Kitabı oku: «Modern Broods; Or, Developments Unlooked For», sayfa 15
CHAPTER XXVIII—SUMMONED
“What would we give to our beloved?”
—E. B. Browning.
“I wish they all would not go so very fast,” said little Lena, hiding her face against him from the whirl of cabs and omnibuses.
“They bewilder us savages,” said Angela, smiling. “Remember we are from the wilds.”
“She shall have her tea, and a good rest,” said Marilda; “and then I have asked her uncle and aunts to meet you at dinner, and Fernan hopes to bring home another old friend. Whom do you think, Angel?”
“Oh! Not our Bishop?”
“Yes, the Bishop of Albertstown! He is actually in town; Fernan saw him yesterday at the Church House.”
“Oh! that is joy!” cried Angela; and Lena raised her head, with, “Is it mine—mine own Bishop?”
“Mine own, mine own Bishop and godfather, my sweet!” said Angela; “more to us in our own way than any one else. Oh! it is joy! How happy Clement will be!”
It was with much feeling, almost akin to shame, that Bessie wrote to Angela this decision of her brother, that a London authority must be consulted—not Dr. Brownlow, but one whom Mrs. Sam had heard highly spoken of.
“That man!” cried Angela. “I have heard of him! He is a regular mealy-mouthed old woman of a doctor! And she is so well just now! How horrid to shake her up again! Oh, Bear! if I could only sail away with her to Queensland!”
“You would if it was ten years ago,” said Bernard.
“Yes! Is it the way of the world, or learning resignation, that makes one know one must submit? Giving up an idol is a worse thing when the idol is made of flesh and blood.”
Bernard wanted to see Sir Ferdinand, so made it an excuse for helping his sister on the way; and he did so effectively, for his knee and broad breast were Lena’s great resting-place; and his stories of monkeys and elephants were almost as good as kangaroos. Was there not a kangaroo to be seen in London, which she apparently thought would be a place of about the size of Albertstown?
Lady Underwood had insisted on receiving the travellers from Vale Leston in her house in Kensington; and there was her broad, kindly face looking out for them at the station, and her likewise broad and kindly carriage ready to carry them from it. How natural all looked to Angela, with all her associations of being a naughty, wild, mischievous schoolgirl, the general plague and problem!
“But always a dear,” said Marilda, with her habit of forgetting everybody’s faults. “Why didn’t you bring your wife, Bernard, and your little girl for this darling’s playfellow?”
“She is her best playfellow,” said Angela; “Adela’s Joan is too rough, and fitter for Adrian’s companion.”
“She is my playfellow,” said Bernard, holding her up. “Look out, Lena. Here’s Father Thames to go over.”
“And Fernan is so glad,” added Marilda.
For Bishop Robert Fulmort had, when Vicar of St. Wulstan’s, been the guide and helper of Ferdinand Travis’s time of trial and disappointment, as well as the spiritual father of Clement Underwood; he had known and dealt with Angela in her wayward girlhood, and aided her bitter repentance; and in these later days in Australia had been her true fatherly friend, counsellor and comforter in the trials and perplexities that had befallen her. Bernard read, in her lifted head and brightened eye, that she felt the meeting him almost a compensation for the distress and perplexity of this journey to London.
Bernard carried the little girl up to the room and laid her down to sleep off her fatigue, while Marilda waited on her and Angela with her wonted bustling affection, extremely happy to have two of her best beloved cousins under her roof.
Bernard went off to find Sir Ferdinand at his office, and quiet prevailed till nearly dinner time, when Lena awoke and would not be denied one sight of her godfather. So Angela dressed her in her white frock, and smoothed her thin yellow hair, and took her down to the great stiff handsome room that all Emilia’s efforts had never made to look liveable. Emilia Brown was there, very fashionably attired, but eager for news of Vale Leston, and the Merrifields soon arrived with, “Oh! here she is!” from the Captain, “Well! she looks better than I expected!”
“Poor little dear!” observed his wife, dressed in a low dress and thin fringe on her forehead in honour of what, to the country mind, was a grand dinner party, at which Angela’s plain black dress and tight white cap were an unbecoming sight. Elizabeth was there, kissing Angela with real sympathy; and Lena, who had grown a good deal more accustomed to strange relations, endured the various embraces without discourtesy.
