CHAPTER XIX.

RETRIBUTION.

THE next few hours were to Lettice one prolonged whirl. She did what had to be done, with some measure of outward quietness; but her mind was in a dizzy tumult of feeling. After all that had passed, it seemed such a fearful reverse for Theodosia! Lettice forgot injuries to herself, and her whole heart went out in passionate pity to that unhappy woman, who in losing Keith might almost be said to lose her all.

Felix said little during the journey, but he saw to everything, looked well after Lettice, and made her lie down on the seat, while nobody except themselves occupied the compartment. She found herself involuntarily tracing and retracing the course of late events. Things had turned out utterly unlike all previous expectations. But for Theodosia's determined antagonism, she might not have come to London at this time, and she might never have lived again with Felix! This new phase of affairs had sprung from a chain of circumstances over which she had small control; not one of which, separately viewed, could have been deemed likely to produce any such result.

"I suppose things often are so," she meditated, reposing in the lamplight, with the rush of the train in her ears. "And after all, it has been worth going through the trouble, to bring about my home with Felix. Yes; worth the whole. I would not undo a single step, if it must mean undoing that too . . . I never fancied Felix could be what he is now to me. Three months ago, if I could have looked ahead, how little I should have cared about Mrs. Bryant's unkindness . . . At least it would have been a different feeling altogether—not desolate! I do care now: but I shall be cleared some day, quite cleared. I am sure of it. And meantime life is so happy! How can I help being contented? . . . That poor little Keith? Ought I to be glad about anything, when he is dying?"

So the hours passed, in alternations of feeling; and after midnight, the journey ended, in a dark drive to Quarrington Cottage.

Lettice sprang out, to be met at the door by Dr. Bryant.

He looked grave and tried; but at the first glimpse of Lettice, something of the old light came into his eyes. "My child, I have missed you!" he said.

"Have you? I did wonder if, perhaps, you might!"

"Hardly possible that I should not!"

"And Keith?"

"You are in time. Not much more than in time, I fear. Your brother was right to come too," as he held out a hand to Felix.

"I could not let Lettice travel alone at night."

"No: you are perfectly right."

"Uncle, what is the illness?"

"A chill first. Bronchitis, with complications. He cannot last many hours now. At this moment he is not conscious."

"Will he know me?"

"I hope so. He has asked for you incessantly, poor little lad. Theodosia would not consent, until yesterday afternoon, to have you sent for. I feared then that it might be too late. The boy was so distressed that she had to give way."

Lettice shivered at the thought of Theodosia; not with reference to herself. "It is terrible for Mrs. Bryant!" she murmured.

"Yes; and the boy has seemed to turn from her in this illness. It has been most painful. My dear, will you take off your wraps; and then you must have supper. After that you shall see him."

"O let me go to him first. We had supper at home."

"You must take something more now."

She had no choice as to submission, and obedience was the quicker mode. Fatigue could not be thought of; and she had no desire for sleep. Felix at least was glad to avail himself of the food provided; and Lettice did her best to satisfy Dr. Bryant.

"You are looking well in health. Not the worse for London!" he said, after an earnest scrutiny.

"Felix takes such care of me."

Felix grunted slightly, as if in token that he desired no compliments.

"Anderson will be no loser in the end."

Then came a summons. "Master Keith was sensible, and he wanted Miss Lettice. He had asked if she were in the house."

"Come, both of you," the doctor said unexpectedly. He could hardly have explained why he extended his invitation to Felix. The words sprang from a momentary impulse; and Felix followed without hesitation.

Keith was sitting up in his little bed, supported by pillows. Beside him stood Theodosia; haggard, wretched beyond description. After one glance, as Lettice entered, her eyes were averted: while the boy extended eager hands, and gasped, "Dear old Lettice! Come!"

She bent over him, and he held her with his thin arms, until they dropped through weakness. The breathing was sorely oppressed. He seemed striving to say something, and unable to bring it out.

Theodosia drew nearer; but with one hand, he tried to push her away—a hasty childish motion.

"No, no, Keith!" the doctor said in a gentle voice.

"I can't! Lettice! Not Mamsie! It was she—did it!" The boy could with difficulty speak, and he looked towards Dr. Bryant, panting. "I want—want—to tell you! . . . Mamsie did it! . . . I saw her! . . . Lettice knows! . . . Ask Lettice!"

