There is sure another Flood toward, that so many couples are coming to the Ark.—As You Like It
“Ah! it is a pitiable case!”
“What case, boys?”
“Yours, mother, with such an influx of daughters-in-law.”
“I suspect the daughters-in-law think themselves more to be pitied.”
“As too many suns in one sphere.”
“As daughters-in-law at all.”
“There’s a ready cure for that. Eh, Charlie?”
“The sight of the mother-in-law.”
“Safe up on the shelf? Ha, you flattering boys!”
“Well, each of the three bridegrooms has severally told us that his bride was a strong likeness of the mother, so she will have the advantage of three mirrors!”
“Ay, and each married solely for her benefit. I wonder which is the truest!”
“Come, Baby Charles, don’t you take to being cynical and satirical,” said the mother. “It would be more to the purpose to consider of the bringing them home. Let me see, Raymond and his Cecil will be at Holford’s Gate at 5.30. They must have the carriage in full state. I suppose Brewer knows.”
“Trust the ringers for scenting it out.”
“Julius and Rosamond by the down train at Willansborough, at 4.50. One of you must drive old Snapdragon in the van for them. They will not mind when they understand; but there’s that poor wife of Miles’s, I wish she could have come a few days earlier. Her friend, Mrs. Johnson, is to drop her by the express at Backsworth, at 3.30.”
“Inconvenient woman!”
“I imagine that she cannot help it; Mrs. Johnson is going far north, and was very good in staying with her at Southampton till she could move. Poor little thing! alone in a strange country! I’ll tell you what! One of you must run down by train, meet her, and either bring her home in a fly, or wait to be picked up by Raymond’s train. Take her Miles’s letter.”
The two young men glanced at one another in dismay, and the elder said, “Wouldn’t nurse do better?”
“No, no, Frank,” said the younger, catching a distressed look on their mother’s face, “I’ll look up Miles’s little African. I’ve rather a curiosity that way. Only don’t let them start the bells under the impression that we are a pair of the victims. If so, I shall bolt.”
“Julius must be the nearest bolting,” said Frank. “How he accomplished it passes my comprehension. I shall not believe in it till I see him. There, then, I’ll give orders. Barouche for the squire, van for the rector, and the rattling fly for the sailor’s wife. So wags the course of human life,” chanted Frank Charnock, as he strolled out of the room.
“Thanks, Charlie,” whispered his mother. “I am grieved for that poor young thing. I wish I could go myself. And, Charlie, would you cast an eye round, and see how things look in their rooms? You have always been my daughter.”
“Ah! my vocation is gone! Three in one day! I wonder which is the best of the lot. I bet upon Miles’s Cape Gooseberry.—Tired, mother darling? Shall I send in nurse? I must be off, if I am to catch the 12.30 train.”
He bent to kiss the face, which was too delicately shaped and tinted to look old enough to be in expectation of three daughters-in-law. No, prostrate as she was upon pillows, Mrs. Charnock Poynsett did not look as if she had attained fifty years. She was lady of Compton Poynsett in her own right; and had been so early married and widowed, as to have been the most efficient parental influence her five sons had ever known; and their beautiful young mother had been the object of their adoration from the nursery upwards, so that she laughed at people who talked of the trouble and anxiety of rearing sons.
They had all taken their cue from their senior, who had always been more to his mother than all the world besides. For several years, he being as old of his age as she was young, Mr. and Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, with scarcely eighteen years between their ages, had often been taken by strangers for husband and wife rather than son and mother. And though she knew she ought to wish for his marriage, she could not but be secretly relieved that there were no symptoms of any such went impending.
At last, during the first spring after Raymond Charnock Poynsett, Esquire, had been elected member for the little borough of Willansborough, his mother, while riding with her two youngest boys, met with an accident so severe, that in two years she had never quitted the morning-room, whither she had at first been carried. She was daily lifted to a couch, but she could endure no further motion, though her general health had become good, and her cheerfulness made her room pleasant to her sons when the rest of the house was very dreary to them.
Raymond, always the home son, would never have absented himself but for his parliamentary duties, and vibrated between London and home, until, when his mother had settled into a condition that seemed likely to be permanent, and his two youngest brothers were at home, reading each for his examination, the one for a Government clerkship, the other for the army, he yielded to the general recommendation, and set out for a journey on the Continent.
A few weeks later came the electrifying news of his engagement to his second cousin, Cecil Charnock. It was precisely the most obvious and suitable of connections. She was the only child of the head of the family of which his father had been a cadet, and there were complications of inheritance thus happily disposed of. Mrs. Poynsett had not seen her since her earliest childhood; but she was known to have been educated with elaborate care, and had been taken to the Continent as the completion of her education, and there Raymond had met her, and sped so rapidly with his wooing, that he had been married at Venice just four weeks previously.
Somewhat less recent was the wedding of the second son Commander Miles Charnock. (The younger sons bore their patronymic alone.) His ship had been stationed at the Cape and there, on a hunting expedition up the country, he had been detained by a severe illness at a settler’s house; and this had resulted in his marrying the eldest daughter, Anne Fraser. She had spent some months at Simon’s Bay while his ship was there, and when he found himself under orders for the eastern coast of Africa, she would fain have awaited him at Glen Fraser; but he preferred sending her home to fulfil the mission of daughterhood to his own mother.
