The Clever Woman of the Family

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF A MISSION

“It is very kind in the dear mother.”

“But—what, Rachel? Don’t you like it! She so enjoyed choosing it for you.”

“Oh yes, it is a perfect thing in its way. Don’t say a word to her; but if you are consulted for my next birthday present, Grace, couldn’t you suggest that one does cease to be a girl.”

“Only try it on, Rachel dear, she will be pleased to see you in it.”

“Oh yes, I will bedizen myself to oblige her. I do assure you I am not ungrateful. It is beautiful in itself, and shows how well nature can be imitated; but it is meant for a mere girl, and this is the very day I had fixed for hauling down the flag of youth.”

“Oh, Rachel.”

“Ah, ha! If Rachel be an old maid, what is Grace? Come, my dear, resign yourself! There is nothing more unbecoming than want of perception of the close of young-ladyhood.”

“Of course I know we are not quite young girls now,” said Grace, half perplexed, half annoyed.

“Exactly, from this moment we are established as the maiden sisters of Avonmouth, husband and wife to one another, as maiden pairs always are.”

“Then thus let me crown, our bridal,” quoth Grace, placing on her sister’s head the wreath of white roses.

“Treacherous child!” cried Rachel, putting up her hands and tossing her head, but her sister held her still.

“You know brides always take liberties. Please, dear, let it stay till the mother has been in, and pray don’t talk, before her of being so very old.”

“No, I’ll not be a shock to her. We will silently assume our immunities, and she will acquiesce if they come upon her gradually.”

Grace looked somewhat alarmed, being perhaps in some dread of immunities, and aware that Rachel’s silence would in any one else have been talkativeness.

“Ah, mother dear, good morning,” as a pleasant placid-looking lady entered, dressed in black, with an air of feeble health, but of comely middle age.

Birthday greetings, congratulations, and thanks followed, and the mother looked critically at the position of the wreath, and Rachel for the first time turned to the glass and met a set of features of an irregular, characteristic cast, brow low and broad, nose retrousse, with large, singularly sensitive nostrils quivering like those of a high-bred horse at any emotion, full pouting lips, round cheeks glowing with the freshest red, eyes widely opened, dark deep grey and decidedly prominent, though curtained with thick black lashes. The glossy chestnut hair partook of the redundance and vigour of the whole being, and the roses hung on it gracefully though not in congruity with the thick winter dress of blue and black tartan, still looped up over the dark petticoat and hose, and stout high-heeled boots, that like the grey cloak and felt hat bore witness to the early walk. Grace’s countenance and figure were in the same style, though without so much of mark or animation; and her dress was of like description, but less severely plain.

“Yes, my dear, it looks very well; and now you will oblige me by not wearing that black lace thing, that looks fit for your grandmother.”

“Poor Lovedy Kelland’s aunt made it, mother, and it was very expensive, and wouldn’t sell.”

“No wonder, I am sure, and it was very kind in you to take it off their hands; but now it is paid for, it can’t make much difference whether you disfigure yourself with it or not.”

“Oh yes, dear mother, I’ll bind my hair when you bid me do it and really these buds do credit to the makers. I wonder whether they cost them as dear in health as lace does,” she added, taking off the flowers and examining them with a grave sad look.

“I chose white roses,” proceeded the well-pleased mother, “because I thought they would suit either of the silks you have now, though I own I should like to see you in another white muslin.”

“I have done with white muslin,” said Rachel, rousing from her reverie. “It is an affectation of girlish simplicity not becoming at our age.”

“Oh Rachel!” thought Grace in despair; but to her great relief in at that moment filed the five maids, the coachman, and butler, and the mother began to read prayers.

Breakfast over, Rachel gathered up her various gifts, and betook herself to a room on the ground floor with all the appliances of an ancient schoolroom. Rather dreamily she took out a number of copy-books, and began to write copies in them in large text hand.

