The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes

Now that Tibb’s Alley was deserted, and plans fixed, architect and clerk of the works chosen, March winds ready for building and underground work to begin at once, what could be more prudent than for the inhabitants of Willow Lawn to remove far from the disturbance of ancient drains and no drains, and betake themselves to a purer atmosphere? Mr. Kendal was of no use as a superintendent, and needed no persuasion to flee from the chance of typhus.

As to the children, the time had come early when Maurice’s whole nature cried out for school. He was much improved, and there was that real principle within him which made it not unsafe to launch him in a world where he might meet with more useful trials than those of home. Child as he was, his propensities were too much limited by the bounds of the town-house and garden, and the society of his sisters, one too old and one too young to serve as tomboys. He needed to meet his match, and work his way; Albinia felt that school had become his element, and Mr. Kendal only wanted to make his education the reverse of Gilbert’s; so he ran nearly frantic between the real jacket and the promise of going to school with Willie. He knew not, though his mother mourned over, the coming heart-sickness and mother-sickness of the first night, the first Sunday, the first trouble. It was sure to be very severe in one of such strong and affectionate feeling, but it must come sooner or later, and the better that it should be conquered while home was still a paradise. Fairmead was not so far from his destination but that his uncle would keep an eye on him; and Winifred held out a hope that if the tour lasted long enough, he should bring out both boys to spend their holidays with them. A very good Winifred!

Albinia the Less was to become a traveller, for the good reason that nobody could or would go without her. They were to go direct to Lucy, who was at Naples with a second boy, and pining for home faces and home comforts—the inducement which perhaps worked most strongly to make Sophy like the journey, for since her delusion had been swept, away, a doubly deep and intense feeling had sprung up towards her own only sister, whose foibles had been forgotten in long separation.

CHAPTER XXXI

The Lake of Lucerne lay blue and dark in the shade of the mountains, on whose summits the evening sunshine was fast mounting, peak after peak falling into purple shadow.

There was a small inlet where a stream rushed down between the hills, and on the green slope stood a chalet, the rich red of the roof contrasting with the green pasture. A little boat was moored to a stump near the land, and in it sat Sophia Kendal, her hat by her side, listening to and answering merrily the chatter of Maurice, who tumbled about in the boat, often causing it severe shocks, while he inspected the cut of the small sail which she was making for the miniature specimen, which he often tried in the clear cold water.

Farther off, a little up the hill-side, Willie Ferrars was holding the hand of the chestnut-curled, black-eyed fairy, ‘little Awk,’ who was impressing him by her fluency in two languages at once, according as she chattered to him in English, or in French to a picturesque peasant, her great ally, who was mowing his flowery crop of hay, glancing like an illumination, with an under-current of brilliant blossoms among the grass.

Wandering with slow conversational pace up and down the beach of the lake, were Mr. Kendal and Sir William Ferrars, conversing as usual; the soldier, with quick alert comprehension, wide observation, and clearness of mind, which jumped to the very points to which the scholar’s deeply-read and long-digested arguments were bringing him more slowly.

On a projecting point sat Albinia, her fair hair shaded under her dark hat, beneath which her English complexion glowed fresh and youthful, as with flat tin box by her side, and block sketch-book on her knee, she mixed and she painted, and tried to catch those purples and those blues with unabated ardour. Suddenly a great trailing frond of mountain fern came over the brim of her hat from behind. ‘Oh, Maurice, don’t!’ Then, looking up and laughing, ‘Oh, it is you, is it? I knew Maurice would do, whichever it might be; but see, the other is quite out of mischief.’

‘Unless he should upset Sophy into the lake.’

‘He can’t do that, the rope is too short. But is not he very much improved? He has quite lost his imperious manner towards her.’

‘Nothing like school for making a boy behave himself to his sisters.’

‘Exactly, as I learnt by experience long ago. I am glad William did not see him till he had learnt to be agreeable. How he does admire him!’

‘You’ll never make anything of that sketch; the mountain is humpbacked, and the face of that precipice is exactly like Colonel Bury;’ and he caught up a pencil to help out the resemblance with nostril and eyebrow.

‘For shame, to be so mischievous; such a great boy as you.’

‘Well, we all came out here to be great boys, didn’t we? I am sure you look a dozen years younger than when I last saw you, Mrs. Grandmother. By-the-by, it was a bold stroke to encumber yourself with that brat; what’s become of him?’

‘Susan has taken him in asleep. You see, Maurice, I really could not help it, the poor little thing was so sickly, and had never thriven; but when they were a little while in bracing air, Lucy was longing to have him in England, and his father, who never believes in anything but what he likes, would not see it, and what with those Italian servants, and Algernon hunting Lucy about as he does, it would have been the death of him. Susan, good creature, had taken to him of her own accord the moment we came to Naples, and could not have borne to leave him, and you know the Awk is almost off her hands now, and Sophy, who first proposed it, or I am sure I should never have ventured, is delighted to do anything for either of them, and always has her little sister in her room. As to papa, he was very good, and the child is very little in his way, and has been quite well ever since we have been in this delicious air.’

‘How did you get Lucy to consent?’

‘Poor dear, it was a melancholy business; but she had so often been in alarm about him, and had suffered so much from having to leave him with people she did not trust, that she caught at the proposal before she fairly contemplated what the parting would be; and when she did, Algernon was too glad to be relieved from him not to keep her up to it, but it wont do to think of it, she has her baby, who is healthier, and if they remain abroad, I suspect we shall keep little Ralph altogether; he is a dear little fellow, and Sophy has so taken possession of Albinia, that I should be quite lost if I did not set up a private child.

