‘Leedle, leedle, leedle,Our cat’s dead.What did she die wi’?Wi’ a sair head.A’ you that kenned herWhile she was alive,Come to her buryingAt half-past five.’
And then the Colonel, bestirring himself to the rescue, with ‘go away boys, or I’ll send for the police.’ And then the discovery, when in the height of his wrath, Jock perked up, and said, ‘I thought you would like to have the ladies amused, Uncle Robert.’ He did box his ears then—small blame to him, I must say. I could stand that better than the jaw Ellen gave us afterwards. I beg your pardon, Mary, but it really was one. She thinks us far gone in the ways of depravity, and doesn’t willingly let her little girls come near us.”
“Isn’t that a pity?”
“I don’t know; Essie and Ellie have feelings in their clothes, and don’t like our scrambling walks, and if Ellie does get allured by our wicked ways, she is sure to be torn, or splashed, or something, and we have shrieks and lamentations, and accusations of Jock and Joe, amid floods of tears; and Jessie comes to the rescue, primly shaking her head and coaxing her little sister, while she brings out a needle and thread. I can’t help it, Mary. It does aggravate me to look at her!”
Mary could only shake her head with a mixture of pity, reproof, and amusement, and as a safer subject could not help asking—
“By the bye, why do you confuse your friends by having all the two families named in pairs?”
“We didn’t know we were going to live close together,” said Carey. “But the fact is that the Janets were named after their fathers’ only sister, who seems to have been an equal darling to both. We would have avoided Robert, but we found that it would have been thought disrespectful not to call the boy after his grandfather and uncle.”
“And Bobusisa thoroughly individual name.”
“Then Jock’s name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the second, but it wouldn’t stick. Names won’t sometimes, and there’s a formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But Joseph Armine’s second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it; and Barbara was dear grandmamma’s own name, and quite our own.”
Therewith Babie rushed downstairs with “He’s coming, Mother Carey,” and darted out at the house door to welcome Mr. Ogilvie at the gate, and lead him in in triumph, attended by her two brothers. The two ladies laughed, and Carey said, with a species of proud apology—
“Poor children, you see they have been used to be noticed by clever men.”
“Mr. Ogilvie is come to see our museum,” cried Babie, in her patronising tone, jumping and dancing round during his greetings and remarks that he hoped he might take advantage of her invitation; he had been thinking whether to begin a school museum would not be a very good thing for the boys, and serve to open their minds to common things. On which, before any one else could answer, the parrot, in a low and sententious tone, observed, “Excellent.”
“There, you have the consent of your first acquaintance,” said Carey, while the bird, excited by one of those mysterious likings that her kind are apt to take, held her grey head to Mr. Ogilvie to be scratched, chuckling out, “All Mother Carey’s chickens,” and Janet exclaimed—
“That’s an adoption.”
The troop were climbing the stairs to the third story, where Armine and Bobus were already within an octagon room, corresponding to the little hall below, and fitted with presses and shelves, belonging to the store-room of the former thrifty inhabitant; but now divided between the six children, Mother Carey, as Babie explained, being “Mine own, and helping me more specially.”
The table was likewise common to all; but one of the laws of the place was that everything left there after twelve o’clock on Saturday was, as Babie’s little mouth rolled out the long words, “confiscated by the inexorable Eumenides.”
“And who are they?” asked Mr. Ogilvie, who was always much entertained by the simplicity with which the little maid uttered the syllables as if they were her native speech.
“Janet, and Nurse, and Emma,” she said; “and they really are inex-o-rable. They threw away my snail shell that a thrush had been eating, though I begged and prayed them.”
“Yes, and my femur of a rabbit,” said Armine, “and said it was a nasty old bone, and the baker’s Pincher ate it up; but I did find my turtle-dove’s egg in the ash-heap, and discovered it over again, and you don’t see it is broken now; it is stuck down on a card.”
“Yes,” said his mother, “it is wonderful how valuable things become precisely at twelve on Saturday.”
Each had some department: Janet’s, which was geology, was the fullest, as she had inherited some youthful hoards of her father’s; Bobus’s, which was botany, was the neatest and most systematic. Mary thought at first that it did not suit him; but she soon saw that with him it was not love of flowers, but the study of botany. He pronounced Jock’s butterflies to be perfectly disgraceful.
