G. A. Henty

“ Polly and I were capital walkers, and there were such pretty walks to be taken round it—up the hill, and across the common to Wimbledon, or on nearly to Kingston, or across Putney heath, through Barnes, to Mortlake and Kew, or—best of all—through the green lanes to Richmond Park, with its groups of splendid trees, its brown fern brakes, and fallow-deer; and sometimes, when it was fine and the water was high, along the towing-path to Hammersmith, to watch the barges drifting lazily on the quiet water, and the steamboats, full of holiday-makers to Kew, cleaving their swift way through it. ”

“ I knew that I should not for years be fit to join in society. I felt already old and strange; the light and youth seemed at once to have faded out of my life. I was resolved that I would return to Canterbury and take up my abode there. My heart seemed to yearn for the dear old town, with its tranquil, sleepy ways, and I felt that it would harmonize well with my changed life, and that I should be calmer, more resigned and tranquil, there than I could be anywhere else. And now my next thought was of Harry. Why should he not take a wife with him on his long journey? ”

“ By this time it was the end of April; the season happened to be an early one, and our garden was gay with spring flowers, with which we had stocked it from a nursery close by, and the lime-trees in front were just putting out their delicate green leaves.
On the very day after I had written to Ada, an open carriage with a splendid pair of horses stopped in front of our house, and a tall powdered footman got down, opened the gate and came down the little walk, with a rather mystified air, as if wondering what his mistress could possibly want at No. 1, Daisy Villas. ”

“ Let me see, he has been gone now nearly four years,—four more, darling! it seems a long time to wait, but still it is something that half has gone, and what a happiness it is that his regiment was not out in that dreadful Crimea. And now, how am I looking, Agnes?"
"A little changed, Ada. You see I speak the truth. You were, like myself, nearly eighteen then; you are twenty-three now. Older, and a little more matronly-looking, for you were a girl then; you are a woman now, but certainly not less beautiful; indeed, I think more so, for your face has a calmer and brighter expression than it had." ”

“ Billow repeated her message.
"Do see him, my dear," she went on as Sophy shook her head, "It will do you good; you are fretting yourself to death. Indeed, indeed, my dear, you are, and it is very wrong of you; what is to become of your little baby if you get ill, as I am sure you will, if you sit here think, think, all day, without speaking a word to any one? Do see him, now there's a deary, it will do you good, indeed it will." ”

“ Should this woman who had robbed her and her child, who had now slain her husband, who had, as Dr. Ashleigh had told her, destroyed his daughter's happiness, and brought her to the verge of the grave; should she prosper and triumph? No, a thousand times no; and day after day Sophy's determination became more and more deeply rooted, her purpose more strongly confirmed. Should it cost her her life as it had done Robert's, she would yet find the will. ”

“ Harry came to dinner, and Ada made him feel perfectly at home. Certainly prosperity had not spoiled her; she was just as frank and as friendly as when she had been staying with us as a girl at Canterbury; she introduced him to Lord Holmeskirk with a laughing remark, that Harry had at one time very nearly prevented her from ever occupying the position she now so unworthily filled, by making the most desperate love to her when she was only sixteen years old. ”

“ I try very hard to be patient, but I feel at times irritable and impatient at my sorrow, I hope, with time, that this will die away, and that I shall settle down into a tranquil, even-tempered, cheerful old maid. I find it difficult, at present, to enter into all the tittle-tattle and gossip of this town, but I endeavour to do so, for I know that I shall not be the same as those around me if I do not. So I am beginning to join in the working parties and tea-meetings, which form the staple of the amusements of our quiet set, and where we discuss the affairs of Canterbury to our hearts' content. ”

“ I can hardly keep myself from bursting into wild songs of joy. My happiness is so exquisite, it is almost too much for me, and I want all the world to rejoice with me, for this, my own Percy, who was dead and is alive again; who was lost, and is found. Mrs. Mapleside tells me that I look ten years younger than I did a week ago. I can quite believe her; I feel fifty. If I had Polly here now, to play for me, I think it would be a relief to dance myself into a state of exhaustion; but poor Mrs. Mapleside would not understand it. As it is she says she does not know my step about the house ”

“ As time went on, the first faint gleams of consciousness came into baby's eyes, and then it came to know her, and to hold out its arms, and struggle and cry to come to her, and Sophy began to feel that life might have some happiness for her yet, for she had something to love and work for, something which loved her in return. ”

“ The priest looked at him for a moment as if not understanding him, then he threw up his hands despairingly, and with a low moaning cry, turned round and went out as if in a dream. Mechanically he got up into his gig which was standing there, and then with a wild hopeless look in his eyes, he cowered down, while his servant drove the weary horse off into the darkness again.
Major Charteris was a married man, and his wife at once took charge of Sophy, and with the maid's assistance undressed the insensible woman and put her into bed, by which time the doctor arrived. ”

“ Ada told me that her mother felt Percy's death terribly, and that it seemed quite to have crushed her. Ada was sure, although Lady Desborough had not said so to her, that she bitterly regretted now the course she had taken with reference to his engagement with me.
Thus it often is with us, we take a course, and we keep to it, as if we were infallible, and we allow nothing to alter our convictions. We persuade ourselves that we are right, and we hold on our course unmoved. ”

