Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 47

"Yes, but what's the use, if all the little beggars in Kenminster are to be let in to make them wild! And when you knew I particularly wished to have something worth asking Prince Siegfried down to."

"Never mind, Allen," put in Janet; "you can ask him to shoot into the poultry yard. The poor things are just as thick there, and rather tamer, so the sport will be the more n.o.ble."

"You know nothing about it, Janet," said Allen, in displeasure.

"But Allen," said his mother, apologetically, though she felt with Janet, "the woods are locked up."

"Locked! As if that was any use when you let a lot of boys come marauding all over the place!"

"Really, Allen," said his mother, "when I remember what we used to say about old Mr. Barnes, I cannot find it in my heart to play the same game!"

"It is quite a different thing."

"How?"

"He did it out of mere surliness."

"I don't suppose it makes much difference to the excluded whether it is done out of mere surliness, or for the sake of the preserves."

"Mother!" Allen spoke as if the absurdity of the argument were quite too much for him; but his brother and sister both laughed, which nettled him into adding--

"Well! All I have to say is, that if Belforest is to be nothing but a people's park for all the ragam.u.f.fins in Kenminster, there will soon not be a head of game in the place, and I shall be obliged to shoot elsewhere!"

Poor Caroline! If there was a thing she specially hated, it was a battue, both for the thing itself, and all the previous preparation of preserving, and of prosecuting poachers; and yet sons have their mothers so much in their power by that threat of staying away from home, that she could not help faltering, "Oh, Allen, I'll do my best, and tell the keepers to be very careful, and lock the gates of all the preserves."

Allen saw she was vexed, and spoke more kindly, "There, never mind, mother. It is more than can be expected that ladies should see things in a reasonable light."

"What is the reasonable light?" asked Bobus.

Allen did not choose to hear, regarding Bobus not indeed as a woman, but as something as little capable of appreciating his reason. It was Janet who took up the word. "The reasonable light is that the enjoyment of the many should be sacrificed to the vanity of the few, viz., that all Kenminster should be confined to dusty roads all the year round in order that Allen may bring down the youngest son of the youngest son of a German prince for one day to fire amongst some hundreds of tame pheasants who come up expecting to be fed."

"Oh, yes," said Allen, "we all know that you are a regular out-and-out democrat, Janet."

"I confess, without being a democrat," said his mother, "that I do wonder that you gentlemen, who wish the game laws to continue, should so work them as to be more aggravating than ever."

"It is a simple question of the rights of property," said Allen. "If I do a thing, I like it to be well done, and not half-and-half."

Caroline rose from the table, dreading, like many a mother, a regular skirmish about game-preserving, between those who cared to shoot, and those who did not. Like other ladies, she could never understand exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to have game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest of the chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they told her was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and all the footpaths. Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were those of a former generation, was quite satisfied; Allen never would be so; and it was one of the few bones of contention in the family.

For Allen was walking through Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be "good form."

His brother accused him of carrying his idolatry of "good form" to a sn.o.bbish extent, but Allen could carry it out so naturally that no one could have suspected that he had not been to the manner born. If he did appreciate the society of people with handles to their names, he comported himself among them as their easy equal; and he was so lavish as to be a very popular man. He had no vicious tastes or tendencies, and was too gentlemanly and quiet ever to come into collision with the authorities. At home, except when his notions of "good form" were at variance with strong opinions of his mother's, nothing could be more chivalrously deferential than his whole demeanour to her; and the worst that could be said of him was that he managed to waste a large amount of time and money with very little to show for it. His profession was to be son and heir to a large fortune, and he took to the show part of the affair very kindly.

