THE AMERICAN GUEST.
"Shall we rouse the night-owl with a catch that will draw three
souls out of one weaver?"
In less than a week from the receipt of his son's letter, John Mortimer
wrote again, and gave the boy leave to come home, but on no account to
bring young Crayshaw with him, if a journey was likely to do him harm.
Johnny accordingly set off instantly (the holidays having just begun),
and, travelling all night, reached the paternal homestead by eight
o'clock in the morning.
His father was away, but he was received with rapture by his brothers
and sisters. His little brothers admired him with the humble reverence
of small boys for big ones, and the girls delighted in his school-boy
slang, and thought themselves honoured by his companionship.
Crayshaw was an American by birth, but his elder brother (under whose
guardianship he was) had left him in England as his best chance of
living to manhood, for he had very bad health, and the climate of his
native place did not suit him.
Young Gifford Crayshaw had a general invitation to spend the holidays at
Brandon's house, for his brother and Brandon were intimate friends; but
boys being dull alone, Johnny Mortimer and he contrived at these times
to meet rather often, sometimes to play, sometimes to fight--even the
latter is far better than being without companionship, more natural, and
on the whole more cheerful.
"And I'm sure," said Aunt Christie, when she heard he was coming, "I
should never care about the mischief he leads the little ones into when
he's well, if he could breathe like other people when he's ill; you may
hear him half over the house when he has his asthma."
Crayshaw came by the express train in the afternoon, and was met by the
young Mortimers in the close carriage. He was nearly fifteen, and a
strange contrast to Johnny, whose perfect health, ardent joyousness, and
lumbering proportions never were so observable as beside the clear-cut
face of the other, the slow gait, an expression of countenance at once
audacious, keen, and sweet, together with that peculiar shadow under the
eyelids which some people consider to betoken an early death.
Crayshaw was happily quite well that afternoon, and accordingly very
noisy doings went on; Miss Crampton was away for her short Easter
holiday, and Aunt Christie did not interfere if she could help it when
Johnny was at home.
That night Master Augustus John Mortimer, his friend, and all the family
were early asleep; not so the next. It was some time past one o'clock
A.M. when John Mortimer and Brandon, who had been dining together at a
neighbour's house, one having left his father rather better, and the
other having come home from the Isle of Wight, walked up towards the
house deep in conversation, till John, lifting up his eyes, saw lights
in the schoolroom windows. This deluded father calmly remarked that the
children had forgotten to put the lamp out when they went to bed.
Brandon thought he heard a sound uncommonly like infant revelry, but he
said nothing, and the two proceeded into the closed house, and went
softly up-stairs.
"Roast pork," said Brandon, "if ever I smelt that article in my life!"
They opened the schoolroom door, and John beheld, to his extreme
surprise, a table spread, his eldest son at the head of it, his twin
daughters, those paragons of good behaviour, peeling potatoes, and the
other children, all more or less dishevelled, sitting round, blushing
and discomfited.
"My dears!" exclaimed John Mortimer, "this I never could have believed
of you! One o'clock in the morning!"
Perfect silence. Brandon thought John would find it beneath his dignity
to make a joke of this breach of discipline. He was rather vexed that he
should have helped to discover it, and feeling a little _de trop_, he
advanced to the top of the table. "John," he said with a resigned air
and with a melancholy cadence in his voice that greatly impressed the
children.
"Come," thought John as he paused, "they deserve a 'wigging,' but I
don't want to make a 'Star-chamber matter' of this. I wish he would not
be so supernaturally serious."
"John," repeated Brandon, "on occasion of this unexpected hospitality, I
feel called upon to make a speech."
John sat down, wondering what would come next.
"John, ladies and gentlemen," said Brandon, "when I look around me on
these varied attractions, when I behold those raspberry turnovers of a
flakiness and a puffiness so ethereal, that one might think the very
eyes of the observer should drop lightly on them, lest that too
appreciative glance should flatten them down--I say, ladies and
gentlemen, when I smell that crackling, when I cast my eyes on those
cinders in the gravy, I am irresistibly reminded of occasions when I
myself, arrayed in a holland pinafore, have presided over like
entertainments; and of one in particular when, being of tender age--of
one occasion, I say, that is never to be forgotten, when, during the
small hours of the night, I was hauled out of bed to assist in mixing
hardbake, by one very dear to us all--who shall be nameless."
What more he would have added will never be known, for with ringing
laughter that spoke for the excellence of their lungs, the whole
tableful of young Mortimers, with the exception of Johnnie, rose, and,
as if by one impulse, fell upon their father.
"Hold hard," he was heard to shout, "don't smother me." But he received
a kissing and hugging of great severity; the elder ones who had
understood Brandon's speech, closing him in; the little ones, who only
perceived to their delight that the occasion had become festive again,
hovering round, and getting at him where they could. So that when they
parted, and he was visible again, sitting radiant in the midst of them,
his agreeable face was very red, and he was breathing fast and audibly.
