Books: Modern Broods

C >> Charlotte Mary Yonge >> Modern Broods

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

"Petting her! spoiling her!" scoffed the Captain. "Why, Susan and
Bessie were full of the contrast with your little girl."

"Health," began Phyllis.

"An Indian child too!" he went on. "Just showing what a little good
sense in the training can do! No, indeed! Since I am to be her
guardian, I have no notion of swerving from my duty, and letting poor
Hal's child be bred up to Sisterhoods and all that flummery."

"It will just break Angela's heart," cried Valetta, with tears in her
eyes, at which the Captain looked contemptuous.

"I must say," added Bernard, "that I should think it little short of
murderous to take that unlucky child from the one woman who
understands her up into the bleak north at this time of year."

"Decidedly!" added Sir Jasper. "Miss Underwood deserves every
consideration in dealing with the child who has been always her sole
charge."

Wherewith he changed the conversation by a question about Stokesley;
but he held to his dictum when alone with his nephew, and as he was
the only person for whose opinion Captain Sam had any respect, it had
its effect, though there was a sense that he might be biassed by his
son-in-law and his herd of womanfolk, and that he did not partake
Mrs. Samuel Merrifield's dislike to the very name of Sister or of
anything not commonplace.

Angela obtained Dr. Dagger's opinion to reinforce her own and Lady
Merrifield's, and the Captain was obliged to give way so far as to
consent to Magdalen, as he insisted on calling her, being allowed to
remain at Arnscombe till after Easter, when her aunts were to fetch
her to Coalham, there to send her to the kindergarten.

After Angela's period of raging against law and lawyers and all the
Stokesley family, and being on the verge of impertinence to Captain
Merrifield, she submitted to the prospect more quietly than her
friends had dared to hope. Lance had almost expected her to deport
her charge, parrot and all, suddenly and secretly by an Australian
liner, and had advised Bernard, on a fleeting meeting at Bexley, to
be on his guard if she hinted at anything so preposterous; but
Bernard shook his head, and said Angel was more to be trusted than
her elders thought. "Waves and storms don't go over us for nothing,
I hope," he said.

And he found himself right on his return. Angela had bowed her head
to the inevitable, and was quietly trying to prepare her little
charge for the change, accustoming her to more discipline and less
petting. When Angela proposed to walk over to Clipstone with her
brother on his return, and the whine was set up, "Let me go, Sister,"
it was answered, "No, my dear, it is too far for you. You must stay
and walk with Paula."

"I want to go with Sister."

"You must be a good child, and do as Sister tells you. No, I can't
have any fretting. Paula will show you how to drive your hoop. Keep
her moving fast, Paula, don't let her fret and get cold."

And Angela actually detached the clinging hand, and put it into
Paulina's, and, holding up her finger, silenced the burst of weeping,
though tears sprang to her own eyes as she resolutely turned away,
and, after running out and shutting the back gate after her, put her
arm with a clinging gesture into Bernard's.

"That's right!" he said, pressing her hand.

"Cruel," she said, "but better by and by for her. Oh, Bear, if one
could but learn to lie still and say, 'Thou didst it,' when it is
human agency that takes away the desire of one's eyes with a stroke."

"The desire of thine eyes!" repeated Bernard. "How often I thought
of that last February."

It was the only time he had referred to the loss of his little boy.
His wife had told her mother that he could not bear to mention it,
and had poured out all her own feelings of sorrow and her struggle
for cheerfulness and resignation alone with her or with Mysie; but he
had shrunk from the least allusion to the little two year old Felix,
who slept beneath a palm tree at Colombo.

Now, however, still holding his sister's hand, he drifted into all
the particulars of the little ways, the baby language, the dawning
understanding, and the very sudden sharp illness carrying the
beautiful boy away almost before they were aware of danger; and he
took out the photograph from his breast, and showed her the little
face, so recalling old fond remembrances. "Forbear to cry, make no
mourning for the dead," he repeated. "Yes, the boy is saved the wear
and tear and heat and burthen of the day, but it is very hard to be
thankful."

"Ah, and it is all the harder if you have to leave your Lily."

"If--yes; but Travis MAY so arrange that we can stay, or I make only
one voyage out to settle matters and then come home for good. If you
are still bent on Carrigaboola you might come as far as Frisco with
me. I may have to go there about the Californian affairs."

