Books: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides

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And then we heard Harry bidding those around not touch him, and Dora
screamed with dismay, and I saw he had wrapped both hands in his
handkerchief. To my frightened question, whether he was hurt, he
answered, "Only my hands, but I fancy the brute has done for some of
my fingers. If those fellows could but have held their tongues!"

He climbed into the carriage to rid himself of the crowd, who were
offering all sorts of aid, commiseration, and advice, and Dermot
begged to come too, "in case he should be faint," which made Harry
smile, though he was in much pain, frowning and biting his lip while
the coachman took the reins, and turned us round amid the deafening
cheers of the people, for Eustace was quite unnerved, and Dora broke
into sobs as she saw the blood soaking through the handkerchiefs--all
that we could contribute. He called her a little goose, and said it
was nothing; but the great drops stood on his brow, he panted and
moved restlessly, as if sitting still were unbearable, and he could
hardly help stamping out the bottom of the carriage. He shouted to
Eustace to let him walk, but Dermot showed him how he would thus have
the crowd about him in a moment. It was the last struggle that had
done the mischief, when the lion, startled by the shout of the crowd,
had turned on him again, and there had been a most narrow escape of a
dying bite, such as would probably have crushed his hand itself
beyond all remedy; and, as it was, one could not but fear he was
dreadfully hurt, when the pain came in accesses of violence several
times in the short distance to Dr. Kingston's door.

No, Dr. Kingston was not at home; nor would be in for some time; but
while we were thinking what to do, a young man came hastily up,
saying "I am Dr. Kingston's partner; can I do anything?"

Harold sprang out on this, forbidding Eustace to follow him, but
permitting Dermot; and Mrs. Kingston, an old acquaintance of mine,
came and invited us all to her drawing-room, lamenting greatly her
husband's absence, and hoping that Mr. Yolland, his new partner,
would be able to supply his place. The young man had very high
testimonials and an excellent education. She was evidently exercised
between her own distrust of the assistant and fear of disparaging
him. Seeing how much shaken we were, she sent for wine, and I was
surprised to see Eustace take some almost furtively, but his little
sister, though still sobbing, glared out from behind the knuckles she
was rubbing into her eyes, and exclaimed, "Eustace, I shall tell
Harry."

"Hold your tongue," said Eustace, petulantly; "Harry has nothing to
do with it."

Mrs. Kingston looked amazed. I set to work to talk them both down,
and must have given a very wild, nervous account of the disaster.
At last Dermot opened the door for Harry, who came in, looking very
pale, with one hand entirely covered and in a sling, the other bound
up all but the thumb and forefinger. To our anxious inquiries, he
replied that the pain was much better now, and he should soon be all
right; and then, on being further pressed, admitted that the little
finger had been so much crushed that it had been taken off from the
first joint, the other three fingers had been broken and were in
splints, and the right hand was only torn and scratched. Mrs.
Kingston exclaimed at this that Mr. Yolland should have waited for
the doctor to venture on such an operation, but both Dermot and
Harold assured her that he could not have waited, and also that it
could not have been more skilfully done, both of which assurances she
must have heard with doubts as to the competence of the judges, and
she much regretted that she could not promise a visit from her doctor
that evening, as he was likely to be detained all night.

Dermot came downstairs with us, and we found Mr. Yolland waiting at
the door to extract a final promise that Harold would go to bed at
once on coming home. It seemed that he had laughed at the
recommendation, so that the young surgeon felt bound to enforce it
before all of us, adding that it was a kind of hurt that no one could
safely neglect. There was something in his frank, brusque manner
that pleased Harold, and he promised with half a smile, thanking the
doctor hastily as he did so, while Dermot Tracy whispered to me,
"Good luck getting him; twice as ready as the old one;" and then
vehemently shaking all our hands, to make up for Harold's not being
fit to touch, he promised to come and see him on the morrow. The
moment we were all in the carriage--Eustace still too much shaken to
drive home--his first question was, who _that_ was?

"Mr. Tracy," I answered; and Eustace added, "I thought you called him
Dermont?"

"Dermot--Dermot Tracy. I have known him all our lives."

"I saw he was a gentleman by his boots," quoth Eustace with
deliberation, holding out his own foot as a standard. "I saw they
were London made."

