When I did him at this advantage take,An ass’s nowl I fixed upon his head.Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In the early spring an unlooked-for obstacle arose to all wanderings in the Belforest woods. The owner returned and closed the gates. From time that seemed immemorial, the inhabitants of Kenminster had disported themselves there as if the grounds had been kept up for their sole behoof, and their indignation at the monopoly knew no bounds.
Nobody saw Mr. Barnes save his doctor, whose carriage was the only one admitted within the lodge gates, intending visitors being there informed that Mr. Barnes was too unwell to be disturbed.
Mrs. “Folly” Brownlow’s aberrations lost their interest in the Coffinkey world beside the mystery of Belforest. Opinions varied as to his being a miser, or a lunatic, a prey to conscience, disease, or deformity; and reports were so diverse, that at the “Folly” a journal was kept of them, with their dates, as a matter of curiosity—their authorities marked:—
March 4th.—Mr. Barnes eats nothing but fresh turtle. Brings them down in tubs alive and flapping. Mrs. Coffinkey’s Jane heard them cooing at the station. Gives his cook three hundred pounds per annum.
5th.—Mr. Barnes so miserly, that he turned away the housemaid for burning candles eight to the pound. (H. S. H.)
6th.—Mr. B. keeps a bloodhound trained to hunt Indians, and has six pounds of prime beef steaks for it every day. (Emma.)
8th.—Mr. B.‘s library is decorated with a string of human ears, the clippings of his slaves in “the Indies.” (Nurse.)
12th.—Mr. B. whipped a little black boy to death, and is so haunted by remorse, that he can’t sleep without wax-candles burning all round him. (Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.)
14th.—Mr. Barnes’s income is five hundred thousand pounds, and he does not live at the rate of two hundred pounds. (Col. Brownlow.)
l5th.—He has turned off all his gardeners, and the place will be desolation. (H. S. H.)
16th.—He did turn off one gardener’s boy for staring at him when he was being wheeled about in his bath-chair. (Alfred Richards.)
17th.—He threw a stone, which cut the boy’s head open, and he lies at the hospital in a dangerous state. (Emma.)
18th.—Mr. Barnes was crossed in love when he was a young man by one Miss Anne Thorpe, and has never been the same man since, but has hated all society. (Query: Is this a version of being a misanthrope?)
19th.—He is a most unhappy man, who has sacrificed all family affections and all humanity to gold, and whose conscience will not let him rest. He is worn to a shadow, and is at war with mankind. In fine, he is a lesson to weak human nature. (Mrs. Rigby.)
22nd.—All his toilet apparatus is of “virgin gold;” he lets nothing else touch him. (Jessie.)
“Exactly like King Midas.” (Babie.)
The exclusion from the grounds was a serious grievance, entailing much loss of time and hindrance to the many who had profited by the private roads. The Sunday promenade was a great deprivation; nurses and children were cut off from grass and shade, and Mother Carey and her brood from all the delights of the enchanted ground.
She could bear the loss better than in that first wild restlessness, which only free nature could allay. She had made her occupations, and knew of other haunts, though many a longing eye was cast at the sweet green wilderness, and many regrets spent on the rambles, the sketches, the plants, and the creatures that had seemed the certain entertainment of the summer.
To one class of the population the prohibition only gave greater zest—namely, the boys. Should there be birds’ nests in Belforest unscathed by the youth of St. Kenelm’s? What were notice-boards, palings, or walls to boys with arms and legs ready to defy even the celebrated man-traps of Ellangowan, “which, if a man goes in, they will break a horse’s leg?” The terrific bloodhound alarmed a few till his existence was denied by Alfred Richards, the agent’s son; and dodging the keepers was a new and exciting sport. At first, these men were not solicitous for captures, but their negligence was so often detected, that they began to believe that their master kept telescopes that could penetrate through trees, and their vigilance increased.
Bobus, in quest of green hellebore, got off with a warning; but a week later, Robin and Jock were inspecting the heronry, when they caught sight of a keeper, and dashed off to find themselves running into the jaws of another. Swift as lightning, Jock sprung up into an ivied ash; but the less ready Bob was caught by the leg as he mounted, and pulled down again, while his captor shouted, “If there’s any more of you young varmint up yonder, you’d best come down before I fires up into the hoivy.”
He made a click and pointed his gun, and Robin shrieked, “Oh, don’t! We are Colonel Brownlow’s sons; at least, I mean nephews. Don’t! I say. Skipjack, come down.”
“You ass!” muttered Jack, as he crackled down, and was collared by the keeper. “Hollo! what’s that for?”
“Now, young gents, why will you come larking here to get a poor chap out of his situation. It’s as much as my place is worth not to summons you, and yet I don’t half like to do it to young gents like you.”
“What could they do to us?” asked Jock.
“Well, sir, may be they’d keep you in the lock-up all night; and what would your papa and mamma say to that?”
“My father is Colonel Brownlow,” growled Robin.
“More shame for you, sir, to want to get a poor man out of his place.”
“Look here, my man,” said Jock with London sharpness and impudence, “if you want to bully us into tipping you, it’s no go. We’ve only got one copper between us, and nothing else but our knives; and if we had, we wouldn’t do such a sneaking thing!”
“I never meant no such thing, sir,” said the keeper; “only in case Mr. Barnes should hear of our good nature.”
“Come along, Robin,” said Jock; “if we are had up, we’ll let ‘em know how Leggings wanted us to buy off!”
