Cousin Tom

Front matter

Cousin Tom. BY William Turville. LONDON: Ash Partners, Limited. is97. COUSIN TOM. BY WILLIAM TURVILLE ~k London ASH PARTNERS, Ltd. PRINTED BY THE WESTMINSTER PRESS, 411a HARROW ROAD, LONDON, W. CONTENTS PAGE Chapter I Mary ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 5 Chapter II. Fanny ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12 Chapter III. Tanglement... ... ... 18 Chapter IV. A Morning Call 25 Chapter V. The Ellipsis ... ... ... ... ... ... 28 Chapter VI. Jesuitry ... ... ... 33 Chapter VII. A Turn ... 41 Chapter VIII. News ... 4& Chapter IX. Diplomacy ... ... ■■■ ••• 53 Chapter X. A Visit to Zedminster ... ... ... ... ... 60 Chapter XI. Bubbles ... ... •■• ••• ••■ ••• ••• 64 Chapter XII. Anxieties ... ... ■■• •■• ••• ••• ••■ 7° Chapter XIII. Responsibilities ... ... ... 78 Chapter XIV. Tribulation... ... ... ... ••• ■•• ••■ contents.

PAGE Chapter XV. Convalescence ... ... ... ... ... ... 92 Chapter XVI. Ventilation... ... ... ... ... ... ... 101 Chapter XVII. Brought Low ... 108 Chapter XVIII. As it is on Earth... ... ... ... ... .. n6

Chapter I. Mary

VllVARY MEREDITH, at the age of fourteen, was as old <*-IIJ fashioned as Lavrock itself, the country village of which her father was the vicar. Her face was pleasant, fresh, and rosy, with a merry radiance twinkling in its dimples and smiling out of her eyes. She looked as if she had been told that life was a serious thing, to be taken decorously; while, in contradiction to this, her inner nature seemed dancing to the idea that it was chiefly happy and decidedly funny. She assented very cheerfully when old Mrs. Pennefather remarked that it was a bitterly cold day : it was November, and the winter had set in early ; but the words had no meaning for Mary, who was tingling with the thought of her Cousin Tom's home coming. She had never had rheumatism herself, and usually listened with both sympathy and interest to Mrs. Pennefather's account of that malady, which she described as though it were an evil spirit, always changing its lodgings from one part of her afflicted frame to another, and leaving behind a variety of un comfortable mementoes.

Mary believed all that Mrs. Pennefather told her ; that her "aliment," as she called it, was caused many years ago by her reckless good nature, in doing a day's washing for a friend in a draughty washhouse, a friend now long since departed from Lav rock, if not from the world itself — Mary was never quite certain which, for the old lady, forgetting which version she had com mitted herself to, and annoyed at having gone into such unneces sary detail at all, now shrouded the whole affair in mystery— that she had once been offered the post of housekeeper to a rich old gentleman, who, before Mrs. Pennefather could take up the ap pointment, suddenly became bankrupt ; that when she was Mrs. Randall's (her daughter's) age she did twice as much work ; that no one knew what she suffered, and the self-control with which she restrained the exhibition of it : Mary believed all this, because of her own motion she never thought of doubting anybody.

She was thus a great comfort to the old woman when she detailed the eccentric aberrations of her disorder. Mary used to follow all its wicked meanderings with the interest and respect the subject deserved, but to-day she hardly showed herself equal to the occasion. Mrs. Pennefather had been unusually graphic in her descriptions that day, and wound up — for the moment — by say ing: " It's that cruel bad, running up and down my bones, that I feel they don't belong to me at all ; and they creaks and cricks like a door, and the pain works away as if you was driving nails in, or twisting all my joints apart." CHAPTER one. With confused recollections of one of the last things she had read and a belief in the soothing effect of literature generally, Mary said : "You feel like Hamlet, that the world is out of joint?

