Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

“He likes it, my dear,” said Babie.

“It is a gentle titillation,” said Allen.

“He can’t get on without it,” said the Friar.

“And comes for it like the cattle to the scrubbing-stones,” said the Skipjack.

“Yes,” said Armine; “but he tries to get pitied, like Chico walking on three legs when some one is looking at him.”

“You deal in most elegant comparisons,” said the mother.

“Only to get him a little more pitied,” said Jock. “He is as grateful as possible for being made so interesting.”

“Hark, there’s a knock!” cried Allen. “Can’t you instruct your cubs not to punish the door so severely, Jock? I believe they think that the more row they make, the more they proclaim their nobility!”

“The obvious derivation of the word stunning,” said Mother Carey, as she rose to meet her guests in the drawing-room, and Cecil to hold the door for her.

“Stay, Evelyn,” said Allen. “This is the night when unlicked cubs do disport themselves in our precincts. A mistaken sense of philanthropy has led my mother to make this house the fortnightly salon bleu of St. Thomas’s. But there’s a pipe at your service in my room.”

“Dr. Medlicott is coming,” said Babie, who had tarried behind the Johns, “and perhaps Mr. Grinstead, and we are sure to have Mr. Esdale’s photographs. It is never all students, medical or otherwise. Much better than Allen’s smoke, Cecil.”

“I am coming of course,” he said. “I was only waiting for the Infanta.”

It may be doubted whether the photographs, Dr. Medlicott, or even Jock were the attraction. He was much more fond of using his privilege of dropping in when the family were alone, than of finding himself in the midst of what an American guest had called Mrs. Brownlow’s surprise parties. They were on regular evenings, but no one knew who was coming, from scientific peers to daily governesses, from royal academicians to medical students, from a philanthropic countess to a city missionary. To listen to an exposition of the microphone, to share in a Shakespeare reading, or worse still, in a paper game, was, in the Captain’s eyes, such a bore that he generally had only haunted Collingwood Street on home days and on Sundays, when, for his mother’s sake and his own, an exception was made in his favour.

He followed Babie with unusual alacrity, and found Mrs. Brownlow shaking hands with a youth whom Jock upheld as a genius, but who laboured under the double misfortune of always coming too soon, and never knowing what to do with his arms and legs. He at once perceived Captain Evelyn to be an “awful swell,” and became trebly wretched—in contrast to Jock’s open-hearted, genial young dalesman, who stood towering over every one with his broad shoulders and hearty face, perfectly at his ease (as he would have been in Buckingham Palace), and only wondering a little that Brownlow could stand an empty-headed military fop like that; while Cecil himself, after gazing about vaguely, muttered to Babie something about her cousin.

“She is gone to see whether Lina is asleep, and will be too shy to come down again if I don’t drag her.”

So away flew Babie, and more eyes than Cecil Evelyn’s were struck when in ten minutes’ time she again led in her cousin.

Mr. Acton, who was talking to Mrs. Brownlow, said in an undertone—

“Your model? Another niece?”

“Yes; you remember Jessie?”

“This is a more ideal face.”

It was true. Esther had lived much less than her elder sister in the Coffinkey atmosphere, and there was nothing to mar the peculiar dignified innocence and perfect unconsciousness of her sweet maidenly bloom. She never guessed that every man, and every woman too, was admiring her, except the strong-minded one who saw in her the true inane Raffaelesque Madonna on whom George Eliot is so severe.

Nor did the lady alter her opinion when, at the end of a very curious speculation about primeval American civilisation, Captain Evelyn and Miss Brownlow were discovered studying family photographs in a corner, apparently much more interested whether a hideous half-faded brown shadow had resembled John at fourteen, than to what century and what nation those odd curly-whirleys on stone belonged, and what they were meant to express.

Babie was scandalised.

“You didn’t listen! It was most wonderful! Why Armie went down and fetched up Allen to hear about those wonderful walled towns!”

“I don’t go in for improving my mind,” said Cecil.

“Then you should not hinder Essie from improving hers! Think of letting her go home having seen nothing but all the repeated photographs of her brothers and sisters!”

“Well, what should she like to see?” cried Cecil. “I’m good for anything you want to go to before the others are free.”

“The Ethiopian serenaders, or, may be, Punch,” said Jock. “Madame Tussaud would be too intellectual.”

