Charlotte M. Yonge

“ What is a responsibility, Armie? I am sure Ali didn’t like it.”
“Something to answer for!” said Armine.
“To who?” asked the little girl.
“To God,” said the boy reverently. “It’s like the talent in the parable. One has got to do something for God with it, and then it won’t turn to harm.”
“Like the man’s treasure that changed into slate stones when he made a bad use of it,” said Babie. “Oh! Armie, what shall we do? Shall we give plum-puddings to the little thin girls down the lane?” ”

“ Now, mother, why should not I be worthy?”
“My dear Janet, it is not a question of worthiness; it is not a thing a woman could work out.”
“I do not ask you to give it to me now, nor even to promise it to me,” said Janet, with a light in those dark wells, her eyes; “but only to let me have the hope, that when in three years’ time I am qualified, and have passed the examinations, if Bobus does not take it up, you will let me claim that best inheritance my father left, but which his sons do not heed.” ”

“ It was past Janet’s bedtime, but though too proud to say so, she manifestly shrank from her first night of loneliness, and her mother, herself unwilling to be alone, came with her to her room, undressed her, and sat with her in the darkness, hoping for some break in the dull reticence, but disappointed, for Janet hid her head in the clothes, and slept, or seemed to sleep.
Perhaps Carey herself had been half dozing, when she heard the well-known sounds of arrival, and darted down stairs, meeting indeed the welcoming eye and smile; but “Ah, here she is!” ”

“ Denison that Miss Ogilvie has a book about,” said Babie. “But you will get well and do it when you are a man, Armie! Didn’t you think about it when you heard all about the golden life in the sermon to-day?” I thought, “That’s going to be Armie’s life,” and I looked at you, but you were looking down. Were you thinking how it was all spoilt, Armie, poor dear Armie. For perhaps it isn’t.”
“No, I know nobody can spoil it but myself,” said Armine. “And you know he said that one might make weakliness and sickness just as golden, by that great Love, as being up and doing. ”

“ I wish I wasn’t so stupid,” cried Armine, with a violent effort against his exhaustion. “Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we’ve done, and ask Him to blot it out. I’ve been trying—trying—only I’m so dull; and let us give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or there.”
“That I must,” said Jock; “it would be shabby and sneaking not.”
“Oh, Jock,” cried Armine, joyfully, “then it will all be right any way;” and he raised his face and kissed his brother. “You promise, Jock. Please promise.” ”

“ In fact, she would rather prefer to have the whole family on her hands.”
“It is all the spirit of self-sacrifice,” said Sydney; “but oh, Lucas, let it be any sacrifice but that of your sword! Think how we should all feel if there was a great glorious war, and you only a poor creature of a civilian, instead of getting—as I know you would—lots of medals and Victoria Crosses, and knighthood—real knighthood! Oh, Jock, think of that! When your mother thinks of that, she can’t want you to make any such mistaken sacrifice to her. Live on a crust if you like, but don’t—don’t give up your sword.” ”

“ Shall I write to George Gould, or will you, mother?”
“Oh dear,” sighed Caroline, “I think Mr. Wakefield is the fittest person, if it signifies enough to have it done at all.”
“Signifies!” cried Jock. “To have that rascal loafing about! I wouldn’t be trampled upon while the life is in me!”
“I don’t like worrying Mr. Gould. It is not his fault, except for having married such a wife, poor man.”
“Having been married by her, you mean,” said Bobus. “Mark me, she means to get that fellow married to that poor child, as sure as fate.”
“Impossible, Bobus! His age!” ”

“ Caroline rose from the table, dreading, like many a mother, a regular skirmish about game-preserving, between those who cared to shoot, and those who did not. Like other ladies, she could never understand exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to have game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest of the chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they told her was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and all the footpaths. Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were those of a former generation, was quite satisfied ”

“ It is a great thing to have held so pure and true a heart, not for time, but eternity.”
“Don’t, Jock. Not yet! I can’t bear it,” she moaned; but she laid her head on his shoulder, and so rested till he said—
“If you can spare me, Babie, I think I must see to Armie. He seemed to me terribly overcome.”
“Armine has lost his very best and dearest friend,” she said, pressing her hands together. “Oh yes, go to him! Armie can feel, and I can’t! I can only choke!” ”

“ The Colonel, in his wrath, even while addressing only Caroline and Mr. Ogilvie, had raised his voice as if he were shouting words of command, so that both shrank a little, and Carey said—
“I don’t think he knew it was so bad.”
“What? Cheating his masters and torturing a helpless child for not yielding to his tyranny?”
“People don’t always give things their right names even to themselves,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “I should try to see it from the boy’s point of view.”
“I have no notion of extenuating ill-conduct or making excuses! That’s the modern way! So principles get lowered! ”

“ Poor Janet, you know dressing her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won’t stand still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a still more curious way. So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable, between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass to order. ”

“ Cecil has got his sister! Oh! and there she is! Babie—holding on to mother, and that must be Mrs. Evelyn with Fordham—and there’s Elf making up already to the Doctor! Aren’t you coming down, Jock?”
“Not I! I don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself before everybody!—I say—you’ll have to come up stairs again, you know! Shut the door I say!”—shouted Jock, as he found Armine deaf to all his expostulations, and then getting up, he banged it himself, and then shuffling back to the sofa, put his hands over his face and exclaimed, “There! What an eternal brute I am!” ”

