The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes

With a trembling heart she left the train at the little Traversham station, making resolutions neither to be too angry with the negligent tutor, nor to show Gilbert how much importance she attached to his illness.

As they walked into the village, they heard a merry clamour of tongue, and presently met five or six boys, and, a few paces behind them, Mr. Downton.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘I am glad you are come. I would have written yesterday, but that I found your boy had done so. I shall be very glad to have him cheered up about himself. I will turn back with you. You go on, Price. They are setting out for one of Hullah’s classes, so we shall have the house clear.’

‘I hope there is not much amiss?’ said Mr. Kendal.

‘A tedious cold,’ said the tutor; ‘but the doctor assures me that there is nothing wrong with his chest, and I do believe he would not cough half so much, if he were not always watching himself.’

‘Who has been attending him?’

‘Lee, the union doctor, a very good man, with a large family,’ (Albinia could have beaten him). ‘Indeed,’ he continued perceiving some dissatisfied looks, ‘I think you will find that a little change is all that he wants.’

‘I hope you can give a good account of him in other respects?’ said Mr. Kendal.

‘Oh! yes, in every way; he is the most good-natured lad in the world, and quite the small boys’ friend. Perhaps he has been a little more sentimental of late, but that may be only from being rather out of order. I’ll call him.’

The last words were spoken as they entered the parsonage, where opening a door, he said, ‘Here, Kendal, here’s a new prescription for you.’

Albinia had a momentary view of a tabby-cat and kitten, a volume of poetry, a wiry-haired terrier, and Gilbert, all lying promiscuously on the hearth-rug, before the two last leaped up, the one to bark, and the other to come forward with outstretched hand, and glad countenance.

He looked flushed and languid, but the roaring fire and close room might account for that, and though, when the subject was mentioned, he gave a short uncomfortable cough, Albinia’s mind was so far relieved, that she was in doubt with whom to be angry, and prepared to stand on the defensive, should her brother think him too well.

The gentlemen went away together, and Gilbert, grasping her hand, gave way to one of his effusions of affection—‘So kind to come to him—he knew he had her to trust to, whatever happened’—and he leant his cheek on his hand in a melancholy mood.

‘Don’t be so piteous, Gibbie,’ she said. ‘You were quite right to tell us you were not well, only you need not have been so very doleful, I don’t like papa to be frightened.’

‘I thought it was no use to go on in this way,’ said Gilbert, with a cough: ‘it was the old thing over again, and nobody would believe I had anything the matter with me.’

And he commenced a formidable catalogue of symptoms which satisfied her that Maurice would think him fully justified. Just at a point where it was not easy to know what next to say, the kitten began to play tricks with her mother’s tail, and a happy diversion was made; Gilbert began to exhibit the various drolleries of the animals, to explain the friendship between dog and cat, and to leave off coughing as he related anecdotes of their sagacity; and finally, when the gentlemen returned, laughing was the first sound they heard, and Mrs. Kendal was found sitting on the floor at play with the livestock.

They had come to fetch her to see the church and schools, and on going out, she found that Mr. Ferrars had moved and carried that Gilbert should be taken home at once, and, on the way, be shown to a physician at the county town. From this she gathered that Maurice was compassionate, and though, of course, he would make no such admission, she had reason afterwards to believe that he had shown Mr. Downton that the pupil’s health ought to have met with a shade more attention.

With Gilbert wrapped up to the tip of his nose, they set off, and found the doctor at home. Nothing could have been more satisfactory to Albinia, for it gave her a triumph over her brother, without too much anxiety for the future. The physician detected the injury to the lungs left by an attack that the boy had suffered from in his first English winter, and had scarcely outgrown when Albinia first knew him. The recent cold had so far renewed the evil, that though no disease actually existed, the cough must be watched, and exposure avoided; in fact, a licence for petting to any extent was bestowed, and therewith every hope of recovery.

Albinia and her son sat in their corners of the carriage in secret satisfaction, while Mr. Kendal related the doctor’s opinion to Mr. Ferrars, but one of them, at least, was unprepared for the summing-up. ‘Under the circumstances, Gilbert is most fortunate. A few years in his native climate will quite set him up.’

‘Oh! but he is too old for Haileybury,’ burst out Albinia, in her consternation.

‘Nearly old enough for John Kendal’s bank, eh, Gilbert?’

‘Oh!’ cried Albinia, ‘pray don’t let us talk of that while poor Gilbert is so ill.’

