Books: Magnum Bonum

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This Etext was prepared by Sandra Laythorpe, laythorpe@tiscali.co.uk,
from the 1882 edition. A web page about Charlotte M Yonge may be
found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm.

Magnum Bonum

or

Mother Carey's Brood

by

Charlotte M Yonge

CONTENTS.

I. JOE BROWNLOW'S FANCY

II. THE CHICKENS

III. THE WHITE SLATE

IV. THE STRAY CHICKENS

V. BRAINS AND NO BRAINS

VI. ENCHANTED GROUND

VII. THE COLONEL'S CHICKENS

VIII. THE FOLLY

IX. FLIGHTS

X. ELLEN'S MAGNUM BONUMS

XI. UNDINE

XII. KING MIDAS

XIII. THE RIVAL HEIRESSES

XIV. PUMPING AWAY

XV. THE BELFOREST MAGNUM BONUM

XVI. POSSESSION

XVII. POPINJAY PARLOUR

XVIII. AN OFFER FOR MAGNUM BONUM

XIX. THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET

XX. A RACE

XXI. AN ACT OF INDEPENDENCE

XXII. SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR

XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE

XXIV. THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN

XXV. THE LAND OF AFTERNOON

XXVI. MOONSHINE

XXVII. BLUEBEARD'S CLOSET

XXVIII. THE TURN OF THE WHEEL

XXIX. FRIENDS AND UNFRIENDS

XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING

XXXI. SLACK TIDE

XXXII. THE COST

XXXIII. BITTER FAREWELLS

XXXIV. BLIGHTED BEINGS

XXXV. THE PHANTOM BLACKCOCK OF KILNAUGHT

XXXVI. OF NO CONSEQUENCE

XXXVII. THE TRAVELLER'S JOY

XXXVIII. THE TRUST FULFILLED

XXXIX. THE TRUANT

XL. EVIL OUT OF GOOD

XLI. GOOD OUT OF EVIL

XLII. DISENCHANTED

MAGNUM BONUM;

OR,

MOTHER CAREY'S BROOD.

CHAPTER I. JOE BROWNLOW'S FANCY.

The lady said, "An orphan's fate
Is sad and hard to bear."—-Scott.

"Mother, you could do a great kindness."

"Well, Joe?"

"If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath's here for
the holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and
worst, and they don't know what to do with her, for she came from the
asylum for officers' daughters, and has no home at all, and they must
go away to have the house purified. They can't take her with them,
for their sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to
room before the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the
critical state of chest left by measles."

"What is her name?"

"Allen. The cry was always for Miss Allen when the sick girls wanted
to be amused."

"Allen! I wonder if it can be the same child as the one Robert was
interested about. You don't remember, my dear. It was the year you
were at Vienna, when one of Robert's brother-officers died on the
voyage out to China, and he sent home urgent letters for me to
canvass right and left for the orphan's election. You know Robert
writes much better than he speaks, and I copied over and over again
his account of the poor young man to go with the cards. 'Caroline
Otway Allen, aged seven years, whole orphan, daughter of Captain
Allen, l07th Regiment;' yes, that's the way it ran."

"The year I was at Vienna, and Robert went out to China. That was
eleven years ago. She must be the very child, for she is only
eighteen. They sent her to Miss Heath's to grow a little older, for
though she was at the head of everything at the asylum, she looks so
childish that they can't send her out as a governess. Did you see
her, mother?"

"Oh, no! I never had anything to do with her; but if she is daughter
to a friend of Robert's—-"

Mother and son looked at each other in congratulation. Robert was
the stepson, older by several years, and was viewed as the
representative of sober common sense in the family. Joe and his
mother did like to feel a plan quite free from Robert's condemnation
for enthusiasm or impracticability, and it was not the worse for his
influence, that he had been generally with his regiment, and when
visiting them was a good deal at the United Service Club. He had
lately married an heiress in a small way, retired from the army, and
settled in a house of hers in a country town, and thus he could give
his dicta with added weight.

Only a parent or elder brother would, however, have looked on "Joe"
as a youth, for he was some years over thirty, with a mingled air of
keenness, refinement, and alacrity about his slight but active form,
altogether with the air of some implement, not meant for ornament but
for use, and yet absolutely beautiful, through perfection of polish,
finish, applicability, and a sharpness never meant to wound, but
deserving to be cherished in a velvet case.

