The Child's Return

FROM "WITH WOLFE IN CANADA."

The Winning of a Continent.

(1887)

[Squire Linthorne's son had married the daughter of an ex-sergeant in the army, who kept a lodging-house at Southampton. He had married her in defiance of his father, and in spite too of the sergeant, who would not give his consent to the marriage unless the squire also gave his approval. The young couple had fallen into poverty.

The squire, who always intended finally to forgive his son, travelled on the Continent, and on his return found a letter from his dying son, dated from a place in the south of France. He travelled there post-haste, but arrived too late; his son and his young wife were both dead. A child had been born, but had been taken away by the wife's father, who had been with them at the last.

The squire had tried every means to obtain a clue to the whereabouts of his granddaughter, but had failed, and had settled down a solitary and broken-hearted man on his estate near Sidmouth. In the meantime the sergeant, who was ignorant that the squire had ever at heart forgiven his son, and who believed that he had refused to come to see him even on his death-bed, had brought up the child.

After the death of his daughter he had travelled the country with a peep-show, taking the little one with him. When she was five or six years old he had placed her with a school-mistress at Sidmouth, considering that although it would be terrible to him to part with her, it was but right that the squire should at least have the opportunity of taking his granddaughter to live with him. John Petersham, the squire's old butler, undertook to introduce the little girl to his master.]

That evening the squire was sitting by himself in the great dining-room. The curtains were drawn and the candles lighted, for it was late in September, and the evenings were closing in fast, and the squire was puzzling over John Petersham's behaviour at dinner.

Although the squire was not apt to observe closely what was passing around him, he had been struck with the old butler's manner; that something was wrong with him was clear. Usually he was the most quiet and methodical of servants, but he had blundered several times in the service. He had handed his master dishes when his plate was already supplied; he had started nervously when spoken to. Mr. Linthorne even thought that he had seen tears in his eyes; altogether he was strangely unlike himself.

Mr. Linthorne had asked him if anything was the matter, but John had with almost unnecessary earnestness declared there was nothing. Altogether the squire was puzzled.

Presently the door of the room quietly opened. The squire did not look up. It closed again as quietly, and then he glanced towards it. He could hardly believe his eyes. A child was standing there�a girl with soft smooth hair and large eyes and a sensitive mouth, with an expression fearless but appealing. Her hands were clasped before her, and she was standing, in doubt whether to advance.

There was something so strange in this apparition in the lonely room that the squire did not speak for a moment. It flashed across him vaguely that there was something familiar to him in the face and expression, something which sent a thrill through him; and at the same instant, without knowing why, he felt that there was a connection between the appearance of the child and the matter he had just been thinking of�John Petersham's strange conduct. He was still looking at her when she advanced quietly towards him.

"Grandpapa," she said, "I am Aggie Linthorne."

A low cry of astonishment broke from the squire. He pushed his chair back.

"Can it be true," he muttered, "or am I dreaming?"

"Yes, grandpapa," the child said, close beside him now, "I am Aggie Linthorne, and I have come to see you. If you don't think it's me, grampa said I was to give you this and then you would know;" and she held out a miniature on ivory of a boy some fourteen years old, and a watch and chain.

"I do not need them," the squire said in low tones, "I see it in your face. You are Herbert's child, whom I looked for so long. Oh! my child! my child! have you come at last?" and he drew her towards him and kissed her passionately, while the tears streamed down his cheeks.

THE CHILD'S RETURN.�II.

"I couldn't come before, you know," the child said, "because I didn't know about you, and grampa�that's my other grandpapa, you know�did not know you wanted me; but now he knows he sent me to you. He told me I was to come because you were lonely; but you can't be more lonely than he is," she said, with a quiver in her voice.

"Oh! he will be lonely now!"

"But where did you come from, my dear, and how did you get here, and what have you been doing all these years?"

"Grampa brought me here," the child said. "I call him grampa, you know, because I did when I was little, and I have always kept to it; but I know, of course, it ought to be grandpapa. He brought me here, and John�at least he called him John�brought me in. And I have been living for two years with Mrs. Walsham down in the town, and I used to see you in church, but I did not know that you were my grandpapa."

