Allen-a-Dale has no faggot for burning,
Allen-a-Dale has no farrow for turning,
Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning,
Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning.
Scott.
The little family raft put forth from the haven of shelter into the
stormy waves. The first experience was, as Jock said, that large rooms
and country clearness had been demoralising, or, as Babie averred, the
bad taste and griminess of the Drake remains were invincible, for when
the old furniture and pictures were all restored to the old places, the
tout ensemble was so terribly dingy and confined that the mother
could hardly believe that it was the same place that had risen in her
schoolgirl eyes as a vision of home brightness. Armine was magnanimously
silent, but what would be the effect on Allen, who had been heard of at
Gibraltar, and was sure to return before the case was heard in court?
“We must give up old associations, and try what a revolution will do,”
Mother Carey said.
“Hurrah!” cried Babie; “I was feeling totally overpowered by that awful
round table, but I thought it was the very core of mother’s heart.”
“So did I,” said the mother herself, “when I remember how we used to
sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we
wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won’t bring back those who
sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and
our goods get into each other’s way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it
in the back drawing-room and bring in your whole generation of little
tables.”
There was opportunity for choice, for the house was somewhat overfull of
furniture, since besides the original plenishing of the Pagoda, all that
was individual property had been sent from Belforest, and this included
a great many choice and curious articles, small and great, all indeed
that any one cared much about, except the more intrinsically valuable
gems of art. It had been all done between Messrs. Wakefield, Gould,
and Richards, who had sent up far more than Mrs. Brownlow had marked,
assuring her that she need not scruple to keep it.
So by the time twilight came on the second evening, when the whole
family were feeling exceedingly bruised, weary, and dusty, such a
transformation had been effected that each of the four, on returning
from the much needed toilet, stood at the door exclaiming--“This is
something like;” and when John arrived, a little later, he looked round
with--
“This is almost as nice as the Folly. How does Mother Carey manage to
make things like herself and nobody else?”
Allen’s comment a few days later was--“What’s the use of taking so much
trouble about a dingy hole which you can’t make tolerable even if you
were to stay here.”
“I mean it to be my home till my M.D. son takes a wife and turns me
out.”
“Why, mother, you don’t suppose that ridiculous will can hold water?”
“You know I don’t contest it.”
“I know, but they will not look at it for a moment in the Probate
Court.”
Some chance friend whom he had met abroad had suggested this to Allen,
and he had gradually let his wish become hope, and his hope expectation,
till he had come home almost secure of a triumph, which would reinstate
his mother, and bring Elvira back to him, having learnt the difference
between true friends and false.
It was a proportionate blow when no difficulty was made about proving
the will. As the trustees acted, Mrs. Brownlow had not to appear, but
Allen haunted the Law Courts with his uncle and saw the will accepted
as legal. Nothing remained but another amicable action to put Elvira de
Menella in possession.
He was in a state of nervous excitement at every postman’s knock, making
sure, poor fellow, that Elvira’s first use of her victory would be
to return to him. But all that was heard of was a grand reception
at Belforest, bands, banners, horsemen, triumphal arches, banquet,
speeches, toasts, and ball, all, no doubt, in “Gould taste.”
The penny-a-liner of the Kenminster paper outdid himself in the
polysyllables of his description, while Colonel Brownlow briefly wrote
that “all was as insolent as might be expected, and he was happy to say
that most of the county people and some of the tenants showed their good
feeling by their absence.”
Over this Mrs. Brownlow would not rejoice. She did not like the poor
girl to be left to such society as her aunt would pick up, and she wrote
on her behalf to various county neighbours; but the heiress had already
come to the house in Hyde Corner, chaperoned by her aunt, who, fortified
by the trust that she was “as good as Mrs. Joseph Brownlow,” had come to
fight the battle of fashion, with Lady Flora Folliott for an ally.
The name of George Gould, Esquire, was used on occasion, but he was
usually left in peace at his farm with his daughter Mary, with whom
her step-mother had decided that nothing could be done. Kate was made
presentable by dress and lessons in deportment, and promoted to be white
slave, at least so Armine and Barbara inferred, from her constrained and
frightened manner when they met her in a shop, though she was evidently
trying to believe herself very happy.
