Christmas at Thompson Hall (17 page)

It should have been mentioned a little way back in this story that the poor old Major had been gathered to his fathers during the past year. As he had said to himself, it would be better for him that he should die. He had lived to see the glory of his country, and had gloried in it. If further glory or even further gain were to come out of this terrible war, — as great gains to men and nations do come from contests which are very terrible while they last, — he at least would not live to see it. So when he was left by his sons, he turned his face to the wall and died. There had of course been much said on this subject between the two brothers when they were together, and Frank had declared how special orders had been given to protect the house of the widow if the waves of the war in Kentucky should surge up around Frankfort. Land very near to Frankfort had become debatable between the two armies, and the question of flying from their house had more than once been mooted between the aunt and her niece; but, so far, that evil day had been staved off, and as yet Frankfort, the little capital of the State, was Northern territory.

“I suppose you will get home?” said Frank, after musing awhile, “and look after my mother and Ada?”

“If I can I shall, of course. What else can I do with one leg?”

“Nothing in this war, Tom, of course.” Then there was another pause between them. “And what will Ada do?” said Frank.

“What will Ada do? Stay at home with my mother.”

“Ah, — yes. But she will not remain always as Ada Forster.”

“Do you mean to ask whether I shall marry her; — because of my one leg? If she will have me, I certainly shall.”

“And will she? Ought you to ask her?”

“If I found her seamed all over with small-pox, with her limbs broken, blind, disfigured by any misfortune which could have visited her, I would take her as my wife all the same. If she were pennyless it would make no difference. She shall judge for herself; but I shall expect her to act by me, as I would have acted by her.” Then there was another pause. “Look here, Frank,” continued General Tom; “if you mean that I am to give her up as a reward to you for being sent home, I will have nothing to do with the bargain.”

“I had intended no such bargain,” said Frank, gloomily.

“Very well; then you can do as you please. If Ada will take me, I shall marry her as soon as she will let me. If my being sent home depends upon that, you will know how to act now.”

Nevertheless he was sent home. There was not another word spoken between the two brothers about Ada Forster. Whether Frank thought that he might still have a chance through want of firmness on the part of the girl; or whether he considered that in keeping his brother away from home he could at least do himself no good; or whether, again, he resolved that he would act by his brother as a brother should act, without reference to Ada Forster, I will not attempt to say. For a day or two after the above conversation he was somewhat sullen, and did not talk freely with his brother. After that he brightened up once more, and before long the two parted on friendly terms. General Frank remained with his command, and General Tom was sent to the hospital at Alexandria, — or to such hospitalities as he might be able to enjoy at Washington in his mutilated state, — till that affair of his exchange had been arranged.

In spite of his brother's influence at headquarters this could not be done in a day; nor could permission be obtained for him to go home to Kentucky till such exchange had been effected. In this way he was kept in terrible suspense for something over two months, and mid-winter was upon him before the joyful news arrived that he was free to go where he liked. The officials in Washington would have sent him back to Richmond had he so pleased, seeing that a Federal general officer, supposed to be of equal weight with himself, had been sent back from some Southern prison in his place; but he declined any such favour, declaring his intention of going home to Kentucky. He was simply warned that no pass South could after this be granted to him, and then he went his way.

Disturbed as was the state of the country, nevertheless railways ran from Washington to Baltimore, from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, and from Cincinnati to Frankfort. So that General Tom's journey home, though with but one leg, was made much faster, and with less difficulty, than that last journey by which he reached the old family house. And again he presented himself on Christmas-eve. Ada declared that he remained purposely at Washington, so that he might make good his last promise to the letter; but I am inclined to think that he allowed no such romantic idea as that to detain him among the amenities of Washington.

He arrived again after dark, but on this occasion did not come knocking at the back door. He had fought his fight, had done his share of the battle, and now had reason to be afraid of no one. But again it was Ada who opened the door for him. “Oh, Tom; oh, my own one.” There never was a word of question between them as to whether that unseemly crutch and still unhealed wound was to make any difference between them. General Tom found before three hours were over that he lacked the courage to suggest that he might not be acceptable to her as a lover with one leg. There are times in which girls throw off all their coyness, and are as bold in their loves as men. Such a time was this with Ada Forster. In the course of another month the elder General simply sent word to the younger that they intended to be married in May, if the war did not prevent them; and the younger General simply sent back word that his duties at headquarters would prevent his being present at the ceremony.

And they were married in May, though the din of war was going on around them on every side. And from that time to this the din of war is still going on, and they are in the thick of it. The carnage of their battles, the hatreds of their civil contests, are terrible to us when we think of them; but may it not be that the beneficient power of Heaven, which they acknowledge as we do, is thus cleansing their land from that stain of slavery, to abolish which no human power seemed to be sufficient?

N
OT IF I KNOW IT.” IT WAS AN ILL-NATURED ANSWER TO GIVE, MADE IN THE TONE THAT WAS used, by a brother-in-law to a brother-in-law, in the hearing of the sister of the one and wife of the other, — made, too, on Christmas Eve, when the married couple had come as visitors to the house of him who made it! There was no joke in the words, and the man who had uttered them had gone for the night. There was to be no other farewell spoken indicative of the brightness of the coming day. “Not if I know it!” and the door was slammed behind him. The words were very harsh in the ears even of a loving sister.

