Produced by Sandra Laythorpe
THE DAISY CHAIN, OR ASPIRATIONS
By Charlotte Yonge
PREFACE.
No one can be more sensible than is the Author that the present is an
overgrown book of a nondescript class, neither the “tale” for the young,
nor the novel for their elders, but a mixture of both.
Begun as a series of conversational sketches, the story outran both
the original intention and the limits of the periodical in which it was
commenced; and, such as it has become, it is here presented to those who
have already made acquaintance with the May family, and may be willing
to see more of them. It would beg to be considered merely as what it
calls itself, a Family Chronicle--a domestic record of home events,
large and small, during those years of early life when the character
is chiefly formed, and as an endeavour to trace the effects of those
aspirations which are a part of every youthful nature. That the young
should take one hint, to think whether their hopes and upward-breathings
are truly upwards, and founded in lowliness, may be called the moral of
the tale.
For those who may deem the story too long, and the characters too
numerous, the Author can only beg their pardon for any tedium that they
may have undergone before giving it up. Feb. 22nd, 1856.
THE DAISY CHAIN
PART 1.
CHAPTER I.
Si douce est la Marguerite.--CHAUCER.
“Miss Winter, are you busy? Do you want this afternoon? Can you take a
good long walk?”
“Ethel, my dear, how often have I told you of your impetuosity--you have
forgotten.”
“Very well”--with an impatient twist--“I beg your pardon. Good-morning,
Miss Winter,” said a thin, lank, angular, sallow girl, just fifteen,
trembling from head to foot with restrained eagerness, as she tried to
curb her tone into the requisite civility.
“Good-morning, Ethel, good-morning, Flora,” said the prim, middle-aged
daily governess, taking off her bonnet, and arranging the stiff little
rolls of curl at the long, narrow looking-glass, the border of which
distorted the countenance.
“Good-morning,” properly responded Flora, a pretty, fair girl, nearly
two years older than her sister.
“Will you--” began to burst from Etheldred’s lips again, but was stifled
by Miss Winter’s inquiry, “Is your mamma pretty well to-day?”
“Oh! very well,” said both at once; “she is coming to the reading.” And
Flora added, “Papa is going to drive her out to-day.”
“I am very glad. And the baby?”
“I do believe she does it on purpose!” whispered Ethel to herself,
wriggling fearfully on the wide window-seat on which she had
precipitated herself, and kicking at the bar of the table, by which
manifestation she of course succeeded in deferring her hopes, by a
reproof which caused her to draw herself into a rigid, melancholy
attitude, a sort of penance of decorum, but a rapid motion of the
eyelids, a tendency to crack the joints of the fingers, and an
unquietness at the ends of her shoes, betraying the restlessness of the
digits therein contained.
It was such a room as is often to be found in old country town houses,
the two large windows looking out on a broad old-fashioned street,
through heavy framework, and panes of glass scratched with various names
and initials. The walls were painted blue, the skirting almost a third
of the height, and so wide at the top as to form a narrow shelf. The
fireplace, constructed in the days when fires were made to give as
little heat as possible, was ornamented with blue and white Dutch
tiles bearing marvellous representations of Scripture history, and was
protected by a very tall green guard; the chairs were much of the same
date, solid and heavy, the seats in faded carpet-work, but there was a
sprinkling of lesser ones and of stools; a piano; a globe; a large table
in the middle of the room, with three desks on it; a small one, and a
light cane chair by each window; and loaded book-cases. Flora began, “If
you don’t want this afternoon to yourself--”
Ethel was on her feet, and open-mouthed. “Oh, Miss Winter, if you would
be so kind as to walk to Cocksmoor with us!”
“To Cocksmoor, my dear!” exclaimed the governess in dismay.
“Yes, yes, but hear,” cried Ethel. “It is not for nothing. Yesterday--”
“No, the day before,” interposed Flora.
“There was a poor man brought into the hospital. He had been terribly
hurt in the quarry, and papa says he’ll die. He was in great distress,
for his wife has just got twins, and there were lots of children before.
