Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

          “I know a bank”—

Then the curate, as he finished, began to sing some other appropriate song, and Nita Ray and others joined in. It was very pretty, very charming in the moonlight, very like “Midsummer Night’s Dream;” but Mary Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency; but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots, was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good deal distressed, and could not, for very humanity’s sake, be left behind.

“And after all,” thought Mary, as peals of the boys’ merry laughter came to her, and then again echoes of “spotted snakes with double tongue” awoke the night echoes; “this is such a solitary place that it cannot signify, if they will only have the sense to stop when we get into the roads.”

But they hadn’t. Mary heard a chorus from “Der Freischutz,” beginning just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing shadows. That brought them into a lane darkened by its high hedges, where there was nothing for it but to let Miss Ray tightly grapple her arm, while the songs came further and further on the wind, and Mary felt the conviction that middle-aged spinsters must reckon on being forgotten, and left behind alike by brothers, sisters, and friends.

Nor did they come up with the party till they found them waiting in the road, close to the Rays’ lodgings, having evidently just missed them, for Mr. Ogilvie and the clergyman were turning back to look for them when they were gladly hailed, half apologised to, half laughed at by a babel of voices, among which Nita’s was the loudest, informing her sister that she had lost the best bit of all, for just at the turn of the lane there had come on them Babie’s fiery-eyed monster, which had “burst on the path,” when they were in mid song, flashing over them, and revealing, first a horse, and then a brougham, wherein there sat the august forms of Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow, going home from a state dinner, the lady’s very marabouts quivering with horror.

Mary stepped up to Nita, and gave her a sharp, severe grasp.

“Hush! remember their boys are here,” she whispered; and, with an exaggerated gesture, Nita looked about her in affected alarm, and, seeing that none were near, added—

“Thank you; I was just going to say it would be a study for Punch”

“O do send it up, they’ll never know it,” cried Janet; but there Caroline interfered—

“Hush, Janet, we ought to be at home. Don’t stand here, Armine is tired to death! 11.5 at the station to-morrow. Good-night.”

They parted, and Mary and her brother turned away to their own home. If it had not been for the presence of the curate, Mary would have said a good deal on the way home. As it was, she was so silent as to inspire her brother with enough compunction for having deserted her, to make him follow her, when she went to her own room. “Mary, I am sorry we missed you,” he said; “I ought to have looked about for you more, but I thought—”

“Nonsense, David; of course I do not mind that, if only I could have stopped all that singing.”

“That singing; why it was very pretty, wasn’t it?”

“Pretty indeed! Did it never occur to you what a scrape you may be getting that poor little thing into with her relations, and yourself, too?”

David looked more than half-amused, and she proceeded more resolutely—

“Well! what do you think must be Mrs. Brownlow’s opinion of what she saw and heard to-night? I blame myself exceedingly for not having urged the setting off sooner; but you must remember that what is all very well for holiday people, only here for a time, may do infinite mischief to residents.”

David only observed, “I didn’t want all those men, if that’s what you mean. They made the noise, not I.”

“No, nor I; but we swelled the party, and I am much disposed to believe that the best thing we can do is to take ourselves off, or do anything to break up this set.”

He looked for a moment much disconcerted; but then with a little masculine superiority, answered—

“Well, well, we’ll think over it, Mary. See how it appears to you to-morrow when you aren’t tired,” and then, with a smile and a kiss, bade her good-night.

“So that’s what we get,” said Mary, to herself, half amused, half annoyed; “those men think it is all because one is left behind in the dark! David is the best boy in the world, but there’s not a man of them all who has a notion of what gets a woman into trouble! I believe he was rather gratified than otherwise to be found out on a lark. Well, I’ll talk to Clara; she will have some sense!”

They were all to meet at the station the next morning, to go to an old castle, about an hour from Kenminster by railway; and they filled the platform, armed with sketching tools, sandwich baskets, botanical tins, and all other appliances; but when Mr. Ogilvie accosted Mrs. Joseph Brownlow, saying, “You have only half your boys,” she looked up, with a drolly guilty air, saying, “No, there’s an embargo on the other poor fellows.”

They had just taken their seats, and the train was in motion, when a heated headlong boy came dashing over the platform, and clung to the door of the carriage, standing on the step. It was Johnny. Orlando Hughes, who was next the window, grasped his hands, and, in answer to the cries of dismay and blame that greeted him, he called out, “Yes, here I am; Rob and Joe couldn’t run so fast.”

