Where is his golden heap?
Divine Breathings.
Mrs. Robert Brownlow was churched with all the expedition possible, in
order that she might not lose the sight of the funeral procession, which
would be fully visible from the studio in the top of the tower.
The excitement was increased by invitations to attend the funeral being
sent to the Colonel and to his two eldest nephews, who were just
come home for the holidays, also to their mother to be present at the
subsequent reading of the will.
A carriage was sent for her, and she entered it, not knowing or caring
to find out what she wished, and haunted by the line, “Die and endow a
college or a cat.”
Allen met her at the front door, whispering--“Did you see, mother, he
has still got his ears?” And the thought crossed her--“Will those ears
cost us dear?”
She was the only woman present in the library--a large room, but with
an atmosphere as if the open air had not been admitted for thirty years,
and with an enormous fire, close to which was the arm-chair whither she
was marshalled, being introduced to the two solicitors, Mr. Rowse and
Mr. Wakefield, who, with Farmer Gould, the agent, Richards, the Colonel,
and the two boys, made up the audience.
The lawyers explained that the will had been sent home ten years ago
from Yucatan, and had ever since been in their hands. Search had been
made for a later one, but none had been found, nor did they believe that
one could exist.
It was very short. The executors were Charles Rowse and Peter Ball, and
the whole property was devised to them, and to Lieutenant-Colonel Robert
Brownlow, as trustees for the testator’s great-niece, Mrs. Caroline
Otway Brownlow, daughter of John and Caroline Allen, and wife of Joseph
Brownlow, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., the income and use thereof to be enjoyed
by her during her lifetime; and the property, after her death, to be
divided among her children in such proportions as she should direct.
That was all; there was no legacy, no further directions.
“Allow me to congratulate--” began the elder lawyer.
“No--no--oh, stay a bit,” cried she, in breathless dismay and
bewilderment. “It can’t be! It can’t mean only me. There must be
something about Elvira de Menella.”
“I fear there is not,” said Mr. Rowse; “I could wish my late client had
attended more to the claims of justice, and had divided the property,
which could well have borne it; but unfortunately it is not so.”
“It is exactly as he led us to expect,” said Mr. Gould. “We have no
right to complain, and very likely the child will be much happier
without it. You have a fine family growing up to enjoy it, Mrs.
Brownlow, and I am sure no one congratulates you more heartily than I.”
“Don’t; it can’t be,” cried the heiress, nearly crying, and wringing the
old farmer’s hand. “He must have meant Elvira. You know he sent for you.
Has everything been hunted over? There must be a later will.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Brownlow,” said the solicitor, “you may rest assured that
full search has been made. Mr. Richards had the same impression, and we
have been searching every imaginable receptacle.”
“Besides,” added Colonel Brownlow, “if he had made another will there
would have been witnesses.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Richards; “but to make matters certain, I wrote to
several of the servants to ask whether they remembered any attestation,
but no one did; and indeed I doubt whether, after his arrival here, poor
Mr. Barnes ever had sustained power enough to have drawn up and executed
a will without my assistance, or that of any legal gentleman.”
“It is too hard and unjust,” cried Caroline; “it cannot be. I must halve
it with the child, as if there had been no will at all. Robert! you know
that is what your brother would have done.”
“That would be just as well as generous, indeed, if it were
practicable,” said Mr. Rowse; “but unfortunately Colonel Brownlow
and myself (for Mr. Ball is dead) are in trust to prevent any such
proceeding. All that is in your power is to divide the property among
your own family by will, in such proportion as you may think fit.”
“Quite true, my dear sister,” said the Colonel, meeting her despairing
appealing look, “as regards the principal, but the ready money at the
bank and the income are entirely at your own disposal, and you can,
without difficulty, secure a very sufficient compensation to the little
girl out of them.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Rowse.
“You’ll let me--you’ll let me, Mr. Gould,” implored Caroline; “you’ll
let me keep her, and do all I can to make up to her. You see the Colonel
thinks it is only justice; don’t you, Robert?”
“Mrs. Brownlow is quite right,” said the Colonel, seeing that her
vehemence was a little distrusted; “it will be only an act of justice to
make provision for your granddaughter.”
