Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 82

"Like it? Poor Duke! Mother! As if I could ever! A man that can't sit in a draught, or get wet in his feet!" cried Babie, with the utmost scorn; and reading reproof as well as amused pity in her mother's eyes, she added, "Of course, I am very sorry for him; but fancy being very _sorry_ for one's love!"

"I thought you liked wounded knights?"

"Wounded! Yes, but they've done something, and had glorious wounds. Now Duke--he is very good, and it is not his fault but his misfortune; but he is such a--such a m.u.f.f!"

"That's enough, my dear; I am quite content that my Infanta should wait for her hero. Though," she added, almost to herself, "she is too childish to know the true worth of what she condemns."

She felt this the more when Babie, who had coaxed the housekeeper into letting her begin a private school of cookery, started up, crying--

"I must go and see my orange biscuits taken out of the oven! I should like to send a taste to Sydney!"

Yes, Barbara was childish for nearly sixteen, and, as it struck her mother at the moment, rather wonderfully so considering her cleverness and romance. It was better for her that the softening should not come yet, but, mother as she was, Caroline's sympathies could not but be at the moment with the warm-hearted, impulsive, generous young man, moved out of all his habitual valetudinarian habits by his affection, rather than with the light-hearted child, who spurned the love she did not comprehend, and despised his ill-health. Had the young generation no hearts? Oh no--no--it could not be so with her loving Barbara, and she ought to be thankful for the saving of pain and perplexity.

Poor Armine was not getting much comfort out of his friend, who was too much preoccupied to attend to what he was saying, and only mechanically a.s.sented at intervals to the proposition that it was an inscrutable dispensation that the will and the power should so seldom go together.

He heard all Armine's fallen castles about chapels, schools, curates, and sisters, as in a dream, really not knowing whether they were or were not to be. And with all his desire to be useful, he never perceived the one offer that would have been really valuable, namely, to carry off the boy out of sight of the scene of his disappointment.

Fordham was compelled to stay for an uncomfortable luncheon, when there were spasmodic jerks of talk about subjects of the day to keep up appearances before the servants, who flitted about in such an exasperating way that their mistress secretly rejoiced to think how soon she should be rid of the fine courier butler.

Just as the pony-carriage came round for Armine to drive his friend back to the station, the Colonel came in, and was an astonished spectator of the farewells.

"So that's your young lord," he said. "Poor lad! if our n.o.bility is made of no tougher stuff, I would not give much for it. What brought him here?"

"Kindness--sympathy--" said Caroline, a little awkwardly.

"Much of that he showed," said Allen, "just knowing nothing at all about anybody! No! If it were not so utterly ridiculous I should think he had come to make an offer to Babie:" and as his sister flew out of the room, "You don't mean that he has, mother?"

"Pray, don't speak of it to any one!" said Caroline. "I would not have it known for the world. It was a generous impulse, poor dear fellow; and Babie has no feeling for him at all."

"Very lucky," said the uncle. "He looks as if his life was not worth a year's purchase. So you refused him? Quite right too. You are a sensible woman, Caroline, in the midst of this severe reverse!"

CHAPTER x.x.x. -- AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING

'Lesbia hath a beaming eye, But no one knows for whom it beameth, Right and left its arrows fly, But what they aim at, no one dreameth.'

By the advice, or rather by the express desire, of her trustees, Mrs.

Brownlow remained at Belforest, while they accepted an offer of renting the London house for the season. Mr. Wakefield declared that there was no reason that she should contract her expenditure; but she felt as if everything she spent beyond her original income, except of course the needful outlay on keeping up the house and gardens, were robbery of Elvira, and she therefore did not fill up the establishment of servants, nor of horses, using only for herself the little pair of ponies which had been turned out in the park.

No one had perhaps realised the amount of worry that this arrangement entailed. As Barbara said, if they could have gone away at once and worked for their living like sensible people in a book, it would have been all very well--but this half-and-half state was dreadful.

Personally it did not affect Babie much, but she was growing up to the part of general sympathiser, and for the first time in their lives there was a pull in contrary directions by her mother, and Armine.

