XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE…

XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE

But solemn sound, or sober thought The Fairies cannot bear; They sing, inspired with love and joy, Like skylarks in the air. Of solid sense, or thought that’s grave, You find no traces there. Young Tamlane.

When old Lady Fordham’s long decay ended in death, Mrs. Evelyn would not recall her sons to the funeral, but meant to go out herself to join them, and offered to escort Mrs. Brownlow’s daughters to the meeting-place. This was to be Engelberg, for Dr. Medlicott had decided that after the month at Leukerbad all his patients would be much the better for a breath of the pine-woods on the Alpine height, and undertook to see them conveyed thither in time to meet the ladies.

This proposal set Miss Ogilvie free to join her brother, who had a curacy in a seaside place where the season began just when the London season ended. Her holiday was then to begin, and Janet was to write to Mrs. Evelyn and declare herself ready to meet her in London at the time appointed.

The arrangement was not to Janet’s taste. She thought herself perfectly capable of escorting the younger ones, especially as they were to take their maid, a capable person named Delrio, daughter of an Englishwoman and a German waiter, and widow of an Italian courier, who was equal to all land emergencies, and could speak any language. She belonged to the young ladies. Their mother, not liking strangers about her, had, on old nurse’s death, caused Emma to learn enough of the lady’s maid’s art for her own needs at home, and took care of herself abroad.

Babie was enraptured to be going to Mother Carey and Armine, and Elvira was enchanted to leave the schoolroom behind her, being fully aware that she always had more notice and indulgence from outsiders than at home, or indeed from anyone who had been disappointed at her want of all real affection.

“You are just like a dragon fly,” said Babie to her; “all brightness outside and nothing within.”

This unusually severe remark came from Babie’s indignation at Elvira’s rebellion against going to River Hollow to take leave. It would be a melancholy visit, for her grandfather had become nearly imbecile since he had had a paralytic stroke, in the course of the winter, and good sensible Mrs. Gould had died of fever in the previous autumn.

Elvira, who had never liked the place, now loathed it, and did not seem capable of understanding Babie’s outburst.

“Not like to go and see them when they are ill and unhappy! Elfie, how can you?”

“Of course I don’t! Grandpapa kisses me and makes me half sick.”

“But he is so fond of you.”

“I wish he wasn’t then. Why, Babie, are you going to cry? What’s the matter?”

“It is very silly,” said Babie, winking hard to get rid of her tears; “but it does hurt me so to think of the good old gentleman caring more for you than anybody, and you not liking to go near him.”

“I can’t see what it matters to you,” said Elvira; “I wish you would go instead of me, if you are so fond of him.”

“He wouldn’t care for me,” said Babie; “I’m not his ain lassie.”

“His lassie! I’m a lady,” exclaimed the senorita, with the haughty Spanish turn of the neck peculiar to herself.

“That’s not what I mean by a lady,” said Babie.

“What do you mean by it?” said Elvira, with a superior air.

“One who never looks down on anybody,” said Babie, thoughtfully.

“What nonsense!” rejoined the Elf; “as if any lady could like to hear grandpapa maunder, and Mary scold and scream at the farm people, just like the old peahen.”

“Miss Ogilvie said poor Mary was overstrained with having more to attend to than she could properly manage, and that made her shrill.”

“I know it makes her very disagreeable; and so they all are. I hate the place, and I don’t see why I should go,” grumbled Elvira.

“You will when you are older, and know what proper feeling is,” said Miss Ogilvie, who had come within earshot of the last words. “Go and put on your hat; I have ordered the pony carriage.”

“Shall I go, Miss Ogilvie?” asked Babie, as Elfie marched off sullenly, since her governess never allowed herself to be disobeyed.

“I think I had better go, my dear; Elfie may be under more restraint with me.”

“Please give old Mr. Gould and Mary and Kate my love, and I will run and ask for some fruit for you to take to them,” said Babie, her tender heart longing to make compensation.

Miss Ogilvie and her pouting companion were received by a fashionable--nay, extra fashionable--looking person, whom Mary and Kate Gould called Cousin Lisette, and the old farmer, Eliza Gould. While the old man in his chair in the sun in the hot little parlour caressed, and asked feeble repetitions of questions of his impatient granddaughter, the lady explained that she had thrown up an excellent situation as instructress in a very high family to act in the same capacity to her motherless little cousins. She professed to be enchanted to meet Miss Ogilvie, and almost patronised.

“I know what the life is, Miss Ogilvie, and how one needs companionship to keep up one’s spirits. Whenever you are left alone, and would drop me a line, I should be quite delighted to come and enliven you; or whenever you would like to come over here, there’s no interruption by uncle; and he, poor old gentleman, is quite--quite passe. The children I can always dismiss. Regularity is my motto, of course, but I consider that an exception in favour of my own friends does no harm, and indeed it is no more than I have a right to expect, considering the sacrifices that I have made for them. Mary, child, don’t cross your ankles; you don’t see your cousin do that. Kate, you go and see what makes Betsy so long in bringing the tea. I rang long ago.”

“I will go and fetch it,” said Mary, an honest, but harassed-looking girl.

“Always in haste,” said Miss Gould, with an effort at good humour, which Miss Ogilvie direfully mistrusted. “No, Mary, you must remain to entertain your cousin. What are servants for but to wait on us? She thinks nothing can be done without her, Miss Ogilvie, and I am forced to act repression sometimes.”

“Indeed we do not wish for any tea,” said Miss Ogilvie, seeing Elvira look as black as thunder; “we have only just dined.”

“But Elfie will have some sweet-cake; Elfie likes auntie’s sweet-cake, eh?” said the old man.

“No, thank you,” said Elfie, glumly, though in fact she did care considerably for sweets, and was always buying bonbons.

“No cake! Or some strawberries--strawberries and cream,” said her grandfather. “Mr. Allen always liked them. And where is Mr. Allen now, my dear?”

“Gone to Norway. It’s the fifth time I’ve told him so,” muttered Elvira.

“And where is Mr. Robert? And Mr. Lucas?” he went on. “Fine young gentlemen all of them; but Mr. Allen is the pleasant-spoken one. Ain’t he coming down soon? He always looks in and says, ‘I don’t forget your good cider, Mr. Gould,’” and there was a feeble chuckling laugh and old man’s cough.

“Do let me go into the garden; I’m quite faint,” cried Elvira, jumping up.

It was true that the room was very close, rather medicinal, and not improved by Miss Gould’s perfumes; but there was an alacrity about Elfie’s movements, and a vehemence in the manner of her rejection of the said essences, which made her governess not think her case alarming, and she left her to the care of the young cousins, while trying to make up for her incivility by courteously listening to and answering her grandfather, and consuming the tea and sweet-cake.

When she went out to fetch her pupil to say goodbye, Miss Gould detained her on the way to obtain condolence on the “dreadful trial that old uncle was,” and speak of her own great devotion to him and the children, and the sacrifices she had made. She said she had been at school with Elvira’s poor mamma, “a sweetly pretty girl, poor dear, but so indulged.”

And then she tried to extract confidences as to Mrs. Brownlow’s intentions towards the child, in which of course she was baffled.

Elvira was found ranging among the strawberries, with Mary and Kate looking on somewhat dissatisfied.

Both the poor girls looked constrained and unhappy, and Miss Ogilvie wondered whether “Cousin Lisette’s” evident intentions of becoming a fixture would be for their good or the reverse.

“Are you better, my dear?” asked she, affectionately.

“Yes, it was only the room,” said Elvira.

“You are a good deal there, are not you?” said Miss Ogilvie to Mary, who had the white flabby look of being kept in an unwholesome atmosphere.

“Yes,” said Mary, wistfully, “but grandpapa does not like having me half so much as Elvira. He is always talking about her.”

“You had better come back to him now, Elfie,” said Miss Ogilvie.

“It makes me ill,” said Elvira, with her crossest look.

Her governess laid her hand on her shoulder, and told her in a few decided words, in the lowest possible voice, that she was not going away till she had taken a properly respectful and affectionate leave of her grandfather. Whereupon she knew further resistance was of no use, and going hastily to the door of the room, called out--

“Good-bye, then, grandpapa.”

“Ah! my little beauty, are you there?” he asked, in a tone of bewildered pleasure, holding out the one hand he could use.

Elvira was forced to let herself be held by it. She hoped to kiss his brow, and escape; but the poor knotted fingers which had once been so strong, would not let her go, and she had to endure many more kisses and caresses and blessings than her proud thoughtless nature could endure before she made her escape. And then “Cousin Lisette” insisted on a kiss for the sake of her dear mamma; and Elfie could only exhale her exasperation by rushing to the pony-carriage, avoiding all kisses to her young cousins, taking the driving seat, and whipping up the ponies more than their tender-hearted mistress would by any means have approved.

Miss Ogilvie abstained from either blame or argument, knowing that it would only make her worse; and recollecting the old Undine theory, wondered whether the Elf would ever find her soul, and think with tender regret of the affection she was spurning.

The next day the travellers started, sleeping a couple of nights in Hyde Corner, for convenience of purchases and preparations.

They were to meet Mrs. Evelyn at the station; but Janet, who foretold that she would be another Serene Highness, soured by having missed the family title, retarded their start till so late that there could be no introduction on the platform; but seats had to be rushed for, while a servant took the tickets.

However, a tall, elderly, military-looking gentleman with a great white moustache, was standing by the open door of a carriage.

“Miss Brownlow,” said he, handing them in--Babie first, next Janet, and then Elvira.

He then bowed to Miss Ogilvie, took his seat, handed in the appurtenances, received, showed, and pocketed the tickets, negotiated Janet’s purchase of newspapers, and constituted himself altogether cavalier to the party.

Sir James Evelyn! Janet had no turn for soldiers, and was not gratified; but Elvira saw that her blue eyes and golden hair were producing the effect she knew how to trace; so she was graciously pleased to accept Punch, and to smile a bewitching acceptance of the seat assigned to her opposite to the old general.

Barbara was opposite to Mrs. Evelyn, and next to Sydney, a girl a few months older than herself, but considerably taller and larger. Mother and daughter were a good deal alike, save that the girl was fresh plump, and rosy, and the mother worn, with the red colouring burnt as it were into her thin cheeks. Yet both looked as if smiles were no strangers to their lips, though there were lines of anxiety and sorrow traced round Mrs. Evelyn’s temples. Their voices were sweet and full, and the elder lady spoke with a tender intonation that inspired Babie with trustful content and affection, but caused Janet to pass a mental verdict of “Sugared milk and water.”

She immersed herself in her Pall Mall, and left Babie to exchange scraps of intelligence from the brother’s letters, and compare notes on the journey.

By-and-by Mrs. Evelyn retired into her book, and the two little girls put their heads together over a newly-arrived acrostic, calling on Elfie to assist them.

“Do you like acrostics?” she said, peeping up through her long eyelashes at the old general.

“Oh, don’t tease Uncle James,” hastily interposed Sydney, as yet inexperienced in the difference between the importunities of a merely nice-looking niece, and the blandishments of a brilliant stranger. Sir James said kindly--

“What, my dear?”

And when Elvira replied--

“Do help us to guess this. What does man love most below?” he put on a droll face, and answered--

“His pipe.”

“O Uncle James, that’s too bad,” cried Sydney.

“If Jock had made this acrostic, it might be pipe,” said Babie; “but this is Armine’s.”

It was thereupon handed to the elders, who read, in a boyish handwriting--

Twins, parted from their rocky nest, We run our wondrous race, And now in tumult, now at rest, Flash back heaven’s radiant face.

1. While both alike this name we bear, And both like life we flow, 2. And near us nestle sweet and fair What man most loves below.

Alike it is our boasted claim To nurse the precious juice 3. That maddened erst the Theban dame, With streaming tresses loose.

4. The evening land is sought by one, One rushes towards midday, One to a vigil song has run, One heard Red Freedom’s lay.

Tall castles, glorious battlefields Graced this in ages past, But now its mighty power that yields 5. To work my busy last.

“Is that your brother Armine’s own?” asked Sir James, surprised.

“O yes,” said Janet with impressive carelessness, “all my brothers have a facility in stringing rhymes.”

“Not Bobus,” said Elvira.

“He does not think it worth while,” said Janet, again absorbing herself in her paper, while the public united in guessing the acrostic; and the only objection was raised by the exact General, who would not allow that the “Marseillaise” was sung at the mouth of the Rhone, and defended Ino’s sobriety.

Barbara and Sydney lived upon those acrostics in their travelling bags till they reached Folkestone, and had grown intimate over them. Sir James looked after the luggage, putting gently aside Janet’s strong-minded attempt to watch over it, and she only retained her own leathern travelling case, where she carried her personals, and which, heavy as it was, she never let out of her immediate charge.

They all sat on deck, for there was a fine smooth summer sea, and no one was deranged except the two maids, whom every one knew to be always disabled on a voyage.

Janet had not long been seated, and was only just getting immersed in her Contemporary, when she received a greeting which gratified her. It was from somewhat of a lion, the author of some startling poems and more startling essays much admired by Bobus, who had brought him to some evening parties of his mother’s, not much to her delectation, since there were ugly stories as to his private character. These were ascribed by Bobus to pious malevolence, and Janet had accepted the explanation, and cultivated a bowing acquaintance.

Hyde Corner was too agreeable a haunt to be despised, and Janet owed her social successes more to her mother’s attractions than her own. Conversation began by an inquiry after her brothers, whose adventures had figured in the papers, and it went on to Janet’s own journey and prospects. Her companion was able to tell her much that she wanted to know about the university of Zurich, and its facilities for female study. He was a well-known advocate of woman’s rights, and she scrupled not to tell him that she was inquiring on her own account. Many men would have been bored, and have only sought to free themselves from this learned lady, but the present lion was of the species that prefer roaring to an intelligent female audience, without the rough male argumentative interruption, and Janet thus made the voyage with the utmost satisfaction to herself.

Mrs. Evelyn asked Babie who her sister’s friend was. The answer was, “Do you know, Elfie? You know so many more gentlemen than I do.”

“No,” replied Elvira, “I don’t. He looks like the stupid sort of man.”

“What is the stupid sort of man?” asked the General, as she intended.

“Oh! that talks to Janet.”

“Is everyone that talks to Janet stupid?”

“Of course,” said Elvira. “They only go on about stupid things no better than lessons.”

Sir James laughed at her arch look, and shook his head at her, but then made a tour among the other passengers, leaving her pouting a little at his desertion. On his return, he sat down by his sister-in-law and mentioned a name, which made her start and glance an inquiry whether she heard aright. Then as he bent his head in affirmation, she asked, “Is there anything to be done?”

“It is only for the crossing, and she is quite old enough to take care of herself.”

“And it is evidently an established acquaintance, for which I am not responsible,” murmured Mrs. Evelyn to herself.

She was in perplexity about these friends of her son’s. Ever since Cecil had been at Eton, his beloved Brownlow had seemed to be his evil genius, whose influence none of his resolutions or promises could for a moment withstand. If she had acted on her own judgment, Cecil would never have returned to Eton, but his uncle disapproved of his removal, especially with the disgrace of the champagne supper unretrieved; and his penitent letter had moved her greatly. Trusting much to her elder son and to Dr. Medlicott, she had permitted the party to continue together, feeling that it might be life or death to that other fatherless boy in whom Duke was so much interested; and now she was going out to judge for herself, and Sir James had undertaken to escort her, that they might together come to a decision whether the two friends were likely to be doing one another good or harm.

Mrs. Evelyn had lived chiefly in the country since her husband’s death, and knew nothing of Mrs. Joseph Brownlow. So she looked with anxiety for indications of the tone of the family who had captivated not only Cecil, but Fordham, and seemed in a fair way of doing the same by Sydney. The two hats, brown and black, were almost locked together all the voyage, and indeed the feather of one once became entangled with the crape of the other, so that they had to be extricated from above. There was perhaps a little maternal anxiety at this absorption; but as Sydney was sure to pour out everything at night, her mother could let things take their course, and watch her delight in expanding, after being long shut up in a melancholy house without young companions.

Elvira had a tone of arch simplicity which, in such a pretty creature, was most engaging, and she was in high spirits with the pleasure of being with new people, away from her schoolroom and from England, neither of which she loved, so she chattered amiably and amusingly, entertained Mrs. Evelyn, and fascinated Sir James.

Janet and her companion were less complacently regarded. Certainly the girl (though less ancient-looking at twenty-one than at fourteen) had the air of one well used to independence, so that she was no great subject for responsibility; but she gave no favourable impression, and was at no pains to do so. When she rejoined the party, Mrs. Evelyn asked whether she had known that gentleman long.

“He is a friend of my brother Robert,” she answered. “Shall I introduce you?”

Mrs. Evelyn declined in a quiet civil tone, that provoked a mental denunciation of her as strait-laced and uncharitable, and as soon as the gentleman returned to the neighbourhood, Janet again sought his company, let him escort her ashore, and only came back to the others in the refreshment-room, whither she brought a copy of a German periodical which he had lent her. With much satisfaction Mrs. Evelyn filled the railway carriage with her own party, so that there was no room for any addition to their number. Nor indeed did they see any more of their unwelcome fellow-traveller, since he was bound for the Hotel du Louvre, and, to Janet’s undisguised chagrin, rooms were already engaged at the Hotel Castiglione.

They came too late for the table d’hote, and partook of an extemporised meal in their sitting-room immediately on their arrival, as the start was to be early. Then it was that Janet missed her bag, her precious bag! Delrio was sent all over the house to make inquiries whether it had been taken to any other person’s room, but in vain. Mrs. Evelyn said she had last seen it when they took their seats on board the steamer.

“Yes,” added Elvira, “you left it there when you went to walk up and down with that gentleman.”

“Then why did not you take care of it? I don’t mean Elfie--nobody expects her to be of any use; but you, Babie?”

“You never told me!” gasped Babie, aghast.

“You ought to have seen; but you never think of anything but your own chatter.”

“It is a very inconvenient loss,” said Mrs. Evelyn, kindly. “Have you sent to the station?”

“I shall, as soon as I am satisfied that it is not here. I can send out for the things I want for use; but there are books and papers of importance, and my keys.”

“The key of mother’s davenport?” cried Babie. “Was it there? O Janet, Janet!”

“You should have attended to it, then,” said Janet sharply.

Delrio knocked at the door with an account of her unsuccessful mission, and Sir James, little as the young lady deserved it, concerned himself about sending to the station, and if the bag were not forthcoming there, telegraphing to Boulogne the first thing in the morning.

While Janet was writing particulars and volubly instructing the commissionaire, Mrs. Evelyn saw Babie’s eyes full of tears, and her throat swelling with suppressed sobs. She held out an arm and drew the child to her, saying kindly, “I am sure you would have taken care of the bag if you had been asked, my dear.”

“It’s not that, thank you,” said Babie, laying her head on the kind shoulder, “for I don’t think it was my fault; but mother will be so sorry for her key. It is the key of her davenport, and father’s picture is there, and grandmamma’s, and the card with all our hairs, and she will be so sorry.”

And Babie cried the natural tears of a tired child, whom anything would overcome after her long absence from her mother. Mrs. Evelyn saw how it was, and, as Delrio was entirely occupied with the hue and cry, she herself took the little girl away, and helped her to bed, tenderly soothing and comforting her, and finding her various needments. Among them were her “little books,” but they could not be found, and her eyes looked much too tired to use them, especially as the loss again brought the ready moisture. “My head feels so funny, I can’t think of anything,” she said.

“Shall I do as I used when Sydney was little?” and Mrs. Evelyn knelt down with her, and said one or two short prayers.

Babie murmured her thanks, nestled up to her and kissed her, but added imploringly, “My Psalm. Armie and I always say our Psalm at bed-time, and think of each other. He did it out on the moraine.”

“Will it do if you lie down and I say it to you?”

There was another fond, grateful nestling kiss, and some of the Psalms were gone through in the soft, full cadences of a voice that had gained unconscious pathos by having many times used them as a trustful lullaby to a weary sufferer.

If Babie heard the end, it was in the sweetness of sleep, and when Mrs. Evelyn left her, it was with far less judicial desire to inquire into the subject of that endless conversation which had lasted, with slight intermission, from London to Paris. She was not long left in ignorance, for no sooner had Sydney been assured that nothing ailed Barbara but fatigue, than she burst out, “Mamma, she is the nicest girl I ever saw.”

“Do you like her better than Elvira?”

“Of course I do,” most emphatically. “Mamma, she loves Sir Kenneth of the Leopard as much as I do.”