Allen was convinced at last that he was designedly given up, and so far
from trying to meet his faithless lady, dejectedly refused all society
where he could fall in with her, and only wandered about the parks to
feed his melancholy with distant glimpses of her on horseback, while
Armine and Barbara, who held Elvira very cheap, were wicked enough to
laugh at him between themselves and term him the forsaken merman.
Jock had likewise given up his old connections with fashionable life.
Several times, if anything were going on, or if he met a former brother
officer in the street, he would be warmly invited to come and take his
share, or to dine with the mess; he might have played in cricket matches
and would have been welcome as a frequent guest; but he had made up his
mind that this would only lead to waste of time and money, and steadily
declined, till the invitations ceased. It would have cost him more had
any come from Cecil Evelyn, but all that had been seen of him was a
couple of visiting-cards. The rest of the family had not come to town
for the season, and though the two mothers corresponded as warmly as
ever, and Fordham and Armine exchanged letters, there was a sort of
check and chill upon the friendship between the two young girls, of
which each understood only her own half.
Jock said nothing, but he seemed to have grown mother-sick, spent all
his leisure moments in haunting his mother’s steps, helping her in
whatever she was about, and telling her everything about his studies and
companions, as if she were the great solace of the life that had become
so much less bright to him.
In general he showed himself as droll as ever, but there were days when,
as John said, “all the skip was gone out of the Jack.” The good Monk
was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his
cousin, having--though the son of a military man--a contempt for the
pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled to see Jock affectionately
hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his
mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt
wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise. Jock, however,
decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready
for a call to arms for his country. He did not like to think that she
was reading a report of Sir Philip Cameron’s campaign, in which the
aide-de-camp happened to receive honourable mention for a dashing and
hazardous ride.
“Why, old fellow, what makes you so down in the mouth?” said John, on
that very day as the two cousins were walking home from a lecture. They
had had to get into a door-way to avoid the rush of rabble escorting a
regiment of household troops on their way to the station, and Lucas had
afterwards walked the length of two streets without a word. “You don’t
mean that you are hankering after all this style of thing--row and all
the rest of it.”
“There’s a good deal more going to it than row,” said Jock, rather
heavily.
“What, that donkey, Evelyn, having cut you? I should not trouble myself
much on that score, though I did think better of him at Eton.”
“He hasn’t cut me,” Jock made sharp return.
“One pasteboard among all the family,” grunted the Friar. “I reserve to
myself the satisfaction of cutting him dead the next opportunity,” he
added magniloquently.
Jock laughed, as he was of course intended to do, but there was such a
painful ring in the laugh that John paused and said--
“That’s not all, old fellow! Come, make a clean breast of it, my fair
son. Thou dost weary of thy vocation.”
“No such thing,” exclaimed Jock, with an inaudible growl between his
teeth. “Trust Kencroft for boring on!” and aloud, with some impatience,
“It is just what I would have chosen for its own sake.”
“Then,” said John, still keeping up the grand philosophical air and
demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, “thou
art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the
wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of
the fickle sex.”
“Shut up!” said Jock, pushed beyond endurance; “can’t you understand
that some things can’t be talked of?”
“Whew!” John whistled, and surveyed him rather curiously from head to
foot. “It is another case of deluded souls not knowing what an escape
they’ve had. What! she thought you a catch in the old days.”
“That’s all you know about it!” said Jock. “She is not that sort. The
poverty is nothing, but there’s a fitness in things. Women, the best of
them, think much of what I suppose you call the row. It fits in with all
their chivalry and romance.”
“Then she’s a fool,” said John, shortly.
“I can’t stand any more of this, Monk, I tell you. You know just nothing
at all about it, and I’ve no right to complain, nor any one to bait me
with questions.”
The Monk took the hint, and when they reached their own street Jock
said--
“You meant it all kindly, Reverend Friar, but there are things that
won’t stand probing, as you’ll know some day.”
“Poor old chap,” said John, with his hand on his shoulder, “I’ll not
bother you any more. The veil shall be sacred. If this has been going on
all the time, I wonder you have carried it off so well!”
