Summer had quite set in before Mr. Egremont was able to go out for a drive, and then he was ordered to Buxton.
Nuttie only once saw her cousins before leaving town, for their little boy fulfilled the nursery superstition by whooping till May; and all intercourse was prohibited, till he had ceased for a whole week to utter a suspicious sound. Mr. Dutton had insisted on the family spending a fortnight at Springfield House for change of air, and it was there that Nuttie was permitted to see them, though the children were still forbidden to meet.
Annaple looked very thin, but rattled as merrily as ever. 'No one could guess,' she said, 'what a delight it was not to know what one was to have for dinner?'
'To do more than know, I am afraid,' said Ursula.
'Well, next to the delight of knowing nothing at all about it—and even that is only good for a holiday—is the delight of seeing a pudding come out smooth and comfortable and unbroken from its basin. "Something attempted, something done," you know. It is quite as good a work of art as a water-coloured drawing.'
'Only not quite so permanent.'
'No; it is only one's first pudding that one wants to embalm in a glass case for being so good as not to leave its better part behind in the basin, or to collapse as soon as it is in the dish.'
'Which my puddings always did in the happy days of old, but then I was always hunted ignominiously out of the kitchen and told I wasted good food,' said Nuttie.
'Yes, and waste is fearful when Mark and Billy have to eat it all the same, like the poor cows with spoilt hay. I wonder whether your old experiences recall the joy of finding trustworthy eggs within your price.'
'Ah, I was not housekeeper. I only remember being in disgrace for grumbling when there was no pudding, because the hens would not lay.'
'Though I heard a woman declaring the other day that there ought to be a machine for them. Oh, the scenes that I encounter when I am marketing! If I only could describe them for Punch! I walked home once with our porter's wife, carrying two most brilliant sticks of rhubarb, all carmine stalk and gamboge leaf, and expressing a very natural opinion that the rhubarb tree must be very showy to look at, and curious to know in what kind of fruit the medicine grew.'
'Oh, Annaple! do you go yourself in that way?'
'Mark used to go with me, but, poor old fellow, he has ruinous ideas about prices and quantities, and besides, now he is so hard worked-up and down all day—he wants a little more of his bed in the morning.'
'And what do you want?'
'I never was a sleepy creature, and I get back in time to dress the boy. I generally find him at high-jinks on his father's bed. It uses up a little superfluous energy before the dressing.'
'But surely you have a servant now?'
'I've come to the conclusion that a workman's wife charing is a better institution. No. 1, a pet of Miss Nugent's, was a nice creature, but the London air did for her at once. No. 2, also from Micklethwayte, instantly set up a young man, highly respectable, and ready to marry on the spot, as they did, though their united ages don't amount to thirty-nine. No. 3 was a Cockney, and couldn't stay because the look-out was so dull; and No. 4 gossiped with her kind when I thought her safe in the Temple Gardens with Billy, whereby he caught the whooping-cough, and as she also took the liberty of wearing my fur cloak, and was not particular as to accuracy, we parted on short notice; and I got this woman to come in every day to scrub, help make the bed, etc. It is much less trouble, and the only fault I have to find with her is an absolute incapability of discerning blacks. I believe she thinks I have a monomania against them.'
Still Annaple insisted that she did not work half so hard as her nieces, Muriel and Janet, in their London season, and that her economy was not nearly so trying and difficult as that which Lady Delmar had been practising for years in order to afford them a summer there; nor was her anxiety to make both ends meet by any means equal to her sister's in keeping up appearances, and avoiding detrimentals. The two sisters met occasionally, but Lady Delmar was so compassionate and patronising that Annaple's spirit recoiled in off-hand levity and rattle, and neither regretted the occupation that prevented them from seeing much of one another.
A year passed by, chiefly spent by Mr. Egremont in the pursuit of comparative health, at Buxton, Bagneres, and Biarritz, during which his daughter could do little but attend to him and to little Alwyn. The boy had been enough left to her and nurse during his father's acute illness to have become more amenable. He was an affectionate child, inheriting, with his mother's face, her sweetness and docility of nature, and he was old enough to be a good deal impressed with the fact that he had made poor papa so ill by teasing him to stand in the cold. Mr. Egremont was not at rest without a sight of the child every day, if only for a moment, and the helplessness and suffering had awed the little fellow a good deal. It was touching to see him pause when galloping about the house when he went past the sick-room, and hush his merry voice of his own accord.
And in the journeys, when his father's invalided state would have made a fractious or wilful child a serious inconvenience, his good temper and contentment were invaluable. He would sit for hours on his sister's lap, listening to whispered oft-told tales, or playing at impromptu quiet games; he could go to sleep anywhere, and the wonderful discoveries he made at each new place were the amusement of all his auditors. Sister was always his playfellow and companion whenever she could be spared from her father, and she had an ever-increasing influence over him which she did her best to raise into principle.