“You said you’d see to them,” returned Jock.
“Yes, I shall take up insects when I have done with plants,” said Bobus, coolly.
“And say, ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee’?” asked Mr. Ogilvie.
Bobus looked as if he did not like it; but his mother shook her head at him as one who well deserved the little rebuke for self-sufficiency. There was certainly a wonderful winning way about her—there was a simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending household, now broken up.
There was, too, the perception that, beneath the surface on which, like the children, she played so lightly, there were depths of sorrow that might not be stirred, which added a sweetness and pathos to all she said and did.
Of many a choice curiosity the children said, in lowered tones of reverence, that “hefound it;” and these she would not allow to be passed over, but showed fondly off in all their best points, telling their story as if she loved to dwell upon it.
Barbara, who had specially fastened herself on Mr. Ogilvie, according to the modern privileges of small girls, after having much amused him by doing the honours of her own miscellaneous treasury, insisted on exhibiting “Mother Carey’s studio.”
Caroline tried to declare that this meant nothing deserving of so grand a name; it was only the family resort for making messes in. She never touched clay now, and there was nothing worth seeing; but it was in vain; Babie had her way; and they mounted to the highest stage of the pagoda, where the eaves and the twisted monsters that supported them were in close juxtaposition with the four windows.
The view was a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town almost as if in a pit below, with a bird’s-eye prospect of the roofs, the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups-and-downs of a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there, and village and town gleaming out white; a large house, “bosomed high in tufted trees;” a church-tower and spire, nestled on the hill-side, up to the steep grey hill with the tall land-mark tower, closing in the horizon—altogether, as Carey said, a thorough “allegro” landscape, even to “the tanned haycock in the mead.” But the summer sun made the place dazzling and almost uninhabitable, and the visitors, turning from the glare, could hardly see the casts and models that filled the shelves; nor was there anything in hand; so that they let themselves be hurried away to share the midday meal, after which Mr. Ogilvie and the boys betook themselves to the school, and Carey and her little ones to the shade of the garden-wall, to finish their French reading, while Mary wondered the less at the Kenminster ladies.
Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble liketinkers at this time of night? Is there no respect ofplace, persons, nor time in you?—Twelfth-Night.
The summer holidays not only brought home Allen Brownlow from Eton, but renewed his mother’s intercourse with several of her friends, who so contrived their summer outing as to “see how poor little Mrs. Brownlow was getting on,” and she hailed them as fragments of her dear old former life.
Mr. and Mrs. Acton came to a farmhouse at Redford, about a mile and a half off, where Mr. Acton was to lay up a store of woodland and home sketches, and there were daily meetings for walks, and often out-of-door meals. Mr. Ogilvie declared that he was thus much more rested than by a long expedition in foreign scenery, and he and his sister stayed on, and usually joined in the excursion, whether it were premeditated or improvised, on foot, into copse or glade, or by train or waggonette, to ruined abbey or cathedral town.
Then came two sisters, whom old Mrs. Brownlow had befriended when the elder was struggling, as a daily governess, to provide home and education for the younger. Now, the one was a worthy, hard-working law-copier, the other an artist in a small way, who had transmogrified her name of Jane into Juanita or Nita, wore a crop, short petticoats, and was odd. She treated Janet on terms of equal friendship, and was thus a much more charming companion than Jessie. They always came into cheap sea-side lodgings in the vacation, but this year had settled themselves within ten minutes walk of the Folly, a title which became more and more applicable, in Kenminster eyes, to the Pagoda, and above all in those of its proper owner. Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in the calm dignity of the heiress, in a small way, of a good family, had a bare toleration for professional people, had regretted the vocation of her brother-in-law, and classed governesses and artists as “that kind of people,” so that Caroline’s association with them seemed to her absolute love of low company. She would have stirred up her husband to remonstrate, but he had seen more of the world than she had, and declared that there was no harm in Caroline’s friends. “He had met Mr. Acton in the reading-room, smoked pipes with him in the garden, and thought him a very nice fellow; his wife was the daughter of poor Cartwright of the Artillery, and a sensible ladylike woman as ever he saw.”
With a resigned sigh at the folly of mankind, his wife asked, “How about the others? That woman with the hair? and that man with the velvet coat? Jessie says Jock told her that he was a mere play-actor!”
