Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

Jessie opened her large brown eyes to mark her horror, and Allen, made a gesture of exaggerated sympathy, which his sister took for more earnest than it was, and she said, scornfully, “I should like to see him literally rolling in gold. It must be like Midas. Do you mean that he sleeps on it, Jessie? How hard and cold!”

“Nonsense,” said Jessie; “you know what I mean.”

“I know what literally rolling in gold means, but I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t bully her, Janet,” said Allen; “we are not so stupid, are we, Jessie? Come and show me the walnut-tree you were telling me about.”

“What’s the matter, Janet?” said her mother, coming in a moment or two after, and finding her staring blankly out of the window, where the two had made their exit.

“O mother, Jessie has been talking such gossip, and Allen likes it, and won’t have it stopped! I can’t think what makes Allen and Bobus both so foolish whenever she is here.”

“She is a very pretty creature,” said Carey, smiling a little.

“Pretty!” repeated Janet. “What has that to do with it?”

“A great deal, as you will have to find out in the course of your life, my dear.”

“I thought only foolish people cared about beauty.”

“It is very convenient for us to think so,” said Carey, smiling.

“But mother—surely everybody cares for you just as much or more than if you were a great handsome, stupid creature! How I hate that word handsome!”

“Except for a cab,” said Carey.

“Ah! when shall I see a Hansom again?” said Janet in a slightly sentimental tone. But she returned to the charge, “Don’t go, mother, I want you to answer.”

“Beauty versus brains! My dear, you had better open your eyes to the truth. You must make up your mind to it. It is only very exceptional people who, even in the long run, care most for feminine brains.”

“But, mother, every one did.”

“Every one in our world, Janet; but your father made our home set of those exceptional people, and we are cast out of it now!” she added, with a gasp and a gesture of irrepressible desolateness.

“Yes, that comes of this horrid move,” said the girl, in quite another tone. “Well, some day—” and she stopped.

“Some day?” said her mother.

“Some day we’ll go back again, and show what we are,” she said, proudly.

“Ah, Janet! and that’s nothing now without him.”

“Mother, how can you say so, when—?” Jane just checked herself, as she was coming to the great secret.

“When we have his four boys,” said her mother. “Ah! yes, Janet—if—and when—But that’s a long way off, and, to come back to our former subject,” she added, recalling herself with a sigh, “it will be wise in us owlets to make up our minds that owlets we are, and to give the place to the eaglets.”

“But eaglets are very ugly, and owlets very pretty,” quoth Janet.

Carey laughed. “That does not seem to have been the opinion of the Beast Epic,” said she, and the entrance of Babie prevented them from going further.

Janet turned away with one of her grim sighs at the unappreciative world to which she was banished. She had once or twice been on the point of mentioning the Magnum Bonum to her mother, but the reserve at first made it seem as if an avowal would be a confession, and to this she could not bend her pride, while the secrecy made a strange barrier between her and her mother. In truth, Janet had never been so devoted to Mother Carey as to either granny or her father, and now she missed them sorely, and felt it almost an injury to have no one but her mother to turn to.

Her character was not set in the same mould, and though both could meet on the common ground of intellect, she could neither enter into the recesses of her mother’s grief, nor understand those flashes of brightness and playfulness which nothing could destroy. If Carey had chosen to unveil the truth to herself, she would have owned that Allen, who was always ready, tender and sympathetic to her, was a much greater comfort than his sister; nay, that even little Babie gave her more rest and peace than did Janet, who always rubbed against her whenever they found themselves tete-a-tete or in consultation.

Meantime Babie had been out with her two little cousins, and came home immensely impressed with the Belforest gardens. The house was shut up, but the gardens were really kept up to perfection, and the little one could not declare her full delight in the wonderful blaze she had seen of banks of red, and flame coloured, and white, flowering trees. “They said they would show me the Americans,” she said. “Why was it, mother? I thought Americans were like the gentleman who dined with you one day, and told me about the snow birds. But there were only these flower-trees, and a pond, and statues standing round it, and I don’t think they were Americans, for I know one was Diana, because she had a bow and quiver. I wanted to look at the rest, but Miss James said they were horrid heathen gods, not fit for little girls to look at; and, mother, Ellie is so silly, she thought the people at Belforest worshipped them. Do come and see them, mother. It is like the Crystal Palace out-of-doors.”

