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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Magnum Bonum, by Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Magnum Bonum
+
+Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5080]
+Last Updated: October 13, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAGNUM BONUM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sandra Laythorpe
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MAGNUM BONUM
+
+or, Mother Carey’s Brood
+
+By Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+I. JOE BROWNLOW’S FANCY
+
+II. THE CHICKENS
+
+III. THE WHITE SLATE
+
+IV. THE STRAY CHICKENS
+
+V. BRAINS AND NO BRAINS
+
+VI. ENCHANTED GROUND
+
+VII. THE COLONEL’S CHICKENS
+
+VIII. THE FOLLY
+
+IX. FLIGHTS
+
+X. ELLEN’S MAGNUM BONUMS
+
+XI. UNDINE
+
+XII. KING MIDAS
+
+XIII. THE RIVAL HEIRESSES
+
+XIV. PUMPING AWAY
+
+XV. THE BELFOREST MAGNUM BONUM
+
+XVI. POSSESSION
+
+XVII. POPINJAY PARLOUR
+
+XVIII. AN OFFER FOR MAGNUM BONUM
+
+XIX. THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET
+
+XX. A RACE
+
+XXI. AN ACT OF INDEPENDENCE
+
+XXII. SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR
+
+XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE
+
+XXIV. THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN
+
+XXV. THE LAND OF AFTERNOON
+
+XXVI. MOONSHINE
+
+XXVII. BLUEBEARD’S CLOSET
+
+XXVIII. THE TURN OF THE WHEEL
+
+XXIX. FRIENDS AND UNFRIENDS
+
+XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING
+
+XXXI. SLACK TIDE
+
+XXXII. THE COST
+
+XXXIII. BITTER FAREWELLS
+
+XXXIV. BLIGHTED BEINGS
+
+XXXV. THE PHANTOM BLACKCOCK OF KILNAUGHT
+
+XXXVI. OF NO CONSEQUENCE
+
+XXXVII. THE TRAVELLER’S JOY
+
+XXXVIII. THE TRUST FULFILLED
+
+XXXIX. THE TRUANT
+
+XL. EVIL OUT OF GOOD
+
+XLI. GOOD OUT OF EVIL
+
+XLII. DISENCHANTED
+
+
+
+
+
+MAGNUM BONUM
+
+OR, MOTHER CAREY’S BROOD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--JOE BROWNLOW’S FANCY.
+
+
+
+     The lady said, “An orphan’s fate
+     Is sad and hard to bear.”--Scott.
+
+
+“Mother, you could do a great kindness.”
+
+“Well, Joe?”
+
+“If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath’s here for the
+holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst,
+and they don’t know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum
+for officers’ daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away
+to have the house purified. They can’t take her with them, for their
+sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before
+the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state
+of chest left by measles.”
+
+“What is her name?”
+
+“Allen. The cry was always for Miss Allen when the sick girls wanted to
+be amused.”
+
+“Allen! I wonder if it can be the same child as the one Robert was
+interested about. You don’t remember, my dear. It was the year you were
+at Vienna, when one of Robert’s brother-officers died on the voyage out
+to China, and he sent home urgent letters for me to canvass right and
+left for the orphan’s election. You know Robert writes much better than
+he speaks, and I copied over and over again his account of the poor
+young man to go with the cards. ‘Caroline Otway Allen, aged seven years,
+whole orphan, daughter of Captain Allen, l07th Regiment;’ yes, that’s
+the way it ran.”
+
+“The year I was at Vienna, and Robert went out to China. That was eleven
+years ago. She must be the very child, for she is only eighteen. They
+sent her to Miss Heath’s to grow a little older, for though she was at
+the head of everything at the asylum, she looks so childish that they
+can’t send her out as a governess. Did you see her, mother?”
+
+“Oh, no! I never had anything to do with her; but if she is daughter to
+a friend of Robert’s--”
+
+Mother and son looked at each other in congratulation. Robert was the
+stepson, older by several years, and was viewed as the representative of
+sober common sense in the family. Joe and his mother did like to feel
+a plan quite free from Robert’s condemnation for enthusiasm or
+impracticability, and it was not the worse for his influence, that he
+had been generally with his regiment, and when visiting them was a good
+deal at the United Service Club. He had lately married an heiress in a
+small way, retired from the army, and settled in a house of hers in a
+country town, and thus he could give his dicta with added weight.
+
+Only a parent or elder brother would, however, have looked on “Joe” as
+a youth, for he was some years over thirty, with a mingled air of
+keenness, refinement, and alacrity about his slight but active form,
+altogether with the air of some implement, not meant for ornament but
+for use, and yet absolutely beautiful, through perfection of polish,
+finish, applicability, and a sharpness never meant to wound, but
+deserving to be cherished in a velvet case.
+
+This case might be the pretty drawing-room, full of the choice artistic
+curiosities of a man of cultivation, and presided over by his mother,
+a woman of much the same bright, keen, alert sweetness of air and
+countenance: still under sixty, and in perfect health and spirits--as
+well she might be, having preserved, as well as deserved, the exclusive
+devotion of her only child during all the years in which her early
+widowhood had made them all in all to each other. Ten years ago, on his
+election to a lectureship at one of the London hospitals, the son had
+set up his name on the brass plate of the door of a comfortable house in
+a once fashionable quarter of London; she had joined him there, and
+they had been as happy as affection and fair success could make them.
+He became lecturer at a hospital, did much for the poor, both within
+and without its walls, and had besides a fair practice, both among the
+tradespeople, and also among the literary, scientific, and artistic
+world, where their society was valued as much as his skill. Mrs.
+Brownlow was well used to being called on to do the many services
+suggested by a kind heart in the course of a medical man’s practice, and
+there was very little within, or beyond, reason that she would not have
+done at her Joe’s bidding. So she made the arrangement, exciting much
+gratitude in the heads of the Pomfret House Establishment for Young
+Ladies; though without seeing little Miss Allen, till, from the Doctor’s
+own brougham, but escorted only by an elderly maid-servant, there came
+climbing up the stairs a little heap of shawls and cloaks, surmounted by
+a big brown mushroom hat.
+
+“Very proper of Joe. He can’t be too particular,--but such a child!”
+ thought Mrs. Brownlow as the mufflings disclosed a tiny creature,
+angular in girlish sort, with an odd little narrow wedge of a face,
+sallow and wan, rather too much of teeth and mouth, large greenish-hazel
+eyes, and a forehead with a look of expansion, partly due to the crisp
+waves of dark hair being as short as a boy’s. The nose was well cut,
+and each delicate nostril was quivering involuntarily with emotion--or
+fright, or both.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow kissed her, made her rest on the sofa, and talked to her,
+the shy monosyllabic replies lengthening every time as the motherliness
+drew forth a response, until, when conducted to the cheerful little room
+which Mrs. Brownlow had carefully decked with little comforts for the
+convalescent, and with the ornaments likely to please a girl’s eye, she
+suddenly broke into a little irrepressible cry of joy and delight. “Oh!
+oh! how lovely! Am I to sleep here? Oh! it is just like the girls’ rooms
+I always _did_ long to see! Now I shall always be able to think about
+it.”
+
+“My poor child, did you never even see such a room?”
+
+“No; I slept in the attic with the maid at old Aunt Mary’s, and always
+in a cubicle after I went to the asylum. Some of the girls who went home
+in the holidays used to describe such rooms to us, but they could never
+have been so nice as this! Oh! oh! Mrs. Brownlow, real lilies of the
+valley! Put there for me! Oh! you dear, delicious, pearly things! I
+never saw one so close before!”
+
+“Never before.” That was the burthen of the song of the little bird with
+wounded wing who had been received into this nest. She had the dimmest
+remembrance of home or mother, something a little clearer of her sojourn
+at her aunt’s, though there the aunt had been an invalid who kept her in
+restraint in her presence, and her pleasures had been in the kitchen and
+in a few books, probably ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘Evelina,’ so far as could
+be gathered from her recollection of them. The week her father had spent
+with her, before his last voyage, had been the one vivid memory of her
+life, and had taught her at least how to love. Poor child, that happy
+week had had to serve her ever since, through eleven years of unbroken
+school! Not that she pitied herself. Everybody had been kind to
+her--governesses, masters, girls, and all. She had been happy and
+successful, and had made numerous friends, about whom, as she grew more
+at home, she freely chatted to Mrs. Brownlow, who was always ready to
+hear of Mary Ogilvie and Clara Cartwright, and liked to draw out the
+stories of the girl-world, in which it was plain that Caroline Allen had
+been a bright, good, clever girl, getting on well, trusted and liked.
+She had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go
+on to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss
+Heath’s lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum’s
+senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and the
+ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained. But
+still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow’s lap, that she
+had always craved for something--something, and she had found it now!
+
+Everything was a fresh joy to her, every print on the walls, every
+ornament on the brackets, seemed to speak to her eye and to her soul
+both at once, and the sense of comfort and beauty and home, after the
+bareness of school, seemed to charm her above all. “I always did want to
+know what was inside people’s windows,” she said.
+
+And in the same way it was a feast to her to get hold of “a real book,”
+ as she called it, not only the beginnings of everything, and selections
+that always broke off just as she began to care about them. She had been
+thoroughly well grounded, and had a thirst for knowledge too real to
+have been stifled by the routine she had gone through--though, said she,
+“I do want time to get on further, and to learn what won’t be of any
+use!”
+
+“Of no use!” said Mr. Brownlow laughing--having just found her trying to
+make out the Old English of King Alfred’s ‘Boethius’--“such as this?”
+
+“Just so! They always are turning me off with ‘This won’t be of any use
+to you.’ I hate use--”
+
+“Like Ridley, who says he reads a book with double pleasure if he is not
+going to review it.”
+
+“That Mr. Ridley who came in last evening?”
+
+“Even so. Why that opening of eyes?”
+
+“I thought a critic was a most formidable person.”
+
+“You expected to see a mess of salt and vinegar prepared for his diet?”
+
+“I should prepare something quite different--milk and sweetbreads, I
+think.”
+
+“To soften him? Do you hear, mother? Take advice.”
+
+Caroline--or Carey, as she had begged to be called--blushed, and drew
+back half-alarmed, as she always was when the Doctor caught up any of
+the little bits of fun that fell so shyly and demurely from her, as they
+were evoked by the more congenial atmosphere.
+
+It was a great pleasure to him and to his mother to show her some of the
+many things she had never seen, watch her enjoyment, and elicit whether
+the reality agreed with her previous imaginations. Mr. Brownlow used
+to make time to take the two ladies out, or to drop in on them at some
+exhibition, checking the flow of half-droll, half-intelligent remarks
+for a moment, and then encouraging it again, while both enjoyed that
+most amusing thing, the fresh simplicity of a grown-up, clever child.
+
+“How will you ever bear to go back again?” said Carey’s school-friend,
+Clara Cartwright, now a governess, whom Mrs. Brownlow had, with some
+suppressed growls from her son, invited to share their one day’s
+country-outing under the horse-chestnut trees of Richmond.
+
+“Oh! I shall have it all to take back with me,” was the answer, as Carey
+toyed with the burnished celandine stars in her lap.
+
+“I should never dare to think of it! I should dread the contrast!”
+
+“Oh no!” said Carey. “It is like a blind person who has once seen,
+you know. It will be always warm about my heart to know there are such
+people.”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow happened to overhear this little colloquy while her son
+was gone to look for the carriage, and there was something in the bright
+unrepining tone that filled her eyes with tears, more especially as the
+little creature still looked very fragile--even at the end of a month.
+She was so tired out with her day of almost rapturous enjoyment that
+Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down stairs again, but made her go
+at once to bed, in spite of a feeble protest against losing one evening.
+
+“And I am afraid that is a recall,” said Mrs. Brownlow, seeing a letter
+directed to Miss Allen on the side-table. “I will not give it to her
+to-night, poor little dear; I really don’t know how to send her back.”
+
+“Exactly what I was thinking,” said the Doctor, leaning over the fire,
+which he was vigorously stirring.
+
+“You don’t think her strong enough? If so, I am very glad,” said the
+mother, in a delighted voice. “Eh, Joe?” as there was a pause; and as
+he replaced the poker, he looked up to her with a colour scarcely to be
+accounted for by the fire, and she ended in an odd, startled, yet not
+displeased tone, “It is that--is it?”
+
+“Yes, mother, it is that,” said Joe, laughing a little, in his relief
+that the plunge was made. “I don’t see that we could do better for your
+happiness or mine.”
+
+“Don’t put mine first” (half-crying).
+
+“I didn’t know I did. It all comes to the same thing.”
+
+“My dear Joe, I only wish you could do it to-morrow, and have no fuss
+about it! What will Robert do?”
+
+“Accept the provision for his friend’s daughter,” said Joe, gravely; and
+then they both burst out laughing. In the midst came the announcement
+of dinner, during which meal they refrained themselves, and tried
+to discuss other things, though not so successfully but that it was
+reported in the kitchen that something was up.
+
+Joseph was just old enough for his mother, who had always dreaded his
+marriage, to have begun to wish for it, though she had never yet seen
+her ideal daughter-in-law, and the enforced silence during the meal
+only made her more eager, so that she began at once as soon as they were
+alone.
+
+“When did you begin to think of this, Joe?”
+
+“Not when I asked you to invite her--that would have been treacherous.
+No, but when I began to realise what it would be to send her back to her
+treadmill; though the beauty of it is that she never seems to realise
+that it is a treadmill.”
+
+“She might now, though I tried so hard not to spoil her. It is that
+content with such a life which makes me think that in her you may have
+something more worth than the portion, which--which I suppose I ought to
+regret and say you will miss.”
+
+“I shall get all that plentifully from Robert, mother.”
+
+“I am afraid it does entail harder work on you, and later on in life,
+than if you had chosen a person with something of her own.”
+
+“Something of her own? Her own, indeed! Mother, she has that of her own
+which is the very thing to help and inspire me to make a name, and work
+out an idea, worth far more than any pounds, shillings, and pence, or
+even houses or lands I might get with a serene and solemn dame, even
+with clear notions as to those same L. s. d.!”
+
+“For shame, Joe! You may be as much in love as you please, but don’t be
+wicked.”
+
+For this description was applicable to the bride whom Robert had
+presented to them about a year ago, on retiring with a Colonel’s rank.
+
+“So I may be as much in love as I please? Thank you. I always knew you
+were the very best mother in the world:” and he came and kissed her.
+
+“I wonder what she will say, the dear child!”
+
+“May be that she has no taste for such an old fellow. Hush, mother.
+Seriously, my chief scruple is whether it be fair to ask a girl to marry
+a man twice her age, when she has absolutely seen nothing of his kind
+but the German master!”
+
+“Trust her,” said Mrs. Brownlow. “Nay, she never could have a freer
+choice than now, when she is too young and simple to be weighted with a
+sense of being looked down on. It is possible that she may be startled
+at first, but I think it will be only at life opening on her; so don’t
+be daunted, and imagine it is your old age and infirmity,” said the
+mother, smoothing back the locks which certainly were not the clustering
+curls of youth.
+
+How the mother watched all the next morning, while the unconscious Carey
+first marvelled at her nervousness and silence, and then grew almost
+infected by it. It was very strange, she thought, that Mrs. Brownlow,
+always so kind, should say nothing but “humph” on being told that Miss
+Heath’s workmen had finished, and that she must return next Monday
+morning. It was the Doctor’s day to be early at the hospital, and he
+had had a summons to see some one on the way, so that he was gone before
+breakfast, when Carey’s attempts to discuss her happy day in the country
+met with such odd, fitful answers; for, in fact, Mrs. Brownlow could not
+trust herself to talk, and had no sooner done breakfast than she went
+off to her housekeeping affairs and others, which she managed unusually
+to prolong.
+
+Carey was trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her--a little
+purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft
+of quaking grass. He came and stood behind her, saying--
+
+“You’ve got the character of those.”
+
+“They are very difficult,” sighed Carey; “I never tried flowers before,
+but I wanted to take them with me.”
+
+“To take them with you?” he repeated, rather dreamily.
+
+“Yes, back to another sort of Heath,” she said, with a little laugh;
+“don’t you know I go next Monday?”
+
+“If you go, I hope it will only be to come back.”
+
+“Oh! if Mrs. Brownlow is so good as to let me come again in the
+holidays!” and she was all one flush of joy, looking round, and up in
+his face, to see whether it could be true.
+
+“Not only for holidays--for work days,” he said, and his voice shook.
+
+“But Mrs. Brownlow can’t want a companion?”
+
+“But I do. Caroline, will you come back to us to make home doubly sweet
+to a busy man, who will do his best to make you happy?”
+
+The little creature looked up in his face bewildered, and then said
+shyly, the colour surging into her face--
+
+“Please, what did you say?”
+
+“I asked if you would stay with us, and make this place bright for us,
+as my wife,” he said, taking both the little brown hands into his own,
+and looking into the widely-opened wondering eyes; while she answered,
+“if I may,”--the very words, almost the very tone, in which she had
+replied to his invitation to come to recover at his house.
+
+“Ah, my poor child, you have no one’s leave to ask!” he said; “you
+belong to us, only to us,”--and he drew her into his arms, and kissed
+her.
+
+Then he felt and heard a great sob, and there were two tears on her
+cheek when he could see her face, but she smiled with happy, quivering
+lip, and said--
+
+“It was like when papa kissed me before he went away; he would be so
+glad.”
+
+In the midst of the caress that answered this, a bell sounded, and in
+the certainty that the announcement of luncheon would instantly follow,
+they started apart.
+
+Two seconds later they met Mrs. Brownlow on the landing--
+
+“There, mother,” said the Doctor.
+
+“My child!” and Carey was in her arms.
+
+“Oh, may I?--Is it real?” said the girl in a stifled voice.
+
+After that, they took it very quietly. Carey was so young and ignorant
+of the world that she was not nearly so much overpowered as if she had
+had the slightest external knowledge either of married life, or of the
+exceptional thing the doctor was doing. Her mother had died when she
+was three years old, and she had never since that time lived with wedded
+folk, while even her companions at school being all fatherless, she had
+gathered nothing of even second-hand experience from them. All she knew
+was from books, which had given glimpses into happy homes; and though
+she had feasted on a few novels during this happy month, they had been
+very select, and chiefly historical romance. She was at the age when
+nothing is impossible to youthful dreams, and if Tancredi had come out
+of the Gerusalemme and thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have
+felt it more strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind
+doctor into her own Joe: and on the other hand, she had from the first
+moment nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more
+unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it. As to
+her being an extraordinary and very disadvantageous choice for him, she
+simply knew nothing of the matter; she was used to passiveness as to her
+own destiny, and now that she did indeed “belong to somebody” she let
+those somebodies think and decide for her with the one certainty that
+what Mr. Brownlow and his mother liked was sure to be the truly right
+and happy thing.
+
+So, instead of being alarmed and scrupulous, she was sweetly, shyly, and
+yet confidingly gay and affectionate, enchanting both her companions,
+but revealing by her naive questions and remarks such utter ignorance
+of all matters of common life that Mrs. Brownlow had no scruples in not
+stirring the question, that had never occurred to her son or his little
+betrothed, namely, her own retirement. Caroline needed a mother far too
+much for her to be spared.
+
+What was to be done about Miss Heath? It was due to her for Miss Allen
+to offer to return till her place could be supplied, Mrs. Brownlow
+said--but that was only to tease the lovers--for a quarter, at which Joe
+made a snarling howl, whereat Carey ventured to laugh at him, and say
+she should come home for every Sunday, as Miss Pinniwinks, the senior
+governess, did.
+
+“Come home,--it is enough to say that,” she added.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow undertook to negotiate the matter, her son saying
+privately--
+
+“Get her off, if you have to advance a quarter. I’d rather do anything
+than send her back for even a week, to have all manner of nonsense put
+into her head. I’d sooner go and teach there myself.”
+
+“Or send me?” asked his mother.
+
+“Anything short of that,” he said.
+
+Miss Heath, as Mrs. Brownlow had guessed, thought an engaged girl as
+bad as a barrel of gunpowder, and was quite as much afraid of Miss Allen
+putting nonsense into her pupils’ heads as the doctor could be of the
+reverse process: so, young teachers not being scarce, Carey’s brief
+connection with Miss Heath was brought to an end in a morning call,
+whence she returned endowed with thirteen book-markers, five mats, and a
+sachet.
+
+Carey had of her own, as it appeared, twenty-five pounds a year, which
+had hitherto clothed her, and of which she only knew that it was paid to
+her quarterly by a lawyer at Bath, whose address she gave. Mr. Brownlow
+followed up the clue, but could not learn much about her belongings. The
+twenty-five pounds was the interest of the small sum, which had remained
+to poor Captain Allen, when he wound up his affairs, after paying the
+debts in which his early and imprudent marriage had involved him. He did
+not seem to have had any relations, and of his wife nothing was known
+but that she was a Miss Otway, and that he had met her in some colonial
+quarters. The old lady, with whom the little girl had been left, was her
+mother’s maternal aunt, and had lived on an annuity so small that on her
+death there had not been funds sufficient to pay expenses without a sale
+of all her effects, so that nothing had been saved for the child, except
+a few books with her parents’ names in them--John Allen and Caroline
+Otway--which she still kept as her chief treasures. The lawyer, who had
+acted as her guardian, would hand over to her five hundred pounds on her
+coming of age.
+
+That was all that could be discovered, nor was Colonel Robert Brownlow
+as much flattered as had been hoped by the provision for his friend’s
+daughter. Nay, he was inclined to disavow the friendship. He was sorry
+for poor Allen, he said, but as to making a friend of such a fellow,
+pah! No! there was no harm in him, he was a good officer enough, but he
+never had a grain of common sense; and whereas he never could keep
+out of debt, he must needs go and marry a young girl, just because he
+thought her uncle was not kind to her. It was the worst thing he could
+have done, for it made her uncle cast her off on the spot, and then
+she was killed with harass and poverty. He never held up his head again
+after losing her, and just died of fever because he was too broken down
+to have energy to live. There was enough in this to weave out a tender
+little romance, probably really another aspect of the truth, which made
+Caroline’s bright eyes overflow with tears, when she heard it couched in
+tenderer language from Joseph, and the few books and treasures that
+had been rescued agreed with it--a Bible with her father’s name, a few
+devotional books of her mother’s, and Mrs. Hemans’s poems with “To Lina,
+from her devoted J. A.”
+
+Caroline would fain have been called Lina, but the name did not fit her,
+and would not _take_.
+
+Colonel Brownlow was altogether very friendly, if rather grave and dry
+towards her, as soon as he was convinced that “it was only Joe,” and
+that pity, not artfulness, was to blame for the undesirable match. He
+was too honourable a man not to see that it could not be given up, and
+he held that the best must now be made of it, and that it would be more
+proper, since it was to be, for him to assume the part of father, and
+let the marriage take place from his house at Kenminster. This was a
+proposal for which it was hard to be as grateful as it deserved; since
+it had been planned to walk quietly into the parish church, be married
+“without any fuss,” and then to take the fortnight’s holiday, which was
+all that the doctor allowed himself.
+
+But as Robert was allowed to be judge of the proprieties, and as the
+kindness on his part was great, it was accepted; and Caroline was
+carried off for three weeks to keep her residence, and make the house
+feel what a blank her little figure had left.
+
+Certainly, when the pair met again on the eve of the wedding, there
+never was a more willing bride.
+
+She said she had been very happy. The Colonel and Ellen, as she had
+been told to call her future sister, had been very kind indeed; they
+had taken her for long drives, shown her everything, introduced her to
+quantities of people; but, oh dear! was it absolutely only three weeks
+since she had been away? It seemed just like three years, and she
+understood now why the girls who had homes made calendars, and checked
+off the days. No school term had ever seemed so long; but at Kenminster
+she had had nothing to do, and besides, now she knew what home was!
+
+So it was the most cheerful and joyous of weddings, though the bride was
+a far less brilliant spectacle than the bride of last year, Mrs. Robert
+Brownlow, who with her handsome oval face, fine figure, and her tasteful
+dress, perfectly befitting a young matron, could not help infinitely
+outshining the little girlish angular creature, looking the browner
+for her bridal white, so that even a deep glow, and a strange misty
+beaminess of expression could not make her passable in Kenminster eyes.
+
+How would Joe Brownlow’s fancy turn out?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. -- THE CHICKENS.
+
+
+
+     John Gilpin’s spouse said to her dear,
+       “Though wedded we have been
+     These twice ten tedious years, yet we
+       No holiday have seen.”--Cowper.
+
+
+No one could have much doubt how it had turned out, who looked, after
+fifteen years, into that room where Joe Brownlow and his mother had once
+sat tete-a-tete.
+
+They occupied the two ends of the table still, neither looking much
+older, in expression at least, for the fifteen years that had passed
+over their heads, though the mother had--after the wont of active old
+ladies--grown smaller and lighter, and the son somewhat more bald and
+grey, but not a whit more careworn, and, if possible, even brighter.
+
+On one side of him sat a little figure, not quite so thin, some angles
+smoothed away, the black hair coiled, but still in resolute little
+mutinous tendrils on the brow, not ill set off by a tuft of carnation
+ribbon on one side, agreeing with the colour that touched up her gauzy
+black dress; the face, not beautiful indeed--but developed, softened,
+brightened with more of sweetness and tenderness--as well as more
+of thought--added to the fresh responsive intelligence it had always
+possessed.
+
+On the opposite side of the dinner-table were a girl of fourteen and a
+boy of twelve; the former, of a much larger frame than her mother,
+and in its most awkward and uncouth stage, hardly redeemed by the keen
+ardour and inquiry that glowed in the dark eyes, set like two hot coals
+beneath the black overhanging brows of the massive forehead, on which
+the dark smooth hair was parted. The features were large, the complexion
+dark but not clear, and the look of resolution in the square-cut chin
+and closely shutting mouth was more boy-like than girl-like. Janet
+Brownlow was assuredly a very plain girl, but the family habit was to
+regard their want of beauty as rather a mark of distinction, capable of
+being joked about, if not triumphed in.
+
+Nor was Allen, the boy, wanting in good looks. He was fairer, clearer,
+better framed in every way than his sister, and had a pleasant, lively
+countenance, prepossessing to all. He had a well-grown, upright figure,
+his father’s ready suppleness of movement, and his mother’s hazel eyes
+and flashing smile, and there was a look of success about him, as well
+there might be, since he had come out triumphantly from the examination
+for Eton College, and had been informed that morning that there were
+vacancies enough for his immediate admission.
+
+There was a pensiveness mixed with the satisfaction in his mother’s eyes
+as she looked at him, for it was the first break into the home. She had
+been the only teacher of her children till two years ago, when Allen
+had begun to attend a day school a few streets off, and the first
+boy’s first flight from under her wing, for ever so short a space, is
+generally a sharp wound to the mother’s heart.
+
+Not that Allen would leave an empty house behind him. Lying at full
+length on the carpet, absorbed in a book, was Robert, a boy on whom the
+same capacious brow as Janet’s sat better than on the feminine creature.
+He was reading on, undisturbed by the pranks of three younger children,
+John Lucas, a lithe, wiry, restless elf of nine, with a brown face and
+black curly head, and Armine and Barbara, young persons of seven and
+six, on whom nature had been more beneficent in the matter of looks,
+for though brown was their prevailing complexion, both had well-moulded,
+childish features, and really fine eyes. The hubbub of voices, as
+they tumbled and rushed about the window and balcony, was the regular
+accompaniment of dinner, though on the first plaintive tone from the
+little girl, the mother interrupted a “Well, but papa,” from Janet, with
+“Babie, Babie.”
+
+“It’s Jock, Mother Carey! He _will_ come into Fairyland too soon.”
+
+“What’s the last news from Fairyland, Babie?” asked the father as the
+little one ran up to him.
+
+“I want to be Queen Mab, papa, but Armine wants to be Perseus with the
+Gorgon’s head, and Jock is the dragon; but the dragon will come before
+we’ve put Polly upon the rock.”
+
+“What! is Polly Andromeda--?” as a grey parrot’s stand was being
+transferred from the balcony.
+
+“Yes, papa,” called out Armine. “You see she’s chained, and Bobus won’t
+play, and Babie will be Queen Mab--”
+
+“I suppose,” said the mother, “that it is not harder to bring Queen Mab
+in with Perseus than Oberon with Theseus and Hippolyta--”
+
+“You would have us infer,” said the Doctor with grave humour, “that
+your children are at their present growth in the Elizabethan age of
+culture--”
+
+But again began a “Well, but papa!” but, he exclaimed, “Do look at that
+boy--Well walloped, dragon!” as Jock with preternatural contortions,
+rolled, kicked and tumbled himself with extended jaws to the rock,
+alias stand, to which Polly was chained, she remarking in a hoarse, low
+whisper, “Naughty boy--”
+
+“Well moaned, Andromeda!”
+
+“But papa,” persisted Janet, “when Oliver Cromwell--”
+
+“Oh! look at the Gorgon!” cried the mother, as the battered head of an
+ancient doll was displayed over his shoulder by Perseus, decorated
+with two enormous snakes, one made of stamps, and the other a spiral of
+whalebone shavings out of a box.
+
+The monster immediately tumbled over, twisted, kicked, and wriggled
+so that the scandalised Perseus exclaimed: “But Jock--monster, I
+mean--you’re turned into stone--”
+
+“It’s convulsions,” replied the monster, gasping frightfully, while
+redoubling his contortions, though Queen Mab observed in the most
+admonitory tone, touching him at the same time with her wand, “Don’t you
+know, Skipjack, that’s the reason you don’t grow--”
+
+“Eh! What’s the new theory! Who says so, Babie?” came from the bottom of
+the table.
+
+“Nurse says so, papa,” answered Allen; “I heard her telling Jock
+yesterday that he would never be any taller till he stood still and gave
+himself time.”
+
+“Get out, will you!” was then heard from the prostrate Robert, the
+monster having taken care to become petrified right across his legs.
+
+“But papa,” Janet’s voice was heard, “if Oliver Cromwell had not helped
+the Waldenses--”
+
+It was lost, for Bobus and Jock were rolling over together with too much
+noise to be bearable; Grandmamma turned round with an expostulatory “My
+dears,” Mamma with “Boys, please don’t when papa is tired--”
+
+“Jock is such a little ape,” said Bobus, picking himself up. “Father,
+can you tell me why the moon draws up the tides on the wrong side?”
+
+“You may study the subject,” said the Doctor; “I shall pack you all off
+to the seaside in a day or two.”
+
+There was one outcry from mother, wife, and boys, “Not without you?”
+
+“I can’t go till Drew comes back from his outing--”
+
+“But why should we? It would be so much nicer all together.”
+
+“It will be horribly dull without; indeed I never can see the sense of
+going at all,” said Janet.
+
+There was a confused outcry of indignation, in which waves--crabs--boats
+and shrimps, were all mingled together.
+
+“I’m sure that’s not half so entertaining as hearing people talk in the
+evening,” said Janet.
+
+“You precocious little piece of dissipation,” said her mother, laughing.
+
+“I didn’t mean fine lady nonsense,” said Janet, rather hotly; “I meant
+talk like--”
+
+“Like big guns. Oh, yes, we know,” interrupted Allen; “Janet does not
+think anyone worth listening to that hasn’t got a whole alphabet tacked
+behind his name.”
+
+“Janet had better take care, and Bobus too,” said the Doctor, “or we
+shall have to send them to vegetate on some farm, and see the cows
+milked and the pigs fed.”
+
+“I’m afraid Bobus would apply himself to finding how much caseine matter
+was in the cow’s milk,” said Janet in her womanly tone.
+
+“Or by what rule the pigs curled their tails,” said her father, with a
+mischievous pull at the black plaited tail that hung down behind her.
+
+And then they all rose from the table, little Barbara starting up as
+soon as grace was said. “Father, please, you _are_ the Giant Queen Mab
+always rides!”
+
+“Queen Mab, or Queen Bab, always rides me, which comes to the same
+thing. Though as to the size of the Giant--”
+
+There was a pause to let grandmamma go up in peace, upon Mother Carey’s
+arm, and then a general romp and scurry all the way up the stairs,
+ending by Jock’s standing on one leg on the top post of the baluster,
+like an acrobat, an achievement which made even his father so giddy that
+he peremptorily desired it never to be attempted again, to the great
+relief of both the ladies. Then, coming into the drawing-room,
+Babie perched herself on his knee, and began, without the slightest
+preparation, the recitation of Cowper’s “Colubriad”:--
+
+
+          “Fast by the threshold of a door nailed fast
+           Three kittens sat, each kitten looked aghast.”
+
+
+And just as she had with great excitement--
+
+
+          “Taught him never to come there no more,”
+
+
+Armine broke in with “Nine times one are nine.”
+
+It was an institution dating from the days when Janet made her first
+acquaintance with the “Little Busy Bee,” that there should be something,
+of some sort, said or shown to papa, whenever he was at home or free
+between dinner and bed-time, and it was considered something between a
+disgrace and a misfortune to produce nothing.
+
+So when the two little ones had been kissed and sent off to bed, with
+mamma going with them to hear their prayers, Jock, on being called for,
+repeated a Greek declension with two mistakes in it, Bobus showed a long
+sum in decimals, Janet, brought a neat parallelism of the present tense
+of the verb “to be” in five languages--Greek, Latin, French, German, and
+English.
+
+“And Allen--reposing on your honours? Eh, my boy?”
+
+Allen looked rather foolish, and said, “I spoilt it, papa, and hadn’t
+time to begin another.”
+
+“It--I suppose I am not to hear what till it has come to perfection. Is
+it the same that was in hand last time?”
+
+“No, papa, much better,” said Janet, emphatically.
+
+“What I want to see,” said Dr. Brownlow, “is something finished. I’d
+rather have that than ever so many magnificent beginnings.”
+
+Here he was seized upon by Robert, with his knitted brow and a book in
+his hands, demanding aid in making out why, as he said, the tide swelled
+out on the wrong side of the earth.
+
+His father did his best to disentangle the question, but Bobus was not
+satisfied till the clock chimed his doom, when he went off with Jock,
+who was walking on his hands.
+
+“That’s too tough a subject for such a little fellow,” said the
+grandmother; “so late in the day too!”
+
+“He would have worried his brain with it all night if he had not worked
+it out,” said his father.
+
+“I’m afraid he will, any way,” said the mother. “Fancy being troubled
+with dreams of surging oceans rising up the wrong way!”
+
+“Yes, he ought to be running after the tides instead of theorising about
+them. Carry him off, Mother Carey, and the whole brood, without loss of
+time.”
+
+“But Joe, why should we not wait for you? You never did send us away
+all forlorn before!” she said, pleadingly. “We are all quite well, and I
+can’t bear going without you.”
+
+“I had much rather all the chickens were safe away, Carey,” he said,
+sitting down by her. “There’s a tendency to epidemic fever in two or
+three streets, which I don’t like in this hot weather, and I had rather
+have my mind easy about the young ones.”
+
+“And what do you think of my mind, leaving you in the midst of it?”
+
+“Your mind, being that of a mother bird and a doctor’s wife, ought to
+have no objection.”
+
+“How soon does Dr. Drew come home?”
+
+“In a fortnight, I believe. He wanted rest terribly, poor old fellow.
+Don’t grudge him every day.”
+
+“A fortnight!” (as if it was a century). “You can’t come for a
+fortnight. Well, perhaps it will take a week to fix on a place.”
+
+“Hardly, for see here, I found a letter from Acton when I came in.
+They have found an unsophisticated elysium at Kyve Clements, and are in
+raptures which they want us to share--rocks and waves and all.”
+
+“And rooms?”
+
+“Yes, very good rooms, enough for us all,” was the answer, flinging
+into her lap a letter from his friend, a somewhat noted artist in
+water-colours, whom, after long patience, Carey’s school friend, Miss
+Cartwright, had married two years ago.
+
+There was nothing to say against it, only grandmamma observed, “I am too
+old to catch things; Joe will let me stay and keep house for him.”
+
+“Please, please let me stay with granny,” insisted Janet; “then I shall
+finish my German classes.”
+
+Janet was granny’s child. She had slept in her room ever since Allen
+was born, and trotted after her in her “housewifeskep,” and the sense
+of being protected was passing into the sense of protection. Before she
+could be answered, however, there was an announcement. Friends were apt
+to drop in to coffee and talk in the evening, on the understanding that
+certain days alone were free--people chiefly belonging to a literary,
+scientific, and artist set, not Bohemian, but with a good deal of quiet
+ease and absence of formality.
+
+This friend had just returned from Asia Minor, and had brought an
+exquisite bit of a Greek frieze, of which he had become the happy
+possessor, knowing that Mrs. Joseph Brownlow would delight to see it,
+and mayhap to copy it.
+
+For Carey’s powers had been allowed to develop themselves; Mrs. Brownlow
+having been always housekeeper, she had been fain to go on with the
+studies that even her preparation for governess-ship had not rendered
+wearisome, and thus had become a very graceful modeller in clay--her
+favourite pursuit--when her children’s lessons and other occupations
+left her free to indulge in it. The history of the travels, and the
+account of the discovery, were given and heard with all zest, and in the
+midst others came in--a barrister and his wife to say good-bye before
+the circuit, a professor with a ticket for the gallery at a scientific
+dinner, two medical students, who had been made free of the house
+because they were nice lads with no available friends in town.
+
+It was all over by half-past ten, and the trio were alone together.
+“How amusing Mr. Leslie is!” said the young Mrs. Brownlow. “He knows how
+describe as few people do.”
+
+“Did you see Janet listening to him,” said her grandmother, “with her
+brows pulled down and her eyes sparkling out under them, wanting to
+devour every word?”
+
+“Yes,” returned the Doctor, “I saw it, and I longed to souse that
+black head of hers with salt water. I don’t like brains to grow to the
+contempt of healthful play.”
+
+“People never know when they are well off! I wonder what you would have
+said if you had had a lot of stupid dolts, boys always being plucked,
+&c.”
+
+“Don’t plume yourself too soon, Mother Carey; only one chick has gone
+through the first ordeal.”
+
+“And if Allen did, Bobus will.”
+
+“Allen is quite as clever as Bobus, granny, if--” eagerly said the
+mother.
+
+“If--” said the father; “there’s the point. If Allen has the stimulus,
+he will do well. I own I am particularly pleased with his success,
+because perseverance is his weak point.”
+
+“Carey kept him up to it,” said granny. “I believe his success is quite
+as much her work as his own.”
+
+“And the question is, how will he get on without his mother to coach
+him?”
+
+“Now you know you are not one bit uneasy, papa!” cried his wife,
+indignantly. “But don’t you think we might let Janet have her will
+for just these ten days? There can’t be any real danger for her with
+grandmamma, and I should be happier about granny.”
+
+“You don’t trust Joe to take care of me?”
+
+“Not if Joe is to be out all day. There will be nobody to trot up and
+down stairs for you. Come, it is only what she begs for herself, and she
+really is perfectly well.”
+
+“As if I could have a child victimised to me,” said granny.
+
+“The little Cockney thinks the victimising would be in going to the
+deserts with only the boys and me,” laughed Carey; “But I think a week
+later will be quite time enough to sweep the cobwebs out of her brain.”
+
+“And you can do without her?” inquired Mrs. Brownlow. “You don’t want
+her to help to keep the boys in order?”
+
+“Thank you, I can do that better without her,” said Carey. “She
+exasperates them sometimes.”
+
+“I believe granny is thinking whether she is not wanted to keep Mother
+Carey in order as well as her chickens. Hasn’t mother been taken for
+your governess, Carey?”
+
+“No, no, Joe, that’s too bad. They asked Janet at the dancing-school
+whether her sister was not going to join.”
+
+“Her younger sister?”
+
+“No, I tell you, her half-sister. But Clara Acton will do discretion for
+us, granny; and I promise you we won’t do anything her husband says is
+very desperate! Don’t be afraid.”
+
+“No,” said grandmamma, smiling as she kissed her daughter-in-law, and
+rose to take her candle; “I am never afraid of anything a mother can
+share with her boys.”
+
+“Even if she is nearly a tomboy herself,” laughed the husband, with
+rather a teasing air, towards his little wife. “Good night, mother.
+Shall not we be snug with nobody left but Janet, who might be
+great-grandmother to us both?”
+
+“I really am glad that Janet should stay with granny,” said Carey, when
+he had shut the door behind the old lady; “she would be left alone so
+many hours while you are out, and she does need more waiting on than she
+used to do.”
+
+“You think so? I never see her grow older.”
+
+“Not in the least older in mind or spirits; but she is not so strong,
+nor so willing to exert herself, and she falls asleep more in the
+afternoon. One reason for which I am less sorry to go on before, is that
+I shall be able to judge whether the rooms are comfortable enough for
+her, and I suppose we may change if they are not.”
+
+“To another place, if you think best.”
+
+“Only you will not let her stay at home altogether. That’s what I’m
+afraid of.”
+
+“She will only do so on the penalty of keeping me, and you may trust her
+not to do that,” said Joe, laughing with the confidence of an only son.
+
+“I shall come back and fetch you if you don’t appear under a fortnight.
+Did you do any more this morning to the great experiment, Magnum Bonum?”
+
+She spoke the words in a proud, shy, exulting semi-whisper, somewhat as
+Gutenberg’s wife might have asked after his printing-press.
+
+“No. I haven’t had half an hour to myself to-day; at least when I could
+have attended to it. Don’t be afraid, Carey, I’m not daunted by the
+doubts of our good friends. I see your eyes reproaching me with that.”
+
+“Oh no, as you said, Sir Matthew Fleet mistrusts anything entirely
+new, and the professor is never sanguine. I am almost glad they are so
+stupid, it will make our pleasure all the sweeter.”
+
+“You silly little bird, if you sit on that egg it will be sure to be
+addled. If it should come to any good, probably it will take longer than
+our life-time to work into people’s brains.”
+
+“No,” said Carey, “I know the real object is the relieving pain and
+saving life, and that is what you care for more than the honour and
+glory. But do you remember the fly on the coach wheel?”
+
+“Well, the coach wheel means to stand still for a little while. I don’t
+mean to try another experiment till my brains have been turned out to
+grass, and I can come to it fresh.”
+
+“Ah! ‘tis you that really need the holiday,” said Carey, wistfully;
+“much more than any of us. Look at this great crow’s foot,” tracing it
+with her finger.
+
+“Laughing, my dear. That’s the outline of the risible muscle. A Mother
+Carey and her six ridiculous chickens can’t but wear out furrows with
+laughing at them.”
+
+“I only know I wish it were you that were going, and I that were staying
+at home.”
+
+
+          “‘You shall do my work to-day,
+            And I’ll go follow the plough,’”
+
+
+said her husband, laughing. “There are the notes of my lecture, if
+you’ll go and give it.”
+
+“Ah! we should not be like that celebrated couple. You would manage the
+boys much better than I could doctor your patients.”
+
+“I don’t know that. The boys are never so comfortable, when I’ve
+got them alone. But, considering the hour, I should think the best
+preliminary would be to put out the lamp and go to bed.”
+
+“I suppose it is time; but I always think this last talk before going
+upstairs, the best thing in the whole day!” said the happy wife as she
+took the candle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. -- THE WHITE SLATE.
+
+
+
+     Dark house, by which once more I stand
+     Here in the long unlovely street.
+     Doors, where my heart was wont to beat
+     So quickly, waiting for a hand--
+     A hand that can be clasped no more.
+     Behold me, for I cannot sleep.--Tennyson.
+
+
+“Mother Carey,” to call her by the family name that her husband had
+given the first day she held a baby in her arms, had a capacity of
+enjoyment that what she called her exile could not destroy. Even Bobus
+left theory behind him and became a holiday boy, and the whole six
+climbed rocks, paddled, boated, hunted sea weeds and sea animals, lived
+on the beach from morning to night; and were exceedingly amused by the
+people, who insisted on addressing the senior of the party as “Miss,”
+ and thought them a young girl and her brothers under the charge of Mrs.
+Acton. She, though really not a year older than her friend, looked like
+a worn and staid matron by her side, and was by no means disposed to
+scramble barefoot over slippery seaweed, or to take impromptu a part in
+the grand defence of the sand and shingle edition of Raglan Castle.
+
+Even to Mrs. Acton it was a continual wonder to see how entirely under
+control of that little merry mother were those great, lively, spirited
+boys, who never seemed to think of disobeying her first word, and, while
+all made fun together, and she was hardly less active and enterprising
+than they, always considered her comfort and likings.
+
+So went things for a fortnight, during which the coming of the others
+had been put off by Dr. Drew’s absence. One morning Mr. Acton sought
+Mrs. Brownlow on the beach, where she was sitting with her brood round
+her, partly reading from a translation, partly telling them the story of
+Ulysses.
+
+He called her aside, and told her that her husband had telegraphed to
+him to bid him to carry her the tidings that good old Mrs. Brownlow had
+been taken from them suddenly in the night, evidently in her sleep.
+
+Carey turned very white, but said only “Oh! why did I go without them?”
+
+It was such an overwhelming shock as left no room for tears. Her first
+thought, the only one she seemed to have room for, was to get back to
+her husband by the next train. She would have taken all the children,
+but that Mrs. Acton insisted, almost commanded, that they should be left
+under her charge, and reminded her that their father wished them to be
+out of London; nor did Allen and Robert show any wish to return to a
+house of mourning, being just of the age to be so much scared at sorrow
+as to ignore it. And indeed their mother was equally new to any real
+grief; her parents had been little more than a name to her, and the only
+loss she had actually felt was that of a favourite schoolfellow.
+
+She had no time to think or feel till she had reached the train and
+taken her seat, and even then the first thing she was conscious of was
+a sense of numbness within, and frivolous observation without, as she
+found herself trying to read upside down the direction of her opposite
+neighbour’s parcels, counting the flounces on her dress, and speculating
+on the meetings and partings at the stations; yet with a terrible weight
+and soreness on her all the time, though she could not think of the dear
+grannie, of whom it was no figure of speech to say that she had been
+indeed a mother. The idea of her absence from home for ever was too
+strange, too heartrending to be at once embraced, and as she neared the
+end of her journey on that long day, Carey’s mind was chiefly fixed on
+the yearning to be with her husband and Janet, who had suffered such a
+shock without her. She seemed more able to feel through her husband--who
+was so devoted to his mother, than for herself, and she was every moment
+more uneasy about her little daughter, who must have been in the room
+with her grandmother. Comfort them? How, she did not know! The others
+had always petted and comforted her, and now--No one to go to when the
+children were ailing or naughty--no one to share little anxieties
+when Joe was out late--no one to be the backbone she leant on--no dear
+welcome from the easy chair. That thought nearly set her crying; the
+tears burnt in her strained eyes, but the sight of the people opposite
+braced her, and she tried to fix her thoughts on the unseen world, but
+they only wandered wide as if beyond her own control, and her head was
+aching enough to confuse her.
+
+At last, late on the long summer day, she was at the terminus, and with
+a heart beating so fast that she could hardly breathe, found herself in
+a cab, driving up to her own door, just as the twilight was darkening.
+
+How dark it looked within, with all the blinds down! The servant who
+opened the door thought Miss Janet was in the drawing-room, but the
+master was out. It sounded desolate, and Carey ran up stairs, craving
+and eager for the kiss of her child--the child who must have borne the
+brunt of the shock.
+
+The room was silent, all dusky and shadowed; the window-frames were
+traced on the blinds by the gas freshly lighted outside, and moving in
+the breeze with a monotonous dreariness. Carey stood a moment, and then
+her eyes getting accustomed to the darkness, she discerned a little
+heap lying curled up before the ottoman, her head on a great open book,
+asleep--poor child! quite worn out. Carey moved quietly across and sat
+down by her, longing but not daring to touch her. The lamp was brought
+up in a minute or two, and that roused Janet, who sprang up with a
+sudden start and dazzled eyes, exclaiming “Father! Oh, it’s Mother
+Carey! Oh, mother, mother, please don’t let him go!”
+
+“And you have been all alone in the house, my poor child,” said Carey,
+as she felt the girl shuddering in her close embrace.
+
+“Mrs. Lucas came to stay with me, but I didn’t want her,” said Janet,
+“so I told her she might go home to dinner. It’s father--”
+
+“Where is father?”
+
+“Those horrid people in Tottenham Court Road sent for him just as he had
+come home,” said Janet.
+
+“He went out as usual?”
+
+“Yes, though he had such a bad cold. He said he could not be spared;
+and he was out all yesterday till bedtime, or I should have told him
+grandmamma was not well.”
+
+“You thought so!”
+
+“Yes, she panted and breathed so oddly; but she would not let me say a
+word to him. She made me promise not, but being anxious about him helped
+to do it. Dr. Lucas said so.”
+
+There was a strange hardness and yet a trembling in Janet’s voice; nor
+did she look as if she had shed tears, though her face was pale and her
+eyes black-ringed, and when old nurse, now very old indeed, tottered
+in sobbing, she flung herself to the other end of the room. It was more
+from nurse than from Janet that Carey learnt the particulars, such as
+they were, namely, that the girl had been half-dressed when she had
+taken alarm from her grandmother’s unresponsive stillness, and had
+rushed down to her father’s room. He had found that all had long
+been over. His friend, old Dr. Lucas, had come immediately, and had
+pronounced the cause to have been heart complaint.
+
+Nurse said her master had been “very still,” and had merely given the
+needful orders and written a few letters before going to his patients,
+for the illness was at its height, and there were cases for which he was
+very anxious.
+
+The good old woman, who had lived nearly all her life with her mistress,
+was broken-hearted; but she did not forget to persuade Caroline to
+take food, telling her she must be ready to cheer up the master when
+he should come in, and assuring her that the throbbing headache which
+disgusted her with all thoughts of eating, would be better for the
+effort. Perhaps it was, but it would not allow her to bring her thoughts
+into any connection, or to fix them on what she deemed befitting, and
+when she saw that the book over which Janet had been asleep in the
+twilight was “The Last of the Mohicans,” she was more scandalised than
+surprised.
+
+It was past Janet’s bedtime, but though too proud to say so, she
+manifestly shrank from her first night of loneliness, and her mother,
+herself unwilling to be alone, came with her to her room, undressed
+her, and sat with her in the darkness, hoping for some break in the dull
+reticence, but disappointed, for Janet hid her head in the clothes, and
+slept, or seemed to sleep.
+
+Perhaps Carey herself had been half dozing, when she heard the
+well-known sounds of arrival, and darted down stairs, meeting indeed the
+welcoming eye and smile; but “Ah, here she is!” was said so hoarsely and
+feebly, that she exclaimed “Oh Joe, you have knocked yourself up!”
+
+“Yes,” said Dr. Lucas, whom she only then perceived. “He must go to bed
+directly, and then we will see to him. Not another word, Brownlow, till
+you are there, nor then if you are wise.”
+
+He strove to disobey, but cough and choking forbade; and as he began to
+ascend the stairs, Caroline turned in dismay to the kind, fatherly old
+man, who had always been one of the chief intimates of the house, and
+was now retired from practice, except for very old friends.
+
+He told her that her husband was suffering from a kind of sore throat
+that sometimes attacked those attending on this fever, though generally
+not unless there was some predisposition, or unless the system had
+been unduly lowered. Joe had indeed been over-worked in the absence of
+several of the regular practitioners and of all those who could give
+extra help; but this would probably have done little harm, but for a
+cold caught in a draughty room, and the sudden stroke with which the day
+had begun. Dr. Lucas had urged him to remain at home, and had undertaken
+his regular work for the day, but summonses from his patients had been
+irresistible; he had attended to everyone except himself, and finally,
+after hours spent over the critical case of the wife of a small
+tradesman, he had found himself so ill that he had gone to his friend
+for treatment, and Dr. Lucas had brought him home, intending to stay all
+night with him.
+
+Since the wife had arrived, the good old man, knowing how much rather
+they would be alone, consented to sleep in another room, after having
+done all that was possible for the night, and cautioned against talking.
+
+Indeed, Joe, heavy, stupefied, and struggling for breath, knew too well
+what it all meant not to give himself all possible chance by silent
+endurance, lying with his wife’s hand in his, or sometimes smoothing
+her cheek, but not speaking without necessity. Once he told her that her
+head was aching, and made her lie down on the bed, but he was too ill
+for this rest to last long, and the fits of struggling with suffocation
+prevented all respite save for a few minutes.
+
+With the early light of the long summer morning Dr. Lucas looked in,
+and would have sent her to bed, but she begged off, and a sign from her
+husband seemed to settle the matter, for the old physician went away
+again, perhaps because his eyes were full of tears.
+
+The first words Joe said when they were again alone was “My tablets.”
+ She went in search of them to his dressing-room, and not finding them
+there, was about to run down to the consulting-room, when Janet came out
+already dressed, and fetched them for her, as well as a white slate, on
+which he was accustomed to write memorandums of engagements.
+
+Her father thanked her by a sign, but there was possibility enough
+of infection to make him wave her back from kissing him, and she took
+refuge at the foot of the bed, on a sofa shut off by the curtains which
+had been drawn to exclude the light.
+
+Joe meantime wrote on the slate the words, “Magnum bonum.”
+
+“Magnum bonum?” read his wife, in amazement.
+
+“Papers in bureau,” he wrote; “lock all in my desk. Mention to no one.”
+
+“Am I to put them in your desk?” asked Caroline, bewildered as to his
+intentions, and finding it hard to read the writing, as he went on--
+
+“No word to anyone!” scoring it under, “not till one of the boys is
+ready.”
+
+“One of the boys!” in utter amazement.
+
+“Not as a chance for himself,” he wrote, “but as a great trust.”
+
+“I know,” she said, “it is a great trust to make a discovery which will
+save life. It is my pride to know you are doing it, my own dear Joe.”
+
+“It seems I am not worthy to do it,” was traced by his fingers. “It is
+not developed enough to be listened to by anyone. Keep it for the fit
+one of the boys. Religion, morals, brains, balance.”
+
+She read each word aloud, bending her head in assent; and, after a
+pause, he wrote “Not till his degree. He could not work it out sooner.
+These is peril to self and others in experimenting--temptation to
+rashness. It were better unknown than trifled with. Be an honest
+judge--promise. Say what I want.”
+
+Spellbound, almost mesmerised by his will, Caroline pronounced--“I
+promise to keep the magnum bonum a secret till the boys are grown up,
+and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he has
+taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with brains
+and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an invention,
+and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good and
+blessing to all.”
+
+He gave her one of his bright, sweet smiles, and, as she sealed her
+promise by a kiss, he took up the slate again and wrote, “My dear
+comfort, you have always understood. You are to be trusted. It must be
+done worthily or not at all.”
+
+That was the burthen of everything; and his approval and affection gave
+a certain sustaining glow to the wife, who was besides so absorbed in
+attending to him, as not to look beyond the moment. He wrote presently,
+after a little more, “You know all my mind for the children. With God’s
+help you can fill both places to them. I should like you to live at
+Kenminster, under Robert’s wing.”
+
+After that he only used the tablets for temporary needs, and to show
+what he wanted Dr. Lucas to undertake for his patients. The husband and
+wife had little more time for intimate communings, for the strangulation
+grew worse, more remedies were tried, and one of the greatest physicians
+of the day was called in, but only to make unavailing efforts.
+
+Colonel Brownlow arrived in the middle of the day, and was thunderstruck
+at the new and terrible disaster. He was a large, tall man, with a
+good-humoured, weather-beaten face, and an unwieldy, gouty figure;
+and he stood, with his eyes brimming over with tears, looking at
+his brother, and at first unable to read the one word Joe traced for
+him--for writing had become a great effort--“Carey.”
+
+“We will do our best for her, Ellen and I, my dear fellow. But you’ll
+soon be better. Horrid things, these quinsies; but they pass off.”
+
+Poor Joe half-smiled at this confident opinion, but he merely wrung his
+brother’s hand, and only twice more took up the pencil--once to write
+the name of the clergyman he wished to see, and lastly to put down the
+initials of all his children: “Love to you all. Let God and your mother
+be first with you.--J. B.”
+
+The daylight of the second morning had come in before that deadly
+suffocation had finished its work, and the strong man’s struggles were
+ended.
+
+When Colonel Brownlow tried to raise his sister-in-law, he found her
+fainting, and, with Dr. Lucas’s help, carried her to another room,
+where she lay, utterly exhausted, in a kind of faint stupor, apparently
+unconscious of anything but violent headache, which made her moan from
+time to time, if anything stirred her. Dr. Lucas thought this the effect
+of exhaustion, for she had not slept, and hardly taken any food since
+her breakfast at Kyve three days ago; and finding poor old nurse too
+entirely broken down to be of any use, he put his own kind wife in
+charge of her, and was unwilling to admit anyone else--even Mrs.
+Robert Brownlow, who arrived in the course of the day. She was a tall,
+fine-looking person, with an oval face--soft, pleasant brown skin, mild
+brown eyes, and much tenderness of heart and manner, but not very well
+known to Caroline; for her periodical visits had been wholly devoted to
+shopping and sight-seeing. She was exceedingly shocked at the tidings
+that met her, and gathered Janet into her arms with many tears over the
+poor orphan girl! It was an effusiveness that overwhelmed Janet, who had
+a miserable, hard, dried-up feeling of wretchedness, and injury too; for
+the more other people cried, the less she could cry, and she heard them
+saying to one another that she was unfeeling.
+
+Still Aunt Ellen’s presence was a sort of relief, for it made the house
+less empty and dreary, and she took upon her the cares that were greatly
+needed in the bereaved household, where old nurse had lost her head,
+and could do nothing, and the most effective maid was away with the
+children. So Janet wandered about after her aunt, with an adverse
+feeling at having her home meddled with, but answering questions
+and giving opinions, called or uncalled for. Her longing was for her
+brothers, and it was a great blow to find that her uncle had written to
+both Allen and Mr. Acton that they had better not come home at present.
+She thought it cruel and unjust both towards them and herself; and in
+her sickening sense of solitude and injury she had a vague expectation
+that they were all going to be left wholly orphans, like the children
+of fiction, dependent on their uncle and aunt, who would be unjust, and
+prefer their own children; and she had a prevision of the battles she
+was to fight, and the defensive influence she was to exert.
+
+That brought to her mind the white slate on which her father had been
+writing, and she hurried to secure it, though she hardly knew where to
+go or to look; but straying into her father’s dressing-room, she found
+both it and the tablets among a heap of other small matters that had
+been, cleared away when the other chamber had been arranged into the
+solemnity of the death-room. Hastily securing them, she carried them to
+her own desk in the deserted school-room, feeling as if they were her
+charge, and thus having no scruple in reading them.
+
+She had heard what passed aloud; and, as the eldest girl, had been so
+constantly among the seniors, and so often supposed to be intent on
+her own occupations when they were conversing, that she had already
+the knowledge that magnum bonum, was the pet home term for some great
+discovery in medical, science that her father had been pursuing, with
+many disappointments and much incredulity from the few friends to whom
+it had been mentioned, but with absolute confidence on his own part.
+What it was she did, not know, but she had fully taken in the injunction
+of secrecy and the charge to hand on the task to one of her brothers;
+only, while her father had spoken of it as a grave trust, she viewed it
+as an inheritance of glory; and felt a strange longing and repining that
+it could not be given to her to win and wear the crown of success.
+
+Janet, did not, however, keep the treasure long, for that very evening
+Mrs. Lucas sought her out to tell her that her mother had been saying
+something, about a slate, and Dr. Lucas thought it was one on which her
+father had been writing. If she could find it, they hoped her mother
+would rest better.
+
+Janet produced it, and, being evidently most unwilling to let it go out
+of her hands, was allowed to carry it in, and to tell her mother that
+she had it. There was no need for injunctions to do so softly and
+cautiously, for she was frightened by her mother’s dull, half-closed
+eye, and pale, leaden look; but there was a little air of relief as she
+faltered, “Here’s the slate, dear mother:” and the answer, so faint that
+she could hardly hear it, was, “Lock it up, my dear, till I can look.”
+
+Mrs. Lucas told Janet she might kiss her, and then sent the girl away.
+There was need of anxious watch lest fever should set in, and therefore
+all that was exciting was kept at a distance as the poor young widow
+verged towards recovery.
+
+Once, when she heard voices on the stairs, she started nervously, and
+asked Mrs. Lucas, “Is Ellen there?”
+
+“Yes, my dear; she shall not come to you unless you wish it,” seeing her
+alarm; and she laid her head down again.
+
+The double funeral was accomplished while she was still too ill to hear
+anything about it, though Mrs. Lucas had no doubt that she knew; and
+when he came home, Colonel Brownlow called for Janet, and asked her
+whether she could find her grandmother’s keys and her father’s for him.
+
+“Mother would not like anyone to rummage their things,” said Janet, like
+a watch-dog.
+
+“My dear,” said her uncle, in a surprised but kind tone, as one who
+respected yet resented her feeling; “you may trust me not to rummage,
+as you call it, unnecessarily; but I know that I am executor, if you
+understand what that means, my dear.”
+
+“Of course,” said Janet, affronted as she always was by being treated as
+a child.
+
+“To both wills,” continued her uncle; “and it will save your mother much
+trouble and distress if I can take steps towards acting on them at once;
+and if you cannot tell where the keys are, I shall have to look for
+them.”
+
+“Janet ought to obey at once,” said her aunt, not adding to the serenity
+of Janet’s mind; but she turned on her heel, ungraciously saying, “I’ll
+get them;” and presently returned with her grandmother’s key-box, full
+of the housekeeping keys, and a little key, which she gave to her uncle
+with great dignity, adding, “The key of her desk is the Bramah one; I’ll
+see for the others.”
+
+“A strange girl, that!” said her uncle, as she marched out of the room.
+
+“I am glad our Jessie has not her temper!” responded his wife; and then
+they both repaired to old Mrs. Brownlow’s special apartment, the back
+drawing-room, while Janet quietly dropped downstairs with the key she
+had taken from her father’s table on her way to the consulting-room. She
+intended to prevent any search, by herself producing the will from among
+his papers, for she was in an agony lest her uncle should discover the
+clue to the magnum bonum, of which she regarded herself the guardian.
+
+Till she had actually unlocked the sloping lid of the old-fashioned
+bureau, it did not occur to her that she did not know either what the
+will was like, nor yet the magnum bonum, which was scarcely likely to be
+so ticketed. She only saw piles of letters and papers, marked, some with
+people’s names, some with a Greek or Latin word, or one of the curious
+old Arabic signs, for which her father had always a turn, having, as his
+mother used to tell him, something of the alchemist in his composition.
+One of these parcels, fastened with elastic rings, must be magnum bonum,
+and Janet, though without much chance of distinguishing it, was reading
+the labels with a strange, sad fascination, when, long before she had
+expected him, her uncle stood before her, with greatly astonished and
+displeased looks, and the word “Janet.”
+
+She coloured scarlet, but answered boldly, “There was something that I
+know father did not want anyone but mother to see.”
+
+“Of course there is much,” said her uncle, gravely--“much that I am
+fitter to judge, of than any little girl.”
+
+Words cannot express the offence thus given to Janet. Something swelled
+in her throat as if to suffocate her, but there could be no reply, and
+to burst out crying would only make him think her younger still; so as
+he turned to his mournful task, she ensconced herself in a high-backed
+chair, and watched him from under her dark brows.
+
+She might comfort herself by the perception that he was less likely
+than even herself to recognise the magnum bonum. He would scarcely have
+thought it honourable to cast a glance upon the medical papers, and
+pushing them aside from where she had pulled them forward, searched till
+he had found a long cartridge-paper envelope, which he laid on the table
+behind him while he shut up the bureau, and Janet, by cautiously craning
+up her neck, managed to read that on it was written “Will of Joseph
+Brownlow, Executors: Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, Lieutenant-Colonel
+Robert Brownlow.”
+
+Her uncle then put both that and the keys in his pocket, either not
+seeing her, or not choosing to notice her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. -- THE STRAY CHICKENS.
+
+
+
+     But when our father came not here,
+       I thought if we could find the sea
+     We should be sure to meet him there,
+       And once again might happy be.--Ballad.
+
+
+
+“What was Dr. Lucas saying to you?” asked Carey, sitting up in bed after
+her breakfast.
+
+“He said, my dear, that you were really well now,” said Mrs. Lucas,
+tenderly; “and that you only wanted rousing.”
+
+She clasped her hands together.
+
+“Yes, I know it. I have been knowing it all yesterday and last night. It
+hasn’t been right of me, keeping you all this time, and not facing it.”
+
+“I don’t think you could, my dear.”
+
+“Not at first. It seems to me like having been in a whirlpool, and those
+two went down in it.” She put her hands to her temples. “But I must do
+it all now, and I will. I’ll get up now. Oh! dear, if they only would
+let me come down and go about quietly.” Then smiling a piteous smile.
+“It is very naughty, but of all things I dread the being cried over and
+fondled by Ellen!”
+
+Mrs. Lucas shook her head, though the tears were in her eyes, and
+bethought her whether she could caution Mrs. Robert Brownlow not to be
+too demonstrative; but it was a delicate matter in which to interfere,
+and after all, whatever she might think beforehand, Caroline might miss
+these tokens of feeling.
+
+She had sat up for some hours the evening before, so that there was no
+fear of her not being strong enough to get up as she proposed; but how
+would it be when she left her room, and beheld all that she could not
+have realised?
+
+However, matters turned out contrary to all expectation. Mrs. Lucas was
+in the drawing-room, talking to the Colonel’s wife, and Janet up stairs
+helping her mother to dress, when there was a sound of feet on the
+stairs, the door hastily opened for a moment, and two rough-headed,
+dusty little figures were seen for one moment, startling Mrs. Brownlow
+with the notion of little beggars; but they vanished in a moment, and
+were heard chattering up stairs with calls of “Mother! Mother Carey!”
+ And looking out, they beheld at the top of the stairs the two little
+fellows hanging one on each side of Carey, who was just outside her
+door, with her hair down, in her white dressing gown, kneeling between
+them, all the three almost devouring one another.
+
+“Jockie! Armie! my dears! How did you come? Where are the rest?”
+
+“Still at Kyve,” said Jock. “Mother we have done such a thing--we came
+to tell you of it.”
+
+“We’ve lost the man’s boat,” added Armine, “and we must give him the
+money for another.”
+
+“What is it? What is it, Caroline?” began her sister-in-law; but Mrs.
+Lucas touched her arm, and as a mother herself, she saw that mother
+and sons had best be left to one another, and let them retreat into the
+bedroom, Carey eagerly scanning her two little boys, who had a battered,
+worn, unwashed look that puzzled her as much as their sudden appearance,
+which indeed chimed in with the strange dreamy state in which she had
+lived ever since that telegram. But their voices did more to restore her
+to ordinary life than anything else could have done; and their hearts
+were so full of their own adventure, that they poured it out before
+remarking anything,--
+
+“How did you come, my dear boys?”
+
+“We walked, after the omnibus set us down at Charing Cross, because we
+hadn’t any more money,” said Armine. “I’m so tired.” And he nestled
+into her lap, seeming to quell the beating of her aching heart by his
+pressure.
+
+“This is it, mother,” said Jock, pulling her other arm round him. “We
+two went down to the beach yesterday, and we saw a little boat--Peter
+Lary’s pretty little boat, you know, that is so light--and we got in to
+rock in her, and then I thought I would pull about in her a little.”
+
+“Oh! Jock, Jock, how could you?”
+
+“I’d often done it with Allen and Young Pete,” said Jock, defensively.
+
+“But by yourselves!” she said in horror.
+
+“Nobody told us not,” said Jock rather defiantly; and Armine, who, with
+his little sister Barbara, always seemed to live where dreamland and
+reality bordered on each other, looked up in her face and innocently
+said--
+
+“Mrs. Acton read us about the Rocky Island, and she said father and
+granny had brought their boats to the beautiful country, and that we
+ought to go after them, and there was the bright path along the sea, and
+I thought we would go too, and that it would be nicer if Jock went with
+me.”
+
+“I knew it did not mean that,” said Jock, hanging his mischievous black
+head a little, as he felt her shudder; “but I thought it would be such
+fun to be Columbus.”
+
+“And then? Oh! my boys, what a fearful thing! Thank God I have you
+here.”
+
+“I wasn’t frightened,” said Jock, with uplifted head; “we could both
+row, couldn’t we, Armie? and the tide was going out, and it was so
+jolly; it seemed to take us just where we wanted to go, out to that
+great rock, you know, mother, that Bobus called the Asses’ Bridge.”
+
+Carey knew that the current at the mouth of the river did, at high tide,
+carry much drift to the base of this island, and she could understand
+how her two boys had been floated thither. Jock went on--
+
+“We had a boat-hook, and I pulled up to the island; I did, mother, and
+I made fast the boat to a little stick, and we went out to explore the
+island.”
+
+“It has a crater in the top, mother, and we think it must be an instinct
+volcano,” said Armine, looking up sleepily.
+
+“And there were such lots of jolly little birds,” went on Jock.
+
+“Never mind that now. What happened?”
+
+“Why, the brute of a boat got away,” said Jock, much injured, “when I’d
+made her ever so fast. She pulled up the stick, I’m sure she did, for I
+can tie a knot as well as Pete.”
+
+“So you could not get away?”
+
+“No, and we’d got nothing to eat but chocolate creams and periwinkles,
+and Armie wouldn’t look at them, and I don’t think I could while they
+were alive. So I hoisted a signal of distress, made of my tie, for we’d
+lost our pocket-handkerchiefs. I was afraid they would think we were
+pirates, and not venture to come near us, for we’d only got black flags,
+and it was a very, very long time, but at last, just as it got a little
+darkish, and Armie was crying--poor little chap--that steamer came
+by that always goes between Porthole and Kyvemouth on Tuesdays and
+Thursdays. I hailed and I hailed, and they saw or heard, and sent a boat
+and took us on board. The people all came and looked at us, and one of
+them said I was a plucky little chap; he did, mother, and that I’d the
+making of an admiral in me; and a lady gave us such a jolly paper of
+sandwiches. But you see the steamer was going to Porthole, and the
+captain said he could not anyhow put back to Kyve, but he must take us
+on, and we must get back by train.”
+
+Mother Carey understood this, for the direct line ran to Porthole, and
+there was a small junction station whence a branch ran to Kyvemouth,
+from which Kyve St. Clements was some three miles distant.
+
+“Were you carried on?” she asked.
+
+“Well, yes, but we meant it,” said Jock. “I remembered the boat. I knew
+father would say we must buy another, so I asked the captain what was
+the price of one, for Armine and I had each got half-a-sovereign.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“An old gentleman the day before was talking to Mr. Acton. I think he is
+some great swell, for he has got a yacht, and servants, and a carriage,
+and lots of things; and he said, ‘What! are those poor Brownlow’s boys?
+bless me!’ and he tipped us each. Allen and Bobus were to go with Mr.
+Acton and have a sail in his yacht, but they said we should be too many,
+so we thought we’d get a new boat, but the Captain--”
+
+“Said your money would go but a little way,” put in Caroline.
+
+“He laughed!” said Jock, as a great offence; “and said that was a matter
+for our governor, and we had better go home and tell as fast as we
+could. There was a train just starting when we got in to Porthole, and
+somebody got our tickets for us, and Armie went fast off to sleep, and
+I, when I came to think about it, thought we would not get out at the
+junction, but come on home at once, Mother Carey, and tell you all about
+it. When Armie woke--why, he’s asleep now--he said he would rather come
+home than to Kyve.”
+
+“Then you travelled all night?”
+
+“Yes, there was a jolly old woman who made us a bed with her shawl,
+only I tumbled off three times and bumped myself, and she gave us
+gooseberries, and cake, and once when we stopped a long time a porter
+got us a cup of tea. Then when we came to where they take the tickets,
+I think the man was going to make a row, but the guard came up and told
+him all about it, and I gave him my two half-sovereigns, and he gave me
+back fourteen shillings change, for he said we were only half-price and
+second class. Then when once I was in London,” said Jock, as if his foot
+was on his native heath, “of course I knew what to be at.”
+
+“Have you had nothing to eat?”
+
+“We had each a bun when we got out at Charing Cross, but I’m awfully
+hungry, mother!”
+
+“I should think so. Janet, my dear, go and order some breakfast for
+them.”
+
+“And,” said Janet, “must not the others be dreadfully frightened about
+them at Kyve?”
+
+That question startled her mother into instant action.
+
+“Of course they must! Poor Clara! poor Allen! They must be in a dreadful
+state. I must telegraph to them at once.”
+
+She lifted Armine off gently to her bed, scarcely disturbing him,
+twisted up her hair in summary fashion, and the dress, which her friends
+had dreaded her seeing, was on, she hardly knew how, as she bade old
+nurse see to Jock’s washing, dressing, and making himself tidy, and
+then amazed the other ladies by running into the drawing-room crying
+breathlessly--
+
+“I must telegraph to the Actons,” and plunging to the depths of a drawer
+in the davenport.
+
+“Caroline, your cap!”
+
+For it was on the back of the head that had never worn a cap before. And
+not only then, but for the most part whenever they met, those tears and
+caresses, that poor Mother Carey so much feared, were checked midway by
+the instinct that made Aunt Ellen run at her with a great pin and cry--
+
+“Caroline, your cap.”
+
+She was still, after having had it fixed, kneeling down, searching for
+a form for telegraphing, when the door was opened, and in came Colonel
+Brownlow, looking very pale and fearfully shocked.
+
+“Ellen!” he began, “how shall I ever tell that poor child? Here is Mr.
+Acton.”
+
+But at that moment up sprang Mother Carey, and as Mr. Acton entered the
+room she leapt forward--
+
+“Oh! I was just going to telegraph! They are safe! they are here! Jock,
+Jock!”
+
+And downstairs came tumbling and rushing that same little imp, while the
+astonishment of his uncle and aunt only allowed them to utter the one
+word, “John!”
+
+Mr. Acton drew a long breath, and said, “You have given us a pretty
+fright, boy.”
+
+“Here’s the paper,” added Carey; “telegraph to Clara at once. Ring the
+bell, Jock; I’ll send to the office.”
+
+All questions were suspended while Mr. Acton wrote the telegram, and
+then it appeared that the boat had been picked up empty, with Armine’s
+pocket-handkerchief full of shells in it, and the boys had been given up
+for lost, it having been concluded that, if they had been seen, the boat
+also would have been taken in tow, and not cast loose to tell the tale.
+The two elder boys were almost broken-hearted, and would have been wild
+to come back to their mother, had it not been impossible to leave poor
+little Barbara, who clung fast to them, as the only shreds left to her
+of home and protection. They would at least be comforted in the space of
+a quarter of an hour!
+
+Carey was completely herself and full of vigour while Mr. Acton was
+there, consoling him when he lamented not having taken better care, and
+refusing when he tried to persuade her to accompany him back to Kyve.
+Neither would Janet return with him, feeling it impossible to relax such
+watch as she could keep over the Magnum Bonum papers, even though she
+much longed for her brothers.
+
+“I should insist on her going,” said Aunt Ellen, “after all she has gone
+through.”
+
+“I don’t think I can,” said Carey. “You would not send away your
+Jessie?”
+
+Ellen did not quite say that her pretty, sweet, caressing Jessie was
+different, but she thought it all the same.
+
+Carey did not fulfil her intentions of going into matters of business
+with her brother-in-law that day, for little Armine, always delicate,
+had been so much knocked up by his course of adventures, that he needed
+her care all the rest of the day. Nor would she have been fit for
+anything else, for when his aunt recommended a totally different
+treatment for his ailments, she had no spirit to argue, but only
+looked pale and determined, being too weary and dejected to produce her
+arguments.
+
+Jock was sufficiently tired to be quiescent in the nursery, where she
+kept him with her, feeling, in his wistful eyes, and even in poor little
+Armine’s childish questions, something less like blank desolation than
+her recent apathy had been, as if she were waking to thrills of pain
+after the numbness of a blow.
+
+Urged by a restless night and an instinctive longing for fresh air, she
+took a long walk in the park before anyone came down the next morning,
+with only Jock for her companion, and she came to the breakfast table
+with a freshened look, though with a tremulous faintness in her voice,
+and she let Janet continue tea maker, scarcely seeming to hear or
+understand the casual remarks around her; but afterwards she said in a
+resolute tone, “Robert, I am ready whenever you wish to speak to me.”
+
+So in the drawing-room the Colonel, with the two wills in his hand,
+found himself face to face with her. He was the more nervous of the two,
+being, much afraid of upsetting that composure which scandalised his
+wife, but which he preferred to tears; and as he believed her to be a
+mere child in perception, he explained down to her supposed level,
+while she listened in a strange inert way, feeling it hard to fix her
+attention, yet half-amused by the simplicity of his elucidations. “Would
+Ellen need to be told what an executor meant?” thought she.
+
+She was left sole guardian of the children, “the greatest proof of
+confidence a parent can give,” impressively observed the Colonel,
+wondering at the languor of her acquiescence, and not detecting the
+thought, “Dear Joe! of course! as if he would have done anything else!”
+
+“Of course,” continued the Colonel, “he never expected that it would
+have proved more than a nominal matter, a mere precaution. For my own
+part, I can only say that I shall be always ready to assist you with
+advice or authority if ever you should find the charge too onerous for
+you.”
+
+“Thank you,” was all she could bring herself to say at that moment,
+feeling that her boys were her own, though the next she was recollecting
+that this was no doubt the reason Joe had bidden her live at
+Kenminster, and in a pang of self-reproach, was hardly attending to the
+technicalities of the matters of property which were being explained to
+her.
+
+Her husband had not been able to save much, but his life insurance was
+for a considerable sum, and there was also the amount inherited from his
+parents. A portion of the means which his mother had enjoyed passed to
+the elder brother, and Mrs. Brownlow had sunk most of her individual
+property in the purchase of the house in which they lived. By the terms
+of Joseph’s will, everything was left to Caroline unreservedly, save
+for a stipulation that all, on her death, should be divided among the
+children, as she should appoint. The house was not even secured to
+Allen, so that she could let or sell it as she thought advisable.
+
+“I could not sell it,” said Carey quickly, feeling it her first and only
+home. “I hope to see Allen practising there some day.”
+
+“It is not in a situation where you could sell it to so much advantage
+as you would have by letting it to whoever takes the practice.”
+
+She winced, but it was needful to listen, as he told her of the offers
+that had been made for the house and the good-will of the practice.
+What he had thought the best offer was, however, rejected by her with
+vehemence. She was sure that Joe would never stand that man coming in
+upon his patients, and when asked for her reasons, would only reply,
+that “None of us could bear him.”
+
+“That is no reason why he should not be a good practitioner and
+respectable man. He may not be what you like in society, and yet--”
+
+“Ask Dr. Lucas,” hastily interrupted Carey.
+
+“Perhaps that will be the best way,” said the Colonel gravely. “Will you
+promise to abide by his decision?”
+
+“I don’t know! I mean, if everyone decided against me, _nothing_ should
+induce me to let _that_ Vaughan into Joe’s house to meddle with his
+patients.”
+
+Colonel Brownlow made a sign of displeased acquiescence, so like his
+brother when Carey was a little impetuous or naughty, that she instantly
+felt shocked at herself, and faltered, “I beg your pardon.”
+
+He seemed not to notice this, but went on, “As you say, it may be wise
+to consult Dr. Lucas. Perhaps, putting it up to competition would be the
+best way.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Caroline. “Have you a letter from Dr. Drake?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then depend upon it he must have too much delicacy to begin about it so
+soon. I had rather he had it than anyone else.”
+
+“Can he make a fair offer for it? You cannot afford to throw away a
+substantial benefit for preferences,” said the Colonel. “At the outside,
+you will not have more than five hundred pounds a year, and I fear you
+will feel much straitened after what you are used to, with four boys,
+and such ideas as to their education,” he added smiling.
+
+“I don’t know, but I am sure it is what Joe would wish. He had rather
+trust his patients to Harry--to Dr. Drake--than to anyone, and he is
+just going to be married, and wants a practice; I shall write to him. It
+is so nice of him not to have pressed forward.”
+
+“You will not commit yourself?” said Colonel Brownlow. “Remember that
+your children’s interests are at stake, and must not be sacrificed to a
+predilection.”
+
+Again Caroline felt fiery and furious, and less inclined than ever to
+submit her judgment as she said, “You can inquire, but I know what Joe
+thought of him.”
+
+“His worthiness is not the point, but whether he can indemnify you.”
+
+“His worthiness not the point!” cried Caroline, indignantly. “I think it
+all the point.”
+
+“You misunderstand me; you totally misunderstand me,” exclaimed the
+Colonel trying hard to be gentle. “I never meant to recommend an
+unworthy man.”
+
+“You wanted Vaughan,” murmured Mother Carey, but he did not regard the
+words, perhaps did not hear them, for he went on: “My brother in such
+a case would have taken a reasonable view, and placed the good of his
+children before any amiable desire to benefit a--a--one unconnected with
+him. However,” he added, “there is no reason against writing to him,
+provided you do not commit yourself.”
+
+Caroline hated the word, but endured it, and the rest of the interview
+was spent upon some needful signatures, and on the question of her
+residence at Kenminster, an outlook which she contemplated as part of
+the darkness into which her life seemed to have suddenly dashed forward.
+One place would be much the same as another to her, and she could only
+hear with indifference about the three houses, possible, and the rent,
+garden, and number of rooms.
+
+She was very glad when it was over, and the Colonel, saying he should go
+and consult Dr. Lucas, gave her back the keys he had taken from Janet,
+and said that perhaps she would prefer looking over the papers before
+he himself did so, with a view to accounts; but he should advise all
+professional records to be destroyed.
+
+It may be feared that the two executors did not respect or like each,
+other much the better for the interview, which had made the widow feel
+herself even more desolate and sore-hearted.
+
+She ran, downstairs, locked the door of the consulting room, opened the
+lid of the bureau, and kneeling down with her head among all the papers,
+she sobbed with long-drawn, tearless sobs, “O father! O Joe! how could
+you bid me live there? He makes me worse! They will make me worse and
+worse, and now you are gone, and Granny is gone, there’s nobody to make
+me good; and what will become of the children?”
+
+Then she looked drearily on the papers that lay before her, as if his
+hand-writing at least gave a sort of nearness. There was a memorandum
+book which had been her birthday present to him, and she felt drawn to
+open it. The first she saw after her own writing of his name was--
+
+“‘Magnum Bonum. So my sweet wife insists on calling this possibility, of
+which I will keep the notes in her book.
+
+“‘Magnum Bonum! Whether it so prove, and whether I may be the means of
+making it known, must be as God may will. May He give me the power of
+persevering, to win, or to fail, or to lay the foundation for other men,
+whichever may be the best, with a true heart, heeding His glory, and
+acting as His servant to reveal His mysteries of science for the good of
+His children.
+
+“‘And above all, may He give us all to know and feel the true and only
+Magnum Bonum, the great good, which alone makes success or failure, loss
+or gain, life or death, alike blessed in Him and through Him.’”
+
+Carey gazed on those words, as she sat in the large arm-chair, whither
+she had moved on opening the book. She had always known that religion
+was infinitely more to her husband than ever it had been to herself. She
+had done what he led her to do, and had a good deal of intellectual and
+poetical perception and an uprightness, affection, and loyalty of
+nature that made her anxious to do right, but devotion was duty, and
+not pleasure to her; she was always glad when it was over, and she was
+feeling that the thoughts which were said to comfort others were quite
+unable to reach her grief. There was no disbelief nor rebellion about
+her, only a dull weariness, and an inclination which she could hardly
+restrain, even while it shocked her, to thrust aside those religious
+consolations that were powerless to soothe her. She knew it was not
+their fault, she did not doubt of their reality; it was she who was not
+good enough to use them.
+
+These words of Joe were to her as if he were speaking to her again. She
+laid them on her knee, murmured them over fondly, looked at them, and
+finally, for she was weak still and had had a bad night, fell fast
+asleep over them, and only wakened, as shouts of “Mother” were heard
+over the house.
+
+She locked the bureau in a hurry, and opened the door, calling back to
+the boys, and then she found that Aunt Ellen had taken all the three out
+walking, when Jock and Armine, with the remains of their money burning
+in their pockets, had insisted on buying two little ships, which must
+necessarily be launched in the Serpentine. Their aunt could by no means
+endure this, and Janet did not approve, so there seemed to have been a
+battle royal, in which Jock would have been the victor, if his little
+brother had not been led off captive between his aunt and sister,
+when Jock went along on the opposite side of the road, asserting his
+independence by every sort of monkey trick most trying to his aunt’s
+rural sense of London propriety.
+
+It was very ridiculous to see the tall, grave, stately Mrs. Robert
+Brownlow standing there describing the intolerable naughtiness of
+that imp, who, not a bit abashed, sat astride on the balustrade in the
+comfortable conviction that he was not hers.
+
+“I hope, at least,” concluded the lady, “that you will make them feel
+how bad their behaviour has been.”
+
+“Jock,” said Carey mechanically, “I am afraid you have behaved very ill
+to your aunt.”
+
+“Why, Mother Carey,” said that little wretch, “it is just that she
+doesn’t know anything about anything in London.”
+
+“Yes,” chimed in little Armine, who was hanging to his mother’s skirts;
+“she thought she should get to the Park by Duke Street.”
+
+“That did not make it right for you not to be obedient,” said Carey,
+trying for severity.
+
+“But we couldn’t, mother.”
+
+“Couldn’t?” both echoed.
+
+“No,” said Jock, “or we should be still in Piccadilly. Mother Carey, she
+told us not to cross till it was safe.”
+
+“And she stood up like the Duke of Bedford in the Square,” added Armine.
+
+Janet caught her mother’s eye, and both felt a spasm of uncontrollable
+diversion in their throats, making Janet turn her back, and Carey gasp
+and turn on the boys.
+
+“All that is no reason at all. Go up to the nursery. I wish I could
+trust you to behave like a gentleman, when your aunt is so kind as to
+take you out.”
+
+“I _did_, mother! I did hand her across the street, and dragged her out
+from under all the omnibus horses,” said Jock in an injured tone, while
+Janet could not refrain from a whispered comparison, “Like a little
+steam-tug,” and this was quite too much for all of them, producing an
+explosion which made the tall and stately dame look from one to another
+in such bewildered amazement, that struck the mother and daughter as so
+comical that the one hid her face in her hands with a sort of hysterical
+heaving, and the other burst into that painful laughter by which
+strained spirits assert themselves in the young.
+
+Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in utter astonishment and discomfiture, turned and
+walked off to her own room. Somehow Carey and Janet felt more on
+their ordinary terms than they had done all these sad days, in their
+consternation and a certain sense of guilt.
+
+Carey could adjudicate now, though trembling still. She made Jock own
+that his Serpentine plans had been unjustifiable, and then she added,
+“My poor boy, I must punish you. You must remember it, for if you are
+not good and steady, what _will_ become of us.”
+
+Jock leapt at her neck. “Mother, do anything to me. I don’t mind, if you
+only won’t look at me like that!”
+
+She sat down on the stairs, all in a heap again with him, and sentenced
+him to the forfeit of the ship, which he endured with more tolerable
+grace, because Armine observed, “Never mind, Skipjack, we’ll go partners
+in mine. You shall have half my cargo of gold dust.”
+
+Carey could not find it in her heart to check the voyages of the
+remaining ship, over the uncarpeted dining-room; but as she was going,
+Armine looked at her with his great soft eyes, and said, “Mother Carey,
+have you got to be the scoldy and punishy one now?”
+
+“I must if you need it,” said she, going down on her knees again to
+gather the little fellow to her breast; “but, oh, don’t--don’t need it.”
+
+“I’d rather it was Uncle Robert and Aunt Ellen,” said Jock, “for then I
+shouldn’t care.”
+
+“Dear Jock, if you only care, I think we sha’n’t want many punishments.
+But now I must go to your aunt, for we did behave horribly ill to her.”
+
+Aunt Ellen was kind, and accepted Carey’s apology when she found that
+Jock had really been punished. Only she said, “You must be firm with
+that boy, Caroline, or you will be sorry for it. My boys know that what
+I have said is to be done, and they know it is of no use to disobey. I
+am happy to say they mind me at a word; but that John of yours needs
+a tight hand. The Colonel thinks that the sooner he is at school the
+better.”
+
+Before Carey had time to get into a fresh scrape, the Colonel was
+ringing at the door. He had to confess that Dr. Lucas had said Mrs. Joe
+Brownlow was right about Vaughan, and had made it plain that his offer
+ought not to be accepted, either in policy, or in that duty which the
+Colonel began to perceive towards his brother’s patients. Nor did he
+think ill of her plan respecting Dr. Drake; and said he would himself
+suggest the application which that gentleman was no doubt withholding
+from true feeling, for he had been a favourite pupil of Joe Brownlow,
+and had been devoted to him. He was sure that Mrs. Brownlow’s good sense
+and instinct were to be trusted, a dictum which not a little surprised
+her brother-in-law, who had never ceased to think of “poor Joe’s fancy”
+ as a mere child, and who forgot that she was fifteen years older than at
+her marriage.
+
+He told his wife what Dr. Lucas had said, to which she replied, “That’s
+just the way. Men know nothing about it.”
+
+However, Dr. Drake’s offer was sufficiently eligible to be accepted.
+Moreover, it proved that the most available house at Kenminster could
+not be got ready for the family before the winter, so that the move
+could not take place till the spring. In the meantime, as Dr. Drake
+could not marry till Easter, the lower part of the house was to be given
+up to him, and Carey and Janet felt that they had a reprieve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. -- BRAINS AND NO BRAINS.
+
+
+
+     I do say, thou art quick in answers:
+     Thou heatest my blood.--Love’s Labours Lost.
+
+
+Kem’ster, as county tradition pronounced what was spelt Kenminster, a
+name meaning St. Kenelm’s minster, had a grand collegiate church and a
+foundation-school which, in the hands of the Commissioners, had of
+late years passed into the rule of David Ogilvie, Esq., a spare, pale,
+nervous, sensitive-looking man of eight or nine and twenty, who sat one
+April evening under his lamp, with his sister at work a little way off,
+listening with some amusement to his sighs and groans at the holiday
+tasks that lay before him.
+
+“Here’s an answer, Mary. What was Magna Charta? The first map of the
+world.”
+
+“Who’s that ingenious person?”
+
+“Brownlow Major, of course; and here’s French, who says it was a new
+sort of cow invented by Henry VIII.--a happy feminine, I suppose, to
+the Papal Bull. Here’s a third! The French fleet defeated by Queen
+Elizabeth. Most have passed it over entirely.”
+
+“Well, you know this is the first time you have tried such an
+examination, and boys never do learn history.”
+
+“Nor anything else in this happy town,” was the answer, accompanied by a
+ruffling over of the papers.
+
+“For shame, David! The first day of the term!”
+
+“It is the dead weight of Brownlows, my dear. Only think! There’s
+another lot coming! A set of duplicates. They haven’t even the sense to
+vary the Christian names. Three more to be admitted to-morrow.”
+
+“That accounts for a good deal!”
+
+“You are laughing at me, Mary; but did you never know what it is to feel
+like Sisyphus? Whenever you think you have rolled it a little way,
+down it comes, a regular dead weight again, down the slope of utter
+indifference and dulness, till it seems to crush the very heart out of
+you!”
+
+“Have you really nobody that is hopeful?”
+
+“Nobody who does not regard me as his worst enemy, and treat all my
+approaches with distrust and hostility. Mary, how am I to live it down?”
+
+“You speak as if it were a crime!”
+
+“I feel as if it were one. Not of mine, but of the pedagogic race before
+me, who have spoilt the relations between man and boy; so that I cannot
+even get one to act as a medium.”
+
+“That would be contrary to esprit de corps.”
+
+“Exactly; and the worst of it is, I am not one of those genial fellows,
+half boys themselves, who can join in the sports con amore; I should
+only make a mountebank of myself if I tried, and the boys would distrust
+me the more.”
+
+“Quite true. The only way is to be oneself, and one’s best self, and the
+rest will come.”
+
+“I’m not so sure of that. Some people mistake their vocation.”
+
+“Well, when you have given it a fair trial, you can turn to something
+else. You are getting the school up again, which is at least one
+testimony.”
+
+David Ogilvie made a sound as if this were very base kind of solace,
+and his sister did not wonder when she remembered the bright hopes and
+elaborate theories with which he had undertaken the mastership only
+nine months ago. He was then fresh from the university, and the loss
+of constant intercourse with congenial minds had perhaps contributed
+as much as the dulness of the Kenminster youth to bring him into a
+depressed state of health and spirits, which had made his elder sister
+contrive to spend her Easter at the seaside with him, and give him a few
+days at the beginning of the term. Indeed, she was anxious enough
+about him, when he went down to the old grammar-school, to revolve the
+possibility of acceding to his earnest wish, and coming to live with
+him, instead of continuing in her situation as governess.
+
+He came back to luncheon next day with a brightened face, that made his
+sister say, “Well, have you struck some sparks?”
+
+“I’ve got some new material, and am come home saying, ‘What’s in a
+name?’”
+
+“Eh! Is it those very new Brownlows, that seemed yesterday to be the
+last straw on the camel’s back?”
+
+“I wish you could have seen the whole scene, Mary. There were
+half-a-dozen new boys to be admitted, four Brownlows! Think of that!
+Well, there stood manifestly one of the old stock, with the same oval
+face and sleepy brown eyes, and the very same drawl I know so well in
+the ‘No--a--’ to the vain question, ‘Have you done any Latin?’ And how
+shall I do justice to the long, dragging drawl of his reading?
+Aye, here’s the sentence I set him on:
+‘The--Gowls--had--con--sen--ted--to--accept--a--sum--of--gold--and--retire.
+They were en--gagged--in--wag--ging out the sum--required, and--’ I had
+to tell him what to call Brennus, and he proceeded to cast the sword
+into the scale, exclaiming, just as to a cart-horse, ‘Woh! To the
+Worsted’ (pronounced like yarn). After that you may suppose the feelings
+with which I called his ditto, another Joseph Armine Brownlow; and forth
+came the smallest sprite, with a white face and great black eyes, all
+eagerness, but much too wee for this place. ‘Begun Latin?’ ‘Oh, yes;’
+and he rattled off a declension and a tense with as much ease as if he
+had been born speaking Latin. I gave him Phaedrus to see whether that
+would stump him, and I don’t think it would have done so if he had not
+made os a mouth instead of a bone, in dealing with the ‘Wolf and the
+Lamb.’ He was almost crying, so I put the Roman history into his hand,
+and his reading was something refreshing to hear. I asked if he knew
+what the sentence meant, and he answered, ‘Isn’t it when the geese
+cackled?’ trying to turn round the page. ‘What do you know about the
+geese?’ said I. To which the answer was, ‘We played at it on the stairs!
+Jock and I were the Romans, and Mother Carey and Babie were the geese.’”
+
+“Poor little fellow! I hope no boys were there to listen, or he will
+never hear the last of those geese.”
+
+“I hope no one was within earshot but his brothers, who certainly did
+look daggers at him. He did very well in summing and in writing, except
+that he went out of his way to spell fish, p h y c h, and shy, s c h y;
+and at last, I could not resist the impulse to ask him what Magna Charta
+is. Out came the answer, ‘It is yellow, and all crumpled up, and you
+can’t read it, but it has a bit of a great red seal hanging to it.’”
+
+“What, he had seen it?”
+
+“Yes, or a facsimile, and what was more, he knew who signed it. Whoever
+taught that child knew how to teach, and it is a pity he should be
+swamped among such a set as ours.”
+
+“I thought you would be delighted.”
+
+“I should be, if I had him alone, but he must be put with a crew who
+will make it their object to bully him out of his superiority, and the
+more I do for him, the worse it will be for him, poor little fellow; and
+he looks too delicate to stand the ordeal. It is sheer cruelty to send
+him.”
+
+“Hasn’t he brothers?”
+
+“Oh, yes! I was going to tell you, two bigger boys, another Robert and
+John Brownlow--about eleven and nine years old. The younger one is
+a sort of black spider monkey, wanting the tail. We shall have some
+trouble with that gentleman, I expect.”
+
+“But not the old trouble?”
+
+“No, indeed; unless the atmosphere affects him. He answered as no boy
+of twelve can do here; and as to the elder one, I must take him at once
+into the fifth form, such as it is.”
+
+“Where have they been at school?”
+
+“At a day school in London. They are Colonel Brownlow’s nephews. Their
+father was a medical man in London, who died last summer, leaving a
+young widow and these boys, and they have just come down to live in
+Kenminster. But it can’t be owing to the school. No school would
+give all three that kind of--what shall I call it?--culture, and
+intelligence, that they all have; besides, the little one has been
+entirely taught at home.”
+
+“I wonder whether it is their mother’s doing?”
+
+“I am afraid it is their father’s. The Colonel spoke of her as a poor
+helpless little thing, who was thrown on his hands with all her family.”
+
+After the morning’s examination and placing of the boys, there was a
+half-holiday; and the brother and sister set forth to enjoy it together,
+for Kenminster was a place with special facilities for enjoyment. It was
+built as it were within a crescent, formed by low hills sloping down to
+the river; the Church, school, and other remnants of the old collegiate
+buildings lying in the flat at the bottom, and the rest of the town, one
+of the small decayed wool staples of Somerset, being in terraces on
+the hill-side, with steep streets dividing the rows. These were of very
+mixed quality and architecture, but, as a general rule, improved the
+higher they rose, and were all interspersed with gardens running up or
+down, and with a fair sprinkling of trees, whose budding green looked
+well amid the yellow stone.
+
+On the summit were some more ornamental villa-like houses, and grey
+stone buildings with dark tiled roofs, but the expansion on that side
+had been checked by extensive private grounds. There were very beautiful
+woods coming almost close to the town, and in the absence of the owner,
+a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make
+themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee
+proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were
+the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led
+them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being
+constructed on supposed Chinese principles of architecture, was known
+to its friends as “the Pagoda,” to its foes as “the Folly.” It had been
+long untenanted, but this winter it had been put into complete repair,
+and two rooms, showing a sublime indifference to consistency of
+architecture, had been lately built out with sash windows and a slated
+roof, contrasting oddly with the frilled and fluted tiles of the tower
+from which it jutted.
+
+Suddenly there sounded close to their ears the words--“School time, my
+dear!”
+
+Starting and looking round for some impertinent street boy, Mr. Ogilvie
+exclaimed, “What’s that?”
+
+“Mother Carey! We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”
+
+“See, there,” exclaimed Mary, and a great parrot was visible on the
+branch of a sumach, which stretched over the railings of the low wall of
+the pagoda garden. “O you appropriate bird,--you surely ought not to be
+here!”
+
+To which the parrot replied, “Hic, haec, hoc!” and burst out in a wild
+scream of laughing, spreading her grey wings, and showing intentions of
+flying away; but Mr. Ogilvie caught hold of the chain that hung from her
+leg.
+
+Just then voices broke out--
+
+“That’s Polly! Where is she? That’s you, Jock, you horrid boy.”
+
+“Well, I didn’t see why she shouldn’t enjoy herself.”
+
+“Now you’ve been and lost her. Poll, Poll!”
+
+“I have her!” called back Mr. Ogilvie. “I’ll bring her to the gate.”
+
+Thanks came through the hedge, and the brother and sister walked on.
+
+“It’s old Ogre. Cut!” growled in what was meant to be an aside, a voice
+the master knew full well, and there was a rushing off of feet, like
+ponies in a field.
+
+When the sheep gate was reached, a great furniture van was seen standing
+at the door of the “Folly,” and there appeared a troop of boys and girls
+in black, eager to welcome their pet.
+
+“Thank you, sir; thank you very much. Come, Polly,” said the eldest boy,
+taking possession of the bird.
+
+“I think we have met before,” said the schoolmaster to the younger ones,
+glad to see that two--i.e. the new Robert and Armine Brownlow--had not
+joined in the sauve qui peut.
+
+Nay, Robert turned and said, “Mother, it is Mr. Ogilvie.”
+
+Then that gentleman was aware that one of the black figures had a
+widow’s cap, with streamers flying behind her in the breeze, but while
+he was taking off his hat and beginning, “Mrs. Brownlow,” she held out
+her hands to his sister, crying, “Mary, Mary Ogilvie,” and there was an
+equally fervent response. “Is it? Is it really Caroline Allen?” and
+the two friends linked eager hands in glad pressure, turning, after the
+first moment, towards the house, while Mary said, “David, it is my dear
+old schoolfellow; Carey, this is my brother.”
+
+“You were very kind to these boys,” said Carey, warmly shaking hands
+with him. “The name sounded friendly, but I little thought you were
+Mary’s brother. Are you living here, Mary? How delightful!”
+
+“Alas, no; I am only keeping holiday with David. I go back to-morrow.”
+
+“Then stay now, stay and let me get all I can of you, in this frightful
+muddle,” entreated Caroline. “Chaos is come again, but you won’t mind.”
+
+“I’ll come and help you,” said Mary. “David, you must go on alone and
+come back for me.”
+
+“Can’t I be of use?” offered David, feeling rather shut out in the cold;
+“I see a bookcase. Isn’t that in my line?”
+
+“And here’s the box with its books,” said Janet. “Oh! mother, do let
+that be finished off at least! Bobus, there are the shelves, and I have
+all their pegs in my basket.”
+
+The case was happily in its place against the wall, and Janet had seized
+on her recruit to hold the shelves while she pegged them, while the two
+friends were still exchanging their first inquiries, Carey exclaiming,
+“Now, you naughty Mary, where have you been, and why didn’t you write?”
+
+“I have been in Russia, and I didn’t write, because nobody answered, and
+I didn’t know where anybody was.”
+
+“In Russia! I thought you were with a Scottish family, and wrote to you
+to the care of some laird with an unearthly name.”
+
+“But you knew that they took me abroad.”
+
+“And Alice Brown told me that letters sent to the place in Scotland
+would find you. I wrote three times, and when you did not answer my
+last--” and Caroline broke off with things unutterable in her face.
+
+“I never had any but the first when you were going to London. I answered
+that. Yes, I did! Don’t look incredulous. I wrote from Sorrento.”
+
+“That must have miscarried. Where did you address it.”
+
+“To the old place, inside a letter to Mrs. Mercer.”
+
+“I see! Poor Mrs. Mercer went away ill, and did not live long after, and
+I suppose her people never troubled themselves about her letters. But
+why did not you get ours.”
+
+“Mrs. McIan died at Venice, and the aunts came out, and considering me
+too young to go on with the laird and his girls, they fairly made me
+over to a Russian family whom we had met. Unluckily, as I see now, I
+wrote to Mrs. Mercer, and as I never heard more I gave up writing. Then
+the Crimean War cut me off entirely even from David. I had only one
+letter all that time.”
+
+“How is it that you are a governess? I thought one was sure of a pension
+from a Russian grandee!”
+
+“These were not very grand grandees, only counts, and though they paid
+liberally, they could not pension one. So when I had done with the
+youngest daughter, I came to England and found a situation in London. I
+tried to look up our old set, but could not get on the track of anyone
+except Emily Collins, who told me you had married very soon, but was not
+even sure of your name. Very soon! Why, Caroline, your daughter looks as
+old as yourself.”
+
+“I sometimes think she is older! And have you seen my Eton boy?”
+
+“Was it he who received the delightful popinjay, who ‘Up and spak’ so
+much to the purpose?” asked Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“Yes, it was Allen. He is the only one you did not see in the morning.
+Did they do tolerably?”
+
+“I only wish I had any boys who did half as well,” said Mr. Ogilvie, the
+lads being gone for more books.
+
+“I was afraid for John and Armine, for we have been unsettled, and I
+could not go on so steadily with them as before,” she said eagerly, but
+faltering a little. “Armine told me he blundered in Phaedrus, but I hope
+he did fairly on the whole.”
+
+“So well that if you ask my advice, I should say keep him to yourself
+two years more.”
+
+“Oh! I am so glad,” with a little start of joy. “You’ll tell his uncle?
+He insisted--he had some impression that they were very naughty boys,
+whom I could not cope with, poor little fellows.”
+
+“I can decidedly say he is learning more from you than he would in
+school among those with whom, at his age, I must place him.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you. Then Babie won’t lose her companion. She wanted
+to go to school with Armie, having always gone on with him. And the
+other two--what of them? Bobus is sure to work for the mere pleasure of
+it--but Jock?”
+
+“I don’t promise that he may not let himself down to the standard of his
+age and develop a capacity for idleness, but even he has time to spare,
+and he is at that time of life when boys do for one another what no one
+else can do for them.”
+
+“The Colonel said the boys were a good set and gentlemanly,” said Carey
+wistfully.
+
+“I think I may say that for them,” returned their master. “They are not
+bad boys as boys go. There is as much honour and kindliness among them
+as you would find anywhere. Besides, to boys like yours this would be
+only a preparatory school. They are sure to fly off to scholarships.”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Carey. “I want them to be where physical science is
+an object. Or do you think that thorough classical training is a better
+preparation than taking up any individual line?”
+
+“I believe it is easier to learn how to learn through languages than
+through anything else.”
+
+“And to be taught how to learn is a much greater thing than to be
+crammed,” said Carey. “Of course when one begins to teach oneself,
+the world has become “mine oyster,” and one has the dagger. The point
+becomes how to sharpen the dagger.”
+
+At that moment three or four young people rushed in with arms full of
+books, and announcing that the uncle and aunt were coming. The next
+moment they appeared, and stood amazed at the accession of volunteer
+auxiliaries. Mr. Ogilvie introduced his sister, while Caroline explained
+that she was an old friend,--meanwhile putting up a hand to feel for her
+cap, as she detected in Ellen’s eyes those words, “Caroline, your cap.”
+
+“We came to see how you were getting on,” said the Colonel, kindly.
+
+“Thank you, we are getting on capitally. And oh, Robert, Mr. Ogilvie
+will tell you; he thinks Armine too--too--I mean he thinks he had better
+not go into school yet,” she added, thankful that she had not said “too
+clever for the school.”
+
+The Colonel turned aside with the master to discuss the matter, and the
+ladies went into the drawing-room, the new room opening on the lawn,
+under a verandah, with French windows. It was full of furniture in the
+most dire confusion. Mrs. Robert Brownlow wanted to clear off at once
+the desks and other things that seemed school-room properties, saying
+that a little room downstairs had always served the purpose.
+
+“That must be nurse’s sitting-room,” said Carey.
+
+
+“Old nurse! She can be of no use, my dear!”
+
+“Oh yes, she is; she has lived with us ever since dear grandmamma
+married, and has no home, and no relations. We could not get on without
+dear old nursey!”
+
+“Well, my dear, I hope you will find it answer to keep her on. But as
+to this room! It is such a pity not to keep it nice, when you have such
+handsome furniture too.”
+
+“I want to keep it nice with habitation,” said Caroline. “That’s the
+only way to do it. I can’t bear fusty, shut-up smart rooms, and I think
+the family room ought to be the pleasantest and prettiest in the house
+for the children’s sake.”
+
+“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Brownlow, with a serene good nature, contrasting
+with the heat with which Caroline spoke, “it is your affair, my dear,
+but my boys would not thank me for shutting them in with my pretty
+things, and I should be sorry to have them there. Healthy country boys
+like to have their fun, and I would not coop them up.”
+
+“Oh, but there’s the studio to run riot in, Ellen,” said Carey. “Didn’t
+you see? The upper story of the tower. We have put the boy’s tools
+there, and I can do my modelling there, and make messes and all that’s
+nice,” she said, smiling to Mary, and to Allen, who had just come in.
+
+“Do you model, Carey?” Mary asked, and Allen volunteered to show his
+mother’s groups and bas-reliefs, thereby much increasing the litter
+on the floor, and delighting Mary a good deal more than his aunt, who
+asked, “What will you do for a store-room then?”
+
+“Put up a few cupboards and shelves anywhere.”
+
+It is not easy to describe the sort of air with which Mrs. Robert
+Brownlow received this answer. She said nothing but “Oh,” and
+was perfectly unruffled in a sort of sublime contempt, as to the
+hopelessness of doing anything with such a being on her own ground.
+
+There did not seem overt provocation, but poor Caroline, used to petting
+and approval, chafed and reasoned: “I don’t think anything so important
+as a happy home for the boys, where they can have their pursuits, and
+enjoy themselves.”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow seemed to think this totally irrelevant, and observed,
+“When I have nice things, I like to keep them nice.”
+
+“I like nice boys better than nice things,” cried Carey.
+
+Ellen smiled as though to say she hoped she was not an unnatural mother,
+and again said “Oh!”
+
+Mary Ogilvie was very glad to see the two gentlemen come in from the
+hall, the Colonel saying, “Mr. Ogilvie tells me he thinks Armine too
+small at present for school, Caroline.”
+
+“You know I am very glad of it, Robert,” she said, smiling gratefully,
+and Ellen compassionately observed, “Poor little fellow, he is very
+small, but country air and food will soon make a man of him if he is not
+overdone with books. I make it a point never to force my children.”
+
+“No, that you don’t,” said Caroline, with a dangerous smile about the
+corners of her mouth.
+
+“And my boys do quite as well as if they had their heads stuffed and
+their growth stunted,” said Ellen. “Joe is only two months older than
+Armine, and you are quite satisfied with him, are you not, Mr. Ogilvie?”
+
+“He is more on a level with the others,” said Mr. Ogilvie politely; “but
+I wish they were all as forward as this little fellow.”
+
+“Schoolmasters and mammas don’t always agree on those points,” said the
+Colonel good-humouredly.
+
+“Very true,” responded his wife. “I never was one for teasing the poor
+boys with study and all that. I had rather see them strong and well
+grown. They’ll have quite worry enough when they go to school.”
+
+“I’m sorry you look at me in that aspect,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“Oh, I know you can’t help it,” said the lady.
+
+“Any more than Trois Echelles and Petit Andre,” said Carey, in a low
+voice, giving the two Ogilvies the strongest desire to laugh.
+
+Just then out burst a cry of wrath and consternation, making everyone
+hurry out into the hall, where, through a perfect cloud of white powder,
+loomed certain figures, and a scandalised voice cried “Aunt Caroline,
+Jock and Armine have been and let all the arrowroot fly about.”
+
+“You told me to be useful and open parcels,” cried Jock.
+
+“Oh, jolly, jolly! first-rate!” shouted Armine in ecstasy. “It’s just
+like Paris in the cloud! More, more, Babie. You are Venus, you know.”
+
+“Master Armine, Miss Barbara! For shame,” exclaimed the nurse’s voice.
+“All getting into the carpet, and in your clothes, I do declare! A whole
+case of best arrowroot wasted, and worse.”
+
+“‘Twas Jessie’s doing,” replied Jock. “She told me.”
+
+Jessie, decidedly the most like Venus of the party, being a very pretty
+girl, with an oval face and brown eyes, had retreated, and was with
+infinite disgust brushing the white powder out of her dress, only in
+answer ejaculating, “Those boys!”
+
+Jock had not only opened the case, but had opened it upside down, and
+the classical performances of Armine and Barbara had powdered themselves
+and everything around, while the draught that was rushing through all
+the wide open doors and windows dispersed the mischief far and wide.
+
+“Can you do nothing but laugh, Caroline?” gravely said Mrs. Brownlow.
+“Janet, shut that window. Children, out of the way! If you were mine, I
+should send you to bed.”
+
+“There’s no bed to be sent to,” muttered Jock, running round to give a
+sly puff to the white heap, diffusing a sprinkling of white powder over
+his aunt’s dress.
+
+“Jock,” said his mother with real firmness and indignation in her voice,
+“that is not the way to behave. Beg your aunt’s pardon this instant.”
+
+And to everyone’s surprise the imp obeyed the hand she had laid on
+him, and muttered something like, “beg pardon,” though it made his face
+crimson.
+
+His uncle exclaimed, “That’s right, my boy,” and his aunt said, with
+dignity, “Very well, we’ll say no more about it.”
+
+Mary Ogilvie was in the meantime getting some of the powder back into
+the tin, and Janet running in from the kitchen with a maid, a soup
+tureen, and sundry spoons, everyone became busy in rescuing the
+remains--in the midst of which there was a smash of glass.
+
+“Jock again!” quoth Janet.
+
+“Oh, mother!” called out Jock. “It’s so long! I thought I’d get the
+feather-brush to sweep it up with, and the other end of it has been and
+gone through this stupid lamp.”
+
+“Things are not unapt to be and go through, where you are concerned, Mr.
+Jock, I suspect,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “Suppose you were to come with me,
+and your brothers too, and be introduced to the swans on the lake at
+Belforest.”
+
+The boys brightened up, the mother said, “Thank you most heartily, if
+they will not be a trouble,” and Babie put her hand entreatingly into
+the schoolmaster’s, and said, “Me too?”
+
+“What, Venus herself! I thought she had disappeared in the cloud! Let
+her come, pray, Mrs. Brownlow.”
+
+“I thought the children would have been with their cousins,” observed
+the aunt.
+
+“So we were,” returned Armine; “but Johnnie and Joe ran away when they
+saw Mr. Ogilvie coming.”
+
+Babie having by this time had a little black hat tied on, and as
+much arrowroot as possible brushed out of her frock; Carey warned the
+schoolmaster not to let himself be chattered to death, and he walked off
+with the three younger ones.
+
+Caroline would have kept her friend, but Mary, seeing that little good
+could be gained by staying with her at present, replied that she would
+take the walk now, and return to her friend in a couple of hours’ time;
+and Carey was fain to consent, though with a very wistful look in her
+eyes.
+
+At the end of that time, or more, Janet met the party at the garden
+gate. “You are to go down to my uncle’s, children,” she said; “mother
+has one of her very bad headaches.”
+
+There was an outcry that they must take her the flowers, of which their
+hands and arms were full; but Janet was resolute, though Babie was very
+near tears.
+
+“To-morrow--to-morrow,” she said. “She must lie still now, or she won’t
+be able to do anything. Run away, Babie, they’ll be waiting tea for you.
+Allen’s there. He’ll take care of you.”
+
+“I want to give Mother Carey those dear white flowers,” still entreated
+Babie.
+
+“I’ll give them, my dear. They want you down there--Ellie and Esther.”
+
+“I don’t want to play with Ellie and Essie,” sturdily declared Barbara.
+“They say it is telling falsehoods when one wants to play at anything.”
+
+“They don’t understand pretending,” said Armine. “Do let us stay, Janet,
+we’ll not make one smallest little atom of noise, if Jock doesn’t stay.”
+
+“You can’t,” said Janet, “for there’s nothing for you to eat, and nurse
+and Susan are as savage as Carribee islanders.”
+
+This last argument was convincing. The children threw their flowers into
+Janet’s arms, gave their hands to Miss Ogilvie, and Babie between her
+two brothers, scampered off, while Miss Ogilvie uttered her griefs and
+regrets.
+
+“My mother would like to see you,” said Janet; “indeed, I think it will
+do her good. She told me to bring you in.”
+
+“Such a day of fatigue,” began Mary.
+
+“That and all the rest of it,” said Janet moodily.
+
+“Is she subject to headaches?”
+
+“No, she never had one, till--” Janet broke off, for they had reached
+her mother’s door.
+
+“Bring her in,” said a weary voice, and Mary found herself beside a low
+iron bed, where Carey, shaking off the handkerchief steeped in vinegar
+and water on her brow, and showing a tear-stained, swollen-eyed face,
+threw herself into her friend’s arms.
+
+But she did not cry now, her tears all came when she was alone, and when
+Mary said something of being so sorry for her headache, she said, “Oh!
+it’s only with knocking one’s head against a mattress like mad people,”
+ in such a matter-of-fact voice, that Mary for a moment wondered whether
+she had really knocked her head.
+
+Mary doubted what to say, and wetted the kerchief afresh with the
+vinegar and water.
+
+“Oh, Mary, I wish you were going to stay here.”
+
+“I wish! I wish I could, my dear!”
+
+“I think I could be good if you were here!” she sighed. “Oh, Mary, why
+do they say that troubles make one good?”
+
+“They ought,” said Mary.
+
+“They don’t,” said Carey. “They make me wicked!” and she hid her face in
+the pillow with a great gasp.
+
+“My poor Carey!” said the gentle voice.
+
+“Oh! I want to tell you all about it. Oh! Mary, we have been so happy!”
+ and what a wail there was in the tone. “But I can’t talk,” she added
+faintly, “it makes me sick, and that’s all her doing too.”
+
+“Don’t try,” said Mary tenderly. “We know where to find each other now,
+and you can write to me.”
+
+“I will,” said Caroline; “I can write much better than tell. And you
+will come back, Mary?”
+
+“As soon as I can get a holiday, my dear, indeed I will.”
+
+Carey was too much worn out not to repose on the promise, and though she
+was unwilling to let her friend go, she said very little more.
+
+Mary longed to give her a cup of strong coffee, and suggested it to
+Janet; but headaches were so new in the family, that domestic remedies
+had not become well-known. Janet instantly rushed down to order it, but
+in the state of the house at that moment, it was nearly as easy to get a
+draught of pearls.
+
+“But she shall have it, Miss Ogilvie,” said Janet, putting on her hat.
+“Where’s the nearest grocer?”
+
+“Oh, never mind, my dear,” sighed the patient. “It will go off of
+itself, when I can get to sleep.”
+
+“You shall have it,” returned Janet.
+
+And Mary having taken as tender a farewell as Caroline was able to bear,
+they walked off together; but the girl did not respond to the kindness
+of Miss Ogilvie.
+
+She was too miserable not to be glum, too reserved to be open to a
+stranger. Mary guessed a little of the feeling, though she feared that
+an uncomfortable daughter might be one of poor Carey’s troubles, and
+she could not guess the girl’s sense of banishment from all that she had
+enjoyed, society, classes, everything, or her feeling that the Magnum
+Bonum itself was imperilled by exile into the land of dulness, which
+of course the poor child exaggerated in her imagination. Her only
+consolation was to feel herself the Masterman Ready of the shipwreck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. -- ENCHANTED GROUND.
+
+
+
+     And sometimes a merry train
+     Comes upon us from the lane
+     All through April, May, or June,
+     Every gleaming afternoon;
+     All through April, May, and June,
+     Boys and maidens, birds and bees,
+     Airy whisperings from all trees.
+                       Petition of the Flowers--Keble.
+
+
+The headache had been carried off by a good night’s rest; a droll,
+scrambling breakfast had been eaten, German fashion, with its
+headquarters on the kitchen table; and everybody running about
+communicating their discoveries. Bobus and Jock had set off to school,
+and poor little Armine, who firmly believed that his rejection was in
+consequence of his confusion between os, ossis, and os, oris, and was
+very sore about it, had gone with Allen and Barbara to see them on their
+way, and Mother Carey and Janet had agreed to get some real work done
+and were actually getting through business, when in rushed, rosy and
+eager, Allen, Armine, and Babie, with arms stretched and in breathless
+haste.
+
+“Mother Carey! Oh, mother! mammie, dear! come and see!”
+
+“Come--where?”
+
+“To fairy-land. Get her bonnet, Babie.”
+
+“Out of doors, you boy? just look there!”
+
+“Oh! bother all that! It can wait.”
+
+“Do pray come, mother,” entreated Armine; “you never saw anything like
+it!”
+
+“What is it? Will it take long?” said she, beginning to yield, as Babie
+danced about with her bonnet, Armine tugged at her, and Allen look
+half-commanding, half-coaxing.
+
+“She is not to know till she sees! No, don’t tell her,” said Armine.
+“Bandage her eyes, Allen. Here’s my silk handkerchief.”
+
+“And Janet. She mustn’t see,” cried Babie, in ecstasy.
+
+“I’m not coming,” said Janet, rather crossly. “I’m much too busy, and it
+is only some nonsense of yours.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Allen, laughing; “mother shall judge of that.”
+
+“It does seem a shame to desert you, my dear,” said Carey, “but you
+see--”
+
+What Janet was to see was stifled in the flap of the handkerchief
+with which Allen was binding her eyes, while Armine and Babie sang
+rapturously--
+
+
+          “Come along, Mother Carey,
+           Come along to land of fairy;”
+
+
+an invocation to which, sooth to say, she had become so much accustomed
+that it prevented her from expecting a fairy-land where it was not
+necessary to “make believe very much.”
+
+Janet so entirely disapproved of the puerile interruption that she
+never looked to see how Allen and Babie managed the bonnet. She only
+indignantly picked up the cap which had fallen from the sofa to the
+floor, and disposed of it for security’s sake on the bronze head of
+Apollo, which was waiting till his bracket could be put up.
+
+Guided most carefully by her eldest son, and with the two little ones
+dancing and singing round her, and alternately stopping each other’s
+mouths when any premature disclosure was apprehended, pausing in wonder
+when the cuckoo note, never heard before, came on them, making them
+laugh with glee.
+
+Thus she was conducted much further than she expected. She heard the
+swing of the garden gate and felt her feet on the road and remonstrated,
+but she was coaxed on and through another gate, and a path where Allen
+had to walk in front of her, and the little ones fell behind.
+
+Then came an eager “Now.”
+
+Her eyes were unbound, and she beheld what they might well call
+enchanted ground.
+
+She was in the midst of a curved bank where the copsewood had no doubt
+been recently cut away, and which was a perfect marvel of primroses,
+their profuse bunches standing out of their wrinkled leaves at every
+hazel root or hollow among the exquisite moss, varied by the pearly
+stars of the wind-flower, purple orchis spikes springing from
+black-spotted leaves, and deep-grey crested dog-violets. On one side
+was a perfect grove of the broad-leaved, waxen-belled Solomon’s seal,
+sloping down to moister ground where was a golden river of king-cups,
+and above was a long glade between young birch-trees, their trunks
+gleaming silvery white, the boughs over head breaking out into foliage
+that looked yellow rather than green against the blue sky, and the
+ground below one sheet of that unspeakably intense purple blue which is
+only produced by masses of the wild hyacinth.
+
+“There!” said Allen.
+
+“There!” re-echoed the children. “Oh mammy, mammy dear! Is it not
+delicious?”
+
+Carey held up her hand in silence, for a nightingale was pouring out
+his song close by; she listened breathlessly, and as it ceased she burst
+into tears.
+
+“O mother!” cried Allen, “it is too much for you.”
+
+“No, dear boy, it is--it is--only too beautiful. It is what papa always
+talked of and would have so enjoyed.”
+
+“Do you think he has better flowers up there?” asked Babie. “I don’t
+think they can be much better.”
+
+And without waiting for more she plunged down among the primroses and
+spread her little self out with a scream of ecstasy.
+
+And verily the strange sense of rapture and enchantment was no less
+in the mother herself. There is no charm perhaps equal to that of a
+primrose bank on a sunny day in spring, sight, sound, scent all alike
+exquisite. It comes with a new and fresh delight even to those to whom
+this is an annual experience, and to those who never saw the like before
+it gives, like the first sight of the sea or of a snowy mountain, a
+sensation never to be forgotten. Fret, fatigue, anxiety, sorrow all
+passed away like dreams in that sweet atmosphere. Carey, like one of her
+children, absolutely forgot everything in the charm and wonder of the
+scene, in the pure, delicate unimaginable odour of the primroses, in
+debating with Allen whether (cockneys that they were) it could be a
+nightingale “singing by day when every goose is cackling,” in listening
+to the marvellous note, only pausing to be answered from further depths,
+in the beauty of the whole, and in the individual charm of every flower,
+each heavily-laden arch of dark blue-bells with their curling tips, so
+infinitely more graceful than their pampered sister, the hyacinth of
+the window-glass, of each pure delicate anemone she gathered, with its
+winged stem, of the smiling primrose of that inimitable tint it only
+wears in its own woodland nest; and when Allen lighted on a bed of
+wood-sorrel, with its scarlet stems, lovely trefoil leaves, and purple
+striped blossoms like insect’s wings, she absolutely held her breath in
+an enthusiasm of reverent admiration. No one can tell the happiness of
+those four, only slightly diminished by Armine’s getting bogged on his
+way to the golden river of king-cups, and his mother in going after him,
+till Allen from an adjacent stump pulled them out, their feet deeply
+laden with mud.
+
+They had only just emerged when the strokes of a great bell came pealing
+up from the town below; Allen and his mother looked at each other in
+amused dismay, then at their watches. It was twelve o’clock! Two hours
+had passed like as many minutes, and the boys would be coming home to
+dinner.
+
+“Ah! well, we must go,” said Carey, as they gathered up their armloads
+of flowers. “You naughty children to make me forget everything.”
+
+“You are not sorry you came though, mother. It has done you good,” said
+Allen solicitously. He was the most affectionate of them all.
+
+“Sorry! I feel as if I cared for nothing while I have a place like that
+to drink up delight in.”
+
+With which they tried to make their way back to the path again, but it
+was not immediately to be found; and their progress was further impeded
+by a wood-pigeon dwelling impressively on the notes “Take two cows,
+Taffy; Taffy take TWO!” and then dashing out, flapping and grey, in
+their faces, rather to Barbara’s alarm, and then by Armine’s stumbling
+on his first bird’s nest, a wren’s in the moss of an old stump, where
+the tiny bird unadvisedly flew out of her leafy hole full before their
+eyes. That was a marvel of marvels, a delight equal to that felt by
+any explorer the world has seen. Armine and Barbara, who lived in one
+perpetual fairy tale, were saying to one another that
+
+“One needn’t make believe here, it was every bit real.”
+
+“And more;” added the other little happy voice. Barbara did however
+begin to think of the numerous children in the wood, and to take comfort
+that it was unprecedented that their mother and big brother should be
+with them, but they found the park palings at last, and then a little
+wicket gate, where they were very near home.
+
+“Mother, where _have_ you been?” exclaimed Janet, somewhat suddenly
+emerging from the door.
+
+“In Tom Tiddler’s ground, picking up gold and silver,” said Carey,
+pointing to the armsful of king-cups, cuckoo-flowers, and anemones,
+besides blue-bells, orchises, primroses, &c. “My poor child, it was a
+great shame to leave you, but they got me into the enchanted land and I
+forgot all about everything.”
+
+“I think so,” said a gravely kind voice, and Caroline was aware of
+Ellen’s eye looking at her as the Court Queen might have looked at
+Ophelia if she had developed her taste for “long purples” as Hamlet’s
+widow. At least so it struck Mother Carey, who immediately became
+conscious that her bonnet was awry, having been half pulled off by a
+bramble, that her ankles were marked by the bog, and that bits of green
+were sticking all over her.
+
+“Have you been helping Janet? Oh, how kind!” she said, refreshed by her
+delightsome morning into putting a bright face on it.
+
+“We have done all we could in your absence,” said her sister-in-law, in
+a reproachful voice.
+
+“Thank you; I’m sure it is very good of you. Janet--Janet, where’s the
+great Dutch bowl--and the little Salviati? Nothing else is worthy of
+this dear little fairy thing.”
+
+“What is it? Just common wood-sorrel,” said the other lady, in utter
+amaze.
+
+“Ah, Ellen, you think me demented. You little know what it is to see
+spring for the first time. Ah! that’s right, Janet. Now, Babie, we’ll
+make a little bit of fairy-land--”
+
+“Don’t put all those littering flowers on that nice clean chintz,
+children,” exclaimed the aunt, as though all her work were about to be
+undone.
+
+And then a trampling of boy’s boots being heard and shouts of “Mother,”
+ Carey darted out into the hall to hear fragments of school intelligence
+as to work and play, tumbling over one another, from Bobus and Jock both
+at once, in the midst of which Mrs. Robert Brownlow came out with her
+hat on, and stood, with her air of patient serenity, waiting for an
+interval.
+
+Caroline looked up, and said, “I beg your pardon, Ellen--what is it?”
+
+“If you can attend a moment,” said she, gravely; “I must be going to
+my boys’ dinner. But Robert wishes to know whether he shall order this
+paper for the drawing-room. It cannot be put up yet, of course; but
+Smith has only a certain quantity of it, and it is so stylish that he
+said the Colonel had better secure it at once.”
+
+She spread the roll of paper on the hall table. It was a white paper,
+slightly tinted, and seemed intended to represent coral branches, with
+starry-looking things at the ends.
+
+“The aquarium at the Zoo,” muttered Bobus; and Caroline herself, meeting
+Allen’s eye, could not refrain from adding,
+
+
+          “The worms they crawled in,
+           And the worms they crawled out.”
+
+
+“Mother!” cried Jock, “I thought you were going to paint it all over
+with jolly things.”
+
+“Frescoes,” said Allen; “sha’n’t you, mother?”
+
+“If your uncle does not object,” said his mother, choking down a giggle.
+“Those plaster panels are so tempting for frescoes, Ellen.”
+
+“Frescoes! Why, those are those horrid improper-looking gods and
+goddesses in clouds and chariots on the ceilings at Belforest,” observed
+that lady, in a half-puzzled, half-offended tone of voice, that most
+perilously tickled the fancy of Mother Carey and her brood! and she
+could hardly command her voice to make answer, “Never fear, Ellen; we
+are not going to attempt allegorical monstrosities, only to make a bower
+of green leaves and flowers such as we see round us; though after what
+we have seen to-day that seems presumptuous enough. Fancy, Janet! golden
+green trees and porcelain blue ground, all in one bath of sunshine. Such
+things must be seen to be believed in.”
+
+Poor Mrs. Robert Brownlow! She went home and sighed, as she said to her
+husband, “Well, what is to become of those poor things I do not know.
+One would sometimes think poor Caroline was just a little touched in the
+head.”
+
+“I hope not,” said the Colonel, rather alarmed.
+
+“It may be only affectation,” said his lady, in a consolatory tone. “I
+am afraid poor Joe did live with a very odd set of people--artists, and
+all that kind of thing. I am sure I don’t blame her, poor thing! But she
+is worse to manage than any child, because you can’t bid her mind what
+she is about, and not talk nonsense. When she leaves her house in such a
+state, and no one but that poor girl to see to anything, and comes home
+all over mud, raving about fairyland, and gold trees and blue ground;
+when she has just got into a bog in Belforest coppice--littering the
+whole place, too, with common wild flowers. If it had been Essie and
+Ellie, I should just have put them in the corner for making such a
+mess!”
+
+The Colonel laughed a little to himself, and said, consolingly, “Well,
+well, you know all these country things are new to her. You must be
+patient with her.”
+
+Patient! That had to be the burthen of the song on both sides. Carey was
+pushing back her hair with a fierce, wild sense of impatience with that
+calm assumption that fretted her beyond all bearing, and made her feel
+desolate beyond all else. She would have, she thought, done well enough
+alone with her children, and scrambled into her new home; but the
+directions, however needful, seemed to be continually insulting her
+understanding. When she was advised as to the best butcher and baker,
+there was a ring in her ears as if Ellen meant that these were safe men
+for a senseless creature like her, and she could not encounter them with
+her orders without wondering whether they had been told to treat her
+well.
+
+Indeed, one of the chief drawbacks to Carey’s comfort was her difficulty
+in attending to what her brother and sister-in-law said to her.
+Something in the measured tones of the Colonel always made her thoughts
+wander as from a dull sermon; and this was more unlucky in his case than
+in his wife’s--for Ellen used such reiterations that there was a fair
+chance of catching her drift the second or third time, if not the first,
+whereas all he said was well weighed and arranged, and was only too
+heavy and sententious.
+
+Kencroft, the home of the Colonel and his family, Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s
+inheritance, was certainly “a picture of a place.” It had probably
+been an appendage of the old minster, though the house was only of the
+seventeenth century; but that was substantial and venerable of its kind,
+and exceedingly comfortable and roomy, with everything kept in perfect
+order. Caroline could not quite think the furniture worthy of it, but
+that was not for want of the desire to do everything handsomely and
+fashionably. Moreover, in spite of the schoolroom and nurseryful of
+children, marvels of needlework and knitting adorned every table, chair,
+and sofa, while even in the midst of the town Kencroft had its own
+charming garden; a lawn, once devoted to bowls and now to croquet, an
+old-fashioned walled kitchen garden, sloping up the hill, and a paddock
+sufficient to make cows and pigs part of the establishment.
+
+The Colonel had devoted himself to gardening and poultry with the
+mingled ardour and precision of a man who needed something to supply the
+place of his soldierly duties; and though his fervour had relaxed under
+the influence of ease, gout, and substantial flesh, enough remained to
+keep up apple-pie order without-doors, and render Kencroft almost a show
+place. The meadow lay behind the house, and a gravel walk leading along
+its shaded border opened into the lane about ten yards from the gate of
+the Pagoda, as Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow and the post office laboured to
+call it; the Folly, as came so much more naturally to everyone’s lips.
+It had been the work of the one eccentric man in Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s
+family, and was thus her property. It had hung long on hand, being
+difficult to let, and after making sufficient additions, it had been
+decided that, at a nominal rent, it would house the family thrown upon
+the hands of the good Colonel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. -- THE COLONEL’S CHICKENS.
+
+
+
+     They censured the bantam for strutting and crowing,
+     In those vile pantaloons that he fancied looked knowing;
+     And a want of decorum caused many demurs
+     Against the game chicken for coming in spurs.
+                                           The Peacock at Home.
+
+
+Left to themselves, Mother Carey, with Janet and old nurse, completed
+their arrangements so well that when Jessie looked in at five o’clock,
+with a few choice flowers covering a fine cucumber in her basket, she
+exclaimed in surprise, “How nice you have made it all look, I shall be
+so glad to tell mamma.”
+
+“Tell her what?” asked Janet.
+
+“That you have really made the room look nice,” said Jessie.
+
+“Thank you,” said her cousin, ironically. “You see we have as many hands
+as other people. Didn’t Aunt Ellen think we had?”
+
+“Of course she did,” said Jessie, a pretty, kindly creature, but slow of
+apprehension; “only she said she was very sorry for you.”
+
+“And why?” cried Janet, leaping up in indignation.
+
+“Why?” interposed Allen, “because we are raw cockneys, who go into
+raptures over primroses and wild hyacinths, eh, Jessie?”
+
+“Well, you have set them up very nicely,” said Jessie; “but fancy taking
+so much trouble about common flowers.”
+
+“What would you think worth setting up?” asked Janet. “A big dahlia, I
+suppose, or a great red cactus?”
+
+“We have a beautiful garden,” said Jessie: “papa is very particular
+about it, and we always get the prize for our flowers. We had the first
+prizes for hyacinths and forced roses last week, and we should have had
+the first for forced cucumbers if the gardener at Belforest had not
+had a spite against Spencer, because he left him for us. Everybody said
+there was no comparison between the cucumbers, and Mr. Ellis said--”
+
+Janet had found the day before how Jessie could prattle on in an endless
+quiet stream without heeding whether any one entered into it or replied
+to it; but she was surprised at Allen’s toleration of it, though he
+changed the current by saying, “Belforest seems a jolly, place.”
+
+“But you’ve only seen the wood, not the gardens,” said Jessie.
+
+“I went down to the lake with Mr. Ogilvie,” said Allen, “and saw
+something splendiferous looking on the other side.”
+
+“Oh! they are beautiful!” cried Janet, “all laid out in ribbon gardens
+and with the most beautiful terrace, and a fountain--only that doesn’t
+play except when you give the gardener half-a-crown, and mamma says,
+that is exorbitant--and statues standing all round--real marble
+statues.”
+
+“Like the groves of Blarney,” muttered Janet:
+
+
+          “Heathen goddesses most rare,
+           Homer, Venus, and Nebuchadnezzar,
+           All standing naked in the open air.”
+
+
+Allen, seeing Jessie scandalised, diverted her attention by asking,
+“Whom does it belong to?”
+
+“Mr. Barnes,” said Jessie; “but he is hardly ever there. He is an old
+miser, you know--what they call a millionaire, or mill-owner; which is
+it?”
+
+“One is generally the French for the other,” put in Janet.
+
+“Never mind her, Jessie,” said Allen, with a look of infinite
+displeasure at his sister. “What does he do which keeps him away?”
+
+“I believe he is a great merchant, and is always in Liverpool,” said
+Jessie. “Any way, he is a very cross old man, and won’t let anybody go
+into his park and gardens when he comes down here; and he is very cruel
+too, for he disinherited his own nephew and niece for marrying. Only
+think Mrs. Watson at the grocer’s told our Susan that there’s a little
+girl, who is his own great-niece, living down at River Hollow Farm with
+Mr. and Mrs. Gould, just brought up by common farmers, you know, and he
+won’t take any notice of her, nor give one farthing for bringing her up.
+Isn’t it shocking? And even when he is at home, he only has two chops
+or two steaks, or just a bit of kidney, and that when he is literally
+rolling in gold.”
+
+Jessie opened her large brown eyes to mark her horror, and Allen, made a
+gesture of exaggerated sympathy, which his sister took for more earnest
+than it was, and she said, scornfully, “I should like to see him
+literally rolling in gold. It must be like Midas. Do you mean that he
+sleeps on it, Jessie? How hard and cold!”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Jessie; “you know what I mean.”
+
+“I know what literally rolling in gold means, but I don’t know what you
+mean.”
+
+“Don’t bully her, Janet,” said Allen; “we are not so stupid, are we,
+Jessie? Come and show me the walnut-tree you were telling me about.”
+
+“What’s the matter, Janet?” said her mother, coming in a moment or two
+after, and finding her staring blankly out of the window, where the two
+had made their exit.
+
+“O mother, Jessie has been talking such gossip, and Allen likes it, and
+won’t have it stopped! I can’t think what makes Allen and Bobus both so
+foolish whenever she is here.”
+
+“She is a very pretty creature,” said Carey, smiling a little.
+
+“Pretty!” repeated Janet. “What has that to do with it?”
+
+“A great deal, as you will have to find out in the course of your life,
+my dear.”
+
+“I thought only foolish people cared about beauty.”
+
+“It is very convenient for us to think so,” said Carey, smiling.
+
+“But mother--surely everybody cares for you just as much or more than
+if you were a great handsome, stupid creature! How I hate that word
+handsome!”
+
+“Except for a cab,” said Carey.