‘Hm!’ said Mr. Kendal with interrogative surprise, almost displeasure, and no more was said.

Albinia felt guilty, as she remembered that she had no more intended to betray her dislike to the scheme, than to gratify Gilbert by calling him ‘so ill.’ Aristocratic and military, she had no love for the monied interest, and had so sedulously impressed on her friends that Mr. Kendal had been in the Civil Service, and quite unconnected with the bank, that Mr. Ferrars had told her she thought his respectability depended on it, and she was ashamed that her brother should hear her give way again so foolishly to the weakness.

Gilbert became the most talkative as they drew near home, and was the first to spring out and open the hall door, displaying his two sisters harnessed tandem-fashion with packthread, and driven at full speed by little Maurice, armed with the veritable carriage whip! The next moment it was thrown down, with a rapturous shout, and Maurice was lost to everything but his brother!

‘Oh! girls, how could you let him serve you so?’ began the horrified Albinia. ‘Sophy will be laid up for a week!’

‘Never mind,’ said Sophy, dropping on a chair. ‘Poor little fellow, he wished it so much!’

‘I tried to stop her, mamma,’ said Lucy, ‘but she will do as Maurice pleases.’

‘See, this is the way they will spoil my boy, the instant my back is turned!’ said Albinia. ‘What’s the use of all I can do with him, if every one else will go and be his bond-slave! I do believe Sophy would let him kill her, if he asked her!’

‘It is no real kindness,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Their good-nature ought not to go beyond reason.’

The elder Maurice could hardly help shrugging his shoulders. Well did he know that Mr. Kendal would have joined the team if such had been the will of that sovereign in scarlet merino, who stood with one hand in Gilbert’s, and the whip in the other.

‘Come here, Maurice,’ quoth Albinia; ‘put down the whip,’ and she extracted it from his grasp, with grave resolution, against which he made no struggle, gave it to Lucy to be put away, and seated him on her knee. ‘Now listen, Maurice; poor sister Sophy is tired, and you are never to make a horse of her. Do you hear?’

‘Yes,’ said Maurice, fidgeting.

‘Mind, if ever you make a horse of Sophy, mamma will put you into the black cupboard. You understand?’

‘Sophy shan’t be horse,’ said Maurice. ‘Sophy naughty, lazy horse. Boy has Gibbie—’

‘There’s gratitude,’ said Mr. Ferrars, as ‘Boy’ slid off his mamma’s knee, stood on tiptoe to pull the door open, and ran after Gilbert to grandmamma’s room.

‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘no one is grateful for services beyond all reason. So, Sophy, mind, into the cupboard he goes, the very next time you are so silly as to be a horse.’

‘To punish which of them?’ asked her brother.

‘Sophy knows,’ said Albinia.

Sophy was too miserable to smile. Sarah Anne Drury had been calling, and on hearing of Gilbert’s indisposition, had favoured them with ‘mamma’s remarks,’ and when Mrs. Kendal was blamed, Sophy had indignantly told Sarah Anne that she knew nothing about it, and had no business to interfere. Then followed the accusation, that Mrs. Kendal had set the whole family against their old friends, and Sophy had found all her own besetting sins charged upon her step-mother.

‘My dear!’ said Albinia, ‘don’t you know that if a royal tiger were to eat up your cousin John in India, the Drurys would say Mrs. Kendal always let the tigers run about loose! Nor am I sure that your faults are not my fault. I helped you to be more exclusive and intolerant, and I am sure I tried your temper, when I did not know what was the matter with you—’

‘No—no,’ said the choked voice. It would have been an immense comfort to cry, or even to be able to return the kiss; but she was a great deal too wretched to be capable of any demonstration; physically exhausted by being driven about by Maurice; mentally worn out by the attempts to be amiable, which had degenerated into wrangling, full of remorse for having made light of her brother’s illness, and, for that reason, persuaded that she was to be punished by seeing it become fatal. Not a word of all this did she say, but, dejected and silent, she spent the evening in a lonely corner of the drawing-room, while her brother, in the full pleasure of returning home, and greatly enjoying his invalid privileges, was discussing the projected improvements.

Talking at last brought back his cough with real violence, and he was sent to bed; Albinia went up with him to see that his fire burnt. He set Mr. Ferrars’s drawing of the alms-houses over his mantelshelf. ‘I shall nail it up to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I always wanted a picture here, and that’s a jolly one to look to.’

