That Stick Part 16

He did what was needed. n.o.body wanted anything but the sensible commonplace, kindly spoken, about the advantages of good opportunities, the conscientiousness of doing one's best. And after all, the inferiority of mere attainments in themselves to the discipline and dutifulness of responding to training,--it was slowly but not stammeringly spoken, and Bertha did not feel critical or ashamed, but squeezed Mary's hand, and said, 'Just the right thing.'

One by one the girls were summoned for their prizes, the little ones first. Lord Northmoor had not the gift of inventing a pretty speech for each, he could do no more than smile as he presented the book, and read its name; but the smile was a very decided one when, in the cla.s.s next to the highest, three out of the seven prizes were awarded to Constance Elizabeth Morton, and it might be a question which had the redder cheeks, the uncle or the niece, as he handed them to her. It was one of the few happinesses that he had derived from his brother's family!

After such achievements on Constance's part, it was impossible to withhold--as they drove back to Northmoor--the proposal to take her with them, and the effect was magical. Constance opened her eyes, bounded up, as if she were going to fly out of the carriage, and then launched herself, first on her uncle, then on her aunt, for an ecstatic kiss.

'Take care, take care, we shall have the servants thinking you a little lunatic!'

'I am almost! Oh, I am so glad! To be with you and Aunt Mary all the holidays! That would be enough! But to go and see all the places,' she added, somehow perceiving that the desire to escape from home was, at least ought not to be approved of, and yet there was some exultation, when she hazarded a supposition that there was no time to go home.

CHAPTER XVIII DESDICHADO

Home--that is to say, Westhaven--was in some commotion when Herbert came back and grimly growled out his intelligence as to his own personal affairs. Mrs. Morton had been already apprized, in one of Lord Northmoor's well-considered letters, of his intentions of removing his nephew to a tutor more calculated to prepare for the army, and she had accepted this as promotion such as was his due. However, when the pride of her heart, the tall gentlemanly son, made his appearance in a savage mood, her feelings were all on the other side, and those of Ida exaggerated hers.

'So I'm to go to some disgusting hole where they grind the fellows no end,' was Herbert's account of the matter.

'But surely with your connection there's no need for grinding?' said his mother.

Herbert laughed, 'Much you know about it! n.o.body cares a rap for connections nowadays, even if old Frank were a connection to do a man any good.'

'But you'll not go and study hard and hurt yourself, my dear,' said his mother, though Herbert's looks by no means suggested any such danger, while Ida added, 'It is not as if he had nothing else to look to, you know. He can't keep you out of the peerage.'

'Can't he then? Why, he can and will too, for thirty or forty years more at least.'

'I thought his health was failing,' said Ida, putting into words a hope her mother had a little too much sense of propriety to utter.

'Bosh, it's only neuralgia, just because he is such a stick he can't take things easy, and lark about and do every one's work--he hasn't the least notion what a gentleman ought to do.'

'It is bred in the bone,' said his mother; 'he always was a shabby poor creature! I always said he would not know how to spend his money.'

'He is a regular screw!' responded Herbert. 'What do you think now! He was in no end of a rage with me just because I went with some of the other fellows to the Colbeam races; and one can't help a bet or two, you know. So I lost twelve pound or so, and what must he do but stop it out of my allowance two pound at a time!'

There was a regular outcry at this, and Mrs. Morton declared her poor dear boy should not suffer, but she would make it up to him, and Herbert added that 'it had been unlucky, half of it was that they were riled with him, first because he had shot a ridiculous rook with white wings that my lady made no end of a fuss about.'

'Ah, then it is her spite,' said Ida. 'She's a sly cat, with all her meek ways.'

Herbert was not displeased with this evening's sympathy, as he lay outspread on the sofa, with the admiring and pitying eyes of his mother and sister upon him; but he soon began to feel--when he had had his grumble out, and could take his swing at home--that there could be too much of it.

It was all very well to ease his own mind by complaining, but when he heard of Ida announcing that he had been shamefully treated, all out of spite for killing a white rook, his sense of justice made him declare that the notion was nothing but girl's folly, such as no person with a grain of sense could believe.

The more his mother and her friends persisted in treating him as an ill-used individual, the victim of his uncle's avarice and his aunt's spite, the more his better nature revolted and acknowledged inwardly and sometimes outwardly the kindness and justice he had met with. It was really provoking that any attempt to defend them, or explain the facts, were only treated as proofs of his own generous feeling. Ida's partisanship really did him more good than half a dozen lectures would have done, and he steadily adhered to his promise not to bet, though on the regatta day Ida and her friend Sibyl derided him for not choosing to risk even a pair of gloves; and while one pitied him, the other declared that he was growing a skinflint like his uncle.

