MR. MORTIMER GOES THROUGH THE TURNPIKE.
"I hear thee speak of the happy land."
Swan looked down as Miss Crampton and Miss Christie emerged into the
garden.
"Most impertinent of Swan," he heard the former say, to be arguing thus
about political affairs in the presence of the children. And what Mr.
Mortimer can be thinking of, inviting young Crayshaw to stay so much
with them, I cannot imagine. We shall be having them turn republican
next."
"Turn republican!" repeated Miss Christie with infinite scorn; "there's
about as much chance of that as of his ever seeing his native country
again, poor laddie; which is just no chance at all."
Crayshaw at this moment inquired of Swan, who had mounted his ladder
step by step as Miss Crampton went on, "Is the old girl gone in? And
what was she talking of?"
"Well, sir, something about republican institootions."
"Ah! and so you hate them like poison?"
"Yes, in a manner of speaking I do. But I've been a-thinking," continued
Swan, taking the nails out of his lips and leaning in at the window,
"I've been a-thinking as it ain't noways fair, if all men is ekal--which
you're allers upholding--that you should say Swan, and I should say
Mister Crayshaw."
"No, it isn't," exclaimed Crayshaw, laughing; "let's have it the other
way. You shall say Crayshaw to me, and I'll say Mr. Swan to you, sir."
"Well, now, you allers contrive to get the better of me, you and Mr.
Johnnie, you're so sharp! But, anyhow, I could earn my own living before
I was your age, and neither of you can. Then, there's hardly a year as I
don't gain a prize."
"I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can
strike, too. But how did you find out, sir, that I never gained any
prizes?"
"Don't you, sir?"
"Never, sir--I never gained one in my life, sir. But I say, I wish you'd
take these shavings down again."
"No, I won't," answered Swan, "if I'm to be 'sirred' any more, and the
young ladies made to laugh at me."
"Let Swanny alone, Cray," said Gladys. "Be as conservative as you like,
Swan. Why shouldn't you? It's the only right thing."
"Nothing can be very far wrong as Old Master thinks," answered Swan. "He
never interfered with my ways of doing my work either, no more than Mr.
John does, and that's a thing I vally; and he never but once wanted me
to do what I grudged doing."
"When was that?" asked Mr. Augustus John.
"Why, when he made me give up that there burial club," answered Swan.
"He said it was noways a moral institootion; and so I shouldn't have
even a decent burying to look forward to for me and my wife (my poor
daughters being widows, and a great expense to me), if he hadn't said
he'd bury us himself if I'd give it up, and bury us respectably too, it
stands to reason. Mr. John heard him."
"Then, thath the thame thing ath if he'd thaid it himthelf," observed
Johnnie, answering the old man's thought about a much older man.
"Did I say it wasn't, sir? No, if ever there was a gentleman--it's not
a bit of use argufying that all men are ekal. I'm not ekal to either of
them two."
"In what respect?" asked Crayshaw.
"In what respect? Well, sir, this is how it is. I wouldn't do anything
mean nor dishonest; but as for them two, they couldn't. I never had the
education neither to be a gentleman, nor wished to. Not that I talk as
these here folks do down here--I'd scorn it. I'm a Sunbury man myself,
and come from the valley of the Thames, and talk plain English. But one
of my boys, Joey," continued Swan, "talking of wishes, he wished he'd
had better teaching. He's been very uppish for some time (all his own
fault he hadn't been more edicated); told his mother and me, afore he
sailed for the West Indies, as he'd been trying hard for some time to
turn gentleman. 'I shall give myself all the airs that ever I can,' he
says, 'when once I get out there.' 'Why, you young ass!' says I, 'for
it's agen my religion to call you a fool (let alone your mother wouldn't
like it), arn't you awear that giving himself airs is exactly what no
real gentleman ever does?' 'A good lot of things,' says he, 'father,
goes to the making of a gentleman.' 'Ay, Joey,' says I, 'but ain't a
gentleman a man with good manners? Now a good-manner'd man is allers
saying by his ways and looks to them that air beneath him, "You're as
good as I am!" and a bad-manner'd man is allers saying by his ways and
looks to them that air above him, "I'm as good as you air!" There's a
good many folks,' I says (not knowing I should repeat it to you this
day, Mr. Crayshaw), 'as will have it, that because we shall all ekally
have to be judged in the next world, we must be all ekal in this. In
some things I uphold we air, and in others I say we're not. Now your
real gentleman thinks most of them things that make men ekal, and
t'other chap thinks most of what makes them unekal.'"
