Читать книгу Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood - Yonge Charlotte Mary - Страница 8

“How does my little schoolfellow get on?” asked Mary Ogilvie, when she had sat down for her first meal with her brother in her summer holidays.

“Much as Ariel did in the split pine, I fancy.”

“For shame, David! I’m afraid you are teaching her to see Sycorax and Caliban in her neighbours.”

“Not I! How should I ever see her! Do you hear from her?”

“Sometimes; and I heard of her from the Actons, who had an immense regard for her husband, who, they say, was a very superior man.”

“It is hardly necessary to be told so.”

“They mean to take lodgings somewhere near here this next month, and see what they can do to cheer her in her present life, which must be the greatest possible contrast to her former one. Do you wish to set out on our expedition before August, Davie? I should like you to see them.”

“By all means let us wait for them. Indeed I should not be at liberty till the last week in July.”

“And how go the brains of Kenminster? You look enlivened since last time I saw you.”

“It is the infusion the brains have received. That one woman has made more difference to the school than I could have done in ten years.”

“You find her boys, at any rate, pupils worth teaching.”

“More than that. Of course it is something to have a fellow capable of ideas before one; but besides that, lads who had gone on contentedly at their own level have had to bestir themselves not to be taken down by him. When he refused to have it forced upon him that study was not the thing at Kenminster, they found the only way to make him know his place was to keep theirs, and some of them have really found the use of their wits, and rejoice in them. Even in the lower form, the Colonel’s second boy has developed an intellect. Then the way those boys bring their work prepared has raised the standard!”

“I heard something of that on my way.”

“You did?”

“Yes; two ladies were in full career of talk when the train stopped at the Junction, and I heard—‘I am always obliged to spend one hour every evening seeing that Arthur knows his lessons. So troublesome you know; but since that Mrs. Joseph Brownlow has come, she helps her boys so with their home-work that the others have not a chance if one does not look to it oneself.’ Then it appeared that she told Mr. Ogilvie it wasn’t fair, and that he would give her no redress.”

“Absurd woman! It is not a matter of unfairness, as I told her. They don’t get help in sums or exercises; they only have grammar to learn and construing to prepare, and all my concern is that it should be got up thoroughly. If their mothers help them, so much the better.”

“The mothers don’t seem to think so. However, she branched off into incredulity that Mrs. Joe Brownlow could ever really teach her children anything, for she was always tramping all over the country with them at all hours of the day and night. She has met her herself, with all those boys after her, three miles from home, in a great straw hat, when her husband hadn’t been dead a year.”

“I’m sure she is always in regulation veils, and all the rest of it, at Church, if that’s what you ladies want.”

“But the crown of the misdoings seemed to be that she had been met at some old castle, sacred to picnics, alone with her children—no party nor anything. I could not make out whether the offence consisted in making the ruin too cheap, or in caring for it for its own sake, and not as a lion for guests.”

“The latter probably. She has the reputation of being very affected!!!”

“Poor dear! I heard that she was a great trial to dear Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mary, in an imitative voice. “Why, do you know, she sometimes is up and out with her children before six o’clock in the morning; and then Colonel Brownlow went in one day at twelve o’clock, and found the whole family fast asleep on different sofas.”

“The sensible way, too, to spend such days as these. To go out in the cool of the morning, and take a siesta, is the only rational plan!”

“I’m afraid one must conform to one’s neighbours’ ways.”

“Trust a woman for being conventional.”

“I confess I did not like the tone in which my poor Carey was spoken of. I am afraid she can hardly have taken care enough not to be thought flighty.”

“Mary! you are as absurd as the rest of them!”

“Why? what have you seen of her?”

“Nothing, I tell you, except once meeting her in the street, and once calling on her to ask whether her boy should learn German.” And David Ogilvie spoke with a vehemence that somewhat startled his sister.

It was a July evening, and though the walls of the schoolmaster’s house were thick, it was sultry enough within to lead the brother and sister out immediately after dinner, looking first into the play-fields, where cricket was of course going on among the bigger boys, but where Mary looked in vain for her friend’s sons.

