Mrs. Brook

“ Mrs. Brook lucidly continued. "What I don't for a moment believe is that her bills are paid by any one. It's much more probable," she sagaciously observed, "that they're not paid at all."
"Oh, well, if she can get on that way—!"
"There can't be a place in London," Mrs. Brook pursued, "where they're not delighted to dress such a woman. She shows things, don't you see? as some great massive wall shows placards and posters. And what proof can you adduce?" she asked.
Mr. Cashmore had grown restless; he picked a stray thread off the knee of his trousers. "Ah, when you talk about 'adducing'—!" ”

“ Mrs. Brook was immensely interested. “He left me, you know, to do so.”
“Know—how should I know? I left her five minutes ago.”
“Then he went out without seeing her.” Mrs. Brook took it in. “He changed his mind out there on the stairs.”
“Well,” said Edward, “it won’t be the first mind that has been changed there. It’s about the only thing a man can change.”
“Do you refer particularly to MY stairs?” she asked with her whimsical woe. But meanwhile she had taken it in. “Then whom were you speaking of?”
“Mr. Longdon’s coming to tea with her. She has had a note.” ”

“ He wants me so to marry her that he has proposed a definite basis."
Mrs. Brook got straight up. "'Proposed'? To her?"
"No, I don't think he has said a word to Nanda—in fact I'm sure that, very properly, he doesn't mean to. But he spoke to me on Sunday night at Mertle—I had a big talk with him there alone, very late, in the smokingroom." Mrs. Brook's stare was serious, and Vanderbank now went on as if the sound of his voice helped him to meet it. "We had things out very much and his kindness was extraordinary—he's the most beautiful old boy that ever lived. ”

“ I'm glad," said the discontented Brook.
"Glad of what?" exclaimed a roaring voice, coming over the rock, and sweeping away the leaves as if they had been a mere handful; and covering up the ugly purple stain upon the willow stump. "Ain't I a famous fellow, though? When once my blood is up, can't I go on and frighten people? Can't I mine out the earth, and sweep along big trees like boats? Can't I tumble down the rocks that dare to stop my path? Can't I drown men and boys, and all the cattle in the land? ”

“ Mrs. Brook declared, "is never severe: she's only uncontrollably witty. It's only Tishy, moreover, who gives out that her husband doesn't like her. He, poor man, doesn't say anything of the sort."
"Yes, but after all, you know "—Vanderbank just put it to her—"where the deuce, all the while, is he?"
"Heaven forbid," the Duchess remarked, "that we should too indiscreetly inquire." ”

“ Brook moralized, "one must always, I consider, think, as a sort of point de repère, of some one good person. Only it's best if it's a person one's afraid of. You do very well, but I'm not enough. What one really requires is a kind of salutary terror. I never stick in a pin without thinking of your cousin Jane. What is it that some one quotes somewhere about some one's having said that 'Our antagonist is our helper—he prevents our being superficial'? The extent to which, with my poor clothes, the Duchess prevents me—!" ”

“ That man—Sir Brook, I mean—is nothing to me; he ought to be, but he is not. My father and he were friends; that is, my father thought he was his friend, and left him the guardianship of me on his deathbed.”
“Your guardian,—Sir Brook your guardian?” cried Lucy, with intense eagerness.
“Yes; with more power than the law, I believe, would accord to any guardian.” She paused and seemed lost in thought for some seconds, and then went on: “Colonel Sewell and he never liked each other. Sir Brook took little trouble to be liked by him; perhaps Dudley was as careless on his side. ”

“ Brook had found the cup of her secret sorrows suddenly jostled by some touch of which the perversity, though not completely noted at the moment, proved, as she a little let herself go, sufficient to make it flow over; but she drew, the next thing, from her daughter’s stillness a reflexion of the vanity of such heat and speedily recovered herself as if in order with more dignity to point the moral. “I can carry my burden and shall do so to the end; but we must each remember that we shall fall to pieces if we don’t manage to keep hold of some little idea of responsibility. ”

