It came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an hour do, and in a few minutes more he was on the steps in front of his father's house. His father, hearing the carriage arrive, came a little way down the steps to meet him. Like the coachman he saw at a glance that Ernest was appointed as though money were abundant with him, and that he was looking robust and full of health and vigour.
This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated prodigal ought to return--abject, broken-hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey ulster and a blue and white neck-tie, and looking better than Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. Was it for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's death-bed? Could any advantage be meaner than the one which Ernest had taken? Well, he would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he had promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why he, Theobald, had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his life. He was still using an old one which his father had turned over to him when he went up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not a portmanteau.
Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw; but he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been easy to do so even if he had thought of it. He put out his hand and said laughingly, "Oh, it's all paid for--I am afraid you do not know that Mr Overton has handed over to me Aunt Alethea's money."
Theobald flushed scarlet. "But why," he said, and these were the first words that actually crossed his lips--"if the money was not his to keep, did he not hand it over to my brother John and me?" He stammered a good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out.
"Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, "my aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my Uncle John--and it has accumulated till it is now over 70,000 pounds. But tell me how is my mother?"
"No, Ernest," said Theobald excitedly, "the matter cannot rest here, I must know that this is all open and above board."
This had the true Theobald ring and instantly brought the whole train of ideas which in Ernest's mind were connected with his father. The surroundings were the old familiar ones, but the surrounded were changed almost beyond power of recognition. He turned sharply on Theobald in a moment. I will not repeat the words he used, for they came out before he had time to consider them, and they might strike some of my readers as disrespectful; there were not many of them, but they were effectual. Theobald said nothing, but turned almost of an ashen colour; he never again spoke to his son in such a way as to make it necessary for him to repeat what he had said on this occasion. Ernest quickly recovered his temper and again asked after his mother. Theobald was glad enough to take this opening now, and replied at once in the tone he would have assumed towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she was getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do for her, and concluded by saying she had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for more than thirty years, but that he could not wish it prolonged.
The pair then went upstairs to Christina's room, the one in which Ernest had been born. His father went before him and prepared her for her son's approach. The poor woman raised herself in bed as he came towards her, and weeping as she flung her arms around him, cried: "Oh, I knew he would come, I knew, I knew he could come."
Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for years.
"Oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could recover her voice. "Have you never really been near us for all these years?
Ah, you do not know how we have loved you and mourned over you, papa just as much as I have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you.
Sometimes at night I have thought I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest I should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, but there has been only dark or the greyness of the morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again.
Still I think you have been near us though you were too proud to let us know--and now at last I have you in my arms once more, my dearest, dearest boy."
How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he had been.
"Mother," he said, "forgive me--the fault was mine, I ought not to have been so hard; I was wrong, very wrong"; the poor blubbering fellow meant what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother as he had never thought that it could yearn again. "But have you never," she continued, "come although it was in the dark and we did not know it--oh, let me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought you. Tell me that you came if only to comfort me and make me happier."
Ernest was ready. "I had no money to come with, mother, till just lately."
This was an excuse Christina could understand and make allowance for; "Oh, then you would have come, and I will take the will for the deed--and now that I have you safe again, say that you will never, never leave me--not till--not till--oh, my boy, have they told you I am dying?" She wept bitterly, and buried her head in her pillow.
