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

‘Go on!’ shouted Maurice. ‘I’ve got my ticket. ‘No one can stop me. I’m going to Malta!’ and he tried to get to the other side of a stout traveller, who defended his legs from him, and said, ‘Ha! Running away from school, young master! Here’s your usher.’

‘No, I’m not running away! I’m not at school! I’m Maurice Kendal! I’m going to my brother at Malta!’

‘He is the son of Mr. Kendal of Bayford,’ said Ulick to the station-master,’ his parents are from home, and there will be dreadful distress if he goes in this way. Maurice, your sister has troubles enough already.’

‘I’ve my ticket, and can’t be stopped.’

But even as he spoke, the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick’s arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, ‘Let me go; I will go to Gilbert!’

‘Behave like a man,’ said Ulick; ‘don’t disgrace yourself in that way.’

The boy coloured, and choking with passion and disappointment, and straining against Ulick’s hold of his shoulder.

‘Indeed, sir,’ said the station-master, ‘if we had recognised the young gentleman, we would have made more inquiries, but he asked so readily for his ticket, not seeming at a loss, and we have so many young travellers, that we thought of nothing amiss. Will you have a fly, sir?’

‘I’m not going home,’ said the boy, undaunted.

‘You must submit, Maurice. You do not wish to make poor Sophy miserable.’

‘I must go to Malta,’ the boy persisted. ‘Gilbert says it would make him well to see me. I know my way; I saw it in the map, and I’ve a roll, and the end of a cold tongue, and a clean shirt, and my own sovereign, and four shillings, and a half-crown, and a half-penny in my pocket; and I’m going!’

‘But, Maurice, this gentleman will tell you that your whole sovereign would not carry you a quarter of the way to Malta.’

The station-master gave so formidable a description of the impossibilities of the route, that the hardy little fellow’s look of decision relaxed into dejection, his muscles lost their tension, and he struggled hard with his tears.

He followed Ulick to the carriage, and hid his face in a corner, while orders were given to stop at the post-office in case there were fresh letters. There was one for Miss Kendal, in Mr. Ferrars’ writing, and with black borders. Ulick felt too surely what it must be, and hardly could bear to address Maurice, who had shrunk from him with some remains of passion, but hearing suppressed sobs, he put his hand on him and said, ‘My poor little man.’

‘Get away,’ said Maurice, shaking him off. ‘Why did you come and bother?’

‘I came because it would have almost killed your sister and mother for you to be lost. If you had seen Sophy’s face, Maurice!’

‘I don’t care. Now I shall never see Gilbert again, and he did want me so!’ Maurice hid his face, and his frame shook with sobs.

‘Yes,’ said Ulick, ‘every one knew he wanted you; but if it had been possible for you to go, your mamma would have taken you. If your uncle had to take care of her how could you go alone?’

‘I’d have got there somehow,’ cried Maurice. ‘I’d have seen and heard Gilbert. He’s written me a letter to say he wants to see me, and I can’t even make that out!’

‘Has not your sister read it to you!’

‘I hate Sophy’s reading!’ cried Maurice. ‘It makes it all grumpy, like her. Take it, Ulick—you read it.’

That rich, sensitive, modulated voice brought out the meaning of the letter, though there were places where Ulick had nearly broken down; and Maurice pressed against him with the large tears in his eyes, and was some minutes without speaking.

‘He does not think of your coming; he does not expect you, dear boy,’ said Ulick. ‘It is a precious letter to have. I hope you will keep it and read it often, and heed it too.’

‘I can’t read it,’ said Maurice, ruefully. ‘If I could, I shouldn’t mind.’

‘You soon will. You see how he tells you you are to be a comfort; and if you are a good boy, you’ll quickly leave the dunce behind.’

‘I can’t,’ said Maurice. ‘Mamma said I should not do a bit of a lesson with Sophy, or I should tease her heart out. Would it come quite out?’

‘Well, I think you’ve gone hard to try to-day,’ said Ulick.

‘Mamma said my being able to read would be a comfort, and papa says he never saw such an ignorant boy! so what’s the use of minding Gilbert’s letter? It wont let me.’

‘What wont let you?’

‘Fun!’ said Maurice, with a sob.

‘He is a rogue!’ cried Ulick, vehemently; ‘but a stout heart and good will can get him under yet. Think of what your brother says of making your father and mother happy!’