The passage had been long and unfavourable, and the consequences to her had been so serious that when she landed she could not travel until after a few days’ rest.
The marriage of the third son had been a much greater surprise. Compton Poynsett was not a family living; but the patron, hearing of Julius Charnock as a hard-working curate in a distant seaport, wrote to offer it to him; and the same letter to Mrs. Poynsett to offer it to him; and the same letter to Mrs Poynsett which conveyed this gratifying intelligence, also informed her of his having proposed to the daughter of the commanding officer of the regiment stationed at the town where lay his present charge. Her father enjoyed the barren honours of the Earldom of Rathforlane, an unimprovable estate in a remote corner of Ireland, burthened with successive families of numerous daughters, so that he was forced to continue in the service, and the marriage had been hastened by the embarkation of the regiment for India only two days later. The Rectory had, however, been found in such a state of dilapidation, that demolition was the only cure; and thus the Reverend Julius and Lady Rosamond Charnock were to begin their married life in the family home.
The two youngest sons, Francis and Charles, stood on the other side of a gap made by the loss of two infants, and were only twenty-one and nineteen. Frank had passed through Oxford with credit, and had been promised a Government office; while Charles was intended for the army; and both had been reading with a tutor who lived at Willansborough, and was continually employed in cramming, being reported of as the best ‘coach’ in the country. Charlie, however, had passed a week previously, and was to repair to Sandhurst in another fortnight.
At half-past four there was a light tap at Mrs. Poynsett’s door, and Charlie announced, “Here’s the first, mother!” as he brought in a gray-cloaked figure; and Mrs. Poynsett took a trembling hand, and bestowed a kiss on a cheek which had languor and exhaustion in the very touch.
“She was tired to death, mother,” said Charlie, “so we did not wait for the train.”
“Quite right!” and as the newcomer sank into the chair he offered—“My dear, you are sadly knocked up! You were hardly fit to come.”
“Thank you, I am quite well,” answered the fagged timid voice.
“Hark!” as the crash of a peal of bells came up. “Dear child, you will like to rest before any fresh introductions. You shall go to your room and have some tea there.”
“Thank you.”
“Charlie, call Susan.—She is my boys’ old nurse, now mine. Only tell me you have good accounts from my boy Miles.”
“Oh yes;” and the hand tightly clasped the closely-written letter for which the mother’s eyes felt hungry. “He sent you his love, and he will write to you next time. He was so busy, his first lieutenant was down in fever.”
“Where was he?”
“Off Zanzibar—otherwise the crew was healthy—the 12th of August,” she answered, squeezing out the sentences as if constrained by the mother’s anxious gaze.
“And he was quite well when you parted with him?”
“Quite.”
“Ah! you nursed my boy, and we must nurse you for him.”
“Thank you, I am quite well.” But she bit her lip, and spoke constrainedly, as if too shy and reserved to give way to the rush of emotion; but the coldness pained Mrs. Poynsett, whose expansiveness was easily checked; and a brief silence was followed by Charlie’s return to report that he could not find nurse, and thought she was out with the other servants, watching for the arrival; in another moment, the approaching cheers caused him to rush out; and after many more noises, showing the excitement of the multitude and the advance of the bridal pair, during which Mrs. Poynsett lay with deepening colour and clasped hands, her nostrils dilating with anxiety and suppressed eagerness, there entered a tall, dark, sunburnt man bringing on his arm a little, trim, upright, girlish figure; and bending down, he exclaimed, “There, mother, I’ve brought her—here’s your daughter!”
Two little gloved hands were put into hers, and a kiss exchanged, while Raymond anxiously inquired for his mother’s health; and she broke in by saying, “And here is Anne—Miles’s Anne, just arrived.”
“Ah, I did not see you in the dark,” said Raymond. “There, Cecil, is a sister for you—you never had one.”
Cecil was readier with greeting hand and cheek than was Anne, but at the same moment the tea equipage was brought in, and Cecil, quite naturally, and as a matter of course, began to preside over the low table, while Raymond took his accustomed chair on the further side of his mother’s sofa, where he could lean over the arm and study her countenance, while she fondled the hand that he had hung over the back. He was describing the welcome at the station, and all through the village—the triumphal arches and shouts.
“But how they did miss you, mother,” said Charlie. “Old Gurnet wrung my hand in tears as he said, ‘Yes, sir, ’tis very fine, but it beats the heart out of it that madam bain’t here to see.’”
“Good old Gurnet!” responded Raymond. “They are famously loyal. The J. C. P. crowned all above all the Cs and Rs, I was happy to see.”
“J. was for Julius—not Julia,” said the mother.
“No; J. H. C. and R. C. had a separate device of roses all to themselves. Hark! is that a cheer beginning again? Had we not better go into the drawing-room, mother? it will be so many for you all together.”
“Oh no, I must see you all.”
The brothers hurried out with their welcome; and in another minute, a plump soft cheek was pressed to the mother’s, devouring kisses were hailed on her, and a fuller sweeter tone than had yet been heard answered the welcome.
