On an east-windy Friday afternoon Valetta and Fergus were in a crowning state of ecstasy. Rigdum Funnidos was in a hutch in the small garden under the cliff, Begum and two small gray kittens were in a basket under the kitchen stairs, Aga was purring under everybody’s feet, Cocky was turning out the guard upon his perch—in short, Il Lido was made as like Silverfold as circumstances would permit. Aunt Ada with Miss Vincent was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, with a newly-worked cosy, like a giant’s fez, over the teapot, and Valetta’s crewel cushion fully displayed. She was patiently enduring a rush in and out of the room of both children and Quiz once every minute, and had only requested that it should not be more than once, and that the door should neither be slammed nor left open.
Macrae and the Silverfold carriage were actually gone to the station, and, oh! oh! oh! here it really was with papa on the box, and heaps of luggage, and here were Primrose and Gillian and mamma and Mrs. Halfpenny, all emerging one after another, and Primrose, looking—oh dear! more like a schoolroom than a nursery girl—such a great piece of black leg below the little crimson skirt; but the dear little face as plump as ever.
That was the first apparent fact after the disengaging from the general embrace, when all had subsided into different seats, and Aunt Jane, who had appeared from somewhere in her little round sealskin hat, had begun to pour out the tea. The first sentence that emerged from the melee of greetings and intelligence was—
‘Fly met her mother at the station; how well she looks!’
‘Then Victoria came down with you?’
‘Yes; I am glad we went to her. I really do like her very much.’
Then Primrose and Valetta varied the scene by each laying a kitten in their mother’s lap; and Begum, jumping after her progeny, brushed Lady Merrifield’s face with her bushy tail, interrupting the information about names.
‘Come, children,’ said Sir Jasper, ‘that’s enough; take away the cats.’ It was kindly said, but it was plain that liberties with mamma would not continue before him.
‘The Whites?’ was Gillian’s question, as she pressed up to Aunt Jane.
‘Poor Mrs. White died the night before last,’ was the return. ‘I have just come from Kally. She is in a stunned state now—actually too busy to think and feel, for the funeral must be to-morrow.’
Sir Jasper heard, and came to ask further questions.
‘She saw Alexis,’ went on Miss Mohun. ‘They dressed him in his own clothes, and she seemed greatly satisfied when he came to sit by her, and had forgotten all that went before. However, the end came very suddenly at last, and all those poor children show their southern nature in tremendous outbursts of grief—all except Kalliope, who seems not to venture on giving way, will not talk, or be comforted, and is, as it were, dried up for the present. The big brothers give way quite as much as the children, in gusts, that is to say. Poor Alexis reproaches himself with having hastened it, and I am afraid his brother does not spare him. But Mr. White has bought his discharge.’
‘You don’t mean it.’
‘Yes; whether it was the contrast between Alexis’s air of refinement and his private soldier’s turn-out, or the poor fellow’s patience and submission, or the brother’s horrid behaviour to him, Mr. White has taken him up, and bought him out.’
‘All because of Richard’s brutal speech. That is good! Though I confess I should have let the lad have at least a year’s discipline for his own good, since he had put himself into it; but I can’t be sorry. There is something engaging about the boy.’
‘And Mr. White is the right man to dispose of them.’
No more passed, for here were the children eager and important, doing the honours of the new house, and intensely happy at the sense of home, which with them depended more on persons than on place.
One schoolroom again,’ said Mysie. ‘One again with Val and Prim and Miss Vincent. Oh, it is happiness!’
Even Mrs. Halfpenny was a delightful sight, perhaps the more so that her rightful dominion was over; the nursery was no more, and she was only to preside in the workroom, be generally useful, wait on my lady, and look after Primrose as far as was needful.
The bustle and excitement of settling in prevented much thought of the Whites, even from Gillian, during that evening and the next morning; and she was ashamed of her own oblivion of her friend in the new current of ideas, when she found that her father meant to attend the funeral out of respect to his old fellow-soldier.
Rockquay had outgrown its churchyard, and had a cemetery half a mile off, so that people had to go in carriages. Mr. White had made himself responsible for expenses, and thus things were not so utterly dreary as poverty might have made them. It was a dreary, gusty March day, with driving rushes of rain, which had played wildly with Gillian’s waterproof while she was getting such blossoms and evergreen leaves as her aunt’s garden afforded, not out of love for the poor Queen of the White Ants herself, but thinking the attention might gratify the daughters; and her elders moralised a little on the use and abuse of wreaths, and how the manifestation of tender affection and respect had in many cases been imitated in empty and expensive compliment.
‘The world spoils everything with its coarse finger,’ said Lady Merrifield.
‘I hope the custom will not be exaggerated altogether out of fashion,’ said Jane. ‘It is a real comfort to poor little children at funerals to have one to carry, and it is as Mrs. Gaskell’s Margaret said of mourning, something to prevent settling to doing nothing but crying; besides that afterwards there is a wholesome sweetness in thus keeping up the memory.’
Sir Jasper shared a carriage with Mr. White, and returned somewhat wet and very cold, and saying that it had been sadly bleak and wretched for the poor young people, who stood trembling, so far as he could see; and he was anxious to know how the poor girls were after it. It had seemed to him as if Kalliope could scarcely stand. He proved to be right. Kalliope had said nothing, not wept demonstratively, perhaps not at all; but when the carriage stopped at the door, she proved to be sunk back in her corner in a dead faint. She was very long in reviving, and no sooner tried to move than she swooned again, and this time it lasted so long that the doctor was sent for. Miss Mohun arrived just as he had partially restored her, and they had a conversation.
‘They must get that poor girl to bed as soon as it is possible to undress her,’ he said. ‘I have seen that she must break down sooner or later, and I’m afraid she is in for a serious illness; but as yet there is no knowing.’
Nursing was not among Jane’s accomplishments, except of her sister Ada’s chronic, though not severe ailments; but she fetched Mrs. Halfpenny as the most effective person within reach, trusting to that good woman’s Scotch height, strong arms, great decision, and the tenderness which real illness always elicited.
Nor was she wrong. Not only did Mrs. Halfpenny get the half-unconscious girl into bed, but she stayed till evening, and then came back to snatch a meal and say—
‘My leddy, if you have no objection, I will sit up with that puir lassie the night. They are all men-folk or bairns there, except the lodger-lady, who is worn out with helping the mother, and they want some one with a head on her shoulders.’
Lady Merrifield consented with all her heart; but the Sunday morning’s report was no better, when Mrs. Halfpenny came home to dress Primrose, and see her lady.