“And this is all I am doing for my fellow-creatures,” she muttered half aloud. “One class of half-grown lads, and those grudged to me! Here is the world around one mass of misery and evil! Not a paper do I take up but I see something about wretchedness and crime, and here I sit with health, strength, and knowledge, and able to do nothing, nothing—at the risk of breaking my mother’s heart! I have pottered about cottages and taught at schools in the dilettante way of the young lady who thinks it her duty to be charitable; and I am told that it is my duty, and that I may be satisfied. Satisfied, when I see children cramped in soul, destroyed in body, that fine ladies may wear lace trimmings! Satisfied with the blight of the most promising buds! Satisfied, when I know that every alley and lane of town or country reeks with vice and corruption, and that there is one cry for workers with brains and with purses! And here am I, able and willing, only longing to task myself to the uttermost, yet tethered down to the merest mockery of usefulness by conventionalities. I am a young lady forsooth!—I must not be out late, I must not put forth my views; I must not choose my acquaintance, I must be a mere helpless, useless being, growing old in a ridiculous fiction of prolonged childhood, affecting those graces of so-called sweet seventeen that I never had—because, because why? Is it for any better reason than because no mother can bear to believe her daughter no longer on the lists for matrimony? Our dear mother does not tell herself that this is the reason, but she is unconsciously actuated by it. And I have hitherto given way to her wish. I mean to give way still in a measure; but I am five and twenty, and I will no longer be withheld from some path of usefulness! I will judge for myself, and when my mission has declared itself, I will not be withheld from it by any scruple that does not approve itself to my reason and conscience. If it be only a domestic mission—say the care of Fanny, poor dear helpless Fanny, I would that I knew she was safe,—I would not despise it, I would throw myself into it, and regard the training her and forming her boys as a most sacred office. It would not be too homely for me. But I had far rather become the founder of some establishment that might relieve women from the oppressive task-work thrown on them in all their branches of labour. Oh, what a worthy ambition!”

“Rachel!” called Grace. “Come, there’s a letter, a letter from Fanny herself for you. Make haste, mamma is so nervous till you read it.”

No exhortation was needed to make Rachel hurry to the drawing-room, and tear open the black-edged letter with the Australian stamp.

“All is right, mamma. She has been very ill, but is fast recovering, and was to sail by the Voluta. Why, she may be here any day.”

“Any day! My dear Grace, see that the nurseries are well aired.”

“No, mother, she says her party is too large, and wants us to take a furnished house for her to come into at once—Myrtlewood if possible. Is it let, Grace?”

“I think I saw the notice in the window yesterday.”

“Then, I’ll go and see about it at once.”

“But, my dear, you don’t really mean that poor dear Fanny thinks of coming anywhere but to us?” said her mother, anxiously.

“It is very considerate of her,” said Grace, “with so many little children. You would find them too much for you, dear mother. It is just like Fanny to have thought of it. How many are there, Rachel?”

“Oh! I can’t tell. They got past my reckoning long ago. I only know they are all boys, and that this baby is a girl.”

“Baby! Ah, poor Fanny, I feared that was the reason the did not come sooner.”

“Yes, and she has been very ill; she always is, I believe, but there is very little about it. Fanny never could write letters; she only just says: ‘I have not been able to attempt a letter sooner, though my dear little girl is five weeks old to-day. Think of the daughter coming at last, too late for her dear father, who had so wished for one. She is very healthy, I am thankful to say; and I am now so much better, that the doctor says I may sail next week. Major Keith has taken our cabins, in the Voluta, and soon after you receive this, I hope to be showing you my dear boys. They are such good, affectionate fellows; but I am afraid they would be too much for my dear aunt, and our party is so large, so the Major and I both think it will be the best way for you to take a house for me for six months. I should like Myrtlewood best, if it is to be had. I have told Conrade all about it, and how pretty it is, and it is so near you that I think there I can be happy as ever I can be again in this world, and have your advice for the dear children.’”

“Poor darling! she seems but a child herself.”

“My age—five and twenty,” returned Rachel. “Well I shall go and ask about the house. Remember, mother, this influx is to bring no trouble or care on you; Fanny Temple is my charge from henceforth. My mission has come to seek me,” she added as she quitted the room, in eager excitement of affection, emotion, and importance, for Fanny had been more like a sister than a cousin.

Grace and Rachel Curtis were the daughters of the squire of the Homestead; Fanny, of his brother, an officer in the army. Left at home for education, the little girl had spent her life, from her seventh to her sixteenth year, as absolutely one with her cousins, until she was summoned to meet her father at the Cape, under the escort of his old friend, General Sir Stephen Temple. She found Colonel Curtis sinking under fatal disease, and while his relations were preparing to receive, almost to maintain, his widow and daughter, they were electrified by the tidings that the gentle little Fanny, at sixteen, had become the wife of Sir Stephen Temple, at sixty.

From that time little had been known about her; her mother had continued with her, but the two Mrs. Curtises had never been congenial or intimate; and Fanny was never a full nor willing correspondent, feeling perhaps the difficulty of writing under changed circumstances. Her husband had been in various commands in the colonies, without returning to England; and all that was known of her was a general impression that she had much ill-health and numerous children, and was tended like an infant by her bustling mother and doting husband. More than half a year back, tidings had come of the almost sudden death of her mother; and about three months subsequently, one of the officers of Sir Stephen’s staff had written to announce that the good old general had been killed by a fall from his horse, while on a round of inspection at a distance from home. The widow was then completely prostrated by the shock, but promised to write as soon as she was able, and this was the fulfilment of that promise, bringing the assurance that Fanny was coming back with her little ones to the home of her childhood.