"That would be jolly. Yes, I think it will clench the matter, for I
believe I am of more good at Carriga than anywhere else, though the
heart of it is taken out of it for me; but one lives on and gets on
somehow without a heart, or a heart set where I suppose it ought not
to be entirely at least! And, indeed, I think that little one taught
me better than ever before how to love."

"That's what the creatures are sent us for," said Bernard, in a low
voice. "And here are, looming in the distance, all the posse of
girls to meet us."

"Ah-h!" breathed Angela, withdrawing her arm. "Well, Bear, you have
given me something to look forward to, whether it comes to anything
or not. It will help me to be thankful. I know they are good
people, and the child will do well when once the pining and bracing
are over. They are her own people, and it is right."

"Right you are, Angel!" said Bernard, with a fresh squeeze of the
hand, as he resumed his own cheerful, resolute voice ere joining his
sisters-in-law.

"What! Angela without her satellite!" cried Primrose.

"Too far," murmured Angela; but Mysie tried to hush her sister,
perceiving the weaning process, and respecting Angela for it.

And the next moment Angela was challenging Bernard to a game at golf.

CHAPTER XXV--BEAR AS ADVISER

"Weary soul and burthened sore
Labouring with thy secret load."
- KEBLE.

The early spring brought a new development. Thekla, who attended
classes at the High School, came home with unmistakable tokens of
measles, and Primrose did the same, in common with most of their
contemporaries at Rockstone. Nor was there any chance that either
Lily Underwood at Clipstone or Lena Merrifield at the Goyle would
escape; indeed, they both showed an amount of discomfort that made it
safer to keep them where they were, than to try to escape in the
sharp east wind and frost.

No one was much dismayed at what all regarded as a trifling ailment,
even if dignified as German. Angela owned that she regarded it as a
relief, since infection might last till the summer, and the only
person who was--as he owned--trying to laugh at himself with Angela,
was Bernard, who could not keep out of his mind's eye a little grave
at Colombo. As he walked home, at the turning he saw a figure
wearily toiling upwards, which proved to be Wilfred. "Holloa! you
are at home early!"

"I had an intolerable headache!"

"Measles, eh?"

"No such thing! Once when I was a kid in Malta. But I say, Bear,"
he added, coming up with quickened pace, "you could do me no end of a
favour if you would advance me twenty pounds."

"Whew!" Bernard whistled.

"There is Lady Day coming, and I can pay you then--most assuredly."
And an asseveration or two was beginning.

"Twenty pounds don't fly promiscuously about the country," muttered
Bernard, chiefly for the sake of giving himself time.

"But I tell you I shall have a quarter from the works, and a quarter
from my father (with his hand to his head). That's--that's--. Awful
skinflints both of them! How is a man to do, so cramped up as that?"

"Oh! and how is a man to do if he spends it all beforehand?"

"I tell you, Bernard, I must have it, or--or it will break my
mother's heart! And as to my father, I'd--I'd cut my throat--I'd go
to sea before he knew! Advance it to me, Bear! You know what it is
to be in an awful scrape. Get me through this once and I'll never--"

Bernard did not observe that the scrape of his boyhood over the
drowned Stingo had hardly been of the magnitude that besought for
twenty pounds. He waived the personal appeal, and asked, "What is
the scrape?"

"Why, that intolerable swindler and ruffian, Hart, deceived me about
Racket, and--"

"A horse at Avoncester?" said Bernard, light beginning to dawn on
him.

"I made sure it was the only way out of it all, and they said Racket
was as sure as death, and now the brute has come in third. Hart
swears there was foul play, but what's that to me? I'm done for
unless you will help me over."

"If it is a betting debt, the only safe way is to have it out with
your father, and have done with it."

"You don't know what my father is! Just made of iron. You might as
well put your hand under a Nasmyth's hammer." And as he saw that his
hearer was unconvinced, "Besides, it is ever so much more than what I
put upon Racket! That was only the way out of it! It is all up with
me if he hears of it. You might as well pitch me over the cliff at
once!"

"Well, what is it then?"

Incoherently, Wilfred stammered out what Bernard understood at last
to mean that he had got into the habit of betting at the billiard
table, surreptitiously kept up in Ivinghoe Terrace in a house of
Richard White's, not for any excessive sums, and with luck at first
on his side than otherwise; but at last he had become involved for a
sum not in itself very terrible to elder years, and his creditor was
in great dread of pressure from his employers, and insisted on
payment. Wilfred, who seemed to have a mortal terror of his father,
beyond what Bernard could understand, had been unable to believe that
the offence for so slight a sum might be forgiven if voluntarily
confessed, had done the worst thing he could, he had paid the debt
with a cheque which had, unfortunately, passed through his hands at
the office, trusting in a few days to recover the amount by a bet
upon the horse, in full security of success! And now!

