To your eager prayer, the Voice
Makes awful answer, “Come to Me.”
Once for all now seal your choice
With Christ to tread the boisterous sea.
Keble.
The Leukerbad section of the party had only three days’ start of the
others, for Jock was not released till after a whole month’s course of
the baths, and Armine’s state fluctuated so much that the journey would
not have been sooner possible.
It had been a trying time. While Dr. Medlicott thought he could not
rouse Mrs. Brownlow to the sense of the little fellow’s precarious
condition, deadly alarm lay couched in the bottom of her heart, only
kept at bay by defiantly cheerful plans and sanguine talk.
Then Jock was depressed, and at his age (and, alas! at many others)
being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother
and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods,
seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and
whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a muff as
Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was
more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions
with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and
cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the friendship only seemed cemented
by this treatment, and this devoted slave evidently preferred being
abused by Jock to being made much of by any one else.
The regimen was very disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium
of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account
for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one
guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on the
moraine and ratified with Cecil. To no one else had he spoken, but all
the more for his reserve did he feel himself bound by the sense of
the shame and dishonour of falling back from vows made in the time of
danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of
a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could
have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the
monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been
infinitely better tempered.
For to poor Jock steadiness appeared renunciation of all “jest and
youthful jollity,” and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might
be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome
and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in life seemed
extinguished, and he would have preferred leaving Eton, where he must
change his habits and amaze his associates. Indeed, he was between
hoping and fearing that all this would there seem folly. But then he
would break his word, the one thing that poor half-heathen Jock truly
cared about.
Meantime he was keeping it as best he knew how under the circumstances,
by minding his prayers more than he had ever done before, trying to
attend when part of the service was read on Sundays, and endeavouring to
follow the Evelyn sabbatical code, but only succeeding in making himself
more dreary and savage on Sunday than on any other day.
By easy journeys they arrived at Engelberg early on a Friday afternoon,
and found pleasant rooms in the large hotel, looking out in front on the
grand old monastery, once the lord of half the Canton, and in the rear
upon pine-woods, leading up to a snow-crowned summit. The delicious
scent seemed to bring invigoration in at the windows.
However, Jock and Armine were both tired enough to be sent to bed,
if not to sleep, immediately after the--as yet, scantily filled table
d’hote. The former was lying dreamily listening to the evening bells of
the monastery, when Cecil came in, looking diffident and hesitating.
“I say, Jock,” he began, “did you see that old clergyman at the table
d’hote?”
“Was there one?”
“Yes; and there is to be a Celebration on Sunday.”
“O! Then Armine can have his wish.”
“Fordham has been getting the old cleric to talk to your mother about
it.”
Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before
Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother Robert’s
example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on that
terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, “Do you mean to
stay?” he answered rather snappishly, “I suppose so.”
“I fancied,” said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, “that if we were
together it would be a kind of seal to--”
Jock actually forced back the words, “Don’t humbug,” which were not his
own, but his ill-temper’s, and managed to reply--
“Well, what?”
“Being brothers in arms,” replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that
touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full assent,
letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.
He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed his
tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for the
birds of the air. The outcome was--
“I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is--I don’t know
where.”
Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil himself,
would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was heartily
glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock’s reformation his own security in
the ways which he really preferred.
Poor Jock, who, whatever he was, was real in all his ways, and could
not lead a double life, as his friend too often did, read and tried to
fulfil the injunctions of the book, but only became more confused and
unhappy than ever. Yet still he held on, in a blind sort of way, to
his resolution. He had undertaken to be good, he meant therefore
to communicate, and he believed he repented, and would lead a new
life--if--if he could bear it.
His next confidence was--
“I say, Cecil, can you get me some writing things? We--at least I--ought
to write and tell my tutor that I am sorry about that supper.”
“Well, he was rather a beast.”
“I think,” said Jock, who had the most capacity for seeing things from
other people’s point of view, “we did enough to put him in a wax. It was
more through me than any one else, and I shall write at once, and get it
off my mind before to-morrow.”
“Very well. If you’ll write, I’ll sign,” said Cecil. “Mother said I
ought when I saw her in London, but she didn’t order me. She said she
left it to my proper feeling.”
“And you hadn’t any?”
“I was going to stick by you,” said Cecil, rather sulkily; on which Jock
rewarded him with something sounding like--
“What a donkey you can be!”