‘That eldest brother, set him up, the idle loon, was off by the mail train that night, and naething wad serve him but to come in and bid good-bye to his sister just as I had gotten her off into something more like a sleep. It startled her up, and she went off her head again, poor dearie, and began to talk about prison and disgrace, and what not, till she fainted again; and when she came to, I was fain to call the other lad to pacify her, for I could see the trouble in her puir een, though she could scarce win breath to speak.’
‘Is Alexis there?’
‘Surely he is, my leddy; he’s no the lad to leave his sister in sic a strait. It was all I could do to gar him lie down when she dozed off again, but there’s sair stress setting in for all of them, puir things. I have sent the little laddie off to beg the doctor to look in as soon as he can, for I am much mistaken if there be not fever coming on.’
‘Indeed! And what can those poor children do?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking, my leddy. And since ‘tis your pleasure that the nursery be done awa’ wi’, and I have not ta’en any fresh work, I should like weel to see the puir lassie through wi’ it. Ye’ll no mind that Captain White and my puir Halfpenny listed the same time, and always forgathered as became douce lads. The twa of them got their stripes thegither, and when Halfpenny got his sunstroke in that weary march, ‘twas White who gave him his last sup of water, and brought me his bit Bible. So I’d be fain to tend his daughter in her sickness, if you could spare me, my leddy, and I’d aye rin home to dress Missie Primrose and pit her to bed, and see to matters here.’
‘There’s no better nurse in the world, dear old Halfpenny,’ said Lady Merrifield, with tears in her eyes. ‘I do feel most thankful to you for proposing it. Never mind about Primrose, only you must have your meals and a good rest here, and not knock yourself up.’
Mrs. Halfpenny smiled grimly at the notion of her being sooner knocked up than a steam-engine. Dr. Dagger entirely confirmed her opinion that poor Kalliope was likely to have a serious illness, low nervous fever, and failing action of the heart, no doubt from the severe strain that she had undergone, more or less, for many months, and latterly fearfully enhanced by her mother’s illness, and the shock and suspense about Alexis, all borne under the necessity of external composure and calmness, so that even Mrs. Lee had never entirely understood how much it cost her. The doctor did not apprehend extreme danger to one young and healthy, but he thought much would depend on good nursing, and on absolute protection from any sort of excitement, so that such care as Mrs. Halfpenny’s was invaluable, since she was well known to be a dove to a patient, but a dragon to all outsiders.
Every one around grieved at having done so little to lighten these burthens, and having even increased them, her brother Alexis above all; but on the other hand, he was the only person who was of any use to her, or was suffered to approach her, since his touch and voice calmed the recurring distress, lest he were still in prison and danger.
Alexis went back dutifully on the Monday morning to his post at the works. The young man was much changed by his fortnight’s experiences, or rather he had been cured of a temporary fit of distraction, and returned to his better self. How many discussions his friends held about him cannot be recorded, but after a conversation with Mr. Flight, with whom he was really more unreserved than any other being except Kalliope, this was the understanding at which Miss Mohun and Lady Merrifield arrived as to his nature and character.
Refined, studious, and sensitive, thoroughly religious-minded, and of a high tone of thought, his aspirations had been blighted by his father’s death, his brother’s selfishness, and his mother’s favouritism. In a brave spirit of self-abnegation, he had turned to the uncongenial employment set before him for the sake of his family, and which was rendered specially trying by the dislike of his fellows to ‘the gentleman cove,’ and the jealousy of the Stebbings. Alike for his religious and his refined habits he had suffered patiently, as Mr. Flight had always known more or less, and now bore testimony. The curate, who had opened to him the first door of hope and comfort, had in these weeks begun to see that the apparent fitfulness of his kindness had been unsettling.
Then came the brief dream of felicity excited by Gillian and the darkness of its extinction, just as Frank Stebbing’s failure and the near approach of Mr. White had made the malice of his immediate superiors render his situation more intolerable than ever. There was the added sting of self-reproach for his presumption towards Gillian, and the neglect caused by his fit of low spirits. Such a sensitive being, in early youth, wearied and goaded on all sides, might probably have persevered through the darkness till daylight came; but the catastrophe, the dismissal, and the perception that he could only defend himself at the expense of his idol’s little brother, all exaggerated by youthful imagination, were too much for his balance of judgment, and he fled without giving himself time to realise how much worse he made it for those he left behind him.
Of course he perceived it all now, and the more bitterly from his sister’s wanderings, but the morbid exaggeration was gone. The actual taste of a recruit’s life had shown him that there were worse things than employment at the quarries with his home awaiting him, and his cell had been a place of thought and recovery of his senses. He had never seriously expected conviction, and Sir Jasper’s visit had given him a spring of hopeful resignation, in which thoughts stirred of doing his duty, and winning his way after his father’s example, and taking the trials of his military life as the just cross of his wrong-doing in entering it.
His liberation and Mr. White’s kindness had not altered this frame. He was too unhappy to feel his residence in the great house anything but a restraint; he could not help believing that he had hastened his mother’s death, and could only bow his head meekly under his brother’s reproaches, alike for that and for his folly and imprudence and the disgrace he had brought on the family.
‘And now you’ll, be currying favour and cutting out every one else,’ had been a sting which added fresh force to Alexis’s desire to escape from his kinsman’s house to sleep at home as soon as his brother had gone; and Richard had seen enough of Sir Jasper and of Mr. White to be anxious to return to his office at Leeds as soon as possible, and to regulate his affairs beyond their reach.
Alexis knew that he had avoided a duty in not working out his three months’ term, and likewise that his earnings were necessary to the family all the more for his sister being laid aside. He knew that he hardly deserved to resume his post, and he merely asked permission so to do, and it was granted at once, but curtly and coldly.
Mr. Flight had asked if he had not found the going among the other clerks very trying.
‘I had other things to think of,’ said Alexis sadly, then recalling himself. ‘Yes; Jones did sneer a little, but the others stopped that. They knew I was down, you see.’
‘And you mean to go on?’
‘If I may. That, and for my sister to get better, is all I can dare to hope. My madness and selfishness have shown me unworthy of all that I once dreamt of.’