This case might be the pretty drawing-room, full of the choice
artistic curiosities of a man of cultivation, and presided over by
his mother, a woman of much the same bright, keen, alert sweetness of
air and countenance: still under sixty, and in perfect health and
spirits—-as well she might be, having preserved, as well as deserved,
the exclusive devotion of her only child during all the years in
which her early widowhood had made them all in all to each other.
Ten years ago, on his election to a lectureship at one of the London
hospitals, the son had set up his name on the brass plate of the door
of a comfortable house in a once fashionable quarter of London; she
had joined him there, and they had been as happy as affection and
fair success could make them. He became lecturer at a hospital, did
much for the poor, both within and without its walls, and had besides
a fair practice, both among the tradespeople, and also among the
literary, scientific, and artistic world, where their society was
valued as much as his skill. Mrs. Brownlow was well used to being
called on to do the many services suggested by a kind heart in the
course of a medical man's practice, and there was very little within,
or beyond, reason that she would not have done at her Joe's bidding.
So she made the arrangement, exciting much gratitude in the heads of
the Pomfret House Establishment for Young Ladies; though without
seeing little Miss Allen, till, from the Doctor's own brougham, but
escorted only by an elderly maid-servant, there came climbing up the
stairs a little heap of shawls and cloaks, surmounted by a big brown
mushroom hat.

"Very proper of Joe. He can't be too particular,—-but such a child!"
thought Mrs. Brownlow as the mufflings disclosed a tiny creature,
angular in girlish sort, with an odd little narrow wedge of a face,
sallow and wan, rather too much of teeth and mouth, large greenish-
hazel eyes, and a forehead with a look of expansion, partly due to
the crisp waves of dark hair being as short as a boy's. The nose was
well cut, and each delicate nostril was quivering involuntarily with
emotion—-or fright, or both.

Mrs. Brownlow kissed her, made her rest on the sofa, and talked to
her, the shy monosyllabic replies lengthening every time as the
motherliness drew forth a response, until, when conducted to the
cheerful little room which Mrs. Brownlow had carefully decked with
little comforts for the convalescent, and with the ornaments likely
to please a girl's eye, she suddenly broke into a little
irrepressible cry of joy and delight. "Oh! oh! how lovely! Am I to
sleep here? Oh! it is just like the girls' rooms I always _did_ long
to see! Now I shall always be able to think about it."

"My poor child, did you never even see such a room ?"

"No; I slept in the attic with the maid at old Aunt Mary's, and
always in a cubicle after I went to the asylum. Some of the girls
who went home in the holidays used to describe such rooms to us, but
they could never have been so nice as this! Oh! oh! Mrs. Brownlow,
real lilies of the valley! Put there for me! Oh! you dear,
delicious, pearly things! I never saw one so close before!"

"Never before." That was the burthen of the song of the little bird
with wounded wing who had been received into this nest. She had the
dimmest remembrance of home or mother, something a little clearer of
her sojourn at her aunt's, though there the aunt had been an invalid
who kept her in restraint in her presence, and her pleasures had been
in the kitchen and in a few books, probably 'Don Quixote' and
'Evelina,' so far as could be gathered from her recollection of them.
The week her father had spent with her, before his last voyage, had
been the one vivid memory of her life, and had taught her at least
how to love. Poor child, that happy week had had to serve her ever
since, through eleven years of unbroken school! Not that she pitied
herself. Everybody had been kind to her-—governesses, masters,
girls, and all. She had been happy and successful, and had made
numerous friends, about whom, as she grew more at home, she freely
chatted to Mrs. Brownlow, who was always ready to hear of Mary
Ogilvie and Clara Cartwright, and liked to draw out the stories of
the girl-world, in which it was plain that Caroline Allen had been a
bright, good, clever girl, getting on well, trusted and liked. She
had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go on
to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss
Heath's lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum's
senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and
the ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained.
But still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow's lap, that
she had always craved for something-—something, and she had found it
now!

Everything was a fresh joy to her, every print on the walls, every
ornament on the brackets, seemed to speak to her eye and to her soul
both at once, and the sense of comfort and beauty and home, after the
bareness of school, seemed to charm her above all. "I always did
want to know what was inside people's windows," she said.