Mrs. Evelyn was satisfied. While Sir Kenneth of the Leopard remained the object of the young ladies’ passion, there was not much fear of any nonsense that was not innocent and happy.

No news of the bag. Janet was disposed to go back herself or send Delrio, but Sir James declared this impossible; nor would the Evelyns consent to disturb the plan of the journey, and disappoint those who expected them at Engelberg on Saturday by waiting at Paris for tidings. Janet in vain told herself that she was not under their control, and tried to remain behind by herself with her maid. They had a quiet, high-bred decisive way of taking things for granted, and arranging for her and she found herself unable to resist; but whenever, in after times, she was unpleasantly reminded of her loss, she always charged it upon them.

Otherwise the journey was prosperous. Elfie was on the terms of a saucy pet with the General, and Babie’s bright, gentle courtesy and unselfishness won Mrs. Evelyn’s heart, while she and Sydney were as inseparable as ever.

In fact Sydney had been made free of Jotapata. That celebrated romance had been going on all these years with the elision of several generations; because though few members of the family were allowed to see their twenty-fifth year, it was impossible to squeeze them all into the crusading times; and besides the reigning favourites must be treated to an adventure with Coeur de Lion.

Even thus abridged, it bade fair to last throughout the journey, both the little maidens being sufficiently experienced travellers to care little for the sights from the French railway, and being only stimulated to talk and listen the more eagerly when interrupted by such trifles as meals, companions, and calls to look at objects far less interesting.

“Look, my dears; we are coming to the mountains. There is the first snowy head.”

“Yes, mamma,” but the hats were together again in the corner.

“Come, Sydney, don’t lose this wonderful winding valley.”

“I see, Uncle James. Beautiful!” popping back instantly with, “Go on, Babie, dear. How did Sir Gilbert get them out of that horrid defile full of Turks? It is true, you said.”

“True that Louis VII. and Queen Eleanor got into that dreadful mess. Armine found it in Sismondi, but nobody knew who Sir Gilbert was except ourselves; and we are quite sure he was Sir Gilbert of the Ermine, the son of the brother who thought it his duty to stay at home.”

“Sir Philibert? Oh, yes! I know.”

“There are some verses about the Iconium Pass, written out in our spotted book, but I can say some of them.”

“Oh, do!”

“‘The rock is steep, the gorge is deep, Mount Joye St. Denys; But King Louis bold his way doth hold, Mount Joye St. Denys.

Ho ho, the ravine is ‘narrow I ween, Lah billah el billah, hurrah. The hills near and far the Frank’s way do bar, Lah billah el billah, hurrah.”

“It ought to be ‘Allah el Allah,’ but you know that really does mean a holy name, and Armine thought we ought not to have it. It was delightful making the ballad, for all the Christian verses have ‘Mount Joye St. Denys’ in the different lines, and all the Turkish ones ‘Lah billah,’ till Sir Gilbert comes in, and then his war-cry goes instead--

“‘On, on, ye Franks, hew down their ranks, Up, merry men, for the Ermine! For Christian right ‘gainst Pagan might, Up, merry men, for the Ermine!’

but one day Jock got hold of it, and wrote a parody on it.”

“Oh what a shame! Weren’t you very angry?”

“It was so funny, one could not help laughing.

“‘Come on, old Turk, you’ll find hot work-- Pop goes the weasel! They cut and run; my eyes, what fun!-- Pop goes the weasel!’”

“How could you bear it? I won’t hear a bit more. It is dreadful.”

“Miss Ogilvie says if one likes a thing very much, parodies don’t hurt one’s love,” said Babie.

“But what did Sir Gilbert do?”

“He rode up to where Louis was standing with his back against a rock, and dismounted saying ‘My liege--’”

“I thought he was an Englishman?”

“Oh, but you always called a king ‘my liege,’ whoever you were. ‘My liege,’ he said--”

“Look at that charming little church tower.”

“I see, thank you.”

“I see, Uncle James. No, thank you, I don’t want to look out any more. I saw it. Well, Babie, ‘My liege--’”

“Never mind, James,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “one can’t be more than in Elysium.”

There were fewer conveniences for the siege on the last day of the journey, when railroads were no more; but something could be done on board the steamer in spite of importunities from those who thought it a duty to look at the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and when arrival became imminent, happy anticipation inclined Barbara to a blissful silence. Mrs. Evelyn saw her great hazel eyes shining like stars, and began to prefer the transparent mask of that ardent little soul to the external beauty which made Elvira a continual study for an artist.

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XXIV. THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN

To your eager prayer, the Voice Makes awful answer, “Come to Me.” Once for all now seal your choice With Christ to tread the boisterous sea. Keble.

The Leukerbad section of the party had only three days’ start of the others, for Jock was not released till after a whole month’s course of the baths, and Armine’s state fluctuated so much that the journey would not have been sooner possible.

It had been a trying time. While Dr. Medlicott thought he could not rouse Mrs. Brownlow to the sense of the little fellow’s precarious condition, deadly alarm lay couched in the bottom of her heart, only kept at bay by defiantly cheerful plans and sanguine talk.

Then Jock was depressed, and at his age (and, alas! at many others) being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods, seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a muff as Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the friendship only seemed cemented by this treatment, and this devoted slave evidently preferred being abused by Jock to being made much of by any one else.

The regimen was very disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on the moraine and ratified with Cecil. To no one else had he spoken, but all the more for his reserve did he feel himself bound by the sense of the shame and dishonour of falling back from vows made in the time of danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been infinitely better tempered.

For to poor Jock steadiness appeared renunciation of all “jest and youthful jollity,” and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in life seemed extinguished, and he would have preferred leaving Eton, where he must change his habits and amaze his associates. Indeed, he was between hoping and fearing that all this would there seem folly. But then he would break his word, the one thing that poor half-heathen Jock truly cared about.

Meantime he was keeping it as best he knew how under the circumstances, by minding his prayers more than he had ever done before, trying to attend when part of the service was read on Sundays, and endeavouring to follow the Evelyn sabbatical code, but only succeeding in making himself more dreary and savage on Sunday than on any other day.

By easy journeys they arrived at Engelberg early on a Friday afternoon, and found pleasant rooms in the large hotel, looking out in front on the grand old monastery, once the lord of half the Canton, and in the rear upon pine-woods, leading up to a snow-crowned summit. The delicious scent seemed to bring invigoration in at the windows.

However, Jock and Armine were both tired enough to be sent to bed, if not to sleep, immediately after the--as yet, scantily filled table d’hote. The former was lying dreamily listening to the evening bells of the monastery, when Cecil came in, looking diffident and hesitating.

“I say, Jock,” he began, “did you see that old clergyman at the table d’hote?”

“Was there one?”

“Yes; and there is to be a Celebration on Sunday.”

“O! Then Armine can have his wish.”

“Fordham has been getting the old cleric to talk to your mother about it.”

Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother Robert’s example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on that terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, “Do you mean to stay?” he answered rather snappishly, “I suppose so.”

“I fancied,” said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, “that if we were together it would be a kind of seal to--”

Jock actually forced back the words, “Don’t humbug,” which were not his own, but his ill-temper’s, and managed to reply--

“Well, what?”

“Being brothers in arms,” replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full assent, letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.

He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed his tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for the birds of the air. The outcome was--

“I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is--I don’t know where.”

Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil himself, would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was heartily glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock’s reformation his own security in the ways which he really preferred.

Poor Jock, who, whatever he was, was real in all his ways, and could not lead a double life, as his friend too often did, read and tried to fulfil the injunctions of the book, but only became more confused and unhappy than ever. Yet still he held on, in a blind sort of way, to his resolution. He had undertaken to be good, he meant therefore to communicate, and he believed he repented, and would lead a new life--if--if he could bear it.

His next confidence was--

“I say, Cecil, can you get me some writing things? We--at least I--ought to write and tell my tutor that I am sorry about that supper.”

“Well, he was rather a beast.”

“I think,” said Jock, who had the most capacity for seeing things from other people’s point of view, “we did enough to put him in a wax. It was more through me than any one else, and I shall write at once, and get it off my mind before to-morrow.”

“Very well. If you’ll write, I’ll sign,” said Cecil. “Mother said I ought when I saw her in London, but she didn’t order me. She said she left it to my proper feeling.”

“And you hadn’t any?”

“I was going to stick by you,” said Cecil, rather sulkily; on which Jock rewarded him with something sounding like--

“What a donkey you can be!”

However, with many writhings and gruntings the letter was indited, and Jock was as much wearied out as if he had taken a long walk, so that his mother feared that Engelberg was going to disagree with him. He had not energy enough to go out in the evening of Saturday to meet the new arrivals, but stayed with Armine, who was in a state of restless joy and excitement, marvelling at him, and provoking him by this surprise as if it were censure.

With his forehead against the window, Armine watched and did his utmost to repress the eagerness that seemed to irritate his brother, and at last gave vent to an irrepressible hurrah.

“There they are! Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is! Babie--holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with Fordham--and there’s Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren’t you coming down, Jock?”

“Not I! I don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself before everybody!--I say--you’ll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut the door I say!”--shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed, “There! What an eternal brute I am!”

A few moments more and the door was open again, and Cecil, with his arm round his sister, thrust her forwards, exclaiming--“Here he is, Syd.”

Jock had recovered his gentlemanly manners enough to shake hands courteously, as well as to receive and return Babie’s kiss, when she and Armine staggered in together, reeling under their weight of delight. Janet kissed him too, and then, scanning both brothers, observed to her mother--

“I think Lucas is the more altered of the two.” In which sentiment Elvira seemed to agree, for she put her hands behind her and exclaimed--

“O Jock, you do look such a fright; I never knew how like Janet you were!”

“You are letting every one know what a spiteful little Elf you can be,” returned Janet, indignantly. “Can’t you give poor Jock a kinder greeting?”

Whereupon the Elf put on a cunning look of innocence and said--

“I didn’t know it was unkind to say he was like you, Janet.”

The Evelyn pair had gone--after this introduction of Jock and Sydney--to their own sitting-room, which opened out of that of the Brownlows, and the door was soon unclosed, for the two families meant to make up only one party. The two mothers seemed as if they had been friends of old standing, and Mrs. Evelyn was looking with delighted wonder at her eldest son, who had gained much in flesh and in vigour ever since Dr. Medlicott’s last and most successful prescription of a more pressing subject of interest than his own cough.

She had an influence about her that repressed all discords in her presence, and the evening was a cheerful and happy one, leaving a soothing sense upon all.

Then came the awakening to the sounds of the monastery bells, and in due time the small English congregation assembled, and one at least was trying to force an attention that had freely wandered ever before.

The preacher was the chance visitor, an elderly clergyman with silvery hair. He spoke extempore from Job xxviii.

Where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, “It is not in me:” And the sea saith, “It is not with me.” It cannot be gotten for gold. Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

What he said was unlike any sermon the young people had heard before. It began with a description of the alchemist’s labours, seeking for ever for the one great arcanum, falling by the way upon numerous precious discoveries, yet never finding the one secret which would have rendered all common things capable of being made of priceless value. He drew this quest into a parable of man’s search for the One Great Good, the wisdom that is the one thing necessary to give weight, worth, and value to the life which, without it, is vanity of vanities. Many a choice gift of thought, of science, of philosophy, of beauty, of poetry, has been brought to light in its time by the seekers, but in vain. All rang empty, hollow, and heartless, like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, till the secret should be won. And it is no unattainable secret. It is the love of Christ that truly turneth all things into fine gold. One who has attained that love has the true transmuting and transforming power of making life golden, golden in brightness, in purity, in value, so as to be “a present for a mighty King.”

Then followed a description of the glory and worth of the true, noble, faithful manhood of a “happy warrior,” ever going forward and carrying through achievements for the love of the Great Captain. Each in turn, the protector of the weak, the redresser of wrong, the patriot, the warrior, the scholar, the philosopher, the parent, the wife, the sister, or the child, the healthful or the sick, whoever has that one constraining secret, the love of Christ, has his service even here, whether active or passive, veritably golden, the fruit unto holiness, the end everlasting life.

Perhaps it was the cluster of young faces that led the preacher thus to speak, and as he went on, he must have met the earnest and responsive eyes that are sure to animate a speaker, and the power and beauty of his words struck every one. To the Evelyns it was a new and beautiful allegory on a familiar idea. Janet was divided between discomfort at allusions reminding her of her secret, and on criticisms of the description of alchemy. Her mother’s heart beat as if she were hearing an echo of her husband’s thoughts about his Magnum Bonum. Little Armine was thrilled as, in the awe of drawing near to his first Communion, this golden thread of life was put into his hand. But it was Jock to whom that discourse came like a beam of light into a dark place. When upon the dreary vista of dull abnegation on which he had been dwelling for a month past, came this vision of the beauty, activity, victory, and glory of true manhood, as something attainable, his whole soul swelled and expanded with joyful enthusiasm. The future that he had embraced as lead had become changed to gold! Thus the whole ensuing service was to him a continuation of that blessed hopeful dedication of himself and all his powers. It was as if from being a monk, he had become a Red Cross Knight of the Hospital. Yet, after his soiled, spoiled, reckless boyhood, how could that grand manhood be attained?

Later in the afternoon, when the denizens of the hotel had gone their several ways, some to look and listen at Benediction in the Convent church, some to climb through the pine-woods to the Alp, some to saunter and rest among the nearer trees, the clergyman, with his Greek Testament in his hand, was sitting on a seat under one of the trees, enjoying the calm of one of his few restful Sundays; when he heard a movement, and beheld the pale thin lad, who still walked so lame, who had been so silent at the table d’hote, and whose dark eyes had looked up with such intensity of interest, that he had more than once spoken to them.

“You are tired,” said the clergyman, kindly making room for him.

“Thanks,” said the boy, mechanically moving forward, but then pausing as he leant on his stick, and his eyes suddenly dimmed with tears as he said, “Oh, sir, if you would only tell me how to begin--”

“Begin what?” said the old man, holding out his hand.

“To turn it to gold,” said Jock. “Can I, after being the mad fool I’ve been?”

They talked for more than an hour; even till Dr. Medlicott, coming down from the Alp, laid his hand on Jock’s shoulder, and told him the evening chill was coming, and he must sit still no longer. And when the boy looked up, the restless weary distress of his face was gone.

Jock never saw that old clergyman again, nor heard of him, unless it were his death that he read of in the paper six months later. But he never heard the name of Engelberg without an echo of the parting benediction, and feeling that to him it had indeed been an Angel mountain.

This had been a happy day to several others. Cecil, after ten minutes with his mother, which filled her with hope and thankfulness, had gone to show his sister the charms of the place, and Armine and Babie, on a sheltered seat, were free to pour out their hearts to one another, ranging from the heights of pure childish wisdom to its depths of blissful ignorance and playful folly, as they talked over the past and the future.

Armine knew there was no chance of an immediate and entire recovery for him, and this was a severe stroke to Babie, who was quite unprepared. And, as her face began to draw up with tears near the surface, he hugged her close, and consolingly whispered that now they would be together always, he should not have to go away from his own dear Babie Bunting, and there was a little kissing match, ending by Babie saying, disconsolately, “But you did like Eton so, and you were going to get the Newcastle and the Prince Consort’s prize, and to be in the eleven and all--and you were so sure of a high remove! Oh, dear!” and she let her head drop on his shoulder, and was almost crying again.

“Don’t, don’t, Babie! or you’ll make me as bad again,” said Armine. “It does come over me now and then, and I wish I had never known what it was to be strong and jolly, and to expect to do all sorts of things.”

“I shall always be wishing it,” said Babie.

“No, you are not to cry! You would be more sorry if I was dead, and not here at all, Babie; and you have got to thank God for that.”

“I do--I have! I’ve done it ever since we got Johnny’s dreadful letter. Oh, yes, Armine, I’ll try not to mind, for perhaps if we aren’t thankful, I mayn’t keep you at all,” said poor Babie, with her arms round her treasure. “But are you quite sure, Armine? Couldn’t Dr. Lucas get you quite well? You see this Dr. Medlicott is very young,” added the small maiden sapiently.

“Young doctors are all the go. Dr. Lucas said so when mother wrote to ask if she had better bring me home for advice,” said Armine. “He knows all about Dr. Medlicott, and said he was first-rate, and they’ve been writing to each other about me. The doctor stethoscoped me all over, and then he did a map of my lungs, Cecil said, to send in his letter.”

“Oh!” gasped Babie, “didn’t it frighten you?”

“I wanted to know, for I saw mother was in a way. She did talk and whisk about so fast, and made such a fuss, that I thought I must be much worse than I knew. So I told Dr. Medlicott I wished he would tell me right out if I was going to die, in time to see you, and then I shouldn’t mind. So he said not now, and he thought I should get over it in the end, but that most likely I should have a long time, years perhaps, of being very careful. And when I asked if I should be able to go back to Eton, he said he hardly expected it; and that he believed it was kinder to let me know at once than let me be straining and hoping on.”

“Was it?” said Babie.

“I thought not,” said Armine, “when I shut my eyes and the playing-fields and the trees and the river stood up before me. I thought if I could have hoped ever so little, it would have been nice. And then to think of never being able to run, or row, or stay out late, and always to be bothering about one’s stockings and wraps, and making a miserable muff of oneself just to keep in a bit of uncomfortable life, and being a nuisance to everybody.”

Babie fairly shrieked and sobbed her protest that he could never be a nuisance to her or mother.

“You are Babie, and mother is mother, I know that; but it did seem such a long burthen and bore, and when--oh, Babie--don’t you know--”

“How we always thought you would go on and be something great, and do something great, like Bishop Selwyn, or like that Mr. Denison that Miss Ogilvie has a book about,” said Babie. “But you will get well and do it when you are a man, Armie! Didn’t you think about it when you heard all about the golden life in the sermon to-day?” I thought, “That’s going to be Armie’s life,” and I looked at you, but you were looking down. Were you thinking how it was all spoilt, Armie, poor dear Armie. For perhaps it isn’t.”

“No, I know nobody can spoil it but myself,” said Armine. “And you know he said that one might make weakliness and sickness just as golden, by that great Love, as being up and doing. I was going to tell you, Babie, I was horridly wretched and dismal one day at Leukerbad when I thought mother and all were out of the way--gone out driving, I believe--and then Fordham came in. He had stayed in, I do believe, on purpose--”

“But, but,” said Babie, not so much impressed as her brother wished; “isn’t he rather a spoon? Johnny said he ought to have been a girl.”

“I didn’t think Johnny was such a stupid,” said Armine, “I only know he has been no end of a comfort to me, though he says he only wants to hinder me from getting like him.”

“Don’t then,” said Babie, “though I don’t understand. I thought you were so fond of him.”

“So must you be,” said Armine; “I never got on with anybody so well. He knows just how it is! He says if God gives one such a life, He will help one to find out the way to make the best of it for oneself and other people, and to bear to see other people doing what one can’t, and we are to help one another. Oh, Babie! you must like Fordham!”

“I must if you do!” said Babie. “But he is awfully old for a friend for you, Armie.”

“He is nineteen,” said Armine, “but people get more and more of the same age as they grow older. And he likes all our books, and more too, Babie. He had such a delicious book of French letters, that he lent me, with things in them that were just what I wanted. If we are to be abroad all the winter, he will get his mother to go wherever we do. Suppose we went to the Holy Land, Babie!”

“Oh! then we could find Jotapata! Oh, no,” she added, humbly, “I promised Miss Ogilvie not to talk of Jotapata on a Sunday.”

“And going to the Holy Land only to look for it would be much the same thing,” said Armine. “Besides, I expect it is up among the Druses, where one can’t go.”

“Armie,” in the tone of a great confession, “I’ve told Sydney all about it. Have you told Lord Fordham?”

“No,” said Armine, who was less exclusively devoted to the great romance. “I wonder whether he would read it?”

“I’ve brought it. Nineteen copybooks and a dozen blank ones, though it was so hard to make Delrio pack them up.”

“Hurrah for the new ones! We did so want some for the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ the paper at Leukerbad was so bad. You should hear the verses the Doctor wrote on the mud baths. They are as stunning as ‘Fly Leaves.’ Mr. Editor, I say,” as Lord Fordham’s tall figure strode towards them, “she has brought out a dozen clean copybooks. Isn’t that a joy for the ‘Joy’?”

“Had you no other intentions for them?” said Fordham, detecting something of disappointment in Babie’s face. “You surely were not going to write exercises in them?”