‘It would be a beautiful beginning,’ she said. ‘I think your life would go the better for it, Gibbie.’

‘I suppose old nurse would be too grand for one,’ he said, ‘but I should like to have her so near! And you must mind and keep old Mrs. Baker out of the Union for it. And that famous old blind sailor! I shall put him up a bench to sit in the sun, and spin his yarns on, and tell him to think himself at Greenwich.’

Albinia went down, only afraid that his being so very good was a dangerous symptom.

Sophy was far from well in the morning, and Albinia kept her upstairs, and sent her godfather to make her a visit. He always did her good; he knew how to probe deeply, and help her to speak, and he gave her advice with more experience than his sister, and more encouragement than her father.

Sophy said little, but her eyes had a softened look.

‘One good thing about Sophy,’ said he afterwards to his sister, ‘is, that she will never talk her feelings to death.’

‘That reserve is my great pain. I don’t get at the real being once in six months.’

‘So much the better for people living together.’

‘Well, I was thinking that you and I are a great deal more intimate and confidential when we meet now, than we used to be when we were always together.’

‘People can’t be often confidential from the innermost when they live together,’ said Maurice.

‘Since I have been a Kendal, such has been my experience.’

‘It was the same before, only we concealed it by an upper surface of chatter,’ said Maurice. ‘“As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man the countenance of his friend;” but if the mutual sharpening went on without intermission, both irons would wear away, and no work would be done. Aren’t you coming with me? Edmund is going to drive me to Woodside to meet the pony-carriage from home.’

‘I wish I could; but you see what happens when I go out pleasuring!’

‘Well, you can take one element of mischief with you—that imp, Maurice.’

‘Ye—es. Papa would like it, if you do.’

‘I should like you to come on worse terms.’

‘Very well, then; and Sophy is safe; I had already asked Genevieve to come and read to her this afternoon. If Gilbert can spare me, I will go.’

Gilbert did not want her, and begged Lucy not to think of staying indoors on his account. He was presently left in solitary possession of the drawing-room, whereupon he rose, settled his brown locks at the glass, arranged his tie, brushed his cuffs, leisurely walked upstairs, and tapped at the door of the morning-room, meekly asking, ‘May I come in?’ with a cough at each end of the sentence.

‘Oh! Gilbert!’ cried his anxious sister, starting up. ‘Are you come to see me?’ and she would have wheeled round her father’s arm-chair for him, but Genevieve was beforehand with her, and he sank into it, saying pathetically, ‘Ah! thank you, Miss Durant; you are come to a perfect hospital. Oh! this is too much,’ as she further gave him a footstool. ‘Oh! no, thank you, Sophy,’ for she would have handed Genevieve her own pillow for his further support; ‘this is delightful!’ reclining pathetically in his chair. ‘This is not like Traversham.’

‘Where they would not believe he was ill!’ said Sophy.

‘I hope he does not look so very ill,’ said Genevieve, cheerfully, but this rather hurt the feelings of both; the one said, ‘Oh! but he is terribly pale,’ the other coughed, and said, ‘Looks are deceitful.’

‘That is the very reason,’ said Genevieve. ‘You don’t look deceitful enough to be so ill—so ill as Miss Sophie fears; now you are at home, and well cared for, you will soon be well.’

‘Care would have prevented it all,’ said Sophy.

‘And not brought me home!’ said Gilbert. ‘Home is home on any terms. No one there had the least idea a fellow could ever be unwell or out of spirits!’

‘Ah! you must have been ill,’ cried his sister, ‘you who never used to be miserable!’

Gilbert gave a sigh. ‘They were such mere boys,’ he said.

‘Monsieur votre Precepteur?’ asked Genevieve.

‘Ah! he was otherwise occupied!’

‘There is some mystery beneath,’ said Genevieve, turning to Sophy, who exclaimed abruptly, ‘Oh! is he in love?’

‘Sophy goes to the point,’ said Gilbert, smiling, the picture of languid comfort; ‘but I own there are suspicious circumstances. He always has a photograph in his pocket, and Price has seen him looking at it.’

‘Ah! depend upon it, Miss Sophy, it is all a romance of these young gentlemen,’ said Genevieve, turning to her with a droll provoking air of confidence; ‘ce pauvre Monsieur had the portrait of his sister!’

