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

Still the strength of her constitution staved off the nervous fever of her spirits, and though she was not at all a comfortable patient, she made a certain degree of progress, so that though it was not easy to call her better, she was not quite so ill, and grew less irrational in her solicitude, and more open to other ideas. ‘Do you know, Winifred,’ she said one day, ‘I have been thinking myself at Fairmead till I almost believed I heard John Smith’s voice under the window.’

Winifred was obliged to look out at the window to hide her smile. Maurice, who was standing on the lawn with the very John Smith, beckoned to her, and she went down to hear his plans. He was wanted at home the next day, and asked whether she thought he had better take Gilbert with him. ‘It is the wisest thing that has been said yet!’ exclaimed she. ‘Now I shall have a chance for Albinia!’ and accordingly, Mr. Kendal having given a gracious and grateful consent, Albinia was informed; but Winifred thought her almost perverse when a perturbed look came over her, and she said, ‘It is very kind in Maurice, but I must speak to him.’

He was struck by the worn, restless expression of her features, so unlike the calm contented repose of a young mother, and when she spoke to him, her first word was of Gilbert. ‘Maurice, it is so kind, I know you will make him happy—but oh! take care—he is so delicate—indeed, he is—don’t let him get wet through.’

Maurice promised, but Albinia resumed with minutiae of directions, ending with, ‘Oh! if he should get hurt or into any mischief, what should we do? Pray, take care, Maurice, you are not used to such delicate boys.’

‘My dear, I think you may rely on me.’

‘Yes, but you will not be too strict with him—’ and more was following, when her brother said, ‘I promise you to make him my special charge. I like the boy very much. I think you may be reasonable, and trust him with me, without so much agitation. You have not let me see my own nephew yet.’

Albinia looked with her wistful piteous face at her brother as he took in his arms her noble-looking fair infant.

‘You are a great fellow indeed, sir,’ said his uncle. ‘Now if I were your mamma, I would be proud of you, rather than—’

‘I am afraid!’ said Albinia, in a sudden low whisper.

He looked at her anxiously.

‘Let me have him,’ she said; then as Maurice bent over her, and she hastily gathered the babe into her arms, she whispered in quick, low, faint accents, ‘Do you know how many children have been born in this house?’

Mr. Ferrars understood her, he too had seen the catalogue in the church, and guessed that the phantoms of her boy’s dead brethren dwelt on her imagination, forbidding her to rejoice in him hopefully. He tried to say something encouraging of the child’s appearance, but she would not let him go on. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘he is so now—but—’ then catching her breath again and speaking very low, ‘his father does not dare look at him—I see that he is sorry for me—Oh, Maurice, it will come, and I shall be able to do nothing!’

Maurice felt his lip quivering as his sister’s voice became choked—the sister to whom he had once been the whole world, and who still could pour out her inmost heart more freely to him than to any other. But it was a time for grave authority, and though he spoke gently, it was almost sternly.

‘Albinia, this is not right. It is not thankful or trustful. No, do not cry, but listen to me. Your child is as likely to do well as any child in the world, but nothing is so likely to do him harm as your want of composure.’

‘I tell myself so,’ said Albinia, ‘but there is no helping it.’

‘Yes, there is. Make it your duty to keep yourself still, and not be troubled about what may or may not happen, but be glad of the present pleasure.’

‘Don’t you think I am?’ said Albinia, half smiling; ‘so glad, that I grow frightened at myself, and—’ As if fain to leave the subject, she added, ‘And it is what you don’t understand, Maurice, but he can’t be the first to Edmund as he is to me—never—and when I get almost jealous for him, I think of Gilbert and the girls—and oh! there is so much to do for them—they want a mother so much—and Winifred wont let me see them, or tell me about them!’

She had grown piteous and incoherent, and a glance from Winifred told him, ‘this is always the way.’

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you will never be fit to attend to them if you do not use this present time rightly. You may hurt your health, and still more certainly, you will go to work fretfully and impetuously. If you have a busy life, the more reason to learn to be tranquil. Calm is forced on you now, and if you give way to useless nervous brooding over the work you are obliged to lay aside for a time, you have no right to hope that you will either have judgment or temper for your tasks.’

‘But how am I to keep from thinking, Maurice? The weaker I am, the more I think.’

‘Are you dutiful as to what Winifred there thinks wisest? Ah! Albinia, you want to learn, as poor Queen Anne of Austria did, that docility in illness may be self-resignation into higher Hands. Perhaps you despise it, but it is no mean exercise of strength and resolution to be still.’

Albinia looked at him as if receiving a new idea.

‘And,’ he added, bending nearer her face, and speaking lower, ‘when you pray, let them be hearty faithful prayers that God’s hand may be over your child—your children, not half-hearted faithless ones, that He may work out your will in them.’

‘Oh, Maurice, how did you know? But you are not going? I have so much to talk over with you.’

‘Yes, I must go; and you must be still. Indeed I will watch over Gilbert as though he were mine. Yes, even more. Don’t speak again, Albinia, I desire you will not. Good-bye.’

That lecture had been the most wholesome treatment she had yet received; she ceased to give way without effort to restless thoughts and cares, and was much less refractory.

When at last Lucy and Sophia were admitted, Winifred found perils that she had not anticipated. Lucy was indeed supremely and girlishly happy: but it was Sophy whose eye Albinia sought with anxiety, and that eye was averted. Her cheek was cold like that of a doll when Albinia touched it eagerly with her lips; and when Lucy admonished her to kiss the dear little brother, she fairly turned and ran out of the room.

‘Poor Sophy!’ said Lucy. ‘Never mind her, mamma, but she is odder than ever, since baby has been born. When Eweretta came up and told us, she hid her face and cried; and when grandmamma wanted to make us promise to love him with all our hearts, and not make any difference, she would only say, “I wont!”’

‘We will leave him to take care of that, Lucy,’ said Albinia. But though she spoke cheerfully, Winifred was not surprised, after a little interval, to hear sounds like stifled weeping.

Almost every home subject was so dangerous, that whenever Mrs. Ferrars wanted to make cheerful, innocent conversation, she began to talk of her visit to Ireland and the beautiful Galway coast, and the O’Mores of Ballymakilty, till Albinia grew quite sick of the names of the whole clan of thirty-six cousins, and thought, with her aunts, that Winifred was too Irish. Yet, at any other time, the histories would have made her sometimes laugh, and sometimes cry, but the world was sadly out of joint with her.

There was a sudden change when, for the first time her eye rested on the lawn, and she beheld the work of drainage. The light glanced in her eye, the colour rose on her cheek, and she exclaimed, ‘How kind of Edmund!’

Winifred must needs give her husband his share. ‘Ah! you would never have had it done without Maurice.’