Kitabı oku: «Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood», sayfa 3
Indeed, Joe, heavy, stupefied, and struggling for breath, knew too well what it all meant not to give himself all possible chance by silent endurance, lying with his wife’s hand in his, or sometimes smoothing her cheek, but not speaking without necessity. Once he told her that her head was aching, and made her lie down on the bed, but he was too ill for this rest to last long, and the fits of struggling with suffocation prevented all respite save for a few minutes.
With the early light of the long summer morning Dr. Lucas looked in, and would have sent her to bed, but she begged off, and a sign from her husband seemed to settle the matter, for the old physician went away again, perhaps because his eyes were full of tears.
The first words Joe said when they were again alone was “My tablets.” She went in search of them to his dressing-room, and not finding them there, was about to run down to the consulting-room, when Janet came out already dressed, and fetched them for her, as well as a white slate, on which he was accustomed to write memorandums of engagements.
Her father thanked her by a sign, but there was possibility enough of infection to make him wave her back from kissing him, and she took refuge at the foot of the bed, on a sofa shut off by the curtains which had been drawn to exclude the light.
Joe meantime wrote on the slate the words, “Magnum bonum.”
“Magnum bonum?” read his wife, in amazement.
“Papers in bureau,” he wrote; “lock all in my desk. Mention to no one.”
“Am I to put them in your desk?” asked Caroline, bewildered as to his intentions, and finding it hard to read the writing, as he went on—
“No word to anyone!” scoring it under, “not till one of the boys is ready.”
“One of the boys!” in utter amazement.
“Not as a chance for himself,” he wrote, “but as a great trust.”
“I know,” she said, “it is a great trust to make a discovery which will save life. It is my pride to know you are doing it, my own dear Joe.”
“It seems I am not worthy to do it,” was traced by his fingers. “It is not developed enough to be listened to by anyone. Keep it for the fit one of the boys. Religion, morals, brains, balance.”
She read each word aloud, bending her head in assent; and, after a pause, he wrote “Not till his degree. He could not work it out sooner. These is peril to self and others in experimenting—temptation to rashness. It were better unknown than trifled with. Be an honest judge—promise. Say what I want.”
Spellbound, almost mesmerised by his will, Caroline pronounced—“I promise to keep the magnum bonum a secret till the boys are grown up, and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he has taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with brains and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an invention, and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good and blessing to all.”
He gave her one of his bright, sweet smiles, and, as she sealed her promise by a kiss, he took up the slate again and wrote, “My dear comfort, you have always understood. You are to be trusted. It must be done worthily or not at all.”
That was the burthen of everything; and his approval and affection gave a certain sustaining glow to the wife, who was besides so absorbed in attending to him, as not to look beyond the moment. He wrote presently, after a little more, “You know all my mind for the children. With God’s help you can fill both places to them. I should like you to live at Kenminster, under Robert’s wing.”
After that he only used the tablets for temporary needs, and to show what he wanted Dr. Lucas to undertake for his patients. The husband and wife had little more time for intimate communings, for the strangulation grew worse, more remedies were tried, and one of the greatest physicians of the day was called in, but only to make unavailing efforts.
Colonel Brownlow arrived in the middle of the day, and was thunderstruck at the new and terrible disaster. He was a large, tall man, with a good-humoured, weather-beaten face, and an unwieldy, gouty figure; and he stood, with his eyes brimming over with tears, looking at his brother, and at first unable to read the one word Joe traced for him—for writing had become a great effort—“Carey.”
“We will do our best for her, Ellen and I, my dear fellow. But you’ll soon be better. Horrid things, these quinsies; but they pass off.”
Poor Joe half-smiled at this confident opinion, but he merely wrung his brother’s hand, and only twice more took up the pencil—once to write the name of the clergyman he wished to see, and lastly to put down the initials of all his children: “Love to you all. Let God and your mother be first with you.—J. B.”
The daylight of the second morning had come in before that deadly suffocation had finished its work, and the strong man’s struggles were ended.