"Hear, hear!" said Johnnie. "And what did Joey thay to that, Thwan?"
"He didn't say much," answered Swan in his most pragmatical manner. "He
knows well enough that when I'm argufying with my own children (as I've
had the expense of bringing up), I expect to have the last word, and I
have it. It's dinner-time, Mr. Johnnie; will you pass me out my pipe? I
don't say but what I may take a whiff while the dinner's dishing up."
"It was very useful, Swan," said Gladys. "No doubt it made Miss Crampton
think that Cray smokes."
"My word!" exclaimed Swan, "it was as good as a play to see him give
himself those meek airs, and look so respectful."
He went down, and the two little boys came up. They had been turned out
of Parliament, and had spent the time of their exile in running to the
town, and laying out some of their money in the purchase of a present
for Crayshaw; they were subject to humble fits of enthusiasm for
Crayshaw and Johnnie. They came in, and handed him a "Robinson Crusoe"
with pictures in it.
Crayshaw accepted it graciously.
"You must write my name in it," he observed, with exceeding mildness,
"and mind you write it with a soft G."
"Yes, of course," said little Hugh, taking in, but hesitating how to
obey.
"A hard G is quite wrong, and very indigestible too," he continued, yet
more mildly; "though people will persist that it's a capital letter."
The young people then began to congratulate themselves on their success
as regarded Miss Crampton.
"She scarcely stayed five minutes, and she was so afraid of the machine,
and so shocked at the whittling and the talk, and Cray's whole
appearance, that she will not come near us while he is here. After that,
the stair-rods will protect us."
"No," said Crayshaw, "but it's no stimulus to my genius to have to talk
Yankee to such ignorant people. I might mix up North, South, and West
as I liked, and you would be none the wiser. However, if she chances to
hear me speak a week hence, she'll believe that my accent has entirely
peeled off. I thought I'd better provide against that probability. It
was an invention worthy of a poet, which I am."
"Que les poètes thoient pendus," said Augustus John, with vigour and
sincerity. "Ekthepting Homer and Tennython," he added, as if willing to
be just to all men.
"What for? they've done nothing to you."
"Haven't they! But for them I need not watht my life in making Latin
vertheth. The fighting, though, in Homer and Tennython I like."
In the meantime the four younger children were whispering together over
a large paper parcel, that crackled a good deal.
"Which do you think is the grandest word?" said Bertram.
"I _fallacious_, Janie."
"But you said you would put _umbrageous_," observed Hugh, in a
discontented tone.
"No, those words don't mean _it_," answered Janie. "I like _ambrosial_
best. Put 'For our dear ambrosial Johnnie.'"
The parcel contained as many squibs and crackers as the seller thereof
would trust with his young customers; also one rocket.
Johnnie's little brothers and sisters having written these words, rose
from the floor on which they had been seated, and with blushes and
modest pride presented the parcel.
"For a birthday present," they said, "and, Johnnie, you're to let off
every one of them your own self; and lots more are coming from the
shop."
"My wig!" exclaimed Johnnie, feigning intense surprise, though he had
heard every word of the conference. "Let them all off mythelf, did you
thay? Well, I do call that a motht egregiouth and tender lark."
These epithets appeared to give rarity and splendour to his thanks.
Janie pondered over them a little, but when Crayshaw added, "Quite
parenthetical," she gave it up. That was a word she could not hope to
understand. When a difficulty is once confessed to be unconquerable, the
mind can repose before it as before difficulties overcome, so says
Whately. "If it had only been as hard a word as _chemical_" thought
Janie, "I would have looked it out in the spelling-book; but this word
is so very hard that perhaps nobody knows it but Cray."
