“So is detached, so left all by itself,

The little life, the fact which means so much.

Shall not God stoop the kindlier to His work,

Now that the hand He trusted to receive,

And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce?

The better; He shall have in orphanage

His own way all the clearlier.”

R. Browning.

I wonder what will become of Ralph Denmead,” said Lady Tresidder, “it is one of the saddest cases I ever heard of; the poor boy seems to be left without a single relation.”

“Yes,” said Sir John, musingly. “Just the way with these old decayed families, they dwindle slowly away and then become extinct. There was no spirit or energy in poor Denmead, the man was a mere hermit and knew nothing of the world or he wouldn’t have made such a mull of his affairs.”

“Yet Ralph seems to have the energy of ten people,” said Lady Tresidder, glancing as she walked at the river which wound its peaceful way through the park and reflected in the afternoon light the early spring tints of the wooded bank on its further side. At no great distance a boat glided swiftly over the calm water: in the stern sat a dark-haired, handsome girl of nineteen, while the vigorous little rower seemed to be not more than eleven.

“Poor little chap,” said Sir John, “he is terribly cut up about his father’s death. I wish we could have kept him here a few days longer, but it’s better that he should be put at once into his guardian’s hands. There’s no fear that Sir Matthew Mactavish will not do all that’s right for him, if only for the sake of his own reputation.”

“I suppose he is a very charitable man,” said Lady Tresidder.

“Oh, yes, extremely charitable, and very well thought of. For myself, I frankly own I don’t like the way in which he mixes up speculation and philanthropy, and I’m not at all sure that he was always a good adviser to poor Denmead. But he’ll be kind enough to Ralph I’ve no doubt. The boy is his godson, and Denmead was one of his oldest friends. By the bye he was to be at the Rectory by five o’clock, and the boy ought to be there to receive him. They had better be landing, and Mabel can drive him to Whinhaven in the pony chaise.”

He began to make vigorous signals to the occupants of the boat, who somewhat reluctantly came ashore and slowly mounted the rising ground to the house.

“Come in and have some tea while they are putting in Ranger,” said Lady Tresidder, kindly. “Sir John thinks you ought to be at the Rectory when your guardian arrives, and Mab will like a drive with you.”

Ralph grew grave at the thought of a return to the desolate Rectory with its darkened windows and awful stillness; he sighed as he followed comfortable motherly Lady Tresidder into the drawing-room where flowers and well-used books and a cosy tea-table, and some needle work, just put aside, gave a curiously homelike air to the whole place.

“Come and sit by me,” said his hostess in that friendly voice which more than anything helped him to forget his troubles. And perhaps it was the thought of the hard future confronting him which made Lady Tresidder glance so often at the little fellow who had outgrown the stage for petting, and who in spite of his smallness was really thirteen, innocent and ignorant of the world, and with a touch of the chivalrous gentleness of manner that had characterised his father, but in other respects just a high spirited, enthusiastic, hungry boy.

His honest brown eyes grew less wistful as he waded blissfully through the huge slice of Buzzard cake with which Mabel had provided him, but he found the goodbyes hard to say, all the harder because of the kindness he received. It was only afterwards, as they drove up the steep hill in the park, and turned for a last look at the river, that he could remember without a choking in his throat, Lady Tresidder’s motherly kiss, and Sir John’s kindly farewell and cheery words about future visits, and the half sovereign with which he had “tipped” him.

There had been no particular reason why the Tresidders should have been so good to him. Sir John was not the Squire of Whinhaven, indeed Westbrook Hall was not even in his father’s parish: but they had been practically Ralph’s only friends ever since he could remember and some of his happiest hours had been spent with Mab, who being many years his senior and a country girl of the best sort, had been able to teach him to ride and drive, to fish, to row, and to care for animals as devotedly as she herself did.

Mab had a frank, hail fellow well met manner which contrasted rather curiously with her beautiful womanly face and delicately chiselled features; the world in general considered her somewhat off-hand and brusque, but she had in her the makings of a very noble woman, and the boy owed much to her companionship. They were very silent as they drove through the park, but it was the comfortable silence of friends who have perfect confidence in each other. Ralph seemed to be looking with wistful eyes at every familiar turn of the road; his eyes rested lingeringly on the grey walls of the house down below, and the gleaming silvery river, and the old hawthorn bushes, and the fine old chestnut trees.

“Mab,” he said at length, “may we stop for a minute, and just see the bullfinches? Look, there is one of them out of the nest and trying to fly; the cat will get hold of it.”

“Why, to be sure,” said Mab. “Will you care to take it with you to London? It is fledged and I think you could rear it. Would you like it?”

“Rather!” said Ralph emphatically. “And I have a cage at home that would do for it.”

So the young bullfinch was carefully placed in a covered basket, and half an hour later Mabel Tresidder put down the two forlorn young things at the door of Whinhaven Rectory wondering how they would prosper in life.

A severe-looking old housekeeper came out at the sound of the wheels.

