Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

Janet eagerly asked the when and the where.

“I am glad,” said her mother, “to find that you change of name was not in order to elude him, as feared at first.”

“No,” said Janet, “he never knew he was cruel, but he had made a mistake altogether in me. I was a disappointment to begin with, owing to my own bad management, you see, for if I had brought off the book, and destroyed the will, his speculation would have succeeded. And then, for his comfort, he should have married a passive, ignorant, senseless, obedient oriental, and he did not know what to do with a cold, proud thing, who looked most hard when most wretched, who had understanding enough to see his blunders, and remains of conscience enough to make her sour. Poor Demetrius! He had the worst of the bargain! And now—” She turned the leaf of the manuscript, and showed, with a date three days back:

“Mr. Field has written to me, sending a cutting of an advertisement of a month back of a spiritualist from Abville, which he thinks may be my husband’s. I am sure it is, I know the Greek idiom put into English. It decides me on what I had thought of before. I shall offer my services as nurse or physician, or whatever they will let me be in that stress of need. I may find him, or if he have fled, I may, if I live, trace him. At any rate, by God’s grace, I may thus endeavour to make a better use of what has never yet been used for His service.

“And in case I should add no further words to this, let me conclude by telling my dear, dear mother that my whole soul and spirit are asking her forgiveness, and by sending my love to my brothers, and sister, whom I love far better now than ever I did when I was with them. And to Elvira too—perhaps she is my sister by this time.

“Let them try henceforth to think not unkindly of

“JANET HERMANN.”

This had been enclosed in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Joseph Brownlow, to the care of Wakefield and Co., solicitors.

“You see I cannot go back with you, mother dear,” she said, “though you have come to seek me.”

“Not yet,” said Caroline, handing the last page to Jock, who had come back again from one of his excursions.

“Look here, Janet,” said Jock, “mother will not forbid it, I know. If you will wait another day for me to arrange for her, I will go with you. This is a place specially mentioned as in frightful need of medical attendance, and I already doubted whether I ought not to volunteer, but if you have an absolute call of duty there, that settles it. Mother, do you remember that American clergyman who dined with us? I met him just now. He begged me with all his heart to persuade you to come and stay with his family. I believe he is going to bring his wife to call. I am sure they would take care of you.”

“I don’t want care. Jock, Jock, why should I not go and help? Do you think I can send my children into the furnace without me?”

Jock came and sat down by her with his specially consoling caress. “Mother dear, I don’t think you ought. We are trained to it, you see, and it is part of our vocation, besides, Janet has a call. But your nursing would not make much difference, and besides, you don’t belong only to us—Armine and Babie need their home. And suppose poor Bobus came back. No, I am accountable to them all. They didn’t send me out in charge of my Mother Carey that I should run her into the jaws of Yellow Jack. I can’t do it, mother. I should mind my own business far less if I were thinking about you. It would be just like your coming after me into a general engagement.”

“Lucas is quite right,” said Janet. “You know, mother, this is a special kind of nursing, that one does not understand by the light of nature, and you are not strong enough or tough enough for it.”

“I flattered myself I was pretty tough,” said her mother, with trembling lip. “What sort of a place is it? Could not I—even if you won’t let me nurse—be near enough to rest you, and feed you, and disinfect you? That is my trade, Jock will allow, as a doctor’s wife and mother. And I could collect things and send them to the sick. Would not that be possible, my dears?”

Jock said he would find out. And then he told them he had found a Church with a daily service, to which they went.

And then those three had a wonderfully happy evening together.

CHAPTER XLI. – GOOD OUT OF EVIL

How the field of combat lay
By the tomb’s self; how he sprang from ambuscade—
Captured Death, caught him in that pair of hands.

                                                      Browning.

“John,” said Sydney, as they were taking their last walk together as engaged people on the banks of their Avon, “There’s something I think I ought to tell you.”

“Well, my dearest.”

“Don’t they say that there ought not to be any shadow of concealment of the least little liking for any one else, when one is going to be married,” quoth Sydney, not over lucidly.

“I’m sure I can safely acquit myself of any such shadow,” said John, laughing. “I never had the least little liking for anybody but Mother Carey, and that wasn’t a least little one at all!”

“Well, John, I’m very much ashamed of it, because he didn’t care for me, as it turned out; but if he had, as I once thought, I should have liked him,” said Sydney, looking down, and speaking with great confusion out of the depths of her conscience, stirred up by much ‘Advice to Brides,’ and Sunday novels, all turning on the lady’s error in hiding her first love; and then perhaps because the effect on John was less startling than she had expected, she added with another effort, “It was Lucas Brownlow.”