For the remainder of the week, though many revolutionary speeches were
made in Parliament against the constituted schoolroom authorities, there
was, on the whole, better behaviour and less noise.
After that, John took his three elder children on the Continent, keeping
the boy with him till Harrow School opened again, and remaining behind
with the girls till the first week in November. During this time he by
no means troubled himself about the domestic happiness that he felt he
had missed, though he looked forward with fresh interest to the time
when his intelligent little daughters would be companions for him, and
began, half unconsciously, to idealise the character of his late wife,
as if her death had cost him a true companion--as if, in fact, it had
not made him much nobler and far happier.
He was not sorry, when he returned home, to find Valentine eager to get
away for a little while, for it had been agreed that the old man should
not be left by both of them. Valentine was improved; his comfortable and
independent position in his uncle's house, where his presence was so
evidently regarded as an advantage, had made him more satisfied with
himself; and absence from Dorothea had enabled him to take an interest
in other women.
He went away in high spirits and capital health, and John subsided into
his usual habits, his children continuing to grow about him. He was
still a head taller than his eldest son, but this did not promise to be
long the case. And his eldest girls were so clever, and so forward with
their education, that he was increasingly anxious to propitiate Miss
Crampton. It was very difficult to hold the balance even; he scarcely
knew how to keep her at a distance, and yet to mark his sense of her
value.
"I am going to see the Brandons to-morrow," he remarked to Miss Christie
one day, just before the Christmas holidays.
"Then I wish ye would take little Nancy with ye," observed the good
lady, "for Dorothea was here yesterday. Emily is come to stay with them,
and she drove her over. Emily wished to see the child, and when she
found her gone out for her walk she was disappointed."
"What did she want with her?" asked John.
"Well, I should have thought it might occur to ye that the sweet lamb
had perhaps some sacred reason for feeling attracted towards the
smallest creatures she could conveniently get at."
"Let the nestling bird be dressed up, then," said John. "I will drive
her over with me to lunch this morning. Poor Emily! she will feel seeing
the child."
"Not at all. She has been here twice to see the two little ones. At
first she would only watch them over the blinds, and drop a few tears;
but soon she felt the comfort of them, and when she had got a kiss or
two, she went away more contented."
Accordingly John drove his smallest daughter over to Wigfield House,
setting her down rosy and smiling from her wraps, and sending her to the
ladies, while he went up to Brandon's peculiar domain to talk over some
business with him.
They went down into the morning-room together, and Emily rose to meet
John. It was the first time he had seen her in her mourning-dress and
with the cap that did not seem at all to belong to her.
Emily was a graceful young woman. Her face, of a fine oval shape, was
devoid of ruddy hues; yet it was more white than pale; the clear dark
grey eyes shining with health, and the mouth being red and beautiful.
The hair was dark, abundant, and devoid of gloss, and she had the
advantage of a graceful and cordial manner, and a very charming smile.
There were tears on her eyelashes when she spoke to John, and he knew
that his little cherub of a child must have caused them. She presently
went back to her place, taking little Anastasia on her knee; while
Dorothea, sitting on the sofa close to them, and facing the child,
occupied and pleased herself with the little creature, and encouraged
her to talk.
Of English children this was a lovely specimen, and surely there are
none lovelier in the world. Dorothea listened to her pretty tongue, and
mused over her with a silent rapture. Her hair fell about her face like
flakes of floss-silk, loose, and yellow as Indian corn; and her rosy
cheeks were deeply dimpled. She was the only one of the Mortimers who
was small for her years. She liked being nursed and petted, and while
Dorothea smoothed out the fingers of her tiny gloves, the little fat
hands, so soft and warm, occupied themselves with the contents of her
work-box.