“He was always a cur,” said the husband.

“No; not so. George has his ill-humours and his little periods of bad temper; but he was not always a cur. Don't say so of him, Wilfred.”

“He always was so to me. He wanted you to marry that fellow Cross because he had a lot of money.”

“But I didn't,” said the wife, who now had been three years married to Wilfred Horton.

“I cannot understand that you and he should have been children of the same parents. Just the use of his name, and there would be no risk.”

“I suppose he thinks that there might have been risk,” said the wife. “He cannot know you as I do.”

“Had he asked me I would have given him mine without thinking of it. Though he knows that I am a busy man, I have never asked him to lend me a shilling. I never will.”

“Wilfred!”

“All right, old girl — I am going to bed; and you will see that I shall treat him to-morrow just as though he had refused me nothing. But I shall think that he is a cur.” And Wilfred Horton prepared to leave the room.

“Wilfred!”

“Well, Mary, out with it.”

“Curs are curs —— ”

“Because other curs make them so; that is what you are going to say.”

“No, dear, no; I will never call you a cur, because I know well that you are not one. There is nothing like a cur about you.” Then she took him in her arms and kissed him. “But if there be any signs of ill-humour in a man, the way to increase it is to think much of it. Men are curs because other men think them so; women are angels sometimes, just because some loving husband like you tells them that they are. How can a woman not have something good about her when everything she does is taken to be good? I could be as cross as George is if only I were called cross. I don't suppose you want the use of his name so very badly.”

“But I have condescended to ask for it. And then to be answered with that jeering pride! I wouldn't have his name to a paper now, though you and I were starving for the want of it. As it is, it doesn't much signify. I suppose you won't be long before you come.” So saying, he took his departure.

She followed him, and went through the house till she came to her brother's apartments. He was a bachelor, and was living all alone when he was in the country at Hallam Hall. It was a large, rambling house, in which there had been of custom many visitors at Christmas time. But Mrs. Wade, the widow, had died during the past year, and there was nobody there now but the owner of the house, and his sister, and his sister's husband. She followed him to his rooms, and found him sitting alone, with a pipe in his mouth, and as she entered she saw that preparations had been made for the comfort of more than one person. “If there be anything that I hate,” said George Wade, “it is to be asked for the use of my name. I would sooner lend money to a fellow at once, — or give it to him.”

“There is no question about money, George.”

“Oh, isn't there? I never knew a man's name wanted when there was no question about money.”

“I suppose there is a question — in some remote degree.” Here George Wade shook his head. “In some remote degree,” she went on repeating her words. “Surely you know him well enough not to be afraid of him.”

“I know no man well enough not to be afraid of him where my name is concerned.”

“You need not have refused him so crossly, just on Christmas Eve.”

“I don't know much about Christmas where money is wanted.”

“‘Not if I know it!' you said.”

“I simply meant that I did not wish to do it. Wilfred expects that everybody should answer him with such constrained courtesy! What I said was as good a way of answering him as any other; and if he didn't like it — he must lump it.”

“Is that the message that you send him?” she asked.

“I don't send it as a message at all. If he wants a message you may tell him that I'm extremely sorry, but that it's against my principles. You are not going to quarrel with me as well as he?”

“Indeed, no,” she said, as she prepared to leave him for the night. “I should be very unhappy to quarrel with either of you.” Then she went.

“He is the most punctilious fellow living at this moment, I believe,” said George Wade, as he walked alone up and down the room. There were certain regrets which did make the moment bitter to him. His brother-in-law had on the whole treated him well, — had been liberal to him in all those matters in which one brother comes in contact with another. He had never asked him for a shilling, or even for the use of his name. His sister was passionately devoted to her husband. In fact, he knew Wilfred Horton to be a fine fellow. He told himself that he had not meant to be especially uncourteous, but that he had been at the moment startled by the expression of Horton's wishes. But looking back over his own conduct, he could remember that in the course of their intimacy he himself had been occasionally rough to his brother-in-law, and he could remember that his brother-in-law had not liked it. “After all what does it mean, ‘Not if I know it'? It is just a form of saying that I had rather not.” Nevertheless, Wilfred Horton could not persuade himself to go to bed in a good humour with George Wade.

“I think I shall get back to London to-morrow,” said Mr. Horton, speaking to his wife from beneath the bedclothes, as soon as she had entered the room.

“To-morrow?”

“It is not that I cannot bear his insolence, but that I should have to show by my face that I had made a request, and had been refused. You need not come.”

“On Christmas Day?”

“Well, yes. You cannot understand the sort of flutter I am in. ‘Not if I know it!' The insolence of the phrase in answering such a request! The suspicion that it showed! If he had told me that he had any feeling about it, I would have deposited the money in his hands. There is a train in the morning. You can stay here and go to church with him, while I run up to town.”

“That you two should part like that on Christmas Day; you two dear ones! Wilfred, it will break my heart.” Then he turned round and endeavoured to make himself comfortable among the bedclothes. “Wilfred, say that you will not go out of this to-morrow.”