Wherewith Jock made a rush, Rob plunged after him into the brambles, and they never halted till they had tumbled over the park wall, and lay in a breathless heap on the other side. The adventure was the fruitful cause of mirth at the Folly, but not a word was breathed of it at Kencroft.
A few other lads did actually pay toll to the keepers, and some penniless ones were brought before the magistrates and fined for trespass, “because they could not afford it,” as Caroline said, and to the Colonel’s great disgust she sent two sovereigns by Allen to pay their fines and set them free.
“It was my own money,” she said, in self-defence, “earned by my models of fungi.”
The Colonel thought it an unsatisfactory justification, and told her that she would lay up trouble for herself by thus encouraging insubordination. He little thought that the laugh in her eyes was at his complacent ignorance of his own son’s narrow escape.
Allen was at home for Easter, when Eton gave longer holidays than did St. Kenelm, so that his brothers were at work again long before he was. One afternoon, which had ended in a soaking mist, the two pairs of Roberts and Johns encountered him at the Folly gate so disguised in mud that they hardly recognised the dainty Etonian.
“That brute Barnes,” he ejaculated; “I had to come miles round through a disgusting lane. I wish I had gone on. I’d have proved the right of way if he chose to prosecute me!”
“Father says that’s no go,” said Robin.
“I say, Allen, what a guy you are,” added Johnny.
“And he’s got his swell trousers on,” cried Jock, capering with glee.
“I see,” gravely observed Bobus, “he had got himself up regardless of expense for his Undine, and she has treated him to another dose of her native element.
“She had nothing to do with it,” asseverated Allen, “she was as good as gold—”
“Ah! I knew he wasn’t figged out for nothing,” put in Jock.
“Don’t be ashamed, Ali, my boy,” added Bobus. “We all understand her little tokens.”
“Stop that!” cried Allen, catching hold of Jock’s ear so as to end his war-dance in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large attics opening into one another, which served as the lair of the Folly lads. There, while struggling, with Jock’s assistance, to pull off his boots, Allen explained how he had been waylaid “by a beast in velveteens,” and walked off to the nearest gate.
“Will he summons you, Ali? We’ll all go and see the Grand Turk in the dock,” cried Jock.
“Don’t flatter yourself; he wouldn’t think of it.”
“How much did you fork out?” asked Bobus.
Allen declaimed in the last refinement of Eton slang (carefully treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out at a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall on each side, and two ruts running like torrents with water, leading in the opposite direction to Kenminster, and ending in a bottom where he was up to the ankles in red clay.
“The Eton boots, oh my!” cried Jock, falling backwards with one of them, which he had just pulled off.
“And then,” added Allen, “as I tried to get along under the wall by the bank, what should a miserable stone do, but turn round with me and send me squash into the mud and mire, floundering like a hippopotamus. I should like to get damages from that villain! I should!”
Allen was much more angry than was usual with him, and the others, though laughing at his Etonian airs, fully sympathised with his wrath.
“He ought to be served out.”
“We will serve him out!”
“How?”
“Get all our fellows and make a jolly good row under his windows,” said Robin.
“Decidedly low,” said Allen.
“And impracticable besides,” said Bobus. “They’d kick you out before you could say Jack Robinson.”
“There was an old book of father’s,” suggested Jock, “with an old scamp who starved and licked his apprentices, till one of them dressed himself up in a bullock’s hide, horns and hoofs, and tail and all, and stood over his bed at night and shouted—
“‘Old man, old man, for thy cruelty,Body and soul thou art given to me;Let me but hear those apprentices’ cries,And I’ll toss thee, and gore thee, and bore out thine eyes.’
And he was quite mild to the apprentices ever after.”
Jock acted and roared with such effect as to be encored, but Rob objected. “He ain’t got any apprentices.”
“It might be altered,” said Allen.
“Old man, old man, thy gates thou must ope,”
Bobus chimed in.
“Nor force Eton swells in quagmire to grope.”
“Bother you, don’t humbug and put me out.
“Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope,Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope.Let me but—”
“Get Mother Carey to write it,” suggested his cousin John.
“No; she must know nothing about it,” said Bobus.
“She’d think it a jolly lark,” said Jock.
“When it’s over,” said Allen. “But it’s one of the things that the old ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so rational and jolly.”
“‘Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow,” sighed Johnny.
“And who’ll do the verses?” said Rob.
“Oh, any fool can do them,” returned Bobus. “The point is to bell the cat.”
“There’d be no getting in to act the midnight ghost,” said Allen.
“No,” said Jock; “but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair.”
In Allen’s railway rug, Jock rehearsed the scene, and was imitated if not surpassed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it could not be carried out in the daylight.
“I could do it still better,” said Jock, “if I blacked myself all over, not only my face, but all the rest, and put on nothing but my red flannel drawers and a turban. They’d take me for the ghost of the little nigger he flogged to death, and Allen could write something pathetic and stunning.”
“You might cut human ears out of rabbit-skins and hang them round your neck,” added Bobus.
“You’d be awfully cold,” said Allen.
“You could mix in a little iodine,” suggested Bobus. “That stings like fun, and a coppery tinge would be more natural.”
There was great acclamation, but the difficulty was that the only time for effecting an entrance into the garden was between four and five in the morning, and it would be needful to lurk there in this light costume till Mr. Barnes went out. No one would be at liberty from school but Allen, and he declined the oil and lamp-black even though warmed up with iodine.
“Could it not be done by deputy?” said Bobus; “we might blacken the little fat boy riding on a swan, the statue, I mean.”
“What, and gild the swan, to show how far his golden goose can carry him?” said Jock.
