That Stick

‘I did not know what I was letting you in for,’ said Bertha, in apology to Mrs. Bury.

‘My dear, I would not have been without the experience on any account.  I never saw such a refreshing pair of people.’

‘Surely it must have been awfully slow—regular penal servitude!’

‘You confuse absence of small talk with absence of soul, Birdie.  When we had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to say, we got on perfectly.’

‘And what you had to say was about Master Michael?’

‘Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.’

‘More so than your snowy peaks!  Ah, if the proper study of mankind is man, the proper study of womankind is babe.’

‘Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case.  And let me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.’

‘Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!’

‘I hope they were an education to me.’

‘I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive thing as that which they possess in common,’ said Bertha.

‘I wish it had been,’ said Mrs. Bury gravely.

‘At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,’ said Bertha, laughing.

Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder.  She was not exactly of either set.  The children were all so young as to look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and merriment was quite a revelation to her.  She had never before seen mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did Ida’s screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these young matrons.

Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and she could hardly be detached from him.  She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of die Gnadigen Frauen.  Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge of Lady Northmoor’s baby on the way home.  Constance hoped Ida might never hear this fact.

Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir.  A bit of moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had first been crossed by a branch line, and the primary growth of a station had been followed by the discovery of good building stone, and the erection of a crop of houses of all degrees, which promised to set the Northmoor finances on a better footing than had been theirs for years, and set their conscientious landlord to work at once on providing church room and schools.

All this, and that most precious possession at home, combined to give Lord Northmoor an amount of spirit and life that enabled him to take his place in the county, emancipate himself from the squire, show an opinion of his own, and open his mouth occasionally.  As Bertha observed, no one would ever have called him a stick if he had begun like this.  To people like these, humbled and depressed in early life, a little happiness was a great stimulus.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LOVE

It was not till Christmas that Ida had the opportunity of making her observations.  By that time ‘Mite,’ as he was supposed to have named himself, had found the use of his feet, and was acquiring that of his tongue.  In fact, he was a very fine forward child, who might easily have been supposed to be eighteen months old instead of fifteen, as Ida did not fail to remark.

He was a handsome little creature, round and fair, with splendid sturdy legs and mottled arms, hair that stood up in a pale golden crest, round blue eyes and a bright colour, without much likeness as yet to either parent, though Lord Northmoor declared that there was an exact resemblance to his own brother, Charles, Herbert’s father, as he first remembered him.  Ida longed to purse up her lips but did not dare, and was provoked to see her mother taken completely captive by his charms, and petting him to the utmost extent.

Indeed, Lady Northmoor, who was very much afraid of spoiling him, was often distressed when such scenes as this took place.  ‘Mite! Mite, dear, no!’ when his fat little hands had grasped an ivory paper-cutter, and its blade was on the way to the button mouth.  ‘No!’ as he paused and looked at her.  ‘Here’s Mite’s ball! poor little dear, do let him have it’—and Mite, reading sympathy in his aunt’s face, laughed in a fascinating triumphant manner, and took a bite with his small teeth.

‘Mite! mother said no!’ and it was gently taken from his hand, but before the fingers had embraced the substituted ball, a depreciating look and word of remonstrance gave a sense of ill-usage and there was a roar.

‘Oh, poor little dear!  Here—auntie’s goody goody—’

‘No, no, please, Emma, he has had quite as many as he ought!  No, no, Mite—’ and he was borne off sobbing in her arms, while Ida observed, ‘There! is that the way people treat their own children?’

‘Some people never get rid of the governess,’ observed Mrs. Morton, quite unconscious that but for her interference there would have been no contest and no tears.

But she herself had no doubts, and was mollified by Mary’s plea on her return.  ‘He is quite good now, but you see, there is so much danger of our spoiling him, we feel that we cannot begin too soon to make him obedient.’

‘I could not bear to keep a poor child under in that way.’

‘I believe it saves them a great deal if obedience is an instinct,’ said Mary.