“Omitting the Crystal,” laughed some one; but Babie had more to say, exclaiming, “O mother, Essie says Aunt Ellen says Janet and I are to do lessons with Miss James, but you won’t let us, will you?”

“Miss James!” broke out Janet indignantly; “we might as well learn of old nurse! Why, mother, she can’t pronounce French, and she never heard of terminology, and she thinks Edward I. killed the bards!” For the girls had spent a day or two with their cousins in the course of the move.

“Yes,” broke in Barbara, “and she won’t let Essie and Ellie teach their dolls their lessons! She was quite cross when I was showing them how, and said it was all nonsense when I told her I heard you say that I half taught myself by teaching Juliet. And so the poor dolls have no advantages, mother, and are quite stupid for want of education,” pursued the little girl, indignantly. “They aren’t people, but only dolls, and Essie and Ellie can’t do anything with them but just dress them and take them out walking.”

“That’s what they would wish to make Babie like!” said her elder sister.

“But you’ll not let anybody teach me but you, dear, dear Mother Carey,” entreated the child.

“No, indeed, my little one.” And just then the boys came rushing in to their evening meal, full of the bird’s nest that they had been visiting in their uncle’s field, and quite of opinion that Kenminster was “a jolly place.”

“And then,” added Jock, “we got the garden engine, and had such fun, you don’t know.”

“Yes,” said Bobus, “till you sent a whole cataract against the house, and that brought out her Serene Highness!”

The applicability of the epithet set the whole family off into a laugh, and Jock further made up a solemn face, and repeated—

          “Buff says Buff to all his men,           And I say Buff to you again.           Buff neither laughs nor smiles,           But carries his face           With a very good grace.”

It convulsed them all, and the mother, recovering a little, said, “I wonder whether she ever can laugh.”

“Poor Aunt Ellen!” said Babie, in all her gravity; “she is like King Henry I. and never smiled again.”

And with more wit than prudence, Mrs. Buff, her Serene Highness, Sua Serenita, as Janet made it, became the sobriquets for Aunt Ellen, and were in continual danger of oozing out publicly. Indeed the younger population at Kencroft probably soon became aware of them, for on the next half-holiday Jock crept in with unmistakable tokens of combat about him, and on interrogation confessed, “It was Johnnie, mother. Because we wanted you to come out walking with us, and he said ‘twas no good walking with one’s mother, and I told him he didn’t know what a really jolly mother was, and that his mother couldn’t laugh, and that you said so, and he said my mother was no better than a tomboy, and that she said so, and so—”

And so, the effects were apparent on Jock’s torn and stained collar and swelled nose.

But the namesake champions remained unconvinced, except that Johnnie may have come over to the opinion that a mother no better than a tomboy was not a bad possession, for the three haunted the “Folly” a good deal, and made no objection to their aunt’s company after the first experiment.

Unfortunately, however, their assurances that their mother could laugh as well as other people were not so conclusive but that Jock made it his business to do his utmost to produce a laugh, in which he was apt to be signally unsuccessful, to his own great surprise, though to that of no one else. For instance, two or three days later, when his mother and Allen were eating solemnly a dinner at Kencroft, by way of farewell ere Allen’s return to Eton, an extraordinarily frightful noise was heard in the poultry yard, where dwelt various breeds of Uncle Robert’s prize fowls.

Thieves—foxes—dogs—what could it be? Even the cheese and celery were deserted, and out rushed servants, master, mistress, and guests, being joined by the two girls from the school-room; but even then Carey was struck by the ominous absence of boys. The poultry house door was shut—locked—but the noises within were more and more frightful—of convulsive cocks and hysterical hens, mingled with human scufflings and hushes and snortings and snigglings that made the elders call out in various tones of remonstrance and reprobation, “Boys, have done! Come out! Open the door.”

A small hatch door was opened, a flourish on a tin trumpet was heard, and out darted, in an Elizabethan ruff and cap, a respectable Dorking mother of the yard, cackling her displeasure, and instantly dashing to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard, decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box, squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll’s hat on her unwilling head, &c., &c.