‘Catch me carrying Sophy’s face in my waistcoat pocket, cried Gilbert, forgetting his languor.

‘Speak for yourself, Mr. Gilbert,’ laughed Genevieve.

‘And he writes letters every day, and wont let any of us put them into the post for him; but we know the direction begins with Miss—’

‘Oh! the curious boys!’ cried Genevieve. ‘If I could only hint to this poor tutor to let them read Miss Downton on one!’

‘I assure you,’ cried Gilbert, ‘Price has laid a bet that she’s an heiress with forty thousand pounds and red hair.’

‘Mr. Price is an impertinent! I hope you will inform me how he looks when he is the loser.’

‘But he has seen her! He met Mr. Downton last Christmas in Regent Street, in a swell carriage, with a lady with such carrots, he thought her bonnet was on fire; and Mr. Downton never saw Price, though he bowed to him, and you know nobody would marry a woman with red hair unless she was an heiress.’

‘Miss Sophy,’ whispered Genevieve, ‘prepare for a red-haired sister-in-law. I predict that every one of the pupils of the respectable Mr. Downton will marry ladies with lively chestnut locks.’

‘What, you think me so mercenary, Genevieve?’ said Gilbert.

‘I only hope to see this school-boy logic well revenged!’ said Genevieve. ‘Mrs. Price shall have locks of orange red, and for Mrs. Gilbert Kendal—ah! we will content ourselves with her having a paler shade—sandy gold.’

‘No,’ said Gilbert, speaking slowly, turning round his eyes. ‘I could tell you what Mrs. G. Kendal’s hair will be—’

Genevieve let this drop, and said, ‘You do not want me: good-bye, Miss Sophie.’

‘Going! why, you came to read to me, Genevieve,’ exclaimed Sophy.

‘Ah! I beg your pardon, I have been interrupting you all this time,’ cried Gilbert; ‘I never meant to disturb you. Pray let me listen.’

And Genevieve read while Gilbert resumed his reclining attitude, with half-closed eyes, listening to the sweet intonations and pretty refined accent of the ancien regime.

Sophy enjoyed this exceedingly, she made it her especial occupation to take care of Gilbert, and enter into his fireside amusements. This indisposition had drawn the two nearer together, and essentially unlike as they were, their two characters seemed to be fitting well one into the other. His sentiment accorded with her strain of romance, and they read poetry and had discussions as they sat over the fire, growing constantly into greater intimacy and confidence. Sophy waited on him, and watched him perpetually, and her assiduity was imparting a softness and warmth quite new to her, while the constant occupation kept affronts and vexations out of her sight, and made her amiable.

Gilbert’s health improved, though with vicissitudes that enforced the necessity of prudence. Rash when well, and desponding at each renewal of illness, he was not easy to manage, but he was always so gentle, grateful, and obliging, that he endeared himself to the whole household. It was no novelty for him to be devoted to his step-mother and his little brother, but he was likewise very kind to Lucy, and spent much time in helping in her pursuits; he was becoming companionable to his father, and could play at chess sufficiently well to be a worthy antagonist in Mr. Kendal’s scientific and interminable games. He would likewise play at backgammon with grandmamma, and could entertain her for hours together by listening to her long stories of the old Bayford world. He was a favourite in her little society, and would often take a hand at cards to make up a rubber, nay, even when not absolutely required, he was very apt to bestow his countenance upon the little parties, where he had the pleasure of being treated as a great man, and which, at least, had the advantage of making a variation in his imprisonment during the east winds.

Madame Belmarche and her daughter and grandchild were sometimes of the party, and on these occasions, Sophy always claimed Genevieve, and usually succeeded in carrying her off when Gilbert would often join them. Their books and prints were a great treat to her; Gilbert had a beautiful illustrated copy of Longfellow’s poems, and the engravings and ‘Evangeline’ were their enjoyment; Gilbert regularly proffering the loan of the book, and she as regularly refusing it, and turning a deaf ear to gentle insinuations of the pleasure of knowing that an book of his was in her hands. Gilbert had never had much of the schoolboy manner, and he was adopting a gentle, pathetic tone, at which Albinia was apt to laugh, but in her absence was often verged upon tendresse, especially with Genevieve. She, however, by her perfect simplicity and lively banter, always nipped the bud of his sentiment, she had known him from a child, and never lost the sense of being his elder, treating him somewhat as a boy to be played with. Perfectly aware of her own position, her demeanour, frank and gracious as it was, had something in it which kept in check other Bayford youths less gentlemanlike than Gilbert Kendal. If she never forgot that she was dancing-master’s daughter, she never let any one else forget that she was a lady.