Perhaps she never had a happier moment than when she heard how he had put his hands behind him and steadily refused when Gregorio had offered to regale him at a stall of bonbons forming only a thin crust to liqueurs, which unfortunately he had already been taught to like.
'But I told him sister said I mustn't have them,' said Alwyn. 'And then he made a face and said something in French about you. I know 'twas you, for he said "soeur." What was it?'
'Never mind, Wynnie dear. We had much better never know. You were sister's own dear steadfast boy, and you shall kiss mother's picture.'
Nuttie had a beautiful coloured photograph of her mother, finished like a miniature, which had been taken at Nice, in the time of Alice Egremont's most complete and matured beauty. She had taught Alwyn to kiss and greet it every evening before his prayers, and such a kiss was his reward when he had shown any special act of goodness, for which, as she told him, 'mother would have been pleased with her little son.'
Such another boon was his one Sunday evening at Biarritz, when she found that while she was shut up at dinner with her father he had voluntarily gone to church with nurse instead of playing on the beach with some other English children. 'It was all very long and tiresome,' he said, when asked if he liked it.
'Then why did you go, old man? There was no need to drag you there,' said his father.
'She didn't drag me,' said the boy; 'I walked.'
'You need not have walked then, Master Dignity.'
'Poor nursie couldn't go without me,' said Alwyn, 'and sister says there's a blessing on those that go.'
'A blessing? eh! and what idea does that little head entertain of a blessing?' said Mr. Egremont.
Alwyn lifted his soft brown eyes reverently and said, 'It is something good,' speaking, as he always did, in a baby lisp inimitable here.
'Well?'
'And it comes from God.'
'Well, what is it? Can you see it?'
'No'—he looked in perplexity towards Nuttie, who was in agony all the time, lest there should be a scoff that might remain in the child's mind.
'Never mind sister. Can you feel it?'
'Yes;' and the little face lighted with such a reality that the incipient mockery turned into wonder on the next question.
'And how does it feel?'
'Oh, so nice! It makes Wynnie glad here,' and he spread his hands over his breast; and gave a little caper like a kid for very gladness.
'There!' said Mr. Egremont, leaning back fairly conquered. 'Any one might envy Wynnie! Goodnight, my boy, blessing and all. I wonder if one felt like that when one was a little shaver,' he pursued, as Alwyn went off to his bed.
'I think I did sometimes,' said Nuttie, 'but I never was half as good as Wynnie!'
'What?' exclaimed her father. 'You! bred up among the saints.'
'Ah! but I hadn't the same nature. I never was like—her.'
'Well—'tis very pretty now, and I don't know how we could stand a young Turk, but you mustn't make a girl of him.'
'There's no fear of that,' said Nuttie. 'He is full of spirit. That old bathing woman calls him "un vrai petit diable d'Anglais," he is so venturous.'
Which delighted Mr. Egremont as much as the concession that the boy's faith was 'pretty' delighted Ursula. Indeed, he went a little further, for when she came back from her few minutes at Alwyn's bedside he proceeded to tell her of the absolute neglect in which his mother, a belle of the Almacks days, had left her nursery. It was the first time he had ever hinted at a shadow of perception that anything in his own life had been amiss, and Ursula could not but feel a dreamy, hopeful wonder whether her sweet little Alwyn could be the destined means of doing that in which her mother had failed. It was at least enough to quicken those prayers which had been more dutiful than trustful.
And then her hope sank again when she realised that her father's days were spent between the lull of opiate, followed by a certain serenity, then in a period of irritability, each being more or less prolonged, according to health, weather, or entertainment, and closed again by the sedatives in various forms. It relieved her indeed, but she felt it a wickedness to be glad of the calm, and she was aware that the habit was making inroads on her father's powers. Between that and his defect of eyesight, he was often much confused, especially about money matters, and was more and more dependent.
Would that it had been only upon her, but she was constantly certain that Gregorio was taking advantage of his master's helplessness, and keeping it up by all means in his power. Yet what could be done? For the valet was absolutely necessary to his comfort, and yet she sometimes thought her father half in dread of him, and afraid to expostulate about personal neglects, which became more frequent. Things, that would have enraged him from others, were only grumbled and fretted over, when Gregorio caused him real inconvenience by absence or forgetfulness, and made very insufficient apology. It seemed like a bondage; Nuttie thought of her mother's efforts, and blamed herself in vain.
It was during this journey that she heard of good Miss Headworth's death. The old lady's mind had long failed, and the actual present loss to Nuttie was not great; but it seemed to close a long account of gratitude such as she had not thoroughly felt or understood before; and the link with Micklethwayte was severed.