+
+“Ah! when shall I see a Hansom again?” said Janet in a slightly
+sentimental tone. But she returned to the charge, “Don’t go, mother, I
+want you to answer.”
+
+“Beauty versus brains! My dear, you had better open your eyes to the
+truth. You must make up your mind to it. It is only very exceptional
+people who, even in the long run, care most for feminine brains.”
+
+“But, mother, every one did.”
+
+“Every one in our world, Janet; but your father made our home set of
+those exceptional people, and we are cast out of it now!” she added,
+with a gasp and a gesture of irrepressible desolateness.
+
+“Yes, that comes of this horrid move,” said the girl, in quite another
+tone. “Well, some day--” and she stopped.
+
+“Some day?” said her mother.
+
+“Some day we’ll go back again, and show what we are,” she said, proudly.
+
+“Ah, Janet! and that’s nothing now without _him_.”
+
+“Mother, how can you say so, when--?” Jane just checked herself, as she
+was coming to the great secret.
+
+“When we have his four boys,” said her mother. “Ah! yes, Janet--if--and
+when--But that’s a long way off, and, to come back to our former
+subject,” she added, recalling herself with a sigh, “it will be wise in
+us owlets to make up our minds that owlets we are, and to give the place
+to the eaglets.”
+
+“But eaglets are very ugly, and owlets very pretty,” quoth Janet.
+
+Carey laughed. “That does not seem to have been the opinion of the Beast
+Epic,” said she, and the entrance of Babie prevented them from going
+further.
+
+Janet turned away with one of her grim sighs at the unappreciative world
+to which she was banished. She had once or twice been on the point of
+mentioning the Magnum Bonum to her mother, but the reserve at first made
+it seem as if an avowal would be a confession, and to this she could not
+bend her pride, while the secrecy made a strange barrier between her and
+her mother. In truth, Janet had never been so devoted to Mother Carey as
+to either granny or her father, and now she missed them sorely, and felt
+it almost an injury to have no one but her mother to turn to.
+
+Her character was not set in the same mould, and though both could meet
+on the common ground of intellect, she could neither enter into
+the recesses of her mother’s grief, nor understand those flashes of
+brightness and playfulness which nothing could destroy. If Carey had
+chosen to unveil the truth to herself, she would have owned that Allen,
+who was always ready, tender and sympathetic to her, was a much greater
+comfort than his sister; nay, that even little Babie gave her more rest
+and peace than did Janet, who always rubbed against her whenever they
+found themselves tete-a-tete or in consultation.
+
+Meantime Babie had been out with her two little cousins, and came home
+immensely impressed with the Belforest gardens. The house was shut up,
+but the gardens were really kept up to perfection, and the little one
+could not declare her full delight in the wonderful blaze she had seen
+of banks of red, and flame coloured, and white, flowering trees. “They
+said they would show me the Americans,” she said. “Why was it, mother?
+I thought Americans were like the gentleman who dined with you one
+day, and told me about the snow birds. But there were only these
+flower-trees, and a pond, and statues standing round it, and I don’t
+think they were Americans, for I know one was Diana, because she had a
+bow and quiver. I wanted to look at the rest, but Miss James said they
+were horrid heathen gods, not fit for little girls to look at;
+and, mother, Ellie is so silly, she thought the people at Belforest
+worshipped them. Do come and see them, mother. It is like the Crystal
+Palace out-of-doors.”
+
+“Omitting the Crystal,” laughed some one; but Babie had more to say,
+exclaiming, “O mother, Essie says Aunt Ellen says Janet and I are to do
+lessons with Miss James, but you won’t let us, will you?”
+
+“Miss James!” broke out Janet indignantly; “we might as well learn of
+old nurse! Why, mother, she can’t pronounce French, and she never heard
+of terminology, and she thinks Edward I. killed the bards!” For the
+girls had spent a day or two with their cousins in the course of the
+move.
+
+“Yes,” broke in Barbara, “and she won’t let Essie and Ellie teach their
+dolls their lessons! She was quite cross when I was showing them how,
+and said it was all nonsense when I told her I heard you say that I
+half taught myself by teaching Juliet. And so the poor dolls have no
+advantages, mother, and are quite stupid for want of education,” pursued
+the little girl, indignantly. “They aren’t people, but only dolls, and
+Essie and Ellie can’t do anything with them but just dress them and take
+them out walking.”
+
+“That’s what they would wish to make Babie like!” said her elder sister.
+
+“But you’ll not let anybody teach me but you, dear, dear Mother Carey,”
+ entreated the child.
+
+“No, indeed, my little one.” And just then the boys came rushing in to
+their evening meal, full of the bird’s nest that they had been visiting
+in their uncle’s field, and quite of opinion that Kenminster was “a
+jolly place.”
+
+“And then,” added Jock, “we got the garden engine, and had such fun, you
+don’t know.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bobus, “till you sent a whole cataract against the house,
+and that brought out her Serene Highness!”
+
+The applicability of the epithet set the whole family off into a laugh,
+and Jock further made up a solemn face, and repeated--
+
+
+          “Buff says Buff to all his men,
+           And I say Buff to you again.
+           Buff neither laughs nor smiles,
+           But carries his face
+           With a very good grace.”
+
+
+It convulsed them all, and the mother, recovering a little, said, “I
+wonder whether she ever can laugh.”
+
+“Poor Aunt Ellen!” said Babie, in all her gravity; “she is like King
+Henry I. and never smiled again.”
+
+And with more wit than prudence, Mrs. Buff, her Serene Highness, Sua
+Serenita, as Janet made it, became the sobriquets for Aunt Ellen, and
+were in continual danger of oozing out publicly. Indeed the younger
+population at Kencroft probably soon became aware of them, for on the
+next half-holiday Jock crept in with unmistakable tokens of combat about
+him, and on interrogation confessed, “It was Johnnie, mother. Because
+we wanted you to come out walking with us, and he said ‘twas no good
+walking with one’s mother, and I told him he didn’t know what a really
+jolly mother was, and that his mother couldn’t laugh, and that you said
+so, and he said my mother was no better than a tomboy, and that she said
+so, and so--”
+
+And so, the effects were apparent on Jock’s torn and stained collar and
+swelled nose.
+
+But the namesake champions remained unconvinced, except that Johnnie may
+have come over to the opinion that a mother no better than a tomboy was
+not a bad possession, for the three haunted the “Folly” a good deal, and
+made no objection to their aunt’s company after the first experiment.
+
+Unfortunately, however, their assurances that their mother could laugh
+as well as other people were not so conclusive but that Jock made it his
+business to do his utmost to produce a laugh, in which he was apt to be
+signally unsuccessful, to his own great surprise, though to that of no
+one else. For instance, two or three days later, when his mother and
+Allen were eating solemnly a dinner at Kencroft, by way of farewell ere
+Allen’s return to Eton, an extraordinarily frightful noise was heard
+in the poultry yard, where dwelt various breeds of Uncle Robert’s prize
+fowls.
+
+Thieves--foxes--dogs--what could it be? Even the cheese and celery were
+deserted, and out rushed servants, master, mistress, and guests, being
+joined by the two girls from the school-room; but even then Carey
+was struck by the ominous absence of boys. The poultry house door was
+shut--locked--but the noises within were more and more frightful--of
+convulsive cocks and hysterical hens, mingled with human scufflings and
+hushes and snortings and snigglings that made the elders call out in
+various tones of remonstrance and reprobation, “Boys, have done! Come
+out! Open the door.”
+
+A small hatch door was opened, a flourish on a tin trumpet was heard,
+and out darted, in an Elizabethan ruff and cap, a respectable Dorking
+mother of the yard, cackling her displeasure, and instantly dashing
+to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard,
+decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box,
+squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll’s hat
+on her unwilling head, &c., &c.
+
+The outsiders were choking with breathless surprise at first, then the
+one lady began indignantly to exclaim, “Now, boys! Have done--let
+the poor things alone. Come out this minute.” The other fairly reeled
+against the wall with laughter, and Janet and Jessie screamed at each
+fresh appearance, till they made as much noise as the outraged chickens,
+though one shrieked with dismay, the other with diversion. At last the
+Colonel, slower of foot than the rest, arrived on the scene, just as the
+pride of his heart, the old King Chanticleer of the yard, made his exit,
+draped in a royal red paper robe and a species of tinsel crown, out
+of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and
+stupefied, having evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched
+rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and
+flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and
+accoutred as a page.
+
+Colonel Brownlow’s severe command to open the door was not resisted for
+one moment, and forth rushed a cloud of dust and feathers, a quacking
+waggling substratum of ducks, and a screaming flapping rabble of
+chickens, behind whom, when the mist cleared, were seen, looking as
+if they had been tarred and feathered, various black and grey figures,
+which developed into Jock, Armine, Robin, Johnny, and Joe. Jock, the
+foremost, stared straight up in his aunt’s face, Armine ran to his
+mother with--“Did you see the old king, mother, and his little page?
+Wasn’t it funny--”
+
+But he was stopped by the sight of his uncle, who laid hold of his
+eldest son with a fierce “How dare you, sir?” and gave him a shake
+and blow. Robin stood with a sullen look on his face, and hands in his
+pockets, and his brothers followed suit. Armine hid his face in his
+mother’s dress, and burst out crying; but Jock stepped forth and, with
+that impish look of fearlessness, said, “I did it, Uncle Robert! I
+wanted to make Aunt Ellen laugh. Did she laugh, mother?” he asked in so
+comical and innocent a manner that, in spite of her full consciousness
+of the heinousness of the offence, and its general unluckiness, Mother
+Carey was almost choked. This probably added to the gravity with which
+the other lady decreed with Juno-like severity, “Robin and John must be
+flogged. Joe is too young.”
+
+“Certainly,” responded the Colonel; but Caroline, instead of, as they
+evidently expected of her, at once offering up her victim, sprang
+forward with eager, tearful pleadings, declaring it was all Jock’s
+fault, and he did not know how naughty it was--but all in vain. “Robert
+knew. He ought to have stopped it,” said the Colonel. “Go to the study,
+you two.”
+
+Jock did not act as the generous hero of romance would have done, and
+volunteer to share the flogging. He cowered back on his mother, and
+put his arm round her waist, while she said, “Jock told the truth, so
+I shall not ask you to flog him, Uncle Robert. He shall not do such
+mischief again.”
+
+“If he does,” said his uncle, with a look as if her consent would not be
+asked to what would follow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. -- THE FOLLY.
+
+
+
+     There will we sit upon the rocks,
+     And see the shepherds feed their flocks
+     By summer rivers, by whose falls
+     Melodious birds sing madrigals.--Marlowe.
+
+
+
+“How does my little schoolfellow get on?” asked Mary Ogilvie, when she
+had sat down for her first meal with her brother in her summer holidays.
+
+“Much as Ariel did in the split pine, I fancy.”
+
+“For shame, David! I’m afraid you are teaching her to see Sycorax and
+Caliban in her neighbours.”
+
+“Not I! How should I ever see her! Do you hear from her?”
+
+“Sometimes; and I heard of her from the Actons, who had an immense
+regard for her husband, who, they say, was a very superior man.”
+
+“It is hardly necessary to be told so.”
+
+“They mean to take lodgings somewhere near here this next month, and
+see what they can do to cheer her in her present life, which must be the
+greatest possible contrast to her former one. Do you wish to set out on
+our expedition before August, Davie? I should like you to see them.”
+
+“By all means let us wait for them. Indeed I should not be at liberty
+till the last week in July.”
+
+“And how go the brains of Kenminster? You look enlivened since last time
+I saw you.”
+
+“It is the infusion the brains have received. That one woman has made
+more difference to the school than I could have done in ten years.”
+
+“You find her boys, at any rate, pupils worth teaching.”
+
+“More than that. Of course it is something to have a fellow capable of
+ideas before one; but besides that, lads who had gone on contentedly at
+their own level have had to bestir themselves not to be taken down by
+him. When he refused to have it forced upon him that study was not the
+thing at Kenminster, they found the only way to make him know his place
+was to keep theirs, and some of them have really found the use of their
+wits, and rejoice in them. Even in the lower form, the Colonel’s second
+boy has developed an intellect. Then the way those boys bring their work
+prepared has raised the standard!”
+
+“I heard something of that on my way.”
+
+“You did?”
+
+“Yes; two ladies were in full career of talk when the train stopped at
+the Junction, and I heard--‘I am always obliged to spend one hour every
+evening seeing that Arthur knows his lessons. So troublesome you know;
+but since that Mrs. Joseph Brownlow has come, she helps her boys so with
+their home-work that the others have not a chance if one does not look
+to it oneself.’ Then it appeared that she told Mr. Ogilvie it wasn’t
+fair, and that he would give her no redress.”
+
+“Absurd woman! It is not a matter of unfairness, as I told her. They
+don’t get help in sums or exercises; they only have grammar to learn and
+construing to prepare, and all my concern is that it should be got up
+thoroughly. If their mothers help them, so much the better.”
+
+“The mothers don’t seem to think so. However, she branched off into
+incredulity that Mrs. Joe Brownlow could ever really teach her children
+anything, for she was always tramping all over the country with them at
+all hours of the day and night. She has met her herself, with all those
+boys after her, three miles from home, in a great straw hat, when her
+husband hadn’t been dead a year.”
+
+“I’m sure she is always in regulation veils, and all the rest of it, at
+Church, if that’s what you ladies want.”
+
+“But the crown of the misdoings seemed to be that she had been met at
+some old castle, sacred to picnics, alone with her children--no party
+nor anything. I could not make out whether the offence consisted in
+making the ruin too cheap, or in caring for it for its own sake, and not
+as a lion for guests.”
+
+“The latter probably. She has the reputation of being very affected!!!”
+
+“Poor dear! I heard that she was a great trial to dear Mrs. Brownlow,”
+ said Mary, in an imitative voice. “Why, do you know, she sometimes is
+up and out with her children before six o’clock in the morning; and then
+Colonel Brownlow went in one day at twelve o’clock, and found the whole
+family fast asleep on different sofas.”
+
+“The sensible way, too, to spend such days as these. To go out in the
+cool of the morning, and take a siesta, is the only rational plan!”
+
+“I’m afraid one must conform to one’s neighbours’ ways.”
+
+“Trust a woman for being conventional.”
+
+“I confess I did not like the tone in which my poor Carey was spoken
+of. I am afraid she can hardly have taken care enough not to be thought
+flighty.”
+
+“Mary! you are as absurd as the rest of them!”
+
+“Why? what have you seen of her?”
+
+“Nothing, I tell you, except once meeting her in the street, and once
+calling on her to ask whether her boy should learn German.” And David
+Ogilvie spoke with a vehemence that somewhat startled his sister.
+
+It was a July evening, and though the walls of the schoolmaster’s house
+were thick, it was sultry enough within to lead the brother and sister
+out immediately after dinner, looking first into the play-fields, where
+cricket was of course going on among the bigger boys, but where Mary
+looked in vain for her friend’s sons.
+
+“No, they are not much of cricketers,” said her brother; “they are small
+for it yet, and only take their turn in watching-out by compulsion. I
+wish the senior had more play in him. Shall we walk on by the river?”
+
+So they did, along a paved causeway which presently got clear of the
+cottages and gables of old factories, and led along, with the brightly
+glassy sheet of water on one side, and the steep wooded slope on the
+other, loose-strife and meadow-sweet growing thickly on the bank,
+amid long weeds with feathery tops, rich brown fingers of sedge, and
+bur-reeds like German morgensterns, while above the long wreaths of
+dog-roses projected, the sweet honeysuckle twined about, and the white
+blossoms of traveller’s joy hung in festoons from the hedge of the
+bordering plantation. After a time they came on a kind of glade, opening
+upwards though the wood, with one large oak-tree standing alone in the
+centre, and behold! on the grass below sat or lay a company--Mrs. Joseph
+Brownlow in the midst, under the obnoxious mushroom-hat, reading aloud.
+Radiating from her were five boys, the biggest of all on his back, with
+his hat over his eyes, fast asleep; another cross-legged, with a basket
+between his knees, dividing his attention between it and the book; two
+more lying frog-like, with elbows on the ground, feet erected behind
+them, chin in hand, devouring the narrative with their eyes; the fifth
+wriggling restlessly about, evidently in search of opportunities of
+mischief or of tormenting tricks. Just within earshot, but sketching the
+picturesque wooden bridge below, sat one girl. The little one, with her
+youngest brother, was close at their mother’s feet, threading flowers
+to make a garland. It was a pretty sight, and so intent were most of the
+party on their occupations that they never saw the pair on the bank till
+Joe, the idler, started and rolled round with “Hollo!” when all turned,
+it may be feared with muttered growls from some of the boys; but Carey
+herself gave a cry of joy, ran down the bank like a girl, and greeted
+Mary Ogilvie with an eager embrace.
+
+“You are holding a Court here,” said the school-master.
+
+“We have had tea out here. It is too hot for indoors, and I am reading
+them the ‘Water Babies.’”
+
+“To a large audience, I see.”
+
+“Yes, and some of which are not quite sure whether it is fact or
+fiction. Come and sit down.”
+
+“The boys will hate us for breaking up their reading,” said Mary.
+
+“Why should not we listen!” said her brother.
+
+“Don’t disturb yourselves, boys; we’ve met before to-day.”
+
+Bobus and Jock were, however, on their feet, and Johnny had half risen;
+Robin lay still snoring, and Joe had retreated into the wood from the
+alarming spectacle of “the schoolmaster abroad.”
+
+After a greeting to the two girls, who comported themselves, according
+to their ages, as young ladies might be expected to do, the Ogilvies
+found accommodation on the roots of the tree, and listened. The “Water
+Babies” were then new, and Mr. Ogilvie had never heard them. Luckily the
+reading had just come to the history of the “Do as You Likes,” and the
+interview between the last of the race and M. Du Chaillu diverted him
+beyond measure. He laughed so much over the poor fellow’s abortive
+attempt to say “Am I not a man and a brother?” that his three scholars
+burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of
+him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion,
+sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured tone
+what was the row?
+
+“‘The Last of the Do as You Likes,’” said Armine.
+
+“Oh I say--isn’t it jolly,” cried Jock, beating his breast
+gorilla-fashion and uttering a wild murmur of “Am I not a man and
+a brother?” then tumbling head over heels, half in ecstasy, half in
+imitation of the fate of the Do as You Like, setting everybody off into
+fits again.
+
+“It’s just what Robin is coming to,” observed Bobus, as his namesake
+stretched his arms and delivered himself of a waking howl; then suddenly
+becoming conscious of Mr. Ogilvie, he remained petrified, with one arm
+fully outstretched, the other still lifted to his head.
+
+“Never mind, Brownlow maximus,” said his master; “it was hardly fair to
+surprise you in private life, was it?”
+
+The boy made no answer, but scrambled up, sheepish and disconcerted; and
+indeed the sun was entirely down and the dew almost falling, so that the
+mother called to the young ones to gather up their things and come home.
+
+Such a collection! Bobus picked up a tin-case and basket full of
+flowers, interspersed with bottles of swimming insects. The trio and
+Armine shouldered their butterfly-nets, and had a distribution of
+pill-boxes and bottles, in some of which were caterpillars intended to
+live, in others butterflies dead (or dying, it may be feared) of laurel
+leaves. Babie had a mighty nosegay; Janet put up the sketch, which
+showed a good deal of power; and the whole troop moved up the slope to
+go home by the lanes.
+
+“What collectors you are!” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“For the museum,” answered Armine, eagerly.
+
+“Haven’t you seen our museum?” cried Barbara, who had taken his hand.
+“Oh, it is such a beauty! We have got an Orobanche major, only it is not
+dry yet.”
+
+“I’m afraid Babie likes fine words,” said her mother; “but our museum is
+a great amusement to us Londoners.”
+
+They all walked home together, talking merrily, and Mr. and Miss Ogilvie
+came in with them, on special entreaty, to share the supper--milk,
+fruit, bread and butter and cheese, and sandwiches, which was laid out
+on the round table in the octagon vestibule, which formed the lowest
+story of the tower. It was partaken of standing, or sitting at case on
+the window-seats, a form or two, an old carved chair, or on the stairs,
+the children ascending them after their meal, and after securing in
+their own fashion their treasures for the morrow. The two cousins had
+already bidden good-night at the gate and gone home, and the Ogilvies
+followed their example in ten minutes, Caroline begging Mary to come up
+to her as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was disposed of by school hours.
+
+“But you will be busy?” said Mary.
+
+“Never mind, I am afraid we are not very regular,” said Carey.
+
+It was by this time ten o’clock, and the two younger children were still
+to be heard shouting to one another up stairs about the leaves for their
+chrysalids. So when Mary came up the hill at half-past ten the next
+morning, she was the less surprised to find these two only just
+beginning breakfast, while their mother was sitting at the end of the
+table knitting, and hearing Janet repeat German poetry. The boys had
+long been in school.
+
+Caroline jumped up and threw her arms round Mary’s neck, declaring that
+now they would enjoy themselves. “We are very late,” she added, “but
+these late walks make the little people sleep, and I think it is better
+for them than tossing about, hot and cross.”
+
+Mary was rather entertained at this new code, but said nothing, as Carey
+pointed out to the children how they were to occupy themselves under
+Janet’s charge, and the work they had to do showed that for their age
+they had lost no time.
+
+The drawing-room showed indeed a contrast to the chaotic state in which
+it had been left. It was wonderfully pleasant-looking. The windows of
+the deep bay were all open to the lawn, shaded with blinds projecting
+out into the garden, where the parrot sat perched on her pole; pleasant
+nooks were arranged in the two sides of the bay window, with light
+chairs and small writing-tables, each with its glass of flowers; the
+piano stood across the arc, shutting off these windows into almost a
+separate room; low book-cases, with chiffonier cupboards and marble
+tops, ran round the walls, surmounted with many artistic ornaments.
+The central table was crowned with a tall glass of exquisitely-arranged
+grasses and wild flowers, and the choice and graceful nicknacks round it
+were such as might be traced to a London life in the artist world, and
+among grateful patients.
+
+Brackets with vases and casts here and there projected from the walls,
+and some charming crayons and water-colours hung round them. The
+plastered walls had already been marked out in panels, and a growth of
+frescoes of bulrushes, ivy, and leaves of all kinds was beginning to
+overspread them, while on a nearer inspection the leaves proved to be
+fast becoming peopled with living portraits of butterflies and other
+insects; indeed Mary started at finding herself in, as she thought,
+unpleasant proximity to a pair of cockchafers.
+
+“Ah! I tell the children that we shall be suspected of putting those
+creatures there as a trial to the old ladies’ nerves,” said Caroline,
+laughing.
+
+“I confess they are startling to those who don’t like creeping things!
+Have you many old ladies, Carey?”
+
+“Not very many. I fancy they don’t take to me more than I take to them,
+so we are mutually satisfied.”
+
+“But is that a good thing?” said Mary anxiously.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Carey, indifferently. “At least I do know,” she
+added, “that I always used to be told I didn’t try to make small talk,
+and I can do it less than ever now that it is the smallest of small, and
+my heart faints from it. Oh Mary!”
+
+“My poor dear Caroline! But you say that you were told you ought to do
+it?”
+
+“Well, yes. Dear granny wished it; but I think that was rather with a
+view to Joe’s popularity, and we haven’t any patients to think of now. I
+should think the less arrant gossip the children heard, the better.”
+
+“But is it well to let them despise everybody?”
+
+“Then the less they see of them, the better!”
+
+“For shame, Carey!”
+
+“Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty. I do feel naughtier now than
+ever I did in my life; but I can’t help it! It just makes me mad to
+be worried or tied down,” and she pushed back her hair so that her
+unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the pin
+that held it.
+
+“Oh, that wretched cap!” she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going
+to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the pin
+became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary’s quiet hand to set it
+to rights; “it’s just an emblem of all the rest of it; I wouldn’t
+wear it another day, but that I’m afraid of Ellen and Robert, and it
+perfectly drives me wild. And I know Joe couldn’t have borne to see me
+in it.” At the Irishism of which she burst out laughing, and laughed
+herself into the tears that had never come when they were expected of
+her.
+
+Mary caressed and soothed her, and told her she could well guess it was
+sadder to her now than even at first.
+
+“Well, it is,” said Carey, looking up. “If one was sent out to sea in a
+boat, it wouldn’t be near so bad as long as one could see the dear
+old shore still, as when one had got out--out into the wide open--with
+nothing at all.”
+
+And she stretched out her hands with a dreary, yearning gesture into the
+vacant space, such as it went to her friend’s heart to see.
+
+“Ah! but there’s a haven at the end.”
+
+“I suppose there is,” said Carey; “but it’s a long way off, and there’s
+dying first, and when people want to begin about it, they get so
+conventional, and if there’s one thing above another that I can’t stand,
+it is being bored.”
+
+“My poor child!”
+
+“There, don’t be angry with me, because I’m telling you just what I am!”
+
+Before any more could be said Janet opened the door, saying, “Mother,
+Emma wants to see you.”
+
+“Oh! I forgot,” cried Carey, hurrying off, while Janet came forward to
+the guest in her grown-up way, and asked--
+
+“Have you been to the Water-Colour Exhibition, Miss Ogilvie?”
+
+“Yes; Mr. Acton took me one Saturday afternoon.”
+
+“Oh! then he would be sure to show you Nita Ray’s picture. I want so
+much to know how it strikes people.”
+
+And Janet had plunged into a regular conversation about exhibitions,
+pictures, artists, concerts, lectures, &c., before her mother came back,
+talking with all the eagerness of an exile about her native country. As
+a governess in her school-room, Miss Ogilvie had had little more than a
+key-hole view of all these things; but then what she had seen and heard
+had been chiefly through the Actons, and thus coincided with Janet’s own
+side of the world, and they were in full discussion when Caroline came
+back.
+
+“There, I’ve disposed of the butcher and baker!” she said. “Now we can
+be comfortable again.”
+
+Mary expected Janet to repair to her own lessons, or to listen to those
+scales which Babie might be heard from a distance playing; but she only
+appealed to her mother about some picture of last year, and sat down to
+her drawing, while the conversation on pictures and books continued in
+animated style. So far from sending her away, Mary fancied that Carey
+was rather glad to keep to surface matters, and to be prevented from
+another outbreak of feeling.
+
+The next interruption was from the children, each armed with a pile of
+open books on the top of a slate. Carey begged Mary to wait, and went
+outside the window with them, sitting down under a tree whence the
+murmured sounds of repetition could be heard, lasting about twenty
+minutes between the two, and then she returned, the little ones jumping
+on each side of her, Armine begging that Miss Ogilvie would come and see
+the museum, and Barbara saying that Jock wanted to help to show it off.
+
+“Well, run now and put your own corners tidy,” suggested their mother.
+“If Jock does not stay in the playground, he will come back in a quarter
+of an hour.”
+
+“And Mr. Ogilvie will come then. I invited him,” said Babie.
+
+At which Carey laughed incredulously; but Janet, observing that she must
+go and see that the children did not do more harm than good, walked off,
+and Mary said--
+
+“I should not wonder if he did act on the invitation.”
+
+“I hope he will. It would have only been civil in me to have asked him,
+considering that I have taken possession of you,” said Caroline.
+
+“I fully expect to see him on Miss Barbara’s invitation. Do you know,
+Carey, he says you have transformed his school.”
+
+“Translated it, like Bottom the Weaver.”
+
+“In the reverse direction. He says you have made the mothers see to
+their boys’ preparation, and wakened up the intellects.”
+
+“Have I? I thought I had only kept my own boys up to the mark. Yes, and
+there’s Johnny. Do you know, Mary, it is very funny, but that boy Johnny
+has adopted me. He comes after me everywhere like a shadow, and there’s
+nothing he won’t do for me, even learning his lessons. You see the poor
+boy has a good deal of native sense, Brownlow sense, and mind had been
+more stifled than wanting in him. Nobody had ever put things to him by
+the right end, and when he once let me do it for him, it was quite a
+revelation, and he has been so happy and prosperous that he hardly knows
+himself. Poor boy, there is something very honest and true about him,
+and so affectionate! He is a little like his uncle, and I can’t help
+being fond of him. Then Robin is just as devoted to Jock, though I can’t
+say the results are so very desirable, for Jock _is_ a monkey, I must
+confess, and it is irresistible to a monkey to have a bear that he can
+lead to do anything. I hear that Robin used to be the good boy of the
+establishment, and I am afraid he is not that now.”
+
+“But can’t you stop that?”
+
+“My dear, nobody could think of Jock’s devices so as to stop them, who
+had not his own monkey brain. Who would have thought of his getting the
+whole set to dress up as nigger singers, with black faces and banjoes,
+and coming to dance and sing in front of the windows?”
+
+“There wasn’t much harm in that.”
+
+“There wouldn’t have been if it had been only here. And, oh dear, the
+irresistible fun of Jock’s capering antics, and Rob moving by mechanism,
+as stiff and obedient as the giant porter to Flibberti-gibbet.” Carey
+stopped to laugh. “But then I never thought of their going on to present
+themselves to Ellen in the middle of a mighty and solemn dinner party!
+All the grandees, the county people (this in a deep and awful voice),
+sitting up in their chignons of state, in the awful pause during the
+dishing-up, when these five little wretches, in finery filched from the
+rag bag, appear on the smooth lawn, mown and trimmed to the last extent
+for the occasion, and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close to
+the open window. Ellen rises with great dignity. I fancy I can see her,
+sending out to order them off. And then, oh dear, Jock only hopping more
+frantically than ever round the poor man the hired waiter, who, you must
+know, is the undertaker’s chief mute, and singing--
+
+
+          ‘Leedle, leedle, leedle,
+           Our cat’s dead.
+           What did she die wi’?
+           Wi’ a sair head.
+           A’ you that kenned her
+           While she was alive,
+           Come to her burying
+           At half-past five.’
+
+
+And then the Colonel, bestirring himself to the rescue, with ‘go away
+boys, or I’ll send for the police.’ And then the discovery, when in the
+height of his wrath, Jock perked up, and said, ‘I thought you would
+like to have the ladies amused, Uncle Robert.’ He did box his ears
+then--small blame to him, I must say. I could stand that better than the
+jaw Ellen gave us afterwards. I beg your pardon, Mary, but it really
+was one. She thinks us far gone in the ways of depravity, and doesn’t
+willingly let her little girls come near us.”
+
+“Isn’t that a pity?”
+
+“I don’t know; Essie and Ellie have feelings in their clothes, and don’t
+like our scrambling walks, and if Ellie does get allured by our wicked
+ways, she is sure to be torn, or splashed, or something, and we have
+shrieks and lamentations, and accusations of Jock and Joe, amid floods
+of tears; and Jessie comes to the rescue, primly shaking her head and
+coaxing her little sister, while she brings out a needle and thread. I
+can’t help it, Mary. It does aggravate me to look at her!”
+
+Mary could only shake her head with a mixture of pity, reproof, and
+amusement, and as a safer subject could not help asking--
+
+“By the bye, why do you confuse your friends by having all the two
+families named in pairs?”
+
+“We didn’t know we were going to live close together,” said Carey. “But
+the fact is that the Janets were named after their fathers’ only sister,
+who seems to have been an equal darling to both. We would have avoided
+Robert, but we found that it would have been thought disrespectful not
+to call the boy after his grandfather and uncle.”
+
+“And Bobus _is_ a thoroughly individual name.”
+
+“Then Jock’s name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the
+second, but it wouldn’t stick. Names won’t sometimes, and there’s a
+formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He
+got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But Joseph
+Armine’s second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it; and
+Barbara was dear grandmamma’s own name, and quite our own.”
+
+Therewith Babie rushed downstairs with “He’s coming, Mother Carey,” and
+darted out at the house door to welcome Mr. Ogilvie at the gate, and
+lead him in in triumph, attended by her two brothers. The two ladies
+laughed, and Carey said, with a species of proud apology--
+
+“Poor children, you see they have been used to be noticed by clever
+men.”
+
+“Mr. Ogilvie is come to see our museum,” cried Babie, in her patronising
+tone, jumping and dancing round during his greetings and remarks that
+he hoped he might take advantage of her invitation; he had been thinking
+whether to begin a school museum would not be a very good thing for the
+boys, and serve to open their minds to common things. On which, before
+any one else could answer, the parrot, in a low and sententious tone,
+observed, “Excellent.”
+
+“There, you have the consent of your first acquaintance,” said Carey,
+while the bird, excited by one of those mysterious likings that her
+kind are apt to take, held her grey head to Mr. Ogilvie to be scratched,
+chuckling out, “All Mother Carey’s chickens,” and Janet exclaimed--
+
+“That’s an adoption.”
+
+The troop were climbing the stairs to the third story, where Armine and
+Bobus were already within an octagon room, corresponding to the little
+hall below, and fitted with presses and shelves, belonging to the
+store-room of the former thrifty inhabitant; but now divided between
+the six children, Mother Carey, as Babie explained, being “Mine own, and
+helping me more specially.”
+
+The table was likewise common to all; but one of the laws of the place
+was that everything left there after twelve o’clock on Saturday was,
+as Babie’s little mouth rolled out the long words, “confiscated by the
+inexorable Eumenides.”
+
+“And who are they?” asked Mr. Ogilvie, who was always much entertained
+by the simplicity with which the little maid uttered the syllables as if
+they were her native speech.
+
+“Janet, and Nurse, and Emma,” she said; “and they really are
+inex-o-rable. They threw away my snail shell that a thrush had been
+eating, though I begged and prayed them.”
+
+“Yes, and my femur of a rabbit,” said Armine, “and said it was a
+nasty old bone, and the baker’s Pincher ate it up; but I did find my
+turtle-dove’s egg in the ash-heap, and discovered it over again, and you
+don’t see it is broken now; it is stuck down on a card.”
+
+“Yes,” said his mother, “it is wonderful how valuable things become
+precisely at twelve on Saturday.”
+
+Each had some department: Janet’s, which was geology, was the fullest,
+as she had inherited some youthful hoards of her father’s; Bobus’s,
+which was botany, was the neatest and most systematic. Mary thought at
+first that it did not suit him; but she soon saw that with him it was
+not love of flowers, but the study of botany. He pronounced Jock’s
+butterflies to be perfectly disgraceful.
+
+“You said you’d see to them,” returned Jock.
+
+“Yes, I shall take up insects when I have done with plants,” said Bobus,
+coolly.
+
+“And say, ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee’?” asked Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+Bobus looked as if he did not like it; but his mother shook her head
+at him as one who well deserved the little rebuke for self-sufficiency.
+There was certainly a wonderful winning way about her--there was a
+simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the
+cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder
+at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending
+household, now broken up.
+
+There was, too, the perception that, beneath the surface on which, like
+the children, she played so lightly, there were depths of sorrow that
+might not be stirred, which added a sweetness and pathos to all she said
+and did.
+
+Of many a choice curiosity the children said, in lowered tones of
+reverence, that “_he_ found it;” and these she would not allow to be
+passed over, but showed fondly off in all their best points, telling
+their story as if she loved to dwell upon it.
+
+Barbara, who had specially fastened herself on Mr. Ogilvie, according
+to the modern privileges of small girls, after having much amused him
+by doing the honours of her own miscellaneous treasury, insisted on
+exhibiting “Mother Carey’s studio.”
+
+Caroline tried to declare that this meant nothing deserving of so grand
+a name; it was only the family resort for making messes in. She never
+touched clay now, and there was nothing worth seeing; but it was in
+vain; Babie had her way; and they mounted to the highest stage of the
+pagoda, where the eaves and the twisted monsters that supported them
+were in close juxtaposition with the four windows.
+
+The view was a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town
+almost as if in a pit below, with a bird’s-eye prospect of the roofs,
+the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a
+great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups-and-downs of
+a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there,
+and village and town gleaming out white; a large house, “bosomed high in
+tufted trees;” a church-tower and spire, nestled on the hill-side, up
+to the steep grey hill with the tall land-mark tower, closing in the
+horizon--altogether, as Carey said, a thorough “allegro” landscape, even
+to “the tanned haycock in the mead.” But the summer sun made the place
+dazzling and almost uninhabitable, and the visitors, turning from the
+glare, could hardly see the casts and models that filled the shelves;
+nor was there anything in hand; so that they let themselves be hurried
+away to share the midday meal, after which Mr. Ogilvie and the boys
+betook themselves to the school, and Carey and her little ones to the
+shade of the garden-wall, to finish their French reading, while Mary
+wondered the less at the Kenminster ladies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. -- FLIGHTS.
+
+
+
+     Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like
+     tinkers at this time of night?  Is there no respect of
+     place, persons, nor time in you?--Twelfth-Night.
+
+
+The summer holidays not only brought home Allen Brownlow from Eton, but
+renewed his mother’s intercourse with several of her friends, who so
+contrived their summer outing as to “see how poor little Mrs. Brownlow
+was getting on,” and she hailed them as fragments of her dear old former
+life.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Acton came to a farmhouse at Redford, about a mile and a
+half off, where Mr. Acton was to lay up a store of woodland and home
+sketches, and there were daily meetings for walks, and often out-of-door
+meals. Mr. Ogilvie declared that he was thus much more rested than by a
+long expedition in foreign scenery, and he and his sister stayed on,
+and usually joined in the excursion, whether it were premeditated or
+improvised, on foot, into copse or glade, or by train or waggonette, to
+ruined abbey or cathedral town.
+
+Then came two sisters, whom old Mrs. Brownlow had befriended when
+the elder was struggling, as a daily governess, to provide home and
+education for the younger. Now, the one was a worthy, hard-working
+law-copier, the other an artist in a small way, who had transmogrified
+her name of Jane into Juanita or Nita, wore a crop, short petticoats,
+and was odd. She treated Janet on terms of equal friendship, and was
+thus a much more charming companion than Jessie. They always came into
+cheap sea-side lodgings in the vacation, but this year had settled
+themselves within ten minutes walk of the Folly, a title which became
+more and more applicable, in Kenminster eyes, to the Pagoda, and above
+all in those of its proper owner. Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in the calm
+dignity of the heiress, in a small way, of a good family, had a bare
+toleration for professional people, had regretted the vocation of her
+brother-in-law, and classed governesses and artists as “that kind of
+people,” so that Caroline’s association with them seemed to her
+absolute love of low company. She would have stirred up her husband
+to remonstrate, but he had seen more of the world than she had, and
+declared that there was no harm in Caroline’s friends. “He had met Mr.
+Acton in the reading-room, smoked pipes with him in the garden, and
+thought him a very nice fellow; his wife was the daughter of poor
+Cartwright of the Artillery, and a sensible ladylike woman as ever he
+saw.”
+
+With a resigned sigh at the folly of mankind, his wife asked, “How about
+the others? That woman with the hair? and that man with the velvet coat?
+Jessie says Jock told her that he was a mere play-actor!”
+
+“Jock told Jessie! Nonsense, my dear! The man is going out to China
+in the tea trade, and is come to take leave. I believe he did sing in
+public at one time; but Joe attended him in an illness which damaged
+his voice, and then he put him in the way of other work. You need not be
+afraid. Joe was one of the most particular men in the world in his own
+way.”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow could do no more. She had found that her little
+sister-in-law could be saucy, and personal squabbles, as she justly
+thought, had better be avoided. She could only keep Jessie from the
+contamination by taking her out in the carriage and to garden parties,
+which the young lady infinitely preferred to long walks that tired
+her and spoilt her dress; to talk and laughter that she could not
+understand, and games that seemed to her stupid, though everybody else
+seemed to find them full of fun. True, Allen and Bobus were always ready
+to push and pull her through, and to snub Janet for quizzing her; but
+Jessie was pretty enough to have plenty of such homage at her command,
+and not specially to prefer that of her cousins, so that it cost her
+little to turn a deaf ear to all their invitations.
+
+Her brothers were not of the same mind, for Rob was never happy out of
+sight of Jock. Johnny worshipped his aunt, and Joe was gregarious,
+so there was generally an accompanying rabble of six or seven boys,
+undistinguishable by outsiders, though very individual indeed in
+themselves and adding a considerable element of noise, high spirits, and
+mischievous enterprise. The man in the velvet coat, whose proper name
+was Orlando Hughes, was as much of a boy as any of them, and so could
+Mr. Acton be on occasion, thus giving a certain Bohemian air to their
+doings.
+
+Things came to a crisis on one of the dog-days. Young Dr. Drake had
+brought his bride to show to his old friend, and they were staying at
+the Folly, while a college friend of Mr. Ogilvie’s, a London curate, had
+come to see him in the course of a cathedral tour, and had stayed on,
+under the attraction of the place, taking the duty for a few Sundays.
+
+The weather was very sultry, forbidding exertion on the part of all save
+cricketers; but there was a match at Redford, and Kenminster was eager
+about it, so that all the boys, grown up or otherwise, walked over to
+see it, accompanied by Nita Ray with her inseparable Janet, meaning to
+study village groups and rustic sports. The other ladies walked in the
+cool to meet them at the Acton’s farmhouse, chiefly, it was alleged, in
+deference to the feelings of the bride, who could not brave the heat,
+but had never yet been so long separated from her bridegroom.
+
+The little boys, however, were alone to be found at the farm, reporting
+that their elders had joined the cricket supper. So Mrs. Acton made them
+welcome, and spread her cloth in the greensward, whence could be seen
+the evening glow on the harvest fields. Then there was a feast of
+cherries, and delicious farmhouse bread and butter, and inexhaustible
+tea, which was renewed when the cricketers joined them, and called for
+their share.
+
+Thus they did not set out on their homeward walk, over fragrant
+heath and dewy lanes, till just as the stars were coming out, and a
+magnificent red moon, scarcely past the full, was rising in the east,
+and the long rest, and fresh dewiness after the day’s heat, gave a
+delightful feeling of exhilaration.
+
+Babie went skipping about in the silvery flood of light, quite wild with
+delight as they came out on the heath, and, darting up to Mr. Ogilvie,
+asked if now he did not think they might really see a fairy.
+
+“Perhaps I do,” he said.
+
+“Oh where, where, show me?”
+
+“Ah! you’re the one that can’t see her.”
+
+“What, not if I did my eyes with that Euphrasia and Verbena
+officinalis?” catching tight hold of his hand, as a bright red light
+went rapidly moving in a straight line in the valley beneath their feet.
+
+“Robin Goodfellow,” said Mr. Hughes, overhearing her, and immediately
+began to sing--
+
+
+          “I know a bank”--
+
+
+Then the curate, as he finished, began to sing some other appropriate
+song, and Nita Ray and others joined in. It was very pretty, very
+charming in the moonlight, very like “Midsummer Night’s Dream;” but Mary
+Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear
+notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency;
+but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country
+walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots,
+was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good
+deal distressed, and could not, for very humanity’s sake, be left
+behind.
+
+“And after all,” thought Mary, as peals of the boys’ merry laughter came
+to her, and then again echoes of “spotted snakes with double tongue”
+ awoke the night echoes; “this is such a solitary place that it cannot
+signify, if they will only have the sense to stop when we get into the
+roads.”
+
+But they hadn’t. Mary heard a chorus from “Der Freischutz,” beginning
+just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been
+formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing
+shadows. That brought them into a lane darkened by its high hedges,
+where there was nothing for it but to let Miss Ray tightly grapple her
+arm, while the songs came further and further on the wind, and Mary
+felt the conviction that middle-aged spinsters must reckon on being
+forgotten, and left behind alike by brothers, sisters, and friends.
+
+Nor did they come up with the party till they found them waiting in the
+road, close to the Rays’ lodgings, having evidently just missed them,
+for Mr. Ogilvie and the clergyman were turning back to look for them
+when they were gladly hailed, half apologised to, half laughed at by
+a babel of voices, among which Nita’s was the loudest, informing her
+sister that she had lost the best bit of all, for just at the turn of
+the lane there had come on them Babie’s fiery-eyed monster, which had
+“burst on the path,” when they were in mid song, flashing over them,
+and revealing, first a horse, and then a brougham, wherein there sat
+the august forms of Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow, going home from a state
+dinner, the lady’s very marabouts quivering with horror.
+
+Mary stepped up to Nita, and gave her a sharp, severe grasp.
+
+“Hush! remember their boys are here,” she whispered; and, with an
+exaggerated gesture, Nita looked about her in affected alarm, and,
+seeing that none were near, added--
+
+“Thank you; I was just going to say it would be a study for Punch”
+
+“O do send it up, they’ll never know it,” cried Janet; but there
+Caroline interfered--
+
+“Hush, Janet, we ought to be at home. Don’t stand here, Armine is tired
+to death! 11.5 at the station to-morrow. Good-night.”
+
+They parted, and Mary and her brother turned away to their own home. If
+it had not been for the presence of the curate, Mary would have said a
+good deal on the way home. As it was, she was so silent as to inspire
+her brother with enough compunction for having deserted her, to make him
+follow her, when she went to her own room. “Mary, I am sorry we missed
+you,” he said; “I ought to have looked about for you more, but I
+thought--”
+
+“Nonsense, David; of course I do not mind that, if only I could have
+stopped all that singing.”
+
+“That singing; why it was very pretty, wasn’t it?”
+
+“Pretty indeed! Did it never occur to you what a scrape you may be
+getting that poor little thing into with her relations, and yourself,
+too?”
+
+David looked more than half-amused, and she proceeded more resolutely--
+
+“Well! what do you think must be Mrs. Brownlow’s opinion of what she saw
+and heard to-night? I blame myself exceedingly for not having urged the
+setting off sooner; but you must remember that what is all very well
+for holiday people, only here for a time, may do infinite mischief to
+residents.”
+
+David only observed, “I didn’t want all those men, if that’s what you
+mean. They made the noise, not I.”
+
+“No, nor I; but we swelled the party, and I am much disposed to believe
+that the best thing we can do is to take ourselves off, or do anything
+to break up this set.”
+
+He looked for a moment much disconcerted; but then with a little
+masculine superiority, answered--
+
+“Well, well, we’ll think over it, Mary. See how it appears to you
+to-morrow when you aren’t tired,” and then, with a smile and a kiss,
+bade her good-night.
+
+“So that’s what we get,” said Mary, to herself, half amused, half
+annoyed; “those men think it is all because one is left behind in the
+dark! David is the best boy in the world, but there’s not a man of them
+all who has a notion of what gets a woman into trouble! I believe he was
+rather gratified than otherwise to be found out on a lark. Well, I’ll
+talk to Clara; she will have some sense!”
+
+They were all to meet at the station the next morning, to go to an old
+castle, about an hour from Kenminster by railway; and they filled the
+platform, armed with sketching tools, sandwich baskets, botanical tins,
+and all other appliances; but when Mr. Ogilvie accosted Mrs. Joseph
+Brownlow, saying, “You have only half your boys,” she looked up, with
+a drolly guilty air, saying, “No, there’s an embargo on the other poor
+fellows.”
+
+They had just taken their seats, and the train was in motion, when a
+heated headlong boy came dashing over the platform, and clung to the
+door of the carriage, standing on the step. It was Johnny. Orlando
+Hughes, who was next the window, grasped his hands, and, in answer to
+the cries of dismay and blame that greeted him, he called out, “Yes,
+here I am; Rob and Joe couldn’t run so fast.”
+
+“Then you’ve got leave?” asked his aunt.
+
+Johnny’s grin said “No.”
+
+She looked up at Mr. Ogilvie in much vexation and anxiety.
+
+“Don’t say any more to him now. It might put him in great danger. Wait
+till the next station,” he said.
+
+It was a stopping train, and ten minutes brought a halt, when the guard
+came up in a fury, and Johnny found no sympathy for his bold attempt.
+Carey had no notion of fostering flat disobedience, and she told Johnny
+that unless he would promise to go home by himself and beg his father’s
+pardon, she should stay behind and go back with him, for she could
+have no pleasure in an expedition with him when he was behaving so
+outrageously.
+
+The boy looked both surprised and abashed. His affection for his aunt
+was very great, as for one who had opened to him the gates of a new
+world, both within himself and beyond himself. He would not hear of her
+giving up the expedition, and promised her with all his heart to walk
+home, and confess, “Though ‘twasn’t papa, but mamma!” were his last
+words, as they left him on the platform, crestfallen, but with a twinkle
+in his eye, and with the station-master keeping watch over him as a
+dangerous subject.
+
+Mr. Ogilvie said it would do the boy good for life; Caroline mourned
+over him a little, and wondered how his mother would treat him; and Mary
+sat and thought till the arrival at their destination, when they had
+to walk to the castle, dragging their appurtenances, and then to rouse
+their energies to spread out the luncheon.
+
+Then, when there had been the usual amount of mirth, mischief, and
+mishap, and the party had dispersed, some to sketch, some to scramble,
+some to botanize, the “Duck and Drake to spoon,”--as said the boys, Mary
+Ogilvie found a turfy nook where she could hold council with Mrs. Acton
+about their poor little friend, for whose welfare she was seriously
+uneasy.
+
+But Clara did not sympathise as much as she expected, having been much
+galled by Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s supercilious manner, and thinking the
+attempt to conciliate her both unworthy and useless.
+
+“Of course I do not mean that poor Carey should truckle to her,” said
+Mary, rather nettled at the implication; “but I don’t think these
+irregular hours, and all this roaming about the country at all times,
+can be well in themselves for her or the children.”
+
+“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country
+in the spring for the first time? If not, you never saw the prettiest
+and most innocent of intoxications. I had once to take the little
+Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that
+they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly
+mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells.
+I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to
+be done, of lessons. There was no sitting still on a fine morning. I was
+as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to
+be a prison.”
+
+“This is not spring,” said Mary.
+
+“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”
+
+“No doubt, but they cannot be good. They keep up flightiness and
+excitability.”
+
+“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”
+
+“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the
+clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary,
+rather severely. Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think
+me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection
+or her grief.”
+
+“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to
+sorrow without doing them harm.”
+
+“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only
+to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select--so as not to do
+herself harm with her relations--who after all must be more important to
+her than any outsiders.”
+
+The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the
+schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life;
+and Clara made answer--
+
+“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good
+Dr. Brownlow’s life.”
+
+“I am not sure of that. Blood is thicker than water.”
+
+“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very
+turbid.”
+
+“For shame, Clara.”
+
+“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to
+be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little
+country town Serene Highness! I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr.
+Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who
+can never be congenial.”
+
+“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy),
+should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”
+
+“To purr and lay eggs? My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly
+duckling, even in early life.”
+
+“Not after it had been among the swans? You vain Clara!”
+
+“I only lay claim to having seen the swans--not to having brought many
+specimens down here.”
+
+“Such as _that_ Nita, or Mr. Hughes?”
+
+“More like the other bird, certainly,” said Clara, smiling; “but Mary,
+if you had but seen what that house was. Joe Brownlow was one of those
+men who make themselves esteemed and noted above their actual position.
+He was much thought of as a lecturer, and would have had a much larger
+practice but for his appointment at the hospital. It was in the course
+of the work he had taken for a friend gone out of town that he caught
+the illness that killed him. His lectures brought men of science about
+him, and his practice had made him acquainted with us poor Bohemians, as
+you seem to think us. Old Mrs. Brownlow had means of her own, and theirs
+was quite a wealthy house among our set. Any of us were welcome to drop
+into five o’clock tea, or at nine at night, and the pleasantness and
+good influence were wonderful. The motherliness and yet the enthusiasm
+of Mrs. Brownlow made her the most delightful old lady I ever saw. I
+can’t describe how good she was about my marriage, and many more would
+say they owed all that was brightest and best in them to that house. And
+there was Carey, like a little sunshiny fairy, the darling of everyone.
+No, not spoilt--I see what you are going to say.”
+
+“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness
+ever could help making a pet of her.”
+
+“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable
+voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have
+what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the
+light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and
+she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother.
+I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and
+her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against
+her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”
+
+She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.
+
+Mary laughed a little.
+
+“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be
+unappreciated.”
+
+“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature
+of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on
+together.”
+
+Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less
+defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always
+protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she
+further tried to say was--
+
+“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock
+them?”
+
+“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment
+her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter,
+you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”
+
+Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if
+they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could
+not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of
+wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was
+prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to
+expostulate and deliver her testimony.
+
+There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by
+children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again
+they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in
+the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed
+immediately--no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a
+very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic
+wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs.
+Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking
+tea at the vicarage.
+
+Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next
+day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock
+in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out
+upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.
+
+“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous
+Armine exclaimed--
+
+“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”
+
+“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their
+mother; “then we break up our sitting.”
+
+“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a
+good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday;
+“but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”
+
+“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,”
+ she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly
+comic.
+
+“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.
+
+Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen
+to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult
+Sabbatarian question in her mind.
+
+“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know
+who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother,
+didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more,
+mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”
+
+But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered--
+
+“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get
+nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her
+guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr.
+Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the
+Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with
+company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad
+to read what keeps mine round me?”
+
+“Is it an old fashion with you?”
+
+“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And
+this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of
+the old sunshine.”
+
+It was a watery reflection indeed!
+
+“And could it not be with something that would be--”
+
+“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly
+futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”
+
+To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”
+
+“I did mean salt--very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.
+
+“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do
+what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism
+questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little
+fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when
+we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did,
+what would become of the boys?”
+
+“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that
+pass. There are things I wanted to say.”
+
+“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his
+thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”
+
+“Not if you heed him so little.”
+
+“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good
+little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not
+think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said
+I was not behaving decently!”
+
+“No more you are.”
+
+“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost
+hysterically.
+
+“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have
+happened.”
+
+“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll
+not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”
+
+“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”
+
+“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”
+
+“You are not like yourself, Carey.”
+
+“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was
+it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and
+make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always
+knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep
+up the old friendships and kindnesses--poor little fragments as they
+are--everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”
+
+“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once
+admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”
+
+“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little
+laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara
+Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to
+you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more
+innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s
+sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to
+hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you
+know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I
+scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”
+
+“It just shows how careful you should be.”
+
+“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with
+a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have
+they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”
+
+“Not the Coffinkeys, certainly,” said Mary; “but indeed, Carey, I myself
+was uncomfortable at that singing in the lanes at eleven at night.”
+
+“It wasn’t eleven,” said Carey, perversely.
+
+“Only 10.50--eh?”
+
+“But what was the possible harm in it?”
+
+“None at all in itself, only remember the harm it may do to the children
+for you to be heedless of people’s opinion, and to get a reputation for
+flightiness and doing odd things.”
+
+“I couldn’t be like the Coffinkey pattern any more than I could be tied
+down to a rope walk.”
+
+“But you need not do things that your better sense must tell you may
+be misconstrued. Surely there was a wish that you should live near the
+Colonel and be guided by him.”
+
+“Little knowing that his guidance would consist in being set at me by
+Ellen and the Coffinkeys!”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Mary, vexed enough to resume their old school-girl
+manners. “You know I am not set on by anybody, and I tell you that
+if you do not pull up in time, and give no foundation for ill-natured
+comments, your children will never get over it in people’s estimation.
+And as for themselves, a little steadiness and regularity would be much
+better for their whole dispositions.”
+
+“It is holiday time,” said Carey, in a tone of apology.
+
+“If it is only in holiday time--”
+
+“The country has always seemed like holiday. You see we used to go--all
+of us--to some seaside place, and be quite free there, keeping no
+particular hours, and being so intensely happy. I haven’t yet got over
+the feeling that it is only for a time, and we shall go back into the
+dear old home and its regular ways.” Then clasping her hands over her
+side as though to squeeze something back, she broke out, “O Mary, Mary,
+you mustn’t scold me! You mustn’t bid me tie myself to regular hours
+till this summer is over. If you knew the intolerable stab when I
+recollect that he is gone--gone--gone for ever, you would understand
+that there’s nothing for it but jumping up and doing the first thing
+that comes to hand. Walking it down is best. Oh! what will become of
+me when the mornings get dark, and I can’t get up and rush into those
+woods? Yes”--as Mary made some affectionate gesture--“I know I have gone
+on in a wild way, but who would not be wild who had lost _him_? And then
+they goad me, and think me incapable of proper feeling,” and she laughed
+that horrid little laugh. “So I am, I suppose; but feeling won’t go
+as other people think _proper_. Let me alone, Mary, I won’t damage the
+children. They are Joe’s children, and I know what he wanted and wished
+for them better than Robert or anybody else. But I must go my own way,
+and do what I can bear, and as I can, or--or I think my heart would
+break quite, and that would be worse for them than anything.”
+
+Mary had tears in her eyes, drawn forth by the vehement passion of grief
+apparent in the whole tone of her poor little friend. She had no doubts
+of Carey’s love, sorrow, or ability, but she did seriously doubt of her
+wisdom and judgment, and thought her undisciplined. However, she could
+say no more, for Nita Ray and Janet were advancing on them.
+
+The next day Caroline was in bed with one of her worst headaches. Mary
+felt that she had been a cruel and prim old duenna, and meekly bore
+Clara’s reproachful glances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. -- ELLEN’S MAGNUM BONUMS.
+
+
+
+     He put in his thumb
+     And he pulled out a plum,
+     And cried, “What a good boy am I!”
+                                  Jack Horner.
+
+
+Whether it were from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native
+good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down,
+and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her
+brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and
+Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who
+could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed
+unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the
+consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her
+Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection,
+and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange
+phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not
+equally discreet.
+
+With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first
+anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became
+possible to be more calm and quiet.
+
+Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was
+Janet’s inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that
+the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.
+
+“Without asking me!” she exclaimed, aghast.
+
+“I thought you heard us talking,” said Janet, so carelessly, that her
+mother put on her dignity.
+
+“I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted
+without reference to me.”
+
+“Come, now, Mother Carey,” said this modern daughter; “don’t be cross!
+We really didn’t know you weren’t attending.”
+
+“If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can
+never have thought over the matter!”
+
+“Haven’t I? When I am doing no good here, only wasting time?”
+
+“That is my fault. We will set to work at once steadily.”
+
+“But my classes and my lectures!”
+
+“You are not so far on but that our reading together will teach you
+quite as much as lectures.”
+
+Janet looked both sulky and scornful, and her mother continued--
+
+“It is not as if we had not modern books, and I think I know how to read
+them so as to be useful to you.”
+
+“I don’t like getting behindhand with the world.”
+
+“You can’t keep up even with the world without a sound foundation.
+Besides, even if it were more desirable, the Rays cannot afford to keep
+you, nor I to board you there.”
+
+“I am to pay them by helping Miss Ray in her copying.”
+
+“Poor Miss Ray!” exclaimed Carey, laughing. “Does she know your
+handwriting?”
+
+“You do not know what I can do,” said Janet, with dignity.
+
+“Yes, I hope to see it for myself, for you must put this notion of
+going to London out of your head. I am sure Miss Ray did not give the
+invitation--no, nor second it. Did she, Janet?”
+
+Janet blushed a little, and muttered something about Miss Ray being
+afraid of stuck-up people.
+
+“I thought so! She is a good, sensible person, whom grandmamma esteemed
+very much; but she has never been able to keep her sister in order;
+and as to trusting you to their care, or letting you live in their set,
+neither papa nor grandmamma would ever have thought of it.”
+
+“You only say so because her Serene Highness turns up her nose at
+everything artistic and original.”
+
+“Janet, you forget yourself,” Caroline exclaimed, in a tone which
+quelled the girl, who went muttering away; and no more was ever heard
+of the Ray proposal, which no doubt the elder sister at least had never
+regarded as anything but an airy castle.
+
+However, Caroline was convinced that the warnings against the intimacy
+had not been so uncalled for as she had believed; for she found, when
+she tried to tighten the reins, that her daughter was restive, and had
+come to think herself a free agent, as good as grown up. Spirit was not,
+however, lacking to Caroline, and when she had roused herself, she
+made Janet understand that she was not to be disregarded or disobeyed.
+Regular hours were instituted, and the difficulty of getting broken
+into them again was sufficient proof to her that she had done wrong in
+neglecting them. Armine yawned portentously, and declared that he could
+not learn except at his own times; and Babie was absolutely naughty more
+than once, when her mother suffered doubly in punishing her from the
+knowledge of whose fault it was. However, they were good little things,
+and it was not hard to re-establish discipline with them. After a little
+breaking in, Babie gave it to her dolls as her deliberate opinion that
+“Wegulawity settles one’s mind. One knows when to do what.”
+
+Janet could not well complain of the regularity in itself, though she
+did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all round
+to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in
+the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary,
+encyclopaedia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved
+almost uniformly to be against her whenever there was a difference of
+opinion, she had sense enough to perceive that she could still learn
+something at home.
+
+Moreover, after one or two of these references, Mr. Ogilvie offered to
+look over her Latin and Greek exercises, and hear her construe on his
+Saturday half-holidays, declaring that it would be quite a refreshment.
+Caroline was shocked at the sacrifice, but she could not bear to affront
+her daughter, so she consented; but as she thought Janet was not old
+enough to need a chaperon, and as her boys did want her, she was hardly
+ever present at the lessons.
+
+Moreover, Mr. Ogilvie had a lecturer from London to give weekly lectures
+on physical science to his boys, and opened the doors to ladies. This
+was a great satisfaction, chiefly for the sake of Bobus and Jock, but
+also for Janet’s and her mother’s. The difficulty was to beat up for
+ladies enough to keep one another in countenance; but happily two
+families in the country, and one bright little bride in the town,
+were found glad to open their ears, so that Ellen had no just cause of
+disapproval of the attendance of her sister and niece.
+
+Ellen had more cause to sigh when Michaelmas came, and for the first
+time taught poor Carey what money matters really meant. Throughout her
+married life, her only stewardship had concerned her own dress and
+the children’s; Mrs. Brownlow’s occasional plans of teaching her
+housekeeping had always fallen through, Janet being always her
+grandmamma’s deputy.
+
+Thus Janet and nurse had succeeded to the management when poor Carey was
+too ill and wretched to attend to it; and it had gone on in their hands
+at the Pagoda. Janet was pleased to be respected accordingly by
+her aunt, who always liked her the best, in spite of her much worse
+behaviour, for were not her virtues her own, and her vices her mother’s?
+
+Caroline had paid the weekly books, and asked no questions, until the
+winding up of the executor’s business; and the quarterly settlement of
+accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was
+just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as
+bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who
+could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for
+breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living
+at much less expense than in London, and there had been no outgoings
+worth mentioning for dress or journeys. What were they to do? Surely
+they could not live upon less! Was it her fault?
+
+She was so much distressed, that the good-natured Colonel pitied her,
+and answered kindly--
+
+“My good little sister, you were inexperienced. You will do better
+another year.”
+
+“But there’s nothing to go on upon!”
+
+He reminded her of the rent for the London house, and the dividends that
+must soon come in.
+
+“Then it will be as bad as ever! How can we live more cheaply than we
+do?”
+
+“Ellen is an excellent manager, and you had better consult her on the
+scale of your expenditure.”
+
+Caroline’s spirit writhed, but before she had time to say anything, or
+talk to Janet, the Colonel had heard his excellent housewife’s voice,
+and called her into the council. She was as good as possible, too
+serenely kind to manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of
+her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so
+dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and
+dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household
+books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week
+in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse’s
+self-taught writing--
+
+          “Man......  Glas of beare. 1d.
+           Creme........... 3d.”
+
+For had not the Colonel’s wife warned against the endless hospitality
+of glasses of beer to all messengers; and had not unlimited cream with
+strawberries and apple-tarts been treated as a kind of spontaneous
+luxury produced at the Belforest farm agent’s? To these, and many other
+small matters, Caroline was quite relieved to plead guilty, and to
+promise to do her best by personal supervision; and Ellen set herself
+to devise further ways of reduction, not realising how hopeless it is to
+prescribe for another person’s household difficulties. It is not in the
+nature of things that such advice should be palatable, and the proverb
+about the pinching of the shoe is sure to be realised.
+
+“Too many servants,” said prudence. “If old nurse must be provided
+for--and she ought to have saved enough to do without--it would be much
+better to pension her off, or get her into an almshouse.”
+
+Caroline tried to endure, as she made known that she viewed nurse as a
+sacred charge, about whom there must be no question.
+
+Ellen quietly said--
+
+“Then it is no use to argue, but she must be allowed no more discretion
+in the housekeeping.”
+
+“No, I shall do that myself,” said Caroline.
+
+“An extravagant cook.”
+
+“That may be my fault. I will try to judge of that.”
+
+“Irregular hours.”
+
+“They shall end with the holidays.”
+
+There was still another maid, whom Ellen said was only kept to wait on
+nurse, but who, Caroline said, did all their needlework, both making and
+mending.
+
+“That,” said Ellen, “I should have thought you and Janet could do. I do
+nearly all our work with the girls’ help; I am happy to say that Jessie
+is an excellent needlewoman, and Essie and Ellie can do something. I
+only direct the nursery maid; I never trust anything to servants.”
+
+“I could never bear not to trust people,” said Caroline.
+
+Ellen sighed, believing that she would soon be cured of that; and Carey
+added--
+
+“On true principles of economy, surely it is better that Emma, who knows
+how, should mend the clothes, than that I should botch them up in any
+way, when I can earn more than she costs me!”
+
+“Earn!”
+
+“Yes; I can model, and I can teach. Was I not brought up to it?”
+
+“Yes, but now it is impossible! It is not a larger income that you want,
+but proper attention to details in the spending of it, as I will show
+you.”
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Brownlow, in her neat figures, built up a pretty little
+economical scheme, based on a thorough knowledge of the subject.
+Caroline tried to follow her calculations, but a dreaminess came over
+her; she found herself saying “Yes,” without knowing what she was
+assenting to; and while Ellen was discoursing on coals and coke, she was
+trying to decide which of her casts she could bear to offer for sale,
+and going off into the dear old associations connected with each,
+so that she was obliged at the end, instead of giving an unqualified
+assent, to say she would think it over; and Ellen, who had marked
+her wandering eye, left off with a conviction that she had wasted her
+breath.
+
+Certainly she was not prepared for the proposal with which Mother Carey
+almost rushed into the room the next day, just as she was locking up
+her wine, and the Colonel lingering over his first glance at the day’s
+Times.
+
+“I know what to do! Miss James is not coming back? And you have not
+heard of any one? Then, if you would only let me teach your girls with
+mine! You know that is what I really can do. Yes, indeed, I would be
+regular. I always was. You know I was, Robert, till I came here, and
+didn’t quite know what I was about; and I have been regular ever since
+the end of the holidays, and I really can teach.”
+
+“My dear sister,” edged in the Colonel, as she paused for breath, “no
+one questions your ability, only the fitness of--”
+
+“I had thought over two things,” broke in Caroline again. “If you don’t
+like me to have Jessie, and Essie, and Ellie, I would offer to prepare
+little boys. I’ve been more used to them than to girls, and I know
+Mr. Ogilvie would be glad. I could have the little Wrights, and Walter
+Leslie, and three or four more directly, but I thought you might like
+the other way better.”
+
+“I can see no occasion for either,” said Ellen. “You need no increase in
+income, only to attend to details.”
+
+“And I had rather do what I can--than what I can’t,” said Caroline.
+
+“Every lady should understand how to superintend her own household,”
+ said her Serene Highness.
+
+“Granted; oh, granted, Ellen! I’m going to superintend with all my might
+and main, but I don’t want to be my own upper servant, and I know I
+should make no hand of it, and I had much rather earn something by my
+wits. I can do it best in the way I was trained; and you know it is what
+I have been used to ever since my own children were born.”
+
+Ellen heaved a sigh at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the
+dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the
+bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household. Here was
+poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been
+educated for a governess!
+
+The Colonel, wanting to finish his Times in peace, looked up and said,
+with the gracious tone he always used to his brother’s wife--
+
+“My good little sister, it is very praiseworthy in you to wish to exert
+yourself, and very kind and proper to desire to begin at home, but you
+must allow us a little time to consider.”
+
+She took this as a hint to retreat; and her Serene Highness likewise
+feeling it a dismissal, tried at once to obviate all ungraciousness by
+saying, “We are preserving our magnum bonums, Caroline dear; I will send
+you some.”
+
+“Magnum bonum!” gasped Caroline, hearing nothing but the name. “Do you
+know--?”
+
+“I know the recipe of course, and can give you an excellent one. I will
+come over by-and-by and explain it to you.”
+
+Caroline stood confounded. Had Joe revealed all to his brother? Was
+it to be treated as a domestic nostrum? “Then you know what the magnum
+bonum is?” she faltered.
+
+“Are you asking as a philosopher,” said the Colonel, amused by her tone
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, Colonel,” said his wife. “I offered
+Caroline a basket of magnum bonums for preserving, and one would think I
+had said something very extraordinary.”
+
+“Perhaps it is my cockney ignorance,” said Caroline, beginning to
+breathe freely, and thinking it would have been less oppressive if
+Sua Serenita would have either laughed or scolded, instead of gravely
+leading her past the red-baize door which shut out the lower regions
+to the room where white armies of jam-pots stood marshalled, and in the
+midst two or three baskets of big yellow plums, which awoke in her a
+remembrance of their name, and set her laughing, thanking, and preparing
+to carry home the basket.
+
+This, however, as she was instantly reminded, was not country-town
+manners. The gardener was to be sent with them, and Ellen herself would
+copy out the recipe, and by-and-by bring it, with full directions.
+
+Each lady felt herself magnanimously forbearing, as Caroline went
+home to the lessons, and Ellen repaired to her husband on his morning
+inspection of his hens and chickens.
+
+“Poor thing,” she said, “there are great allowances to be made for her.
+I believe she wishes to do right.”
+
+“She knows how to teach,” rejoined the Colonel. “Bobus is nearly at the
+head of the school, and Johnny has improved greatly since he has been so
+much with her.”
+
+“Johnny was always clever,” said his mother. “For my part, I had rather
+see them playing at good honest games than messing about with that
+museum nonsense. The boys did not do half so much mischief, nor destroy
+so many clothes, before they were always running down to the Pagoda. And
+as to this setting up a school, you would never consent to have Joe’s
+wife doing that!”
+
+“There is no real need.”
+
+“None at all, if she only would--if she only knew how to attend to her
+proper duties.”
+
+“At the same time, I should be very glad of an excuse for making her
+an advance, enough to meet the weekly bills, till her rent comes in, so
+that she may not begin a debt. Could you not send the girls to her for a
+few hours every day?”
+
+“That’s not so bad as her taking pupils, for nobody need know that she
+was paid for it,” said his wife, considering. “I don’t believe it will
+answer, or that she will ever keep to it steadily; but it can hardly
+hurt the children to try, if Jessie has an eye on Essie and Ellie. I
+will not have them brought on too fast, nor taught Latin, and all that
+poor little Babie is learning. I am sure it is dreadful to hear that
+child talk. I am always expecting that she will have water on the
+brain.”
+
+The decision, which really involved a sacrifice and a certain sense of
+risk on the part of these good people, was conveyed in a note, together
+with a recipe for the preservation of magnum bonums, and a very liberal
+cheque in advance for the first quarter of her three pupils, stipulating
+that no others should be admitted, that the terms should be kept secret,
+that the hours should be regular, and above all, that the pupils should
+not be forced.
+
+Caroline was touched and grateful, but could hardly keep a little satire
+out of her promise that Essie and Ellie should not be too precocious.
+She wrote her note of thanks, despatched it, and then, in the interest
+of some arithmetical problems which she was working with Janet, forgot
+everything else, till a sort of gigantic buzz was heard near at hand. A
+sudden thought struck her, and out she darted into the hall. There stood
+the basket in the middle of the table, just where the boys were wont to
+look for refections of fruit or cake when they tumbled in from school.
+Six boys and Babie hovered round, each in the act of devouring a
+golden-green, egg-like plum, and only two or three remained in the
+leaves at the bottom!
+
+“Oh, the magnum bonums!” she cried; and Janet came rushing out in dismay
+at the sound, standing aghast, but not exclaiming.
+
+“Weren’t they for us?” asked Bobus, the first to get the stone out of
+his mouth.
+
+“No; oh, no!” answered his mother, as well as laughter would permit;
+“they are your aunt’s precious plums, which she gave us as a great
+favour, and I was going to be so good and learn to preserve and pickle
+them! Oh, dear!”
+
+“Never mind, Mother Carey,” mumbled her nephew Johnny, with his stone
+swelling out his cheek, where it was tucked for convenience of speech;
+“I’ll go and get you another jolly lot more.”
+
+“You can’t,” grunted Robin; “they are all gathered.”
+
+“Then we’ll get them off the old tree at the bottom of the orchard,
+where they are just as big and yellow, and mamma will never know the
+difference.”
+
+“But they taste like soap!”
+
+“That doesn’t matter. She’d no more taste a magnum bonum, before it is
+all titivated up with sugar, than--than--than--”
+
+“Babie’s head with brain sauce,” gravely put in Bobus, as his cousin
+paused for a comparison. “It’s a wasting of good gifts to make jam of
+these, for jam is nothing but a vehicle for sugar.”
+
+“Then the grocer’s cart is jam,” promptly retorted Armine, “for I saw a
+sugarloaf come in one yesterday.”
+
+“Come on, then,” cried Jock, ripe for the mischief; “I know the tree!
+They are just like long apricots. Aunt Ellen will think her plums have
+been all a-growing!”
+
+“No, no, boys!” cried his mother, “I can’t have it done. To steal your
+aunt’s own plums to deceive her with!”
+
+“We always may do as we like with that tree,” said Johnny, “because they
+are so nasty, and won’t keep.”
+
+“How nice for the preserves!” observed Bobus.
+
+“They would do just as well to hinder Mother Carey from catching it.”
+
+“No, no, boys; I ought to ‘catch it!’ It was all my fault for not
+putting the plums away.”
+
+“You won’t tell of us,” growled Robin, between lips that he opened wide
+enough the next moment to admit one of three surviving plums.
+
+“If I tell her I left them about in the boys’ way, she will arrive at
+the natural conclusion.”
+
+“Do they call those things magnum bonum?” asked Janet, as the boys
+drifted away.
+
+“Yes,” said her mother, looking at her rather wonderingly; and
+adding, as Janet coloured up to the eyes, “My dear, have you any other
+association with the name?”
+
+Many a time Janet had longed to tell all she knew; now, when so good an
+opportunity had come, all was choked back by the strange leaden weight
+of reserve, and shame in that long reserve.
+
+She opened her eyes and stared as stupidly at her mother as Robin
+could have done, feeling an utter incapacity of making any reply; and
+Caroline, who had for a moment thought she understood, was baffled,
+and durst not pursue the subject for fear of betraying her own secret,
+deciding within herself that Janet might have caught up the word without
+understanding.
+
+They were interrupted the next minute, and Janet ran away, feeling that
+she had had an escape, yet wishing she had not.
+
+Caroline did effectually shelter her nephews under her general term “the
+boys,” and if their mother was not conciliated, their fellow-feeling
+with her was strengthened, as well as their sense of honour. Nay, Johnny
+actually spent the next half-holiday in walking three miles and back to
+his old nurse, whom he beguiled out of a basket of plums--hard, little
+blue things, as unlike magnum bonums as could well be, but which his
+aunt received as they were meant, as full compensation; nay, she took
+the pains to hunt up a recipe, and have them well preserved, in hopes of
+amazing his mother.
+
+It was indeed one difficulty that the two sisters-in-law had such
+different notions of the aim and end of economy. The income at Kencroft
+had not increased with the family, which numbered eight, for there were
+two little boys in the nursery, and it was only by diligent housewifery
+that Mrs. Brownlow kept up the somewhat handsome establishment she had
+started with at her marriage. Caroline felt that she neither could nor
+would have made herself such a slave to domestic details; yet this was
+life and duty and interest to Ellen. Where one sister would be unheeding
+of shabby externals, so that all her children might be free and on an
+equality, if they did not go beyond her, in all enjoyments, physical,
+artistic, or intellectual; the other toiled to keep up appearances, kept
+her children under restraint and in the background, and made all sorts
+of unseen sacrifices to the supposed duty of always having a handsome
+dinner for whomsoever the Colonel might bring in, and keeping the
+horses, carriages, and servants that she thought his due.
+
+But then Ellen had a husband, and, as Caroline sighed to herself, that
+made all the difference! and she was no Serene Highness, and had no
+dignity.
+
+The three girls from Kencroft did actually become pupils at the Folly,
+but the beginnings were not propitious, for, in her new teacher’s eyes,
+Jessie knew nothing accurately, but needed to have her foundations
+looked to--to practise scales, draw square boxes, and work the four
+first rules of arithmetic.
+
+“Simple things,” complained Jessie to her mother, “that I used to do
+when I was no bigger than Essie, and yet she is always teasing one about
+how and why! She wanted me to tell why I carried one.”
+
+“Have a little patience for the present, my dear, your papa wants to
+help her just at present, and after this autumn we will manage for you
+to have some real good music lessons.”
+
+“But I don’t like wasting time over old easy things made difficult,”
+ sighed Jessie.
+
+“It is very tiresome, my dear; but your papa wishes it, and you see,
+poor thing, she can’t teach you more than she knows herself; and while
+you are there, I am sure it is all right with Essie and Ellie.”
+
+“She does not teach them a bit like Miss James,” said Jessie. “She makes
+their sums into a story, and their spelling lessons too. It is like a
+game.”
+
+Indeed, Essie and Ellie were so willing to go off to their lessons every
+morning, that their mother often thought it could not be all right,
+and that the progress, which they undoubtedly made, must be by some
+superficial trick; but as their father had so willed it, she submitted
+to the present arrangement, deciding that “poor Caroline was just able
+to teach little children.”
+
+The presence of Essie and Ellie much assisted in bringing Babie back to
+methodical habits; nor was she, in spite of her precocious intelligence,
+too forward in the actual drill of education to be able to work with her
+little cousins.
+
+The incongruous elements were the two elder girls, who could by no means
+study together, since they were at the two opposite ends of the scale;
+but as Jessie was by no means aggressive, being in fact as sweet and
+docile a shallow girl as ever lived, things went on peaceably, except
+when Janet could not conceal her displeasure that Bobus would not share
+her contempt for Jessie’s intellect.
+
+If she told him that Jessie thought that the Odyssey was about a voyage
+to Odessa, and was written by Alfred Tennyson, he only declared that
+anything was better than being a spiteful cat; and when he came in from
+school, and found his cousin in wild despair over the conversion
+of 2,861 florins into half-crowns, he stood by, telling her every
+operation, and leaving her nothing to do but to write down the figures.
+He was reckless of Janet, who tried to wither them both by her scorn;
+but Jessie looked up with her honest eyes, saying--
+
+“I wish you hadn’t put it into my head, Janet, for now I must rub it out
+and do it again, and it won’t be so hard now Bobus has shown me how.”
+
+“No, no, Jessie,” said Bobus; “I wouldn’t be bullied.”
+
+“For shame, Bobus,” said his sister; “how is she to learn anything in
+that way?”
+
+“And if she doesn’t?” said Bobus.
+
+“That’s a disgrace.”
+
+“A grace,” said provoking Bobus. “She is much nicer as she is, than you
+will ever be.”
+
+“Don’t talk such nonsense,” said Janet, with an elder sisterly air.
+“It is not kind to encourage Jessie to think anyone can care for an
+empty-headed doll.”
+
+“Empty-headed dolls are all the go,” said Bobus. “Never mind, Jessie, a
+girl’s business is to be pretty and good-humoured, not to stuff herself
+with Latin and Greek. You should leave that to us poor beggars!”
+
+“Yes, I know, that’s all your envy and jealousy,” retorted Janet.
+
+All the time Jessie stood by, plump, gentle, and pretty, though with
+a certain cloud of perplexity on her white open brow, and as her aunt
+returned into the room, she said--
+
+“I think my sum is right now, Aunt Caroline; but Bobus helped me. Must I
+do it over again?”
+
+“You shall begin with it to-morrow, my dear,” said her aunt; “then I
+daresay it will go off easily.”
+
+Jessie thanked with an effusion of gratitude which made her prettier
+than ever, and then was claimed by Bobus to help him in the making of
+some paper bags that he needed for some of his curiosities.
+
+Janet liked to fancy that it was beauty versus genius that made Jessie
+the greater favourite. She had not taken into account that she was
+always too much engrossed with her own concerns to be helpful, while
+Jessie’s pretty dexterous hands were always at everyone’s service,
+and without in the least entering into the cause of science, she was
+invaluable in the museum, whenever her ideas of neatness and symmetry
+were not in too absolute opposition to the requirements of system.
+
+The two little ones, Essie and Ellie, were equally graceful, or indeed
+still more so, as being still in their kittenhood, and their attitudes
+were so charming as to revive their aunt’s artistic instincts.
+
+All the earlier part of the year, when her time was her own, it had been
+mere wretchedness and heart-sickness to think of the art which had given
+her husband so much pleasure, and, but for Allen, the studio would
+never have been arranged. But no sooner was her time engrossed, than
+the artist fever awoke in her, and all the time she could steal by early
+rising, or on wet afternoons, and birthday holidays, was devoted to her
+clay.
+
+Before the end of the autumn she had sent up to Mr. Acton some lovely
+little groups of children, illustrating Wordsworth’s poems. She had been
+taught anatomy enough to make her work superior to that of most women,
+and Mr. Acton found no difficulty in disposing of them to a porcelain
+manufactory, to be copied in Parian, bringing in a sum that made her
+feel rich.
+
+Vistas opened before her sanguine eyes of that clay educating her son
+for the Magnum Bonum, her great thought. Her boys must be brought up to
+be worthy of the quest, high-minded, disinterested, and devoted, as well
+as intellectual and religious. So said their father; and thus the Magnum
+Bonum had become very nearly a religion to her, giving her a definite
+aim and principle.
+
+Unfortunately there was not much in her present surroundings to lead her
+higher. The vicar, Mr. Rigby, was a dull, weak man, of a wornout type,
+a careful visitor of the sick and poor, but taking little heed to the
+educated, except as subscribers and Sunday-school teachers. Carey had
+done little in the first capacity, Janet had refused to act in the
+latter.
+
+His sermons were very sleepy performances, except for a tendency to
+jumble up metaphors, that kept the audience from the Folly just awake
+enough to watch for them. The hearer was proud who could repeat by heart
+such phrases as “let us not, beloved brethren, as gaudy insects, flutter
+out life’s little day, bound to the chariot wheels of vanity, whirling
+in the vortex of dissipation, until at length we lie moaning over
+the bitter dregs of the intoxicating draught.” Some of these became
+household proverbs at “the Folly,” under the title of “Rigdum
+Funnidoses,” and might well be an extreme distress to the good,
+reverent, and dutiful Jessie.
+
+Mrs. Rigby was an inferior woman, a sworn member of the Coffinkey
+clique, admiring and looking up to her Serene Highness as the great lady
+of the place, and wearing an almost abject manner when receiving good
+counsels from her. Neither of them commanded respect, nor were they
+likely to change the belief, which prevailed at the Folly, that all
+ability resided among the London clergy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. -- UNDINE.
+
+
+
+     Lithest, gaudiest harlequin,
+     Prettiest tumbler ever seen,
+     Light of heart and light of limb.
+                                Wordsworth.
+
+
+Long walks continued to be almost a necessity to Mrs. Joseph Brownlow,
+even when comparatively sobered down, and there were few days on which
+she was not to be met a mile or two from Kenminster, attended by a train
+of boys larger or smaller, according to the demands of the school for
+work or play.
+
+The winter was of the description least favourable to collective boyish
+sports, as there was no snow and very little frost. The Christmas
+holidays led to more walking than ever. The gravelled roads of Belforest
+were never impassable, even in moist weather; and even the penetralia
+of the place had been laid open to the Brownlows, in consequence of a
+friendship which the two Johns had established with Alfred Richards,
+the agent’s son. They had brought him in to see the museum, and he had
+proved so nice and intelligent a lad, that Mother Carey, to the great
+scandal of her Serene Highness, allowed Jock to ask him to partake of a
+birthday feast.
+
+When Allen came home at Christmas, he introduced stilt walking, and the
+Coffinkey world had the pleasure of communicating to one another that
+“Mrs. Folly Brownlow” had been seen with all her boys walking on stilts;
+and of course in the next stage, Mrs. “Folly” Brownlow herself was said
+to have been walking on stilts with all her boys, a libel, which caused
+Mrs. Robert Brownlow much pain and trouble in the contradiction.
+
+“Poor Caroline! walking seemed to be necessary to her health, and she
+was out a great deal, but always walking along in the lanes on foot with
+her little girls--yes, I assure you, always on foot!”
+
+It was thus that Caroline, with Babie and Armine, was descending a hill
+on the other side of Belforest Park, fully employed in picking the way
+through the mud from stone to stone, when a cry of dismay came to them
+from a distance, and whilst they were still struggling towards a gate,
+which broke the line of the high hedge, the two Johns came back at
+speed, crying--“Mother, Mother Carey! come quick, here’s Allen had a
+spill--came down on his shoulder--his stilt went into a hole, and he
+went right over; they think he must have broken something, he howls so
+when they touch him.”
+
+Feeling her limbs and breath inadequate to bear her on as fast as her
+spirit flew forward, Caroline dashed through the slippery mud far too
+swiftly for poor little Babie to keep up with her, leaving one boy to
+take care of the little ones, while the other acted as her guide down
+the long steep lane. She was unable to see over the hedges till she came
+through a gate into a meadow, where Jock looked about, rubbed his eyes,
+and exclaimed--“Hallo, where are they?” pointing to the place where
+Allen had fallen, but whence he seemed to have been spirited away like
+Sir Piercie Shafton. However, Rob and Joe came running out of a farmyard
+at a little distance, with tidings that Allen had been taken in there,
+and replying to her breathless question, that they could not tell how
+much he was hurt.
+
+A fine looking white-haired farmer met her next, saying--“Your young
+gentleman is not very seriously hurt, ma’am. I think a dislocation of
+the shoulder is the extent of the injury. He is feeling rather faint,
+but you must not be alarmed.”
+
+It was spoken with a kind courtesy that gave her confidence, and the old
+man led her to the parlour, where his daughter-in-law, a gentle looking
+person, was most kindly attending on Allen, who lay on the sofa,
+exceedingly white, and in much pain, but able to smile at his mother,
+and assure her that he should soon be all right.
+
+“Had they sent for a surgeon?”
+
+“No, but they had sent for a bone-setter, who would be there in a
+minute.”
+
+The old farmer explained that it would be two hours at the least before
+a surgeon could be fetched from Kenminster, while Higg, the blacksmith,
+who lived close at hand, was better for man and beast than any surgeon
+he had known, and his son had instantly set out to fetch him. As the
+mother doubtfully asked of his fitness, instances were quoted of his
+success. The family had a “gift,” inherited and kept up from time
+immemorial, and the farmer’s wife declared that he was as tender as
+possible; she had seen him operate on a neighbour’s child, and should
+not be afraid to trust him with one of her own.
+
+The man’s voice was heard; they went out to speak to him, and Caroline
+was left with her boy.
+
+“What do you think, Ali, my dear,” she said, kneeling by him, “I
+have often heard dear papa speak of the wonderful instinct of those
+bone-setting families.”
+
+“I’d have nothing to do with a humbugging quack,” put in Bobus.
+
+“He may humbug as much as he likes, if he’ll only get me out of this
+pain,” said poor Allen.
+
+“He will only make it ever so much worse, and then you’ll have to have
+it done over again,” croaked Bobus.
+
+“That is not the way to talk of it, Bobus,” said his mother. “I know
+a dislocated shoulder does not require any great skill, and that
+promptness is of greater use than knowledge in such a case.”
+
+“Well, if you like to encourage abominable humbug and have Allen lamed
+for life, I don’t,” said Bobus. “I shan’t stay in the house with the
+blackguard.”
+
+He stalked out of the room with great loftiness of demeanour, just as
+the operator was being introduced--a tall, sinewy man, with one of those
+strong yet meek faces often to be found among the peasantry. He came in
+after the old farmer, pulling his forelock to the lady, and waiting for
+orders as if he had been sent for to mend the grate; but Caroline saw in
+a moment that he was a man to trust in, and that his hands were not
+only clean, but were well-formed, and powerful, with a great air of
+dexterity.
+
+“I am afraid my boy’s arm is put out,” she said, trembling a good deal.
+
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+
+“And--and,” said she, feeling sick, and more desolate and left to her
+own judgment than ever before. “Can you undertake to push it in again.”
+
+“Please God, ma’am,” Higg said, gravely, coming nearer for examination.
+
+Allen shrank and shuddered.
+
+“Won’t it hurt awfully?” he asked.
+
+“Well, sir, it won’t just be a bed of roses, but it won’t last, not
+long, if you sets your will to it.”
+
+He asked for various needments, and while he was inspecting them,
+Allen’s courage began to fail, and he breathed out whispers that the man
+was rougher and more ignorant than he expected, and they had better
+wait and send to Kenminster for a doctor; but those who thought Caroline
+helpless and childish would have been amazed at the gentle resolution
+with which she refused to listen to his falterings, and braced him to
+endure, knowing well that her husband had said that skill was hardly
+needed in such a case, only resolution. She would not let herself be
+taken out of the room, and indeed never thought of herself, only
+of Allen, whose other hand she held, and to whom she seemed to give
+patience and courage. When all was well over, there was a hospitable
+invitation to the patient to remain till he was fit to return, and an
+extension of the invitation to his mother, but with promises of every
+care if she must leave him, and this she was forced to decide on doing,
+as such a household as hers could not well spare her, especially on a
+Saturday evening; and she also saw that the inconvenience to her hosts
+would have been great.
+
+Allen was so much relieved, that she had no fear of leaving him to these
+kind people, to whom she had taken a great fancy.
+
+“I shall learn the habits of the genuine species, British farmer,”
+ said he, as his mother kissed him, and declared him the best and most
+conformable of boys.
+
+Old Mr. Gould would not be denied driving her home in his gig, and when
+she thought about it, she found she had a strange relaxed aching of the
+knees, which made her glad of kindness for herself and the little ones.
+In the fine old kitchen she found that Armine had had an overpowering
+fit of crying, which had been kindly soothed by motherly Mrs. Gould, and
+the whole party were partaking of a luxurious tea, enlivened by mince
+pies and rosy-cheeked apples, which had diverted his attention to the
+problem why the next year’s prosperity should depend on the number of
+mince pies consumed before Christmas.
+
+Bobus was not among them, having marched off in his contempt of the
+bone-setter, and his mother was not without fears that he might bring a
+real surgeon down on her at any moment, so she quickly drank off her cup
+of tea, and took her seat in Farmer Gould’s gig with Babie as bodkin in
+front, and Joe and Armine in the little seat behind. Robin and the two
+Johns were to stilt themselves home, while she was taken so long and
+rugged a way, that at every jolt she was ready to renew her thanks for
+sparing it to her son’s shoulder; and they were at home before her.
+
+The whole family came pouring out to meet her, and the Colonel made warm
+acknowledgments of the farmer’s kindness, speaking of him when he was
+gone as one of the most estimable men in the neighbourhood, staunch in
+his politics, and very ill-used by old Barnes of Belforest.
+
+Caroline looked anxiously for Bobus; and Janet, who had stayed at home
+to finish some papers for her essay society, said that he had only
+hurried in to tell her and take off his stilts, and had then gone down
+to Dr. Leslie’s.
+
+“Then has Dr. Leslie gone? We did not meet him, but he may have gone
+through Belforest,” exclaimed Caroline.
+
+“O no, he has not gone; he would not when he heard about that Higg,”
+ said Janet, with uneasy and much disgusted face. “He couldn’t do any
+good after his meddling.”
+
+“Do you mean that he said so?” asked Carey, much alarmed.
+
+“Never mind,” said the Colonel, “you did quite right, Caroline, whatever
+the doctor says. Any man of sense, with good strong hands, can manage
+a shoulder like that, and I should have thought Leslie had sense to see
+it; but those professional men can’t stand outsiders.”
+
+“Where is Bobus?” asked Caroline; “I should like to distinguish between
+what Dr. Leslie said to him and what he told Janet. He might be more
+zealous for Dr. Leslie than Dr. Leslie for himself.”
+
+Bobus was unearthed, and by much pumping was made to allow that Dr.
+Leslie had told him that there was nothing more to be done, and that
+his brother was quite safe in Higg’s hands; but Bobus evidently did not
+believe it. He kept silence while his uncle remained, but he had hunted
+up his father’s surgical books, and went on about humeral clavicles and
+ligatures all the evening, till his mother felt sick, in the nervous
+contemplation of possibilities, though her better sense was secure that
+she had done right, while Janet was moodily silent and angered with her,
+in the belief that she had weakly let Allen be injured for life; and
+Bobus seemed as if he had rather it should be so than that he should be
+wrong, and Higg’s native endowments turn out a reality.
+
+Caroline abstained from looking at the book herself, partly because she
+thought she might only alarm herself the more without confuting Bobus,
+and partly because she knew that the old law which forbade Janet to
+meddle with the medical books, would be considered as abrogated if she
+touched them herself.
+
+Both she and Janet were much more anxious than they confessed, except
+by the looks which betrayed their broken rest the next morning. Each
+was bent on walking to River Hollow, and they would fain have done so
+immediately after breakfast, but to take the whole tribe was impossible;
+and to let them go to Church without her, would infallibly lead to
+Jock’s getting into a scrape with his relatives, if not with the whole
+congregation. Was it not all her eyes could do to hinder palpable smiles
+in the sermon, and her monkey from playing tricks on his bear, who, by
+some fatality, always sat in front, with his irresistible broad back,
+down which, in spite of all her vigilance, Jock had once thrust a large
+bluebottle fly. She also knew that both her husband and his mother would
+have thought she ought to go to Church, and that if matters went
+amiss with her boy, she should reproach herself with the omission. Her
+children, too, influenced her, though very oppositely, for Janet was
+found preparing to start for River Hollow, and on being told that she
+must wait, to go with her mother, till after Church, declared defiantly
+that “she saw no sense in staying at home to hear Rigdum when she did
+not know how ill Allen might be.”
+
+“You would not have said that to grandmamma,” said Carey.
+
+“Well, if you like to go to Church, you can. I can go alone.”
+
+“No, I will not have you take that long walk alone.”
+
+“Then I will take one of the boys.”
+
+“No, Janet, I mean to be obeyed. Go and put on your other hat, and do
+not make us late for Church.”
+
+Janet was forced to submit, for she never came to the point of actual
+disobedience to her mother. Caroline’s ruffled feelings were soothed by
+little Armine, who ran in from feeding his rabbits to ask to have the
+place in his Prayer-book shown to him where he should pray for poor
+Allen. She marked the Litany sentence for him, and meant to have thrown
+her own heart into it, but when the moment came, her mind was far
+astray, building vague castles about her boys.
+
+Still she felt as if her church going had its reward, for Dr. Leslie
+met her a little way outside the porch, and, after asking after her boy,
+said--
+
+“I hope his brother explained to you that Higg is quite to be trusted.
+He always knows what he can do, and when a case is beyond him. If I had
+come there would have been nothing for me to do.”
+
+“There!” said Jock, triumphantly to his brother and sister.
+
+“Much you know about it,” grunted Bobus.
+
+“Mother Carey was right. She always is,” persisted Jock.
+
+“It would have been just the same if the man had known nothing about
+it,” said Janet. “I hate your irregular practitioners, and it was very
+weak in mother to encourage them.” Then, as Bobus snarled at the censure
+of his mother--“You said so yourself yesterday.”
+
+“I didn’t say any such beastly thing of mother. She could tell whether
+it was just a simple dislocation, and she was right, having ever so much
+more sense than _you_, Janet.”
+
+“You didn’t say so yesterday,” repeated Janet.
+
+“I don’t like irregular practitioners a bit better than you do, Janet,”
+ said Bobus with dignity; “and I thought it right to call in a qualified
+surgeon, but I never said mother couldn’t judge.”
+
+However, Bobus would not countenance the irregular practitioner by
+escorting his mother to River Hollow; and as he was in one of the
+surly moods in which he was dangerous to any one who meddled with him,
+especially Janet, his mother was glad not to have to keep the peace
+between them.
+
+Janet, though not in the most amiable mood, chose to go with her, and
+they set forth by the shorter way, across Belforest park, skirting the
+gardens where the statues stood up, looking shivery and forlorn, as if
+they were not suited to English winters, and the huge house looked
+down on them like a London terrace that had lost its way, with a dreary
+uninhabited air about it. Even by this private way they had two miles
+and a half of park to traverse, before they reached a heavy miry lane,
+where the beds of mud, alternated with rugged masses of stone, intended
+to choke them. It led up between high hedges to the brow of one of the
+many hills of the county, whence they could look down into the hollow, a
+perfect cup, scooped out as it were between the hills that closed it in,
+except at the outlet of the river that intersected it, making the meadow
+on either side emerald green, even in the winter. Corn lands of rich red
+soil, pasture fields dotted with cattle, and broad belts of copse wood
+between clothed the slopes; and a picturesque wooden bridge, with a
+double handrail, crossed the river. The farm-house, built of creamy
+stone, stood on the opposite side of the river, some way above the bank,
+and the mother and daughter agreed that it deserved to be sketched next
+summer.
+
+They had to pick their way down a lane that was almost a torrent, and
+emerging at the foot of the bridge, they stood still in amazement, for
+in the very centre was something vibrating rapidly, surrounded by a
+perfect halo of gold and scarlet. It was like a gigantic humming-bird
+moth at first, but it presently resolved itself into a little girl,
+clad in something dark purple below, and above with a bright scarlet
+cloaklet, which flew out and streamed back, beneath the floating locks
+of glistening gold that glinted in the sun, as with a hand on each rail
+of the bridge she swung herself backwards and forwards with the most
+bewildering rapidity. Suddenly becoming aware of the approach of
+strangers, she stood for one moment gazing in astonishment, then fled
+so swiftly that she almost seemed to fly, and vanished in the farm
+buildings!
+
+They stood laughing and declaring that Babie would be convinced that
+fairies came out on Sunday, then crossed the river and were beginning
+to ascend the path when a volley of sounds broke on them, a shrill yap
+giving the alarm, louder notes joining in, and the bass being supplied
+by a formidable deep-mouthed bark, as out of the farmyard-gate dashed
+little terrier, curly spaniel, slim greyhounds, surly sheep-dog of the
+old tailless sort, and big and mighty Newfoundland, and there they stood
+in a row, shouting forth defiance in all gradations of note, so that,
+though frightened, Carey and Janet could not help laughing, as the
+former said--
+
+“This comes of gadding about on Sunday.”
+
+“If we went on boldly they would see we are not tramps,” said Janet.
+
+“Depend on it they will let no one pass in Church time.”
+
+So it proved, for Janet’s attempt to move forward elicited a growl from
+the sheep-dog, and a leap forward of the “little dogs and all,” which
+daunted even her stout heart.
+
+However, calls were heard, and the bright vision of the bridge came
+darting among the dogs, scolding and driving them in, and Allen himself
+came out to the gate, all bandaged up on one side, but waving his arm as
+a signal to his mother and sister to advance. They did so nervously but
+safely, while the growls of the sheep-dog sounded like distant thunder,
+and the terrier uttered his protest from the door. Allen declared
+himself much better, and said he should be quite able to go home
+to-morrow, only this was such a jolly place; and then he brought them
+into the beautiful old kitchen with a magnificent open hearth, inclosed
+by two fine dark walnut-wood settles, making a little carpeted chamber
+between them. Here Allen had the farmer’s armchair and a footstool, and
+with “Foxe’s Martyrs” open at a flaming illustration on the little round
+table before him, appeared to be spending his Sunday as luxuriously as
+the big tabby cat who shared the hearth with him.
+
+“They have only one service at Woodbridge, morning and afternoon by
+turns,” he explained, “and so they are all gone to it.”
+
+“Who is that girl?” asked Janet.
+
+“Undine,” he coolly replied.
+
+“She certainly appeared on the bridge,” said his mother, “but I should
+think Undine’s colouring had been less radiant--more of the blue and
+white.”
+
+“She had not a whiter skin nor bluer eyes,” said Allen, “nor made
+herself more ridiculous either. Did you ever see such hair, mother?
+Hullo, Elfie. There she is, peeping in at the window, just as Undine
+did; Come in!” he cried at the door. “No, not she,” as he returned
+baffled; “she is off again!”
+
+“But, Allen, who is she? Not Farmer Gould’s daughter.”
+
+“Of course not. Don’t you know she was fished up in a net, and belonged
+to a palace under the ocean full of pearls and diamonds. She took such a
+fancy to me that no power on earth would make her go to Church with the
+rest. She ran away, and hid, and when they were all gone she came out
+and curled herself up at my feet and chattered, till I happened to
+offend her majesty, and off she went like a shot. I’m only thankful
+that she did not make her pearly teeth meet in my finger in true Undine
+fashion.”
+
+“But who is she, really?”
+
+“I can’t quite make out. They call her Elfie, and she calls them
+grandpapa, and uncle and aunt, but she has been sitting here complaining
+of everything being cold and dull, and talking about seas and islands,
+palm-trees, and coral caves, and humming birds, yes, and black slaves,
+and strings of pearls, so that if she is romancing, like Armine and
+Babie, she does it uncommonly naturally.”
+
+They saw no more of this mysterious little being, and the family soon
+returned from Church. The father was a fine, old-fashioned yeoman,
+the son had the style of a modern farmer, and the wife was so quiet,
+sensible, and matronly as to be almost ladylike. Her two little girls
+were dressed as well as Essie and Ellie, but all were essentially
+commonplace. They were very kind and friendly, anxious that Allen
+should stay as long as was good for him, as well as pressing in their
+hospitality to the two ladies. Mr. Gould was very anxious to drive them
+home in his gig, though he allowed that the road was very rough unless
+you went through Belforest Park, and that he never did.
+
+This was surprising, for Belforest had always seemed as free as the
+turnpike-road, and River Hollow was apparently part of the estate, but
+there was an air of discouraging questions, so Carey suspected quarrels
+and asked none.
+
+She was enlightened the next day when Colonel Brownlow brought his
+phaeton to fetch Allen home over the smooth park road. He told her
+that the Goulds were freeholders who had owned River Hollow from time
+immemorial, though each successive lord of Belforest tried to buy them
+out. The alienation between them and Mr. Barnes, the present master, had
+however much stronger grounds than these. His nephew and intended heir
+has stolen a match with the old man’s pretty daughter, and this had
+never been forgiven. The young couple had gone out to the West Indian
+isles, where the early home of her husband had been, and where he held
+some government office, and there fell a victim to the climate. Old Mr.
+Gould had gone home to fetch his daughter and her child, but the former
+had died before he reached her, and he had only brought back the little
+girl about two years ago.
+
+Mr. Barnes ignored her entirely, and the Goulds, who had a good deal
+of pride, did not choose to apply to him. It was very unfortunate,
+for unless he had any other relations the child must be heiress to his
+immense wealth, though it was as likely as not that he would leave it
+all to hospitals out of pure vindictiveness.
+
+They found Allen out of doors attended by the three little girls, all
+eagerly watching the removal of a sheep-fold. He was a pleasant-mannered
+boy, ready to adapt himself to all circumstances and to throw ready
+intelligent interest into everything, and he had won the hearts of
+the whole River Hollow establishment, from old Mr. Gould down to the
+smallest puppy.
+
+Elfie, as he called her, stood her ground, and as she looked up under
+her brown mushroom hat Caroline was struck with her beauty, fair, but
+with a southern richness of bloom and glow--the carnation cheek of a
+depth of tint more often found in brunette complexions. The eyes were
+not merely blue by courtesy, but of a wonderful deep azure, shaded by
+very long lashes, dark except when the sun glinted them with gold, and
+round her shoulders hung masses of hair of that exquisite light auburn
+which cannot be accused of being red.
+
+She let herself be greeted by the strangers with much more ease and
+grace than the other two children, but the slow walk of her grandfather
+and Colonel Brownlow seemed more than she could brook, and she went off,
+flying and spinning round like a little dog.
+
+While all the acknowledgments and farewells were being made, and Colonel
+Brownlow was taking directions for finding Higg’s house and forge so
+as to remunerate him for his services, Elfie came hurrying up to Allen,
+holding out a great, gorgeous pink-lined shell, and laid within it two
+heads of scarlet geranium on a green leaf.
+
+“O Elfie, Elfie! how could you?” exclaimed he, knowing them to be the
+only flowers in bloom.
+
+“You must have them. There’s nothing else pretty to give you, and I love
+you,” said the child, holding up her face to kiss him.
+
+“Elvira!” said her aunt in warning, “how can you! What will this lady
+think of you?”
+
+Elvira’s gesture would in any other child have seemed a sulky thrust
+of the elbow, but in her it was more like the flutter of the wing of a
+brilliant bird.
+
+“You must,” she repeated; and when he hesitated with “If Mrs. Gould,”
+ she broke away, dashed the flowers, shell and all, into the middle of a
+clump of rosemary, and rushed out of sight like a little fury.
+
+“You will excuse her, Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Gould, much annoyed.
+“She has been sadly spoilt, living among negro servants and having her
+own way, so that she is sometimes quite ungovernable.”
+
+“Nay, nay, she is a warm-hearted little thing if you don’t cross her,”
+ said the old farmer; “and the young gentleman has been very kind to
+her.”
+
+Mrs. Gould looked as if she thought she knew her niece better than
+grandpapa did, but she was too wise to speak; and the little girls,
+having assisted Allen in the recovery of the shell and the flowers, he
+tendered them again to her.
+
+“You had better keep them, Mr. Brownlow,” she said. “The shell is her
+own, and if you did not take it she is so _tenacious_ that she would be
+sure to smash it to atoms.”
+
+Allen accepted perforce and proceeded with his farewells, but as he was
+stooping down to kiss little five-year-old Kate Gould, something wet,
+cold, and sloppy came with great force on them both, almost knocking
+them down and bespattering them both with black drops. The missile
+proved to be a dripping sod pulled up from the duck-pond in the
+next field, and a glimpse might be caught of Elvira’s scarlet legs
+disappearing over the low wall between.
+
+Over poor Mrs. Gould’s apologies a veil had best be drawn. Mother Carey
+pitied her heartily, but it was impossible not to make fun at home
+over the black tokens on Allen’s shirt-collar. His brothers and sisters
+laughed excessively, and Janet twitted him with his Undine, till he,
+contrary to his wont, grew so cross as to make his mother recollect that
+he was still a suffering patient, and insist on his lying quiet on the
+sofa, while she banished every one, and read Tennyson to him. Poetry,
+read aloud by her, was Allen’s greatest delight, but not often enjoyed,
+as Bobus and Jock scouted it, and Janet was getting too strong-minded
+and used to break in with inopportune, criticisms.
+
+So to have Mother Carey to read “Elaine” undisturbed was as great an
+indulgence as Allen could well have, but she had not gone far before he
+broke out--
+
+“Mother, please, I wish you could do something for that girl. She really
+is a lady.”
+
+“So it appears,” said Carey, much disposed to laugh.
+
+“Now, mother, don’t be tiresome. You have more sense than Janet. Her
+father was Vice-consul at Sant Ildefonso, one of the Antilles.”
+
+“But, my dear, I am afraid that is not quite so grand as it sounds--”
+
+“Hush, mother. He was nephew to Mr. Barnes, and they lived out of the
+town in a perfect paradise of a place, looking out into the bay. Mr.
+Gould says he can hardly believe he ever saw anything so gorgeously
+beautiful, and there this poor little Elvira de Menella lived like a
+princess with a court of black slaves. Just fancy what it must be to her
+to come to that farm, an orphan too, with an aunt who can’t understand a
+creature like that.”
+
+“Poor child.”
+
+“Then she can’t get any education. Old Gould is a sensible man, who says
+any school he could afford would only turn her out a sham, and he means,
+when Mary and Kate are a little older, to get some sort of governess for
+the three. But, mother, couldn’t you just let him bring her in on market
+days and teach her a little?”
+
+“My dear boy, what would your aunt do? We can’t have sods of mud flying
+about the house.”
+
+“Now, mother, you know better! You could make anything of her, you know
+you could! And what a model she would make! Think what a poor little
+desolate thing she is. You always have a fellow feeling for orphans, and
+we do owe those people a great deal of gratitude.”
+
+“Allen, you special pleader, it really will not do! If I had not
+undertaken Essie and Ellie, I might think about it, but I promised your
+aunt not to have any other pupils.”
+
+Allen bothered Essie and Ellie, but was forced to acquiesce, which was
+fortunate, for when on the last day of the holidays it was found that
+he had walked to River Hollow to take leave of the Goulds, his aunt
+administered to his mother a serious warning on the dangers of allowing
+him to become intimate there.
+
+Caroline tingled all over during the discourse, and at last jumped up,
+exclaiming--
+
+“My dear Ellen, half the harm in the world is done by making a fuss.
+Things don’t die half so hard when they die a natural death.”
+
+Ellen knew Carey thought she had said something very clever, but was all
+the more unconvinced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. -- KING MIDAS.
+
+
+
+     When I did him at this advantage take,
+     An ass’s nowl I fixed upon his head.
+                          Midsummer Night’s Dream.
+
+
+In the early spring an unlooked-for obstacle arose to all wanderings in
+the Belforest woods. The owner returned and closed the gates. From
+time that seemed immemorial, the inhabitants of Kenminster had disported
+themselves there as if the grounds had been kept up for their sole
+behoof, and their indignation at the monopoly knew no bounds.
+
+Nobody saw Mr. Barnes save his doctor, whose carriage was the only one
+admitted within the lodge gates, intending visitors being there informed
+that Mr. Barnes was too unwell to be disturbed.
+
+Mrs. “Folly” Brownlow’s aberrations lost their interest in the Coffinkey
+world beside the mystery of Belforest. Opinions varied as to his being
+a miser, or a lunatic, a prey to conscience, disease, or deformity; and
+reports were so diverse, that at the “Folly” a journal was kept of them,
+with their dates, as a matter of curiosity--their authorities marked:--
+
+March 4th.--Mr. Barnes eats nothing but fresh turtle. Brings them down
+in tubs alive and flapping. Mrs. Coffinkey’s Jane heard them cooing at
+the station. Gives his cook three hundred pounds per annum.
+
+5th.--Mr. Barnes so miserly, that he turned away the housemaid for
+burning candles eight to the pound. (H. S. H.)
+
+6th.--Mr. B. keeps a bloodhound trained to hunt Indians, and has six
+pounds of prime beef steaks for it every day. (Emma.)
+
+8th.--Mr. B.’s library is decorated with a string of human ears, the
+clippings of his slaves in “the Indies.” (Nurse.)
+
+12th.--Mr. B. whipped a little black boy to death, and is so haunted by
+remorse, that he can’t sleep without wax-candles burning all round him.
+(Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.)
+
+14th.--Mr. Barnes’s income is five hundred thousand pounds, and he does
+not live at the rate of two hundred pounds. (Col. Brownlow.)
+
+l5th.--He has turned off all his gardeners, and the place will be
+desolation. (H. S. H.)
+
+16th.--He did turn off one gardener’s boy for staring at him when he was
+being wheeled about in his bath-chair. (Alfred Richards.)
+
+17th.--He threw a stone, which cut the boy’s head open, and he lies at
+the hospital in a dangerous state. (Emma.)
+
+18th.--Mr. Barnes was crossed in love when he was a young man by one
+Miss Anne Thorpe, and has never been the same man since, but has hated
+all society. (Query: Is this a version of being a misanthrope?)
+
+19th.--He is a most unhappy man, who has sacrificed all family
+affections and all humanity to gold, and whose conscience will not let
+him rest. He is worn to a shadow, and is at war with mankind. In fine,
+he is a lesson to weak human nature. (Mrs. Rigby.)
+
+22nd.--All his toilet apparatus is of “virgin gold;” he lets nothing
+else touch him. (Jessie.)
+
+“Exactly like King Midas.” (Babie.)
+
+The exclusion from the grounds was a serious grievance, entailing much
+loss of time and hindrance to the many who had profited by the private
+roads. The Sunday promenade was a great deprivation; nurses and children
+were cut off from grass and shade, and Mother Carey and her brood from
+all the delights of the enchanted ground.
+
+She could bear the loss better than in that first wild restlessness,
+which only free nature could allay. She had made her occupations, and
+knew of other haunts, though many a longing eye was cast at the sweet
+green wilderness, and many regrets spent on the rambles, the sketches,
+the plants, and the creatures that had seemed the certain entertainment
+of the summer.
+
+To one class of the population the prohibition only gave greater
+zest--namely, the boys. Should there be birds’ nests in Belforest
+unscathed by the youth of St. Kenelm’s? What were notice-boards,
+palings, or walls to boys with arms and legs ready to defy even the
+celebrated man-traps of Ellangowan, “which, if a man goes in, they will
+break a horse’s leg?” The terrific bloodhound alarmed a few till his
+existence was denied by Alfred Richards, the agent’s son; and dodging
+the keepers was a new and exciting sport. At first, these men were not
+solicitous for captures, but their negligence was so often detected,
+that they began to believe that their master kept telescopes that could
+penetrate through trees, and their vigilance increased.
+
+Bobus, in quest of green hellebore, got off with a warning; but a week
+later, Robin and Jock were inspecting the heronry, when they caught
+sight of a keeper, and dashed off to find themselves running into the
+jaws of another. Swift as lightning, Jock sprung up into an ivied ash;
+but the less ready Bob was caught by the leg as he mounted, and pulled
+down again, while his captor shouted, “If there’s any more of you young
+varmint up yonder, you’d best come down before I fires up into the
+hoivy.”
+
+He made a click and pointed his gun, and Robin shrieked, “Oh, don’t!
+We are Colonel Brownlow’s sons; at least, I mean nephews. Don’t! I say.
+Skipjack, come down.”
+
+“You ass!” muttered Jack, as he crackled down, and was collared by the
+keeper. “Hollo! what’s that for?”
+
+“Now, young gents, why will you come larking here to get a poor chap out
+of his situation. It’s as much as my place is worth not to summons you,
+and yet I don’t half like to do it to young gents like you.”
+
+“What could they do to us?” asked Jock.
+
+“Well, sir, may be they’d keep you in the lock-up all night; and what
+would your papa and mamma say to that?”
+
+“My father is Colonel Brownlow,” growled Robin.
+
+“More shame for you, sir, to want to get a poor man out of his place.”
+
+“Look here, my man,” said Jock with London sharpness and impudence, “if
+you want to bully us into tipping you, it’s no go. We’ve only got one
+copper between us, and nothing else but our knives; and if we had, we
+wouldn’t do such a sneaking thing!”
+
+“I never meant no such thing, sir,” said the keeper; “only in case Mr.
+Barnes should hear of our good nature.”
+
+“Come along, Robin,” said Jock; “if we are had up, we’ll let ‘em know
+how Leggings wanted us to buy off!”
+
+Wherewith Jock made a rush, Rob plunged after him into the brambles, and
+they never halted till they had tumbled over the park wall, and lay in a
+breathless heap on the other side. The adventure was the fruitful cause
+of mirth at the Folly, but not a word was breathed of it at Kencroft.
+
+A few other lads did actually pay toll to the keepers, and some
+penniless ones were brought before the magistrates and fined for
+trespass, “because they could not afford it,” as Caroline said, and
+to the Colonel’s great disgust she sent two sovereigns by Allen to pay
+their fines and set them free.
+
+“It was my own money,” she said, in self-defence, “earned by my models
+of fungi.”
+
+The Colonel thought it an unsatisfactory justification, and told
+her that she would lay up trouble for herself by thus encouraging
+insubordination. He little thought that the laugh in her eyes was at his
+complacent ignorance of his own son’s narrow escape.
+
+Allen was at home for Easter, when Eton gave longer holidays than did
+St. Kenelm, so that his brothers were at work again long before he
+was. One afternoon, which had ended in a soaking mist, the two pairs of
+Roberts and Johns encountered him at the Folly gate so disguised in mud
+that they hardly recognised the dainty Etonian.
+
+“That brute Barnes,” he ejaculated; “I had to come miles round through a
+disgusting lane. I wish I had gone on. I’d have proved the right of way
+if he chose to prosecute me!”
+
+“Father says that’s no go,” said Robin.
+
+“I say, Allen, what a guy you are,” added Johnny.
+
+“And he’s got his swell trousers on,” cried Jock, capering with glee.
+
+“I see,” gravely observed Bobus, “he had got himself up regardless of
+expense for his Undine, and she has treated him to another dose of her
+native element.
+
+“She had nothing to do with it,” asseverated Allen, “she was as good as
+gold--”
+
+“Ah! I knew he wasn’t figged out for nothing,” put in Jock.
+
+“Don’t be ashamed, Ali, my boy,” added Bobus. “We all understand her
+little tokens.”
+
+“Stop that!” cried Allen, catching hold of Jock’s ear so as to end his
+war-dance in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there
+was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the
+gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight
+of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large
+attics opening into one another, which served as the lair of the Folly
+lads. There, while struggling, with Jock’s assistance, to pull off
+his boots, Allen explained how he had been waylaid “by a beast in
+velveteens,” and walked off to the nearest gate.
+
+“Will he summons you, Ali? We’ll all go and see the Grand Turk in the
+dock,” cried Jock.
+
+“Don’t flatter yourself; he wouldn’t think of it.”
+
+“How much did you fork out?” asked Bobus.
+
+Allen declaimed in the last refinement of Eton slang (carefully
+treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the
+keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out at
+a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall on each side,
+and two ruts running like torrents with water, leading in the opposite
+direction to Kenminster, and ending in a bottom where he was up to the
+ankles in red clay.
+
+“The Eton boots, oh my!” cried Jock, falling backwards with one of them,
+which he had just pulled off.
+
+“And then,” added Allen, “as I tried to get along under the wall by the
+bank, what should a miserable stone do, but turn round with me and send
+me squash into the mud and mire, floundering like a hippopotamus. I
+should like to get damages from that villain! I should!”
+
+Allen was much more angry than was usual with him, and the others,
+though laughing at his Etonian airs, fully sympathised with his wrath.
+
+“He ought to be served out.”
+
+“We will serve him out!”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Get all our fellows and make a jolly good row under his windows,” said
+Robin.
+
+“Decidedly low,” said Allen.
+
+“And impracticable besides,” said Bobus. “They’d kick you out before you
+could say Jack Robinson.”
+
+“There was an old book of father’s,” suggested Jock, “with an old scamp
+who starved and licked his apprentices, till one of them dressed himself
+up in a bullock’s hide, horns and hoofs, and tail and all, and stood
+over his bed at night and shouted--
+
+
+     “‘Old man, old man, for thy cruelty,
+       Body and soul thou art given to me;
+       Let me but hear those apprentices’ cries,
+       And I’ll toss thee, and gore thee, and bore out thine eyes.’
+
+
+And he was quite mild to the apprentices ever after.”
+
+Jock acted and roared with such effect as to be encored, but Rob
+objected. “He ain’t got any apprentices.”
+
+“It might be altered,” said Allen.
+
+
+       “Old man, old man, thy gates thou must ope,”
+
+
+Bobus chimed in.
+
+
+       “Nor force Eton swells in quagmire to grope.”
+
+
+“Bother you, don’t humbug and put me out.
+
+
+       “Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope,
+        Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope.
+        Let me but--”
+
+
+“Get Mother Carey to write it,” suggested his cousin John.
+
+“No; she must know nothing about it,” said Bobus.
+
+“She’d think it a jolly lark,” said Jock.
+
+“When it’s over,” said Allen. “But it’s one of the things that the old
+ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so rational and
+jolly.”
+
+“‘Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow,” sighed Johnny.
+
+“And who’ll do the verses?” said Rob.
+
+“Oh, any fool can do them,” returned Bobus. “The point is to bell the
+cat.”
+
+“There’d be no getting in to act the midnight ghost,” said Allen.
+
+“No,” said Jock; “but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the
+wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair.”
+
+In Allen’s railway rug, Jock rehearsed the scene, and was imitated if
+not surpassed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it
+could not be carried out in the daylight.
+
+“I could do it still better,” said Jock, “if I blacked myself all
+over, not only my face, but all the rest, and put on nothing but my red
+flannel drawers and a turban. They’d take me for the ghost of the little
+nigger he flogged to death, and Allen could write something pathetic and
+stunning.”
+
+“You might cut human ears out of rabbit-skins and hang them round your
+neck,” added Bobus.
+
+“You’d be awfully cold,” said Allen.
+
+“You could mix in a little iodine,” suggested Bobus. “That stings like
+fun, and a coppery tinge would be more natural.”
+
+There was great acclamation, but the difficulty was that the only time
+for effecting an entrance into the garden was between four and five in
+the morning, and it would be needful to lurk there in this light costume
+till Mr. Barnes went out. No one would be at liberty from school but
+Allen, and he declined the oil and lamp-black even though warmed up with
+iodine.
+
+“Could it not be done by deputy?” said Bobus; “we might blacken the
+little fat boy riding on a swan, the statue, I mean.”
+
+“What, and gild the swan, to show how far his golden goose can carry
+him?” said Jock.
+
+“Or,” said Allen, “there’s the statue they say is himself, though that’s
+all nonsense. We could make a pair of donkey’s ears in Mother Carey’s
+clay, and clap them on him, and gild the thing in his hand.”
+
+“What would be the good of that?” asked Robert.
+
+However, the fun was irresistible, and the only wonder was that the
+secret was kept for the whole day, while Allen moulded in the studio
+two things that might pass for ass’s ears, and secreted cement enough to
+fasten them on. The performance elicited such a rapture of applause that
+the door had to be fast locked against the incursion of the little ones
+to learn the cause of the mirth. When Mother Carey asked at tea what
+they were having so much fun about they only blushed, sniggled, and
+wriggled in their chairs in a way that would have alarmed a more
+suspicious mother, but only made her conclude that some delightful
+surprise was preparing, for which she must keep her curiosity in
+abeyance.
+
+“Nor was she dismayed by the creaking of boots on the attic stairs
+before dawn, and when the boys appeared at breakfast with hellebore,
+blue periwinkle, and daffodils, clear indications of where they had
+been, she only exclaimed--
+
+“Forbidden sweets! O you naughty boys!” when ecstatic laughter alone
+replied.
+
+She heard no more till the afternoon, when the return from school was
+notified by shouts from Allen, and the boys rushed up to the verandah
+where he was reading.
+
+“I say! here’s a go. He thinks Richards has done it, and has written to
+Ogilvie to have him expelled.”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“He told me himself.”
+
+“But Ogilvie has too much sense to expel him!”
+
+“Of course, but there’s worse, for old Barnes means to turn off his
+father. Nothing will persuade the old fellow that it wasn’t his work,
+for he says that it must be a grammar-school boy.”
+
+“Does Dicky Bird guess?”
+
+“Yes, but he’s all right, as close as wax. He says he was sure no one
+but ourselves could have done it, for nobody else could have thought of
+such things or made them either.”
+
+“Then he has seen it?”
+
+“Yes, and he was fit to kill himself with laughing, though his father
+and old Barnes were mad with rage and fury. His father believes him, but
+old Barnes believes neither of them, and swears his father shall go.”
+
+“We shall have to split on ourselves,” elegantly observed Johnny.
+
+“We had better tell Mother Carey. Hullo! here she is, inside the
+window.”
+
+“Didn’t you know that,” said Allen.
+
+Therefore the boys, leaning and sprawling round her, half in and
+half out of the window, told the story, the triumph overcoming all
+compunction, as they described the morning raid, the successful scaling
+of the park-wall, the rush across the sward, the silence of the garden,
+the hoisting up of Allen to fasten on the ears, and the wonderful charms
+of the figure when it wore them and held a golden apple in its hand.
+“Right of Way,” and “Let us in,” had been written in black on all the
+pedestals.
+
+“It is a peculiar way of recommending your admission,” said Caroline.
+
+“That’s Rob’s doing,” said Allen. “I couldn’t look after him while I
+was gilding the apple or I would have stopped him. He half blacked the
+little boy on the swan too--”
+
+“And broke the swan’s bill off, worse luck,” added Johnny.
+
+“Yes,” said Allen, “that was altogether low and unlucky! I meant the old
+fellow simply to have thought that his statue had grown a pair of ears
+in the night.”
+
+“And what would have been the use of that?” said Robin.
+
+“What was the use of all your scrawling,” said Allen, “except just to
+show it was not the natural development of statues.”
+
+“Yes,” added Bobus, “it all came of you that poor Dickey Bird is
+suspected and it is all blown up.”
+
+“As if he would have thought it was done by nobody,” said Rob.
+
+“Why not?” said Jock. “I’m sure I’d never wonder to see ass’s ears
+growing on you. I think they are coming.”
+
+There was a shout of laughter as Rob hastily put up his hands to feel
+for them, adding in his slow, gruff voice--“A statue ain’t alive.”
+
+“It made a fool of the whole matter,” proceeded Bobus. “I wish we’d kept
+a lout like you out of it.”
+
+“Hush, hush, Bobus,” put in his mother, “no matter about that. The
+question is what is to be done about poor Mr. Richards and Alfred.”
+
+“Write a poetical letter,” said Allen, beginning to extemporise in
+Hiawatha measure.
+
+
+          “O thou mighty man of money,
+           Barnes, of Belforest, Esquire,
+           Innocent is Alfred Richards;
+           Innocent his honest father;
+           Innocent as unborn baby
+           Of development of Midas,
+           Of the smearing of the Cupid,
+           Of the fracture of the goose-bill,
+           Of the writing of the mottoes.
+           All the Brownlows of St. Kenelm’s,
+           From the Folly and from Kencroft.
+           Robert, the aspiring soldier,
+           Robert, too, the sucking chemist,
+           John, the Skipjack full of mischief,
+           John, the great originator,
+           Allen, the--”
+
+
+“Allen the uncommon gaby,” broke in Bobus. “Come, don’t waste time,
+something must be done.”
+
+“Yes, a rational letter must be written and signed by you all,” said
+his mother. “The question is whether it would be better to do it through
+your uncle or Mr. Ogilvie.”
+
+“I don’t see why my father should hear of it, or Mr. Ogilvie either,”
+ growled Rob. “I didn’t do those donkeyfied ears.”
+
+“You did the writing, which was five hundred times more donkeyfied,”
+ said Jock.
+
+“It is quite impossible to keep either of them in ignorance,” said
+Caroline.
+
+“Yes,” repeated all her own three; Jock adding “Father would have known
+it as soon as you, and I don’t see that my uncle is much worse.”
+
+“He ain’t so soft,” exclaimed Johnny, roused to loyal defence of his
+parent.
+
+“Soft!” cried Jock, indignantly; “I can tell you father did pitch
+into me when I caught the old lady’s bonnet out at the window with a
+fishing-rod.”
+
+“He never flogged you,” said Johnny contemptuously.
+
+“He did!” cried Jock, triumphantly. “At least he flogged Bobus, when--”
+
+“Shut up, you little ape,” thundered Bobus, not choosing to be offered
+up to the manes of his father’s discipline.
+
+“You think you must explain it to my uncle, mother,” said Allen, rather
+ruefully.
+
+“Certainly. He ought to be told first, and Mr. Ogilvie next. Depend upon
+it, he will be far less angry if it is freely confessed and put into
+his hands and what is more important, Mr. Barnes must attend to him, and
+acquit the Richardses.”
+
+The general voice agreed, but Rob writhed and muttered, “Can’t you be
+the one to tell him, Mother Carey?”
+
+“That’s cool,” said Allen, “to ask her to do what you’re afraid of.”
+
+“He couldn’t do anything to her,” said Rob.
+
+However, public opinion went against Rob, and the party of boys
+dragged him off in their train the less reluctantly that Allen would be
+spokesman, and he always got on well with his uncle. No one could tell
+how it was, but the boy had a frank manner, with a sort of address in
+the manner of narration, that always went far to disarm displeasure, and
+protected his comrades as well as himself. So it was that, instead of
+meeting with unmitigated wrath, the boys found that they were allowed
+the honours and graces of voluntary confession. Allen even thought that
+his uncle showed a little veiled appreciation of the joke, but this was
+not deemed possible by the rest.
+
+To exonerate young Richards was the first requisite, and Allen, under
+his uncle’s eye, drew up a brief note to this effect:--
+
+
+“SIR,--We beg to apologise for the mischief done in your grounds, and to
+assure you on our word and honour that it was suggested by no one, that
+no one admitted us, and no one had any share in it except ourselves.
+
+                            “ALLEN BROWNLOW.
+                            “ROBERT FRIAR BROWNLOW.
+                            “ROBERT OTWAY BROWNLOW.
+                            “JOHN FRIAR BROWNLOW.
+                            “JOHN LUCAS BROWNLOW.”
+
+
+This letter was taken up the next morning to Belforest by Colonel
+Brownlow, and the two eldest delinquents, one, curious, amused, and with
+only compunction enough to flavour an apology, the other cross, dogged,
+and sheepish, dragged along like a cur in a sling, “just as though he
+were going to be hanged,” said Janet.
+
+The report of the expedition as given by Allen was thus:--“The servant
+showed us into a sort of anteroom, and said he would see whether his
+master would see us. Uncle Robert sent in his card and my letter, and
+we waited with the door open, and a great screen in front, so that we
+couldn’t help hearing every word. First there was a great snarl, and
+then a deferential voice, ‘This alters the case, sir.’ But the old man
+swore down in his throat that he didn’t care for Colonel Brownlow or
+Colonel anybody. ‘A gentleman, sir; one of the most respected.’ ‘Then he
+should bring up his family better.’ ‘Indeed, sir, it might be better
+to accept the apology. This might not be considered actionable damage.’
+‘We’ll see that!’ ‘Indeed, don’t you agree with me, Mr. Richards, the
+magistrates would hardly entertain the case.’ ‘Then I’ll appeal; I’ll
+send a representation to the Home Office.’ ‘Is it not to be considered,
+sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous
+light?’ Then,” continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking
+the two voices, “we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter,
+and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was
+sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us.
+He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser;
+almost hump-backed, and as yellow as a mummy. He looked just ready to
+bite off our heads, but he was amazingly set on finding out which was
+which among us, and seemed uncommonly struck with my name and Bobus’s.
+My uncle told him I was called after your father, and he made a snarl
+just like a dog over a bone. He ended with, ‘So you are Allen Brownlow!
+You’ll remember this day’s work, youngster.’ I humbly said I should, and
+so the matter ended.”
+
+“He did not mean any prosecution?”
+
+“O no, that was all quashed, even if it was begun. He must have been
+under an hallucination that he was a stern parent, cutting me off with a
+shilling.”
+
+The words had also struck the Colonel, who sought the first opportunity
+of asking his sister-in-law whether she knew the names of any of her
+mother’s relations.
+
+“Only that her name was Otway,” said Caroline. “You know I lived with my
+father’s aunt, who knew nothing about her, and I have never been able to
+find anything out. Do you know of any connection? Not this old man? Then
+you would have known.”
+
+“That does not follow, for I was scarcely in Jamaica at all. I had a
+long illness immediately after going there, was sent home on leave, and
+then to the depot, and only joined again after the regiment had gone to
+Canada, when the marriage had taken place. I may have heard the name of
+Mrs. Allen’s uncle, but I never bore it in my mind.”
+
+“Is there any way of finding out?”
+
+“I will write to Norton. If he does not remember all about it, his wife
+will.”
+
+“He is the present lieutenant-colonel, I think.”
+
+“Yes, and he was your father’s chief friend. Now that they are at home
+again, we must have him here one of these days.”
+
+“It would be a wonderful thing if this freak were an introduction to a
+relation,” said Caroline.
+
+“There was no doubt of his being struck by the combination of Allen and
+Otway. He chose to understand which were my sons and which my nephews,
+and when I said that Allen bore your maiden name he assented as if he
+knew it before, and spoke of your boy having cause to remember this; I
+am afraid it will not be pleasantly.”
+
+“No,” said Caroline, “it sounded much like a threat. But one would like
+to know, only I thought Farmer Gould’s little granddaughter was his
+niece.”
+
+“That might be without preventing your relationship; I will do my best
+to ascertain it.”
+
+Colonel Norton’s letter gave decisive information that Barnes was the
+name of the uncle with whom Caroline Otway had been living at the time
+of her marriage. She had been treated as a poor relation, and seemed to
+be half-slave, half-governess to the children of the favoured sister,
+little semi-Spanish tyrants. This had roused Captain Allen’s chivalry,
+and his friend remembered his saying that, though he had little or
+nothing of his own, he could at least make her happier than she was in
+such a family. The uncle was reported to have grown rich in the mahogany
+trade, and likewise by steamboat speculations, coupled with judicious
+stock-jobbing among the distressed West Indians, after the emancipation.
+
+“He was a sinister-looking old fellow,” ended Colonel Norton, “and I
+should think not very particular; but I should be glad to hear that he
+had done justice to poor Allen’s daughter. He was written to when she
+was left an orphan, but vouchsafed no answer.”
+
+“Still he may have kept an eye upon you,” added Uncle Robert. “I do not
+think it was new to him that you had married into our family.”
+
+“If only those unfortunate boys have not ruined everything,” sighed
+Ellen.
+
+“Little Elvira’s father must have been one of those cousins,” said
+Caroline. “I wonder what became of the others? She must be--let me
+see--my second cousin.”
+
+“Not very near,” said Ellen.
+
+“I never had a blood relation before since my old aunt died. I am so
+glad that brilliant child belongs to me!”
+
+“I daresay old Gould could tell you more,” said the Colonel.
+
+“Is it wise to revive the connection?” asked his wife.
+
+“The Goulds are not likely to presume,” said the Colonel; “and I think
+that if Caroline takes up the one connection, she is bound to take up
+the other.”
+
+“How am I to make up to this cross old man?” said Carey. “I can’t go and
+fawn on him.”
+
+“Certainly not,” said her brother-in-law; “but I think you ought to make
+some advance, merely as a relation.”
+
+On the family vote, Caroline rather unwillingly wrote a note, explaining
+that she had only just discovered her kinship with Mr. Barnes, and
+offering to come and see him; but not the smallest notice was taken of
+her letter, rather to her relief, though she did not like to hear Ellen
+augur ill for the future.
+
+Another letter, to old Mr. Gould, begging him to call upon her next
+market day, met with a far more ready response. When at his entrance she
+greeted him with outstretched hands, and--“I never thought you were a
+connection;” the fine old weather-beaten face was strangely moved, as
+the rugged hand took hers, and the voice was husky that said--
+
+“I thought there was a likeness in the voice, but I never imagined you
+were grandchild to poor Carey Barnes; I beg your pardon, to Mrs. Otway.”
+
+“You knew her? You must let me see something of my little cousin! I know
+nothing of my relations and my brother-in-law said he thought you could
+tell me.”
+
+“I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young
+days,” said the farmer.
+
+The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the
+son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad,
+noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in
+a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of
+his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one
+of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over
+thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable
+age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid
+out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young
+lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her
+wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the
+back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church,
+leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into
+whose feelings no one ever inquired.
+
+Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared
+in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die.
+There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had
+had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before
+her brother’s prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died
+young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister
+had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and,
+married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business.
+The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated
+in England, treated as his uncle’s heir, and came to Belforest for
+shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould’s
+pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother’s contrivance, though
+without her father’s consent, had made her his wife.
+
+The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew
+as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of
+all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had
+nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso,
+of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to
+obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few
+years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the
+care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father’s
+death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to
+make any further application.
+
+“My little cousin,” said Caroline, “the first I ever knew. Pray bring
+her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her.”
+
+The old man began to prepare her for the child’s being shy and wild,
+though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too
+much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was
+plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was
+charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he
+did not regard her as his grandchild’s rival, but as representing the
+cherished playmate of his youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. -- THE RIVAL HEIRESSES.
+
+
+
+     You smile, their eager ways to see,
+     But mark their choice when they
+     To choose their sportive garb are free,
+     The moral of their play.
+                                 Keble.
+
+
+One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to
+its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which
+the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half
+of amusement, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain
+thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus
+will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.
+
+Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never
+put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of
+their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in
+the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she
+thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided
+rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people’s
+thoughts, but she seldom reflected, analysed or moralised, save on the
+spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief
+events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her,
+that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always
+hitherto been taken by surprise.
+
+So, when Jock observed in public--“Mother, they say at Kencroft that the
+old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?” it
+was with perfect truth that she answered, “I don’t think at all about
+it.”
+
+It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk
+about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions,
+they thought the more.
+
+Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over
+their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd
+compounds of cleverness and ignorance.
+
+“Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest,” said
+Janet.
+
+“A woman can’t be heir-at-law,” said Bobus.
+
+“The Salique law doesn’t come into England.”
+
+“Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of
+the old man’s daughter.
+
+“Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?”
+
+“Besides,”--Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility--“when
+there’s nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among
+them.”
+
+“Who gets it, then?”
+
+“Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all
+blood-suckers.”
+
+“I’m sure,” said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, “that
+abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a
+will, mother will be heiress.”
+
+“Only halves with that black Undine of Allen’s,” sturdily persisted
+Bobus. “Is she coming here, Janet?”
+
+“Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the
+house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.”
+
+“If mother gets rich she won’t have all that teaching to bother her,”
+ said Bobus.
+
+“And I can go on with my education,” said Janet.
+
+“Girl’s education does not signify,” said Bobus. “Now I shall be able to
+get the very best instruction in physical science, and make some great
+discovery. If I could only go and study at Halle, instead of going on
+droning here.”
+
+“Oh! boys can always get educated if they choose. You are going to Eton
+or Winchester after this term.”
+
+“Not if I can get any sense into mother. I don’t want to waste my time
+on those stupid classics and athletics. I say, Janet, it’s time to see
+whether the precipitation has taken place.”
+
+The two used to try experiments together, in Bobus’s end of the attic,
+to an extent that might make the presence of a strange child in the
+house dangerous to herself as well as to everyone else.
+
+Mrs. Gould herself brought the little girl, trying to impress on
+Mrs. Brownlow that if she was indocile it was not her fault, but her
+grandfather could not bear to have her crossed.
