"It is very warm yet, Piers."
"Never mind, I want to see the children. The house is too still. They have been at Atheling for three days."
"We promised them a week. Harold will expect the week; and Edith and Maude will rebel at any shorter time."
"At any rate let us go and see them."
"Shall we ride there?"
"Let us rather take a carriage. One of the three may possibly be willing to come back with us."
Near the gates of Atheling they met the Squire and his grandson Harold.
They had been fishing. "The dew was on the gra.s.s when we went away; and Harold has been into the water after the trout. We are both a bit wet," said the Squire; "but our baskets are full." And then Harold leaped into the carriage beside his father and mother, and proudly exhibited his speckled beauties.
Mrs. Atheling had heard their approach, and she was at the open door to meet them. Very little change had taken place in her. Her face was a trifle older, but it was finer and tenderer; and her smile was as sweet and ready, and her manner as gracious--though perhaps a shade quieter than in the days when we first met her. Her granddaughter Edith, a girl of eight years, stood at her side; and Maude, a charming babe of four, clung to her black-silk ap.r.o.n, and half-hid her pretty face in its sombre folds. To her mother, Kate was still Kate; and to Kate, mother was still mother. They went into the house together, little Maude making a link between them, and Edith holding her mother"s hand. But, in the slight confusion following their arrival, the children all disappeared.
"They were helping Bradley to make tarts," said Mrs. Atheling, "when I called them, and they have gone back to their pastry and jam. Let them alone. Dear me! I remember how proud I was when I first cut pastry round the patty pans with my thumb," and Mrs. Atheling looked at Kate, who smiled and nodded at her own similar memory.
They were soon seated in the large parlour, where all the windows were open, and a faint little breeze stirring the cherry leaves round them.
Then the Squire began to talk of the Indian news; and Piers told, with a pitiful pathos, the last tragic act in Cecil"s and Annabel"s love and life. And when he had finished the narration, greatly to every one"s amazement, the Squire rose to his feet, and, lifting his eyes heavenward, said solemnly,--
"I give hearty thanks for their death, so n.o.ble and so worthy of their faith and their race. I give hearty thanks because G.o.d, knowing their hearts and their love, committed unto them the dismissing of their own souls from the wanton cruelty of incarnate devils. I give hearty thanks for Love triumphant over Death, and for that faith in our immortality which could command an immediate re-union, "Come quickly, Cecil!"
"There is nothing to cry about," he added, as he resumed his seat.
"Death must come to all of us. It came mercifully to these two. It did not separate them; they went together. Somewhere in G.o.d"s Universe they are now, without doubt, doing His Will together. Let us give thanks for them."
After a little while, Kate and her mother went away. They had many things to talk over about which masculine opinions were not necessary, nor even desirable. And the Squire and Piers had, in a certain way, a similar confidence. Indeed the Squire told Piers many things he would not have told any one else,--little wrongs and worries not worth complaining about to his wife, and perhaps about which he was not very certain of her sympathy. But with Piers, these crept into his conversation, and were talked away, or at least considerably lessened, by his son-in-law"s patient interest.
This morning their conversation had an unconscious tone of gratified prophecy in it. "Edgar is in a lot of trouble," he said; "but then he seems to enjoy it. His hands gathered in the mill-yard yesterday and gave him what they call, "a bit of their mind." And their "mind"
isn"t what you and I would call a civil one. Luke Staley, a big dyer from Oldham, got beyond bearing, and told Edgar, if he didn"t do thus and so, he would be made to. And Edgar can be very provoking. He didn"t tell me what he said; but I have no doubt it was a few of the strongest words he could pick out. And Luke Staley, not having quite such a big private stock as Edgar, doubled his fist, to make the shortage good, almost in Edgar"s face; and there would have, maybe, been a few blows, if Edgar had not taken very strong measures at once,--that is, Piers, he knocked the fellow down as flat as a pancake. And then all was so still that, Edgar said, the very leaves rustling seemed noisy; and he told them in his masterful way, they could have five minutes to get back to their looms. And if they were not back in five minutes, he promised them he would dump the fires and lock the gates, and they could go about their business."
"And they went to their looms, of course?"
"To be sure they did. More than that, Luke Staley picked himself up, and went civilly to Edgar and said, "That was a good knock-down. I"m beat this time, Master;" and he offered his hand, blue and black with dyes, and Edgar took it. My word! how his grandfather Belward would have enjoyed that scene. I am sorry he is not alive this day. He missed a deal by dying before Reform. Edgar and he together could keep a thousand men at their looms--and set the price, too."
"What did the men want?"
"A bit of Reform, of course,--more wage and less work. I am not much put out of the way now, Piers, with the mill. I get a lot of pleasure out of it, one road or another. Did I ever tell you about the Excursion Edgar gave them last week?"
"I have not heard anything about it."
