Chapter XI: The Arrival

RUTH and Morris stood at the window overlooking the drive, long before the travellers could by any possibility arrive from the station, were the train never so punctual.

Ruth was pale and flushed by turns, and Morris had hard work to cheer her into any degree of pleasant anticipation. Her father's continued depression, and the feeling of his displeasure, weighed on her spirits like a gloomy cloud over what might otherwise have been a bright prospect.

Old Morris held her hand, softly stroking it with her fingers, ever and anon suggesting gentle little hopeful sentences in answer to Ruth's doleful prognostications.

"I know they'll be horrid!" she exclaimed at last.

"At any rate, they are almost as bad as orphans, dearie," said Morris in answer.

Ruth drew her hand away quickly.

"Perhaps you will be able to comfort them? I expect they will be home-sick—" said Morris.

"'Home-sick'? This will be their home now."

"Ah! But they will not feel it so at first. They have left their father and all they love—and their mother's grave—"

Ruth turned startled eyes on the housekeeper's face.

"I never thought of them as anything but a bother—"

"No, dearie; but it makes such a difference if we think we can do something to make them happy—and to make their lives seem a little less forlorn in a strange land."

"'A strange land,'" echoed Ruth again. But after a moment she added, with a heavy, weary sigh, "Oh, I don't care one way or the other! If my father is dull and vexed with me, what is there to care about? It makes all the rest of little consequence."

The housekeeper ventured to put her arm round Ruth's shoulders as she used when she was a little girl. "Dearie," she said softly, "I know it is very hard for you, but do go on as if all were just as it used to be. The dear master is as sorrowful as you, but ask God to help you to be your bright self, and by and by, you will see that the Lord 'will turn darkness into light before you.'"

"That is what Mrs. Arundel says," answered Ruth, turning to kiss the faded cheek of her old friend; "I will try, Morris, indeed I will—"

Her sentence was broken short, for at the moment, the station fly turned in at the gate, piled up with luggage, and several young faces peeped out of the window.

"Here, Ruth!" called Dr. Brown. "Where are you?"

But Ruth was already at the door, and found a tall boy shaking hands with her, and an ayah dressed in Indian costume helping a delicate looking little boy from the cab, who seemed hardly to have strength to walk up the two broad steps to the door.

A little girl with a proud little head and dark flashing eyes followed, carrying a dainty basket and a light Indian shawl.

Ruth bent and kissed the two children much more warmly than she could have done half an hour ago, and then, motioning them to follow Morris to the dining-room, she ran up to her father and flung her arms round his neck.

"'Dear' father!" she said earnestly.

He glanced at her hastily, and then followed the party into the dining-room, where a pleasant meal was spread ready for them.

"I will show you where to hang your coat, Heston," said Ruth.

He followed her through the hall, and hung up his coat as directed, while she managed to ask if they had had a nice journey.

"From India?" he questioned.

"I meant from London," answered Ruth, smiling. "I suppose that is nothing after all your travels?"

"No," he responded.

And Ruth wondered what next she could say to interest him if the first question fell flat like this.

Morris now suggested that they should be shown their rooms, while the maid brought in the meal.

So Ruth took Norman's hand, and was going on before, when the ayah interposed.

"He not walk quickly," she said; "I bring him. Will you go on, missy?"

Norman shrank to the ayah's side, and Ruth went on, followed by Judith and Heston.

"This is your room, Heston, next to my father's, and we have put Norman in this little room next to you."

Heston looked so dismayed that she broke off abruptly.

"He used to sleep in a room adjoining Mala's. He isn't strong," said Judith almost reproachfully.

Ruth turned to Morris. "What shall we do, Morris? How can we manage?"

"Let them take off their hats, Miss Ruth, in the rooms we have got ready, and we can ask the Doctor what he would think best."

Ruth gladly assented, and then conducted Judith to a sunny dressing-room which opened from her own chamber. It had cost her a great deal to give up that dressing-room, but her father had objected to the little stranger being put on the upper floor far away from her brothers.

Mala looked rather glum, but she began taking off Norman's gloves in the little room apportioned to him, brushing his hair and making him ready for tea.

Ruth went downstairs with a heavy heart. This beginning was worse even than she had anticipated.

