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

‘Stuff,’ said Lucy.

‘Stuff indeed,’ more sincerely murmured Sophy.

‘Say something in earnest,’ said Lucy. ‘You professed to tell what I thought of the people.’

‘I hope you’ll never put on such new white gloves where I’m the party chiefly concerned.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They are a great deal too unexceptionable.’

If there were something coquettish in the manner of these two, it did not give Albinia much concern. It was in him ‘only Irish;’ and Fred Ferrars had made her believe that it was rather a sign of the absence of love than of its presence. She saw much more respect and interest in his mischievous attacks on Sophy’s gravity, and though Lucy both pitied him and liked chattering with him, it was all the while under the secret protest that he was only a banker’s clerk.

Sophy was glad of the presence of a third person to obviate the perils of her evenings with grandmamma, and she beheld the trio set off to their dinner-party, without the usual dread of being betrayed into wrangling. Mr. O’More devoted himself to the old lady’s entertainment, he amused her with droll stories, and played backgammon with her. Then she composed herself to her knitting, and desired them not to mind her, she liked to hear young people talk cheerfully; whereupon Sophy, by way of light and cheerful conversation, renewed the battle of consistency with a whole broadside of heavy metal.

When the diners-out came home, they found the war raging as hotly as ever; a great many historical facts and wise sayings having been fired off on both sides, and neither having found out that each meant the same thing.

However, the hours had gone imperceptibly past them, which could not be said for the others. The half-yearly dinners at Mr. Drury’s were Albinia’s dread nearly as much as Mr. Kendal’s aversion. He was certain, whatever he might intend, to fall into a fit of absence, and she was almost equally sure to hear something unpleasant, and to regret her own reply. On the whole, however, Mr. Kendal came away on this evening the least dissatisfied, for Mr. Goldsmith had asked him with some solicitude, whether he thought ‘that lad, young More,’ positively unwell; and had gone the length of expressing that he seemed to be fairly sharp, and stuck to his work. Mr. Kendal seized the moment for telling his opinion, of Ulick, and though Mr. Goldsmith coughed and looked dry and almost contemptuous, he was perceptibly gratified, and replied with a maxim evidently intended both as an excuse for himself and as a warning to the Kendals, that young men were always spoilt by being made too much of—in his younger days—&c.

Lucy, meantime, was undergoing the broad banter of her unrefined cousins on the subject of the Irish clerk. A very little grace in the perpetration would have made it grateful to her vanity, but this was far too broad raillery, and made her hold up her head with protestations of her perfect indifference, to which her cousins manifested incredulity, visiting on her with some petty spite their small jealousies of her higher pretensions, and of the attention which had been paid to her by Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy.

‘Not that he will ever look at you again, Lucy, you need not flatter yourself,’ said the amiable Sarah Anne. ‘Harry Wolfe writes that he was flirting with a beautiful young lady who came to see Oxford, and that he is spending quantities of money.’

‘It is nothing to me, I am sure,’ retorted Lucy. ‘Besides, Gilbert says no such thing.’

‘Gilbert! oh, no!’ exclaimed Miss Drury; ‘why, he is just as bad himself. Papa said, from what Mrs. Wolfe told him, he would not take 500 pounds to pay Mr. Gilbert’s bills.’

Albinia had been hearing much the same story from Mrs. Drury, though not so much exaggerated, and administered with more condolence. She did not absolutely believe, and yet she could not utterly disbelieve, so the result was a letter to Gilbert, with an anxious exhortation to be careful, and not to be deluded into foolish expenditure in imitation of the Polysyllable; and as no special answer was returned, she dismissed the whole from her mind as a Drury allegation.

The horse chanced to be lame, so that Gilbert could not be met at Hadminster on his return from Oxford, but much earlier than the omnibus usually lumbered into Bayford, he astonished Sophy, who was lying on the sofa in the morning-room, by marching in with a free and easy step, and a loose coat of the most novel device.

‘No one else at home?’ he asked.

‘Only grandmamma. We did not think the omnibus would come in so soon, but I suppose you took a fly, as there were three of you.’

‘As if we were going to stand six miles of bus with the Wolfe cub! No, Dusautoy brought his horse down with him, and I took a fly!’ said Gilbert. ‘Well, and what’s the matter with Captain; has the Irishman been riding him?’

Sophy bit her lip to prevent an angry answer, and was glad that Maurice rushed in, fall of uproarious joy. ‘Hollo! boy, how you grow! What have you got there?’