"What does he mean?" asked Dr. Bryant, in a low voice.

Lettice shook her head. How could she reply?

"Lettice knows!" repeated the boy brokenly. "Hold me, Lettice! Don't go! . . . She put the bank-note . . . her own self . . . into Lettice's box! . . . I saw her . . . Mamsie knows quite well . . . And Lettice knows!"

Theodosia's face grew stony; and Dr. Bryant's changed to a grey whiteness.

"Who put the bank-note into Lettice's box, Keith?"

"Mamsie! Her own self! I saw her! . . . I can't think—how—she could!"

An oppressive silence followed, broken only by the boy's gasps.

Lettice was the first to speak.

"Keith, darling, don't think of all that now. Try to forget about the money. You have not to do with it, you know. Think of the stories I used to tell you, up in the playroom on Sunday afternoon. About JESUS, dying on the Cross, and how He loved the children always."

"Yes, I know! Will He take me—right away—up there?"

"I am sure He will. He loves you so; and He died for you, Keith. Ask Him now to forgive you all that you have done wrong; and to take care of you."

"I can't speak—it hurts! You ask?"

There was an instant's shy reluctance, but at such a moment she could not think of self.

Others simply stood around, waiting. Lettice looked at none of them. She knew that Theodosia, Dr. Bryant, Felix, Susanna, were present; yet as she knelt, with bowed head, clasping the boy's hand, she had a sense of being alone with Keith before the Heavenly Throne.

In soft tones she uttered the words of her own old evening prayer, learnt long ago from Cecilia, and taught later to Keith, only changing the pronouns to suit the needs of the present occasion, and bringing in Keith's name. He joined brokenly in the familiar sentences: and then a fit of choking came on. Theodosia interfered to give help: her own face ghastly. When the attack passed off, it left the boy unconscious.

"Is this true?" the doctor asked, in a voice of suppressed pain.

He had no immediate answer. Theodosia's gaze was riveted on her boy's face, over which a marked change was creeping. It had come without warning: and it deepened fast. Again he struggled for breath: and once more, with returning sense, his eyes sought Lettice's face. A smile glimmered: and one word passed his lips, that word of "hope for the dying." He said distinctly—"JESUS!"

"Keith, darling, look at mamsie! Give poor mamsie one smile."

He made an effort to obey: but in the act, his eyes closed.

There was another slight struggle: and the child was gone.

Silence again fell upon them all; and Lettice trembled, holding the small lifeless hand. Theodosia stood up white and stern.

"Yes: it is true," she said, "I did it! I wanted to get rid of Lettice,—for Keith's sake! I could not have done such a thing for anybody else's sake,—only for Keith! . . . Only for Keith! . . . I know what I am saying! Don't stare at me—all of you! I tell you—Lettice stole my boy's heart from me! And she would have robbed him—robbed him of his rights! I saw it all—and so—for his sake—my boy's sake—"

"Come out of the room, Theodosia!" Dr. Bryant spoke with infinite pity.

"Why should I go? Nothing is left to me now. Oh, I know—it was wrong, of course—but this is an awful punishment!" And she sank over the child's body, uttering a wail of such misery, that Lettice burst into weeping at the sound. Who could comfort the unhappy woman? She had sacrificed her truth, her sense of right, deliberately wronging an innocent girl, as a gratification of her own jealousy, and for the supposed advantage of the single being whom she loved: and now, not only was he taken from her, but before he went, she had the additional anguish of knowing that she had forfeited his esteem, if not also his love.

There was a bitter irony in the fact that her own idolised boy should have been the one, of all others, to make known her wrong-doing. Either, his resolution not to speak of it had broken down under the weakness of suffering, or his childish conscience had refused to let him pass away without clearing Lettice from unjust accusation. Whichever way it might be, Theodosia's cup was thereby filled to the brim.

"Go away! Go and leave me!" she cried. "I want Keith! Nobody but Keith! Lettice may have all your money now. Now Keith is gone."

To Lettice the scene was heartrending: to Felix it was a revelation. If the love of money could lead to this—love of money, not for self even, but for another—who might count himself free from peril! He said nothing; but that which he saw sank deeply, and was not forgotten. Theodosia's jealousy of her boy's affection for Lettice was an additional motive which he could not so well see or appreciate. One side of the matter was clear enough: and it carried its own lesson.