The outsiders were choking with breathless surprise at first, then the one lady began indignantly to exclaim, “Now, boys! Have done—let the poor things alone. Come out this minute.” The other fairly reeled against the wall with laughter, and Janet and Jessie screamed at each fresh appearance, till they made as much noise as the outraged chickens, though one shrieked with dismay, the other with diversion. At last the Colonel, slower of foot than the rest, arrived on the scene, just as the pride of his heart, the old King Chanticleer of the yard, made his exit, draped in a royal red paper robe and a species of tinsel crown, out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, having evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and accoutred as a page.

Colonel Brownlow’s severe command to open the door was not resisted for one moment, and forth rushed a cloud of dust and feathers, a quacking waggling substratum of ducks, and a screaming flapping rabble of chickens, behind whom, when the mist cleared, were seen, looking as if they had been tarred and feathered, various black and grey figures, which developed into Jock, Armine, Robin, Johnny, and Joe. Jock, the foremost, stared straight up in his aunt’s face, Armine ran to his mother with—“Did you see the old king, mother, and his little page? Wasn’t it funny—”

But he was stopped by the sight of his uncle, who laid hold of his eldest son with a fierce “How dare you, sir?” and gave him a shake and blow. Robin stood with a sullen look on his face, and hands in his pockets, and his brothers followed suit. Armine hid his face in his mother’s dress, and burst out crying; but Jock stepped forth and, with that impish look of fearlessness, said, “I did it, Uncle Robert! I wanted to make Aunt Ellen laugh. Did she laugh, mother?” he asked in so comical and innocent a manner that, in spite of her full consciousness of the heinousness of the offence, and its general unluckiness, Mother Carey was almost choked. This probably added to the gravity with which the other lady decreed with Juno-like severity, “Robin and John must be flogged. Joe is too young.”

“Certainly,” responded the Colonel; but Caroline, instead of, as they evidently expected of her, at once offering up her victim, sprang forward with eager, tearful pleadings, declaring it was all Jock’s fault, and he did not know how naughty it was—but all in vain. “Robert knew. He ought to have stopped it,” said the Colonel. “Go to the study, you two.”

Jock did not act as the generous hero of romance would have done, and volunteer to share the flogging. He cowered back on his mother, and put his arm round her waist, while she said, “Jock told the truth, so I shall not ask you to flog him, Uncle Robert. He shall not do such mischief again.”

“If he does,” said his uncle, with a look as if her consent would not be asked to what would follow.

CHAPTER VIII. – THE FOLLY

     There will we sit upon the rocks,     And see the shepherds feed their flocks     By summer rivers, by whose falls     Melodious birds sing madrigals.—Marlowe.

“How does my little schoolfellow get on?” asked Mary Ogilvie, when she had sat down for her first meal with her brother in her summer holidays.

“Much as Ariel did in the split pine, I fancy.”

“For shame, David! I’m afraid you are teaching her to see Sycorax and Caliban in her neighbours.”

“Not I! How should I ever see her! Do you hear from her?”

“Sometimes; and I heard of her from the Actons, who had an immense regard for her husband, who, they say, was a very superior man.”

“It is hardly necessary to be told so.”

“They mean to take lodgings somewhere near here this next month, and see what they can do to cheer her in her present life, which must be the greatest possible contrast to her former one. Do you wish to set out on our expedition before August, Davie? I should like you to see them.”

“By all means let us wait for them. Indeed I should not be at liberty till the last week in July.”

“And how go the brains of Kenminster? You look enlivened since last time I saw you.”

“It is the infusion the brains have received. That one woman has made more difference to the school than I could have done in ten years.”

“You find her boys, at any rate, pupils worth teaching.”

“More than that. Of course it is something to have a fellow capable of ideas before one; but besides that, lads who had gone on contentedly at their own level have had to bestir themselves not to be taken down by him. When he refused to have it forced upon him that study was not the thing at Kenminster, they found the only way to make him know his place was to keep theirs, and some of them have really found the use of their wits, and rejoice in them. Even in the lower form, the Colonel’s second boy has developed an intellect. Then the way those boys bring their work prepared has raised the standard!”

