Books: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides

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Harold bit the hair that hung over his lip, and I guessed, what I
afterwards found to be the truth, that his stepfather was no small
trial to him; being, in fact, an unprosperous tutor and hanger-on on
some nobleman's family, finally sent out by his patrons in despair,
to keep school in Sydney.

Poor Ambrose had died of lock-jaw from a cut from an axe very soon
after his emancipation, just as his energy was getting the farm into
order, and making things look well with the family, and, after a year
or two, Alice, deceived by the man's air and manners, and hoping to
secure education for her son, had married, and the effect had been
that, while Harold was provoked into fierce insubordination, Eustace
became imbued with a tuft-hunting spirit, a great contrast to what
might have been expected from his antecedents.

I cannot tell whether I found this out the first evening, or only
gradually discovered it, with much besides. I only remember that
when at last Harold carried Dora upstairs fast asleep, and my maid
Colman and I had undressed her and put her into a little bed in a
room opening out of mine, I went to rest, feeling rejoiced that the
suspense was over and I knew the worst. I felt rather as if I had a
magnificent wild beast in the house; and yet there was a wonderful
attraction, partly from the drawing of kindred blood, and partly from
the strength and sweetness of Harold's own face, and, aunt-like, I
could not help feeling proud, of having such a grand creature
belonging to me, though there might be a little dread of what he
would do next.

In the morning all seemed like a dream, for Dora had vanished,
leaving no trace but her black bag; but while I was dressing a
tremendous cackling among my bantams caused me to look out, when I
beheld them scurrying right and left at sight of the kangaroo leaping
after the three strangers, and my cat on the top of the garden wall
on tiptoe, with arched back, bristling tail, and glassy eyes, viewing
the beast as the vengeful apotheosis of all the rats and mice she had
slaughtered in her time.

>From the stairs I heard Dora scouting her brother's orders to tidy
herself for breakfast, adding that Harry never did, to which he
merely replied, "I shall now. Come."

There was a sound of hoisting, that gave me warning rather
fortunately, for he came striding upstairs with that great well-grown
girl of eight perched on his shoulder as if she had been a baby, and
would have run me down if I had not avoided into the nook on the
landing.

All that day and the next those three were out; I never saw them but
at meals, when they came in full of eager questions and comments on
their discoveries in farming and other matters. These were the early
bright days of spring, and they were out till after dark, only
returning to eat and go to bed. I found the fascination of Harold's
presence was on all the servants and dependents, except perhaps our
bailiff Bullock, who disliked him from the first. All the others
declared that they had no doubt about staying on, now that they saw
what the young squire really was. It made a great impression on them
that, when in some farmyard arrangements there was a moment's danger
of a faggot pile falling, he put his shoulder against it and propped
the whole weight without effort. His manhood, strength, and
knowledge of work delighted them, and they declared already that he
would be a good friend to the poor.

I confess that here lay what alarmed me. He was always given to few
words, but I could see that he was shocked at the contrast between
our poor and the Australian settlers, where food and space were
plenty and the wages high. I was somewhat hurt at his way of viewing
what had always seemed to me perfection, at least all that could be
reasonably expected for the poor--our pet school, our old women, our
civil dependents in tidy cottages, our picturesque lodges; and I did
not half like his trenchant questions, which seemed to imply censure
on all that I had hitherto thought unquestionable, and perhaps I told
him somewhat impatiently that, when he had been a little longer here,
he would understand our ways and fall naturally into them.

"That's just what I don't want," he said.

"Not want?" I exclaimed.

"Yes; I want to see clearly before I get used to things."

And as, perhaps, I seemed to wonder at this way of beginning, he
opened a little, and said, "It is my father. He told me that if ever
I came here I was to mind and do his work."

"What kind of work?" I asked, anxiously.

"Doing what he meant to have done," returned Harold, "for the poor.
He said I should find out about it."

"You must have been too young to understand much of what he meant
then," I said. "Did he not regret anything?"

"Yes, he said he had begun at the wrong end, when they were not ripe
for it, and that the failure had ruined him for trying again."

"Then he did see things differently at last?" I said, hoping to find
that the sentiments I had always heard condemned had not been
perpetuated.

