You know, my father left me some prescriptions
Of rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading,
And manifest experience, had collected
For general sovereignty; and that he will’d me
In heedfullest reservation to bestow them,
As notes, whose faculties inclusive were,
More than they were in note.
All’s Well that Ends Well.
Another year had come and gone, with its various changes, and the mother
of the Collingwood Street household felt each day that the short life
of Marmaduke Viscount Fordham had not been an unimportant one to her
children.
It had of course told the most on Barbara. Her first great grief seemed
to have smoothed out the harsher lines of her character, and made her
gentle and tolerant as she had never been; or more truly, she had learnt
charity at a deeper source. That last summer had lifted her into a
different atmosphere. What she had shared with Fordham she loved. She
had felt the reality of the invisible world to him, and knew he trusted
to her meeting his spirit there even in this life, and the strong faith
of his mother had strengthened the impression.
Heavenly things had seemed more true,
And came down closer to her view,
now that his presence was among them. She had by no means lost her
vivacity. There would always be a certain crispness, drollery, and
keenness about her, and she had too much of her mother’s elasticity to
be long depressed; but instead of looking on with impatient criticism at
good works, she had learnt to be ardent in the cause, and she was a most
effective helper. To Armine, it was as if Fordham had given him back the
sister of his childhood to be as thoroughly one in aims and sympathies
as ever, but with a certain clearness of eye, brisk alacrity of
execution, and quickness of judgment that made her a valuable assistant,
the complement, as it were, of his more contemplative nature.
He had just finished his course at King’s College, and taken a fair
degree, and he was examining advertisements, with a view to obtaining
some employment in teaching that would put a sufficient sum in his hands
to enable him to spend a year at one of the theological colleges, in
preparation for Ordination. His mother was not happy about it, she never
would be quite easy as to Armine’s roughing it at any chance school, and
she had much rather he had spent the intervening year in working as a
lay assistant to Mr. Ogilvie, who had promised to give him a title for
Orders, and would direct his reading.
Armine, however, said he could neither make himself Mr. Ogilvie’s guest
for a year, nor let his mother pay his expenses; also that he wished
to do something for himself, and that he felt the need of definite
training. All he would do, was to promise that if he should find himself
likely to break down in his intended employment of tuition, he
would give up in time and submit to her plan of boarding him at St.
Cradocke’s.
“But,” as he said to Babie, “I don’t think it is self-will to feel bound
to try to exert myself for the one great purpose of my life. I am too
old to live upon mother any longer.”
“How I do wish I could do anything to help you to the year at
C----. Mother has always said that she will let me try to publish
‘Hart’s-tongue Well’ when I am twenty-one!”
“Living on you instead of mother?”
“Oh no, Armie, you know we are one. Though perhaps a mere story like
that is not worthy to do such work. Yet I think there must be something
in it, as Duke cared for it.”
“That would be proof positive but for the author,” said Armine, smiling;
“but poor Allen’s attempts have rather daunted my literary hopes.”
“I really believe Allen would write better sense now, if he tried,” said
Babie. “I believe Lady Grose is making something of him!”
“Without intending it,” said Armine, laughing.
“No; but you see snubbing is wholesome diet, if it is taken with a few
grains of resolution, and he has come to that now!”
