Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 104

"Repet.i.tion, Babie," said her mother; "too like the Montjoie S. Denis poem."

"It saves so much trouble, mother."

"And a recall to the freshness and innocence of childhood is so pleasing," added Jock.

"How much did the man of family let his moor for?" asked Allen.

There Cecil saw the pitiful and indignant face opposite to him, would have sulked, and began looking at her for sympathy, exclaiming at last--

"Haven't you a word to say for me, Miss Brownlow?"

"I don't like it at all. I don't think it is fair," broke from Essie, as she coloured crimson at the laugh.

"He likes it, my dear," said Babie.

"It is a gentle t.i.tillation," said Allen.

"He can't get on without it," said the Friar.

"And comes for it like the cattle to the scrubbing-stones," said the Skipjack.

"Yes," said Armine; "but he tries to get pitied, like Chico walking on three legs when some one is looking at him."

"You deal in most elegant comparisons," said the mother.

"Only to get him a little more pitied," said Jock. "He is as grateful as possible for being made so interesting."

"Hark, there's a knock!" cried Allen. "Can't you instruct your cubs not to punish the door so severely, Jock? I believe they think that the more row they make, the more they proclaim their n.o.bility!"

"The obvious derivation of the word stunning," said Mother Carey, as she rose to meet her guests in the drawing-room, and Cecil to hold the door for her.

"Stay, Evelyn," said Allen. "This is the night when unlicked cubs do disport themselves in our precincts. A mistaken sense of philanthropy has led my mother to make this house the fortnightly salon bleu of St.

Thomas's. But there's a pipe at your service in my room."

"Dr. Medlicott is coming," said Babie, who had tarried behind the Johns, "and perhaps Mr. Grinstead, and we are sure to have Mr. Esdale's photographs. It is never all students, medical or otherwise. Much better than Allen's smoke, Cecil."

"I am coming of course," he said. "I was only waiting for the Infanta."

It may be doubted whether the photographs, Dr. Medlicott, or even Jock were the attraction. He was much more fond of using his privilege of dropping in when the family were alone, than of finding himself in the midst of what an American guest had called Mrs. Brownlow's surprise parties. They were on regular evenings, but no one knew who was coming, from scientific peers to daily governesses, from royal academicians to medical students, from a philanthropic countess to a city missionary.

To listen to an exposition of the microphone, to share in a Shakespeare reading, or worse still, in a paper game, was, in the Captain's eyes, such a bore that he generally had only haunted Collingwood Street on home days and on Sundays, when, for his mother's sake and his own, an exception was made in his favour.

He followed Babie with unusual alacrity, and found Mrs. Brownlow shaking hands with a youth whom Jock upheld as a genius, but who laboured under the double misfortune of always coming too soon, and never knowing what to do with his arms and legs. He at once perceived Captain Evelyn to be an "awful swell," and became trebly wretched--in contrast to Jock's open-hearted, genial young dalesman, who stood towering over every one with his broad shoulders and hearty face, perfectly at his ease (as he would have been in Buckingham Palace), and only wondering a little that Brownlow could stand an empty-headed military fop like that; while Cecil himself, after gazing about vaguely, muttered to Babie something about her cousin.

"She is gone to see whether Lina is asleep, and will be too shy to come down again if I don't drag her."

So away flew Babie, and more eyes than Cecil Evelyn's were struck when in ten minutes' time she again led in her cousin.

Mr. Acton, who was talking to Mrs. Brownlow, said in an undertone--

"Your model? Another niece?"

"Yes; you remember Jessie?"

"This is a more ideal face."

It was true. Esther had lived much less than her elder sister in the Coffinkey atmosphere, and there was nothing to mar the peculiar dignified innocence and perfect unconsciousness of her sweet maidenly bloom. She never guessed that every man, and every woman too, was admiring her, except the strong-minded one who saw in her the true inane Raffaelesque Madonna on whom George Eliot is so severe.

Nor did the lady alter her opinion when, at the end of a very curious speculation about primeval American civilisation, Captain Evelyn and Miss Brownlow were discovered studying family photographs in a corner, apparently much more interested whether a hideous half-faded brown shadow had resembled John at fourteen, than to what century and what nation those odd curly-whirleys on stone belonged, and what they were meant to express.

Babie was scandalised.

"You didn't listen! It was most wonderful! Why Armie went down and fetched up Allen to hear about those wonderful walled towns!"

"I don't go in for improving my mind," said Cecil.

"Then you should not hinder Essie from improving hers! Think of letting her go home having seen nothing but all the repeated photographs of her brothers and sisters!"

"Well, what should she like to see?" cried Cecil. "I'm good for anything you want to go to before the others are free."

"The Ethiopian serenaders, or, may be, Punch," said Jock. "Madame Tussaud would be too intellectual."

"When Lina is strong enough she is to see Madame Tussaud," said Essie gravely. "Georgie once went, and she has wished for it ever since."

"Oh, we'll get up Madame Tussaud for her at home, free gratis, for nothing at all!" cried Armine, whose hard work inspirited him to fun and frolic.

So in the twilight hour two days later there was a grand exhibition of human waxworks, in which Babie explained tableaux represented by the two Johns, Armine, and Cecil, supposed to be adapted to Lina's capacity.

With the timid child it was not a success, the disguises frightened her, and gave her an uncanny feeling that her friends were transformed; she sat most of the time on her aunt's lap, with her face hidden, and barely hindered from crying by the false a.s.surance that it was all for her pleasure.

But there was no doubt that Esther was a pleased spectator of the show, and her grat.i.tude far more than sufficient to cover the little one's ingrat.i.tude.

Those two drifted together. In every gathering, when strangers had departed they were found tete-a-tete. Cecil's horses knew the way to Collingwood Street better than anywhere else, and he took to appearing there at times when he was fully aware Jock would be at the night-school or Mutual Improvement Society.

Though strongly wishing, on poor Bobus's account, that it should not go much farther under her own auspices; day after day it was more borne in upon Mrs. Brownlow that her house held an irresistible attraction to the young officer, and she wondered over her duty to the parents who had trusted her. Acting on impulse at last, she took council with John, securing him as her companion in the gaslit walk from a concert.

"Do you see what is going on there?" she asked, indicating the pair before them.

"What do you mean? Oh, I never thought of that!"

"I don't think! I have seen. Ever since the night of the Phantom Blackc.o.c.k of Kilnaught. He did his work on Essie."

"Essie rather thinks he is after the Infanta."

"It looks like it! What could have put it into her head? It did not originate there!"

"Something my mother said about Babie being a viscountess."

"You know better, Friar!"