Her father was waiting with an expectant look. "Well," he asked, "do they like their quarters?"

"They have hardly settled in yet," answered Ruth, who had been used for the last year to make the best possible of everything. "They are taking off their things now."

"Yes—yes. I expect they are shy."

"Very shy; and Morris thinks they will be home-sick—"

"Eh? Oh, perhaps they will. He's a big boy, Heston, isn't he? And looks as if he knew his own mind."

"Yes, I daresay he does," she assented, thinking that at any rate Judith did, and so did the ayah!

They soon came down. The ayah put Norman comfortably at the table, and gave him a footstool, which she produced from beneath her flowing garments, one he had evidently used on the journey. After which, with a comprehensive glance all round, she silently and noiselessly left the room, and the meal began.

Dr. Brown busied himself with helping his young guests, and Ruth poured out the tea and tried to make conversation.

Heston responded quite pleasantly to all that was said, and seemed accustomed to talking to older people, so that he and Dr. Brown plunged into the topics of the day, which the boy had evidently heard discussed on board the steamer, and his observations were modest and acute. Dr. Brown decided in his own mind that his nephew had good sense worth cultivating.

Judith sat in silence, her dark eyes scanning the faces of each in turn. She answered Ruth's remarks politely, but in a condescending way that made poor Ruth's cheeks burn. Her one thought seemed her little brother, and life to her was how it might affect him. While Ruth saw this and respected it, she thought that she might have waited to see how they all treated Norman before she decided that he would be neglected.

Dr. Brown, busy as he was with talking, kept his observant eyes on the pale little guest whose appetite seemed to fail him after the first few minutes, and who turned whiter and whiter as the meal progressed.

"My dear," he said at last, in the tone Ruth was accustomed to hear when he spoke to his little patients, "you look tired; would you rather lie on the sofa, or go into the other room?"

Norman started on being spoken to, but did not answer otherwise than by looking appealingly towards Judith.

She sprang up and came and bent over him.

After an instant, she answered, "He feels rather faint and sick. I will take him to Mala," which she proceeded to do before Ruth could have presence of mind to ring the bell.

She came back very quietly in a few moments, and finished what was on her plate, refusing any more rather abruptly.

Ruth would fain have made things go more smoothly, but the discomfort of the situation was becoming almost unbearable.

"Shall we go upstairs and unpack, Judith?" she asked, as they rose from the table.

"Mala will do all that," said Judith, "but I will go up and see Norman to bed. That is, if I know where he is to sleep."

"I will ask my father," said Ruth. "Will you and Heston go to the drawing-room while we speak about it?"

"He has to have Mala in the same room," exclaimed Judith, "she is his nurse; he never sleeps alone! My father said before we left India that he had written to uncle all about it. He's an invalid—I never thought anyone could be so unkind as to put him to sleep alone!" she concluded passionately.

Ruth turned toward Dr. Brown in dismay.

"I will see to it," said Dr. Brown gravely and firmly. "You two go into the drawing-room, as Ruth said, and I will come to you there when I have spoken to her."

Judith looked in two minds whether to obey, but Heston hastily drew her into the other room, and Ruth and her father found themselves in the study.

"This is a 'kettle of fish'!" he exclaimed. "I had no idea the poor child was an invalid, or that we were going to be saddled with that ayah—"

"Don't you think I had better go up and begin to help them unpack? Perhaps we shall get more sociable so?"

"Yes, perhaps you had better do that. Send Heston to me. My brother ought to have told me more about them. I feel weary with it all."

Ruth looked longingly at him, but he did not respond as he once would have done.

"Bring Heston," he repeated. "I must find out what they think is wrong with the child—"

Ruth turned to the door with her message, and in a moment, Heston came in with some anxiety in his eyes.

"I must go to Judith," said Ruth, turning to the door. "I will come down again presently."

"My boy," said Dr. Brown kindly, as he put his hand on his nephew's shoulder, "I was unprepared for your little brother being such an invalid. What is it?"

"Did not my father write to you? Has not the letter reached? It was that which made him so anxious about our coming, that Norman might have the best advice. Did not the letter come?"

"No letter has come about him—no particulars about any of you."