“Jock told Jessie! Nonsense, my dear! The man is going out to China in the tea trade, and is come to take leave. I believe he did sing in public at one time; but Joe attended him in an illness which damaged his voice, and then he put him in the way of other work. You need not be afraid. Joe was one of the most particular men in the world in his own way.”
Mrs. Brownlow could do no more. She had found that her little sister-in-law could be saucy, and personal squabbles, as she justly thought, had better be avoided. She could only keep Jessie from the contamination by taking her out in the carriage and to garden parties, which the young lady infinitely preferred to long walks that tired her and spoilt her dress; to talk and laughter that she could not understand, and games that seemed to her stupid, though everybody else seemed to find them full of fun. True, Allen and Bobus were always ready to push and pull her through, and to snub Janet for quizzing her; but Jessie was pretty enough to have plenty of such homage at her command, and not specially to prefer that of her cousins, so that it cost her little to turn a deaf ear to all their invitations.
Her brothers were not of the same mind, for Rob was never happy out of sight of Jock. Johnny worshipped his aunt, and Joe was gregarious, so there was generally an accompanying rabble of six or seven boys, undistinguishable by outsiders, though very individual indeed in themselves and adding a considerable element of noise, high spirits, and mischievous enterprise. The man in the velvet coat, whose proper name was Orlando Hughes, was as much of a boy as any of them, and so could Mr. Acton be on occasion, thus giving a certain Bohemian air to their doings.
Things came to a crisis on one of the dog-days. Young Dr. Drake had brought his bride to show to his old friend, and they were staying at the Folly, while a college friend of Mr. Ogilvie’s, a London curate, had come to see him in the course of a cathedral tour, and had stayed on, under the attraction of the place, taking the duty for a few Sundays.
The weather was very sultry, forbidding exertion on the part of all save cricketers; but there was a match at Redford, and Kenminster was eager about it, so that all the boys, grown up or otherwise, walked over to see it, accompanied by Nita Ray with her inseparable Janet, meaning to study village groups and rustic sports. The other ladies walked in the cool to meet them at the Acton’s farmhouse, chiefly, it was alleged, in deference to the feelings of the bride, who could not brave the heat, but had never yet been so long separated from her bridegroom.
The little boys, however, were alone to be found at the farm, reporting that their elders had joined the cricket supper. So Mrs. Acton made them welcome, and spread her cloth in the greensward, whence could be seen the evening glow on the harvest fields. Then there was a feast of cherries, and delicious farmhouse bread and butter, and inexhaustible tea, which was renewed when the cricketers joined them, and called for their share.
Thus they did not set out on their homeward walk, over fragrant heath and dewy lanes, till just as the stars were coming out, and a magnificent red moon, scarcely past the full, was rising in the east, and the long rest, and fresh dewiness after the day’s heat, gave a delightful feeling of exhilaration.
Babie went skipping about in the silvery flood of light, quite wild with delight as they came out on the heath, and, darting up to Mr. Ogilvie, asked if now he did not think they might really see a fairy.
“Perhaps I do,” he said.
“Oh where, where, show me?”
“Ah! you’re the one that can’t see her.”
“What, not if I did my eyes with that Euphrasia and Verbena officinalis?” catching tight hold of his hand, as a bright red light went rapidly moving in a straight line in the valley beneath their feet.
“Robin Goodfellow,” said Mr. Hughes, overhearing her, and immediately began to sing—
“I know a bank”—
Then the curate, as he finished, began to sing some other appropriate song, and Nita Ray and others joined in. It was very pretty, very charming in the moonlight, very like “Midsummer Night’s Dream;” but Mary Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency; but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots, was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good deal distressed, and could not, for very humanity’s sake, be left behind.
“And after all,” thought Mary, as peals of the boys’ merry laughter came to her, and then again echoes of “spotted snakes with double tongue” awoke the night echoes; “this is such a solitary place that it cannot signify, if they will only have the sense to stop when we get into the roads.”
But they hadn’t. Mary heard a chorus from “Der Freischutz,” beginning just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing shadows. That brought them into a lane darkened by its high hedges, where there was nothing for it but to let Miss Ray tightly grapple her arm, while the songs came further and further on the wind, and Mary felt the conviction that middle-aged spinsters must reckon on being forgotten, and left behind alike by brothers, sisters, and friends.
