“Jock! say this is not true!”

The wedding had been celebrated with all the splendour befitting a marriage in high life. Bridesmaids and bridesmen were wandering about the gardens waiting for the summons to the breakfast, when one of the former thus addressed one of the latter, who was standing, gazing without much speculation in his eyes, at the gold fish disporting themselves round a fountain.

“Sydney!” he exclaimed, “are not your mother and Fordham here? I can’t find them.”

“Did you not hear, Duke has one of his bad colds, and mamma could not leave him? But, Jock, while we have time, set my mind at rest.”

“What is affecting your mind?” said Jock, knowing only too well.

“What Cecil says, that you mean to disappoint all our best hopes.”

“There’s no help for it, Sydney,” said Jock, too heavy-hearted for fencing.

“No help. I don’t understand. Why, there’s going to be war, real war, out there.”

“Frontier tribes!”

“What of that? It would lead to something. Besides, no one leaves a corps on active service.”

“Is mine?”

“It is all the same. You were going to get into one that is.”

“Curious reasoning, Sydney. I am afraid my duty lies the other way.”

“Duty to one’s country comes first. I can’t believe Mrs. Brownlow wants to hold you back; she—a soldier’s daughter!”

“It is no doing of hers,” said Jock; “but I see that I must not put myself out of reach of her.”

“When she has all the others! That is a mere excuse! If you were an only son, it would be bad enough.”

“Come this way, and I’ll tell you what convinced me.”

“I can’t see how any argument can prevail on you to swerve from the path of honour, the only career any one can care about,” cried Sydney, the romance of her nature on fire.

“Hush, Sydney,” he said, partly from the exquisite pain she inflicted, partly because her vehemence was attracting attention.

“No wonder you say Hush,” said the maiden, with what she meant for noble severity, “No wonder you don’t want to be reminded of all we talked of and planned. Does not it break Babie’s heart?”

“She does not know.”

“Then it is not too late.”

But at that moment the bride’s aunt, who felt herself in charge of Miss Evelyn, swooped down on them, and paired her off with an equally honourable best man, so that she found herself seated between two comparative strangers; while it seemed to her that Lucas Brownlow was keeping up an insane whirl of merriment with his neighbours.

Poor child, her hero was fallen, her influence had failed, and nothing was left her but the miserable shame of having trusted in the power of an attraction which she now felt to have been a delusion. Meanwhile the aunt, by way of being on the safe side, effectually prevented Jock from speaking to her again before the party broke up; and he could only see that she was hotly angered, and not that she was keenly hurt.

She arrived at home the next day with white cheeks and red eyes, and most indistinct accounts of the wedding. A few monosyllables were extracted with difficulty, among them a “Yes” when Fordham asked whether she had seen Lucas Brownlow.

“Did he talk of his plans?”

“Not much.”

“One cannot but be sorry,” said her mother; “but, as your uncle says, his motives are to be much respected.”

“Mamma,” cried Sydney, horrified, “you wouldn’t encourage him in turning back from the defence of his country in time of war?”

“His country!” ejaculated Fordham. “Up among the hill tribes!”

“You palliating it too, Duke! Is there no sense of honour or glory left? What are you laughing at? I don’t think it a laughing matter, nor Cecil either, that he should have been led to turn his back upon all that is great and glorious!”

“That’s very fine,” said Fordham, who was in a teasing mood. “Had you not better put it into the ‘Traveller’s Joy?’”

“I shall never touch the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ again!” and Sydney’s high horse suddenly breaking down, she flew away in a flood of tears.

Her mother and brother looked at one another rather aghast, and Fordham said—

“Had you any suspicion of this?”

“Not definitely. Pray don’t say a word that can develop it now.”

“He is all the worthier.”

“Most true; but we do not know that there is any feeling on his side, and if there were, Sydney is much too young for it to be safe to interfere with conventionalities. An expressed attachment would be very bad for both of them at present.”

“Should you have objected if he had still been going to India?”

“I would have prevented an engagement, and should have regretted her knowing anything about it. The wear of such waiting might be too great a strain on her.”

“Possibly,” said Fordham. “And should you consider this other profession an insuperable objection?”

“Certainly not, if he goes on as I think he will; but such success cannot come to him for many years, and a good deal may happen in that time.”

Poor Lucas! He would have been much cheered could he have heard the above conversation instead of Cecil’s wrath, which, like his sister’s, worked a good deal like madness on the brain.

Mr. Evelyn chose to resent the slight to his family, and the ingratitude to his uncle, in thus running counter to their wishes, and plunging into what the young aristocrat termed low life. He did not spare the warning that it would be impossible to keep up an intimacy with one who chose to “grub his nose in hospitals and dissecting rooms.”