“Or,” said Allen, “there’s the statue they say is himself, though that’s all nonsense. We could make a pair of donkey’s ears in Mother Carey’s clay, and clap them on him, and gild the thing in his hand.”
“What would be the good of that?” asked Robert.
However, the fun was irresistible, and the only wonder was that the secret was kept for the whole day, while Allen moulded in the studio two things that might pass for ass’s ears, and secreted cement enough to fasten them on. The performance elicited such a rapture of applause that the door had to be fast locked against the incursion of the little ones to learn the cause of the mirth. When Mother Carey asked at tea what they were having so much fun about they only blushed, sniggled, and wriggled in their chairs in a way that would have alarmed a more suspicious mother, but only made her conclude that some delightful surprise was preparing, for which she must keep her curiosity in abeyance.
“Nor was she dismayed by the creaking of boots on the attic stairs before dawn, and when the boys appeared at breakfast with hellebore, blue periwinkle, and daffodils, clear indications of where they had been, she only exclaimed—
“Forbidden sweets! O you naughty boys!” when ecstatic laughter alone replied.
She heard no more till the afternoon, when the return from school was notified by shouts from Allen, and the boys rushed up to the verandah where he was reading.
“I say! here’s a go. He thinks Richards has done it, and has written to Ogilvie to have him expelled.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me himself.”
“But Ogilvie has too much sense to expel him!”
“Of course, but there’s worse, for old Barnes means to turn off his father. Nothing will persuade the old fellow that it wasn’t his work, for he says that it must be a grammar-school boy.”
“Does Dicky Bird guess?”
“Yes, but he’s all right, as close as wax. He says he was sure no one but ourselves could have done it, for nobody else could have thought of such things or made them either.”
“Then he has seen it?”
“Yes, and he was fit to kill himself with laughing, though his father and old Barnes were mad with rage and fury. His father believes him, but old Barnes believes neither of them, and swears his father shall go.”
“We shall have to split on ourselves,” elegantly observed Johnny.
“We had better tell Mother Carey. Hullo! here she is, inside the window.”
“Didn’t you know that,” said Allen.
Therefore the boys, leaning and sprawling round her, half in and half out of the window, told the story, the triumph overcoming all compunction, as they described the morning raid, the successful scaling of the park-wall, the rush across the sward, the silence of the garden, the hoisting up of Allen to fasten on the ears, and the wonderful charms of the figure when it wore them and held a golden apple in its hand. “Right of Way,” and “Let us in,” had been written in black on all the pedestals.
“It is a peculiar way of recommending your admission,” said Caroline.
“That’s Rob’s doing,” said Allen. “I couldn’t look after him while I was gilding the apple or I would have stopped him. He half blacked the little boy on the swan too—”
“And broke the swan’s bill off, worse luck,” added Johnny.
“Yes,” said Allen, “that was altogether low and unlucky! I meant the old fellow simply to have thought that his statue had grown a pair of ears in the night.”
“And what would have been the use of that?” said Robin.
“What was the use of all your scrawling,” said Allen, “except just to show it was not the natural development of statues.”
“Yes,” added Bobus, “it all came of you that poor Dickey Bird is suspected and it is all blown up.”
“As if he would have thought it was done by nobody,” said Rob.
“Why not?” said Jock. “I’m sure I’d never wonder to see ass’s ears growing on you. I think they are coming.”
There was a shout of laughter as Rob hastily put up his hands to feel for them, adding in his slow, gruff voice—“A statue ain’t alive.”
“It made a fool of the whole matter,” proceeded Bobus. “I wish we’d kept a lout like you out of it.”
“Hush, hush, Bobus,” put in his mother, “no matter about that. The question is what is to be done about poor Mr. Richards and Alfred.”
“Write a poetical letter,” said Allen, beginning to extemporise in Hiawatha measure.
“O thou mighty man of money,Barnes, of Belforest, Esquire,Innocent is Alfred Richards;Innocent his honest father;Innocent as unborn babyOf development of Midas,Of the smearing of the Cupid,Of the fracture of the goose-bill,Of the writing of the mottoes.All the Brownlows of St. Kenelm’s,From the Folly and from Kencroft.Robert, the aspiring soldier,Robert, too, the sucking chemist,John, the Skipjack full of mischief,John, the great originator,Allen, the—”
“Allen the uncommon gaby,” broke in Bobus. “Come, don’t waste time, something must be done.”
“Yes, a rational letter must be written and signed by you all,” said his mother. “The question is whether it would be better to do it through your uncle or Mr. Ogilvie.”
“I don’t see why my father should hear of it, or Mr. Ogilvie either,” growled Rob. “I didn’t do those donkeyfied ears.”
“You did the writing, which was five hundred times more donkeyfied,” said Jock.
“It is quite impossible to keep either of them in ignorance,” said Caroline.
“Yes,” repeated all her own three; Jock adding “Father would have known it as soon as you, and I don’t see that my uncle is much worse.”
“He ain’t so soft,” exclaimed Johnny, roused to loyal defence of his parent.
“Soft!” cried Jock, indignantly; “I can tell you father did pitch into me when I caught the old lady’s bonnet out at the window with a fishing-rod.”
“He never flogged you,” said Johnny contemptuously.
“He did!” cried Jock, triumphantly. “At least he flogged Bobus, when—”
“Shut up, you little ape,” thundered Bobus, not choosing to be offered up to the manes of his father’s discipline.
“You think you must explain it to my uncle, mother,” said Allen, rather ruefully.