"How fortunate that you had not on your Sydney ones," I could not
help saying in mischief.

"I took care of that," was the complacent answer. "I told Richardson
to take them all away."

I don't think Harold saw the fun. They had neither of them any
humour; even Harold was much too simple and serious.

Eustace next treated us to a piece of his well-conned manual, and
demonstrated that Dermot St. Glear Tracy, Esquire, of Killy Marey,
County Cavan, Ireland, was grandson to an English peer, great
grandson to an Irish peer, and nephew to the existing Edward St.
Glear, 6th Earl of Erymanth. "And a very fashionable young man," he
went on, "distinguished in the sporting world."

"An excellent good fellow, with plenty of pluck," said Harold warmly.
"Is he not brother to the pretty little girl who was with you when we
came?"

I answered as briefly as I could; I did not want to talk of the
Tracys. My heart was very sore about them, and I was almost relieved
when Dora broke in with a grave accusing tone: "Harry, Eustace drank
a glass of wine, and I said I would tell you!"

"Eustace has no reason to prevent him," was Harold's quiet answer.

"And, really, I think, in my position, it is ridiculous, you see,"
Eustace began stammering, but was wearily cut short by Harold with,
"As you please."

Eustace could never be silent long, and broke forth again: "Harold,
your ring."

By way of answer Harold, with his available thumb and finger, showed
the ring for a moment from his waistcoat pocket. Instantly Dora
sprang at it, snatched it from his finger before he was aware, and
with all her might flung it into the river, for we were crossing the
bridge.

There was strength in that thumb and finger to give her a sharp
fierce shake, and the low voice that said "Dora" was like the lion's
growl.

"It's Meg's ring, and I hate her!" she cried.

"For shame, Dorothy."

The child burst into a flood of tears and sobbed piteously, but it
was some minutes before he would relent and look towards her.
Eustace scolded her for making such a noise, and vexing Harold when
he was hurt, but that only made her cry the more. I told her to say
she was sorry, and perhaps Harold would forgive her; but she shook
her head violently at this.

Harold relented, unable to bear the sight of distress. "Don't tease
her," he said, shortly, to us both. "Hush, Dora; there's an end of
it."

This seemed to be an amnesty, for she leant against his knee again.

"Dora, how could you?" I said, when we were out of the carriage, and
the two young men had gone upstairs together.

"It was Meg's ring, and I hate her," answered Dora, with the fierce
wild gleam in her eyes.

"You should not hate anyone," was, of course, my answer.

"But she's dead!" said Dora, triumphantly as a little tigress.

"So much the worse it is to hate her. Who was she?"

"His wife," said Dora.

I durst not ask the child any more questions.

"Eustace, who is Meg?"

I could not but ask that question as we sat tete-a-tete after dinner,
Dora having gone to carry Harold some fruit, and being sure to stay
with him as long as he permitted.

Eustace looked round with a startled, cautious eye, as if afraid of
being overheard, and said, as Dora had done, "His wife."

"Not alive?"

"Oh, no--thank goodness."

"At his age!"

"He was but twenty when he married her. A bad business! I knew it
could not be otherwise. She was a storekeeper's daughter."

Then I learnt, in Eustace's incoherent style, the sad story I
understood better afterwards.

This miserable marriage had been the outcome of the desolate state of
the family after the loss of all the higher spirits of the elder
generation. For the first few years after my brothers had won their
liberation, and could hold property, they had been very happy, and
the foundations of their prosperity at Boola Boola had been laid.
Had Ambrose lived he would, no doubt, have become a leading man in
the colony, where he had heartily embraced his lot and shaped his
career.

Poor Eustace was, however, meant by nature for a quiet, refined
English gentleman, living in his affections. He would never have
transgressed ordinary bounds save for his brother's overmastering
influence. He drooped from the time of Ambrose's untimely death,
suffered much from the loss of several children, and gradually became
a prey to heart complaint. But his wife was full of sense and
energy, and Ambrose's plans were efficiently carried on, so that all
went well till Alice's marriage; and, a year or two later on,
Dorothy's death, in giving birth to her little girl, no woman was
left at the farm but a rough though kind-hearted old convict, who did
her best for the motherless child.

