Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 65

Then Jock was depressed, and at his age (and, alas! at many others) being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods, seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a m.u.f.f as Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the friendship only seemed cemented by this treatment, and this devoted slave evidently preferred being abused by Jock to being made much of by any one else.

The regimen was very disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on the moraine and ratified with Cecil. To no one else had he spoken, but all the more for his reserve did he feel himself bound by the sense of the shame and dishonour of falling back from vows made in the time of danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been infinitely better tempered.

For to poor Jock steadiness appeared renunciation of all "jest and youthful jollity," and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in life seemed extinguished, and he would have preferred leaving Eton, where he must change his habits and amaze his a.s.sociates. Indeed, he was between hoping and fearing that all this would there seem folly. But then he would break his word, the one thing that poor half-heathen Jock truly cared about.

Meantime he was keeping it as best he knew how under the circ.u.mstances, by minding his prayers more than he had ever done before, trying to attend when part of the service was read on Sundays, and endeavouring to follow the Evelyn sabbatical code, but only succeeding in making himself more dreary and savage on Sunday than on any other day.

By easy journeys they arrived at Engelberg early on a Friday afternoon, and found pleasant rooms in the large hotel, looking out in front on the grand old monastery, once the lord of half the Canton, and in the rear upon pine-woods, leading up to a snow-crowned summit. The delicious scent seemed to bring invigoration in at the windows.

However, Jock and Armine were both tired enough to be sent to bed, if not to sleep, immediately after the--as yet, scantily filled table d'hote. The former was lying dreamily listening to the evening bells of the monastery, when Cecil came in, looking diffident and hesitating.

"I say, Jock," he began, "did you see that old clergyman at the table d'hote?"

"Was there one?"

"Yes; and there is to be a Celebration on Sunday."

"O! Then Armine can have his wish."

"Fordham has been getting the old cleric to talk to your mother about it."

Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother Robert's example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on that terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, "Do you mean to stay?" he answered rather snappishly, "I suppose so."

"I fancied," said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, "that if we were together it would be a kind of seal to--"

Jock actually forced back the words, "Don't humbug," which were not his own, but his ill-temper's, and managed to reply--

"Well, what?"

"Being brothers in arms," replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full a.s.sent, letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.

He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed his tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for the birds of the air. The outcome was--

"I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is--I don't know where."

Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil himself, would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was heartily glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock's reformation his own security in the ways which he really preferred.

Poor Jock, who, whatever he was, was real in all his ways, and could not lead a double life, as his friend too often did, read and tried to fulfil the injunctions of the book, but only became more confused and unhappy than ever. Yet still he held on, in a blind sort of way, to his resolution. He had undertaken to be good, he meant therefore to communicate, and he believed he repented, and would lead a new life--if--if he could bear it.

His next confidence was--

"I say, Cecil, can you get me some writing things? We--at least I--ought to write and tell my tutor that I am sorry about that supper."

"Well, he was rather a beast."

"I think," said Jock, who had the most capacity for seeing things from other people's point of view, "we did enough to put him in a wax. It was more through me than any one else, and I shall write at once, and get it off my mind before to-morrow."

"Very well. If you'll write, I'll sign," said Cecil. "Mother said I ought when I saw her in London, but she didn't order me. She said she left it to my proper feeling."

"And you hadn't any?"

"I was going to stick by you," said Cecil, rather sulkily; on which Jock rewarded him with something sounding like--

"What a donkey you can be!"

However, with many writhings and gruntings the letter was indited, and Jock was as much wearied out as if he had taken a long walk, so that his mother feared that Engelberg was going to disagree with him. He had not energy enough to go out in the evening of Sat.u.r.day to meet the new arrivals, but stayed with Armine, who was in a state of restless joy and excitement, marvelling at him, and provoking him by this surprise as if it were censure.

With his forehead against the window, Armine watched and did his utmost to repress the eagerness that seemed to irritate his brother, and at last gave vent to an irrepressible hurrah.

"There they are! Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is!

Babie--holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with Fordham--and there's Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren't you coming down, Jock?"

"Not I! I don't want to see you make a fool of yourself before everybody!--I say--you'll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut the door I say!"--shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed, "There! What an eternal brute I am!"

A few moments more and the door was open again, and Cecil, with his arm round his sister, thrust her forwards, exclaiming--"Here he is, Syd."

Jock had recovered his gentlemanly manners enough to shake hands courteously, as well as to receive and return Babie's kiss, when she and Armine staggered in together, reeling under their weight of delight.

Janet kissed him too, and then, scanning both brothers, observed to her mother--

"I think Lucas is the more altered of the two." In which sentiment Elvira seemed to agree, for she put her hands behind her and exclaimed--

"O Jock, you do look such a fright; I never knew how like Janet you were!"

"You are letting every one know what a spiteful little Elf you can be," returned Janet, indignantly. "Can't you give poor Jock a kinder greeting?"

Whereupon the Elf put on a cunning look of innocence and said--

"I didn't know it was unkind to say he was like you, Janet."

The Evelyn pair had gone--after this introduction of Jock and Sydney--to their own sitting-room, which opened out of that of the Brownlows, and the door was soon unclosed, for the two families meant to make up only one party. The two mothers seemed as if they had been friends of old standing, and Mrs. Evelyn was looking with delighted wonder at her eldest son, who had gained much in flesh and in vigour ever since Dr.

Medlicott's last and most successful prescription of a more pressing subject of interest than his own cough.

She had an influence about her that repressed all discords in her presence, and the evening was a cheerful and happy one, leaving a soothing sense upon all.

Then came the awakening to the sounds of the monastery bells, and in due time the small English congregation a.s.sembled, and one at least was trying to force an attention that had freely wandered ever before.

The preacher was the chance visitor, an elderly clergyman with silvery hair. He spoke extempore from Job xxviii.

Where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living.

The depth saith, "It is not in me:"

And the sea saith, "It is not with me."

It cannot be gotten for gold.

Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.