Chapter IV

This child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest:
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bless it upon my breast.

LOWELL’S _Changeling_.

William Ebbesley had travelled night and day. As he neared the child that was all he had left on earth, for whose sake he had lived loveless for seven years of incessant work, his impatience for his reward increased. He outstripped the post, writing letters but not lingering for them to be received. What did it matter whether they were prepared for him on this day or that? had not they been waiting for him for months past? He had meant to wander through France and Italy on his way; to visit Rome, Venice, Paris; to turn aside here and there, as fancy led him. The thought of ease and leisure was pleasant to the weary wayfarer on life’s highway; he, whose whole time had for years been portioned out with the regularity and monotony of clockwork, found, or expected to find, a luxury in caprice and idleness. But the thought of his boy drove all others from his head. They would see Europe together, and all wonders of nature or of art should steal a fresh charm for him, mirrored in the delight of young eyes. His wanderings would be far more pleasantly irregular, dictated by the wayward fancy of a bright impulsive child, than by his own more conventional judgment.

Mr. Ebbesley’s expectations of his son were not bounded by strict reason: he did not reflect that the child had never even heard of most of the countries they were to visit. His life had not favoured much exercise of the imagination, and all he possessed of that quality had flowed for seven years in this one direction. It was art, literature, and all to him; and we have seen how widely the conception he had built up for himself differed from the reality. The child of his dreams must be tall, well-made and bright-coloured, merry and healthy, but above all he must be full to overflowing with love to match the love he was bringing him. He knew nothing of children, and drew his conclusions about a child of nine from the feelings of his own heart at fifty, never doubting that on the boy’s side the meeting had been as eagerly looked for as on his. He had never learnt that to a child a mere name such as ‘Father’ cannot endear a person he has never seen. Those he is with, from whom he receives kindness, however slight, may count upon his warmest affection; but tell him he must love one brought to him for the first time because he is akin to him, and he will not understand the claim.

The drive from Granthurst Station in the crawling fly had seemed endless to the poor man. Have we not all had those drives, when we felt how much faster we could go on foot, yet knew we could not? He had walked up all the hills, in hopes that the wretched asthmatic old horse would gain more energy for going down on the other side. And at last he was here--here on the threshold of happiness, hardly daring to turn the handle of the door.

When he entered the room he never doubted for an instant which of the boys before him was his son; indeed Carol, standing in the centre of the room, was an object which so effectually caught the eye, that Tim, lying prone upon the sofa, in the shadow of its high back, was scarcely noticeable. He did not stop to consider that Carol was some four years older than his son could possibly be; it was quite in accordance with his views that the boy should be tall for his age, and in all other respects the lad before him realised so completely the picture of his child which for years had made itself in his heart.

Who can blame him for the sinking he experienced as, following the outstretched arm of the nurse, his eyes rested on the little figure of Tim? He put down the offended Carol without a word of apology, and stood looking at his son: he was too much taken aback to make any demonstration. His pent-up feelings had expended themselves in the passionate clasp of Carol to his breast. Had he found Tim alone, those feelings must yet have found vent, and would, if they had not counteracted his disappointment, at least have softened it: his fancy would have been busy to make excuses to itself for the child which was, though it was not, the original of his dream-child. But now fate had shown him the perfect realisation of his hopes and wishes, only to pluck it away and substitute this changeling in its place.

As for poor Tim, he was dimly conscious that something was wrong. This tall, gray-headed stranger, who was yet his father, frightened him; he felt the disappointment in those sad cold eyes, though he could not understand it. For hardly more than a minute the father and son looked at one another, but the chill of that minute was as a barrier between them through all their after-intercourse.

At length, roused by some gesture or sound of Mrs. Quitchett’s to a sense of what was required of him, William Ebbesley stooped and kissed Tim’s forehead, and then left the room without a word. It was necessary for him to be alone, to arrange the crowding thoughts that pressed upon his brain, to think, to determine--above all, to be master of himself. Half an hour afterwards, when Mrs. Quitchett went to seek him in the room to which he had gone--a little chamber by the front door, which had been his study in the old days--she found him sitting still in his coat as he had come in.