‘What do you call him? I thought his name was Belraven.’

‘I could not possibly call him so; and his aunts, by way of adding to the aviary, made him Ralph the Raven, so I mean it to stick by him; I believe papa has forgotten the other dreadful fact, for I caught him giving his name as Ralph Cavendish Dusautoy. How the dear vicar of Bayford will devour him! and what work I shall have to keep him from being spoilt!’

‘Then you think they will remain abroad?’

‘Algernon hates England; and all his habits are foreign.’

‘Did he make himself tolerably agreeable?’

‘He really did. One could bear to be patronized by one’s host better than by one’s guest, and he was in wholesome awe of William. Besides, he is really at home in Italy, and knows his way about so well, that he was not a bad Cicerone. I am sure Sophy could never have done either Vesuvius or Pompeii without his arrangements; and as long as he had a victim for his catalogue raisonnee, he was very placable and obliging. That was all extracts, so it really was not so bad.’

‘So you were satisfied?’

‘He has a bad lot about him, that’s the worst—Polish counts, disreputable artists and poets, any one who has a spurious sort of fame, and knows how to flatter him. Edmund was terribly disgusted.’

‘Very bad for his wife.’

‘You see, she is a thorough-going mother, and no linguist. She really is improved, and I like her more really than ever I could, poor dear. I believe her head was once quite turned, and that he influenced her entirely, and made her forget everything else; but she has a heart, though not much of a head, and sorrow and illness and children have brought it out, and she is what a ‘very woman’ becomes, I suppose, if there be any good in her, an abstract wife and mother.’

‘Was it not dangerous to take away her child?’

‘There was another, you know, and it was to save his life. The duties clashed, and were destroying all comfort.’

‘How does he behave to her?’

‘I believe she has all the love he has to spare; he is proud of her, and dresses her up, and has endless portraits of her. Luckily she keeps her beauty. She is more refined, and has more expression; one could sometimes cry to watch her, and he likes to have her with him, and to discourse to her, but without the slightest perception or consideration of what she would prefer, and with no notion of sacrificing anything for her or the children. I know she is afraid of him; I have seen her tremble if there were any chance of his being annoyed; and she would not object to any plan of his if it were to cost her life. I believe it would be misery to her, but I think she would resist—ay, she did resist, and in vain, for the sake of her child.’

‘Does her affection hold out, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes, the spaniel and walnut-tree love, which is in us all, and doubly in the very woman. It is very beautiful. She is so proud of him and of her gilded slavery, and so unconsciously submissive and patient; but it is a harder life, I guess, than we can see. I am sure it must be, for every bit of personal vanity and levity is worn out of her; she only goes out to satisfy him; dresses to please his eye, and talks, with her eye seeking round for him, in dread of being rebuked for mistakes or bad French. And for the rest, her joy is to be left in peace with little Algernon upon her lap. Yes, I hope living in all womanly virtues may be training and compensation, but the saddest part of the affair is that he does not think it fashionable to be religious, and she has not moral courage to make open resistance.’

‘May it come,’ fervently.

‘It is strange, how much more real and good a creature she is now, than when at home in the midst of all external observances. Yet it cannot be right! she surely ought to make more stand, but it is too, too literally being afraid to say her soul is her own, for she is unhappy. She does the utmost she can without offending him, and feels it as she never did before.’

‘There is no judging,’ said Maurice, as his sister looked at him with eyes full of sorrowful yearning. ‘No one can tell where are the boundaries of the two duties. Poor girl! she has put herself into a state of temptation and trial; but she may be shielded by her exercise of so much that is simply good, and her womanly qualities may become not idolatry, but a training in reaching higher.’

‘May it be so, indeed!’ said Albinia. ‘Oh, Maurice! how I once disdained being told I was too young, and how true it was! What visions I had about those three, and what failures have resulted!’

‘Your visions may have vanished, but you did your work faithfully, and it has not been fruitless.’

‘Ay, in shipwrecked lives. Mischiefs wherever I meant to do best! Why, I let even my own Maurice grow unmanageable while I was nursing poor grandmamma. The voluntary duty choked the natural one, and yet—’

‘And yet,’ interrupted her brother, ‘that was no error.’

‘Oh, no! I would not have done it for anything.’

‘Nor do I think the boy the worse for it. I may venture now on saying he was intolerable, and it hastened school, but though your rein was loose, you never let it fall; and maybe, the self-conquest was the best thing for him. If you had neglected him wilfully for your own pleasure, nothing but harm could have been expected. As you were absorbed by a sacred act of duty, I believe it will all be made up to you in your son.’

‘Oh, Maurice, if I might trust so! I believe I am doubly set on that boy doing well, because his father must not, must not have another pang!’

‘I think he knows that. I do not imagine that he will never be carried astray by high spirits; but I am sure that he has the strength, honour, and sweetness that are the elements of greatness!’

‘Nothing we did so changed him as the loss of his brother. Oh, Maurice! there was my most earnest wish to do right, and my most fatal mistake!’

‘And greatest success. Gilbert owed everything to you.’

‘Had I but silenced my foolish pride, he might have been safe in India now.’

‘We do not know how safe he might be. I did indeed think it a pity your influence led the other way, but things might have been far worse; if you made some blunders, your love and your earnestness were working on that susceptible nature, and what better hope can we wish to have than what rested with us at Malta? what better influence than has remained with Maurice or with Fred?’