That Stick ...

by Charlotte Mary Yonge

  ‘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?’

  p. 164‘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 p. 165it 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.

  p. 166The 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.

  ‘I did not know what I was letting you in for,’ said Bertha, in apology to Mrs. Bury.

  ‘My dear, I would not have been without the experience on any account. I never saw such a refreshing pair of people.’

  ‘Surely it must have been awfully slow—regular penal servitude!’

  ‘You confuse absence of small talk with absence of soul, Birdie. When we had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to say, we got on perfectly.’

  ‘And what you had to say was about Master Michael?’

  ‘Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.’

  p. 167‘More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is man, the proper study of womankind is babe.’

  ‘Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.’

  ‘Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!’

  ‘I hope they were an education to me.’

  ‘I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive thing as that which they possess in common,’ said Bertha.

  ‘I wish it had been,’ said Mrs. Bury gravely.

  ‘At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,’ said Bertha, laughing.

  Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder. She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did Ida’s screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these young matrons.

  Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and p. 168she could hardly be detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of die Gnadigen Frauen. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge of Lady Northmoor’s baby on the way home. Constance hoped Ida might never hear this fact.

  Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir. A bit of moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had first been crossed by a branch line, and the primary growth of a station had been followed by the discovery of good building stone, and the erection of a crop of houses of all degrees, which promised to set the Northmoor finances on a better footing than had been theirs for years, and set their conscientious landlord to work at once on providing church room and schools.

  All this, and that most precious possession at home, combined to give Lord Northmoor an amount of spirit and life that enabled him to take his place in the county, emancipate himself from the squire, show an opinion of his own, and open his mouth occasionally. As Bertha
observed, no one would ever have called him a stick if he had begun like this. To people like these, humbled and depressed in early life, a little happiness was a great stimulus.

  p. 169CHAPTER XXV

  THE LOVE

  It was not till Christmas that Ida had the opportunity of making her observations. By that time ‘Mite,’ as he was supposed to have named himself, had found the use of his feet, and was acquiring that of his tongue. In fact, he was a very fine forward child, who might easily have been supposed to be eighteen months old instead of fifteen, as Ida did not fail to remark.

  He was a handsome little creature, round and fair, with splendid sturdy legs and mottled arms, hair that stood up in a pale golden crest, round blue eyes and a bright colour, without much likeness as yet to either parent, though Lord Northmoor declared that there was an exact resemblance to his own brother, Charles, Herbert’s father, as he first remembered him. Ida longed to purse up her lips but did not dare, and was provoked to see her mother taken completely captive by his charms, and petting him to the utmost extent.

  Indeed, Lady Northmoor, who was very much afraid of spoiling him, was often distressed when p. 170such scenes as this took place. ‘Mite! Mite, dear, no!’ when his fat little hands had grasped an ivory paper-cutter, and its blade was on the way to the button mouth. ‘No!’ as he paused and looked at her. ‘Here’s Mite’s ball! poor little dear, do let him have it’—and Mite, reading sympathy in his aunt’s face, laughed in a fascinating triumphant manner, and took a bite with his small teeth.

  ‘Mite! mother said no!’ and it was gently taken from his hand, but before the fingers had embraced the substituted ball, a depreciating look and word of remonstrance gave a sense of ill-usage and there was a roar.

  ‘Oh, poor little dear! Here—auntie’s goody goody—’

  ‘No, no, please, Emma, he has had quite as many as he ought! No, no, Mite—’ and he was borne off sobbing in her arms, while Ida observed, ‘There! is that the way people treat their own children?’

  ‘Some people never get rid of the governess,’ observed Mrs. Morton, quite unconscious that but for her interference there would have been no contest and no tears.

  But she herself had no doubts, and was mollified by Mary’s plea on her return. ‘He is quite good now, but you see, there is so much danger of our spoiling him, we feel that we cannot begin too soon to make him obedient.’

  ‘I could not bear to keep a poor child under in that way.’

  ‘I believe it saves them a great deal if obedience is an instinct,’ said Mary.

  It had not been Mrs. Morton’s method, and she p. 171was perfectly satisfied with the result, so she only made some inarticulate sound; but she thought Frank quite as unnatural, when he kept Michael on his knee at breakfast, but with only an empty spoon to play with! All the tossing and playing, the radiant smiles between the two did not in her eyes atone for these small beginnings of discipline, even though her brother-in-law’s first proceeding, whenever he came home, was to look for his son, and if the child were not in the drawing-room, to hurry up to the nursery and bring him down, laughing and shouting.

  The Tyrolean nurse had been sacrificed to those notions of training which the Westhaven party regarded as so harsh. Her home sickness and pining for her mountains had indeed fully justified the ‘rampant consciences,’ as to the humanity as well as the expedience of sending her home before her indulgence of the Kleiner Freiherr had had time to counteract his parents’ ideas, and her place had been supplied by the nurse whom Amice was outgrowing, so that Ida was disappointed of her intentions of examining her, and laid up the circumstances as suspicious, though, on the other hand, her mother was gratified at exercising a bit of patronage by recommending a nursery girl from Westhaven. The next winter, however, was not marked by a visit to Northmoor. Ida had been having her full share of the summer and early autumnal gaieties of Westhaven, and among the yachts who were given to putting in there was a certain Morna, belonging to Sir Thomas Brady, who had become a baronet by force of success in speculation. His son, who chiefly p. 172used it, showed evident admiration of Miss Morton’s bright cheeks and eyes, and so often resorted to Westhaven, and dropped in at what she had named Northmoor cottage, that there was fair reason for supposing that this might result in more than an ordinary flirtation.