“Certainly. He ought to be told first, and Mr. Ogilvie next. Depend upon it, he will be far less angry if it is freely confessed and put into his hands and what is more important, Mr. Barnes must attend to him, and acquit the Richardses.”
The general voice agreed, but Rob writhed and muttered, “Can’t you be the one to tell him, Mother Carey?”
“That’s cool,” said Allen, “to ask her to do what you’re afraid of.”
“He couldn’t do anything to her,” said Rob.
However, public opinion went against Rob, and the party of boys dragged him off in their train the less reluctantly that Allen would be spokesman, and he always got on well with his uncle. No one could tell how it was, but the boy had a frank manner, with a sort of address in the manner of narration, that always went far to disarm displeasure, and protected his comrades as well as himself. So it was that, instead of meeting with unmitigated wrath, the boys found that they were allowed the honours and graces of voluntary confession. Allen even thought that his uncle showed a little veiled appreciation of the joke, but this was not deemed possible by the rest.
To exonerate young Richards was the first requisite, and Allen, under his uncle’s eye, drew up a brief note to this effect:—
“SIR,—We beg to apologise for the mischief done in your grounds, and to assure you on our word and honour that it was suggested by no one, that no one admitted us, and no one had any share in it except ourselves.
“ALLEN BROWNLOW.“ROBERT FRIAR BROWNLOW.“ROBERT OTWAY BROWNLOW.“JOHN FRIAR BROWNLOW.“JOHN LUCAS BROWNLOW.”
This letter was taken up the next morning to Belforest by Colonel Brownlow, and the two eldest delinquents, one, curious, amused, and with only compunction enough to flavour an apology, the other cross, dogged, and sheepish, dragged along like a cur in a sling, “just as though he were going to be hanged,” said Janet.
The report of the expedition as given by Allen was thus:—“The servant showed us into a sort of anteroom, and said he would see whether his master would see us. Uncle Robert sent in his card and my letter, and we waited with the door open, and a great screen in front, so that we couldn’t help hearing every word. First there was a great snarl, and then a deferential voice, ‘This alters the case, sir.’ But the old man swore down in his throat that he didn’t care for Colonel Brownlow or Colonel anybody. ‘A gentleman, sir; one of the most respected.’ ‘Then he should bring up his family better.’ ‘Indeed, sir, it might be better to accept the apology. This might not be considered actionable damage.’ ‘We’ll see that!’ ‘Indeed, don’t you agree with me, Mr. Richards, the magistrates would hardly entertain the case.’ ‘Then I’ll appeal; I’ll send a representation to the Home Office.’ ‘Is it not to be considered, sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous light?’ Then,” continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking the two voices, “we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter, and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us. He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser; almost hump-backed, and as yellow as a mummy. He looked just ready to bite off our heads, but he was amazingly set on finding out which was which among us, and seemed uncommonly struck with my name and Bobus’s. My uncle told him I was called after your father, and he made a snarl just like a dog over a bone. He ended with, ‘So you are Allen Brownlow! You’ll remember this day’s work, youngster.’ I humbly said I should, and so the matter ended.”
“He did not mean any prosecution?”
“O no, that was all quashed, even if it was begun. He must have been under an hallucination that he was a stern parent, cutting me off with a shilling.”
The words had also struck the Colonel, who sought the first opportunity of asking his sister-in-law whether she knew the names of any of her mother’s relations.
“Only that her name was Otway,” said Caroline. “You know I lived with my father’s aunt, who knew nothing about her, and I have never been able to find anything out. Do you know of any connection? Not this old man? Then you would have known.”
“That does not follow, for I was scarcely in Jamaica at all. I had a long illness immediately after going there, was sent home on leave, and then to the depot, and only joined again after the regiment had gone to Canada, when the marriage had taken place. I may have heard the name of Mrs. Allen’s uncle, but I never bore it in my mind.”
“Is there any way of finding out?”
“I will write to Norton. If he does not remember all about it, his wife will.”
“He is the present lieutenant-colonel, I think.”
“Yes, and he was your father’s chief friend. Now that they are at home again, we must have him here one of these days.”
“It would be a wonderful thing if this freak were an introduction to a relation,” said Caroline.
“There was no doubt of his being struck by the combination of Allen and Otway. He chose to understand which were my sons and which my nephews, and when I said that Allen bore your maiden name he assented as if he knew it before, and spoke of your boy having cause to remember this; I am afraid it will not be pleasantly.”
“No,” said Caroline, “it sounded much like a threat. But one would like to know, only I thought Farmer Gould’s little granddaughter was his niece.”
“That might be without preventing your relationship; I will do my best to ascertain it.”
Colonel Norton’s letter gave decisive information that Barnes was the name of the uncle with whom Caroline Otway had been living at the time of her marriage. She had been treated as a poor relation, and seemed to be half-slave, half-governess to the children of the favoured sister, little semi-Spanish tyrants. This had roused Captain Allen’s chivalry, and his friend remembered his saying that, though he had little or nothing of his own, he could at least make her happier than she was in such a family. The uncle was reported to have grown rich in the mahogany trade, and likewise by steamboat speculations, coupled with judicious stock-jobbing among the distressed West Indians, after the emancipation.
“He was a sinister-looking old fellow,” ended Colonel Norton, “and I should think not very particular; but I should be glad to hear that he had done justice to poor Allen’s daughter. He was written to when she was left an orphan, but vouchsafed no answer.”
“Still he may have kept an eye upon you,” added Uncle Robert. “I do not think it was new to him that you had married into our family.”
