That Stick

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> That Stick

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'Dear little baby, indeed!' said Ida scornfully. 'Nasty little wretch, I
say. One good thing is, up in that cold place all this time he's sure
not to live.'

Herbert whistled. 'That's coming it rather strong.' And Constance, with
tears starting to her eyes, said, 'For shame, Ida, how can you be so
wicked! Think of Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary!'

'I believe you care for them more than for your own flesh and blood!'
exclaimed her mother.

'Well, and haven't they done a sight deal more for her?' said Herbert.

'You turning on me too, you ungrateful boy!' cried Mrs. Morton.

Herbert laughed.

'If it comes to gratitude,' he said, and looked significantly at the
decorations.

'And what is it but the due to his brother's widow?' said Mrs. Morton.
'Just a pittance, and you may depend that will be cut down on some
pretext now!'

'I should think so, if they heard Ida's tongue!' said Herbert.

'And Constance there is spitefulness enough to go and tell
them--favourite as she is!' said Ida.

'I should think not!' said Constance indignantly. 'As if I would do such
a mean thing!'

'Come, come, Ida,' said her mother, 'your sister knows better than that.
It's not the way when she is only just come home, so grown too and
improved, "quite the lady."'

Mrs. Morton had a mother's heart for Constance, though only in the third
degree, and was really gratified to see her progress. She had turned up
her pretty brown hair, and the last year had made her much less of a
child in appearance; her features were of delicate mould, she had dark
eyes, and a sweet mouth, with a rose-blush complexion, and was pleasing
to look on, though, in her mother's eyes, no rival to the thin, rather
sharply-defined features, bright eyes, and pink-and-white complexion that
made Ida the belle of a certain set at Westhaven. The party were more
amicable over the dinner-table--for dinner it was called, as an assertion
of gentility.

'Are you allowed to dine late,' asked Ida patronisingly of her sister,
'when you are not at school?

'Lady Adela dines early,' said Constance.

'Oh, for your sake, I suppose?'

'Always, I believe,' said Constance.

'Yes, always,' said Herbert. 'Fine people needn't ask what's genteel,
you see, Ida.'

That was almost the only breeze, and after dinner Herbert rushed out for
a smell of sea, interspersed with pipe, and to 'look up the inevitable
old Jack.'

Constance was then subjected to a cross-examination on all the
circumstances of the detention at Ratzes, and all she had heard or ought
to have heard about the arrival of the unwelcome little Michael, while
her mother and sister drew their own inferences.

'Really,' said Ida at last, 'it is just like a thing in a book.'

Constance was surprised.

'Because it was such a happy surprise for them,' she added hastily.

'No, nonsense, child, but it is just what they always do when they want a
supposititious heir.'

'Ida, how can you say such things?'

'But it is, Conny! There was the wicked Sir Ronald Macronald. He took
his wife away to Belgrade, right in the Ukraine mountains, and it--'

'Belgrade is in Hungary, and the Cossacks live in the Ukraine in Russia,'
suggested Constance.

'Oh, never mind your school-girl geography, it was Bel something, an
out-of-the-way place in the mountains anyway, and there he pretended she
had a child, just out of malice to the right heiress, that lovely Lilian,
and he got killed by a stag, and then she confessed on her death-bed. I
declare it is just like--'

'My dear, don't talk in that way, your sister is quite shocked. Your
uncle never would--'

'Bless me, ma, I was only in fun. I could tell you ever so many stories
like that. There's Broughton's, on the table there. I knew from the
first it was an impostor, and the old nurse dressed like a nun was his
mother.'

'I believe you always know the end before you are half through the first
volume,' said her mother admiringly; 'but of course it is all right, only
it is a terrible disappointment and misfortune for us, and not to be
looked for after all these years.'

The last three Christmastides had been spent at Northmoor, where it had
been needful to conform to the habits of the household, which impressed
Ida and her mother as grand and conferring distinction, but decidedly
dull and religious.

So as they were at Westhaven, perforce, they would make up for it,
Christmas Eve was spent in a tumult of preparation for the diversions of
the next day. Mrs. Morton had two maids now, but to her they were still
'gals,' not to be trusted with the more delicate cookeries, and Ida was
fully engaged in the adornment of the room and herself, while Constance
ran about and helped both, and got more thanks from her mother than her
sister.

