“I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?”
“Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated.”
“And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full training and expansion. If you mean to be a great surgeon—”
“I don’t mean to be a surgeon.”
“A physician then.”
“No, sir. Please don’t let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at everyone’s beck and call. I’ve seen too much of that. I mean to get a professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get to the bottom of everything,” said the boy, with the vast purposes of his age.
“Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school, trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent. Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are growing. Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated classics. You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones, of studying physical science than I can provide for you here.”
This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he allowed that it made all the difference.
Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
“Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth Lawn.”
“Not a good day for it.”
“It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call it fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in the hall if it rained. I’m sure her kindness is great, for she takes infinite trouble to make Janet producible! Poor Janet, you know dressing her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won’t stand still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a still more curious way. So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable, between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass to order.”
It was not long before Janet appeared, and Jessie with her, the latter having been set down to give a message. The two girls were dressed in the same light black-and-white checked silk of early youth, one with pink ribbons and the other with blue; but the contrast was the more apparent, for one was fresh and crisp, while the other was flattened and tumbled; one said everything had been delightful, the other that it had all been very stupid, and the expression made even more difference than the complexion, in one so fair, fresh, and rosy, in the other so sallow and muddled. Jessie looked so sweet and bright, that when she had gone Miss Ogilvie could not help exclaiming, “How pretty she is!”
“Yes, and so good-tempered and pleasant. There is something always restful to me in having her in the room,” said Caroline.
“Restful?” said Janet, with one of her unamiable sneers. “Yes, she and H. S. H. sent me off to sleep with their gossip on the way home! O mother, there’s another item for the Belforest record. Mr. Barnes has sent off all his servants again, even the confidential man is shipped off to America.”
“You seem to have slept with one ear open,” said her mother. “And oh!” as Janet took off her gloves, “I hope you did not show those hands!”
“I could not eat cake without doing so, and Mr. Glover supposed I had been photographing.”
“And what had you been doing?” inquired Mary, at sight of the brown stains.
“Trying chemical experiments with Bobus,” said her mother.
“Yes!” cried Janet, “and I’ve found out why we did not succeed. I thought it out during the dancing.”
“Instead of cultivating the ‘light fantastic toe,’ as the Courier calls it.”
“I danced twice, and a great plague it was. Only with Mr. Glover and with a stupid little middy. I was thinking all the time how senseless it was.”
“How agreeable you must have been!”
“One can’t be agreeable to people like that. Oh, Bobus!” as he came into the room with Mr. Ogilvie, “I’ve found out—”
“I thought Jessie was here,” he interrupted.
“She’s gone home. I know what was wrong yesterday. We ought to have isolated the hypo—”
“Isolated the grandmother,” said Bobus. “That has nothing to do with it.”
“I’m sure of it. I’ll show you how it acts.”
“I’ll show you just the contrary.”
“Not to-night,” cried their mother, as Bobus began to relight the lamp. “You two explosives are quite perilous enough by day without lamps and candles.”
“You endure a great deal,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“I’m not afraid of either of these two doing anything dangerous singly, for they are both careful, but when they are of different minds, I never know what the collision may produce.”
“Yes,” said Bobus, “I’d much sooner have Jessie to help me, for she does what she is bid, and never thinks.”
“That’s all you think women good for,” said Janet.
“Quite true,” said Bobus, coolly.
And Mr. Ogilvie was acknowledged by his sister to have done a good deed that night, since the Folly might be far more secure when Janet tried her experiments alone.
The rude will scuffle through with ease enough,Great schools best suit the sturdy and the rough.Soon see your wish fulfilled in either child,The pert made perter, and the tame made wild.Cowper.
Robert Otway Brownlow came out fourth on the roll of newly-elected scholars of S. Mary, Winton, and his master was, as his sister declared, unwholesomely proud of it, even while he gave all credit to the Folly, and none to himself.
Still Mary had her way and took him to Brittany, and though her present pupils were to leave the schoolroom at Christmas, she would bind herself to no fresh engagement, thinking that she had better be free to make a home for him, whether at Kenminster or elsewhere.
When the half-year began again Bobus was a good deal missed, Jock was in a severe idle fit, and Armine did not come up to the expectations formed of him, and was found, when “up to Mr. Perkins,” to be as bewildered and unready as other people.
All the work in the school seemed flat and poor, except perhaps Johnny’s, which steadily improved. Robert, whose father wished him to be pushed on so as to be fit for examination for Sandhurst, opposed, to all pressure, the passive resistance of stolidity. He was nearly sixteen, but seemed incapable of understanding that compulsory studies were for his good and not a cruel exercise of tyranny. He disdainfully rejected an offer from his aunt to help him in the French and arithmetic which had become imminent, while of the first he knew much less than Babie, and of the latter only as much as would serve to prevent his being daily “kept in.”
One chilly autumn afternoon, Armine was seen, even by the unobservant under-master, to be shivering violently, and his teeth chattering so that he could not speak plainly.
“You ought to be at home,” said Mr. Perkins. “Here, you, Brownlow maximus, just see him home, and tell his mother that he should be seen to.”
“I can go alone,” Armine tried to say; but Mr. Perkins thought the head-master could not say he neglected one who was felt to be a favoured scholar if he sent his cousin with him.
So presently Armine was pushed in at the back door, with these words from Rob to the cook—“Look here, he’s been and got cold, or something.”
