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

‘No—no—’ said Sophy, ‘not there—’ as Genevieve would have taken her to the little parlour, but opening the door of the school-room, she sank breathless into a sitting position on the carpetless boards.

Genevieve shut the door, and kneeling down, found Sophy’s arms thrown round her, pressing her almost to strangulation.

‘Oh! I wanted to do it—I never could wont you have the book, Genevieve? It is my keepsake—only I could not give it because—’

‘Is it your keepsake, indeed, dear Miss Sophy?’ said Genevieve. ‘Oh! if it is yours—how I shall value it—but it is too beautiful—’

‘Nothing is too beautiful for you, Genevieve,’ said Sophy fervently.

‘And it is your gift! But I am frightened—it must have cost—!’ began Genevieve, still a little on her guard. ‘Dear, dear Miss Sophy, forgive me if I do seem ungrateful, but indeed I ought to ask—if—if it is all your own gift?’

‘Mine? yes!’ said Sophy, on the borders of offence. ‘I know what you mean, Genevieve, but you may trust me. I would not take you in.’

Genevieve was blushing intensely, but taking courage she bestowed a shower of ardent embraces and expressions of gratitude, mingled with excuses for her precaution. ‘Oh! it was so very kind in Miss Sophy,’ she said; ‘it would be such a comfort to remember, she had feared she too was angry with her.’

‘Angry? oh, no!’ cried Sophy, her heart quite unlocked; ‘but the more I loved and admired, the more I could not speak. And if they drive you to be a governess? If you had a situation like what we read of?’

‘Perhaps I shall not,’ said Genevieve, laughing. ‘Every one has been so good to me hitherto! And then I am not reduced from anything grander. I shall always have the children, you know.’

‘How I should hate them!’ quoth Sophy.

‘They are my pleasure. Besides I have always thought it a blessing that my business in life, though so humble, should be what may do direct good. If only I do not set them a bad example, or teach them any harm.’

‘Not much danger of that,’ said Sophy, smiling. ‘Well, I can’t believe it will be your lot all your life. You will find some one who will know how to love you.’

‘No,’ said Genevieve, ‘I am not in a position for marriage—grandmamma has often told me so!’

‘Things sometimes happen,’ pursued Sophy. ‘Mamma said if Gilbert had been older, or even if—if he had been in earnest and steady enough to work for you in India, then it might—And surely if Gilbert could care for you—people higher and deeper than he would like you better still.’

‘Hush,’ said Genevieve; ‘they would only see the objections more strongly. No, do not put these things in my head. I know that unless a teacher hold her business as her mission, and put all other schemes out of her mind, she will work with an absent, distracted, half-hearted attention, and fail of the task that the good God has committed to her.’

‘Then you would never even wish—’

‘It would be seeking pomps and vanities to wish,’ said Genevieve; ‘a school-room is a good safe cloister, probably less dull than the convent. If I wish at all, it will be that I may be well shut up there, for I know that in spite of myself my manners are different from your English ones. I cannot make them otherwise, and that amuses people; and I cannot help liking to please, and so I become excited. I enjoy society so much that it is not safe for me! So don’t be sorry, dear Sophy, it is a fit penance for the vanity that elated me too much that evening at Fairmead!’

Mademoiselle Belmarche was here attracted by the voices. Sophy started up from the ground, made some unintelligible excuse, and while Mademoiselle was confounded with admiration at the sight of the book, inflicted another boa-constrictor embrace, and hurried away.

CHAPTER XVII

Planets hostile to the tender passion must have been in the ascendant, for the result of Captain Ferrars’s pursuit of his brother to Italy was the wholesome certainty that his own slender portion was all he had to reckon upon. Before returning to Canada, he came to Bayford to pour out his troubles to his cousin, and to induce her, if he could induce no one else, to advise his immediate marriage. It was the first time he had been really engaged, and his affection had not only stood three months’ absence, but had so much elevated his shatter-brained though frank and honest temperament, that Albinia conceived a high opinion of ‘Emily,’ and did her best to persuade him to be patient, and wait for promotion.

Sophy likewise approved of him this time, perhaps because he was so opposite a specimen of the genus lover from that presented by her brother. Gilbert had not been able to help enjoying himself while from home, but his spirits sank on his return; he lay about on the grass in doleful dejection, studied little but L. E. L., lost appetite, and reproachfully fondled his cough; but Albinia was now more compassionate than Sophy, whom she was obliged to rebuke for an unsisterly disregard toward his woes.

