Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

But Elvira was really unhappy about the worn, faded air that made Allen look much older than his twenty-nine years warranted. The poor girl’s nerves proved to have been much disturbed; she besought Barbara to sleep with her, and was haunted by fears of pursuit and capture, and Gilbert claiming her after all. She kept on starting, clutching at Babie, and requiring to be soothed till far on into the night, and then she slept so soundly that no one had the heart to wake her. Indeed it was her first real peaceful repose since her flight had been planned, nor did she come down till half-past ten, just when Mr. Wakefield drove up to the door, and Jock had taken pity on Allen, and set forth to undertake Sir Samuel for the day. Mr. Wakefield was the less surprised at the sight of the young lady, having been somewhat prepared by her telegraphic inquiry about Allen, which he had not communicated to the Brownlows for fear of raising false expectations.

There was a great consultation. Elvira was not in the least shy, and only wanted to be safely Mrs. Allen Brownlow before the Goulds should arrive, as she expected, in the next steamer to pursue her vi et armis. If it had depended on her, she would have sent Allen for a special licence, and been married in her travelling dress that very day. Mr. Wakefield, solicitor as he was, was quite ready for speed. He had always viewed the marriage with Allen Brownlow as a simple act of restitution, and the trust made settlements needless. Still he did not apprehend any danger from the Goulds, when he found that Elvira had never written a note to Gilbert in her life. Nay, he thought that if they even threatened any annoyance, they had given cause enough to have a prosecution for conspiracy held over them in wholesome terror.

And considering all the circumstances, Mrs. Brownlow and Allen were alike determined against undignified haste. Miss Menella ought to be married from among her own kindred, and from her own house; but this was not easy to manage; for poor Mary Whiteside and her husband, though very worthy, were not exactly the people to enact parents in such a house as Belforest; and Mrs. Brownlow could see why she herself should not, though Elvira could not think why she objected. At last the idea was started that the fittest persons were Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield. The latter was a thorough lady, pleasant and sensible. The only doubt was whether so very quiet a person could be asked to undertake such an affair, and her husband took leave, that he might consult her and see whether she could bring herself to be mother for the nonce to the wild heiress, of whom his family were wont to talk with horrified compassion.

When he was gone, it was possible to come to the examination upon Janet for which Mother Carey had been so anxious. How was she looking?

“Oh! so old, and worn and thin. I never should have guessed it was Janet, if I had not caught her eye, and then I knew her eyebrows and nose, because they are just like Allen’s,—and her voice sounded so like home that I was ready to cry, only I did not dare, as Gilbert was there.”

“I wonder they did not take alarm at her name.”

“I don’t imagine they ever heard it.”

“Not when she was living there? Was not her husband practising?”

“Her husband! Oh no, I never heard any thing about him. I thought you knew I found her at the photographer’s?”

“Met her as a sitter?”

“Oh dear, no! I thought you understood. It was she that was doing my picture. She finishes up all his miniature photographs.”

“My dear Elvira, do you really mean that my poor Janet is supporting herself in that way?”

“Yes, indeed I do; that was why I made sure she would have come home with me. I was so dreadfully disappointed when I found only her note.”

“And are you sure you have quite lost it?”

“Yes, I turned out every corner of my bag this morning to look for it. I am so sorry, but I was so ill and so wretched, that I could not take care of anything. I just wonder how I lived through the voyage, all alone.”

“Was there no message? Nothing for me.”

“Yes, I have recollected it now, or some of it. She said she durst not go home, or ask anything of you, after the way she had offended. Oh! I wonder how she could send me, for I know I was worse.”

“But what did she say?” said Caroline, too anxious to listen to Elvira’s own confessions. “Was there nothing for me?”

“Yes.” She said, “Tell her that I have learnt by the bitterest of all experience the pain I have given her, and the wrong I have done!” Then there was something about being so utterly past forgiveness that she could not come to ask it. “Oh, don’t cry so, Mother Carey, we can write and get her back, and I will send her the passage money.”

