The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations

Norman was not at home; he had undertaken the tutorship of two schoolboys for the holidays; and his father owned, with a sigh, that he was doing wisely.

As to Meta, she was Ethel’s chief consolation, by the redoubled assurances, directed to Ethel’s unexpressed dread, lest Flora should be rejecting the chastening Hand. Meta had the most absolute certainty that Flora’s apparent cheerfulness was all for George’s sake, and that it was a most painful exertion. “If Ethel could only see how she let herself sink together, as it were, and her whole countenance relax, as soon as he was out of sight,” Meta said, “she could not doubt what misery these efforts were to her.”

“Why does she go on with them?” said Ethel.

“George,” said Meta. “What would become of him without her? If he misses her for ten minutes he roams about lost, and he cannot enjoy anything without her. I cannot think how he can help seeing what hard work it is, and how he can be contented with those dreadful sham smiles; but as long as she can give him pleasure, poor Flora will toil for him.”

“It is very selfish,” Ethel caught herself saying.

“No, no, it is not,” cried Meta. “It is not that he will not see, but that he cannot see. Good honest fellow, he really thinks it does her good and pleases her. I was so sorry one evening when I tried to take her place at that perpetual ecarte, and told him it teased her; he went so wistfully to her, and asked whether it did, and she exerted herself into such painful enjoyment to persuade him to the contrary; and afterwards she said to me, ‘Let me alone, dearest—it is the only thing left me.’”

“There is something in being husband and wife that one cannot understand,” slowly said Ethel, so much in her quaint way that Meta laughed.

Had it not been for Norman’s absence, Ethel would, in the warm sympathy and accustomed manner of Meta Rivers, have forgotten all about the hopes and fears that, in brighter days, had centred on that small personage; until one day, as she came home from Cocksmoor, she found “Sir Henry Walkinghame’s” card on the drawing-room table. “I should like to bite you! Coming here, are you?” was her amiable reflection.

Meta, in her riding-habit, peeped out of Margaret’s room. “Oh, Ethel, there you are! It is such a boon that you did not come home sooner, or we should have had to ride home with him! I heard him asking for the Miss Mays! And now I am in hopes that he will go home without falling in with Flora and George.”

“I did not know he was in these parts.”

“He came to Drydale last week, but the place is forlorn, and George gave him a general invitation to the Grange.”

“Do you like him?” said Ethel, while Margaret looked on, amazed at her audacity.

“I liked him very much in London,” said Meta; “he is pleasant enough to talk to, but somehow, he is not congruous here—if you understand me. And I think his coming oppresses Flora—she turned quite pale when he was announced, and her voice was lower than ever when she spoke to him.”

“Does he come often?” said Ethel.

“I don’t think he has anything else to do,” returned Meta, “for our house cannot be as pleasant as it was; but he is very kind to George, and for that we must be grateful. One thing I am afraid of, that he will persuade us off to the yachting after all.”

“Oh!” was the general exclamation.

“Yes,” said Meta. “George seemed to like the plan, and I very much fear that he is taking a dislike to the dear old Grange. I heard him say, ‘Anything to get away.’”

“Poor George, I know he is restless,” said Margaret.

“At least,” said Ethel, “you can’t go till after your birthday, Miss Heiress.”

“No, Uncle Cosham is coming,” said Meta. “Margaret, you must have your stone laid before we go!”

“Dr. Spencer promises it before Hector’s holidays are over,” said Margaret, blushing, as she always did, with pleasure, when they talked of the church.

Hector Ernescliffe had revived Margaret wonderfully. She was seldom downstairs before the evening, and Ethel thought his habit of making her apartment his sitting-room must be as inconvenient to her as it was to herself; but Hector could not be de trop for Margaret. She exerted herself to fulfil for him all the little sisterly offices that, with her brothers, had been transferred to Ethel and Mary; she threw herself into all his schemes, tried to make him endure Captain Gordon, and she even read his favourite book of Wild Sports, though her feelings were constantly lacerated by the miseries of the slaughtered animals. Her couch was to him as a home, and he had awakened her bright soft liveliness which had been only dimmed for a time.

