XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING…

XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING

‘Lesbia hath a beaming eye, But no one knows for whom it beameth, Right and left its arrows fly, But what they aim at, no one dreameth.’

By the advice, or rather by the express desire, of her trustees, Mrs. Brownlow remained at Belforest, while they accepted an offer of renting the London house for the season. Mr. Wakefield declared that there was no reason that she should contract her expenditure; but she felt as if everything she spent beyond her original income, except of course the needful outlay on keeping up the house and gardens, were robbery of Elvira, and she therefore did not fill up the establishment of servants, nor of horses, using only for herself the little pair of ponies which had been turned out in the park.

No one had perhaps realised the amount of worry that this arrangement entailed. As Barbara said, if they could have gone away at once and worked for their living like sensible people in a book, it would have been all very well--but this half-and-half state was dreadful. Personally it did not affect Babie much, but she was growing up to the part of general sympathiser, and for the first time in their lives there was a pull in contrary directions by her mother, and Armine.

Every expenditure was weighed before it was granted. Did it belong rightly to Belforest estate or to Caroline Brownlow? And the claims of the church and parish at Woodside were doubtful. Armine, under the influence of Miss Parsons, took a wide view of the dues of the parish, thought there was a long arrear to be paid off, and that whatever could be given was so much out of the wolf’s mouth.

His mother, with ‘Be just before you are generous’ ringing in her ears, referred all to the Colonel, and he had long had a fixed scale of the duties of the property as a property, and was only rendered the more resolute in it by that vehemence of Armine’s which enhanced his dislike and distrust of the family at the vicarage.

“Bent on getting all they could while they could,” he said, quite unjustly as to the vicar, and hardly fairly by the sister, whose demands were far exceeded by those of her champion.

The claims of the cottages for repair, and of the school for sufficient enlargement and maintenance to obviate a School Board, were acknowledged; but for the rest, the Colonel said, “his sister was perfectly at liberty. No one could blame her if she threw her balance at the bank into the sea. She would never be called to account; but since she asked him whether the estate was bound to assist in pulling the church to pieces, and setting up a fresh curate to bring in more absurdities, he could only say what he thought,” etc.

These thoughts of his were of course most offensive to Armine, who set all down to sordid Puritan prejudice, could not think how his mother could listen, and, when Babie stood up for her mother, went off to blend his lamentations with those of Miss Parsons, whose resignation struck him as heroic. “Never mind, Armine, it will all come in time. Perhaps we are not fit for it yet. We cannot expect the world’s justice to understand the outpouring of the saints’ liberality.”

Armine repeated this interesting aphorism to Barbara, and was much disappointed that the shrewd little woman did not understand it, or only so far as to say, “But I did not know that it was saintly to be liberal with other people’s money.”

He said Babie had a prejudice against Miss Parsons; and he was so far right that the Infanta did not like her, thought her a humbug, and sorely felt that for the first time something had come between herself and Armine.

Allen was another trouble. He did not agree to the retrenchments, in which he saw no sense, and retained his horse and groom. Luckily he had retained only one when going abroad, and at this early season he needed no more. But his grievous anxiety and restlessness about Elvira did not make him by any means insensible to the effects of a reduced establishment in a large house, and especially to the handiwork of the good woman who had been left in charge, when compared with that of the 80L cooks who had been the plague of his mother’s life.

No one, however, could wonder at his wretchedness, as day after day passed without hearing from Elvira, and all that was known was that she had left Mrs. Evelyn and gone to stay with Lady Flora Folliott, a flighty young matron, who had been enraptured with her beauty at a table d’hote a year ago, and had made advances not much relished by the rest of the party.

No more was to be learnt till Lucas found a Saturday to come down. Before he could say three words, he was cross-examined. Had he seen Elvira?

“Several times.”

“Spoken to her?”

“Yes.”

“What had she said?”

“Asked him to look at a horse.”

“Did she know he was coming home?”

“Yes.”

“Had she sent any message?”

“Well--yes. To desire that her Algerine costume should be sent up. Whew!” as Allen flung himself out of the room. “How have I put my foot in it, mother?”

“You don’t mean that that was all?”

“Every jot! What, has she not written? The abominable little elf! I’m coming.” And he shrugged his shoulders as Allen, who had come round to the open window, beckoned to him.

“He was absolutely grappled by a trembling hand, and a husky voice demanded, ‘What message did she really send? I can’t stand foolery’.”

“Just that, Allen--to Emma. Really just that. You can’t shake more out of me. You might as well expect anything from that Chinese lantern. Hold hard. ‘Tis not I--”

“Don’t speak! You don’t know her! I was a fool to think she would confide to a mere buffoon,” cried poor Allen, in his misery. “Yet if they were intercepting her letters--”

Wherewith he buried himself in the depths of the shrubbery, while Jock, with a long whistle, came back through the library window to his mother, observing--

“Intercepted! Poor fellow! Hardly necessary, if possible, though Lady Flora might wish to catch her for Clanmacnalty. Has the miserable imp really vouchsafed no notice of any of you?”

“Not the slightest; and it is breaking Allen’s heart.”

“As if a painted little marmoset were worth a man’s heart! But Allen has always been infatuated about her, and there’s a good deal at stake, though, if he could only see it in the right fight, he is well quit of such a bubble of a creature. I wouldn’t be saddled with it for all Belforest.”

“Don’t call her any more names, my dear! I only wish any one would represent to her the predicament she keeps Allen in. He can’t press for an answer, of course; but it is cruel to keep him in this suspense. I wonder Mrs. Evelyn did not make her write.

“I don’t suppose it entered her mind that the little wretch (beg your pardon) had not done it of her own accord, and with those Folliotts there’s no chance. They live in a perpetual whirl, enough to distract an Archbishop. Twenty-four parties a week at a moderate computation.”

“Unlucky child!”

“Wakefield is heartily vexed at her having run into such hands,” said Jock; “but there is no hindering it, no one has any power, and even if he had, George Gould is a mere tool in his wife’s hands.”

“Still, Mr. Wakefield might insist on her answering Allen one way or the other. Poor fellow! I don’t think it would cost her much, for she was too childish ever to be touched by that devotion of his. I always thought it a most dangerous experiment, and all I wish for now is that she would send him a proper dismissal, so that his mind might be settled. It would be bad enough, but better than going on in this way.”

“I’ll see him,” said Jock, “or may be I can do the business myself, for, strange to say, the creature doesn’t avoid me, but rather runs after me.”

“You meet her in society?”

“Yes, I’ve not come to the end of my white kids yet, you see. And mother, I came to tell you of something that has turned up. You know the Evelyns are all dead against my selling out. I dined with Sir James on Tuesday, and found next day it was for the sake of walking me out before Sir Philip Cameron, the Cutteejung man, you know. He is sure to be sent out again in the autumn, and he has promised Sir James that if I can get exchanged into some corps out there, he will put me on his staff at once. Mother!”

He stopped short, astounded at the change of countenance, that for a moment she could neither control nor conceal, as she exclaimed “India!” but rallying at once she went on “Sir Philip Cameron! My dear boy, that’s a great compliment. How delighted your uncle will be!”

“But you, mother!”

“Oh yes, my dear, I shall, I will, like it. Of course I am glad and proud for my Jock! How very kind of Sir James!”

“Isn’t it? He talked it over with me as if I had been Cecil, and said I was quite right not to stay in the Guards; and that in India, if a man has any brains at all and reasonable luck, he can’t help getting on. So I shall be quite and clean off your hands, and in the way of working forward, and perhaps of doing something worth hearing of. Mother, you will be pleased then?”

“Shall I not, my dear, dear Jockey! I don’t think you could have a better chief. I have always heard that Sir Philip was such a good man.”

“So Mrs. Evelyn said. She was sure you would be satisfied. You can’t think how kind they were, making the affair quite their own,” said Jock, with a little colour in his face. “They absolutely think it would be wrong to give up the service.”

“Yes; Mrs. Evelyn wrote to me that you ought not to be thrown away. It was very kind and dear, but with a little of the aristocratic notion that the army is the only profession in the world. I can’t help it; I can’t think your father’s profession unworthy of his son.”

“She didn’t say so!”

“No, but I understood it. Perhaps I am touchy; I don’t think I am ungrateful. They have always made you like one of themselves.”

“Yes, so much that I don’t like to run counter to their wishes when they have taken such pains. Besides, there are things that can be thought of, even by a poor man, as a soldier, which can’t in the other line.”

This speech, made with bent head, rising colour, and hand playing with his mother’s fan, gave her, all unwittingly on his part, a keen sense that her Jock was indeed passing from her, but she said nothing to damp his spirits, and threw herself heartily into his plans, announcing them to his uncle with genuine exultation. To this the Colonel fully responded, telling Jock that he would have given the world thirty years ago for such a chance, and commending him for thus getting off his mother’s hands.

“I only wish the rest of you were doing the same,” he said, “but each one seems to think himself the first person to be thought of, and her the last.”

“The Colonel’s wish seemed in course of fulfilment, for when Lucas went a few days later to his brother Robert’s rooms, he found him collecting testimonials for his fitness to act as Vice-principal to a European college at Yokohama for the higher education of the Japanese.

“Mother has not heard of it,” said Jock.

“She need not till it is settled,” answered Bobus. “It will save her trouble with her clerical friends if she only knows too late for a protest.”

Jock understood when he saw the stipulations against religious teaching, and recognised in the Principal’s name an essayist whose negations of faith had made some stir. However, he only said, “It will be rather a blow.”

“There are limits to all things,” replied Bobus. “The truest kindness to her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible. She has quite enough to drag her down.”

“I should hope to act the other way,” said Jock.

“Get your own head above water first,” said Bobus. “Here’s some good advice gratis, though I’ve no expectation of your taking it. Don’t go in for study in the old quarters! Go to Edinburgh or Paris or anywhere you please, but cut the connection, or you’ll never be rid of loafers for life. Wherever mother is, all the rest will gravitate. Mark me, Allen is spoilt for anything but a walking gentleman, Armine will never be good for work, and how many years do you give Janet’s Athenian to come to grief in? Then will they return to the domestic hearth with a band of small Grecians, while Dr. Lucas Brownlow is reduced to a rotifer or wheel animal, circulating in a trap collecting supplies, with ‘sic vos non vobis’ for his motto.”

Jock looked startled. “How if there be no such rotifer?” he said. “You don’t really think there will be nothing to depend when we are both gone?”

“When?”

“Yes, I’ve a chance of getting on Cameron’s staff in India.”

“Oh, that’s all right, old fellow! Why, you’ll be my next neighbour.”

“But about mother? You don’t seriously think Ali and Armie will be nothing but dead weights on her?”

“Only as long as there’s anybody to hold them up”, said Bobus, perceiving that his picture had taken an effect the reverse of what he intended. “They have no lack of brains, and are quite able to shift for themselves and mother too, if only they have to do it, even if she were a pauper, which she isn’t.”

But it was with a less lightsome heart that Jock went to his quarters to prepare for a fancy ball, where he expected to meet Elvira, though whether he should approach her or not would depend on her own caprice.

It was a very splendid affair. A whole back garden, had been transformed into a vast pavilion, containing an Armida’s garden, whose masses of ferns and piles of gorgeous flowers made delightful nooks for strangers who left the glare of the dancing-room, and the quaint dresses harmonised with the magic of the gaslight and the strange forms of the exotics.

The simple scarlet of the young Guardsman was undistinguished among the brilliant character-groups which represented old fairy tales and nursery rhymes. There were ‘The White Cat and her Prince,’ ‘Puss-in-Boots and the Princess,’ ‘Little Snowflake and her Bear,’ and, behold, here was the loveliest Fatima ever seen, in the well-known Algerine dress, mated with a richly robed and turbaned hero, whose beard was blue, though in ordinary life red, inasmuch as he was Lady Flora’s impecunious and not very reputable Scottish peer of a brother. That lady herself, in a pronounced bloomer, represented the little old woman of doubtful identity, and her husband the pedlar, whose ‘name it was Stout’; while not far off the Spanish lady, in garments gay, as rich as may be, wooed her big Englishman in a dress that rivalled Sir Nicolas Blount’s.

There was a pretty character quadrille, and then a general melee, in which Jock danced successively with Cinderella and the fair equestrian of Banbury Cross, and lost sight of Fatima, till, just as he was considering of offering himself to little Bo-peep, he saw her looking a good deal bored by the Spanish lady’s Englishman.

Tossing her head till the coins danced on her forehead, she exclaimed, “Oh, there’s my cousin; I must speak to him!” and sprang to her old companion as if for protection. “Take me to a cool corner, Jock,” she said, “I am suffocating.”

“No wonder, after waltzing with a mountain.”

“He can no more waltz than fly! And he thinks himself irresistible! He says his dress is from a portrait of his ancestor, Sir Somebody; and Flora declares his only ancestor must have been the Fat Boy! And he thought I was a Turkish Sultana! Wasn’t it ridiculous! You know he never says anything but ‘Exactly.’”

“Did he intone it so as to convey all this?”

“He is a little inspired by his ruff and diamonds. Flora says he wants to dazzle me, and will have them changed into paste before he makes them over to his young woman. He has just tin enough to want more, and she says I must be on my guard.”

“You want no guard, I should think, but your engagement.”

“What are you bringing that up for? I suppose you know how Allen wrote to me?” she pouted.

“I know that he thought it due to you to release you from your promise, and that he is waiting anxiously for your reply. Have you written?”

“Don’t bore so, Jock,” said Elvira pettishly. “It was no doing of mine, and I don’t see why I should be teased.”

“Then you wish me to tell him that he is to take your silence as a release from you.”

“I authorise nothing,” she said. “I hate it all.”

“Look here, Elvira,” said Jock, “do you know your own mind? Nobody wants you to take Allen. In fact, I think he is much better quit of you; but it is due to him, and still more to yourself, to cancel the old affair before beginning a new one.”

“Who told you I was beginning a new one?” asked she pertly.

“No one can blame you, provided you let him loose first. It is considered respectable, you know, to be off with the old love before you are on with the new. Nay, it may be only a superstition.”

“Superstition!” she repeated in an awed voice that gave him his cue, and he went on--“Oh yes, a lady has been even known to come and shake hands with the other party after he had been hanged to give back her troth, lest he should haunt her.”

“Allen isn’t hanged,” said Elvira, half frightened, half cross. “Why doesn’t he come himself?”

“Shall he?” said Jock.

“My dear child, I’ve been running madly up and down for you!” cried Lady Flora, suddenly descending on them, and carrying off her charge with a cursory nod to the Guardsman, marking the difference between a detrimental and even the third son of a millionaire.

He saw Elvira no more that night, and the next post carried a note to Belforest.

31st May.

DEAR ALLEN--I don’t know whether you will thank me, but I tried to get a something definite out of your tricksy Elf, and the chief result, so far as I can understand the elfish tongue, is, that she sought no change, and the final sentence was, ‘Why doesn’t he come himself?’ I believe it is her honest wish to go on, when she is left to her proper senses; but that is seldom. You must take this for what it is worth from the buffoon, J. L. B.

Allen came full of hope, and called the next morning. Miss Menella was out riding. He got a card for a party where she was sure to be present, and watched the door, only to see her going away on the arm of Lord Clanmacnalty to some other entertainment. He went to Mr. Folliott’s door, armed with a note, and heard that Lady Flora and Miss Menella were gone out of town for a few days. So it went on, and he turned upon Jock with indignation at having been summoned to be thus deluded. The undignified position added venom to the smart of the disregarded affection and the suspense as to the future, and Jock had much to endure after every disappointment, though Allen clung to him rather than to any one else because of his impression that Elvira’s real preference was unchanged (such as it was), and that these failures were rather due to her friend than to herself.

This became more clear through Mrs. Evelyn. Her family had connections in common with the Dowager Lady Clanmacnalty, and the two ladies met at the house of their relation. Listening in the way of duty to the old Scottish Countess’s profuse communications, she heard what explained a good deal.

Did she know the Spanish girl who was with Flora--a handsome creature and a great heiress? Oh yes; she had presented her. Strange affair! Flora understood that there was a deep plot for appropriating the young lady and her fortune.

“She had been engaged to Mr. Brownlow long before claims were known,” began Mrs. Evelyn.

“Oh yes! It was very ingeniously arranged, only the discovery was made too soon. I have it on the best authority. When the girl came to stay with Flora, her aunt asked for an interview--such a nice sensible woman--so completely understanding her position. She said it was such a distress to her not to be qualified to take her niece into society, yet she could not take her home, living so near, to be harassed by this young man’s pursuit.”

“I saw Mrs. Gould myself,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “I cannot say I was favourably impressed.”

“Oh, we all know she is not a lady; never professes it poor thing. She is quite aware that her niece must move in a different sphere, and all she wants is to have her guarded from that young Brownlow. He follows them everywhere. It is quite the business of Flora’s life to avoid him.”

“Perhaps you don’t know that Mrs. Brownlow took that girl out of a farmhouse, and treated her like a daughter, merely because they were second or third cousins. The engagement to Allen Brownlow was made when the fortune was entirely on his side.”

“Precaution or conscience, eh?” said the old lady, laughing. “By the by, you were intimate with Mrs. Brownlow abroad. How fortunate for you that nothing took place while they had such expectations! Of no family, I hear, of quite low extraction. A parish doctor he was, wasn’t he?”

“A distinguished surgeon.”

“And she came out of some asylum or foundling hospital?”

“Only the home for officers’ daughters,” said Mrs. Evelyn, not able to help laughing. “Her father, Captain Allen, was in the same regiment with Colonel Brownlow, her husband’s brother. I assure you the Menellas and Goulds have no reason to boast.”

“A noble Spanish family,” said the dowager. “One can see it every gesture of the child.”

It was plain that the old lady intended Mr. Barnes’s hoards to repair the ravages of dissipation on the never very productive estates of Clanmacnalty, and that while Elvira continued in Lady Flora’s custody, there was little chance of a meeting between her and Allen. The girl seemed to be submitting passively, and no doubt her new friends could employ tact and flattery enough to avoid exciting her perverseness. No doubt she had been harassed by Allen’s exaction of response to his ardent affection, and wearied of his monopoly of her. Maiden coyness and love of liberty might make her as willing to elude his approach as her friends could wish.

