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.