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

Albinia was too much demolished to recollect her two arguments, that pride on their side would only serve to make Algernon prouder, and that she did not believe that asking pardon would be so bitter a pill to Maurice as his father supposed. She could only feel thankful to have been forgiven for her own offence.

When they met at dinner, all were formal, Algernon stiff and haughty, ashamed, but too grand to betray himself, and Lucy restless and uneasy, her eyes looking as if she had been crying. When Maurice came in at dessert, the fourth part of his countenance emulating the unlucky cast in gorgeous hues of crimson and violet, Algernon was startled, and turning to Albinia, muttered something about ‘never having intended,’ and ‘having had no idea.’

He might have said more, if Mr. Kendal, with Maurice on his knee, had not looked as if he expected it; and that look sealed Albinia’s lips against expressing regret for the provocation; but Maurice exclaimed, ‘Never mind, Algernon, it was all fair, and it doesn’t hurt now. I wouldn’t have touched your image, but that I wanted to know what you would do to me. Shake hands; people always do when they’ve had a good mill.’

Mr. Kendal looked across the table to his wife in a state of unbounded exultation in his generous boy, and Albinia felt infinitely relieved and grateful. Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy took the firm young paw, and said with an attempt at condescension, ‘Very well, Maurice, the subject shall be mentioned no more, since you have received a severer lesson than I intended, and appear sensible of your error.’

‘It wasn’t you that made me so,’ began Maurice, with defiant eye; but with a strong sense of ‘let well alone,’ his father cut him short with, ‘That’s enough, my man, you’ve said all that can be wished,’ lifted him again on his knee, and stopped his mouth with almonds and raisins.

The subject was mentioned no more; Lucy considered peace as proclaimed, and herself relieved from the necessity of such an unprecedented deed as preferring an accusation against Maurice, and Albinia, unaware of the previous persecution, did not trace that Maurice considered himself as challenged to prove, that experience of his brother-in-law’s fist did not suffice to make him cease from his ‘fun.’

Two days after, Algernon was coming in from riding, when a simple voice upon the stairs observed, ‘Here’s such a pretty picture!’

‘Eh! what?’ said Algernon; and Maurice held it near to him as he stood taking off his great coat.

‘Such a pretty picture, but you mustn’t have it! No, it is Ulick’s.’

‘Heavens and earth!’ thundered Algernon, as he gathered up the meaning. ‘Who has dared—? Give it me—or—’ and as soon as he was freed from the sleeves, he snatched at the paper, but the boy had already sprung up to the first landing, and waving his treasure, shouted, ‘No, it’s not for you, I’ll not give you Ulick’s picture.’

‘Ulick!’ cried Algernon, in redoubled fury. ‘You’re put up to this! Give it me this instant, or it shall be the worse for you;’ but ere he could stride up the first flight, Maurice’s last leg was disappearing round the corner above, and the next moment the exhibition was repeated overhead in the gallery. Thither did Algernon rush headlong, following the scampering pattering feet, till the door of Maurice’s little room was slammed in his face. Bursting it open, he found the chamber empty, but there was a shout of elvish laughter outside, and a cry of dismay coming up from the garden, impelled him to mount the rickety deal-table below the deep sunk dormer window, when thrusting out his head and shoulders, he beheld his wife and her parents gazing up in terror from the lawn. No wonder, for there was a narrow ledge of leading without, upon which Maurice had suddenly appeared, running with unwavering steps till in a moment he stooped down, and popped through the similar window of Gilbert’s room.

While still too dizzy with horror to feel secure that the child was indeed safe within, those below were startled by a frantic shout from Algernon: ‘Let me out! I say, the imp has locked me in! Let me out!’

Albinia flew into the house and upstairs. Maurice was flourishing the key, and executing a war-dance before the captive’s door, with a chant alternating of war-whoops, ‘Promise not to hurt it, and I’ll let you out!’ and ‘Pity poor prisoners in a foreign land!’

