Kitabı oku: «Modern Broods; Or, Developments Unlooked For», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XV—BROODS ASTRAY
“But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of Heaven-descended will,
And ever weaker grows through acted crime,
Or seeming genial venial fault.”
—Tennyson.
“Man Friday hope piccaniny live well—bring her buckra fish from sea!” Such was the greeting from Lord Rotherwood to Thekla when the whole party walked over in time for tea on the lawn, before church at Clipstone, as he presented her with a facsimile oyster which he had hunted up in a sweet shop, making an absurd bow and scrape.
Poor Thekla coloured, and mumbled a shy, “Thank you, my—my—” having had a lecture from Vera on treating a marquis with over familiarity and it was left to Primrose to ask where Friday learnt nigger language. “By nature, Missy buckra,” he responded; “all same nigger everywhere.” And he repeated his bow so drolly that Primrose’s laugh carried Thekla’s along with it, as Lady Phyllis walked up with, “Come, father, you are wanted to congratulate.”
“Eh! Am I? So they have perpetrated it, have they? More’s the pity is what I should say in the Palace of Truth; but the maiden has landed a better fish than she knows—that is, if she have landed him.”
“There! take care, don’t be tiresome, Papa!” admonished Lady Phyllis, drawing him on, when he met Vera with a courtly manner, and, “I hope I see you recovered, Miss Prescott, and able to rejoice in the pleasant consequences of your adventure.”
Vera blushed, and looked very pretty and modest, making not much answer as she retreated among her contemporaries to show them her ring, a hoop of pearls, which Wilfred insisted were Roman pearls, fishes’ eyes, most appropriate; but Flapsy felt immeasurably older than Wilfred to-day, and able to despise his teasing, though Hubert Delrio was not present, and indeed Wilfred was not disposed to bestow much of his attention upon her, having much more inclination to beset his cousin, Lady Phyllis, who surely ought to perceive that he had attained at least the same height as his brother Jasper, and could, in his absence, pose as the young man of the household.
Phyllis had not much to say to him, nor after the first to Vera, though she duly admired the ring so exultantly shown, and accepted the assurance that Hubert was the dearest fellow in the world. But there was no getting any condolence out of her upon the misery of having to wait four whole years. She said, “It was a very good thing! There was her cousin Gillian, who had insisted on waiting three years to finish her education.”
“Oh, but dear Hubert likes me as I am,” simpered Vera.
“You might wish that he should find more in you to like. Gillian,” said Phyllis, coming up to her and Agatha, “I want you to assure Vera that four years is not such a great trial in waiting.”
“It is what I have been trying to persuade her,” said Agatha; “she is hardly seventeen.”
“And I would not have been married at seventeen for anything,” said Gillian to the pouting Vera. “I want to be more worth having.”
Vera did not like it, she had heard the like at home, and she fell back upon Valetta, while the others walked on. “Poor little Flapsy!” said Agatha, “I do hope this engagement may make more of a woman of her.”
“My father was very much struck by Mr. Delrio,” said Phyllis, “both as artist and personally.”
“You must be glad of the time for putting her up to his level,” said Gillian.
“Do you think such things are to be done?” asked Agatha.
“Yes,” said Phyllis stoutly. “You may not make her able to be a Senior Wrangler—(Oh you are Oxford!)—or capable of it, like this Gillyflower; but you can get the stuff into her that makes a sound sensible wife.”
Gillian caught a little hopeless sigh of “can,” and answered it with, “When all this effervescence is blown off, then will be the time for working at the substance, and she may be all the better wife—especially for the artist temperament, if she is of the homely sort.”
“How angry she would be if she heard you say so!” returned Agatha. “Yet certainly I do feel relieved that wifehood is to be my poor Flapsy’s portion, for she is not of the sort that can stand alone and make her own way.”
“There will always be plenty of such women in the world,” said Gillian.
“So much the better for the world,” retorted Phyllis, who had never shown any symptoms of exclusive devotion to any one of the other sex, except her father.