Of that home, Grace and Rachel were the joint-heiresses, though it was owned by the mother for her life. It was an estate of farm and moorland, worth some three or four thousand a year, and the house was perched on a beautiful promontory, running out into the sea, and inclosing one side of a bay, where a small fishing-village had recently expanded into a quiet watering-place, esteemed by some for its remoteness from railways, and for the calm and simplicity that were yearly diminished by its increasing popularity. It was the family fashion to look down from their crag at the new esplanade with pity and contempt for the ruined loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps there was more of timidity and caution than of pride in the mother’s exclusiveness, and Grace had always acquiesced in it as the natural and established state of affairs, without any sense of superiority, but rather of being protected. She had a few alarms as to the results of Rachel’s new immunities of age, and though never questioning the wisdom of her clever sister’s conclusions, dreaded the effect on the mother, whom she had been forbidden to call mamma. “At their age it was affecting an interesting childishness.”

Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected with the great progressive world, where, however, Rachel’s sympathies all lay, necessarily fed, however, by periodical literature, instead of by conversation or commerce with living minds.

She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more because it was not so much the fear of her mother’s authority as of her horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever since their father’s death, which had taken place in Grace’s seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel’s superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing any of her clever daughter’s schemes, never disputed either her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that she despised.

This twenty-fifth birthday had long been anticipated as the turning-point when this submissive girlhood ought to close, and the privileges of acting as well as thinking for herself ought to be assumed. Something to do was her cry, and on this very day that something seemed to be cast in her way. It was not ameliorating the condition of the masses, but it was educating those who might ameliorate them; and Rachel gladly hailed the prospect of a vocation that might be conducted without pain to her mother.

Young children of her own class were not exactly what her dream of usefulness had devised; but she had already a decided theory of education, and began to read up with all her might, whilst taking the lead in all the details of house taking, servant hiring, &c., to which her regular occupations of night school in the evening and reading to the lacemakers by day, became almost secondary. In due time the arrival of the ship was telegraphed, a hurried and affectionate note followed, and, on a bright east-windy afternoon, Rachel Curtis set forth to take up her mission. A telegram had announced the arrival of the Voluta, and the train which would bring the travellers to Avonchester. The Homestead carriage was sent to meet them, and Rachel in it, to give her helpless cousin assistance in this beginning of English habits. A roomy fly had been engaged for nurses and children, and Mrs. Curtis had put under the coachman’s charge a parcel of sandwiches, and instructed him to offer all the appliances for making her own into an invalid carriage.

Full of warm tenderness to those who were to be dependent on her exertions, led by her good sense, Rachel paced the platform till the engine rushed up, and she looked along the line of windows, suddenly bewildered. Doors opened, but gentlemen alone met her disappointed eye, until close to her a soft voice said, “Rachel!” and she saw a figure in deep black close to her; but her hand had been hardly clasped before the face was turned eagerly to a tall, bearded man, who was lifting out little boy after little boy, apparently in an endless stream, till at last a sleeping baby was brought out in the arms of a nurse.

“Good-bye. Thank you, oh, thank you. You will come soon. Oh, do come on now.”

“Do come on now,” was echoed by many voices.

“I leave you in good hands. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye. Conrade dear, see what Cyril is doing; never mind, Wilfred, the Major will come and see us; run on with Coombe.” This last was a respectable military-looking servant, who picked up a small child in one hand and a dressing-case in the other, and awaited orders.

There was a clinging to the Major by all the children, only ended by his finally precipitating himself into the carriage, and being borne off. Then came a chorus—“Mamma, let me go with you;” “I’ll go with mamma;” “Me go with mamma;” according to the gradations of age.

While Coombe and mamma decided the question by lifting the lesser ones into the fly, Rachel counted heads. Her mission exceeded her expectations. Here was a pair of boys in knickerbockers, a pair in petticoats, a pair in pelisses, besides the thing in arms. When the fly had been nearly crammed, the two knickerbockers and one pelisse remained for the carriage, quite against Rachel’s opinion, but “Little Wilfred can sit on my lap, he has not been well, poor little man,” was quite conclusive; and when Rachel suggested lying back to rest, there was a sweet, low laugh, and, “Oh, no thank you, Wilfred never tires me.”

Rachel’s first satisfaction was in seeing the veil disclose the face of eight years back, the same soft, clear, olive skin, delicate, oval face, and pretty deep-brown eyes, with the same imploring, earnest sweetness; no signs of having grown older, no sign of wear and tear, climate, or exertion, only the widow’s dress and the presence of the great boys enhancing her soft youthfulness. The smile was certainly changed; it was graver, sadder, tenderer, and only conjured up by maternal affection or in grateful reply, and the blitheness of the young brow had changed to quiet pensiveness, but more than ever there was an air of dependence almost beseeching protection, and Rachel’s heart throbbed with Britomart’s devotion to her Amoret.