It had not been Mrs. Morton’s method, and she was perfectly satisfied with the result, so she only made some inarticulate sound; but she thought Frank quite as unnatural, when he kept Michael on his knee at breakfast, but with only an empty spoon to play with!  All the tossing and playing, the radiant smiles between the two did not in her eyes atone for these small beginnings of discipline, even though her brother-in-law’s first proceeding, whenever he came home, was to look for his son, and if the child were not in the drawing-room, to hurry up to the nursery and bring him down, laughing and shouting.

The Tyrolean nurse had been sacrificed to those notions of training which the Westhaven party regarded as so harsh.  Her home sickness and pining for her mountains had indeed fully justified the ‘rampant consciences,’ as to the humanity as well as the expedience of sending her home before her indulgence of the Kleiner Freiherr had had time to counteract his parents’ ideas, and her place had been supplied by the nurse whom Amice was outgrowing, so that Ida was disappointed of her intentions of examining her, and laid up the circumstances as suspicious, though, on the other hand, her mother was gratified at exercising a bit of patronage by recommending a nursery girl from Westhaven.  The next winter, however, was not marked by a visit to Northmoor.  Ida had been having her full share of the summer and early autumnal gaieties of Westhaven, and among the yachts who were given to putting in there was a certain Morna, belonging to Sir Thomas Brady, who had become a baronet by force of success in speculation.  His son, who chiefly used it, showed evident admiration of Miss Morton’s bright cheeks and eyes, and so often resorted to Westhaven, and dropped in at what she had named Northmoor cottage, that there was fair reason for supposing that this might result in more than an ordinary flirtation.

However, at the regatta, when she had looked for distinguished attention on his part, she felt herself absolutely neglected, and the very next day the Morna sailed away, without a farewell.

Ida at first could hardly believe it.  When she did, the conviction came upon her that his son’s attachment had been reported to Sir Thomas, and that the young man had been summoned away against his will.  It would have been different, no doubt, had Herbert still been heir-presumptive.

‘That horrid little Mite!’ said she.

Whether her heart or her ambition had been most affected might be doubtful.  At any rate, the disappointment added to the oppression of a heavy cold on the chest, which she had caught at the regatta, and which became severe enough to call for the doctor.

Thus the mother and daughter did not go to Northmoor.  At a ball given on board a steam yacht just before Christmas Ida caught a violent cold on the chest, the word congestion was uttered, and an opinion was pronounced that as she had always weak lungs, a spring abroad would be advisable.

Mrs. Morton wrote a letter with traces of tears upon it, appealing to her brother-in-law to assist her as the only hope of saving her dearest child, and the quarries had done so well during the last year that he was able to respond with a largesse sufficient for her needs, though not for her expectations.

Mrs. Morton would have liked to have taken Constance as interpreter, and general aid and assistant; but Constance was hard at work, aspiring to a scholarship, at a ladies’ college, and it was plain that her sister was not so desirous of her company as to make her mother overrule her wishes as a duty.

In fact, Ida had found a fellow-traveller who would suit her much better than Constance.  Living for the last year in lodgings near at hand was a Miss Gattoni, daughter of an Italian courier and French lady’s maid.  As half boarder at a third-rate English school, she had acquired education enough to be first a nursery-governess, and later a companion; and in her last situation, when she had gone abroad several times with a rheumatic old lady, she had recommended herself enough to receive a legacy which rendered her tolerably independent.  She was very good-natured, and had graduated in the art of making herself acceptable, and, as she really wished to go abroad again, she easily induced Mrs. Morton and Ida to think it a great boon that she should join forces with them, and as she was an experienced traveller with a convenient smattering of various tongues, she really smoothed their way considerably and lived much more at her ease than she could have done upon her own resources, always frequenting English hotels and boarding-houses.

Mrs. Morton and Ida were of that order of tourists who do not so much care for sights as for being on a level with those who have seen them; and besides, Ida was scarcely well or in spirits enough for much exertion till after her first month at Nice, which restored her altogether to her usual self, and made her impatient of staying in one place.