"Oh yes!" cried Eustace. "They were just brutes, you know, that
nobody could do any good to, and were only bent on destroying, and
had no gratitude nor sense; and that was the ruin of him and of my
father too."

"They were ignorant, and easily maddened," said Harold, gravely.
"He did not know how little they could be controlled. I must find
out the true state of things. Prometesky said I must read it up."

"Prometesky!" I cried in despair. "Oh, Harold, you have not been
influenced by that old firebrand?"

"He taught me almost all I know," was the answer, still much to my
dismay; but I showed Harold to the library, and directed him to some
old books of my father's, which I fancied might enlighten him on the
subjects on which he needed information, though I feared they might
be rather out of date; and whenever he was not out of doors, he was
reading them, sometimes running his fingers through his yellow hair,
or pulling his beard, and growling to himself when he was puzzled or
met with what he did not like. Eustace's favourite study, meanwhile,
was "Burke's Peerage," and his questions nearly drove me wild by
their absurdity; and Dora rolled on the floor with my Spitz dog, for
she loathed the doll I gave her, and made me more afraid of her than
of either of the others.

Harold was all might and gentleness; Eustace viewed me as a glass of
fashion and directory of English life and manners; but I saw they
both looked to me not only to make their home, but to tame their
little wild cat of a child; and that was enough to make her hate and
distrust me. Moreover, she had a gleam of jealousy not far from
fierce in her wild blue eyes if she saw Harold turn affectionately to
me, and she always protested sullenly against the "next week," when I
was to begin her education.

She could only read words of four letters, and could not, or would
not, work a stitch. Harold had done all her mending. On the second
day I passed by the open door of his room, and saw him at work on a
great rectangular rent in her frock. I could not help stopping to
suggest that Colman or I might save him that trouble, whereupon Dora
slammed the door in my face.

Harold opened it again at once, saying, "You ought to beg Aunt Lucy's
pardon;" and when no apology could be extracted from her, and with
thanks he handed over the little dress to me, she gave a shriek of
anger (she hardly ever shed tears) and snatched it from me again.

"Well, well," said Harold, patting her curly head; "I'll finish this
time, but not again, Dora. Next time, Aunt Lucy will be so good as
to see to it. After old Betty's eyes grew bad we had to do our own
needling."

I confess it was a wonderful performance--quite as neat as Colman
could have made it; and I suspect that Harold did not refrain from
producing needle and thread from his fat miscellaneous pocket-book,
and repairing her many disasters before they reached the domestic
eye; for there was a chronic feud between Dora and Colman, and the
attempts of the latter to make the child more like a young lady were
passionately repelled, though she would better endure those of a
rough little under-housemaid, whose civilisation was, I suppose, not
quite so far removed from her own.

On Sunday, she and Harold disappeared as soon as breakfast was over,
and only Eustace remained, spruce beyond all imagination, and giving
himself childlike credit for not being with them; but when at church
I can't say much for his behaviour. He stared unblushingly,
whispered remarks and inquiries, could not find the places in his
book, and appeared incapable of kneeling. Our little church at
Arghouse was then a chapelry, with merely Sunday morning service by a
curate from Mycening, and the congregation a village one, to the
disgust of Eustace, who had expected to review his neighbours, and
thought his get-up thrown away.

"No one at all to see," he observed with discontent over our
luncheon, Harold and Dora having returned from roaming over Kalydon
Moor.

"I go to afternoon service at Mycening, Harold," I said. "Will not
you come with me?"

"There will be somebody there?" asked Eustace; to which I replied in
the affirmative, but with some protest against his view of the
object, and inviting the others again, but Dora defiantly answered
that Harold was going to swing her on the ash tree.

"You ought to appear at church, Harry," said Eustace. "It is
expected of an English squire. You see everybody, and everybody sees
you."

"Well, then, go," said Harold.

"And won't you?" I entreated.

"I've promised to swing Dora," he answered, strolling out of the
room, much to my concern; and though Eustace did accompany me, it was
so evidently for the sake of staring that there was little comfort in
that; and it was only by very severe looks that I could keep him from
asking everyone's name. I hoped to make every one understand that he
was not the squire, but no one came across us as we went out of
church, and I had to reply to his torrent of inquiries all the way
home.