“I heard something of that on my way.”

“You did?”

“Yes; two ladies were in full career of talk when the train stopped at the Junction, and I heard—‘I am always obliged to spend one hour every evening seeing that Arthur knows his lessons. So troublesome you know; but since that Mrs. Joseph Brownlow has come, she helps her boys so with their home-work that the others have not a chance if one does not look to it oneself.’ Then it appeared that she told Mr. Ogilvie it wasn’t fair, and that he would give her no redress.”

“Absurd woman! It is not a matter of unfairness, as I told her. They don’t get help in sums or exercises; they only have grammar to learn and construing to prepare, and all my concern is that it should be got up thoroughly. If their mothers help them, so much the better.”

“The mothers don’t seem to think so. However, she branched off into incredulity that Mrs. Joe Brownlow could ever really teach her children anything, for she was always tramping all over the country with them at all hours of the day and night. She has met her herself, with all those boys after her, three miles from home, in a great straw hat, when her husband hadn’t been dead a year.”

“I’m sure she is always in regulation veils, and all the rest of it, at Church, if that’s what you ladies want.”

“But the crown of the misdoings seemed to be that she had been met at some old castle, sacred to picnics, alone with her children—no party nor anything. I could not make out whether the offence consisted in making the ruin too cheap, or in caring for it for its own sake, and not as a lion for guests.”

“The latter probably. She has the reputation of being very affected!!!”

“Poor dear! I heard that she was a great trial to dear Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mary, in an imitative voice. “Why, do you know, she sometimes is up and out with her children before six o’clock in the morning; and then Colonel Brownlow went in one day at twelve o’clock, and found the whole family fast asleep on different sofas.”

“The sensible way, too, to spend such days as these. To go out in the cool of the morning, and take a siesta, is the only rational plan!”

“I’m afraid one must conform to one’s neighbours’ ways.”

“Trust a woman for being conventional.”

“I confess I did not like the tone in which my poor Carey was spoken of. I am afraid she can hardly have taken care enough not to be thought flighty.”

“Mary! you are as absurd as the rest of them!”

“Why? what have you seen of her?”

“Nothing, I tell you, except once meeting her in the street, and once calling on her to ask whether her boy should learn German.” And David Ogilvie spoke with a vehemence that somewhat startled his sister.

It was a July evening, and though the walls of the schoolmaster’s house were thick, it was sultry enough within to lead the brother and sister out immediately after dinner, looking first into the play-fields, where cricket was of course going on among the bigger boys, but where Mary looked in vain for her friend’s sons.

“No, they are not much of cricketers,” said her brother; “they are small for it yet, and only take their turn in watching-out by compulsion. I wish the senior had more play in him. Shall we walk on by the river?”

So they did, along a paved causeway which presently got clear of the cottages and gables of old factories, and led along, with the brightly glassy sheet of water on one side, and the steep wooded slope on the other, loose-strife and meadow-sweet growing thickly on the bank, amid long weeds with feathery tops, rich brown fingers of sedge, and bur-reeds like German morgensterns, while above the long wreaths of dog-roses projected, the sweet honeysuckle twined about, and the white blossoms of traveller’s joy hung in festoons from the hedge of the bordering plantation. After a time they came on a kind of glade, opening upwards though the wood, with one large oak-tree standing alone in the centre, and behold! on the grass below sat or lay a company—Mrs. Joseph Brownlow in the midst, under the obnoxious mushroom-hat, reading aloud. Radiating from her were five boys, the biggest of all on his back, with his hat over his eyes, fast asleep; another cross-legged, with a basket between his knees, dividing his attention between it and the book; two more lying frog-like, with elbows on the ground, feet erected behind them, chin in hand, devouring the narrative with their eyes; the fifth wriggling restlessly about, evidently in search of opportunities of mischief or of tormenting tricks. Just within earshot, but sketching the picturesque wooden bridge below, sat one girl. The little one, with her youngest brother, was close at their mother’s feet, threading flowers to make a garland. It was a pretty sight, and so intent were most of the party on their occupations that they never saw the pair on the bank till Joe, the idler, started and rolled round with “Hollo!” when all turned, it may be feared with muttered growls from some of the boys; but Carey herself gave a cry of joy, ran down the bank like a girl, and greeted Mary Ogilvie with an eager embrace.