“Oh, no!” said Babie, “only--”

“She can’t mention it on Sunday,” said Armine, a little wickedly. “It’s a wonderful long story about the Crusaders.”

“And,” explained Babie, “our governess said we--that is I--thought of nothing else, and made the Lessons at Church and everything else apply to it, so she made me resolve to say nothing about it on Sunday.”

“And she has brought out nineteen copybooks full of it,” added Armine.

“Yes,” said Babie, “but the little speckled ones are very small, and have half the leaves torn out, and we used to write larger when we began. I think,” she added, with the humility of an aspirant contributor towards the editor of a popular magazine, “if Lord Fordham would be so kind as to look at it, Armie thought it might do what people call, I believe, supplying the serial element of fiction, and I should be happy to copy it out for each number, if I write well enough.”

The word “happy,” was so genuine, and the speech so comical, that the Editor had much ado to keep his countenance as he gave considerable hopes that the serial element should be thus supplied in the MS. magazine.

Meantime, the two mothers were walking about and resting together, keeping their young people in some degree in view, and discussing at first the subject most on their minds, their sons’ bodily health, and the past danger, for which Caroline found a deeply sympathetic listener, and one who took a hopeful view of Armine.

Mrs. Evelyn was indeed naturally disposed to augur well whenever the complaint was not hereditary, and she was besides in excellent spirits at the very visible progress of both her sons, the one in physical, the other in moral health, and she could not but attribute both to the companionship that she had been so anxious to prevent. She had never seen Duke look so well, nor seem so free from languor and indifference since he was a mere child, and all seemed due to his devotion to Armine; while as to Cecil, he seemed to have a new spring of improvement, which he ascribed altogether to his friend.

“It is strange to me to hear this of my poor Jock,” said Caroline, “always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy. His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don’t you think an uncle’s strong hand is much worse than any mother’s weakness?”

“Not than her weakness,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “It is her love, I think, that you mean. There are some boys with whom strong hands are vain, but who will guide themselves for love, and that we mothers are surely the ones to infuse.”

“My boys are affectionate enough, dear fellows,” said Caroline proudly, forgetting her sore disappointment that neither Allen nor Robert had chosen to come to her help.

“I did not only mean love of oneself,” said Mrs. Evelyn, gently. “I was thinking of the fine gold we heard of this morning. When our boys once have found that secret, the chief of our work is done.”

“Ah! and I never understood how to give them that,” said Caroline. “We have been all astray ever since their father left us.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Evelyn, with a certain sweet shyness, “I can’t help thinking that your dear Lucas found that gold among the stones of the moraine, and will help my poor weak Cecil to keep a fast hold of it.”

Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion was confirmed, when a few days later came the answer to Jock’s letter to his tutor, pleasing and touching both friends so much that each showed it to his mother. Another important piece of intelligence came in a letter from John to his cousin, namely that the present Captain of the house, with two or three more “fellows,” were leaving Eton at the Midsummer holidays, and that his tutor had been talking to him about becoming Captain.

Jock and Cecil greatly rejoiced, for the departing Captain had been a youth whose incapacity for government had been much better known to his subordinates than to his master, and the other two had been the special tempters and evil geniuses of the house, those who above all had set themselves to make obedience and religion seem contemptible, and vice daring and manly.

“I should have hated the notion of being Captain,” wrote John, “if those impracticable fellows had stayed on, and if I did not feel sure of you and Evelyn. You are such a fellow for getting hold of the others, but with you two at my back, I really think the house may get a different tone into it.”

“And every one told us what an excellent character it had,” said Mrs. Evelyn, when the letter, through a chain of strict confidence, came round to her, the boys little knowing how much it did to decide their continuance together, and at Eton. Sir James had never been willing that Cecil should be taken away, and he had become as sensible as any of the rest to the Brownlow charm.

That was a very happy time in the pine-woods and the Alp. The whole of the nineteen copy books were actually read by Babie to Sydney and Armine; and Lord Fordham, over his sketches, submitted to hear a good deal. He told his mother that the story was the most diverting thing he had ever heard, with its queer mixture of childish simplicity and borrowed romance, of natural poetry and of infantine absurdity, of extraordinary knowledge and equally comical ignorance, of originality and imitation, so that his great difficulty had been not to laugh in the wrong place, when Babie had tears in her eyes at the heights of pathos and sublimity, and Sydney was shedding them for company. It was funny to come to places where Armine’s slightly superior age and knowledge of the world began to tell, and when he corrected and criticised, or laughed, with appeals to his elder friend. Babie was so perfectly good-humoured about the sacrifice of her pet passages, and even of her dozen copybooks, that the editor of the “Traveller’s Joy” could not help encouraging the admission of “Jotapata” into the magazine, in spite of the remonstrances of the rest of his public, who declared it was merely making the numbers a great deal heavier for postage, and all for nothing.

The magazine was well named, for it was a great resource. There were illustrations of all kinds, from Lord Fordham’s careful watercolours, and Mrs. Brownlow’s graceful figures or etchings, to the doctor’s clever caricatures and grotesque outlines, and the contributions were equally miscellaneous. There were descriptions of scenery, fragmentary notes of history and science, records more or less veracious or absurd of personal adventures, and conversations, and advertisements, such as--

Stolen or strayed.--A parasol, white above, black below, minus a ring, with an ivory loop handle, and one broken whalebone. Whoever will bring the same to the Senora Donna Elvira de Menella, will he handsomely rewarded with a smile or a scowl, according to her mood.

Lost.--On the walk from the Alp, of inestimable value to the owner, and none to any one else, an Idea, one of the very few originated by the Honble. C. F. Evelyn.

Small wit went a good way, and personalities were by no means prohibited, since the editor could be trusted to exercise a safe discretion in the riddles, acrostics, and anagrams deposited in the bag at his door; and immense was the excitement when the numbers were produced, with a pleasing irregularity as to time, depending on when they became bulky enough to look respectable, and not too thick to be sewn up comfortably by the great Reeves, who did not mind turning his hand to anything when he saw his lordship so merry.

The only person who took no interest in the “Traveller’s Joy” was Janet, who could not think how reasonable people could endure such nonsense. Her first affront had been taken at a most absurd description which Jock had illustrated by a fancy caricature of “The Fox and the Crow,” “Woman’s Progress,” in which “Mr. Hermann Dowsterswivel” was represented as haranguing by turns with her on the steamer, and, during her discourse, quietly secreting her bag. It was such wild fun that Lord Fordham never dreamt of its being an affront, nor perhaps would it have been, if Dr. Medlicott would have chopped logic, science, and philosophy with her in the way she thought her due from the only man who could be supposed to approach her in intellect. He however took to chaff. He would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest, and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows with Miolner for three flaps of a rat’s tail.

The magazine contained a series of notes on the nursery rhymes, where the “Song of Sixpence” was proved to be a solar myth. The pocketful of rye was the yield of the earth, and the twenty-four blackbirds sang at sunrise while the king counted out the golden drops of the rain, and the queen ate the produce while the maid’s performance in the garden was, beyond all doubt, symbolic of the clouds suddenly broken in upon by the lightning!

Moreover the man of Thessaly was beautifully illustrated, blinding himself by jumping into the prickly bush of science, where each gooseberry was labelled with some pseudo study. When he saw his eyes were out, he stood wondrously gazing after them with his sockets while they returned a ludicrous stare from the points of thorns, like lobsters. In his final leap deeper into truth, he scratched them in again, and walked off, in a crown of laurels, triumphant.

Janet was none the less disposed to leap into her special gooseberry-bush; and her importunity prevailed, so that before Dr. Medlicott returned to England he escorted her and her mother to Zurich. Then after full inquiries it was decided that she should have her will, and follow out her medical course of study, provided she could find a satisfactory person to board with.

She proposed, and her mother consented, that the two Miss Rays should be her chaperons, of course with liberal payment. Nita could carry on her studies in art, and made the plan agreeable to Janet, while old Miss Ray’s eyes, which had begun to suffer from the copying, would have a rest, and Mrs. Brownlow had as much confidence in her as in any one Janet would endure.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXV. THE LAND OF AFTERNOON

And all at once they sang, “Our island home Is far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam.” Tennyson.

We must pass over three more years and a half, and take up the scene in the cloistered court of a Moorish house in Algeria, adapted to European habits. The slender columns supporting the horse-shoe arches were trained with crimson passion-flower and bougainvillia, while orange and gardenia blossom scented the air, and in the midst of a pavement of mosaic marbles was a fountain, tinkling coolness to the air which was already heated enough to make it impossible to cross the court without protection from the sunshine even at nine o’clock in the morning.

Mrs. Brownlow had a black lace veil thrown over her head; and both she and the clergyman with her, in muslin-veiled hat, had large white sunshades.

“Little did we think where we should meet again, and why, Mr. Ogilvie. Do you feel as if you had got into ‘Tales of the Alhambra,’ or into the ‘Tempest’?”

“I hope not to continue in the ‘Tempest,’ at any rate, after this Algier wedding.”

“Though no doubt you feel, as I do, that the world goes very like a game at consequences. Who would ever have put together The Vicar of Benneton and Mary Ogilvie in the amphitheatre at Constantina, eating lion-steaks. Consequence was, an engaged ring. What the world said, ‘Who would have thought it?’”

“The world in my person should say you have been Mary’s kindest friend, Mrs. Brownlow. Little did I think, when I persuaded Charles Morgan to give himself six months’ rest from his parish by reading with Armine, that this was to be the end of it, though I am sure there is not a man in the world to whom I am so glad to give my sister.”

“And is it not delightful to see dear old Mary? She looks younger now than ever she did in her whole life, and has broken out of all her primmy governessy crust. Oh! it has been such fun to watch it, so entirely unconscious as both of them were. Mrs. Evelyn and I gloated over it together, all the more that the children had not a suspicion. I don’t think Babie and Sydney realise any one being in love nearer our own times than ‘Waverley’ at the very latest. They received the intelligence quite as a shock. Allen said, as if they had heard that the Greek lexicon was engaged to the French grammar! It will be their first bridesmaid experience.”

“Did they miss the wedding at Kenminster?”

“Yes; Jessie’s old General chose to marry her in the depth of winter, when we could not think of going home. You know I have not been at Belforest for four years.”

“Four years! I suppose I knew, but I did not realise it.”

“Yes. You know there was the first summer, when, just as we got back to London after our Italian winter, poor Armie had such a dreadful attack on the lungs, that Dr. Medlicott said he was in more danger than when he was at Schwarenbach; and, as soon as he could move, we had to take him to Bournemouth, to get strength for going to the Riviera. I can say now that I never did expect to bring him back again! But I am thankful to say he has been getting stronger ever since, and has scarcely had a real drawback.”

“Yes, I was astonished to see him looking so well. He would scarcely give a stranger the impression of being delicate.”

“They told me last summer in London that the damage to the lungs had been quite outgrown, and that he would only need moderate care for the future. Indeed, we should have stayed at home this year, but last summer twelvemonth there was a fever, and that set on foot a perquisition into our drains at Belforest, and it was satisfactorily proved that we ought by good rights to have been all dead of typhoid long ago. So we turned the workmen in, and they could not of course be got out again. And then Allen fell in love with parquet and tiles, and I was weak enough to think it a good opportunity when all the floors were up. But when a man of taste takes to originality, there’s no end of it. Everything has had to be made on purpose, and certain little tiles five times over; for when they did come out the right shape, they were of a colour that Allen pronounced utter demoralisation. However, we are quite determined to get home this summer, and you and Mary must meet there, and show old Kenminster to Mr. Morgan. Ah! here she comes, and I shall leave you to enjoy this lucid interval of her while Mr. Morgan is doing his last lessons with the children.”

“How exactly like herself!” exclaimed Mr. Ogilvie, as Mrs. Brownlow vanished under one of the arches.

“Like! yes; but much more, much better,” said Mary, eagerly.

“Ah, do you remember when you told me coming to her was an experiment, and you thought it might be better for the old friendship if you did not accept the situation?”

“You triumph at last, David; but I can confess now that for the first four years I held to that opinion, and felt that my poor Carey and I could have loved each other better if our relative situations had been different, and we had not seen so much of one another. My life used to seem to me half-unspoken remonstrance, half-truckling compliance, and nothing but our mutual loyalty to old times, and dear little Babie’s affection, could have borne us through.”

“And her extraordinary sweetness and humility, Mary.”

“Yes, I allow that. Very few employers would have treated me as she did, knowing how I regretted much that went on in her household. However, when I met her at Pontresina, after the boys’ terrible adventure in Switzerland, there was an indefinable change. I cannot tell whether it is owing to the constant being with such a boy as Armine, while he was for more than a year between life and death, or whether it was from the influence of living with Mrs. Evelyn; but she has certainly ever since had the one thing that was wanting to all her sweetness and charm.”

“I never thought so!”

“No; but you were never a fair judge. I think she has owed unspeakably much to Mrs. Evelyn, who, so far as I can see, is the first person who, at any rate since the break-up of the original home, made conscientiousness, or indeed religion, appear winning to her, neither stiff, nor censorious, nor goody.”

“Is not this close combination of the two families rather odd?”

“I don’t think it is. Poor Lord Fordham is very fond of Armine, and he hates the being driven abroad every winter so much, that the meeting Armine is the only pleasant ingredient. And it has been convenient for Sydney to join our school-room party. I was very glad also, that these last two summers, there have been visits at Fordham. Staying there has given Mrs. Brownlow and the younger ones some insight into what the life at Belforest might be, but never has been; and they will not be kept out of it any longer.”

“Then they are going home!”

“After the London season.”

“Why, little Barbara is surely not coming out yet?”

“No; but Elvira is.”

“Ah! by the bye, was I not told that I was to have two weddings?”

“Allen wished it, but the Elf won’t hear of it. She says she had no notion of turning into a stupid old married woman before she has had any fun.”

“Does she care for him?”

“I don’t think she is capable of caring for any one much. I don’t know whether she may ever soften with age; but--”

“Say it, Mary--out with it.”

“I never saw such a heartless little butterfly! She did not care a rush when her good old grandfather died, and I don’t believe she has one fraction more love for Mrs. Brownlow, or Allen, or anybody else. The best thing I can see is that she is too young to perceive the prudence of securing Allen; but perhaps that is only frivolity, and he, poor fellow, is so devoted to her, that it is quite provoking to see how she trifles with and torments him.”

“Isn’t it rather good for the great Mr. Brownlow? Not much besides has contradicted him, I should imagine.”

“His mother thinks that it is the perpetual restlessness in which Elvira keeps him that renders him so unsettled, and that if they were once married he would have some peace of mind, and be able to begin life in earnest. But to hurry on the marriage is such a fearful risk, with such a creature as that sprite, that she has persuaded him to wait, and let the child be satisfied by this season in London, that she may not think they are cheating her of her young lady life.”

“It is on the cards, I suppose, that she might see some one whom she preferred to him?”

“Which might, in some aspects of the matter, be the best thing possible; but Mrs. Brownlow would have many conscientious scruples about the property, and Allen would be in utter despair.”

“Though, of course, all this would be far better than exposing that tropical-natured Spanish butterfly to meeting the subject of a grand passion too late,” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“Yes; of course that must be in his mother’s mind, though I don’t suppose she expresses it even to herself. Miss Evelyn is coming out too, and is to be presented, which reconciles the younger ones to putting off all their schemes for working at Belforest, after the true Fordham and story-book fashion. Besides, Mrs. Brownlow always feels that she has a duty towards Elvira, even apart from Allen.”

“And what do you think of Allen? He seems very pleasant and gentlemanly.”

“That’s just what he is! He has always been as agreeable and nice as possible all these eight years that I have been with them, and has treated me entirely as his mother’s old friend. I can’t help liking Allen very much, and wondering what he would have been if--if he had had to work for his living--or if Elvira had not been such a little tormenting goose--or if, all manner of ifs--indeed; but they all resolve themselves into one question if there be much stuff in him!”

“If not, he is the only one of the family without, except, perhaps, Jock.”

“Oh! if you saw Jock now, you would not doubt that there’s plenty of substance in him! He has been a very different person ever since his illness in Switzerland, as full of life and fun as ever, but thoroughly in earnest about doing right. He had an immense number of marks for the army examination, and seems by all accounts to be keeping up to regular work, now that it is more voluntary.”

“Is he not rather wasted on the Guards!”

“Well, that was Sir James Evelyn’s doing. They are glad enough to have him there to look after his friend, Mr. Evelyn, and it was one of the cases where the decision for life has to be made before the youth is old enough to understand his full capabilities. I expect Lucas, to give him his right name, will do something distinguished yet, perhaps be a great General; and I hope Sir James has interest enough to get him employment before he has eaten his heart out on drill and parade. Now that Armine’s health is coming round, I do leave Caroline very happy about the younger half of her family.”

“And the elder half?”

“Well! I sometimes think that there must have been something defective in the management of that excellent doctor and his mother, as if they had never taught the children proper loyal respect for her! The three younger ones have it all right, and the two elder sons are as fond of her as possible; but she never had any authority over those three from the first. Only Allen is too gentle and has too much good taste to show it; while as to the other two, Bobus’s contempt is of a kindly, filial, petting description; Janet’s, a nasty, defiant, overt disregard.”

“Impossible! They could not dare to despise her.”

“They do, for the very things that are best in her; and so far I think the Evelyn intercourse has been unlucky, since they ascribe her greater religiousness to what it suits their democratic notions to scorn. Not that there is much to complain of in Bobus’s manner when we do see him. He only uses little stings of satire, chiefly about Lord Fordham. I don’t think he would knowingly pain his mother if he could help it; and for that reason there is a reserve between them.”

“He is eating his terms in the Temple, is he not? And Janet? Is she studying medicine still? Does she mean to practise?”

“I can’t make out. She has only been with us twice in these four years, once at Sorrento and once in London; but she has a very active dislike to Mrs. Evelyn, and vexes her mother by making no secret of it. I believe she is to take her degree at Zurich this spring, but I don’t think she means to practise. She is too well off for the drudgery, but she is bent on making researches of some kind, and I think I heard of some plan of her going to attend lectures, to which her degree may admit her, but I am not sure where. The two Miss Rays seem to be happy to escort her anywhere, and that is a sort of comfort to Mrs. Brownlow. Miss Ray keeps us informed of their comings and goings, for Janet seldom deigns to write.”

“It is very strange that there should be such alienation, and from such a mother.”

“The two characters are as unlike as can be, but I have always thought there must be some cause that no one but Janet herself could perhaps explain. I cannot help thinking that she has some definite purpose in this study of medicine; for I do not think it is for the sake either of the emancipation of women or of general philanthropy. They must be an odd party. Miss Ray attends to the household matters, mends the clothes, and pays the bills. Nita sketches, reads at the libraries, and talks at the table d’hote, like a strong-minded woman, as she is; and Janet goes her own way. Bobus looked in on them once and described them to us with great gusto.”

There Mary’s face became illuminated as a step approached, and a gentleman with grizzled hair, and a thoughtful, gentle face came out, and sat down on her other side.

He had been college tutor to her brother, though not much older, and had stayed on at Oxford, till two years back he had taken a much neglected living. His health had broken down under the severe work of organising, and he had accepted the easy task of reading with Armine Brownlow for the winter in a perfect climate, as a welcome mode of recruiting his strength. He had truly recruited it in an unexpected manner, and was about to take home with him one who would prove such a helpmeet as would lighten all the troubles and difficulties that had weighed so heavily on him, and remove some of them entirely.

So he came out and testified to the remarkable ability and zeal he had found in his pupil, and likewise to the spirit of industry which had prevented the desultory life of travelling and ill-health from having made him nearly so much behindhand as might have been expected. If he only had health to work steadily for the next two years, he would be quite as well prepared to matriculate at the university as all but the very foremost scholars from the public schools. Mr. Morgan thought his intellect equal to that of his brother Robert, who had taken a double first-class, but of a finer order, being open to those poetical instincts which went for nothing with the materialistic Bobus.

Wherewith the friends fell into conversation more immediately interesting to themselves, while at the other end of the court, sheltered by a great orange-tree, a committee of the “Traveller’s Joy” was held.

For that serial still survived, though it could never be called a periodical, since it was an intermittent, and sometimes came out very rapidly, sometimes with intervals of many months; but it was always sent to, and greatly relished by, the absent members of the original party, at first at Eton, and later, two in their barracks, and one at his college at Oxford, whither, to his great satisfaction, he had gone by means of a well-won scholarship, not at his aunt’s expense.