‘If I could do something to please them very, very much! Oh! if I could but learn to read all at once.’

‘You can read—anybody can read!’ said Ulick, pulling a book out of his pocket. ‘There! try.’

There was some laughing over this; and then Maurice leant out of window, and grew sleepy. They had descended into the wide basin of alluvial land through which the Baye dawdled its meandering course, and were just about to cross the first bridge about two miles from Bayford, when Maurice shouted, ‘There’s Sophy!—how funny.’

It was a tall figure, in deep mourning, slowly moving along the towing-path, intently gazing into the river; but so strange was it to see Sophy so far from home, that Ulick paused a moment ere calling to the driver to stop.

As he hastily wrenched open the door, she raised up her face, and he was shocked. She looked as if she had lived years of sorrow, and even Maurice was struck with consternation.

‘Sophy! Sophy!’ he cried, hanging round her. ‘I wouldn’t have gone without telling you, if I had thought you would mind it. Speak to me, Sophy!’

She could say nothing save a hoarse ‘Where?’ as with both arms she pressed him as if she could never let him go again.

‘In the train—intending to go to Malta,’ said Ulick.

‘I didn’t know I could not; I didn’t mean to vex you, Sophy,’ continued the child. ‘I’m come home now, and I wont try again.’

‘Oh! Maurice, what would have become of you?’ She held out her hand to Ulick, the first time for months.

‘And we’ve got a letter for you, proceeded Maurice.

Ulick would fain have withheld it, but he had not the choice. She caught at it, still holding Maurice fast, and ere he could propose her opening it in the carriage while he walked home she had torn it open, and the same moment she had sunk down, seated on the path, with an arm round her brother. ‘Oh! Maurice, it is well you are here! You would not have found them—it is over!’

She had found one brother to lose the other; but the relief of Maurice’s safety had so softened the blow, that her tears gushed forth freely.

The sense of Ulick’s presence restrained her, but raising her head, she missed him, and felt lonely, desolate, deserted, almost fainting, and in a strange place.

‘Is he dead?’ said Maurice, in a solemn low voice, and she wept helplessly, while the little fellow stood sustaining her weight like a small pillar, perplexed and dismayed.

‘Are you poorly, Sophy? What shall I do?’ said he, as she almost fell back, but a stronger arm held her up.

‘Lean on me, dear Sophy,’ said Ulick, who had returned, bringing some water from a small house near at hand, and supported her and soothed her like a brother.

The mists cleared away, the sense of desertion was gone, and she rose, but could not stand without his arm, and he almost lifted her into the carriage, where her appealing eye and helpless gesture made him follow her, and take Maurice on his knee. No one spoke; Maurice nestled close to his friend; awe-struck but weighed down by weariness and excitement. The blow had in reality been given when he was forced to relinquish the hope of seeing his brother again, and the actual certainty of his death fell with less comparative force. Perhaps he did not enter into the fact enough to ask for particulars. After a short space Sophy recovered herself enough to take out the letter, and read it over with greater comprehension.

‘They were come!’ she said.

‘In time. I am glad.’

‘In time to bring him peace, my uncle says! He knew mamma. I could never have borne it if I had deprived him of her!’

‘Nor I,’ said Ulick, from his heart. ‘Did one but know the upshot of one’s idle follies!’

Sophy looked towards Maurice.

‘Asleep!’ said Ulick. ‘No wonder. He has walked four miles! He has a heart that might have been born in Ireland;’ and as he looked at the fair young face softened and sweetened by sleep, ‘What an infant it is to have even fancied such an undertaking!’

‘Poor child!’ sighed Sophy. ‘He will never be the same!’

‘Nay, grief at that age does not check the spirits for life.’

‘You have never known,’ said Sophy.

‘No; our number has never yet been broken; but for this little man, I trust that the sense of duty may be deepened, and with it his love to you all; and surely that is not what will quench the blithe temper.’

‘May it be so!’ said Sophy. ‘He may have enough of his mother in him to be happy.’

‘I must think that the recollection of so loving a brother, and his pride in him for a hero, may make the stream flow more deeply, but not more darkly.’

‘There never was a cloud between them,’ said Sophy.

‘Clouds are all past and gone now between those who can with him “take part in that thanksgiving lay,”’ answered Ulick, kindly.

