With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent, G. A. Henty [ebooks online reader txt] 📗

me than he is, though I don't know how that can be. But you won't say that, will you? For, oh! I know he is so lonely without me, and I should never be happy, thinking of him all alone, not if you were to be ever so kind to me, and to give me all sorts of grand things."

"No, my dear, I certainly shall not say so. You shall see him as often as you like."

"Oh, thank you, grandpapa!" she exclaimed joyfully, and she held up her face to kiss him.

The squire lifted her in his arms, and held her closely to him.

"John," he said, "you must tell Mrs. Morcombe to get a room ready for my granddaughter, at once, and you had better bring the tea in here, and then we will think of other things. I feel quite bewildered, at present."

When John returned with the tea, Aggie was sitting on the squire's knee. She was perfectly at home, now, and had been chattering to him of her life with her grandfather, and had just related the incident of her narrow escape from drowning.

"Do you hear that, John?" the squire said. "She was nearly drowned here, within sight of our home, and I might never have known anything about it. It seems that lad of Dr. Walsham's saved her life. He is a fine lad. He was her champion, you know, in that affair with my nephew. How strange that the two boys should have quarrelled over my granddaughter!"

"Yes, squire, and young Walsham came well out of it!" John said heartily; for to him, only, did the squire mention the circumstances of the case, and he chuckled now to himself, as he thought that Richard Horton had made an even greater mistake in that matter than he thought of, for John detested the boy with all his heart, and had only abstained from reporting his conduct, to the squire, from fear of giving his master pain.

The squire's brow clouded a little at the allusion.

"It will make a difference to him, John," he said, "for, of course, now my granddaughter will take his place."

"And a good thing, too!" John said heartily. "I have never said a word before, squire, because, as you had chosen him as your heir, there was no use in setting you against him; but a more hatefuller lad than Richard Horton I never comed across, and so said everyone here. You did not see much of him, squire, and natural thought well of him, for he was a good-looking boy, and could speak fair enough when he liked. I thought well of him, myself, when he first came, but I larned better, afterwards."

"There are many excuses to be made for him, John," the squire said, "and I have had good reports of him, since. Of course, I shall see that, although he can no longer be regarded as my heir here, he shall be well provided for. But there will be plenty of time to think of this."

"Mr. Wilks asked me to say, sir," the butler said as he prepared to leave them, "that he shall be staying in Sidmouth tomorrow, and that, if you wish to see him, he will come up here."

"Certainly I wish to see him," the squire replied. "I have many things to ask him. Let the boy go down, the first thing in the morning, or--no, if you don't mind, John, would you go down yourself tonight? He will naturally be anxious to know how his grandchild is getting on. Tell him with what joy I have received her, and take any message she may give you.

"Is there anything you would like to say to your grandfather, child?"

"Oh, yes. Please tell him that I think I shall like it, and that he is to come and see me when he likes, and that, of course, he is to see me when he comes in the morning, and then I can tell him all about it."

"And say, I shall be glad to see him the first thing after breakfast," the squire added.

The housekeeper soon entered, and Aggie, very sleepy after the excitements of the day, was taken off to bed. Her sleepiness, however, disappeared in her wonder at the size of the house, and at the vastness of her bedroom.

"Why, you have got a fire!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "I never saw a fire in a bedroom, before."

"I didn't light it for the cold, miss," the housekeeper said; "but because it is a long time since the room was slept in before, and because I thought it would be cheerful for you. I shall sleep in the next room, till things are settled, so that, if you want anything, you will only have to run in."

"Thank you," Aggie said gratefully. "It does all seem so big; but I am sure not to want anything. Thank you."

"Here is your box, miss. Would you like me to help undress you?"

"Oh, no!" Aggie laughed. "Why, of course I can undress myself;" and she laughed at the idea of assistance being required in such a matter.

"Then, good night!" the housekeeper said. "I shall leave the door ajar, between the two rooms, when I come to bed."

The next morning, soon after breakfast, Sergeant Wilks was ushered into the study, where the squire was expecting him. The two men had had hard thoughts of each other, for many years. The squire regarded the sergeant as a man who had inveigled his son into marrying his daughter, while the sergeant regarded the squire as a heartless and unnatural father, who had left his son to die alone among strangers. The conversation with John Petersham had taught the sergeant that he had wronged the squire, by his estimate of him, and that he was to be pitied rather than blamed in the matter. The squire, on his part, was grateful to the sergeant for the care he had bestowed upon the child, and for restoring her to him, and was inclined, indeed, at the moment, to a universal goodwill to all men.