Nor did they come up with the party till they found them waiting in the road, close to the Rays’ lodgings, having evidently just missed them, for Mr. Ogilvie and the clergyman were turning back to look for them when they were gladly hailed, half apologised to, half laughed at by a babel of voices, among which Nita’s was the loudest, informing her sister that she had lost the best bit of all, for just at the turn of the lane there had come on them Babie’s fiery-eyed monster, which had “burst on the path,” when they were in mid song, flashing over them, and revealing, first a horse, and then a brougham, wherein there sat the august forms of Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow, going home from a state dinner, the lady’s very marabouts quivering with horror.
Mary stepped up to Nita, and gave her a sharp, severe grasp.
“Hush! remember their boys are here,” she whispered; and, with an exaggerated gesture, Nita looked about her in affected alarm, and, seeing that none were near, added—
“Thank you; I was just going to say it would be a study for Punch”
“O do send it up, they’ll never know it,” cried Janet; but there Caroline interfered—
“Hush, Janet, we ought to be at home. Don’t stand here, Armine is tired to death! 11.5 at the station to-morrow. Good-night.”
They parted, and Mary and her brother turned away to their own home. If it had not been for the presence of the curate, Mary would have said a good deal on the way home. As it was, she was so silent as to inspire her brother with enough compunction for having deserted her, to make him follow her, when she went to her own room. “Mary, I am sorry we missed you,” he said; “I ought to have looked about for you more, but I thought—”
“Nonsense, David; of course I do not mind that, if only I could have stopped all that singing.”
“That singing; why it was very pretty, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty indeed! Did it never occur to you what a scrape you may be getting that poor little thing into with her relations, and yourself, too?”
David looked more than half-amused, and she proceeded more resolutely—
“Well! what do you think must be Mrs. Brownlow’s opinion of what she saw and heard to-night? I blame myself exceedingly for not having urged the setting off sooner; but you must remember that what is all very well for holiday people, only here for a time, may do infinite mischief to residents.”
David only observed, “I didn’t want all those men, if that’s what you mean. They made the noise, not I.”
“No, nor I; but we swelled the party, and I am much disposed to believe that the best thing we can do is to take ourselves off, or do anything to break up this set.”
He looked for a moment much disconcerted; but then with a little masculine superiority, answered—
“Well, well, we’ll think over it, Mary. See how it appears to you to-morrow when you aren’t tired,” and then, with a smile and a kiss, bade her good-night.
“So that’s what we get,” said Mary, to herself, half amused, half annoyed; “those men think it is all because one is left behind in the dark! David is the best boy in the world, but there’s not a man of them all who has a notion of what gets a woman into trouble! I believe he was rather gratified than otherwise to be found out on a lark. Well, I’ll talk to Clara; she will have some sense!”
They were all to meet at the station the next morning, to go to an old castle, about an hour from Kenminster by railway; and they filled the platform, armed with sketching tools, sandwich baskets, botanical tins, and all other appliances; but when Mr. Ogilvie accosted Mrs. Joseph Brownlow, saying, “You have only half your boys,” she looked up, with a drolly guilty air, saying, “No, there’s an embargo on the other poor fellows.”
They had just taken their seats, and the train was in motion, when a heated headlong boy came dashing over the platform, and clung to the door of the carriage, standing on the step. It was Johnny. Orlando Hughes, who was next the window, grasped his hands, and, in answer to the cries of dismay and blame that greeted him, he called out, “Yes, here I am; Rob and Joe couldn’t run so fast.”
“Then you’ve got leave?” asked his aunt.
Johnny’s grin said “No.”
She looked up at Mr. Ogilvie in much vexation and anxiety.
“Don’t say any more to him now. It might put him in great danger. Wait till the next station,” he said.
It was a stopping train, and ten minutes brought a halt, when the guard came up in a fury, and Johnny found no sympathy for his bold attempt. Carey had no notion of fostering flat disobedience, and she told Johnny that unless he would promise to go home by himself and beg his father’s pardon, she should stay behind and go back with him, for she could have no pleasure in an expedition with him when he was behaving so outrageously.
