THE FAMILY.
A bright spring morning, sharp and cold, but with floods of sunshine
everywhere--sunshine on the grass, turning the delicate rime into a
network of pearls, and glittering along all the bare branches, where the
brown buds were beginning to swell--colder than autumn, almost colder
than winter, but with a different sentiment in the air. Spring cold is
like the poverty of a poor man who has had a fortune left him--better
days are coming; the trees felt this already, though their buds were
pinched, and Nelly felt it as she went out with her garden gloves on,
and a pair of scissors. What did she expect to find in the garden, do
you ask? Nothing in the garden, where the crocuses had scarcely awakened
to the fact that the sun was up and calling them; but away at the end of
the lawn, among the roots of that transept of lime trees which crossed
the avenue of big elms, there were hosts of hardy little snowdrops
peeping up among the half-frozen grass, and growing in handfuls as
Nature bade them. By what sweet piece of good fortune this came to be, I
cannot tell; but so it was. Nelly herself, in a jacket trimmed with
white fur, was too bright to be like her snowdrops. She ran up and down
the long avenue to warm her delicate little toes. It was a better way
than sitting over the fire. In the little open space before the garden
door, Dick, with a book in his coat pocket, was doing what he could to
inform the mind of Winks. Dick was supposed to get up at seven to
improve his own mind, and, I presume, he believed that the book in his
pocket did him some good by mere contact, if nothing else. He had read,
at most, one page of it, at the expense of I don’t know how many yawns,
but now his soul was set on the more congenial task of teaching Winks to
carry a musket and stand on guard. Winks looked at the stick which had
fallen from his unwilling paws, sniffing at it with a certain cynical
disbelief in the supposed weapon. He was a very dark-coloured Skye,
almost black, and had a way of grinning at Dick with all his white teeth
displayed from his black lips, in a satirical smile which incensed his
instructor greatly. Winks had as great objections to being instructed as
Dick had himself, but, being above those prudential reasons which
induced his young master to smother his feelings, the four-footed
neophyte had distinctly the advantage. He did not believe in the feigned
firearm, and words could not have expressed the good-humoured disdain
with which he wagged his tail. “You think this is a gun, I suppose,”
Winks’s tail said; “but I who am your intellectual superior am not to be
taken in. Take up that bit of wood in my paws as if I was a mountebank!
Not if I know it.” “Sit up, sir, sit up,” said Dick in a passion. Winks
only smiled the more and wagged his tail. But the lesson, though it
amused his cynical humour, began to bore him. All at once he put his
head on one side, and pricked up his ears, responding to some imaginary
call. The pantomime was far cleverer than anything Dick was capable of.
“I think I hear my mistress calling me,” Winks said in the plainest
English; but he was too clever to escape at once. He paused,
contemplative, consulting heaven and earth. “Did I hear my mistress
call?” Then suddenly once more came the imaginary summons. “Distressed I
am sure, beyond all measure, to leave you,” the polite dog said, with a
final wag of his tail, triumphant, yet deprecating. “Confound the little
brute!” cried Dick, indignant; and Winks chuckled as he ran off on three
legs, pretending to be all eagerness. “Confound the little beast!”
repeated the boy; “Nelly, come here, and don’t dance about in that
aggravating way;--just when I thought he had got hold of a new trick!”
“Winks is a great deal too clever to do tricks,” said Nelly.
“Yes, he is as knowing as I am,” said innocent Dick. “I wonder now if
there is any truth in that stuff about transmigration. He must have been
an actor, that brute. I don’t believe my mother called a bit. I don’t
believe she is down-stairs yet--cunning little beast! What a jolly lot
of snowdrops, Nelly! Are you going in? It’s not nine yet. Come round the
walk, I want to speak to you. Oh what an awful bore is this exam.!”
said Dick, with a deep sigh. “Now I put it to you, Nell, in the spirit
of fairness, how can a fellow be expected to do mathematics before
breakfast? It is bad enough when you have been worked up to it, and
supported; but at eight o’clock in the morning, without so much as a cup
of coffee! What are men supposed to be made of? I am sure it never was
so in the old times.”