" " Aye, that I does, Miss ! He had the rheumatisms too, I'll be bound ! " " I dare say he had," replied Mary absently, yet nevertheless feeling that it was a new point of view, and certainly fitted in with hunting about after ghosts in the middle of the night. "Did he take rum in his tea, Miss? 'Cos I think that's as good as anything." " No, he took poison." " Lawk a mussy ! Well, and I don't blame him neither, if he was as bad as I be. Not a bit ! But I bears it ! " Mrs. Penne father's exclamation recalled Mary to herself. " Oh, it was only a play, you know ! It didn't really happen ! " But Mrs. Pennefather was not to be cheated out of such a striking contrast to her own fortitude, and she Seemed not to hear. " Poor creetur ! He couldn't bear up, I suppose, as I'm a doing ! I'm a-aching that bad this minute, that I can hardly sit I " Mary felt that she could hardly sit either, as she heard the church clock strike half-past four.

There wouldn't be time to go into Mrs. Pennefather's rheumatism any more to-day, and she seemed, moreover, to have got some satisfaction out of Hamlet as it was ; so Mary said : "Where's Harry?" Harry Randall was a chubby-cheeked little boy, the son of her father's gardener, and a favourite of Mary's. She liked him because he was such a merry little fellow, always wanting to play, and with a look in his eyes which seemed to expect that Mary could confer a great boon upon him at any moment. " He's gone round to the grocer's with his mother. Not to get anything for me though, I do assure you, Miss ! I aint had a drop of anything this week, and I believe that's why I am so bad I " " I'll tell papa ; perhaps he will send you something. But I must be going now;" and Mrs. Pennefather seeming to con sider that the chief object of the visit had been accomplished in Mary's last words, thanked her, but did not detain her with any further complaints.

No sooner was she fairly out of the little garden in front of the cottage than she ran along the lane upon which she then emerged — no one was in sight, and, perhaps, if there had been it would have made no difference — until she came into the village street, when she immediately assumed as much calm propriety of demeanour as her panting breath allowed, and looked down the road where it led to Zedminster. A station fly, with luggage on the top, was crawling, insect-like, along. " That must be Tom ! " Mary's pace became funereal. MARY, 7 " Hullo ! " It was the voice of Tom Roberts, as his head projected from the window of the cab. He stopped the driver, got out and paid him, and sent him on with the luggage to the Vicarage. Then Dr. Roberts turned to his cousin. He had a bright ex pression, generally with a quizzical look in it, but capable of a grave professional regard, which, however, sat awkwardly upon him, fer he was very boyish-looking.

He had not seen Mary since last spring ; he had been so busy working in London for his final examination as a doctor. He had passed at last, having been plucked on two previous occasions, more from idleness than anything else, and had come back to the Merediths, who were his only living relatives, for a little country air and rest before settling down in life. Tom thought it would be rather slow work at Lavrock. It was a sleepy old place, where the very smoke from the chimneys, it seemed to him, rose up more lazily than it did anywhere else ; but he was somewhat knocked up with reading and confinement in town all through the previous summer, and felt that he wanted a change. Mary, who was tallish and slender, drew herself up for a moment ere she stepped sedately towards him. But her eyes beamed more than welcome as he came forward with genial looks, and said, as they shook hands : " Here we are again I " "Yes, Tom."

And the laughing dimples on her cheeks ibolished all her young-lady dignity in an instant. " Dr. Roberts, now. How grand ! " "Isn't it?" he replied, smiling. " You look jolly ! You're growing away like a mushroom, aren't you ? " said Tom, who was just two-and-twenty. Mary glowed. If he had called her a toadstool, with that look of interest on his features she would have liked it. " Have I grown out of all knowledge ? Are you sure it's me ? " she said, still smiling. The first pleased look on Tom's face which the welcome in her familiar features had called forth sub sided into a more critical expression. Her manner was all too natural for his Londonised taste. He deemed himself a judge of manner, had an eye for styles of hair dressing, and a good deal of criticism for gloves and boots, the cut of dresses, and the appropriateness of combinations of form and colour.

