Loe raamatut: «Heart and Cross», lehekülg 2

CHAPTER III

“Who are we to have, Clare?—let us hear. You don’t suppose that my mind, weighed down with the responsibilities of law-making, can remember everything, eh?—even my wife’s guests?” said Derwent, rubbing his hands, as we sat after dinner near the fire in the warm crimson dining-room. When we were alone I gave Mr. Crofton’s claret my benign countenance till he was ready to go with me to the drawing-room. There were not enough of us to separate at that genial hour, especially as little Derwent sat between us peeling his orange, and quite ready to give his opinion on any knotty point that might occur.

“Papa, please give Willie Sedgwick the little grey pony,” said Derwie, “to ride when he’s here; he says his papa will never let him take his horse anywhere with him—there’s such a lot of children,” added my boy, parenthetically, with some pity and contempt. “I like little Clary best—I like her because her name’s the same as mamma’s, and because she has blue eyes, and because she likes me, and she’s good to that poor old nurse, too, who has her daughter in a fever, and daren’t go to see her.”

“How do you know about the nurse’s daughter’s fever, Derwie?” asked I.

“Mamma, they sent me to the nursery, when you were calling there,” said Derwie, with some emphasis, “and she told me she has the scarlet fever, and Mrs. Sedgwick won’t let her mamma go to see her, for fear of the children taking it—isn’t it a shame? Clary told me she said her prayers for her every night, to get her well; and so,” said Derwent, coloring, and looking up with some apparent idea that this was not perfectly right, and the most manful intention to stand out the consequences, “and so do I.”

His father and I looked at each other, and neither of us said anything just for that moment, which silence emboldened Derwie to believe that no harm was coming of his confession, and to go on with his story.

“And Mr. Sedgwick’s man—he’s such a funny fellow. I wish you’d ask him to tell you one of his stories, mamma,” said Derwie, “for I know he’s coming here with them. He has a brother like Johnny Harley—just as lame—and he got cured in Wales, at St. Winifred’s Well. Why don’t you ask Mrs. Harley to send Johnny to St. Winifred’s Well, mamma?—she only laughed at me when I said so. I say, mamma,” continued Derwie, with his mouth full of his orange, “I’ll tell Russell he’s to tell you one of his stories—I never knew a fellow that could tell such famous stories—I wish you had a man like Russell, papa. He’s been all over the world, and he’s got two children at home, and the name of one of them is John—John Russell—like the little gentleman in Punch.”

“Don’t be personal, Derwie,” said Mr. Crofton, laughing; “we are to have Mr. Sedgwick’s Russell, and Mrs. Sedgwick’s nurse—who else?”

“The Harleys,” said I, “for we’ll postpone for a little, if you please, Derwie, your friends below-stairs; and Mr. Reredos and his sister, and Miss Polly Greenfield, and her little nieces. I fear the womankind will rather predominate in our Easter party—though Maurice Harley, to be sure”–

“Yes—Maurice Harley, to be sure,” said Derwent, still with a smile, “is—what should you call him now, Clare—a host in himself?”

“Fellow of Exeter College, Cambridge,” said I, demurely; “he has it on his card.”

“Mamma, is Maurice Harley a clergyman?—shouldn’t a clergyman care about people?” said little Derwent; “I don’t think he does. He likes books.”

“And what do you mean by people?—and don’t you like books?” I asked.

“Oh! yes, sometimes,” said my son; “when there’s pictures in them. But you know what people mean, mamma—quite well! You talk to them, you do—but Maurice Harley puts up his shoulders like this, and looks more tired than Bob Dawkes does after his ploughing—so tired—just as if he could drop down with tiredness. Oh!” cried Derwent, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, “I would not give our Johnnie for a hundred of him.”

“A hundred of him!” I confess the thought filled me with alarm. In my heart I doubted, with a little shudder of apprehension, whether the country, not to speak of Hilfont, could have survived the invasion of a hundred such accomplished men. “But, Derwie,” said I, recovering from that shock, “if you do not like books except when they have pictures in them, how do you think you are ever to learn all the things that Maurice Harley knows?”

