That Stick

At which Herbert laughed heartily, and demanded what sort of scholar he made.

‘Not very good,’ owned Constance; ‘he did forget so from day to day, and he asked so many questions, and was always wanting to have things explained.  But it made me know them better, and Mrs. Bury had such nice books, and she helped me.  If you want to take up French and German, Bertie—

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t spoil the passing hour, child.  I should think you would be glad enough to get away from it all.’

‘I do want to get on,’ said Constance.  ‘I must, you know, more than ever now.’

‘Oh, you mean that mad fancy of going and being a teacher?’

‘It is not a bit mad, Herbert.  Rose does not think it is, and I want you to stand by me if mamma and Ida make objections.’

‘Girls are always in such a hurry,’ grumbled Herbert.  ‘You need not make a stir about it yet.  You won’t be able to begin for ever so long.’

Rose agreed with him that it would be much wiser not to broach the subject till Constance was old enough to begin the preparation, though, with the impatience of youth to express its designs and give them form, she did not like the delay.

‘I tell you what, Con,’ finally said Herbert, ‘if you set mother and Ida worrying before their time, I shall vote it all rot, and not say a word to help you.’

Which disposed of the subject for the time, and left them to discuss happily Constance’s travels and Herbert’s new tutor and companions till their arrival at Westhaven, where Constance’s welcome was quite a secondary thing to Herbert’s, as she well knew it would be, nor felt it as a grievance, though she was somewhat amazed at seeing him fervently embraced, and absolutely cried over, with ‘Oh, my poor injured boy!’

Herbert did not like it at all, and disengaging himself rapidly, growled out his favourite expletive of ‘Rot!  Have done with that!’

He was greatly admired for his utter impatience of commiseration, but there was no doubt that the disappointment was far greater to his mother and Ida than to himself.  He cared little for what did not make any actual difference to his present life, whereas to them the glory and honour of his heirship and the future hopes were everything—and Constance’s manifest delight in the joy of her uncle and aunt, and her girlish interest in the baby, were to their eyes unfeeling folly, if not absolute unkindness to her brother.

‘Dear little baby, indeed!’ said Ida scornfully.  ‘Nasty little wretch, I say.  One good thing is, up in that cold place all this time he’s sure not to live.’

Herbert whistled.  ‘That’s coming it rather strong.’  And Constance, with tears starting to her eyes, said, ‘For shame, Ida, how can you be so wicked!  Think of Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary!’

‘I believe you care for them more than for your own flesh and blood!’ exclaimed her mother.

‘Well, and haven’t they done a sight deal more for her?’ said Herbert.

‘You turning on me too, you ungrateful boy!’ cried Mrs. Morton.

Herbert laughed.

‘If it comes to gratitude,’ he said, and looked significantly at the decorations.

‘And what is it but the due to his brother’s widow?’ said Mrs. Morton.  ‘Just a pittance, and you may depend that will be cut down on some pretext now!’

‘I should think so, if they heard Ida’s tongue!’ said Herbert.

‘And Constance there is spitefulness enough to go and tell them—favourite as she is!’ said Ida.

‘I should think not!’ said Constance indignantly.  ‘As if I would do such a mean thing!’

‘Come, come, Ida,’ said her mother, ‘your sister knows better than that.  It’s not the way when she is only just come home, so grown too and improved, “quite the lady.”‘

Mrs. Morton had a mother’s heart for Constance, though only in the third degree, and was really gratified to see her progress.  She had turned up her pretty brown hair, and the last year had made her much less of a child in appearance; her features were of delicate mould, she had dark eyes, and a sweet mouth, with a rose-blush complexion, and was pleasing to look on, though, in her mother’s eyes, no rival to the thin, rather sharply-defined features, bright eyes, and pink-and-white complexion that made Ida the belle of a certain set at Westhaven.  The party were more amicable over the dinner-table—for dinner it was called, as an assertion of gentility.

‘Are you allowed to dine late,’ asked Ida patronisingly of her sister, ‘when you are not at school?

‘Lady Adela dines early,’ said Constance.

‘Oh, for your sake, I suppose?’

‘Always, I believe,’ said Constance.

‘Yes, always,’ said Herbert.  ‘Fine people needn’t ask what’s genteel, you see, Ida.’

