Tom Tufton's Travels, Evelyn Everett-Green [read people like a book TXT] 📗

failed; and Tom, his quick nature touched and sobered, rose hastily, and, with a muttered promise of quick return, threw himself out of the room, as though afraid to trust himself there longer. He was such a stranger to keen emotion, that he fled from before it with a sense of dread.

The wife came back to her husband's bedside. He looked into her face and said, faintly:

"The lad hath yet a warm heart."

"I have always felt that," she answered quickly. "But oh, my husband, why send him forth to the perils of war?"

"In the hope that the stern discipline of a soldier's life may fit him for the duties which will be his at home. The lad needs above all things to learn to obey. Till he has mastered the lesson of submission, he can never be fit to hold the reins of government. That lesson he will learn most quickly in the life of the camp. There he will be no great man, but an overgrown boy to be taught and drilled. Young Tom needs to find his own level. That is what he never will do at home. He has lorded it over the neighbourhood too long already."

"But if he leaves us and goes forth into the world, who will care for his immortal soul?" asked the mother, with tears in her eyes.

"Has he listened to our words of admonition and warning at home?" asked the Squire, with a strange look in his glazing eyes. "Nay, wife, I feel as I lie here dying, that the life of the soul is something we poor frail human creatures must not try too much to touch. The Spirit of God will work in His own time. We may pray and weep and plead before God for an erring son, and we believe our prayers will be answered; but it will be in His time, not in our own. And time and place are no barriers with Him. He will do for Tom, I will not doubt it, what we have failed to do with all our pains and care."

The mother wept silently--for the husband whose life was ebbing away; for the son over whose heart she seemed to have so little control; for herself, soon to be left alone in the world, with only her daughter for her prop and stay. She was not a weak or helpless creature. She had been in her husband's confidence, and had been his helpmeet throughout their married life. She was well able to carry on single-handed the course of action he had pursued through his long rule at Gablehurst; yet not the less for this did she feel the desolation of her approaching widowhood; and it seemed an additional sorrow (although she recognized its necessity) that Tom was also to be taken from her.

A mother's love for her only son is a very sacred and compelling thing. Tom had not been a comfort or support to his parents; he was likely, if he remained, to be a source of endless trouble to his mother during her reign at the old house; yet none the less did it seem to her a heart-breaking thing to have to part from him.

The light about them grew more dim as the fire burned with a steady glow instead of with dancing flames. Rachel had lighted a lamp, yet it did little to illumine the great room. The sick man lay as though asleep.

Presently the mother spoke in a whisper to her daughter.

"Fetch Tom," she said.

Rachel knew what that meant, and her heart beat to suffocation. She crept from the room, and returned with her brother, and they stood side by side at one side of the bed, whilst their mother knelt at the other.

Once the dying man opened his eyes, and looked from one to another of those about him, though whether he saw them they did not know. Then his eyes closed, he gave a sigh, and turned upon his pillows.

The Squire of Gablehurst had passed to his last account.

CHAPTER II. OUT INTO THE WORLD.

"You had better let me go, mother. I shall do no good here."

Tom stood before his mother with a flush upon his handsome face--a flush that was one partly of shame, partly of anger, with a dash of excitement and eagerness thrown in.

His mother was in tears. She had been uttering words of reproach and sorrow; for after a period of wonderful steadiness immediately succeeding his father's death, young Tom had broken out into his wild ways again, and her fond hopes of seeing him grow into her comfort and stay were dashed ruthlessly to the ground again. The impression made upon him by the death of the Squire was growing dim now. His old companions were tempting him back to their ranks, and he had neither strength of purpose nor the resolute desire to resist their overtures.

"You had better let me go. You know my father said it. I have never done any good here, and I never shall. I want to see the world, and I see nothing here. Gablehurst and Gablethorpe are too narrow for me. I will go to foreign lands, and come back to you with a better record to show. I think I could make a fine soldier, but in this miserable little place a man has no scope."

"A man has scope to become a good landlord, a kind master, a God-fearing head of his household," said the mother, with a sigh in her voice.

But Tom interrupted impatiently:

"That is all very well when one is the master. Perhaps when I come back I can be all that myself; but now I am a dummy--a nobody, and they all make game of me for being a mock squire! My father himself knew that no man of spirit would stand such a humiliating arrangement. If he could not trust me to succeed him, he did well to arrange for me to go elsewhere. He said you would tell me what provision he had made for me to do so."

The moment had come that the mother had so long dreaded. She had to face the separation from her son, and to send him forth into the world alone. But the experiences of the past weeks had taught her that perhaps this was the best thing that could happen to young Tom. In Gablethorpe he had no chance of getting away from evil associates. In a different place he might find friends of a different stamp.