She called to him to desist, but he was too wild to be checked by her voice, and as she advanced to capture him, he shot like an arrow to the other end of the passage, and down the back-stairs. She promised speedy rescue, and hurried down, hoping to seize the culprit in the hall, but he had whipped out at the back-door, and was making for the garden gate, when his father hastened down the path to meet him, and seeing his retreat cut off, he plunged into the bushes, and sprang like a cat up a cockspur-thorn, too slender for ascent by a heavier weight, and thence grinned and waved his hand to his prisoner at the window.

‘Maurice,’ called his father, ‘what does this mean?’

‘I only want to take home Ulick’s picture. Then I’ll let him out.’

‘What picture?’

‘That’s my secret.’

‘This is not play, Maurice,’ said Albinia. ‘Attend to papa.’

The boy swung the light shrub about with him in a manner fearful to behold, and looked irresolute. Lucy put in her cry, ‘You very naughty child, give up the key this moment,’ and above, Algernon bawled appeals to Mr. Kendal, and threats to Maurice.

‘Silence!’ said Mr. Kendal, sternly. ‘Maurice, this must not be. Come down, and give me the key of your room.’

‘I will, papa,’ said Maurice, in a reasonable voice. ‘Only please promise not to let Algernon have Ulick’s picture, for I got it without his knowing it.’

‘I promise,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Let us put an end to this.’

Maurice came down, and brought the key to his father, and while Lucy hastened to release her husband, Mr. Kendal seized the boy, finding him already about again to take flight.

‘Papa, let me take home Ulick’s picture before he gets out,’ said Maurice, finding the grasp too strong for him; but Mr. Kendal had taken the picture out of his hand, and looked at it with changed countenance.

It depicted the famous drawing-room scene, in its native element, the moon squinting through inky clouds at Lucy swooning on the sofa, while the lofty presence of the Polysyllable discharged the fluid from the inkstand.

‘Did Mr. O’More give you this?’ asked Mr. Kendal.

‘No, it tumbled out of his paper-case. You know he said I might go to his rooms and get the Illustrated News with the picture of Balaklava, and so the newspaper knocked the paper-case down, and all the things tumbled out, so I picked this up, and thought I would see what Algernon would say to it, and then put it back again. Let me have it, papa, if he catches me, he’ll tear it to smithereens.’

‘Don’t talk Irish, sir,’ said his father. ‘I see where your impertinence comes from, and I will put a stop to it.’

Maurice gave back a step, amazed at his father’s unwonted anger, but far greater wrath was descending in the person of Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, who came striding across the lawn, and planting himself before his father-in-law, demanded, ‘I beg to know, sir, if it is your desire that I should be deliberately insulted in this house?’

‘No one can be more concerned than I am at what has occurred.’

‘Very well, sir; then I require that this intolerable child be soundly flogged, that beggarly Irishman kicked out, and that infamous libel destroyed!’

‘Oh, papa,’ cried Maurice, ‘you promised me the picture should be safe!’

‘I promise you, you impudent brat,’ cried Algernon, ‘that you shall learn what it is to insult your elders! You shall be flogged till you repent it!’

‘You will allow me to judge of the discipline of my own family,’ said Mr. Kendal.

‘Ay! I knew how it would be! You encourage that child in every sort of unbearable impudence; but I have endured it long enough, and I give you warning that I do not remain another night under this roof unless I see the impertinence flogged out of him.’

‘Papa never whips me,’ interposed Maurice. ‘You must ask mamma.’

Mr. Kendal bit his lips, and Albinia could have smiled, but their sense of the ludicrous inflamed Algernon, and like one beside himself, he swung round, and declaring he should ask his uncle if that were proper treatment, he marched across the lawn, while Mr. Kendal exclaimed, ‘More childish than Maurice!’

‘Oh, mamma, what shall I do?’ was Lucy’s woful cry, as she turned back, finding herself unable to keep up with his huge step, and her calls disregarded.

‘My dear,’ said Albinia, affectionately, ‘you had better compose yourself and follow him. His uncle will bring him to reason, and then you can tell him how sorry we are.’