In that resolution it was assuredly best to leave him, only giving him such encouragement and sympathy as might prevent that more dangerous reaction of giving up all better things; and Sir Jasper impressed on Mr. Flight, the only friend who could have aided him in fulfilling his former aspirations, that Mr. White had in a manner purchased the youth by buying his discharge, and that interference would not only be inexpedient, but unjust. The young clergyman chafed a little over not being allowed to atone for his neglect; but Sir Jasper was not a person to be easily gainsayed. Nor could there be any doubt that Mr. White was a good man, though in general so much inclined to reserve his hand that his actions were apt to take people by surprise at last, as they had never guessed his intentions, and he had a way of sucking people’s brains without in the least letting them know what use he meant to make of their information. The measures he was taking for the temporal, intellectual, and spiritual welfare of the people at the works would hardly have been known except for the murmurs of Mrs. Stebbing, although, without their knowing what he was about with them, Mr. Stebbing himself, Mr. Hablot, Miss Mohun, to say nothing of Alexis, the foremen and the men and their wives, had given him the groundwork of his reforms. Meantime, he came daily to inquire for Kalliope, and lavished on her all that could be an alleviation, greatly offending Mrs. Halfpenny by continually proffering the services of a hospital nurse.
‘A silly tawpie that would be mair trouble than half a dozen sick,’ as she chose to declare.
She was a born autocrat, and ruled as absolutely in No. l as in her nursery, ordering off the three young ones to their schools, in spite of Maura’s remonstrances and appeals to Lady Merrifield, who agreed with nurse that the girl was much better away and occupied than where she could be of very little use.
Indeed, Mrs. Halfpenny banished every one from the room except Mrs. Lee and Alexis, whom she would allow to take her place, while she stalked to Il Lido for her meals, and the duties she would not drop. As to rest, she always, in times of sickness, seemed to be made of cast iron, and if she ever slept at all, it was in a chair, while Alexis sat by his sister in the evening.
The fever never ran very high, but constant vigilance was wanted from the extreme exhaustion and faintness. There was no violent delirium, but more of delusion and distress; nor was it easy to tell when she was conscious or otherwise, for she hardly spoke, and as yet the doctor forbade any attempt to rouse her more than was absolutely needful. They were only to give nourishment, watch her, and be patient.
A few months ago Gillian would have fussed herself into a frantic state of anxiety and self-reproach, but her parents, when her mother had once heard as much outpouring as she thought expedient, would not permit what Sir Jasper called ‘perpetual harping.’
‘You have to do your duties all the same, and not worry your mother and all the family with your feelings,’ he said. She thought it very unkind, and went away crying.
‘Nobody could hinder her from thinking about Kalliope,’ she said to herself, and think she did at her prayers, and when the bulletins came in, but the embargo on discussion prevented her from being so absolutely engrossed, as in weaker hands she might have been, and there was a great deal going on to claim her attention. For one thing, the results of the Cambridge Examination showed that while Emma Norton and a few others had passed triumphantly, she had failed, and conscience carried her back to last autumn’s disinclination to do just what Aunt Jane especially recommended.
She cried bitterly over the failure, for she had a feeling that success there would redeem her somewhat in her parents’ eyes; but here again she experienced the healing kindness of her father. He would not say that he should not have been much pleased by her success, but he said failure that taught her to do her best without perverseness was really a benefit; and as arithmetic and mathematics had been her weakest points, he would work at them with her and Mysie for an hour every morning.
It was somewhat formidable, but the girls soon found that what their father demanded was application, and that inattention displeased him much more than stupidity. His smile, though rare, was one of the sweetest things in the world, and his approbation was delightful, and gave a stimulus to the entire day’s doings. Mysie was more than ever in dread of being handed over to the Rotherwoods, though her love for poor Fly and pity for her solitude were so strong. She would have been much relieved if she had known what had passed; when the offer was seriously made, Lord Rotherwood insisted that his wife should do it.
‘Then they will believe in it,’ he said.
‘I do not know why you should say that,’ she returned, always dutifully blinding herself to that which all their intimates knew perfectly well. However, perhaps from having a station and dignity of her own, together with great simplicity, Lady Merrifield had from her first arrival got on so well with her hostess as not quite to enter into Jane’s sarcastic descriptions of her efforts at cordiality; and it was with real warmth that Lady Rotherwood begged for Mysie as a permanent companion and adopted sister to Phyllis, who was to be taken back to London after Easter, and in the meantime spent every possible moment with her cousins.
Tears at the unkindness to lonely Fly came into Lady Merrifield’s eyes as she said—
‘I cannot do it, Victoria; I do not think I ought to give away my child, even if I could.’
‘It is not only our feelings,’ added Sir Jasper, ‘but it is our duty to bring up our own child in her natural station; and though we know she would learn nothing but good in your family, I cannot think it well that a girl should acquire habits, and be used to society ways and of life beyond those which she can expect to continue.’
They both cried out at this, Lord Rotherwood with a halting declaration of perfect equality, which his lady seconded, with a dexterous reference to connections.
‘We will not put it on rank then,’ said Sir Jasper, ‘but on wealth. With you, Maria must become accustomed to much that she could not continue, and had better not become natural to her. I know there are great advantages to manners and general cultivation in being with you, and we shall be most thankful to let her pay long visits, and be as much with Phyllis as is consistent with feeling her home with us, but I cannot think it right to do more.’
‘But with introductions,’ pleaded Lady Rotherwood, ‘she might marry well. With her family and connections, she would be a match for any one.’
‘I hope so,’ said Sir Jasper; ‘but at the same time it would not be well for her to look on such a marriage as the means of continuing the habits that would have become second nature.’
‘Poor Mysie,’ exclaimed Lord Rotherwood, bursting out laughing at the idea, and at Lady Merrifield’s look as she murmured, ‘My Mysie!’
‘You misunderstand me,’ said the Marchioness composedly. ‘I was as far as possible from proposing marriage as a speculation for her.’
‘I know you were,’ said Sir Jasper. ‘I know you would deal by Maria as by your own daughter, and I am very grateful to you, Lady Rotherwood, but I can only come back to my old decision, that as Providence did not place her in your rank of life, she had better not become so accustomed to it as to render her own distasteful to her.’
‘Exactly what I expected,’ said Lord Rotherwood.
‘Yes,’ returned his wife, with an effort of generosity; ‘and I believe you are right, Jasper, though I am sorry for my little solitary girl, and I never saw a friend so perfectly suitable for her as your Mysie.’
‘They may be friends still,’ said Lord Rotherwood, ‘and we will be grateful to you whenever you can spare her to us.’
‘Perhaps,’ added Sir Jasper, ‘all the more helpful friends for seeing different phases of life.’
‘And, said his wife, with one of her warm impulses, ‘I do thank you, Victoria, for so loving my Mysie.’
‘As if any one could help it, after last winter,’ said that lady, and an impromptu kiss passed between the two mothers, much to the astonishment of the Marquis, who had never seen his lady so moved towards any one.
