The Caxtons — Volume 12 eBook

I turned away, and felt a remorseful shame that I had so far gratified my curiosity,—­if by so harsh a name the powerful interest that had absorbed me must be called.  I looked round for Blanche; she had retreated from my side to the door, and, with her hands before her eyes, was weeping.  As I stole towards her, my glance fell on a book that lay on a chair near the casement and beside those relics of an infancy once pure and serene.  By the old-fashioned silver clasps I recognized Roland’s Bible.  I felt as if I had been almost guilty of profanation in my thoughtless intrusion.  I drew away Blanche, and we descended the stairs noiselessly; and not till we were on our favorite spot, amidst a heap of ruins on the feudal justice-hill, did I seek to kiss away her tears and ask the cause.

“My poor brother!” sobbed Blanche, “they must have been his,—­and we shall never, never see him again!—­and poor papa’s Bible, which he reads when he is very, very sad!  I did not weep enough when my brother died.  I know better what death is now!  Poor papa! poor papa!  Don’t die, too, Sisty!”

There was no running after butterflies that morning; and it was long before I could soothe Blanche.  Indeed, she bore the traces of dejection in her soft looks for many, many days; and she often asked me, sighingly, “Don’t you think it was very wrong in me to take you there?” Poor little Blanche, true daughter of Eve, she would not let me bear my due share of the blame; she would have it all, in Adam’s primitive way of justice,—­“The woman tempted me, and I did eat.”  And since then Blanche has seemed more fond than ever of Roland, and comparatively deserts me to nestle close to him, and closer, till he looks up and says, “My child, you are pale; go and run after the butterflies;” and she says now to him, not to me, “Come too!” drawing him out into the sunshine with a hand that will not loose its hold.

Of all Roland’s line, this Herbert de Caxton was “the best and bravest!” yet he had never named that ancestor to me,—­never put any forefather in comparison with the dubious and mythical Sir William.  I now remembered once that, in going over the pedigree, I had been struck by the name of Herbert,—­the only Herbert in the scroll,—­and had asked, “What of him, uncle?” and Roland had muttered something inaudible, and turned away.  And I remembered also that in Roland’s room there was the mark on the wall where a picture of that size had once hung.  The picture had been removed thence before we first came, but must have hung there for years to have left that mark on the wall,—­perhaps suspended by Bolt during Roland’s long Continental absence.  “If ever I have a—­” What were the missing words?  Alas! did they not relate to the son,—­missed forever, evidently not forgotten still?

CHAPTER IV.