For Allen had continued not only to profess to be, but to be willing
to do anything to relieve his mother, and Dr. Medlicott had, with
much hesitation and doubt, recommended him for what was called a
secretaryship to a paralytic old gentleman, who had been, in his own
estimation, eminent both in the scientific and charitable worlds, and
still carried on his old habits, though quite incapable. It really was,
as the Doctor honestly told Allen, very little better than being a male
humble companion, for though old Sir Samuel Grose was fussy and exacting
from infirmity, he was a gentleman; but he had married late in life
a vulgar, overbearing woman, who was sure to show insolent want of
consideration to anyone she considered her inferior. To his surprise,
Allen accepted the situation, and to his still greater surprise, endured
it, walking to Kensington every day by eleven o’clock, and coming home
whenever he was released, at an hour varying from three to eleven,
according to my Lady’s will. He became attached to the old man, pitied
him, and did his best to satisfy his many caprices and to deal with
his infirmities of brain and memory; but my Lady certainly was his bete
noire, though she behaved a good deal better to him after she had seen
him picked up in the park by Lady Fordham’s carriage. However, he made
light of all he underwent from her, and did not break down even when it
was known that though poor George Gould had died at New York, his
widow showed no intention of coming home, and wrote confidently to her
step-daughters of Elvira marrying her brother Gilbert. She was of
age now, there was nothing to prevent her, and they seemed to be only
waiting for a decent interval after her uncle’s death. Allen, a couple
of years ago, would have made his mother and all the family as wretched
as he could, and would have dropped all semblance of occupation but
smoking. Now Lady Grose would not let him smoke, and Sir Samuel required
him to be entertaining; but the continual worry he was bearing was
making him look so ill that his mother was very anxious about him. She
had other troubles. It was eighteen months since Janet Hermann had drawn
her allowance. Her husband once had written in her name, saying that
she was ill, but Mr. Wakefield had sent an order payable only on her
signature, and it had never been acknowledged or presented! Could Janet
be living? Or could she be in some such fitful state of prosperity as to
be able to disregard £25?
Her mother spent many anxious thoughts and prayers on her, though the
younger ones seemed to have almost forgotten her, so long it was since
she had been a part of their family life. Nor did Bobus answer his
mother’s letters, though he continued to write fully and warmly to Jock.
As to the MS., he said he had improved upon it, and had sent a fresh
one to a friend who would have none of the scruples of which physical
science ought to have cured Jock. It came out in a review, but without
his name, and though it was painful enough to all who cared for him, it
had been shorn of several of the worst and most virulent passages; so
that Jock’s remonstrance had done some good.
Jock himself had come into possession of £200, and the like sum had been
left to his mother by their good old friends the Lucases, who had died,
as it is given to some happy old couples to leave this world, within
three days of one another.
The other John, in the last autumn, had taken both his degrees at Oxford
and in London with high credit, and had immediately after obtained one
of those annual appointments in his hospital which are bestowed upon
the most distinguished of the students, to enable them to gain more
experience; but as it did not involve residence, he continued to be one
of the family in Collingwood Street. However, in the early spring, a
slight hurt to his hand festered so as to make the doctors uneasy, and
his sister set her heart on taking him to Fordham for Easter, for a more
thorough rest than could be had at Kencroft, while the younger ones were
having measles.
John, however, had by this time learnt enough of his own feelings
to delay consent till he had written to ask Mrs. Evelyn whether she
absolutely objected to his entertaining any future hopes of Sydney, when
he should have worked his way upward, as his recent success gave him
hopes of doing in time.
Sydney’s fortune was not overpowering. £10,000 was settled on each
of the younger children, and it had only been Fordham’s liberality
in treating Cecil as his eldest son, that had brought about his early
marriage. Thus she was no such heiress that her husband would be obliged
to feel as if he were living on her means, or that exertion could be
dispensed with, and thus, though he must make his way before he could
marry, there was no utter inequality for one who brought a high amount
of trained ability and industry.
Mrs. Evelyn could only answer as she would once have answered Jock,
and on these terms he went. In the meantime Sydney had rejected the
honourable young rector of the next parish, and was in the course of
administering rebuffs to the county member, who was so persuaded that he
and Miss Evelyn were the only fit match for one another, that no implied
negative was accepted by him. Her brother, whom he was coaching in his
county duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon;
and in the clash and crisis, without any one’s quite knowing how it
happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to
sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a
young doctor, Lady Fordham’s brother! Not only the M.P., but all the
family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to
be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas
had long made up his mind that so it would end, and told his mother that
it was a relief the crisis had come. He put a good face on it, wrung
his cousin’s hand with the grasp of a Hercules, observed “Well done, old
Monk,” and then made the work for his final examination a plea for being
so incessantly occupied as to avoid all private outpourings. And if he
had very little flesh on his bones, it was hard work and anxiety about
his examination.