“Ali is a caution,” said Jock, who had shaken himself into his ordinary
manner. “What would become of Babie with two blighted beings on her
hands? Besides, he has some excuse, and I have not.”
After this at every carriage to which Lucas bowed, John frowned, and
scanned the inmates in search of the fair deceiver, never making a guess
in the right direction.
John had enough of the Kencroft character not to be original. Set him
to work, and he had plenty of intelligence and energy, perhaps more
absolute force and power than his cousin Lucas; but he would never
devise things for himself, and was not discursive, pausing at novelties,
because his nature was so thorough that he could not take up anything
without spending his very utmost force upon it.
His University training made him an excellent aid to Armine, who went up
for his examination at King’s College and acquitted himself so well as
to be admitted to begin his terms after the long vacation.
Indeed he and Barbara had drawn together again more. She had her home
tasks and her classes at King’s College, and did not fret as at St.
Cradocke’s for want of work; she enjoyed the full tide of life, and had
plenty of sympathy for whatever did not come before her in a “goody”
aspect, and, though there might be little depth of serious reflection in
her, she was a very charming member of the household. Then her enjoyment
of society was gratified, for society of her own kind had by no means
forgotten one so agreeable as Mrs. Brownlow, and whereas, in her
prosperity, she had never dropped old friends, they welcomed her back as
one of themselves, resuming the homely inexpensive gatherings where
the brains were more consulted than the palate, aesthetics more than
fashion. She was glad of it for the young people’s sake as well as her
own, and returned to her old habit of keeping open house one evening
in the week between eight and ten, with cups of coffee and varieties of
cheap foreign drinks, and slight but dainty cakes made by herself and
Babie according to lessons taken together at the school of cookery.
As Allen declared these evenings a grievance, and often thought himself
unable to bear family chatter, she had made the old consulting room as
like his luxurious apartment at home as furniture and fittings could
do, and he was always free to retire thither. Indeed the toleration and
tenderness with which his mother treated him were a continual wonder
and annoyance to Barbara, the active little busy bee, who not unjustly
considered him the drone of the family, and longed to sting him, not to
death but to exertion.
It was provoking that when all the other youths had long finished
breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the
dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee,
till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit
patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how little
he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen, when she
shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no sooner,
and when he did so, told his mother that he could not have children
screaming at his door at all hours of the morning. Mother Carey replied
to her impatient champion that while waiting for Allen was her time for
writing letters and reading amusing books, and that the day was only too
long for him already, poor fellow, without urging him to make it longer.
“More shame for him,” muttered pitiless sixteen.
After breakfast Allen generally strolled out to see the papers or to
bestow his time somewhere--in the picture galleries or in the British
Museum, where he had a reading order; but it was always uncertain
whether he would disappear for the whole day, shut himself up in his own
room, or hang about the drawing-room, very much injured if his mother
could not devote herself to him. Indeed she always did so, except
when she was bound to take Barbara to some of her classes (including
cookery), or when she had promised herself to Dr. and Mrs. Lucas, who
were now both very infirm, and knew not how to be thankful enough for
the return of one who became like a daughter to them; while Jock, their
godson, at once made himself like the best of grandsons, and never
failed to give them a brightening, cheering hour every Sunday.
The science of cookery was by no means a needless task, for the cook was
very plain, and Allen’s appetite was dainty, and comfort at dinner
could only be hoped for by much thought and contrivance. Allen was never
discourteous to his mother herself, but he would look at her in piteous
reproach, and affect to charge all failures on the cook, or on “children
being allowed to meddle,” the most cutting thing to Babie he could say.
Then the two Johns always took up the cudgels, and praised the food with
all their might. Indeed the Friar was often sensible of a strong desire
to flog the dawdling melancholy out of his cousin, and force him no
longer to hang a dead weight on his mother; and even Jock began to be
annoyed at her unfailing patience and pity, though he understood her
compassion better than did those who had never felt a wound.
She did in truth blame herself for having given him no profession,
and having acquiesced in the indolent dilettante habits which made all
harder to him now; and she was not certain how far it was only his
fancy that his health and nerves were perilously affected, though
Dr. Medlicott, whom she secretly consulted, assured her that the only
remedies needed were good sense and something to do.