Ida was to end the day with a dance at a friend's house, but she was not
desirous of taking Constance with her, having been accustomed to treat
her as a mere child, and Constance, though not devoid of a wish for
amusement, knew that her uncle and aunt would have taken her to church,
where she would have enjoyed the festal service.

Her mother would not let her go out in the dark alone, and was too tired
to go with her, so she had to stay at home, while Herbert disported
himself elsewhere, and Constance underwent another cross-examination over
the photographs she had brought home, but Mrs. Morton was never unkind
when alone with her, and she had all the natural delight of youth in
relating her adventures. Mrs. Morton, however, showed offence at not
having been sent for instead of Mrs. Bury.--'So much less of a relation,'
and Constance found herself dwelling on the ruggedness of the pass, and
the difficulties of making oneself understood, but Mrs. Morton still
persisted that she 'could not understand why they should have got into
such a place at all, when there were plenty of fashionable places in the
newspaper where they could have had society and attendance and
everything.'

'Ah, but that was just what Uncle Frank didn't want.'

'Well, if they choose to be so eccentric, and close and shy, they can't
wonder that people talk.'

'Mamma, you can't mean that horrid nonsense that Ida talked about! It
was only a joke!'

'Oh, my dear, I don't say that I suspect anything--oh no,--only, if they
had not been so close and queer, one would have been able to contradict
it. I like people to be straightforward, that's all I have to say. And
it is terribly hard on your poor brother to be so disappointed, after
having his expectations so raised!' and Mrs. Morton melted into tears,
leaving Constance with nothing to say, for in the first place, she did
not think Herbert, as yet at least, was very sensible of his loss, and in
the next, she did not quite venture to ask her mother whether she thought
little Michael should have been sacrificed to Herbert's expectations. So
she took the wiser course of producing a photograph of Vienna.

CHAPTER XXIII
VELVET

Constance created quite a sensation when she came down dressed for church
on Christmas Day in a dark blue velvet jacket, deeply trimmed with silver
fox, and a hat and muff _en suite_, matching with her serge dress, and
though unpretending, yet very handsome.

Up jumped Ida, from lacing her boots by the fire. 'Well, I never! They
are spoiling you! Real velvet, I declare, and real silk-wadded lining.
Look, ma. What made them dress you like that?'

'It wasn't them,' said Constance, 'it was Lady Adela. One Sunday in
October it turned suddenly cold, and I had only my cloth jacket, and she
sent up for something warm for me. This was just new before she went
into black, when husband died, and she had put it away for Amice, but it
fitted me so well, and looked so nice, that she was so kind as to wish me
to keep it always.'

'Cast-off clothes! That's the insolence of these swells,' said Ida. 'I
wonder you had not the spirit to refuse.'

'Sour grapes,' muttered Herbert; while her mother sighed--'Ah, that's
what we come to!'

'Must not I wear it, mamma?' said Constance, who had a certain attachment
to the beautiful and comfortable garment. 'She told me she had only worn
it once in London, and she was so very kind.'

'Oh, if you call it kindness,' said Ida, 'I call it impertinence.'

'If you had only heard--' faltered Constance.

'No, no,' said their mother, 'you could not refuse, of course, my dear,
and no one here will know. It becomes her very well too. Doesn't it,
Ida?'

Ida made a snort. 'If people choose to make a little chit of a
schoolgirl ridiculous by dressing her out like that!' she said.

'There isn't time now before church,' said Constance almost tearfully,
'or I would take it off.'

'No such thing,' said Herbert. 'Come on, Conny. You shall walk with me.
You look stunning, and I want Westhaven folk to see for once what a lady
is like.'