The Merrifields were somewhat on the world, for Sir Jasper, on going to Silverfold and corresponding with the trustees of the landlord, had found that the place could not be put in a state either of repair or sanitation, such as he approved, without more expense than either he or the trustees thought advisable, and he decided on giving it up, and remaining at Il Lido till he could find something more suitable.
The children, who had been there during the special homemaking age, bewailed the decision, and were likely always to look back on Silverfold as a sort of Paradise; but the elder ones had been used to changes from infancy, and had never settled down, and their mother said that place was little to her as long as she had her Jasper by her side, and as to the abstract idea of home as a locality, that would always be to her under the tulip-tree and by the pond at the Old Court at Beechcroft, just as her abstract idea of church was in the old family pew, with the carved oak panels, before the restoration, in which she had been the most eager of all.
Thus a fortnight passed, and then the fever was decidedly wearing off, but returning at night. Kalliope still lay weak, languid, silent, fainting at any attempt to move her, not apparently able to think enough to ask how time passed, or to be uneasy about anything, simply accepting the cares given to her, and lying still. One morning, however, Alexis arrived in great distress to speak to Sir Jasper, not that his sister was worse, as he explained, but Richard had been selling the house. The younger ones at home had never troubled themselves as to whose property the three houses in Ivinghoe Terrace were. Perhaps Kalliope knew, but she could not be asked; but the fact was that Captain White had been so lost sight of, that he had not known that this inheritance had fallen to him under the will of his grandfather, who was imbecile at the time of his flight. On his deathbed, the Captain had left the little he owned to his wife, and she had died intestate, as Richard had ascertained before leaving home, so that he, as eldest son, was heir to the ground. He had written to Kalliope, a letter which Alexis had opened, informing her that he had arranged to sell the houses to a Mr. Gudgeon, letting to him their own till the completion of the legal business necessary, and therefore desiring his brothers and sisters to move out with their lodgers, if not by Lady Day itself, thus giving only a week’s spare notice, at latest by Old Lady Day.
‘Is he not aware of your sister’s state?’
‘I do not imagine that he has read the letter that I wrote to him. He was very much displeased with me, and somewhat disposed to be angry at my sister’s fainting, and to think that we were all trying to work on his feelings. He used to be rather fond of Maura, so I told her to write to him, but he has taken no notice, and he can have no conception of Kalliope’s condition, or he would not have addressed his letter to her. I came to ask if you would kindly write to him how impossible it is to move her.’
‘You had better get a certificate from Dr. Dagger. Either I or Lady Merrifield will meet him, and see to that. That will serve both to stay him and the purchaser.’
‘That is another misfortune. This Gudgeon is the chief officer, or whatever they call it, of the Salvation Army. I knew they had been looking out for a place for a barracks, and could not get one because almost everything belongs to Lord Rotherwood or to Mr. White.’
Sir Jasper could only reply that he would see what could be done in the matter, and that, at any rate, Kalliope should not be disturbed.
Accordingly Lady Merrifield repaired to Ivinghoe Terrace for the doctor’s visit, and obtained from him the requisite certificate that the patient could not be removed at present. He gave it, saying, however, to Lady Merrifield’s surprise, that though he did not think it would be possible to remove her in a week’s time, yet after that he fully believed that she would have more chance of recovering favourably if she could be taken out of the small room and the warm atmosphere beneath the cliffs—though of course all must depend on her state at the time.
Meantime there was a council of the gentlemen about outbidding the Salvation Army. Lord Rotherwood was spending already as much as he could afford, in the days of agricultural depression, on the improvements planned with Mr. White. That individual was too good a man of business to fall, as he said, into the trap, and make a present to that scamp Richard of more than the worth of the houses, and only Mr. Flight was ready to go to any cost to keep off the Salvation Army; but the answer was curt. Richard knew he had no chance with Mr. White, and did not care to keep terms with him.
‘Mr. Richard White begs to acknowledge the obliging offer of the Rev. Augustine Flight, and regrets that arrangements have so far progressed with Mr. Gudgeon that he cannot avail himself of it.’
Was this really regret or was the measure out of spite? Only the widest charity could accept the former suggestion, and even Sir Jasper Merrifield’s brief and severe letter and Dr. Dagger’s certificate did not prevent a letter to Alexis, warning him not to make their sister’s illness a pretext for unreasonable delay.
What was to be done? Kalliope was still unfit to be consulted or even informed, and she had been hitherto so entirely the real head and manager of the family that Alexis did not like to make any decision without her; and even the acceptance of the St. Wulstan’s choristership for Theodore had been put off for her to make it, look to his outfit, and all that only the woman of the family could do for them.
And here they were at a loss for a roof over their heads, and nowhere to bestow the battered old furniture, of which Richard magnanimously renounced his sixth share; while she who had hitherto toiled, thought, managed, and contrived for all the other four, without care of their own, still lay on her bed, sensible indeed and no longer feverish, but with the perilous failure of heart, renewed by any kind of exertion or excitement, a sudden movement, or a startling sound in the street; and Mrs. Halfpenny, guarding her as ferociously as ever, and looking capable of murdering any one of her substitutes if they durst hint a word of their perplexities. Happily she asked no questions; she was content when allowed to be kissed by the others, and to see they were well. Nature was enforcing repose, and so far “her senses was all as in a dream bound up.” Alexis remembered that it had been somewhat thus at Leeds, when, after nursing all the rest, she had succumbed to the epidemic; but then the mother had been able to watch over her, and had been a more effective parent to the rest than she had since become.
The first practical proposal was Mrs. Lee’s. They thought of reversing the present position, and taking a small house where their present hosts might become their lodgers. Moreover, Miss Mohun clenched the affair about Theodore, and overcame Alexis’s scruples, while Lady Merrifield, having once or twice looked in, and been smiled at and thanked by Kalliope, undertook to prepare her for his farewell.
Alexis and Maura both declared that she would instantly jump up, and want to begin looking over his socks; but she got no further than—
‘Dear boy! It is the sort of thing I always wished for him. People are very good! But his things—’
‘Oh yes, dearie, ye need not fash yourself. I’ve mended them as I sat by you, and packed them all. Lie still. They are all right.’
There was an atmosphere of the Royal Wardours about Mrs. Halfpenny, which was at once congenial and commanding; and Kalliope’s mind at once relinquished the burthen of socks, shirts, and even the elbows of the outgrown jacket, nor did any of the family ever know how the deficiencies had been supplied.