“Much you know about it,” said Nelly. “When I was at school, and much
younger than you, I had to get up and practise for an hour and a half
before breakfast--cold fingers and cold keys--and not even a fire.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Dick, “of course I never minded getting up at
Eton; all the other fellows did it, and for one thing, the masters were
punished just as much as we were, and looked just as blue. But when you
are all of you in your comfortable beds, and only me at work!”
“If that was all, I should not mind in the least getting up and sitting
with you,” said Nelly; “but then we should only chatter, and no work
would be done. And if you work hard, you know it will soon be over.”
“Soon over? yes, till the next one,” said Dick the disconsolate; “and
then India at the end. There’s Frederick now, a lazy beggar, comes down
at ten o’clock, and everybody thinks it quite right. Why should there be
such a difference between him and me? You’re a girl, and don’t count;
but why should he be in clover at the Sealing Wax Office, while I am to
be sent to India?”
“Frederick will never get rich in the Sealing Wax Office, but you may in
India. Besides, you know,” said Nelly, who was impressionable on this
point, though she did not altogether trust her elder brother, “he would
have been in the Church had he not been too conscientious. Quantities of
men go into the Church without thinking what they are doing; but
Frederick had scruples--he had doubts even on some points----”
“Much anybody would care if I had doubts,” said Dick; “if I were to set
up opinions, Nell----”
But this was more than Nelly’s gravity could stand. The idea of Dick
having opinions, and the injured look with which he announced the
probable indifference of the world to them, sent his sister off into
that _fou rire_ which no one can stop. “I will race you to the end of
the walk,” she said, trying to subdue herself; and, undismayed by the
indifference thus shown to his metaphysical difficulties, Dick accepted
the challenge. He allowed her to dart past him with all a boy’s
contempt. He regarded her, indeed, with something of the same sentiment
with which Winks had regarded him. “Girls spend all their strength at
the first outset,” Dick said composedly, going steadily on with his
squared elbows. “They’re like greased lightning for ten yards or so, and
then they’re done--like you, Nell,” he said, passing her when she
paused, panting, to take breath. She had made a hard fight for it,
however. She had run to within a few yards of the goal before she
allowed herself to be beaten. Dick immediately began a lecture to her
upon the deficiency of feminine performances, which was perhaps too
technical for these pages, but so like many lectures on the same subject
that the reader will have little difficulty in imagining it. “You never
can ‘stay,’” was the conclusion, made with much patronizing good-humour.
Altogether, it was apparent that Dick’s general opinion of his sister
coincided wonderfully with Winks’s opinion of himself. Great wits jump.
“Miss Ellinor, your mamma has been a-waiting breakfast this half-hour,”
said Brownlow solemnly, addressing them from the end of the walk.
Brownlow was large and stout, and filled up the vista formed by the
branches. They had known his sway all their lives, and they laughed at
him between themselves; but the young Eastwoods had not yet learned to
disobey Brownlow. They put themselves in motion with the utmost
docility. “We are coming directly,” said Nelly, running to pick up her
basket with the snowdrops. Even Frederick did instinctively what
Brownlow told him. The brother and sister went on to the house,
following the large black shadow which moved with dignity before them.
“What an awful old bore he is,” said Dick: “look here, Nell, what will
you bet that I couldn’t hit that big red ear of his with this chestnut?
One, two, three----”
“Oh, don’t, Dick, for heaven’s sake!” said Nelly, catching his hand;
“though he is an old bore. I wonder how it is that we have none but old
servants? Mamma prefers them, I suppose; though Frederick, I know, would
like another cook, and I,--oh, no, I couldn’t part with old Alice. What
a wretch I am to think of it! But she never can help one to a new way of
doing one’s hair.”
“I always do my hair exactly the same,” said Dick. “I never require any
one to help me.”
“Oh, you!” said Nelly taking her revenge; “who cares how a boy looks?”
And thus they went in, breathing youth, and fun, and nonsense, and
mischief. Mrs. Eastwood stood warming her hands by the fire, but Dick
and Nelly put themselves on the other side of the table. Their young
blood was dancing, their young limbs too light to be touched by the
cold.
