The Heir of Redclyffe Part 56

'You bring no good news?' said she, sadly, as she read the answer in his face. 'O! how I wish you had. It would be such a comfort now. You have heard about poor Charlie?'

'Yes; and very sorry I am. But, Laura, is it really thought that accident could have occasioned it?'

'Dr. Mayerne does not think so, only Mr. Thompson talked of remote causes, when Amy mentioned it. I don't believe it did any harm, and Charlie himself says you saved him from falling down-stairs.'

Philip had begun to give Laura his version of the accident, as he had already done to her father, when Mrs. Edmonstone came down, looking hara.s.sed and anxious. She told her nephew that Charles was very desirous to see him, and sent him up at once.

There was a fire in the dressing-room, and the door was open into the little room, which was only lighted by a lamp on a small table, where Amy was sitting at work. After shaking hands, she went away, leaving him alone with Charles, who lay in his narrow bed against the wall, fixed in one position, his forehead contracted with pain, his eyelids red and heavy from sleeplessness, his eyes very quick and eager, and his hands and arms thrown restlessly outside the coverings.

'I am very sorry to find you here,' said Philip, coming up to him, and taking, rather than receiving, his hot, limp hand. 'Is the pain very bad?'

'That is a matter of course,' said Charles, in a sharp, quick manner, his voice full of suffering. 'I want to hear what you have been doing at Oxford and St. Mildred's.'

'I am sorry I do not bring the tidings you wish.'

'I did not expect you would. I know you too well; but I want to hear what you have been doing--what he said,' answered Charles, in short, impatient sentences.

'It can be of no use, Charlie. You are not in a state to enter on agitating subjects.'

'I tell you I will hear all,' returned Charles, with increased asperity.

'I know you will say nothing to his advantage that you can help, but still I know you will speak what you think the truth, and I want to judge for myself.'

'You speak as if I was not acting for his good.'

'Palaver!' cried Charles, fully sensible of the advantage his illness gave him. 'I want the facts. Begin at the beginning. Sit down--there's a chair by you. Now tell me, where did you find him?'

Philip could not set Charles down in his present state, and was obliged to submit to a cross-examination, in which he showed no abatement of his natural acuteness, and, unsparing as he always was, laid himself under no restraint at all. Philip was compelled to give a full history of his researches; and if he had afforded no triumph to Guy, Charles revenged him.

'Pray, what did Guy say when he heard the result of this fine voyage of discovery?'

'I did not see him again.'

'Not see him! not tell him he was so far justified!'

'I had no time--at least I thought not. It would have been useless, for while these mysteries continue, my opinion is unchanged, and there was no benefit in renewing vain disputes.'

'Say no more!' exclaimed Charles. 'You have said all I expected, and more too. I gave you credit for domineering and prejudice, now I see it is malignity.'

As he spoke, Laura entered from the dressing-room, and stood aghast at the words, and then looked imploringly at her cousin. Dr. Mayerne was following her, and Charles called out,--

'Now, doctor, give me as much opium as you please. I only want to be stupefied till the world has turned round, and then you may wake me.'

Philip shook hands with Dr. Mayerne, and, without betraying a shade of annoyance, wished Charles good night; but Charles had drawn the coverings over his head, and would not hear him.

'Poor fellow!' said Philip to Laura, when they were out of the room. 'He is a very generous partisan, and excitement and suffering make him carry his zeal to excess.'

'I knew you could not be angry with him.'

'I could not be angry at this time at far more provocation given by any one belonging to you, Laura.'

Laura's heart had that sensation which the French call "se serrer", as she heard him allude to the long separation to which there seemed no limit; but they could say no more.

'Amy,' said Charles, when she returned to him after dinner, 'I am more than ever convinced that things will right themselves. I never saw prejudice more at fault.'

'Did he tell you all about it?'

'I worked out of him all I could, and it is my belief Guy had the best of it. I only wonder he did not horsewhip Philip round the quadrangle. I wish he had.'

'Oh, no, no! But he controlled himself?'

'If he had not we should have heard of it fast enough;' and Charles told what he had been able to gather, while she sat divided between joy and pain.