She was relating how Grand had invited them all to spend the day. "Papa
brought the message, and they all wanted to go; and so--" she was
saying, when John caught the sound of her little voice--"and so papa
said, 'What! not one of you going to stay with your poor old
father?'"--these words, evidently authentic, she repeated with the
deepest pathos--"and so," she went on, "I said, 'I will.'" Then, after
a pause for reflection, "That was kind of me, wasn't it?"
A few caresses followed.
Then catching sight of Emily's brooch, in which was a portrait of her
child, little Nancy put the wide tulle cap-strings aside, and looked at
it earnestly.
"I know who that is," she said, after bestowing a kiss on the baby's
face.
"Do you, my sweet? who is it, then?"
"It's Freddy; he's gone to the happy land. It's full of little boys and
girls. Grand's going soon," she added, with great cheerfulness. "Did you
know? Grand says he hopes he shall go soon."
"How did Emily look?" asked Miss Christie, when John came home.
"Better than usual, I think," said John carelessly. "There's no
bitterness in her sorrow, poor thing! She laughed several times at
Nancy's childish talk."
"She looks a great deal too young and attractive to live alone," said
Miss Christie pointedly.
"Well," answered John, "she need not do that long. There are several
fellows about here, who, unless they are greater fools than I take them
for, will find her, as a well-endowed young widow, quite as attractive
as they did when she was an almost portionless girl."
"But in the meantime?" said Miss Christie.
"If you are going to say anything that I shall hate to hear," answered
John, half-laughing, "don't keep me lingering long. If you mean to leave
me, say so at once, and put me out of my misery."
"Well, well," said Miss Christie, looking at him with some pleasure, and
more admiration, "I've been torn in pieces for several weeks past,
thinking it over. Never shall I have my own way again in any man's
house, or woman's either, as I have had it here. And the use of the
carriage and the top of the pew," she continued, speaking; to herself as
much as to him; "and the keys; and I always _knew_ I was welcome, which
is more than being told so. And I thank ye, John Mortimer, for it all, I
do indeed; but if my niece's daughter is wanting me, what can I do but
go to her?"
"It was very base of Emily not to say a word about it," said John,
smiling with as much grimness as utter want of practice, together with
the natural cast of his countenance, would admit of.
Miss Christie looked up, and saw with secret joy the face she admired
above all others coloured with a sudden flush of most unfeigned
vexation. John gave the footstool before him a little shove of
impatience, and it rolled over quite unknown to him, and lighted on Miss
Christie's corns.
She scarcely felt the pain. It was sweet to be of so much importance.
Two people contending for one lonely, homely old woman.
"Say the word," she presently said, "and I won't leave ye."
"No," answered John, "you ought to go to Emily. I had better say instead
that I am very sensible of the kindness you have done me in staying so
long."
"But ye won't be driven to do anything rash?" she answered, observing
that he was still a little chafed, and willing to pass the matter off
lightly.
"Such as taking to myself the lady up-stairs!" exclaimed John. "No, but
I must part with her; if one of you goes, the other must."
This was absolutely the first time the matter had even been hinted at
between them, and yet Miss Christie's whole conduct was arranged with
reference to it, and John always fully counted on her protective
presence.
"Ay, but if I might give myself the liberty of a very old friend," she
answered, straightway taking the ell because he had given her an inch,
"there is something I would like to say to ye."
"What would you like to say?"
"Well, I would like to say that if a man is so more than commonly a fine
man, that it's just a pleasure to set one's eyes on him, and if he's
well endowed with this world's gear, it's a strange thing if there is no
excellent, desirable, and altogether sweet young woman ready, and even
sighing, for him."
"Humph!" said John.
"I don't say there is," proceeded Miss Christie; "far be it from me."
"I hate red hair," answered the attractive widower.
"It's just like a golden oriole. It isn't red at all," replied Miss
Christie dogmatically.
"_I_ call it red," said John Mortimer.
"The painters consider it the finest colour possible," continued the
absent lady's champion.