Rob then disappeared, and Armine struggled in to the kitchen fire, white, sobbing and panting, and, as the compassionate maids discovered, drenched from head to foot, his hair soaked, his boots squishing with water. His mother and sisters were out, and as cook administered the hottest draught she could compound, and Emma tugged at his jacket, they indignantly demanded what he had been doing to himself.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll go and take my things off; only please don’t tell mother.”
“Yes,” said old nurse, who had tottered in, but who was past fully comprehending emergencies; “go and get into bed, my dear, and Emma shall come and warm it for him.”
“No,” stoutly said the little boy; “there’s nothing the matter, and mother must not know.”
“Take my word for it,” said cook, “that child have a been treated shameful by those great nasty brutes of big boys.”
And when Armine, too cold to sit anywhere but by the only fire in the house, returned with a book and begged humbly for leave to warm himself, he was installed on nurse’s footstool, in front of a huge fire, and hot tea and “lardy-cake” tendered for his refreshment, while the maids by turns pitied and questioned him.
“Have you had a haccident, sir,” asked cook.
“No,” he wearily said.
“Have any one been doing anything to you, then?” And as he did not answer she continued: “You need not think to blind me, sir; I sees it as if it was in print. Them big boys have been a-misusing of you.”
“Now, cook, you ain’t to say a word to my mother,” cried Armine, vehemently. “Promise me.”
“If you’ll tell me all about it, sir,” said cook, coaxingly.
“No,” he answered, “I promised!” And he buried his head in nurse’s lap.
“I calls that a shame,” put in Emma; “but you could tellwe, Master Armine. It ain’t like telling your ma nor your master.”
“I said no one,” said Armine.
The maids left off tormenting him after a time, letting him fall asleep with his head on the lap of old nurse, who went on dreamily stroking his damp hair, not half understanding the matter, or she would have sent him to bed.
Being bound by no promise of secrecy, Emma met her mistress with a statement of the surmises of the kitchen, and Caroline hurried thither to find him waking to headache, fiery cheeks, and aching limbs, which were not simply the consequence of the position in which he had been sleeping before the fire. She saw him safe in bed before she asked any questions, but then she began her interrogations, as little successfully as the maids.
“I can’t, mother,” he said, hiding his face on the pillow.
“My little boy used to have no secrets from me.”
“Men must have secrets sometimes, though they rack their hearts and—their backs,” sighed poor Armine, rolling over. “Oh, mother, my back is so bad! Please don’t bother besides.”
“My poor darling! Let me rub it. There, you might trust Mother Carey! She would not tell Mr. Ogilvie, nor get any one into trouble.”
“I promised, mother. Don’t!” And no persuasions could draw anything from him but tears. Indeed he was so feverish and in so much pain that she called in Dr. Leslie before the evening was over, and rheumatic fever was barely staved off by the most anxious vigilance for the next day or two. It was further decreed that he must be carefully tended all the winter, and must not go to school again till he had quite got over the shock, since he was of a delicate frame that would not bear to be trifled with.
The boy gave a long sigh of content when he heard that he was not to return to school at present; but it did not induce him to utter a word on the cause of the wetting, either to his mother or to Mr. Ogilvie, who came up in much distress, and examined him as soon as he was well enough to bear it. Nor would any of his schoolfellows tell. Jock said he had had an imposition, and was kept in school when “it” happened; John said “he had nothing to do with it;” and Rob and Joe opposed surly negatives to all questions on the subject, Rob adding that Armine was a disgusting little idiot, an expression for which his father took him severely to task.
However there were those in Kenminster who never failed to know all about everything, and the first afternoon after Armine’s disaster that Caroline came to Kencroft she was received with such sympathetic kindness that her prophetic soul misgave her, and she dreaded hearing either that she was letting herself be cheated by some tradesman, or that she was to lose her pupils.
No. After inquiries for Armine, his aunt said she was very sorry, but now he was better she thought his mother ought to know the truth.
“What—?” asked Caroline, startled; and Jessie, the only other person in the room, put down her work, and listened with a strange air of determination.
“My dear, I am afraid it is very painful.”
“Tell me at once, Ellen.”
“I can’t think how he learnt it. But they have been about with all sorts of odd people.”
“Who? What, Ellen? Are you accusing my boy?” said Caroline, her limbs beginning to tremble and her eyes to flash, though she spoke as quietly as she could.
“Now do compose yourself, my dear. I dare say the poor little fellow knew no better, and he has had a severe lesson.”
“If you would only tell me, Ellen.”
“It seems,” said Ellen, with much regret and commiseration, “that all this was from poor little Armine using such shocking language that Rob, as a senior boy, you know, put him under the pump at last to put a stop to it.”
Before Caroline’s fierce, incredulous indignation had found a word, Jessie had exclaimed “Mamma!” in a tone of strong remonstrance; then, “Never mind, Aunt Carey, I know it is only Mrs. Coffinkey, and Johnny promised he would tell the whole story if any one brought that horrid nonsense to you about poor little Armine.”
Kind, gentle Jessie seemed quite transported out of herself, as she flew to the door and called Johnny, leaving the two mothers looking at each other, and Ellen, somewhat startled, saying “I’m sure, if it is not true, I’m very sorry, Caroline, but it came from—”
She broke off, for Johnny was scuffling across the hall, calling out “Holloa, Jessie, what’s up?”