That final ordeal was gone through at last; John Lucas Brownlow was,
like his cousin, possessor of a certificate of honour and a medal, and
had won both his degrees most brilliantly. He had worked the hardest and
had the most talent, and his achievement was perhaps the most esteemed
because of his lack of the previous training that Friar had brought
from Oxford. Professors and physicians wrote his mother notes to express
their satisfaction at the career of their old friend’s son, and Dr.
Medlicott came to bring her a whole bouquet of gratifying praise and
admiration from all concerned with him, ranging from the ability of
his prize essay to the firm delicacy of his hand; and backed up by the
doctor’s own opinion of the blameless conduct and excellent influence
of both the cousins. And now Dr. Medlicott declared he must have a good
rest and holiday, after the long strain of hard toil and study.
It came like a dream to Caroline that the conditions imposed by her
husband fifteen years before, when Lucas was a mischievous imp of
a Skipjack, had been thus completely worked out, not only the
intellectual, but the moral and religious terms being thus fulfilled.
The two cousins had come home to dinner in high spirits at the various
kind things that had been said to, and of, Jock, and discussing the
various suggestions for the future that had been made to them. They
thought Mother Carey strangely silent, but when they rose she called her
son into the consulting room, as she still termed it.
“My dear,” she said, “this slate will tell you why this is the moment I
have looked forward to from the time your dear father was taken from
us with his work half done. He had been working out a discovery. He was
sure of it himself, but none of the faculty would believe in it or take
it up. Even Dr. Lucas thought it was a craze, and I believe it can only
be tested by risky experiments. All that he had made out is in this
book. You know he could not speak for that dreadful throat. This is what
he wrote. I copied it again, putting in my answers lest it should fade,
but these are his very words, and that is my pledge. Magnum Bonum was
our playful pet name for it between ourselves.
“‘I promise to keep the Magnum Bonum a secret, till the boys are grown
up, and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he
has taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with
brains and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an
invention, and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good
and blessing to all.’ And oh, Jock,” she added, “am I not thankful
that after all it should have come about that you should fulfil those
conditions.”
“Did you not once mean it for John?” said Jock, hastily looking up.
“Yes, when I thought that hateful money had turned you all aside.”
“Then I think he ought to share this knowledge.”
“I thought you would say so, but it is your first right.”
“Perhaps,” said Jock. “But he is superior in his own line to me. He
gave himself up to this line of his own free will, not like me, as a
resource. And moreover, if it should bring any personal benefit, as an
accident, it would be more important to him than to me. And these other
conditions he fulfils to the letter. Mother, let me fetch him.”
She kissed his brow by way of answer, and a call brought John into the
room. The explanation was made, and John said, “If you think it right,
Aunt Caroline. No one can quite fulfil the conditions, but two may be
better than one.”
“Then I will leave you to read it together,” she said, after pointing
them to the solemn words in the first page. “Oh, you cannot think how
glad I am to give up my trust.”
She went upstairs to the drawing-room, and about half an hour had passed
in this way, when Jock came to the door, and said, “Mother, would you
please to come down.”
It was a strange, grave voice in which he spoke, and when she reached
the room, they set Allen’s most luxurious chair for her, but she
stood trembling, reading in their faces that there was something they
hesitated to tell her. They looked at one another as if to ask which
should do it, and a certain indignation and alarm seized on her. “You
believe in it!” she cried, as if she suspected them of disloyalty.
“Most entirely!” they both exclaimed.
“It is a great discovery,” added Jock, “but--”
“But,” said John, as he hesitated, “it has been worked out within the
last two years.”