However, with many writhings and gruntings the letter was indited, and
Jock was as much wearied out as if he had taken a long walk, so that his
mother feared that Engelberg was going to disagree with him. He had
not energy enough to go out in the evening of Saturday to meet the new
arrivals, but stayed with Armine, who was in a state of restless joy and
excitement, marvelling at him, and provoking him by this surprise as if
it were censure.
With his forehead against the window, Armine watched and did his utmost
to repress the eagerness that seemed to irritate his brother, and at
last gave vent to an irrepressible hurrah.
“There they are! Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is!
Babie--holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with
Fordham--and there’s Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren’t you
coming down, Jock?”
“Not I! I don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself before
everybody!--I say--you’ll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut
the door I say!”--shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his
expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then
shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed,
“There! What an eternal brute I am!”
A few moments more and the door was open again, and Cecil, with his arm
round his sister, thrust her forwards, exclaiming--“Here he is, Syd.”
Jock had recovered his gentlemanly manners enough to shake hands
courteously, as well as to receive and return Babie’s kiss, when she
and Armine staggered in together, reeling under their weight of delight.
Janet kissed him too, and then, scanning both brothers, observed to her
mother--
“I think Lucas is the more altered of the two.” In which sentiment
Elvira seemed to agree, for she put her hands behind her and exclaimed--
“O Jock, you do look such a fright; I never knew how like Janet you
were!”
“You are letting every one know what a spiteful little Elf you can
be,” returned Janet, indignantly. “Can’t you give poor Jock a kinder
greeting?”
Whereupon the Elf put on a cunning look of innocence and said--
“I didn’t know it was unkind to say he was like you, Janet.”
The Evelyn pair had gone--after this introduction of Jock and Sydney--to
their own sitting-room, which opened out of that of the Brownlows, and
the door was soon unclosed, for the two families meant to make up only
one party. The two mothers seemed as if they had been friends of old
standing, and Mrs. Evelyn was looking with delighted wonder at her
eldest son, who had gained much in flesh and in vigour ever since Dr.
Medlicott’s last and most successful prescription of a more pressing
subject of interest than his own cough.
She had an influence about her that repressed all discords in her
presence, and the evening was a cheerful and happy one, leaving a
soothing sense upon all.
Then came the awakening to the sounds of the monastery bells, and in
due time the small English congregation assembled, and one at least was
trying to force an attention that had freely wandered ever before.
The preacher was the chance visitor, an elderly clergyman with silvery
hair. He spoke extempore from Job xxviii.
Where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof;
Neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith, “It is not in me:”
And the sea saith, “It is not with me.”
It cannot be gotten for gold.
Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
What he said was unlike any sermon the young people had heard before.
It began with a description of the alchemist’s labours, seeking for ever
for the one great arcanum, falling by the way upon numerous precious
discoveries, yet never finding the one secret which would have rendered
all common things capable of being made of priceless value. He drew this
quest into a parable of man’s search for the One Great Good, the wisdom
that is the one thing necessary to give weight, worth, and value to the
life which, without it, is vanity of vanities. Many a choice gift of
thought, of science, of philosophy, of beauty, of poetry, has been
brought to light in its time by the seekers, but in vain. All rang
empty, hollow, and heartless, like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal,
till the secret should be won. And it is no unattainable secret. It is
the love of Christ that truly turneth all things into fine gold. One who
has attained that love has the true transmuting and transforming power
of making life golden, golden in brightness, in purity, in value, so as
to be “a present for a mighty King.”
Then followed a description of the glory and worth of the true, noble,
faithful manhood of a “happy warrior,” ever going forward and carrying
through achievements for the love of the Great Captain. Each in turn,
the protector of the weak, the redresser of wrong, the patriot, the
warrior, the scholar, the philosopher, the parent, the wife, the
sister, or the child, the healthful or the sick, whoever has that one
constraining secret, the love of Christ, has his service even here,
whether active or passive, veritably golden, the fruit unto holiness,
the end everlasting life.