“If only those unfortunate boys have not ruined everything,” sighed Ellen.
“Little Elvira’s father must have been one of those cousins,” said Caroline. “I wonder what became of the others? She must be—let me see—my second cousin.”
“Not very near,” said Ellen.
“I never had a blood relation before since my old aunt died. I am so glad that brilliant child belongs to me!”
“I daresay old Gould could tell you more,” said the Colonel.
“Is it wise to revive the connection?” asked his wife.
“The Goulds are not likely to presume,” said the Colonel; “and I think that if Caroline takes up the one connection, she is bound to take up the other.”
“How am I to make up to this cross old man?” said Carey. “I can’t go and fawn on him.”
“Certainly not,” said her brother-in-law; “but I think you ought to make some advance, merely as a relation.”
On the family vote, Caroline rather unwillingly wrote a note, explaining that she had only just discovered her kinship with Mr. Barnes, and offering to come and see him; but not the smallest notice was taken of her letter, rather to her relief, though she did not like to hear Ellen augur ill for the future.
Another letter, to old Mr. Gould, begging him to call upon her next market day, met with a far more ready response. When at his entrance she greeted him with outstretched hands, and—“I never thought you were a connection;” the fine old weather-beaten face was strangely moved, as the rugged hand took hers, and the voice was husky that said—
“I thought there was a likeness in the voice, but I never imagined you were grandchild to poor Carey Barnes; I beg your pardon, to Mrs. Otway.”
“You knew her? You must let me see something of my little cousin! I know nothing of my relations and my brother-in-law said he thought you could tell me.”
“I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young days,” said the farmer.
The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad, noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church, leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into whose feelings no one ever inquired.
Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die. There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before her brother’s prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and, married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business. The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated in England, treated as his uncle’s heir, and came to Belforest for shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould’s pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother’s contrivance, though without her father’s consent, had made her his wife.
The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso, of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father’s death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to make any further application.
“My little cousin,” said Caroline, “the first I ever knew. Pray bring her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her.”
The old man began to prepare her for the child’s being shy and wild, though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he did not regard her as his grandchild’s rival, but as representing the cherished playmate of his youth.
You smile, their eager ways to see,But mark their choice when theyTo choose their sportive garb are free,The moral of their play.Keble.
One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half of amusement, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.
Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people’s thoughts, but she seldom reflected, analysed or moralised, save on the spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her, that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always hitherto been taken by surprise.
So, when Jock observed in public—“Mother, they say at Kencroft that the old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?” it was with perfect truth that she answered, “I don’t think at all about it.”
It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions, they thought the more.
Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd compounds of cleverness and ignorance.
“Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest,” said Janet.
“A woman can’t be heir-at-law,” said Bobus.
“The Salique law doesn’t come into England.”
“Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of the old man’s daughter.
“Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?”
“Besides,”—Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility—“when there’s nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among them.”
“Who gets it, then?”
“Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all blood-suckers.”
“I’m sure,” said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, “that abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a will, mother will be heiress.”
“Only halves with that black Undine of Allen’s,” sturdily persisted Bobus. “Is she coming here, Janet?”
“Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.”
“If mother gets rich she won’t have all that teaching to bother her,” said Bobus.
“And I can go on with my education,” said Janet.
“Girl’s education does not signify,” said Bobus. “Now I shall be able to get the very best instruction in physical science, and make some great discovery. If I could only go and study at Halle, instead of going on droning here.”
“Oh! boys can always get educated if they choose. You are going to Eton or Winchester after this term.”
“Not if I can get any sense into mother. I don’t want to waste my time on those stupid classics and athletics. I say, Janet, it’s time to see whether the precipitation has taken place.”
The two used to try experiments together, in Bobus’s end of the attic, to an extent that might make the presence of a strange child in the house dangerous to herself as well as to everyone else.
Mrs. Gould herself brought the little girl, trying to impress on Mrs. Brownlow that if she was indocile it was not her fault, but her grandfather could not bear to have her crossed.
The elders did not wonder at his weakness, for the creature was wonderfully lovely and winning, with a fearless imperiousness that subdued everyone to her service. So brilliant was she, that Essie and Ellie, though very pretty little girls, looked faded and effaced beside this small empress, whose air seemed to give her a right to bestow her favours.
“I am glad to be here!” she observed, graciously, to her hostess, “for you are my cousin and a lady.”
“And pray what are you?” asked Janet.
“I am la Senora Dona Elvira Maria de Guadalupe de Menella,” replied the damsel, with a liquid sonorousness so annihilating, that Janet made a mocking courtesy; and her mother said it was like asking the head of the house of Hapsburg if she were a lady!
With some disappointment at Allen’s absence, the little Donna motioned Bobus to sit by her side at dinner-time, and when her grandfather looked in somewhat later to wish her good-bye, in mingled hope and fear of her insisting on going home with him, she cared for nothing but his admiration of her playing at kings and queens with Armine and Barbara, in the cotton velvet train of the dressing up wardrobe.
“No, she did not want to go home. She never wanted to go back to River Hollow.”
Nor would she even kiss him till she had extorted the assurance that he had been shaved that morning.
The old man went away blessing Mrs. Brownlow’s kindness to his child, and Janet was universally scouted for muttering that it was a heartless little being. She alone remained unenthralled by Elvira’s chains. The first time she went to Kencroft, she made Colonel Brownlow hold her up in his arms to gather a bough off his own favourite double cherry; and when Mother Carey demurred, she beguiled Aunt Ellen into taking her on her own responsibility to the dancing lessons at the assembly rooms.