They want everything--food and clothes--and we want to walk and take
it.”
“We had a collection of clothes ready, luckily,” said Flora; “and we
have a blanket, and some tea and some arrowroot, and a bit of bacon, and
mamma says she does not think it too far for us to walk, if you will be
so kind as to go with us.”
Miss Winter looked perplexed. “How could you carry the blanket, my
dear?”
“Oh, we have settled that,” said Ethel, “we mean to make the donkey a
sumpter-mule, so, if you are tired, you may ride home on her.”
“But, my dear, has your mamma considered? They are such a set of wild
people at Cocksmoor; I don’t think we could walk there alone.”
“It is Saturday,” said Ethel, “we can get the boys.”
“If you would reflect a little! They would be no protection. Harry would
be getting into scrapes, and you and Mary running wild.”
“I wish Richard was at home!” said Flora.
“I know!” cried Ethel. “Mr. Ernescliffe will come. I am sure he can walk
so far now. I’ll ask him.”
Ethel had clapped after her the heavy door with its shining brass lock,
before Miss Winter well knew what she was about, and the governess
seemed annoyed. “Ethel does not consider,” said she. “I don’t think your
mamma will be pleased.”
“Why not?” said Flora.
“My dear--a gentleman walking with you, especially if Margaret is
going!”
“I don’t think he is strong enough,” said Flora; “but I can’t think
why there should be any harm. Papa took us all out walking with him
yesterday--little Aubrey and all, and Mr. Ernescliffe went.”
“But, my dear--”
She was interrupted by the entrance of a fine tall blooming girl
of eighteen, holding in her hand a pretty little maid of five.
“Good-morning. Miss Winter. I suppose Flora has told you the request we
have to make to you?”
“Yes, my dear Margaret, but did your mamma consider what a lawless place
Cocksmoor is?”
“That was the doubt,” said Margaret, “but papa said he would answer for
it nothing would happen to us, and mamma said if you would be so kind.”
“It is unlucky,” began the governess, but stopped at the incursion of
some new-comers, nearly tumbling over each other, Ethel at the head
of them. “Oh, Harry!” as the gathers of her frock gave way in the
rude grasp of a twelve-year-old boy. “Miss Winter, ‘tis all right--Mr.
Ernescliffe says he is quite up to the walk, and will like it very much,
and he will undertake to defend you from the quarrymen.”
“Is Miss Winter afraid of the quarrymen?” hallooed Harry. “Shall I take
a club?”
“I’ll take my gun and shoot them,” valiantly exclaimed Tom; and while
threats were passing among the boys, Margaret asked, in a low voice,
“Did you ask him to come with us?”
“Yes, he said he should like it of all things. Papa was there, and said
it was not too far for him--besides, there’s the donkey. Papa says it,
so we must go, Miss Winter.”
Miss Winter glanced unutterable things at Margaret, and Ethel began to
perceive she had done something wrong. Flora was going to speak, when
Margaret, trying to appear unconscious of a certain deepening colour in
her own cheeks, pressed a hand on her shoulder, and whispering, “I’ll
see about it. Don’t say any more, please,” glided out of the room.
“What’s in the wind?” said Harry. “Are many of your reefs out there,
Ethel?”
“Harry can talk nothing but sailors’ language,” said Flora, “and I am
sure he did not learn that of Mr. Ernescliffe. You never hear slang from
him.”
“But aren’t we going to Cocksmoor?” asked Mary, a blunt downright girl
of ten.
“We shall know soon,” said Ethel. “I suppose I had better wait till
after the reading to mend that horrid frock?”
“I think so, since we are so nearly collected,” said Miss Winter; and
Ethel, seating herself on the corner of the window-seat, with one leg
doubled under her, took up a Shakespeare, holding it close to her
eyes, and her brother Norman, who, in age, came between her and Flora,
kneeling on one knee on the window-seat, and supporting himself with one
arm against the shutter, leaned over her, reading it too, disregarding a
tumultuous skirmish going on in that division of the family collectively
termed “the boys,” namely, Harry, Mary, and Tom, until Tom was suddenly
pushed down, and tumbled over into Ethel’s lap, thereby upsetting
her and Norman together, and there was a general downfall, and a loud
scream, “The sphynx!”
