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

‘I thought,’ said Winifred to her husband, ‘that you would rather have exchanged a Sunday when Albinia is better able to enjoy you?’

‘That may yet be, but poor Kendal is so much depressed, that I do not like to leave him.’

‘I have no patience with him!’ cried Winifred; ‘he does not seem to take the slightest pleasure in his baby, and he will hardly let poor Albinia do so either! Do you know, Maurice, it is as bad as I ever feared it would be. No, don’t stop me, I must have it out. I always said he had no business to victimize her, and I am sure of it now! I believe this gloom of his has broken down her own dear sunny spirits! There she is—so unlike herself—so anxious and fidgety about her baby—will hardly take any one’s word for his being as healthy and stout a child as I ever saw! And then, every other moment, she is restless about that boy—always asking where he is, or what he is doing. I don’t see how she is ever to get well, while it goes on in this way! Mr. Kendal told me that Gilbert had been worrying and distressing her; and as to those girls, the eldest of them is intolerable with her airs, and the youngest—I asked her if she liked babies, and she growled, “No.” Lucy said Gilbert was waiting in the passage for news of mamma, and she grunted, “All sham!” and that’s the whole I have heard of her! He is bad enough in himself, but with such a train! My poor Albinia! If they are not the death of her, it will be lucky!’

‘Well done, Winifred!’

‘But, Maurice,’ said his impetuous wife, in a curiously altered tone, ‘are not you very unhappy about Albinia?’

‘I shall leave you to find that out for me.’

‘Then you are not?’

‘I think Kendal thoroughly values and appreciates her, and is very uncomfortable without her.’

‘I suppose so. People do miss a maid-of-all-work. I should not so much mind it, if she had been only his slave, but to be so to all those disagreeable children of his too! And with so little effect. Why can’t he send them all to school?’

‘Propose that to Albinia.’

‘She did want the boy to go somewhere. I should not care where, so it were out of her way. What creatures they must be for her to have produced no more effect on them!’

‘Poor Albinia! I am afraid it is a hard task: but these are still early days, and we see things at a disadvantage. We shall be able to judge whether there be really too great a strain on her spirits, and if so, I would talk to Kendal.’

‘And I wonder what is to come of that. It seems to me like what John Smith calls singing psalms to a dead horse.’

‘John Smith! I am glad you mentioned him; I shall desire Dusautoy to bring him here on Monday.’

‘What! as poor Albinia would say, you can’t exist a week without John Smith.’

‘Even so. I want him to lay out a plan for draining the garden. That pond is intolerable. I suspect that all, yourself included, will become far more good-tempered in consequence.’

‘A capital measure, but do you mean that Edmund Kendal is going to let you and John Smith drain his pond under his very nose, and never find it out? I did not imagine him quite come to that.’

‘Not quite ,’ said Maurice; ‘it is with his free consent, and I believe he will be very glad to have it done without any trouble to himself. He said that Albinia thought it damp , and when I put a few sanatory facts before him, thanked me heartily, and seemed quite relieved. If they had only been in Sanscrit, they would have made the greater impression.’

‘One comfort is, Maurice, that however provoking you are at first, you generally prove yourself reasonable at last, I am glad you are not Mr. Kendal.’

‘Ah! it will have a fine effect on you to spend your Christmas-day tete-a-tete with him.’

Mrs. Ferrars’s views underwent various modifications, like all hasty yet candid judgments. She took Mr. Kendal into favour when she found him placidly submitting to Miss Meadows’s showers of words, in order to prevent her gaining access to his wife.

‘Maria Meadows is a very well-meaning person,’ he said afterwards; ‘but I know of no worse infliction in a sick-room.’

‘I wonder,’ thought Winifred, ‘whether he married to get rid of her. I should have thought it justifiable had it been any one but Albinia!’

The call on Mrs. Dusautoy was consoling. It was delightful to find how Albinia was loved and valued at the vicarage. Mrs. Dusautoy began by sending her as a message, John’s first exclamation on hearing of the event. ‘Then she will never be of any more use.’ In fact, she said, it was much to him like having a curate disabled, and she believed he could only be consoled by the hopes of a pattern christening, and of a nursery for his school-girls; but there Winifred shook her head, Fairmead had a prior claim, and Albinia had long had her eye upon a scholar of her own.

‘I told John that she would! and he must bear it as he can,’ laughed Mrs. Dusautoy; and she went on more seriously to say that her gratitude was beyond expression, not merely for the actual help, though that was much, but for the sympathy, the first encouragement they had met among their richer parishioners, and she spoke of the refreshment of the mirthfulness and playful manner, so as to convince Winifred that they had neither died away nor been everywhere wasted.

Winifred had no amenable patient. Weak and depressed as Albinia was, her restlessness and air of anxiety could not be appeased. There was a look of being constantly on the watch, and once, when her door was ajar, before Winifred was aware she exerted her voice to call Gilbert!

Pushing the door just wide enough to enter, and treading almost noiselessly, he came forward, looking from side to side as with a sense of guilt. She stretched out her hand and smiled, and he obeyed the movement that asked him to bend and kiss her, but still durst not speak.

‘Let me have the baby,’ she said.

Mrs. Ferrars laid it beside her, and held aloof. Gilbert’s eyes were fixed intently on it.

‘Yes, Gilbert,’ Albinia said, ‘I know what you will feel for him. He can’t be what you once had—but oh, Gilbert, you will do all that an elder brother can to make him like Edmund!’

Gilbert wrung her fingers, and ventured to stoop down to kiss the little red forehead. The tears were running down his cheeks, and he could not speak.

‘If your father might only say the same of him! that he never grieved him!’ said Albinia; ‘but oh, Gilbert—example,’ and then, pausing and gazing searchingly in his face, ‘You have not told papa.’

‘No,’ whispered Gilbert.

‘Winifred,’ said Albinia, ‘would you be so kind as to ask papa to come?’

Winifred was forced to obey, though feeling much to blame as Mr. Kendal rose with a sigh of uneasiness. Gilbert still stood with his hand clasped in Albinia’s, and she held it while her weak voice made the full confession for him, and assured his father of his shame and sorrow. There needed no such assurance, his whole demeanour had been sorrow all these dreary days, and Mr. Kendal could not but forgive, though his eye spoke deep grief.

‘I could not refuse pardon thus asked,’ he said. ‘Oh, Gilbert, that I could hope this were the beginning of a new course!’

Albinia looked from Gilbert to his little brother, and back again to Gilbert.

‘It shall be,’ she said, and Gilbert’s resolution was perhaps the more sincere that he spoke no word.

‘Poor boy,’ said Albinia, half to herself and half aloud, ‘I think I feel more strong to love and to help him!’

That interview was a dangerous experiment, and she suffered for it. As her brother said, instead of having too little life, she had too much, and could not let herself rest; she had never cultivated the art of being still, and when she was weak, she could not be calm.