Once only, at a garden party, did he touch the tips of her fingers, but no more. She never met his eye, but threw herself into eager flirtation with the men he most disliked, while the lovely carnation was mounting in her cheek, and betraying unusual excitement. It became known that she was going early in July into the country with some gay people who were going to give a series of fetes on some public occasion, and then that she was to go with Lady Clanmacnalty and her unmarried daughter to Scotland, to help them entertain the grouse-shoot-party.

Allen’s stay in London was clearly of no further use, as Jock perceived with a sensation of relief, for all his pity could not hinder him from being bored with Allen’s continual dejection, and his sighs over each unsuccessful pursuit. He was heartily tired of the part of confidant, which was the more severe, because, whenever Allen had a fit of shame at his own undignified position, he vented it in reproaches to Jock for having called him up to London; and yet as long as there was a chance of seeing Elvira, he could not tear himself away, was wild to get invitations to meet her, and lived at his club in the old style and expense.

Bobus was brief with Allen, and ironical on Jock’s folly in having given the summons. For his own part he was much engrossed with his appointment, going backwards and forwards between Oxford and London, with little time for the concerns of any one else; but the evening after this unfortunate garden party, when Jock had accompanied his eldest brother back to his rooms, and was endeavouring, by the help of a pipe, to endure the reiteration of mournful vituperations of destiny in the shape of Lady Flora and Mrs. Gould, the door suddenly opened and Bobus stood before them with his peculiarly brisk, self-satisfied air, in itself an aggravation to any one out of spirits.

“All right,” he said, “I didn’t expect to find you in, but I thought I would leave a note for the chance. I’ve heard of the very identical thing to suit you, Ali, my boy.”

“Indeed,” said Allen, not prepared with gratitude for his younger brother’s patronage.

“I met Bulstrode at Balliol last night, and he asked if I knew of any one (a perfect gentleman he must be, that matters more than scholarship) who would take a tutorship in a Hungarian count’s family. Two little boys, who live like princes, tutor the same, salary anything you like to ask. It is somewhere in the mountains, a feudal castle, with capital sport.”

“Wolves and bears,” cried Jock, starting up with his old boyish animation. “If I wasn’t going pig-sticking in India, what wouldn’t I give for such a chance. The tutor will teach the young ideas how to shoot, of course.”

“Of course,” said Bobus. “The Count is a diplomate, and there’s not a bad chance of making oneself useful, and getting on in that line. I should have jumped at it, if I hadn’t got the Japs on my hands.”

“Yes, you,” said Allen languidly.

“Well, you can do quite as well for a thing like this,” said Bobus, “or better, as far as looking the gentleman goes. In fact, I suspect as much classics as Mother Carey taught us at home would serve their countships’ turn. Here’s the address. You had better write by the first post to-morrow, for one or two others are rising at it; but Bulstrode said he would wait to hear from you. Here’s the letter with all the details.”

“Thank you. You seem to take a good deal for granted,” said Allen, not moving a finger towards the letter.

“You won’t have it?”

“I have neither spirits nor inclination for turning bear-leader, and it is not a position I wish to undertake.”

“What position would you like?” cried Jock. “You could take that rifle you got for Algeria, and make the Magyars open their eyes. Seriously, Allen, it is the right thing at the right time. You know Miss Ogilvie always said the position was quite different for an English person among these foreigners.”

“Who, like natives, are all the same nation,” quietly observed Allen.

“For that matter,” said Jock, “wasn’t it in Hungarie that the beggar of low degree married the king’s daughter? There’s precedent for you, Ali!”

Allen had taken up the letter, and after glancing it slightly over, said--

“Thanks, Vice-principal, but I won’t stand in the light of your other aspirants.”

“What can you want better than this?” cried Jock. “By the time the law business is over, one may look in vain for such a chance. It is a new country too, and you always said you wanted to know how those fellows with long-tailed names lived in private life.”

Both brothers talked for an hour, till they hoped they had persuaded him that even for the most miserable and disappointed being on earth the Hungarian castle might prove an interesting variety, and they left him at last with the letter before him, undertaking to write and make further inquiries.

The next day, however, just as Jock was about to set forth, intending, as far as might be, to keep him up to the point, Bobus made his appearance, and scornfully held out an envelope. There was the letter, and therewith these words:--

“On consideration, I recur to my first conclusion, that this situation is out of the question. To say nothing of the injury to my health and nerves from agitation and suspense, rendering me totally unfit for drudgery and annoyance, I cannot feel it right to place myself in a situation equivalent to the abandonment of all hope. It is absurd to act as if we were reduced to abject poverty, and I will never place myself in the condition of a dependent. This season has so entirely knocked me up that I must at once have sea air, and by the time you receive this I shall be on my way to Ryde for a cruise in the Petrel.”

“His health!” cried Bobus, his tone implying three notes, scarcely of admiration.

“Well, poor old Turk, he is rather seedy,” said Jock. “Can’t sleep, and has headaches! But ‘tis a regular case of having put him to flight!”

“Well, I’ve done with him,” said Bobus, “since there’s a popular prejudice against flogging, especially one’s elder brother. This is a delicate form of intimation that he intends doing the dolce at mother’s expense.”

“The poor old chap has been an ornamental appendage so long that he can’t make up his mind to anything else,” said Jock.

“He is no worse off than the rest of us,” said Bobus.

“In age, if in nothing else.”

“The more reason against throwing away a chance. The yacht, too! I thought there was a Quixotic notion of not dipping into that Elf’s money. I’m sure poor mother is pinching herself enough.”

“I don’t think Ali knows when he spends money more than when he spends air,” returned Jock. “The Petrel can hardly cost as much in a month as I have seen him get through in a week, protesting all the while that he was living on absolutely nothing.”

“I know. You may be proud to get him down Oxford Street under thirty shillings, and he never goes out in the evening much under half that.”

“Yes, he told me selling my horses was shocking bad economy.”

“Well, it was your own doing, having him up here,” said Bobus.

“I wonder how he will go on when the money is really not there.”

“Precisely the same,” said Bobus; “there’s no cure for that sort of complaint. The only satisfaction is that we shall be out of sight of it.”

“And a very poor one,” sighed Jock, “when mother is left to bear the brunt.”

“Mother can manage him much better than we can,” said Bobus; “besides, she is still a youngish woman, neither helpless nor destitute; and as I always tell you, the greatest kindness we can do her is to look out for ourselves.”

Bobus himself had done so effectually, for he was secure of a handsome salary, and his travelling expenses were to be paid, when, early in the next year, he was to go out with his Principal to confer on the Japanese the highest possible culture in science and literature without any bias in favour of Christianity, Buddhism, or any other sublime religion.

Meantime he was going home to make his preparations, and pack such portions of his museum as he thought would be unexampled in Japan. He had fulfilled his intention of only informing his mother after his application had been accepted; and as it had been done by letter, he had avoided the sight of the pain it gave her and the hearing of her remonstrances, all of which he had referred to her maternal dislike of his absence, rather than to his association with the Principal, a writer whose articles she kept out of reach of Armine and Barbara.

The matter had become irrevocable and beyond discussion, as he intended, before his return to Belforest, which he only notified by the post of the morning before he walked into luncheon. By that time it was a fait accompli, and there was nothing to be done but to enter on a lively discussion on the polite manners and customs of the two-sworded nation and the wonderful volcanoes he hoped to explore.

Perhaps one reason that his notice was so short was that there might be the less time for Kencroft to be put on its guard. Thus, when, by accident of course, he strolled towards the lodge, he found his cousin Esther in the wood, with no guardians but the three youngest children, who had coaxed her, in spite of the heat, to bring them to the slopes of wood strawberries on their weekly half-holiday.

He had seen nothing, but had only been guided by the sound of voices to the top of the sloping wooded bank, where, under the shade of the oak-trees, looking over the tall spreading brackens, he beheld Essie in her pretty gipsy hat and holland dress, with all her bird-like daintiness, kneeling on the moss far below him, threading the scarlet beads on bents of grass, with the little ones round her.

“I heard a chattering,” he said, as, descending through the fern, he met her dark eyes looking up like those of a startled fawn; “so I came to see whether the rabbits had found tongues. How many more are there? No, thank you,” as Edmund and Lina answered his greeting with an offer of very moist-looking fruit, and an ungrammatical “Only us.”

“Then us run away. They grow thick up that bank, and I’ve got a prize here for whoever keeps away longest. No, you shan’t see what it is. Any one who comes asking questions will lose it. Run away, Lina, you’ll miss your chance. No, no, Essie, you are not a competitor.”

“I must, Robert; indeed I must.”

“Can’t you spare me a moment when I am come down for my last farewell visit?”

“But you are not going for a good while yet.”

“So you call it, but it will seem short enough. Did you ever hear of minutes seeming like diamond drops meted out, Essie?”

“But, you know, it is your own doing,” said Essie.

“Yes, and why, Essie? Because misfortune has made such an exile as this the readiest mode of ceasing to be a burden to my mother.”

“Papa said he was glad of it,” said Esther, “and that you were quite right. But it is a terrible way off!”

“True! but there is one consideration that will make up to me for everything.”

“That it is for Aunt Caroline!”

“Partly, but do you not know the hope which makes all work sweet to me?” And the look of his eyes, and his hand seeking hers, made her say,

“Oh don’t, Robert, I mustn’t.”

“Nay, my queen, you were too duteous to hearken to me when I was rich and prosperous. I would not torment you then, I meant to be patient; but now I am poor and going into banishment, you will be generous and compassionate, and let me hear the one word that will make my exile sweet.”

“I don’t think I ought,” said the poor child under her breath. “O, Robert, don’t you know I ought not.”

“Would you if that ugly cypher of an ought did not stand in the way?”

“Oh don’t ask me, Robert; I don’t know.”

“But I do know, my queen,” said he. “I know my little Essie better than she knows herself. I know her true heart is mine, only she dares not avow it to herself; and when hearts have so met, Esther, they owe one another a higher duty than the filial tie can impose.”

“I never heard that before,” she said, puzzled, but not angered.

“No, it is not a doctrine taught in schoolrooms, but it is true and universal for all that, and our fathers and mothers acted on it in their day, and will give way to it now.”

Esther had never been told all her father’s objections to her cousin. Simple prohibition had seemed to her parents sufficient for the gentle, dutiful child. Bobus had always been very kind to her, and her heart went out enough to him in his trouble to make coldness impossible to her. Tears welled into her eyes with perplexity at the new theory, and she could only falter out--

“That doesn’t seem right for me.”

“Say one word and trust to me, and it shall be right. Yes, Esther, say the word, and in it I shall be strong to overcome everything, and win the consent you desire. Say only that, with it, you would love me.”

“If?” said Esther.

It was an interrogative if, and she did not mean it for “the one word,” but Bobus caught at it as all he wanted. He meant it for the fulcrum on which to rest the strong lever of his will, and before Esther could add any qualification, he was overwhelming her with thanks and assurances so fervent that she could interpose no more doubts, and yielded to the sweetness of being able to make any one so happy, above all the cousin whom most people thought so formidably clever.

Edmund interrupted them by rushing up, thus losing the prize, which was won by the last comer, and proved to be a splendid bonbon; but there was consolation for the others, since Bobus had laid in a supply as a means of securing peace.

He would fain have waited to rivet his chains before manifesting them, but he knew Essie too well to expect her to keep the interview a secret; and he had no time to lose if, as he intended, though he had not told her so, he was to take her to Japan with him.

So he stormed the castle without delay, walked to Kencroft with the strawberry gatherers, found the Colonel superintending the watering of his garden, and, with effrontery of which Essie was unconscious, led her up, and announced their mutual love, as though secure of an ardent welcome.

He did, mayhap, expect to surprise something of the kind out of his slowly-moving uncle, but the only answer was a strongly accentuated “Indeed! I thought I had told you both that I would have none of this foolery. Esther, I am ashamed of you. Go in directly.”

The girl repaired to her own room to weep floods of tears over her father’s anger, and the disobedience that made itself apparent as soon as she was beyond the spell of that specious tongue. There were a few fears too for his disappointment; but when her mother came up in great displeasure, the first words were--

“O, mamma, I could not help it!”

“You could not prevent his accosting you, but you might have prevented his giving all this trouble to papa. You know we should never allow it.”

“Indeed I only said if!”

“You had no right to say anything. When a young lady knows a man is not to be encouraged, she should say nothing to give him an advantage. You could never expect us to let you go to a barbarous place at the other end of the world with a man of as good as no religion at all.”

“He goes to church,” said Essie, too simple to look beyond.

“Only here, to please his mother. My dear, you must put this out of your head. Even if he were very different, we should never let you marry a first cousin, and he knows it. It was very wrong in him to have spoken to you.”

“Please don’t let him do it again,” said Esther, faintly.

“That’s right, my dear,” with a kiss of forgiveness. “I am sure you are too good a girl really to care for him.”

“I wish he would not care for me,” sighed poor Essie, wearily. “He always was so kind, and now they are in trouble I couldn’t vex him.”

“Oh, my dear, young men get over things of this sort half a dozen times in their lives.”

Essie was not delighted with this mode of consolation, and when her mother tenderly smoothed back her hair, and bade her bathe her face and dress for dinner, she clung to her and said--

“Don’t let me see him again.”

It was a wholesome dread, which Mrs. Brownlow encouraged, for both she and her husband were annoyed and perplexed by Robert’s cool reception of their refusal. He quietly declared that he could allow for their prejudices, and that it was merely a matter of time, and he was provokingly calm and secure, showing neither anger nor disappointment. He did not argue, but having once shown that his salary warranted his offer, that the climate was excellent, and that European civilisation prevailed, he treated his uncle and aunt as unreasonably prejudiced mortals, who would in time yield to his patient determination.

His mother was as much annoyed as they were, all the more because her sister-in-law could hardly credit her perfect innocence of Robert’s intentions, and was vexed at her wish to ascertain Esther’s feelings. This was not easy! the poor child was so unhappy and shamefaced, so shocked at her involuntary disobedience, and so grieved at the pain she had given. If Robert had been set before her with full consent of friends, she would have let her whole heart go out to him, loved him, and trusted him for ever, treating whatever opinions were unlike hers as manly idiosyncrasies beyond her power to fathom. But she was no Lydia Languish to need opposition as a stimulus. It rather gave her tender and dutiful spirit a sense of shame, terror, and disobedience; and she thankfully accepted the mandate that sent her on a visit to her married sister for as long as Bobus should remain at Belforest.

He did not show himself downcast, but was quietly assured that he should win her at last, only smiling at the useless precaution, and declaring himself willing to wait, and make a home for her.

But this matter had not tended to make his mother more at ease in her enforced stay at Belforest, which was becoming a kind of gilded prison.

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XXXI. SLACK TIDE

If... Thou hide thine eyes and make thy peevish moan Over some broken reed of earth beneath, Some darling of blind fancy dead and gone. Keble.

There is such a thing as slack tide in the affairs of men, when a crisis seems as if it would never come, and all things stagnate. The Law Courts had as yet not concerned themselves about the will, vacation time had come and all was at a standstill, nor could any steps be taken for Lucas’s exchange till it was certain into what part of India Sir Philip Cameron was going. In the meantime his regiment had gone into camp, and he could not get away until the middle of September, and then only for a few days. Arriving very late on a Friday night, he saw nobody but his mother over his supper, and thought her looking very tired. When he met her in the morning, there was the same weary, harassed countenance, there were worn marks round the dark wistful eyes, and the hair, whitened at Schwarenbach, did not look as incongruous with the face as hitherto.

No one else except Barbara had come down to prayers, so Jock’s first inquiry was for Armine.

“He is pretty well,” said his mother; “but he is apt to be late. He gets overtired between his beloved parish work and his reading with Bobus.”

“He is lucky to get such a coach,” said Jock. “Bob taught me more mathematics in a week than I had learnt in seven years before.”

“He is terribly accurate,” said Babie.

“Which Armie does not appreciate?” said Jock.

“I’m afraid not,” said his mother. “They do worry each other a good deal, and this Infanta most of all, I’m afraid.”

“O no, mother,” said Babie. “Only it is hard for poor Armie to have two taskmasters.”

“What! the Reverend Petronella continues in the ascendant?”

Bobus here entered, with a face that lightened, as did everyone’s, at sight of Lucas.

“Good morning. Ah! Jock! I didn’t sit up, for I had had a long day out on the moors; we kept the birds nearer home for you. There are plenty, but Grimes says he has heard shots towards River Hollow, and thinks some one must have been trespassing there.”

“Have you heard anything of Elvira? apropos to River Hollow,” said his mother.

“Yes,” said Jock. “One of our fellows has been on a moor not far from where she was astonishing the natives, conjointly with Lady Anne Macnalty. There were bets which of three men she may be engaged to.”

“Pending which,” said his mother, “I suppose poor Allen will continue to hover on the wings of the Petrel?”

“And send home mournful madrigals by the ream,” said Bobus. “Never was petrel so tuneful a bird!”

“For shame, Bobus; I never meant you to see them!”

“‘Twas quite involuntary! I have trouble enough with my own pupil’s effusions. I leave him a bit of Latin composition, and what do I find but an endless doggerel ballad on What’s his name?--who hid under his father’s staircase as a beggar, eating the dogs’ meat, while his afflicted family were searching for him in vain;--his favourite example.”

“St. Alexis,” said Babie; “he was asked to versify it.”

“As a wholesome incentive to filial duty and industry,” said Bobus. “Does the Parsoness mean to have it sung in the school?”

“It might be less dangerous than ‘the fox went out one moonshiny night,’” said their mother, anxious to turn the conversation. “Mr. Parsons brought Mr. Todd of Wrexham in to see the school just as the children were singing the final catastrophe when the old farmer ‘shot the old fox right through the head.’ He was so horrified that he declared the schools should never have a penny of his while they taught such murder and heresy.”

“Served them right,” said Jock, “for spoiling that picture of domestic felicity when ‘the little ones picked the bones, oh!’ How many guns shall we be, Bobus?”

“Only three. My uncle has a touch of gout, the Monk has got a tutorship, Joe has gone back to his ship, but the mighty Bob has a week’s leave, and does not mean a bird to survive the change of owners.”

“Doesn’t Armine come?”

“Not he!” said Bobus. “Says he doesn’t want to acquire the taste, and he would knock up with half a day.”

“But you’ll all come and bring us luncheon?” entreated Jock. “You will, mother! Now, won’t you? We’ll eat it on a bank like old times when we lived at the Folly, and all were jolly. I beg your pardon, Bob; I didn’t mean to turn into another poetical brother on your hands, but enthusiasm was too strong for me! Come, Mother Carey, do!”

