Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 48

"Armine will walk through life like Allen," scornfully said Janet; "besides he is but fourteen. Now, mother, why should not I be worthy?"

"My dear Janet, it is not a question of worthiness; it is not a thing a woman could work out."

"I do not ask you to give it to me now, nor even to promise it to me,"

said Janet, with a light in those dark wells, her eyes; "but only to let me have the hope, that when in three years' time I am qualified, and have pa.s.sed the examinations, if Bobus does not take it up, you will let me claim that best inheritance my father left, but which his sons do not heed."

"My child, you do not know what you ask. Remember, I know more about it than only what you picked up on that morning. It is a matter he could not have made sure of without a succession of experiments very hard even for him, and certainly quite impossible for any woman. The exceeding difficulty and danger of the proof was one reason of his guarding it so much, and desiring it should only be told to one good as well as clever--clever as well as good."

"Can you give me no hint of the kind of thing," said Janet, wistfully.

"That would be a betrayal of his trust."

Janet looked terribly disappointed.

"Mother," said she, "let me put it to you. Is it fair to shut up a discovery that might benefit so many people."

"It is not his fault, Janet, that it is shut up. He talked of it to several of the most able men he was connected with, and they thought it a chimera. He could not carry it on far enough to convince them. I do not know what he would have done if his illness had been longer, or he could have talked it out with any one, but I know the proof could only be made out by a course of experiments which he could not commit to any one not highly qualified, or whom he could not entirely trust. It is not a thing to be set forth broadcast, while it might yet prove a fallacy."

"Is it to be lost for ever, then?"

"I shall try to find light as to the right thing to be done about it."

"Well," said Janet, drawing a long breath, "three years of study must come, any way, and by that time I may be able to triumph over prejudice."

There was no time to reply, for at that moment the letters of the second delivery were brought in; and the first that Caroline opened told her that the cold which Armine had mentioned on Sat.u.r.day seemed to be developing into an attack of a rather severe hybrid kind of illness, between measles and scarlatina, from which many persons had lately been suffering.

Armine was never strong, and his illnesses were always a greater anxiety than those of other people, so that his mother came to the immediate decision of going to Eton that same afternoon and remaining there, unless she found that it had been a false alarm.

She did not find it so; and as she remained with her boy, Janet's conversation with her could not be resumed. There was so much chance of infection that she could not see any of the family again. Both the Johns sickened as soon as Armine began to improve, and Miss Ogilvie took the three girls down to Belforest. After the first few days it was rather a pleasant nursing. There was never any real alarm; indeed, Armine was the least ill of the three, and Johnny the most, and each boy was perfectly delighted to have her to attend to him, her nephew almost touchingly grateful. The only other victim was Jock's most intimate friend, Cecil Evelyn, whose f.a.g Armine was. He became a sharer of her attentions and the amus.e.m.e.nts she provided. She received letters of grateful thanks from his mother, who was, like herself, a widow, but was prevented from coming to him by close attendance on her mother-in-law, who was in a lingering state of decay when every day might be the last.

The eldest son, Lord Fordham, was so delicate that he was on no account to be exposed to the infection, and the boys were exceedingly anxious that Cecil should join them in the expedition that their mother projected making with them, to air them in Switzerland before returning to the rest of the family. But Mrs. Evelyn (her husband had not lived to come to the t.i.tle) declined this. Fordham was in the country with his tutor, and she wished Cecil to come and spend his quarantine with her in London before joining him. The boys grumbled very much, but Caroline could hardly wonder when she talked with their tutor.

He, like every one else, liked, and even loved personally that perplexing subject, John Lucas Brownlow, alias Jock. The boy was too generous, honourable, truthful, and kindly to be exposed to the stigma of removal; but he was the perplexity of everybody. He could not be convinced of any necessity for application, and considered a flogging as a slight risk quite worth encountering for the sake of diversion.

He would execute the most audacious pranks, and if he was caught, would take it as a trial of skill between the masters and himself, and accept punishment as amends, with the most good humoured grace in the world.

Fun seemed to be his only moving spring, and he led everybody along with him, so as to be a much more mischievous person than many a worse lad.

The only exceptions in the house to his influence seemed to be his brother and cousin. Both were far above the average boy. Armine, for talent, John Friar Brownlow at once for industry and steadiness. They had stood out resolutely against more than one of his pranks, and had been the only boys in the house not present on the occasion of his last freak--a champagne supper, when parodies had been sung, caricaturing all the authorities; and when the company had become uproarious enough to rouse the whole family, the boys were discovered in the midst of the most audacious but droll mimicry of the masters.