She rose and silently unlocked a great oaken press, clamped with iron, a place where the Squire kept all his valuable papers, and some of the heirlooms which had come down to him from his forefathers. Tom looked on with curious eyes. He had always experienced, from childhood upwards, a certain sense of awe when that press was unlocked and thrown open. He now observed his mother's actions with great curiosity.

"Come, Tom, and lift down that box, for it is heavy," she said; and Tom came forward and carefully lifted down a small iron-bound chest, which, for its size, was in truth remarkably heavy. This box was placed upon the table, whilst the mother locked up the safe once more.

Then she selected a small key from a number in a bag at her girdle, and offered it to her son.

"There, Tom, the box and its contents are yours. You will find within five hundred golden pieces--guineas every one of them, bright and new from the mint. Your father saved them up for you for many long years, in case it should ever become needful that you should leave home to see the world. Always it was his hope that you would remain at home to be his comfort and stay; but if that could not be, then would he wish to send forth his only son in such a manner as beseemed his condition in life."

Tom's eyes sparkled. A flush mounted to his cheek, and his hand shook a little as he put the key into the lock.

It was all true. There lay, in neat rolls, more money than he had ever seen in all his life--a fortune for a prince, as it seemed to him in his youthful inexperience. The admonitions and counsel of his mother fell on deaf ears. Tom's busy brain was planning a thousand ways in which his wealth might be expended. He would go forth. He would see the world. He would win fame and fortune. He would never return to Gablehurst until he brought with him a name which should cause the ears of those who knew him to tingle by reason of the fame he had won!

"Nay, but boast not of the future, my son," pleaded the mother, with a note of anxiety in her voice; "and be not over confident. The times are perilous, and you are but an untried youth. Boasting is not well."

But Tom could not listen. He laughingly repeated his boast, and was off to the stables forthwith, to pick for himself the best horses for his ride to London. For, of course, he must first go there, to fit himself out for his journey beyond seas, and find out where the army of the Duke was at present to be found.

Vague rumours of the great victory had penetrated to the wilds of Essex; but where Blenheim was, and what the victory was all about, the rustics knew as little as "Old Kaspar" of the immortal ballad of later days. The squires were little less vague in their ideas as to the scope and purpose of the war. It was to abase the power of France--so much they knew, and was unpopular with the Tories of Jacobite leanings, for the reason that the French king was sheltering the dethroned monarch of the Stuart line. But then the great Duke who was winning all these victories was said to be a stanch Tory himself; so that it was all rather confusing, and Tom was just as ignorant and ill-informed on all these topics as the hinds who tilled his fields. He had never cared to inform himself of what was passing in the world, and the newspapers had always seemed to him very dull reading.

Now, however, he wished he knew a little more; but he told himself that he should quickly pick up everything in London. His heart beat at the thought of seeing that wonderful city; and although he carelessly promised his mother not to linger there long, he was by no means sure that he would not make a good stay, and learn the fashions of the gay world before he crossed the sea.

He was quite of the opinion that, clad in a new suit of fashionable make, he could ruffle it with the best of the young bloods about town. He was now all in a fever to be off. He selected for his attendant a young groom, with whom he had long been more intimate than his father approved. His mother in vain besought him to take faithful old John, or at least Peter, whom they had known from boyhood; but Tom would have nobody but young Robin, and declared that he and Robin, mounted upon Wildfire and Wildgoose--two of the best and fleetest horses ever reared in the meadows round Gablehurst--could distance any highwaymen who might try to stop them, or shoot them down if they could not shake them off.

For these were days when travelling was none too safe, and the transit of the heavy bag of golden guineas made an additional source of danger. For there were highway robbers and footpads, who seemed to have a seventh sense for the scenting of gold. It was probable that they had spies and confederates in all sorts of places, and that they were warned beforehand when travellers rode with money and valuables upon their persons.

It was, therefore, small wonder that mother and sister looked with somewhat sinking hearts at the handsome young fellow, in his workman-like, if rustic, riding dress, as he sat upon his horse at the hall door, giving a last look round him at the little crowd gathered to see him ride away.

"You will write and tell us of your safe arrival in London; and be very careful how you cross Epping Forest," said the mother.

And young Tom answered gaily,--"Oh, never fear for me. Wildfire and I can ride through and ride down anything! I will send a letter from London, but after that you must not look for anything but silence. When men cross the seas, and live amid battles and marches, letters can scarce be written, still less safely carried."

He stooped from his saddle, and once more kissed both mother and sister. Then the servants and tenants crowded round, full of good wishes for a prosperous journey and a happy return; and Tom answered them with gay words of promise. He would come back