The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes

‘I’ve been at—at Brighton, dear grandmamma,’ said Lucy, so much agitated as scarcely to be able to recall the name, or utter the words.

‘And—I say, my dear love,’ said Mrs. Meadows, earnestly and mysteriously, ‘have you seen him?’

Poor Lucy turned scarlet with distress and confusion, but she was held fast, and grandmamma pursued, ‘I’m sure he has not his equal for handsomeness and stateliness, and there must have been a pair of you.’

‘Dear grandmamma, we must let Lucy go and take off her things; she shall come back presently, but she has had a long journey,’ interposed Albinia, seeing her ready to sink into the earth.

But Mrs. Meadows had roused into eagerness, and would not let her go. ‘I hope you danced with him, dear,’ she went on; ‘and it’s all nonsense about his being high and silent. Your papa is bent on it, and you’ll live like a princess in India.’

‘She takes you for your mother—she means papa, whispered Albinia, not without a secret flash at once of indignation at perceiving how his first love had been wasted, yet of exultation in finding that no one but herself had known how to love him; but poor Lucy, completely and helplessly overcome, could only exclaim in a faltering voice: ‘Oh, grandmamma, don’t—’ and Albinia was forced to disengage her, support her out of the room, and leaving her to her sister, hasten back to soothe the old lady, who had been terrified by her emotion. It had been a great mistake to bring her in abruptly, when tired with her journey, and not fully aware what awaited her. But there was at that time reason to think all would soon be over, and Albinia was startled and confused.

Albinia had hitherto been the only efficient nurse of the family. Sophy’s presence seemed to stir up instincts of the old wrangling habits, and the invalid was always fretful when left to her, so that to her own exceeding distress she was kept almost entirely out of the sick room.

Lucy, on the other hand, was extremely valuable there, her bright manner and unfailing chatter always amused if needful, and her light step and tender hand made her useful, and highly appreciated by the regular nurse.

For the first few days, they watched in awe for the last dread summons, but gradually it was impossible not to become in a manner habituated to the suspense, so that common things resumed their interest, and though Sophy was pained by the incongruity, it could not have been otherwise without the spirits and health giving way under the strain. Nothing could be more trying than to have the mind wrought up to hourly anticipation of the last parting, and then the delay, without the reaction of recovery, the spirit beyond all reach of intercourse, and the mortal frame languishing and drooping. Mr. Kendal had from the first contemplated the possibility of the long duration of such lingering, and did his utmost to promote such enlivenment and change for the attendants as was consistent with their care of the sufferer. They never dared to be all beyond call at once, since a very little agitation might easily suffice to bring on a fatal attack, and Albinia and Lucy were forced to share the hours of exercise and employment between them, and often Albinia could not leave the house and garden at all.

Gilbert was an excellent auxiliary, and would devote many an hour to the cheering of the poor shattered mind. His entrance seldom failed to break the thread of melancholy murmurs, and he had exactly the gentle, bright attentive manner best fitted to rouse and enliven. Nothing could be more irreproachable, than his conduct, and his consideration and gentleness so much endeared him, that he had never been so much at peace. All he dreaded was the leaving what was truly to him the sanctuary of home, he feared alike temptation and the effort of resistance and could not bear to go away when his grandmother was in so precarious a state, and he could so much lighten Mrs. Kendal’s cares both by being with her, and by watching over Maurice. His parents were almost equally afraid of trusting him in the world; and the embodiment of the militia for the county offered a quasi profession, which would keep him at home and yet give him employment. He was very anxious to be allowed to apply for a commission, and pleaded so earnestly and humbly that it would be his best hope of avoiding his former errors, that Mr. Kendal yielded, though with doubt whether it would be well to confine him to so narrow a sphere. Meantime the corps was quartered at Bayford, and filled the streets with awkward louts in red jackets, who were inveterate in mistaking the right for the left, Gilbert had a certain shy pride in his soldiership, and Maurice stepped like a young Field Marshal when he saw his brother saluted.

Nothing had so much decided this step as the finding that young Dusautoy was to return to his college after Easter. He was at the Vicarage again, marking his haughty avoidance of the Kendal family, and to their great joy, Lucy did not appear distressed, she was completely absorbed in her grandmother, and shrank from all allusion to her lover. Had the small flutter of vanity been cured by a glimpse beyond her own corner of the world?