That was almost the only breeze, and after dinner Herbert rushed out for a smell of sea, interspersed with pipe, and to ‘look up the inevitable old Jack.’

Constance was then subjected to a cross-examination on all the circumstances of the detention at Ratzes, and all she had heard or ought to have heard about the arrival of the unwelcome little Michael, while her mother and sister drew their own inferences.

‘Really,’ said Ida at last, ‘it is just like a thing in a book.’

Constance was surprised.

‘Because it was such a happy surprise for them,’ she added hastily.

‘No, nonsense, child, but it is just what they always do when they want a supposititious heir.’

‘Ida, how can you say such things?’

‘But it is, Conny!  There was the wicked Sir Ronald Macronald.  He took his wife away to Belgrade, right in the Ukraine mountains, and it—’

‘Belgrade is in Hungary, and the Cossacks live in the Ukraine in Russia,’ suggested Constance.

‘Oh, never mind your school-girl geography, it was Bel something, an out-of-the-way place in the mountains anyway, and there he pretended she had a child, just out of malice to the right heiress, that lovely Lilian, and he got killed by a stag, and then she confessed on her death-bed.  I declare it is just like—’

‘My dear, don’t talk in that way, your sister is quite shocked.  Your uncle never would—’

‘Bless me, ma, I was only in fun.  I could tell you ever so many stories like that.  There’s Broughton’s, on the table there.  I knew from the first it was an impostor, and the old nurse dressed like a nun was his mother.’

‘I believe you always know the end before you are half through the first volume,’ said her mother admiringly; ‘but of course it is all right, only it is a terrible disappointment and misfortune for us, and not to be looked for after all these years.’

The last three Christmastides had been spent at Northmoor, where it had been needful to conform to the habits of the household, which impressed Ida and her mother as grand and conferring distinction, but decidedly dull and religious.

So as they were at Westhaven, perforce, they would make up for it, Christmas Eve was spent in a tumult of preparation for the diversions of the next day.  Mrs. Morton had two maids now, but to her they were still ‘gals,’ not to be trusted with the more delicate cookeries, and Ida was fully engaged in the adornment of the room and herself, while Constance ran about and helped both, and got more thanks from her mother than her sister.

Ida was to end the day with a dance at a friend’s house, but she was not desirous of taking Constance with her, having been accustomed to treat her as a mere child, and Constance, though not devoid of a wish for amusement, knew that her uncle and aunt would have taken her to church, where she would have enjoyed the festal service.

Her mother would not let her go out in the dark alone, and was too tired to go with her, so she had to stay at home, while Herbert disported himself elsewhere, and Constance underwent another cross-examination over the photographs she had brought home, but Mrs. Morton was never unkind when alone with her, and she had all the natural delight of youth in relating her adventures.  Mrs. Morton, however, showed offence at not having been sent for instead of Mrs. Bury.—‘So much less of a relation,’ and Constance found herself dwelling on the ruggedness of the pass, and the difficulties of making oneself understood, but Mrs. Morton still persisted that she ‘could not understand why they should have got into such a place at all, when there were plenty of fashionable places in the newspaper where they could have had society and attendance and everything.’

‘Ah, but that was just what Uncle Frank didn’t want.’

‘Well, if they choose to be so eccentric, and close and shy, they can’t wonder that people talk.’

‘Mamma, you can’t mean that horrid nonsense that Ida talked about!  It was only a joke!’

‘Oh, my dear, I don’t say that I suspect anything—oh no,—only, if they had not been so close and queer, one would have been able to contradict it.  I like people to be straightforward, that’s all I have to say.  And it is terribly hard on your poor brother to be so disappointed, after having his expectations so raised!’ and Mrs. Morton melted into tears, leaving Constance with nothing to say, for in the first place, she did not think Herbert, as yet at least, was very sensible of his loss, and in the next, she did not quite venture to ask her mother whether she thought little Michael should have been sacrificed to Herbert’s expectations.  So she took the wiser course of producing a photograph of Vienna.

CHAPTER XXIII

VELVET

Constance created quite a sensation when she came down dressed for church on Christmas Day in a dark blue velvet jacket, deeply trimmed with silver fox, and a hat and muff en suite, matching with her serge dress, and though unpretending, yet very handsome.