‘Yes,’ said Sophy. ‘My uncle says it was peace at last! Oh! if humbleness and penitence could win it, one might be sure it would be his.’

‘True,’ said Ulick. ‘It was a beautiful thing to find the loving sweetness and kindness refined into self-devotion and patience, and growing into something brighter and purer as it came near the last. It will be a precious recollection.’

‘To those who have no self-reproach,’ sighed Sophy; and after a pause she abruptly resumed, ‘You once blamed me for being hard with him. Nothing was more true.’

‘Impossible—when could I have presumed?’

‘When? You remember. After Oxford.’

‘Oh! you should not have let what I said dwell with you. I was a very raw Irishman then, and thought it barbarity to look cold on a little indiscretion, but I have learnt to think differently,’ and he sighed. ‘The severity that leads to repentance is truer affection than is shown by making light of foolishness.’

‘If it had been affection and not wounded pride.’

‘The dross has been refined away, if there were any,’ said Ulick. ‘You will be able to love him better now than ever you did in life.’

His comprehension met her half way, and gave her more relief and soothing than anything she had experienced for months. There was that response and intercommunion of spirit for which her nature had yearned the more because of the inability to express the craving; the very turn of the dark blue eyes, and the inflexions of the voice, did not merely convey pity, but an entering into the very core of her sorrow, namely, that she had never loved her brother enough, nor forgiven him for not being his fellow-twin. Whatever he said tended to reveal to her that there had been more justice, rectitude, sisterly feeling, and wholesome training than she had given herself credit for, and, above all, that Gilbert had loved her all the time. She was induced to dwell on the exalting and touching circumstances of his last redeeming year, and her tears streamed calmly and softly, not with the harshness that had hitherto marred her grief. Neither could have believed that there had been so long and marked a separation in feeling, or that Ulick O’More had not always been one with the Kendal family. It was all too soon that the conversation ended, and Maurice wakened suddenly at the vicarage wicket. Mrs. Dusautoy herself came to meet them as the little boy was lifted out. She had never been seen on her own feet so far from the house before! But no one ever knew the terror she had suffered, when of all her three charges not one was safe but the little Albinia, whose ‘poor Maurice’ and ‘all gone’ were as trying as her alternations of merriment. The vicar, the curate, the parish clerk, the servants of the two establishments, and four policemen, were all gone different ways; and poor Mrs. Dusautoy’s day had been spent in hearing the results of their fruitless researches, or in worse presages, in which, as it now appeared, the river had played its part.

She kissed Maurice, and he did not rebel! She kissed Sophy, and could have shaken off Ulick’s hand, but he only waited to hold up Hyder Ali as the real finder, before he ran off to desire the school-bell to be rung—the signal for announcing a discovery. It was well that Maurice was too much stunned and fatigued to be sensible what a commotion he had excited, or he might have thought it good fun.

The tidings from Malta came in almost as something secondary. The case had been too hopeless for anything else to be looked for, and when Mrs. Dusautoy consigned her charge to a couch, with entreaties to her not to move, there was calm tenderness in Sophy’s voice as she told what needed to be told, and did not shrink from sympathy. She was grateful and gentle, and lay all the rest of the day, sad and physically worn out, but quietly mournful, and no longer dwelling on the painful side of past transactions, her remorse had given way to resigned acquiescence, and desolation to a sense that there was one who understood her. The sweet tones, and, above all, those two words, ‘dear Sophy,’ would come chiming back from some involuntary echo, and the turbid depths were at peace.

When Mr. Dusautoy came to her side, and held out his hand, his honest eyes brimming over, there was no repulsion in her manner of saying affectionately, ‘You have had a great deal of trouble for my naughty little brother.’ So different was her whole tone, that her kind friends thought how much better for some minds was any certainty than suspense. She bethought herself of sending to the Drurys, and showed rather gratification than her ordinary impatience at the manifold reports of the general sympathy, and of Bayford’s grief for its hero. The poison was gone from her mind.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Family Office had been asked to receive the whole party on their return. Mr. Kendal had business in London, and could not bear to part with the colonel till he had seen him safely lodged, and heard the surgeon’s opinion.