The church was her other great interest, and Dr. Spencer humoured her by showing her all his drawings, consulting her on every ornament, and making many a perspective elevation, merely that she might see the effect.

Richard and Tom made it their recreation to construct a model of the church as a present for her, and Tom developed a genius for carving, which proved a beneficial interest to keep him from surliness. He had voluntarily propounded his intended profession to his father, who had been so much pleased by his choice, that he could not but be gratified; though now and then ambitious fancies, and discontent with Stoneborough, combined to bring on his ordinary moody fits, the more, because his habitual reserve prevented any one from knowing what was working in his mind.

Finally the Rivers’ party announced their intention of going to the Isle of Wight as soon as Meta had come of age; and the council of Cocksmoor, meeting at tea at Dr. May’s house, decided that the foundation stone of the church should be laid on the day after her birthday, when there would be a gathering of the whole family, as Margaret wished. Dr. Spencer had worked incredibly hard to bring it forward, and Margaret’s sweet smiles, and liquid eyes, expressed how personally thankful she felt.

“What a blessing this church has been to that poor girl,” said Dr. Spencer, as he left the house with Mr. Wilmot. “How it beguiles her out of her grief! I am glad she has the pleasure of the foundation; I doubt if she will see the consecration.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Wilmot, shocked. “Was that attack so serious?”

“That recumbent position and want of exercise were certain to produce organic disease, and suspense and sorrow have hastened it. The death of Mrs. Rivers’s poor child was the blow that called it into activity, and, if it last more than a year, I shall be surprised.”

“For such as she is, one cannot presume to wish, but her father—is he aware of this?”

“He knows there is extensive damage; I think he does not open his eyes to the result, but he will bear it. Never was there a man to whom it came so naturally to live like the fowls of the air, or the lilies of the field, as it does to dear Dick May,” said Dr. Spencer, his voice faltering.

“There is a strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret—I think it is the same with them all—not only Ethel and Richard, who have been immediately concerned; but that one object has been a centre and aim to elevate the whole family, and give force and unity to their efforts. Even the good doctor, much as I always looked up to him—much good as he did me in my young days—I must confess that he was sometimes very provoking.”

“If you had tried to be his keeper at Cambridge, you might say so!” rejoined Dr. Spencer.

“He is so much less impetuous—more consistent—less desultory; I dare say you understand me,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His good qualities do not entangle one another as they used to do.”

“Exactly so. He was far more than I looked for when I came home, though I might have guessed that such a disposition, backed by such principles and such—could not but shake off all the dross.”

“One thing was,” said Mr. Wilmot, smiling, “that a man must take himself in hand at some time in his life, and Dr. May only began to think himself responsible for himself when he lost his wife, who was wise for both. She was an admirable person, but not easy to know well. I think you knew her at—”

“I say,” interrupted Dr. Spencer, “it strikes me that we could not do better than get up our S. P. G. demonstration on the day of the stone—”

Hitherto the Stoneborough subscribers to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been few and far between; but, under the new dynasty, there was a talk of forming an association, and having a meeting to bring the subject forward. Dr. Spencer’s proposal, however, took the vicar by surprise.

“Never could there be a better time,” he argued. “You have naturally a gathering of clergy—people ought to be liberal on such an occasion, and, as Cocksmoor is provided for, why not give the benefit to the missions, in their crying need!”

“True, but there is no time to send for any one to make a speech.”

“Husband your resources. What could you have better than young Harry and his islanders?”

“Harry would never make a speech.”

“Let him cram Norman. Young Lake tells me Norman made a great sensation at the Union at Oxford, and if his heart is in the work, he must not shrink from the face of his townsmen.”

“No doubt he had rather they were savages,” said the vicar. “And yourself—you will tell them of the Indian missions.”

“With all my heart,” said Dr. Spencer. “When my Brahminhee godson—the deacon I told you of, comes to pay me his promised visit, what doings we shall have! Seriously, I have just had letters from him and from others, that speak of such need, that I could feel every moment wasted that is not spent on their behalf.”

Mr. Wilmot was drawn into Dr. Spencer’s house, and heard the letters, till his heart burned within him.