Harold, then sixteen, and master of his father's half of the
property, was already its chief manager. He was, of course, utterly
unrestrained, doing all kinds of daring and desperate things in the
exuberance of his growing strength, and, though kind to his feeble
uncle, under no authority, and a thorough young barbarian of the
woods; the foremost of all the young men in every kind of exploit, as
marksman, rider, hunter, and what-not, and wanting also to be
foremost in the good graces of Meg Cree, the handsome daughter of the
keeper of the wayside store on the road to Sydney, where young stock-
farmers were wont to meet, with the price of their wool fresh in
their hands. It was the rendezvous for all that was collectively
done in the district; and many were the orgies and revelries in which
Harold had shared when a mere boy in all but strength and stature,
and ungovernable in proportion to the growing forces within him.

Of course she accepted him, with his grand physical advantages and
his good property. There was rivalry enough to excite him, her
beauty was sufficient to fire his boyish fancy; and opposition only
maddened his headstrong will. A loud, boisterous, self-willed boy,
with already strength, courage, and power beyond those of most grown
men; his inclination light and unformed, as the attachments of his
age usually are, was so backed that he succeeded where failure would
have been a blessing.

My poor brother Eustace! what must not Harold's marriage have been to
him! Into the common home, hitherto peaceful if mournful, was
brought this coarse, violent, uneducated woman, jealous of him and
his family, unmeasured in rudeness, contemning all the refinements to
which he clung, and which even then were second nature to the youths,
boasting over him for being a convict, whereas her father was a free
settler, and furious at any act of kindness or respect to him from
her husband.

She must have had a sort of animal jealousy, for the birth of her
first child rendered her so savagely intolerant of poor Dora's
fondness for Harold, that the offer of a clergyman's wife to take
charge of the little girl was thankfully accepted by her father,
though it separated him from his darling by more than fifty miles.

The woman's plan seemed to be to persecute the two Eustaces out of
her house, since she could not persuade Harold that it was not as
much theirs as his own. They clung on, as weak men do, for want of
energy to make a change, and Eustace said his father would never
complain; but Harold never guessed how much she made him suffer.
Home had become a wretched place to all, and Harold was more
alienated from it, making long expeditions, staying out as long and
as late as he could whenever business or pleasure called him away,
and becoming, alas, more headlong and reckless in the pursuit of
amusement. There were fierce hot words when he came home, and though
a tender respect for his uncle was the one thing in which he never
failed, the whole grand creature was being wrecked and ruined by the
wild courses to which home misery was driving him.

After about three years of this kind of life, Meg, much against his
will, went to her father's station for the birth of her second child;
lingered in the congenial atmosphere there far longer than was
necessary after her recovery, and roused Harold's jealousy to a
violent pitch by her demeanour towards a fellow of her own rank, whom
she probably would have married but for Harold's unfortunate
advantages, and whom she now most perilously preferred.

The jollification after the poor child's long-deferred christening
ended in furious language on both sides, Meg insisting that she would
not go home while "the old man" remained at Boola Boola, Harold
swearing that she should come at once, and finally forcing her into
his buggy, silencing by sheer terror her parents' endeavours to keep
them at least till morning, rather than drive in his half-intoxicated
condition across the uncleared country in the moonlight.

In the early morning Harold stood at their door dazed and bleeding,
with his eldest child crushed and moaning in his arms. Almost
without a word he gave it to the grandmother, and then guided the men
at hand, striding on silently before them, to the precipitous bank of
a deep gulley some twelve miles off. In the bottom lay the carriage
broken to pieces, and beside it, where Harold had dragged them out,
Meg and her baby both quite dead--where he had driven headlong down
in the darkness.

The sun was burning hot when they brought her back in the cart,
Harold walking behind with the little one in his arms, and when he
had laid it down at home, the elder one waited till he took it. It
was a fine boy of two years old, the thing he loved best in the
world; but with a broken spine there was no hope for it, and for a
whole day and night he held it, pacing the room, and calling it,
speaking to and noticing no one else, and touching no food, only
slaking his thirst with the liquor that stood at hand, until the poor
little thing died in convulsions.

