Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 60

"Will you come to the rosary, Uncle Robert?" said Babie, recovering her manners, as Johnny set her down. "It is the coolest place, and they are sitting there."

"Why, Babie, what a sprite you look," said Johnny. "You look as if you were just off the sick-list too!"

"I'm all right," said Babie, shaking her hair at him, and bounding on before with the tidings of their coming, while her uncle observed in a low voice--

"Poor little thing! I believe she has been a good deal knocked up between the heat and the anxiety; there was no making her eat or sleep.

Ah! Miss Elfie, are you acting queen of roses?" as Babie returned together with Elvira, who with a rich dark red rose over one ear, and a large bouquet at her bosom, justified the epithet at which she bridled, and half curtsied in her graceful stately archness, as she gave her hand in greeting, and exclaimed--

"Ah, Johnny! are you come? When is Mother Carey going to send for us?"

"When they leave Leukerbad I fancy," said John. "That's a tiresome place for anyone who does not need to lead the life of a hippopotamus."

"It can't be more tiresome than this is," said Elvira, with a yawn.

"Lessons all day, and n.o.body to come near us."

"Isn't this a dreadful place?" said John, merrily, as he looked into the rosary, a charming bowery circle of fragrance, inclosed by arches of trellis-work on which roses were trained, their wreaths now bearing a profusion of blossoms of every exquisite tint, from deep crimson or golden-yellow, to purest white, while their more splendid standard sisters bloomed out in fragrant and gorgeous magnificence under their protection.

At the shady end there was a little gra.s.s plat round a tiny fountain, whose feather of spray rose and plashed coolness. Near it were seats where Miss Ogilvie and Janet were discovered with books and work. They came forward with greetings and inquiries, which Johnny answered in detail.

"Yes, they are both better. Armine sat by the window for an hour the day before I came away."

"Will they be able to come back to Eton after the holidays?" asked his father.

"Certainly not Armine, but Jock seems to be getting all right. If he was to catch rheumatism he did it at the right place, for that's what Leukerbad is good for. Oh, Babie, you never saw such a lark! Fancy a great room, and where the floor ought to be, nothing but muddy water or liquid mud, with steps going down, and a lot of heads looking out of it, some with curly heads, some in smoking-caps, some in fine caps of lace and ribbons."

"Oh! Johnny; like women!"

"Like women! They are women."

"Not both together."

"Yes, I tell you, the whole boiling of them, male and female. There's a fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes floundering after him, to his very great disgust. The only things they have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups and newspapers."

"Oh! like the little blacks in the dear bright bays at San Ildefonso,"

cried Elvira.

"You don't mean that they have no clothes on?" said Babie, with shocked downrightness of speech that made everybody laugh; and Johnny satisfied her on that score, adding that Dr. Medlicott had made a parody of Tennyson's "Merman," for Jock's benefit, on giving him up to a Leukerbad doctor, who was to conduct his month's Kur. It was to go into the "Traveller's Joy," a ma.n.u.script magazine, the "first number of which was being concocted and ill.u.s.trated amongst the Leukerbad party, for the benefit of Babie and Sydney Evelyn. As a foretaste, Johnny produced from the bag he still carried strapped on his shoulder, a packet of acrostics addressed to Miss Barbara Brownlow, and a smaller envelope for Janet.

"Is it the key?" asked Colonel Brownlow.

"Yes," said Janet, "the key of her davenport, and directions in which drawer to find the letters you want. Do you like to have them at once, Uncle Robert?"

"Thank you--yes, for then I can go round and settle with that fellow Martin, which I can't do without knowing exactly what pa.s.sed between him and your mother."

Janet went off, observing--"I wonder whether that is a possibility;"

while Miss Ogilvie put in an anxious inquiry for Mrs. Brownlow's health and spirits, and a good many more details were elicited than Johnny had given at home. She had never broken down, and now that she was hopeful, was, in spite of her fatigue, as bright and merry as ever, and was contributing comic pictures to the "Traveller's Joy," while Lord Fordham did the sketches. Those kind people were as careful of her as any could be.

"And what are her further plans?" asked Miss Ogilvie. "Has she been able to form any?"