“Where is it to be?” she asked, smiling.

“Out by the Long Hanger would be a good place,” said Bobus, “where we found the Epipactis grandiflora.”

“Or the heathery knoll where poor little mother got into a scrape for singing profane songs by moonlight,” laughed Jock.

“Ah! that was when hearts were light,” she said; “but at any rate we’ll make a holiday of it, for Jock’s sake.”

“Ha! what do I see?” exclaimed Jock, who was opposite the open window. “Is that Armine, or a Jack-in-the-Green?”

“Oh!” half sighed Barbara. “It’s that harvest decoration!” And Armine, casting down armfuls of great ferns, and beautiful trailing plants, made his entrance through the open window, exchanging greetings, and making a semi-apology for his late appearance as he said--

“Mother, please desire Macrae to cut me the great white orchids. He won’t do it unless you tell him, and I promised them for the Altar vases.”

“You know, Armie, he said cutting them would be the ruin of the plant, and I don’t feel justified in destroying it.”

“Macrae’s fancy,” muttered Armine. “It is only that he hates the whole thing.”

“Unhappy Macrae! I go and condole with him sometimes,” said Bobus. “I don’t know which are most outraged--his Freekirk or his horticultural feelings!”

“Babie,” ordered Armine, who was devouring his breakfast at double speed, “if you’ll put on your things, I’ve the garden donkey-cart ready to take down the flowers. You won’t expect us to luncheon, mother?”

Barbara, though obedient, looked blank, and her mother said--

“My dear, if I went down and helped at the Church till half past twelve, could not we all be set free? Your brothers want us to bring their luncheon to them at the Hanger.”

“That’s right, mother,” cried Jock; “I’ve half a mind to come and expedite matters.”

“No, no, Skipjack!” cried Bobus; “I had that twenty stone of solid flesh whom I see walking up to the house to myself all yesterday, and I can’t stand another day of it unmitigated!”

Entered the tall heavy figure of Rob. He reported his father as much the same and not yet up, delivered a note to his aunt, and made no objection to devouring several slices of tongue and a cup of cocoa to recruit nature after his walk; while Bobus reclaimed the reluctant Armine from cutting scarlet geraniums in the ribbon beds to show him the scene in the Greek play which he was to prepare, and Babie tried to store up all the directions, perceiving from the pupil’s roving eye that she should have to be his memory.

Jock saw that the note had brought an additional line of care to his mother’s brow, and therefore still more gaily and eagerly adjured her not to fail in the Long Hanger, and as the shooting party started, he turned back to wave his cap, and shout, “Sharp two!”

Two o’clock found three hungry youths and numerous dead birds on the pleasant thymy bank beneath the edge of the beach wood, but gaze as they might through the clear September air, neither mother, brother, nor sister was visible. Presently, however, the pony-carriage appeared, and in it a hamper, but driven only by the stable-boy. He said a gentleman was at the house, and Mrs. Brownlow was very sorry that she could not come, but had sent him with the luncheon.

“I shall go and see after her,” said Jock; and in spite of all remonstrance, and assurance that it was only a form of Parsonic tyranny, he took a draught of ale and a handful of sandwiches, sprang into the carriage, and drove off, hardly knowing why, but with a yearning towards his mother, and a sense that all that was unexpected boded evil. Leaving the pony at the stables, and walking up to the house, he heard sounds that caused him to look in at the open library window.

On one side of the table stood his mother, on the other Dr. Demetrius Hermann, with insinuating face, but arm upraised as if in threatening.

“Scoundrel!” burst forth Jock. Both turned, and his mother’s look of relief and joy met him as he sprang to her side, exclaiming, “What does this mean? How dare you?”

“No, no!” she cried breathlessly, clinging to his arm. “He did not mean--it was only a gesture!”

“I’ll have no such gestures to my mother.”

“Sir, the honoured lady only does me justice. I meant nothing violent. Zat is for you English military, whose veapon is zie horsewhip.”

“As you will soon feel,” said Jock, “if you attempt to bully my mother. What does it mean, mother dear?”

“He made a mistake,” she said, in a quick, tremulous tone, showing how much she was shaken. “He thinks me a quack doctor’s widow, whose secret is matter of bargain and sale.”

“Madame! I offered most honourable terms.”

“Terms, indeed! I told you the affair is no empirical secret to be bought.”

“Yet madame knows that I am in possession of a portion of zie discovery, and that it is in my power to pursue it further, though, for family considerations, I offer her to take me into confidence, so that all may profit in unison,” said the Greek, in his blandest manner.

“The very word profit shows your utter want of appreciation,” said Mrs. Brownlow, with dignity. “Such discoveries are the property of the entire faculty, to be used for the general benefit, not for private selfish profit. I do not know how much information may have been obtained, but if any attempt be made to use it in the charlatan fashion you propose, I shall at once expose the whole transaction, and send my husband’s papers to the Lancet.”

Hermann shrugged his shoulders and looked at Lucas, as if considering whether more or less reason could be expected from a soldier than from a woman. It was to him that he spoke.

“Madame cannot see zie matter in zie light of business. I have offered freely to share all that I shall gain, if I may only obtain the data needful to perfect zie discovery of zie learned and venerated father. I am met wit anger I cannot comprehend.”

“Nor ever will,” said Caroline.

“And,” pursued Dr. Hermann, “when, on zie oder hand, I explain that my wife has imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?”

“Not quite,” said Jock. “That is to be kicked out of the house, as you shortly will be, if you do not take yourself off.”

“Sir, your amiable affection for madame leads you to forget, as she does, zie claim of your sister.”

“No one has any claim on my mother,” said Jock.

“Zie moral claim--zie claim of affection,” began the Greek; but Caroline interrupted him--

“Dr. Hermann is not the person fitly to remind me of these. They have not been much thought of in Janet’s case. I mean to act as justly as I can by my daughter, but I have absolutely nothing to give her at present. Till I know what my own means may prove to be I can do nothing.”

“But madame holds out zie hope of some endowment. I shall be in a condition to be independent of it, but it would be sweet to my wife as a token of pardon. I could bear away a promise.”

“I promise nothing,” was the reply. “If I have anything to give--even then, all would depend on your conduct and the line you may take. And above all, remember, it is in my power to frustrate and expose any attempt to misuse any hints that may have been stolen from my husband’s memoranda. In my power, and my duty.”

“Madame might have spared me this,” sighed the Athenian. “My poor Janette! She will not believe how her husband has been received.”

He was gone. Caroline dropped into a chair, but the next moment she almost screamed--

“Oh, we must not let him go thus! He may revenge it on her! Go after him, get his address, tell him she shall have her share if he will behave well to her.”

Jock fulfilled his mission according to his own judgment, and as he returned his mother started up.

“You have not brought him back!”

“I should rather think not!”

“Janet’s husband! Oh, Jock, it is very dreadful! My poor child!”

She had been a little lioness in face of the enemy, but she was trembling so hopelessly that Jock put her on a couch and knelt with his arm round her while she laid her head on his strong young shoulder.

“Let me fetch you some wine, mother darling,” he said.

“No, no--to feel you is better than anything,” putting his arm closer--

“What was it all about, mother?”

“Ah! you don’t know, yet you went straight to the point, my dear champion.”

“He was bullying you, that was enough. I thought for a moment the brute was going to strike you.”

“That was only gesticulation. I’m glad you didn’t knock him down when you made in to the rescue.”

She could laugh a little now.

“I should like to have done it. What did he want? Money, of course?”

“Not solely. I can’t tell you all about it; but Janet saw some memoranda of your father’s, and he wants to get hold of them.”

“To pervert them to some quackery?”

“If not, I do him great injustice.”

“Give them up to a rogue like that! I should guess not! It will be some little time before he tries again. Well done, little mother!”

“If he will not turn upon her.”

“What a speculation he must have thought her.”

“Don’t talk of it, Jock; I can’t bear to think of her in such hands.”

“Janet has a spirit of her own. I should think she could get her way with her subtle Athenian. Where did he drop from?”

“He overtook me on my way back from the Church, for indeed I did not mean to break my appointment. I don’t think the servants knew who was here. And Jock, if you mention it to the others, don’t speak of this matter of the papers. Call it, as you may with truth, an attempt to extort money.”

“Very well,” he gravely said.

“It is true,” she continued, “that I have valuable memoranda of your father’s in my charge; but you must trust me when I say that I am not at liberty to tell you more.”

“Of course I do. So the mother was really coming, like a good little Red-riding-hood, to bring her son’s dinner into the forest, when she met with the wolf! Pray, has he eaten up the two kids at a mouthful?”

“No, Miss Parsons had done that already. They are making the Church so beautiful, and it did not seem possible to spare them, though I hope Armine may get home in time to get his work done for Bobus.”

“Is not he worked rather hard between the two? He does not seem to thrive on it.”

“Jock, I can say it to you. I don’t know what to do. The poor boy’s heart is in these Church matters, and he is so bitterly grieved at the failure of all his plans that I cannot bear to check him in doing all he can. It is just what I ought to have been doing all these years; I only saw my duties as they were being taken away from me, and so I deserve the way Miss Parsons treats me.”

“What way?”

“You need not bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the worldly obstructive mother who serves as a trial to the hero.”

“If she makes Armine think so--”

“Armie is too loyal for that. Yet it may be only too true, and only my worldliness that wishes for a little discretion. Still, I don’t think a sensible woman, if she were ever so good and devoted, would encourage his fretting over the disappointment, or lead him to waste his time when so much depends on his diligence. I am sure the focus of her mind must be distorted, and she is twisting his the same way.”

“And her brother follows suit?”

“I think they go in parallel grooves, and he lets her alone. It is very unlucky, for they are a constant irritation to Bobus, and he fancies them average specimens of good people. He sneers, and I can’t say but that much of what he says is true, but there is the envenomed drop in it which makes his good sense shocking to Armine, and I fear Babie relishes it more than is good for her. So they make one another worse, and so they will as long as we are here. It was a great mistake to stay on, and your uncle must feel it so.”

“Could you not go to Dieppe, or some cheap place?”

“I don’t feel justified in any more expense. Here the house costs nothing, and our personal expenditure does not go beyond our proper means; but to pay for lodging elsewhere would soon bring me in excess of it, at least as long as Allen keeps up the yacht. Then poor Janet must have something, and I don’t know what bills may be in store for me, and there’s your outfit, and Bobus’s.”

“Never mind mine.”

“My dear, that’s fine talking, but you can’t go like Sir Charles Napier, with one shirt and a bit of soap.”

“No, but I shall get something for the exchange. Besides, my kit was costly even for the Guards, and will amply cover all that.”

“And you have sold your horses?”

“And have been living on them ever since! Come, won’t that encourage you to make a little jaunt, just to break the spell?”

“I wish it could, my dear, but it does not seem possible while those bills are such a dreadful uncertainty. I never know what Allen may have been ordering.”

“Surely the Evelyns would be glad to have you.”

“No, Jock, that can’t be. Promise me that you will do nothing to lead to an invitation. You are to meet some of them, are you not?”

“Yes, on Thursday week, at Roland Hampton’s wedding. Cecil and I and a whole lot of us go down in the morning to it, and Sydney is to be a bridesmaid. What are you going to do now, mother?”

“I don’t quite know. I feel regularly foolish. I shall have a headache if I don’t keep quiet, but I can’t persuade myself to stay in the house lest that man should come back.”

“What! not with me for garrison?”

“O nonsense, my dear. You must go and catch up the sportsmen.”

“Not when I can get my Mother Carey all to myself. You go and lie down in the dressing-room, and I’ll come as soon as I have taken off my boots and ordered some coffee for you.”

He returned with the step of one treading on eggs, expecting to find her half asleep; but her eyes were glittering, and there were red spots on her cheeks, for her nerves were excited, and when he came in she began to talk. She told him, not of present troubles, but of the letters between his father and grandmother, which, in her busy, restless life, she had never before looked at, but which had come before her in her preparations for vacating Belforest. Perhaps it was only now that she had grown into appreciation of the relations between that mother and son, as she read the letters, preserved on each side, and revealing the full beauty and greatness of her husband’s nature, his perfect confidence in his mother, and a guiding influence from her, which she herself had never thought of exerting. Does not many an old correspondence thus put the present generation to shame?

Jock was the first person with whom she had shared these letters, and it was good to watch his face as he read the words of the father whom he remembered chiefly as the best of playfellows. He was of an age and in a mood to enter into them with all his heart, though he uttered little more than an occasional question, or some murmured remark when anything struck him. Both he and his mother were so occupied that they never observed that the sky clouded over and rain began to fall, nor did they think of any other object till Bobus opened the door in search of them.

“Halloo, you deserter!”

“Hush! Mother has a headache.”

“Not now, you have cured it.”

“Well, you’ve missed an encounter with the most impudent rascal I ever came across.”

“You didn’t meet Hermann?”

“Well, perhaps I have found his match; but you shall hear. Grimes said he heard guns, and we came upon the scoundrel in Lewis Acre, two brace on his shoulder.”

“The vultures are gathering to the prey,” said his mother.

“I’m not arrived at lying still to be devoured!” said Bobus. “I gave him the benefit of a doubt, and sent Grimes to warn him off; but the fellow sent his card--his card forsooth, ‘Mr. Gilbert Gould, R.N.,’--and information that he had Miss Menella’s permission.”

“Not credible,” said Jock.

“Mrs. Lisette’s more likely,” said his mother. “I think he is her brother.”

“I sent Grimes back to tell him that Miss Menella had as much power to give leave as my old pointer, and if he did not retire at once, we should gently remove his gun and send out a summons.”

“Why did you not do so at once?” cried Jock.

“Because I have brains enough not to complicate matters by a personal row with the Goulds,” said Bobus, “though I could wish not to have been there, when the keepers would infallibly have done so. Shall I write to George Gould, or will you, mother?”

“Oh dear,” sighed Caroline, “I think Mr. Wakefield is the fittest person, if it signifies enough to have it done at all.”

“Signifies!” cried Jock. “To have that rascal loafing about! I wouldn’t be trampled upon while the life is in me!”

“I don’t like worrying Mr. Gould. It is not his fault, except for having married such a wife, poor man.”

“Having been married by her, you mean,” said Bobus. “Mark me, she means to get that fellow married to that poor child, as sure as fate.”

“Impossible, Bobus! His age!”

“He is a good deal younger than his sister, and a prodigious swell.”

“Besides, he is her uncle,” said Jock.

“No, no, only her uncle’s wife’s brother.”

“That’s just the same.”

“I wish it were!” But Jock would not be satisfied without getting a Prayer-book, to look at the table of degrees.

“He is really her third cousin, I believe,” said his mother, “and I’m afraid that is not prohibited.”

“Is he a ship’s steward?” said Jock, looking at the card with infinite disgust.

“A paymaster’s assistant, I believe.”

“That would be too much. Besides, there’s the Scot!”

“I don’t think much of that,” said Jock. “The mother and sister are keen for it, but Clanmacnalty is in no haste to marry, and by all accounts the Elf carries on promiscuously with three or four at once.”

“And she has no fine instinct for a gentleman,” added Bobus. “It is who will spread the butter thickest!”

“A bad look out for Belforest,” said Jock.

“It can’t be much worse than it has been with me,” said his mother.

“That’s what that little ass, Armine, has been presuming to din into your ears,” said Bobus; “as if the old women didn’t prefer beef and blankets to your coming poking piety at the poor old parties.”

“By the bye,” cried Caroline, starting, “those children have never come home, and see how it rains!”

Jock volunteered to take the pony carriage and fetch them, but he had not long emerged from the park in the gathering twilight before he overtook two figures under one umbrella, and would have passed them had he not been hailed.

“You demented children! Jump in this instant.”

“Don’t turn!” called Armine. “We must take this,” showing a parcel which he had been sheltering more carefully than himself or his sister. “It is cord and tassels for the banner. They sent wrong ones,” said Barbara, “and we had to go and match it. They would not let me go alone.”

“Get in, I say,” cried Jock, who was making demonstrations with the “national weapon” much as if he would have liked to lay it about their shoulders.

“Then we must drive onto the Parsonage,” stipulated Armine.

“Not a bit of it, you drenched and foolish morsel of humanity. You are going straight home to bed. Hand us the parcel. What will you give me not to tie this cord round the Reverend Petronella’s neck?”

“Thank you, Jock, I’m so glad,” said Babie, referring probably to the earlier part of his speech. “We would have come home for the pony carriage, but we thought it would be out.”

“Take care of the drip,” was Armine’s parting cry, as Babie turned the pony’s head, and Jock strode down the lane. He meant merely to have given in the parcel at the door, but Miss Parsons darted out, and not distinguishing him in the dark began, “Thank you, dear Armine; I’m so sorry, but it is in the good cause and you won’t regret it. Where’s your sister? Gone home? But you’ll come and have a cup of tea and stay to evensong?”

“My brother and sister are gone home, thank you,” said Jock, with impressive formality, and a manly voice that made her start.

“Oh, indeed. Thank you, Mr. Brownlow. I was so sorry to let them go; but it had not begun to rain, and it is such a joy to dear Armine to be employed in the service.”

“Yes, he is mad enough to run any risk,” said Jock.

“Oh, Mr. Brownlow, if I could only persuade you to enter into the joy of self-devotion, you would see that I could not forbid him! Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

“Thank you, no. Good night.” And Miss Parsons was left rejoicing at having said a few words of reproof to that cynical Mr. Robert Brownlow, while Jock tramped away, grinning a sardonic smile at the lady’s notions of the joys of self-sacrifice.

He came home only just in time for dinner, and found Armine enduring, with a touching resignation learnt in Miss Parsons’s school, the sarcasm of Bobus for having omitted to prepare his studies. The boy could neither eat nor entirely conceal the chills that were running over him; and though he tried to silence his brother’s objurgations by bringing out his books afterwards, his cheeks burnt, he emitted little grunting coughs, and at last his head went down on the lexicon, and his breath came quick and short.

The Harvest Festival day was perforce kept by him in bed, blistered and watched from hour to hour to arrest the autumn cold, which was the one thing dreaded as imperilling him in the English winter which he must face for the first time for four years.

And Miss Parsons, when impressively told, evidently thought it was the family fashion to make a great fuss about him.

Alas! why are people so one-sided and absorbed in their own concerns as never to guess what stumbling-blocks they raise in other people’s paths, nor how they make their good be evil spoken of?