“You’ve crushed it,” cried Harry, dealing out thumps indiscriminately.
“No, here ‘tis,” said Mary, rushing among them, and bringing out a green
sphynx caterpillar on her finger--“‘tis not hurt.”
“Pax! Pax!” cried Norman, over all, with the voice of an authority,
as he leaped up lightly and set Tom on his legs again. “Harry! you had
better do that again,” he added warningly. “Be off, out of this window,
and let Ethel and me read in peace.”
“Here’s the place,” said Ethel--“Crispin, Crispian’s day. How I do like
Henry V.”
“It is no use to try to keep those boys in order!” sighed Miss Winter.
“Saturnalia, as papa calls Saturday,” replied Flora.
“Is not your eldest brother coming home to-day?” said Miss Winter in a
low voice to Flora, who shook her head, and said confidentially, “He
is not coming till he has passed that examination. He thinks it better
not.”
Here entered, with a baby in her arms, a lady with a beautiful
countenance of calm sweetness, looking almost too young to be the mother
of the tall Margaret, who followed her. There was a general hush as she
greeted Miss Winter, the girls crowding round to look at their little
sister, not quite six weeks old.
“Now, Margaret, will you take her up to the nursery?” said the
mother, while the impatient speech was repeated, “Mamma, can we go to
Cocksmoor?”
“You don’t think it will be too far for you?” said the mother to Miss
Winter as Margaret departed.
“Oh, no, not at all, thank you, that was not--But Margaret has
explained.”
“Yes, poor Margaret,” said Mrs. May, smiling. “She has settled it by
choosing to stay at home with me. It is no matter for the others, and he
is going on Monday, so that it will not happen again.”
“Margaret has behaved very well,” said Miss Winter.
“She has indeed,” said her mother, smiling. “Well, Harry, how is the
caterpillar?”
“They’ve just capsized it, mamma,” answered Harry, “and Mary is making
all taut.”
Mrs. May laughed, and proceeded to advise Ethel and Norman to put away
Henry V., and find the places in their Bibles, “or you will have the
things mixed together in your heads,” said she.
In the meantime Margaret, with the little babe, to-morrow to be her
godchild, lying gently in her arms, came out into the matted hall, and
began to mount the broad shallow-stepped staircase, protected by low
stout balusters, with a very thick, flat, and solid mahogany hand-rail,
polished by the boys’ constant riding up and down upon it. She was only
on the first step, when the dining-room door opened, and there came out
a young man, slight, and delicate-looking, with bright blue eyes, and
thickly-curling light hair. “Acting nurse?” he said, smiling. “What
an odd little face it is! I didn’t think little white babies were so
pretty! Well, I shall always consider myself as the real godfather--the
other is all a sham.”
“I think so,” said Margaret; “but I must not stand with her in a
draught,” and on she went, while he called after her. “So we are to have
an expedition to-day.”
She did not gainsay it, but there was a little sigh of disappointment,
and when she was out of hearing, she whispered, “Oh! lucky baby, to
have so many years to come before you are plagued with troublesome
propriety!”
Then depositing her little charge with the nurse, and trying to cheer up
a solemn-looking boy of three, who evidently considered his deposition
from babyhood as a great injury, she tripped lightly down again, to take
part in the Saturday’s reading and catechising.
It was pleasant to see that large family in the hush and reverence of
such teaching, the mother’s gentle power preventing the outbreaks of
restlessness to which even at such times the wild young spirits were
liable. Margaret and Miss Winter especially rejoiced in it on this
occasion, the first since the birth of the baby, that she had been able
to preside. Under her, though seemingly without her taking any trouble,
there was none of the smothered laughing at the little mistakes, the
fidgeting of the boys, or Harry’s audacious impertinence to Miss Winter;
and no less glad was Harry to have his mother there, and be guarded from
himself.