At last, at Midsummer, the crisis came in a heavy discharge of
bills, the consequence of Allen’s incredulity as to their poverty and
incapability of economising. He said “the rascals could wait,” and “his
mother need not trouble herself.” She said they must be paid, and she
found it could be done at the cost of giving up spending August at
St. Cradocke’s, as well as of breaking into her small reserve for
emergencies.
But she told Allen that she insisted on his making some exertion for his
own maintenance.
“Yes,” said Allen in languid assent.
“I know it is harder at your age to find occupation.”
“That is not the point. I can easily find something to do. There’s
literature. Or I could take up art. And last year there was a Hungarian
Count who would have given anything to get me for a tutor.”
“Then why didn’t you go?”
“Mother, you ask me why!”
“I know you had not made up your mind to the worst, but it is a pity you
missed the opportunity.”
“There will be more,” said Allen loftily. “I never meant to be a burden,
but ladies are so impatient, I suppose you do not wish to turn me out
instantly to seek my fortune. No, mother, I do not mean to blame you.
You have been sadly harassed, and no woman can ever enter into what I
have suffered. Put aside those bills. Long before Christmas, I shall be
able to discharge them myself.”
So Allen wrote to Bobus’s friend at Oxford, but he of course did
not keep a pocketful of Hungarian Counts. He answered one or two
advertisements for a travelling tutor, and had one personal interview,
the result of which was that he could have nothing to do with such
insufferable snobs. He also concocted an advertisement beginning with
“M.A., Oxford, accustomed to the best society and familiar with European
languages,” but though the newspapers charged highly for it, he only
received one answer, except those from agents, and that, he said with
illimitable disgust, was from a Yankee.
Meantime he turned over his poems, and made Barbara copy out a ballad
he had written for the “Traveller’s Joy” on some local tradition in
the Tyrol. He offered this to a magazine, whose editor, a lady, was an
occasional frequenter of Mrs. Brownlow’s evenings. The next time she
came, she showed herself so much interested in the legend that Allen
said he should like to show her another story, which he had written for
the same domestic periodical.
“Would it serve for our Christmas number?”
“I will have it copied out and send it for you to look at,” said Allen.
“If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it
be worth while to copy it. I shall set forth on my holiday journey the
day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my
Christmas number.”
So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the “Joy,” and in a
couple of days returned it with a hasty note--
“A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make
it taking, and not overdone. Please let me have it, with a few verbal
corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of
September. It will bring you in about £15.”
Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the
periodicals more widely circulated. It was plain that literature was his
vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial,
the instalments paying his expenses for the trial. The only doubt was
what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a
historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery
would be available. Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the
latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the
“Traveller’s Joy,” and wanted to see his germ developed.
To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly
impossible in Allen’s eyes, and he must recruit himself by a
yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half
compassionately. Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and
observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no
other way, and he doubted Allen’s liking it, but that was his affair.
Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a
big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant
to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the
modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was
to make a brief stay in his friend’s paternal Cumberland farm. He had
succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his
father’s former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of
his commission, still made him the rich man of the family. John was of
course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm
invitation from their friends at Fordham.
“I should like Armie to go,” said the mother in conference with Babie,
her cabinet councillor.
“O yes, Armie must go,” said Babie, “but--”
“Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?”
“I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much.”
“Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you
would not wish to go without me.”
“O no, no, NO, NO, mother,” and her face and neck burnt with blushes.
“Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some
surprises ready for the others.”
“Hurrah! We’ll do the painting of the doors. What fun it will be to see
London empty.”
The male population were horribly scandalised at the decision. Jock and
Armine wanted to give up their journey, and John implored his aunt to
come to Kencroft; but she only promised to send Babie there if she saw
signs of flagging, and the Infanta laughed at the notion, and said she
had had an overdose of country enough to last her for years. Allen said
ladies overdid everything, and that Mother Carey could not help being
one of the sex, and then he asked her for £10, and said Babie would have
plenty of time to copy out “The Single Eye.” She pouted “I thought you
were going to put the finishing touches.”