It is not, however, worth while to record the wanderings of the trio, until in the next summer they reached Venice, where Ida declared her intention of penetrating into the Dolomites.  There was an outcry.  What could she wish for in that wild and savage country, where there was no comfortable hotel, no society, no roads—nothing in short to make life tolerable, whereas an hotel full of Americans of extreme politeness to ladies, and expeditions in gondolas, when one could talk and have plenty of attention, were only too delightful?

That peaks should be more attractive than flirtations was inexplicable, but at last in secret confabulation Ida disclosed her motive, and in another private consultation Mrs. Morton begged Miss Gattoni to agree to it, as the only means of satisfying the young lady, or putting her mind at rest about a fancy her mother could not believe in; though even as she said, ‘it would be so very shocking, it is perfectly ridiculous to think my brother Lord Northmoor would be capable,’ the shrewd confidante detected a lingering wish that it might be so!

Maps and routes were consulted, and it was decided that whereas to go from Venice through Cadore would involve much mule-riding and rough roads, the best way would be to resort to the railway to Verona, and thence to Botzen as the nearest point whence Ratzes could be reached.

CHAPTER XXVI

IDA’S WARNING

Botzen proved to be very hot and full of smells, nor did Mrs. Morton care for its quaint old medieval houses, but Ida’s heart had begun to fail her when she came so near the crisis, and on looking over the visitors’ book she gave a cry.  ‘Ah, if we had only known!  It is all of no use.’

‘How?’ she was asked.

‘That horrid Mrs. Bury!’

‘There?’

‘Of course she is.  Only a week ago she was here.  If she is at Ratzes, of course we can do nothing.’

‘And the road is affreux, perfectly frightful,’ said Mademoiselle.  ‘I have been inquiring about it.  No access except upon mules.  A whole day’s journey—and the hotel!  Bah, it is vilain!’

‘If Ida is bent on going she must go without me,’ said Mrs. Morton.  ‘I—I have had enough of those horrid beasts.  Ida’s nonsense will be the death of me.’

‘I don’t see much good in going on with that woman there,’ said Ida gloomily.  ‘She would be sure to stifle all inquiry.’

‘A good thing too,’ muttered poor, weary Mrs. Morton.

Ida turned the leaves of the visitors’ book till she found the names of Lord and Lady Northmoor, and then, growing more eager as obstructions came in her way, and not liking to turn back as if on a fool’s errand, she suggested to Miss Gattoni that questions might be asked about their visit.  The Tyrolean patois was far beyond her, and not too comprehensible to her friend, but there was a waiter who could speak French, and the landlady’s German was tolerable.

The milord and miladi were perfectly remembered, as well as their long detention, but the return had been by way of Italy, so they had not revisited Botzen with their child the next spring.

‘But,’ said the hostess, ‘there is a young woman in the next street who can tell you more than I.  She offered herself as a nurse.’

This person was at once sent for.  She was the same who had been mentioned by Mrs. Bury, but she had exchanged the peasant costume, which had, perhaps, only been assumed to please the English ladies, for the townswoman’s universal endeavour at French fashion, which by no means enhanced her rather coarse beauty, which was more Italian than Austrian.

Italian was the tongue which chiefly served as a medium between her and Miss Gattoni, though hers was not pure enough to be easily understood.  Mrs. Morton and Ida put questions which Miss Gattoni translated as best she could, and made out as much as possible of the answers.  It was elicited that she had not been allowed to see the English miladi.  All had been settled by the signora who came yearly, and they had rejected her after all her trouble; the doctor had recommended her, and though her creatura would have been just the right age, and that little ipocrila’s child was older, ever so much older—she spread out her hands to indicate infinity.

‘Ah!’ said Ida, ‘I always thought so.’

‘Ask her how much older,’ demanded Mrs. Morton.

The replies varied from nearly un sanestre to tre settimane—and no more could be made of that question.

‘Where was the foster-child?’

