The father had no intention of giving up the child. But before he knew, Mark had stretched his arms to Hester, and was out of his into hers.

Instinctively trying to retain him, he hurt him, and the boy gave a little cry. Thereupon with a new pang of pain, and a new sting of resentment, which he knew unreasonable but could not help, he let him go and followed in distressed humiliation.

Hester's heart was very sore because of this new grief, but she saw some hope in it.

"He is too heavy for you, Hester," said her father. "Surely as it is my fault, I ought to bear the penalty!"

"It's no penalty--is it, Markie?" said Hester merrily.

"No, Hessie," replied Mark, almost merrily. "--You don't know how strong Hessie is, papa!"

"Yes, I am very strong. And you ain't heavy--are you, Markie?"

"No," answered Mark; "I feel so light sometimes, I think I could fly; only I don't like to try for fear I couldn't. I like to think perhaps I could."

By and by Hester found, with all her good will, that her strength was of the things that can be shaken, and was obliged to yield him to her father. It was much to his relief, for a sense of moral weakness had invaded him as he followed his children: he was rejected of his family, and had become a n.o.body in it!

When at length they reached home, Mark was put to bed, and the doctor sent for.

CHAPTER LIV.

MOTHER AND SON.

In the meantime Cornelius kept his bed. The moment her husband was gone, his mother rose and hastened to her son! Here again was a discord! for the first time since their marriage, a jarring action: the wife was glad the husband was gone that she might do what was right without annoying him: with all her strength of principle, she felt too weak to go openly against him, though she never dreamt of concealing what she did. She tottered across his floor, threw herself on the bed beside him, and took him to her bosom.

With his mother Corney had never pretended to the same degree as with other people, and his behaviour to her was now more genuine than to any but his wife. He clung to her as he had never clung since his infancy; and felt that, let his father behave to him as he might, he had yet a home. All the morning he had been fretting, in the midst of Hester's kindest attentions, that he had not his wife to do things for him as he liked them done;--and in all such things as required for their well-doing a fitting of self to the notions of another, Amy was indeed before Hester--partly, perhaps, in virtue of having been a little while married. But now that Cornelius had his mother, he was more content, or rather less discontented--more agreeable in truth than she had known him since first he went to business. She felt greatly consoled, and he so happy with her that he began to wish that he had not a secret from her--for the first time in his life to be sorry that he was in possession of one. He grew even anxious that she should know it, but none the less anxious that he should not have to tell it.

A great part of the time when her husband supposed her asleep, she had been lying wide awake, thinking of the Corney she had lost, and the Corney that had come home to her instead: she was miserable over the altered looks of her disfigured child. The truest of mothers, with all her love for the real and indifference to outsides, can hardly be expected to reconcile herself with ease to a new face on her child: she has loved him in one shape, and now has to love him in another! It was almost as if she had received again another child--her own indeed, but taken from her the instant he was born and never seen by her since--whom, now she saw him, she had to learn to love in a shape different from that in which she had been accustomed to imagine him. His sad, pock-marked face had a torturing fascination for her. It was almost pure pain, yet she could not turn her eyes from it. She reproached herself that it gave her pain, yet was almost indignant with the face she saw for usurping the place of her boy's beauty: through that mask she must force her way to the real beneath it! At the same time very pity made her love with a new and deeper tenderness the poor spoilt visage, pathetic in its ugliness. Not a word did she utter of reproach: his father would do--was doing enough for both in that way! Every few minutes she would gaze intently in his face for a moment, and then clasp him to her heart as if seeking a shorter way to his presence than through the ruined door of his countenance.

Hester, who had never received from her half so much show of tenderness, could not help, like the elder brother in the divine tale, a little choking at the sight, but she soon consoled herself that the less poor Corney deserved it the more he needed it. The worst of it to Hester was that she could not with any confidence look on the prodigal as a repentant one; and if he was not, all this tenderness, she feared and with reason, would do him harm, causing him to think less of his crime, and blinding him to his low moral condition. But she thought also that G.o.d would do what he could to keep the love of such a mother from hurting; and it was not long before she was encouraged by a softness in Corney's look, and a humid expression in his eyes which she had never seen before. Doubtless had he been as in former days, he would have turned from such over flow of love as womanish gush; but disgraced, worn out, and even to his own eyes an unpleasant object, he was not so much inclined to repel the love of the only one knowing his story who did not feel for him more or less contempt. Sometimes in those terrible half-dreams in the dark of early morn when suddenly waked by conscience to hold a _tete-a-tete_ with her, he would imagine himself walking into the bank, and encountering the eyes of all the men on his way to his uncle, whom next to his father he feared--then find himself running for refuge to the bosom of his mother. She was true to him yet! he would say: yes, he used the word! he said _true!_ Slowly, slowly, something was working on him--now in the imagined judgment of others, now in the thought of his wife, now in the devotion of his mother.