"Well, you see, Edgar sent all his hands and their wives and sweethearts to the seaside, and gave them a good dinner; and they had a band of music to play for them, and a little steamer to give them a sail; and they came home at midnight, singing and in high good humour. Edgar thought he had pleased them. Not a bit of it! Two nights after they held a meeting in that Mechanics Hall Mrs. Atheling built for them. What for? To talk over the jaunt, and try and find out, "_What Master Atheling was up to_." You see they were sure he had a selfish motive of some kind."
"I don"t believe he had a single selfish motive; he is not a selfish man," said Piers.
"I wouldn"t swear to his motives, Piers. Between you and me, he wants to go to Parliament again."
"He ought to be there; it is his native heath, in a manner."
"Well, as I said, one way or another, I get a lot of pleasure out of these men. There is a truce on now between them and Edgar; but, in the main, it is a lively truce."
"Edgar seems to enjoy the conditions, also, Father."
"Well, he ought to have a bit of something that pleases him. He has a deal of contrary things to fight. There is his eldest son."
"Augustus?"
"Yes, Augustus."
"What has Augustus done?"
"He will paint pictures and make little figures, and waste his time about such things as no Atheling in this world ever bothered his head about,--unless he wanted his likeness painted. The lad does wonders with his colours and brushes, and I"ll allow that. He brought me a bit of canvas with that corner by the fir woods on it, and you would have thought you could pull the gra.s.s and drink the water. But I did not think it right to praise him much. I said, "Very good, Augustus, but what will you make by this?""
"Well?"
"Well, Piers, the lad talked about his ideals, and said Art was its own reward, and a lot of rubbishy nonsense. But I never expected much from a boy called Augustus. That was his mother"s whim; no Atheling was ever called such a name before. He wants to go to Italy, and his father wants him in the mill. Edgar is finding a few things out now he didn"t believe in when he was twenty years old. The point of view is everything, Piers. Edgar looks at things as a father looks at them now; then, he had an idea that fathers knew next to nothing. Augustus is no worse than he was. Maybe, he will come to looms yet; he is just like the Curzons, and they were loom lovers. Now Cecil, his second boy, has far better notions. He likes a rod, and a horse, and a gun; and he thinks a gamekeeper has the best position in the world."
"Mrs. Atheling sets us all an example. She is always doing something for the people."
"They don"t thank her for it. She brings lecturers, and expects them to go and hear them; and the men would rather be in the cricket field.
She has cla.s.ses of all kinds for the women and girls; and they don"t want her interfering in their ways and their houses. I"ll tell you what it is, Piers, you cannot write Reform upon flesh and blood as easy as you can write it upon paper. It will take a few generations to erase the old marks, and put the new marks on."
"Still Reform has been a great blessing. You know that, Father."
"Publicly, I know it, Piers. Privately, I keep my own ideas. But there is Kate calling us, and I see the carriage is waiting. Thank G.o.d, Reform has nothing to do with homes. Wives and children are always the same.
We don"t want them changed, even for the better."
"You do not mean that?"
"Yes, I do," said the Squire, positively. "My wife"s faults are very dear to me. Do you think I would like to miss her bits of tempers, and her unreasonableness? Even when she tries to get the better of me, I like it. I wouldn"t have her perfect, not if I could."
Then Piers called for his son; but Harold could not be found. The Squire laughed. "He has run away," he said. "The boy wants a holiday. I"ll take good care of him. He isn"t doing nothing; he is learning to catch a trout. Many a very clever man can"t catch a trout." Then Piers asked his little daughters to come home with him; and Edith hid herself behind the ample skirts of her grandfather"s coat, and Maude lifted her arms to her grandmother, and snuggled herself into her bosom.
[Ill.u.s.tration:]
"Come, Piers, we shall have to go home alone," Kate said.
"You have Katherine at home," said the Squire.
And then Kate laughed. "Why, Father," she said, "you speak as if Katherine was more than we ought to expect. Surely we may have one of our six children. The Duke thinks he has whole and sole right in d.i.c.k and John; and you have Harold and Edith and Maude."
"And you have Katherine," reiterated the Squire.
When they got back to Exham Hall, the little Lady Katherine was in the drawing-room to meet them. She was the eldest daughter of the house, a fair girl of fifteen with her father"s refined face and rather melancholy manner. Piers delighted in her; and there was a sympathy between them that needed no words. She had a singular love for music, though from what ancestor it had come no one could tell; and it was her usual custom after dinner to open the door a little between the drawing-room and music-room, and play her various studies, while her father and mother mused, and talked, and listened.
This evening Piers lit his cigar, and Kate and he walked in the garden.
It was warm, and still, and full of moonshine; and the music rose and fell to their soft reminiscent talk of the many interests that had filled their lives for the past twenty golden years. And when they were wearied a little, they came back to the drawing-room and were quiet. For Katherine was striking the first notes of a little melody that always charmed them; and as they listened, her girlish voice lifted the song, and the tender words floated in to them, and sunk into their hearts, and became a prayer of thanksgiving.