+
+The elders did not wonder at his weakness, for the creature was
+wonderfully lovely and winning, with a fearless imperiousness that
+subdued everyone to her service. So brilliant was she, that Essie and
+Ellie, though very pretty little girls, looked faded and effaced beside
+this small empress, whose air seemed to give her a right to bestow her
+favours.
+
+“I am glad to be here!” she observed, graciously, to her hostess, “for
+you are my cousin and a lady.”
+
+“And pray what are you?” asked Janet.
+
+“I am la Senora Dona Elvira Maria de Guadalupe de Menella,” replied the
+damsel, with a liquid sonorousness so annihilating, that Janet made a
+mocking courtesy; and her mother said it was like asking the head of the
+house of Hapsburg if she were a lady!
+
+With some disappointment at Allen’s absence, the little Donna motioned
+Bobus to sit by her side at dinner-time, and when her grandfather looked
+in somewhat later to wish her good-bye, in mingled hope and fear of
+her insisting on going home with him, she cared for nothing but his
+admiration of her playing at kings and queens with Armine and Barbara,
+in the cotton velvet train of the dressing up wardrobe.
+
+“No, she did not want to go home. She never wanted to go back to River
+Hollow.”
+
+Nor would she even kiss him till she had extorted the assurance that he
+had been shaved that morning.
+
+The old man went away blessing Mrs. Brownlow’s kindness to his child,
+and Janet was universally scouted for muttering that it was a heartless
+little being. She alone remained unenthralled by Elvira’s chains. The
+first time she went to Kencroft, she made Colonel Brownlow hold her up
+in his arms to gather a bough off his own favourite double cherry; and
+when Mother Carey demurred, she beguiled Aunt Ellen into taking her on
+her own responsibility to the dancing lessons at the assembly rooms.
+
+There she electrified the dancing-master, and all beholders, seeming
+to catch inspiration from the music, and floating along with a
+wondrous swimming grace, as her dainty feet twinkled, her arms wreathed
+themselves, and her eyes shone with enjoyment.
+
+If she could only have always danced, or acted in the garden! Armine’s
+and Babie’s perpetual romantic dramas were all turned by her into homage
+to one and the same princess. She never knew or cared whether she were
+goddess or fairy, Greek or Briton, provided she had the crown and
+train; but as Babie much preferred action to magnificence, they got on
+wonderfully well without disputes. There was a continual performance,
+endless as a Chinese tragedy, of Spenser’s Faery Queene, in which Elfie
+was always Gloriana, and Armine and Babie were everybody else in turn,
+except the wicked characters, who were represented by the cabbages and a
+dummy.
+
+“Reading was horrid,” Elvira said, and certainly hers deserved the
+epithet. Her attainments fell far behind those of Essie and Ellie, and
+she did not mean to improve them. Her hostess let her alone till she
+had twice shaken her rich mane at her grandfather, and refused to return
+with him; and he had shown himself deeply grateful to Mrs. Brownlow for
+keeping her there, and had said he hoped she was good at her lessons.
+
+The first trial resulted in Elvira’s going to sleep over her book, the
+next in her playing all sorts of ridiculous tricks, and sulking when
+stopped, and when she was forbidden to speak or go out till she had
+repeated three answers in the multiplication table, she was the next
+moment singing and dancing in defiance in the garden. Caroline did not
+choose to endure this, and went to fetch her in, thus producing such
+a screaming, kicking, rolling fury that Mrs. Coffinkey might have some
+colour for the statement that Mrs. Folly Brownlow was murdering all her
+children. The cook, as the strongest person in the house, was called,
+carried her in and put her to bed, where she fell sound asleep, and
+woke, hungry, in high spirits, and without an atom of compunction.
+
+When called to lessons she replied--“No, I’m going back to grandpapa.”
+
+“Very well,” was all Caroline answered, thinking wholesome neglect the
+best treatment.
+
+In an hour’s time Mr. Gould made his appearance with his grandchild. She
+had sought him out among the pigs in the market-place, pulled him by the
+coat, and insisted on being taken home.
+
+His politeness was great, but he was plainly delighted, and determined
+to believe that her demand sprang from affection, and not naughtiness.
+Elvira stood caressing him, barely vouchsafing to look at her hostess,
+and declaring that she never meant to come back.
+
+Not a fortnight had passed, however, before she burst upon them again,
+kissing them all round, and reiterating that she hated her aunt, and
+would live with Mother Carey. Mr. Gould had waited to be properly
+ushered in. He was distressed and apologetic, but he had been forced
+to do his tyrant’s behest. There had been more disturbances than ever
+between her and her aunt, and Mrs. Gould had declared that she would
+not manage the child any longer, while Elvira was still more vehement
+to return to Mother Carey. Would Mrs. Brownlow recommend some school or
+family where the child would be well cared for? Mrs. Brownlow did more,
+offering herself to undertake the charge.
+
+Spite of all the naughtiness, she loved the beautiful wild creature, and
+could not bear to think of intrusting her to strangers; she knew, too,
+that her brother and sister-in-law had no objection, and it was the
+obvious plan. Mr. Gould would make some small payment, and the child was
+to be made to understand that she must be obedient, learn her lessons,
+and cease to expect to find a refuge with her grandfather when she was
+offended.
+
+She drew herself up with childish pride and grace saying, “I will attend
+to Mrs. Brownlow, for she is my cousin and my equal.”
+
+To a certain degree the little maiden kept her word. She was the
+favourite plaything of the boys, and got on well with Babie, who was too
+bright and yielding to quarrel with any one.
+
+But Janet’s elder-sisterly authority was never accepted by the newcomer.
+“I couldn’t mind her, she looked so ugly,” said she in excuse; and
+probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were
+repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life
+and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor,
+who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with
+curious versions of the long words more successfully used by Armine and
+Babie.
+
+Caroline succeeded in modelling a very lovely profile in bas-relief of
+the exquisite little head, and then had it photographed. Mary Ogilvie,
+coming to Kenminster as usual when her holidays began in June, found the
+photograph in the place of honour on her brother’s chimney-piece, and a
+little one beside it of the artist herself.
+
+So far as Carey herself was concerned, Mary was much better satisfied.
+She did not look so worn or so flighty, and had a quieter and more
+really cheerful tone and manner, as of one who had settled into her home
+and occupations. She had made friends, too--few, but worth having;
+and there were those who pronounced the Folly the pleasantest house in
+Kenminster, and regarded the five o’clock tea, after the weekly physical
+science lecture at the school, as a delightful institution.
+
+Of course, the schoolmaster was one of these; and when Mary found
+how all his paths tended to the Pagoda, she hated herself for being a
+suspicious old duenna. Nevertheless, she could not but be alarmed by
+finding that her project of a walking tour through Brittany was not,
+indeed, refused, but deferred, with excuses about having work to finish,
+being in no hurry, and the like.
+
+“I think you ought to go,” said Mary at last.
+
+“I see no ought in the case. Last year the work dragged, and was
+oppressive; but you see how different it has become.”
+
+“That is the very reason,” said Mary, the colour flying to her checks.
+“It will not do to stay lingering here as we did last summer, and not
+only on your own account.”
+
+“You need not be afraid,” was the muttered answer, as David bent down
+his head over the exercise he was correcting. She made no answer, and
+ere long he began again, “I don’t mean that her equal exists, but I am
+not such a fool as to delude myself with a spark of hope.”
+
+“She is too nice for that,” said Mary.
+
+“Just so,” he said, glad to relieve himself when the ice had been
+broken. “There’s something about her that makes one feel her to be
+altogether that doctor’s, as much as if he were present in the flesh.”
+
+“Are you hoping to wear that out? For I don’t think you will.”
+
+“I told you I had no hope,” he answered, rather petulantly. “Even were
+it otherwise, there is another thing that must withhold me. It has got
+abroad that she may turn out heiress to the old man at Belforest.”
+
+“In such a hopeless case, would it not be wiser to leave this place
+altogether?”
+
+“I cannot,” he exclaimed; then remembering that vehemence told against
+him, he added, “Don’t be uneasy; I am a reasonable man, and she is a
+woman to keep one so; but I think I am useful to her, and I am sure she
+is useful to me.”
+
+“That I allow she has been,” said Mary, looking at her brother’s much
+improved appearance; “but--”
+
+“Moths and candles to wit,” he returned; “but don’t be afraid, I attract
+no notice, and I think she trusts me about her boys.”
+
+“But what is it to come to?”
+
+“I have thought of that. Understand that it is enough for me to live
+near her, and be now and then of some little service to her.”
+
+They were interrupted by a note, which Mr. Ogilvie read, and handed to
+his sister with a smile:--
+
+
+“DEAR MR. OGILVIE,--Could you and Mary make it convenient to look in
+this evening? Bobus has horrified his uncle by declining to go up for a
+scholarship at Eton or Winchester, and I should be very glad to talk it
+over with you. Also, I shall have to ask you to take little Armine into
+school after the holidays.
+
+“Yours sincerely,
+
+“C. O. BROWNLOW.”
+
+
+“What does the boy mean?” asked Mary. “I thought he was the pride of
+your heart.”
+
+“So he is; but he is ahead of his fellows, and ought to be elsewhere.
+All measures have been taken for sending him up to stand at one of the
+public schools, but I thought him very passive about it. He is an
+odd boy--reserved and self-concentrated--quite beyond his uncle’s
+comprehension, and likely to become headstrong at a blind exercise of
+authority.”
+
+“I used to like Allen best,” said Mary.
+
+“He is the pleasantest, but there’s more solid stuff in Bobus.
+That boy’s school character is perfect, except for a certain cool
+opinionativeness, which seldom comes out with me, but greatly annoys the
+undermasters.”
+
+“Is he a prig?”
+
+“Well, yes, I’m afraid he is. He’s unpopular, for he does not care for
+games; but his brother is popular enough for both.”
+
+“Jock?--the monkey!”
+
+“His brains run to mischief. I’ve had to set him more impositions than
+any boy in the school, and actually to take his form myself, for simply
+the undermasters can’t keep up discipline or their own tempers. As to
+poor M. le Blanc, I find him dancing and shrieking with fury in the
+midst of a circle of snorting, giggling boys; and when he points out ce
+petit monstre, Jock coolly owns to having translated ‘Croquons les,’ let
+us croquet them; or ‘Je suis blesse,’ I am blest.”
+
+“So the infusion of brains produces too much effervescence.”
+
+“Yes, but the whole school has profited, and none more so than No. 2 of
+the other family, who has quite passed his elder brother, and is above
+his namesake whenever it is a case of plodding ability versus idle
+genius. But, after all, how little one can know of one’s boys.”
+
+“Or one’s girls,” said Mary, thinking of governess experiences.
+
+It was a showery summer evening when the brother and sister walked up
+to the Folly in a partial clearing, when the evening sun made every bush
+twinkle all over with diamond drops. Childish voices were heard near the
+gate, and behind a dripping laurel were seen Elvira, Armine, and Barbara
+engaged in childhood’s unceasing attempt to explore the centre of the
+earth.
+
+“What do you expect to find there?” they were asked.
+
+“Little kobolds, with pointed caps, playing at ball with rubies and
+emeralds, and digging with golden spades,” answered Babie.
+
+“And they shall give me an opal ring,” said Elfie, “But Armine does not
+want the kobolds.”
+
+“He says they are bad,” said Babie. “Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know
+elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that
+sat on the water and played his harp, wasn’t bad, and the dear little
+kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?”
+
+Her voice was full of earnest pleading, and Mr. Ogilvie, not being
+versed in the spiritual condition of elves could best reply by asking
+why Armine thought ill of their kind.
+
+“I think they are nasty little things that want to distract and bewilder
+one in the real great search.”
+
+“What search, my boy?”
+
+“For the source of everything,” said Armine, lowering his voice and
+looking into his muddy hole.
+
+“But that is above, not below,” said Mary.
+
+“Yes,” said Armine reverently; “but I think God put life and the
+beginning of growing into the earth, and I want to find it.”
+
+“Isn’t it Truth?” said Babie. “Mr. Acton said Truth was at the bottom of
+a well. I won’t look at the kobolds if they keep one from seeing Truth.”
+
+“But I must get my ring and all my jewels from them,” put in Elfie.
+
+“Should you know Truth?” asked Mr. Ogilvie. “What do you think she is
+like?”
+
+“So beautiful!” said Babie, clasping her fingers with earnestness. “All
+white and clear like crystal, with such blue, sweet, open eyes. And she
+has an anchor.”
+
+“That’s Hope?” said Armine.
+
+“Oh! Hope and Truth go hand in hand,” said Babie; “and Hope will be all
+robed in green like the young corn-fields in the spring.”
+
+“Ah, Babie, that emerald Hope and crystal Truth are not down in the
+earth, earthy,” said Mary again.
+
+“Nay, perhaps Armine has got hold of a reality,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “They
+are to be found above by working below.”
+
+“Talking paradox to Armine?” said the cheerful voice of the young
+mother. “My dear sprites, do you know that it is past eight! How wet you
+are! Good night, and mind you don’t go upstairs in those boots.”
+
+“It is quite comfortable to hear anything so commonplace,” said Mary,
+when the children had run away, to the sound of its reiteration after
+full interchange of good nights. “Those imps make one feel quite eerie.”
+
+“Has Armine been talking in that curious fashion of his,” said Carey,
+as they began to pace the walks. “I am afraid his thinker is too big--as
+the child says in Miss Tytler’s book. This morning over his parsing he
+asked me--‘Mother, which is _realest_, what we touch or what we feel?’
+knitting his brows fearfully when I did not catch his meaning, and going
+on--‘I mean is that fly as real as King David?’ and then as I was more
+puzzled he went on--‘You see we only need just see that fly now with our
+outermost senses, and he will only live a little while, and nobody cares
+or will think of him any more, but everybody always does think, and
+feel, and care a great deal about King David.’ I told him, as the best
+answer I could make on the spur of the moment, that David was alive in
+Heaven, but he pondered in and broke out--‘No, that’s not it! David was
+a real man, but it is just the same about Perseus and Siegfried, and
+lots of people that never were men, only just thoughts. Ain’t thoughts
+_realer_ than things, mother?’”
+
+“But much worse for him, I should say,” exclaimed Mary.
+
+“I thought of Pisistratus Caxton, and wrote to Mr. Ogilvie. It is a
+great pity, but I am afraid he ought not to dwell on such things till
+his body is grown up to his mind.”
+
+“Yes, school is the approved remedy for being too clever,” said Mr.
+Ogilvie. “You are wise. It is a pity, but it will be all the better for
+him by-and-by.”
+
+“And the elder ones will take care the seasoning is not too severe,”
+ said Caroline, with a resolution she could hardly have shown if this had
+been her first launch of a son. “But it was about Bobus that I wanted
+to consult you. His uncle thinks him headstrong and conceited, if not
+lazy.”
+
+“Lazy he is certainly not.”
+
+“I knew you would say so, but the Colonel cannot enter into his wish to
+have more physical science and less classics, and will not hear of his
+going to Germany, which is what he wishes, though I am sure he is too
+young.”
+
+“He ought not to go there till his character is much more formed.”
+
+“What do you think of his going on here?”
+
+“That’s a temptation I ought to resist. He will soon have outstripped
+the other boys so that I could not give him the attention he needs, and
+besides the being with other boys, more his equals, would be invaluable
+to him.”
+
+“Well, he is rather bumptious.”
+
+“Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk. It
+spoils him often for life.”
+
+“I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the
+law and talking to women instead of men, because they don’t argue with
+him. No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin
+special training. Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie? You know if my
+horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all
+in vain.”
+
+They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where
+the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow. Bobus was
+sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate
+the light on him and to afford it to no one else. On the floor was a
+servant’s flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John
+sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged,
+working a sum with ink from a doll’s tea-cup placed in the candlestick,
+and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there
+always was between those two.
+
+“I say, what does pulsum come from?”
+
+“What a brute this is of a fraction! Skipjack, what will go in 639 and
+852?”
+
+“Pulsum, a pulse--volat, flies. Eh! Three’ll do it. Or common measure it
+at once.”
+
+“Bother common measure. The threes in--”
+
+“Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased;
+paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom. I say wouldn’t that rile
+Perkins like fun?”
+
+“The threes in seven--two--in eighteen--”
+
+“I say, Johnny, is pulsum from pulco?”
+
+“Never heard of it.”
+
+“Bobus, is it pulco, pulxi, pulsum?”
+
+“Pulco--I make an ass of myself,” muttered Bobus.
+
+“O murder,” groaned Johnny, “it has come out 213.”
+
+“Not half so much murder as this pulsum. Why it will go in them both. I
+can see with half an eye.”
+
+“Isn’t it pello--pulsum?”
+
+“Pello, to drive out. Hurrah! That fits it.”
+
+“Look out, Skipjack, there’s a moth.”
+
+“Anything worth having?” demanded Bobus.
+
+“Only a grass eggar. Fama, fame; volat, flies; Idomoeea ducem, that
+Idomaeeus the leader; pulsum, expelled. Get out, I say, you foolish
+beggar” (to the moth).
+
+“Never mind catching him,” said Bobus, “we’ve got dozens.”
+
+“Yes, but I don’t want him frizzling alive in my candle.”
+
+“Don’t kick up such a shindy,” broke out Johnny, as a much stained
+handkerchief came flapping about.
+
+“You’ve blotted my sum. Thunder and ages!” as the candlestick toppled
+over, ink and all. “That is a go!”
+
+“I say, Bobus, lend us your Guy Fawkes to pick up the pieces.”
+
+“Not if I know it,” said Bobus. “You always smash things.”
+
+“There’s a specimen of the way we learn our lessons,” said Caroline, in
+a low voice, still unseen, as Bobus wiped, sheathed, and pocketed his
+favourite pen, then proceeded to turn down the lamp, but allowed the
+others to relight their candle at the expiring wick.
+
+“The results are fair,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“I think of your carpet,” said Mary, quaintly.
+
+“We always lay down an ancient floorcloth in the bay window before the
+boys come home,” said Carey, laughing. “Here, Bobus.”
+
+And as he came out headforemost at the window, the two ladies discreetly
+drew off to leave the conversation free.
+
+“So, Brownlow,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “I hear you don’t want to try your
+luck elsewhere.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Do you object to telling me why?”
+
+“I see no use in it,” said Bobus, never shy, and further aided by the
+twilight; “I do quite well enough here.”
+
+“Should you not do better in a larger field among a higher stamp of
+boys?”
+
+“Public school boys are such fools!”
+
+“And what are the Kenites?”
+
+“Well, not much,” said Bobus, with a twitch in the corner of his mouth;
+“but I can keep out of their way.”
+
+“You mean that you have gained your footing, and don’t want to have to
+do it again.”
+
+“Not only that, sir,” said the boy, “but at a public school you’re
+fagged, and forced to go in for cricket and football.”
+
+“You would soon get above that.”
+
+“Yes, but even then you get no peace, and are nobody unless you go in
+for all that stuff of athletics and sports. I hate it all, and don’t
+want to waste my time.”
+
+“I don’t think you are quite right as to there being no distinction
+without athletics.”
+
+“Allen says it is so now.”
+
+“Allen may be a better judge of the present state of things, but I
+should think there was always a studious set who were respectable.”
+
+“Besides,” proceeded Bobus, warming with his subject, “I see no good in
+nothing but classics. I don’t care what ridiculous lies some old man who
+never existed, or else was a dozen people at once, told about a lot of
+ruffians who never lived, killing each other at some place that never
+was. I like what you can lay your finger on, and say it’s here, it’s
+true, and I can prove it, and explain it, and improve on it.”
+
+“If you can,” said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little
+brother.
+
+“That’s what I want to do,” said Bobus; “to deal with real things, not
+words and empty fancies. I know languages are necessary; but if one can
+read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that’s all
+that is of use. If my uncle won’t let me study physical science in
+Germany, I had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it
+for myself.”
+
+“I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the
+difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?”
+
+“Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated.”
+
+“And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some
+special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full
+training and expansion. If you mean to be a great surgeon--”
+
+“I don’t mean to be a surgeon.”
+
+“A physician then.”
+
+“No, sir. Please don’t let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at
+everyone’s beck and call. I’ve seen too much of that. I mean to get a
+professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get
+to the bottom of everything,” said the boy, with the vast purposes of
+his age.
+
+“Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school,
+trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more
+powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent.
+Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are growing.
+Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated
+classics. You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones,
+of studying physical science than I can provide for you here.”
+
+This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth
+to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he
+allowed that it made all the difference.
+
+Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
+
+“Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth
+Lawn.”
+
+“Not a good day for it.”
+
+“It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call it
+fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in
+the hall if it rained. I’m sure her kindness is great, for she takes
+infinite trouble to make Janet producible! Poor Janet, you know dressing
+her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won’t stand
+still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a
+still more curious way. So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female
+household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable,
+between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some
+twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets
+every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen
+and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass
+to order.”
+
+It was not long before Janet appeared, and Jessie with her, the latter
+having been set down to give a message. The two girls were dressed in
+the same light black-and-white checked silk of early youth, one with
+pink ribbons and the other with blue; but the contrast was the more
+apparent, for one was fresh and crisp, while the other was flattened and
+tumbled; one said everything had been delightful, the other that it had
+all been very stupid, and the expression made even more difference than
+the complexion, in one so fair, fresh, and rosy, in the other so sallow
+and muddled. Jessie looked so sweet and bright, that when she had gone
+Miss Ogilvie could not help exclaiming, “How pretty she is!”
+
+“Yes, and so good-tempered and pleasant. There is something always
+restful to me in having her in the room,” said Caroline.
+
+“Restful?” said Janet, with one of her unamiable sneers. “Yes, she
+and H. S. H. sent me off to sleep with their gossip on the way home! O
+mother, there’s another item for the Belforest record. Mr. Barnes has
+sent off all his servants again, even the confidential man is shipped
+off to America.”
+
+“You seem to have slept with one ear open,” said her mother. “And oh!”
+ as Janet took off her gloves, “I hope you did not show those hands!”
+
+“I could not eat cake without doing so, and Mr. Glover supposed I had
+been photographing.”
+
+“And what had you been doing?” inquired Mary, at sight of the brown
+stains.
+
+“Trying chemical experiments with Bobus,” said her mother.
+
+“Yes!” cried Janet, “and I’ve found out why we did not succeed. I
+thought it out during the dancing.”
+
+“Instead of cultivating the ‘light fantastic toe,’ as the Courier calls
+it.”
+
+“I danced twice, and a great plague it was. Only with Mr. Glover and
+with a stupid little middy. I was thinking all the time how senseless it
+was.”
+
+“How agreeable you must have been!”
+
+“One can’t be agreeable to people like that. Oh, Bobus!” as he came into
+the room with Mr. Ogilvie, “I’ve found out--”
+
+“I thought Jessie was here,” he interrupted.
+
+“She’s gone home. I know what was wrong yesterday. We ought to have
+isolated the hypo--”
+
+“Isolated the grandmother,” said Bobus. “That has nothing to do with
+it.”
+
+“I’m sure of it. I’ll show you how it acts.”
+
+“I’ll show you just the contrary.”
+
+“Not to-night,” cried their mother, as Bobus began to relight the lamp.
+“You two explosives are quite perilous enough by day without lamps and
+candles.”
+
+“You endure a great deal,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“I’m not afraid of either of these two doing anything dangerous singly,
+for they are both careful, but when they are of different minds, I never
+know what the collision may produce.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bobus, “I’d much sooner have Jessie to help me, for she does
+what she is bid, and never thinks.”
+
+“That’s all you think women good for,” said Janet.
+
+“Quite true,” said Bobus, coolly.
+
+And Mr. Ogilvie was acknowledged by his sister to have done a good deed
+that night, since the Folly might be far more secure when Janet tried
+her experiments alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. -- PUMPING AWAY.
+
+
+
+     The rude will scuffle through with ease enough,
+     Great schools best suit the sturdy and the rough.
+     Soon see your wish fulfilled in either child,
+     The pert made perter, and the tame made wild.
+                                                  Cowper.
+
+
+Robert Otway Brownlow came out fourth on the roll of newly-elected
+scholars of S. Mary, Winton, and his master was, as his sister declared,
+unwholesomely proud of it, even while he gave all credit to the Folly,
+and none to himself.
+
+Still Mary had her way and took him to Brittany, and though her present
+pupils were to leave the schoolroom at Christmas, she would bind herself
+to no fresh engagement, thinking that she had better be free to make a
+home for him, whether at Kenminster or elsewhere.
+
+When the half-year began again Bobus was a good deal missed, Jock was in
+a severe idle fit, and Armine did not come up to the expectations formed
+of him, and was found, when “up to Mr. Perkins,” to be as bewildered and
+unready as other people.
+
+All the work in the school seemed flat and poor, except perhaps
+Johnny’s, which steadily improved. Robert, whose father wished him to be
+pushed on so as to be fit for examination for Sandhurst, opposed, to all
+pressure, the passive resistance of stolidity. He was nearly sixteen,
+but seemed incapable of understanding that compulsory studies were for
+his good and not a cruel exercise of tyranny. He disdainfully rejected
+an offer from his aunt to help him in the French and arithmetic which
+had become imminent, while of the first he knew much less than Babie,
+and of the latter only as much as would serve to prevent his being daily
+“kept in.”
+
+One chilly autumn afternoon, Armine was seen, even by the unobservant
+under-master, to be shivering violently, and his teeth chattering so
+that he could not speak plainly.
+
+“You ought to be at home,” said Mr. Perkins. “Here, you, Brownlow
+maximus, just see him home, and tell his mother that he should be seen
+to.”
+
+“I can go alone,” Armine tried to say; but Mr. Perkins thought the
+head-master could not say he neglected one who was felt to be a favoured
+scholar if he sent his cousin with him.
+
+So presently Armine was pushed in at the back door, with these words
+from Rob to the cook--“Look here, he’s been and got cold, or something.”
+
+Rob then disappeared, and Armine struggled in to the kitchen fire,
+white, sobbing and panting, and, as the compassionate maids discovered,
+drenched from head to foot, his hair soaked, his boots squishing with
+water. His mother and sisters were out, and as cook administered the
+hottest draught she could compound, and Emma tugged at his jacket, they
+indignantly demanded what he had been doing to himself.
+
+“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll go and take my things off; only please don’t
+tell mother.”
+
+“Yes,” said old nurse, who had tottered in, but who was past fully
+comprehending emergencies; “go and get into bed, my dear, and Emma shall
+come and warm it for him.”
+
+“No,” stoutly said the little boy; “there’s nothing the matter, and
+mother must not know.”
+
+“Take my word for it,” said cook, “that child have a been treated
+shameful by those great nasty brutes of big boys.”
+
+And when Armine, too cold to sit anywhere but by the only fire in the
+house, returned with a book and begged humbly for leave to warm himself,
+he was installed on nurse’s footstool, in front of a huge fire, and hot
+tea and “lardy-cake” tendered for his refreshment, while the maids by
+turns pitied and questioned him.
+
+“Have you had a haccident, sir,” asked cook.
+
+“No,” he wearily said.
+
+“Have any one been doing anything to you, then?” And as he did not
+answer she continued: “You need not think to blind me, sir; I sees it as
+if it was in print. Them big boys have been a-misusing of you.”
+
+“Now, cook, you ain’t to say a word to my mother,” cried Armine,
+vehemently. “Promise me.”
+
+“If you’ll tell me all about it, sir,” said cook, coaxingly.
+
+“No,” he answered, “I promised!” And he buried his head in nurse’s lap.
+
+“I calls that a shame,” put in Emma; “but you could tell _we_, Master
+Armine. It ain’t like telling your ma nor your master.”
+
+“I said no one,” said Armine.
+
+The maids left off tormenting him after a time, letting him fall asleep
+with his head on the lap of old nurse, who went on dreamily stroking his
+damp hair, not half understanding the matter, or she would have sent him
+to bed.
+
+Being bound by no promise of secrecy, Emma met her mistress with a
+statement of the surmises of the kitchen, and Caroline hurried thither
+to find him waking to headache, fiery cheeks, and aching limbs, which
+were not simply the consequence of the position in which he had been
+sleeping before the fire. She saw him safe in bed before she asked any
+questions, but then she began her interrogations, as little successfully
+as the maids.
+
+“I can’t, mother,” he said, hiding his face on the pillow.
+
+“My little boy used to have no secrets from me.”
+
+“Men must have secrets sometimes, though they rack their hearts
+and--their backs,” sighed poor Armine, rolling over. “Oh, mother, my
+back is so bad! Please don’t bother besides.”
+
+“My poor darling! Let me rub it. There, you might trust Mother Carey!
+She would not tell Mr. Ogilvie, nor get any one into trouble.”
+
+“I promised, mother. Don’t!” And no persuasions could draw anything from
+him but tears. Indeed he was so feverish and in so much pain that she
+called in Dr. Leslie before the evening was over, and rheumatic fever
+was barely staved off by the most anxious vigilance for the next day
+or two. It was further decreed that he must be carefully tended all the
+winter, and must not go to school again till he had quite got over
+the shock, since he was of a delicate frame that would not bear to be
+trifled with.
+
+The boy gave a long sigh of content when he heard that he was not to
+return to school at present; but it did not induce him to utter a word
+on the cause of the wetting, either to his mother or to Mr. Ogilvie, who
+came up in much distress, and examined him as soon as he was well enough
+to bear it. Nor would any of his schoolfellows tell. Jock said he had
+had an imposition, and was kept in school when “it” happened; John said
+“he had nothing to do with it;” and Rob and Joe opposed surly negatives
+to all questions on the subject, Rob adding that Armine was a disgusting
+little idiot, an expression for which his father took him severely to
+task.
+
+However there were those in Kenminster who never failed to know all
+about everything, and the first afternoon after Armine’s disaster
+that Caroline came to Kencroft she was received with such sympathetic
+kindness that her prophetic soul misgave her, and she dreaded hearing
+either that she was letting herself be cheated by some tradesman, or
+that she was to lose her pupils.
+
+No. After inquiries for Armine, his aunt said she was very sorry, but
+now he was better she thought his mother ought to know the truth.
+
+“What--?” asked Caroline, startled; and Jessie, the only other person
+in the room, put down her work, and listened with a strange air of
+determination.
+
+“My dear, I am afraid it is very painful.”
+
+“Tell me at once, Ellen.”
+
+“I can’t think how he learnt it. But they have been about with all sorts
+of odd people.”
+
+“Who? What, Ellen? Are you accusing my boy?” said Caroline, her limbs
+beginning to tremble and her eyes to flash, though she spoke as quietly
+as she could.
+
+“Now do compose yourself, my dear. I dare say the poor little fellow
+knew no better, and he has had a severe lesson.”
+
+“If you would only tell me, Ellen.”
+
+“It seems,” said Ellen, with much regret and commiseration, “that all
+this was from poor little Armine using such shocking language that Rob,
+as a senior boy, you know, put him under the pump at last to put a stop
+to it.”
+
+Before Caroline’s fierce, incredulous indignation had found a word,
+Jessie had exclaimed “Mamma!” in a tone of strong remonstrance; then,
+“Never mind, Aunt Carey, I know it is only Mrs. Coffinkey, and Johnny
+promised he would tell the whole story if any one brought that horrid
+nonsense to you about poor little Armine.”
+
+Kind, gentle Jessie seemed quite transported out of herself, as she flew
+to the door and called Johnny, leaving the two mothers looking at each
+other, and Ellen, somewhat startled, saying “I’m sure, if it is not
+true, I’m very sorry, Caroline, but it came from--”
+
+She broke off, for Johnny was scuffling across the hall, calling out
+“Holloa, Jessie, what’s up?”
+
+“Johnny, she’s done it!” said Jessie. “You said if the wrong one was
+accused you would tell the whole story!”
+
+“And what do they say?” asked John, who was by this time in the room.
+
+“Mamma has been telling Aunt Carey that Rob put poor little Armine under
+the pump for using bad language.”
+
+“I say!” exclaimed John; “if that is not a cram!”
+
+“You said you knew nothing of it,” said his mother.
+
+“I said I didn’t do it. No more I did,” said John.
+
+“No more did Rob, I am sure,” said his mother.
+
+But Johnny, though using no word of denial, made it evident that she was
+mistaken, as he answered in an odd tone of excuse, “Armie was cheeky.”
+
+“But he didn’t use bad words!” said Caroline, and she met a look of
+comfortable response.
+
+“Let us hear, John,” said his mother, now the most agitated. “I can’t
+believe that Rob would so ill-treat a little fellow like Armie, even if
+he did lose his temper for a moment. Was Armine impertinent?”
+
+“Well, rather,” said John. “He wouldn’t do Rob’s French exercise.” And
+then--as the ladies cried out, he added--“O yes, he knows ever so much
+more French than Rob, and now Bobus is gone Rob could not get anyone
+else.”
+
+“Bobus?”
+
+“O yes, Bobus would do anybody’s exercises at a penny for Latin, two for
+French, and three for Greek,” said John, not aware of the shock he gave.
+
+“And Armine would not?” said his mother. “Was that it?”
+
+“Not only that,” said John; “but the little beggar must needs up and say
+he would not help to act a falsehood, and you know nobody could stand
+that.”
+
+Caroline understood the gravity of such an offence better than Ellen
+did, for that good lady had never had much in common with her boys after
+they outgrew the nursery. She answered, “Armine was quite right.”
+
+“So much the worse for him, I fear,” said Caroline.
+
+“Yes,” said John, “it would have been all very well to give him a cuff
+and tell him to mind his own business.”
+
+“All very well!” ejaculated his mother.
+
+“But you know,” continued Johnny to his aunt, “the seniors are always
+mad at a junior being like that; and there was another fellow who
+dragged him to the great school pump, and put him in the trough, and
+they said they would duck him till he swore to do whatever Rob ordered.”
+
+“Swore!” exclaimed his mother. “You don’t mean that, Johnny?”
+
+“Yes, I do, mamma,” said John. “I would tell you the words, only you
+wouldn’t like them. And Armine said it would be breaking the Third
+Commandment, which was the very way to aggravate them most. So they
+pumped on his head, and tried if he would say it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You
+may kill me like the forty martyrs, but I won’t,’ and of course that set
+them on to pump the more.”
+
+“But, Johnny, did you see it all?” cried Caroline. “How could you?”
+
+“I couldn’t help it, Aunt Carey.”
+
+“Yes, Aunt Carey,” again broke in Jessie, “he was held down. That
+horrid--well, I won’t say whom, Johnny--held him, and his arm was
+so twisted and grazed that he was obliged to come to me to put some
+lily-leaves on it, and if he would but show it, it is all black and
+yellow still.”
+
+Carey, much moved, went over and kissed both her boy’s champions, while
+Ellen said, with tears in her eyes, “Oh, Johnny, I’m glad you were at
+least not so bad. What ended it?”
+
+“The school-bell,” said Johnny. “I say, please don’t let Rob know I
+told, or I shall catch it.”
+
+“Your father--”
+
+“Mamma! You aren’t going to tell him!” cried Jessie and Johnny, both in
+horror, interrupting her.
+
+“Yes, children, I certainly shall. Do you think such wickedness as that
+ought to be kept from him? Nearly killing a fatherless child like that,
+because he was not as bad as they were, and telling falsehoods about
+it too! I never could have believed it of Rob. Oh! what school does to
+one’s boys!” She was agitated and overcome to a degree that startled
+Carey, who began to try to comfort her.
+
+“Perhaps Rob did not understand what he was about, and you see he was
+led on. Armine will soon be all right again, and though he is a dear,
+good little fellow, maybe the lesson may have been good for him.”
+
+“How can you treat it so lightly?” cried poor Ellen, in her agitated
+indignation. “It was a mercy that the child did not catch his death; and
+as to Rob--! And when Mr. Ogilvie always said the boys were so improved,
+and that there was no bullying! It just shows how much he knows about
+it! To think what they have made of my poor Rob! His father will be so
+grieved! I should not wonder if he had a fit of the gout!”
+
+The shock was far greater to her than to one who had never kept her boys
+at a distance, and who understood their ways, characters, and code of
+honour; and besides Rob was her eldest, and she had credited him with
+every sterling virtue. Jessie and Johnny stood aghast. They had only
+meant to defend their little cousin, and had never expected either that
+she would be so much overcome, or that she would insist on their father
+knowing all, as she did with increasing anger and grief at each of their
+attempts at persuading her to the contrary. Caroline thought he ought
+to know. Her children’s father would have known long ago, but then
+his wrath would have been a different thing from what seemed to be
+apprehended from his brother; and she understood the distress of Jessie
+and John, though her pity for Rob was but small. Whatever she tried to
+say in the way of generous mediation or soothing only made it worse; and
+poor Ellen, far from being her Serene Highness, was, between scolding
+and crying, in an almost hysterical state, so that Caroline durst not
+leave her or the frightened Jessie, and was relieved at last to hear the
+Colonel coming into the house, when, thinking her presence would do more
+harm than good, and longing to return to her little son, she slipped
+away, and was joined at the door by her own John, who asked--
+
+“What’s up, mother?”
+
+“Did you know all about this dreadful business, Jock?”
+
+“Afterwards, of course, but I was shut up in school, writing three
+hundred disgusting lines of Virgil, or I’d have got the brutes off some
+way.”
+
+“And so little Armie is the brave one of all!”
+
+“Well, so he is,” said Jock; “but I say, mother, don’t go making him
+cockier. You know he’s only fit to be stitched up in one of Jessie’s
+little red Sunday books, and he must learn to keep a civil tongue in his
+head, and not be an insufferable little donkey.”
+
+“You would not have had him give in and do it! Never, Jock!”
+
+“Why no, but he could have got off with a little chaff instead of coming
+out with his testimony like that, and so I’ve been telling him. So don’t
+you set him up again to think himself forty martyrs all in one, or there
+will be no living with him.”
+
+“If all boys were like him.”
+
+Jock made a sound of horror and disgust that made her laugh.
+
+“He’s all very well,” added he in excuse; “but to think of all being
+like that. The world would be only one big muff.”
+
+“But, Jock, what’s this about Bobus being paid for doing people’s
+exercises?”
+
+“Bobus is a cute one,” said Jock.
+
+“I thought he had more uprightness,” she sighed. “And you, Jock?”
+
+“I should think not!” he laughed. “Nobody would trust me.”
+
+“Is that the only reason?” she said, sadly, and he looked up in her
+face, squeezed her hand, and muttered--
+
+“One mayn’t like dirt without making such a row.”
+
+“That’s like father’s boy,” she said, and he wrung her hand again.
+
+They found Armine coiled up before the fire with a book, and Jock
+greeted him with--
+
+“Well, you little donkey, there’s such a shindy at the Croft as you
+never heard.”
+
+“Mother, you know!” cried Armine, running into her outstretched arms and
+being covered with her kisses. “But who told?” he asked.
+
+“John and Jessie,” said Jock. “They always said they would if anyone
+said anything against you to mother or Uncle Robert.”
+
+“Against me?” said Armine.
+
+“Yes,” said Jock. “Didn’t you know it got about through some of the
+juniors or their sisters that it was Brownlow maximus gently chastising
+you for bad language, and of course Mrs. Coffinkey told Aunt Ellen.”
+
+“Oh, but Jock,” cried Armine, turning round in consternation, “I hope
+Rob does not know.”
+
+And on further pressing it was extracted that Rob, when sent home with
+him, had threatened him with the great black vaulted cellars of Kencroft
+if he divulged the truth. When Jock left them the relief of pouring out
+the whole history to the mother was evidently great.
+
+“You know, mother, I couldn’t,” he cried, as if there had been a
+physical impossibility.
+
+“Why, dear child. How did you bear their horrid cruelty?”
+
+“I thought it could not be so bad as it was for the forty soldiers on
+the Lake. Dear grandmamma read us the story out of a little red book one
+Sunday evening when you were gone to Church. They froze, you know, and
+it was only cold and nasty for me.”
+
+“So the thought of them carried you through?”
+
+“God carried me through,” said the child reverently. “I asked Him not to
+let me break His Commandment.”
+
+Just then the Colonel’s heavy tread was heard, and with him came Mr.
+Ogilvie, whom he had met on the road and informed. The good man was
+indeed terribly grieved, and his first words were, “Caroline, I cannot
+tell you how much shocked and concerned I am;” and then he laid his hand
+on Armine’s shoulder saying--“My little boy, I am exceedingly sorry for
+what you have suffered. One day Robert will be so too. You have been
+a noble little fellow, and if anything could console me for the part
+Robert has played it would be the seeing one of my dear brother’s sons
+so like his father.”
+
+He gave the downcast brow a fatherly kiss, so really like those of days
+gone by that the boy’s overstrained spirits gushed forth in sobs and
+tears, of which he was so much ashamed that he rushed out of the room,
+leaving his mother greatly overcome, his uncle distressed and annoyed,
+and his master not much less so, at the revelation of so much evil, so
+hard either to reach or to understand.
+
+“I would have brought Robert to apologise,” said the Colonel, “if he had
+been as yet in a mood to do so properly.”
+
+“Oh! that would have been dreadful for us all,” ejaculated Caroline,
+under her breath.
+
+“But I can make nothing of him,” continued he, “He is perfectly stolid
+and seems incapable of feeling anything, though I have talked to him as
+I never thought to have to speak to any son of mine; but he is deaf to
+all.”
+
+The Colonel, in his wrath, even while addressing only Caroline and Mr.
+Ogilvie, had raised his voice as if he were shouting words of command,
+so that both shrank a little, and Carey said--
+
+“I don’t think he knew it was so bad.”
+
+“What? Cheating his masters and torturing a helpless child for not
+yielding to his tyranny?”
+
+“People don’t always give things their right names even to themselves,”
+ said Mr. Ogilvie. “I should try to see it from the boy’s point of view.”
+
+“I have no notion of extenuating ill-conduct or making excuses! That’s
+the modern way! So principles get lowered! I tell you, sir, there are
+excuses for everything. What makes the difference is only the listening
+to them or not.”
+
+“Yes,” ventured Caroline, “but is there not a difference between finding
+excuses for oneself and for other people?”
+
+“All alike, lowering the principle,” said the Colonel, with something
+of the same slowness of comprehension as his son. “If excuses are to be
+made for everything, I don’t wonder that there is no teaching one’s boys
+truth or common honesty and humanity.”
+
+“But, Robert,” said Caroline, roused to defence; “do you really mean
+that in your time nobody bullied or cribbed?”
+
+“There was some shame about it if they did,” said the Colonel. “Now, I
+suppose, I am to be told that it is an ordinary custom to be connived
+at.”
+
+“Certainly not by me,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I had hoped that the standard
+of honour had been raised, but it is very hard to mete the exact level
+of the schoolboy code from the outside.”
+
+“And your John and mine have never given in to it,” added Caroline.
+
+“What do you propose to do, Mr. Ogilvie?” said the Colonel. “I shall do
+my part with my boy as a father. What will you do with him and the other
+bully, who I find was Cripps.”
+
+“I shall see Cripps’s father first. I think it might be well if we both
+saw him before deciding on the form of discipline. We have to think not
+only of justice but of the effect on their characters.”
+
+“That’s the modern system,” said the Colonel indignantly. “Fine work it
+would make in the army. I know when punishment is deserved. I don’t set
+up to be Providence, to know exactly what work it is to do. I leave that
+to my Maker and do my duty.”
+
+He was cut short by his son Joe rushing in headlong, exclaiming--
+
+“Papa, papa, please come! Rob has knocked Johnny down and he doesn’t
+come round.”
+
+Colonel Brownlow hurried off, Caroline trying to make him hear her offer
+to follow if she could be useful, and sending Jock to see whether there
+was any opening for her. Unless the emergency were very great indeed
+she knew her absence would be preferred, and so she and Mr. Ogilvie
+remained, talking the matter over, with more pity for the delinquent
+than his own family would have thought natural.
+
+“It really is a terrible thing to be stupid,” she said. “I don’t imagine
+that unlucky boy ever entered into his father’s idea of truth and
+honour, which really is fine in its way.”
+
+“Very fine, and proved to have made many fine fellows in its time.
+I dare say the lad will grow up to it, but just now he simply feels
+cruelly injured by interference with a senior’s claim to absolute
+submission.”
+
+“Which he sees as singly as his father sees the simple duty of justice.”
+
+“It would be comfortable if we poor moderns could deal out our measures
+with that straightforward military simplicity. I cannot help seeing in
+that unfortunate boy the victim of examinations for commissions. Boys
+must be subjected to high pressure before they can thoroughly enter into
+the importance of the issues that depend upon it; and when a sluggish,
+dull intellect is forced beyond endurance, there is an absolute instinct
+of escape, impelling to shifts and underhand ways of eluding work.
+Of course the wrong is great, but the responsibility rests with the
+taskmaster in the same manner as the thefts of a starved slave might on
+his owner.”
+
+“The taskmaster being the country?”
+
+“Exactly so. Happy those boys who have available brains, like yours.”
+
+“Ah! I am very sorry about Bobus; what ought I to do?”
+
+“Hardly more than write a few words of warning, since the change may
+probably have put an end to the practice.”
+
+Jock presently brought back tidings that his namesake was all right,
+except for a black eye, and was growling like ten bears at having been
+sent to bed.
+
+“Uncle Robert was more angry than ever, in a white heat, quiet and
+terrible,” said Jock, in an awe-struck voice. “He has locked Rob up in
+his study, and here’s Joe, for Aunt Ellen is quite knocked up, and they
+want the house to be very quiet.”
+
+No tragical consequences, however, ensued. Mother and sons both appeared
+the next morning, and were reported as “all right” by the first inquirer
+from the Folly; but Jessie came to her lessons with swollen eyelids
+as if she had cried half the night; and when her aunt thanked her for
+defending Armine, she began to cry again, and Essie imparted to Barbara
+that Rob was “just like a downright savage with her.”
+
+“No; hush, Essie, it is not that,” said Jessie; “but papa is so
+dreadfully angry with him, and he is to be sent away, and it is all my
+fault.”
+
+“But Jessie, dear, surely it is better for Rob to be stopped from those
+deceitful ways.”
+
+“O yes, I know. But that I should have turned against him!” And Jessie
+was so thoroughly unhappy that none of her lessons prospered and her
+German exercise had three great tear blots on it.
+
+Rob’s second misdemeanour had simplified matters by deciding his father
+on sending him from home at once into the hands of a professed coach,
+who would not let him elude study, and whose pupils were too big to
+be bullied. To the last he maintained his sullen dogged air of
+indifference, though there might be more truth than the Folly was
+disposed to allow in his sister’s allegations that it was because he did
+feel it so very much, especially mamma’s looking so ill and worried.
+
+Ellen did in truth look thoroughly unhinged, though no one saw her give
+way. She felt her boy’s conduct sorely, and grieved at the first parting
+in her family. Besides, there was anxiety for the future. Rob’s manner
+of conducting his studies was no hopeful augury of his success, and
+the expenses of sending him to a tutor fell the more heavily because
+unexpectedly. A horse and man were given up, and Jessie had to resign
+the hope of her music lessons. These were the first retrenchments, and
+the diminution of dignity was felt.
+
+The Colonel showed his trouble and anxiety by speaking and tramping
+louder than ever, ruling his gardener with severe precision, and
+thundering at his boys whenever he saw them idle. Both he and his wife
+were so elaborately kind and polite that Caroline believed that it was
+an act of magnanimous forgiveness for the ill luck that she and her
+boys had brought them. At last the Colonel had the threatened fit of the
+gout, which restored his equilibrium, and brought him back to his usual
+condition of kindly, if somewhat ponderous, good sense.
+
+He had not long recovered before Number Nine made his appearance at
+Kencroft, and thus his mother had unusual facilities for inquiries of
+Dr. Leslie respecting the master of Belforest.
+
+The old man really seemed to be in a dying state. A hospital nurse had
+taken charge of him, but there was not a dependent about the place, from
+Mr. Richards downwards, who was not under notice to quit, and most were
+staying on without his knowledge on the advice of the London solicitor,
+to whom the agent had written. There was even more excitement on the
+intelligence that Mr. Barnes had sent for Farmer Gould.
+
+On this there was no doubt, for Mr. Gould, always delicately honourable
+towards Mrs. Brownlow, came himself to tell her about the interview. It
+seemed to have been the outcome of a yearning of the dying man towards
+the sole survivor of the companions of his early days. He had talked
+in a feeble wandering way of old times, but had said nothing about the
+child, and was plainly incapable of sustained attention.
+
+He had asked Mr. Gould to come again, but on this second visit he was
+too far gone for recognition, and had returned to his moody instinctive
+aversion to visitors, and in three days more he was dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. -- THE BELFOREST MAGNUM BONUM.
+
+
+
+     Where is his golden heap?
+                    Divine Breathings.
+
+
+Mrs. Robert Brownlow was churched with all the expedition possible, in
+order that she might not lose the sight of the funeral procession, which
+would be fully visible from the studio in the top of the tower.
+
+The excitement was increased by invitations to attend the funeral being
+sent to the Colonel and to his two eldest nephews, who were just
+come home for the holidays, also to their mother to be present at the
+subsequent reading of the will.
+
+A carriage was sent for her, and she entered it, not knowing or caring
+to find out what she wished, and haunted by the line, “Die and endow a
+college or a cat.”
+
+Allen met her at the front door, whispering--“Did you see, mother, he
+has still got his ears?” And the thought crossed her--“Will those ears
+cost us dear?”
+
+She was the only woman present in the library--a large room, but with
+an atmosphere as if the open air had not been admitted for thirty years,
+and with an enormous fire, close to which was the arm-chair whither she
+was marshalled, being introduced to the two solicitors, Mr. Rowse and
+Mr. Wakefield, who, with Farmer Gould, the agent, Richards, the Colonel,
+and the two boys, made up the audience.
+
+The lawyers explained that the will had been sent home ten years ago
+from Yucatan, and had ever since been in their hands. Search had been
+made for a later one, but none had been found, nor did they believe that
+one could exist.
+
+It was very short. The executors were Charles Rowse and Peter Ball, and
+the whole property was devised to them, and to Lieutenant-Colonel Robert
+Brownlow, as trustees for the testator’s great-niece, Mrs. Caroline
+Otway Brownlow, daughter of John and Caroline Allen, and wife of Joseph
+Brownlow, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., the income and use thereof to be enjoyed
+by her during her lifetime; and the property, after her death, to be
+divided among her children in such proportions as she should direct.
+
+That was all; there was no legacy, no further directions.
+
+“Allow me to congratulate--” began the elder lawyer.
+
+“No--no--oh, stay a bit,” cried she, in breathless dismay and
+bewilderment. “It can’t be! It can’t mean only me. There must be
+something about Elvira de Menella.”
+
+“I fear there is not,” said Mr. Rowse; “I could wish my late client had
+attended more to the claims of justice, and had divided the property,
+which could well have borne it; but unfortunately it is not so.”
+
+“It is exactly as he led us to expect,” said Mr. Gould. “We have no
+right to complain, and very likely the child will be much happier
+without it. You have a fine family growing up to enjoy it, Mrs.
+Brownlow, and I am sure no one congratulates you more heartily than I.”
+
+“Don’t; it can’t be,” cried the heiress, nearly crying, and wringing the
+old farmer’s hand. “He must have meant Elvira. You know he sent for you.
+Has everything been hunted over? There must be a later will.”
+
+“Indeed, Mrs. Brownlow,” said the solicitor, “you may rest assured that
+full search has been made. Mr. Richards had the same impression, and we
+have been searching every imaginable receptacle.”
+
+“Besides,” added Colonel Brownlow, “if he had made another will there
+would have been witnesses.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Richards; “but to make matters certain, I wrote to
+several of the servants to ask whether they remembered any attestation,
+but no one did; and indeed I doubt whether, after his arrival here, poor
+Mr. Barnes ever had sustained power enough to have drawn up and executed
+a will without my assistance, or that of any legal gentleman.”
+
+“It is too hard and unjust,” cried Caroline; “it cannot be. I must halve
+it with the child, as if there had been no will at all. Robert! you know
+that is what your brother would have done.”
+
+“That would be just as well as generous, indeed, if it were
+practicable,” said Mr. Rowse; “but unfortunately Colonel Brownlow
+and myself (for Mr. Ball is dead) are in trust to prevent any such
+proceeding. All that is in your power is to divide the property among
+your own family by will, in such proportion as you may think fit.”
+
+“Quite true, my dear sister,” said the Colonel, meeting her despairing
+appealing look, “as regards the principal, but the ready money at the
+bank and the income are entirely at your own disposal, and you can,
+without difficulty, secure a very sufficient compensation to the little
+girl out of them.”
+
+“No doubt,” said Mr. Rowse.
+
+“You’ll let me--you’ll let me, Mr. Gould,” implored Caroline; “you’ll
+let me keep her, and do all I can to make up to her. You see the Colonel
+thinks it is only justice; don’t you, Robert?”
+
+“Mrs. Brownlow is quite right,” said the Colonel, seeing that her
+vehemence was a little distrusted; “it will be only an act of justice to
+make provision for your granddaughter.”
+
+“I am sure, Colonel Brownlow, nothing can be handsomer than your conduct
+and Mrs. Brownlow’s,” said the old man; “but I should not like to take
+advantage of what she is good enough to say on the spur of the moment,
+till she has had more time to think it over.”
+
+Therewith he took leave, while Caroline exclaimed--
+
+“I always say there is no truer gentleman in the county than old Mr.
+Gould. I shall not be satisfied about that will till I have turned
+everything over and the partners have been written to.”
+
+Again she was assured that she might set her mind at rest, and then
+the lawyers began to read a statement of the property which made Allen
+utter, under his breath, an emphatic “I say!” but his mother hardly
+took it in. The heated room had affected her from the first, and the
+bewilderment of the tidings seemed almost to crush her; her heart and
+temples throbbed, her head ached violently, and while the final words
+respecting arrangements were passing between the Colonel and the
+lawyers, she was conscious only of a sickening sense of oppression, and
+a fear of committing the absurdity of fainting.
+
+However, at last her brother-in-law put her into the brougham, desiring
+the boys to walk home, which they did very willingly, and with a
+wonderful air of lordship and possession.
+
+“Well, Caroline,” said the Colonel, “I congratulate you on being the
+richest proprietor in the county.”
+
+“O Robert, don’t! If--if,” said a suffocated voice, so miserable that he
+turned and took her hand kindly, saying--
+
+“My dear sister, this feeling is very--it becomes you well. This is a
+fearful responsibility.”
+
+She could not answer. She only leant back in the carriage, with closed
+eyes, and moaned--
+
+“Oh! Joe! Joe!”
+
+“Indeed,” said his brother, greatly touched, “we want him more than
+ever.”
+
+He did not try to talk any more to her, and when they reached the
+Pagoda, all she could do was to hurry up stairs, and, throwing off her
+bonnet, bury her face in the pillow.
+
+Janet and her aunt both followed, the latter with kind and tender
+solicitude; but Caroline could bear nothing, and begged only to be left
+alone.
+
+“Dear Ellen, it is very kind, but nothing does any good to these
+headaches. Please don’t--please leave me alone.”
+
+They saw it was the only true kindness, and left her, after all attempts
+at bathing her forehead, or giving her sal volatile, proved only to
+molest her. She lay on her bed, not able to think, and feeling nothing
+but the pain of her headache and a general weight and loneliness.
+
+The first break was from Allen, who came in tenderly with a cup of
+coffee, saying that they thought her time was come for being ready for
+it. His manner always did her good, and she sat up, pushed back her
+hair, smiled, took the cup, and thanked him lovingly.
+
+“Uncle Robert is waiting to hear if you are better,” he said.
+
+“Oh yes,” she said; “thank him; I am sorry I was so silly.”
+
+“He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and Mr.
+Wakefield,” said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad of
+fifteen, who had just become “somebody.”
+
+“Very well,” she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again,
+just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.
+
+“And mother,” said Allen, lingering in the dark, “don’t trouble about
+Elfie. I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make all
+straight.”
+
+Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous
+announcement, and she dreamily said--
+
+“Time enough to think of such things.”
+
+“I know,” said Allen; “but I thought you ought to know this.”
+
+He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she was
+really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy’s words,
+and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep. She had a curious
+dream, which she remembered long after. She seemed to have identified
+herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her children, who
+turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on pedestals in the
+Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly calling them. Then
+her husband’s voice, sad and reproachful, seemed to say, “Magnum Bonum!
+Magnum Bonum!” and she fancied it the elixir which alone could restore
+them, and would have climbed a mountain in search of it, as in the
+Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy, and immovable, and she
+found that they too had become gold, and that the chill was creeping
+upwards. With a scream of “Save the children, Joe,” she awoke.
+
+No wonder she had dreamt of cold golden limbs, for her feet were really
+chilly as ice, and the room as dark as at midnight. However it was not
+yet seven o’clock; and presently Janet brought a light, and persuaded
+her to come downstairs and warm herself. She was not yet capable of
+going into the dining-room to the family tea, but crept down to lie
+on the sofa in the drawing-room; and there, after taking the small
+refreshment which was all she could yet endure, she lay with closed
+eyes, while the children came in from the meal. Armine and Babie were
+the first. She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert
+herself to speak to them.
+
+“Asleep,” they whispered. “Poor Mother Carey.”
+
+“Armie,” said Babie, “is mother unhappy because she has got rich?”
+
+Armine hesitated. His brief experience of school had made him less
+unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fashion even
+to his little sister, and she added--
+
+“Must people get wicked when they are rich?”
+
+“Mother is always good,” said faithful little Armine.
+
+“The rich people in the Bible were all bad,” pondered Babie. “There was
+Dives, and the man with the barns.”
+
+“Yes,” said Armine; “but there were good ones too--Abraham and Solomon.”
+
+“Solomon was not always good,” said Babie; “and Uncle Robert told Allen
+it was a fearful responsibility. What is a responsibility, Armie? I am
+sure Ali didn’t like it.”
+
+“Something to answer for!” said Armine.
+
+“To who?” asked the little girl.
+
+“To God,” said the boy reverently. “It’s like the talent in the parable.
+One has got to do something for God with it, and then it won’t turn to
+harm.”
+
+“Like the man’s treasure that changed into slate stones when he made a
+bad use of it,” said Babie. “Oh! Armie, what shall we do? Shall we give
+plum-puddings to the little thin girls down the lane?”
+
+“And I should like to give something good to the little grey workhouse
+boys,” said Armine. “I should so hate always walking out along a
+straight road as they do.”
+
+“And oh! Armie, then don’t you think we may get a nice book to write out
+Jotapata in?”
+
+“Yes, a real jolly one. For you know, Babie, it will take lots of room,
+even if I write my very smallest.”
+
+“Please let it be ruled, Armie. And where shall we begin?”
+
+“Oh! at the beginning, I think, just when Sir Engelbert first heard
+about the Crusade.”
+
+“It will take lots of books then.”
+
+“Never mind, we can buy them all now. And do you know, Bab, I think
+Adelmar and Ermelind might find a nice lot of natural petroleum and
+frighten Mustafa ever so much with it!”
+
+For be it known that Armine and Barbara’s most cherished delight was in
+one continued running invention of a defence of Jotapata by a crusading
+family, which went on from generation to generation with unabated
+energy, though they were very apt to be reduced to two young children
+who held out their fortress against frightful odds of Saracens, and
+sometimes conquered, sometimes converted their enemies. Nobody but
+themselves was fully kept au courant with this wonderful siege, which
+had hitherto been recorded in interlined copy-books, or little paper
+books pasted together, and very remarkably illustrated.
+
+The door began to creak with an elaborate noisiness intended for perfect
+silence, and Jock’s voice was heard.
+
+“Bother the door! Did it wake mother? No? That’s right;” and he squatted
+down between the little ones while Bobus seated himself at the table
+with a book.
+
+“Well! what colour shall our ponies be?” began Jock, in an attempt at a
+whisper.
+
+“Oh! shall we have ponies?” cried the little ones.
+
+“Zebras if we like,” said Jock. “We’ll have a team.”
+
+“Can’t,” growled Bobus.
+
+“Why not? They can be bought!”
+
+“Not tamed. They’ve tried it at the Jardin d’Acclimatisation.”
+
+“Oh, that was only Frenchmen. A zebra is too jolly to let himself be
+tamed by a Frenchman. I’ll break one in myself and go out with the
+hounds upon him.”
+
+“Jack-ass on striped-ass--or off him,” muttered Bobus.
+
+“Oh! don’t, Jock,” implored Babie, “you’ll get thrown.”
+
+“No such thing. You’ll come to the meet yourself, Babie, on your Arab.”
+
+“Not she,” said Bobus, in his teasing voice. “She’ll be governessed up
+and kept to lessons all day.”
+
+“Mother always teaches us,” said Babie.
+
+“She’ll have no time, she’ll be a great lady, and you’ll have three
+governesses--one for French, and one for German, and one for deportment,
+to make you turn out your toes, and hold up your head, and never sit on
+the rug.”
+
+“Never mind, Babie,” said Jock. “We’ll bother them out of their lives if
+they do.”
+
+“You’ll be at school,” said Bobus, “and they’ll all three go out walking
+with Babie, and if she goes out of a straight line one will say ‘Fi
+donc, Mademoiselle Barbe,’ and the other will say, ‘Schamen sie sich,
+Fraulein Barbara,’ and the third will call for the stocks.”
+
+“For shame, Robert,” cried his mother, hearing something like a sob;
+“how can you tease her so!”
+
+“Mother, must I have three governesses?” asked poor little Barbara.
+
+“Not one cross one, my sweet, if I can help it!”
+
+“Oh! mother, if it might be Miss Ogilvie?” said Babie.
+
+“Yes, mother, do let it be Miss Ogilvie,” chimed in Armine. “She tells
+such jolly stories!”
+
+“She ain’t a very nasty one,” quoted Jock from Newman Noggs, and as
+Janet appeared he received her with--“Moved by Barbara, seconded by
+Armine, that Miss Ogilvie become bear-leader to lick you all into
+shape.”
+
+“What do you think of it, Janet?” said her mother.
+
+“It will not make much difference to me,” said Janet. “I shall depend on
+classes and lectures when we go back to London. I should have thought a
+German better for the children, but I suppose the chief point is to find
+some one who can manage Elfie if we are still to keep her.”
+
+“By the bye, where is she, poor little thing?” asked Caroline.
+
+“Aunt Ellen took her home,” said Janet. “She said she would send her
+back at bed-time, but she thought we should be more comfortable alone
+to-night.”
+
+“Real kindness,” said Caroline; “but remember, children, all of you,
+that Elfie is altogether one of us, on perfectly equal terms, so don’t
+let any difference be made now or ever.”
+
+“Shall I have a great many more lessons, mother?” asked Babie.
+
+“Don’t be as silly as Essie, Babie,” said Janet. “She expects us all to
+have velvet frocks and gold-fringed sashes, and Jessie’s first thought
+was ‘Now, Janet, you’ll have a ladies’ maid.’”
+
+“No wonder she rejoiced to be relieved of trying to make you
+presentable,” said Bobus.
+
+“Shall we live at Belforest?” asked Armine.
+
+“Part of the year,” said Janet, who was in a wonderfully expansive and
+genial state; “but we shall get back to London for the season, and know
+what it is to enjoy life and rationality again, and then we must all go
+abroad. Mother, how soon can we go abroad?”
+
+“It won’t make a bit of difference for a year. We shan’t get it for ever
+so long,” said Bobus.
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Fact. I know a man whose uncle left him a hundred pounds last year, and
+the lawyers haven’t let him touch a penny of it.”
+
+“Perhaps he is not of age,” said Janet.
+
+“At any rate,” said Jock, “we can have our fun at Belforest.”
+
+“O yes, Jock, only think,” cried Babie, “all the dear tadpoles belong to
+mother!”
+
+“And all the dragon-flies,” said Armine.
+
+“And all the herons,” said Jock.
+
+“We can open the gates again,” said Armine.
+
+“Oh! the flowers!” cried Babie in an ecstasy.
+
+“Yes,” said Janet. “I suppose we shall spend the early spring in the
+country, but we must have the best part of the season in London now
+that we can get out of banishment, and enjoy rational conversation once
+more.”
+
+“Rational fiddlestick,” muttered Bobus.
+
+“That’s what any girl who wasn’t such a prig as Janet would look for,”
+ said Jock.
+
+“Well, of course,” said Janet. “I mean to have my balls like other
+people; I shall see life thoroughly. That’s just what I value this for.”
+
+Bobus made a scoffing noise.
+
+“What’s up, Bobus?” asked Jock.
+
+“Nothing, only you keep up such a row, one can’t read.”
+
+“I’m sure this is better and more wonderful than any book!” said Jock.
+
+“It makes no odds to me,” returned Bobus, over his book.
+
+“Oh! now!” cried Janet, “if it were only the pleasure of being free from
+patronage it would be something.”
+
+“Gratitude!” said Bobus.
+
+“I’ll show my gratitude,” said Janet; “we’ll give all of them at
+Kencroft all the fine clothes and jewels and amusements that ever they
+care for, more than ever they gave us; only it is we that shall give and
+they that will take, don’t you see?”
+
+“Sweet charity,” quoth Bobus.
+
+Those two were a great contrast; Janet had never been so radiant,
+feeling her sentence of banishment revoked, and realising more vividly
+than anyone else was doing, the pleasures of wealth. The cloud under
+which she had been ever since the coming to the Pagoda seemed to have
+rolled away, in the sense of triumph and anticipation; while Bobus
+seemed to have fallen into a mood of sarcastic ill-temper. His mother
+saw, and it added to her sense of worry, though her bright sweet nature
+would scarcely have fathomed the cause, even had she been in a state to
+think actively rather than to feel passively. Bobus, only a year younger
+than Allen, and endowed with more force and application, if not with
+more quickness, had always been on a level with his brother, and
+felt superior, despising Allen’s Eton airs and graces, and other
+characteristics which most people thought amiable. And now Allen had
+become son and heir, and was treated by everyone as the only person of
+importance. Bobus did not know what his own claims might be, but at any
+rate his brother’s would transcend them, and his temper was thoroughly
+upset.
+
+Poor Caroline! She did not wholly omit to pray “In all time of our
+tribulation, in all time of our wealth, deliver us!” but if she had
+known all that was in her children’s hearts, her own would have trembled
+more.
+
+And as to Ellen, the utmost she allowed herself to say was, “Well, I
+hope she will make a good use of it!”
+
+While the Colonel, as trustee and adviser, had really a very
+considerable amount of direct importance and enjoyment before him,
+which might indeed be--to use his own useful phrase--“a fearful
+responsibility,” but was no small boon to a man with too much time on
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. -- POSSESSION.
+
+
+
+     Vain glorious Elf, said he, dost thou not weete
+     That money can thy wants at will supply;
+     Shields, steeds and armes, and all things for thee meet,
+     It can purvey in twinkling of an eye.
+                                              Spenser.
+
+
+Bobus’s opinion that it would be long before anything came of this
+accession of wealth was for a few days verified in the eyes of the
+impatient family, for Christmas interfered with some of the necessary
+formalities; and their mother, still thinking that another will might
+be discovered, declared that they were not to go within the gates of
+Belforest till they were summoned.
+
+At last, after Colonel Brownlow had spent a day in London, he made his
+appearance with a cheque-book in his hand, and the information that he
+and his fellow-trustee had so arranged that the heiress could open an
+account, and begin to enter on the fruition of the property. There were
+other arrangements to be made, those about the out-door servants and
+keepers could be settled with Richards, but she ought to remove her
+two sons from the foundation of the two colleges, though of course they
+would continue there as pupils.
+
+“And Robert,” she said, colouring exceedingly, “if you will let me,
+there is a thing I wish very much--to send your John to Eton with mine.
+He is my godson, you know, and it would be such a pleasure to me.”
+
+“Thank you, Caroline,” said the Colonel, after a moment’s hesitation,
+“Johnny is to stand at the Eton election, and I should prefer his owing
+his education to his own exertions rather than to any kindness.”
+
+“Yes, yes; I understand that,” said Caroline; “but I do want you to let
+me do anything for any of them. I should be so grateful,” she added,
+imploringly, with a good deal of agitation; “please--please think of it,
+as if your brother were still here. You would never mind how much he did
+for them.”
+
+“Yes, I should,” said the Colonel, decidedly, but pausing to collect his
+next sentence. “I should not accept from him what might teach my sons
+dependence. You see that, Caroline.”
+
+“Yes,” she humbly said. “He would be wise about it! I don’t want to be
+disagreeable and oppressive, Robert; I will never try to force things on
+you; but please let me do all that is possible to you to allow.”
+
+There was something touching in her incoherent earnestness, which made
+the Colonel smile, yet wink away some moisture from his eyes, as he
+again thanked her without either acceptance or refusal. Then he said he
+was going to Belforest, and asked whether she would not like to come
+and look over the place. He would go back and call for her with the pony
+carriage.
+
+“But would not Ellen like to go?” she said. “I will walk with the boys.”
+
+The Colonel demurred a little, but knowing that his wife really longed
+to go, and could not well be squeezed into the back seat, he gave a sort
+of half assent; and as he left the house, Mother Carey gave a summoning
+cry to gather her brood, rushed upstairs, put on what Babie called her
+“most every dayest old black hat;” and when Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow,
+with Jessie behind, drove into the park, it was to see her careering
+along by the short cut over the hoar-frosty grass, in the midst of
+seven boys, three girls, and two dogs, all in a most frisky mood of
+exhilaration.
+
+Distressed at appearing to drive up like the lady of the house, her
+Serene Highness insisted on stopping at the iron gates of the stately
+approach. There she alighted, and waited to make the best setting to
+rights she could of the heiress’s wind-tossed hat and cloak, and would
+have put her into the carriage, but that no power could persuade her to
+mount that triumphal car, and all that could be obtained was that she
+should walk in the forefront of the procession with the Colonel.
+
+There was nobody to receive them but Richards, for the servants had been
+paid off, and only a keeper and his wife were living in the kitchen in
+charge. There was a fire in the library, where the Colonel had business
+to transact with Richards, while the ladies and children proceeded with
+their explorations. It was rather awful at first in the twilight gloom
+of the great hall, with a painted mythological ceiling, and cold white
+pavement, varied by long perspective lines of black lozenges, on which
+every footfall echoed. The first door that they opened led into a vast
+and dreary dining-room, with a carpet, forming a crimson roll at one
+end, and long ranks of faded leathern chairs sitting in each other’s
+laps. At one end hung a huge picture by Snyders, of a bear hugging one
+dog in his forepaws and tearing open the ribs of another with his hind
+ones. Opposite was a wild boar impaling a hound with his tusk, and the
+other walls were occupied by Herodias smiling at the contents of
+her charger, Judith dropping the gory head into her bag, a brown St.
+Sebastian writhing among the arrows; and Juno extracting the painfully
+flesh and blood eyes of Argus to set them in her peacock’s tail.
+
+“I object to eating my dinner in a butcher’s shop,” observed Allen.
+
+“Yes, we must get them out of this place,” said his mother.
+
+“They are very valuable paintings,” interposed Ellen. “I know they are
+in the county history. They were collected by Sir Francis Bradford, from
+whom the place was bought, and he was a great connoisseur.”
+
+“Yes, they are just the horrid things great connoisseurs of the last
+century liked, by way of giving themselves an appetite,” said Caroline.
+
+“Are not fine pictures always horrid?” asked Jessie, in all simplicity.
+
+The drawing-rooms, a whole suite--antechamber, saloon, music-room, and
+card-room, were all swathed up in brown holland, hanging even from
+the picture rods along the wall. Even in the days of the most liberal
+housekeeper, Ellen had never done more than peep beneath. So she
+revelled in investigations of gilding and yellow satin, ormolu and
+marble, big mirrors and Sevres clocks, a three-piled carpet, and a
+dazzling prismatic chandelier, though all was pervaded with such a
+chill of unused dampness and odour of fustiness, that Caroline’s first
+impression was that it was a perilous place for one so lately recovered.
+However, Ellen believed in no danger till she came on two monstrous
+stains of damp on the walls, with a whole crop of curious fungi in one
+corner, and discovered that all the holland was flabby, and all the
+damask clammy! Then she enforced the instant lighting of fires, and
+shivered so decidedly, that Caroline and Jessie begged her to return to
+the fire in the library, while Jessie went in search of Rob to drive her
+home.
+
+All the rest of the younger population had deserted the state
+apartments, and were to be heard in the distance, clattering along the
+passages, banging doors, bawling and shouting to each other, with freaks
+of such laughter as had never awakened those echoes during the Barnes’
+tenure, but Jessie returned not; and her aunt, going in quest of her up
+a broad flight of shallow stairs, found herself in a grand gallery, with
+doors leading to various corridors and stairs. She called, and the
+tramp of the boots of youth began to descend on her, with shouts of “All
+right!” and downstairs flowed the troop, beginning with Jock, and
+ending with Armine and Babie, each with some breathless exclamation, all
+jumbled together--
+
+Jock. “Oh, mother! Stunning! Lots of bats fast asleep.”
+
+Johnny. “Rats! rats!”
+
+Rob. “A billiard-table.”
+
+Joe. “Mother Carey, may Pincher kill your rats?”
+
+Armine. “One wants a clue of thread to find one’s way.”
+
+Janet. “I’ve counted five-and-thirty bedrooms already, and that’s not
+all.”
+
+Babie. “And there’s a little copper tea-kettle in each. May my dolls
+have one?”
+
+Bobus. “There’s nothing else in most of them; and, my eyes! how musty
+they smell.”
+
+Elvira. “I will have the room with the big red bed, with a gold crown at
+the top.”
+
+Allen. “Mother, it will be a magnificent place, but it must have a vast
+deal done to it.”
+
+But Mother Carey was only looking for Jessie. No one had seen her. Janet
+suggested that she had taken a rat for a ghost, and they began to look
+and call in all quarters, till at last she appeared, looking rather
+white and scared at having lost herself, being bewildered by the voices
+and steps echoing here, there, and everywhere. The barrenness and
+uniformity did make it very easy to get lost, for even while they were
+talking, Joe was heard roaring to know where they were, nor would he
+stand still till they came up with him, but confused them and himself by
+running to meet them by some deluding stair.
+
+“We’ve not got a house, but a Cretan labyrinth,” said Babie.
+
+“Or the bewitched castle mother told us of,” said Allen, “where
+everybody was always running round after everybody.”
+
+“You’ve only to have a grain of sense,” said Bobus, who had at last
+recovered Joe, and proceeded to give them a lecture on the two main
+arteries, and the passages communicating with them, so that they might
+always be able to recover their bearings.
+
+They were more sober after that. Rob drove his mother home, and the
+Colonel made the round to inspect the dilapidations, and estimate what
+was wanting. The great house had never been thoroughly furnished since
+the Bradfords had sold it, and it was, besides, in manifest need of
+repair. Damp corners, and piles of crumbled plaster told their own
+tale. A builder must be sent to survey it, and on the most sanguine
+computation, it could hardly be made habitable till the end of the
+autumn.
+
+Meantime, Caroline must remain a tenant of the Pagoda, though, as she
+told the eager Janet, this did not prevent a stay in London for the sake
+of the classes and the society, of whom she was always talking, only
+there must be time to see their way.
+
+The next proposition gave universal satisfaction, Mother Carey would
+take her whole brood to London for a day, to make purchases, the three
+elder children each with five pounds, the younger with two pounds
+a-piece. She actually wanted to take two-thirds of those from Kencroft
+also, with the same bounty in their pockets, but to this their parents
+absolutely refused consent. To go about London with a train of seven was
+bad enough; but that was her own affair, and they could not prevent it;
+and they absolutely would not swell the number to thirteen. It would be
+ridiculous; she would want an omnibus to go about in.
+
+“I did not mean all to go about together. The elder boys will go their
+own way.”
+
+But, as the Colonel observed, that was all very well for boys, whose
+home had always been in London, but she would find his country lads
+much in her way. She then reduced her demand by a third, for she really
+wished for Johnny; but the Colonel’s principles would not allow him to
+accept so great an indulgence for Rob.
+
+That unlucky fellow had, of course, failed in his examination, and this
+had renewed the Colonel’s resentment at his laziness and shuffling. He
+was, however, improved by contact with strangers, looked and behaved
+less bearishly, and had acquired a will to do better. Still, it was not
+possible to regret his absence, except because it involved that of his
+brother; and, with a great effort, and many assurances of her being
+really needed, Jessie’s company was secured.
+
+Never was the taste of wealth sweeter than in that over-filled railway
+carriage, before it was light on the winter morning, with a vista of
+endless possibilities contained in those crackling notes and round gold
+pieces, Jessie being, of course, as well off as the rest, and feeling
+the novelty and wonder even more.
+
+Mrs. Acton’s house was to be the place of rendezvous, and she would take
+charge of the girls for part of the day, the boys wished to shift for
+themselves; and Allen and Bobus had friends of their own with whom they
+meant to lunch.
+
+Clara met her friend with an agitated manner, half-laughing,
+half-crying, as she said--
+
+“Well, Mother Carey dear, you haven’t quite soared above us yet?”
+
+“Petrels never take high flights,” said Carey; “I hope and trust that
+it may prove impossible to make a fine lady of me. I am caught late, you
+see.”
+
+“Your daughters are not. You won’t like to have them making excuses for
+mamma’s friends.”
+
+“Janet’s exclusiveness will not be of that sort, and for warm-hearted
+little Babie, trust her. Do you know where the Ogilvies can be written
+to, Clara? Are they at Rome, or Florence?”
+
+“They were to be at Florence by the 14th. Mary has learnt to be such a
+traveller, that she always drags her brother abroad for however short a
+time St. Kenelm may give her.”
+
+“I hope I shall catch her in time. We want her for our governess.”
+
+“Now, really, Carey, you are a woman for old friends! But do you think
+you will get on? You know she won’t spare you.”
+
+“That’s the very reason I want her.”
+
+“It is very generous of you! You always were the best little thing in
+the world, with a strong turn for being under the lash; so you’re going
+to keep the slave in the back of your triumphal chariot, like the Roman
+general.”
+
+“I see, you’re afraid she will teach me to be too proper behaved for
+you.”
+
+“Precisely so, after her experience of Russian countesses. I don’t know
+whether she will let you be mistress of your own house.”
+
+“She will make me mistress all the more,” said Caroline; “for she will
+make me all the more ‘queen o’er myself.’”
+
+Then began the shopping, such shopping extraordinary as none of the
+family had ever enjoyed except in dreams; and when it was the object
+of everybody to conceal their purchases from everybody else. Caroline
+contrived to make time for a quiet luncheon with Dr. and Mrs. Lucas, to
+which she took her two youngest boys, since Jock was the godson of
+the house, and had moreover been shaken off by his two elder brothers.
+Happily he was too good-tempered to grumble at being thrown over, and
+his mind was in a beatific state of contemplation of his newly-purchased
+treasures, a small pistol, a fifteen-bladed knife, and a box of
+miscellaneous sweets, although his mother had so far succumbed to the
+weakness of her sex as to prevent the weapon from being accompanied by
+any ammunition.
+
+As to Armine, she wanted to consult Dr. Lucas about the fragile looks
+and liability to cold that had alarmed her ever since Rob’s exploit.
+Besides, he was so unlike the others! Had she not seen him quietly
+make his way into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Lucas kept a box for the
+Children’s Hospital, and drop into it two bright florins, one of which
+she had seen Babie hand over to him?
+
+“I do think it is not canny,” she said, as if it had been one of his
+symptoms.
+
+“Do you want me to prescribe for it?”
+
+“I did try one prescription for having too big a soul; I turned my poor
+little boy loose into school, and there they half killed him for me, and
+made the original complaint worse.”
+
+“Happily no prescription, ‘neither life, nor death, nor any other
+creature,’ can cure that complaint,” said the good old doctor, “though,
+alas! it is only too apt to dry up from within.”
+
+“Still I can’t help feeling it rather awful to have to do with a being
+so spiritual as that, and it appears to me to increase on him, so that
+he never seems quite to belong to me. And precocity is a dangerous sign,
+is it not?”
+
+“I see,” said the doctor, smiling; “you are going to be a treasure to
+the faculty, and indulge in anxieties and consultations.”
+
+“Now, Dr. Lucas, you know that we were always anxious about Armine. You
+remember his father said he needed more care than the rest.”
+
+Dr. Lucas allowed that this was true; but he only recommended flannel,
+pale ale, moderation in study, and time to recover the effects of the
+pump.
+
+Both the good old friends were very kind and full of tender
+congratulation, mingled with a little anxiety, though they were pleased
+with her good taste and simplicity and absence of all elation. But then
+she had hardly realised the new position, and seemed to look neither
+behind nor before. Her only scheme seemed to be to take a house in
+London for a few months, and then perhaps to go abroad, but of this
+she could not talk in those old scenes which vividly brought back that
+castle in the air, never fulfilled, of a holiday in Switzerland with
+Joe.
+
+On leaving the Lucases, she sent her boys on before her to the nearest
+bazaar, and was soon at her old home. Kind Mrs. Drake effaced herself as
+much as possible, and let her roam about the house alone, but furniture
+had altered every room, so that no responsive chord was touched till she
+came to the study, which was little changed. There she shut herself in
+and strove to recall the touch of the hand that was gone, the sound of
+the voice that was still. She stood, where she had been wont to stand
+over her husband, when he had been busy at his table and she had run
+down with some inquiry, and with a yearning ache of heart she clasped
+her hands, and almost breathed out the words, “O Joe, Joe, dear father!
+Oh! for one moment of you to tell me what to do, and how to keep true to
+the charge you gave me--your Magnum Bonum!”
+
+So absolutely had she asked the question, that she waited, almost
+expecting a reply, but there was no voice and none to answer her; and
+she was turning away with a sickening sense of mockery at her own folly
+in seeking the empty shrine whence the oracle of her life had departed,
+when her eye fell on the engraving over the mantel-piece. It was the one
+thing for which Mr. Drake had begged as a memorial of Joe Brownlow, and
+it still hung in its old place. It was of the Great Physician, consoling
+and healing all around--the sick, the captive, the self-tormenting
+genius, the fatherless, the widow.
+
+Was this the answer? Something darted through her mind like a pang
+followed by a strange throb--“Give yourself up to Him. Seek the true
+good first. The other may lie on its way.”
+
+But it was only a pang. The only too-natural recoil came the next
+minute. Was not she as religious as there was any need to be, or at
+least as she could be without alienating her children or affecting more
+than she felt? Give herself to Him? How? Did that mean a great deal of
+church-going, sermon-reading, cottage visiting, prayers, meditations,
+and avoidance of pleasure? That would never do; the boys would not bear
+it, and Janet would be alienated; besides, it would be hypocrisy in one
+who could not sit still and think, or attend to anything lengthy and
+wearisome.
+
+So, as a kind of compromise, she looked at the photograph which hung
+below, and to it she almost spoke out her answer. “Yes, I’ll be very
+good, and give away lots of things. Mary Ogilvie shall come and keep me
+in order, and she won’t let me be naughty, if I ever want to be naughty
+when I get away from Ellen. Then Magnum Bonum shall have its turn too.
+Don’t be afraid, dearest. If Allen does not take to it now, I am sure
+Bobus will be a great chemical discoverer, able to give all his time
+and spare no expense, and then we will fit up this dear old house for
+a hospital for very poor people. That’s what you would have done if you
+had been here! Oh, if this money had only come in time! But here are
+these horrid tears! If I once begin crying I shall be good for nothing.
+If I don’t go at once, there’s no saying what Jock mayn’t have bought.”
+
+She was just in time to find Jock asking the price of all the animals
+in the Pantheon Bazaar, and expecting her to supply the cost of a
+vicious-looking monkey. The whole flock collected in due time at the
+station, and so did their parcels. Allen brought with him his chief
+purchase, the most lovely toy-terrier in the world, whom he presented on
+the spot to Elvira, and who divided the journey between licking himself
+and devouring the fragments of biscuit with which Jock supplied him.
+Allen had also bought a beautiful statuette for himself, and a set of
+studs. Janet had set herself up with a case of mathematical instruments
+and various books; Bobus’s purchases were divers chemical appliances
+and a pocket microscope, also what he thrust into Jessie’s lap and she
+presently proclaimed to be a lovely little work-case; Jessie herself was
+hugging a parcel, which turned out to contain warm pelisses for the two
+nursery boys just above the baby. For the adaptation of their seniors’
+last year’s garments had not proved so successful as not to have much
+grieved the good girl and her mother.
+
+Elvira’s money had all gone into an accordion, and a necklace of large
+blue beads.
+
+“Didn’t you get anything for your grandfather or your cousins?” said
+Caroline.
+
+“I wanted it all,” said Elfie; “and you only gave me two sovereigns, or
+I would have had the bracelets too.”
+
+“Never mind, Elfie,” cried Babie, “I’ve got something for Mr. Gould and
+for Kate and Mary.”
+
+“Have you, Babie? So have I,” returned Armine; and the two, who had
+been wedged into one seat, began a whispering conversation, by which
+the listeners might have learnt that there was a friendly rivalry as
+to which had made the two pounds provide the largest possible number
+of presents. Neither had bought anything for self, for the chest of
+drawers, bath, and broom were for Babie’s precious dolls, not for
+herself. Mother Carey, uncle and aunt, brothers, sisters, cousins,
+servants, Mr. Gould, the gardener’s grandson, the old apple-woman, “the
+little thin girls,” had all been provided for at that wonderful German
+Bazaar, and the only regret was that gifts for Mr. Ogilvie and Alfred
+Richards could not be brought within the powers of even two pounds. What
+had Mother Carey bought? Ah! Nobody was to know till Twelfth-day, and
+then the first tree cut at Belforest would be a Christmas-tree. Then
+came a few regrets that everybody had proclaimed their purchases, and
+therewith people began to grow weary and drop asleep. It was by gaslight
+that they arrived at home and bundled into the flys that awaited them,
+and then in the hall at home came Elvira’s cry--
+
+“Where’s my doggie, my Chico?”
+
+“Here; I took him out,” said Jock.
+
+“That’s not Chico; that’s a nasty, horrid, yellow cur. Chico was black.
+You naughty boy, Jock, you’ve been and changed my dog.”
+
+“Has Midas changed him to gold?” cried Babie.
+
+“Ah,” said Bobus, meaningly.
+
+“You’ve done it then, Bobus! You’ve put something to him.”
+
+“_I_ haven’t,” said Bobus, “but he’s been licking himself all the way
+home. Well, we all know green is the sacred colour of the Grand Turk.”
+
+“No! You don’t mean it!” said Allen, catching up the dog and holding him
+to the lamp, while Janet observed that he was a sort of chameleon, for
+his body, which had been black, was now yellow, and his chops which had
+been tan, had become black.
+
+Elvira began to cry angrily, still uncomprehending, and fancying Bobus
+and Jock had played her a trick and changed her dog; Allen abused the
+horrid little brute, and the more horrid man who had deceived him; and
+Armine began pitying and caressing him, seriously distressed lest
+the poor little beast should have poisoned himself. Caroline herself
+expected to have heard that he was dead the next morning, and would
+have felt more compassion than regret; but, to her surprise and Allen’s
+chagrin, Chico made his appearance, very rhubarb-coloured and perfectly
+well.
+
+“I think,” said Elvira, “I will give Chico to grandpapa, for a nice
+London present.”
+
+Everybody burst out laughing at this piece of generosity, and though the
+young lady never quite understood what amused them, and Allen heartily
+wished Chico among the army of dogs at River Hollow, he did somehow or
+other remain at the Folly, and, after the fashion of dogs, adopted Jock
+as the special object of his devotion.
+
+Ellen came in, expecting to regale her eyes with the newest fashions. Or
+were they all coming down from the dressmaker?
+
+“I had no time to be worried with dressmakers,” said Caroline.
+
+“I thought you went there while the girls were going about with Mrs.
+Acton.”
+
+“Indeed no. I had just got my new bonnet for the winter.”
+
+“But!”
+
+“And _indeed_, I have not inherited any more heads.”
+
+Ellen sighed at the impracticability of her sister-in-law and the
+blindness of fortune. But nobody could sigh long in the face of that
+Twelfth-day Christmas-tree. What need be said of it but that each member
+of the house of Brownlow, and each of its dependents, obtained the very
+thing that the bright-eyed fairy of the family had guessed would be most
+acceptable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. -- POPINJAY PARLOUR.
+
+
+
+     Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit
+     Commits itself to yours to be directed.
+                                 Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+“It is our melancholy duty to record the demise of James Barnes, Esq.,
+which took place at his residence at Belforest Park, near Kenminster,
+on the 20th of December. The lamented gentleman had long been in failing
+health, and an attack of paralysis, which took place on the 19th,
+terminated fatally. The vast property which the deceased had
+accumulated, chiefly by steamboat and railway speculations in the West
+Indies, rendered him one of the richest proprietors in the county.
+We understand that the entire fortune is bequeathed solely to his
+grand-niece, Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, widow of the late Joseph
+Brownlow, Esq., and at present resident in the Pagoda, Kenminster Hill.
+Her eldest son, Allen Brownlow, Esq., is being educated at Eton.”
+
+That was the paragraph which David Ogilvie placed before the eyes of
+his sister in a newspaper lent to him in the train by a courteous
+fellow-traveller.
+
+“Poor Caroline!” said Mary.
+
+They said no more till the next day, when, after the English service at
+Florence, they were strolling together towards San Miniato, and feeling
+themselves entirely alone.
+
+“I wonder whether this is true,” began Mary at last.
+
+“Why not true?”
+
+“I thought Mr. Barnes had threatened the boys that they should remember
+the Midas escapade.”
+
+“It must have been only a threat. It could only lie between her and
+the Spanish child; and, if report be true, even the half would be an
+enormous fortune.”
+
+“Will it be fortune or misfortune, I wonder?”
+
+“At any rate, it puts an end to my chances of being of any service to
+her. Be it the half or the whole, she is equally beyond my reach.”
+
+“As she was before.”
+
+“Don’t misinterpret me, Mary. I mean out of reach of helping her in any
+way. I was of little use to her before. I could not save little Armine
+from those brutal bullies, and never suspected the abuse that engulphed
+Bobus. I am not fit for a schoolmaster.”
+
+“To tell the truth, I doubt whether you have enough high spirits or
+geniality.”
+
+“That’s the very thing! I can’t get into the boys, or prevent
+their thinking me a Don. I had hoped there was improvement, but the
+revelations of the half-year have convinced me that I knew just nothing
+at all about it.”
+
+“Have you thought what you will do?”
+
+“As soon as I get home, I shall send in my notice of resignation at
+Midsummer. That will see out her last boy, if he stays even so long.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“I shall go for a year to a theological college, and test my fitness to
+offer myself for Holy Orders.”
+
+A look of satisfaction on his sister’s part made him add, “Perhaps you
+were disappointed that I was not ordained on my fellowship seven years
+ago.”
+
+“Certainly I was; but I was in Russia, and I thought you knew best, so I
+said nothing.”
+
+“You were right. You would only have heard what would have made you
+anxious. Not that there was much to alarm you, but it is not good for
+any one to be left so entirely without home influences as I was all the
+time you spent abroad. I fell among a set of daring talkers, who thought
+themselves daring thinkers; and though the foundations were never
+disturbed with me, I was not disposed to bind myself more closely to
+what might not bear investigation, and I did not like the aspect of
+clerical squabbles on minutiae. There was a tide against the life that
+carried me along with it, half from sound, half from unsound, motives,
+and I shrank from the restraint, outward and inward.”
+
+“Very likely it was wise, and the best thing in the end. But what has
+brought you to it?”
+
+“I hope not as the resource of a shelved schoolmaster.”
+
+“Oh, no; you are not shelved. See how you have improved the school. Look
+at the numbers.”
+
+“That is no test of my real influence over the boys. I teach them, I
+keep them in external order, but I do not get into them. The religious
+life is at a low ebb.”
+
+“No wonder, with that vicar; but you have done your best.”
+
+“Even if my attempts are a layman’s best, they always get quenched by
+the cold water of the Rigby element. It is hard for boys to feel the
+reality of what is treated with such business-like indifference, and set
+forth so feebly, not to say absurdly.”
+
+“I know. It is a terrible disadvantage.”
+
+“Listening to Rigby, has, I must say, done a good deal to bring about my
+present intention.”
+
+“By force of contradiction.”
+
+“If that means of longing to be in his place and put the thing as it
+ought to be put.”
+
+“It is a contradiction in which I most sincerely rejoice, David,” she
+said; “one of the wishes of my heart fulfilled when I had given it up.”
+
+“You do not know that it will be fulfilled.”
+
+“I think it will, though you are right to take time, in case the
+decision should be partly due to disappointment.”
+
+“If there can be disappointment where hope has never existed. But if
+a man finds he can’t have his great good, it may make him look for the
+greater.”
+
+Mary sighed a mute and thankful acquiescence.
+
+“The worst of it is about you, Mary. It is throwing you over just as you
+were coming to make me a home.”
+
+“Never mind, Davie. It is only deferred, and at any rate we can keep
+together till Midsummer. Then I can go out again for a year or two, and
+perhaps you will settle somewhere where the curate’s sister could get a
+daily engagement.”
+
+The next day they found the following letter at the post office:--
+
+
+                                         “The Folly, Jan. 3rd.
+
+“My Dear Mary,--I suppose you may have attained the blessed realms that
+lie beyond the borders of Gossip, and may not have heard the nine days’
+wonder that Belforest had descended on the Folly, and that poor old Mr.
+Barnes has left his whole property to me. My dear, it would be something
+awful even if he had done his duty and halved it between Elvira and
+me, and he has ingeniously tied it up with trustees so as to make
+restitution impossible. As it is, my income will be not less than forty
+thousand pounds a year, and when divided among the children they will
+all be richer than perhaps is good for them.
+
+“And now, my dear old dragon, will you come and keep me in order under
+the title of governess to Barbara and Elvira? For, of course, the child
+will go on living with us, and will have it made up to her as far as
+possible. You know that I shall do all manner of foolish things, but
+I think they will be rather fewer if you will only come and take me in
+hand. My trustees are the Colonel and an old solicitor, and will both
+look after the estate; but as for the rest, all that the Colonel can say
+is, that it is a frightful responsibility, and her Serene Highness is
+awe-struck. I could not have conceived that such a thing could have made
+so much difference in so really good a woman. Now I don’t think you will
+be subject to gold dust in the eyes, and, I believe, you will still see
+the same little wild goose, or stormy petrel, that you used to bully at
+Bath, and will be even more willing to perform the process. As I should
+have begun by saying, on the very first evening Babie showed her sense
+by proposing you as governess, and you were unanimously elected in full
+and free parliament. It really was the child’s own thought and proposal,
+and what I want is to have those two children made wiser and better
+than I can make them, as well as that you should be the dear comrade and
+friend I need more than ever. You will see more of your brother than you
+could otherwise, for Belforest will be our chief home, and I need not
+say how welcome he will always be there. It is not habitable at present,
+so I mean to stay on in the Folly till Easter, and then give Janet the
+London lectures and classes she has been raving for these two years, and
+take Jessie also for music lessons, if she can be spared.
+
+“I’m afraid it is a come down for a finisher like you to condescend to
+my little Babie, but she is really worth teaching, and I would say, make
+your own terms, but that I am afraid you would not ask enough. Please
+let it be one hundred and fifty pounds, there’s a good Mary! I think
+you would come if you knew what a relief it would be. Ever since that
+terrible August, two years and a half ago, I have felt as if I were
+drifting in an endless mist, with all the children depending on me, and
+nobody to take my hand and lead me. You are one of the straws I grasp
+at. Not very complimentary after all, but when I thought of the strong,
+warm, guiding hands that are gone, I could not put it otherwise. Do,
+Mary, come, I do need you so.
+
+“Your affectionate
+
+“C. O. BROWNLOW.”
+
+
+“May I see it?” asked David.
+
+“If you will; but I don’t think it will do you any good. My poor Carey!”
+
+“Few women would have written such a letter in all the first flush of
+wealth.”
+
+“No; there’s great sweetness and humility and generosity in it, dear
+child.”
+
+“It changes the face of affairs.”
+
+“I’m engaged to you.”
+
+“Nonsense! As if that would stand in the way. Besides, she will be at
+Kenminster till Easter. You are not hesitating, Mary?”
+
+“I don’t think I am, and yet I believe I ought to do so.”
+
+“You are not imagining that I--”
+
+“I was not thinking of you; but I am not certain that it would not be
+better for our old friendship if I did not accept the part poor Carey
+proposes to me. I might make myself more disagreeable than could be
+endured by forty thousand a year.”
+
+“You do yourself and her equal injustice.”
+
+“I shall settle nothing till I have seen her.”
+
+“Then you will be fixed,” he said, in a tone of conviction.
+
+So she expected, though believing that it would be the ruin of her
+pleasant old friendship. Her nineteen years of governess-ship had shown
+her more of the shady side of high life than was known to her brother or
+her friend. She knew that, whatever the owner may be at the outset,
+it is the tendency of wealth and power to lead to arbitrariness and
+impatience of contradiction and censure, and to exact approval
+and adulation. Even if Caroline Brownlow’s own nature should, at
+five-and-thirty, be too much confirmed in sweetness and generosity to
+succumb to such temptation, her children would only too probably resent
+any counter-influence, and set themselves against their mother’s
+friend, and guide, under the title of governess. Moreover, Mary was
+too clear-sighted not to feel that there was a lack in the Brownlow
+household of what alone could give her confidence in the charming
+qualities of its mistress. Yet she knew that her brother would never
+forgive her for refusing, and that she should hardly forgive herself for
+following--not so much her better, as her more prudent, judgment. For
+she was infinitely touched and attracted by that warmhearted letter,
+and could not bear to meet it with a refusal. She hoped, for a time at
+least, to be a comfort, and to make suggestions, with some chance
+of being attended to. Such aid seemed due from the old friendship at
+whatever peril thereto, and she would leave her final answer till she
+should see whether her friend’s letter had been written only on the
+impulse of the moment, and half retracted immediately after.
+
+The brother and sister crossed the Channel at night, and arrived at
+Kenminster at noon, on a miserably wet day. At the station they were
+met by Jock and a little yellow dog. His salutation, as he capped his
+master, was--
+
+“Please, mother sent me up to see if you were come by this train,
+because if you’d come to early dinner, she would be glad, because
+there’s a builder or somebody coming with Uncle Robert about the repairs
+afterwards. Mother sent the carriage because of the rain. I say, isn’t
+it jolly cats and dogs?”
+
+Mary was an old traveller, who could sleep anywhere, and had made her
+toilet on landing, so as to be fresh and ready; but David was yellow
+and languid enough to add force to his virtuous resolution to take no
+advantage of the invitation, but leave his sister to settle her affairs
+her own way, thinking perhaps she might trust his future discretion the
+more for his present abstinence, so he went off in the omnibus. Jock,
+with the unfailing courtesy of the Brood, handed Miss Ogilvie into a
+large closed waggonette, explaining, “We have this for the present, and
+a couple of job horses; but Uncle Robert is looking out for some
+real good ones, and ponies for all of us. I am going over with him to
+Woolmarston to-morrow to try some.”
+
+It was said rather magnificently, and Mary answered, “You must be glad
+to get back into the Belforest grounds.”
+
+“Ain’t we? It was just in time for the skating,” said Jock. “Only the
+worst of it is, everybody will come to the lake, and so mother won’t
+learn to skate. We thought we had found a jolly little place in the
+wood, where we could have had some fun with her, but they found it out,
+though we halloed as loud as ever we could to keep them off.”
+
+“Can your mother skate?”
+
+“No, you see she never had a chance at home. Father was so busy, and we
+were so little; but she’d learn. Mother Carey can learn anything, if
+one could hinder her Serene Highness from pitching into her. I say,
+Miss Ogilvie, you’ll give her leave to skate, won’t you?” he asked in an
+insinuating tone.
+
+“I give her leave!”
+
+“She always says she’ll ask you when we want her to be jolly and not
+mind her Serene Highness.”
+
+Mary avoided pledging herself, and Jock’s attention was diverted to the
+dog, who was rising on his hind legs, vainly trying to look out of the
+window; and his history, told with great gusto by Jock, lasted till they
+reached home.
+
+The drawing-room was full of girls about their lessons as usual--sums,
+exercises, music, and grammar all going on at once! but Caroline put an
+end to them, and sent the Kencroft party home at once in the carriage.
+
+“So you have not dropped the old trade?” said Mary.
+
+“I couldn’t. Ellen is not strong enough yet to have the children on her
+hands all day. I said I’d be responsible for them till Easter, and
+I dare say you won’t mind helping me through it as the beginning of
+everything. Will you condescend? You know I want to be your pupil too.”
+
+“You can be no one’s pupil but your own, my dear! no one’s on earth, I
+mean.”
+
+“Oh, don’t! I know that, Mary. I’m trying and trying to be their pupil
+still. Indeed I am! It makes me patient of Robert, and his fearful
+responsibility, and his good little sister, to know that my husband
+always thought him right, and meant him to look after me. But as one
+lives on, those dear voices seem to get farther and farther away, as if
+one was drifting more out of reach in the fog. I do hate myself for it,
+but I can’t help it.”
+
+“Is there not a voice that can never go out of reach, and that brings
+you nearer to them?”
+
+“You dear old Piety, Prudence, and Charity all in one! That is if you
+have the charity to come and infuse a little of your piety and prudence
+into me. You know you could always make me mind you, and you’ll make
+me--what is it that Mrs. Coffinkey says?--a credit to my position before
+you’ve done. I’ve had your room got ready; won’t you come and take off
+your things?”
+
+“I think, if you don’t object, I had better sleep at the schoolhouse,
+and come up here after David’s breakfast.”
+
+“Very well; I won’t try to rob him of you more than can be helped.
+Though you know he would be welcome here every evening if he liked.”
+
+“Thank you very much, I can help him more at home; but I’ll come for the
+whole day, for I am sure you must have a great deal on your hands.”
+
+“Well! I’ve almost as many classes as pupils, and then there are so many
+interruptions. The Colonel is always bringing something to be signed,
+and then people will come and offer themselves, though I’m sure I never
+asked them. Yesterday there was a stupendous butler and house-steward
+who could also act as courier, and would do himself the honour of
+arranging my household in a truly ducal style. Just as I got rid of him,
+came a man with a future history of the landed gentry in quest of my
+coat of arms and genealogy, also three wine merchants, a landscape
+gardener, and a woman with a pitcher of goldfish. Emma is so soft
+she thinks everybody is a gentleman. I am trying to get the good old
+man-servant we had in our old home to come and defend me; not that he
+is old, for he was a boy whom Joe trained. Oh Mary, the bewilderment
+of it!” and she pushed back the little stray curly rings of hair on her
+forehead, while a peal at the bell was heard and a card was brought in.
+“Oh! Emma! don’t bring me any more! Is it a gentleman?”
+
+“Y--es, ma’am. Leastways it is a clergyman.”
+
+The clergyman turned out to be a Dissenting minister seeking
+subscriptions, and he was sent off with a sovereign.
+
+“I know it was very weak,” she said; “but it was the only way to stop
+his mouth, and I must have time to talk to you, so don’t begin your
+mission by scolding me.”
+
+Terms were settled; Mary would remain at the schoolhouse, but daily
+come to the Pagoda till the removal to London, when her residence was to
+begin in earnest.
+
+She took up her line from the first as governess, dropping her friend’s
+Christian name, and causing her pupils to address herself as Miss
+Ogilvie, a formality which was evidently approved by Mrs. Robert
+Brownlow, and likewise by Janet.
+
+That young lady was wonderfully improved by prosperity. She had lost
+her caustic manner and air of defiance, so that her cleverness and
+originality made her amusing instead of disagreeable. She piqued herself
+on taking her good fortune sensibly, and, though fully seventeen,
+professed not to know or care whether she was out or not, but threw
+herself into hard study, with a view to her classes, and gladly availed
+herself of Miss Ogilvie’s knowledge of foreign languages.
+
+Mrs. Coffinkey supposed that she would be presented at court with her
+dear mamma; but she laughed at courts and ceremonies, and her mother
+said that the first presentation in the family would be of Allen’s wife
+when he was a member of parliament. But Janet was no longer at war with
+Kenminster. She laughed good-humouredly, and was not always struggling
+for self-assertion, since the humiliations of going about as the poor,
+plain cousin of the pretty Miss Brownlow were over. Now that she was the
+rich Miss Brownlow, she was not likely to feel that she was the plain
+one.
+
+The sense of exile was over when the house in London was taken, and so
+Janet could afford to be kind to Kenminster; and she was like the Janet
+of old times, without her slough of captious disdain. Even then there
+was a sense that the girl was not fathomed; she never seemed to pour out
+her inner self, but only to talk from the surface, and certainly not to
+have any full confidence with her mother--nay, rather to hold her cheap.
+
+Mary Ogilvie detected this disloyal spirit, and was at a loss whether
+to ascribe it to modern hatred of control, to the fact that Caroline had
+been in her old home more like the favourite child than the mother, or
+to her own eager naturalness of demeanour, and total lack of assumption.
+She was anything but weak, yet she could not be dignified, and was
+quite ready to laugh at herself with her children. Janet could hardly
+be overawed by a mother who had been challenged by her own gamekeeper
+creeping down a ditch, with the two Johns, to see a wild duck on her
+nest, and with her hat half off, and her hair disordered by the bushes.
+
+The “Folly” laughed till its sides ached at the adventure, and Caroline
+asked Mary if she were not longing to scold her.
+
+“No, I think you will soon grow more cautious about getting into
+ridiculous positions.”
+
+“Isn’t laughing a wholesome pastime?”
+
+“Not when it is at those who ought to be looked up to.”
+
+“Oh! I’m not made to be looked up to. I’m not going to be a hero to my
+valet de chambre, or to anybody else, my dear, if that’s what you want
+of me!”
+
+Mary secretly hoped that a little more dignity would come in the London
+life, and was relieved when the time came for the move. The new abode
+was a charming house, with the park behind it, and the space between
+nearly all glass. Great ferns, tall citrons, fragrant shrubs, brilliant
+flowers, grew there; a stone-lined pool, with water-lilies above,
+gold-fish below, and a cool, sparkling, babbling fountain in the middle.
+There was an open space round it, with low chairs and tables, and the
+parrot on her perch. Indeed, Popinjay Parlour was the family title of
+this delightful abode; but it might almost as well have been called
+Mother Carey’s bower. Here, after an audience with the housekeeper,
+who was even more overpowering than her Serene Highness, would Caroline
+retreat to write notes, keep accounts, and hear Armine’s lessons, secure
+before luncheon from all unnecessary interruption; and here was her
+special afternoon and evening court.
+
+This first summer she was free to take her own course as to society, for
+Janet cared for the Cambridge examination far more than for gaiety, and
+thus she had no call, and no heart for “going out,” even if she had as
+yet been more known. Some morning calls were exchanged, but she sent
+refusals on mourning cards to invitations to evening parties, though she
+took her young people to plays, concerts, and operas, and all that was
+pleasant. Her young people included Jessie. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow
+made her a visit as soon as she was settled, and were so much edified
+by the absence of display and extravagance, that they did not scruple to
+trust their daughter to her for the long-desired music-lessons.
+
+Caroline had indeed made no attempt to win her way into the great world;
+but she had brought together as much as possible of the old society
+of her former home. On two evenings in the week, the habitues of Joe
+Brownlow’s house were secure of finding her either in the drawing-room
+or conservatory; beautiful things, and new books and papers on the
+tables, good music on the piano, sometimes acted charades, or paper
+games, according to the humour or taste of the party. If she had been
+a beautiful duchess, Popinjay Parlour would have been a sort of salon
+bleu; but it was really a kind of paradise to a good many clever,
+hardworked men and women. Those of the upper world, such as Kenminster
+county folks, old acquaintances of her husband, or natural adherents of
+Midas, who found their way to these receptions, either thought them odd
+but charming, or else regretted that Mrs. Brownlow should get such queer
+people together, and turn Hyde Corner House into another Folly.
+
+Mary Ogilvie enjoyed, but not without misgivings. It was delightful,
+and yet, what with Joe Brownlow and his mother had been guarded, might
+become less safe with no leader older or of more weight than Carey, who
+could easily be carried along by what they would have checked. The older
+and more intimate friends always acted as a wholesome restraint; but
+when they were not present there was sometimes a tone that jarred on
+the reverent ear, or dealt with life and its mysteries in a sneering,
+mocking style. This was chiefly among new-comers, introduced by former
+acquaintances, and it never went far; but Mary was distressed by seeing
+Janet’s relish for such conversation. Nita Ray was the chief female
+offender in this way, and this was the more unfortunate as Sunday was
+her only free day.
+
+Those Sundays vexed Mary’s secret soul. No one interfered with her way
+of spending them; but that was the very cause of misgiving. Everybody
+went to Church in the morning, but just where, and as, they pleased,
+meeting at luncheon, with odd anecdotes of their adventures, and
+criticisms of music or of sermons. It was an easy-going meal, lasting
+long, and haunted by many acquaintances, for whose sake the table was
+always at its full length, and spread with varieties of delicacies that
+would endure waiting.
+
+People dropped in, helped themselves, ate and drank, and then adjourned
+to Popinjay Parlour, where the afternoon was spent in an easy-going,
+loitering way, more like a foreign than an English Sunday. Miss Ogilvie
+used to go to the Litany at one of the Churches near; Armine always came
+with her, and often brought Babie, and Jessie came too, as soon as that
+good girl had swallowed the fact that the Litany could stand alone.
+
+Janet was apt to be walking with Nita, or else in some eager and
+amusing conversation in the conservatory; and as to Elvira, she was the
+prettiest, most amusing plaything that Mrs. Brownlow’s house afforded, a
+great favourite, and a continual study to the artist friends. Mary used
+to find her chattering, coquetting, and romping on coming in to the
+afternoon tea, which she would fain have herself missed; but that her
+absence gave pain, and as much offence as one so kind as Mrs. Brownlow
+could take.
+
+Carey argued that most of her guests were people who seldom had leisure
+to enjoy rest, conversation, and variety of pretty things, and that it
+would be mere Puritan crabbedness to deny them the pleasures of Popinjay
+Parlour on the only day they could be happy there. It was not easy to
+answer the argument, though the strong feeling remained that it was
+not keeping Sunday as the true Lord’s Day. While abstinence from such
+enjoyments created mere negative dulness, there must be something wrong.
+
+Otherwise, Mary was on the happiest terms, made her own laws and duties,
+and was treated like a sister by Caroline, while the children were
+heartily fond of her, all except Elvira, who made a fierce struggle
+against her authority, and then, finding that it was all in vain,
+conformed as far as her innate idleness and excitability permitted.
+
+She behaved better to Miss Ogilvie than to Janet, with whom she kept up
+a perpetual petty warfare, sometimes, Mary thought, with the pertinacity
+of a spiteful elf, making a noise when Janet wanted quiet, losing no
+opportunity of upsetting her books or papers, and laughing boisterously
+at any little mishap that befell her. The only reason she ever gave
+when pushed hard, was that “Janet was so ugly, she could not help it,” a
+reason so utterly ridiculous, that there was no going any further.
+
+Janet, on the whole, behaved much better under the annoyance than could
+have been expected. She entered enough into the state of affairs to see
+that the troublesome child could hardly be expelled, and she was too
+happy and too much amused to care much about the annoyance. There was
+magnanimity enough about her not to mind midge bites, and certainly this
+summer was exceptionally delightful with all the pleasures of wealth,
+and very few of its drawbacks.
+
+By the time the holidays were coming round, Belforest was not half
+habitable, and they had to return to the Pagoda. A tenant had been found
+for it, and such of the old furniture as was too precious to be parted
+with was to be removed to Belforest. Things were sufficiently advanced
+there for the rooms to be chosen, and orders given as to the decoration
+and furniture, and then, gathering up her sons, Caroline meant to start
+for the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy. Old nurse was settled in a small
+pair of rooms, with Emma to wait on her, and promises from Jessie to
+attend to her comforts; but the old woman had failed so much in their
+absence, and had fretted so much after “Mrs. Joseph” and the children,
+that it was hard to leave her again.
+
+Everything that good taste and wealth could do to make a place
+delightful was at work. The “butcher’s shop” was relegated to a dim
+corner of the gallery, and its place supplied from the brushes of the
+artists whom Caroline viewed with loving respect; the drawing-room was
+renovated, a forlorn old library resuscitated into vigorous life, a
+museum fitted with shelves, drawers, and glass cases which Caroline said
+would be as dangerous to the vigorous spirit of natural history as new
+clothes to a Brownie, and a billiard and gun room were ceded to the
+representations of Allen, who comported himself as befitted the son and
+heir.
+
+Caroline would not part with her room-mate, little Barbara, and was to
+have for herself a charming bedroom and dressing-room, with a balcony
+and parapet overlooking the garden and park, and a tiny room besides,
+for Babie to call her own.
+
+Janet chose the apartments which had been Mr. Barnes’, and which being
+in the oldest part of the house, and wainscoted with dark oak, she could
+take possession of at once. There was one room down stairs with very
+ugly caryatides, supporting the wooden mantelpiece, and dividing the
+panels, one of which had a secret door leading by an odd little stair to
+the bedroom above--that in which Mr. Barnes had died.
+
+It had of course another door opening into the corridor, and it was
+on these rooms that Janet set her affections. To the general surprise,
+Elvira declared that this was the very room she had chosen, with the red
+velvet curtains and gold crown, the day they went over the house, and
+that Mother Carey had promised it to her, and she would have it.
+
+No one could remember any such promise, and the curtains of crimson
+moreen did not answer Elfie’s description; but she would not be denied,
+and actually put all her possessions into the room.
+
+Janet, without a word, quietly turned them out into the passage, and
+Elfie flew into one of those furious kicking and screaming passions
+which always ended in her being sent to bed. Caroline felt quite shaken
+by it, but stood firm, though, as she said, it went to her heart to deny
+the child who ought to have had equal shares with herself, and she would
+have been thankful if Janet would have given way.
+
+Of this, however, Janet had no thoughts, strong in the conviction that
+the child could not make the same reasonable use of the fittings of the
+room as she could herself, and by no means disposed not “to seek her
+own.”
+
+She had numerous papers, notes of lectures, returned essays from her
+society, and the like to dispose of, and she rejoiced in placing them in
+the compartments of the great bureau, in the lower room. The lawyers had
+cleared all before her, and the space was delightful. All personals must
+have been carried off by the servants as perquisites, for she found no
+traces of the former occupant till she came to a little bed-side table.
+The drawer was not locked, but did not open without difficulty, being
+choked with notes and letters in envelopes, directed to J. Barnes,
+Esquire. This perhaps accounted for the drawer not having been observed
+and emptied. Janet shook the contents out into a basket, and was going
+to take them to her uncle, but thought it could do no harm first to see
+whether there were anything curious or interesting in them.
+
+Several were receipted bills; but then she came to her mother’s
+handwriting, and read her conciliatory note, which whetted her
+curiosity; and looking further she got some amusement out of the polite
+notes and offers of service, claims to old family friendship, and
+congratulations which had greeted Mr. Barnes, and he had treated with
+grim disregard.
+
+Presently, thrust into an envelope with another letter, and written on
+a piece of note-paper, was something that made her start as if at the
+sting of a viper. No! it could not be a will! She knew what wills were
+like. They were sheets of foolscap, written by lawyers, while this was
+only an old man’s cramped and crooked writing. Perhaps, when he was in
+a rage, he had so far carried out his threat, that Allen should remember
+King Midas as to make a rough draft of a will, leaving everything to
+Elvira de Menella, for there at the top was the date, plainly visible,
+the very April when the confession had been made. But no doubt he had
+never carried out his purpose so far as to get it legally drawn out and
+attested. As Mr. Richards had said, he had never been in health to take
+any active measures, and probably he had rested satisfied with this
+relief to his feelings.
+
+Should she show it to her mother and uncle, and let them know their
+narrow escape? No. Mother Carey and Allen made quite fuss enough already
+about that little vixen, and if they discovered how nearly she had been
+the sole heiress, they would be far worse. Besides, her mother might
+have misgivings, as to this unhappy document being morally though not
+legally, binding. Suppose she were seized with a fit of generosity,
+and gave all up! or even half. Elfie, the little shrew, to have equal
+rights! The sweets of wealth only just tasted to be resigned, and the
+child, overweening enough already, to be set in their newly-gained
+place!
+
+The sagacity of seventeen decided that mother had better not be worried
+about it for her own sake, and that of everyone else. So what was to
+be done. No means of burning it were at hand, and to ask for them might
+excite suspicion. The safest way was to place it in one of the drawers
+of the bureau, lock it up, and keep the key.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. -- AN OFFER FOR MAGNUM BONUM.
+
+
+
+     They had gold and gold and gold without end,
+     Gold to lay by and gold to spend,
+     Gold to give and gold to lend,
+     And reversions of gold in futuro.
+     In gold his family revelled and rolled,
+     Himself and his wife and his sons so bold,
+     And his daughters who sang to their harps of gold
+                                 O bella eta dell’ oro.
+
+
+Four years of wealth had not made much external alteration in Mrs.
+Joseph Brownlow. As she descended the staircase of her beautiful London
+house, one Monday morning, late in April, between flower-stands filled
+with lovely ferns and graceful statues, she had still the same eager
+girlish look. It was true that her little cap was of the most costly
+lace, her hair manipulated by skilful hands, and her thin black summer
+dress was of material and make such as a scientific eye alone could have
+valued in their simplicity. But dignity still was wanting. Silks and
+brocades that would stand alone, and velvets richly piled only crushed
+and suffocated the little light swift figure, and the crisp curly hair
+was so much too wilful for the maid, that she had been even told that
+madame’s style would be to cut it short, and wear it a l’ingenue, which
+she viewed as insulting; and altogether her general air was precisely
+what it had been when her dress cost a twentieth part of what it did at
+present.
+
+Her face looked no older. It was thin, eager, bright, and sunny, yet
+with an indescribable wistfulness in the sparkling eyes, and something
+worn in the expression, and, as usual, she moved with a quiet nimbleness
+peculiar to herself.
+
+The breakfast-table, sparkling with silver and glass, around a
+magnificent orchid in the centre, and a rose by every plate, was spread
+in the dining-room, sweet sounds and scents coming in through the
+widely-opened glass doors of the conservatory, while a bright wood fire,
+still pleasant to look at, shone in the grate.
+
+As she rang the bell, Bobus came in from the conservatory, book in hand,
+to receive the morning kiss, for which he had to bend to his little
+mother. He was not tall, but he had attained his full height, and had a
+well-knit sturdy figure which, together with his heavy brow and deep-set
+eyes, made him appear older than his real age--nineteen. His hair and
+upper lip were dark, and his eyes keen with a sense of ready power and
+strong will.
+
+“Good morning, Bobus; I didn’t see you all day yesterday,” said his
+mother.
+
+“No, I couldn’t find you before you went out on Saturday night, to tell
+you I was going to run down to Belforest with Bauerson. I wanted to
+enlighten his mind as to wild hyacinths. They are in splendid bloom all
+over the copses, and I thought he would have gone down on his knees to
+them, like Linnaeus to the gorse.”
+
+“I’m afraid he didn’t go on his knees to anything else.”
+
+“Well, it is not much in his line.”
+
+“Then can he be a nice Sunday companion?”
+
+“Now, mother, I expected credit for not scandalising the natives. We got
+out at Woodgate, and walked over, quite ‘unknownst,’ to Kenminster.”
+
+“I was not thinking of the natives, but of yourself.”
+
+“As you are a sensible woman, Mother Carey, wasn’t it a more goodly
+and edifying thing to put a man like Bauerson in a trance over
+the bluebells, than to sit cramped up in foul air listening to the
+glorification of a wholesale massacre.”
+
+“For shame, Bobus; you know I never allow you to say such things.”
+
+“Then you should not drag me to Church. Was it last Sunday that I was
+comparing the Prussians at Bazeille with--”
+
+“Hush, my dear boy, you frighten me; you know it is all explained.
+Fancy, if we had to deal with a nation of Thugs, and no means of
+guarding them--a different dispensation and all. But here come the
+children, so hush.”
+
+Bobus gave a nod and smile, which his mother understood only too well
+as intimating acquiescence with wishes which he deemed feminine and
+conventional.
+
+“My poor boy,” she said to herself, with vague alarm and terror, “what
+has he not picked up? I must read up these things, and be able to talk
+it over with him by the time he comes back from Norway.”
+
+There, however, came the morning greeting of Elvira and Barbara, girls
+of fourteen and eleven, with floating hair and short dresses, the one
+growing up into all the splendid beauty of her early promise, the other
+thin and brown, but with a speaking face and lovely eyes. They were
+followed by Miss Ogilvie, as trim and self-possessed as ever, but with
+more ease and expansiveness of manner.
+
+“So Babie,” said her brother, “you’ve earned your breakfast; I heard you
+hammering away.”
+
+“Like a nuthatch,” was the merry answer.
+
+“And Elfie?” asked Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+“I’m not so late as Janet,” she answered; and the others laughed at the
+self-defence before the attack.
+
+“It is a lazy little Elf in town,” said Miss Ogilvie; “in the country
+she is up and out at impossible hours.”
+
+“Good morning, Janet,” said Bobus, at that moment, “or rather, ‘Marry
+come up, mistress mine, good lack, nothing is lacking to thee save a
+pointed hood graceless.’”
+
+For Janet was arrayed in a close-fitting pale blue dress, cut in
+semblance of an ancient kirtle, and with a huge chatelaine, from which
+massive chains dangled, not to say clattered--not merely the ordinary
+appendages of a young lady, but a pair of compasses, a safety inkstand,
+and a microscope. Her dark hair was strained back from a face not
+calculated to bear exposure, and was wound round a silver arrow.
+
+Elfie shook with laughter, murmuring--
+
+“Oh dear! what a fright!” in accents which Miss Ogilvie tried to hush;
+while Babie observed, as a sort of excuse, “Janet always is a figure of
+fun when she is picturesque.”
+
+“My dear, I hope you are not going to show yourself to any one in that
+dress,” added her mother.
+
+“It is perfectly correct,” said Janet, “studied from an old Italian
+costume.”
+
+“The Marchioness of Carabbas, in my old fairy-tale book. Oh, yes, I
+see!” and Babie went off again in an ecstatic fit of laughter.
+
+“I hope you’ve got boots and a tail ready for George,” added Bobus.
+“Being a tiger already, he may serve as cat.”
+
+Therewith the post came in, and broke up the discourse; for Babie had a
+letter from Eton, from Armine who was shut up with a sore throat.
+
+Her mother was less happy. She had asked a holiday for the next day for
+her two Eton boys and their cousin John, and the reply had been that
+though for two of the party there could be no objection, her elder boy
+was under punishment for one of the wild escapades to which he was too
+apt to pervert his excellent abilities.
+
+“Are not they coming, mother?” asked Babie. “Armie does not say.”
+
+“Unfortunately Jock has got kept in again.”
+
+“Poor Jock!” said Bobus; “sixpence a day, and no expectations, would
+have been better pasture for his brains.”
+
+“Yes,” said his mother with a sigh, “I doubt if we are any of us much
+the better or the wiser for Belforest.”
+
+“The wiser, I’m sure, because we’ve got Miss Ogilvie,” cried Babie.
+
+“Do I hear babes uttering the words of wisdom?” asked Allen, coming into
+the room, and pretending to pull her hair, as the school-room party rose
+from the breakfast-table, and he met them with outstretched hands.
+
+“Ay, to despise Lag-last,” said Elvira, darting out of his reach, and
+tossing her dark locks at him as she hid behind a fern plant in the
+window; and there was a laughing scuffle, ended by Miss Ogilvie, who
+swept the children away to the school-room, while Allen came to the
+table, where his mother had poured out his coffee, and still waited to
+preside over his breakfast, though she had long finished her own.
+
+Allen Brownlow, at twenty, was emphatically the Eton and Christchurch
+production, just well made and good-looking enough to do full justice
+to his training and general getting up, without too much individual
+personality of his own. He looked only so much of a man as was needful
+for looking a perfect gentleman, and his dress and equipments were in
+the most perfect quietly exquisite style, as costly as possible, yet
+with no display, and nothing to catch the eye.
+
+“Well, Bobus,” he said, “you made out your expedition. How did the place
+look?”
+
+“Wasting its sweetness,” said his mother; “it is tantalising to think of
+it.”
+
+“It could hardly be said to be wasted,” said Bobus; “the natives were
+disporting themselves all over it.”
+
+“Where?” asked Allen, with displeased animation.
+
+“O, Essie and Ellie were promenading a select party about the gardens. I
+could almost hear Mackintyre gnashing his teeth at their inroads on the
+forced strawberries, and the park and Elmwood Spinney were dotted so
+thick with people, that we had to look sharp not to fall in with any
+one.”
+
+“Elmwood Spinney!” exclaimed Allen; “you don’t mean that they were
+running riot over the preserves?”
+
+“I don’t think there were more than half-a-dozen there. Bauerson was
+quite edified. He said, ‘So! they had on your English Sunday quite
+falsely me informed.’ There were a couple of lovers spooning and some
+children gathering flowers, and it had just the Arcadian look dear to
+the German eye.”
+
+“Children,” cried Allen, as if they were vipers. “That’s just what I
+told you, mother. If you will persist in throwing open the park, we
+shall not have a pheasant on the place.”
+
+“My dear boy, I have seen them running about like chickens in a
+farmyard.”
+
+“Yes, but what’s the use, if all the little beggars in Kenminster are to
+be let in to make them wild! And when you knew I particularly wished to
+have something worth asking Prince Siegfried down to.”
+
+“Never mind, Allen,” put in Janet; “you can ask him to shoot into the
+poultry yard. The poor things are just as thick there, and rather tamer,
+so the sport will be the more noble.”
+
+“You know nothing about it, Janet,” said Allen, in displeasure.
+
+“But Allen,” said his mother, apologetically, though she felt with
+Janet, “the woods are locked up.”
+
+“Locked! As if that was any use when you let a lot of boys come
+marauding all over the place!”
+
+“Really, Allen,” said his mother, “when I remember what we used to say
+about old Mr. Barnes, I cannot find it in my heart to play the same
+game!”
+
+“It is quite a different thing.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“He did it out of mere surliness.”
+
+“I don’t suppose it makes much difference to the excluded whether it is
+done out of mere surliness, or for the sake of the preserves.”
+
+“Mother!” Allen spoke as if the absurdity of the argument were quite too
+much for him; but his brother and sister both laughed, which nettled him
+into adding--
+
+“Well! All I have to say is, that if Belforest is to be nothing but a
+people’s park for all the ragamuffins in Kenminster, there will soon
+not be a head of game in the place, and I shall be obliged to shoot
+elsewhere!”
+
+Poor Caroline! If there was a thing she specially hated, it was a
+battue, both for the thing itself, and all the previous preparation of
+preserving, and of prosecuting poachers; and yet sons have their mothers
+so much in their power by that threat of staying away from home, that
+she could not help faltering, “Oh, Allen, I’ll do my best, and tell the
+keepers to be very careful, and lock the gates of all the preserves.”
+
+Allen saw she was vexed, and spoke more kindly, “There, never mind,
+mother. It is more than can be expected that ladies should see things in
+a reasonable light.”
+
+“What is the reasonable light?” asked Bobus.
+
+Allen did not choose to hear, regarding Bobus not indeed as a woman, but
+as something as little capable of appreciating his reason. It was Janet
+who took up the word. “The reasonable light is that the enjoyment of
+the many should be sacrificed to the vanity of the few, viz., that all
+Kenminster should be confined to dusty roads all the year round in order
+that Allen may bring down the youngest son of the youngest son of
+a German prince for one day to fire amongst some hundreds of tame
+pheasants who come up expecting to be fed.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Allen, “we all know that you are a regular out-and-out
+democrat, Janet.”
+
+“I confess, without being a democrat,” said his mother, “that I do
+wonder that you gentlemen, who wish the game laws to continue, should so
+work them as to be more aggravating than ever.”
+
+“It is a simple question of the rights of property,” said Allen. “If I
+do a thing, I like it to be well done, and not half-and-half.”
+
+Caroline rose from the table, dreading, like many a mother, a regular
+skirmish about game-preserving, between those who cared to shoot,
+and those who did not. Like other ladies, she could never understand
+exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to have
+game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest of the
+chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they told her
+was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and all the
+footpaths. Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were those of a
+former generation, was quite satisfied; Allen never would be so; and it
+was one of the few bones of contention in the family.
+
+For Allen was walking through Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not
+troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an
+ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be “good form.”
+
+His brother accused him of carrying his idolatry of “good form” to a
+snobbish extent, but Allen could carry it out so naturally that no one
+could have suspected that he had not been to the manner born. If he
+did appreciate the society of people with handles to their names, he
+comported himself among them as their easy equal; and he was so lavish
+as to be a very popular man. He had no vicious tastes or tendencies,
+and was too gentlemanly and quiet ever to come into collision with the
+authorities. At home, except when his notions of “good form” were at
+variance with strong opinions of his mother’s, nothing could be more
+chivalrously deferential than his whole demeanour to her; and the worst
+that could be said of him was that he managed to waste a large amount of
+time and money with very little to show for it. His profession was to
+be son and heir to a large fortune, and he took to the show part of the
+affair very kindly.
+
+But was this being the man his father had expected him to be? The
+thought would come across Caroline at times, but not very often, as
+she floated along easily in the stream of life. Most of the business
+troubles of her property were spared her by her trustees, and her income
+was so large that even Allen’s expenditure had not yet been felt as an
+inconvenience. As to the responsibilities, she contributed largely to
+county subscriptions, gave her clergyman whatever he asked, provided
+Christmas treats and summer teas for their school-children, and
+permitted Miss Ogilvie and Babie to do whatever they pleased among the
+poor when they were at home. But she was not very much at Belforest. She
+generally came there at Midsummer and at Christmas, and filled the house
+with friends. All kinds of amusements astonished the neighbourhood, and
+parties of the newest kinds, private theatricals, tableaux, charades,
+all that taste or ingenuity could devise were in vogue.
+
+But before the spring east winds the party were generally gone to
+some more genial climate, and the early autumn was often spent in
+Switzerland. Pictures, art, and scenery were growing to be necessaries
+of life, and to stay at home with no special diversion in view seemed
+unthought of. The season was spent in London, not dropping the artist
+society on the one hand, but adding to it the amount of intercourse into
+which she was drawn by the fact of her being a rich and charming woman,
+having a delightful house, and a son and daughter who might be “grands
+partis.” Allen liked high life for her, so she did not refuse it;
+but probably her social success was all the greater from her entire
+indifference, and that of her daughter, to all the questions of
+exclusiveness and fashion. If they had been born duchesses they could
+not have been less concerned about obtaining invitations to what their
+maid called “the first circles,” and they would sometimes reduce Allen
+to despair by giving the preference to a lively literary soiree, when he
+wanted them to show themselves among the aristocracy at a drum.
+
+Engagements of all kinds grew on them with every season, and in this
+one especially, Caroline had grown somewhat weary of the endeavour to
+satisfy both him and Janet, and was not sorry that her two eldest sons
+were starting on a yacht voyage to Norway, where Allen meant to fish,
+and Bobus to study natural history. She had her interview with the
+housekeeper, and proceeded to her own place in Popinjay Parlour, a quiet
+place at this time of day, save for the tinkling of the fountain and
+the twitterings of the many little songsters in the aviary, whom the
+original parrot used patronisingly to address as “Pretty little birds.”
+
+Janet was wandering about among the flowers, evidently waiting for her,
+and began, as she came in--
+
+“I wanted to speak to you, mother.”
+
+“Well, Janet,” said Caroline, reviewing in one moment every unmarried
+man, likely or unlikely, who had approached the girl, and with a
+despairing conviction that it would be some one very unlikely indeed!
+
+“You know I am of age, mother.”
+
+“Certainly. We drank your health last Monday.”
+
+“I made up my mind that till I was of age I would go on studying, and at
+the same time see something of the world and of society.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Caroline, wondering what her inscrutable daughter was
+coming to.
+
+“And having done this, I wish to devote myself to the study of
+medicine.”
+
+“Be a lady doctor, Janet!”
+
+“Mother, you are surely above all the commonplace, old world nonsense!”
+
+“I don’t think I am, Janet. I don’t think your father would have wished
+it.”
+
+“He would have gone on with the spirit of the times, mother; men do,
+while women stand still.”
+
+“I don’t think he would in this.”
+
+“I think he would, if he knew me, and the issues and stake, and how his
+other children are failing him.”
+
+“Janet!”--and the colour flushed into her mother’s face--“I don’t quite
+know what you mean; but it is time we came to an understanding.”
+
+“I think so,” returned Janet.
+
+“Then you know--”
+
+“I heard what papa said to you. I kept the white slate till you thought
+of it,” said Janet, in a tone that sounded soft from her.
+
+“And why did you never say so, my dear?”
+
+“I can hardly tell. I was shy at first; and then reserve grows on a
+person; but I never ceased from thinking about it through all these
+years. Mother, you do not think there is any chance of the boys taking
+it up as my father wished?”
+
+“Certainly not Allen,” said Caroline with a sigh. “And as to Bobus, he
+would have full capacity; but a great change must come over him, poor
+fellow, before he would fulfil your father’s conditions.”
+
+“He has no notion of the drudgery of the medical profession,” said
+Janet; “he means to read law, get up social and sanitary questions, and
+go into parliament.”
+
+“I know,” said her mother, “I have always lived in hopes that sanitary
+theories would give him his father’s heart for the sufferers, and that
+search into the secrets of nature would lead him higher; but as long
+as he does not turn that way of himself it would be contrary to your
+father’s charge to hold this discovery out to him as an inducement.”
+
+“And Jock?” said Janet, smiling. “You don’t expect it of the born
+soldier--nor of Armine?”
+
+“I am not sure about Armine, though he may not be strong enough to bear
+the application.”
+
+“Armine will walk through life like Allen,” scornfully said Janet;
+“besides he is but fourteen. Now, mother, why should not I be worthy?”
+
+“My dear Janet, it is not a question of worthiness; it is not a thing a
+woman could work out.”
+
+“I do not ask you to give it to me now, nor even to promise it to me,”
+ said Janet, with a light in those dark wells, her eyes; “but only to
+let me have the hope, that when in three years’ time I am qualified, and
+have passed the examinations, if Bobus does not take it up, you will let
+me claim that best inheritance my father left, but which his sons do not
+heed.”
+
+“My child, you do not know what you ask. Remember, I know more about it
+than only what you picked up on that morning. It is a matter he could
+not have made sure of without a succession of experiments very hard even
+for him, and certainly quite impossible for any woman. The exceeding
+difficulty and danger of the proof was one reason of his guarding it
+so much, and desiring it should only be told to one good as well as
+clever--clever as well as good.”
+
+“Can you give me no hint of the kind of thing,” said Janet, wistfully.
+
+“That would be a betrayal of his trust.”
+
+Janet looked terribly disappointed.
+
+“Mother,” said she, “let me put it to you. Is it fair to shut up a
+discovery that might benefit so many people.”
+
+“It is not his fault, Janet, that it is shut up. He talked of it to
+several of the most able men he was connected with, and they thought it
+a chimera. He could not carry it on far enough to convince them. I do
+not know what he would have done if his illness had been longer, or he
+could have talked it out with any one, but I know the proof could only
+be made out by a course of experiments which he could not commit to any
+one not highly qualified, or whom he could not entirely trust. It is not
+a thing to be set forth broadcast, while it might yet prove a fallacy.”
+
+“Is it to be lost for ever, then?”
+
+“I shall try to find light as to the right thing to be done about it.”
+
+“Well,” said Janet, drawing a long breath, “three years of study
+must come, any way, and by that time I may be able to triumph over
+prejudice.”
+
+There was no time to reply, for at that moment the letters of the second
+delivery were brought in; and the first that Caroline opened told
+her that the cold which Armine had mentioned on Saturday seemed to be
+developing into an attack of a rather severe hybrid kind of illness,
+between measles and scarlatina, from which many persons had lately been
+suffering.
+
+Armine was never strong, and his illnesses were always a greater anxiety
+than those of other people, so that his mother came to the immediate
+decision of going to Eton that same afternoon and remaining there,
+unless she found that it had been a false alarm.
+
+She did not find it so; and as she remained with her boy, Janet’s
+conversation with her could not be resumed. There was so much chance of
+infection that she could not see any of the family again. Both the Johns
+sickened as soon as Armine began to improve, and Miss Ogilvie took the
+three girls down to Belforest. After the first few days it was rather a
+pleasant nursing. There was never any real alarm; indeed, Armine was the
+least ill of the three, and Johnny the most, and each boy was perfectly
+delighted to have her to attend to him, her nephew almost touchingly
+grateful. The only other victim was Jock’s most intimate friend, Cecil
+Evelyn, whose fag Armine was. He became a sharer of her attentions and
+the amusements she provided. She received letters of grateful thanks
+from his mother, who was, like herself, a widow, but was prevented from
+coming to him by close attendance on her mother-in-law, who was in a
+lingering state of decay when every day might be the last.
+
+The eldest son, Lord Fordham, was so delicate that he was on no account
+to be exposed to the infection, and the boys were exceedingly anxious
+that Cecil should join them in the expedition that their mother
+projected making with them, to air them in Switzerland before returning
+to the rest of the family. But Mrs. Evelyn (her husband had not lived
+to come to the title) declined this. Fordham was in the country with his
+tutor, and she wished Cecil to come and spend his quarantine with her
+in London before joining him. The boys grumbled very much, but Caroline
+could hardly wonder when she talked with their tutor.
+
+He, like every one else, liked, and even loved personally that
+perplexing subject, John Lucas Brownlow, alias Jock. The boy was too
+generous, honourable, truthful, and kindly to be exposed to the stigma
+of removal; but he was the perplexity of everybody. He could not be
+convinced of any necessity for application, and considered a flogging
+as a slight risk quite worth encountering for the sake of diversion.