Little result was there for earthly eye, but the mother's perceived or imagined a difference in him. If only she could descry something plain to tell her husband! If the ice that froze up the spring of his love would but begin to melt! For to whom are we to go for refuge from ourselves if not to those through whom we were born into the world, and who are to blame for more or less of our unfitness for a true life?--"His father _must_ forgive him!" she said to herself. She would go down on her knees to him. Their boy should _not_ be left out in the cold! If he had been guilty, what was that to the cruel world so ready to punish, so ready to do worse! The mother still carried in her soul the child born of her body, preparing for him the new and better, the all-lovely birth of repentance unto life.

Hester had not yet said a word about her own affairs. No one but the major knew that her engagement to lord Gartley was broken. She was not willing to add yet an element of perturbance to the overcharged atmosphere; she would not add disappointment to grief.

In the afternoon the major, who had retired to the village, two miles off, the moment his night-watch was relieved, made his appearance, in the hope of being of use. He saw only Hester, who could give him but a few minutes. No sooner did he learn of Mark's condition, than he insisted on taking charge of him. He would let her know at once if he wanted to see her or any one: she might trust him to his care!

"I am quite as good at nursing--I don't say as you, cousin Hester, or your mother, but as any ordinary woman. You will see I am! I know most of the newest wrinkles, and will carry them out."

Hester could not be other than pleased with the proposal; for having both her mother and Corney to look after, and Miss Dasomma or Amy to write to every day, she had feared the patient Mark might run some risk of being neglected. To be sure Saffy had a great notion of nursing, but her ideas were in some respects, to say the least, a little peculiar; and though at times she was a great gain in the sick room, she could hardly be intrusted with entire management of the same. So the major took the position of head-nurse, with Saffy for aid, and one of the servants for orderly.

Hester's mind was almost constantly occupied with thinking how she was to let her father and mother know what they must know soon, and ought to know as soon as possible. She would tell her father first; her mother should not know till he did: she must not have the anxiety of how he would take it! But she could not see how to set about it. She had no light, and seemed to have no leading--felt altogether at a standstill, without impulse or energy.

She waited, therefore, as she ought; for much harm comes of the impatience that outstrips guidance. People are too ready to think _something_ must be done, and forget that the time for action may not have arrived, that there is seldom more than one thing fit to be done, and that the wrong thing must in any case be worse than nothing.

Cornelius grew gradually better, and at last was able to go down stairs.

But the weather continued so far unfavourable that he could not go out.

He had not yet seen his father, and his dread of seeing him grew to a terror. He never went down until he knew he was not in the house, and then would in general sit at some window that commanded the door by which he was most likely to enter. He enticed Saffy from attendance on Mark to be his scout, and bring him word in what direction his father went. This did the child incalculable injury. The father was just as anxious to avoid him, fully intending, if he met him, to turn his back upon him. But it was a rambling and roomy old house, and there was plenty of s.p.a.ce for both. A whole week pa.s.sed and they had not met--to the disappointment of Hester, who cherished some hope in a chance encounter.

She had just one consolation: ever since she had Cornelius safe under her wing, the mother had been manifestly improving. But even this was a source of dissatisfaction to the brooding selfishness of the unhealthy-minded father. He thought with himself--"Here have I been heart and soul nursing her through the illness he caused her, and all in vain till she gets the rascal back, and then she begins at once to improve! She would be perfectly happy with him if she and I never saw each other again!"

The two brothers had not yet met. For one thing, Corney disliked the major, and for another, the major objected to an interview. He felt certain the disfigurement of Corney would distress Mark too much, and r.e.t.a.r.d the possible recovery of which he was already in great doubt.

CHAPTER LV.

MISS DASOMMA AND AMY.

Miss Dasomma was quite as much pleased with Amy as she had expected to be, and that was not a little. She found her very ignorant in the regions of what is commonly called education, but very quick in understanding where human relation came in. A point in construction or composition she would forget immediately; but once shown a possibility of misunderstanding avoidable by a certain arrangement, Amy would recall the fact the moment she made again the mistake. Her teachableness, coming largely of her trustfulness, was indeed a remarkable point in her character. It was partly through this that Corney gained his influence over her: superior knowledge was to her a sign of superior goodness.