But when the door opened and the grey-headed Bishop came in there was a low half scream of “Oh! oh!” and with one leap she was in his arms, as he knelt on one knee, and clasped her, holding out a hand to Angela, whose eyes were full of tears of relief and trust. Marilda gave a glad welcome, but they were startled by perceiving that the joy of meeting had brought on a spasm of choking on Lena, who was gasping in a strange sort of agony. Angela took her in her arms and carried her out of the room. Marilda presently following, came back reporting that the little girl had been relieved by a shower of tears, but was still faint and agitated, and that Angela could not leave her, but begged that they would not wait dinner.
“Such sensitiveness needs anxious care,” said Elizabeth.
“If it be not the effect of spoiling. Just affectation!” replied the sister-in-law in a decided voice, which made Bessie glad that the poor child’s home was not to be among the rough boys at Stokesley, who were not credited with any particular feelings.
Angela’s absence gave the Bishop the opportunity of telling what she had been during her years at Albertstown, what a wonderful power among the natives, though not without disappointment, and she had been still more effective among the settlers and their daughters. Carrigaboola, Fulbert’s farm, had been an oasis of hope and rest to the few clergy of his scanty staff, and Fulbert himself had been a tower of strength for influence over the settlers who had fallen in his way, by his unswerving uprightness and honour, with the deeper principles of religion, little talked of but never belied. Even after his death, the power he had been told over all with whom he had come in contact.
Bernard heard it with immense pleasure, as did the faithful Ferdinand and Marilda; while Elizabeth felt more and more that Sister Angela was not to be treated, as she feared Sam and his wife were inclined to do, as a mere interloper in their family affairs, but as one to be not merely considered with gratitude, but even reverenced.
Indeed, Sam began to feel it, as he saw how the other men, both practical business men, listened, and were impressed; but it was not quite the case with his wife, who did not particularly esteem colonial Bishops, and still less Sisterhoods or devotion to missionary efforts, especially among the Australian blacks, whom her old geography book had told her were the most degraded and hopeless of natives, scarcely removed from mere animals.
When Angela appeared half through dinner time and said that Lena was safely asleep, and Marilda sat her down to be happy in exchange of Carrigaboola tidings with her Bishop, Fernando greeted her with a reverence not undeserved, though perhaps all the more from the contrast to the mischievous little sprite who used to disturb the days of his philandering with Alda.
How much shocked Mrs. Samuel was, when the magnificent Sir Ferdinand, whom she regarded with awe as a millionaire, was flippantly answered by this extraordinary Sister, “Thank you, Fernan, I should like to have a sight of the old office. I hope you have a descendant of the old cat, Betty. Didn’t she come from your grandmother, Marilda? Do you remember her being found playing tricks with the nugget, just come from Victoria?”
“That was in her kitten days,” said Ferdinand.
“Is that personal, Fernan?”
“A compliment, Angel,” said the Bishop. “Kittens alter a good deal.”
“Not much for the better,” said Angela. “If you only could see Mrs. Lamb, who used to be the very moral of a kitten, scratchiness and all!”
“I thought her very much improved,” said Lady Underwood gravely.
“Oh, yes; grown into a sleek and personable tabby, able to wave her tail at the tip and tuck her paws—her velvet paws—well under her; and lick her lips over the—oh, dear!—what do you call it?—your menu is quite too much for us poor savages, Marilda. A bit of damper is quite enough for us, isn’t it, Bishop?”
“Varied with opossum and fern root,” he said smiling; “but that’s only when we have lost our way.”
The talk drifted off to the history of a shepherd’s child, who had strayed into the bush, and after much searching, in which the Bishop and Fulbert had been half starved, had finally been found and carried home by Angela’s “crack gin,” as she told it to Bernard; and as Marilda thought the poor child was in a trap, it had to be translated into “favourite pupil,” though Bernard carried on the joke by asking Marilda if she thought the natives cannibals given to the snaring of mankind.
Altogether it was a thoroughly merry evening, such as comes to pass in the meeting of old friends and comrades in too large numbers for grave discourse, but with habits of close intercourse and associations of all kinds. Emilia and her husband tried in all courtesy not to let the Merrifields feel themselves neglected; and indeed Bessie was only too glad to listen and join at times in the talk; but it all went outside Mrs. Sam, who was on the whole scandalised at the laughter of a Bishop, and a Sister. Indeed, it was true that Bishop Fulmort, naturally a grave man, very much so in his early days, comported himself on this occasion as if he realised Southey’s wish—
“That in mine age as cheerful I might be,
Like the green winter of the holly tree.”
At any rate, that evening was long a bright remembrance. Lena slept all night, and was so fresh and well in the morning that Angela foreboded that the examination might not detect her delicacy. They met Mrs. Merrifield, and took her with them to the doctor’s, Lady Underwood Travis having placed her carriages at their disposal.
