The Young Step-Mother Part 97

'What! your little governess friend?' said Ulick. 'Yes; she did show superior wit, when the rest of the world stood gaping round.'

'It was admirable--just like Genevieve's tenderness and dexterity,'

said Albinia. 'I dare say she is doing everything for the poor little fellow.'

'Yes, admirable,' said Mr. Kendal; 'but you all behaved very creditably, ladies.'

'Ay,' said Albinia; 'not to scream is what a man thinks the climax of excellence in a woman.'

'It is generally all that is required,' said Mr. Kendal. I don't know what I should have done if poor Lucy had been there.'

Thereupon the ladies went upstairs, Maurice following Sophy to extract a full account of the skirmish. The imp probably had an instinct that she would think more of what redounded to Ulick O'More's glory than of what would be edifying to his own infant mind. It was doubtful how long it would be before Guy Fawkes would arrive at his proper standing in the little Awk's opinion, after the honour of an auto-da-fe in company with papa.

Mr. Hope escorted Genevieve home, and was kept to dinner. They narrated that they had found the public-house open, and the bar full of noisy runaways.

The burns were dreadful, but the surgeon did not think they would be fatal, and the child had held Genevieve's hand throughout the dressing, and seemed so unwilling to part with her, that she had promised to come again the next day, and had been thanked gratefully. There seemed no positive want of comforts, and there was every hope that all would do well.

Genevieve looked pale after the scene she had gone through, and could not readily persuade herself to eat, still less rally her spirits to talk; but she managed to avoid observation at dinner-time, and afterwards a rest on the sofa restored her. She evidently felt, as she said, that this was coming home, and her exquisite gift of tact making her perceive that she was to be at ease and on an equality, she a.s.sumed her position without giving her friends the embarra.s.sment of installing her, and Mr. Hope was in such a state of transparent admiration, that Albinia could not help two or three times noiselessly clapping her hands under the table, and secretly thanking the rioters and their tag-rag and bob-tail for having provided a home for little Genevieve Durant.

There was indeed a pang as she thought of Gilbert; but she believed that Genevieve's heart had never been really touched, and was still fresh and open. She thought she might make Mr. Kendal and Sophy equally magnanimous. Perhaps by that time Sophy would be too happy to have leisure to be hurt, and she had little fear but that Mr. Kendal's good sense would conquer his jealousy for his son, though it might cost him something.

Two lovers to befriend at once! Two desirable attachments to foster!

There was glory! Not that Albinia fulfilled her mission to a great extent; shamefacedness always restrained her, and she had not Emily's gift for making opportunities. Indeed, when she did her best, so perversely bashful were the parties, that the wrong pairs resorted together, the two who could talk being driven into conversation by the silence of the others.

Of Mr. Hope's sentiments there could be no doubt. He was fairly carried off his feet by the absorption of the pa.s.sion, which was doubly engrossing because all ladies had hitherto appeared to him as beings with whom conversation was an impossible duty; but after all he had heard of Miss Durant, he might as a judicious man select her for an excellent parsoness, and as a young man fall vehemently in love. Nothing could be more evident to the lookers-on, but Albinia could not satisfy herself whether Genevieve had any suspicion.

She was not very young, knew something of the world, and was acute and observing; but on the other hand, she had made it a principle never to admit the thought of courtship, and she might not be sufficiently acquainted with the habits of the individual to be sensible of the symptomatic alteration.

She had begged the Dusautoys to make her leisure profitable, and spent much of her time upon the schools, on her little patient in Tibb's Alley, and in going about among the poor; she visited her old shopkeeper friends, and drank tea with them much oftener than gratified Mr. Kendal, talking so openly of the pleasure of seeing them again, that Albinia sometimes thought the blood of the O'Mores was a little chafed.

'There,' said Genevieve, completing a housewife, filled with needles ready threaded, 'I wonder whether the omnibus is too protestant to leave a parcel at the convent?'

'I don't think its scruples of conscience would withstand sixpence,'

said Albinia.

'You might post it for less than that,' said Sophy.

'Don't you know,' said Ulick O'More, who was playing with the little Awk in the window, 'that the feminine mind loves expedients? It would be less commonplace to confide the parcel to the conductor, than merely let him receive it as guard of the mail bag and servant of the public.'

'Exactly,' laughed Genevieve. 'Think of the moral influence of being selected as bearer of a token of tenderness to my aunt on her fete, instead of being treated as a mere machine, devoid of human sympathies.'

'Sophy, where were we reading of a nation which gives the simplest transaction the air of a little romance?' said Ulick.