One thing Agatha wanted to know, and dared not ask, namely, what impression Vera had made in the Kittiwake and what Hubert had said about her; for she and Paula had begun to remark that, lover as he was, not a word about her heroism had escaped him. And it was as well that she did not hear what the extra plain spoken Primrose did not spare the boasting Thekla. “Cousin Rotherwood and Fly both say they can’t think how Mr. Delrio got on with such a silly little hysterical goose upon his hands; and that it is a foolish romantic unlucky notion that he ought to be engaged to her. I think Mamma will tell Miss Prescott so.”
The Kittiwake, having arrived three days later than had been expected, there had been an amount of revolution in the general arrangements. The break up of the High School was to be on an early day of the next week. It had become a much more extensive and public matter than in the days of Valetta and Maura, though these were not so very long ago, and there was a great day of exhibitions and speeches to the parents and neighbourhood generally. Two ladies had been secured for the purpose, Elizabeth Merrifield and Miss Arthuret, and the former arrived on the Saturday afternoon, but as the Rotherwood party almost overflowed Clipstone, she was transferred to Miss Mohun.
After the death of their parents, about three years previously, Susan and Elizabeth had gone to live at Coalham, and to be useful to their brother David’s parish; Susan betaking herself to the poor, and Bessie finding herself specially available in the various forms of improvement undertaken by ladies in modern days. To her own surprise, and her sister’s discomfiture, her talent as a public speaker had become developed. With a little assistance from her sister-in-law Agnes’s unwilling stage experience, and entreaties, not easily to be withstood, came from various quarters that she would come and advocate the good cause.
Of course she was ever welcome at Clipstone, and she walked up thither with General Mohun, arriving just after the others from the Goyle; and in the general confusion of greetings, and the Babel of cousinly tongues, there were no introductions nor naming of names. Bessie declared herself delighted with the chance of seeing Lady Ivinghoe, whom she considered more to realise the beauty of women than any one she had hitherto beheld, and the fair face had not lost its simplicity, but rather gained in loveliness by the sweetness of early motherhood, as she and Phyllis sat by Mysie, regaling her with tales of what they regarded as the remarkable precocity of the infant Claude, reluctantly left to his grandmother.
“But where’s Dolores?” asked Bessie. “I miss her among the swarm of mice!”
“Dolores is at Vale Leston,” answered Gillian. “She has been a long time making up her mind to go there, to Gerald’s home; and now she is there, they will not let her go till some birthday is over.”
“Uncle Felix’s!” whispered Franceska to Mysie. “You know it was dear Gerald’s place. She had never seen it.”
Another voice was now raised, asking, “What had become of Miss Arthuret?”
“She only comes down on Monday,” said Bessie. “Just in time for the meeting. She is too valuable to come for more than one meeting.”
“But who is she?”
“Arthurine Arthuret? She is a girl, or rather woman, who has some property at Stokesley. In fact, she is one of those magnets that seem to attract inheritance without effort—like the Hapsburgs, though happily she makes a most beneficent, though, sometimes, original use of them.”
“Is not that very dangerous?” said Aunt Lily.
“The first came to her early, and coming into it very young, and overflowing with new ideas, she began rather grotesquely; but she has tamed down a good deal since, and really has done an immense deal of good in finding employment for people, making improvements and the like, though she is Sam’s pet aversion, a tremendous Liberal, almost a Socialist. They are so like cat and dog that Susan and I were really glad to be away from Stokesley, especially at election times; but altogether she is an admirable person.”
Lady Merrifield thought she detected a start of Miss Prescott at the name Stokesley, and that her eyes looked anxiously at the speaker. Bessie was not of the sandy part of the family. Was the unattractive schoolboy, once seen, like his sisters? All that was observable was startling similitudes to her own children, though in them the elements of the handsome dark Mohun generally predominated.
But by and by, in a quiet moment, Bessie suddenly asked, “Did you say her name was Magdalen?”
Lady Merrifield laughed. “Four years may do a good deal at that time of life,” she said. “I suppose no time ever so changes—changes—what shall I say?—eyes—views—characters. Only constancy in absence is the dangerous thing. There are distinguished examples of—of the mischief of being constant without knowing what one is constant to. Virulent constancy, as Mrs. Malaprop has it.”
Magdalen thanked and smiled. Perhaps there was a certain virulent constancy in a remote corner of her heart which had been revived by a certain indescribable look in the eyes and contour of Bessie Merrifield.
