Tom Tuftons Travels | Page 7

in our own. And time and place are no
barriers with Him. He will do for Tom, I will not doubt it, what we
have failed to do with all our pains and care."

The mother wept silently--for the husband whose life was ebbing away;
for the son over whose heart she seemed to have so little control; for
herself, soon to be left alone in the world, with only her daughter for
her prop and stay. She was not a weak or helpless creature. She had
been in her husband's confidence, and had been his helpmeet
throughout their married life. She was well able to carry on
single-handed the course of action he had pursued through his long rule
at Gablehurst; yet not the less for this did she feel the desolation of her
approaching widowhood; and it seemed an additional sorrow (although
she recognized its necessity) that Tom was also to be taken from her.
A mother's love for her only son is a very sacred and compelling thing.
Tom had not been a comfort or support to his parents; he was likely, if
he remained, to be a source of endless trouble to his mother during her
reign at the old house; yet none the less did it seem to her a
heart-breaking thing to have to part from him.
The light about them grew more dim as the fire burned with a steady
glow instead of with dancing flames. Rachel had lighted a lamp, yet it
did little to illumine the great room. The sick man lay as though asleep.
Presently the mother spoke in a whisper to her daughter.
"Fetch Tom," she said.
Rachel knew what that meant, and her heart beat to suffocation. She
crept from the room, and returned with her brother, and they stood side
by side at one side of the bed, whilst their mother knelt at the other.
Once the dying man opened his eyes, and looked from one to another
of those about him, though whether he saw them they did not know.
Then his eyes closed, he gave a sigh, and turned upon his pillows.
The Squire of Gablehurst had passed to his last account.
CHAPTER II.
OUT INTO THE WORLD.

"You had better let me go, mother. I shall do no good here."
Tom stood before his mother with a flush upon his handsome face--a
flush that was one partly of shame, partly of anger, with a dash of
excitement and eagerness thrown in.
His mother was in tears. She had been uttering words of reproach and
sorrow; for after a period of wonderful steadiness immediately
succeeding his father's death, young Tom had broken out into his wild
ways again, and her fond hopes of seeing him grow into her comfort
and stay were dashed ruthlessly to the ground again. The impression
made upon him by the death of the Squire was growing dim now. His
old companions were tempting him back to their ranks, and he had
neither strength of purpose nor the resolute desire to resist their
overtures.
"You had better let me go. You know my father said it. I have never
done any good here, and I never shall. I want to see the world, and I see
nothing here. Gablehurst and Gablethorpe are too narrow for me. I will
go to foreign lands, and come back to you with a better record to show.
I think I could make a fine soldier, but in this miserable little place a
man has no scope."
"A man has scope to become a good landlord, a kind master, a
God-fearing head of his household," said the mother, with a sigh in her
voice.
But Tom interrupted impatiently:
"That is all very well when one is the master. Perhaps when I come
back I can be all that myself; but now I am a dummy--a nobody, and
they all make game of me for being a mock squire! My father himself
knew that no man of spirit would stand such a humiliating arrangement.
If he could not trust me to succeed him, he did well to arrange for me to
go elsewhere. He said you would tell me what provision he had made
for me to do so."
The moment had come that the mother had so long dreaded. She had to

face the separation from her son, and to send him forth into the world
alone. But the experiences of the past weeks had taught her that perhaps
this was the best thing that could happen to young Tom. In Gablethorpe
he had no chance of getting away from evil associates. In a different
place he might find friends of a different stamp.
She rose and silently unlocked a great oaken press, clamped with iron,
a place where