“Johnny, she’s done it!” said Jessie. “You said if the wrong one was accused you would tell the whole story!”
“And what do they say?” asked John, who was by this time in the room.
“Mamma has been telling Aunt Carey that Rob put poor little Armine under the pump for using bad language.”
“I say!” exclaimed John; “if that is not a cram!”
“You said you knew nothing of it,” said his mother.
“I said I didn’t do it. No more I did,” said John.
“No more did Rob, I am sure,” said his mother.
But Johnny, though using no word of denial, made it evident that she was mistaken, as he answered in an odd tone of excuse, “Armie was cheeky.”
“But he didn’t use bad words!” said Caroline, and she met a look of comfortable response.
“Let us hear, John,” said his mother, now the most agitated. “I can’t believe that Rob would so ill-treat a little fellow like Armie, even if he did lose his temper for a moment. Was Armine impertinent?”
“Well, rather,” said John. “He wouldn’t do Rob’s French exercise.” And then—as the ladies cried out, he added—“O yes, he knows ever so much more French than Rob, and now Bobus is gone Rob could not get anyone else.”
“Bobus?”
“O yes, Bobus would do anybody’s exercises at a penny for Latin, two for French, and three for Greek,” said John, not aware of the shock he gave.
“And Armine would not?” said his mother. “Was that it?”
“Not only that,” said John; “but the little beggar must needs up and say he would not help to act a falsehood, and you know nobody could stand that.”
Caroline understood the gravity of such an offence better than Ellen did, for that good lady had never had much in common with her boys after they outgrew the nursery. She answered, “Armine was quite right.”
“So much the worse for him, I fear,” said Caroline.
“Yes,” said John, “it would have been all very well to give him a cuff and tell him to mind his own business.”
“All very well!” ejaculated his mother.
“But you know,” continued Johnny to his aunt, “the seniors are always mad at a junior being like that; and there was another fellow who dragged him to the great school pump, and put him in the trough, and they said they would duck him till he swore to do whatever Rob ordered.”
“Swore!” exclaimed his mother. “You don’t mean that, Johnny?”
“Yes, I do, mamma,” said John. “I would tell you the words, only you wouldn’t like them. And Armine said it would be breaking the Third Commandment, which was the very way to aggravate them most. So they pumped on his head, and tried if he would say it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You may kill me like the forty martyrs, but I won’t,’ and of course that set them on to pump the more.”
“But, Johnny, did you see it all?” cried Caroline. “How could you?”
“I couldn’t help it, Aunt Carey.”
“Yes, Aunt Carey,” again broke in Jessie, “he was held down. That horrid—well, I won’t say whom, Johnny—held him, and his arm was so twisted and grazed that he was obliged to come to me to put some lily-leaves on it, and if he would but show it, it is all black and yellow still.”
Carey, much moved, went over and kissed both her boy’s champions, while Ellen said, with tears in her eyes, “Oh, Johnny, I’m glad you were at least not so bad. What ended it?”
“The school-bell,” said Johnny. “I say, please don’t let Rob know I told, or I shall catch it.”
“Your father—”
“Mamma! You aren’t going to tell him!” cried Jessie and Johnny, both in horror, interrupting her.
“Yes, children, I certainly shall. Do you think such wickedness as that ought to be kept from him? Nearly killing a fatherless child like that, because he was not as bad as they were, and telling falsehoods about it too! I never could have believed it of Rob. Oh! what school does to one’s boys!” She was agitated and overcome to a degree that startled Carey, who began to try to comfort her.
“Perhaps Rob did not understand what he was about, and you see he was led on. Armine will soon be all right again, and though he is a dear, good little fellow, maybe the lesson may have been good for him.”
“How can you treat it so lightly?” cried poor Ellen, in her agitated indignation. “It was a mercy that the child did not catch his death; and as to Rob—! And when Mr. Ogilvie always said the boys were so improved, and that there was no bullying! It just shows how much he knows about it! To think what they have made of my poor Rob! His father will be so grieved! I should not wonder if he had a fit of the gout!”
The shock was far greater to her than to one who had never kept her boys at a distance, and who understood their ways, characters, and code of honour; and besides Rob was her eldest, and she had credited him with every sterling virtue. Jessie and Johnny stood aghast. They had only meant to defend their little cousin, and had never expected either that she would be so much overcome, or that she would insist on their father knowing all, as she did with increasing anger and grief at each of their attempts at persuading her to the contrary. Caroline thought he ought to know. Her children’s father would have known long ago, but then his wrath would have been a different thing from what seemed to be apprehended from his brother; and she understood the distress of Jessie and John, though her pity for Rob was but small. Whatever she tried to say in the way of generous mediation or soothing only made it worse; and poor Ellen, far from being her Serene Highness, was, between scolding and crying, in an almost hysterical state, so that Caroline durst not leave her or the frightened Jessie, and was relieved at last to hear the Colonel coming into the house, when, thinking her presence would do more harm than good, and longing to return to her little son, she slipped away, and was joined at the door by her own John, who asked—
“What’s up, mother?”
“Did you know all about this dreadful business, Jock?”
“Afterwards, of course, but I was shut up in school, writing three hundred disgusting lines of Virgil, or I’d have got the brutes off some way.”
“And so little Armie is the brave one of all!”
“Well, so he is,” said Jock; “but I say, mother, don’t go making him cockier. You know he’s only fit to be stitched up in one of Jessie’s little red Sunday books, and he must learn to keep a civil tongue in his head, and not be an insufferable little donkey.”