When Colonel Brownlow tried to raise his sister-in-law, he found her fainting, and, with Dr. Lucas’s help, carried her to another room, where she lay, utterly exhausted, in a kind of faint stupor, apparently unconscious of anything but violent headache, which made her moan from time to time, if anything stirred her. Dr. Lucas thought this the effect of exhaustion, for she had not slept, and hardly taken any food since her breakfast at Kyve three days ago; and finding poor old nurse too entirely broken down to be of any use, he put his own kind wife in charge of her, and was unwilling to admit anyone else—even Mrs. Robert Brownlow, who arrived in the course of the day. She was a tall, fine-looking person, with an oval face—soft, pleasant brown skin, mild brown eyes, and much tenderness of heart and manner, but not very well known to Caroline; for her periodical visits had been wholly devoted to shopping and sight-seeing. She was exceedingly shocked at the tidings that met her, and gathered Janet into her arms with many tears over the poor orphan girl! It was an effusiveness that overwhelmed Janet, who had a miserable, hard, dried-up feeling of wretchedness, and injury too; for the more other people cried, the less she could cry, and she heard them saying to one another that she was unfeeling.
Still Aunt Ellen’s presence was a sort of relief, for it made the house less empty and dreary, and she took upon her the cares that were greatly needed in the bereaved household, where old nurse had lost her head, and could do nothing, and the most effective maid was away with the children. So Janet wandered about after her aunt, with an adverse feeling at having her home meddled with, but answering questions and giving opinions, called or uncalled for. Her longing was for her brothers, and it was a great blow to find that her uncle had written to both Allen and Mr. Acton that they had better not come home at present. She thought it cruel and unjust both towards them and herself; and in her sickening sense of solitude and injury she had a vague expectation that they were all going to be left wholly orphans, like the children of fiction, dependent on their uncle and aunt, who would be unjust, and prefer their own children; and she had a prevision of the battles she was to fight, and the defensive influence she was to exert.
That brought to her mind the white slate on which her father had been writing, and she hurried to secure it, though she hardly knew where to go or to look; but straying into her father’s dressing-room, she found both it and the tablets among a heap of other small matters that had been, cleared away when the other chamber had been arranged into the solemnity of the death-room. Hastily securing them, she carried them to her own desk in the deserted school-room, feeling as if they were her charge, and thus having no scruple in reading them.
She had heard what passed aloud; and, as the eldest girl, had been so constantly among the seniors, and so often supposed to be intent on her own occupations when they were conversing, that she had already the knowledge that magnum bonum, was the pet home term for some great discovery in medical, science that her father had been pursuing, with many disappointments and much incredulity from the few friends to whom it had been mentioned, but with absolute confidence on his own part. What it was she did, not know, but she had fully taken in the injunction of secrecy and the charge to hand on the task to one of her brothers; only, while her father had spoken of it as a grave trust, she viewed it as an inheritance of glory; and felt a strange longing and repining that it could not be given to her to win and wear the crown of success.
Janet, did not, however, keep the treasure long, for that very evening Mrs. Lucas sought her out to tell her that her mother had been saying something, about a slate, and Dr. Lucas thought it was one on which her father had been writing. If she could find it, they hoped her mother would rest better.
Janet produced it, and, being evidently most unwilling to let it go out of her hands, was allowed to carry it in, and to tell her mother that she had it. There was no need for injunctions to do so softly and cautiously, for she was frightened by her mother’s dull, half-closed eye, and pale, leaden look; but there was a little air of relief as she faltered, “Here’s the slate, dear mother:” and the answer, so faint that she could hardly hear it, was, “Lock it up, my dear, till I can look.”
Mrs. Lucas told Janet she might kiss her, and then sent the girl away. There was need of anxious watch lest fever should set in, and therefore all that was exciting was kept at a distance as the poor young widow verged towards recovery.
Once, when she heard voices on the stairs, she started nervously, and asked Mrs. Lucas, “Is Ellen there?”
“Yes, my dear; she shall not come to you unless you wish it,” seeing her alarm; and she laid her head down again.
The double funeral was accomplished while she was still too ill to hear anything about it, though Mrs. Lucas had no doubt that she knew; and when he came home, Colonel Brownlow called for Janet, and asked her whether she could find her grandmother’s keys and her father’s for him.
“Mother would not like anyone to rummage their things,” said Janet, like a watch-dog.
