"But we couldn't, mother."
"Couldn't?" both echoed.
"No," said Jock, "or we should be still in Piccadilly. Mother Carey, she told us not to cross till it was safe."
"And she stood up like the Duke of Bedford in the Square," added Armine.
Janet caught her mother's eye, and both felt a spasm of uncontrollable diversion in their throats, making Janet turn her back, and Carey gasp and turn on the boys.
"All that is no reason at all. Go up to the nursery. I wish I could trust you to behave like a gentleman, when your aunt is so kind as to take you out."
"I _did_, mother! I did hand her across the street, and dragged her out from under all the omnibus horses," said Jock in an injured tone, while Janet could not refrain from a whispered comparison, "Like a little steam-tug," and this was quite too much for all of them, producing an explosion which made the tall and stately dame look from one to another in such bewildered amazement, that struck the mother and daughter as so comical that the one hid her face in her hands with a sort of hysterical heaving, and the other burst into that painful laughter by which strained spirits assert themselves in the young.
Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in utter astonishment and discomfiture, turned and walked off to her own room. Somehow Carey and Janet felt more on their ordinary terms than they had done all these sad days, in their consternation and a certain sense of guilt.
Carey could adjudicate now, though trembling still. She made Jock own that his Serpentine plans had been unjustifiable, and then she added, "My poor boy, I must punish you. You must remember it, for if you are not good and steady, what _will_ become of us."
Jock leapt at her neck. "Mother, do anything to me. I don't mind, if you only won't look at me like that!"
She sat down on the stairs, all in a heap again with him, and sentenced him to the forfeit of the ship, which he endured with more tolerable grace, because Armine observed, "Never mind, Skipjack, we'll go partners in mine. You shall have half my cargo of gold dust."
Carey could not find it in her heart to check the voyages of the remaining ship, over the uncarpeted dining-room; but as she was going, Armine looked at her with his great soft eyes, and said, "Mother Carey, have you got to be the scoldy and punishy one now?"
"I must if you need it," said she, going down on her knees again to gather the little fellow to her breast; "but, oh, don't-don't need it."
"I'd rather it was Uncle Robert and Aunt Ellen," said Jock, "for then I shouldn't care."
"Dear Jock, if you only care, I think we sha'n't want many punishments. But now I must go to your aunt, for we did behave horribly ill to her."
Aunt Ellen was kind, and accepted Carey's apology when she found that Jock had really been punished. Only she said, "You must be firm with that boy, Caroline, or you will be sorry for it. My boys know that what I have said is to be done, and they know it is of no use to disobey. I am happy to say they mind me at a word; but that John of yours needs a tight hand. The Colonel thinks that the sooner he is at school the better."
Before Carey had time to get into a fresh scrape, the Colonel was ringing at the door. He had to confess that Dr. Lucas had said Mrs. Joe Brownlow was right about Vaughan, and had made it plain that his offer ought not to be accepted, either in policy, or in that duty which the Colonel began to perceive towards his brother's patients. Nor did he think ill of her plan respecting Dr. Drake; and said he would himself suggest the application which that gentleman was no doubt withholding from true feeling, for he had been a favourite pupil of Joe Brownlow, and had been devoted to him. He was sure that Mrs. Brownlow's good sense and instinct were to be trusted, a dictum which not a little surprised her brother-in-law, who had never ceased to think of "poor Joe's fancy" as a mere child, and who forgot that she was fifteen years older than at her marriage.
He told his wife what Dr. Lucas had said, to which she replied, "That's just the way. Men know nothing about it."
However, Dr. Drake's offer was sufficiently eligible to be accepted. Moreover, it proved that the most available house at Kenminster could not be got ready for the family before the winter, so that the move could not take place till the spring. In the meantime, as Dr. Drake could not marry till Easter, the lower part of the house was to be given up to him, and Carey and Janet felt that they had a reprieve.
CHAPTER V. BRAINS AND NO BRAINS.
I do say, thou art quick in answers: Thou heatest my blood.-Love's Labours Lost.