“When Lina is strong enough she is to see Madame Tussaud,” said Essie gravely. “Georgie once went, and she has wished for it ever since.”

“Oh, we’ll get up Madame Tussaud for her at home, free gratis, for nothing at all!” cried Armine, whose hard work inspirited him to fun and frolic.

So in the twilight hour two days later there was a grand exhibition of human waxworks, in which Babie explained tableaux represented by the two Johns, Armine, and Cecil, supposed to be adapted to Lina’s capacity. With the timid child it was not a success, the disguises frightened her, and gave her an uncanny feeling that her friends were transformed; she sat most of the time on her aunt’s lap, with her face hidden, and barely hindered from crying by the false assurance that it was all for her pleasure.

But there was no doubt that Esther was a pleased spectator of the show, and her gratitude far more than sufficient to cover the little one’s ingratitude.

Those two drifted together. In every gathering, when strangers had departed they were found tete-a-tete. Cecil’s horses knew the way to Collingwood Street better than anywhere else, and he took to appearing there at times when he was fully aware Jock would be at the night-school or Mutual Improvement Society.

Though strongly wishing, on poor Bobus’s account, that it should not go much farther under her own auspices; day after day it was more borne in upon Mrs. Brownlow that her house held an irresistible attraction to the young officer, and she wondered over her duty to the parents who had trusted her. Acting on impulse at last, she took council with John, securing him as her companion in the gaslit walk from a concert.

“Do you see what is going on there?” she asked, indicating the pair before them.

“What do you mean? Oh, I never thought of that!”

“I don’t think! I have seen. Ever since the night of the Phantom Blackcock of Kilnaught. He did his work on Essie.”

“Essie rather thinks he is after the Infanta.”

“It looks like it! What could have put it into her head? It did not originate there!”

“Something my mother said about Babie being a viscountess.”

“You know better, Friar!”

“I thought so; but I only told her it was no such thing, and I believe the child thought I meant to rebuke her for mentioning such frivolities, for she turned scarlet and held her peace.”

“Perhaps the delusion has kept her unconscious, and made her the sweeter. But the question is, whether this ought to go on without letting your people know?”

“I suppose they would have no objection?” said John. “There’s no harm in Evelyn, and he shows his sense by running after Jock. He hasn’t got the family health either. I’d rather have him than an old stick like Jessie’s General.”

“Yes, if all were settled, I believe your mother would be very well pleased. The question is, whether it is using her fairly not to let her know in the meantime?”

“Well, what is the code among you parents and guardians?”

“I don’t know that there is any, but I think that though the crisis might be pleasing enough, yet if your mother found out what was going on, she might be vexed at not having been informed.”

John considered a moment, and then proposed that if things looked “like it” at the end of the week, he should go down on Saturday and give a hint of preparation to his father, letting him understand the merits of the case. However, in the existing state of affairs, a week was a long time, and that very Sunday brought the crisis.

The recollection of former London Sundays, of Mary Ogilvie’s quiet protests, and of the effect on her two eldest children, had strengthened Mrs. Brownlow’s resolution to make it impossible to fill the afternoon with aimless visiting and gossiping; and plenty of other occupations had sprung up.

Thus on this particular afternoon she and Barbara were with their Girls’ Friendly Society Classes, of which Babie took the clever one, and she the stupid. Armine was reading with Percy Stagg, and a party of School Board pupil-teachers, whom that youth had brought him, as very anxious for the religious instruction they knew not how to obtain. Jock had taken the Friar’s Bible Class of young men, and Allen had, as a great favour, undertaken to sit with Dr. and Mrs. Lucas till he could look in on them. So that Esther and Lina were the sole occupants of the drawing-room when Captain Evelyn rang at the door, knowing very well that he was only permitted up stairs an hour later in time for a cup of tea before evensong. He did look into Allen’s sitting-room as a matter of form, but finding it empty, and hearing a buzz of voices elsewhere, he took licence to go upstairs, and there he found Esther telling her little sister such histories of Arundel Society engravings as she could comprehend.

Lina sprang to him at once; Esther coloured, and began to account for the rest of the family. “I hear,” said Cecil, as low tones came through the closed doors of the back drawing-room, “they work as hard here as my sister does!”

“I think my aunt has almost done,” said Essie, with a shy doubt whether she ought to stay. “Come, Lina, I must get you ready for tea.”