“Oh, very well! You have only to speak and I obey. If you could only manage to make your brother more civil for the one day it would be an improvement.”

“I think he will be civil. I have been speaking to him, and he seems to be sorry that he should have annoyed you.”

“Well, yes; he did annoy me. ‘Not if I know it!' in answer to such a request! As if I had asked him for five thousand pounds! I wouldn't have asked him or any man alive for five thousand pence. Coming down to his house at Christmastime, and to be suspected of such a thing!” Then he prepared himself steadily to sleep, and she, before she stretched herself by his side, prayed that God's mercy might obliterate the wrath between these men, whom she loved so well, before the morrow's sun should have come and gone.

The bells sounded merry from Hallam Church tower on the following morning, and told to each of the inhabitants of the old hall a tale that was varied according to the minds of the three inhabitants whom we know. With her it was all hope, but hope accompanied by that despondency which is apt to afflict the weak in the presence of those that are stronger. With her husband it was anger, — but mitigated anger. He seemed, as he came into his wife's room while dressing, to be aware that there was something which should be abandoned, but which still it did his heart some good to nourish. With George Wade there was more of Christian feeling, but of Christian feeling which it was disagreeable to entertain. “How on earth is a man to get on with his relatives, if he cannot speak a word above his breath?” But still he would have been very willing that those words should have been left unsaid.

Any observer might have seen that the three persons as they sat down to breakfast were each under some little constraint. The lady was more than ordinarily courteous, or even affectionate, in her manner. This was natural on Christmas Day, but her too apparent anxiety was hardly natural. Her husband accosted his brother-in-law with almost loud good humour. “Well, George, a merry Christmas, and many of them. My word; — how hard it froze last night! You won't get any hunting for the next fortnight. I hope old Burnaby won't spin us a long yarn.”

George Wade simply kissed his sister, and shook hands with his brother-in-law. But he shook hands with more apparent zeal than he would have done but for the quarrel, and when he pressed Wilfred Horton to eat some devilled turkey, he did it with more ardour than was usual with him. “Mrs. Jones is generally very successful with devilled turkey.” Then, as he passed round the table behind his sister's back, she put out her hand to touch him, and as though to thank him for his goodness. But any one could see that it was not quite natural.

The two men as they left the house for church, were thinking of the request that had been made yesterday, and which had been refused. “Not if I know it!” said George Wade to himself. “There is nothing so unnatural in that, that a fellow should think so much of it. I didn't mean to do it. Of course, if he had said that he wanted it particularly I should have done it.”

“Not if I know it!” said Wilfred Horton. “There was an insolence about it. I only came to him just because he was my brother-in-law. Jones, or Smith, or Walker would have done it without a word.” Then the three walked into church, and took their places in the front seat, just under Dr. Burnaby's reading-desk.

We will not attempt to describe the minds of the three as the Psalms were sung, and as the prayers were said. A twinge did cross the minds of the two men as the coming of the Prince of Peace was foretold to them; and a stronger hope did sink into the heart of her whose happiness depended so much on the manner in which they two stood with one another. And when Dr. Burnaby found time, in the fifteen minutes which he gave to his sermon, to tell his hearers why the Prophet had specially spoken of Christ as the Prince of Peace, and to describe what the blessings were, hitherto unknown, which had come upon the world since a desire for peace had filled the minds of men, a feeling did come on the hearts of both of them, — to one that the words had better not have been spoken, and to the other that they had better have been forgiven. Then came the Sacrament, more powerful with its thoughts than its words, and the two men as they left the church were ready to forgive each other — if they only knew how.

There was something a little sheep-faced about the two men as they walked up together across the grounds to the old hall, — something sheep-faced which Mrs. Horton fully understood, and which made her feel for the moment triumphant over them. It is always so with a woman when she knows that she has for the moment got the better of a man. How much more so when she has conquered two? She hovered about among them as though they were dear human beings subject to the power of some beneficent angel. The three sat down to lunch, and Dr. Burnaby could not but have been gratified had he heard the things that were said of him. “I tell you, you know,” said George, “that Burnaby is a right good fellow, and awfully clever. There isn't a man or woman in the parish that he doesn't know how to get to the inside of.”

“And he knows what to do when he gets there,” said Mrs. Horton, who remembered with affection the gracious old parson as he had blessed her at her wedding.

“No; I couldn't let him do it for me.” It was thus Horton spoke to his wife as they were walking together about the gardens. “Dear Wilfred, you ought to forgive him.”

“I have forgiven him. There!” And he made a sign as of blowing his anger away to the winds. “I do forgive him. I will think no more about it. It is as though the words had never been spoken, — though they were very unkind. ‘Not if I know it!' All the same, they don't leave a sting behind.”

“But they do.”

“Nothing of the kind. I shall drink prosperity to the old house and a loving wife to the master just as cheerily by and by as though the words had never been spoken.”

“But there will not be peace, — not the peace of which Dr. Burnaby told us. It must be as though it had really — really never been uttered. George has not spoken to me about it, not to-day, but if he asks, you will let him do it?”