Perhaps, like students of other subjects, he was a little overwhelmed by his own learning, which had been acquired in divers places and under sundry conditions not otherwise edify ing, and at the expense of time which should have been devoted to study. "Well," he said, "I do think your pinafores are longer, you know." He was just the same as ever thought Mary, and at home now, in every sense of the word. As he looked ather and noticed how she had grown, he wondered what changes the time CHAPTER ONE. of his absence had wrought in another. If she — it flashed across him for an instant — was as fickle as himself, what chance had he of being remembered ; and, indeed, how did he deserve it? Tom had not led a very steady life in town, and would not have cared for his uncle and aunt to have been acquainted with one-half of it.

He was unstable, and distracted by every passing pleasure, and this had been the chief reason of his not obtaining his diploma before. Mary was obviously just as much of a child as ever, just as easy to mystify, fair game for a jest, and evidently as ready to join in a laugh against herself as heretofore. " You look pale, Cousin Tom ! How did you ever get through that dreadful examination? It must have been very hard work ! " " It was, rather. But it would never have done to be plucked again, so I stuck to it. Now I am going to see about a practice, after rusticating a little." " Oh, where ? " Mary knew that something of that sort must be. She considered him a sort of eagle, settled for a while, indeed, after having tested his pinions by that unparalleled feat of diploma-taking, and now preening himself for new flights, when, perhaps, he would soar away altogether.

" Ah !" cried Tom, mysteriously, while Mary surveyed him, and thought he looked the living model of a clever young doctor. As he knew no more than she did what he was going to do, he looked very wise, which his professional habits enabled him to do — for a moment. Then he added, lightly : " How's Bluebottle, and Britannia, and the others ? All serene ? " " Oh, yes ! Bluebottle, when he heard you were coming back, said he was going to be a doctor, too, and has been buzzing about asking the most extraordinary questions ever since. And All- Fours picked up the notion as well, and between them they per suaded Lullaby to lend them her doll, and they cut its leg oft ; so I had to sew it on again." Mary spoke in an impulsive, open way, with fun beaming in hei eyes ; and, as she ended with a bubbling laugh, humour was radiant in every feature.

Tom joined in her laughter, but hardly seemed to find the circumstance she had narrated as amusing as she did, and prepared himself to listen, with no very eagei interest, to chronicles of small beer, as he said : " And what else have you been doing ? Teaching away, I suppose?" " Oh, yes, I've been very busy, and Britannia helps me now. I am head-master, and she is assistant usher." Mary laughed again. " And papa helps if we get stuck." " How clever you must be getting ! " said Tom, ironically. " I suppose you'll be going in for ambulance lectures, or something of that sort next I " " Oh, do you think that's necessary ? " Mary didn't like the idea, but she would have been quite ready to take it uo if he had approved. MARY, 9 "No, I don't. Not for you," said Tom, patronisingly. "Better stick to what you're doing.

A little learning is a dangerous thing." " Ah, yes," exclaimed Mary, relieved. " Dr. Mask said once, that when people were seriously ill, ignorant interference was very like a man striking with a club at two others fighting in the dark ; he was just as likely to kill his friend as his friend's enemy." " So it is ! Those ambulance people particularly ! They think they know such a lot ! One fellow I found in the act of perform ing artificial respiration on a man who had had his neck broken." " Oh, how shocking ! " Mary did not see the point, but was horrified at the picture Tom's words suggested. He only laughed. " Yes, because the man was quite dead. But if he hadn't been, artificial respiration was not the remedy." "What is artificial respiration?" said Mary, desperately striv ing to rise to the intellectual heights of her cousin's learned conversation.