He talked and laughed noisily enough to Ida's friends, but he had seen enough at Northmoor to feel the difference, and he told his sister that there was not a lady amongst the whole kit of them, except Rose Rollstone, who was coming down for her holiday.

'Rose!' cried Ida, tossing her head. 'A servant's daughter and a hand at a shop! What will you say next, I wonder?'

'Lady is as lady acts,' said Herbert, making a new proverb, whereat his mother and sister in chorus rebuked him, and demanded to know whether Ida were not a perfect lady.

At which he laughed with a sound of scoffing, and being tired of the discussion sauntered out of the house to that inexhaustible occupation of watching the boats come in, and smoking with old acquaintances, who were still congenial to him, and declared that he had not become stuck-up, though he was turned into an awful swell! Perhaps they were less bad for him than Stanhope, for they inspired no spirit of imitation.

When he came back a later post had arrived, bringing the news of Constance's successes and of the invitation to her to share the expedition of her uncle and aunt. There was no question about letting her go, but the feeling was scarcely of congratulation.

'Well, little Conny knows how to play her cards!'

'Stuff--child wouldn't know what it meant,' said Herbert glumly.

'Well,' said his sister, 'she always was the favourite, and I call it a shame.'

'What, because you've been such a good girl, and got such honours and prizes?' demanded Herbert.

'Nonsense, Herbert,' said his mother. 'Ida's education was finished, you know.'

'Oh, she wasn't a bit older than Conny is now.'

'And I don't hold with all that study, science and logic, and what d'ye call it; that's no use to any one,' continued his mother. 'It's not as if your sisters had to be governesses. Give me a girl who can play a tune on the piano and make herself agreeable. Your uncle may do as he pleases, but he'll have Constance on his hands. The men don't fancy a girl that is always after books and lectures.'

'Not of your sort, perhaps,' said Herbert, 'but I don't care what I bet that Conny gets a better husband than Ida.'

'It stands to reason,' Ida said, almost crying, 'when uncle takes her about to all these fine places and sets her up to be the favourite--just the youngest. It's not fair.'

'As if she wasn't by a long chalk the better of the two,' said Herbert.

'Now, Bertie,' interposed his mother, 'I'll not have you teasing and running down your sister, though I do say it is a shame and a slight to pick out the youngest, when poor Ida is so delicate, and both of you two have ever so much better a right to favours.'

'That's a good one!' muttered Herbert, while Ida exclaimed--

'Of course, you know, aunt has always been nasty to me, ever since I said ma said I was not strong enough to be bothered with that horrid school; and as to poor Herbert, they have spited him because he shot that--'

'Shut up, Ida,' shouted Herbert. 'I wouldn't go with them if they went down on their knees to me! What should I do, loafing about among a lot of disputing frog-eaters, without a word of a Christian language, and old Frank with his nose in a guide-book wanting me to look at beastly pictures and rum old cathedrals. You would be a fish out of water, too, Ida. Now Conny will take to it like a house afire, and what's more, she deserves it!'

'Well, ma,' put in the provoked Ida, 'I wonder you let Conny go, when it would do me so much good, and it is so unfair.'

'My dear, you don't understand a mother's feelings. I feel the slight for you, but your uncle must be allowed to have his way. He is at all the expense, and to refuse for Conny would do you no good.'

'Except that she will be more set up than ever,' murmured Ida.

'Oh, come now! I wonder which looks more like the set-up one,' said Herbert, whose wider range had resulted in making him much alive to Ida's shortcomings, and who looked on at her noisy style of flirtation with the eye of a grave censor. Whatever he might be himself, he knew what a young lady ought to be.

He triumphed a little when, during the few days spent in London, Constance wrote of a delightful evening when, while her uncle and aunt and Miss Morton had gone to an entertainment for Bertha's match-box makers, she had been permitted to have Rose Rollstone to spend the time with her, the carriage, by their kind contrivance, fetching the girl both in going and coming.

The two young things had been thoroughly happy together. Rose had gone on improving herself; her companions in the art embroidery line were girls of a good cla.s.s, with a few ladies among them, and their tone was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the cla.s.ses, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's _protegee_ had been softened. She was a very pretty little creature, with big blue eyes and hair that could be called golden, and very full of life and drollery, so that she was a treat to both; and when the housemaid, whose charge she was, insisted on her coming to bed, they begged to superintend her evening toilet, and would have played antics with her in her crib half the night if they had not been inexorably chased away.

Then they sat down on low stools in the balcony, among the flowers, in convenient proximity for the caresses they had not yet outgrown, and had what they called 'a sweet talk.'

Constance had been much impressed with the beauty of the embroidery, and thought it must be delightful to do such things.