And when Theodore, well admonished, came softly and timidly for the parting kiss, his face quivering all over with the effort at self-control, she lay and smiled; but with a great crystal tear on each dark eyelash, and her thin transparent fingers softly stroked his cheeks, as the low weak voice said—
‘Be a good boy, dear—speak truth. Praise God well. Write; I’ll write when I am better.’
It was the first time she had spoken of being better, and they told Theodore to take comfort from it when all the other three walked him up to the station.
In the search for a new abode Mrs. Lee was in much difficulty, for it was needful to be near St. Kenelm’s, and the only vacant houses within her means were not desirable for the reception of a feeble convalescent; moreover, Mr. Gudgeon grumbled and inquired, and was only withheld by warnings enhanced by the police from carrying the whole charivari of the Salvation Army along Ivinghoe Terrace on Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps it was this, perhaps it was the fact of having discussed the situation with the two Miss Mohuns, that made Mr. White say to Alexis, ‘There are two rooms ready for your sister, as soon as Dagger says she can be moved safely. The person who nurses her had better come with her, and you may as well come back to your old quarters.’
Alexis could hardly believe his ears, but Mr. White waved off all thanks. The Mohun sisters were delighted and triumphant, and Jane came down to talk it over with her elder sister, auguring great things from that man who loved to deal in surprises.
‘That is true,’ said Sir Jasper.
‘What does that mean, Jasper?’ said his wife. ‘It sounds significant.’
‘I certainly should not be amazed if he did further surprise us all. Has it never struck you how that noontide turn of Adeline’s corresponds with his walk home from the reading-room?’
Lady Merrifield looked rather startled, but Jane only laughed, and said, ‘My dear Jasper, if you only knew Ada as well as I do! Yes, I have seen far too many of those little affairs to be taken in by them. Poor Ada! I know exactly how she looks, but she is only flattered, like a pussy-cat waggling the end of its tail—it means nothing, and never comes to anything. The thing that is likely and hopeful is, that he may adopt those young people as nephews and nieces.’
‘Might it not spoil them?’ said Lady Merrifield.
‘Oh! I did not mean that. They might work with him still. However, there is no use in settling about that. The only thing to be expected of him is the unexpected!’
‘And the thing to be done,’ added her sister, ‘is to see how and when that poor girl can be got up to Cliff House.’
To the general surprise, Dr. Dagger wished the transit to take place without loss of time. A certain look of resigned consternation crossed Kalliope’s face on being informed of her destiny, but she justified Mrs. Halfpenny’s commendation of her as the maist douce and conformable patient in the world, for she had not energy enough even to plead against anything so formidable, and she had not yet been told that Ivinghoe Terrace was her home no longer.
The next day she was wrapped in cloaks and carried downstairs between her brother and Mrs. Halfpenny, laid on a mattress in the Merrifield waggonette, which went up the hill at a foot’s pace, and by the same hands, with her old friend the caretaker’s wife going before, was taken upstairs to a beautiful large room, with a window looking out on vernal sky and sea. She was too much exhausted on her arrival to know anything but the repose on the fresh comfortable bed, whose whiteness was almost rivalled by her cheek, and Mrs. Halfpenny ordered off Alexis, who was watching her in great anxiety. However, when he came back after his afternoon’s work, it was to find that she had eaten and slept, and now lay, with her eyes open, in quiet interested admiration of a spacious and pleasant bedroom, such as to be a great novelty to one whose life had been spent in cheap lodging houses. The rooms had been furnished twenty years before as a surprise intended for the wife who never returned to occupy them, and though there was nothing extraordinary in them, there was much to content the eyes accustomed to something very like squalidness, for had not Kalliope’s lot always been the least desirable chamber in the family quarters?
At any rate, from that moment she began to recover, ate with appetite, slept and woke to be interested, and to enjoy Theodore’s letter of description of St. Wulstan’s, and even to ask questions. Alexis was ready to dance for joy when she first began really to talk to him; and could not forbear imparting his gladness to the Miss Mohuns that very evening, as well as to Mr. White, and running down after dinner with the good news to Maura, Mrs. Lee, and Lady Merrifield. Dinners with Mr. White had, on his first sojourn in that house, been a great penance, though there were no supercilious servants, for all the waiting was by the familiar housekeeper, Mrs. Osborne, who had merely added an underling to her establishment on her master’s return; but Alexis then had been utterly miserable, feeling guilty and ashamed, as one only endured on sufferance out of compassion, because his brother cast him out, and fresh from the sight of his mother’s dying bed; a terrible experience altogether, which had entirely burnt out and effaced his foolish fit of romantic calf-love, and rendered him much more of a man. Now, though not a month had passed, he seemed to be on a different footing. He was doing his work steadily, and the hope of his sister’s recovery had brightened him. Mr. White had begun to talk to him, to ask him questions about the doings of the day, and to tell him in return some of his own experiences in Italy, and in the earlier days of the town. Maura came up to see her sister every day, and tranquillised her mind when the move was explained, and anxiety as to the transport of all their worldly goods began to set in. Mrs. Lee had found a house where she could place two bedrooms and a sitting-room at the disposal of the Whites if things were to continue as before, and no hint had been given of any change, or of what was to happen when the three months’ notice given to Kalliope and Alexis should have expired.
By the Easter holidays Mrs. Halfpenny began to get rather restless as to the overlooking of the boys’ wardrobes; and, indeed, she thought so well of her patient’s progress as to suggest to Mr. White that the lassie would do very well if she had her sister to be with her in the holidays, and she herself would come up every day to help at the getting up, for Kalliope was now able to be dressed and to lie on a couch in the dressing-room, where she could look out over the bay, and she had even asked for some knitting.
‘And really, Miss Gillian, you could not do her much harm if you came up to see her,’ said the despot. ‘So you may come this very afternoon, if ye’ll be douce, and not fash her with any of your cantrips.’
Gillian did not feel at all in a mood for cantrips as she slowly walked up the broad staircase, and was ushered into the dressing-room, cheerful with bright fire and April sunshine, and with a large comfortable sofa covered with a bright rug, where Kalliope could enjoy both window and fire without glare. The beauty of her face so much depended on form and expression that her illness had not lessened it. Gillian had scarcely seen her since the autumn, and the first feeling was what an air of rest and peace had succeeded the worn, harassed look then almost perpetual. There was a calmness now that far better suited the noble forehead, dark pencilled eyebrows, and classical features in their clear paleness; and with a sort of reverence Gillian bent over her, to kiss her and give her a bunch of violets. Then, when the thanks had passed, Gillian relieved her own shyness by exclaiming with admiration at a beautiful water-coloured copy of an early Italian fresco, combining the Nativity and Adoration of the Magi, that hung over the mantelpiece.