For Mark and Annaple prevailed on Mrs. Egremont to install Miss Nugent as governess to Rosalind and Adela. In that capacity Nuttie hoped to see a good deal of her; but of course was again disappointed, for her father would not hear of returning to Bridgefield. It was draughty, and dull, and desolate, and nothing suited him but London.
'Man's work ends with set of sun,Woman's work is never done.'—Proverb.
It was far on in May when Ursula found herself again in the sitting-room over the warehouse. Somehow it had not the dainty well-cared-for air of erst. The pretty table ornaments were out of sight; the glass over the clock was dim, the hands had stopped; some of Annaple's foes, the blacks, had effected a lodgment on the Parian figures; the chintzes showed wear and wash, almost grime; the carpet's pattern was worn; a basket full of socks was on the sofa; and on the table a dress, once belonging to Annaple's trousseau, was laid out, converted into its component parts. The wails of a baby could be heard in the distance, and the first person to appear was Master William, sturdy and happy in spite of wofully darned knees to his stockings.
'Mother's coming, if baby will stop crying,' he said, 'and lie in her cradle.'
'Your little sister! What's her name?'
'Jane Christian,' said the boy, with a much more distinct enunciation than Alwyn, though a year older, had yet acquired. 'She does cry so! She won't let mother make my new knickies out of her blue gown!'
Thoughts of the suits that Alwyn was discarding came across Nuttie. Could they be offered without offence? She asked, however, 'Do you remember Alwyn—my Wynnie?'
'Wynnie gave me my horse,' cried the boy, unstabling a steed which had seen hard service since the presentation. 'Where's Wynnie?'
'He is at home. You must come and see him,' said Nuttie, who had not been allowed to bring him till secure of a clean bill of health. 'But see, just outside the door, there's something for Billy.'
She had made her servant bring up the parcels to the passage outside, and Billy was soon hugging a magnificent box of soldiers, wherewith he pranced off to show them to his mother, leaving the doors open, so that Ursula could more decidedly hear the baby's voice, not a healthy child's lusty cry, but a poor little feeble wail, interspersed with attempts at consolation. 'Come, won't she go to Emily? Oh, Billy-boy, how splendid! I hope you thanked Cousin Ursula. Baby Jenny, now can't you let any one speak but yourself? Oh! shall I never teach you that "Balow, my babe," is not "bellow, my babe." That's better! Now can't you let Emily have you, while I go to Cousin Nuttie?'
'Let me come! Mayn't I?' exclaimed Ursula, invading the room that served as kitchen, where Annaple was trying to hush off the child and make her over to a little twelve years old maid, who stood in waiting, helping Willie meantime to unpack his soldiers, with smothered exclamations of delight.
'Oh, Nuttie, how good of you! Please to excuse the accompaniment. There never was such a young lady for self-assertion to make up for there being so little of her.'
And Annaple, very thin and tired looking, held up the child, fearfully small and pinched for four months old, to be kissed by Nuttie.
'Does she always go on like this?'
''Cept when she is asleep,' said Willie.
'Poor wee lassie,' said Annaple; 'there's great excuse for her, for the food has not yet been invented that suits her ladyship.'
'You must come and consult nurse.'
'And how are you all? I'm glad you are at hand, Nuttie! Is Mr. Egremont better?'
'As well as ever he is—lame and altogether an invalid,—but he has not had such bad attacks of pain lately.'
'And his eyes?'
'About the same. He can write, and tell one card from another, but he can't read—or rather it hurts him to do so, and he can't bear a strong light. But, Annaple, how are you? That child is wearing you to a shadow.'
'Oh! I'm quite well—perfectly. There, I think she is gone off at last. You had better walk her about a little, Emily; she will break out again if we try to put her in the cradle.'
And having handed over the child with only a very low murmur, Annaple left her combined kitchen and nursery. She flew at the flowers Nuttie had brought like a thirsty person, crying, as she buried her face in them, 'Now for beauty! Now Mark will be refreshed! Ah! here's a pretty pickle for a reception room.'
'Oh, don't put it away! I could help you; I do so like that kind of work. It is so like old times.'
'It must be put away, thank you, for Mark will be coming in. And the saying about the public washing of garments is specially true of one's own husband. Ways and means are worrying to the masculine mind.'
'I thought it was too early for Mark?'
'He has an appointment to keep at Charing Cross or thereabouts, so I made him promise to come in in time to "put a bit in his head," as our Irish charwoman says.'
'Then I can take him. I have the carriage, and I must be at home by half-past twelve. I wish you would come too, Annaple. There's plenty of room. You could show the baby to nurse, and the boys could have a good game. I would send you back in the evening. Mark could come on after his business is done.'
'Thank you, Nuttie, I can't to-day—for a whole heap of domestic reasons; but, if you can get Mark to come, do, it would be so good for him.'
'How is Mark?'
