Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849

Steps! – one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland! – steps, though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the little door at an angle in the ruins – a woman's form. Is it my mother? – it is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice – a voice strange, yet familiar – calls, tender, but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground: he is evidently much disturbed in his mind; now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble —

Years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and Primmins-like. They have taken too good care of thy creature comforts, O sensual Mauritanian! still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct, thou art chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory. Thou art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's right, – come near – nearer – my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look at thee. Plague take the dog! he flies off from her: he has found the scent – he is making up to the buttress! Now – pounce – he is caught! whining ungallant discontent. Shall I not yet see the face? it is buried in Juba's black curls. Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb animal what, I heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly glad of! Juba struggles in vain, and is borne off. I don't think that those eyes can have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can never go with that voice which has the coo of the dove.

I leave my hiding-place, and steal after the Voice, and its owner. Where can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the lords of the castle once administered justice – that hill which commands the land far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse of the westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful repose! Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously flow! How softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as a bird's – now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull four-footed friend. She is telling him something that must make the black ears stand on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming," and "home!"

I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush, amidst the brake and the ruins; but I feel that the orb has passed from the landscape, in the fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo! Hesper comes forth: at his signal, star after star, come the hosts —

and the sweet voice is hushed.

Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side – the form escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See, again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and behold the face, looking up to the stars – the face which had nestled to my breast in the sorrow of parting, years, long years ago: on the grave where we had sat, I the boy, thou the infant – there, O Blanche! is thy fair face – (fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my exile) – vouchsafed to my gaze!

"Blanche, my cousin! – again, again – soul with soul, amidst the dead! Look up, Blanche; it is I."

"Go in first, and prepare them, dear Blanche: I will wait by the door. Leave it ajar, that I may see them."

Roland is leaning against the wall – old armour suspended over the gray head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I gave to the dark cheek and high brow: no change there for the worse – no new sign of decay. Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the brow – no shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed, smile with ease – no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance shows me all this.

"Papæ!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a line. He is coming to-morrow! – to-morrow! If we lived to the age of Methusalem, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is, if the poor man's to be plagued with a good affectionate son!"

And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father – one minute more – and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty and thin; but still not a furrow!

Whence comes that short sigh?

"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret clock? Well, just go and look again."

"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before you, and they all concur in the same tale – to-day is not to-morrow."

"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and they've never gone right since he left."

Now out comes a letter – for I hear the rustle – and then a step glides towards the lamp; and the dear, gentle, womanly face – fair still, fair ever for me – fair as when it bent over my pillow, in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and now the flutter, the start, the cry – "It is true! it is true! Your arms, mother. Close, close round my neck, as in the old time. Father! Roland, too! Oh joy! joy! joy! home again – home till death!"

From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes, 7 7 Dingoes – the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs. and the war-whoop of the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that Blanche herself has had trained round the window – old school-books, neatly ranged round the wall – fishing rods, cricket-bats, foils, and the old-fashioned gun, – and my mother seated by the bedside – and Juba whining and scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl of the dingoes?

Then what days of calm exquisite delight! – the interchange of heart with heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame, now our pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks round by the village, that some favourite gossips might stop and ask, "What news of his brave young honour?"

I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the repair of the ruins – for the culture of those wide bogs and moorlands: why is it that he turns away, and looks down embarrassed? Ah, I guess! – his true heir now is restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest this dross, for which (the Great Book once published) I have no other use, in the house and the lands that will pass to his son. Neither would he suffer me so to invest even his son's fortune, the bulk of which I still hold in trust for that son. True, in his career, my cousin may require to have his money always forthcoming. But I, who have no career, – pooh! these scruples will rob me of half the pleasure my years of toil were to purchase. I must contrive it somehow or other: what if he would let me house and moorland on a long improving lease? Then, for the rest, there is a pretty little property to be sold close by, on which I can retire when my cousin, as heir of the family, comes, perhaps with a wife, to reside at the Tower. I must consider of all this, and talk it over with Bolt when my mind is at leisure from happiness to turn to such matters; meanwhile I fall back on my favourite proverb, – " Where there's a will there's a way ."