‘You may assure him,’ said Mr. Kendal, ‘that I am as much hurt as he can be, that such an improper use should have been made of O’More’s intimacy here, and I mean to mark my sense of it.’

‘And,’ said Lucy, ‘I don’t think anything would pacify him so much as Maurice being only a little beaten, not to hurt him, you know.’

‘If Maurice be punished, it shall not be in revenge,’ said Mr. Kendal.

‘I’m afraid nothing else will do,’ said Lucy, wringing her hands. ‘He has really declared that he will not sleep another night here unless Maurice is punished; and whatever he says, he’ll do, and I know it would kill me to go away in this manner.’

Her father confidently averred that he would do no such thing, but she cried so much as to move Maurice into exclaiming, ‘Look here, Lucy, I’ll come up with you, and let him give me one good punch, and then we shall all be comfortable again.’

‘I don’t know about the punching,’ said Albinia; ‘but I think the least you can do, Maurice, is to go and ask his forgiveness for having been so very naughty. You were not thinking what you were about when you locked him in.’

This measure was adopted, Mr. Kendal accompanying Lucy and the boy, while Albinia went in search of Sophy, whom she found in grandmamma’s room, looking very pale. ‘Well?’ was the inquiry, and she told what had passed.

‘I hope Maurice will be punished,’ said Sophy; so unwonted a sentiment, that Albinia quite started, though it was decidedly her own opinion.

‘That meddling with papers was very bad,’ she said, with an extenuating smile.

‘Fun is a perfect demon when it becomes master,’ said Sophy. It was plain that it was not Maurice that she was thinking of, but the caricature. Her sister should have been sacred from derision.

‘We must remember,’ she said, ‘that it was only through Maurice’s meddling that we became aware of the existence of this precious work. It is not as if he had shown it to any one.

‘How many of the O’Mores have made game of it?’ asked Sophy, bitterly. ‘No, I am glad I know of it, I shall not be deceived any more.’

With these words she withdrew, evidently resolved to put an end to the subject. Her face was like iron, and Albinia grieved for the deep resentment that the man whom she had ventured to think of as devoted to herself, had made game of her sister. Poor Sophy, to her that tryste had been a subject of unmitigated affliction and shame, and it was a cruel wound that Ulick O’More should, of all men, have turned it into ridicule. What would be the effect on her?

In process of time Mr. Kendal returned. ‘Albinia,’ he said, ‘this is a most unfortunate affair. He is perfectly impracticable, insists on starting for Paris to-morrow, and I verily believe he will.’

‘Poor Lucy.’

‘She is in such distress, that I could not bear to look at her, but he will not attend to her, nor to his uncle and aunt. Mrs. Dusautoy proposed that they should come to the vicarage, where there would be no danger of collisions with Maurice; but his mind can admit no idea but that he has been insulted, and that we encourage it, and he thinks his dignity concerned in resenting it.’

‘Not much dignity in being driven off the field by a child of six years old.’

‘So his aunt told him, but he mixes it up with O’More, and insists on my complaining to Mr. Goldsmith, and getting the lad dismissed for a libellous caricaturist, as he calls it. Now, little as I should have expected such conduct from O’More, it could not be made a ground of complaint to his uncle.’

‘I should think not. No one with more wit than Algernon would have dreamt of it! But if Ulick came and apologized? Ah! but I forgot! Mr. Goldsmith sent him to London this morning. Well, it may be better that he should be out of the way of Algernon in his present mood.’

‘Humph!’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘It is the first time I ever allowed a stranger to be intimate in my family, and it shall be the last. I never imagined him aware of the circumstance.’

‘Nor I; I am sure none of us mentioned it.’

‘Maurice told him, I suppose. It is well that we should be aware who has instigated the child’s impertinence. I shall keep him as much as possible with me; he must be cured of Irish brogue and Irish coolness before they are confirmed.’

Mr. Kendal’s conscience was evidently relieved by transferring to the Irishman the imputation of fostering Maurice’s malpractices.

