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

A few lines from General Ferrars spoke of the improvement in both patients, adding that Fred had had a hard struggle for his life, and had only been saved, by Gilbert’s unremitting care by day and night.

Heroism had not transformed Gilbert, and Albinia’s old fondness glowed with double ardour as she mused over his history of the battle-eve. His father attributed the impression to a mind full of presage and excitement, acted upon by strong memory; but woman-like, Albinia preferred the belief that the one twin might have been an actual messenger to cheer and strengthen the other for the coming trial. Sophy only said, ‘Gilbert’s fancies as usual.’

‘This was not like fancy,’ said Albinia. ‘This is an unkind way of taking it.’

‘It is common sense,’ she bluntly answered. ‘I don’t see why he should think that Edmund has nothing better to do than to call him. It would be childish.’

Albinia did not reply, disturbed by this display of jealousy and harshness, as if every bud of tenderness had been dried up and withered, and poor Sophy only wanted to run counter to any obvious sentiment.

Albinia was grateful for the message which gave her an excuse for seeking Ulick out, and endeavouring to conciliate him. Mr. Kendal made no objection, and expressed a hope that he might have become reasonable. She therefore contrived to waylay him in the November darkness, holding out her hand so that he took it at unawares, as if not recollecting that he was offended, but in the midst his grasp relaxed, and his head went up.

‘I have a message for you from Gilbert about your brother Bryan,’ she said, and he could not defend himself from manifesting eager interest, as she told of the tea-party; but that over, it was in stiff formal English that he said, ‘I hope you had a good account.’

It struck a chill, and she answered, almost imploringly, ‘Gilbert is much better, thank you.’

‘I am glad to hear it;’ and he was going to bow and pass on, when she exclaimed,

‘Ulick, why are we strangers?’

‘It was agreed on all hands that things past could not be undone,’ he frigidly replied.

‘Too true,’ she said; ‘but I do not think you know how sorry we are for my poor little boy’s foolish trick.’

‘I owe no displeasure to Maurice. He knew no more what he was doing than if he had been a gust of wind; but if the wind had borne a private paper to my feet, I would never have acted on the contents.’

‘Unhappily,’ said Albinia, ‘some revelations, though received against our will, cannot help being felt. We saw the drawing before we knew how he came by it, and you cannot wonder that it gave pain to find that a scene so distressing to us should have furnished you with amusement. It was absurd in itself, but we had hoped it was a secret, and it wounded us because we thought you would have been tender of our feelings.’

‘You don’t mean that it was fact!’ cried Ulick, stopping suddenly; and as her silence replied, he continued, ‘I give you my word and honour that I never imagined there was a word of truth in the farrago old Biddy told me, and I’ll not deny that I did scrawl the scene down as the very picture of a bit of slander. I only wonder I’d not brought it to yourself.’

‘Pray let me hear what she told you.’

‘Oh! she said they two had been colloguing together by moonlight, and you came home in the midst, and Miss Kendal fainted away, so he catches up the ink and throws it over her instead of water, and you and Mr. Kendal came in and were mad entirely; and Mr. Kendal threatened to brain him with the poker if he did not quit it that instant, and sent Gilbert for a soldier for opening the door to him, but you and Lucy went down on your bare knees to get him to relent.’

‘Well, I own the poker does throw an air of improbability over the whole. Minus that and the knees, I am afraid it is only too true. I suppose it got abroad through the servants.’

‘It was an unlucky goose-quill that lay so handy,’ exclaimed Ulick; ‘but you may credit me, no eye but my own ever saw the scrawl, nor would have seen it.’

‘Then, Ulick, if we all own that something is to be regretted, why do we stand aloof, and persist in quarrelling?’

‘I want no quarrel,’ said Ulick, stiffly. ‘Mr. Kendal intimated to me that he did not wish for my company, and I’m not the man to force it.’

‘Oh, Ulick, this is not what I hoped from you!’

‘I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Kendal, you could talk over the Giant’s Causeway if you had a mind,’ said Ulick, with much agitation; ‘but you must not talk over me, for your own judgment would be against it. You know what I am, and what I came of, and what have I in the world except the honour of a gentleman? Mr. Kendal and yourself have been my kindest friends, and I’ll be grateful to my dying day; but if Mr. Kendal thinks I can submit tamely when he resents what he never ought to have noticed, why, then, what have I to do but to show him the difference? If his kindness was to me as a gentleman and his equal, I love and bless him for it, but if it be a patronizing of the poor clerk, why, then, I owe it to myself and my people to show that I can stand alone, without cringing, and being thankful for affronts.’