Jotapata’s lengthy romance had died a natural death in the winter that had been spent between Egypt and Palestine. So far from picking up ideas from it there, Babie, in the actual sight of Mount Hermon’s white crown, had begged not to be put in mind of such nonsense, and had never recurred to it; but the wells of fancy had never been dried, and the young people were happily putting together their bits of journal, their bits of history, the description of the great amphitheatre, a poem of Babie’s on St. Louis’s death, a spirited translation in Scott-like metre of Armine’s of the opening of the AEneid, also one from the French, by Sydney, on Arab customs, and all Lord Fordham had been able to collect about Hippo, also “The Single Eye,” by Allen, and “Marco’s Felucca,” by Armine and Babie in partnership, and a fair proportion of drollery.

“There was a space left for the wedding, the greatest event the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ had ever had on record,” said Sydney, as she touched up the etching at the top of her paper, sitting on a low stool by a low mother-of-pearl inlaid Eastern table.

“The greatest and the last,” chimed in Babie, as she worked away at the lace she was finishing for the bride.

“I don’t see why it should be the last of the poor old ‘Joy,’” said Lord Fordham, sorting the MSS. which were scattered round him on the ground.

“Well, somehow I feel as if we had come to the end of a division of our lives,” returned Babie.

“Having done with swaddling bands, eh, Infanta?” said Lord Fordham, while Armine hastily sketched in pen and ink, Babie, with her hair flying and swaddling bands off, executing a war-dance. She did not like it.

“For shame, Armine! Don’t you know how dreadful it is to lose dear Miss Ogilvie?”

“Of course, Babie,” said her brother, “I didn’t think you were such a Babie as not to know that things go by contraries.”

“It is too tender a spot for irony, Armie,” said Lord Fordham.

“Well,” said Armine, “I shall be obliged to do something outrageous presently, so look out!”

“Not really!” said Sydney.

“Yes, really,” said Babie, recovering; “I see what he means. He would like to do anything rather than sit and think that this is the last time we shall all be together again in this way.”

“I’m sure I don’t see why we should not,” said Sydney. “To say nothing of meetings in England; Duke and Armine have only to cough three times in October, and we should all go off together again, and be as jolly as ever.”

“I don’t mean to cough,” said Armine, gravely, “I’ve wasted enough of my life already.”

“In our company, eh?” said Sydney, “or are you to be taken by contraries?”

“No,” said Armine. “One has duties, and lotus-eating is uncommonly nice, but it won’t do to go on for ever. I wouldn’t have given in to it this winter if Allen hadn’t floored us.”

“And then when you thought I had got a tutor, and should do some good with him,” chimed in Babie, “he must needs go and fall in love and spoil our Miss Ogilvie.”

The disgust with which she uttered the words was so comic, that all the others burst out laughing.

And Fordham said--

“The Land of Afternoon was too strong for him. Shall you really pine much for Miss Ogilvie, Infanta?”

“I shall miss her dreadfully,” said Babie, “and I think it is very stupid of her to leave mother, whom she has known all her life, and all of us, for a strange man she never saw till four months ago.”

“Oh, Babie, you to be the author of a chivalrous romance!” said Fordham.

“I was young and silly then,” said the young lady, who was within a month of sixteen.

“And all your romances are to be henceforth without love,” said Armine.

“I think they would be much more sensible,” said Babie. “Why do you all laugh so? Don’t you see how stupid poor Allen always is? And it can even spoil Miss Ogilvie, and make her inattentive.”

“Poor Allen,” echoed one or two voices, in the same low tone, for as they peeped out beyond the orange-tree, Allen might be seen, extended on a many-coloured rug, in an exceedingly deplorable attitude.

“O yes,” said Sydney; “but if one has such a--such a--such an object as that, one must expect to be stupid and miserable sometimes!”

“She must have been worrying him again,” said Babie.

“O yes, didn’t you see?” said Armine. “No, I remember you didn’t go out riding early to-day.”

“No, I was finishing Miss Ogilvie’s wedding lace.”

“Well, that French captain, that Elfie went on with at the commandant’s ball, came riding up in full splendour, and trotted alongside of her, chattering away, she bowing and smiling, and playing off all her airs, and at last letting him give her a great white flower. Didn’t you see it in her breast at breakfast? Poor Allen was looking as if he had eaten wormwood all the time when he was forced to fall back upon me, and I suppose he has been having it out with her and has got the worst of it.”

“O, it is that, is it?” said Lord Fordham; “I thought she wanted to pique Allen, she was so empressee with me.”

“If people will be so foolish as to care for a pretty face,” sagely said Sydney.

“You know it is not only that,” said Babie; “Allen is bound in honour to marry Elvira, to repair the great injustice. It is a great pity she will not marry him now at once, but I think she is afraid, because then, you know, she would get to have a soul, like Undine, and she doesn’t want one yet.”

“That’s a new view of the case,” said Lord Fordham in his peculiar lazy manner, “and taken allegorically it may be the true one.”

“But one would like to have a soul,” said Sydney.

“I’m not sure,” said Babie, with a great look of awe. “One would know it was best, but it would be very tremendous to feel all sorts of thoughts and perceptions swelling up in one.”

“If that is the soul,” said Armine.

“Which is the soul?” said Babie, “our understanding, or our feelings, or both?”

“Both,” said Sydney, undoubtingly.

“I don’t know,” said Babie. “Poor little Chico has double the heart of his mistress.”

“It is quite true,” said Fordham. “We may share intellect with demons, but we do share what is called heart with animals.”

“I think good animals have a sort of soul,” observed Armine.

“And of course, Elvira has a soul,” said Sydney, who was getting bewildered.

“Theologically speaking--yes,” said Armine, making them all laugh, “and I suppose Undine hadn’t. But it was sense and heart that was wanting.”

“The heart would bring the sense,” said Lord Fordham, “and so we have come round to the Infanta’s first assertion that the young lady shrinks from the awakening.”

“I’ll tell you what she really does care for,” said Babie, “and what I believe would waken up her soul much better than marrying poor Allen.”

The announcement was so extraordinary that they all turned their heads to listen.

“Her old black nurse at San Ildefonso,” said Babie. “I believe going back there would do her all the good in the world.”

“There’s something in that notion,” said Armine. “She is always better-tempered in a hot country.”

“Yes,” added Babie, “and you didn’t see her when somebody advised our trying the West Indies for the winter. Her eyes gleamed, and she panted, and I didn’t know what she was going to do. I told mother at night, but she said she was afraid of going there, because of the yellow fever, and that San Ildefonso had been made a coaling-station by the Americans, so it would only disappoint her. But Elfie looked--I never saw any one look as she did--fit to kill some one when she found it was given up, and she did not get over it for ever so long.”

“Take care; here’s an apparition,” said Armine, as a brilliant figure darted out in a Moorish dress, rich jacket, short full white tunic, full trousers tied at the ankles, coins pendulous on the brow, bracelets, anklets, and rows of pearls. It was a dress on which Elvira had set her heart in readiness for fancy balls; it had been procured with great difficulty and expense, and had just come home from the French modiste who had adapted it to European wear.

Allen started up in admiration and delight. Even Mr. Morgan was roused to make an admiring inspection of the curious ornaments and devices; and Elvira, with her perfect features, rich complexion, dark blue eyes, Titian coloured hair, fine figure, and Oriental air, formed a splendid study.

Lord Fordham begged her to stand while he sketched her; and Babie, with Sydney, was summoned to try on the bridesmaids’ apparel.

The three girls, Elvira, Sydney, and Barbara acted as bridesmaids the next day, when, in the English chapel, Mr. Ogilvie gave his sister to his old friend, to begin her new life as a clergyman’s wife.

What could be called Elvira de Menella’s character? Those who knew her best, such as Barbara Brownlow, would almost have soon have thought of ascribing a personal character to a cloud as to her. She smiled into glorious loveliness when the sun shone; she was gloomy and thunderous when displeased, and though she had a passionate temper, and could be violent, she had no fixed purpose, but drifted with the external impulse of the moment. She had not much mind or power of learning, and was entirely inattentive to anything intellectual, so that education had not been able at the utmost to do more than fit her to pass in the crowd, and could get no deeper; and what principles she had it was not easy to tell. Not that she did or said objectionable things, since she had outgrown her childish outbreaks; but she seemed to have no substance, and to be kept right by force of circumstances. She had the selfishness of any little child, and though she had never been known to be untruthful, this might be because there was not the slightest temptation to deceive. She was just as much the spoilt child, to all intents and purposes, as if she had been the heiress; perhaps more so, for Mrs. Brownlow had always been so remorseful for the usurpation as to be extra indulgent--lenient to her foibles, and lavish in gifts and pleasures, even inconveniencing herself for her fancies; whilst Allen had, from the first, treated her with the devotion of a lover. No stranger had ever supposed that she was not the equal in all respects of the rest of the family, nor had she realised it herself.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXVI. MOONSHINE

But still the lady shook her head, And swore by yea and nay My whole was all that he had said, And all that he could say. W. M. Praed.

Mrs. Brownlow had intended to go at once to London on her return to England, but the joint entreaties of Armine and Barbara prevailed on her to give them one week at Belforest, now in that early spring beauty in which they had first seen it.

How delightful the arrival was! Easter had been very late, so it was the last week of the vacation, and dear old Friar John’s handsome face was the first thing they saw at the station, and then his father’s portly form, with a tall pretty creature on each side of him, causing Babie to fall back with a cry of glad amazement, “Oh! Essie and Ellie! Such women!”

Then the train stopped, and there was a tumult of embracings and welcomes, in the midst of which Jock appeared, having just come by the down train.

“You’ll all come to dinner this evening?” entreated Caroline. “My love to Ellen. Tell her you must all of you come.”

It was a most delightsome barouche full that drove from the station. Jock took the reins, and turned over coachman and footman to the break, and in defiance of dignity, his mother herself sprang up beside him. The sky was blue, the hedges were budding with pure light-green above, and resplendent with rosy campion and white spangles of stitchwort below. Stars of anemone, smiling bunches of primrose, and azure clouds of bluebell made the young hearts leap as at that first memorable sight. Armine said he was ready to hurrah and throw up his hat, and though Elvira declared that she saw nothing to be so delighted about, they only laughed at her.

Gorgeous rhododendrons and gay azaleas rose in brilliant masses nearer the house, beds of hyacinths and jonquils perfumed the air, judiciously arranged parterres of gay little Van Thol tulips and white daisies flashed on the eyes of the arriving party, while the exquisite fresh green provoked comparisons with parched Africa.

Bobus was standing on the steps to receive them, and when they had crossed the hall, with due respect to its Roman mosaic pavement, they found the Popinjay bowing, dancing, and chattering for joy, and tea and coffee for parched throats in the favourite Dresden set in the morning room, the prettiest and cosiest in the house.

“How nice it is! We are all together except Janet,’ exclaimed Babie.

“And Janet is coming to us in London,” said her mother. “Did you see her on her way to Edinburgh boys?”

“No,” said Jock. “She never let us know she was there.”

“But I’ll tell you an odd thing I have just found out,” said Bobus. “It seems she came down here on her way, unknown to anyone, got out at the Woodside station, and walked across here. She told Brock that she wanted something out of the drawers of her library-table, of which the key had been lost, and desired him to send for Higg to break it open; but Brock wouldn’t hear of it. He said his Missus had left him in charge, and he could not be answerable to her for having locks picked without her authority--or leastways the Colonel’s. He said Miss Brownlow was in a way about it, and said as how it was her own private drawer that no one had a right to keep her out of, but he stood to his colours; he said the house was Mrs. Brownlow’s, and under his care, and he would have no tampering with locks, except by her authority or the Colonel’s. He even offered to send to Kenminster if she would write a note to my uncle, but she said she had not time, and walked off again, forbidding him to mention that she had been here.”

“Janet always was a queer fish!” said Jock.

“Poor Janet, I suppose she wanted some of her notes of lectures,” said her mother. “Brock’s sound old house-dog instinct must have been very inconvenient to her. I must write and ask what she wanted.”

“But she forbade him to mention it,” said Bobus.

“Of course that was only to avoid the fuss there would have been if it had been known that she had been here without coming to Kencroft. By the bye, I didn’t tell Brock those good people were coming to dinner. How well the dear old Monk looks, and how charming Essie and Ellie! But I shall never know them apart, now they are both the same size.”

“You won’t feel that difficulty long,” said Bobus. “There really is no comparison between them.”

“Just the insipid English Mees,” said Elvira. “You should hear what the French think of the ordinary English girl!”

“So much the better,” said Bobus. “No respectable English girl would wish for a foreigner’s insulting admiration.”

“Well done, Bobus! I never heard such an old-fashioned insular sentiment from you. One would think it was your namesake. By the bye, where is the great Rob?”

“At Aldershot,” said Jock. “I assure you he improves as he grows older. I had him to dine the other day at our mess, and he cut a capital figure by judiciously holding his tongue and looking such a fine fellow, that people were struck with him.”

“There,” said Armine, slyly, “he has the seal of the Guards’ approval.”

Jock could afford to laugh at himself, for he was entirely devoid of conceit, but he added, good humouredly--

“Well, youngster, I can tell you it goes for something. I wasn’t at all sure whether the ass mightn’t get his head out of the lion-skin.”

“Oh, yes! they are all lions and no asses in the Guards,” said Babie; whereupon Jock fell on her, and they had a playful skirmish.

Nobody came to dinner but John and his two sisters. It had turned out that the horse had been too much worked to be used again, and there was a fine moon, so that the three had walked over together. Esther and Eleanor Brownlow had always been like twins, and were more than ever so now, when both were at the same height of five feet eight, both had the same thick glossy dark-brown hair, done in the very same rich coils, the same clearly-cut regular profiles, oval faces, and soft carnation cheeks, with liquid brown eyes, under pencilled arches. Caroline was in confusion how to distinguish them, and trusted at first solely to the little coral charms which formed Esther’s ear-rings, but gradually she perceived that Esther was less plump and more mobile than her sister--her colour was more variable, and she seemed as timid as ever, while Eleanor was developing the sturdy Friar texture. Their aunt had been the means of sending them to a good school, and they had a much more trained and less homely appearance than Jessie at the same age, and seemed able to take their part in conversation with their cousins, though Essie was manifestly afraid of her aunt. They had always been fond of Barbara, and took eager possession of her, while John’s Oxford talk was welcome to all,--and it was a joyous evening of interchange of travellers’ anecdotes and local and family news, but without any remarkable feature till the time came for the cousins to return. They had absolutely implored not to be sent home in the carriage, but to walk across the park in the moonlight; and it was such a lovely night that when Bobus and Jock took up their hats to come with them, Babie begged to go too, and the same desire strongly possessed her mother, above all when John said, “Do come, Mother Carey;” and “rowed her in a plaidie.”

That youthful inclination to frolic had come on her, and she only waited to assure herself that Armine did not partake of her madness, but was wisely going to bed. Allen was holding out a scarf to Elvira, but she protested that she hated moonlight, and that it was a sharp frost, and she went back to the fire.

As they went down the steps in the dark shadow of the house, John gave his aunt his arm, and she felt that he liked to have her leaning on him, as they walked in the strong contrasts of white light and dark shade in the moonshine, and pausing to look at the wonderful snowy appearance of the white azaleas, the sparkling of the fountain, and the stars struggling out in the pearly sky; but John soon grew silent, and after they had passed the garden, said--

“Aunt Caroline, if you don’t mind coming on a little way, I want to ask you something.”

The name, Aunt Caroline, alarmed her, but she professed her readiness to hear.

“You have always been so kind to me” (still more alarming, thought she); “indeed,” he added, “I may say I owe everything to you, and I should like to know that you would not object to my making medicine my profession.”

“My dear Johnny!” in an odd, muffled voice.

“Had you rather not?” he began.

“Oh, no! Oh, no, no! It is the very thing. Only when you began I was so afraid you wanted to marry some dreadful person!”

“You needn’t be afraid of that. Ars Medico, will be bride enough for me till I meet another Mother Carey, and that I shan’t do in a hurry.”

“You silly fellow, you aren’t practising the smoothness of tongue of the popular physician.”

“Don’t you think I mean it?” said John, rather hurt.

“My dear boy, you must excuse me. It is not often one gets so many compliments in a breath, besides having one of the first wishes of one’s heart granted.”

“Do you mean that you really wished this?”

“So much that I am saying, ‘Thank God!’ in my heart all the time.”

“Well, my father and mother thought you might be wishing me to be a barrister, or something swell.”

“As if I could--as if I ever could be so glad of anything,” said she with rejoicing that surprised him. “It is the only thing that could make up for none of my own boys taking that line. I can’t tell you now how much depends on it, John, you will know some day. Tell me what put it into your head--”

He told her, as he had told his father nearly four years before, how the dim memory of his uncle had affected him, and how the bent had been decidedly given by his attendance on Jock, and his intercourse with Dr. Medlicott. At Oxford, he had availed himself of all opportunities, and had come out honourably in all examinations, including physical science, and he was now reading for his degree, meaning to go up for honours. His father, finding him steady to his purpose, had consented, and his mother endured, but still hoped his aunt would persuade him out of it. She was so far from any such intention, that a hint of the Magnum Bonum had very nearly been surprised out of her. For the first time since Belforest had come to her, did she feel in the course of carrying out her husband’s injunctions; and she felt strengthened against that attack from Janet to which she looked forward with dread. She talked with John of his plans till they actually reached the lodge gate, and there found Jock, Babie, and Eleanor chattering merrily about fireflies and glowworms a little way behind, and Bobus and Esther paired together much further back. When all had met at the gate and the parting good-nights had been spoken, Bobus became his mother’s companion, and talked all the way home of his great satisfaction at her wandering time being apparently over, of his delight in her coming to settle at home at last, his warm attachment to the place, and his desire to cultivate the neighbouring borough with a view to representing it in Parliament, since Allen seemed to be devoid of ambition, and so much to hate the mud and dust of public life, that he was not likely to plunge into it, unless Elvira should wish for distinction. Then Bobus expatiated on the awkward connection the Goulds would be for Allen, stigmatising the amiable Lisette, who of course by this time had married poor George Gould, as an obnoxious, presuming woman, whom it would be very difficult to keep in her right position. It was not a bad thing that Elvira should have a taste of London society, to make her less likely to fall under her influence.

“That is not a danger I should have apprehended,” said Caroline.

“The woman can fawn, and that is exactly what a haughty being like Elvira likes. She is always pining for a homage she does not get in the family.”

“Except from poor Allen.”

“Except from Allen, but that is a matter of course. He is a slave to be flouted! Did you ever see a greater contrast than that between her and our evening guests?”

“Esther and Eleanor? They have grown up into very sweet-looking girls.”

“Not that there can be any comparison between them. Essie has none of the ponderous Highness in her--only the Serenity.”

“Yes, there is a very pleasant air of innocent candour about their faces--”

“Just what it does a man good to look at. It is like going out into the country on a spring morning. And there is very real beauty too--”

“Yes, Kencroft monopolises all the good looks of the family. What a fine fellow the dear old Friar has grown.”

“If you bring out those two girls this year, you will take the shine out of all the other chaperons!”

“I wonder whether your aunt would like it.”

“She never made any objection to Jessie’s going out with you.”

“No. I should like it very much; I wonder I had not thought of it before, but I had hardly realised that Essie and Ellie were older than Babie, but I remember now, they are eighteen and seventeen.”

“It would be so good for you to have something human and capable of a little consideration to go out with,” added Bobus, “not to be tied to the tail of a will-of-the-wisp like that Elf--I should not like that for you.”

“I am not much afraid,” said Caroline. “You know I don’t stand in such awe of the little donna, and I shall have my Guardsman to take care of me when we are too frivolous for you. But it would be very nice to have those two girls, and make it pleasanter for my Infanta, who will miss Sydney a good deal.”

“I thought the Evelyns were to be in town.”

“Yes, but their house is at the other end of the park. What are Jock and the Infanta looking at?”

Jock and Babie, who were on a good way in advance in very happy and eager conversation, had come to a sudden stop, and now turned round, exclaiming “Look, mother! Here’s the original Robin Goodfellow.”