Babie confided her feelings to Jock when he escorted her to Church in the evening, and had detected a melancholy sound in her voice which made him ask if she thought Armine’s attack of the worst sort.

“Not particularly, except that he talks so beautifully.”

Jock gave a small sympathetic whistle at this dreadful symptom, and wondered to hear that he had been able to talk.

“I didn’t mean only to-day, but this is only what he had made up his mind to. He never expects to leave Belforest, and he thinks--oh, Jock!--he thinks it is meant to do Bobus good.”

“He doesn’t go the way to edify Bobus.”

“No, but don’t you see? That is what is so dreadful. He only just reads with Bobus because mother ordered him; and he hates it because he thinks it is of no use, for he will never be well enough to go to college. Why, he had this cold coming yesterday, and I believe he is glad, for it would be like a book for him to be very bad indeed, bad enough to be able to speak out to Bobus without being laughed at.”

“Does he always go on in this way?”

“Not to mother; but to hear him and Miss Parsons is enough to drive one wild. They went on such a dreadful way yesterday that I was furious, and so glad to get away to Kenminster; only after I had set off, he came running after me, and I knew what that would be.”

“What does she do? Does she blarney him?”

“Yes, I suppose so. She means it, I believe; but she does natter him so that it would make me sick, if it didn’t make me so wretched! You see he likes it, because he fancies her goodness itself; and so I suppose she is, only there is such a lot of clerical shop”--then, as Jock made a sound as if he did not like the slang in her mouth--“Ay, it sounds like Bobus; but if this goes on much longer, I shall turn to Bobus’s way. He has all the sense on his side!”

“No, Babie,” said Jock very gravely. “That’s a much worse sort of folly!”

“And he will be gone before long,” said Barbara, much struck by a tone entirely unwonted from her brother. “O Jock, I thought reverses would be rather nice and help one to be heroic, and perhaps they would, if they would only come faster, and Armine could be out of Miss Parsons’s way; but I don’t believe he will ever be better while he is here. I think!--I think!” and she began to sob, “that Miss Parsons will really be the death of him if she is not hindered!”

“Can’t he go on board the Petrel with Allen?”

“Mother did think of that,” said Babie, “but Allen said he wasn’t in spirits for the charge, and that cabin No. 2 wasn’t comfortable enough.”

Jock was not the least surprised at this selfishness, but he said--

“We will get him away somehow, Infanta, never fear! And when you have left this place, you’ll be all right. You’ll have the Friar, and he is a host in himself.”

“Yes,” said Babie, ruefully, “but he is not a brother after all. Oh, Jock! mother says it is very wrong in me, but I can’t help it.”

“What is wrong, little one?”

“To feel it so dreadful that you and Bobus are going! I know it is honour and glory, and promotion, and chivalry, and Victoria crosses, and all that Sydney and I used to care for; but, oh! we never thought of those that stayed at home.”

“You were a famous Spartan till the time came,” said Jock, in an odd husky voice.

“I wouldn’t mind so much but for mother,” said poor Barbara, in an apologetic tone; “nor if there were any stuff in Allen; nor if dear Armie were well and like himself; but, oh dear! I feel as if all the manhood and comfort of the family would be gone to the other end of the world.”

“What did you say about mother?”

“I beg your pardon, Jock, I didn’t mean to worry you. I know it is a grand thing for you. But mother was so merry and happy when we thought we should all be snug with you in the old house, and she made such nice plans. But now she is so fagged and worn, and she can’t sleep. She began to read as soon as it was light all those long summer mornings to keep from thinking; and she is teasing herself over her accounts. There were shoals of great horrid bills of things Allen ordered coming in at Midsummer, just as she thought she saw her way! Do you know, she thinks she may have to let our own house and go into lodgings.”

“Is that you, Barbara?” said a voice at the Parsonage wicket. “How is our dear patient?”

“Rather better to-night, we think.”

“Tell him I hope to come and see him to-morrow. And say the vases are come. I thought your mother would wish us to have the large ones, so I put them in the Church. They are £3.”

Babie thought Jock’s face was dazed when he came among the lights in Church, and that he moved and responded like an automaton, and she could hardly get a word out of him all the way home. There, they were sent for to Armine, who was sufficiently better to want to hear all about the services, the procession, the wheat-sheaf, the hymns, and the sermons. Jock stood the examination well till it came to evensong, when, as his sister had conjectured, he knew nothing, except one sentence, which he said had come over and over again in the sermon, and he wanted to know whence it came. It was, “Seekest thou great things for thyself.”

Even Armine only knew that it was in a note in the “Christian Year,” and Babie looked out the reference, and found that it was Jeremiah’s rebuke to Baruch for self-seeking amid the general ruin.

“I liked Baruch,” she said. “I am sorry he was selfish.”

“Noble selfishness, perhaps,” said Armine. “He may have aimed at saving his country and coming out a glorious hero, like Gideon or Jephthah.”

“And would that have been self-seeking too, as well as the commoner thing?” said Babie.

“It is like a bit of New Testament in the midst of the Old,” said Armine. “They that are great are called Benefactors--a good sort of greatness, but still not the true Christian greatness.”

“And that?” said Babie.

“To be content to be faithful servant as well as faithful soldier,” said Armine, thoughtfully. “But what had it to do with the harvest?”

He got no satisfaction, Babie could remember nothing but Jock’s face, and Jock had taken the Bible, and was looking at the passages referred to He sat for a long time resting his head on his hand, and when at last he was roused to bid Armine goodnight, he bent over him, kissed him, and said, “In spite of all, you’re the wise one of us, Armie boy. Thank you.”

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XXXII. THE COST

O well for him who breaks his dream With the blow that ends the strife, And waking knows the peace that flows Around the noise of life. G. MacDonald.

“Jock! say this is not true!”

The wedding had been celebrated with all the splendour befitting a marriage in high life. Bridesmaids and bridesmen were wandering about the gardens waiting for the summons to the breakfast, when one of the former thus addressed one of the latter, who was standing, gazing without much speculation in his eyes, at the gold fish disporting themselves round a fountain.

“Sydney!” he exclaimed, “are not your mother and Fordham here? I can’t find them.”

“Did you not hear, Duke has one of his bad colds, and mamma could not leave him? But, Jock, while we have time, set my mind at rest.”

“What is affecting your mind?” said Jock, knowing only too well.

“What Cecil says, that you mean to disappoint all our best hopes.”

“There’s no help for it, Sydney,” said Jock, too heavy-hearted for fencing.

“No help. I don’t understand. Why, there’s going to be war, real war, out there.”

“Frontier tribes!”

“What of that? It would lead to something. Besides, no one leaves a corps on active service.”

“Is mine?”

“It is all the same. You were going to get into one that is.”

“Curious reasoning, Sydney. I am afraid my duty lies the other way.”

“Duty to one’s country comes first. I can’t believe Mrs. Brownlow wants to hold you back; she--a soldier’s daughter!”

“It is no doing of hers,” said Jock; “but I see that I must not put myself out of reach of her.”

“When she has all the others! That is a mere excuse! If you were an only son, it would be bad enough.”

“Come this way, and I’ll tell you what convinced me.”

“I can’t see how any argument can prevail on you to swerve from the path of honour, the only career any one can care about,” cried Sydney, the romance of her nature on fire.

“Hush, Sydney,” he said, partly from the exquisite pain she inflicted, partly because her vehemence was attracting attention.

“No wonder you say Hush,” said the maiden, with what she meant for noble severity, “No wonder you don’t want to be reminded of all we talked of and planned. Does not it break Babie’s heart?”

“She does not know.”

“Then it is not too late.”

But at that moment the bride’s aunt, who felt herself in charge of Miss Evelyn, swooped down on them, and paired her off with an equally honourable best man, so that she found herself seated between two comparative strangers; while it seemed to her that Lucas Brownlow was keeping up an insane whirl of merriment with his neighbours.

Poor child, her hero was fallen, her influence had failed, and nothing was left her but the miserable shame of having trusted in the power of an attraction which she now felt to have been a delusion. Meanwhile the aunt, by way of being on the safe side, effectually prevented Jock from speaking to her again before the party broke up; and he could only see that she was hotly angered, and not that she was keenly hurt.

She arrived at home the next day with white cheeks and red eyes, and most indistinct accounts of the wedding. A few monosyllables were extracted with difficulty, among them a “Yes” when Fordham asked whether she had seen Lucas Brownlow.

“Did he talk of his plans?”

“Not much.”

“One cannot but be sorry,” said her mother; “but, as your uncle says, his motives are to be much respected.”

“Mamma,” cried Sydney, horrified, “you wouldn’t encourage him in turning back from the defence of his country in time of war?”

“His country!” ejaculated Fordham. “Up among the hill tribes!”

“You palliating it too, Duke! Is there no sense of honour or glory left? What are you laughing at? I don’t think it a laughing matter, nor Cecil either, that he should have been led to turn his back upon all that is great and glorious!”

“That’s very fine,” said Fordham, who was in a teasing mood. “Had you not better put it into the ‘Traveller’s Joy?’”

“I shall never touch the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ again!” and Sydney’s high horse suddenly breaking down, she flew away in a flood of tears.

Her mother and brother looked at one another rather aghast, and Fordham said--

“Had you any suspicion of this?”

“Not definitely. Pray don’t say a word that can develop it now.”

“He is all the worthier.”

“Most true; but we do not know that there is any feeling on his side, and if there were, Sydney is much too young for it to be safe to interfere with conventionalities. An expressed attachment would be very bad for both of them at present.”

“Should you have objected if he had still been going to India?”

“I would have prevented an engagement, and should have regretted her knowing anything about it. The wear of such waiting might be too great a strain on her.”

“Possibly,” said Fordham. “And should you consider this other profession an insuperable objection?”

“Certainly not, if he goes on as I think he will; but such success cannot come to him for many years, and a good deal may happen in that time.”

Poor Lucas! He would have been much cheered could he have heard the above conversation instead of Cecil’s wrath, which, like his sister’s, worked a good deal like madness on the brain.

Mr. Evelyn chose to resent the slight to his family, and the ingratitude to his uncle, in thus running counter to their wishes, and plunging into what the young aristocrat termed low life. He did not spare the warning that it would be impossible to keep up an intimacy with one who chose to “grub his nose in hospitals and dissecting rooms.”

Naturally Lucas took these as the sentiments of the whole family, and found that he was sacrificing both love and friendship. Sir James Evelyn indeed allowed that he was acting rightly according to his lights. Sir Philip Cameron told him that his duty to a widowed mother ought to come first, and his own Colonel, a good and wise man, commended his decision, and said he hoped not to lose sight of him. The opinions of these veterans, though intrinsically worth more than those of the two young Evelyns, were by no means an equivalent to poor Lucas. The “great things” he had resolved not to seek, involved what was far dearer. It was more than he had reckoned on when he made his resolution, but he had committed himself, and there was no drawing back. He was just of age, and had acted for himself, knowing that his mother would withhold her consent if she were asked for it; but he was considering how to convey the tidings to her, when he found that a card had been left for him by the Reverend David Ogilvie, with a pencilled invitation to dine with him that evening at an hotel.

Mr. Ogilvie, after several years of good service as curate at a district Church at a fashionable south coast watering place, sometimes known as the English Sorrento, had been presented to the parent Church. He had been taking his summer holiday, and on his way back had undertaken to relieve a London friend of his Sunday services. His sister’s letters had made him very anxious for tidings of Mrs. Brownlow, and he had accordingly gone in quest of her son.

He ordered dinner with a half humorous respect for the supposed epicurism of a young Guardsman, backed by the desire to be doubly correct because of the fallen fortunes of the family, and he awaited with some curiosity the pupil, best known to him as a pickle.

“Mr. Brownlow.”

There stood, a young man, a soldier from head to foot, slight, active, neatly limbed, and of middle height, with a clear brown cheek, dark hair and moustache, and the well-remembered frank hazel eyes, though their frolic and mischief were dimmed, and they had grown grave and steadfast, and together with the firm-set lip gave the impression of a mind resolutely bent on going through some great ordeal without flinching or murmuring. With a warm grasp of the hand Mr. Ogilvie said--

“Why, Brownlow, I should not have known you.”

“I should have known you, sir, anywhere,” said Jock, amazed to find the Ogre of old times no venerable seignior, but a man scarce yet middle-aged.

They talked of Mr. Ogilvie’s late tour, in scenes well known to Jock, and thence they came to the whereabouts of all the family, Armine’s health and Robert’s appointment, till they felt intimate; and the unobtrusive sympathy of the old friend opened the youth’s heart, and he made much plain that had been only half understood from Mrs. Morgan’s letters. Of his eldest brother and sister, Jock said little; but there was no need to explain why his mother was straitening herself, and remaining at Belforest when it had become so irksome to her.

“And you are going out to India?” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“That’s not coming off, sir.”

“Indeed, I thought you were to have a staff appointment.”

“It would not pay, sir; and that is a consideration.”

“Then have you anything else in view?”

“The hospitals,” said Jock, with a poor effort to seem diverted; “the other form of slaughter.” Then as his friend looked at him with concerned and startled eyes, he added, “Unless there were some extraordinary chance of loot. You see the pagoda tree is shaken bare, and I could do no more than keep myself and have nothing for my mother, and I am afraid she will need it. It is a chance whether Allen, at his age, or Armine, with his health, can do much, and some one must stay and get remunerative work.”

“Is not the training costly?”

“Her Majesty owes me something. Luckily I got my commission by purchase just in time, and I shall receive compensation enough to carry me through my studies. We shall be all together with Friar Brownlow, who takes the same line in the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born. That she really does look forward to.”

“I should think so, with you to look after her,” said Mr. Ogilvie heartily.

“Only she can’t get into it till Lady Day. And I wanted to ask you, Mr. Ogilvie, do you know anything about expenses down at your place? What would tolerable lodgings be likely to come to, rent of rooms, I mean, for my mother and the two young ones. Armie has not wintered in England since that Swiss adventure of ours, and I suppose St. Cradocke’s would be as good a place for him as any.”

“I had a proposition to make, Brownlow. My sister and I invested in a house at St. Cradocke’s when I was curate there, and she meant to retire to me when she had finished Barbara. My married curate is leaving it next week, when I go home. The single ones live in the rectory with me, and I think of making it a convalescent home; but this can’t be begun for some months, as the lady who is to be at the head will not be at liberty. Do you think your mother would do me the favour to occupy it? It is furnished, and my housekeeper would see it made comfortable for her. Do you think you could make the notion acceptable to her?” he said, colouring like a lad, and stuttering in his eagerness.

“It would be a huge relief,” exclaimed Jock. “Thank you, Mr. Ogilvie. Belforest has come to be like a prison to her, and it will be everything to have Armine in a warm place among reasonable people.”

“Is Kenminster more unreasonable than formerly?”

“Not Kenminster, but Woodside. I say, Mr. Ogilvie, you haven’t any one at St. Cradocke’s who will send Armine and Babie to walk three miles and back in the rain for a bit of crimson cord and tassels?”

“I trust not,” said Mr. Ogilvie, smiling. “That is the way in which good people manage to do so much harm.”

“I’m glad you say so,” cried Jock. “That woman is worse for him than six months of east wind. I declare I had a hard matter to get myself to go to Church there the next day.”

“Who is she?”

“The sister of the Vicar of Woodside, who is making him the edifying martyr of a goody book. Ah, you know her, I see,” as Mr. Ogilvie looked amused.

“A gushing lady of a certain age? Oh yes, she has been at St. Cradocke’s.”

“She is not coming again, I hope!” in horror.

“Not likely. They were there for a few months before her brother had the living, and I could quite fancy her influence bringing on a morbid state of mind. There is something exaggerated about her.”

“You’ve hit her off exactly!” cried Jock, “and you’ll unbewitch our poor boy before she has quite done for him! Can’t you come down with me on Saturday, and propose the plan?”

“Thank you, I am pledged to Sunday.”

“I forgot. But come on Monday then?”

“I had better go and prepare. I had rather you spoke for me. Somehow,” and a strange dew came in David Ogilvie’s eyes, “I could not bear to see her there, where we saw her installed in triumph, now that all is so changed.”

“You would see her the brightest and bravest of all. Neither she nor Babie would mind the loss of fortune a bit if it were not, as Babie says, for ‘other things.’ But those other things are wearing her to a mere shadow. No, not a shadow--that is dark--but a mere sparkle! But to escape from Belforest will cure a great deal.”

So Jock went away with the load on his heart somewhat lightened. He could not get home on Saturday till very late, when dinner had long been over. Coming softly in, through the dimly lighted drawing-rooms, over the deeply piled carpets, he heard Babie’s voice reading aloud in the innermost library, and paused for a moment, looking through the heavy velvet curtains over the doorway before withdrawing one and entering. His mother’s face was in full light, as she sat helping Armine to illuminate texts. She did indeed look worn and thin, and there were absolute lines on it, but they were curves such as follow smiles, rather than furrows of care; feet rather of larks than of crows, and her whole air was far more cheerful and animated than that of her youngest son. He was thin and wan, his white cheeks contrasting with his dark hair and brown eyes, which looked enormous in their weary pensiveness, as he lent back languidly, holding a brush across his lips in a long pause, while she was doing his work. Barbara’s bright keen little features were something quite different as, wholly wrapped up in her book, she read--

“Oh! then Ladurlad started, As one who, in his grave, Has heard an angel’s call, Yea, Mariately, thou must deign to save, Yea, goddess, it is she, Kailyal--”

“Are you learning Japanese?” asked Jock, advancing, so that Armine started like Ladurlad himself.

“Dear old Skipjack! Skipped here again!” and they were all about him. “Have you had any dinner?”

“A mouthful at the station. If there is any coffee and a bit of something cold, I’d rather eat it promiscuously here. No dining-room spread, pray. It is too jolly here,” said Jock, dropping into an armchair. “Where’s Bob?”

“Dining at the school-house.”

“And what’s that Mariolatry?”

“Mariately,” said Babie. “An Indian goddess. It is the ‘Curse of Kehama,’ and wonderfully noble.”

“Moore or Browning?”

“For shame, Jock!” cried the girl. “I thought you did know more than examination cram.”

“It is the advantage of having no Mudie boxes,” said his mother. “We are taking up our Southey.”

“And, Armie, how are you?”

“My cough is better, thank you,” was the languid answer. “Only they won’t let me go beyond the terrace.”