‘Did it ever occur to you to think whether pride be a sin?’

‘’Tis not pride!’ cried Ulick. It is my duty to my family and my name. You’d say yourself, as you allowed before now, that it would be mere meanness and servility to swallow insults for one’s own profit; and if I were to say “you’re welcome, with many thanks, to shuffle over my private papers, and call myself to account,” I’d better have given up my name at once, for I’d have left the gentleman behind me.’

‘I do believe it is solely for the O’Mores that you are making a duty of implacability!’

‘It is a duty not to run from one’s word, and debase oneself for one’s own advantage.’

‘One would think some wonderful advantage was held out to you.’

‘The pleasantest hours of my life,’ murmured he sadly, under his breath.

‘Well, Ulick,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘I’m not quite dissatisfied; I think some day even an O’More will see that there is no exception from the law of forgiveness in their special favour, and that you will not be able to go on resenting what we have suffered from the young of the spider-monkey.’

Even this allusion produced no outward effect; he only shook hands gravely, saying, ‘I never did otherwise than forgive, and regret the consequences: I am very thankful for all your past kindness.’

Worse than the Giant’s Causeway, thought Albinia as she parted from him. Nothing is so hopeless as that sort of forgiveness, because it satisfies the conscience.

Mr. Kendal predicted that, the Keltic dignity having been asserted, good sense and principle would restore things to a rational footing. What this meant might be uncertain, but he certainly missed Prometheus, and found Maurice a poor substitute. Indulgence itself could hardly hold out in unmitigated intercourse with an obstreperous dunce not seven years old, and Maurice, deprived of Gilbert, cut off from Ulick, with mamma busy, and Sophy out of spirits, underwent more snubbing than had ever yet fallen to his lot. Not that he was much concerned thereat; and Mr. Kendal would resume his book after a lecture upon good manners, and then be roused to find his library a gigantic cobweb, strings tied to every leg of table or chair, and Maurice and the little Awk enacting spider and fly, heedless of the unwilling flies who might suffer by their trap. Such being the case, his magnanimity was the less amazing when he said, ‘Albinia, there is no reason that O’More should not eat his Christmas dinner here.’

‘Very well. I trust he will not think it needful still to be self-denying.’

‘It is not our part to press advances which are repelled,’ said Sophy.

‘Indeed, Sophy,’ said her father, smiling, ‘I see nothing attractive in the attitude of rocks rent asunder.’

The undesigned allusion must have gone deep, for she coloured to a purple crimson, and said in a freezing tone, ‘I thought you considered that to take him up again would be a direct insult to Lucy and her husband.’

‘They do not show much consideration for us,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘How long ago was the date of her last letter?’

‘Nearly three weeks,’ said Albinia. ‘Poor child, how could she write with the catalogue raisonnee of the Louvre to learn by heart?’

The Dusautoys yearly gave a Christmas tea-party to the teachers in the Sunday-school, who had of late become more numerous, as Mr. Dusautoy’s influence had had more time to tell. Mrs. Kendal was reckoned on as one of the chief supporters of the gaiety of the evening, but on this occasion she was forced to send Sophia alone.

Sophy regarded it as a duty and a penance, and submitted the more readily because it was so distasteful. It was, however, more than she had reckoned on to find that the party had been extended to the male teachers, an exceedingly good and lugubrious-looking youth lately apprenticed to Mr. Bowles, and Ulick O’More. It was the first time she had met the latter since his offence. She avoided seeing him as long as possible, though all his movements seemed to thrill her, and so confused the conversation which she was trying to keep up, that she found herself saying that Genevieve Durant had lost an arm, and that Gilbert would spend Christmas in London.

She felt him coming nearer; she knew he was passing the Miss Northover in the purple silk and red neck-ribbon; she heard him exchanging a few civil words with the sister with the hair strained off her face; she knew he was coming; she grew more eager in her fears for Mr. Rainsforth’s chest.

Tea was announced. Sophy held back in the general move, Ulick made a step nearer, their eyes met, and if ever eyes spoke, hers ordered him to keep his distance, while he glanced affront for affront, bowed and stepped back.