“No, they are not much of cricketers,” said her brother; “they are small for it yet, and only take their turn in watching-out by compulsion. I wish the senior had more play in him. Shall we walk on by the river?”

So they did, along a paved causeway which presently got clear of the cottages and gables of old factories, and led along, with the brightly glassy sheet of water on one side, and the steep wooded slope on the other, loose-strife and meadow-sweet growing thickly on the bank, amid long weeds with feathery tops, rich brown fingers of sedge, and bur-reeds like German morgensterns, while above the long wreaths of dog-roses projected, the sweet honeysuckle twined about, and the white blossoms of traveller’s joy hung in festoons from the hedge of the bordering plantation. After a time they came on a kind of glade, opening upwards though the wood, with one large oak-tree standing alone in the centre, and behold! on the grass below sat or lay a company—Mrs. Joseph Brownlow in the midst, under the obnoxious mushroom-hat, reading aloud. Radiating from her were five boys, the biggest of all on his back, with his hat over his eyes, fast asleep; another cross-legged, with a basket between his knees, dividing his attention between it and the book; two more lying frog-like, with elbows on the ground, feet erected behind them, chin in hand, devouring the narrative with their eyes; the fifth wriggling restlessly about, evidently in search of opportunities of mischief or of tormenting tricks. Just within earshot, but sketching the picturesque wooden bridge below, sat one girl. The little one, with her youngest brother, was close at their mother’s feet, threading flowers to make a garland. It was a pretty sight, and so intent were most of the party on their occupations that they never saw the pair on the bank till Joe, the idler, started and rolled round with “Hollo!” when all turned, it may be feared with muttered growls from some of the boys; but Carey herself gave a cry of joy, ran down the bank like a girl, and greeted Mary Ogilvie with an eager embrace.

“You are holding a Court here,” said the school-master.

“We have had tea out here. It is too hot for indoors, and I am reading them the ‘Water Babies.’”

“To a large audience, I see.”

“Yes, and some of which are not quite sure whether it is fact or fiction. Come and sit down.”

“The boys will hate us for breaking up their reading,” said Mary.

“Why should not we listen!” said her brother.

“Don’t disturb yourselves, boys; we’ve met before to-day.”

Bobus and Jock were, however, on their feet, and Johnny had half risen; Robin lay still snoring, and Joe had retreated into the wood from the alarming spectacle of “the schoolmaster abroad.”

After a greeting to the two girls, who comported themselves, according to their ages, as young ladies might be expected to do, the Ogilvies found accommodation on the roots of the tree, and listened. The “Water Babies” were then new, and Mr. Ogilvie had never heard them. Luckily the reading had just come to the history of the “Do as You Likes,” and the interview between the last of the race and M. Du Chaillu diverted him beyond measure. He laughed so much over the poor fellow’s abortive attempt to say “Am I not a man and a brother?” that his three scholars burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion, sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured tone what was the row?

“‘The Last of the Do as You Likes,’” said Armine.

“Oh I say—isn’t it jolly,” cried Jock, beating his breast gorilla-fashion and uttering a wild murmur of “Am I not a man and a brother?” then tumbling head over heels, half in ecstasy, half in imitation of the fate of the Do as You Like, setting everybody off into fits again.

“It’s just what Robin is coming to,” observed Bobus, as his namesake stretched his arms and delivered himself of a waking howl; then suddenly becoming conscious of Mr. Ogilvie, he remained petrified, with one arm fully outstretched, the other still lifted to his head.

“Never mind, Brownlow maximus,” said his master; “it was hardly fair to surprise you in private life, was it?”

The boy made no answer, but scrambled up, sheepish and disconcerted; and indeed the sun was entirely down and the dew almost falling, so that the mother called to the young ones to gather up their things and come home.