But soon Albinia became sensible of an alteration in Gilbert. He had no sooner settled completely into his new employment, than a certain restless dissatisfaction seemed to have possessed him. He was fastidious at his meals, grumbled at his horse, scolded the groom, had fits of petulance towards his brother, and almost neglected Mrs. Meadows. No one could wonder at a youth growing weary of such attendance, but his tenderness and amiability had been his best points, and it was grievous to find them failing. Albinia would have charged the alteration on his brother officers, if they had not been a very steady and humdrum set, whose society Gilbert certainly did not prefer. She was more uneasy at finding that he sometimes saw Algernon Dusautoy, though for Lucy’s sake, he always avoided bringing his name forward.

A woman was ill in the bargeman’s cottage by the towing-path, and Albinia had walked to see her. As she came down-stairs, she heard voices, and beheld Mr. Hope evidently on the same errand with herself, talking to Gilbert. She caught the words, ere she could safely descend the rickety staircase, Gilbert was saying,

‘Oh! some happy pair from the High Street!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Hope, ‘I am so blind, I really took it for your sister, but our shopkeepers’ daughters do dress so!’

Albinia looking in the same direction, beheld in a walk that skirted the meadow towards the wood, two figures, of which only one was clearly visible, it was nearly a quarter of a mile off, but there was something about it that made her exclaim, ‘Why, that’s Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy! whom can he be walking with?’

Gilbert started violently at hearing her behind him, and a word or two of greeting passed with Mr. Hope, then there was some spying at the pair, but they were getting further off, and disappeared in the wood, while Gilbert, screwing up his eyes, and stammering, declared he did not know; it might be, he did not think any one could be recognised at such a distance; and then saying that he had fallen in with Mr. Hope by chance, he hastened on. The curate made a brief visit, and walked home with her, examining her on her impression that the gentleman was young Dusautoy, and finally consulting her on the expediency of mentioning the suspicion to the vicar, in case he should be deluding some foolish tradesman’s daughter. Albinia strongly advised his doing so; she had much faith in her own keen eyesight, and could not mistake the majestic mien of Algernon; she thought the vicar ought at once to be warned, but felt relieved that it was not her part to speak.

She was very glad when Mr. Hope took an opportunity of telling her that young Dusautoy was going to the Greenaways in a day or two.

As to Gilbert, it was as if this departure had relieved him from an incubus; he was in better spirits from that moment, and returned to his habits of kindness to both grandmamma and Maurice.

The manifold duties of head sick-nurse, governess, and housekeeper, were apt to clash, and valiant and unwearied as Albinia was, she was obliged perforce to leave the children more to others than she would have preferred. Little Albinia was all docility and sweetness, and already did such wonders with her ivory letters, that the exulting Sophy tried to abash Maurice by auguring that she would be the first to read; to which, undaunted, he replied, ‘She’ll never be a boy!’ Nevertheless Maurice was developing a species of conscience, rendering him trustworthy and obedient out of sight, better, in fact, alone with his own honour and his mother’s commands, than with any authority that he could defy. He knew when his father meant to be obeyed, and Gilbert managed him easily; but he warred with Lucy, ruled Sophy, and had no chivalry for any one but little Albinia, nor obedience except for his mother, and was a terror to maid-servants and elder children. With much of promise, he was anything but an agreeable child, and whilst no one but herself ever punished, contradicted, or complained of him, Albinia had a task that would have made her very uneasy, had not her mind been too fresh and strong for over-sense of responsibility. Each immediate duty in its turn was sufficient for her.

Maurice’s shadow-like pursuit of Gilbert often took him off her hands. It might sometimes be troublesome to the elder brother, and now and then rewarded with a petulant rebuff, but Maurice was only the more pertinacious, and on the whole his allegiance was requited with ardent affection and unbounded indulgence. Nay, once when Maurice and his pony, one or both, were swept on by the whole hunt, and obliged to follow the hounds, Gilbert in his anxiety took leaps that he shuddered to remember, while the urchin sat the first gallantly, and though he fell into the next ditch, scrambled up on the instant, and was borne by his spirited pony over two more, amid universal applause. Mr. Nugent himself rode home with the brothers to tell the story; papa and mamma were too much elated at his prowess to scold.