“Not Dr. Hermann!” she cried.
“No, indeed!” said Jock. “Why?”
“Because poor Janet overheard our conversation, and obtained a sight of
the book. It was her ambition. I believe it was fatal to her. She may
have caught up enough of the outline to betray it. Jock, you remember
that scene at Belforest?”
“I do,” said Jock; “but this is not that scoundrel. It is Ruthven, who
has worked it out in a full and regular way. It is making a considerable
sensation though it has scarcely yet come into use as a mode of
treatment. Mother, do not be disappointed. It will be the blessing that
my father intended, all the sooner for not being in the hands of two
lads like us, whom all the bigwigs would scout!”
“And what I never thought of before,” said John. “You know we are so
often asked whether we belong to Joseph Brownlow, that one forgets to
mention it every time; but that day, when Dr. Medlicott took me to the
Westminster hospital, we fell in with Dr. Ruthven, and after the usual
disappointment on finding I was only the nephew and not the son, he
said, ‘Joseph Brownlow would have been a great man if he had lived. I
owe a great deal to a hint he once gave me?’”
“He ought to see these notes,” said Jock. “It strikes me that there is
a clue here to that difficulty he mentions in that published paper of
his.”
“You ought to show it to him,” said John.
“You ought,” said Jock.
“Do you know much about him?” asked Mother Carey. “I don’t think I ever
saw him, though I know his name. A fashionable physician, is he not?”
“A very good man,” said John. “A great West-end swell just come to be
the acknowledged head in his own line. I suppose it is just what my
uncle would have been ten years ago, if he had been spared.”
“May we show it to him, mother?” said Jock. “I should think he was quite
to be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of
his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to
tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so
imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead
him away from the subject.”
“Yes, Dr. Lucas’s incredulity made all the difference. How old is Dr.
Ruthven, John?”
“A little over forty, I should say. He may have been a pupil of my
uncle’s.”
After a little more consultation, it was decided that John should write
to Dr. Ruthven that his cousin had some papers of his father’s which he
thought the Doctor might like to see, and that they would bring them if
he would make an appointment.
And so the Magnum Bonum was no longer a secret, a burden, and a charge!
It was not easy to tell whether she who had so long been its depositary
felt the more lightened or disappointed. She had reckoned more than she
knew upon the honour of the discovery being connected with the name of
Brownlow, and she could not quite surmount the feeling that Dr. Ruthven
had somehow robbed her husband, though her better sense accepted and
admired the young men’s argument that such discoveries were common
property, and that the benefit to the world was the same.
Allen was a good deal struck when he understood the matter. He said
it explained a good deal to him which the others had been too young to
observe or remember both in the old home and afterwards.
“One wonderful part of it is how you kept the secret, and Janet too!”
he said. “And you must often have been sorely tempted. I remember being
amused at your disappointment and her indignation when I said I didn’t
see why a man was bound to be a doctor because his father was before
him; and I suppose if Bobus or I had taken to it, this Ruthven need not
have been beforehand with us!”
“It would have been transgressing the conditions to hold it out to you.”
“I don’t imagine I could have done it any way,” said Allen, sighing. “I
never can enter into the taste the others have for that style of thing;
but Bobus might have succeeded. You must have expected it of him, at the
time when he and I used to laugh at what we thought was a monomania on
your part for our taking up medical science as a tribute to our father,
when we did not need it as a provision.”
“You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philanthropy,
as some people do--well, at any rate in George Macdonald’s novels--it
would have been the very qualification. But I had little hope from the
time that the fortune came. I dreamt the first night that Midas had
turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I was wandering about
like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum Bonum to disenchant you.”
“It has come pretty true,” said Allen thoughtfully, “that inheritance
did us all a great deal of mischief.”
“And it took a greater magnum bonum, a maximum bonum, to disenchant us,”
said Armine.