Up jumped Ida, from lacing her boots by the fire.  ‘Well, I never!  They are spoiling you!  Real velvet, I declare, and real silk-wadded lining.  Look, ma.  What made them dress you like that?’

‘It wasn’t them,’ said Constance, ‘it was Lady Adela.  One Sunday in October it turned suddenly cold, and I had only my cloth jacket, and she sent up for something warm for me.  This was just new before she went into black, when husband died, and she had put it away for Amice, but it fitted me so well, and looked so nice, that she was so kind as to wish me to keep it always.’

‘Cast-off clothes!  That’s the insolence of these swells,’ said Ida.  ‘I wonder you had not the spirit to refuse.’

‘Sour grapes,’ muttered Herbert; while her mother sighed—‘Ah, that’s what we come to!’

‘Must not I wear it, mamma?’ said Constance, who had a certain attachment to the beautiful and comfortable garment.  ‘She told me she had only worn it once in London, and she was so very kind.’

‘Oh, if you call it kindness,’ said Ida, ‘I call it impertinence.’

‘If you had only heard—’ faltered Constance.

‘No, no,’ said their mother, ‘you could not refuse, of course, my dear, and no one here will know.  It becomes her very well too.  Doesn’t it, Ida?’

Ida made a snort.  ‘If people choose to make a little chit of a schoolgirl ridiculous by dressing her out like that!’ she said.

‘There isn’t time now before church,’ said Constance almost tearfully, ‘or I would take it off.’

‘No such thing,’ said Herbert.  ‘Come on, Conny.  You shall walk with me.  You look stunning, and I want Westhaven folk to see for once what a lady is like.’

Constance was very glad to be led away from Ida’s comments, and resolved that her blue velvet should not see the light again at Westhaven; but she did not find this easy to carry out; for, perhaps for the sake of teasing Ida, Herbert used to inquire after it, and insist on her wearing it, and her mother liked to see her, and to show her, in it.  It was only Ida who seemed unable to help saying something disagreeable, till, almost in despair, Constance offered to lend the bone of contention; but Lady Adela was a small woman, and Constance would never be on so large a scale as her sister, so that the jacket refused to be transferred except at the risk of being spoilt by alteration; and here Mrs. Morton interfered, ‘It would never do to have them say at Northmoor that “Lady Morton’s” gift had been spoilt by their meddling with it.’  Constance was glad, though she suspected that Lady Adela would never have found it out.

Then Ida consulted Sibyl Grover, who was working with a dressmaker, and with whom she kept up a sort of patronisingly familiar acquaintance, as to making something to rival it, and Sibyl was fertile in devices as to doing so cheaply, but when she consulted her superior, she was told that without the same expensive materials it would evidently be only an imitation, and moreover, that the fashion was long gone out of date.  Which enabled Ida to bear the infliction with some degree of philosophy.

This jacket was not, however, Constance’s only trouble.  Her conscience was already uneasy at the impossibility of getting to evensong on Christmas Day.  She had been to an early Celebration without asking any questions, and had got back before Herbert had come down to breakfast, and very glad she was that she had done so, for she found that her mother regarded it as profane ‘to take the Sacrament’ when she was going to have a party in the evening, and when Constance was in the midst of the party she felt that—if it were to be—her mother might be right.

It was a dinner first—at which Constance did not appear—chiefly of older people, who talked of shipping and of coals.  Afterwards, if they noticed the young people, joked them about their imaginary lovers—beaux, as the older ladies called them; young men, as the younger ones said.  One, the most plain spoken of all, asked Herbert how he felt, at which the boy wriggled and laughed sheepishly, and his mother had a great confabulation with various of the ladies, who were probably condoling with her.

Later, there were cards for the elders, and sundry more young people came in for a dance.  The Rollstones were considered as beneath the dignity of the Mortons, but Herbert had loudly insisted on inviting Rose for the evening and had had his way, but after all she would not come.  Herbert felt himself aggrieved, and said she was as horrid a little prig as Constance, who on her side felt a pang of envy as she thought of Rose going to church and singing hymns and carols to her father and mother, while she, after a struggle under the mistletoe, which made her hot and miserable, had to sit playing waltzes.  One good-natured lady offered to relieve her, but she was too much afraid of the hero of the mistletoe to stir from her post, and the daughter of her kindly friend had no scruple in exclaiming—

‘Oh no, ma, don’t!  You always put us out, you know, and Constance Morton is as true as old Time.’