“You are holding a Court here,” said the school-master.

“We have had tea out here. It is too hot for indoors, and I am reading them the ‘Water Babies.’”

“To a large audience, I see.”

“Yes, and some of which are not quite sure whether it is fact or fiction. Come and sit down.”

“The boys will hate us for breaking up their reading,” said Mary.

“Why should not we listen!” said her brother.

“Don’t disturb yourselves, boys; we’ve met before to-day.”

Bobus and Jock were, however, on their feet, and Johnny had half risen; Robin lay still snoring, and Joe had retreated into the wood from the alarming spectacle of “the schoolmaster abroad.”

After a greeting to the two girls, who comported themselves, according to their ages, as young ladies might be expected to do, the Ogilvies found accommodation on the roots of the tree, and listened. The “Water Babies” were then new, and Mr. Ogilvie had never heard them. Luckily the reading had just come to the history of the “Do as You Likes,” and the interview between the last of the race and M. Du Chaillu diverted him beyond measure. He laughed so much over the poor fellow’s abortive attempt to say “Am I not a man and a brother?” that his three scholars burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion, sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured tone what was the row?

“‘The Last of the Do as You Likes,’” said Armine.

“Oh I say—isn’t it jolly,” cried Jock, beating his breast gorilla-fashion and uttering a wild murmur of “Am I not a man and a brother?” then tumbling head over heels, half in ecstasy, half in imitation of the fate of the Do as You Like, setting everybody off into fits again.

“It’s just what Robin is coming to,” observed Bobus, as his namesake stretched his arms and delivered himself of a waking howl; then suddenly becoming conscious of Mr. Ogilvie, he remained petrified, with one arm fully outstretched, the other still lifted to his head.

“Never mind, Brownlow maximus,” said his master; “it was hardly fair to surprise you in private life, was it?”

The boy made no answer, but scrambled up, sheepish and disconcerted; and indeed the sun was entirely down and the dew almost falling, so that the mother called to the young ones to gather up their things and come home.

Such a collection! Bobus picked up a tin-case and basket full of flowers, interspersed with bottles of swimming insects. The trio and Armine shouldered their butterfly-nets, and had a distribution of pill-boxes and bottles, in some of which were caterpillars intended to live, in others butterflies dead (or dying, it may be feared) of laurel leaves. Babie had a mighty nosegay; Janet put up the sketch, which showed a good deal of power; and the whole troop moved up the slope to go home by the lanes.

“What collectors you are!” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“For the museum,” answered Armine, eagerly.

“Haven’t you seen our museum?” cried Barbara, who had taken his hand. “Oh, it is such a beauty! We have got an Orobanche major, only it is not dry yet.”

“I’m afraid Babie likes fine words,” said her mother; “but our museum is a great amusement to us Londoners.”

They all walked home together, talking merrily, and Mr. and Miss Ogilvie came in with them, on special entreaty, to share the supper—milk, fruit, bread and butter and cheese, and sandwiches, which was laid out on the round table in the octagon vestibule, which formed the lowest story of the tower. It was partaken of standing, or sitting at case on the window-seats, a form or two, an old carved chair, or on the stairs, the children ascending them after their meal, and after securing in their own fashion their treasures for the morrow. The two cousins had already bidden good-night at the gate and gone home, and the Ogilvies followed their example in ten minutes, Caroline begging Mary to come up to her as soon as Mr. Ogilvie was disposed of by school hours.

“But you will be busy?” said Mary.

“Never mind, I am afraid we are not very regular,” said Carey.

It was by this time ten o’clock, and the two younger children were still to be heard shouting to one another up stairs about the leaves for their chrysalids. So when Mary came up the hill at half-past ten the next morning, she was the less surprised to find these two only just beginning breakfast, while their mother was sitting at the end of the table knitting, and hearing Janet repeat German poetry. The boys had long been in school.