A Hardy Norseman. Lyall Edna
and perhaps this accounted in a great measure for the peace of the domestic atmosphere. Certainly there is nothing so productive of family quarrels as the habit of perpetually talking over the various arrangements, household or personal, and many a good digestion must have been ruined, and many a temper soured by the baneful habit of arguing the pros and cons of some vexed question during breakfast or dinner.
Cecil was in the drawing-room, playing one of Chopin’s Ballads, when her father came into the room. He stood by the fire till she had finished, watching her thoughtfully. He was an elderly man, tall and spare, with a small, shapely head, white hair and trim white beard. His gray eyes were honest and kindly, like his son’s, and the face was a good as well as a refined face. He was one of the deacons of a Congregational chapel, and came of an old Nonconformist family, which for many generations had pleaded and suffered for religious liberty. Robert Boniface was true to his principles, and when his children grew up, and, becoming old enough to go thoroughly into the question, declared their wish to join the Church of England, he made not the slightest objection. What was more, he would not even allow them to see that it was a grief to him.
“It is not to be supposed that every one should see from one point of view,” he had said to his wife. “We are all of us looking to the same sun, and that is the great thing.”
Such division must always be a little sad, but mutual love and mutual respect made them in this case a positive gain. There were no arguments, but each learned to see and admire what was good in the other’s view, to hold stanchly to what was deemed right, and to live in that love which practically nullifies all petty divisions and differences.
“And so I hear that you want to be mothering those little children over the way,” said Mr. Boniface, when the piece was ended.
Cecil crossed the room and stood beside him.
“What do you think about it, father?” she asked.
“I think that before you decide you must realize that it will be a great responsibility.”
“I have thought of that,” she said. “And of course there is the expense to be thought of.”
“Never mind about the expense; I will undertake that part of the matter if you will undertake the responsibility. Do you quite realize that even pretty little children are sometimes cross and naughty and ill?”
She laughed.
“Yes, yes; I have seen those children in all aspects, and they are rather spoiled. But I can’t bear to think that they will be sent to some great institution, with no one to care for them properly.”
“Then you are willing to undertake your share of the bargain?”
“Quite.”
“Very well, then, that is settled. Let us come across and see if any one has stepped in before us.”
Cecil, in great excitement, flew upstairs to tell her mother, and reappeared in a minute or two in her hat and jacket. Then the father and daughter crossed the quiet suburban road to the opposite house, where such a different life-story had been lived. The door was opened to them by the nurse; she had evidently been crying, and even as they entered the passage they seemed conscious of the desolation of the whole atmosphere.
“Oh, miss, have you heard the verdict?” said the servant, who knew Cecil slightly, and was eager for sympathy. “And what’s to become of my little ones no one seems to know.”
“That is just what we came to inquire about,” said Mr. Boniface, “We heard there were no relations to take charge of them. Is that true?”
“There’s not a creature in the world to care for them, sir,” said the nurse. “There’s the lawyer looking through master’s papers now, sir, and he says we must be out of this by next week, and that he must look up some sort of school where they’ll take them cheap. A school for them little bits of things, sir, isn’t it enough to break one’s heart? And little Miss Gwen so delicate, and only a lawyer to choose it, one as knows nothing but about parchments and red tape, sir, and hasn’t so much as handled a child in his life, I’ll be bound.”
“If Mr. Grantley’s solicitor is here I should like to speak to him for a minute,” said Mr. Boniface. “I’ll be with you again before long, Cecil; perhaps you could see the children.”
He was shown into the study which had belonged to the master of the house, and unfolded Cecil’s suggestion to the lawyer, who proved to be a much more fatherly sort of man than the nurse had represented. He was quite certain that his client would be only too grateful for so friendly an act.
“Things have gone hardly with poor Grantley,” he remarked. “And such an offer will be the greatest possible surprise to him. The poor fellow has not had a fair chance; handicapped with such a wife, one can almost forgive him for going to the bad. I shall be seeing him once more to-morrow, and will let you know what he says. But of course there can be but one answer—he will thankfully accept your help.”
Meanwhile Cecil had been taken upstairs to the nursery; it looked a trifle less desolate than the rest of the house, yet lying on the table among the children’s toys she saw an evening paper with the account of the verdict and sentence on John Grantley.
The nurse had gone into the adjoining room, but she quickly returned.
“They are asleep, miss, but you’ll come in and see them, wont you?”
Cecil had wished for this, and followed her guide into the dimly lighted night nursery, where in two little cribs lay her future charges. They were beautiful children, and as she watched them in their untroubled sleep and thought of the mother who had deserted them and disgraced her name, and the father who was that moment beginning his five years of penal servitude, her heart ached for the little ones, and more and more she longed to help them.
Lancelot, the elder of the two, was just four years old; he had a sweet, rosy, determined little face with a slightly Jewish look about it, his curly brown hair was long enough to fall back over the pillow, and in his fat little hand he grasped a toy horse, which was his inseparable companion night and day. The little girl was much smaller and much more fragile-looking, though in some respects the two were alike. Her baby face looked exquisite now in its perfect peace, and Cecil did not wonder that the nurse’s tears broke forth again as she spoke of the little two-year-old Gwen being sent to school. They were still talking about the matter when Mr. Boniface rejoined them; the lawyer also came in, and, to the nurse’s surprise, even looked at the sleeping children. “Quite human-like,” as she remarked afterward to the cook.
“Don’t you distress yourself about the children,” he said kindly. “It will be all right for them. Probably they will only have to move across the road. We shall know definitely about it to-morrow; but this gentleman has very generously offered to take care of them.”
The nurse’s tearful gratitude was interrupted by a sound from one of the cribs. Lance, disturbed perhaps by the voices, was talking in his sleep.
“Gee-up,” he shouted, in exact imitation of a carter, as he waved the toy-horse in the air.
Every one laughed, and took the hint: the lawyer went back to his work, and Mr. Boniface and Cecil, after a few parting words with the happy servant, recrossed the road to Rowan Tree House.
“Oh, father, it is so very good of you,” said Cecil, slipping her arm into his; “I haven’t been so happy for an age!”
“And I am happy,” he replied, “that it is such a thing as this which pleases my daughter.”
After that there followed a delightful evening of anticipation, and Mrs. Boniface entered into the plan with her whole heart and talked of nursery furniture put away in the loft, and arranged the new nursery in imagination fifty times over—always with improvements. And this made them talk of the past, and she began to tell amusing stories of Roy and Cecil when they were children, and even went back to remembrances of her own nursery life, in which a stern nurse who administered medicine with a forcing spoon figured largely.
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