Before the predicament was made clear, Wilfred reeled, and would have
fallen if Bernard had not supported him, and he mumbled something
about giddiness and dazzling, insisting at the same time that it was
nothing but the miserable pickle, and that if Bernard would not see
him out of it, he might as well let him lie there and have done with
it.

Happily they were in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, and it
was possible to get him into the hall before he entirely collapsed
upon a chair; but seeming to recover fresh vigour from alarm at the
sound of voices, he rushed at the stairs and dashed up rapidly the
two flights to his own room, only throwing back the words, "Dead
secret, mind!"

Bernard was glad to have made no promise, and, indeed, Wilfred's
physical condition chiefly occupied him at the moment, for one or two
of the girls were hurrying in, asking what was the matter, and at the
answer, "He is gone up to his room with a bad headache," Valetta
declared with satisfaction, "Then he has got it! We told him so!
But he would go to the office! and, Bernard, so has Lily."

"Pleasing information!" said Bernard, nettled and amused at the tone
of triumph, while Mysie, throwing behind her the words, "It may be
nothing," went off to call Mrs. Halfpenny, who was in a state of
importance and something very like pleasure. Bernard strode up to
his wife's room, leaving Valetta half-way in her exposition that when
all the family had been laid low by measles at Malta, Wilfred had
been a very young infant, and it had always been doubtful whether he
had been franked or not; and how he had been reproached with looking
ill in the morning, but had fiercely insisted on going down to the
office, which he was usually glad to avoid on any excuse.

By the time the household met at dinner, it was plain that they had
to resign themselves to being an infected family, though there were
not many probable victims, and they were likely only to have the
disorder favourably, with the exception of Wilfred, who had evidently
got a severe chill, and could only be reported as very ill, though
still he vehemently resented any suspicion of being subject to such a
babyish complaint. But when the break up for the night was just
over, Lady Merrifield came in search of Bernard, entreating him to
come to speak to Wilfred, who was more and more feverish, almost
light-headed, and insisting that he must speak to Bear, "Bear had not
promised," reiterating the summons, so that there was no choice but
to comply with it.

He found Wilfred flushed with fever, and violently restless, starting
up in bed as he entered, and crying out, "Bear, Bear, will you? will
you? You did not promise!"

"I will see about it! Lie down now! There's nothing to be done to-
night."

"But promise! promise! And not a word!"

All this was reiterated till Wilfred at last was exhausted for the
time, and to a certain degree pacified by the reassuring voice in
which Bernard soothed him and undertook to take the matter in hand,
hardly knowing what he undertook, and only feeling the necessity of
quieting the perilous excitement, and of helping the mother to bring
a certain amount of tranquillity.

His own little girl was going on well, and quite capable of being
amused in the morning by being compared to a lobster or a tiger lily;
and Primrose was reported in an equally satisfactory state, ready
either for sleep or continuous reading by her sisters. Only Wilfred
was in the same, or a more anxious, state of fever; and as soon as
Bernard had satisfied himself that there was no special use in his
remaining in the house, he set out for the marble works office,
having made up his mind as to one part of what he had expressed as
"seeing about it."

He had hardly turned into the Cliffe road before he met Captain
Henderson walking up, and they exchanged distant inquiries and
answers as to whether each might be thought dangerous to the other's
home; after which they forgathered, and compared notes as to
invalids. The Captain had heard of Wilfred's going home ill, and was
coming, he said, to inquire.

"He seems very seriously ill," was the answer. "I imagine there has
been a chill, and a check. I was coming to speak to you about him."

"He has spoken to you?"

Both could now consult freely. "It is a very anxious matter--not so
much for the actual amount as for the habits that it shows."

"The amount? Oh, I have made up that as regards the firm. I could
not let it come before Sir Jasper, especially in the present state of
things! I meant to give the young chap a desperate fright and
rowing, but that will have to be deferred."

"You must let me take it!"

"No, no. Remember, Sir Jasper was my commanding officer, and I and
my wife owe everything to him. I could supply the amount, so that no
one would guess from the accounts that anything had been amiss."