" Keeping up the breathing, or reviving it when the circulation has ceased from the heart flagging. You draw up the arms, like this," said Tom, raising his above his head, " and then bring them back again to the sides of the chest, and squeeze it, and then raise them again, and so go on, working away steadily, until the circu lation is re-established." Tom was not displeased — what young doctor is ? — at having to give a little medical lecture, and Mary, with rapt attention, drank in every word. After explaining the mechanism of this expedient Tom con cluded by saying : " Hunter was the first who practically realised it. He had heart disease himself, and a violent temper, and when he got in a tantrum it would bring on fainting attacks ; and once his heart quite stopped beating, and he would have died, only that with determined efforts he kept breathing sor twenty minutes or so, and ftjade his heart go again, so that he saved his life."

" How wonderful ! " exclaimed Mary, who was deeply im pressed ; but more, on the whole, with Tom than with Hunter. Her cousin's matter-of-course assurance, with its touch of flippancy, enhanced his learning in Mary's eyes, and she saw no callousness in his boyish levity. They had reached the Vicarage gates by this time, and now entered the garden. Mary's satisfaction at being the first to welcome her cousin, and to find that he was not changed, was alloyed by a jealousy of the career he must be contemplating — a career which might carry him away, she knew not where ; and on this point she was intensely curious. She felt she was not clever, and longed for cleverness, like wings, with which to follow her eagle ; while he, as he once more entered the atmosphere of the same old life he had left three-quarters of a year ago, felt divided between regrets sor his London life and the almost unconscious influence of association and memory which made his newly acquired ideas — though he would not have admitted it — seem somewhat paltry and tawdry.

CHAPTER ONE. As Mary witnessed Tom's hearty welcomings by her father and mother she thought they hardly recognised what a hero he was ; they merely congratulated him on having passed in about three words, and did not seem to see the glory which, to her eyes, covered him all over. Her sister, Britannia, did show a little reverence certainly, but it was chiefly exhibited by stares and a gaping mouth, which, no doubt, were complimentary, but not delicately so ; while Bluebottle and All-Fours were simply up roarious, wanting Tom to do a dozen different things for them at once, and promise to do fifty more. Lullaby, the youngest of all, who had very blue eyes with a saintly expression in them, became exceedingly inquisitive about a locket Tom wore on his watch-chain, and wanted to know what was inside; and would have carried her investigations a great deal further than Tom cared for, had it not been for the diversion caused by the playful assaults of her two brothers, and Tom's description of a few little presents he had brought for his cousins, which he suddenly declared he would get out of his portmanteau and bring dowimmediately.

As he distributed them Mary thought how good it was of him to remember them all when he was so far away, and immersed in the bustle of the teeming metropolis. She and Britannia had often talked together about Tom, and what he was doing, and pictured London as a densely-thronged labyrinth of streets, where fires, robberies, murders, and catastrophes of every kind were constantly happening ; and they sometimes worked themselves up to such a pitch of excitement, by the extraordinary conjectures they constructed between them, that they could hardly sleep. Mary's passing dissatisfaction was soon forgotten in the de lightful sensation of her cousin being at home again. There was a great deal to tell him, and she hardly knew where to begin. Tom's account of his studies was very condensed indeed, not to say curt.

" It was beastly," he said. " I read six hours a day, and, just at the end, eight hours ; two hours at each thing. I stuck up a calendar and chalked off the hours as I went along ; so I'm going to have a jolly good holiday now." " You look pale," said Mrs. Meredith, " and your appetite is not what it used to be." "Isn't it?" said Tom, smiling ; "you just wait a little, and see if I don't make up for lost time ! Has there been any skating yet ? " Nobody could answer this question satisfactorily. They all agreed that it had been very cold, but Mr. Meredith had not heard of any skating. Mary said she had seen some boys sliding on the road, and Britannia, anxious to contribute some item of information if she could, remarked that they had had a slight fall of snow last week, at which Tom laughed.