“Thank you. So kind! Here’s Julius! I’ll not be in your way.”
“Dearest mother, how is it with you?” as her son embraced her. “Rose has been longing to be with you.”
“And we’ve all come together! How delicious!” cried Rosamond, enfolding Anne in her embrace; “I didn’t know you were come!—See, Julius!”
But as Julius turned, a startled look came over Anne’s face; and she turned so white, that Rosamond exclaimed, “My dear—what—she’s faint!” And while Cecil stood looking puzzled, Rosamond had her arm round the trembling form, and disappeared with her, guided and assisted by Nurse Susan.
“Isn’t she—?” exclaimed Julius, in a voice of triumph that made all smile.
“Full of sweet kindness,” said Mrs. Poynsett; “but I have only seen and heard her yet, my dear Julius. Susan will take her to her room—my old one.”
“Oh, thank you, mother,” said Julius, “but I hardly like that; it seems like your giving it up.”
“On the contrary, it proves that I do not give it up, since I put in temporary lodgers like you.—Now Cecil is housed as you preferred, Raymond—in the wainscot-rooms.”
“And where have you put that poor Mrs. Miles?” asked Raymond. “She looks quite knocked up.”
“Yes, she has been very ill on the voyage, and waited at Southampton to gather strength for the journey.—I am so grateful to your good Rose, Julius.—Why, where is the boy? Vanished in her wake, I declare!”
“His venerable head is quite turned,” said Frank. “I had to get inside alone, and let them drive home outside together to avoid separation.”
Raymond repeated his question as to the quarters of Miles’s wife.
“I had the old schoolroom and the bedroom adjoining newly fitted up,” answered Mrs. Poynsett. “Jenny Bowater was here yesterday, and gave the finishing touches. She tells me the rooms look very nice.—Cecil, my dear, you must excuse deficiencies; I shall look to you in future.”
“I hope to manage well,” said Cecil. “Had I not better go up now? Will you show me the way, Raymond?”
The mother and her two younger sons remained.
“Haven’t I brought you home a splendid article?” was Frank’s exclamation. “Julius has got the best of it.”
“I back my Cape Gooseberry,” returned Charles. “She has eyes and hair and skin that my Lady can’t match, and is a fine figure of a woman besides.”
“Much you know of Rosamond’s eyes!”
“Or you either, boxed up in the van.”
“Any way, they have made roast meat of his Reverence’s heart! The other two take it much more easily.”
“She’s a mere chicken,” said Charlie. “Who would have thought of Raymond being caught by a callow nestling?”
“And so uncommonly cool,” added Frank.
“It would take much to transform Raymond,” interposed the mother. “Now, boys, away with you; I must have a little quiet, to repair myself for company after dinner.”
Charlie settled her cushions with womanly skill, and followed his brother. “Well, Frank, which is the White Cat? Ah, I thought so—she’s yet to come.”
“Not one is fit to hold a candle to her. You saw that as plain as I did, Charlie; Eleonora beats them all.”
“Ah, you’re not the youngest brother, remember. It was he who brought her home at last. Come, you need not knock me down; I shall never see any one to surpass the mother, and I’ll have no one till I do.”
He wanted a wife his braw hoose to keep,
But favour wi’ wooin’ was fashous to seek.—Laird o’ Cockpen
In the bright lamplight of the dining-table, the new population first fully beheld one another, and understood one another’s looks.
There was much family resemblance between the five brothers. All were well-grown well-made men, strong and agile, the countenance pleasing, rather square of mould, eyebrows straight and thick, nose well cut and short, chin firm and resolute-looking, and the complexion very dark in Raymond, Frank, and the absent Miles. Frank’s eyes were soft, brown, rather pensive, and absent in expression; but Raymond’s were much deeper and darker, and had a steadfast gravity, that made him be viewed as formidable, especially as he had lost all the youthful glow of colouring that mantled in his brother’s olive cheek; and he had a short, thick, curly brown beard, while Frank had only attained to a black moustache, that might almost have been drawn on his lip with charcoal.
Charlie was an exception—fair, blue-eyed, rosy, and with a soft feminine contour of visage, which had often drawn on him reproaches for not being really the daughter all his mother’s friends desired for her.
And Julius, with the outlines of the others, was Albino, with transparent skin mantling with colour that contrasted with his snowy hair, eyebrows, and the lashes, veiling eyes of a curious coral hue, really not unpleasing under their thick white fringes, but most inconveniently short of sight, although capable of much work; in fact, he was a curiously perfect pink-and-white edition of his dark and bronzed brother the sailor.
The dark eyes came from the father’s side; Cecil had them, and very observing orbs they seemed to be, travelling about from one face to another, and into every corner of the room, scrutinizing every picture or piece of plate, and trying to see into the conservatory, which had a glass door opening from one end of the room. She was the youngest of the brides, and her features and form seemed hardly developed, nor had she attained the air of a matron; her fashionable dress of crisp white worked muslin with blue trimmings, and blue ribbons in her brown hair, only gave her the air of a young girl at her first party, in spite of her freedom from all shyness as she sat at the head of the table in contented self-possession, her little slender figure as upright as a perfect spine could make it.