They were interrupted by Lucy’s arrival. She was come to take leave of home, for her lord was not to be dissuaded from going to London by the evening’s train. The greater the consternation, the sweeter his revenge. Never able to see more than one side of a question, he could not perceive how impossible it was for the Kendals to fulfil his condition with regard to Ulick O’More, and he sullenly adhered to his obstinate determination. Lucy was in an agony of grief, and perhaps the most painful blow was the perception how little he was swayed by consideration for her. Her maid packed, while her parents tried to console her. It was easier when she bewailed the terrors of the voyage, and the uncertainty of hearing of dear grandmamma and dear Gilbert, than when she sobbed about Algernon having no feeling for her. It might be only too true, but her wifely submission ought not to have acknowledged it, and they would not hear when they could not comfort; and so they were forced to launch her on the world, with a tyrant instead of a guide, and dreading the effect of dissipation on her levity of mind, as much as they grieved for her feeble spirit. It was a piteous parting—a mournful departure for a bride—a heavy penalty for vanity and weakness.

Unfortunately the result is to an action as the lens through which it is viewed, and the turpitude of the deed seems to increase or diminish according to the effect it produces.

Had it been in Algernon Dusautoy’s nature to receive the joke good-humouredly, it might have been regarded as an audacious exercise of wit, and have been quickly forgotten, but when it had actually made a breach between him and his wife’s family, and driven him from Bayford when everything conspired to make his departure unfeelingly cruel, the caricature was regarded as a serious insult and an abuse of intimacy. Even Mr. Kendal was not superior to this view, feeling the offence with all the sensitiveness of a hot-tempered man, a proud reserved guardian of the sanctities of home, and of a father who had seen his daughter’s weakest and most faulty action turned into ridicule, and he seemed to feel himself bound to atone for not going to all the lengths to which Algernon would have impelled him, by showing the utmost displeasure within the bounds of common sense.

Albinia, better appreciating the irresistibly ludicrous aspect of the adventure, argued that the sketch harmlessly shut up in a paper-case showed no great amount of insolence, and that considering how the discovery had been made, it ought not to be visited. She thought the drawing had better be restored without remarks by the same hand that had abstracted it; but Mr. Kendal sternly declared this was impossible, and Sophy’s countenance seconded him.

‘Well, then,’ said Albinia, ‘put it into my hands. I’m a bad manager in general, but I can promise that Ulick will come down so shocked and concerned, that you will not have the heart not to forgive him.’

‘The question is not of forgiveness,’ said Sophy, in the most rigid of voices, as she saw yielding in her father’s face; if any one had to forgive, it was poor Lucy and Algernon. All we have to do, is to be on our guard for the future.’

‘Sophy is right,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘intimacy must be over with one who has so little discretion or good taste.’

‘Then after his saving Maurice, he is to be given up, because he quizzed the Polysyllable?’ cried Albinia.

‘I do not give him up,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘I highly esteem his good qualities, and should be happy to do him a service, but I cannot have my family at the mercy of his wit, nor my child taught disrespect. We have been unwisely familiar, and must retreat.’

‘And what do you mean us to do?’ exclaimed Albinia. ‘Are we to cut him systematically?’

‘I do not know what course you may adopt,’ said Mr. Kendal, in a tone whose grave precision rebuked her half petulant, half facetious inquiry. ‘I have told you that I do not mean to do anything extravagant, nor to discontinue ordinary civilities, but I think you will find that our former habits are not resumed.’

‘And Maurice must not be always with him,’ said Sophy.

‘Certainly not; I shall keep the boy with myself.’

It was with the greatest effort that Albinia held her tongue. To have Sophy not only making common cause against her, but inciting her father to interfere about Maurice, was well-nigh intolerable, and she only endured it by sealing her lips as with a bar of iron.

By-and-by came the reflection that if poor Sophy had a secret cause of bitterness, it was she herself who had given those thoughts substance and consciousness, and she quickly forgave every one save herself and Algernon.