There she electrified the dancing-master, and all beholders, seeming to catch inspiration from the music, and floating along with a wondrous swimming grace, as her dainty feet twinkled, her arms wreathed themselves, and her eyes shone with enjoyment.
If she could only have always danced, or acted in the garden! Armine’s and Babie’s perpetual romantic dramas were all turned by her into homage to one and the same princess. She never knew or cared whether she were goddess or fairy, Greek or Briton, provided she had the crown and train; but as Babie much preferred action to magnificence, they got on wonderfully well without disputes. There was a continual performance, endless as a Chinese tragedy, of Spenser’s Faery Queene, in which Elfie was always Gloriana, and Armine and Babie were everybody else in turn, except the wicked characters, who were represented by the cabbages and a dummy.
“Reading was horrid,” Elvira said, and certainly hers deserved the epithet. Her attainments fell far behind those of Essie and Ellie, and she did not mean to improve them. Her hostess let her alone till she had twice shaken her rich mane at her grandfather, and refused to return with him; and he had shown himself deeply grateful to Mrs. Brownlow for keeping her there, and had said he hoped she was good at her lessons.
The first trial resulted in Elvira’s going to sleep over her book, the next in her playing all sorts of ridiculous tricks, and sulking when stopped, and when she was forbidden to speak or go out till she had repeated three answers in the multiplication table, she was the next moment singing and dancing in defiance in the garden. Caroline did not choose to endure this, and went to fetch her in, thus producing such a screaming, kicking, rolling fury that Mrs. Coffinkey might have some colour for the statement that Mrs. Folly Brownlow was murdering all her children. The cook, as the strongest person in the house, was called, carried her in and put her to bed, where she fell sound asleep, and woke, hungry, in high spirits, and without an atom of compunction.
When called to lessons she replied—“No, I’m going back to grandpapa.”
“Very well,” was all Caroline answered, thinking wholesome neglect the best treatment.
In an hour’s time Mr. Gould made his appearance with his grandchild. She had sought him out among the pigs in the market-place, pulled him by the coat, and insisted on being taken home.
His politeness was great, but he was plainly delighted, and determined to believe that her demand sprang from affection, and not naughtiness. Elvira stood caressing him, barely vouchsafing to look at her hostess, and declaring that she never meant to come back.
Not a fortnight had passed, however, before she burst upon them again, kissing them all round, and reiterating that she hated her aunt, and would live with Mother Carey. Mr. Gould had waited to be properly ushered in. He was distressed and apologetic, but he had been forced to do his tyrant’s behest. There had been more disturbances than ever between her and her aunt, and Mrs. Gould had declared that she would not manage the child any longer, while Elvira was still more vehement to return to Mother Carey. Would Mrs. Brownlow recommend some school or family where the child would be well cared for? Mrs. Brownlow did more, offering herself to undertake the charge.
Spite of all the naughtiness, she loved the beautiful wild creature, and could not bear to think of intrusting her to strangers; she knew, too, that her brother and sister-in-law had no objection, and it was the obvious plan. Mr. Gould would make some small payment, and the child was to be made to understand that she must be obedient, learn her lessons, and cease to expect to find a refuge with her grandfather when she was offended.
She drew herself up with childish pride and grace saying, “I will attend to Mrs. Brownlow, for she is my cousin and my equal.”
To a certain degree the little maiden kept her word. She was the favourite plaything of the boys, and got on well with Babie, who was too bright and yielding to quarrel with any one.
But Janet’s elder-sisterly authority was never accepted by the newcomer. “I couldn’t mind her, she looked so ugly,” said she in excuse; and probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor, who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with curious versions of the long words more successfully used by Armine and Babie.
Caroline succeeded in modelling a very lovely profile in bas-relief of the exquisite little head, and then had it photographed. Mary Ogilvie, coming to Kenminster as usual when her holidays began in June, found the photograph in the place of honour on her brother’s chimney-piece, and a little one beside it of the artist herself.
So far as Carey herself was concerned, Mary was much better satisfied. She did not look so worn or so flighty, and had a quieter and more really cheerful tone and manner, as of one who had settled into her home and occupations. She had made friends, too—few, but worth having; and there were those who pronounced the Folly the pleasantest house in Kenminster, and regarded the five o’clock tea, after the weekly physical science lecture at the school, as a delightful institution.
Of course, the schoolmaster was one of these; and when Mary found how all his paths tended to the Pagoda, she hated herself for being a suspicious old duenna. Nevertheless, she could not but be alarmed by finding that her project of a walking tour through Brittany was not, indeed, refused, but deferred, with excuses about having work to finish, being in no hurry, and the like.
“I think you ought to go,” said Mary at last.
“I see no ought in the case. Last year the work dragged, and was oppressive; but you see how different it has become.”
“That is the very reason,” said Mary, the colour flying to her checks. “It will not do to stay lingering here as we did last summer, and not only on your own account.”
“You need not be afraid,” was the muttered answer, as David bent down his head over the exercise he was correcting. She made no answer, and ere long he began again, “I don’t mean that her equal exists, but I am not such a fool as to delude myself with a spark of hope.”
“She is too nice for that,” said Mary.
“Just so,” he said, glad to relieve himself when the ice had been broken. “There’s something about her that makes one feel her to be altogether that doctor’s, as much as if he were present in the flesh.”
“Are you hoping to wear that out? For I don’t think you will.”