As to work, Jock was developing the utmost faculties for leaving it undone, trusting to his native facility for putting on the steam at any crisis; and not believing in the warnings that he would fail in pa.s.sing for the army.

What was to be done with him? Was he to be taken away and sent to a tutor? His mother consulted himself as he sat in his arm-chair.

"Like Rob!" he said, and made up a face.

"Rob is doing very well in the militia."

"No; don't do that, mother! Never fear, I'll put on a spurt when the time comes!"

"I don't believe a spurt will do. Now, seriously, Jock--"

"Don't say, seriously, mother: it's like H.S.H."

"Perhaps if I had been like her, you would not be vexing me so much now."

"Come, come, mother, it's nothing to be vexed about. My tutor needn't have bothered you. I've done nothing sneaking nor ungentlemanly."

"There is plenty of wrong without that, Jock. While you never heed anything but fun and amus.e.m.e.nt I do not see how you are to come to anything worth having; and you will soon get betrayed into something unworthy. Don't let me have to take you away in disgrace, my boy; it would break my heart."

"You shan't have to do that, mother."

"But don't you think it would be wiser to be somewhere with fewer inducements to idleness?"

"Leave Eton? O no, mother! I can't do that till the last day possible. I shall be in the eight another year."

"You will not be here another year unless you go on very differently.

Your tutor will not allow it, if I would."

"Has he said so?"

"Yes; and the next half is to be the trial."

Jock applied himself to extracting a horsehair from the stuffing of the elbow of his chair; and there was a look over his face as near sullenness as ever came to his gay, careless nature.

Would he attend? or even could he?

When his bills came in Caroline feared, as before, that he was the one of all her children whom Belforest was most damaging. Allen was expensive, but in an elegant, exquisite kind of way; but Jock was simply reckless; and his pleasures were questionable enough to be on the borders of vices, which might change the frank, sweet, merry face that now looked up to her into a countenance stained by dissipation and licence!

A flash of horror and dismay followed the thought! But what could she do for him, or for any of her children? Censure only alienated them and made them worse, and their love for her was at least one blessing. Why had this gold come to take away the wholesome necessity for industry?

CHAPTER XIX. -- THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET.

Cold, cold, 'tis a chilly clime That the youth in his journey hath reached; And he is aweary now, And faint for lack of food.

Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven.

Southey.

Very merry was the party which arrived at the roughly-built hotel of Schwarenbach which serves as a half-way house to the Altels.

Never had expedition been more enjoyed than that of Mrs. Brownlow and her three boys. They had taken a week by the sea to recruit their forces, and then began their journey in earnest, since it was too late for a return to Eton, although so early in the season that to the Swiss they were like the first swallows of the spring, and they came in for some of the wondrous glory of the spring flowers, so often missed by tourists.

In her mountain dress, all state and ceremony cast aside, Caroline rode, walked, and climbed like the jolly Mother Carey she was, to use her son's favourite expression, and the boys, full of health and recovery, gambolled about her, feeling her companionship the very crown of their enjoyment.

Johnny, to whom all was more absolutely new than to the others, was the quietest of the three. He was a year older than Lucas, as Jock was now called to formal outsiders, while Friar John, a reversal of his cousin's two Christian names, was a school t.i.tle that sometimes pa.s.sed into home use. Friar John then had reached an age open to the influences of beautiful and sublime scenery, and when the younger ones only felt the exhilaration of mountain air, and longings to get as high as possible, his soul began to expand, and fresh revelations of glory and majesty to take possession of him. He was a very different person from the rough, awkward lad of eight years back. He still had the somewhat loutish figure which, in his mother's family, was the sh.e.l.l of fine-looking men, and he was shy and bashful, but Eton polish had taken away the rude gruffness, and made his manners and bearing gentlemanly. His face was honest and intelligent, and he had a thoroughly good, conscientious disposition; his character stood high, and he was the only Brownlow of them all who knew the sweets of being "sent up for good." His aunt could almost watch expression deepening on his open face, and he was enjoying with soul and mind even more than with body. Having had the illness later and more severely than the other two, his strength had not so fully returned, and he was often glad to rest, admire, and study the subject with his aunt, to whose service he was specially devoted, while the other two climbed and explored. For even Armine had been invigorated with a sudden overflow of animal health and energy, which made him far more enterprising and less contemplative than he had ever been before.