Kem'ster, as county tradition pronounced what was spelt Kenminster, a name meaning St. Kenelm's minster, had a grand collegiate church and a foundation-school which, in the hands of the Commissioners, had of late years passed into the rule of David Ogilvie, Esq., a spare, pale, nervous, sensitive-looking man of eight or nine and twenty, who sat one April evening under his lamp, with his sister at work a little way off, listening with some amusement to his sighs and groans at the holiday tasks that lay before him.
"Here's an answer, Mary. What was Magna Charta? The first map of the world."
"Who's that ingenious person?"
"Brownlow Major, of course; and here's French, who says it was a new sort of cow invented by Henry VIII.-a happy feminine, I suppose, to the Papal Bull. Here's a third! The French fleet defeated by Queen Elizabeth. Most have passed it over entirely."
"Well, you know this is the first time you have tried such an examination, and boys never do learn history."
"Nor anything else in this happy town," was the answer, accompanied by a ruffling over of the papers.
"For shame, David! The first day of the term!"
"It is the dead weight of Brownlows, my dear. Only think! There's another lot coming! A set of duplicates. They haven't even the sense to vary the Christian names. Three more to be admitted to- morrow."
"That accounts for a good deal!"
"You are laughing at me, Mary; but did you never know what it is to feel like Sisyphus? Whenever you think you have rolled it a little way, down it comes, a regular dead weight again, down the slope of utter indifference and dulness, till it seems to crush the very heart out of you !"
"Have you really nobody that is hopeful?"
"Nobody who does not regard me as his worst enemy, and treat all my approaches with distrust and hostility. Mary, how am I to live it down?"
"You speak as if it were a crime!"
"I feel as if it were one. Not of mine, but of the pedagogic race before me, who have spoilt the relations between man and boy; so that I cannot even get one to act as a medium."
"That would be contrary to esprit de corps."
"Exactly; and the worst of it is, I am not one of those genial fellows, half boys themselves, who can join in the sports con amore; I should only make a mountebank of myself if I tried, and the boys would distrust me the more."
"Quite true. The only way is to be oneself, and one's best self, and the rest will come."
"I'm not so sure of that. Some people mistake their vocation."
"Well, when you have given it a fair trial, you can turn to something else. You are getting the school up again, which is at least one testimony."
David Ogilvie made a sound as if this were very base kind of solace, and his sister did not wonder when she remembered the bright hopes and elaborate theories with which he had undertaken the mastership only nine months ago. He was then fresh from the university, and the loss of constant intercourse with congenial minds had perhaps contributed as much as the dulness of the Kenminster youth to bring him into a depressed state of health and spirits, which had made his elder sister contrive to spend her Easter at the seaside with him, and give him a few days at the beginning of the term. Indeed, she was anxious enough about him, when he went down to the old grammar- school, to revolve the possibility of acceding to his earnest wish, and coming to live with him, instead of continuing in her situation as governess.
He came back to luncheon next day with a brightened face, that made his sister say, "Well, have you struck some sparks?"
"I've got some new material, and am come home saying, 'What's in a name?'"
"Eh! Is it those very new Brownlows, that seemed yesterday to be the last straw on the camel's back?"
"I wish you could have seen the whole scene, Mary. There were half- a-dozen new boys to be admitted, four Brownlows! Think of that! Well, there stood manifestly one of the old stock, with the same oval face and sleepy brown eyes, and the very same drawl I know so well in the 'No-a-' to the vain question, 'Have you done any Latin?' And how shall I do justice to the long, dragging drawl of his reading? Aye, here's the sentence I set him on: 'The-Gowls-had-con-sen- ted-to-accept-a-sum-of-gold-and-retire. They were en- gagged-in-wag--ging out the sum-required, and-' I had to tell him what to call Brennus, and he proceeded to cast the sword into the scale, exclaiming, just as to a cart-horse, 'Woh! To the Worsted' (pronounced like yarn). After that you may suppose the feelings with which I called his ditto, another Joseph Armine Brownlow; and forth came the smallest sprite, with a white face and great black eyes, all eagerness, but much too wee for this place. 'Begun Latin?' 'Oh, yes;' and he rattled off a declension and a tense with as much ease as if he had been born speaking Latin. I gave him Phaedrus to see whether that would stump him, and I don't think it would have done so if he had not made os a mouth instead of a bone, in dealing with the 'Wolf and the Lamb.' He was almost crying, so I put the Roman history into his hand, and his reading was something refreshing to hear. I asked if he knew what the sentence meant, and he answered, 'Isn't it when the geese cackled?' trying to turn round the page. 'What do you know about the geese?' said I. To which the answer was, 'We played at it on the stairs! Jock and I were the Romans, and Mother Carey and Babie were the geese.'"