+He would execute the most audacious pranks, and if he was caught, would
+take it as a trial of skill between the masters and himself, and accept
+punishment as amends, with the most good humoured grace in the world.
+Fun seemed to be his only moving spring, and he led everybody along with
+him, so as to be a much more mischievous person than many a worse lad.
+
+The only exceptions in the house to his influence seemed to be his
+brother and cousin. Both were far above the average boy. Armine, for
+talent, John Friar Brownlow at once for industry and steadiness. They
+had stood out resolutely against more than one of his pranks, and had
+been the only boys in the house not present on the occasion of his last
+freak--a champagne supper, when parodies had been sung, caricaturing all
+the authorities; and when the company had become uproarious enough to
+rouse the whole family, the boys were discovered in the midst of the
+most audacious but droll mimicry of the masters.
+
+As to work, Jock was developing the utmost faculties for leaving it
+undone, trusting to his native facility for putting on the steam at any
+crisis; and not believing in the warnings that he would fail in passing
+for the army.
+
+What was to be done with him? Was he to be taken away and sent to a
+tutor? His mother consulted himself as he sat in his arm-chair.
+
+“Like Rob!” he said, and made up a face.
+
+“Rob is doing very well in the militia.”
+
+“No; don’t do that, mother! Never fear, I’ll put on a spurt when the
+time comes!”
+
+“I don’t believe a spurt will do. Now, seriously, Jock--”
+
+“Don’t say, seriously, mother: it’s like H.S.H.”
+
+“Perhaps if I had been like her, you would not be vexing me so much
+now.”
+
+“Come, come, mother, it’s nothing to be vexed about. My tutor needn’t
+have bothered you. I’ve done nothing sneaking nor ungentlemanly.”
+
+“There is plenty of wrong without that, Jock. While you never heed
+anything but fun and amusement I do not see how you are to come to
+anything worth having; and you will soon get betrayed into something
+unworthy. Don’t let me have to take you away in disgrace, my boy; it
+would break my heart.”
+
+“You shan’t have to do that, mother.”
+
+“But don’t you think it would be wiser to be somewhere with fewer
+inducements to idleness?”
+
+“Leave Eton? O no, mother! I can’t do that till the last day possible. I
+shall be in the eight another year.”
+
+“You will not be here another year unless you go on very differently.
+Your tutor will not allow it, if I would.”
+
+“Has he said so?”
+
+“Yes; and the next half is to be the trial.”
+
+Jock applied himself to extracting a horsehair from the stuffing of
+the elbow of his chair; and there was a look over his face as near
+sullenness as ever came to his gay, careless nature.
+
+Would he attend? or even could he?
+
+When his bills came in Caroline feared, as before, that he was the
+one of all her children whom Belforest was most damaging. Allen was
+expensive, but in an elegant, exquisite kind of way; but Jock was
+simply reckless; and his pleasures were questionable enough to be on the
+borders of vices, which might change the frank, sweet, merry face that
+now looked up to her into a countenance stained by dissipation and
+licence!
+
+A flash of horror and dismay followed the thought! But what could she
+do for him, or for any of her children? Censure only alienated them and
+made them worse, and their love for her was at least one blessing. Why
+had this gold come to take away the wholesome necessity for industry?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. -- THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET.
+
+
+
+     Cold, cold, ‘tis a chilly clime
+     That the youth in his journey hath reached;
+        And he is aweary now,
+        And faint for lack of food.
+     Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven.
+                                         Southey.
+
+
+Very merry was the party which arrived at the roughly-built hotel of
+Schwarenbach which serves as a half-way house to the Altels.
+
+Never had expedition been more enjoyed than that of Mrs. Brownlow
+and her three boys. They had taken a week by the sea to recruit their
+forces, and then began their journey in earnest, since it was too late
+for a return to Eton, although so early in the season that to the Swiss
+they were like the first swallows of the spring, and they came in for
+some of the wondrous glory of the spring flowers, so often missed by
+tourists.
+
+In her mountain dress, all state and ceremony cast aside, Caroline rode,
+walked, and climbed like the jolly Mother Carey she was, to use her
+son’s favourite expression, and the boys, full of health and recovery,
+gambolled about her, feeling her companionship the very crown of their
+enjoyment.
+
+Johnny, to whom all was more absolutely new than to the others, was the
+quietest of the three. He was a year older than Lucas, as Jock was now
+called to formal outsiders, while Friar John, a reversal of his cousin’s
+two Christian names, was a school title that sometimes passed into
+home use. Friar John then had reached an age open to the influences of
+beautiful and sublime scenery, and when the younger ones only felt the
+exhilaration of mountain air, and longings to get as high as possible,
+his soul began to expand, and fresh revelations of glory and majesty to
+take possession of him. He was a very different person from the rough,
+awkward lad of eight years back. He still had the somewhat loutish
+figure which, in his mother’s family, was the shell of fine-looking
+men, and he was shy and bashful, but Eton polish had taken away the rude
+gruffness, and made his manners and bearing gentlemanly. His face was
+honest and intelligent, and he had a thoroughly good, conscientious
+disposition; his character stood high, and he was the only Brownlow of
+them all who knew the sweets of being “sent up for good.” His aunt could
+almost watch expression deepening on his open face, and he was enjoying
+with soul and mind even more than with body. Having had the illness
+later and more severely than the other two, his strength had not so
+fully returned, and he was often glad to rest, admire, and study the
+subject with his aunt, to whose service he was specially devoted, while
+the other two climbed and explored. For even Armine had been invigorated
+with a sudden overflow of animal health and energy, which made him far
+more enterprising and less contemplative than he had ever been before.
+
+They four had walked up the mountain after breakfast from Kandersteg,
+bringing their bags for a couple of nights, the boys being anxious to go
+up the Altels the next day, as their time was nearly over and they were
+to be in school in ten days’ time again. After luncheon and a good rest
+on the wooden bench outside the door, they began to stroll towards the
+Daubensee, along a path between desolate boulders, without vegetation,
+except a small kind of monkshood.
+
+“I call this dreary,” said the mother. “We don’t seem to get a bit
+nearer the lake. I shall go home and write to Babie.”
+
+“I’ll come back with you,” said Johnny. “My mother will be looking for a
+letter.”
+
+“Not giving in already, Johnny,” said Armine. “I can tell you I mean to
+get to the lake.”
+
+“The Friar is the slave of his note-book,” said Jock. “When are we to
+have it--‘Crags and Cousins,’ or ‘From Measles to Mountains’?”
+
+“I don’t want to forget everything,” said Johnny, with true Kencroft
+doggedness.
+
+“Do you expect ever to look at that precious diurnal again?”
+
+“He will leave it as an heirloom to his grandchildren!”
+
+“And they will say how slow people were in the nineteenth century.”
+
+“There will have been a reaction by that time, and they will only wonder
+how anybody cared to go up into such dreary places.”
+
+“Or perhaps they will have stripped them all, and eaten the glaciers up
+as ices and ice-creams!”
+
+“I think I’ll set up that as my pet anxiety,” said their mother,
+laughing; “just as some people suffer from perplexity as to what is to
+become of the world when all the coal is used up! You are not turning on
+my account, are you, Johnny? I am quite happy to go back alone.”
+
+“No, indeed. I want to write my letter, and I have had enough,” said
+John.
+
+“Tired!” said Armine. “Poor old monk! Swiss air always makes me feel
+like a balloon full of gas. I could go on, up and up, for ever!”
+
+“Well, keep to the path, and don’t do anything imprudent,” she said,
+turning back, the boys saying, “We’ll only have a look down the pass!
+Here, Chico! Chico! Chick! Chick!”
+
+Chico, the little dog so disdainfully rejected by Elvira, had attached
+himself from the first to Jock. He had been in the London house when
+they spent a day there, and in rapture at the meeting had smuggled
+himself, not without his master’s connivance, among the rugs and
+wrappers, and had already been the cause of numerous scrapes with
+officials and travellers, whence sometimes money, sometimes politeness,
+sometimes audacity, bought off his friends as best they could.
+
+There was a sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of
+the scene--the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining
+white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and
+the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine’s spirit fell under
+the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was
+running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and
+throwing him into the water.
+
+They came to the gap where they expected to look over the pass, but
+it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding
+everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near
+at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on their
+eyes.
+
+“I didn’t know it was so near,” said Jock. “Come and have a look at it.”
+
+“Not on it,” said Armine, who had somewhat more Swiss experience than
+his brother. “There’s no going there without a guide.”
+
+“There’s no reason we should not get on the moraine,” said Jock; and
+they presently began to scramble about among the rocks and boulders,
+trying to mount some larger one whence they might get a more general
+view of the form of the glacier. Chico ran on before them, stimulated
+by some reminiscence of the rabbit-holes of Belforest, and they were
+looking after him and whistling him back; Armine heard a sudden cry and
+fall--Jock had disappeared. “Never mind!” he called up the next instant.
+“I’m all right. Only, come down here! I’ve twisted my foot somehow.”
+
+Armine scrambled round the rock over which he had fallen, a loose stone
+having turned with him. He had pulled himself up, but even with an arm
+round Armine’s neck, he could not have walked a step on even ground,
+far less on these rough debris, which were painful walking even for the
+lightest, most springy tread.
+
+“You must get to the inn and bring help,” he said, sinking down with a
+sigh.
+
+“I suppose there’s nothing else to be done,” said Armine, unwillingly.
+“You’ll have a terrible time to wait, unless I meet some one first. I’ll
+be as quick as I can.”
+
+“Not too quick till you get off this place,” said Jock, “or you’ll be
+down too, and here, help me off with this boot first.”
+
+This was not done quickly or easily. Jock was almost sick with the pain
+of the effort, and the bruise looked serious. Armine tried to make him
+comfortable, and set out, as he thought, in the right direction, but he
+had hardly gone twenty steps before he came to a sudden standstill with
+an emphatic “I say!” then came back repeating “I say, Jock, we are close
+upon the glacier; I was as near as possible going down into an awful
+blue crack!”
+
+“That’s why it’s getting so cold,” said Jock. “Here, Chick, come and
+warm me. Well, Armie, why ain’t you off?”
+
+“Yes,” said Armine, with a quiver in his voice, “if I keep down by the
+side of the glacier, I suppose I must come to the Daubensee in time.”
+
+“What! Have we lost the way?” said Jock, beginning to look alarmed.
+
+“There’s no doubt of that,” said Armine, “and what’s worse, that fog
+is coming up; but I’ve got my little compass here, and if I keep to the
+south-west, and down, I must strike the lake somewhere. Goodbye, Jock.”
+
+He looked white and braced up for the effort. Jock caught hold of him.
+“Don’t leave me, Armie,” he said; “you can’t--you’ll fall into one of
+those crevasses.”
+
+“You’d better let me go before the fog gets worse,” said Armine.
+
+“I say you can’t; it’s not fit for a little chap like you. If you fell
+it would be ever so much worse for us both.”
+
+“I know! But it is the less risk,” said Armine, gravely.
+
+“I tell you, Armie, I can’t have you go. Mother will send out for us,
+and we can make no end of a row together. There’s a much better chance
+that way than alone. Don’t go, I say--”
+
+“I was only looking out beyond the rock. I don’t think it would be
+possible to get on now. I can’t see even the ridge of stones we climbed
+over.”
+
+“I wish it was I,” said Jock, “I’ll be bound I could manage it!” Then
+impatiently--“Something must be done, you know, Armie. We can’t stay
+here all night.”
+
+Yet when Armine went a step or two to see whether there was any
+practicability of moving, he instantly called out against his attempting
+to go away. He was in a good deal of pain, and high-spirited boy as
+he was, was thoroughly unnerved and appalled, and much less able to
+consider than the usually quieter and more timid Armine. Suddenly
+there was a frightful thunderous roar and crash, and with a cry of “An
+avalanche,” the brothers clasped one another fast and shut their eyes,
+but ere the words “Have mercy” were uttered all was still again, and
+they found themselves alive!
+
+“I don’t think it was an avalanche,” said Armine, recovering first. “It
+was most likely to be a great mass of ice tumbling off the arch at the
+bottom of the glacier. They do make a most awful row. I’ve heard one
+before, only not so near. Anyway we can’t be far from the bottom of the
+glacier, if I only could crawl there.”
+
+“No, no;” cried Jock, holding him tight; “I tell you, you can’t do it.”
+
+Jock could not have defined whether he was most actuated by fears
+for his brother’s safety or by actual terror at being left alone and
+helpless. At any rate Armine much preferred remaining, in all the
+certain misery and danger, to losing sight of his brother, with the
+great probability of only being further lost himself.
+
+“I wonder whether Chico would find mother,” he said.
+
+Jock brightened; Armine found an envelope in his pocket, and scribbled--
+
+“On the moraine. Jock’s ankle sprained--Come.”
+
+Then Jock produced a bit of string, wherewith it was fastened to the
+dog’s collar, and then authoritatively bade Chico go to mother.
+
+Alas! cleverness had never been Chico’s strong point, and the present
+extremity did not inspire him with sagacity. He knew the way as little
+as his masters did, and would only dance about in an unmeaning way, and
+when ordered home crouch in abject entreaty. Jock grew impatient and
+threatened him, but this only made him creep behind Armine, put his tail
+between his legs, hold up his little paw, and look piteously imploring.
+
+“There’s no use in the little brute,” sighed Jock at last, but the
+attempt had done him good and recalled his nerve and good sense.
+
+“We are in for a night of it,” he said, “unless they find us; and how
+are they ever to do that in this beastly fog?”
+
+“We must halloo,” said Armine, attempting it.
+
+“Yes, and we don’t know when to begin! We can’t go on all night, you
+know,” said Jock; “and if we begin too soon, we may have no voice left
+just at the right time.”
+
+“It is half-past seven now,” said Armine, looking at his watch. “The
+food was to be at seven, so they must have missed us by this time.”
+
+“They won’t think anything of it till it gets dark.”
+
+“No. Give them till half-past eight. Somewhere about nine or half-past
+it may be worth while to yodel.”
+
+“And how awfully cold it will be by that time. And my foot is aching
+like fun!”
+
+Armine offered to rub it, and there was some occupation in this and in
+watching the darkening of the evening, which was very gradual in the
+dense white fog that shut them in with a damp, cold, moist curtain of
+undeveloped snow.
+
+The poor lads were thinly clad for a summer walk, Jock had left his
+plaid behind him, and they were beginning to feel only too vividly that
+it was past supper-time, when they could dimly see that it was
+past nine, and began to shout, but they soon found this severe and
+exhausting.
+
+Armine suggested counting ten between each cry, which would husband
+their powers and give them time to listen for an answer. Yet even
+thus there was an empty, feeble sound about their cries, so that Jock
+observed--
+
+“It’s very odd that when there’s no good in making a row, one can make
+it fast enough, and now when it would be of some use, one seems to have
+no more voice than a little sick mouse.”
+
+“Not so much, I think,” said Armine. “It is hunger partly.”
+
+“Hark! That sounded like something.”
+
+Invigorated by hope they shouted again, but though several times they
+did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves
+soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions
+ended soon in an utter breakdown--into a hoarse squeak on Jock’s part
+and a weak, hungry cry on Armine’s. Jock’s face was covered with tears,
+as much from the strain as from despair.
+
+“There!” he sighed, “there’s our last chance gone! We are in for a night
+of it.”
+
+“It can’t be a very long night,” Armine said, through chattering teeth.
+“It’s only a week to the longest day.”
+
+“Much that will matter to us,” said Jock, impatiently. “We shall be
+frozen long before morning.”
+
+“We must keep ourselves awake.”
+
+“You little ass,” said poor Jock, in the petulant inconsistency of his
+distress; “it is not come to that yet.”
+
+Armine did not answer at once. He was kneeling against the rock, and a
+strange thrill came over Jock, forbidding him again to say--“It was not
+come to that,” but a shoot of aching pain in his ankle presently drew
+forth an exclamation.
+
+Armine again offered to rub it for him, and the two arranged themselves
+for this purpose, the curtain of damp woolliness seeming to thicken on
+them. There was a moon somewhere, and the darkness was not total, but
+the dreariness and isolation were the more felt from the absence of all
+outlines being manifest. They even lost sight of their own hands if they
+stretched out their arms, and their light summer garments were already
+saturated with damp and would soon freeze. No part of their bodies was
+free from that deadly chill save where they could press against one
+another.
+
+They were brave boys. Jock had collected himself again, and for some
+time they kept up a show of mirth in the shakings and buffetings they
+bestowed on one another, but they began to grow too stiff and spent to
+pursue this discipline. Armine thought that the night must be nearly
+over, and Jock tried to see his watch, but decided that he could not,
+because he could not bear to believe how far it was from day.
+
+Armine was drowsily rubbing the ankle, mechanically murmuring something
+to himself. Jock shook him, saying--
+
+“Take care, don’t doze off. What are you mumbling about leisure?”
+
+“O tarry thou the Lord’s leisure. Be strong and--Was I saying it aloud?”
+ he broke off with a start.
+
+“Yes; go on.”
+
+Armine finished the verse, and Jock commented--
+
+“Comfort thine heart. Does the little chap mean it in a fix like this?”
+
+“Jock,” said Armine, now fully awake, “I do want to say something.”
+
+“Cut on.”
+
+“If you get out of this and I don’t--”
+
+“Stop that! We’ve got heat enough to last till morning.”
+
+“Will they find us then? These fogs last for days and turn to snow.”
+
+“Don’t croak, I say. I can’t face mother without you.”
+
+“She’ll be glad enough to get you. Please listen, Jock, while I’m awake.
+I want you to give her and all of them my love, and say I’m sorry for
+all the times I’ve vexed them.”
+
+“As if you had ever--”
+
+“And please Jock, if I was nasty and conceited about the champagne--”
+
+“Shut up, I can’t stand this,” cried Jock, chiefly from force of habit,
+for it was a tacit agreement among the elder brothers that Armine
+must not be suffered to “be cocky and humbug,” by which they meant
+no implication on his sincerity, but that they did not choose to hear
+remonstrances or appeals to higher motives, and this had made him very
+reticent with all except his sister Barbara and Miss Ogilvie, but he now
+persisted.
+
+“Indeed I want you to forgive me, Jock. You don’t know how often I’ve
+thought all sorts of horridness about you.”
+
+Jock laughed, “Not more than I deserved, I’ll be bound. How can you be
+so absurd! If anyone wants forgiveness, it is I. I say, Armie, this is
+all nonsense. You don’t really think you are done for, or you would not
+take it so coolly.”
+
+“Of course I know Who can bring us through if He will,” said
+Armine. “There’s the Rock. I’ve been asking Him all this time--every
+moment--only I get so sleepy.”
+
+“If He will; but if He won’t?”
+
+“Then there’s Paradise. And Himself and father,” said Armine, still in a
+dreamy tone.
+
+“Oh, yes; that’s for you! But how about a mad fellow like me? It’s so
+sneaking just to take to one’s prayers because one’s in a bad case.”
+
+“Oh, Jock! He is always ready to hear! More ready than we to pray!”
+
+“Now don’t begin to improve the occasion,” broke out Jock. “By all the
+stories that ever were written, I’m the one to come to a bad end, not
+you.”
+
+“Don’t,” said Armine, with an accent of pain that made Jock cry, hugging
+him tighter. “There, never mind, Armie; I’ll let you say all you like.
+I don’t know what made me stop you, except that I’m a beast, and always
+have been one. I’d give anything not to have gone on playing the fool
+all my life, so as to be able to mind this as little as you do.”
+
+“I don’t seem awake enough to mind anything much,” said the little boy,
+“or I should trouble more about Mother and Babie; but somehow I can’t.”
+
+“Oh!” wailed Jock, “you must! You must get out of it, Armie. Come
+closer. Shove in between me and the rock. Here, Chico, lie down on the
+top of us! Mother must have you back any way, Armie.”
+
+The little fellow was half-dozing, but words of prayer and faith kept
+dropping from his tongue. Pain, and a stronger vitality alike, kept
+Jock free from the torpor, and he used his utmost efforts to rouse
+his brother; but every now and then a horrible conviction of the
+hopelessness of their condition came over him.
+
+“Oh!” he groaned out, “how is it to be if this is the end of it? What is
+to become of a fellow that has been like me?”
+
+Armine only spoke one word; the Name that is above every name.
+
+“Yes, you always cared! But I never cared for anything but fun! Never
+went to Communion at Easter. It is too late.”
+
+“Oh, no, no!” cried Armine, rousing up, “not too late! Never! You are
+His! You belong to Him! He cares for you!”
+
+“If He does, it makes it all the worse. I never heeded; I thought it all
+a bore. I never let myself think what it all meant. I’ve thrown it all
+away.”
+
+“Oh! I wish I wasn’t so stupid,” cried Armine, with a violent effort
+against his exhaustion. “Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is
+like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we’ve done, and ask Him to
+blot it out. I’ve been trying--trying--only I’m so dull; and let us
+give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or
+there.”
+
+“That I must,” said Jock; “it would be shabby and sneaking not.”
+
+“Oh, Jock,” cried Armine, joyfully, “then it will all be right any
+way;” and he raised his face and kissed his brother. “You promise, Jock.
+Please promise.”
+
+“Promise what? That if He will save us out of this, I’ll take a new
+line, and be as good as I know how, and--”
+
+Armine took the word, whether consciously or not: “And manfully to fight
+under His banner, and continue Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants
+unto our lives’ end. Amen!”
+
+“Amen,” Jock said, after him.
+
+After that, Jock found that the child was repeating the Creed, and said
+it after him, the meanings thrilling through him as they had never done
+before. Next followed lines of “Rock of Ages,” and for some time longer
+there was a drowsy murmur of sacred words, but there was no eliciting a
+direct reply any more; and with dull consternation, Jock knew that the
+fatal torpor could no longer be broken, and was almost irritated that
+all the words he caught were such happy, peaceful ones. The very last
+were, “Inside angels’ wings, all white down.”
+
+The child seemed almost comfortable--certainly not suffering like
+himself, bruised and strained, with sharp twinges rending his damaged
+foot; his limbs cramped, and sensible of the acute misery of the cold,
+and the full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake
+even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness
+compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away,
+and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud
+that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if
+he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds
+of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of
+wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker
+shades of a self-indulgent and audacious school-boy life!
+
+It was a little lighter, as if dawn might be coming, but the cold was
+bitterer, and benumbing more than paining him. His clothes were stiff,
+his eyelashes white with frost, he did not feel equal to looking at his
+watch, he _would_ not see Armine’s face, he found the fog depositing
+itself in snow, but he heeded it no longer. Fear and hope had alike
+faded out of his mind, his ankle seemed to belong to some one else far
+away, he had left off wishing to see his mother, he wanted nothing but
+to be let alone!
+
+He did not hear when Chico, finding no comfort, no sign of life in his
+masters, stood upon them as they lay clasped together in the drift of
+fine small snow, and in the climax of misery he lifted up the long and
+wretched wailing howlings of utter dog-wretchedness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. -- A RACE.
+
+
+
+     Speed, Melise, speed! such cause of haste
+     Thine active sinews never braced,
+     Bend ‘gainst the steepy hill thy breast,
+     Burst down like torrent from its crest.
+                                          Scott.
+
+
+“Hark!”
+
+The guides and the one other traveller, a Mr. Graham, who had been
+at the inn, were gathered at the border of the Daubensee, entreating,
+almost ready to use force to get the poor mother home before the
+snow should efface the tracks, and render the return to Schwarenbach
+dangerous.
+
+Ever since the alarm had been given there had been a going about with
+lights, a shouting and seeking, all along the road where she had parted
+with her sons. It was impossible in the fog to leave the beaten track,
+and the traveller told her that rewards would be but temptations to
+suicide.
+
+Johnny had fortunately been so tired out that he had gone to bed soon
+after coming in, and had not been wakened by the alarm till eleven
+o’clock. Then, startled by the noises and lights, he had risen and made
+his way to his aunt. Substantial help he could not give--even his German
+was halting, but he was her stay and help, and she would--as she knew
+afterwards--have been infinitely more desolate without him. And now,
+when all were persuading her to wait, as they said, till more aid could
+be sent for to Kandersteg, he knew as well as she did that it was but
+a kindly ruse to cover their despair, and was striving to insist that
+another effort in daylight should be made.
+
+He it was who uttered the “Hark,” and added, “That is Chico!”
+
+At first the tired, despairing guides did not hear, but going along
+the road by the lake in the direction from which the sound came, the
+prolonged wail became more audible.
+
+“It is on the moraine,” the men said, with awe-struck looks at one
+another.
+
+They would fain not even have taken John with them, but with a resolute
+look he uttered “Ich komm.”
+
+Mr. Graham, an elderly man, not equal to a moraine in the snow, stayed
+with the mother. He wanted to take her back to prepare for them, as he
+said--in reality to lesson any horrors there might be to see.
+
+But she stood like a statue, with clasped hands and white face, the
+small feathery snow climbing round her feet and on her shoulders.
+
+“O God, spare my boys! Though I don’t deserve it--spare them!” had been
+her one inarticulate prayer all night.
+
+And now--shouts and yodels reach her ears. They are found! But how
+found! The cries are soon hushed. There is long waiting--then,
+through the snow, John flashes forward and takes her hand. He does not
+speak--only as their eyes meet, his pale lips tremble, and he says,
+“Don’t fear; they will revive in the inn. Jock is safe, they are sure.”
+
+Safe? What? that stiff, white-faced form, carried between two men, with
+the arm hanging lifelessly down? One man held the smaller figure of
+Armine, and kept his face pressed inwards. Kind words of “Liebe Frau,”
+ and assurances that were meant to be cheering passed around her, but
+she heard them not. Some brandy had, it seemed, been poured into their
+mouths. They thought Jock had swallowed, Armine had not.
+
+At intervals on the way back a little more was administered, and the
+experienced guides had no doubt that life was yet in him. When they
+reached the hotel the guides would not take them near the stove,
+but carried them up at once by the rough stair to the little
+wood-partitioned bedrooms. There were two beds in each room, and their
+mother would have had them both together; but the traveller, and the
+kindly, helpful young landlady, Fraulein Rosalie, quietly managed
+otherwise, and when Johnny tried to enforce his aunt’s orders, Mr.
+Graham, by a sign, made him comprehend why they had thus arranged,
+filling him with blank dismay.
+
+A doctor? The guides shook their heads. They could hardly make their way
+to Leukerbad while it was snowing as at present, and if they had done
+so, no doctor could come back with them. Moreover the restoratives were
+known to the mountaineers as well as to the doctors themselves, and
+these were vigorously applied. All the resources of the little way-side
+house were put in requisition. Mr. Graham and Johnny did their best for
+Jock, his mother seemed to see and think of nothing but Armine, who lay
+senseless and cold in spite of all their efforts.
+
+It was soon that Jock began to moan and turn and struggle painfully back
+to life. When he opened his eyes with a dazed half-consciousness, and
+something like a word came from between his lips, Mr. Graham sent John
+to call the mother, saying very low, “Get her away. She will bear it
+better when she sees this one coming round.”
+
+John had deep and reverent memories connected with Armine. He knew--as
+few did know--how steadfastly that little gentle fellow could hold the
+right, and more than once the two had been almost alone against their
+world. Besides, he was Mother Carey’s darling! Johnny felt as if his
+heart would break, as with trembling lips he tried to speak, as if in
+glad hope, as he told his aunt that Jock was speaking and wanted her,
+while he looked all the time at the still, white, inanimate face.
+
+She looked at him half in distrust.
+
+“Yes! Indeed, indeed,” he said, “Jock wants you.”
+
+She went; Johnny took her place. The efforts at restoration were
+slackening. The attendants were shaking their heads and saying, “der
+Arme.”
+
+Mr. Graham came up to him, saying in his ear, “She is engrossed with the
+other. He will not let her go. Let them do what is to be done for this
+poor little fellow. So it will be best for her.”
+
+There was a frantic longing to do something for Armine, a wild wonder
+that the prayers of a whole night had not been more fully answered in
+John’s mind, as he threw himself once more over the senseless form,
+propped with pillows, and kissed either cheek and the lips. Then
+suddenly he uttered a low cry, “He breathed. I’m sure he did; I felt it!
+The spoon! O quick!”
+
+Mr. Graham and the Fraulein looked pitifully at one another at the
+delusion; but they let the lad have the spoon with the drops of brandy.
+He had already gained experience in giving it, and when they looked for
+disappointment, his eyes were raised in joy.
+
+“It’s gone down,” he said.
+
+Mr. Graham put his hand on the pulse and nodded.
+
+Another drop or two, and renewed rubbing of hands and feet. The icy
+cold, the deadly white, were certainly giving way, the lips began to
+quiver, contract, and gasp.
+
+Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that
+terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock’s
+fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room,
+to see Armine upheld on Johnny’s breast, with heaving chest and working
+features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers.
+
+Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as
+that when he saw her countenance light up.
+
+The first word was “Jock!”
+
+Armine’s full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who
+was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the
+desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the
+miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were
+evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed
+them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with
+absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was
+sufficiently himself to be able to assure them that there had been no
+hurt beyond the strain.
+
+It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing
+seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother’s hand and his
+mother’s voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon
+him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn?
+The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries,
+and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the
+roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for
+comfort--nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane
+made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste.
+
+And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the
+future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to
+lie down, except when supported on John’s breast and in his arms--with a
+fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs
+were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock’s murmurs and cries
+were to be heard plainly through the wooden partition, and the little
+fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and
+Mr. Graham from alarming her. “She--can’t--do--any--good,” he gasped out
+in John’s ear.
+
+No, nobody could, without medical skill and appliances. The utmost that
+the house could do was to produce enough mustard to make two plasters,
+and to fill bottles with hot water, to warm stones, and to wrap them
+in blankets. And what was this, in such cold as penetrated the wooden
+building, too high up in the mountains for the June sun as yet to have
+full power? The snow kept blinding and drifting on, and though everyone
+said it could not last long at that time in the summer, it might easily
+last too long for Armine’s fragile life. Here was evening drawing on and
+no change outside, so that no offer of reward could make it possible for
+any messenger to attempt the Gemmi to fetch advice from Leukerbad.
+
+Caroline could not think. She was in a dull, dreary state of
+consternation, and all she could dwell on was the immediate need of
+the moment, soothing Jock’s terrors, and, what was almost worse, his
+irritable rejection of the beverages she could offer him, and trying to
+relieve him by rubbing and hot applications. If ever she could look into
+Armine’s room, she was filled with still greater dismay, even though a
+sweet, patient smile always met her, and a resolute endeavour to make
+the best of it.
+
+“It--does--not--make--much--difference,” gasped Armine. “One would not
+like anything.”
+
+John came out in a character no one could have expected. He showed
+himself a much better nurse, and far more full of resource than the
+traveller. It was he who bethought him of keeping a kettle in the room
+over the inevitable charcoal, so as slightly to mitigate the chill of
+the air, or the fumes of the charcoal, which were equally perilous and
+distressing to the labouring lungs. He was tender and handy in lifting,
+tall and strong, so as to be efficient in supporting, and then Armine
+and he understood one another. They had never been special companions;
+John had too much of the Kencroft muscularity about him to accord with a
+delicate, imaginative being like Armine, but they respected one another,
+and made common cause, and John had more than once been his little
+cousin’s protector. So when they were so much alone that all reserves
+were overcome, Armine had comfort in his cousin that no one else in the
+place could have afforded him. The little boy perfectly knew how ill he
+was, and as he lay in John’s arms, breathed out his messages to Babie as
+well as he could utter them.
+
+“And please, you’ll be always mother’s other son,” said Armine.
+
+“Won’t I? She’s been the making of me every way,” said John.
+
+“If ever--she does want anybody--” said Armine, feeling, but not
+uttering, a vague sense of want of trust in others around her.
+
+“I will, I will. Why, Armie, I shall never care for any one so much.”
+
+“That’s right.”
+
+And again, after an interval, Armine spoke of Jock, saying, “You’ll help
+him, Johnny. You know sometimes he can be put in mind--”
+
+John promised again, perhaps less hopefully, but he saw that Armine
+hoped.
+
+“Would you mind reading me a Psalm,” came, after a great struggle for
+breath. “It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night,
+and thinking of us.”
+
+So the evening wore away and night came on, and John, after full
+six-and-twenty hours’ wakeful exertion and anxiety, began to grow
+sleepy, and dozed even as he held his cousin whenever the cough did not
+shake the poor little fellow. At last, with Armine’s consent, or rather,
+at his entreaty, Mr. Graham, though knowing himself a bad substitute,
+took him from the arms of the outwearied lad, who, in five minutes more,
+was lying, dressed as he was, in the soundest of dreamless slumbers.
+
+When he awoke, the sun was up, an almost midsummer sun, streaming on the
+fast-melting snow with a dazzling brilliancy. Armine was panting under
+the same deadly oppression on his pillows, and Mother Carey was standing
+by him, talking to Mr. Graham about despatching a messenger to Leukerbad
+in search of one of the doctors, who were sure to be found at the baths.
+How haggard her face looked, and Armine gasped out--
+
+“Mother, your hair.”
+
+The snow had been there; the crisp black waves on her brow were quite
+white. Jock had fallen into a sort of doze from exhaustion, but moaning
+all the time. She could call him no better, and Armine’s sunken face
+told that he was worse.
+
+John went in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which
+made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois
+than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about
+English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to
+the other side of the pass, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg,
+had just come up with tidings that an English party were there, who had
+meant to cross the Gemmi but had given it up, finding it too early in
+the season for the kranklicher Milord who was accompanied by his doctor.
+
+“An English doctor! Oh!” cried John, “there’s some good in that. Some
+one must take a note down to him at once.”
+
+But after some guttural conversation of which he understood only a word
+or two, Mr. Graham said--
+
+“They declare it is of no use. The carriage was ordered at nine. It is
+past seven now.”
+
+“But it need not take two hours to go that distance downhill, the lazy
+blackguards!” exclaimed John.
+
+“In the present state of the path, they say that it will,” said Mr.
+Graham. “In fact, I suspect a little unwillingness to deprive their
+countrymen of the job.”
+
+“I’ll go,” said John, “then there will be no loss of time about writing.
+You’ll look after Armine, sir, and tell my aunt.”
+
+“Certainly, my boy; but you’ll find it a stiffish pull.”
+
+“I came in second for the mile race last summer at Eton,” said Johnny.
+“I’m not in training now; but if a will can do it--”
+
+“I believe you are right. If you don’t catch him, we shall hardly have
+lost time, for they say we must wait an hour or two for the Gemmi road
+to get clear of snow. Stay; don’t go without eating. You won’t keep it
+up on an empty stomach. Remember the proverb.”
+
+Prayer had been with him all night, and he listened to the remonstrance
+as to provender enough to devour a bit of bread, put another into his
+pocket, and swallow a long draught of new milk. Mr. Graham further
+insisted on his taking a lad to show him the right path through the fir
+woods; and though Johnny looked more formed for strength than speed, and
+was pale-cheeked and purple-eyed with broken rest, the manner in which
+he set forth had a purpose-like air that was satisfactory--not over
+swift at the outset over the difficult ground, but with a steadfast
+resolution, and with a balance and knowledge of the management of his
+limbs due to Eton athletics.
+
+Mr. Graham went up to encourage Mrs. Brownlow. She clasped her hands
+together with joy and gratitude.
+
+“That dear, dear boy,” she said, “I shall owe him everything.”
+
+Jock had wakened rational, though only to be conscious of severe
+suffering. He would hardly believe that Armine was really alive till Mr.
+Graham actually carried in the boy, and let them hold each other’s hands
+for a moment before placing Armine on the other bed.
+
+Indeed it seemed that this might be the poor boys’ last meeting.
+Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak
+increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor,
+gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another of these
+cold mountain nights.
+
+Their mother was so far relieved to have them together that it was
+easier to attend to them; and Armine’s patient eyes certainly acted as
+a gentle restraint upon Jock’s moans, lamentations, and requisitions for
+her services. It was one of those times that she only passed through
+by her faculty of attending only to present needs, and the physical
+strength and activity that seemed inexhaustible as long as she had
+anything to do, and which alone alleviated the despair within her heart.
+
+Meantime John found the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young
+guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been
+so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a
+baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless
+of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber,
+once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found
+when he picked himself up, and plodded on again, without even stopping
+to shake himself.
+
+At last came an opening where he could see down into the Kandersteg
+valley. There was the hotel in clear sunshine, looking only too like a
+house in a German box of toys, and alas! there was also a toy carriage
+coming round to the front!
+
+Like the little foot-page of old ballads, John “let down his feet and
+ran,” ran determinately on, down the now less precipitous slope--ran
+till he was beyond the trees, with the summer sun beating down on him,
+and in sight of figures coming out from the hotel to the carriage.
+
+Johnny scarce ventured to give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate
+hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The horses were
+moving!
+
+But he remembered a slight steep on the further road where they must go
+slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his
+teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands,
+intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination
+of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, intent only
+on the way.
+
+He was past the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees
+were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him
+go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops
+danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed
+to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say,
+“Hullo, it’s the Monk! What is the matter?”
+
+Then he knew he was on the ground on his face, with kind but tormenting
+hands busy about him, and his heart going so like a sledge hammer, that
+the word he would have given his life to utter, would not come out of
+his lips, and all he could do was to grasp convulsively at something
+that he believed to be a garment of the departing travellers.
+
+“Here, the flask! Don’t speak yet,” said a man’s voice, and a choking
+stimulant was poured into his mouth. When the choking spasm it cost him
+was over, his eyes cleared, and he could at least gasp. Then he saw that
+it was his housemate, Evelyn, at whom he was clutching, and who asked
+again in amaze--
+
+“What is up, old fellow?”
+
+“Hush, not yet,” said the other voice; “let him alone till he gets his
+breath. Don’t hurry, my boy,” he added, “we will wait.”
+
+Johnny, however, felt altogether absorbed in getting out one panting
+whisper, “A doctor.”
+
+“Yes, yes, he is,” cried Evelyn. “What’s the matter? Not Brownlow!”
+
+“Both--oh,” sobbed John in the agony of contending with the bumping,
+fluttering heart which _would_ not let him fetch breath enough to speak.
+
+“You will tell us presently. Don’t be afraid. We will wait,” said the
+voice of the man who, as John now felt, was supporting him. “Hush,
+Cecil, another minute, and he will be able to tell us.”
+
+Indeed the rushing of every pulse was again making it vain for Johnny to
+try to utter anything, and he shut his eyes in the realisation that he
+had succeeded and found help. If his heart would have not bumped and
+fluttered so fearfully, it would have been almost rest, as he was helped
+up by those kind, strong arms. It was really for little more than five
+seconds before he gathered his powers to say, still between gasps--
+
+“Out all night--the moraine--fog--snow--Jock--very
+bad--Armine--worse--up there.”
+
+“At Schwarenbach?”
+
+“Yes. Oh, come! They are so ill.”
+
+“I am sure Dr. Medlicott will do all he can for them,” said another
+voice, which John saw proceeded from a very tall, slight youth, with a
+fair, delicate, girlish face. “Had he not better get into the carriage
+and return to the hotel?”
+
+“By all means.”
+
+And John found himself without much volition lifted and helped into the
+carriage, where Cecil Evelyn scrambled up beside him, and put an arm
+round him.
+
+“Poor old Monk, you are dead beat,” he said, as the carriage turned, the
+other two walking beside it. “Did you come that pace all the way down?”
+
+“Only after the wood.”
+
+“Well, ‘twas as plucky a thing as I ever saw. But is Skipjack so bad?”
+
+“Dreadful! Light-headed all yesterday--horrid pain! But not so bad as
+Armine. If something ain’t done soon--he’ll die.”
+
+“Poor little Brownlow! You’ve come to the right shop. Medlicott is first
+rate. Did you know it was we?”
+
+“No--only--an English doctor,” said John.
+
+“Mother sent us abroad with him, because they said Fordham must have
+Swiss air; and poor old Granny still goes on in the same state,” said
+Cecil. “We got here on Tuesday evening, and saw your names; but then the
+fog came, and it snowed all yesterday, and the doctor said it would not
+do for Fordham to go so high. And the more I wanted them to come up with
+you, the more they would not. Were they out in that snow?”
+
+Here came an order from the doctor not to make his friend talk, and
+Johnny was glad to obey, and reserve his breath for the explanation. He
+did not hear what passed between the other two, as they walked behind
+the carriage.
+
+“A fine fellow that! Is he Cecil’s friend?”
+
+“No, I wish he were. However, it can’t be helped now, in common
+humanity; and my mother will understand.”
+
+“You mean that it was her wish that we should avoid them.”
+
+“She thinks the influence has not been good for Cecil.”
+
+“That was the reason you gave up the Gemmi so easily.”
+
+“It was. But, as I say, it can’t be helped now, and no harm can be done
+by going to see whether they are really so ill.”
+
+“Brownlow is the name. I wonder if they are any relation to a man I once
+knew--a lecturer at one of the hospitals?”
+
+“Not likely. These are very rich people, with a great house in Hyde Park
+regions, and a place in the country. They are always asking Cecil there;
+only my mother does not fancy it. It is not a matter of charity after
+the first stress. They can easily have advice from England, or anywhere
+they like.”
+
+By this time they reached the hotel, and John alighted briskly enough,
+and explained the state of affairs in a few words.
+
+“My dear boy,” said Dr. Medlicott, “I’ll go up at once, as soon as I
+can get at our travelling medicine-chest. Luckily we have what is most
+likely to be useful.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Johnny, and therewith he turned dizzy, and reeled
+against the wall.
+
+“It is nothing--nothing,” he said, as the doctor having helped him into
+a sitting-room, laid his hand on his pulse. “Don’t delay about me! I
+shall be all right in a minute.”
+
+“They are getting down the boxes. No time is lost,” said the doctor,
+quietly. “See whether they can let us have some soup, Cecil.”
+
+“I couldn’t swallow anything,” said Johnny, imploringly.
+
+“Have you had any breakfast this morning?”
+
+“Yes, a bit of bread and a drink of milk. There was not time for more.”
+
+“And you had been searching all one night, and nursing the next?”
+
+“Most of it,” was the confession. “But I shall be all right--if there is
+any pony I could ride upon.”
+
+“You shall by-and-by; but first, Reeves,” as a servant with grizzled
+hair and moustache brought in a neatly-fitted medicine-chest, “I give
+this young gentleman into your care. He is to lie down on my bed for
+half an hour, and Mr. Evelyn is not to go near him. Then, if he is
+awake--”
+
+“If--” ejaculated John.
+
+“Give him a basin of soup--Liebig, if you can’t get anything here.”
+
+“Liebig!” broke out John. “Oh, please take some. There’s nothing up
+there but old goat, and nothing to drink but milk and lemonade, like
+beastly hair-oil; and Jock hates milk.”
+
+“Never fear,” said Dr. Medlicott; “Liebig is going, and a packet of tea.
+Mrs. Evelyn does not send us out unprovided. If you eat your soup like a
+good boy, you may then ride up--not walk--unless you wish to be on your
+mother’s hands too.”
+
+“She’s my aunt; but it is all the same. Tell her I’m coming.”
+
+“I shall go with you, doctor,” said Cecil. “I must know about Brownlow.”
+
+“Much good you’ll do him! But I’d rather leave this fellow in Fordham’s
+charge than yours.”
+
+So Johnny had no choice but to obey, growling a little that it was
+all nonsense, and he should be all right in five minutes, but that
+expectation continued, without being realised, for longer than Johnny
+knew. He awoke with a start to find the Liebig awaiting him; and Lord
+Fordham’s eyes fixed on him, with (though neither understood it)
+the generous, though melancholy envy of an invalid youth for a young
+athlete.
+
+“Have I been asleep?” he asked, looking at his watch. “Only ten minutes
+since I looked last? Well, now I am all right.”
+
+“You will be when you have eaten this,” said Lord Fordham.
+
+Johnny obeyed, and ate with relish.
+
+“There!” said he; “now I am ready for anything.”
+
+“Don’t get up yet. I’ll go and order a horse for you.”
+
+When Lord Fordham came back from doing so, he found his patient really
+fast asleep, and with a little colour coming into the pale cheeks. He
+stole back, bade that the pony should wait, went on writing his letter,
+and waited till one hour, two, three hours had passed, and at last the
+sleeper woke, greatly disgusted, willing to accept the bath which Lord
+Fordham advised him to take, and which made him quite himself again.
+
+“You’ll let me go now,” he said. “I can walk as well as ever.”
+
+“You will be of more use now, if you ride,” said Lord Fordham. “There,
+I hear our luncheon coming in. You must eat while the pony is coming
+round.”
+
+“If it won’t lose time--thank you,” said Johnny, recovered enough now
+to know how hungry he was, “But I ought not to have stayed away. My aunt
+has no one but me.”
+
+“And you can really help her?” said Lord Fordham, with some experience
+of his brother’s uselessness.
+
+“Not well, of course,” said Johnny; “but it is better than nobody; and
+Armine is so patient and so good, that I’m the more afraid. Is not it
+a very bad sign,” he added, confidentially; for he was quite won by the
+youth’s kind, considerate way, and evident liking and sympathy.
+
+“I don’t know,” faltered Lord Fordham. “My brother Walter was like that!
+Is this the little fellow who is Cecil’s fag?”
+
+“Yes; Jock asked him to take him, because he was sure never to bully him
+or lick him when he wouldn’t do things.”
+
+This not very lucid description rejoiced Lord Fordham.
+
+“I am glad of that,” he said. “But I hope the little boy will get over
+this. My mother had a very excellent account of Dr. Medlicott’s skill;
+and you know an illness from a misadventure is not like anything
+constitutional.”
+
+“No; but Armine is always delicate, and my aunt has had to take care of
+him.”
+
+“Do you live with them?”
+
+“O no; I have lots of people at home. I only came with them because I
+had had these measles at Eton; and my aunt is--well, the very jolliest
+woman that ever was.”
+
+Lord Fordham smiled.
+
+“Yes, indeed she is. I don’t mean only kind and good-natured. But if
+you just knew her! The whole world and everything else have just been
+something new and glorious ever since I knew her. I seem to myself to
+have lived in a dark hole till she made it all light.”
+
+“Ah! I understand that you would do anything for her.”
+
+“_That_ I would, if there was anything I could do,” said Johnny, hastily
+finishing his meal.
+
+“Well, you’ve done something to-day.”
+
+“That--oh, that was nothing. I shouldn’t have made such a fool of myself
+if I hadn’t been seedy before. I hear the pony,” he added. “Excuse me.”
+ And, with a murmured grace, he rose. Then, recollecting himself, “No end
+of thanks. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
+
+“Don’t; I’ve done nothing,” said Lord Fordham, wringing his hand. “I
+only hope--”
+
+The words stuck in his throat, and with a sigh he watched the lad ride
+off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. -- AN ACT OF INDEPENDENCE.
+
+
+
+     Soldier now and servant true;
+     Earth behind and heaven in view.
+                            Isaac Williams.
+
+
+Marmaduke Alwyn Evelyn, Viscount Fordham, was the fourth bearer of that
+title within ten years. His father had not lived to wear it, and his two
+elder brothers had both died in early youth. His precarious existence
+seemed to be only held on a tenure of constant precaution, and if his
+mother ventured to hope that it might be otherwise with the two youngest
+of the family, it was because they were of a shorter, sturdier, more
+compact form and less transparent complexion than their elders, and
+altogether seemed of a different constitution.
+
+More delicate from the first than the two brothers who had gone before
+him, Lord Fordham had never been at school, had studied irregularly, and
+had never been from under his mother’s wing till this summer, when
+she was detained by the slow decay of his grandmother. Languor and
+listlessness had beset the youth, and he had been ordered mountain
+air, and thus it was that Mrs. Evelyn had despatched both her sons to
+Switzerland, under the attendance of a highly recommended physician,
+a young man bright and attractive, who had over-worked himself at an
+hospital, and needed thorough relaxation. Rightly considering Lucas
+Brownlow as the cause of most of Cecil’s Eton follies, she had given her
+eldest son a private hint to elude joining forces with the family, and
+he was the most docile and obedient of sons. Yet was it the perversity
+of human nature that made him infinitely more animated and interested in
+John Brownlow’s race and the distressed travellers on the Schwarenbach
+than he had been since--no one could tell when?
+
+Perhaps it was the novelty of being left alone and comparatively
+unwatched. Certain it was that he ate enough to rejoice the heart of
+his devoted and tyrannical attendant Reeves; and that he walked about in
+much anxiety all the afternoon, continually using his telescope to look
+up the mountain wherever a bit of the track was visible through the pine
+woods.
+
+In due time Cecil rode back the pony which John had taken up. The
+alacrity with which the long lank bending figure stepped to meet him was
+something unwonted, but the boy himself was downcast and depressed.
+
+“I’m afraid you’ve nothing good to tell.”
+
+Cecil shook his head, and after some more seconds broke out--
+
+“It’s awful!”
+
+“What is?”
+
+“Brownlow’s pain. I never saw anything like it!”
+
+“Rheumatism? If that is from the exposure, I hope it will not last
+long.”
+
+“No. They’ve sent for some opiates to Leukerbad, and the doctor says
+that is sure to put him to sleep.”
+
+“Medlicott stays there?”
+
+“Yes. He says if little Armine is any way fit, he must move him away
+to-morrow at all risks from the night-cold up there, and he wants Reeves
+to see about men to carry him, that is if--if to-night does not--”
+
+Cecil could not finish.
+
+“Then it is as bad as we heard?”
+
+“Quite,” said Cecil, “or worse. That dear little chap, just fancy!” and
+his eyes filled with tears. “He tried to thank me for having been good
+to him--as if I had.”
+
+“He was your fag?”
+
+“Yes; Skipjack asked me to choose him because he’s that sort of little
+fellow that won’t give into anything that goes against his conscience,
+and if one of those fellows had him that say lower boys have no business
+with consciences, he might be licked within an inch of his life and
+he’d never give in. He did let himself be put under a pump once at some
+beastly hole in the country, for not choosing to use bad language, and
+he has never been so strong since.”
+
+“Mother would be glad that at least you allowed him the use of his
+conscience.”
+
+“I’m glad I did now,” said Cecil, with a sigh, “though it was a great
+nuisance sometimes.”
+
+“Was the Monk, as you call him, one of that set?”
+
+“Bless you, no, he’s a regular sap, as steady as old time.”
+
+“I wonder if he is the son of the doctor whom Medlicott talks of.”
+
+“No; his father is alive. He is a colonel, living near their place. The
+other two are the doctor’s sons; their mother came into the property
+after his death. Their Maximus was in college at first, and between
+ourselves, he was a bit of a snob, who couldn’t bear to recollect it.”
+
+“Not your friend?”
+
+“No, indeed. The eldest one, who has left these two years, and is at
+Christchurch.”
+
+“I am sure the one who came down here was a gentleman.”
+
+“So they are, all three of them,” said Cecil, who had never found his
+brother so ready to hear anything about his Eton life, since in general
+accounts of the world, from which he was debarred, so jarred on his
+feelings that he silenced it with apparent indifference, contempt, or
+petulance. Now, however, Cecil, with his heart full of the Brownlows,
+could not say more of them than Fordham was willing to hear; nay, he
+even found an amused listener to some of his good stories of courageous
+pranks.
+
+Fordham was not yet up the next morning when there was a knock at his
+door, and the doctor came in, answering his eager question with--
+
+“Yes, he has got through this night, but another up in that place would
+be fatal. We must get them down to Leukerbad.”
+
+“Over that long precipitous path?”
+
+“It is the only chance. I came down to look up bearers, and rig up a
+couple of hammocks, as well as to see how you are getting on.”
+
+“Oh! I’m very well,” said Lord Fordham, in a tone that meant it, sitting
+up in bed. “We might ride on to Leukerbad with Reeves, and get rooms
+ready.”
+
+“The best thing you could do,” said Dr. Medlicott, joyfully. “When we
+are there we can consider what can be done next; and if you wish to go
+on, I could look up some one there in whose charge to leave them till
+they could get advice from home; but it is touch and go with that little
+fellow.”
+
+“I’m in no particular hurry,” said Lord Fordham, answering the doctor’s
+tone rather than his words. “I would not do anything hasty or that
+might add to their distress. Are there likely to be good doctors at this
+place?”
+
+“It is a great watering-place, chiefly for rheumatic complaints, and
+that is all very well for the elder boy. As to the little one, he is
+in as critical a state as I ever saw, and--His mother is an excellent
+linguist, that is one good thing.”
+
+“Yes; it would be very trying for her to have a foreigner to attend the
+boy in such a state, however skilled he might be,” said Lord Fordham.
+“I think we might make up our minds to stay with them till they can get
+some one from England.”
+
+Dr. Medlicott caught at the words.
+
+“It rests with you,” he said. “Of course I am your property and Mrs.
+Evelyn’s, but I should like to tell you why this is more to me than
+a matter of common humanity. I went up to study in London, a simple,
+foolish lad, bred up by three good old aunts, more ignorant of the world
+than their own tabby cat. Of course I instantly fell in with the worst
+stamp of fellows, and was in a fair way of being done for, body
+and soul, if one of the lecturers, after taking us to task for some
+heartless, disgusting piece of levity, seeing perhaps that it was more
+than half bravado on my part and nearly made me sick, managed to get me
+alone. He talked it out with me, found out the innocent-hearted fool I
+was, cured me of my false shame at what the good old souls at home had
+taught me, showed me what manhood was, found a good friend and a better
+lodging for me, in short, was the saving of me. He died three months
+after I first knew him, but whatever is worth having in me is owing to
+him.”
+
+“Was he the father of these boys?”
+
+“Yes; I saw a likeness in the nephew who came down yesterday, and I see
+it in both the others.”
+
+“Of course you would wish to do all that is possible for them?”
+
+“I should feel it the greatest honour. Still my first duty is to you,
+and you have told me that your mother wished you to keep your brother
+out of the way of his schoolfellow.”
+
+“My mother would not wish to deprive her worst enemy of your care in
+such need as this,” said Lord Fordham, smiling. “Besides if this friend
+of Cecil’s were ever so bad, he couldn’t do him much harm while he is
+ill, poor boy. We will at any rate stay to get them through the next few
+days, and then we can judge. I will settle it with my mother.”
+
+“I knew you would say so,” rejoined the doctor. “Thank you. Then it
+seems to me that the right course will be to write to Mrs. Evelyn,
+inclosing a note to Dr. Lucas--who it seems is Mrs. Brownlow’s chief
+reliance--asking him to find someone to send out. She, can send it on
+to him if she disapproves of our remaining together longer than is
+absolutely necessary, or if Leukerbad disagrees with you. Meantime, I’ll
+go and see whether Reeves has found any men to carry the poor boys.”
+
+Unfortunately it was too early in the season for the hotels to have
+marshalled their full establishment, and such careful and surefooted
+bearers as the sufferers needed could not be had in sufficient numbers,
+so that Dr. Medlicott was forced to decide on leaving the elder patient
+for a night at Schwarenbach. The move might be matter of life or death
+to Armine; but Jock was better, the pain could be somewhat allayed by
+anodynes, the fever was abating, and he would rather gain than lose by
+another day of rest, provided he would only accept his fate patiently,
+and also if he could be properly attended to. If Mr. Graham would stay
+with him--
+
+So breakfast was eaten, bills were paid, horses hired, and the whole
+cavalcade started from Kandersteg in time to secure the best part of a
+bright hot day for the transit.
+
+They met Mr. Graham, who had been glad to escape as soon as Mrs.
+Brownlow had found other assistance, so that the doctor was disappointed
+in his hope of a guardian for Jock. Lord Fordham offered to lend Reeves,
+but that functionary absolutely refused to separate himself from his
+charge, observing--
+
+“I am responsible for your lordship to your mamma, and it does not lie
+within my province to leave you on any account.”
+
+Reeves always called Mrs. Evelyn “your mamma” when he wished to be
+particularly authoritative with his young gentlemen. If they were
+especially troublesome he called her “your ma.”
+
+“And after all,” said the doctor, “I don’t know what sort of
+preparations the young gentlemen would make if we let them go by
+themselves. A bare room, perhaps--with no bed-clothes, and nothing to
+eat till the table d’hote”
+
+Reeves smiled. He had found the doctor much less of a rival than he had
+expected, and he was a kind-hearted man, so long as his young lord was
+made the first object; so he declared his willingness to do anything
+that lay in his power for the assistance of the poor lady and her sons.
+He would gladly sit up with them, if it were in the same house with his
+lordship.
+
+No one came out to meet the party. John was found with Armine, who had
+been taken back at night to his own room; Mrs. Brownlow, as usual, with
+Jock, who would endure no presence but hers, and looked exceedingly
+injured when, sending Cecil in to sit with him, the doctor called her
+out of the room.
+
+It was a sore stroke on her to hear that her charges must be separated;
+and there was the harrowing question whether she should stay with one or
+go with the other.
+
+“Please, decide,” she said.
+
+“I think you should be with the most serious case.”
+
+“And that, I fear, means my little Armine. Yes, I will do as you tell
+me. But what can be done for Jock?--poor Jock who thinks he needs me
+most. And perhaps he does. You know best, though, Dr. Medlicott, and you
+shall settle it.”
+
+“That is a wise nurse,” said he, kindly; “I wish I could take your place
+myself, but I must be with the little fellow myself; and I am afraid we
+can only leave his brother to your nephew for this one night. Should you
+be afraid to be sole nurse?” he added, as Johnny came to Armine’s door.
+
+“I think I know what to do, if Jock can stand having me,” said Johnny,
+stoutly, as soon as he understood the question.
+
+“Mother!” just then shouted Jock, and as Johnny obeyed the call, he
+began--“I want my head higher--no--I say not you--Mother Carey!”
+
+“She is busy with the doctor.”
+
+“Can’t she come and do this? No, I say,” and he threw the nearest thing
+at hand at him.
+
+“Come,” said Cecil, “I’m glad you can do such things as that.”
+
+But Jock gave a cry of pain, and protested that it was all John’s fault
+for making him hurt himself instead of fetching mother.
+
+“You had better let me lift you,” said John, “you know she is tired, and
+I _really_ am stronger.”
+
+“No, you shan’t touch me--a great clumsy lout.”
+
+In the midst of these amenities, the doctor appeared, and Jock looked
+slightly ashamed, especially when the doctor, instead of doing what
+was wanted, directed John where to put an arm, and how to give support,
+while moving the pillow, adding that he was a handy fellow, more so than
+many a pupil after half a year’s training at the hospital, and smiling
+down Jock’s growls and groans, which were as much from displeasure as
+from pain. They were followed by some despairing sighs at the horrors of
+the prospect of being moved.
+
+“Ah! what will you give me for letting you off?” said the Doctor.
+
+Jock uttered a sound of relief, then, rather distrustfully,
+asked--“Why?”
+
+“We can only get bearers enough for one; and as it is most important to
+move your brother, while you will gain by a night’s rest, he must have
+the first turn.”
+
+“And welcome,” said Jock; “my mother will stay with me.”
+
+“That’s the very point,” said Dr. Medlicott. “I want you not only to
+give her up, but to do so cheerfully.”
+
+“I’m sure mother wants to stay with me. Armine does not need her half so
+much.”
+
+“He does not require the same kind of attention; but he is in so
+critical a state that I do not think I ought to separate her from him.”
+
+“Why, what is the matter with him?” asked Jock, startled.
+
+“Congestion of the right lung,” said the doctor, seeing that he was
+strong enough to bear the information, and feeling the need of rousing
+him from his monopolising self-absorption.
+
+“People get over that, don’t they?” said Jock, with an awestruck
+interrogation in his voice.
+
+“They _do_; and I hope much from getting him into a warmer atmosphere,
+but the child is so much reduced that the risk is great, and I should
+not dare not to have his mother with him.” Then, as Jock was silent, “I
+have told you because you can make a great difference to their comfort
+by not showing how much it costs you to let her go.”
+
+Jock drew the bed clothes over his face, and an odd stifled sound was
+heard from under them. He remained thus perdu, while directions were
+being given to John for the night, but as the doctor was leaving the
+room, emerged and said--
+
+“Bring him in before he goes.”
+
+In a short time, for it was most important not to lose the fine weather,
+the doctor carried Armine in swathed in rugs and blankets, a pale,
+sunken, worn face, and great hollow eyes looking out at the top.
+
+The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor
+boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one
+another’s hands.
+
+“Don’t forget,” gasped Armine, labouring for breath.
+
+And Jock answered--
+
+“All right, Armie; good-bye. I’m coming to morrow,” with a choking,
+quivering attempt at bravery.
+
+“Yes, to-morrow,” said poor Mother Carey, bending over him. “My boy--my
+poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two! I can’t tell you how
+thankful I am to you for being so good about it. That dear good Johnny
+will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow. You’ll sleep most of
+the time.”
+
+“All right, mother,” was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and
+the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known.
+He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull
+of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in
+a dream bound up. When he looked up again at the clink of glass, it was
+Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.
+
+“You!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance
+of a sleep. That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as
+sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two.”
+
+“You’re sure it’s the right stuff?”
+
+“I should think so. We’ve practice enough in the family to know how to
+measure off a dose by this time.”
+
+“How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn’t it? We meant
+to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches.”
+
+“I’m not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid
+these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest
+of us, so I’ve got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after
+churches and picture galleries and mountains,” said Cecil, in a tone of
+infinite disgust. “I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of
+Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight.”
+
+“Not this year.”
+
+“No, but next.”
+
+In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock,
+instead of falling asleep again, said, “Evelyn, what does your doctor
+really think of the little chap?”
+
+Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.
+
+“Never you think about it,” he said. “Doctors always croak. He’ll be all
+right again soon.”
+
+“If I was sure,” sighed Jock; “but you know he has always been such a
+religious little beggar. It’s a horrid bad sign.”
+
+“Like my brother Walter,” said Cecil gravely. “Now, Duke can be ever so
+snappish and peevish; I’m not half so much afraid for him.”
+
+“You never heard anything like the little fellow that night,” said Jock,
+and therewith he gave his friend by far the most connected account
+of the adventure that had yet been arrived at. He even spoke of the
+resolution to which he had been brought, and in a tone of awe described
+how he had pledged himself for the future.
+
+“So you see I’m in for it,” he concluded; “I must give up all our jolly
+larks.”
+
+“Then I shan’t get into so many rows with my mother and uncle,” said
+Cecil, by no means with the opposition his friend had anticipated.
+
+“Then you’ll stand by me?” said Jock.
+
+“Gladly. My mother was at me all last Easter, telling me my goings on
+were worse to her than losing George or Walter, and talking about my
+Confirmation and all. She only let me be a communicant on Easter Day,
+because I did mean to make a fresh start--and I did mean it with all my
+heart; only when that supper was talked of, I didn’t like to stick out
+against you, Brownlow; I never could, you know, and I didn’t know what
+it was coming to.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Jock; “that’s the worst of it. When a lark begins one
+doesn’t know how far one will get carried on. But that night I thought
+about the Confirmation, and how I had made the promise without really
+thinking about it, and never had been to Holy Communion.”
+
+“I meant it all,” said Cecil, “and broke it, so I’m worst.”
+
+“Well!” said Jock, “if I go back from the promise little Armie made me
+make about being Christ’s faithful soldier and servant I could never
+face him again--no, nor death either! You can’t think what it was like,
+Evelyn, sitting in the dead stillness--except for an awful crack and
+rumbling in the ice, and the solid snow fog shutting one in. How ugly,
+and brutish, and horrid all those things did look; and how it made me
+long to have been like the little fellow in my arms, or even this
+poor little dog, who knew no better. Then somehow came now and then a
+wonderful sense that God was all round us, and that our Lord had done
+all that for my forgiveness, if I only meant to do right in earnest. Oh!
+how to go on meaning it!”
+
+“That’s the thing,” said Cecil. “I mean it fast enough at home, and when
+my mother talks to me and I look at my brothers’ graves, but it all
+gets swept away at Eton. It won’t now, though, if you are different,
+Brownlow. I never liked any fellow like you I knew you were best, even
+when you were worst. So if you go in for doing right, I shan’t care for
+anyone else--not even Cressham and Bulford.”
+
+“If they choose to make asses of themselves they must,” said Jock. “It
+will be a bore, but one mustn’t mind things. I say, Evelyn, suppose we
+make that promise of Armine’s over again together now.”
+
+“It is only the engagement we made when we were sworn into Christ’s army
+at our baptism,” said the much more fully instructed Cecil. “We always
+were bound by it.”
+
+“Yes, but we knew nothing about it then, and we really mean it now,”
+ said Jock. “If we do it for ourselves together, it will put us on our
+honour to each other, and to Christ our Captain, and that’s what we
+want. Lay hold of my hand.”
+
+The two boys, with clasped hands, and grave, steadfast eyes, with one
+voice, repeated together--
+
+“We, John Lucas Brownlow and Cecil Fitzroy Evelyn, promise with all
+our hearts manfully to fight under Christ’s banner, and continue His
+faithful soldiers and servants to our lives’ end. Amen.”
+
+Then Cecil touched Lucas’s brow with his lips, and said--
+
+“Fellow-soldiers, Brownlow.”
+
+“Brothers in arms,” responded Jock.
+
+It was one of those accesses of deep enthusiasm, and even of sentiment,
+which modern cynicism and false shame have not entirely driven out of
+youth. Their hearts were full; and Jock, the stronger, abler, and more
+enterprising had always exercised a fascination over his friend, who was
+absolutely enchanted to find him become an ally instead of a tempter,
+and to be no longer pulled two opposite ways.
+
+“Ought we not to say a prayer to make it really firm? We can’t stand
+alone, you know,” he said, diffidently.
+
+“If you like; if you know one,” said Jock.
+
+Cecil knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer and the collect for the
+Fourth Epiphany Sunday.
+
+“That’s nice,” was Jock’s comment. “How did you know it?”
+
+“Mother made us learn the collects every Sunday, and she wrote that in
+my little book. I always begin the half with it, but afterwards I can’t
+go on.”
+
+“Then it doesn’t do you much good,” was the not unnatural remark.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Cecil, hesitating; “may be all this--your getting
+right, I mean, is the coming round of prayers--my mother’s, I mean, for
+if you take this turn, it will be much easier for me! Poor mother! it’s
+not for want of her caring and teaching.”
+
+“My mother doesn’t bother about it.”
+
+“I wish she did,” said Cecil. “If she had gone on like mine, you would
+have been ever so much better than I.”
+
+“No, I should have been bored and bothered into being regularly
+good-for-nothing. You don’t know what she’s really like. She’s nicer
+than anyone--as jolly as any fellow, and yet a lady all over.”
+
+“I know that,” said Cecil; “she was uncommonly jolly to me at Eton, and
+I know my mother and she will get on like a house on fire. We’re too old
+to have a scrimmage about them like disgusting little lower boys,” he
+added, seeing Jock still bristling in defence of Mother Carey.
+
+This produced a smile, and he went on--
+
+“Look here, Skipjack, we will be fellow-soldiers every way. My Uncle
+James can do anything at the Horse Guards, and he shall have us set down
+for the same regiment. I’ll tell him you are my good influence.”
+
+“But I’ve been just the other way.”
+
+“Oh, but you will be--a year or two will show it. Which shall it be? Do
+you go in for cavalry or infantry? I like cavalry, but he’s all for the
+other.”
+
+Jock was wearied enough not to have much contribution to make to the
+conversation, and he thus left Cecil such a fair field as he seldom
+enjoyed for Uncle James’s Indian and Crimean campaigns, and for the
+comparative merits of the regiments his nephew had beheld at reviews.
+
+He was interrupted by a message from the guide that there was a cloud
+in the distance, and the young Herr had better set off quickly unless he
+wished to be weather-bound.
+
+Johnny was on his feet as soon as there was a step on the stairs, and
+was congratulated on his ready powers of sleeping.
+
+“It’s in the family,” said Jock. “His brother Rob went to sleep in the
+middle of the examination for his commission.”
+
+“Then I should think he could sleep on the rack,” said Cecil.
+
+“I’m sure I wish I could,” rejoined Jock.
+
+“What a sell for the torturers, to get some chloroform!” said John. And
+so Cecil departed amid laughter, which gave John little idea how serious
+the talk had been in his absence.
+
+The rain came on even more rapidly than the guide had foretold, and it
+was a drenched and dripping object that rode into the court of the tall
+hotel at Leukerbad, and immediately fell into the hands of Dr. Medlicott
+and Reeves, who deposited him ignominiously in bed, in spite of all his
+protestations and murmurs. However, he had the comfort of hearing that
+his little fag was recovering from the exhaustion of the journey. He
+had at first been so faint that the doctor had watched, fearing that he
+would never revive again, and he had not yet attempted to speak; but
+his breathing was certainly already less laboured, and the choking,
+struggling cough less frequent. “He really seems likely to have a little
+natural sleep,” was Lord Fordham’s report somewhat later, on coming in
+to find Cecil sitting up in bed to discuss a very substantial supper. “I
+hope that with Reeves and the doctor to look to him, his mother may get
+a little rest to-night.”
+
+“Have you seen her?”
+
+“Only for a moment or two, poor thing; but I never did see such eyes or
+such a wonderful sad smile as she tried to thank us with. Medlicott is
+ready to do anything for her husband’s sake; I am sure anyone would do
+the same for hers. To get such a look is something to remember!”
+
+“Well done, Duke!” ejaculated Cecil under his breath, for he had never
+seen his senior so animated or so enthusiastic. “Then you mean to stay,
+and let Medlicott look after them?”
+
+“Of course I do,” said Fordham, in a much more decided tone than he had
+used in the morning. “I’m not going to do anything so barbarous as to
+leave them to some German practitioner; and when we are here, I
+don’t see why they should have advice out from home--not half so good
+probably.”
+
+“You’re a brick, Duke,” uttered Cecil; and though Fordham hated slang,
+he smiled at the praise.
+
+“And now, Duke, be a good fellow, and give me some clothes. That brute
+Reeves has not brought me in one rag.”
+
+“Really it is hardly worth while. It is nearly eight o’clock, and I
+don’t know where your portmanteau was put. Shall I get you a book?”
+
+“No; but if you’d get me a pen and ink, I want to write to mother.”
+
+Such a desire was not too frequent in Cecil, and Fordham was glad enough
+to promote it, bringing in his own neat apparatus, with only a mild
+entreaty that his favourite pen might be well treated, and the sheets
+respected. He had written his own letter of explanation of his first act
+of independence, and he looked with some wonder at his brother’s rapid
+writing, not without fear that some sudden pressure for a foolish debt
+might have been the result of his tete-a-tete with his dangerous friend.
+Cecil’s letters were too apt to be requests for money or confessions of
+debts, and if this were the case, what would be Mrs. Evelyn’s view of
+the conduct of the whole party in disregarding her wishes?
+
+Had he been with his mother, he would have probably been called into
+consultation over the letter, but he was forced to remain without the
+privilege here offered to the reader:--
+
+
+                                “Baden Hotel, Leukerbad, June 14.
+
+“Dearest Mother,--Duke has written about our falling in with the
+Brownlows, and how pluckily Friar caught us up. It was a regular mercy,
+for the little one couldn’t have lived without Dr. Medlicott, and most
+likely Lucas is in for a rheumatic fever. He has been telling me all
+about it, and how frightful it was to be all night out on the edge
+of the glacier in a thick fog with his ankle strained, and how little
+Armine went on with his texts and hymns and wasn’t a bit afraid, but
+quite happy. You never would believe what a fellow Brownlow is. We have
+had a great talk, and you will never have to say again that he does me
+harm.
+
+“Mammy, darling, I want to tell you that I was a horrible donkey last
+half, worse than you guessed, and I am sorrier than ever I was before,
+and this is a real true resolution not to do it again. Brownlow and
+I have promised to stand by one another about right and wrong to our
+lives’ end. He means it, and what Brownlow means he does, and so do I.
+We said your collect, and somehow I do feel as if God would help us now.
+
+“Please, dearest mother, forgive me for all I have not told you.
+
+“Duke is very well and jolly. He is quite smitten with Mrs. Brownlow,
+and, what is more, so is Reeves, who says she is ‘such a lady that it is
+a pleasure to do anything for her.’
+
+“Your loving son,
+
+“C. F. E.”
+
+
+Cecil’s letter went off with his brother’s in early morning; but it was
+such a day as only mails and postmen encounter. Mountains, pine-woods,
+nay, even the opposite houses, were blotted out by sheets of driving
+rain, and it was impossible to think of bringing Jock down! Dr.
+Medlicott heard and saw with dismay. What would the mother say to
+him--nay, what ought he to have done? He could hardly expect her not to
+reproach him, and he fairly dreaded meeting her eyes when they turned
+from the streaming window.
+
+But all she said was, “We did not reckon on this.”
+
+“If I had--” began the doctor.
+
+“Please don’t vex yourself,” said she; “you could not have done
+otherwise, and perhaps the move would have hurt him more than staying
+there. You have been so very kind. See what you have done here!”
+
+For Armine, after some hours that had been very distressing, had sunk
+into a calm sleep, and there was a far less oppressed look on his wan
+little face.
+
+The doctor would have had her take some rest, but she shook her head.
+The only means of allaying the gnawing anxiety for Jock, and the
+despairing fancies about his suffering and Johnny’s helplessness, was
+the attending constantly to Armine.
+
+“Anyway, I will see him to-day,” said Dr. Medlicott, impelled far more
+by the patient silence with which she sat, one hand against her beating
+heart, than he would have been by any entreaty. But how she thanked him
+when she found him really setting forth! She insisted on his taking a
+guide, as much for his own security as to carry some additional comforts
+to the prisoners, and she committed to him two little notes, one to each
+boy, written through a mist of tears. Yes; tears, unusual as they were
+with her, were called forth as much by the kindness she met with as
+by her sick yearning after the two lonely boys. And when she knew the
+doctor was on his way, she could yield to Armine’s signs of entreaty,
+lie back in her chair and sleep, while Reeves watched over him.
+
+When the doctor, by a strong man’s determination, had made his way
+up the pass, he found matters better than he had dared to expect. The
+patient was certainly not worse, and the medicine had kept him in a
+sleepy, tranquil state, in which he hardly realised the situation. His
+young attendant was just considering how to husband the last draught,
+when the welcome, dripping visitor appeared. The patient was not in bad
+spirits considering, and could not but feel himself reprieved by the
+weather. He was too sleepy to feel the dulness of his present position,
+and even allowed that his impromptu nurse had done tolerably well.
+Johnny had been ready at every call, had rubbed away an attack of pain,
+hurt wonderfully little in lifting him, and was “not half a bad lot
+altogether”--an admission of which doctor and nurse knew the full worth.
+
+Johnny himself was pleased and grateful, and had that sort of
+satisfaction which belongs to the finding out of one’s own available
+talent. He had done what was pronounced the right thing; and not only
+that, but he had liked the doing it, and he declared himself not afraid
+to encounter another night alone with his cousin. He had picked up
+enough vernacular German to make himself understood, and indeed was a
+decided favourite with Fraulein Rosalie, who would do anything for her
+dear young Herr. It was possible to get a fair amount of sleep, and Dr.
+Medlicott felt satisfied that the charge was not too much for him, and
+indeed there was no other alternative. The doctor stayed as long as he
+could, and did his best to enliven the dulness by producing a pocketful
+of Tauchnitzes, and sitting talking while the patient dozed. Johnny
+showed such intelligent curiosity as to the how and why of the symptoms
+and their counteraction, that after some explanation the doctor said,
+“You ought to be one of us, my friend.”
+
+“I have sometimes thought about it,” said John.
+
+“Indeed!” cried the doctor, like an enthusiast in his profession; and
+John, though not a ready speaker, was drawn on by his notes of interest
+to say, “I don’t really like anything so much as making out about man
+and what one is made of.”
+
+“Physiology?”
+
+“Yes,” said the boy, who had been shy of uttering the scientific term.
+“There’s nothing like it for interest, it seems to me. Besides, one is
+more sure of being of use that way than in any other.”
+
+“Capital! Then what withholds you? Isn’t it _swell_ enough?”
+
+Johnny laughed and coloured. “I’m not such a fool, but I am not sure
+about my people.”
+
+“I thought your uncle was Joseph Brownlow.”
+
+“My aunt would be delighted, but it is my own people. They would say my
+education--Eton and all that--was not intended for it.”
+
+“You may tell them that whatever tends to make you more thoroughly a
+man and gentleman, and less of a mere professional, is a benefit to your
+work. The more you are in yourself, the higher your work will be. I hope
+you will go to the university.”
+
+“I mean to go up for a scholarship next year; but I’ve lost a great deal
+of time now, and I don’t know how far that will tell.”
+
+“I think you will find that what you may have lost in time, you will
+have gained in power.”
+
+“I do want to go in for physical science, but there’s another
+difficulty. One of my cousins does so, but the effect on him has not
+made my father like it the better--and--and to tell the truth--” he half
+mumbled, “it makes me doubt--”
+
+“The effect on his faith?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If faith is unsettled by looking deeper into the mysteries of God’s
+works it cannot have been substantial faith, but merely outward,
+thoughtless reception,” said the doctor, as he met two thoughtful dark
+eyes fixed on him in inquiry and consideration.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” after a pause.
+
+“Had this troubled you?”
+
+“Yes,” said John; “I couldn’t stand doubt there. I would rather break
+stones on the road than set myself doubting!”
+
+“Why should you think that there is danger?”
+
+“It seems to be so with others.”
+
+“Depend upon it, Doubting Castle never lay on the straight road. If men
+run into it, it is not simple study of the works of creation that leads
+them there; but either they have only acquiesced, and never made their
+faith a living reality, or else they are led away by fashion and pride
+of intellect. One who begins and goes on in active love of God and man,
+will find faith and reverence not diminished but increased.”
+
+“But aren’t there speculations and difficulties?”
+
+“None which real active religion, and love cannot regard as the mere
+effects of half-knowledge--the distortions of a partial view. I speak
+with all my heart, as one who has seen how it has been with many of my
+own generation, as well as with myself.”
+
+Johnny bent his head, and the young physician, somewhat surprised at
+finding himself saying so much on such points, left that branch of the
+subject, and began to talk to him about his uncle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. -- SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR.
+
+
+
+     Presumptuous maid, with looks intent,
+     Again she gazed, again she bent,
+       Nor knew the gulf between.
+                               Grey.
+
+
+“Hurrah! It’s Johnny!”
+
+“Georgie. Recollect yourself.”
+
+“But, mamma, it was Johnny.”
+
+“Johnny does not come till evening. Sit still, children, or I shall have
+to send you to dine in the nursery.”
+
+“Somebody did pass the window, mamma, but I thought it was Rob,” said
+Jessie, now grown into a very fine-looking, tall, handsome maiden, with
+a grandly-formed head and shoulders, and pleasant soft brown eyes.
+
+“It was Johnny,” reiterated little George; and at that moment the
+dining-room door opened, and the decorum of the luncheon dinner entirely
+giving way, the three little ones all precipitated themselves towards
+the entering figure, while Jessie and her mother rose at their two
+ends of the table, and the Colonel, no luncheon eater, came in from the
+study.
+
+“What, Johnny, already!”
+
+“The tidal train was earlier than I expected, so I have another
+half-day.”
+
+“Well! are you all well?”
+
+“Quite well. Why--how you are grown! I thought it was Rob when you
+passed my window,” said his father.
+
+“So did I at first,” added Jessie, “but Rob is much broader.”
+
+“Yes,” said his mother. “I am glad you are come back, Johnny; you look
+thin and pale. Sit down. Some mutton or some rabbit-pie? No, no, let
+Jessie help you; you shan’t have all the carving; I’m sure you are
+tired; you don’t look at all well.”
+
+“I was crossing all night, you know,” said Johnny laughing, “and am
+as hungry as a hunter, that’s all. What a blessing to see a nice clean
+English potato again without any flummery!”
+
+“Ah! I thought so,” said his mother; “they didn’t know how to feed you.
+It was an unfortunate business altogether.”
+
+“How did you leave those poor boys, Johnny?” asked his father.
+
+“Better,” said Johnny. “Jock is nearly well,--will be quite so after
+the baths; and Armine is getting better. He sat up for an hour the day
+before I came away.”
+
+“And your aunt?” said his father.
+
+“Wonderful,” said John, with a quiver of feeling on his face. “You never
+saw anything like her. She keeps up, but she looks awfully thin and
+worn. I couldn’t have left her, if Dr. Medlicott and Lord Fordham and
+his man had not all been bent on saving her whatever they could.”
+
+Her Serene Highness virtuously forbore a sigh. She never could believe
+those chains with which Caroline bound all men to her service to be
+either unconscious or strictly proper. However, she only said--
+
+“It was high time that you came away; you were quite knocked up with
+being left a week alone with Lucas in that horrid place. I can’t think
+how your aunt came to think of it.”
+
+“She didn’t think,” said John, bluntly. “It was only a week, and it
+couldn’t be helped. Besides it was rather jolly.”
+
+“But it knocked you up.”
+
+“Oh! that was only a notion of the doctor and my aunt. They said I was
+done up first because I caught cold, and I was glad to wait a day or two
+longer at Leukerbad, in hopes Allen and Bobus would have come out before
+I went.”
+
+“They come out! Not they!” said the Colonel. “‘Tis not the way of young
+men nowadays to give up anything for their fathers and mothers. No,
+no, Bobus can’t spare a week from his reading-party, but must leave his
+mother to a set of chance acquaintance, and Allen--whom poor Caroline
+always thinks the affectionate one, if he is nothing else--can’t give up
+going to gape at the sun at midnight, and Rob was wanting to make one of
+their freight of fools, but I told him it was quite enough to have one
+son wandering abroad at other people’s expense, when it couldn’t be
+helped; and that I wouldn’t have another unless he was prepared to lay
+down his share in the yacht, out of his pay and allowance. I’m glad you
+are come home, Johnny; it was quite right to come as soon as your aunt
+could spare you, poor thing! She writes warmly about you; I am glad
+you were able to be of use to her, but you ought not to waste any more
+time.”
+
+“No. I wrote to my tutor that I would be at Eton to-morrow night, in
+time to begin the week’s work.”
+
+“Papa!” cried out Mrs. Brownlow, “you will never let him start so soon?
+He is so pulled down, I must have him at home to get him right again;
+and there are all his clothes to look over!”
+
+Colonel Brownlow gave the odd little chuckling noise that meant to all
+the family that he did not see the force of mamma’s objections, and John
+asseverated that he was perfectly well, and that his Eton garments were
+all at Hyde Corner, where he should take them up. Meantime, he thought
+he ought to walk to Belforest to report to his cousins, and carry a key
+which his aunt had sent by him to Janet.
+
+“They will be coming in this evening,” said his mother; “you had better
+stay and rest.”
+
+“I must go over, thank you,” said John. “There is a book Armine wants to
+have sent out to him. Jessie, will you walk with me?”
+
+“And me!” cried George.
+
+“And me!” cried Edmund.
+
+“And me, Lina go!” cried the smallest voice.
+
+But the Colonel disconcerted the petitioners by announcing that he had
+business at Belforest, and would drive Johnny over in the dogcart. So
+Jessie had to console herself by agreeing with her mother that Johnny
+looked much more manly, yes, and had an air and style about him which
+both admired very much, though, while Mrs. Brownlow deemed it the true
+outcome of the admixture of Friar and Brownlow, Jessie gave more credit
+to Eton and Belforest, for Jessie was really fond of her aunt, to whom
+she had owed most of her extra gaieties. Moreover, Mrs. Brownlow, though
+often chafing secretly, had the power of reticence, and would not
+set the minds of her children against one who was always doing them
+kindnesses. True, these favours were more than she could easily brook,
+since her pride and independence were not, like her husband’s, tempered
+by warm affection. It was his doing that the expenses of Johnny’s
+education had been accepted, and that Esther and Ellen had been sent by
+their aunt to a good school; thus gratitude, unpalatable though it were,
+prevented unguarded censure. She abstained from much; and as there
+was no quick intuition in the family, even Jessie, the most in her
+confidence, only vaguely knew that mamma thought Aunt Caroline too
+clever and fly-away; but mamma was grave and wise, and it was very nice
+to have an aunt who was young and lively, and always had pleasant things
+going on in her house. Jessie always had her full share, not indeed
+appreciating the intellect, but possessing beauty and charm enough to
+be always appreciated there. “Sweetly pretty,” as Mrs. Coffinkey
+called her, was exactly what she was, for she was thoroughly good and
+unselfish, and a happy, simple nature looked out through her brown
+smiling eyes. She was very fond of her cousins, had shared all the
+anxieties of the last fortnight to the utmost, and was a good deal
+disappointed at being baulked of the walk with her brother, in which
+she would have heard so much more about Armine, Jock, and Aunt Caroline,
+than would be communicated in public.
+
+Johnny, however, was glad of the invitation, even though a little shy
+of it. The tete-a-tete drive was an approach to the serious business of
+life, since it was evidently designed to give opportunity for answering
+a letter which he had thought out and written while laid up at Leukerbad
+by a bad cold and the reaction from his exertions at Schwarenbach.
+
+Still his father did not speak till they had driven up the hill, and
+were near the gates of Belforest. Then he said--
+
+“That was not a bad letter that you wrote me, Johnny.”
+
+Johnny flushed with pleasure. The letter had cost him much thought and
+pains, and commendation from his father was rare.
+
+“But it will take a great deal of consideration.”
+
+“Yes,” said Johnny. “You don’t disapprove, do you, papa?”
+
+“Well,” said the Colonel, in his ponderous way, “you have advantages,
+you know, and you might do better for yourself.”
+
+There was a quivering impulse on Johnny’s lips to say that it was not to
+himself that he wanted to do good; but when his father was speaking
+in that deliberate manner, he was not to be interrupted, and there was
+nothing for it but to hear him out.
+
+“Your aunt is providing you with the best of educations, you have good
+abilities and industry, and you will be a well-looking fellow besides,”
+ added the Colonel, glancing over him with an approving eye of fatherly
+satisfaction; “and it seems to me that you could succeed in some
+superior line. Your mother and I had always hoped to see you at the bar.
+Every opportunity for distinction is given you, and I do not understand
+this sudden desire to throw them up for a profession of much greater
+drudgery and fewer chances of rising, unless it were from some influence
+of your aunt.”
+
+“She never spoke of it. She does not know that I have thought of it, nor
+of my letter to you.”
+
+“Then it is simply from enthusiasm for this young doctor?”
+
+“Not exactly,” said John, “but I always wished I could be like my uncle.
+I remember hearing mamma read a bit of one of the letters of condolence
+which said ‘His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known,’
+and I never forgot it. It stayed in my mind like a riddle, till I
+gradually found out that the beauty was in the good he was always
+doing--”
+
+“Ah!” said the Colonel, in a tone betokening that he was touched, and
+which encouraged John to continue,--
+
+“Besides, I really do like and enter into scientific subjects better
+than any others; I believe it is my turn.”
+
+“Perhaps--you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle. But why have
+you only spoken of it now?”
+
+“I don’t think I really considered what I should be,” said John. “There
+was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest,
+till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it
+over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I
+wanted to know.”
+
+“Did he persuade you?”
+
+“No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone
+with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me. He
+loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one. Yes, papa,
+indeed I think it is. To be always learning the ways of God’s working,
+for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world--”
+
+“Johnny! That’s almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and
+what did it come to? Being at the beck and call night and day of every
+beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in
+their service.”
+
+“Yes,” said John, with a low, gruff sound in his voice, “but is not that
+like being killed in battle?”
+
+“The world doesn’t think it so, my boy,” said the soldier. “Well! what
+is it you propose to do?”
+
+“I don’t suppose it will make much difference yet,” said John, “except
+that at Oxford I should go in more for physical science.”
+
+“You don’t want to give up the university?”
+
+“Oh, no! Dr. Medlicott said a degree there is a great help, besides
+that, all the general study one can get is the more advantage, lifting
+one above the mere practitioner.”
+
+“That is well,” said the Colonel. “If you are to go to the university,
+there is no need to dwell further on the matter at present. You will
+have had time to see more of the world, and you will know whether this
+wish only comes from enthusiasm for a pleasant young man who has been
+kind to you, or if it be your real deliberate choice, and if so, your
+mother will have had time to reconcile herself to the notion. At any
+rate we will say no more about it for the present. Though I must say,
+Johnny,” he added, as he turned his horse’s head between the ribbon
+borders of the approach, “you have thought and spoken like a sensible
+lad, and so like my dear brother, that I could not deny you.”
+
+If Johnny could hardly believe in the unwonted commendation which made
+his heart throb, and sent a flood of colour into his cheeks. Colonel
+Brownlow was equally amazed at the boy’s attainment of a manly and
+earnest thought and purpose, so utterly unlike anything he had hitherto
+seen in the stolid Rob, or the easy-going Allen, or even in Bobus,
+who--whatever there might be in him--never thought it worth while to
+show it to his uncle.
+
+However, discussion was cut short by a little flying figure which came
+rushing across the garden, and Babie with streaming hair clung to her
+cousin, gasping--
+
+“Oh! Johnny, Johnny, tell me about Armie and Jock.”
+
+“They are ever so much better, Babie,” said Johnny, lifting the slim
+little thing up in his arms, as he had lifted his own five-year-old
+brother; “I’ve got a thick parcel of acrostics for you, Armie makes them
+in bed, and Lord Fordham writes them out.”
+
+“Will you come to the rosary, Uncle Robert?” said Babie, recovering her
+manners, as Johnny set her down. “It is the coolest place, and they are
+sitting there.”
+
+“Why, Babie, what a sprite you look,” said Johnny. “You look as if you
+were just off the sick-list too!”
+
+“I’m all right,” said Babie, shaking her hair at him, and bounding on
+before with the tidings of their coming, while her uncle observed in a
+low voice--
+
+“Poor little thing! I believe she has been a good deal knocked up
+between the heat and the anxiety; there was no making her eat or sleep.
+Ah! Miss Elfie, are you acting queen of roses?” as Babie returned
+together with Elvira, who with a rich dark red rose over one ear, and a
+large bouquet at her bosom, justified the epithet at which she bridled,
+and half curtsied in her graceful stately archness, as she gave her hand
+in greeting, and exclaimed--
+
+“Ah, Johnny! are you come? When is Mother Carey going to send for us?”
+
+“When they leave Leukerbad I fancy,” said John. “That’s a tiresome place
+for anyone who does not need to lead the life of a hippopotamus.”
+
+“It can’t be more tiresome than this is,” said Elvira, with a yawn.
+“Lessons all day, and nobody to come near us.”
+
+“Isn’t this a dreadful place?” said John, merrily, as he looked into
+the rosary, a charming bowery circle of fragrance, inclosed by arches
+of trellis-work on which roses were trained, their wreaths now bearing
+a profusion of blossoms of every exquisite tint, from deep crimson
+or golden-yellow, to purest white, while their more splendid standard
+sisters bloomed out in fragrant and gorgeous magnificence under their
+protection.
+
+At the shady end there was a little grass plat round a tiny fountain,
+whose feather of spray rose and plashed coolness. Near it were seats
+where Miss Ogilvie and Janet were discovered with books and work. They
+came forward with greetings and inquiries, which Johnny answered in
+detail.
+
+“Yes, they are both better. Armine sat by the window for an hour the day
+before I came away.”
+
+“Will they be able to come back to Eton after the holidays?” asked his
+father.
+
+“Certainly not Armine, but Jock seems to be getting all right. If he
+was to catch rheumatism he did it at the right place, for that’s what
+Leukerbad is good for. Oh, Babie, you never saw such a lark! Fancy a
+great room, and where the floor ought to be, nothing but muddy water or
+liquid mud, with steps going down, and a lot of heads looking out of it,
+some with curly heads, some in smoking-caps, some in fine caps of lace
+and ribbons.”
+
+“Oh! Johnny; like women!”
+
+“Like women! They are women.”
+
+“Not both together.”
+
+“Yes, I tell you, the whole boiling of them, male and female. There’s
+a fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes
+floundering after him, to his very great disgust. The only things they
+have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards
+floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups and
+newspapers.”
+
+“Oh! like the little blacks in the dear bright bays at San Ildefonso,”
+ cried Elvira.
+
+“You don’t mean that they have no clothes on?” said Babie, with shocked
+downrightness of speech that made everybody laugh; and Johnny satisfied
+her on that score, adding that Dr. Medlicott had made a parody of
+Tennyson’s “Merman,” for Jock’s benefit, on giving him up to a Leukerbad
+doctor, who was to conduct his month’s Kur. It was to go into the
+“Traveller’s Joy,” a manuscript magazine, the “first number of which
+was being concocted and illustrated amongst the Leukerbad party, for the
+benefit of Babie and Sydney Evelyn. As a foretaste, Johnny produced from
+the bag he still carried strapped on his shoulder, a packet of acrostics
+addressed to Miss Barbara Brownlow, and a smaller envelope for Janet.
+
+“Is it the key?” asked Colonel Brownlow.
+
+“Yes,” said Janet, “the key of her davenport, and directions in which
+drawer to find the letters you want. Do you like to have them at once,
+Uncle Robert?”
+
+“Thank you--yes, for then I can go round and settle with that fellow
+Martin, which I can’t do without knowing exactly what passed between him
+and your mother.”
+
+Janet went off, observing--“I wonder whether that is a possibility;”
+ while Miss Ogilvie put in an anxious inquiry for Mrs. Brownlow’s health
+and spirits, and a good many more details were elicited than Johnny had
+given at home. She had never broken down, and now that she was hopeful,
+was, in spite of her fatigue, as bright and merry as ever, and was
+contributing comic pictures to the “Traveller’s Joy,” while Lord Fordham
+did the sketches. Those kind people were as careful of her as any could
+be.
+
+“And what are her further plans?” asked Miss Ogilvie. “Has she been able
+to form any?”
+
+“Hardly,” said Johnny. “They must stay at Leukerbad for a month for Jock
+to have the course of waters rightly, and indeed Armine could hardly be
+moved sooner. I think Dr. Medlicott wants them to keep in Switzerland
+till the heat of the weather is over, and then winter in the south.”
+
+“And when may I go to Armine?”
+
+“When shall we get away from here?” asked Babie and Elfie in a breath.
+
+“I don’t quite know,” said John. “There is not much room to spare in the
+hotel where they are at Leukerbad, and it is a dreadfully slow place.
+Evelyn is growling like a dozen polar bears at it.”
+
+“Why isn’t he gone back with you to Eton?”
+
+“I believe it was settled that he was not to go back this half, for fear
+of his lungs, and you see he is a swell who takes it easily. He would
+have been glad enough to return with me though, and would scarcely have
+endured staying, but that he is so fond of Jock.”
+
+“What is there to be done there?”
+
+“Nothing, except to wade in tepid mud. Fordham has routed out a German
+to read Faust with, and that puts Evelyn into a sweet temper. They go on
+expeditions, and do sketching and botany, which amuses Armine; but they
+get up some fun over the queer people, and _do_ them for the mag., but
+it is all deadly lively, not that I saw much of it, for we only got down
+from Schwarenbach on Monday, and they kept me in bed all the two next
+days; but Jock and Evelyn hate it awfully. Indeed Jock is so down in
+the mouth altogether I don’t know what to make of him, and just when
+the German doctors say the treatment makes people particularly brisk and
+lively.”
+
+“Perhaps what makes a German lively makes an Englishman grave,” sagely
+observed Babie.
+
+“Jock grave must be a strange sight,” said the Colonel; “I am afraid he
+can’t be recovering properly.”
+
+“The doctor thinks he is,” said John; “but then he doesn’t know the
+nature of the Skipjack. But,” he added, in a low voice, “that night was
+enough to make any one grave, and it was much the worst to Jock, because
+he kept his senses almost all the time, and was a good deal hurt besides
+to begin with. His sprain is still so bad that he has to be carried
+upstairs and to go to the baths in a chair.”
+
+“And do you think,” said the Colonel, “that this young lord is going
+to stay on all this time in this dull place for the sake of an utter
+stranger?”.
+
+“Jock and Evelyn were always great friends at Eton,” said John. “Then my
+uncle did something, I don’t know what, that Medlicott is grateful for,
+and they have promised to see Armine through this illness. The place
+agrees with Fordham; they say he has never been so well or active since
+he came out.”
+
+“What is he like?” inquired Babie.
+
+“Like, Babie? Like anything long and limp you can think of. He sits all
+in a coil and twist, and you don’t think there’s much of him; but when
+he gets up and pulls himself upright, you go looking and looking till
+you don’t know where’s the top of him, till you see a thin white face
+in washed-out hair. He is a good fellow, awfully kind, and I suppose he
+can’t help being such a tremendous--” John hesitated, in deference to
+his father, for a word that was not slang, and finally chose “don.”
+
+“Oh,” sighed Babie, “Armie said in his note he was jolly beyond
+description.”
+
+“Well, so he is,” said John; “he plays chess with Armie, and brings him
+flowers and books, and waits on him as you used to do on a sick doll.
+And that’s just what he is; he ought to have been a woman, and he would
+have been much happier too, poor fellow. I’d rather be dead at once than
+drag about such a life of coddling as he does.”
+
+“Poor lad!” said his father. “Did Janet understand that I was waiting
+for those letters, I wonder?”
+
+“You had better go and see, Babie,” said Miss Ogilvie. “Perhaps she
+cannot find them.”
+
+Babie set off, and John proceeded to explain that Mrs. Evelyn was still
+detained in London by old Lady Fordham, who continued to be kept between
+life and death by her doctors. Meantime, the sons could dispose of
+themselves as they pleased, while under the care of Dr. Medlicott, and
+were not wanted at home, so that there was little doubt but that they
+would remain with Armine as long as he needed their physician’s care.
+
+All the while Elfie was flitting about, pelting Johnny with handfuls
+snatched from over-blown roses, and though he returned the assault at
+every pause, his grey travelling suit was bestrewn with crimson, pink,
+cream, and white petals.
+
+At last the debris of a huge Eugenie Grandet hit him full on the bridge
+of his nose, and caused him to exclaim--
+
+“Nay, Elfie, you little wretch; that was quite a good rose--not fair
+game,” and leaping up to give her chase in and out among the beds, they
+nearly ran against Janet returning with the letters, and saying “she was
+sorry to have been so long, but mother’s hoards were never easy places
+of research.”
+
+Barbara came more slowly back, and looked somewhat as if she had had a
+sharper rebuke than she understood or relished.
+
+Poor child! she had suffered much in this her first real trouble, and
+a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered
+from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to come
+peeping and worrying.
+
+Janet had given a most violent start when she opened the door of her
+mother’s bedroom where the davenport stood; and Janet much resented
+being startled; no doubt that was the reason she was so cross, thought
+Barbara, but still it was very disagreeable.
+
+That room was the child’s also. She had been her mother’s bed-fellow
+ever since her father’s death, and she felt her present solitude. The
+nights were sultry, and her sleep had been broken of late.
+
+That night she was in a slumber as cool as a widely-opened window would
+make it, but not so sound that she was not haunted all the time by dread
+for Armine.
+
+Suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness by seeing a light in the
+room. No, it was not the maid putting away her dresses. It was Janet,
+bending over her mother’s davenport.
+
+Babie started up.
+
+“Janet! Is anything the matter?”
+
+“Nothing! Nonsense! go to sleep, child.”
+
+“What are you about?”
+
+“Never mind. Only mother keeps her things in such a mess; I was setting
+them to rights after disturbing them to find the book.”
+
+There was something in the tone like an apology.
+
+Babie did not like it, but she well knew that she should be
+contemptuously put down if she attempted an inquiry, far less a
+remonstrance, with Janet. Only, with a puzzled sort of watch-dog sense,
+she sat up in bed and stared.
+
+“Why don’t you lie down?” said Janet.
+
+Babie did lie down, but on her back, her head high up on the pillow, and
+her eyes well open still.
+
+Perhaps Janet did not like it, for she gave an impatient shuffle to the
+papers, shut the drawer with a jerk, locked it, took up her candle, and
+went away without vouchsafing a “good-night.”
+
+Babie lay wondering. She knew that the davenport contained all that was
+most sacred and precious to her mother, as relics of her old life, and
+that only dire necessity would have made her let anyone touch it. What
+could Janet mean? To speak would be of no use. One-and-twenty was not
+likely to listen to thirteen, though Babie, in her dreamy wakefulness,
+found herself composing conversations in which she made eloquent appeals
+to Janet, which she was never likely to utter.
+
+At last the morning twitterings began outside, doves cooed, peacocks
+miawed, light dawned, and Babie’s perceptions cleared themselves. In
+the wainscoted room was a large closet, used for hanging up cloaks and
+dresses, and fortunately empty. No sooner did the light begin to reflect
+itself in its polished oak-panelled door, than an idea struck Babie, and
+bounding from her bed, she opened the door, wheeled in the davenport,
+shut it in, turned the big rusty key with both hands and a desperate
+effort, then repairing to her own little inner room, disturbed the
+honourable retirement of the last and best-beloved of her dolls in a
+pink-lined cradle in a disused doll’s house, and laying the key beneath
+the mattress, felt heroically ready for the thumbscrew rather than yield
+it up. She knew Armine would say she was right, and be indignant that
+Janet should meddle with mother’s private stores. So she turned over on
+the pillow, cooled by the morning breeze, and fell into a sound sleep,
+whence she was only roused by the third “Miss Barbara,” from her maid.
+
+She heard no more of the matter, and but for the absence of the
+davenport could really have thought it all a dream.
+
+She was driving her two little fairy ponies to Kenminster with Elvira,
+to get the afternoon post, when a quiet, light step came into the
+bedroom, and Janet stood within it, looking for the davenport, as if she
+did not quite believe her senses. However, remembering Babie’s eyes,
+she had her suspicions. She looked into the little girl’s room and saw
+nothing, then tried the closet door, and finding it locked, came to
+a tolerably correct guess as to what had become of it, and felt hotly
+angry at “that conceited child’s meddling folly.”
+
+For the awkward thing was that the clasped memorandum-book, containing
+“Magnum Bonum,” was in her hand, locked out of, instead of into, its
+drawer.
+
+When searching for the account-book for her uncle, it had, as it were,
+offered itself to her; and though so far from being green, with “Garden”
+ marked on it, it was Russia leather, and had J. B. upon it. She had
+peeped in and read “Magnum Bonum” within the lid. All day the idea had
+haunted her, that there lay the secret, in the charge of her little
+thoughtless mother, who, ignorant of its true value, and deterred by
+uncomprehended words and weak scruples, was withholding it from the
+world, and depriving her own family, and what was worst of all, her
+daughter, of the chances of becoming illustrious.
+
+“I am his daughter as much as hers,” thought she. “Why should she
+deprive me of my inheritance?”
+
+Certainly Janet had been told that the great arcanum could not be dealt
+with by a woman; but this she did not implicitly believe, and she was in
+consequence the more curious to discover what it really was, and whether
+it was reasonable to sacrifice the best years of her life to preparing
+for it. The supposed unfairness of her exclusion seemed to her to
+justify the act, and thus it was that she had stolen to the davenport
+when she supposed that her little sister would be asleep, and finding it
+impossible to attend or understand with Babie’s great brown eyes lamping
+on her, she had carried off the book.
+
+She had been reading it even till the morning light had surprised her,
+and had been able to perceive the general drift, though she had leaped
+over the intermediate steps. She had just sufficient comprehension
+of the subject for unlimited confidence that the achievement was
+practicable, without having knowledge enough to understand a tithe
+of the difficulties, though she did see that they could hardly be
+surmounted by a woman unassisted. However, she might see her way by the
+time her studies were completed, and in the meantime her mother might
+keep the shell while she had the essence.
+
+However, to find the shell thus left on her hands was no slight
+perplexity. Should she, as eldest daughter left in charge, demand the
+desk, Barbara would produce her reasons for its abstraction, and for
+this Janet was not prepared. Unless something else was wanted from it,
+so as to put Babie in the wrong, Janet saw no alternative but to secure
+the book in her own bureau, and watch for a chance of smuggling it back.
+
+Thus Babie escaped all interrogation, but she did not release the
+captive davenport, and indeed she soon forgot all about it in her
+absorption in Swiss letters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. -- THE LOST TREASURE.
+
+
+
+     But solemn sound, or sober thought
+       The Fairies cannot bear;
+     They sing, inspired with love and joy,
+       Like skylarks in the air.
+     Of solid sense, or thought that’s grave,
+       You find no traces there.
+                               Young Tamlane.
+
+
+When old Lady Fordham’s long decay ended in death, Mrs. Evelyn would
+not recall her sons to the funeral, but meant to go out herself to
+join them, and offered to escort Mrs. Brownlow’s daughters to the
+meeting-place. This was to be Engelberg, for Dr. Medlicott had decided
+that after the month at Leukerbad all his patients would be much
+the better for a breath of the pine-woods on the Alpine height, and
+undertook to see them conveyed thither in time to meet the ladies.
+
+This proposal set Miss Ogilvie free to join her brother, who had a
+curacy in a seaside place where the season began just when the London
+season ended. Her holiday was then to begin, and Janet was to write to
+Mrs. Evelyn and declare herself ready to meet her in London at the time
+appointed.
+
+The arrangement was not to Janet’s taste. She thought herself perfectly
+capable of escorting the younger ones, especially as they were to take
+their maid, a capable person named Delrio, daughter of an Englishwoman
+and a German waiter, and widow of an Italian courier, who was equal to
+all land emergencies, and could speak any language. She belonged to the
+young ladies. Their mother, not liking strangers about her, had, on old
+nurse’s death, caused Emma to learn enough of the lady’s maid’s art for
+her own needs at home, and took care of herself abroad.
+
+Babie was enraptured to be going to Mother Carey and Armine, and Elvira
+was enchanted to leave the schoolroom behind her, being fully aware that
+she always had more notice and indulgence from outsiders than at home,
+or indeed from anyone who had been disappointed at her want of all real
+affection.
+
+“You are just like a dragon fly,” said Babie to her; “all brightness
+outside and nothing within.”
+
+This unusually severe remark came from Babie’s indignation at Elvira’s
+rebellion against going to River Hollow to take leave. It would be a
+melancholy visit, for her grandfather had become nearly imbecile since
+he had had a paralytic stroke, in the course of the winter, and good
+sensible Mrs. Gould had died of fever in the previous autumn.
+
+Elvira, who had never liked the place, now loathed it, and did not seem
+capable of understanding Babie’s outburst.
+
+“Not like to go and see them when they are ill and unhappy! Elfie, how
+can you?”
+
+“Of course I don’t! Grandpapa kisses me and makes me half sick.”
+
+“But he is so fond of you.”
+
+“I wish he wasn’t then. Why, Babie, are you going to cry? What’s the
+matter?”
+
+“It is very silly,” said Babie, winking hard to get rid of her tears;
+“but it does hurt me so to think of the good old gentleman caring more
+for you than anybody, and you not liking to go near him.”
+
+“I can’t see what it matters to you,” said Elvira; “I wish you would go
+instead of me, if you are so fond of him.”
+
+“He wouldn’t care for me,” said Babie; “I’m not his ain lassie.”
+
+“_His_ lassie! I’m a lady,” exclaimed the senorita, with the haughty
+Spanish turn of the neck peculiar to herself.
+
+“That’s not what I mean by a lady,” said Babie.
+
+“What do you mean by it?” said Elvira, with a superior air.
+
+“One who never looks down on anybody,” said Babie, thoughtfully.
+
+“What nonsense!” rejoined the Elf; “as if any lady could like to hear
+grandpapa maunder, and Mary scold and scream at the farm people, just
+like the old peahen.”
+
+“Miss Ogilvie said poor Mary was overstrained with having more to attend
+to than she could properly manage, and that made her shrill.”
+
+“I know it makes her very disagreeable; and so they all are. I hate the
+place, and I don’t see why I should go,” grumbled Elvira.
+
+“You will when you are older, and know what proper feeling is,” said
+Miss Ogilvie, who had come within earshot of the last words. “Go and put
+on your hat; I have ordered the pony carriage.”
+
+“Shall I go, Miss Ogilvie?” asked Babie, as Elfie marched off sullenly,
+since her governess never allowed herself to be disobeyed.
+
+“I think I had better go, my dear; Elfie may be under more restraint
+with me.”
+
+“Please give old Mr. Gould and Mary and Kate my love, and I will run
+and ask for some fruit for you to take to them,” said Babie, her tender
+heart longing to make compensation.
+
+Miss Ogilvie and her pouting companion were received by a
+fashionable--nay, extra fashionable--looking person, whom Mary and Kate
+Gould called Cousin Lisette, and the old farmer, Eliza Gould. While the
+old man in his chair in the sun in the hot little parlour caressed, and
+asked feeble repetitions of questions of his impatient granddaughter,
+the lady explained that she had thrown up an excellent situation as
+instructress in a very high family to act in the same capacity to her
+motherless little cousins. She professed to be enchanted to meet Miss
+Ogilvie, and almost patronised.
+
+“I know what the life is, Miss Ogilvie, and how one needs companionship
+to keep up one’s spirits. Whenever you are left alone, and would drop me
+a line, I should be quite delighted to come and enliven you; or whenever
+you would like to come over here, there’s no interruption by uncle; and
+he, poor old gentleman, is quite--quite passe. The children I can always
+dismiss. Regularity is my motto, of course, but I consider that an
+exception in favour of my own friends does no harm, and indeed it is no
+more than I have a right to expect, considering the sacrifices that I
+have made for them. Mary, child, don’t cross your ankles; you don’t see
+your cousin do that. Kate, you go and see what makes Betsy so long in
+bringing the tea. I rang long ago.”
+
+“I will go and fetch it,” said Mary, an honest, but harassed-looking
+girl.
+
+“Always in haste,” said Miss Gould, with an effort at good humour,
+which Miss Ogilvie direfully mistrusted. “No, Mary, you must remain
+to entertain your cousin. What are servants for but to wait on us? She
+thinks nothing can be done without her, Miss Ogilvie, and I am forced to
+act repression sometimes.”
+
+“Indeed we do not wish for any tea,” said Miss Ogilvie, seeing Elvira
+look as black as thunder; “we have only just dined.”
+
+“But Elfie will have some sweet-cake; Elfie likes auntie’s sweet-cake,
+eh?” said the old man.
+
+“No, thank you,” said Elfie, glumly, though in fact she did care
+considerably for sweets, and was always buying bonbons.
+
+“No cake! Or some strawberries--strawberries and cream,” said her
+grandfather. “Mr. Allen always liked them. And where is Mr. Allen now,
+my dear?”
+
+“Gone to Norway. It’s the fifth time I’ve told him so,” muttered Elvira.
+
+“And where is Mr. Robert? And Mr. Lucas?” he went on. “Fine young
+gentlemen all of them; but Mr. Allen is the pleasant-spoken one. Ain’t
+he coming down soon? He always looks in and says, ‘I don’t forget your
+good cider, Mr. Gould,’” and there was a feeble chuckling laugh and old
+man’s cough.
+
+“Do let me go into the garden; I’m quite faint,” cried Elvira, jumping
+up.
+
+It was true that the room was very close, rather medicinal, and not
+improved by Miss Gould’s perfumes; but there was an alacrity about
+Elfie’s movements, and a vehemence in the manner of her rejection of the
+said essences, which made her governess not think her case alarming, and
+she left her to the care of the young cousins, while trying to make
+up for her incivility by courteously listening to and answering her
+grandfather, and consuming the tea and sweet-cake.
+
+When she went out to fetch her pupil to say goodbye, Miss Gould detained
+her on the way to obtain condolence on the “dreadful trial that old
+uncle was,” and speak of her own great devotion to him and the children,
+and the sacrifices she had made. She said she had been at school
+with Elvira’s poor mamma, “a sweetly pretty girl, poor dear, but so
+indulged.”
+
+And then she tried to extract confidences as to Mrs. Brownlow’s
+intentions towards the child, in which of course she was baffled.
+
+Elvira was found ranging among the strawberries, with Mary and Kate
+looking on somewhat dissatisfied.
+
+Both the poor girls looked constrained and unhappy, and Miss Ogilvie
+wondered whether “Cousin Lisette’s” evident intentions of becoming a
+fixture would be for their good or the reverse.
+
+“Are you better, my dear?” asked she, affectionately.
+
+“Yes, it was only the room,” said Elvira.
+
+“You are a good deal there, are not you?” said Miss Ogilvie to Mary, who
+had the white flabby look of being kept in an unwholesome atmosphere.
+
+“Yes,” said Mary, wistfully, “but grandpapa does not like having me half
+so much as Elvira. He is always talking about her.”
+
+“You had better come back to him now, Elfie,” said Miss Ogilvie.
+
+“It makes me ill,” said Elvira, with her crossest look.
+
+Her governess laid her hand on her shoulder, and told her in a few
+decided words, in the lowest possible voice, that she was not going away
+till she had taken a properly respectful and affectionate leave of her
+grandfather. Whereupon she knew further resistance was of no use, and
+going hastily to the door of the room, called out--
+
+“Good-bye, then, grandpapa.”
+
+“Ah! my little beauty, are you there?” he asked, in a tone of bewildered
+pleasure, holding out the one hand he could use.
+
+Elvira was forced to let herself be held by it. She hoped to kiss his
+brow, and escape; but the poor knotted fingers which had once been so
+strong, would not let her go, and she had to endure many more kisses and
+caresses and blessings than her proud thoughtless nature could endure
+before she made her escape. And then “Cousin Lisette” insisted on a
+kiss for the sake of her dear mamma; and Elfie could only exhale her
+exasperation by rushing to the pony-carriage, avoiding all kisses to her
+young cousins, taking the driving seat, and whipping up the ponies more
+than their tender-hearted mistress would by any means have approved.
+
+Miss Ogilvie abstained from either blame or argument, knowing that
+it would only make her worse; and recollecting the old Undine theory,
+wondered whether the Elf would ever find her soul, and think with tender
+regret of the affection she was spurning.
+
+The next day the travellers started, sleeping a couple of nights in Hyde
+Corner, for convenience of purchases and preparations.
+
+They were to meet Mrs. Evelyn at the station; but Janet, who foretold
+that she would be another Serene Highness, soured by having missed the
+family title, retarded their start till so late that there could be no
+introduction on the platform; but seats had to be rushed for, while a
+servant took the tickets.
+
+However, a tall, elderly, military-looking gentleman with a great white
+moustache, was standing by the open door of a carriage.
+
+“Miss Brownlow,” said he, handing them in--Babie first, next Janet, and
+then Elvira.
+
+He then bowed to Miss Ogilvie, took his seat, handed in the
+appurtenances, received, showed, and pocketed the tickets, negotiated
+Janet’s purchase of newspapers, and constituted himself altogether
+cavalier to the party.
+
+Sir James Evelyn! Janet had no turn for soldiers, and was not gratified;
+but Elvira saw that her blue eyes and golden hair were producing the
+effect she knew how to trace; so she was graciously pleased to accept
+Punch, and to smile a bewitching acceptance of the seat assigned to her
+opposite to the old general.
+
+Barbara was opposite to Mrs. Evelyn, and next to Sydney, a girl a few
+months older than herself, but considerably taller and larger. Mother
+and daughter were a good deal alike, save that the girl was fresh plump,
+and rosy, and the mother worn, with the red colouring burnt as it were
+into her thin cheeks. Yet both looked as if smiles were no strangers to
+their lips, though there were lines of anxiety and sorrow traced round
+Mrs. Evelyn’s temples. Their voices were sweet and full, and the elder
+lady spoke with a tender intonation that inspired Babie with trustful
+content and affection, but caused Janet to pass a mental verdict of
+“Sugared milk and water.”
+
+She immersed herself in her Pall Mall, and left Babie to exchange scraps
+of intelligence from the brother’s letters, and compare notes on the
+journey.
+
+By-and-by Mrs. Evelyn retired into her book, and the two little girls
+put their heads together over a newly-arrived acrostic, calling on Elfie
+to assist them.
+
+“Do you like acrostics?” she said, peeping up through her long eyelashes
+at the old general.
+
+“Oh, don’t tease Uncle James,” hastily interposed Sydney, as yet
+inexperienced in the difference between the importunities of a merely
+nice-looking niece, and the blandishments of a brilliant stranger. Sir
+James said kindly--
+
+“What, my dear?”
+
+And when Elvira replied--
+
+“Do help us to guess this. What does man love most below?” he put on a
+droll face, and answered--
+
+“His pipe.”
+
+“O Uncle James, that’s too bad,” cried Sydney.
+
+“If Jock had made this acrostic, it might be pipe,” said Babie; “but
+this is Armine’s.”
+
+It was thereupon handed to the elders, who read, in a boyish
+handwriting--
+
+
+          Twins, parted from their rocky nest,
+            We run our wondrous race,
+          And now in tumult, now at rest,
+            Flash back heaven’s radiant face.
+
+       1. While both alike _this_ name we bear,
+            And both like life we flow,
+       2. And near us nestle sweet and fair
+            What man most loves below.
+
+          Alike it is our boasted claim
+            To nurse the precious juice
+       3. That maddened erst the Theban dame,
+            With streaming tresses loose.
+
+       4. The evening land is sought by one,
+            One rushes towards midday,
+          One to a vigil song has run,
+            One heard Red Freedom’s lay.
+
+          Tall castles, glorious battlefields
+            Graced this in ages past,
+          But now its mighty power that yields
+       5.   To work my busy last.
+
+
+“Is that your brother Armine’s own?” asked Sir James, surprised.
+
+“O yes,” said Janet with impressive carelessness, “all my brothers have
+a facility in stringing rhymes.”
+
+“Not Bobus,” said Elvira.
+
+“He does not think it worth while,” said Janet, again absorbing herself
+in her paper, while the public united in guessing the acrostic; and the
+only objection was raised by the exact General, who would not allow
+that the “Marseillaise” was sung at the mouth of the Rhone, and defended
+Ino’s sobriety.
+
+Barbara and Sydney lived upon those acrostics in their travelling bags
+till they reached Folkestone, and had grown intimate over them.
+Sir James looked after the luggage, putting gently aside Janet’s
+strong-minded attempt to watch over it, and she only retained her own
+leathern travelling case, where she carried her personals, and which,
+heavy as it was, she never let out of her immediate charge.
+
+They all sat on deck, for there was a fine smooth summer sea, and no
+one was deranged except the two maids, whom every one knew to be always
+disabled on a voyage.
+
+Janet had not long been seated, and was only just getting immersed in
+her Contemporary, when she received a greeting which gratified her. It
+was from somewhat of a lion, the author of some startling poems and
+more startling essays much admired by Bobus, who had brought him to
+some evening parties of his mother’s, not much to her delectation, since
+there were ugly stories as to his private character. These were ascribed
+by Bobus to pious malevolence, and Janet had accepted the explanation,
+and cultivated a bowing acquaintance.
+
+Hyde Corner was too agreeable a haunt to be despised, and Janet owed
+her social successes more to her mother’s attractions than her own.
+Conversation began by an inquiry after her brothers, whose adventures
+had figured in the papers, and it went on to Janet’s own journey and
+prospects. Her companion was able to tell her much that she wanted
+to know about the university of Zurich, and its facilities for female
+study. He was a well-known advocate of woman’s rights, and she scrupled
+not to tell him that she was inquiring on her own account. Many men
+would have been bored, and have only sought to free themselves from
+this learned lady, but the present lion was of the species that prefer
+roaring to an intelligent female audience, without the rough male
+argumentative interruption, and Janet thus made the voyage with the
+utmost satisfaction to herself.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn asked Babie who her sister’s friend was. The answer was, “Do
+you know, Elfie? You know so many more gentlemen than I do.”
+
+“No,” replied Elvira, “I don’t. He looks like the stupid sort of man.”
+
+“What is the stupid sort of man?” asked the General, as she intended.
+
+“Oh! that talks to Janet.”
+
+“Is everyone that talks to Janet stupid?”
+
+“Of course,” said Elvira. “They only go on about stupid things no better
+than lessons.”
+
+Sir James laughed at her arch look, and shook his head at her, but then
+made a tour among the other passengers, leaving her pouting a little
+at his desertion. On his return, he sat down by his sister-in-law and
+mentioned a name, which made her start and glance an inquiry whether she
+heard aright. Then as he bent his head in affirmation, she asked, “Is
+there anything to be done?”
+
+“It is only for the crossing, and she is quite old enough to take care
+of herself.”
+
+“And it is evidently an established acquaintance, for which I am not
+responsible,” murmured Mrs. Evelyn to herself.
+
+She was in perplexity about these friends of her son’s. Ever since Cecil
+had been at Eton, his beloved Brownlow had seemed to be his evil genius,
+whose influence none of his resolutions or promises could for a moment
+withstand. If she had acted on her own judgment, Cecil would never have
+returned to Eton, but his uncle disapproved of his removal, especially
+with the disgrace of the champagne supper unretrieved; and his penitent
+letter had moved her greatly. Trusting much to her elder son and to Dr.
+Medlicott, she had permitted the party to continue together, feeling
+that it might be life or death to that other fatherless boy in whom Duke
+was so much interested; and now she was going out to judge for herself,
+and Sir James had undertaken to escort her, that they might together
+come to a decision whether the two friends were likely to be doing one
+another good or harm.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn had lived chiefly in the country since her husband’s death,
+and knew nothing of Mrs. Joseph Brownlow. So she looked with anxiety for
+indications of the tone of the family who had captivated not only Cecil,
+but Fordham, and seemed in a fair way of doing the same by Sydney. The
+two hats, brown and black, were almost locked together all the voyage,
+and indeed the feather of one once became entangled with the crape
+of the other, so that they had to be extricated from above. There was
+perhaps a little maternal anxiety at this absorption; but as Sydney was
+sure to pour out everything at night, her mother could let things take
+their course, and watch her delight in expanding, after being long shut
+up in a melancholy house without young companions.
+
+Elvira had a tone of arch simplicity which, in such a pretty creature,
+was most engaging, and she was in high spirits with the pleasure of
+being with new people, away from her schoolroom and from England,
+neither of which she loved, so she chattered amiably and amusingly,
+entertained Mrs. Evelyn, and fascinated Sir James.
+
+Janet and her companion were less complacently regarded. Certainly the
+girl (though less ancient-looking at twenty-one than at fourteen) had
+the air of one well used to independence, so that she was no great
+subject for responsibility; but she gave no favourable impression, and
+was at no pains to do so. When she rejoined the party, Mrs. Evelyn asked
+whether she had known that gentleman long.
+
+“He is a friend of my brother Robert,” she answered. “Shall I introduce
+you?”
+
+Mrs. Evelyn declined in a quiet civil tone, that provoked a mental
+denunciation of her as strait-laced and uncharitable, and as soon as the
+gentleman returned to the neighbourhood, Janet again sought his company,
+let him escort her ashore, and only came back to the others in the
+refreshment-room, whither she brought a copy of a German periodical
+which he had lent her. With much satisfaction Mrs. Evelyn filled the
+railway carriage with her own party, so that there was no room for any
+addition to their number. Nor indeed did they see any more of their
+unwelcome fellow-traveller, since he was bound for the Hotel du Louvre,
+and, to Janet’s undisguised chagrin, rooms were already engaged at the
+Hotel Castiglione.
+
+They came too late for the table d’hote, and partook of an extemporised
+meal in their sitting-room immediately on their arrival, as the start
+was to be early. Then it was that Janet missed her bag, her precious
+bag! Delrio was sent all over the house to make inquiries whether it had
+been taken to any other person’s room, but in vain. Mrs. Evelyn said she
+had last seen it when they took their seats on board the steamer.
+
+“Yes,” added Elvira, “you left it there when you went to walk up and
+down with that gentleman.”
+
+“Then why did not you take care of it? I don’t mean Elfie--nobody
+expects her to be of any use; but you, Babie?”
+
+“You never told me!” gasped Babie, aghast.
+
+“You ought to have seen; but you never think of anything but your own
+chatter.”
+
+“It is a very inconvenient loss,” said Mrs. Evelyn, kindly. “Have you
+sent to the station?”
+
+“I shall, as soon as I am satisfied that it is not here. I can send
+out for the things I want for use; but there are books and papers of
+importance, and my keys.”
+
+“The key of mother’s davenport?” cried Babie. “Was it there? O Janet,
+Janet!”
+
+“You should have attended to it, then,” said Janet sharply.
+
+Delrio knocked at the door with an account of her unsuccessful mission,
+and Sir James, little as the young lady deserved it, concerned himself
+about sending to the station, and if the bag were not forthcoming there,
+telegraphing to Boulogne the first thing in the morning.
+
+While Janet was writing particulars and volubly instructing the
+commissionaire, Mrs. Evelyn saw Babie’s eyes full of tears, and her
+throat swelling with suppressed sobs. She held out an arm and drew the
+child to her, saying kindly, “I am sure you would have taken care of the
+bag if you had been asked, my dear.”
+
+“It’s not that, thank you,” said Babie, laying her head on the kind
+shoulder, “for I don’t think it was my fault; but mother will be so
+sorry for her key. It is the key of her davenport, and father’s picture
+is there, and grandmamma’s, and the card with all our hairs, and she
+will be so sorry.”
+
+And Babie cried the natural tears of a tired child, whom anything would
+overcome after her long absence from her mother. Mrs. Evelyn saw how
+it was, and, as Delrio was entirely occupied with the hue and cry,
+she herself took the little girl away, and helped her to bed, tenderly
+soothing and comforting her, and finding her various needments. Among
+them were her “little books,” but they could not be found, and her eyes
+looked much too tired to use them, especially as the loss again brought
+the ready moisture. “My head feels so funny, I can’t think of anything,”
+ she said.
+
+“Shall I do as I used when Sydney was little?” and Mrs. Evelyn knelt
+down with her, and said one or two short prayers.
+
+Babie murmured her thanks, nestled up to her and kissed her, but added
+imploringly, “My Psalm. Armie and I always say our Psalm at bed-time,
+and think of each other. He did it out on the moraine.”
+
+“Will it do if you lie down and I say it to you?”
+
+There was another fond, grateful nestling kiss, and some of the Psalms
+were gone through in the soft, full cadences of a voice that had gained
+unconscious pathos by having many times used them as a trustful lullaby
+to a weary sufferer.
+
+If Babie heard the end, it was in the sweetness of sleep, and when Mrs.
+Evelyn left her, it was with far less judicial desire to inquire into
+the subject of that endless conversation which had lasted, with slight
+intermission, from London to Paris. She was not long left in ignorance,
+for no sooner had Sydney been assured that nothing ailed Barbara but
+fatigue, than she burst out, “Mamma, she is the nicest girl I ever saw.”
+
+“Do you like her better than Elvira?”
+
+“Of course I do,” most emphatically. “Mamma, she loves Sir Kenneth of
+the Leopard as much as I do.”
+
+Mrs. Evelyn was satisfied. While Sir Kenneth of the Leopard remained
+the object of the young ladies’ passion, there was not much fear of any
+nonsense that was not innocent and happy.
+
+No news of the bag. Janet was disposed to go back herself or send
+Delrio, but Sir James declared this impossible; nor would the Evelyns
+consent to disturb the plan of the journey, and disappoint those who
+expected them at Engelberg on Saturday by waiting at Paris for tidings.
+Janet in vain told herself that she was not under their control, and
+tried to remain behind by herself with her maid. They had a quiet,
+high-bred decisive way of taking things for granted, and arranging
+for her and she found herself unable to resist; but whenever, in after
+times, she was unpleasantly reminded of her loss, she always charged it
+upon them.
+
+Otherwise the journey was prosperous. Elfie was on the terms of a
+saucy pet with the General, and Babie’s bright, gentle courtesy and
+unselfishness won Mrs. Evelyn’s heart, while she and Sydney were as
+inseparable as ever.
+
+In fact Sydney had been made free of Jotapata. That celebrated
+romance had been going on all these years with the elision of several
+generations; because though few members of the family were allowed to
+see their twenty-fifth year, it was impossible to squeeze them all into
+the crusading times; and besides the reigning favourites must be treated
+to an adventure with Coeur de Lion.
+
+Even thus abridged, it bade fair to last throughout the journey, both
+the little maidens being sufficiently experienced travellers to care
+little for the sights from the French railway, and being only stimulated
+to talk and listen the more eagerly when interrupted by such trifles as
+meals, companions, and calls to look at objects far less interesting.
+
+“Look, my dears; we are coming to the mountains. There is the first
+snowy head.”
+
+“Yes, mamma,” but the hats were together again in the corner.
+
+“Come, Sydney, don’t lose this wonderful winding valley.”
+
+“I see, Uncle James. Beautiful!” popping back instantly with, “Go on,
+Babie, dear. How did Sir Gilbert get them out of that horrid defile full
+of Turks? It is true, you said.”
+
+“True that Louis VII. and Queen Eleanor got into that dreadful mess.
+Armine found it in Sismondi, but nobody knew who Sir Gilbert was except
+ourselves; and we are quite sure he was Sir Gilbert of the Ermine, the
+son of the brother who thought it his duty to stay at home.”
+
+“Sir Philibert? Oh, yes! I know.”
+
+“There are some verses about the Iconium Pass, written out in our
+spotted book, but I can say some of them.”
+
+“Oh, do!”
+
+          “‘The rock is steep, the gorge is deep,
+              Mount Joye St. Denys;
+            But King Louis bold his way doth hold,
+              Mount Joye St. Denys.
+
+            Ho ho, the ravine is ‘narrow I ween,
+              Lah billah el billah, hurrah.
+            The hills near and far the Frank’s way do bar,
+              Lah billah el billah, hurrah.”
+
+
+“It ought to be ‘Allah el Allah,’ but you know that really does mean a
+holy name, and Armine thought we ought not to have it. It was delightful
+making the ballad, for all the Christian verses have ‘Mount Joye St.
+Denys’ in the different lines, and all the Turkish ones ‘Lah billah,’
+till Sir Gilbert comes in, and then his war-cry goes instead--
+
+
+          “‘On, on, ye Franks, hew down their ranks,
+              Up, merry men, for the Ermine!
+            For Christian right ‘gainst Pagan might,
+              Up, merry men, for the Ermine!’
+
+
+but one day Jock got hold of it, and wrote a parody on it.”
+
+“Oh what a shame! Weren’t you very angry?”
+
+“It was so funny, one could not help laughing.
+
+
+          “‘Come on, old Turk, you’ll find hot work--
+              Pop goes the weasel!
+            They cut and run; my eyes, what fun!--
+              Pop goes the weasel!’”
+
+
+“How could you bear it? I won’t hear a bit more. It is dreadful.”
+
+“Miss Ogilvie says if one likes a thing very much, parodies don’t hurt
+one’s love,” said Babie.
+
+“But what did Sir Gilbert do?”
+
+“He rode up to where Louis was standing with his back against a rock,
+and dismounted saying ‘My liege--’”
+
+“I thought he was an Englishman?”
+
+“Oh, but you always called a king ‘my liege,’ whoever you were. ‘My
+liege,’ he said--”
+
+“Look at that charming little church tower.”
+
+“I see, thank you.”
+
+“I see, Uncle James. No, thank you, I don’t want to look out any more. I
+saw it. Well, Babie, ‘My liege--’”
+
+“Never mind, James,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “one can’t be more than in
+Elysium.”
+
+There were fewer conveniences for the siege on the last day of the
+journey, when railroads were no more; but something could be done on
+board the steamer in spite of importunities from those who thought it
+a duty to look at the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and when arrival
+became imminent, happy anticipation inclined Barbara to a blissful
+silence. Mrs. Evelyn saw her great hazel eyes shining like stars, and
+began to prefer the transparent mask of that ardent little soul to the
+external beauty which made Elvira a continual study for an artist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. -- THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+
+     To your eager prayer, the Voice
+     Makes awful answer, “Come to Me.”
+      Once for all now seal your choice
+     With Christ to tread the boisterous sea.
+                                         Keble.
+
+
+The Leukerbad section of the party had only three days’ start of the
+others, for Jock was not released till after a whole month’s course of
+the baths, and Armine’s state fluctuated so much that the journey would
+not have been sooner possible.
+
+It had been a trying time. While Dr. Medlicott thought he could not
+rouse Mrs. Brownlow to the sense of the little fellow’s precarious
+condition, deadly alarm lay couched in the bottom of her heart, only
+kept at bay by defiantly cheerful plans and sanguine talk.
+
+Then Jock was depressed, and at his age (and, alas! at many others)
+being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother
+and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods,
+seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and
+whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a muff as
+Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was
+more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions
+with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and
+cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the friendship only seemed cemented
+by this treatment, and this devoted slave evidently preferred being
+abused by Jock to being made much of by any one else.
+
+The regimen was very disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium
+of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account
+for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one
+guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on the
+moraine and ratified with Cecil. To no one else had he spoken, but all
+the more for his reserve did he feel himself bound by the sense of
+the shame and dishonour of falling back from vows made in the time of
+danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of
+a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could
+have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the
+monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been
+infinitely better tempered.
+
+For to poor Jock steadiness appeared renunciation of all “jest and
+youthful jollity,” and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might
+be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome
+and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in life seemed
+extinguished, and he would have preferred leaving Eton, where he must
+change his habits and amaze his associates. Indeed, he was between
+hoping and fearing that all this would there seem folly. But then he
+would break his word, the one thing that poor half-heathen Jock truly
+cared about.
+
+Meantime he was keeping it as best he knew how under the circumstances,
+by minding his prayers more than he had ever done before, trying to
+attend when part of the service was read on Sundays, and endeavouring to
+follow the Evelyn sabbatical code, but only succeeding in making himself
+more dreary and savage on Sunday than on any other day.
+
+By easy journeys they arrived at Engelberg early on a Friday afternoon,
+and found pleasant rooms in the large hotel, looking out in front on the
+grand old monastery, once the lord of half the Canton, and in the rear
+upon pine-woods, leading up to a snow-crowned summit. The delicious
+scent seemed to bring invigoration in at the windows.
+
+However, Jock and Armine were both tired enough to be sent to bed,
+if not to sleep, immediately after the--as yet, scantily filled table
+d’hote. The former was lying dreamily listening to the evening bells of
+the monastery, when Cecil came in, looking diffident and hesitating.
+
+“I say, Jock,” he began, “did you see that old clergyman at the table
+d’hote?”
+
+“Was there one?”
+
+“Yes; and there is to be a Celebration on Sunday.”
+
+“O! Then Armine can have his wish.”
+
+“Fordham has been getting the old cleric to talk to your mother about
+it.”
+
+Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before
+Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother Robert’s
+example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on that
+terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, “Do you mean to
+stay?” he answered rather snappishly, “I suppose so.”
+
+“I fancied,” said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, “that if we were
+together it would be a kind of seal to--”
+
+Jock actually forced back the words, “Don’t humbug,” which were not his
+own, but his ill-temper’s, and managed to reply--
+
+“Well, what?”
+
+“Being brothers in arms,” replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that
+touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full assent,
+letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.
+
+He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed his
+tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for the
+birds of the air. The outcome was--
+
+“I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is--I don’t know
+where.”
+
+Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil himself,
+would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was heartily
+glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock’s reformation his own security in
+the ways which he really preferred.
+
+Poor Jock, who, whatever he was, was real in all his ways, and could
+not lead a double life, as his friend too often did, read and tried to
+fulfil the injunctions of the book, but only became more confused and
+unhappy than ever. Yet still he held on, in a blind sort of way, to
+his resolution. He had undertaken to be good, he meant therefore
+to communicate, and he believed he repented, and would lead a new
+life--if--if he could bear it.
+
+His next confidence was--
+
+“I say, Cecil, can you get me some writing things? We--at least I--ought
+to write and tell my tutor that I am sorry about that supper.”
+
+“Well, he was rather a beast.”
+
+“I think,” said Jock, who had the most capacity for seeing things from
+other people’s point of view, “we did enough to put him in a wax. It was
+more through me than any one else, and I shall write at once, and get it
+off my mind before to-morrow.”
+
+“Very well. If you’ll write, I’ll sign,” said Cecil. “Mother said I
+ought when I saw her in London, but she didn’t order me. She said she
+left it to my proper feeling.”
+
+“And you hadn’t any?”
+
+“I was going to stick by you,” said Cecil, rather sulkily; on which Jock
+rewarded him with something sounding like--
+
+“What a donkey you can be!”
+
+However, with many writhings and gruntings the letter was indited, and
+Jock was as much wearied out as if he had taken a long walk, so that his
+mother feared that Engelberg was going to disagree with him. He had
+not energy enough to go out in the evening of Saturday to meet the new
+arrivals, but stayed with Armine, who was in a state of restless joy and
+excitement, marvelling at him, and provoking him by this surprise as if
+it were censure.
+
+With his forehead against the window, Armine watched and did his utmost
+to repress the eagerness that seemed to irritate his brother, and at
+last gave vent to an irrepressible hurrah.
+
+“There they are! Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is!
+Babie--holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with
+Fordham--and there’s Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren’t you
+coming down, Jock?”
+
+“Not I! I don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself before
+everybody!--I say--you’ll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut
+the door I say!”--shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his
+expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then
+shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed,
+“There! What an eternal brute I am!”
+
+A few moments more and the door was open again, and Cecil, with his arm
+round his sister, thrust her forwards, exclaiming--“Here he is, Syd.”
+
+Jock had recovered his gentlemanly manners enough to shake hands
+courteously, as well as to receive and return Babie’s kiss, when she
+and Armine staggered in together, reeling under their weight of delight.
+Janet kissed him too, and then, scanning both brothers, observed to her
+mother--
+
+“I think Lucas is the more altered of the two.” In which sentiment
+Elvira seemed to agree, for she put her hands behind her and exclaimed--
+
+“O Jock, you do look such a fright; I never knew how like Janet you
+were!”
+
+“You are letting every one know what a spiteful little Elf you can
+be,” returned Janet, indignantly. “Can’t you give poor Jock a kinder
+greeting?”