“Mr. Sedgwick says he’s a prig,” says little Derwent, with great seriousness, “and I know more things now than he does—I know how to make rabbits’ houses. If you were to get some little white rabbits, mamma, I could make a beautiful house for them. Will Morris taught me how. Oh! papa, don’t you know Will Morris wants to marry little Susan at the shop?—he has her picture, and it’s not the least like her, and I heard Maurice Harley say the photographs must be like, because the sun took them. Does the sun see better than other people? That one’s like you with the paper in your hand; but Will Morris’s picture, instead of being Susan, is anybody in a checked dress.”

“I begin to think you will turn out a great critic, Derwie,” said his admiring father, who desired no better than to spend his after-dinner hour listening to the wisdom of his son.

“What’s a critic? is it anything like a prig?” asked Derwent, who was trying hard to set up the crooked stem of a bunch of raisins—now, alas, denuded of every vestige of its fruit—like a tree upon his plate; the endeavor was not very successful, although when propped up on each side by little mounds of orange-peel, the mimic tree managed to hold a very slippery and precarious footing, and for a few minutes kept itself upright. We two sat looking at this process in a hush of pleased and interested observation. Maurice Harley, with all his powers and pretensions, could neither have done nor said anything which could thus have absorbed us, and I doubt whether we would have looked at the highest triumphs of art or genius with admiration as complete as that with which we regarded little Derwie setting up the stalk of the bunch of raisins between these little mounds of orange-peel.

“Clare, how old is he now?” said Mr. Crofton to me.

As if he did not know! but I answered with calm pride, “Seven on Monday, Derwent—and you remember it was Easter Monday too that year—and tall for his age, certainly—but he is not so stout as Willie Sedgwick.”

“Ah, Monday’s your birthday, is it, old fellow?” said Derwent; “what should you like on your birthday, Derwie—let us hear?”

“May I have anything I like, papa?” asked the child, throwing down immediately both the raisin-stalk and the orange-skin. His father nodded in assent. I, a little in terror of what “anything I like” at seven years old might happen to be, hastened to interpose.

“Anything in reason, Derwie, dear—not the moon, you know, nor the crown, nor an impossible thing. You are a very sensible little boy when you please; think of something in papa’s power.”

“It is only little babies that cry for the moon,” said Derwie, contemptuously, “and I’ve got it in the stereoscope—and what’s the good of it if one had it? nobody lives there; but, papa, I’ll tell you what I should like—give me the key of the door of the House of Commons, where you go every day when we are in town. That’s what I should like for my birthday; what makes you laugh?” continued my boy, coming to a sudden pause and growing red, for he was deeply susceptible to ridicule, bold as he was.

“Why on earth do you want to go to the House of Commons?” cried his father, when his laughter permitted him to speak.

“It’s in the Bible that the people used to come to tell everything to the king,” said Derwie, a little peevishly; “and isn’t the House of Commons instead of the king in this country? and doesn’t everybody go to the House of Commons when they want anything? I should like to see them all coming and telling their stories—what fun it must be! That’s why you go there, I suppose, every night? but I don’t know why you never should take mamma or me.”

“It would never do to let the ladies come in,” said Derwent, with mock seriousness; “you know they would talk so much that we could never hear what the people had to say.”

“Mamma does not talk very much,” said Derwie, sharply; “nor Alice either. Old Mrs. Sedgwick, to be sure—but then it’s some good when she talks; it isn’t all about books or things I can’t understand, it’s about people—that’s real talk, that is. Before I go to school—just till this session is over—oh, papa, will you give me that key?”

“My boy,” said Derwent, with the love and the laughter rivalling each other in his eyes, “they don’t give me any key, or you should have it—there’s a turnkey at the door, who opens it to let the poor people out and in; but some day you and mamma shall go and be shut up in a cage we have for the ladies, and hear all that’s said. I’m afraid, Derwie, when you’ve once been there you won’t want to go again.”

“Yes, I shall!” cried Derwie, all his face glowing with eagerness; when there suddenly appeared a solemn and silent apparition at the door, namely Nurse, under whose iron rule the young gentleman, much resisting, was still held, so far at least as his toilette was concerned. That excellent woman said not a word. She opened the door with noiseless solemnity, came in, and stood smoothing down her spotless apron by the wall. No need for words to announce the presence of that messenger of fate; Derwie made some unavailing struggles with destiny, and at last resigned himself and marched off defiantly, followed by the mighty Nemesis. When the door closed upon the well-preserved skirts of that brown silk gown, in which, ever since little Derwie emerged from babyhood, nurse had presented herself in the dining-room to fetch him to bed, Mr. Crofton and I once more looked at each other with those looks of fondness and praise and mutual congratulation which our boy had brought to our eyes. We had already exhausted all the phrases of parental wonder and admiration; we only looked at each other with a mutual tender delight and congratulation. Nobody else, surely, since the beginning of the world, ever had such a boy!