Unhappily, he had scarcely laid it down beside its mother and
brother, when he saw his rival in the outer room of the store, and
with one deadly imprecation, and a face which Eustace could not think
of without horror, challenged him to fight, and in a second or two
had struck him down, with a fractured skull. But the deed was done
in undoubted brain fever. That was quite established, and for ten
days after he was desperately ill and in the wildest delirium,
probably from some injury to the head in the fall, aggravated by all
that followed.

Neiher magistrate nor doctor was called in, but Prometesky came to
their help, and when he grew calmer, brought him home, where his
strength rallied, but his mind was for some time astray. For weeks
he alternated between moods of speechless apathy and hours of frenzy,
which, from his great strength, must have been fatal to someone if he
had not always known his gentle, feeble old uncle, and obeyed his
entreaties, even when Prometesky lost power with him.

In this remote part of the country no one interfered; the Crees,
whose presence maddened him, were afraid to approach, and only
Prometesky sustained the hopes of the two Eustaces by his conviction
that this was not permanent insanity, but a passing effect of the
injury; and they weathered that dreadful time till the frantic fits
ceased, and there was only the dull, silent, stoniness of look and
manner, lasting on after his health had entirely returned, and he had
begun mechanically to attend to the farm and stock, and give orders
to the men.

The final cure was the message that Dora was lost in the Bush.
Harold had the keen sagacity of a black fellow, and he followed up
the track with his unwearied strength until, on the third day, he
found her, revived her with the food he had brought with him, and
carried her home. There was only just nourishment enough to support
her, and he took none himself, so that when he laid her down beside
her father, he was so spent that, after a mouthful or two, he slept
for twenty hours without moving, as he had never rested since the
accident; and when he woke, and Dora ran up and stroked his face, it
was the first time he had been seen to smile. Ever since he had been
himself again, though changed from the boy of exuberant spirits, and
the youth of ungovernable inclinations, into a grave, silent man,
happier apparently in Dora's vehement affection than in anything
else, and, at any rate, solaced, and soothed by the child's fondness
and dependence upon him. This was two years ago, and no token of
mental malady had since shown itself.

My poor brother Eustace! My heart yearned to have been able to
comfort him. His tender nature had been all along the victim of
others, and he was entirely shattered by these last miseries; an old
man when little more than forty, and with heart disease so much
accelerated by distress and agitation, that he did not live a month
after Dora's adventure; but at least he had the comfort of seeing
Harold's restoration, and being able to commit the other two to his
charge, being no doubt aware that his son was at the best a poor weak
being, and that Harold's nature would rise under responsibility which
would call out its generosity.

Harold had never touched liquor since the day of his child's death,
nor spoken of it; but when his dying uncle begged him to watch over
his young cousins, he took up the Bible that lay on the bed, and,
unsolicited, took a solemn oath to taste nothing of the kind for the
rest of his life.

Afterwards the three had lived on together at Boola Boola. Then had
come the tidings of the inheritance supposed to be Harold's, and with
the relief of one glad to make a new beginning, to have a work to do,
and leave old things behind, he had taken both the others with him.

So it was true! My noble-looking Harold had those dark lines in his
spectrum. Wild ungovernable strength had whirled him in mere boyhood
at the beck of his passions, and when most men are entering freshly
upon life, he was already saddened and sobered by sin and suffering.
The stories whispered of him were more than true. I remember I cried
over them as I sat alone that evening. Eustace had not told all with
the extenuations that I discovered gradually, some even then by
cross-questioning, and much by the tuition of that sisterly affection
that had gone out from me to Harold, and fastened on him as the one
who, to me, represented family ties.

I never thought of breaking with him. No, if I had been told he
might be insane that very night, it would have bound me to him the
more. And when I went to bid him "Good-night" and take away Dora,
and saw the massive features in their stillness light up into a good-
natured smile of thanks at my inquiries, I could believe it all the
less. He was lying cornerwise across the bed, with a stool beyond
for his feet to rest on, and laughed a little as he said he always
had to contrive thus, he never found a bed long enough; and our
merriment over this seemed to render what Eustace had told me even
more incongruous in one so scrupulously gentle.