“Which I fear did not come from me,” said his mother, “and I am most
grateful to the dear people who applied it to you. I wish I saw my way
to the disenchantment of the other two!”
“I suppose you quite despaired till John took his turn in that
direction,” said Allen. “Bobus could really have done better than any of
us, I fancy, but he would not have fulfilled the religious condition, as
sine qua non.”
“Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,” said Armine.
“Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,” said his
mother. “I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!”
“Perhaps he is not,” said Armine. “He told me he had been comparing the
MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven’s published paper, and he thought my father
saw farther into the capabilities.”
“Well, he will do right with it. I am thankful to leave it in such hands
as his and the Monk’s.”
“Then it was this,” continued Allen, “that was the key to poor Janet’s
history. I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set
on going to Zurich.”
“Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just
enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he
managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery
for her. Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear. If I
could only know where she is.”
A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr.
Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might
fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.
However, they came home more than satisfied. Perhaps in the interim Dr.
Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours
they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them
how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of
what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully
proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with
success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow
physicians to accept his system.
Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the
notes. He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his
face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he
said, “This is just what I wanted. Why did I not think of it before?”
and asked permission to copy the passage.
Then he urged the publication of the notes in some medical journal,
showing true and generous anxiety that honour should be given where
honour was due, and that his system should have the support of a name
not yet forgotten. Further, he told his visitors that they would hear
from him soon, and altogether they came home so much gratified that the
mother began to lose her sense of being forestalled. She was hard at
work in her own way on a set of models for dinner-table ornaments which
had been ordered. “Pot-boilers” had unfortunately much more success than
the imaginary groups she enjoyed.
Therefore she stayed at home and only sent her young people on a
commission to bring her as many varieties of foliage and seed-vessels as
they could, when Jock and Armine spent this first holiday of waiting in
setting forth with Babie to get a regular good country walk, grumbling
horribly that she would not accompany them.
She was deep in the moulding of a branch of chestnut, which carried her
back to the first time she saw those prickly clusters, on that day
of opening Paradise at Richmond, with Joe by her side, then still Mr.
Brownlow to her, Joe, who had seemed so much closer to her side in these
last few days. The Colonel might call Armine the most like Joe, and
say that Jock almost absurdly recalled her own soldier-father, Captain
Allen, but to her, Jock always the most brought back her husband’s words
and ways, in a hundred little gestures and predilections, and she had
still to struggle with her sense of injury that he should not be the
foremost.
The maid came up with two cards: Dr. and Mrs. Ruthven. This was speedy,
and Caroline had to take off her brown holland apron, and wash her
hands, while Emma composed her cap, in haste and not very good will, for
she could not but think them her natural enemies, though she was ready
to beat herself for being so small and nasty “when they could not help
it, poor things.”
However, Mrs. Ruthven turned out to be a pleasant lively table d’hote
acquaintance of six or seven years ago in her maiden days, and her
doctor an agreeable Scotsman, who told Mrs. Brownlow that he had been
here on several evenings in former days, and did not seem at all hurt
that she did not remember him. He seemed disappointed that neither of
the young men was at home, and inquired whether they had anything in
view. “Not definitely,” she said, and she spoke of some of the various
counsels Dr. Medlicott and others had given them.
In the midst she heard that peculiar dash with which the Fordham
carriage always announced itself. Little Esther might be ever so much
a Viscountess, but could she ever cease to be shy? In spite of her
increasing beauty and grace, she was not a success in society, for the
ladies said she was slow; she had no conversation, and no dash or rattle
to make up for it, and nothing would ever teach her to like strangers.