‘I am sure Constance is only too happy to oblige her friends,’ said Mrs. Morton.  ‘And she is not out yet,’ she added, as a tribute to high life.

If Constance at times felt unkindly neglected, at others she heard surges of giggling, and suppressed shrieking and protests that made her feel the piano an ark of refuge.

The parting speech from a good-natured old merchant captain was, ‘Why, you demure little pussy cat, you are the prettiest of them all!  What have yon lads been thinking about to let those little fingers be going instead of her feet?  Or is it all Miss Ida’s jealousy, eh?’

All this, in a speaking-trumpet voice, put the poor child into an agony of blushes, which only incited him to pat her on the cheek, and the rest to laugh hilariously, under the influence of negus and cheap champagne.

Constance could have cried for very shame, but when she was waiting on her mother, who, tired as she was, would not go to bed without locking up the spoons and the remains of the wine, Mrs. Morton said kindly, ‘You are tired, my dear, and no wonder.  They were a little noisy to-night.  Those are not goings-on that I always approve, you know, but young folk always like a little pleasure extra at Christmas.  Don’t you go and get too genteel for us, Conny.  Come, come, don’t cry.  Drink this, my love, you’re tired.’

‘Oh, mamma, it is not the being genteel—oh no, but Christmas Day and all!’

‘Come, come, my dear, I can’t have you get mopy and dull; religion is a very good thing, but it isn’t meant to hinder all one’s pleasure, and when you’ve been to church on a Christmas Day, what more can be expected of young people but to enjoy themselves?  Come, go to bed and think no more about it.’

To express or even to understand what she felt would have been impossible to Constance, so she had to content herself with feeling warm at her heart, at her mother’s kind kiss.

All the other parties she saw were much more decorous, even to affectation, except that at the old skipper’s, and he was viewed by the family as a subject for toleration, because he had been a friend and messmate of Mrs. Morton’s father.  All the good side of that lady and Ida came out towards him and his belongings.  He had an invalid granddaughter, with a spine complaint and feeble eyesight, and Ida spent much time in amusing her, teaching her fancy works and reading to her.  Unluckily it was only trashy novels from the circulating library that they read; Ida had no taste for anything else, and protested that Louie would be bored to death if she tried to read her the African adventures which were just then the subject of enthusiasm even with Herbert!  Ida was not a dull girl.  Unlike some who do not seem to connect their books with life, she made them her realities and lived in them, and as she hardly ever read anything more substantial her ideas of life and society were founded on them, though in her own house she was shrewd in practical matters, and though not strong was a useful active assistant to her mother whenever there was no danger of her being detected in doing anything derogatory to one so nearly connected with the peerage.

Indeed, she seemed to regard her sister’s dutiful studies as proofs of dulness and want of spirit.  She was quite angry when Constance objected to The Unconscious Impostor,—very yellow, with a truculent flaming design outside—that ‘she did not think she ought to read that kind of book—Aunt Mary would not like it.’

‘Well, if I would be in bondage to an old governess!  You are not such a child now.’

‘Don’t, Ida.  Uncle Frank would not like it either.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Ida, with an ugly, meaning laugh as she glanced again at the title.

Constance might really have liked to read more tales than she allowed herself.  The House on the Marsh tempted her, but she was true to the advice she had received, and Rose Rollstone upheld her in her resolution.

Ida thought it rather ‘low’ in Herbert and Constance to care for the old butler’s daughter, but their mother had a warm spot in the bottom of her heart, and liked a gossip with Mrs. Rollstone too much to forbid the house to her daughter, besides that she shrank from inflicting on her so much distress.

So during the fortnight that Rose spent at home the girls were together most of the morning.  After Constance, well wrapped up, had practised in the cold drawing-room, where economy forbade fires till the afternoon, she sped across to Rose in the little stuffy parlour where Mr. Rollstone liked to doze over his newspaper to the lullaby of their low-voiced chatter.  Often they walked together, and were sometimes joined by Herbert, who on these occasions always showed that he knew how to behave like a gentleman.