“You would not have had him give in and do it! Never, Jock!”
“Why no, but he could have got off with a little chaff instead of coming out with his testimony like that, and so I’ve been telling him. So don’t you set him up again to think himself forty martyrs all in one, or there will be no living with him.”
“If all boys were like him.”
Jock made a sound of horror and disgust that made her laugh.
“He’s all very well,” added he in excuse; “but to think of all being like that. The world would be only one big muff.”
“But, Jock, what’s this about Bobus being paid for doing people’s exercises?”
“Bobus is a cute one,” said Jock.
“I thought he had more uprightness,” she sighed. “And you, Jock?”
“I should think not!” he laughed. “Nobody would trust me.”
“Is that the only reason?” she said, sadly, and he looked up in her face, squeezed her hand, and muttered—
“One mayn’t like dirt without making such a row.”
“That’s like father’s boy,” she said, and he wrung her hand again.
They found Armine coiled up before the fire with a book, and Jock greeted him with—
“Well, you little donkey, there’s such a shindy at the Croft as you never heard.”
“Mother, you know!” cried Armine, running into her outstretched arms and being covered with her kisses. “But who told?” he asked.
“John and Jessie,” said Jock. “They always said they would if anyone said anything against you to mother or Uncle Robert.”
“Against me?” said Armine.
“Yes,” said Jock. “Didn’t you know it got about through some of the juniors or their sisters that it was Brownlow maximus gently chastising you for bad language, and of course Mrs. Coffinkey told Aunt Ellen.”
“Oh, but Jock,” cried Armine, turning round in consternation, “I hope Rob does not know.”
And on further pressing it was extracted that Rob, when sent home with him, had threatened him with the great black vaulted cellars of Kencroft if he divulged the truth. When Jock left them the relief of pouring out the whole history to the mother was evidently great.
“You know, mother, I couldn’t,” he cried, as if there had been a physical impossibility.
“Why, dear child. How did you bear their horrid cruelty?”
“I thought it could not be so bad as it was for the forty soldiers on the Lake. Dear grandmamma read us the story out of a little red book one Sunday evening when you were gone to Church. They froze, you know, and it was only cold and nasty for me.”
“So the thought of them carried you through?”
“God carried me through,” said the child reverently. “I asked Him not to let me break His Commandment.”
Just then the Colonel’s heavy tread was heard, and with him came Mr. Ogilvie, whom he had met on the road and informed. The good man was indeed terribly grieved, and his first words were, “Caroline, I cannot tell you how much shocked and concerned I am;” and then he laid his hand on Armine’s shoulder saying—“My little boy, I am exceedingly sorry for what you have suffered. One day Robert will be so too. You have been a noble little fellow, and if anything could console me for the part Robert has played it would be the seeing one of my dear brother’s sons so like his father.”
He gave the downcast brow a fatherly kiss, so really like those of days gone by that the boy’s overstrained spirits gushed forth in sobs and tears, of which he was so much ashamed that he rushed out of the room, leaving his mother greatly overcome, his uncle distressed and annoyed, and his master not much less so, at the revelation of so much evil, so hard either to reach or to understand.
“I would have brought Robert to apologise,” said the Colonel, “if he had been as yet in a mood to do so properly.”
“Oh! that would have been dreadful for us all,” ejaculated Caroline, under her breath.
“But I can make nothing of him,” continued he, “He is perfectly stolid and seems incapable of feeling anything, though I have talked to him as I never thought to have to speak to any son of mine; but he is deaf to all.”
The Colonel, in his wrath, even while addressing only Caroline and Mr. Ogilvie, had raised his voice as if he were shouting words of command, so that both shrank a little, and Carey said—
“I don’t think he knew it was so bad.”
“What? Cheating his masters and torturing a helpless child for not yielding to his tyranny?”
“People don’t always give things their right names even to themselves,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I should try to see it from the boy’s point of view.”
“I have no notion of extenuating ill-conduct or making excuses! That’s the modern way! So principles get lowered! I tell you, sir, there are excuses for everything. What makes the difference is only the listening to them or not.”
“Yes,” ventured Caroline, “but is there not a difference between finding excuses for oneself and for other people?”
“All alike, lowering the principle,” said the Colonel, with something of the same slowness of comprehension as his son. “If excuses are to be made for everything, I don’t wonder that there is no teaching one’s boys truth or common honesty and humanity.”
“But, Robert,” said Caroline, roused to defence; “do you really mean that in your time nobody bullied or cribbed?”
“There was some shame about it if they did,” said the Colonel. “Now, I suppose, I am to be told that it is an ordinary custom to be connived at.”
“Certainly not by me,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I had hoped that the standard of honour had been raised, but it is very hard to mete the exact level of the schoolboy code from the outside.”
“And your John and mine have never given in to it,” added Caroline.
“What do you propose to do, Mr. Ogilvie?” said the Colonel. “I shall do my part with my boy as a father. What will you do with him and the other bully, who I find was Cripps.”
“I shall see Cripps’s father first. I think it might be well if we both saw him before deciding on the form of discipline. We have to think not only of justice but of the effect on their characters.”
“That’s the modern system,” said the Colonel indignantly. “Fine work it would make in the army. I know when punishment is deserved. I don’t set up to be Providence, to know exactly what work it is to do. I leave that to my Maker and do my duty.”