As to her little traitor son, she took him seriously in hand at bedtime, and argued the whole transaction with him, representing the dreadful consequences of meddling with people’s private papers under trust. Here was poor Lucy taken away from home, and papa made very angry with Ulick, because Maurice had been meddlesome and mischievous; and though he had not been beaten for it, he would find it a worse punishment not to be trusted another time, nor allowed to be with Ulick.

Maurice turned round with mouth open at hearing of papa’s anger with Ulick, and the accusation of having brought his friend into trouble.

‘Why, Maurice, you remember how unhappy we were, Gilbert and all. It was because it was sadly wrong of Gilbert and Lucy to have let Algernon in without papa’s knowing it, and it was not right or friendly in Ulick to laugh at what was so wrong, and grieved us all so much.’

‘It was such fun,’ said Maurice.

‘Yes, Maurice; but fun is no excuse for doing what is unkind and mischievous. Ulick would not have been amused if he had cared as much for us as we thought he did, but, after all, his drawing the picture would have done no harm but for a little boy, whom he trusted, never thinking that an unkind wish to tease, would betray this foolish action, and set his best friends against him.’

‘I did not know I should,’ said Maurice, winking hard.

‘No; you did not know you were doing what, if you were older, would have been dishonourable.’

That word was too much! First he hid his face from his mother, and cried out fiercely, ‘I’ve not—I’ve not been that and clenched his fist. ‘Don’t say it, mamma.’

‘If you had known what you were doing, it would have been dishonourable,’ she repeated, gravely. ‘It will be a long time before you earn trust and confidence again.’

There was a great struggle with his tears. She had punished him, and almost more than she could bear to see, but she knew the conquest must be secured, and she tried, while she caressed him, to make him look at the real cause of his lapse; he declared that it was ‘such fun’ to provoke Algernon, and a little more brought out a confession of the whole course of persecution, the child’s voice becoming quite triumphant as he told of the success of his tricks, and his mother, though appalled at their audacity, with great difficulty hindering herself from manifesting her amusement.

She did not wonder at Algernon’s having found it intolerable, and though angry with him for having made himself such fair game, she set to work to impress upon Maurice his own errors, and the hatefulness of practical jokes, and she succeeded so far as to leave him crying himself to sleep, completely subdued, while she felt as if all the tears ought to have been shed by herself for her want of vigilance.

Conflicting duties! how hard to strike the balance! She had readily given up her own pleasures for the care of Mrs. Meadows, but when it came to her son’s training, it was another question.

She much wished to see the note with which Mr. Kendal returned the unfortunate sketch, but one of the points on which he was sensitive, was the sacredness of his correspondence, and all that she heard was, that Ulick had answered ‘not at all as Mr. Kendal had expected; he was nothing but an Irishman, after all.’ But at last she obtained a sight of the note.

‘Bayford, Nov. 20th, 1854.

‘Dear Sir,

‘I was much astonished at the contents of your letter of this morning, and greatly concerned that Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy should have done so much honour to any production of mine, as to alter his arrangements on that account.

‘As the scrawl in question was not meant to meet the eye of any living being, I should, for my own part, have considered it proper to take no notice of what was betrayed by mere accident. I should have considered it more conducive to confidence between gentlemen. I fully acquiesce in what you say of the cessation of our former terms of acquaintance, and with many thanks for past kindness, believe me,

‘Your obedient servant,‘U. O’MORE.’

Nothing was more evidently written in a passion at the invasion of these private papers, and Albinia, though she had always feared he might consider himself the aggrieved party, had hardly expected so much proud irritation and so little regret. Mr. Kendal called him ‘foolish boy,’ and tried to put the matter aside, but he was much hurt, and Ulick put himself decidedly in the wrong by passing in the street with a formal bow, when Mr. Kendal, according to his purpose of ordinary civility without an open rupture, would have shaken hands.