Naturally Lucas took these as the sentiments of the whole family, and found that he was sacrificing both love and friendship. Sir James Evelyn indeed allowed that he was acting rightly according to his lights. Sir Philip Cameron told him that his duty to a widowed mother ought to come first, and his own Colonel, a good and wise man, commended his decision, and said he hoped not to lose sight of him. The opinions of these veterans, though intrinsically worth more than those of the two young Evelyns, were by no means an equivalent to poor Lucas. The “great things” he had resolved not to seek, involved what was far dearer. It was more than he had reckoned on when he made his resolution, but he had committed himself, and there was no drawing back. He was just of age, and had acted for himself, knowing that his mother would withhold her consent if she were asked for it; but he was considering how to convey the tidings to her, when he found that a card had been left for him by the Reverend David Ogilvie, with a pencilled invitation to dine with him that evening at an hotel.

Mr. Ogilvie, after several years of good service as curate at a district Church at a fashionable south coast watering place, sometimes known as the English Sorrento, had been presented to the parent Church. He had been taking his summer holiday, and on his way back had undertaken to relieve a London friend of his Sunday services. His sister’s letters had made him very anxious for tidings of Mrs. Brownlow, and he had accordingly gone in quest of her son.

He ordered dinner with a half humorous respect for the supposed epicurism of a young Guardsman, backed by the desire to be doubly correct because of the fallen fortunes of the family, and he awaited with some curiosity the pupil, best known to him as a pickle.

“Mr. Brownlow.”

There stood, a young man, a soldier from head to foot, slight, active, neatly limbed, and of middle height, with a clear brown cheek, dark hair and moustache, and the well-remembered frank hazel eyes, though their frolic and mischief were dimmed, and they had grown grave and steadfast, and together with the firm-set lip gave the impression of a mind resolutely bent on going through some great ordeal without flinching or murmuring. With a warm grasp of the hand Mr. Ogilvie said—

“Why, Brownlow, I should not have known you.”

“I should have known you, sir, anywhere,” said Jock, amazed to find the Ogre of old times no venerable seignior, but a man scarce yet middle-aged.

They talked of Mr. Ogilvie’s late tour, in scenes well known to Jock, and thence they came to the whereabouts of all the family, Armine’s health and Robert’s appointment, till they felt intimate; and the unobtrusive sympathy of the old friend opened the youth’s heart, and he made much plain that had been only half understood from Mrs. Morgan’s letters. Of his eldest brother and sister, Jock said little; but there was no need to explain why his mother was straitening herself, and remaining at Belforest when it had become so irksome to her.

“And you are going out to India?” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“That’s not coming off, sir.”

“Indeed, I thought you were to have a staff appointment.”

“It would not pay, sir; and that is a consideration.”

“Then have you anything else in view?”

“The hospitals,” said Jock, with a poor effort to seem diverted; “the other form of slaughter.” Then as his friend looked at him with concerned and startled eyes, he added, “Unless there were some extraordinary chance of loot. You see the pagoda tree is shaken bare, and I could do no more than keep myself and have nothing for my mother, and I am afraid she will need it. It is a chance whether Allen, at his age, or Armine, with his health, can do much, and some one must stay and get remunerative work.”

“Is not the training costly?”

“Her Majesty owes me something. Luckily I got my commission by purchase just in time, and I shall receive compensation enough to carry me through my studies. We shall be all together with Friar Brownlow, who takes the same line in the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born. That she really does look forward to.”

“I should think so, with you to look after her,” said Mr. Ogilvie heartily.

“Only she can’t get into it till Lady Day. And I wanted to ask you, Mr. Ogilvie, do you know anything about expenses down at your place? What would tolerable lodgings be likely to come to, rent of rooms, I mean, for my mother and the two young ones. Armie has not wintered in England since that Swiss adventure of ours, and I suppose St. Cradocke’s would be as good a place for him as any.”

“I had a proposition to make, Brownlow. My sister and I invested in a house at St. Cradocke’s when I was curate there, and she meant to retire to me when she had finished Barbara. My married curate is leaving it next week, when I go home. The single ones live in the rectory with me, and I think of making it a convalescent home; but this can’t be begun for some months, as the lady who is to be at the head will not be at liberty. Do you think your mother would do me the favour to occupy it? It is furnished, and my housekeeper would see it made comfortable for her. Do you think you could make the notion acceptable to her?” he said, colouring like a lad, and stuttering in his eagerness.

“It would be a huge relief,” exclaimed Jock. “Thank you, Mr. Ogilvie. Belforest has come to be like a prison to her, and it will be everything to have Armine in a warm place among reasonable people.”

