CHAPTER XVIII. – FATHER AND MOTHER
The telegram came early on Monday morning. Admiral Merrifield and Harry started by the earliest train, deciding not to take the girls; whereupon their kind host, to mitigate the suspense, placed himself at the young ladies’ disposal for anything in the world that they might wish to see. It was too good an opportunity of seeing the Houses of Parliament to be lost, and the spell of Westminster Abbey was upon Mysie.
Cousin Rotherwood was a perfect escort, and declared that he had not gone through such a course of English history since he had taken his cousin Lilias and his sister Florence the same round more years ago than it was civil to recollect. He gave a sigh to the great men he had then let them see and hear, and regretted the less that there was no possibility of regaling the present pair with a debate. It was all like a dream to the two girls. They saw, but suspense was throbbing in their hearts all the time, and qualms were crossing Gillian as she recollected that in some aspects her father could be rather a terrible personage when one was wilfully careless, saucy to authorities, or unable to see or confess wrong-doing; and the element of dread began to predominate in her state of expectation. The bird in the bosom fluttered very hard as the possible periods after the arrivals of trains came round; and it was not till nearly eight o’clock that the decisive halt of wheels was heard, and in a few moments Mysie was in the dearest arms in the world, and Gillian feeling the moustached kiss she had not known for nearly four long years, and which was half-strange, half-familiar.
In drawing-room light, there was the mother looking none the worse for her journey, her clear brown skin neither sallow nor lined, and the soft brown eyes as bright and sweet as ever; but the father must be learnt over again, and there was awe enough as well as enthusiastic love to make her quail at the thought of her record of self-will.
There was, however, no disappointment in the sight of the fine, tall soldierly figure, broad shouldered, but without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and only altered by his hair having become thinner and whiter, thus adding to the height of his forehead, and making his very dark eyebrows and eyes have a different effect, especially as he was still pallid beneath the browning of many years, though he declared himself so well as to be ashamed of being invalided.
Time was short. Harry and the Admiral, who were coming to dinner, had rushed home to dress and to fetch Susan; and Lady Merrifield was conducted in haste to her bedroom, and left to the almost too excited ministrations of her daughters.
It was well that attentive servants had unfastened the straps, for when Gillian had claimed the keys of the dear old familiar box, her hand shook so much that they jingled; the key would not go into the hole, and she had to resign them to sober Mysie, who had been untying the bonnet, with a kiss, and answering for the health of Primrose, whom Uncle William was to bring to London in two days’ time.
‘My dear silly child,’ said her mother, surprised at Gillian’s emotion.
And the reply was a burst of tears. ‘Oh, so silly! so wrong! I have so wanted you.’
‘I know all about it. You told us all, like an honest child.’
‘Oh, such dreadful things—the rock—the poor child killed—Cousin Rotherwood hurt.’
‘Yes, yes, I heard! We can’t have it out now. Here’s papa! she is upset about these misadventures,’ added Lady Merrifield, looking up to her husband, who stood amazed at the sobs that greeted him.
‘You must control yourself, Gillian,’ he said gravely. ‘Stop that! Your mother is tired, and has to dress! Don’t worry her. Go, if you cannot leave off.’
The bracing tone made Gillian swallow her tears, the more easily because of the familiarity of home atmosphere, confidence, and protection; and a mute caress from her mother was a promise of sympathy.
The sense of that presence was the chief pleasure of the short evening, for there were too many claimants for the travellers’ attention to enable them to do more than feast their eyes on their son and daughters, while they had to talk of other things, the weddings, the two families, the home news, all deeply interesting in their degree, though not touching Gillian quite so deeply as the tangle she had left at Rockstone, and mamma’s view of her behaviour; even though it was pleasant to hear of Phyllis’s beautiful home in Ceylon, and Alethea’s bungalow, and how poor Claude had to go off alone to Rawul Pindee. She felt sure that her mother was far more acceptable to her hostess than either of the aunts, and that, indeed, she might well be so!
Gillian’s first feeling was like Mysie’s in the morning, that nothing could go wrong with her again, but she must perforce have patience before she could be heard. Harry could not be spared for another day from his curacy, and to him was due the first tete-a-tete with his mother, after that most important change his life had yet known, and in which she rejoiced so deeply. ‘The dream of her heart,’ she said, ‘had always been that one of her sons should be dedicated;’ and now that the fulfilment had come in her absence, it was precious to her to hear all those feelings and hopes and trials that the young man could have uttered to no other ears.