The sergeant was pale, but self possessed and quiet; while the squire, moved, by the events of the night before, out of the silent reserve in which he had, for years, enveloped himself, was agitated and nervous. He was the first to speak.

"Mr. Wilks," he said. "I have to give you my heartfelt thanks, for having restored my granddaughter to me--the more so as I know, from what she has said, how great a sacrifice you must be making. John has been telling me of his conversation with you, and you have learned, from him, that I was not so wholly heartless and unnatural a father as you must have thought me; deeply as I blame myself, and shall always blame myself, in the matter."

"Yes," the sergeant said. "I have learned that I have misread you. Had it not been so, I should have brought the child to you long ago--should never have taken her away, indeed. Perhaps we have both misjudged each other."

"I fear that we have," the squire said, remembering the letters he wrote to his son, in his anger, denouncing the sergeant in violent language.

"It does not matter, now," the sergeant went on quietly; "but, as I do not wish Aggie ever to come to think ill of me, in the future, it is better to set it right.

"When I left the army, I had saved enough money to furnish a house, and I took one at Southampton, and set up taking lodgers there. I had my pension, and lived well until my wife died--a year before your son came down, from London, with another gentleman, and took my rooms. My daughter was seventeen when her mother died, and she took to managing the house. I was careful of her, and gave her orders that, on no account, was she ever to go into the lodgers' rooms. I waited on them, myself.

"How your son first saw her, and got to speak to her, I don't know; but I am not surprised that, when he did, he loved her, for there was no prettier or sweeter girl in Hampshire. They took the rooms, first, only for a fortnight, then the other gentleman went away, and your son stayed on.

"One day--it came upon me like a thunderbolt--your son told me he wanted to marry my Agnes. I was angry, at first. Angry, because it had been done behind my back, and because I had been deceived. I said as much; but your son assured me that he had never spoken to her in the house, but had met her when she went out for her walks. Still, it was wrong, and I told him so, and I told her so, though, in my heart, I did not altogether blame them; for young people will be young people, and, as he had acted honourably in coming to me at once, I let that pass.

"But, squire, though but a sergeant in His Majesty's service, I had my pride as you had yours, and I told him, at once, that I would not give my consent to my daughter's marrying him, until you had given yours; and that he must leave the house at once, and not see Agnes again, until he came with your written consent to show me.

"He went away at once. After a time, he began to write to me, urging me to change my decision; and from this, although he never said so, I was sure that you had refused to sanction his marriage. However, I stuck to what I had said, though it was hard for me to do so, with my child growing thin and pale before my eyes, with all her bright happiness gone.

"So it went on, for three months, and then one morning she was gone, and I found a letter on her table for me, saying that she had been married to him a week before, when she went out, as I thought, to spend the day with a friend. She begged and prayed me to forgive her, and said how miserable she had been, and that she could not say no to her lover's pleadings.

"I wrote to the address she had given me, saying that she had well nigh broken my heart. She knew that I had only refused my consent because it would have seemed a dishonourable action, to allow your son to marry her without your consent. She knew how hard it had been for me to do my duty, when I saw her pining before my eyes, but I forgave her wholly, and did not altogether blame her, seeing that it was the way of Nature that young women, when they once took to loving, should put their father altogether in the second place;

"It was hard to me to write that letter, for I longed to see her bonny face again. But I thought it was my duty. I thought so then; but I think, now, it was pride.

"From time to time she wrote to me. I learned that you still refused to see your son, and I gathered, though she did not say much of this, that things were going badly with them. At last, she wrote that her husband was ill--very ill, she feared. He had, in vain, tried to get employment. I don't think he was naturally strong, and the anxiety had broken him down. Then I went up to London at once, and found them, in a little room, without the necessaries of life. I brought them down home, and nursed him for three months, till he died.

"A week later, Aggie was born. Ten days afterwards, I laid her mother by the side of her father. No answer had come to the letters he had written to you, while he had been ill, though in the later ones he had told you that he was dying. So, I looked upon the child as mine.

"Things had gone badly with me. I had been able to take no lodgers, while they were with me. I had got into debt, and even could I have cleared myself, I could not well have kept the house on, without a woman to look after it. I was restless, too, and longed to be moving about. So I sold off the furniture, paid my debts, and laid by the money that remained, for the child's use in the future.

"I had, some time before, met an old comrade travelling the country with a show. I happened to meet him again, just as I was leaving, and he told me the name of a man, in London, who sold such things. I left the child, for a year, with some people I knew, a few miles out of Southampton; came up to London, bought a show, and started. It was lonely work, at first; but, after a