Constance was very glad to be led away from Ida's comments, and resolved
that her blue velvet should not see the light again at Westhaven; but she
did not find this easy to carry out; for, perhaps for the sake of teasing
Ida, Herbert used to inquire after it, and insist on her wearing it, and
her mother liked to see her, and to show her, in it. It was only Ida who
seemed unable to help saying something disagreeable, till, almost in
despair, Constance offered to lend the bone of contention; but Lady Adela
was a small woman, and Constance would never be on so large a scale as
her sister, so that the jacket refused to be transferred except at the
risk of being spoilt by alteration; and here Mrs. Morton interfered, 'It
would never do to have them say at Northmoor that "Lady Morton's" gift
had been spoilt by their meddling with it.' Constance was glad, though
she suspected that Lady Adela would never have found it out.

Then Ida consulted Sibyl Grover, who was working with a dressmaker, and
with whom she kept up a sort of patronisingly familiar acquaintance, as
to making something to rival it, and Sibyl was fertile in devices as to
doing so cheaply, but when she consulted her superior, she was told that
without the same expensive materials it would evidently be only an
imitation, and moreover, that the fashion was long gone out of date.
Which enabled Ida to bear the infliction with some degree of philosophy.

This jacket was not, however, Constance's only trouble. Her conscience
was already uneasy at the impossibility of getting to evensong on
Christmas Day. She had been to an early Celebration without asking any
questions, and had got back before Herbert had come down to breakfast,
and very glad she was that she had done so, for she found that her mother
regarded it as profane 'to take the Sacrament' when she was going to have
a party in the evening, and when Constance was in the midst of the party
she felt that--if it were to be--her mother might be right.

It was a dinner first--at which Constance did not appear--chiefly of
older people, who talked of shipping and of coals. Afterwards, if they
noticed the young people, joked them about their imaginary lovers--beaux,
as the older ladies called them; young men, as the younger ones said.
One, the most plain spoken of all, asked Herbert how he felt, at which
the boy wriggled and laughed sheepishly, and his mother had a great
confabulation with various of the ladies, who were probably condoling
with her.

Later, there were cards for the elders, and sundry more young people came
in for a dance. The Rollstones were considered as beneath the dignity of
the Mortons, but Herbert had loudly insisted on inviting Rose for the
evening and had had his way, but after all she would not come. Herbert
felt himself aggrieved, and said she was as horrid a little prig as
Constance, who on her side felt a pang of envy as she thought of Rose
going to church and singing hymns and carols to her father and mother,
while she, after a struggle under the mistletoe, which made her hot and
miserable, had to sit playing waltzes. One good-natured lady offered to
relieve her, but she was too much afraid of the hero of the mistletoe to
stir from her post, and the daughter of her kindly friend had no scruple
in exclaiming--

'Oh no, ma, don't! You always put us out, you know, and Constance Morton
is as true as old Time.'

'I am sure Constance is only too happy to oblige her friends,' said Mrs.
Morton. 'And she is not out yet,' she added, as a tribute to high life.

If Constance at times felt unkindly neglected, at others she heard surges
of giggling, and suppressed shrieking and protests that made her feel the
piano an ark of refuge.

The parting speech from a good-natured old merchant captain was, 'Why,
you demure little pussy cat, you are the prettiest of them all! What
have yon lads been thinking about to let those little fingers be going
instead of her feet? Or is it all Miss Ida's jealousy, eh?'

All this, in a speaking-trumpet voice, put the poor child into an agony
of blushes, which only incited him to pat her on the cheek, and the rest
to laugh hilariously, under the influence of negus and cheap champagne.

Constance could have cried for very shame, but when she was waiting on
her mother, who, tired as she was, would not go to bed without locking up
the spoons and the remains of the wine, Mrs. Morton said kindly, 'You are
tired, my dear, and no wonder. They were a little noisy to-night. Those
are not goings-on that I always approve, you know, but young folk always
like a little pleasure extra at Christmas. Don't you go and get too
genteel for us, Conny. Come, come, don't cry. Drink this, my love,
you're tired.'

'Oh, mamma, it is not the being genteel--oh no, but Christmas Day and
all!'

'Come, come, my dear, I can't have you get mopy and dull; religion is a
very good thing, but it isn't meant to hinder all one's pleasure, and
when you've been to church on a Christmas Day, what more can be expected
of young people but to enjoy themselves? Come, go to bed and think no
more about it.'

To express or even to understand what she felt would have been impossible
to Constance, so she had to content herself with feeling warm at her
heart, at her mother's kind kiss.