Very different was the bride on Raymond’s right hand. She was of middle height, soft, round, and plump, carrying her head a little tenderly on one side with a delightful dégagée kind of ease, and air of vivacious indolence. Her complexion was creamy and colourless, her nose rather retroussé, her lips full and parting in a delicious roguish smile, answering to the sleepily twinkling eyes, whose irides seemed to shade so imperceptibly into the palest gray, that there was no telling where the pupils ended, especially as the lids were habitually half closed, as if weighed down by the black length of their borders. The habit of arching up one or other of the eyebrows, in surprise or interrogation, gave a drollery to the otherwise nonchalant sweetness of the countenance. The mass of raven black hair was only adorned by a crimson ribbon, beneath which it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray skirt which looked as if it had done solitary duty for the five weeks since the marriage, and was but slightly relieved by a crimson sash.
Rosamond made some apology when she saw Cecil’s dainty equipment. “Dressed, you correct little thing! You put me to shame; but I had no notion which box my evening things are in, and it would have been serious to irritate the whole concern.”
“And she was some time with Anne,” added Julius.
“Ah! with my good will Anne should not have been here!” rejoined Rosamond. “Didn’t I meet old Mrs. Nurse at your threshold, with an invitation from Mrs. Poynsett to dine with her in her room, and didn’t we find the bird flown at the first stroke of the gong?”
“Oh, I am very well!” repeated Anne.
Yet she was far more colourless than Julius, for her complexion was not only faded by sickness, but was naturally of the whitest blonde tint; the simple coils of her hair “lint white,” and her eyes of the lightest tint of pure blue. The features were of Scottish type, all the more so from being exaggerated by recent illness; but they were handsome enough to show that she must have been a bonnie lassie when her good looks were unimpaired. Her figure far surpassed in height that of both the other ladies, and was very slender, bending with languor and fatigue in spite of her strenuous attempts to straighten it. She was clad in a perfectly plain, almost quaker-looking light dove-coloured silk dress, fitting closely, and unrelieved by any ribbon or ornament of any description, so that her whole appearance suggested nothing but the words “washed out.”
It was clear that to let her alone was merciful, and there was no lack of mutual communications among the rest. Frank and Charlie gave their account of the condition of the game.
“Do you let your tenants shoot rabbits?” exclaimed Cecil, as if scandalized. “We never do at Dunstone.”
“It prevents an immense amount of discontent and ill-will and underhand work,” said Raymond.
“My father never will listen to any nonsense about rabbits,” proceeded Cecil. “If you once begin there is no end to it, they are sure to encroach. He just sends them a basket of game at the beginning and end of the season.”
“By the bye,” said Raymond, “I hope ours have all been sent out as usual.”
“I can answer for a splendid one at our wedding breakfast,” said Rosamond. “The mess-man who came to help was lost in admiration. Did you breakfast on ortolans, Cecil?”
“Or on nightingales’ tongues?” added Charlie.
“You might as well say fatted dormice and snails,” said Frank. “One would think the event had been eighteen hundred years ago.”
“Poor Frank! he’s stuffed so hard that it is bursting out at all his pores!” exclaimed Charlie.
“Ah! you have the advantage of your elder, Master Charles!” said Raymond, with a paternal sound of approbation.
“Till next time,” said Frank. “Now, thank goodness, mine is once for all!”
The conversation drifted away to Venice and the homeward journey, which Raymond and Cecil seemed to have spent in unremitting sight-seeing. The quantities of mountains, cathedrals, and pictures they had inspected was quite appalling.
“How hard you must have worked!” exclaimed Rosamond. “Had you never a day’s rest out of the thirty?”
“Had we, Cecil? I believe not,” said Raymond.
“Sundays?” gasped Anne’s low voice at his elbow.
“Indeed,” triumphantly returned Cecil, “between English service and High Mass, and Benediction, and the public gardens, and listening to the band, we had not a single blank Sunday.”
Anne started and looked aghast; and Raymond said, “The opportunity was not to be wasted, and Cecil enjoyed everything with unwearied vigour.”
“Why, what else should we have done? It would have been very dull and stupid to have stayed in together,” said Cecil, with a world of innocent wonder in her eyes. Then turning to her neighbour, “Surely, Julius, you went about and saw things!”
“The sea at Filey Bridge, and the Church Congress at Leeds,” he answered, smiling.
“Very shocking, is it not, Cecil?” said Rosamond, with mock gravity; “but he must be forgiven, for he was tired to death! I used to think, for my part, that lovers were a sort of mild lunatics, never to be troubled or trusted with any earthly thing; but that’s one of the things modern times have changed! As he was to be going, all the clerical staff of St. Awdry’s must needs have their holiday and leave him to do their work; indeed, one was sent off here. For six weeks I never saw him, except when he used to rush in to say he couldn’t stay; and when at last we were safe in the coupé, he fairly went to sleep before we got to the first station.—Hush! you know you did! And no wonder, for he had been up two nights with some sort of infidel who was supposed to be dying. Then that first week at Filey, he used to bring out his poetry books as the proper sort of thing, and try to read them to me on the sands: but by the time he had got to the bottom of a page, I used to hear the words dragging out slower and slower—
Whereon the—lily—maid—of—Astolat
Lay—smiling—like—a—star-fish—fast—asleep.”