‘I can’t help it,’ said Sophy; ‘I can’t believe in him now!’

‘Yes, you ought to believe that he is really unhappy, and be more gentle and considerate with him.’

‘If it had been earnest, he would have sacrificed himself instead of Genevieve.’

‘Ah! Sophy, some day you will learn to make excuses for other people, and not be so intolerant.’

‘I never make excuses.’

‘Except for Maurice,’ said Albinia. ‘If you viewed other people as you do him, your judgments would be gentler.’

Sophy’s conscientiousness, like her romance, was hard, high, and strict; but while she had as little mercy on herself as on others, and while there were some soft spots in her adamantine judgment, there was hope that these would spread, and, without lowering her tone, make her more merciful.

She corresponded constantly with Genevieve, who seemed very happily placed; Mrs. Elwood was delighted with her, and she with Mrs. Elwood; and her lively letters showed no signs of pining for home. Sophy felt as if it were a duty to her friend, to do what in her lay to prevent the two old ladies from being dull, and spent an hour with them every week, not herself contributing much to their amusement, but pleasing them by the attention, and hearing much that was very curious of their old-world recollections.

Ever since that unlucky penny-club-day, when she had declared that she hated poor people, she had been let alone on that subject; and though principle had made her use her needle in their behalf, shyness and reserve had kept her back from all intercourse with them; but in her wish to compensate for Genevieve’s absence, she volunteered to take charge of her vacant Sunday-school class, and obtained leave to have the girls at home on the afternoons for an hour and a half. This was enough for one who worked as she did, making a conscience of every word, and toiling to prepare her lessons, writing out her questions beforehand, and begging for advice upon them.

‘My dear,’ said Albinia, ‘you must alter this—you see this question does not grow out of the last answer.’

‘Yes,’ said Sophy, ‘that must have been what puzzled them last Sunday: they want connexion.’

‘Nothing like logic to teach one to be simple,’ said Albinia.

‘I can’t see the use of all this trouble,’ put in Lucy. ‘Why can’t you ask them just what comes into your head, as I always do?’

‘Suppose mistakes came into my head.’

‘Oh! they would not find it out if they did! I declare!—what’s this—Persian? Are you going to teach them Persian?’

‘No; it is Greek. You see it is a piece of a Psalm, a quotation rather different in the New Testament. I wrote it down to ask papa what it is in Hebrew.’

‘By-the-bye, Sophy,’ continued Lucy, ‘how could you let Susan Price come to church with lace sleeves—absolute lace sleeves!’

‘Had she?’

‘There—you never see anything! Mamma, would not it be more sensible to keep their dress in order, than to go poking into Hebrew, which can’t be of use to any one?’

There was more reason than might appear in what Lucy said: the girls of her class were more orderly, and fonder of her than Sophy’s of the grave young lady whose earnestness oppressed them, and whose shyness looked dislike and pride. As to finding fault with their dress, she privately told Albinia that she could not commit such a discourtesy, and was answered that no one but Mrs. Dusautoy need interfere.

‘I will go and ask Mrs. Dusautoy what she wishes,’ said Albinia. ‘I should be glad if she would modify Lucy’s sumptuary laws. To fall foul of every trifle only makes the girls think of their dress.’

Albinia found Mrs. Dusautoy busied in writing notes on mourning paper.

‘Here is a note I had written to you,’ she said. ‘I am sending over to Hadminster to see if any of the curates can take the services to-morrow.’

Albinia looked at the note while Mrs. Dusautoy wrote on hurriedly. She read that there could be no daily services at present, the Vicar having been summoned to Paris by the sudden death of Mrs. Cavendish Dusautoy. As the image of a well-endowed widow, always trying to force her way into higher society, arose before Albinia, she could hardly wait till the letter was despatched, to break out in amazement,

‘Was she a relation of yours? Even the name never made me think of it!’

‘It is a pity she cannot have the gratification of hearing it, poor woman,’ said Mrs. Dusautoy, ‘but it is a fact that she did poor George Dusautoy the honour to marry him.’

‘Mr. Dusautoy’s brother?’

‘Ay—he was a young surgeon, just set up in practice, exactly like John—nay, some people thought him still finer-looking. She was a Miss Greenaway Cavendish, a stock-broker’s heiress of a certain age.’