Sophy sat by Miss Jane Northover, and endeavoured to make her talk. Anything would have been better than the echoes of the sprightliness at the lower end of the table, where Ulick was talking what he would have called blarney to Miss Susan Northover and Miss Mary Anne Higgins, both at once, till he excited them into a perpetual giggle. Mr. Dusautoy was delighted, and evidently thought this brilliant success; Mrs. Dusautoy was less at her ease—the mirth was less sober and more exclusive than she had intended; and Sophy, finding nothing could be made of Miss Jane, turned round to her other neighbour, Mr. Hope, and asked his opinion of the Whewell and Brewster controversy on the Plurality of Worlds.

Mr. Hope had rather a good opinion of Miss Sophia, and as she had never molested him, could talk to her, so he straightway became engrossed in the logical and theological aspects of the theory; and Mrs. Dusautoy could hardly suppress her smile at this unconscious ponderous attempt at a counter flirtation, with Saturn and Jupiter as weapons for light skirmishing.

Ulick received the invitation to dinner, and did not accept it. He said he had an engagement—Albinia wondered what it could be, and had reason afterwards to think that he had the silent young apothecary to a Christmas dinner in his own rooms—an act of charity at least, if not of forgiveness. Mr. Johns, the senior clerk, whose health had long been failing, was about to retire, and this announcement was followed by the appearance of a smart, keen-looking young man of six or seven-and-twenty, whom Miss Goldsmith paraded as her cousin, Mr. Andrew Goldsmith, and it was generally expected that he would be taken into partnership, and undertake old John’s work, but in a fortnight he disappeared, and young O’More was promoted to the vacant post with an increase of salary. It was mortifying only to be informed through Mr. Dusautoy, instead of by the lad himself.

The Eastern letters were the chief comfort. First came tidings that Gilbert, not having yet recovered his contusion, was to accompany Colonel Ferrars to Scutari, and then after a longer interval came a brief and joyous note—Gilbert was coming home! On his voyage from the Crimea he had caught cold, and this had brought on severe inflammation on the injured chest, which had laid him by for many days at Scutari. The colonel had become the stronger of the two, in spite of a fragment of shell lodged so deeply in the side, that the medical board advised his going to London for its removal. Both were ordered home together with six months’ leave, and Gilbert’s note overflowed with glad messages to all, including Algernon, of whose departure he was still in ignorance.

Mr. Kendal knew not whether he was most gratified or discomfited by the insinuating ringer who touched his hat, hoping for due notice of the captain’s arrival in time to welcome him with a peal of bells. Indeed, Bayford was so excited about its hero, that there were symptoms of plans for a grand reception with speeches, cheers, and triumphal arches, which caused Sophy to say she hoped that he would come suddenly without any notice, so as to put a stop to all that nonsense; while Albinia could not help nourishing a strange vague expectation that his return would be the beginning of better days.

At last, Sophia, with a touch of the old penny club fever, toiled over the school clothing wilfully and unnecessarily for two hours, kept up till evening without owning to the pain in her back, but finally returned so faint and dizzy that she was forced to be carried helpless to her room, and the next day could barely drag herself to the couch in the morning-room, where she lay quite prostrated, and grieved at increasing instead of lessening her mother’s cares.

‘Oh, mamma, don’t stay with me. You are much too busy.’

‘No, I am not. The children are out, and grandmamma asleep, and I am going to write to Lucy, but there’s no hurry. Let me cool your forehead a little longer.’

‘How I hate being another bother!’

‘I like you much better so, than when you would not let me speak to you, my poor child.’

‘I could not,’ she said, stifling her voice on the cushion, and averting her head; but in a few moments she made a great effort, and said, ‘You think me unforgiving, mamma. It was not entirely that. It was hating myself for an old fancy, a mere mistake. I have got over it; and I will not be in error again.’

‘Sophy dear, if you find strength in pride, it will only wound yourself.’

‘I do not think I am proud,’ said Sophy, quietly. ‘I may have been headstrong, but I despise myself too much for pride.’

‘Are you sure it was mere fancy? It was an idea that occurred to more than to you.’

‘Hush!’ cried Sophy. ‘Had it been so, could he have ridiculed Lucy? Could he have flown out so against papa? No; that caricature undeceived me, and I am thankful. He treated us as cousins—no more—he would act in the same manner by any of the Miss O’Mores of Ballymakilty, nay, by Jane Northover herself. We did not allow for Irish manner.’

‘If so, he had no right to do so. I shall never wish to see him here again.’