CHAPTER IV

The next day after, being the Saturday, our little Easter party assembled; first our neighbors the Sedgwicks, who were a party in themselves. Ten years before, Hugh Sedgwick had been the finest gentleman in our neighborhood, which he filled with amazement and consternation when he chose to fall in love with and marry little Clara Harley, whom, in the most literal sense of the word, he married out of the school-room, and who was just seventeen years old. But now that five children had followed this marriage, nobody could have supposed or believed in the existence of any such great original contrast between the husband and wife. Either Mr. Sedgwick had grown younger, or Clara older, than their years. He who now called Maurice Harley a prig, had been himself the prince of prigs—according to the estimate of the country gentlemen, his neighbors—in his day; but that day was long departed. Hugh Sedgwick, fastidious, dilettante fine gentleman, as he had been, was now the solicitous father of little children, and not above giving very sound advice upon measles and hooping-cough—while Clara, who had gradually blossomed out into fuller and fuller bloom, had scarcely yet attained the height of her soft beauty, despite the little flock of children round her. Nobody in the county made such a toilette as little Mrs. Sedgwick. I suspect she must have had carte blanche as to her milliner’s bills; and when they entered the Hilfont drawing-room, Clara, with her pretty matronly self-possession, her graceful little figure, round and full as one of her own babies, and her lovely little face, with all its cloudless lilies and roses—nobody could have believed in the time when his good neighbors shrugged their shoulders and laughed at Hugh Sedgwick’s choice. She sat down, I remember, by Miss Polly Greenfield—dear old Miss Polly in her primeval drapery—that crimson satin gown which I had known all my life. Such a contrast they made in the bright youth and pale age of the two faces, which came together lovingly in a kiss of greeting! Since her brother, Sir Willoughby, had married, Miss Polly’s habits had changed greatly. She had thrown aside her old brown riding-dress and the stiff man’s hat she used to wear when she rode with Sir Willoughby. And when her old horse and her old groom were old enough to be pensioned off in their respective paddock and cottage, Miss Polly set up a pony-carriage, more suitable to her years. Her niece, a young widow of twenty, a poor, little, disconsolate soul, who was all the trouble in the world to Miss Polly, had made a second marriage, and left her two little children to the care of their grandaunt. They were little girls both, and the tender old woman was very happy in their society—happier a hundred times than when she had been mistress of Fenosier Hall. But to hear how little Clara, who once had stood somewhat in awe of Miss Polly, talked to her now!—advising her how to manage little Di and Emmy, telling how she regulated her own Clary, who, though a good deal younger, was very far on for her age—with what a sweet touch of superiority and simplicity the dear little matron looked down from her wifely and motherly elevation upon pale old Miss Polly, who was neither mother nor wife! Clara was quite ready at the same moment to have bestowed her matronly counsels upon me.