"I'll pay you for this!" he exclaimed, when he observed, to his
amusement, that Brandon's serious look was now really genuine, as if he
was afraid the experiment might be repeated on himself. "Johnnie, my
boy, shake hands, I forgive you this once. And you may pass the bottle."
Johnnie, who knew himself to be the real offender, made haste to obey.
"It's not blacking, of course," continued John, looking at the thick
liquor with distrust.
"The betht black currant," exclaimed his heir, "at thirteen-penth a
bottle."
"And where's Cray?" exclaimed John, suddenly observing the absence of
his young guest.
"He's down in the kitchen, dishing up the pudding," said Barbara
blushing, and she darted out of the room, and presently returned, other
footsteps following hers.
"Cray," exclaimed John, as the boy seemed inclined to linger outside,
"don't stand there in the draught. And so it is not by your virtuous
inclinations that you have hitherto been excluded from this festive
scene?"
"No, sir," said Crayshaw with farcical meekness of voice and air, "quite
the contrary. It was that I've met with a serious accident. I've been
run over."
John looked aghast. "You surely have not been into the loose-box," he
said anxiously.
"Oh no, father, nothing of the sort," said Barbara. "It was only that he
was down in the kitchen on his knees, and two blackbeetles ran over his
legs. You should never believe a word he says, father."
"But that was the reason the pudding came to grief," continued Crayshaw;
"they were very large and fierce, and in my terror I let it fall, and it
was squashed. When I saw their friends coming on to fall upon it, I was
just about to cry, 'Take it all, but spare my life!' when Barbara came
and rescued me. I hope," he went on, yet more meekly, "I hope it was not
an unholy self-love that prompted me to prefer my life to the pudding!"
The children laughed, as they generally did when Crayshaw spoke, but it
was more at his manner than at his words. And now, peace being restored,
everybody helped everybody else to the delicacies, John discreetly
refraining from any inquiry as to whether this was the first midnight
feast over which his son had presided, but he could not forbear to say,
"I suppose your grandfather's 'tip' is to blame for this?"
"If everybody was like the Grand," remarked Crayshaw, "Tennyson never
need have said--
"'Vex not thou the schoolboy's soul
With thy shabby _tip_.'"
"Now, Cray," said Brandon, "don't you emulate Valentine's abominable
trick of quoting."
"And I have often begged you two not to parody the Immortals," said
John. "The small fry you may make fun of, if you please, but let the
great alone."
"But he ithn't dead," reasoned Master Augustus John; "I don't call any
of thoth fellowth immortal till they're dead."
"It's a very bad habit," continued his father.
"And he's made me almost as bad as himself," observed Crayshaw in the
softest and mildest of tones. "Miss Christie said this very morning that
there was no bearing me, and I never did it till I knew him. I used to
be so good, everybody loved me."
John laughed, but was determined to say his say.
"You never can take real pleasure again in any poetry that you have
mauled in that manner. Miss Crampton was seriously annoyed when she
found that you had altered the girl's songs, and made them ridiculous."
The last time, in fact, that Johnnie and Crayshaw had been together,
they had deprived themselves of their natural rest in order to carry out
these changes; and the first time Miss Crampton gave a music lesson
after their departure, she opened the book at one of their improved
versions, which ran as follows:--
"Wink to me only with thy nose,
And I will sing through mine."
Miss Crampton hated boyish vulgarity; she turned the page, but matters
were no better. The two youths had next been at work on a song in which
a muff of a man, who offers nothing particular in return, requests
'Nancy' to gang wi' him, leaving her home, her dinner, her brooches, her
best gowns, &c., behind, to walk through snow-drifts, blasts, and other
perils by his side, and afterwards strew flowers on his clay. Desirous
as it seemed to show that the young person was not so misguided as her
silence has hitherto left the world to think, they had added a verse,
which ran as follows:--
"'Ah, wilt thou thus, for his loved sake,
All manner of hardships dare to know?'
The fair one smiled whenas he spake,
And promptly answered, 'No, sir; no,'"
"Cray," said John Mortimer, observing the boy's wan appearance, "how
could you think of sitting up so late?"
"Why, the thupper wath on purpoth for him," exclaimed Johnnie. "We gave
it in hith honour, ath a mark of thympathy."
"Because he was burnt out," said Gladys. "Papa, did you know? his
tutor's house was burnt down, and the boys had to escape in the night."
"But it wath a great lark," observed Johnnie, "and he knowth he thought
tho."
"Yes," said Crayshaw, folding his hands with farcical mock meekness,
"but I saved hardly anything--nothing whatever, in fact, but my Yankee
accent, and that only by taking it between my teeth."
"There was not enough of it to be worth saving, my dear boy," said
Brandon.