They were only so many disturbances in the way of her enjoyment of her
husband and her baby; and when she could not have the former to go out
driving with her, she always came and besought for the company of Aunt
Caroline and Babie; above all, when she had any shopping to do. She knew
it was very foolish, but she could never be happy in encountering shop
people, and she wanted strong support and protection to prevent herself
from being made a lay figure by urgent dressmakers. Her home only
gave her help and company on great occasions, for Eleanor persisted
in objecting to fine people, was determined against attracting another
guardsman, and privately desired her sister to abstain from inviting
her. Essie was aware that this was all for the sake of a certain
curate at St. Kenelm’s, and left Ellie to carry out her plan of passive
resistance, becoming thus the more dependent on her aunt’s family.
In she came, too graceful and courteous for strangers to detect the
shock their presence gave her, but much relieved to see them depart. Her
husband was on guard, and she had a whole list of commissions for mamma,
which would be much better executed without him. Moreover, baby must
have a new pelisse and hat for the country, and might not she have
little stockings and shoes, in case she should want to walk before the
return to London?
As little Alice was but four months old, and her father’s leave was only
for three months, this did not seem a very probable contingency, but
Mother Carey was always ready for shopping. She had never quite outgrown
the delight of the change from being a penniless school girl, casting
wistful fleeting glances at the windows where happier maidens might
enter and purchase.
Then there was to be a great review in two days’ time, Cecil would be
with his regiment, and Esther wanted the whole family to go with her,
lunch with the officers, and have a thorough holiday. Cecil had sent a
message that Jock must come to have the cobwebs swept out of his brain,
and see his old friends before he got into harness again. It was a
well-earned holiday, as Mother Carey felt, accepting it with eager
pleasure, for all who could come, though John’s power of so doing must
be doubtful, and there was little chance of a day being granted to
Allen.
In going out with her niece, Caroline’s eye had fallen on an envelope
among the cards on the hall table, ambiguously addressed to “J.
Brownlow, Esq., M.B.,” and on her return home she was met at the door by
Jock with a letter in his hand.
“So Dr. Ruthven has been here,” he said, drawing her into the
consulting-room.
“Yes. I like him rather. He seems to wish to make any amends in his
power.”
“Amends! you dear old ridiculous mother! Do you call this amends?”
holding up the letter. “He says now this discovery is getting known and
he has a name for the sort of case, his practice is outgrowing him,
and he wants some one to work with him who may be up to this particular
matter, and all he has heard of us convinces him that he cannot do
better than propose it to whichever of us has no other designs.”
“Very right and proper of him. It is the only thing he can do. I suppose
it would be the making of one of you. Ah!” as she glanced over the
letter. “He gives the preference to you.”
“He was bound to do that, but I think he would prefer the Monk. I wonder
whether you care very much about my accepting the offer.”
“Would this house be too far off?”
“I don’t know his plans enough to tell. That was not what I was thinking
of, but of what it would save her. Essie said she was not looking well;
and no doubt waiting is telling on her, just as her mother always feared
it would.”
“John has just not had the forbearance you have shown!”
“That is all circumstance. There was the saving her life, and afterwards
the being on the spot when she was tormented about the other affair. He
has no notion of having cut me out, and I trust he never will.”
“No, I do him that justice.”
“Then he has the advantage of me every way, out and out in looks and
University training; and it was to him that Ruthven first took a fancy.”
“You surpassed him in your essay, and in--.
“Oh, yes, yes,” interrupted Jock hastily, “but you see work was my
refuge. I had nothing to call me off. Besides, I have my share of your
brains, instead of her Serenity’s; but that’s all the more reason, if
you would listen to me. Depend upon it, Ruthven, if he knew all, would
much prefer the connection John would have, and she would bring means to
set up directly.”
“I suppose you will have it so,” replied she, looking up to him
affectionately.
“I should like it,” he said. “It is the one thing for them, and waiting
might do her infinite harm; the dear old Monk deserves it every way.
Remember how it all turned on his desperate race. If your comfort
depended on my taking it, that would come first.”
“Oh, no.”
“But there is sure to turn up plenty of other work without leaving you,”
he continued. “I don’t fancy getting involved in West-end practice among
swells, and not being independent. I had rather see whether I can’t work
out this principle further, devoting myself to reading up for it, and
getting more hospital experience to go upon.”
