The Clever Woman of the Family
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Fanny took it for granted that Rachel must know who Alick was, but she was far from doing so, though she remembered that the —th had been her uncle’s regiment, and had been under Sir Stephen Temple’s command in India at the time of the mutiny. The thought of Fanny’s lapsing into military society was shocking to her. The boys were vociferating about boats, ponies, and all that had been deferred till the Major’s arrival, and he was answering them kindly, but hushing the extra outcry less by word than sign, and his own lowered voice and polished manner—a manner that excessively chafed her as a sort of insult to the blunt, rapid ways that she considered as sincere and unaffected, a silkiness that no doubt had worked on the honest, simple general, as it was now working on the weak young widow. Anything was better than leaving her to such influence, and in pursuance of the intention that Rachel had already announced at home, she invited herself to stay to dinner; and Fanny eagerly thanked her, for making it a little less dull for Colonel Keith and Alick. It was so good to come down and help. Certainly Fanny was an innocent creature, provided she was not spoilt, and it was a duty to guard her innocence.
Alison Williams escaped to her home, sure of nothing but that her sister must not be allowed to share her uncertainties; and Lady Temple and her guests sat down to dinner. Rachel meant to have sat at the bottom and carved, as belonging to the house; but Fanny motioned the Colonel to the place, observing, “It is so natural to see you there! One only wants poor Captain Dent at the other end. Do you know whether he has his leave?”
Wherewith commenced a discussion of military friends—who had been heard of from Australia, who had been met in England, who was promoted, who married, who retired, &c., and all the quarters of the-th since its return from India two years ago; Fanny eagerly asking questions and making remarks, quite at home and all animation, absolutely a different being from the subdued, meek little creature that Rachel had hitherto seen. Attempts were made to include Miss Curtis in the conversation by addressing anecdotes to her, and asking if she knew the places named; but she had been to none, and the three old friends quickly fell into the swing of talk about what interested them. Once, however, she came down on them with, “What conclusion have you formed upon female emigration?”
“‘His sister she went beyond the seas, And died an old maid among black savagees.’“That’s the most remarkable instance of female emigration on record, isn’t it?” observed Alick.
“What; her dying an old maid?” said Colonel Keith. “I am not sure. Wholesale exportations of wives are spoiling the market.”
“I did not mean marriage,” said Rachel, stoutly. “I am particularly anxious to know whether there is a field open to independent female labour.”
“All the superior young women seemed to turn nurserymaids,” said the Colonel.
“Oh,” interposed Fanny, “do you remember that nice girl of ours who would marry that Orderly-Sergeant O’Donoghoe? I have had a letter from her in such distress.”
“Of course, the natural termination,” said Alick, in his lazy voice.
“And I thought you would tell me how to manage sending her some help,” proceeded Fanny.
“I could have helped you, Fanny. Won’t an order do it?”
“Not quite,” said Fanny, a shade of a smile playing on her lip. “It is whether to send it through one of the officers or not. If Captain Lee is with the regiment, I know he would take care of it for her.”
So they plunged into another regiment, and Rachel decided that nothing was so wearisome as to hear triflers talk shop.
There was no opportunity of calling Fanny to order after dinner, for she went off on her progress to all the seven cribs, and was only just returning from them when the gentlemen came in, and then she made room for the younger beside her on the sofa, saying, “Now, Alick, I do so want to hear about poor, dear little Bessie;” and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a party, when she did not.
She had been whiling away the time of Fanny’s absence by looking over the books on the table, and she did not regard the present company sufficiently to desist on their account. Colonel Keith began to turn over some numbers of the “Traveller” that lay near him, and presently looked up, and said, “Do you know who is the writer of this?”
“What is it? Ah! one of the Invalid’s essays. They strike every one; but I fancy the authorship is a great secret.”
“You do not know it?”
“No, I wish I did. Which of them are you reading? ‘Country Walks.’ That is not one that I care about, it is a mere hash of old recollections; but there are some very sensible and superior ones, so that I have heard it sometimes doubted whether they are man’s or woman’s writing. For my part, I think them too earnest to be a man’s; men always play with their subject.”