Crayshaw's face for once assumed a genuine expression, one of alarm. He
was distinguished at school for the splendid Yankee dialect he could put
on, as Johnnie was for his mastery of a powerful Devonshire lingo; but
if scarcely a hint of his birthplace remained in his daily speech, and
he had not noticed any change, there was surely danger lest this
interesting accomplishment should be declining also.
"I am always imitating the talk I hear in the cottages," he remarked; "I
may have lost it so."
"Perhaps, as Cray goes to so many places, it may get scattered about,"
said little Bertram; but he was speedily checked by Johnnie, who
observed with severity that they didn't want any "thrimp thauth."
"He mutht thimmer," said Johnnie, "thath what he mutht do. He mutht be
thrown into an iron pot, with a gallon of therry cobbler, and a pumpkin
pie, and thome baked beanth, and a copy of the Biglow Paperth, and a
handful of thalt, and they mutht all thimmer together till he geth
properly flavoured again."
"Wouldn't it be safer if he was only dipped in?" asked the same "shrimp"
who had spoken before.
As this was the second time he had taken this awful liberty, he would
probably have been dismissed the assembly but for the presence of his
father. As it was, Johnnie and Crayshaw both looked at him, not fiercely
but steadily, whereupon the little fellow with deep blushes slid gently
from his chair under the table.
A few days after this midnight repast, Emily, knowing that John Mortimer
was away a good deal, and having a perfectly gratuitous notion that his
children must be dull in consequence, got Valentine to drive her over
one morning to invite them to spend a day at Brandon's house.
A great noise of shouting, drumming on battledores, and blowing through
discordant horns, let them know, as they came up the lane, that the
community was in a state of high activity; and when they reached the
garden gate they were just in time to see the whole family vanish round
a corner, running at full speed after a donkey on which Johnnie was
riding.
The visitors drove inside the gate, and waited five minutes, when the
donkey, having made the circuit of the premises, came galloping up, the
whole tribe of young Mortimers after him. They received Emily with
loving cordiality, and accounted for the violent exercise they had been
taking by the declaration that this donkey never would go at all, unless
he heard a great noise and clatter at his heels.
"So that if Johnnie wanted to go far, as far as to London," observed one
of the panting family, "it would be awkward, wouldn't it?"
"And he's only a second-hand donkey, either," exclaimed little Janie in
deep disparagement of the beast; "father bought him of the blacksmith."
"But isn't it good fun to see him go so fast?" cried another. "Would you
like to see our donkey do it again?"
"And see him 'witch the world with noble assmanship," said Valentine.
Whereupon a voice above said rather faintly. "Hear, hear!" and Crayshaw
appeared leaning out of a first-floor window, the pathetic shadow more
than commonly evident in his eyes, in spite of a mischievous smile. He
had but lately recovered from a rheumatic fever, and was further held
down by frequent attacks of asthma. Yet the moment one of these went
off, the elastic spirits of boyhood enabled him to fling it into the
background of his thoughts, and having rested awhile, as he was then
doing, he became, according to the account Gladys gave of him at that
moment, "just like other boys, only ten times more so!"
Emily now alighted, and as they closed about her and hemmed her in,
donkey and all, she felt inclined to move her elbows gently, as she had
sometimes seen John do, in order to clear a little space about him. "Why
does not Cray come down, too?" she asked.
"I think he has had enough of the beast," said Barbara, "for yesterday
he was trying to make him jump; but the donkey and Cray could not agree
about it. He would not jump, and at last he pitched Cray over his head."
"Odd," said Valentine; "that seems a double contradiction to the proverb
that 'great wits jump.'" Valentine loved to move off the scene, leaving
a joke with his company. He now drove away, and Johnnie informed Emily
that he had already been hard at work that morning.
"I've a right to enjoy mythelf after it," he added, looking round in a
patronising manner, "and I have. I've not had a better lark, in fact,
since Grand was a little boy."
By these kind, though preposterous words, the assembly was stimulated
to action. The frightful clatter, drumming, and blowing of horns began
again, and the donkey set off with all his might, the Mortimers after
him. When he returned, little Bertram was seated on his back. "Johnnie
and Cray have something very particular to do," she was informed with
gravity.
"For their holiday task?"
"Oh no, for that lovely electrifying machine of cousin Val's. Cray is
always writing verses; he is going to be a poet. Johnnie was saying last
week that it was not at all hard to turn poetry into Latin, and Val said
he should have the machine if he could translate some that Cray wrote
the other day. Do you think the Romans had any buttons and buttonholes?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because there are buttons in one of the poems. Cray says it is a
tribute--a tribute to this donkey that father has, just given us. He was
inspired to write it when he saw him hanging his head over the yard
gate."
Thereupon the verses, copied in a large childish hand, were produced and
read aloud:--
A TRIBUTE.