The boy looked both surprised and abashed. His affection for his aunt was very great, as for one who had opened to him the gates of a new world, both within himself and beyond himself. He would not hear of her giving up the expedition, and promised her with all his heart to walk home, and confess, “Though ‘twasn’t papa, but mamma!” were his last words, as they left him on the platform, crestfallen, but with a twinkle in his eye, and with the station-master keeping watch over him as a dangerous subject.
Mr. Ogilvie said it would do the boy good for life; Caroline mourned over him a little, and wondered how his mother would treat him; and Mary sat and thought till the arrival at their destination, when they had to walk to the castle, dragging their appurtenances, and then to rouse their energies to spread out the luncheon.
Then, when there had been the usual amount of mirth, mischief, and mishap, and the party had dispersed, some to sketch, some to scramble, some to botanize, the “Duck and Drake to spoon,”—as said the boys, Mary Ogilvie found a turfy nook where she could hold council with Mrs. Acton about their poor little friend, for whose welfare she was seriously uneasy.
But Clara did not sympathise as much as she expected, having been much galled by Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s supercilious manner, and thinking the attempt to conciliate her both unworthy and useless.
“Of course I do not mean that poor Carey should truckle to her,” said Mary, rather nettled at the implication; “but I don’t think these irregular hours, and all this roaming about the country at all times, can be well in themselves for her or the children.”
“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country in the spring for the first time? If not, you never saw the prettiest and most innocent of intoxications. I had once to take the little Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells. I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to be done, of lessons. There was no sitting still on a fine morning. I was as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to be a prison.”
“This is not spring,” said Mary.
“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”
“No doubt, but they cannot be good. They keep up flightiness and excitability.”
“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”
“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary, rather severely. Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection or her grief.”
“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to sorrow without doing them harm.”
“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select—so as not to do herself harm with her relations—who after all must be more important to her than any outsiders.”
The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life; and Clara made answer—
“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good Dr. Brownlow’s life.”
“I am not sure of that. Blood is thicker than water.”
“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very turbid.”
“For shame, Clara.”
“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little country town Serene Highness! I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr. Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who can never be congenial.”
“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy), should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”
“To purr and lay eggs? My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly duckling, even in early life.”
“Not after it had been among the swans? You vain Clara!”
“I only lay claim to having seen the swans—not to having brought many specimens down here.”
“Such asthatNita, or Mr. Hughes?”
“More like the other bird, certainly,” said Clara, smiling; “but Mary, if you had but seen what that house was. Joe Brownlow was one of those men who make themselves esteemed and noted above their actual position. He was much thought of as a lecturer, and would have had a much larger practice but for his appointment at the hospital. It was in the course of the work he had taken for a friend gone out of town that he caught the illness that killed him. His lectures brought men of science about him, and his practice had made him acquainted with us poor Bohemians, as you seem to think us. Old Mrs. Brownlow had means of her own, and theirs was quite a wealthy house among our set. Any of us were welcome to drop into five o’clock tea, or at nine at night, and the pleasantness and good influence were wonderful. The motherliness and yet the enthusiasm of Mrs. Brownlow made her the most delightful old lady I ever saw. I can’t describe how good she was about my marriage, and many more would say they owed all that was brightest and best in them to that house. And there was Carey, like a little sunshiny fairy, the darling of everyone. No, not spoilt—I see what you are going to say.”
“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness ever could help making a pet of her.”
“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother. I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”
She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.
Mary laughed a little.
“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be unappreciated.”
“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on together.”
Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she further tried to say was—
“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock them?”
“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter, you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”
Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to expostulate and deliver her testimony.
There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed immediately—no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs. Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking tea at the vicarage.
Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.
“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous Armine exclaimed—
“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”
“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their mother; “then we break up our sitting.”
“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday; “but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”
“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,” she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly comic.
“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.
Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult Sabbatarian question in her mind.
“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother, didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more, mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”
But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered—
“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr. Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad to read what keeps mine round me?”
“Is it an old fashion with you?”
“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of the old sunshine.”
It was a watery reflection indeed!
“And could it not be with something that would be—”
“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”
To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”
“I did mean salt—very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.
“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did, what would become of the boys?”
“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that pass. There are things I wanted to say.”
“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”
“Not if you heed him so little.”
