Chapter XIII: A United Family

Home at last!

"Good-bye, old boy! see you to-morrow, I daresay. Remember me to all at home; I'll wish them a merry Christmas when I come." This was from Duke to Lionel. He and Penharden were going forward to Penzance. The train was just about to start; they were standing on the platform exchanging farewell greetings, though their absence from each other would in all probability be short. "Good-bye, Penharden! Don't forget our supper in the larder. But I say, you fellows," and he went up to the window and spoke to them as they were standing in the carriage, "don't go telling all the tale; leave a bit of it for me to finish."

"Why, certainly, certainly," was Lionel's reply; "we'll leave it all. It would be intolerable for us to rob you of so excellent an opportunity of exhibiting your unrivalled powers of description. Good-bye! Good-bye, Mrs. Tregowan! Good-bye!"

They stood at the window, he and Noel, bowing to Winnie and her mother and waving their hands to Duke. Duke waited till the train had left the station, and then went with Winnie and his mother to the carriage which awaited them. The people who had come to welcome him still lingered, and were clustering outside. Perceiving this, Duke, as he stepped into the carriage, turned and spoke to them.

"A merry Christmas to you all," he said, "and many of them. I had a narrow shave last night. I always thought that it would be rather fun to be in a railway accident, but I've changed my mind since then. For a good long time I thought that all was up with me, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling, I can tell you; and jolly glad I am to be at home, and back with all of you again."

"A merry Christmas to you, sir!" "Glad to see you back!" "Three cheers for Mr. Marmaduke!" cried people in the crowd; and while the cheers were being given, Duke took his seat, and off the coachman drove, while the best of all good wishes were showered after him. And so the lad was once more with his own kith and kin.

The first few moments they spent in looking at each other. Duke noticed how like the mother Winnie grew; noted too her fresh, sweet, girlish beauty--beauty of the soul as well as of the form and face; for there was no mistaking the story of her eyes. And the mother too, she was the same; yet was she changed as little. There was a gentle melancholy in her face, a tender anxiety in her loving eyes, an indefinite something in her whole expression, which seemed to tell of anxious thoughts, which he could not fail to notice, and which alike were strange to him. But these things were in the background now; she could know no troubled mood in this the first hour of their meeting; and on her face was that rare smile, which all her children with one voice declared was the most wonderful which ever yet was known on face of woman. Nor was it strange, nor was it partiality alone which made them say that when the mother smiled she was as beautiful as any maiden of them all.

"Duke, how you have grown!" The mother sat by Winnie, with her head nestling among the cushions of the carriage, smiling at Marmaduke. Duke laughed back at her; he was not clear whether the remark might be considered complimentary; he was not sure whether he might look on it as flattering. He had reached that peculiar stage in the life of a young gentleman when his mind is racked by a doubt as to whether he may regard himself as boy or man, whether he is not almost a man, although perhaps not quite, going on that way at any rate; and in this state of dubitation he is not at all sure whether it is not undignified to allow people to speak of him as having grown, or getting quite tall, or anything suggestive of his being in the chrysalis state, and not yet the actual butterfly. Although Mr. Pitt very properly declared that to be young is certainly no crime, a young man is entirely persuaded that there is something very dignified in age.

So Duke was rather at a loss how to regard this observation of his mother's. In his most offhand manner, as though the matter were nothing at all, "Think so, mother?" he replied.

"You've grown quite two inches. How big do you intend to be before you've done?" This was rather exasperating of Winnie--for it was Winnie spoke. Duke felt that the less said upon these delicate subjects the better. He felt that the best thing he could do was to turn the battery upon the other side.

"I know one thing," he retorted. "I shall never get as big as you are jolly-looking. I say, Win, old girl, you're not so ugly as you were, you know."

"Duke, how dare you?" cried the lady, turning all the colours of the rainbow, for the attack was unexpected, though whether she objected very strongly to the young gentleman's remarks is perhaps a little doubtful.

"Duke means that for flattery, my dear," put in the mother, smiling at them both. "He is under the impression that he has paid you a very neat and graceful compliment. O Duke! Duke! when will you learn that elegance of speech is not the least manly of accomplishments?"

"I will learn anything you care to teach me," declared Marmaduke there and then. "Why, mother, I believe you grow younger every time I come, and Winnie's growing up, and you are growing down, or whatever it is--you know exactly what I mean," for he felt that his words hardly expressed what he intended to convey. "For you are so beautiful, mother mine, that though I carry your face with me wherever I may be, it always seems so strange and wonderful when I come back again."