" Quite an unusual occurrence here," said Mr. Meredith. " I really think we are going to have a severe winter." " I hope we shall," observed Tom. " Cold, frosty weather is MARY. 11 much more cheerful than rain and dirt, and I intend to enjoy myself as much as I can." " Certainly," replied Mr. Meredith. " We shall have a little gaiety in the way of Christmas parties and so on, and must make the most of it. It will be a good opportunity for you to cultivate the society of the neighbourhood, because everybody is here at Christmas time." " Mr. Somerville is staying at Brakespeare," added his wife. " They are not going on the Continent this year." " He drove over last week," said the Vicar, " and said you must pay him a visit." " Is he as jolly as ever ? " inquired Tom. " Oh, yes 1 " returned the Vicar, smiling.

" He is a wonderful man," put in Mrs. Meredith. " I never saw such a flow of spirits ! " " And he has got two new horses," observed Britannia, Mary's younger sister — Britannia was not her real name ; but it was so constantly used that everybody seemed to have forgotten the other — " beautiful greys, in his carriage, and he drives so fast ! " Tom listened to the news graciously ; the item about Mr. Somerville did seem worth hearing, and he expressed his ap proval. He gave Mary, who hardly ever took her eyes off him, an astonishing account of the chrysanthemums he had seen at a flower show in London. Britannia, who apparently thought that all London flowers were brought up in back yards, was unable at first to believe that they could be finer than those in the country, but did afterwards, when Tom assured her that they forced them with beef tea and turtle soup, talking just as he used to nine months ago, until Mary burst out laughing and Britannia realised the joke.

Then Tom began to regale them with some experiences of his London life, and in consideration of their evident appetite for and interest in these reminiscences, did not wholly disdain the aid of fancy. He described the darkness of a London fog as quite equal to that of a coal pit ; told how one of his fellow-students had been garrotted on returning from the evening lecture ; hinted at the horrors of the dissecting-room and hospital ; left the im pression that the lectures of the professor of chemistry were scenes of explosions, fireworks, and startling illusions ; and did his best to picture London as a sort of up-to-date edition of Babylon, Athens, and Rome rolled into one, perpetually coruscating with a lurid brillance, and so full of traps for the unwary that it be came a wonder to both girls that he had escaped from it alive.

It was all delicious, thought Mary, to whom the bright side of life was very real. Her earliest associations, the accident of her position as eldest daughter and natural assistant in the training of her brothers and sisters, and, above all, a powerfully active spon taneous amiability, kept her even now as a little child in all that pertained to simplicity and purity of motive. And when the Vicar said, as the evening drew to a close, after the children CHAPTER TWO. had dropped off one by one to bed with eyes that winked and twinked like stars disappearing before the dawn, that he was proud to see Tom ready to begin the world on his own account, and never doubted he would be a credit to them all, Mary felt that she too had a pride, sacred and known only to herself, which the future should justify.

How could she think evil or dream of unhappiness when her very existence breathed goodwill towards the whole world ! In the happy belief that others must feel towards her as she to them life seemed essentially one thing ; a joyful pouring forth of services and a grateful acceptance of delights, a giving and a doing in which selfconsideration was forgotten. Dreary winter ruled without in cold and darkness and moaning wind, but Mary, as she lay down to rest, basked in a summer of content.

Chapter II. Fanny

*IK1 EXT morning, directly after breakfast, Tom was closeted " I with his uncle in his study. Mr. Meredith had married, rather late in life, a lady consider ably younger than himself, who had simple tastes and was quite content with her somewhat humdrum life. Their children were educated in an out-of-date fashion, which encouraged miscel laneous reading amongst their father's favourite authors, and stopped short of accomplishments, for which none of them had shown ability or inclination. He felt that Tom's rather harum-scarum tendencies wanted steadying, and was anxious he should settle down as soon as possible. Dr. Roberts was not strong ; his mother, Mr. Meredith's sister, had died of consumption : and although her son had as yet manifested no signs of inheriting that disorder, Dr. Mask, the local practitioner, had impressed upon the Vicar that it was of the first importance to Tom's health that he should have country air and lead an outdoor life.