It was very much as Angela had expected, knowing by hospital reputation what the doctor was supposed to be to old ladies and fanciful mothers, while perhaps he had also heard of her fracas long ago at the hospital. For he was not more courteous to her than could be helped, treating her much as if she were only the nursery maid, and hardly looking at the opinion which she had made Professor May write out for him.
To her mind, it was a very cursory examination that he made; and the upshot of his opinion, triumphantly accepted by Mrs. Merrifield, was that there was nothing seriously amiss with the child, that she only needed care, regularity and bracing, and that the stifling, gasping spasms were simply the effect of hysteria.
Hysteria! Angela felt as if she should run wild as she heard Mrs. Merrifield’s complacent remarks on having always thought so, and being sure that a few weeks of good air and good management would make an immense difference. The need of not alarming or prejudicing the poor little victim was all that kept Angela in any restraint; and Mrs. Merrifield went on to say that she had promised her youngest boy, who was with her in London, to take him to the Zoological Gardens, and it would be a good opportunity for Magdalen to see them.
“Is that where there is a kangaroo?” asked Lena, so eagerly that Angela, though thinking that morning’s work enough for the feeble strength, could not withstand her. Besides, if the Merrifields were to have her wholly in another day, what was the use of standing out for one afternoon? One comfort was that Elizabeth, who would really have the charge of the child, had much more good sense and knowledge of the world than her sister-in-law.
Still Angela felt the only way of bearing it was that after setting Mrs. Merrifield down, she stopped the carriage at a church she knew to have a noon-tide Litany, knelt there, with the little girl beside her, and tried to say, “Thy will be done! To Thy keeping I commit her.” Her “hours” came to help her.
“Quench Thou the fires of hate and strife,
The wasting fever of the heart,
From perils guard her feeble life,
And to our souls Thy help impart.”
She was able to be calm, and to utter none of her rage when they came back to luncheon; and Marilda, declaring she liked nothing so well as seeing children at the Zoo, wished to go with the party. All, save Mrs. Merrifield and her boy, had gone different ways in London, so there was plenty of room in the barouche.
The boy’s mind was set on riding on the elephant, and they walked on that way, turning aside, however, to the yard where towered the kangaroo, tall, gentle, graceful and gracious. Lena sprang forward with a cry of joy, and clasped her hands; but in one moment the same spasm, at first of ecstasy then of overpowering feeling, becoming agony, came over her, and gasping and choking, Angela held her in her arms and carried her to a seat, holding her up, loosening her clothes; but still she did not come round. Her aunt tried to say, “hysteric.” Some one brought water, but it was of no use—there were still the labouring gasps, and the convulsive motion. “Let us take her home,” Marilda said.
“Nothing but hysterics!” repeated the aunt. “I will stay with Jackie.”
Marilda found her servant and the carriage, and in the long drive, a few drops of strong stimulant at a chemist’s brought a little relief though scarcely consciousness; and when Angela had carried her up to her room, there was a blueness about the lips, a coldness about the fingers, that told much. Marilda had at once sent for Dr. Brownlow as the nearest, and he was at home; but he could only look and do nothing, but attempt to revive circulation, all in vain; and with Marilda standing by, with one convulsive clutch of Angela’s hand, the true mother of her orphaned life, little Lena sank to a peaceful rest from the tribulations that awaited her here.
CHAPTER XXIX—SAFE
“Rest beyond all grief and pain,
Death to thee is truest gain.”
Keble.
Angela’s nearest and best friends had anticipated that the peaceful climax of all her cares would be a relief to her; and so indeed in the long run it would be to her higher sense, and she would be thankful. But even those who knew her most thoroughly had not estimated the pangs of personal affection and deprivation of the child she had fostered with a mother’s tenderness for seven years, and the absolute suffering of the sudden parting, even though it was to security of bliss, instead of doubt and uneasiness.
She was quite broken and really ill with neuralgia and exhaustion, unable to attend the funeral, which the Merrifields wished to have at Stokesley, and unfit for anything but lying still with the pink parrot on the rail below, kindly watched over by good Marilda. The strain of many disturbed nights, the perplexities, the struggle for resignation, all coming after a succession of trying events in Australia, had told heavily upon her. Indeed, no one guessed how much she had undergone, physically as well as spiritually, till Marilda would not be denied the consulting Dr. Brownlow, who questioned her closely, and extorted confessions of the long continued strain of exertion. Rest was all she needed; and Marilda took care that she had it, bringing Robina up from Minsterham to make it more effectual, and letting her have visits from her Bishop and from Bernard as they could afford the time, both being very and variously busy.