Perhaps it was the cluster of young faces that led the preacher thus to
speak, and as he went on, he must have met the earnest and responsive
eyes that are sure to animate a speaker, and the power and beauty of
his words struck every one. To the Evelyns it was a new and beautiful
allegory on a familiar idea. Janet was divided between discomfort
at allusions reminding her of her secret, and on criticisms of the
description of alchemy. Her mother’s heart beat as if she were hearing
an echo of her husband’s thoughts about his Magnum Bonum. Little Armine
was thrilled as, in the awe of drawing near to his first Communion, this
golden thread of life was put into his hand. But it was Jock to whom
that discourse came like a beam of light into a dark place. When upon
the dreary vista of dull abnegation on which he had been dwelling for a
month past, came this vision of the beauty, activity, victory, and glory
of true manhood, as something attainable, his whole soul swelled and
expanded with joyful enthusiasm. The future that he had embraced as lead
had become changed to gold! Thus the whole ensuing service was to him a
continuation of that blessed hopeful dedication of himself and all his
powers. It was as if from being a monk, he had become a Red Cross Knight
of the Hospital. Yet, after his soiled, spoiled, reckless boyhood, how
could that grand manhood be attained?
Later in the afternoon, when the denizens of the hotel had gone their
several ways, some to look and listen at Benediction in the Convent
church, some to climb through the pine-woods to the Alp, some to saunter
and rest among the nearer trees, the clergyman, with his Greek Testament
in his hand, was sitting on a seat under one of the trees, enjoying the
calm of one of his few restful Sundays; when he heard a movement, and
beheld the pale thin lad, who still walked so lame, who had been so
silent at the table d’hote, and whose dark eyes had looked up with such
intensity of interest, that he had more than once spoken to them.
“You are tired,” said the clergyman, kindly making room for him.
“Thanks,” said the boy, mechanically moving forward, but then pausing
as he leant on his stick, and his eyes suddenly dimmed with tears as he
said, “Oh, sir, if you would only tell me how to begin--”
“Begin what?” said the old man, holding out his hand.
“To turn it to gold,” said Jock. “Can I, after being the mad fool I’ve
been?”
They talked for more than an hour; even till Dr. Medlicott, coming down
from the Alp, laid his hand on Jock’s shoulder, and told him the evening
chill was coming, and he must sit still no longer. And when the boy
looked up, the restless weary distress of his face was gone.
Jock never saw that old clergyman again, nor heard of him, unless it
were his death that he read of in the paper six months later. But
he never heard the name of Engelberg without an echo of the parting
benediction, and feeling that to him it had indeed been an Angel
mountain.
This had been a happy day to several others. Cecil, after ten minutes
with his mother, which filled her with hope and thankfulness, had gone
to show his sister the charms of the place, and Armine and Babie, on
a sheltered seat, were free to pour out their hearts to one another,
ranging from the heights of pure childish wisdom to its depths of
blissful ignorance and playful folly, as they talked over the past and
the future.
Armine knew there was no chance of an immediate and entire recovery for
him, and this was a severe stroke to Babie, who was quite unprepared.
And, as her face began to draw up with tears near the surface, he hugged
her close, and consolingly whispered that now they would be together
always, he should not have to go away from his own dear Babie
Bunting, and there was a little kissing match, ending by Babie saying,
disconsolately, “But you did like Eton so, and you were going to get the
Newcastle and the Prince Consort’s prize, and to be in the eleven and
all--and you were so sure of a high remove! Oh, dear!” and she let her
head drop on his shoulder, and was almost crying again.
“Don’t, don’t, Babie! or you’ll make me as bad again,” said Armine. “It
does come over me now and then, and I wish I had never known what it was
to be strong and jolly, and to expect to do all sorts of things.”
“I shall always be wishing it,” said Babie.
“No, you are not to cry! You would be more sorry if I was dead, and not
here at all, Babie; and you have got to thank God for that.”
“I do--I have! I’ve done it ever since we got Johnny’s dreadful
letter. Oh, yes, Armine, I’ll try not to mind, for perhaps if we aren’t
thankful, I mayn’t keep you at all,” said poor Babie, with her arms
round her treasure. “But are you quite sure, Armine? Couldn’t Dr. Lucas
get you quite well? You see this Dr. Medlicott is very young,” added the
small maiden sapiently.
“Young doctors are all the go. Dr. Lucas said so when mother wrote to
ask if she had better bring me home for advice,” said Armine. “He knows
all about Dr. Medlicott, and said he was first-rate, and they’ve been
writing to each other about me. The doctor stethoscoped me all over, and
then he did a map of my lungs, Cecil said, to send in his letter.”