The meeting was at once decided upon, though Ethel could not see why people could not give without speechifying, and her two younger brothers declared it was humbug—Tom saying, he wished all blackamoors were out of creation, and Harry, that he could not stand palaver about his friend David. Dr. May threatened him with being displayed on the platform as a living instance of the effects of missions, at which he took alarm, and so seriously declared that he should join the Bucephalus at once, that they pacified him by promising that he should do as he pleased.

The archdeacon promised a sermon, and the active Dr Spencer worked the nine muses and all the rest of the town and neighbourhood into a state of great enthusiasm and expectation. He went to the Grange, as he said, to collect his artillery; primed Flora that she might prime the M. P.; made the willing Meta promise to entrap the uncle, who was noted for philanthropical speeches; and himself captured Sir Henry Walkinghame, who looked somewhat rueful at what he found incumbent on him as a country gentleman, though there might be some compensation in the eagerness of Miss Rivers.

Norman had hardly set foot in Stoneborough before he was told what was in store for him, and, to the general surprise, submitted as if it were a very simple matter. As Dr. Spencer told him, it was only a foretaste of the penalty which every missionary has to pay for coming to England. Norman was altogether looking much better than when he had been last at home, and his spirits were more even. He had turned his whole soul to the career he had chosen, cast his disappointment behind him, or, more truly, made it his offering, and gathered strength and calmness, with which to set out on tasks of working for others, with thoughts too much absorbed on them, to give way to the propensity of making himself the primary object of study and contemplation. The praise of God, and love of man, were the best cures for tendencies like his, and he had found it out. His calm, though grave cheerfulness, came as a refreshment to those who had been uneasy about him, and mournfully watching poor Flora.

“Yes,” said Dr. Spencer, “you have taken the best course for your own happiness.”

Norman coloured, as if he understood more than met the ear. Mary and Blanche were very busy preparing presents for Meta Rivers, and every one was anxious to soften to her the thought of this first birthday without her father. Each of the family contributed some pretty little trifle, choice in workmanship or kind in device, and each was sealed and marked with the initials of the giver, and packed up by Mary, to be committed to Flora’s charge. Blanche had, however, much trouble in extracting a gift from Norman, and he only yielded at last, on finding that all his brothers had sent something, so that his omission would be marked. Then he dived into the recesses of his desk, and himself sealed up a little parcel, of which he would not allow his sisters to inspect the contents.

Ethel had a shrewd guess. She remembered his having, in the flush of joy at Margaret’s engagement, rather prematurely caused a seal to be cut with a daisy, and “Pearl of the meadow” as the motto; and his having said that he should keep it as a wedding present. She could understand that he was willing to part with it without remark.

Flora met Meta in her sitting-room, on the morning of the day, which rose somewhat sadly upon the young girl, as she thought of past affection and new responsibilities. If the fondness of a sister could have compensated for what she had lost, Meta received it in no scanty measure from Flora, who begged to call George, because he would be pleased to see the display of gifts.

His own was the only costly one—almost all the rest were homemade treasures of the greater price, because the skill and fondness of the maker were evident in their construction; and Meta took home the kindness as it was meant, and felt the affection that would not let her feel herself lonely. She only wished to go and thank them all at once.

“Do then,” said Flora. “If Lord Cosham will spare you, and your business should be over in time, you could drive in, and try to bring papa home with you.”

“Oh, thank you, Flora. That is a kind treat, in case the morning should be very awful!”

Margaret Agatha Rivers signed her documents, listened to explanations, and was complimented by her uncle on not thinking it necessary to be senseless on money matters, like her cousin, Agatha Langdale.

Still she looked a little oppressed, as she locked up the tokens of her wealth, and the sunshine of her face did not beam out again till she arrived at Stoneborough, and was dispensing her pretty thanks to the few she found at home.

“Ethel out and Norman? His seal is only too pretty—”

“They are all helping Dr. Spencer at Cocksmoor.”

“What a pity! But it is so very kind of him to treat me as a daisy. In some ways I like his present for that the best of all,” said Meta.

“I will tell him so,” said Mary.