"Take Lettice into another room," Dr. Bryant said quietly, and Felix obeyed. Half-an-hour later Dr. Bryant appeared alone, entering the study where the brother and sister had taken refuge. Lettice, not a little shaken by the past scene, was sobbing still: but at the sound of his step, she stood up.

"Is Mrs. Bryant—!" she tried to say.

Dr. Bryant was still ashen pale, with the look of a man who has received a severe blow. He came in front of Lettice, and said, "My child, forgive me!"

Lettice clung to him, without a word.

"Forgive me!" he repeated. "You have been cruelly wronged."

"You couldn't know! You couldn't tell. It was not your fault. I have nothing to forgive."

"You have much! I ought to have been sure! The marvel to me now is—how I could ever have thought it possible. My own credulity amazes me."

His grieved look wandered to the brother, and Felix said promptly, "The other would have seemed much more impossible."

"True!" Dr. Bryant sighed heavily. "The least of the pain is that our little lad is safe at Home!"

"Don't mind about me! Don't think of that again," entreated Lettice. "You have been so good, so dear and good to me always. And if I had spoken out at first—"

"That was always a mystery! I never could understand your silence. Why not have denied it from the beginning?"

Lettice was dumb, and Felix spoke for her. "She thought she might divert suspicion upon me. I was in the room, also, with the bank-note."

"I see!—" with a flash of understanding. "But, no! How could that affect you? You were not in the room alone?"

"Yes,—alone!"

"Ah!" The sound was almost a groan.

"It is all right now—I mean, you will never doubt me again—and I shall always be your child!" murmured Lettice, longing to comfort him.

His lips touched her brow, as he echoed,—

"Always my child!"

"Is she any better, uncle?"

A negative mournful movement came in answer.

"She has insisted on being alone for a time. After all—what can one do? What can any one say to comfort her? . . . Now you must both go to bed? And do not hurry up in the morning, either of you. Breakfast can be made ready at any time."

"And you, uncle?"

"I must have a little time to myself. Good-night, dear child. Try to sleep . . . There is need to sorrow more for the living than the dead; and that touches me more closely than you."

"I think—what touches you touches me!" she tried to say.

"Thanks, my comfort!" and with a stirred face he was gone, able to bear no more.

"I am glad I know him," Felix observed abruptly. "There's something noble about that man—something unlike other men!"

Four days later, Keith was laid to rest in the little village churchyard; and some who knew Theodosia well, said plainly that it was a merciful stroke which had taken the boy thus early away from her influence. Dr. Bryant, whatever he might have felt, passed no such judgment. He uttered no reproaches, and showed to his wife only a steadfast compassion.

She bore up sullenly till after the funeral, only keeping to her own room, and refusing to see Lettice. Then she broke down, and for many weeks she was laid low with brain fever. Out of this illness, she emerged a permanent invalid, shattered in body and mind, childishly sorry for her past conduct, so far as she was capable of recalling it, yet apt to be amused with the veriest trifles.

Lettice could be no help to Dr. Bryant, so far as Theodosia was concerned: since her presence proved always in a measure harmful, by exciting more vivid recollections. A good nurse was in constant attendance: and Dr. Bryant devoted himself, with patient and forgiving assiduity, to lightening, so far as was in his power, the burden of his wife's existence. Hers truly was a spoilt life. In less than a year, she was laid beside her boy.

Dr. Bryant had been thoroughly shaken out of his love for Quarrington Cottage by these painful events. Without consulting anybody, he put the place into the hands of agents, to be let or sold: and six weeks after his wife's death, he betook himself to a London hotel, within five minutes' walk of the Andersons' lodgings.

Nobody expected him. Lettice had been greatly exercised of late, wondering whether her first duty lay with Felix or with Dr. Bryant, now that the latter was left alone in the world.

"If only I could live with them both!" she said often to herself. But Felix was tied to the neighbourhood of London: and that Dr. Bryant should be willing to quit his old home was a notion which never so much as occurred to her imagination. Everybody looked upon him as a fixture there.