Angela had made up her mind to go out to Australia again, and to make Carrigaboola an endowment for the Sisterhood; but the means of doing this could best be arranged there, and she intended to go out when her Bishop should return in the autumn, feeling that her vocation was there, though there was a blank in all she had most cared for on earth in that home.
As soon as she had recovered, she wished to spend a fortnight at Dearport, beginning with a retreat that was held there. Remembering her old career there, and the abrupt close of her novitiate, she felt and spoke as if she was to be received as in penitence, but to the Sisters who surrounded her it was more as if they were receiving a saint.
When she came back to Vale Leston, she had recovered cheerfulness, more equable than it had ever been, and Cherry and Alda found her a charming companion. There was much going on at Vale Leston just then. Miss Arthuret and Dolores were at Penbeacon, seriously considering of the scheme of converting the old farm house into a kind of place of study for girls who wanted to work at various technicalities, and to fit themselves for usefulness or for self-maintenance. There was to be more or less of the Convalescent Home or House of Rest in combination, and it had occurred to Dolores that there could hardly be a better head of such an establishment than Magdalen Prescott.
Magdalen had been asked to the Priory to meet Angela, to whom it was now a comfort and pleasure to talk of her treasure, so much less lost to her than in the uncongenial surroundings threatened at Coalham. And the invitation, followed by the proposal, came at a not unpropitious moment. A railway company, after much surveying, much disputing, and many heartburnings, were actually obtaining an Act of Parliament, empowering it to lay its cruel hands upon the Goyle, running its viaducts down the ravine of Arnscombe, and destroy all the peace and privacy! It did much, as Agatha had said, to make the new scheme of Penbeacon acceptable though.
“That comes of making one’s nest,” she sighed, “and thinking one’s self secure in it for life! Oh! it is worse and more changeable in this latter century than in any other! Does the world go round faster?”
“Of course it does,” said Geraldine. “Think how many fashions, how many styles, how many ways of thinking, have passed away, even in our own time.”
“And what have they left behind them?”
“Something good, I trust. Coral cells, stones for the next generation of zoophytes to stand upon to reach up higher.”
“Is it higher?”
“In one sense, I hope. The same foundation, remember, and each cell forms a rock for the future—a white and beautiful cell, remember, as it grows unconsciously, beneath this creature.”
Magdalen smiled, delighted with the illustration.
“It forms into the rocks, the strong foundations of the earth,” she said.
“When it has undergone its baptism beneath the sea,” added Geraldine. “But practically and unpoetically, perhaps—how the young folk mount upon all our little achievements in Church matters, and think them nearly as old-fashioned and despicable as we did pews and black gowns! Or how attempts like the schools that brought up Robina and Angela have shot out into High Schools, colleges, professions, and I know not what besides.”
“Ah! we come to my old notions for my sisters. I thought they would have been governesses like myself, but they married; and now tell me, what do you think of this scheme of Miss Mohun and Agatha?”
“You know Dolores is going to her father first. I never saw him, but Lady Merrifield and Jane tell me he is a very wise, highly-principled person, perfectly to be trusted; and they like all that they have heard of his young wife. I should think if Agatha is to become a scientific lecturer, she could not begin her career under better training.”
“Career, exactly! People used not to talk of careers.”
“Life and career! Tortoise and hare, eh? But the hare may and ought still to reach the goal, and have her cell built, even if she does have her wander yahr, like the young barnacles, before becoming attached! No! she need not become the barnacle goose. That is fabulous,” said Mrs. Grinstead, laughing off a little of her seriousness, and adding, “Tell me of the other girls. I think Vera did not come home last year.”
“No; nor the year before. She has a good many pretty little talents, and is very obliging. Mrs. White seems to be very fond of her, and did not want to spare her when they went to Gastein for the summer. And this year, when there was so much infection about, I could not press it.”
“Is it true that there is anything between her and Petros White?”
“I know Miss Mohun—Jane—infers it, but I don’t like to build upon it.”
“I should build on most inferences that Jane Mohun ventured to make known,” said Geraldine, smiling; “and Paulina’s fate is pretty well fixed, I suppose!”
“Dear child, she has never had any other purpose since I first knew her thoroughly, and I do not think her present stay at Dearport will disenchant her. I think she is really devoted, not to the theoretical romance of a Sisterhood, but to the deeper full purpose of self-devotion.”