“I’ve marked them for you. Why, Barbara, I am surprised,” he added in
an elder brotherly tone; “you ought to be thankful to be able to be
useful.”
“Useful! I’ve lots of things to do! And you?”
“As if I could lug that great MS. of yours about with me on board
Apthorpe’s yacht.”
“Never mind, Allen,” said his mother, who had not been intended to hear
all this. “I will do it for you; but Miss Editor must not laugh at my
peaked governessy hand.”
“I did not mean that, mother, only Babie ought not to be disobliging.”
“Babie has a good deal to do. She has an essay to write for her
professor, you know, and her hands are pretty full.”
Babie too said, “Mother, I never meant you to undertake it. Please let
me have it now. Only Allen will never do anything for himself that he
can get any one else to do.”
“He could not well do it on board the yacht, my dear. And I don’t want
you to have so much writing on your hands.’
“And so you punish me,” sighed Barbara, more annoyed than penitent.
However, nothing could be more snug and merry than the mother and
daughter when left together, for they were like two sisters and suited
one another perfectly. Babie was disappointed that London would not look
emptier even in the fashionable squares, which she insisted on exploring
in search of solitude. They made little gay outings in a joyous spirit
of adventure, getting up early and going by train to some little
station, with an adjacent expanse of wood or heather, whence they came
home with their luncheon basket full of flowers, wherewith to gladden
Mrs. Lucas’s eyes, and those of Mother Carey’s district. They prepared
their surprises too. Several hopelessly dingy panels were painted black
and adorned with stately lilies and irises, with proud reed-maces, and
twining honeysuckle, and bryony, fluttered over by dragon-flies and
butterflies, from the brush of mother and daughter. The stores from
Belforest further supplied hangings for brackets, and coverings for
cushions, under the dainty fingers of the Infanta, who had far more of
the household fairy about her than had her mother, perhaps from having
grown up in a home instead of a school, and besides, from being bent on
having the old house a delightsome place.
Indeed her mother was really happier than for many years, for the sense
of failing in her husband’s charge had left her since she had seen Jock
by his own free will on the road to the quest, and likely also to fulfil
the moral, as well as the scientific, conditions attached to it. She did
feel as if her dream was being realised and the golden statues becoming
warmed into life, and though her heart ached for Janet, she still hoped
for her. So, with a mother’s unfailing faith, she believed in Allen’s
dawning future even while another sense within her marvelled, as she
copied, at the acceptance of “The Single Eye.” But then, was it not
well-known that loving eyes see the most faults, and was not an editor
the best judge of popularity?
She had her scheme too. She had taken lessons some years ago at Rome in
her old art of modelling, and knew her eye and taste had improved in
the galleries. She had once or twice amused the household by figures
executed by her dexterous fingers in pastry or in butter; and in the
empty house, in her old studio, amid remnants of Bobus’s museum, she set
to work on a design that had long been in her mind asking her to bring
it into being.
Thus the tete-a-tete was so successful that people’s pity was highly
diverting, and the vacation was almost too brief, though when the young
men began to return, it was a wonder how existence could have been so
agreeable without them.
Jock was first, having come home ten days sooner than his friends were
willing to part with him, determined if he found his ladies looking pale
to drag them out of town, if only to Ramsgate.
They met him in a glow of animation, and Babie hardly gave him time to
lay down his basket of ferns from the dale, and flowers from the garden,
before she threw open the folding doors to the back drawing-room.
“Why, mother, who sent you that group? Why do you laugh? Did Grinstead
lend it to Babie to copy? Young Astyanax, isn’t it? And, I say!
Andromache is just like Jessie. I say! Mother Carey didn’t do it. Well!
She is an astonishing little mother and no mistake. The moulding of it!
Our anatomical professor might lecture on Hector’s arm.”
“Ah! I, haven’t been a surgeon’s wife for nothing. Your father put me
through a course of arms and legs.”
“And we borrowed a baby,” said Babie. “Mrs. Jones, our old groom’s wife,
who lives in the Mews, was only too happy to bring it, and when it was
shy, it clung beautifully.”
“Then the helmet.”
“That was out of the British Museum.”
“Has Grinstead seen it?”