“My dear,” said her uncle, in a surprised but kind tone, as one who respected yet resented her feeling; “you may trust me not to rummage, as you call it, unnecessarily; but I know that I am executor, if you understand what that means, my dear.”
“Of course,” said Janet, affronted as she always was by being treated as a child.
“To both wills,” continued her uncle; “and it will save your mother much trouble and distress if I can take steps towards acting on them at once; and if you cannot tell where the keys are, I shall have to look for them.”
“Janet ought to obey at once,” said her aunt, not adding to the serenity of Janet’s mind; but she turned on her heel, ungraciously saying, “I’ll get them;” and presently returned with her grandmother’s key-box, full of the housekeeping keys, and a little key, which she gave to her uncle with great dignity, adding, “The key of her desk is the Bramah one; I’ll see for the others.”
“A strange girl, that!” said her uncle, as she marched out of the room.
“I am glad our Jessie has not her temper!” responded his wife; and then they both repaired to old Mrs. Brownlow’s special apartment, the back drawing-room, while Janet quietly dropped downstairs with the key she had taken from her father’s table on her way to the consulting-room. She intended to prevent any search, by herself producing the will from among his papers, for she was in an agony lest her uncle should discover the clue to the magnum bonum, of which she regarded herself the guardian.
Till she had actually unlocked the sloping lid of the old-fashioned bureau, it did not occur to her that she did not know either what the will was like, nor yet the magnum bonum, which was scarcely likely to be so ticketed. She only saw piles of letters and papers, marked, some with people’s names, some with a Greek or Latin word, or one of the curious old Arabic signs, for which her father had always a turn, having, as his mother used to tell him, something of the alchemist in his composition. One of these parcels, fastened with elastic rings, must be magnum bonum, and Janet, though without much chance of distinguishing it, was reading the labels with a strange, sad fascination, when, long before she had expected him, her uncle stood before her, with greatly astonished and displeased looks, and the word “Janet.”
She coloured scarlet, but answered boldly, “There was something that I know father did not want anyone but mother to see.”
“Of course there is much,” said her uncle, gravely—“much that I am fitter to judge, of than any little girl.”
Words cannot express the offence thus given to Janet. Something swelled in her throat as if to suffocate her, but there could be no reply, and to burst out crying would only make him think her younger still; so as he turned to his mournful task, she ensconced herself in a high-backed chair, and watched him from under her dark brows.
She might comfort herself by the perception that he was less likely than even herself to recognise the magnum bonum. He would scarcely have thought it honourable to cast a glance upon the medical papers, and pushing them aside from where she had pulled them forward, searched till he had found a long cartridge-paper envelope, which he laid on the table behind him while he shut up the bureau, and Janet, by cautiously craning up her neck, managed to read that on it was written “Will of Joseph Brownlow, Executors: Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Brownlow.”
Her uncle then put both that and the keys in his pocket, either not seeing her, or not choosing to notice her.
CHAPTER IV. – THE STRAY CHICKENS
But when our father came not here,
I thought if we could find the sea
We should be sure to meet him there,
And once again might happy be.—Ballad.
“What was Dr. Lucas saying to you?” asked Carey, sitting up in bed after her breakfast.
“He said, my dear, that you were really well now,” said Mrs. Lucas, tenderly; “and that you only wanted rousing.”
She clasped her hands together.
“Yes, I know it. I have been knowing it all yesterday and last night. It hasn’t been right of me, keeping you all this time, and not facing it.”
“I don’t think you could, my dear.”
“Not at first. It seems to me like having been in a whirlpool, and those two went down in it.” She put her hands to her temples. “But I must do it all now, and I will. I’ll get up now. Oh! dear, if they only would let me come down and go about quietly.” Then smiling a piteous smile. “It is very naughty, but of all things I dread the being cried over and fondled by Ellen!”
Mrs. Lucas shook her head, though the tears were in her eyes, and bethought her whether she could caution Mrs. Robert Brownlow not to be too demonstrative; but it was a delicate matter in which to interfere, and after all, whatever she might think beforehand, Caroline might miss these tokens of feeling.
