Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 31

"I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young days," said the farmer.

The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad, noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church, leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into whose feelings no one ever inquired.

Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die.

There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before her brother's prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and, married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business.

The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated in England, treated as his uncle's heir, and came to Belforest for shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould's pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother's contrivance, though without her father's consent, had made her his wife.

The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso, of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father's death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to make any further application.

"My little cousin," said Caroline, "the first I ever knew. Pray bring her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her."

The old man began to prepare her for the child's being shy and wild, though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he did not regard her as his grandchild's rival, but as representing the cherished playmate of his youth.

CHAPTER XIII. -- THE RIVAL HEIRESSES.

You smile, their eager ways to see, But mark their choice when they To choose their sportive garb are free, The moral of their play.

Keble.

One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half of amus.e.m.e.nt, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.

Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people's thoughts, but she seldom reflected, a.n.a.lysed or moralised, save on the spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her, that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always. .h.i.therto been taken by surprise.

So, when Jock observed in public--"Mother, they say at Kencroft that the old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?" it was with perfect truth that she answered, "I don't think at all about it."

It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions, they thought the more.

Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd compounds of cleverness and ignorance.

"Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest," said Janet.

"A woman can't be heir-at-law," said Bobus.

"The Salique law doesn't come into England."

"Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of the old man's daughter.

"Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?"

"Besides,"--Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility--"when there's n.o.body but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among them."

"Who gets it, then?"

"Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all blood-suckers."

"I'm sure," said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, "that abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a will, mother will be heiress."

"Only halves with that black Undine of Allen's," st.u.r.dily persisted Bobus. "Is she coming here, Janet?"

"Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough."

"If mother gets rich she won't have all that teaching to bother her,"

said Bobus.

"And I can go on with my education," said Janet.

"Girl's education does not signify," said Bobus. "Now I shall be able to get the very best instruction in physical science, and make some great discovery. If I could only go and study at Halle, instead of going on droning here."

"Oh! boys can always get educated if they choose. You are going to Eton or Winchester after this term."

"Not if I can get any sense into mother. I don't want to waste my time on those stupid cla.s.sics and athletics. I say, Janet, it's time to see whether the precipitation has taken place."

The two used to try experiments together, in Bobus's end of the attic, to an extent that might make the presence of a strange child in the house dangerous to herself as well as to everyone else.

Mrs. Gould herself brought the little girl, trying to impress on Mrs. Brownlow that if she was indocile it was not her fault, but her grandfather could not bear to have her crossed.

The elders did not wonder at his weakness, for the creature was wonderfully lovely and winning, with a fearless imperiousness that subdued everyone to her service. So brilliant was she, that Essie and Ellie, though very pretty little girls, looked faded and effaced beside this small empress, whose air seemed to give her a right to bestow her favours.

"I am glad to be here!" she observed, graciously, to her hostess, "for you are my cousin and a lady."

"And pray what are you?" asked Janet.

"I am la Senora Dona Elvira Maria de Guadalupe de Menella," replied the damsel, with a liquid sonorousness so annihilating, that Janet made a mocking courtesy; and her mother said it was like asking the head of the house of Hapsburg if she were a lady!

With some disappointment at Allen's absence, the little Donna motioned Bobus to sit by her side at dinner-time, and when her grandfather looked in somewhat later to wish her good-bye, in mingled hope and fear of her insisting on going home with him, she cared for nothing but his admiration of her playing at kings and queens with Armine and Barbara, in the cotton velvet train of the dressing up wardrobe.

"No, she did not want to go home. She never wanted to go back to River Hollow."

Nor would she even kiss him till she had extorted the a.s.surance that he had been shaved that morning.

The old man went away blessing Mrs. Brownlow's kindness to his child, and Janet was universally scouted for muttering that it was a heartless little being. She alone remained unenthralled by Elvira's chains. The first time she went to Kencroft, she made Colonel Brownlow hold her up in his arms to gather a bough off his own favourite double cherry; and when Mother Carey demurred, she beguiled Aunt Ellen into taking her on her own responsibility to the dancing lessons at the a.s.sembly rooms.

There she electrified the dancing-master, and all beholders, seeming to catch inspiration from the music, and floating along with a wondrous swimming grace, as her dainty feet twinkled, her arms wreathed themselves, and her eyes shone with enjoyment.

If she could only have always danced, or acted in the garden! Armine's and Babie's perpetual romantic dramas were all turned by her into homage to one and the same princess. She never knew or cared whether she were G.o.ddess or fairy, Greek or Briton, provided she had the crown and train; but as Babie much preferred action to magnificence, they got on wonderfully well without disputes. There was a continual performance, endless as a Chinese tragedy, of Spenser's Faery Queene, in which Elfie was always Gloriana, and Armine and Babie were everybody else in turn, except the wicked characters, who were represented by the cabbages and a dummy.

"Reading was horrid," Elvira said, and certainly hers deserved the epithet. Her attainments fell far behind those of Essie and Ellie, and she did not mean to improve them. Her hostess let her alone till she had twice shaken her rich mane at her grandfather, and refused to return with him; and he had shown himself deeply grateful to Mrs. Brownlow for keeping her there, and had said he hoped she was good at her lessons.

The first trial resulted in Elvira's going to sleep over her book, the next in her playing all sorts of ridiculous tricks, and sulking when stopped, and when she was forbidden to speak or go out till she had repeated three answers in the multiplication table, she was the next moment singing and dancing in defiance in the garden. Caroline did not choose to endure this, and went to fetch her in, thus producing such a screaming, kicking, rolling fury that Mrs. Coffinkey might have some colour for the statement that Mrs. Folly Brownlow was murdering all her children. The cook, as the strongest person in the house, was called, carried her in and put her to bed, where she fell sound asleep, and woke, hungry, in high spirits, and without an atom of compunction.

When called to lessons she replied--"No, I'm going back to grandpapa."

"Very well," was all Caroline answered, thinking wholesome neglect the best treatment.