Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

CHAPTER I.—JOE BROWNLOW’S FANCY

“Mother, you could do a great kindness.”

“Well, Joe?”

“If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath’s here for the holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst, and they don’t know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum for officers’ daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away to have the house purified. They can’t take her with them, for their sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state of chest left by measles.”

“What is her name?”

“Allen. The cry was always for Miss Allen when the sick girls wanted to be amused.”

“Allen! I wonder if it can be the same child as the one Robert was interested about. You don’t remember, my dear. It was the year you were at Vienna, when one of Robert’s brother-officers died on the voyage out to China, and he sent home urgent letters for me to canvass right and left for the orphan’s election. You know Robert writes much better than he speaks, and I copied over and over again his account of the poor young man to go with the cards. ‘Caroline Otway Allen, aged seven years, whole orphan, daughter of Captain Allen, l07th Regiment;’ yes, that’s the way it ran.”

“The year I was at Vienna, and Robert went out to China. That was eleven years ago. She must be the very child, for she is only eighteen. They sent her to Miss Heath’s to grow a little older, for though she was at the head of everything at the asylum, she looks so childish that they can’t send her out as a governess. Did you see her, mother?”

“Oh, no! I never had anything to do with her; but if she is daughter to a friend of Robert’s—”

Mother and son looked at each other in congratulation. Robert was the stepson, older by several years, and was viewed as the representative of sober common sense in the family. Joe and his mother did like to feel a plan quite free from Robert’s condemnation for enthusiasm or impracticability, and it was not the worse for his influence, that he had been generally with his regiment, and when visiting them was a good deal at the United Service Club. He had lately married an heiress in a small way, retired from the army, and settled in a house of hers in a country town, and thus he could give his dicta with added weight.

Only a parent or elder brother would, however, have looked on “Joe” as a youth, for he was some years over thirty, with a mingled air of keenness, refinement, and alacrity about his slight but active form, altogether with the air of some implement, not meant for ornament but for use, and yet absolutely beautiful, through perfection of polish, finish, applicability, and a sharpness never meant to wound, but deserving to be cherished in a velvet case.

This case might be the pretty drawing-room, full of the choice artistic curiosities of a man of cultivation, and presided over by his mother, a woman of much the same bright, keen, alert sweetness of air and countenance: still under sixty, and in perfect health and spirits—as well she might be, having preserved, as well as deserved, the exclusive devotion of her only child during all the years in which her early widowhood had made them all in all to each other. Ten years ago, on his election to a lectureship at one of the London hospitals, the son had set up his name on the brass plate of the door of a comfortable house in a once fashionable quarter of London; she had joined him there, and they had been as happy as affection and fair success could make them. He became lecturer at a hospital, did much for the poor, both within and without its walls, and had besides a fair practice, both among the tradespeople, and also among the literary, scientific, and artistic world, where their society was valued as much as his skill. Mrs. Brownlow was well used to being called on to do the many services suggested by a kind heart in the course of a medical man’s practice, and there was very little within, or beyond, reason that she would not have done at her Joe’s bidding. So she made the arrangement, exciting much gratitude in the heads of the Pomfret House Establishment for Young Ladies; though without seeing little Miss Allen, till, from the Doctor’s own brougham, but escorted only by an elderly maid-servant, there came climbing up the stairs a little heap of shawls and cloaks, surmounted by a big brown mushroom hat.

“Very proper of Joe. He can’t be too particular,—but such a child!” thought Mrs. Brownlow as the mufflings disclosed a tiny creature, angular in girlish sort, with an odd little narrow wedge of a face, sallow and wan, rather too much of teeth and mouth, large greenish-hazel eyes, and a forehead with a look of expansion, partly due to the crisp waves of dark hair being as short as a boy’s. The nose was well cut, and each delicate nostril was quivering involuntarily with emotion—or fright, or both.