He was cut short by his son Joe rushing in headlong, exclaiming—
“Papa, papa, please come! Rob has knocked Johnny down and he doesn’t come round.”
Colonel Brownlow hurried off, Caroline trying to make him hear her offer to follow if she could be useful, and sending Jock to see whether there was any opening for her. Unless the emergency were very great indeed she knew her absence would be preferred, and so she and Mr. Ogilvie remained, talking the matter over, with more pity for the delinquent than his own family would have thought natural.
“It really is a terrible thing to be stupid,” she said. “I don’t imagine that unlucky boy ever entered into his father’s idea of truth and honour, which really is fine in its way.”
“Very fine, and proved to have made many fine fellows in its time. I dare say the lad will grow up to it, but just now he simply feels cruelly injured by interference with a senior’s claim to absolute submission.”
“Which he sees as singly as his father sees the simple duty of justice.”
“It would be comfortable if we poor moderns could deal out our measures with that straightforward military simplicity. I cannot help seeing in that unfortunate boy the victim of examinations for commissions. Boys must be subjected to high pressure before they can thoroughly enter into the importance of the issues that depend upon it; and when a sluggish, dull intellect is forced beyond endurance, there is an absolute instinct of escape, impelling to shifts and underhand ways of eluding work. Of course the wrong is great, but the responsibility rests with the taskmaster in the same manner as the thefts of a starved slave might on his owner.”
“The taskmaster being the country?”
“Exactly so. Happy those boys who have available brains, like yours.”
“Ah! I am very sorry about Bobus; what ought I to do?”
“Hardly more than write a few words of warning, since the change may probably have put an end to the practice.”
Jock presently brought back tidings that his namesake was all right, except for a black eye, and was growling like ten bears at having been sent to bed.
“Uncle Robert was more angry than ever, in a white heat, quiet and terrible,” said Jock, in an awe-struck voice. “He has locked Rob up in his study, and here’s Joe, for Aunt Ellen is quite knocked up, and they want the house to be very quiet.”
No tragical consequences, however, ensued. Mother and sons both appeared the next morning, and were reported as “all right” by the first inquirer from the Folly; but Jessie came to her lessons with swollen eyelids as if she had cried half the night; and when her aunt thanked her for defending Armine, she began to cry again, and Essie imparted to Barbara that Rob was “just like a downright savage with her.”
“No; hush, Essie, it is not that,” said Jessie; “but papa is so dreadfully angry with him, and he is to be sent away, and it is all my fault.”
“But Jessie, dear, surely it is better for Rob to be stopped from those deceitful ways.”
“O yes, I know. But that I should have turned against him!” And Jessie was so thoroughly unhappy that none of her lessons prospered and her German exercise had three great tear blots on it.
Rob’s second misdemeanour had simplified matters by deciding his father on sending him from home at once into the hands of a professed coach, who would not let him elude study, and whose pupils were too big to be bullied. To the last he maintained his sullen dogged air of indifference, though there might be more truth than the Folly was disposed to allow in his sister’s allegations that it was because he did feel it so very much, especially mamma’s looking so ill and worried.
Ellen did in truth look thoroughly unhinged, though no one saw her give way. She felt her boy’s conduct sorely, and grieved at the first parting in her family. Besides, there was anxiety for the future. Rob’s manner of conducting his studies was no hopeful augury of his success, and the expenses of sending him to a tutor fell the more heavily because unexpectedly. A horse and man were given up, and Jessie had to resign the hope of her music lessons. These were the first retrenchments, and the diminution of dignity was felt.
The Colonel showed his trouble and anxiety by speaking and tramping louder than ever, ruling his gardener with severe precision, and thundering at his boys whenever he saw them idle. Both he and his wife were so elaborately kind and polite that Caroline believed that it was an act of magnanimous forgiveness for the ill luck that she and her boys had brought them. At last the Colonel had the threatened fit of the gout, which restored his equilibrium, and brought him back to his usual condition of kindly, if somewhat ponderous, good sense.
He had not long recovered before Number Nine made his appearance at Kencroft, and thus his mother had unusual facilities for inquiries of Dr. Leslie respecting the master of Belforest.
The old man really seemed to be in a dying state. A hospital nurse had taken charge of him, but there was not a dependent about the place, from Mr. Richards downwards, who was not under notice to quit, and most were staying on without his knowledge on the advice of the London solicitor, to whom the agent had written. There was even more excitement on the intelligence that Mr. Barnes had sent for Farmer Gould.
On this there was no doubt, for Mr. Gould, always delicately honourable towards Mrs. Brownlow, came himself to tell her about the interview. It seemed to have been the outcome of a yearning of the dying man towards the sole survivor of the companions of his early days. He had talked in a feeble wandering way of old times, but had said nothing about the child, and was plainly incapable of sustained attention.
He had asked Mr. Gould to come again, but on this second visit he was too far gone for recognition, and had returned to his moody instinctive aversion to visitors, and in three days more he was dead.
Where is his golden heap?Divine Breathings.
Mrs. Robert Brownlow was churched with all the expedition possible, in order that she might not lose the sight of the funeral procession, which would be fully visible from the studio in the top of the tower.
The excitement was increased by invitations to attend the funeral being sent to the Colonel and to his two eldest nephews, who were just come home for the holidays, also to their mother to be present at the subsequent reading of the will.