The day on which he arrived happened to be the day of Prue Valentine's wedding: a quiet affair, with only Bertha and Nan, Lettice and one other girl, for bride's-maids. The ceremony took place in Mr. Kelly's own Church.

Prue looked calmly happy, in her neat white dress: not only happier but younger than for years past. The bride's-maids wore mauve and white, in consideration of Lettice's mourning, which was of course slight in degree.

It was a morning of much excitement for Lettice, who had never been a bride's-maid before: and for about the first time during six weeks past, her mind did not dwell continuously on the thought of Dr. Bryant in his solitude.

Coming out of Church, after the happy pair, a vague sense took possession of Lettice that somebody familiar and unexpected was present. She could not at once give shape to the notion, and she did not exactly see the "somebody." It was rather a dim consciousness that such an one might be seen—and her eyes roved about anxiously. Had she caught a glimpse, or had she not—almost without knowing? An answer came in the porch, when a kind finely-outlined face, framed in grey hair, was suddenly close at hand; and then she was aware that she had before detected him in Church, though her brain had not fully translated what her eyes had seen.

"Uncle Maurice!" burst from her lips.

"Presently!" he said, as his hand clasped hers. "Go and enjoy yourself, my child. I shall see you by-and-by."

The next two hours were passed in pleasurable suspense. When at length bride and bridegroom had taken their departure, Lettice was free to go home,—and there, according to hope, she found Dr. Bryant comfortably established.

"So this is where you live!" he said.

"It isn't a palace, uncle. But big rooms don't make happiness."

"That's an aphorism worthy of a copybook. Wedding gone off all right?"

"O yes. But how did you know?"

"I called here, and learnt where you were gone."

"Didn't you think Prue looked nice?"

"I thought somebody else did . . . Lettice, are you and Felix wedded to this neighbourhood?"

"To London? Felix has his work."

"Business men often live outside London: within easy distance."

"But the expense of going in and out every day! Of course I should like it, and so would Felix: only it can't be thought of. You see, Felix ought to lay by, if only a little, every year, and I cost him a great deal. But I do try to be economical, and to save in every possible way. And Felix is so glad now to have me with him."

"My dear, I want you also."

"If only Quarrington Cottage were not all that great distance—!" Lettice spoke distressfully.

"I am not going back to Quarrington Cottage. It holds too many sad memories. The place is to be sold. I think of finding a new home outside London,—perhaps in the direction of Reigate or Dorking. And I must have you to live with me."

"But—Felix!"

"Felix too! I would not on any account separate you. I want you both to make my home your home. Why should you not? All that I have will belong to you by-and-by: and my will is already made, to that effect. No,—I shall leave something to Felix—" as she uttered her brother's name—"but the bulk will be yours. Felix can make his own way: and he will make it the faster, if by this plan, he is able to lay by present earnings. I should undertake all his current expenses, as with a son of my own. Will Felix object?—And would you mind?"

"Mind! If Felix consents, I shall be only too glad!! To be with you always:—and to have Felix:—and to live in the country! I didn't know life could be so lovely!" cried Lettice, enraptured.

No difficulties arose in the path of the plan. Felix was both touched and grateful.

"Nonsense!" he said to Lettice, when she expressed privately her regrets as to Dr. Bryant's intentions for the future, which he had plainly stated to the young man. "Of course he is free to leave his money where he likes. Neither of us has the smallest claim upon him, but you deserve it, if anybody does. He is uncommonly good to me, I can tell you: and this will be a capital lift. To have a home provided, and expenses paid, just when I am making my way! Don't you see what a lot I shall be able to save?"

"I hope we shall not both get to care too much for money," Lettice said seriously.

"Not much danger for you. That isn't your sort. And mind—if you think I'm getting into an avaricious groove—just speak and warn me, Lettice."

Quarrington Cottage was sold, and a pretty home was chosen within forty minutes of the City by rail. There the brother and sister lived with Dr. Bryant, finding in him a true father. Neither of the two had after cause to regret the arrangement, and Dr. Bryant's old age was the happiest period of his life.

Although the desire to "get on" was no longer the ruling passion of Felix Anderson's mind, to the exclusion of higher aims, he did get on, and gave promise in time of becoming a thoroughly prosperous man. But in after years, he never lost sight of one main fact, that what he possessed was literally not his own, but only "held in trust."

THE END.

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