Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 39

"I am sure, Colonel Brownlow, nothing can be handsomer than your conduct and Mrs. Brownlow's," said the old man; "but I should not like to take advantage of what she is good enough to say on the spur of the moment, till she has had more time to think it over."

Therewith he took leave, while Caroline exclaimed--

"I always say there is no truer gentleman in the county than old Mr.

Gould. I shall not be satisfied about that will till I have turned everything over and the partners have been written to."

Again she was a.s.sured that she might set her mind at rest, and then the lawyers began to read a statement of the property which made Allen utter, under his breath, an emphatic "I say!" but his mother hardly took it in. The heated room had affected her from the first, and the bewilderment of the tidings seemed almost to crush her; her heart and temples throbbed, her head ached violently, and while the final words respecting arrangements were pa.s.sing between the Colonel and the lawyers, she was conscious only of a sickening sense of oppression, and a fear of committing the absurdity of fainting.

However, at last her brother-in-law put her into the brougham, desiring the boys to walk home, which they did very willingly, and with a wonderful air of lords.h.i.+p and possession.

"Well, Caroline," said the Colonel, "I congratulate you on being the richest proprietor in the county."

"O Robert, don't! If--if," said a suffocated voice, so miserable that he turned and took her hand kindly, saying--

"My dear sister, this feeling is very--it becomes you well. This is a fearful responsibility."

She could not answer. She only leant back in the carriage, with closed eyes, and moaned--

"Oh! Joe! Joe!"

"Indeed," said his brother, greatly touched, "we want him more than ever."

He did not try to talk any more to her, and when they reached the PaG.o.da, all she could do was to hurry up stairs, and, throwing off her bonnet, bury her face in the pillow.

Janet and her aunt both followed, the latter with kind and tender solicitude; but Caroline could bear nothing, and begged only to be left alone.

"Dear Ellen, it is very kind, but nothing does any good to these headaches. Please don't--please leave me alone."

They saw it was the only true kindness, and left her, after all attempts at bathing her forehead, or giving her sal volatile, proved only to molest her. She lay on her bed, not able to think, and feeling nothing but the pain of her headache and a general weight and loneliness.

The first break was from Allen, who came in tenderly with a cup of coffee, saying that they thought her time was come for being ready for it. His manner always did her good, and she sat up, pushed back her hair, smiled, took the cup, and thanked him lovingly.

"Uncle Robert is waiting to hear if you are better," he said.

"Oh yes," she said; "thank him; I am sorry I was so silly."

"He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and Mr.

Wakefield," said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad of fifteen, who had just become "somebody."

"Very well," she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again, just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.

"And mother," said Allen, lingering in the dark, "don't trouble about Elfie. I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make all straight."

Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous announcement, and she dreamily said--

"Time enough to think of such things."

"I know," said Allen; "but I thought you ought to know this."

He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she was really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy's words, and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep. She had a curious dream, which she remembered long after. She seemed to have identified herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her children, who turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on pedestals in the Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly calling them. Then her husband's voice, sad and reproachful, seemed to say, "Magnum Bonum!

Magnum Bonum!" and she fancied it the elixir which alone could restore them, and would have climbed a mountain in search of it, as in the Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy, and immovable, and she found that they too had become gold, and that the chill was creeping upwards. With a scream of "Save the children, Joe," she awoke.

No wonder she had dreamt of cold golden limbs, for her feet were really chilly as ice, and the room as dark as at midnight. However it was not yet seven o'clock; and presently Janet brought a light, and persuaded her to come downstairs and warm herself. She was not yet capable of going into the dining-room to the family tea, but crept down to lie on the sofa in the drawing-room; and there, after taking the small refreshment which was all she could yet endure, she lay with closed eyes, while the children came in from the meal. Armine and Babie were the first. She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert herself to speak to them.

"Asleep," they whispered. "Poor Mother Carey."

"Armie," said Babie, "is mother unhappy because she has got rich?"

Armine hesitated. His brief experience of school had made him less unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on even to his little sister, and she added--

"Must people get wicked when they are rich?"

"Mother is always good," said faithful little Armine.

"The rich people in the Bible were all bad," pondered Babie. "There was Dives, and the man with the barns."

"Yes," said Armine; "but there were good ones too--Abraham and Solomon."

"Solomon was not always good," said Babie; "and Uncle Robert told Allen it was a fearful responsibility. What is a responsibility, Armie? I am sure Ali didn't like it."

"Something to answer for!" said Armine.

"To who?" asked the little girl.

"To G.o.d," said the boy reverently. "It's like the talent in the parable.

One has got to do something for G.o.d with it, and then it won't turn to harm."

"Like the man's treasure that changed into slate stones when he made a bad use of it," said Babie. "Oh! Armie, what shall we do? Shall we give plum-puddings to the little thin girls down the lane?"

"And I should like to give something good to the little grey workhouse boys," said Armine. "I should so hate always walking out along a straight road as they do."

"And oh! Armie, then don't you think we may get a nice book to write out Jotapata in?"

"Yes, a real jolly one. For you know, Babie, it will take lots of room, even if I write my very smallest."

"Please let it be ruled, Armie. And where shall we begin?"

"Oh! at the beginning, I think, just when Sir Engelbert first heard about the Crusade."

"It will take lots of books then."

"Never mind, we can buy them all now. And do you know, Bab, I think Adelmar and Ermelind might find a nice lot of natural petroleum and frighten Mustafa ever so much with it!"

For be it known that Armine and Barbara's most cherished delight was in one continued running invention of a defence of Jotapata by a crusading family, which went on from generation to generation with unabated energy, though they were very apt to be reduced to two young children who held out their fortress against frightful odds of Saracens, and sometimes conquered, sometimes converted their enemies. n.o.body but themselves was fully kept au courant with this wonderful siege, which had hitherto been recorded in interlined copy-books, or little paper books pasted together, and very remarkably ill.u.s.trated.

The door began to creak with an elaborate noisiness intended for perfect silence, and Jock's voice was heard.

"Bother the door! Did it wake mother? No? That's right;" and he squatted down between the little ones while Bobus seated himself at the table with a book.