And Bessie herself, while sitting under the verandah with Lady Merrifield, while all the others were walking down to embark Lord and Lady Ivinghoe in the yacht, suddenly repeated, “Did you say that her name was Magdalen?”
“Yes; I saw it startled you, my dear.”
“It revived an old, old story. I do not know whether there was anything in it. Who or what is she, Aunt Lily? I only know her as the sister of the girl that the Ivinghoes picked up.”
“She is the owner of a little property at Arnscombe, and has taken home her four young half-sisters to live with her, after having slaved for them as a governess till she came into this inheritance. She is an excellent person.”
“Ah! Was her house at Filsted?”
“I am not sure. Yes, I think the young ones were at school there. You think—”
“I feel certain. May I tell you, Aunt Lily? Some of the others cannot bear to mention my poor Hal; but to me the worst of the sting is gone, since I know he repented.”
“My dear, I should be very glad to hear. Your father and mother never mention your brother, and we were away at the time.”
“Poor Hal! I am afraid there was a weakness in him. He never had that determination that carried all the others on. He never could get through an examination, and my father put him into a bank at Filsted. By and by, after some years, came a letter telling my father he was gambling very seriously, getting into temptation, and engaging himself to an attorney’s daughter. It was while I was living with grandmamma, and he used sometimes to look in on me, and talk to me about this Magdalen. Once he showed me her photograph and I thought I knew her face again. But my father went off, very angry. I have always feared he found poor Hal on the verge of tampering with the bank money, but he never would say a word. He broke everything up, put an end to the engagement if there was one, and sent Hal off to John and George, who had just got their farm in Manitoba, and were getting on by dint of hard work.”
“They have done very well, have they not?”
“Yes, by working and living harder than any day labourer at Stokesley. Hal could not stand it, and—and I’m afraid the boys were not very merciful to him, poor fellow, and he got something to do in Winnipeg. There he fell in with a speculator called Golding, they all did in fact; he was a plausible man, whom they all liked, and used to put up at his house when they took waggons in with their produce. He had a daughter, and Johnnie got engaged to her, or thought he was. They all were persuaded to put money into a horrid building speculation,—Henry, what he had brought out, the other two what they had realised. Well, suddenly it all ended. They were all gone, Golding, daughter, Hal and all—yes, all—the money the other boys had put in the thing, off to the States, as we suppose! No trace ever found.”
“Really no trace?”
“None! The poor boys lost all they had, and were obliged to begin over again.”
“And has really nothing been heard of this unfortunate Hal?”
“There is one thing that does give me a hope. There did come to Stokesley a letter from a Brisbane bank, addressed to J. and G. Merrifield, to the care of Rear-Admiral Merrifield, and in it were bank bills up to the value of what the boys had been robbed of, about two hundred and fifty pounds. Poor Henry must have repented, and wished to make restitution.”
“Was there no name, no clue?”
“None at all. We know no more.”
“But was there no inquiry made at Brisbane?”
“It was when my father was very ill. The parcel was not opened at first. I have been always sorry he never heard of it; but after all there was no asking of forgiveness, nor anything that could be answered. The boys got it with the tidings of our dear father’s death. John came home to see about things, George stayed to look after his Stokesley. They were well over their troubles by that time, and they gave the restored money to David for his churches.”
“And no more was done, not even by David?” said Lady Merrifield, thinking over what she had heard from Geraldine Grinstead, and how the Underwoods would have accepted such a token from their lost sheep.
“David did write to Brisbane to the bank, but there never was any answer. There is no knowing how it might have been, if any one had gone out and done his best; but you see we were all much taken up with home duties and cares, and I am afraid we have not dwelt enough upon our poor boy, and he had much against him. The discipline from my dear father, that all the elders responded to with a sort of loyal exultation, only frightened him and made him shifty. They despised him, and I do not think any of us were as kind to him as we ought to have been; though on the whole he liked me the best, for he cared for books and quiet pursuits, such as all laughed at, except David. I wish he could have seen more of David.”
“Did your mother hear of this ray of hope?”
