Chapter 62

After Five Years.

"Noiselessly as I be spring-time Her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills Open their thousand leaves,"

So noiselessly and quickly have the years come and gone since we first saw our heroine, Bessie, a little girl on the sands of Aberystwyth, and now we present her to our readers for the last time, a sweet-faced, lovely matron of twenty-six, who, with her husband, was waiting at the Allington station, one bright June afternoon, for the incoming train from New York. Just behind the station, where the horses would not be startled by the engine, stood the family carriage, a large, roomy vehicle, bought for comfort rather than show, and which seemed to be full of children, though in reality there were only three. First, Neil, the boy of five years and a half, who, with his dark eyes and hair, and bright olive complexion, was the very image of the Neil for whom he was named, and who was a most lovable and affectionate child.

Next to Neil was the three-year old Robin, with blue eyes and golden hair, like the blind Robin for whom he was named, and next was the girl baby, who came nearly a year and a half ago, and to whom Grey said, when he first took her in his arms:

"I thank God for giving you to me my little daughter, and I am sure you look just as your mother did when she first opened her eyes at Stoneleigh. Yes, I am very glad for you, little Bessie McPherson."

And so that was the name they gave the baby with lustrous blue eyes and wavy hair, and the same sweet, patient expression about the mouth as there was about the mouth of the young girl-mother, whom Neil and Robin called "Bessie mamma," while to their sister they gave the name of "Baby Bessie."

And Baby Bessie was in the roomy carriage, sitting on Jenny's lap, and playing peek-a-boo with Robin, while Neil stood on the opposite seat engaged in a hot altercation with another boy about his own age, who, dressed in deep black, which gave him a peculiar look, was seated at a little distance in a most elegant carriage, with servants in livery, and who, when asked by some one standing near what his name was, had answered:

"I am Lord Rossiter Hardy, and I am waiting for my mother, who is coming from New York, and who is going to bring me a bicycle."

Something in the boy's tone of superiority irritated Neil, who was thoroughly democratic, and he called out:

"Phoo!--a _lord_--why you are nobody but Ross Hardy! and your grandmother--"

"Hush, Neil, or I'll tell your father; and look where you are standin', with your dirthy fate on the cushions. Come down directly, or I'll be afther helpin' ye!" said Jennie; whereupon Neil turned his attention to her, and a spirited battle ensued, in which Robin also took part, and which was only brought to an end by the sound of the train in the distance.

"There's the whistle! Out with ye, or ye'll not be in time to grate yer uncle!" Jennie cried; and with a bound Neil was upon the ground, and rushing through the station, joined his mother, who with Grey was looking anxiously at the few passengers alighting from the train.

First came Lady Augusta Hardy, habited in the deepest of crape. Poor Teddie had died a few months before, and with her little son Rossiter, who was now the heir of Hardy Manor, she was spending the summer at home, and with her foreign airs and liveried servants brought from Dublin was creating quite a sensation to Allington. With a bow to the Jerrolds, who were among the few she condescended to notice, she passed on to where her coachman and footman waited for her, while Bessie ran hastily down the platform towards a tall, sickly looking man, who almost tottered as he walked, while a sudden pallor about his lips told how weak he was.

"Oh, Neil, I am so glad--and so sorry, too. I did not think you were like this," Bessie cried, as she took both his hands in hers, and, standing on tiptoe, kissed the quivering lips, which could not for a moment speak to her "You are very tired," she continued, as Grey came up and, after greeting the stranger cordially, offered him his arm.

"You are very tired from the voyage and the journey here, it is so hot and dusty; but you will rest now, our house is so cool and the air here so pure. There, let me help you, too."

And in her eagerness, Bessie passed her arm through Neil's, or rather put it around him, and thus supported, the sick man went slowly to the open carriage, where Jennie had the children with the exception of little Neil, who, finding himself overlooked, was cultivating the station master and telling him that the dark-looking man was his Uncle Neil from India, and that they were to have ice cream for dinner in honor of his arrival, and he was to go to the table and have two saucers full.

In her anxiety for her cousin, Bessie had forgotten her children, but at the sight of them she exclaimed:

"Oh, Neil, look! Here are two of my babies, Robin and Bessie, and the boy over there throwing stones, is your namesake. I hope they will not trouble you--Robin and Bessie, I mean--for you and I are to go in the carriage with them, and Grey will take little Neil in the phaeton."

"Yes, thank you," Neil replied, too sick and tired to care for anything just then; and leaning back in the carriage, he closed his eyes wearily, and did not open them again until they were more than half way to Stoneleigh Cottage.

