Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 59

"How did you leave those poor boys, Johnny?" asked his father.

"Better," said Johnny. "Jock is nearly well,--will be quite so after the baths; and Armine is getting better. He sat up for an hour the day before I came away."

"And your aunt?" said his father.

"Wonderful," said John, with a quiver of feeling on his face. "You never saw anything like her. She keeps up, but she looks awfully thin and worn. I couldn't have left her, if Dr. Medlicott and Lord Fordham and his man had not all been bent on saving her whatever they could."

Her Serene Highness virtuously forbore a sigh. She never could believe those chains with which Caroline bound all men to her service to be either unconscious or strictly proper. However, she only said--

"It was high time that you came away; you were quite knocked up with being left a week alone with Lucas in that horrid place. I can't think how your aunt came to think of it."

"She didn't think," said John, bluntly. "It was only a week, and it couldn't be helped. Besides it was rather jolly."

"But it knocked you up."

"Oh! that was only a notion of the doctor and my aunt. They said I was done up first because I caught cold, and I was glad to wait a day or two longer at Leukerbad, in hopes Allen and Bobus would have come out before I went."

"They come out! Not they!" said the Colonel. "'Tis not the way of young men nowadays to give up anything for their fathers and mothers. No, no, Bobus can't spare a week from his reading-party, but must leave his mother to a set of chance acquaintance, and Allen--whom poor Caroline always thinks the affectionate one, if he is nothing else--can't give up going to gape at the sun at midnight, and Rob was wanting to make one of their freight of fools, but I told him it was quite enough to have one son wandering abroad at other people's expense, when it couldn't be helped; and that I wouldn't have another unless he was prepared to lay down his share in the yacht, out of his pay and allowance. I'm glad you are come home, Johnny; it was quite right to come as soon as your aunt could spare you, poor thing! She writes warmly about you; I am glad you were able to be of use to her, but you ought not to waste any more time."

"No. I wrote to my tutor that I would be at Eton to-morrow night, in time to begin the week's work."

"Papa!" cried out Mrs. Brownlow, "you will never let him start so soon?

He is so pulled down, I must have him at home to get him right again; and there are all his clothes to look over!"

Colonel Brownlow gave the odd little chuckling noise that meant to all the family that he did not see the force of mamma's objections, and John a.s.severated that he was perfectly well, and that his Eton garments were all at Hyde Corner, where he should take them up. Meantime, he thought he ought to walk to Belforest to report to his cousins, and carry a key which his aunt had sent by him to Janet.

"They will be coming in this evening," said his mother; "you had better stay and rest."

"I must go over, thank you," said John. "There is a book Armine wants to have sent out to him. Jessie, will you walk with me?"

"And me!" cried George.

"And me!" cried Edmund.

"And me, Lina go!" cried the smallest voice.

But the Colonel disconcerted the pet.i.tioners by announcing that he had business at Belforest, and would drive Johnny over in the dogcart. So Jessie had to console herself by agreeing with her mother that Johnny looked much more manly, yes, and had an air and style about him which both admired very much, though, while Mrs. Brownlow deemed it the true outcome of the admixture of Friar and Brownlow, Jessie gave more credit to Eton and Belforest, for Jessie was really fond of her aunt, to whom she had owed most of her extra gaieties. Moreover, Mrs. Brownlow, though often chafing secretly, had the power of reticence, and would not set the minds of her children against one who was always doing them kindnesses. True, these favours were more than she could easily brook, since her pride and independence were not, like her husband's, tempered by warm affection. It was his doing that the expenses of Johnny's education had been accepted, and that Esther and Ellen had been sent by their aunt to a good school; thus grat.i.tude, unpalatable though it were, prevented unguarded censure. She abstained from much; and as there was no quick intuition in the family, even Jessie, the most in her confidence, only vaguely knew that mamma thought Aunt Caroline too clever and fly-away; but mamma was grave and wise, and it was very nice to have an aunt who was young and lively, and always had pleasant things going on in her house. Jessie always had her full share, not indeed appreciating the intellect, but possessing beauty and charm enough to be always appreciated there. "Sweetly pretty," as Mrs. Coffinkey called her, was exactly what she was, for she was thoroughly good and unselfish, and a happy, simple nature looked out through her brown smiling eyes. She was very fond of her cousins, had shared all the anxieties of the last fortnight to the utmost, and was a good deal disappointed at being baulked of the walk with her brother, in which she would have heard so much more about Armine, Jock, and Aunt Caroline, than would be communicated in public.