+
+Whereupon the Elf put on a cunning look of innocence and said--
+
+“I didn’t know it was unkind to say he was like you, Janet.”
+
+The Evelyn pair had gone--after this introduction of Jock and Sydney--to
+their own sitting-room, which opened out of that of the Brownlows, and
+the door was soon unclosed, for the two families meant to make up only
+one party. The two mothers seemed as if they had been friends of old
+standing, and Mrs. Evelyn was looking with delighted wonder at her
+eldest son, who had gained much in flesh and in vigour ever since Dr.
+Medlicott’s last and most successful prescription of a more pressing
+subject of interest than his own cough.
+
+She had an influence about her that repressed all discords in her
+presence, and the evening was a cheerful and happy one, leaving a
+soothing sense upon all.
+
+Then came the awakening to the sounds of the monastery bells, and in
+due time the small English congregation assembled, and one at least was
+trying to force an attention that had freely wandered ever before.
+
+The preacher was the chance visitor, an elderly clergyman with silvery
+hair. He spoke extempore from Job xxviii.
+
+
+          Where shall wisdom be found?
+          And where is the place of understanding?
+          Man knoweth not the price thereof;
+          Neither is it found in the land of the living.
+          The depth saith, “It is not in me:”
+           And the sea saith, “It is not with me.”
+           It cannot be gotten for gold.
+          Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
+
+
+What he said was unlike any sermon the young people had heard before.
+It began with a description of the alchemist’s labours, seeking for ever
+for the one great arcanum, falling by the way upon numerous precious
+discoveries, yet never finding the one secret which would have rendered
+all common things capable of being made of priceless value. He drew this
+quest into a parable of man’s search for the One Great Good, the wisdom
+that is the one thing necessary to give weight, worth, and value to the
+life which, without it, is vanity of vanities. Many a choice gift of
+thought, of science, of philosophy, of beauty, of poetry, has been
+brought to light in its time by the seekers, but in vain. All rang
+empty, hollow, and heartless, like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal,
+till the secret should be won. And it is no unattainable secret. It is
+the love of Christ that truly turneth all things into fine gold. One who
+has attained that love has the true transmuting and transforming power
+of making life golden, golden in brightness, in purity, in value, so as
+to be “a present for a mighty King.”
+
+Then followed a description of the glory and worth of the true, noble,
+faithful manhood of a “happy warrior,” ever going forward and carrying
+through achievements for the love of the Great Captain. Each in turn,
+the protector of the weak, the redresser of wrong, the patriot, the
+warrior, the scholar, the philosopher, the parent, the wife, the
+sister, or the child, the healthful or the sick, whoever has that one
+constraining secret, the love of Christ, has his service even here,
+whether active or passive, veritably golden, the fruit unto holiness,
+the end everlasting life.
+
+Perhaps it was the cluster of young faces that led the preacher thus to
+speak, and as he went on, he must have met the earnest and responsive
+eyes that are sure to animate a speaker, and the power and beauty of
+his words struck every one. To the Evelyns it was a new and beautiful
+allegory on a familiar idea. Janet was divided between discomfort
+at allusions reminding her of her secret, and on criticisms of the
+description of alchemy. Her mother’s heart beat as if she were hearing
+an echo of her husband’s thoughts about his Magnum Bonum. Little Armine
+was thrilled as, in the awe of drawing near to his first Communion, this
+golden thread of life was put into his hand. But it was Jock to whom
+that discourse came like a beam of light into a dark place. When upon
+the dreary vista of dull abnegation on which he had been dwelling for a
+month past, came this vision of the beauty, activity, victory, and glory
+of true manhood, as something attainable, his whole soul swelled and
+expanded with joyful enthusiasm. The future that he had embraced as lead
+had become changed to gold! Thus the whole ensuing service was to him a
+continuation of that blessed hopeful dedication of himself and all his
+powers. It was as if from being a monk, he had become a Red Cross Knight
+of the Hospital. Yet, after his soiled, spoiled, reckless boyhood, how
+could that grand manhood be attained?
+
+Later in the afternoon, when the denizens of the hotel had gone their
+several ways, some to look and listen at Benediction in the Convent
+church, some to climb through the pine-woods to the Alp, some to saunter
+and rest among the nearer trees, the clergyman, with his Greek Testament
+in his hand, was sitting on a seat under one of the trees, enjoying the
+calm of one of his few restful Sundays; when he heard a movement, and
+beheld the pale thin lad, who still walked so lame, who had been so
+silent at the table d’hote, and whose dark eyes had looked up with such
+intensity of interest, that he had more than once spoken to them.
+
+“You are tired,” said the clergyman, kindly making room for him.
+
+“Thanks,” said the boy, mechanically moving forward, but then pausing
+as he leant on his stick, and his eyes suddenly dimmed with tears as he
+said, “Oh, sir, if you would only tell me how to begin--”
+
+“Begin what?” said the old man, holding out his hand.
+
+“To turn it to gold,” said Jock. “Can I, after being the mad fool I’ve
+been?”
+
+They talked for more than an hour; even till Dr. Medlicott, coming down
+from the Alp, laid his hand on Jock’s shoulder, and told him the evening
+chill was coming, and he must sit still no longer. And when the boy
+looked up, the restless weary distress of his face was gone.
+
+Jock never saw that old clergyman again, nor heard of him, unless it
+were his death that he read of in the paper six months later. But
+he never heard the name of Engelberg without an echo of the parting
+benediction, and feeling that to him it had indeed been an Angel
+mountain.
+
+This had been a happy day to several others. Cecil, after ten minutes
+with his mother, which filled her with hope and thankfulness, had gone
+to show his sister the charms of the place, and Armine and Babie, on
+a sheltered seat, were free to pour out their hearts to one another,
+ranging from the heights of pure childish wisdom to its depths of
+blissful ignorance and playful folly, as they talked over the past and
+the future.
+
+Armine knew there was no chance of an immediate and entire recovery for
+him, and this was a severe stroke to Babie, who was quite unprepared.
+And, as her face began to draw up with tears near the surface, he hugged
+her close, and consolingly whispered that now they would be together
+always, he should not have to go away from his own dear Babie
+Bunting, and there was a little kissing match, ending by Babie saying,
+disconsolately, “But you did like Eton so, and you were going to get the
+Newcastle and the Prince Consort’s prize, and to be in the eleven and
+all--and you were so sure of a high remove! Oh, dear!” and she let her
+head drop on his shoulder, and was almost crying again.
+
+“Don’t, don’t, Babie! or you’ll make me as bad again,” said Armine. “It
+does come over me now and then, and I wish I had never known what it was
+to be strong and jolly, and to expect to do all sorts of things.”
+
+“I shall always be wishing it,” said Babie.
+
+“No, you are not to cry! You would be more sorry if I was dead, and not
+here at all, Babie; and you have got to thank God for that.”
+
+“I do--I have! I’ve done it ever since we got Johnny’s dreadful
+letter. Oh, yes, Armine, I’ll try not to mind, for perhaps if we aren’t
+thankful, I mayn’t keep you at all,” said poor Babie, with her arms
+round her treasure. “But are you quite sure, Armine? Couldn’t Dr. Lucas
+get you quite well? You see this Dr. Medlicott is very young,” added the
+small maiden sapiently.
+
+“Young doctors are all the go. Dr. Lucas said so when mother wrote to
+ask if she had better bring me home for advice,” said Armine. “He knows
+all about Dr. Medlicott, and said he was first-rate, and they’ve been
+writing to each other about me. The doctor stethoscoped me all over, and
+then he did a map of my lungs, Cecil said, to send in his letter.”
+
+“Oh!” gasped Babie, “didn’t it frighten you?”
+
+“I wanted to know, for I saw mother was in a way. She did talk and whisk
+about so fast, and made such a fuss, that I thought I must be much worse
+than I knew. So I told Dr. Medlicott I wished he would tell me right out
+if I was going to die, in time to see you, and then I shouldn’t mind.
+So he said not now, and he thought I should get over it in the end, but
+that most likely I should have a long time, years perhaps, of being very
+careful. And when I asked if I should be able to go back to Eton, he
+said he hardly expected it; and that he believed it was kinder to let me
+know at once than let me be straining and hoping on.”
+
+“Was it?” said Babie.
+
+“I thought not,” said Armine, “when I shut my eyes and the
+playing-fields and the trees and the river stood up before me. I thought
+if I could have hoped ever so little, it would have been nice. And
+then to think of never being able to run, or row, or stay out late, and
+always to be bothering about one’s stockings and wraps, and making a
+miserable muff of oneself just to keep in a bit of uncomfortable life,
+and being a nuisance to everybody.”
+
+Babie fairly shrieked and sobbed her protest that he could never be a
+nuisance to her or mother.
+
+“You are Babie, and mother is mother, I know that; but it did seem such
+a long burthen and bore, and when--oh, Babie--don’t you know--”
+
+“How we always thought you would go on and be something great, and do
+something great, like Bishop Selwyn, or like that Mr. Denison that Miss
+Ogilvie has a book about,” said Babie. “But you will get well and do it
+when you are a man, Armie! Didn’t you think about it when you heard all
+about the golden life in the sermon to-day?” I thought, “That’s going to
+be Armie’s life,” and I looked at you, but you were looking down. Were
+you thinking how it was all spoilt, Armie, poor dear Armie. For perhaps
+it isn’t.”
+
+“No, I know nobody can spoil it but myself,” said Armine. “And you know
+he said that one might make weakliness and sickness just as golden, by
+that great Love, as being up and doing. I was going to tell you, Babie,
+I was horridly wretched and dismal one day at Leukerbad when I thought
+mother and all were out of the way--gone out driving, I believe--and
+then Fordham came in. He had stayed in, I do believe, on purpose--”
+
+“But, but,” said Babie, not so much impressed as her brother wished;
+“isn’t he rather a spoon? Johnny said he ought to have been a girl.”
+
+“I didn’t think Johnny was such a stupid,” said Armine, “I only know
+he has been no end of a comfort to me, though he says he only wants to
+hinder me from getting like him.”
+
+“Don’t then,” said Babie, “though I don’t understand. I thought you were
+so fond of him.”
+
+“So must you be,” said Armine; “I never got on with anybody so well. He
+knows just how it is! He says if God gives one such a life, He will help
+one to find out the way to make the best of it for oneself and other
+people, and to bear to see other people doing what one can’t, and we are
+to help one another. Oh, Babie! you must like Fordham!”
+
+“I must if you do!” said Babie. “But he is awfully old for a friend for
+you, Armie.”
+
+“He is nineteen,” said Armine, “but people get more and more of the same
+age as they grow older. And he likes all our books, and more too, Babie.
+He had such a delicious book of French letters, that he lent me, with
+things in them that were just what I wanted. If we are to be abroad all
+the winter, he will get his mother to go wherever we do. Suppose we went
+to the Holy Land, Babie!”
+
+“Oh! then we could find Jotapata! Oh, no,” she added, humbly, “I
+promised Miss Ogilvie not to talk of Jotapata on a Sunday.”
+
+“And going to the Holy Land only to look for it would be much the same
+thing,” said Armine. “Besides, I expect it is up among the Druses, where
+one can’t go.”
+
+“Armie,” in the tone of a great confession, “I’ve told Sydney all about
+it. Have you told Lord Fordham?”
+
+“No,” said Armine, who was less exclusively devoted to the great
+romance. “I wonder whether he would read it?”
+
+“I’ve brought it. Nineteen copybooks and a dozen blank ones, though it
+was so hard to make Delrio pack them up.”
+
+“Hurrah for the new ones! We did so want some for the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’
+the paper at Leukerbad was so bad. You should hear the verses the
+Doctor wrote on the mud baths. They are as stunning as ‘Fly Leaves.’ Mr.
+Editor, I say,” as Lord Fordham’s tall figure strode towards them,
+“she has brought out a dozen clean copybooks. Isn’t that a joy for the
+‘Joy’?”
+
+“Had you no other intentions for them?” said Fordham, detecting
+something of disappointment in Babie’s face. “You surely were not going
+to write exercises in them?”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Babie, “only--”
+
+“She can’t mention it on Sunday,” said Armine, a little wickedly. “It’s
+a wonderful long story about the Crusaders.”
+
+“And,” explained Babie, “our governess said we--that is I--thought of
+nothing else, and made the Lessons at Church and everything else apply
+to it, so she made me resolve to say nothing about it on Sunday.”
+
+“And she has brought out nineteen copybooks full of it,” added Armine.
+
+“Yes,” said Babie, “but the little speckled ones are very small, and
+have half the leaves torn out, and we used to write larger when we
+began. I think,” she added, with the humility of an aspirant contributor
+towards the editor of a popular magazine, “if Lord Fordham would be so
+kind as to look at it, Armie thought it might do what people call, I
+believe, supplying the serial element of fiction, and I should be happy
+to copy it out for each number, if I write well enough.”
+
+The word “happy,” was so genuine, and the speech so comical, that the
+Editor had much ado to keep his countenance as he gave considerable
+hopes that the serial element should be thus supplied in the MS.
+magazine.
+
+Meantime, the two mothers were walking about and resting together,
+keeping their young people in some degree in view, and discussing at
+first the subject most on their minds, their sons’ bodily health, and
+the past danger, for which Caroline found a deeply sympathetic listener,
+and one who took a hopeful view of Armine.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn was indeed naturally disposed to augur well whenever the
+complaint was not hereditary, and she was besides in excellent spirits
+at the very visible progress of both her sons, the one in physical,
+the other in moral health, and she could not but attribute both to the
+companionship that she had been so anxious to prevent. She had never
+seen Duke look so well, nor seem so free from languor and indifference
+since he was a mere child, and all seemed due to his devotion to Armine;
+while as to Cecil, he seemed to have a new spring of improvement, which
+he ascribed altogether to his friend.
+
+“It is strange to me to hear this of my poor Jock,” said Caroline,
+“always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy.
+His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don’t you think an
+uncle’s strong hand is much worse than any mother’s weakness?”
+
+“Not than her weakness,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “It is her love, I think,
+that you mean. There are some boys with whom strong hands are vain, but
+who will guide themselves for love, and that we mothers are surely the
+ones to infuse.”
+
+“My boys are affectionate enough, dear fellows,” said Caroline proudly,
+forgetting her sore disappointment that neither Allen nor Robert had
+chosen to come to her help.
+
+“I did not only mean love of oneself,” said Mrs. Evelyn, gently. “I was
+thinking of the fine gold we heard of this morning. When our boys once
+have found that secret, the chief of our work is done.”
+
+“Ah! and I never understood how to give them that,” said Caroline. “We
+have been all astray ever since their father left us.”
+
+“Do you know,” said Mrs. Evelyn, with a certain sweet shyness, “I can’t
+help thinking that your dear Lucas found that gold among the stones of
+the moraine, and will help my poor weak Cecil to keep a fast hold of
+it.”
+
+Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion was confirmed, when a few days later came the
+answer to Jock’s letter to his tutor, pleasing and touching both friends
+so much that each showed it to his mother. Another important piece of
+intelligence came in a letter from John to his cousin, namely that the
+present Captain of the house, with two or three more “fellows,” were
+leaving Eton at the Midsummer holidays, and that his tutor had been
+talking to him about becoming Captain.
+
+Jock and Cecil greatly rejoiced, for the departing Captain had been a
+youth whose incapacity for government had been much better known to his
+subordinates than to his master, and the other two had been the special
+tempters and evil geniuses of the house, those who above all had set
+themselves to make obedience and religion seem contemptible, and vice
+daring and manly.
+
+“I should have hated the notion of being Captain,” wrote John, “if those
+impracticable fellows had stayed on, and if I did not feel sure of you
+and Evelyn. You are such a fellow for getting hold of the others, but
+with you two at my back, I really think the house may get a different
+tone into it.”
+
+“And every one told us what an excellent character it had,” said Mrs.
+Evelyn, when the letter, through a chain of strict confidence, came
+round to her, the boys little knowing how much it did to decide their
+continuance together, and at Eton. Sir James had never been willing that
+Cecil should be taken away, and he had become as sensible as any of the
+rest to the Brownlow charm.
+
+That was a very happy time in the pine-woods and the Alp. The whole
+of the nineteen copy books were actually read by Babie to Sydney and
+Armine; and Lord Fordham, over his sketches, submitted to hear a good
+deal. He told his mother that the story was the most diverting thing
+he had ever heard, with its queer mixture of childish simplicity and
+borrowed romance, of natural poetry and of infantine absurdity, of
+extraordinary knowledge and equally comical ignorance, of originality
+and imitation, so that his great difficulty had been not to laugh in the
+wrong place, when Babie had tears in her eyes at the heights of pathos
+and sublimity, and Sydney was shedding them for company. It was funny to
+come to places where Armine’s slightly superior age and knowledge of the
+world began to tell, and when he corrected and criticised, or laughed,
+with appeals to his elder friend. Babie was so perfectly good-humoured
+about the sacrifice of her pet passages, and even of her dozen
+copybooks, that the editor of the “Traveller’s Joy” could not help
+encouraging the admission of “Jotapata” into the magazine, in spite of
+the remonstrances of the rest of his public, who declared it was
+merely making the numbers a great deal heavier for postage, and all for
+nothing.
+
+The magazine was well named, for it was a great resource. There were
+illustrations of all kinds, from Lord Fordham’s careful watercolours,
+and Mrs. Brownlow’s graceful figures or etchings, to the doctor’s clever
+caricatures and grotesque outlines, and the contributions were equally
+miscellaneous. There were descriptions of scenery, fragmentary notes
+of history and science, records more or less veracious or absurd of
+personal adventures, and conversations, and advertisements, such as--
+
+
+     Stolen or strayed.--A parasol, white above, black
+     below, minus a ring, with an ivory loop handle,
+     and one broken whalebone.  Whoever will bring
+     the same to the Senora Donna Elvira de Menella,
+     will he handsomely rewarded with a smile or a
+     scowl, according to her mood.
+
+     Lost.--On the walk from the Alp, of inestimable
+     value to the owner, and none to any one else,
+     an Idea, one of the very few originated by the
+     Honble. C. F. Evelyn.
+
+
+Small wit went a good way, and personalities were by no means
+prohibited, since the editor could be trusted to exercise a safe
+discretion in the riddles, acrostics, and anagrams deposited in the
+bag at his door; and immense was the excitement when the numbers were
+produced, with a pleasing irregularity as to time, depending on when
+they became bulky enough to look respectable, and not too thick to be
+sewn up comfortably by the great Reeves, who did not mind turning his
+hand to anything when he saw his lordship so merry.
+
+The only person who took no interest in the “Traveller’s Joy” was
+Janet, who could not think how reasonable people could endure such
+nonsense. Her first affront had been taken at a most absurd description
+which Jock had illustrated by a fancy caricature of “The Fox and the
+Crow,” “Woman’s Progress,” in which “Mr. Hermann Dowsterswivel” was
+represented as haranguing by turns with her on the steamer, and, during
+her discourse, quietly secreting her bag. It was such wild fun that Lord
+Fordham never dreamt of its being an affront, nor perhaps would it have
+been, if Dr. Medlicott would have chopped logic, science, and philosophy
+with her in the way she thought her due from the only man who could
+be supposed to approach her in intellect. He however took to chaff. He
+would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen
+and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest,
+and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows
+with Miolner for three flaps of a rat’s tail.
+
+The magazine contained a series of notes on the nursery rhymes, where
+the “Song of Sixpence” was proved to be a solar myth. The pocketful of
+rye was the yield of the earth, and the twenty-four blackbirds sang at
+sunrise while the king counted out the golden drops of the rain, and the
+queen ate the produce while the maid’s performance in the garden was,
+beyond all doubt, symbolic of the clouds suddenly broken in upon by the
+lightning!
+
+Moreover the man of Thessaly was beautifully illustrated, blinding
+himself by jumping into the prickly bush of science, where each
+gooseberry was labelled with some pseudo study. When he saw his eyes
+were out, he stood wondrously gazing after them with his sockets
+while they returned a ludicrous stare from the points of thorns, like
+lobsters. In his final leap deeper into truth, he scratched them in
+again, and walked off, in a crown of laurels, triumphant.
+
+Janet was none the less disposed to leap into her special
+gooseberry-bush; and her importunity prevailed, so that before Dr.
+Medlicott returned to England he escorted her and her mother to Zurich.
+Then after full inquiries it was decided that she should have her will,
+and follow out her medical course of study, provided she could find a
+satisfactory person to board with.
+
+She proposed, and her mother consented, that the two Miss Rays should be
+her chaperons, of course with liberal payment. Nita could carry on her
+studies in art, and made the plan agreeable to Janet, while old Miss
+Ray’s eyes, which had begun to suffer from the copying, would have a
+rest, and Mrs. Brownlow had as much confidence in her as in any one
+Janet would endure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. -- THE LAND OF AFTERNOON.
+
+
+
+     And all at once they sang, “Our island home
+     Is far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam.”
+                                               Tennyson.
+
+
+We must pass over three more years and a half, and take up the scene in
+the cloistered court of a Moorish house in Algeria, adapted to European
+habits. The slender columns supporting the horse-shoe arches were
+trained with crimson passion-flower and bougainvillia, while orange
+and gardenia blossom scented the air, and in the midst of a pavement of
+mosaic marbles was a fountain, tinkling coolness to the air which was
+already heated enough to make it impossible to cross the court without
+protection from the sunshine even at nine o’clock in the morning.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow had a black lace veil thrown over her head; and both
+she and the clergyman with her, in muslin-veiled hat, had large white
+sunshades.
+
+“Little did we think where we should meet again, and why, Mr. Ogilvie.
+Do you feel as if you had got into ‘Tales of the Alhambra,’ or into the
+‘Tempest’?”
+
+“I hope not to continue in the ‘Tempest,’ at any rate, after this Algier
+wedding.”
+
+“Though no doubt you feel, as I do, that the world goes very like a game
+at consequences. Who would ever have put together The Vicar of Benneton
+and Mary Ogilvie in the amphitheatre at Constantina, eating lion-steaks.
+Consequence was, an engaged ring. What the world said, ‘Who would have
+thought it?’”
+
+“The world in my person should say you have been Mary’s kindest friend,
+Mrs. Brownlow. Little did I think, when I persuaded Charles Morgan to
+give himself six months’ rest from his parish by reading with Armine,
+that this was to be the end of it, though I am sure there is not a man
+in the world to whom I am so glad to give my sister.”
+
+“And is it not delightful to see dear old Mary? She looks younger now
+than ever she did in her whole life, and has broken out of all her
+primmy governessy crust. Oh! it has been such fun to watch it, so
+entirely unconscious as both of them were. Mrs. Evelyn and I gloated
+over it together, all the more that the children had not a suspicion.
+I don’t think Babie and Sydney realise any one being in love nearer
+our own times than ‘Waverley’ at the very latest. They received the
+intelligence quite as a shock. Allen said, as if they had heard that the
+Greek lexicon was engaged to the French grammar! It will be their first
+bridesmaid experience.”
+
+“Did they miss the wedding at Kenminster?”
+
+“Yes; Jessie’s old General chose to marry her in the depth of winter,
+when we could not think of going home. You know I have not been at
+Belforest for four years.”
+
+“Four years! I suppose I knew, but I did not realise it.”
+
+“Yes. You know there was the first summer, when, just as we got back to
+London after our Italian winter, poor Armie had such a dreadful attack
+on the lungs, that Dr. Medlicott said he was in more danger than when he
+was at Schwarenbach; and, as soon as he could move, we had to take him
+to Bournemouth, to get strength for going to the Riviera. I can say now
+that I never did expect to bring him back again! But I am thankful to
+say he has been getting stronger ever since, and has scarcely had a real
+drawback.”
+
+“Yes, I was astonished to see him looking so well. He would scarcely
+give a stranger the impression of being delicate.”
+
+“They told me last summer in London that the damage to the lungs had
+been quite outgrown, and that he would only need moderate care for the
+future. Indeed, we should have stayed at home this year, but last summer
+twelvemonth there was a fever, and that set on foot a perquisition into
+our drains at Belforest, and it was satisfactorily proved that we ought
+by good rights to have been all dead of typhoid long ago. So we turned
+the workmen in, and they could not of course be got out again. And then
+Allen fell in love with parquet and tiles, and I was weak enough to
+think it a good opportunity when all the floors were up. But when a man
+of taste takes to originality, there’s no end of it. Everything has had
+to be made on purpose, and certain little tiles five times over; for
+when they did come out the right shape, they were of a colour that Allen
+pronounced utter demoralisation. However, we are quite determined to
+get home this summer, and you and Mary must meet there, and show old
+Kenminster to Mr. Morgan. Ah! here she comes, and I shall leave you
+to enjoy this lucid interval of her while Mr. Morgan is doing his last
+lessons with the children.”
+
+“How exactly like herself!” exclaimed Mr. Ogilvie, as Mrs. Brownlow
+vanished under one of the arches.
+
+“Like! yes; but much more, much better,” said Mary, eagerly.
+
+“Ah, do you remember when you told me coming to her was an experiment,
+and you thought it might be better for the old friendship if you did not
+accept the situation?”
+
+“You triumph at last, David; but I can confess now that for the first
+four years I held to that opinion, and felt that my poor Carey and I
+could have loved each other better if our relative situations had been
+different, and we had not seen so much of one another. My life used to
+seem to me half-unspoken remonstrance, half-truckling compliance, and
+nothing but our mutual loyalty to old times, and dear little Babie’s
+affection, could have borne us through.”
+
+“And her extraordinary sweetness and humility, Mary.”
+
+“Yes, I allow that. Very few employers would have treated me as she did,
+knowing how I regretted much that went on in her household. However,
+when I met her at Pontresina, after the boys’ terrible adventure in
+Switzerland, there was an indefinable change. I cannot tell whether it
+is owing to the constant being with such a boy as Armine, while he was
+for more than a year between life and death, or whether it was from the
+influence of living with Mrs. Evelyn; but she has certainly ever since
+had the one thing that was wanting to all her sweetness and charm.”
+
+“I never thought so!”
+
+“No; but you were never a fair judge. I think she has owed unspeakably
+much to Mrs. Evelyn, who, so far as I can see, is the first person
+who, at any rate since the break-up of the original home, made
+conscientiousness, or indeed religion, appear winning to her, neither
+stiff, nor censorious, nor goody.”
+
+“Is not this close combination of the two families rather odd?”
+
+“I don’t think it is. Poor Lord Fordham is very fond of Armine, and he
+hates the being driven abroad every winter so much, that the meeting
+Armine is the only pleasant ingredient. And it has been convenient for
+Sydney to join our school-room party. I was very glad also, that these
+last two summers, there have been visits at Fordham. Staying there has
+given Mrs. Brownlow and the younger ones some insight into what the life
+at Belforest might be, but never has been; and they will not be kept out
+of it any longer.”
+
+“Then they are going home!”
+
+“After the London season.”
+
+“Why, little Barbara is surely not coming out yet?”
+
+“No; but Elvira is.”
+
+“Ah! by the bye, was I not told that I was to have two weddings?”
+
+“Allen wished it, but the Elf won’t hear of it. She says she had no
+notion of turning into a stupid old married woman before she has had any
+fun.”
+
+“Does she care for him?”
+
+“I don’t think she is capable of caring for any one much. I don’t know
+whether she may ever soften with age; but--”
+
+“Say it, Mary--out with it.”
+
+“I never saw such a heartless little butterfly! She did not care a rush
+when her good old grandfather died, and I don’t believe she has one
+fraction more love for Mrs. Brownlow, or Allen, or anybody else. The
+best thing I can see is that she is too young to perceive the prudence
+of securing Allen; but perhaps that is only frivolity, and he, poor
+fellow, is so devoted to her, that it is quite provoking to see how she
+trifles with and torments him.”
+
+“Isn’t it rather good for the great Mr. Brownlow? Not much besides has
+contradicted him, I should imagine.”
+
+“His mother thinks that it is the perpetual restlessness in which Elvira
+keeps him that renders him so unsettled, and that if they were once
+married he would have some peace of mind, and be able to begin life in
+earnest. But to hurry on the marriage is such a fearful risk, with such
+a creature as that sprite, that she has persuaded him to wait, and let
+the child be satisfied by this season in London, that she may not think
+they are cheating her of her young lady life.”
+
+“It is on the cards, I suppose, that she might see some one whom she
+preferred to him?”
+
+“Which might, in some aspects of the matter, be the best thing possible;
+but Mrs. Brownlow would have many conscientious scruples about the
+property, and Allen would be in utter despair.”
+
+“Though, of course, all this would be far better than exposing that
+tropical-natured Spanish butterfly to meeting the subject of a grand
+passion too late,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“Yes; of course that must be in his mother’s mind, though I don’t
+suppose she expresses it even to herself. Miss Evelyn is coming out too,
+and is to be presented, which reconciles the younger ones to putting off
+all their schemes for working at Belforest, after the true Fordham and
+story-book fashion. Besides, Mrs. Brownlow always feels that she has a
+duty towards Elvira, even apart from Allen.”
+
+“And what do you think of Allen? He seems very pleasant and
+gentlemanly.”
+
+“That’s just what he is! He has always been as agreeable and nice as
+possible all these eight years that I have been with them, and has
+treated me entirely as his mother’s old friend. I can’t help liking
+Allen very much, and wondering what he would have been if--if he had
+had to work for his living--or if Elvira had not been such a little
+tormenting goose--or if, all manner of ifs--indeed; but they all resolve
+themselves into one question if there be much stuff in him!”
+
+“If not, he is the only one of the family without, except, perhaps,
+Jock.”
+
+“Oh! if you saw Jock now, you would not doubt that there’s plenty of
+substance in him! He has been a very different person ever since his
+illness in Switzerland, as full of life and fun as ever, but thoroughly
+in earnest about doing right. He had an immense number of marks for the
+army examination, and seems by all accounts to be keeping up to regular
+work, now that it is more voluntary.”
+
+“Is he not rather wasted on the Guards!”
+
+“Well, that was Sir James Evelyn’s doing. They are glad enough to have
+him there to look after his friend, Mr. Evelyn, and it was one of the
+cases where the decision for life has to be made before the youth is old
+enough to understand his full capabilities. I expect Lucas, to give him
+his right name, will do something distinguished yet, perhaps be a great
+General; and I hope Sir James has interest enough to get him employment
+before he has eaten his heart out on drill and parade. Now that Armine’s
+health is coming round, I do leave Caroline very happy about the younger
+half of her family.”
+
+“And the elder half?”
+
+“Well! I sometimes think that there must have been something defective
+in the management of that excellent doctor and his mother, as if they
+had never taught the children proper loyal respect for her! The three
+younger ones have it all right, and the two elder sons are as fond of
+her as possible; but she never had any authority over those three from
+the first. Only Allen is too gentle and has too much good taste to show
+it; while as to the other two, Bobus’s contempt is of a kindly, filial,
+petting description; Janet’s, a nasty, defiant, overt disregard.”
+
+“Impossible! They could not dare to despise her.”
+
+“They do, for the very things that are best in her; and so far I think
+the Evelyn intercourse has been unlucky, since they ascribe her greater
+religiousness to what it suits their democratic notions to scorn. Not
+that there is much to complain of in Bobus’s manner when we do see him.
+He only uses little stings of satire, chiefly about Lord Fordham. I
+don’t think he would knowingly pain his mother if he could help it; and
+for that reason there is a reserve between them.”
+
+“He is eating his terms in the Temple, is he not? And Janet? Is she
+studying medicine still? Does she mean to practise?”
+
+“I can’t make out. She has only been with us twice in these four years,
+once at Sorrento and once in London; but she has a very active dislike
+to Mrs. Evelyn, and vexes her mother by making no secret of it. I
+believe she is to take her degree at Zurich this spring, but I don’t
+think she means to practise. She is too well off for the drudgery, but
+she is bent on making researches of some kind, and I think I heard of
+some plan of her going to attend lectures, to which her degree may admit
+her, but I am not sure where. The two Miss Rays seem to be happy to
+escort her anywhere, and that is a sort of comfort to Mrs. Brownlow.
+Miss Ray keeps us informed of their comings and goings, for Janet seldom
+deigns to write.”
+
+“It is very strange that there should be such alienation, and from such
+a mother.”
+
+“The two characters are as unlike as can be, but I have always thought
+there must be some cause that no one but Janet herself could perhaps
+explain. I cannot help thinking that she has some definite purpose in
+this study of medicine; for I do not think it is for the sake either of
+the emancipation of women or of general philanthropy. They must be an
+odd party. Miss Ray attends to the household matters, mends the clothes,
+and pays the bills. Nita sketches, reads at the libraries, and talks at
+the table d’hote, like a strong-minded woman, as she is; and Janet goes
+her own way. Bobus looked in on them once and described them to us with
+great gusto.”
+
+There Mary’s face became illuminated as a step approached, and a
+gentleman with grizzled hair, and a thoughtful, gentle face came out,
+and sat down on her other side.
+
+He had been college tutor to her brother, though not much older, and had
+stayed on at Oxford, till two years back he had taken a much neglected
+living. His health had broken down under the severe work of organising,
+and he had accepted the easy task of reading with Armine Brownlow for
+the winter in a perfect climate, as a welcome mode of recruiting his
+strength. He had truly recruited it in an unexpected manner, and was
+about to take home with him one who would prove such a helpmeet as would
+lighten all the troubles and difficulties that had weighed so heavily on
+him, and remove some of them entirely.
+
+So he came out and testified to the remarkable ability and zeal he had
+found in his pupil, and likewise to the spirit of industry which had
+prevented the desultory life of travelling and ill-health from having
+made him nearly so much behindhand as might have been expected. If he
+only had health to work steadily for the next two years, he would be
+quite as well prepared to matriculate at the university as all but the
+very foremost scholars from the public schools. Mr. Morgan thought his
+intellect equal to that of his brother Robert, who had taken a double
+first-class, but of a finer order, being open to those poetical
+instincts which went for nothing with the materialistic Bobus.
+
+Wherewith the friends fell into conversation more immediately
+interesting to themselves, while at the other end of the court,
+sheltered by a great orange-tree, a committee of the “Traveller’s Joy”
+ was held.
+
+For that serial still survived, though it could never be called a
+periodical, since it was an intermittent, and sometimes came out very
+rapidly, sometimes with intervals of many months; but it was always sent
+to, and greatly relished by, the absent members of the original party,
+at first at Eton, and later, two in their barracks, and one at his
+college at Oxford, whither, to his great satisfaction, he had gone by
+means of a well-won scholarship, not at his aunt’s expense.
+
+Jotapata’s lengthy romance had died a natural death in the winter that
+had been spent between Egypt and Palestine. So far from picking up ideas
+from it there, Babie, in the actual sight of Mount Hermon’s white
+crown, had begged not to be put in mind of such nonsense, and had never
+recurred to it; but the wells of fancy had never been dried, and the
+young people were happily putting together their bits of journal, their
+bits of history, the description of the great amphitheatre, a poem of
+Babie’s on St. Louis’s death, a spirited translation in Scott-like metre
+of Armine’s of the opening of the AEneid, also one from the French, by
+Sydney, on Arab customs, and all Lord Fordham had been able to collect
+about Hippo, also “The Single Eye,” by Allen, and “Marco’s Felucca,” by
+Armine and Babie in partnership, and a fair proportion of drollery.
+
+“There was a space left for the wedding, the greatest event the
+‘Traveller’s Joy’ had ever had on record,” said Sydney, as she touched
+up the etching at the top of her paper, sitting on a low stool by a low
+mother-of-pearl inlaid Eastern table.
+
+“The greatest and the last,” chimed in Babie, as she worked away at the
+lace she was finishing for the bride.
+
+“I don’t see why it should be the last of the poor old ‘Joy,’” said Lord
+Fordham, sorting the MSS. which were scattered round him on the ground.
+
+“Well, somehow I feel as if we had come to the end of a division of our
+lives,” returned Babie.
+
+“Having done with swaddling bands, eh, Infanta?” said Lord Fordham,
+while Armine hastily sketched in pen and ink, Babie, with her hair
+flying and swaddling bands off, executing a war-dance. She did not like
+it.
+
+“For shame, Armine! Don’t you know how dreadful it is to lose dear Miss
+Ogilvie?”
+
+“Of course, Babie,” said her brother, “I didn’t think you were such a
+Babie as not to know that things go by contraries.”
+
+“It is too tender a spot for irony, Armie,” said Lord Fordham.
+
+“Well,” said Armine, “I shall be obliged to do something outrageous
+presently, so look out!”
+
+“Not really!” said Sydney.
+
+“Yes, really,” said Babie, recovering; “I see what he means. He would
+like to do anything rather than sit and think that this is the last time
+we shall all be together again in this way.”
+
+“I’m sure I don’t see why we should not,” said Sydney. “To say nothing
+of meetings in England; Duke and Armine have only to cough three times
+in October, and we should all go off together again, and be as jolly as
+ever.”
+
+“I don’t mean to cough,” said Armine, gravely, “I’ve wasted enough of my
+life already.”
+
+“In our company, eh?” said Sydney, “or are you to be taken by
+contraries?”
+
+“No,” said Armine. “One has duties, and lotus-eating is uncommonly nice,
+but it won’t do to go on for ever. I wouldn’t have given in to it this
+winter if Allen hadn’t _floored_ us.”
+
+“And then when you thought I had got a tutor, and should do some good
+with him,” chimed in Babie, “he must needs go and fall in love and spoil
+our Miss Ogilvie.”
+
+The disgust with which she uttered the words was so comic, that all the
+others burst out laughing.
+
+And Fordham said--
+
+“The Land of Afternoon was too strong for him. Shall you really pine
+much for Miss Ogilvie, Infanta?”
+
+“I shall miss her dreadfully,” said Babie, “and I think it is very
+stupid of her to leave mother, whom she has known all her life, and all
+of us, for a strange man she never saw till four months ago.”
+
+“Oh, Babie, you to be the author of a chivalrous romance!” said Fordham.
+
+“I was young and silly then,” said the young lady, who was within a
+month of sixteen.
+
+“And all your romances are to be henceforth without love,” said Armine.
+
+“I think they would be much more sensible,” said Babie. “Why do you all
+laugh so? Don’t you see how stupid poor Allen always is? And it can even
+spoil Miss Ogilvie, and make her inattentive.”
+
+“Poor Allen,” echoed one or two voices, in the same low tone, for as
+they peeped out beyond the orange-tree, Allen might be seen, extended on
+a many-coloured rug, in an exceedingly deplorable attitude.
+
+“O yes,” said Sydney; “but if one has such a--such a--such an object as
+that, one must expect to be stupid and miserable sometimes!”
+
+“She must have been worrying him again,” said Babie.
+
+“O yes, didn’t you see?” said Armine. “No, I remember you didn’t go out
+riding early to-day.”
+
+“No, I was finishing Miss Ogilvie’s wedding lace.”
+
+“Well, that French captain, that Elfie went on with at the commandant’s
+ball, came riding up in full splendour, and trotted alongside of her,
+chattering away, she bowing and smiling, and playing off all her airs,
+and at last letting him give her a great white flower. Didn’t you see
+it in her breast at breakfast? Poor Allen was looking as if he had eaten
+wormwood all the time when he was forced to fall back upon me, and I
+suppose he has been having it out with her and has got the worst of it.”
+
+“O, it is that, is it?” said Lord Fordham; “I thought she wanted to
+pique Allen, she was so empressee with me.”
+
+“If people will be so foolish as to care for a pretty face,” sagely said
+Sydney.
+
+“You know it is not only that,” said Babie; “Allen is bound in honour to
+marry Elvira, to repair the great injustice. It is a great pity she will
+not marry him now at once, but I think she is afraid, because then, you
+know, she would get to have a soul, like Undine, and she doesn’t want
+one yet.”
+
+“That’s a new view of the case,” said Lord Fordham in his peculiar lazy
+manner, “and taken allegorically it may be the true one.”
+
+“But one would like to have a soul,” said Sydney.
+
+“I’m not sure,” said Babie, with a great look of awe. “One would know it
+was best, but it would be very tremendous to feel all sorts of thoughts
+and perceptions swelling up in one.”
+
+“If that is the soul,” said Armine.
+
+“Which is the soul?” said Babie, “our understanding, or our feelings, or
+both?”
+
+“Both,” said Sydney, undoubtingly.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Babie. “Poor little Chico has double the heart of
+his mistress.”
+
+“It is quite true,” said Fordham. “We may share intellect with demons,
+but we do share what is called heart with animals.”
+
+“I think good animals have a sort of soul,” observed Armine.
+
+“And of course, Elvira has a soul,” said Sydney, who was getting
+bewildered.
+
+“Theologically speaking--yes,” said Armine, making them all laugh, “and
+I suppose Undine hadn’t. But it was sense and heart that was wanting.”
+
+“The heart would bring the sense,” said Lord Fordham, “and so we have
+come round to the Infanta’s first assertion that the young lady shrinks
+from the awakening.”
+
+“I’ll tell you what she really does care for,” said Babie, “and what I
+believe would waken up her soul much better than marrying poor Allen.”
+
+The announcement was so extraordinary that they all turned their heads
+to listen.
+
+“Her old black nurse at San Ildefonso,” said Babie. “I believe going
+back there would do her all the good in the world.”
+
+“There’s something in that notion,” said Armine. “She is always
+better-tempered in a hot country.”
+
+“Yes,” added Babie, “and you didn’t see her when somebody advised our
+trying the West Indies for the winter. Her eyes gleamed, and she panted,
+and I didn’t know what she was going to do. I told mother at night, but
+she said she was afraid of going there, because of the yellow fever, and
+that San Ildefonso had been made a coaling-station by the Americans, so
+it would only disappoint her. But Elfie looked--I never saw any one look
+as she did--fit to kill some one when she found it was given up, and she
+did not get over it for ever so long.”
+
+“Take care; here’s an apparition,” said Armine, as a brilliant figure
+darted out in a Moorish dress, rich jacket, short full white tunic, full
+trousers tied at the ankles, coins pendulous on the brow, bracelets,
+anklets, and rows of pearls. It was a dress on which Elvira had set
+her heart in readiness for fancy balls; it had been procured with great
+difficulty and expense, and had just come home from the French modiste
+who had adapted it to European wear.
+
+Allen started up in admiration and delight. Even Mr. Morgan was roused
+to make an admiring inspection of the curious ornaments and devices;
+and Elvira, with her perfect features, rich complexion, dark blue eyes,
+Titian coloured hair, fine figure, and Oriental air, formed a splendid
+study.
+
+Lord Fordham begged her to stand while he sketched her; and Babie, with
+Sydney, was summoned to try on the bridesmaids’ apparel.
+
+The three girls, Elvira, Sydney, and Barbara acted as bridesmaids the
+next day, when, in the English chapel, Mr. Ogilvie gave his sister to
+his old friend, to begin her new life as a clergyman’s wife.
+
+What could be called Elvira de Menella’s character? Those who knew her
+best, such as Barbara Brownlow, would almost have soon have thought of
+ascribing a personal character to a cloud as to her. She smiled into
+glorious loveliness when the sun shone; she was gloomy and thunderous
+when displeased, and though she had a passionate temper, and could be
+violent, she had no fixed purpose, but drifted with the external impulse
+of the moment. She had not much mind or power of learning, and was
+entirely inattentive to anything intellectual, so that education had not
+been able at the utmost to do more than fit her to pass in the crowd,
+and could get no deeper; and what principles she had it was not easy
+to tell. Not that she did or said objectionable things, since she had
+outgrown her childish outbreaks; but she seemed to have no substance,
+and to be kept right by force of circumstances. She had the selfishness
+of any little child, and though she had never been known to be
+untruthful, this might be because there was not the slightest temptation
+to deceive. She was just as much the spoilt child, to all intents and
+purposes, as if she had been the heiress; perhaps more so, for Mrs.
+Brownlow had always been so remorseful for the usurpation as to be extra
+indulgent--lenient to her foibles, and lavish in gifts and pleasures,
+even inconveniencing herself for her fancies; whilst Allen had, from the
+first, treated her with the devotion of a lover. No stranger had ever
+supposed that she was not the equal in all respects of the rest of the
+family, nor had she realised it herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. MOONSHINE.
+
+
+
+     But still the lady shook her head,
+       And swore by yea and nay
+     My whole was all that he had said,
+       And all that he could say.
+                             W. M. Praed.
+
+
+Mrs. Brownlow had intended to go at once to London on her return to
+England, but the joint entreaties of Armine and Barbara prevailed on her
+to give them one week at Belforest, now in that early spring beauty in
+which they had first seen it.
+
+How delightful the arrival was! Easter had been very late, so it was the
+last week of the vacation, and dear old Friar John’s handsome face was
+the first thing they saw at the station, and then his father’s portly
+form, with a tall pretty creature on each side of him, causing Babie
+to fall back with a cry of glad amazement, “Oh! Essie and Ellie! Such
+women!”
+
+Then the train stopped, and there was a tumult of embracings and
+welcomes, in the midst of which Jock appeared, having just come by the
+down train.
+
+“You’ll all come to dinner this evening?” entreated Caroline. “My love
+to Ellen. Tell her you must all of you come.”
+
+It was a most delightsome barouche full that drove from the station.
+Jock took the reins, and turned over coachman and footman to the break,
+and in defiance of dignity, his mother herself sprang up beside him. The
+sky was blue, the hedges were budding with pure light-green above, and
+resplendent with rosy campion and white spangles of stitchwort below.
+Stars of anemone, smiling bunches of primrose, and azure clouds of
+bluebell made the young hearts leap as at that first memorable sight.
+Armine said he was ready to hurrah and throw up his hat, and though
+Elvira declared that she saw nothing to be so delighted about, they only
+laughed at her.
+
+Gorgeous rhododendrons and gay azaleas rose in brilliant masses nearer
+the house, beds of hyacinths and jonquils perfumed the air, judiciously
+arranged parterres of gay little Van Thol tulips and white daisies
+flashed on the eyes of the arriving party, while the exquisite fresh
+green provoked comparisons with parched Africa.
+
+Bobus was standing on the steps to receive them, and when they had
+crossed the hall, with due respect to its Roman mosaic pavement, they
+found the Popinjay bowing, dancing, and chattering for joy, and tea and
+coffee for parched throats in the favourite Dresden set in the morning
+room, the prettiest and cosiest in the house.
+
+“How nice it is! We are all together except Janet,’ exclaimed Babie.
+
+“And Janet is coming to us in London,” said her mother. “Did you see her
+on her way to Edinburgh boys?”
+
+“No,” said Jock. “She never let us know she was there.”
+
+“But I’ll tell you an odd thing I have just found out,” said Bobus. “It
+seems she came down here on her way, unknown to anyone, got out at the
+Woodside station, and walked across here. She told Brock that she wanted
+something out of the drawers of her library-table, of which the key had
+been lost, and desired him to send for Higg to break it open; but Brock
+wouldn’t hear of it. He said his Missus had left him in charge, and
+he could not be answerable to her for having locks picked without her
+authority--or leastways the Colonel’s. He said Miss Brownlow was in a
+way about it, and said as how it was her own private drawer that no one
+had a right to keep her out of, but he stood to his colours; he said
+the house was Mrs. Brownlow’s, and under his care, and he would have no
+tampering with locks, except by her authority or the Colonel’s. He even
+offered to send to Kenminster if she would write a note to my uncle,
+but she said she had not time, and walked off again, forbidding him to
+mention that she had been here.”
+
+“Janet always was a queer fish!” said Jock.
+
+“Poor Janet, I suppose she wanted some of her notes of lectures,” said
+her mother. “Brock’s sound old house-dog instinct must have been very
+inconvenient to her. I must write and ask what she wanted.”
+
+“But she forbade him to mention it,” said Bobus.
+
+“Of course that was only to avoid the fuss there would have been if it
+had been known that she had been here without coming to Kencroft. By the
+bye, I didn’t tell Brock those good people were coming to dinner. How
+well the dear old Monk looks, and how charming Essie and Ellie! But I
+shall never know them apart, now they are both the same size.”
+
+“You won’t feel that difficulty long,” said Bobus. “There really is no
+comparison between them.”
+
+“Just the insipid English Mees,” said Elvira. “You should hear what the
+French think of the ordinary English girl!”
+
+“So much the better,” said Bobus. “No respectable English girl would
+wish for a foreigner’s insulting admiration.”
+
+“Well done, Bobus! I never heard such an old-fashioned insular sentiment
+from you. One would think it was your namesake. By the bye, where is the
+great Rob?”
+
+“At Aldershot,” said Jock. “I assure you he improves as he grows older.
+I had him to dine the other day at our mess, and he cut a capital figure
+by judiciously holding his tongue and looking such a fine fellow, that
+people were struck with him.”
+
+“There,” said Armine, slyly, “he has the seal of the Guards’ approval.”
+
+Jock could afford to laugh at himself, for he was entirely devoid of
+conceit, but he added, good humouredly--
+
+“Well, youngster, I can tell you it goes for something. I wasn’t at all
+sure whether the ass mightn’t get his head out of the lion-skin.”
+
+“Oh, yes! they are all lions and no asses in the Guards,” said Babie;
+whereupon Jock fell on her, and they had a playful skirmish.
+
+Nobody came to dinner but John and his two sisters. It had turned out
+that the horse had been too much worked to be used again, and there
+was a fine moon, so that the three had walked over together. Esther and
+Eleanor Brownlow had always been like twins, and were more than ever so
+now, when both were at the same height of five feet eight, both had the
+same thick glossy dark-brown hair, done in the very same rich coils,
+the same clearly-cut regular profiles, oval faces, and soft carnation
+cheeks, with liquid brown eyes, under pencilled arches. Caroline was in
+confusion how to distinguish them, and trusted at first solely to the
+little coral charms which formed Esther’s ear-rings, but gradually
+she perceived that Esther was less plump and more mobile than her
+sister--her colour was more variable, and she seemed as timid as ever,
+while Eleanor was developing the sturdy Friar texture. Their aunt had
+been the means of sending them to a good school, and they had a much
+more trained and less homely appearance than Jessie at the same age,
+and seemed able to take their part in conversation with their cousins,
+though Essie was manifestly afraid of her aunt. They had always been
+fond of Barbara, and took eager possession of her, while John’s Oxford
+talk was welcome to all,--and it was a joyous evening of interchange
+of travellers’ anecdotes and local and family news, but without any
+remarkable feature till the time came for the cousins to return. They
+had absolutely implored not to be sent home in the carriage, but to walk
+across the park in the moonlight; and it was such a lovely night that
+when Bobus and Jock took up their hats to come with them, Babie begged
+to go too, and the same desire strongly possessed her mother, above all
+when John said, “Do come, Mother Carey;” and “rowed her in a plaidie.”
+
+That youthful inclination to frolic had come on her, and she only waited
+to assure herself that Armine did not partake of her madness, but was
+wisely going to bed. Allen was holding out a scarf to Elvira, but she
+protested that she hated moonlight, and that it was a sharp frost, and
+she went back to the fire.
+
+As they went down the steps in the dark shadow of the house, John gave
+his aunt his arm, and she felt that he liked to have her leaning on him,
+as they walked in the strong contrasts of white light and dark shade in
+the moonshine, and pausing to look at the wonderful snowy appearance
+of the white azaleas, the sparkling of the fountain, and the stars
+struggling out in the pearly sky; but John soon grew silent, and after
+they had passed the garden, said--
+
+“Aunt Caroline, if you don’t mind coming on a little way, I want to ask
+you something.”
+
+The name, Aunt Caroline, alarmed her, but she professed her readiness to
+hear.
+
+“You have always been so kind to me” (still more alarming, thought she);
+“indeed,” he added, “I may say I owe everything to you, and I should
+like to know that you would not object to my making medicine my
+profession.”
+
+“My dear Johnny!” in an odd, muffled voice.
+
+“Had you rather not?” he began.
+
+“Oh, no! Oh, no, no! It is the very thing. Only when you began I was so
+afraid you wanted to marry some dreadful person!”
+
+“You needn’t be afraid of that. Ars Medico, will be bride enough for me
+till I meet another Mother Carey, and that I shan’t do in a hurry.”
+
+“You silly fellow, you aren’t practising the smoothness of tongue of the
+popular physician.”
+
+“Don’t you think I mean it?” said John, rather hurt.
+
+“My dear boy, you must excuse me. It is not often one gets so many
+compliments in a breath, besides having one of the first wishes of one’s
+heart granted.”
+
+“Do you mean that you really wished this?”
+
+“So much that I am saying, ‘Thank God!’ in my heart all the time.”
+
+“Well, my father and mother thought you might be wishing me to be a
+barrister, or something swell.”
+
+“As if I could--as if I ever could be so glad of anything,” said she
+with rejoicing that surprised him. “It is the only thing that could make
+up for none of my own boys taking that line. I can’t tell you now how
+much depends on it, John, you will know some day. Tell me what put it
+into your head--”
+
+He told her, as he had told his father nearly four years before, how
+the dim memory of his uncle had affected him, and how the bent had been
+decidedly given by his attendance on Jock, and his intercourse with Dr.
+Medlicott. At Oxford, he had availed himself of all opportunities, and
+had come out honourably in all examinations, including physical science,
+and he was now reading for his degree, meaning to go up for honours. His
+father, finding him steady to his purpose, had consented, and his mother
+endured, but still hoped his aunt would persuade him out of it. She was
+so far from any such intention, that a hint of the Magnum Bonum had very
+nearly been surprised out of her. For the first time since Belforest had
+come to her, did she feel in the course of carrying out her husband’s
+injunctions; and she felt strengthened against that attack from Janet to
+which she looked forward with dread. She talked with John of his plans
+till they actually reached the lodge gate, and there found Jock, Babie,
+and Eleanor chattering merrily about fireflies and glowworms a little
+way behind, and Bobus and Esther paired together much further back. When
+all had met at the gate and the parting good-nights had been spoken,
+Bobus became his mother’s companion, and talked all the way home of his
+great satisfaction at her wandering time being apparently over, of his
+delight in her coming to settle at home at last, his warm attachment to
+the place, and his desire to cultivate the neighbouring borough with a
+view to representing it in Parliament, since Allen seemed to be devoid
+of ambition, and so much to hate the mud and dust of public life, that
+he was not likely to plunge into it, unless Elvira should wish for
+distinction. Then Bobus expatiated on the awkward connection the Goulds
+would be for Allen, stigmatising the amiable Lisette, who of course
+by this time had married poor George Gould, as an obnoxious, presuming
+woman, whom it would be very difficult to keep in her right position. It
+was not a bad thing that Elvira should have a taste of London society,
+to make her less likely to fall under her influence.
+
+“That is not a danger I should have apprehended,” said Caroline.
+
+“The woman can fawn, and that is exactly what a haughty being like
+Elvira likes. She is always pining for a homage she does not get in the
+family.”
+
+“Except from poor Allen.”
+
+“Except from Allen, but that is a matter of course. He is a slave to be
+flouted! Did you ever see a greater contrast than that between her and
+our evening guests?”
+
+“Esther and Eleanor? They have grown up into very sweet-looking girls.”
+
+“Not that there can be any comparison between them. Essie has none of
+the ponderous Highness in her--only the Serenity.”
+
+“Yes, there is a very pleasant air of innocent candour about their
+faces--”
+
+“Just what it does a man good to look at. It is like going out into the
+country on a spring morning. And there is very real beauty too--”
+
+“Yes, Kencroft monopolises all the good looks of the family. What a fine
+fellow the dear old Friar has grown.”
+
+“If you bring out those two girls this year, you will take the shine out
+of all the other chaperons!”
+
+“I wonder whether your aunt would like it.”
+
+“She never made any objection to Jessie’s going out with you.”
+
+“No. I should like it very much; I wonder I had not thought of it
+before, but I had hardly realised that Essie and Ellie were older than
+Babie, but I remember now, they are eighteen and seventeen.”
+
+“It would be so good for you to have something human and capable of a
+little consideration to go out with,” added Bobus, “not to be tied to
+the tail of a will-of-the-wisp like that Elf--I should not like that for
+you.”
+
+“I am not much afraid,” said Caroline. “You know I don’t stand in such
+awe of the little donna, and I shall have my Guardsman to take care of
+me when we are too frivolous for you. But it would be very nice to have
+those two girls, and make it pleasanter for my Infanta, who will miss
+Sydney a good deal.”
+
+“I thought the Evelyns were to be in town.”
+
+“Yes, but their house is at the other end of the park. What are Jock and
+the Infanta looking at?”
+
+Jock and Babie, who were on a good way in advance in very happy and
+eager conversation, had come to a sudden stop, and now turned round,
+exclaiming “Look, mother! Here’s the original Robin Goodfellow.”
+
+And on the walk there was a most ludicrous shadow in the moonlight,
+a grotesque, dancing figure, with one long ear, and a hand held up in
+warning. It was of course the shadow of the Midas statue, which the boys
+had never permitted to be restored to its pristine state. One ear had
+however crumbled away, but in the shadow this gave the figure the air
+of cocking the other, in the most indescribably comical manner, and
+the whole four stood gazing and laughing at it. There was a certain
+threatening attitude about its hand, which, Jock said, looked as if
+the ghost of old Barnes had come to threaten them for the wasteful
+expenditure of his hoards. Or, as Babie said, it was more like the
+ghastly notion of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, of some phantom of a
+murdered slave protecting those hoards.
+
+“I don’t wonder he threatens,” said Caroline. “I always thought he meant
+that audacious trick to have forfeited the hoards.”
+
+“Very lucky he was balked,” said Bobus, “not only for us, but for human
+nature in general. Fancy how insufferable that Elf would have been if
+she had been dancing on gold and silver.”
+
+“Take care!” muttered Jock, under his breath. “There’s her swain coming;
+I see his cigar.”
+
+“And we really shall have it Sunday morning presently,” said his mother,
+“and I shall get into as great a scrape as I did in the old days of the
+Folly.”
+
+It was a happy Sunday morning. The Vicar of Woodside had much improved
+the Church and services with as much assistance in the way of money as
+he chose to ask for from the lady of Belforest, though hitherto he had
+had nothing more; but he and his sister augured better things when the
+lady herself with her daughter and her two youngest sons came across
+the park in the freshness of the morning to the early Celebration. The
+sister came out with them and asked them to breakfast. Mrs. Brownlow
+would not desert Allen and Bobus, but she wished Armine to spare himself
+more walking. Moreover, Babie discovered that some desertion of teachers
+would render their aid at the Sunday School desirable on that morning.
+
+This was at present her ideal of Sunday occupation, and she had gained a
+little fragmentary experience under Sydney’s guidance at Fordham. So
+she was in a most engaging glow of shy delight, and the tidy little
+well-trained girls who were allotted to her did not diminish her
+satisfaction. To say that Armine’s positive enjoyment was equal to hers
+would not be true, but he had intended all his life to be a clergyman,
+and he was resolved not to shrink from his first experience of the kind.
+The boys were too much impressed, by the apparition of one of the young
+gentlemen from Belforest, to comport themselves ill, but they would
+probably not have answered his questions even had they been in their
+own language, and they stared at him in a stolid way, while he
+disadvantageously contrasted them with the little ready-tongued peasant
+boys of Italy. However, he had just found the touch of nature which made
+the world kin, and had made their eyes light up by telling them of a
+scene he had beheld in Palestine, illustrating the parable they had been
+repeating, when the change in the Church bells was a signal for leaving
+off.
+
+Very happy and full of plans were the two young things, much pleased
+with the clergyman and his sister, who were no less charmed with the
+little, bright, brown-faced, lustrous-eyed girl, with her eager yet
+diffident manner and winning vivacity, and with the slender, delicate,
+thoughtful lad, whose grave courtesy of demeanour sat so prettily upon
+him.
+
+Though not to compare in numbers, size, or beauty with the Kencroft
+flock, the Belforest party ranged well in their seat at Church, for
+Robert never failed to accompany his mother once a day, as a concession
+due from son to mother. It was far from satisfying her. Indeed there was
+a dull, heavy ache at her heart whenever she looked at him, for however
+he might endeavour to conform, like Marcus Aurelius sacrificing to the
+gods, there was always a certain half-patronising, half-criticising
+superciliousness about his countenance. Yet, if he came for love of her,
+still something might yet strike him and win his heart?
+
+Had her years of levity and indifference been fatal to him? was ever her
+question to herself as she knelt and prayed for him.
+
+She felt encouraged when, at luncheon, she asked Jock to walk with her
+to Kenminster for the evening service, after looking in at Kencroft,
+Robert volunteered to be of the party.
+
+Caroline, however, did not think that he was made quite so welcome
+at Kencroft as his exertion deserved. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow were
+sitting in the drawing-room with the blinds down, presumably indulging
+in a Sunday nap in the heat of the afternoon, for the Colonel shook
+himself in haste, and his wife’s cap was a little less straight than
+suited her serene dignity, and though they kissed and welcomed the
+mother, they were rather short and dry towards Bobus. They said the
+children had gone out walking, whereupon the two lads said they would
+try to meet them, and strolled out again.
+
+This left the field free for Caroline to propose the taking the two
+girls to London with her.
+
+“I am sure,” said Ellen, “you have always been very kind to the
+children. But indeed, Caroline, I did not think you would have
+encouraged it.”
+
+“It?--I don’t quite understand,” said Caroline, wondering whether Ellen
+had suddenly taken an evangelically serious turn.
+
+“There!” said the Colonel, “I told you she was not aware of it,” and on
+her imploring cry of inquiry, Ellen answered, “Of this folly of Robert.”
+
+“Bobus, do you mean,” she cried. “Oh!” as conviction flashed on her, “I
+never thought of _that_.”
+
+“I am sure you did not,” said the Colonel kindly.
+
+“But--but,” she said, bewildered, “if--if you mean Esther--why did you
+send her over last night, and let him go out to find her now.”
+
+“She is safe, reading to Mrs. Coffinkey,” said Ellen. “I did not know
+Robert was at home, or I should not have let her come without me.”
+
+“Esther is a very dear, sweet-looking girl,” said Caroline. “If only she
+were any one else’s daughter! Though that does not sound civil! But
+I know my dear husband had the strongest feeling about first cousins
+marrying.”
+
+“Yes, I trusted to your knowing that,” said the Colonel. “And I rely on
+you not to be weak nor to make the task harder to us. Remembering, too,”
+ he added in a voice of sorrow and pity that made the words sound not
+unkind, “that even without the relationship, we should feel that there
+were strong objections.”
+
+“I know! My poor Bobus!” said Caroline, sadly. “That makes it such a
+pity she is his cousin. Otherwise she might do him so much good.”
+
+“I have not much faith in good done in that manner,” said the Colonel.
+
+Caroline thought him mistaken, but could not argue an abstract question,
+and came to the personal one. “But how far has it gone? How do you know
+about it? I see now that I might have detected it in his tone, but one
+never knows, when one’s children grow up.”
+
+“The Colonel was obliged to tell him in the autumn that we did not
+approve of flirtations between cousins,” said Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+“And he answered--?”
+
+“That flirtation was the last thing he intended,” said the Colonel. “On
+which I told him that I would have no nonsense.”
+
+“Was that all?”
+
+“Except that at Christmas he sent her, by way of card, a drawing that
+must have cost a large sum,” said the Colonel. “We thought it better to
+let the child keep it without remark, for fear of putting things into
+her head; though I wrote and told him such expensive trumpery was folly
+that I was much tempted to forbid. So what does he do on Valentine’s
+Day but send her a complete set of ornaments like little birds, in Genoa
+silver--exquisite things. Well, she was very good, dear child. We told
+her it was not nice or maidenly to take such valuable presents; and she
+was quite contented and happy when her mother gave her a ring of her
+own, and we have written to Jessie to send her some pretty things from
+India.”
+
+“She said she did not care for anything that Ellie did not have too,”
+ added her mother.
+
+“Then you returned them?”
+
+“Yes, and my young gentleman patronisingly replies that he ‘appreciates
+my reluctance, and reserves them for a future time.’”
+
+“Just like Bobus!” said Caroline. “He never gives up his purpose! But
+how about dear little Esther? Is she really untouched?”
+
+“I hope so,” replied her mother. “So far it has all been put upon
+propriety, and so on. I told her, now she was grown up and come home
+from school she must not run after her cousins as she used to do, and I
+have called her away sometimes when he has tried to get her alone. Last
+evening, she told me in a very simple way--like the child she is--that
+Robert would walk home with her in the moonlight, and hindered her when
+she tried to join the others, telling me she hoped I should not be angry
+with her. He seems to have talked to her about this London plan; but I
+told her on the spot it was impossible.”
+
+“I am afraid it is!” sighed Caroline. “Dear Essie! I will do my best to
+keep her peace from being ruffled, for I know you are quite right; but I
+can’t help being sorry for my boy, and he is so determined that I don’t
+think he will give up easily.”
+
+“You may let him understand that nothing will ever make me consent,”
+ returned the Colonel.
+
+“I will, if he enters on it with me,” said Caroline; “but I think it
+is advisable as long as possible to prevent it from taking a definite
+shape.”
+
+Caroline was much better able now to hold her own with her brother and
+sister-in-law. Not only did her position and the obligations they were
+under give her weight, but her character had consolidated itself in
+these years, and she had much more force, and appearance of good sense.
+Besides, John was a weight in the family now, and his feeling for
+his aunt was not without effect. They talked of his prospects and of
+Jessie’s marriage, over their early tea. The elders of the walking party
+came in with hands full of flowers, namely, the two Johns and Eleanor,
+but ominously enough, Bobus was not there. He had been lost sight of
+soon after they had met.
+
+Yes, and at that moment he was loitering at a safe distance from the
+door of the now invalid and half-blind Mrs. Coffinkey, to whom the
+Brownlow girls read by turns. She lived conveniently up a lane not
+much frequented. This was the colloquy which ensued when the tall,
+well-proportioned maiden, with her fresh, modest, happy face, tripped
+down the steps:--
+
+“So the Coffinkey is unlocked at last! Stern Proserpine relented!”
+
+“Robert! You here?”
+
+“You never used to call me Robert.”
+
+“Mamma says it is time to leave off the other.”
+
+“Perhaps she would like you to call me Mr. Robert Otway Brownlow.”
+
+“Don’t talk of mamma in that way.”
+
+“I would do anything my queen tells me except command my tones when
+there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to be made into buckram.”
+
+“Please, Robert,” as some one met and looked at them, “let me walk on by
+myself.”
+
+“What? Shall I be the means of getting you into trouble?”
+
+“No, but I ought not--”
+
+“The road is clear now, never mind. In town there are no gossips, that’s
+one comfort. Mother Carey is propounding the plan now.”
+
+“Oh, but we shall not go. Mamma told me so last night.”
+
+“That was before Mother Carey had talked her over.”
+
+“Do you think she will?”
+
+“I am certain of it! You are a sort of child of Mother Carey’s own, you
+know, and we can’t do without you.”
+
+“Mother would miss us so, just as we are getting useful.”
+
+“Yes, but Ellie might stay.”
+
+“Oh! we have never been parted. We _couldn’t_ be.”
+
+“Indeed! Is there no one that could make up to you for Ellie?”
+
+“No, indeed!” indignantly.
+
+“Ah, Essie, you are too much of a child yet to understand the force of
+the love that--”
+
+“Don’t,” broke in Esther, “that is just like people in novels; and mamma
+would not like it.”
+
+“But if I feel ten times far more for you than ‘the people in novels’
+attempt to express?”
+
+“Don’t,” again cried Esther. “It is Sunday.”
+
+“And what of that, my most scriptural little queen?”
+
+“It isn’t a time to talk out of novels,” said Esther, quickening her
+pace, to reach the frequented road and throng of church-goers.”
+
+“I am not talking out of any novel that ever was written,” said Bobus
+seriously; but she was speeding on too fast to heed him, and started as
+he laid a hand on her arm.
+
+“Stay, Essie; you must not rush on like a frightened fawn, or people
+will stare,” he said; and she slackened her pace, though she shook him
+off and went on through the numerous passengers on the footpath, with
+her pretty head held aloft with the stately grace of the startled
+pheasant, not choosing to seem to hear his attempts at addressing her,
+and taking refuge at last in the innermost recesses of the family seat
+at Church, though it was full a quarter to five.
+
+There the rest of the party found her, and as they did not find Bobus,
+they concluded that all was safe. However, when the two Johns were
+walking home with Mother Carey, Bobus joined them, and soon made
+his mother fall behind with him, asking her, “I hope your eloquence
+prevailed.”
+
+“Far from it, Bobus,” she said. “In fact you have alarmed them.”
+
+“H. S. H. doesn’t improve with age,” he replied carelessly. “She never
+troubled herself about Jessie.”
+
+“Perhaps no one gave her cause. My dear boy, I am very sorry for you,”
+ and she laid her hand within his arm.
+
+“Have they been baiting you? Poor little Mother Carey!” he said. “Force
+of habit, you know, that’s all. Never mind them.”
+
+“Bobus, my dear, I must speak, and in earnest. I am afraid you may be
+going on so as to make yourself and--some one else unhappy, and you
+ought to know that your father was quite as determined as your uncle
+against marriages between first cousins.”
+
+“My dear mother, it will be quite time to argue that point when the
+matter becomes imminent. I am not asking to marry any one before I am
+called to the bar, and it is very hard if we cannot, in the meantime,
+live as cousins.”
+
+“Yes, but there must be no attempt to be ‘a little more than kin.’”
+
+“Less than kind comes in on the other side!” said Bobus, in his throat.
+“I tell you the child _is_ a child who has no soul apart from her
+sister, and there’s no use in disturbing her till she has grown up to
+have a heart and a will of her own.”
+
+“Then you promise to let her alone?”
+
+“I pledge myself to nothing,” said Bobus, in an impracticable voice. “I
+only give warning that a commotion will do nobody any good.”
+
+She knew he had not abandoned his intention, and she also knew she had
+no power to make him abandon it, so that all she could say was, “As long
+as you make no move there will be no commotion, but I only repeat my
+assurance that neither your uncle nor I, acting in the person, of your
+dear father, will ever consent.”
+
+“To which I might reply, that most people end by doing that against
+which they have most protested. However, I am not going to stir in the
+matter for some time to come, and I advise no one else to do so.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. -- BLUEBEARD’S CLOSET.
+
+
+
+     A moment then the volume spread,
+     And one short spell therein he read.
+                                       Scott.
+
+
+The reality of John’s intention to devote himself to medicine made
+Caroline anxious to look again at the terms of the trust on which she
+held the Magnum Bonum secret.
+
+Moreover, she wanted some papers and accounts, and therefore on Monday
+morning, while getting up, she glanced towards the place where her
+davenport usually stood, and to her great surprise missed it. She asked
+Emma, who was dressing her, whether it had been moved, and found that
+her maid had been as much surprised as herself at its absence, and that
+the housekeeper had denied all knowledge of it.
+
+“Other things is missing, ma’am,” said Emma; “there’s the key of the
+closet where your dresses hangs. I’ve hunted high and low for it, and
+nobody hasn’t seen it.”
+
+“Keys are easily lost,” said Caroline, “but my davenport is very
+important. Perhaps in some cleaning it has been moved into one of the
+other rooms and forgotten there. I wish you would look. You know I had
+it before I came here.”
+
+Not only did Emma look, but as soon as her mistress was ready to leave
+the room she went herself on a voyage of discovery, peeping first into
+the little dressing-room, where seeing Babie at her morning prayers, she
+said nothing to disturb her, and then going on to look into some spare
+rooms beyond, where she thought it might have been disposed of, as being
+not smart enough for my lady’s chamber. Coming back to her room she
+found, to her extreme amazement, the closet open, and Babie pushing the
+davenport out of it, with her cheeks crimson and a look of consternation
+at being detected.
+
+“My dear child! The davenport there! Did you know it? How did it get
+there?”
+
+“I put it,” said Barbara, evidently only forced to reply by sheer
+sincerity.
+
+“You! And why?”
+
+“I thought it safer,” mumbled Babie.
+
+“And you knew where the key of the closet was?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In my doll’s bed, locked up in the baby-house.”
+
+“This is most extraordinary. When did you do this?”
+
+“Just before we came out to you at Leukerbad,” said Babie, each reply
+pumped out with great difficulty.
+
+“Four years ago! It is a very odd thing. I suppose you had a panic, for
+you were too old then for playing monkey tricks.”
+
+To which Babie made no answer, and the next minute her mother, who had
+become intent on the davenport, exclaimed, “I suppose you haven’t got
+the key of this in your doll’s bed?”
+
+“Don’t you remember, mother,” said Barbara, “you sent it home to Janet,
+and it was lost in her bag on the crossing?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I remember! And it is a Bramah lock, more’s the pity. We must
+have the locksmith over from Kenminster to open it.”
+
+The man was sent for, the davenport was opened, desk, drawers, and all.
+Caroline was once more in possession of her papers. She turned them over
+in haste, and saw no book of Magnum Bonum. Again, more carefully she
+looked. The white slate, where those precious last words had been
+written, was there, proving to her that her memory had not deceived her,
+but that she had really kept her treasure in that davenport.
+
+Then, in her distress, she thought of Barbara’s strange behaviour, went
+in quest of her, and calling her aside, asked her to tell her the real
+reason why she had thought fit to secure the davenport in the closet.
+
+“Why,” asked Babie, her eyes growing large and shining, “is anything
+missing?”
+
+“Tell me first,” said Caroline, trembling.
+
+Then Babie told how she had wakened and seen Janet with the desk
+part raised up, reading something, and how, when she lay watching and
+wondering, Janet had shut it up and gone away. “And I did not feel
+comfortable about it, mother,” said Babie, “so I thought I would lock up
+the davenport, so that nobody could get at it.”
+
+“You did not see her take anything away?”
+
+“No, I can’t at all tell,” said Babie. “Is anything gone?”
+
+“A book I valued very much. Some memoranda of your father were in that
+desk, and I cannot find them now. You cannot tell, I suppose, whether
+she was reading letters or a book?”
+
+“It was not letters,” said Babie, “but I could not see whether it was
+print or manuscript. Mother, I think she must have taken it to read and
+could not put it back again because I had hidden the davenport. Oh!
+I wish I hadn’t, but I couldn’t ask any one, it seemed such a wicked,
+dreadful fancy that she could meddle with your papers.”
+
+“You acted to the best of your judgment, my dear,” said Caroline. “I
+ought never to have let it out of my own keeping.”
+
+“Do you think it was lost in the bag, mother?”
+
+“I hope not. That would be worst of all!” said Caroline. “I must ask
+Janet. Don’t say anything about it, my dear. Let me think it over.”
+
+When Caroline recollected Janet’s attempt, as related by Robert, to
+break open her bureau, she had very little doubt that the book was
+there. It could not have been lost in the bag, for, as she remembered,
+reference had been made to it when Janet had extorted permission to go
+to Zurich, and she had warned her that even these studies would not be
+a qualification for the possession of the secret. Janet had then smiled
+triumphantly, and said she would make her change her mind yet;
+had looked, in fact, very much as Bobus did when he put aside her
+remonstrances. It was not the air of a person who had lost the records
+of the secret and was afraid to confess, though it was possible she
+might have them in her own keeping. Caroline longed to search the
+bureau, but however dishonourably Janet might have acted towards
+herself, she could not break into her private receptacles without
+warning. So after some consideration, she made Barbara drive her to the
+station, and send the following telegraphic message to Janet’s address
+at Edinburgh:--
+
+“Come home at once. Father’s memorandum book missing. Must be searched
+for.”
+
+All that day and the next the sons wondered what was amiss with their
+mother, she was so pensive, with starts of flightiness. Allen thought
+she was going to have an illness, and Bobus that it was a very strange
+and foolish way of taking his resistance, but all the time Armine was
+going about quite unperceiving, in a blissful state. The vicar’s
+sister, a spirited, active, and very winning woman of thirty-five,
+had captivated him, as she did all the lads of the parish. He had been
+walking about with her, being introduced to all the needs of the parish,
+and his enthusiastic nature throwing itself into the cause of religion
+and beneficence, which was in truth his congenial element; he was ready
+to undertake for himself and his mother whatever was wanted, without a
+word of solicitation, nay rather, the vicar, who thought it all far too
+good to be true, held him back.
+
+And when he came in and poured out his narrative, he was, for the first
+time in his life, even petulant that his mother was too much preoccupied
+to confirm his promises, and angry when Allen laughed at his vehemence,
+and said he should beware of model parishes.
+
+By dinner-time the next day Janet had actually arrived. She looked
+thin and sharp, her keen black eyes roamed about uneasily, and some
+indescribable change had passed over her. Her brothers told her study
+had not agreed with her, and she did not, as of old, answer tartly,
+but gave a stiff, mechanical smile, and all the evening talked in a
+woman-of-the-world manner, cleverly, agreeably, not putting out her
+prickles, but like a stranger, and as if on her guard.
+
+Of course there was no speaking to her till bedtime, and Caroline at
+first felt as if she ought to let one night pass in peace under the home
+roof; but she soon felt that to sleep would be impossible to herself,
+and she thought it would be equally so to her daughter without coming
+to an understanding. She yearned for some interchange of tenderness
+from that first-born child from whom she had been so long separated, and
+watched and listened for a step approaching her door; till at last, when
+the maid was gone and no one came, she yielded to her impulse; and in
+her white dressing-gown, with softly-slippered feet, she glided along
+the passage with a strange mixed feeling of maternal gladness that Janet
+was at home again, and of painful impatience to have the interview over.
+
+She knocked at the door. There was no answer. She opened it. There
+was no one there, but the light on the terrace below, thrown from
+the windows of the lower room, was proof to her that Janet was in her
+sitting-room, and she began to descend the private stairs that led down
+to it. She was as light in figure and in step as ever, and her soft
+slippers made no noise as she went down. The door in the wainscot was
+open, and from the foot of the stairs she had a strange view. Janet’s
+candle was on the chair behind her, in front of it lay half-a-dozen
+different keys, and she herself was kneeling before the bureau, trying
+one of the keys into the lock. It would not fit, and in turning to try
+another, she first saw the white figure, and started violently at the
+first moment, then, as the trembling, pleading voice said, “Janet,” she
+started to her feet, and cried out angrily--
+
+“Am I to be always spied and dogged?”
+
+“Hush, Janet,” said her mother, in a voice of grave reproof, “I simply
+came to speak to you about the distressing loss of what your father put
+in my charge.”
+
+“And why should I know anything about it?” demanded Janet.
+
+“You were the last person who had access to the davenport,” said her
+mother.
+
+“This is that child Barbara’s foolish nonsense,” muttered Janet to
+herself.
+
+“Barbara has nothing to do with the fact that I sent you the key of the
+davenport where the book was. It is now missing. Janet, it is bitterly
+painful to me to say so, but your endeavours to open that bureau
+privately have brought suspicion upon you, and I must have it opened in
+my presence.”
+
+“I have a full right to my own bureau.”
+
+“Of course you have; but I had these notes left in my trust. It is my
+duty towards your father to use every means for their recovery.”
+
+“You call it a duty to my father to shut up his discovery and keep it
+useless for the sake of a lot of boys who will never turn it to profit.”
+
+“Of that I am judge. My present duty is to recover it. Your conduct is
+such as to excite suspicion, and I therefore cannot allow you to take
+anything out of that bureau except in my presence, till I have satisfied
+myself that his memoranda are not there. I would not search your drawers
+in your absence, and therefore telegraphed for you.”
+
+“Thank you. Since you like to treat your daughter like a maidservant,
+you may go on and search my boxes,” said Janet, sulkily.
+
+“I beg your pardon, my poor child, if I am unjustly causing you this
+humiliation,” said Caroline humbly, as Janet sullenly flumped down into
+a chair without answering. She took up the keys that Janet had brought
+with her, and tried them one by one, where Janet had been using them.
+The fourth turned in the lock, and the drawer was open!
+
+“I will disarrange nothing unnecessarily,” said Caroline. “Look for
+yourself.”
+
+Janet would not, however, move hand, foot, or eye, while her mother put
+in her hand and took out what lay on the top. It was the Magnum Bonum.
+She held it to the light and was sure of it; but she had taken up an
+envelope at the same time, and her eye fell on the address as she was
+laying it down. It was to--“James Barnes, Esq.” And as her eye caught
+the pencilled words “My Will,” a strange electric thrill went through
+her, as she exclaimed, “What is this, Janet? How came it here?”
+
+“Oh! take it if you like,” said Janet. “I put it there to spare you
+worry; but if you will pursue your researches, you must take the
+consequences.”
+
+Caroline, thus defied, still instinctively holding Magnum Bonum close
+to her, drew out the contents of the envelope, and caught in the broken
+handwriting of the old man, the words--“Will and Testament--George
+Gould--Wakefield--Elvira de Menella--whole estate.” Then she saw
+signature, seal, witnesses--date, “April 24th, 1862.”
+
+“What is this? Where did it come from?” she asked.
+
+“I found it--in his table drawer; I saw it was not valid, so I kept it
+out of the way from consideration for you,” said Janet.
+
+“How do you know it was not valid?”
+
+“Oh--why--I didn’t look much, or know much about it either,” said Janet,
+in an alarmed voice. “I was a mere child then, you know. I saw it was
+only scrawled on letter-paper, and I thought it was only a rough draft,
+which would just make you uncomfortable.”
+
+“I hope you did, Janet. I hope you did not know what you were doing!”
+
+“You don’t mean that it has been executed?”
+
+“Here are witnesses,” said Caroline--her eyes swam too much to see their
+names. “It must be for better heads than ours to decide whether this is
+of force; but, oh, Janet! if we have been robbing the orphan all these
+years!”
+
+“The orphan has been quite as well off as if it had been all hers,” said
+Janet. “Mother, just listen! Give me the keeping of my father’s secret,
+and--even if we lose this place--it shall make up for all--”
+
+“You do not know what you are talking of, Janet,” said Caroline, pushing
+back those ripples of white hair that crowned her brow, “nor indeed I
+either! I only know you have spoken more kindly to me, and that you are
+under my own roof again. Kiss me, my child, and forgive me if I have
+pained you. You did not know what you did about the will, and as to this
+book, I know you meant to put it back again.”
+
+“I did--I did, mother--if Barbara had not hidden the desk,” cried Janet.
+And as her mother kissed her, she laid her head on her shoulder, and
+wept and sobbed in an hysterical manner, such as Caroline had never seen
+in her before. Of course she was tired out by the long journey, and the
+subsequent agitation; and Caroline soothed and caressed her, with the
+sole effect of making her cry more piteously; but she would not hear of
+her mother staying to undress and put her to bed, gathered herself up
+again as soon as she could, and when another kiss had been exchanged at
+her bedroom door, Caroline heard it locked after her.
+
+Very little did Caroline sleep that night. If she lost consciousness
+at all, it was only to know that something strange and wonderful was
+hanging over her. Sometimes she had a sense that her trust and mission
+as a rich woman had been ill-fulfilled, and therefore the opportunity
+was to be taken away; but more often there was a strange sense of relief
+from what she was unfit for. She remembered that strange dream of
+her children turning into statues of gold, and the Magnum Bonum
+disenchanting them, and a fancy came over her that this might yet be
+realised, a fancy to whose lulling effect she was indebted for the sleep
+she enjoyed in the morning, which made her unusually late, but prevented
+her from looking as haggard as Janet did, with eyelids swollen, as if
+she had cried a good deal longer last night.
+
+The postbag was lying on the table, and directly after family prayers
+(which she had for some years begun when at home), Mrs. Brownlow
+beguiled her nervousness by opening it, and distributing the letters.
+
+The first she opened was such a startling one, that her head seemed to
+reel, and she doubted whether the shock of last night was confusing her
+senses.
+
+
+“MY DEAR MRS. BROWNLOW,--What will you think of us now that the full
+truth has burst on you? Of me especially, to whom you entrusted your
+dear daughter. I never could have thought that Nita would have lent
+herself to the transaction, and alas! I let the two girls take care of
+themselves more than was right. However, I can at least give you the
+comfort of knowing that it was a perfectly legal marriage, for Nita was
+one of the witnesses, and looked to all that--”
+
+
+Here Caroline could read no more. Sick and stunned, she began to
+dispense her teacups, and even helped herself to some of the food that
+was handed round, but her hand trembled so, and she looked so white and
+bewildered, that Allen exclaimed--
+
+“Mother, you are really ill. You should not have come down.”
+
+She could not bear the crowd and buzz of voices and all the anxious eyes
+any longer. She pushed back her chair, and as sons came hurrying round
+with offered arms, she took the nearest, which was Jock’s, let him take
+her to the morning-room, and there assured him she was not ill, only she
+had had a letter. She wanted nothing, only that he should go back, and
+send her Janet. She tried once more to master the contents of Miss Ray’s
+letter, but she was too dizzy; and when Janet came in, she could only
+hold it out to her.
+
+“Oh!” said Janet, “poor old Maria has forestalled me. Yes, mother, it
+is what I meant to tell you, only I thought you could not bear a fresh
+shock last night.”
+
+“Married! Oh, Janet; why thus?”
+
+“Because we wished to avoid the gossip and conventionality. My uncle and
+aunt were to be avoided.”
+
+“Let me hear at once who it is,” said Caroline, with the sharpness of
+misery.
+
+“It is Professor Demetrius Hermann, a most able lecturer, whose course
+we have been following. I met him a year ago, at the table d’hote, at
+Zurich, where he delivered a series of lectures on physiology on a new
+and original system. He is now going on with them in Scotland, where his
+wonderful acuteness and originality have produced an immense sensation,
+and I have no doubt that in his hands this discovery of my father’s will
+receive its full development.”
+
+There was no apology in her tone; it was rather that of one who was
+defying censure; and her mother could only gasp out--
+
+“How long?”
+
+“Three weeks. When we heard you were returning, we thought it would save
+much trouble and difficulty to secure ourselves against contingencies,
+and profit by Scottish facilities.” Wherewith Janet handed her mother
+a certificate of her marriage, at Glasgow, before Jane Ray and another
+witness, and taking her wedding-ring from her purse, put it on, adding,
+“When you see him, mother, you will be more than satisfied.”
+
+“Where is he?” interrupted Caroline.
+
+“At the Railway Hotel, waiting till you are prepared to see him. He
+brought me down, but he is to give a lecture at Glasgow the day after
+tomorrow, so we can only remain one night.”
+
+“Oh, Janet--Janet, this is very fearful!”
+
+At that moment, Johnny strolled up to the window from the outside, and,
+as he greeted Janet with some surprise, he observed--
+
+“There’s a most extraordinary looking foreign fellow loitering about out
+here. I warned him he was on private ground, and he made me a bow, as if
+I, not he, were the trespasser.”
+
+On this Janet darted out at the window without another word, and John
+exclaiming, in dismay--
+
+“Mother Carey! what is the matter?”
+
+She gasped out, “Oh, Johnny! she’s married to him! And the children
+don’t know it. Send them in--Allen and Bobus I mean--make haste; I must
+prepare them. Take that letter, and let the others know.”
+
+John saw the truest kindness was implicit obedience; and Allen and Bobus
+instantly joined her, the latter asking what new tomfoolery Janet had
+brought home, Allen following with a cup of coffee.
+
+Caroline’s lips felt too dry to speak, and she held out the certificate.
+
+It was received by Allen, with the exclamation--
+
+“By Jove!”
+
+And by Bobus, with an odd, harsh laugh--“I thought she would do
+something monstrous one of these days.”
+
+“Did you ever hear of him, Bobus?” she found voice to say, after
+swallowing a mouthful of coffee.
+
+“I fancy I have. Yes, I remember now; he was lecturing and vapouring
+about at Zurich; he is half Greek, I believe, and all charlatan. Well,
+Janet _has_ been and gone and done for herself now, and no mistake.”
+
+“But he is a professor,” pleaded Caroline. “He must be of some
+university.”
+
+“Don’t make too sure,” said Allen, “A professor may mean a writing
+master. Good heavens! what a connection.”
+
+“It can’t be so bad as that,” said Caroline. “Remember, your sister is
+not foolish.”
+
+“Flatter an ugly woman,” said Bobus, “and it’s a regular case of fox and
+crow.”
+
+“Mercy! here they come!” cried Allen.
+
+“Mother, do you go away! This is not work for you. Leave us to settle
+the rascal,” said Bobus.
+
+“No, Bobus,” she said; “this ought to be settled by me. Remember that,
+whatever the man may be, he is Janet’s husband, and she is your sister.”
+
+“Worse luck!” sighed Allen.
+
+“And,” she added, “he has to go away to-morrow, at latest,” a sentence
+which she knew would serve to pacify Allen.
+
+They had crossed the parterre by this time, and were almost at the
+window.
+
+It was Bobus who took the initiative, bowing formally as he spoke, in
+German--
+
+“Good morning, Herr Professor. You seem to have a turn for entering
+houses by irregular methods.”
+
+The new-comer bowed with suavity, saying, in excellent English--
+
+“It is to your sister that in both senses I owe my entrance, and to the
+lady, your mother, that I owe my apology.”
+
+And before Caroline well knew what was going on, he had one knee to the
+ground, and was kissing her hand.
+
+“The tableau is incomplete, Janet,” said Bobus, whom Caroline heartily
+wished away. “You ought to be on your knees beside him.”
+
+“I have settled it with my mother already,” said Janet.
+
+Both Caroline and her eldest son were relieved by the first glance at
+the man. He was small, and had much more of the Greek than of the
+German in his aspect, with neat little features, keen dark eyes, and
+no vulgarity in tone or appearance. His hands were delicate; there
+was nothing of the “greasy foreigner” about him, but rather an air of
+finesse, especially in his exquisitely trimmed little moustache and
+pointed beard, and his voice and language were persuasive and fluent. It
+might have been worse, was the prominent feeling, as she hastily said--
+
+“Stand up, Mr. Hermann; I am not used to be spoken to in that manner.”
+
+“Nor is it an ordinary occasion on which I address madame,” said her new
+son-in-law, rising. “I am aware that I have transgressed many codes, but
+my anxiety to secure my treasure must plead for me; and she assured me
+that she might trust to the goodness of the best of mothers.”
+
+“There is such a thing as abusing such goodness,” said Bobus.
+
+“Sir,” said Hermann, “I understand that you have rights as eldest son,
+but I await my sentence from the lips of madame herself.”
+
+“No, he is not the eldest,” interrupted Janet. “This is Allen--Allen,
+you were always good-natured. Cannot you say one friendly word?”
+
+Something in the more childish, eager tone of Janet’s address softened
+Allen, and he answered--
+
+“It is for mother to decide on what terms we are to stand, Janet, and
+strange as all this has been, I have no desire to be at enmity.”
+
+Caroline had by this time been able to recover herself and spoke.
+
+“Mr. Hermann can hardly expect a welcome in the family into which he
+has entered so unexpectedly, and--and without any knowledge of his
+antecedents. But what is done cannot be undone; I don’t want to be harsh
+and unforgiving. I should like to understand all about everything, and
+of course to be friends; as to the rest, it must depend on how they go
+on, and a great deal besides.”
+
+It was a lame and impotent conclusion, but it seemed to satisfy the
+gentleman, who clasped her hand and kissed it with fervour, wrung that
+of Allen, which was readily yielded, and would have done the same by
+that of Bobus, if that youth had done more than accord very stiff cold
+tips.
+
+Immediately after, John said at the door--
+
+“Aunt Caroline, my father is here. Will you see him?”
+
+That was something to be got over at once, and she went to the Colonel,
+who was very kind and pitiful to her, and spared her the “I told you
+so.” He did not even reproach her with being too lenient, in not having
+turned the pair at once out of her house; indeed, he was wise enough to
+think the extremity of a quarrel ought to be avoided, but he undertook
+to make every inquiry into Mr. Demetrius Hermann’s history, and observed
+that she should be very cautious in pledging herself as to what she
+would do for him, since she had, as he expressed it, the whip-hand of
+him, since Janet was totally dependent upon her.
+
+“Oh! but Robert, I forgot; I don’t know if there is anything for
+anybody,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead; “there’s that
+other will! Ah! I see you think I don’t know what I am saying, and my
+head is getting past understanding much, but I really did find the other
+will last night.”
+
+“What other will?”
+
+“The one we always knew there must be, in favour of Elvira. This
+dreadful business put it out of my head; the children don’t know it yet,
+and I don’t seem able to think or care.”
+
+It was true; severe nervous headache had brought her to the state in
+which she could do nothing but lie passively on her bed. The Colonel saw
+this, and bade her think of nothing for the present, and sent Barbara to
+take care of her.
+
+She spent the rest of the day in the sort of aniantissement which that
+sort of headache often produces, and in the meantime everybody held
+tete-a-tetes. The Colonel held his peace about the will, not half
+crediting such a catastrophe, and thinking one matter at a time quite
+enough for his brain; but he talked to the Professor, to Janet,
+to Allen, and to Bobus, and tried to come to a knowledge of the
+bridegroom’s history, and to decide what course ought to be pursued,
+feeling as the good man always did and always would do, that he was, or
+ought to be, the supreme authority for his brother’s widow and children.
+
+Allen was quite placable, and ready to condone everything. He thought
+the Athenian Professor a very superior man, with excellent classical
+taste, by which it was plain that his mosaic pavement, his old china,
+and his pictures had met with rare appreciation. Moreover, the Professor
+knew how to converse, and could be brilliantly entertaining; there
+was nothing to find fault with in his appearance; and if Janet was
+satisfied, Allen was. He knew his uncle hated foreigners, but for his
+own part, he thought nothing so dull as English respectability.
+
+For once the Colonel declared that Bobus had more sense! Bobus had
+come to a tolerably clear comprehension of the matter, and his first
+impressions were confirmed by subsequent inquiries. Demetrius Hermann
+was the son of some lawyer of King Otho’s court who had married a
+Greek lady. He had studied partly at Athens, partly at so many other
+universities, that Bobus thought it rather suspicious; while his
+uncle, who held that a respectable degree must be either of Oxford or
+Cambridge, thought this fatal to his reputation. He had studied medicine
+at one time, but had broached some theory which the German faculty were
+too narrow to appreciate; “Which means,” quoth Bobus, “either that he
+could not get a licence to practise, or else had it revoked.”
+
+Then he had taken to lecturing. The professorship was obscure; he said
+it was Athenian, and Bobus had no immediate means of finding out
+whether it were so or not, nor of analysing the alphabet of letters that
+followed his name upon the advertisement of his lectures.
+
+Apparently he was a clever lecturer, fluent and full of illustration,
+with an air of original theory that caught people’s attention. He knew
+his ground, and where critically scientific men were near to bring him
+to book, was cautious to keep within the required bounds, but in the
+freer and less regulated places, he discoursed on new theories and
+strange systems connected with the mysteries of magnetism, and producing
+extraordinary and unexplained effects.
+
+Robert and Jock were inclined to ascribe to some of these arts the
+captivation of so clever a person as their sister, by one whom they both
+viewed with repulsion as a mere adventurer.
+
+They had not the clue which their mother had to the history of the
+matter, when the next day, though still far from well, she had an
+interview with her daughter and the Athenian Professor before their
+return to Scotland.
+
+He knew of the Magnum Bonum matter. It seemed that Janet, as her
+knowledge increased, had become more sensible of the difficulties in the
+pursuit, and being much attracted by his graces and ability, had so
+put questions for her own enlightenment as to reveal to him that she
+possessed a secret. To cajole it from her, so far as she knew it, had
+been no greater difficulty than it was to the fox to get the cheese from
+the crow: and while to him she was the errant unprotected young lady of
+large and tempting fortune, he could easily make himself appear to her
+the missing link in the pursuit. He could do what as a woman she could
+not accomplish, and what her brothers were not attempting.
+
+In that conviction, nay, even expecting her mother to be satisfied with
+his charms and his qualifications, she claimed that he might at least
+read the MS. of the book, assuring her mother that all she had intended
+the night before was to copy out the essentials for him.
+
+“To take the spirit and leave me the letter?” said Caroline. “O Janet,
+would not that have been worse than carrying off the book?”
+
+“Well, mother, I maintain that I have a right to it,” said Janet, “and
+that there is no justice in withholding it.”
+
+“Do you or your husband fulfil these conditions Janet?” and Caroline
+read from the white slate those words about the one to whom the pursuit
+was intrusted being a sound, religious man, who would not seek it for
+his own advancement but for the good of others.
+
+Janet exultantly said that was just what Demetrius would do. As to the
+being a sound religious man, her mother might seek in vain for a man of
+real ability who held those old-fashioned notions. They were very well
+in her father’s time, but what would Bobus say to them?
+
+She evidently thought Demetrius would triumph in his private interview
+with her mother, but if Caroline had had any doubt before, that would
+have removed it. Janet honestly had a certain enthusiasm for science,
+beneficence, and the honour of the family, but the Professor besieged
+Mrs. Brownlow with his entreaties and promises just as if--she said to
+herself--she had been the widow of some quack doctor for whose secret he
+was bidding.
+
+If she would only grant it to him and continue her allowance to Janet
+while he was pursuing it, then, there would be no limit to the share
+he would give her when the returns came in. It was exceedingly hard to
+answer without absolutely insulting him, but she entrenched herself in
+the declaration that her husband’s conditions required a full diploma
+and degree, and that till all her sons were grown up she had been
+forbidden to dispose of it otherwise. Very thankful she was that Armine
+was not seventeen, when a whole portfolio of testimonials in all sorts
+of languages were unfolded before her! Whatever she had ever said of
+Ellen’s insular prejudices, she felt that she herself might deserve, for
+she viewed them all as utterly worthless compared with an honest English
+or Scottish degree. At any rate, she could not judge of their value, and
+they did not fulfil her conditions. She made him understand at last that
+she was absolutely impracticable, and that the only distant hope she
+would allow to be wrung from her by his coaxing, wheedling tones, soft
+as the honey of Hybla, was, that if none of her sons or nephews were
+in the way of fulfilling the conditions, and he could bring her
+satisfactory English certificates, she might consider the matter, but
+she made no promises.
+
+Then he most politely represented the need of a maintenance while he
+was thus qualifying himself. Janet had evidently not told him about the
+will, and Caroline only said that from a recent discovery she thought
+her own tenure of the property very insecure, and she could undertake
+nothing for the future. She would let him know. However, she gave him a
+cheque for 100 pounds for the present, knowing that she could make it up
+from the money of her own which she had been accumulating for Elvira’s
+portion.
+
+Then Janet came in to take leave. Mr. Hermann described what the
+excellent and gracious lady had granted to him, and he made it sound so
+well, and his wife seemed so confident and triumphant, that her mother
+feared she had allowed more to be inferred than she intended, and tried
+to explain that all depended on the fulfilment of the conditions of
+which Janet at least was perfectly aware. She was overwhelmed, however,
+with his gratitude and Janet’s assurances, and they went away, leaving
+her with a hand much kissed by him, and the fondest, most lingering
+embrace she had ever had from Janet. Then she was free to lie still,
+abandoned to fears for her daughter’s future and repentance for her own
+careless past, and, above all crushed by the ache that would let her
+really feel little but pain and oppression.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. -- THE TURN OF THE WHEEL.
+
+
+
+     Is there, for honest poverty,
+       That hangs his head and a’ that,
+     The coward slave, we pass him by,
+       A man’s a man for a’ that.
+                               Burns.
+
+
+Thinking and acting were alike impossible to Caroline for the remainder
+of the day when her daughter left her, but night brought power of
+reflection, as she began to look forward to the new day, and its
+burthen.
+
+Her headache was better, but she let Barbara again go down to breakfast
+without her, feeling that she could not face her sons at once, and that
+she needed another study of the document before she could trust herself
+with the communication. She felt herself too in need of time to pray for
+right judgment and steadfast purpose, and that the change might so work
+with her sons that it might be a blessing, not a curse. Could it be for
+nothing that the finding of Magnum Bonum had wrought the undoing of this
+wrong? That thought, and the impulse of self-bracing, made her breakfast
+well on the dainty little meal sent up to her by the Infanta, and look
+so much refreshed, that the damsel exclaimed--
+
+“You are much better, mother! You will be able to see Jock before he
+goes--”
+
+“Fetch them all, Babie; I have something to tell you--”
+
+“Writs issued for a domestic parliament,” said Allen, presently
+entering. “To vote for the grant to the Princess Royal on her marriage?
+Do it handsomely, I say, the Athenian is better than might be expected,
+and will become prosperity better than adversity.”
+
+“Being capable of taking others in besides Janet,” said the opposition
+in the person of Bobus. “He seemed so well satisfied with the Gracious
+Lady house-mother that I am afraid she has been making him too many
+promises.”
+
+“That was impossible. It was not about Janet that I sent for you, boys.
+It was to think what we are to do ourselves. You know I always thought
+there must be another will. Look there!”
+
+She laid it on the table, and the young men stood gazing as if it were a
+venomous reptile which each hesitated to touch.
+
+“Is it legal, Bobus?” she presently asked.
+
+“It looks--rather so--” he said in an odd, stunned voice.
+
+“Elvira, by all that’s lucky!” exclaimed Jock. “Well done, Allen, you
+are still the Lady Clare!”
+
+“Not till she is of age,” said Allen, rather gloomily.
+
+“Pity you didn’t marry her at Algiers,” said Jock.
+
+“Where did this come from?” said Bobus, who had been examining it
+intently.
+
+“Out of the old bureau.”
+
+“Mother!” cried out Barbara, in a tone of horror, which perhaps was a
+revelation to Bobus, for he exclaimed--
+
+“You don’t mean that Janet had had it, and brought it out to threaten
+you?”
+
+“Oh, no, no! it was not so dreadful. She found it long ago, but did not
+think it valid, and only kept it out of sight because she thought it
+would make me unhappy.”
+
+“It is a pity she did not go a step further,” observed Bobus. “Why did
+she produce it now?”
+
+“I found it. Boys, you must know the whole truth, and consider how best
+to screen your sister. Remember she was very young, and fancied a thing
+on a common sheet of paper, and shut up in an unfastened table drawer
+could not be of force, and that she was doing no harm.” Then she told of
+her loss and recovery of what she called some medical memoranda of their
+father, which she knew Janet wanted, concluding--“It will surely be
+enough to say I found it in his old bureau.”
+
+“That will hardly go down with Wakefield,” said Bobus; “but as I see he
+stands here as trustee for that wretched child, as well as being yours,
+there is no fear but that he will be conformable. Shall I take it up and
+show it to him at once, so that if by any happy chance this should turn
+out waste paper, no one may get on the scent?”
+
+“Your uncle! I was so amazed and stupefied yesterday that I don’t know
+whether I told him, and if I did, I don’t think he believed me.”
+
+“Here he comes,” said Barbara, as the wheels of his dog-cart were heard
+below the window.
+
+“Ask him to come up. It will be a terrible blow to him. This place has
+been as much to him as to any of us, if not more.”
+
+“Mother, how brave you are!” cried Jock.
+
+“I have known it longer than you have, my dear. Besides, the mere loss
+is nothing compared with that which led to it. The worst of it is the
+overthrow of all your prospects, my dear fellow.”
+
+“Oh,” said Jock, brightly, “it only means that we have something and
+somebody to work for now;” and he threw his arms round her waist and
+kissed her.
+
+“Oh! my dear, dear boy, don’t! Don’t upset me, or your uncle will think
+it is about this.”
+
+“And don’t, for Heaven’s sake, talk as if it were all up with us,” cried
+Bobus.
+
+By this time the Colonel’s ponderous tread was near, and Caroline met
+him with an apology for giving him the trouble of the ascent, but said
+that she had wanted to see him in private.
+
+“Is this in private?” asked the Colonel, looking at the five young
+people.
+
+“Yes. They have a right to know all. Here it is, Robert.”
+
+He sat down, deliberately put on his spectacles, took the will, read
+it once, and groaned, read it twice, and groaned more deeply, and then
+said--
+
+“My poor dear sister! This is a bad business! a severe reverse! a very
+severe reverse!”
+
+“He has hit on his catch-word,” thought Caroline, and Jock’s arm still
+round her gave a little pressure, as if the thought had occurred to him.
+The moment of amusement gave a cheerfulness to her voice as she said--
+
+“We have been doing sad injustice all this time; that is the worst of
+it. For the rest, we shall be no worse off than we were before.”
+
+“It will be in Allen’s power to make up to you a good deal. That is a
+fortunate arrangement, but I am afraid it cannot take place till the
+girl is of age.”
+
+“You are all in such haste,” said Bobus. “It would take a good deal to
+make me accept such an informal scrap as this. No doubt one could drive
+a coach and horses through it.”
+
+“That would not lessen the injustice,” said his mother.
+
+“Could there not be a compromise?” said Allen.
+
+“That is nonsense,” said his uncle. “Either _this_ will stand, or
+_that_, and I am afraid this is the later. April 18th. Was that the time
+of that absurd practical joke of yours?”
+
+“Too true,” said Allen. “You recollect the old brute said I should
+remember it.”
+
+“Witnesses--? There’s Gomez, the servant who was drowned on his way out
+after his dismissal--Elizabeth Brook--is it--servant.--Who is to find
+her out?”
+
+“Richards may know.”
+
+“It is not our business to hunt up the witnesses. That’s the lookout of
+the other party,” said Bobus impatiently.
+
+“You don’t suppose I mean to contest it?” said his mother. “It is bad
+enough to go on as we have been doing these eight years. I only want to
+know what is right and truth, and if this be a real will.”
+
+“Where did it come from?” asked the Colonel, coming to the critical
+question. “Did you say you found it yourself, Caroline?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In the old bureau.”
+
+“What! the one that stood in his study? You don’t say so! I saw
+Wakefield turn the whole thing out, and look for any secret drawer
+before I would take any steps; I could have sworn that not the thickness
+of that sheet of paper escaped us. I should like, if only out of
+curiosity, to see where it was.”
+
+“Just as I said, mother,” said Bobus; “there’s no use in trying to blink
+it to any one who knows the circumstances.”
+
+“You do not insinuate that there was any foul play!” said his uncle
+hotly.
+
+“I don’t know what else it can be called,” said Caroline, faintly; “but
+please, Robert, and all the rest, don’t expose her. Poor Janet found the
+thing in the back of the bedside table-drawer, fancied it a mere rough
+draft, and childlike, put it out of sight in the bureau, where I lighted
+on it in looking for something else. Surely there is no need to mention
+her?”
+
+“Not if you do not contest the will,” replied the Colonel, who looked
+thunderstruck; “but if you did, it must all come out to exonerate us,
+the executors, from shameful carelessness. Well, we shall see what
+Wakefield says! A severe reverse! a very severe reverse!”
+
+When he found that Bobus meant to go in search of the lawyer that
+afternoon, he decided on accompanying him. And with a truly amazing
+burst of intuition, he even suggested carrying off Elvira to spend the
+day with Essie and Ellie, and even that an invitation might arise to
+stay all night, or as long as the first suspense lasted. Then muttering
+to himself, “A severe reverse--a most severe reverse!” he took his
+leave. Caroline went down stairs with him, as thinking she could the
+most naturally administer the invitation to Elvira, and the two eldest
+sons proceeded to make arrangements for the time of meeting and the
+journey.
+
+“A severe reverse!” said Jock, finding himself alone with the younger
+ones. “When one has a bitter draught, it is at least a consolation to
+have labelled it right.”
+
+“Shall we be very poor, Jock?” asked Barbara.
+
+“I don’t know what we were called before,” he said; “but from what I
+remember, I fancy we had about what I have been using for my private
+delectation. Just enough for my mother and you to be jolly upon.”
+
+“That’s all you think of!” said Armine.
+
+“All that a man need think of,” said Jock; “as long as mother and Babie
+are comfortable, we can do for ourselves very well.”
+
+“Ourselves!” said Armine, bitterly. “And how about this wretched place
+that we have neglected shamefully all these years!”
+
+“Armine!” cried Jock, indignantly. “Why, you are talking of mother!”
+
+“Mother says so herself.”
+
+“You went on raging about it; and, just like her, she did not defend
+herself. I am sure she has given away loads of money.”
+
+“But see what is wanting! The curate, and the school chapel, and the
+cottages; and if the school is not enlarged, they will have a school
+board. And what am I to say to Miss Parsons? I promised to bring
+mother’s answer about the curate this afternoon at latest.”
+
+“If she has the sense of a wren, she must know that a cataclysm like
+Janet’s may account for a few trifling omissions.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Babie! “She can’t expect it. Do you know, I am
+rather sorry we are not poorer? I hoped we should have to live in a very
+small way, and that I should have to work like you--for mother.”
+
+“Not like us, for pity’s sake, Infanta!” cried Jock. “We have had enough
+of that. The great use of you is to look after mother; and keep her from
+galloping the life out of herself, and this chap from worrying it out of
+her.”
+
+“Jock!” cried Armine, indignantly.
+
+“Yes, you will, if you go on moaning about these fads, and making her
+blame herself for them. I don’t say we have all done the right thing
+with this money, I’m sure I have not, and most likely it serves us right
+to lose it, but to have mother teased about what, after all, was chiefly
+owing to her absence, is more than I will stand. The one duty in hand is
+to make the best of it for her. I shall run down again as soon as I
+hear how this is likely to turn out--for Sunday, perhaps. Keep up a good
+heart, Babie Bunting, and whatever you do, don’t let him worry mother.
+Good-bye, Armie! What’s the use of being good, if you can’t hold up
+against a thing like this?”
+
+“Jock doesn’t know,” said Armine, as the door closed. “Fads indeed!”
+
+“Jock didn’t mean that,” pleaded Babie. “You know he did not; dear, good
+Jock, he could not!”
+
+“Jock is a good fellow, but he lives a frivolous, self-indulgent life,
+and has got infected with the spirit and the language,” said Armine, “or
+he would understand that myself or my own loss is the very last thing I
+am troubled about. No, indeed, I should never think of that! It is the
+ruin of these poor people and all I meant to have done for them. It is
+very strange that we should only be allowed to waken to a sense of our
+opportunities to have them taken away from us!”
+
+No one would have expected Armine, always regarded as the most religious
+of the family, to be the most dismayed, and neither he nor Barbara could
+detect how much of the spoilt child lay at the bottom of his regrets;
+but his little sister’s sympathy enabled him to keep from troubling his
+mother with his lamentations.
+
+Indeed Allen was usually in presence, and nobody ever ventured on what
+might bore Allen. He was in good spirits, believing that the discovery
+would put an end to all trifling on Elvira’s part, and that he and she
+would thus together be able to act the beneficent genii of the whole
+family. Even their mother had a sense of relief. She was very quiet, and
+moved about softly, like one severely shaken and bruised; but there
+was a calm in knowing the worst, instead of living in continual vague
+suspicion.
+
+The Colonel returned with tidings that Mr. Wakefield had no doubt of
+the validity of the will, though it might be possible to contest it if
+Elizabeth Brook, the witness, could not be found; but that would involve
+an investigation as to the manner of the loss, and the discovery. It
+was, in truth, only a matter of time; and on Monday Mr. Wakefield would
+come down and begin to take steps. That was the day on which the family
+were to have gone to London, but Caroline’s heart failed her, and she
+was much relieved when a kind letter arrived from Mrs. Evelyn, who was
+sure she could not wish to go into society immediately after Janet’s
+affair, and offered to receive Elvira for as long as might be
+convenient, and herself--as indeed had been already arranged--to present
+her at court with Sydney. It was a great comfort to place her in such
+hands during the present crisis, all the more that Ellen was not at
+all delighted with her company for Essie and Ellie. She rushed home on
+Saturday evening to secure Delrio, and superintend her packing up, with
+her head a great deal too full of court dresses and ball dresses, fancy
+costumes, and Parisian hats, to detect any of the tokens of a coming
+revolution, even in her own favour.
+
+Jock too came home that same evening, as gay and merry apparently as
+ever, and after dinner, claimed his mother for a turn in the garden.
+
+“Has Drake written to you, mother?” he asked. “I met him the other day
+at Mrs. Lucas’s, and it seems his soul is expanding. He wants to give
+up the old house--you know the lease is nearly out--and to hang out in a
+more fashionable quarter.”
+
+“Dear old house!”
+
+“Now, mother, here’s my notion. Why should not we hide our diminished
+heads there? You could keep house while the Monk and I go through the
+lectures and hospitals, and King’s College might not be too far off for
+Armine.”
+
+“You, Jock, my dear.”
+
+“You see, it is a raving impossibility for me to stay where I am.”
+
+“I am afraid so; but you might exchange into the line.”
+
+“There would be no great good in that. I should have stuck to the Guards
+because there I am, and I have no opinion of fellows changing about for
+nothing--and because of Evelyn and some capital fellows besides. But I
+found out long ago that it had been a stupid thing to go in for. When
+one has mastered the routine, it is awfully monotonous; and one has
+nothing to do with one’s time or one’s brains. I have felt many a time
+that I could keep straight better if I had something tougher to do.”
+
+“Tell me, just to satisfy my mind, my dear, you have no debts.”
+
+“I don’t owe forty pounds in the world, mother; and I shall not owe
+that, when I can get my tailor to send in his bill. You have given me as
+jolly an allowance as any man in the corps, and I’ve always paid my way.
+I’ve got no end of things about my rooms, and my horses and cab, but
+they will turn into money. You see, having done the thing first figure,
+I should hate to begin in the cheap and nasty style, and I had much
+rather come home to you, Mother Carey. I’m not too old, you know--not
+one-and-twenty till August. I shall not come primed like the Monk, but
+I’ll try to grind up to him, if you’ll let me, mother.”
+
+“Oh, Jock, dear Jock!” she cried, “you little know the strength and life
+it gives me to have you taking it so like a young hero.”
+
+“I tell you I’m sick of drill and parade,” said Jock, “and heartily
+glad of an excuse to turn to something where one can stretch one’s wits
+without being thought a disgrace to humanity. Now, don’t you think we
+might be very jolly together?”
+
+“Oh, to think of being there again! And we can have the dear old
+furniture and make it like home. It is the first definite notion any one
+has had. My dear, you have given me something to look forward to. You
+can’t guess what good you have done me! It is just as if you had shown
+me light at the end of the thicket; ay, and made yourself the good stout
+staff to lead me through!”
+
+“Mother, that’s the best thing that ever was said to me yet; worth ever
+so much more than all old Barnes’s money-bags.”
+
+“If the others will approve! But any way it is a nest egg for my own
+selfish pleasure to carry me through. Why, Jock, to have your name on
+the old door would be bringing back the golden age!”
+
+Nobody but Jock knew what made this such a cheerful Sunday with his
+mother. She was even heard making fun, and declaring that no one knew
+what a relief it would be not to have to take drives when all the roads
+were beset with traction engines. She had so far helped Armine out of
+the difficulties his lavish assurances had brought him into, that she
+had written a note to the Vicar, Mr. Parsons, telling him that she
+should be better able to reply in a little while; but Armine, knowing
+that he must not speak, and afraid of betraying the cause of his
+unhappiness and of the delay, was afraid to stir out of reach of the
+others lest Miss Parsons should begin an inquiry.
+
+The Vicar of Woodside was, in fact, as some people mischievously called
+her, the Reverend Petronella Parsons. Whether she wrote her brother’s
+sermons was a disputed question. She certainly did other things in his
+name which she had better have let alone. He was three or four years her
+junior, and had always so entirely followed her lead, that he seemed
+to have no personal identity; but to be only her male complement. That
+Armine should have set up a lady of this calibre for the first goddess
+of his fancy was one of the comical chances of life, but she was a fine,
+handsome, fresh-looking woman of five-and-thirty, with a strong vein
+of sentiment--ecclesiastical and poetic--just ignorant enough to
+gush freely, and too genuine to be _always_ offensive. She had been
+infinitely struck with Armine, had hung a perfect romance of renovation
+on him, sympathised with his every word, and lavished on him what
+perhaps was not quite flattery, because she was entirely in earnest, but
+which was therefore all the worse for him.
+
+Barbara had a natural repulsion from her, and could not understand
+Armine’s being attracted, and for the first time in their lives this was
+creating a little difference between the brother and sister. Babie had
+said, in rather an uncalled-for way, that Miss Parsons would draw back
+when she knew the truth, and Armine had been deeply offended at such an
+ungenerous hint, and had reduced her to a tearful declaration that she
+was very sorry she had said anything so uncalled for.
+
+Petronella herself had been much vexed at Armine’s three days’
+defection, which was ascribed to the worldly and anti-ecclesiastical
+influences of the rest of the family. She wanted her brother to preach
+a sermon about Lot’s wife; but Jemmie, as she called him, had on certain
+occasions a passive force of his own, and she could not prevail. She
+regretted it the less when Armine and Babie duly did the work they had
+undertaken in the Sunday-school, though they would not come in for any
+intermediate meals.
+
+“What did Mrs. Brownlow tell you in her note?” she asked of her brother
+while giving him his tea before the last service.
+
+“That in a few days she shall be able to answer me.”
+
+“Ah, well! Do you know there is a belief in the parish that something
+has happened--that a claim is to be set up to the whole property, and
+that the whole family will be reduced to beggary?”
+
+“I never heard of an estate to which there was not some claimant in
+obscurity.”
+
+“But this comes from undoubted authority.” Mr. Parsons smiled a little.
+“One can’t help it if servants _will_ hear things. Well! any way it
+will be overruled for good to that dear boy--though it would be a cruel
+stroke on the parish.”
+
+It was the twilight of a late spring evening when the congregation
+streamed out of Church, and Elvira, who had managed hitherto to avoid
+all intercourse with the River Hollow party, found herself grappled by
+Lisette without hope of rescue. “My dear, this is a pleasure at last; I
+have so much to say to you. Can’t you give us a day?”
+
+“I am going to town to-morrow,” said Elvira, never gracious to any
+Gould.
+
+“To-morrow! I heard the family had put off their migration.”
+
+“I go with Lucas. I am to stay with Mrs. Evelyn, Lord Fordham’s mother,
+you know, who is to present me at the Drawing-room,” said Elvira,
+magnificently.
+
+“Oh! if I could only see you in your court dress it would be memorable,”
+ cried Mrs. Gould. “A little longer, my dear, our paths lie together.”
+
+“I must get home. My packing--”
+
+“And may I ask what you wear, my dear? Is your dress ordered?”
+
+“O yes, I had it made at Paris. It is white satin, with lilies--a kind
+of lily one gets in Algiers.” And she expatiated on the fashion till
+Mrs. Gould said--
+
+“Well, my love, I hope you will enjoy yourself at the Honourable Mrs.
+Evelyn’s. What is the address, in case I should have occasion to write?”
+
+“I shall have no time for doing commissions.”
+
+“That was not my meaning,” was the gentle answer; “only if there be
+anything you ought to be informed of--”
+
+“They would write to me from home. Why, what do you mean?” asked the
+girl, her attention gained at last.
+
+“Did it never strike you why you are sent up alone?”
+
+“Only that Mrs. Brownlow is so cut up about Janet.”
+
+“Ah! youth is so sweetly unconscious. It is well that there are those
+who are bound to watch for your interests, my dear.”
+
+“I can’t think what you mean.”
+
+“I will not disturb your happy innocence, my love. It is enough for your
+uncle and me to be awake, to counteract any machinations. Ah! I see
+your astonishment! You are so simple, my dear child, and you have been
+studiously kept in the dark.”
+
+“I can’t think what you are driving at,” said Elvira, impatiently. “Mrs.
+Brownlow would never let any harm happen to me, nor Allen either. Do let
+me go.”
+
+“One moment, my darling. I must love you through all, and you will know
+your true friends one day. Are you--let me ask the question out of my
+deep, almost maternal, solicitude--are you engaged to Mr. Brownlow?”
+
+“Of course I am!”
+
+“Of course, as you say. Most ingenuous! Ah? well, may it not be too
+late!”
+
+“Don’t be so horrid, Lisette! Allen is not half a bad fellow, and
+frightfully in love with me.”
+
+“Exactly, my dear unsuspicious dove. There! I see you are impatient. You
+will know the truth soon enough. One kiss, for your mother’s sake.”
+
+But Elvira broke from her, and rejoined Allen.
+
+“I have sounded the child,” said Lisette to her husband that evening,
+“and she is quite in the dark, though the very servants in the house are
+better informed.”
+
+“Better informed than the fact, may be,” said Mr. Gould (for a man
+always scouts a woman’s gossip).
+
+“No, indeed. Poor dear child, she is blinded purposely. She never
+guessed why she was sent to Kencroft while the old Colonel was called
+in, and they all agreed that the will should be kept back till the
+wedding with Mr. Allen should be over, and he could make up the rest. So
+now the child is to be sent to town, and surrounded with Mrs. Brownlow’s
+creatures to prey upon her innocence. But you have no care for your own
+niece--none!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. -- FRIENDS AND UNFRIENDS.
+
+
+
+                           Ay, and, I think,
+     One business doth command us all; for mine
+     Is money.
+                            Timon of Athens.
+
+
+Before the door of one of the supremely respectable and aristocratic
+but somewhat gloomy-looking houses in Cavendish Square, whose mauve
+plate-glass windows and link-extinguishers are like fossils of a past
+era of civilisation, three riding horses were being walked up and down,
+two with side-saddles and one for a gentleman. They were taken aside as
+a four-wheel drove up, while a female voice exclaimed--
+
+“Ah! we are just it time!”
+
+Cards and a note were sent in with a request to see Miss Menella.
+
+Word came back that Miss Menella was just going out riding; but on
+the return of a message that the visitors came from Mrs. Brownlow on
+important business, they were taken up-stairs to an ante-room.
+
+They were three--Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Gould, and, to the great
+discontentment of the former, Mrs. Gould likewise. Fain would he have
+shaken her off; but as she truly said, who could deprive her of her
+rights as kinswoman, and wife to the young lady’s guardian?
+
+After they had waited a few moments in the somewhat dingy surroundings
+of a house seldom used by its proper owners, Elvira entered in plumed
+hat and habit, a slender and exquisite little figure, but with a haughty
+twitch in her slim waist, superb indifference in the air of her little
+head, and a grasp of her coral-handled whip as if it were a defensive
+weapon, when Lisette flew up to offer an embrace with--
+
+“Joy, joy, my dear child! Remember, I was the first to give you a hint.”
+
+“Good morning,” said Elvira, with a little bend of her head, presenting
+to each the shapely tip of a gauntleted hand, but ignoring her uncle and
+aunt as far as was possible. “Is there anything that need detain me, Mr.
+Wakefield? I am just going out with Miss Evelyn and Lord Fordham, and I
+cannot keep them waiting.”
+
+“Ah! it is you that will have to be waited for now, my sweet one,” began
+Mrs. Gould.
+
+“Here is a note from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mr. Wakefield, holding it to
+Elvira, who looked like anything but a sweet one. “I imagine it is to
+prepare you for the important disclosure I have to make.”
+
+A hot colour mounted in the fair cheek. Elvira tore open the letter and
+read--
+
+
+“MY DEAR CHILD,--I can only ask your pardon for the unconscious wrong
+which I have so long been doing to you, and which shall be repaired as
+soon as the processes of the law render it possible for us to change
+places.
+
+“Your ever loving,
+
+“MOTHER CAREY.”
+
+
+“What does it all mean?” cried the bewildered girl.
+
+“It means,” said the lawyer, “that Mrs. Brownlow has discovered a will
+of the late Mr. Barnes more recent than that under which she inherited,
+naming you, Miss Elvira Menella, as the sole inheritrix.”
+
+“My dear child, let me be the first to congratulate you on your recovery
+of your rights,” said Mrs. Gould, again proffering an embrace, but
+again the whip was interposed, while Elvira, with her eyes fixed on Mr.
+Wakefield, asked “What?” so that he had to repeat the explanation.
+
+“Then does it all belong to me?” she asked.
+
+“Eventually it will, Miss Menella. You are sole heiress to your great
+uncle, though you cannot enter into possession till certain needful
+forms of law are gone through. Mrs. Brownlow offers no obstruction, but
+they cannot be rapid.”
+
+“All mine!” repeated Elvira, with childish exultation. “What fun! I must
+go and tell Sydney Evelyn.”
+
+“A few minutes more, Miss Menella,” said Mr. Wakefield. “You ought to
+hear the terms of the will.”
+
+And he read it to her.
+
+“I thought you told me it was to be mine. This is all you and uncle
+George.”
+
+“As your trustees.”
+
+“Oh, to manage as the Colonel does. You will give me all the money I ask
+you for. I want some pearls, and I must have that duck of a little Arab.
+Uncle George, how soon can I have it?”
+
+“We must go through the Probate Court,” he began, but his wife
+interrupted--
+
+“Ways and means will be forthcoming, my dear, though for my part I think
+it would be much better taste in Mrs. Brownlow to put you in possession
+at once.”
+
+“Mr. Wakefield explained, my dear,” said her husband, “that, much as
+Mrs. Brownlow wishes to do so, she cannot; she has no power. It is her
+trustees.”
+
+“Oh yes, I know every excuse will be found for retaining the property as
+long as possible,” said the lady.
+
+“Then I shall have to wait ever so long,” said the young lady. “And I do
+so want the Arab. It is a real love, and Allen would say so.”
+
+“I have another letter for you,” said Mr. Wakefield, on hearing that
+name. “We will leave it with you. If you wish for further information, I
+would call immediately on receiving a line at my office.”
+
+Just then a message was brought from Mrs. Evelyn inviting Miss Menella’s
+friends to stay to luncheon. It incited Elvira, who knew neither awe nor
+manners, to run across the great drawing-room, leaving the doors open
+behind her, to the little morning-room, where sat Mrs. Evelyn, with
+Sydney, in her habit standing by the mantelpiece.
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Evelyn,” Elvira began, “it is Mr. Wakefield and my uncle and
+his wife. They have come to say it is all mine; Uncle Barnes left it all
+to me.”
+
+“So I hear from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Evelyn gravely.
+
+“Oh, Elfie, I am so sorry for you. Don’t you hate it?” cried Sydney.
+
+“Oh, but it is such fun! I can do everything I please,” said the
+heiress.
+
+“Yes, that’s the best part,” said Sydney. “I do envy you the day when
+you give it all back to Allen.”
+
+That reminded Elvira to open the note, and as she read it her great eyes
+grew round.
+
+
+“SWEETEST AND DEAREST,--How I have always loved, and always shall love
+you, you know full well. But these altered circumstances bring about
+what you have so often playfully wished. Say the word and you are free,
+no longer bound to me by anything that has passed between us, though the
+very fibres of my heart and life are as much as ever entwined about you.
+Honour bids my dissolution of our engagement, and I await your answer,
+though nothing can ever make me other than
+
+“Your wholly devoted,
+
+“ALLEN.”
+
+
+Mrs. Evelyn had been prepared by a letter from her friend for what was
+now taking place; Mr. Wakefield had likewise known the main purport of
+Allen’s note, and had allowed that Mr. Brownlow could not as a gentleman
+do otherwise than release the young lady; though he fully believed that
+it would be only as a matter of form, and that Elvira would not hear
+of breaking off. He had in fact spent much eloquence in persuading Mrs.
+Brownlow to continue to take the charge of the heiress during the three
+years before her majority. Begun in generous affection by Allen long
+ago, the engagement seemed to the lawyer, as well as to others, an
+almost providential means of at least partial restitution.
+
+He had meant Elvira to read her letter alone, but she had opened
+it before the two ladies, and her first exclamation was a startled,
+incredulous--
+
+“Ha! What’s this? He says our engagement is dissolved.”
+
+“He is of course bound to set you free, my dear,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “but
+it only depends on yourself.”
+
+“Oh! and I shall tease him well first,” cried Elvira, her face lighting
+up with fun and mischief. “He was so tiresome and did bother so! Now I
+shall have my swing! Oh, what fun! I won’t let him worry me again just
+yet, I can tell him!”
+
+“You don’t seem to consider,” began Sydney,--but Mrs. Gould took this
+moment for advancing.
+
+From the whole length of the large drawing-room the trio had been
+spectators, not quite auditors, though perhaps enough to perceive what
+line the Evelyns were taking.
+
+So Mrs. Gould advanced into the drawing-room; Mrs. Evelyn came forward
+to assume the duties of hostess; and Sydney turned and ran away so
+precipitately that she shut the door on the trailing skirt of her habit
+and had to open it again to release herself.
+
+Mr. Wakefield hoped the young ladies would pardon him for having spoilt
+their ride, and Elvira was going off to change her dress, when, to his
+dismay, Mrs. Evelyn desired her to take her aunt to her room to prepare
+for luncheon. He had seen enough of Mrs. Gould to know that this was a
+most unlucky measure of courtesy on good simple Mrs. Evelyn’s part, but
+of course he could do nothing to prevent it, and had to remain with
+Mr. Gould, both speaking in the strongest manner of Mrs. Brownlow’s
+uprightness and bravery in meeting this sudden change. Mr. Wakefield
+said he hoped to prevail on her to retain the charge of the young lady
+for the present, and Mr. Gould assented that she could not be in better
+hands. Then Mrs. Evelyn (by way of doing anything for her friend)
+undertook to make Elvira welcome as long as it might be convenient, and
+was warmly thanked. She further ascertained that the missing witness had
+been traced; and that the most probable course of action would be that
+there would be an amicable suit in the Probate Court and then another of
+ejectment. Until these were over, things would remain in their present
+state for how many weeks or months would depend upon the Law Courts,
+since Mrs. Brownlow’s trustees would be legally holders of the property
+until the decision was given against them, and Miss Menella would be
+as entirely dependent on her bounty as she had been all these years.
+Meanwhile, as Mrs. Brownlow had no inclination to come to London and
+exhibit herself as a disinherited heroine, Mr. Wakefield and the Colonel
+strongly advised her remaining on at Belforest.
+
+All this, Mrs. Evelyn had been anxious to understand, and thus was more
+glad of the delay of Elvira and her aunt up-stairs than she would have
+been, if she could ever have guessed what work a designing, flattering
+tongue could make with a vain, frivolous, selfish brain, with the same
+essential strain of vulgarity and worldliness.
+
+Still, Elvira was chiefly shallow and selfish, and all her affection and
+confidence naturally belonged to her home of the last eight years. She
+was bewildered, perhaps a little intoxicated at the sense of riches, but
+was really quite ready to lean as much as ever upon her natural friends
+and protectors.
+
+However, Lisette’s congratulations and exultation rang pleasantly
+upon her ear, and she listened and talked freely, asking questions and
+rejoicing.
+
+Now Mrs. Gould, to do her justice, measured others by herself, and
+really and truly believed that only accident had disconcerted a plan for
+concealing the will till Elvira should have been safely married to Allen
+Brownlow, and that thus it was the fixed purpose of the family to keep
+her and her fortune in their hands, a purpose which every instinct bade
+Mrs. Lisette Gould to traverse and overthrow, if only because she hated
+such artfulness and meanness. Unfortunately, too, as she had been a
+governess, and her father had been a Union doctor, she could put herself
+forward as something above a farmer’s wife, indeed “quite as good as
+Mrs. Brownlow.”
+
+All Mrs. Evelyn’s civility had not redeemed her from the imputation of
+being “high,” and Elvira was quite ready to call hers a very dull house.
+In truth, there was only moderate gaiety, and no fastness. The ruling
+interests were religious and political questions, as befitted Fordham’s
+maiden session, the society was quietly high-bred, and intelligent,
+and there was much attention to health; for, strong as Sydney was, her
+mother would have dreaded the full whirl of the season as much for her
+body as for her mind.
+
+At all this the frivolous, idle little soul chafed and fretted, aware
+that the circle was not a fashionable one, eager for far more diversion
+and less restraint, and longing to join the party in Hyde Corner, where
+she could always make Allen do what she pleased.
+
+With the obtuseness of an unobservant, self-occupied mind, she was taken
+by surprise when Mrs. Gould said that Mrs. Brownlow was not coming to
+town, adding, “It would be very unbecoming in her, though of course she
+will hold on at Belforest as long as there is any quibble of the law.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t want to lose the season; she promised me!”
+
+Then Mrs. Gould made a great stroke.
+
+“My dear, you could not return to her. Not when the young man has just
+broken with you. You would have more proper pride.”
+
+“Poor Allen!” said Elvira. “If he would only let me alone, to have my
+fun like other girls.”
+
+“You see he could not afford to let you gratify your youthful spirits.
+Too much was at stake, and it is most providential that things had gone
+no further, and that your own good sense has preserved you to adorn a
+much higher sphere.”
+
+“Allen could be made something,” said Elvira, “I know, for he told me
+he could get himself made a baronet. He always does as I tell him. Will
+they be very poor, Lisette?”
+
+“Oh no, my dear, generous child, Mrs. Brownlow was quite as well
+provided for as she had any right to expect. You need have no anxieties
+on that score.”
+
+To Elvira, the change from River Hollow to the Pagoda had been from
+rustic to gentle life, and thus this reply sounded plausible enough to
+silence a not much awakened compassion, but she still said, “Why can’t
+I go home? I’ve nowhere else to go. I could not stay at the Farm,” she
+added in her usual uncomplimentary style.
+
+“No, my dear, I should not think of it. An establishment must be formed,
+but in the meantime, it would be quite beneath you to return to Mrs.
+Brownlow, again to become the prey of underground machinations. Besides,
+how awkward it would be while the lawsuits are going on. Impossible! No
+my dear, you must only return to Belforest in a triumphal procession.
+Surely there must be a competition for my lovely child among more
+congenial friends.”
+
+“Well,” said Elvira, “there were the Folliots. We met them at Nice, and
+Lady Flora did ask me the other day, but Mrs. Brownlow does not like
+them, and Allen says they are not good form.”
+
+“Ah! I knew you could not want for friends. You are not bound by those
+who want to keep you to themselves for reasons of their own.”
+
+Thus before Elvira brought her aunt down stairs, enough had been done
+to make her eager to be with one who would discuss her future splendour
+rather than deplore the change to her benefactor, and thus she readily
+accepted a proposal she would naturally have scouted, to go out driving
+with Mrs. Gould. She came back in a mood of exulting folly, and being
+far too shallow and loquacious to conceal anything, she related in full
+all Mrs. Gould’s insinuations, which, to do her justice, the poor
+child did not really understand. But Sydney did, and was furious at the
+ingratitude which could seem almost flattered. Mrs. Evelyn found the two
+girls in a state of hot reproach and recrimination, and cut the matter
+short by treating them as if they were little children, and ordering
+them both off to their rooms to dress for dinner.
+
+Elvira went away sobbing, and saying that nobody cared for her;
+everybody was wrapped up in the Brownlows, who had been enjoying what
+was hers ever so long.
+
+And Sydney presently burst into her mother’s room to pour out her
+disgust and indignation against the heartless, ungrateful, intolerable--
+
+“Only foolish, my dear, and left all day in the hands of a flattering,
+designing woman.”
+
+“To let such things be said. Mamma, did you hear--?”
+
+“I had rather not hear, Sydney; and I desire you will not repeat them
+to any one. Be careful, if you talk to Jock to-night. To repeat words
+spoken in her present mood might do exceeding mischief.”
+
+“She speaks as if she meant to cast them all off--Allen and all.”
+
+“Very possibly she may see things differently when she wakes to-morrow.
+But Sydney, while she is here, the whole subject must be avoided.
+It would not be acting fairly to use any influence in favour of our
+friends.”
+
+“Don’t you mean to speak to her, mamma?”
+
+“If she consults me, of course I shall tell her what I think of the
+matter, but I shall not force my advice on her, or give these Goulds
+occasion to say that I am playing into Mrs. Brownlow’s hands.”
+
+They were going to an evening party, and Lucas and Cecil came to dinner
+to go with them. Cecil looked grave and gloomy, but Jock rattled away
+so merrily that Sydney began to wonder whether all this were a dream, or
+whether he were still unaware of the impending misfortune.
+
+But Jock only waited for the friendly cover of a grand piece of
+instrumental music to ask Mrs. Evelyn if she had heard from his
+mother, and she was very glad to go into details with him, while he was
+infinitely relieved that the silence was over, and he could discuss the
+matter with his friends.
+
+“Tell me truly, Jock, will she be comfortably off?”
+
+“Very fairly. Yes, indeed. My father’s savings were absolutely left to
+her, and have been accumulating all this time, and they will be a very
+fair maintenance for her and Babie.”
+
+“There is no danger of her having to pay the mesne profits?”
+
+“No, certainly not, as it stands. Mr. Wakefield says that cannot happen.
+Then the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born, is our own,
+and she likes the notion of returning thither. Mrs. Evelyn, after all
+you and Sir James have done for me, what should you think of my giving
+it up, and taking to the pestle and mortar?”
+
+“My dear Lucas!” Then after a moment’s reflection, “I suppose it would
+be folly to think of going on as you are?”
+
+“Raving insanity,” said Jock, “and this notion really does seem to
+please my mother.”
+
+“Is it not just intolerable to hear him?” said Cecil, who had made his
+way to them.
+
+“‘What is bred in the bone--’” said Jock. “What’s that? Chopin? Sydney,
+will you condescend to the apothecary’s boy?”
+
+As he led her to the dancing-room, she asked, “You can’t really mean
+this, Jock. Cecil is breaking his heart about it.”
+
+“There are worse trades.”
+
+“But it is such a cruel pity!”
+
+“What? The execution I shall make,” he said lightly.
+
+“For shame, Jock!”
+
+But he went on teasing her, because their hearts were so very full.
+“‘Tis just the choice between various means of slaughter.”
+
+“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Something can be done to prevent your throwing
+yourself away. Why can’t you exchange?”
+
+“It is too late to get into any corps where I should not be an expense
+to my mother,” said Jock, regretting his decision a good deal more when
+he found how she regarded it.
+
+“Well, sacrifice is something!” sighed Sydney.
+
+Jock defied strange feelings by a laugh and the reply, “Equal to the
+finest thing in the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ and that was the knight who
+let the hyena eat up his hand that his lady might finish her rosary
+undisturbed.”
+
+“It is as bad--or as good--to let the hyena eat up your sword hand as to
+cut yourself off from all that is great and noble--all we used to think
+you would do.”