‘It’s my new pop-gun, that Ulick made me, I’ll shoot you,’ cried Maurice, retiring to a suitable distance.

‘I declare the child has caught the brogue! Is the fellow here still?’

‘What fellow?’ coldly asked Sophy.

‘Why, this pet of my father’s.’

‘Bang!’ cried Maurice, and a pellet passed perilously close to Gilbert’s eyes.

‘Don’t, child. Pray is this banker’s clerk one of our fixtures, Sophy?’

‘I don’t know why you despise him, unless it is because it is what you ought to be yourself,’ Sophy was provoked into retorting.

‘Apparently my father has a monomania for the article.’ Gilbert intended to speak with provoking coolness; but another fraternal pellet hit him fall in the nose, and the accompanying shout of glee was too much for an already irritated temper. With passion most unusual in him, he caught hold of the child, and exclaiming, ‘You little imp, what do you mean by it?’ he wrenched the weapon out of his hand, and dashed it into the fire, in the midst of an energetic ‘For shame!’ from his sister. Maurice, with a furious ‘Naughty Gilbert,’ struck at him with both his little fists clenched, and then precipitated himself over the fender to snatch his treasure from the grate, but was instantly captured and pulled back, struggling, kicking, and fighting with all his might, till, to the equal relief of both brothers, Sophy held up the pop-gun in the tongs, one end still tinged with a red glow, smoky, blackened, and perfumed. Maurice made one bound, she lowered it into his grasp as the last red spark died out, and he clasped it as Siegfried did the magic sword!

‘There, Maurice, I didn’t mean it,’ said Gilbert, heartily ashamed and sorry; ‘kiss and make it up, and then put on your hat, and we’ll come up to old Smith’s and get such a jolly one!’

The forgiving child had already given the kiss, glad to atone for his aggressions, but then was absorbed in rubbing the charred wood, amazed that while so much black came off on his fingers, the effect on the weapon was not proportionate, and then tried another shot in a safer direction. ‘Come,’ said Gilbert, ‘put that black affair into the fire, and come along.’

‘No!’ said Maurice; ‘it is my dear gun that Ulick made me, and it shan’t be burnt.’

‘What, not if I give you a famous one—like a real one, with a stock and barrel?’ said Gilbert, anxious to be freed from the tokens of his ebullition.

‘No! no!’ still stoutly said the constant Maurice. ‘I don’t want new guns; I’ve got my dear old one, and I’ll keep him to the end of his days and mine!’ and he crossed his arms over it.

‘That’s right, Maurice,’ said Sophy; ‘stick to old friends that have borne wounds in your service!’

‘Well, it’s his concern if he likes such a trumpery old thing,’ said Gilbert. ‘Come here, boy; you don’t bear malice! Come and have a ride on my back.’

The practical lesson, ‘don’t shoot at your brother’s nose,’ would never have been impressed, had not mamma, on coming in, found Maurice and his pop-gun nearly equally black, and by gradual unfolding of cause and effect, learnt his forgotten offence. She reminded him of ancient promises never to aim at human creatures, assured him that Gilbert was very kind not to have burnt it outright; and to the great displeasure, and temporary relief of all the family, sequestrated the weapon for the rest of the evening.

Sophy told her in confidence that Gilbert had been the most to blame, which she took as merely an instance of Sophy’s blindness to Maurice’s errors; for the explosion had so completely worked off the Oxford dash, that he was perfectly meek and amiable. Considering the antecedents, such a contrast to himself as young O’More could hardly fail to be an eyesore, walking tame about the home, and specially recommended to his friendship; but so good-natured was he, and so attractive was the Irishman, that it took much influence from Algernon Dusautoy to keep up a thriving aversion. Albinia marvelled at the power exercised over Gilbert by one whose intellect and pretensions he openly contemned, but perceived that obstinacy and undoubting self-satisfaction overmastered his superior intelligence and principle, and that while perceiving all the follies of the Polysyllable, Gilbert had a strange propensity for his company, and therein always resumed the fast man, disdainful of the clerk. He did not like Ulick better for being the immediate cause of the removal of the last traces of the Belmarche family from their old abode, which had been renovated by pretty shamrock chintz furniture, the pride of the two Irish hearts. Indeed it was to be feared that Bridget would assist in the perpetuation of those rolling R’s which caused Mr. Goldsmith’s brow to contract whenever his nephew careered along upon one.