And on the walk there was a most ludicrous shadow in the moonlight, a grotesque, dancing figure, with one long ear, and a hand held up in warning. It was of course the shadow of the Midas statue, which the boys had never permitted to be restored to its pristine state. One ear had however crumbled away, but in the shadow this gave the figure the air of cocking the other, in the most indescribably comical manner, and the whole four stood gazing and laughing at it. There was a certain threatening attitude about its hand, which, Jock said, looked as if the ghost of old Barnes had come to threaten them for the wasteful expenditure of his hoards. Or, as Babie said, it was more like the ghastly notion of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, of some phantom of a murdered slave protecting those hoards.

“I don’t wonder he threatens,” said Caroline. “I always thought he meant that audacious trick to have forfeited the hoards.”

“Very lucky he was balked,” said Bobus, “not only for us, but for human nature in general. Fancy how insufferable that Elf would have been if she had been dancing on gold and silver.”

“Take care!” muttered Jock, under his breath. “There’s her swain coming; I see his cigar.”

“And we really shall have it Sunday morning presently,” said his mother, “and I shall get into as great a scrape as I did in the old days of the Folly.”

It was a happy Sunday morning. The Vicar of Woodside had much improved the Church and services with as much assistance in the way of money as he chose to ask for from the lady of Belforest, though hitherto he had had nothing more; but he and his sister augured better things when the lady herself with her daughter and her two youngest sons came across the park in the freshness of the morning to the early Celebration. The sister came out with them and asked them to breakfast. Mrs. Brownlow would not desert Allen and Bobus, but she wished Armine to spare himself more walking. Moreover, Babie discovered that some desertion of teachers would render their aid at the Sunday School desirable on that morning.

This was at present her ideal of Sunday occupation, and she had gained a little fragmentary experience under Sydney’s guidance at Fordham. So she was in a most engaging glow of shy delight, and the tidy little well-trained girls who were allotted to her did not diminish her satisfaction. To say that Armine’s positive enjoyment was equal to hers would not be true, but he had intended all his life to be a clergyman, and he was resolved not to shrink from his first experience of the kind. The boys were too much impressed, by the apparition of one of the young gentlemen from Belforest, to comport themselves ill, but they would probably not have answered his questions even had they been in their own language, and they stared at him in a stolid way, while he disadvantageously contrasted them with the little ready-tongued peasant boys of Italy. However, he had just found the touch of nature which made the world kin, and had made their eyes light up by telling them of a scene he had beheld in Palestine, illustrating the parable they had been repeating, when the change in the Church bells was a signal for leaving off.

Very happy and full of plans were the two young things, much pleased with the clergyman and his sister, who were no less charmed with the little, bright, brown-faced, lustrous-eyed girl, with her eager yet diffident manner and winning vivacity, and with the slender, delicate, thoughtful lad, whose grave courtesy of demeanour sat so prettily upon him.

Though not to compare in numbers, size, or beauty with the Kencroft flock, the Belforest party ranged well in their seat at Church, for Robert never failed to accompany his mother once a day, as a concession due from son to mother. It was far from satisfying her. Indeed there was a dull, heavy ache at her heart whenever she looked at him, for however he might endeavour to conform, like Marcus Aurelius sacrificing to the gods, there was always a certain half-patronising, half-criticising superciliousness about his countenance. Yet, if he came for love of her, still something might yet strike him and win his heart?

Had her years of levity and indifference been fatal to him? was ever her question to herself as she knelt and prayed for him.

She felt encouraged when, at luncheon, she asked Jock to walk with her to Kenminster for the evening service, after looking in at Kencroft, Robert volunteered to be of the party.

Caroline, however, did not think that he was made quite so welcome at Kencroft as his exertion deserved. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow were sitting in the drawing-room with the blinds down, presumably indulging in a Sunday nap in the heat of the afternoon, for the Colonel shook himself in haste, and his wife’s cap was a little less straight than suited her serene dignity, and though they kissed and welcomed the mother, they were rather short and dry towards Bobus. They said the children had gone out walking, whereupon the two lads said they would try to meet them, and strolled out again.

This left the field free for Caroline to propose the taking the two girls to London with her.

“I am sure,” said Ellen, “you have always been very kind to the children. But indeed, Caroline, I did not think you would have encouraged it.”

“It?--I don’t quite understand,” said Caroline, wondering whether Ellen had suddenly taken an evangelically serious turn.

“There!” said the Colonel, “I told you she was not aware of it,” and on her imploring cry of inquiry, Ellen answered, “Of this folly of Robert.”

“Bobus, do you mean,” she cried. “Oh!” as conviction flashed on her, “I never thought of that.”

“I am sure you did not,” said the Colonel kindly.

“But--but,” she said, bewildered, “if--if you mean Esther--why did you send her over last night, and let him go out to find her now.”

“She is safe, reading to Mrs. Coffinkey,” said Ellen. “I did not know Robert was at home, or I should not have let her come without me.”

“Esther is a very dear, sweet-looking girl,” said Caroline. “If only she were any one else’s daughter! Though that does not sound civil! But I know my dear husband had the strongest feeling about first cousins marrying.”

“Yes, I trusted to your knowing that,” said the Colonel. “And I rely on you not to be weak nor to make the task harder to us. Remembering, too,” he added in a voice of sorrow and pity that made the words sound not unkind, “that even without the relationship, we should feel that there were strong objections.”

“I know! My poor Bobus!” said Caroline, sadly. “That makes it such a pity she is his cousin. Otherwise she might do him so much good.”

“I have not much faith in good done in that manner,” said the Colonel.

Caroline thought him mistaken, but could not argue an abstract question, and came to the personal one. “But how far has it gone? How do you know about it? I see now that I might have detected it in his tone, but one never knows, when one’s children grow up.”

“The Colonel was obliged to tell him in the autumn that we did not approve of flirtations between cousins,” said Mrs. Brownlow.

“And he answered--?”

“That flirtation was the last thing he intended,” said the Colonel. “On which I told him that I would have no nonsense.”

“Was that all?”

“Except that at Christmas he sent her, by way of card, a drawing that must have cost a large sum,” said the Colonel. “We thought it better to let the child keep it without remark, for fear of putting things into her head; though I wrote and told him such expensive trumpery was folly that I was much tempted to forbid. So what does he do on Valentine’s Day but send her a complete set of ornaments like little birds, in Genoa silver--exquisite things. Well, she was very good, dear child. We told her it was not nice or maidenly to take such valuable presents; and she was quite contented and happy when her mother gave her a ring of her own, and we have written to Jessie to send her some pretty things from India.”

“She said she did not care for anything that Ellie did not have too,” added her mother.

“Then you returned them?”

“Yes, and my young gentleman patronisingly replies that he ‘appreciates my reluctance, and reserves them for a future time.’”

“Just like Bobus!” said Caroline. “He never gives up his purpose! But how about dear little Esther? Is she really untouched?”

“I hope so,” replied her mother. “So far it has all been put upon propriety, and so on. I told her, now she was grown up and come home from school she must not run after her cousins as she used to do, and I have called her away sometimes when he has tried to get her alone. Last evening, she told me in a very simple way--like the child she is--that Robert would walk home with her in the moonlight, and hindered her when she tried to join the others, telling me she hoped I should not be angry with her. He seems to have talked to her about this London plan; but I told her on the spot it was impossible.”

“I am afraid it is!” sighed Caroline. “Dear Essie! I will do my best to keep her peace from being ruffled, for I know you are quite right; but I can’t help being sorry for my boy, and he is so determined that I don’t think he will give up easily.”

“You may let him understand that nothing will ever make me consent,” returned the Colonel.

“I will, if he enters on it with me,” said Caroline; “but I think it is advisable as long as possible to prevent it from taking a definite shape.”

Caroline was much better able now to hold her own with her brother and sister-in-law. Not only did her position and the obligations they were under give her weight, but her character had consolidated itself in these years, and she had much more force, and appearance of good sense. Besides, John was a weight in the family now, and his feeling for his aunt was not without effect. They talked of his prospects and of Jessie’s marriage, over their early tea. The elders of the walking party came in with hands full of flowers, namely, the two Johns and Eleanor, but ominously enough, Bobus was not there. He had been lost sight of soon after they had met.

Yes, and at that moment he was loitering at a safe distance from the door of the now invalid and half-blind Mrs. Coffinkey, to whom the Brownlow girls read by turns. She lived conveniently up a lane not much frequented. This was the colloquy which ensued when the tall, well-proportioned maiden, with her fresh, modest, happy face, tripped down the steps:--

“So the Coffinkey is unlocked at last! Stern Proserpine relented!”

“Robert! You here?”

“You never used to call me Robert.”

“Mamma says it is time to leave off the other.”

“Perhaps she would like you to call me Mr. Robert Otway Brownlow.”

“Don’t talk of mamma in that way.”

“I would do anything my queen tells me except command my tones when there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to be made into buckram.”

“Please, Robert,” as some one met and looked at them, “let me walk on by myself.”

“What? Shall I be the means of getting you into trouble?”

“No, but I ought not--”

“The road is clear now, never mind. In town there are no gossips, that’s one comfort. Mother Carey is propounding the plan now.”

“Oh, but we shall not go. Mamma told me so last night.”

“That was before Mother Carey had talked her over.”

“Do you think she will?”

“I am certain of it! You are a sort of child of Mother Carey’s own, you know, and we can’t do without you.”

“Mother would miss us so, just as we are getting useful.”

“Yes, but Ellie might stay.”

“Oh! we have never been parted. We couldn’t be.”

“Indeed! Is there no one that could make up to you for Ellie?”

“No, indeed!” indignantly.

“Ah, Essie, you are too much of a child yet to understand the force of the love that--”

“Don’t,” broke in Esther, “that is just like people in novels; and mamma would not like it.”

“But if I feel ten times far more for you than ‘the people in novels’ attempt to express?”

“Don’t,” again cried Esther. “It is Sunday.”

“And what of that, my most scriptural little queen?”

“It isn’t a time to talk out of novels,” said Esther, quickening her pace, to reach the frequented road and throng of church-goers.”

“I am not talking out of any novel that ever was written,” said Bobus seriously; but she was speeding on too fast to heed him, and started as he laid a hand on her arm.

“Stay, Essie; you must not rush on like a frightened fawn, or people will stare,” he said; and she slackened her pace, though she shook him off and went on through the numerous passengers on the footpath, with her pretty head held aloft with the stately grace of the startled pheasant, not choosing to seem to hear his attempts at addressing her, and taking refuge at last in the innermost recesses of the family seat at Church, though it was full a quarter to five.

There the rest of the party found her, and as they did not find Bobus, they concluded that all was safe. However, when the two Johns were walking home with Mother Carey, Bobus joined them, and soon made his mother fall behind with him, asking her, “I hope your eloquence prevailed.”

“Far from it, Bobus,” she said. “In fact you have alarmed them.”

“H. S. H. doesn’t improve with age,” he replied carelessly. “She never troubled herself about Jessie.”

“Perhaps no one gave her cause. My dear boy, I am very sorry for you,” and she laid her hand within his arm.

“Have they been baiting you? Poor little Mother Carey!” he said. “Force of habit, you know, that’s all. Never mind them.”

“Bobus, my dear, I must speak, and in earnest. I am afraid you may be going on so as to make yourself and--some one else unhappy, and you ought to know that your father was quite as determined as your uncle against marriages between first cousins.”

“My dear mother, it will be quite time to argue that point when the matter becomes imminent. I am not asking to marry any one before I am called to the bar, and it is very hard if we cannot, in the meantime, live as cousins.”

“Yes, but there must be no attempt to be ‘a little more than kin.’”

“Less than kind comes in on the other side!” said Bobus, in his throat. “I tell you the child is a child who has no soul apart from her sister, and there’s no use in disturbing her till she has grown up to have a heart and a will of her own.”

“Then you promise to let her alone?”

“I pledge myself to nothing,” said Bobus, in an impracticable voice. “I only give warning that a commotion will do nobody any good.”

She knew he had not abandoned his intention, and she also knew she had no power to make him abandon it, so that all she could say was, “As long as you make no move there will be no commotion, but I only repeat my assurance that neither your uncle nor I, acting in the person, of your dear father, will ever consent.”

“To which I might reply, that most people end by doing that against which they have most protested. However, I am not going to stir in the matter for some time to come, and I advise no one else to do so.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXVII. BLUEBEARD’S CLOSET

A moment then the volume spread, And one short spell therein he read. Scott.

The reality of John’s intention to devote himself to medicine made Caroline anxious to look again at the terms of the trust on which she held the Magnum Bonum secret.

Moreover, she wanted some papers and accounts, and therefore on Monday morning, while getting up, she glanced towards the place where her davenport usually stood, and to her great surprise missed it. She asked Emma, who was dressing her, whether it had been moved, and found that her maid had been as much surprised as herself at its absence, and that the housekeeper had denied all knowledge of it.

“Other things is missing, ma’am,” said Emma; “there’s the key of the closet where your dresses hangs. I’ve hunted high and low for it, and nobody hasn’t seen it.”

“Keys are easily lost,” said Caroline, “but my davenport is very important. Perhaps in some cleaning it has been moved into one of the other rooms and forgotten there. I wish you would look. You know I had it before I came here.”

Not only did Emma look, but as soon as her mistress was ready to leave the room she went herself on a voyage of discovery, peeping first into the little dressing-room, where seeing Babie at her morning prayers, she said nothing to disturb her, and then going on to look into some spare rooms beyond, where she thought it might have been disposed of, as being not smart enough for my lady’s chamber. Coming back to her room she found, to her extreme amazement, the closet open, and Babie pushing the davenport out of it, with her cheeks crimson and a look of consternation at being detected.

“My dear child! The davenport there! Did you know it? How did it get there?”

“I put it,” said Barbara, evidently only forced to reply by sheer sincerity.

“You! And why?”

“I thought it safer,” mumbled Babie.

“And you knew where the key of the closet was?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In my doll’s bed, locked up in the baby-house.”

“This is most extraordinary. When did you do this?”

“Just before we came out to you at Leukerbad,” said Babie, each reply pumped out with great difficulty.

“Four years ago! It is a very odd thing. I suppose you had a panic, for you were too old then for playing monkey tricks.”

To which Babie made no answer, and the next minute her mother, who had become intent on the davenport, exclaimed, “I suppose you haven’t got the key of this in your doll’s bed?”

“Don’t you remember, mother,” said Barbara, “you sent it home to Janet, and it was lost in her bag on the crossing?”

“Oh, yes, I remember! And it is a Bramah lock, more’s the pity. We must have the locksmith over from Kenminster to open it.”

The man was sent for, the davenport was opened, desk, drawers, and all. Caroline was once more in possession of her papers. She turned them over in haste, and saw no book of Magnum Bonum. Again, more carefully she looked. The white slate, where those precious last words had been written, was there, proving to her that her memory had not deceived her, but that she had really kept her treasure in that davenport.

Then, in her distress, she thought of Barbara’s strange behaviour, went in quest of her, and calling her aside, asked her to tell her the real reason why she had thought fit to secure the davenport in the closet.

“Why,” asked Babie, her eyes growing large and shining, “is anything missing?”

“Tell me first,” said Caroline, trembling.

Then Babie told how she had wakened and seen Janet with the desk part raised up, reading something, and how, when she lay watching and wondering, Janet had shut it up and gone away. “And I did not feel comfortable about it, mother,” said Babie, “so I thought I would lock up the davenport, so that nobody could get at it.”

“You did not see her take anything away?”

“No, I can’t at all tell,” said Babie. “Is anything gone?”

“A book I valued very much. Some memoranda of your father were in that desk, and I cannot find them now. You cannot tell, I suppose, whether she was reading letters or a book?”

“It was not letters,” said Babie, “but I could not see whether it was print or manuscript. Mother, I think she must have taken it to read and could not put it back again because I had hidden the davenport. Oh! I wish I hadn’t, but I couldn’t ask any one, it seemed such a wicked, dreadful fancy that she could meddle with your papers.”

“You acted to the best of your judgment, my dear,” said Caroline. “I ought never to have let it out of my own keeping.”

“Do you think it was lost in the bag, mother?”

“I hope not. That would be worst of all!” said Caroline. “I must ask Janet. Don’t say anything about it, my dear. Let me think it over.”

When Caroline recollected Janet’s attempt, as related by Robert, to break open her bureau, she had very little doubt that the book was there. It could not have been lost in the bag, for, as she remembered, reference had been made to it when Janet had extorted permission to go to Zurich, and she had warned her that even these studies would not be a qualification for the possession of the secret. Janet had then smiled triumphantly, and said she would make her change her mind yet; had looked, in fact, very much as Bobus did when he put aside her remonstrances. It was not the air of a person who had lost the records of the secret and was afraid to confess, though it was possible she might have them in her own keeping. Caroline longed to search the bureau, but however dishonourably Janet might have acted towards herself, she could not break into her private receptacles without warning. So after some consideration, she made Barbara drive her to the station, and send the following telegraphic message to Janet’s address at Edinburgh:--

“Come home at once. Father’s memorandum book missing. Must be searched for.”

All that day and the next the sons wondered what was amiss with their mother, she was so pensive, with starts of flightiness. Allen thought she was going to have an illness, and Bobus that it was a very strange and foolish way of taking his resistance, but all the time Armine was going about quite unperceiving, in a blissful state. The vicar’s sister, a spirited, active, and very winning woman of thirty-five, had captivated him, as she did all the lads of the parish. He had been walking about with her, being introduced to all the needs of the parish, and his enthusiastic nature throwing itself into the cause of religion and beneficence, which was in truth his congenial element; he was ready to undertake for himself and his mother whatever was wanted, without a word of solicitation, nay rather, the vicar, who thought it all far too good to be true, held him back.

And when he came in and poured out his narrative, he was, for the first time in his life, even petulant that his mother was too much preoccupied to confirm his promises, and angry when Allen laughed at his vehemence, and said he should beware of model parishes.

By dinner-time the next day Janet had actually arrived. She looked thin and sharp, her keen black eyes roamed about uneasily, and some indescribable change had passed over her. Her brothers told her study had not agreed with her, and she did not, as of old, answer tartly, but gave a stiff, mechanical smile, and all the evening talked in a woman-of-the-world manner, cleverly, agreeably, not putting out her prickles, but like a stranger, and as if on her guard.

Of course there was no speaking to her till bedtime, and Caroline at first felt as if she ought to let one night pass in peace under the home roof; but she soon felt that to sleep would be impossible to herself, and she thought it would be equally so to her daughter without coming to an understanding. She yearned for some interchange of tenderness from that first-born child from whom she had been so long separated, and watched and listened for a step approaching her door; till at last, when the maid was gone and no one came, she yielded to her impulse; and in her white dressing-gown, with softly-slippered feet, she glided along the passage with a strange mixed feeling of maternal gladness that Janet was at home again, and of painful impatience to have the interview over.

She knocked at the door. There was no answer. She opened it. There was no one there, but the light on the terrace below, thrown from the windows of the lower room, was proof to her that Janet was in her sitting-room, and she began to descend the private stairs that led down to it. She was as light in figure and in step as ever, and her soft slippers made no noise as she went down. The door in the wainscot was open, and from the foot of the stairs she had a strange view. Janet’s candle was on the chair behind her, in front of it lay half-a-dozen different keys, and she herself was kneeling before the bureau, trying one of the keys into the lock. It would not fit, and in turning to try another, she first saw the white figure, and started violently at the first moment, then, as the trembling, pleading voice said, “Janet,” she started to her feet, and cried out angrily--

“Am I to be always spied and dogged?”

“Hush, Janet,” said her mother, in a voice of grave reproof, “I simply came to speak to you about the distressing loss of what your father put in my charge.”

“And why should I know anything about it?” demanded Janet.

“You were the last person who had access to the davenport,” said her mother.

“This is that child Barbara’s foolish nonsense,” muttered Janet to herself.

“Barbara has nothing to do with the fact that I sent you the key of the davenport where the book was. It is now missing. Janet, it is bitterly painful to me to say so, but your endeavours to open that bureau privately have brought suspicion upon you, and I must have it opened in my presence.”

“I have a full right to my own bureau.”

“Of course you have; but I had these notes left in my trust. It is my duty towards your father to use every means for their recovery.”

“You call it a duty to my father to shut up his discovery and keep it useless for the sake of a lot of boys who will never turn it to profit.”

“Of that I am judge. My present duty is to recover it. Your conduct is such as to excite suspicion, and I therefore cannot allow you to take anything out of that bureau except in my presence, till I have satisfied myself that his memoranda are not there. I would not search your drawers in your absence, and therefore telegraphed for you.”

