The Young Step-Mother Part 82

'I do believe it is solely for the O'Mores that you are making a duty of implacability!'

'It is a duty not to run from one's word, and debase oneself for one's own advantage.'

'One would think some wonderful advantage was held out to you.'

'The pleasantest hours of my life,' murmured he sadly, under his breath.

'Well, Ulick,' she said, holding out her hand, 'I'm not quite dissatisfied; I think some day even an O'More will see that there is no exception from the law of forgiveness in their special favour, and that you will not be able to go on resenting what we have suffered from the young of the spider-monkey.'

Even this allusion produced no outward effect; he only shook hands gravely, saying, 'I never did otherwise than forgive, and regret the consequences: I am very thankful for all your past kindness.'

Worse than the Giant's Causeway, thought Albinia as she parted from him.

Nothing is so hopeless as that sort of forgiveness, because it satisfies the conscience.

Mr. Kendal predicted that, the Keltic dignity having been a.s.serted, good sense and principle would restore things to a rational footing. What this meant might be uncertain, but he certainly missed Prometheus, and found Maurice a poor subst.i.tute. Indulgence itself could hardly hold out in unmitigated intercourse with an obstreperous dunce not seven years old, and Maurice, deprived of Gilbert, cut off from Ulick, with mamma busy, and Sophy out of spirits, underwent more snubbing than had ever yet fallen to his lot. Not that he was much concerned thereat; and Mr.

Kendal would resume his book after a lecture upon good manners, and then be roused to find his library a gigantic cobweb, strings tied to every leg of table or chair, and Maurice and the little Awk enacting spider and fly, heedless of the unwilling flies who might suffer by their trap.

Such being the case, his magnanimity was the less amazing when he said, 'Albinia, there is no reason that O'More should not eat his Christmas dinner here.'

'Very well. I trust he will not think it needful still to be self-denying.'

'It is not our part to press advances which are repelled,' said Sophy.

'Indeed, Sophy,' said her father, smiling, 'I see nothing attractive in the att.i.tude of rocks rent asunder.'

The undesigned allusion must have gone deep, for she coloured to a purple crimson, and said in a freezing tone, 'I thought you considered that to take him up again would be a direct insult to Lucy and her husband.'

'They do not show much consideration for us,' said Mr. Kendal. 'How long ago was the date of her last letter?'

'Nearly three weeks,' said Albinia. 'Poor child, how could she write with the catalogue raisonnee of the Louvre to learn by heart?'

The Dusautoys yearly gave a Christmas tea-party to the teachers in the Sunday-school, who had of late become more numerous, as Mr. Dusautoy's influence had had more time to tell. Mrs. Kendal was reckoned on as one of the chief supporters of the gaiety of the evening, but on this occasion she was forced to send Sophia alone.

Sophy regarded it as a duty and a penance, and submitted the more readily because it was so distasteful. It was, however, more than she had reckoned on to find that the party had been extended to the male teachers, an exceedingly good and lugubrious-looking youth lately apprenticed to Mr. Bowles, and Ulick O'More. It was the first time she had met the latter since his offence. She avoided seeing him as long as possible, though all his movements seemed to thrill her, and so confused the conversation which she was trying to keep up, that she found herself saying that Genevieve Durant had lost an arm, and that Gilbert would spend Christmas in London.

She felt him coming nearer; she knew he was pa.s.sing the Miss Northover in the purple silk and red neck-ribbon; she heard him exchanging a few civil words with the sister with the hair strained off her face; she knew he was coming; she grew more eager in her fears for Mr.

Rainsforth's chest.

Tea was announced. Sophy held back in the general move, Ulick made a step nearer, their eyes met, and if ever eyes spoke, hers ordered him to keep his distance, while he glanced affront for affront, bowed and stepped back.

Sophy sat by Miss Jane Northover, and endeavoured to make her talk.

Anything would have been better than the echoes of the sprightliness at the lower end of the table, where Ulick was talking what he would have called blarney to Miss Susan Northover and Miss Mary Anne Higgins, both at once, till he excited them into a perpetual giggle. Mr. Dusautoy was delighted, and evidently thought this brilliant success; Mrs. Dusautoy was less at her ease--the mirth was less sober and more exclusive than she had intended; and Sophy, finding nothing could be made of Miss Jane, turned round to her other neighbour, Mr. Hope, and asked his opinion of the Whewell and Brewster controversy on the Plurality of Worlds.

Mr. Hope had rather a good opinion of Miss Sophia, and as she had never molested him, could talk to her, so he straightway became engrossed in the logical and theological aspects of the theory; and Mrs. Dusautoy could hardly suppress her smile at this unconscious ponderous attempt at a counter flirtation, with Saturn and Jupiter as weapons for light skirmishing.

Ulick received the invitation to dinner, and did not accept it. He said he had an engagement--Albinia wondered what it could be, and had reason afterwards to think that he had the silent young apothecary to a Christmas dinner in his own rooms--an act of charity at least, if not of forgiveness. Mr. Johns, the senior clerk, whose health had long been failing, was about to retire, and this announcement was followed by the appearance of a smart, keen-looking young man of six or seven-and-twenty, whom Miss Goldsmith paraded as her cousin, Mr. Andrew Goldsmith, and it was generally expected that he would be taken into partnership, and undertake old John's work, but in a fortnight he disappeared, and young O'More was promoted to the vacant post with an increase of salary. It was mortifying only to be informed through Mr.

Dusautoy, instead of by the lad himself.