Then Robin, who had been regarding the stranger curiously, laid his little dimpled hand on the thin, wasted one, and said:

"Is you s'eep?"

With a start Neil's eyes unclosed, and he looked for the first time on Bessie's children, with such a pain in his heart as he had hoped he might never feel again. Over and over he had said to himself that she should never know how the very thought of them hurt and almost maddened him, and how, in his foolish anger, he had burned the lock of hair which she had sent to him from the head of her first-born. And he said it to himself again, now that he was face to face with the little ones, and though every nerve in his body thrilled at the touch of the soft hand on his, he tried to smile, and said:

"No, I am not asleep; I am only tired. What is your name, my little man?"

"Wobin; tree years old. And this is Baby Bessie, and this is Bessie mamma," was the prompt reply; and Neil rejoined:

"Yes, I knew your mamma when she was a little girl no bigger than you, and her hands felt just as yours feel."

"I p'ays for you every night when mamma puts me to bed. I say, 'God bless Uncle Neil,'" the child continued.

Then two great tears gathered in the sick man's eyes, but he brushed them away quickly, while Bessie took the boy in her lap and kept him from talking any more.

By this time they were in the road which led from the highway to the house. This had formerly been little more than a lane, but under Bessie's supervision it had been transformed into a broad avenue, bordered with trees and footpaths on either side, and seats beneath the trees, which, though young, had grown rapidly, and already cast cool shadows upon the grass.

"This is the place; that is Stoneleigh Cottage," Bessie said, pointing to the house where Grey was waiting for them, with the boy Neil at his side.

"And this is Neil, my eldest; we think he is like you," Bessie continued, as she alighted from the carriage and presented the child to her cousin.

"Phoo! I ain't a bit like him," was the boy's mental comment, while Neil, the elder said, quickly:

"Heaven forbid that he should be like me."

They took him to his room at once--the pleasant south room, whose windows overlooked the plateau, now all ablaze with flowers.

"You must lie down and rest till dinner. I ordered it at seven to-night, I will send you up some tea at once. I hope you will be comfortable and ask for what you want," Bessie said, as she flitted about the room, anxious to make her guest feel at home.

He was very tired, and sank down upon the inviting looking lounge, saying as he did so:

"Oh, Bessie, you do not know how glad I am to be here with you and Grey; nor yet how it affects me. I am not always as bad as this. I shall be better by and by. God bless you."

He drew her face down to his and kissed it fervently; then she went softly out and left him there alone.

Poor Neil! he was greatly to be pitied. His life in India had been a failure from first to last. He had no talent for business, and as he thoroughly disliked the business he was in, it was not strange that he was dismissed by his employers within six months after his arrival in Calcutta. Then he tried something else, and still something else, and was just beginning to feel some interest in his work and to hope for success, when a malarial fever seized upon him and reduced him to a mere wreck of his former self.

Then it was that his father died suddenly at Stoneleigh, and as it seemed desirable that some one should attend to what little there was left to him, Neil returned to England, going first to Wales and then to London, where he took the very lodgings which Bessie had occupied years before, and at which he had rebelled as dingy and second-class. How sorry he was now that he had wounded Bessie so unnecessarily, and how well he understood from actual experience the poverty which could only afford such apartments as Mrs. Buncher's! Except the little his father had left him he had scarcely a shilling in the world, and the future looked very dreary and desolate on that first evening in April, when the once fashionable and fastidious Neil McPherson took possession of his cheerless rooms on Abingdon Road, and threw himself down upon the hair-cloth sofa with an ache in his head and an ache in his heart as he thought of all the past, and remembered the sweet-faced girl who had once been there, and who had left there an atmosphere of peace and quiet, which reconciled him at last to his surroundings.

Of all his large circle of acquaintance in London, there was not one whom he cared to meet, and so he staid mostly in his room, only going out at unfashionable hours for a stroll in Kensington Gardens, and occasionally to the park, where he always sat down in the place where Bessie had sat in her faded linen when he drove by with Blanche. Once only he joined the crowd on Saturday afternoon, and saw the _elite_ go by, the princess with her children, the dukes and duchesses, the lords and ladies, and lastly Lady Blanche Paxton, who rode alone in her glory.

The man, who was almost an imbecile when she married him, was an idiot now, and had a keeper to look after him, and on Blanche's face there was an expression of _ennui_ and discontent which told Neil that she was scarcely happier than himself, even with her hundreds of thousands and her home on Grosvenor Square.

It was about this time that Neil received a most cordial letter from Grey and Bessie, urging him to spend the summer with them in Allington, and to stay as much longer as he pleased.