Such a collection! Bobus picked up a tin-case and basket full of flowers, interspersed with bottles of swimming insects. The trio and Armine shouldered their butterfly-nets, and had a distribution of pill-boxes and bottles, in some of which were caterpillars intended to live, in others butterflies dead (or dying, it may be feared) of laurel leaves. Babie had a mighty nosegay; Janet put up the sketch, which showed a good deal of power; and the whole troop moved up the slope to go home by the lanes.

“What collectors you are!” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“For the museum,” answered Armine, eagerly.

“Haven’t you seen our museum?” cried Barbara, who had taken his hand. “Oh, it is such a beauty! We have got an Orobanche major, only it is not dry yet.”

“I’m afraid Babie likes fine words,” said her mother; “but our museum is a great amusement to us Londoners.”

They all walked home together, talking merrily, and Mr. and Miss Ogilvie came in with them, on special entreaty, to share the supper—milk, fruit, bread and butter and cheese, and sandwiches, which was laid out on the round table in the octagon vestibule, which formed the lowest story of the tower. It was partaken of standing, or sitting at case on the window-seats, a form or two, an old carved chair, or on the stairs, the children ascending them after their meal, and after securing in their own fashion their treasures for the morrow. The two cousins had already bidden good-night at the gate and gone home, and the Ogilvies followed their example in ten minutes, Caroline begging Mary to come up to her as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was disposed of by school hours.

“But you will be busy?” said Mary.

“Never mind, I am afraid we are not very regular,” said Carey.

It was by this time ten o’clock, and the two younger children were still to be heard shouting to one another up stairs about the leaves for their chrysalids. So when Mary came up the hill at half-past ten the next morning, she was the less surprised to find these two only just beginning breakfast, while their mother was sitting at the end of the table knitting, and hearing Janet repeat German poetry. The boys had long been in school.

Caroline jumped up and threw her arms round Mary’s neck, declaring that now they would enjoy themselves. “We are very late,” she added, “but these late walks make the little people sleep, and I think it is better for them than tossing about, hot and cross.”

Mary was rather entertained at this new code, but said nothing, as Carey pointed out to the children how they were to occupy themselves under Janet’s charge, and the work they had to do showed that for their age they had lost no time.

The drawing-room showed indeed a contrast to the chaotic state in which it had been left. It was wonderfully pleasant-looking. The windows of the deep bay were all open to the lawn, shaded with blinds projecting out into the garden, where the parrot sat perched on her pole; pleasant nooks were arranged in the two sides of the bay window, with light chairs and small writing-tables, each with its glass of flowers; the piano stood across the arc, shutting off these windows into almost a separate room; low book-cases, with chiffonier cupboards and marble tops, ran round the walls, surmounted with many artistic ornaments. The central table was crowned with a tall glass of exquisitely-arranged grasses and wild flowers, and the choice and graceful nicknacks round it were such as might be traced to a London life in the artist world, and among grateful patients.

Brackets with vases and casts here and there projected from the walls, and some charming crayons and water-colours hung round them. The plastered walls had already been marked out in panels, and a growth of frescoes of bulrushes, ivy, and leaves of all kinds was beginning to overspread them, while on a nearer inspection the leaves proved to be fast becoming peopled with living portraits of butterflies and other insects; indeed Mary started at finding herself in, as she thought, unpleasant proximity to a pair of cockchafers.

“Ah! I tell the children that we shall be suspected of putting those creatures there as a trial to the old ladies’ nerves,” said Caroline, laughing.

“I confess they are startling to those who don’t like creeping things! Have you many old ladies, Carey?”

“Not very many. I fancy they don’t take to me more than I take to them, so we are mutually satisfied.”

“But is that a good thing?” said Mary anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Carey, indifferently. “At least I do know,” she added, “that I always used to be told I didn’t try to make small talk, and I can do it less than ever now that it is the smallest of small, and my heart faints from it. Oh Mary!”

“My poor dear Caroline! But you say that you were told you ought to do it?”

“Well, yes. Dear granny wished it; but I think that was rather with a view to Joe’s popularity, and we haven’t any patients to think of now. I should think the less arrant gossip the children heard, the better.”

