Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/657

 6, 1863.] something else, very quietly, and thought no one saw her—she was mistaken.

Mr. Lee came with Harry in the afternoon; he was quieter and graver than before, and Harry was always with him whenever it was warm enough for him to be out of doors; and Michael Lee would come and sit with him when the weather prevented the boy leaving the house. Simpson brought him to the garden-gate, and then he was able to walk up the little garden by himself. Sometimes Mrs. Parker walked with him, and a few times Katherine had helped him, but her hand always trembled as it rested on his arm, and he would try and grope about by himself rather than ask her; and then Harry called her stupid for not offering.

It was the 25th of October, a very wild day. Harry was not so well, lying on the couch, looking out of the window, watching the thick muddy waves rolling in angrily one after the other. The ferry-boat was not crossing, it was so very rough. Something was coming, the boatmen said, as they smoked their pipes and looked out to sea. It was worse by the evening; how the wind howled; and the tide was in, every now and then dashing over the sea-wall into the road. Harry lay watching the angry waves: he had never seen the Straits so rough before. Michael could not see it, but he heard the roaring of the waters, and he hummed the line—

“It will be a terrible night, Harry, I fear,” he said.

“It will indeed, Michael; I was thinking you would scarcely get back to the hotel.”

Ay, a terrible night it was. One to be much remembered in Anglesea. As they spoke, the big iron ship was rolling about in the thick fog, hoping for a pilot, hoping to reach Liverpool that night; and before Michael Lee reached the Bulkeley Arms, the big iron ship was thumping against the iron coast only a few miles away. The iron coast was the harder. The great masts tottered and fell, shivered so, that Katherine’s little fingers broke off pieces from them afterwards; and when all was over, when the big iron ship was broken to pieces—when “the storm had ceased, and the waves thereof were still,” some bottles of champagne and pickles were found unbroken amidst the rocks, which were covered with big iron bolts wrenched out of the big iron ship that night of agony! Scarcely credible if read in a novel—and yet it is true. Verily, “truth is strange sometimes, stranger than fiction!”

So these two sat watching and listening to the storm that evening, and at last Harry said:

“Michael, I have been thinking of such a good plan.”

And Michael said, “Have you, my boy, what about?”

And Harry said, “About you, Michael. I know you don’t like having Simpson with you always; and, you see, I’m not strong enough to read a great deal, or go out when it’s not fine: they think I’m made of sugar or salt, or something, and that I shall melt; and I’ve been thinking if you had a wife, it would be much better. I thought Katie would do so nicely, and then, when you go back to Oldcourt, she or I would always be with you. If mother wanted her, you could fall back on me; and she reads ever so long without getting tired, and writes so fast, too. Do you think it a good plan, Michael?”

“My dear Harry,” the quiet voice said, and then stopped.

“Oh, what a monster! It’s bigger than any yet! There, it’s broke over the pier, I declare; such a wave, Michael, you never saw. Well, but what do you think about Katie?”

“I think, Harry, for once you have forgotten I am blind,” Michael Lee answered.

“No, I have not, Michael; that’s the very thing made me think you ought to have a wife. If you weren’t, there’s no reason for it. You could fish and shoot, and ride, and read and write, and do everything yourself, and she might be in the way and want you for something just when you had got your gun, perhaps; I think you’d find her so useful now, that’s what put it into my head.”

“Harry, I thought of it a long time ago, when I was not blind, and she would not be my wife even then. I am glad of it now, Harry, for her sake.” But the deep low voice had no gladness in it.

Up started the boy from the couch.

“Oh, Michael, you don’t really mean you ever asked Katie to be your wife before?”

“Yes, Harry, I do mean even that.”

“And Katie said she would not like to be, Michael?”

“Yes, Harry.”

“What a shame! Oh, Michael, it makes me almost wish I’d been a girl myself. I’m sure I should have liked it very much.” He threw himself back on the couch and coughed. Michael could not see how his colour went and came. So neither of them spoke, and when he had done coughing he rested a little; then he said, “I might have been strong enough for a girl, perhaps, there’s not much in them ever, though Katie’s much stronger than I am. She’s a great deal older, that’s one thing. I wonder if I shall ever be as old as Katie; she’s nearly out of her teens now. Do you know, Michael, sometimes I think I never shall. You can’t see me now, or you would know how thin I have grown—a regular scarecrow. I’m a great deal taller, but my hands are so thin, my fingers look so long, and they’re so white compared to other boys’ I see on the beach. Some of the boys from the grammar-school I often watch playing cricket by the castle, and such nice brown hands they’ve got, I’m quite ashamed of mine. It’s not manly to have such white hands. Do you think I ever shall be a man, Michael?”

Michael felt for the boy’s hand, and stroked it in his own. He knew it was very thin and soft, though he could not see how white it was. He stroked it a few moments, and then he said:

“Harry, my boy, if you never are, remember there is a better Land than this, where you will be strong, and I shall see again: we must both think of that, Harry, and be patient; it is hard work often, is it not?”

“Very; and sometimes I’m so cross when can’t sleep, Michael. I know what you mean.