"Then let them paint her," said John; "but--I shall not marry her;
besides," he chose to say, "I know if I asked her she would not have me:
therefore, as I don't mean to ask her, I shall not be such an unmannerly
dog as to discuss her, further than to say that I do not wish to marry a
woman who takes such a deep and sincere interest in herself."
"Why, don't we all do that? I am sure _I_ do."
"You naturally feel that you are the most important and interesting of
all God's creatures _to yourself_. You do not therefore think that you
must be so to _me_. Our little lives, my dear lady, should not turn
round upon themselves, and as it were make a centre of their own axis.
The better lives revolve round some external centre; everything depends
on that centre, and how much or how many we carry round with us besides
ourselves. Now, my father's centre is and always has been Almighty
God--our Father and his. His soul is as it were drawn to God and lost,
as a centre to itself in that great central soul. He looks at
everything--I speak it reverently--from God's high point of view."
"Ay, but she's a good woman," said Miss Christie, trying to adopt his
religious tone, and as usual not knowing how. "Always going about among
the poor. I don't suppose," she continued with enthusiasm--"I don't
suppose there's a single thing they can do in their houses that she
doesn't interfere with." Then observing his amusement, "Ye don't know
what's good for ye," she added, half laughing, but a little afraid she
was going too far.
"If ever I am so driven wild by the governesses that I put my neck, as a
heart-broken father, under the yoke, in order to get somebody into the
house who can govern as you have done," said John, "it will be entirely
your doing, your fault for leaving me."
"Well, well," said Miss Christie, laughing, "I must abide ye're present
reproaches, but I feel that I need dread no future ones, for if ye
should go and do it, ye'll be too much a gentleman to say anything to me
afterwards."
"You are quite mistaken," exclaimed John, laughing, "that one
consolation I propose to reserve to myself, or if I should not think it
right to speak, mark my words, the more cheerful I look the more sure
you may be that I am a miserable man."
Some days after this the stately Miss Crampton departed for her
Christmas holidays, a letter following her, containing a dismissal
(worded with studied politeness) and a cheque for such an amount of
money as went far to console her.
"Mr. Mortimer was about to send the little boys to school, and meant
also to make other changes in his household. Mr. Mortimer need hardly
add, that should Miss Crampton think of taking another situation, he
should do himself the pleasure to speak as highly of her qualifications
as she could desire."
Aunt Christie gone, Miss Crampton gone also! What a happy state of
things for the young Mortimers! If Crayshaw had been with them, there is
no saying what they might have done; but Johnnie, by his father's
orders, had brought a youth of seventeen to spend three weeks with him,
and the young fellow turned out to be such a dandy, and so much better
pleased to be with the girls than with Johnnie scouring the country and
skating, that John for the first time began to perceive the coming on
of a fresh source of trouble in his house. Gladys and Barbara were
nearly fourteen years old, but looked older; they were tall, slender
girls, black-haired and grey-eyed, as their mother had been, very
simple, full of energy, and in mind and disposition their father's own
daughters. Johnnie groaned over his unpromising companion, Edward
Conyngham by name; but he was the son of an old friend, and John did
what he could to make the boys companionable, while the girls, though
they laughed at young Conyngham, were on the whole more amused with his
compliments than their father liked. But it was not till one day, going
up into Parliament, and finding some verses pinned on a curtain, that he
began to feel what it was to have no lady to superintend his daughters.
"What are they?" Gladys said. "Why, papa, Cray sent them; they are
supposed to have been written by Conyngham."
"What does he know about Conyngham?"
"Oh, I told him when I last wrote."
"When you last wrote," repeated John, in a cogitative tone.
"Yes; I write about once a fortnight, of course, when Barbara writes to
Johnnie."
"Did Miss Crampton superintend the letters?" was John's next inquiry.
"Oh no, father, we always wrote them up here."
"I wonder whether Janie would have allowed this," thought John. "I
suppose as they are so young it cannot signify."
"Cray sent them because we told him how Conyngham walked after Gladys
wherever she went. That boy is such a goose, father; you never heard
such stuff as he talks when you are away."
John was silent.