Dr. Mask was an old friend, as well as medical adviser, and had been consulted about Tom's future career before his return from London. The upshot of the conference in the study was that Tom should go round at once to the doctor's, and as he opened the door Mary and Britannia, who were at that moment coming down the stairs, heard Mr. Meredith saying : " You will be sure to find Dr. Mask in if you go at once. It is as well to lose no time." Then Tom came out, took down his hat and put on his over coat. " I wonder what that means ! " said Mary, as he went out. " Oh, so do I too," echoed Britannia, with childish impetuosity. She generally followed her sister's lead, and would not willingly FANNY, 13 have missed participating in the merest fraction of a^surmise of Mary's about Tom, whose sayings and doings and future prospects ■were just now the theme of primary interest to both girls.

Brit annia had a very sweet expression, framed in a comic setting, and with her hair brushed away from her forehead in an upward rushing cataract, flowing in wavy ripples over her ears and splash ing down the back of her head and neck in fluffy surf, looked a sort of immaculate conception of delighted astonishment. There was something of the same expression about the other children, only that in Bluebottle the astonishment was tinged with pug nacity, and in All-Fours with curiosity, while Lullaby's countenance appeared chiefly to denote an overwhelming surprise at being alive at all. "Perhaps papa has told him to report his health to Dr. Mask," said Mary. " He sounded his chest, you know, last year." "And he'll have to put out his tongue," remarked Britannia, with a smile. " Fancy doctors having to do that !

" " Of course they have to, when they are examined, like every ■one else." " Oh, fancy ! " 'Britannia could not imagine Dr. Mask putting out his tongue at the word of command, like they did to him. But her thoughts went on involuntarily, and in a burst of surprise at her own penetration, she exclaimed : " And they get ill too, and die, like other people ! " " Britannia, how can you ! I am shocked at your thoughtless ness ! " said Mary, severely. Her sister seemed shocked too, and curbed the prancings of her too daring intellect in silence. " No," continued Mary gravely, as if it was a sin to mention Tom and death in the same conversation, and as if it was not she herself who had introduced the idea. " No, you are quite wrong ! " " Am I ? " Britannia was apparently as pleased as if it was a joke or some interesting secret.

"Yes, quite. It is not that. It is most likely he is going to tell Dr. Mask of new discoveries they have found out in London, and that is why he has gone off immediately, to lose no time." And Mary thought of the wonderful lecture on artificial respira tion she had heard tiie day before. " Oh ! " exclaimed Britannia, in her nice admiring, surprised way, and doing justice to the idea by placing her arms akimbo and straddling a little, as though to support the weight of the news, while her high forehead was directed up at Mary, like a telescope, " Oh, I see ! " After some intense staring at her sister, Britannia added : " Perhaps Dr. Mask will make his medicine nicer now. Do you think he will ? " " There is no knowing," replied Mary, to whom Britannia's remark seemed rather trivial, and she felt her own answer was very appropriate.

There really was no knowing what a person of Tom's intellectual stature might do. He might revolutionise the -whole theory and art of medicine in all its branches I CHAPTER TWO. " All I know is," she went on, " if Tom had you in a hospital he would probably cure you six times faster than Dr. Mask could ! " " But I shouldn't like to go to a hospital," replied Britannia, quickly. " Oh ! I shouldn't mind a bit if Cousin Tom was the doctor," declared Mary ; and Britannia was quite awestruck at her sister's confident manner. What a lot Mary knew, and how perfectly, how knowingly she knew it ! Mary admired Tom, Britannia admired Mary, and Lullaby admired Britannia; not like the boys, who went straight to the fountain-head, and admired Tom severally, each on his own account. To celebrate Tom's having come home it was understood to be a dies non that day in the matter of lessons, and the younger children, all of whose ideas of amusement just now were asso ciated with their newly-returned cousin, watched him out of window as he walked down the gravel drive, as if he was carrying away in his pocket all the entertainment of their holiday.