‘Is it not exquisite?’ returned Kalliope. ‘I do so much enjoy making out each head and dwelling on them! Look at that old shepherd’s simple wonder and reverence, and the little child with the lamb, and the contrast with the Wise Man from the East, whose eyes look as if he saw so much by faith.’
‘Can you see it from there?’ asked Gillian, who had got up to look at these and further details dwelt on by Kalliope.
‘Yes. Not at first; but they come out on me by degrees. It is such a pleasure, and so kind of Mr. White to have put it there. He had it hung there, Mrs. Halfpenny told me, instead of his own picture just before I came in here.’
‘Well, he is not a bad-looking man, but it is no harm to him or his portrait to say that this is better to look at!’
‘It quite does me good! And see,’ pointing to a photograph of the Arch of Titus hung on the screen that shielded her from the door, ‘he sends in a fresh one by Alexis every other day.
‘How very nice! He really seems to be a dear old man. Don’t you think so?’
‘I am sure he is wonderfully kind, but I have only seen him that once when he came with Sir Jasper, and then I knew nothing but that when Sir Jasper was come things must go right.’
‘Of course; but has he never been to see you now that you are up and dressed?’
‘No, he lavishes anything on me that I can possibly want, but I have only seen him once—never here.’
‘It is like Beauty and the Beast!’
‘Oh no, no; don’t say that!’
‘Well, George Stebbing really taught Fergus to call him a beast, and you—Kally—I won’t tease you with saying what you are.’
‘I wish I wasn’t, it would be all so much easier.’
‘Never mind! I do believe the Stebbings are going away! Does Maura never see him?’
‘She has met him on the stairs and in the garden, but she has her meals here. I trust by the time her Easter holidays are over I may be fit to go back with her. But I do hope I may be able to copy a bit of that picture first, though, any way, I can never forget it.’
‘To go on as before?’ exclaimed Gillian, with an interrogative sigh of wonder.
‘If that notice of dismissal can be revoked,’ said Kalliope.
But would you like it—must you?’
‘Ishouldlike to go back to my girls,’ said Kalliope; ‘and things come into my head, now I am doing nothing, that I want to work out, if I might. So, you see, it is not at all a pity that Imust.’
And why is it must?’ said Gillian wistfully. ‘You have to get well first.’
Yes, I know that; but, you see, there are Maura and Petros. They must not be thrown on Alexis, poor dear fellow! And if he could only be set free, he might go on with what he once hoped for, though he thinks it is his duty to give all that entirely up now and work obediently on. But I know the longing will revive, and if I only could improve myself, and be worth more, it might still be possible.’
‘Only you must not begin too soon and work yourself to death.’
‘Hardly after such a rest,’ said Kalliope. ‘It is not work I mind, but worry’—and then a sadder look crossed her for a moment, and she added, ‘I am so thankful.’
‘Thankful?’ echoed Gillian.
‘Yes, indeed! For Sir Jasper’s coming and saving us at that dreadful moment, and my being able to keep up as long as dear mamma wanted me, and then Mrs. Halfpenny being spared by dear Lady Merrifield to give me such wonderful care and kindness, and little Theodore being so happily placed, and this rest—such a strange quiet rest as I never knew before. Oh! it is all so thankworthy’—and the great tears came to dim her eyes. ‘It seems sent to help me to take strength and courage for the future. “He hath helped me hitherto.”’
‘And you are better?’
‘Yes, much better. Quite comfortable as long as I am quite still.’
‘And content to be still?’
‘Yes, I’m very lazy.’
It was a tired voice, and Gillian feared her half-hour was nearly over, but she could not help saying—
‘Do you know, I think it will be all nicer now. Mr. White is doing so much, and Mr. Stebbing hates it so, that Mrs. Stebbing says he is going to dissolve the partnership and go away.’
‘Then it would all be easier. It seems too good to be true.’
‘And that man Mr. White. He must do something for you! He ought.’
‘Oh no! He has done a great deal already, and has not been well used. Don’t talk of that.’
‘I believe he is awfully rich. You know he is building an Institute for the workmen, and a whole row of model cottages.’
‘Yes, Alexis told me. What a difference it will make! I hope he will build a room where the girls can dine and rest and read, or have a piano; it would be so good for them.’
‘You had better talk to him about it.’
‘I never see him, and I should not dare.’
‘I’ll tell my aunts. He always does what Aunt Ada tells him. Is that really all you wish?’
‘Oh! I don’t wish for anything much—I don’t seem able to care now dear mamma is where they cease from troubling, and I have Alec again.’
‘Well, I can’t help having great hopes. I can’t see why that man should not make a daughter of you! Then you would travel and see mountains and pictures and everything. Oh, should you not like that?’
‘Like? Oh, one does not think about liking things impossible! And for the rest, it is nonsense. I should not like to be dependent, and I ought not.’
‘You don’t think what is to come next?’
‘No, it would be taking thought for the morrow, would it not? I don’t want to, while I can’t do anything, it would only make me fret, and I am glad I am too stupid still to begin vexing myself over it. I suppose energy and power of considering will come when my heart does not flutter so. In the meantime, I only want to keep quiet, and I hope that’s not all laziness, but some trust in Him who has helped me all this time.’
‘Miss Gillian, you’ve clavered as long as is good for Miss White, and here are the whole clanjamfrie waiting in the road for you. Now be douce, my bairn, and mind you are not in the woods at home, and don’t let the laddies play their tricks with Miss Primrose.’
‘I must go,’ said Gillian, hastily kissing Kalliope. ‘The others were going to call for me. When Lady Phyllis was riding with her father she spied a wonderful field of daffodils and a valley full of moss at a place called Clipston, two miles off, and we are all going to get some for the decorations. I’ll send you some. Good-bye.’
The clanjamfrie, as Mrs. Halfpenny called it, mustered strong, and Gillian’s heart leapt at the resumption of the tumultuous family life, as she beheld the collection of girls, boys, dogs, and donkeys awaiting her in the approach; and, in spite of the two governesses’ presence, her mind misgave her as to the likelihood of regard to the hint that her mother had given that she hoped the elder ones would try to be sober in their ways, and not quite forget what week it was. It was in their favour that Jasper, now in his last term at school, was much more of a man and less of a boy than hitherto, and was likely to be on the side of discretion, so that he might keep in order that always difficult element, Wilfred, whose two years of preparatory school as yet made him only more ingenious in the arts of teasing, and more determined to show his superiority to petticoat government. He had driven Fergus nearly distracted by threatening to use all his mineralogical specimens to make ducks and drakes, and actually confusing them together, so that Fergus repented of having exhibited them, and rejoiced that Aunt Jane had let them continue in her lumber-room till they could find a permanent home.