“Oh, yes,” said Fanny, “I am sure only a lady could have written anything so sweet as that about flowers in a sick-room; it so put me in mind of the lovely flowers you used to bring me one at a time, when I was ill at Cape Town.”
There was no more sense to be had after those three once fell upon their reminiscences.
That night, after having betrayed her wakefulness by a movement in her bed, Alison Williams heard her sister’s voice, low and steady, saying, “Ailie, dear, be it what it may, guessing is worse than certainty.”
“Oh, Ermine, I hoped—I know nothing—I have nothing to tell.”
“You dread something,” said Ermine; “you have been striving for unconcern all the evening, my poor dear, but surely you know, Ailie, that nothing is so bad while we share it.”
“And I have frightened you about nothing.”
“Nothing! nothing about Edward?”
“Oh, no, no!”
“And no one has made you uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Then there is only one thing that it can be, Ailie, and you need not fear to tell me that. I always knew that if he lived I must be prepared for it, and you would not have hesitated to tell me of his death.”
“It is not that, indeed it is not, Ermine, it is only this—that I found to-day that Lady Temple’s major has the same name.”
“But you said she was come home. You must have seen him.”
“Yes, but I should not know him. I had only seen him once, remember, twelve years ago, and when I durst not look at him.”
“At least,” said Ermine, quickly, “you can tell me what you saw to-day.”
“A Scotch face, bald head, dark beard, grizzled hair.”
“Yes I am grey, and he was five years older; but he used not to have a Scotch face. Can you tell me about his eyes?”
“Dark,” I think.
“They were very dark blue, almost black. Time and climate must have left them alone. You may know him by those eyes, Ailie. And you could not make out anything about him?”
“No, not even his Christian name nor his regiment. I had only the little ones and Miss Rachel to ask, and they knew nothing. I wanted to keep this from you till I was sure, but you always find me out.”
“Do you think I couldn’t see the misery you were in all the evening, poor child? But now you have had it out, sleep, and don’t be distressed.”
“But, Ermine, if you—”
“My dear, I am thankful that nothing is amiss with you or Edward. For the rest, there is nothing but patience. Now, not another word; you must not lose your sleep, nor take away my chance of any.”
How much the sisters slept they did not confide to one another, but when they rose, Alison shook her head at her sister’s heavy eyelids, and Ermine retorted with a reproachful smile at certain dark tokens of sleeplessness under Alison’s eyes.
“No, not the flowered flimsiness, please,” she said, in the course of her toilette, “let me have the respectable grey silk.” And next she asked for a drawer, whence she chose a little Nuremberg horn brooch for her neck. “I know it is very silly,” she said, “but I can’t quite help it. Only one question, Ailie, that I thought of too late. Did he hear your name?”
“I think not, Lady Temple named nobody. But why did you not ask me last night?”
“I thought beginning to talk again would destroy your chance of sleep, and we had resolved to stop.”
“And, Ermine, if it be, what shall I do?”
“Do as you feel right at the moment,” said Ermine, after a moment’s pause. “I cannot tell how it may be. I have been thinking over what you told me about the Major and Lady Temple.”
“Oh, Ermine, what a reproof this is for that bit of gossip.”
“Not at all, my dear, the warning may be all the better for me,” said Ermine, with a voice less steady than her words. “It is not what, under the circumstances, I could think likely in the Colin whom I knew; but were it indeed so, then, Ailie, you had better say nothing about me, unless he found you out. We would get employment elsewhere.”
“And I must leave you to the suspense all day.”
“Much better so. The worst thing we could do would be to go on talking about it. It is far better for me to be left with my dear little unconscious companion.”
Alison tried to comfort herself with this belief through the long hours of the morning, during which she only heard that mamma and Colonel Keith were gone to the Homestead, and she saw no one till she came forth with her troop to the midday meal.