+
+So spoke Sydney Evelyn in her girlish prejudice, and the prospects that
+had recently seemed to Lucas so fair and kindly, suddenly clouded over
+and became dull, gloomy, and despicable. She felt as if she were saving
+him from becoming a deserter as she went on--
+
+“I am sure Babie must be shocked!”
+
+“I don’t know whether Babie has heard. She has serious thoughts of
+coming out as a lady-help, editing the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ as a popular
+magazine, giving lessons in Greek, or painting the crack picture in the
+Royal Academy. In fact, she would rather prefer to have the whole family
+on her hands.”
+
+“It is all the spirit of self-sacrifice,” said Sydney; “but oh, Lucas,
+let it be any sacrifice but that of your sword! Think how we should all
+feel if there was a great glorious war, and you only a poor creature of
+a civilian, instead of getting--as I know you would--lots of medals and
+Victoria Crosses, and knighthood--real knighthood! Oh, Jock, think of
+that! When your mother thinks of that, she can’t want you to make
+any such mistaken sacrifice to her. Live on a crust if you like, but
+don’t--don’t give up your sword.”
+
+“This is coming it strong,” muttered Jock. “I did not think anyone cared
+so much.”
+
+“Of course I care.”
+
+The words were swept off as they whirled together into the dance, where
+the clasping hands and flying feet had in them a strange impulse, half
+tenderness, half exultation, as each felt an importance to the other
+unknown before. Childishness was not exactly left behind in it, but a
+different stage was reached. Sydney felt herself to have done a noble
+work, and gloried in watching till her hero should have achieved
+greatness on a crust a day, and Jock was equally touched and elated at
+the intimation that his doings were so much to her.
+
+Friendship sang the same note. Cecil, honest lad, had never more than
+the average amount either of brains or industry, and despised medicines
+to the full as much as did his sister. Abhorring equally the toil and
+the degradation, he deemed it a duty to prevent such a fall, and put his
+hope in his uncle. Nay, if his mother had not assured him that it was
+too late, he would have gone off at once to seek Sir James at his club.
+
+Lord Fordham had been in bed long before the others returned, but in the
+morning a twisted note was handed to his mother, briefly saying he was
+running down to see how it was with them at Belforest.
+
+When a station fly was seen drawing to the door, Allen, who was drearily
+leaning over the stone wall of the terrace, much disorganised by having
+received no answer to his letter, instantly jumped to the conclusion
+that Elvira had come home, sprang to the door, and when he only saw the
+tall figure emerge, he concluded that something dreadful had happened,
+grasped Fordham’s hand, and demanded what it was.
+
+It fell flat that she had last been seen full-dressed going off to a
+party.
+
+“Then, if there’s nothing, what brought you here? I mean,” said poor
+Allen, catching up his courtesy, “I’m afraid there’s nothing you or any
+one else can do.”
+
+“Can I see your mother?”
+
+Allen turned him into the library and went off to find his mother,
+and instruct her to discover from “that stupid fellow” how Elvira
+was feeling it. When, after putting away the papers she was trying to
+arrange, Caroline went downstairs, she had no sooner opened the door
+than Barbara flew up to her, crying out--
+
+“Oh, mother, tell him not!”
+
+“Tell him what, my dear?” as the girl hung on her, and dragged her into
+the ante-room. “What is the matter?”
+
+“If it is nonsense, he ought not to have made it so like earnest,” said
+Babie, all crimson, but quite gravely.
+
+“You don’t mean--”
+
+“Yes, mother.”
+
+“How could he?” cried Caroline, in her first annoyance at such things
+beginning with her Babie.
+
+“You’ll tell him, mother. You’ll not let him do it again?”
+
+“Let me go, my child. I must speak to him and find out what it all
+means.”
+
+Within the library she was met by Fordham.
+
+“Have I done very wrong, Mrs. Brownlow? I could not help it.”
+
+“I wish you had not.”
+
+“I always meant to wait till she was older, and I grew stronger, but
+when all this came, I thought if we all belonged to one another it might
+be a help--”
+
+“Very, very kind, but--”
+
+“I know I was sudden and frightened her,” he continued; “but if she
+could--”
+
+“You forget how young she is.”
+
+“No, I don’t. I would not take her from you. We could all go on
+together.”
+
+“All one family? Oh, you unpractised boy!”
+
+“Have we not done so many winters? But I would wait, I meant to have
+waited, only I am afraid of dying without being able to provide for her.
+If she would have me, she would be left better off than my mother, and
+then it would be all right for you and Armie. What are you smiling at?”
+
+“At your notions of rightness, my dear, kind Duke. I see how you mean
+it, but it will not do. Even if she had grown to care for you, it would
+not be right for me to give her to you for years to come.”
+
+“May not I hope till then?”
+
+She could not tell how sorry she should be to see in her little daughter
+any dawnings of an affection which would be a virtual condemnation to
+such a life as his mother’s had been.
+
+“You don’t guess how I love her! She has been the bright light of my
+life ever since the Engelberg,--the one hope I have lived for!”
+
+“My poor Duke!”
+
+“Then do you quite mean to deny me all hope?”
+
+“Hope must be according to your own impressions, my dear Fordham. Of
+course, if you are well, and still wishing it four or five years hence,
+it would be free to you to try again. More, I cannot say. No, don’t
+thank me, for I trust to your honour to make no demonstrations in the
+meantime, and not to consider yourself as bound.”
+
+It was a relief that Armine here came in, attracted by a report of his
+friend’s arrival, and Mrs. Brownlow went in search of her daughter, to
+whom she was guided by a sonata played with very unnecessary violence.
+
+“You need not murder Haydn any more, you little barbarian,” she said,
+with a hand on the child’s shoulder, and looking anxiously into the
+gloomy face. “I have settled him.”
+
+Babie drew a long breath, and said--
+
+“I’m glad! It was so horrid! You’ll not let him do it any more?”
+
+“Then you decidedly would not like it?” returned her mother.
+
+“Like it? Poor Duke! Mother! As if I could ever! A man that can’t sit in
+a draught, or get wet in his feet!” cried Babie, with the utmost scorn;
+and reading reproof as well as amused pity in her mother’s eyes, she
+added, “Of course, I am very sorry for him; but fancy being very _sorry_
+for one’s love!”
+
+“I thought you liked wounded knights?”
+
+“Wounded! Yes, but they’ve done something, and had glorious wounds. Now
+Duke--he is very good, and it is not his fault but his misfortune; but
+he is such a--such a muff!”
+
+“That’s enough, my dear; I am quite content that my Infanta should
+wait for her hero. Though,” she added, almost to herself, “she is too
+childish to know the true worth of what she condemns.”
+
+She felt this the more when Babie, who had coaxed the housekeeper into
+letting her begin a private school of cookery, started up, crying--
+
+“I must go and see my orange biscuits taken out of the oven! I should
+like to send a taste to Sydney!”
+
+Yes, Barbara was childish for nearly sixteen, and, as it struck her
+mother at the moment, rather wonderfully so considering her cleverness
+and romance. It was better for her that the softening should not come
+yet, but, mother as she was, Caroline’s sympathies could not but be at
+the moment with the warm-hearted, impulsive, generous young man, moved
+out of all his habitual valetudinarian habits by his affection, rather
+than with the light-hearted child, who spurned the love she did not
+comprehend, and despised his ill-health. Had the young generation no
+hearts? Oh no--no--it could not be so with her loving Barbara, and she
+ought to be thankful for the saving of pain and perplexity.
+
+Poor Armine was not getting much comfort out of his friend, who was too
+much preoccupied to attend to what he was saying, and only mechanically
+assented at intervals to the proposition that it was an inscrutable
+dispensation that the will and the power should so seldom go together.
+He heard all Armine’s fallen castles about chapels, schools, curates,
+and sisters, as in a dream, really not knowing whether they were or were
+not to be. And with all his desire to be useful, he never perceived the
+one offer that would have been really valuable, namely, to carry off the
+boy out of sight of the scene of his disappointment.
+
+Fordham was compelled to stay for an uncomfortable luncheon, when
+there were spasmodic jerks of talk about subjects of the day to keep
+up appearances before the servants, who flitted about in such an
+exasperating way that their mistress secretly rejoiced to think how soon
+she should be rid of the fine courier butler.
+
+Just as the pony-carriage came round for Armine to drive his friend back
+to the station, the Colonel came in, and was an astonished spectator of
+the farewells.
+
+“So that’s your young lord,” he said. “Poor lad! if our nobility is
+made of no tougher stuff, I would not give much for it. What brought him
+here?”
+
+“Kindness--sympathy--” said Caroline, a little awkwardly.
+
+“Much of that he showed,” said Allen, “just knowing nothing at all about
+anybody! No! If it were not so utterly ridiculous I should think he had
+come to make an offer to Babie:” and as his sister flew out of the room,
+“You don’t mean that he has, mother?”
+
+“Pray, don’t speak of it to any one!” said Caroline. “I would not have
+it known for the world. It was a generous impulse, poor dear fellow; and
+Babie has no feeling for him at all.”
+
+“Very lucky,” said the uncle. “He looks as if his life was not worth a
+year’s purchase. So you refused him? Quite right too. You are a sensible
+woman, Caroline, in the midst of this severe reverse!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. -- AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING
+
+
+
+     ‘Lesbia hath a beaming eye,
+        But no one knows for whom it beameth,
+      Right and left its arrows fly,
+        But what they aim at, no one dreameth.’
+
+
+By the advice, or rather by the express desire, of her trustees, Mrs.
+Brownlow remained at Belforest, while they accepted an offer of renting
+the London house for the season. Mr. Wakefield declared that there was
+no reason that she should contract her expenditure; but she felt as if
+everything she spent beyond her original income, except of course the
+needful outlay on keeping up the house and gardens, were robbery of
+Elvira, and she therefore did not fill up the establishment of servants,
+nor of horses, using only for herself the little pair of ponies which
+had been turned out in the park.
+
+No one had perhaps realised the amount of worry that this arrangement
+entailed. As Barbara said, if they could have gone away at once and
+worked for their living like sensible people in a book, it would
+have been all very well--but this half-and-half state was dreadful.
+Personally it did not affect Babie much, but she was growing up to the
+part of general sympathiser, and for the first time in their lives there
+was a pull in contrary directions by her mother, and Armine.
+
+Every expenditure was weighed before it was granted. Did it belong
+rightly to Belforest estate or to Caroline Brownlow? And the claims
+of the church and parish at Woodside were doubtful. Armine, under the
+influence of Miss Parsons, took a wide view of the dues of the parish,
+thought there was a long arrear to be paid off, and that whatever could
+be given was so much out of the wolf’s mouth.
+
+His mother, with ‘Be just before you are generous’ ringing in her ears,
+referred all to the Colonel, and he had long had a fixed scale of the
+duties of the property as a property, and was only rendered the more
+resolute in it by that vehemence of Armine’s which enhanced his dislike
+and distrust of the family at the vicarage.
+
+“Bent on getting all they could while they could,” he said, quite
+unjustly as to the vicar, and hardly fairly by the sister, whose demands
+were far exceeded by those of her champion.
+
+The claims of the cottages for repair, and of the school for
+sufficient enlargement and maintenance to obviate a School Board,
+were acknowledged; but for the rest, the Colonel said, “his sister was
+perfectly at liberty. No one could blame her if she threw her balance at
+the bank into the sea. She would never be called to account; but since
+she asked him whether the estate was bound to assist in pulling the
+church to pieces, and setting up a fresh curate to bring in more
+absurdities, he could only say what he thought,” etc.
+
+These thoughts of his were of course most offensive to Armine, who set
+all down to sordid Puritan prejudice, could not think how his mother
+could listen, and, when Babie stood up for her mother, went off to blend
+his lamentations with those of Miss Parsons, whose resignation struck
+him as heroic. “Never mind, Armine, it will all come in time. Perhaps
+we are not fit for it yet. We cannot expect the world’s justice to
+understand the outpouring of the saints’ liberality.”
+
+Armine repeated this interesting aphorism to Barbara, and was much
+disappointed that the shrewd little woman did not understand it, or only
+so far as to say, “But I did not know that it was saintly to be liberal
+with other people’s money.”
+
+He said Babie had a prejudice against Miss Parsons; and he was so far
+right that the Infanta did not like her, thought her a humbug, and
+sorely felt that for the first time something had come between herself
+and Armine.
+
+Allen was another trouble. He did not agree to the retrenchments, in
+which he saw no sense, and retained his horse and groom. Luckily he had
+retained only one when going abroad, and at this early season he needed
+no more. But his grievous anxiety and restlessness about Elvira did
+not make him by any means insensible to the effects of a reduced
+establishment in a large house, and especially to the handiwork of the
+good woman who had been left in charge, when compared with that of the
+80L cooks who had been the plague of his mother’s life.
+
+No one, however, could wonder at his wretchedness, as day after day
+passed without hearing from Elvira, and all that was known was that
+she had left Mrs. Evelyn and gone to stay with Lady Flora Folliott, a
+flighty young matron, who had been enraptured with her beauty at a table
+d’hote a year ago, and had made advances not much relished by the rest
+of the party.
+
+No more was to be learnt till Lucas found a Saturday to come down.
+Before he could say three words, he was cross-examined. Had he seen
+Elvira?
+
+“Several times.”
+
+“Spoken to her?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What had she said?”
+
+“Asked him to look at a horse.”
+
+“Did she know he was coming home?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Had she sent any message?”
+
+“Well--yes. To desire that her Algerine costume should be sent up.
+Whew!” as Allen flung himself out of the room. “How have I put my foot
+in it, mother?”
+
+“You don’t mean that that was all?”
+
+“Every jot! What, has she not written? The abominable little elf! I’m
+coming.” And he shrugged his shoulders as Allen, who had come round to
+the open window, beckoned to him.
+
+“He was absolutely grappled by a trembling hand, and a husky voice
+demanded, ‘What message did she really send? I can’t stand foolery’.”
+
+“Just that, Allen--to Emma. Really just that. You can’t shake more out
+of me. You might as well expect anything from that Chinese lantern. Hold
+hard. ‘Tis not I--”
+
+“Don’t speak! You don’t know her! I was a fool to think she would
+confide to a mere buffoon,” cried poor Allen, in his misery. “Yet if
+they were intercepting her letters--”
+
+Wherewith he buried himself in the depths of the shrubbery, while Jock,
+with a long whistle, came back through the library window to his mother,
+observing--
+
+“Intercepted! Poor fellow! Hardly necessary, if possible, though Lady
+Flora might wish to catch her for Clanmacnalty. Has the miserable imp
+really vouchsafed no notice of any of you?”
+
+“Not the slightest; and it is breaking Allen’s heart.”
+
+“As if a painted little marmoset were worth a man’s heart! But Allen
+has always been infatuated about her, and there’s a good deal at stake,
+though, if he could only see it in the right fight, he is well quit
+of such a bubble of a creature. I wouldn’t be saddled with it for all
+Belforest.”
+
+“Don’t call her any more names, my dear! I only wish any one would
+represent to her the predicament she keeps Allen in. He can’t press for
+an answer, of course; but it is cruel to keep him in this suspense. I
+wonder Mrs. Evelyn did not make her write.
+
+“I don’t suppose it entered her mind that the little wretch (beg your
+pardon) had not done it of her own accord, and with those Folliotts
+there’s no chance. They live in a perpetual whirl, enough to distract an
+Archbishop. Twenty-four parties a week at a moderate computation.”
+
+“Unlucky child!”
+
+“Wakefield is heartily vexed at her having run into such hands,” said
+Jock; “but there is no hindering it, no one has any power, and even if
+he had, George Gould is a mere tool in his wife’s hands.”
+
+“Still, Mr. Wakefield might insist on her answering Allen one way or the
+other. Poor fellow! I don’t think it would cost her much, for she
+was too childish ever to be touched by that devotion of his. I always
+thought it a most dangerous experiment, and all I wish for now is
+that she would send him a proper dismissal, so that his mind might be
+settled. It would be bad enough, but better than going on in this way.”
+
+“I’ll see him,” said Jock, “or may be I can do the business myself, for,
+strange to say, the creature doesn’t avoid me, but rather runs after
+me.”
+
+“You meet her in society?”
+
+“Yes, I’ve not come to the end of my white kids yet, you see. And
+mother, I came to tell you of something that has turned up. You know the
+Evelyns are all dead against my selling out. I dined with Sir James on
+Tuesday, and found next day it was for the sake of walking me out before
+Sir Philip Cameron, the Cutteejung man, you know. He is sure to be sent
+out again in the autumn, and he has promised Sir James that if I can
+get exchanged into some corps out there, he will put me on his staff at
+once. Mother!”
+
+He stopped short, astounded at the change of countenance, that for a
+moment she could neither control nor conceal, as she exclaimed “India!”
+ but rallying at once she went on “Sir Philip Cameron! My dear boy,
+that’s a great compliment. How delighted your uncle will be!”
+
+“But you, mother!”
+
+“Oh yes, my dear, I shall, I will, like it. Of course I am glad and
+proud for my Jock! How very kind of Sir James!”
+
+“Isn’t it? He talked it over with me as if I had been Cecil, and said I
+was quite right not to stay in the Guards; and that in India, if a man
+has any brains at all and reasonable luck, he can’t help getting on.
+So I shall be quite and clean off your hands, and in the way of working
+forward, and perhaps of doing something worth hearing of. Mother, you
+will be pleased then?”
+
+“Shall I not, my dear, dear Jockey! I don’t think you could have a
+better chief. I have always heard that Sir Philip was such a good man.”
+
+“So Mrs. Evelyn said. She was sure you would be satisfied. You can’t
+think how kind they were, making the affair quite their own,” said Jock,
+with a little colour in his face. “They absolutely think it would be
+wrong to give up the service.”
+
+“Yes; Mrs. Evelyn wrote to me that you ought not to be thrown away. It
+was very kind and dear, but with a little of the aristocratic notion
+that the army is the only profession in the world. I can’t help it; I
+can’t think your father’s profession unworthy of his son.”
+
+“She didn’t say so!”
+
+“No, but I understood it. Perhaps I am touchy; I don’t think I am
+ungrateful. They have always made you like one of themselves.”
+
+“Yes, so much that I don’t like to run counter to their wishes when they
+have taken such pains. Besides, there are things that can be thought of,
+even by a poor man, as a soldier, which can’t in the other line.”
+
+This speech, made with bent head, rising colour, and hand playing with
+his mother’s fan, gave her, all unwittingly on his part, a keen sense
+that her Jock was indeed passing from her, but she said nothing to damp
+his spirits, and threw herself heartily into his plans, announcing
+them to his uncle with genuine exultation. To this the Colonel fully
+responded, telling Jock that he would have given the world thirty years
+ago for such a chance, and commending him for thus getting off his
+mother’s hands.
+
+“I only wish the rest of you were doing the same,” he said, “but each
+one seems to think himself the first person to be thought of, and her
+the last.”
+
+“The Colonel’s wish seemed in course of fulfilment, for when Lucas went
+a few days later to his brother Robert’s rooms, he found him collecting
+testimonials for his fitness to act as Vice-principal to a European
+college at Yokohama for the higher education of the Japanese.
+
+“Mother has not heard of it,” said Jock.
+
+“She need not till it is settled,” answered Bobus. “It will save her
+trouble with her clerical friends if she only knows too late for a
+protest.”
+
+Jock understood when he saw the stipulations against religious teaching,
+and recognised in the Principal’s name an essayist whose negations of
+faith had made some stir. However, he only said, “It will be rather a
+blow.”
+
+“There are limits to all things,” replied Bobus. “The truest kindness to
+her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible.
+She has quite enough to drag her down.”
+
+“I should hope to act the other way,” said Jock.
+
+“Get your own head above water first,” said Bobus. “Here’s some good
+advice gratis, though I’ve no expectation of your taking it. Don’t go in
+for study in the old quarters! Go to Edinburgh or Paris or anywhere you
+please, but cut the connection, or you’ll never be rid of loafers for
+life. Wherever mother is, all the rest will gravitate. Mark me, Allen is
+spoilt for anything but a walking gentleman, Armine will never be good
+for work, and how many years do you give Janet’s Athenian to come to
+grief in? Then will they return to the domestic hearth with a band of
+small Grecians, while Dr. Lucas Brownlow is reduced to a rotifer or
+wheel animal, circulating in a trap collecting supplies, with ‘sic vos
+non vobis’ for his motto.”
+
+Jock looked startled. “How if there be no such rotifer?” he said. “You
+don’t really think there will be nothing to depend when we are both
+gone?”
+
+“When?”
+
+“Yes, I’ve a chance of getting on Cameron’s staff in India.”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right, old fellow! Why, you’ll be my next neighbour.”
+
+“But about mother? You don’t seriously think Ali and Armie will be
+nothing but dead weights on her?”
+
+“Only as long as there’s anybody to hold them up”, said Bobus,
+perceiving that his picture had taken an effect the reverse of what he
+intended. “They have no lack of brains, and are quite able to shift for
+themselves and mother too, if only they have to do it, even if she were
+a pauper, which she isn’t.”
+
+But it was with a less lightsome heart that Jock went to his quarters
+to prepare for a fancy ball, where he expected to meet Elvira, though
+whether he should approach her or not would depend on her own caprice.
+
+It was a very splendid affair. A whole back garden, had been transformed
+into a vast pavilion, containing an Armida’s garden, whose masses of
+ferns and piles of gorgeous flowers made delightful nooks for strangers
+who left the glare of the dancing-room, and the quaint dresses
+harmonised with the magic of the gaslight and the strange forms of the
+exotics.
+
+The simple scarlet of the young Guardsman was undistinguished among the
+brilliant character-groups which represented old fairy tales and nursery
+rhymes. There were ‘The White Cat and her Prince,’ ‘Puss-in-Boots and
+the Princess,’ ‘Little Snowflake and her Bear,’ and, behold, here was
+the loveliest Fatima ever seen, in the well-known Algerine dress, mated
+with a richly robed and turbaned hero, whose beard was blue, though in
+ordinary life red, inasmuch as he was Lady Flora’s impecunious and
+not very reputable Scottish peer of a brother. That lady herself, in
+a pronounced bloomer, represented the little old woman of doubtful
+identity, and her husband the pedlar, whose ‘name it was Stout’; while
+not far off the Spanish lady, in garments gay, as rich as may be, wooed
+her big Englishman in a dress that rivalled Sir Nicolas Blount’s.
+
+There was a pretty character quadrille, and then a general melee, in
+which Jock danced successively with Cinderella and the fair equestrian
+of Banbury Cross, and lost sight of Fatima, till, just as he was
+considering of offering himself to little Bo-peep, he saw her looking a
+good deal bored by the Spanish lady’s Englishman.
+
+Tossing her head till the coins danced on her forehead, she exclaimed,
+“Oh, there’s my cousin; I must speak to him!” and sprang to her old
+companion as if for protection. “Take me to a cool corner, Jock,” she
+said, “I am suffocating.”
+
+“No wonder, after waltzing with a mountain.”
+
+“He can no more waltz than fly! And he thinks himself irresistible! He
+says his dress is from a portrait of his ancestor, Sir Somebody; and
+Flora declares his only ancestor must have been the Fat Boy! And he
+thought I was a Turkish Sultana! Wasn’t it ridiculous! You know he never
+says anything but ‘Exactly.’”
+
+“Did he intone it so as to convey all this?”
+
+“He is a little inspired by his ruff and diamonds. Flora says he wants
+to dazzle me, and will have them changed into paste before he makes them
+over to his young woman. He has just tin enough to want more, and she
+says I must be on my guard.”
+
+“You want no guard, I should think, but your engagement.”
+
+“What are you bringing that up for? I suppose you know how Allen wrote
+to me?” she pouted.
+
+“I know that he thought it due to you to release you from your promise,
+and that he is waiting anxiously for your reply. Have you written?”
+
+“Don’t bore so, Jock,” said Elvira pettishly. “It was no doing of mine,
+and I don’t see why I should be teased.”
+
+“Then you wish me to tell him that he is to take your silence as a
+release from you.”
+
+“I authorise nothing,” she said. “I hate it all.”
+
+“Look here, Elvira,” said Jock, “do you know your own mind? Nobody wants
+you to take Allen. In fact, I think he is much better quit of you; but
+it is due to him, and still more to yourself, to cancel the old affair
+before beginning a new one.”
+
+“Who told you I was beginning a new one?” asked she pertly.
+
+“No one can blame you, provided you let him loose first. It is
+considered respectable, you know, to be off with the old love before you
+are on with the new. Nay, it may be only a superstition.”
+
+“Superstition!” she repeated in an awed voice that gave him his cue, and
+he went on--“Oh yes, a lady has been even known to come and shake hands
+with the other party after he had been hanged to give back her troth,
+lest he should haunt her.”
+
+“Allen isn’t hanged,” said Elvira, half frightened, half cross. “Why
+doesn’t he come himself?”
+
+“Shall he?” said Jock.
+
+“My dear child, I’ve been running madly up and down for you!” cried Lady
+Flora, suddenly descending on them, and carrying off her charge with
+a cursory nod to the Guardsman, marking the difference between a
+detrimental and even the third son of a millionaire.
+
+He saw Elvira no more that night, and the next post carried a note to
+Belforest.
+
+
+                                                      31st May.
+
+DEAR ALLEN--I don’t know whether you will thank me, but I tried to get a
+something definite out of your tricksy Elf, and the chief result, so far
+as I can understand the elfish tongue, is, that she sought no change,
+and the final sentence was, ‘Why doesn’t he come himself?’ I believe it
+is her honest wish to go on, when she is left to her proper senses;
+but that is seldom. You must take this for what it is worth from the
+buffoon,                                                       J. L. B.
+
+
+Allen came full of hope, and called the next morning. Miss Menella was
+out riding. He got a card for a party where she was sure to be present,
+and watched the door, only to see her going away on the arm of Lord
+Clanmacnalty to some other entertainment. He went to Mr. Folliott’s
+door, armed with a note, and heard that Lady Flora and Miss Menella were
+gone out of town for a few days. So it went on, and he turned upon
+Jock with indignation at having been summoned to be thus deluded.
+The undignified position added venom to the smart of the disregarded
+affection and the suspense as to the future, and Jock had much to endure
+after every disappointment, though Allen clung to him rather than to
+any one else because of his impression that Elvira’s real preference was
+unchanged (such as it was), and that these failures were rather due to
+her friend than to herself.
+
+This became more clear through Mrs. Evelyn. Her family had connections
+in common with the Dowager Lady Clanmacnalty, and the two ladies met
+at the house of their relation. Listening in the way of duty to the old
+Scottish Countess’s profuse communications, she heard what explained a
+good deal.
+
+Did she know the Spanish girl who was with Flora--a handsome creature
+and a great heiress? Oh yes; she had presented her. Strange affair!
+Flora understood that there was a deep plot for appropriating the young
+lady and her fortune.
+
+“She had been engaged to Mr. Brownlow long before claims were known,”
+ began Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+“Oh yes! It was very ingeniously arranged, only the discovery was made
+too soon. I have it on the best authority. When the girl came to stay
+with Flora, her aunt asked for an interview--such a nice sensible
+woman--so completely understanding her position. She said it was such a
+distress to her not to be qualified to take her niece into society,
+yet she could not take her home, living so near, to be harassed by this
+young man’s pursuit.”
+
+“I saw Mrs. Gould myself,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “I cannot say I was
+favourably impressed.”
+
+“Oh, we all know she is not a lady; never professes it poor thing. She
+is quite aware that her niece must move in a different sphere, and all
+she wants is to have her guarded from that young Brownlow. He follows
+them everywhere. It is quite the business of Flora’s life to avoid him.”
+
+“Perhaps you don’t know that Mrs. Brownlow took that girl out of a
+farmhouse, and treated her like a daughter, merely because they were
+second or third cousins. The engagement to Allen Brownlow was made when
+the fortune was entirely on his side.”
+
+“Precaution or conscience, eh?” said the old lady, laughing. “By the by,
+you were intimate with Mrs. Brownlow abroad. How fortunate for you that
+nothing took place while they had such expectations! Of no family, I
+hear, of quite low extraction. A parish doctor he was, wasn’t he?”
+
+“A distinguished surgeon.”
+
+“And _she_ came out of some asylum or foundling hospital?”
+
+“Only the home for officers’ daughters,” said Mrs. Evelyn, not able to
+help laughing. “Her father, Captain Allen, was in the same regiment with
+Colonel Brownlow, her husband’s brother. I assure you the Menellas and
+Goulds have no reason to boast.”
+
+“A noble Spanish family,” said the dowager. “One can see it every
+gesture of the child.”
+
+It was plain that the old lady intended Mr. Barnes’s hoards to repair
+the ravages of dissipation on the never very productive estates of
+Clanmacnalty, and that while Elvira continued in Lady Flora’s custody,
+there was little chance of a meeting between her and Allen. The girl
+seemed to be submitting passively, and no doubt her new friends could
+employ tact and flattery enough to avoid exciting her perverseness.
+No doubt she had been harassed by Allen’s exaction of response to his
+ardent affection, and wearied of his monopoly of her. Maiden coyness and
+love of liberty might make her as willing to elude his approach as her
+friends could wish.
+
+Once only, at a garden party, did he touch the tips of her fingers, but
+no more. She never met his eye, but threw herself into eager flirtation
+with the men he most disliked, while the lovely carnation was mounting
+in her cheek, and betraying unusual excitement. It became known that she
+was going early in July into the country with some gay people who were
+going to give a series of fetes on some public occasion, and then that
+she was to go with Lady Clanmacnalty and her unmarried daughter to
+Scotland, to help them entertain the grouse-shoot-party.
+
+Allen’s stay in London was clearly of no further use, as Jock perceived
+with a sensation of relief, for all his pity could not hinder him from
+being bored with Allen’s continual dejection, and his sighs over each
+unsuccessful pursuit. He was heartily tired of the part of confidant,
+which was the more severe, because, whenever Allen had a fit of shame
+at his own undignified position, he vented it in reproaches to Jock for
+having called him up to London; and yet as long as there was a chance
+of seeing Elvira, he could not tear himself away, was wild to get
+invitations to meet her, and lived at his club in the old style and
+expense.
+
+Bobus was brief with Allen, and ironical on Jock’s folly in having
+given the summons. For his own part he was much engrossed with his
+appointment, going backwards and forwards between Oxford and London,
+with little time for the concerns of any one else; but the evening after
+this unfortunate garden party, when Jock had accompanied his eldest
+brother back to his rooms, and was endeavouring, by the help of a pipe,
+to endure the reiteration of mournful vituperations of destiny in the
+shape of Lady Flora and Mrs. Gould, the door suddenly opened and Bobus
+stood before them with his peculiarly brisk, self-satisfied air, in
+itself an aggravation to any one out of spirits.
+
+“All right,” he said, “I didn’t expect to find you in, but I thought
+I would leave a note for the chance. I’ve heard of the very identical
+thing to suit you, Ali, my boy.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Allen, not prepared with gratitude for his younger
+brother’s patronage.
+
+“I met Bulstrode at Balliol last night, and he asked if I knew of any
+one (a perfect gentleman he must be, that matters more than scholarship)
+who would take a tutorship in a Hungarian count’s family. Two little
+boys, who live like princes, tutor the same, salary anything you like
+to ask. It is somewhere in the mountains, a feudal castle, with capital
+sport.”
+
+“Wolves and bears,” cried Jock, starting up with his old boyish
+animation. “If I wasn’t going pig-sticking in India, what wouldn’t I
+give for such a chance. The tutor will teach the young ideas how to
+shoot, of course.”
+
+“Of course,” said Bobus. “The Count is a diplomate, and there’s not
+a bad chance of making oneself useful, and getting on in that line. I
+should have jumped at it, if I hadn’t got the Japs on my hands.”
+
+“Yes, you,” said Allen languidly.
+
+“Well, you can do quite as well for a thing like this,” said Bobus, “or
+better, as far as looking the gentleman goes. In fact, I suspect as much
+classics as Mother Carey taught us at home would serve their countships’
+turn. Here’s the address. You had better write by the first post
+to-morrow, for one or two others are rising at it; but Bulstrode said he
+would wait to hear from you. Here’s the letter with all the details.”
+
+“Thank you. You seem to take a good deal for granted,” said Allen, not
+moving a finger towards the letter.
+
+“You won’t have it?”
+
+“I have neither spirits nor inclination for turning bear-leader, and it
+is not a position I wish to undertake.”
+
+“What position would you like?” cried Jock. “You could take that rifle
+you got for Algeria, and make the Magyars open their eyes. Seriously,
+Allen, it is the right thing at the right time. You know Miss Ogilvie
+always said the position was quite different for an English person among
+these foreigners.”
+
+“Who, like natives, are all the same nation,” quietly observed Allen.
+
+“For that matter,” said Jock, “wasn’t it in Hungarie that the beggar of
+low degree married the king’s daughter? There’s precedent for you, Ali!”
+
+Allen had taken up the letter, and after glancing it slightly over,
+said--
+
+“Thanks, Vice-principal, but I won’t stand in the light of your other
+aspirants.”
+
+“What can you want better than this?” cried Jock. “By the time the law
+business is over, one may look in vain for such a chance. It is a new
+country too, and you always said you wanted to know how those fellows
+with long-tailed names lived in private life.”
+
+Both brothers talked for an hour, till they hoped they had persuaded
+him that even for the most miserable and disappointed being on earth the
+Hungarian castle might prove an interesting variety, and they left
+him at last with the letter before him, undertaking to write and make
+further inquiries.
+
+The next day, however, just as Jock was about to set forth, intending,
+as far as might be, to keep him up to the point, Bobus made his
+appearance, and scornfully held out an envelope. There was the letter,
+and therewith these words:--
+
+
+“On consideration, I recur to my first conclusion, that this situation
+is out of the question. To say nothing of the injury to my health and
+nerves from agitation and suspense, rendering me totally unfit for
+drudgery and annoyance, I cannot feel it right to place myself in a
+situation equivalent to the abandonment of all hope. It is absurd to act
+as if we were reduced to abject poverty, and I will never place myself
+in the condition of a dependent. This season has so entirely knocked me
+up that I must at once have sea air, and by the time you receive this I
+shall be on my way to Ryde for a cruise in the Petrel.”
+
+
+“_His_ health!” cried Bobus, his tone implying three notes, scarcely of
+admiration.
+
+“Well, poor old Turk, he is rather seedy,” said Jock. “Can’t sleep, and
+has headaches! But ‘tis a regular case of having put him to flight!”
+
+“Well, I’ve done with him,” said Bobus, “since there’s a popular
+prejudice against flogging, especially one’s elder brother. This is a
+delicate form of intimation that he intends doing the dolce at mother’s
+expense.”
+
+“The poor old chap has been an ornamental appendage so long that he
+can’t make up his mind to anything else,” said Jock.
+
+“He is no worse off than the rest of us,” said Bobus.
+
+“In age, if in nothing else.”
+
+“The more reason against throwing away a chance. The yacht, too! I
+thought there was a Quixotic notion of not dipping into that Elf’s
+money. I’m sure poor mother is pinching herself enough.”
+
+“I don’t think Ali knows when he spends money more than when he spends
+air,” returned Jock. “The Petrel can hardly cost as much in a month as
+I have seen him get through in a week, protesting all the while that he
+was living on absolutely nothing.”
+
+“I know. You may be proud to get him down Oxford Street under thirty
+shillings, and he never goes out in the evening much under half that.”
+
+“Yes, he told me selling my horses was shocking bad economy.”
+
+“Well, it was your own doing, having him up here,” said Bobus.
+
+“I wonder how he will go on when the money is really not there.”
+
+“Precisely the same,” said Bobus; “there’s no cure for that sort of
+complaint. The only satisfaction is that we shall be out of sight of
+it.”
+
+“And a very poor one,” sighed Jock, “when mother is left to bear the
+brunt.”
+
+“Mother can manage him much better than we can,” said Bobus; “besides,
+she is still a youngish woman, neither helpless nor destitute; and as I
+always tell you, the greatest kindness we can do her is to look out for
+ourselves.”
+
+Bobus himself had done so effectually, for he was secure of a handsome
+salary, and his travelling expenses were to be paid, when, early in the
+next year, he was to go out with his Principal to confer on the Japanese
+the highest possible culture in science and literature without any bias
+in favour of Christianity, Buddhism, or any other sublime religion.
+
+Meantime he was going home to make his preparations, and pack such
+portions of his museum as he thought would be unexampled in Japan.
+He had fulfilled his intention of only informing his mother after his
+application had been accepted; and as it had been done by letter, he
+had avoided the sight of the pain it gave her and the hearing of her
+remonstrances, all of which he had referred to her maternal dislike of
+his absence, rather than to his association with the Principal, a writer
+whose articles she kept out of reach of Armine and Barbara.
+
+The matter had become irrevocable and beyond discussion, as he intended,
+before his return to Belforest, which he only notified by the post of
+the morning before he walked into luncheon. By that time it was a fait
+accompli, and there was nothing to be done but to enter on a lively
+discussion on the polite manners and customs of the two-sworded nation
+and the wonderful volcanoes he hoped to explore.
+
+Perhaps one reason that his notice was so short was that there might
+be the less time for Kencroft to be put on its guard. Thus, when, by
+accident of course, he strolled towards the lodge, he found his cousin
+Esther in the wood, with no guardians but the three youngest children,
+who had coaxed her, in spite of the heat, to bring them to the slopes of
+wood strawberries on their weekly half-holiday.
+
+He had seen nothing, but had only been guided by the sound of voices
+to the top of the sloping wooded bank, where, under the shade of the
+oak-trees, looking over the tall spreading brackens, he beheld Essie
+in her pretty gipsy hat and holland dress, with all her bird-like
+daintiness, kneeling on the moss far below him, threading the scarlet
+beads on bents of grass, with the little ones round her.
+
+“I heard a chattering,” he said, as, descending through the fern, he met
+her dark eyes looking up like those of a startled fawn; “so I came to
+see whether the rabbits had found tongues. How many more are there? No,
+thank you,” as Edmund and Lina answered his greeting with an offer of
+very moist-looking fruit, and an ungrammatical “Only us.”
+
+“Then _us_ run away. They grow thick up that bank, and I’ve got a prize
+here for whoever keeps away longest. No, you shan’t see what it is. Any
+one who comes asking questions will lose it. Run away, Lina, you’ll miss
+your chance. No, no, Essie, you are not a competitor.”
+
+“I must, Robert; indeed I must.”
+
+“Can’t you spare me a moment when I am come down for my last farewell
+visit?”
+
+“But you are not going for a good while yet.”
+
+“So you call it, but it will seem short enough. Did you ever hear of
+minutes seeming like diamond drops meted out, Essie?”
+
+“But, you know, it is your own doing,” said Essie.
+
+“Yes, and why, Essie? Because misfortune has made such an exile as this
+the readiest mode of ceasing to be a burden to my mother.”
+
+“Papa said he was glad of it,” said Esther, “and that you were quite
+right. But it is a terrible way off!”
+
+“True! but there is one consideration that will make up to me for
+everything.”
+
+“That it is for Aunt Caroline!”
+
+“Partly, but do you not know the hope which makes all work sweet to me?”
+ And the look of his eyes, and his hand seeking hers, made her say,
+
+“Oh don’t, Robert, I mustn’t.”
+
+“Nay, my queen, you were too duteous to hearken to me when I was rich
+and prosperous. I would not torment you then, I meant to be patient;
+but now I am poor and going into banishment, you will be generous and
+compassionate, and let me hear the one word that will make my exile
+sweet.”
+
+“I don’t think I ought,” said the poor child under her breath. “O,
+Robert, don’t you know I ought not.”
+
+“Would you if that ugly cypher of an ought did not stand in the way?”
+
+“Oh don’t ask me, Robert; I don’t know.”
+
+“But I do know, my queen,” said he. “I know my little Essie better than
+she knows herself. I know her true heart is mine, only she dares not
+avow it to herself; and when hearts have so met, Esther, they owe one
+another a higher duty than the filial tie can impose.”
+
+“I never heard that before,” she said, puzzled, but not angered.
+
+“No, it is not a doctrine taught in schoolrooms, but it is true and
+universal for all that, and our fathers and mothers acted on it in their
+day, and will give way to it now.”
+
+Esther had never been told all her father’s objections to her cousin.
+Simple prohibition had seemed to her parents sufficient for the gentle,
+dutiful child. Bobus had always been very kind to her, and her heart
+went out enough to him in his trouble to make coldness impossible to
+her. Tears welled into her eyes with perplexity at the new theory, and
+she could only falter out--
+
+“That doesn’t seem right for me.”
+
+“Say one word and trust to me, and it shall be right. Yes, Esther, say
+the word, and in it I shall be strong to overcome everything, and win
+the consent you desire. Say only that, with it, you would love me.”
+
+“If?” said Esther.
+
+It was an interrogative _if,_ and she did not mean it for “the one
+word,” but Bobus caught at it as all he wanted. He meant it for the
+fulcrum on which to rest the strong lever of his will, and before Esther
+could add any qualification, he was overwhelming her with thanks and
+assurances so fervent that she could interpose no more doubts, and
+yielded to the sweetness of being able to make any one so happy, above
+all the cousin whom most people thought so formidably clever.
+
+Edmund interrupted them by rushing up, thus losing the prize, which was
+won by the last comer, and proved to be a splendid bonbon; but there was
+consolation for the others, since Bobus had laid in a supply as a means
+of securing peace.
+
+He would fain have waited to rivet his chains before manifesting them,
+but he knew Essie too well to expect her to keep the interview a secret;
+and he had no time to lose if, as he intended, though he had not told
+her so, he was to take her to Japan with him.
+
+So he stormed the castle without delay, walked to Kencroft with the
+strawberry gatherers, found the Colonel superintending the watering of
+his garden, and, with effrontery of which Essie was unconscious, led
+her up, and announced their mutual love, as though secure of an ardent
+welcome.
+
+He did, mayhap, expect to surprise something of the kind out of his
+slowly-moving uncle, but the only answer was a strongly accentuated
+“Indeed! I thought I had told you both that I would have none of this
+foolery. Esther, I am ashamed of you. Go in directly.”
+
+The girl repaired to her own room to weep floods of tears over her
+father’s anger, and the disobedience that made itself apparent as soon
+as she was beyond the spell of that specious tongue. There were a few
+fears too for his disappointment; but when her mother came up in great
+displeasure, the first words were--
+
+“O, mamma, I could not help it!”
+
+“You could not prevent his accosting you, but you might have prevented
+his giving all this trouble to papa. You know we should never allow it.”
+
+“Indeed I only said if!”
+
+“You had no right to say anything. When a young lady knows a man is not
+to be encouraged, she should say nothing to give him an advantage. You
+could never expect us to let you go to a barbarous place at the other
+end of the world with a man of as good as no religion at all.”
+
+“He goes to church,” said Essie, too simple to look beyond.
+
+“Only here, to please his mother. My dear, you must put this out of your
+head. Even if he were very different, we should never let you marry a
+first cousin, and he knows it. It was very wrong in him to have spoken
+to you.”
+
+“Please don’t let him do it again,” said Esther, faintly.
+
+“That’s right, my dear,” with a kiss of forgiveness. “I am sure you are
+too good a girl really to care for him.”
+
+“I wish he would not care for me,” sighed poor Essie, wearily. “He
+always was so kind, and now they are in trouble I couldn’t vex him.”
+
+“Oh, my dear, young men get over things of this sort half a dozen times
+in their lives.”
+
+Essie was not delighted with this mode of consolation, and when her
+mother tenderly smoothed back her hair, and bade her bathe her face and
+dress for dinner, she clung to her and said--
+
+“Don’t let me see him again.”
+
+It was a wholesome dread, which Mrs. Brownlow encouraged, for both she
+and her husband were annoyed and perplexed by Robert’s cool reception
+of their refusal. He quietly declared that he could allow for their
+prejudices, and that it was merely a matter of time, and he was
+provokingly calm and secure, showing neither anger nor disappointment.
+He did not argue, but having once shown that his salary warranted his
+offer, that the climate was excellent, and that European civilisation
+prevailed, he treated his uncle and aunt as unreasonably prejudiced
+mortals, who would in time yield to his patient determination.
+
+His mother was as much annoyed as they were, all the more because her
+sister-in-law could hardly credit her perfect innocence of Robert’s
+intentions, and was vexed at her wish to ascertain Esther’s feelings.
+This was not easy! the poor child was so unhappy and shamefaced, so
+shocked at her involuntary disobedience, and so grieved at the pain
+she had given. If Robert had been set before her with full consent of
+friends, she would have let her whole heart go out to him, loved him,
+and trusted him for ever, treating whatever opinions were unlike hers
+as manly idiosyncrasies beyond her power to fathom. But she was no Lydia
+Languish to need opposition as a stimulus. It rather gave her tender
+and dutiful spirit a sense of shame, terror, and disobedience; and she
+thankfully accepted the mandate that sent her on a visit to her married
+sister for as long as Bobus should remain at Belforest.
+
+He did not show himself downcast, but was quietly assured that he should
+win her at last, only smiling at the useless precaution, and declaring
+himself willing to wait, and make a home for her.
+
+But this matter had not tended to make his mother more at ease in her
+enforced stay at Belforest, which was becoming a kind of gilded prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. -- SLACK TIDE.
+
+
+
+     If...
+     Thou hide thine eyes and make thy peevish moan
+     Over some broken reed of earth beneath,
+     Some darling of blind fancy dead and gone.
+                                                Keble.
+
+
+There is such a thing as slack tide in the affairs of men, when a crisis
+seems as if it would never come, and all things stagnate. The Law Courts
+had as yet not concerned themselves about the will, vacation time had
+come and all was at a standstill, nor could any steps be taken for
+Lucas’s exchange till it was certain into what part of India Sir Philip
+Cameron was going. In the meantime his regiment had gone into camp, and
+he could not get away until the middle of September, and then only for
+a few days. Arriving very late on a Friday night, he saw nobody but his
+mother over his supper, and thought her looking very tired. When he
+met her in the morning, there was the same weary, harassed countenance,
+there were worn marks round the dark wistful eyes, and the hair,
+whitened at Schwarenbach, did not look as incongruous with the face as
+hitherto.
+
+No one else except Barbara had come down to prayers, so Jock’s first
+inquiry was for Armine.
+
+“He is pretty well,” said his mother; “but he is apt to be late. He gets
+overtired between his beloved parish work and his reading with Bobus.”
+
+“He is lucky to get such a coach,” said Jock. “Bob taught me more
+mathematics in a week than I had learnt in seven years before.”
+
+“He is terribly accurate,” said Babie.
+
+“Which Armie does not appreciate?” said Jock.
+
+“I’m afraid not,” said his mother. “They do worry each other a good
+deal, and this Infanta most of all, I’m afraid.”
+
+“O no, mother,” said Babie. “Only it is hard for poor Armie to have two
+taskmasters.”
+
+“What! the Reverend Petronella continues in the ascendant?”
+
+Bobus here entered, with a face that lightened, as did everyone’s, at
+sight of Lucas.
+
+“Good morning. Ah! Jock! I didn’t sit up, for I had had a long day out
+on the moors; we kept the birds nearer home for you. There are plenty,
+but Grimes says he has heard shots towards River Hollow, and thinks some
+one must have been trespassing there.”
+
+“Have you heard anything of Elvira? apropos to River Hollow,” said his
+mother.
+
+“Yes,” said Jock. “One of our fellows has been on a moor not far
+from where she was astonishing the natives, conjointly with Lady Anne
+Macnalty. There were bets which of three men she may be engaged to.”
+
+“Pending which,” said his mother, “I suppose poor Allen will continue to
+hover on the wings of the Petrel?”
+
+“And send home mournful madrigals by the ream,” said Bobus. “Never was
+petrel so tuneful a bird!”
+
+“For shame, Bobus; I never meant you to see them!”
+
+“‘Twas quite involuntary! I have trouble enough with my own pupil’s
+effusions. I leave him a bit of Latin composition, and what do I find
+but an endless doggerel ballad on What’s his name?--who hid under
+his father’s staircase as a beggar, eating the dogs’ meat, while
+his afflicted family were searching for him in vain;--his favourite
+example.”
+
+“St. Alexis,” said Babie; “he was asked to versify it.”
+
+“As a wholesome incentive to filial duty and industry,” said Bobus.
+“Does the Parsoness mean to have it sung in the school?”
+
+“It might be less dangerous than ‘the fox went out one moonshiny
+night,’” said their mother, anxious to turn the conversation. “Mr.
+Parsons brought Mr. Todd of Wrexham in to see the school just as the
+children were singing the final catastrophe when the old farmer ‘shot
+the old fox right through the head.’ He was so horrified that he
+declared the schools should never have a penny of his while they taught
+such murder and heresy.”
+
+“Served them right,” said Jock, “for spoiling that picture of domestic
+felicity when ‘the little ones picked the bones, oh!’ How many guns
+shall we be, Bobus?”
+
+“Only three. My uncle has a touch of gout, the Monk has got a tutorship,
+Joe has gone back to his ship, but the mighty Bob has a week’s leave,
+and does not mean a bird to survive the change of owners.”
+
+“Doesn’t Armine come?”
+
+“Not he!” said Bobus. “Says he doesn’t want to acquire the taste, and he
+would knock up with half a day.”
+
+“But you’ll all come and bring us luncheon?” entreated Jock. “You will,
+mother! Now, won’t you? We’ll eat it on a bank like old times when we
+lived at the Folly, and all were jolly. I beg your pardon, Bob; I didn’t
+mean to turn into another poetical brother on your hands, but enthusiasm
+was too strong for me! Come, Mother Carey, _do_!”
+
+“Where is it to be?” she asked, smiling.
+
+“Out by the Long Hanger would be a good place,” said Bobus, “where we
+found the Epipactis grandiflora.”
+
+“Or the heathery knoll where poor little mother got into a scrape for
+singing profane songs by moonlight,” laughed Jock.
+
+“Ah! that was when hearts were light,” she said; “but at any rate we’ll
+make a holiday of it, for Jock’s sake.”
+
+“Ha! what do I see?” exclaimed Jock, who was opposite the open window.
+“Is that Armine, or a Jack-in-the-Green?”
+
+“Oh!” half sighed Barbara. “It’s that harvest decoration!” And Armine,
+casting down armfuls of great ferns, and beautiful trailing plants, made
+his entrance through the open window, exchanging greetings, and making a
+semi-apology for his late appearance as he said--
+
+“Mother, please desire Macrae to cut me the great white orchids. He
+won’t do it unless you tell him, and I promised them for the Altar
+vases.”
+
+“You know, Armie, he said cutting them would be the ruin of the plant,
+and I don’t feel justified in destroying it.”
+
+“Macrae’s fancy,” muttered Armine. “It is only that he hates the whole
+thing.”
+
+“Unhappy Macrae! I go and condole with him sometimes,” said Bobus. “I
+don’t know which are most outraged--his Freekirk or his horticultural
+feelings!”
+
+“Babie,” ordered Armine, who was devouring his breakfast at double
+speed, “if you’ll put on your things, I’ve the garden donkey-cart ready
+to take down the flowers. You won’t expect us to luncheon, mother?”
+
+Barbara, though obedient, looked blank, and her mother said--
+
+“My dear, if I went down and helped at the Church till half past twelve,
+could not we all be set free? Your brothers want us to bring their
+luncheon to them at the Hanger.”
+
+“That’s right, mother,” cried Jock; “I’ve half a mind to come and
+expedite matters.”
+
+“No, no, Skipjack!” cried Bobus; “I had that twenty stone of solid flesh
+whom I see walking up to the house to myself all yesterday, and I can’t
+stand another day of it unmitigated!”
+
+Entered the tall heavy figure of Rob. He reported his father as much the
+same and not yet up, delivered a note to his aunt, and made no objection
+to devouring several slices of tongue and a cup of cocoa to recruit
+nature after his walk; while Bobus reclaimed the reluctant Armine from
+cutting scarlet geraniums in the ribbon beds to show him the scene in
+the Greek play which he was to prepare, and Babie tried to store up all
+the directions, perceiving from the pupil’s roving eye that she should
+have to be his memory.
+
+Jock saw that the note had brought an additional line of care to his
+mother’s brow, and therefore still more gaily and eagerly adjured her
+not to fail in the Long Hanger, and as the shooting party started, he
+turned back to wave his cap, and shout, “Sharp two!”
+
+Two o’clock found three hungry youths and numerous dead birds on the
+pleasant thymy bank beneath the edge of the beach wood, but gaze as
+they might through the clear September air, neither mother, brother, nor
+sister was visible. Presently, however, the pony-carriage appeared, and
+in it a hamper, but driven only by the stable-boy. He said a gentleman
+was at the house, and Mrs. Brownlow was very sorry that she could not
+come, but had sent him with the luncheon.
+
+“I shall go and see after her,” said Jock; and in spite of all
+remonstrance, and assurance that it was only a form of Parsonic tyranny,
+he took a draught of ale and a handful of sandwiches, sprang into the
+carriage, and drove off, hardly knowing why, but with a yearning towards
+his mother, and a sense that all that was unexpected boded evil. Leaving
+the pony at the stables, and walking up to the house, he heard sounds
+that caused him to look in at the open library window.
+
+On one side of the table stood his mother, on the other Dr. Demetrius
+Hermann, with insinuating face, but arm upraised as if in threatening.
+
+“Scoundrel!” burst forth Jock. Both turned, and his mother’s look of
+relief and joy met him as he sprang to her side, exclaiming, “What does
+this mean? How dare you?”
+
+“No, no!” she cried breathlessly, clinging to his arm. “He did not
+mean--it was only a gesture!”
+
+“I’ll have no such gestures to my mother.”
+
+“Sir, the honoured lady only does me justice. I meant nothing violent.
+Zat is for you English military, whose veapon is zie horsewhip.”
+
+“As you will soon feel,” said Jock, “if you attempt to bully my mother.
+What does it mean, mother dear?”
+
+“He made a mistake,” she said, in a quick, tremulous tone, showing how
+much she was shaken. “He thinks me a quack doctor’s widow, whose secret
+is matter of bargain and sale.”
+
+“Madame! I offered most honourable terms.”
+
+“Terms, indeed! I told you the affair is no empirical secret to be
+bought.”
+
+“Yet madame knows that I am in possession of a portion of zie discovery,
+and that it is in my power to pursue it further, though, for family
+considerations, I offer her to take me into confidence, so that all may
+profit in unison,” said the Greek, in his blandest manner.
+
+“The very word profit shows your utter want of appreciation,” said Mrs.
+Brownlow, with dignity. “Such discoveries are the property of the entire
+faculty, to be used for the general benefit, not for private selfish
+profit. I do not know how much information may have been obtained, but
+if any attempt be made to use it in the charlatan fashion you propose, I
+shall at once expose the whole transaction, and send my husband’s papers
+to the Lancet.”
+
+Hermann shrugged his shoulders and looked at Lucas, as if considering
+whether more or less reason could be expected from a soldier than from a
+woman. It was to him that he spoke.
+
+“Madame cannot see zie matter in zie light of business. I have offered
+freely to share all that I shall gain, if I may only obtain the data
+needful to perfect zie discovery of zie learned and venerated father. I
+am met wit anger I cannot comprehend.”
+
+“Nor ever will,” said Caroline.
+
+“And,” pursued Dr. Hermann, “when, on zie oder hand, I explain that my
+wife has imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate
+the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand
+compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie
+captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?”
+
+“Not quite,” said Jock. “That is to be kicked out of the house, as you
+shortly will be, if you do not take yourself off.”
+
+“Sir, your amiable affection for madame leads you to forget, as she
+does, zie claim of your sister.”
+
+“No one has any claim on my mother,” said Jock.
+
+“Zie moral claim--zie claim of affection,” began the Greek; but Caroline
+interrupted him--
+
+“Dr. Hermann is not the person fitly to remind me of these. They have
+not been much thought of in Janet’s case. I mean to act as justly as
+I can by my daughter, but I have absolutely nothing to give her
+at present. Till I know what my own means may prove to be I can do
+nothing.”
+
+“But madame holds out zie hope of some endowment. I shall be in a
+condition to be independent of it, but it would be sweet to my wife as a
+token of pardon. I could bear away a promise.”
+
+“I promise nothing,” was the reply. “If I have anything to give--even
+then, all would depend on your conduct and the line you may take. And
+above all, remember, it is in my power to frustrate and expose any
+attempt to misuse any hints that may have been stolen from my husband’s
+memoranda. In my power, and my duty.”
+
+“Madame might have spared me this,” sighed the Athenian. “My poor
+Janette! She will not believe how her husband has been received.”
+
+He was gone. Caroline dropped into a chair, but the next moment she
+almost screamed--
+
+“Oh, we must not let him go thus! He may revenge it on her! Go after
+him, get his address, tell him she shall have her share if he will
+behave well to her.”
+
+Jock fulfilled his mission according to his own judgment, and as he
+returned his mother started up.
+
+“You have not brought him back!”
+
+“I should rather think not!”
+
+“Janet’s husband! Oh, Jock, it is very dreadful! My poor child!”
+
+She had been a little lioness in face of the enemy, but she was
+trembling so hopelessly that Jock put her on a couch and knelt with his
+arm round her while she laid her head on his strong young shoulder.
+
+“Let me fetch you some wine, mother darling,” he said.
+
+“No, no--to feel you is better than anything,” putting his arm closer--
+
+“What was it all about, mother?”
+
+“Ah! you don’t know, yet you went straight to the point, my dear
+champion.”
+
+“He was bullying you, that was enough. I thought for a moment the brute
+was going to strike you.”
+
+“That was only gesticulation. I’m glad you didn’t knock him down when
+you made in to the rescue.”
+
+She could laugh a little now.
+
+“I should like to have done it. What did he want? Money, of course?”
+
+“Not solely. I can’t tell you all about it; but Janet saw some memoranda
+of your father’s, and he wants to get hold of them.”
+
+“To pervert them to some quackery?”
+
+“If not, I do him great injustice.”
+
+“Give them up to a rogue like that! I should guess not! It will be some
+little time before he tries again. Well done, little mother!”
+
+“If he will not turn upon her.”
+
+“What a speculation he must have thought her.”
+
+“Don’t talk of it, Jock; I can’t bear to think of her in such hands.”
+
+“Janet has a spirit of her own. I should think she could get her way
+with her subtle Athenian. Where did he drop from?”
+
+“He overtook me on my way back from the Church, for indeed I did not
+mean to break my appointment. I don’t think the servants knew who was
+here. And Jock, if you mention it to the others, don’t speak of this
+matter of the papers. Call it, as you may with truth, an attempt to
+extort money.”
+
+“Very well,” he gravely said.
+
+“It is true,” she continued, “that I have valuable memoranda of your
+father’s in my charge; but you must trust me when I say that I am not at
+liberty to tell you more.”
+
+“Of course I do. So the mother was really coming, like a good little
+Red-riding-hood, to bring her son’s dinner into the forest, when she met
+with the wolf! Pray, has he eaten up the two kids at a mouthful?”
+
+“No, Miss Parsons had done that already. They are making the Church so
+beautiful, and it did not seem possible to spare them, though I hope
+Armine may get home in time to get his work done for Bobus.”
+
+“Is not he worked rather hard between the two? He does not seem to
+thrive on it.”
+
+“Jock, I can say it to you. I don’t know what to do. The poor boy’s
+heart is in these Church matters, and he is so bitterly grieved at the
+failure of all his plans that I cannot bear to check him in doing all he
+can. It is just what I ought to have been doing all these years; I only
+saw my duties as they were being taken away from me, and so I deserve
+the way Miss Parsons treats me.”
+
+“What way?”
+
+“You need not bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that
+Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the
+worldly obstructive mother who serves as a trial to the hero.”
+
+“If she makes Armine think so--”
+
+“Armie is too loyal for that. Yet it may be only too true, and only my
+worldliness that wishes for a little discretion. Still, I don’t think
+a sensible woman, if she were ever so good and devoted, would encourage
+his fretting over the disappointment, or lead him to waste his time when
+so much depends on his diligence. I am sure the focus of her mind must
+be distorted, and she is twisting his the same way.”
+
+“And her brother follows suit?”
+
+“I think they go in parallel grooves, and he lets her alone. It is very
+unlucky, for they are a constant irritation to Bobus, and he fancies
+them average specimens of good people. He sneers, and I can’t say but
+that much of what he says is true, but there is the envenomed drop in it
+which makes his good sense shocking to Armine, and I fear Babie relishes
+it more than is good for her. So they make one another worse, and so
+they will as long as we are here. It was a great mistake to stay on, and
+your uncle must feel it so.”
+
+“Could you not go to Dieppe, or some cheap place?”
+
+“I don’t feel justified in any more expense. Here the house costs
+nothing, and our personal expenditure does not go beyond our proper
+means; but to pay for lodging elsewhere would soon bring me in excess of
+it, at least as long as Allen keeps up the yacht. Then poor Janet must
+have something, and I don’t know what bills may be in store for me, and
+there’s your outfit, and Bobus’s.”
+
+“Never mind mine.”
+
+“My dear, that’s fine talking, but you can’t go like Sir Charles Napier,
+with one shirt and a bit of soap.”
+
+“No, but I shall get something for the exchange. Besides, my kit was
+costly even for the Guards, and will amply cover all that.”
+
+“And you have sold your horses?”
+
+“And have been living on them ever since! Come, won’t that encourage you
+to make a little jaunt, just to break the spell?”
+
+“I wish it could, my dear, but it does not seem possible while those
+bills are such a dreadful uncertainty. I never know what Allen may have
+been ordering.”
+
+“Surely the Evelyns would be glad to have you.”
+
+“No, Jock, that can’t be. Promise me that you will do nothing to lead to
+an invitation. You are to meet some of them, are you not?”
+
+“Yes, on Thursday week, at Roland Hampton’s wedding. Cecil and I and
+a whole lot of us go down in the morning to it, and Sydney is to be a
+bridesmaid. What are you going to do now, mother?”
+
+“I don’t quite know. I feel regularly foolish. I shall have a headache
+if I don’t keep quiet, but I can’t persuade myself to stay in the house
+lest that man should come back.”
+
+“What! not with me for garrison?”
+
+“O nonsense, my dear. You must go and catch up the sportsmen.”
+
+“Not when I can get my Mother Carey all to myself. You go and lie down
+in the dressing-room, and I’ll come as soon as I have taken off my boots
+and ordered some coffee for you.”
+
+He returned with the step of one treading on eggs, expecting to find her
+half asleep; but her eyes were glittering, and there were red spots on
+her cheeks, for her nerves were excited, and when he came in she began
+to talk. She told him, not of present troubles, but of the letters
+between his father and grandmother, which, in her busy, restless life,
+she had never before looked at, but which had come before her in her
+preparations for vacating Belforest. Perhaps it was only now that she
+had grown into appreciation of the relations between that mother and
+son, as she read the letters, preserved on each side, and revealing
+the full beauty and greatness of her husband’s nature, his perfect
+confidence in his mother, and a guiding influence from her, which
+she herself had never thought of exerting. Does not many an old
+correspondence thus put the present generation to shame?
+
+Jock was the first person with whom she had shared these letters, and
+it was good to watch his face as he read the words of the father whom he
+remembered chiefly as the best of playfellows. He was of an age and in
+a mood to enter into them with all his heart, though he uttered little
+more than an occasional question, or some murmured remark when anything
+struck him. Both he and his mother were so occupied that they never
+observed that the sky clouded over and rain began to fall, nor did they
+think of any other object till Bobus opened the door in search of them.
+
+“Halloo, you deserter!”
+
+“Hush! Mother has a headache.”
+
+“Not now, you have cured it.”
+
+“Well, you’ve missed an encounter with the most impudent rascal I ever
+came across.”
+
+“You didn’t meet Hermann?”
+
+“Well, perhaps I have found his match; but you shall hear. Grimes said
+he heard guns, and we came upon the scoundrel in Lewis Acre, two brace
+on his shoulder.”
+
+“The vultures are gathering to the prey,” said his mother.
+
+“I’m not arrived at lying still to be devoured!” said Bobus. “I gave him
+the benefit of a doubt, and sent Grimes to warn him off; but the fellow
+sent his card--_his_ card forsooth, ‘Mr. Gilbert Gould, R.N.,’--and
+information that he had Miss Menella’s permission.”
+
+“Not credible,” said Jock.
+
+“Mrs. Lisette’s more likely,” said his mother. “I think he is her
+brother.”
+
+“I sent Grimes back to tell him that Miss Menella had as much power
+to give leave as my old pointer, and if he did not retire at once, we
+should gently remove his gun and send out a summons.”
+
+“Why did you not do so at once?” cried Jock.
+
+“Because I have brains enough not to complicate matters by a personal
+row with the Goulds,” said Bobus, “though I could wish not to have been
+there, when the keepers would infallibly have done so. Shall I write to
+George Gould, or will you, mother?”
+
+“Oh dear,” sighed Caroline, “I think Mr. Wakefield is the fittest
+person, if it signifies enough to have it done at all.”
+
+“Signifies!” cried Jock. “To have that rascal loafing about! I wouldn’t
+be trampled upon while the life is in me!”
+
+“I don’t like worrying Mr. Gould. It is not his fault, except for having
+married such a wife, poor man.”
+
+“Having been married by her, you mean,” said Bobus. “Mark me, she means
+to get that fellow married to that poor child, as sure as fate.”
+
+“Impossible, Bobus! His age!”
+
+“He is a good deal younger than his sister, and a prodigious swell.”
+
+“Besides, he is her uncle,” said Jock.
+
+“No, no, only her uncle’s wife’s brother.”
+
+“That’s just the same.”
+
+“I wish it were!” But Jock would not be satisfied without getting a
+Prayer-book, to look at the table of degrees.
+
+“He is really her third cousin, I believe,” said his mother, “and I’m
+afraid that is not prohibited.”
+
+“Is he a ship’s steward?” said Jock, looking at the card with infinite
+disgust.
+
+“A paymaster’s assistant, I believe.”
+
+“That would be too much. Besides, there’s the Scot!”
+
+“I don’t think much of that,” said Jock. “The mother and sister are keen
+for it, but Clanmacnalty is in no haste to marry, and by all accounts
+the Elf carries on promiscuously with three or four at once.”
+
+“And she has no fine instinct for a gentleman,” added Bobus. “It is who
+will spread the butter thickest!”
+
+“A bad look out for Belforest,” said Jock.
+
+“It can’t be much worse than it has been with me,” said his mother.
+
+“That’s what that little ass, Armine, has been presuming to din into
+your ears,” said Bobus; “as if the old women didn’t prefer beef and
+blankets to your coming poking piety at the poor old parties.”
+
+“By the bye,” cried Caroline, starting, “those children have never come
+home, and see how it rains!”
+
+Jock volunteered to take the pony carriage and fetch them, but he had
+not long emerged from the park in the gathering twilight before he
+overtook two figures under one umbrella, and would have passed them had
+he not been hailed.
+
+“You demented children! Jump in this instant.”
+
+“Don’t turn!” called Armine. “We must take this,” showing a parcel which
+he had been sheltering more carefully than himself or his sister. “It
+is cord and tassels for the banner. They sent wrong ones,” said Barbara,
+“and we had to go and match it. They would not let me go alone.”
+
+“Get in, I say,” cried Jock, who was making demonstrations with the
+“national weapon” much as if he would have liked to lay it about their
+shoulders.
+
+“Then we must drive onto the Parsonage,” stipulated Armine.
+
+“Not a bit of it, you drenched and foolish morsel of humanity. You are
+going straight home to bed. Hand us the parcel. What will you give me
+not to tie this cord round the Reverend Petronella’s neck?”
+
+“Thank you, Jock, I’m so glad,” said Babie, referring probably to
+the earlier part of his speech. “We would have come home for the pony
+carriage, but we thought it would be out.”
+
+“Take care of the drip,” was Armine’s parting cry, as Babie turned the
+pony’s head, and Jock strode down the lane. He meant merely to have
+given in the parcel at the door, but Miss Parsons darted out, and not
+distinguishing him in the dark began, “Thank you, dear Armine; I’m so
+sorry, but it is in the good cause and you won’t regret it. Where’s your
+sister? Gone home? But you’ll come and have a cup of tea and stay to
+evensong?”
+
+“My brother and sister are gone home, thank you,” said Jock, with
+impressive formality, and a manly voice that made her start.
+
+“Oh, indeed. Thank you, Mr. Brownlow. I was so sorry to let them go;
+but it had not begun to rain, and it is such a joy to dear Armine to be
+employed in the service.”
+
+“Yes, he is mad enough to run any risk,” said Jock.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Brownlow, if I could only persuade you to enter into the joy of
+self-devotion, you would see that I could not forbid him! Won’t you come
+in and have a cup of tea?”
+
+“Thank you, no. Good night.” And Miss Parsons was left rejoicing at
+having said a few words of reproof to that cynical Mr. Robert Brownlow,
+while Jock tramped away, grinning a sardonic smile at the lady’s notions
+of the joys of self-sacrifice.
+
+He came home only just in time for dinner, and found Armine enduring,
+with a touching resignation learnt in Miss Parsons’s school, the sarcasm
+of Bobus for having omitted to prepare his studies. The boy could
+neither eat nor entirely conceal the chills that were running over him;
+and though he tried to silence his brother’s objurgations by bringing
+out his books afterwards, his cheeks burnt, he emitted little grunting
+coughs, and at last his head went down on the lexicon, and his breath
+came quick and short.
+
+The Harvest Festival day was perforce kept by him in bed, blistered and
+watched from hour to hour to arrest the autumn cold, which was the one
+thing dreaded as imperilling him in the English winter which he must
+face for the first time for four years.
+
+And Miss Parsons, when impressively told, evidently thought it was the
+family fashion to make a great fuss about him.
+
+Alas! why are people so one-sided and absorbed in their own concerns as
+never to guess what stumbling-blocks they raise in other people’s paths,
+nor how they make their good be evil spoken of?
+
+Babie confided her feelings to Jock when he escorted her to Church in
+the evening, and had detected a melancholy sound in her voice which made
+him ask if she thought Armine’s attack of the worst sort.
+
+“Not particularly, except that he talks so beautifully.”
+
+Jock gave a small sympathetic whistle at this dreadful symptom, and
+wondered to hear that he had been able to talk.
+
+“I didn’t mean only to-day, but this is only what he had made up
+his mind to. He never expects to leave Belforest, and he thinks--oh,
+Jock!--he thinks it is meant to do Bobus good.”
+
+“He doesn’t go the way to edify Bobus.”
+
+“No, but don’t you see? That is what is so dreadful. He only just reads
+with Bobus because mother ordered him; and he hates it because he thinks
+it is of no use, for he will never be well enough to go to college.
+Why, he had this cold coming yesterday, and I believe he is glad, for
+it would be like a book for him to be very bad indeed, bad enough to be
+able to speak out to Bobus without being laughed at.”
+
+“Does he always go on in this way?”
+
+“Not to mother; but to hear him and Miss Parsons is enough to drive one
+wild. They went on such a dreadful way yesterday that I was furious,
+and so glad to get away to Kenminster; only after I had set off, he came
+running after me, and I knew what that would be.”
+
+“What does she do? Does she blarney him?”
+
+“Yes, I suppose so. She means it, I believe; but she does natter him so
+that it would make me sick, if it didn’t make me so wretched! You see he
+likes it, because he fancies her goodness itself; and so I suppose she
+is, only there is such a lot of clerical shop”--then, as Jock made a
+sound as if he did not like the slang in her mouth--“Ay, it sounds like
+Bobus; but if this goes on much longer, I shall turn to Bobus’s way. He
+has all the sense on his side!”
+
+“No, Babie,” said Jock very gravely. “That’s a much worse sort of
+folly!”
+
+“And he will be gone before long,” said Barbara, much struck by a tone
+entirely unwonted from her brother. “O Jock, I thought reverses would be
+rather nice and help one to be heroic, and perhaps they would, if they
+would only come faster, and Armine could be out of Miss Parsons’s way;
+but I don’t believe he will ever be better while he is here. I think!--I
+think!” and she began to sob, “that Miss Parsons will really be the
+death of him if she is not hindered!”
+
+“Can’t he go on board the Petrel with Allen?”
+
+“Mother did think of that,” said Babie, “but Allen said he wasn’t in
+spirits for the charge, and that cabin No. 2 wasn’t comfortable enough.”
+
+Jock was not the least surprised at this selfishness, but he said--
+
+“We _will_ get him away somehow, Infanta, never fear! And when you have
+left this place, you’ll be all right. You’ll have the Friar, and he is a
+host in himself.”
+
+“Yes,” said Babie, ruefully, “but he is not a brother after all. Oh,
+Jock! mother says it is very wrong in me, but I can’t help it.”
+
+“What is wrong, little one?”
+
+“To feel it so dreadful that you and Bobus are going! I know it is
+honour and glory, and promotion, and chivalry, and Victoria crosses,
+and all that Sydney and I used to care for; but, oh! we never thought of
+those that stayed at home.”
+
+“You were a famous Spartan till the time came,” said Jock, in an odd
+husky voice.
+
+“I wouldn’t mind so much but for mother,” said poor Barbara, in an
+apologetic tone; “nor if there were any stuff in Allen; nor if dear
+Armie were well and like himself; but, oh dear! I feel as if all the
+manhood and comfort of the family would be gone to the other end of the
+world.”
+
+“What did you say about mother?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Jock, I didn’t mean to worry you. I know it is a
+grand thing for you. But mother was so merry and happy when we thought
+we should all be snug with you in the old house, and she made such nice
+plans. But now she is so fagged and worn, and she can’t sleep. She began
+to read as soon as it was light all those long summer mornings to keep
+from thinking; and she is teasing herself over her accounts. There
+were shoals of great horrid bills of things Allen ordered coming in at
+Midsummer, just as she thought she saw her way! Do you know, she thinks
+she may have to let our own house and go into lodgings.”
+
+“Is that you, Barbara?” said a voice at the Parsonage wicket. “How is
+our dear patient?”
+
+“Rather better to-night, we think.”
+
+“Tell him I hope to come and see him to-morrow. And say the vases are
+come. I thought your mother would wish us to have the large ones, so I
+put them in the Church. They are £3.”
+
+Babie thought Jock’s face was dazed when he came among the lights in
+Church, and that he moved and responded like an automaton, and she could
+hardly get a word out of him all the way home. There, they were sent
+for to Armine, who was sufficiently better to want to hear all about the
+services, the procession, the wheat-sheaf, the hymns, and the sermons.
+Jock stood the examination well till it came to evensong, when, as his
+sister had conjectured, he knew nothing, except one sentence, which he
+said had come over and over again in the sermon, and he wanted to know
+whence it came. It was, “Seekest thou great things for thyself.”
+
+Even Armine only knew that it was in a note in the “Christian Year,” and
+Babie looked out the reference, and found that it was Jeremiah’s rebuke
+to Baruch for self-seeking amid the general ruin.
+
+“I liked Baruch,” she said. “I am sorry he was selfish.”
+
+“Noble selfishness, perhaps,” said Armine. “He may have aimed at saving
+his country and coming out a glorious hero, like Gideon or Jephthah.”
+
+“And would that have been self-seeking too, as well as the commoner
+thing?” said Babie.
+
+“It is like a bit of New Testament in the midst of the Old,” said
+Armine. “They that are great are called Benefactors--a good sort of
+greatness, but still not the true Christian greatness.”
+
+“And that?” said Babie.
+
+“To be content to be faithful servant as well as faithful soldier,” said
+Armine, thoughtfully. “But what had it to do with the harvest?”
+
+He got no satisfaction, Babie could remember nothing but Jock’s face,
+and Jock had taken the Bible, and was looking at the passages referred
+to He sat for a long time resting his head on his hand, and when at last
+he was roused to bid Armine goodnight, he bent over him, kissed him,
+and said, “In spite of all, you’re the wise one of us, Armie boy. Thank
+you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. -- THE COST.
+
+
+
+     O well for him who breaks his dream
+       With the blow that ends the strife,
+     And waking knows the peace that flows
+       Around the noise of life.
+                                   G. MacDonald.
+
+
+“Jock! say this is not true!”
+
+The wedding had been celebrated with all the splendour befitting a
+marriage in high life. Bridesmaids and bridesmen were wandering about
+the gardens waiting for the summons to the breakfast, when one of
+the former thus addressed one of the latter, who was standing, gazing
+without much speculation in his eyes, at the gold fish disporting
+themselves round a fountain.
+
+“Sydney!” he exclaimed, “are not your mother and Fordham here? I can’t
+find them.”
+
+“Did you not hear, Duke has one of his bad colds, and mamma could not
+leave him? But, Jock, while we have time, set my mind at rest.”
+
+“What is affecting your mind?” said Jock, knowing only too well.
+
+“What Cecil says, that you mean to disappoint all our best hopes.”
+
+“There’s no help for it, Sydney,” said Jock, too heavy-hearted for
+fencing.
+
+“No help. I don’t understand. Why, there’s going to be war, real war,
+out there.”
+
+“Frontier tribes!”
+
+“What of that? It would lead to something. Besides, no one leaves a
+corps on active service.”
+
+“Is mine?”
+
+“It is all the same. You were going to get into one that is.”
+
+“Curious reasoning, Sydney. I am afraid my duty lies the other way.”
+
+“Duty to one’s country comes first. I can’t believe Mrs. Brownlow wants
+to hold you back; she--a soldier’s daughter!”
+
+“It is no doing of hers,” said Jock; “but I see that I must not put
+myself out of reach of her.”
+
+“When she has all the others! That is a mere excuse! If you were an only
+son, it would be bad enough.”
+
+“Come this way, and I’ll tell you what convinced me.”
+
+“I can’t see how any argument can prevail on you to swerve from the path
+of honour, the only career any one can care about,” cried Sydney, the
+romance of her nature on fire.
+
+“Hush, Sydney,” he said, partly from the exquisite pain she inflicted,
+partly because her vehemence was attracting attention.
+
+“No wonder you say Hush,” said the maiden, with what she meant for noble
+severity, “No wonder you don’t want to be reminded of all we talked of
+and planned. Does not it break Babie’s heart?”
+
+“She does not know.”
+
+“Then it is not too late.”
+
+But at that moment the bride’s aunt, who felt herself in charge of
+Miss Evelyn, swooped down on them, and paired her off with an equally
+honourable best man, so that she found herself seated between two
+comparative strangers; while it seemed to her that Lucas Brownlow was
+keeping up an insane whirl of merriment with his neighbours.
+
+Poor child, her hero was fallen, her influence had failed, and nothing
+was left her but the miserable shame of having trusted in the power of
+an attraction which she now felt to have been a delusion. Meanwhile the
+aunt, by way of being on the safe side, effectually prevented Jock from
+speaking to her again before the party broke up; and he could only see
+that she was hotly angered, and not that she was keenly hurt.
+
+She arrived at home the next day with white cheeks and red eyes, and
+most indistinct accounts of the wedding. A few monosyllables were
+extracted with difficulty, among them a “Yes” when Fordham asked whether
+she had seen Lucas Brownlow.
+
+“Did he talk of his plans?”
+
+“Not much.”
+
+“One cannot but be sorry,” said her mother; “but, as your uncle says,
+his motives are to be much respected.”
+
+“Mamma,” cried Sydney, horrified, “you wouldn’t encourage him in turning
+back from the defence of his country in time of war?”
+
+“His country!” ejaculated Fordham. “Up among the hill tribes!”
+
+“You palliating it too, Duke! Is there no sense of honour or glory left?
+What are you laughing at? I don’t think it a laughing matter, nor Cecil
+either, that he should have been led to turn his back upon all that is
+great and glorious!”
+
+“That’s very fine,” said Fordham, who was in a teasing mood. “Had you
+not better put it into the ‘Traveller’s Joy?’”
+
+“I shall never touch the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ again!” and Sydney’s high
+horse suddenly breaking down, she flew away in a flood of tears.
+
+Her mother and brother looked at one another rather aghast, and Fordham
+said--
+
+“Had you any suspicion of this?”
+
+“Not definitely. Pray don’t say a word that can develop it now.”
+
+“He is all the worthier.”
+
+“Most true; but we do not know that there is any feeling on his side,
+and if there were, Sydney is much too young for it to be safe to
+interfere with conventionalities. An expressed attachment would be very
+bad for both of them at present.”
+
+“Should you have objected if he had still been going to India?”
+
+“I would have prevented an engagement, and should have regretted her
+knowing anything about it. The wear of such waiting might be too great a
+strain on her.”
+
+“Possibly,” said Fordham. “And should you consider this other profession
+an insuperable objection?”
+
+“Certainly not, if he goes on as I think he will; but such success
+cannot come to him for many years, and a good deal may happen in that
+time.”
+
+Poor Lucas! He would have been much cheered could he have heard the
+above conversation instead of Cecil’s wrath, which, like his sister’s,
+worked a good deal like madness on the brain.
+
+Mr. Evelyn chose to resent the slight to his family, and the ingratitude
+to his uncle, in thus running counter to their wishes, and plunging into
+what the young aristocrat termed low life. He did not spare the warning
+that it would be impossible to keep up an intimacy with one who chose to
+“grub his nose in hospitals and dissecting rooms.”
+
+Naturally Lucas took these as the sentiments of the whole family, and
+found that he was sacrificing both love and friendship. Sir James Evelyn
+indeed allowed that he was acting rightly according to his lights. Sir
+Philip Cameron told him that his duty to a widowed mother ought to come
+first, and his own Colonel, a good and wise man, commended his decision,
+and said he hoped not to lose sight of him. The opinions of these
+veterans, though intrinsically worth more than those of the two young
+Evelyns, were by no means an equivalent to poor Lucas. The “great
+things” he had resolved not to seek, involved what was far dearer. It
+was more than he had reckoned on when he made his resolution, but he had
+committed himself, and there was no drawing back. He was just of age,
+and had acted for himself, knowing that his mother would withhold her
+consent if she were asked for it; but he was considering how to convey
+the tidings to her, when he found that a card had been left for him by
+the Reverend David Ogilvie, with a pencilled invitation to dine with him
+that evening at an hotel.
+
+Mr. Ogilvie, after several years of good service as curate at a district
+Church at a fashionable south coast watering place, sometimes known as
+the English Sorrento, had been presented to the parent Church. He had
+been taking his summer holiday, and on his way back had undertaken to
+relieve a London friend of his Sunday services. His sister’s letters
+had made him very anxious for tidings of Mrs. Brownlow, and he had
+accordingly gone in quest of her son.
+
+He ordered dinner with a half humorous respect for the supposed
+epicurism of a young Guardsman, backed by the desire to be doubly
+correct because of the fallen fortunes of the family, and he awaited
+with some curiosity the pupil, best known to him as a pickle.
+
+“Mr. Brownlow.”
+
+There stood, a young man, a soldier from head to foot, slight, active,
+neatly limbed, and of middle height, with a clear brown cheek, dark hair
+and moustache, and the well-remembered frank hazel eyes, though their
+frolic and mischief were dimmed, and they had grown grave and steadfast,
+and together with the firm-set lip gave the impression of a mind
+resolutely bent on going through some great ordeal without flinching or
+murmuring. With a warm grasp of the hand Mr. Ogilvie said--
+
+“Why, Brownlow, I should not have known you.”
+
+“I should have known you, sir, anywhere,” said Jock, amazed to find
+the Ogre of old times no venerable seignior, but a man scarce yet
+middle-aged.
+
+They talked of Mr. Ogilvie’s late tour, in scenes well known to Jock,
+and thence they came to the whereabouts of all the family, Armine’s
+health and Robert’s appointment, till they felt intimate; and the
+unobtrusive sympathy of the old friend opened the youth’s heart, and he
+made much plain that had been only half understood from Mrs. Morgan’s
+letters. Of his eldest brother and sister, Jock said little; but there
+was no need to explain why his mother was straitening herself, and
+remaining at Belforest when it had become so irksome to her.
+
+“And you are going out to India?” said Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“That’s not coming off, sir.”
+
+“Indeed, I thought you were to have a staff appointment.”
+
+“It would not pay, sir; and that is a consideration.”
+
+“Then have you anything else in view?”
+
+“The hospitals,” said Jock, with a poor effort to seem diverted;
+“the other form of slaughter.” Then as his friend looked at him
+with concerned and startled eyes, he added, “Unless there were some
+extraordinary chance of loot. You see the pagoda tree is shaken bare,
+and I could do no more than keep myself and have nothing for my mother,
+and I am afraid she will need it. It is a chance whether Allen, at his
+age, or Armine, with his health, can do much, and some one must stay and
+get remunerative work.”
+
+“Is not the training costly?”
+
+“Her Majesty owes me something. Luckily I got my commission by purchase
+just in time, and I shall receive compensation enough to carry me
+through my studies. We shall be all together with Friar Brownlow, who
+takes the same line in the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all
+born. That she really does look forward to.”
+
+“I should think so, with you to look after her,” said Mr. Ogilvie
+heartily.
+
+“Only she can’t get into it till Lady Day. And I wanted to ask you, Mr.
+Ogilvie, do you know anything about expenses down at your place? What
+would tolerable lodgings be likely to come to, rent of rooms, I mean,
+for my mother and the two young ones. Armie has not wintered in England
+since that Swiss adventure of ours, and I suppose St. Cradocke’s would
+be as good a place for him as any.”
+
+“I had a proposition to make, Brownlow. My sister and I invested in a
+house at St. Cradocke’s when I was curate there, and she meant to retire
+to me when she had finished Barbara. My married curate is leaving it
+next week, when I go home. The single ones live in the rectory with me,
+and I think of making it a convalescent home; but this can’t be begun
+for some months, as the lady who is to be at the head will not be at
+liberty. Do you think your mother would do me the favour to occupy it?
+It is furnished, and my housekeeper would see it made comfortable for
+her. Do you think you could make the notion acceptable to her?” he said,
+colouring like a lad, and stuttering in his eagerness.
+
+“It would be a huge relief,” exclaimed Jock. “Thank you, Mr. Ogilvie.
+Belforest has come to be like a prison to her, and it will be everything
+to have Armine in a warm place among reasonable people.”
+
+“Is Kenminster more unreasonable than formerly?”
+
+“Not Kenminster, but Woodside. I say, Mr. Ogilvie, you haven’t any one
+at St. Cradocke’s who will send Armine and Babie to walk three miles and
+back in the rain for a bit of crimson cord and tassels?”
+
+“I trust not,” said Mr. Ogilvie, smiling. “That is the way in which good
+people manage to do so much harm.”
+
+“I’m glad you say so,” cried Jock. “That woman is worse for him than six
+months of east wind. I declare I had a hard matter to get myself to go
+to Church there the next day.”
+
+“Who is _she_?”
+
+“The sister of the Vicar of Woodside, who is making him the edifying
+martyr of a goody book. Ah, you know her, I see,” as Mr. Ogilvie looked
+amused.
+
+“A gushing lady of a certain age? Oh yes, she has been at St.
+Cradocke’s.”
+
+“She is not coming again, I hope!” in horror.
+
+“Not likely. They were there for a few months before her brother had the
+living, and I could quite fancy her influence bringing on a morbid state
+of mind. There is something exaggerated about her.”
+
+“You’ve hit her off exactly!” cried Jock, “and you’ll unbewitch our poor
+boy before she has quite done for him! Can’t you come down with me on
+Saturday, and propose the plan?”
+
+“Thank you, I am pledged to Sunday.”
+
+“I forgot. But come on Monday then?”
+
+“I had better go and prepare. I had rather you spoke for me. Somehow,”
+ and a strange dew came in David Ogilvie’s eyes, “I could not bear to see
+_her_ there, where we saw her installed in triumph, now that all is so
+changed.”
+
+“You would see her the brightest and bravest of all. Neither she nor
+Babie would mind the loss of fortune a bit if it were not, as Babie
+says, for ‘other things.’ But those other things are wearing her to a
+mere shadow. No, not a shadow--that is dark--but a mere sparkle! But to
+escape from Belforest will cure a great deal.”
+
+So Jock went away with the load on his heart somewhat lightened. He
+could not get home on Saturday till very late, when dinner had long been
+over. Coming softly in, through the dimly lighted drawing-rooms, over
+the deeply piled carpets, he heard Babie’s voice reading aloud in the
+innermost library, and paused for a moment, looking through the heavy
+velvet curtains over the doorway before withdrawing one and entering.
+His mother’s face was in full light, as she sat helping Armine to
+illuminate texts. She did indeed look worn and thin, and there were
+absolute lines on it, but they were curves such as follow smiles, rather
+than furrows of care; feet rather of larks than of crows, and her whole
+air was far more cheerful and animated than that of her youngest son.
+He was thin and wan, his white cheeks contrasting with his dark hair and
+brown eyes, which looked enormous in their weary pensiveness, as he lent
+back languidly, holding a brush across his lips in a long pause, while
+she was doing his work. Barbara’s bright keen little features were
+something quite different as, wholly wrapped up in her book, she read--
+
+
+          “Oh! then Ladurlad started,
+           As one who, in his grave,
+           Has heard an angel’s call,
+           Yea, Mariately, thou must deign to save,
+           Yea, goddess, it is she,
+           Kailyal--”
+
+
+“Are you learning Japanese?” asked Jock, advancing, so that Armine
+started like Ladurlad himself.
+
+“Dear old Skipjack! Skipped here again!” and they were all about him.
+“Have you had any dinner?”
+
+“A mouthful at the station. If there is any coffee and a bit of
+something cold, I’d rather eat it promiscuously here. No dining-room
+spread, pray. It is too jolly here,” said Jock, dropping into an
+armchair. “Where’s Bob?”
+
+“Dining at the school-house.”
+
+“And what’s that Mariolatry?”
+
+“Mariately,” said Babie. “An Indian goddess. It is the ‘Curse of
+Kehama,’ and wonderfully noble.”
+
+“Moore or Browning?”
+
+“For shame, Jock!” cried the girl. “I thought you did know more than
+examination cram.”
+
+“It is the advantage of having no Mudie boxes,” said his mother. “We are
+taking up our Southey.”
+
+“And, Armie, how are you?”
+
+“My cough is better, thank you,” was the languid answer. “Only they
+won’t let me go beyond the terrace.”
+
+“For don’t I know,” said his mother, “that if once I let you out, I
+should find you croaking at a choir practice at Woodside?”
+
+Then, after ordering a refection for the traveller, came the question
+what he had been doing.
+
+“Dining with Mr. Ogilvie. It is quite a new sensation to find oneself on
+a level with the Ogre of one’s youth, and prove him a human mortal after
+all.”
+
+“That’s a sentiment worthy of Joe,” said Babie. “You used to know him in
+private life.”
+
+“Always with a smack of the dominie. Moreover, he is so young. I thought
+him as ancient as Dr. Lucas, and, behold, he is a brisk youth, without a
+grey hair.”
+
+“He always was young-looking,” said his mother. “I am glad you saw him.
+I wish he were not so far off.”
+
+“Well then, mother, here’s an invitation from Mahomet to the mountain,
+which Mahomet is too shy to make in person. That house which he and
+his sister bought at his English Sorrento has just been vacated by his
+married curate, and he wants you to come and keep it warm till he begins
+a convalescent home there next spring.”
+
+“How very kind!”
+
+“Oh! mother, you couldn’t,” burst out Armine in consternation.
+
+“Would it be an expense or loss to him, Jock?” said his mother,
+considering.
+
+“I should say not, unless he be an extremely accomplished dissembler. If
+it eased your mind, no doubt he would consent to your paying the rates
+and taxes.”
+
+“But, mother,” again implored Armine, “you said you would not force me
+to go to Madeira, with the Evelyns!”
+
+“Are they going to Madeira?” exclaimed Jock, thunderstruck.
+
+“Did you not hear it from Cecil?”
+
+“He has been away on leave for the last week. This is a sudden
+resolution.”
+
+“Yes, Fordham goes on coughing, and Sydney has a bad cold, caught at the
+wedding. Did you see her?”
+
+“Oh yes, I saw her,” he mechanically answered, while his mother
+continued--
+
+“Mrs. Evelyn has been pressing me most kindly to let Armine go with
+them; but as Dr. Leslie assures me it is not essential, and he seems so
+much averse to it himself--”
+
+“You know, mother, how I wish to hold my poor neglected Woodside to the
+last,” cried Armine. “Why is my health always to be made the excuse for
+deserting it?”
+
+“You are not the only reason,” said his mother. “It is hard to keep
+Esther in banishment all this time, and I am in constant fear of a row
+about the shooting with that Gilbert Gould.”
+
+“Has he been at it again!” exclaimed Jock, fiercely.
+
+“You are as bad as Rob,” she said. “I fully expect a disturbance between
+them, and I had rather be no party to it. Oh, I shall be very thankful
+to get away, I feel like a prisoner on parole.”
+
+“And I feel,” said Armine, “as if all we could do here was too little to
+expiate past carelessness.”
+
+“Mind, you are talking of mother!” said Jock, firing up.
+
+“I thought she felt with me,” said Armine, meekly.
+
+“So I do, my dear; I ought to have done much better for the place,
+but our staying on now does no good, and only leads to perplexity and
+distress.”
+
+“And when can you come, mother?” said Jock. “The house is at your
+service instanter.”
+
+“I should like to go to-night, without telling any one or wishing any
+one good-bye. No, you need not be afraid, Armie. The time must depend
+on your brother’s plans. St. Cradocke’s is too far off for much running
+backwards and forwards. Have you any notion when you may have to leave
+us, Jock? You don’t go with Sir Philip?”
+
+“No, certainly not,” said Jock. Then, with a little hesitation, “In
+fact, that’s all up.”
+
+“He has not thrown you over?” said his mother; “or is there any
+difficulty about your exchange?”
+
+Here Babie broke in, “Oh, that’s it! That’s what Sydney meant! Oh, Jock!
+you don’t mean that you let it prey upon you--the nonsense I talked? Oh,
+I will never, never say anything again!”
+
+“What did she say?” demanded Jock.
+
+“Sydney? Oh, that it would break her heart and Cecil’s if you persisted,
+and that she could not prevent you, and it was my duty. Mother, that was
+the letter I didn’t show you. I could not understand it, and I thought
+you had enough to worry you.”
+
+“But what does it all mean?” asked their mother. “What have you been
+doing to the Evelyns?”
+
+“Mother, I have gone back to our old programme,” said Jock. “I have sent
+in my papers; I said nothing to you, for I thought you would only vex
+yourself.”
+
+“Oh, Jock!” she said, overpowered; “I should never have let you!”
+
+“No, mother, dear, I knew that, so I didn’t ask you.”
+
+“You undutiful person!” but she held out her arm, and as he came to her,
+she leant her head against him, sobbing a little sob of infinite relief,
+as though fortitude found it much pleasanter to have a living column.
+
+“You’ve done it?” said Armine.
+
+“You will see it gazetted in a day or two.”
+
+“Then it is all over,” cried Babie, again in tears; “all our dreams of
+honour, and knighthood, and wounds, and glorious things!”
+
+“You can always have the satisfaction of believing I should have got
+them,” said Jock, but there was a quiver in his voice, and a thrill
+through his whole frame that showed his mother that it was very sore
+with him, and she hastened to let him subside into a chair while she
+asked if it was far to the end of the canto, and as Babie was past
+reading, she took the book and finished it herself. Nobody had much
+notion of the sense, but the cadence was soothing, and all were composed
+by the time the prayer-bell rang.
+
+“Come to my dressing-room presently,” she said to Lucas, as he lighted
+her candle for her.
+
+Just as she had gone up stairs, the front door opened to admit Bobus.
+
+“Oh, you are here!” was his salutation. “So you have done for yourself?”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“Your colonel wrote to my uncle. He was at the dinner, and made me come
+back with him to ask if I knew about it.”
+
+“How does he take it?”
+
+“He will probably fall on you, as he did on me to-night, calling it all
+my fault.”
+
+“As how?”
+
+“For looking out for myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy,
+but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the
+only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don’t plume
+yourself. You’ll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him.
+Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn’t improve his
+temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my mother.
+What are your plans?”
+
+“Rotifer, as before.”
+
+“Chacun a son gout,” said Bobus, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+“I should have thought you would respect curing more than killing.”
+
+“If there were not a whole bag of stones about your neck.”
+
+“Magnets,” said Jock.
+
+“That’s just it. All the heavier.”
+
+The brothers went upstairs together, and Jock was kept waiting a little
+while in the dressing-room, till his mother came out, shutting the door
+on Barbara.
+
+“The poor Infanta!” she said. “She is breaking her foolish little heart
+over something she said to you. ‘As bad as the woman in the “Black
+Brunswicker,”’ she says, only she didn’t mean it. Was it so, Jock?”
+
+“I had pretty well made up my mind before. Mother, are you vexed that I
+did not tell you?”
+
+“You spared me much. Your uncle would never have consented. But oh,
+Jock! I’m not a Spartan mother. My heart _will_ bound.”
+
+“My colonel said it was right,” said Jock; “so did Cameron, and even Sir
+James, though he did not like it.”
+
+“With such an array of old soldiers on our side we may let the young
+ladies rage,” said his mother, but she checked her mirth on seeing how
+far from a joke their indignation was to her son.
+
+He turned and looked into the fire as he said--
+
+“When did Sydney write that letter, mother?”
+
+“Before meeting you at the wedding. She has not written since.”
+
+“I thought not,” muttered Jock, his brow against the mantel-piece.
+
+“No, but Mrs. Evelyn has written such a nice letter, just like herself,
+though I did not understand it then. I think she was doubtful how much
+I knew, for she only said how thankworthy it must be to have such a
+self-sacrificing spirit among my sons, moral courage, in fact, of the
+highest kind, and how those who were lavish of strong words in their
+first disappointment would be wiser by-and-by. I was puzzled then. But
+oh, my dear, this must have been very grievous to you!”
+
+“I couldn’t go back, but I did not know how it would be,” said Jock, in
+a choked voice, collapsing at last, and hiding his face on his mother’s
+lap.
+
+“My Jock, I am so sorry! I wish it were not too late. I could not have
+let you give up so much,” and she fondled his head. “I did not think I
+had been so weak as to let you see.”
+
+“No, mother. It was not that you were so weak, but that you were so
+brave. Besides, I ought to take the brunt of it. I ruined you all by
+being the prime mover with that assification, and I was the cause of
+Armie’s illness too. I ought to take my share. If ever I can be any good
+to any one again,” he added, in a dejected tone.
+
+“Good!--unspeakably good! This is my first bright spot of light through
+the wood. If it were but bright to you! I am afraid they have been very
+unkind.”
+
+“Not unkind. _She_ couldn’t be that, but I’ve shocked and disappointed
+her,” and his head dropped again.
+
+“What, in not being a hero? My dear, you are a true hero in the eyes of
+us old mothers; but I am afraid that is poor comfort. My Jock, does it
+go so deep as that? Giving up _all_ that for me! O my boy!”
+
+“It is nonsense to talk of giving up,” said Jock, rousing himself to a
+common-sense view. “What chance had I of her if I had gone to India ten
+times over?” but the wave of grief broke over him again. “She would have
+believed in me, and, may be, have waited.”
+
+“She will believe in you again.”
+
+“No, I’m below her.”
+
+“My poor boy, I didn’t know it had come to this. Do you mean that
+anything had ever passed between you?”
+
+“No, but it was all the same. Even Evelyn implied it, when he said they
+must give me up, if we took such different lines.”
+
+“Cecil too! Foolish fellow! Jock, don’t care about such absurdity. They
+are not worth it.”
+
+“They’ve been the best of my life,” said poor Jock, but he stood up,
+shook himself, and said, “A nice way this of helping you! I didn’t think
+I was such a fool. But it is over now. I’ll buckle to, and do my best.”
+
+“My brave boy!” and as the thought of the Magnum Bonum darted into her
+mind, she said, “You may have greater achievements than are marked by
+Victoria Crosses, and Sydney herself may own it.”
+
+And Jock went to bed, cheered in spite of himself by his mother’s
+pleasure, and by Mrs. Evelyn’s letter, which she allowed him to take
+away with him.
+
+Colonel Brownlow was not so much distressed by Lucas’s retirement as
+had been apprehended. He knew the life of a soldier with small means
+too well to recommend it. The staff appointment, he said, might mean
+anything or nothing, and could only last a short time unless Lucas had
+extraordinary opportunities. It might be as well, he was very like his
+grandfather, poor John Allen, and might have had his history over again.
+
+The likeness was a new idea to Caroline and a great pleasure to her.
+Indeed, she seemed to Armine unfeelingly joyous, as she accepted Mr.
+Ogilvie’s invitation, and hurried her preparations. There was a bare
+possibility of a return in the spring, which prevented final farewells,
+and softened partings a little. The person who showed most grief of all
+was Mrs. Robert Brownlow, who, glad as she must have been to be free of
+Bobus and able to recall her daughter, wept over her sister-in-law as
+if she had been going into the workhouse, with tears partly penitent for
+the involuntary ingratitude with which past kindness had been received.
+She was, as Babie said, much more sorry for Mother Carey than Mother
+Carey for herself.
+
+Yet the relief was all the greater that it was plain that Esther was
+not happy in her banishment; and that General Hood thought her visit
+had lasted long enough, while the matter was complicated at home by her
+sister Eleanor’s undisguised sympathy with her cousin Bobus, for whom
+she would have sent messages if her mother had not, with some difficulty
+exacted a promise never to allude to him in her letters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. -- BITTER FAREWELLS.
+
+
+
+     But he who lets his feelings run
+       In soft luxurious flow
+     Shrinks when hard service must be done
+       And faints at every woe.
+                                 J. H. Newman.
+
+
+Welcome shone in Mr. Ogilvie’s face in the gaslight on the platform
+as the train drew up, and the Popinjay in her cage was handed out,
+uttering, “Hic, haec, hoc. We’re all Mother Carey’s chicks.”
+
+Therewith the mother and the two youngest of her chicks were handed to
+their fly, and driven, through raindrops and splashes flashing in the
+gas, to a door where the faithful Emma awaited them, and conveyed them
+to a room so bright and comfortable that Babie piteously exclaimed--
+
+“Oh, Emma, you have left me nothing to do!”
+
+Presently came Mr. Ogilvie to make sure that the party needed nothing.
+He was like a child hovering near, and constantly looking to assure
+himself of the reality of some precious acquisition.
+
+Later in the evening, on his way from the night-school, he was at the
+door again to leave a parish magazine with a list of services that ought
+to have rejoiced Armine’s heart, if he had felt capable of enjoying
+anything at St. Cradocke’s, and at which Babie looked with some dismay,
+as if fearing that they would all be inflicted on her. He was in a
+placid, martyr-like state. He had made up his mind that the air was of
+the relaxing sort that disagreed with him, and no doubt would be fatal,
+though as he coughed rather less than more, he could hardly hope to
+edify Bobus by his death-bed, unless he could expedite matters by
+breaking a blood-vessel in saving someone’s life. On the whole, however,
+it was pleasanter to pity himself for vague possibilities than to
+apprehend the crisis as immediate. It was true that he was very forlorn.
+He missed the admiring petting by which Miss Parsons had fostered his
+morbid state; he missed the occupations she had given him, and he missed
+the luxurious habits of wealth far more than he knew. After his winters
+under genial skies, close to blue Mediterranean waves, English weather
+was trying; and, in contrast with southern scenery, people, and art,
+everything seemed ugly, homely, and vulgar in his eyes. Gorgeous
+Cathedrals with their High Masses and sweet Benedictions, their bannered
+processions and kneeling peasantry, rose in his memory as he beheld
+the half restored Church, the stiff, open seats, and the Philistine
+precision of the St. Cradocke’s Old Church congregation; and Anglicanism
+shared his distaste, in spite of the fascinations of the district
+Church.
+
+He was languid and inert, partly from being confined to the house on
+days of doubtful character. He would not prepare any work for Bobus,
+who, with Jock, was to follow in ten days, he would not second Babie’s
+wish to get up a St. Cradocke’s number of the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ to
+challenge a Madeira one; he did little but turn over a few books, say
+there was nothing to read, and exchange long letters with Miss Parsons.
+
+“Armine,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “I never let my friends come into my parish
+without getting work out of them. I have a request to make you.”
+
+“I’m afraid I am not equal to much,” said Armine, not graciously.
+
+“This is not much. We have a lame boy here for the winter, son to a
+cabinet maker in London. His mind is set on being a pupil-teacher, and
+he is a clever, bright fellow, but his chance depends on his keeping up
+his work. I have been looking over his Latin and French, but I have not
+time to do so properly, and it would be a great kindness if you would
+undertake it.”
+
+“Can’t he go to school?” said Armine, not graciously.
+
+“It is much too far off. Now he is only round the corner here.”
+
+“My going out is so irregular,” said Armine, not by any means as he
+would have accepted a behest of Petronella’s.
+
+“He could often come here. Or perhaps the Infanta would fetch and carry.
+He is with an uncle, a fisherman, and the wife keeps a little shop.
+Stagg is the name. They are very respectable people, but of a lower
+stamp than this lad, and he is rather lost for want of companionship.
+The London doctors say his recovery depends on sea air for the winter,
+so here he is, and whatever you can do for him will be a real good
+work.”
+
+“What is the name?” asked Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+“Stagg. It is over a little grocery shop. You must ask for Percy Stagg.”
+
+Perhaps Armine suspected the motive to be his own good, for he took a
+dislike to the idea at once.
+
+“Percy Stagg!” he began, as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was gone. “What a
+detestable conjunction, just showing what the fellow must be. And to
+have him on my hands.”
+
+“I thought you liked teaching?” said his mother.
+
+“As if this would be like a Woodside boy!”
+
+“Yes,” said Babie; “I don’t suppose he will carry onions and lollipops in
+his pockets, nor put cockchafers down on one’s book.”
+
+“Babie, that was only Ted Stokes!”
+
+“And I should _think_ he might have rather cleaner hands, and not leave
+their traces on every book.”
+
+“He’ll do worse!” said Armine. “He will be vulgarly stuck up, and
+excruciate me with every French word he attempts to pronounce.”
+
+“But you’ll do it, Armie?” said his mother.
+
+“Oh, yes, I will try if it be possible to make anything of him, when I
+am up to it.”
+
+Armine was not “up to it” the next day, nor the next. The third was very
+fine, and with great resignation, he sauntered down to Mrs. Stagg’s.
+
+Percy turned out to be a quiet, gentle, pale lad of fourteen, without
+cockney vivacity, and so shy that Armine grew shyer, did little but mark
+the errors in his French exercise, hear a bit of reading, and retreat,
+bemoaning the hopeless stupidity of his pupil.
+
+A few days later Mr. Ogilvie asked the lame boy how he was getting on.
+
+“Oh, sir,” brightening, “the lady is so kind. She does make it so plain
+in me.”
+
+“The lady? Not the young gentleman?”
+
+“The young gentleman has been here once, sir.”
+
+“And his sister comes when he is not well?”
+
+“No, sir, it is his mother, I think. A lady with white hair--the nicest
+lady I ever saw.”
+
+“And she teaches you?”
+
+“Oh yes, sir! I am preparing a fable in the Latin Delectus for her, and
+she gave me this French book. She does tell me such interesting facts
+about words, and about what she has seen abroad, sir! And she brought me
+this cushion for my knee.”
+
+“Percy thinks there never was such a lady,” chimed in his aunt. “She is
+very good to him, and he is ever so much better in his spirits and
+his appetite since she has been coming to him. The young gentleman was
+haughty like, and couldn’t make nothing of him; but the lady--she’s so
+affable! She is one of a thousand!”
+
+“I did not mean to impose a task on you,” said Mr. Ogilvie, next time he
+could speak to Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+“Oh! I am only acting stop-gap till Armine rallies and takes to it,” she
+said. “The boy is delightful. It is very amusing to teach French to a
+mind of that age so thoroughly drilled in grammar.”
+
+“A capital thing for Percy, but I thought at least you would have
+deputed the Infanta.”
+
+“The Infanta was a little overdone with the style of thing at Woodside.
+She and Sydney Evelyn had a romance about good works, of which Miss
+Parsons completely disenchanted her--rather too much so, I fear.”
+
+“Let her alone; she will recover,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “if only by seeing
+you do what I never intended.”
+
+“I like it, teacher as I am by trade.”
+
+So each day Armine imagined himself bound to the infliction of Percy
+Stagg, and compelled by headache, cough, or weather, to let his mother
+be his substitute.
+
+“She is keeping him going on days when I am not equal to it,” he said to
+Mr. Ogilvie.
+
+“Having thus given you one of my tasks,” said that gentleman, “let me
+ask whether I can help you in any of your studies?”
+
+“I have been reading with Bobus, thank you.”
+
+“And now?”
+
+“I have not begun again, though, if my mother desires it, I shall.”
+
+“So I should suppose; but I am sorry you do not take more interest in
+the matter.”
+
+“Even if I live,” said Armine, “the hopes with which I once studied are
+over.”
+
+“What hopes?”
+
+The boy was drawn on by his sympathy to explain his plans for the
+perfection of church and charities at Woodside, where he would have
+worked as curate, and lavished all that wealth could supply in all
+institutions for its good and that of Kenminster. It was the vanished
+castle over which he and Miss Parsons had spent so many moans, and yet
+at the end of it all, Armine saw a sort of incredulous smile on his
+friend’s face.
+
+“I don’t think it was impossible or unreasonable,” he said. “I could
+have been ordained as curate there, and my mother would have gladly
+given land, and means, and all.”
+
+“I was not thinking of that, my boy. What struck me was how people put
+their trust in riches without knowing it.”
+
+“Indeed I should have given up all wealth and luxury. I am not
+regretting that!” exclaimed Armine, in unconscious blindness.
+
+“I did not say you were.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Armine, thinking he had not caught the words.
+
+“I said people did not know how they put their trust in riches.”
+
+“I never thought I did.”
+
+“Only that you think nothing can be done without them.”
+
+“I don’t see how it can.”
+
+“Don’t you? Well, the longer I live the more cause I see to dread and
+distrust what is done easily by force of wealth. Of course when the
+money is there, and is given along with one’s self (as I know you
+intended), it is providential, but I verily believe it intensifies
+difficulties and temptations. Poverty is almost as beneficial a sieve of
+motives and stimulus to energy as persecution itself.”
+
+“There are so many things one can’t do.”
+
+“Perhaps the fit time is not come for their being done. Or you want more
+training for doing them. Remember that to bring one’s good desires to
+good effect, there is a _how_ to be taken into account. I know of a
+place where the mere knowledge that there are unlimited means to bestow
+seems to produce ingratitude and captiousness for whatever is done. On
+the other hand, I have seen a far smaller gift, that has cost an effort,
+most warmly and touchingly received. Again, the power of at once acting
+leads to over-haste, want of consideration, domineering, expectation of
+adulation, impatience of counsel or criticism.”
+
+“I suppose one does not know till one has tried,” said Armine, “but I
+should mind nothing from Mr. or Miss Parsons.”
+
+“I did not allude to any special case, I only wanted to show you that
+riches do not by any means make doing good a simpler affair, but rather
+render it more difficult not to do an equal amount of harm.”
+
+“Of course,” said Armine, “as this misfortune has happened, it is plain
+that we must submit, and I hope I am bowing to the disappointment.”
+
+“By endeavouring to do your best for God with what is left you?”
+
+“I hope so, but with my health there seems nothing left for me but
+unmurmuring resignation.”
+
+Mr. Ogilvie was amused at Armine’s notion of unmurmuring resignation,
+but he added only, “Which would be much assisted by a little exertion.”
+
+“I did exert myself at home, but it is all aimless now.”
+
+“I should have thought you still equally bound to learn and labour to do
+your duty in Him and for Him. Will you think about what I have said?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Ogilvie, thank you. I know you mean it kindly, and no one can
+be expected to enter into my feeling of the uselessness of wasting my
+time over classical studies when I know I shall never be able to be
+ordained.”
+
+“Are you sure you are not wasting it now?”
+
+It was not possible to continue the subject. Mr. Ogilvie had failed in
+both his attempts to rouse Armine, and had to tell his mother, who had
+hoped much from this new influence. “I think,” he said, “that Armine is
+partly feeling the change from invalidism to ordinary health. He
+does not know it, poor fellow; but it is rather hard to give up being
+interesting.”
+
+Caroline saw the truth of this when Armine showed himself absolutely
+nettled at his brothers, on their arrival, pronouncing that he looked
+much better--in fact quite jolly, an insult which he treated with
+Christian forgiveness.
+
+Bobus had visited Belforest. His mother had never intended this, and
+still less that he should walk direct from the station to Kencroft,
+surprising the whole family at luncheon, and taking his seat among them
+quite naturally. Thereby he obtained all he had expected or hoped, for
+when the meal was over, he was able, though in the presence of all the
+family, to take Esther by both hands, and say in his resolute earnest
+voice, “Good-bye, my sweet and only love. You will wait for me,
+and by-and-by, when I have made you a home, and people see things
+differently, I shall come for you,” and therewith he pressed on her
+burning, blushing, drooping brow four kisses that felt like fire.
+
+Her mother might fret and her father might fume, but they were as
+powerless as the parents of young Lochinvar’s bride, and the words of
+their protest were scarcely begun when he loosed the girl’s hands, and,
+turning to her mother, said, “Good-bye, Aunt Ellen. When we meet again,
+you will see things otherwise. I ask nothing till that time comes.”
+
+This was not the part of his visit of which he told his mother, he only
+dwelt on a circumstance so opportune that he had almost been forgiven
+even by the Colonel. He had encountered Dr. Hermann, who had come down
+to make another attempt on the Gracious Lady, and had thus found himself
+in the presence of a very different person. An opening had offered
+itself in America, and he had come to try to obtain his wife’s fortune
+to take them out. The opportunity of making stringent terms had seemed
+to Bobus so excellent that he civilly invited Demetrius to dine and
+sleep, and sent off a note to beg his uncle to come and assist in a
+family compact. Colonel Brownlow, having happily resisted his impulse
+to burn the letter unread as an impertinent proposal for his daughter,
+found that it contained so sensible a scheme that he immediately
+conceived a higher opinion of his namesake than he had ever had before.
+
+Thus Dr. Hermann found himself face to face with the very last members
+of the family he desired to meet, and had to make the best of the
+situation. Of secrets of the late Joseph Brownlow he said nothing, but
+based his application on the offer of a practice and lectureship he said
+he had received from New Orleans. He had evidently never credited that
+Mrs. Brownlow meant to resign the whole property without giving away
+among her children the accumulation of ready money in hand, and as
+he knew himself to be worth buying off, he reckoned upon Janet’s full
+share. He had taken Mrs. Brownlow’s own statements as polite refusals,
+and a lady’s romance until he found the uncle and nephew viewing the
+resignation of the whole as common honesty, and that she was actually
+gone. They would not give him her address, and prevented his coming
+in contact with the housekeeper, so that no more molestation might be
+possible, and meantime they offered him terms such as they thought she
+would ratify.
+
+All that Joseph Brownlow had left was entirely in her power, and the
+amount was such that if she had died intestate, each of her six children
+would have been entitled to about £l600, exclusive of the house in
+London. Janet had no right to claim anything now or at her mother’s
+death, but the uncle and nephew knew that Mrs. Brownlow would not endure
+to leave her destitute, and they thought the deportation to America
+worth a considerable sacrifice. Therefore they proposed that on the
+actual bona fide departure, £500 should be paid down, the interest of
+the £1100 should be secured to her, and paid half-yearly through Mr.
+Wakefield, who was to draw up the agreement; but the final disposal of
+the sum was not to be promised, but to depend on Mrs. Brownlow’s will.
+
+Such a present boon as £500 had made Hermann willing to agree to
+anything. Bobus had seen the lawyer in London, and with him concocted
+the agreement for signature, making the payments pass through the
+Wakefield office, the receipts being signed by Janet Hermann herself.
+
+“Why must all payments go through the office?” asked Caroline.
+
+“Because there’s no trusting that slippery Greek,” said Bobus.
+
+“I should have liked my poor Janet to have been forced to communicate
+with me every half-year,” she sighed.
+
+“What, when she has never chosen to write all this time?”
+
+“Yes. It is very weak, but I can’t help it. It would be something only
+to see her name. I have never known where to write to her, or I would
+have done so.”
+
+“O, very well,” said Bobus, “you had better invite them both to share
+the menage in Collingwood Street.”
+
+“For shame, Bobus,” said Jock. “You have no right to say such things.”
+
+“Only that all this might as well have been left undone if my mother
+is to rush on them to ask their pardon and beg them to receive her with
+open arms. I mean, mother,” he added with a different manner, “if you
+give one inch to that Greek, he will make it a mile, and as to Janet,
+if she can’t bring down her pride to write to you like a daughter, I
+wouldn’t give a rap for her receipt, and it might lead to intolerable
+pestering. Now you know she can’t starve on £50 a year besides her
+medical education. Wakefield will always know where she is, and you may
+be quite easy about her.”
+
+Caroline gave way to her son’s reasoning, as he thought, but no sooner
+was she alone with Jock than she told him that he must take her to
+London to see Janet in her lodgings before the departure for the States.
+
+He was at her service, and as they did not mean to sleep in town, they
+started at a preposterously early hour, with a certain mirth and gaiety
+at thus eloping together, as the mother’s spirits rose at the bare idea
+of seeing the first-born child for whom she had famished so long. Jock
+was such a perfect squire of dames, and so chivalrously charmed to be
+her escort, that her journey was delightful, nor did she grow sad till
+it was over. Then, she could not eat the food he would have had her take
+at the station, and he saw tears standing in her eyes as he sat beside
+her in the omnibus. When they were set down they walked swiftly and
+without a word to the lodgings.
+
+Dr. and Mrs. Hermann had “left two days ago,” said the untidy girl,
+whose aspect, like that of the street and house, betokened that Janet
+was drinking of her bitter brewst.
+
+“What shall we do, mother?” asked Jock. “You ought to rest. Will you go
+to Mrs. Acton or Mrs. Lucas, while I run down to Wakefield’s office and
+find out about them?”
+
+“To Miss Ray’s, I think,” she said faintly. “Nita may know their plans.
+Here’s the address,” taking a little book from her pocket, and ruffling
+over the leaves, “you must find it. I can’t see. O, but I can walk!” as
+he hailed a cab, and helped her into it, finding the address and jumping
+after her, while she sank back in the corner.
+
+Very small and shrunken did she look when he took her out at the door
+leading to rooms over a stationer’s shop. The sisters were somewhat
+better off than formerly, though good old Miss Ray was half ashamed
+of it, since it was chiefly owing to the liberal allowance from Mrs.
+Brownlow for the chaperonage in which she felt herself to have so sadly
+failed.
+
+Jock saw his mother safe in the hands of the kind old lady, heard that
+the pair were really gone, and departed for his interview with Mr.
+Wakefield. No sooner had the papers been signed, and the £500 made over
+to them, than the Hermanns had hurried away a fortnight earlier than
+they had spoken of going. It was much like an escape from creditors, but
+the reason assigned was an invitation to lecture in New York.
+
+So there was nothing for it but to put up with Miss Ray’s account of
+Janet, and even that was second-hand, for the gentle spirit of the good
+old lady had been so roused at the treachery of the stolen marriage that
+she had refused to see the couple, and when Nita had once brought them
+in, she had retired to her bedroom.
+
+Nita was gone on a professional engagement into the country for a week.
+According to what she had told her sister, Demetrius and Janet were
+passionately attached, and his manner was only too endearing; but Miss
+Ray had disliked the subject so much that she had avoided it in a way
+she now regretted.
+
+“Everything I have done has turned out wrong,” she said with tears
+running down her cheeks. “Even this! I would give anything to be able to
+tell you of poor Janet, and yet I thought my silence was for the best,
+for Nita and I could not mention her without quarrelling as we had never
+done before. O, Mrs. Brownlow, I can’t think how you have ever forgiven
+me.”
+
+“I can forgive every one but myself,” said Caroline sadly. “If I had
+understood how to be a better mother, this would never have been.”
+
+“You! the most affectionate and devoted.”
+
+“Ah! but I see now it was only human love without the true moving
+spring, and so my poor child grew up without it, and these are the
+fruits.”
+
+“But my dear, my dear, one can’t _give_ these things. Poor Janet always
+was a headstrong girl, like my poor Nita. I know what you mean, and
+how one feels that if one had been better oneself,” said poor Miss Ray,
+ending in utter entanglement, but tender sympathy.
+
+“She might have been a child of many prayers,” said the poor mother.
+
+“Ah! but that she can still be,” said the old lady. “She will turn back
+again, my dear. Never fear. I don’t think I could die easy if I did not
+believe she would!”
+
+Jock brought back word that the lawyer had been entirely unaware of the
+Hermanns’ departure, and thought it looked bad. He had seen them both,
+and his report was less brilliant than Nita’s. Indeed Jock kept back the
+details, for Mr. Wakefield had described Mrs. Hermann as much altered,
+thin, haggard, shabby, and anxious, and though her husband fawned upon
+her demonstratively before spectators, something in her eyes betokened
+a certain fear of him. He had also heard that Elvira was still making
+visits. There was a romance about her, which, in addition to her beauty
+and future wealth, made people think her a desirable guest. She was
+always more agreeable with strangers than in her own family; and as
+to the needful funds, she had her ample allowance; and no doubt her
+expectations secured her unlimited credit. Her conduct was another pang,
+but it was lost in the keener pain Janet had given.
+
+As his mother could not bear to face any one else, Jock thought the
+sooner he could get her home the better, and all they did was to
+buy some of Armine’s favourite biscuits, and likewise to stop at
+Rivington’s, where she chose the two smallest and neatest Greek
+Testaments she could find.
+
+They reached home three hours before they were expected, and she went up
+at once to her room and her bed, leaving Jock to make the explanations,
+and receive all Bobus’s indignation at having allowed her to knock
+herself up by such a foolish expedition.
+
+Chill, fatigue, and, far more, grief after her long course of worry
+really did bring on a feverish attack, so unprecedented in her that it
+upset the whole family, and if Mr. Ogilvie had not been almost equally
+wretched himself, he would have been amused to see these three great
+sons wandering forlorn about the house like stray chicks who had lost
+their parent hen, and imagining her ten times worse than she really was.
+
+Babie was really useful as a nurse, and had very little time to comfort
+them. And indeed they treated her as childish and trifling for assuring
+them that neither patient, maid, nor doctor thought the ailment at all
+serious. Bobus found some relief in laying the blame on Jock, but
+when Armine heard the illness ascribed to a long course of anxiety and
+harass, he was conscience-stricken, as he thought how often his
+perverse form of resignation had baffled her pleadings and added to her
+vexations. Words, impatiently heard at the moment, returned upon him,
+and compunction took its outward effect in crossness. It was all that
+Jock could do by his good-humoured banter and repartee to keep the peace
+between the other two who, when unchecked by regard to their mother
+and Babie, seemed bent on discussing everything on which they most
+disagreed.
+
+Babie was a welcome messenger to Jock at least, when she brought word
+that mother hoped Armine would attend to Percy Stagg, and would take him
+the book she sent down for him. Her will was law in the present state of
+things, and Armine set forth in dutiful disgust; but he found the lad so
+really anxious about the lady, and so much brightened and improved, that
+he began to take an interest in him and promised a fresh lesson with
+alacrity.
+
+His next step in obedience was to take out his books; but Bobus had no
+mind for them, and said it was too late. If Armine had really worked
+diligently all the autumn, he might have easily entered King’s College,
+London; but now he had thrown away his chance.
+
+Mr. Ogilvie found him with his books on the table, plunged in utter
+despondency. “Your mother is not worse?” he asked in alarm.
+
+“Oh no; she is very comfortable, and the doctor says she may get up
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Then is it the Greek?” said Mr. Ogilvie, much relieved.
+
+“Yes. Bobus says my rendering is perfectly ridiculous.”
+
+“Are you preparing for him?”
+
+“No. He is sick of me, and has no time to attend to me now.”
+
+“Let me see--”
+
+“Oh! Mr. Ogilvie,” said Armine, looking up with his ingenuous eyes. “I
+don’t deserve it. Besides, Bobus says it is of no use now. I’ve wasted
+too much time ever to get into King’s.”
+
+“I should like to judge of that. Suppose I examined you--not now, but
+to-morrow morning. Meantime, how do you construe this chorus? It is a
+tough one.”
+
+Armine winked out of his eyes the tears that had risen at the belief
+that he had really in his wilfulness lost the hope of fulfilling the
+higher aims of his life, and with a trembling voice translated the
+passage he had been hammering over. A word from Mr. Ogilvie gave him the
+clue, and when that stumbling-block was past, he acquitted himself well
+enough to warrant a little encouragement.
+
+“Well done, Armine. We shall make a fair scholar of you, after all.”
+
+“I don’t deserve you should be so kind. I see now what a fool I have
+been,” said Armine, his eyes filling again, with tears.
+
+“I have no time to talk of that now,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I only looked
+in to hear how your mother was. Bring down whatever books you have been
+getting up at twelve to-morrow; or if it is a wet day, I will come to
+you.”
+
+Armine worked for this examination as eagerly as he had decorated for
+Miss Parsons, and in the face of the like sneers; for Bobus really
+believed it was all waste of time, and did not scruple to tell him so,
+and to laugh when he consulted Jock, whose acquirements lay more in
+the way of military mathematics and modern languages than of university
+requirements.
+
+Perhaps the report that Armine was reading Livy with all his might was
+one of his mother’s best restoratives,--and still more that when he
+came to wish her good-night, he said, “Mother, I’ve been a wretched,
+self-sufficient brute all this time; I’m very sorry, and I’ll try to go
+on better.”
+
+And when she came downstairs to be petted and made much of by all the
+four, she found that the true and original Armine had come back, instead
+of Petronella’s changeling. Indeed, the danger now was that he would
+overwork himself in his fervour, for Bobus’s continued ill-auguries
+only acted as a stimulus; nor were they silenced till she begged as a
+personal favour that he would not torment the boy.
+
+Indeed her presence made life smooth and cheerful again to the young
+people; there were no more rubs of temper, and Bobus, whose departure
+was very near, showed himself softened. He was very fond of his mother,
+and greatly felt the leaving her. He assured her that it was all for her
+sake, and that he trusted to be able to lighten some of her burdens when
+his first expenses were over.
+
+“And mother,” he said, on his last evening, “you will let me sometimes
+hear of my Esther?”
+
+“Oh, Bobus, if you could only forget her!”
+
+“Would you rob me of my great incentive--my sweet image of purity, who
+rouses and guards all that is best in me? My ‘loyalty to my future wife’
+is your best hope for me, mother.”
+
+“Oh, if she were but any one else! How can I encourage you in
+disobedience to your father and to hers?”
+
+“You know what I think about that. When my Esther ventures to judge for
+herself, these prejudices will give way. She shall not be disobedient,
+but you will all perceive the uselessness of withholding my darling.
+Meanwhile, I only ask you to let me see her name from time to time. You
+won’t deny me that?”
+
+“No, my dear, I cannot refuse you that, but you must not assume more
+than that I am sorry for you that your heart is set so hopelessly.
+Indeed, I see no sign of her caring for you. Do you?”
+
+“Her heart is not opened yet, but it will.”
+
+“Suppose it should do so to any one else?”
+
+“She is a mere child; she has few opportunities; and if she had--well, I
+think it would recall to her what she only half understood. I am content
+to be patient--and, mother, you little know the good it does me to think
+of her and think of you. It is well for us men that all women are not
+like Janet.”
+
+“Yet if you took away our faith, what would there be to hinder us from
+being like my poor Janet?”
+
+“Heaven forbid that I should take away any one’s honest faith; above
+all, yours or Essie’s.”
+
+“Except by showing that you think it just good enough for us.”
+
+“How can I help it, any more than I can help that Belforest was left to
+Elvira? Wishes and belief are two different things.”
+
+“Would you help it if you could?” she earnestly asked.
+
+He hesitated. “I might wish to satisfy you, mother, and other good
+folks, but not to put myself in bondage to what has led blindfold to
+half the dastardly and cruel acts on this earth, beautiful dream though
+it be.”
+
+“Ah, my boy, it is my shame and grief that it is not a beautiful reality
+to you.”
+
+“You were too wise to bore us. You have only fancied that since you fell
+in with the Evelyns.”
+
+“Ah, if I had only bred you up in the same spirit as the Evelyns!”
+
+“It would not have answered. We are of different stuff. And after all,
+Janet and I are your only black sheep. Jock has his convictions in a
+strong, practical working order, as real to him as ever his drill and
+order-book were. Good old fellow, he strikes me a good deal more than
+all Ogilvie’s discussions.”
+
+“Mr. Ogilvie has talked to you?”
+
+“He has done his part both as cleric and your devoted servant, mother,
+and, I confess, made the best of his case, as an able man heartily
+convinced can do. Good night, mother.”
+
+“One moment, Bobus, my dear; I want one promise from you, to your
+old Mother Carey. Call it a superstition and a charm if you will, but
+promise. Take this Greek Testament, keep it with you, and read a few
+verses every night. Promise me.”
+
+“Dear mother, I am ready to promise. I have read those poems and letters
+several times in the original.”
+
+“But you will do this for me, beginning again when you have finished?
+Promise.”
+
+“I will, mother, since it comforts you,” said Bobus, in a tone that she
+knew might be trusted.
+
+The other little book, with the like request, in urgent and tender
+entreaty, was made up into a parcel to be forwarded as soon as Mr.
+Wakefield should learn Janet Hermann’s address. It was all that the
+mother could do, except to pray that this living Sword of the Spirit
+might yet pierce its way to those closed hearts.
+
+Nor was she quite happy about Barbara. Hitherto the girl had seemed, as
+it were, one with Armine, and had been led by his precocious piety
+into similar habits and aspirations, which had been fostered by her
+intercourse with Sydney and the sharing with her of many a blissful and
+romantic dream.
+
+All this, however, was altered. Petronella had drawn Armine aside one
+way, and now that he was come back again, he did not find the same
+perfectly sympathetic sister as before. Bobus had not been without
+effect upon her, as the impersonation of common sense and antagonism to
+Miss Parsons. It had not shown at the time, for his domineering tone and
+his sneers always impelled her to stand up for her darling; but when
+he was “poor Bobus” gone into exile and bereft of his love, certain
+poisonous germs attached to his words began to grow. There was no
+absolute doubt--far from it--but there was an impatience of the
+weariness and solemnity of religion.
+
+To enjoy Church privileges to the full, and do good works under Church
+direction, had in their wandering life been a dream of modern chivalry
+which she had shared with Sydney, much as they had talked of going on a
+crusade. And now she found these privileges very tedious, the good works
+onerous, and she viewed them somewhat as she might have regarded Coeur
+de Lion’s camp had she been set down in it. Armine would have gone on
+hearing nothing but “Remember the Holy Sepulchre,” but Barbara would
+soon have seen every folly and failure that spoiled the glory of the
+army--even though she might not question its destination--and would have
+been unfeignedly weary of its discipline.
+
+So she hung back from the frequent Church ordinances of St. Cradocke’s,
+being allowed to do as she pleased about everything extra; she made
+fun of the peculiarities of the varieties of the genus Petronella who
+naturally hung about it, and adopted the popular tone about the curates,
+till Jock told her “not to be so commonplace.” Indeed both he and Armine
+had made friends with them, as he did with every one; and Armine’s
+enjoyment of the society of a new, young, bright deacon, who came at
+Christmas, perhaps accounted for a little of her soreness, and made
+Armine himself less observant that the two were growing apart.
+
+Her mother saw it though, and being seconded by Jock, found it easier
+than of old to keep the tables free from sceptical and semi-sceptical
+literature; but this involved the loss of much that was clever, and
+there was no avoiding those envenomed shafts that people love to
+strew about, and which, for their seeming wit and sense, Babie always
+relished. She did not think--that was the chief charge; and she was
+still a joyous creature, even though chafing at the dulness of St.
+Cradocke’s.
+
+“Gould and another versus Brownlow and another, to be heard on the
+18th,” Mr. Wakefield writes. “So we must leave our peaceful harbour to
+face the world again!”
+
+“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Barbara. “I am fairly tingling to be in the
+thick of it again!”
+
+“You ungrateful infant,” said Armine, “when this place has done every
+one so much good!”
+
+“So does bed; but I feel as if it were six in the morning and I couldn’t
+get the shutters open!”
+
+“I wonder if Mr. Ogilvie will think me fit to go in for matriculation
+for the next term?” said Armine.
+
+“And I ought to go up for lectures,” said Jock, who had been reading
+hard all this time under directions from Dr. Medlicott. “I might go on
+before, and see that the house is put in order before you come home,
+mother.”
+
+“Home! It sounds more like going home than ever going back to Belforest
+did!”
+
+“And we’ll make it the very moral of the old times. We’ve got all the
+old things!”
+
+“What do you know about the old times--baby that you are and were?” said
+Jock.
+
+“The Drakes move to-morrow,” said his mother. “I must write to your aunt
+and Richards about sending the things from Belforest. We must have it at
+its best before Ali comes home.”
+
+“All right!” said Babie. “You know our own things have only to go back
+into their places, and the Drake carpets go on. It will be such fun; as
+nice as the getting into the Folly!”
+
+“Nice you call that?” said her mother. “All I remember is the disgrace
+we got into and the fright I was in! I wonder what the old home will
+bring us?”
+
+“Life and spirit and action,” cried Babie. “Oh, I’m wearying for the
+sound of the wheels and the flow of people!”
+
+“Oh, you little Cockney!”
+
+“Of course. I was born one, and I am thankful for it! There’s nothing to
+do here.”
+
+“Babie!” cried Armine, indignantly.
+
+“Well, you and Jock have read a great deal, and he has plunged into
+night-schools.”
+
+“And become a popular lecturer,” added Armine.
+
+“And you and mother have cultivated Percy Stagg, and gone to Church a
+great deal--pour passer le temps.”
+
+“Ah, you discontented mortal!” said her mother, rising to write her
+letters. “You have yet to learn that what is stagnation to some is rest
+to others.”
+
+“Oh yes, mother, I know it was very good for you, but I’m heartily glad
+it is over. Sea and Ogre are all very well for once in a way, but they
+pall, especially in an east wind English fog!”
+
+“My Babie, I hope you are not spoilt by all the excitements of our last
+few years,” said the mother. “You won’t find life in Collingwood Street
+much like life in Hyde Corner.”
+
+“No, but it will be _life_, and that’s what I care for!”
+
+No, Barbara, used to constant change, and eager for her schemes of
+helpfulness, could not be expected to enjoy the peacefulness of St.
+Cradocke’s as the others had done. To Armine, indeed, it had been the
+beginning of a new life of hope and vigour, and a casting off of the
+slough of morbid self-contemplation, induced by his invalid life, and
+fostered at Woodside. He had left off the romance of being early doomed,
+since his health had stood the trial of the English winter, and
+under Mr. Ogilvie’s bracing management, seconded by Jock’s energetic
+companionship, he had learnt to look to active service, and be ready to
+strive for it.
+
+To Jock, the time had been a rest from the victory which had cost him
+so dear, and though the wounds still smarted, there had been nothing
+to call them into action; and he had fortified himself against the
+inevitable reminders he should meet with in London. He had been studying
+with all his might for the preliminary examination, and eagerness in so
+congenial a pursuit was rapidly growing on him, while conversations with
+Mr. Ogilvie had been equally pleasant to both, for the ex-schoolmaster
+thoroughly enjoyed hearing of the scientific world, and the young
+man was heartily glad of the higher light he was able to shed on his
+studies, and for being shown how to prevent the spiritual world from
+being obscured by the physical, and to deal with the difficulties that
+his brother’s materialism had raised for him. He had never lost, and
+trusted never to lose, hold of his anchor in the Rock; but he had not
+always known how to answer when called on to prove its existence
+and trace the cable. Thus the winter at St. Cradocke’s had been very
+valuable to him personally, and he had been willing to make return for
+the kindness for which he felt so grateful, by letting the Vicar employ
+him in the night-schools, lectures, and parish diversions--all in short
+for which a genial and sensible young layman is invaluable, when he can
+be caught.
+
+And for their mother herself, she had been sheltered from agitation,
+and had gathered strength and calmness, though with her habitual want
+of self-consciousness she hardly knew it, and what she thanked her old
+friend for was what he had done for her sons, especially Armine. “He and
+I shall be grateful to you all the rest of our lives,” she said, with
+her bright eyes glistening.
+
+David Ogilvie, in his deep, silent, life-long romance, felt that
+precious guerdons sometimes are won at an age which the young suppose
+to be past all feeling--guerdons the more precious and pure because
+unconnected with personal hopes or schemes. He still knew Caroline to be
+as entirely Joseph Brownlow’s own as when he had first perceived it,
+ten years ago, but all that was regretful jealousy was gone. His
+idealisation of her had raised and moulded his life, and now that
+she had grown into the reality of that ideal, he was content with the
+sunshine she had brought, and the joy of having done her a real service,
+little as she guessed at the devoted homage that prompted it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. -- BLIGHTED BEINGS.
+
+
+
+     Allen-a-Dale has no faggot for burning,
+     Allen-a-Dale has no farrow for turning,
+     Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning,
+     Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning.
+                                                   Scott.
+
+
+The little family raft put forth from the haven of shelter into the
+stormy waves. The first experience was, as Jock said, that large rooms
+and country clearness had been demoralising, or, as Babie averred, the
+bad taste and griminess of the Drake remains were invincible, for when
+the old furniture and pictures were all restored to the old places, the
+tout ensemble was so terribly dingy and confined that the mother
+could hardly believe that it was the same place that had risen in her
+schoolgirl eyes as a vision of home brightness. Armine was magnanimously
+silent, but what would be the effect on Allen, who had been heard of at
+Gibraltar, and was sure to return before the case was heard in court?
+
+“We must give up old associations, and try what a revolution will do,”
+ Mother Carey said.
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Babie; “I was feeling totally overpowered by that awful
+round table, but I thought it was the very core of mother’s heart.”
