A Country Sweetheart. Dora Russell
be with him, would you not, Rachel? There may be some—parting word.”
Mrs. Temple moaned aloud.
“You mean before he—”
“Before he leaves us. Come, my poor Rachel, for his sake try to compose yourself.”
These words seemed to have some effect on the unhappy mother. She made an effort to be calm, and a few minutes later, leaning on her husband’s arm, and tottering as she went, she returned to the bedside of the dying boy.
Those standing round it moved back as she approached it. There were present the village doctor and Mrs. Layton, Mrs. Temple’s mother, and the poor lad’s nurse. No one spoke. Doctor Brown had already told Sir Henry Fairfax’s opinion to the two weeping women, and Mrs. Layton silently put her hand into her daughter’s as she neared the bed. But Mrs. Temple shrank from this mark of sympathy. Without a word she fell on her knees and fixed her eyes on the face of the unconscious boy.
No wonder she had loved him. He had inherited her own handsome features, and dark marked brows, and lithe slim form. But his disposition had not been like hers. He lacked her waywardness, her excitability. He had been a sunny-faced, sunny-hearted lad, and to see him lying thus—mute, white, and still—was inexpressibly painful.
They watched him hour after hour. The sun dipped behind the green hills that lay to the west, and slowly the summer daylight began to fade, and still there was no change. Mrs. Layton crept noiselessly out of the room to go down to the vicarage to see after her husband and household, but all the rest remained. The gray-haired father sat at one side of the bed, and at the other the mother knelt. From time to time the doctor felt the small brown wrist that lay outside the coverlet, and the old nurse by the window was praying silently.
But Mrs. Temple breathed no prayer. In her heart was hot revolt and despair. She never took her eyes from her boy’s face, and her expression told her anguish. Once the doctor poured her out some wine, but she put it from her with a gesture of loathing.
And so the numbered hours stole on. Presently a new light shone into the room—a soft pale radiancy—and the moonbeams lit the dying face. They fell on it more than an hour, and then a faint change took place in the breathing. The doctor bent down and listened; the father drew a gasping sigh. It was the passing away of the young soul; and a moment or two later they were forced to tell Mrs. Temple that she was childless.
Then the pent-up anguish broke loose. The bereaved mother caught the dead boy in her arms, and called to him by every endearing name to come back to her.
“Come back, my darling, my darling; do not leave me alone!” she shrieked in her despair.
They sent for her mother, but the very presence of Mrs. Layton seemed still further to excite her.
“But for you,” she cried, turning on her mother in her frantic grief, “he would never have been born! But for you I would have been with George—George Hill, from whom you parted me!”
It was a most painful scene. Mrs. Layton drew the gray-haired old squire out of the room, and tried to whisper some words of comfort in his ear.
“Grief has made poor Rachel beside herself,” she said. “Fancy her talking of George Hill now, when the poor fellow has been dead over ten years. They were children together, you know.”
But Mr. Temple made no answer. He knew very well that his wife was speaking the truth, and that his mother-in-law was not. He turned from Mrs. Layton and went into his library, and sat there alone, thinking. The boy’s death had changed everything. Mr. Temple was a rich man, for besides his own large property, he had in his youth married for his first wife the daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Devon, whose estates marched with his own. At her death this lady had left everything she possessed to her husband, and thus Mr. Temple was one of the largest land-owners in the country.
The old man sighed when he thought of all this, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking who would now come after him; thinking of his heir. He knew who it must be. The Woodlea estates had been entailed by his father in the event of his having no children, beyond him. The late Mr. Temple had left two sons, Phillip, the heir, and John, who had gone into the army and died young. But he had married, and left a son, also named John. This John Temple the squire knew was now the heir to Woodlea. He was a man of some thirty years old, and occasionally had visited his uncle, but no great intimacy had existed between them.
John Temple had a fair fortune, and had not sought to increase it. He had been educated as a barrister, but he had never practiced. He had lived a good deal abroad, and led a roving life, it was said, but his uncle knew very little about him. He had had in truth small interest in him. But now all this was changed. His bright young son, his hope and pride, had passed away, and the old squire, sitting with his bowed head, knew that John Temple was his heir.
CHAPTER II.
THE MAYFLOWER.
Three days later they carried young Phillip Temple to his grave, and the new heir came to Woodlea as a mourner. His uncle had written to John Temple to tell him of the sad and untimely death of his son, and John Temple had received the news with a little shrug.
“Poor lad, what a pity, and he was such a fine boy,” he said to the friend who was dining with him, when the squire’s black-edged letter was placed in his hand.
“But this will make a great difference to you?” answered his friend.
It was then John Temple gave the little shrug.
“It will give me a good many more thousands a year than I have now hundreds,” he said, “but that will be about the only difference. The poor lad with his youth would have enjoyed the old man’s money more than I shall. I am too old to believe in the pleasures of riches.”
“I am not, then,” replied the friend enviously; “you can buy anything.”
“No,” answered John Temple, and his brow darkened.
He was a good-looking man, this new heir of Woodlea, tall and slender, and with a pair of keen gray eyes beneath his dark brows. He looked also fairly-well content with life, and took most things calmly, if not with absolute indifference.
“I have been able to pay my way, and what more does a man want?” he said, presently, as his friend still harped on his new inheritance. “To be in debt is disgusting; I should work hard to keep out of it.”
“It is very difficult to keep out of it,” was the reply he received.
“You must cut your coat according to your cloth,” answered John Temple, smiling. “Had I lived extravagantly I should now have been in debt, but I have not, and therefore I have no duns.”
What he said of himself was quite true. He had lived within his income, and was not therefore greatly elated by learning that he would probably soon be a rich man. Perhaps he affected to care less about his change of fortune than he really did. He was cynic enough for this. At all events he accepted his uncle’s invitation to be present at his poor young cousin’s funeral, and he wrote in becoming and even feeling terms of the sad loss the squire had sustained.
Mr. Temple read this letter with a sigh, but he was not displeased with it. He did not show it to his wife, who was prostrate with grief. Mrs. Temple’s condition was indeed truly pitiable. Her one moan was she had no one to love her now, and she refused to be comforted.
“She will be better,” said Mrs. Layton to the squire, “when it is all over. Rachel is, and always was, very emotional.”
Mrs. Layton meant that her daughter would be better when her young son was in his grave. But Mr. Temple did not consult his mother-in-law on the subject. He fixed the day for the poor lad’s burial himself, and he invited the funeral guests. And it was only after