“But is it well to let them despise everybody?”

“Then the less they see of them, the better!”

“For shame, Carey!”

“Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty. I do feel naughtier now than ever I did in my life; but I can’t help it! It just makes me mad to be worried or tied down,” and she pushed back her hair so that her unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the pin that held it.

“Oh, that wretched cap!” she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the pin became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary’s quiet hand to set it to rights; “it’s just an emblem of all the rest of it; I wouldn’t wear it another day, but that I’m afraid of Ellen and Robert, and it perfectly drives me wild. And I know Joe couldn’t have borne to see me in it.” At the Irishism of which she burst out laughing, and laughed herself into the tears that had never come when they were expected of her.

Mary caressed and soothed her, and told her she could well guess it was sadder to her now than even at first.

“Well, it is,” said Carey, looking up. “If one was sent out to sea in a boat, it wouldn’t be near so bad as long as one could see the dear old shore still, as when one had got out—out into the wide open—with nothing at all.”

And she stretched out her hands with a dreary, yearning gesture into the vacant space, such as it went to her friend’s heart to see.

“Ah! but there’s a haven at the end.”

“I suppose there is,” said Carey; “but it’s a long way off, and there’s dying first, and when people want to begin about it, they get so conventional, and if there’s one thing above another that I can’t stand, it is being bored.”

“My poor child!”

“There, don’t be angry with me, because I’m telling you just what I am!”

Before any more could be said Janet opened the door, saying, “Mother, Emma wants to see you.”

“Oh! I forgot,” cried Carey, hurrying off, while Janet came forward to the guest in her grown-up way, and asked—

“Have you been to the Water-Colour Exhibition, Miss Ogilvie?”

“Yes; Mr. Acton took me one Saturday afternoon.”

“Oh! then he would be sure to show you Nita Ray’s picture. I want so much to know how it strikes people.”

And Janet had plunged into a regular conversation about exhibitions, pictures, artists, concerts, lectures, &c., before her mother came back, talking with all the eagerness of an exile about her native country. As a governess in her school-room, Miss Ogilvie had had little more than a key-hole view of all these things; but then what she had seen and heard had been chiefly through the Actons, and thus coincided with Janet’s own side of the world, and they were in full discussion when Caroline came back.

“There, I’ve disposed of the butcher and baker!” she said. “Now we can be comfortable again.”

Mary expected Janet to repair to her own lessons, or to listen to those scales which Babie might be heard from a distance playing; but she only appealed to her mother about some picture of last year, and sat down to her drawing, while the conversation on pictures and books continued in animated style. So far from sending her away, Mary fancied that Carey was rather glad to keep to surface matters, and to be prevented from another outbreak of feeling.

The next interruption was from the children, each armed with a pile of open books on the top of a slate. Carey begged Mary to wait, and went outside the window with them, sitting down under a tree whence the murmured sounds of repetition could be heard, lasting about twenty minutes between the two, and then she returned, the little ones jumping on each side of her, Armine begging that Miss Ogilvie would come and see the museum, and Barbara saying that Jock wanted to help to show it off.

“Well, run now and put your own corners tidy,” suggested their mother. “If Jock does not stay in the playground, he will come back in a quarter of an hour.”

“And Mr. Ogilvie will come then. I invited him,” said Babie.

At which Carey laughed incredulously; but Janet, observing that she must go and see that the children did not do more harm than good, walked off, and Mary said—

“I should not wonder if he did act on the invitation.”

“I hope he will. It would have only been civil in me to have asked him, considering that I have taken possession of you,” said Caroline.

“I fully expect to see him on Miss Barbara’s invitation. Do you know, Carey, he says you have transformed his school.”

“Translated it, like Bottom the Weaver.”

“In the reverse direction. He says you have made the mothers see to their boys’ preparation, and wakened up the intellects.”