Every expenditure was weighed before it was granted. Did it belong rightly to Belforest estate or to Caroline Brownlow? And the claims of the church and parish at Woodside were doubtful. Armine, under the influence of Miss Parsons, took a wide view of the dues of the parish, thought there was a long arrear to be paid off, and that whatever could be given was so much out of the wolf's mouth.

His mother, with 'Be just before you are generous' ringing in her ears, referred all to the Colonel, and he had long had a fixed scale of the duties of the property as a property, and was only rendered the more resolute in it by that vehemence of Armine's which enhanced his dislike and distrust of the family at the vicarage.

"Bent on getting all they could while they could," he said, quite unjustly as to the vicar, and hardly fairly by the sister, whose demands were far exceeded by those of her champion.

The claims of the cottages for repair, and of the school for sufficient enlargement and maintenance to obviate a School Board, were acknowledged; but for the rest, the Colonel said, "his sister was perfectly at liberty. No one could blame her if she threw her balance at the bank into the sea. She would never be called to account; but since she asked him whether the estate was bound to a.s.sist in pulling the church to pieces, and setting up a fresh curate to bring in more absurdities, he could only say what he thought," etc.

These thoughts of his were of course most offensive to Armine, who set all down to sordid Puritan prejudice, could not think how his mother could listen, and, when Babie stood up for her mother, went off to blend his lamentations with those of Miss Parsons, whose resignation struck him as heroic. "Never mind, Armine, it will all come in time. Perhaps we are not fit for it yet. We cannot expect the world's justice to understand the outpouring of the saints' liberality."

Armine repeated this interesting aphorism to Barbara, and was much disappointed that the shrewd little woman did not understand it, or only so far as to say, "But I did not know that it was saintly to be liberal with other people's money."

He said Babie had a prejudice against Miss Parsons; and he was so far right that the Infanta did not like her, thought her a humbug, and sorely felt that for the first time something had come between herself and Armine.

Allen was another trouble. He did not agree to the retrenchments, in which he saw no sense, and retained his horse and groom. Luckily he had retained only one when going abroad, and at this early season he needed no more. But his grievous anxiety and restlessness about Elvira did not make him by any means insensible to the effects of a reduced establishment in a large house, and especially to the handiwork of the good woman who had been left in charge, when compared with that of the 80L cooks who had been the plague of his mother's life.

No one, however, could wonder at his wretchedness, as day after day pa.s.sed without hearing from Elvira, and all that was known was that she had left Mrs. Evelyn and gone to stay with Lady Flora Folliott, a flighty young matron, who had been enraptured with her beauty at a table d'hote a year ago, and had made advances not much relished by the rest of the party.

No more was to be learnt till Lucas found a Sat.u.r.day to come down.

Before he could say three words, he was cross-examined. Had he seen Elvira?

"Several times."

"Spoken to her?"

"Yes."

"What had she said?"

"Asked him to look at a horse."

"Did she know he was coming home?"

"Yes."

"Had she sent any message?"

"Well--yes. To desire that her Algerine costume should be sent up.

Whew!" as Allen flung himself out of the room. "How have I put my foot in it, mother?"

"You don't mean that that was all?"

"Every jot! What, has she not written? The abominable little elf! I'm coming." And he shrugged his shoulders as Allen, who had come round to the open window, beckoned to him.

"He was absolutely grappled by a trembling hand, and a husky voice demanded, 'What message did she really send? I can't stand foolery'."

"Just that, Allen--to Emma. Really just that. You can't shake more out of me. You might as well expect anything from that Chinese lantern. Hold hard. 'Tis not I--"

"Don't speak! You don't know her! I was a fool to think she would confide to a mere buffoon," cried poor Allen, in his misery. "Yet if they were intercepting her letters--"

Wherewith he buried himself in the depths of the shrubbery, while Jock, with a long whistle, came back through the library window to his mother, observing--

"Intercepted! Poor fellow! Hardly necessary, if possible, though Lady Flora might wish to catch her for Clanmacnalty. Has the miserable imp really vouchsafed no notice of any of you?"