“Thank you. Since you like to treat your daughter like a maidservant, you may go on and search my boxes,” said Janet, sulkily.

“I beg your pardon, my poor child, if I am unjustly causing you this humiliation,” said Caroline humbly, as Janet sullenly flumped down into a chair without answering. She took up the keys that Janet had brought with her, and tried them one by one, where Janet had been using them. The fourth turned in the lock, and the drawer was open!

“I will disarrange nothing unnecessarily,” said Caroline. “Look for yourself.”

Janet would not, however, move hand, foot, or eye, while her mother put in her hand and took out what lay on the top. It was the Magnum Bonum. She held it to the light and was sure of it; but she had taken up an envelope at the same time, and her eye fell on the address as she was laying it down. It was to--“James Barnes, Esq.” And as her eye caught the pencilled words “My Will,” a strange electric thrill went through her, as she exclaimed, “What is this, Janet? How came it here?”

“Oh! take it if you like,” said Janet. “I put it there to spare you worry; but if you will pursue your researches, you must take the consequences.”

Caroline, thus defied, still instinctively holding Magnum Bonum close to her, drew out the contents of the envelope, and caught in the broken handwriting of the old man, the words--“Will and Testament--George Gould--Wakefield--Elvira de Menella--whole estate.” Then she saw signature, seal, witnesses--date, “April 24th, 1862.”

“What is this? Where did it come from?” she asked.

“I found it--in his table drawer; I saw it was not valid, so I kept it out of the way from consideration for you,” said Janet.

“How do you know it was not valid?”

“Oh--why--I didn’t look much, or know much about it either,” said Janet, in an alarmed voice. “I was a mere child then, you know. I saw it was only scrawled on letter-paper, and I thought it was only a rough draft, which would just make you uncomfortable.”

“I hope you did, Janet. I hope you did not know what you were doing!”

“You don’t mean that it has been executed?”

“Here are witnesses,” said Caroline--her eyes swam too much to see their names. “It must be for better heads than ours to decide whether this is of force; but, oh, Janet! if we have been robbing the orphan all these years!”

“The orphan has been quite as well off as if it had been all hers,” said Janet. “Mother, just listen! Give me the keeping of my father’s secret, and--even if we lose this place--it shall make up for all--”

“You do not know what you are talking of, Janet,” said Caroline, pushing back those ripples of white hair that crowned her brow, “nor indeed I either! I only know you have spoken more kindly to me, and that you are under my own roof again. Kiss me, my child, and forgive me if I have pained you. You did not know what you did about the will, and as to this book, I know you meant to put it back again.”

“I did--I did, mother--if Barbara had not hidden the desk,” cried Janet. And as her mother kissed her, she laid her head on her shoulder, and wept and sobbed in an hysterical manner, such as Caroline had never seen in her before. Of course she was tired out by the long journey, and the subsequent agitation; and Caroline soothed and caressed her, with the sole effect of making her cry more piteously; but she would not hear of her mother staying to undress and put her to bed, gathered herself up again as soon as she could, and when another kiss had been exchanged at her bedroom door, Caroline heard it locked after her.

Very little did Caroline sleep that night. If she lost consciousness at all, it was only to know that something strange and wonderful was hanging over her. Sometimes she had a sense that her trust and mission as a rich woman had been ill-fulfilled, and therefore the opportunity was to be taken away; but more often there was a strange sense of relief from what she was unfit for. She remembered that strange dream of her children turning into statues of gold, and the Magnum Bonum disenchanting them, and a fancy came over her that this might yet be realised, a fancy to whose lulling effect she was indebted for the sleep she enjoyed in the morning, which made her unusually late, but prevented her from looking as haggard as Janet did, with eyelids swollen, as if she had cried a good deal longer last night.

The postbag was lying on the table, and directly after family prayers (which she had for some years begun when at home), Mrs. Brownlow beguiled her nervousness by opening it, and distributing the letters.

The first she opened was such a startling one, that her head seemed to reel, and she doubted whether the shock of last night was confusing her senses.

“MY DEAR MRS. BROWNLOW,--What will you think of us now that the full truth has burst on you? Of me especially, to whom you entrusted your dear daughter. I never could have thought that Nita would have lent herself to the transaction, and alas! I let the two girls take care of themselves more than was right. However, I can at least give you the comfort of knowing that it was a perfectly legal marriage, for Nita was one of the witnesses, and looked to all that--”

Here Caroline could read no more. Sick and stunned, she began to dispense her teacups, and even helped herself to some of the food that was handed round, but her hand trembled so, and she looked so white and bewildered, that Allen exclaimed--

“Mother, you are really ill. You should not have come down.”

She could not bear the crowd and buzz of voices and all the anxious eyes any longer. She pushed back her chair, and as sons came hurrying round with offered arms, she took the nearest, which was Jock’s, let him take her to the morning-room, and there assured him she was not ill, only she had had a letter. She wanted nothing, only that he should go back, and send her Janet. She tried once more to master the contents of Miss Ray’s letter, but she was too dizzy; and when Janet came in, she could only hold it out to her.

“Oh!” said Janet, “poor old Maria has forestalled me. Yes, mother, it is what I meant to tell you, only I thought you could not bear a fresh shock last night.”

“Married! Oh, Janet; why thus?”

“Because we wished to avoid the gossip and conventionality. My uncle and aunt were to be avoided.”

“Let me hear at once who it is,” said Caroline, with the sharpness of misery.

“It is Professor Demetrius Hermann, a most able lecturer, whose course we have been following. I met him a year ago, at the table d’hote, at Zurich, where he delivered a series of lectures on physiology on a new and original system. He is now going on with them in Scotland, where his wonderful acuteness and originality have produced an immense sensation, and I have no doubt that in his hands this discovery of my father’s will receive its full development.”

There was no apology in her tone; it was rather that of one who was defying censure; and her mother could only gasp out--

“How long?”

“Three weeks. When we heard you were returning, we thought it would save much trouble and difficulty to secure ourselves against contingencies, and profit by Scottish facilities.” Wherewith Janet handed her mother a certificate of her marriage, at Glasgow, before Jane Ray and another witness, and taking her wedding-ring from her purse, put it on, adding, “When you see him, mother, you will be more than satisfied.”

“Where is he?” interrupted Caroline.

“At the Railway Hotel, waiting till you are prepared to see him. He brought me down, but he is to give a lecture at Glasgow the day after tomorrow, so we can only remain one night.”

“Oh, Janet--Janet, this is very fearful!”

At that moment, Johnny strolled up to the window from the outside, and, as he greeted Janet with some surprise, he observed--

“There’s a most extraordinary looking foreign fellow loitering about out here. I warned him he was on private ground, and he made me a bow, as if I, not he, were the trespasser.”

On this Janet darted out at the window without another word, and John exclaiming, in dismay--

“Mother Carey! what is the matter?”

She gasped out, “Oh, Johnny! she’s married to him! And the children don’t know it. Send them in--Allen and Bobus I mean--make haste; I must prepare them. Take that letter, and let the others know.”

John saw the truest kindness was implicit obedience; and Allen and Bobus instantly joined her, the latter asking what new tomfoolery Janet had brought home, Allen following with a cup of coffee.

Caroline’s lips felt too dry to speak, and she held out the certificate.

It was received by Allen, with the exclamation--

“By Jove!”

And by Bobus, with an odd, harsh laugh--“I thought she would do something monstrous one of these days.”

“Did you ever hear of him, Bobus?” she found voice to say, after swallowing a mouthful of coffee.

“I fancy I have. Yes, I remember now; he was lecturing and vapouring about at Zurich; he is half Greek, I believe, and all charlatan. Well, Janet has been and gone and done for herself now, and no mistake.”

“But he is a professor,” pleaded Caroline. “He must be of some university.”

“Don’t make too sure,” said Allen, “A professor may mean a writing master. Good heavens! what a connection.”

“It can’t be so bad as that,” said Caroline. “Remember, your sister is not foolish.”

“Flatter an ugly woman,” said Bobus, “and it’s a regular case of fox and crow.”

“Mercy! here they come!” cried Allen.

“Mother, do you go away! This is not work for you. Leave us to settle the rascal,” said Bobus.

“No, Bobus,” she said; “this ought to be settled by me. Remember that, whatever the man may be, he is Janet’s husband, and she is your sister.”

“Worse luck!” sighed Allen.

“And,” she added, “he has to go away to-morrow, at latest,” a sentence which she knew would serve to pacify Allen.

They had crossed the parterre by this time, and were almost at the window.

It was Bobus who took the initiative, bowing formally as he spoke, in German--

“Good morning, Herr Professor. You seem to have a turn for entering houses by irregular methods.”

The new-comer bowed with suavity, saying, in excellent English--

“It is to your sister that in both senses I owe my entrance, and to the lady, your mother, that I owe my apology.”

And before Caroline well knew what was going on, he had one knee to the ground, and was kissing her hand.

“The tableau is incomplete, Janet,” said Bobus, whom Caroline heartily wished away. “You ought to be on your knees beside him.”

“I have settled it with my mother already,” said Janet.

Both Caroline and her eldest son were relieved by the first glance at the man. He was small, and had much more of the Greek than of the German in his aspect, with neat little features, keen dark eyes, and no vulgarity in tone or appearance. His hands were delicate; there was nothing of the “greasy foreigner” about him, but rather an air of finesse, especially in his exquisitely trimmed little moustache and pointed beard, and his voice and language were persuasive and fluent. It might have been worse, was the prominent feeling, as she hastily said--

“Stand up, Mr. Hermann; I am not used to be spoken to in that manner.”

“Nor is it an ordinary occasion on which I address madame,” said her new son-in-law, rising. “I am aware that I have transgressed many codes, but my anxiety to secure my treasure must plead for me; and she assured me that she might trust to the goodness of the best of mothers.”

“There is such a thing as abusing such goodness,” said Bobus.

“Sir,” said Hermann, “I understand that you have rights as eldest son, but I await my sentence from the lips of madame herself.”

“No, he is not the eldest,” interrupted Janet. “This is Allen--Allen, you were always good-natured. Cannot you say one friendly word?”

Something in the more childish, eager tone of Janet’s address softened Allen, and he answered--

“It is for mother to decide on what terms we are to stand, Janet, and strange as all this has been, I have no desire to be at enmity.”

Caroline had by this time been able to recover herself and spoke.

“Mr. Hermann can hardly expect a welcome in the family into which he has entered so unexpectedly, and--and without any knowledge of his antecedents. But what is done cannot be undone; I don’t want to be harsh and unforgiving. I should like to understand all about everything, and of course to be friends; as to the rest, it must depend on how they go on, and a great deal besides.”

It was a lame and impotent conclusion, but it seemed to satisfy the gentleman, who clasped her hand and kissed it with fervour, wrung that of Allen, which was readily yielded, and would have done the same by that of Bobus, if that youth had done more than accord very stiff cold tips.

Immediately after, John said at the door--

“Aunt Caroline, my father is here. Will you see him?”

That was something to be got over at once, and she went to the Colonel, who was very kind and pitiful to her, and spared her the “I told you so.” He did not even reproach her with being too lenient, in not having turned the pair at once out of her house; indeed, he was wise enough to think the extremity of a quarrel ought to be avoided, but he undertook to make every inquiry into Mr. Demetrius Hermann’s history, and observed that she should be very cautious in pledging herself as to what she would do for him, since she had, as he expressed it, the whip-hand of him, since Janet was totally dependent upon her.

“Oh! but Robert, I forgot; I don’t know if there is anything for anybody,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead; “there’s that other will! Ah! I see you think I don’t know what I am saying, and my head is getting past understanding much, but I really did find the other will last night.”

“What other will?”

“The one we always knew there must be, in favour of Elvira. This dreadful business put it out of my head; the children don’t know it yet, and I don’t seem able to think or care.”

It was true; severe nervous headache had brought her to the state in which she could do nothing but lie passively on her bed. The Colonel saw this, and bade her think of nothing for the present, and sent Barbara to take care of her.

She spent the rest of the day in the sort of aniantissement which that sort of headache often produces, and in the meantime everybody held tete-a-tetes. The Colonel held his peace about the will, not half crediting such a catastrophe, and thinking one matter at a time quite enough for his brain; but he talked to the Professor, to Janet, to Allen, and to Bobus, and tried to come to a knowledge of the bridegroom’s history, and to decide what course ought to be pursued, feeling as the good man always did and always would do, that he was, or ought to be, the supreme authority for his brother’s widow and children.

Allen was quite placable, and ready to condone everything. He thought the Athenian Professor a very superior man, with excellent classical taste, by which it was plain that his mosaic pavement, his old china, and his pictures had met with rare appreciation. Moreover, the Professor knew how to converse, and could be brilliantly entertaining; there was nothing to find fault with in his appearance; and if Janet was satisfied, Allen was. He knew his uncle hated foreigners, but for his own part, he thought nothing so dull as English respectability.

For once the Colonel declared that Bobus had more sense! Bobus had come to a tolerably clear comprehension of the matter, and his first impressions were confirmed by subsequent inquiries. Demetrius Hermann was the son of some lawyer of King Otho’s court who had married a Greek lady. He had studied partly at Athens, partly at so many other universities, that Bobus thought it rather suspicious; while his uncle, who held that a respectable degree must be either of Oxford or Cambridge, thought this fatal to his reputation. He had studied medicine at one time, but had broached some theory which the German faculty were too narrow to appreciate; “Which means,” quoth Bobus, “either that he could not get a licence to practise, or else had it revoked.”

Then he had taken to lecturing. The professorship was obscure; he said it was Athenian, and Bobus had no immediate means of finding out whether it were so or not, nor of analysing the alphabet of letters that followed his name upon the advertisement of his lectures.

Apparently he was a clever lecturer, fluent and full of illustration, with an air of original theory that caught people’s attention. He knew his ground, and where critically scientific men were near to bring him to book, was cautious to keep within the required bounds, but in the freer and less regulated places, he discoursed on new theories and strange systems connected with the mysteries of magnetism, and producing extraordinary and unexplained effects.

Robert and Jock were inclined to ascribe to some of these arts the captivation of so clever a person as their sister, by one whom they both viewed with repulsion as a mere adventurer.

They had not the clue which their mother had to the history of the matter, when the next day, though still far from well, she had an interview with her daughter and the Athenian Professor before their return to Scotland.

He knew of the Magnum Bonum matter. It seemed that Janet, as her knowledge increased, had become more sensible of the difficulties in the pursuit, and being much attracted by his graces and ability, had so put questions for her own enlightenment as to reveal to him that she possessed a secret. To cajole it from her, so far as she knew it, had been no greater difficulty than it was to the fox to get the cheese from the crow: and while to him she was the errant unprotected young lady of large and tempting fortune, he could easily make himself appear to her the missing link in the pursuit. He could do what as a woman she could not accomplish, and what her brothers were not attempting.

In that conviction, nay, even expecting her mother to be satisfied with his charms and his qualifications, she claimed that he might at least read the MS. of the book, assuring her mother that all she had intended the night before was to copy out the essentials for him.

“To take the spirit and leave me the letter?” said Caroline. “O Janet, would not that have been worse than carrying off the book?”

“Well, mother, I maintain that I have a right to it,” said Janet, “and that there is no justice in withholding it.”

“Do you or your husband fulfil these conditions Janet?” and Caroline read from the white slate those words about the one to whom the pursuit was intrusted being a sound, religious man, who would not seek it for his own advancement but for the good of others.

Janet exultantly said that was just what Demetrius would do. As to the being a sound religious man, her mother might seek in vain for a man of real ability who held those old-fashioned notions. They were very well in her father’s time, but what would Bobus say to them?

She evidently thought Demetrius would triumph in his private interview with her mother, but if Caroline had had any doubt before, that would have removed it. Janet honestly had a certain enthusiasm for science, beneficence, and the honour of the family, but the Professor besieged Mrs. Brownlow with his entreaties and promises just as if--she said to herself--she had been the widow of some quack doctor for whose secret he was bidding.

If she would only grant it to him and continue her allowance to Janet while he was pursuing it, then, there would be no limit to the share he would give her when the returns came in. It was exceedingly hard to answer without absolutely insulting him, but she entrenched herself in the declaration that her husband’s conditions required a full diploma and degree, and that till all her sons were grown up she had been forbidden to dispose of it otherwise. Very thankful she was that Armine was not seventeen, when a whole portfolio of testimonials in all sorts of languages were unfolded before her! Whatever she had ever said of Ellen’s insular prejudices, she felt that she herself might deserve, for she viewed them all as utterly worthless compared with an honest English or Scottish degree. At any rate, she could not judge of their value, and they did not fulfil her conditions. She made him understand at last that she was absolutely impracticable, and that the only distant hope she would allow to be wrung from her by his coaxing, wheedling tones, soft as the honey of Hybla, was, that if none of her sons or nephews were in the way of fulfilling the conditions, and he could bring her satisfactory English certificates, she might consider the matter, but she made no promises.

Then he most politely represented the need of a maintenance while he was thus qualifying himself. Janet had evidently not told him about the will, and Caroline only said that from a recent discovery she thought her own tenure of the property very insecure, and she could undertake nothing for the future. She would let him know. However, she gave him a cheque for 100 pounds for the present, knowing that she could make it up from the money of her own which she had been accumulating for Elvira’s portion.

Then Janet came in to take leave. Mr. Hermann described what the excellent and gracious lady had granted to him, and he made it sound so well, and his wife seemed so confident and triumphant, that her mother feared she had allowed more to be inferred than she intended, and tried to explain that all depended on the fulfilment of the conditions of which Janet at least was perfectly aware. She was overwhelmed, however, with his gratitude and Janet’s assurances, and they went away, leaving her with a hand much kissed by him, and the fondest, most lingering embrace she had ever had from Janet. Then she was free to lie still, abandoned to fears for her daughter’s future and repentance for her own careless past, and, above all crushed by the ache that would let her really feel little but pain and oppression.

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XXVIII. THE TURN OF THE WHEEL

Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head and a’ that, The coward slave, we pass him by, A man’s a man for a’ that. Burns.

Thinking and acting were alike impossible to Caroline for the remainder of the day when her daughter left her, but night brought power of reflection, as she began to look forward to the new day, and its burthen.

Her headache was better, but she let Barbara again go down to breakfast without her, feeling that she could not face her sons at once, and that she needed another study of the document before she could trust herself with the communication. She felt herself too in need of time to pray for right judgment and steadfast purpose, and that the change might so work with her sons that it might be a blessing, not a curse. Could it be for nothing that the finding of Magnum Bonum had wrought the undoing of this wrong? That thought, and the impulse of self-bracing, made her breakfast well on the dainty little meal sent up to her by the Infanta, and look so much refreshed, that the damsel exclaimed--

“You are much better, mother! You will be able to see Jock before he goes--”

“Fetch them all, Babie; I have something to tell you--”

“Writs issued for a domestic parliament,” said Allen, presently entering. “To vote for the grant to the Princess Royal on her marriage? Do it handsomely, I say, the Athenian is better than might be expected, and will become prosperity better than adversity.”

“Being capable of taking others in besides Janet,” said the opposition in the person of Bobus. “He seemed so well satisfied with the Gracious Lady house-mother that I am afraid she has been making him too many promises.”

“That was impossible. It was not about Janet that I sent for you, boys. It was to think what we are to do ourselves. You know I always thought there must be another will. Look there!”

She laid it on the table, and the young men stood gazing as if it were a venomous reptile which each hesitated to touch.

“Is it legal, Bobus?” she presently asked.

“It looks--rather so--” he said in an odd, stunned voice.

“Elvira, by all that’s lucky!” exclaimed Jock. “Well done, Allen, you are still the Lady Clare!”

“Not till she is of age,” said Allen, rather gloomily.

“Pity you didn’t marry her at Algiers,” said Jock.

“Where did this come from?” said Bobus, who had been examining it intently.

“Out of the old bureau.”

“Mother!” cried out Barbara, in a tone of horror, which perhaps was a revelation to Bobus, for he exclaimed--

“You don’t mean that Janet had had it, and brought it out to threaten you?”

“Oh, no, no! it was not so dreadful. She found it long ago, but did not think it valid, and only kept it out of sight because she thought it would make me unhappy.”

“It is a pity she did not go a step further,” observed Bobus. “Why did she produce it now?”

“I found it. Boys, you must know the whole truth, and consider how best to screen your sister. Remember she was very young, and fancied a thing on a common sheet of paper, and shut up in an unfastened table drawer could not be of force, and that she was doing no harm.” Then she told of her loss and recovery of what she called some medical memoranda of their father, which she knew Janet wanted, concluding--“It will surely be enough to say I found it in his old bureau.”