“Is Kenminster more unreasonable than formerly?”

“Not Kenminster, but Woodside. I say, Mr. Ogilvie, you haven’t any one at St. Cradocke’s who will send Armine and Babie to walk three miles and back in the rain for a bit of crimson cord and tassels?”

“I trust not,” said Mr. Ogilvie, smiling. “That is the way in which good people manage to do so much harm.”

“I’m glad you say so,” cried Jock. “That woman is worse for him than six months of east wind. I declare I had a hard matter to get myself to go to Church there the next day.”

“Who is she?”

“The sister of the Vicar of Woodside, who is making him the edifying martyr of a goody book. Ah, you know her, I see,” as Mr. Ogilvie looked amused.

“A gushing lady of a certain age? Oh yes, she has been at St. Cradocke’s.”

“She is not coming again, I hope!” in horror.

“Not likely. They were there for a few months before her brother had the living, and I could quite fancy her influence bringing on a morbid state of mind. There is something exaggerated about her.”

“You’ve hit her off exactly!” cried Jock, “and you’ll unbewitch our poor boy before she has quite done for him! Can’t you come down with me on Saturday, and propose the plan?”

“Thank you, I am pledged to Sunday.”

“I forgot. But come on Monday then?”

“I had better go and prepare. I had rather you spoke for me. Somehow,” and a strange dew came in David Ogilvie’s eyes, “I could not bear to see her there, where we saw her installed in triumph, now that all is so changed.”

“You would see her the brightest and bravest of all. Neither she nor Babie would mind the loss of fortune a bit if it were not, as Babie says, for ‘other things.’ But those other things are wearing her to a mere shadow. No, not a shadow—that is dark—but a mere sparkle! But to escape from Belforest will cure a great deal.”

So Jock went away with the load on his heart somewhat lightened. He could not get home on Saturday till very late, when dinner had long been over. Coming softly in, through the dimly lighted drawing-rooms, over the deeply piled carpets, he heard Babie’s voice reading aloud in the innermost library, and paused for a moment, looking through the heavy velvet curtains over the doorway before withdrawing one and entering. His mother’s face was in full light, as she sat helping Armine to illuminate texts. She did indeed look worn and thin, and there were absolute lines on it, but they were curves such as follow smiles, rather than furrows of care; feet rather of larks than of crows, and her whole air was far more cheerful and animated than that of her youngest son. He was thin and wan, his white cheeks contrasting with his dark hair and brown eyes, which looked enormous in their weary pensiveness, as he lent back languidly, holding a brush across his lips in a long pause, while she was doing his work. Barbara’s bright keen little features were something quite different as, wholly wrapped up in her book, she read—

“Are you learning Japanese?” asked Jock, advancing, so that Armine started like Ladurlad himself.

“Dear old Skipjack! Skipped here again!” and they were all about him. “Have you had any dinner?”

“A mouthful at the station. If there is any coffee and a bit of something cold, I’d rather eat it promiscuously here. No dining-room spread, pray. It is too jolly here,” said Jock, dropping into an armchair. “Where’s Bob?”

“Dining at the school-house.”

“And what’s that Mariolatry?”

“Mariately,” said Babie. “An Indian goddess. It is the ‘Curse of Kehama,’ and wonderfully noble.”

“Moore or Browning?”

“For shame, Jock!” cried the girl. “I thought you did know more than examination cram.”

“It is the advantage of having no Mudie boxes,” said his mother. “We are taking up our Southey.”

“And, Armie, how are you?”

“My cough is better, thank you,” was the languid answer. “Only they won’t let me go beyond the terrace.”

“For don’t I know,” said his mother, “that if once I let you out, I should find you croaking at a choir practice at Woodside?”

Then, after ordering a refection for the traveller, came the question what he had been doing.

“Dining with Mr. Ogilvie. It is quite a new sensation to find oneself on a level with the Ogre of one’s youth, and prove him a human mortal after all.”

“That’s a sentiment worthy of Joe,” said Babie. “You used to know him in private life.”

“Always with a smack of the dominie. Moreover, he is so young. I thought him as ancient as Dr. Lucas, and, behold, he is a brisk youth, without a grey hair.”

“He always was young-looking,” said his mother. “I am glad you saw him. I wish he were not so far off.”

“Well then, mother, here’s an invitation from Mahomet to the mountain, which Mahomet is too shy to make in person. That house which he and his sister bought at his English Sorrento has just been vacated by his married curate, and he wants you to come and keep it warm till he begins a convalescent home there next spring.”

“How very kind!”

“Oh! mother, you couldn’t,” burst out Armine in consternation.