“Jock!” cried John. “The dear fellow!”

“Yes—I did think it, when he was in the Guards, and always about with Cecil. It was very silly of me, for he did not care one fraction.”

“Why do you think so?” said John hoarsely.

“Well, I know better now, but when he made up his mind to leave the army, I fancied it was no better than being a recreant knight, and I begged and prayed him to go out with Sir Philip Cameron, and as near as I dared told him it was for my sake. But he went on all the same, and then I was quite sure he did not care, and saw what a goose I had made of myself. Oh! Johnny, it has been very hard to tell you, but I thought I ought, and I hope you’ll never think of it more, for Lucas just despised my foolish forwardness, and you know you have every bit of my heart and soul. What is the matter, John? Oh! have I done harm, when I meant to do right?”

“No, no, my darling, don’t be startled. But do you mean that you really thought Jock’s disregard of your entreaties came from indifference?”

“It was all one mixture of pain and anger,” said Sydney. “I can’t define it. I thought it was one’s duty to lead a man to be courageous and defend his country, and of course he thought me such a fool. Why, he has never really talked to me since!”

“And you thought it was indifference,” again repeated John, with an iteration worthy of his father.

“O John, you frighten me. Wasn’t it? Did you know this before?”

“No, most certainly not. I did know thus much, that in giving up the army Jock had given up his dearest hopes; but I thought it was some fine fashionable lady, whom he was well rid of, though he didn’t know it. And he never said a word to betray it, even when I came home brimful and overflowing with happiness. And you know it was his doing that my way has been smoothed. Oh! Sydney, I don’t know how to look at it!”

“But indeed, John dear, I couldn’t help loving you best. You saved me, you know, and I feel to fit in, and understand you best. I can’t be sorry as it has turned out.”

“That’s very well,” said John, trying to laugh, “for you couldn’t be transferred back to him, like a bale of goods. And I could not have helped loving you; but that I should have been a robber, Jock’s worst enemy!”

“I can’t be sorry you did not guess it,” said Sydney. “Then I never should have had you, and somehow—”

“And you thought him wanting in courage,” recurred John.

“Only when I was wild and silly, talking out of the ‘Traveller’s Joy.’ It was hearing about his going into that dreadful place that stirred it all up in my mind, because I saw what a hero he is.”

“God grant he may come safe out of it!” said John. “I’ll tell you what, Sydney, though, it is a shame, when I am the gainer: I think your romance went astray; more faith and patience would have waited to see the real hero come out, and so you have missed him and got the ordinary, jog-trot, commonplace fellow instead.”

“Ah! but love must be at the bottom of faith and patience,” said Sydney, “and that was scared away by shame at my own forwardness and foolishness. And now it is all gone to the jog-trot! I want no better hero!”

“What a confession for the maiden of the twelfth century!”

“I’m very glad you don’t feel moved to start off to the yellow fever.”

“Do you know, Sydney, I do not know what I don’t feel moved to sometimes, I cannot understand this silence!”

“But you said the telegram that he was mending was almost better than if he had never been ill at all.”

“So I thought then; but why do we not hear, if all is well with them?”

Three weeks since, a telegram had been received by Allen, containing the words, “Janet died at 2.30 A.M. Lucas mending.”

It had been resolved not to put off the wedding, as much inconvenience would have been caused, and poor Janet was only cousin to John, and had been removed from all family interests so long, even Mrs. Robert Brownlow saw no impropriety, since Barbara went to Belforest for a fortnight, returning to Mrs. Evelyn on the afternoon of the wedding-day itself to assist in her move to the Dower House. Esther, who had never professed to wish for a hero, had been so much disturbed by the recent alarms of war, that she was only anxious that her guardsman should safely sell out in the interval of peace; and he had begun to care enough about the occupations at Fordham to wish to be free to make it his chief dwelling-place.

The wedding was as quiet as possible. Sydney was disappointed of the only bridesmaid she cared much about, and Barbara felt a kind of relief in not having a second time to assist at the destruction of a brother’s hopes. She was very glad to get back to Fordham, reporting that Allen and Elvira were so devotedly in love that a third person was very much de trop; though they had been very kind, and Elvira had mourned poor Janet with real gratitude and affection. Still they did not take half so much alarm at the silence as she did, and she was relieved to be with the Evelyns, who were becoming very anxious. The bridegroom and bride could not bear to go out of reach of intelligence, and had limited their tour to the nearest place on the coast, where they could hear by half a day’s post.