His departure from Willow Lawn was to take place at Christmas. The Ferrars party were coming to keep the two consecutive birthdays of Sophy and Maurice at Bayford, would take him back for Christmas-day to Fairmead, and on his return he would take possession of his new rooms.

Maurice’s fete was to serve as the occasion of paying off civilities to a miscellaneous young party; but as grandmamma’s feelings would have been hurt, had not Sophy’s been equally distinguished, it was arranged that Mrs. Nugent should then bring her eldest girl to meet the Ferrarses at an early tea.

Just as Albinia had descended to await her guests, Gilbert came down, and presently said, with would-be indifference, ‘Oh, by-the-by, Dusautoy said he would look in.’

‘The Polysyllable!’ cried Albinia, thunderstruck; ‘what possessed you to ask him, when you knew I sacrificed Mr. Dusautoy rather than have him to spoil it all?’

‘I didn’t ask him exactly,’ replied Gilbert; ‘it was old Bowles, who met us, and tried to nail us to eat our mutton with him, as he called it. I had my answer, and Dusautoy got off by saying he was engaged to us, and desired me to tell you he would make his excuses in person.’

‘He can make no excuse for downright falsehood.’

‘Hem!’ quoth Gilbert. ‘You wouldn’t have him done into drinking old Bowles’s surgery champagne.’

‘One comfort is that he wont get any dinner,’ said Albinia, vindictively. ‘I hope he’ll be ravenously hungry.’

‘He may not come after all,’ said Gilbert; and Albinia, laying hold of that hope, had nearly forgotten the threatened disaster, as her party appeared by instalments, and Winifred owned to her that Sophy had grown better-looking than could have been expected. Her eyes had brightened, the cloudy brown of her cheeks was enlivened, she held herself better, and the less childish dress was much to her advantage. But above all, the moody look of suffering was gone, and her face had something of the grave sweetness and regular beauty of that of her father.

‘Seventeen,’ said Mrs. Ferrars; ‘by the time she is seventy, she may be a remarkably handsome woman!’

The tea-drinking was in lively operation, when after a thundering knock, Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy was ushered in, with the air of a prince honouring the banquet of his vassals, saying, ‘I told Kendal I should presume on your hospitality, I beg you will make no difference on my account.’

Of which gracious permission Albinia was resolved to avail herself. She left all the insincerity to her husband, and would by no means allow grandmamma to abdicate the warm corner. She suspected that he wanted an introduction to Mrs. Nugent, and was resolved to defeat this object, unless he should condescend to make the request, so she was well satisfied to see him wedged in between papa and Sophy, while a prodigious quantity of Irish talk was going on between Mrs. Nugent and Mr. O’More, with contributions of satire from Mr. Ferrars which kept every one laughing except little Nora Nugent and Mary Ferrars, who were deep in the preliminaries of an eternal friendship, and held the ends of each other’s crackers like a pair of doves. Lucy, however, was ill at ease at the obscurity which shrouded the illustrious guest, and in her anxiety, gave so little attention to her two neighbours, that Willie Ferrars, affronted at some neglect, exclaimed, ‘Why, Lucy, what makes you screw your eyes about so! you can’t attend to any one.’

‘It is because Polly Silly is there,’ shouted Master Maurice from his throne beside his mamma.

To the infinite relief of the half-choked Albinia, little Mary Ferrars, with whom her cousin had been carrying on a direful warfare all day, fitted on the cap, shook her head gravely at him, and after an appealing look of indignation, first at his mamma, then at her own, was overheard confiding to Nora Nugent that Maurice was a very naughty boy—she was sorry to say, a regular spoilt child.

‘But how should you hinder Miss Kendal from attending?’

‘I’ll tell you, darling. Poor Lucy! she is very fond of me, and I dare say she wanted me to sit next to her, but you know she will have me for three days, and I have you only this one evening. I’ll go and speak to her after tea, when we go into the drawing-room, and then she wont mind.’

Lucy, after an agony of blushes, had somewhat recovered on finding that no one seemed to apply her brother’s speech, and when the benevolent Mary made her way to her, and thrust a hand into hers, only a feeble pressure replied to these romantic blandishments, so anxious was she to carry to Mrs. Kendal the information that Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy had been so obliging as to desire his servant to bring his guitar and key-bugle.

‘We are much obliged,’ said Albinia, ‘but look at that face!’ and she turned Lucy towards Willie’s open-mouthed, dismayed countenance. You must tell him the company are not sufficiently advanced in musical science.’

‘But mamma, it would gratify him!’