“Have I? I thought I had only kept my own boys up to the mark. Yes, and there’s Johnny. Do you know, Mary, it is very funny, but that boy Johnny has adopted me. He comes after me everywhere like a shadow, and there’s nothing he won’t do for me, even learning his lessons. You see the poor boy has a good deal of native sense, Brownlow sense, and mind had been more stifled than wanting in him. Nobody had ever put things to him by the right end, and when he once let me do it for him, it was quite a revelation, and he has been so happy and prosperous that he hardly knows himself. Poor boy, there is something very honest and true about him, and so affectionate! He is a little like his uncle, and I can’t help being fond of him. Then Robin is just as devoted to Jock, though I can’t say the results are so very desirable, for Jock is a monkey, I must confess, and it is irresistible to a monkey to have a bear that he can lead to do anything. I hear that Robin used to be the good boy of the establishment, and I am afraid he is not that now.”

“But can’t you stop that?”

“My dear, nobody could think of Jock’s devices so as to stop them, who had not his own monkey brain. Who would have thought of his getting the whole set to dress up as nigger singers, with black faces and banjoes, and coming to dance and sing in front of the windows?”

“There wasn’t much harm in that.”

“There wouldn’t have been if it had been only here. And, oh dear, the irresistible fun of Jock’s capering antics, and Rob moving by mechanism, as stiff and obedient as the giant porter to Flibberti-gibbet.” Carey stopped to laugh. “But then I never thought of their going on to present themselves to Ellen in the middle of a mighty and solemn dinner party! All the grandees, the county people (this in a deep and awful voice), sitting up in their chignons of state, in the awful pause during the dishing-up, when these five little wretches, in finery filched from the rag bag, appear on the smooth lawn, mown and trimmed to the last extent for the occasion, and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close to the open window. Ellen rises with great dignity. I fancy I can see her, sending out to order them off. And then, oh dear, Jock only hopping more frantically than ever round the poor man the hired waiter, who, you must know, is the undertaker’s chief mute, and singing—

And then the Colonel, bestirring himself to the rescue, with ‘go away boys, or I’ll send for the police.’ And then the discovery, when in the height of his wrath, Jock perked up, and said, ‘I thought you would like to have the ladies amused, Uncle Robert.’ He did box his ears then—small blame to him, I must say. I could stand that better than the jaw Ellen gave us afterwards. I beg your pardon, Mary, but it really was one. She thinks us far gone in the ways of depravity, and doesn’t willingly let her little girls come near us.”

“Isn’t that a pity?”

“I don’t know; Essie and Ellie have feelings in their clothes, and don’t like our scrambling walks, and if Ellie does get allured by our wicked ways, she is sure to be torn, or splashed, or something, and we have shrieks and lamentations, and accusations of Jock and Joe, amid floods of tears; and Jessie comes to the rescue, primly shaking her head and coaxing her little sister, while she brings out a needle and thread. I can’t help it, Mary. It does aggravate me to look at her!”

Mary could only shake her head with a mixture of pity, reproof, and amusement, and as a safer subject could not help asking—

“By the bye, why do you confuse your friends by having all the two families named in pairs?”

“We didn’t know we were going to live close together,” said Carey. “But the fact is that the Janets were named after their fathers’ only sister, who seems to have been an equal darling to both. We would have avoided Robert, but we found that it would have been thought disrespectful not to call the boy after his grandfather and uncle.”

“And Bobus is a thoroughly individual name.”

“Then Jock’s name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the second, but it wouldn’t stick. Names won’t sometimes, and there’s a formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But Joseph Armine’s second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it; and Barbara was dear grandmamma’s own name, and quite our own.”

Therewith Babie rushed downstairs with “He’s coming, Mother Carey,” and darted out at the house door to welcome Mr. Ogilvie at the gate, and lead him in in triumph, attended by her two brothers. The two ladies laughed, and Carey said, with a species of proud apology—

“Poor children, you see they have been used to be noticed by clever men.”

“Mr. Ogilvie is come to see our museum,” cried Babie, in her patronising tone, jumping and dancing round during his greetings and remarks that he hoped he might take advantage of her invitation; he had been thinking whether to begin a school museum would not be a very good thing for the boys, and serve to open their minds to common things. On which, before any one else could answer, the parrot, in a low and sententious tone, observed, “Excellent.”