Wherewith Rosamond dropped her head and closed her eyes; while the brothers shouted with mirth, except Frank, whose countenance was ‘of one hurt on a vulnerable side.’
“Disrespect to Elaine? Eh, Frank?” said Charlie; “how many pegs has Julius gone down in your estimation?”
Frank would not commit himself, but he was evidently at the era of sensitiveness on the poetical side. Cecil spoke for him. “How very provoking! What did you do to him, Rosamond?”
“I kept off the sand-flies! I can’t say but I was glad of a little rest, for I had been packing up for the whole family for ten days past, with interludes of rushing out into the town; for whatever we had not forgotten, the shops had not sent home! Oh! what a paradise of quiet it was under the rocks at Filey—wasn’t it, Julius?”
“We will go there again next time we have a chance,” said Julius, looking blissful.
“I would never go again to the same place,” cried Cecil. “That’s not the way to acquire new ideas.”
“We are too old to acquire new ideas, my dear,” drawled Rosamond, sleepily.
“What did you go to the Church Congress for!” asked Charlie.
“I hope Julius was awake by that time,” said Frank.
“Not if we are to have all the new ideas tried on us,” said Raymond, dryly.
“I went to a Congress once!” exclaimed Cecil.
“Indeed!” said her husband, surprised.
“Yes. We thought we ought to encourage them. It was the Congress of Sunday-school managers for our archdeaconry.”
“Did you acquire any new ideas?” asked Frank; while Rosamond’s very eyelashes seemed to curl with suppressed diversion.
“Oh yes. We explained our system of tickets, and the Arch-deacon said it was a very good one, and ought to be adopted everywhere.”
This mode of acquisition of new ideas was quite too much for Julius and Charlie, who both exploded; but Frank retained composure enough to ask, “Did you explain it in person?”
“No. We made Mr. Venn.”
“The schoolmaster?” said Julius.
“No. He is our clergyman, and he always does as we tell him; and so Dunstone is quite the model parish of the archdeaconry.”
Julius could not help making an odd little bend of the head, half deferential, half satirical; and Raymond said, “Cecil, I believe it rests with you to make the move.” An ingenuous girlish blush mantled on her cheek as she looked towards Rosamond and moved.
The drawing-room adjoined the dining-room, and likewise had a glass door leading into the conservatory; but this, like the other windows, was concealed by the pale-blue damask curtains that descended from cornices gilded like the legs of the substantial chairs and sofas. There was, however, no lack of modern light cane and basket seats round the fire, and it looked cheery and comfortable. Rosamond put an arm round Anne’s waist—“Poor tired dear, come and lie on the sofa.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t. The gentlemen will come in.”
“All brothers! What, will you only be satisfied with an easy-chair! A charming room, and a charming fire!”
“Not so nice as a library,” said Cecil, stabbing the fire with the poker as a sort of act of possession. “We always sit in the library at Dunstone. State rooms are horrid.”
“This only wants to be littered down,” said Rosamond. “That’s my first task in fresh quarters, banishing some things and upsetting the rest, and strewing our own about judiciously. There are the inevitable wax-flowers. I have regular blarney about their being so lovely, that it would just go to my heart to expose them to the boys.”
“You have always been on the move,” said Cecil, who was standing by the table examining the ornaments.
“You may say so! there are not many of Her Majesty’s garrisons that I have not had experience of, except my native country that I wasn’t born in. It was very mean of them never once to send us to Ireland.”
“Where were you born?” said Cecil, neither of the two catching at the bull which perhaps Rosamond had allowed to escape by way of trying them.
“At Plymouth. Dick and I were both born at Plymouth, and Maurice at Scutari; then we were in the West Indies; the next two were born all up and down in Jamaica and all the rest of the Islands—Tom and Terry—dear boys, I’ve got the charge of them now they are left at school. Three more are Canadians; and little Nora is the only Irish-born one amongst us.”
“I thought you said you had never been in Ireland.”
“Never quartered there, but on visits at Rathforlane,” said Rosamond. “Our ten years at home we have been up and down the world, till at last you see I’ve ended where I began—at Plymouth.”
“Oh, what a lovely Florentine mosaic!” exclaimed Cecil, who had taken but slight interest in this itinerary. “It is just like a weight at Dunstone.” Then opening a miniature-case, “Who is this—Mrs. Poynsett when she was young?”
“Most likely,” said Rosamond. “It is like her now, and very like Charlie.”
“Yes. Charles is quite unlike the family.”
“What family?” said Rosamond.
“The Charnocks, of course. Raymond is a perfect Charnock!”
“A vast advantage,” murmured Rosamond.
“Of course,” said Cecil, taking it quite seriously. “No one else could be the same thing to us. Papa said there was not a match in the whole world that could have gratified him so much.”
“How old are you, Cecil?” quoth Rosamond, with a ripple in her voice.
“Oh, his age was no matter. I don’t like young men. That’s not the drawback; no, it is that horrid Poynsett at the end of the name.”
“You see you had better have waived your objections to youth, and taken a younger son.”
“I couldn’t,” said this naive young person. “Besides, there is much more of a field for me here than at Dunstone since papa’s marriage.”