And there, at sight of Lady Temple’s content and calm, satisfied look, as though she were once more in an accustomed atmosphere, and felt herself and the boys protected, and of the Colonel’s courteous attention to her and affectionate authority towards her sons, it was an absolute pang to recognise the hue of eye described by Ermine; but still Alison tried to think them generic Keith eyes, till at length, amid the merry chatter of her pupils, came an appeal to “Miss Williams,” and then came a look that thrilled through her, the same glance that she had met for one terrible moment twelve years before, and renewing the same longing to shrink from all sight or sound. How she kept her seat and continued to attend to the children she never knew, but the voices sounded like a distant Babel; and she did not know whether she were most relieved, disappointed, or indignant when she left the dining-room to take the boys for their walk. Oh, that Ermine could be hid from all knowledge of what would be so much harder to bear than the death in which she had long believed!
Harder to bear? Yes, Ermine had already been passing through a heart sickness that made the morning like an age. Her resolute will had struggled hard for composure, cheerfulness, and occupation; but the little watchful niece had seen through the endeavour, and had made her own to the sleepless night and the headache. The usual remedy was a drive in a wheeled chair, and Rose was so urgent to be allowed to go and order one, that Ermine at last yielded, partly because she had hardly energy enough to turn her refusal graciously, partly because she would not feel herself staying at home for the vague hope and when the child was out of sight, she had the comfort of clasping her hands, and ceasing to restrain her countenance, while she murmured, “Oh, Colin, Colin, are you what you were twelve years back? Is this all dream, all delusion, and waste of feeling, while you are lying in your Indian grave, more mine than you can ever be living be as it may,—
“‘Calm me, my God, and keep me calm While these hot breezes blow; Be like the night dew’s cooling balm Upon earth’s fevered brow. Calm me, my God, and keep me calm, Soft resting on Thy breast; Soothe me with holy hymn and psalm, And bid my spirit rest.’”CHAPTER V. MILITARY SOCIETY
“My trustLike a good parent did beget of himA falsehood in its contrary as greatAs my trust was, which had indeed no limit.”—TEMPEST.Rose found the wheeled chair, to which her aunt gave the preference, was engaged, and shaking her little discreet head at “the shakey chair” and “the stuffy chair,” she turned pensively homeward, and was speeding down Mackarel Lane, when she was stayed by the words, “My little girl!” and the grandest and most bearded gentleman she had ever seen, demanded, “Can you tell me if Miss Williams lives here?”
“My aunt?” exclaimed Rose, gazing up with her pretty, frightened-fawn look.
“Indeed!” he exclaimed, looking eagerly at her, “then you are the child of a very old friend of mine! Did you never hear him speak of his old school-fellow, Colin Keith?”
“Papa is away,” said Rose, turning back her neck to get a full view of his face from under the brim of her hat.
“‘Will you run on and ask your aunt if she would like to see me?” he added.
Thus it was that Ermine heard the quick patter of the child’s steps, followed by the manly tread, and the words sounded in her ears, “Aunt Ermine, there’s a gentleman, and he has a great beard, and he says he is papa’s old friend! And here he is.”
Ermine’s beaming eyes as absolutely met the new comer as though she had sprung forward. “I thought you would come,” she said, in a voice serene with exceeding bliss.
“I have found you at last,” as their hands clasped; and they gazed into each other’s faces in the untroubled repose of the meeting, exclusive of all else.
Ermine was the first to break silence. “Oh, Colin, you look worn and altered.”
“You don’t; you have kept your sunbeam face for me with the dear brown glow I never thought to have seen again. Why did they tell me you were an invalid, Ermine?”
“Have you not seen Alison?” she asked, supposing he would have known all.
“I saw her, but did not hear her name, till just now at luncheon, when our looks met, and I saw it was not another disappointment.”
“And she knows you are come to me?”
“It was not in me to speak to her till I had recovered you! One can forgive, but not forget.”
“You will do more when you know her, and how she has only lived and worked for me, dear Ailie, and suffered far more than I—”
“While I was suffering from being unable to do anything but live for you,” he repeated, taking up her words; “but that is ended now—” and as she made a negative motion of her head, “have you not trusted to me?”
“I have thought you not living,” she said; “the last I know was your letter to dear Lady Alison, written from the hospital at Cape Town, after your wound. She was ill even when it came, and she could only give it to Ailie for me.”