When the building began, Gilbert had a wholesome occupation, saving his father some trouble and—not quite so much expense by overlooking the workmen. Mr. Kendal was glad to be spared giving orders and speaking to people, and would always rather be overcharged than be at the pains of bargaining or inquiring. ‘It was Gilbert’s own house,’ he said, ‘and it was good for the boy to take an interest in it, and not to be too much interfered with.’ So the bay window and the conservatory were some degrees grander than Mr. Ferrars had proposed but all was excused by the pleasure and experience they afforded Gilbert, and it was very droll to see Maurice following him about after the workmen, watching them most knowingly, and deep in mischief at every opportunity. Once he had been up to his knees in a tempting blancmanger-like lake of lime, many times had he hammered or cut his fingers, and once his legs had gone through the new drawing-room ceiling, where he hung by the petticoats screaming till rescued by his brother. The room was under these auspices finished, and was a very successful affair—the conservatory, in which the hall terminated, and into which a side door of the drawing-room opened, gave a bright fragrant, flowery air to the whole house; and the low fireplace and comfortable fan-shaped fender made the room very cheerful. Fresh delicately-tinted furniture, chosen con amore by the London aunts, had made the apartment very unlike old Willow-Lawn, and Albinia had so much enjoyed setting it off to the best advantage, that she sent word to Winifred that she was really becoming a furniture fancier.

It was a very pretty paper, and some choice prints hung on it, but Albinia and Sophy had laid violent hands on all the best-looking books, and kept them for the equipment of one of the walls. The rest were disposed, for Mr. Kendal’s delectation, in the old drawing-room, henceforth to be named the library. Lucy thought it sounded better, and he was quite as willing as Albinia was that the name of study should be extinct. Meantime Mr. Downton had verified the boys’ prediction by writing to announce that he was about to marry and give up pupils.

Gilbert was past seventeen, and it was time to decide on his profession. Albinia had virtuously abstained from any hint adverse to the house of Kendal and Kendal, for she knew it hurt her husband’s feelings to hear any disparagement of the country where he had spent some of his happiest years. He was fond of his cousins, and knew that they would give his son a safe and happy home, and he believed that the climate was exactly what his health needed.

Sophy fired at the idea. Her constant study of the subject and her vivid imagination had taken the place of memory, which could supply nothing but the glow of colouring and the dazzling haze which enveloped all the forms that she would fain believe that she remembered. She and her father would discuss Indian scenery as if they had been only absent from it a year, she envied Gilbert his return thither, but owned that it was the next thing to going herself, and was already beginning to amass a hoard of English gifts for the old ayahs and bearers who still lived in her recollection, in preparation for the visit which on his first holiday her brother must pay to her birthplace and first home.

Gilbert, however, took no part in this enthusiasm, he made no opposition, but showed no alacrity; and at last his father asked Albinia whether she knew of any objection on his part, or any design which he might be unwilling to put forward. With a beating heart she avowed her cherished scheme.

‘Is this his own proposal?’ asked Mr. Kendal.

‘No; he has never spoken of it, but your plan has always seemed so decided that perhaps he thinks he has no choice.’

‘That is not what I wish,’ said his father. ‘If his inclinations be otherwise, he has only to speak, and I will consider.’

‘Shall I sound him?’ suggested Albinia, dreading the timidity that always stood between the boy and his father.

‘Do not inspire him with the wish and then imagine it his own,’ said Mr. Kendal; and then thinking he had spoken sternly, added ‘I know you would be the last to wish him to take holy orders inconsiderately, but you have such power over him, that I question whether he would know his wishes from yours.’

Albinia began to disavow the desire of actuating him.

‘You would not intend it, but he would catch the desire from you, and I own I would rather he were not inspired with it. If he now should express it, I should fear it was the unconscious effort to escape from India. If it had been his brother Edmund, I would have made any sacrifice, but I do not think Gilbert has the energy or force of character I should wish to see in a clergyman, nor do I feel willing to risk him at the university.’

‘Oh! Edmund, why will you distrust Oxford? Why will you not believe what I know through Maurice and his friends?’

‘If my poor boy had either the disposition or the discipline of your brother, I should not feel the same doubt.’