Whatever Rosamond had on the tip of her tongue was averted by the entrance of the three younger brothers. Julius seated himself beside her in the cushioned fireside corner; and Cecil asked where Raymond was.
“Just stepped in to see my mother,” said Frank. “This room opens into hers. Will you come to them?”
“Not yet,” said Cecil. “I want you to tell me about the neighbourhood.”
“Just what I want,” said Rosamond. “Whenever I ask, Julius always says there’s Dr. Easterby.”
Frank and Charlie burst out laughing.
“Dr. Easterby is one of the greatest men in the English Church,” said Julius.
“Precisely! But what is the regiment at Backsworth?” and as Charlie named it, “Oh, what fun! That’s where Laurie Cookson exchanged. He will be sure to send us cards for everything.”
“At Dunstone we never used to go to garrison gaieties,” said Cecil, gravely.
“Oh! I’m a military pariah,” said Rosamond, hastily.
“Who are the land-owners?” continued Cecil. “There was a place I saw from the line, but Raymond didn’t hear when I asked whose it was. Close to the station, I mean.”
“That is Sirenwood,” said Charles. “Sir Harry Vivian’s. He is just come back there with his two daughters.”
“I thought Emily Vivian was dead,” said Julius. “You don’t mean that women!”
“That woman?” laughed his wife. “What has she done to be a that woman?”
“Offended his Reverence,” said Frank, in that sort of jocose tone which betrays annoyance.
“A heartless mischievous woman!” said Julius.
Rosamond cocked up her left eyebrow with an ineffably droll look, which encouraged Charlie to say, “Such fierceness can only be prompted by personal experience. Look out, Rosamond!”
“Come ’fess, Julius,” said she, merrily. “’Fess and make it up.”
“I—I have nothing to confess,” said Julius, seriously.
“Hasn’t he indeed?” said she, looking at the brothers.
“Oh! don’t ask us,” said Charlie. “His youthful indiscretions were over long before our eyes had risen above the horizon!”
“Do you mean that they have really come home to live here?” demanded Julius, with singular indifference to the personal insinuations.
“I am sorry it is so painful to you,” said I Frank, somewhat ironically; “but Sir Harry thinks it right to return and end his days among his own people.”
“Is he ill, then?”
“I can’t gratify you so far,” returned Frank; “he is a fine old fellow of sixty-five. Just what humbugging papers call a regular specimen of an old English gentleman,” he added to Cecil.
“Humbugging indeed, I should hope,” muttered Julius. “The old English gentleman has reason to complain!”
“There’s the charity of the clergy!” exclaimed Frank. “No forgiveness for a man who has spent a little in his youth!”
“As an essential of the old English gentleman?” asked Julius.
“At any rate, the poor old fellow has been punished enough,” said Charlie.
“But what is it? Tell me all about it,” said Cecil. “I am sure my father would not wish me to associate with dissipated people.”
“Ah! Cecil,” said Rosamond. “You’ll have to take refuge with the military, after all!”
“It is just this,” said Charlie. “Sir Harry and his only son were always extravagant, one as bad as the other—weren’t they, Julius? Phil Bowater told me all about it, and how Tom Vivian lost fifteen thousand pounds one Derby Day, and was found dead in his chambers the next morning, they said from an over-dose of chloroform for neuralgia. Then the estate was so dipped that Sir Harry had to give up the estate to his creditors, and live on an allowance abroad or at watering-places till now, when he has managed to come home. That is to say, the house is really leased to Lady Tyrrell, and he is in a measure her guest—very queer it must be for him in his own house.”
“Is Lady Tyrrell that woman?” asked Rosamond.
“I conclude so,” said Charlie. “She was the eldest daughter, and married Lord Tyrrell, who died about two years ago. She has no children, so she has taken the family in charge, patches up Sir Harry’s affairs with her jointure, and chaperons her sister.”
“What is she like?”
“Ask Frank,” said Charlie, slyly.
“No!” said Frank, with dignity. “I shall say no more, I only excite prejudice.”
“You are right, Frank,” said Julius, who had evidently recovered from the shock. “It is not fair to judge people now from what they were eleven years ago. They have had some terrible lessons, and may be much changed.”
“Ay,” said Frank; “and they have been living in an atmosphere congenial to you, at Rockpier, and are hand and glove with all the St. Chrysostom folk there. What do you say to that, Julius? I can tell you they are enchanted with your curate!”
“They are not in this parish.”
“No, but they turn up here—the ladies, at least—at all the services at odd times that Bindon has begun with.”
“Ah! by the bye, is Herbert Bowater come?”
“Yes, the whole family came over to his installation in Mrs. Hornblower’s lodgings.”
“I saw him this morning, poor old Herbs,” added Frank, “looking uncommonly as if he felt himself in a strait waistcoat.”
“What, are there two curates?” demanded Cecil, in a tone of reprobation.
Julius made a gesture of assent, with a certain humorous air of deprecation, which, however, was lost upon her.
“We never let Mr. Venn have one,” continued Cecil, “except one winter when he was ill, and then not a young one. Papa says idle young clergymen are not to be encouraged.”