“Then you’ve got leave?” asked his aunt.

Johnny’s grin said “No.”

She looked up at Mr. Ogilvie in much vexation and anxiety.

“Don’t say any more to him now. It might put him in great danger. Wait till the next station,” he said.

It was a stopping train, and ten minutes brought a halt, when the guard came up in a fury, and Johnny found no sympathy for his bold attempt. Carey had no notion of fostering flat disobedience, and she told Johnny that unless he would promise to go home by himself and beg his father’s pardon, she should stay behind and go back with him, for she could have no pleasure in an expedition with him when he was behaving so outrageously.

The boy looked both surprised and abashed. His affection for his aunt was very great, as for one who had opened to him the gates of a new world, both within himself and beyond himself. He would not hear of her giving up the expedition, and promised her with all his heart to walk home, and confess, “Though ‘twasn’t papa, but mamma!” were his last words, as they left him on the platform, crestfallen, but with a twinkle in his eye, and with the station-master keeping watch over him as a dangerous subject.

Mr. Ogilvie said it would do the boy good for life; Caroline mourned over him a little, and wondered how his mother would treat him; and Mary sat and thought till the arrival at their destination, when they had to walk to the castle, dragging their appurtenances, and then to rouse their energies to spread out the luncheon.

Then, when there had been the usual amount of mirth, mischief, and mishap, and the party had dispersed, some to sketch, some to scramble, some to botanize, the “Duck and Drake to spoon,”—as said the boys, Mary Ogilvie found a turfy nook where she could hold council with Mrs. Acton about their poor little friend, for whose welfare she was seriously uneasy.

But Clara did not sympathise as much as she expected, having been much galled by Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s supercilious manner, and thinking the attempt to conciliate her both unworthy and useless.

“Of course I do not mean that poor Carey should truckle to her,” said Mary, rather nettled at the implication; “but I don’t think these irregular hours, and all this roaming about the country at all times, can be well in themselves for her or the children.”

“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country in the spring for the first time? If not, you never saw the prettiest and most innocent of intoxications. I had once to take the little Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells. I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to be done, of lessons. There was no sitting still on a fine morning. I was as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to be a prison.”

“This is not spring,” said Mary.

“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”

“No doubt, but they cannot be good. They keep up flightiness and excitability.”

“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”

“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary, rather severely. Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection or her grief.”

“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to sorrow without doing them harm.”

“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select—so as not to do herself harm with her relations—who after all must be more important to her than any outsiders.”

The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life; and Clara made answer—

“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good Dr. Brownlow’s life.”

“I am not sure of that. Blood is thicker than water.”

“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very turbid.”

“For shame, Clara.”

“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little country town Serene Highness! I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr. Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who can never be congenial.”

“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy), should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”

“To purr and lay eggs? My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly duckling, even in early life.”

“Not after it had been among the swans? You vain Clara!”

“I only lay claim to having seen the swans—not to having brought many specimens down here.”

“Such as that Nita, or Mr. Hughes?”

“More like the other bird, certainly,” said Clara, smiling; “but Mary, if you had but seen what that house was. Joe Brownlow was one of those men who make themselves esteemed and noted above their actual position. He was much thought of as a lecturer, and would have had a much larger practice but for his appointment at the hospital. It was in the course of the work he had taken for a friend gone out of town that he caught the illness that killed him. His lectures brought men of science about him, and his practice had made him acquainted with us poor Bohemians, as you seem to think us. Old Mrs. Brownlow had means of her own, and theirs was quite a wealthy house among our set. Any of us were welcome to drop into five o’clock tea, or at nine at night, and the pleasantness and good influence were wonderful. The motherliness and yet the enthusiasm of Mrs. Brownlow made her the most delightful old lady I ever saw. I can’t describe how good she was about my marriage, and many more would say they owed all that was brightest and best in them to that house. And there was Carey, like a little sunshiny fairy, the darling of everyone. No, not spoilt—I see what you are going to say.”

“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness ever could help making a pet of her.”

“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother. I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”

She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.

Mary laughed a little.

“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be unappreciated.”

“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on together.”

Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she further tried to say was—

“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock them?”

“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter, you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”

Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to expostulate and deliver her testimony.

There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed immediately—no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs. Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking tea at the vicarage.

Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.

“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous Armine exclaimed—

“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”

“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their mother; “then we break up our sitting.”

“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday; “but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”

“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,” she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly comic.

“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.

Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult Sabbatarian question in her mind.

“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother, didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more, mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”

But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered—

“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr. Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad to read what keeps mine round me?”

“Is it an old fashion with you?”

“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of the old sunshine.”

It was a watery reflection indeed!

“And could it not be with something that would be—”

“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”

To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”

“I did mean salt—very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.

“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did, what would become of the boys?”

“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that pass. There are things I wanted to say.”

“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”

“Not if you heed him so little.”

“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said I was not behaving decently!”

“No more you are.”

“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost hysterically.

“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have happened.”

“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”

“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”

“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”

“You are not like yourself, Carey.”

“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep up the old friendships and kindnesses—poor little fragments as they are—everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”

“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”

“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”

“It just shows how careful you should be.”

“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”

“Not the Coffinkeys, certainly,” said Mary; “but indeed, Carey, I myself was uncomfortable at that singing in the lanes at eleven at night.”

“It wasn’t eleven,” said Carey, perversely.

“Only 10.50—eh?”

“But what was the possible harm in it?”

“None at all in itself, only remember the harm it may do to the children for you to be heedless of people’s opinion, and to get a reputation for flightiness and doing odd things.”

“I couldn’t be like the Coffinkey pattern any more than I could be tied down to a rope walk.”

“But you need not do things that your better sense must tell you may be misconstrued. Surely there was a wish that you should live near the Colonel and be guided by him.”

“Little knowing that his guidance would consist in being set at me by Ellen and the Coffinkeys!”

“Nonsense,” said Mary, vexed enough to resume their old school-girl manners. “You know I am not set on by anybody, and I tell you that if you do not pull up in time, and give no foundation for ill-natured comments, your children will never get over it in people’s estimation. And as for themselves, a little steadiness and regularity would be much better for their whole dispositions.”

“It is holiday time,” said Carey, in a tone of apology.

“If it is only in holiday time—”

“The country has always seemed like holiday. You see we used to go—all of us—to some seaside place, and be quite free there, keeping no particular hours, and being so intensely happy. I haven’t yet got over the feeling that it is only for a time, and we shall go back into the dear old home and its regular ways.” Then clasping her hands over her side as though to squeeze something back, she broke out, “O Mary, Mary, you mustn’t scold me! You mustn’t bid me tie myself to regular hours till this summer is over. If you knew the intolerable stab when I recollect that he is gone—gone—gone for ever, you would understand that there’s nothing for it but jumping up and doing the first thing that comes to hand. Walking it down is best. Oh! what will become of me when the mornings get dark, and I can’t get up and rush into those woods? Yes”—as Mary made some affectionate gesture—“I know I have gone on in a wild way, but who would not be wild who had lost him? And then they goad me, and think me incapable of proper feeling,” and she laughed that horrid little laugh. “So I am, I suppose; but feeling won’t go as other people think proper. Let me alone, Mary, I won’t damage the children. They are Joe’s children, and I know what he wanted and wished for them better than Robert or anybody else. But I must go my own way, and do what I can bear, and as I can, or—or I think my heart would break quite, and that would be worse for them than anything.”

Mary had tears in her eyes, drawn forth by the vehement passion of grief apparent in the whole tone of her poor little friend. She had no doubts of Carey’s love, sorrow, or ability, but she did seriously doubt of her wisdom and judgment, and thought her undisciplined. However, she could say no more, for Nita Ray and Janet were advancing on them.

The next day Caroline was in bed with one of her worst headaches. Mary felt that she had been a cruel and prim old duenna, and meekly bore Clara’s reproachful glances.

CHAPTER X. – ELLEN’S MAGNUM BONUMS

     He put in his thumb     And he pulled out a plum,     And cried, “What a good boy am I!”                                  Jack Horner.

Whether it were from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down, and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection, and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not equally discreet.

With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became possible to be more calm and quiet.

Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was Janet’s inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.

“Without asking me!” she exclaimed, aghast.

“I thought you heard us talking,” said Janet, so carelessly, that her mother put on her dignity.

“I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted without reference to me.”

“Come, now, Mother Carey,” said this modern daughter; “don’t be cross! We really didn’t know you weren’t attending.”

“If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can never have thought over the matter!”