“No, I kept it for my own public first.”
“What will you do with it? Put it into the Royal Academy?”
“No, it is not big enough. I thought of offering it to the Works that
used to take my things in the old Folly days. They might do it in terra
cotta, or Parian.”
“Too good for a toy material like that,” said Jock. “Get some good
opinion before you part with it, mother. I wish we could keep it. I’m
proud of my Mother Carey.”
Allen, who came home next, only sighed at the cruel necessity of
selling such a work. He was in deplorable spirits, for Gilbert Gould was
superintending the refitting of a beautiful steam yacht, in which Miss
Menella meant to sail to the West Indies, with her uncle and aunt.
“I knew she would! I knew she would,” softly said Babie.
That did not console Allen, and his silence and cynicism about his hosts
gave the impression that he had outstayed his welcome, since he had
neither wealth, nor the social brilliance or subservience that might
have supplied its place. He had scarcely energy to thank his mother for
her faultless transcription of “The Single Eye,” and only just exerted
himself to direct the neat roll of MS. to the Editor.
The next day a note came for him.
“Mother what _have_ you done?” he exclaimed. “What _did_ you send to the
‘Weathercock’?”
“‘The Single Eye.’ What? Not rejected?”
“See there!”
“DEAR MR. BROWNLOW,--I am afraid there has been some mistake. The story
I wished for is not this one, but another in the same MS. Magazine;
a charming little history of a boy’s capture by, and escape from, the
Moorish corsairs. Can you let me have it by Tuesday? I am very sorry
to have given so much trouble, but ‘The Single Eye’ will not suit my
purpose at all.”
“What does she mean?” demanded Allen.
“I see! It is a story of the children’s! ‘Marco’s Felucca.’ I looked
at it while I was copying, and thought how pretty it was. And now I
remember there were some pencil-marks!”
“Well, it will please the children,” graciously said Allen. “I am not
sorry; I did not wish to make my debut in a second-rate serial like
that, and now I am quit of it. She is quite right. It is not her style
of thing.”
But Allen did not remember that he had spent the £15 beforehand, so as
to make it £25, and this made it fortunate that his mother’s group had
been purchased by the porcelain works, and another pair ordered.
Thus she could freely leave their gains to Armine and Babie, for the
latter declared the sum was alike due to both, since if she had the
readiest wit, her brother had the most discrimination, and the best
choice of language. The story was only signed A. B., and their mother
made a point of the authorship being kept a secret; but little notices
of the story in the papers highly gratified the young authors.
Armine, who had returned from a round of visits to St. Cradocke’s,
Fordham, Kenminster, and Woodside, confirmed the report of Elvira’s
intended voyage; but till the yacht was ready, the party had gone
abroad, leaving the management of the farm, and agency of the estate,
to a very worthy man named Whiteside, who had long been a suitor to Mary
Gould, and whom she was at last allowed to marry. He had at once made
the Kencroft party free of the park and gardens, and indeed John and
Armine came laden with gifts in poultry, fruit, and flowers from the
dependants on the estate to Mrs. Brownlow.
Armine really looked quite healthy, nothing remaining of his former
ethereal air, but a certain expansiveness of brow and dreaminess of eye.
He greatly scrupled at halving the £15 when it was paid, but Barbara
insisted that he must take his share, and he then said--
“After all it does not signify, for we can do things together with it,
as we have always done.”
“What things?”
“Well, I am afraid I do want a few books.”
“So do I, terribly.”
“And there are some Christmas gifts I want to send to Woodside.”
“Woodside! oh!”
“And wouldn’t it be pleasant to put the choir at the iron Church into
surplices and cassocks for Christmas?”
“Oh, Armie, I do think we might have a little fun out of our own money.”
“What fun do you mean?” said Armine.
“I want to subscribe to Rolandi’s, and to take in the ‘Contemporary,’
and to have one real good Christmas party with tableaux vivants, and
charades. Mother says we can’t make it a mere surprise party, for people
must have real food, and I think it would be more pleasure to all of us
than presents and knicknacks.”