“I told you I had no hope,” he answered, rather petulantly. “Even were it otherwise, there is another thing that must withhold me. It has got abroad that she may turn out heiress to the old man at Belforest.”
“In such a hopeless case, would it not be wiser to leave this place altogether?”
“I cannot,” he exclaimed; then remembering that vehemence told against him, he added, “Don’t be uneasy; I am a reasonable man, and she is a woman to keep one so; but I think I am useful to her, and I am sure she is useful to me.”
“That I allow she has been,” said Mary, looking at her brother’s much improved appearance; “but—”
“Moths and candles to wit,” he returned; “but don’t be afraid, I attract no notice, and I think she trusts me about her boys.”
“But what is it to come to?”
“I have thought of that. Understand that it is enough for me to live near her, and be now and then of some little service to her.”
They were interrupted by a note, which Mr. Ogilvie read, and handed to his sister with a smile:—
“DEAR MR. OGILVIE,—Could you and Mary make it convenient to look in this evening? Bobus has horrified his uncle by declining to go up for a scholarship at Eton or Winchester, and I should be very glad to talk it over with you. Also, I shall have to ask you to take little Armine into school after the holidays.
“Yours sincerely,
“C. O. BROWNLOW.”
“What does the boy mean?” asked Mary. “I thought he was the pride of your heart.”
“So he is; but he is ahead of his fellows, and ought to be elsewhere. All measures have been taken for sending him up to stand at one of the public schools, but I thought him very passive about it. He is an odd boy—reserved and self-concentrated—quite beyond his uncle’s comprehension, and likely to become headstrong at a blind exercise of authority.”
“I used to like Allen best,” said Mary.
“He is the pleasantest, but there’s more solid stuff in Bobus. That boy’s school character is perfect, except for a certain cool opinionativeness, which seldom comes out with me, but greatly annoys the undermasters.”
“Is he a prig?”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid he is. He’s unpopular, for he does not care for games; but his brother is popular enough for both.”
“Jock?—the monkey!”
“His brains run to mischief. I’ve had to set him more impositions than any boy in the school, and actually to take his form myself, for simply the undermasters can’t keep up discipline or their own tempers. As to poor M. le Blanc, I find him dancing and shrieking with fury in the midst of a circle of snorting, giggling boys; and when he points out ce petit monstre, Jock coolly owns to having translated ‘Croquons les,’ let us croquet them; or ‘Je suis blesse,’ I am blest.”
“So the infusion of brains produces too much effervescence.”
“Yes, but the whole school has profited, and none more so than No. 2 of the other family, who has quite passed his elder brother, and is above his namesake whenever it is a case of plodding ability versus idle genius. But, after all, how little one can know of one’s boys.”
“Or one’s girls,” said Mary, thinking of governess experiences.
It was a showery summer evening when the brother and sister walked up to the Folly in a partial clearing, when the evening sun made every bush twinkle all over with diamond drops. Childish voices were heard near the gate, and behind a dripping laurel were seen Elvira, Armine, and Barbara engaged in childhood’s unceasing attempt to explore the centre of the earth.
“What do you expect to find there?” they were asked.
“Little kobolds, with pointed caps, playing at ball with rubies and emeralds, and digging with golden spades,” answered Babie.
“And they shall give me an opal ring,” said Elfie, “But Armine does not want the kobolds.”
“He says they are bad,” said Babie. “Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that sat on the water and played his harp, wasn’t bad, and the dear little kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?”
Her voice was full of earnest pleading, and Mr. Ogilvie, not being versed in the spiritual condition of elves could best reply by asking why Armine thought ill of their kind.
“I think they are nasty little things that want to distract and bewilder one in the real great search.”
“What search, my boy?”
“For the source of everything,” said Armine, lowering his voice and looking into his muddy hole.
“But that is above, not below,” said Mary.
“Yes,” said Armine reverently; “but I think God put life and the beginning of growing into the earth, and I want to find it.”
“Isn’t it Truth?” said Babie. “Mr. Acton said Truth was at the bottom of a well. I won’t look at the kobolds if they keep one from seeing Truth.”
“But I must get my ring and all my jewels from them,” put in Elfie.
“Should you know Truth?” asked Mr. Ogilvie. “What do you think she is like?”
“So beautiful!” said Babie, clasping her fingers with earnestness. “All white and clear like crystal, with such blue, sweet, open eyes. And she has an anchor.”
“That’s Hope?” said Armine.
“Oh! Hope and Truth go hand in hand,” said Babie; “and Hope will be all robed in green like the young corn-fields in the spring.”
“Ah, Babie, that emerald Hope and crystal Truth are not down in the earth, earthy,” said Mary again.
“Nay, perhaps Armine has got hold of a reality,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “They are to be found above by working below.”
“Talking paradox to Armine?” said the cheerful voice of the young mother. “My dear sprites, do you know that it is past eight! How wet you are! Good night, and mind you don’t go upstairs in those boots.”
“It is quite comfortable to hear anything so commonplace,” said Mary, when the children had run away, to the sound of its reiteration after full interchange of good nights. “Those imps make one feel quite eerie.”
“Has Armine been talking in that curious fashion of his,” said Carey, as they began to pace the walks. “I am afraid his thinker is too big—as the child says in Miss Tytler’s book. This morning over his parsing he asked me—‘Mother, which isrealest, what we touch or what we feel?’ knitting his brows fearfully when I did not catch his meaning, and going on—‘I mean is that fly as real as King David?’ and then as I was more puzzled he went on—‘You see we only need just see that fly now with our outermost senses, and he will only live a little while, and nobody cares or will think of him any more, but everybody always does think, and feel, and care a great deal about King David.’ I told him, as the best answer I could make on the spur of the moment, that David was alive in Heaven, but he pondered in and broke out—‘No, that’s not it! David was a real man, but it is just the same about Perseus and Siegfried, and lots of people that never were men, only just thoughts. Ain’t thoughtsrealerthan things, mother?’”