‘No, mamma, he did not know the folly he had to deal with. Next time I meet him, I shall know how to be really indifferent. Now, this is the last time we will mention the subject!’

Albinia obeyed, but still hoped. It was well that hope remained, for her task was heavier than ever; Mrs. Meadows was feebler, but more restless and wakeful, asking twenty times in an hour for Mrs. Kendal. The doctors thought it impossible that she should hold out another fortnight, but she lived on from day to day, and at times Albinia hardly could be absent from her for ten minutes together. Sophy was so completely knocked up that she could barely creep about the house, and was forbidden the sick-room; but she was softened and gentle, and was once more a companion to her father, while eagerly looking forward to devoting herself to Gilbert.

A letter with the Malta post-mark was eagerly opened, as the harbinger of his speedy arrival.

‘Royal Hotel, Malta,February 10th, 1855.

‘Dearest Mrs. Kendal,

‘I am afraid you will all be much disappointed, though your grief cannot equal mine at the Doctor’s cruel decree. We arrived here the day before yesterday, but I had been so ill all the voyage with pain in the side and cough, that there was no choice but to land, and call in Dr.–, who tells me that my broken rib has damaged my lungs so much, that I must keep perfectly quiet, and not think of going home till warm weather. If I am well enough to join by that time, I shall not see you at all unless you and my father could come out. Am I nourishing too wild a hope in thinking it possible? Since Lucy has been so kind as to promise never to leave grandmamma, I cannot help hoping you might be spared. I do not think my proposal is selfish, since my poor grandmother is so little conscious of your cares; and Ferrars insists on remaining with me till he sees me in your hands, though they say that the splinter must be extracted in London, and every week he remains here is so much suffering, besides delaying his expedition to Canada. I have entreated him to hasten on, but he will not hear of it. He is like a brother or a father to me, and nurses me most tenderly, when he ought to be nursed himself. We are famishing for letters. I suppose all ours have gone up to Balaklava, and thence will be sent to England. If we were but there! We are both much better for the quiet of these two days, and are to move to-morrow to a lodging that a friend of Fred’s has taken for us at Bormola, so as to be out of the Babel of these streets—we stipulated that it should be large enough to take in you and my father. I wish Sophy and the children would come too—it would do them all the good in the world; and Maurice would go crazy among the big guns; I am only afraid we should have him enlisting as a drummer. The happy pair would be very glad to have the house to themselves, and would persuade themselves that it was another honeymoon.

‘Good-bye. Instead of looking for a letter, I shall come down to meet you at the Quarantine harbour. Love to all.

‘Your most affectionate‘GILBERT KENDAL.’

How differently Gilbert wrote when really ill, from his desponding style when he only fancied himself so, thought Albinia, as, perplexed and grieved, she handed the letter to her husband, and opened the enclosure, written in the laboured, ill-formed characters of a left-hand not yet accustomed to doing the offices of both.

‘Dear Albinia,

‘Come, if possible. His heart is set upon it, though he does not realize his condition, and I cannot bear to tell him. Only the utmost care can save him. I am doing my best for him, but my nursing is as left-handed as my writing.

‘Ever yours,‘F.F.’

His wife’s look of horror was Mr. Kendal’s preparation for this emphatic summons, perhaps a shock less sudden to him than to her, for he had not been without misgivings ever since he had heard of the situation of the injury. He read and spoke not, till the silence became intolerable, and she burst out almost with a scream, ‘Oh! Edmund, I knew not what I did when I took grandmamma into this house!’

‘This is very perplexing,’ he said, his feelings so intense that he dared only speak of acting; ‘I must set out to-night.’

‘Order me to come with you,’ she said breathlessly. ‘That will cancel everything else.’

‘Would Mrs. Drury take charge of her aunt?’ said he, with a moment’s hesitation; and Albinia felt it implied his impression that they were bound by her repeated promises never to quit the invalid, but she only spoke the more vehemently—

‘Mrs Drury? She might—she would, under the circumstances. She could not refuse. If you desire me to come, I should not be doing wrong; and grandmamma might never even miss me. Surely—oh surely, a young life, full of hope and promise, that may yet be saved, is not to be set against what cannot be prolonged more than a few weeks.’

‘As to that,’ said Mr. Kendal, in the deliberate tone which denoted dissatisfaction, ‘though of course it would be the greatest blessing to have you with us, I think you may trust Gilbert to my care. And we must consider poor Sophia.’