The jackass brayed;
And all his passionate dream was in that sound
Which, to the stables round
And other tenements, told of packs that weighed
On his brown haunches; also that, alas!
His true heart sighed for Jenny, that fair ass
Who backward still and forward paced
With panniers and the curate's children graced.
Then, when she took no heed, but turned aside
Her head, he shook his ears
As much as to say "Great are--as these--my fears."
And while I wept to think how love that preyed
On the deep heart not worth a button seemed
To her for whom he dreamed;
And while the red sun stained the welkin wide,
And summer lightnings on the horizon played,
Again the jackass brayed.
"And here's the other," said Gladys. "Johnnie says, it would be much
the easier to do, only he is doubtful about the 'choker.'"
THE SCHOOLBOY TO HIS DRESS SUIT.
Nice is broiled salmon, whitebait's also nice
With bread and butter served, no shaving thinner.
_Entrées_ are good; but what is even ice--
Cream ice--to him that's made to dress for dinner?
Oh my dress boots, my studs, and my white tie
Termed choker (emblem of this heart's pure aim),
Why are good things to eat your meed? Oh why
Must swallow-tails be donned for tasting game?
The deep heart questions vainly,--not for ease
Or joy were such invented;--but this know,
I'd rather dine off hunks of bread and cheese
Than feast in state rigged out in my dress clo'.
G.C.
Emily, after duly admiring these verses, gave her invitation, and it was
accepted with delight. Nothing, they said, could be more convenient.
Father had told them how Mr. Brandon was having the long wing of the
house pulled down, the part where cousin Val's room used to be; so he
had been obliged to turn out his nests, and his magic lantern, and many
other things that he had when he was a little boy.
"And he says we shall inherit them."
"And when father saw him sitting on a heap of bricks among his things,
he says it put him in mind of Marius on the ruins of Carthage."
"So now we can fetch them all away."
Emily then departed, after stipulating that the two little ones, her
favourites, should come also. "Darlings!" she exclaimed, when she saw
their stout little legs so actively running to ask Miss Christie's
leave. "Will my boy ever look at me with such clear earnest eyes? Shall
I ever see such a lovely flush on his face, or hear such joyous laughter
from him?"
Time was to answer this question for her, and a very momentous month for
the whole family began its course. Laura, writing from Paris to Liz,
made it evident to those who knew anything of the matter, that Mrs.
Melcombe, as she thought, had carried her out of harm's way; and it is a
good thing Laura did not know with what perfect composure and ambitious
hope Joseph made his preparations for the voyage. The sudden change of
circumstances and occupation, and the new language he had to learn, woke
him thoroughly from his dream, and though it had been for some long time
both deep and strong, yet it was to him now as other dreams "when one
awaketh;" and Laura herself, now that she had been brought face to face,
not with her lover, but with facts, was much more reasonable than
before. Brandon had said to her pointedly, in the presence of her
sister-in-law, "If you and this young man had decided to marry, no law,
human or divine, could have forbidden it." But at the same time Amelia
had said, "Laura, you know very well that though you love to make
romances about him, you would not give up one of the comforts of life
for his sake."
Laura, in fact, had scarcely believed in the young man's love till she
had been informed that it was over. She longed to be sought more than
she cared to be won; it soothed and comforted what had been a painful
sense of disadvantage to know that one man at least had sighed for her
in vain. He would not have been a desirable husband, but as a former
lover she could feign him what she pleased, and while, under new and
advantageous circumstances, he became more and more like what she
feigned, it was not surprising that in the end she forgot her feigning,
and found her feet entangled for good and all in the toils she herself
had spread for them.
In the meantime Johnnie and Crayshaw, together with the younger
Mortimers, did much as they liked, till Harrow school reopened, when the
two boys returned, departing a few hours earlier than was necessary that
they might avoid Miss Crampton, a functionary whom Johnny held in great
abhorrence.
At the same period Grand suddenly rallied, and, becoming as well as
ever, his son, who had made many journeys backwards and forwards to see
him, brought him home, buying at the railway station, as he stepped
into his father's carriage, the _Times_ and the _Wigfield Advertiser_,
and _True Blue_, in each of which he saw a piece of news that concerned
himself, though it was told with a difference.
In the _Times_ was the marriage of Giles Brandon, Esq., &c., to
Dorothea, elder daughter of Edward Graham, Esq.; and in the local paper,
with an introduction in the true fustian style of mock concealment, came
the same announcement, followed by a sufficiently droll and malicious
account of the terrible inconvenience another member of this family had
suffered a short time since by being snowed up, in which state he still
continued, as snow in that part of the world had forgotten how to melt.
A good deal that was likely to mortify Valentine followed this, but it
was no more than he deserved.
John laughed. "Well, Giles is a dear fellow," he said, throwing down the
paper. "I am pleased at his marriage, and they must submit to be laughed
at like other people."