“But much worse for him, I should say,” exclaimed Mary.
“I thought of Pisistratus Caxton, and wrote to Mr. Ogilvie. It is a great pity, but I am afraid he ought not to dwell on such things till his body is grown up to his mind.”
“Yes, school is the approved remedy for being too clever,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “You are wise. It is a pity, but it will be all the better for him by-and-by.”
“And the elder ones will take care the seasoning is not too severe,” said Caroline, with a resolution she could hardly have shown if this had been her first launch of a son. “But it was about Bobus that I wanted to consult you. His uncle thinks him headstrong and conceited, if not lazy.”
“Lazy he is certainly not.”
“I knew you would say so, but the Colonel cannot enter into his wish to have more physical science and less classics, and will not hear of his going to Germany, which is what he wishes, though I am sure he is too young.”
“He ought not to go there till his character is much more formed.”
“What do you think of his going on here?”
“That’s a temptation I ought to resist. He will soon have outstripped the other boys so that I could not give him the attention he needs, and besides the being with other boys, more his equals, would be invaluable to him.”
“Well, he is rather bumptious.”
“Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk. It spoils him often for life.”
“I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the law and talking to women instead of men, because they don’t argue with him. No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin special training. Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie? You know if my horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all in vain.”
They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow. Bobus was sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate the light on him and to afford it to no one else. On the floor was a servant’s flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged, working a sum with ink from a doll’s tea-cup placed in the candlestick, and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there always was between those two.
“I say, what does pulsum come from?”
“What a brute this is of a fraction! Skipjack, what will go in 639 and 852?”
“Pulsum, a pulse—volat, flies. Eh! Three’ll do it. Or common measure it at once.”
“Bother common measure. The threes in—”
“Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased; paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom. I say wouldn’t that rile Perkins like fun?”
“The threes in seven—two—in eighteen—”
“I say, Johnny, is pulsum from pulco?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Bobus, is it pulco, pulxi, pulsum?”
“Pulco—I make an ass of myself,” muttered Bobus.
“O murder,” groaned Johnny, “it has come out 213.”
“Not half so much murder as this pulsum. Why it will go in them both. I can see with half an eye.”
“Isn’t it pello—pulsum?”
“Pello, to drive out. Hurrah! That fits it.”
“Look out, Skipjack, there’s a moth.”
“Anything worth having?” demanded Bobus.
“Only a grass eggar. Fama, fame; volat, flies; Idomoeea ducem, that Idomaeeus the leader; pulsum, expelled. Get out, I say, you foolish beggar” (to the moth).
“Never mind catching him,” said Bobus, “we’ve got dozens.”
“Yes, but I don’t want him frizzling alive in my candle.”
“Don’t kick up such a shindy,” broke out Johnny, as a much stained handkerchief came flapping about.
“You’ve blotted my sum. Thunder and ages!” as the candlestick toppled over, ink and all. “That is a go!”
“I say, Bobus, lend us your Guy Fawkes to pick up the pieces.”
“Not if I know it,” said Bobus. “You always smash things.”
“There’s a specimen of the way we learn our lessons,” said Caroline, in a low voice, still unseen, as Bobus wiped, sheathed, and pocketed his favourite pen, then proceeded to turn down the lamp, but allowed the others to relight their candle at the expiring wick.
“The results are fair,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“I think of your carpet,” said Mary, quaintly.
“We always lay down an ancient floorcloth in the bay window before the boys come home,” said Carey, laughing. “Here, Bobus.”
And as he came out headforemost at the window, the two ladies discreetly drew off to leave the conversation free.
“So, Brownlow,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “I hear you don’t want to try your luck elsewhere.”
“No, sir.”
“Do you object to telling me why?”
“I see no use in it,” said Bobus, never shy, and further aided by the twilight; “I do quite well enough here.”
“Should you not do better in a larger field among a higher stamp of boys?”
“Public school boys are such fools!”
“And what are the Kenites?”
“Well, not much,” said Bobus, with a twitch in the corner of his mouth; “but I can keep out of their way.”
“You mean that you have gained your footing, and don’t want to have to do it again.”
“Not only that, sir,” said the boy, “but at a public school you’re fagged, and forced to go in for cricket and football.”
“You would soon get above that.”
“Yes, but even then you get no peace, and are nobody unless you go in for all that stuff of athletics and sports. I hate it all, and don’t want to waste my time.”
“I don’t think you are quite right as to there being no distinction without athletics.”
“Allen says it is so now.”
“Allen may be a better judge of the present state of things, but I should think there was always a studious set who were respectable.”
“Besides,” proceeded Bobus, warming with his subject, “I see no good in nothing but classics. I don’t care what ridiculous lies some old man who never existed, or else was a dozen people at once, told about a lot of ruffians who never lived, killing each other at some place that never was. I like what you can lay your finger on, and say it’s here, it’s true, and I can prove it, and explain it, and improve on it.”
“If you can,” said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little brother.
“That’s what I want to do,” said Bobus; “to deal with real things, not words and empty fancies. I know languages are necessary; but if one can read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that’s all that is of use. If my uncle won’t let me study physical science in Germany, I had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it for myself.”