She had sat up for some hours the evening before, so that there was no fear of her not being strong enough to get up as she proposed; but how would it be when she left her room, and beheld all that she could not have realised?
However, matters turned out contrary to all expectation. Mrs. Lucas was in the drawing-room, talking to the Colonel’s wife, and Janet up stairs helping her mother to dress, when there was a sound of feet on the stairs, the door hastily opened for a moment, and two rough-headed, dusty little figures were seen for one moment, startling Mrs. Brownlow with the notion of little beggars; but they vanished in a moment, and were heard chattering up stairs with calls of “Mother! Mother Carey!” And looking out, they beheld at the top of the stairs the two little fellows hanging one on each side of Carey, who was just outside her door, with her hair down, in her white dressing gown, kneeling between them, all the three almost devouring one another.
“Jockie! Armie! my dears! How did you come? Where are the rest?”
“Still at Kyve,” said Jock. “Mother we have done such a thing—we came to tell you of it.”
“We’ve lost the man’s boat,” added Armine, “and we must give him the money for another.”
“What is it? What is it, Caroline?” began her sister-in-law; but Mrs. Lucas touched her arm, and as a mother herself, she saw that mother and sons had best be left to one another, and let them retreat into the bedroom, Carey eagerly scanning her two little boys, who had a battered, worn, unwashed look that puzzled her as much as their sudden appearance, which indeed chimed in with the strange dreamy state in which she had lived ever since that telegram. But their voices did more to restore her to ordinary life than anything else could have done; and their hearts were so full of their own adventure, that they poured it out before remarking anything,—
“How did you come, my dear boys?”
“We walked, after the omnibus set us down at Charing Cross, because we hadn’t any more money,” said Armine. “I’m so tired.” And he nestled into her lap, seeming to quell the beating of her aching heart by his pressure.
“This is it, mother,” said Jock, pulling her other arm round him. “We two went down to the beach yesterday, and we saw a little boat—Peter Lary’s pretty little boat, you know, that is so light—and we got in to rock in her, and then I thought I would pull about in her a little.”
“Oh! Jock, Jock, how could you?”
“I’d often done it with Allen and Young Pete,” said Jock, defensively.
“But by yourselves!” she said in horror.
“Nobody told us not,” said Jock rather defiantly; and Armine, who, with his little sister Barbara, always seemed to live where dreamland and reality bordered on each other, looked up in her face and innocently said—
“Mrs. Acton read us about the Rocky Island, and she said father and granny had brought their boats to the beautiful country, and that we ought to go after them, and there was the bright path along the sea, and I thought we would go too, and that it would be nicer if Jock went with me.”
“I knew it did not mean that,” said Jock, hanging his mischievous black head a little, as he felt her shudder; “but I thought it would be such fun to be Columbus.”
“And then? Oh! my boys, what a fearful thing! Thank God I have you here.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” said Jock, with uplifted head; “we could both row, couldn’t we, Armie? and the tide was going out, and it was so jolly; it seemed to take us just where we wanted to go, out to that great rock, you know, mother, that Bobus called the Asses’ Bridge.”
Carey knew that the current at the mouth of the river did, at high tide, carry much drift to the base of this island, and she could understand how her two boys had been floated thither. Jock went on—
“We had a boat-hook, and I pulled up to the island; I did, mother, and I made fast the boat to a little stick, and we went out to explore the island.”
“It has a crater in the top, mother, and we think it must be an instinct volcano,” said Armine, looking up sleepily.
“And there were such lots of jolly little birds,” went on Jock.
“Never mind that now. What happened?”
“Why, the brute of a boat got away,” said Jock, much injured, “when I’d made her ever so fast. She pulled up the stick, I’m sure she did, for I can tie a knot as well as Pete.”
“So you could not get away?”
“No, and we’d got nothing to eat but chocolate creams and periwinkles, and Armie wouldn’t look at them, and I don’t think I could while they were alive. So I hoisted a signal of distress, made of my tie, for we’d lost our pocket-handkerchiefs. I was afraid they would think we were pirates, and not venture to come near us, for we’d only got black flags, and it was a very, very long time, but at last, just as it got a little darkish, and Armie was crying—poor little chap—that steamer came by that always goes between Porthole and Kyvemouth on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I hailed and I hailed, and they saw or heard, and sent a boat and took us on board. The people all came and looked at us, and one of them said I was a plucky little chap; he did, mother, and that I’d the making of an admiral in me; and a lady gave us such a jolly paper of sandwiches. But you see the steamer was going to Porthole, and the captain said he could not anyhow put back to Kyve, but he must take us on, and we must get back by train.”