“ Here Sophy stopped for a day, and wandered through the long streets and narrow lanes, with the picturesque houses and quaint little jewellers' shops. The next morning they went by steamer to Leghorn, starting again next day by train to Florence. Past Pisa, with its leaning tower and lofty campaniles, visible for miles across the plain; and then along lovely valleys, studded with pretty villages, where every foot of ground is a garden; till at last the hills receded, and before them lay Florence in all its beauty. ”

“ Then I believed that I had done with the world; that its joys and its pleasures, its griefs and anxieties, were no more for me, but that I was to remain a mere spectator of the drama; interested indeed, as a spectator always is, hoping that virtue will be rewarded, and the villains of the play unmasked and punished in the end, and giving my best wishes to all the young lovers, but really caring only for the happiness of Harry, and Polly and Ada ”

“ On shore, no one would have singled him out as a man of unusual strength, or as a practised gymnast; but put him into a boat, and his muscles seemed to stiffen into steel, and, as he tore his oar through the water, you saw before you the most finished, as well as, perhaps, the most plucky, oarsman in the world. Rupert Planter's life was passed, when not at business or asleep, in a boat. His every thought and energy were devoted to the promotion of the aquatic art in general, and of the "Metropolitan Rowing Club" in particular. ”

“ Percy is telling me that if I go on writing any more, he shall begin to think he has married a blue-stocking. So I must end now, with a fervent feeling of thankfulness for the great mercies which have been vouchsafed to me; which have dissipated all the dark clouds which hung over me, and have changed an existence which promised to be a very sad one, into a life of as perfect happiness as ever falls to the lot of mortals upon earth. ”

“ Although he had not received my letter telling him of my late-found wealth, yet he knew that there would be no cloud to dim the brightness of our happiness, for he had long since heard from his mother of the determination she had arrived at, on hearing of his being alive, that she would no longer in any way oppose our union. In due time Percy came home. I cannot tell how we met. That happiness is too deep, too sacred to be described. ”

“ A finer-looking set of men could hardly be found—men with straight, active figures, and fresh, healthy complexions; not noisy, and yet full of fun and life. They were almost all in business of some kind in the City; merchants, Stock Exchange men, solicitors, and men in government and other offices. Harry was very particular who he brought home with him, and certainly Polly's opinion and mine—as far as our little season in town had qualified us to judge—was, that they were as pleasant and gentlemanly a set of men as could be found. ”

“ But for the child's sake she must live and work; for that child who, if he had his rights, would be heir to wealth and fortune—to that very home where his father had been shot down like a common robber, by the woman who had defrauded him of his rights. Sophy did not know all the history of that night's work, only what Dr. Ashleigh had told her; that Robert had gone with the intention of alarming Miss Harmer into divulging where the will was hidden. Angela Harmer's death she regarded as an unfortunate effect of the fright, which could not have been foreseen ”

“ My life here is not eventful, but on the other hand it is not dull. I am never unoccupied, and time passes away in an easy, steady flow, which is very tranquillizing and soothing to me. The first thing after breakfast I read the Times aloud to Mrs. Mapleside, and then whenever there is an accident I look out the train in Bradshaw, and she is always devoutly thankful for another hairbreadth escape which she insists we have had. About eleven, either one or other of my friends comes in with her work and sits with us until lunch-time, or else I myself go out to call upon one of them. ”

“ I said, "but it is a bitter fruit; no good can come of it. When Percy comes home, if we are married, and if Polly is still single, it will be a different thing; but at present Daisy Villa has nothing in common, except our affection, with Wilton Crescent and Belgrave Square. We shall be very glad to come over sometimes to see you quietly, and for you to drive over to see us when you can spare time from your gaieties, but beyond that, as long as I am Miss Ashleigh, nothing." Ada tried hard to shake my resolution, but in vain, and Polly was equally firm with myself. ”

“ In the morning Sophy assisted at the domestic work; that done, she sat under the shelter of the vines, working sometimes, and looking over the lovely country, with its picturesque houses—picturesque not only in shape but in colour, with their fancifully painted walls—with its innumerable little gardens—they could be hardly called fields—separated by trees, over and between which the vines clustered and hung with graceful festoons; with the hills rising on either side, cultivated to the very tops; and over all the bright Italian sky, with its intense, cloudless blue. ”

“ Oh, it is a glorious exercise! and if ever I wished myself a man, it was, certainly, that I might be able to row in a boat-race.
Polly would get even more excited than I did, and I remember that on one or two occasions of particularly hard races, she came home with her handkerchief and gloves literally torn into shreds, quite unconsciously to herself, in the excitement she felt in watching the varying chances of the boat Harry pulled in. ”

“ I am a woman; I am Mr. Harmer's grand-daughter, and this is his will: don't give it up—don't let him have it—don't let"—and Sophy sank in a lifeless heap at the officers' feet. When she first began to speak, there had been a general exclamation of astonishment, but now they all clustered round her, and the eldest of them raised her from the ground. He had hardly done so, when the group was broken again, and Father Eustace burst in among them: "I charge you to deliver that man up to me; he is a thief—he has stolen a deed, a document of value. ”

“ However, when Major Charteris introduced me to his wife, who received me very kindly, and at once took me in to the room where Sophy was lying, all feelings of strangeness past off, and I forgot everything in the poor girl before me. She was in a terrible state of delirium, and it was at times almost more than Hannah and I could do to keep her down. Her appearance was shocking: her pale cheeks, with a patch of red in their centres, her wild staring eyes, her closely cut hair, the strange streaks of paint upon her face, made her dreadful to see ”