'He is well, quite well,' said Annaple; 'and so good and patient. But you see, it does take it out of a man when that doleful little noise won't stop all night! We are both acquiring a form of somnambulism, but when there's real out-of-door business to be done, it is not like proper sleep.'
'Or when there's woman's indoor business, I am afraid,' said Nuttie, much concerned at the extreme thinness of Annaple's face and hands, and the weary look of her large eyes.
'Oh, one makes that up at odd times!' she answered brightly. 'One thing is, this work suits Mark, he feels that he can do it, and he gets on well with the men. They asked him to join in their club, and he was so much pleased. He gets up subjects for them, and I am so glad he has such a pleasure and interest to keep him from missing the society he was used to.'
'It must be very good for them too. Mr. Dutton said he really thought Mark had kept them from going in for a strike.'
'Besides the glory of the thing,' said Annaple drawing herself up, 'Mr. Dobbs thought so too, and raised us ten pounds; which made us able to import that little Bridgefield lassie to hold baby—when—when Miss Jenny will let her. He has some law copying to do besides, but I don't like that; it burns the candle at both ends, and he does get bad headaches sometimes, and goes on all the same.'
'You must both come and see my Wyn.'
'Ah! I had never asked after him. I suppose he is as pretty as ever,' said Annaple, who secretly thought his beauty too girlish compared with her sturdy Billy.
'Prettier, I think, as he gets more expression. We can't persuade ourselves to cut his hair, and it looks so lovely on his sailor suit. And he is so good. I could not have believed a child could be so quiet and considerate on a journey. You should have seen him standing by my father's knee in the railway carriage, and amusing him with all that was to be seen, and stopping at the least hint that he was chattering too much.'
'Billy is wonderfully helpful. Ah—' and Annaple's eyes lighted up as the step that had music in't came up the stair; and as Mark came in, Nuttie thought him grown older, his hair thinner, his shoulders rounded, and his office coat shabby, but she saw something in his countenance there had never been before. Ever since she had known him he had worn a certain air of depression, or perhaps more truly of failure and perplexity, which kept before her conscious mind the Desdichado on Ivanhoe's shield, even when he was a gentleman at ease at the luxurious Rectory; but there was now not only the settled air of a man who had found his vocation, but something of the self-respect and eagerness of one who was doing it well, and feeling himself valued.
'Is baby—' he began. 'Oh, Nuttie! Are you there? Mr. Dutton told me you were coming. How is my uncle?' And the voice was much brisker than in the days of lawn-tennis.
'Father, father, look!' cried the boy.
'Why, Billy-boy, you are set up! Zouaves and chasseurs! I see where they came from.'
During the mixture of greetings and inquiries, admiration of the flowers, and the exhibition of Billy's treasures, Annaple glided away, and presently placed before him a tray, daintily benapkinned and set forth with a little cup of soup.
'Baby is really asleep, and Emily as proud as a Hielandman,' she said. 'Now eat this, without more ado, for that good Nuttie is going to set you down at Charing Cross.'
'This is the way we spoil our husbands, Nuttie,' said Mark. 'Refections served up at every turn.'
'Only bones! The immortal pot au feu,' said Annaple. 'And you are to go on after you have interviewed your man of steel, and have tea with Nuttie, and pay your respects to your uncle, like a dutiful nephew.'
'No, that I can't, Nannie; I promised Dobbs to go and see a man for him, and I must come back as soon as I can after that.'
He looked—as to figure and air—much more like his old self when he had changed his coat. They fed him, almost against his will, with a few of the forced strawberries Nuttie had brought. Billy pressed on him wonders from a Paris bonbon box, and Annaple fastened a rose and a pink in his button-hole, and came down to the street door with her boy to see him off.
'What do you think of her?' was Mark's first inquiry.
'Think! As Mr. Dutton said long ago, never was braver lady!'
'Never was there a truer word! I meant as to her health? As to courage, spirits, and temper, there is no question; I never saw them fail; but are they not almost too much for the frame?' he asked anxiously.
It echoed Nuttie's fear, but she tried to frame a cheerful answer. 'She is very thin, but she seems well.'
'She never complains, but I am sure her strength is not what it was. She cannot walk out as she did at first. Indeed, she gets no real rest day nor night, and there's no relieving her!'
'She says you don't get much rest either.'
'More than my share,' said Mark. 'The poor little thing never sleeps except in someone's arms, and if awake, is not content for a moment except in her mother's.'
'And that has been going on four months?'
'Three. Ever since we brought her back from Redcastle. I have nearly determined to move into some suburb when I get a rise at Michaelmas, unless she improves.'
'Nurse might suggest something.'
'Or at any rate tell us what to think. We showed her to a doctor, and all he could propose was some kind of food, which was no more successful than the rest. Did you look at her, Nuttie? She is a pretty little thing when she is quiet, but she dwindles away—at least so it seems to me, though Annaple will not see it, and—and if we are not permitted to keep the little one, I dread what the effect may be on her.'