“That will hardly go down with Wakefield,” said Bobus; “but as I see he stands here as trustee for that wretched child, as well as being yours, there is no fear but that he will be conformable. Shall I take it up and show it to him at once, so that if by any happy chance this should turn out waste paper, no one may get on the scent?”

“Your uncle! I was so amazed and stupefied yesterday that I don’t know whether I told him, and if I did, I don’t think he believed me.”

“Here he comes,” said Barbara, as the wheels of his dog-cart were heard below the window.

“Ask him to come up. It will be a terrible blow to him. This place has been as much to him as to any of us, if not more.”

“Mother, how brave you are!” cried Jock.

“I have known it longer than you have, my dear. Besides, the mere loss is nothing compared with that which led to it. The worst of it is the overthrow of all your prospects, my dear fellow.”

“Oh,” said Jock, brightly, “it only means that we have something and somebody to work for now;” and he threw his arms round her waist and kissed her.

“Oh! my dear, dear boy, don’t! Don’t upset me, or your uncle will think it is about this.”

“And don’t, for Heaven’s sake, talk as if it were all up with us,” cried Bobus.

By this time the Colonel’s ponderous tread was near, and Caroline met him with an apology for giving him the trouble of the ascent, but said that she had wanted to see him in private.

“Is this in private?” asked the Colonel, looking at the five young people.

“Yes. They have a right to know all. Here it is, Robert.”

He sat down, deliberately put on his spectacles, took the will, read it once, and groaned, read it twice, and groaned more deeply, and then said--

“My poor dear sister! This is a bad business! a severe reverse! a very severe reverse!”

“He has hit on his catch-word,” thought Caroline, and Jock’s arm still round her gave a little pressure, as if the thought had occurred to him. The moment of amusement gave a cheerfulness to her voice as she said--

“We have been doing sad injustice all this time; that is the worst of it. For the rest, we shall be no worse off than we were before.”

“It will be in Allen’s power to make up to you a good deal. That is a fortunate arrangement, but I am afraid it cannot take place till the girl is of age.”

“You are all in such haste,” said Bobus. “It would take a good deal to make me accept such an informal scrap as this. No doubt one could drive a coach and horses through it.”

“That would not lessen the injustice,” said his mother.

“Could there not be a compromise?” said Allen.

“That is nonsense,” said his uncle. “Either this will stand, or that, and I am afraid this is the later. April 18th. Was that the time of that absurd practical joke of yours?”

“Too true,” said Allen. “You recollect the old brute said I should remember it.”

“Witnesses--? There’s Gomez, the servant who was drowned on his way out after his dismissal--Elizabeth Brook--is it--servant.--Who is to find her out?”

“Richards may know.”

“It is not our business to hunt up the witnesses. That’s the lookout of the other party,” said Bobus impatiently.

“You don’t suppose I mean to contest it?” said his mother. “It is bad enough to go on as we have been doing these eight years. I only want to know what is right and truth, and if this be a real will.”

“Where did it come from?” asked the Colonel, coming to the critical question. “Did you say you found it yourself, Caroline?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the old bureau.”

“What! the one that stood in his study? You don’t say so! I saw Wakefield turn the whole thing out, and look for any secret drawer before I would take any steps; I could have sworn that not the thickness of that sheet of paper escaped us. I should like, if only out of curiosity, to see where it was.”

“Just as I said, mother,” said Bobus; “there’s no use in trying to blink it to any one who knows the circumstances.”

“You do not insinuate that there was any foul play!” said his uncle hotly.

“I don’t know what else it can be called,” said Caroline, faintly; “but please, Robert, and all the rest, don’t expose her. Poor Janet found the thing in the back of the bedside table-drawer, fancied it a mere rough draft, and childlike, put it out of sight in the bureau, where I lighted on it in looking for something else. Surely there is no need to mention her?”

“Not if you do not contest the will,” replied the Colonel, who looked thunderstruck; “but if you did, it must all come out to exonerate us, the executors, from shameful carelessness. Well, we shall see what Wakefield says! A severe reverse! a very severe reverse!”

When he found that Bobus meant to go in search of the lawyer that afternoon, he decided on accompanying him. And with a truly amazing burst of intuition, he even suggested carrying off Elvira to spend the day with Essie and Ellie, and even that an invitation might arise to stay all night, or as long as the first suspense lasted. Then muttering to himself, “A severe reverse--a most severe reverse!” he took his leave. Caroline went down stairs with him, as thinking she could the most naturally administer the invitation to Elvira, and the two eldest sons proceeded to make arrangements for the time of meeting and the journey.

“A severe reverse!” said Jock, finding himself alone with the younger ones. “When one has a bitter draught, it is at least a consolation to have labelled it right.”

“Shall we be very poor, Jock?” asked Barbara.

“I don’t know what we were called before,” he said; “but from what I remember, I fancy we had about what I have been using for my private delectation. Just enough for my mother and you to be jolly upon.”

“That’s all you think of!” said Armine.

“All that a man need think of,” said Jock; “as long as mother and Babie are comfortable, we can do for ourselves very well.”

“Ourselves!” said Armine, bitterly. “And how about this wretched place that we have neglected shamefully all these years!”

“Armine!” cried Jock, indignantly. “Why, you are talking of mother!”

“Mother says so herself.”

“You went on raging about it; and, just like her, she did not defend herself. I am sure she has given away loads of money.”

“But see what is wanting! The curate, and the school chapel, and the cottages; and if the school is not enlarged, they will have a school board. And what am I to say to Miss Parsons? I promised to bring mother’s answer about the curate this afternoon at latest.”

“If she has the sense of a wren, she must know that a cataclysm like Janet’s may account for a few trifling omissions.”

“That’s true,” said Babie! “She can’t expect it. Do you know, I am rather sorry we are not poorer? I hoped we should have to live in a very small way, and that I should have to work like you--for mother.”

“Not like us, for pity’s sake, Infanta!” cried Jock. “We have had enough of that. The great use of you is to look after mother; and keep her from galloping the life out of herself, and this chap from worrying it out of her.”

“Jock!” cried Armine, indignantly.

“Yes, you will, if you go on moaning about these fads, and making her blame herself for them. I don’t say we have all done the right thing with this money, I’m sure I have not, and most likely it serves us right to lose it, but to have mother teased about what, after all, was chiefly owing to her absence, is more than I will stand. The one duty in hand is to make the best of it for her. I shall run down again as soon as I hear how this is likely to turn out--for Sunday, perhaps. Keep up a good heart, Babie Bunting, and whatever you do, don’t let him worry mother. Good-bye, Armie! What’s the use of being good, if you can’t hold up against a thing like this?”

“Jock doesn’t know,” said Armine, as the door closed. “Fads indeed!”

“Jock didn’t mean that,” pleaded Babie. “You know he did not; dear, good Jock, he could not!”

“Jock is a good fellow, but he lives a frivolous, self-indulgent life, and has got infected with the spirit and the language,” said Armine, “or he would understand that myself or my own loss is the very last thing I am troubled about. No, indeed, I should never think of that! It is the ruin of these poor people and all I meant to have done for them. It is very strange that we should only be allowed to waken to a sense of our opportunities to have them taken away from us!”

No one would have expected Armine, always regarded as the most religious of the family, to be the most dismayed, and neither he nor Barbara could detect how much of the spoilt child lay at the bottom of his regrets; but his little sister’s sympathy enabled him to keep from troubling his mother with his lamentations.

Indeed Allen was usually in presence, and nobody ever ventured on what might bore Allen. He was in good spirits, believing that the discovery would put an end to all trifling on Elvira’s part, and that he and she would thus together be able to act the beneficent genii of the whole family. Even their mother had a sense of relief. She was very quiet, and moved about softly, like one severely shaken and bruised; but there was a calm in knowing the worst, instead of living in continual vague suspicion.

The Colonel returned with tidings that Mr. Wakefield had no doubt of the validity of the will, though it might be possible to contest it if Elizabeth Brook, the witness, could not be found; but that would involve an investigation as to the manner of the loss, and the discovery. It was, in truth, only a matter of time; and on Monday Mr. Wakefield would come down and begin to take steps. That was the day on which the family were to have gone to London, but Caroline’s heart failed her, and she was much relieved when a kind letter arrived from Mrs. Evelyn, who was sure she could not wish to go into society immediately after Janet’s affair, and offered to receive Elvira for as long as might be convenient, and herself--as indeed had been already arranged--to present her at court with Sydney. It was a great comfort to place her in such hands during the present crisis, all the more that Ellen was not at all delighted with her company for Essie and Ellie. She rushed home on Saturday evening to secure Delrio, and superintend her packing up, with her head a great deal too full of court dresses and ball dresses, fancy costumes, and Parisian hats, to detect any of the tokens of a coming revolution, even in her own favour.

Jock too came home that same evening, as gay and merry apparently as ever, and after dinner, claimed his mother for a turn in the garden.

“Has Drake written to you, mother?” he asked. “I met him the other day at Mrs. Lucas’s, and it seems his soul is expanding. He wants to give up the old house--you know the lease is nearly out--and to hang out in a more fashionable quarter.”

“Dear old house!”

“Now, mother, here’s my notion. Why should not we hide our diminished heads there? You could keep house while the Monk and I go through the lectures and hospitals, and King’s College might not be too far off for Armine.”

“You, Jock, my dear.”

“You see, it is a raving impossibility for me to stay where I am.”

“I am afraid so; but you might exchange into the line.”

“There would be no great good in that. I should have stuck to the Guards because there I am, and I have no opinion of fellows changing about for nothing--and because of Evelyn and some capital fellows besides. But I found out long ago that it had been a stupid thing to go in for. When one has mastered the routine, it is awfully monotonous; and one has nothing to do with one’s time or one’s brains. I have felt many a time that I could keep straight better if I had something tougher to do.”

“Tell me, just to satisfy my mind, my dear, you have no debts.”

“I don’t owe forty pounds in the world, mother; and I shall not owe that, when I can get my tailor to send in his bill. You have given me as jolly an allowance as any man in the corps, and I’ve always paid my way. I’ve got no end of things about my rooms, and my horses and cab, but they will turn into money. You see, having done the thing first figure, I should hate to begin in the cheap and nasty style, and I had much rather come home to you, Mother Carey. I’m not too old, you know--not one-and-twenty till August. I shall not come primed like the Monk, but I’ll try to grind up to him, if you’ll let me, mother.”

“Oh, Jock, dear Jock!” she cried, “you little know the strength and life it gives me to have you taking it so like a young hero.”

“I tell you I’m sick of drill and parade,” said Jock, “and heartily glad of an excuse to turn to something where one can stretch one’s wits without being thought a disgrace to humanity. Now, don’t you think we might be very jolly together?”

“Oh, to think of being there again! And we can have the dear old furniture and make it like home. It is the first definite notion any one has had. My dear, you have given me something to look forward to. You can’t guess what good you have done me! It is just as if you had shown me light at the end of the thicket; ay, and made yourself the good stout staff to lead me through!”

“Mother, that’s the best thing that ever was said to me yet; worth ever so much more than all old Barnes’s money-bags.”

“If the others will approve! But any way it is a nest egg for my own selfish pleasure to carry me through. Why, Jock, to have your name on the old door would be bringing back the golden age!”

Nobody but Jock knew what made this such a cheerful Sunday with his mother. She was even heard making fun, and declaring that no one knew what a relief it would be not to have to take drives when all the roads were beset with traction engines. She had so far helped Armine out of the difficulties his lavish assurances had brought him into, that she had written a note to the Vicar, Mr. Parsons, telling him that she should be better able to reply in a little while; but Armine, knowing that he must not speak, and afraid of betraying the cause of his unhappiness and of the delay, was afraid to stir out of reach of the others lest Miss Parsons should begin an inquiry.

The Vicar of Woodside was, in fact, as some people mischievously called her, the Reverend Petronella Parsons. Whether she wrote her brother’s sermons was a disputed question. She certainly did other things in his name which she had better have let alone. He was three or four years her junior, and had always so entirely followed her lead, that he seemed to have no personal identity; but to be only her male complement. That Armine should have set up a lady of this calibre for the first goddess of his fancy was one of the comical chances of life, but she was a fine, handsome, fresh-looking woman of five-and-thirty, with a strong vein of sentiment--ecclesiastical and poetic--just ignorant enough to gush freely, and too genuine to be always offensive. She had been infinitely struck with Armine, had hung a perfect romance of renovation on him, sympathised with his every word, and lavished on him what perhaps was not quite flattery, because she was entirely in earnest, but which was therefore all the worse for him.

Barbara had a natural repulsion from her, and could not understand Armine’s being attracted, and for the first time in their lives this was creating a little difference between the brother and sister. Babie had said, in rather an uncalled-for way, that Miss Parsons would draw back when she knew the truth, and Armine had been deeply offended at such an ungenerous hint, and had reduced her to a tearful declaration that she was very sorry she had said anything so uncalled for.

Petronella herself had been much vexed at Armine’s three days’ defection, which was ascribed to the worldly and anti-ecclesiastical influences of the rest of the family. She wanted her brother to preach a sermon about Lot’s wife; but Jemmie, as she called him, had on certain occasions a passive force of his own, and she could not prevail. She regretted it the less when Armine and Babie duly did the work they had undertaken in the Sunday-school, though they would not come in for any intermediate meals.

“What did Mrs. Brownlow tell you in her note?” she asked of her brother while giving him his tea before the last service.

“That in a few days she shall be able to answer me.”

“Ah, well! Do you know there is a belief in the parish that something has happened--that a claim is to be set up to the whole property, and that the whole family will be reduced to beggary?”

“I never heard of an estate to which there was not some claimant in obscurity.”

“But this comes from undoubted authority.” Mr. Parsons smiled a little. “One can’t help it if servants will hear things. Well! any way it will be overruled for good to that dear boy--though it would be a cruel stroke on the parish.”

It was the twilight of a late spring evening when the congregation streamed out of Church, and Elvira, who had managed hitherto to avoid all intercourse with the River Hollow party, found herself grappled by Lisette without hope of rescue. “My dear, this is a pleasure at last; I have so much to say to you. Can’t you give us a day?”

“I am going to town to-morrow,” said Elvira, never gracious to any Gould.

“To-morrow! I heard the family had put off their migration.”

“I go with Lucas. I am to stay with Mrs. Evelyn, Lord Fordham’s mother, you know, who is to present me at the Drawing-room,” said Elvira, magnificently.

“Oh! if I could only see you in your court dress it would be memorable,” cried Mrs. Gould. “A little longer, my dear, our paths lie together.”

“I must get home. My packing--”

“And may I ask what you wear, my dear? Is your dress ordered?”

“O yes, I had it made at Paris. It is white satin, with lilies--a kind of lily one gets in Algiers.” And she expatiated on the fashion till Mrs. Gould said--

“Well, my love, I hope you will enjoy yourself at the Honourable Mrs. Evelyn’s. What is the address, in case I should have occasion to write?”

“I shall have no time for doing commissions.”

“That was not my meaning,” was the gentle answer; “only if there be anything you ought to be informed of--”

“They would write to me from home. Why, what do you mean?” asked the girl, her attention gained at last.

“Did it never strike you why you are sent up alone?”

“Only that Mrs. Brownlow is so cut up about Janet.”

“Ah! youth is so sweetly unconscious. It is well that there are those who are bound to watch for your interests, my dear.”

“I can’t think what you mean.”

“I will not disturb your happy innocence, my love. It is enough for your uncle and me to be awake, to counteract any machinations. Ah! I see your astonishment! You are so simple, my dear child, and you have been studiously kept in the dark.”

“I can’t think what you are driving at,” said Elvira, impatiently. “Mrs. Brownlow would never let any harm happen to me, nor Allen either. Do let me go.”

“One moment, my darling. I must love you through all, and you will know your true friends one day. Are you--let me ask the question out of my deep, almost maternal, solicitude--are you engaged to Mr. Brownlow?”

“Of course I am!”

“Of course, as you say. Most ingenuous! Ah? well, may it not be too late!”

“Don’t be so horrid, Lisette! Allen is not half a bad fellow, and frightfully in love with me.”

“Exactly, my dear unsuspicious dove. There! I see you are impatient. You will know the truth soon enough. One kiss, for your mother’s sake.”

But Elvira broke from her, and rejoined Allen.

“I have sounded the child,” said Lisette to her husband that evening, “and she is quite in the dark, though the very servants in the house are better informed.”

“Better informed than the fact, may be,” said Mr. Gould (for a man always scouts a woman’s gossip).

“No, indeed. Poor dear child, she is blinded purposely. She never guessed why she was sent to Kencroft while the old Colonel was called in, and they all agreed that the will should be kept back till the wedding with Mr. Allen should be over, and he could make up the rest. So now the child is to be sent to town, and surrounded with Mrs. Brownlow’s creatures to prey upon her innocence. But you have no care for your own niece--none!”

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XXIX. FRIENDS AND UNFRIENDS

Ay, and, I think, One business doth command us all; for mine Is money. Timon of Athens.

Before the door of one of the supremely respectable and aristocratic but somewhat gloomy-looking houses in Cavendish Square, whose mauve plate-glass windows and link-extinguishers are like fossils of a past era of civilisation, three riding horses were being walked up and down, two with side-saddles and one for a gentleman. They were taken aside as a four-wheel drove up, while a female voice exclaimed--

“Ah! we are just it time!”

Cards and a note were sent in with a request to see Miss Menella.

Word came back that Miss Menella was just going out riding; but on the return of a message that the visitors came from Mrs. Brownlow on important business, they were taken up-stairs to an ante-room.

They were three--Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Gould, and, to the great discontentment of the former, Mrs. Gould likewise. Fain would he have shaken her off; but as she truly said, who could deprive her of her rights as kinswoman, and wife to the young lady’s guardian?

After they had waited a few moments in the somewhat dingy surroundings of a house seldom used by its proper owners, Elvira entered in plumed hat and habit, a slender and exquisite little figure, but with a haughty twitch in her slim waist, superb indifference in the air of her little head, and a grasp of her coral-handled whip as if it were a defensive weapon, when Lisette flew up to offer an embrace with--

“Joy, joy, my dear child! Remember, I was the first to give you a hint.”

“Good morning,” said Elvira, with a little bend of her head, presenting to each the shapely tip of a gauntleted hand, but ignoring her uncle and aunt as far as was possible. “Is there anything that need detain me, Mr. Wakefield? I am just going out with Miss Evelyn and Lord Fordham, and I cannot keep them waiting.”

“Ah! it is you that will have to be waited for now, my sweet one,” began Mrs. Gould.

“Here is a note from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mr. Wakefield, holding it to Elvira, who looked like anything but a sweet one. “I imagine it is to prepare you for the important disclosure I have to make.”

A hot colour mounted in the fair cheek. Elvira tore open the letter and read--

“MY DEAR CHILD,--I can only ask your pardon for the unconscious wrong which I have so long been doing to you, and which shall be repaired as soon as the processes of the law render it possible for us to change places.

“Your ever loving,

“MOTHER CAREY.”

“What does it all mean?” cried the bewildered girl.

“It means,” said the lawyer, “that Mrs. Brownlow has discovered a will of the late Mr. Barnes more recent than that under which she inherited, naming you, Miss Elvira Menella, as the sole inheritrix.”

“My dear child, let me be the first to congratulate you on your recovery of your rights,” said Mrs. Gould, again proffering an embrace, but again the whip was interposed, while Elvira, with her eyes fixed on Mr. Wakefield, asked “What?” so that he had to repeat the explanation.

“Then does it all belong to me?” she asked.

“Eventually it will, Miss Menella. You are sole heiress to your great uncle, though you cannot enter into possession till certain needful forms of law are gone through. Mrs. Brownlow offers no obstruction, but they cannot be rapid.”

“All mine!” repeated Elvira, with childish exultation. “What fun! I must go and tell Sydney Evelyn.”

“A few minutes more, Miss Menella,” said Mr. Wakefield. “You ought to hear the terms of the will.”

And he read it to her.

“I thought you told me it was to be mine. This is all you and uncle George.”

“As your trustees.”

“Oh, to manage as the Colonel does. You will give me all the money I ask you for. I want some pearls, and I must have that duck of a little Arab. Uncle George, how soon can I have it?”