Mrs. Brownlow kissed her, made her rest on the sofa, and talked to her, the shy monosyllabic replies lengthening every time as the motherliness drew forth a response, until, when conducted to the cheerful little room which Mrs. Brownlow had carefully decked with little comforts for the convalescent, and with the ornaments likely to please a girl’s eye, she suddenly broke into a little irrepressible cry of joy and delight. “Oh! oh! how lovely! Am I to sleep here? Oh! it is just like the girls’ rooms I always did long to see! Now I shall always be able to think about it.”

“My poor child, did you never even see such a room?”

“No; I slept in the attic with the maid at old Aunt Mary’s, and always in a cubicle after I went to the asylum. Some of the girls who went home in the holidays used to describe such rooms to us, but they could never have been so nice as this! Oh! oh! Mrs. Brownlow, real lilies of the valley! Put there for me! Oh! you dear, delicious, pearly things! I never saw one so close before!”

“Never before.” That was the burthen of the song of the little bird with wounded wing who had been received into this nest. She had the dimmest remembrance of home or mother, something a little clearer of her sojourn at her aunt’s, though there the aunt had been an invalid who kept her in restraint in her presence, and her pleasures had been in the kitchen and in a few books, probably ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘Evelina,’ so far as could be gathered from her recollection of them. The week her father had spent with her, before his last voyage, had been the one vivid memory of her life, and had taught her at least how to love. Poor child, that happy week had had to serve her ever since, through eleven years of unbroken school! Not that she pitied herself. Everybody had been kind to her—governesses, masters, girls, and all. She had been happy and successful, and had made numerous friends, about whom, as she grew more at home, she freely chatted to Mrs. Brownlow, who was always ready to hear of Mary Ogilvie and Clara Cartwright, and liked to draw out the stories of the girl-world, in which it was plain that Caroline Allen had been a bright, good, clever girl, getting on well, trusted and liked. She had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go on to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss Heath’s lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum’s senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and the ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained. But still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow’s lap, that she had always craved for something—something, and she had found it now!

Everything was a fresh joy to her, every print on the walls, every ornament on the brackets, seemed to speak to her eye and to her soul both at once, and the sense of comfort and beauty and home, after the bareness of school, seemed to charm her above all. “I always did want to know what was inside people’s windows,” she said.

And in the same way it was a feast to her to get hold of “a real book,” as she called it, not only the beginnings of everything, and selections that always broke off just as she began to care about them. She had been thoroughly well grounded, and had a thirst for knowledge too real to have been stifled by the routine she had gone through—though, said she, “I do want time to get on further, and to learn what won’t be of any use!”

“Of no use!” said Mr. Brownlow laughing—having just found her trying to make out the Old English of King Alfred’s ‘Boethius’—“such as this?”

“Just so! They always are turning me off with ‘This won’t be of any use to you.’ I hate use—”

“Like Ridley, who says he reads a book with double pleasure if he is not going to review it.”

“That Mr. Ridley who came in last evening?”

“Even so. Why that opening of eyes?”

“I thought a critic was a most formidable person.”

“You expected to see a mess of salt and vinegar prepared for his diet?”

“I should prepare something quite different—milk and sweetbreads, I think.”

“To soften him? Do you hear, mother? Take advice.”

Caroline—or Carey, as she had begged to be called—blushed, and drew back half-alarmed, as she always was when the Doctor caught up any of the little bits of fun that fell so shyly and demurely from her, as they were evoked by the more congenial atmosphere.

It was a great pleasure to him and to his mother to show her some of the many things she had never seen, watch her enjoyment, and elicit whether the reality agreed with her previous imaginations. Mr. Brownlow used to make time to take the two ladies out, or to drop in on them at some exhibition, checking the flow of half-droll, half-intelligent remarks for a moment, and then encouraging it again, while both enjoyed that most amusing thing, the fresh simplicity of a grown-up, clever child.