‘I came to see if you wouldn’t take something to eat, sir; I’m sorry we were so unready for you, but if you wrote I never got it, though I wondered not to hear from you again.’

He raised his head, and answered her almost mechanically, ‘Oh yes, he would have something, no matter what--whatever was least trouble.’ She brought him the little meal she had arranged for him, and stood watching him as he ate in silence, with the air of one doing accustomed things in his sleep. Her loving old heart had lent keenness to her sight, and she had seen at a glance how things stood; she longed to smooth matters a little, but hardly knew how to begin; she had always had some awe of her master, which time and distance had not diminished, and at present he seemed in no mood for conversation. Presently she took courage and spoke. ‘You mustn’t think, sir, the little one won’t be very glad to see you, when he finds himself a bit; the poor dear’s not himself; he had an accident a fortnight or so back, and he’s weak and nervous yet. Your coming was sudden to him, poor dear----’

He interrupted her almost angrily. ‘Who did you say that other boy was?’

‘’Tis young Master Darley, sir, from the Court; it was he that caused your son’s accident while shooting, and he’s been nearly every day since to sit with him.’

‘He mustn’t come any more.’

Mrs. Quitchett was horrified. ‘Your son ’ll fret to death without him,’ she said; ‘he’s going away to school soon; let him come till then.’

She knew what had passed in her master’s mind, and did not attempt to argue with him; only she begged for a little reprieve for her darling, who was more precious in her eyes than all the healthiest children in England. Mr. Ebbesley considered a little and then answered, ‘Very well; but don’t let _me_ see him.’ And with that Mrs. Quitchett was fain to be content.

Tim meanwhile clung to Carol. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said, again and again; ‘he frightens me, that man. I don’t care if he is my father; I want you, and only you. I don’t care about him’; and then again, ‘Promise me you won’t leave me, Carol; always be my friend.’

Carol promised readily enough--would have promised anything just then to get away. He did not like emotional display, and he was very angry with Mr. Ebbesley. ‘Was that old man mad?’ he said indignantly as he scudded off homewards. But his wrath was not of a kind upon which the sun goes down, and the air and exercise soon restored him to his usual spirits. A little breeze had come up towards sunset, and blew refreshingly in his flushed face. ‘How hot that room was!’

And here for a time we must part company with him. With the evening wind in his curls, he springs out of our story, and is lost to our eyes for a little. Two days later he went to Eton. Tim heard the Court dogcart whirl by the house, on its way to the station. Did Carol look round? Was that his hand waving? He could not quite tell, for his eyes were full of childish tears.

Soon after this Tim was about again as usual. A man had brought the squirrel in his cage, with a message of farewell from its owner. But for that, life seemed much the same as before. Had he dreamed all this, as he lay on the high-backed sofa?

At first even the presence of his father in the house made but little difference: when they met, Tim never showed to advantage; he was frightened, and his scared manner irritated Mr. Ebbesley, who never guessed how much character he had. The poor man had no notion how to talk to the child. He patted him stiffly on the head, and asked him questions that he could not answer. He was like a man who, meeting another in some foreign country, wishes to hold converse with him, but does not know in what language to address him. If the boy would but begin, he thought,--would seem in any way glad to have him there, or claim his interest in his pursuits, he could respond, and would. He almost wished him to be naughty; he knew he could reprove him, and that at least would be intercourse, and might lead to something else; only this simple shyness and silence he was powerless to attack. On one point he had no doubt. The life his son was leading was a most unprofitable one, and a radical change must be made in it; he called him into his study and told him so. Tim naturally had not the least idea of what he meant. He looked very uncomfortable, and pulled Bess’s ears.