After the Sedgwicks, Alice Harley, all by herself, as became one who felt herself at home, and was all but a daughter of the house, came into the room. Alice was plain in her dress to the extreme of plainness. That she assumed an evening dress at all was somewhat against her convictions, and in compassion to my weakness and prejudice; but the dress was of dark colored silk, made with a studied sobriety of cut, and lack of ornament. Instead of sharing Clara’s round soft loveliness, Alice had grown slender and pale. Unimaginative people called her thin. Out of her girlish beauty had come a face full of thoughtfulness and expression, but not so pretty as some people expected—perhaps, because somehow or other, the ordinary roselight of youth had failed to Alice. Half by choice, half by necessity, she had settled down into the humdrum useful existence which the eldest daughter of a large family, if she does not elude her fate by an early marriage, so often falls into. Various “offers” had been made to her, one of which Mrs. Harley, divided between a mother’s natural wish to see her daughter properly “settled,” and a little reluctance, not less natural, to part with her own household counsellor and helper, had given a wavering support to. Alice, however, said No, coldly, and not, as I thought, without the minutest possible tinge of bitterness answered the persuasions which were addressed to her. She was rather high and grandiloquent altogether on the subject of marriage, looking on with a half-comic, disapproving spectator observation at little Clara’s loving tricks to her husband, whom that little matron had no awe of now-a-days, and discoursing more than seemed to me entirely necessary upon the subject. Alice was somewhat inclined to the views of those philosophers (chiefly feminine, it must be confessed) who see in the world around them, not a general crowd of human creatures, but two distinct rows of men and women; and she was a little condescending and superior, it must also be admitted, to that somewhat frivolous antagonistic creature, man. The ideal man, whom Alice had never—so she intimated—had the luck to light upon, was a demigod; but the real male representatives of the race were poor creatures—well enough, to be sure, but no more worthy of a woman’s devotion than of any other superlative gift. With sentiments so distinct and prononcés, Alice had not lived all these years without feeling some yearning for an independent sway and place of her own, as one may well suppose—which tempted her into further speculations about women’s work, and what one could do to make a place for one’s self, who had positively determined not to be indebted for one’s position to one’s husband. Such was the peculiar atmosphere out of which Alice Harley revealed herself to the common world. She was deeply scornful of that talk about people which pleased my boy so much, and so severe upon gossip and gossips, that I had on more than one occasion seriously to defend myself. There she stood in her dark-brown silk dress beside little Clara’s flowing toilette and vivacious nursery talk, casting a shadow upon pale Miss Polly in her crimson satin. Alice was as much unlike that tender old soul, with her old maidenly restraints and preciseness, her unbounded old womanly indulgence and kindness, as she was unlike her matronly younger sister; and I confess that to myself, in all her perverseness, knowing as I did what a genuine heart lay below, there was quite a charm of her own about the unmarried woman. She was so conscious of her staid and sober age, so unconscious of her pleasant youth, and the simplicity which, all unknown to herself, lay in her wisdom. Such was my Alice; the same Alice who, keeping silent and keeping her brothers and sisters quiet in the nursery, while she knew her father lay dying many a long year ago, adjured me with unspeakable childish pathos—“Oh, don’t be sorry for me! I mustn’t cry!”

I do not know how it was that, while I contemplated Alice on her first appearance with a kind of retrospective glance at her history, there suddenly appeared above her the head of Mr. Reredos. He was a middle-sized, handsome man, with a pale complexion and dark hair—very gentlemanly, people said—a man who preached well, talked well, and looked well, and who, even to my eyes, which were no way partial, had no particular defect worth noticing, if it were not the soft, large, white hands without any bones in them, which held your fingers in a warm, velvety clasp when you shook hands with the new rector. I don’t know how he had managed to come in without my perceiving him. And strong must have been the attraction which beguiled Mr. Reredos to neglect the duty of paying his respects to his hostess, even for five minutes. It was not five minutes, however, before he recollected himself, and came with his soft white hand and his sister on his arm. His sister was so far like himself that she was very pale, with very black hair, and an “interesting” look. She did not interest me very much; but I could not help hoping that perhaps in this sentimental heroine Maurice Harley, for the time being, might meet his fate. I thought that would be rather a comfortable way of shelving those members of our party; for Maurice, though he was a very fine gentleman, not to say Fellow of his College, afflicted my soul with a constant inclination to commit a personal assault upon him, and have him whipped and sent to bed.

However, to be sure, we had all the elements of a very pleasant party about us—people who belonged to us, as one may say. Derwent, who liked to see a number of cheerful faces about him, was in the lightest spirits; he paid Clara Sedgwick compliments on her toilette, and “chaffed” (as he called it—I am not responsible for the word) Alice, whom he had the sincerest affection for, but loved to tease, and took Miss Polly in to dinner, while little Derwie did the honors of the nursery to a party almost as large, and quite as various. I fear we made rather a night of feasting than a penitential vigil of that Easter Eve.