Johnny, however, was glad of the invitation, even though a little shy of it. The tete-a-tete drive was an approach to the serious business of life, since it was evidently designed to give opportunity for answering a letter which he had thought out and written while laid up at Leukerbad by a bad cold and the reaction from his exertions at Schwarenbach.

Still his father did not speak till they had driven up the hill, and were near the gates of Belforest. Then he said--

"That was not a bad letter that you wrote me, Johnny."

Johnny flushed with pleasure. The letter had cost him much thought and pains, and commendation from his father was rare.

"But it will take a great deal of consideration."

"Yes," said Johnny. "You don't disapprove, do you, papa?"

"Well," said the Colonel, in his ponderous way, "you have advantages, you know, and you might do better for yourself."

There was a quivering impulse on Johnny's lips to say that it was not to himself that he wanted to do good; but when his father was speaking in that deliberate manner, he was not to be interrupted, and there was nothing for it but to hear him out.

"Your aunt is providing you with the best of educations, you have good abilities and industry, and you will be a well-looking fellow besides,"

added the Colonel, glancing over him with an approving eye of fatherly satisfaction; "and it seems to me that you could succeed in some superior line. Your mother and I had always hoped to see you at the bar.

Every opportunity for distinction is given you, and I do not understand this sudden desire to throw them up for a profession of much greater drudgery and fewer chances of rising, unless it were from some influence of your aunt."

"She never spoke of it. She does not know that I have thought of it, nor of my letter to you."

"Then it is simply from enthusiasm for this young doctor?"

"Not exactly," said John, "but I always wished I could be like my uncle.

I remember hearing mamma read a bit of one of the letters of condolence which said 'His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known,'

and I never forgot it. It stayed in my mind like a riddle, till I gradually found out that the beauty was in the good he was always doing--"

"Ah!" said the Colonel, in a tone betokening that he was touched, and which encouraged John to continue,--

"Besides, I really do like and enter into scientific subjects better than any others; I believe it is my turn."

"Perhaps--you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle. But why have you only spoken of it now?"

"I don't think I really considered what I should be," said John. "There was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest, till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I wanted to know."

"Did he persuade you?"

"No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me. He loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one. Yes, papa, indeed I think it is. To be always learning the ways of G.o.d's working, for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world--"

"Johnny! That's almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and what did it come to? Being at the beck and call night and day of every beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in their service."

"Yes," said John, with a low, gruff sound in his voice, "but is not that like being killed in battle?"

"The world doesn't think it so, my boy," said the soldier. "Well! what is it you propose to do?"

"I don't suppose it will make much difference yet," said John, "except that at Oxford I should go in more for physical science."

"You don't want to give up the university?"

"Oh, no! Dr. Medlicott said a degree there is a great help, besides that, all the general study one can get is the more advantage, lifting one above the mere pract.i.tioner."

"That is well," said the Colonel. "If you are to go to the university, there is no need to dwell further on the matter at present. You will have had time to see more of the world, and you will know whether this wish only comes from enthusiasm for a pleasant young man who has been kind to you, or if it be your real deliberate choice, and if so, your mother will have had time to reconcile herself to the notion. At any rate we will say no more about it for the present. Though I must say, Johnny," he added, as he turned his horse's head between the ribbon borders of the approach, "you have thought and spoken like a sensible lad, and so like my dear brother, that I could not deny you."

If Johnny could hardly believe in the unwonted commendation which made his heart throb, and sent a flood of colour into his cheeks. Colonel Brownlow was equally amazed at the boy's attainment of a manly and earnest thought and purpose, so utterly unlike anything he had hitherto seen in the stolid Rob, or the easy-going Allen, or even in Bobus, who--whatever there might be in him--never thought it worth while to show it to his uncle.

However, discussion was cut short by a little flying figure which came rus.h.i.+ng across the garden, and Babie with streaming hair clung to her cousin, gasping--

"Oh! Johnny, Johnny, tell me about Armie and Jock."

"They are ever so much better, Babie," said Johnny, lifting the slim little thing up in his arms, as he had lifted his own five-year-old brother; "I've got a thick parcel of acrostics for you, Armie makes them in bed, and Lord Fordham writes them out."