"Duke, how can you be so foolish!" But though she called him foolish, in her look was no reproach. "Do you wish to spoil your mother utterly? and when will you learn that she is a staid matron, well on in years, with a grown-up family around her?"

"I will never learn it. She will always be the youngest, and the loveliest, and the best woman in the world to me."

"Duke, I will not have you talk such nonsense. The best woman I pray that indeed she might be, but I fear that it is out of the range of possibilities for her to be always the youngest and the loveliest as well."

For some moments there was silence. It was an open carriage they were in; they had left the town behind, and were going through Rosewarne to Tregowan. It was the longest road which they were taking; the shortest is by Pool and Trevenson; but this way the hills are neither so numerous nor so steep, which is a consideration when it is remembered that in many places in the hollows the snow was over three feet deep. The wind blew in their faces, but the mother and Winnie were so wrapped in sealskins, that only to look at them made one feel quite warm; while Duke was, when he chose, impervious to cold.

"What a storm! Why, the snow must have been as bad with you as it was with us," said Marmaduke. "It's many a year since I've seen it in these parts so deep as this. It will be something like Christmas, won't it? How's Nell and Ria? I should think Ria thinks this awfully jolly fun; and it is jolly, don't you think? Don't you like it, mother?"

"Do I like it? What does it matter? It does not trouble me, and it does seem more like the typical Christmas when snow is on the ground; but though it may be fun to you, it is very far from being fun to others. Poverty and cold are not the best of friends, and the two together are not pleasant things to know. If snow seem Christmas-like, it should also remind us of God's love for us at that first Christmas, and what should be our Christmas-love for others."

Duke all at once was grave; he looked for some moments silently into the mother's eyes, and then suddenly, with a great burst, exclaimed--

"Mother, I should like to do something special this Christmas-time, I should. Somehow or other I feel as though I must, you know. Here am I escaped without a scratch, and the season is so precious seasonable, and everything is exactly as it ought to be, and I do feel as though I ought to do something uncommon and out of the way to make it a memorable Christmas-tide."

Winnie laughed; Duke was so enthusiastic all at once, and there was such a peculiar vagueness in his speech; but Mrs. Tregowan said, although she smiled as well--

"What is the something uncommon and out of the way which you would like to do? Do you mean that you would like to do it for yourself, or have it done for others?"

"Have it done for others--myself be bothered! Something special has been already done for me." The words escaped him unawares, and he went on all the quicker, conscious that his full meaning would escape his listeners. "Something is always being done for me; it is other people I am thinking of--the sort who know both poverty and cold. Couldn't we give them a tremendous feed, or an extra lot of presents, or something--something that would make Christmas mean to them what it means to us?"

"If you mean that we could do something to shed light in homes where there is little, and comfort in homes where there is none, I think most certainly we could; but, Duke, yours are the purse-strings; whatever is to be done must be done entirely by you. For anything in the way of suggestion or actual work, you may call upon the girls and me, but you are the millionaire, not us."

This she said, not because she wished to awaken in Duke an undue sense of his own importance, nor because she wished to save herself expenditure, but because she felt that in such a matter--with which he was to have anything to do--the whole suggestions should be his, the whole idea originate with him; for she felt that half the value of a good action is destroyed if it be prompted by another. How much better is it for us of our own accord to do good deeds, and not wait until we are urged to them by others! In reply to his mother's words Duke for the time said nothing, but none the less were they pondered in his mind. He read her meaning perfectly; he had not been the son he was if he had not; and they were the seed which, taking root within his heart, brought forth as fruit the doings which did indeed make memorable that Christmas-tide.

On still they went, and now Rosewarne is left behind and Tregowan is in sight, and they are on the hill from whose summit one can look down into its wide domains. The north wind is blowing from the cliffs and bringing the breath of the salt sea with it as it comes. Dignified Duke makes no effort to restrain the excitement, which increases every moment.