"Hardly," said Johnny. "They must stay at Leukerbad for a month for Jock to have the course of waters rightly, and indeed Armine could hardly be moved sooner. I think Dr. Medlicott wants them to keep in Switzerland till the heat of the weather is over, and then winter in the south."

"And when may I go to Armine?"

"When shall we get away from here?" asked Babie and Elfie in a breath.

"I don't quite know," said John. "There is not much room to spare in the hotel where they are at Leukerbad, and it is a dreadfully slow place.

Evelyn is growling like a dozen polar bears at it."

"Why isn't he gone back with you to Eton?"

"I believe it was settled that he was not to go back this half, for fear of his lungs, and you see he is a swell who takes it easily. He would have been glad enough to return with me though, and would scarcely have endured staying, but that he is so fond of Jock."

"What is there to be done there?"

"Nothing, except to wade in tepid mud. Fordham has routed out a German to read Faust with, and that puts Evelyn into a sweet temper. They go on expeditions, and do sketching and botany, which amuses Armine; but they get up some fun over the queer people, and _do_ them for the mag., but it is all deadly lively, not that I saw much of it, for we only got down from Schwarenbach on Monday, and they kept me in bed all the two next days; but Jock and Evelyn hate it awfully. Indeed Jock is so down in the mouth altogether I don't know what to make of him, and just when the German doctors say the treatment makes people particularly brisk and lively."

"Perhaps what makes a German lively makes an Englishman grave," sagely observed Babie.

"Jock grave must be a strange sight," said the Colonel; "I am afraid he can't be recovering properly."

"The doctor thinks he is," said John; "but then he doesn't know the nature of the Skipjack. But," he added, in a low voice, "that night was enough to make any one grave, and it was much the worst to Jock, because he kept his senses almost all the time, and was a good deal hurt besides to begin with. His sprain is still so bad that he has to be carried upstairs and to go to the baths in a chair."

"And do you think," said the Colonel, "that this young lord is going to stay on all this time in this dull place for the sake of an utter stranger?".

"Jock and Evelyn were always great friends at Eton," said John. "Then my uncle did something, I don't know what, that Medlicott is grateful for, and they have promised to see Armine through this illness. The place agrees with Fordham; they say he has never been so well or active since he came out."

"What is he like?" inquired Babie.

"Like, Babie? Like anything long and limp you can think of. He sits all in a coil and twist, and you don't think there's much of him; but when he gets up and pulls himself upright, you go looking and looking till you don't know where's the top of him, till you see a thin white face in washed-out hair. He is a good fellow, awfully kind, and I suppose he can't help being such a tremendous--" John hesitated, in deference to his father, for a word that was not slang, and finally chose "don."

"Oh," sighed Babie, "Armie said in his note he was jolly beyond description."

"Well, so he is," said John; "he plays chess with Armie, and brings him flowers and books, and waits on him as you used to do on a sick doll.

And that's just what he is; he ought to have been a woman, and he would have been much happier too, poor fellow. I'd rather be dead at once than drag about such a life of coddling as he does."

"Poor lad!" said his father. "Did Janet understand that I was waiting for those letters, I wonder?"

"You had better go and see, Babie," said Miss Ogilvie. "Perhaps she cannot find them."

Babie set off, and John proceeded to explain that Mrs. Evelyn was still detained in London by old Lady Fordham, who continued to be kept between life and death by her doctors. Meantime, the sons could dispose of themselves as they pleased, while under the care of Dr. Medlicott, and were not wanted at home, so that there was little doubt but that they would remain with Armine as long as he needed their physician's care.

All the while Elfie was flitting about, pelting Johnny with handfuls s.n.a.t.c.hed from over-blown roses, and though he returned the a.s.sault at every pause, his grey travelling suit was bestrewn with crimson, pink, cream, and white petals.

At last the debris of a huge Eugenie Grandet hit him full on the bridge of his nose, and caused him to exclaim--

"Nay, Elfie, you little wretch; that was quite a good rose--not fair game," and leaping up to give her chase in and out among the beds, they nearly ran against Janet returning with the letters, and saying "she was sorry to have been so long, but mother's h.o.a.rds were never easy places of research."

Barbara came more slowly back, and looked somewhat as if she had had a sharper rebuke than she understood or relished.