CHAPTER V

When we returned to the drawing-room after dinner, we found, hidden in a distant corner, with books and portfolios, and stereoscopes blocking up the table near him, Johnnie Harley. I have said little of this boy. He was the proxy which the handsome, healthy family had given for their singular exemption from disease and weakness—the one sufferer, among many strong, who is so often found in households unexceptionably healthful, as if all the minor afflictions which might have been divided among them had concentrated on one and left the rest free. When Johnnie was a child he had only been moved in the little wheeled chair, got for him in his father’s lifetime, when they were rich. Now he was better, and able to move about with the help of a crutch, but even now was a hopeless cripple, with only his vigorous mind and unconquerable spirits to maintain him through private hours of suffering. Partly from his infirmities—partly from his natural temperament—the lad had a certain superficial shyness, which, though it was easily got over, made it rather difficult to form acquaintance with him. He could not be induced to dine with us that first night—but he was in the drawing-room, showing the stereoscope to Miss Polly’s little nieces, Di and Emmy, when we came back from dinner; the other little creatures were playing at some recondite childish game in another part of the room; but Emmy and Di were very proper little maidens, trained to take judicious care of their white India muslin frocks, the spare dimensions of which contrasted oddly enough with Clary’s voluminous little skirts and flush of ribbons. Clary was like a little rose, with lovely rounded cheeks and limbs like her mother, dimpled to the very finger-points, while Di and Emmy, though by no means deficient in good looks, were made up quite after Miss Polly’s own model, in a taste which was somewhat severe for their years. Johnnie Harley veiled himself behind these little maidens till we were safely settled in the room. He was twenty, poor fellow, and did not know what was to become of him. He was sometimes very melancholy, and sometimes very gay; he was in rather a doubtful mood to-night.

“Look here, Mrs. Crofton,” he said, drawing me shyly aside. “I’ve put this one in a famous light—do tell me if you like it. I did it myself.”

I looked, of course, to please him. It was a pretty view of my own house at Estcourt, with the orphan children who lived there playing on the terrace—very pretty, and very minute—so clear that I fancied I could recognize the children. It pleased me mightily.

“You did it, Johnnie,” cried I, much gratified. “I am very much pleased; but I never knew you were a ‘photographic artist’ before.”

“No more I was,” said Johnnie, who rather affected a little roughness of speech, “till they got me a camera the other day. Of course I know it was Alice, and that somehow or other she’s spared it off herself. Do you know whether there’s anything she ought to have had that she hasn’t, Mrs. Crofton? One can never find Alice out. She doesn’t go when she’s made a sacrifice for you and keep hinting and hinting to let you know, as some people do; but look here—isn’t it horrible to think I’m grown up and yet have to stay at home like a girl, and can’t do anything. Now that I’m able to do these slides, I’d give my ears if I could sell them. I’d go and stand in the market at Simonborough. But of course it’s no use speaking. Don’t you think, Mrs. Crofton, that there’s surely something in the world that could be done by a cripple like me?”

“I have no doubt a dozen things,” said I, boldly; “but have a little patience, Johnnie. Maurice is ten years older than you are, and he does nothing that I can see. Besides, it is holiday time—I forbid you to think of anything but the new camera to-night. Is it a good one? What a pleasure it must be for all of you,” I continued, looking once more into the stereoscope, where, most singular of optical delusions, I certainly saw a pretty new winter bonnet, the back of which, in the wardrobe of Alice, I had already made a memorandum of, floating over the picture of my old house.

“Ah,” said Johnnie, with a sigh, “if I were a fellow like Maurice!—but here, Di, you have not seen this,” he added, transferring another slide into that wooden box. Grave little Di looked at it, and summoned her sister with a little scream of delight.

“It’s Miss Harley and Baby Sedgwick,” said Di, “and I do believe if any one was little enough they could go round behind her in the picture. Oh! let me tell Derwent and Clara, Mr. John!”

Mr. John was very graciously pleased to exhibit his handiwork to any number of spectators, and shortly we all gathered round the stereoscope. Alice stood looking on very demurely, while we were examining her in that pretty peep-show; she listened to all the usual observations with due calm, while Johnnie, quite in a flush of pleasure, produced the pictures, at which I understood afterwards the poor youth had been working all day long, one by one out of the box.

“My love,” said Miss Polly, in a mild aside, “I’d like to see you just so in a house of your own, my dear.”

Alice colored slightly; very slightly—it was against her principles to blush—and made no answer, except a slight shake of her head.

“Such a sweet baby,” said Miss Reredos, “I think one might bear anything for such a darling! Oh, don’t you think so, Miss Harley? I think it’s so unnatural for a lady not to love children. I think if dear Clement had but a family I should be so happy.”