Nuttie said something about bravery and goodness, thinking in her heart that, if the blow fell, it would be better for all than the perpetual suffering of the poor little sickly being.
'Ah! you don't know what her affections are,' said Mark. 'You did not see her when she lost her mother, and there had been no strain on her powers then. However, I've no business to croak. Many a child gets over troubles of this kind, and, as Annaple says, little Jenny will be all the more to us for what we go through with her.'
The carriage stopped, and Nuttie asked him if it would delay him too long if she executed a commission about her father's glasses. He had plenty of time, but she was delayed longer than she expected, and on her return was surprised to find that he had dropped asleep.
'Ah! that's what comes of a moment's quiet;' he said, smiling.
'Fine quiet in the roar of Ludgate Hill!'
'To a Cockney 'tis as the mill to the miller! I like the full stir and tide,' he added, looking out upon it. 'I never knew what life was before!'
'I should have thought you never knew what hardness and hard work were.'
'That's just it,' he answered, smiling. 'The swing of it is exhilaration—very different from being a cumberer of the ground.'
'Oh, Mark, all the privations and anxiety!'
'The privation! that's nothing. Indeed I am afraid—yes, I am ashamed to say—it falls more on my dear wife than myself, but if we can only wear through a year or two we shall get a further rise, and my poor Annaple may get out of this drudgery. Please God, she and the little one can stand it for a time, and I think she has a spring within her that will;' then, as he saw tears in his cousin's eyes, he added, 'Don't be unhappy about it, Nuttie; I have had it in my mind ever so long to tell you that the finding you at Micklethwayte was the best thing that ever happened to me!'
Yes, so far as character went, Ursula could believe that it had been so. He was twice the man he would have been without the incentive to work, and the constant exercise of patience and cheerfulness; but her heart was heavy with apprehension that the weight of the trial might be too heavy. To her eyes the baby's life seemed extremely doubtful, and Annaple looked so fragile that the increase of her burthens, any saddening of the heart, might destroy her elasticity, and crush her outright; while even Mark seemed to her to be toiling so close within the limits of his powers that a straw might break the camel's back!
She longed to talk to Mr. Dutton about them, but she found herself doomed to a day that perhaps Annaple would have thought more trying than her harrowed life. She was a little later than she had intended, and her father had been waiting impatiently to have a note read to him, so he growled at her impatience to run after 'that Scotch girl.' And the note happened to be of an irritating nature; moreover, the cutlets at luncheon were said to be akin to indiarubber, and there was the wrong flavour in the sauce. Ursula let that cook do what she pleased without remonstrance.
Even Alwyn did not afford as much satisfaction as usual, for the boy was in high spirits and wanted to blow a little trumpet, which was more than his father could stand. He was very good when this was silenced, but he then began to rush round the room daring his sister to catch the wild colt as he went by. This had likewise to be stopped, with the murmur that Ursula spoilt the child.
She tried to compose matters by turning out the old toys in the ottoman, but Alwyn had outgrown most of them, and did not care for any except a certain wooden donkey, minus one ear and a leg, which went by the name of Sambo, and had absorbed a good deal of his affection. He had with difficulty been consoled for Sambo being left behind, and now turned over everything with considerable clatter in search of him. Alas! Sambo could nowhere be found in the room, and Alwyn dashed off to inquire of all the household after him. His father meanwhile growled at the child's noise, and went on trying the glasses Nuttie had brought, and pronouncing each pair in turn useless, vowing that it was no use to send her anywhere.
Upon this, back came Alwyn, terribly distressed and indignant, for he had extracted from the housemaid left in charge, who was as cross as she was trustworthy, 'What! that old broken thing, Master Egremont? I threw it on the fire! I'd never have thought a young gentleman of your age would have cared for such rubbish as that.'
'You are a wicked cruel woman,' returned Alwyn, with flashing eyes; 'I shall tell papa and sister of you.'
And in he flew, sobbing with grief and wrath for the dear Sambo, feeling as if it had been a live donkey burnt to death, and hiding his face on his sister's breast for consolation.
'Come, come, Wyn,' said his father, who did not brook interruption; 'here's half a sovereign to go and buy a new donkey.'
'It won't be Sambo,' said Alwyn ruefully.
'But you should thank papa,' said Nuttie.
'Thank you, papa,' he said, with quivering lip, 'but I don't want a new one. Oh Sambo, Sambo! burnt!' and he climbed on Nuttie's lap, hid his face against her and cried, but her comfortings were broken off by, 'How can you encourage the child in being so foolish? Have done, Wyn; don't be such a baby! Go out with nurse and buy what you like, but I can't have crying here.'