Sir Jasper, meantime, had gone out on business, and was to meet the rest at luncheon at his mother’s house, go with them to call on the Grinsteads, and then do some further commissions, Lady Rotherwood placing the carriage at their disposal. As to ‘real talk,’ that seemed impossible for the girls, they could only, as Mysie expressed it, ‘bask in the light of mamma’s eyes’ and after Harry was gone on an errand for his vicar, there were no private interviews for her.
Indeed, the mother did not know how much Gillian had on her mind, and thought all she wanted was discussion, and forgiveness for the follies explained in the letter, the last received. Of any connection between that folly and the accident to Lord Rotherwood of course she was not aware, and in fact she had more on her hands than she could well do in the time allotted, and more people to see. Gillian had to find that things could not be quite the same as when she had been chief companion in the seclusion of Silverfold.
And just as she was going out the following letter was put into her hands, come by one of the many posts from Rockstone:—
‘MY DEAR GILLIAN—I write to you because you can explain matters, and I want your father’s advice, or Cousin Rotherwood’s. As I was on the way to Il Lido just now I met Mr. Flight, looking much troubled and distressed. He caught at me, and begged me to go with him to tell poor Kalliope that her brother Alexis is in Avoncester Jail. He knew it from having come down in the train with Mr. Stebbing. The charge is for having carried away with him L15 in notes, the payment for a marble cross for a grave at Barnscombe. You remember that on the day of the accident poor Field was taking it in the waggon, when he came home to hear of his child’s death.
‘The receipt for the price was inquired for yesterday, and it appeared that the notes had been given to Field in an envelope. In his trouble, the poor man forgot to deliver this till the morning; when on his way to the office he met young White and gave it to him. Finding it had not been paid in, nor entered in the books, and knowing the poor boy to have absconded, off went Mr. Stebbing, got a summons, and demanded to have him committed for trial.
‘Alexis owned to having forgotten the letter in the shock of the dismissal, and to having carried it away with him, but said that as soon as he had discovered it he had forwarded it to his sister, and had desired her to send it to the office. He did not send it direct, because he could only, at the moment, get one postage-stamp. On this he was remanded till Saturday, when his sisters’ evidence can be taken at the magistrates meeting. This was the news that Mr. Flight and I had to take to that poor girl, who could hardly be spared from her mother to speak to us, and how she is to go to Avoncester it is hard to say; but she has no fear of not being able to clear her brother, for she says she put the dirty and ragged envelope that no doubt contained the notes into another, with a brief explanation, addressed it to Mr. Stebbing, and sent it by Petros, who told her that he had delivered it.
‘I thought nothing could be clearer, and so did Mr. Flight, but unluckily Kalliope had destroyed her brother’s letter, and had not read me this part of it, so that she can bring no actual tangible proof, and it is a much more serious matter than it appeared when we were talking to her. Mr. White has just been here, whether to condole or to triumph I don’t exactly know. He has written to Leeds, and heard a very unsatisfactory account of that eldest brother, who certainly has deceived him shamefully, and this naturally adds to the prejudice against the rest of the family. We argued about Kalliope’s high character, and he waved his hand and said, “My dear ladies, you don’t understand those Southern women—the more pious, devoted doves they are, the blacker they will swear themselves to get off their scamps of men.” To represent that Kalliope is only one quarter Greek was useless, especially as he has been diligently imbued by Mrs. Stebbing with all last autumn’s gossip, and, as he confided to Aunt Ada, thinks “that they take advantage of his kindness!”
‘Of course Mr. Flight, and all who really know Alexis and Kalliope, feel the accusation absurd; but it is only too possible that the Avoncester magistrates may not see the evidence in the same light, as its weight depends upon character, and the money is really missing, so that I much fear their committing him for trial at the Quarter Sessions. It will probably be the best way to employ a solicitor to watch the case at once, and I shall speak to Mr. Norton tomorrow, unless your father can send me any better advice by post. I hope it is not wicked to believe that the very fact of Mr. Norton’s being concerned might lead to the notes finding themselves.
‘Meantime, I am of course doing what I can. Kally is very brave in her innocence and her brother’s, but, shut up in her mother’s sickroom, she little guesses how bad things are made to look, or how Greek and false are treated as synonymous.