Mr. Ferrars was laying himself out to guard his brother-in-law from being oppressed by the sympathetic welcome of the good aunts; but though the good ladies never failed in kindness, all the excess was directed into a different channel; Albinia herself was but secondary to the wounded hero, for whom alone they had eyes and ears. They would hardly let him stand erect for a moment; easy-chairs and couches were offered, soup and wine, biscuits and coffee were suggested, and questions were crowded on him, while he, poor fellow, wistfully gazed at the oft-directed pile of foreign letters on the side-table, and in pure desperation became too fatigued to go down to luncheon.

When the others returned, he was standing on the rug, curling his moustaches. There was a glow of colour on his hollow cheek, and his eyes danced; he put out his hand, and catching Albinia’s with boyish playfulness, he squeezed it triumphantly, with the words, ‘Albinia, she’s a brick!’

They went their several ways, Fred to rest, Maurice to make an appointment for him with the doctor, and Albinia to Genevieve, whom Mr. Kendal regarded like his son’s widow, forgetting that the attachment had been neither sanctioned nor returned. He could not rest without seeing her, and delivering that last message, but he was glad to have the way prepared by his wife, and proposed to call for her when his law business should be over.

Albinia sent in her card, and asked whether Miss Durant were at liberty. Genevieve came hurrying to her with outstretched hands: ‘Dear Mrs. Kendal, this is kind!’ and led her to the back drawing-room, where they were with one impulse enfolded in each other’s tearful embrace.

‘Oh! madame, how much you have suffered!’

‘You know all?’ said Albinia.

‘O no, very little. My aunt knows little of Bayford now, and her sight is too weak for much writing.’

Genevieve pushed back her hair; she looked ill and heavy-eyed, with the extinguished air that sorrow gave her. Gilbert had distressed, perplexed her, and driven her from home, but what could be remembered, save the warm affection he had lavished on her, and the pain she had inflicted? Uneasiness and sorrow, necessarily unavowed, had preyed on the poor girl for weeks in secret; and even now she hardly presumed to give way, relief, almost luxury, as it was to be pressed in those kind arms, and suffered to weep freely for the champion of her younger days. When she had heard how he had thought of her to the last, her emotion grew less controllable; and Albinia was touched by the idea that there had all along been a stifled preference. Embellished as Gilbert now was, she could not but wish to believe that his affection had not been wasted; and his constancy might well be touching in one of the heroes of the six hundred. At least, Genevieve had a most earnest and loving appetite for every detail, and though the afternoon was nearly gone, neither felt as if half an hour had passed when admittance was asked for Mr. Kendal.

It was a trying moment, but Genevieve was too simple, genuine, and grateful to pause in selfish embarrassment. Had she toyed with Gilbert’s affection, she could not have met his father with such maidenly modesty, and sweet sympathy and respect in her blushing cheek and downcast, tearful eyes.

He took her hand, speaking in the kindest tone of his mellow voice: ‘My dear, Mrs. Kendal has told you what brings us here, and how much we feel for and with you.’

‘So kind in you,’ said Genevieve, faltering.

‘Poor child, she has suffered grievously for want of fuller tidings,’ said Albinia; ‘she has been keeping her sorrow pent up all this time.’

‘She has acted, as she has done throughout, most consistently,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘My dear, though it was inexpedient to show my sentiments, I always respected my son for having placed his affections so worthily, and though circumstances were unfortunately adverse, I cannot thank you enough for your course of action and the influence you exercised.’

‘I never did,’ murmured Genevieve.

‘Not perhaps consciously; but unswerving rectitude of conduct is one of the strongest earthly influences. He was sensible of it. He bade me tell you that whenever higher and better thoughts came to him, you were connected with them; and when to his surprise, poor boy, he found that he was thought to have distinguished himself, his first thought was that it might be a step to your esteem. He desired me to thank you for all that you have been to him, to entreat you to pardon the annoyance of which he was the occasion, and to beg you to wear this for his sake, if you could think of his presumption with forgiveness and toleration. Those were his words; but I trust you do not retain displeasure, for though, perhaps, foolishly and obtrusively expressed, it was sincere and lasting affection.’

‘Oh, sir!’ exclaimed Genevieve, ‘do not speak thus! What can I feel save that it will be my tenderest and deepest pride to have been so regarded. Oh! that I could thank him! but,’ clasping her hands together, ‘I cannot even thank you.’