“Yes, no,” said Meta. “I am not pretending to be anything half so nice.”

Mary and Blanche fell upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or a tulip.

“That is as she comports herself,” he said playfully.

“Which means that you don’t think her quite done for,” said Meta.

“Not quite,” said the doctor, with a droll intonation; “but I have not seen what this morning may have done to her.”

“Come and see, then,” said Meta. “Flora told me to bring you home—and it is my birthday, you know. Never mind waiting to tell Ethel. Margaret will let her know that I’ll keep you out of mischief.”

As usual, Dr. May could not withstand her, and she carried him off in triumph in her pony carriage.

“Then you don’t give me up yet?” was the first thing she said, as they were off the stones.

“What have you been doing to make me?” said he.

“Doing or not doing—one or the other,” she said. “But indeed I wanted to have you to myself. I am in a great puzzle!”

“Sir Henry! I hope she won’t consult me!” thought Dr. May, as he answered, “Well, my dear.”

“I fear it is a lasting puzzle,” she said. “What shall I do with all this money?”

“Keep it in the bank, or buy railway shares!” said Dr. May, looking arch.

“Thank you. That’s a question for my cousins in the city. I want you to answer me as no one else can do. I want to know what is my duty now that I have my means in my own hands?”

“There is need enough around—”

“I do not mean only giving a little here and there, but I want you to hear a few of my thoughts. Flora and George are kindness itself—but, you see, I have no duties. They are obliged to live a gay sort of life—it is their position; but I cannot make out whether it is mine. I don’t see that I am like those girls who have to go out as a matter of obedience.”

Dr. May considered, but could only say, “You are very young.”

“Too young to be independent,” sighed Meta. “I must grow old enough to be trusted alone, and in the meantime—”

“Probably an answer will be found,” said the doctor. “You and your means will find their—their vocation.”

“Marriage,” said Meta, calmly speaking the word that he had avoided. “I think not.”

“Why—” he began.

“I do not think good men like heiresses.”

He became strongly interested in a corn-field, and she resumed,

“Perhaps I should only do harm. It may be my duty to wait. All I wish to know is, whether it is?”

“I see you are not like girls who know their duty, and are restless, because it is not the duty they like.”

“Oh! I like everything. It is my liking it so much that makes me afraid.”

“Even going to Ryde?”

“Don’t I like the sailing? and seeing Harry too? I don’t feel as if that were waste, because I can sometimes spare poor Flora a little. We could not let her go alone.”

“You need never fear to be without a mission of comfort,” said Dr. May. “Your ‘spirit full of glee’ was given you for something. Your presence is far more to my poor Flora than you or she guess.”

“I never meant to leave her now,” said Meta earnestly. “I only wished to be clear whether I ought to seek for my work.”

“It will seek you, when the time comes.”

“And meantime I must do what comes to hand, and take it as humiliation that it is not in the more obviously blessed tasks! A call might come, as Cocksmoor did to Ethel. But oh! my money! Ought it to be laid up for myself?”

“For your call, when it comes,” said Dr. May, smiling; then gravely, “There are but too many calls for the interest. The principal is your trust, till the time comes.”

Meta smiled, and was pleased to think that her first-fruits would be offered to-morrow.

CHAPTER XXII

“Oh, dear!” sighed Etheldred, as she fastened her white muslin, “I’m afraid it is my nature to hate my neighbour.”

“My dear Ethel, what is coming next?” said Margaret.

“I like my neighbour at home, and whom I have to work for, very much,” said Ethel, “but oh! my neighbour that I have to be civil to!”

“Poor old King! I am afraid your day will be spoiled with all your toils as lady of the house. I wish I could help you.”

“Let me have my grumble out, and you will!” said Ethel.

“Indeed I am sorry you have this bustle, and so many to entertain, when I know you would rather have the peaceful feelings belonging to the day undisturbed. I should like to shelter you up here.”

“It is very ungrateful of me,” said Ethel, “when Dr. Spencer works so hard for us, not to be willing to grant anything to him.”

“And—but then I have none of the trouble of it—I can’t help liking the notion of sending out the Church to the island whence the Church came home to us.”