"Always, if you will, for our home is yours," Bessie wrote; and after a severe conflict with his love and his pride, Neil accepted the invitation, and left England with a feeling that he might never see it again.

The voyage was a rough one, and as he was sick all the way, he had scarcely strength to stand when he reached Allington, and only excitement and sheer will kept him up until he found himself in the cool, pretty room which had been prepared for him, and which it seemed to him he could never leave again.

Just as the twilight was beginning to fall, Miss Betsey drove up the avenue, stiff, straight, and severe, in her best black silk and white India shawl, which she only wore on rare occasions. Why she wore them now, she hardly knew, and she had hesitated a little before deciding to do so.

"I do not want the dude to think me a scarecrow," she said to herself; "though who cares what he thinks? I did not favor his coming, and they know it. I told them they would have him on their hands for life, and Bessie actually said they might have a worse thing. I don't know about that, but I do know he will not sit down upon _me_."

From this it will be seen that Miss Betsey's attitude toward the young man was anything but friendly, as she started to make her first call upon him.

"Didn't come down to dinner? I don't like that. He will be having all his meals in his room, first you will know. Better begin as you can hold out," she said, sharply, and Bessie replied, with tears in her eyes:

"Oh, auntie, don't be so hard upon poor Neil. You do not know how weak, and sick, and changed he is. Just think of his lodging with Mrs. Buncher in London, and coming out as a second-class passenger."

"Did he do that?" Miss Betsey asked, quickly, while the lines about her mouth softened as she went up stairs to meet the _dude_, who looked like anything but a dude as he rose to greet her, in his shabby clothes, which, nevertheless, were worn with a certain grace which made you forget their shabbiness, while his manner, though a little constrained, had in it that air of good breeding and courtesy inseparable from Neil.

Miss Betsey had expected to see him thin and worn, but she was not prepared for the white, wasted face, which turned so wistfully to her, or for the expression of the dark eyes so like her brother Hugh, Archie's father. Hugh had been her favorite brother, the one nearest her age, with whom she had played and romped in the old garden at Stoneleigh. He had been with her at Monte Carlo when her lover was brought to her dead, and in the frightened face which had looked at her then there was the same look which she saw now in Neil, as he came slowly forward. She had expected a dandy, with enough of invalidism about him to make him interesting to himself at least; but she saw a broken, sorry young man, as far removed from dandyism as it was possible for Neil to be, and she felt herself melting at once.

He was her own flesh and blood, nearer to her even than Bessie; he was sick; he was subdued; he had crossed as a second-class passenger, and this went further toward reconciling her to him than anything he could have done.

"Why Neil, my boy," she said, as she took both his hands, "I am sorry to see you so weak. Sit down; don't try to stand; or rather, lie down, and I will sit beside you."

She arranged his pillows and made him lie down again, he protesting the while, and saying, with a faint smile:

"It hardly seems right for a great hulking fellow like me to be lying here, but I am very tired and weak," and in proof thereof the perspiration came out in great drops upon his forehead and hands, and about his pallid lips.

Miss Betsey did not talk long with him that night, but when she left him she promised to come again next day and bring him some wine, which she had made herself, and which was sure to do him good.

"Sleep well to-night, and you will be better to-morrow," she said.

But Neil did not sleep well, and he was not better on the morrow, and for many days he kept his room, seeming to take little interest in anything around him, except Bessie. At sight of her he always brightened and made an effort to be cheerful and to talk, but nothing she could do availed to arouse him from his state of apathy.

"All life and hope have gone out of me," he said to her one day, "and I sometimes wonder what has become of that finefied swell I used to know as Neil McPherson. I never felt this more, I think, than the day I hesitated before paying my penny for a chair in the park because I did not know as I could afford it. That was the time I saw Blanche go by in her grand carriage, where I might have sat, I suppose; but I preferred my hired chair, and sent no regret after her and her ten thousand a year. I saw Jack, too, that day; did I tell you? He stumbled upon me, and I think would have offered me money if he had dared. I am glad he did not. He was staying in London, at Langham's, and Flossie was with him. I did not see her, but he told me of her, and of his twin boys, Jack and Giles, whom Flossie calls 'Jack and Gill.' Roguish little bears he said they were, with all their mother's Irish in them, even to her brogue. He has grown stout with years, and seemed very happy, as he deserves to be. Everybody is happy, but myself; everybody of some use, while I am a mere leech, a sponge, a nonenitity in everybody's way, and I often wish I were dead. Nobody would miss me. Don't interrupt me, please," he continued, as he saw Bessie about to speak. "Don't interrupt me, and do not misunderstand me. I know you and Grey would be sorry just at first, but you have each other, and you have your children. You could not miss me long, or be sorry except for my wasted life. No, Bessie. I would far rather die, and I think I shall."

