Richard came up to his mother, and kissed her. He had been to East Lynne. Mrs. Hare took his hand and fondly held it. The change in her was wonderful; she was a young and happy woman again.
"Barbara has decided to go to the seaside, mother. Mr. Carlyle takes her on Monday."
"I am glad, my dear, it will be sure to go her good. Richard"--bending over to her husband, but still retaining her son's hand--"Barbara has agreed to go to the seaside, I will set her up."
"Ay, ay," nodded the justice, "set her up. Seaside? Can't we go?"
"Certainly, dear, if you wish it; when you shall be a little stronger."
"Ay, ay," nodded the justice again. It was his usual answer now.
"Stronger. Where's Barbara?"
"She goes on Monday, sir," said Richard, likewise bending his head.
"Only for a fortnight. But they talk of going again later in the autumn."
"Can't I go, too?" repeated the justice, looking pleadingly in Richard's face.
"You shall, dear father. Who knows but a month or two's bracing would bring you quite round again? We might go all together, ourselves and the Carlyles. Anne comes to stay with us next week, you know, and we might go when her visit is over."
"Aye, all go together. Anne's coming?"
"Have you forgotten, dear Richard? She comes to stay a month with us, and Mr. Clitheroe and the children. I am so pleased she will find you better," added Mrs. Hare, her gentle eyes filling. "Mr. Wainwright says you may go out for a drive to-morrow."
"And I'll be coachman," laughed Richard. "It will be the old times come round again. Do you remember, father, my breaking the pole, one moonlight night, and your not letting me drive for six months afterwards?"
The poor justice laughed in answer to Richard, laughed till the tears ran down his face, probably not knowing in the least what he was laughing at.
"Richard," said Mrs. Hare to her son, almost in an apprehensive tone, her hand pressing his nervously, "was not that Afy Hallijohn I saw you speaking with at the gate?"
"Did you? What a spectacle she had made of herself! I wonder she is not ashamed to go through the streets in such a guise! Indeed, I wonder she shows herself at all."
"Richard, you--you--will not be drawn in again?" were the next whispered words.
"Mother!" There was a sternness in his mild blue eyes as he cast them upon his mother. Those beautiful eyes--the very counterpart of Barbara's, both his and hers the counterpart of Mrs. Hare's. The look had been sufficient refutation without words.
"Mother mine, I am going to belong to you in the future, and to nobody else. West Lynne is already busy for me, I understand, pleasantly carving out my destiny. One marvels whether I shall lose myself with Miss Afy; another, that I shall set on offhand, and court Louisa Dobede. They are all wrong; my place will be with my darling mother,--at least, for several years to come."
She clasped his hand to her bosom in her glad delight.
"We want happiness together, mother, to enable us to forget the past; for upon none did the blow fall, as upon you and upon me. And the happiness we shall find, in our own home, living for each other, and striving to amuse my poor father."
"Aye, aye," complacently put in Justice Hare.
So it would be. Richard had returned to his home, had become, to all intent and purposes, its master; for the justice would never be in a state to hold sway again. He had resumed his position; and regained the favor of West Lynne, which, always in extremes, was now wanting to kill him with kindness. A happy, happy home from henceforth; and Mrs. Hare lifted up her full heart in thankfulness to God. Perhaps Richard's went up also.
One word touching that wretched prisoner in the condemned cell at Lynneborough. As you must have anticipated, the extreme sentence was not carried out. And, little favorite as Sir Francis is with you and with me, we can but admit that justice did not demand that it should be. That he had willfully killed Hallijohn, was certain; but the act was committed in a moment of wild rage; it had not been premeditated.
The sentence was commuted to transportation. A far more disgraceful one in the estimation of Sir Francis; a far more unwelcome one in the eyes of his wife. It is no use to mince the truth, one little grain of comfort had penetrated to Lady Levison; the anticipation of the time when she and her ill-fated child should be alone, and could hide themselves in some hidden nook of the wide world; /he/, and his crime, and his end gone; forgotten. But it seems he was not to go and be forgotten; she and the boy must be tied to him still; and she was lost in horror and rebellion.
He envied the dead Hallijohn, did that man, as he looked forth on the future. A cheering prospect truly! The gay Sir Francis Levison working in chains with his gang! Where would his diamonds and his perfumed handkerchiefs and his white hands be then? After a time he might get a ticket-of-leave. He groaned in agony as the turnkey suggested it to him. A ticket-of-leave for /him/! Oh, why did they not hang him? he wailed forth as he closed his eyes to the dim light. The light of the cell, you understand; he could not close them to the light of the future. No; never again; it shone out all too plainly, dazzling his brain as with a flame of living fire.