“Yes—” said Ethel, “if we could do it without holding forth!”

“Come, Ethel, it is much better than the bazaar—it is no field for vanity.”

“Certainly not,” said Ethel. “What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people’s work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no more!—And Norman! I wish I could run away!”

“Richard says we do not guess how well Norman speaks.”

“Richard thinks Norman can do anything he can’t do himself! It is all chance—he may do very well, if he gets into his ‘funny state’, but he always suffers for that, and he will certainly put one into an agony at the outset. I wish Dr. Spencer would have let him alone! And then there will be that Sir Henry, whom I can’t abide! Oh, I wish I were more charitable, like Miss Bracy and Mary, who will think all so beautiful!”

“So will you, when you come home,” said Margaret.

“If I could only be talking to Cherry, and Dame Hall! I think the school children enter into it very nicely, Margaret. Did I tell you how nicely Ellen Reid answered about the hymn, ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’? She did not seem to have made it a mere geographical lesson, like Fanny Grigg—”

Ethel’s misanthropy was happily conducted off via the Cocksmoor children, and any lingering remains were dissipated by her amusement at Dr. Spencer’s ecstasy on seeing Dr. May assume his red robe of office, to go to the minster in state, with the Town Council. He walked round and round his friend, called him Nicholas Randall redivivus, quoted Dogberry, and affronted Gertrude, who had a dim idea that he was making game of papa.

Ethel was one of those to whom representation was such a penance, that a festival, necessitating hospitality to guests of her own rank, was burden enough seriously to disturb the repose of thankfulness for the attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her, and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm service in the minster, where it was her own fault if cares haunted her, and she could confess the sin of her irritated sensations, and wishes to have all her own way, and then, as ever, be led aright into thanksgiving for the unlooked-for crowning of her labours.

The archdeacon’s sermon amplified what Margaret had that morning expressed, so as to carry on her sense of appropriateness in the offerings of the day being bestowed on distant lands.

But the ordeal was yet to come, and though blaming herself, she was anything but comfortable, as the world repaired to the Town Hall, the room where the same faces so often met for such diverse purposes—now an orrery displayed by a conceited lecturer, now a ball, now a magistrates’ meeting, a concert or a poultry show, where rival Hamburg and Dorking uplifted their voices in the places of Mario and Grisi, all beneath the benignant portrait of Nicholas Randall, ruffed, robed, square-toed, his endowment of the scholarship in his hand, and a chequered pavement at his feet.

Who knows not an S. P. G. meeting?—the gaiety of the serious, and the first public spectacle to the young, who, like Blanche and Aubrey, gaze with admiration at the rows of bonnets, and with awe at the black coats on the platform, while the relations of the said black coats suffer, like Ethel, from nervous dread of the public speaking of their best friends.

Her expectations were realised by the archdeacon’s speech, which went round in a circle, as if he could not find his way out of it. Lord Cosham was fluent, but a great many words went to very small substance; and no wonder, thought Ethel, when all they had to propose and second was the obvious fact that missions were very good things.

Dr. Hoxton pompously, Sir Henry Walkinghame creditably, assisted the ladies and gentlemen to resolve that the S. P. G. wanted help; Mr. Lake made a stammering, and Mr. Rivers, with his good-natured face, hearty manner, and good voice, came in well after him with a straightforward, speech, so brief, that Ethel gave Flora credit for the best she had yet heard.

Mr. Wilmot said something which the sharpest ears in the front row might, perhaps, have heard, and which resulted in Dr. Spencer standing up. Ethel hardly would have known who was speaking had her eyes been shut. His voice was so different, when raised and pitched, so as to show its power and sweetness; the fine polish of his manner was redoubled, and every sentence had the most graceful turn. It was like listening to a well-written book, so smooth and so fluent, and yet so earnest—his pictures of Indian life so beautiful, and his strong affection for the converts he described now and then making his eyes fill, and his voice falter, as if losing the thread of his studied composition—a true and dignified work of art, that made Dr. May whisper to Flora, “You see what he can do. They would have given anything to have had him for a lecturer.”