Wilfred had a shot for Mrs. Halfpenny, when she came down with Gillian and looked for Primrose to secure that there were no interstices between the silk handkerchief and fur collar.
‘Ha, ha, old Small Change, don’t you wish you may get it?’—as Primrose proved to be outside the drive on one of the donkeys. ‘You’ve got nothing to do but gnaw your fists at us like old Giant Pope.’
‘For shame, Wilfred!’ said Jasper. ‘My mother did Primrose’s throat, nurse, so she is all right.’
‘Bad form,’ observed Lord Ivinghoe, shaking his head.
‘I’m not going to Eton,’ replied Wilfred audaciously.
‘I should hope not!’—in a tone of ineffable contempt, not for Wilfred’s person, but his manners, and therewith his Lordship exclaimed, ‘Who’s that?’ as Maura came flying down with Gillian’s forgotten basket.
‘Oh, that’s Maura White!’ said Valetta.
‘I say, isn’t she going with us?’
‘Oh no, she has to look after her sister!’
‘Don’t you think we might take her, Gill?’ said Fly. ‘She never gets any fun.’
‘I don’t think she ought to leave Kalliope to-day, Fly, for nurse is going down to Il Lido; and besides, Aunt Jane said we must not takeallRockquay with us.’
‘No, they would not let us ask Kitty and Clement Varley, said Fergus disconsolately.
‘I am sure she is five times as pretty as your Kitty!’ returned Ivinghoe. ‘She is a regular stunner.’ Whereby it may be perceived that a year at Eton had considerably modified his Lordship’s correctness of speech, if not of demeanour. Be it further observed that, in spite of the escort of the governesses, the young people were as free as if those ladies had been absent, for, as Jasper observed, the donkeys neutralised them. Miss Elbury, being a bad walker, rode one, and Miss Vincent felt bound to keep close to Primrose upon the other; and as neither animal could be prevailed on to moderate its pace, they kept far ahead of all except Valetta, who was mounted on the pony intended for Lady Phyllis, but disdained by her until she should be tired. Lord Ivinghoe’s admiration of Maura was received contemptuously by Wilfred, who was half a year younger than his cousin, and being already, in his own estimation, a Wykehamist, had endless rivalries with him.
‘She! She’s nothing but a cad! Her sister is a shop-girl, and her brother is a quarryman.’
‘She does not look like it,’ observed Ivinghoe, while Mysie and Fly, with one voice, exclaimed that her father was an officer in the Royal Wardours.
‘A private first,’ said Wilfred, with boyhood’s reiteration. ‘Cads and quarrymen all of them—the whole boiling, old White and all, though he has got such a stuck-up house!’
‘Nonsense, Will,’ said Fly. ‘Why, Mr. White has dined with us.’
‘A patent of nobility, said Jasper, smiling.
‘I don’t care,’ said Wilfred; ‘if other people choose to chum with old stonemasons and convicts, I don’t.’
‘Wilfred, that is too bad,’ said Gillian. ‘It is very wrong to talk in that way.’
‘Oh!’ said the audacious Wilfred, ‘we all know who is Gill’s Jack!’
‘Shut up, Will!’ cried Fergus, flying at him. ‘I told you not to—’
But Wilfred bounded up a steep bank, and from that place of vantage went on—
‘Didn’t she teach him Greek, and wasn’t he spoony; and didn’t she send back his valentine, so that—’
Fergus was scrambling up the bank after him, enraged at the betrayal of his confidence, and shouting inarticulately, while poor Gillian moved on, overwhelmed with confusion, and Fly uttered the cutting words, ‘Perfectly disgusting!’
‘Ay, so it was!’ cried the unabashed Wilfred, keeping on at the top of the bank, and shaking the bushes at every pause. ‘So he broke down the rocks, and ran away with the tin, and enlisted, and went to prison. Such a sweet young man for Gill!’
Poor Gillian! was her punishment never to end? That scrape of hers, hitherto so tenderly and delicately hinted at, and which she would have given worlds to have kept from her brothers, now shouted all over the country! Sympathy, however, she had, if that would do her any good. Mysie and Fly came on each side of Ivinghoe, assuring him, in low eager voices, of the utter nonsense of the charge, and explaining ardently; and Jasper, with one bound, laid hold of the tormentor, dragged him down, and, holding his stick over him, said—
‘Now, Wilfred, if you don’t hold your tongue, and not behave like a brute, I shall send you straight home.’
‘It’s quite true,’ growled Wilfred. ‘Ask her.’
‘What does that signify? I’m ashamed of you! I’ve a great mind to thrash you this instant. If you speak another word of that sort, I shall. Now then, there are the governesses trying to stop to see what’s the row. I shall give you up to Miss Vincent, if you choose to behave so like a spiteful girl.’
A sixth-form youth was far too great a man to be withstood by one who was not yet a public schoolboy at all; and Wilfred actually obeyed, while Jasper added to Fergus—
‘How could you be such a little ass as to go and tell him all that rot?’
‘It was true,’ grumbled Fergus.
‘The more reason not to go cackling about it like an old hen, or a girl! Your own sister! I’m ashamed of you both. Mind, I shall thrash you if you mention it again.’
Poor Fergus felt the accusation of cackling unjust, since he had only told Wilfred in confidence, and that had been betrayed, but he had got his lesson on family honour, and he subsided into his wonted look-out for curious stones, while Gillian was overtaken by Jasper—whether willingly or not, she hardly knew—but his first word was, ‘Little beast!’
‘You didn’t hurt him, I hope,’ said Gill, accepting the invitation to take his arm.
‘Oh no! I only threatened to make him walk with the governesses and the donkeys.’
‘Asses and savants to the centre,’ said Gillian; ‘like the orders to the French army in Egypt.’
‘But what’s all this about? You wanted me to look after you! Is it that Alexis?’
‘Oh, Japs! Mamma knows all about it and papa. It was only that he was ridiculous because I was so silly as to think I could help him with his Greek.’
‘You! With his Greek! I pity him!’
‘Yes. I found he soon knew too much for me,’ said Gillian meekly; ‘but, indeed, Japs, it wasn’t very bad! He only sent me a valentine, and Aunt Jane says I need not have been so angry.’