“So you’ve come back, Master Ralph,” she said looking him over critically to see that he was clean and presentable. “That’s a good job, for Sir Matthew has been here ten minutes or more, and the lawyer from London with him. Are you coming in, Miss?” she added glancing with no great favour at Miss Tresidder, and calling to mind how often in past days she had led Ralph through bush and through brier to the great detriment of his clothes.

“No, I will not come in,” said Mab, “and this is not my real good-bye to you, Ralph, for I shall stay and speak to you to-morrow morning after the service.”

She waved her hand to him, and drove swiftly off, while old Mrs. Grice muttered something uncomplimentary about “new-fangled” ways, and not liking females at a funeral.

Ralph, meanwhile, had carefully hidden away the basket containing the bullfinch, and now stood in the little hall with a heavy heart. The quiet of the house was terrible, and the low murmur of strange voices in the study accentuated the misery and desolateness, which seemed to grow more and more oppressive every moment.

“For goodness sake!” exclaimed old Mrs. Grice, “don’t stand there staring at nothing, like a tragedy actor, but go in and make yourself agreeable to the gentlemen; wait a bit, wait a bit, your hair’s all rumpled up, not seen a brush since the morning, I’ll be bound.”

Ralph, made meek by his misery, obediently turned into the room to the right of the door, his own special sanctum where he had worked and played ever since he could remember, and having brushed his wavy brown hair into a state of immaculate order went slowly back once more to the silent little hall which was not even enlivened now by the presence of old Mrs. Grice. Nothing was to be heard save the ticking of the clock and the low murmur of voices from the adjoining room, not a creature was there to take compassion on the shy desolate boy. He looked up at the black representation of Lord John Harsick and Katharine his wife, which hung upon the wall above the old oak chest, and the tears started to his eyes as he remembered how he had helped his father to mount this rubbing from a brass, some two or three years before. The stately old couple stood there holding each others’ hands, he fancied that they looked down on him with a sort of pity because he was left so utterly alone. He stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the study, dreading to enter, but at length impelled to move by a worse fear.

“If they come out and catch me here they’ll think I’m eavesdropping!” he thought to himself, and therewith manfully turned the handle, and walked in.

The study was in reality the drawing-room of the Rectory, a pretty room with a verandah and French windows opening on to it, and upon one side of the fireplace there was a cosy little recess where the Rector had been wont to keep his choicest flowers, and where the light from a little western window fell upon the marble bust of a sweet-faced woman—the mother whom Ralph could remember just in a vague dreamy fashion. Seated now at his father’s writing-table was an old gentleman with a kindly, astute face, and remarkably thick white hair. Standing with his back to the fireplace was a middle-aged man whom Ralph at once recognised from the photographs he had seen as his godfather, Sir Matthew Mactavish.

He looked up anxiously into the shrewd Scottish face, with its reddish hair just touched with grey, its keen steel-coloured eyes, its somewhat wrinkled forehead and ready smile. It was a powerful and an attractive face, but with something about it curiously different to the faces to which Ralph had been accustomed; the genial country squires, and the country parsons had nothing in common with this brisk, managing man of the world.

“Well, my boy,” he said with a kindly greeting, “I’m glad to see you. You’ll not remember me for you were but a little fellow when I was last here. Let me see, they call you Raphe, don’t they?”

“Not Raphe, but Ralph,” said the boy, and into his mind there darted the recollection of a scene that had once been funny but now seemed pathetic, of a discussion upon his name between his father and two old antiquaries, and of how one of them had patted him on the head with the gruff-voiced injunction, “If any one calls you ‘Raphe’ tell him he’s a fool.”

It was impossible to call such a man as Sir Matthew a fool, and the boy turned to greet the lawyer, and was surprised to find that unlike the typical solicitor of fiction he was a very noble looking man of the old school, gentle and courtly in manner, and evidently understanding how embarrassing the interview must be to a lad of thirteen.

“Sit down, Ralph,” said Sir Matthew, motioning him to a chair, “there are several things I must talk to you about.”

Ralph obeyed, not without a curious sensation at being ordered about in his own home by a perfect stranger. “Mr. Marriott and I,” resumed his godfather, “have been looking into your father’s affairs on our way from London, and as a matter of fact they were pretty well known to me before. I grieve to say, my boy, that he has left you quite unprovided for.”

“I—I knew,” said Ralph, “that father had lost a great deal of money lately—it was through some company that failed: he told me he never would have speculated, but he wanted very much to make money and send me to Winchester and then to Oxford; he couldn’t do that, you know, only out of the living. But he blamed himself for having done it; he said it was no better than gambling.”

Sir Matthew had paced up and down the room restlessly during this speech, he seemed to be moved by it, and it was the lawyer who first broke the silence. “You are happy,” he said to Ralph, “in having the memory of a father who was just enough to recognise his own mistakes, and noble enough to confess them. Be warned, my boy, and never in the future dabble in speculation.”

Sir Matthew returned to his former position on the hearthrug. “In the meantime,” he said with displeasure in his tone, “his more useful study will be how to live in the present.”

“That,” said Mr. Marriott gravely, “is a matter which you, Sir Matthew, will no doubt help him to consider.”