A carriage was sent for her, and she entered it, not knowing or caring to find out what she wished, and haunted by the line, “Die and endow a college or a cat.”
Allen met her at the front door, whispering—“Did you see, mother, he has still got his ears?” And the thought crossed her—“Will those ears cost us dear?”
She was the only woman present in the library—a large room, but with an atmosphere as if the open air had not been admitted for thirty years, and with an enormous fire, close to which was the arm-chair whither she was marshalled, being introduced to the two solicitors, Mr. Rowse and Mr. Wakefield, who, with Farmer Gould, the agent, Richards, the Colonel, and the two boys, made up the audience.
The lawyers explained that the will had been sent home ten years ago from Yucatan, and had ever since been in their hands. Search had been made for a later one, but none had been found, nor did they believe that one could exist.
It was very short. The executors were Charles Rowse and Peter Ball, and the whole property was devised to them, and to Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Brownlow, as trustees for the testator’s great-niece, Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, daughter of John and Caroline Allen, and wife of Joseph Brownlow, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., the income and use thereof to be enjoyed by her during her lifetime; and the property, after her death, to be divided among her children in such proportions as she should direct.
That was all; there was no legacy, no further directions.
“Allow me to congratulate—” began the elder lawyer.
“No—no—oh, stay a bit,” cried she, in breathless dismay and bewilderment. “It can’t be! It can’t mean only me. There must be something about Elvira de Menella.”
“I fear there is not,” said Mr. Rowse; “I could wish my late client had attended more to the claims of justice, and had divided the property, which could well have borne it; but unfortunately it is not so.”
“It is exactly as he led us to expect,” said Mr. Gould. “We have no right to complain, and very likely the child will be much happier without it. You have a fine family growing up to enjoy it, Mrs. Brownlow, and I am sure no one congratulates you more heartily than I.”
“Don’t; it can’t be,” cried the heiress, nearly crying, and wringing the old farmer’s hand. “He must have meant Elvira. You know he sent for you. Has everything been hunted over? There must be a later will.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Brownlow,” said the solicitor, “you may rest assured that full search has been made. Mr. Richards had the same impression, and we have been searching every imaginable receptacle.”
“Besides,” added Colonel Brownlow, “if he had made another will there would have been witnesses.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Richards; “but to make matters certain, I wrote to several of the servants to ask whether they remembered any attestation, but no one did; and indeed I doubt whether, after his arrival here, poor Mr. Barnes ever had sustained power enough to have drawn up and executed a will without my assistance, or that of any legal gentleman.”
“It is too hard and unjust,” cried Caroline; “it cannot be. I must halve it with the child, as if there had been no will at all. Robert! you know that is what your brother would have done.”
“That would be just as well as generous, indeed, if it were practicable,” said Mr. Rowse; “but unfortunately Colonel Brownlow and myself (for Mr. Ball is dead) are in trust to prevent any such proceeding. All that is in your power is to divide the property among your own family by will, in such proportion as you may think fit.”
“Quite true, my dear sister,” said the Colonel, meeting her despairing appealing look, “as regards the principal, but the ready money at the bank and the income are entirely at your own disposal, and you can, without difficulty, secure a very sufficient compensation to the little girl out of them.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Rowse.
“You’ll let me—you’ll let me, Mr. Gould,” implored Caroline; “you’ll let me keep her, and do all I can to make up to her. You see the Colonel thinks it is only justice; don’t you, Robert?”
“Mrs. Brownlow is quite right,” said the Colonel, seeing that her vehemence was a little distrusted; “it will be only an act of justice to make provision for your granddaughter.”
“I am sure, Colonel Brownlow, nothing can be handsomer than your conduct and Mrs. Brownlow’s,” said the old man; “but I should not like to take advantage of what she is good enough to say on the spur of the moment, till she has had more time to think it over.”
Therewith he took leave, while Caroline exclaimed—
“I always say there is no truer gentleman in the county than old Mr. Gould. I shall not be satisfied about that will till I have turned everything over and the partners have been written to.”
Again she was assured that she might set her mind at rest, and then the lawyers began to read a statement of the property which made Allen utter, under his breath, an emphatic “I say!” but his mother hardly took it in. The heated room had affected her from the first, and the bewilderment of the tidings seemed almost to crush her; her heart and temples throbbed, her head ached violently, and while the final words respecting arrangements were passing between the Colonel and the lawyers, she was conscious only of a sickening sense of oppression, and a fear of committing the absurdity of fainting.
However, at last her brother-in-law put her into the brougham, desiring the boys to walk home, which they did very willingly, and with a wonderful air of lordship and possession.
“Well, Caroline,” said the Colonel, “I congratulate you on being the richest proprietor in the county.”
“O Robert, don’t! If—if,” said a suffocated voice, so miserable that he turned and took her hand kindly, saying—
“My dear sister, this feeling is very—it becomes you well. This is a fearful responsibility.”
She could not answer. She only leant back in the carriage, with closed eyes, and moaned—
“Oh! Joe! Joe!”
“Indeed,” said his brother, greatly touched, “we want him more than ever.”
He did not try to talk any more to her, and when they reached the Pagoda, all she could do was to hurry up stairs, and, throwing off her bonnet, bury her face in the pillow.
Janet and her aunt both followed, the latter with kind and tender solicitude; but Caroline could bear nothing, and begged only to be left alone.