The eventful year 1854 had begun, and General Ferrars was summoned from Canada to a command in the East. On his arrival in England, he wrote to his brother and sister to meet him in London, and the aunts, delighted to gather their children once more round them, sent pressing invitations, only regretting that there was not room enough in the Family Office for the younger branches.

Mr. Ferrars’ first measure was to ride to Willow Lawn. Knocking at the door of his sister’s morning-room, he found Maurice with a pouting lip, back rounded, and legs twisted, standing upon his elbows, which were planted upon the table on either side of a calico spelling-book. Mr. Kendal stood up straight before the fire, looking distressed and perplexed, and Albinia sat by, a little worn, a little irritable, and with the expression of a wilful victim.

All greeted the new-comer warmly, and Maurice exclaimed, ‘Mamma, I may have a holiday now!’

‘Not till you have learnt your spelling.’ There was some sharpness in the tone, and Maurice’s shoulder-blades looked sulky.

‘In consideration of his uncle,’ began Mr. Kendal, but she put her hand on the boy, saying, ‘You know we agreed there were to be no holidays for a week, because we did not use the last properly.’

He moved off disconsolately, and his father said, ‘I hope you are come to arrange the journey to London. Is Winifred coming with you?’

‘No; a hurry and confusion, and the good aunts would be too much for her, you will be the only one for inspection.’

‘Yes, take him with you, Maurice,’ said Albinia, ‘he must see William.’

‘You must be the exhibitor, then,’ her brother replied.

‘Now, Maurice, I know what you are come for, but you ought to know better than to persuade me, when you know there are six good reasons against my going.’

‘I know of one worth all the six.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘I have been telling her that she is convincing me that I did wrong in allowing her to burthen herself with this charge.’

‘That’s nothing to the purpose,’ said Albinia; ‘having undertaken it, when you all saw the necessity, I cannot forsake it now—’

‘If Mrs. Meadows were in the same condition as she was in two months ago, there might be a doubt,’ said Mr. Kendal; but she is less dependent on your attention, and Lucy and Gilbert are most anxious to devote themselves to her in your absence.’

‘I know they all wish to be kind, but if anything went wrong, I should never forgive myself!’

‘Not if you went out for pleasure alone,’ said her brother; ‘but relationship has demands.’

‘Of course,’ she said, petulantly, ‘if Edmund is resolved, I must go, but that does not convince me that it is right to leave everything to run riot here.’

Mr. Kendal looked serious, and Mr. Ferrars feared that the winter cares had so far told on her temper, that perplexity made her wilful in self-sacrifice. There was a pause, but just as she began to perceive she had said something wrong, the lesser Maurice burst out in exultation,

‘There, it is not indestructible!’

‘What mischief have you been about?’ The question was needless, for the table was strewn with snips of calico.

‘This nasty spelling-book! Lucy said it was called indestructible, because nobody could destroy it, but I’ve taken my new knife to it. And see there!’

‘And now can you make another?’ said his uncle.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Nor one either, sir,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘What shall we have to tell Uncle William about you! I’m afraid you are one of the chief causes of mamma not knowing how to go to London.’

Maurice did not appear on the way to penitence, but his mother said, ‘Bring me your knife.’

He hung down his head, and obeyed without a word. She closed it, and laid it on the mantel-shelf, which served as a sort of pound for properties in sequestration.

‘Now, then, go,’ she said, ‘you are too naughty for me to attend to you.’

‘But when will you, mamma?’ laying a hand on her dress.

‘I don’t know. Go away now.’

He slowly obeyed, and as the door shut, she said, ‘There!’ in a tone as if her view was established.

‘You must send him to Fairmead,’ said the uncle.

‘To “terrify” Winifred? No, no, I know better than that; Gilbert can look after him. I don’t so much care about that.’

The admission was eagerly hailed, and objection after objection removed, and having recovered her good humour, she was candid, and owned how much she wished to go. ‘I really want to make acquaintance with William. I’ve never seen him since I came to my senses, and have only taken him on trust from you.’

‘I wish equally that he should see you,’ said her brother. ‘It would be good for him, and I doubt whether he has any conception what you are like.’

‘I’d better stay at home, to leave you and Edmund to depict for his benefit a model impossible idol—the normal woman.’

Maurice looked at her, and shook his head.

‘No—it would be rather—it and its young one, eh?’

Maurice took both her hands. ‘I should not like to tell William what I shall believe if you do not come.’