“How will you ever bear to go back again?” said Carey’s school-friend, Clara Cartwright, now a governess, whom Mrs. Brownlow had, with some suppressed growls from her son, invited to share their one day’s country-outing under the horse-chestnut trees of Richmond.

“Oh! I shall have it all to take back with me,” was the answer, as Carey toyed with the burnished celandine stars in her lap.

“I should never dare to think of it! I should dread the contrast!”

“Oh no!” said Carey. “It is like a blind person who has once seen, you know. It will be always warm about my heart to know there are such people.”

Mrs. Brownlow happened to overhear this little colloquy while her son was gone to look for the carriage, and there was something in the bright unrepining tone that filled her eyes with tears, more especially as the little creature still looked very fragile—even at the end of a month. She was so tired out with her day of almost rapturous enjoyment that Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down stairs again, but made her go at once to bed, in spite of a feeble protest against losing one evening.

“And I am afraid that is a recall,” said Mrs. Brownlow, seeing a letter directed to Miss Allen on the side-table. “I will not give it to her to-night, poor little dear; I really don’t know how to send her back.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said the Doctor, leaning over the fire, which he was vigorously stirring.

“You don’t think her strong enough? If so, I am very glad,” said the mother, in a delighted voice. “Eh, Joe?” as there was a pause; and as he replaced the poker, he looked up to her with a colour scarcely to be accounted for by the fire, and she ended in an odd, startled, yet not displeased tone, “It is that—is it?”

“Yes, mother, it is that,” said Joe, laughing a little, in his relief that the plunge was made. “I don’t see that we could do better for your happiness or mine.”

“Don’t put mine first” (half-crying).

“I didn’t know I did. It all comes to the same thing.”

“My dear Joe, I only wish you could do it to-morrow, and have no fuss about it! What will Robert do?”

“Accept the provision for his friend’s daughter,” said Joe, gravely; and then they both burst out laughing. In the midst came the announcement of dinner, during which meal they refrained themselves, and tried to discuss other things, though not so successfully but that it was reported in the kitchen that something was up.

Joseph was just old enough for his mother, who had always dreaded his marriage, to have begun to wish for it, though she had never yet seen her ideal daughter-in-law, and the enforced silence during the meal only made her more eager, so that she began at once as soon as they were alone.

“When did you begin to think of this, Joe?”

“Not when I asked you to invite her—that would have been treacherous. No, but when I began to realise what it would be to send her back to her treadmill; though the beauty of it is that she never seems to realise that it is a treadmill.”

“She might now, though I tried so hard not to spoil her. It is that content with such a life which makes me think that in her you may have something more worth than the portion, which—which I suppose I ought to regret and say you will miss.”

“I shall get all that plentifully from Robert, mother.”

“I am afraid it does entail harder work on you, and later on in life, than if you had chosen a person with something of her own.”

“Something of her own? Her own, indeed! Mother, she has that of her own which is the very thing to help and inspire me to make a name, and work out an idea, worth far more than any pounds, shillings, and pence, or even houses or lands I might get with a serene and solemn dame, even with clear notions as to those same L. s. d.!”

“For shame, Joe! You may be as much in love as you please, but don’t be wicked.”

For this description was applicable to the bride whom Robert had presented to them about a year ago, on retiring with a Colonel’s rank.

“So I may be as much in love as I please? Thank you. I always knew you were the very best mother in the world:” and he came and kissed her.

“I wonder what she will say, the dear child!”

“May be that she has no taste for such an old fellow. Hush, mother. Seriously, my chief scruple is whether it be fair to ask a girl to marry a man twice her age, when she has absolutely seen nothing of his kind but the German master!”

“Trust her,” said Mrs. Brownlow. “Nay, she never could have a freer choice than now, when she is too young and simple to be weighted with a sense of being looked down on. It is possible that she may be startled at first, but I think it will be only at life opening on her; so don’t be daunted, and imagine it is your old age and infirmity,” said the mother, smoothing back the locks which certainly were not the clustering curls of youth.