Bernard could hardly allow himself to be thus relieved, but there was
the comfort of knowing that Wilfred's name was safe, and that the
unstained family honour would not have to suffer shame. Still the
other debts remained, of which Captain Henderson had been only
vaguely suspicious, till the two took counsel on them. Wilfred had
not given up the name of the person for whom he had meant to borrow
from the office; but Captain Henderson had very little doubt who it
was, and it was agreed that he should receive the amount through a
cheque of Bernard on Brown and Travis Underwood, from Captain
Henderson's hands, with a scathing rebuke and peremptory assurance of
exposure to Mr. White, and consequent dismissal, if anything more of
the same kind among the younger men were detected. The man was a
clever artist in his first youth, and had always been something of a
favourite with the authorities, and had a highly respectable father;
so Captain Henderson meant to spare him as much as possible, and
endeavour to ascertain how far the mischief had gone among the young
men connected with the marble works, also to consult Mr. White on the
amount of stringency in the measures used to put a stop to it. All
this, of course, passed out of Bernard Underwood's hands and
knowledge, but a sad and anxious day was before him. All the young
girls were going on well, but Wilfred was increasingly ill all day,
and continually calling for Bernard. Being told, "I have settled the
matter" did not satisfy him. He looked eagerly about the room to
find whether his mother were present, and fancying she was absent
demanded, "Does he know? Do they know?" reiterating again and again.
It was necessary to tell Lady Merrifield that there was an
entanglement about money matters on his mind, which had been settled;
but towards evening he grew worse and more light-headed, apparently
under the impression that only Bernard could guard him from something
unknown, or conceal, whenever he was conscious of the presence of his
mother; and on his father's entrance he hid his face in the pillows
and trembled, of course to their exceeding distress and perplexity;
and when he believed no one present but Bernard and Mrs. Halfpenny,
he became more and more rambling, sometimes insisting that his father
must not know, sometimes abusing all connected with the racing bet,
and more often fancying that he was going to be arrested for robbing
the firm, the enormity of the sum and of the danger increasing with
the fever, and therewith his horror of his father's knowing. It was
of no use for his mother to hang over him, hold his hands, and assure
him that she knew (as, in fact, she did, for Bernard had been obliged
to make a cursory explanation), and that nothing could hinder her
loving him still; he forgot it in the next interruption, and turned
from her with terror and dismay, and once he nearly flung himself out
of bed, fancying that the policeman was coming.

Bernard held him on this occasion, and told him, "Nothing will do you
good, Willie, but to tell your father, and he will keep all from you.
Let him know, and it will be all right."

It only seemed to add to his misery and terror. Something that
passed in his hearing, gave him the impression that he was in great
danger, if not actually dying; but his cry was still for Bernard, who
had not ventured to go to bed; but it was still, "Oh, Bear, save me!
Don't let me die with this upon my name! I can't go to God!"

"There's nothing for it, Wilfred, but to tell your father. He will
pardon you. Your mother has, you see. Tell him, and when he
forgives, you will know that God does. It will come right. Let me
call him!"

"Let me bring him, my boy, my dear boy!" entreated his mother. "You
know he will."

Wilfred seemed as if he did not know, but still held fast by
Bernard's strong hands, as though there were support in them; and
when in a few moments Sir Jasper entered the room, there was the same
clinging gesture and endeavour to hide, in spite of the gentle
sweetness of the tone of, "Well, my poor boy."

It was Bernard who was obliged to say, turning the poor flushed face
towards him, "Wilfred wishes to say--"

"Father," it came with a gasp at last, "I've done it. I've disgraced
us all. Forgive!"

He was repeating his own exaggerated ideas of what his crime had
been, and what Sir Jasper would have said to him if all had been
discovered in any other way.

"Do not think of it now, my boy. I forgive you, whatever it is."

Thereupon Dr. Dagger entered. He turned every one out except Mrs.
Halfpenny, and gave a draught, which silenced the patient and put him
to sleep in a few minutes. While Bernard hastily satisfied the
parents that a good deal was exaggerated feeling, and that an old
soldier must have known of a good many worse things in his time,
though not so near home.

There was a general sense of relief in the morning, for Wilfred's
attack had become an ordinary, though severe one, and the other cases
were going on well. But Sir Jasper, who had not been able to grasp
the extent of Wilfred's delinquency, and had been persuaded by his
despair that it was much more serious than it really was, called his
son-in-law into council, and demanded whether the whole could have
been told.

