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.