Philip saw very little more of Charles. He used to come to ask him how he was once a day, but never received any encouragement to lengthen his visit. These gatherings in the diseased joint were always excessively painful, and were very long in coming to the worst, as well as afterwards in healing; and through the week of Philip's stay at Hollywell, Charles was either in a state of great suffering, or else heavy and confused with opiates. His mother's whole time and thoughts were absorbed in him; she attended to him day and night, and could hardly spare a moment for anything else. Indeed, with all her affection and anxiety for the young lovers, Charles was so entirely her engrossing object, that her first feeling of disappointment at the failure of Philip's journey of investigation was because it would grieve Charlie.

She could not think about Guy just then, and for Amy there was nothing for it but patience; and, good little creature, it was very nice to see her put her own troubles aside, and be so cheerful a nurse to her brother. She was almost always in his room, for he liked to have her there, and she could not conquer a certain shrinking from Philip.

Laura had once pleaded hard and earnestly for Guy with Philip, but all in vain; she was only taught to think the case more hopeless than before. Laura was a very kind nurse and sister, but she could better be spared than her mother and Amy, so that it generally fell to her lot to be down-stairs, making the drawing-room habitable. Dr. Mayerne, whenever Charles was ill, used to be more at Hollywell than at his own house, and there were few days that he did not dine there. When Amy was out of the way, Philip used to entertain them with long accounts of Redclyffe, how fine a place it was, how far the estate reached on the Moorworth road, of its capacities for improvement, wastes of moorland to be enclosed or planted, magnificent timber needing nothing but thinning. He spoke of the number of tenantry, and the manorial rights, and the influence in both town and county, which, in years gone by, had been proved to the utmost in many a fierce struggle with the house of Thorndale. Sir Guy Morville might be one of the first men in England if he were not wanting to himself. Mr. Edmonstone enjoyed such talk, for it made him revel in the sense of his own magnanimity in refusing his daughter to the owner of all this; and Laura sometimes thought how Philip would have graced such a position, yet how much greater it was to rest entirely on his own merits.

'Ah, my fine fellow!' muttered Dr. Mayerne to himself one day, when Philip and his uncle had left the room, just after a discourse of this kind, 'I see you have not forgotten you are the next heir.'

Laura coloured with indignation, exclaimed, 'Oh!' then checked herself, as if such an aspersion was not worthy of her taking the trouble to refute it.

'Ah! Miss Edmonstone, I did not know you were there.'

'Yes, you were talking to yourself, just as if you were at home,' said Charlotte, who was specially pert to the old doctor, because she knew herself to be a great pet. 'You were telling some home truths to make Laura angry.'

'Well, he would make a very good use of it if he had it,' said the doctor.

'Now you'll make me angry,' said Charlotte; 'and you have not mended matters with Laura. She thinks nothing short of four-syllabled words good enough for Philip.'

'Hus.h.!.+ nonsense, Charlotte!' said Laura, much annoyed.

'There Charlotte, she is avenging herself on you because she can't scold me' said the doctor, pretending to whisper.

'Charlotte is only growing more wild than ever for want of mamma,' said Laura, trying to laugh it off, but there was so much annoyance evident about her, that Dr. Mayerne said,--

'Seriously, I must apologize for my unlucky soliloquy; not that I thought I was saying much harm, for I did not by any means say or think the Captain wished Sir Guy any ill, and few men who stood next in succession to such a property would be likely to forget it.'

'Yes, but Philip is not like other men,' said Charlotte, who, at fourteen, had caught much of her brother's power of repartee, and could be quite as provoking, when unrestrained by any one whom she cared to obey.

Laura felt it was more for her dignity not to notice this, and replied, with an effort for a laugh,--

'It must be your guilty conscience that sets you apologizing, for you said no harm, as you observe.'

'Yes,' said Dr. Mayerne, good-humouredly. 'He does very well without it, and no doubt he would be one of the first men in the country if he had it; but it is in very good hands now, on the whole. I don't think, even if the lad has been tempted into a little folly just now, that he can ever go very far wrong.'

'No, indeed,' said Charlotte; 'but Charlie and I don't believe he has done anything wrong.'

She spoke in a little surly decided tone, as if her opinion put an end to the matter, and Philip's return closed the discussion.