‘Very likely’—and without listening further, Albinia turned to Willie, who had all day been insisting that papa should introduce her to the new game of the Showman.

Infinitely delighted to be relieved from the fear of the guitar, Willie hunted all who would play into another room; whence they were to be summoned, one by one, back to the drawing-room by the showman, Mr. Ferrars, who shrugged his shoulders at the task, but undertook it, and first called for Mrs. Kendal.

She found him stationed before the red curtains, which were closely drawn, and her husband and the three elder ladies sitting by as audience.

‘Pray, madam, may I ask what animal you would desire to have exhibited to you, out of the vast resources that my menagerie contains. Choose freely, I undertake that whatever you may select, you shall not be disappointed.’

‘What, not if I were to ask for a black spider monkey?’ said Albinia, to whom it was very charming to be playing with Maurice again.

Mr. Kendal looked up in entertained curiosity, Mrs. Nugent smiled as if she thought the showman’s task impossible, and Winifred stretched out to gain a full view.

‘A black spider monkey,’ he said, slowly. ‘Allow me to ask, madam, if you are acquainted with the character of the beast?’

‘It doesn’t scratch, does it?’ said she, quickly.

‘That is for you to answer.’

‘I never knew it do so. It does chatter a great deal, but it never scratched that I knew of.’

‘Nor I,’ said the showman, ‘since it was young. Do you think age renders it graver and steadier?’

‘Not a bit. It is always frisky and troublesome, and I never knew it get a bit better as it grew older.’

Winifred laughed outright. Mr. Kendal’s lips were parted by his smile. ‘I wonder what sort of a mother it would make?’ said the showman.

‘All animals are good mothers, of course.’

‘I meant, is it a good disciplinarian?’

‘If you mean cuffing its young one for playing exactly the same tricks as itself.’

‘Exactly; and what would be the effect of letting it and its young one loose in a great scholar’s study?’

‘There wouldn’t be much study left.’

‘And would it be for his good?’

‘Really, Mr. Showman, you ask very odd questions. Shall we try?’ said Albinia, with a skip backward, so as to lay her hand on the shoulder of her own great scholar, while the showman drew back the curtain, observing—‘I wish, ma’am, I could show “it and its young one” together, but the young specimen is unfortunately asleep. Behold the original black spider monkey!’

There stood the monkey, with sunny brown locks round the laughing glowing face, and one white paw still lying on the scholar’s shoulder—while his face made no assurance needful that it was very good for him! The mirror concealed behind the curtains was the menagerie! Albinia clapped her hands with delight, and pronounced it the most perfect of games.

‘And now let us have Willie,’ said Mrs. Ferrars; ‘it will conduce to the harmony of the next room.’

Willie, already initiated, hoped to puzzle papa as a platypus ornithoryncus, but was driven to allow that it was a nondescript animal, neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring, useless, and very fond of grubbing in the mud; and if it were not at Botany Bay, it ought to be! The laughter that hailed his defence of its nose as ‘well, nothing particular,’ precipitated the drawing up of the curtain and his apparition in the glass: and then Nora Nugent being called, the inseparable Mary accompanied her, arm-in-arm, simpering an announcement that they liked nothing so well as a pair of dear little love-birds.

Oh, unpitying papa! to draw from the unsuspicious Nora the admission that they were very dull little birds, of no shape at all, who always sat hunched up in a corner without any fun, and people said their love was all stupidity and pretence; in fact, if she had one she should call it Silly Polly or Polly Silly!

To silence Willie’s exultation in his sister’s discomfiture, he was sent to fetch Lucy, whose impersonation of an argus pheasant would not have answered well but for a suggestion of Albinia, that she was eyes all over for any delinquency in school. Ulick O’More, owning with a sigh that he should like to see no beast better than a snipe, gave rise to much ingenuity by being led to describe it as of a class migratory, hard to catch, food for powder, given to long bills. There he guessed something, and stood on the defensive, but could not deny that its element was bogs, but that it had been seen skimming over water meadows, and finding sustenance in banks, whereupon the curtain rose. Ulick rushed upon the battles of his nation, and was only reduced to quiescence by the entrance of Sophy, who expressed a desire to see a coral worm, apparently perplexing the showman, who, to gain time, hemmed, and said, ‘A very unusual species, ma’am,’ which set all the younger ones in a double giggle, such as confused Sophy, to find herself standing up, with every one looking at her, and listening for her words. ‘I thought you undertook for any impossibility in earth air or water.’