‘Oh!’ expressively cried Albinia.

‘You may say so,’ returned Mrs. Dusautoy. ‘She made him put away his profession, and set up for taste and elegant idleness.’

‘And he submitted?’

‘There was a great deal of the meek giant in him, and he believed implicitly in the honour she had done him. It would have been very touching, if it had not been so provoking, to see how patiently and humbly that fine young man gave up all that would have made him happy, to bend to her caprices and pretensions.’

‘Did you ever see them together?’

‘No, I never saw her at all, and him only once. I never knew John really savage but once, and that was at her not letting him come to our wedding; but she did give him leave of absence for one fortnight, when we were at Lauriston. How happy the brothers were! It did one good to hear their great voices about the house; and they were like boys on a stolen frolic, when John took him to prescribe for some of our poor people. He used to talk of bringing us his little son—the one pleasure of his life—but he never was allowed. Oh, how I used to long to stir up a mutiny!’ cried Mrs. Dusautoy, quite unknowing that she ruled her own lion with a leash of silk. ‘If she had appreciated him, it would have been bearable; but to her he was no more than the handsome young doctor, whom she had made a gentleman, and not a very good piece of work of it either! Little she recked of the great loving heart that had thrown itself away on her, and the patience that bore with her; and she tried to hinder all the liberal bountiful actions that were all he cared to do with his means! I wish the boy may remember him!’

‘How long has he been dead?’

‘These ten years. He was drowned in a lake storm in Switzerland—people clung to him, and he could not swim. It was John’s one great grief—he cannot mention him even now. And really,’ she added, smiling, ‘I do believe he has brought himself to fancy it was a very happy marriage. She has always been very civil; but she has been chiefly abroad, and never would take his advice about sending her boy to school.’

‘What becomes of him now?’

‘He is our charge. She was on the way home from Italy, when she was taken ill at Paris, and died at the end of the week.’

‘How old is he?’

‘About nineteen, I fancy. He must have had an odd sort of education; but if he is a nice lad, it will be a great pleasure to John to have something young about the house.’

‘I was thinking that Mr. Dusautoy hardly wanted more cares.’

‘So have I,’ said her friend, smiling, ‘and I have been laying a plot against him. You see, he is as strong as a lion, and never yet was too tired to sleep; but it is rather a tempting of Providence to keep 3589 people and fourteen services in a week resting upon one man!’

‘Exactly what his churchwarden has preached to him.’

‘Moreover, he cannot be in two places at once, let alone half-a-dozen. Now, my Lancashire people have written in quest of a title for holy orders for a young man who has just gone through Cambridge with great credit, and it strikes me that he might at once help John, and cram Master Algernon.’

‘And Gilbert!’ cried Albinia. ‘Oh, if you will import a tutor for Gilbert, we shall be for ever beholden to you!’

‘I had thought of him. I have no doubt that he is much better taught than Algernon; but I am not afraid of this poor fellow bringing home bad habits, and they will be good companions. I reckon upon you and Mr. Kendal as great auxiliaries, and I don’t think John will be able to withstand our united forces.’

On the way home, on emerging from the alley, Albinia encountered Gilbert, just parting with another youth, who walked off quickly on the Tremblam road, while she inquired who it was.

‘That?’ said Gilbert; ‘oh! that was young Tritton. He has been away learning farming in Scotland. We speak when we meet, for old acquaintance sake and that.’

The Bayford mind was diverted from the romance of Genevieve, by the enormous fortune of the Vicar’s nephew, whose capital was in their mouths and imaginations swelled into his yearly income. Swarms of cards of inquiry were left at the vicarage; and Mrs. Meadows and Lucy enjoyed the reflected dignity of being able to say that Mrs. Kendal was continually there. And so she was, for Mrs. Dusautoy was drooping, though more in body than visibly in spirit, and needed both companionship and assistance in supporting the charge left by her absent Atlas.

He was not gone a moment longer than necessary, and took her by surprise at last, while Albinia and Sophy were sitting on the lawn with her, when she welcomed the nephew and the Vicar, holding out a hand to each, and thanked them for taking care of ‘Fanny.’ ‘Here, Algernon,’ he continued, ‘here are two of our best friends, Mrs. Kendal and Miss Sophy.’