"Poor little fellow! I hope no boys were there to listen, or he will never hear the last of those geese."
"I hope no one was within earshot but his brothers, who certainly did look daggers at him. He did very well in summing and in writing, except that he went out of his way to spell fish, p h y c h, and shy, s c h y; and at last, I could not resist the impulse to ask him what Magna Charta is. Out came the answer, 'It is yellow, and all crumpled up, and you can't read it, but it has a bit of a great red seal hanging to it.'"
"What, he had seen it?"
"Yes, or a facsimile, and what was more, he knew who signed it. Whoever taught that child knew how to teach, and it is a pity he should be swamped among such a set as ours."
"I thought you would be delighted."
"I should be, if I had him alone, but he must be put with a crew who will make it their object to bully him out of his superiority, and the more I do for him, the worse it will be for him, poor little fellow; and he looks too delicate to stand the ordeal. It is sheer cruelty to send him."
"Hasn't he brothers?"
"Oh, yes! I was going to tell you, two bigger boys, another Robert and John Brownlow-about eleven and nine years old. The younger one is a sort of black spider monkey, wanting the tail. We shall have some trouble with that gentleman, I expect."
"But not the old trouble?"
"No, indeed; unless the atmosphere affects him. He answered as no boy of twelve can do here; and as to the elder one, I must take him at once into the fifth form, such as it is."
"Where have they been at school?"
"At a day school in London. They are Colonel Brownlow's nephews. Their father was a medical man in London, who died last summer, leaving a young widow and these boys, and they have just come down to live in Kenminster. But it can't be owing to the school. No school would give all three that kind of-what shall I call it?-culture, and intelligence, that they all have; besides, the little one has been entirely taught at home."
"I wonder whether it is their mother's doing?"
"I am afraid it is their father's. The Colonel spoke of her as a poor helpless little thing, who was thrown on his hands with all her family."
After the morning's examination and placing of the boys, there was a half-holiday; and the brother and sister set forth to enjoy it together, for Kenminster was a place with special facilities for enjoyment. It was built as it were within a crescent, formed by low hills sloping down to the river; the Church, school, and other remnants of the old collegiate buildings lying in the flat at the bottom, and the rest of the town, one of the small decayed wool staples of Somerset, being in terraces on the hill-side, with steep streets dividing the rows. These were of very mixed quality and architecture, but, as a general rule, improved the higher they rose, and were all interspersed with gardens running up or down, and with a fair sprinkling of trees, whose budding green looked well amid the yellow stone.
On the summit were some more ornamental villa-like houses, and grey stone buildings with dark tiled roofs, but the expansion on that side had been checked by extensive private grounds. There were very beautiful woods coming almost close to the town, and in the absence of the owner, a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being constructed on supposed Chinese principles of architecture, was known to its friends as "the Pagoda," to its foes as "the Folly." It had been long untenanted, but this winter it had been put into complete repair, and two rooms, showing a sublime indifference to consistency of architecture, had been lately built out with sash windows and a slated roof, contrasting oddly with the frilled and fluted tiles of the tower from which it jutted.
Suddenly there sounded close to their ears the words-"School time, my dear!"
Starting and looking round for some impertinent street boy, Mr. Ogilvie exclaimed, "What's that?"