+
+“So did I,” said the mother herself, “when I remember how we used to
+sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we
+wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won’t bring back those who
+sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and
+our goods get into each other’s way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it
+in the back drawing-room and bring in your whole generation of little
+tables.”
+
+There was opportunity for choice, for the house was somewhat overfull of
+furniture, since besides the original plenishing of the Pagoda, all that
+was individual property had been sent from Belforest, and this included
+a great many choice and curious articles, small and great, all indeed
+that any one cared much about, except the more intrinsically valuable
+gems of art. It had been all done between Messrs. Wakefield, Gould,
+and Richards, who had sent up far more than Mrs. Brownlow had marked,
+assuring her that she need not scruple to keep it.
+
+So by the time twilight came on the second evening, when the whole
+family were feeling exceedingly bruised, weary, and dusty, such a
+transformation had been effected that each of the four, on returning
+from the much needed toilet, stood at the door exclaiming--“This is
+something like;” and when John arrived, a little later, he looked round
+with--
+
+“This is almost as nice as the Folly. How does Mother Carey manage to
+make things like herself and nobody else?”
+
+Allen’s comment a few days later was--“What’s the use of taking so much
+trouble about a dingy hole which you can’t make tolerable even if you
+were to stay here.”
+
+“I mean it to be my home till my M.D. son takes a wife and turns me
+out.”
+
+“Why, mother, you don’t suppose that ridiculous will can hold water?”
+
+“You know I don’t contest it.”
+
+“I know, but they will not look at it for a moment in the Probate
+Court.”
+
+Some chance friend whom he had met abroad had suggested this to Allen,
+and he had gradually let his wish become hope, and his hope expectation,
+till he had come home almost secure of a triumph, which would reinstate
+his mother, and bring Elvira back to him, having learnt the difference
+between true friends and false.
+
+It was a proportionate blow when no difficulty was made about proving
+the will. As the trustees acted, Mrs. Brownlow had not to appear, but
+Allen haunted the Law Courts with his uncle and saw the will accepted
+as legal. Nothing remained but another amicable action to put Elvira de
+Menella in possession.
+
+He was in a state of nervous excitement at every postman’s knock, making
+sure, poor fellow, that Elvira’s first use of her victory would be
+to return to him. But all that was heard of was a grand reception
+at Belforest, bands, banners, horsemen, triumphal arches, banquet,
+speeches, toasts, and ball, all, no doubt, in “Gould taste.”
+ The penny-a-liner of the Kenminster paper outdid himself in the
+polysyllables of his description, while Colonel Brownlow briefly wrote
+that “all was as insolent as might be expected, and he was happy to say
+that most of the county people and some of the tenants showed their good
+feeling by their absence.”
+
+Over this Mrs. Brownlow would not rejoice. She did not like the poor
+girl to be left to such society as her aunt would pick up, and she wrote
+on her behalf to various county neighbours; but the heiress had already
+come to the house in Hyde Corner, chaperoned by her aunt, who, fortified
+by the trust that she was “as good as Mrs. Joseph Brownlow,” had come to
+fight the battle of fashion, with Lady Flora Folliott for an ally.
+
+The name of George Gould, Esquire, was used on occasion, but he was
+usually left in peace at his farm with his daughter Mary, with whom
+her step-mother had decided that nothing could be done. Kate was made
+presentable by dress and lessons in deportment, and promoted to be white
+slave, at least so Armine and Barbara inferred, from her constrained and
+frightened manner when they met her in a shop, though she was evidently
+trying to believe herself very happy.
+
+Allen was convinced at last that he was designedly given up, and so far
+from trying to meet his faithless lady, dejectedly refused all society
+where he could fall in with her, and only wandered about the parks to
+feed his melancholy with distant glimpses of her on horseback, while
+Armine and Barbara, who held Elvira very cheap, were wicked enough to
+laugh at him between themselves and term him the forsaken merman.
+
+Jock had likewise given up his old connections with fashionable life.
+Several times, if anything were going on, or if he met a former brother
+officer in the street, he would be warmly invited to come and take his
+share, or to dine with the mess; he might have played in cricket matches
+and would have been welcome as a frequent guest; but he had made up his
+mind that this would only lead to waste of time and money, and steadily
+declined, till the invitations ceased. It would have cost him more had
+any come from Cecil Evelyn, but all that had been seen of him was a
+couple of visiting-cards. The rest of the family had not come to town
+for the season, and though the two mothers corresponded as warmly as
+ever, and Fordham and Armine exchanged letters, there was a sort of
+check and chill upon the friendship between the two young girls, of
+which each understood only her own half.
+
+Jock said nothing, but he seemed to have grown mother-sick, spent all
+his leisure moments in haunting his mother’s steps, helping her in
+whatever she was about, and telling her everything about his studies and
+companions, as if she were the great solace of the life that had become
+so much less bright to him.
+
+In general he showed himself as droll as ever, but there were days when,
+as John said, “all the skip was gone out of the Jack.” The good Monk
+was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his
+cousin, having--though the son of a military man--a contempt for the
+pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled to see Jock affectionately
+hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his
+mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt
+wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise. Jock, however,
+decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready
+for a call to arms for his country. He did not like to think that she
+was reading a report of Sir Philip Cameron’s campaign, in which the
+aide-de-camp happened to receive honourable mention for a dashing and
+hazardous ride.
+
+“Why, old fellow, what makes you so down in the mouth?” said John, on
+that very day as the two cousins were walking home from a lecture. They
+had had to get into a door-way to avoid the rush of rabble escorting a
+regiment of household troops on their way to the station, and Lucas had
+afterwards walked the length of two streets without a word. “You don’t
+mean that you are hankering after all this style of thing--row and all
+the rest of it.”
+
+“There’s a good deal more going to it than row,” said Jock, rather
+heavily.
+
+“What, that donkey, Evelyn, having cut you? I should not trouble myself
+much on that score, though I did think better of him at Eton.”
+
+“He hasn’t cut me,” Jock made sharp return.
+
+“One pasteboard among all the family,” grunted the Friar. “I reserve to
+myself the satisfaction of cutting him dead the next opportunity,” he
+added magniloquently.
+
+Jock laughed, as he was of course intended to do, but there was such a
+painful ring in the laugh that John paused and said--
+
+“That’s not all, old fellow! Come, make a clean breast of it, my fair
+son. Thou dost weary of thy vocation.”
+
+“No such thing,” exclaimed Jock, with an inaudible growl between his
+teeth. “Trust Kencroft for boring on!” and aloud, with some impatience,
+“It is just what I would have chosen for its own sake.”
+
+“Then,” said John, still keeping up the grand philosophical air and
+demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, “thou
+art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the
+wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of
+the fickle sex.”
+
+“Shut up!” said Jock, pushed beyond endurance; “can’t you understand
+that some things can’t be talked of?”
+
+“Whew!” John whistled, and surveyed him rather curiously from head to
+foot. “It is another case of deluded souls not knowing what an escape
+they’ve had. What! she thought you a catch in the old days.”
+
+“That’s all you know about it!” said Jock. “She is not that sort. The
+poverty is nothing, but there’s a fitness in things. Women, the best of
+them, think much of what I suppose you call the row. It fits in with all
+their chivalry and romance.”
+
+“Then she’s a fool,” said John, shortly.
+
+“I can’t stand any more of this, Monk, I tell you. You know just nothing
+at all about it, and I’ve no right to complain, nor any one to bait me
+with questions.”
+
+The Monk took the hint, and when they reached their own street Jock
+said--
+
+“You meant it all kindly, Reverend Friar, but there are things that
+won’t stand probing, as you’ll know some day.”
+
+“Poor old chap,” said John, with his hand on his shoulder, “I’ll not
+bother you any more. The veil shall be sacred. If this has been going on
+all the time, I wonder you have carried it off so well!”
+
+“Ali is a caution,” said Jock, who had shaken himself into his ordinary
+manner. “What would become of Babie with two blighted beings on her
+hands? Besides, he has some excuse, and I have not.”
+
+After this at every carriage to which Lucas bowed, John frowned, and
+scanned the inmates in search of the fair deceiver, never making a guess
+in the right direction.
+
+John had enough of the Kencroft character not to be original. Set him
+to work, and he had plenty of intelligence and energy, perhaps more
+absolute force and power than his cousin Lucas; but he would never
+devise things for himself, and was not discursive, pausing at novelties,
+because his nature was so thorough that he could not take up anything
+without spending his very utmost force upon it.
+
+His University training made him an excellent aid to Armine, who went up
+for his examination at King’s College and acquitted himself so well as
+to be admitted to begin his terms after the long vacation.
+
+Indeed he and Barbara had drawn together again more. She had her home
+tasks and her classes at King’s College, and did not fret as at St.
+Cradocke’s for want of work; she enjoyed the full tide of life, and had
+plenty of sympathy for whatever did not come before her in a “goody”
+ aspect, and, though there might be little depth of serious reflection in
+her, she was a very charming member of the household. Then her enjoyment
+of society was gratified, for society of her own kind had by no means
+forgotten one so agreeable as Mrs. Brownlow, and whereas, in her
+prosperity, she had never dropped old friends, they welcomed her back as
+one of themselves, resuming the homely inexpensive gatherings where
+the brains were more consulted than the palate, aesthetics more than
+fashion. She was glad of it for the young people’s sake as well as her
+own, and returned to her old habit of keeping open house one evening
+in the week between eight and ten, with cups of coffee and varieties of
+cheap foreign drinks, and slight but dainty cakes made by herself and
+Babie according to lessons taken together at the school of cookery.
+
+As Allen declared these evenings a grievance, and often thought himself
+unable to bear family chatter, she had made the old consulting room as
+like his luxurious apartment at home as furniture and fittings could
+do, and he was always free to retire thither. Indeed the toleration and
+tenderness with which his mother treated him were a continual wonder
+and annoyance to Barbara, the active little busy bee, who not unjustly
+considered him the drone of the family, and longed to sting him, not to
+death but to exertion.
+
+It was provoking that when all the other youths had long finished
+breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the
+dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee,
+till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit
+patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how little
+he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen, when she
+shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no sooner,
+and when he did so, told his mother that he could not have children
+screaming at his door at all hours of the morning. Mother Carey replied
+to her impatient champion that while waiting for Allen was her time for
+writing letters and reading amusing books, and that the day was only too
+long for him already, poor fellow, without urging him to make it longer.
+
+“More shame for him,” muttered pitiless sixteen.
+
+After breakfast Allen generally strolled out to see the papers or to
+bestow his time somewhere--in the picture galleries or in the British
+Museum, where he had a reading order; but it was always uncertain
+whether he would disappear for the whole day, shut himself up in his own
+room, or hang about the drawing-room, very much injured if his mother
+could not devote herself to him. Indeed she always did so, except
+when she was bound to take Barbara to some of her classes (including
+cookery), or when she had promised herself to Dr. and Mrs. Lucas, who
+were now both very infirm, and knew not how to be thankful enough for
+the return of one who became like a daughter to them; while Jock, their
+godson, at once made himself like the best of grandsons, and never
+failed to give them a brightening, cheering hour every Sunday.
+
+The science of cookery was by no means a needless task, for the cook was
+very plain, and Allen’s appetite was dainty, and comfort at dinner
+could only be hoped for by much thought and contrivance. Allen was never
+discourteous to his mother herself, but he would look at her in piteous
+reproach, and affect to charge all failures on the cook, or on “children
+being allowed to meddle,” the most cutting thing to Babie he could say.
+Then the two Johns always took up the cudgels, and praised the food with
+all their might. Indeed the Friar was often sensible of a strong desire
+to flog the dawdling melancholy out of his cousin, and force him no
+longer to hang a dead weight on his mother; and even Jock began to be
+annoyed at her unfailing patience and pity, though he understood her
+compassion better than did those who had never felt a wound.
+
+She did in truth blame herself for having given him no profession,
+and having acquiesced in the indolent dilettante habits which made all
+harder to him now; and she was not certain how far it was only his
+fancy that his health and nerves were perilously affected, though
+Dr. Medlicott, whom she secretly consulted, assured her that the only
+remedies needed were good sense and something to do.
+
+At last, at Midsummer, the crisis came in a heavy discharge of
+bills, the consequence of Allen’s incredulity as to their poverty and
+incapability of economising. He said “the rascals could wait,” and “his
+mother need not trouble herself.” She said they must be paid, and she
+found it could be done at the cost of giving up spending August at
+St. Cradocke’s, as well as of breaking into her small reserve for
+emergencies.
+
+But she told Allen that she insisted on his making some exertion for his
+own maintenance.
+
+“Yes,” said Allen in languid assent.
+
+“I know it is harder at your age to find occupation.”
+
+“That is not the point. I can easily find something to do. There’s
+literature. Or I could take up art. And last year there was a Hungarian
+Count who would have given anything to get me for a tutor.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you go?”
+
+“Mother, you ask me why!”
+
+“I know you had not made up your mind to the worst, but it is a pity you
+missed the opportunity.”
+
+“There will be more,” said Allen loftily. “I never meant to be a burden,
+but ladies are so impatient, I suppose you do not wish to turn me out
+instantly to seek my fortune. No, mother, I do not mean to blame you.
+You have been sadly harassed, and no woman can ever enter into what I
+have suffered. Put aside those bills. Long before Christmas, I shall be
+able to discharge them myself.”
+
+So Allen wrote to Bobus’s friend at Oxford, but he of course did
+not keep a pocketful of Hungarian Counts. He answered one or two
+advertisements for a travelling tutor, and had one personal interview,
+the result of which was that he could have nothing to do with such
+insufferable snobs. He also concocted an advertisement beginning with
+“M.A., Oxford, accustomed to the best society and familiar with European
+languages,” but though the newspapers charged highly for it, he only
+received one answer, except those from agents, and that, he said with
+illimitable disgust, was from a Yankee.
+
+Meantime he turned over his poems, and made Barbara copy out a ballad
+he had written for the “Traveller’s Joy” on some local tradition in
+the Tyrol. He offered this to a magazine, whose editor, a lady, was an
+occasional frequenter of Mrs. Brownlow’s evenings. The next time she
+came, she showed herself so much interested in the legend that Allen
+said he should like to show her another story, which he had written for
+the same domestic periodical.
+
+“Would it serve for our Christmas number?”
+
+“I will have it copied out and send it for you to look at,” said Allen.
+
+“If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it
+be worth while to copy it. I shall set forth on my holiday journey the
+day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my
+Christmas number.”
+
+So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the “Joy,” and in a
+couple of days returned it with a hasty note--
+
+“A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make
+it taking, and not overdone. Please let me have it, with a few verbal
+corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of
+September. It will bring you in about £15.”
+
+Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the
+periodicals more widely circulated. It was plain that literature was his
+vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial,
+the instalments paying his expenses for the trial. The only doubt was
+what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a
+historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery
+would be available. Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the
+latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the
+“Traveller’s Joy,” and wanted to see his germ developed.
+
+To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly
+impossible in Allen’s eyes, and he must recruit himself by a
+yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half
+compassionately. Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and
+observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no
+other way, and he doubted Allen’s liking it, but that was his affair.
+Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a
+big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant
+to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the
+modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was
+to make a brief stay in his friend’s paternal Cumberland farm. He had
+succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his
+father’s former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of
+his commission, still made him the rich man of the family. John was of
+course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm
+invitation from their friends at Fordham.
+
+“I should like Armie to go,” said the mother in conference with Babie,
+her cabinet councillor.
+
+“O yes, Armie must go,” said Babie, “but--”
+
+“Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?”
+
+“I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much.”
+
+“Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you
+would not wish to go without me.”
+
+“O no, no, NO, NO, mother,” and her face and neck burnt with blushes.
+
+“Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some
+surprises ready for the others.”
+
+“Hurrah! We’ll do the painting of the doors. What fun it will be to see
+London empty.”
+
+The male population were horribly scandalised at the decision. Jock and
+Armine wanted to give up their journey, and John implored his aunt to
+come to Kencroft; but she only promised to send Babie there if she saw
+signs of flagging, and the Infanta laughed at the notion, and said she
+had had an overdose of country enough to last her for years. Allen said
+ladies overdid everything, and that Mother Carey could not help being
+one of the sex, and then he asked her for £10, and said Babie would have
+plenty of time to copy out “The Single Eye.” She pouted “I thought you
+were going to put the finishing touches.”
+
+“I’ve marked them for you. Why, Barbara, I am surprised,” he added in
+an elder brotherly tone; “you ought to be thankful to be able to be
+useful.”
+
+“Useful! I’ve lots of things to do! And you?”
+
+“As if I could lug that great MS. of yours about with me on board
+Apthorpe’s yacht.”
+
+“Never mind, Allen,” said his mother, who had not been intended to hear
+all this. “I will do it for you; but Miss Editor must not laugh at my
+peaked governessy hand.”
+
+“I did not mean that, mother, only Babie ought not to be disobliging.”
+
+“Babie has a good deal to do. She has an essay to write for her
+professor, you know, and her hands are pretty full.”
+
+Babie too said, “Mother, I never meant you to undertake it. Please let
+me have it now. Only Allen will never do anything for himself that he
+can get any one else to do.”
+
+“He could not well do it on board the yacht, my dear. And I don’t want
+you to have so much writing on your hands.’
+
+“And so you punish me,” sighed Barbara, more annoyed than penitent.
+
+However, nothing could be more snug and merry than the mother and
+daughter when left together, for they were like two sisters and suited
+one another perfectly. Babie was disappointed that London would not look
+emptier even in the fashionable squares, which she insisted on exploring
+in search of solitude. They made little gay outings in a joyous spirit
+of adventure, getting up early and going by train to some little
+station, with an adjacent expanse of wood or heather, whence they came
+home with their luncheon basket full of flowers, wherewith to gladden
+Mrs. Lucas’s eyes, and those of Mother Carey’s district. They prepared
+their surprises too. Several hopelessly dingy panels were painted black
+and adorned with stately lilies and irises, with proud reed-maces, and
+twining honeysuckle, and bryony, fluttered over by dragon-flies and
+butterflies, from the brush of mother and daughter. The stores from
+Belforest further supplied hangings for brackets, and coverings for
+cushions, under the dainty fingers of the Infanta, who had far more of
+the household fairy about her than had her mother, perhaps from having
+grown up in a home instead of a school, and besides, from being bent on
+having the old house a delightsome place.
+
+Indeed her mother was really happier than for many years, for the sense
+of failing in her husband’s charge had left her since she had seen Jock
+by his own free will on the road to the quest, and likely also to fulfil
+the moral, as well as the scientific, conditions attached to it. She did
+feel as if her dream was being realised and the golden statues becoming
+warmed into life, and though her heart ached for Janet, she still hoped
+for her. So, with a mother’s unfailing faith, she believed in Allen’s
+dawning future even while another sense within her marvelled, as she
+copied, at the acceptance of “The Single Eye.” But then, was it not
+well-known that loving eyes see the most faults, and was not an editor
+the best judge of popularity?
+
+She had her scheme too. She had taken lessons some years ago at Rome in
+her old art of modelling, and knew her eye and taste had improved in
+the galleries. She had once or twice amused the household by figures
+executed by her dexterous fingers in pastry or in butter; and in the
+empty house, in her old studio, amid remnants of Bobus’s museum, she set
+to work on a design that had long been in her mind asking her to bring
+it into being.
+
+Thus the tete-a-tete was so successful that people’s pity was highly
+diverting, and the vacation was almost too brief, though when the young
+men began to return, it was a wonder how existence could have been so
+agreeable without them.
+
+Jock was first, having come home ten days sooner than his friends were
+willing to part with him, determined if he found his ladies looking pale
+to drag them out of town, if only to Ramsgate.
+
+They met him in a glow of animation, and Babie hardly gave him time to
+lay down his basket of ferns from the dale, and flowers from the garden,
+before she threw open the folding doors to the back drawing-room.
+
+“Why, mother, who sent you that group? Why do you laugh? Did Grinstead
+lend it to Babie to copy? Young Astyanax, isn’t it? And, I say!
+Andromache is just like Jessie. I say! Mother Carey didn’t do it. Well!
+She is an astonishing little mother and no mistake. The moulding of it!
+Our anatomical professor might lecture on Hector’s arm.”
+
+“Ah! I, haven’t been a surgeon’s wife for nothing. Your father put me
+through a course of arms and legs.”
+
+“And we borrowed a baby,” said Babie. “Mrs. Jones, our old groom’s wife,
+who lives in the Mews, was only too happy to bring it, and when it was
+shy, it clung beautifully.”
+
+“Then the helmet.”
+
+“That was out of the British Museum.”
+
+“Has Grinstead seen it?”
+
+“No, I kept it for my own public first.”
+
+“What will you do with it? Put it into the Royal Academy?”
+
+“No, it is not big enough. I thought of offering it to the Works that
+used to take my things in the old Folly days. They might do it in terra
+cotta, or Parian.”
+
+“Too good for a toy material like that,” said Jock. “Get some good
+opinion before you part with it, mother. I wish we could keep it. I’m
+proud of my Mother Carey.”
+
+Allen, who came home next, only sighed at the cruel necessity of
+selling such a work. He was in deplorable spirits, for Gilbert Gould was
+superintending the refitting of a beautiful steam yacht, in which Miss
+Menella meant to sail to the West Indies, with her uncle and aunt.
+
+“I knew she would! I knew she would,” softly said Babie.
+
+That did not console Allen, and his silence and cynicism about his hosts
+gave the impression that he had outstayed his welcome, since he had
+neither wealth, nor the social brilliance or subservience that might
+have supplied its place. He had scarcely energy to thank his mother for
+her faultless transcription of “The Single Eye,” and only just exerted
+himself to direct the neat roll of MS. to the Editor.
+
+The next day a note came for him.
+
+“Mother what _have_ you done?” he exclaimed. “What _did_ you send to the
+‘Weathercock’?”
+
+“‘The Single Eye.’ What? Not rejected?”
+
+“See there!”
+
+
+“DEAR MR. BROWNLOW,--I am afraid there has been some mistake. The story
+I wished for is not this one, but another in the same MS. Magazine;
+a charming little history of a boy’s capture by, and escape from, the
+Moorish corsairs. Can you let me have it by Tuesday? I am very sorry
+to have given so much trouble, but ‘The Single Eye’ will not suit my
+purpose at all.”
+
+
+“What does she mean?” demanded Allen.
+
+“I see! It is a story of the children’s! ‘Marco’s Felucca.’ I looked
+at it while I was copying, and thought how pretty it was. And now I
+remember there were some pencil-marks!”
+
+“Well, it will please the children,” graciously said Allen. “I am not
+sorry; I did not wish to make my debut in a second-rate serial like
+that, and now I am quit of it. She is quite right. It is not her style
+of thing.”
+
+But Allen did not remember that he had spent the £15 beforehand, so as
+to make it £25, and this made it fortunate that his mother’s group had
+been purchased by the porcelain works, and another pair ordered.
+
+Thus she could freely leave their gains to Armine and Babie, for the
+latter declared the sum was alike due to both, since if she had the
+readiest wit, her brother had the most discrimination, and the best
+choice of language. The story was only signed A. B., and their mother
+made a point of the authorship being kept a secret; but little notices
+of the story in the papers highly gratified the young authors.
+
+Armine, who had returned from a round of visits to St. Cradocke’s,
+Fordham, Kenminster, and Woodside, confirmed the report of Elvira’s
+intended voyage; but till the yacht was ready, the party had gone
+abroad, leaving the management of the farm, and agency of the estate,
+to a very worthy man named Whiteside, who had long been a suitor to Mary
+Gould, and whom she was at last allowed to marry. He had at once made
+the Kencroft party free of the park and gardens, and indeed John and
+Armine came laden with gifts in poultry, fruit, and flowers from the
+dependants on the estate to Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+Armine really looked quite healthy, nothing remaining of his former
+ethereal air, but a certain expansiveness of brow and dreaminess of eye.
+
+He greatly scrupled at halving the £15 when it was paid, but Barbara
+insisted that he must take his share, and he then said--
+
+“After all it does not signify, for we can do things together with it,
+as we have always done.”
+
+“What things?”
+
+“Well, I am afraid I do want a few books.”
+
+“So do I, terribly.”
+
+“And there are some Christmas gifts I want to send to Woodside.”
+
+“Woodside! oh!”
+
+“And wouldn’t it be pleasant to put the choir at the iron Church into
+surplices and cassocks for Christmas?”
+
+“Oh, Armie, I do think we might have a little fun out of our own money.”
+
+“What fun do you mean?” said Armine.
+
+“I want to subscribe to Rolandi’s, and to take in the ‘Contemporary,’
+and to have one real good Christmas party with tableaux vivants, and
+charades. Mother says we can’t make it a mere surprise party, for people
+must have real food, and I think it would be more pleasure to all of us
+than presents and knicknacks.”
+
+“Of course you can do it,” said Armine, rather disappointed. “And if we
+had in Percy Stagg, and the pupil teachers, and the mission people--”
+
+“It would be awfully edifying and good-booky! Oh yes, to be sure, nearly
+as good as hiding your little sooty shoe-blacks in surplices! But, my
+dear Armie, I am so tired of edifying! Why should I never have any fun?
+Come, don’t look so dismal. I’ll spare five shillings for a gown for old
+Betty Grey, and if there’s anything left out after the party, you shall
+have it for the surplices, and you’ll be Roland Graeme in my tableau?”
+
+The next day Mother Carey found Armine with an elbow on each side of his
+book and his hands in his hair, looking so dreamily mournful that
+she apprehended a fresh attack of Petronella, but made her approaches
+warily.
+
+“What have you there?” she asked.
+
+“Dean Church’s lectures,” he said.
+
+“Ah! I want to make time to read them! But why have they sent you into
+doleful dumps?”
+
+“Not they,” said Armine; “but I wanted to read Babie a passage just now,
+and she said she had no notion of making Sundays of week days, and ran
+away. It is not only that, mother, but what is the matter with Babie?
+She is quite different.”
+
+“Have you only just seen it?”
+
+“No, I have felt something indefinable between us, though I never could
+bear to speak of it, ever since Bobus went. Do you think he did her any
+harm?”
+
+“A little, but not much. Shall I tell you the truth, Armine; can you
+bear it?”
+
+“What! did I disgust her when I was so selfish and discontented?”
+
+“Not so much you, my boy, as the overdoing at Woodside! I can venture to
+speak of it now, for I fancy you have got over the trance.”
+
+“Well, mother,” said Armine, smiling back to her in spite of himself, “I
+have not liked to say so, it seemed a shame; but staying at the Vicarage
+made me wonder at my being such an egregious ass last year! Do you know,
+I couldn’t help it; but that good lady would seem to me quite mawkish in
+her flattery! And how she does domineer over that poor brother of hers!
+Then the fuss she makes about details, never seeming to know which
+are accessories and which are principles. I don’t wonder that I was an
+absurdity in the eyes of all beholders. But it is very sad if it has
+really alienated my dear Infanta from all deeper and higher things!”
+
+“Not so bad as that, my dear; my Babie is a good little girl.”
+
+“Oh yes, mother, I did not mean--”
+
+“But it did break that unity between you, and prevent your leading her
+insensibly. I fancy your two characters would have grown apart anyhow,
+but this was the moving cause. Now I fancy, so far as I can see, that
+she is more afraid of being wearied and restrained than of anything
+else. It is just what I felt for many years of my life.”
+
+“No, mother?”
+
+“Yes, my boy; till the time of your illness, serious thought, religion
+and all the rest, seemed to me a tedious tax; and though I always, I
+believe, made it a rule to my conscience in practical matters, it has
+only very, very lately been anything like the real joy I believe it
+has always been to you. Believe that, and be patient with your little
+sister, for indeed she is an unselfish, true, faithful little being, and
+some day she will go deeper.”
+
+Armine looked up to his mother, and his eyes were full of tears, as she
+kissed him, and said--
+
+“You will do her much more good if you sympathise with her in her
+innocent pleasures than if you insist on dragging her into what she
+feels like privations.”
+
+“Very well, mother,” he said. “It is due to her.”
+
+And so, though the choir did have at least half Armine’s share of the
+price of “Marco’s Felucca,” he threw himself most heartily into the
+Christmas party, was the poet of the versified charade, acted the
+strong-minded woman who was the chief character in “Blue Bell;” and he
+and Jock gained universal applause.
+
+Allen hardly appeared at the party. He had a fresh attack of sleepless
+headache and palpitation, brought on by the departure of Miss Menella
+for the Continent, and perhaps by the failure of “A Single Eye” with
+some of the magazines. He dabbled a little with his mother’s clay,
+and produced a nymph, who, as he persuaded her and himself, was a much
+nobler performance than Andromache, but unfortunately she did not prove
+equally marketable. And he said it was quite plain that he could
+not succeed in anything imaginative till his health and spirits had
+recovered from the blow; but he was ready to do anything.
+
+So Dr. Medlicott brought in one day a medical lecture that he wanted to
+have translated from the German, and told Allen that it would be well
+paid for. He began, but it made his head ache; it was not a subject that
+he could well turn over to Babie; and when Jock brought a message to
+say the translation must be ready the next day, only a quarter had been
+attempted. Jock sat up till three o’clock in the morning and finished
+it, but he could not pain his mother by letting her know that her son
+had again failed, so Allen had the money, and really believed, as he
+said, that all Jock had done was to put the extreme end to it, and
+correct the medical lingo of which he could not be expected to know
+anything. Allen was always so gentle, courteous, and melancholy, that
+every one was getting out of the habit of expecting him to do anything
+but bring home news, discover anything worth going to see, sit at the
+foot of the table, and give his verdict on the cookery. Babie indeed was
+sometimes provoked into snapping at him, but he bore it with the amiable
+magnanimity of one who could forgive a petulant child, ignorant of what
+he suffered.
+
+Jock was borne up by a great pleasure that winter. One day at dinner,
+his mother watched his eyes dancing, and heard the old boyish ring of
+mirth in his laugh, and as she went up stairs at night, he came after
+and said--
+
+“Fancy, I met Evelyn on the ice to-day. He wants to know if he may
+call.”
+
+“What prevents him?”
+
+“Well, I believe the poor old chap is heartily ashamed of his airs.
+Indeed he as good as said so. He has been longing to make a fresh start,
+only he didn’t know how.”
+
+“I think he used you very ill, Jock; but if you wish to be on the old
+terms, I will do as you like.”
+
+“Well,” said Jock, in an odd apologetic voice, “you see the old beggar
+had got into a pig-headed sort of pet last year. He said he would cut me
+if I left the service, and so he felt bound to be as good as his word;
+but he seems to have felt lost without us, and to have been looking out
+for a chance of meeting. He was horribly humiliated by the Friar looking
+over his head last week.”
+
+“Very well. If he chooses to call, here we are.”
+
+“Yes, and don’t put on your cold shell, mother mine. After all, Evelyn
+is Evelyn. There are wiser fellows, but I shall never warm to any one
+again like him. Why, he was the first fellow who came into my room at
+Eton! I am to meet him to-morrow after the lecture. May I bring him
+home?”
+
+“If he likes. His mother’s son must have a welcome.”
+
+She could not feel cordial, and she so much expected that the young
+gentleman might be seized with a fresh fit of exclusive disdain, that
+she would not mention the possibility, and it was an amazement to all
+save herself when Jock appeared with the familiar figure in his wake.
+Guardsman as he was, Cecil had the grace to look bashful, not to say
+shamefaced, and more so at Mrs. Brownlow’s kindly reception, than at
+Barbara’s freezing dignity. The young lady was hotly resentful on Jock’s
+behalf, and showed it by a stiff courtesy, elevated eyebrows, and the
+merest tips of her fingers.
+
+Allen took it easily. He had been too much occupied with his own
+troubles to have entered into all the complications with the Evelyn
+family; and though he had never greatly cared for them, and had
+viewed Cecil chiefly as an obnoxious boy, he was, in his mournful way,
+gratified by any reminder of his former surroundings. So without malice
+prepense he stung poor Cecil by observing that it was long since they
+had met; but no one could be expected to find the way to the other end
+of nowhere. Cecil blushed and stammered something about Hounslow, but
+Allen, who prided himself on being the conversational man of the world,
+carried off the talk into safe channels.
+
+As Cecil was handing Mrs. Brownlow down to the dining-room, wicked
+Barbara whispered to her cousin John--
+
+“We’ve such a nice vulgar dinner. It couldn’t have been better if I’d
+known it!”
+
+John, whose wrath had evaporated in his “cut,” shook his head at her,
+but partook of her diversion at her brother’s resignation at sight of a
+large dish of boiled beef, with a suet pudding opposite to it, Allen
+was too well bred to apologise, but he carved in the dainty and delicate
+style befitting the single slice of meat interspersed between countless
+entrees.
+
+Barbara began to relent as soon as Cecil, after making four mouthfuls
+of Allen’s help, sent his plate with a request for something more
+substantial. And before the meal was over, his evident sense of
+bien-etre and happiness had won back her kindness; she remembered
+that he was Sydney’s brother, and took no more trouble to show her
+indignation.
+
+Thenceforth, Cecil was as much as ever Jock’s friend, and a frequenter
+of the family, finding that the loss of their wealth and place in the
+great world made wonderfully little difference to them, and rather
+enhanced the pleasant freedom and life of their house. The rest of the
+family were seen once or twice, when passing through London, but only
+in calls, which, as Babie said, were as good as nothing, except, as
+she forgot to add, that they broke through the constraint on her
+correspondence with Sydney.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV. THE PHANTOM BLACKCOCK OF KILNAUGHT.
+
+
+
+     And we alike must shun regard
+     From painter, player, sportsman, bard,
+     Wasp, blue-bottle, or butterfly,
+     Insects that swim in fashion’s sky.
+                                          Scott.
+
+
+“At home? Then take these. There’s a lot more. I’ll run up,” said Cecil
+Evelyn one October evening nearly two years later, as he thrust into
+the arms of the parlour-maid a whole bouquet of game, while his servant
+extracted a hamper from his cab, and he himself dashed up stairs with a
+great basket of hot-house flowers.
+
+But in the drawing-room he stood aghast, glancing round in the firelit
+dusk to ascertain that he had not mistaken the number, for though the
+maid at the door had a well-known face, and though tables, chairs,
+and pictures were familiar, the two occupants of the room were utter
+strangers, and at least as much startled as himself.
+
+A little pale child was hurriedly put down from the lap of a tall maiden
+who rose from a low chair by the fire, and stood uncertain.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I came to see Mrs. Brownlow.”
+
+“My aunt. She will be here in a moment. Will you run and call her,
+Lina?”
+
+“You may tell her Cecil Evelyn is here,” said he; “but there is no
+hurry,” he added, seeing that the child clung to her protector, too shy
+even to move. “You are John Brownlow’s little sister, eh?” he added,
+bending towards her; but as she crept round in terror, still clinging,
+he addressed the elder one: “I am so glad; I thought I had rushed into a
+strange house, and should have to beat a retreat.”
+
+The young lady gave a little shy laugh which made her sweet oval glowing
+face and soft brown eyes light up charmingly, and there was a fresh
+graceful roundness of outline about her tall slender figure, as she
+stood holding the shy child, which made her a wondrously pleasant sight.
+“Are you staying here?” he asked.
+
+“Yes; we came for advice for my little sister, who is not strong.”
+
+“I’m so glad. I mean I hope there is only enough amiss to make you stay
+a long time. Were you ever in town before?”
+
+“Only for a few hours on our way to school.”
+
+Here a voice reached them--
+
+
+          “Fee, fa, fum,
+           I smell the breath of geranium.”
+
+
+And through the back drawing-room door came Babie, in walking attire,
+declaiming--
+
+
+          “‘Tis Cecil, by the jingling steel,
+           ‘Tis Cecil, by the pawing bay,
+           ‘Tis Cecil, by the tall two-wheel,
+           ‘Tis Cecil, by the fragrant spray.”
+
+
+“O Cecil, how lovely! Oh, the maiden-hair. You’ve been making
+acquaintance with Essie and Lina?”
+
+“I did not know you were out, Babie,” said Essie. “Was my aunt with
+you?”
+
+“Yes. We just ran over to see Mrs. Lucas, and as we were coming home, a
+poor woman besought us to buy two toasting-forks and a mousetrap, by
+way of ornament to brandish in the streets. She looked so frightfully
+wretched, that mother let her follow, and is having it out with her at
+the door. So you are from Fordham, Cecil; I see and I smell. How are
+they?”
+
+“Duke is rather brisk. I actually got him out shooting yesterday, but he
+didn’t half like it, and was thankful when I let him go home again. See,
+Sydney said I was to tell you that passion-flower came from the plant
+she brought from Algiers.”
+
+“The beauty! It must go into Mrs. Evelyn’s Venice glass,” said Babie,
+bustling about to collect her vases.
+
+Lina, with a cry of delight, clutched at a spray of butterfly-like mauve
+and white orchids, in spite of her sister’s gentle “No, no, Lina, you
+must not touch.”
+
+Babie offered some China asters in its stead, Cecil muttered “Let her
+have it;” but Esther was firm in making her relinquish it, and when
+she began to cry, led her away with pretty tender gestures of mingled
+comfort and reproof.
+
+“Poor little thing,” said Babie, “she is sadly fretful. Nobody but Essie
+can manage her.”
+
+“I should think not!” said Cecil, looking after the vision, as if he
+did not know what he was saying. “You never told me you had any one like
+_that_ in the family?”
+
+“O yes; there are two of them, as much alike as two peas.”
+
+“What! the Monk’s sisters?”
+
+“To be sure. They are a comely family; all but poor little Lina.”
+
+“Will they be long here?”
+
+“That depends. That poor little mite is the youngest but one, and the
+nurse likes boys best. So she peaked and pined, and was bullied by
+Edmund above and Harry below, and was always in trouble. Nobody but
+Johnny and Essie ever had a good word for her. This autumn it came to a
+crisis. You know we had a great meeting of the two families at Walmer,
+and there, the shock of bathing nearly took out of her all the little
+life there was. I believe she would have gone into fits if mother
+had not heard her screams, and dashed on the nurse like a vindictive
+mermaid, and then made uncle Robert believe her. My aunt trusts the
+nurse, you must know, and lets her ride rough-shod over every one in the
+nursery. The poor little thing was always whining and fretting whenever
+she was not in Essie’s arms or the Monk’s, till the Monk declared she
+had a spine, and he and mother gave uncle and aunt no peace till they
+brought her here for advice, and sure enough her poor little spine is
+all wrong, and will never be good for anything without a regular course
+of watching and treatment. So we have her here with Essie to look after
+her for as long as Sir Edward Fane wants to keep her under him, and you
+can’t think what a nice little mortal she turns out to be now she is
+rescued from nurse and those little ruffians of brothers.”
+
+“That’s first-rate,” remarked Cecil.
+
+“The eucharis and maiden-hair, is it not? I must keep some sprays for
+our hairs to-night.”
+
+“Is any one coming to-night?”
+
+“The promiscuous herd. Oh, didn’t you know? Our Johns told mother it
+would be no end of kindness to let them bring in a sprinkling of their
+fellow-students--poor lads that live poked up in lodgings, and never see
+a lady or any civilisation all through the term. So she took to having
+them on Thursday once a fortnight, and Dr. Medlicott was perfectly
+delighted, and said she could not do a better work; and it is such fun!
+We don’t have them unmitigated, we get other people to enliven them. The
+Actons are coming, and I hope Mr. Esdale is coming to-night to show
+us his photographs of the lost cities in Central America. You’ll stay,
+won’t you?”
+
+“If Mrs. Brownlow will let me. I hope your toasting-fork woman has not
+spirited her away?”
+
+“Under the eyes of your horse and man.”
+
+“Are you all at home? And has Allen finished his novel?”
+
+Babie laughed, and said--
+
+“Poor Ali! You see there comes a fresh blight whenever it begins to
+bud.”
+
+“What has that wretched girl been doing now?”
+
+“Oh, don’t you know? The yacht had to be overhauled, so they went to
+Florence instead, and have been wandering about in all the resorts of
+rather shady people, where Lisette can cut a figure. Mr. Wakefield is
+terribly afraid that even poor Mr. Gould himself is taking to gambling
+for want of something to do. There are always reports coming of Elfie
+taking up with some count or baron. It was a Russian prince last
+time, and then Ali goes down into the very lowest depths, and can’t do
+anything but smoke. You know that’s good for blighted beings. I cure my
+plants by putting them into his room surreptitiously.”
+
+“You are a hard-hearted little mortal, Babie. Ah, there’s the bell!”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow came in with the two Johns, who had joined her just as she
+had finished talking to the poor woman; Jock carried off his friend to
+dress, and Babie, after finishing her arrangements and making the
+most of every fragment of flower or leaf, repaired with a selection of
+delicate sprays, to the room where Esther, having put her little sister
+to bed, was dressing for dinner. She was eager to tell of her alarm at
+the invasion, and of Captain Evelyn’s good nature when she had expected
+him to be proud and disagreeable.
+
+“He wanted to be,” said Babie, “but honest nature was too strong for
+him.”
+
+“Johnny was so angry at the way he treated Jock.”
+
+“O, we quite forget all that. Poor fellow! it was a mistaken reading of
+noblesse oblige, and he is very much ashamed of it. There, let me put
+this fern and fuchsia into your hair. I’ll try to do it as well as Ellie
+would.”
+
+She did so, and better, being more dainty-fingered, and having more
+taste. It really was an artistic pleasure to deal with such beautiful
+hair, and such a lovely lay figure as Esther’s. With all her queenly
+beauty and grace, the girl had that simplicity and sedateness which
+often goes with regularity of feature, and was hardly conscious of the
+admiration she excited. Her good looks were those of the family, and
+Kenminster was used to them. This was her first evening of company,
+for on the only previous occasion her little sister had been unwell,
+sleepless and miserable in the strange house, and she had begged
+off. She was very shy now, and could not go down without Barbara’s
+protection, so, at the last moment before dinner, the little brown fairy
+led in the tall, stately maiden, all in white, with the bright fuchsias
+and delicate fern in her dark hair, and a creamy rose, set off by a few
+more in her bosom.
+
+Babie exulted in her work, and as her mother beheld Cecil’s raptured
+glance and the incarnadine glow it called up, she guessed all that would
+follow in one rapid prevision, accompanied by a sharp pang for her son
+in Japan. It was not in her maternal heart not to hope almost against
+her will that some fibre had been touched by Bobus that would be
+irresponsive to others, but duty and loyalty alike forbade the slightest
+attempt to revive the thought of the poor absentee, and she must steel
+herself to see things take their course, and own it for the best.
+
+Esther was a silent damsel. The clash of keen wits and exchange of
+family repartee were quite beyond her. She had often wondered whether
+her cousins were quarrelling, and had been only reassured by seeing them
+so merry and friendly, and her own brother bearing his part as
+naturally as the rest. She was more scandalised than ever to-day, for
+it absolutely seemed to her that they were all treating Captain Evelyn,
+long moustache and all, like a mere family butt, certainly worse than
+they would have treated one of her own brothers, for Rob would have
+sulked, and Joe, or any of the younger ones, might have been dangerous,
+whereas this distinguished-looking personage bore all as angelically
+as befitted one called by such a charming appellation as the Honourable
+Cecil Evelyn.
+
+“How about the shooting, Cecil? Sydney said you had not very good
+sport.”
+
+“Why--no, not till I joined Rainsforth’s party.”
+
+“Where was your moor?”
+
+“In Lanarkshire,” rather unwillingly.
+
+“Eh,” said Allen, in a peculiar soft languid tone, that meant diversion.
+“Near L---?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Then Jock burst out into laughter inexplicable at first, but Allen made
+his voice gentler and graver, as he said, “You don’t mean Kilnaught?”
+ and then he too joined Jock in laughter, as the latter cried--
+
+“Another victim to McNab of Kilnaught! He certainly is the canniest of
+Scots.”
+
+“He revenges the wrongs of Scotland on innocent young Guardsmen.”
+
+“Well, I’m sure there could not be a more promising advertisement.”
+
+“That’s just it!” said Jock. “Moor and moss. How many acres of heather?”
+
+“How was I to expect a man of family to be a regular swindler?”
+
+“Hush! hush, my dear fellow! Roderick Dhu was a man of family. It is the
+modern form.”
+
+“But I saw his keeper.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Allen. “I know! Old Rory! Tells you a long story in broad
+Scotch, of which you understand one word here and there about his Grace
+the Deuke, and how many miles--miles Scots--he walked.”
+
+“I can see Evelyn listening, and saying ‘yes,’ at polite intervals!”
+
+“How many birds did you actually see?”
+
+“Well, I killed two brace and a half the first day.”
+
+“Hatched under a hen, and let out for a foretaste.”
+
+“And there was one old blackcock.”
+
+“That blackcock! There are serious doubts whether it is a phantom bird,
+or whether Rory keeps it tame as a decoy. You didn’t kill it?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“If you had, you might have boasted of an achievement,” said Allen.
+
+“The spell would have been destroyed,” added Jock. “But you did not let
+him finish. Did you say you saw the blackcock?”
+
+“I am not sure; I think I heard it rise once, but the keeper was always
+seeing it.”
+
+Everybody but Essie was in fits of laughing at Cecil’s frank air of
+good-humoured, self-defensive simplicity, and Armine observed--
+
+“There’s a fine subject for a ballad for the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ Babie.
+‘The Phantom Blackcock of Kilnaught!’”
+
+Babie extemporised at once, amid great applause--
+
+
+          “The hills are high, the laird’s purse dry,
+             Come out in the morning early;
+           McNabs are keen, the Guards are green,
+             The blackcock’s tail is curly.
+
+          “The Southron’s spoil ‘tis worthy toil,
+             Come out in the morning early;
+           Come take my house and kill my grouse,
+             The blackcock’s tail is curly.
+
+          “Come out, come out, quoth Rory stout,
+             Come out in the morning early,
+           Sir Captain mark, he rises! hark,
+            The blackcock’s tail is curly.”
+
+
+“Repetition, Babie,” said her mother; “too like the Montjoie S. Denis
+poem.”
+
+“It saves so much trouble, mother.”
+
+“And a recall to the freshness and innocence of childhood is so
+pleasing,” added Jock.
+
+“How much did the man of family let his moor for?” asked Allen.
+
+There Cecil saw the pitiful and indignant face opposite to him, would
+have sulked, and began looking at her for sympathy, exclaiming at last--
+
+“Haven’t you a word to say for me, Miss Brownlow?”
+
+“I don’t like it at all. I don’t think it is fair,” broke from Essie, as
+she coloured crimson at the laugh.
+
+“He likes it, my dear,” said Babie.
+
+“It is a gentle titillation,” said Allen.
+
+“He can’t get on without it,” said the Friar.
+
+“And comes for it like the cattle to the scrubbing-stones,” said the
+Skipjack.
+
+“Yes,” said Armine; “but he tries to get pitied, like Chico walking on
+three legs when some one is looking at him.”
+
+“You deal in most elegant comparisons,” said the mother.
+
+“Only to get him a little more pitied,” said Jock. “He is as grateful as
+possible for being made so interesting.”
+
+“Hark, there’s a knock!” cried Allen. “Can’t you instruct your cubs not
+to punish the door so severely, Jock? I believe they think that the more
+row they make, the more they proclaim their nobility!”
+
+“The obvious derivation of the word stunning,” said Mother Carey, as she
+rose to meet her guests in the drawing-room, and Cecil to hold the door
+for her.
+
+“Stay, Evelyn,” said Allen. “This is the night when unlicked cubs do
+disport themselves in our precincts. A mistaken sense of philanthropy
+has led my mother to make this house the fortnightly salon bleu of St.
+Thomas’s. But there’s a pipe at your service in my room.”
+
+“Dr. Medlicott is coming,” said Babie, who had tarried behind the
+Johns, “and perhaps Mr. Grinstead, and we are sure to have Mr. Esdale’s
+photographs. It is never all students, medical or otherwise. Much better
+than Allen’s smoke, Cecil.”
+
+“I am coming of course,” he said. “I was only waiting for the Infanta.”
+
+It may be doubted whether the photographs, Dr. Medlicott, or even Jock
+were the attraction. He was much more fond of using his privilege of
+dropping in when the family were alone, than of finding himself in the
+midst of what an American guest had called Mrs. Brownlow’s surprise
+parties. They were on regular evenings, but no one knew who was coming,
+from scientific peers to daily governesses, from royal academicians to
+medical students, from a philanthropic countess to a city missionary.
+To listen to an exposition of the microphone, to share in a Shakespeare
+reading, or worse still, in a paper game, was, in the Captain’s eyes,
+such a bore that he generally had only haunted Collingwood Street on
+home days and on Sundays, when, for his mother’s sake and his own, an
+exception was made in his favour.
+
+He followed Babie with unusual alacrity, and found Mrs. Brownlow shaking
+hands with a youth whom Jock upheld as a genius, but who laboured under
+the double misfortune of always coming too soon, and never knowing what
+to do with his arms and legs. He at once perceived Captain Evelyn to
+be an “awful swell,” and became trebly wretched--in contrast to Jock’s
+open-hearted, genial young dalesman, who stood towering over every one
+with his broad shoulders and hearty face, perfectly at his ease (as he
+would have been in Buckingham Palace), and only wondering a little that
+Brownlow could stand an empty-headed military fop like that; while Cecil
+himself, after gazing about vaguely, muttered to Babie something about
+her cousin.
+
+“She is gone to see whether Lina is asleep, and will be too shy to come
+down again if I don’t drag her.”
+
+So away flew Babie, and more eyes than Cecil Evelyn’s were struck when
+in ten minutes’ time she again led in her cousin.
+
+Mr. Acton, who was talking to Mrs. Brownlow, said in an undertone--
+
+“Your model? Another niece?”
+
+“Yes; you remember Jessie?”
+
+“This is a more ideal face.”
+
+It was true. Esther had lived much less than her elder sister in
+the Coffinkey atmosphere, and there was nothing to mar the peculiar
+dignified innocence and perfect unconsciousness of her sweet maidenly
+bloom. She never guessed that every man, and every woman too, was
+admiring her, except the strong-minded one who saw in her the true inane
+Raffaelesque Madonna on whom George Eliot is so severe.
+
+Nor did the lady alter her opinion when, at the end of a very curious
+speculation about primeval American civilisation, Captain Evelyn and
+Miss Brownlow were discovered studying family photographs in a corner,
+apparently much more interested whether a hideous half-faded brown
+shadow had resembled John at fourteen, than to what century and what
+nation those odd curly-whirleys on stone belonged, and what they were
+meant to express.
+
+Babie was scandalised.
+
+“You didn’t listen! It was most wonderful! Why Armie went down and
+fetched up Allen to hear about those wonderful walled towns!”
+
+“I don’t go in for improving my mind,” said Cecil.
+
+“Then you should not hinder Essie from improving hers! Think of letting
+her go home having seen nothing but all the repeated photographs of her
+brothers and sisters!”
+
+“Well, what should she like to see?” cried Cecil. “I’m good for anything
+you want to go to before the others are free.”
+
+“The Ethiopian serenaders, or, may be, Punch,” said Jock. “Madame
+Tussaud would be too intellectual.”
+
+“When Lina is strong enough she is to see Madame Tussaud,” said Essie
+gravely. “Georgie once went, and she has wished for it ever since.”
+
+“Oh, we’ll get up Madame Tussaud for her at home, free gratis, for
+nothing at all!” cried Armine, whose hard work inspirited him to fun and
+frolic.
+
+So in the twilight hour two days later there was a grand exhibition of
+human waxworks, in which Babie explained tableaux represented by the
+two Johns, Armine, and Cecil, supposed to be adapted to Lina’s capacity.
+With the timid child it was not a success, the disguises frightened her,
+and gave her an uncanny feeling that her friends were transformed; she
+sat most of the time on her aunt’s lap, with her face hidden, and barely
+hindered from crying by the false assurance that it was all for her
+pleasure.
+
+But there was no doubt that Esther was a pleased spectator of the show,
+and her gratitude far more than sufficient to cover the little one’s
+ingratitude.
+
+Those two drifted together. In every gathering, when strangers had
+departed they were found tete-a-tete. Cecil’s horses knew the way to
+Collingwood Street better than anywhere else, and he took to appearing
+there at times when he was fully aware Jock would be at the night-school
+or Mutual Improvement Society.
+
+Though strongly wishing, on poor Bobus’s account, that it should not go
+much farther under her own auspices; day after day it was more borne in
+upon Mrs. Brownlow that her house held an irresistible attraction to
+the young officer, and she wondered over her duty to the parents who
+had trusted her. Acting on impulse at last, she took council with John,
+securing him as her companion in the gaslit walk from a concert.
+
+“Do you see what is going on there?” she asked, indicating the pair
+before them.
+
+“What do you mean? Oh, I never thought of that!”
+
+“I don’t think! I have seen. Ever since the night of the Phantom
+Blackcock of Kilnaught. He did his work on Essie.”
+
+“Essie rather thinks he is after the Infanta.”
+
+“It looks like it! What could have put it into her head? It did not
+originate there!”
+
+“Something my mother said about Babie being a viscountess.”
+
+“You know better, Friar!”
+
+“I thought so; but I only told her it was no such thing, and I believe
+the child thought I meant to rebuke her for mentioning such frivolities,
+for she turned scarlet and held her peace.”
+
+“Perhaps the delusion has kept her unconscious, and made her the
+sweeter. But the question is, whether this ought to go on without
+letting your people know?”
+
+“I suppose they would have no objection?” said John. “There’s no harm in
+Evelyn, and he shows his sense by running after Jock. He hasn’t got
+the family health either. I’d rather have him than an old stick like
+Jessie’s General.”
+
+“Yes, if all were settled, I believe your mother would be very well
+pleased. The question is, whether it is using her fairly not to let her
+know in the meantime?”
+
+“Well, what is the code among you parents and guardians?”
+
+“I don’t know that there is any, but I think that though the crisis
+might be pleasing enough, yet if your mother found out what was going
+on, she might be vexed at not having been informed.”
+
+John considered a moment, and then proposed that if things looked “like
+it” at the end of the week, he should go down on Saturday and give a
+hint of preparation to his father, letting him understand the merits of
+the case. However, in the existing state of affairs, a week was a long
+time, and that very Sunday brought the crisis.
+
+The recollection of former London Sundays, of Mary Ogilvie’s quiet
+protests, and of the effect on her two eldest children, had strengthened
+Mrs. Brownlow’s resolution to make it impossible to fill the afternoon
+with aimless visiting and gossiping; and plenty of other occupations had
+sprung up.
+
+Thus on this particular afternoon she and Barbara were with their Girls’
+Friendly Society Classes, of which Babie took the clever one, and she
+the stupid. Armine was reading with Percy Stagg, and a party of School
+Board pupil-teachers, whom that youth had brought him, as very anxious
+for the religious instruction they knew not how to obtain. Jock had
+taken the Friar’s Bible Class of young men, and Allen had, as a great
+favour, undertaken to sit with Dr. and Mrs. Lucas till he could look
+in on them. So that Esther and Lina were the sole occupants of the
+drawing-room when Captain Evelyn rang at the door, knowing very well
+that he was only permitted up stairs an hour later in time for a cup of
+tea before evensong. He did look into Allen’s sitting-room as a matter
+of form, but finding it empty, and hearing a buzz of voices elsewhere,
+he took licence to go upstairs, and there he found Esther telling her
+little sister such histories of Arundel Society engravings as she could
+comprehend.
+
+Lina sprang to him at once; Esther coloured, and began to account for
+the rest of the family. “I hear,” said Cecil, as low tones came through
+the closed doors of the back drawing-room, “they work as hard here as my
+sister does!”
+
+“I think my aunt has almost done,” said Essie, with a shy doubt whether
+she ought to stay. “Come, Lina, I must get you ready for tea.”
+
+“No, no,” said Cecil, “don’t go! You need not be as much afraid of me
+as that first time I walked in, and thought I had got into a strange
+house.”
+
+Essie laughed a little, and said, “A month ago! Sometimes it seems a
+very long time, and sometimes a very short one.”
+
+“I hope it seems a very long time that you have known me.”
+
+“Well, Johnny and all the rest had known you ever so long,” answered
+she, with a confusion of manner that expressed a good deal more than the
+words. “I really must go--”
+
+“Not till you have told me more than that,” cried Cecil, seizing
+his opportunity with a sudden rush of audacity. “If you know me, can
+you--can you like me? Can’t you? Oh, Essie, stay! Could you ever love
+me, you peerless, sweetest, loveliest--”
+
+By this time Mrs. Brownlow, who had heard Cecil’s boots on the stairs,
+and particularly wished to stave matters off till after the Friar’s
+mission, had made a hasty conclusion of her lesson, and letting her
+girls depart, opened the door. She saw at once that she was too late;
+but there was no retreat, for Esther flew past her in shy terror, and
+Cecil advanced with the earnest, innocent entreaty, “Oh, Mrs. Brownlow,
+make her hear me! I must have it out, or I can’t bear it.”
+
+“Oh,” said she, “it has come to this, has it?” speaking half-quaintly,
+half-sadly, and holding Lina kindly back.
+
+“I could not help it!” he went on. “She did look so lovely, and she is
+so dear! Do get her down, that I may see her again. I shall not have a
+happy moment till she answers me.”
+
+“Are you sure you will have a happy moment then?”
+
+“I don’t know. That’s the thing! Won’t you help a fellow a bit, Mrs.
+Brownlow? I’m quite done for. There never was any one so nice, or so
+sweet, or so lovely, or so unlike all the horrid girls in society! Oh,
+make her say a kind word to me!”
+
+“I’ll make her,” said little Lina, looking up from her aunt’s side. “I
+like you very much, Captain Evelyn, and I’ll run and make Essie tell you
+she does.”
+
+“Not quite so fast, my dear,” said her aunt, as both laughed, and Cecil,
+solacing himself with a caress, and holding the little one very close
+to him on his knee, where her intentions were deferred by his watch and
+appendages.
+
+“I suppose you don’t know what your mother would say?” began Mrs.
+Brownlow.
+
+“I have not told her, but you know yourself she would be all right. Now,
+aren’t you sure, Mrs. Brownlow? She isn’t up to any nonsense?”
+
+“No, Cecil, I don’t think she would oppose it. Indeed, my dear boy, I
+wish you happiness, but Esther is a shy, startled little being, and away
+from her mother; and perhaps you will have to be patient.”
+
+“But will you fetch her--or at least speak to her?” said he, in a tone
+not very like patience; and she had to yield, and be the messenger.
+
+She found Esther fluttering up and down her room like a newly-caught
+bird. “Oh, Aunt Carey, I must go home! Please let me!” she said.
+
+“Nay, my dear, can’t I help you for once?” and Esther sprang into her
+arms for comfort; but even then it was plain to a motherly eye that
+this was not the distress that poor Bobus had caused, but rather the
+agitation of a newly-awakened heart, terrified at its own sensations.
+“He wants you to come and hear him out,” she said, when she had kissed
+and petted the girl into more composure.
+
+“Oh, must I? I don’t want. Oh, if I could go home! They were so angry
+before. And I only said ‘if,’ and never meant--”
+
+“That was the very thing, my dear,” said her aunt with a great throb of
+pain. “You were quite right not to encourage my poor Bobus; but this
+is a very different case, and I am sure they would wish you to act
+according as you feel.”
+
+Esther drew a great gasp; “You are sure they would not think me wrong?”
+
+“Quite sure,” was the reply, in full security that her mother would be
+rapturous at the nearly certain prospect of a coronet. “Indeed, my dear,
+no one can find any fault with you. You need not be afraid. He is good
+and worthy, and they will be glad if you wish it.”
+
+Wish was far too strong a word for poor frightened Esther; she could
+only cling and quiver.
+
+“Shall I tell him to go and see them at Kencroft?”
+
+“Oh, do, do, dear Aunt Carey! Please tell him to go to papa, and not
+want to see me till--”
+
+“Very well, my dear child; that will be the best way. Now I will send
+you up some tea, and then you shall put Lina to bed; and you and I will
+slip off quietly together, and go to St. Andrew’s in peace, quite in a
+different direction from the others, before they set out.”
+
+Meantime Cecil had been found by Babie tumbling about the music and
+newspapers on the ottoman, and on her observation--
+
+“Too soon, sir! And pray what mischief still have your idle hands found
+to do?”
+
+“Don’t!” he burst out; “I’m on the verge of distraction already! I can’t
+bear it!”
+
+“Is there anything the matter? You’re not in a scrape? You don’t want
+Jock?” she said.
+
+“No, no--only I’ve done it. Babie, I shall go mad, if I don’t get an
+answer soon.”
+
+Babie was much too sharp not to see what he meant. She knew in a kind of
+intuitive, undeveloped way how things stood with Bobus, and this gave a
+certain seriousness to her manner of saying--
+
+“Essie?”
+
+“Of course, the darling! If your mother would only come and tell
+me,--but she was frightened, and won’t say anything. If she won’t, I’m
+the most miserable fellow in the world.”
+
+“How stupid you must have been!” said Babie. “That comes of you, neither
+of you, ever reading. You couldn’t have done it right, Cecil.”
+
+“Do you really think so?” he asked, in such piteous, earnest tones that
+he touched her heart.
+
+“Dear Cecil,” she said, “it will be all right. I know Essie likes you
+better than any one else.”
+
+She had almost added “though she is an ungrateful little puss for doing
+so,” but before the words had time to come out of her mouth, Cecil had
+flown at her in a transport, thrown his arms round her and kissed her,
+just as her mother opened the door, and uttered an odd incoherent cry of
+amazement.
+
+“Oh, Mother Carey,” cried Cecil, colouring all over, “I didn’t know what
+I was doing! She gave me hope!”
+
+“I give you hope too,” said Caroline, “though I don’t know how it might
+have been if she had come down just now!”
+
+“Don’t!” entreated Cecil. “Babie is as good as my sister. Why, where is
+she?”
+
+“Fled, and no wonder!”
+
+“And won’t she, Esther, come?”
+
+“She is far too much frightened and overcome. She says you may go to her
+father, and I think that is all you can expect her to say.”
+
+“Is it? Won’t she see me? I don’t want it to be obedience.”
+
+“I don’t think you need have any fears on that score.”
+
+“You don’t? Really now? You think she likes me just a little? How soon
+can I get down? Have you a train-bill?”
+
+Then during the quest into trains came a fit of humility. “Do you think
+they will listen to me? You are not the sort who would think me a catch,
+and I know I am a very poor stick compared with any of you, and should
+have gone to the dogs long ago but for Jock, ungrateful ass as I was to
+him last year. But if I had such a creature as that to take care of,
+why it would be like having an angel about one. I would--indeed I
+would--reverence, yes, and worship her all my life long.”
+
+“I am sure you would. I think it would be a very happy and blessed thing
+for you both, and I have no doubt that her father will think so too.
+Now, here are the others coming home, and you must behave like a
+rational being, even though you don’t see Essie at tea.”
+
+Mother Carey managed to catch Jock, give a hint of the situation, and
+bid him take care of his friend. He looked grave. “I thought it was
+coming,” he said. “I wish they would have done it out of our way.”
+
+“So do I, but I didn’t take measures in time.”
+
+“Well, it is all right as regards them both, but poor Bobus will hardly
+get over it.”
+
+“We must do our best to soften the shock, and, as it can’t be helped, we
+must put our feelings in our pocket.”
+
+“As one has to do most times,” said Jock. “Well, I suppose it is better
+for one in the end than having it all one’s own way. And Evelyn is a
+generous fellow, who deserves anything!”
+
+“So, Jock, as we can do Bobus no good, and know besides that nothing
+could make it right for his hopes to be fulfilled, we must throw
+ourselves into this present affair as Cecil and Essie deserve.”
+
+“All right, mother,” he said. “There’s not stuff in her to be of much
+use to Bobus if he had her, besides the other objection. It is the hope
+that he will sorely miss, poor old fellow!”
+
+“Ah! if he had a better hope lighted as his guiding star! But we must
+not stand talking now, Jock; I must take her to Church quietly with me.”
+
+To Cecil’s consternation, his military duties would detain him all the
+forenoon of the next day; and before he could have started, the train
+that brought John back also brought his father and mother, the latter
+far more eager and effusive than her sister-in-law had ever seen her.
+“My dear Caroline, I thought you’d excuse my coming, I was so anxious to
+see about my little girl, and we’ll go to an hotel.”
+
+“I’ll leave you with her,” said Caroline, rushing off in haste, to let
+Esther utter her own story as best she might, poor child! Allen was
+fortunately in his room, and his mother sprang down to him to warn him
+to telegraph to Cecil that Colonel Brownlow was in Collingwood Street;
+the fates being evidently determined to spare her nothing.
+
+Allen’s feelings were far less keen as to Bobus than were Jock’s, and he
+liked the connection; so he let himself be infected with the excitement,
+and roused himself not only to telegraph, but go himself to Cecil’s
+quarters to make sure of him. It was well that he did so, for just as he
+got into Oxford Street, he beheld the well-known bay fortunately caught
+in a block of omnibuses and carts round a tumble-down cab-horse, and
+some gas-fitting. Such was the impatience of the driver of the hansom,
+that Allen absolutely had to rush desperately across the noses of
+half-a-dozen horses, making wild gestures, before he was seen and taken
+up by Cecil’s side.
+
+“The most wonderful thing of all,” said Cecil afterwards, “was to see
+Allen going on like that!”
+
+In consequence of his speed, Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow had hardly
+arrived at Esther’s faltered story, and come to a perception which way
+her heart lay, when she started and cried, “Oh, that’s his hansom!” for
+she perfectly well knew the wheels.
+
+So did her aunt and Babie, who had taken refuge in the studio, but
+came out at Allen’s call to hear his adventures, and thenceforth had
+to remain easily accessible, Babie to take charge of Lina, who was much
+aggrieved at her banishment, and Mother Carey to be the recipient of all
+kinds of effusions from the different persons concerned. There was the
+mother: “Such a nice young man! So superior! Everything we could have
+wished! And so much attached! Speaks so nicely! You are sure there will
+be no trouble with his mother?”
+
+“I see no danger of it. I am sure she must love dear little Esther, and
+that she would like to see Cecil married.”
+
+“Well, you know her! but you know she might look much higher for him,
+though the Brownlows are a good old family. Oh, my dear Caroline, I
+shall never forget what you have done for us all.”
+
+Her Serenity in a flutter was an amusing sight. She was so full of
+exultation, and yet had too much propriety to utter the main point of
+her hopes, fears, doubts, and gratitude; and she durst not so much as
+hazard an inquiry after poor Lord Fordham, lest she should be suspected
+of the thought that came uppermost.
+
+However, the Colonel, with whom that possibility was a very secondary
+matter, could speak out: “I like the lad; he is a good, simple, honest
+fellow, well-principled, and all one could wish. I don’t mind trusting
+little Essie with him, and he says his brother is sure to give him quite
+enough to marry upon, so they’ll do very well, even, if--How about that
+affair which was hinted of at Belforest, Caroline? Will it ever come
+off?”
+
+“Probably not. Poor Lord Fordham’s health does not improve, and so I am
+very thankful that he does not fulfil Babie’s ideal.”
+
+“Poor young man!” said Ellen, with sincere compassion but great relief.
+
+“That’s the worst of it,” said the father, gravely. “I am afraid it is a
+consumptive family, though this young fellow looks hearty and strong.”
+
+“He has always been so,” said Caroline. “He and his sister are quite
+different in looks and constitution from poor Fordham, and I believe
+from the elder ones. They are shorter and sturdier, and take after their
+mother’s family.”
+
+“I told you so, papa,” said Ellen. “I was sure nothing could be amiss
+with him. You can’t expect everybody to look like our boys. Well,
+Caroline, you have always been a good sister; and to think of your
+having done this for little Essie! Tell me how it was? Had you suspected
+it?”
+
+It was all very commonplace and happy. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow were
+squeezed into the house to await Mrs. Evelyn’s reply, and Cecil and
+Esther sat hand-in-hand all the evening, looking, as Allen and Babie
+agreed, like such a couple of idiots, that the intimate connection
+between selig and silly was explained.
+
+Mrs. Robert Brownlow whiled away the next day by a grand shopping
+expedition, followed by the lovers, who seemed to find pillars of
+floor-cloth and tracery of iron-work as blissful as ever could be
+pleached alley. Nay, one shopman flattered Cecil and shocked Esther
+by directing his exhibition of wares to them, and the former was thus
+excited to think how soon they might be actually shopping on their own
+account, and to fix his affections on an utterly impracticable fender
+as his domestic hearth. Meanwhile Caroline had only just come in from
+amusing Mrs. Lucas with the story, when a cab drove up, and Mrs. Evelyn
+was with her, with an eager, “Where are they?”
+
+“Somewhere in the depths of the city, with her mother, shopping. Ought I
+to have told you?”
+
+“Of course I trust you. She must be nice--your Friar’s sister; but I
+could not stay at home, and Duke wished me to come--”
+
+“How is he?”
+
+“So very happy about this--the connection especially. I don’t think he
+could have borne it if it had been the Infanta. How is that dear Babie?”
+
+“Quite well. I left her walking with Lina in the Square gardens.”
+
+“As simple and untouched as ever?”
+
+“As much as ever a light-hearted baby.”
+
+“Ah! well, so much the better. And let me say, once for all, that you
+need not fear any closer intercourse with us. My poor Duke has made up
+his mind that such things are not for him, and wishes all to be arranged
+for Cecil as his heir. Not that he is any worse. With care he may
+survive us all, the doctors say; but he has made up his mind, and will
+never ask Babie again. He says it would be cruel; but he does long for a
+sight of her bright face!”
+
+“Well, we shall be brought into meeting in a simple natural way.”
+
+“And Babie? How does she look? I am ashamed of it; but I can’t help
+thinking more about seeing her than this new cousin. I can fancy
+her--handsome, composed, and serene.”
+
+“That may be so ten or twenty years hence! but now she is the tenderest
+little clinging thing you ever saw.”
+
+“And my ideal would have been that Cecil should have chosen some one
+superior; but after all, I believe he is really more likely to be raised
+by being looked up to. He has been our boy too long.”
+
+“Quite true; I have watched him content with the level my impertinent
+children assign him here, but now trying to be manly for Essie’s sake.
+You have not told me of Sydney.”
+
+“So angry at the folly of passing over Babie, that I was forced to give
+her a hint to be silent before Duke. She collapsed, much impressed.
+Forgive me, if it was a betrayal; but she is two years older now, and
+would not have been a safe companion unless warned. Hark! Is that the
+door-bell?”
+
+Therewith the private interview period set in, and Babie made such use
+of her share of it, that when Lina was produced in the drawing-room
+before dinner she sat on Cecil’s knee, and gravely observed that she had
+a verse to repeat to him--
+
+
+          “The phantom blackcock of Kilnaught
+           Is a marvellous bird yet uncaught;
+               Go out in all weather,
+               You see not a feather,
+           Yet a marvellous work it has wrought,
+           That phantom blackcock of Kilnaught.”
+
+
+“What is that verse you are saying, Lina?” said her mother.
+
+Lina trotted across and repeated it, while Cecil shook his head at
+wicked Babie.
+
+“I hope you don’t learn nursery rhymes, about phantoms and ghosts,
+Lina?” said Mrs. Robert Brownlow.
+
+“This is an original poem, Aunt Ellen,” replied Babie, gravely.
+
+“More original than practical,” said John. “You haven’t accounted for
+the pronoun?”
+
+“Oh, never mind that. Great poets are above rules. I want Essie to
+promise us bridesmaids blackcock tails in our hats.”
+
+“My dear!” said her aunt, in serious reproof, shocked at the rapidity of
+the young lady’s ideas.
+
+“Or, at least,” added Babie, “if she won’t, you’ll give us blackcock
+lockets, Cecil. They would be lovely--you know--enamelled!”
+
+“That I will!” he cried. “And, Mother Carey, will you model me a group
+of the birds? That would be a jolly present!”
+
+“Better than Esther’s head, eh? I have done that three times, and you
+shall choose one, Cecil.”
+
+Nothing would serve Cecil but an immediate expedition to the studio, to
+choose as well as they could by lamp-light.
+
+And during the examination, Mrs. Evelyn managed to say to Caroline, “I’m
+quite satisfied. She is as bright and childish as you told me.”
+
+“Essie?”
+
+“No, the Infanta.”
+
+“If she is not a little too much so.”
+
+“Oh no, don’t wish any difference in those high spirits!”
+
+“She makes it a cheerful house, dear child; and even Allen has
+brightened lately.”
+
+“And, Jock? He looks hard-worked, but brisk as ever.”
+
+“He does work very hard in all ways; but he thoroughly enjoys his work,
+and is as much my sunshine as Babie. There are golden opinions of him in
+the Medical School; indeed there are of both my Johns.”
+
+“They are quite the foremost of the young men of their year, and carry
+off most of the distinctions, besides being leaders in influence. So Dr.
+Medlicott told us,” said Mrs. Evelyn; “and yet he said it was delightful
+to see how they avoided direct rivalry, or else were perfectly friendly
+over it.”
+
+“Yes, they avoid, when it is possible, going in for the same things, and
+indeed I think Jock has more turn for the scientific side of the study,
+and the Friar for the practical. There is room for them both!”
+
+“And what a contrast they are! What a very handsome fellow John has
+grown! So tall, and broad, and strong, with that fine colour, and dark
+eyes as beautiful as his sister’s!”
+
+“More beautiful, I should say,” returned Caroline; “there is so much
+more intellect in them--raising them out of the regular Kencroft
+comeliness. True, the great charm of the stalwart Friar, as we call him,
+is--what his father has in some degree--that quiet composed way that
+gives one a sense of protection. I think his patients will feel entire
+trust in his hands. They say at the hospital the poor people always are
+happy when they see one of the Mr. Brownlows coming, whether it be the
+big or the little one.”
+
+“Not so very little, except by comparison; and I am glad Jock keeps his
+soldierly bearing.”
+
+“He is a Volunteer, you know, and very valuable there.”
+
+“But he has not an ounce of superfluous flesh. He puts me in mind of a
+perfectly polished, finished instrument!”
+
+“That is just what used to be said of his father. Colonel Brownlow says
+he is the most like my poor young father of all the children.”
+
+“He is the most like you.”
+
+“But he puts me most of all in mind of my husband, in all his ways, and
+manner; and our old friends tell me that he sets about things exactly
+like his father, as if it were by imitation. I like to know it is so.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI. -- OF NO CONSEQUENCE.
+
+
+
+     Fell not, but dangled in mid air,
+     For from a fissure in the stone
+     Which lined its sides, a bush had grown,
+     To this he clung with all his might.
+                                   Archbishop Trench.
+
+
+Lord Fordham made it his most especial and urgent desire that his
+brother’s wedding, which was to take place before Lent, should be at his
+home instead of at the lady’s. Otherwise he could not be present, for
+Kenminster had a character for bleakness, and he was never allowed to
+travel in an English winter. Besides, he had set his heart on giving one
+grand festal day to his tenantry, who had never had a day of rejoicing
+since his great-uncle came of age, forty years ago.
+
+Mrs. Robert Brownlow did not like it at all, either as an anomaly or as
+a disappointment to the Kenminster world, but her husband was won over,
+and she was obliged to consent. Mother Carey, with her brood, were of
+course to be guests, but her difficulty was the leaving Dr. and Mrs.
+Lucas. The good old physician was failing fast, and they had no kindred
+near at hand, or capable of being of much comfort to them, and she was
+considering how to steer between the two calls, when Jock settled it for
+her, by saying that he did not mean to go to Fordham, and if Mrs. Lucas
+liked, would sleep in the house. There was much amazement and vexation.
+He had of course been the first best man thought of, but he fought
+off, declaring that he could not afford to miss a single lecture or
+demonstration. Friar John’s University studies had given him such a
+start that he had to work less hard than his cousin, and could afford
+himself the week for which he was invited; but Jock declared that he
+could not even lose the thirty-six hours that Armine was to take for the
+journey to Fordham and back. Every one declared this nonsense, and even
+Mrs. Lucas could not bear that he should remain, as she thought, on her
+account; but his mother did not join in the public outcry, and therefore
+was admitted to fuller insight, as he was walking back with her, after
+listening to the old lady’s persuasions.
+
+“I think she would really be better pleased to spare you for that one
+day,” said Caroline.
+
+“May be, good old soul,” said Jock; “but as you know, mother, that’s not
+all.”
+
+“I guessed not. It may be wiser.”
+
+“Well! There’s no use in stirring it all up again, after having settled
+down after a fashion,” said Jock. “I see clearer than ever how hopeless
+it is to have anything fit to offer a girl in her position for the next
+ten years, and I must not get myself betrayed into drawing her in to
+wait for me. I am such an impulsive fool, I don’t know what I might be
+saying to her, and it would not be a right return for all they have been
+to me.”
+
+“You will have to meet her in town?”
+
+“Perhaps; but not as if I were in the house and at the wedding. It would
+just bring back the time when she bade me never give up my sword.”
+
+“Perhaps she is wiser now.”
+
+“That would make it even more likely that I should say what would be
+better left alone. No, mother! Ten years hence, if--”
+
+She thought of Magnum Bonum, and said, “Sooner, perhaps!”
+
+“No,” he said, laughing. “It is only in the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ that all
+the bigwigs are out of sight, and the apothecary’s boy saved the Lord
+Mayor’s life.”
+
+With that laugh, rather a sad one, he inserted the latch-key and ended
+the discussion.
+
+Whether Barbara were really unwilling to go was not clear, for she had
+no such excuse as her brother; but she grumbled almost as much as her
+aunt at the solecism of a wedding in the gentleman’s home; and for the
+only time in her life showed ill-humour. She was vexed with Esther
+for her taste in bridesmaid’s attire (hers was given by her uncle);
+sarcastic to Cecil for his choice of gifts; cross to her mother about
+every little arrangement as to dress; satirical on Allen’s revival of
+spirits in prospect of a visit to a great house; annoyed at whatever was
+done or not done; and so much less tolerant of having little Lina left
+on her hands, that Aunt Carey became the child’s best reliance.
+
+Some of this temper might be put to the score of that pity for Bobus,
+which Babie in her caprice had begun to dwell on, most inconsistently
+with her former gaiety; but her mother attributed it to an unconfessed
+reluctance to meet Lord Fordham again, and a sense that the light
+thoughtlessness to which she had clung so long might perforce be at an
+end.
+
+So sharp-edged was her tongue, even to the moment of embarkation in the
+train, that her mother began to fear how she might behave, and dreaded
+lest she should wound Fordham; but she grew more silent all the way
+down, and when the carriage came to the station, and they drove past
+banks starred by primroses, and with the blue eyes of periwinkles
+looking out among the evergreen trailers, she spoke no word. Even Allen
+brightened to enjoy that lamb-like March day; and John, with his little
+sister on his knee, was most joyously felicitous. Indeed, the tall,
+athletic, handsome fellow looked as if it were indeed spring with him,
+all the more from the contrast with Allen’s languid, sallow looks,
+savouring of the fumes in which he lived.
+
+Out on the steps were Fordham, wrapped up to the ears; Sydney ready to
+devour Babie, who passively submitted; and Mrs. Evelyn, as usual, giving
+her friend a sense of rest and reliance.
+
+The last visit, though only five years previous to this one, had seemed
+in past ages, till the familiar polished oak floor was under foot, and
+the low tea-table in the wainscoted hall, before the great wood fire,
+looked so homelike and natural, that the newcomers felt as if they had
+only left it yesterday. Fordham, having thrown off his wraps, waited on
+his guests, looking exceedingly happy in his quiet way, but more fragile
+than ever. He had a good deal of fair beard, but it could not conceal
+the hollowness of his cheeks, and there were great caves round his
+eyes, which were very bright and blue. Yet he was called well, waited
+assiduously on little Lina, and talked with animation.
+
+“We have nailed the weathercock,” he said, “and telegraphed to the clerk
+of the weather-office not to let the wind change for a week.”
+
+“Meantime we have three delicious days to ourselves,” said Sydney,
+“before any of the nonsense and preparation begins.”
+
+“Indeed! As if Sydney were not continually drilling her unfortunate
+children!”
+
+“If you call the Psalms and hymns nonsense, Duke--”
+
+“No! no! But isn’t there a course of instruction going on, how to strew
+the flowers gracefully before the bride?”
+
+“Well, I don’t want them thrown at her head, as the children did at the
+last wedding, when a great cowslip ball hit the bride in the eye. So I
+told the mistress to show them how, and the other day we found them in
+two lines, singing--
+
+
+          ‘This is the way the flowers we strew!’”
+
+
+“I suppose Cecil is keeping his residence?”
+
+“No. Did you not know that this little Church of ours is not licensed
+for weddings? The parish Church is three miles off and a temple of the
+winds. This is only a chapelry, there is a special licence, and Cecil is
+hunting with the Hamptons, and comes with them on Monday.”
+
+“Special licence! Happy Mrs. Coffinkey!” ejaculated Babie.
+
+“Everybody comes then,” said Sydney; “not that it is a very large
+everybody after all, and we have not asked more neighbours than we can
+help, because it is to be a feast for all the chief tenants--here in
+this hall--then the poor people dine in the great barn, and the children
+drink tea later in the school. Come, little Caroline, you’ve done tea,
+and I have my old baby-house to show you. Come, Babie! Oh! isn’t it
+delicious to have you?”
+
+When Sydney had carried off Babie, and the two mothers stood over the
+fire in the bedroom, Mrs. Evelyn said--
+
+“So Lucas stays with his good old godfather. I honour him more than I
+can show.”
+
+“We did not like to leave the old people alone. They were my kindest
+friends in my day of trouble.”
+
+“You will not let me press him to run down for the one day, if he cannot
+leave them for more? Would he, do you think?”
+
+“I believe he would, if you did it,” said Caroline, slowly; “but I ought
+not let you do so, without knowing his full reason for staying away.”
+
+They both coloured as if they had been their own daughters, and Mrs.
+Evelyn smiled as she said--
+
+“We have outgrown some of our folly about choice of profession.”
+
+“But does that make it safer? My poor boy has talked it over with me. He
+says he is afraid of his own impulses, leading him to say what would not
+be an honourable requital for all your kindness to him.”
+
+“He is very good. I think he is right--quite right,” said Mrs. Evelyn.
+“I am afraid I must say so. For anything to begin afresh between them
+might lead to suspense that my child’s constitution might not stand, and
+I am very grateful to him for sparing her.”
+
+“Afresh? Do you think there ever was anything?”
+
+“Never anything avowed, but a good deal of sympathy. Indeed, so far as
+I can guess, my foolish girl was first much offended and disquieted
+with Jock for not listening to her persuasions, and then equally so
+with herself for having made them, and now I confess I think shame and
+confusion are predominant with her when she hears of him.”
+
+“So that she is relieved at his absence.”
+
+“Just so, and it is better so to leave it; I should be only too happy
+to keep her with me waiting for him, only I had rather she did not know
+it.”
+
+“My dear friend!” And again Caroline thought of Magnum Bonum. All the
+evening she said to herself that Sydney showed no objection to medical
+students, when she was looking over the Engelberg photographs with
+John, who had been far more her companion in the mountain rambles they
+recalled than had Jock in his half-recovered state.
+
+The mother could not help feeling a little pang of jealousy as she owned
+to herself that the Friar was a very fine-looking youth, with the air of
+a university man, and of one used to good society, and that he did look
+most perilously happy. He was the next thing to her own son, but not
+quite the same, and she half repented of her candour to Mrs. Evelyn, and
+wished that the keen, sensitive face and soldierly figure could be there
+to reassert their influence.
+
+There ensued a cheerful, pleasant Saturday, which did much to restore
+the ordinary tone between the old friends and to take off the sense of
+strangeness. It was evident that Lord Fordham had insensibly become much
+more the real head and master of the house than at the time when the
+Brownlow party had last been there, and that he had taken on him much
+more of the duties of his position than he had then seemed capable of
+fulfilling. It might cost much effort, but he had ceased to be the mere
+invalid, and had come to take his part thoroughly and effectively, and
+to win trust and confidence. It was strange to think how Babie could
+ever have called him a muff merely to be pitied.
+
+The Sundays at Fordham were always delightful. The little Church was as
+near perfection as might be. It was satisfactory to see that Fordham’s
+gentleness and courtesy had dispelled all the clouds, and Barbara had
+returned to her ordinary manner; perhaps a little more sedate and gentle
+than usual, and towards him she was curiously submissive, as if she had
+a certain awe of the tenderness she had rejected.
+
+After the short afternoon service, Sydney waited to exercise her choir
+once more in their musical duties; but Babie, hearing there was to be no
+rehearsal of the flower-strewing, declared she had enough of classes at
+home, and should take Lina for a stroll on the sunny terrace among the
+crocuses, where Fordham joined them till warned that the sun was getting
+low.
+
+One there was who would have been glad of an invitation to join in the
+practice, but who did not receive one. John lingered with Allen about
+the gardens till the latter disposed of himself on a seat with a cigar
+beyond the public gaze. Then saying something about seeing whether the
+stream promised well for fishing, John betook himself to the bank of the
+river, one of the many Avons, probably with a notion that by the merest
+accident he might be within distance at the break-up of the choir
+practice.
+
+He was sauntering with would-be indifference towards the foot-bridge
+that shortened the walk to the Church, but he was still more than
+one hundred yards from it, when on the opposite side he beheld Sydney
+herself. She was on the very verge of the stream, below the steep,
+slippery clay bank, clinging hard with one hand to the bared root of
+a willow stump, and with the other striving to uphold the head and
+shoulder of a child, the rest of whose person was in the water.
+
+One cry, one shout passed, then John had torn off coat, boots, and
+waistcoat, and plunged in to swim across, perceiving to his horror that
+not only was there imminent danger of the boy’s weight overpowering her,
+but that the bank, undermined by recent floods, was crumbling under her
+feet, and the willow-stump fast yielding to the strain on its roots.
+And while each moment was life or death to her, he found the current
+unexpectedly strong, and he had to use his utmost efforts to avoid being
+carried down far below where she stood watching with cramped, strained
+failing limbs, and eyes of appealing, agonising hope.
+
+One shout of encouragement as he was carried past her, but stemming the
+current all the time, and at last he paddled back towards her, and came
+close enough to lay hold of the boy.
+
+“Let go,” he said, “I have him.”
+
+But just as Sydney relaxed her hold on the boy the willow stump gave way
+and toppled over with an avalanche of clay and stones. Happily Sydney
+had already unfastened her grasp, and so fell, or threw herself
+backwards on the bank, scratched, battered, bruised, and feeling half
+buried for an instant, but struggling up immediately, and shrieking with
+horror as she missed John and the boy, who had both been swept in by the
+tree. The next moment she heard a call, and scrambling up the bank, saw
+John among the reedy pools a little way down, dragging the boy after
+him.
+
+She dashed and splashed to the spot and helped to drag the child to a
+drier place, where they all three sank on the grass, the boy, a sturdy
+fellow of seven years old, lying unconscious, and the other two sitting
+not a little exhausted, Sydney scarcely less drenched than the child.
+She was the first to gasp--
+
+“The boy?”
+
+“He’ll soon be all right,” said John, bending over him. “How came--”
+
+“I came suddenly on them--him and his brother--birds’-nesting. In his
+fright he slipped in. I just caught him, but the other ran away, and I
+could not pull him up. Oh! if you had not come.”
+
+John hid his face in his hands with a murmur of intense thanksgiving.
+
+“You should get home,” he said. “Can you? I’ll see to the boy.”
+
+At this moment the keeper came up full of wrath and consternation, as
+soon as he understood what had happened. He was barely withheld from
+shaking the truant violently back to life, and averred that he would
+teach him to come birds’-nesting in the park on Sunday.
+
+And when, after he had fetched John’s coat and boots, Sydney bade him
+take the child, now crying and shivering, back to his mother, and tell
+her to put him to bed and give him something hot he replied--
+
+“Ay, ma’am, I warrant a good warming would do him no harm. Come on,
+then, you young rascal; you won’t always find a young lady to pull you
+out, nor a gentleman to swim across that there Avon. Upon my honour,
+sir, there ain’t many could have done that when it is in flood.”
+
+He would gladly have escorted them home, but as the boy could not yet
+stand, he was forced to carry him.
+
+“You should walk fast,” said John, as he and Sydney addressed themselves
+to the ascent of the steep sloping ground above the river.
+
+She assented, but she was a good deal strained, bruised, and spent, and
+her heavy winter dress, muddied and soaked, clung to her and held her
+back, and both laboured breathlessly without making much speed.
+
+“I never guessed that a river was so strong,” she said. “It was like a
+live thing fighting to tear him away.”
+
+“How long had you stood there?”
+
+“I can’t guess. It felt endless! The boy could not help himself, and
+I was getting so cramped that I must have let go if your call had not
+given me just strength enough! And the tree would have come down upon
+us!”
+
+“I believe it would,” muttered John.
+
+“Mamma must thank you,” whispered Sydney, holding out her hand.
+
+He clasped it, saying almost inwardly--
+
+“God and His Angels were with you.”
+
+“I hope so,” said Sydney softly.
+
+They still held one another’s hands, seeming to need the support in the
+steep, grassy ascent, and there came a catch in John’s breath that made
+Sydney cry,
+
+“You are not hurt?”
+
+“That snag gave me a dig in the side, but it is nothing.”
+
+As they gained the level ground, Sydney said--
+
+“We will go in by the servants’ entrance, it will make less fuss.”
+
+“Thank you;” and with a final pressure she loosed his hand, and led
+the way through the long, flagged, bell-hung passage, and pointed to a
+stair.
+
+“That leads to the end of the gallery; you will see a red baize door,
+and then you know your way.”
+
+Sydney knew that at this hour on Sunday, servants were not plentiful,
+but she looked into the housekeeper’s room where the select grandees
+were at tea, and was received with an astounded “Miss Evelyn!” from the
+housekeeper.
+
+“Yes, Saunders; I should have been drowned, and little Peter Hollis too,
+if it hadn’t been for Mr. Friar Brownlow. He swam across Avon, and has
+been knocked by a tree; and Reeves, would you be so very kind as to go
+and see about him?”
+
+Reeves, who had approved of Mr. Friar Brownlow ever since his race at
+Schwarenbach, did not need twice bidding, but snatched up the kettle
+and one of Mrs. Saunders’s flasks, while that good lady administered the
+like potion to Sydney and carried her off to be undressed. Mrs. Evelyn
+was met upon the way, and while she was hearing her daughter’s story, in
+the midst of the difficulties of unfastening soaked garments, there was
+a knock at the door. Mrs. Saunders went to it, and a young housemaid
+said--
+
+“Oh, if you please, ma’am, Mr. Friar Brownlow says its of no
+consequence, but he has broken two of his ribs, and Mr. Reeves thinks
+Mrs. Evelyn ought to be informed.”
+
+She spoke so exactly as if he had broken a window, that at first the
+sense hardly reached the two ladies.
+
+“Broken what?”
+
+“His ribs, ma’am.”
+
+“Oh! I was sure he was hurt!” cried Sydney. “Oh, mamma! go and see.”
+
+Mrs. Evelyn went, but finding that Reeves and Fordham were with John,
+and that the village doctor, who lived close by the park gates, had been
+sent for, she went no farther than the door of the patient’s room,
+and there exchanged a few words with her son. Sydney thought her very
+hard-hearted, and having been deposited in bed, lay there starting,
+trembling, and listening, till her brother, according to promise, came
+down.
+
+“Well, Sydney, what a brave little woman you have shown yourself! John
+has no words to tell how well you behaved.”
+
+“Oh, never mind that! Tell me about him? Is he not dreadfully hurt?”
+
+“He declares these particular ribs are nothing,” said Fordham,
+indicating their situation on himself, “and says they laugh at them at
+the hospital. He wanted Reeves to have sent for Oswald privately, and
+then meant to have come down to dinner as if nothing had happened.”
+
+“Mr. Oswald does not mean to allow that,” said Miss Evelyn.
+
+“Certainly not; I told him that if he did anything so foolish I should
+certainly never call him in. Now let me hear about it, Sydney, for he
+was in rather too much pain to be questioned, and I only heard that you
+had shown courage and presence of mind.”
+
+The mother and brother might well shudder as they heard how nearly their
+joy had been turned into mourning. The river was a dangerous one, and
+to stem the current in full flood had been no slight exploit; still more
+the recovery of the boy after receiving such a blow from the tree.
+
+“Very nobly done by both,” said Fordham, bending to kiss his sister as
+she finished.
+
+“Most thankworthy,” said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+There was a brief space spent silently by both Mrs. Evelyn and her son
+on their knees, and then the former went up to the little bachelor-room
+where in the throng of guests John had been bestowed, and where she
+found him lying, rather pale, but very content, and her eyes filled with
+tears as she took his hand, saying--
+
+“You know what I have come for?”
+
+“How is she?” he said, looking eagerly in her face.
+
+“Well, I think, but rather strained and very much tired, so I shall keep
+her in her room for precaution’s sake, as to-morrow will be a bustling
+day. I trust you will be equally wise.”
+
+“I have submitted, but I did not think it requisite. Pray don’t trouble
+about me.”
+
+“What, when I think how it would have been without you? No, I will not
+tease you by talking about it, but you know how we shall always feel for
+you. Are you in much pain now?”
+
+“Nothing to signify, now it has been bandaged, thank you. I shall soon
+be all right. Did she make you understand her wonderful courage and
+resolution in holding up that heavy boy all that time?”
+
+Mrs. Evelyn let John expatiate on her daughter’s heroism till steps were
+heard approaching, and his aunt knocked at the door. Perhaps she was
+the person most tried when she looked into his bright, dark eyes, and
+understood the thrill in his voice as he told of Sydney’s bravery and
+resolution. She guessed what emotion gave sweetness to his thankfulness,
+and feared if he did not yet understand it he soon would, and then what
+pain would be in store for one or other of the cousins. When Mrs. Evelyn
+asked him if he had really sent the message that his fractured ribs were
+of no consequence, his aunt’s foreboding spirit feared they might prove
+of only too much consequence; but at least, if he were a supplanter, it
+would be quite unconsciously.
+
+As Barbara said, when she came up from the diminished dinner-party to
+spend the evening with her friend--
+
+“Those delightful things always do happen to other people!”
+
+“It wasn’t very delightful!” said Sydney.
+
+“Not at the time, but you dear old thing, you have really saved a life!
+That was always our dream!”
+
+“The boy is not at all like our dream!” said Sydney. “He is a horrid
+little fellow.”
+
+“Oh, he will come right now!”
+
+“If you knew the family, you would very much doubt it.”
+
+“Sydney, why will you go on disenchanting me? I thought _the real thing_
+had happened to you at last as a reward for having been truer to our old
+woman than I.”
+
+“I don’t think you would have thought hanging on that bank much reward,”
+ said Sydney.
+
+“Adventures aren’t nice when they are going on. It is only ‘meminisse
+juvat’, you know. You must have felt like the man in Ruckert’s Apologue,
+with the dragon below, and the mice gnawing the root above.”
+
+“My dear, that story kept running in my head, and whenever I looked at
+the river it seemed to be carrying me away, bank, and stump, and all.
+I’m afraid it will do so all night. It did, when some hot wine and water
+they made me have with my dinner sent me to sleep. Then I thought of--
+
+
+          “Time, with its ever rolling stream,
+           Is bearing them away.”
+
+
+and I didn’t know which was Time and which was Avon.”
+
+“In your sleep, or by the river?”
+
+“Both, I think! I seem to have thought of thousands of things, and
+yet my whole soul was one scream of despairing prayer, though I don’t
+believe I said anything except to bid the boy hold still, till I heard
+that welcome shout.”
+
+“Ah, the excellent Monk! He is the family hero. I wonder if he enjoys it
+more than you? Did he really never let you guess how much he was hurt?”
+
+“I asked him once; but he said it was only a dig in the side, and would
+go off.”
+
+“Ah, well! Allen says it is accident that makes the hero. Now the Monk
+has been as good as the hyena knight of the Jotapata, who was a mixture
+of Tyr, with his hand in the wolf’s mouth, and of Kunimund, when he
+persuaded Amala that his blood running into the river was only the
+sunset.”
+
+“Don’t,” said Sydney. “I won’t have it made nonsense of!”
+
+“Indeed,” said Babie, almost piteously, “I meant it for the most
+glorious possible praise; but somehow people always seem to take me for
+a little hard bit of spar, a barbarian, or a baby; I wish I had a more
+sensible name!”
+
+“Infanta, his princess, is what Duke always calls you,” said Sydney,
+drawing her fondly to nestle close to her on the bed in her fire-lit
+room. “Do you know one of the thoughts I had time for in that dreadful
+eternity by the river, was how I wished it were you that were going to
+be a daughter to poor mamma.”
+
+“Esther will make a very kind, gentle, tender one.”
+
+“Oh, yes; but she won’t be quite what you are. We have all been children
+together, and you have fitted in with us ever since that journey when
+we talked incessantly about Jotapata.” Then, as Babie made no answer,
+Sydney gave her a squeeze, and whispered, “I know!”
+
+“Who told you?” asked Babie, with eyes on the fire.
+
+“Mamma, when I was crazy with Cecil for caring for a pretty face instead
+of real stuff. She thought it would hurt Duke if I went on.”
+
+“Does he care still?” said Babie, in a low voice.
+
+“Oh, Babie, don’t you feel how much?”
+
+“Do you know, Sydney, sometimes I can’t believe it. I’m sure I have no
+right to complain of being thought a childish, unfeeling little wretch,
+when I recollect how hard, and cold, and impertinent I was to him three
+years ago.”
+
+“It was three years ago, and we were very foolish then,” consolingly
+murmured the wisdom of twenty, not without recollections of her own.
+
+“I hope it was only foolishness,” said Barbara; “but I have only now
+begun to understand the rights of it, only I could not bear the thoughts
+of seeing him again. And now he is so kind!”
+
+“Do you wish you had?”
+
+“Not that. I don’t think anything but fuss and worry would have come of
+it then. I was only fifteen, and my mother could never have let it
+go on, and even if--; but what I am so grieved and ashamed at is my
+fancying him not enough of a man for such a self-sufficient ape as I
+was. And now I have seen more of the world, and know what men are, I
+see his generosity, and that his patient fight with ill-health to do his
+best and his duty, is really very great and good.”
+
+“I wish you could tell him so. No, I know you can’t; but you might let
+him feel it, for you need not be afraid of his ever asking you again.
+They have had a great examination of his lungs, and there’s only part of
+one in any sort of order. They say he may go on with great care unless
+he catches cold, or sets the disease off again, and upon that he made up
+his mind that it was a very good thing he had not disturbed your peace.”
+
+“As if I should not be just as sorry!” said Babie. “Oh, Sydney, what a
+sad world it is! And there is he going about as manful, and pleased, and
+merry about this wedding as if it were his own. And the worst of it is,
+though I do admire him so, it can’t be real, proper, lover’s love, for
+I felt quite glad when you said he would never ask me, so it is all
+wasted.”
+
+The mothers would hardly have liked the subject of the maidens’ talk in
+their bower, and Barbara bade good-night, feeling as if she should never
+look at Fordham with the same eyes again; but the light of day restored
+commonplace thoughts of the busy Monday.
+
+Reeves, having been sent up by his lord with inquiries, found the
+patient’s toilet so far advanced, that under protest he could only
+assist in the remainder. So the hero and heroine met on the stairs, and
+clasped hands in haste to the sound of the bell for morning prayers in
+the household chapel, to which they carried their thankful hearts.
+
+The Fordham household was not on such a scale that the heads of the
+family could sit still in dignified ease on the eve of such a spectacle.
+Every one was busy adorning the hall or the tables, and John would not
+be denied his share, though as he could neither stoop, lift, nor use his
+right arm, he was reduced to making up wreaths and bouquets, with Lina
+to supply him with flowers, since he was the one person with whom she
+never failed to be happy or good. Fordham was entreated to sit still and
+share the employment, but his long, thin hands proved utterly wanting
+in the dexterity that the Monk displayed. He was, moreover, the man in
+authority constantly called to give orders, and in his leisure moments
+much more inclined to haunt his Infanta’s winged steps, and erect his
+tall person where she could not reach. Artistic taste rendered her,
+her mother, and Allen most valuable decorators, and it might be doubted
+whether Allen had ever toiled so hard in his life. In pity to the busy
+servants, luncheon was served up cold on a side table, when Barbara, who
+had rallied her spirits to nonsense pitch, declared that metaphorically,
+Fordham and the agent carved the meal with gloves of steel, and that
+the workers drank the red wine through the helmet barred. In the midst,
+however, in marched Reeves, with a tray and a napkin, and a regular
+basin of invalid soup, which he set down before John in his easy
+chair. There was something so exceedingly ludicrous in the poor Friar’s
+endeavour to be gratified, and his look of dismay and disgust, that
+the public fairly shrieked with laughter, in which he would fain have
+joined, but had to beg pardon for only looking solemn; laughter was a
+painful matter.
+
+However, later in the afternoon, when he was looking white and tired,
+his host came and said--
+
+“Your object is to be about, and not make a sensation when people
+arrive. Come and rest then;” then landed him on his own sofa in his
+sitting-room, which was kept sacred from all confusion.
+
+About half an hour later Mrs. Evelyn said--
+
+“Sydney, my dear, Willis is come for the tickets. Are they ready?”
+
+“Oh, mother, I meant to have done them yesterday evening!”
+
+“You had better take them to Duke’s room, it is the only quiet place. He
+is not there, I wish he were. Willis can wait while you fill them up,”
+ said Mrs. Evelyn, not at all sorry to pin her daughter down for an
+hour’s quiet, and unaware that the room was occupied.
+
+So Sydney, with a list of names and packet of cards, betook herself to
+her brother’s writing-table, never perceiving that there was anybody
+under the Algerine rug, till there was a movement, suddenly checked, and
+a voice said--
+
+“Can I help?”
+
+“Oh! don’t move. I’m so sorry, I hope--”
+
+“Oh, no! I beg your pardon,” he said, with equal incoherency, and
+raising himself more deliberately. “Your brother put me here to rest,
+and I fell asleep, and did not hear you come in.”
+
+“Oh, don’t! Pray, don’t! I am so sorry I disturbed you. I did not know
+any one was here--”
+
+“Pray, don’t go! Can’t I help you?”
+
+Sydney recollected that in the general disorganisation pen, ink, and
+table were not easy to secure, and replied--
+
+“It is the people in the village who are to dine here to-morrow. They
+must have tickets, or we shall have all manner of strangers. The stupid
+printer only sent the tickets yesterday, and the keeper is waiting for
+them. It would save time if you would read out the names while I mark
+the cards; but, please, lie still, or I shall go.” And she came and
+arranged the cushions, which his movements had displaced, till he
+pronounced himself quite comfortable.
+
+Hardly a word passed but “Smith James, two; Sennet Widow, one;
+Hacklebury Nicholas, three;” with a “yes” after each, till they came to
+“Hollis Richard.”
+
+“That’s the boy’s father,” then said Sydney.
+
+“Have you heard anything of him?” asked John.
+
+“Oh, yes! his mother dragged him up to beg pardon, and return thanks,
+but mamma thought you would rather be spared the infliction.”
+
+“Besides that, they were not my due,” said John.
+
+“I never thought of the boy.”
+
+“If you did not, you saved him--twice!”
+
+“A Newfoundland-dog instinct. But I am glad the little scamp is not the
+worse. I suppose he is to appear to-morrow?”
+
+“Oh, yes! and the vicar begs no notice may be taken of him. He is really
+a very naughty little fellow, and if he is made a hero for getting
+himself and us so nearly drowned by birds’-nesting on a Sunday in the
+park, it will be perfectly demoralising!”
+
+“You are as bad as your keeper!”
+
+“I am only repeating the general voice,” said Sydney, with a gleam upon
+her face, half-droll, half-tender. “Poor little man! I got him alone
+this morning, while his mother was pouring forth to mine, and I think he
+has a little more notion where thanks are due.”
+
+“I should like to see him,” said John. “I’ll try not to demoralise him;
+but he has given me some happy moments.”
+
+The voice was low, and Sydney blushed as she laughed and said--
+
+“That’s like Babie, saying it was delightful.”
+
+“She is quite right as far as I am concerned.”
+
+The hue on Sydney’s cheek deepened excessively, as she said--
+
+“Is George Hollis next?”
+
+They went on steadily after that, and Willis was not kept long waiting.
+Then came the whirl of arrivals, Cecil with his Hampton cousins, Sir
+James Evelyn and Armine, Jessie and her General, and the Kenminster
+party. Caroline found herself in great request as general confidante,
+adviser, and medium as being familiar with all parties, and it was
+evidently a great comfort to her sister-in-law to find some one there to
+answer questions and give her the carte-du-pays. Outwardly, she was all
+the Serene Highness, a majestic matron, overshadowing everybody, not
+talkative, but doing her part with dignity, in great part the outcome of
+shyness, but rather formidable to simple-minded Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+She heard of John’s accident with equanimity amazing to her hostess,
+but befitting the parent of six sons who were always knocking themselves
+about. Indeed, John was too well launched ever to occupy much of her
+thoughts. Her pride was in her big Robert, and her joy in her little
+Harry, and her care for whichever intermediate one needed it most. This
+one at the moment was of course pretty, frightened, blushing Esther,
+who was moving about in one maze and dazzle of shyness and strangeness,
+hardly daring to raise her eyes, but fortunately graceful enough to
+look her part well in the midst of her terrors. Such continual mistakes
+between her and Eleanor were made, that Cecil was advised to take
+care that he had the right bride; but Ellie, though so like her sister
+outwardly, was of a very different nature, neither shy nor timid, but of
+the sturdy Friar texture.
+
+She was very unhappy at the loss of her sister, and had an odd little
+conversation with Babie, who showed her to her room, while the rest of
+the world made much of the bride.
+
+“Ellie, the finery and flummery is to be done in Aunt Ellen’s
+dressing-room,” explained Babie; “but Essie is to sleep here with you
+to-night.”
+
+Poor Ellie! her lip quivered at the thought that it was for the last
+time, and she said, bluntly--
+
+“I didn’t want to have come! I hate it all!”
+
+“It can’t be helped,” said Barbara.
+
+“I can’t think how you and Aunt Carey could give in to it!”
+
+“It was the real article, and no mistake,” said Babie.
+
+“Yes; she is as silly about him as possible. A mere fine gentleman! Poor
+Bobus has more stuff in him than a dozen of him!”
+
+“He is a real, honest, good fellow,” said Babie. “I’m sorry for Bobus,
+but I’ve known Cecil almost all my life, and I can’t have him abused.
+I do really believe that Essie will be happier with a simple-hearted
+fellow like him, than with a clever man like Bobus, who has places
+in his mind she could never reach up to, and lucky for her too,” half
+whispered Babie at the end.
+
+“I thought you would have cared more for your own brother.”
+
+“Remember, they all said it would have been wrong. Besides, Cecil has
+been always like my brother. You will like him when you know him.”
+
+“I can’t bear fine folks.”
+
+“They are anything but fine!” cried Babie indignantly.
+
+“They can’t help it. That way of Lord Fordham’s, high-breeding I suppose
+you call it, just makes me wild. I hate it!”
+
+“Poor Ellie. You’ll have to get over it, for Essie’s sake.”
+
+“No, I shan’t. It is really losing her, as much as Jessie--”
+
+“Jessie looks worn.”
+
+“No wonder. Jessie was a goose. Mamma told her to marry that old man,
+and she just did it because she was told, and now he is always ordering
+her about, and worries and fidgets about everything in the house. I wish
+one’s sisters would have more sense and not marry.”
+
+Which sentiment poor Ellie uttered just as Sydney was entering by an
+unexpected open door into the next room, and she observed, “Exactly! It
+is the only consolation for not having a sister that she can’t go and
+marry! O Ellie, I am so sorry for you.”
+
+This somewhat softened Ellie, and she was restored to a pitch of
+endurance by the time Essie was escorted into the room by both the
+mothers.
+
+That polished courtesy of Fordham’s which Ellie so much disliked
+had quite won the heart of her mother, who, having viewed him from a
+distance as an obstacle in Esther’s way, now underwent a revulsion
+of feeling, and when he treated her with marked distinction, and her
+daughter with brotherly kindness, was filled with mingled gratitude,
+admiration and compunction.
+
+When, after dinner, Fordham had succeeded in rousing his uncle and the
+other two old soldiers out of a discussion on promotion in the army, and
+getting them into the drawing-room, the Colonel came and sat down by his
+“good little sister” to confide to her, under cover of Sydney’s music,
+that he was very glad his pretty Essie had chosen a younger man than her
+elder sister’s husband.
+
+“Very opinionated is Hood!” he said, shaking his head. “Stuck out
+against Sir James and me in a perfectly preposterous way.”
+
+Caroline was not prepossessed in favour of General Hood, either by his
+conversation with herself at dinner, or by the startled way in which
+Jessie sat upright and put on her gloves as soon as he came in; but she
+did not wish to discuss him with the Colonel, and asked whether John had
+gone to bed.
+
+“Is he not here? I thought he had come in with the young ones? No? then
+he must have gone to bed. Could Armine or any of them show me the way to
+his room?--for I should like to know how the boy really is.”
+
+“I doubt if Armine knows which is his room. I had better show you, for
+he is not unlikely to be lying down in Fordham’s sitting-room. Otherwise
+you must prepare for many stairs. I suppose you know how gallantly he
+behaved,” she added, as they left the room.
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Evelyn told me. I am glad he has not lost his athletics in
+his London life. I always tell his mother that John is the flower of the
+flock.”
+
+“A dear good brave fellow he is.”
+
+“Yes, you have been the making of him, Caroline. If we don’t say much
+about it, we are none the less sensible of all you have been to our
+children. Most generous and disinterested!”
+
+This was a speech to make Caroline tingle all over, and be glad both
+that she was a little in advance, and at the door of Fordham’s room,
+where John was not. Indeed, he proved to be lying on his bed, waiting
+for some one to help him off with his coat, and he was gratified and
+surprised to the utmost by his father’s visit, for in truth John was the
+one of all the sons who most loved and honoured his father.
+
+If that evening were a whirl, what was the ensuing day, when all who
+stood in the position of hosts or their assistants were constantly
+on the stretch, receiving, entertaining, arranging, presiding over
+toilettes, getting people into their right places, saving one another
+trouble. If Mrs. Joseph Brownlow was an invaluable aid to Mrs. Evelyn,
+Allen was an admirable one to Lord Fordham, for his real talent was for
+society, and he had shaken himself up enough to exert it. There might
+have been an element of tuft-hunting in it, but there was no doubt that
+he was doing a useful part. For Robert was of no use at all, Armine was
+too much of a mere boy to take the same part, and John was feeling
+his injury a good deal more, could only manage to do his part as
+bridegroom’s man, and then had to go away and lie down, while the
+wedding-breakfast went on. In consequence he was spared the many
+repetitions of hearing how he had saved Miss Evelyn from a watery grave,
+and Allen made a much longer speech than he would have done for himself
+when undertaking, on Rob’s strenuous refusal, to return thanks for the
+bridesmaids.
+
+That which made this unlike other such banquets, was that no one could
+help perceiving how much less the bridegroom was the hero of the day to
+the tenants than was the hectic young man who presided over the feast,
+and how all the speeches, however they began in honour of Captain
+Evelyn, always turned into wistful good auguries for the elder brother.
+
+There was no worship of the rising sun there, for when Lord Fordham,
+in proposing the health of the bride and bridegroom, spoke of them
+as future possessors, in the tone of a father speaking of his heir
+apparent, there was a sub-audible “No, no,” and poor Cecil fairly and
+flagrantly broke down in returning thanks.
+
+Fordham’s own health had been coupled with his mother’s, and committed
+to a gentleman who knew it was to be treated briefly; but this did not
+satisfy the farmers, and the chief tenant rose, saying he knew it was
+out of course to second a toast, but he must take the opportunity on
+this occasion. And there followed some of that genuine native heartfelt
+eloquence that goes so deep, as the praise of the young landlord was
+spoken, the strong attachment to him found expression, and there were
+most earnest wishes for his long life, and happiness like his brother’s.
+
+Poor Fordham, it was very trying for him, and he could only command
+himself with difficulty and speak briefly. He thanked his friends with
+all his heart for their kindness and good wishes. Whatever might be
+the will of God concerning himself, they had given him one of the most
+precious recollections of his life, and he trusted that when sooner or
+later he should leave them, they would convey the same warm and friendly
+feelings to his successor.
+
+There were so many tears by that time, and Mrs. Evelyn felt so much
+shaken, that she made the signal for breaking up. No one was more
+relieved than Barbara. She must go to her room to compose herself before
+she could bear a word from any one, and as soon as she could gain the
+back stair, she gathered up her heavy white silk and dashed up, rushing
+along the gallery so blinded by tears under her veil that she would have
+had a collision if a hand had not been put out as some one drew aside to
+let her fly past if she wished; but as the mechanical “beg pardon” was
+exchanged, she knew Fordham’s voice and paused. “I was going to look
+after the wounded Friar,” he said, and then he saw her tearful eyes,
+and she exclaimed, “I could not help it! I could not stay. You would say
+such things. O, Duke! Duke!”
+
+It was the first time she had used the familiar old name, but she did
+not know what she said. He put her into a great carved chair, and knelt
+on one knee by her, saying, “Poor Rogers, I wish he had let it alone. It
+was hard for my mother and Cecil.”
+
+“Then how could you go on and break all our hearts!” sobbed Babie.
+
+“It will make a better beginning for Cecil. I want them to learn to look
+to him. I thought every one knew that each month I am here is like an
+extra time granted after notice, and that it was no shock to any one to
+look forward to that fine young couple.”
+
+“Oh, don’t! I can’t bear it,” she exclaimed, weeping bitterly.
+
+“Don’t grieve, dearest. I have tried hard, but I find I cannot do my
+work as it ought to be done. People are very kind, but I am content,
+when the time comes, to leave it to one to whom it will not be such
+effort and weariness. This is really one of the most gladsome days of my
+life. Won’t you believe it?”
+
+“I know unselfish people are happy.”
+
+“And do you know that you are giving me the sweetest drop of all,
+today?” said Fordham, giving one shy, fervent kiss to the hand that
+clasped the arm of the chair just as sounds of ascending steps caused
+them to start asunder and go their separate ways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII. -- THE TRAVELLER’S JOY.
+
+
+
+     ‘Tis true bright hours together told,
+      And blissful dreams in secret shared,
+      Serene or solemn, gay or bold,
+      Still last in fancy unimpaired.
+                                     Keble.
+
+
+To his mother’s surprise, Lucas did not betray any discomfiture at
+Sydney’s adventure, nor even at John’s having, of necessity, been left
+behind for a week at Fordham after all the other guests were gone. All
+he said was that the Friar was in luck.
+
+He himself was much annoyed at the despatch he had received from Japan.
+Of course there had been much anxiety as to the way in which Bobus would
+receive the tidings of Esther’s engagement; and his mother had written
+it to him with much tenderness and sympathy. But instead of replying to
+her letter, he had written only to Lucas, so entirely ignoring the whole
+matter that except for some casual allusion to some other subject, it
+would have been supposed that he had not received it. He desired his
+brother to send him out the rest of his books and other possessions
+which he had left provisionally in England; and he likewise sent a
+manuscript with orders to him to get it published and revise the proofs.
+It proved to be a dissertation on Buddhism, containing such a bitter
+attack upon Christianity that Jock was strongly tempted to put it in the
+fire at once, and had written to Bobus to refuse all assistance in
+its publication, and to entreat him to reconsider it. He would not
+telegraph, in order that there might be more time to cool down, for
+he felt convinced that this demonstration was a species of revenge,
+at least so far that there was a certain satisfaction in showing what
+lengths the baffled lover might go to, when no longer withheld by the
+hope of Esther or by consideration for his mother.
+
+Jock would have kept back the knowledge from her, but she was too uneasy
+about Bobus for him not to tell her. She saw it in the same light,
+feared that her son would never entirely forgive her, but went on
+writing affectionate letters to him all the same, whether he answered
+them or not. Oh, what a pang it was that she had never tried to make the
+boy religious in his childhood.
+
+Then she looked at Jock, and wondered whether he would harbour any
+such resentment against her when he came to perceive what she had seen
+beginning at Fordham.
+
+John came back most ominously radiant. It had been very bad weather,
+and he and Sydney seemed to have been doing a great quantity of fretwork
+together, and to have had much music, only chaperoned by old Sir James,
+for Fordham had been paying for his exertions at the wedding by being
+confined to his room.
+
+He had sent Babie a book, namely, Vaughan’s beautiful “Silex
+Scintillans,” full of marked passages, which went to her heart. She
+asked leave to write and thank him, and in return his mother wrote to
+hers, “Duke is much gratified by the dear Infanta’s note. He would like
+to write to her unless he knows you would not object.”
+
+To which Caroline replied, “Let him write whatever he pleases to
+Barbara. I am sure it will only be what is good for her.” Indeed Babie
+had been by many degrees quieter since her return.
+
+So a correspondence began, and was carried on till after Easter, when
+the whole party came to London for the season. Mrs. Evelyn wished
+Fordham to be under Dr. Medlicott’s eye; also to give Sydney another
+sight of the world, and to superintend Mrs. Cecil Evelyn’s very
+inexperienced debut.
+
+The young people had made a most exquisitely felicitous tour in the
+South of France and North of Spain, and had come back to a pleasant
+little house, which had been taken for them near the Park. There Cecil
+was bent on giving a great house-warming, a full family party. He would
+have everybody, for he had prevailed to have Fordham sleeping there
+while his room in his own house received its final arrangements; and
+Caroline had added to Ellen’s load of obligation by asking her and the
+Colonel to come for a couple of nights to behold their daughter dressed
+for the Drawing-room.
+
+That would no doubt be a pretty sight, but to others her young matronly
+dignity was a prettier sight still, as she stood in her soft dainty
+white, receiving her guests, the rosy colour a little deepened, though
+she knew and loved them all, and Cecil by her side, already having made
+a step out of his boyhood by force of adoration and protection.
+
+But their lot was fixed, and they could not be half so interesting to
+Caroline as the far less beautiful young sister, who could only lay
+claim to an honest, pleasant, fresh-coloured intelligent face, only
+prevented by an air of high-breeding from being milkmaid-like. It was
+one of those parties when the ingenuity of piercing a puzzle is required
+to hinder more brothers and sisters from sitting together than could be
+helped.
+
+So fate or contrivance placed Sydney between the two Johns at the
+dinner-table, and Mother Carey, on the other side, felt that some
+indication must surely follow. Yet Sydney was apparently quite
+unconscious, and she was like the description in “Rokeby:”--
+
+
+          “Two lovers by the maiden sate
+           Without a glance of jealous hate;
+           The maid her lovers sat between
+           With open brow and equal mien;
+           It is a sight but rarely spied,
+           Thanks to man’s wrath and woman’s pride.”
+
+
+Were these to awaken? They seemed to be all three talking together in
+the most eager and amiable manner, quite like old times, and Jock’s
+bright face was full of animation. She had plenty of time for
+observation, for the Colonel liked a good London dinner, and knew
+he need not disturb his enjoyment to make talk for “his good little
+sister.” Presently, however, he began to tell her that the Goulds and
+Elvira had really set out for America, and when her attention was free
+again, she found that Jock had been called in by Fordham to explain to
+Essie whether she had, or had not, seen Roncesvalles, while Sydney and
+John were as much engrossed as ever.
+
+So it continued all the rest of the dinner-time. Jock was talked to
+by Fordham, but John never once turned to his other neighbour. In
+the evening, the party divided, for it was very warm, and rather than
+inconvenience the lovers of fresh air, Fordham retreated into the inner
+drawing-room, where there was a fire. He had asked Babie to bring the
+old numbers of the “Traveller’s Joy,” as he had a fancy for making a
+selection of the more memorable portions, and having them privately
+printed as a memorial of those bright days. Babie and Armine were there
+looking them over with him, and the former would fain have referred to
+Sydney, but on looking for her, saw she was out among the flowers in
+the glass-covered balcony, too much absorbed even to notice her summons.
+Only Jock came back with her, and sat turning over the numbers in rather
+a dreamy way.
+
+The ladies and the Colonel were sent home in Mrs. Evelyn’s carriage,
+where Ellen purred about Esther’s happiness and good fortune all the
+way back. Caroline lingered, somewhat purposely, writing a note that she
+might see the young men when they came back.
+
+They wished her good-night in their several fashions.
+
+“Good-night, mother. Well, some people are born with silver spoons!”
+
+“Good-night, mother dear. Don’t you think Fordham looks dreadful?”
+
+“Oh, no, Armie; much better than when I came up to town.”
+
+“Good-night, Mother Carey. If those young folks make all their parties
+so jolly, it will be the pleasantest house in London! Good-night!”
+
+“Mother,” said Jock, as the cousin, softly humming a tune, sprang up the
+stairs, “does the wind sit in that quarter?”
+
+“I am grievously afraid that it does,” she said.
+
+“It is no wonder,” he said, doctoring the wick of his candle with her
+knitting-needle. “Did you know it before?”
+
+“I began to suspect it after the accident, but I was not sure; nor am I
+now.”
+
+“I am,” said Jock, quietly.
+
+“She is a stupid girl!” burst out his mother.
+
+“No! there’s no blame to either of them. That’s one comfort. She gave me
+full warning, and he knew nothing about it, nor ever shall.”
+
+“He is just as much a medical student as you! That vexes me.”
+
+“Yes, but he did not give up the service for it, when she implored him.”
+
+“A silly girl! O Jock, if you had but come down to Fordham.”
+
+“It might have made no odds. Friar was so aggressively jolly after his
+Christmas visit, that I fancy it was done then. Besides, just look at us
+together!”
+
+“He will never get your air of the Guards.”
+
+“Which is preposterously ridiculous in the hospital,” said Jock,
+endeavouring to smile. “Never mind, mother. It was all up with me two
+years ago, as I very well knew. Good-night. You’ve only got me the more
+whole and undivided, for the extinction of my will-of-the-wisp.”
+
+She saw he had rather say no more, and only returned his fervent embrace
+with interest; but Babie knew she was restless and unhappy all night,
+and would not ask why, being afraid to hear that it was about Fordham,
+who coughed more, and looked frailer.
+
+He never went out in the evening now, and only twice to the House, when
+his vote was more than usually important; but Mrs. Evelyn was taking
+Sydney into society, and the shrinking Esther needed a chaperon much
+more, being so little aware of her own beauty, that she was wont to
+think something amiss with her hair or her dress when she saw people
+looking at her.
+
+Sydney had no love for the gaieties, and especially tried to avoid their
+own county member, who showed signs of pursuing her. Her real delight
+and enthusiasm were for the surprise parties, to which she always
+inveigled her mother when it was possible. Mrs. Evelyn was not by any
+means unwilling, but Cecil and Esther loved them not, and much preferred
+seeing the Collingwood Street cousins without the throng of clever
+people, who were formidable to Esther, and wearisome to Cecil.
+
+Jock seldom appeared on these evenings. He was working harder than ever.
+He was studying a new branch of his profession, which he had meant to
+delay for another year, and had an appointment at the hospital
+which occupied him a great deal. He had offered himself for another
+night-school class, and spent his remaining leisure on Dr. and Mrs.
+Lucas, who needed his attention greatly, though Mrs. Lucas had her
+scruples, feared that he was overdoing himself, and begged his mother to
+prohibit some of his exertions. Dr. Medlicott himself said something
+of the same kind to Mrs. Brownlow. “Young men will get into a rush,
+and suffer for it afterwards,” he said, “and Jock is looking ill and
+overstrained. I want him to remember that such an illness as he had in
+Switzerland does not leave a man’s heart quite as sound as before, and
+he must not overwork himself.”
+
+“And yet I don’t know how to interfere,” said his mother. “There are
+hearts and hearts, you know,” she added.
+
+“Ah! Work may sometimes be the least of two evils,” and the doctor said
+no more.
+
+“So Jock will not come,” said Mrs. Evelyn, opening a note declining a
+dinner in Cavendish Square.
+
+“His time is very much taken up,” said his mother. “It is one of his
+class-nights.”
+
+“So he says. It is a strange question to ask, but I cannot help it. Do
+you think he fully enters into the situation?”
+
+“I say in return, Do you remember my telling you that the two cousins
+always avoided rivalry?”
+
+“Then he acts deliberately. Forgive me; I felt that unless I was certain
+of this virtual resignation of the unspoken hope, I was not acting
+fairly in allowing--I cannot say encouraging--what I cannot help
+seeing.”
+
+“Dear Mrs. Evelyn! you understand that it is no slight to Sydney, but
+you know why he held back; and now he sees that his absence has made
+room for John, he felt that there was no chance for him, and that the
+more he can keep out of the way the better it is for all parties. Honest
+John has never had the least notion that he has come between Jock and
+his hopes, and it is our great desire that he should not guess it.”
+
+“Well! what can I say? You are generous people, you and your son; but
+young folks’ hearts will go their own way. I had made up my mind to a
+struggle with the prejudices of all the family, and I had rather it
+had been for Jock; but it can’t be helped, and there is not a shadow of
+objection to the other John.”
+
+“No, indeed! He is only not Jock--”
+
+“And I do not think my Sydney was knowingly fickle, but she thought she
+had utterly disgusted and offended Jock by her folly about the selling
+out, and that it was a failure of influence. Poor child! it was all a
+cloud of shame and grief to her. I think he would have dispelled it if
+he had come to the wedding, but as he did not--”
+
+“The Adriatic was free,” said Caroline, trying to smile. “I see it all,
+dear Mrs. Evelyn. I neither blame you nor Sydney; and I trust all will
+turn out right for my poor boy.”
+
+“He deserves it!” said Mrs. Evelyn with a sigh.
+
+There was a good deal more intercourse between Cavendish Square and
+Collingwood Street than Mother Carey had expected. Mrs. Evelyn and her
+son and daughter fell into the habit of coming, when they went out for a
+drive, to see whether Mrs. Brownlow or Barbara would come with them;
+and as it was almost avowed that Babie was the object, she almost always
+went, and kept Fordham company in the carriage, whilst his mother and
+sister were shopping or making calls. He had certainly lost much ground
+in these few weeks; he had ceased to ride, and never went out in the
+evening; but the doctors still said he might live for months or years
+if he avoided another English winter. His mother was taking Sydney into
+society, and Esther was always happier when under their wing, being
+rather frightened by the admiration of which Cecil was so proud. When
+they went out much before Fordham’s bed time, he was thankful for the
+companionship of Allen or Armine, generally the former, for Armine
+was reading hard, and working after lectures for a tutor; while Allen,
+unfortunately, had nothing to prevent him from looking in whenever Mrs.
+Evelyn was out, to play chess, read aloud, or assist in that re-editing
+of the cream of the “Traveller’s Joy,” which seemed the invalid’s great
+amusement. Fordham had a few scruples at first, and when Allen had
+undertaken to come to him for the whole afternoon of a garden-party, he
+consulted Barbara whether it was not permitting too great a sacrifice of
+valuable time.
+
+“You don’t mean that for irony?” said Babie. “It is only so much time
+subtracted from tobacco.”
+
+“Will you let me say something to you, Infanta?” returned Fordham, with
+all his gentleness. “It seems to me that you are not always quite kind
+in your way of speaking of Allen.”
+
+“If you knew how provoking he is!”
+
+“I have a great fellow-feeling for him, having grown up the same sort of
+helpless being as he has been. I should be much worse in his place.”
+
+“Never!” cried Babie. “You would never hang about the house, worrying
+mother about eating and fiddle-faddles, instead of doing any one useful
+thing!”
+
+“But if one can’t?”
+
+“I don’t believe in can’t.”
+
+“Happy person!”
+
+“Oh, Duke, you know I never meant health; you know I did not,” and then
+a pang shot across her as she remembered her past contempt of him whom
+she now reverenced.
+
+“There are other incapacities,” he said.
+
+“But,” said Babie, half-pleading, half-meditating, “Allen is not stupid.
+He used to be considered just as clever as Bobus; and he is so now to
+talk to. Can there be any reason but laziness, and want of application,
+that makes him never succeed in anything, except in answering riddles
+and acrostics in the papers? He generally just begins things, and makes
+mother or Armie finish them for him. He really did set to work and
+finish up an article on Count Ugolino since we came home from Fordham,
+and he has tried all the periodicals round, and they won’t have it, not
+even the editors that know mother!”
+
+“Poor fellow! And you have no pity!”
+
+“Don’t you think it is his own fault?”
+
+“It is quite possible that he would have done much better if he had
+always had to work for his livelihood. I grant you that even as a rich
+man he ought to have avoided the desultory ways, which, as you say, are
+more likely to have caused his failures than want of native ability. But
+I don’t like to see you hard upon him. You hardly realise how cruelly he
+has been treated in return for a very deep and generous attachment,
+or how such a grief must make it more difficult for him to exert his
+powers.”
+
+“I don’t like you to think me hard and unkind,” said Babie, sadly.
+
+“Only a little over just,” said Fordham. “I am sure you could do a great
+deal to help and brighten Allen; and,” he added, smiling, “in the name
+of spoilt and shiftless heirs, I hope you will try.”
+
+“Indeed I will,” said Babie earnestly, as the footman at the shop door
+signalled to the coachman that his ladies were ready.
+
+She found it the less difficult to remember what he had said, because
+Allen himself was much less provoking to her. Something was due to the
+influence and example of the strenuous endeavour that Fordham made
+to keep up to such duties as he had undertaken, not indeed onerous
+in themselves, but a severe labour to a man in his state. It had been
+intimated to him also that his saturation with tobacco was distressing
+to his friend, and he was fond enough of him to abstain from his solace,
+except when walking home at night.
+
+Perhaps this had cleared his senses to perceive habits of consideration
+for the family, which he had never thought incumbent on himself,
+whatever they might be in his brothers; and his eyes were open, as
+they had never yet been, to his mother’s straits. It was chiefly indeed
+through his fastidiousness. His mother and Babie had existed most of
+this time upon their Belforest wardrobe; indeed, the former, always
+wearing black, was still fairly provided; but Babie, who had not in
+those days been out, was less extensively or permanently provided;
+and Allen objected to the style in which she appeared in the enamelled
+carriage, “like a nursery governess out for an airing.”
+
+“Or not so smart,” said Babie, merrily putting on her little black hat
+with the heron’s plume, and running down stairs.
+
+“She does not care,” said Allen; “but mother, how can you let her?”
+
+“I can’t help it, Allen. We turned out all the old feathers and flowers,
+to see if I could find anything more respectable; but things don’t last
+in Bloomsbury, and they only looked fit to point a moral, and not at all
+to adorn a tail or a head.”
+
+“I should think not. But can’t the poor child have something fresh, and
+like other people?”
+
+No; her uncle had given her bridesmaid’s dress, but there had been
+expenses enough connected with the journey to Fordham to drain the dress
+purse, and the sealskin cap that had been then available could not be
+worn in the sun of June. There had been sundry incidental calls for
+money. Mother Carey had been disappointed in the sale of a somewhat
+ambitious set of groups from Fouque’s “Seasons,” which were declared
+abstruse and uninteresting to the public. She had accepted an order for
+some very humble work, not much better than chimney ornaments, for which
+she rose early, and toiled while Babie was out driving with her friends.
+When she had the money for this she would be more at ease, and if it
+came to a little more than she durst reckon upon, she could venture on
+some extras.
+
+“Babie might earn it for herself; she is full of inventions.”
+
+“There is nothing more strongly impressed on me than that those children
+are not to begin being made literary hacks before they are come to
+maturity. One Christmas tale a year is the utmost I ought to allow.”
+
+“I wish I could be a literary hack, or anything else,” sighed poor
+Allen.
+
+It was the first time he really let himself understand what a burden
+he was, and as Fordham was one of those people who involuntarily almost
+draw out confidence, he talked it over with him. Allen himself was
+convinced, by having really tried, that he was not as availably clever
+as others of his family. Whether nature or dawdling was to blame, he
+had neither originality nor fire. He could not get his plots or his
+characters to work, even when his mother or Babie jogged them on by
+remarks: his essays were heavy and unreadable, his jokes hung fire,
+and he had so exhausted every one’s patience, that the translations and
+small reviewing work which he could have done were now unattainable. He
+was now ready to do anything, and he actually meant it, but there seemed
+nothing for him to do. Mrs. Evelyn succeeded in getting him two pupils,
+little pickles whom their sister’s governess could not manage, and whom
+he was to teach for two hours every morning in preparation for their
+going to school.
+
+He attended faithfully, but he was not the man to deal with pickles. The
+mutual aversion with which the connection began, increased upon further
+acquaintance. The boys found out his weak points, and played tricks,
+learnt nothing, and made his life a burden to him; and though the lady
+mother liked him extremely, and could not think why her sons were so
+naughty with him, it would not be easy to say which of the parties
+concerned looked with the strongest sense of relief to the close of the
+engagement.
+
+The time spent with Fordham was, however, the compensation. There was
+sincere liking on both sides, and such helpfulness that Fordham more
+than once wished he had some excuse for making Allen his secretary; and
+perhaps would have done so if he had really believed such a post would
+be permanent.
+
+Armine’s term likewise ended, and his examination being over with much
+credit, he wished for nothing better than to resume the pursuits he
+had long shared with Fordham. He had not Jock’s facility in forming
+intimacies with youths of his own age. His development was too
+exclusively on the spiritual and intellectual side to attract ordinary
+lads, and his home gave him sufficient interests outside his studies;
+and thus Fordham was still his sole, as well as his earliest, friend
+outside the family. Their intercourse had never received the check that
+circumstances had interposed between others of the two families,
+Armine had spent part of almost all his vacations with the Evelyns,
+the correspondence had been a great solace to the invalid, and the
+friendship grew yearly more equal.
+
+Armine was to join the Evelyn party when they went to the seaside, as
+they intended to do on leaving London. It was the fashion to say he
+looked pale and overworked, but he had really attained to very fair
+health, and was venturing at last to look forward in earnest to a
+clerical life; a thought that began to colour and deepen all his more
+intimate conversations with his friend, who could share with him many
+of the reflections matured in the seclusion of ill-health. For they were
+truly congenial spirits, and poor Fordham was more experienced in the
+lore of suffering and resignation than his twenty-seven years seemed to
+imply.
+
+Meantime, the work of editing the “Traveller’s Joy” was carried on.
+Some five-and-twenty copies were printed, containing all the favourite
+papers--a specimen from each contributor, from a shocking bad riddle
+of Cecil’s to Dr. Medlicott’s commentary upon the myths of the nursery;
+from Armine’s original acrostic on the “Rhine and Rhone,” down to the
+“Phantom Blackcock of Kilnaught;” the best illustrations from Mrs.
+Brownlow’s sketches, and Dr. Medlicott’s clever pen-and-ink outlines
+were reproduced; and, with much pains and expense, Fordham had procured
+photographs of all the marked spots, from Schwarenbach even to Fordham
+Church, so that Cecil and Esther considered it a graceful memorial of
+their courtship.
+
+“So very kind of Duke,” they said.
+
+Esther had quite forgotten all her dread of him, and never was happier
+than when he was listening to all that had amused her in the gaieties
+which she liked much better in the past than in the present.
+
+The whole was finished at last, after many a pleasant discussion and
+reunion scene, and the books were sent to the binder. Fordham was eager
+for them to come home, and rather annoyed at some delays which made it
+doubtful whether they would be received before he, with his mother and
+sister, were to leave town. It was late, and June had come in, and the
+weight of London air was oppressing him and making him weaker, and his
+mother, anxious to get him into sea air, had made no fresh engagements.
+It was a surprise to meet him at All Saints on St. Peter’s day.
+
+“Come with us, Infanta,” he said, pausing at the door of the carriage.
+“I am to have my drive early to-day, as the ladies are going to this
+great garden-party.”
+
+Sydney said she would walk home with Mrs. Brownlow, and be taken up when
+Babie was set down.
+
+Fordham gave the word to go to the binder’s.
+
+“I should have thought you had better have gone into some clearer air,”
+ said his mother, for he looked very languid.
+
+“There will be time for a turn in the park afterwards,” he said; “and
+the books were to be ready yesterday, if there is any faith in binders.”
+
+The books were ready, and Fordham insisted on having them deposited
+on the seat beside him, in spite of all offers of sending them; and a
+smiling--
+
+“Oh, Duke, your name should have been Babie,” from his mother.
+
+They then drove to Cecil’s house, where Mrs. Evelyn went in to let
+Esther know her hour of starting; but where Cecil came running down, and
+putting his head into the carriage, said--
+
+“Come in, mamma; here’s the housemaid been bullying Essie, and she wants
+you to help her. These two can go round the park by themselves, can’t
+they?”
+
+“Those are the most comical pair of children,” said Fordham, laughing,
+as the carriage moved on. “Will Esther ever make a serene highness?”
+
+“It is not in her,” said Babie. “It might have been in Jessie, if her
+General was not such a horrid old martinet as to hinder the development;
+but Essie is much nicer as she is.”
+
+Meantime, Fordham’s fingers were on the knot of the string of his
+parcel.
+
+“Oh, you are going to peep in? I am so glad.”
+
+“Since mamma is not here to laugh at me.”
+
+“You’ll tell her you did it to please the Babie!”
+
+“There, it is you that are doing it now,” as her vigorous little fingers
+plucked far more effectively at the cord than his thin weak ones.
+
+Out came at last one of the choice dark green books, with a clematis
+wreath stamped on the cover, and it was put into Barbara’s lap.
+
+“How pretty! This is mother’s own design for the title-page! And oh--how
+capital! Dr. Medlicott’s sketch of the mud baths, with Jock shrinking
+into a corner out of the way of the fat Grafin! You have everything.
+Here is Armine’s Easter hymn!”