“I wonder where Frederick will be by this time; I wonder when he will
reach Pisa,” said the mother. “I suppose it is not to be expected that a
young man would go right through Paris without stopping. But when I
think of that poor little thing all alone----”
“The wind blew nice and strong last night,” said Dick; “it would be
pleasant in the Channel. I say, mamma, I hope Frederick liked it. How
queer he would look this morning! What a thing it is not to be able to
stand a breeze at sea! You should have seen us off the Needles in the
last equinoctial, in old Summerdale’s yacht.”
“Don’t tell me about it,” said Mrs. Eastwood, closing her eyes and
setting down her tea-cup. “Some of these days you will hear that Mr.
Summerdale and his yacht have gone to the bottom: and I am sure, though
I would not be uncharitable to any man, I think he deserves it: carrying
boys away in a storm without the knowledge of their people. I thought I
should have died.”
“I was a good bit more like dying, and I did not mind,” cried Dick. “It
was glorious. The noise, so that you couldn’t hear yourself talk, and
the excitement, and the confusion, and the danger! Hadn’t we just a
squeak for it? It was gloriously jolly,” cried Dick, rubbing his hands
at the recollection. He looked so wickedly pleased with the escapade
that his mother could not help snubbing him on the spot.
“I hope you have got a great deal of work done this morning. Alice tells
me you got up directly when you were called. And you must remember,
Dick, how very short the time is getting,” she said, in her softest
tones. “I would not for the world deprive you of a single advantage; but
seven-and-sixpence an hour is a very great deal to pay unless you take
the full advantage of it. And now I shall have another child to provide
for,” Mrs. Eastwood added, sighing faintly. Poor Dick’s random mood was
over. He said something about mathematics in general which was not
complimentary to that lofty science.
“If it was to be of any use to a fellow after I should not mind,” he
said. “It is the doing it all for no good that riles one. If I were to
be mathematical master somewhere, or head accountant, or even a
bookkeeping fellow----. You need not cry ‘Oh, oh!’ You ain’t in
Parliament, Nell, and never can be; that’s a comfort. Girls ought to
talk of things they understand. I don’t interfere with your
fiddle-de-jigs. That’s what discourages a fellow. Besides, mathematics
are horribly hard; ladies that never opened a Euclid,” said Dick, with
dignity, “are quite incapable of forming an idea.”
“They tell the best in the examination,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “When you
have passed you will have no more trouble with them. But we must not
forget how many marks there are for mathematics; and you must not be
discouraged, Dick. But you know, children, if we are to have a new
member in the family, we shall require to think of economy more than
ever. I do not see anything we can actually put down,” the mother said,
with deliberation, and a sigh to the memory of the carriage. “The only
thing I could think of was the fires in our bedrooms, and really that
would not be good for your healths. But we must be generally economical.
And the very first principle of economy is making the best use of what
we have. So recollect, Dick.”
“I’m going, mamma,” he said, and pulled the book out of his coat pocket
which had been keeping him company all the morning. Mrs. Eastwood
followed him to the door with her kind eyes.
“I really think, though he is such a harum-scarum, that he is doing his
work, poor boy,” she said, with that fond maternal confidence which is
often so indifferently deserved.
“Yes, yes, mamma,” cried Nelly, with some impatience, not feeling all
the interest in the subject her mother did. “But never mind Dick, he’ll
do very well, I daresay. Come and see what I want to have done to the
little room.”
The Elms was an old-fashioned house. It was built, as houses in England
are rarely built now-a-days, in those suites of rooms which are so
general on the Continent. Mrs. Eastwood’s room occupied the whole width
of the wing. It had an alcove, which was like an inner room, for the
bed, and abundance of space for reading tables and writing tables, and
sofas and book-cases in the rest of the spacious chamber, which was like
a French room in every way, with its dressing-closet opening from the
alcove, and all the less beautiful accessories of the toilet kept well
out of sight. Ellinor’s room opened from her mother’s, and opening from
that again was the little room which was to be prepared for the
new-comer. Already it was all pulled to pieces by Nelly’s commands, and
under her supervision; and a brisk little workwoman sat in Nelly’s own
chamber surrounded by billows of bright new chintz, with a running
pattern of rose buds and fern leaves. A tall old woman, in a black gown
and cap, stood beside this artist, advising it seemed and disapproving.