“I dare say that is quite right. I know it is like your father, and
indeed I shall be quite content however you decide. Only might it not be
well to see how it strikes John, before you absolutely make it over to
him?”
“You are trying to be prudent against the grain, Mother Carey.”
“Trying to see it like your uncle. Yes, exactly as if I were trying to
forestall his calling me his good little sister.”
“I don’t know what he would call me,” said Jock, “for at the bottom is
a feeling that, after reading my father’s words, I had rather not, if I
can help it, begin immediately to make all that material advantage out
of ‘Magnum Bonum’ as you call it.”
“Well, my dear, do as you think right; I trust it all to you. It is sure
to turn out the right sort of ‘Magnum Bonum’ to you--”
The Monk’s characteristic ring at the bell was heard, and the letter
was, without loss of time, committed to him, while both mother and son
watched him as he gathered up the sense.
“Well, this is jolly!” was his first observation. “Downright handsome
of Ruthven!” and then as the colour rose a little in his face, “Just the
thing for you, Jock, home work, which is exactly what you, want.”
“I’m not sure about that,” said Jock; “I don’t want to get into that
kind of practice just yet. It is fitter for a family man.”
“And who is a family man if you are not?” said John. “Wasn’t it the very
cause of your taking this line?”
“There’s a popular prejudice in favour of wives, rather than mothers,”
said Jock. “I should have said you were more likely to fulfil the
conditions.”
“Oh!” and there was a sound in that exclamation that belied the sequel,
“that’s just nonsense! The offer is to you primarily, and it is your
duty to take it.”
“I had much rather you did, and so had Dr. Ruthven. I want more time
for study and experience, and have set my heart on some scientific
appointment--”
“Come now, my good fellow--why, what are you laughing at?”
“Because you are such a good imitation of your father, my dear Johnny,”
said his aunt.
“It is just what my father would say,” returned John, taking this as
a high compliment; “it would be very foolish of Lucas to give up a
certainty for this just because of his Skipjack element, which doesn’t
want to get into routine harness. Now, don’t you think so, Mother
Carey?”
“_If_ I thought it _was_ the Skipjack element,” she said, smiling.
“If it is not,” he said, the colour now spreading all over his face, “I
am all the more bound not to let him give up all his prospects in life.”
“_All_ my prospects! My dear Monk, do you think they don’t go beyond a
brougham, and unlimited staircases?”
“I only know,” cried John, nettled into being a little off his guard,
“that what you despise would be all the world to me!”
The admission was hailed triumphantly, but the Kencroft nature was too
resolute, and the individual conscience too generous, to be brought
round to accept the sacrifice, which John estimated at the value of the
importance it was to himself, viewing what was real in Lucas’s distaste,
as mere erratic folly, which ought to be argued down. Finally, when the
argument had gone round into at least its fiftieth circle, Mother Carey
declared that she would have no more of it. Lucas should write a note
to Dr. Ruthven, accepting his proposal for one or other of them, and
promising that he should know which, in the course of a few days; so
that John, if he chose, could write to his father or _anyone_ else.
Meantime there was to be no allusion to “the raid of Ruthven” till the
day of the review was over. It was to be put entirely off the tongue, if
not out of the head!
And the two young doctors were weary enough of the subject to rejoice in
obedience to her.
The day was perfect except that poor Allen was pinned fast by his
tyrant, all the others gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the
moment. They understood the sham fight, and recognised all the corps,
with Jock as their cicerone, they had a good place at the marching past,
and Esther had the crowning delight of an excellent view of Captain
Viscount Fordham with his company, and at the luncheon. Jock received an
absolutely affectionate welcome from his old friends, who made as much
of his mother and sister for his sake, as they did of the lovely Lady
Fordham for her husband’s, finding them, moreover, much more easy to get
on with.