“Of course you can do it,” said Armine, rather disappointed. “And if we
had in Percy Stagg, and the pupil teachers, and the mission people--”
“It would be awfully edifying and good-booky! Oh yes, to be sure, nearly
as good as hiding your little sooty shoe-blacks in surplices! But, my
dear Armie, I am so tired of edifying! Why should I never have any fun?
Come, don’t look so dismal. I’ll spare five shillings for a gown for old
Betty Grey, and if there’s anything left out after the party, you shall
have it for the surplices, and you’ll be Roland Graeme in my tableau?”
The next day Mother Carey found Armine with an elbow on each side of his
book and his hands in his hair, looking so dreamily mournful that
she apprehended a fresh attack of Petronella, but made her approaches
warily.
“What have you there?” she asked.
“Dean Church’s lectures,” he said.
“Ah! I want to make time to read them! But why have they sent you into
doleful dumps?”
“Not they,” said Armine; “but I wanted to read Babie a passage just now,
and she said she had no notion of making Sundays of week days, and ran
away. It is not only that, mother, but what is the matter with Babie?
She is quite different.”
“Have you only just seen it?”
“No, I have felt something indefinable between us, though I never could
bear to speak of it, ever since Bobus went. Do you think he did her any
harm?”
“A little, but not much. Shall I tell you the truth, Armine; can you
bear it?”
“What! did I disgust her when I was so selfish and discontented?”
“Not so much you, my boy, as the overdoing at Woodside! I can venture to
speak of it now, for I fancy you have got over the trance.”
“Well, mother,” said Armine, smiling back to her in spite of himself, “I
have not liked to say so, it seemed a shame; but staying at the Vicarage
made me wonder at my being such an egregious ass last year! Do you know,
I couldn’t help it; but that good lady would seem to me quite mawkish in
her flattery! And how she does domineer over that poor brother of hers!
Then the fuss she makes about details, never seeming to know which
are accessories and which are principles. I don’t wonder that I was an
absurdity in the eyes of all beholders. But it is very sad if it has
really alienated my dear Infanta from all deeper and higher things!”
“Not so bad as that, my dear; my Babie is a good little girl.”
“Oh yes, mother, I did not mean--”
“But it did break that unity between you, and prevent your leading her
insensibly. I fancy your two characters would have grown apart anyhow,
but this was the moving cause. Now I fancy, so far as I can see, that
she is more afraid of being wearied and restrained than of anything
else. It is just what I felt for many years of my life.”
“No, mother?”
“Yes, my boy; till the time of your illness, serious thought, religion
and all the rest, seemed to me a tedious tax; and though I always, I
believe, made it a rule to my conscience in practical matters, it has
only very, very lately been anything like the real joy I believe it
has always been to you. Believe that, and be patient with your little
sister, for indeed she is an unselfish, true, faithful little being, and
some day she will go deeper.”
Armine looked up to his mother, and his eyes were full of tears, as she
kissed him, and said--
“You will do her much more good if you sympathise with her in her
innocent pleasures than if you insist on dragging her into what she
feels like privations.”
“Very well, mother,” he said. “It is due to her.”
And so, though the choir did have at least half Armine’s share of the
price of “Marco’s Felucca,” he threw himself most heartily into the
Christmas party, was the poet of the versified charade, acted the
strong-minded woman who was the chief character in “Blue Bell;” and he
and Jock gained universal applause.
Allen hardly appeared at the party. He had a fresh attack of sleepless
headache and palpitation, brought on by the departure of Miss Menella
for the Continent, and perhaps by the failure of “A Single Eye” with
some of the magazines. He dabbled a little with his mother’s clay,
and produced a nymph, who, as he persuaded her and himself, was a much
nobler performance than Andromache, but unfortunately she did not prove
equally marketable. And he said it was quite plain that he could
not succeed in anything imaginative till his health and spirits had
recovered from the blow; but he was ready to do anything.