“ How still the boy laid on her breast! his head against the willow stump, over which there trickled a tiny purple stream smaller than the spring-drops from the rock! How richly his golden locks floated upon the Brook! but how widely strained his bright blue eyes glaring at the sky and tree-tops above, and how he gasped from his mouth; a mouth so like the one the laborer had often prest in harvest-time to the Brook, when it was yet circling in the meadow! The Brook said to herself, "I will put some of my ripples into this mouth, as I have seen the laborer do ”

“ Brook’s eyes, from the sofa, while this went on, attached themselves to her visitors. It took Vanderbank, as he moved about and his companions waited, a minute longer to produce what he had in mind. “What IS splendid, as we call it, is this extraordinary freedom and good humour of our intercourse and the fact that we do care—so independently of our personal interests, with so little selfishness or other vulgarity—to get at the idea of things. The beautiful specimen Mrs. Brook had just given me of that,” he continued to Mitchy, “was what made me break out to you about her when you came in.” ”

“ Her testimony, declared in the strongest and most unequivocal manner, is also to be added to that of the narrative, in contradiction of the aspersion on the fame of Mrs. Yates, to which there has before been allusion.
Mrs. Brook was a very distinguished woman; she had excellent and highly cultivated talents, and made the best use of them. She was very highly esteemed by Dr. Johnson, who frequently visited her, and she also reckoned among her friends, some of the most distinguished literary characters of her time. The friendship between her and Mrs. ”

“ His mother, always a practical woman, did not press the question of marriage, deeming that with his disposition he would stand a better chance of married peace when he had expended a good deal of what she called his vivacity; and his father, who came of very long-lived people, always said that no man should take a wife before he was thirty. As Brook did not gamble immoderately, nor start a racing stable, nor propose to manage an opera troupe, the practical lady felt that he was really a very good young man. ”

“ It was in this mood he got back to the little lodging in a humble suburb called Cullen's Wood, where Sir Brook awaited him. It is not impossible that the disparities of temperament in this world are just as beneficial, just as grateful, as are the boundless variety and change we find in nature. To Tom Lendrick's depression, almost disgust with life, Sir Brook brought that bright, hopeful, happy spirit which knew how to throw sunlight on every path to be travelled. ”

“ Having first gone into society upon this principle, however, and having been at once taken up and made much of by an extremely fashionable young woman afflicted with an elderly and eccentric husband, it was not likely that Brook would return to the threshold of the schoolroom for women’s society. ”

“ Brook would say, more extravagant and funny than any that have yet been risked. I remember," he continued, "Mrs. Brook's having spoken of her to me lately as 'wild.' Wild?—why, she's simply tameness run to seed. Such an expression shows the state of training to which Mrs. ”

“ Brook can feel that he has paid your way and will have no scruples about that matter. In his heart of hearts, the dear old gentleman has been worried over it, I know, just as well as if I had heard him say: ‘But, Joanna, they are so poor! What if he goes to the expense for nothing!’ and she has comforted him by saying: ‘Never mind, Chidly dear, we will make it up to them in some way. The young [101] man must come, of course.’ You see how it is, don’t you, Motherkin? ”

“ You must insist with these people. You can always get what you want. Brook, where’s my fan?”
She settled upon a straw chair—like a white butterfly. The others walked on towards the end of the terrace, but the young man whom she called Brook stood beside her, slowly lighting a cigarette, not five paces from Mrs. Bowring and Clare. ”

“ At the same time Paul was assuming that the bonneted and cloaked mature-looking lady was no other than Mrs. Brooke herself, and he wondered why she should receive callers when so obviously dressed for going out. Miss Brooke rose to greet him with a pleasant smile of welcome. In a simple dress with wide sleeves that fitted tight round the wrists, her short [43] front hair, evenly divided, falling over her temples in rippling masses, she seemed less phantasmal and fairylike, less remote from this world—a being more humanly sweet and that one might dare to woo. ”

“ Now that that poor wretched man is hopelessly insane, we might never have learnt the truth. Is there any way in which I can thank you? any way in which I can give you a reward?"
She looked steadily into his face, and saw that he changed color.
"There is only one way, Lady Alice," he stammered.
"You are not to call me Lady Alice: I like 'Mrs. Brooke' much better. Well?"
"I love your daughter," said Maurice bluntly, "and I believe she would love me if you would let her." ”