This was Neil's state of mind, and nothing could rouse him from it until one day in August when Miss Betsey drove over to Stoneleigh Cottage, and went up to his room, where he sat as usual by the window looking out upon the plateau, where Bessie's children were frolicking with their nurse. Of late he had evinced some interest in the children, and once or twice had had them in his room, and had held Baby Bessie on his knee and kissed her fat hands, and the boy Neil, who saw everything, had said to his mother, in speaking of it:

"He looked as if he wanted to cry, when sister patted his face and said 'I love oo,' and when I asked him if he didn't wish she was his baby, he looked so white, and said, 'Yes, Neil; will you give her to me?'

"I told him 'No, sir-ee, I'd give him my ball, and velocipede, and jackknife, but not baby.'"

This was the day before Miss Betsey came, straight and prim as usual, but with a different look on her face and tone in her voice from anything Neil had known, as she asked him how he was feeling, and them, sitting down beside him, began abruptly:

"I say, Neil, why, don't you rouse yourself? I've been talking to the doctor, and he says you have no particular disease, except that you seem discouraged and hopeless, and have made up your mind that you must die."

"Yes, auntie, that is just it; hopeless and discouraged, and want to die--oh, so badly!" Neil replied, as he leaned back in his chair. "What use for me to live? Who wants me?"

"_I do!_"

The words rang sharply through the room, and Neil started as if a pistol had been fired at him.

"You want me? You!" he said, staring blankly at her as she went on rapidly:

"Yes, I want you, and have come to tell you so. I am an odd old woman, hard to be moved, but I am not quite calloused yet. I did not like you, years ago, when those letters passed between us and you would not accept my offer because you thought it degrading. I am glad now you did not, for if you had, Bessie would not have been Grey's wife, but yours; and you are not fit to be her husband, or in fact anybody's. You are only fit to live with _me_, and see to my business. I am cheated at every turn, and I need somebody who is honest to look after my rents and investments. You can do this. It is not hard, and will pay in the end. I am old and lonesome, and want somebody to speak to besides the cat--somebody to sit at table and say good-morning to me. In short, I want you for my son, or grandson, if you like that better. I shall be queer, and cranky, and hard to get along with at times, but I shall mean well always. I shall give you a thousand dollars a year to manage my affairs, and when I die I shall divide with you and Bessie. I have made a new will to that effect this very morning, so you see I am in earnest. What do you say?"

He said nothing at first, but cried like a child, while Miss Betsey cried, too, a little, and blew her nose loudly, and told him not to be a fool, but to go outdoors on the plateau, where the children were, and sit there in the shade, and try to get some strength, for she wanted him very soon.

Then she went away, and he dragged himself out to the plateau, and let Neil and Robin play that he was a balky horse who would not go, notwithstanding their shouts and blows with dandelions and blades of grass, while Baby Bessie pelted him with daisies from the white cross and pansies from the border.

From that day on, Neil's improvement was rapid, and when, on the last day of September, the Jerrolds returned to their house in Boston, they left him domesticated with Miss Betsey, and to all appearance happy and contented. He would never be very strong again, for the malaria contracted in India had undermined his constitution; but he was able to do all his aunt required of him, even to overseeing at times the hands in the cotton-mill, an office he had once spurned with contempt, and from which he undoubtedly shrank a little, although he never made a sign to that effect.

A year or more after his arrival in America he wrote to Jack Trevellian as follows:

"I hardly think you would know the once fastidious Neil McPherson, if you could see him now in a noisy cotton-mill, screaming at the top of his voice to the stupid operatives, and button-holed confidentially by the Brother Jonathans, who address him as 'Square, and speak of his aunt as the 'old woman.' But it is astonishing how soon one gets accustomed to things, and I really am very happy, especially when scouting the country on my beautiful bay, a present from my aunt, who gave it to me on condition that I would take care of it myself. Think of me in overalls and knit jacket, currying a horse and bedding him down, for I do all that; in fact, I do everything, even to splitting the kindlings when the chore-boy (that's what they call him here) does not come.