“Oh!” gasped Babie, “didn’t it frighten you?”
“I wanted to know, for I saw mother was in a way. She did talk and whisk
about so fast, and made such a fuss, that I thought I must be much worse
than I knew. So I told Dr. Medlicott I wished he would tell me right out
if I was going to die, in time to see you, and then I shouldn’t mind.
So he said not now, and he thought I should get over it in the end, but
that most likely I should have a long time, years perhaps, of being very
careful. And when I asked if I should be able to go back to Eton, he
said he hardly expected it; and that he believed it was kinder to let me
know at once than let me be straining and hoping on.”
“Was it?” said Babie.
“I thought not,” said Armine, “when I shut my eyes and the
playing-fields and the trees and the river stood up before me. I thought
if I could have hoped ever so little, it would have been nice. And
then to think of never being able to run, or row, or stay out late, and
always to be bothering about one’s stockings and wraps, and making a
miserable muff of oneself just to keep in a bit of uncomfortable life,
and being a nuisance to everybody.”
Babie fairly shrieked and sobbed her protest that he could never be a
nuisance to her or mother.
“You are Babie, and mother is mother, I know that; but it did seem such
a long burthen and bore, and when--oh, Babie--don’t you know--”
“How we always thought you would go on and be something great, and do
something great, like Bishop Selwyn, or like that Mr. Denison that Miss
Ogilvie has a book about,” said Babie. “But you will get well and do it
when you are a man, Armie! Didn’t you think about it when you heard all
about the golden life in the sermon to-day?” I thought, “That’s going to
be Armie’s life,” and I looked at you, but you were looking down. Were
you thinking how it was all spoilt, Armie, poor dear Armie. For perhaps
it isn’t.”
“No, I know nobody can spoil it but myself,” said Armine. “And you know
he said that one might make weakliness and sickness just as golden, by
that great Love, as being up and doing. I was going to tell you, Babie,
I was horridly wretched and dismal one day at Leukerbad when I thought
mother and all were out of the way--gone out driving, I believe--and
then Fordham came in. He had stayed in, I do believe, on purpose--”
“But, but,” said Babie, not so much impressed as her brother wished;
“isn’t he rather a spoon? Johnny said he ought to have been a girl.”
“I didn’t think Johnny was such a stupid,” said Armine, “I only know
he has been no end of a comfort to me, though he says he only wants to
hinder me from getting like him.”
“Don’t then,” said Babie, “though I don’t understand. I thought you were
so fond of him.”
“So must you be,” said Armine; “I never got on with anybody so well. He
knows just how it is! He says if God gives one such a life, He will help
one to find out the way to make the best of it for oneself and other
people, and to bear to see other people doing what one can’t, and we are
to help one another. Oh, Babie! you must like Fordham!”
“I must if you do!” said Babie. “But he is awfully old for a friend for
you, Armie.”
“He is nineteen,” said Armine, “but people get more and more of the same
age as they grow older. And he likes all our books, and more too, Babie.
He had such a delicious book of French letters, that he lent me, with
things in them that were just what I wanted. If we are to be abroad all
the winter, he will get his mother to go wherever we do. Suppose we went
to the Holy Land, Babie!”
“Oh! then we could find Jotapata! Oh, no,” she added, humbly, “I
promised Miss Ogilvie not to talk of Jotapata on a Sunday.”
“And going to the Holy Land only to look for it would be much the same
thing,” said Armine. “Besides, I expect it is up among the Druses, where
one can’t go.”
“Armie,” in the tone of a great confession, “I’ve told Sydney all about
it. Have you told Lord Fordham?”
“No,” said Armine, who was less exclusively devoted to the great
romance. “I wonder whether he would read it?”
“I’ve brought it. Nineteen copybooks and a dozen blank ones, though it
was so hard to make Delrio pack them up.”
“Hurrah for the new ones! We did so want some for the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’
the paper at Leukerbad was so bad. You should hear the verses the
Doctor wrote on the mud baths. They are as stunning as ‘Fly Leaves.’ Mr.
Editor, I say,” as Lord Fordham’s tall figure strode towards them,
“she has brought out a dozen clean copybooks. Isn’t that a joy for the
‘Joy’?”