And in the same way it was a feast to her to get hold of "a real
book," as she called it, not only the beginnings of everything, and
selections that always broke off just as she began to care about
them. She had been thoroughly well grounded, and had a thirst for
knowledge too real to have been stifled by the routine she had gone
through-—though, said she, "I do want time to get on further, and to
learn what won't be of any use!"

"Of no use!" said Mr. Brownlow laughing—-having just found her trying
to make out the Old English of King Alfred's 'Boethius'-—"such as
this?"

"Just so! They always are turning me off with 'This won't be of any
use to you.' I hate use—-"

"Like Ridley, who says he reads a book with double pleasure if he is
not going to review it."

"That Mr. Ridley who came in last evening?"

"Even so. Why that opening of eyes?"

"I thought a critic was a most formidable person."

"You expected to see a mess of salt and vinegar prepared for his
diet?"

"I should prepare something quite different—-milk and sweetbreads,
I think."

"To soften him? Do you hear, mother? Take advice."

Caroline-—or Carey, as she had begged to be called-—blushed, and drew
back half-alarmed, as she always was when the Doctor caught up any of
the little bits of fun that fell so shyly and demurely from her, as
they were evoked by the more congenial atmosphere.

It was a great pleasure to him and to his mother to show her some of
the many things she had never seen, watch her enjoyment, and elicit
whether the reality agreed with her previous imaginations. Mr.
Brownlow used to make time to take the two ladies out, or to drop in
on them at some exhibition, checking the flow of half-droll, half-
intelligent remarks for a moment, and then encouraging it again,
while both enjoyed that most amusing thing, the fresh simplicity of a
grown-up, clever child.

"How will you ever bear to go back again?" said Carey's school-
friend, Clara Cartwright, now a governess, whom Mrs. Brownlow had,
with some suppressed growls from her son, invited to share their one
day's country-outing under the horse-chestnut trees of Richmond.

"Oh! I shall have it all to take back with me," was the answer, as
Carey toyed with the burnished celandine stars in her lap.

"I should never dare to think of it! I should dread the contrast!"

"Oh no!" said Carey. "It is like a blind person who has once seen,
you know. It will be always warm about my heart to know there are
such people."

Mrs. Brownlow happened to overhear this little colloquy while her son
was gone to look for the carriage, and there was something in the
bright unrepining tone that filled her eyes with tears, more
especially as the little creature still looked very fragile-—even at
the end of a month. She was so tired out with her day of almost
rapturous enjoyment that Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down
stairs again, but made her go at once to bed, in spite of a feeble
protest against losing one evening.

"And I am afraid that is a recall," said Mrs. Brownlow, seeing a
letter directed to Miss Allen on the side-table. "I will not give it
to her to-night, poor little dear; I really don't know how to send
her back."

"Exactly what I was thinking," said the Doctor, leaning over the
fire, which he was vigorously stirring.

"You don't think her strong enough? If so, I am very glad," said the
mother, in a delighted voice. "Eh, Joe?" as there was a pause; and
as he replaced the poker, he looked up to her with a colour scarcely
to be accounted for by the fire, and she ended in an odd, startled,
yet not displeased tone, "It is that-—is it?"

"Yes, mother, it is that," said Joe, laughing a little, in his relief
that the plunge was made. "I don't see that we could do better for
your happiness or mine."

"Don't put mine first" (half-crying).

"I didn't know I did. It all comes to the same thing."

"My dear Joe, I only wish you could do it to-morrow, and have no fuss
about it! What will Robert do?"

"Accept the provision for his friend's daughter," said Joe, gravely;
and then they both burst out laughing. In the midst came the
announcement of dinner, during which meal they refrained themselves,
and tried to discuss other things, though not so successfully but
that it was reported in the kitchen that something was up.

Joseph was just old enough for his mother, who had always dreaded his
marriage, to have begun to wish for it, though she had never yet seen
her ideal daughter-in-law, and the enforced silence during the meal
only made her more eager, so that she began at once as soon as they
were alone.

"When did you begin to think of this, Joe?"

"Not when I asked you to invite her-—that would have been
treacherous. No, but when I began to realise what it would be to
send her back to her treadmill; though the beauty of it is that she
never seems to realise that it is a treadmill."

"She might now, though I tried so hard not to spoil her. It is that
content with such a life which makes me think that in her you may
have something more worth than the portion, which-—which I suppose I
ought to regret and say you will miss."