It was a wet evening, and we all stayed in the house. Harold brought
in one of his political economy studies from the library, and I tried
to wile Dora to look at the pictures in a curious big old Dutch
Scripture history, the Sunday delight of our youth.

Eustace came too, as if he wanted the amusement and yet was ashamed
to take it, when he exclaimed, "I say, Harry; isn't this the book
father used to tell us about--that they used to look over?"

Harold came, and stood towering above us with his hands in his
pockets; but when we came to the Temptation of Eve, Dora broke out
into an exclamation that excited my curiosity too much not to be
pursued, though it was hardly edifying.

"Was that such a snake as Harold killed?"

"I have killed a good many snakes," he answered.

"Yes, but I meant the ones you killed when you were a little tiny
boy."

"I don't remember," he said, as if to stop the subject, hating, as he
always did, to talk about himself.

"No, I know you don't," said Dora; "but it is quite true, isn't it,
Eustace?"

"Hardly true that Harold ever was a little tiny boy," I could not
help saying.

"No, he never was _little_," said Eustace. "But it is quite true
about the snakes. I seem to remember it now, and I've often heard my
mother and my Aunt Alice tell of it. It was at the first place where
we were in New South Wales. I came running out screaming, I believe-
-I was old enough to know the danger--and when they went in there was
Harry sitting on the floor, holding a snake tight by the neck and
enjoying its contortions like a new toy."

"Of course," said Harold, "if it were poisonous, which I doubt, the
danger would have been when I let go. My mother quietly bade me hold
him tight, which I suppose I had just sense enough to do, and in
another moment she had snatched up the bill-hook they had been
cutting wood with, and had his head off. She had the pluck."

I could but gasp with horror, and ask how old he was. About two!
That was clear to their minds from the place where it happened which
Harold could not recollect, though Eustace could.

"But, Harold, you surely are the eldest," I said.

"Oh no; I am six months the eldest," said Eustace, proud of his
advantage.

We were to hear more of that by-and-by.

Monday afternoon brought Mr. Prosser, who was closeted with Harold,
while Eustace and I devoted our faculties to pacifying Dora under her
exclusion, and preventing her from climbing up to the window-sill to
gaze into the library from without. She scorned submission to either
of us, so Eustace kept guard by lying on the grass below, and I
coaxed her by gathering primroses, sowing seeds, and using all
inducements I could think of, but my resources were nearly exhausted
when Harold's head appeared at the window, and he called, "Eustace!
Lucy! here!"

We came at once, Dora before us.

"Come in," said Harold, admitting us at the glass door. "It is all a
mistake. I am not the man. It is Eustace. Eu, I wish you joy, old
chap--"

Mr. Prosser was at the table with a great will lying spread out on
it. "I am afraid Mr. Alison is right, Miss Alison," he said. "The
property is bequeathed to the eldest of the late Mr. Alison's
grandsons born here, not specifying by which father. If I had copied
the terms of the will I might have prevented disappointment, but I
had no conception of what he tells me."

"But Ambrose was Harold's father," I exclaimed in bewilderment, "and
he was the eldest."

"The seniority was not considered as certain," said Mr. Prosser, "and
therefore the late Mr. Alison left the property to the eldest child
born at home. 'Let us at least have an English-born heir,' I
remember he said to me."

"And that is just what I am not," said Harold.

"I cannot understand! I have heard Miss Woolmer talk of poor
Ambrose's beautiful child, several months older than Eustace's, and
his name was Harold."

"Yes," said Harold, "but that one died on the voyage out, an hour or
two before I was born. He was Harold Stanislas. I have no second
name."

"And I always was the eldest," reiterated Eustace, hardly yet
understanding what it involved.

All the needful documents had been preserved and brought home. There
was the extract from the captain's log recording the burial at sea of
Harold Stanislas Alison, aged fifteen months, and the certificate of
baptism by a colonial clergyman of Harold, son of Ambrose and Alice
Alison, while Eustace was entered in the Northchester register,
having been born in lodgings, as Mr. Prosser well recollected, while
his poor young father lay under sentence of death.

It burst on him at last. "Do you mean that I have got it, and not
you?"

"That's about it," said Harold. "Never mind, Eu, it will all come to
the same thing in the end."