‘Well, what—’

‘That Edmund is right, and you have been overtasked till you are careful and troubled about many things.’

‘Only too much bent on generous self-devotion,’ said Mr. Kendal, eagerly; ‘too unselfish to cast the balance of duties.’

‘Hush, Edmund,’ said Albinia. ‘I don’t deserve fine words. I honestly believe I want to do what is right, but I can’t be sure what it is, and I have made quite fuss enough, so you two shall decide, and then I shall be made right anyway. Only do it from your consciences.’

They looked at each other, taken aback by the sudden surrender. Mr. Ferrars waited, and her husband said, ‘She ought to see her brother. She needs the change, and there is no sufficient cause to detain her.’

‘She must be content sometimes to trust,’ said Mr. Ferrars.

‘Aye, and all that will go wrong, when my back is turned.’

‘Let it,’ said her brother. ‘The right which depends on a single human eye is not good for much. Let the weeds grow, or you can’t pull them up.’

‘Let the mice play, that the cat may catch them,’ said Albinia, striving to hide her care. ‘One good effect is, that Edmund has not begun to groan.’

Indeed, in his anxiety that she should consent to enjoy herself, he had not had time to shrink from the introduction.

Outside the door they found Maurice waiting, his spelling learnt from a fragment of the indestructible spelling-book, and the question followed, ‘Now, mamma, you wont say I’m too naughty for you to go to London and see Uncle William?’

‘No, my little boy, I mean to trust you, and tell Uncle William that my young soldier is learning the soldier’s first duty—obedience.’

‘And may I have my knife, mamma?’

Papa had settled that question by himself taking it off the chimney-piece and restoring it. If mamma wished the penance to have been longer, she neither looked it nor said it.

The young people received the decision with acclamation, and the two elder ones vied with one another in attempts to set her mind at rest by undertaking everything, and promising for themselves and the children perfect regularity and harmony. Sophy, with a bluntness that King Lear would have highly disapproved, said, ‘She was glad mamma was going, but she knew they should be all at sixes and sevens. She would do her best, and very bad it would be.’

‘Not if you don’t make up your mind beforehand that it must be bad,’ said her uncle.

Sophy smiled, she was much less impervious to cheerful auguries, and spoke with gladness of the pleasure it would give her friend Genevieve to see Mrs. Kendal.

Mr. Ferrars had a short interview with Ulick, and was amused by observing that little Maurice had learnt as much Irish as Ulick had dropped. After the passing fever about his O had subsided, he was parting with some of his ultra-nationality. The whirr of his R’s and his Irish idioms were far less perceptible, and though a word of attack on his country would put him on his mettle, and bring out the Kelt in full force, yet in his reasonable state, his good sense and love of order showed an evident development, and instead of contending that Galway was the most perfect county in the world, he only said it might yet be so.

‘Isn’t he a noble fellow?’ cried Albinia, warmly.

‘Yes,’ said her brother; ‘I doubt whether all the O’Mores put together have ever made such a conquest as he has.’

‘It was fun to see how the aunts were dismayed to find one of the horde in full force here. I believe it was as a measure of precaution that they took Lucy away. I was very glad for Lucy to go, but hers was not exactly the danger.’

‘Ha!’ said Maurice; and Albinia blushed. Whereupon he said interrogatively, ‘Hem?’ which made her laugh so consciously that he added, ‘Don’t you go and be romantic about either of your young ladies, or there will be a general burning of fingers.’

‘If you knew all our secrets, Maurice, you would think me a model of prudence and forbearance.’

‘Ho!’ was his next interjection, ‘so much the worse. For my own part, I don’t expect prudence will come to you naturally till the little Awk has a lover.’

‘Won’t it come any other way?’

‘Yes, in one way,’ he said, gravely.

‘And that way is not easily found by those who have neither humility nor patience,’ she said, sadly, ‘who rush on their own will.’

‘Nay, Albinia, it is being sought, I do believe; and remember the lines—

  “Thine own mild energy bestow,   And deepen while thou bidst it flow,More calm our stream of love.”’

Forced to resign herself to her holiday, Albinia did so with a good grace, in imitation of her brother, who assured her that he had brought a bottle of Lethe, and had therein drowned wife, children, and parish. Mr. Kendal’s spirits, as usual, rose higher every mile from Bayford, and they were a very lively party when they arrived in Mayfair.