“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said I was not behaving decently!”
“No more you are.”
“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost hysterically.
“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have happened.”
“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”
“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”
“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”
“You are not like yourself, Carey.”
“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep up the old friendships and kindnesses—poor little fragments as they are—everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”
“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”
“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”
“It just shows how careful you should be.”
“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”
“Not the Coffinkeys, certainly,” said Mary; “but indeed, Carey, I myself was uncomfortable at that singing in the lanes at eleven at night.”
“It wasn’t eleven,” said Carey, perversely.
“Only 10.50—eh?”
“But what was the possible harm in it?”
“None at all in itself, only remember the harm it may do to the children for you to be heedless of people’s opinion, and to get a reputation for flightiness and doing odd things.”
“I couldn’t be like the Coffinkey pattern any more than I could be tied down to a rope walk.”
“But you need not do things that your better sense must tell you may be misconstrued. Surely there was a wish that you should live near the Colonel and be guided by him.”
“Little knowing that his guidance would consist in being set at me by Ellen and the Coffinkeys!”
“Nonsense,” said Mary, vexed enough to resume their old school-girl manners. “You know I am not set on by anybody, and I tell you that if you do not pull up in time, and give no foundation for ill-natured comments, your children will never get over it in people’s estimation. And as for themselves, a little steadiness and regularity would be much better for their whole dispositions.”
“It is holiday time,” said Carey, in a tone of apology.
“If it is only in holiday time—”
“The country has always seemed like holiday. You see we used to go—all of us—to some seaside place, and be quite free there, keeping no particular hours, and being so intensely happy. I haven’t yet got over the feeling that it is only for a time, and we shall go back into the dear old home and its regular ways.” Then clasping her hands over her side as though to squeeze something back, she broke out, “O Mary, Mary, you mustn’t scold me! You mustn’t bid me tie myself to regular hours till this summer is over. If you knew the intolerable stab when I recollect that he is gone—gone—gone for ever, you would understand that there’s nothing for it but jumping up and doing the first thing that comes to hand. Walking it down is best. Oh! what will become of me when the mornings get dark, and I can’t get up and rush into those woods? Yes”—as Mary made some affectionate gesture—“I know I have gone on in a wild way, but who would not be wild who had losthim? And then they goad me, and think me incapable of proper feeling,” and she laughed that horrid little laugh. “So I am, I suppose; but feeling won’t go as other people thinkproper. Let me alone, Mary, I won’t damage the children. They are Joe’s children, and I know what he wanted and wished for them better than Robert or anybody else. But I must go my own way, and do what I can bear, and as I can, or—or I think my heart would break quite, and that would be worse for them than anything.”
Mary had tears in her eyes, drawn forth by the vehement passion of grief apparent in the whole tone of her poor little friend. She had no doubts of Carey’s love, sorrow, or ability, but she did seriously doubt of her wisdom and judgment, and thought her undisciplined. However, she could say no more, for Nita Ray and Janet were advancing on them.
The next day Caroline was in bed with one of her worst headaches. Mary felt that she had been a cruel and prim old duenna, and meekly bore Clara’s reproachful glances.
He put in his thumbAnd he pulled out a plum,And cried, “What a good boy am I!”Jack Horner.
Whether it were from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down, and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection, and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not equally discreet.
With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became possible to be more calm and quiet.
Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was Janet’s inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.
“Without asking me!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“I thought you heard us talking,” said Janet, so carelessly, that her mother put on her dignity.
“I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted without reference to me.”
“Come, now, Mother Carey,” said this modern daughter; “don’t be cross! We really didn’t know you weren’t attending.”
“If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can never have thought over the matter!”
“Haven’t I? When I am doing no good here, only wasting time?”
“That is my fault. We will set to work at once steadily.”
“But my classes and my lectures!”
“You are not so far on but that our reading together will teach you quite as much as lectures.”
Janet looked both sulky and scornful, and her mother continued—
“It is not as if we had not modern books, and I think I know how to read them so as to be useful to you.”
“I don’t like getting behindhand with the world.”
“You can’t keep up even with the world without a sound foundation. Besides, even if it were more desirable, the Rays cannot afford to keep you, nor I to board you there.”
“I am to pay them by helping Miss Ray in her copying.”