All the other parties she saw were much more decorous, even to
affectation, except that at the old skipper's, and he was viewed by the
family as a subject for toleration, because he had been a friend and
messmate of Mrs. Morton's father. All the good side of that lady and Ida
came out towards him and his belongings. He had an invalid
granddaughter, with a spine complaint and feeble eyesight, and Ida spent
much time in amusing her, teaching her fancy works and reading to her.
Unluckily it was only trashy novels from the circulating library that
they read; Ida had no taste for anything else, and protested that Louie
would be bored to death if she tried to read her the African adventures
which were just then the subject of enthusiasm even with Herbert! Ida
was not a dull girl. Unlike some who do not seem to connect their books
with life, she made them her realities and lived in them, and as she
hardly ever read anything more substantial her ideas of life and society
were founded on them, though in her own house she was shrewd in practical
matters, and though not strong was a useful active assistant to her
mother whenever there was no danger of her being detected in doing
anything derogatory to one so nearly connected with the peerage.

Indeed, she seemed to regard her sister's dutiful studies as proofs of
dulness and want of spirit. She was quite angry when Constance objected
to _The Unconscious Impostor_,--very yellow, with a truculent flaming
design outside--that 'she did not think she ought to read that kind of
book--Aunt Mary would not like it.'

'Well, if I would be in bondage to an old governess! You are not such a
child now.'

'Don't, Ida. Uncle Frank would not like it either.'

'Perhaps not,' said Ida, with an ugly, meaning laugh as she glanced again
at the title.

Constance might really have liked to read more tales than she allowed
herself. _The House on the Marsh_ tempted her, but she was true to the
advice she had received, and Rose Rollstone upheld her in her resolution.

Ida thought it rather 'low' in Herbert and Constance to care for the old
butler's daughter, but their mother had a warm spot in the bottom of her
heart, and liked a gossip with Mrs. Rollstone too much to forbid the
house to her daughter, besides that she shrank from inflicting on her so
much distress.

So during the fortnight that Rose spent at home the girls were together
most of the morning. After Constance, well wrapped up, had practised in
the cold drawing-room, where economy forbade fires till the afternoon,
she sped across to Rose in the little stuffy parlour where Mr. Rollstone
liked to doze over his newspaper to the lullaby of their low-voiced
chatter. Often they walked together, and were sometimes joined by
Herbert, who on these occasions always showed that he knew how to behave
like a gentleman.

Herbert was faithfully keeping his promise not to bet, though, as he
observed, he had not expected to be in for it so long. But it was
satisfactory to hear that his present fellow-pupils did not go in for
that sort of thing, and Constance felt sure that her uncle and aunt would
be pleased with him and think him much improved.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE REVENGE OF SORDID SPIRITS

'I am quite convinced,' said Ida Morton, 'it is quite plain why we are
not invited.'

'My dear, you see what your aunt says; that Mrs. Bury's daughter's
husband is ordered to India, and that having the whole family to stay at
Northmoor gives them the only chance of being all together for a little
while, and after their obligations to Mrs. Bury--'

'Ma, how can you be so green? Obligations, indeed! It is all a mere
excuse to say there is not room for us in that great house. I see
through it all. It is just to prevent us from being able to ask
inconvenient questions of the German nurse and Mrs. Bury and all!'

'Now, Ida, I wish you would put away that fancy. Your uncle and aunt
were always such good people! And there was Mrs. Bury--'

'Mother, you will never understand the revenge of sordid souls,' said Ida
tragically, quoting from _The Unconscious Impostor_.

'Revenge! What can you mean?'

'Of course, you know, Mrs. Bury never forgave Herbert's taking her for a
tramp, and you know how nasty uncle was about that white rook and the
bets. Oh, it is quite plain. He was to be deprived of his rights, and
so this journey was contrived, and they got into this out-of-the-way,
inaccessible place, and sent poor Conny away, and then had no doctor or
nurse--exactly as people always do.'

'Oh, Ida, only in stories! Your novels are turning your head.'

'Novels are transcripts of life,' again said Ida, solemnly quoting.

'I don't believe it if they put such things into your head,' said her
mother. 'Asking Herbert to be godfather too! Such a compliment!'