Ralph, with a child’s quick consciousness that something lay beneath these words which he did not altogether understand, glanced from one to the other in some perplexity. He saw that Sir Matthew was angry with the lawyer, and that the lawyer disapproved somehow of Sir Matthew.

“I wish Mr. Marriott had been my godfather,” he thought to himself. “I like him twice as well. Sir Matthew orders one about as though he bossed the whole world.”

And then, as often happens, he was forced to modify his rather severe criticism of his godfather, for Sir Matthew with a genuinely kind glance drew him nearer, and laying a hand on his shoulder, said in the most genial of voices:

“Don’t you be afraid, my boy, I’ll see you through your trouble. Leave everything to me. We’ll have you a Wykehamist as I know your father wished, and then make a parson of you, eh?”

“Oh no, thank you,” said Ralph, “I couldn’t be a clergyman, I don’t want to be that at all.”

“Eh! What! you have already some other idea? Come tell me, for it’s a real help to know what a boy’s tastes are.”

“I want to be an actor,” said Ralph quietly.

“What!” cried Sir Matthew. “Go on the stage? Oh, that’s just a passing fancy. No gentleman can take up play-acting as a profession. No, no, I don’t send you to Winchester to fit you for such a trumpery calling as that. If you’ll not be a parson what do you say to trying for the Indian Civil Service? I’m much mistaken if you have not very good abilities, and for a man who has to make his own way in the world, why India is the right place.”

“I should like to go to India,” said Ralph, thinking of certain tales of jungle life and thrilling adventures with man-eating tigers that he had lately read.

“Very well,” said Sir Matthew briskly, “that’s decided then. To Winchester for six years, then a choice of the Church or the Indian Civil Service. There’s your future my boy, and I will see you fairly started in life whichever line you choose. To-morrow you shall come back with me to London, so run off now and let them get your things together, and Mr. Marriott and I will make all the necessary arrangements with regard to your father’s effects.”

Not sorry to be dismissed, Ralph made his way upstairs, where he found the housekeeper already busy with his packing. She made him collect what few possessions he had, two or three pictures, some tools, some books and a toy boat; but what she termed “the rubbish,” such as bird’s eggs, mosses, fossils, imperfect models of engines, and such like, she entirely declined to handle. “The rubbish” must be left, and Ralph with an odd sinking of the heart, as he remembered how short was the time remaining to him, began his sad round of farewells. He stole quietly up to the attic from which the harbour could best be seen, and watched the stately ships going into port. Then he walked through the garden with lingering steps; he had worked in it with his father so long and so happily that every plant was dear to him; to leave it just now in this May weather, when the Gloire de Dijon on the south wall was covered with exquisite roses, when the snapdragons, which as a little fellow he had delighted in feeding with spoonfuls of sugar and water, were just coming into flower, when the bedding-out plants, which but three weeks ago they had planted were actually in bloom—this was hard indeed! Could it be only three weeks since that half-holiday when, with no thought of coming trouble, they had worked so merrily together?

Passing through the green lauristinus arch he paced slowly on between the strawberry-beds now white with blossom. That Saturday had been their last really happy day, for the next morning’s post had brought the news of his father’s great losses, and though the Sunday’s work had been struggled through, the Rector had never been the same again, the burdened look had never left his face.

Ralph thought it all over as he rested his arms on the little iron gate leading into the glebe, his eyes wandering sadly over that distant view which he had always loved, with its stretch of gorse and heather, and to the right the beautiful woods of Whinhaven park, just now in the full perfection of their spring tints. Well, it was all over now, and the place was to pass into the hands of strangers, and somehow he must get through his goodbyes. Making his way to the stable, he flung his arms about the neck of old Forester the pony, choked back a sob in his throat as he unfastened Skipper the Irish terrier, and picking up in his arms a scared-looking white cat, ran at full speed down the drive, across the common, with its golden gorse and dark fir trees, until he reached the coastguard station. Beneath the flag-staff, with a telescope tucked under his arm, there stood a cheery-looking official in trim reefer and gold-laced cap. It was Langston—the head of the coastguard station, and one of Ralph’s best friends.

“I have come to say good-bye, for to-morrow I’m going to London,” said the boy hurriedly. “And I want to give you Skipper, if you care to have him. He’s of a very good breed, father said, and he’s an awfully friendly dog. And if you had room for Toots as well I should be awfully obliged. I know he’s not worth anything, and ever since Benjamin was lost Toots has been sort of queer, always mewing and roaming about looking for him. But I think if you buttered his feet he would stay, and he’s a real good mouser.”

Langston promised to adopt both dog and cat, but he would not allow all the giving to be on one side. He went into his house and returned in a few minutes with a little pocket compass.

“I’ll ask you to accept that, Master Ralph,” he said, as he gripped the boy’s hand in a friendly grasp. “You’ll maybe have rough times in life, but steer well, my lad, steer well, and be the man your father would have had you.”

“How does one steer if one doesn’t know which is the right way to go?” said Ralph with a sigh.

“Why it’s then that you’ll hear your captain’s orders,” said the coastguardsman. “Cheer up, Master Ralph, it don’t all depend on the man at the wheel.”