'And I have heard of a nation which denudes every action of sentiment, and leaves you the tree without the leaves,' was Genevieve's retort.

'That misses fire, Miss Durant; my nation does everything by the soul, nothing by mechanism.'

'When they _do_ do it.'

'That's a defiance. You must deprive the conductor of the moral influence, whether as man or machine, and entrust the parcel to me.'

'That would be like chartering a steamer to send home a Chinese puzzle.'

'No, indeed; I must go to Hadminster. Bear me witness, Sophy, Miss Goldsmith wants me to talk to the house agent.'

'Mind, if you miss St. Leocadia's day, you will miss my aunt's fete.'

Mr. O'More succeeded in carrying off the little parcel. The next morning, as the ladies were descending the hill, a hurried step came after them, and the curate said in an abrupt rapid manner, 'I beg your pardon, I was going to Hadminster; could I do anything for you?'

'Nothing, thank you,' said Albinia, at whom he looked.

'Did I not hear--Miss Durant had some work to send her aunt to-day?'

'How did you know that, Mr. Hope?' exclaimed Genevieve.

'I heard something pa.s.s, when some one was admiring your work,' he said, not looking at her. 'And this--I think--is St. Leocadia's day.'

'I am very much obliged to you for remembering it, but I have sent my little parcel otherwise, so I need not trouble you.'

'Ah! how stupid in me! I am very sorry. I beg your pardon,' and he hurried off, looking as if very sorry were not a mere matter of course.

'Poor man,' thought Albinia, 'I dare say he has reckoned on it all this time, and hunted out St. Leocadia in Alban Butler, and then tried to screw up his courage all yesterday. Ulick has managed to traverse a romance, but perhaps it is just as well, for what would be the effect on the public of Mr. Hope in _that_ coat being seen ringing at the convent door?'

'Well, Miss Durant,' said Ulick, entering the drawing-room in the winter twilight, 'here is evidence for you!'

'You have actually penetrated the convent, and seen my aunt? Impossible!

and yet this pencilled note is her own dear writing!'

'You don't mean that you really were let in?' cried Sophy.

'I entered quite legitimately, I a.s.sure you. It was all luck. I'd just been putting up at the Crown, when what should I see in a sort of a trance, staring right into the inn-yard, but as jolly-looking a priest as ever held a station. "An' it's long since I've seen the like of you,"

says he aloud to himself. "Is it the car?" says I. "Sure it is," says he. "I've not laid my eyes on so iligant a vehicle since I left County Tyrone."'

'Mr. O'Hara!' exclaimed Genevieve.

'"And I'm mistaken if you're not the master of it," he goes on, taking the measure of me all over,' continued Ulick, putting on his drollest brogue. 'You see he had too much manners to say that such a personable young gentleman, speaking such correct English, could be no other than an Irishman, so I made my bow, and said the car and I were both from County Galway, and we were straight as good friends as if we'd hunted together at Ballymakilty. To be sure, he was a little taken aback when he found I was one of the Protestant branch, of the O'Mores, but a countryman is a countryman in a barbarous land, and he asked me to call upon him, and offered to do me any service in his power.'

'I am sure he would. He is the kindest old gentleman I know,' exclaimed Genevieve. 'He always used to bring me barleysugar-drops when I was a little girl, and it was he who found out our poor old Biddy in distress at Hadminster, and sent her to live with us.'

'Indeed! Then I owe him another debt of grat.i.tude--in fact, he told me that one of his flock, meaning Biddy, had spoken to him honourably of me. "Well," said I, "the greatest service you could do me, sir, would be to introduce me to Mademoiselle Belmarche; I have a young lady's commission for her." "From my little Genevieve," he said, "the darling that she is. Did you leave the child well?" And so when I said it was a present for her saint's day, and that your heart was set on it--'

'But, Mr. O'More, I never did set my heart on your seeing her.'

'Well, well, you would have done it if you'd known there had been any chance of it, besides, your heart was set on her getting the work, and how could I make sure of that unless I gave it into her own hand? I wouldn't have put it into Mr. O'Hara's snuffy pocket to hinder myself from being bankrupt.'

'Then he took you in?'

'So he did, like an honest Irishman as he was. He rang at the bell and spoke to the portress, and had me into the parlour and sent up for the lady; and I have seldom spent a pleasanter hall-hour. Mademoiselle Belmarche bade me tell you that she would write fuller thanks to you another day, and that her eyes would thank you every night.'

'Was her cold gone? Did she seem well, the dear aunt?'