“Why wouldn’t the Major come, mamma?”

“He will soon come, I hope, my dear.”

Those few words gave Rachel a strong antipathy to the Major.

Then began a conversation under difficulties, Fanny trying to inquire after her aunt, and Rachel to detail the arrangements made for her at Myrtlewood, while the two boys were each accommodated with a window; but each moment they were claiming their mother’s attention, or rushing across the ladies’ feet to each other’s window, treating Rachel’s knees as a pivot, and vouchsafing not the slightest heed to her attempts at intelligent pointing out of the new scenes.

And Fanny made no apology, but seemed pleased, ready with answers and with eyes, apparently ignorant that Rachel’s toes were less insensible than her own, and her heavy three-years-old Wilfred asleep on her lap all the time.

“She feeble, helpless, sickly!” thought Rachel, “I should have been less tired had I walked the twenty miles!”

She gave up talking in despair, and by the time the young gentlemen had tired themselves into quiescence, and began to eat the provisions, both ladies were glad to be allowed a little silence.

Coming over the last hill, Conrade roused at his mother’s summons to look out at “home,” and every word between them showed how fondly Avonmouth had been remembered far away.

“The sea!” said Fanny, leaning forwards to catch sight of the long grey line; “it is hard to believe we have been on it so long, this seems so much more my own.”

“Yes,” cried Rachel, “you are come to your own home, for us to take care of you.”

“I take care of mamma! Major Keith said so,” indignantly exclaimed Conrade.

“There’s plenty of care for you both to take,” said Fanny, half-smiling, half-sobbing. “The Major says I need not be a poor creature, and I will try. But I am afraid I shall be on all your hands.”

Both boys drummed on her knee in wrath at her presuming to call herself a poor creature—Conrade glaring at Rachel as if to accuse her of the calumny.

“See the church,” said Lady Temple, glad to divert the storm, and eagerly looking at the slender spire surmounting the bell-turret of a small building in early-decorated style, new, but somewhat stained by sea-wind, without having as yet acquired the tender tints of time. “How beautiful!” was her cry. “You were beginning the collection for it when I went away! How we used to wish for it.”

“Yes, we did,” said Rachel, with a significant sigh; but her cousin had no time to attend, for they were turning in a pepper-box lodge. The boys were told that they were arrived, and they were at the door of a sort of overgrown Swiss cottage, where Mrs. Curtis and Grace stood ready to receive them.

There was a confusion of embraces, fondlings, and tears, as Fanny clung to the aunt who had been a mother to her—perhaps a more tender one than the ruling, managing spirit, whom she had hardly known in her childhood; but it was only for a moment, for Wilfred shrieked out in an access of shyness at Grace’s attempt to make acquaintance with him; Francis was demanding, “Where’s the orderly?” and Conrade looking brimful of wrath at any one who made his mother cry. Moreover, the fly had arrived, and the remainder had to be produced, named, and kissed—Conrade and Francis, Leoline and Hubert, Wilfred and Cyril, and little Stephana the baby. Really the names were a study in themselves, and the cousins felt as if it would be hopeless to endeavour to apply them.

Servants had been engaged conditionally, and the house was fully ready, but the young mother could hardly listen to her aunt’s explanations in her anxiety that the little ones should be rested and fed, and she responded with semi-comprehending thanks, while moving on with her youngest in her arms, and as many hanging to her dress as could get hold of it. Her thanks grew more emphatic at the sight of cribs in inviting order, and all things ready for a meal.

“I don’t drink tea with nurse,” was Conrade’s cry, the signal for another general outcry, untranquillized by soothings and persuasions, till the door was shut on the younger half of the family, and those who could not open it remained to be comforted by nurse, a soldier’s widow, who had been with them from the birth of Conrade.

The Temple form of shyness seemed to consist in ignoring strangers, but being neither abashed nor silenced, only resenting or avoiding all attempts at intercourse, and as the boys rushed in and out of the rooms, exploring, exclaiming, and calling mamma, to the interruption of all that was going on, only checked for a few minutes by her uplifted hand and gentle hush, Grace saw her mother so stunned and bewildered that she rejoiced in the fear of cold that had decided that Rachel alone should spend the evening there. Fanny made some excuses; she longed to see more of her aunt, but when they were a little more settled,—and as a fresh shout broke out, she was afraid they were rather unruly,—she must come and talk to her at the dear Homestead. So kind of Rachel to stay—not that the boys seemed to think so, as they went racing in and out, stretching their ship-bound legs, and taking possession of the minute shrubbery, which they scorned for the want of gum-trees and parrots.