Herbert was faithfully keeping his promise not to bet, though, as he observed, he had not expected to be in for it so long.  But it was satisfactory to hear that his present fellow-pupils did not go in for that sort of thing, and Constance felt sure that her uncle and aunt would be pleased with him and think him much improved.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE REVENGE OF SORDID SPIRITS

‘I am quite convinced,’ said Ida Morton, ‘it is quite plain why we are not invited.’

‘My dear, you see what your aunt says; that Mrs. Bury’s daughter’s husband is ordered to India, and that having the whole family to stay at Northmoor gives them the only chance of being all together for a little while, and after their obligations to Mrs. Bury—’

‘Ma, how can you be so green?  Obligations, indeed!  It is all a mere excuse to say there is not room for us in that great house.  I see through it all.  It is just to prevent us from being able to ask inconvenient questions of the German nurse and Mrs. Bury and all!’

‘Now, Ida, I wish you would put away that fancy.  Your uncle and aunt were always such good people!  And there was Mrs. Bury—’

‘Mother, you will never understand the revenge of sordid souls,’ said Ida tragically, quoting from The Unconscious Impostor.

‘Revenge!  What can you mean?’

‘Of course, you know, Mrs. Bury never forgave Herbert’s taking her for a tramp, and you know how nasty uncle was about that white rook and the bets.  Oh, it is quite plain.  He was to be deprived of his rights, and so this journey was contrived, and they got into this out-of-the-way, inaccessible place, and sent poor Conny away, and then had no doctor or nurse—exactly as people always do.’

‘Oh, Ida, only in stories!  Your novels are turning your head.’

‘Novels are transcripts of life,’ again said Ida, solemnly quoting.

‘I don’t believe it if they put such things into your head,’ said her mother.  ‘Asking Herbert to be godfather too!  Such a compliment!’

‘An empty compliment, to hoodwink us and the poor boy,’ said Ida.  ‘No, no, ma, the keeping you away settles it in my mind, and it shall be the business of my life to unmask that!’

So spoke Ida, conscious of being a future heroine.

It was quite true that Herbert had been asked to stand godfather to his little cousin’s admission into the Church, after, of course, a very good report had been received from his tutor.  ‘You are the little fellow’s nearest kinsman,’ wrote Lord Northmoor, ‘and I trust to you to influence him for good.’  Herbert wriggled, blushed, thought he hated it, was glad it had been written instead of spoken, but was really touched.

His uncle had justly thought responsibility would be wholesome, and besides, Herbert represented to him his brother, for whom he had a very tender feeling.

It was quite true that Northmoor was as full as it would hold.  Mrs. Bury’s eldest daughter was going out to India, and another had a husband in the Civil Service; the third lived in Ireland, and the only way of having the whole family together for their last fortnight was to gather them at Northmoor, as soon as its lord and lady returned, nor had they been able to escape from their Dolomite ravine till the beginning of May, for the roads were always dangerous, often impassable, so that there had been weeks when they were secluded from even the post, and had had difficulties as to food and fire.

However, it had done them no harm, and was often looked back upon as, metaphorically as well as literally, the brightest and whitest time in their lives.  Frank had walked and climbed both with Mrs. Bury and on his own account, and had drunk in the wild glories of the mountain winter, and the fantastic splendours of snow and ice on those wondrous peaks.  And, with that new joy and delight to be found in the queer wooden cradle, his heart was free to bound as perhaps it had never done before, in exulting thankfulness, as he looked up to those foretastes of the Great White Throne.

Never had he had such a rest before from toil, care, and anxiety as in those months in the dry, bracing air, and it was the universal remark that Lord Northmoor came back years younger and twice the man he had been before, with a spirit of cheerfulness and enterprise such as had always been wanting; while as to his wife, she was less strong than before, but there was a certain peaceful, yet exulting happiness about her, and her face had gained wonderfully in sweetness and expression.

The child was a fine plump little fellow, old enough to laugh and respond to loving faces and gestures.  Mary had feared the sight might be painful to Lady Adela, and was gratified to find her too true a baby-lover and too generous a spirit not to worship him almost as devotedly as did Constance.

Perhaps the heads of the family had never seen or participated in anything like the domestic mirth and enjoyment of that fortnight’s visit; Bertha was with Lady Adela, and the intimacy and confidence in which Frank and Mary had lived with Mrs. Bury had demolished many barriers of shyness, and made them hosts who could be as one with their guests—guests with whom the shadow of parting made the last sunshine seem the more bright.