He tried to stop in sheer amazement, but the ground swell of sob could not be controlled. Nuttie was going to lead him away, and console him with more imaginative sympathy than could be expected from the maids, but her father sharply called her back. He wanted her himself, and indeed there was no question which was the worse spoilt child. He might idolise Alwyn, but not so as to clash with his own comforts. The glasses being unsuccessful, Nuttie proposed to drive back to Ludgate Hill for him to choose for himself, but he would not hear of going into the heat of the City, and growled at her for thinking of such a thing.
They took an aimless drive instead in the park, and Nuttie was nearly baked while the carriage was stopped for her father to have a long talk over the prospects of the Derby day with one of his most unpleasant associates, who stood leaning over the door on the shady side of the carriage, no one recking how little protection she derived from her small fringed parasol.
She came home tired out, and thankful that her father went to rest in his own room. She climbed to the nursery, thinking to share Alwyn's tea and comfort him, but she found only nurse there. Nurse had a bad foot, and dreaded hot pavement, so she had sent Master Alwyn out with her subordinate, a country girl, to play in Mr. Dutton's garden till it should be cool enough to go and make his purchase, and a message had since arrived that he was going to drink tea there, and Mr. Dutton would take him out.
His sister envied him the green shades, and had just done her best to cool the back drawing-room and rest herself with a book, when Mr. Fane was announced. He talked pleasantly enough, and lingered and lingered, no doubt intending to be asked to dinner, but she was equally determined to do no such thing. She had heard enough of races for one day, she thought, and at last he took his leave, only just before she dressed for dinner.
'I thought Fane was here,' said Mr. Egremont as he came in; no doubt told by Gregorio.
'He has been, but he is gone.'
'You didn't ask him to stay and dine?'
'I did not know you wished it.'
'You might have known that I should have liked to see him. I suppose you think your sweet self society enough for any man?'
'I am sorry—'
'I'm sick of hearing you are sorry! I believe there's nothing you like so well as doing an ungracious thing to a friend of mine.'
Nuttie had learnt to hold her tongue on such occasions.
Dinner was nearly over, and her father had been grumbling again at having no one to take a hand at cards with him, when the door opened a little way, and Alwyn's pretty glowing face looked in. He was come to say good-night rather later than usual, and he ran up to his sister with a little bouquet of yellow banksia and forget-me-nots. 'Mithter Button'—so Alwyn called him—'sent you this. He said you would like it, 'cause it came from one that grew at Mittletwait. And oh, look, look!'
He was hugging a little ship, which he proudly exhibited, while his father's brow had darkened at the message. 'Did you buy that?' asked his sister.
'Yes, Mr. Button went with me, and we sailed it. We sailed it by the fountain in Mr. Button's garden, And we made a storm!'
He danced about with glee, and Mr. Egremont observed, 'A dear purchase for ten shillings. Did it cost all that, Wyn?'
'They gived me a big silver half-crown, and I gived that to a little boy what came to speak to Mr. Button, and had his toes through his boots, and he was so glad.'
'Your money is not for beggars, Wyn.'
'The little boy was not a beggar, papa. He came with a newspaper to Mr. Button, and he is so good to his poor sick mother,' said Alwyn. 'See, see, sister!' turning the prow of his small vessel towards her, and showing a word on it in pencil which he required her to spell out. It was Ursula.
'Oh Wynnie!' she said, duly flattered, 'did Mr. Dutton do that?'
'He held my hand, and I did!' cried Alwyn, triumphantly, 'and he will paint it on Saturday. Then it will dry all Sunday, and not come off, so it will be the Ursula for ever and always.'
Here nurse claimed her charge; and when the goodnights were over, and a murmur recommenced, Nuttie suggested that if Mr. Dutton was at home perhaps he would come in and make up the game, but she encountered the old humour. 'I'll tell you what, Ursula, I'll not have that umbrella fellow encouraged about the house, and if that child is to be made the medium of communication, I'll put a stop to it.'
The words were spoken just as Gregorio had entered the room with a handkerchief of his master's. Nuttie, colouring deeply at the insult, met his triumphant eyes, bit her lips, and deigned no word of reply.
An undefined but very slight odour, that told her of opium smoke, pervaded the stairs that night. It was the only refuge from fretfulness; but her heart ached for her father, herself, and most of all for her little brother. And was she to be cut off from her only counsellor?
'Seemed to the boy some comrade gayLed him forth to the woods to play.'—SCOTT.
Though it was the Derby day, Mr. Egremont's racing days were over, and he only took his daughter with him in quest of the spectacles he wanted. When they came back, Nuttie mounted to the nursery, but no little brother met her on the stairs, and she found nurse in deep displeasure with her subordinate.
'I sent him out with Ellen to play in the garden at Springfield, and swim his ship, where he couldn't come to no harm,' said nurse; 'being that my foot is that bad I can't walk the length of the street; and what does the girl do but lets that there Gregorio take the dear child and go—goodness knows where—without her.'