“No, no,” said Cecil, “don’t go! You need not be as much afraid of me as that first time I walked in, and thought I had got into a strange house.”

Essie laughed a little, and said, “A month ago! Sometimes it seems a very long time, and sometimes a very short one.”

“I hope it seems a very long time that you have known me.”

“Well, Johnny and all the rest had known you ever so long,” answered she, with a confusion of manner that expressed a good deal more than the words. “I really must go—”

“Not till you have told me more than that,” cried Cecil, seizing his opportunity with a sudden rush of audacity. “If you know me, can you—can you like me? Can’t you? Oh, Essie, stay! Could you ever love me, you peerless, sweetest, loveliest—”

By this time Mrs. Brownlow, who had heard Cecil’s boots on the stairs, and particularly wished to stave matters off till after the Friar’s mission, had made a hasty conclusion of her lesson, and letting her girls depart, opened the door. She saw at once that she was too late; but there was no retreat, for Esther flew past her in shy terror, and Cecil advanced with the earnest, innocent entreaty, “Oh, Mrs. Brownlow, make her hear me! I must have it out, or I can’t bear it.”

“Oh,” said she, “it has come to this, has it?” speaking half-quaintly, half-sadly, and holding Lina kindly back.

“I could not help it!” he went on. “She did look so lovely, and she is so dear! Do get her down, that I may see her again. I shall not have a happy moment till she answers me.”

“Are you sure you will have a happy moment then?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing! Won’t you help a fellow a bit, Mrs. Brownlow? I’m quite done for. There never was any one so nice, or so sweet, or so lovely, or so unlike all the horrid girls in society! Oh, make her say a kind word to me!”

“I’ll make her,” said little Lina, looking up from her aunt’s side. “I like you very much, Captain Evelyn, and I’ll run and make Essie tell you she does.”

“Not quite so fast, my dear,” said her aunt, as both laughed, and Cecil, solacing himself with a caress, and holding the little one very close to him on his knee, where her intentions were deferred by his watch and appendages.

“I suppose you don’t know what your mother would say?” began Mrs. Brownlow.

“I have not told her, but you know yourself she would be all right. Now, aren’t you sure, Mrs. Brownlow? She isn’t up to any nonsense?”

“No, Cecil, I don’t think she would oppose it. Indeed, my dear boy, I wish you happiness, but Esther is a shy, startled little being, and away from her mother; and perhaps you will have to be patient.”

“But will you fetch her—or at least speak to her?” said he, in a tone not very like patience; and she had to yield, and be the messenger.

She found Esther fluttering up and down her room like a newly-caught bird. “Oh, Aunt Carey, I must go home! Please let me!” she said.

“Nay, my dear, can’t I help you for once?” and Esther sprang into her arms for comfort; but even then it was plain to a motherly eye that this was not the distress that poor Bobus had caused, but rather the agitation of a newly-awakened heart, terrified at its own sensations. “He wants you to come and hear him out,” she said, when she had kissed and petted the girl into more composure.

“Oh, must I? I don’t want. Oh, if I could go home! They were so angry before. And I only said ‘if,’ and never meant—”

“That was the very thing, my dear,” said her aunt with a great throb of pain. “You were quite right not to encourage my poor Bobus; but this is a very different case, and I am sure they would wish you to act according as you feel.”

Esther drew a great gasp; “You are sure they would not think me wrong?”

“Quite sure,” was the reply, in full security that her mother would be rapturous at the nearly certain prospect of a coronet. “Indeed, my dear, no one can find any fault with you. You need not be afraid. He is good and worthy, and they will be glad if you wish it.”

Wish was far too strong a word for poor frightened Esther; she could only cling and quiver.

“Shall I tell him to go and see them at Kencroft?”

“Oh, do, do, dear Aunt Carey! Please tell him to go to papa, and not want to see me till—”

“Very well, my dear child; that will be the best way. Now I will send you up some tea, and then you shall put Lina to bed; and you and I will slip off quietly together, and go to St. Andrew’s in peace, quite in a different direction from the others, before they set out.”

Meantime Cecil had been found by Babie tumbling about the music and newspapers on the ottoman, and on her observation—

“Too soon, sir! And pray what mischief still have your idle hands found to do?”

“Don’t!” he burst out; “I’m on the verge of distraction already! I can’t bear it!”