  However, at the regatta, when she had looked for distinguished attention on his part, she felt herself absolutely neglected, and the very next day the Morna sailed away, without a farewell.

  Ida at first could hardly believe it. When she did, the conviction came upon her that his son’s attachment had been reported to Sir Thomas, and that the young man had been summoned away against his will. It would have been different, no doubt, had Herbert still been heir-presumptive.

  ‘That horrid little Mite!’ said she.

  Whether her heart or her ambition had been most affected might be doubtful. At any rate, the disappointment added to the oppression of a heavy cold on the chest, which she had caught at the regatta, and which became severe enough to call for the doctor.

  Thus the mother and daughter did not go to Northmoor. At a ball given on board a steam yacht just before Christmas Ida caught a violent cold on the chest, the word congestion was uttered, and an opinion was pronounced that as she had always weak lungs, a spring abroad would be advisable.

  Mrs. Morton wrote a letter with traces of tears upon it, appealing to her brother-in-law to assist her as the only hope of saving her dearest child, and the quarries had done so well during the last year p. 173that he was able to respond with a largesse sufficient for her needs, though not for her expectations.

  Mrs. Morton would have liked to have taken Constance as interpreter, and general aid and assistant; but Constance was hard at work, aspiring to a scholarship, at a ladies’ college, and it was plain that her sister was not so desirous of her company as to make her mother overrule her wishes as a duty.

  In fact, Ida had found a fellow-traveller who would suit her much better than Constance. Living for the last year in lodgings near at hand was a Miss Gattoni, daughter of an Italian courier and French lady’s maid. As half boarder at a third-rate English school, she had acquired education enough to be first a nursery-governess, and later a companion; and in her last situation, when she had gone abroad several times with a rheumatic old lady, she had recommended herself enough to receive a legacy which rendered her tolerably independent. She was very good-natured, and had graduated in the art of making herself acceptable, and, as she really wished to go abroad again, she easily induced Mrs. Morton and Ida to think it a great boon that she should join forces with them, and as she was an experienced traveller with a convenient smattering of various tongues, she really smoothed their way considerably and lived much more at her ease than she could have done upon her own resources, always frequenting English hotels and boarding-houses.

  Mrs. Morton and Ida were of that order of tourists who do not so much care for sights as for being on a level with those who have seen them; and besides, Ida was scarcely well or in spirits p. 174enough for much exertion till after her first month at Nice, which restored her altogether to her usual self, and made her impatient of staying in one place.

  It is not, however, worth while to record the wanderings of the trio, until in the next summer they reached Venice, where Ida declared her intention of penetrating into the Dolomites. There was an outcry. What could she wish for in that wild and savage country, where there was no comfortable hotel, no society, no roads—nothing in short to make life tolerable, whereas an hotel full of Americans of extreme politeness to ladies, and expeditions in gondolas, when one could talk and have plenty of attention, were only too delightful?

  That peaks should be more attractive than flirtations was inexplicable, but at last in secret confabulation Ida disclosed her motive, and in another private consultation Mrs. Morton begged Miss Gattoni to agree to it, as the only means of satisfying the young lady, or putting her mind at rest about a fancy her mother could
not believe in; though even as she said, ‘it would be so very shocking, it is perfectly ridiculous to think my brother Lord Northmoor would be capable,’ the shrewd confidante detected a lingering wish that it might be so!

  Maps and routes were consulted, and it was decided that whereas to go from Venice through Cadore would involve much mule-riding and rough roads, the best way would be to resort to the railway to Verona, and thence to Botzen as the nearest point whence Ratzes could be reached.

  p. 175CHAPTER XXVI

  IDA’S WARNING

  Botzen proved to be very hot and full of smells, nor did Mrs. Morton care for its quaint old medieval houses, but Ida’s heart had begun to fail her when she came so near the crisis, and on looking over the visitors’ book she gave a cry. ‘Ah, if we had only known! It is all of no use.’

  ‘How?’ she was asked.

  ‘That horrid Mrs. Bury!’

  ‘There?’

  ‘Of course she is. Only a week ago she was here. If she is at Ratzes, of course we can do nothing.’

  ‘And the road is affreux, perfectly frightful,’ said Mademoiselle. ‘I have been inquiring about it. No access except upon mules. A whole day’s journey—and the hotel! Bah, it is vilain!’

  ‘If Ida is bent on going she must go without me,’ said Mrs. Morton. ‘I—I have had enough of those horrid beasts. Ida’s nonsense will be the death of me.’

  ‘I don’t see much good in going on with that p. 176woman there,’ said Ida gloomily. ‘She would be sure to stifle all inquiry.’

  ‘A good thing too,’ muttered poor, weary Mrs. Morton.

  Ida turned the leaves of the visitors’ book till she found the names of Lord and Lady Northmoor, and then, growing more eager as obstructions came in her way, and not liking to turn back as if on a fool’s errand, she suggested to Miss Gattoni that questions might be asked about their visit. The Tyrolean patois was far beyond her, and not too comprehensible to her friend, but there was a waiter who could speak French, and the landlady’s German was tolerable.