Charlotte Yonge - Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness ever could help making a pet of her.”

“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother. I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”

She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.

Mary laughed a little.

“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be unappreciated.”

“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on together.”

Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she further tried to say was—

“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock them?”

“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter, you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”

Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to expostulate and deliver her testimony.

There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed immediately—no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs. Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking tea at the vicarage.

Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.

“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous Armine exclaimed—

“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”

“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their mother; “then we break up our sitting.”

“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday; “but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”

“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,” she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly comic.

“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.

Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult Sabbatarian question in her mind.

“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother, didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more, mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”

But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered—

“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr. Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad to read what keeps mine round me?”

“Is it an old fashion with you?”

“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of the old sunshine.”

It was a watery reflection indeed!

“And could it not be with something that would be—”

“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”

To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”

“I did mean salt—very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.

“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did, what would become of the boys?”

“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that pass. There are things I wanted to say.”

“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”

“Not if you heed him so little.”

“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said I was not behaving decently!”

“No more you are.”

“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost hysterically.

“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have happened.”

“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”

“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”

“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”

“You are not like yourself, Carey.”

“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep up the old friendships and kindnesses—poor little fragments as they are—everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”

“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”

“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”

“It just shows how careful you should be.”

“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”