How the mother watched all the next morning, while the unconscious Carey first marvelled at her nervousness and silence, and then grew almost infected by it. It was very strange, she thought, that Mrs. Brownlow, always so kind, should say nothing but “humph” on being told that Miss Heath’s workmen had finished, and that she must return next Monday morning. It was the Doctor’s day to be early at the hospital, and he had had a summons to see some one on the way, so that he was gone before breakfast, when Carey’s attempts to discuss her happy day in the country met with such odd, fitful answers; for, in fact, Mrs. Brownlow could not trust herself to talk, and had no sooner done breakfast than she went off to her housekeeping affairs and others, which she managed unusually to prolong.

Carey was trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her—a little purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft of quaking grass. He came and stood behind her, saying—

“You’ve got the character of those.”

“They are very difficult,” sighed Carey; “I never tried flowers before, but I wanted to take them with me.”

“To take them with you?” he repeated, rather dreamily.

“Yes, back to another sort of Heath,” she said, with a little laugh; “don’t you know I go next Monday?”

“If you go, I hope it will only be to come back.”

“Oh! if Mrs. Brownlow is so good as to let me come again in the holidays!” and she was all one flush of joy, looking round, and up in his face, to see whether it could be true.

“Not only for holidays—for work days,” he said, and his voice shook.

“But Mrs. Brownlow can’t want a companion?”

“But I do. Caroline, will you come back to us to make home doubly sweet to a busy man, who will do his best to make you happy?”

The little creature looked up in his face bewildered, and then said shyly, the colour surging into her face—

“Please, what did you say?”

“I asked if you would stay with us, and make this place bright for us, as my wife,” he said, taking both the little brown hands into his own, and looking into the widely-opened wondering eyes; while she answered, “if I may,”—the very words, almost the very tone, in which she had replied to his invitation to come to recover at his house.

“Ah, my poor child, you have no one’s leave to ask!” he said; “you belong to us, only to us,”—and he drew her into his arms, and kissed her.

Then he felt and heard a great sob, and there were two tears on her cheek when he could see her face, but she smiled with happy, quivering lip, and said—

“It was like when papa kissed me before he went away; he would be so glad.”

In the midst of the caress that answered this, a bell sounded, and in the certainty that the announcement of luncheon would instantly follow, they started apart.

Two seconds later they met Mrs. Brownlow on the landing—

“There, mother,” said the Doctor.

“My child!” and Carey was in her arms.

“Oh, may I?—Is it real?” said the girl in a stifled voice.

After that, they took it very quietly. Carey was so young and ignorant of the world that she was not nearly so much overpowered as if she had had the slightest external knowledge either of married life, or of the exceptional thing the doctor was doing. Her mother had died when she was three years old, and she had never since that time lived with wedded folk, while even her companions at school being all fatherless, she had gathered nothing of even second-hand experience from them. All she knew was from books, which had given glimpses into happy homes; and though she had feasted on a few novels during this happy month, they had been very select, and chiefly historical romance. She was at the age when nothing is impossible to youthful dreams, and if Tancredi had come out of the Gerusalemme and thrown himself at her feet, she would hardly have felt it more strangely dream-like than the transformation of her kind doctor into her own Joe: and on the other hand, she had from the first moment nestled so entirely into the home that it would have seemed more unnatural to be torn away from it than to become a part of it. As to her being an extraordinary and very disadvantageous choice for him, she simply knew nothing of the matter; she was used to passiveness as to her own destiny, and now that she did indeed “belong to somebody” she let those somebodies think and decide for her with the one certainty that what Mr. Brownlow and his mother liked was sure to be the truly right and happy thing.

So, instead of being alarmed and scrupulous, she was sweetly, shyly, and yet confidingly gay and affectionate, enchanting both her companions, but revealing by her naive questions and remarks such utter ignorance of all matters of common life that Mrs. Brownlow had no scruples in not stirring the question, that had never occurred to her son or his little betrothed, namely, her own retirement. Caroline needed a mother far too much for her to be spared.

