"Grown careless," he said. "Regular throwing away of his life."
Careless Herbert might have been, but Julius wondered whether this might not be losing of the life to find it.
Cranstoun or Cranky arrived, a charming old nurse, much gratified in the midst of her grief, and inclination to scold. She summarily sent off Mungo and Tartar by the conveyance that brought her, and would have sent Rollo away, but that Herbert protested against it, and no power short of an order from him would have taken the dog from his bedside.
And Mr. Bindon returned from Wil'sbro' in unspeakable surprise. "The heroes of the occasion," he said, "were Bowater and Mrs. Duncombe! Every sick person I visited, and there were fourteen in all stages, had something to say of one or other. Poor things, how their faces fell when they saw me instead of his bright, honest face! 'Cheering the very heart of one!' as a poor woman said; 'That's what I calls a true shepherd,' said an old man. You don't really mean he was rejected at the Ordination?'"
"Yes, and it will make him the still truer shepherd, if he is only spared!"
"The Sisters can't say enough of him. They thought him very ill yesterday, and implored him to take care of himself; but he declared he could not leave these two funerals to you. But, after all, he is less amazing to me than Mrs. Duncombe. She has actually been living at the hospital with the Sisters. I should not have known her."
"Great revolutions have happened in your absence. Much that has drawn out her sterling worth, poor woman."
"I shall never speak harshly again, I hope. It seems to be a judgment on me that I should have been idling on the mountains, while those two were thus devoting themselves to my Master in His poor."
"We are thankful enough to have you coming in fresh, instead of breaking down now. Have you a sermon? You will have to take Wil'sbro' to-morrow. Driver won't come. He wrote to the churchwardens that he had a cold, and that his agreement was with poor Fuller."
"And you undertook the Sunday?"
"Yes. They would naturally have no Celebration, and I thought Herbert's preaching in the midst of his work would be good for them. You never heard such an apology and confession as the boy made to our people the first Sunday here, begging them to bear with him."
"Then I can't spare you anything here?"
"Yes, much care and anxiety. The visitation has done its worst in our house. We have got into the lull after the storm, and you need not be anxious about me. There is peace in what I have to do now. It is gathering the salvage after the wreck."
Then Julius went into his own house, where he found Terry alone, and, as usual, ravenously hungry.
"Is Bowater really ill?" he asked.
"I am afraid there is no believing otherwise, Terry," said Julius. "You will have to spare Rose to him sometimes, till some one comes to nurse him."
"I would spare anything to him," said Terry, fervently. "Julius, it is finer than going into battle!"
"I thought you did not care much for battles, Terry."
"If it was battles, I should not mind," said the boy; "it is peaceful soldiering that I have seen too much of. But don't you bother my father, Julius, I won't grumble any more; I made up my mind to that."
"I know you did, my boy; but you did so much futile arithmetic, and so often told us that a+b-c equalled Peter the Great, that Dr. Worth said you must not be put to mathematics for months to come, and I have told your father that if he cannot send you to Oxford, we will manage it."
A flush of joy lighted up the boy's face. "Julius, you are a brick of a brother!" he said. "I'll do my best to get a scholarship."
"And the best towards that you can do now is to get well as soon as possible."
"Yes. And you lie down on the sofa there, Julius, and sleep-Rose would say you must. Only I want to say one thing more, please. If I do get to Oxford, and you are so good, I've made up my mind to one thing. It's not only for the learning that I'll go; but I'll try to be a soldier in your army and Bowater's. That's all that seems to me worth the doing now."
So Julius dropped asleep, with a thankworthy augury in his ears. It is not triumph, but danger and death that lead generous spirits each to step where his comrade stood!
CHAPTER XXXII. The Salvage
Frank was certainly better. Ever since that sight of Eleonora he had been mending. If he muttered her name, or looked distressed, it was enough to guide his hand to her token, he smiled and slept again; and on the Sunday morning his throat and mouth were so much better, that he could both speak and swallow without nearly so much pain; but one of his earliest sayings was, "Louder, please, I can't hear. When does she come?"
Mrs. Poynsett raised her voice, Anne tried; but he frowned and sighed, and only when Miles uttered a sea-captain's call close to his ear, did he smile comprehension, adding, "Were you shouting?" a fact only too evident to those around.
"Then I'm deaf," he said. And Anne wrote and set before him, "We hope it will pass as you get better." He looked grateful, but there was little more communication, for his eyes and head were still weak, and signs and looks were the chief currency; however, Julius met Eleonora after morning service, to beg her to renew her visit, after having first prepared her for what she would find. Eleonora was much distressed; then paused a minute, and said, "It does him good to see me?"
"It seems to be the one thing that keeps him up," said Julius, surprised at the question.
"O, yes! I can't-I could not stay away," she said. "It is all so wrong together; yet this last time cannot hurt!"
"Last time?"
"Yes; did you not know that papa has set his heart on going to London to-morrow? Yes, early to-morrow. And it will be for ever. We shall never see Sirenwood again."
She stood still, almost bent with the agony of suppressed grief.
"I am very sorry; but I do not wonder he wishes for change."
"He has been in an agony to go these three days. It was all I could do to get him to stay to-day. You don't think it will do Frank harm? Then I would stay, if I took lodgings in the village; but otherwise-poor papa-I think it is my duty-and he can't do without me."
"I think Frank is quite capable of understanding that you are forced to go, and that he need not be the worse for it."
"And then," she lowered her voice, "it does a little reconcile me that I don't think we ought to go further into it till we can understand. I did make that dreadful vow. I know I ought not now; but still I did, in so many words."
"You mean against a gambler?"
"If it had only been against a gambler; but I was stung, and wanted to guard myself, and made it against any one who had ever betted! If I go on, I must break it, you see, and if I do might it not bring mischief on him? I don't even feel as if it were true to have come to him on Friday, and now-yet they said it was the only chance for his life."
"Yes, I think it saved him then, and to disappoint him now might quite possibly bring a relapse," said Julius. "It seems to me that you can only act as seems right at the moment. When he is his own man again, you will better have the power of judging about this vow, and if it ought to bind you. And so, it may really be well you do not see more of him, and that his weakness does not lead you further than you mean."
A tottering step, and an almost agonized, though very short sob under the crape veil, proved to Julius that his counsel, though chiming in with her stronger, sterner judgment, was terrible to her, nor would he have given it, if he had not had reason to fear that while she had grown up, Frank had grown down; and that, after this illness, it would have to be proved whether he were indeed worthy of the high-minded girl whom he had himself almost thrown over in a passion.