"You have none of it!"

"Not an acre. It all goes together; but don't look at me in that
way. There's Boola Boola, you know."

"You're not going back there to leave me?" exclaimed Eustace, with a
real sound of dismay, laying hold of his arm.

"Not just yet, at any rate," said Harold.

"No, no; nor at all," reiterated Eustace, and then, satisfied by the
absence of contradiction, which did, in fact, mean a good deal from
the silent Harold, he began to discover his own accession of dignity.
"Then it all belongs to me. I am master. I am squire--Eustace
Alison, Esquire, of Arghouse. How well it sounds. Doesn't it,
Harry, doesn't it, Lucy? Uncle Smith always said I was the one cut
out for high life. Besides, I've been presented, and have been to a
ball at Government House."

I saw that Mr. Prosser was a little overcome with amusement, and I
wanted to make my retreat and carry off Dora, but she had perched on
her favourite post--Harold's knee--and I was also needed to witness
Eustace's signatures, as well as on some matters connected with my
own property. So I stayed, and saw that he did indeed seem lost
without his cousin's help. Neither knew anything about business of
this kind, but Harold readily understood what made Eustace so
confused, that he was quite helpless without Harold's explanations,
and rather rough directions what he was to do. How like themselves
their writing was! Eustace's neat and clerkly, but weak and
illegible; and Harold's as distinct, and almost as large, as a
schoolboy's copy, but with square-turned joints and strength of limb
unlike any boy's writing.

The dressing-bell broke up the council, and Harold snatched up his
hat to rush out and stretch his legs, but I could not help detaining
him to say:

"Oh, Harry, I am so sorry!"

"Why?" he said.

"What does it leave you, Harry?"

"Half the capital stock farm, twelve thousand sheep, and a tidy sum
in the Sydney bank," said Harold readily.

"Then I am afraid we shall lose you."

"That depends. I shall set Eustace in the way of doing what our
fathers meant; and there's Prometesky--I shall not go till I have
done his business."

I hardly knew what this meant, and could not keep Harold, whose long
legs were eager for a rush in the fresh air; and the next person I
met was Eustace.

"Aunt Lucy," he said, "that old fellow says you are going away. You
can't be?"

I answered, truly enough, that I had not thought what to do, and he
persisted that I had promised to stay.

"But that was with Harry," I said.

"I don't see why you should not stay as much with me," he said.
"I'm your nephew all the same, and Dora is your niece; and she must
be made a proper sister for me, who have been, &c."

I don't know that this form of invitation was exactly the thing that
would have kept me; but I had a general feeling that to leave these
young men and my old home would be utter banishment, that there was
nothing I so cared for as seeing how they got on, and that it was
worth anything to me to be wanted anywhere and by anyone; so I gave
Eustace to understand that I meant to stay. I rather wished Harold
to have pressed me; but I believe the dear good fellow honestly
thought everyone must prefer Eustace to himself; and it was good to
see the pat he gave his cousin's shoulder when that young gentleman,
nothing loath, exultingly settled down in the master's place.

Before long I found out what Harold meant about Prometesky's
business; for we had scarcely begun dinner before he began to consult
Mr. Prosser about the ways and means of obtaining a pardon for
Prometesky. This considerably startled Mr. Prosser. Some cabinets,
he said, were very lenient to past political offences, but Prometesky
seemed to him to have exceeded all bounds of mercy.

"You never knew the true facts, then?" said Harold.

"I know the facts that satisfied the jury."

"You never saw my father's statement?"

No, Mr. Prosser had been elsewhere, and had not been employed in my
brother's trial; he had only inherited the connection with our family
affairs when the matter had passed into comparative oblivion.

My brothers had never ceased to affirm that he had only started for
the farm that had been Lewthwayte's on hearing that an attack was to
be made on it, in hopes of preventing it, and that the witness, borne
against him on the trial by a fellow who had turned king's evidence,
had been false; but they had been unheeded, or rather Prometesky was
regarded as the most truly mischievous of all, as perhaps he really
had been, since he had certainly drawn them into the affair, and his
life had barely been saved in consideration of his having rescued a
child from the fire at great personal peril.