That gentleness was perhaps reactionary in one who had had such
lessons in keeping back his strength. He had evidently come forth a
changed man. But that vow of his--was it the binding of a worse lion
than that he had fought with to-day? Yet could such things be done
in the might of a merely human will? And what token was there of the
higher aid being invoked? My poor Harold! I could only pray for
him! Alas! did he pray for himself?

I was waked in early morning by Dora's vociferous despair at the
disappearance of her big patient, and then Eustace's peremptory
fretful tone was heard silencing her by explaining that Harold's
hurts had become so painful that he had walked off to Mycening to
have the bandages loosened.

Indeed, when we met at breakfast, Eustace seemed to think himself
injured by the interruption of his slumbers by Harold's coming to him
for assistance in putting on his clothes, and stared at my dismay at
his having permitted such an exertion. Before long, however, we saw
an unmistakable doctor's gig approaching, and from it emerged Harold
and Mr. Yolland. I saw now that he was a sturdy, hard-working-
looking young man of seven or eight and twenty, with sandy hair, and
an honest, open, weather-beaten face. He had a rather abrupt manner,
but much more gentleman-like than that of the usual style of young
Union doctors, who are divided between fine words and affectation and
Sawbones roughness.

He said he had come in to enforce on us what he could not get his
patient to believe--that it was madness to take such liberties with
himself, while such serious wounds were so fresh; and certainly
Harold did not seem to suppose a two mile walk more of an exertion
than a turn on the terrace; indeed, but for Mr. Yolland, he would
have set off again after breakfast for the interrupted quest of
horses at the fair. This, however, was forbidden, with a hint about
even the strongest constitution not being able to defy tetanus. This
made us all look grave, and submission being promised, the young
doctor took his leave, saying he would come in the evening and dress
the hands again for the night.

"Why _did_ you go to that fellow?" asked Eustace. "It is the old
doctor who attends _gentlemen_; he is only the partner."

"He is good enough for me," said Harold. "I was right glad to meet
him."

Then it appeared that as Harold was striding into town, half
distracted with the pain of his hands, in the sunrise of that April
morning, he had had the good fortune to meet Mr. Yolland just coming
from the cottage where the poor little boy lay who had been injured
by the lion. The fright and shock had nearly killed the mother, and
the young doctor had been up all night, trying to save her, while on
the floor, in a drunken sleep, lay the father, a navvy, who had
expended the money lavished on the child by the spectators of the
accident, in a revel at the public house. If any were left, it was
all in the brute's pocket, and the only hope of peace was when he
should have drunk it up.

Eustace went off to the fair to look at horses, Harold impressing on
him to do nothing final in haste; and I could see that, while proud
of doing anything on his own account, he was almost afraid of the
venture alone. Tired by his sleepless night and morning walk,
Harold, when we went into the hall for Dora's lessons, lay down on
the white bear-skin, let us build a pile of cushions for his head,
and thanked us with "That's nice." I suppose he had never been
waited on before, he smiled with such a grateful look, almost of
surprise.

Have I not said that ours was a black oak-panelled hall, with a wide
fireplace, a gallery and oriel window, matted, and so fitted up as to
be a pleasant resort for summer days. Our lessons took place there,
because I had found that my old schoolroom, out of sight and sound of
everything, was such an intolerable prison to my little wild Bush
girl, that she really could not learn there, since her very limited
attention could only be secured, under the certainty that Harold did
not leave the house without her.

He bade her let him hear how well she could read, but he was very
soon fast asleep, and I was persuading her that the multiplication
table could not disturb his slumbers, when, at the sound of horses'
feet, she darted from my side, like an arrow from a bow, to the open
front door, and there waved her hand in command, calling to the rider
in a hushed voice, "He is asleep."

I followed, expecting to see Eustace; but the rider was instead
Dermot Tracy, who in unfeigned alarm asked if he were seriously ill;
and when I laughed and explained, he gave his horse, to the groom,
and came quietly enough, to satisfy Dora, into the hall with us.

There he stood transfixed, gazing at the great sleeping figure with a
passion of enthusiasm in his dark-grey eyes. "Glorious!" he said.
"Splendid fellow! Worthy of the deed, Lucy! It was the most plucky
thing I ever saw!"

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