“For don’t I know,” said his mother, “that if once I let you out, I should find you croaking at a choir practice at Woodside?”

Then, after ordering a refection for the traveller, came the question what he had been doing.

“Dining with Mr. Ogilvie. It is quite a new sensation to find oneself on a level with the Ogre of one’s youth, and prove him a human mortal after all.”

“That’s a sentiment worthy of Joe,” said Babie. “You used to know him in private life.”

“Always with a smack of the dominie. Moreover, he is so young. I thought him as ancient as Dr. Lucas, and, behold, he is a brisk youth, without a grey hair.”

“He always was young-looking,” said his mother. “I am glad you saw him. I wish he were not so far off.”

“Well then, mother, here’s an invitation from Mahomet to the mountain, which Mahomet is too shy to make in person. That house which he and his sister bought at his English Sorrento has just been vacated by his married curate, and he wants you to come and keep it warm till he begins a convalescent home there next spring.”

“How very kind!”

“Oh! mother, you couldn’t,” burst out Armine in consternation.

“Would it be an expense or loss to him, Jock?” said his mother, considering.

“I should say not, unless he be an extremely accomplished dissembler. If it eased your mind, no doubt he would consent to your paying the rates and taxes.”

“But, mother,” again implored Armine, “you said you would not force me to go to Madeira, with the Evelyns!”

“Are they going to Madeira?” exclaimed Jock, thunderstruck.

“Did you not hear it from Cecil?”

“He has been away on leave for the last week. This is a sudden resolution.”

“Yes, Fordham goes on coughing, and Sydney has a bad cold, caught at the wedding. Did you see her?”

“Oh yes, I saw her,” he mechanically answered, while his mother continued--

“Mrs. Evelyn has been pressing me most kindly to let Armine go with them; but as Dr. Leslie assures me it is not essential, and he seems so much averse to it himself--”

“You know, mother, how I wish to hold my poor neglected Woodside to the last,” cried Armine. “Why is my health always to be made the excuse for deserting it?”

“You are not the only reason,” said his mother. “It is hard to keep Esther in banishment all this time, and I am in constant fear of a row about the shooting with that Gilbert Gould.”

“Has he been at it again!” exclaimed Jock, fiercely.

“You are as bad as Rob,” she said. “I fully expect a disturbance between them, and I had rather be no party to it. Oh, I shall be very thankful to get away, I feel like a prisoner on parole.”

“And I feel,” said Armine, “as if all we could do here was too little to expiate past carelessness.”

“Mind, you are talking of mother!” said Jock, firing up.

“I thought she felt with me,” said Armine, meekly.

“So I do, my dear; I ought to have done much better for the place, but our staying on now does no good, and only leads to perplexity and distress.”

“And when can you come, mother?” said Jock. “The house is at your service instanter.”

“I should like to go to-night, without telling any one or wishing any one good-bye. No, you need not be afraid, Armie. The time must depend on your brother’s plans. St. Cradocke’s is too far off for much running backwards and forwards. Have you any notion when you may have to leave us, Jock? You don’t go with Sir Philip?”

“No, certainly not,” said Jock. Then, with a little hesitation, “In fact, that’s all up.”

“He has not thrown you over?” said his mother; “or is there any difficulty about your exchange?”

Here Babie broke in, “Oh, that’s it! That’s what Sydney meant! Oh, Jock! you don’t mean that you let it prey upon you--the nonsense I talked? Oh, I will never, never say anything again!”

“What did she say?” demanded Jock.

“Sydney? Oh, that it would break her heart and Cecil’s if you persisted, and that she could not prevent you, and it was my duty. Mother, that was the letter I didn’t show you. I could not understand it, and I thought you had enough to worry you.”

“But what does it all mean?” asked their mother. “What have you been doing to the Evelyns?”

“Mother, I have gone back to our old programme,” said Jock. “I have sent in my papers; I said nothing to you, for I thought you would only vex yourself.”

“Oh, Jock!” she said, overpowered; “I should never have let you!”

“No, mother, dear, I knew that, so I didn’t ask you.”

“You undutiful person!” but she held out her arm, and as he came to her, she leant her head against him, sobbing a little sob of infinite relief, as though fortitude found it much pleasanter to have a living column.

“You’ve done it?” said Armine.

“You will see it gazetted in a day or two.”

“Then it is all over,” cried Babie, again in tears; “all our dreams of honour, and knighthood, and wounds, and glorious things!”

“You can always have the satisfaction of believing I should have got them,” said Jock, but there was a quiver in his voice, and a thrill through his whole frame that showed his mother that it was very sore with him, and she hastened to let him subside into a chair while she asked if it was far to the end of the canto, and as Babie was past reading, she took the book and finished it herself. Nobody had much notion of the sense, but the cadence was soothing, and all were composed by the time the prayer-bell rang.

“Come to my dressing-room presently,” she said to Lucas, as he lighted her candle for her.

Just as she had gone up stairs, the front door opened to admit Bobus.

“Oh, you are here!” was his salutation. “So you have done for yourself?”

“How do you know?”

“Your colonel wrote to my uncle. He was at the dinner, and made me come back with him to ask if I knew about it.”

“How does he take it?”

“He will probably fall on you, as he did on me to-night, calling it all my fault.”

“As how?”

“For looking out for myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy, but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don’t plume yourself. You’ll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him. Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn’t improve his temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my mother. What are your plans?”

“Rotifer, as before.”

“Chacun a son gout,” said Bobus, shrugging his shoulders.

“I should have thought you would respect curing more than killing.”

“If there were not a whole bag of stones about your neck.”

“Magnets,” said Jock.

“That’s just it. All the heavier.”

The brothers went upstairs together, and Jock was kept waiting a little while in the dressing-room, till his mother came out, shutting the door on Barbara.

“The poor Infanta!” she said. “She is breaking her foolish little heart over something she said to you. ‘As bad as the woman in the “Black Brunswicker,”’ she says, only she didn’t mean it. Was it so, Jock?”

“I had pretty well made up my mind before. Mother, are you vexed that I did not tell you?”

“You spared me much. Your uncle would never have consented. But oh, Jock! I’m not a Spartan mother. My heart will bound.”

“My colonel said it was right,” said Jock; “so did Cameron, and even Sir James, though he did not like it.”

“With such an array of old soldiers on our side we may let the young ladies rage,” said his mother, but she checked her mirth on seeing how far from a joke their indignation was to her son.

He turned and looked into the fire as he said--

“When did Sydney write that letter, mother?”

“Before meeting you at the wedding. She has not written since.”

“I thought not,” muttered Jock, his brow against the mantel-piece.

“No, but Mrs. Evelyn has written such a nice letter, just like herself, though I did not understand it then. I think she was doubtful how much I knew, for she only said how thankworthy it must be to have such a self-sacrificing spirit among my sons, moral courage, in fact, of the highest kind, and how those who were lavish of strong words in their first disappointment would be wiser by-and-by. I was puzzled then. But oh, my dear, this must have been very grievous to you!”

“I couldn’t go back, but I did not know how it would be,” said Jock, in a choked voice, collapsing at last, and hiding his face on his mother’s lap.

“My Jock, I am so sorry! I wish it were not too late. I could not have let you give up so much,” and she fondled his head. “I did not think I had been so weak as to let you see.”

“No, mother. It was not that you were so weak, but that you were so brave. Besides, I ought to take the brunt of it. I ruined you all by being the prime mover with that assification, and I was the cause of Armie’s illness too. I ought to take my share. If ever I can be any good to any one again,” he added, in a dejected tone.

“Good!--unspeakably good! This is my first bright spot of light through the wood. If it were but bright to you! I am afraid they have been very unkind.”

“Not unkind. She couldn’t be that, but I’ve shocked and disappointed her,” and his head dropped again.

“What, in not being a hero? My dear, you are a true hero in the eyes of us old mothers; but I am afraid that is poor comfort. My Jock, does it go so deep as that? Giving up all that for me! O my boy!”

“It is nonsense to talk of giving up,” said Jock, rousing himself to a common-sense view. “What chance had I of her if I had gone to India ten times over?” but the wave of grief broke over him again. “She would have believed in me, and, may be, have waited.”

“She will believe in you again.”

“No, I’m below her.”

“My poor boy, I didn’t know it had come to this. Do you mean that anything had ever passed between you?”

“No, but it was all the same. Even Evelyn implied it, when he said they must give me up, if we took such different lines.”

“Cecil too! Foolish fellow! Jock, don’t care about such absurdity. They are not worth it.”

“They’ve been the best of my life,” said poor Jock, but he stood up, shook himself, and said, “A nice way this of helping you! I didn’t think I was such a fool. But it is over now. I’ll buckle to, and do my best.”

“My brave boy!” and as the thought of the Magnum Bonum darted into her mind, she said, “You may have greater achievements than are marked by Victoria Crosses, and Sydney herself may own it.”

And Jock went to bed, cheered in spite of himself by his mother’s pleasure, and by Mrs. Evelyn’s letter, which she allowed him to take away with him.

Colonel Brownlow was not so much distressed by Lucas’s retirement as had been apprehended. He knew the life of a soldier with small means too well to recommend it. The staff appointment, he said, might mean anything or nothing, and could only last a short time unless Lucas had extraordinary opportunities. It might be as well, he was very like his grandfather, poor John Allen, and might have had his history over again.

The likeness was a new idea to Caroline and a great pleasure to her. Indeed, she seemed to Armine unfeelingly joyous, as she accepted Mr. Ogilvie’s invitation, and hurried her preparations. There was a bare possibility of a return in the spring, which prevented final farewells, and softened partings a little. The person who showed most grief of all was Mrs. Robert Brownlow, who, glad as she must have been to be free of Bobus and able to recall her daughter, wept over her sister-in-law as if she had been going into the workhouse, with tears partly penitent for the involuntary ingratitude with which past kindness had been received. She was, as Babie said, much more sorry for Mother Carey than Mother Carey for herself.

Yet the relief was all the greater that it was plain that Esther was not happy in her banishment; and that General Hood thought her visit had lasted long enough, while the matter was complicated at home by her sister Eleanor’s undisguised sympathy with her cousin Bobus, for whom she would have sent messages if her mother had not, with some difficulty exacted a promise never to allude to him in her letters.

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XXXIII. BITTER FAREWELLS

But he who lets his feelings run In soft luxurious flow Shrinks when hard service must be done And faints at every woe. J. H. Newman.

Welcome shone in Mr. Ogilvie’s face in the gaslight on the platform as the train drew up, and the Popinjay in her cage was handed out, uttering, “Hic, haec, hoc. We’re all Mother Carey’s chicks.”

Therewith the mother and the two youngest of her chicks were handed to their fly, and driven, through raindrops and splashes flashing in the gas, to a door where the faithful Emma awaited them, and conveyed them to a room so bright and comfortable that Babie piteously exclaimed--

“Oh, Emma, you have left me nothing to do!”

Presently came Mr. Ogilvie to make sure that the party needed nothing. He was like a child hovering near, and constantly looking to assure himself of the reality of some precious acquisition.

Later in the evening, on his way from the night-school, he was at the door again to leave a parish magazine with a list of services that ought to have rejoiced Armine’s heart, if he had felt capable of enjoying anything at St. Cradocke’s, and at which Babie looked with some dismay, as if fearing that they would all be inflicted on her. He was in a placid, martyr-like state. He had made up his mind that the air was of the relaxing sort that disagreed with him, and no doubt would be fatal, though as he coughed rather less than more, he could hardly hope to edify Bobus by his death-bed, unless he could expedite matters by breaking a blood-vessel in saving someone’s life. On the whole, however, it was pleasanter to pity himself for vague possibilities than to apprehend the crisis as immediate. It was true that he was very forlorn. He missed the admiring petting by which Miss Parsons had fostered his morbid state; he missed the occupations she had given him, and he missed the luxurious habits of wealth far more than he knew. After his winters under genial skies, close to blue Mediterranean waves, English weather was trying; and, in contrast with southern scenery, people, and art, everything seemed ugly, homely, and vulgar in his eyes. Gorgeous Cathedrals with their High Masses and sweet Benedictions, their bannered processions and kneeling peasantry, rose in his memory as he beheld the half restored Church, the stiff, open seats, and the Philistine precision of the St. Cradocke’s Old Church congregation; and Anglicanism shared his distaste, in spite of the fascinations of the district Church.

He was languid and inert, partly from being confined to the house on days of doubtful character. He would not prepare any work for Bobus, who, with Jock, was to follow in ten days, he would not second Babie’s wish to get up a St. Cradocke’s number of the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ to challenge a Madeira one; he did little but turn over a few books, say there was nothing to read, and exchange long letters with Miss Parsons.

“Armine,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “I never let my friends come into my parish without getting work out of them. I have a request to make you.”

“I’m afraid I am not equal to much,” said Armine, not graciously.

“This is not much. We have a lame boy here for the winter, son to a cabinet maker in London. His mind is set on being a pupil-teacher, and he is a clever, bright fellow, but his chance depends on his keeping up his work. I have been looking over his Latin and French, but I have not time to do so properly, and it would be a great kindness if you would undertake it.”

“Can’t he go to school?” said Armine, not graciously.

“It is much too far off. Now he is only round the corner here.”

“My going out is so irregular,” said Armine, not by any means as he would have accepted a behest of Petronella’s.

“He could often come here. Or perhaps the Infanta would fetch and carry. He is with an uncle, a fisherman, and the wife keeps a little shop. Stagg is the name. They are very respectable people, but of a lower stamp than this lad, and he is rather lost for want of companionship. The London doctors say his recovery depends on sea air for the winter, so here he is, and whatever you can do for him will be a real good work.”

“What is the name?” asked Mrs. Brownlow.

“Stagg. It is over a little grocery shop. You must ask for Percy Stagg.”

Perhaps Armine suspected the motive to be his own good, for he took a dislike to the idea at once.

“Percy Stagg!” he began, as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was gone. “What a detestable conjunction, just showing what the fellow must be. And to have him on my hands.”

“I thought you liked teaching?” said his mother.

“As if this would be like a Woodside boy!”

“Yes,” said Babie; “I don’t suppose he will carry onions and lollipops in his pockets, nor put cockchafers down on one’s book.”

“Babie, that was only Ted Stokes!”

“And I should think he might have rather cleaner hands, and not leave their traces on every book.”

“He’ll do worse!” said Armine. “He will be vulgarly stuck up, and excruciate me with every French word he attempts to pronounce.”

“But you’ll do it, Armie?” said his mother.

“Oh, yes, I will try if it be possible to make anything of him, when I am up to it.”

Armine was not “up to it” the next day, nor the next. The third was very fine, and with great resignation, he sauntered down to Mrs. Stagg’s.

Percy turned out to be a quiet, gentle, pale lad of fourteen, without cockney vivacity, and so shy that Armine grew shyer, did little but mark the errors in his French exercise, hear a bit of reading, and retreat, bemoaning the hopeless stupidity of his pupil.

A few days later Mr. Ogilvie asked the lame boy how he was getting on.

“Oh, sir,” brightening, “the lady is so kind. She does make it so plain in me.”

“The lady? Not the young gentleman?”

“The young gentleman has been here once, sir.”

“And his sister comes when he is not well?”

“No, sir, it is his mother, I think. A lady with white hair--the nicest lady I ever saw.”

“And she teaches you?”

“Oh yes, sir! I am preparing a fable in the Latin Delectus for her, and she gave me this French book. She does tell me such interesting facts about words, and about what she has seen abroad, sir! And she brought me this cushion for my knee.”

“Percy thinks there never was such a lady,” chimed in his aunt. “She is very good to him, and he is ever so much better in his spirits and his appetite since she has been coming to him. The young gentleman was haughty like, and couldn’t make nothing of him; but the lady--she’s so affable! She is one of a thousand!”

“I did not mean to impose a task on you,” said Mr. Ogilvie, next time he could speak to Mrs. Brownlow.

“Oh! I am only acting stop-gap till Armine rallies and takes to it,” she said. “The boy is delightful. It is very amusing to teach French to a mind of that age so thoroughly drilled in grammar.”

“A capital thing for Percy, but I thought at least you would have deputed the Infanta.”

“The Infanta was a little overdone with the style of thing at Woodside. She and Sydney Evelyn had a romance about good works, of which Miss Parsons completely disenchanted her--rather too much so, I fear.”

“Let her alone; she will recover,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “if only by seeing you do what I never intended.”

“I like it, teacher as I am by trade.”

So each day Armine imagined himself bound to the infliction of Percy Stagg, and compelled by headache, cough, or weather, to let his mother be his substitute.

“She is keeping him going on days when I am not equal to it,” he said to Mr. Ogilvie.

“Having thus given you one of my tasks,” said that gentleman, “let me ask whether I can help you in any of your studies?”

“I have been reading with Bobus, thank you.”

“And now?”

“I have not begun again, though, if my mother desires it, I shall.”

“So I should suppose; but I am sorry you do not take more interest in the matter.”

“Even if I live,” said Armine, “the hopes with which I once studied are over.”

“What hopes?”

The boy was drawn on by his sympathy to explain his plans for the perfection of church and charities at Woodside, where he would have worked as curate, and lavished all that wealth could supply in all institutions for its good and that of Kenminster. It was the vanished castle over which he and Miss Parsons had spent so many moans, and yet at the end of it all, Armine saw a sort of incredulous smile on his friend’s face.

“I don’t think it was impossible or unreasonable,” he said. “I could have been ordained as curate there, and my mother would have gladly given land, and means, and all.”

“I was not thinking of that, my boy. What struck me was how people put their trust in riches without knowing it.”

“Indeed I should have given up all wealth and luxury. I am not regretting that!” exclaimed Armine, in unconscious blindness.

“I did not say you were.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Armine, thinking he had not caught the words.

“I said people did not know how they put their trust in riches.”

“I never thought I did.”

“Only that you think nothing can be done without them.”

“I don’t see how it can.”

“Don’t you? Well, the longer I live the more cause I see to dread and distrust what is done easily by force of wealth. Of course when the money is there, and is given along with one’s self (as I know you intended), it is providential, but I verily believe it intensifies difficulties and temptations. Poverty is almost as beneficial a sieve of motives and stimulus to energy as persecution itself.”

“There are so many things one can’t do.”