The good aunts were delighted to have round them all those whom they called their children; all except Fred, whom the new arrangements had sent to rejoin his regiment in Ireland.

Sinewy, spare, and wiry, with keen gray eyes under straight brows, narrow temples, a sunburnt face, and alert, upright bearing and quick step, William Ferrars was every inch a soldier; but nothing so much struck Mr. and Mrs. Kendal as the likeness to their little Maurice, though it consisted more in air and gesture than in feature. His speech was brief and to the point, softened into delicately-polished courtesy towards womankind, in the condescension of strength to weakness—the quality he evidently thought their chief characteristic.

Albinia was amused as she watched him with grown-up eyes, and compared present with past impressions. She could now imagine that she had been an inconvenient charge to a young soldier brother, and that he had been glad to make her over to the aunts, only petting and indulging her as a child; looking down on her fancies, and smiling at her sauciness when she was an enthusiastic maiden—treatment which she had so much resented, that she had direfully offended Maurice by pronouncing William a mere martinet, when she was hurt at his neither reading the Curse of Kehama, nor entering into her plans for Fairmead school.

Having herself become a worker, she could better appreciate a man who had seen and acted instead of reading, recollected herself as an emanation of conceit, and felt shy and anxious, even more for her husband than for herself. How would the scholar and the soldier fare together? and could she and Maurice keep them from wearying of each other? She had little trust in her own fascinations, though she saw the General’s eye approvingly fixed on her, and believing herself to be a more pleasing object in her womanly bloom than in her unformed girlhood.

‘How does the Montreal affair go on?’ she asked.

‘What affair?’

‘Fred and Miss Kinnaird.’

‘I am sorry to say he has not put it out of his head.’

‘Surely she is a very nice person.’

‘Pshaw! He has no right to think of a wife these dozen years.’

‘Not even think? When he is not to have one at any rate till he is a field officer!’

‘And he is a fool to have one then. A mere encumbrance to himself and the entire corps.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Albinia, ‘she always gets the best cabin.’

‘And that is no place for her! No man, as I have told Fred over and over again, ought to drag a woman into hardships for which she is not fitted, and where she interferes with his effectiveness and the comfort of every one else.’

The identical lecture of twelve years since, when he had feared Albinia’s becoming this inconvenient appendage! If he had repeated it on all like occasions, she did not wonder that it had wearied his aide-de-camp.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘the backwoods may have fitted Miss Emily for the life; and I can’t but be glad of Fred’s having been steady to anything.’

Considering this speech like the Kehama days, the General went on to dilate on the damage that marriage was to the ‘service,’ removing the best officers, first from the mess, and then from the army.

‘What a pity William was born too late to be a Knight of St. John!’ said Albinia.

All laughed, but she doubted whether he were pleased, for he addressed himself to one of the aunts, while Maurice spoke to her in an under tone—‘I believe he is quite right. Homes are better for the individual man, but not for the service. How remarkably the analogy holds with this other service!’

‘You mean what St. Paul says of the married and unmarried?’

‘I always think he and his sayings are the most living lessons I know on the requirements of the other army.’

Albinia mused on the insensible change in Maurice. He had not embraced his profession entirely by choice. It had always been understood that one of the younger branches must take the family living; and as Fred had spurned study, he had been bred up to consider it as his fate, and if he had ever had other wishes, he had entirely accepted his destiny, and sincerely turned to his vocation. The knowledge that he must be a clergyman had ruled him and formed him from his youth, and acting through him on his sister, had rendered her more than the accomplished, prosperous young lady her aunts meant to have made her. Yet, even up to a year or two after his Ordination, there had been a sense of sacrifice; he loved sporting, and even balls, and it had been an effort to renounce them. He had avoided coming to London because his keen enjoyment of society tended to make him discontented with his narrow sphere; she had even known him to hesitate to ride with the staff at a review, lest he should make himself liable to repinings. And now how entirely had all this passed away, not merely by outgrowing the enterprising temper and boyish habits, nor by contentment in a happy home, but by the sufficiency and rest of his service, the engrossment in the charge from his great Captain. Without being himself aware of it, he had ceased to distrust a holiday, because it was no longer a temptation; and his animation and mirth were the more free, because self-regulation was so thoroughly established, that restraint was no longer felt.