She began at once to teach her music: the sooner a beginning was made the better! Her fingers were stiff, but so was her will: the way she stuck to her work was pathetic. Here also she understood quickly, but the doing of what she understood she found very hard--the more so that her spirit was but ill at ease. Corney had deceived her; he had done something wrong besides; she was parted from him, and could realize little of his surroundings; all was very different from what she had expected in marrying her Corney! Also, from her weariness and anxiety in nursing him, and from other causes as well, her health was not what it had been. Then Hester's letters were a little stiff! She felt it without knowing what she felt, or why they made her uncomfortable. It was from no pride or want of love they were such, but from her uncertainty--the discomfort of knowing they were no nearer a solution of their difficulty than when they parted at the railway: she did not even know yet what she was going to do in the matter! This prevented all free flow of communication. Unable to say what she would have liked to say, unwilling to tell the uncomfortable condition of things, there rose a hedge and seemed to sink a gulf between her and her sister. Amy therefrom, naturally surmised that the family was not willing to receive her, and that the same unwillingness though she was too good to yield to it, was in Hester also. It was not in her. How she might have taken his marriage had Corney remained respectable, I am not sure; but she knew that the main hope for her brother lay in his love for Amy and her devotion to him--in her common sense, her true, honest, bright nature. She was only far too good for Corney!

Then again Amy noted, for love and anxiety made her very sharp, that Miss Dasomma did not read to her every word of Hester's letters. Once she stopped suddenly in the middle of a sentence, and after a pause went on with another! Something was there she was not to know! It might have some reference to her husband! If so, then something was not going right with him! Was he worse and were they afraid to tell her, lest she should go to him! Perhaps they were treating him as her aunts treated her--making his life miserable--and she not with him to help him to bear it! All no doubt because she had married him! It explained his deceiving her! If he had told them, as he ought to have done, they would not have let her have him at all, and what would have become of her without her Corney! He ought not certainly to have told her lies, but if anything could excuse him, so that making the best of things, and excusing her husband all she could, she was in danger of lowering her instinctively high sense of moral obligation.

She brooded over the matter but not long, she threw herself on her knees, and begged her friend to let her know what the part of her sister's letter she had not read to her was about.

"But, my dear," said Miss Dasomma, "Hester and I have been friends for many years, and we may well have things to say to each other we should not care that even one we loved so much as you should hear?--A lady must not be inquisitive, you know."

"I know that, and I never did pry into other people's affairs. Tell me it was nothing about my husband, and I shall be quite content."

"But think a moment, Amy!" returned Miss Dasomma, who began to find herself in a difficulty; "there might be things between his family and him, who have known him longer than you, which they were not quite prepared to tell you all about before knowing you better. Some people in the way they treated you would have been very different from that angel sister of yours! There is n.o.body like her--that I know!"

"I love her with my whole heart," replied Amy sobbing--"next to Cornelius. But even she must not come between him and me. If it is anything affecting him, his wife has a right to know about it--a greater right than any one else; and no one has a right to conceal it from her!"

"Why do you think that?" asked Miss Dasomma, entirely agreeing with her that she had a right to know, but thinking also, in spite of logic, that one might have a right to conceal it notwithstanding. She was anxious to temporize, for she did not see how to answer her appeal. She could not tell her a story, and she did not feel at liberty to tell her the truth; and if she declined to answer her question, the poor child might imagine something dreadful.

"Why, miss," answered Amy, "we can't be divided! I must do what I can--all I can for him, and I have a right to know what there is to be done for him."

"But can you not trust his own father and mother?" said Miss Dasomma--and as she said it, her conscience accused her.

"Yes, surely," replied Amy, "if they were loving him, and not angry with him. But I have seen even that angel Hester look very vexed with him sometimes, and that when he was ill too! and I know he will never stand that: he will run away as I did. I know what your own people can do to make you miserable! They say a woman must leave all for her husband, and that's true; but it is the other way in the Bible--I read it this morning! In the Bible it is--'a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife;' and after that who will say there ought to be anything between him and his parents she don't know about. It's _she_ that's got to look after the man given to her like that!"

Miss Dasomma looked with admiration at the little creature--showing fight like a wren for her nest. How rapidly she was growing! how n.o.ble she was and free! She was indeed a treasure! The man she had married was little worthy of her, but if she rescued him, not from his parents, but from himself, she might perhaps have done as good a work as helping a n.o.ble-hearted man!

"I've got him to look after," she resumed, "and I will. He's mine, miss!

If anybody's not doing right by him, I ought to be by and see him through it."

Here Miss Dasomma's prudence for a moment forsook her: who shall explain such _accidents_! It stung her to hear her friends suspected of behaving unjustly.

"That's all you know, Amy!" she blurted out--and bit her lip in vexation with herself.

Amy was upon her like a cat upon a mouse.