“Poor Miss Ray!” exclaimed Carey, laughing. “Does she know your handwriting?”
“You do not know what I can do,” said Janet, with dignity.
“Yes, I hope to see it for myself, for you must put this notion of going to London out of your head. I am sure Miss Ray did not give the invitation—no, nor second it. Did she, Janet?”
Janet blushed a little, and muttered something about Miss Ray being afraid of stuck-up people.
“I thought so! She is a good, sensible person, whom grandmamma esteemed very much; but she has never been able to keep her sister in order; and as to trusting you to their care, or letting you live in their set, neither papa nor grandmamma would ever have thought of it.”
“You only say so because her Serene Highness turns up her nose at everything artistic and original.”
“Janet, you forget yourself,” Caroline exclaimed, in a tone which quelled the girl, who went muttering away; and no more was ever heard of the Ray proposal, which no doubt the elder sister at least had never regarded as anything but an airy castle.
However, Caroline was convinced that the warnings against the intimacy had not been so uncalled for as she had believed; for she found, when she tried to tighten the reins, that her daughter was restive, and had come to think herself a free agent, as good as grown up. Spirit was not, however, lacking to Caroline, and when she had roused herself, she made Janet understand that she was not to be disregarded or disobeyed. Regular hours were instituted, and the difficulty of getting broken into them again was sufficient proof to her that she had done wrong in neglecting them. Armine yawned portentously, and declared that he could not learn except at his own times; and Babie was absolutely naughty more than once, when her mother suffered doubly in punishing her from the knowledge of whose fault it was. However, they were good little things, and it was not hard to re-establish discipline with them. After a little breaking in, Babie gave it to her dolls as her deliberate opinion that “Wegulawity settles one’s mind. One knows when to do what.”
Janet could not well complain of the regularity in itself, though she did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all round to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary, encyclopaedia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved almost uniformly to be against her whenever there was a difference of opinion, she had sense enough to perceive that she could still learn something at home.
Moreover, after one or two of these references, Mr. Ogilvie offered to look over her Latin and Greek exercises, and hear her construe on his Saturday half-holidays, declaring that it would be quite a refreshment. Caroline was shocked at the sacrifice, but she could not bear to affront her daughter, so she consented; but as she thought Janet was not old enough to need a chaperon, and as her boys did want her, she was hardly ever present at the lessons.
Moreover, Mr. Ogilvie had a lecturer from London to give weekly lectures on physical science to his boys, and opened the doors to ladies. This was a great satisfaction, chiefly for the sake of Bobus and Jock, but also for Janet’s and her mother’s. The difficulty was to beat up for ladies enough to keep one another in countenance; but happily two families in the country, and one bright little bride in the town, were found glad to open their ears, so that Ellen had no just cause of disapproval of the attendance of her sister and niece.
Ellen had more cause to sigh when Michaelmas came, and for the first time taught poor Carey what money matters really meant. Throughout her married life, her only stewardship had concerned her own dress and the children’s; Mrs. Brownlow’s occasional plans of teaching her housekeeping had always fallen through, Janet being always her grandmamma’s deputy.
Thus Janet and nurse had succeeded to the management when poor Carey was too ill and wretched to attend to it; and it had gone on in their hands at the Pagoda. Janet was pleased to be respected accordingly by her aunt, who always liked her the best, in spite of her much worse behaviour, for were not her virtues her own, and her vices her mother’s?
Caroline had paid the weekly books, and asked no questions, until the winding up of the executor’s business; and the quarterly settlement of accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living at much less expense than in London, and there had been no outgoings worth mentioning for dress or journeys. What were they to do? Surely they could not live upon less! Was it her fault?
She was so much distressed, that the good-natured Colonel pitied her, and answered kindly—
“My good little sister, you were inexperienced. You will do better another year.”
“But there’s nothing to go on upon!”
He reminded her of the rent for the London house, and the dividends that must soon come in.
“Then it will be as bad as ever! How can we live more cheaply than we do?”
“Ellen is an excellent manager, and you had better consult her on the scale of your expenditure.”
Caroline’s spirit writhed, but before she had time to say anything, or talk to Janet, the Colonel had heard his excellent housewife’s voice, and called her into the council. She was as good as possible, too serenely kind to manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse’s self-taught writing—