Mother Carey understood this, for the direct line ran to Porthole, and there was a small junction station whence a branch ran to Kyvemouth, from which Kyve St. Clements was some three miles distant.
“Were you carried on?” she asked.
“Well, yes, but we meant it,” said Jock. “I remembered the boat. I knew father would say we must buy another, so I asked the captain what was the price of one, for Armine and I had each got half-a-sovereign.”
“How was that?”
“An old gentleman the day before was talking to Mr. Acton. I think he is some great swell, for he has got a yacht, and servants, and a carriage, and lots of things; and he said, ‘What! are those poor Brownlow’s boys? bless me!’ and he tipped us each. Allen and Bobus were to go with Mr. Acton and have a sail in his yacht, but they said we should be too many, so we thought we’d get a new boat, but the Captain—”
“Said your money would go but a little way,” put in Caroline.
“He laughed!” said Jock, as a great offence; “and said that was a matter for our governor, and we had better go home and tell as fast as we could. There was a train just starting when we got in to Porthole, and somebody got our tickets for us, and Armie went fast off to sleep, and I, when I came to think about it, thought we would not get out at the junction, but come on home at once, Mother Carey, and tell you all about it. When Armie woke—why, he’s asleep now—he said he would rather come home than to Kyve.”
“Then you travelled all night?”
“Yes, there was a jolly old woman who made us a bed with her shawl, only I tumbled off three times and bumped myself, and she gave us gooseberries, and cake, and once when we stopped a long time a porter got us a cup of tea. Then when we came to where they take the tickets, I think the man was going to make a row, but the guard came up and told him all about it, and I gave him my two half-sovereigns, and he gave me back fourteen shillings change, for he said we were only half-price and second class. Then when once I was in London,” said Jock, as if his foot was on his native heath, “of course I knew what to be at.”
“Have you had nothing to eat?”
“We had each a bun when we got out at Charing Cross, but I’m awfully hungry, mother!”
“I should think so. Janet, my dear, go and order some breakfast for them.”
“And,” said Janet, “must not the others be dreadfully frightened about them at Kyve?”
That question startled her mother into instant action.
“Of course they must! Poor Clara! poor Allen! They must be in a dreadful state. I must telegraph to them at once.”
She lifted Armine off gently to her bed, scarcely disturbing him, twisted up her hair in summary fashion, and the dress, which her friends had dreaded her seeing, was on, she hardly knew how, as she bade old nurse see to Jock’s washing, dressing, and making himself tidy, and then amazed the other ladies by running into the drawing-room crying breathlessly—
“I must telegraph to the Actons,” and plunging to the depths of a drawer in the davenport.
“Caroline, your cap!”
For it was on the back of the head that had never worn a cap before. And not only then, but for the most part whenever they met, those tears and caresses, that poor Mother Carey so much feared, were checked midway by the instinct that made Aunt Ellen run at her with a great pin and cry—
“Caroline, your cap.”
She was still, after having had it fixed, kneeling down, searching for a form for telegraphing, when the door was opened, and in came Colonel Brownlow, looking very pale and fearfully shocked.
“Ellen!” he began, “how shall I ever tell that poor child? Here is Mr. Acton.”
But at that moment up sprang Mother Carey, and as Mr. Acton entered the room she leapt forward—
“Oh! I was just going to telegraph! They are safe! they are here! Jock, Jock!”
And downstairs came tumbling and rushing that same little imp, while the astonishment of his uncle and aunt only allowed them to utter the one word, “John!”
Mr. Acton drew a long breath, and said, “You have given us a pretty fright, boy.”
“Here’s the paper,” added Carey; “telegraph to Clara at once. Ring the bell, Jock; I’ll send to the office.”