“Is there anything the matter? You’re not in a scrape? You don’t want Jock?” she said.

“No, no—only I’ve done it. Babie, I shall go mad, if I don’t get an answer soon.”

Babie was much too sharp not to see what he meant. She knew in a kind of intuitive, undeveloped way how things stood with Bobus, and this gave a certain seriousness to her manner of saying—

“Essie?”

“Of course, the darling! If your mother would only come and tell me,—but she was frightened, and won’t say anything. If she won’t, I’m the most miserable fellow in the world.”

“How stupid you must have been!” said Babie. “That comes of you, neither of you, ever reading. You couldn’t have done it right, Cecil.”

“Do you really think so?” he asked, in such piteous, earnest tones that he touched her heart.

“Dear Cecil,” she said, “it will be all right. I know Essie likes you better than any one else.”

She had almost added “though she is an ungrateful little puss for doing so,” but before the words had time to come out of her mouth, Cecil had flown at her in a transport, thrown his arms round her and kissed her, just as her mother opened the door, and uttered an odd incoherent cry of amazement.

“Oh, Mother Carey,” cried Cecil, colouring all over, “I didn’t know what I was doing! She gave me hope!”

“I give you hope too,” said Caroline, “though I don’t know how it might have been if she had come down just now!”

“Don’t!” entreated Cecil. “Babie is as good as my sister. Why, where is she?”

“Fled, and no wonder!”

“And won’t she, Esther, come?”

“She is far too much frightened and overcome. She says you may go to her father, and I think that is all you can expect her to say.”

“Is it? Won’t she see me? I don’t want it to be obedience.”

“I don’t think you need have any fears on that score.”

“You don’t? Really now? You think she likes me just a little? How soon can I get down? Have you a train-bill?”

Then during the quest into trains came a fit of humility. “Do you think they will listen to me? You are not the sort who would think me a catch, and I know I am a very poor stick compared with any of you, and should have gone to the dogs long ago but for Jock, ungrateful ass as I was to him last year. But if I had such a creature as that to take care of, why it would be like having an angel about one. I would—indeed I would—reverence, yes, and worship her all my life long.”

“I am sure you would. I think it would be a very happy and blessed thing for you both, and I have no doubt that her father will think so too. Now, here are the others coming home, and you must behave like a rational being, even though you don’t see Essie at tea.”

Mother Carey managed to catch Jock, give a hint of the situation, and bid him take care of his friend. He looked grave. “I thought it was coming,” he said. “I wish they would have done it out of our way.”

“So do I, but I didn’t take measures in time.”

“Well, it is all right as regards them both, but poor Bobus will hardly get over it.”

“We must do our best to soften the shock, and, as it can’t be helped, we must put our feelings in our pocket.”

“As one has to do most times,” said Jock. “Well, I suppose it is better for one in the end than having it all one’s own way. And Evelyn is a generous fellow, who deserves anything!”

“So, Jock, as we can do Bobus no good, and know besides that nothing could make it right for his hopes to be fulfilled, we must throw ourselves into this present affair as Cecil and Essie deserve.”

“All right, mother,” he said. “There’s not stuff in her to be of much use to Bobus if he had her, besides the other objection. It is the hope that he will sorely miss, poor old fellow!”

“Ah! if he had a better hope lighted as his guiding star! But we must not stand talking now, Jock; I must take her to Church quietly with me.”

To Cecil’s consternation, his military duties would detain him all the forenoon of the next day; and before he could have started, the train that brought John back also brought his father and mother, the latter far more eager and effusive than her sister-in-law had ever seen her. “My dear Caroline, I thought you’d excuse my coming, I was so anxious to see about my little girl, and we’ll go to an hotel.”

“I’ll leave you with her,” said Caroline, rushing off in haste, to let Esther utter her own story as best she might, poor child! Allen was fortunately in his room, and his mother sprang down to him to warn him to telegraph to Cecil that Colonel Brownlow was in Collingwood Street; the fates being evidently determined to spare her nothing.

Allen’s feelings were far less keen as to Bobus than were Jock’s, and he liked the connection; so he let himself be infected with the excitement, and roused himself not only to telegraph, but go himself to Cecil’s quarters to make sure of him. It was well that he did so, for just as he got into Oxford Street, he beheld the well-known bay fortunately caught in a block of omnibuses and carts round a tumble-down cab-horse, and some gas-fitting. Such was the impatience of the driver of the hansom, that Allen absolutely had to rush desperately across the noses of half-a-dozen horses, making wild gestures, before he was seen and taken up by Cecil’s side.