The Catechism was repeated, and a comment on the Sunday Services read
aloud. The Gospel was that on the taking the lowest place, and when they
had finished, Ethel said, “I like the verse which explains that:
‘They who now sit lowest here,
When their Master shall appear,
He shall bid them higher rise,
And be highest in the skies.’”
“I did not think of that being the meaning of ‘when He that bade thee
cometh,’” said Norman thoughtfully.
“It seemed to be only our worldly advantage that was meant before,” said
Ethel.
“Well, it means that too,” said Flora.
“I suppose it does,” said Mrs. May; “but the higher sense is the
one chiefly to be dwelt on. It is a lesson how those least known and
regarded here, and humblest in their own eyes, shall be the highest
hereafter.”
And Margaret looked earnestly at her mother, but did not speak.
“May we go, mamma?” said Mary.
“Yes, you three--all of you, indeed, unless you wish to say any more.”
The “boys” availed themselves of the permission. Norman tarried to put
his books into a neat leather case, and Ethel stood thinking. “It means
altogether--it is a lesson against ambition,” said she.
“True,” said her mother, “the love of eminence for its own sake.”
“And in so many different ways!” said Margaret.
“Ay, worldly greatness, riches, rank, beauty,” said Flora.
“All sorts of false flash and nonsense, and liking to be higher than one
ought to be,” said Norman. “I am sure there is nothing lower, or more
mean and shabby, than getting places and praise a fellow does not
deserve.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Ethel, “but no one fit to speak to would do that!”
“Plenty of people do, I can tell you,” said Norman.
“Then I hope I shall never know who they are!” exclaimed Ethel. “But
I’ll tell you what I was thinking of, mamma. Caring to be clever, and
get on, only for the sake of beating people.”
“I think that might be better expressed.”
“I know,” said Ethel, bending her brow, with the fullness of her
thought--“I mean caring to do a thing only because nobody else can do
it--wanting to be first more than wanting to do one’s best.”
“You are quite right, my dear Ethel,” said her mother; “and I am glad
you have found in the Gospel a practical lesson, that should be useful
to you both. I had rather you did so than that you read it in Greek,
though that is very nice too,” she added, smiling, as she put her hand
on a little Greek Testament, in which Ethel had been reading it, within
her English Bible. “Now, go and mend that deplorable frock, and if you
don’t dream over it, you won’t waste too much of your holiday.”
“I’ll get it done in no time!” cried Ethel, rushing headlong upstairs,
twice tripping in it before she reached the attic, where she slept, as
well as Flora and Mary--a large room in the roof, the windows gay with
bird-cages and flowers, a canary singing loud enough to deafen any one
but girls to whom headaches were unknown, plenty of books and treasures,
and a very fine view, from the dormer window, of the town sloping
downwards, and the river winding away, with some heathy hills in the
distance. Poking and peering about with her short-sighted eyes, Ethel
lighted on a work-basket in rare disorder, pulled off her frock, threw
on a shawl, and sat down cross-legged on her bed, stitching vigorously,
while meantime she spouted with great emphasis an ode of Horace, which
Norman having learned by heart, she had followed his example; it being
her great desire to be even with him in all his studies, and though
eleven months younger, she had never yet fallen behind him. On Saturday,
he showed her what were his tasks for the week, and as soon as her rent
was repaired, she swung herself downstairs in search of him for this
purpose. She found him in the drawing-room, a pretty, pleasant room--its
only fault that it was rather too low. It had windows opening down to
the lawn, and was full of pretty things, works and knick-knacks. Ethel
found the state of affairs unfavourable to her. Norman was intent on
a book on the sofa, and at the table sat Mr. Ernescliffe, hard at work
with calculations and mathematical instruments. Ethel would not for the
world that any one should guess at her classical studies--she scarcely
liked to believe that even her father knew of them, and to mention them
before Mr. Ernescliffe would have been dreadful. So she only shoved
Norman, and asked him to come.
“Presently,” he said.
“What have you here?” said she, poking her head into the book. “Oh! no
wonder you can’t leave off. I’ve been wanting you to read it all the
week.”