So Dr. Medlicott brought in one day a medical lecture that he wanted to
have translated from the German, and told Allen that it would be well
paid for. He began, but it made his head ache; it was not a subject that
he could well turn over to Babie; and when Jock brought a message to
say the translation must be ready the next day, only a quarter had been
attempted. Jock sat up till three o’clock in the morning and finished
it, but he could not pain his mother by letting her know that her son
had again failed, so Allen had the money, and really believed, as he
said, that all Jock had done was to put the extreme end to it, and
correct the medical lingo of which he could not be expected to know
anything. Allen was always so gentle, courteous, and melancholy, that
every one was getting out of the habit of expecting him to do anything
but bring home news, discover anything worth going to see, sit at the
foot of the table, and give his verdict on the cookery. Babie indeed was
sometimes provoked into snapping at him, but he bore it with the amiable
magnanimity of one who could forgive a petulant child, ignorant of what
he suffered.
Jock was borne up by a great pleasure that winter. One day at dinner,
his mother watched his eyes dancing, and heard the old boyish ring of
mirth in his laugh, and as she went up stairs at night, he came after
and said--
“Fancy, I met Evelyn on the ice to-day. He wants to know if he may
call.”
“What prevents him?”
“Well, I believe the poor old chap is heartily ashamed of his airs.
Indeed he as good as said so. He has been longing to make a fresh start,
only he didn’t know how.”
“I think he used you very ill, Jock; but if you wish to be on the old
terms, I will do as you like.”
“Well,” said Jock, in an odd apologetic voice, “you see the old beggar
had got into a pig-headed sort of pet last year. He said he would cut me
if I left the service, and so he felt bound to be as good as his word;
but he seems to have felt lost without us, and to have been looking out
for a chance of meeting. He was horribly humiliated by the Friar looking
over his head last week.”
“Very well. If he chooses to call, here we are.”
“Yes, and don’t put on your cold shell, mother mine. After all, Evelyn
is Evelyn. There are wiser fellows, but I shall never warm to any one
again like him. Why, he was the first fellow who came into my room at
Eton! I am to meet him to-morrow after the lecture. May I bring him
home?”
“If he likes. His mother’s son must have a welcome.”
She could not feel cordial, and she so much expected that the young
gentleman might be seized with a fresh fit of exclusive disdain, that
she would not mention the possibility, and it was an amazement to all
save herself when Jock appeared with the familiar figure in his wake.
Guardsman as he was, Cecil had the grace to look bashful, not to say
shamefaced, and more so at Mrs. Brownlow’s kindly reception, than at
Barbara’s freezing dignity. The young lady was hotly resentful on Jock’s
behalf, and showed it by a stiff courtesy, elevated eyebrows, and the
merest tips of her fingers.
Allen took it easily. He had been too much occupied with his own
troubles to have entered into all the complications with the Evelyn
family; and though he had never greatly cared for them, and had
viewed Cecil chiefly as an obnoxious boy, he was, in his mournful way,
gratified by any reminder of his former surroundings. So without malice
prepense he stung poor Cecil by observing that it was long since they
had met; but no one could be expected to find the way to the other end
of nowhere. Cecil blushed and stammered something about Hounslow, but
Allen, who prided himself on being the conversational man of the world,
carried off the talk into safe channels.
As Cecil was handing Mrs. Brownlow down to the dining-room, wicked
Barbara whispered to her cousin John--
“We’ve such a nice vulgar dinner. It couldn’t have been better if I’d
known it!”
John, whose wrath had evaporated in his “cut,” shook his head at her,
but partook of her diversion at her brother’s resignation at sight of a
large dish of boiled beef, with a suet pudding opposite to it, Allen
was too well bred to apologise, but he carved in the dainty and delicate
style befitting the single slice of meat interspersed between countless
entrees.
Barbara began to relent as soon as Cecil, after making four mouthfuls
of Allen’s help, sent his plate with a request for something more
substantial. And before the meal was over, his evident sense of
bien-etre and happiness had won back her kindness; she remembered
that he was Sydney’s brother, and took no more trouble to show her
indignation.
Thenceforth, Cecil was as much as ever Jock’s friend, and a frequenter
of the family, finding that the loss of their wealth and place in the
great world made wonderfully little difference to them, and rather
enhanced the pleasant freedom and life of their house. The rest of the
family were seen once or twice, when passing through London, but only
in calls, which, as Babie said, were as good as nothing, except, as
she forgot to add, that they broke through the constraint on her
correspondence with Sydney.