“But, dear, shouldn’t you be happier,” said Clara, opening her bright eyes a little wider, with a laughing humor which now-a-days that young lady permitted herself to exercise pretty freely, “if you had a family of your own?”

“Oh! Mrs. Sedgwick, how can you speak so? I am so glad the gentlemen are not here,” said the Rector’s sister. Alice stood looking at her with a half vexed, half amused expression. Alice was a little afraid for the honor of (most frightful of phrases!) her sex.

“As for Alice,” said Clara, laughing, “do you know she thinks it rather improper to be married? She would not allow she cared for anybody, not for the world.”

“I think women ought to be very careful,” said Alice, responding instantly to the challenge with a little flush and start; “I think there are very few men in the world worthy of being loved. Yes, I do think so, whatever you choose to say. They’re well enough for their trades, but they’re not good enough to have a woman’s heart for a plaything. Of course there may be some—I do not deny that; but I never”–

Here Alice paused—perhaps she was going to tell a fib—perhaps conscience stopped her—I will not guess; but Clara clapped her hands in triumph.

“Ah, but if you did ever,” said Clara, laughing, “would you marry him, Alice?”

“If he asked me it is very likely I should,” said Alice, with great composure; “but not for a house of my own, as Miss Polly says—nor for fun, like some other people.”

“My love, it’s very natural to like a house of one’s own,” said Miss Polly, with a little sigh. “I don’t mind saying it now that I am so old: once in my life I almost think I would have married for a home—not for a living, remember, Alice—but for a place and people that should belong to me, and not to another—that’s what one wishes for, you know; but I never talked about it either now or then; my dear, I wouldn’t if I were you.”

At this address Alice blushed crimson—blushed up to the hair, and patted her foot upon the ground in a very impatient, not to say angry, way. She cast a somewhat indignant side-look at me, to express her conviction that I was at the bottom of this, and had suggested the mild condemnation of Miss Polly—which, so far as agreeing thoroughly in her sentiments went, I confess I might have done. Then Alice went off abruptly to the piano, and began playing to the children, who gathered round her; before long her voice was pleasantly audible in one of those immemorial songs with a fox or a robin for a hero, which always delight children; and when the song was finished there ensued as pretty a scene as I have ever looked at. Clara gathered the children in a ring, which danced round and round, with a dazzle of little rosebud faces, flying white frocks and ribbons, to Alice’s accompaniment. Such scenes I have no doubt were of nightly occurrence in the big, grand drawing-room at Waterflag Hall; and little Derwie took his part so heartily, and joined in the chant with which they went round with lungs and will so unmistakable, that, for my part, I was quite captivated. Miss Polly and I sat down to watch them. Little Di, too shy and too big to join them, being twelve years old and a grandmother among these babes, stood wistfully behind us, envying Emmy, who was only ten and a half, and “not too old for such a game.” Di, a long way older and graver than Mrs. Clare, stood nodding and smiling to encourage her little sister every time she whisked past. Miss Reredos behind us was examining Johnnie’s pictures and talking sentiment in a soft half-whisper to that defenceless boy, while Miss Polly and I sat on a sofa together, looking on.

“It is strange,” said Miss Polly, “but yet I’m sure I am very glad. I thought of asking you, Clare, whether anything had occurred to disturb that dear girl? I don’t like when I hear young women talk like that, my dear—it looks to me as if they had something on their mind, you know. Once I thought there might perhaps be something between Bertie Nugent and Alice—that would have been a very nice match; but somehow these nice matches never come about—at least, not without a deal of trouble; and I suppose it was nothing but an old woman’s fancy, Clare.”

“I suppose not, indeed,” said I, rather ruefully, looking at that prettiest spectacle before me, and recognizing, as by intuition, that Mr. Reredos had just come in, and was standing at the door in a glow of delight and approbation, looking at Alice, and deciding not to delay his proposal for an hour longer than it should be absolutely necessary to keep silent. Ah, me! there was some hope for us in Alice’s philosophical moods; but when she played to her little nieces and nephews in that shockingly happy, careless, and easy manner, I was in despair.

“It’s very sad when people won’t see what’s most for their advantage,” said Miss Polly, with a ghost of humor in her pale old face. “I daresay, Clare, my dear, Bertie’s just as happy. I heard from Lady Greenfield the other day—one of her letters, you know—that the dear boy was getting on very well, but breaking his heart to get home that he might go to the Crimea to the war.”