“There, you have the consent of your first acquaintance,” said Carey, while the bird, excited by one of those mysterious likings that her kind are apt to take, held her grey head to Mr. Ogilvie to be scratched, chuckling out, “All Mother Carey’s chickens,” and Janet exclaimed—

“That’s an adoption.”

The troop were climbing the stairs to the third story, where Armine and Bobus were already within an octagon room, corresponding to the little hall below, and fitted with presses and shelves, belonging to the store-room of the former thrifty inhabitant; but now divided between the six children, Mother Carey, as Babie explained, being “Mine own, and helping me more specially.”

The table was likewise common to all; but one of the laws of the place was that everything left there after twelve o’clock on Saturday was, as Babie’s little mouth rolled out the long words, “confiscated by the inexorable Eumenides.”

“And who are they?” asked Mr. Ogilvie, who was always much entertained by the simplicity with which the little maid uttered the syllables as if they were her native speech.

“Janet, and Nurse, and Emma,” she said; “and they really are inex-o-rable. They threw away my snail shell that a thrush had been eating, though I begged and prayed them.”

“Yes, and my femur of a rabbit,” said Armine, “and said it was a nasty old bone, and the baker’s Pincher ate it up; but I did find my turtle-dove’s egg in the ash-heap, and discovered it over again, and you don’t see it is broken now; it is stuck down on a card.”

“Yes,” said his mother, “it is wonderful how valuable things become precisely at twelve on Saturday.”

Each had some department: Janet’s, which was geology, was the fullest, as she had inherited some youthful hoards of her father’s; Bobus’s, which was botany, was the neatest and most systematic. Mary thought at first that it did not suit him; but she soon saw that with him it was not love of flowers, but the study of botany. He pronounced Jock’s butterflies to be perfectly disgraceful.

“You said you’d see to them,” returned Jock.

“Yes, I shall take up insects when I have done with plants,” said Bobus, coolly.

“And say, ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee’?” asked Mr. Ogilvie.

Bobus looked as if he did not like it; but his mother shook her head at him as one who well deserved the little rebuke for self-sufficiency. There was certainly a wonderful winning way about her—there was a simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending household, now broken up.

There was, too, the perception that, beneath the surface on which, like the children, she played so lightly, there were depths of sorrow that might not be stirred, which added a sweetness and pathos to all she said and did.

Of many a choice curiosity the children said, in lowered tones of reverence, that “he found it;” and these she would not allow to be passed over, but showed fondly off in all their best points, telling their story as if she loved to dwell upon it.

Barbara, who had specially fastened herself on Mr. Ogilvie, according to the modern privileges of small girls, after having much amused him by doing the honours of her own miscellaneous treasury, insisted on exhibiting “Mother Carey’s studio.”

Caroline tried to declare that this meant nothing deserving of so grand a name; it was only the family resort for making messes in. She never touched clay now, and there was nothing worth seeing; but it was in vain; Babie had her way; and they mounted to the highest stage of the pagoda, where the eaves and the twisted monsters that supported them were in close juxtaposition with the four windows.

The view was a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town almost as if in a pit below, with a bird’s-eye prospect of the roofs, the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups-and-downs of a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there, and village and town gleaming out white; a large house, “bosomed high in tufted trees;” a church-tower and spire, nestled on the hill-side, up to the steep grey hill with the tall land-mark tower, closing in the horizon—altogether, as Carey said, a thorough “allegro” landscape, even to “the tanned haycock in the mead.” But the summer sun made the place dazzling and almost uninhabitable, and the visitors, turning from the glare, could hardly see the casts and models that filled the shelves; nor was there anything in hand; so that they let themselves be hurried away to share the midday meal, after which Mr. Ogilvie and the boys betook themselves to the school, and Carey and her little ones to the shade of the garden-wall, to finish their French reading, while Mary wondered the less at the Kenminster ladies.