“Perhaps the fit time is not come for their being done. Or you want more training for doing them. Remember that to bring one’s good desires to good effect, there is a how to be taken into account. I know of a place where the mere knowledge that there are unlimited means to bestow seems to produce ingratitude and captiousness for whatever is done. On the other hand, I have seen a far smaller gift, that has cost an effort, most warmly and touchingly received. Again, the power of at once acting leads to over-haste, want of consideration, domineering, expectation of adulation, impatience of counsel or criticism.”

“I suppose one does not know till one has tried,” said Armine, “but I should mind nothing from Mr. or Miss Parsons.”

“I did not allude to any special case, I only wanted to show you that riches do not by any means make doing good a simpler affair, but rather render it more difficult not to do an equal amount of harm.”

“Of course,” said Armine, “as this misfortune has happened, it is plain that we must submit, and I hope I am bowing to the disappointment.”

“By endeavouring to do your best for God with what is left you?”

“I hope so, but with my health there seems nothing left for me but unmurmuring resignation.”

Mr. Ogilvie was amused at Armine’s notion of unmurmuring resignation, but he added only, “Which would be much assisted by a little exertion.”

“I did exert myself at home, but it is all aimless now.”

“I should have thought you still equally bound to learn and labour to do your duty in Him and for Him. Will you think about what I have said?”

“Yes, Mr. Ogilvie, thank you. I know you mean it kindly, and no one can be expected to enter into my feeling of the uselessness of wasting my time over classical studies when I know I shall never be able to be ordained.”

“Are you sure you are not wasting it now?”

It was not possible to continue the subject. Mr. Ogilvie had failed in both his attempts to rouse Armine, and had to tell his mother, who had hoped much from this new influence. “I think,” he said, “that Armine is partly feeling the change from invalidism to ordinary health. He does not know it, poor fellow; but it is rather hard to give up being interesting.”

Caroline saw the truth of this when Armine showed himself absolutely nettled at his brothers, on their arrival, pronouncing that he looked much better--in fact quite jolly, an insult which he treated with Christian forgiveness.

Bobus had visited Belforest. His mother had never intended this, and still less that he should walk direct from the station to Kencroft, surprising the whole family at luncheon, and taking his seat among them quite naturally. Thereby he obtained all he had expected or hoped, for when the meal was over, he was able, though in the presence of all the family, to take Esther by both hands, and say in his resolute earnest voice, “Good-bye, my sweet and only love. You will wait for me, and by-and-by, when I have made you a home, and people see things differently, I shall come for you,” and therewith he pressed on her burning, blushing, drooping brow four kisses that felt like fire.

Her mother might fret and her father might fume, but they were as powerless as the parents of young Lochinvar’s bride, and the words of their protest were scarcely begun when he loosed the girl’s hands, and, turning to her mother, said, “Good-bye, Aunt Ellen. When we meet again, you will see things otherwise. I ask nothing till that time comes.”

This was not the part of his visit of which he told his mother, he only dwelt on a circumstance so opportune that he had almost been forgiven even by the Colonel. He had encountered Dr. Hermann, who had come down to make another attempt on the Gracious Lady, and had thus found himself in the presence of a very different person. An opening had offered itself in America, and he had come to try to obtain his wife’s fortune to take them out. The opportunity of making stringent terms had seemed to Bobus so excellent that he civilly invited Demetrius to dine and sleep, and sent off a note to beg his uncle to come and assist in a family compact. Colonel Brownlow, having happily resisted his impulse to burn the letter unread as an impertinent proposal for his daughter, found that it contained so sensible a scheme that he immediately conceived a higher opinion of his namesake than he had ever had before.

Thus Dr. Hermann found himself face to face with the very last members of the family he desired to meet, and had to make the best of the situation. Of secrets of the late Joseph Brownlow he said nothing, but based his application on the offer of a practice and lectureship he said he had received from New Orleans. He had evidently never credited that Mrs. Brownlow meant to resign the whole property without giving away among her children the accumulation of ready money in hand, and as he knew himself to be worth buying off, he reckoned upon Janet’s full share. He had taken Mrs. Brownlow’s own statements as polite refusals, and a lady’s romance until he found the uncle and nephew viewing the resignation of the whole as common honesty, and that she was actually gone. They would not give him her address, and prevented his coming in contact with the housekeeper, so that no more molestation might be possible, and meantime they offered him terms such as they thought she would ratify.

All that Joseph Brownlow had left was entirely in her power, and the amount was such that if she had died intestate, each of her six children would have been entitled to about £l600, exclusive of the house in London. Janet had no right to claim anything now or at her mother’s death, but the uncle and nephew knew that Mrs. Brownlow would not endure to leave her destitute, and they thought the deportation to America worth a considerable sacrifice. Therefore they proposed that on the actual bona fide departure, £500 should be paid down, the interest of the £1100 should be secured to her, and paid half-yearly through Mr. Wakefield, who was to draw up the agreement; but the final disposal of the sum was not to be promised, but to depend on Mrs. Brownlow’s will.

Such a present boon as £500 had made Hermann willing to agree to anything. Bobus had seen the lawyer in London, and with him concocted the agreement for signature, making the payments pass through the Wakefield office, the receipts being signed by Janet Hermann herself.

“Why must all payments go through the office?” asked Caroline.

“Because there’s no trusting that slippery Greek,” said Bobus.

“I should have liked my poor Janet to have been forced to communicate with me every half-year,” she sighed.

“What, when she has never chosen to write all this time?”

“Yes. It is very weak, but I can’t help it. It would be something only to see her name. I have never known where to write to her, or I would have done so.”

“O, very well,” said Bobus, “you had better invite them both to share the menage in Collingwood Street.”

“For shame, Bobus,” said Jock. “You have no right to say such things.”

“Only that all this might as well have been left undone if my mother is to rush on them to ask their pardon and beg them to receive her with open arms. I mean, mother,” he added with a different manner, “if you give one inch to that Greek, he will make it a mile, and as to Janet, if she can’t bring down her pride to write to you like a daughter, I wouldn’t give a rap for her receipt, and it might lead to intolerable pestering. Now you know she can’t starve on £50 a year besides her medical education. Wakefield will always know where she is, and you may be quite easy about her.”

Caroline gave way to her son’s reasoning, as he thought, but no sooner was she alone with Jock than she told him that he must take her to London to see Janet in her lodgings before the departure for the States.

He was at her service, and as they did not mean to sleep in town, they started at a preposterously early hour, with a certain mirth and gaiety at thus eloping together, as the mother’s spirits rose at the bare idea of seeing the first-born child for whom she had famished so long. Jock was such a perfect squire of dames, and so chivalrously charmed to be her escort, that her journey was delightful, nor did she grow sad till it was over. Then, she could not eat the food he would have had her take at the station, and he saw tears standing in her eyes as he sat beside her in the omnibus. When they were set down they walked swiftly and without a word to the lodgings.

Dr. and Mrs. Hermann had “left two days ago,” said the untidy girl, whose aspect, like that of the street and house, betokened that Janet was drinking of her bitter brewst.

“What shall we do, mother?” asked Jock. “You ought to rest. Will you go to Mrs. Acton or Mrs. Lucas, while I run down to Wakefield’s office and find out about them?”

“To Miss Ray’s, I think,” she said faintly. “Nita may know their plans. Here’s the address,” taking a little book from her pocket, and ruffling over the leaves, “you must find it. I can’t see. O, but I can walk!” as he hailed a cab, and helped her into it, finding the address and jumping after her, while she sank back in the corner.

Very small and shrunken did she look when he took her out at the door leading to rooms over a stationer’s shop. The sisters were somewhat better off than formerly, though good old Miss Ray was half ashamed of it, since it was chiefly owing to the liberal allowance from Mrs. Brownlow for the chaperonage in which she felt herself to have so sadly failed.

Jock saw his mother safe in the hands of the kind old lady, heard that the pair were really gone, and departed for his interview with Mr. Wakefield. No sooner had the papers been signed, and the £500 made over to them, than the Hermanns had hurried away a fortnight earlier than they had spoken of going. It was much like an escape from creditors, but the reason assigned was an invitation to lecture in New York.

So there was nothing for it but to put up with Miss Ray’s account of Janet, and even that was second-hand, for the gentle spirit of the good old lady had been so roused at the treachery of the stolen marriage that she had refused to see the couple, and when Nita had once brought them in, she had retired to her bedroom.

Nita was gone on a professional engagement into the country for a week. According to what she had told her sister, Demetrius and Janet were passionately attached, and his manner was only too endearing; but Miss Ray had disliked the subject so much that she had avoided it in a way she now regretted.

“Everything I have done has turned out wrong,” she said with tears running down her cheeks. “Even this! I would give anything to be able to tell you of poor Janet, and yet I thought my silence was for the best, for Nita and I could not mention her without quarrelling as we had never done before. O, Mrs. Brownlow, I can’t think how you have ever forgiven me.”

“I can forgive every one but myself,” said Caroline sadly. “If I had understood how to be a better mother, this would never have been.”

“You! the most affectionate and devoted.”

“Ah! but I see now it was only human love without the true moving spring, and so my poor child grew up without it, and these are the fruits.”

“But my dear, my dear, one can’t give these things. Poor Janet always was a headstrong girl, like my poor Nita. I know what you mean, and how one feels that if one had been better oneself,” said poor Miss Ray, ending in utter entanglement, but tender sympathy.

“She might have been a child of many prayers,” said the poor mother.

“Ah! but that she can still be,” said the old lady. “She will turn back again, my dear. Never fear. I don’t think I could die easy if I did not believe she would!”

Jock brought back word that the lawyer had been entirely unaware of the Hermanns’ departure, and thought it looked bad. He had seen them both, and his report was less brilliant than Nita’s. Indeed Jock kept back the details, for Mr. Wakefield had described Mrs. Hermann as much altered, thin, haggard, shabby, and anxious, and though her husband fawned upon her demonstratively before spectators, something in her eyes betokened a certain fear of him. He had also heard that Elvira was still making visits. There was a romance about her, which, in addition to her beauty and future wealth, made people think her a desirable guest. She was always more agreeable with strangers than in her own family; and as to the needful funds, she had her ample allowance; and no doubt her expectations secured her unlimited credit. Her conduct was another pang, but it was lost in the keener pain Janet had given.

As his mother could not bear to face any one else, Jock thought the sooner he could get her home the better, and all they did was to buy some of Armine’s favourite biscuits, and likewise to stop at Rivington’s, where she chose the two smallest and neatest Greek Testaments she could find.

They reached home three hours before they were expected, and she went up at once to her room and her bed, leaving Jock to make the explanations, and receive all Bobus’s indignation at having allowed her to knock herself up by such a foolish expedition.

Chill, fatigue, and, far more, grief after her long course of worry really did bring on a feverish attack, so unprecedented in her that it upset the whole family, and if Mr. Ogilvie had not been almost equally wretched himself, he would have been amused to see these three great sons wandering forlorn about the house like stray chicks who had lost their parent hen, and imagining her ten times worse than she really was.

Babie was really useful as a nurse, and had very little time to comfort them. And indeed they treated her as childish and trifling for assuring them that neither patient, maid, nor doctor thought the ailment at all serious. Bobus found some relief in laying the blame on Jock, but when Armine heard the illness ascribed to a long course of anxiety and harass, he was conscience-stricken, as he thought how often his perverse form of resignation had baffled her pleadings and added to her vexations. Words, impatiently heard at the moment, returned upon him, and compunction took its outward effect in crossness. It was all that Jock could do by his good-humoured banter and repartee to keep the peace between the other two who, when unchecked by regard to their mother and Babie, seemed bent on discussing everything on which they most disagreed.

Babie was a welcome messenger to Jock at least, when she brought word that mother hoped Armine would attend to Percy Stagg, and would take him the book she sent down for him. Her will was law in the present state of things, and Armine set forth in dutiful disgust; but he found the lad so really anxious about the lady, and so much brightened and improved, that he began to take an interest in him and promised a fresh lesson with alacrity.

His next step in obedience was to take out his books; but Bobus had no mind for them, and said it was too late. If Armine had really worked diligently all the autumn, he might have easily entered King’s College, London; but now he had thrown away his chance.

Mr. Ogilvie found him with his books on the table, plunged in utter despondency. “Your mother is not worse?” he asked in alarm.

“Oh no; she is very comfortable, and the doctor says she may get up to-morrow.”

“Then is it the Greek?” said Mr. Ogilvie, much relieved.

“Yes. Bobus says my rendering is perfectly ridiculous.”

“Are you preparing for him?”

“No. He is sick of me, and has no time to attend to me now.”

“Let me see--”

“Oh! Mr. Ogilvie,” said Armine, looking up with his ingenuous eyes. “I don’t deserve it. Besides, Bobus says it is of no use now. I’ve wasted too much time ever to get into King’s.”

“I should like to judge of that. Suppose I examined you--not now, but to-morrow morning. Meantime, how do you construe this chorus? It is a tough one.”

Armine winked out of his eyes the tears that had risen at the belief that he had really in his wilfulness lost the hope of fulfilling the higher aims of his life, and with a trembling voice translated the passage he had been hammering over. A word from Mr. Ogilvie gave him the clue, and when that stumbling-block was past, he acquitted himself well enough to warrant a little encouragement.

“Well done, Armine. We shall make a fair scholar of you, after all.”

“I don’t deserve you should be so kind. I see now what a fool I have been,” said Armine, his eyes filling again, with tears.

“I have no time to talk of that now,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I only looked in to hear how your mother was. Bring down whatever books you have been getting up at twelve to-morrow; or if it is a wet day, I will come to you.”

Armine worked for this examination as eagerly as he had decorated for Miss Parsons, and in the face of the like sneers; for Bobus really believed it was all waste of time, and did not scruple to tell him so, and to laugh when he consulted Jock, whose acquirements lay more in the way of military mathematics and modern languages than of university requirements.

Perhaps the report that Armine was reading Livy with all his might was one of his mother’s best restoratives,--and still more that when he came to wish her good-night, he said, “Mother, I’ve been a wretched, self-sufficient brute all this time; I’m very sorry, and I’ll try to go on better.”

And when she came downstairs to be petted and made much of by all the four, she found that the true and original Armine had come back, instead of Petronella’s changeling. Indeed, the danger now was that he would overwork himself in his fervour, for Bobus’s continued ill-auguries only acted as a stimulus; nor were they silenced till she begged as a personal favour that he would not torment the boy.

Indeed her presence made life smooth and cheerful again to the young people; there were no more rubs of temper, and Bobus, whose departure was very near, showed himself softened. He was very fond of his mother, and greatly felt the leaving her. He assured her that it was all for her sake, and that he trusted to be able to lighten some of her burdens when his first expenses were over.

“And mother,” he said, on his last evening, “you will let me sometimes hear of my Esther?”

“Oh, Bobus, if you could only forget her!”

“Would you rob me of my great incentive--my sweet image of purity, who rouses and guards all that is best in me? My ‘loyalty to my future wife’ is your best hope for me, mother.”

“Oh, if she were but any one else! How can I encourage you in disobedience to your father and to hers?”

“You know what I think about that. When my Esther ventures to judge for herself, these prejudices will give way. She shall not be disobedient, but you will all perceive the uselessness of withholding my darling. Meanwhile, I only ask you to let me see her name from time to time. You won’t deny me that?”

“No, my dear, I cannot refuse you that, but you must not assume more than that I am sorry for you that your heart is set so hopelessly. Indeed, I see no sign of her caring for you. Do you?”

“Her heart is not opened yet, but it will.”

“Suppose it should do so to any one else?”

“She is a mere child; she has few opportunities; and if she had--well, I think it would recall to her what she only half understood. I am content to be patient--and, mother, you little know the good it does me to think of her and think of you. It is well for us men that all women are not like Janet.”

“Yet if you took away our faith, what would there be to hinder us from being like my poor Janet?”

“Heaven forbid that I should take away any one’s honest faith; above all, yours or Essie’s.”

“Except by showing that you think it just good enough for us.”

“How can I help it, any more than I can help that Belforest was left to Elvira? Wishes and belief are two different things.”

“Would you help it if you could?” she earnestly asked.

He hesitated. “I might wish to satisfy you, mother, and other good folks, but not to put myself in bondage to what has led blindfold to half the dastardly and cruel acts on this earth, beautiful dream though it be.”

“Ah, my boy, it is my shame and grief that it is not a beautiful reality to you.”

“You were too wise to bore us. You have only fancied that since you fell in with the Evelyns.”

“Ah, if I had only bred you up in the same spirit as the Evelyns!”

“It would not have answered. We are of different stuff. And after all, Janet and I are your only black sheep. Jock has his convictions in a strong, practical working order, as real to him as ever his drill and order-book were. Good old fellow, he strikes me a good deal more than all Ogilvie’s discussions.”

“Mr. Ogilvie has talked to you?”

“He has done his part both as cleric and your devoted servant, mother, and, I confess, made the best of his case, as an able man heartily convinced can do. Good night, mother.”

“One moment, Bobus, my dear; I want one promise from you, to your old Mother Carey. Call it a superstition and a charm if you will, but promise. Take this Greek Testament, keep it with you, and read a few verses every night. Promise me.”

“Dear mother, I am ready to promise. I have read those poems and letters several times in the original.”

“But you will do this for me, beginning again when you have finished? Promise.”

“I will, mother, since it comforts you,” said Bobus, in a tone that she knew might be trusted.

The other little book, with the like request, in urgent and tender entreaty, was made up into a parcel to be forwarded as soon as Mr. Wakefield should learn Janet Hermann’s address. It was all that the mother could do, except to pray that this living Sword of the Spirit might yet pierce its way to those closed hearts.

Nor was she quite happy about Barbara. Hitherto the girl had seemed, as it were, one with Armine, and had been led by his precocious piety into similar habits and aspirations, which had been fostered by her intercourse with Sydney and the sharing with her of many a blissful and romantic dream.

All this, however, was altered. Petronella had drawn Armine aside one way, and now that he was come back again, he did not find the same perfectly sympathetic sister as before. Bobus had not been without effect upon her, as the impersonation of common sense and antagonism to Miss Parsons. It had not shown at the time, for his domineering tone and his sneers always impelled her to stand up for her darling; but when he was “poor Bobus” gone into exile and bereft of his love, certain poisonous germs attached to his words began to grow. There was no absolute doubt--far from it--but there was an impatience of the weariness and solemnity of religion.