“Dear Ellen, it is very kind, but nothing does any good to these headaches. Please don’t—please leave me alone.”
They saw it was the only true kindness, and left her, after all attempts at bathing her forehead, or giving her sal volatile, proved only to molest her. She lay on her bed, not able to think, and feeling nothing but the pain of her headache and a general weight and loneliness.
The first break was from Allen, who came in tenderly with a cup of coffee, saying that they thought her time was come for being ready for it. His manner always did her good, and she sat up, pushed back her hair, smiled, took the cup, and thanked him lovingly.
“Uncle Robert is waiting to hear if you are better,” he said.
“Oh yes,” she said; “thank him; I am sorry I was so silly.”
“He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and Mr. Wakefield,” said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad of fifteen, who had just become “somebody.”
“Very well,” she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again, just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.
“And mother,” said Allen, lingering in the dark, “don’t trouble about Elfie. I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make all straight.”
Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous announcement, and she dreamily said—
“Time enough to think of such things.”
“I know,” said Allen; “but I thought you ought to know this.”
He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she was really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy’s words, and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep. She had a curious dream, which she remembered long after. She seemed to have identified herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her children, who turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on pedestals in the Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly calling them. Then her husband’s voice, sad and reproachful, seemed to say, “Magnum Bonum! Magnum Bonum!” and she fancied it the elixir which alone could restore them, and would have climbed a mountain in search of it, as in the Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy, and immovable, and she found that they too had become gold, and that the chill was creeping upwards. With a scream of “Save the children, Joe,” she awoke.
No wonder she had dreamt of cold golden limbs, for her feet were really chilly as ice, and the room as dark as at midnight. However it was not yet seven o’clock; and presently Janet brought a light, and persuaded her to come downstairs and warm herself. She was not yet capable of going into the dining-room to the family tea, but crept down to lie on the sofa in the drawing-room; and there, after taking the small refreshment which was all she could yet endure, she lay with closed eyes, while the children came in from the meal. Armine and Babie were the first. She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert herself to speak to them.
“Asleep,” they whispered. “Poor Mother Carey.”
“Armie,” said Babie, “is mother unhappy because she has got rich?”
Armine hesitated. His brief experience of school had made him less unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fashion even to his little sister, and she added—
“Must people get wicked when they are rich?”
“Mother is always good,” said faithful little Armine.
“The rich people in the Bible were all bad,” pondered Babie. “There was Dives, and the man with the barns.”
“Yes,” said Armine; “but there were good ones too—Abraham and Solomon.”
“Solomon was not always good,” said Babie; “and Uncle Robert told Allen it was a fearful responsibility. What is a responsibility, Armie? I am sure Ali didn’t like it.”
“Something to answer for!” said Armine.
“To who?” asked the little girl.
“To God,” said the boy reverently. “It’s like the talent in the parable. One has got to do something for God with it, and then it won’t turn to harm.”
“Like the man’s treasure that changed into slate stones when he made a bad use of it,” said Babie. “Oh! Armie, what shall we do? Shall we give plum-puddings to the little thin girls down the lane?”
“And I should like to give something good to the little grey workhouse boys,” said Armine. “I should so hate always walking out along a straight road as they do.”
“And oh! Armie, then don’t you think we may get a nice book to write out Jotapata in?”
“Yes, a real jolly one. For you know, Babie, it will take lots of room, even if I write my very smallest.”
“Please let it be ruled, Armie. And where shall we begin?”
“Oh! at the beginning, I think, just when Sir Engelbert first heard about the Crusade.”
“It will take lots of books then.”
“Never mind, we can buy them all now. And do you know, Bab, I think Adelmar and Ermelind might find a nice lot of natural petroleum and frighten Mustafa ever so much with it!”
For be it known that Armine and Barbara’s most cherished delight was in one continued running invention of a defence of Jotapata by a crusading family, which went on from generation to generation with unabated energy, though they were very apt to be reduced to two young children who held out their fortress against frightful odds of Saracens, and sometimes conquered, sometimes converted their enemies. Nobody but themselves was fully kept au courant with this wonderful siege, which had hitherto been recorded in interlined copy-books, or little paper books pasted together, and very remarkably illustrated.
The door began to creak with an elaborate noisiness intended for perfect silence, and Jock’s voice was heard.
“Bother the door! Did it wake mother? No? That’s right;” and he squatted down between the little ones while Bobus seated himself at the table with a book.
“Well! what colour shall our ponies be?” began Jock, in an attempt at a whisper.
“Oh! shall we have ponies?” cried the little ones.
“Zebras if we like,” said Jock. “We’ll have a team.”
“Can’t,” growled Bobus.
“Why not? They can be bought!”
“Not tamed. They’ve tried it at the Jardin d’Acclimatisation.”
“Oh, that was only Frenchmen. A zebra is too jolly to let himself be tamed by a Frenchman. I’ll break one in myself and go out with the hounds upon him.”
“Jack-ass on striped-ass—or off him,” muttered Bobus.
“Oh! don’t, Jock,” implored Babie, “you’ll get thrown.”
“No such thing. You’ll come to the meet yourself, Babie, on your Arab.”
“Not she,” said Bobus, in his teasing voice. “She’ll be governessed up and kept to lessons all day.”
“Mother always teaches us,” said Babie.