'I'm sure, ma'am,' said the girl crying, 'I would never have done it, but Mr. Gregory said as how 'twas his papa's wish.'
'What was?' said Nuttie.
'That he shouldn't never go and play at Mr. Dutton's again,' said Ellen.
'I told her she was to take her orders off me, and no one else,' returned nurse, 'except, of course, you, Miss Egremont, as has the right.'
'Quite so; you should have told Mr. Gregorio so, Ellen.'
'I did, ma'am, but he said those was Mr. Egremont's orders; and he said,' cried the girl, unable to withstand the pleasure of repeating something disagreeable, 'that Mr. Egremont wouldn't have no messengers between you and a low tradesman fellow, as made umbrellas, and wanted to insinuate himself in here.'
'That's quite enough, Ellen; I don't want to hear any impertinences. Perhaps you did not understand his foreign accent. Did he say where he was going?'
'I think he said he'd take him to the Serpentine to sail his ship,' said Ellen, disposed to carry on asseverations of the correctness of her report, but nurse ordered her off the scene, and proceeded, as a confidential servant, 'The girl had no call to repeat it; but there's not a doubt of it he did say something of the sort. There's not one of us but knows he is dead against Mr. Dutton, because he tried to get master to get to sleep without that nasty opium smoke of his.'
There was bitter feud between nurse and valet, and Nuttie could have exchanged with her many a lament, but she contented herself with saying, 'I wish he would let Master Alwyn alone. It is high time they should come in.'
'The child will be tired to death, and all dirt! His nice new sailor suit too! Going grubbing about at the Serpentine with no one knows who, as isn't fit for a young gentleman,' moaned nurse.
This, however, was the worst fear she entertained, and it was with a certain malicious satisfaction that she heard her master's bell for Gregorio.
Nuttie descended to explain, and whereas the need was not very urgent, and she looked distressed and angered at the valet, her father received her complaint with, 'Well, the boy is getting too big to be tied for ever to a nursery-maid. It will do him good to go about with a man.'
But as dressing-time came on, and still neither Gregorio nor Alwyn appeared, Mr. Egremont became impatient, and declared that the valet had no business to keep the child out so long; indeed, he would sooner have taken alarm but for Nuttie's manifest agony of anxiety, starting and rushing to listen at every ring at the bell or sound of wheels near at hand. At last, at eight o'clock, there was a peal of the servants' bell, and the footman who answered it turned round to the anxious crowd: 'Mr. Gregory! He just asked if the child was come home, and went off like lightning.'
'The villain! He's lost him!' shrieked nurse, with a wild scream. 'Run after him, James! Catch him up!' suggested the butler at the same moment. 'Make him tell where he saw him last!'
James was not a genius, but the hall boy, an alert young fellow, had already dashed down the steps in pursuit, and came up with the valet so as to delay him till the other servants stood round, and Gregorio turned back with them, pale, breathless, evidently terribly dismayed and unwilling to face his master, who stood at the top of the steps, white with alarm and wrath.
'Sir,' cried Gregorio, with a stammering of mixed languages, 'I have been searching everywhere! I was going to give notice to the police. Je ferai tout! Je le trouverai.'
'Where did you lose him?' demanded Mr. Egremont in a hoarse voice, such as Nuttie had never heard.
'In the Park, near the bridge over the Serpentine. I was speaking for a few moments to a friend. Bah! Il etait parti. Mais je le trouverai. Parker, he seeks too. Fear not, sir, I shall find him.'
'Find him, you scoundrel, or never dare to see me again! I've borne with your insolences long, and now you've brought them to a height. Go, I say, find my boy!' exclaimed Mr. Egremont, with a fierce oath and passionate gesture, and Gregorio vanished again.
'Bring the carriage—no, call a cab;' commanded Mr. Egremont, snatching up his hat. 'Who is this Parker?'
The servants hesitated, but the butler said he believed the man to be a friend of Gregorio's employed at one of the clubs. Nuttie meanwhile begging her father not to go without her, flew upstairs to put on her hat, and coming down at full speed found that Mr. Dutton, passing by and seeing the open door and the terrified servants on the steps, had turned in to ask what was the matter, and was hearing in no measured terms from Mr. Egremont how the child had been taken away from his nurse and lost in the Park while that scamp Gregorio was chattering to some good-for-nothing friend.
To Nuttie's great relief, Mr. Dutton offered to go with the father to assist in the search, and the coachman, far too anxious and excited to let his master go without him in a cab, contrived to bring up the carriage. Some of the servants were ordered off to the various police offices. Poor nurse, who was nearly distracted, started in a hansom on her own account, persuaded that she should see and recognise traces of her darling at the scene of his loss, and she almost raced the carriage, which was bound for the same spot.