There was a stiff bow from a stiff altitude. The youth was on the gigantic Dusautoy scale, looking taller even than his uncle, from his manner of holding himself with his chin somewhat elevated. He had a good ruddy sun-burnt complexion, shining brown hair, and regular features; and Albinia could respond heartily to the good Vicar’s exclamation, as he followed her down to the gate for the sake of saying,

‘Well-grown lad, isn’t that? And a very good-hearted fellow too, poor boy—the very picture of his dear father. Well, and how has Fanny been?’

He stayed to be reassured that his return was all his Fanny wanted, and then hurried back to her, while Albinia and Sophy pursued their way down the hill.

‘News for grandmamma. We must give her a particular description of the hero.’

‘How ugly he thought me!’ said Sophy, quaintly.

‘My dear, I believe that is the first thing you think of when you meet a stranger!’

‘I saw it this time,’ returned Sophy. ‘His chin went up in the air at once. He set me down for Mrs. Kendal, and you for Miss Sophy.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Albinia, for the inveterate youthfulness of her bright complexion and sunny hair was almost a sore subject with her. ‘Your always fancying that every one is disgusted with you, is as silly as if you imagined yourself transcendently beautiful. It is mere self-occupation, and helps to make you blunt and shy.’

‘Mamma,’ said Sophy, ‘tell me one thing. Did you ever think yourself pretty?’

‘I have thought myself looking so, under favourable circumstances, but that’s all. You are as far from ugliness as I am, and have as little need to think of it. As far as features go, there’s the making of a much handsomer woman in you than in me.’

Sophy laughed. A certain yearning for personal beauty was a curious part of her character, and she would have been ashamed to own the pleasure those few words had given her, or how much serenity and forbearance they were worth; and her good-humour was put to the proof that evening, for grandmamma had a tea-party, bent on extracting the full description of the great Algernon Greenaway Cavendish Dusautoy, Esquire. Lucy’s first sight was less at her ease. Elizabeth Osborn, with whom she kept up a fitful intimacy, summoned her mysteriously into her garden, to show her a peep-hole through a little dusty window in the tool-house, whence could be descried the vicarage garden, and Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, as, with a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets,

    ‘Stately stept he east the wa’, and stately stept he west.’

Lucy was so much amused, that she could not help reporting it at home, where Gilbert forgot his sorrows, in building up a mischievous romance in honour of the hole in the ‘sweet and lovely wall.’

But the parents’ feud did not seem likely to hold out. A hundred thousand pounds on one side of the wall, and three single daughters on the other, Mrs. Osborn was not the woman to trust to the ‘wall’s hole;’ and so Mr. Dusautoy’s enemy laid down her colours; and he was too kind-hearted to trace her sudden politeness to the source.

Mr. Dusautoy acceded to the scheme devised by his wife, and measures were at once taken for engaging the curate. When Albinia went to talk the matter over at the parsonage, Lucy accompanied her; but the object of her curiosity was not in the room; and when she had heard that he was fond of drawing, and that his horses were to be kept at the King’s Head stables, the conversation drifted away, and she grew restless, and begged Mrs. Dusautoy to allow her to replenish the faded bouquets on the table. No sooner was she in the garden, than Mrs. Dusautoy put on an arch look, and lowering her voice, said,

‘Oh! it is such fun! He does despise us so immensely.’

‘Despise—you?’

‘He is a good, boy, faithful to his training. Now his poor mother’s axioms were, that the English are vulgar, country English more vulgar, Fanny Dusautoy the most vulgar! I wish we always as heartily accepted what we are taught.’

‘He must be intolerable.’

‘No, he is very condescending and patronizing to the savages. He really is fond of his uncle; and John is so much hurt it I notice his peculiarities, that I have been dying to have my laugh out.’

‘Can Mr. Dusautoy bear with pretension?’

‘It is not pretension, only calm faith in the lessons of his youth. Look,’ she added, becoming less personal at Lucy’s re-entrance, and pointing to a small highly-varnished oil-painting of a red terra cotta vase, holding a rose, a rhododendron before it, and half a water-melon grinning behind, newly severed by a knife.

‘Is that what people bring home from Italy now-a-days?’ said Albinia.

‘That is an original production.’

‘Did Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy do that?’ cried Lucy.

‘Genre is his style,’ was the reply. ‘His mother was resolved he should be an amateur, and I give his master great credit.’

‘Especially for that not being a Madonna,’ said Albinia. ‘I congratulate you on his having so safe an amusement.’

‘Yes; it disposes of him and of the spare room. He cannot exist without an atelier.’