"There's the house! there's Tregowan!" he cries, standing in the carriage; and indeed a sharp eye can see the grand old house peeping from among the distant slopes. One never can from a distance get a perfect view of it, for there are so many hills and it is so hidden by the multitude of trees. "How bare the trees are looking, and how few leaves there are upon the firs, and tow deep the snow lies in the Bottom Spinney! Why, the birds must be all buried under it. There will be very little shooting for any one this year. There's Burton;" that was the lodge-keeper at the northern gate. She sees the carriage coming in the distance, and opens it to let them enter--a tall, muscular woman, with the strength almost of a man, with the dark hair and skin of Cornwall and the flashing black eyes which mark the Cornish maid and matron. "How are you, Mrs. Burton?" Mrs. Burton is very well, and glad to see the master back again. They all call Duke the master, though he is still a lad; and indeed he is the master, for all Tregowan is his own. And Duke leans from the carriage and shakes hands with Mrs. Burton, and Mrs. Burton gives him as hearty a grip as ever man could give; and Duke laughs, and says that is the sort of grasp he likes, and Mrs. Burton laughs too, for she is proud of the strength which is in her wrist. And then they leave her, and drive on again; but Duke is not at ease.

"I can't sit still," he cries; "upon my word I can't!" And he proves it by fidgeting this side and that. "I must get out and walk, or I'll race you down the hill. I'll beat you in a canter; I feel just fit to do ten miles an hour in spite of snow or anything--a sort of feeling as though I shall go bang if I'm not able to express my feelings in some emphatic way."

The mother and Winnie laughed at this, for they feel that he is expressing his feelings in a sufficiently emphatic way already; and Winnie says, while she looks at him and smiles--for, like all of them, she loves her brother dearly--

"Perhaps, Duke, you would like us to have the horses taken, out and put you there instead. You might be able to express your feelings with sufficient emphasis by dragging us downhill."

"It's all very well, Miss Win, for you to chaff, but I feel--I feel--I don't know how I feel. I feel as though I should like to box your ears, Miss Win, if you poke fun at me," for Winnie laughed at him again. "I shall commit some outrage on you if you don't take care. I should just like to squeeze in between you two, and put my arms round both your waists, and kiss you in turns all the way along till Day," the coachman, "thinks proper to bring us in safety home."

"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted Winnie, rightly deeming the proposal an outrageous one. "You disgraceful boy! you get worse and worse each time."

"Who are you calling a boy?" cried Duke. It is odd how strongly a young gentleman at a certain stage of his career objects to being called a boy. "You girls are fearfully impudent, you know. You forget that when a fellow can handle a bat, and pull an oar, and do all sorts of things, a certain respect is due to him, which I regret to find you do not show."

They showed him little, but laughed at his laying claims to any, and the grounds on which he claimed it.

"So you think," said Winnie with her demurest air, "that because a fellow can handle a bat, and pull an oar, and do all sorts of things--By the way, what are all sorts of things?"

"Never you mind," said Duke, who felt indignant at Winifred's behaviour; but he laughed just the same, although he shook his fist at her.

But at that moment, while they were engaged in giving each other tit for tat, and were yet at issue as to the propriety of these new claims of Duke's, some one shouted in front of them. Day pulled up his horses sharply, and a girl came bounding through the snow as though it were an element to which she had been accustomed all her lifetime, with a sailor's hat, not slightly the worse for wear, upon her head, a long red woollen shawl enveloping her throat and wrapped in not unpicturesque folds round her body, a bib-apron, not too clean, revealing itself beneath, and hands innocent of any sort of gloves. It was Ria. Her face was all aglow with the enthusiasm of excitement; roses were in her cheeks, fire in her eyes, her every feature seemed lit with love and happiness.

"Duke! Duke!" she cried, rushing to the carriage.

"Ria!" cried Duke; and the excitable damsel had her brother in her arms before any one had time to speak, and was kissing him as though she had not seen the lad for years.

"I couldn't stop indoors--I couldn't--I really couldn't!" she declared. "I guessed that you would come this way, and so I put on this shawl and bolted down to you." Bolted is hardly a word for a young lady's lips, but it is certainly the one she used. "Oh, please, may I come in?"

"May you? Of course you may. In with you;" and he helped her--though it was little help she needed--to the seat on which he sat. Mrs. Tregowan and Winnie said not a word, while Ria herself was in the excitement of the moment utterly indifferent as to what they might think of her proceedings. She fastened herself on to Duke in a fashion which, while it was flattering, was to a certain extent bewildering too.

"So you were in the accident! Wasn't it awful? Didn't you think that you were dead? Did you see anybody killed? It must have been magnificent! How did it happen? Were you frightened? Did you know that it was going to be? I've always thought it must be splendid fun to be in a good accident. Did you think that it was splendid fun? Of course, I shouldn't want anybody to be killed, and I don't think I should like anybody to be injured. But it must be so exciting, don't you think?"

"Yes, it is exciting," drily answered Duke when the maiden's volubility allowed him to say a word. "It is uncommonly exciting. That's about one of the principal things it is. It's perhaps just a little too exciting to be pleasant."