The squire, who was holding her close to him while she spoke, got up and rang the bell, and John opened the door with a quickness that showed that he had been standing close to it, anxiously waiting a summons.

"John Petersham," the squire said, "give me your hand; this is the happiest day of my life!"

The two men wrung each other's hands. They had been friends ever since John Petersham, who was twelve years the senior of the two, first came to the house, a young fellow of eighteen, to assist his father, who had held the same post before him.

"God be thanked, squire!" he said huskily.

"God be thanked, indeed, John!" the squire rejoined reverently. "So this was the reason, old friend, why your hand shook as you poured out my wine. How could you keep the secret from me?"

"I did not know how to begin to tell you, but I was pretty nigh letting it out, and only the thought that it was better the little lady should tell you herself, as we had agreed, kept it in. Only to think, squire, after all these years! but I never quite gave her up. I always thought somehow that she would come just like this."

"Did you, John? I gave up hope years ago. How did it come about, John?"

"Mrs. Walsham told me as I came out of church to-day that she wanted to speak to me, so I went down, and she told me all about it, and then I saw him�"

John hesitated at the name, for he knew that perhaps the only man in the world against whom his master cherished a bitter resentment was the father of his son's wife.

"It seems he never saw your advertisements, never knew you wanted to hear anything of the child, so he took her away and kept her. He has been here off and on all these years. I heard of him often and often when I had been down into Sidmouth, but never dreamt it was him. He went about the country with a box on wheels with glasses�a peep-show they call it."

The squire winced.

"He is well spoken of, squire," John said, "and I am bound to say he doesn't seem the sort of man we took him for at all. He did not know that you wanted to have her, but he thought it his duty to give her the chance, and so he put her with Mrs. Walsham, and never told her till yesterday who she was. Mrs. Walsham was quite grieved at parting with her, for she says she is wonderfully quick at her lessons, and has been like a daughter with her for the last two years."

THE CHILD'S RETURN.�III.

The child had sat quietly down in a chair and was looking into the fire while the two men were speaking. She had done what she had been told to do, and was waiting quietly for what was to come next. Her quick ear, however, noticed that John Petersham spoke of her old grandfather as though he needed to be excused for something, and she was moved to instant anger.

"Why do you speak like that of my grampa?" she said, rising to her feet and standing indignantly before him. "He is the best man in the world, and the kindest and the nicest, and if you don't like him I can go away to him again. I don't want to stay here, not one minute.

"You may be my grandpapa," she went on, turning to the squire, "and you may be lonely, but he is lonely too, and you have got a great house and all sorts of nice things, and you can do better without me than he can, for he has got nothing to love but me, poor grampa!" and her eyes filled with sudden tears as she thought of him tramping on his lonely walks over the hills.

"We do not mean to speak unkindly of your grandfather, my dear," the squire said gently. "I have never seen him, you know, and John has never seen him but once. I have thought all these years bitterly of him, but perhaps I have been mistaken. He has ever been kind and good to you, and, above all, he has given you back to me, and that will make me think differently of him in future. We all make mistakes, you know, and I have made terrible mistakes, and have been terribly punished for them. I daresay I have made a mistake here; but whether or no, you shall never hear a word from me against the man who has been so kind to you."

"And you will let me see him sometimes, grandpapa?" the child said, taking his hand pleadingly. "He said if you said no I must do as you told me, because somehow you are nearer to me than he is, though I don't know how that can be; but you won't say that, will you? for, oh! I know he is so lonely without me, and I should never be happy thinking of him all alone, not if you were to be ever so kind to me and to give me all sorts of grand things."

"No, my dear, I certainly shall not say so. You shall see him as often as you like."

"Oh, thank you, grandpapa!" she exclaimed joyfully, and she held up her face to kiss him.

The squire lifted her in his arms and held her closely to him.

"John," he said, "you must tell Mrs. Morcombe to get a room ready for my grand-daughter at once, and you had better bring the tea in here, and then we will think of other things. I feel quite bewildered at present."