Again the woman threw up her hands to indicate that she had no notion—what was it to her?  She could not tell if it were alive or dead; but (upon a leading question) it had not been seen since Hedwige’s departure nor after return.  Was it boy or girl? and, after some hesitation, it was declared to have been un maschio.

There was more, which nobody quite understood, but which sounded abusive, and they were glad to get rid of her with a couple of thalers.

‘Well?’ said Ida triumphantly.

‘Well?’ echoed her mother in a different tone.  ‘I don’t know what you were all saying, but I’m sure of this, that that woman was only looking to see what you wanted her to say.  I watched the cunning look of her eyes, and I would not give that for her word,’ with a gesture of her fingers.

‘But, ma, you didn’t understand!  Nothing could be plainer.  The doctor recommended her, and sent her over in proper time, but she never saw any one but Mrs. Bury, who, no doubt, had made her arrangements.  Then this other woman’s child was older—nobody knows how much—but we always agreed that nobody could believe Mite, as they call him, was as young as they said.  And then that other child was a boy, and it has vanished.’

‘I don’t believe she knew.’

‘No, I do not think she did,’ chimed in Miss Gattoni.  ‘This canaille will say anything!’

‘I believe the woman,’ said Ida obstinately.  ‘Her evidence chimes in with all my former conclusions.’

The older ladies both had a strong misgiving that the conclusions had formed the evidence, and Mrs. Morton, though she had listened all along to Ida’s grumbling, was perfectly appalled at the notion of bringing such a ridiculous accusation against the brother-in-law, against whom she might indeed murmur, but whom she knew to be truthful and self-denying.  She ventured to represent that it was impossible to go upon this statement without ascertaining whether the Grantzen child was alive, or really dead and buried at Ratzes, and that the hostess of the inn would have been better evidence, but—

He that of purpose looks beside the mark,Might as well hoodwinked shoot as in the dark,

and Ida was certain that all the people at Ratzes had been bribed, and that no one would dare to speak out while Mrs. Bury kept guard there.  Indeed, for that lady to guess at such suspicions and inquiries would have been so dreadful that Ratzes was out of the question, much to the relief of the elders, dragged along by the masterful maiden against their better judgment, though indeed Miss Gattoni gave as much sympathy in her tête-à-têtes with Ida as she did to her mother in their consultations.

They were made to interview the doctor, but he knew as little about the matter as the disappointed balia, and professed to know much less.  In point of fact, though he had been called in after the accident, Mrs. Bury had not thought much of his skill, and had not promoted after-visits.  There had not been time to summon him when the birth took place, and Mrs. Bury thought her experience more useful afterwards than his treatment was likely to be.  So he was a slighted and offended man, whose testimony, given in good German, only declared the secretiveness, self-sufficiency, and hard-neckedness of Englander!

And Ida’s state of mind much resembled that of the public when resolved to believe in the warming-pan.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE YOUNG PRETENDER

The denunciation of the Young Pretender was not an easy matter even in Ida’s eyes.  It was one thing to have a pet grievance and see herself as a heroine, righting her dear injured brother’s wrongs, and another to reproach two of the quietest most matter-of-fact people in the world with the atrocious frauds of which only a wicked baronet was capable.

She was not sorry that the return to England was deferred by the tenants of the house at Westhaven wanting to stay on; and when at length a Christmas visit was paid at Northmoor, Mite was an animated little personage of three and a quarter, and, except that he could not accomplish a k, perfect in speaking plainly and indeed with that pretty precision of utterance that children sometimes acquire when baby language has not been foolishly fastened.  Indeed, his pet name of Mite was only for strictly private use.  Except to his nearest relatives, he was always Michael.

Mrs. Morton was delighted with him, and would have liked to make up for her knowledge of Ida’s suspicions by extra petting, and by discovering resemblances to all the family portraits as well as to his parents, none of which any one else could see.  She lived upon thorns lest Ida should burst out with some accusation, but Ida had not the requisite impudence, and indeed, in sight of the boy with his parents, her ‘evidence’ faded into such stuff as dreams are made of.