“The most wonderful thing of all,” said Cecil afterwards, “was to see Allen going on like that!”

In consequence of his speed, Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow had hardly arrived at Esther’s faltered story, and come to a perception which way her heart lay, when she started and cried, “Oh, that’s his hansom!” for she perfectly well knew the wheels.

So did her aunt and Babie, who had taken refuge in the studio, but came out at Allen’s call to hear his adventures, and thenceforth had to remain easily accessible, Babie to take charge of Lina, who was much aggrieved at her banishment, and Mother Carey to be the recipient of all kinds of effusions from the different persons concerned. There was the mother: “Such a nice young man! So superior! Everything we could have wished! And so much attached! Speaks so nicely! You are sure there will be no trouble with his mother?”

“I see no danger of it. I am sure she must love dear little Esther, and that she would like to see Cecil married.”

“Well, you know her! but you know she might look much higher for him, though the Brownlows are a good old family. Oh, my dear Caroline, I shall never forget what you have done for us all.”

Her Serenity in a flutter was an amusing sight. She was so full of exultation, and yet had too much propriety to utter the main point of her hopes, fears, doubts, and gratitude; and she durst not so much as hazard an inquiry after poor Lord Fordham, lest she should be suspected of the thought that came uppermost.

However, the Colonel, with whom that possibility was a very secondary matter, could speak out: “I like the lad; he is a good, simple, honest fellow, well-principled, and all one could wish. I don’t mind trusting little Essie with him, and he says his brother is sure to give him quite enough to marry upon, so they’ll do very well, even, if—How about that affair which was hinted of at Belforest, Caroline? Will it ever come off?”

“Probably not. Poor Lord Fordham’s health does not improve, and so I am very thankful that he does not fulfil Babie’s ideal.”

“Poor young man!” said Ellen, with sincere compassion but great relief.

“That’s the worst of it,” said the father, gravely. “I am afraid it is a consumptive family, though this young fellow looks hearty and strong.”

“He has always been so,” said Caroline. “He and his sister are quite different in looks and constitution from poor Fordham, and I believe from the elder ones. They are shorter and sturdier, and take after their mother’s family.”

“I told you so, papa,” said Ellen. “I was sure nothing could be amiss with him. You can’t expect everybody to look like our boys. Well, Caroline, you have always been a good sister; and to think of your having done this for little Essie! Tell me how it was? Had you suspected it?”

It was all very commonplace and happy. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow were squeezed into the house to await Mrs. Evelyn’s reply, and Cecil and Esther sat hand-in-hand all the evening, looking, as Allen and Babie agreed, like such a couple of idiots, that the intimate connection between selig and silly was explained.

Mrs. Robert Brownlow whiled away the next day by a grand shopping expedition, followed by the lovers, who seemed to find pillars of floor-cloth and tracery of iron-work as blissful as ever could be pleached alley. Nay, one shopman flattered Cecil and shocked Esther by directing his exhibition of wares to them, and the former was thus excited to think how soon they might be actually shopping on their own account, and to fix his affections on an utterly impracticable fender as his domestic hearth. Meanwhile Caroline had only just come in from amusing Mrs. Lucas with the story, when a cab drove up, and Mrs. Evelyn was with her, with an eager, “Where are they?”

“Somewhere in the depths of the city, with her mother, shopping. Ought I to have told you?”

“Of course I trust you. She must be nice—your Friar’s sister; but I could not stay at home, and Duke wished me to come—”

“How is he?”

“So very happy about this—the connection especially. I don’t think he could have borne it if it had been the Infanta. How is that dear Babie?”

“Quite well. I left her walking with Lina in the Square gardens.”

“As simple and untouched as ever?”

“As much as ever a light-hearted baby.”

“Ah! well, so much the better. And let me say, once for all, that you need not fear any closer intercourse with us. My poor Duke has made up his mind that such things are not for him, and wishes all to be arranged for Cecil as his heir. Not that he is any worse. With care he may survive us all, the doctors say; but he has made up his mind, and will never ask Babie again. He says it would be cruel; but he does long for a sight of her bright face!”