“Dear good aunt, she got into trouble with all the family for our sake; and when she was gone no one would give me any tidings of you.”
“It was her last disappointment that you were not sent home on sick leave. Did you get well too fast?”
“Not exactly; but my father, or rather, I believe, my brother, intimated that I should be welcome only if I had laid aside a certain foolish fancy, and as lying on my back had not conduced to that end, I could only say I would stay where I was.”
“And was it worse for you? I am sure, in spite of all that tanned skin, that your health has suffered. Ought you to have come home?”
“No, I do not know that London surgeons could have got at the ball,” he said, putting his hand on his chest, “and it gives me no trouble in general. I was such a spectacle when I returned to duty, that good old Sir Stephen Temple, always a proverb for making his staff a refuge for the infirm, made me his aide-de-camp, and was like a father to me.”
“Now I see why I never could find your name in any list of the officers in the moves of the regiment! I gave you quite up when I saw no Keith among those that came home from India. I did believe then that you were the Colonel Alexander Keith whose death I had seen mentioned, though I had long trusted to his not being honourable, nor having your first name.”
“Ah! he succeeded to the command after Lady Temple’s father. A kind friend to me he was, and he left me in charge of his son and daughter. A very good and gallant fellow is that young Alick. I must bring him to see you some day—”
“Oh! I saw his name; I remember! I gloried in the doings of a Keith; but I was afraid he had died, as there was no such name with the regiment when it came home.”
“No, he was almost shattered to pieces; but Sir Stephen sent him up the hills to be nursed by Lady Temple and her mother, and he was sent home as soon as he could be moved. I was astonished to see how entirely he had recovered.”
“Then you went through all that Indian war?”
“Yes; with Sir Stephen.”
“You must show me all your medals! How much you have to tell me! And then—?”
“Just when the regiment was coming home, my dear old chief was appointed to the command in Australia, and insisted on my coming with him as military secretary. He had come to depend on me so much that I could not well leave him; and in five years there was the way to promotion and to claiming you at once. We were just settled there, when what I heard made me long to have decided otherwise, but I could not break with him then. I wrote to Edward, but had my letter returned to me.”
“No wonder; Edward was abroad, all connexion broken.”
“I wrote to Beauchamp, and he knew nothing, and I could only wait till my chief’s time should be up. You know how it was cut short, and how the care of the poor little widow detained me till she was fit for the voyage. I came and sought you in vain in town. I went home, and found my brother lonely and dispirited. He has lost his son, his daughters are married, and he and I are all the brothers left out of the six! He was urgent that I should come and live with him and marry. I told him I would, with all my heart, when I had found you, and he saw I was too much in earnest to be opposed. Then I went to Beauchamp, but Harry knew nothing about any one. I tried to find out your sister and Dr. Long, but heard they were gone to Belfast.”
“Yes, they lost a good deal in the crash, and did not like retrenching among their neighbours, so they went to Ireland, and there they have a flourishing practice.”
“I thought myself on my way there,” he said, smiling; “only I had first to settle Lady Temple, little guessing who was her treasure of a governess! Last night I had nearly opened, on another false scent; I fell in with a description that I could have sworn was yours, of the heather behind the parsonage. I made a note of the publisher in case all else had failed.”
“I’m glad you knew the scent of the thyme!”
“Then it was no false scent?”
“One must live, and I was thankful to do anything to lighten Ailie’s burthen. I wrote down that description that I might live in the place in fancy; and one day, when the contribution was wanted and I was hard up for ideas, I sent it, though I was loth to lay open that bit of home and heart.”
“Well it might give me the sense of meeting you! And in other papers of the series I traced your old self more ripened.”
“The editor was a friend of Edward’s, and in our London days he asked me to write letters on things in general, and when I said I saw the world through a key-hole, he answered that a circumscribed view gained in distinctness. Most kind and helpful he has been, and what began between sport and need to say out one’s mind has come to be a resource for which we are very thankful. He sends us books for reviewal, and that is pleasant and improving, not to say profitable.”