“I can fully believe it of her. Hers have not been the ups and downs of my Angela, though indeed, after all she has gone through, there is something in her face that brings to my mind, ‘After that ye have suffered awhile, stablish, strengthen, settle you.’”
“It is a lovely countenance—so patient, and yet so bright.”
“I do not think anything in all her life has tried her so much as the distress about little Lena; and after knowing her wildness—to use a weak word for it—under other troubles, I see what grace and self-control have done for her. You still keep your Thekla!” she added, as the girl flashed by, in company with a coeval Vanderkist.
“For a few years to come, though I am beginning to feel like the old hens who do but bring their children up to launch them on the waters.”
“Well, it is happy if the launch can be made with hope present as well as faith; and to see what Angel has become after many vicissitudes, not confined to her first years of youth, is an immense encouragement.”
To Angela’s great delight, the affairs of Brown and Underwood were found to require inspection at San Francisco, as well as at Colombo, where Bernard was to put the firm into the hands of one of the Browns, who was to meet him there, and he would then be able to come home to the central office in England.
It was not expedient for Phyllis to make the voyage for so brief a stay, so it was decided that she should remain with her mother, and she declared that she should be happy about Bernard being taken care of if Angela, before settling in at Carrigaboola, would go and stay with him at Ceylon. “No one can tell the pleasure it is,” she said to Magdalen, “to borrow one’s own especial brother from his wife for a little while. Oh, yes, I know it goes against the grain with him, and it is right it should; but the poor old sister enjoys her treat nevertheless and notwithstanding.”
There was a great family gathering at Vale Leston, including both the Harewoods; and the Bishop of Albertstown came to spend that last fortnight in England with Clement, the boy who had been committed to him as a chorister, then trained as a young deacon, and almost driven out in his inexperience to the critical charge of the neglected parish and the old squire, only to be recalled after seven years to the more important charge in London on the Bishop’s appointment, there to serve till strength gave way, and he must perforce return to his former home. There was a farewell picnic of the elders at Penbeacon, merry and yet wistful in its hopeful auguries that the loved play place would be a glad and beneficial home.
It was a strange retrospect, talked over by the two old friends in deep thankfulness, yet humility over their own shortcomings and failures, and no less strange were the recollections of the wild noisy insubordinate schoolgirl whom the Bishop’s sister had failed to tame, and who had to both seemed to live only on sensation, whether religious or secular, and who had been one continual care and perplexity to each. By turns they had thought that the full Church system acted as a hotbed on her peculiar temperament, and at others they had thought it only an alternative to the amusements of vanity and flirtation. Each had felt himself a failure with regard to her, and had hoped for a fresh start from each crisis of repentance, notably, from the death of Felix, only to be disappointed by some fresh aberration.
However, in Queensland, her work had been noble, and thoroughly effective in many cases; it had involved much self-denial and even danger, and though these might agree with her native spirit of adventure, there had likewise been not fitful, but steadily earnest devotion in her convent life, as well as the tenderest reverent care of Mother Constance in a long and painful decline, and therewith a steady cheerful influence which had immensely assisted the growth of Fulbert’s character. For some years past, Sister Angela had been not a care, but a trusty helper to the Bishop; and the later trials and difficulties, especially the sore rending of the tie with the being she had come to love with all the force of her strong nature, had been borne in a manner that bore witness to the subduing of that over-rebellious and vehement spirit.
And, as she said to Geraldine on the last evening as they bade good-night, “This has been the very happiest time I ever spent here—yes, happier than in those exultant days of new possession and liberty. Oh, yes, all experiments, as it were, bold ventures, self-reproach and failure, defiance and fun, and then—oh, the ache I would not confess, the glory of being provoking, and, oh, the final anguish I brought on myself and on you all; and I went on, when it began to wear away, still stifling the sting which revived whenever I came home, and all was renewed! Really, whenever I shammed it was only remorse. I don’t think that real repentance, and the peace after it, began till those quiet days with dear Mother Constance.”
“And is it peace now?”
“Yes, I think so. Even the parting with my child has not torn me up. I can say it is well—far better than leaving her, far better, indeed! And Felix is what he meant to be, my treasure, not my accuser. Oh, I am glad to have been at home, and made it all up, to bear away—and leave with you the sense of Peace.”
All who had loved and feared for her were very happy over her when all joined in that farewell service on her own birthday, St. Michael and All Angels’ Day.
The party were joined by Dolores and Wilfred at Liverpool; Bernard having undertaken to establish the latter at Colombo in hands as safe as might be.