‘A cat may look at a king,’ said Jasper loftily. ‘It is a horrid bad thing for a girl to be left to herself without a brother worth having.’
So Gillian got off pretty easily, and after all the walk was not greatly spoilt. They coalesced again with the other three, who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring ‘that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn’t half a bad lot.’
‘An oilman, Ivy,’ said his sister; ‘I thought he imported petroleum.’
‘Well, it’s all the same. I believe he began as an oilman.’
‘We shall have Fergus reporting that he’s a petroleuse,’ put in Jasper.
‘No, a petroleuse is a woman.’
‘I like Mr. White,’ said Fly; ‘but, Gillian, you don’t think it is true that he is going to marry your Aunt Jane?’
There was a great groan, and Japs observed—
‘Some one told us Rockquay was a hotbed of gossip, and we seem to have got it strong.’
‘Where did this choice specimen come from, Fly!’ demanded Ivinghoe, in his manner most like his mother.
Fly nodded her head towards her governess in the advanced guard.
‘She had a cousin to tea with her, and they thought I didn’t know whom they meant, and they said that he was always up at Rockstone.’
‘Well, he is; and Aunt Jane always stands up for him,’ said Gillian; ‘but that was because he is so good to the workpeople, and Aunt Ada took him for some grand political friend of Cousin Rotherwood’s.’
‘Aunt Jane!’ said Jasper. ‘Why, she is the very essence and epitome of old maids.’
‘Yes,’ said Gillian. ‘If it came to that, she would quite as soon marry the postman.’
‘That’s lucky’ said Ivinghoe. ‘One can swallow a good deal, but not quite one’s own connections.’
‘In fact,’ said Jasper, ‘you had rather be an oilman’s fag than a quarryman’s—what is it?—first cousin once removed in law?’
‘It is much more likely,’ said Gillian, as they laughed over this, ‘that Kalliope and Maura will be his adopted daughters, only he never comes near them.’
Wherewith there was a halt. Miss Elbury insisted that Phyllis should ride, the banks began to show promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to do with them.
‘I should,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘I should like to live to be a great old statesman, as Lord Palmerston did, and have it all my own way. Wouldn’t I bring things round again!’
‘Perhaps they would have gone too far,’ suggested Jasper, ‘and then you would have to gnaw your hand like Giant Pope, as Wilfred says.’
‘Catch me, while I could do something better.’
‘If one only lived long enough,’ speculated Fergus, ‘one might find out what everything was made of, and how to do everything.’
‘I wonder if the people did before the Flood, when they lived eight or nine hundred years,’ said Fly.
‘Perhaps that is the reason there is nothing new under the sun,’ suggested Valetta, as many a child has before suggested.
‘But then,’ said Mysie, they got wicked.’
‘And then after the Flood it had all to be begun over again,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam and electricity.’
‘And dynamite,’ said Gillian. ‘Oh, I don’t wonder they had to be swept away, if they were clever and wicked both!’
‘And I suppose they were,’ said Jasper. ‘At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval coons, whose works we are digging up.’
‘From the Conquest till now,’ repeated Gillian. ‘I’m glad we don’t live so long now. It tires one to think of it.’
‘But we shall,’ said Fly.
‘Yes,’ said Mysie, ‘but then we shall be rid of this nasty old self that is always getting wrong.’
‘That little lady’s nasty old self does so as little as any one’s,’ Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike amid its black-spotted leaves, cried—
‘At any rate, these dear things go on the same, without any tiresome inventing.’
‘Except God’s just at first,’ whispered Mysie.
‘And the gardeners do invent new ones,’ said Valetta.
‘Invent! No; they only fuss them and spoil them, and make ridiculous names for them,’ said Fly. These darling creatures are ever so much better. Look at Primrose there.’
‘Yes,’ said Gillian, as she saw her little sister in quiet ecstasy over the sparkling bells of the daffodils; ‘one would not like to live eight hundred years away from that experience.’
‘But mamma cares just as much still as Primrose does,’ said Mysie. ‘We must get some for her own self as well as for the church.’
‘Mine are all for mamma,’ proclaimed Primrose; and just then there was a shout that a bird’s nest had been found—a ring-ousel’s nest on the banks. Fly and her brother shared a collection of birds’ eggs, and were so excited about robbing the ousels of a single egg, that Gillian hoped that Fergus would not catch the infection and abandon minerals for eggs, which would be ever so much worse—only a degree better than butterflies, towards which Wilfred showed a certain proclivity.
‘I shall be thirteen before next holidays,’ he observed, after making a vain dash with his hat at a sulphur butterfly, looking like a primrose flying away.
‘Mamma won’t allow any “killing collection” before thirteen years old,’ explained Mysie.
‘She says,’ explained Gillian, ‘by that time one ought to be old enough to discriminate between the lawfulness of killing the creatures for the sake of studying their beauty and learning them, and the mere wanton amusement of hunting them down under the excuse of collecting.’
‘I say,’ exclaimed Valetta, who had been exploring above, ‘here is such a funny old house.’
There was a rush in that direction, and at the other end of the wide home-field was perceived a picturesque gray stone house, with large mullioned windows, a dilapidated low stone wall, with what had once been a handsome gateway, overgrown with ivy, and within big double daffodils and white narcissus growing wild.
‘It’s like the halls of Ivor,’ said Mysie, awestruck by the loneliness; ‘no dog, nor horse, nor cow, not even a goose,’
‘And what a place to sketch!’ cried Miss Vincent. ‘Oh, Gillian, we must come here another day.’
‘Oh, may we gather the flowers?’ exclaimed the insatiable Primrose.
‘Those poetic narcissuses would be delicious for the choir screen,’ added Gillian.
‘Poetic narcissus—poetic grandmother,’ said Wilfred. ‘It’s old butter and eggs.’
‘I say!’ cried Mysie. ‘Look, Ivy—I know that pair of fighting lions—ain’t these some of your arms over the door?’
‘By which you mean a quartering of our shield,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘Of course it is the Clipp bearing. Or, two lions azure, regardant combatant, their tails couped.’
‘Two blue Kilkenny cats, who have begun with each other’s tails,’ commented Jasper.
‘Ivinghoe glared a little, but respected the sixth form, and Gillian added—
‘They clipped them! Then did this place belong to our ancestors?’
‘Poetic grandmother, really!’ said Mysie.
‘Great grandmother,’ corrected Ivinghoe. ‘To be sure. It was from the Clipps that we got all this Rockstone estate!’
‘And I suppose this was their house? What a shame to have deserted it!’