Bernard was certain that it was so, and related his transactions with
Captain Henderson, much of course to the father's relief, so far as
the outer world was concerned; but what principally grieved him,
besides the habits thus discovered, was his son's abject terror of
him, not only in the exaggeration of illness, but in his mode of
speaking of him.

It had never been thus with any of his sons before.

Claude, the soldier, had always been satisfactory, so had Harry the
clergyman, though often widely separated from the parents in their
wandering life; but the bond of confidence had never been broken.
Jasper had never teased any one but his sisters. Fergus, too, the
youngest of all the sons, and of an individual, rather peculiar
nature, was growing up in straight grooves of his own; but Wilfred,
who from delicate health, had been the most at home, had never seemed
to open to his father. The family discipline of the General seemed
only to oppress and terrify him, and the irregularities and
subterfuges that had from time to time been detected had been met
with just anger, never received in such a manner as to call forth the
tenderness of forgiveness. Each discovery of a misdemeanour had only
been the prelude to fresh and worse concealments and hardening.

And experience of mankind did not give any decided hope that even the
last day's agony of repentance would be the turning over of a new
leaf, when convalescence should bring the same surroundings and
temptations, and perhaps the like disproportionate indignation and
impatience in dealing with errors and constitutional weakness. "And
the example of my brother's poor son is not encouraging," he added.
"He who seems to have owed everything to your brother and sister."

"Yet poor Fulbert and I were to our homes, perhaps not the black
sheep, but at any rate the vagrant ones."

"And what made a difference to you, may I ask?"

"Strong infusion by character and example of principle," said Bernard
thoughtfully; "then, real life, and having to be one's own safeguard,
with nothing to fall back on. As my brother told me at his last, I
should swim when my plank was gone."

"Yes, but, plainly, you were never weak," and as Bernard did not
answer at once, "Old-fashioned severity used to be the rule with
lads, but it seems only to alienate them now and make them think
themselves unjustly treated. What is one to do with these boys?"

A question which Bernard could not answer, though it carried him back
with a strange yearning, yet resignation, to the little figure that
had curled round on his knee, and the hopes connected with the hands
that had caressed his cheek.

He thought over it the more the next week, when he was called to sit
by Wilfred, who was getting better and anxious to talk.

"My father is very kind," he said. "Oh, yes, very kind now; but it
will be all the same when I get well. You see, Bear, how can a man
be always dawdling about with a lot of girls? There's Dolores
bothering with her science, and Fergus every bit as bad; and Mysie
after her disgusting schoolchildren; and Val and Prim horrid little
empty chatterboxes; and if one does turn to a jolly girl for a bit of
fun, their tongues all go to work, so that you would think the skies
were going to fall; and if one goes in for a bit of a spree, down
comes the General like a sledge-hammer! I wish you would take me out
with you, Bear."

The same idea had already been undeveloped in Bernard's mind, and
ever on his tongue when alone with his wife; but he kept it to
himself, and only committed himself to, "You would not find an office
in Colombo much more enlivening."

"There would be something to see--something to do. It would not be
all as dull as ditch-water--just driving one to do something to get
away from the girls and their fads."

This was nearly a fortnight from the night of crisis, when Wilfred,
very weak, was still in bed; when Primrose and Lily were up and
about, but threatened with whooping cough. Thekla much in the same
case, and very cross; and little Lena weak, caressing and dependant,
but angelically good and patient, so much so that Magdalen and Angela
were quite anxious about her.

CHAPTER XXVI--NEW PATHS

"I'll put a girdle round the earth
In forty minutes."
- SHAKESPEARE.

The visitation had not been confined to the High School. The little
cheaply-built rows for workmen and fishermen had suffered much more
severely, owing chiefly to the parents' callous indifference to
infection. "Kismet," as they think it, said Jane Mohun, and still
more to their want of care. Chills were caught, fevers and
diphtheria ensued, and there was an actual mortality among the
children at the works and at Arnscombe. Mr. Flight begged for help
from the Nursing Sisterhood at Dearport, and, to her great joy,
Sister Beata was sent down to him, with another who was of the same
standing as Angela, and delighted to have a glimpse of her; though
Angela thought it due to her delicate charge, and the Merrifields,
not to plunge into actual nursing while Lena needed her hourly
attention, and was not yet in a state for the training to do without
it to continue. Paulina, however, being regarded as infection proof,
was permitted to be an attendant and messenger of her dear Sister
Beata, to her own great joy. She was now nineteen, and her desire to
devote herself to a Sisterhood had never wavered, and intercourse
with Sister Angela had only strengthened it.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17