“ Not a change came over Sir Brook's face during the delivery of this speech; and as he bowed reverentially and withdrew, his manner was all that courtesy could desire.
“I see he's not going to visit Lucy,” muttered Haire, as Sir Brook passed the window.
“I should think not, sir. There are few men would like to linger where they have been so ingloriously defeated.” He walked the room with a proud defiant look for some minutes, and then, sinking faintly into a chair, said, in a weak, tremulous tone, “Haire, these trials are too much for me. ”

“ I said to myself, So sure as we settle down to work,—to work like men who have no thought but how to earn their bread,—some lavender-gloved fellow, with a dressing-case and three hat-boxes, will drop down to disgust us alike with our own hardships and his foppery.”
“He'll not come,” said Sir Brook, calmly; “and if he should, he will be welcome.”
“Oh! as to that,” stammered out Tom, somewhat ashamed of his late warmth, “Trafford is perhaps the one exception to the sort of thing I am afraid of. He is a fine, manly, candid fellow, with no affectations nor any pretensions.” ”

“ Brook sighed, “ready. Nanda has stepped on the stage and I give her up the house. Besides,” she went on musingly, “it’s awfully interesting. It IS the modern daughter—we’re really ‘doing’ her, the child and I; and as the modern has always been my own note—I’ve gone in, I mean, frankly for my very own Time—who is one, after all, that one should pretend to decline to go where it may lead?” ”

“ He was unable, however, to find any record that Brook had gone in her, and believed he had not: neither [45] could he learn that Brook had departed by any other vessel. A friend of his told him that he feared Brook was dead. The day before the Dart went out of port, a young man, who bore out in every respect the description of Brook, was drowned in the harbour.
Comforting news! Delightfully comforting for Ellin Delorane, not to speak of Brook’s people. Aunt Hester came over to Crabb Cot, and burst into tears as she told it. ”

“ The heart cannot play the hypocrite, and no frequency of disaster diminishes the smart. The wondrous resemblance Miss Lendrick bears to Lucy Dillon renews to my memory the bright days of her early beauty, when her poor father would call her to sit down at his feet and read to him, that he might gaze at will on her, weaving whole histories of future happiness and joy for her. 'Is it not like sunshine in the room to see her, Brook?' would he whisper to me. ”

“ Is it this contemptible cur (for he was a cur, sir) that has won the affections of my darling, high-hearted, generous girl? Is the romantic spirit that I have so loved to see in her to bear no better fruit than this? Does the fellow realize to her mind the hero that fills men's thoughts?” I was so overcome, so excited, so confused, Brook, that I begged him to leave me for a while, that one of my attacks of pain was coming on, and that I should not be able to converse farther He said something about trying one of his cheroots,—some impertinence or other, I forget what ”

“ It was the way he said to me, as I rose to leave the room, 'One word more, Sir Brook. We are all very happy, and, in consequence, very selfish. Let us not forget that there is one sad heart here,—that there is one upstairs there who can take no part in all this joy. What shall we, what can we, do for her?' I knew whom he meant at once,—poor Mrs. Sewell ”

“ I could see that you must have been frightening her terribly by some menaced exposure of the family pretensions, for she said over and over again, 'Why is Sir Brook so angry with me? Can't you manage to put him in better temper with us? I have scarcely had courage to open his letters of late. I never got such lectures in my life.' And what a horrid memory you seem to have! She says she 'd be afraid to see you. At all events, you have done me good service. They agree to everything ”

“ Whichever way the truth inclined, each was happy, each contented. And how fond are we all, of every age, of playing the missionary, of setting off into the savage districts of our neighbors' natures and combating their false idols, their superstitions and strange rites! The least adventurous and the least imaginative have these little outbursts of conversion, and all are more or less propagandists.
It was one morning, a bright and glorious one too, that, while Tom and Lucy were yet at breakfast, Sir Brook arrived and entered the breakfast-room. ”