Beechcroft at Rockstone Part 45

'Indeed I did, and Aunt Jane was very kind, or else I should have had no comfort at all. Was mamma very much shocked at my teaching Alexis?'

'I do not remember. We concluded that whatever you did had your aunts'

sanction.'

'Ah! that was the point.'

'Did these young people persuade you to secrecy?'

'Oh no, no; Kalliope protested, and I overpowered her, because--because I was foolish, and I thought Aunt Jane interfering.'

'I see,' said Sir Jasper, with perhaps more comprehension of the antagonism than sisterly habit and affection would have allowed to his wife. 'I am glad you saw your error, and tried to repair it; but what could you have done to affect this boy so much. How old is he? We thought of him as twelve or fourteen, but one forgets how time goes on, and you speak of him as in a kind of superintendent's position.'

'He is nineteen.'

Sir Jasper twirled his moustache.

'I begin to perceive,' he said, 'you rushed into an undertaking that became awkward, and when you had to draw off, the young fellow was upset and did not mind his business. So far I understand, but you said something about prison.'

The worst part of the personal confession was over now, and Gillian could go on to tell the rest of the Stebbing enmity, of Mr. White's arrival, and of the desire to keep his relations aloof from him.

'This is guess work,' said Sir Jasper.

'I think Cousin Rotherwood would say the same' rejoined Gillian, and then she explained the dismissal, the flight, and the unfortunate consequences, and that Aunt Jane hoped for advice by the morning's post.

'I am afraid it is too late for that,' said Sir Jasper, looking at his watch. 'I must read her letter and consider.'

Gillian gave a desperate sigh, and felt more desperate when at that moment the very man they had had a glimpse of on Sat.u.r.day met them, exclaiming in a highly delighted tone--

'Sir Jasper Merrifield!'

Any Royal Wardour ought to have been welcome to the Merrifields, but this individual had not been a particular favourite with the young people. They knew he was the son of a popular dentist, who had made his fortune, and had put his son into the army to make a gentleman of him, and prevent him from becoming an artist. In the first object there had been very fair success; but the taste for art was unquenchable, and it had been the fashion of the elder half of the Merrifield family to make a joke, and profess to be extremely bored, when 'Fangs,' as they naughtily called him among themselves, used to arrive from leave, armed with catalogues, or come in with his drawings to find sympathy in his colonel's wife. Gillian had caught enough from her four elders to share in an unreasoning way their prejudice, and she felt doubly savage and contemptuous when she heard--

'Yes, I retired.'

'And what are you doing now?'

'My mother required me as long as she lived' (then Gillian noticed that he was in mourning). 'I think I shall go abroad, and take lessons at Florence or Rome, though it is too late to do anything seriously--and there are affairs to be settled first.'

Then came a whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they actually included 'poor White' and his family, Gillian was angered and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be delighted to see him.

'What would Lady Rotherwood think of the liberty?' the displeased mood whispered to Gillian.

But Lady Rotherwood, presiding over her pretty Worcester tea-set, was quite ready to welcome any of the Merrifield friends. There were various people in the room besides Lady Merrifield and Mysie, who had just come in. There was the Admiral talking politics with Lord Rotherwood, and there was Clement Underwood, who had come with Harry from the city, and Bessie discussing with them boys' guilds and their amus.e.m.e.nts.

Gillian felt frantic. Would no one cast a thought on Alexis in prison?

If he had been to be hanged the next day, her secret annoyance at their indifference to his fate could not have been worse.

And yet at the first opportunity Harry brought Mr. Underwood to talk to her about his choir-boys, and to listen to her account of the 7th Standard boy, a member of the most musical choir in Rockquay, and the highest of the high.

'I hope not c.o.c.kiest of the c.o.c.ky,' said Mr. Underwood, smiling. 'Our experience is that superlatives may often be so translated.'

'I don't think poor Theodore is c.o.c.ky,' said Gillian; 'the Whites have always been so bullied and sat upon.'

'Is his name Theodore?' asked Mr. Underwood, as if he liked the name, which Gillian remembered to have seen on a cross at Vale Leston.

'Being sat upon is hardly the best lesson in humility,' said Harry.

'There's apt to be a reaction,' said Mr. Underwood; 'but the crack voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know too well. I was the veriest young prig myself under those circ.u.mstances!'

'Don't be too hard on c.o.c.kiness,' said Lord Rotherwood, who had come up to them, 'there must be consciousness of powers. How are you to fly, if you mustn't flap your wings and crow a little?'

'On a les defauts de ses qualites,' put in Lady Merrifield.

'Yes,' added Mr. Underwood. 'It is quite true that needful self-a.s.sertion and originality, and sense of the evils around--'

'Which the old folk have outgrown and got used to,' said Lord Rotherwood.

'May be condemned as conceit,' concluded Mr. Underwood.

'Ay, exactly as Eliab knew David's pride and the naughtiness of his heart,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'If you won't fight your giant yourself, you've no business to condemn those who feel it in them to go at him.'

'Ah! we have got to the condemnation of others, instead of the exaltation of self,' said Lady Merrifield.

'It is better to cultivate humility in one's self than other people, eh?' said the Marquis, and his cousin thought, though she did not say, that he was really the most humble and unself-conscious man she had ever known. What she did say was, 'It is a plant that grows best uncultivated.'

'And if you have it not by happy nature, what then?' said Clement Underwood.

'Then I suppose you must plant it, and there will be plenty of tears of repentance to water it,' returned she.

'Thank you,' said Clement. 'That is an idea to work upon.'

'All very fine!' sighed Gillian to Mysie, 'but oh, how about Alexis in prison! There's papa, now he has got rid of Fangs, actually going to walk off with Uncle Sam, and mamma has let Lady Rotherwood get hold of her. Will no-body care for anybody?'

'I think I would trust papa,' said Mysie.

He was not long gone, and when he came back he said, 'You may give me that letter, Gillian. I posted a card to tell your aunt she should hear to-morrow.'

All that Gillian could say to her mother in private that evening consisted of, 'Oh, mamma, mamma,' but the answer was, 'I have heard about it from papa, my dear; I am glad you told him. He is thinking what to do. Be patient.'

Externally, awe and good manners forced Gillian to behave herself; but internally she was so far from patient, and had so many bitter feelings of indignation, that she felt deeply rebuked when she came down next morning to find her father hurrying through his breakfast, with a cab ordered to convey him to the station, on his way to see what could be done for Alexis White.

That day Gillian had her confidential talk with her mother--a talk that she never forgot, trying to dig to the roots of her failures in a manner that only the true mother-confessor of her own child can perhaps have patience and skill for, and that only when she has studied the creature from babyhood. The concatenation, ending (if it was so to end) in the committal to Avoncester Jail, and beginning with the interview over the rails, had to be traced link by link, and was almost as long as 'the house that Jack built.'

'And now I see,' said Gillian, 'that it all came of a nasty sort of antagonism to Aunt Jane. I never guessed how like I was to Dolores, and I thought her so bad. But if I had only trusted Aunt Jane, and had no secrets, she would have helped me in it all, I know now, and never have brought the Whites into trouble.'

'Yes,' said Lady Merrifield; 'perhaps I should have warned you a little more, but I went off in such a hurry that I had no time to think. You children are all very loyal to us ourselves; but I suppose you are all rather infected by the modern spirit, that criticises when it ought to submit to authorities.'

'But how can one help seeing what is amiss? As some review says, how respect what does not make itself respectable? You know I don't mean that for my aunts. I have learnt now what Aunt Jane really is--how very kind and wise and clever and forgiving--but I was naughty enough to think her at first--'