Just then the Vicar entered.

‘Ah! Algernon’s picture,’ began he, who had never been known to look at one, except the fat cattle in the Illustrated News. ‘What do you think of it? Has he not made a good hand of the pitcher?’

Albinia gratified him by owning that the pitcher was round; and Lucy was in perfect rapture at the ‘dear little spots’ in the rhododendron.

‘A poor way of spending a lad’s time,’ said the uncle; ‘but it is better than nothing; and I call the knife very good: I declare you might take it up,’ and he squeezed up his eyes to enhance the illusion.

A slow and wide opening of the door admitted the lofty presence of Algernon Cavendish Dusautoy, with another small picture in his hand. Becoming aware of the visitors, he saluted them with a dignified movement of his head, and erecting his chin, gazed at them over it.

‘So you have brought us another picture, Algernon,’ said his uncle. ‘Mrs. Kendal has just been admiring your red jar.’

‘Have you a taste for art?’ demanded Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, turning to her with magnificent suavity.

‘I used to be very fond of drawing.’

‘Genre is my style,’ he pursued, almost overthrowing her gravity by the original of his aunt’s imitation. ‘I took lessons of old Barbouille—excellent master. Truth and nature, those were his maxims; and from the moment I heard them, I said, “This is my man.” We used positively to live in the Borghese. There!’ as he walked backwards, after adjusting his production in the best light.

‘A snipe,’ said Albinia.

‘A snipe that I killed in the Pontine marshes.’

‘There is very good shooting about Anxur,’ said Albinia.

‘You have been at Rome?’ He permitted himself a little animation at discovering any one within the pale of civilization.

‘For one fortnight in the course of a galloping tour with my two brothers,’ said Albinia. ‘All the Continent in one long vacation!’

‘That was much to be regretted. It is my maxim to go through every museum thoroughly.’

‘I can’t regret,’ said Albinia. ‘I should be very sorry to give up my bright indistinct haze of glorious memories, though I was too young to appreciate all I saw.’

‘For my part, I have grown up among works of art. My whole existence has been moulded on them, and I feel an inexpressible void without them. I shall be most happy to introduce you into my atelier, and show you my notes on the various Musees. I preserved them merely as a trifling memorial; but many connoisseurs have told me that I ought to print them as a Catalogue raisonnee, for private circulation, of course. I should be sorry to interfere with Murray, but on the whole I decided otherwise: I should be so much bored with applications.’

Mrs. Dusautoy’s wicked glance had so nearly demolished the restraint on her friend’s dimples, that she turned her back on her, and commended the finish of a solitary downy feather that lay detached beside the bird.

‘My maxim is truth to nature, at any cost of pains,’ said the youth, not exactly gratified, for homage was his native element, but graciously proceeding to point out the merits of the composition.

Albinia’s composure could endure no more, and she took her leave, Mr. Dusautoy coming down the hill with her to repeat, and this time somewhat wistfully,

‘A fine lad, is he not, poor fellow?’

With perfect sincerity, she could praise his good looks.

‘He has had a quantity of sad stuff thrust on him by the people who have been about his poor mother,’ said Mr. Dusautoy. ‘She could never bear to part with him, and no wonder, poor thing; and she must have let a very odd sort of people get about her abroad—they’ve flattered that poor lad to the top of his bent, you see, but he’s a very good boy for all that, very warm-hearted.’

‘He must be very amiable for his mother to have been able to manage him all this while.’

‘Just what I say!’ cried the Vicar, his honest face clearing. ‘Many youths would have run into all that is bad, brought up in that way; but only consider what disadvantages he has had! When we get him to see his real standing a little better—I say, could not you let us have your young people to come up this evening, have a little music, and make it lively? I suppose Fanny and I are growing old, though I never thought so before. Will you come, Lucy, there’s a good girl, and bring your brother and sister? The lads must be capital friends.’

Lucy promised with sparkling eyes, and the Vicar strode off, saying he should depend on the three.

Gilbert ‘supposed he was in for it,’ but ‘did not see the use of it,’ he was sick of the name of ‘that polysyllable,’ and ‘should see enough of him when Mr. Hope came, worse luck.’

The result of the evening was, that Lacy was enraptured at the discovery that this most accomplished hero sang Italian songs to the loveliest guitar in the world, and was very much offended with Sophy for wishing to know whether mamma really thought him so very clever.