“Ah! yes, write!” cried out the mother, starting up. “‘When he was yet a great way off.’ Ah! why could she not remember that?” But as she sat down to her table, “You know her address?”

“Yes, certainly, I went to her lodgings once or twice; such a little bit of a room up so many stairs.”

“And you did not hear how that man, her husband, died?”

“I don’t know whether he is dead,” said this most unsatisfactory informant. “She does not wear black, nor a cap, and I am almost sure that he has run away from her, and that is the reason she cannot use her own name.”

“Elfie!”

“O, I thought you knew! She calls herself Mrs. Harte. She took my passage in that name, and that must be why my things have never come. Yes, I asked her why she did not set up for a lady doctor, and she said it was impossible that she could venture on showing her certificates or using her name—either his or hers.”

That was in the main all that could be extracted from Elvira, though it was brought out again and again in all sorts of forms. It was plain that Janet had been very reticent in all that regarded herself, and Elvira had only had stolen interviews, very full of her own affairs, and, besides, had supposed Janet to intend to return with her. Both wrote; Elfie, to announce her safety, and Caroline, an incoherent, imploring, forgiving letter, such as only a mother could write, before they went out to supply Elvira’s lack of garments, and to procure the order for the sum needed for her passage. Caroline was glad they had gone independently, for, on their return, Babie reported to her that her little Ladyship was so wroth with Elfie as to wonder at them for receiving her so affectionately. It was very forgiving of them, but she should never forget the way in which poor Allen had been treated.

“I told her,” said Babie, “that was the way she talked about Cecil, and you should have seen her face. She wonders that Allen has not more spirit, and indeed, mother, I do rather wish Elfie could have come back with nothing but her little bag, so that he could have shown it would have been all the same.”

“A comfortable life they would have had, poor things, in that case,” laughed her mother, “though I agree that it would have been prettier. But I don’t trouble myself about that, my dear. You know, in all equity, Allen ought to have a share in that property. It was only the old man’s caprice that made it all or none; and Elvira is only doing what is right and just.”

“And Allen’s love was a real thing, when he was the rich one. So I told Essie; and besides, Allen would never make any hand of poverty, poor fellow.”

“I think and hope he will make a much better hand of riches than he would have done without all he has gone through,” said her mother.

Allen showed the same feeling when he could talk his prospects over quietly with his mother. These four years had altered him at least as much for the better as Elfie. He would not now begin in thoughtless self-indulgence, refined indeed and never vicious, but selfish, extravagant, and heedless of all but ease, pleasure, and culture. Some of the enervation of his youth had really worn off, though it had so long made him morbid, and he had learnt humility by his failures. Above all, however, his intercourse with Fordham had opened his eyes to a sense of the duties of wealth and position, such as he had never before acquired, and the religious habits that had insensibly grown upon him were tincturing his views of life and responsibility.

It was painful to him to realise that he was returning to wealth and luxury, indeed, monopolising it,—he the helpless, undeserving, indolent son, while all the others, and especially his mother, were left to poverty.

Elfie wanted Mother Carey and all to make their home at Belforest, and still be one family as of old. Indeed, she hung on Mother Carey even more than upon Allen, after her long famine from the motherly tenderness that she had once so little appreciated.

Of such an amalgamation, however, Mrs. Brownlow would not hear, nor would she listen to a proposal of settling on her a yearly income, such as would dispense with economy, and with the manufacture of “pot-boilers.”