“We must go through the Probate Court,” he began, but his wife interrupted--

“Ways and means will be forthcoming, my dear, though for my part I think it would be much better taste in Mrs. Brownlow to put you in possession at once.”

“Mr. Wakefield explained, my dear,” said her husband, “that, much as Mrs. Brownlow wishes to do so, she cannot; she has no power. It is her trustees.”

“Oh yes, I know every excuse will be found for retaining the property as long as possible,” said the lady.

“Then I shall have to wait ever so long,” said the young lady. “And I do so want the Arab. It is a real love, and Allen would say so.”

“I have another letter for you,” said Mr. Wakefield, on hearing that name. “We will leave it with you. If you wish for further information, I would call immediately on receiving a line at my office.”

Just then a message was brought from Mrs. Evelyn inviting Miss Menella’s friends to stay to luncheon. It incited Elvira, who knew neither awe nor manners, to run across the great drawing-room, leaving the doors open behind her, to the little morning-room, where sat Mrs. Evelyn, with Sydney, in her habit standing by the mantelpiece.

“Oh, Mrs. Evelyn,” Elvira began, “it is Mr. Wakefield and my uncle and his wife. They have come to say it is all mine; Uncle Barnes left it all to me.”

“So I hear from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Evelyn gravely.

“Oh, Elfie, I am so sorry for you. Don’t you hate it?” cried Sydney.

“Oh, but it is such fun! I can do everything I please,” said the heiress.

“Yes, that’s the best part,” said Sydney. “I do envy you the day when you give it all back to Allen.”

That reminded Elvira to open the note, and as she read it her great eyes grew round.

“SWEETEST AND DEAREST,--How I have always loved, and always shall love you, you know full well. But these altered circumstances bring about what you have so often playfully wished. Say the word and you are free, no longer bound to me by anything that has passed between us, though the very fibres of my heart and life are as much as ever entwined about you. Honour bids my dissolution of our engagement, and I await your answer, though nothing can ever make me other than

“Your wholly devoted,

“ALLEN.”

Mrs. Evelyn had been prepared by a letter from her friend for what was now taking place; Mr. Wakefield had likewise known the main purport of Allen’s note, and had allowed that Mr. Brownlow could not as a gentleman do otherwise than release the young lady; though he fully believed that it would be only as a matter of form, and that Elvira would not hear of breaking off. He had in fact spent much eloquence in persuading Mrs. Brownlow to continue to take the charge of the heiress during the three years before her majority. Begun in generous affection by Allen long ago, the engagement seemed to the lawyer, as well as to others, an almost providential means of at least partial restitution.

He had meant Elvira to read her letter alone, but she had opened it before the two ladies, and her first exclamation was a startled, incredulous--

“Ha! What’s this? He says our engagement is dissolved.”

“He is of course bound to set you free, my dear,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “but it only depends on yourself.”

“Oh! and I shall tease him well first,” cried Elvira, her face lighting up with fun and mischief. “He was so tiresome and did bother so! Now I shall have my swing! Oh, what fun! I won’t let him worry me again just yet, I can tell him!”

“You don’t seem to consider,” began Sydney,--but Mrs. Gould took this moment for advancing.

From the whole length of the large drawing-room the trio had been spectators, not quite auditors, though perhaps enough to perceive what line the Evelyns were taking.

So Mrs. Gould advanced into the drawing-room; Mrs. Evelyn came forward to assume the duties of hostess; and Sydney turned and ran away so precipitately that she shut the door on the trailing skirt of her habit and had to open it again to release herself.

Mr. Wakefield hoped the young ladies would pardon him for having spoilt their ride, and Elvira was going off to change her dress, when, to his dismay, Mrs. Evelyn desired her to take her aunt to her room to prepare for luncheon. He had seen enough of Mrs. Gould to know that this was a most unlucky measure of courtesy on good simple Mrs. Evelyn’s part, but of course he could do nothing to prevent it, and had to remain with Mr. Gould, both speaking in the strongest manner of Mrs. Brownlow’s uprightness and bravery in meeting this sudden change. Mr. Wakefield said he hoped to prevail on her to retain the charge of the young lady for the present, and Mr. Gould assented that she could not be in better hands. Then Mrs. Evelyn (by way of doing anything for her friend) undertook to make Elvira welcome as long as it might be convenient, and was warmly thanked. She further ascertained that the missing witness had been traced; and that the most probable course of action would be that there would be an amicable suit in the Probate Court and then another of ejectment. Until these were over, things would remain in their present state for how many weeks or months would depend upon the Law Courts, since Mrs. Brownlow’s trustees would be legally holders of the property until the decision was given against them, and Miss Menella would be as entirely dependent on her bounty as she had been all these years. Meanwhile, as Mrs. Brownlow had no inclination to come to London and exhibit herself as a disinherited heroine, Mr. Wakefield and the Colonel strongly advised her remaining on at Belforest.

All this, Mrs. Evelyn had been anxious to understand, and thus was more glad of the delay of Elvira and her aunt up-stairs than she would have been, if she could ever have guessed what work a designing, flattering tongue could make with a vain, frivolous, selfish brain, with the same essential strain of vulgarity and worldliness.

Still, Elvira was chiefly shallow and selfish, and all her affection and confidence naturally belonged to her home of the last eight years. She was bewildered, perhaps a little intoxicated at the sense of riches, but was really quite ready to lean as much as ever upon her natural friends and protectors.

However, Lisette’s congratulations and exultation rang pleasantly upon her ear, and she listened and talked freely, asking questions and rejoicing.

Now Mrs. Gould, to do her justice, measured others by herself, and really and truly believed that only accident had disconcerted a plan for concealing the will till Elvira should have been safely married to Allen Brownlow, and that thus it was the fixed purpose of the family to keep her and her fortune in their hands, a purpose which every instinct bade Mrs. Lisette Gould to traverse and overthrow, if only because she hated such artfulness and meanness. Unfortunately, too, as she had been a governess, and her father had been a Union doctor, she could put herself forward as something above a farmer’s wife, indeed “quite as good as Mrs. Brownlow.”

All Mrs. Evelyn’s civility had not redeemed her from the imputation of being “high,” and Elvira was quite ready to call hers a very dull house. In truth, there was only moderate gaiety, and no fastness. The ruling interests were religious and political questions, as befitted Fordham’s maiden session, the society was quietly high-bred, and intelligent, and there was much attention to health; for, strong as Sydney was, her mother would have dreaded the full whirl of the season as much for her body as for her mind.

At all this the frivolous, idle little soul chafed and fretted, aware that the circle was not a fashionable one, eager for far more diversion and less restraint, and longing to join the party in Hyde Corner, where she could always make Allen do what she pleased.

With the obtuseness of an unobservant, self-occupied mind, she was taken by surprise when Mrs. Gould said that Mrs. Brownlow was not coming to town, adding, “It would be very unbecoming in her, though of course she will hold on at Belforest as long as there is any quibble of the law.”

“Oh, I don’t want to lose the season; she promised me!”

Then Mrs. Gould made a great stroke.

“My dear, you could not return to her. Not when the young man has just broken with you. You would have more proper pride.”

“Poor Allen!” said Elvira. “If he would only let me alone, to have my fun like other girls.”

“You see he could not afford to let you gratify your youthful spirits. Too much was at stake, and it is most providential that things had gone no further, and that your own good sense has preserved you to adorn a much higher sphere.”

“Allen could be made something,” said Elvira, “I know, for he told me he could get himself made a baronet. He always does as I tell him. Will they be very poor, Lisette?”

“Oh no, my dear, generous child, Mrs. Brownlow was quite as well provided for as she had any right to expect. You need have no anxieties on that score.”

To Elvira, the change from River Hollow to the Pagoda had been from rustic to gentle life, and thus this reply sounded plausible enough to silence a not much awakened compassion, but she still said, “Why can’t I go home? I’ve nowhere else to go. I could not stay at the Farm,” she added in her usual uncomplimentary style.

“No, my dear, I should not think of it. An establishment must be formed, but in the meantime, it would be quite beneath you to return to Mrs. Brownlow, again to become the prey of underground machinations. Besides, how awkward it would be while the lawsuits are going on. Impossible! No my dear, you must only return to Belforest in a triumphal procession. Surely there must be a competition for my lovely child among more congenial friends.”

“Well,” said Elvira, “there were the Folliots. We met them at Nice, and Lady Flora did ask me the other day, but Mrs. Brownlow does not like them, and Allen says they are not good form.”

“Ah! I knew you could not want for friends. You are not bound by those who want to keep you to themselves for reasons of their own.”

Thus before Elvira brought her aunt down stairs, enough had been done to make her eager to be with one who would discuss her future splendour rather than deplore the change to her benefactor, and thus she readily accepted a proposal she would naturally have scouted, to go out driving with Mrs. Gould. She came back in a mood of exulting folly, and being far too shallow and loquacious to conceal anything, she related in full all Mrs. Gould’s insinuations, which, to do her justice, the poor child did not really understand. But Sydney did, and was furious at the ingratitude which could seem almost flattered. Mrs. Evelyn found the two girls in a state of hot reproach and recrimination, and cut the matter short by treating them as if they were little children, and ordering them both off to their rooms to dress for dinner.

Elvira went away sobbing, and saying that nobody cared for her; everybody was wrapped up in the Brownlows, who had been enjoying what was hers ever so long.

And Sydney presently burst into her mother’s room to pour out her disgust and indignation against the heartless, ungrateful, intolerable--

“Only foolish, my dear, and left all day in the hands of a flattering, designing woman.”

“To let such things be said. Mamma, did you hear--?”

“I had rather not hear, Sydney; and I desire you will not repeat them to any one. Be careful, if you talk to Jock to-night. To repeat words spoken in her present mood might do exceeding mischief.”

“She speaks as if she meant to cast them all off--Allen and all.”

“Very possibly she may see things differently when she wakes to-morrow. But Sydney, while she is here, the whole subject must be avoided. It would not be acting fairly to use any influence in favour of our friends.”

“Don’t you mean to speak to her, mamma?”

“If she consults me, of course I shall tell her what I think of the matter, but I shall not force my advice on her, or give these Goulds occasion to say that I am playing into Mrs. Brownlow’s hands.”

They were going to an evening party, and Lucas and Cecil came to dinner to go with them. Cecil looked grave and gloomy, but Jock rattled away so merrily that Sydney began to wonder whether all this were a dream, or whether he were still unaware of the impending misfortune.

But Jock only waited for the friendly cover of a grand piece of instrumental music to ask Mrs. Evelyn if she had heard from his mother, and she was very glad to go into details with him, while he was infinitely relieved that the silence was over, and he could discuss the matter with his friends.

“Tell me truly, Jock, will she be comfortably off?”

“Very fairly. Yes, indeed. My father’s savings were absolutely left to her, and have been accumulating all this time, and they will be a very fair maintenance for her and Babie.”

“There is no danger of her having to pay the mesne profits?”

“No, certainly not, as it stands. Mr. Wakefield says that cannot happen. Then the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born, is our own, and she likes the notion of returning thither. Mrs. Evelyn, after all you and Sir James have done for me, what should you think of my giving it up, and taking to the pestle and mortar?”

“My dear Lucas!” Then after a moment’s reflection, “I suppose it would be folly to think of going on as you are?”

“Raving insanity,” said Jock, “and this notion really does seem to please my mother.”

“Is it not just intolerable to hear him?” said Cecil, who had made his way to them.

“‘What is bred in the bone--’” said Jock. “What’s that? Chopin? Sydney, will you condescend to the apothecary’s boy?”

As he led her to the dancing-room, she asked, “You can’t really mean this, Jock. Cecil is breaking his heart about it.”

“There are worse trades.”

“But it is such a cruel pity!”

“What? The execution I shall make,” he said lightly.

“For shame, Jock!”

But he went on teasing her, because their hearts were so very full. “‘Tis just the choice between various means of slaughter.”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Something can be done to prevent your throwing yourself away. Why can’t you exchange?”

“It is too late to get into any corps where I should not be an expense to my mother,” said Jock, regretting his decision a good deal more when he found how she regarded it.

“Well, sacrifice is something!” sighed Sydney.

Jock defied strange feelings by a laugh and the reply, “Equal to the finest thing in the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ and that was the knight who let the hyena eat up his hand that his lady might finish her rosary undisturbed.”

“It is as bad--or as good--to let the hyena eat up your sword hand as to cut yourself off from all that is great and noble--all we used to think you would do.”

So spoke Sydney Evelyn in her girlish prejudice, and the prospects that had recently seemed to Lucas so fair and kindly, suddenly clouded over and became dull, gloomy, and despicable. She felt as if she were saving him from becoming a deserter as she went on--

“I am sure Babie must be shocked!”

“I don’t know whether Babie has heard. She has serious thoughts of coming out as a lady-help, editing the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ as a popular magazine, giving lessons in Greek, or painting the crack picture in the Royal Academy. In fact, she would rather prefer to have the whole family on her hands.”

“It is all the spirit of self-sacrifice,” said Sydney; “but oh, Lucas, let it be any sacrifice but that of your sword! Think how we should all feel if there was a great glorious war, and you only a poor creature of a civilian, instead of getting--as I know you would--lots of medals and Victoria Crosses, and knighthood--real knighthood! Oh, Jock, think of that! When your mother thinks of that, she can’t want you to make any such mistaken sacrifice to her. Live on a crust if you like, but don’t--don’t give up your sword.”

“This is coming it strong,” muttered Jock. “I did not think anyone cared so much.”

“Of course I care.”

The words were swept off as they whirled together into the dance, where the clasping hands and flying feet had in them a strange impulse, half tenderness, half exultation, as each felt an importance to the other unknown before. Childishness was not exactly left behind in it, but a different stage was reached. Sydney felt herself to have done a noble work, and gloried in watching till her hero should have achieved greatness on a crust a day, and Jock was equally touched and elated at the intimation that his doings were so much to her.

Friendship sang the same note. Cecil, honest lad, had never more than the average amount either of brains or industry, and despised medicines to the full as much as did his sister. Abhorring equally the toil and the degradation, he deemed it a duty to prevent such a fall, and put his hope in his uncle. Nay, if his mother had not assured him that it was too late, he would have gone off at once to seek Sir James at his club.

Lord Fordham had been in bed long before the others returned, but in the morning a twisted note was handed to his mother, briefly saying he was running down to see how it was with them at Belforest.

When a station fly was seen drawing to the door, Allen, who was drearily leaning over the stone wall of the terrace, much disorganised by having received no answer to his letter, instantly jumped to the conclusion that Elvira had come home, sprang to the door, and when he only saw the tall figure emerge, he concluded that something dreadful had happened, grasped Fordham’s hand, and demanded what it was.

It fell flat that she had last been seen full-dressed going off to a party.

“Then, if there’s nothing, what brought you here? I mean,” said poor Allen, catching up his courtesy, “I’m afraid there’s nothing you or any one else can do.”

“Can I see your mother?”

Allen turned him into the library and went off to find his mother, and instruct her to discover from “that stupid fellow” how Elvira was feeling it. When, after putting away the papers she was trying to arrange, Caroline went downstairs, she had no sooner opened the door than Barbara flew up to her, crying out--

“Oh, mother, tell him not!”

“Tell him what, my dear?” as the girl hung on her, and dragged her into the ante-room. “What is the matter?”

“If it is nonsense, he ought not to have made it so like earnest,” said Babie, all crimson, but quite gravely.

“You don’t mean--”

“Yes, mother.”

“How could he?” cried Caroline, in her first annoyance at such things beginning with her Babie.

“You’ll tell him, mother. You’ll not let him do it again?”

“Let me go, my child. I must speak to him and find out what it all means.”

Within the library she was met by Fordham.

“Have I done very wrong, Mrs. Brownlow? I could not help it.”

“I wish you had not.”

“I always meant to wait till she was older, and I grew stronger, but when all this came, I thought if we all belonged to one another it might be a help--”

“Very, very kind, but--”

“I know I was sudden and frightened her,” he continued; “but if she could--”

“You forget how young she is.”

“No, I don’t. I would not take her from you. We could all go on together.”

“All one family? Oh, you unpractised boy!”

“Have we not done so many winters? But I would wait, I meant to have waited, only I am afraid of dying without being able to provide for her. If she would have me, she would be left better off than my mother, and then it would be all right for you and Armie. What are you smiling at?”

“At your notions of rightness, my dear, kind Duke. I see how you mean it, but it will not do. Even if she had grown to care for you, it would not be right for me to give her to you for years to come.”

“May not I hope till then?”

She could not tell how sorry she should be to see in her little daughter any dawnings of an affection which would be a virtual condemnation to such a life as his mother’s had been.

“You don’t guess how I love her! She has been the bright light of my life ever since the Engelberg,--the one hope I have lived for!”

“My poor Duke!”

“Then do you quite mean to deny me all hope?”

“Hope must be according to your own impressions, my dear Fordham. Of course, if you are well, and still wishing it four or five years hence, it would be free to you to try again. More, I cannot say. No, don’t thank me, for I trust to your honour to make no demonstrations in the meantime, and not to consider yourself as bound.”

It was a relief that Armine here came in, attracted by a report of his friend’s arrival, and Mrs. Brownlow went in search of her daughter, to whom she was guided by a sonata played with very unnecessary violence.

“You need not murder Haydn any more, you little barbarian,” she said, with a hand on the child’s shoulder, and looking anxiously into the gloomy face. “I have settled him.”

Babie drew a long breath, and said--

“I’m glad! It was so horrid! You’ll not let him do it any more?”

“Then you decidedly would not like it?” returned her mother.

“Like it? Poor Duke! Mother! As if I could ever! A man that can’t sit in a draught, or get wet in his feet!” cried Babie, with the utmost scorn; and reading reproof as well as amused pity in her mother’s eyes, she added, “Of course, I am very sorry for him; but fancy being very sorry for one’s love!”

“I thought you liked wounded knights?”

“Wounded! Yes, but they’ve done something, and had glorious wounds. Now Duke--he is very good, and it is not his fault but his misfortune; but he is such a--such a muff!”

“That’s enough, my dear; I am quite content that my Infanta should wait for her hero. Though,” she added, almost to herself, “she is too childish to know the true worth of what she condemns.”

She felt this the more when Babie, who had coaxed the housekeeper into letting her begin a private school of cookery, started up, crying--

“I must go and see my orange biscuits taken out of the oven! I should like to send a taste to Sydney!”

Yes, Barbara was childish for nearly sixteen, and, as it struck her mother at the moment, rather wonderfully so considering her cleverness and romance. It was better for her that the softening should not come yet, but, mother as she was, Caroline’s sympathies could not but be at the moment with the warm-hearted, impulsive, generous young man, moved out of all his habitual valetudinarian habits by his affection, rather than with the light-hearted child, who spurned the love she did not comprehend, and despised his ill-health. Had the young generation no hearts? Oh no--no--it could not be so with her loving Barbara, and she ought to be thankful for the saving of pain and perplexity.

Poor Armine was not getting much comfort out of his friend, who was too much preoccupied to attend to what he was saying, and only mechanically assented at intervals to the proposition that it was an inscrutable dispensation that the will and the power should so seldom go together. He heard all Armine’s fallen castles about chapels, schools, curates, and sisters, as in a dream, really not knowing whether they were or were not to be. And with all his desire to be useful, he never perceived the one offer that would have been really valuable, namely, to carry off the boy out of sight of the scene of his disappointment.

Fordham was compelled to stay for an uncomfortable luncheon, when there were spasmodic jerks of talk about subjects of the day to keep up appearances before the servants, who flitted about in such an exasperating way that their mistress secretly rejoiced to think how soon she should be rid of the fine courier butler.

Just as the pony-carriage came round for Armine to drive his friend back to the station, the Colonel came in, and was an astonished spectator of the farewells.

“So that’s your young lord,” he said. “Poor lad! if our nobility is made of no tougher stuff, I would not give much for it. What brought him here?”

“Kindness--sympathy--” said Caroline, a little awkwardly.

“Much of that he showed,” said Allen, “just knowing nothing at all about anybody! No! If it were not so utterly ridiculous I should think he had come to make an offer to Babie:” and as his sister flew out of the room, “You don’t mean that he has, mother?”

“Pray, don’t speak of it to any one!” said Caroline. “I would not have it known for the world. It was a generous impulse, poor dear fellow; and Babie has no feeling for him at all.”

“Very lucky,” said the uncle. “He looks as if his life was not worth a year’s purchase. So you refused him? Quite right too. You are a sensible woman, Caroline, in the midst of this severe reverse!”

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