All questions were suspended while Mr. Acton wrote the telegram, and then it appeared that the boat had been picked up empty, with Armine’s pocket-handkerchief full of shells in it, and the boys had been given up for lost, it having been concluded that, if they had been seen, the boat also would have been taken in tow, and not cast loose to tell the tale. The two elder boys were almost broken-hearted, and would have been wild to come back to their mother, had it not been impossible to leave poor little Barbara, who clung fast to them, as the only shreds left to her of home and protection. They would at least be comforted in the space of a quarter of an hour!
Carey was completely herself and full of vigour while Mr. Acton was there, consoling him when he lamented not having taken better care, and refusing when he tried to persuade her to accompany him back to Kyve. Neither would Janet return with him, feeling it impossible to relax such watch as she could keep over the Magnum Bonum papers, even though she much longed for her brothers.
“I should insist on her going,” said Aunt Ellen, “after all she has gone through.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Carey. “You would not send away your Jessie?”
Ellen did not quite say that her pretty, sweet, caressing Jessie was different, but she thought it all the same.
Carey did not fulfil her intentions of going into matters of business with her brother-in-law that day, for little Armine, always delicate, had been so much knocked up by his course of adventures, that he needed her care all the rest of the day. Nor would she have been fit for anything else, for when his aunt recommended a totally different treatment for his ailments, she had no spirit to argue, but only looked pale and determined, being too weary and dejected to produce her arguments.
Jock was sufficiently tired to be quiescent in the nursery, where she kept him with her, feeling, in his wistful eyes, and even in poor little Armine’s childish questions, something less like blank desolation than her recent apathy had been, as if she were waking to thrills of pain after the numbness of a blow.
Urged by a restless night and an instinctive longing for fresh air, she took a long walk in the park before anyone came down the next morning, with only Jock for her companion, and she came to the breakfast table with a freshened look, though with a tremulous faintness in her voice, and she let Janet continue tea maker, scarcely seeming to hear or understand the casual remarks around her; but afterwards she said in a resolute tone, “Robert, I am ready whenever you wish to speak to me.”
So in the drawing-room the Colonel, with the two wills in his hand, found himself face to face with her. He was the more nervous of the two, being, much afraid of upsetting that composure which scandalised his wife, but which he preferred to tears; and as he believed her to be a mere child in perception, he explained down to her supposed level, while she listened in a strange inert way, feeling it hard to fix her attention, yet half-amused by the simplicity of his elucidations. “Would Ellen need to be told what an executor meant?” thought she.
She was left sole guardian of the children, “the greatest proof of confidence a parent can give,” impressively observed the Colonel, wondering at the languor of her acquiescence, and not detecting the thought, “Dear Joe! of course! as if he would have done anything else!”
“Of course,” continued the Colonel, “he never expected that it would have proved more than a nominal matter, a mere precaution. For my own part, I can only say that I shall be always ready to assist you with advice or authority if ever you should find the charge too onerous for you.”
“Thank you,” was all she could bring herself to say at that moment, feeling that her boys were her own, though the next she was recollecting that this was no doubt the reason Joe had bidden her live at Kenminster, and in a pang of self-reproach, was hardly attending to the technicalities of the matters of property which were being explained to her.
Her husband had not been able to save much, but his life insurance was for a considerable sum, and there was also the amount inherited from his parents. A portion of the means which his mother had enjoyed passed to the elder brother, and Mrs. Brownlow had sunk most of her individual property in the purchase of the house in which they lived. By the terms of Joseph’s will, everything was left to Caroline unreservedly, save for a stipulation that all, on her death, should be divided among the children, as she should appoint. The house was not even secured to Allen, so that she could let or sell it as she thought advisable.
“I could not sell it,” said Carey quickly, feeling it her first and only home. “I hope to see Allen practising there some day.”
“It is not in a situation where you could sell it to so much advantage as you would have by letting it to whoever takes the practice.”
She winced, but it was needful to listen, as he told her of the offers that had been made for the house and the good-will of the practice. What he had thought the best offer was, however, rejected by her with vehemence. She was sure that Joe would never stand that man coming in upon his patients, and when asked for her reasons, would only reply, that “None of us could bear him.”
“That is no reason why he should not be a good practitioner and respectable man. He may not be what you like in society, and yet—”
