Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 100

"I will have it copied out and send it for you to look at," said Allen.

"If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it be worth while to copy it. I shall set forth on my holiday journey the day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my Christmas number."

So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the "Joy," and in a couple of days returned it with a hasty note--

"A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make it taking, and not overdone. Please let me have it, with a few verbal corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of September. It will bring you in about 15."

Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the periodicals more widely circulated. It was plain that literature was his vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial, the instalments paying his expenses for the trial. The only doubt was what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery would be available. Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the "Traveller's Joy," and wanted to see his germ developed.

To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly impossible in Allen's eyes, and he must recruit himself by a yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half compa.s.sionately. Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no other way, and he doubted Allen's liking it, but that was his affair.

Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was to make a brief stay in his friend's paternal c.u.mberland farm. He had succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his father's former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of his commission, still made him the rich man of the family. John was of course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm invitation from their friends at Fordham.

"I should like Armie to go," said the mother in conference with Babie, her cabinet councillor.

"O yes, Armie must go," said Babie, "but--"

"Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?"

"I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much."

"Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you would not wish to go without me."

"O no, no, NO, NO, mother," and her face and neck burnt with blushes.

"Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some surprises ready for the others."

"Hurrah! We'll do the painting of the doors. What fun it will be to see London empty."

The male population were horribly scandalised at the decision. Jock and Armine wanted to give up their journey, and John implored his aunt to come to Kencroft; but she only promised to send Babie there if she saw signs of flagging, and the Infanta laughed at the notion, and said she had had an overdose of country enough to last her for years. Allen said ladies overdid everything, and that Mother Carey could not help being one of the s.e.x, and then he asked her for 10, and said Babie would have plenty of time to copy out "The Single Eye." She pouted "I thought you were going to put the finishing touches."

"I've marked them for you. Why, Barbara, I am surprised," he added in an elder brotherly tone; "you ought to be thankful to be able to be useful."

"Useful! I've lots of things to do! And you?"

"As if I could lug that great MS. of yours about with me on board Apthorpe's yacht."

"Never mind, Allen," said his mother, who had not been intended to hear all this. "I will do it for you; but Miss Editor must not laugh at my peaked governessy hand."

"I did not mean that, mother, only Babie ought not to be disobliging."

"Babie has a good deal to do. She has an essay to write for her professor, you know, and her hands are pretty full."

Babie too said, "Mother, I never meant you to undertake it. Please let me have it now. Only Allen will never do anything for himself that he can get any one else to do."

"He could not well do it on board the yacht, my dear. And I don't want you to have so much writing on your hands.'

"And so you punish me," sighed Barbara, more annoyed than penitent.

However, nothing could be more snug and merry than the mother and daughter when left together, for they were like two sisters and suited one another perfectly. Babie was disappointed that London would not look emptier even in the fashionable squares, which she insisted on exploring in search of solitude. They made little gay outings in a joyous spirit of adventure, getting up early and going by train to some little station, with an adjacent expanse of wood or heather, whence they came home with their luncheon basket full of flowers, wherewith to gladden Mrs. Lucas's eyes, and those of Mother Carey's district. They prepared their surprises too. Several hopelessly dingy panels were painted black and adorned with stately lilies and irises, with proud reed-maces, and twining honeysuckle, and bryony, fluttered over by dragon-flies and b.u.t.terflies, from the brush of mother and daughter. The stores from Belforest further supplied hangings for brackets, and coverings for cushions, under the dainty fingers of the Infanta, who had far more of the household fairy about her than had her mother, perhaps from having grown up in a home instead of a school, and besides, from being bent on having the old house a delightsome place.

Indeed her mother was really happier than for many years, for the sense of failing in her husband's charge had left her since she had seen Jock by his own free will on the road to the quest, and likely also to fulfil the moral, as well as the scientific, conditions attached to it. She did feel as if her dream was being realised and the golden statues becoming warmed into life, and though her heart ached for Janet, she still hoped for her. So, with a mother's unfailing faith, she believed in Allen's dawning future even while another sense within her marvelled, as she copied, at the acceptance of "The Single Eye." But then, was it not well-known that loving eyes see the most faults, and was not an editor the best judge of popularity?

She had her scheme too. She had taken lessons some years ago at Rome in her old art of modelling, and knew her eye and taste had improved in the galleries. She had once or twice amused the household by figures executed by her dexterous fingers in pastry or in b.u.t.ter; and in the empty house, in her old studio, amid remnants of Bobus's museum, she set to work on a design that had long been in her mind asking her to bring it into being.

Thus the tete-a-tete was so successful that people's pity was highly diverting, and the vacation was almost too brief, though when the young men began to return, it was a wonder how existence could have been so agreeable without them.

Jock was first, having come home ten days sooner than his friends were willing to part with him, determined if he found his ladies looking pale to drag them out of town, if only to Ramsgate.

They met him in a glow of animation, and Babie hardly gave him time to lay down his basket of ferns from the dale, and flowers from the garden, before she threw open the folding doors to the back drawing-room.

"Why, mother, who sent you that group? Why do you laugh? Did Grinstead lend it to Babie to copy? Young Astyanax, isn't it? And, I say!

Andromache is just like Jessie. I say! Mother Carey didn't do it. Well!

She is an astonishing little mother and no mistake. The moulding of it!

Our anatomical professor might lecture on Hector's arm."

"Ah! I, haven't been a surgeon's wife for nothing. Your father put me through a course of arms and legs."

"And we borrowed a baby," said Babie. "Mrs. Jones, our old groom's wife, who lives in the Mews, was only too happy to bring it, and when it was shy, it clung beautifully."

"Then the helmet."

"That was out of the British Museum."

"Has Grinstead seen it?"

"No, I kept it for my own public first."

"What will you do with it? Put it into the Royal Academy?"

"No, it is not big enough. I thought of offering it to the Works that used to take my things in the old Folly days. They might do it in terra cotta, or Parian."

"Too good for a toy material like that," said Jock. "Get some good opinion before you part with it, mother. I wish we could keep it. I'm proud of my Mother Carey."

Allen, who came home next, only sighed at the cruel necessity of selling such a work. He was in deplorable spirits, for Gilbert Gould was superintending the refitting of a beautiful steam yacht, in which Miss Menella meant to sail to the West Indies, with her uncle and aunt.

"I knew she would! I knew she would," softly said Babie.

That did not console Allen, and his silence and cynicism about his hosts gave the impression that he had outstayed his welcome, since he had neither wealth, nor the social brilliance or subservience that might have supplied its place. He had scarcely energy to thank his mother for her faultless transcription of "The Single Eye," and only just exerted himself to direct the neat roll of MS. to the Editor.

The next day a note came for him.

"Mother what _have_ you done?" he exclaimed. "What _did_ you send to the 'Weatherc.o.c.k'?"

"'The Single Eye.' What? Not rejected?"

"See there!"

"DEAR MR. BROWNLOW,--I am afraid there has been some mistake. The story I wished for is not this one, but another in the same MS. Magazine; a charming little history of a boy's capture by, and escape from, the Moorish corsairs. Can you let me have it by Tuesday? I am very sorry to have given so much trouble, but 'The Single Eye' will not suit my purpose at all."