“Susan thought it best not to tell her. We used to hear her murmuring his name among all ours in her prayers, Susie, Sam, Hal, Bessie, and so on; but she never was herself enough to understand, and they thought it might only stir her up to expect to see him. Oh, Aunt Lily, I don’t think you—any of you—would have gone on so; but you are all much more affectionate and demonstrative than our branch of the family.”
“Ah, my dear, I am sure there was a pang in your mother’s heart that she never durst mention,” said Lady Merrifield, her imagination dwelling in terror on her Wilfred, the one child in whom she could not help detecting the weakness of character of his unhappy cousin. “Depend upon it, Bessie, her prayers were hovering round him all the time, and bringing that act of restitution, though she was not allowed to hear of it.”
“I had not thought of that,” said Bessie, in a low tone, “though I think David has. I have heard his voice choke over an intercession for the absent.”
“Think of it now, my dear, and do not let habitual reserve hinder you from speaking of it to Susan and David, though most likely they have the habit already. Who knows what united prayer may do with Him who deviseth means to bring home His banished?”
Steps returning, Bessie wiped away her tears in haste, actually the first she had shed for the lost Hal, though there was a heartache too deep for tears.
CHAPTER XVI—THE REGIMENT OF WOMEN
“And happier than the merriest games
Is the joy of our new and nobler aims.”
F. R. Havergal.
Miss Mohun and Miss Merrifield encountered Miss Prescott and Agatha among a perfect herd of cycles, making Bessie laugh over the recollections of the horror caused at Stokesley by the arrival of Arthurine Arthuret on a tricycle twelve years previously.
The place was the Town Hall, the High School having proved too small for the number of the intended audience, and Lord Rotherwood having been captured, in spite of the Kittiwake being pronounced ready to sail, and all the younger passengers being actually on board, entertaining a party from Clipstone. There he sat enthroned on the platform, with portraits of himself, his Elizabethan ancestor, and the Prince of Wales overhead, and, in propria persona on either side, the Mayor of Rockstone, Captain Henderson, and a sprinkling of the committee, Jane, of course, being one; while in the space beneath was a sea of hats, more or less beflowered and befeathered.
Lord Rotherwood began by complaining of an act of piracy! After being exposed to a tempest and forced to put in for supplies, here he was captured, and called upon to distribute prizes! He perceived that it was a new act of aggression on the part of the ladies, proving to what lengths they were coming. Tyrants they had always been, but to find them wreckers to boot was a novelty. However, prizes were the natural sequence of a maritime exploit, and he was happy to distribute them to the maidens about to start on the voyage of life, hoping that these dainty logbooks would prove a stimulus and a compass to steer by even into unexplored seas, such as he believed the better-informed ladies were about to describe to them.
Rockstone was used to its Marquis’s speeches, and always enjoyed them; and he handed the prize-books to the recipients with a shake of the hand, and a word or two of congratulation appropriate to each, especially when he knew their names; and then he declared that they were about to hear what education was good for, much better than from himself, from such noted examples as Miss Arthuret and Miss Merrifield, better known to them as Mesa. Wherewith he waved forward Miss Arthuret, a slight, youthful-looking lady, fashionably attired, and made his escape with rapid foot and hasty nods, almost furtively, while the audience were clapping her.
She spoke with voice and utterance notably superior to his well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult manner which had hitherto been their way of working through others, but in an open manner, which compelled attention; and she dwelt on certain brilliant achievements of women, and of others which stood before them, and towards which their education, passing out of the old grooves, was preparing them to take their place among men, and temper their harshness and indifference to suffering with the laws of mercy and humanity, speaking with an authority and equality such as should ensure attention, no longer in home and nursery whispering alone, but with open face asserting and claiming justice for the weakest.
It was a powerful and effective speech; and Agatha’s eye lighted with enthusiasm, as did those of several others of the elder scholars and younger teachers, as these high aims were unfolded to them.