“Little did I think you were in such straits!” he said, stroking the child’s head, and waiting as though her presence were a restraint on inquiries, but she eagerly availed herself of the pause. “Aunt Ermine, please what shall I say about the chairs? Will you have the nice one and Billy when they come home? I was to take the answer, only you did talk so that I could not ask!”
“Thank you, my dear; I don’t want chairs nor anything else while I can talk so,” she answered, smiling. “You had better take a run in the garden when you come back;” and Rose replied with a nod of assent that made the colonel smile and say, “Good-bye then, my sweet Lady Discretion, some day we will be better acquainted.”
“Dear child,” said Ermine, “she is our great blessing, and some day I trust will be the same to her dear father. Oh, Colin! it is too much to hope that you have not believed what you must have heard! And yet you wrote to him.”
“Nay, I could not but feel great distrust of what I heard, since I was also told that his sisters were unconvinced; and besides, I had continually seen him at school the victim of other people’s faults.”
“This is best of all,” exclaimed Ermine, with glistening eyes, and hand laid upon his; “it is the most comfortable word I have heard since it happened. Yes, indeed, many a time before I saw you, had I heard of ‘Keith’ as the friend who saw him righted. Oh, Colin! thanks, thanks for believing in him more than for all!”
“Not believing, but knowing,” he answered—“knowing both you and Edward. Besides, is it not almost invariable that the inventor is ruined by his invention—a Prospero by nature?”
“It was not the invention,” she answered; “that throve as long as my father lived.”
“Yes, he was an excellent man of business.”
“And he thought the concern so secure that there was no danger in embarking all the available capital of the family in it, and it did bring us in a very good income.”
“I remember that it struck me that the people at home would find that they had made a mistake after all, and missed a fortune for me! It was an invention for diminishing the fragility of glass under heat; was it not?”
“Yes, and the manufacture was very prosperous, so that my father was quite at ease about us. After his death we made a home for Edward in London, and looked after him when he used to be smitten with some new idea and forgot all sublunary matters. When he married we went to live at Richmond, and had his dear little wife very much with us, for she was a delicate tender creature, half killed by London. In process of time he fell in with a man named Maddox, plausible and clever, who became a sort of manager, especially while Edward was in his trances of invention; and at all times knew more about his accounts than he did himself. Nothing but my father’s authority had ever made him really look into them, and this man took them all off his hands. There was a matter about the glass that Edward was bent on ascertaining, and he went to study the manufacture in Bohemia, taking his wife with him, and leaving Rose with us. Shortly after, Dr. Long and Harry Beauchamp received letters asking for a considerable advance, to be laid out on the materials that this improvement would require. Immediately afterwards came the crash.”
“Exactly what I heard. Of course the letters were written in ignorance of what was impending.”
“Colin, they were never written at all by Edward! He denied all knowledge of them. Alison saw Dr. Long’s, most ingeniously managed—foreign paper and all—but she could swear to the forgery—”
“You suspect this Maddox?”
“Most strongly! He knew the state of the business; Edward did not. And he had a correspondence that would have enabled so ingenious a person easily to imitate Edward’s letters. I do not wonder at their having been taken in; but how Julia—how Harry Beauchamp could believe—what they do believe. Oh, Colin! it will not do to think about it!”
“Oh, that I had been at home! Were no measures taken?”
“Alas! alas! we urged Edward to come home and clear himself; but that poor little wife of his was terrified beyond measure, imagined prisons and trials. She was unable to move, and he could not leave her; she took from him an unhappy promise not to put himself in what she fancied danger from the law, and then died, leaving him a baby that did not live a day. He was too broken-hearted to care for vindicating himself, and no one-no one would do it for him!”
Colonel Keith frowned and clenched the hand that lay in his grasp till it was absolute pain, but pain that was a relief to feel. “Madness, madness!” he said. “Miserable! But how was it at home—? Did this Maddox stand his ground?”
“Yes, if he had fled, all would have been clear, but he doctored the accounts his own way, and quite satisfied Dr. Long and Harry. He showed Edward’s receipt for the £6000 that had been advanced, and besides, there was a large sum not accounted for, which was, of course, supposed to have been invested abroad by Edward—some said gambled away—as if he had not had a regular hatred of all sorts of games.”