"I shall get all that plentifully from Robert, mother."

"I am afraid it does entail harder work on you, and later on in life,
than if you had chosen a person with something of her own."

"Something of her own? Her own, indeed! Mother, she has that of her
own which is the very thing to help and inspire me to make a name,
and work out an idea, worth far more than any pounds, shillings, and
pence, or even houses or lands I might get with a serene and solemn
dame, even with clear notions as to those same L. s. d.!"

"For shame, Joe! You may be as much in love as you please, but don't
be wicked."

For this description was applicable to the bride whom Robert had
presented to them about a year ago, on retiring with a Colonel's
rank.

"So I may be as much in love as I please? Thank you. I always knew
you were the very best mother in the world:" and he came and kissed
her.

"I wonder what she will say, the dear child!"

"May be that she has no taste for such an old fellow. Hush, mother.
Seriously, my chief scruple is whether it be fair to ask a girl to
marry a man twice her age, when she has absolutely seen nothing of
his kind but the German master!"

"Trust her," said Mrs. Brownlow. "Nay, she never could have a freer
choice than now, when she is too young and simple to be weighted with
a sense of being looked down on. It is possible that she may be
startled at first, but I think it will be only at life opening on
her; so don't be daunted, and imagine it is your old age and
infirmity," said the mother, smoothing back the locks which certainly
were not the clustering curls of youth.

How the mother watched all the next morning, while the unconscious
Carey first marvelled at her nervousness and silence, and then grew
almost infected by it. It was very strange, she thought, that Mrs.
Brownlow, always so kind, should say nothing but "humph" on being
told that Miss Heath's workmen had finished, and that she must return
next Monday morning. It was the Doctor's day to be early at the
hospital, and he had had a summons to see some one on the way, so
that he was gone before breakfast, when Carey's attempts to discuss
her happy day in the country met with such odd, fitful answers; for,
in fact, Mrs. Brownlow could not trust herself to talk, and had no
sooner done breakfast than she went off to her housekeeping affairs
and others, which she managed unusually to prolong.

Carey was trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her-—a little
purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown
tuft of quaking grass. He came and stood behind her, saying—-

"You've got the character of those."

"They are very difficult," sighed Carey; "I never tried flowers
before, but I wanted to take them with me."

"To take them with you?" he repeated, rather dreamily.

"Yes, back to another sort of Heath," she said, with a little laugh;
"don't you know I go next Monday?"

"If you go, I hope it will only be to come back."

"Oh! if Mrs. Brownlow is so good as to let me come again in the
holidays!" and she was all one flush of joy, looking round, and up in
his face, to see whether it could be true.

"Not only for holidays-—for work days," he said, and his voice shook.

"But Mrs. Brownlow can't want a companion?"

"But I do. Caroline, will you come back to us to make home doubly
sweet to a busy man, who will do his best to make you happy?"

The little creature looked up in his face bewildered, and then said
shyly, the colour surging into her face—-

"Please, what did you say?"

"I asked if you would stay with us, and make this place bright for
us, as my wife," he said, taking both the little brown hands into his
own, and looking into the widely-opened wondering eyes; while she
answered, "if I may,"-—the very words, almost the very tone, in which
she had replied to his invitation to come to recover at his house.

"Ah, my poor child, you have no one's leave to ask!" he said; "you
belong to us, only to us,"—-and he drew her into his arms, and kissed
her.

Then he felt and heard a great sob, and there were two tears on her
cheek when he could see her face, but she smiled with happy,
quivering lip, and said—-

"It was like when papa kissed me before he went away; he would be so
glad."

In the midst of the caress that answered this, a bell sounded, and in
the certainty that the announcement of luncheon would instantly
follow, they started apart.

Two seconds later they met Mrs. Brownlow on the landing—-

"There, mother," said the Doctor.

"My child!" and Carey was in her arms.

"Oh, may I?-—Is it real?" said the girl in a stifled voice.