‘Much love to your mother. I am afraid this is a damper on your happiness, but I am sure that your father would wish to know. Aunt Ada tackles Mr. White better than I do, and means if possible to make him go to Avoncester himself when the case comes on, so that he should at least see and hear for himself.—Your affectionate aunt,
J. M.’
What a letter for poor Gillian! She had to pocket it at first, and only opened it while taking off her hat at grandmamma’s house, and there was only time for a blank feeling of uncomprehending consternation before she had to go down to luncheon, and hear her father and uncle go on with talk about India and Stokesley, to which she could not attend.
Afterwards, Lady Merrifield was taken to visit grandmamma, and Bessie gratified the girls with a sight of her special den, where she wrote her stories, showing them the queer and flattering gifts that had come to her in consequence of her authorship, which was becoming less anonymous, since her family were growing hardened to it, and grandmamma was past hearing of it or being distressed. It was in Bessie’s room that Gillian gathered the meaning of her aunt’s letter, and was filled with horror and dismay. She broke out with a little scream, which brought both Mysie and Bessie to her side; but what could they do? Mysie was shocked and sympathising enough, and Bessie was trying to understand the complicated story, when the summons came for the sisters. There were hopes of communicating the catastrophe in the carriage; but no, the first exclamation of ‘Oh, mamma!’ was lost.
Sir Jasper had something so important to tell his wife about his interviews at the Horse Guards, that the attempt to interrupt was silenced by a look and sign. It was a happy thing to have a father at home, but it was different from being mamma’s chief companion and confidante, and poor Gillian sat boiling over with something very like indignation at not being allowed even to allow that she had something to tell at least as important as anything papa could be relating.
She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that the Grinsteads proved to be out of town; but at any rate she might be grateful to Lady Rotherwood for preventing a vain expedition—a call on another old friend, Mrs. Crayon, the Marianne Weston of early youth, and now a widow, as she too was out. Then followed some shopping that the parents wanted to do together, but at the door of the stores Lady Merrifield said—
‘I have a host of things to get here for the two brides. Suppose, papa, that you walk home with Gillian across the Park. It will suit you better than this fearful list.’
Lady Merrifield only thought of letting father and daughter renew their acquaintance, and though she saw that Gillian was in an agony to speak about something, did not guess what an ordeal the girl felt it to have to begin with the father, unseen for four years, and whose searching eyes and grave politeness gave a sense of austerity, so that trepidation was spoiling all the elation at having a father, and such a father, to walk with.
‘Well, Gillian,’ he said, ‘we have a great deal of lee way to make up. I want to hear of poor White’s children. I am glad you have had the opportunity of showing them some kindness.’
‘Oh, papa! it is so dreadful! If you would read this letter.’
‘I cannot do so here,’ said Sir Jasper, who could not well make trial of his new spectacles in Great George Street. What is dreadful?’
‘This accusation. Poor Alexis! Oh! you don’t know. The accident and all—our fault—mine really,’ gasped Gillian.
‘I am not likely to know at this rate,’ said Sir Jasper. ‘I hope you have not caught the infection of incoherency from Lord Rotherwood. Do you mean his accident?’
‘Yes; they have turned them both off, and now they have gone and put Alexis in prison.’
‘For the accident? I thought it was a fall of rock.’
‘Oh no—I mean yes—it wasn’t for that; but it came of that, and Fergus and I were at the bottom of it,’ said Gillian, in such confusion that her words seemed to tumble out without her own control.
‘How did you escape with your lives?’
Was he misunderstanding her on purpose, or giving a lesson on slipslop at such a provoking moment? Perhaps he was really only patient with the daughter who must have seemed to him half-foolish, but she was forced to collect her senses and say—
‘I only meant that we were the real cause. Fergus is wild about geology, and took away a stone that was put to show where the cliff was unsafe. He showed the stone to Alexis White, who did not know where it came from and let him have it, and that was the way Cousin Rotherwood came to tread on the edge of the precipice.’
‘What had you to do with it?’
‘I—oh! I had disappointed Alexis about the lessons,’ said Gillian, blushing a little;’ and he was out of spirits, and did not mind what he was about.’
‘H’m! But you cannot mean that this youth can have been imprisoned for such a cause.’
‘No; that was about the money, but of course he sent it back. He ran away when he was dismissed, because he was quite in despair, and did not know what he was about.’
‘I think not, indeed!’
‘Papa,’ said Gillian, steadying her voice, ‘you must not, please, blame him so much, for it was really very much my fault, and that is what makes me doubly unhappy. Did you read my last letter to mamma?’