“ Feeling her limbs and breath inadequate to bear her on as fast as her spirit flew forward, Caroline dashed through the slippery mud far too swiftly for poor little Babie to keep up with her, leaving one boy to take care of the little ones, while the other acted as her guide down the long steep lane. She was unable to see over the hedges till she came through a gate into a meadow, where Jock looked about, rubbed his eyes, and exclaimed—“Hallo, where are they?” pointing to the place where Allen had fallen, but whence he seemed to have been spirited away like Sir Piercie Shafton. ”

“ I am content to be patient—and, mother, you little know the good it does me to think of her and think of you. It is well for us men that all women are not like Janet.”
“Yet if you took away our faith, what would there be to hinder us from being like my poor Janet?”
“Heaven forbid that I should take away any one’s honest faith; above all, yours or Essie’s.”
“Except by showing that you think it just good enough for us.”
“How can I help it, any more than I can help that Belforest was left to Elvira? Wishes and belief are two different things.” ”

“ I’m a lady,” exclaimed the senorita, with the haughty Spanish turn of the neck peculiar to herself.
“That’s not what I mean by a lady,” said Babie.
“What do you mean by it?” said Elvira, with a superior air.
“One who never looks down on anybody,” said Babie, thoughtfully.
“What nonsense!” rejoined the Elf; “as if any lady could like to hear grandpapa maunder, and Mary scold and scream at the farm people, just like the old peahen.”
“Miss Ogilvie said poor Mary was overstrained with having more to attend to than she could properly manage, and that made her shrill.” ”

“ The idea of her absence from home for ever was too strange, too heartrending to be at once embraced, and as she neared the end of her journey on that long day, Carey’s mind was chiefly fixed on the yearning to be with her husband and Janet, who had suffered such a shock without her. She seemed more able to feel through her husband—who was so devoted to his mother, than for herself, and she was every moment more uneasy about her little daughter, who must have been in the room with her grandmother. Comfort them? ”

“ David Ogilvie, in his deep, silent, life-long romance, felt that precious guerdons sometimes are won at an age which the young suppose to be past all feeling—guerdons the more precious and pure because unconnected with personal hopes or schemes. He still knew Caroline to be as entirely Joseph Brownlow’s own as when he had first perceived it, ten years ago, but all that was regretful jealousy was gone. ”

“ There was a certain threatening attitude about its hand, which, Jock said, looked as if the ghost of old Barnes had come to threaten them for the wasteful expenditure of his hoards. Or, as Babie said, it was more like the ghastly notion of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, of some phantom of a murdered slave protecting those hoards.
“I don’t wonder he threatens,” said Caroline. “I always thought he meant that audacious trick to have forfeited the hoards.”
“Very lucky he was balked,” said Bobus, “not only for us, but for human nature in general. ”

“ She had once or twice amused the household by figures executed by her dexterous fingers in pastry or in butter; and in the empty house, in her old studio, amid remnants of Bobus’s museum, she set to work on a design that had long been in her mind asking her to bring it into being.
Thus the tete-a-tete was so successful that people’s pity was highly diverting, and the vacation was almost too brief, though when the young men began to return, it was a wonder how existence could have been so agreeable without them. ”

“ She saw him safe in bed before she asked any questions, but then she began her interrogations, as little successfully as the maids.
“I can’t, mother,” he said, hiding his face on the pillow.
“My little boy used to have no secrets from me.”
“Men must have secrets sometimes, though they rack their hearts and—their backs,” sighed poor Armine, rolling over. “Oh, mother, my back is so bad! Please don’t bother besides.”
“My poor darling! Let me rub it. There, you might trust Mother Carey! She would not tell Mr. Ogilvie, nor get any one into trouble.” ”

“ Armine and Babie were the first. She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert herself to speak to them.
“Asleep,” they whispered. “Poor Mother Carey.”
“Armie,” said Babie, “is mother unhappy because she has got rich?”
Armine hesitated. His brief experience of school had made him less unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fashion even to his little sister, and she added—
“Must people get wicked when they are rich?”
“Mother is always good,” said faithful little Armine.
“The rich people in the Bible were all bad,” pondered Babie. ”

“ Cecil, after ten minutes with his mother, which filled her with hope and thankfulness, had gone to show his sister the charms of the place, and Armine and Babie, on a sheltered seat, were free to pour out their hearts to one another, ranging from the heights of pure childish wisdom to its depths of blissful ignorance and playful folly, as they talked over the past and the future. ”

“ And is it not delightful to see dear old Mary? She looks younger now than ever she did in her whole life, and has broken out of all her primmy governessy crust. Oh! it has been such fun to watch it, so entirely unconscious as both of them were. Mrs. Evelyn and I gloated over it together, all the more that the children had not a suspicion. I don’t think Babie and Sydney realise any one being in love nearer our own times than ‘Waverley’ at the very latest. They received the intelligence quite as a shock. Allen said, as if they had heard that the Greek lexicon was engaged to the French grammar! ”

“ She was too miserable not to be glum, too reserved to be open to a stranger. Mary guessed a little of the feeling, though she feared that an uncomfortable daughter might be one of poor Carey’s troubles, and she could not guess the girl’s sense of banishment from all that she had enjoyed, society, classes, everything, or her feeling that the Magnum Bonum itself was imperilled by exile into the land of dulness, which of course the poor child exaggerated in her imagination. ”