“Had you no other intentions for them?” said Fordham, detecting
something of disappointment in Babie’s face. “You surely were not going
to write exercises in them?”
“Oh, no!” said Babie, “only--”
“She can’t mention it on Sunday,” said Armine, a little wickedly. “It’s
a wonderful long story about the Crusaders.”
“And,” explained Babie, “our governess said we--that is I--thought of
nothing else, and made the Lessons at Church and everything else apply
to it, so she made me resolve to say nothing about it on Sunday.”
“And she has brought out nineteen copybooks full of it,” added Armine.
“Yes,” said Babie, “but the little speckled ones are very small, and
have half the leaves torn out, and we used to write larger when we
began. I think,” she added, with the humility of an aspirant contributor
towards the editor of a popular magazine, “if Lord Fordham would be so
kind as to look at it, Armie thought it might do what people call, I
believe, supplying the serial element of fiction, and I should be happy
to copy it out for each number, if I write well enough.”
The word “happy,” was so genuine, and the speech so comical, that the
Editor had much ado to keep his countenance as he gave considerable
hopes that the serial element should be thus supplied in the MS.
magazine.
Meantime, the two mothers were walking about and resting together,
keeping their young people in some degree in view, and discussing at
first the subject most on their minds, their sons’ bodily health, and
the past danger, for which Caroline found a deeply sympathetic listener,
and one who took a hopeful view of Armine.
Mrs. Evelyn was indeed naturally disposed to augur well whenever the
complaint was not hereditary, and she was besides in excellent spirits
at the very visible progress of both her sons, the one in physical,
the other in moral health, and she could not but attribute both to the
companionship that she had been so anxious to prevent. She had never
seen Duke look so well, nor seem so free from languor and indifference
since he was a mere child, and all seemed due to his devotion to Armine;
while as to Cecil, he seemed to have a new spring of improvement, which
he ascribed altogether to his friend.
“It is strange to me to hear this of my poor Jock,” said Caroline,
“always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy.
His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don’t you think an
uncle’s strong hand is much worse than any mother’s weakness?”
“Not than her weakness,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “It is her love, I think,
that you mean. There are some boys with whom strong hands are vain, but
who will guide themselves for love, and that we mothers are surely the
ones to infuse.”
“My boys are affectionate enough, dear fellows,” said Caroline proudly,
forgetting her sore disappointment that neither Allen nor Robert had
chosen to come to her help.
“I did not only mean love of oneself,” said Mrs. Evelyn, gently. “I was
thinking of the fine gold we heard of this morning. When our boys once
have found that secret, the chief of our work is done.”
“Ah! and I never understood how to give them that,” said Caroline. “We
have been all astray ever since their father left us.”
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Evelyn, with a certain sweet shyness, “I can’t
help thinking that your dear Lucas found that gold among the stones of
the moraine, and will help my poor weak Cecil to keep a fast hold of
it.”
Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion was confirmed, when a few days later came the
answer to Jock’s letter to his tutor, pleasing and touching both friends
so much that each showed it to his mother. Another important piece of
intelligence came in a letter from John to his cousin, namely that the
present Captain of the house, with two or three more “fellows,” were
leaving Eton at the Midsummer holidays, and that his tutor had been
talking to him about becoming Captain.
Jock and Cecil greatly rejoiced, for the departing Captain had been a
youth whose incapacity for government had been much better known to his
subordinates than to his master, and the other two had been the special
tempters and evil geniuses of the house, those who above all had set
themselves to make obedience and religion seem contemptible, and vice
daring and manly.
“I should have hated the notion of being Captain,” wrote John, “if those
impracticable fellows had stayed on, and if I did not feel sure of you
and Evelyn. You are such a fellow for getting hold of the others, but
with you two at my back, I really think the house may get a different
tone into it.”
“And every one told us what an excellent character it had,” said Mrs.
Evelyn, when the letter, through a chain of strict confidence, came
round to her, the boys little knowing how much it did to decide their
continuance together, and at Eton. Sir James had never been willing that
Cecil should be taken away, and he had become as sensible as any of the
rest to the Brownlow charm.