“I am sure, Colonel Brownlow, nothing can be handsomer than your conduct
and Mrs. Brownlow’s,” said the old man; “but I should not like to take
advantage of what she is good enough to say on the spur of the moment,
till she has had more time to think it over.”
Therewith he took leave, while Caroline exclaimed--
“I always say there is no truer gentleman in the county than old Mr.
Gould. I shall not be satisfied about that will till I have turned
everything over and the partners have been written to.”
Again she was assured that she might set her mind at rest, and then
the lawyers began to read a statement of the property which made Allen
utter, under his breath, an emphatic “I say!” but his mother hardly
took it in. The heated room had affected her from the first, and the
bewilderment of the tidings seemed almost to crush her; her heart and
temples throbbed, her head ached violently, and while the final words
respecting arrangements were passing between the Colonel and the
lawyers, she was conscious only of a sickening sense of oppression, and
a fear of committing the absurdity of fainting.
However, at last her brother-in-law put her into the brougham, desiring
the boys to walk home, which they did very willingly, and with a
wonderful air of lordship and possession.
“Well, Caroline,” said the Colonel, “I congratulate you on being the
richest proprietor in the county.”
“O Robert, don’t! If--if,” said a suffocated voice, so miserable that he
turned and took her hand kindly, saying--
“My dear sister, this feeling is very--it becomes you well. This is a
fearful responsibility.”
She could not answer. She only leant back in the carriage, with closed
eyes, and moaned--
“Oh! Joe! Joe!”
“Indeed,” said his brother, greatly touched, “we want him more than
ever.”
He did not try to talk any more to her, and when they reached the
Pagoda, all she could do was to hurry up stairs, and, throwing off her
bonnet, bury her face in the pillow.
Janet and her aunt both followed, the latter with kind and tender
solicitude; but Caroline could bear nothing, and begged only to be left
alone.
“Dear Ellen, it is very kind, but nothing does any good to these
headaches. Please don’t--please leave me alone.”
They saw it was the only true kindness, and left her, after all attempts
at bathing her forehead, or giving her sal volatile, proved only to
molest her. She lay on her bed, not able to think, and feeling nothing
but the pain of her headache and a general weight and loneliness.
The first break was from Allen, who came in tenderly with a cup of
coffee, saying that they thought her time was come for being ready for
it. His manner always did her good, and she sat up, pushed back her
hair, smiled, took the cup, and thanked him lovingly.
“Uncle Robert is waiting to hear if you are better,” he said.
“Oh yes,” she said; “thank him; I am sorry I was so silly.”
“He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and Mr.
Wakefield,” said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad of
fifteen, who had just become “somebody.”
“Very well,” she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again,
just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.
“And mother,” said Allen, lingering in the dark, “don’t trouble about
Elfie. I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make all
straight.”
Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous
announcement, and she dreamily said--
“Time enough to think of such things.”
“I know,” said Allen; “but I thought you ought to know this.”
He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she was
really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy’s words,
and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep. She had a curious
dream, which she remembered long after. She seemed to have identified
herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her children, who
turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on pedestals in the
Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly calling them. Then
her husband’s voice, sad and reproachful, seemed to say, “Magnum Bonum!
Magnum Bonum!” and she fancied it the elixir which alone could restore
them, and would have climbed a mountain in search of it, as in the
Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy, and immovable, and she
found that they too had become gold, and that the chill was creeping
upwards. With a scream of “Save the children, Joe,” she awoke.
No wonder she had dreamt of cold golden limbs, for her feet were really
chilly as ice, and the room as dark as at midnight. However it was not
yet seven o’clock; and presently Janet brought a light, and persuaded
her to come downstairs and warm herself. She was not yet capable of
going into the dining-room to the family tea, but crept down to lie
on the sofa in the drawing-room; and there, after taking the small
refreshment which was all she could yet endure, she lay with closed
eyes, while the children came in from the meal. Armine and Babie were
the first. She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert
herself to speak to them.
“Asleep,” they whispered. “Poor Mother Carey.”
“Armie,” said Babie, “is mother unhappy because she has got rich?”
Armine hesitated. His brief experience of school had made him less
unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fashion even
to his little sister, and she added--
“Must people get wicked when they are rich?”
“Mother is always good,” said faithful little Armine.
“The rich people in the Bible were all bad,” pondered Babie. “There was
Dives, and the man with the barns.”