Ambrose had written again and again about him to my father, but as
soon as the name occurred the letter had been torn up. On their
liberation from actual servitude they had sent up their statement to
the Government of New South Wales; but in the meantime Prometesky had
fared much worse than they had. They had been placed in hands where
their education, superiority, and good conduct had gained them trust
and respect, and they had quickly obtained a remission of the severer
part of their sentence and become their own masters; indeed, if
Ambrose had lived, he would soon have risen to eminence in the
colony. But Prometesky had fallen to the lot of a harsh, rude
master, who hated him as a foreigner, and treated him in a manner
that roused the proud spirit of the noble. The master had sworn that
the convict had threatened his life, and years of working in chains
on the roads had been the consequence.

It was no time for entertaining a petition on his account, and before
the expiration of this additional sentence Ambrose was dead.

By that time Eustace, now a rich and prosperous man, would gladly
have taken his old tutor to his home, but Prometesky was still too
proud, and all that he would do was to build a little hut under a
rock on the Boola Boola grounds, where he lived upon the proceeds of
such joiner's and watchmaker's work as was needed by the settlers on
a large area, when things were much rougher than even when my nephews
came home. No one cared for education enough to make his gifts
available in that direction, except as concerned Harold, who had, in
fact, learnt of him almost all he knew in an irregular, voluntary
sort of fashion, and who loved him heartily.

His health was failing now, and to bring him home was one of Harold's
prime objects, since London advice might yet restore him. Harold had
made one attempt in his cause at Sydney, sending in a copy of his
father's dying statement, also signed by his uncle; but though he was
told that it had been received, he had no encouragement to hope it
would be forwarded, and had been told that to apply direct to the
Secretary of State, backed by persons from our own neighbourhood,
would be the best chance, and on this he consulted Mr. Prosser, but
without meeting much sympathy. Mr. Prosser said many people's minds
had changed with regard to English or Irish demagogues, and that the
Alison Brothers themselves might very probably have been pardoned,
but everyone was tired of Poles, and popular tradition viewed
Prometesky as the ogre of the past. Mr. Prosser did not seem as if
he would even very willingly assist in the drawing up in due form a
petition in the Pole's favour, and declared that without some
influential person to introduce it, it would be perfectly useless.

Eustace turned round with, "There, you see, Harold, nothing can be
done."

"I do not see that," said Harold, in his quiet way.

"You do not mean to do anything?"

"Yes, I do."

"But what--what? What can you do?"

"I do not yet know."

"You see it is of no use. We shall only get into a scrape with all
the gentlemen of the county."

"Never mind now, Eustace," said Harold, briefly. But I knew the
expression of his face by this time quite well enough to be certain
that nothing would make him abandon the cause of his father's old
friend; and that his silence was full of the strongest determination.
I think it fascinated me, and though in my cooler senses I reverted
to my old notion of Prometesky as a dangerous firebrand, I could not
help feeling for and with the youth whose soul was set on delivering
his friend from exile.

My turn came the next morning, before Mr. Prosser went away. He had
much to say against my making Arghouse my home, telling me that I had
a full independence and could live where I pleased; but that I knew
already, and had decided on the amount I ought to pay towards the
housekeeping.

Then he wanted me to understand how the young men were looked upon,
and the dread all the neighbourhood had of them. I said I had shared
this dread, but on better acquaintance I found it quite undeserved,
and this being the case it was incumbent on their only relation to
stand by them, and not shun them as if they had brought the leprosy.

This he allowed, calling it a generous feeling, if they were worthy
of it. But what greatly amazed me was his rejoicing that Eustace had
proved to be the heir, since nothing was known against him, and when
the other young man was gone there was hope that any little distrusts
might be allayed, and that he might ultimately take his place in the
county.

The other young man! Why should there be any distrust of Harold? I
grew hot and indignant, and insisted on knowing what was meant; but
Mr. Prosser declared that he knew nothing, only there were vague
reports which made him rejoice that Mr. Harold Alison was not called
to be the manager of the property, and would make him question
whether a young lady would find it expedient to be long an inmate of
the same house.

What reports could he mean? No--I could get no more out of him; he
was too cautious to commit himself, and seemed to be satisfied by
observing that if I changed my mind, I could at any time leave my
nephews.

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