Ellinor stopped with the anxious and indeed servile politeness of fear
to speak to this personage. “How kind of you, Alice, to come and help,”
she said; “I hope you like the chintz. Don’t you think we shall make the
room look nice after all, when it has been papered and cleaned?”
“There’s nothing to be said against the room,” said Alice, in a Scotch
accent, and with a solemnity of tone that spoke more than words.
“And then we shall all be together. It will be very handy for
everything,” said Nelly, with a sickly smile, trying to bear up; “all
the ladies of the family----”
“I would like to speak a word to your mamma about that,” said Alice. She
pronounced the word “Mammaw,” and somehow those broad vowels added
ten-fold weight--or so, at least, Ellinor thought--to the speech.
“Mamma has gone into the little room,” said Nelly, with an effort. Mrs.
Eastwood was a very persuadable woman, and she looked still more
persuadable than she was. Most people thought they themselves could
influence her to anything, unless, indeed, some one else had forestalled
them; and, to tell the truth, even her own family attributed to Mrs.
Everard, or failing her to Alice, everything in their mother’s conduct
which was not attributable to their own sage advices. It required a
more subtle observer than Nelly to make out that her mother had in
reality a great deal of her own way; therefore she was deeply alarmed by
Alice’s unfriendly looks, and followed her into the little room with but
slightly disguised terror.
“Alice is in a bad humour,” she whispered to her mother; “You won’t mind
what she says? She thinks the new paper and the chintz are extravagant.
Don’t listen to her, mamma.”
“So they are,” said Mrs. Eastwood, shaking her head. She was fond of
pretty paper and pretty chintz, and of change and novelty. She liked
furnishing a room almost as well as her daughter did, and she thought
she had “taste.” Therefore she had defences against any attack on that
side of the question, which Ellinor had not dreamt of. However, even
Nelly was startled and taken aback by the unexpected line taken by
Alice, who looked as if she might have something very important to say.
“You remember Miss Isabel, mem?” was what she said, looking her mistress
full in the face.
“Dear me, Alice, what a question! Remember my sister?” cried Mrs.
Eastwood, turning abruptly away from the paper and chintz.
“It’s a queer question to ask,” said Alice, with a grim smile; “but
dinna go too fast. You mind your sister, and yet you are going to put
her child--her only child--here in a room next to your own, next to Miss
Ellinor’s? Between mother and daughter? That’s where you place Miss
Isabel’s bairn?”
“Alice!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, almost angrily. She looked at Nelly’s
wondering face and then at her maid with a half-frightened,
half-threatening gesture. She was annoyed, but she was startled too.
“I say it before Miss Ellinor that you may not do it with your eyes
shut,” said Alice. “I’m only a servant, with no right to interfere; but
I cannot stand by, and no say a word. I’m no in favour of it,” she
cried, turning round. “It would be best to provide for her, and no bring
her home; but if you will bring her home--and, mem, you are always
wilful, though nobody thinks so--put her in any place but here.”
“You are dreadfully prejudiced, Alice--dreadfully prejudiced!”
“Maybe I am; and, mem, you like your own way. We are none of us perfect.
But your sister Isabel’s bairn, the child of an ill father to the boot,
should never come into my house. Maybe you think, mem, that the features
of the mind are no transmitted? Poor leddy! Poor leddy! There’s enough
of her in your blood already without searching out of your way to find
more.”
Mrs. Eastwood grew crimson to her hair. “If you think any of my children
resemble my sister, Alice, I can assure you you are very much mistaken,”
she said, walking up and down the little room in her agitation. “Nelly,
look here, you would think she meant something very dreadful. Your poor
aunt Isabella was very secret in her way, and liked to make a mystery.
She got me into some trouble when I was a girl through it. That was all.
Why it should be remembered against her child, or change my natural
affections, I can’t imagine. Oh, I know you mean well, Alice, you mean
well; but that does not make it a bit more pleasant. Put down those
curtains and things, Nelly, put them down. I hate so much fuss. There is
plenty of time. You are always so hasty and premature in everything. I
am going to speak to cook. Don’t trouble me about this any more.”
“It is all your doing, Alice,” said Ellinor, as her mother went away.