“She’ll have no time, she’ll be a great lady, and you’ll have three governesses—one for French, and one for German, and one for deportment, to make you turn out your toes, and hold up your head, and never sit on the rug.”
“Never mind, Babie,” said Jock. “We’ll bother them out of their lives if they do.”
“You’ll be at school,” said Bobus, “and they’ll all three go out walking with Babie, and if she goes out of a straight line one will say ‘Fi donc, Mademoiselle Barbe,’ and the other will say, ‘Schamen sie sich, Fraulein Barbara,’ and the third will call for the stocks.”
“For shame, Robert,” cried his mother, hearing something like a sob; “how can you tease her so!”
“Mother, must I have three governesses?” asked poor little Barbara.
“Not one cross one, my sweet, if I can help it!”
“Oh! mother, if it might be Miss Ogilvie?” said Babie.
“Yes, mother, do let it be Miss Ogilvie,” chimed in Armine. “She tells such jolly stories!”
“She ain’t a very nasty one,” quoted Jock from Newman Noggs, and as Janet appeared he received her with—“Moved by Barbara, seconded by Armine, that Miss Ogilvie become bear-leader to lick you all into shape.”
“What do you think of it, Janet?” said her mother.
“It will not make much difference to me,” said Janet. “I shall depend on classes and lectures when we go back to London. I should have thought a German better for the children, but I suppose the chief point is to find some one who can manage Elfie if we are still to keep her.”
“By the bye, where is she, poor little thing?” asked Caroline.
“Aunt Ellen took her home,” said Janet. “She said she would send her back at bed-time, but she thought we should be more comfortable alone to-night.”
“Real kindness,” said Caroline; “but remember, children, all of you, that Elfie is altogether one of us, on perfectly equal terms, so don’t let any difference be made now or ever.”
“Shall I have a great many more lessons, mother?” asked Babie.
“Don’t be as silly as Essie, Babie,” said Janet. “She expects us all to have velvet frocks and gold-fringed sashes, and Jessie’s first thought was ‘Now, Janet, you’ll have a ladies’ maid.’”
“No wonder she rejoiced to be relieved of trying to make you presentable,” said Bobus.
“Shall we live at Belforest?” asked Armine.
“Part of the year,” said Janet, who was in a wonderfully expansive and genial state; “but we shall get back to London for the season, and know what it is to enjoy life and rationality again, and then we must all go abroad. Mother, how soon can we go abroad?”
“It won’t make a bit of difference for a year. We shan’t get it for ever so long,” said Bobus.
“Oh!”
“Fact. I know a man whose uncle left him a hundred pounds last year, and the lawyers haven’t let him touch a penny of it.”
“Perhaps he is not of age,” said Janet.
“At any rate,” said Jock, “we can have our fun at Belforest.”
“O yes, Jock, only think,” cried Babie, “all the dear tadpoles belong to mother!”
“And all the dragon-flies,” said Armine.
“And all the herons,” said Jock.
“We can open the gates again,” said Armine.
“Oh! the flowers!” cried Babie in an ecstasy.
“Yes,” said Janet. “I suppose we shall spend the early spring in the country, but we must have the best part of the season in London now that we can get out of banishment, and enjoy rational conversation once more.”
“Rational fiddlestick,” muttered Bobus.
“That’s what any girl who wasn’t such a prig as Janet would look for,” said Jock.
“Well, of course,” said Janet. “I mean to have my balls like other people; I shall see life thoroughly. That’s just what I value this for.”
Bobus made a scoffing noise.
“What’s up, Bobus?” asked Jock.
“Nothing, only you keep up such a row, one can’t read.”
“I’m sure this is better and more wonderful than any book!” said Jock.
“It makes no odds to me,” returned Bobus, over his book.
“Oh! now!” cried Janet, “if it were only the pleasure of being free from patronage it would be something.”
“Gratitude!” said Bobus.
“I’ll show my gratitude,” said Janet; “we’ll give all of them at Kencroft all the fine clothes and jewels and amusements that ever they care for, more than ever they gave us; only it is we that shall give and they that will take, don’t you see?”
“Sweet charity,” quoth Bobus.
Those two were a great contrast; Janet had never been so radiant, feeling her sentence of banishment revoked, and realising more vividly than anyone else was doing, the pleasures of wealth. The cloud under which she had been ever since the coming to the Pagoda seemed to have rolled away, in the sense of triumph and anticipation; while Bobus seemed to have fallen into a mood of sarcastic ill-temper. His mother saw, and it added to her sense of worry, though her bright sweet nature would scarcely have fathomed the cause, even had she been in a state to think actively rather than to feel passively. Bobus, only a year younger than Allen, and endowed with more force and application, if not with more quickness, had always been on a level with his brother, and felt superior, despising Allen’s Eton airs and graces, and other characteristics which most people thought amiable. And now Allen had become son and heir, and was treated by everyone as the only person of importance. Bobus did not know what his own claims might be, but at any rate his brother’s would transcend them, and his temper was thoroughly upset.
Poor Caroline! She did not wholly omit to pray “In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, deliver us!” but if she had known all that was in her children’s hearts, her own would have trembled more.
And as to Ellen, the utmost she allowed herself to say was, “Well, I hope she will make a good use of it!”
While the Colonel, as trustee and adviser, had really a very considerable amount of direct importance and enjoyment before him, which might indeed be—to use his own useful phrase—“a fearful responsibility,” but was no small boon to a man with too much time on his hands.