There was some vexation, indeed, that Louisa the nursery-maid, whom Mrs. Morton had recommended, had had to be dismissed.

‘I am sorry,’ said Mrs. Morton, ‘for, as I told you, her father was the mate aboard the Emma Jane, my poor father’s ship, you know, and went down with poor pa and my poor dear Charlie.  And her mother used to char for us, which was but her due.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Mary; ‘Frank and I were both very sorry, and we would have found her another place, but she would go home.  You see, we could not keep her in the nursery, for we must have a thoroughly trustworthy person to go out with Michael.’

‘What!  Can’t your fine nurse?’

‘Eden?  It is her one imperfection.  It is some weakness of the spine, and neither she nor I can be about with Michael as long as it is good for him.  I thought he must be safe in the garden, but it turned out that Louisa had been taking him down to the village, and there meeting a sailor, who I believe came up in a collier to Colbeam.’

‘Oh, an old friend from Westhaven?’

‘Sam Rattler,’ suggested Ida.  ‘Don’t you remember, mamma, Mrs. Hall said they were sweethearting, and she wanted to get her out of the way of him.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Lady Northmoor, ‘but I should have forgiven it if she had told me the truth and not tempted Mite.  She used to make excuses to Eden for going down to the village, and at last she took Mite there, and they gave him sweets at the shop not to tell!’

‘Did he?’ said Ida, rather hoping the model boy would have failed.

‘Oh yes.  The dear little fellow did not understand keeping things back, and when his papa was giving him his nightly sugar-plum, he said, “Blue man gave me a great striped sweet, and it stuck in my little teeth”; and then, when we asked when and where, he said, “Down by Betty’s, when I was out with Cea and Louie”; and so it came out that she had taken him into the village, met this man, brought him into the grounds by the little gate, and tried to bribe Mite to say nothing about it.  Cea told us all about it,—the little girl who lives with Miss Morton.  Of course we could never let him go out with her again, and you would hardly believe what an amount of falsehoods she managed to tell Eden and me about it.’

‘Ah, if you had lived at Westhaven you would have found out that to be so particular is the way to make those girls fib,’ said Mrs. Morton.

‘I hope not.  I think we have a very good girl now, trained up in an orphanage.’

‘Oh, those orphanage girls are the worst of all.  I’ve had enough of them.  They break everything to pieces, and they run after the lads worst of all, because they have never seen one before!’

To which Mary answered by a quiet ‘I hope it may not turn out so.’

There were more agitating questions to be brought forward.  Herbert had behaved very fairly well ever since the escapade of the pied rook; the lad kept his promise as to betting faithfully in his uncle’s absence, and though it had not been renewed, he had learnt enough good sense to keep out of mischief.

Unfortunately, however, he had not the faculty of passing examinations.  He was not exactly stupid or idle, but any kind of study was a bore to him, and the knowledge he was forced to ‘get up’ was not an acquisition that gave him the slightest satisfaction for its own sake, or that he desired to increase beyond what would carry him through.  Naturally, he had more cleverness than his uncle, and learning was less difficult to him, but he only used his ability to be sooner done with a distasteful task, which never occupied his mind for a moment after it was thrown aside.  Thus time after time he had failed in passing for the army, and now only one chance remained before being reduced to attempting to enter the militia.  And suppose that there he failed?

He remained in an amiable, passive, good-humoured state, rather amused than otherwise at his mother’s impression that it was somehow all his uncle’s fault, and ready to be disposed of exactly as they pleased provided that he had not the trouble of thinking about it or of working extra hard.

Mrs. Morton was sure that something could be done.  Could not his uncle send him to Oxford?  Then he could be a clergyman, or a lawyer or anything.  Oh dear, were there those horrid examinations there too?  And then those gentlemen that belonged to the ambassadors and envoys—she was sure Mr. Rollstone had told her any one who had connection could get that sort of appointment to what they called the Civil Service.  What, examinations again? connection no good?  Well, it was shame!  What would things come to?  As Mr Rollstone said, it was mere ruin!