‘Yes. I understood that you thought you had not treated your aunts rightly by not consulting them about your intercourse with the Whites, and that you had very properly resolved to tell them all. I hope you did so.’
‘Indeed I did, and Aunt Jane was very kind, or else I should have had no comfort at all. Was mamma very much shocked at my teaching Alexis?’
‘I do not remember. We concluded that whatever you did had your aunts’ sanction.’
‘Ah! that was the point.’
‘Did these young people persuade you to secrecy?’
‘Oh no, no; Kalliope protested, and I overpowered her, because—because I was foolish, and I thought Aunt Jane interfering.’
‘I see,’ said Sir Jasper, with perhaps more comprehension of the antagonism than sisterly habit and affection would have allowed to his wife. ‘I am glad you saw your error, and tried to repair it; but what could you have done to affect this boy so much. How old is he? We thought of him as twelve or fourteen, but one forgets how time goes on, and you speak of him as in a kind of superintendent’s position.’
‘He is nineteen.’
Sir Jasper twirled his moustache.
‘I begin to perceive,’ he said, ‘you rushed into an undertaking that became awkward, and when you had to draw off, the young fellow was upset and did not mind his business. So far I understand, but you said something about prison.’
The worst part of the personal confession was over now, and Gillian could go on to tell the rest of the Stebbing enmity, of Mr. White’s arrival, and of the desire to keep his relations aloof from him.
‘This is guess work,’ said Sir Jasper.
‘I think Cousin Rotherwood would say the same’ rejoined Gillian, and then she explained the dismissal, the flight, and the unfortunate consequences, and that Aunt Jane hoped for advice by the morning’s post.
‘I am afraid it is too late for that,’ said Sir Jasper, looking at his watch. ‘I must read her letter and consider.’
Gillian gave a desperate sigh, and felt more desperate when at that moment the very man they had had a glimpse of on Saturday met them, exclaiming in a highly delighted tone—
‘Sir Jasper Merrifield!’
Any Royal Wardour ought to have been welcome to the Merrifields, but this individual had not been a particular favourite with the young people. They knew he was the son of a popular dentist, who had made his fortune, and had put his son into the army to make a gentleman of him, and prevent him from becoming an artist. In the first object there had been very fair success; but the taste for art was unquenchable, and it had been the fashion of the elder half of the Merrifield family to make a joke, and profess to be extremely bored, when ‘Fangs,’ as they naughtily called him among themselves, used to arrive from leave, armed with catalogues, or come in with his drawings to find sympathy in his colonel’s wife. Gillian had caught enough from her four elders to share in an unreasoning way their prejudice, and she felt doubly savage and contemptuous when she heard—
‘Yes, I retired.’
‘And what are you doing now?’
‘My mother required me as long as she lived’ (then Gillian noticed that he was in mourning). ‘I think I shall go abroad, and take lessons at Florence or Rome, though it is too late to do anything seriously—and there are affairs to be settled first.’
Then came a whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they actually included ‘poor White’ and his family, Gillian was angered and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be delighted to see him.
‘What would Lady Rotherwood think of the liberty?’ the displeased mood whispered to Gillian.
But Lady Rotherwood, presiding over her pretty Worcester tea-set, was quite ready to welcome any of the Merrifield friends. There were various people in the room besides Lady Merrifield and Mysie, who had just come in. There was the Admiral talking politics with Lord Rotherwood, and there was Clement Underwood, who had come with Harry from the city, and Bessie discussing with them boys’ guilds and their amusements.
Gillian felt frantic. Would no one cast a thought on Alexis in prison? If he had been to be hanged the next day, her secret annoyance at their indifference to his fate could not have been worse.
And yet at the first opportunity Harry brought Mr. Underwood to talk to her about his choir-boys, and to listen to her account of the 7th Standard boy, a member of the most musical choir in Rockquay, and the highest of the high.
‘I hope not cockiest of the cocky,’ said Mr. Underwood, smiling. ‘Our experience is that superlatives may often be so translated.’
‘I don’t think poor Theodore is cocky,’ said Gillian; ‘the Whites have always been so bullied and sat upon.’
‘Is his name Theodore?’ asked Mr. Underwood, as if he liked the name, which Gillian remembered to have seen on a cross at Vale Leston.
‘Being sat upon is hardly the best lesson in humility,’ said Harry.
‘There’s apt to be a reaction,’ said Mr. Underwood; ‘but the crack voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know too well. I was the veriest young prig myself under those circumstances!’
