Chapter 5

Mr. Clair was very much surprised the next morning by a visit from Mr. Murray. Bertie had quite forgotten to mention anything about his meeting with him till he heard the visitor announced, and then it was too late for explanations. It was quite enough for Uncle Clair and Aunt Amy to know that he was a friend of the boys' to ensure a kindly and cordial welcome, but Eddie looked rather black at the visitor, and greeted him coldly.

As the children were on the point of going out, Mr. Murray said they ought to be off, and not lose another moment of the morning sunshine. "The sun and fresh air you get before noon, and the sleep before midnight, are what make strong, healthy, wealthy men and women of you," he said; "so be off, and perhaps I shall find you on the beach later on."

Rather reluctantly Eddie followed Bertie, who was already half-way down the stairs. "I wonder what he wanted?" he grumbled, when they reached their favourite haunt beside an old boat just above high water mark, where Agnes almost directly afterwards joined them. "To see how badly off we are, I suppose. I don't like meeting any one who ever knew us at Riversdale."

"Why, Eddie?" Bertie asked, in open-mouthed wonder. "I thought you would be delighted to see an old friend. I was, I can tell you, when I met him yesterday."

"Oh! you saw him before? I suppose you asked him to come and see us," Eddie cried angrily.

"No, I didn't; he said he would come himself, and asked for Uncle Clair's address; and he was always very good to us, Eddie: he gave me a steam-engine, don't you remember? and you a box of paints. He used to call you a little genius when he came to Riversdale. He's a dear old man, Agnes," Bertie added, turning in search of sympathy from his brother's gloomy face.

"I don't like any one who knew us when we were rich to see us now," Eddie cried suddenly. "They must despise us!"

"Eddie," Agnes cried, a world of reproach in her voice, and sudden tears in her soft eyes, on hearing what he had said, "Eddie dear, how can you say so? how can you ever think such dreadful things? as if it matters a bit whether people are rich or poor, so long as they do right!"

"But we're not poor," Bertie cried exultantly: "that's the fun of it! Why, we have everything we want, haven't we? Everything," he repeated, with a comprehensive glance all round, and an eloquent wave of his somewhat tarry hands. "Why, we're never cold or hungry, or anything. Eddie should come to the City for a while, if he wants to see poor people. Why, I know a fellow in a warehouse near us--Watts his name is--who has only one arm, and gets eighteen shillings a week. He has a wife and a number of children, and he has to walk four miles every morning to work, and four home again, because he can't afford fourpence for a 'bus.' Oh, yes!" he continued; "if Eddie wants to know what it is to be poor, let him come to the City!"

"I thought people in the City were rich," Eddie said, looking interested for a moment. "Uncle Gregory said you were to make your fortune."

"Yes," Bertie replied, slowly and thoughtfully, "there's a lot of rich people; but it seems as if there were twenty thousand times more people very poor. I don't understand it at all."

"Nor I," said Agnes, in a very low voice; "but I agree with you, Bertie: we're not poor a bit; but oh dear! _I_ was poor before poor papa died; we often had nothing to eat but bread for days, and such a little mite of fire. But why didn't you tell us, Bertie, that you met the gentleman yesterday?"

"Just at first I forgot. You remember when I went up for that fishing-line and hooks, and Teddy said we might fish from the chain pier; I found you all gone there, and I ran after you as fast as ever I could. While we were fishing I forgot everything, though I caught nothing, and then, when I did think of it, I thought perhaps you wouldn't care to know that our cousins are here."

Bertie spoke quickly, with flushed cheeks, averted eyes, and a good deal of confusion.

"Our Cousins Dick and Harry Gregory?" Eddie said quietly.

"Yes; they and aunt were with Mr. Murray; and he asked me ever such a lot of questions and said the funniest things. Of course he never had heard a word of poor papa's death, and how we had to leave Riversdale; and how he did pucker his eyebrows over it! And when I said I was in Uncle Gregory's office, and you were with Uncle Clair learning to be an artist, you should see how he wrinkled his forehead and scowled! Then he asked me how I came to be here, and I told him, and how near I came to missing you all, and I wondered whatever I should have done if I had. He said I might have had a very happy time with my cousins: gone in a yacht to the Isle of Wight and round the Land's End; and I couldn't help looking surprised. It showed how little _he_ knew of Aunt Gregory, though he was with her; and then he said he'd call and see Uncle Clair, and I forgot to tell him, and that's all. Let us go and have a swim, Eddie, and perhaps Agnes will like to rest here for a while."