'An empty compliment, to hoodwink us and the poor boy,' said Ida. 'No,
no, ma, the keeping you away settles it in my mind, and it shall be the
business of my life to unmask that!'

So spoke Ida, conscious of being a future heroine.

It was quite true that Herbert had been asked to stand godfather to his
little cousin's admission into the Church, after, of course, a very good
report had been received from his tutor. 'You are the little fellow's
nearest kinsman,' wrote Lord Northmoor, 'and I trust to you to influence
him for good.' Herbert wriggled, blushed, thought he hated it, was glad
it had been written instead of spoken, but was really touched.

His uncle had justly thought responsibility would be wholesome, and
besides, Herbert represented to him his brother, for whom he had a very
tender feeling.

It was quite true that Northmoor was as full as it would hold. Mrs.
Bury's eldest daughter was going out to India, and another had a husband
in the Civil Service; the third lived in Ireland, and the only way of
having the whole family together for their last fortnight was to gather
them at Northmoor, as soon as its lord and lady returned, nor had they
been able to escape from their Dolomite ravine till the beginning of May,
for the roads were always dangerous, often impassable, so that there had
been weeks when they were secluded from even the post, and had had
difficulties as to food and fire.

However, it had done them no harm, and was often looked back upon as,
metaphorically as well as literally, the brightest and whitest time in
their lives. Frank had walked and climbed both with Mrs. Bury and on his
own account, and had drunk in the wild glories of the mountain winter,
and the fantastic splendours of snow and ice on those wondrous peaks.
And, with that new joy and delight to be found in the queer wooden
cradle, his heart was free to bound as perhaps it had never done before,
in exulting thankfulness, as he looked up to those foretastes of the
Great White Throne.

Never had he had such a rest before from toil, care, and anxiety as in
those months in the dry, bracing air, and it was the universal remark
that Lord Northmoor came back years younger and twice the man he had been
before, with a spirit of cheerfulness and enterprise such as had always
been wanting; while as to his wife, she was less strong than before, but
there was a certain peaceful, yet exulting happiness about her, and her
face had gained wonderfully in sweetness and expression.

The child was a fine plump little fellow, old enough to laugh and respond
to loving faces and gestures. Mary had feared the sight might be painful
to Lady Adela, and was gratified to find her too true a baby-lover and
too generous a spirit not to worship him almost as devotedly as did
Constance.

Perhaps the heads of the family had never seen or participated in
anything like the domestic mirth and enjoyment of that fortnight's visit;
Bertha was with Lady Adela, and the intimacy and confidence in which
Frank and Mary had lived with Mrs. Bury had demolished many barriers of
shyness, and made them hosts who could be as one with their
guests--guests with whom the shadow of parting made the last sunshine
seem the more bright.

'I did not know what I was letting you in for,' said Bertha, in apology
to Mrs. Bury.

'My dear, I would not have been without the experience on any account. I
never saw such a refreshing pair of people.'

'Surely it must have been awfully slow--regular penal servitude!'

'You confuse absence of small talk with absence of soul, Birdie. When we
had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to
say, we got on perfectly.'

'And what you had to say was about Master Michael?'

'Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with
which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing
up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.'

'More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is
man, the proper study of womankind is babe.'

'Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let
me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few
months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted
people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.'

'Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!'

'I hope they were an education to me.'

'I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive
thing as that which they possess in common,' said Bertha.

'I wish it had been,' said Mrs. Bury gravely.

'At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,' said
Bertha, laughing.

Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder.
She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to
look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with
them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could
not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and
merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen
mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in
it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did
Ida's screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these
young matrons.

Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and she could hardly be
detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather
Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of _die
Gnadigen Frauen_. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and
the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only
child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge
of Lady Northmoor's baby on the way home. Constance hoped Ida might
never hear this fact.

Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir. A bit of
moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had first been crossed by a
branch line, and the primary growth of a station had been followed by the
discovery of good building stone, and the erection of a crop of houses of
all degrees, which promised to set the Northmoor finances on a better
footing than had been theirs for years, and set their conscientious
landlord to work at once on providing church room and schools.

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