‘Your education,’ his father went on, ‘has been sadly neglected; if you are ever to know what other people do, it is time you should begin to learn something.’

Tim, seeing something was expected of him, whispered, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t call me “sir,”’ said Mr. Ebbesley shortly; ‘it sounds common. I had thought of sending you to school, but as you are very backward, and your nurse tells me you are not strong, I have decided to keep you at home and give you a tutor for the present. I have engaged a gentleman who will come here next week.’

Tim gasped: here was a revolution. ‘You don’t mean Mr. Brown?’ he asked. Mr. Brown was the village schoolmaster.

‘I know of no such person; that is not your tutor’s name.’

‘Oh!’

‘You can read, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘What has Mr. Brown taught you? I suppose he is the schoolmaster.’

‘A little jography, and sums.’

Mr. Ebbesley hesitated for a moment as to whether it was not his duty to examine his son in these branches of knowledge, but came to the conclusion it was not. ‘His tutor will do all that when he comes,’ he thought. ‘You may go now,’ he said aloud. Tim needed no urging, but was out of the room at once. On the door-mat, however, he paused; something perplexed him: he went through a fearful struggle with himself, then he knocked; he was actuated by a strong desire to do right, and give satisfaction. He heard his father say ‘Come in,’ and saw the surprised look on his face when he saw who had knocked. Tim stood in the doorway.

‘Well?’ said Mr. Ebbesley.

‘If you please,’ said Tim, ‘you said I wasn’t to call you “sir”; what shall I call you?’

‘Is the boy half-witted? Call me? Why, “father,” of course; what else would you call me?’ And as the door closed again, he said to himself sadly, ‘Fancy a child that does not _know_ what to call his own father! Is this what I have worked and waited for?’

How came it that these two, having each such a wealth of affection to bestow, could not spend it on one another? On the father’s side it seemed to congeal in his heart; on the son’s it found vent in a passionate devotion to almost the only being capable of inspiring it, who had crossed his lonely little path. To the birds, to Bess, to the brook in the woods he unburthened his heart, and babbled of Carol. But to no living person did he mention his name, insomuch that even Mrs. Quitchett thought he had forgotten him. One great treasure he possessed. Not long after his friend had gone to Eton, the Court groom brought a letter that had come for Tim from Carol, enclosed in one to Mrs. Darley. It was written in a big schoolboy hand, and told how the writer was well, and hoped Tim was, and how he liked Eton, and found lots of fellows who had been at his last school; and some day he hoped Tim would come there, when he was a big fellow. Tim should be his fag. He fagged for Ward, who was captain of the house. He liked football,--that is the lower-boy games, for in the house games the big fellows had it all their own way, and it was a bore never touching the ball; and he remained Tim’s affectionate friend, Carol Darley. And, P.S. he hoped Tim would be careful not to turn the cage round when the squirrel was half through the hole into the sleeping-place.

Tim was ashamed to answer this, for though love of story-books had early induced him to master reading, his writing was in a painfully rudimentary state; and as little boys at Eton do not write, as a rule, for pure love of the thing, the letter had no successors. But it supplied Tim with a motive for working with the new tutor in a way that astonished that gentleman, who did not know that his object was to fit himself for Eton before such time as Carol should be old enough to leave.

Tim’s tutor does not require any minute description at our hands; he was one of those extraordinary men who, though elegant scholars and, in a way, profound thinkers, have yet missed the rewards obtained by men much less gifted than themselves, and are glad of such hack-work as the temporary education of the Tims of this world. It was a relief to him to find that his pupil was only backward, not incurably dull, as were most of the lads into whom it had been his painful duty to hammer the rudiments of many useless branches of knowledge.