"You don't mean to say you were afraid!" cried Ria, to whom the idea of fear--theoretically--was so exceedingly undignified as to be practically impossible in one so near and dear to her as Duke.

"Well, I don't know that I was exactly afraid," said Duke, naturally unwilling to class himself with cravens; "but I'm quite sure I wasn't very comfortable."

"Was it very horrible?" inquired Ria, in her most impressive manner; and in her own way she could be curiously impressive when she chose. "Was it the sort of thing which turns the hair grey in a single night? Was any one's hair turned grey? Didn't you find out if anybody lost their senses through tremendous fright? Was it a very tragic scene?"

"Yes, it was rather that way--tragic, I mean," replied the more matter-of-fact young gentleman. "In fact, it was uncommonly tragic." Then his tones became graver all at once. "There was a fellow in my carriage--as jolly a fellow as ever you saw--who was thrown dead into my arms when the collision came. He was that end of the carriage, and I was this. He was standing up trying to pull the window down, but it had stuck and wouldn't come. All at once there came the crash; all the lights went out; our carriage was smashed up to nothing. I felt something come into my arms, and knew that it was he. I spoke to him, but he said nothing. He was dead."

And they said nothing for a time. All three of them were still. The lad's words had brought in an instant the full horror of the thing before their eyes--had pictured, with the suddenness of a magician, the dread terrors of that sudden passage out of life to death. They realised, as it had been impossible for them to realise before, all that such a tragedy really meant; and with one accord the women's hearts were melted into tears. They looked at Duke, and tears were in their eyes, and such a tremblement of love, and their cheeks grew pale, and the blood ran cold within their veins, and they were all afraid.

"Was he young? I wonder if he had a mother?" It was the mother spoke; she thought what would have been her plight in such a case if Duke had gone, and her thoughts went straightway to the lad's travelling companion who had fallen dead into his arms.

"He was about twenty-five or six. I don't know if he had a mother; but I expect he had, for he said he had been away from home five years, and was going back that night. He said that they would be looking at the clock, and calculating whereabouts he was, and how long it would be before he was home; he said that not long before the end."

"Poor lad!" said Mrs. Tregowan, and "Poor lad!" said Winifred, and "Poor lad!" said Marion. The same words came from the lips of all of them; but all at once Ria broke into a flood of tears.

"What a wretch I am," she cried, "to ask you if it was splendid fun when things like that were happening! O Duke! I am so sorry that I asked it you! To think that I should have ever wanted to be in a good accident! It just shows what animals girls are, or they would never talk about things which it is quite impossible for them to understand. And, Duke, was he--was he mangled very much?"

"No; to all outward appearance he was not hurt at all. I saw him afterwards among the others on the bank, and from the look upon his face you would have thought that he was sleeping. The injury must have been internal, for death was instantaneous."

"Duke, I shall never cease to thank the Lord for keeping you for me! How many blessings must we be thankful for, and how can we show our thankfulness sufficiently! Aye! well may we say that our cup runneth over!" It was the mother spoke. Her heart was filled to overflowing with emotion which welled up to God, and she could think of nothing but the mercy of the Lord.

They were silent for the rest of the way, even Ria was subdued. The shadow of Death had come as it were into their very midst, and its presence was upon them all. They had not far to go; they had only one more slope to ascend, one more winding path to turn and twist along, and they were at Tregowan's very doors; and as Day drew up in front of them, three or four servants came down the steps to assist with the luggage and welcome the young master; and the mother, leaning forward in her seat, heedless of the servants' presence, kissed him once more, and said, so that he alone could hear--

"Thank God, my son, that He has brought you home in safety!" And Duke said nothing, but answered with a look.

And on the steps was Nelly waiting, and he took her in his arms as he had done the others, and kissed her very heartily, and she said--

"O Duke! what a big boy you've grown!" and he remembered Winnie's words, and held her all the tighter, and laughed right in her face.

"Do you think so, Nell? It's not the first time I've been told of it to-day. I say, how jolly warm it is in here!" He might well say so; there was a mighty fire blazing in the hall, on which was heaped a mighty log, which roared and crackled as it burned; and the great hall, with its oak panelling black with age, was all aglow with its grateful warmth and light; and Duke, as he took off his overcoat and the dogs came crowding round him, exclaimed, as he held his cold hands before the fire to warm them at its cheerful blaze--

"Well, thank goodness, at last I am at home!"