‘Well, ma’am, do you take me for a mere mountebank? But when ladies and gentlemen take such unusual fancies—and for an animal that—you would not aver that it is often found from home?’

‘Never, I should say.’

‘Nor that it is accessible?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘And why is it so, ma’am?’

‘Why,’ said Sophy, bewildered into forgetting her natural history, ‘it lives at the bottom of the sea; that’s one thing.’

‘Where Truth lives,’ said a voice behind.

‘I beg to differ,’ observed Albinia. ‘Truth is a fresh water fish at the bottom of a well; besides, I thought coral worms were always close to the surface.’

‘But below it—not in everybody’s view,’ said Sophy—an answer which seemed much to the satisfaction of the audience, but the showman insisted on knowing why, and whether it did not conceal itself. ‘It makes stony caves for itself, out of sight,’ said Sophy, almost doubting whether she spoke correctly. ‘Well, surely it does so.’

‘Most surely,’ said an acclamation so general that she did not like it. If she had been younger, she would have turned sulky upon the spot, and Mr. Ferrars almost doubted whether to bring ont his final query. ‘Pray, ma’am, do you think this creature out of reach in its self-made cave, at the bottom—no, below the surface of the sea, would be popular enough to repay the cost of procuring it.’

‘Ah! that’s too bad,’ burst out the Hibernian tones. ‘Why, is not the best of everything hidden away from the common eye? Out of sight—stony cave—It is the secret worker that lays the true solid foundation, raises the new realms, and forms the precious jewels.’ The torrent of r’s was irresistible!

‘Police! order!’ cried the showman. ‘An Irish mob has got in, and there’s an end of everything.’ So up went the curtain, and the polyp appeared, becoming rapidly red coral as she perceived what the exhibition was, and why the politeness of the Green Isle revolted from her proclaiming her own unpopularity. But all she did was to turn gruffly aside, and say, ‘It is lucky there are no more ladies to come, Mr. Showman, or the mob would turn everything to a compliment.’

Gilbert’s curiosity was directed to the Laughing Jackass, and with too much truth he admitted that it took its tone from whatever it associated with, and caught every note, from the song of the lark to the bray of the donkey; then laughed good-humouredly when the character was fitted upon himself.

‘That is all, is it not?’ asked the showman. ‘I may retire into private life.’

‘Oh no,’ cried Willie; ‘you have forgotten Mr. Dusautoy.’

‘I was afraid you had,’ said Lucy, ‘or you could not have left him to the last.’

‘I am tempted to abdicate,’ said Mr. Ferrars.

‘No,’ Albinia said. ‘He must have his share, and no one but you can do it. Where can he be? the pause becomes awful!’

‘Willie is making suggestions,’ said Gilbert; ‘his imagination would never stretch farther than a lion. It’s what he thinks himself and no mistake.’

‘He is big enough to be the elephant,’ said little Mary.

‘The half-reasoning!’ said Ulick, softly; ‘and I can answer for his trunk, I saw it come off the omnibus.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you persist in such disorderly conduct, the exhibition will close,’ cried the showman, waving his wand as Willie trumpeted Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy in, and on the demand what animal he wanted to see, twitched him as Flibbertigibbet did the giant warder, and caused him to respond—‘The Giraffe.’

‘Has it not another name, sir? A short or a long one, more or less syllables!’

‘Camelopard. A polysyllabic word, certainly,’ said Algernon, looking with a puzzled expression at the laughers behind; and almost imagining it possible that he could have made an error, he repeated, ‘Camel-le-o-pard. Yes, it is a polysyllable’—as, indeed, he had added an unnecessary syllable.

‘Most assuredly,’ said the showman, looking daggers at his suffocating sister. ‘May I ask you to describe the creature?’

‘Seventeen feet from the crown to the hoof, but falls off behind,’ said the accurate Mr. Dusautoy; ‘beautiful tawny colour.’

‘Nearly as good as a Lion,’ added Gilbert; but Algernon, fancying the game was by way of giving useful instruction to the children, went on in full swing. ‘Handsomely mottled with darker brown; a ruminating animal; so gentle that in spite of its size, none of my little friends need be alarmed at its vicinity. Inhabits the African deserts, but may be bred in more temperate latitudes. I myself saw an individual in the Jardin des Plantes, which was popularly said never to bend its neck to the ground, but I consider this a vulgar delusion, for on offering it food, it mildly inclined its head.’

‘Let us hope the present specimen is equally condescending,’ said Mr. Ferrars.