Still, although he took a genuine interest in his charge, which Tim repaid by a grateful feeling very near affection and wonderfully good behaviour, he neither had nor desired any insight into the child’s heart. Some men are born without a fondness for children, just as some have no ear for music; their more favoured brethren look down on them with sublime contempt, but it is absurd to blame either one or the other. Altogether, except as the means of enabling him to prepare for what he so ardently desired, this blameless, learned fellow-creature played but a small part in the life of our hero. That life, but for this new element of education, was for the present much unchanged. After the installation of the tutor, Tim saw but little of his father, which he scarcely regretted. Mr. Ebbesley was often away for weeks at a time, being interested in his profession and watching many cases carefully. Gradually he began to get briefs himself, and established chambers in London, where he spent most of his time; his tastes were not countrified. Mr. Darley had called and had asked him to dine at the Court, but the talk there was so exclusively of Carol, of his letters, his beauty, his skill in games, and thousand virtues, that it almost maddened the poor man.

‘You saw our boy before he went away,’ the Squire said; ‘he has taken quite a fancy for your little fellow. We owe Mr. Ebbesley apologies, my dear, for that unfortunate accident; and yet,’ he added graciously, ‘we mustn’t call it unfortunate if it makes us all better acquainted.’

‘Thank you,’ answered his victim, to whom the Squire’s milk of human kindness was very sour indeed; ‘I daresay your grandson was glad to find a young companion.’ He detected a spice of pity in the reference to Tim which was far from pleasing him.

‘Oh well, you know,’ said grandpapa, ‘I think he felt very sorry for having been the innocent cause of such a mishap; he has a good heart, that boy, and is as tender as a girl for anything in pain, though he’s a brave boy too. But nothing would satisfy him but that we must send to inquire the same afternoon. He has a spice of Darley obstinacy in him.’

‘I don’t think you can call it obstinacy, dear,’ put in grandmamma; ‘I’m sure he’s not a difficult child to guide if you’re judicious with him. When he was quite a little tiny thing I always said, “That’s a child that can be ruled by kindness and no other way, for he has a high spirit.” I recollect when he first went to the school he was at, before Eton, I went down there, and the schoolmaster said to me--I forget his name. Kate dear, do you remember his name? was it Watt or Watkin? Watson, was it? Are you sure? Well, it doesn’t matter--Mr. Watson said, “He’s not a bad boy, Mrs. Darley, but very self-willed.”--”No, Mr. Watkins,” I said, “_there_ you must allow me to correct you; _not_ self-willed, only with a great deal of spirit,” and I’m sure I was right. And your poor dear little boy? I hope he’s quite well again; he didn’t look at all strong.’

‘Yes, he’s quite strong and hearty again, thank you; it was a mere nothing.’

‘Oh, I’m glad to hear it; to me he looked delicate, but then they say I’m always saying people are ill. May he come and see us sometimes? but perhaps he’d not care to, now Carol is away; the house is dull without him.’

‘You are very good, but he is hard at work just now, and I am afraid I must ask you to excuse him. I have got him a tutor, and he is pursuing a more regular course of life than has been possible hitherto. Will that branch line the railway talk of making touch your property in any way, Mr. Darley?’ plunging wildly away from the subject. It seemed as if they were galling him on purpose; and when the Squire made one of his old-fashioned courtly speeches to the effect that ‘if the more exciting sports of India had not rendered their homely partridge and pheasant shooting too tame for him, he hoped he would bring his gun,’ etc., he answered bluntly that he had given up shooting, and so said good-night.

‘A very curt person,’ said Mrs. Darley; ‘I am sure, if only in common gratitude to that dear boy for all his goodness to little what’s-his-name, he ought to be more civil. Fancy a little thing like that working hard! I only hope his father doesn’t beat him.’

And so gradually the intercourse between the two houses languished considerably.

The morning after the dinner at the Court Mr. Ebbesley encountered Tim, his lessons done, flying out of the house in his usual hatless condition. The conversation of the Darleys was still rankling, and his tone was not gentle as he said--

‘You’ve forgotten your hat.’

‘I never wear one except on Sunday,’ answered Tim simply.

‘Not wear a hat!’ ejaculated his father. ‘I never heard of such a thing; I desire you will begin at once.’