After that, they took it very quietly. Carey was so young and
ignorant of the world that she was not nearly so much overpowered as
if she had had the slightest external knowledge either of married
life, or of the exceptional thing the doctor was doing. Her mother
had died when she was three years old, and she had never since that
time lived with wedded folk, while even her companions at school
being all fatherless, she had gathered nothing of even second-hand
experience from them. All she knew was from books, which had given
glimpses into happy homes; and though she had feasted on a few novels
during this happy month, they had been very select, and chiefly
historical romance. She was at the age when nothing is impossible to
youthful dreams, and if Tancredi had come out of the Gerusalemme and
thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have felt it more
strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind doctor into
her own Joe: and on the other hand, she had from the first moment
nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more
unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it. As to
her being an extraordinary and very disadvantageous choice for him,
she simply knew nothing of the matter; she was used to passiveness as
to her own destiny, and now that she did indeed "belong to somebody"
she let those somebodies think and decide for her with the one
certainty that what Mr. Brownlow and his mother liked was sure to be
the truly right and happy thing.

So, instead of being alarmed and scrupulous, she was sweetly, shyly,
and yet confidingly gay and affectionate, enchanting both her
companions, but revealing by her naive questions and remarks such
utter ignorance of all matters of common life that Mrs. Brownlow had
no scruples in not stirring the question, that had never occurred to
her son or his little betrothed, namely, her own retirement.
Caroline needed a mother far too much for her to be spared.

What was to be done about Miss Heath? It was due to her for Miss
Allen to offer to return till her place could be supplied, Mrs.
Brownlow said—-but that was only to tease the lovers—-for a quarter,
at which Joe made a snarling howl, whereat Carey ventured to laugh at
him, and say she should come home for every Sunday, as Miss
Pinniwinks, the senior governess, did.

"Come home,-—it is enough to say that," she added.

Mrs. Brownlow undertook to negotiate the matter, her son saying
privately—-

"Get her off, if you have to advance a quarter. I'd rather do
anything than send her back for even a week, to have all manner of
nonsense put into her head. I'd sooner go and teach there myself."

"Or send me?" asked his mother.

"Anything short of that," he said.

Miss Heath, as Mrs. Brownlow had guessed, thought an engaged girl as
bad as a barrel of gunpowder, and was quite as much afraid of Miss
Allen putting nonsense into her pupils' heads as the doctor could be
of the reverse process: so, young teachers not being scarce, Carey's
brief connection with Miss Heath was brought to an end in a morning
call, whence she returned endowed with thirteen book-markers, five
mats, and a sachet.

Carey had of her own, as it appeared, twenty-five pounds a year,
which had hitherto clothed her, and of which she only knew that it
was paid to her quarterly by a lawyer at Bath, whose address she
gave. Mr. Brownlow followed up the clue, but could not learn much
about her belongings. The twenty-five pounds was the interest of the
small sum, which had remained to poor Captain Allen, when he wound up
his affairs, after paying the debts in which his early and imprudent
marriage had involved him. He did not seem to have had any
relations, and of his wife nothing was known but that she was a Miss
Otway, and that he had met her in some colonial quarters. The old
lady, with whom the little girl had been left, was her mother's
maternal aunt, and had lived on an annuity so small that on her death
there had not been funds sufficient to pay expenses without a sale of
all her effects, so that nothing had been saved for the child, except
a few books with her parents' names in them—-John Allen and Caroline
Otway—-which she still kept as her chief treasures. The lawyer, who
had acted as her guardian, would hand over to her five hundred pounds
on her coming of age.

That was all that could be discovered, nor was Colonel Robert
Brownlow as much flattered as had been hoped by the provision for his
friend's daughter. Nay, he was inclined to disavow the friendship.
He was sorry for poor Allen, he said, but as to making a friend of
such a fellow, pah! No! there was no harm in him, he was a good
officer enough, but he never had a grain of common sense; and whereas
he never could keep out of debt, he must needs go and marry a young
girl, just because he thought her uncle was not kind to her. It was
the worst thing he could have done, for it made her uncle cast her
off on the spot, and then she was killed with harass and poverty. He
never held up his head again after losing her, and just died of fever
because he was too broken down to have energy to live. There was
enough in this to weave out a tender little romance, probably really
another aspect of the truth, which made Caroline's bright eyes
overflow with tears, when she heard it couched in tenderer language
from Joseph, and the few books and treasures that had been rescued
agreed with it-—a Bible with her father's name, a few devotional
books of her mother's, and Mrs. Hemans's poems with "To Lina, from
her devoted J. A."

Caroline would fain have been called Lina, but the name did not fit
her, and would not _take_.

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