To enjoy Church privileges to the full, and do good works under Church direction, had in their wandering life been a dream of modern chivalry which she had shared with Sydney, much as they had talked of going on a crusade. And now she found these privileges very tedious, the good works onerous, and she viewed them somewhat as she might have regarded Coeur de Lion’s camp had she been set down in it. Armine would have gone on hearing nothing but “Remember the Holy Sepulchre,” but Barbara would soon have seen every folly and failure that spoiled the glory of the army--even though she might not question its destination--and would have been unfeignedly weary of its discipline.

So she hung back from the frequent Church ordinances of St. Cradocke’s, being allowed to do as she pleased about everything extra; she made fun of the peculiarities of the varieties of the genus Petronella who naturally hung about it, and adopted the popular tone about the curates, till Jock told her “not to be so commonplace.” Indeed both he and Armine had made friends with them, as he did with every one; and Armine’s enjoyment of the society of a new, young, bright deacon, who came at Christmas, perhaps accounted for a little of her soreness, and made Armine himself less observant that the two were growing apart.

Her mother saw it though, and being seconded by Jock, found it easier than of old to keep the tables free from sceptical and semi-sceptical literature; but this involved the loss of much that was clever, and there was no avoiding those envenomed shafts that people love to strew about, and which, for their seeming wit and sense, Babie always relished. She did not think--that was the chief charge; and she was still a joyous creature, even though chafing at the dulness of St. Cradocke’s.

“Gould and another versus Brownlow and another, to be heard on the 18th,” Mr. Wakefield writes. “So we must leave our peaceful harbour to face the world again!”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Barbara. “I am fairly tingling to be in the thick of it again!”

“You ungrateful infant,” said Armine, “when this place has done every one so much good!”

“So does bed; but I feel as if it were six in the morning and I couldn’t get the shutters open!”

“I wonder if Mr. Ogilvie will think me fit to go in for matriculation for the next term?” said Armine.

“And I ought to go up for lectures,” said Jock, who had been reading hard all this time under directions from Dr. Medlicott. “I might go on before, and see that the house is put in order before you come home, mother.”

“Home! It sounds more like going home than ever going back to Belforest did!”

“And we’ll make it the very moral of the old times. We’ve got all the old things!”

“What do you know about the old times--baby that you are and were?” said Jock.

“The Drakes move to-morrow,” said his mother. “I must write to your aunt and Richards about sending the things from Belforest. We must have it at its best before Ali comes home.”

“All right!” said Babie. “You know our own things have only to go back into their places, and the Drake carpets go on. It will be such fun; as nice as the getting into the Folly!”

“Nice you call that?” said her mother. “All I remember is the disgrace we got into and the fright I was in! I wonder what the old home will bring us?”

“Life and spirit and action,” cried Babie. “Oh, I’m wearying for the sound of the wheels and the flow of people!”

“Oh, you little Cockney!”

“Of course. I was born one, and I am thankful for it! There’s nothing to do here.”

“Babie!” cried Armine, indignantly.

“Well, you and Jock have read a great deal, and he has plunged into night-schools.”

“And become a popular lecturer,” added Armine.

“And you and mother have cultivated Percy Stagg, and gone to Church a great deal--pour passer le temps.”

“Ah, you discontented mortal!” said her mother, rising to write her letters. “You have yet to learn that what is stagnation to some is rest to others.”

“Oh yes, mother, I know it was very good for you, but I’m heartily glad it is over. Sea and Ogre are all very well for once in a way, but they pall, especially in an east wind English fog!”

“My Babie, I hope you are not spoilt by all the excitements of our last few years,” said the mother. “You won’t find life in Collingwood Street much like life in Hyde Corner.”

“No, but it will be life, and that’s what I care for!”

No, Barbara, used to constant change, and eager for her schemes of helpfulness, could not be expected to enjoy the peacefulness of St. Cradocke’s as the others had done. To Armine, indeed, it had been the beginning of a new life of hope and vigour, and a casting off of the slough of morbid self-contemplation, induced by his invalid life, and fostered at Woodside. He had left off the romance of being early doomed, since his health had stood the trial of the English winter, and under Mr. Ogilvie’s bracing management, seconded by Jock’s energetic companionship, he had learnt to look to active service, and be ready to strive for it.

To Jock, the time had been a rest from the victory which had cost him so dear, and though the wounds still smarted, there had been nothing to call them into action; and he had fortified himself against the inevitable reminders he should meet with in London. He had been studying with all his might for the preliminary examination, and eagerness in so congenial a pursuit was rapidly growing on him, while conversations with Mr. Ogilvie had been equally pleasant to both, for the ex-schoolmaster thoroughly enjoyed hearing of the scientific world, and the young man was heartily glad of the higher light he was able to shed on his studies, and for being shown how to prevent the spiritual world from being obscured by the physical, and to deal with the difficulties that his brother’s materialism had raised for him. He had never lost, and trusted never to lose, hold of his anchor in the Rock; but he had not always known how to answer when called on to prove its existence and trace the cable. Thus the winter at St. Cradocke’s had been very valuable to him personally, and he had been willing to make return for the kindness for which he felt so grateful, by letting the Vicar employ him in the night-schools, lectures, and parish diversions--all in short for which a genial and sensible young layman is invaluable, when he can be caught.

And for their mother herself, she had been sheltered from agitation, and had gathered strength and calmness, though with her habitual want of self-consciousness she hardly knew it, and what she thanked her old friend for was what he had done for her sons, especially Armine. “He and I shall be grateful to you all the rest of our lives,” she said, with her bright eyes glistening.

David Ogilvie, in his deep, silent, life-long romance, felt that precious guerdons sometimes are won at an age which the young suppose to be past all feeling--guerdons the more precious and pure because unconnected with personal hopes or schemes. He still knew Caroline to be as entirely Joseph Brownlow’s own as when he had first perceived it, ten years ago, but all that was regretful jealousy was gone. His idealisation of her had raised and moulded his life, and now that she had grown into the reality of that ideal, he was content with the sunshine she had brought, and the joy of having done her a real service, little as she guessed at the devoted homage that prompted it.

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XXXIV. BLIGHTED BEINGS

Allen-a-Dale has no faggot for burning, Allen-a-Dale has no farrow for turning, Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning, Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning. Scott.

The little family raft put forth from the haven of shelter into the stormy waves. The first experience was, as Jock said, that large rooms and country clearness had been demoralising, or, as Babie averred, the bad taste and griminess of the Drake remains were invincible, for when the old furniture and pictures were all restored to the old places, the tout ensemble was so terribly dingy and confined that the mother could hardly believe that it was the same place that had risen in her schoolgirl eyes as a vision of home brightness. Armine was magnanimously silent, but what would be the effect on Allen, who had been heard of at Gibraltar, and was sure to return before the case was heard in court?

“We must give up old associations, and try what a revolution will do,” Mother Carey said.

“Hurrah!” cried Babie; “I was feeling totally overpowered by that awful round table, but I thought it was the very core of mother’s heart.”

“So did I,” said the mother herself, “when I remember how we used to sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won’t bring back those who sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and our goods get into each other’s way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it in the back drawing-room and bring in your whole generation of little tables.”

There was opportunity for choice, for the house was somewhat overfull of furniture, since besides the original plenishing of the Pagoda, all that was individual property had been sent from Belforest, and this included a great many choice and curious articles, small and great, all indeed that any one cared much about, except the more intrinsically valuable gems of art. It had been all done between Messrs. Wakefield, Gould, and Richards, who had sent up far more than Mrs. Brownlow had marked, assuring her that she need not scruple to keep it.

So by the time twilight came on the second evening, when the whole family were feeling exceedingly bruised, weary, and dusty, such a transformation had been effected that each of the four, on returning from the much needed toilet, stood at the door exclaiming--“This is something like;” and when John arrived, a little later, he looked round with--

“This is almost as nice as the Folly. How does Mother Carey manage to make things like herself and nobody else?”

Allen’s comment a few days later was--“What’s the use of taking so much trouble about a dingy hole which you can’t make tolerable even if you were to stay here.”

“I mean it to be my home till my M.D. son takes a wife and turns me out.”

“Why, mother, you don’t suppose that ridiculous will can hold water?”

“You know I don’t contest it.”

“I know, but they will not look at it for a moment in the Probate Court.”

Some chance friend whom he had met abroad had suggested this to Allen, and he had gradually let his wish become hope, and his hope expectation, till he had come home almost secure of a triumph, which would reinstate his mother, and bring Elvira back to him, having learnt the difference between true friends and false.

It was a proportionate blow when no difficulty was made about proving the will. As the trustees acted, Mrs. Brownlow had not to appear, but Allen haunted the Law Courts with his uncle and saw the will accepted as legal. Nothing remained but another amicable action to put Elvira de Menella in possession.

He was in a state of nervous excitement at every postman’s knock, making sure, poor fellow, that Elvira’s first use of her victory would be to return to him. But all that was heard of was a grand reception at Belforest, bands, banners, horsemen, triumphal arches, banquet, speeches, toasts, and ball, all, no doubt, in “Gould taste.” The penny-a-liner of the Kenminster paper outdid himself in the polysyllables of his description, while Colonel Brownlow briefly wrote that “all was as insolent as might be expected, and he was happy to say that most of the county people and some of the tenants showed their good feeling by their absence.”

Over this Mrs. Brownlow would not rejoice. She did not like the poor girl to be left to such society as her aunt would pick up, and she wrote on her behalf to various county neighbours; but the heiress had already come to the house in Hyde Corner, chaperoned by her aunt, who, fortified by the trust that she was “as good as Mrs. Joseph Brownlow,” had come to fight the battle of fashion, with Lady Flora Folliott for an ally.

The name of George Gould, Esquire, was used on occasion, but he was usually left in peace at his farm with his daughter Mary, with whom her step-mother had decided that nothing could be done. Kate was made presentable by dress and lessons in deportment, and promoted to be white slave, at least so Armine and Barbara inferred, from her constrained and frightened manner when they met her in a shop, though she was evidently trying to believe herself very happy.

Allen was convinced at last that he was designedly given up, and so far from trying to meet his faithless lady, dejectedly refused all society where he could fall in with her, and only wandered about the parks to feed his melancholy with distant glimpses of her on horseback, while Armine and Barbara, who held Elvira very cheap, were wicked enough to laugh at him between themselves and term him the forsaken merman.

Jock had likewise given up his old connections with fashionable life. Several times, if anything were going on, or if he met a former brother officer in the street, he would be warmly invited to come and take his share, or to dine with the mess; he might have played in cricket matches and would have been welcome as a frequent guest; but he had made up his mind that this would only lead to waste of time and money, and steadily declined, till the invitations ceased. It would have cost him more had any come from Cecil Evelyn, but all that had been seen of him was a couple of visiting-cards. The rest of the family had not come to town for the season, and though the two mothers corresponded as warmly as ever, and Fordham and Armine exchanged letters, there was a sort of check and chill upon the friendship between the two young girls, of which each understood only her own half.

Jock said nothing, but he seemed to have grown mother-sick, spent all his leisure moments in haunting his mother’s steps, helping her in whatever she was about, and telling her everything about his studies and companions, as if she were the great solace of the life that had become so much less bright to him.

In general he showed himself as droll as ever, but there were days when, as John said, “all the skip was gone out of the Jack.” The good Monk was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his cousin, having--though the son of a military man--a contempt for the pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled to see Jock affectionately hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise. Jock, however, decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready for a call to arms for his country. He did not like to think that she was reading a report of Sir Philip Cameron’s campaign, in which the aide-de-camp happened to receive honourable mention for a dashing and hazardous ride.

“Why, old fellow, what makes you so down in the mouth?” said John, on that very day as the two cousins were walking home from a lecture. They had had to get into a door-way to avoid the rush of rabble escorting a regiment of household troops on their way to the station, and Lucas had afterwards walked the length of two streets without a word. “You don’t mean that you are hankering after all this style of thing--row and all the rest of it.”

“There’s a good deal more going to it than row,” said Jock, rather heavily.

“What, that donkey, Evelyn, having cut you? I should not trouble myself much on that score, though I did think better of him at Eton.”

“He hasn’t cut me,” Jock made sharp return.

“One pasteboard among all the family,” grunted the Friar. “I reserve to myself the satisfaction of cutting him dead the next opportunity,” he added magniloquently.

Jock laughed, as he was of course intended to do, but there was such a painful ring in the laugh that John paused and said--

“That’s not all, old fellow! Come, make a clean breast of it, my fair son. Thou dost weary of thy vocation.”

“No such thing,” exclaimed Jock, with an inaudible growl between his teeth. “Trust Kencroft for boring on!” and aloud, with some impatience, “It is just what I would have chosen for its own sake.”

“Then,” said John, still keeping up the grand philosophical air and demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, “thou art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of the fickle sex.”

“Shut up!” said Jock, pushed beyond endurance; “can’t you understand that some things can’t be talked of?”

“Whew!” John whistled, and surveyed him rather curiously from head to foot. “It is another case of deluded souls not knowing what an escape they’ve had. What! she thought you a catch in the old days.”

“That’s all you know about it!” said Jock. “She is not that sort. The poverty is nothing, but there’s a fitness in things. Women, the best of them, think much of what I suppose you call the row. It fits in with all their chivalry and romance.”

“Then she’s a fool,” said John, shortly.

“I can’t stand any more of this, Monk, I tell you. You know just nothing at all about it, and I’ve no right to complain, nor any one to bait me with questions.”

The Monk took the hint, and when they reached their own street Jock said--

“You meant it all kindly, Reverend Friar, but there are things that won’t stand probing, as you’ll know some day.”

“Poor old chap,” said John, with his hand on his shoulder, “I’ll not bother you any more. The veil shall be sacred. If this has been going on all the time, I wonder you have carried it off so well!”

“Ali is a caution,” said Jock, who had shaken himself into his ordinary manner. “What would become of Babie with two blighted beings on her hands? Besides, he has some excuse, and I have not.”

After this at every carriage to which Lucas bowed, John frowned, and scanned the inmates in search of the fair deceiver, never making a guess in the right direction.

John had enough of the Kencroft character not to be original. Set him to work, and he had plenty of intelligence and energy, perhaps more absolute force and power than his cousin Lucas; but he would never devise things for himself, and was not discursive, pausing at novelties, because his nature was so thorough that he could not take up anything without spending his very utmost force upon it.

His University training made him an excellent aid to Armine, who went up for his examination at King’s College and acquitted himself so well as to be admitted to begin his terms after the long vacation.

Indeed he and Barbara had drawn together again more. She had her home tasks and her classes at King’s College, and did not fret as at St. Cradocke’s for want of work; she enjoyed the full tide of life, and had plenty of sympathy for whatever did not come before her in a “goody” aspect, and, though there might be little depth of serious reflection in her, she was a very charming member of the household. Then her enjoyment of society was gratified, for society of her own kind had by no means forgotten one so agreeable as Mrs. Brownlow, and whereas, in her prosperity, she had never dropped old friends, they welcomed her back as one of themselves, resuming the homely inexpensive gatherings where the brains were more consulted than the palate, aesthetics more than fashion. She was glad of it for the young people’s sake as well as her own, and returned to her old habit of keeping open house one evening in the week between eight and ten, with cups of coffee and varieties of cheap foreign drinks, and slight but dainty cakes made by herself and Babie according to lessons taken together at the school of cookery.

As Allen declared these evenings a grievance, and often thought himself unable to bear family chatter, she had made the old consulting room as like his luxurious apartment at home as furniture and fittings could do, and he was always free to retire thither. Indeed the toleration and tenderness with which his mother treated him were a continual wonder and annoyance to Barbara, the active little busy bee, who not unjustly considered him the drone of the family, and longed to sting him, not to death but to exertion.

It was provoking that when all the other youths had long finished breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee, till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how little he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen, when she shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no sooner, and when he did so, told his mother that he could not have children screaming at his door at all hours of the morning. Mother Carey replied to her impatient champion that while waiting for Allen was her time for writing letters and reading amusing books, and that the day was only too long for him already, poor fellow, without urging him to make it longer.

“More shame for him,” muttered pitiless sixteen.

After breakfast Allen generally strolled out to see the papers or to bestow his time somewhere--in the picture galleries or in the British Museum, where he had a reading order; but it was always uncertain whether he would disappear for the whole day, shut himself up in his own room, or hang about the drawing-room, very much injured if his mother could not devote herself to him. Indeed she always did so, except when she was bound to take Barbara to some of her classes (including cookery), or when she had promised herself to Dr. and Mrs. Lucas, who were now both very infirm, and knew not how to be thankful enough for the return of one who became like a daughter to them; while Jock, their godson, at once made himself like the best of grandsons, and never failed to give them a brightening, cheering hour every Sunday.

The science of cookery was by no means a needless task, for the cook was very plain, and Allen’s appetite was dainty, and comfort at dinner could only be hoped for by much thought and contrivance. Allen was never discourteous to his mother herself, but he would look at her in piteous reproach, and affect to charge all failures on the cook, or on “children being allowed to meddle,” the most cutting thing to Babie he could say. Then the two Johns always took up the cudgels, and praised the food with all their might. Indeed the Friar was often sensible of a strong desire to flog the dawdling melancholy out of his cousin, and force him no longer to hang a dead weight on his mother; and even Jock began to be annoyed at her unfailing patience and pity, though he understood her compassion better than did those who had never felt a wound.

She did in truth blame herself for having given him no profession, and having acquiesced in the indolent dilettante habits which made all harder to him now; and she was not certain how far it was only his fancy that his health and nerves were perilously affected, though Dr. Medlicott, whom she secretly consulted, assured her that the only remedies needed were good sense and something to do.

At last, at Midsummer, the crisis came in a heavy discharge of bills, the consequence of Allen’s incredulity as to their poverty and incapability of economising. He said “the rascals could wait,” and “his mother need not trouble herself.” She said they must be paid, and she found it could be done at the cost of giving up spending August at St. Cradocke’s, as well as of breaking into her small reserve for emergencies.

But she told Allen that she insisted on his making some exertion for his own maintenance.

“Yes,” said Allen in languid assent.

“I know it is harder at your age to find occupation.”

“That is not the point. I can easily find something to do. There’s literature. Or I could take up art. And last year there was a Hungarian Count who would have given anything to get me for a tutor.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“Mother, you ask me why!”

“I know you had not made up your mind to the worst, but it is a pity you missed the opportunity.”