‘But they are so uncomfortable,’ said poor Tim.

‘I think really it’s time you left off such childish nonsense,’ answered Mr. Ebbesley, now really provoked. ‘Why can’t you do as other people do? Why should my son go tearing about like a butcher-boy more than other people’s? It was evidently high time I came home.’

Tim gave in and promised compliance. Carol, he remembered, wore a hat, and of course he would have to when he went to Eton, but it was pain and grief to him. Clearly the days of liberty were over; hats and the Latin grammar were beginning to plough on Tim’s back and make long furrows. Meanwhile he had discovered, Heaven knows how, the date when the Eton holidays should begin, and he kept strict record of the days on a scrap of paper, scoring off one each night when he went to bed.

At last came the long-looked-for 14th of December, and with it Carol; and now for a time Tim was really happy. All the time he could spare from his lessons was spent in trotting about after his friend like a little dog. Wherever Carol led Tim followed, though his soul quaked within him at some of his own exploits. Only when Carol rode upon his pony Tim could not accompany him; and later in the holidays, when a schoolfellow of his own age came on a visit to the elder boy, he grew, boylike, a little ashamed of the constant companionship of such a child as Tim, which the latter needed no hints to tell him. But in spite of drawbacks--and what in this world is perfect?--these were among the happiest weeks in our hero’s life. At no later time did he have again such unrestrained opportunities of worshipping his idol.

Mrs. Quitchett watched all this with an apprehensive eye. No touch of jealousy mingled in her pure devoted love for the child of her heart, but she trembled lest some blow should lie in store for him, that should strike him through this new affection; she did not forget, as Tim seemed to have done, that first evening of Mr. Ebbesley’s arrival. At each of that gentleman’s visits from London she feared some renewal of the talk they had had on that occasion,--some fresh decree of banishment against the unconscious intruder. That his company should be unwelcome to any one was an idea that circumstances had combined to prevent from ever entering Carol’s head, but he did not like Mr. Ebbesley, and so timed his visits mostly when he was not at the manor-house, to Mrs. Quitchett’s great relief; and whatever Mr. Ebbesley may have thought, he said nothing, and the holidays passed over without mishap. Golden days to Tim, speeding by as such days are only too apt to speed, never to come back any more. Indeed, it was some time before the boys met again.

When Easter brought Carol back to Darley, he found the manor-house shut up; only Bess, wandering disconsolately, came and wagged her tail at sight of an acquaintance. Mr. Ebbesley had taken his son for that continental tour to which he had so long looked forward. It would be hard to say what odd quirk in the man made him cling to this part of his old dream, now that so much of it had gone astray; perhaps he had a sort of hope that change of air and scene might develop Tim into something more like what he had imagined him,--that by adhering rigidly to his programme some result that he had looked for might follow even yet.

And, indeed, in the strange new world to which he was transported, Tim found much to excite and interest him. Mr. Ebbesley was better pleased with him than he had been yet, but by this time it was too late for him to overcome the feeling of constraint and fear he always felt in his father’s presence. He was never at his ease with him. And then he was such a child, so very young. He could not appreciate half he saw. But William Ebbesley did not understand all that, and there was no one to tell it to him.

At midsummer it was Carol who was absent. A visit to a friend’s house, measles in the village--I know Tim had them slightly about that time,--a journey to Scotland with his grandparents, and the six weeks’ holiday was gone without bringing him to the Court. It was a year before Tim saw Carol again. A year, which is so little to older people, is a very long time at Tim’s age--a long time for a little boy to remain fixed in his loyalty to an idea. But Tim remained fixed for that year and for others that followed, there being no one to disturb his allegiance. Carol was his almanac, all minor events dating from the periods when he was with him.

How eagerly he longed for the day which, by taking him to Eton, should put an end to the long separations; he feared nothing that might await him there, for he would be near Carol always then, and what more could he want than that?