‘Don’t be too hard on cockiness,’ said Lord Rotherwood, who had come up to them, ‘there must be consciousness of powers. How are you to fly, if you mustn’t flap your wings and crow a little?’
‘On a les defauts de ses qualites,’ put in Lady Merrifield.
‘Yes,’ added Mr. Underwood. ‘It is quite true that needful self-assertion and originality, and sense of the evils around—’
‘Which the old folk have outgrown and got used to,’ said Lord Rotherwood.
‘May be condemned as conceit,’ concluded Mr. Underwood.
‘Ay, exactly as Eliab knew David’s pride and the naughtiness of his heart,’ said Lord Rotherwood. ‘If you won’t fight your giant yourself, you’ve no business to condemn those who feel it in them to go at him.’
‘Ah! we have got to the condemnation of others, instead of the exaltation of self,’ said Lady Merrifield.
‘It is better to cultivate humility in one’s self than other people, eh?’ said the Marquis, and his cousin thought, though she did not say, that he was really the most humble and unself-conscious man she had ever known. What she did say was, ‘It is a plant that grows best uncultivated.’
‘And if you have it not by happy nature, what then?’ said Clement Underwood.
‘Then I suppose you must plant it, and there will be plenty of tears of repentance to water it,’ returned she.
‘Thank you,’ said Clement. ‘That is an idea to work upon.’
‘All very fine!’ sighed Gillian to Mysie, ‘but oh, how about Alexis in prison! There’s papa, now he has got rid of Fangs, actually going to walk off with Uncle Sam, and mamma has let Lady Rotherwood get hold of her. Will no-body care for anybody?’
‘I think I would trust papa,’ said Mysie.
He was not long gone, and when he came back he said, ‘You may give me that letter, Gillian. I posted a card to tell your aunt she should hear to-morrow.’
All that Gillian could say to her mother in private that evening consisted of, ‘Oh, mamma, mamma,’ but the answer was, ‘I have heard about it from papa, my dear; I am glad you told him. He is thinking what to do. Be patient.’
Externally, awe and good manners forced Gillian to behave herself; but internally she was so far from patient, and had so many bitter feelings of indignation, that she felt deeply rebuked when she came down next morning to find her father hurrying through his breakfast, with a cab ordered to convey him to the station, on his way to see what could be done for Alexis White.
That day Gillian had her confidential talk with her mother—a talk that she never forgot, trying to dig to the roots of her failures in a manner that only the true mother-confessor of her own child can perhaps have patience and skill for, and that only when she has studied the creature from babyhood. The concatenation, ending (if it was so to end) in the committal to Avoncester Jail, and beginning with the interview over the rails, had to be traced link by link, and was almost as long as ‘the house that Jack built.’
‘And now I see,’ said Gillian, ‘that it all came of a nasty sort of antagonism to Aunt Jane. I never guessed how like I was to Dolores, and I thought her so bad. But if I had only trusted Aunt Jane, and had no secrets, she would have helped me in it all, I know now, and never have brought the Whites into trouble.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Merrifield; ‘perhaps I should have warned you a little more, but I went off in such a hurry that I had no time to think. You children are all very loyal to us ourselves; but I suppose you are all rather infected by the modern spirit, that criticises when it ought to submit to authorities.’
‘But how can one help seeing what is amiss? As some review says, how respect what does not make itself respectable? You know I don’t mean that for my aunts. I have learnt now what Aunt Jane really is—how very kind and wise and clever and forgiving—but I was naughty enough to think her at first—’
‘Well, what? Don’t be afraid.’
‘Then I did think she was fidgety and worrying—always at one, and wanting to poke her nose into everything.’
‘Poor Aunt Jane! Those are the faults of her girlhood, which she has been struggling against all her life!’
‘But in your time, mamma, would such difficulties really not have been seen—I mean, if she had been actually what I thought her?’
‘I think the difference was that no faults of the elders were dwelt upon by a loyal temper. To find fault was thought so wrong that the defects were scarcely seen, and were concealed from ourselves as well as others. It would scarcely, I suppose, be possible to go back to that unquestioning state, now the temper of the times is changed; but I belong enough to the older days to believe that the true safety is in submission in the spirit as well as the letter.’
‘I am sure I should have found it so,’ said Gillian. ‘And oh! I hope, now that papa is come, the Whites may be spared any more of the troubles I have brought on them.’
‘We will pray that it may be so.’ said her mother.