She read over him a few minutes, then recoiled: “I forgot, mamma told me
not to read those stories in the morning. Only five minutes, Norman.”
“Wait a bit, I’ll come.”
She fidgeted, till Mr. Ernescliffe asked Norman if there was a table of
logarithms in the house.
“Oh, yes,” she answered; “don’t you know, Norman? In a brown book on the
upper shelf in the dining-room. Don’t you remember papa’s telling us the
meaning of them, when we had the grand book-dusting?”
He was conscious of nothing but his book; however, she found the
logarithms, and brought them to Mr. Ernescliffe, staying to look at his
drawing, and asking what he was making out. He replied, smiling at the
impossibility of her understanding, but she wrinkled her brown forehead,
hooked her long nose, and spent the next hour in amateur navigation.
Market Stoneborough was a fine old town. The Minster, grand with the
architecture of the time of Henry III., stood beside a broad river, and
round it were the buildings of a convent, made by a certain good Bishop
Whichcote, the nucleus of a grammar school, which had survived the
Reformation, and trained up many good scholars; among them, one of
England’s princely merchants, Nicholas Randall, whose effigy knelt in
a niche in the chancel wall, scarlet-cloaked, white-ruffed, and black
doubletted, a desk bearing an open Bible before him, and a twisted
pillar of Derbyshire spar on each side. He was the founder of thirteen
almshouses, and had endowed two scholarships at Oxford, the object of
ambition of the Stoneborough boys, every eighteen months.
There were about sixty or seventy boarders, and the town boys slept at
home, and spent their weekly holiday there on Saturday--the happiest
day in the week to the May family, when alone, they had the company at
dinner of Norman and Harry, otherwise known by their school names of
June and July, given them because their elder brother had begun the
series of months as May.
Some two hundred years back, a Dr. Thomas May had been headmaster, but
ever since that time there had always been an M. D., not a D. D., in
the family, owning a comfortable demesne of spacious garden, and field
enough for two cows, still green and intact, among modern buildings and
improvements.
The present Dr. May stood very high in his profession, and might soon
have made a large fortune in London, had he not held fast to his
home attachments. He was extremely skilful and clever, with a boyish
character that seemed as if it could never grow older; ardent,
sensitive, and heedless, with a quickness of sympathy and tenderness of
heart that was increased, rather than blunted, by exercise in scenes of
suffering.
At the end of the previous summer holidays, Dr. May had been called one
morning to attend a gentleman who had been taken very ill, at the Swan
Inn.
He was received by a little boy of ten years old, in much grief,
explaining that his brother had come two days ago from London, to bring
him to school here; he had seemed unwell ever since they met, and last
night had become much worse. And extremely ill the doctor found him;
a youth of two or three and twenty, suffering under a severe attack of
fever, oppressed, and scarcely conscious, so as quite to justify his
little brother’s apprehensions. He advised the boy to write to his
family, but was answered by a look that went to his heart--“Alan”
was all he had in the world--father and mother were dead, and their
relations lived in Scotland, and were hardly known to them.
“Where have you been living, then?”
“Alan sent me to school at Miss Lawler’s when my mother died, and there
I have been ever since, while he has been these three years and a half
on the African station.”
“What, is he in the navy?”
“Yes,” said the boy proudly, “Lieutenant Ernescliffe. He got his
promotion last week. My father was in the battle of Trafalgar; and
Alan has been three years in the West Indies, and then he was in the
Mediterranean, and now on the coast of Africa, in the Atalantis. You
must have heard about him, for it was in the newspaper, how, when he was
mate, he had the command of the Santa Isabel, the slaver they captured.”