For answer, Eddie threw himself on the smooth pebbly beach, and hiding his face on his folded arms, sobbed bitterly, wildly almost. Bertie looked and listened in dumb, helpless amazement. Eddie crying! it seemed absurd, impossible! The rough, hardy, resolute boy would not have cried in such a place for anything, "not," he said afterwards, in confidence, to Agnes, "not if he had a tooth pulled out!" and that, in Bertie's idea, was the climax of human misery, the height of human endurance. But Eddie's sobs continued for a long time without either Agnes or Bertie attempting to offer any consolation, for the simple reason that they did not know in the least what was the matter with him. Once, indeed, Agnes ventured to ask timidly if he were ill, and the answer was such a rough "No, leave me alone!" that she sat and looked at Bertie for what seemed two hours, and was in reality about nine or ten minutes.

The pains and passions, as well as the pleasures of childhood are very fleeting, after all, and Eddie Rivers, in spite of his fifteen years, was a very child, so that he recovered himself quickly, and looked round with an expression of shameful defiance; but on Bertie's puzzled and Agnes' sorrowful face he saw neither contempt nor amusement, and he stammered out a sort of apology.

"I'm very sorry, Bertie, but I could not help it."

"Poor Eddie!" Agnes whispered sympathetically.

"I'm glad you are all right, Ted," Bertie cried, with an uncomfortable feeling in his throat. "I thought you were going to be really bad."

"So I was, 'really bad,' Bert," Eddie answered, with a very unusual accession of gentleness and humility. "I didn't like anybody or anything a moment ago; I thought you were very selfish. I quite disliked those unkind Gregory boys; I thought Mr. Murray came to see us just to make fun of us. I was as wicked and miserable as ever I could be, and I do wish we had our dear ponies, and could ride every day like other boys, instead of moping down here on the beach."

"I thought you liked it, Eddie. I do, over anything," Bertie replied, looking quite serious; "and I'm sure if Uncle Clair knew you wanted a pony badly, he would let you have one. Why didn't you tell him?"

Eddie flushed angrily, and turned aside a little impatiently. "Uncle Clair is far too good to me already. You don't understand me a bit, Bertie: you never did; or you either, Agnes--no, you don't. You are both quite happy and contented, but I'm not."

"Why?" Bertie asked. "Do, tell us, Eddie! Oh, I know! it's because you have an enemy, and I believe he makes you think all kinds of absurd things. Just tell me who he is, Ted, and I'll thrash him," Bertie whispered eagerly.

"Thrash whom? I don't understand you, Bert." Eddie looked up with a sudden appearance of interest, and Agnes drew a little away: she did not quite understand the turn matters were taking; but Bertie meant to talk the "enemy" question over thoroughly, and pulled Agnes back to add her persuasions to his.

But Eddie looked so thoroughly amazed, that Bertie was quite at a loss how to go on. If his brother had an enemy, he did not seem to know anything about it; still, there were Uncle Clair's words: they must mean something; and at last he repeated them, and said he was determined not to have poor Eddie worried by any one in the world.

"Do you know what it means, Agnes? I don't. Do you know what Uncle Clair meant?"

"I think I can guess," she replied, without looking at either of her cousins. "I believe uncle meant that Eddie's enemy was _himself_, because you know, dear, very often you won't let yourself be happy, and make yourself quite miserable about nothing at all."

"Oh!" Eddie said, after a long silence, "do you think Uncle Clair meant that?"

"Here he is, and Mr. Murray too," Bertie said, jumping up, and springing forward, forgetting that poor Eddie's face still bore traces of his recent distress, and that Agnes too looked very sad, and not a bit inclined for company. They had not Bertie's happy knack of shaking off unpleasant sensations and being cheerful in a moment. However, Uncle Clair and Mr. Murray were standing beside them, and there was nothing for it but to make the best of the situation, though Eddie, at least, would have gladly been alone, to think over Agnes' words, and ask himself if he really was his own enemy.