“Yes,” said Armine; “but there were good ones too--Abraham and Solomon.”
“Solomon was not always good,” said Babie; “and Uncle Robert told Allen
it was a fearful responsibility. What is a responsibility, Armie? I am
sure Ali didn’t like it.”
“Something to answer for!” said Armine.
“To who?” asked the little girl.
“To God,” said the boy reverently. “It’s like the talent in the parable.
One has got to do something for God with it, and then it won’t turn to
harm.”
“Like the man’s treasure that changed into slate stones when he made a
bad use of it,” said Babie. “Oh! Armie, what shall we do? Shall we give
plum-puddings to the little thin girls down the lane?”
“And I should like to give something good to the little grey workhouse
boys,” said Armine. “I should so hate always walking out along a
straight road as they do.”
“And oh! Armie, then don’t you think we may get a nice book to write out
Jotapata in?”
“Yes, a real jolly one. For you know, Babie, it will take lots of room,
even if I write my very smallest.”
“Please let it be ruled, Armie. And where shall we begin?”
“Oh! at the beginning, I think, just when Sir Engelbert first heard
about the Crusade.”
“It will take lots of books then.”
“Never mind, we can buy them all now. And do you know, Bab, I think
Adelmar and Ermelind might find a nice lot of natural petroleum and
frighten Mustafa ever so much with it!”
For be it known that Armine and Barbara’s most cherished delight was in
one continued running invention of a defence of Jotapata by a crusading
family, which went on from generation to generation with unabated
energy, though they were very apt to be reduced to two young children
who held out their fortress against frightful odds of Saracens, and
sometimes conquered, sometimes converted their enemies. Nobody but
themselves was fully kept au courant with this wonderful siege, which
had hitherto been recorded in interlined copy-books, or little paper
books pasted together, and very remarkably illustrated.
The door began to creak with an elaborate noisiness intended for perfect
silence, and Jock’s voice was heard.
“Bother the door! Did it wake mother? No? That’s right;” and he squatted
down between the little ones while Bobus seated himself at the table
with a book.
“Well! what colour shall our ponies be?” began Jock, in an attempt at a
whisper.
“Oh! shall we have ponies?” cried the little ones.
“Zebras if we like,” said Jock. “We’ll have a team.”
“Can’t,” growled Bobus.
“Why not? They can be bought!”
“Not tamed. They’ve tried it at the Jardin d’Acclimatisation.”
“Oh, that was only Frenchmen. A zebra is too jolly to let himself be
tamed by a Frenchman. I’ll break one in myself and go out with the
hounds upon him.”
“Jack-ass on striped-ass--or off him,” muttered Bobus.
“Oh! don’t, Jock,” implored Babie, “you’ll get thrown.”
“No such thing. You’ll come to the meet yourself, Babie, on your Arab.”
“Not she,” said Bobus, in his teasing voice. “She’ll be governessed up
and kept to lessons all day.”
“Mother always teaches us,” said Babie.
“She’ll have no time, she’ll be a great lady, and you’ll have three
governesses--one for French, and one for German, and one for deportment,
to make you turn out your toes, and hold up your head, and never sit on
the rug.”
“Never mind, Babie,” said Jock. “We’ll bother them out of their lives if
they do.”
“You’ll be at school,” said Bobus, “and they’ll all three go out walking
with Babie, and if she goes out of a straight line one will say ‘Fi
donc, Mademoiselle Barbe,’ and the other will say, ‘Schamen sie sich,
Fraulein Barbara,’ and the third will call for the stocks.”
“For shame, Robert,” cried his mother, hearing something like a sob;
“how can you tease her so!”
“Mother, must I have three governesses?” asked poor little Barbara.
“Not one cross one, my sweet, if I can help it!”
“Oh! mother, if it might be Miss Ogilvie?” said Babie.
“Yes, mother, do let it be Miss Ogilvie,” chimed in Armine. “She tells
such jolly stories!”
“She ain’t a very nasty one,” quoted Jock from Newman Noggs, and as
Janet appeared he received her with--“Moved by Barbara, seconded by
Armine, that Miss Ogilvie become bear-leader to lick you all into
shape.”
“What do you think of it, Janet?” said her mother.
“It will not make much difference to me,” said Janet. “I shall depend on
classes and lectures when we go back to London. I should have thought a
German better for the children, but I suppose the chief point is to find
some one who can manage Elfie if we are still to keep her.”