Sluggish natures like Mr. Egremont's can sometimes be roused to great violence, and then pour forth the long pent-up accumulations kept back by indolence and indifference. His only occupation during the rapid drive was to vituperate his valet, the curse of his life, he said. To hear him talk, it would have seemed as if Gregorio had been the tyrant who had kept him in bondage all these years, fully aware of his falsehood, peculation, and other rascality, but as unable to break the yoke as if he had been in truth the slave of anything but his own evil habit and helpless acquiescence.
Would it last if Gregorio made his appearance at that instant with Alwyn in his hand? Or even, as Mr. Dutton confidently predicted, a policeman might bring the boy home, before many hours were passed. The chief doubt here was that Alwyn's defective pronunciation, which had been rather foolishly encouraged, might make it difficult to understand his mode of saying his own name, or even that of the street, if he knew it perfectly; but the year he had been absent from London had prevented him from acquiring the curious ready local instinct of the true town child, and he had been so much guarded and watched that he was likely to be utterly at a loss when left alone; and Nuttie was wretched at the thought of his terror and loneliness, even while Mr. Dutton told her of speedy recoveries of lost children through kind people or the police.
They found all the officials of the Park already aware and on the alert, and quite certain of the impossibility of nurse's prime dread that the boy had fallen into the water unseen by any one and been drowned. She was even ready to look into every bush, in case he had been frightened and hidden himself; and nothing would satisfy her but to stay making these researches, when her master had decided on endeavouring to find 'Parker' at the club, and to ascertain from him particulars of time and place.
He was found there. The dinner-hour had brought him back, he being a man in authority there, very well dressed and deferential, declaring himself immensely distressed at the occurrence, and at having accosted Gregorio and attracted his attention. It was about four o'clock, he thought, and he described the exact spot where the little boy had been sailing his vessel fastened to a string. They might have been talking twenty minutes or half an hour when Gregorio missed his charge, and since that time both had been doing all in their power to find him, until half-past seven, when he had to return to his club, and Gregorio went to see whether the child had been taken home.
By this time Mr. Egremont looked so utterly exhausted, that Mr. Dutton availed himself of the hope that the boy might be found safe at home to take him back; but alas! nothing had been heard there.
The poor man was in a restless, unmanageable state of excitement, almost as terrifying to his daughter as the distress that occasioned it. He swallowed a tumblerful of claret, but would not eat nor go to bed; and indeed, Gregorio alone having had the personal charge of him, latterly sleeping in his dressing-room, none of the other servants knew what to do for him. Mr. Dutton agreed with her that it would be better to send for his doctor, as probably he ought to have a sedative, and neither would take the responsibility of giving it; while he himself declared he neither would nor could rest till he had his boy again.
The doctor was dining out, and they had two terrible hours; while Mr. Egremont paced to the windows; threw himself on the sofa; denounced Gregorio; or, for a change, all the system of police which had made no discovery; and Ursula for letting the boy be so helpless. Mr. Dutton sometimes diverted his attention for a few minutes, and hoped he would doze, but the least sound brought him to his feet again, and the only congenial occupation was the composition of a description of poor little Alwyn's person and dress, which set Nuttie crying so uncontrollably, that she had to run out of the room.
Dr. Brownlow came at last, and was very kind and helpful, taking the command, and insisting that Mr. Egremont should go to bed, and take the dose which he mixed. Broadbent, the butler, was to take Gregorio's place, but he was a ponderous man, without much tact, and unused to the valet's office. 'I might just as well have a rhinoceros about me,' said Mr. Egremont, in a fit of irritation; and it ended, Nuttie hardly knew how, in Mr. Dutton's going upstairs to smooth matters. He came down after a time and said: 'I am not satisfied to leave him alone or to Broadbent; I have his consent to my sleeping in the dressing-room. I am just going home to fetch my things. Let me find you gone when I come back. You will hear no more to-night. Even if he is found, they will keep him till morning.'
'It is of no use; I can't sleep.'
'Even if you don't, the mere restful position will make you fitter for the morrow. Will you promise me to undress and really go to bed?'
'Oh yes! if you say I must,' said Nuttie drearily; following an instinct of obedience.
'And remember,' he said, 'though I do not say it will be so, this may be deliverance from bondage.'
'But what a terrible deliverance!'
'Bonds are not burst without something terrible. No; don't be frightened. Remember there is safekeeping for that sweet little fellow, wherever he may be.'
'Oh, Mr. Dutton, if I could pray for him; but the turmoil seems to have driven away all such things! My boy, my boy, where is he now? Who has heard him say his little prayers?'
'His Heavenly Father has; of that we may be secure. You will feel it in the quiet of your own room. Good-night.'
'And I shall know you are praying, better than I can,' murmured Nuttie, as she returned his good-night, and crept up to her chamber.