Sophy looked white, stern, and cold, but said not a word; she deepened her father’s displeasure quite sufficiently by her countenance. His was grave disappointment in a youth whom he found less grateful than he thought he had a right to expect; hers was the rankling of what she deemed an insult to her sister, and the festering of a wound of which she was ashamed. She meant to bear it well, but it made her very hard and rigid, and even the children could hardly extract a smile from her. She seemed to have made a determination to do all that Lucy or herself had ever done, and more too, and listened to no entreaties to spare herself. Commands were met with sullen resignation, entreaties were unavailing, and both in the sickroom and the parish, she insisted on working beyond her powers. It was a nightly battle to send her to bed, and Albinia suspected that she did not sleep. Meantime Lucy had sailed, and was presently heard of in a whirl of excitement that shortened her letters, and made them joyous and self-important.

‘Ah!’ said Sophy, ‘she will soon forget that she ever had a home.’

‘Poor dear! Wait till trouble comes, and she will remember it only too sadly,’ sighed Albinia.

‘Trouble is certain enough,’ said Sophy; ‘but I don’t think what we deserve does us much good.’

Sophy could see nothing but the most ungentle and gloomy aspects. Gilbert had not yet written, and she was convinced that he was either very ill, or had only recovered to be killed at Inkermann, and she would only sigh at the Gazette that announced Lieutenant Gilbert Kendal’s promotion to be Captain, and Major the Honourable Frederick Ferrars to be Lieutenant-Colonel.

The day after, however, came the long expected letter from the captain himself. It was to Mrs. Kendal, and she detected a shade of disappointment on her husband’s face, so she would have handed it to him at once, but he said, ‘No, the person to whom the letter is addressed, should always be the first to read it.’

The letter began with Gilbert’s happiness in those from home, which he called the greatest pleasure he had ever known. He feared he had caused uneasiness by not writing sooner, but it had been out of his power while Fred Ferrars was in danger. Then followed the account of the severe illness from which Fred was scarcely beginning to rally, though that morning, on hearing that he was to be sent home as soon as he could move, he had talked about Canada and Emily. Gilbert said that not only time but strength had been wanting for writing, for attendance on Fred had been all that he could attempt, since moving produced so much pain and loss of breath, that he had been forced to be absolutely still whenever he was not wanted, but he was now much better. ‘Though,’ he continued, ‘I do not now mind telling you that I had thought myself gone. You, who have known all my feelings, and have borne with them so kindly, will understand the effect upon me, when on the night previous to the 25th, I distinctly heard my own name, in Edmund’s voice, at the head of my bed, just as he used to call me when he had finished his lessons, and wanted me to come out with him. As I started up, I heard it again outside the tent. I ran to the door, but of course there was nothing, nor did poor Wynne hear anything. I lay awake for some time, but slept at last, and had forgotten all by morning. It did not even occur to me when I saw the pleasant race they had cut out for us, nor through the whole affair. Do not ask me to describe it, the scene haunts me enough. When I found that I had not come off unhurt, and it seemed as if I could not ask for one of our fellows but to hear he was dead or dying, poor Wynne among them, then the voice seemed a summons. I was thoroughly done up, and could not even speak when General Ferrars came to me; I only wanted to be let alone to die in peace. I fancy I slept, for the next thing I heard was the Major’s voice asking for some water, too feebly to wake the fellow who had been left in charge. I got up, and found him in a state of high fever and great pain, and from that time to the present, I have hardly thought of the circumstance, and know not why I have now written it to you. Did my danger actually bring Edmund nearer, or did its presence act on my imagination? Be that as it may, I think, after the first impression of awe and terror, the having heard the dear old voice braced me, and gave me a sense of being near home and less lonely. Not that my hurt has been for an instant dangerous, and I am mending every day; if it were warmer I should get on faster, but I cannot stir into the air without bringing on cough. Tell Ulick O’More that we entertained his brother at tea last evening, we were obliged to desire him to bring his own cup, and he produced the shell of a land tortoise; it was very like the fox and the crane. Poor fellow, it was the first good meal he had for weeks, and I was glad he came in for some famous bread that the General had sent us in. He made us much more merry than was convenient to either of us, not being in condition for laughing. He is a fine lad, and liked by all.’ Then came a break, and the letter closed with such tidings of Inkermann as had reached the invalid’s tent.