“I am entirely of Mr. Charnock’s opinion. But if I have exceeded the Dunstone standard, it was not willingly. Herbert Bowater is the son of some old friends of my mother’s, who wanted to keep their son near home, and made it their request that I would give him a title.”
“And the Bowaters are the great feature in the neighbourhood,” added Frank. “Herbert tells me there are wonderful designs for entertaining the brides.”
“What do they consist of?” asked Rosamond.
“All the component parts of a family,” said Frank. “The eldest daughter is a sort of sheet-anchor to my mother, as well as her own. The eldest son is at home now. He is in the army.”
“In the Light Dragoons?” asked Rosamond. “Oh! then I knew him at Edinburgh! A man with yellow whiskers, and the next thing to a stutter.”
“I declare, Julius, she is as good as any army list,” exclaimed Charlie.
“There’s praise!” cried Frank. “The army list is his one book! What a piece of luck to have you to coach him up in it!”
“I dare say Rosamond can tell me lots of wrinkles for my outfit,” said Charles.
“I should hope so, having rigged out Dick for the line, and Maurice for the artillery!”
Charlie came and leant on the mantel-shelf, and commenced a conversation sotto voce on the subject nearest his heart; while Cecil continued her catechism.
“Are the Bowaters intellectual?”
“Jenny is very well read,” said Julius, “a very sensible person.”
“Yes,” said Frank; “she was the only person here that so much as tried to read Browning. But if Cecil wants intellect, she had better take to the Duncombes, the queerest firm I ever fell in with. He makes the turf a regular profession, actually gets a livelihood out of his betting-book; and she is in the strong-minded line—woman’s rights, and all the rest of it.”
“We never had such people at Dunstone,” said Cecil. “Papa always said that the evil of being in parliament was the having to be civil to everybody.”
Just then Raymond came back with intelligence that his mother was about to go to bed, and to call his wife to wish her good night. All went in succession to do the same.
“My dear,” she said to Anne, “I hoped you were in bed.”
“I thought I would wait for family worship.”
“I am afraid we don’t have prayers at night, my dear. We must resume them in the morning, now Raymond and Julius are come.”
Poor Anne looked all the whiter, and only mumbled out a few answers to the kind counsels lavished upon her. Mrs. Poynsett was left to think over her daughters-in-law.
Lady Rosamond did not occupy her much. There was evidently plenty of good strong love between her and her husband; and though her training might not have been the best for a clergyman’s wife, there was substance enough in both to shake down together in time.
But it was Raymond who made her uneasy—Raymond, who ever since his father’s death had been more than all her other sons to her. She had armed herself against the pang of not being first with him, and now she was full of vague anxiety at the sense that she still held her old position. Had he not sat all the evening in his own place by her sofa, as if it were the very kernel of home and of repose? And whenever a sense of duty prompted her to suggest fetching his wife, had he not lingered, and gone on talking? It was indeed of Cecil; but how would she have liked his father, at the honeymoon’s end, to prefer talking of her to talking with her? “She has been most carefully brought up, and is very intelligent and industrious,” said Raymond. His mother could not help wondering whether a Roman son might not thus have described a highly accomplished Greek slave, just brought home for his mother’s use.
A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge, when you hear.—But, soft; what nymphs are these?
Midsummer Night’s Dream
It was quite true that Cecil Charnock Poynsett was a very intelligent industrious creature, very carefully brought up—nay, if possible, a little too much so. “A little wholesome neglect” had been lacking.
The only child of her parents who had lived to see a second birthday was sure to be the centre of solicitude. She had not been spoilt in the usual acceptation of the word, for she had no liberty, fewer indulgences and luxuries than many children, and never was permitted to be naughty; but then she was quite aware that each dainty or each pleasure was granted or withheld from a careful consideration of her welfare, and that nothing came by chance with her. And on her rare ebullitions of self-will, mamma, governess, nurse, nay even papa, were all in sorrowful commotion till their princess had been brought to a sense of the enormity of her fault.
She lost her mother at fourteen, but the same anxious training was carried on by her father; and after three years he married her mother’s most intimate friend, avowedly that the perfect system might be continued. Cecil’s gaieties as a come-out young lady were selected on the same judicious principles as her childish diversions; and if ever the Dunstone family favoured an entertainment not to their taste, it was after a debate on the need of condescension and good-nature. She had, however, never had a season in London—a place her father hated; but she was taken abroad as soon as she was deemed old enough thoroughly to appreciate what she was to see there; and in Switzerland her Cousin Raymond, who had at different times visited Dunstone, overtook the party, and ere long made his proposals. He was the very man to whom two or three centuries ago Mr. Charnock would have betrothed the heiress in her infancy; and Cecil had never liked any one so well, feeling that her destiny came to a proper culmination in bestowing her hand on the most eligible Charnock, an M.P., and just a step above her father in rank and influence.
Her step-mother was under orders to spend the winter in Italy and the wedding had therefore taken place in Venice, so that Cecil might finish her journey as a wife. She had been very happy and fully occupied; Raymond, being younger and stronger than her parents, was more competent to escort her to every height or depth to which she wished to go, hunted up information for her, and was her most obedient servant, only resisting any prolongation of the journey beyond the legitimate four weeks; nor indeed had Cecil been desirous of deferring her introduction to her new sphere.