‘She could not bear to be considered.’

‘No; but it would be leaving her in a most distressing position, when she is far from well, and with most uncongenial assistants. You see, poor Gilbert reckons on Lucy being here, which would make it very different. But think of poor Sophia in the event of Mrs. Meadows not surviving till our return!’

‘You are right! It would half kill her! My promise was sacred; I was a wretch to think of breaking it. But when I think of my boy—my Gilbert pining for me, and I deserting him—’

‘For the sake of duty,’ said her husband. ‘Let us do right, and trust that all will be overruled for the best. I shall go with an easier mind if I leave you with the other children, and I can be the sooner with him.’

‘I could travel as fast.’

‘I may soon bring him home to you. Or you might bring the others to join us in the south of France. You will all need change.’

The decision was made, and her judgment acquiesced, though she could hardly have cast the balance for herself. She urged no more, even when relentings came over her husband at the thought of the trials to which he was leaving her, and of those which he should meet in solitude; yet not without a certain secret desire to make himself sufficient for the care and contentment of his own son. He cast about for all possible helpers for her, but could devise nothing except a note entreating her brother to be with her as much as possible, and commending her to the Dusautoys. It was a less decided kindness that he ordered Maurice’s pony to be turned out to grass, so as to prevent rides in solitude, thinking the boy too young to be trusted, and warned by the example of Gilbert’s temptations.

Going up to the bank to obtain a supply of gold, he found young O’More there without his uncle. The tidings of Gilbert’s danger had spread throughout the town, and one heart at least was softened. Ulick wrung the hand that lately he would not touch, and Mr. Kendal forgot his wrath as he replied to the warm-hearted inquiry for particulars.

‘Then Mrs. Kendal cannot go with you?’

‘No, it is impossible. There is no one able to take charge of Mrs. Meadows.’

‘Ah! and Mrs. Cavendish Dusautoy is gone! I grieve for the hour when my pen got the better of me. Mr. Kendal, this is worse than I thought. Your son will never forgive me when he knows I’m at the bottom of his disappointment.’

‘There is something to forgive on all hands,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘That meddlesome boy of mine has caused worse results than we could have contemplated. I believe it has been a lesson to him.’

‘I know it has to some one else,’ said Ulick. ‘I wish I could do anything! It would be the greatest comfort you could give me to tell me of a thing I could do for Gilbert or any of you. If you’d send me to find Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, and tell him ‘twas all my fault, and bring them back—’

‘Rather too wild a project, thank you,’ said Mr. Kendal, smiling. ‘No; the only thing you could do, would be—if that boy of mine have not completely forfeited your kindness—’

‘Maurice! Ah! how I have missed the rogue.’

‘Poor little fellow, I am afraid he may be a burthen to himself and every one else. It would be a great relief if you could be kind enough now and then to give him the pleasure of a walk.’

Maurice did not attend greatly to papa’s permission to go out with Mr. O’More. Either it was clogged with too many conditions of discretion, and too many reminiscences of the past; or Maurice’s mind was too much bent on the thought of his brother. Both children haunted the packing up, entreating to send out impossible presents. Maurice could hardly be persuaded out of contributing a perilous-looking boomerang, which he argued had some sense in it; while he scoffed at the little Awk, who stood kissing and almost crying over the china countenance of her favourite doll, entreating that papa would take dear Miss Jenny because Gibbie loved her the best of all, and always put her to sleep on his knees. At last matters were compromised by Sophy, who roused herself to do one of the few things for which she had strength, engrossing them by cutting out in paper an interminable hunt with horses and dogs adhering together by the noses and tails, which, when brilliantly painted according to their united taste, they might safely imagine giving pleasure to Gilbert, while, at any rate, it would do no harm in papa’s pocket-book.

CHAPTER XXVI

The day after Mr. Kendal’s departure, Mrs. Meadows had another attack, but a fortnight still passed before the long long task was over and the weary spirit set free. There had been no real consciousness and no one could speak of regret; of anything but relief and thankfulness that release had come at last, when Albinia had redeemed her pledge and knew she should no more hear of the dreary ‘very bad night,’ nor be greeted by the low, restless moan. The long good-night was come, and, on the whole, there was peace and absence of self-condemnation in looking back on the past connexion. Forbearance and unselfishness were recompensed by the calm tenderness with which she could regard one who at the outset had appeared likely to cause nothing but frets and misunderstandings.