That was a very happy time in the pine-woods and the Alp. The whole
of the nineteen copy books were actually read by Babie to Sydney and
Armine; and Lord Fordham, over his sketches, submitted to hear a good
deal. He told his mother that the story was the most diverting thing
he had ever heard, with its queer mixture of childish simplicity and
borrowed romance, of natural poetry and of infantine absurdity, of
extraordinary knowledge and equally comical ignorance, of originality
and imitation, so that his great difficulty had been not to laugh in the
wrong place, when Babie had tears in her eyes at the heights of pathos
and sublimity, and Sydney was shedding them for company. It was funny to
come to places where Armine’s slightly superior age and knowledge of the
world began to tell, and when he corrected and criticised, or laughed,
with appeals to his elder friend. Babie was so perfectly good-humoured
about the sacrifice of her pet passages, and even of her dozen
copybooks, that the editor of the “Traveller’s Joy” could not help
encouraging the admission of “Jotapata” into the magazine, in spite of
the remonstrances of the rest of his public, who declared it was
merely making the numbers a great deal heavier for postage, and all for
nothing.
The magazine was well named, for it was a great resource. There were
illustrations of all kinds, from Lord Fordham’s careful watercolours,
and Mrs. Brownlow’s graceful figures or etchings, to the doctor’s clever
caricatures and grotesque outlines, and the contributions were equally
miscellaneous. There were descriptions of scenery, fragmentary notes
of history and science, records more or less veracious or absurd of
personal adventures, and conversations, and advertisements, such as--
Stolen or strayed.--A parasol, white above, black
below, minus a ring, with an ivory loop handle,
and one broken whalebone. Whoever will bring
the same to the Senora Donna Elvira de Menella,
will he handsomely rewarded with a smile or a
scowl, according to her mood.
Lost.--On the walk from the Alp, of inestimable
value to the owner, and none to any one else,
an Idea, one of the very few originated by the
Honble. C. F. Evelyn.
Small wit went a good way, and personalities were by no means
prohibited, since the editor could be trusted to exercise a safe
discretion in the riddles, acrostics, and anagrams deposited in the
bag at his door; and immense was the excitement when the numbers were
produced, with a pleasing irregularity as to time, depending on when
they became bulky enough to look respectable, and not too thick to be
sewn up comfortably by the great Reeves, who did not mind turning his
hand to anything when he saw his lordship so merry.
The only person who took no interest in the “Traveller’s Joy” was
Janet, who could not think how reasonable people could endure such
nonsense. Her first affront had been taken at a most absurd description
which Jock had illustrated by a fancy caricature of “The Fox and the
Crow,” “Woman’s Progress,” in which “Mr. Hermann Dowsterswivel” was
represented as haranguing by turns with her on the steamer, and, during
her discourse, quietly secreting her bag. It was such wild fun that Lord
Fordham never dreamt of its being an affront, nor perhaps would it have
been, if Dr. Medlicott would have chopped logic, science, and philosophy
with her in the way she thought her due from the only man who could
be supposed to approach her in intellect. He however took to chaff. He
would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen
and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest,
and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows
with Miolner for three flaps of a rat’s tail.
The magazine contained a series of notes on the nursery rhymes, where
the “Song of Sixpence” was proved to be a solar myth. The pocketful of
rye was the yield of the earth, and the twenty-four blackbirds sang at
sunrise while the king counted out the golden drops of the rain, and the
queen ate the produce while the maid’s performance in the garden was,
beyond all doubt, symbolic of the clouds suddenly broken in upon by the
lightning!
Moreover the man of Thessaly was beautifully illustrated, blinding
himself by jumping into the prickly bush of science, where each
gooseberry was labelled with some pseudo study. When he saw his eyes
were out, he stood wondrously gazing after them with his sockets
while they returned a ludicrous stare from the points of thorns, like
lobsters. In his final leap deeper into truth, he scratched them in
again, and walked off, in a crown of laurels, triumphant.
Janet was none the less disposed to leap into her special
gooseberry-bush; and her importunity prevailed, so that before Dr.
Medlicott returned to England he escorted her and her mother to Zurich.
Then after full inquiries it was decided that she should have her will,
and follow out her medical course of study, provided she could find a
satisfactory person to board with.
She proposed, and her mother consented, that the two Miss Rays should be
her chaperons, of course with liberal payment. Nita could carry on her
studies in art, and made the plan agreeable to Janet, while old Miss
Ray’s eyes, which had begun to suffer from the copying, would have a
rest, and Mrs. Brownlow had as much confidence in her as in any one
Janet would endure.