There she stood, her hair and pretty Parisian winter dress arranged to perfection, contemplating with approval the sitting-room that had been appropriated to her, the October sunshine lighting up the many-tinted trees around the smooth-shaven dewy lawn, and a bright fire on the hearth, shelves and chiffoniers awaiting her property, and piles of parcels, suggestive of wedding presents, awaiting her hand. She was standing at the table, turning out her travelling-bag with the comfortable sensation that it was not to be immediately re-packed, and had just disinterred a whole library of note-books, when her husband opened the door. “I believe Jenkins is waiting for your appearance to bring in the urn, my dear.”
“I’m coming; but surely there ought to be a bell or gong to assemble the family.”
“It might disturb my mother. What sleep she gets is in the morning. I never go to her till eleven o’clock, unless I am going out for the day.”
“And what will she want me to do for her?” asked Cecil, glancing at her empty shelves.
“A woman’s tact will soon find out. All I wish is that she should be your first object.”
It was a much larger all than could be realized by the son whose happiest moments had been spent in devotion to her, and who thought the motherless girl must rejoice doubly in such a mother.
“But I am free till eleven,” said Cecil.
“Free always, I hope,” he returned, with a shade of vexation. Therewith they descended the broad stairs into the panelled hall, where a great fire was blazing on the hearth, and Rosamond and the two young brothers were standing chatting merrily before it.
Julius, she said, had his primary sermon heavy on his mind, and had risen before day to attack it; and she sped away to summon him from Mrs. Poynsett’s beautiful old dressing-room, where he sat writing amid all the old associations. Anne was discovered hanging over the dining-room fire, looking whiter and more exhausted than the night before, having indeed been the first to come down-stairs. She was rebuked for fatiguing herself, and again murmured something about family worship.
“We must begin to-morrow,” said Raymond. “We have got a chaplain now.”
Julius, however, on entering excused himself, saying that after Sunday he should be at Matins at nine o’clock; whereupon Anne looked at him in mute astonishment.
Raymond, feeling that he ought to cultivate the solitary sister-in-law, began asking about Miles; but unlike the typical colonist, she was very silent, and her replies were monosyllabic, till Rosamond created a diversion by talking to Frank; and then Raymond elicited that Glen Fraser was far up the country—King Williamstown nearer than any other town. They had sent thither for a doctor for Miles, and he stayed one night, but said that mother’s treatment was quite right; and as it was thirty miles off he did not come again. Thirty miles! what sort of roads? Not bad for wagons. It only took two days to get there if the river was not in flood. Had she not been married there? Yes, they all rode in thither for the purpose. Was it the nearest church, then? There was one only nine miles off, to which papa went when there was service—one Sunday in three, “for he is an Episcopalian, you know.”
“And not your mother?” asked Cecil.
“I don’t think she was at home,” said Anne.
“Then had you a Presbyterian Kirk?” asked Cecil, remembering that in Scotland gentle blood and Anglicanism did not go together as uniformly as she believed them to do in England.
“There was one at Schneyder’s Kloof, but that was Dutch.”
“Then did you go nowhere?” asked Cecil.
“There was Mr. Pilgrim’s.”
“A clergyman?”
“No, a settler. He used to pray and expound every Sunday.”
“What does he call himself?” said Cecil, growing more severe.
“I don’t know,” said Anne. “He gathers together a little flock of all denominations, who only care to hear the word.”
“Such a voice in the wilderness as often does good service,” said Julius, with a perception that the side with which he least agreed best deserved support.
He and Rosamond were bent on a tour of parochial inspection, as were Raymond and Cecil on a more domestic one, beginning with the gardens.
Cecil was the first lady down-stairs, all in claret colour trimmed with gray fur, with a little fur and velvet cap upon her head.
“There! it is a clear morning, and you can see the view,” said Raymond, opening the hall door.
“Very prettily undulating ground,” she said, standing on the steps, and looking over a somewhat rapid slope scattered with trees to the opposite side of the valley, where a park with a red mansion in the midst gleamed out among woods of green, red, orange, and brown tints. “How you are shut in! That great Spanish chestnut must be a perfect block when its leaves are out. My father would never let it stand so near the house.”
“It is too near, but it was planted at the birth of my mother’s brother.”
“Who died?”
“Yes, at seven years old. It was her first grief.”
“Then it would vex her if you cut it.”
Raymond laughed. “It is hers, not mine.”
“I forgot.” There was a good deal in the tone; but she added, “What is that place opposite?”
“Sirenwood. It belongs to Sir Harry Vivian; but he does not live there.”
“Yes, he does,” said Cecil. “Your brothers say he has come back with his two daughters.”
“There is only one unmarried.”
“There is a widow come to keep house for him—Lady Tyrrell.”
“Very likely,” said Raymond; “my mother only writes with difficulty, so I hear little when I am from home.”
“Is it true that they are horrid people, very dissipated, and not fit for me to associate with?”
“That is putting it strongly,” said Raymond, quietly. “They are not likely to be very desirable acquaintances for you, but there is no reason you should not associate with them on ordinary terms of courtesy.”
“Ah! I understand—as member’s wife.”