+
+“I wished to commemorate the whole range of feeling,” said Fordham.
+
+“I see; you have even picked out the least ridiculous chapter of
+Jotapata. I wish some one had sketched you patiently listening to the
+nineteen copy-books. It would have been a monument of good nature. And
+here is actually Sydney’s poem about wishing to have been born in the
+twelfth century:--”
+
+
+          “Would that I lived in time of faith,
+             When parable was life,
+           When the red cross in Holy Land
+             Led on the glorious strife.
+           Oh! for the days of golden spurs,
+             Of tournament and tilt,
+           Of pilgrim vow, and prowess high,
+             When minsters fair were built;
+           When holy priest the tonsure wore,
+             The friar had his cord,
+           And honour, truth, and loyalty
+             Edged each bold warrior’s sword.”
+
+
+“The solitary poetical composition of our family,” said Fordham,
+“chiefly memorable, I fear, for the continuation it elicited.”
+
+
+          “Would that I lived in days of yore,
+             When outlaws bold were rife,
+           The days of dagger and of bowl,
+             Of dungeon and of strife.
+           Oh! for the days when forks were not,
+             On skewers came the meat;
+           When from one trencher ate three foes:
+             Oh! but those times were sweet!
+           When hooded hawks sat overhead,
+             And underfoot was straw
+           Where hounds and beggars fought for bones
+             Alternately to gnaw.”
+
+
+“That was Jock’s, I believe. How furious it did make us. Good old
+Sydney, she has lived in her romance ever since.”
+
+“Wisely or unwisely.”
+
+“Can it be unwisely, when it is so pure and bright as hers, and gives
+such a zest to common things?”
+
+“Glamour sometimes is perplexing.”
+
+“Do you know, Duke, I would sometimes give worlds to think of things as
+I used in those old times.”
+
+“You a world-wearied veteran!”
+
+“Don’t laugh at me. It was when Bobus was at home. His common sense made
+all we used to care for seem so silly, that I have never been able to
+get back my old way of looking at things.”
+
+“I am afraid glamour once dispelled does not return. Yet, after all,
+truth is the greater. And I am sure that poor Bobus never loosened my
+Infanta’s hold on the real truth.”
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, looking down; “he or his books made me afraid
+to think about it, and like to laugh at some things--no, I never did
+before you. You hushed me on the very borders of that kind of flippancy,
+and so you don’t guess how horrid I am, or have been, for you have made
+things true and real to me again.”
+
+“‘Fancy may die, but Faith is there,’” said Fordham. “I think you will
+never shut your eyes to those realities again,” he added, gently. “It
+is there that we shall still meet. And my Infanta will make me one
+promise.”
+
+“I would promise you any thing.”
+
+“Never knowingly to read those sneering books,” he said, laying his hand
+on hers. “Current literature is so full of poisoned shafts that it may
+not be possible entirely to avoid them; and there may sometimes be need
+to face out a serious argument, but you will promise me never to take up
+that scoffing style of literature for mere amusement?”
+
+“Never, Duke, I promise,” she said. “I shall always see your face, and
+feel your hand forbidding me.”
+
+Then as he leant back, half in thankfulness, half in weariness, she went
+on looking over the book, and read a preface, new to her.
+
+
+“I have put these selections together, thinking that to the original
+‘Travellers’ it may be a joy to have a memorial of happy days full of
+much innocent pleasure and wholesome intercourse. Let me here express my
+warm gratitude for all the refreshments afforded by the friendships
+it commemorates, and which makes the name most truly appropriate. As
+a stranger and pilgrim whose journey may be near its close, let me be
+allowed thus to weave a parting garland of some of the brightest flowers
+that have bloomed on the wayside, and in dedicating the collection to
+my dear companions and fellow-wanderers in the scenes it records, let
+me wish that on the highway of life that stretches before them, they
+may meet with many a ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ as true as they have been to the
+Editor.
+
+“F----”
+
+
+Babie, with eyes full of tears, was looking up to speak, when the
+carriage, having completed the round, again stopped, and Mrs. Evelyn
+came down, escorted by Cecil, with hearty thanks.
+
+“Essie’s nice clean, fresh, country notions were scouted by the London
+housemaid,” she said. “I am happy to say the child held her own, though
+the woman presumed outrageously on her gentleness, and neither of the
+two had any notion how to get rid of her.”
+
+“Arcadia had no housemaids,” said Fordham, rallying.
+
+“If not, it must have been nearly as bad as Jock’s twelfth century,”
+ said Babie, in the same tone.
+
+“Ah! I see!” said Mrs. Evelyn, laughing.
+
+And there was a little playful banter as to which had been the impatient
+one to open the parcel, each pretending to persuade her that it had
+been a mere yielding to the other. Thus they came to Collingwood Street,
+where Babie would have taken out her book.
+
+“No, no, wait,” said Fordham. “I want to write your name in it first.
+I’ll send it this evening. Ali and Armie are coming to me while these
+good people are at their Duchess’s.”
+
+“Our last gaiety, I am thankful to say,” returned his mother, as Barbara
+felt a fervent squeeze of the hand, which she knew was meant to remind
+her of the deeper tone of their conversation.
+
+It was a very hot day, and in the cool of the evening the two Johns
+beguiled Mrs. Brownlow and Babie into a walk. They had only just come
+home when there was a hurried peal at the bell, and Armine, quite pale,
+dashed up stairs after them.
+
+“Mother, come directly! I’ve got a hansom.”
+
+“Fordham?” asked John.
+
+Armine sighed an affirmative.
+
+“Allen sent me for mother. He said one of you had better come. It’s
+a blood-vessel. We have sent for Medlicott, and telegraphed for the
+others. But oh! they are so far off!”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow gave Barbara one kiss, and put her into Jock’s arms, then
+sprang into the cab, followed by John, and was driven off. The other
+three walked in the same direction, almost unconsciously, as Armine
+explained more fully.
+
+Fordham had seemed tired at first, but as it became cooler, had roused
+himself, seated himself at his writing-table, and made one by one the
+inscriptions in the volumes, including all their party of travellers,
+even Janet and Bobus; Reeves, who had been their binder, Mrs. Evelyn’s
+maid, and one or two intimate friends--such as Mr. Ogilvie and his
+sister--and almost all had some kind little motto or special allusion
+written below the name, and the date. It had thus taken a long time,
+and Fordham leant back so weary that Allen wanted him to leave the
+addressing of the books, when wrapped up, to him and Armine; but he said
+there were some he wished to direct himself, and he was in the act
+of asking Bobus’ right address, when a cough seized him, and Allen
+instantly saw cause to ring for Reeves. The last thing that Armine
+had seen was a wave of the hand to hasten his own departure, as Allen
+despatched him for his mother, and gave orders for the summoning of
+others more needed, but who might not be fetched so promptly.
+
+Then Jock had time to question whether Barbara ought to go on with him
+and Armine to the door, but there was a sound in her “Let me! I must!”
+ that they could not withstand; and they walked on in absolute silence,
+except that Jock said Reeves knew exactly what to do.
+
+Dr. Medlicott’s carriage was at the door, and on their ringing, they
+were silently beckoned into the dining-room, where their mother came
+to them. She could not speak at first, but the way in which she kissed
+Barbara told them how it was. All had been over before she reached the
+house. Dr. Medlicott had come, but could do nothing more than direct
+Allen how to support the sufferer as he sank, with but little struggle,
+while a sudden beam of joy and gladness lit up his face at the last.
+There had been no word from the first. By the time the flow of blood
+ceased, the power of speech was gone, and there was thus less reason to
+regret the absence of the nearest and dearest.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow said she must await their return with Allen, who was
+terribly shocked and overcome by this his first and sudden contact
+with death. John, too, had better remain for his sister’s sake, but the
+others had better go home.
+
+“Yes, my child, you must go,” she said, laying her hand on the cold ones
+of Barbara, who stood white, silent, and stunned by the shock.
+
+“Oh, don’t make me,” said a dull, dreamy, piteous voice.
+
+“Indeed you must, my dear. It would only add to the pain and confusion
+to have you here now. They may like to have you to-morrow. Remember, he
+is not here. Take her, Jock. Take care of her.”
+
+The coming of Sir James Evelyn at that moment gave Babie the impulse
+of movement, and Dr. Medlicott hurrying out to offer the use of his
+carriage, made her cling to Jock, and then to sign rather than speak her
+desire to walk with her brothers.
+
+Swiftly and silently they went along the streets on that June night
+in the throng of carriages carrying people to places of amusement, the
+wheels surging in their ears with the tramp and scuffle of feet on the
+pavement like echoes from some far-off world. Now and then there was a
+muffled sound from Armine, but no word was spoken till they were within
+their own door.
+
+Then Jock saw for one moment Armine’s face perfectly writhen with
+suppressed grief; but the boy gave no time for a word, hurrying up the
+stairs as rapidly as possible to his own room.
+
+“Will not you go to bed? Mother will come to you there,” said Jock to
+his sister, who was still quite white and tearless.
+
+“Please not,” was her entreaty. “Suppose they sent for me!”
+
+He did not think they would, but he let her sit in the dark by the open
+window, listening; and he put his arm round her, and said, gently--
+
+“You are much honoured, Babie. It is a great thing to have held so pure
+and true a heart, not for time, but eternity.”
+
+“Don’t, Jock. Not yet! I can’t bear it,” she moaned; but she laid her
+head on his shoulder, and so rested till he said--
+
+“If you can spare me, Babie, I think I must see to Armie. He seemed to
+me terribly overcome.”
+
+“Armine has lost his very best and dearest friend,” she said, pressing
+her hands together. “Oh yes, go to him! Armie can feel, and I can’t! I
+can only choke!”
+
+Jock apprehended a hysterical struggle, but there only came one long sob
+like strangulation, and he thought the pent up feeling might better
+find its course if she were left alone, and he was really anxious about
+Armine, remembering what the loss was to him, that it was his first real
+grief, and that he had had a considerable share of the first shock of
+the alarm.
+
+His soft knock was unheard, and as he gently pushed open the door,
+he saw Armine kneeling in the dark with his head bowed over his
+prayer-desk, and would have retreated, but he had been heard, and Armine
+rose and came forward.
+
+The light on the stairs showed a pale, tear-stained face, but calm and
+composed; and it was in a steady, though hushed, voice that he said--
+
+“Can I be of any use?”
+
+“I am sorry to have disturbed you. I only came to see after you. This is
+a sore stroke on you, Armie.”
+
+“I can stand it better, now. I have given him up to God as he bade me,”
+ said Armine. “It had been a weary, disappointed, struggling life, and
+he never wished it to last.” The tears were choking him, but they were
+gentle ones. “He thought it might be like this--and soon--only he hoped
+to get home first. And I can give thanks for him, what he has been to
+me, and what he will be to me all my life.”
+
+“That is right, Armie. John did great things for us all when he caught
+the carriage.”
+
+“And how is Babie?”
+
+“Poor child, she seems as if she could neither speak nor cry. It is half
+hysterical, and I was going to get something for her to take. Perhaps
+seeing you may be good for her.”
+
+“Poor little thing, she is almost his widow, though she scarcely knows
+it,” said Armine, coming down with his brother.
+
+They found Babie still in the same intent, transfixed, watching state;
+but she let Armine draw her close to him, and listened as he told her,
+in a low tender voice of the talks he had had with Fordham, who had
+expressed to his young friend, as to no one else, his own feelings as to
+his state, and said much that he had spared others, who could not
+listen with that unrealising calmness that comes when sorrow, never yet
+experienced, is almost like a mere vision. And as Babie listened, the
+large soft tears began to fall, drop by drop, and the elder brother’s
+anxiety was lessened. He made them eat and drink for one another’s sake,
+and watched over them with a care that was almost parental, till at
+nearly half-past twelve o’clock the other three came home.
+
+They said Mrs. Evelyn had come fully prepared by the telegram, and under
+an inexplicable certitude which made it needless to speak the word to
+her. She was thankful that Marmaduke had been spared the protracted
+weeks of struggle in which his elder brothers’ lives had closed, and she
+said--
+
+“We knew each other too well to need last words.”
+
+Indeed she was in the exalted state that often makes the earlier hours
+and days of bereavement the least distressing, and Sydney was absorbed
+in the care of her. Neither had been nearly so much overcome as Cecil
+and Esther, who had been hunted up with difficulty. He seemed to be as
+much shocked and horrified as if his brother had been in the strongest
+possible health; and poor Esther felt it wicked and unfeeling to have
+been dancing, and cried so bitterly that the united efforts of her aunt
+and brother could not persuade her that what was done in simple duty and
+obedience need give no pang, and that Mrs. Evelyn never thought of the
+incongruity.
+
+It was only her husband’s prostration with grief and desolation that
+drew her off, to do her best with her pretty childish caresses and
+soothings; and when the two had been sent to their own home, Mrs. Evelyn
+was so calm that her friend felt she might be left with her daughter for
+the night, and returned, bringing her tender love to “Our Babie,” as she
+called the girl.
+
+She clung very much to Barbara in the ensuing days. The presence of
+every one seemed to oppress her except that of her own children, and the
+two youngest Brownlows, for had not Armine been the depository of
+all Fordham’s last messages? What she really seemed to return to as a
+refreshment after each needful consultation with Sir James on the dreary
+tasks of the mourners, was to finish the packing of those “Traveller’s
+Joys” which lay strewn about Fordham’s sitting-room, open at the fly
+leaves, that the ink might dry.
+
+Esther was very gentle and sweet, taking it quite naturally that Babie
+should be a greater comfort to her mother-in-law than herself; and
+content to be a very valuable assistant herself, for the stimulus made
+her far more capable than she had been thought to be. She managed almost
+all the feminine details, while Sir James attended to the rest.
+She answered all the notes, and wrote all the letters that did not
+necessarily fall on her husband and his mother; and her unobtrusive
+helpfulness made her a daughter indeed.
+
+All the young men went to the funeral; but Mrs. Brownlow felt that
+it was a time for friends to hold back till they were needed, when
+relations had retreated; so she only sent Babie, whom Mrs. Evelyn and
+Sydney could not spare, and she followed after three weeks, when Allen
+was released from his unwelcome work.
+
+She found Mrs. Evelyn feeling it much more difficult to keep up than
+it had been at first, now that she sorely missed the occupation of her
+life. For full twenty years she had had an invalid on her mind, and
+Cecil’s marriage had made further changes in her life. It was not the
+fault of the young couple. They did not love their new honours at all.
+Apart from their affection, Cecil hated trouble and responsibility,
+and could not bear to shake himself out of his groove, and Esther was
+frightened at the charge of a large household. Their little home was
+still a small paradise to them, and they implored their mother to allow
+things to go on as they were, and Cecil continue in the Guards, while
+she reigned as before at Fordham; letting the Cavendish Square house,
+which Essie viewed with a certain nervous horror.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn had so far consented that the change need not be made for at
+least a year. Her dower house was let, and she would remain as mistress
+of Fordham till the term was over, by which time the young Lady Fordham
+might have risen to her position, and her Lord be less unwilling to face
+his new cares.
+
+“And they will be always wanting me to take the chair,” said he, in a
+deplorable voice that made the others laugh in spite of themselves; and
+he was so grateful to his mother for staying in his house, and letting
+him remain in his regiment, that he seemed to have quite forgotten that
+the power was in his own hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII. -- THE TRUST FULFILLED.
+
+
+
+     You know, my father left me some prescriptions
+     Of rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading,
+     And manifest experience, had collected
+     For general sovereignty; and that he will’d me
+     In heedfullest reservation to bestow them,
+     As notes, whose faculties inclusive were,
+     More than they were in note.
+                                     All’s Well that Ends Well.
+
+
+Another year had come and gone, with its various changes, and the mother
+of the Collingwood Street household felt each day that the short life
+of Marmaduke Viscount Fordham had not been an unimportant one to her
+children.
+
+It had of course told the most on Barbara. Her first great grief seemed
+to have smoothed out the harsher lines of her character, and made her
+gentle and tolerant as she had never been; or more truly, she had learnt
+charity at a deeper source. That last summer had lifted her into a
+different atmosphere. What she had shared with Fordham she loved. She
+had felt the reality of the invisible world to him, and knew he trusted
+to her meeting his spirit there even in this life, and the strong faith
+of his mother had strengthened the impression.
+
+
+          Heavenly things had seemed more true,
+          And came down closer to her view,
+
+
+now that his presence was among them. She had by no means lost her
+vivacity. There would always be a certain crispness, drollery, and
+keenness about her, and she had too much of her mother’s elasticity to
+be long depressed; but instead of looking on with impatient criticism at
+good works, she had learnt to be ardent in the cause, and she was a most
+effective helper. To Armine, it was as if Fordham had given him back the
+sister of his childhood to be as thoroughly one in aims and sympathies
+as ever, but with a certain clearness of eye, brisk alacrity of
+execution, and quickness of judgment that made her a valuable assistant,
+the complement, as it were, of his more contemplative nature.
+
+He had just finished his course at King’s College, and taken a fair
+degree, and he was examining advertisements, with a view to obtaining
+some employment in teaching that would put a sufficient sum in his hands
+to enable him to spend a year at one of the theological colleges, in
+preparation for Ordination. His mother was not happy about it, she never
+would be quite easy as to Armine’s roughing it at any chance school, and
+she had much rather he had spent the intervening year in working as a
+lay assistant to Mr. Ogilvie, who had promised to give him a title for
+Orders, and would direct his reading.
+
+Armine, however, said he could neither make himself Mr. Ogilvie’s guest
+for a year, nor let his mother pay his expenses; also that he wished
+to do something for himself, and that he felt the need of definite
+training. All he would do, was to promise that if he should find himself
+likely to break down in his intended employment of tuition, he
+would give up in time and submit to her plan of boarding him at St.
+Cradocke’s.
+
+“But,” as he said to Babie, “I don’t think it is self-will to feel bound
+to try to exert myself for the one great purpose of my life. I am too
+old to live upon mother any longer.”
+
+“How I do wish I could do anything to help you to the year at
+C----. Mother has always said that she will let me try to publish
+‘Hart’s-tongue Well’ when I am twenty-one!”
+
+“Living on you instead of mother?”
+
+“Oh no, Armie, you know we are one. Though perhaps a mere story like
+that is not worthy to do such work. Yet I think there must be something
+in it, as Duke cared for it.”
+
+“That would be proof positive but for the author,” said Armine, smiling;
+“but poor Allen’s attempts have rather daunted my literary hopes.”
+
+“I really believe Allen would write better sense now, if he tried,” said
+Babie. “I believe Lady Grose is making something of him!”
+
+“Without intending it,” said Armine, laughing.
+
+“No; but you see snubbing is wholesome diet, if it is taken with a few
+grains of resolution, and he has come to that now!”
+
+For Allen had continued not only to profess to be, but to be willing
+to do anything to relieve his mother, and Dr. Medlicott had, with
+much hesitation and doubt, recommended him for what was called a
+secretaryship to a paralytic old gentleman, who had been, in his own
+estimation, eminent both in the scientific and charitable worlds, and
+still carried on his old habits, though quite incapable. It really was,
+as the Doctor honestly told Allen, very little better than being a male
+humble companion, for though old Sir Samuel Grose was fussy and exacting
+from infirmity, he was a gentleman; but he had married late in life
+a vulgar, overbearing woman, who was sure to show insolent want of
+consideration to anyone she considered her inferior. To his surprise,
+Allen accepted the situation, and to his still greater surprise, endured
+it, walking to Kensington every day by eleven o’clock, and coming home
+whenever he was released, at an hour varying from three to eleven,
+according to my Lady’s will. He became attached to the old man, pitied
+him, and did his best to satisfy his many caprices and to deal with
+his infirmities of brain and memory; but my Lady certainly was his bete
+noire, though she behaved a good deal better to him after she had seen
+him picked up in the park by Lady Fordham’s carriage. However, he made
+light of all he underwent from her, and did not break down even when it
+was known that though poor George Gould had died at New York, his
+widow showed no intention of coming home, and wrote confidently to her
+step-daughters of Elvira marrying her brother Gilbert. She was of
+age now, there was nothing to prevent her, and they seemed to be only
+waiting for a decent interval after her uncle’s death. Allen, a couple
+of years ago, would have made his mother and all the family as wretched
+as he could, and would have dropped all semblance of occupation but
+smoking. Now Lady Grose would not let him smoke, and Sir Samuel required
+him to be entertaining; but the continual worry he was bearing was
+making him look so ill that his mother was very anxious about him. She
+had other troubles. It was eighteen months since Janet Hermann had drawn
+her allowance. Her husband once had written in her name, saying that
+she was ill, but Mr. Wakefield had sent an order payable only on her
+signature, and it had never been acknowledged or presented! Could Janet
+be living? Or could she be in some such fitful state of prosperity as to
+be able to disregard £25?
+
+Her mother spent many anxious thoughts and prayers on her, though the
+younger ones seemed to have almost forgotten her, so long it was since
+she had been a part of their family life. Nor did Bobus answer his
+mother’s letters, though he continued to write fully and warmly to Jock.
+As to the MS., he said he had improved upon it, and had sent a fresh
+one to a friend who would have none of the scruples of which physical
+science ought to have cured Jock. It came out in a review, but without
+his name, and though it was painful enough to all who cared for him, it
+had been shorn of several of the worst and most virulent passages; so
+that Jock’s remonstrance had done some good.
+
+Jock himself had come into possession of £200, and the like sum had been
+left to his mother by their good old friends the Lucases, who had died,
+as it is given to some happy old couples to leave this world, within
+three days of one another.
+
+The other John, in the last autumn, had taken both his degrees at Oxford
+and in London with high credit, and had immediately after obtained one
+of those annual appointments in his hospital which are bestowed upon
+the most distinguished of the students, to enable them to gain more
+experience; but as it did not involve residence, he continued to be one
+of the family in Collingwood Street. However, in the early spring, a
+slight hurt to his hand festered so as to make the doctors uneasy, and
+his sister set her heart on taking him to Fordham for Easter, for a more
+thorough rest than could be had at Kencroft, while the younger ones were
+having measles.
+
+John, however, had by this time learnt enough of his own feelings
+to delay consent till he had written to ask Mrs. Evelyn whether she
+absolutely objected to his entertaining any future hopes of Sydney, when
+he should have worked his way upward, as his recent success gave him
+hopes of doing in time.
+
+Sydney’s fortune was not overpowering. £10,000 was settled on each
+of the younger children, and it had only been Fordham’s liberality
+in treating Cecil as his eldest son, that had brought about his early
+marriage. Thus she was no such heiress that her husband would be obliged
+to feel as if he were living on her means, or that exertion could be
+dispensed with, and thus, though he must make his way before he could
+marry, there was no utter inequality for one who brought a high amount
+of trained ability and industry.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn could only answer as she would once have answered Jock,
+and on these terms he went. In the meantime Sydney had rejected the
+honourable young rector of the next parish, and was in the course of
+administering rebuffs to the county member, who was so persuaded that he
+and Miss Evelyn were the only fit match for one another, that no implied
+negative was accepted by him. Her brother, whom he was coaching in his
+county duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon;
+and in the clash and crisis, without any one’s quite knowing how it
+happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to
+sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a
+young doctor, Lady Fordham’s brother! Not only the M.P., but all the
+family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to
+be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas
+had long made up his mind that so it would end, and told his mother that
+it was a relief the crisis had come. He put a good face on it, wrung
+his cousin’s hand with the grasp of a Hercules, observed “Well done, old
+Monk,” and then made the work for his final examination a plea for being
+so incessantly occupied as to avoid all private outpourings. And if he
+had very little flesh on his bones, it was hard work and anxiety about
+his examination.
+
+That final ordeal was gone through at last; John Lucas Brownlow was,
+like his cousin, possessor of a certificate of honour and a medal, and
+had won both his degrees most brilliantly. He had worked the hardest and
+had the most talent, and his achievement was perhaps the most esteemed
+because of his lack of the previous training that Friar had brought
+from Oxford. Professors and physicians wrote his mother notes to express
+their satisfaction at the career of their old friend’s son, and Dr.
+Medlicott came to bring her a whole bouquet of gratifying praise and
+admiration from all concerned with him, ranging from the ability of
+his prize essay to the firm delicacy of his hand; and backed up by the
+doctor’s own opinion of the blameless conduct and excellent influence
+of both the cousins. And now Dr. Medlicott declared he must have a good
+rest and holiday, after the long strain of hard toil and study.
+
+It came like a dream to Caroline that the conditions imposed by her
+husband fifteen years before, when Lucas was a mischievous imp of
+a Skipjack, had been thus completely worked out, not only the
+intellectual, but the moral and religious terms being thus fulfilled.
+
+The two cousins had come home to dinner in high spirits at the various
+kind things that had been said to, and of, Jock, and discussing the
+various suggestions for the future that had been made to them. They
+thought Mother Carey strangely silent, but when they rose she called her
+son into the consulting room, as she still termed it.
+
+“My dear,” she said, “this slate will tell you why this is the moment I
+have looked forward to from the time your dear father was taken from
+us with his work half done. He had been working out a discovery. He was
+sure of it himself, but none of the faculty would believe in it or take
+it up. Even Dr. Lucas thought it was a craze, and I believe it can only
+be tested by risky experiments. All that he had made out is in this
+book. You know he could not speak for that dreadful throat. This is what
+he wrote. I copied it again, putting in my answers lest it should fade,
+but these are his very words, and that is my pledge. Magnum Bonum was
+our playful pet name for it between ourselves.
+
+“‘I promise to keep the Magnum Bonum a secret, till the boys are grown
+up, and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he
+has taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with
+brains and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an
+invention, and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good
+and blessing to all.’ And oh, Jock,” she added, “am I not thankful
+that after all it should have come about that you should fulfil those
+conditions.”
+
+“Did you not once mean it for John?” said Jock, hastily looking up.
+
+“Yes, when I thought that hateful money had turned you all aside.”
+
+“Then I think he ought to share this knowledge.”
+
+“I thought you would say so, but it is your first right.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Jock. “But he is superior in his own line to me. He
+gave himself up to this line of his own free will, not like me, as a
+resource. And moreover, if it should bring any personal benefit, as an
+accident, it would be more important to him than to me. And these other
+conditions he fulfils to the letter. Mother, let me fetch him.”
+
+She kissed his brow by way of answer, and a call brought John into the
+room. The explanation was made, and John said, “If you think it right,
+Aunt Caroline. No one can quite fulfil the conditions, but two may be
+better than one.”
+
+“Then I will leave you to read it together,” she said, after pointing
+them to the solemn words in the first page. “Oh, you cannot think how
+glad I am to give up my trust.”
+
+She went upstairs to the drawing-room, and about half an hour had passed
+in this way, when Jock came to the door, and said, “Mother, would you
+please to come down.”
+
+It was a strange, grave voice in which he spoke, and when she reached
+the room, they set Allen’s most luxurious chair for her, but she
+stood trembling, reading in their faces that there was something they
+hesitated to tell her. They looked at one another as if to ask which
+should do it, and a certain indignation and alarm seized on her. “You
+believe in it!” she cried, as if she suspected them of disloyalty.
+
+“Most entirely!” they both exclaimed.
+
+“It is a great discovery,” added Jock, “but--”
+
+“But,” said John, as he hesitated, “it has been worked out within the
+last two years.”
+
+“Not Dr. Hermann!” she cried.
+
+“No, indeed!” said Jock. “Why?”
+
+“Because poor Janet overheard our conversation, and obtained a sight of
+the book. It was her ambition. I believe it was fatal to her. She may
+have caught up enough of the outline to betray it. Jock, you remember
+that scene at Belforest?”
+
+“I do,” said Jock; “but this is not that scoundrel. It is Ruthven, who
+has worked it out in a full and regular way. It is making a considerable
+sensation though it has scarcely yet come into use as a mode of
+treatment. Mother, do not be disappointed. It will be the blessing that
+my father intended, all the sooner for not being in the hands of two
+lads like us, whom all the bigwigs would scout!”
+
+“And what I never thought of before,” said John. “You know we are so
+often asked whether we belong to Joseph Brownlow, that one forgets to
+mention it every time; but that day, when Dr. Medlicott took me to the
+Westminster hospital, we fell in with Dr. Ruthven, and after the usual
+disappointment on finding I was only the nephew and not the son, he
+said, ‘Joseph Brownlow would have been a great man if he had lived. I
+owe a great deal to a hint he once gave me?’”
+
+“He ought to see these notes,” said Jock. “It strikes me that there is
+a clue here to that difficulty he mentions in that published paper of
+his.”
+
+“You ought to show it to him,” said John.
+
+“You ought,” said Jock.
+
+“Do you know much about him?” asked Mother Carey. “I don’t think I ever
+saw him, though I know his name. A fashionable physician, is he not?”
+
+“A very good man,” said John. “A great West-end swell just come to be
+the acknowledged head in his own line. I suppose it is just what my
+uncle would have been ten years ago, if he had been spared.”
+
+“May we show it to him, mother?” said Jock. “I should think he was quite
+to be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of
+his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to
+tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so
+imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead
+him away from the subject.”
+
+“Yes, Dr. Lucas’s incredulity made all the difference. How old is Dr.
+Ruthven, John?”
+
+“A little over forty, I should say. He may have been a pupil of my
+uncle’s.”
+
+After a little more consultation, it was decided that John should write
+to Dr. Ruthven that his cousin had some papers of his father’s which he
+thought the Doctor might like to see, and that they would bring them if
+he would make an appointment.
+
+And so the Magnum Bonum was no longer a secret, a burden, and a charge!
+
+It was not easy to tell whether she who had so long been its depositary
+felt the more lightened or disappointed. She had reckoned more than she
+knew upon the honour of the discovery being connected with the name of
+Brownlow, and she could not quite surmount the feeling that Dr. Ruthven
+had somehow robbed her husband, though her better sense accepted and
+admired the young men’s argument that such discoveries were common
+property, and that the benefit to the world was the same.
+
+Allen was a good deal struck when he understood the matter. He said
+it explained a good deal to him which the others had been too young to
+observe or remember both in the old home and afterwards.
+
+“One wonderful part of it is how you kept the secret, and Janet too!”
+ he said. “And you must often have been sorely tempted. I remember being
+amused at your disappointment and her indignation when I said I didn’t
+see why a man was bound to be a doctor because his father was before
+him; and I suppose if Bobus or I had taken to it, this Ruthven need not
+have been beforehand with us!”
+
+“It would have been transgressing the conditions to hold it out to you.”
+
+“I don’t imagine I could have done it any way,” said Allen, sighing. “I
+never can enter into the taste the others have for that style of thing;
+but Bobus might have succeeded. You must have expected it of him, at the
+time when he and I used to laugh at what we thought was a monomania on
+your part for our taking up medical science as a tribute to our father,
+when we did not need it as a provision.”
+
+“You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philanthropy,
+as some people do--well, at any rate in George Macdonald’s novels--it
+would have been the very qualification. But I had little hope from the
+time that the fortune came. I dreamt the first night that Midas had
+turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I was wandering about
+like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum Bonum to disenchant you.”
+
+“It has come pretty true,” said Allen thoughtfully, “that inheritance
+did us all a great deal of mischief.”
+
+“And it took a greater magnum bonum, a maximum bonum, to disenchant us,”
+ said Armine.
+
+“Which I fear did not come from me,” said his mother, “and I am most
+grateful to the dear people who applied it to you. I wish I saw my way
+to the disenchantment of the other two!”
+
+“I suppose you quite despaired till John took his turn in that
+direction,” said Allen. “Bobus could really have done better than any of
+us, I fancy, but he would not have fulfilled the religious condition, as
+sine qua non.”
+
+“Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,” said Armine.
+
+“Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,” said his
+mother. “I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!”
+
+“Perhaps he is not,” said Armine. “He told me he had been comparing the
+MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven’s published paper, and he thought my father
+saw farther into the capabilities.”
+
+“Well, he will do right with it. I am thankful to leave it in such hands
+as his and the Monk’s.”
+
+“Then it was this,” continued Allen, “that was the key to poor Janet’s
+history. I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set
+on going to Zurich.”
+
+“Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just
+enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he
+managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery
+for her. Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear. If I
+could only know where she is.”
+
+A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr.
+Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might
+fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.
+
+However, they came home more than satisfied. Perhaps in the interim Dr.
+Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours
+they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them
+how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of
+what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully
+proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with
+success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow
+physicians to accept his system.
+
+Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the
+notes. He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his
+face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he
+said, “This is just what I wanted. Why did I not think of it before?”
+ and asked permission to copy the passage.
+
+Then he urged the publication of the notes in some medical journal,
+showing true and generous anxiety that honour should be given where
+honour was due, and that his system should have the support of a name
+not yet forgotten. Further, he told his visitors that they would hear
+from him soon, and altogether they came home so much gratified that the
+mother began to lose her sense of being forestalled. She was hard at
+work in her own way on a set of models for dinner-table ornaments which
+had been ordered. “Pot-boilers” had unfortunately much more success than
+the imaginary groups she enjoyed.
+
+Therefore she stayed at home and only sent her young people on a
+commission to bring her as many varieties of foliage and seed-vessels as
+they could, when Jock and Armine spent this first holiday of waiting in
+setting forth with Babie to get a regular good country walk, grumbling
+horribly that she would not accompany them.
+
+She was deep in the moulding of a branch of chestnut, which carried her
+back to the first time she saw those prickly clusters, on that day
+of opening Paradise at Richmond, with Joe by her side, then still Mr.
+Brownlow to her, Joe, who had seemed so much closer to her side in these
+last few days. The Colonel might call Armine the most like Joe, and
+say that Jock almost absurdly recalled her own soldier-father, Captain
+Allen, but to her, Jock always the most brought back her husband’s words
+and ways, in a hundred little gestures and predilections, and she had
+still to struggle with her sense of injury that he should not be the
+foremost.
+
+The maid came up with two cards: Dr. and Mrs. Ruthven. This was speedy,
+and Caroline had to take off her brown holland apron, and wash her
+hands, while Emma composed her cap, in haste and not very good will, for
+she could not but think them her natural enemies, though she was ready
+to beat herself for being so small and nasty “when they could not help
+it, poor things.”
+
+However, Mrs. Ruthven turned out to be a pleasant lively table d’hote
+acquaintance of six or seven years ago in her maiden days, and her
+doctor an agreeable Scotsman, who told Mrs. Brownlow that he had been
+here on several evenings in former days, and did not seem at all hurt
+that she did not remember him. He seemed disappointed that neither of
+the young men was at home, and inquired whether they had anything in
+view. “Not definitely,” she said, and she spoke of some of the various
+counsels Dr. Medlicott and others had given them.
+
+In the midst she heard that peculiar dash with which the Fordham
+carriage always announced itself. Little Esther might be ever so much
+a Viscountess, but could she ever cease to be shy? In spite of her
+increasing beauty and grace, she was not a success in society, for the
+ladies said she was slow; she had no conversation, and no dash or rattle
+to make up for it, and nothing would ever teach her to like strangers.
+They were only so many disturbances in the way of her enjoyment of her
+husband and her baby; and when she could not have the former to go out
+driving with her, she always came and besought for the company of Aunt
+Caroline and Babie; above all, when she had any shopping to do. She knew
+it was very foolish, but she could never be happy in encountering shop
+people, and she wanted strong support and protection to prevent herself
+from being made a lay figure by urgent dressmakers. Her home only
+gave her help and company on great occasions, for Eleanor persisted
+in objecting to fine people, was determined against attracting another
+guardsman, and privately desired her sister to abstain from inviting
+her. Essie was aware that this was all for the sake of a certain
+curate at St. Kenelm’s, and left Ellie to carry out her plan of passive
+resistance, becoming thus the more dependent on her aunt’s family.
+
+In she came, too graceful and courteous for strangers to detect the
+shock their presence gave her, but much relieved to see them depart. Her
+husband was on guard, and she had a whole list of commissions for mamma,
+which would be much better executed without him. Moreover, baby must
+have a new pelisse and hat for the country, and might not she have
+little stockings and shoes, in case she should want to walk before the
+return to London?
+
+As little Alice was but four months old, and her father’s leave was only
+for three months, this did not seem a very probable contingency, but
+Mother Carey was always ready for shopping. She had never quite outgrown
+the delight of the change from being a penniless school girl, casting
+wistful fleeting glances at the windows where happier maidens might
+enter and purchase.
+
+Then there was to be a great review in two days’ time, Cecil would be
+with his regiment, and Esther wanted the whole family to go with her,
+lunch with the officers, and have a thorough holiday. Cecil had sent a
+message that Jock must come to have the cobwebs swept out of his brain,
+and see his old friends before he got into harness again. It was a
+well-earned holiday, as Mother Carey felt, accepting it with eager
+pleasure, for all who could come, though John’s power of so doing must
+be doubtful, and there was little chance of a day being granted to
+Allen.
+
+In going out with her niece, Caroline’s eye had fallen on an envelope
+among the cards on the hall table, ambiguously addressed to “J.
+Brownlow, Esq., M.B.,” and on her return home she was met at the door by
+Jock with a letter in his hand.
+
+“So Dr. Ruthven has been here,” he said, drawing her into the
+consulting-room.
+
+“Yes. I like him rather. He seems to wish to make any amends in his
+power.”
+
+“Amends! you dear old ridiculous mother! Do you call this amends?”
+ holding up the letter. “He says now this discovery is getting known and
+he has a name for the sort of case, his practice is outgrowing him,
+and he wants some one to work with him who may be up to this particular
+matter, and all he has heard of us convinces him that he cannot do
+better than propose it to whichever of us has no other designs.”
+
+“Very right and proper of him. It is the only thing he can do. I suppose
+it would be the making of one of you. Ah!” as she glanced over the
+letter. “He gives the preference to you.”
+
+“He was bound to do that, but I think he would prefer the Monk. I wonder
+whether you care very much about my accepting the offer.”
+
+“Would this house be too far off?”
+
+“I don’t know his plans enough to tell. That was not what I was thinking
+of, but of what it would save her. Essie said she was not looking well;
+and no doubt waiting is telling on her, just as her mother always feared
+it would.”
+
+“John has just not had the forbearance you have shown!”
+
+“That is all circumstance. There was the saving her life, and afterwards
+the being on the spot when she was tormented about the other affair. He
+has no notion of having cut me out, and I trust he never will.”
+
+“No, I do him that justice.”
+
+“Then he has the advantage of me every way, out and out in looks and
+University training; and it was to him that Ruthven first took a fancy.”
+
+“You surpassed him in your essay, and in--.
+
+“Oh, yes, yes,” interrupted Jock hastily, “but you see work was my
+refuge. I had nothing to call me off. Besides, I have my share of your
+brains, instead of her Serenity’s; but that’s all the more reason, if
+you would listen to me. Depend upon it, Ruthven, if he knew all, would
+much prefer the connection John would have, and she would bring means to
+set up directly.”
+
+“I suppose you will have it so,” replied she, looking up to him
+affectionately.
+
+“I should like it,” he said. “It is the one thing for them, and waiting
+might do her infinite harm; the dear old Monk deserves it every way.
+Remember how it all turned on his desperate race. If your comfort
+depended on my taking it, that would come first.”
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+“But there is sure to turn up plenty of other work without leaving you,”
+ he continued. “I don’t fancy getting involved in West-end practice among
+swells, and not being independent. I had rather see whether I can’t work
+out this principle further, devoting myself to reading up for it, and
+getting more hospital experience to go upon.”
+
+“I dare say that is quite right. I know it is like your father, and
+indeed I shall be quite content however you decide. Only might it not be
+well to see how it strikes John, before you absolutely make it over to
+him?”
+
+“You are trying to be prudent against the grain, Mother Carey.”
+
+“Trying to see it like your uncle. Yes, exactly as if I were trying to
+forestall his calling me his good little sister.”
+
+“I don’t know what he would call me,” said Jock, “for at the bottom is
+a feeling that, after reading my father’s words, I had rather not, if I
+can help it, begin immediately to make all that material advantage out
+of ‘Magnum Bonum’ as you call it.”
+
+“Well, my dear, do as you think right; I trust it all to you. It is sure
+to turn out the right sort of ‘Magnum Bonum’ to you--”
+
+The Monk’s characteristic ring at the bell was heard, and the letter
+was, without loss of time, committed to him, while both mother and son
+watched him as he gathered up the sense.
+
+“Well, this is jolly!” was his first observation. “Downright handsome
+of Ruthven!” and then as the colour rose a little in his face, “Just the
+thing for you, Jock, home work, which is exactly what you, want.”
+
+“I’m not sure about that,” said Jock; “I don’t want to get into that
+kind of practice just yet. It is fitter for a family man.”
+
+“And who is a family man if you are not?” said John. “Wasn’t it the very
+cause of your taking this line?”
+
+“There’s a popular prejudice in favour of wives, rather than mothers,”
+ said Jock. “I should have said you were more likely to fulfil the
+conditions.”
+
+“Oh!” and there was a sound in that exclamation that belied the sequel,
+“that’s just nonsense! The offer is to you primarily, and it is your
+duty to take it.”
+
+“I had much rather you did, and so had Dr. Ruthven. I want more time
+for study and experience, and have set my heart on some scientific
+appointment--”
+
+“Come now, my good fellow--why, what are you laughing at?”
+
+“Because you are such a good imitation of your father, my dear Johnny,”
+ said his aunt.
+
+“It is just what my father would say,” returned John, taking this as
+a high compliment; “it would be very foolish of Lucas to give up a
+certainty for this just because of his Skipjack element, which doesn’t
+want to get into routine harness. Now, don’t you think so, Mother
+Carey?”
+
+“_If_ I thought it _was_ the Skipjack element,” she said, smiling.
+
+“If it is not,” he said, the colour now spreading all over his face, “I
+am all the more bound not to let him give up all his prospects in life.”
+
+“_All_ my prospects! My dear Monk, do you think they don’t go beyond a
+brougham, and unlimited staircases?”
+
+“I only know,” cried John, nettled into being a little off his guard,
+“that what you despise would be all the world to me!”
+
+The admission was hailed triumphantly, but the Kencroft nature was too
+resolute, and the individual conscience too generous, to be brought
+round to accept the sacrifice, which John estimated at the value of the
+importance it was to himself, viewing what was real in Lucas’s distaste,
+as mere erratic folly, which ought to be argued down. Finally, when the
+argument had gone round into at least its fiftieth circle, Mother Carey
+declared that she would have no more of it. Lucas should write a note
+to Dr. Ruthven, accepting his proposal for one or other of them, and
+promising that he should know which, in the course of a few days; so
+that John, if he chose, could write to his father or _anyone_ else.
+Meantime there was to be no allusion to “the raid of Ruthven” till the
+day of the review was over. It was to be put entirely off the tongue, if
+not out of the head!
+
+And the two young doctors were weary enough of the subject to rejoice in
+obedience to her.
+
+The day was perfect except that poor Allen was pinned fast by his
+tyrant, all the others gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the
+moment. They understood the sham fight, and recognised all the corps,
+with Jock as their cicerone, they had a good place at the marching past,
+and Esther had the crowning delight of an excellent view of Captain
+Viscount Fordham with his company, and at the luncheon. Jock received an
+absolutely affectionate welcome from his old friends, who made as much
+of his mother and sister for his sake, as they did of the lovely Lady
+Fordham for her husband’s, finding them, moreover, much more easy to get
+on with.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX. -- THE TRUANT.
+
+
+
+     The bird was sitting in his cage
+       And heard what he did say;
+     He jumped upon the window sill,
+      “‘Tis time I was away.”
+                                 Ballad.
+
+
+“There is a young lady in the drawing-room, ma’am,” said the maid,
+looking rather puzzled and uncertain, on the return of the party from
+the review.
+
+“A stranger? How could you let her in?” said John.
+
+At that moment a face appeared at the top of the stairs, a face set
+in the rich golden auburn that all knew so well, and half way up, Mrs.
+Brownlow was clasped by a pair of arms, and there was a cry, “Mother
+Carey, Mother Carey, I’m come home!”
+
+“Elvira! my dear child! When--how did you come?”
+
+“From the station, in a cab. I made her let me in, but I thought you
+were never coming back. Where’s Allen?”
+
+“Allen will come in by-and-by,” said the astonished Mother Carey, who
+had been dragged into the drawing-room, where Elvira embraced Babie, and
+grasped the hands of the others.
+
+“Oh, it is so nice,” she cried, then nestling back to Mother Carey.
+
+“But where did you come from? Are you alone?”
+
+“Yes, quite alone, Janet would not come with me after all.”
+
+“Janet, my dear! Where is she?”
+
+“Oh, not here--at Saratoga, or at New York. I thought she was coming
+with me, but when the steamer sailed she was not there, only there was
+a note pinned to my berth. I meant to have brought it, but it got lost
+somehow.”
+
+“Where did you see her?”
+
+“At the photographer’s at Saratoga. I should never have come if she had
+not helped me, but she said she knew you would take me home, and she
+wrote and took my passage and all. She said if I did not find you, Mr.
+Wakefield would know where you were, but I did so want to get home to
+you! Please, may I take off my things; I don’t want to be such a fright
+when Allen comes in.”
+
+It was all very mysterious, but Elvira must be much altered indeed if
+her narrative did not come out in an utterly complicated and detached
+manner. She was altered certainly, for she clung most affectionately to
+Mother Carey and Barbara, when they took her upstairs. She had a little
+travelling-bag with her; the rest of her luggage would be sent from the
+station, she supposed, for she had taken no heed to it. She did so want
+to get home.
+
+“I did feel so hungry for you, Mother Carey. Mother, Janet said you
+would forgive me, and I thought if you were ever so angry, it would be
+true, and that would be nicer than Lisette, and, indeed, it was not so
+much my doing as Lisette’s.”
+
+Whatever “it” was, Mother Carey had no hesitation in replying that she
+had no doubt it was Lisette’s fault.
+
+“You see,” continued Elvira, “I never meant anything but to plague Allen
+a little at first. You know he had always been so tiresome and jealous,
+and always teased me when I wanted any fun--at least I thought so, and
+I did want to have my swing before he called me engaged to him again. I
+told Jock so, but then Lisette and Lady Flora, and old Lady Clanmacnalty
+went on telling me that you knew the money was mine all the time, and
+that it was only an accident that it came out before I was married.”
+
+“Oh, Elvira, you could not have thought anything so wicked,” cried
+Babie.
+
+“They all went on so, and made so sure,” said Elvira, hanging her head,
+“and I never did know the real way the will was found till Janet told
+me. Babie, if you had heard Lady Clanmacnalty clear her throat when
+people talked about the will being found, you would have believed she
+knew better than anyone.”
+
+So it was. The girl, weak in character, and far from sensible, full of
+self-importance, and puffed up with her inheritance, had been easily
+blinded and involved in the web that the artful Lisette had managed to
+draw round her. She had been totally alienated from her old friends,
+and by force of reiteration had been brought to think them guilty
+of defrauding her. In truth, she was kept in a whirl of gaiety and
+amusement, with little power of realizing her situation, till the breach
+had grown too wide for the feeble will of a helpless being like her to
+cross it. Though she had flirted extensively, she had never felt capable
+of accepting any one of her suitors, and in these refusals she had
+been assisted by Lisette, who wanted to secure her for her brother, but
+thanks to warnings from Mr. Wakefield, and her husband’s sense of duty,
+durst not do so before she was of age.
+
+Elvira’s one wish had been to visit San Ildefonso again. She had a
+strong yearning towards the lovely island home which she gilded in
+recollection with all the trails of glory that shine round the objects
+of our childish affections. Lisette always promised to take her, but
+found excuses for delay in the refitting of the yacht, while she kept
+the party wandering over Europe in the resorts of second-rate English
+residents. No doubt she wished to make the most of the enjoyments she
+could obtain, as Elvira’s chaperon and guardian, before resigning her
+even to her brother. At last the gambling habits into which her husband
+fell, for lack, poor man, of any other employment, had alarmed her, and
+she permitted her party to embark in the yacht where Gilbert Gould acted
+as captain.
+
+They reached the island. It had become a coaling station. The bay where
+she remembered exquisite groves coming down to the white beach, was
+a wharf, ringing with the discordant shouts of negroes and cries of
+sailors. The old nurse was dead, and fictitious foster brothers and
+sisters were constantly turning up with extravagant claims.
+
+“Oh, I longed never to have come,” said Elvira; “and then I began to get
+homesick, but they would not let me come!”
+
+No doubt Lisette had feared the revival of the Brownlow influence if
+her charge were once in England, for she had raised every obstacle to
+a return. Poor Gould and his niece had both looked forward to Elvira’s
+coming of age as necessarily bringing them to England, but her uncle’s
+health had suffered from the dissipation he had found his only resource.
+Liquor had become his consolation in the life to which he was condemned,
+and in the hotel life of America was only too easily attainable.
+
+His death deprived Elvira of the last barrier to the attempts of an
+unscrupulous woman, who was determined not to let her escape. Elvira’s
+longing to return home made her spread her toils closer. She kept
+her moving from one fashionable resort to another, still attended by
+Gilbert, who was beginning to grow impatient to secure his prize.
+
+“How I hated it,” said Elvira. “I knew she was false and cruel by that
+time, but it was just like being in a trap between them. I loathed them
+more and more, but I couldn’t get away.”
+
+Nurtured as she had been, she was helpless and ignorant about the
+commonest affairs of life, and the sight of American independence never
+inspired her with the idea of breaking the bondage in which she was
+spellbound. Still, she shrank back with instinctive horror from every
+advance of Gilbert’s, and at last, to pique her, Lisette brought forward
+the intelligence that Allen Brownlow was married.
+
+The effect must have surprised them, for Elvira turned on her aunt in
+one of those fits of passion which sometimes seized her, accused her
+vehemently of having poisoned the happiness of her life, and taken her
+from the only man she could ever love. She said and threatened all
+sorts of desperate things; and then the poor child, exhausted by her own
+violence, collapsed, and let herself be cowed and terrified in her turn
+by her aunt’s vulgar sneers and cold determination.
+
+Yet still she held out against the marriage. “I told them it would
+be wicked,” she said. “And when I went to Church, all the Psalms and
+everything said it would be wicked. Then Lisette said it was wicked to
+love a married man, and I said I didn’t know, I couldn’t help it, but it
+would be more wicked to vow I would love a man whom I hated, and should
+hate more every day of my life. Then they said I might have a civil
+marriage, and not vow anything at all, and I told them that would seem
+to me no better than not being married at all. Oh! I was very very
+miserable!”
+
+“Had you no one to consult or help you, my poor child?”
+
+“They watched me so, and whenever I was making friends with any nice
+American girl, they always rattled me off somewhere else. I never did
+understand before what people meant when they talked about God being
+their only Friend, but I knew it then, for I had none at all, none else.
+And I did not think He would help me, for now I knew I had been hard,
+and horrid and nasty, and cruel to you and Allen, the only people who
+ever cared for me for myself, and not for my horrid, horrid money,
+though I was the nastiest little wretch. Oh! Mother Carey, I did know it
+then, and I got quite sick with longing for one honest kiss--or even one
+honest scolding of yours. I used to cry all Church-time, and they used
+to try not to let me go--and I felt just like the children of Israel in
+Egypt, as if I had got into heavy bondage, and the land of captivity.
+O do speak, and let me hear your voice once more! Your arm is so
+comfortable.”
+
+Still it seemed that Elvira had resisted till another attempt was made.
+While she was at a boarding-house on the Hudson a large picnic party was
+arranged, in which, after American fashion, gentlemen took ladies “to
+ride” in their traps to and from the place of rendezvous. In returning,
+of course it had been as easy as possible for her chaperon to contrive
+that she should be left alone with no cavalier but Gilbert Gould, and he
+of course pretended to lose his way, drove on till night-fall, and then
+judgmatically met with an accident, which hurt nobody; but which he
+declared made the carriage incapable of proceeding.
+
+After walking what Elvira fancied half the night, shelter was found in
+a hospitable farmhouse, where the people were wakened with difficulty.
+They took care of the benighted wanderers, and the farmer drove them
+back to the hotel the next morning in his own waggon. They were received
+by Mrs. Gould with great demonstrations both of affection, pity and
+dismay, and she declared that the affair had been so shocking and
+compromising that it was impossible to stay where they were. She made
+Elvira take her meals in her room rather than face the boarding-house
+company, paid the bills (all of course with Elvira’s money) and carried
+her off to the Saratoga Springs, having taken good care not to allow
+her a minute’s conversation with anyone who would have told her that the
+freedom of American manners would make an adventure like hers be thought
+of no consequence at all.
+
+The poor girl herself was assured by Mrs. Gould that this “unhappy
+escapade” left her no alternative but a marriage with Gilbert. She would
+otherwise never be able to show her face again, for even if the affair
+were hushed up, reports would fly, and Mrs. Lisette took care they
+should fly, by ominous shakes of the head, and whispered confidences
+such as made the steadier portion of the Saratoga community avoid her,
+and brought her insolent attention from fast young men. It was this, and
+a cold “What can you expect?’” from Lisette that finally broke down
+her defences, and made her permit the Goulds to make known that she was
+engaged to Gilbert.
+
+Had they seized their prey at that moment of shame and despair, they
+would have secured it, but their vanity or their self-esteem made
+them wish to wash off the mire they had cast, or to conceal it by such
+magnificence at the wedding as should outdo Fifth Avenue. The English
+heiress must have a wedding-dress that would figure in the papers, and,
+even in the States, be fabulously splendid. It must come from Paris, and
+it must be waited for. All the bridesmaids were to have splendid pearl
+lockets containing coloured miniature photograph portraits of the
+beautiful bride, who for her part was utterly broken-hearted. “I thought
+God had forgotten me, because I deserved it; and I only hoped I might
+die, for I knew what the sailors said of Gilbert.”
+
+Listless and indifferent, she let her tyrants do what they would with
+her, and it was in Gilbert’s company that she first saw Janet at the
+photographer’s. Fortunately he had never seen Miss Brownlow, and Elvira
+had grown much too cautious to betray recognition; but the vigilance had
+been relaxed since the avowal of the engagement, and the colouring of
+the photographs from the life, was a process so wearisome, that no one
+cared to attend the sitter, and Elvira could go and come, alone and
+unquestioned.
+
+So it was that she threw herself upon Janet. Whatever had been their
+relations in their girlhood, each was to the other the remnant of the
+old home and of better days, and in their stolen interviews they met
+like sisters. Janet knew as little as Elvira did of her own family,
+rather less indeed, but she declared Mrs. Gould’s horror about the
+expedition with Gilbert to have been pure dissimulation, and soon
+enabled Elvira to prove to herself that it had been a concerted trick.
+In America it would go for nothing. Even in England, so mere an accident
+(even if it had really been an accident) would not tell against her. But
+then, Elvira hopelessly said Allen was married!
+
+Again Janet was incredulous, and when she found that Elvira had never
+seen the letter in which Kate Gould was supposed to have sent the
+information, and knew it only upon Lisette’s assertion, she declared it
+to be probably a fabrication. Why not telegraph? So in Elvira’s name
+and at her expense, but with the address given to Janet’s abode, the
+telegram was sent to Mr. Wakefield’s office, and in a few hours the
+reply had come back: “Allen Brownlow not married, nor likely to be.”
+
+There was no doubt now of the web of falsehood that had entangled the
+poor girl; but she would probably have been too inert and helpless
+to break through it, save for her energetic cousin, who nerved her to
+escape from the life of utter misery that lay before her. What was to
+hinder her from setting off by the train, and going at once home to
+England by the steamer? There was no doubt that Mrs. Brownlow would
+forgive and welcome her, or even if that hope failed her, Mr. Wakefield
+was bound to take care of her. She had a house of her own standing empty
+for her, and the owner of £40,000 a year need never be at a loss.
+
+Had she enough money accessible to pay for a first-class passage? Yes,
+amply even for two. She had always been so passive and incapable of all
+matters of arrangement, that Mrs. Gould had never thought it worth while
+to keep watch over her possession of “the nerves and sinews of war,”
+ being indeed unwilling to rouse her attention to the fact that she was
+paying the by no means moderate expenses of both her tyrants.
+
+Janet found out all about the hours, secured--as Elvira thought--two
+first-class berths, met her when she crept like a guilty thing out of
+the hotel at New York, took her to the station, went with her to an
+outfitter to be supplied with necessaries for the voyage, for she had
+been obliged to abandon everything but a few valuables in her handbag,
+and saw her safely on board, introduced her to some kind friendly
+English people, then on some excuse of seeing the steward, left her, as
+Elvira found, to make the voyage alone!
+
+It turned out that Janet had spoken to the gentleman of this party,
+and explained that her young cousin was going home alone, asking him to
+protect her on landing; and that she had come to London with them and
+been there put into a cab, giving the old address to Collingwood Street,
+where with much difficulty she had prevailed on the maid to let her in
+to await the return of the family.
+
+Nothing so connected as this history came to the ears of Mrs. Brownlow
+or her children. That evening they only heard fragments, much more that
+was utterly irrelevant, and much that was inexplicable, all interspersed
+with inquiries and caresses and intent listening for Allen. Elvira might
+not have acquired brains, but she had gained in sweetness and affection.
+The face had lost its soulless, painted-doll expression, and she was
+evidently happy beyond all measure to be among those she could love and
+trust, sitting on a footstool by Mrs. Brownlow’s knee, leaning against
+her, and now and then murmuring: “O Mother Carey, how I have longed for
+you!”
+
+She was not free from the fear that Lisette and Gilbert could still “do
+something to her,” but the Johns made large assurances of defence, and
+Mr. Wakefield was to be called in the next day. It must be confessed
+that everybody rather enjoyed the notion of the pair left at Saratoga
+with all their hotel bills to pay, and the wedding-dress on their hands,
+but Elvira knew they had enough to clear them for the week, and only
+hoped it was not enough to enable them to follow her.
+
+Fragments of all this came out in the course of the evening. Allen did
+not come home to dinner, and the other young men left the coast clear
+for confidences, which were uttered in the intervals of listening, till
+after all her excitement, her landing and her journey, Elvira was so
+tired out that she had actually dropped asleep, with her head on
+Mother Carey’s knee, when his soft weary step came up the stairs, and
+perceiving, as he entered, that there was a hush over the room, he
+did not speak. Babie looked up from her work with an amused smile of
+infinite congratulation. There was a glance from his mother. Then, as
+Babie put it, the Prince saw the Sleeping Beauty, and, with a strange
+long half-strangled gasp and clasped hands, went down on one knee. At
+that very moment Elvira stirred, opened her eyes, put her hand over
+them, bewildered, as if thinking herself dreaming, then with a sort of
+shriek of joy, flung herself towards him, as he held out his arms with
+“My darling.”
+
+“O Allen, can you forgive me? And oh! do marry me before they can come
+after me!”
+
+So much Mother Carey and Babie heard before they could remove themselves
+from the scene, which they felt ought to be a tete-a-tete. They shut the
+lovers in. Babie said, “Undine has found a heart, at least,” and
+then they began to piece out the story by conjecture, and they then
+discovered how little they had really learnt about Janet. They supposed
+that the Hermanns must be living and practising at Saratoga, and in that
+case it was no wonder she could not come home, the only strange thing
+was Elvira’s expecting it. Besides, why had not Mrs. Gould taken alarm
+at the name, and why was her husband never mentioned? Was there no
+message from her? Most likely there was, in the note that was lost, and
+moreover, Elvira might be improved, but she was Elvira still, and had
+room for very little besides herself in her mind’s eye.
+
+They must wait to examine her till these first raptures had subsided,
+and in the mean time Caroline wrote a telegram to go as early as
+possible to Mr. Wakefield. It showed a guilty conscience that Mrs. Gould
+should not have telegraphed to him Elvira’s flight.
+
+When at last Mrs. Brownlow held that the interview must come to an end,
+and with preliminary warning opened the door, there they were, with
+clasped hands, such as Elvira had never endured since she was a mere
+child! Allen looking almost too blissful for this world, and Elvira with
+eyes glistening with tears as she cried, “O Mother Carey, you never told
+me how altered he was, I never knew how horrible I had been till I saw
+how ill he looks! What can we do for him?”
+
+“You are doing everything, my darling,” said Allen.
+
+“He of course thinks her as irresponsible as if she had been hanging
+up by the hair all this time in a giant’s larder,” whispered Babie to
+Armine.
+
+But Elvira was really unhappy about the worn, faded air that made Allen
+look much older than his twenty-nine years warranted. The poor girl’s
+nerves proved to have been much disturbed; she besought Barbara to sleep
+with her, and was haunted by fears of pursuit and capture, and Gilbert
+claiming her after all. She kept on starting, clutching at Babie, and
+requiring to be soothed till far on into the night, and then she slept
+so soundly that no one had the heart to wake her. Indeed it was her
+first real peaceful repose since her flight had been planned, nor did
+she come down till half-past ten, just when Mr. Wakefield drove up to
+the door, and Jock had taken pity on Allen, and set forth to undertake
+Sir Samuel for the day. Mr. Wakefield was the less surprised at
+the sight of the young lady, having been somewhat prepared by her
+telegraphic inquiry about Allen, which he had not communicated to the
+Brownlows for fear of raising false expectations.
+
+There was a great consultation. Elvira was not in the least shy, and
+only wanted to be safely Mrs. Allen Brownlow before the Goulds should
+arrive, as she expected, in the next steamer to pursue her vi et armis.
+If it had depended on her, she would have sent Allen for a special
+licence, and been married in her travelling dress that very day. Mr.
+Wakefield, solicitor as he was, was quite ready for speed. He had always
+viewed the marriage with Allen Brownlow as a simple act of restitution,
+and the trust made settlements needless. Still he did not apprehend any
+danger from the Goulds, when he found that Elvira had never written
+a note to Gilbert in her life. Nay, he thought that if they even
+threatened any annoyance, they had given cause enough to have a
+prosecution for conspiracy held over them in wholesome terror.
+
+And considering all the circumstances, Mrs. Brownlow and Allen were
+alike determined against undignified haste. Miss Menella ought to be
+married from among her own kindred, and from her own house; but this was
+not easy to manage; for poor Mary Whiteside and her husband, though very
+worthy, were not exactly the people to enact parents in such a house
+as Belforest; and Mrs. Brownlow could see why she herself should not,
+though Elvira could not think why she objected. At last the idea was
+started that the fittest persons were Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield. The latter
+was a thorough lady, pleasant and sensible. The only doubt was whether
+so very quiet a person could be asked to undertake such an affair, and
+her husband took leave, that he might consult her and see whether she
+could bring herself to be mother for the nonce to the wild heiress, of
+whom his family were wont to talk with horrified compassion.
+
+When he was gone, it was possible to come to the examination upon Janet
+for which Mother Carey had been so anxious. How was she looking?
+
+“Oh! so old, and worn and thin. I never should have guessed it was
+Janet, if I had not caught her eye, and then I knew her eyebrows and
+nose, because they are just like Allen’s,--and her voice sounded so
+like home that I was ready to cry, only I did not dare, as Gilbert was
+there.”
+
+“I wonder they did not take alarm at her name.”
+
+“I don’t imagine they ever heard it.”
+
+“Not when she was living there? Was not her husband practising?”
+
+“Her husband! Oh no, I never heard any thing about him. I thought you
+knew I found her at the photographer’s?”
+
+“Met her as a sitter?”
+
+“Oh dear, no! I thought you understood. It was she that was doing my
+picture. She finishes up all his miniature photographs.”
+
+“My dear Elvira, do you really mean that my poor Janet is supporting
+herself in that way?”
+
+“Yes, indeed I do; that was why I made sure she would have come home
+with me. I was so dreadfully disappointed when I found only her note.”
+
+“And are you sure you have quite lost it?”
+
+“Yes, I turned out every corner of my bag this morning to look for it.
+I am so sorry, but I was so ill and so wretched, that I could not take
+care of anything. I just wonder how I lived through the voyage, all
+alone.”
+
+“Was there no message? Nothing for me.”
+
+“Yes, I have recollected it now, or some of it. She said she durst not
+go home, or ask anything of you, after the way she had offended. Oh! I
+wonder how she could send me, for I know I was worse.”
+
+“But what did she say?” said Caroline, too anxious to listen to Elvira’s
+own confessions. “Was there nothing for me?”
+
+“Yes.” She said, “Tell her that I have learnt by the bitterest of all
+experience the pain I have given her, and the wrong I have done!” Then
+there was something about being so utterly past forgiveness that she
+could not come to ask it. “Oh, don’t cry so, Mother Carey, we can write
+and get her back, and I will send her the passage money.”
+
+“Ah! yes, write!” cried out the mother, starting up. “‘When he was yet
+a great way off.’ Ah! why could she not remember that?” But as she sat
+down to her table, “You know her address?”
+
+“Yes, certainly, I went to her lodgings once or twice; such a little bit
+of a room up so many stairs.”
+
+“And you did not hear how that man, her husband, died?”
+
+“I don’t know whether he is dead,” said this most unsatisfactory
+informant. “She does not wear black, nor a cap, and I am almost sure
+that he has run away from her, and that is the reason she cannot use her
+own name.”
+
+“Elfie!”
+
+“O, I thought you knew! She calls herself Mrs. Harte. She took my
+passage in that name, and that must be why my things have never come.
+Yes, I asked her why she did not set up for a lady doctor, and she said
+it was impossible that she could venture on showing her certificates or
+using her name--either his or hers.”
+
+That was in the main all that could be extracted from Elvira, though it
+was brought out again and again in all sorts of forms. It was plain that
+Janet had been very reticent in all that regarded herself, and Elvira
+had only had stolen interviews, very full of her own affairs, and,
+besides, had supposed Janet to intend to return with her. Both wrote;
+Elfie, to announce her safety, and Caroline, an incoherent, imploring,
+forgiving letter, such as only a mother could write, before they went
+out to supply Elvira’s lack of garments, and to procure the order
+for the sum needed for her passage. Caroline was glad they had gone
+independently, for, on their return, Babie reported to her that her
+little Ladyship was so wroth with Elfie as to wonder at them for
+receiving her so affectionately. It was very forgiving of them, but she
+should never forget the way in which poor Allen had been treated.
+
+“I told her,” said Babie, “that was the way she talked about Cecil,
+and you should have seen her face. She wonders that Allen has not more
+spirit, and indeed, mother, I do rather wish Elfie could have come back
+with nothing but her little bag, so that he could have shown it would
+have been all the same.”
+
+“A comfortable life they would have had, poor things, in that case,”
+ laughed her mother, “though I agree that it would have been prettier.
+But I don’t trouble myself about that, my dear. You know, in all equity,
+Allen ought to have a share in that property. It was only the old man’s
+caprice that made it all or none; and Elvira is only doing what is right
+and just.”
+
+“And Allen’s love was a real thing, when he was the rich one. So I told
+Essie; and besides, Allen would never make any hand of poverty, poor
+fellow.”
+
+“I think and hope he will make a much better hand of riches than he
+would have done without all he has gone through,” said her mother.
+
+Allen showed the same feeling when he could talk his prospects over
+quietly with his mother. These four years had altered him at least as
+much for the better as Elfie. He would not now begin in thoughtless
+self-indulgence, refined indeed and never vicious, but selfish,
+extravagant, and heedless of all but ease, pleasure, and culture. Some
+of the enervation of his youth had really worn off, though it had so
+long made him morbid, and he had learnt humility by his failures. Above
+all, however, his intercourse with Fordham had opened his eyes to a
+sense of the duties of wealth and position, such as he had never before
+acquired, and the religious habits that had insensibly grown upon him
+were tincturing his views of life and responsibility.
+
+It was painful to him to realise that he was returning to wealth and
+luxury, indeed, monopolising it,--he the helpless, undeserving, indolent
+son, while all the others, and especially his mother, were left to
+poverty.
+
+Elfie wanted Mother Carey and all to make their home at Belforest, and
+still be one family as of old. Indeed, she hung on Mother Carey even
+more than upon Allen, after her long famine from the motherly tenderness
+that she had once so little appreciated.
+
+Of such an amalgamation, however, Mrs. Brownlow would not hear, nor
+would she listen to a proposal of settling on her a yearly income,
+such as would dispense with economy, and with the manufacture of
+“pot-boilers.”
+
+No, she said, she was a perverse woman, and she had never been so happy
+as when living on her husband’s earnings. The period of education being
+over, she had a full sufficiency, and should only meddle with clay again
+for her own pleasure. She was beginning already a set of dining-table
+ornaments for a wedding-present, representing the early part of the
+story of Undine. Babie knew why, if nobody else did. Perhaps she should
+one of these days mould a similar set for Sydney of the crusaders of
+Jotapata! Then Allen bethought him of putting into Elvira’s head to beg,
+at least, to undertake Armine’s expenses at the theological college for
+a year, and to this she consented thankfully. Armine had been thinking
+of offering himself as Allen’s successor for a year with Sir Samuel; but
+two days’ experience as substitute convinced him that Allen was right
+in declaring that my Lady would be the death of him. Lucas could manage
+her, and kept her well-behaved and even polite, but Armine was so young
+and so deferential that she treated him even worse than she did her
+first victim! She had begun by insisting on a quarter’s notice or
+the forfeiture of the salary, as long as she thought £25 was of vital
+importance to Allen, but as soon as she discovered that the young lady
+was a great heiress, she became most unedifyingly civil, called in
+great state in Collingwood Street, and went about boasting of having
+patronised a sort of prince in disguise.
+
+Meantime Dr. Ruthven’s offer seemed left in abeyance. Colonel Brownlow
+had all his son’s scruples, and more than his indignation at Lucas’s
+folly in hesitating; and John was so sure that he ought not to accept
+the proposal, that he would not stir in the matter, nor mention it
+to Sydney. At last Lucas acted on his own responsibility, and had an
+interview with Dr. Ruthven, in which he declined the offer for himself,
+but made it known that his cousin was not only brother to the beautiful
+Lady Fordham who had been met in Collingwood Street, but was engaged
+to Lord Fordham’s sister. At which connection the fashionable physician
+rubbed his hands with so much glee, that Jock was the more glad not to
+have to hunt in couples with him.
+
+The magnificent wedding-dress had been stopped by telegram, just as it
+was packed for New York, and was despatched to Belforest. Mrs. Wakefield
+undertook the task imposed upon her, and the wedding was to be grand
+enough to challenge attention, and not be liable to the accusation of
+being done in a corner. It might be called hasty, for only a month would
+have passed since Elvira’s arrival, before her wedding-day; but this
+was by her own earnest wish. She made it no secret that she should never
+cease to be nervous till she was Allen Brownlow’s wife, even though a
+letter to her cousins at River Hollow had removed all fear of pursuit
+by Mrs. Gould; she seemed bent on remaining at New York, and complained
+loudly of “the ungrateful girl,” whose personal belongings she retained
+by way of compensation.
+
+It would have been too much to expect that Elvira should be a wise and
+clever woman, but she had really learnt to be an affectionate one, and
+in the school of adversity had parted with much of her selfish petulance
+and arrogance. Allen, whose love had always been blindly tender, more
+like a woman’s or a parent’s love than that of an ordinary lover, was
+rapturous at the response he at last received. At the same time, he knew
+her too well to expect from her intellectual companionship, and would be
+quite content with what she could give.
+
+They were both of them chastened and elevated in tone by their five
+years’ discipline.
+
+The night before the party went down to Belforest, where they were to
+meet the Evelyns, Allen lingered with his mother after all the rest had
+gone upstairs.
+
+“Mother,” he said, “I have thought a great deal of that dream of yours.
+I hope that the touch of Midas may not be baneful this time.”
+
+“I trust not, my dear; you have had a taste of the stern, rugged nurse.”
+
+“And, mother, I know I failed egregiously where the others rose.”
+
+“But you were rising.”
+
+“Then you will let me do nothing for you, and I feel myself sneaking
+into your inheritance, to the exclusion of all the rest, in a backdoor
+sort of way.”
+
+“My dear Allen, it can’t be helped, you have honestly loved your Elf
+from her infancy, when she had nothing, and she really loved you at the
+very worst. Love is so much more than gold, that it really signifies
+very little which of you has the money. You and she have both gone
+through a good deal, and it depends upon you now whether the possession
+becomes a blessing to yourselves and others. Don’t vex about our not
+having a share, you know yourself how much happier we all are without
+the load, and there will never be any anxiety now. I shall always fall
+back on you, if I want anything.”
+
+“That is right,” said Allen, clearing up a good deal as she looked up
+brightly in his face. “You promise me.”
+
+“Of course I do,” she said smiling. “I’m not proud.”
+
+“And you did make Armine consent to our paying those expenses of his.
+That was good of you, but the boy only does it out of obedience.”
+
+“Yes, he would like a little bit of self-willed penance, but it is much
+better for him to submit, bodily and mentally.”
+
+“Elvira has asked me whether we can’t, after all, build the Church and
+all the rest which he wanted so much, and give it to him.”
+
+Caroline smiled, she would not vex Allen by saying how this was merely
+in the spirit of the story book, endowing everybody with what they
+wanted, but she said, “Build by all means, and endow, when you have had
+time to see what is needed, and what is good for the people, but not for
+Armine’s sake, you know. He had much better serve his apprenticeship and
+learn his work somewhere else. He would tell you so himself.”
+
+“I daresay. He would talk of the touch of Midas again. Elvira will be
+sadly disappointed. She had some fancy of presenting him to it as soon
+as he was ordained!”
+
+“Getting the fairies meantime to build the whole concern in secret? Dear
+Elfie, her plans are generous and kind. Tell her, with my love, that her
+Church must not be a shrine for Armine, but that perhaps he and it will
+be fit for each other in some five years’ time. Meantime, if she wants
+to make somebody happy, there’s that excellent hardworking curate of
+Eleanor’s, who has done more good in Kenminster than I ever saw done
+there before.”
+
+“I don’t see why Kencroft should get all the advantages!”
+
+“Ah! You ungrateful boy! Now if Rob had carried off Elfie, you might
+complain!”
+
+At which Allen could not but laugh.
+
+“And now, good night, Mr. Bridegroom; you want your beauty sleep, though
+I must say you look considerably younger than you did two months ago.”
+
+The wedding was a bright one, involving no partings, only joy and
+gladness, and the sole drawback to the general rejoicings seemed to
+be that it was not Mrs. Brownlow herself who was returning to take
+possession.
+
+But on that very afternoon came a chill on her heart. Her own letter and
+Elvira’s to Janet were returned from America! It was quite probable that
+the right address might have been in Elvira’s lost note, and that Janet
+might be easily found through the photographer. “But,” said her mother,
+“I do not believe she will ever come home unless I go to fetch her.”
+
+“The very thing I was thinking of doing,” said Jock. “Letters will
+hardly find her now, and I have not settled to anything. The dear old
+Doctor’s legacy will find the means.”
+
+“And I am sure you want the rest of the voyage. I don’t like the looks
+of you, my Jockey.”
+
+“I shall be all right when this is over,” said Jock, with an endeavour
+at laughing; “but I find I am a greater fool than I thought I was, and I
+had much better be out of the way of it all till it is a fait accompli.”
+
+“It” was of course John’s marriage. This was the first time Jock had
+seen the lovers together. In spite of vehement talking and laughing,
+warm greetings to everyone, and playing at every interval with the
+little cousins, Jock could not hide from either of the mothers that
+the sight cost him a good deal, all the more because the showing the
+Belforest haunts to Sydney had always been a favourite scheme, hitherto
+unfulfilled; nor was there any avoiding family consultations, which
+resulted in the fixing of the wedding for the middle of September, so
+that there might be time for a short tour before they settled down to
+John’s work in London.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn begged that Barbara would come to her whilst her mother and
+brother were away, Armine would be at his theological college, and there
+was nothing to detain Mrs. Brownlow and her son from the journey, to
+which both looked forward with absolute pleasure, not only in the hope
+of the meeting, but in the being together, and throwing off for a time
+the cares of home and gratifying the spirit of enterprise.
+
+Jock had one secret. He had reason to think that Bobus would have a kind
+of vacation at the time, and he telegraphed to Japan what their intended
+voyage was to be, with a hope he durst not tell, that his favourite
+brother would not throw away the opportunity of meeting them in America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL. -- EVIL OUT OF GOOD.
+
+
+
+     And all too little to atone
+     For knowing what should ne’er be known.
+                                             Scott.
+
+
+The season at Saratoga was not yet over, the travellers were told at
+New York, though people were fast thronging back into “the city.” Should
+they go on thither at once, or try to find the photographer nearer at
+hand? It was on a Friday that they landed, and they resolved to wait
+till Monday, Jock thinking that a rest would be better for his mother.
+
+The early autumn sun glowed on the broad streets as they walked slowly
+through them, halting to examine narrowly every display of portraits at
+a photographer’s door.
+
+It was a right course; they came upon some exquisitely-finished ones,
+among which they detected unmistakably the coloured likeness of Elvira
+de Menella. They went into the studio and asked to look at it. “Ah, many
+ask that,” they were told, “though the sensation was a little gone by.”
+
+“What sensation?” Jock asked, while his mother trembled so much that she
+had to sit down on one of the velvet chairs.
+
+“I guess you are a stranger, sir, from England? Then no doubt you have
+not heard of the great event of the season at Saratoga, the sudden
+elopement of this young lady, a beautiful English heiress, on the eve of
+marriage, these very portraits ordered for the bridesmaids’ lockets.”
+
+“Whom did she elope with?” asked Jock.
+
+“That’s the remarkable part of it, sir. Some say that she was claimed
+in secret by a lover to whom she had been long much attached; but we are
+better informed. I can state to a certainty that she only fled to escape
+the tyranny of an aunt. She need only have appealed to the institutions
+of the country.”
+
+“Very true,” said Jock. “Let me ask if your informant was not the lady
+who coloured this photograph, Mrs. Harte?” “Yes.” “And is she here?”
+
+“No, sir,” with some hesitation.
+
+“Can you give me her address? I am her brother. This lady is her mother,
+and we are very anxious to find her.”
+
+The photographer was gained by the frank address and manner. “I am
+sorry,” he said, “but the truth is that there was a monster excitement
+about the disappearance of the girl, and as Mrs. Harte was said to have
+been concerned, there was constant resort to the studio to interview
+her; and I cannot but think she treated me ill, sir, for she quitted me
+at an hour’s notice.”
+
+“And left no address?” exclaimed her mother, grievously disappointed.
+
+“Not with me, madam; but she was intimate with a young lady employed in
+our establishment, and she may know where to find her.”
+
+And, through a tube, the photographer issued a summons, which resulted
+in the appearance of a pleasant-looking girl, who, on hearing that Mrs.
+Harte’s mother and brother were in search of her, readily responded that
+Mrs. Harte had written to her a month ago from Philadelphia, asking her
+to forward to her any letters that might come to the room she usually
+occupied at New York. She had found employment, and there could be no
+doubt that she would be heard of there.
+
+It was very near now. There was something very soothing in the services
+of that Sunday of waiting, when the Church seemed a home on the other
+side the sea, and on the Monday they were on their way, hearing, but
+scarcely heeding, the talk in the cars of the terrible yellow-fever
+visitation then beginning at New Orleans.
+
+They arrived too late to do anything, but in early morning they were
+on foot, breakfasting with the first relay of guests at the hotel, and
+inquiring their way along the broad tree-planted streets of the old
+Quaker city.
+
+It was again at a photograph shop that they paused, but as they were
+looking for the number, the private door opened, and there issued from
+it a grey figure, with a black hat, and a bag in her hand. She stood on
+the step, they on the side-walk. She had a thin, worn, haggard face, a
+strange, grey look about it, but when the eyes met on either side there
+was not a moment’s doubt.
+
+There was not much demonstration. Caroline held out her hand, and Janet
+let hers be locked tight into it. Jock took her bag from her, and they
+went two or three paces together as in a dream, till Jock spoke first.
+
+“Where are we going? Can we come back with you, Janet, or will you come
+to the hotel with us?”
+
+“I was just leaving my rooms,” she said. “I was on my way to the
+station.”
+
+“You will come with me,” said Caroline under her breath; and Janet
+passively let herself be led along, her mother unconsciously holding her
+painfully fast.
+
+So they reached the hotel, and then Jock said, “I shall go and read the
+papers; send a message for me if you want me. You had rather be left to
+yourselves.”
+
+The mother knew not how she reached her bedroom, but once there, and
+with the door locked, she turned with open arms. “Oh! Janet, one kiss!”
+ and Janet slid down on the floor before her, hiding her face in her
+dress and sobbing, “Oh! mother, mother, I am not worthy of this!”
+
+Then Caroline flung herself down by her, and gathered her into her
+arms, and Janet rested her head on her shoulder for some seconds, each
+sensible of little save absolute content.
+
+“And you have come all this way for me?” whispered Janet, at last
+raising her head to gaze at the face.
+
+“I did so long after you! My poor, poor child, how you have suffered,”
+ said Caroline, drawing through her fingers the thin, worn, bony,
+hard-worked hand.
+
+“I deserved a thousand times more,” said Janet. “But it seems all gone
+since I see you, mother. And if you forgive, I can hope God forgives
+too.”
+
+“My child, my child,” and as the strong embrace, and the kiss was on her
+brow, Janet lay still once more in the strange rest and relief. “It is
+very strange,” she said. “I thought the sight of you would wither me
+with shame, but somehow there’s no room for anything but happiness.”
+
+Renewed caresses, for her mother was past speaking.
+
+“And Lucas is with you? Not Babie?”
+
+“No, Babie is left with Mrs. Evelyn.”
+
+“So poor little Elvira came safe home?”
+
+“Yes, and is Mrs. Allen Brownlow. Poor child, you rescued her from a sad
+fate. She believed to the last you were coming with her, and she lost
+your note, or you would have heard from us sooner.”
+
+Janet went on asking questions about the others. Her mother dreaded to
+put any, and only replied. Janet asked where they had been living, and
+she answered:
+
+“In the old house, while the two Johns have been studying medicine.”
+
+“Not Lucas?” cried Janet, sitting upright in her surprise.
+
+“Yes, Lucas. The dear fellow gave up all his prospects in the army,
+because he thought it would be more helpful to me for him to take this
+line, and he has passed so well, Janet. He has got the silver medal, and
+his essay was the prize one.”
+
+“And--” Janet stood up and walked to the window, as she said “and you
+have told him--”
+
+“Yes. But, Janet, it was too late. Some hints of your father’s had been
+followed up, and the main discovery worked out, though not perfected.”
+
+Janet’s eyes glistened for a moment as they used to do in angry
+excitement, and she asked, “Could he bear it?”
+
+“He was chiefly concerned lest I should be disappointed. Then he
+reminded me that the benefit to mankind had come all the sooner.”
+
+“Ah!” said Janet with a gasp, “there’s the difference!” She did not
+explain further, but said, “It has not poisoned his life!”
+
+Then seeking in her bag, she took out a packet. “I wish you to know all
+about it, mother,” she said. “I wrote this to send home by Elvira, but
+then my heart failed me. It was well, since she lost my note. I kept
+it, and when I did not hear from you, I thought I would leave it to be
+posted when all was over with me. I should like you to read it, and I
+will tell you anything else you like to know.”
+
+There came the interruption of the hotel luncheon, after which a room
+was engaged for Janet, and the use of a private parlour secured for
+the afternoon and evening. Jock came and went. He was very much excited
+about the frightful reports he heard of the ravages of yellow fever
+in the south, and went in search of medical papers and reports. Janet
+directed him where to seek them. “I was just starting to offer myself as
+an attendant,” she said. “I shall still go, to-morrow.”
+
+“You? Oh, Janet, not now!” was her mother’s first exclamation.
+
+“You will understand when you have read,” quietly said Janet.
+
+All that afternoon, according to her manifest wish, her mother was
+reading that confession of hers, while she sat by replying to each
+question or comment, in the repose of a confidence such as had not
+existed for fifteen years.
+
+
+“Magnum Bonum,” wrote Janet. “So my father named it. Alas! it has been
+Magnum Malum to me. I have thought over how the evil began. I think it
+must have been when I brooded over the words I caught at my father’s
+death-bed, instead of confessing to my mother that I had overheard them.
+It might be reserve and dread of her grief, but it was not wholly so.
+I did not respect her as I ought in my childish conceit. I was an
+old-fashioned girl. Grandmamma treated her like a petted eldest child,
+and I had not learnt to look up to her with any loyalty. My uncle and
+aunt too, even while seeming to uphold her authority, betrayed how
+cheaply they held her.”
+
+“No wonder,” said Caroline. “I was a very foolish creature then.”
+
+“I saw you differently too late,” said Janet. “Thus unchecked by any
+sober word, my imagination went on dwelling on those words, which
+represented to me an arcanum as wonderful as any elixir of life that
+alchemists dream of, and I was always figuring to myself the honour and
+glory of the discovery, and fretting that it was destined to one of my
+brothers rather than myself. Even then, I had some notion of excelling
+them, and fretted at our residence at Kenminster because I was cut off
+from classes and lectures. Then came the fortune, and I saw at the
+first glance that wealth would hinder all the others, even Robert, from
+attempting to fulfil the conditions, and I imagined myself persevering
+and winning the day. As to the concealment of the will, I can honestly
+say that, to my inexperienced fancy, it appeared utterly unlike my
+father’s and grandmother’s, and at the moment I hid it, I only thought
+of the disturbance and discomfort, which scruples of my mother’s would
+create, and the unpleasantness it would make with Elvira, with whom I
+had just been quarrelling. When as I grew older, and found the validity
+of wills did not depend on the paper they were written upon, I had
+qualms which I lulled by thinking that when my education was safe, and
+Elvira safely married to Allen, I would look again and then bring it to
+light, if needful. My mother’s refusal to commit the secret to me on any
+terms entirely alienated me, I am grieved to say. I have learnt since
+that she was quite right, and that she could not help it. It was only my
+ignorance that rebelled; but I was enraged enough to have produced the
+will, and perhaps should have done so, if I had not been afraid both of
+losing my own medical training, and of causing Robert to take up that
+line, in which I knew he could succeed better than anyone.”
+
+“Janet, this must be fancy!”
+
+“No, mother. There’s no poison like a blessing turned into a curse. This
+is the secret history of what made me such a disagreeable, morose girl.
+
+“Then came the opportunity that enabled me to glance at the book of
+my father’s notes. Barbara’s eyes made me lock the desk in haste and
+confusion. It was really and truly accident that I locked the book out
+instead of in. As you know, Barbara hid away the davenport, and I could
+not restore the book, when I had pored over it half the night, and found
+myself quite incompetent to understand the details, though I perceived
+the main drift. I durst not take the book out of the house, and the loss
+of my keys cut me off from access to it. Meantime I studied, and came
+to the perception that a woman alone could never carry out the needful
+experiments, I must have a man to help me, but I was too much warped by
+this time to see how my mother was thus justified. I still looked on
+her as insanely depriving me of my glory, the world of the benefit for
+a mere narrow scruple. Then I fell in with Demetrius Hermann. How can
+I tell the story? How he seemed to me the wisest and acutest of human
+beings, the very man to assist in the discovery, and how I betrayed to
+him enough by my questions to make him think me a prize, both for my
+secret and my fortune. He says I deceived him. Perhaps I did. Any
+way, we are quits. No, not quite, for I loved him as I should not have
+thought it in me to love anyone, and the very joy and gladness of the
+sensation made me see with his eyes, or else be preposterously blind.
+I think his southern imagination made his expectations of the secret
+unreasonable, and I followed his bidding blindly and implicitly in my
+two attempts to bring off Magnum Bonum, which I had come to believe my
+right, unjustly withheld from me. The second attempt, as you know, ended
+in the general crash.
+
+“Afterwards, all the overtures were made by my husband. I would not
+share in them. I was too proud and would not come as a beggar, or see
+him threaten and cringe as unhappily I knew he could do, nor would I be
+seen by my mother or brothers. I knew they would begin to pity me, and I
+could not brook that. My mother’s assurance of exposure, if he made any
+use of the stolen secret, made Demetrius choose to go to America.
+
+“He said it all came out before my military brother. Did that change
+Lucas’s destination?” said Janet, looking up.
+
+“Ask him?”
+
+“No, indeed,” said Jock, when he understood. “I turned doctor as the
+readiest way of looking after mother.”
+
+“Did you understand nothing?”
+
+“Only that she had some memoranda of my father’s, that the sc---- that
+Hermann wanted. I never thought of them again till she told me.”
+
+Mrs. Brownlow started at the next few words.
+
+“My child was born only two days after we landed at New York.”
+
+But a quick interrogative glance kept her silent. “She was very small
+and delicate, and her father was impatient both of her weakness and
+mine. I think that was when I began to long for my mother. He made
+me call her Glykera, after his mother. I had taught him to be bitter
+against mine.”
+
+“O mother, if you could have seen her,” suddenly exclaimed Janet, “she
+was the dearest little thing,” and she drew from her bosom a locket with
+a baby face on one side, and some soft hair on the other, put it into
+her mother’s hand and hid her face on her shoulder.
+
+“Oh! my poor Janet, you have suffered indeed! How long did you keep the
+little darling?”
+
+“Two years. You will hear! I was not quite wretched while I had her. Go
+on, mother. There’s no talking of it.”
+
+“We tried both practising and lecturing, feeling our way meantime
+towards the Magnum Bonum. We found, however, in the larger cities that
+people were quite as careful about qualifications as at home, and that
+we wanted recommendations. I could have got some practice among women if
+Demetrius would have rested long enough anywhere, but he liked lecturing
+best. I had been obliged to perceive that he had very little real
+science, and indeed I had to give him the facts and he put them in his
+flowery language. While as to Magnum Bonum, he had gained enough to use
+it in a kind of haphazard way, for everything. I trembled at what he
+began doing with it, when in the course of our wanderings we got out of
+the more established regions into the south-west. In Texas we found a
+new township, called Burkeville, without a resident medical man, and the
+fame of his lectures had gone far enough for him to be accepted. There
+we set up our staff, and Demetrius--it makes me sick to say so--tried
+to establish himself as the possessor of a new and certain cure. I was
+persuaded that he did not know how to manage it, I tried to make him
+understand that under certain conditions it might be fatal, but he
+thought I was jealous. He had had one or two remarkable successes, his
+fame was spreading, he was getting reckless, and I could not watch as
+carefully as I sometimes did, for my child was ill, and needed all my
+care. The favourite of all the parish was the minister’s daughter, a
+beautiful, lively, delicate girl, loved and followed like a sort of
+queen by the young men, of whom there were many, while there were hardly
+any other young women, none to compare with her. Demetrius had lost some
+patients, it was a sickly season, and I fancy there was some mistrust
+and exasperation against him already, for he was incompetent, and grew
+more averse to consulting me when his knowledge was at fault. I need
+not blame him. Everyone at home knows that I do not always make myself
+agreeable, and I had enough to exacerbate me, with my child pining in
+the unhealthy climate, and my father’s precious secret used with the
+rough ignorance of an empiric. I knew enough of the case of this Annie
+Field to be sure that there were features in it which would make that
+form of treatment dangerous. I tried to make him understand. He thought
+me jealous of his being called in rather than myself. Well--she died,
+and such a storm of vengeance arose as is possible in those lawless
+parts. I knew and heeded nothing of it, for my little Glykera was worse
+every day, and I thought of nothing else, but it seems that reports
+unfavourable to us had come from some one of the cities where we had
+tried to settle, and thus grief and rage had almost maddened one of
+Annie’s lovers, a young man of Irish blood, a leader among the rest. On
+the day of her funeral all the ruffianism in the place was up in arms
+against us. My husband had warning, I suppose, for I never saw or heard
+of him since he went out that morning, leaving me with my little one
+moaning on my lap. She was growing worse every hour, and I knew nothing
+else, till my door was burst open by a little boy of eight or ten years
+old, crying out, ‘Mrs. Hermann, Mrs. Hermann, quick, they are coming to
+lynch you! come away, bring the baby. If father can’t stop them, there’s
+no place safe but our house.’
+
+“And indeed upon the air came the sound of a great, horrible, yelling
+roar unspeakably dreadful. It seems never to have been out of my ears
+since. I do not know whether an American mob would have proceeded to
+extremities with a lonely woman and dying child, but there was an
+Irish and Spanish element of ferocity at Burkeville, and the cold, hard
+Englishwoman was unpopular, besides that, I was supposed to share in
+the irregular practice that had had such fatal effects. But with that
+horrible sound, one did not stop to weigh probabilities. I gathered up
+my child in her bed-clothes, and followed the boy out at the back
+door, blindly. And where do you think I found myself? where but in the
+minister’s house? His wife, whose daughter had just been carried out
+to her grave, rose up from weeping and praying, to take me into
+the innermost chamber, where none could see me, and when she saw my
+darling’s state, to give me all the help and sympathy a good woman
+could. Oh! that was my first true knowledge of Christian charity.
+
+“Mr. Field himself was striving at the very grave itself to turn away
+the rage of these men against those whom they held his daughter’s
+murderers, but he was as nothing against some fifty or sixty gathered,
+I suppose, some by real or fancied wrongs, some from mere love
+of violence. Any way, when he found himself powerless against the
+infuriated speeches of the young Irish lover, he put his little boy over
+the graveyard wall, and sent him off to take me to the last place where
+the mob would look for me, the very room where Annie died. Those howls
+and yells round the empty house, perhaps, too, the shaking of my rapid
+run, hastened the end with my precious child. I do not believe she
+could have lived many hours, but the fright brought on shudderings and
+convulsions, and she was gone from me by nine that evening. They might
+have torn me to pieces then, and I would have thanked them! I cannot
+tell you the goodness of the Fields. It could not comfort me then, but I
+have wondered over it often since.” (There were blistered, blotted tear
+marks here.) “They knew it was not safe for me to remain, for there had
+been wild talk of a warrant out against us for manslaughter. They would
+have had me leave my little darling’s form to their care, but they saw
+I dreaded (unreasonably I now think) some insult from those ruffians for
+her father’s sake. Mr. Field said I should lay my little one to her rest
+myself. They found a long basket like a cradle. We laid her there in her
+own night-dress, looking so sweet and lovely. Mr. Field himself went out
+and dug the little grave, close to Annie’s, and there by moonlight we
+laid her, and the good man put one of the many wreaths from Annie’s
+grave upon hers, and there we knelt and he prayed. I don’t know what
+denomination his may be, but a Christian I know he is. Cruel as the very
+sight of me must have been, they kept me in bed all the next day; and
+the minister went to see what he could save for me. Finding no one, the
+mob had wreaked their vengeance on our medicine bottles and glasses,
+smashed everything, and made terrible havoc of all our books, clothes
+and furniture. Almost the only thing Mr. Field had found unhurt was
+mother’s little Greek Testament, which I had carried about, but utterly
+neglected till then. Mr. Field saw my name in it, brought it to me, and
+kindly said he was glad to restore it; none could be utterly desolate
+whose study lay there. I was obliged to tell him how you had sent it
+after me with that entreaty, which I had utterly neglected, and you can
+guess how he urged it on me.”
+
+“You have gone on now,” said her mother, looking up at her.
+
+Janet’s reply was to produce the little book from her handbag, showing
+marks of service, and then to open it at the fly leaf. There Caroline
+herself had written “Janet Hermann,” with the reference to St. Luke
+xv. 20. She had not dared to write more fully, but the good minister of
+Burkeville had, at Janet’s desire, put his own initials, and likewise
+written in full:
+
+“Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work
+shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the
+land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that
+thy children shall come again to their own border.”
+
+“He might have written it for me,” said Caroline. “My child--one at
+least is come to me.”
+
+“Or you have gone into her far country to seek her,” said Janet.
+
+“Can I write to this good man?” asked Caroline. “I do long to thank
+him.”
+
+“O yes. I wrote to him only the day before yesterday.”
+
+There was but little more of the narrative. “At night he borrowed a
+waggon, and drove me to a station in time to take the early train for
+the north-east, supplying me with means for the journey, and giving me a
+letter to a family relation of his, in New York State. I was most kindly
+sheltered there for a few days while I looked out for advertisements.
+I found, however, that I must change my name, for the history of
+the Burkeville affair was copied into all the papers, and there were
+warnings against the two impostors, giving my maiden name likewise, as
+that in which my Zurich diploma had been made out. This cut me off from
+all medical employment, and I had to think what else I could do, not
+that I cared much what became of me. Seeing a notice that an assistant
+was wanted to colour and finish photographs, I thought my drawing,
+though only schoolroom work, might serve. I applied, showed specimens,
+and was thought satisfactory. I sent my address to Mr. Field, who had
+promised to let me know in case my husband made any attempt to trace me,
+or if I could find my way back to him, but up to this time I have heard
+absolutely nothing. The few white days in my life are, however, when
+I get a cheering, comforting letter from him. How I should once have
+laughed their phraseology to scorn, but then I did not know what reality
+meant, and they are the only balm of my life now, except mother’s little
+book, and what they have led me to.
+
+“But you see why I cannot come with Elvira. Not only do I not dare to
+meet my mother, but it might bring down upon her one whom she could not
+welcome. Besides, it is clearly fit that I should strive to meet him
+again; I would try to be less provoking to him now.”
+
+“I see, my dear,” said Caroline. “But why did you never draw on Mr.
+Wakefield all this time?”
+
+“I never thought we ought to take that money,” said Janet. “I could
+maintain myself, and that was all I wanted. Besides I was ashamed to bid
+him use a false name, and I durst not receive a letter under my own, nor
+did I know whether Demetrius might go on applying.”
+
+“He did once, saying that you were unwell, but Mr. Wakefield declined to
+let him be supplied with out your signature.”
+
+Janet eagerly asked the when and the where.
+
+“I am glad,” said her mother, “to find that you change of name was not
+in order to elude him, as feared at first.”
+
+“No,” said Janet, “he never knew he was cruel, but he had made a mistake
+altogether in me. I was a disappointment to begin with, owing to my
+own bad management, you see, for if I had brought off the book, and
+destroyed the will, his speculation would have succeeded. And then,
+for his comfort, he should have married a passive, ignorant, senseless,
+obedient oriental, and he did not know what to do with a cold, proud
+thing, who looked most hard when most wretched, who had understanding
+enough to see his blunders, and remains of conscience enough to make her
+sour. Poor Demetrius! He had the worst of the bargain! And now--” She
+turned the leaf of the manuscript, and showed, with a date three days
+back:
+
+“Mr. Field has written to me, sending a cutting of an advertisement of
+a month back of a spiritualist from Abville, which he thinks may be my
+husband’s. I am sure it is, I know the Greek idiom put into English. It
+decides me on what I had thought of before. I shall offer my services
+as nurse or physician, or whatever they will let me be in that stress of
+need. I may find him, or if he have fled, I may, if I live, trace him.
+At any rate, by God’s grace, I may thus endeavour to make a better use
+of what has never yet been used for His service.
+
+“And in case I should add no further words to this, let me conclude by
+telling my dear, dear mother that my whole soul and spirit are asking
+her forgiveness, and by sending my love to my brothers, and sister,
+whom I love far better now than ever I did when I was with them. And to
+Elvira too--perhaps she is my sister by this time.
+
+“Let them try henceforth to think not unkindly of
+
+“JANET HERMANN.”
+
+
+This had been enclosed in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Joseph Brownlow,
+to the care of Wakefield and Co., solicitors.
+
+“You see I cannot go back with you, mother dear,” she said, “though you
+have come to seek me.”
+
+“Not yet,” said Caroline, handing the last page to Jock, who had come
+back again from one of his excursions.
+
+“Look here, Janet,” said Jock, “mother will not forbid it, I know. If
+you will wait another day for me to arrange for her, I will go with
+you. This is a place specially mentioned as in frightful need of medical
+attendance, and I already doubted whether I ought not to volunteer, but
+if you have an absolute call of duty there, that settles it. Mother, do
+you remember that American clergyman who dined with us? I met him just
+now. He begged me with all his heart to persuade you to come and stay
+with his family. I believe he is going to bring his wife to call. I am
+sure they would take care of you.”
+
+“I don’t want care. Jock, Jock, why should I not go and help? Do you
+think I can send my children into the furnace without me?”
+
+Jock came and sat down by her with his specially consoling caress.
+“Mother dear, I don’t think you ought. We are trained to it, you see,
+and it is part of our vocation, besides, Janet has a call. But your
+nursing would not make much difference, and besides, you don’t belong
+only to us--Armine and Babie need their home. And suppose poor Bobus
+came back. No, I am accountable to them all. They didn’t send me out in
+charge of my Mother Carey that I should run her into the jaws of Yellow
+Jack. I can’t do it, mother. I should mind my own business far less if I
+were thinking about you. It would be just like your coming after me into
+a general engagement.”
+
+“Lucas is quite right,” said Janet. “You know, mother, this is a special
+kind of nursing, that one does not understand by the light of nature,
+and you are not strong enough or tough enough for it.”
+
+“I flattered myself I was pretty tough,” said her mother, with trembling
+lip. “What sort of a place is it? Could not I--even if you won’t let me
+nurse--be near enough to rest you, and feed you, and disinfect you? That
+is my trade, Jock will allow, as a doctor’s wife and mother. And I could
+collect things and send them to the sick. Would not that be possible, my
+dears?”
+
+Jock said he would find out. And then he told them he had found a Church
+with a daily service, to which they went.
+
+And then those three had a wonderfully happy evening together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI. -- GOOD OUT OF EVIL.
+
+
+
+                       How the field of combat lay
+     By the tomb’s self; how he sprang from ambuscade--
+     Captured Death, caught him in that pair of hands.
+                                                  Browning.
+
+
+“John,” said Sydney, as they were taking their last walk together as
+engaged people on the banks of their Avon, “There’s something I think I
+ought to tell you.”
+
+“Well, my dearest.”
+
+“Don’t they say that there ought not to be any shadow of concealment
+of the least little liking for any one else, when one is going to be
+married,” quoth Sydney, not over lucidly.
+
+“I’m sure I can safely acquit myself of any such shadow,” said John,
+laughing. “I never had the least little liking for anybody but Mother
+Carey, and that wasn’t a least little one at all!”
+
+“Well, John, I’m very much ashamed of it, because he didn’t care for me,
+as it turned out; but if he had, as I once thought, I should have liked
+him,” said Sydney, looking down, and speaking with great confusion out
+of the depths of her conscience, stirred up by much ‘Advice to Brides,’
+and Sunday novels, all turning on the lady’s error in hiding her first
+love; and then perhaps because the effect on John was less startling
+than she had expected, she added with another effort, “It was Lucas
+Brownlow.”
+
+“Jock!” cried John. “The dear fellow!”
+
+“Yes--I did think it, when he was in the Guards, and always about with
+Cecil. It was very silly of me, for he did not care one fraction.”
+
+“Why do you think so?” said John hoarsely.
+
+“Well, I know better now, but when he made up his mind to leave the
+army, I fancied it was no better than being a recreant knight, and I
+begged and prayed him to go out with Sir Philip Cameron, and as near as
+I dared told him it was for my sake. But he went on all the same, and
+then I was quite sure he did not care, and saw what a goose I had made
+of myself. Oh! Johnny, it has been very hard to tell you, but I thought
+I ought, and I hope you’ll never think of it more, for Lucas just
+despised my foolish forwardness, and you know you have every bit of my
+heart and soul. What is the matter, John? Oh! have I done harm, when I
+meant to do right?”
+
+“No, no, my darling, don’t be startled. But do you mean that you really
+thought Jock’s disregard of your entreaties came from indifference?”
+
+“It was all one mixture of pain and anger,” said Sydney. “I can’t define
+it. I thought it was one’s duty to lead a man to be courageous and
+defend his country, and of course he thought me such a fool. Why, he has
+never really talked to me since!”
+
+“And you thought it was indifference,” again repeated John, with an
+iteration worthy of his father.
+
+“O John, you frighten me. Wasn’t it? Did you know this before?”
+
+“No, most certainly not. I did know thus much, that in giving up the
+army Jock had given up his dearest hopes; but I thought it was some fine
+fashionable lady, whom he was well rid of, though he didn’t know it.
+And he never said a word to betray it, even when I came home brimful and
+overflowing with happiness. And you know it was his doing that my way
+has been smoothed. Oh! Sydney, I don’t know how to look at it!”
+
+“But indeed, John dear, I couldn’t help loving you best. You saved me,
+you know, and I feel to fit in, and understand you best. I can’t be
+sorry as it has turned out.”
+
+“That’s very well,” said John, trying to laugh, “for you couldn’t be
+transferred back to him, like a bale of goods. And I could not have
+helped loving you; but that I should have been a robber, Jock’s worst
+enemy!”
+
+“I can’t be sorry you did not guess it,” said Sydney. “Then I never
+should have had you, and somehow--”
+
+“And you thought him wanting in courage,” recurred John.
+
+“Only when I was wild and silly, talking out of the ‘Traveller’s Joy.’
+It was hearing about his going into that dreadful place that stirred it
+all up in my mind, because I saw what a hero he is.”
+
+“God grant he may come safe out of it!” said John. “I’ll tell you
+what, Sydney, though, it is a shame, when I am the gainer: I think your
+romance went astray; more faith and patience would have waited to see
+the real hero come out, and so you have missed him and got the ordinary,
+jog-trot, commonplace fellow instead.”
+
+“Ah! but love must be at the bottom of faith and patience,” said
+Sydney, “and that was scared away by shame at my own forwardness and
+foolishness. And now it is all gone to the jog-trot! I want no better
+hero!”
+
+“What a confession for the maiden of the twelfth century!”
+
+“I’m very glad you don’t feel moved to start off to the yellow fever.”
+
+“Do you know, Sydney, I do not know what I don’t feel moved to
+sometimes, I cannot understand this silence!”
+
+“But you said the telegram that he was mending was almost better than if
+he had never been ill at all.”
+
+“So I thought then; but why do we not hear, if all is well with them?”
+
+Three weeks since, a telegram had been received by Allen, containing the
+words, “Janet died at 2.30 A.M. Lucas mending.”
+
+It had been resolved not to put off the wedding, as much inconvenience
+would have been caused, and poor Janet was only cousin to John, and
+had been removed from all family interests so long, even Mrs. Robert
+Brownlow saw no impropriety, since Barbara went to Belforest for a
+fortnight, returning to Mrs. Evelyn on the afternoon of the wedding-day
+itself to assist in her move to the Dower House. Esther, who had never
+professed to wish for a hero, had been so much disturbed by the recent
+alarms of war, that she was only anxious that her guardsman should
+safely sell out in the interval of peace; and he had begun to care
+enough about the occupations at Fordham to wish to be free to make it
+his chief dwelling-place.
+
+The wedding was as quiet as possible. Sydney was disappointed of the
+only bridesmaid she cared much about, and Barbara felt a kind of relief
+in not having a second time to assist at the destruction of a brother’s
+hopes. She was very glad to get back to Fordham, reporting that Allen
+and Elvira were so devotedly in love that a third person was very much
+de trop; though they had been very kind, and Elvira had mourned poor
+Janet with real gratitude and affection. Still they did not take half
+so much alarm at the silence as she did, and she was relieved to be with
+the Evelyns, who were becoming very anxious. The bridegroom and bride
+could not bear to go out of reach of intelligence, and had limited their
+tour to the nearest place on the coast, where they could hear by half a
+day’s post.
+
+No news had come except that seven American papers had been forwarded to
+Barbara, giving brief accounts of the pestilence in the southern cities.
+The numbers of deaths in Abville were sensibly decreased, one of these
+papers said. The arrival of an English physician, Dr. Lucas Brownlow,
+and his sister had been noticed, and also that the sister had succumbed
+to the disease, but that he was recovering. These were all,
+however, only up to the date of the telegram, and the sole shadow of
+encouragement was in the assurances that any really fatal news would
+have been telegraphed. Mrs. Evelyn and Barbara were very loving
+companions during this time. Together they looked over those personal
+properties of Duke’s which rather belonged to his mother than his heir.
+Mrs. Evelyn gave Barbara several which had special associations for her,
+and together they read over his papers and letters, laughing tenderly
+over those that awoke droll remembrances, and perfectly entering into
+one another’s sympathies.
+
+“Yet, my dear,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “I do not know whether I ought to let
+you dwell on this: you are too young to be looking back on a grave when
+all life is before you.”
+
+“Nay,” said Babie, “it was he that showed me how to look right on
+through life! You cannot tell how delightful it is to me to be brought
+near to him again, now I can understand him so much better than ever I
+did when he was here.”
+
+“Yet it was always his fear that he might sadden your life.”
+
+“Sadden? oh no! It was he who put life into my hands, as something worth
+using,” said Babie. “Don’t you know it is the great glory and quiet
+secret treasure of my heart, that, as Jock said that first night, I have
+that love not for time but eternity.”
+
+And their thoughts could not but go back to the travellers in America,
+and all the possibilities, for were not whole families swept off by the
+disease, without power of communication?
+
+However, at last, four days after the wedding, Barbara received a
+letter.
+
+
+                              “Ashton Vineyard, Virginia.
+                                            September 30th.
+
+“MY DEAREST BABIE,--I have left you too long without tidings, but I have
+had little time, and no heart to write, and I could not bear to send
+such news without details. Of the ten terrible days at Abville I may, if
+I can, tell you when we meet. I was in a sort of country house a little
+above the valley of the shadow of death, preparing supplies, and keeping
+beds ready for any of the exhausted workers who could snatch a rest in
+the air of the hill. I scarcely saw my poor Janet. She had made out that
+her husband had been one of the first victims, before she even guessed
+at his being there. She only came once to tell me this, and they would
+not even allow me to come down to the Church, where all the clergy,
+doctors and sisters who could, used to meet, every morning and evening.
+
+“On the tenth day she brought home Jock, smitten down after incessant
+exertion. Everyone allows that he saved more cases than anyone, though
+he says it was the abatement of the disease. Janet declares that his was
+a slight attack. If that was slight! She attended to him for two days,
+then told me the crisis was past and that he would live, and almost
+at the same time her strength failed her. The last thing she said
+consciously to me was, ‘Don’t waste time on me. I know these symptoms.
+Attend to Jock. That is of use. Only forgive and pray for me.’ Very soon
+she was insensible, and was gone before twenty-four hours were over. The
+sister whom they spared to help me, said she was too much worn out to
+struggle and suffer like most, indeed as Jock had done.
+
+“That Sister Dorothea, a true divine gift, a sweet and fair vision
+of peace, is a Miss Ashton, a Virginian. She broke down, not with the
+disease, only fatigue, and I gave her such care as I could spare from
+my dear boy. When her father, General Ashton, came to take her home, he
+kindly insisted on likewise carrying us off to his beautiful home, on
+a lovely hillside, where we trusted Jock’s strength would be restored
+quickly. But perhaps we were too impatient, for the journey was far too
+much for him. He fainted several times, and the last miles were passed
+in an unconscious state. There has come back on him the intermittent
+fever which often succeeds the disease; and what is more alarming is the
+faintness, oppression, and difficulty of breathing, which he believes
+to be connected with the slight affection of heart remaining from his
+rheumatic fever at Schwarenbach. Then it is very difficult to give him
+nourishment except disguised with ice, and he is altogether fearfully
+ill. I send such an account of the case as I can get for John or Dr.
+Medlicott to see. How I long for our kind home friends. This place is
+unhappily very far from everywhere, a lone village in the hills; the
+nearest doctor twelve miles off. The Ashtons think highly of him; but
+he is old, and I can’t say that I have any confidence in his treatment.
+Jock allows that he should do otherwise, but he says he has no vigour or
+connection of ideas to be fit to treat himself consistently, and that
+he should only do harm by interfering with Dr. Vanbro; indeed I fear he
+thinks that it does not make much difference. If patience and calmness
+can bring him through, he would live, but my dear Babie, I greatly dread
+that I shall not bring him back to the home he made so bright. He seldom
+rouses into talking much, but lies passive and half dozing when the
+feverish restlessness is not on him. He told me just now to send his
+love to you all, especially to the Monk and Sydney, with all dear good
+wishes to them both. No one can be kinder than the Ashtons; they are
+always trying to help in the nursing, and sending for everything that
+can be thought of for Jock. Sister Dorothea and Primrose are as good and
+loving as Sydney herself could be, and there is an excellent clergyman
+who comes in every day, and prays for my boy in Church. Ask them to
+do the same at Fordham, and at our own Churches. As long as I do not
+telegraph, remember that while there is life there is hope.
+
+“Your loving Mother C.”
+
+
+This letter was sent on to John. Two days later a fly drove up to the
+Dower House, and Sydney walked into the drawing-room alone.
+
+Where did she come from?
+
+From Liverpool. John was gone to America.
+
+“I wanted to go too,” she said, tears coming into her eyes; “but he
+said he could go faster without me, and he could not take me to these
+Ashtons, or leave me alone in New York.”
+
+“It was very noble and good in you to let him go, Sydney,” cried Babie.
+
+“It would have broken his heart for ever,” said Sydney, “if he had
+not tried to do his utmost for Jock. He says Jock has been more than a
+brother to him, and that he owes all that he is, and all that he has, to
+him and Mother Carey, and that even--if--if he were too late, he should
+save her from coming home alone. You think he was right, mamma?”
+
+“Right indeed, and I am thankful that my Sydney was unselfish, and did
+not try to keep him back.”
+
+“O mamma, I could never have looked him in the face again if I had
+hindered him! And so we went up to London, and luckily Dr. Medlicott was
+at home, and he was very eager that John should go. He says he does
+not think it will be too late, and they talked it over, and got some
+medicines, and then John let me come down to Liverpool with him and see
+him on board, and we telegraphed the last thing to Mrs. Brownlow, so
+that it might be too late for her to stop him.”
+
+While that message was rushing on its way beneath the Atlantic it was
+the early morning of the ebb tide of the fever, and the patient was
+resting almost doubled over with his head on pillows before him, either
+slumber or exhaustion, so still, that his mother had yielded to urgent
+persuasion, and lain down in the next room to sleep in the dreamless
+repose of the overworn watcher.
+
+For over him leant a sturdy, dark-browed, dark-bearded figure, to whom
+she had ventured to entrust him. Some fourteen hours before, Robert
+had with some difficulty found them out at Ashton Vineyard, having been
+irresistibly drawn by Jock’s telegram to spend in the States an interval
+of leisure in his work, caused by his appointment as principal to
+another Japanese college. He had gone to the bank where Jock had given
+an address, and his consternation had been great on hearing the state of
+things. All this, however, he had left unexplained, and his mother had
+hardly even thought of asking where he had dropped from. For Jock was in
+the midst of one of his cruellest attacks of the fever, and all she had
+been conscious of was a knock and summons to the door, where Primrose
+Ashton gently whispered, “Here is some one you will be glad to see,” and
+Robert’s low deep voice, almost inaudible with emotion, asked, “May I
+see him?”
+
+“He will not know you,” she said, with the sad composure of one who has
+no time to grieve. But even in the midst of the babbling moan of fevered
+weakness, there was half a smile as of pleased surprise, and an evident
+craving for the strong support of his brother’s arm, and by-and-by Jock
+looked up with meaning and recognition in his eyes, though quite unable
+to speak, in that faint and exhausted state indeed that verged nearer to
+death after every attack.
+
+This had passed enough for her to know there would be a respite for
+perhaps a good many hours, and she had yielded to the entreaty or
+command of Bobus, that she would lie down and sleep, trusting to him to
+call her at any moment.
+
+Presently, as morning light stole in, Jock’s eyes were open, gazing at
+him fondly, and he whispered, “Dear old Bob,” then presently, “Open the
+window.”
+
+The sun was rising, and the wooded hillside opposite was all one
+gorgeous mass of autumn colouring, of every shade from purple to golden
+yellow, so glorious that it arrested Bobus’s attention even at that
+instant.
+
+“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the feeble voice.
+
+“Wonderful, as we always heard.”
+
+“Lift me a little. I like to see it. Not fast--or high--so.”
+
+Bobus raised the white wasted form, and rested the head against his
+square firm shoulder. “Dear old Bob! This is jolly! I’m not cramping
+you?”
+
+“O no, but should not you have something?”
+
+“What time is it?”
+
+“6.30.”
+
+“Too soon yet for that misery;” then, after some silence, “I’m so glad
+you are come. Can you take mother home?”
+
+“I would; but you will.”
+
+“I don’t think so.”
+
+“Now, Jock, you are not getting into Armine’s state of mind, giving
+yourself up and wishing to die?”
+
+“Not at all. There are hosts of things I want to do first. There’s that
+discovery of father’s. With what poor Janet told me of Hermann’s doings,
+and what I saw at Abville, if I could only get an hour of my proper
+wits, I could put the others up to a wrinkle that would make the whole
+thing comparatively plain.”
+
+“Should not you be better if you dictated it, and got it off your mind?”
+
+“So I thought and tried, but presently I saw mother looking queer, and
+she said I was tired, and had gone on enough. I made her read it to me
+afterwards, and I had gone off into a muddle, and said something that
+would have been sheer murder. So I had better leave it alone. Old Vanbro
+mistrusts every word I say because of the Hermann connection, and indeed
+I may not always have talked sense to him. Those things work out in
+God’s own time, and the Monk is on the track. I’d like to have seen him,
+but I’ve got you.”
+
+This had been said in faint slow utterances, so low that Bobus could
+hardly have heard a couple of feet further off, and with intervals
+between, and there was a gesture of tender perfect content in the
+contact with him that went to his heart, and, before he was aware,
+a great hot tear came dropping down on Jock’s forehead and caused an
+exclamation.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Bobus. “Oh! Jock, you don’t know what it is to
+find you like this. I came with so much to ask and talk of to you.”
+
+Jock looked up inquiringly.
+
+“You were right to suppress that paper of mine,” continued Bobus, “I
+wouldn’t have written it now. I have seen better what a people are
+without Christianity, be the code what it may, and the civilisation, it
+can’t produce such women as my mother, no, nor such men as you, Jockey,
+my boy,” he muttered much lower.
+
+“Are you coming back, dear old man?” said Jock, with eyes fixed on him.
+
+“I don’t know. Tell me one thing, old man: I always thought, when you
+took to using your brains and getting up physical science, that you must
+get beyond what satisfied you as a soldier. Now, have the two, science
+and religion, never clashed, or have you kept them apart?”
+
+“They’ve worked in together,” said Jock.
+
+“You don’t say so because you ought, and think it good for me?”
+
+“As if I could, lying here. ‘All Thy works praise Thee, O God, and Thy
+saints do magnify Thee.’”
+
+Bobus was not sure whether this were a conscious reply, or only
+wandering, and his mother here came in, wakened by the murmur of voices.
+
+The brothers could not bear to lose sight of one another, though Jock
+was too much exhausted by this conversation, and, by the sickness that
+followed any endeavour to take food, to speak much again. Thus, when the
+Rector came, Bobus asked whether he must be sent out of the room, Jock
+made an earnest sign to the contrary, and he stayed.
+
+There was of course nothing to concern him, especially in the brief
+reading and prayer; but his mother, looking up, saw that he was finding
+out the passage in the little Greek Testament.
+
+Janet’s lay on a little table close by the bedside. The two copies had
+met again. The work of one was done. Was the work of the other doing at
+last?
+
+However that might be, nothing could be gentler, tenderer, or more
+considerate towards his mother than was Bobus, and her kind friends felt
+much relieved of their fears for her, since she had such a son to take
+care of her.
+
+Towards the evening, the negro servant knocked at the door, and Bobus
+took from him a telegram envelope. His mother opened it and read:
+
+“Friar Brownlow to Mrs. Brownlow. I embark to-day.”
+
+A smile shone out on Jock’s white weary face, and he said, “Good old
+Monk! If I can but hold out till he comes, I shall get home again yet. I
+should like to do him credit.”
+
+
+“Ashton Vineyard, October l2th.
+
+“MY DEAREST CHILD,--You know the main fact by telegram, and now I can
+write, I must tell you all in more order. We thought our darkest hour
+was over when the dear John’s telegram came, and the hope helped us up
+a little while. To Jock himself it was like a drowning man clinging to a
+rope with the more exertion because he knew that a boat was putting off.
+At least so it was at first, but as his strength faded, his brain could
+not grasp the notion any longer, and he generally seemed to be fancying
+himself on the snow with Armine, still however looking for John to come
+and save them, and sometimes, too, talking about Cecil, and being a true
+brother in arms, a faithful servant and soldier. The long severe strain
+of study, work, and all the rest which he has gone through, body and
+mind, coming on a heart already not quite sound, throughout the past
+year, was, John thinks, the real reason of his being unable to rally
+when the fever had brought him down, after the dreadful exertion at
+Abville. Dear fellow, he never let us guess how much his patience cost
+him. I think we had looked to John’s arrival as if it would act like
+magic, and it was very sore disappointment when his treatment was
+producing no change for the better, but the prostration went on day
+after day. Poor Bobus was in utter despair, and went raging about,
+declaring that he had been a fool ever to expect anything from Kencroft,
+and at last he had to be turned out of the sick-room. For I should
+tell you that the one thing that kept me up was the entire calm grave
+composure that John preserved throughout, and which gave him the entire
+command. He never showed any consternation or dismay, nor uttered an
+augury, but he went quietly and vigilantly on, in a manner that all
+along gave me a strange sense of confidence and trust, that all that
+could be done was being done, and the issue was in higher hands. He
+would not let anyone really help him but Sister Dorothea, with her
+trained skill as a nurse. I don’t think even I should have been suffered
+in the room, if he had not thought Jock might be more conscious than was
+apparent, for he had not himself received one token of recognition all
+those three days. Poor Bobus! the little gleam of light that Jock had
+let in on him seemed all gone. I do not know what would have become of
+him but for the good Ashtons. He had been persuaded for a time that what
+was so real to Jock must be true; but when Jock was no longer conscious,
+he had nothing to help him, and I am afraid he spoke terrible words when
+Primrose talked of prayer and faith. I believe he declared that to see
+one like his brother snatched away when just come to the perfection of
+his early manhood, with all his capacity and all his knowledge in vain,
+convinced him either that this universe was one grim, pitiless machine,
+grinding down humanity by mere law of necessity, or if they would have
+it that there was supernatural power, it could only be malevolent;
+and then Primrose, so strong in faith as to venture what I should
+have shrunk from as dangerous presumption, dared him to go on in his
+disbelief, if his brother were given back to prayer.
+
+“She pitied him so much, the sweet bright girl, she had so pitied him
+all along, that I believe she prayed as much for him as for Jock.
+
+“Of course I did not know all this till afterwards, for all was
+stillness in that room, except when at times the clergyman came in and
+prayed.
+
+“The next thing I am sure of, was John’s leaning over me, and his low
+steady voice saying, ‘The pulse is better, the symptoms are mitigating.’
+Sister Dorothea says they had both seen it for some hours, but he made
+her a sign not to agitate me till he was secure that the improvement
+was real. Indeed there was something in that equable firm gentleness of
+John’s that sustained me, and prevented my breaking down. Even then it
+was another whole day before my darling smiled at me again, and said,
+‘Thanks’ to John, but oh! with such a look.
+
+“When Bobus heard his brother was better, he gave a sob, such as I shall
+never forget, and rushed away into the pine-wood on the hillside,
+all alone. The next time I saw him he was walking in the garden with
+Primrose, and with such a quieted, subdued, gentle look upon his face,
+it put me in mind of the fields when a great storm has swept over them,
+and they are lying still in the sunshine afterwards.
+
+“Since that day, when John said we might send off that thankworthy
+telegram, there has been daily progress. I have had one of my headaches.
+That monarch John found it out, and turned me out. I could bear to go,
+for I knew my boy was safe with him. He made me over to Primrose, who
+nursed me as tenderly as my Babie could have done, and indeed, I begin
+to think she will soon be as near and dear to me as my Sydney or Elvira.
+She has a power over Bobus that no one else ever had, and she is very
+lovely in expression as well as features, but how will so ardent a
+Christian as she is receive one still so far off as my poor Robert,
+though indeed I think he has at least come so far as the cry, ‘Help Thou
+mine unbelief.’
+
+“So now they have let me come back to my Jock, and I see visibly his
+improvement. He holds out his hand, and he smiles, and he speaks now and
+then, the dreadful oppression is gone, and all the dangerous symptoms
+are abating, and I cannot tell how happy and thankful we are. ‘Send my
+love, and tell Sydney she has a blessed Monk,’ he says, as he wakes, and
+sees me writing.
+
+“That dear Monk says he will not go home till he can carry home his
+patient. When that will be I cannot tell, for he cannot sit up in bed
+yet. Dear Sydney, how I thank her! John says it was not his treatment,
+but, under Divine Providence, youthful nature that had had her rest,
+and begun to rally her strength. But under that blessing, it was John’s
+steady, faithful strength and care that enabled the restoration to take
+place.
+
+“My dear child’s loving
+
+“MOTHER CAREY.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII. -- DISENCHANTED.
+
+
+
+     Whatever page we turn,
+     However much we learn,
+     Let there be something left to dream of still.
+                                             Longfellow.
+
+
+It was on a very cold day of the cold spring of 1879 that three ladies
+descended at the Liverpool station, escorted by a military-looking
+gentleman. He left them standing while he made inquiries, but his
+servant had anticipated him. “The steamer has been signalled, my Lord.
+It will be in about four o’clock.”
+
+“There will be time to go to the hotel and secure rooms,” said one lady.
+
+“Oh, Reeves can do that. Pray let us come down to the docks and see them
+come in.”
+
+No answer till all four were seated in a fly, rattling through the
+street, but on the repetition of “Are we going to the docks?” his
+Lordship, with a resolute twirl of his long, light moustache, replied,
+“No, Sydney. If you think I am going to have you making a scene on deck,
+falling on your husband’s breast, and all that sort of thing, you are
+much mistaken! I shall lodge you all quietly in the hotel, and you
+may wait there, while I go down with Reeves, and receive them like a
+rational being.”
+
+“Really, Cecil, that’s too bad. He let me come on board!”
+
+“Do you think I should have brought you here if I had thought you meant
+to make yourself ridiculous?”
+
+“It is of no use, Sydney,” said Babie; “there’s no dealing with the
+stern and staid pere de famille. I wonder what he would have liked Essie
+to do, if he had had to go and leave her for nearly two months when he
+had only been married a week?”
+
+“Essie is quite a different thing--I mean she has sense and
+self-possession.”
+
+“Mamma, won’t you speak for us?” implored Sydney. “I did behave so well
+when he went! Nobody would have guessed we hadn’t been married fifty
+years.”
+
+“Still I think Cecil is quite right, and that it may be better for them
+all to manage the landing quietly.”
+
+“Without a pack of women,” said Cecil. “Here we are! I hope you will
+find a tolerable room for him and no stairs.”
+
+As if poor Mrs. Evelyn were not well enough used to choosing rooms for
+invalids!
+
+Twilight had come, the gas had been turned on, and the three anxious
+ladies stood in the window gazing vainly at endless vehicles, when the
+door opened and they beheld sundry figures entering.
+
+Sydney and Barbara flew, the one to her husband, the other to her
+mother, and presently all stood round the fire looking at one another.
+Mrs. Evelyn made a gesture to a very slender and somewhat pale figure to
+sit down in a large easy chair.
+
+“Thank you, I’m not tired,” he briskly said, standing with a caressing
+hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Here’s Cecil can’t quite believe yet
+that I have the use of my limbs.”
+
+“Yes,” said John, “no sooner did he come on board, than he made a rush
+at the poor sailor who had broken his leg, and was going to be carried
+ashore on a hammock. He was on the point of embracing him, red beard
+and all, when he was forcibly dragged off by Jock himself whom he nearly
+knocked down.”
+
+“Well,” said Cecil, as Sydney fairly danced round him in revengeful
+glee, “there was the Monk solicitously lifting him on one side, and
+Mother Carey assisting with a smelling-bottle on the other, so what
+could I suppose?”
+
+“All for want of us,” said Sydney.
+
+“And think of the cunning of him,” added Babie; “shutting us up here
+that he might give way to his feelings undisturbed!”
+
+“I promised to go and speak about that poor fellow at the hospital,”
+ cried John, with sudden recollection.
+
+“You had better let me,” said Jock.
+
+“You will stay where you are.”
+
+“I consider him my patient.”
+
+“If that’s the way you two fought over your solitary case all the way
+home,” said Babie, “I wonder there’s a fragment left of him.”
+
+“It was only three days ago,” said John, “and Jock has been a new man
+ever since he picked the poor fellow up on deck, but I’m not going to
+let him stir to-night.”
+
+“Let me come with you, Johnny,” entreated Sydney; “it will be so nice!
+Oh, no, I don’t mind the cold!”
+
+“Here,” added her brother, “take the poor fellow a sovereign.”
+
+“In compensation for the sudden cooling of your affection,” said
+Jock. “Well, if it is an excuse for an excursion with Sydney I’ll
+not interfere, but ask him for his sister’s address in London, for I
+promised to tell her about him.”
+
+“Oh,” cried Babie, at the word ‘London,’ “then you have heard from Dr.
+Medlicott?”
+
+“I did once,” said John, “with some very useful suggestions, but that
+was a month ago or more.”
+
+“I meant,” said Babie, “a letter he wrote for the chance of Jock’s
+getting it before he sailed. There’s the assistant lectureship
+vacant, and the Professor would not like anyone so much. It is his own
+appointment, not an election matter, and he meant to keep it open till
+he could get an answer from Jock.”
+
+“When was this?” asked Jock, flushing with eagerness.
+
+“The 20th. Dr. Medlicott came down to Fordham for Sunday, to ask if it
+was worth while to telegraph, or if I thought you would be well enough.
+It is not much of a salary, but it is a step, and Dr. Medlicott knows
+they would put you on the staff of the hospital, and then you are open
+to anything.”
+
+Jock drew a long breath and looked at his mother. “The very thing I’ve
+wished,” he said.
+
+“Exactly. Must he answer at once?”
+
+“The Professor would like a telegram, yes or no, at once.”
+
+“Then, you wedded Monk, will you add to your favours by telegraphing for
+me?”
+
+“Yes. Of course it is ‘Yes’. How soon should you have to begin, I
+wonder?”
+
+“Oh, I’m quite cheeky enough for that sort of work. If you’ll telegraph,
+I’ll write by to-night’s post.”
+
+“I’ll go and do the telegraphing,” said Cecil; “I don’t trust those
+two.”
+
+“As if John ever made mistakes,” cried Sydney.
+
+“In fact, I want to send a telegram home.”
+
+“To frighten Essie. She will get a yellow envelope saying you accept a
+lectureship, and the Professor urgent inquiries after his baby.”
+
+“Sydney is getting too obstreperous, Monk,” said Cecil. “You had better
+carry her off. I shall come back by the time you have written your
+letters, Jock.”
+
+“Those two are too happy to do anything but tease one another,” said
+Mrs. Evelyn, as the door shut on the three. “My rival grandmother, as
+Babie calls her, was really quite glad to get rid of Cecil; she declared
+he would excite Esther into a fever.”
+
+“He did alarm Her Serenity herself,” said Babie, laughing. “When she
+would go on about grand sponsors and ancestral names, he told her that
+he should carry the baby off to Church and have him christened Jock
+out of hand, and what a dreadful thing that would be for the peerage. I
+believe she thought he meant it.”
+
+“The name is to be John,” said Mrs. Evelyn--“John Marmaduke. He has
+secured his godmother”--laying a hand affectionately on Babie--“but I
+must not forestall his request to his two earliest and best friends.”
+
+“Dear old fellow!” murmured Jock.
+
+“Everybody is somewhat frantic,” said Barbara.
+
+“Jock’s varieties of classes were almost distracted and besieged the
+door, till Susan was fain to stick the last bulletins in the window to
+save answering the bell; then no sooner did they hear he was better than
+they began getting up a testimonial. Percy Stagg wrote to me, to ask for
+his crest for some piece of plate, and I wrote back that I was sure Dr.
+Lucas Brownlow would like it best to go in something for the Mission
+Church; and if they wanted to give him something for his very own,
+suppose they got him a brass plate for the door?”
+
+“Bravo, Infanta; that was an inspiration!”
+
+“So they are to give an alms-dish, and Ali and Elfie give the rest of
+the plate. Dr. Medlicott says he never saw anything like the feeling at
+the hospital, or does not know what the nurses don’t mean to get up by
+way of welcome.”
+
+“My dear Babie, you must let Jock write his letters,” interposed her
+mother, who had tears in her eyes and saw him struggling with emotion.
+“In spite of your magnificent demonstrations, Jock, you must repair your
+charms by lying down.”
+
+She followed him into his room, which opened from the sitting-room, and
+he turned to her, speaking from a full heart. “Oh, mother! It seems
+all given to me, the old home, the very post I wished for, and all this
+kindness, just when I thought I had taken leave of it all.” He sobbed
+once or twice for very joy.
+
+“You are sure it suits you?”
+
+“If I only can suit it equally well! Oh, I see what you mean. That is
+over now. I suppose the fever burnt it out of me, for it does not hurt
+me now to see the dear old Monk beaming on her. I am glad she came, for
+I can feel sure of myself now. So there’s nothing at present to come
+between me and my Mother Carey. Thanks, mother, I’ll just fire off my
+two notes; and establish myself luxuriously before Cecil comes back!
+I say, this is the best inn’s best room. Poor Mrs. Evelyn must have
+thought herself providing for Fordham. Oh yes, I shall gladly lie down
+when these notes are done, but this is not a chance to be neglected.
+Now, Deo gratias, it will be my own fault if Magnum Bonum is not
+worked out to the utmost; yes, much better than if we had never gone
+to America. Even Bobus owns that all things _have_ worked together for
+good!”
+
+His mother, with another look at the face, so joyous though still so
+wasted and white, went back to the other room, with an equally happy
+though scarcely less worn countenance.
+
+“I hope he is resting,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “Are you quite satisfied about
+him?”
+
+“Fully. He may not be strong for a year or two, and must be careful
+not to overtask himself, but John made him see one of the greatest
+physicians in New York, to whom Dr. Medlicott had sent letters of
+introduction--as if they were needed, he said, after Jock’s work at
+Abville. He said, as John did, there was no lasting damage to the heart,
+and that the attack was the consequence of having been brought so low;
+but he will be as strong and healthy as ever, if he will only be careful
+as to exertion for a year or so. This appointment is the very thing to
+save him. I know his friends will look after him and keep him from doing
+too much. Dr. ---- was quite grieved that he had no notion how ill Jock
+had been, or he would have come to Ashton. Any of the faculty would,
+he said, for one of the ‘true chivalry of 1878.’ And he was so excited
+about the Magnum Bonum.”
+
+“Do you think you and he can bear to crown our great thanksgiving
+feast?”
+
+“My dear, my heart is all one thanksgiving!”
+
+“Cecil’s rejoicing is quite as much for Jock’s sake as over his boy. He
+told me how they had been pledged as brothers in arms, and traces all
+that is best in himself to those days at Engelberg.”
+
+“Yes, that night on the mountain was the great starting-point, thanks to
+dear little Armine.”
+
+“I am writing to him and to Allen,” said Barbara from a corner.
+
+“My love a thousand times, and we will meet at home!”
+
+“Then our joy will not feel incongruous to you?” said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+“No, I am too thankful for what I know of my poor Janet. She is mine now
+as she never was since she was a baby in my arms. I scarcely grieve, for
+happiness was over for her, and hers was a noble death. They have placed
+her name in the memorial tablet in Abville Church, to those who laid
+down their lives for their brethren there. I begged it might be, ‘Janet
+Hermann, daughter of Joseph Brownlow’--for I thank God she died worthy
+of her father. In all ways I can say of this journey, my children were
+dead and are alive again, were lost and are found.”
+
+“Ah! I was sure it must be so, if such a girl as Miss Ashton could
+accept Robert.”
+
+“I am happier about him than I ever thought to be. I do not say that his
+faith is like John’s or Armine’s, but he is striving back through the
+mists, and wishing to believe, rather than being proud of disbelieving,
+and Primrose knows what she is doing, and is aiding him with all her
+power.”
+
+“As our Esther never could have done,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “except by her
+gentle innocence.”
+
+“No. She could only have been to him a pretty white idol of his own
+setting up,” said Babie.
+
+“Now,” added her mother, “Primrose is fairly on equal grounds as to
+force and intellect. She has been all over Europe, read and thought
+much, and can discuss deep matters, while the depth of her religious
+principle impresses him. They fought themselves into love, and then she
+was sorry for him, and so touched by his wretchedness and longing to
+take hold of the comfort his reason could not accept. I wish you could
+have seen her. This photograph shows you her fine head; but not the
+beautiful clear complexion, and the sweetness of those dark grey eyes!”
+
+“I liked her letter,” said Babie, “and I am glad she was such a daughter
+to you, mother. Allen says he is thankful she is not a Japanese with
+black teeth.”
+
+“He wrote very nicely to her, and so did Elfie,” said her mother. “And
+Armine wrote a charming little note, which pleased Primrose best of
+all.”
+
+“Poor Armine has felt all most deeply,” said Babie. “Do you remember
+when he thought it his mission to die and do good to Bobus? Well, he
+was sure that, though, as he said, his own life then was too shallow and
+unreal for his death to have done any good, Jock was meant to produce
+the effect.”
+
+“And he has--”
+
+“Yes, but by life, not death! Armie could hardly believe it. You know he
+was with us at Christmas; and when he found that Bobus was to be led
+not by sorrow, but by this Primrose path, it was quite funny to see how
+surprised he was.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “he went about moralising on the various
+remedies that are applied to the needs of human nature.”
+
+“It made into a poem at last, such a pretty one,” said Babie. “And he
+says he will be wiser all his life for finding things turn out so unlike
+all his expectations.”
+
+“I have a strange feeling of peace about all my children,” said
+Caroline. “I do feel as if my dream had come true, and life, true life,
+had wakened them all.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “I think they all, in their degree, may be said
+to have learnt or be learning the way to true Magnum Bonum.”
+
+“And oh! how precious it has been to me,” said the mother. “How the
+guarding of that secret aided me through the worst of times!”
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Magnum Bonum, by Charlotte M. Yonge
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