"Mother Carey! We are all Mother Carey's chickens."
"See, there," exclaimed Mary, and a great parrot was visible on the branch of a sumach, which stretched over the railings of the low wall of the pagoda garden. "O you appropriate bird,-you surely ought not to be here!"
To which the parrot replied, "Hic, haec, hoc!" and burst out in a wild scream of laughing, spreading her grey wings, and showing intentions of flying away; but Mr. Ogilvie caught hold of the chain that hung from her leg.
Just then voices broke out-
"That's Polly! Where is she? That's you, Jock, you horrid boy."
"Well, I didn't see why she shouldn't enjoy herself."
"Now you've been and lost her. Poll, Poll!"
"I have her!" called back Mr. Ogilvie. "I'll bring her to the gate."
Thanks came through the hedge, and the brother and sister walked on.
"It's old Ogre. Cut!" growled in what was meant to be an aside, a voice the master knew full well, and there was a rushing off of feet, like ponies in a field.
When the sheep gate was reached, a great furniture van was seen standing at the door of the "Folly," and there appeared a troop of boys and girls in black, eager to welcome their pet.
"Thank you, sir; thank you very much. Come, Polly," said the eldest boy, taking possession of the bird.
"I think we have met before," said the schoolmaster to the younger ones, glad to see that two-i.e. the new Robert and Armine Brownlow- had not joined in the sauve qui peut.
Nay, Robert turned and said, "Mother, it is Mr. Ogilvie."
Then that gentleman was aware that one of the black figures had a widow's cap, with streamers flying behind her in the breeze, but while he was taking off his hat and beginning, "Mrs. Brownlow," she held out her hands to his sister, crying, "Mary, Mary Ogilvie," and there was an equally fervent response. "Is it? Is it really Caroline Allen?" and the two friends linked eager hands in glad pressure, turning, after the first moment, towards the house, while Mary said, "David, it is my dear old schoolfellow; Carey, this is my brother."
"You were very kind to these boys," said Carey, warmly shaking hands with him. "The name sounded friendly, but I little thought you were Mary's brother. Are you living here, Mar
y? How delightful!"
"Alas, no; I am only keeping holiday with David. I go back to- morrow."
"Then stay now, stay and let me get all I can of you, in this frightful muddle," entreated Caroline. "Chaos is come again, but you won't mind."
"I'll come and help you," said Mary. "David, you must go on alone and come back for me."
"Can't I be of use?" offered David, feeling rather shut out in the cold; "I see a bookcase. Isn't that in my line ?"
"And here's the box with its books," said Janet. "Oh! mother, do let that be finished off at least! Bobus, there are the shelves, and I have all their pegs in my basket."
The case was happily in its place against the wall, and Janet had seized on her recruit to hold the shelves while she pegged them, while the two friends were still exchanging their first inquiries, Carey exclaiming, "Now, you naughty Mary, where have you been, and why didn't you write?"
"I have been in Russia, and I didn't write, because nobody answered, and I didn't know where anybody was."
"In Russia! I thought you were with a Scottish family, and wrote to you to the care of some laird with an unearthly name."
"But you knew that they took me abroad."
"And Alice Brown told me that letters sent to the place in Scotland would find you. I wrote three times, and when you did not answer my last-" and Caroline broke off with things unutterable in her face.
"I never had any but the first when you were going to London. I answered that. Yes, I did! Don't look incredulous. I wrote from Sorrento."
"That must have miscarried. Where did you address it."
"To the old place, inside a letter to Mrs. Mercer."
"I see! Poor Mrs. Mercer went away ill, and did not live long after, and I suppose her people never troubled themselves about her letters. But why did not you get ours."
"Mrs. McIan died at Venice, and the aunts came out, and considering me too young to go on with the laird and his girls, they fairly made me over to a Russian family whom we had met. Unluckily, as I see now, I wrote to Mrs. Mercer, and as I never heard more I gave up writing. Then the Crimean War cut me off entirely even from David. I had only one letter all that time."
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