"Ah, well; I have learned many things in this land of democracy, and am content; though in my heart I believe I still have a hankering after old aristocratic England, provided I could be one of the aristocrats. I suppose you know that poor Blanche died last winter of fever in Naples, but perhaps you do not know that she left me ten thousand pounds! Fifty thousand dollars they count that in America, and I actually do not know what to do with it. My aunt gives me a thousand a year for spending money, and when she dies, I shall have, as nearly as I can estimate it, half a million, which in this country makes a rich man. If Bessie had not provided for old Anthony and Dorothy, I should care for them; but as she has, I believe I shall use the interest of Blanche's money in paying for scholarships in India, and China, and Japan, and Greece, and I'll call them the Blanche Trevellian and the Bessie McPherson scholarships. That will please Bessie, for she is great on missions, both at home and abroad, and her kitchen is a regular soup-house in the winter, for every beggar in Boston knows Mrs. Grey Jerrold. Jack, you don't know what a lovely woman Bessie is. Sweeter and prettier even than when she was a girl and you and I were both in love with her. And Grey--well, you ought to see how he worships her! Why, she is never within his reach that he does not put his hands upon her, and if he thinks no one is looking on he always kisses her, and by Jove, she kisses him back as if she liked it! And I--well, I bear it now with a good deal of equanimity. Eels, they say, can get used to being skinned, and so I am getting accustomed to think of Bessie as Grey's wife instead of mine, and I really have quite an uncleish feeling for her children. Indeed. I intend to make them my heirs

"And so good-by to you, old chap; with love to Flossie and the twins, from your Yankeefied friend,

"NEIL McPHERSON."

And now our story winds to a close, and we are dropping the curtain upon the characters, who go out one by one and pass from our sight forever. In the cozy rectory Hannah Jerrold's last days are passing happily and peacefully with the Rev. Charles Sanford, who loves her just as dearly and thinks her just as fair as on that night years and years ago, when she walked with him under the chestnut trees, and while her heart was breaking with its load of care and pain, sent him from her with no other explanation than that it could not be.

At Grey's Park Lucy Grey lives her life of sweet unselfishness, looked up to by the villagers as the lady _par excellence_ of the town, and idolized by the little ones from Boston, who know no spot quite as attractive as her house in the park.

Miss Betsey and Neil still scramble along together, he indolent at times and prone to lapse into his old habits of luxurious ease, for which she rates him sharply, though on the whole she pets him as she has never petted a human being before.

"Boys will be boys," she says, forgetting that Neil is over thirty years of age, and she keeps his breakfast warm for him, and gets up to let him in when he has staid later than usual at the Ridge House, where he is a frequent visitor, for he and Allen Browne are fast friends and boon companions. Together they ride and drive, and row on the lakes around Allington; together they smoke and lounge on the broad piazza of the Ridge House, but Neil never drinks or plays with Allen, or any one else, for his aunt made it a condition of her friendship, that he should never touch a drop of anything which could intoxicate, or soil his hands with cards, even for amusement. The shadow of that awful tragedy at Monte Carlo is over her still, and she looks upon anything like card-playing as savoring of the pit.

Allen Browne is a young man of elegant leisure, who takes perfumed baths, and wears an overcoat which comes nearly to his feet, and a collar which cuts his ears. He is a graduate from Harvard, and his mother says his 'schoolin' has cost over fifteen thousand dollars, though where under the sun and moon the money went she can't contrive.

Mrs. Rossiter-Browne is very proud of her son and of her daughter, the Lady Augusta, who comes home nearly every summer with a retinue of servants and her little boy, who calls himself Lord Rossiter-Browne Hardy, and Neil Jerrold, when he is angry with him, "a little Yankee," while Neil promptly returns the compliment by calling him a "freckled-faced paddy."

In the old home on Beacon street, Mrs. Geraldine still affects her air of exclusiveness and invalidism, although a good deal softened and improved by the grandchildren, of whom she is very fond, and whose baby hands and baby prattle have found their way to her heart, making her a better because a less selfish woman.

In the street and among men Burton Jerrold holds his head as high as ever, for all his shame and dread are buried in the grave under the white cross at Stoneleigh Cottage, where Bessie spends every summer, with her children, and where Grey spends as much time as possible. He is a man of business now, and many go to him for counsel and advice, and this, except in the hottest weather, keeps him in the city during the week. But every Saturday afternoon the Jerrold carriage, with Bessie and the children in it, stands behind the station waiting for the train, the first sound of which in the distance is caught up and repeated by Neil and Robin, while Baby Bessie claps her hands and calls out, "Papa is coming." And very soon papa comes, with an expression of perfect content on his fine face as he kisses his wife and babies, and then in the delicious coolness of the late afternoon is driven up the shaded avenue to the cottage where the plateau is bright with flowers, and where the daisy cross in its purple heart of pansies, gleams white and pure in the summer sunshine.

THE END.