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

‘Ah! we are used to Gilbert’s tricks. Always bear with a boy’s antics,’ said Miss Meadows, preventing whatever she thought was coming out of Mrs. Kendal’s month. Albinia took the unwise step of laughing, for her sympathies were decidedly with resistance both to flannels and to the insertion of that hooked finger.

‘Mr. Bowles has always said it was a case for great care. Flannel next the skin—no exposure,’ continued Miss Meadows, tartly. ‘I am sure—I know I am the last person to wish to interfere—but so delicate—You’ll excuse—but my mother was uneasy; and people who go out in all weathers—’

‘I hope Mrs. Meadows had my note this morning.’

‘O yes! I am perfectly aware. Thank you. Yes, I know the rule, but you’ll excuse—My mother was still anxious—I know you exclude visitors in lesson-time. I’m going. Only grandmamma would be glad—not that she wishes to interfere—but if Gilbert had on his piece of flannel—’

‘Have you, Gilbert?’ said Albinia, becoming tormented.

‘I have been flannel all over all my life,’ said Gilbert, sulkily, ‘one bit more or less can make no odds.’

‘Then you have not that piece? said Albinia.

‘Oh, my dear! Think of that! New Saxony! I begged it of Mr. Holland. A new remnant—pink list, and all! I said it was just what I wanted for Master Gilbert. Mr. Holland is always a civil, feeling man. New Saxony—three shillings the yard—and trimmed with blue sarsenet! Where is it, Gilbert?’

‘In a soup dish, with a crop of mustard and cress on it,’ said Gilbert, with a wicked wink at Albinia, who was unable to resist joining in the girls’ shout of laughing, but she became alarmed when she found that poor Miss Meadows was very near crying, and that her incoherency became so lachrymose as to be utterly incomprehensible.

Lucy, ashamed of her laughter, solemnly declared that it was very wrong of Gilbert, and she hoped he would not suffer from it, and Albinia, trying to become grave, judicial, and conciliatory, contrived to pronounce that it was very silly to leave anything off in an east wind, and hoping to put an end to the matter, asked Aunt Maria to sit down, and judge how they went on with their lessons.

O no, she could not interrupt. Her mother would want her. She knew Mrs. Kendal never admitted visitors. She had no doubt she was quite right. She hoped it would be understood. She would not intrude. In fact, she could neither go nor stay. She would not resume her seat, nor let anything go on, and it was full twenty minutes before a series of little vibrating motions and fragmentary phrases had borne her out of the house.

‘Well!’ cried Gilbert, ‘I hoped Aunt Maria had left off coming down upon us.’

‘O, mamma!’ exclaimed Lucy, ‘you never sent your love to grandmamma.’

‘Depend upon it she was waiting for that,’ said Gilbert.

I’m sure I wish I had known it,’ said Albinia, not in the most judicious manner. ‘Half-past eleven!’

‘Aunt Maria says she can’t think how you can find time for church when you can’t see visitors in the morning,’ said Lucy. ‘And oh! dear mamma, grandmamma says gravy soup was enough to throw Gilbert into a fever.’

‘At any rate, it did not,’ said Albinia.

‘Oh! and, dear mamma, Mrs. Osborn is so hurt that you called on Mrs. Dusautoy before returning her visit; and Aunt Maria says if you don’t call to-day you will never get over it, and she says that—’

‘What business has Mrs. Osborn to ask whom I called on?’ exclaimed Albinia, impatiently.

‘Because Mrs. Osborn is the leading lady in the town,’ said Lucy. ‘She told Miss Goldsmith that she had no notion of not being respected.’

‘And she can’t bear the Dusautoys. She left off subscribing to anything when they came; and he behaved very ill to the Admiral and everybody at a vestry-meeting.’

‘I shall ask your papa before I am in any hurry to call on the Osborns!’ cried Albinia. ‘I have no desire to be intimate with people who treat their clergyman in that way.’

‘But Mrs. Osborn is quite the leader!’ exclaimed Lucy. They keep the best society here. So many families in the county come and call on them.’

‘Very likely—’

‘Ah! Mrs. Osborn told Aunt Maria that as the Nugents called on you, and you had such connexions, she supposed you would be high. But you wont make me separate from Lizzie, will you? I suppose Miss Nugent is a fashionable young lady.’

‘Miss Nugent is five years old. Don’t let us have any more of this nonsense.’

‘But you wont part me from Lizzie Osborn,’ said Lucy, hanging her head pathetically on one side.

‘I shall talk to your father. He said, the other day, he did not wish you to be so much with her.’

Lucy melted into tears, and Albinia was conscious of having been first indiscreet and then sharp, hurt at the comments, feeling injured by Lucy’s evident habit of reporting whatever she said, and at the failure of the attempt to please Mrs. Meadows. She was so uneasy about the Osborn question, that she waylaid Mr. Kendal on his return from riding, and laid it before him.

‘My dear Albinia,’ he said, as if he would fain have avoided the appeal, ‘you must manage your own visiting affairs your own way. I do not wish to offend my neighbours, nor would I desire to be very intimate with any one. I suppose you must pay them ordinary civility, and you know what that amounts to. As to the leadership in society here, she is a noisy woman, full of pretension, and thus always arrogates the distinction to herself. Your claims will establish themselves.’

‘Oh, you don’t imagine me thinking of that!’ cried Albinia, laughing. ‘I meant their behaving ill to Mr. Dusautoy.’

‘I know nothing about that. Mr. Dusautoy once called to ask for my support for a vestry meeting, but I make it a rule never to meddle with parish skirmishes. I believe there was a very unbecoming scene, and that Mr. Dusautoy was in the minority.’

‘Ah, Edmund, next time you’ll see if a parson’s sister can sit quietly by to see the parson beaten!’

He smiled, and moved towards his study.

‘Then I am to be civil?’

‘Certainly.’

‘But is it necessary to call to-day?’

‘I should suppose not;’ and there he was, shut up in his den. Albinia went back, between laughing and vexation, and Lucy looked up from her exercise to say, ‘Does papa say you must call on the Osborns?’

It was undignified! She bit her lip, and felt her false position, as with a quiver of the voice she replied, ‘We shall make nothing but mischief if we talk now. Go on with your business.’

The sharp, curious eyes did not take themselves off her face. She leant over Sophy, who was copying a house, told her the lines were slanting, took the pencil from her hand, and tried to correct them, but found herself making them over-black, and shaky. She had not seen such a line since the days of her childhood’s ill-temper. She walked to the fireplace and said, ‘I am going to call on Mrs. Osborn to-day. Not that your father desires it, but because I have been indulging in a wrong feeling.’

‘I’m sure you needn’t,’ cried Gilbert. ‘It is very impertinent of Mrs. Osborn. Why, if he is an admiral, she was the daughter of an old lieutenant of the Marines, and you are General Sir Maurice Ferrars’ first cousin.’

‘Hush, hush, Gilbert!’ said Albinia, blushing and distressed. ‘Mrs. Osborn’s standing in the place entitles her to all attention. I was thinking of nothing of the kind. It was because I gave way to a wrong feeling that I mean to go this afternoon.’

On the Sunday, when Mr. and Mrs. Kendal went to pay their weekly visit to Mrs. Meadows, they found the old lady taking a turn in the garden. And as they were passing by the screen of laurels, Gilbert’s voice was heard very loud, ‘That’s too bad, Lucy! Grandmamma, don’t believe one word of it!’