“There will be more,” said Allen loftily. “I never meant to be a burden, but ladies are so impatient, I suppose you do not wish to turn me out instantly to seek my fortune. No, mother, I do not mean to blame you. You have been sadly harassed, and no woman can ever enter into what I have suffered. Put aside those bills. Long before Christmas, I shall be able to discharge them myself.”

So Allen wrote to Bobus’s friend at Oxford, but he of course did not keep a pocketful of Hungarian Counts. He answered one or two advertisements for a travelling tutor, and had one personal interview, the result of which was that he could have nothing to do with such insufferable snobs. He also concocted an advertisement beginning with “M.A., Oxford, accustomed to the best society and familiar with European languages,” but though the newspapers charged highly for it, he only received one answer, except those from agents, and that, he said with illimitable disgust, was from a Yankee.

Meantime he turned over his poems, and made Barbara copy out a ballad he had written for the “Traveller’s Joy” on some local tradition in the Tyrol. He offered this to a magazine, whose editor, a lady, was an occasional frequenter of Mrs. Brownlow’s evenings. The next time she came, she showed herself so much interested in the legend that Allen said he should like to show her another story, which he had written for the same domestic periodical.

“Would it serve for our Christmas number?”

“I will have it copied out and send it for you to look at,” said Allen.

“If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it be worth while to copy it. I shall set forth on my holiday journey the day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my Christmas number.”

So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the “Joy,” and in a couple of days returned it with a hasty note--

“A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make it taking, and not overdone. Please let me have it, with a few verbal corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of September. It will bring you in about £15.”

Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the periodicals more widely circulated. It was plain that literature was his vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial, the instalments paying his expenses for the trial. The only doubt was what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery would be available. Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the “Traveller’s Joy,” and wanted to see his germ developed.

To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly impossible in Allen’s eyes, and he must recruit himself by a yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half compassionately. Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no other way, and he doubted Allen’s liking it, but that was his affair. Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was to make a brief stay in his friend’s paternal Cumberland farm. He had succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his father’s former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of his commission, still made him the rich man of the family. John was of course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm invitation from their friends at Fordham.

“I should like Armie to go,” said the mother in conference with Babie, her cabinet councillor.

“O yes, Armie must go,” said Babie, “but--”

“Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?”

“I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much.”

“Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you would not wish to go without me.”

“O no, no, NO, NO, mother,” and her face and neck burnt with blushes.

“Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some surprises ready for the others.”

“Hurrah! We’ll do the painting of the doors. What fun it will be to see London empty.”

The male population were horribly scandalised at the decision. Jock and Armine wanted to give up their journey, and John implored his aunt to come to Kencroft; but she only promised to send Babie there if she saw signs of flagging, and the Infanta laughed at the notion, and said she had had an overdose of country enough to last her for years. Allen said ladies overdid everything, and that Mother Carey could not help being one of the sex, and then he asked her for £10, and said Babie would have plenty of time to copy out “The Single Eye.” She pouted “I thought you were going to put the finishing touches.”

“I’ve marked them for you. Why, Barbara, I am surprised,” he added in an elder brotherly tone; “you ought to be thankful to be able to be useful.”

“Useful! I’ve lots of things to do! And you?”

“As if I could lug that great MS. of yours about with me on board Apthorpe’s yacht.”

“Never mind, Allen,” said his mother, who had not been intended to hear all this. “I will do it for you; but Miss Editor must not laugh at my peaked governessy hand.”

“I did not mean that, mother, only Babie ought not to be disobliging.”

“Babie has a good deal to do. She has an essay to write for her professor, you know, and her hands are pretty full.”

Babie too said, “Mother, I never meant you to undertake it. Please let me have it now. Only Allen will never do anything for himself that he can get any one else to do.”

“He could not well do it on board the yacht, my dear. And I don’t want you to have so much writing on your hands.’

“And so you punish me,” sighed Barbara, more annoyed than penitent.

However, nothing could be more snug and merry than the mother and daughter when left together, for they were like two sisters and suited one another perfectly. Babie was disappointed that London would not look emptier even in the fashionable squares, which she insisted on exploring in search of solitude. They made little gay outings in a joyous spirit of adventure, getting up early and going by train to some little station, with an adjacent expanse of wood or heather, whence they came home with their luncheon basket full of flowers, wherewith to gladden Mrs. Lucas’s eyes, and those of Mother Carey’s district. They prepared their surprises too. Several hopelessly dingy panels were painted black and adorned with stately lilies and irises, with proud reed-maces, and twining honeysuckle, and bryony, fluttered over by dragon-flies and butterflies, from the brush of mother and daughter. The stores from Belforest further supplied hangings for brackets, and coverings for cushions, under the dainty fingers of the Infanta, who had far more of the household fairy about her than had her mother, perhaps from having grown up in a home instead of a school, and besides, from being bent on having the old house a delightsome place.

Indeed her mother was really happier than for many years, for the sense of failing in her husband’s charge had left her since she had seen Jock by his own free will on the road to the quest, and likely also to fulfil the moral, as well as the scientific, conditions attached to it. She did feel as if her dream was being realised and the golden statues becoming warmed into life, and though her heart ached for Janet, she still hoped for her. So, with a mother’s unfailing faith, she believed in Allen’s dawning future even while another sense within her marvelled, as she copied, at the acceptance of “The Single Eye.” But then, was it not well-known that loving eyes see the most faults, and was not an editor the best judge of popularity?

She had her scheme too. She had taken lessons some years ago at Rome in her old art of modelling, and knew her eye and taste had improved in the galleries. She had once or twice amused the household by figures executed by her dexterous fingers in pastry or in butter; and in the empty house, in her old studio, amid remnants of Bobus’s museum, she set to work on a design that had long been in her mind asking her to bring it into being.

Thus the tete-a-tete was so successful that people’s pity was highly diverting, and the vacation was almost too brief, though when the young men began to return, it was a wonder how existence could have been so agreeable without them.

Jock was first, having come home ten days sooner than his friends were willing to part with him, determined if he found his ladies looking pale to drag them out of town, if only to Ramsgate.

They met him in a glow of animation, and Babie hardly gave him time to lay down his basket of ferns from the dale, and flowers from the garden, before she threw open the folding doors to the back drawing-room.

“Why, mother, who sent you that group? Why do you laugh? Did Grinstead lend it to Babie to copy? Young Astyanax, isn’t it? And, I say! Andromache is just like Jessie. I say! Mother Carey didn’t do it. Well! She is an astonishing little mother and no mistake. The moulding of it! Our anatomical professor might lecture on Hector’s arm.”

“Ah! I, haven’t been a surgeon’s wife for nothing. Your father put me through a course of arms and legs.”

“And we borrowed a baby,” said Babie. “Mrs. Jones, our old groom’s wife, who lives in the Mews, was only too happy to bring it, and when it was shy, it clung beautifully.”

“Then the helmet.”

“That was out of the British Museum.”

“Has Grinstead seen it?”

“No, I kept it for my own public first.”

“What will you do with it? Put it into the Royal Academy?”

“No, it is not big enough. I thought of offering it to the Works that used to take my things in the old Folly days. They might do it in terra cotta, or Parian.”

“Too good for a toy material like that,” said Jock. “Get some good opinion before you part with it, mother. I wish we could keep it. I’m proud of my Mother Carey.”

Allen, who came home next, only sighed at the cruel necessity of selling such a work. He was in deplorable spirits, for Gilbert Gould was superintending the refitting of a beautiful steam yacht, in which Miss Menella meant to sail to the West Indies, with her uncle and aunt.

“I knew she would! I knew she would,” softly said Babie.

That did not console Allen, and his silence and cynicism about his hosts gave the impression that he had outstayed his welcome, since he had neither wealth, nor the social brilliance or subservience that might have supplied its place. He had scarcely energy to thank his mother for her faultless transcription of “The Single Eye,” and only just exerted himself to direct the neat roll of MS. to the Editor.

The next day a note came for him.

“Mother what have you done?” he exclaimed. “What did you send to the ‘Weathercock’?”

“‘The Single Eye.’ What? Not rejected?”

“See there!”

“DEAR MR. BROWNLOW,--I am afraid there has been some mistake. The story I wished for is not this one, but another in the same MS. Magazine; a charming little history of a boy’s capture by, and escape from, the Moorish corsairs. Can you let me have it by Tuesday? I am very sorry to have given so much trouble, but ‘The Single Eye’ will not suit my purpose at all.”

“What does she mean?” demanded Allen.

“I see! It is a story of the children’s! ‘Marco’s Felucca.’ I looked at it while I was copying, and thought how pretty it was. And now I remember there were some pencil-marks!”

“Well, it will please the children,” graciously said Allen. “I am not sorry; I did not wish to make my debut in a second-rate serial like that, and now I am quit of it. She is quite right. It is not her style of thing.”

But Allen did not remember that he had spent the £15 beforehand, so as to make it £25, and this made it fortunate that his mother’s group had been purchased by the porcelain works, and another pair ordered.

Thus she could freely leave their gains to Armine and Babie, for the latter declared the sum was alike due to both, since if she had the readiest wit, her brother had the most discrimination, and the best choice of language. The story was only signed A. B., and their mother made a point of the authorship being kept a secret; but little notices of the story in the papers highly gratified the young authors.

Armine, who had returned from a round of visits to St. Cradocke’s, Fordham, Kenminster, and Woodside, confirmed the report of Elvira’s intended voyage; but till the yacht was ready, the party had gone abroad, leaving the management of the farm, and agency of the estate, to a very worthy man named Whiteside, who had long been a suitor to Mary Gould, and whom she was at last allowed to marry. He had at once made the Kencroft party free of the park and gardens, and indeed John and Armine came laden with gifts in poultry, fruit, and flowers from the dependants on the estate to Mrs. Brownlow.

Armine really looked quite healthy, nothing remaining of his former ethereal air, but a certain expansiveness of brow and dreaminess of eye.

He greatly scrupled at halving the £15 when it was paid, but Barbara insisted that he must take his share, and he then said--

“After all it does not signify, for we can do things together with it, as we have always done.”

“What things?”

“Well, I am afraid I do want a few books.”

“So do I, terribly.”

“And there are some Christmas gifts I want to send to Woodside.”

“Woodside! oh!”

“And wouldn’t it be pleasant to put the choir at the iron Church into surplices and cassocks for Christmas?”

“Oh, Armie, I do think we might have a little fun out of our own money.”

“What fun do you mean?” said Armine.

“I want to subscribe to Rolandi’s, and to take in the ‘Contemporary,’ and to have one real good Christmas party with tableaux vivants, and charades. Mother says we can’t make it a mere surprise party, for people must have real food, and I think it would be more pleasure to all of us than presents and knicknacks.”

“Of course you can do it,” said Armine, rather disappointed. “And if we had in Percy Stagg, and the pupil teachers, and the mission people--”

“It would be awfully edifying and good-booky! Oh yes, to be sure, nearly as good as hiding your little sooty shoe-blacks in surplices! But, my dear Armie, I am so tired of edifying! Why should I never have any fun? Come, don’t look so dismal. I’ll spare five shillings for a gown for old Betty Grey, and if there’s anything left out after the party, you shall have it for the surplices, and you’ll be Roland Graeme in my tableau?”

The next day Mother Carey found Armine with an elbow on each side of his book and his hands in his hair, looking so dreamily mournful that she apprehended a fresh attack of Petronella, but made her approaches warily.

“What have you there?” she asked.

“Dean Church’s lectures,” he said.

“Ah! I want to make time to read them! But why have they sent you into doleful dumps?”

“Not they,” said Armine; “but I wanted to read Babie a passage just now, and she said she had no notion of making Sundays of week days, and ran away. It is not only that, mother, but what is the matter with Babie? She is quite different.”

“Have you only just seen it?”

“No, I have felt something indefinable between us, though I never could bear to speak of it, ever since Bobus went. Do you think he did her any harm?”

“A little, but not much. Shall I tell you the truth, Armine; can you bear it?”

“What! did I disgust her when I was so selfish and discontented?”

“Not so much you, my boy, as the overdoing at Woodside! I can venture to speak of it now, for I fancy you have got over the trance.”

“Well, mother,” said Armine, smiling back to her in spite of himself, “I have not liked to say so, it seemed a shame; but staying at the Vicarage made me wonder at my being such an egregious ass last year! Do you know, I couldn’t help it; but that good lady would seem to me quite mawkish in her flattery! And how she does domineer over that poor brother of hers! Then the fuss she makes about details, never seeming to know which are accessories and which are principles. I don’t wonder that I was an absurdity in the eyes of all beholders. But it is very sad if it has really alienated my dear Infanta from all deeper and higher things!”

“Not so bad as that, my dear; my Babie is a good little girl.”

“Oh yes, mother, I did not mean--”

“But it did break that unity between you, and prevent your leading her insensibly. I fancy your two characters would have grown apart anyhow, but this was the moving cause. Now I fancy, so far as I can see, that she is more afraid of being wearied and restrained than of anything else. It is just what I felt for many years of my life.”

“No, mother?”

“Yes, my boy; till the time of your illness, serious thought, religion and all the rest, seemed to me a tedious tax; and though I always, I believe, made it a rule to my conscience in practical matters, it has only very, very lately been anything like the real joy I believe it has always been to you. Believe that, and be patient with your little sister, for indeed she is an unselfish, true, faithful little being, and some day she will go deeper.”

Armine looked up to his mother, and his eyes were full of tears, as she kissed him, and said--

“You will do her much more good if you sympathise with her in her innocent pleasures than if you insist on dragging her into what she feels like privations.”

“Very well, mother,” he said. “It is due to her.”

And so, though the choir did have at least half Armine’s share of the price of “Marco’s Felucca,” he threw himself most heartily into the Christmas party, was the poet of the versified charade, acted the strong-minded woman who was the chief character in “Blue Bell;” and he and Jock gained universal applause.

Allen hardly appeared at the party. He had a fresh attack of sleepless headache and palpitation, brought on by the departure of Miss Menella for the Continent, and perhaps by the failure of “A Single Eye” with some of the magazines. He dabbled a little with his mother’s clay, and produced a nymph, who, as he persuaded her and himself, was a much nobler performance than Andromache, but unfortunately she did not prove equally marketable. And he said it was quite plain that he could not succeed in anything imaginative till his health and spirits had recovered from the blow; but he was ready to do anything.

So Dr. Medlicott brought in one day a medical lecture that he wanted to have translated from the German, and told Allen that it would be well paid for. He began, but it made his head ache; it was not a subject that he could well turn over to Babie; and when Jock brought a message to say the translation must be ready the next day, only a quarter had been attempted. Jock sat up till three o’clock in the morning and finished it, but he could not pain his mother by letting her know that her son had again failed, so Allen had the money, and really believed, as he said, that all Jock had done was to put the extreme end to it, and correct the medical lingo of which he could not be expected to know anything. Allen was always so gentle, courteous, and melancholy, that every one was getting out of the habit of expecting him to do anything but bring home news, discover anything worth going to see, sit at the foot of the table, and give his verdict on the cookery. Babie indeed was sometimes provoked into snapping at him, but he bore it with the amiable magnanimity of one who could forgive a petulant child, ignorant of what he suffered.

Jock was borne up by a great pleasure that winter. One day at dinner, his mother watched his eyes dancing, and heard the old boyish ring of mirth in his laugh, and as she went up stairs at night, he came after and said--

“Fancy, I met Evelyn on the ice to-day. He wants to know if he may call.”

“What prevents him?”

“Well, I believe the poor old chap is heartily ashamed of his airs. Indeed he as good as said so. He has been longing to make a fresh start, only he didn’t know how.”

“I think he used you very ill, Jock; but if you wish to be on the old terms, I will do as you like.”

“Well,” said Jock, in an odd apologetic voice, “you see the old beggar had got into a pig-headed sort of pet last year. He said he would cut me if I left the service, and so he felt bound to be as good as his word; but he seems to have felt lost without us, and to have been looking out for a chance of meeting. He was horribly humiliated by the Friar looking over his head last week.”

“Very well. If he chooses to call, here we are.”

“Yes, and don’t put on your cold shell, mother mine. After all, Evelyn is Evelyn. There are wiser fellows, but I shall never warm to any one again like him. Why, he was the first fellow who came into my room at Eton! I am to meet him to-morrow after the lecture. May I bring him home?”

“If he likes. His mother’s son must have a welcome.”

She could not feel cordial, and she so much expected that the young gentleman might be seized with a fresh fit of exclusive disdain, that she would not mention the possibility, and it was an amazement to all save herself when Jock appeared with the familiar figure in his wake. Guardsman as he was, Cecil had the grace to look bashful, not to say shamefaced, and more so at Mrs. Brownlow’s kindly reception, than at Barbara’s freezing dignity. The young lady was hotly resentful on Jock’s behalf, and showed it by a stiff courtesy, elevated eyebrows, and the merest tips of her fingers.

Allen took it easily. He had been too much occupied with his own troubles to have entered into all the complications with the Evelyn family; and though he had never greatly cared for them, and had viewed Cecil chiefly as an obnoxious boy, he was, in his mournful way, gratified by any reminder of his former surroundings. So without malice prepense he stung poor Cecil by observing that it was long since they had met; but no one could be expected to find the way to the other end of nowhere. Cecil blushed and stammered something about Hounslow, but Allen, who prided himself on being the conversational man of the world, carried off the talk into safe channels.

As Cecil was handing Mrs. Brownlow down to the dining-room, wicked Barbara whispered to her cousin John--

“We’ve such a nice vulgar dinner. It couldn’t have been better if I’d known it!”

John, whose wrath had evaporated in his “cut,” shook his head at her, but partook of her diversion at her brother’s resignation at sight of a large dish of boiled beef, with a suet pudding opposite to it, Allen was too well bred to apologise, but he carved in the dainty and delicate style befitting the single slice of meat interspersed between countless entrees.

Barbara began to relent as soon as Cecil, after making four mouthfuls of Allen’s help, sent his plate with a request for something more substantial. And before the meal was over, his evident sense of bien-etre and happiness had won back her kindness; she remembered that he was Sydney’s brother, and took no more trouble to show her indignation.

Thenceforth, Cecil was as much as ever Jock’s friend, and a frequenter of the family, finding that the loss of their wealth and place in the great world made wonderfully little difference to them, and rather enhanced the pleasant freedom and life of their house. The rest of the family were seen once or twice, when passing through London, but only in calls, which, as Babie said, were as good as nothing, except, as she forgot to add, that they broke through the constraint on her correspondence with Sydney.

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