But was this being the man his father had expected him to be? The thought would come across Caroline at times, but not very often, as she floated along easily in the stream of life. Most of the business troubles of her property were spared her by her trustees, and her income was so large that even Allen's expenditure had not yet been felt as an inconvenience. As to the responsibilities, she contributed largely to county subscriptions, gave her clergyman whatever he asked, provided Christmas treats and summer teas for their school-children, and permitted Miss Ogilvie and Babie to do whatever they pleased among the poor when they were at home. But she was not very much at Belforest. She generally came there at Midsummer and at Christmas, and filled the house with friends. All kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts astonished the neighbourhood, and parties of the newest kinds, private theatricals, tableaux, charades, all that taste or ingenuity could devise were in vogue.

But before the spring east winds the party were generally gone to some more genial climate, and the early autumn was often spent in Switzerland. Pictures, art, and scenery were growing to be necessaries of life, and to stay at home with no special diversion in view seemed unthought of. The season was spent in London, not dropping the artist society on the one hand, but adding to it the amount of intercourse into which she was drawn by the fact of her being a rich and charming woman, having a delightful house, and a son and daughter who might be "grands partis." Allen liked high life for her, so she did not refuse it; but probably her social success was all the greater from her entire indifference, and that of her daughter, to all the questions of exclusiveness and fas.h.i.+on. If they had been born d.u.c.h.esses they could not have been less concerned about obtaining invitations to what their maid called "the first circles," and they would sometimes reduce Allen to despair by giving the preference to a lively literary soiree, when he wanted them to show themselves among the aristocracy at a drum.

Engagements of all kinds grew on them with every season, and in this one especially, Caroline had grown somewhat weary of the endeavour to satisfy both him and Janet, and was not sorry that her two eldest sons were starting on a yacht voyage to Norway, where Allen meant to fish, and Bobus to study natural history. She had her interview with the housekeeper, and proceeded to her own place in Popinjay Parlour, a quiet place at this time of day, save for the tinkling of the fountain and the twitterings of the many little songsters in the aviary, whom the original parrot used patronisingly to address as "Pretty little birds."

Janet was wandering about among the flowers, evidently waiting for her, and began, as she came in--

"I wanted to speak to you, mother."

"Well, Janet," said Caroline, reviewing in one moment every unmarried man, likely or unlikely, who had approached the girl, and with a despairing conviction that it would be some one very unlikely indeed!

"You know I am of age, mother."

"Certainly. We drank your health last Monday."

"I made up my mind that till I was of age I would go on studying, and at the same time see something of the world and of society."

"Certainly," said Caroline, wondering what her inscrutable daughter was coming to.

"And having done this, I wish to devote myself to the study of medicine."

"Be a lady doctor, Janet!"

"Mother, you are surely above all the commonplace, old world nonsense!"

"I don't think I am, Janet. I don't think your father would have wished it."

"He would have gone on with the spirit of the times, mother; men do, while women stand still."

"I don't think he would in this."

"I think he would, if he knew me, and the issues and stake, and how his other children are failing him."

"Janet!"--and the colour flushed into her mother's face--"I don't quite know what you mean; but it is time we came to an understanding."

"I think so," returned Janet.

"Then you know--"

"I heard what papa said to you. I kept the white slate till you thought of it," said Janet, in a tone that sounded soft from her.

"And why did you never say so, my dear?"

"I can hardly tell. I was shy at first; and then reserve grows on a person; but I never ceased from thinking about it through all these years. Mother, you do not think there is any chance of the boys taking it up as my father wished?"

"Certainly not Allen," said Caroline with a sigh. "And as to Bobus, he would have full capacity; but a great change must come over him, poor fellow, before he would fulfil your father's conditions."

"He has no notion of the drudgery of the medical profession," said Janet; "he means to read law, get up social and sanitary questions, and go into parliament."

"I know," said her mother, "I have always lived in hopes that sanitary theories would give him his father's heart for the sufferers, and that search into the secrets of nature would lead him higher; but as long as he does not turn that way of himself it would be contrary to your father's charge to hold this discovery out to him as an inducement."

"And Jock?" said Janet, smiling. "You don't expect it of the born soldier--nor of Armine?"

"I am not sure about Armine, though he may not be strong enough to bear the application."