Then followed Elizabeth Merrifield, not contradictory, but recognising what wide fields had been opened to womanhood, dwelling on such being the work of Christianity, which had always tended to repress the power of brute animal strength and jealousy, and to give preponderance to the force of character and the just influence of sweet homely affection. Exceptional flashes, even in heathen lands, and still more under the Divine guidance of the Israelites, showed what women were capable of; and ever since a woman had been the chosen instrument of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Church, the chosen emblem of the union of humanity with her Lord, had gradually purified and exalted the sex by training them through the duties of mercy, of wifehood and motherhood, to be capable of undertaking and fulfilling higher and more extensive tasks, always by the appointment and with the help of Him who had increased their outside powers, for the sake of the weaker ones of His flock. What might, by His will, in the government and politics of the country, be put into their hands, no one could tell; but it was right to be prepared for it, by extending their intellectual ability and knowledge of the past, as well as of the laws of physical nature—all, in short, that modern education aimed at opening young minds to pursue with growing faculties. This was what made her rejoice in the studies here followed with good success, as the prizes testified so pleasantly; and she trusted that the cultivation, which here went on so prosperously, was leading—if she might use old well-accustomed words—to the advancement of God’s glory, the good of His Church, aye! and to the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and her dominions.
The words brought tears of feeling into the eyes of some; but Jane Mohun could not help observing, “Ah! I was afraid you were going to hold up to us the example of the ants and bees, where the old maids do all the working and fighting and governing! Don’t make Gillian regret that she is falling away from the spinsterhood.”
“Come, Aunt Jane, Bessie never did make it the praise of spinsters. I am sure married women can do as much as spinsters, and have more weight,” said Gillian, facing round gallantly, and winning the approval of her aunt and of Bessie. There was no doubt but that since her engagement she had been much quieter and less opinionative.
With what different sensations the same occasion may be attended! To Bessie Merrifield, the primary object was, as ever, woman’s work, especially her own, for the Church; and the actual business absorbed her. In spite of her evenings’ talk to her Aunt Lilias, and the sad and painful recollections it had aroused, still her only look at Magdalen Prescott’s face was one half of curiosity half of sorrow, as of the object of the brief calf-love of one of many brothers, and who had been now lost sight of, with the passing wonder whether, if the affection had survived and been encouraged, it might have led him to better things.
While Magdalen felt the poignant renewal of the one romance of a lifetime, as she caught tones, watched little gestures and recognised those indescribable hereditary similarities which more and more bore in upon her the fraternal connection of the bright earnest woman with the lively pleasant young man who had brought the attraction of a higher tone of manners and cultivation into the country town. No more had been heard of him since his promise to write, a promise that had been only once remembered, so that she had tried to take refuge in the supposition, unlikely as it was, that her stepmother had confiscated his letters. All was a blank since that last stolen kiss; and the wonder whether she could by any means discover anything further from Lady Merrifield or Gillian, so occupied her that she hardly heard the tenor of the two speeches, and did not observe Agatha’s glowing cheeks and burning eyes, which might have told her that this was one of the moments which direct the current of life.
When Hubert Delrio came up in the evening he was curious to hear about the meeting. His young landlady, who had been a High School girl for a short time, thought Miss Arthuret’s speech the most beautiful discourse that ever was spoken; while other reports said that Lady Flight and Miss Mohun were very much shocked, and thought it unwholesome, not to say dangerous; and he wanted to know the meaning of it. Magdalen was quite dismayed to find how entirely her attention had been absent, and how little account she could give of what had passed by her like the wind; but she need not have been at a loss, for Agatha, with sparkling eyes and clasped hands, burst out into a very able and spirited abstract of the speech, and the future it portrayed, showing perhaps more enthusiasm than the practised public speaker thought it prudent to manifest.
“I see,” said Hubert with something of a smile, “you ladies are charmed with the great future opened to you.”
“I’m sure,” said Vera, perhaps a little nettled by attention paid so long to Agatha, “I can’t see the sense of it all; I think a woman is made just to love her husband, and be his pet, without all that fuss about societies, and speeches and learning and fuss!” And she gave a little caress to Hubert’s hand, which was returned, as he said, “She may well be loved, but, without publicly coming forward, she may become the more valuable to her home.”
“Of course she may, at home or abroad. She ought—” began Agatha, but Vera snapped her off. “Well, it only comes to being one of a lot of horrid old maids; and you don’t want me to be one of them, do you, darling? Come and look at my doves!”
“What do you think of it all, sister?” asked Paulina.