The boy would have gone on for ever, if Dr. May had not recalled him to
his brother’s present condition, and proceeded to take every measure
for the welfare and comfort of the forlorn pair. He learned from other
sources that the Ernescliffes were well connected. The father had been
a distinguished officer, but had been ill able to provide for his sons;
indeed, he died, without ever having seen little Hector, who was born
during his absence on a voyage--his last, and Alan’s first. Alan, the
elder by thirteen years, had been like a father to the little boy,
showing judgment and self-denial that marked him of a high cast of
character. He had distinguished himself in encounters with slave ships,
and in command of a prize that he had had to conduct to Sierra Leone,
he had shown great coolness and seamanship, in several perilous
conjunctures, such as a sudden storm, and an encounter with another
slaver, when his Portuguese prisoners became mutinous, and nothing but
his steadiness and intrepidity had saved the lives of himself and his
few English companions. He was, in fact, as Dr. May reported, pretty
much of a hero. He had not, at the time, felt the effects of the
climate, but, owing to sickness and death among the other officers, he
had suffered much fatigue and pressure of mind and body. Immediately on
his return, had followed his examination, and though he had passed with
great credit, and it had been at once followed by well-earned promotion,
his nervous excitable frame had been overtasked, and the consequence was
a long and severe illness.
The Swan Inn was not forty yards from Dr. May’s back gate, and, at
every spare moment, he was doing the part of nurse as well as doctor,
professionally obliged to Alan Ernescliffe for bringing him a curious
exotic specimen of fever, and requiting him by the utmost care and
attention, while, for their own sakes, he delighted in the two boys with
all the enthusiasm of his warm heart. Before the first week was at
an end, they had learned to look on the doctor as one of the kindest
friends it had been their lot to meet with, and Alan knew that if he
died, he should leave his little brother in the hands of one who would
comfort him as a father.
No sooner was young Ernescliffe able to sit up, than Dr. May insisted on
conveying him to his own house, as his recovery was likely to be tedious
in solitude at the Swan. It was not till he had been drawn in a chair
along the sloping garden, and placed on the sofa to rest, that he
discovered that the time the good doctor had chosen for bringing a
helpless convalescent to his house, was two days after an eleventh child
had been added to his family.
Mrs. May was too sorry for the solitary youth, and too sympathising
with her husband, to make any objection, though she was not fond of
strangers, and had some anxieties. She had the utmost dependence on
Margaret’s discretion, but there was a chance of awkward situations,
which papa was not likely to see or guard against. However, all seemed
to do very well, and no one ever came into her room without some degree
of rapture about Mr. Ernescliffe. The doctor reiterated praises of his
excellence, his principle, his ability and talent, his amusing talk; the
girls were always bringing reports of his perfections; Norman retracted
his grumbling at having his evenings spoiled; and “the boys” were
bursting with the secret that he was teaching them to rig a little ship
that was to astonish mamma on her first coming downstairs, and to be
named after the baby; while Blanche did all the coquetry with him, from
which Margaret abstained. The universal desire was for mamma to see him,
and when the time came, she owned that papa’s swan had not turned out a
goose.
There were now no grounds for prolonging his stay; but it was very hard
to go, and he was glad to avail himself of the excuse of remaining for
the christening, when he was to represent the absent godfather. After
that, he must go; he had written to his Scottish cousins to offer a
visit, and he had a promise that he should soon be afloat again. No
place would ever seem to him so like home as Market Stoneborough. He was
quite like one of themselves, and took a full share in the discussions
on the baby’s name, which, as all the old family appellations had been
used up, was an open question. The doctor protested against Alice and
Edith, which he said were the universal names in the present day. The
boys hissed every attempt of their sisters at a romantic name, and
then Harry wanted it to be Atalantis! At last Dr. May announced that
he should have her named Dowsabel if they did not agree, and Mrs. May
advised all the parties concerned to write their choice on a slip of
paper, and little Aubrey should draw two out of her bag, trusting that
Atalantis Dowsabel would not come out, as Harry confidently predicted.
However, it was even worse, Aubrey’s two lots were Gertrude and
Margaret. Ethel and Mary made a vehement uproar to discover who could
have written Margaret, and at last traced it home to Mr. Ernescliffe,
who replied that Flora, without saying why, had desired him to set down
his favourite name. He was much disconcerted, and did not materially
mend the matter by saying it was the first name that came into his head.