‘The best way to gratify us,’ he said, ‘will be always to remember that you have a home at Willow Lawn, and a daughter’s place in our hearts. Think of me like a father, Genevieve;’ and he kissed her drooping forehead.

‘Oh! Mr. Kendal, this is goodness.’

He turned to Albinia to suggest, ‘It must be intolerable to be here at present. Speak to Mrs. Rainsforth, let us take her home, if it be but for a week.’

Leaving him to make the proposition to Genevieve, Albinia gained admittance to the other drawing-room, which she found all over little children, and their mother looking unequal to dispensing with their deputy. She said she had feared Miss Durant was looking ill, and had something weighing on her spirits, though she was always so cheerful and helpful, but baby had not been well, and Mr. Rainsforth was not at all strong, and her views had evidently taken no wider range.

Albinia began to think her proposal cruel, and prefaced it by a few words on the state of the case. The little bit of romance touched the kind heart. Mrs. Rainsforth was shocked to think of the grief the governess must have suffered in secret while aiding to bear her burdens, and was resolved on letting her have this respite, going eagerly to assure her that she could well be spared; baby was better, and papa was better, and the children would be good.

But Genevieve knew too well how necessary she was, and had been telling Mr. Kendal of the poor little mother’s anxieties with her many delicate children, and her husband’s failing health. She could not leave them with a safe conscience; and she would not show how she longed after quiet, the country, and her aunt. She stood firm, and Albinia could not say that she was not right. Mrs. Rainsforth was distressed, though much relieved, and was only pacified by the engagement that Miss Durant should, when it was practicable, spend a long holiday with her friends.

‘At home!’ said Mr. Kendal, and the responsive look of mournful gratitude from beneath the black dewy eyelashes dispelled all marvel at his son’s enduring attachment.

He was wonderfully patient when Mrs. Rainsforth could not be content without Mrs. Kendal’s maternal and medical opinion of the baby, on the road to and from the nursery consulting her on all the Mediterranean climates, and telling her what each doctor had said of Mr. Rainsforth’s lungs, in the course of which Miss Durant and her romance were put as entirely out of the little lady’s mind as if she had never existed.

The next day the Kendals set their faces homewards, leaving Maurice till the surgeon’s work should be done, and Fred, as the aunts fondly hoped, to be their nursling.

But, behold! Sunday and Monday Colonel Fred spent in bed, smiling incessantly; Tuesday and Wednesday on the sofa; Thursday in going about London; Friday he was off to Liverpool; Saturday had sailed for Canada.

Albinia was coming nearer to the home that was pulling her by the heart-strings. Hadminster was past, and she had heard the welcome wards, ‘All well,’ from the servant who brought the carriage; but how much more there was to know than Sophy’s detailed letters could convey—Sophy, whose sincerity, though one of the most trustworthy things in the world, was never quite to be relied on as to her own health or Maurice’s conduct.

At the gate there was a little chestnut curled being in a short black frock, struggling to pull the heavy gate open with her plump arms, and standing for one moment with her back to it, screaming ‘Mamma! Papa!’ then jumping and clapping her hands in ecstasy and oblivion that the swing of the gate might demolish her small person between it and the horse. But there was no time for fright. Sophy caught her and secured the gate together; and the first glimpse assured Albinia that the hard gloom was absent. And there was Maurice, leaning against the iron rail of the hall steps; but he hardly moved, and his face was so strangely white and set, that Albinia caught him in her arms, crying, ‘Are you well, my boy? Sophy, is he well?’

‘Quite well,’ said Sophy; but the boy had wriggled himself loose, stood but for an instant to receive his father’s kiss, and had hold of the sword. The long cavalry sabre was almost as tall as himself, and he stood with both arms clasped round it; but no sooner did he feel their eyes upon him, than he turned about and ran upstairs.

It was not gracious, but they excused it; they had their little Albinia comfortably and childishly happy, as yet without those troublesome Kendal feelings that always demonstrated themselves in some perverse manner.

And Sophy stood among them—that brighter, better Sophy who had so long been obscured, happy to have them at home; talking and asking questions eagerly about the journey, and describing the kindness of the Dusautoys and the goodness of the children.

‘Have you heard from Lucy?’ asked Mr. Kendal, as Albinia went in pursuit of her little boy.

‘Yes—poor Lucy?’