What was to be done about Miss Heath? It was due to her for Miss Allen to offer to return till her place could be supplied, Mrs. Brownlow said—but that was only to tease the lovers—for a quarter, at which Joe made a snarling howl, whereat Carey ventured to laugh at him, and say she should come home for every Sunday, as Miss Pinniwinks, the senior governess, did.

“Come home,—it is enough to say that,” she added.

Mrs. Brownlow undertook to negotiate the matter, her son saying privately—

“Get her off, if you have to advance a quarter. I’d rather do anything than send her back for even a week, to have all manner of nonsense put into her head. I’d sooner go and teach there myself.”

“Or send me?” asked his mother.

“Anything short of that,” he said.

Miss Heath, as Mrs. Brownlow had guessed, thought an engaged girl as bad as a barrel of gunpowder, and was quite as much afraid of Miss Allen putting nonsense into her pupils’ heads as the doctor could be of the reverse process: so, young teachers not being scarce, Carey’s brief connection with Miss Heath was brought to an end in a morning call, whence she returned endowed with thirteen book-markers, five mats, and a sachet.

Carey had of her own, as it appeared, twenty-five pounds a year, which had hitherto clothed her, and of which she only knew that it was paid to her quarterly by a lawyer at Bath, whose address she gave. Mr. Brownlow followed up the clue, but could not learn much about her belongings. The twenty-five pounds was the interest of the small sum, which had remained to poor Captain Allen, when he wound up his affairs, after paying the debts in which his early and imprudent marriage had involved him. He did not seem to have had any relations, and of his wife nothing was known but that she was a Miss Otway, and that he had met her in some colonial quarters. The old lady, with whom the little girl had been left, was her mother’s maternal aunt, and had lived on an annuity so small that on her death there had not been funds sufficient to pay expenses without a sale of all her effects, so that nothing had been saved for the child, except a few books with her parents’ names in them—John Allen and Caroline Otway—which she still kept as her chief treasures. The lawyer, who had acted as her guardian, would hand over to her five hundred pounds on her coming of age.

That was all that could be discovered, nor was Colonel Robert Brownlow as much flattered as had been hoped by the provision for his friend’s daughter. Nay, he was inclined to disavow the friendship. He was sorry for poor Allen, he said, but as to making a friend of such a fellow, pah! No! there was no harm in him, he was a good officer enough, but he never had a grain of common sense; and whereas he never could keep out of debt, he must needs go and marry a young girl, just because he thought her uncle was not kind to her. It was the worst thing he could have done, for it made her uncle cast her off on the spot, and then she was killed with harass and poverty. He never held up his head again after losing her, and just died of fever because he was too broken down to have energy to live. There was enough in this to weave out a tender little romance, probably really another aspect of the truth, which made Caroline’s bright eyes overflow with tears, when she heard it couched in tenderer language from Joseph, and the few books and treasures that had been rescued agreed with it—a Bible with her father’s name, a few devotional books of her mother’s, and Mrs. Hemans’s poems with “To Lina, from her devoted J. A.”

Caroline would fain have been called Lina, but the name did not fit her, and would not take.

Colonel Brownlow was altogether very friendly, if rather grave and dry towards her, as soon as he was convinced that “it was only Joe,” and that pity, not artfulness, was to blame for the undesirable match. He was too honourable a man not to see that it could not be given up, and he held that the best must now be made of it, and that it would be more proper, since it was to be, for him to assume the part of father, and let the marriage take place from his house at Kenminster. This was a proposal for which it was hard to be as grateful as it deserved; since it had been planned to walk quietly into the parish church, be married “without any fuss,” and then to take the fortnight’s holiday, which was all that the doctor allowed himself.

But as Robert was allowed to be judge of the proprieties, and as the kindness on his part was great, it was accepted; and Caroline was carried off for three weeks to keep her residence, and make the house feel what a blank her little figure had left.