No, she said, she was a perverse woman, and she had never been so happy as when living on her husband’s earnings. The period of education being over, she had a full sufficiency, and should only meddle with clay again for her own pleasure. She was beginning already a set of dining-table ornaments for a wedding-present, representing the early part of the story of Undine. Babie knew why, if nobody else did. Perhaps she should one of these days mould a similar set for Sydney of the crusaders of Jotapata! Then Allen bethought him of putting into Elvira’s head to beg, at least, to undertake Armine’s expenses at the theological college for a year, and to this she consented thankfully. Armine had been thinking of offering himself as Allen’s successor for a year with Sir Samuel; but two days’ experience as substitute convinced him that Allen was right in declaring that my Lady would be the death of him. Lucas could manage her, and kept her well-behaved and even polite, but Armine was so young and so deferential that she treated him even worse than she did her first victim! She had begun by insisting on a quarter’s notice or the forfeiture of the salary, as long as she thought £25 was of vital importance to Allen, but as soon as she discovered that the young lady was a great heiress, she became most unedifyingly civil, called in great state in Collingwood Street, and went about boasting of having patronised a sort of prince in disguise.

Meantime Dr. Ruthven’s offer seemed left in abeyance. Colonel Brownlow had all his son’s scruples, and more than his indignation at Lucas’s folly in hesitating; and John was so sure that he ought not to accept the proposal, that he would not stir in the matter, nor mention it to Sydney. At last Lucas acted on his own responsibility, and had an interview with Dr. Ruthven, in which he declined the offer for himself, but made it known that his cousin was not only brother to the beautiful Lady Fordham who had been met in Collingwood Street, but was engaged to Lord Fordham’s sister. At which connection the fashionable physician rubbed his hands with so much glee, that Jock was the more glad not to have to hunt in couples with him.

The magnificent wedding-dress had been stopped by telegram, just as it was packed for New York, and was despatched to Belforest. Mrs. Wakefield undertook the task imposed upon her, and the wedding was to be grand enough to challenge attention, and not be liable to the accusation of being done in a corner. It might be called hasty, for only a month would have passed since Elvira’s arrival, before her wedding-day; but this was by her own earnest wish. She made it no secret that she should never cease to be nervous till she was Allen Brownlow’s wife, even though a letter to her cousins at River Hollow had removed all fear of pursuit by Mrs. Gould; she seemed bent on remaining at New York, and complained loudly of “the ungrateful girl,” whose personal belongings she retained by way of compensation.

It would have been too much to expect that Elvira should be a wise and clever woman, but she had really learnt to be an affectionate one, and in the school of adversity had parted with much of her selfish petulance and arrogance. Allen, whose love had always been blindly tender, more like a woman’s or a parent’s love than that of an ordinary lover, was rapturous at the response he at last received. At the same time, he knew her too well to expect from her intellectual companionship, and would be quite content with what she could give.

They were both of them chastened and elevated in tone by their five years’ discipline.

The night before the party went down to Belforest, where they were to meet the Evelyns, Allen lingered with his mother after all the rest had gone upstairs.

“Mother,” he said, “I have thought a great deal of that dream of yours. I hope that the touch of Midas may not be baneful this time.”

“I trust not, my dear; you have had a taste of the stern, rugged nurse.”

“And, mother, I know I failed egregiously where the others rose.”

“But you were rising.”

“Then you will let me do nothing for you, and I feel myself sneaking into your inheritance, to the exclusion of all the rest, in a backdoor sort of way.”

“My dear Allen, it can’t be helped, you have honestly loved your Elf from her infancy, when she had nothing, and she really loved you at the very worst. Love is so much more than gold, that it really signifies very little which of you has the money. You and she have both gone through a good deal, and it depends upon you now whether the possession becomes a blessing to yourselves and others. Don’t vex about our not having a share, you know yourself how much happier we all are without the load, and there will never be any anxiety now. I shall always fall back on you, if I want anything.”

“That is right,” said Allen, clearing up a good deal as she looked up brightly in his face. “You promise me.”

“Of course I do,” she said smiling. “I’m not proud.”

“And you did make Armine consent to our paying those expenses of his. That was good of you, but the boy only does it out of obedience.”

“Yes, he would like a little bit of self-willed penance, but it is much better for him to submit, bodily and mentally.”