“By the bye, where is she, poor little thing?” asked Caroline.
“Aunt Ellen took her home,” said Janet. “She said she would send her
back at bed-time, but she thought we should be more comfortable alone
to-night.”
“Real kindness,” said Caroline; “but remember, children, all of you,
that Elfie is altogether one of us, on perfectly equal terms, so don’t
let any difference be made now or ever.”
“Shall I have a great many more lessons, mother?” asked Babie.
“Don’t be as silly as Essie, Babie,” said Janet. “She expects us all to
have velvet frocks and gold-fringed sashes, and Jessie’s first thought
was ‘Now, Janet, you’ll have a ladies’ maid.’”
“No wonder she rejoiced to be relieved of trying to make you
presentable,” said Bobus.
“Shall we live at Belforest?” asked Armine.
“Part of the year,” said Janet, who was in a wonderfully expansive and
genial state; “but we shall get back to London for the season, and know
what it is to enjoy life and rationality again, and then we must all go
abroad. Mother, how soon can we go abroad?”
“It won’t make a bit of difference for a year. We shan’t get it for ever
so long,” said Bobus.
“Oh!”
“Fact. I know a man whose uncle left him a hundred pounds last year, and
the lawyers haven’t let him touch a penny of it.”
“Perhaps he is not of age,” said Janet.
“At any rate,” said Jock, “we can have our fun at Belforest.”
“O yes, Jock, only think,” cried Babie, “all the dear tadpoles belong to
mother!”
“And all the dragon-flies,” said Armine.
“And all the herons,” said Jock.
“We can open the gates again,” said Armine.
“Oh! the flowers!” cried Babie in an ecstasy.
“Yes,” said Janet. “I suppose we shall spend the early spring in the
country, but we must have the best part of the season in London now
that we can get out of banishment, and enjoy rational conversation once
more.”
“Rational fiddlestick,” muttered Bobus.
“That’s what any girl who wasn’t such a prig as Janet would look for,”
said Jock.
“Well, of course,” said Janet. “I mean to have my balls like other
people; I shall see life thoroughly. That’s just what I value this for.”
Bobus made a scoffing noise.
“What’s up, Bobus?” asked Jock.
“Nothing, only you keep up such a row, one can’t read.”
“I’m sure this is better and more wonderful than any book!” said Jock.
“It makes no odds to me,” returned Bobus, over his book.
“Oh! now!” cried Janet, “if it were only the pleasure of being free from
patronage it would be something.”
“Gratitude!” said Bobus.
“I’ll show my gratitude,” said Janet; “we’ll give all of them at
Kencroft all the fine clothes and jewels and amusements that ever they
care for, more than ever they gave us; only it is we that shall give and
they that will take, don’t you see?”
“Sweet charity,” quoth Bobus.
Those two were a great contrast; Janet had never been so radiant,
feeling her sentence of banishment revoked, and realising more vividly
than anyone else was doing, the pleasures of wealth. The cloud under
which she had been ever since the coming to the Pagoda seemed to have
rolled away, in the sense of triumph and anticipation; while Bobus
seemed to have fallen into a mood of sarcastic ill-temper. His mother
saw, and it added to her sense of worry, though her bright sweet nature
would scarcely have fathomed the cause, even had she been in a state to
think actively rather than to feel passively. Bobus, only a year younger
than Allen, and endowed with more force and application, if not with
more quickness, had always been on a level with his brother, and
felt superior, despising Allen’s Eton airs and graces, and other
characteristics which most people thought amiable. And now Allen had
become son and heir, and was treated by everyone as the only person of
importance. Bobus did not know what his own claims might be, but at any
rate his brother’s would transcend them, and his temper was thoroughly
upset.
Poor Caroline! She did not wholly omit to pray “In all time of our
tribulation, in all time of our wealth, deliver us!” but if she had
known all that was in her children’s hearts, her own would have trembled
more.
And as to Ellen, the utmost she allowed herself to say was, “Well, I
hope she will make a good use of it!”
While the Colonel, as trustee and adviser, had really a very
considerable amount of direct importance and enjoyment before him,
which might indeed be--to use his own useful phrase--“a fearful
responsibility,” but was no small boon to a man with too much time on
his hands.