“So far as I grasp the subject,” said Magdalen, to whom, of course, this was not new, “I think that if a larger scope is to be given to women, it is for the sake and under the direction of the Church that it can be rightly and safely used.”
She knew she was speaking by rote, and was not surprised that Agatha said, “That is just what one has heard so often, and what Miss Merrifield harped upon! I want to breathe in a fresh atmosphere beyond the old traditions, and know which are Divine and which are only the superstructure of those who have always had the dominion and justified it in their own way!”
“Who gave them that dominion?” said Magdalen.
“Brute strength,” began Agatha.
“Nag, Nag!” cried Paula. “Surely you believe—”
“I did not say—I did not mean—I only meant to think it out, and understand what is Divine and what is in the eternal fitness of things.”
Here came an interruption, leaving Magdalen conscious of the want of preparation for guiding the thought of these young things, and of self-reproach too, for having let herself be so absorbed in the thought of “her broken reed of earth beneath,” as not to have dwelt on what might be the deep impressions of the young sisters under her charge.
A few days later, as Agatha sat reading in the garden, two figures appeared on the drive, wheeling up their bicycles. One was Gillian, the other had a general air of the family, but much darker, and not one of the old acquaintances. Advancing to meet them, she said, “I am the only one at home. My sisters are all at lessons or in the village.”
“I’ll leave a message,” said Gillian. “My mother wants you all to come up to picnic tea to see the foxgloves in the dell, on Monday, and to bring Mr. Delrio—”
“Oh! thank you.”
“I forgot, you had not seen my cousin Dolores Mohun before. Mysie calls her a cousin-twin, if you know what that is.”
Agatha thought the newcomer’s great pensive dark eyes and overhanging brow under very black hair made her look older than Mysie, or indeed than Gillian herself; and when the message had been disposed of, the latter continued, “Dolores wanted to know about Miss Arthuret’s lecture, being rather in that line herself. She could not get home in time for it, and I was seeing the Kittiwake party on board, and only crept in at the other end of the hall in time for Bessie’s faint echoes.”
“I was in the very antipodes,” said Dolores, “in a haunt of ancient peace, whence they would not let me come away soon enough.”
“And, Agatha, Aunt Jane says she saw you devouring Miss Arthuret with your eyes,” said Gillian.
“It gave one a sense of new life,” said Agatha; and she related again Miss Arthuret’s speech, broken only by appreciative questions and comments from Dolores’ auditor, to whom, in the true fashion of nineteen, Agatha straightway lost her heart. Dolores, who had seen much more of the outer world than her cousins, and had had besides a deeply felt inward experience which might well render her far more responsive, and able to comprehend the questions working in the girl’s mind, and which found expression in, “I went to St. Robert’s only wanting to get my education carried on so that I might be a better governess; but I see now there are much farther on, much greater things to aim at, than I ever thought of.”
“Alps on Alps arise!” said Dolores. “Yes—till they lose themselves—and where?”
“Miss Merrifield would say in Heaven, by way of the Church.”
“The all things in earth or under the earth rising up in circles of praise to the Cherubim and the Great White Throne,” said Dolores, her dark eyes raised in a moment’s contemplation.
“Ah! One knows. But is that thought the one to be brought home to every one, as if they could bear it always? Are not we to do something—something—for the helping people here in this life, not always going on to the other life—”
“Temporal or spiritual?” said Dolores; “or spiritual through temporal?”
“And our part in helping,” said Agatha.
“There is an immense deal to be thought out,” said Dolores. “I feel only at the beginning of the questions, and there is study and experience to go to them.”
“You mean what one gets at Oxford?”
“Partly. Thorough—at least, as thorough as one can—of the physical and material nature of things, then of the precedent which then results, also of reasoning.”
“Metaphysical, do you mean, or logical?”
“That comes in; but I was thinking of mathematical in the indirect training of the mind. It all works into needful equipment, and so does actual life.”
“It takes one’s breath away.”
“Well, we have begun our training,” said Dolores, with a sweet sad smile. “At least, I hope so.”
“At St. Robert’s, you mean?”
“You have, I think. But I believe my aunt will be expecting us.”
“Oh! And then they talk about modesty and womanliness and retiring! What do you think about all that?”