"Johnnie and Cray are disgusted with his rubbish," continued Barbara,
"pretending to make love and all that."
"Yes," said John; "it is very ridiculous. Boys like Conyngham and
Crayshaw ought to know better." Nothing, he felt, could be so likely to
make the schoolroom distasteful to his daughters as this early
admiration. Still he was consoled by the view they took of it.
"Cray does know better, of course," said Gladys carelessly.
"Still, he was extremely angry with Conyngham, for being so fond of
Gladys," remarked Barbara; "because you know she is _his_ friend. He
would never hear about his puppy, that old Patience Smith takes care of
for sixpence a week, or his rabbits that we have here, or his hawk that
lives at Wigfield, unless Gladys wrote; Mr. Brandon never writes to
him."
"Now shall I put a stop to this, or shall I let it be?" thought John;
and he proceeded to read Crayshaw's effusion.
TO G.M. IN HER BRONZE BOOTS
As in the novel skippers say,
"Shiver my timbers!" and "Belay!"
While a few dukes so handy there
Respectfully make love or swear;
As in the poem some great ass
For ever pipes to his dear lass;
And as in life tea crowns the cup
And muffins sop much butter up;
So, naturally, while I walk
With you, I feel a swell--and stalk--
Consecutively muttering "Oh,
I'm quite a man, I feel I grow."
But loudliest thumps this heart to-day,
While in the mud you pick your way,
(You fawn, you flower, you star, you gem,)
In your new boots with heels to them.
Your Eldest Slave.
"I don't consider these verses a bit more _consecutive_ than Conyngham's
talk," said John, laughing.
"Well, father, then he shouldn't say such things! He said Mr. Brandon
walked with an infallible stride, and that you were the most consecutive
of any one he had ever met with."
"But, my dear little girl, Crayshaw would not have known that unless
you had told him; do you think that was the right thing to do by a
guest?"
Gladys blushed. "But, father," said Barbara, "I suppose Cray may come
now; Conyngham goes to-morrow. Cray never feels so well as when he is
here."
"I had no intention of inviting him this Christmas," answered John.
"Well," said Gladys, "it doesn't make much difference; he and Johnnie
can be together just the same nearly all day, because his brother and
Mrs. Crayshaw are going to stay with the Brandons, and Cray is to come
too."
John felt as if the fates were against him.
"And his brother was so horribly vexed when he found that he hardly got
on at school at all."
"That's enough to vex any man. Cray should spend less time in writing
these verses of his."
"Yes, he wrote us word that his brother said so, and was extremely cross
and unpleasant, when he replied that this was genius, and must not be
repressed."
John, after this, rode into the town, and as he stopped his horse to pay
the turnpike, he was observed by the turnpike-keeper's wife to be
looking gloomy and abstracted; indeed, the gate was no sooner shut
behind him than he sighed, and said with a certain bitterness, "I
shouldn't wonder if, in two or three years time, I am driven to put my
neck under the yoke after all."
"No, we can't come," said little Hugh, when a few days after this Emily
and Dorothea drove over and invited the children to spend the day, "we
couldn't come on any account, because something very grand is going to
happen."
"Did you know," asked Anastasia, "that Johnnie had got into the
_shell_?"
"No, my sweet," said Emily, consoling her empty arms for their loss, and
appeasing her heart with a kiss.
"And father always said that some day he should come home to early
dinner," continued Hugh, "and show the great magic lantern up in
Parliament. Then Swan's grandchildren and the coachman's little girls
are coming; and every one is to have a present. It will be such fun."
"The shell," observed Bertram, "means a sort of a class between the
other classes. Father's so glad Johnnie has got into the shell."
"She is glad too," said Anastasia. "You're glad, Mrs. Nemily."
"Yes, I am glad," answered Emily, a tear that had gathered under her
dark eyelashes falling, and making her eyes look brighter, and her smile
more sweet.
Emily was not of a temperament that is ever depressed. She had her times
of sorrow and tears; but she could often smile, and still oftener laugh.