The Eastern letters were the chief comfort. First came tidings that Gilbert, not having yet recovered his contusion, was to accompany Colonel Ferrars to Scutari, and then after a longer interval came a brief and joyous note--Gilbert was coming home! On his voyage from the Crimea he had caught cold, and this had brought on severe inflammation on the injured chest, which had laid him by for many days at Scutari.

The colonel had become the stronger of the two, in spite of a fragment of sh.e.l.l lodged so deeply in the side, that the medical board advised his going to London for its removal. Both were ordered home together with six months' leave, and Gilbert's note overflowed with glad messages to all, including Algernon, of whose departure he was still in ignorance.

Mr. Kendal knew not whether he was most gratified or discomfited by the insinuating ringer who touched his hat, hoping for due notice of the captain's arrival in time to welcome him with a peal of bells. Indeed, Bayford was so excited about its hero, that there were symptoms of plans for a grand reception with speeches, cheers, and triumphal arches, which caused Sophy to say she hoped that he would come suddenly without any notice, so as to put a stop to all that nonsense; while Albinia could not help nourishing a strange vague expectation that his return would be the beginning of better days.

At last, Sophia, with a touch of the old penny club fever, toiled over the school clothing wilfully and unnecessarily for two hours, kept up till evening without owning to the pain in her back, but finally returned so faint and dizzy that she was forced to be carried helpless to her room, and the next day could barely drag herself to the couch in the morning-room, where she lay quite prostrated, and grieved at increasing instead of lessening her mother's cares.

'Oh, mamma, don't stay with me. You are much too busy.'

'No, I am not. The children are out, and grandmamma asleep, and I am going to write to Lucy, but there's no hurry. Let me cool your forehead a little longer.'

'How I hate being another bother!'

'I like you much better so, than when you would not let me speak to you, my poor child.'

'I could not,' she said, stifling her voice on the cushion, and averting her head; but in a few moments she made a great effort, and said, 'You think me unforgiving, mamma. It was not entirely that. It was hating myself for an old fancy, a mere mistake. I have got over it; and I will not be in error again.'

'Sophy dear, if you find strength in pride, it will only wound yourself.'

'I do not think I am proud,' said Sophy, quietly. 'I may have been headstrong, but I despise myself too much for pride.'

'Are you sure it was mere fancy? It was an idea that occurred to more than to you.'

'Hush!' cried Sophy. 'Had it been so, could he have ridiculed Lucy?

Could he have flown out so against papa? No; that caricature undeceived me, and I am thankful. He treated us as cousins--no more--he would act in the same manner by any of the Miss O'Mores of Ballymakilty, nay, by Jane Northover herself. We did not allow for Irish manner.'

'If so, he had no right to do so. I shall never wish to see him here again.'

'No, mamma, he did not know the folly he had to deal with. Next time I meet him, I shall know how to be really indifferent. Now, this is the last time we will mention the subject!'

Albinia obeyed, but still hoped. It was well that hope remained, for her task was heavier than ever; Mrs. Meadows was feebler, but more restless and wakeful, asking twenty times in an hour for Mrs. Kendal. The doctors thought it impossible that she should hold out another fortnight, but she lived on from day to day, and at times Albinia hardly could be absent from her for ten minutes together. Sophy was so completely knocked up that she could barely creep about the house, and was forbidden the sick-room; but she was softened and gentle, and was once more a companion to her father, while eagerly looking forward to devoting herself to Gilbert.

A letter with the Malta post-mark was eagerly opened, as the harbinger of his speedy arrival.

'Royal Hotel, Malta, February 10th, 1855.

'Dearest Mrs. Kendal,

'I am afraid you will all be much disappointed, though your grief cannot equal mine at the Doctor's cruel decree. We arrived here the day before yesterday, but I had been so ill all the voyage with pain in the side and cough, that there was no choice but to land, and call in Dr.----, who tells me that my broken rib has damaged my lungs so much, that I must keep perfectly quiet, and not think of going home till warm weather. If I am well enough to join by that time, I shall not see you at all unless you and my father could come out. Am I nourishing too wild a hope in thinking it possible? Since Lucy has been so kind as to promise never to leave grandmamma, I cannot help hoping you might be spared. I do not think my proposal is selfish, since my poor grandmother is so little conscious of your cares; and Ferrars insists on remaining with me till he sees me in your hands, though they say that the splinter must be extracted in London, and every week he remains here is so much suffering, besides delaying his expedition to Canada. I have entreated him to hasten on, but he will not hear of it. He is like a brother or a father to me, and nurses me most tenderly, when he ought to be nursed himself. We are famishing for letters. I suppose all ours have gone up to Balaklava, and thence will be sent to England. If we were but there!

We are both much better for the quiet of these two days, and are to move to-morrow to a lodging that a friend of Fred's has taken for us at Bormola, so as to be out of the Babel of these streets--we stipulated that it should be large enough to take in you and my father. I wish Sophy and the children would come too--it would do them all the good in the world; and Maurice would go crazy among the big guns; I am only afraid we should have him enlisting as a drummer. The happy pair would be very glad to have the house to themselves, and would persuade themselves that it was another honeymoon.

'Good-bye. Instead of looking for a letter, I shall come down to meet you at the Quarantine harbour. Love to all.

'Your most affectionate 'GILBERT KENDAL.'

How differently Gilbert wrote when really ill, from his desponding style when he only fancied himself so, thought Albinia, as, perplexed and grieved, she handed the letter to her husband, and opened the enclosure, written in the laboured, ill-formed characters of a left-hand not yet accustomed to doing the offices of both.

'Dear Albinia,