“Would it be an expense or loss to him, Jock?” said his mother, considering.

“I should say not, unless he be an extremely accomplished dissembler. If it eased your mind, no doubt he would consent to your paying the rates and taxes.”

“But, mother,” again implored Armine, “you said you would not force me to go to Madeira, with the Evelyns!”

“Are they going to Madeira?” exclaimed Jock, thunderstruck.

“Did you not hear it from Cecil?”

“He has been away on leave for the last week. This is a sudden resolution.”

“Yes, Fordham goes on coughing, and Sydney has a bad cold, caught at the wedding. Did you see her?”

“Oh yes, I saw her,” he mechanically answered, while his mother continued—

“Mrs. Evelyn has been pressing me most kindly to let Armine go with them; but as Dr. Leslie assures me it is not essential, and he seems so much averse to it himself—”

“You know, mother, how I wish to hold my poor neglected Woodside to the last,” cried Armine. “Why is my health always to be made the excuse for deserting it?”

“You are not the only reason,” said his mother. “It is hard to keep Esther in banishment all this time, and I am in constant fear of a row about the shooting with that Gilbert Gould.”

“Has he been at it again!” exclaimed Jock, fiercely.

“You are as bad as Rob,” she said. “I fully expect a disturbance between them, and I had rather be no party to it. Oh, I shall be very thankful to get away, I feel like a prisoner on parole.”

“And I feel,” said Armine, “as if all we could do here was too little to expiate past carelessness.”

“Mind, you are talking of mother!” said Jock, firing up.

“I thought she felt with me,” said Armine, meekly.

“So I do, my dear; I ought to have done much better for the place, but our staying on now does no good, and only leads to perplexity and distress.”

“And when can you come, mother?” said Jock. “The house is at your service instanter.”

“I should like to go to-night, without telling any one or wishing any one good-bye. No, you need not be afraid, Armie. The time must depend on your brother’s plans. St. Cradocke’s is too far off for much running backwards and forwards. Have you any notion when you may have to leave us, Jock? You don’t go with Sir Philip?”

“No, certainly not,” said Jock. Then, with a little hesitation, “In fact, that’s all up.”

“He has not thrown you over?” said his mother; “or is there any difficulty about your exchange?”

Here Babie broke in, “Oh, that’s it! That’s what Sydney meant! Oh, Jock! you don’t mean that you let it prey upon you—the nonsense I talked? Oh, I will never, never say anything again!”

“What did she say?” demanded Jock.

“Sydney? Oh, that it would break her heart and Cecil’s if you persisted, and that she could not prevent you, and it was my duty. Mother, that was the letter I didn’t show you. I could not understand it, and I thought you had enough to worry you.”

“But what does it all mean?” asked their mother. “What have you been doing to the Evelyns?”

“Mother, I have gone back to our old programme,” said Jock. “I have sent in my papers; I said nothing to you, for I thought you would only vex yourself.”

“Oh, Jock!” she said, overpowered; “I should never have let you!”

“No, mother, dear, I knew that, so I didn’t ask you.”

“You undutiful person!” but she held out her arm, and as he came to her, she leant her head against him, sobbing a little sob of infinite relief, as though fortitude found it much pleasanter to have a living column.

“You’ve done it?” said Armine.

“You will see it gazetted in a day or two.”

“Then it is all over,” cried Babie, again in tears; “all our dreams of honour, and knighthood, and wounds, and glorious things!”

“You can always have the satisfaction of believing I should have got them,” said Jock, but there was a quiver in his voice, and a thrill through his whole frame that showed his mother that it was very sore with him, and she hastened to let him subside into a chair while she asked if it was far to the end of the canto, and as Babie was past reading, she took the book and finished it herself. Nobody had much notion of the sense, but the cadence was soothing, and all were composed by the time the prayer-bell rang.

“Come to my dressing-room presently,” she said to Lucas, as he lighted her candle for her.

Just as she had gone up stairs, the front door opened to admit Bobus.

“Oh, you are here!” was his salutation. “So you have done for yourself?”

“How do you know?”

“Your colonel wrote to my uncle. He was at the dinner, and made me come back with him to ask if I knew about it.”

“How does he take it?”

“He will probably fall on you, as he did on me to-night, calling it all my fault.”

“As how?”

“For looking out for myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy, but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don’t plume yourself. You’ll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him. Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn’t improve his temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my mother. What are your plans?”

“Rotifer, as before.”

“Chacun a son gout,” said Bobus, shrugging his shoulders.

“I should have thought you would respect curing more than killing.”

“If there were not a whole bag of stones about your neck.”

“Magnets,” said Jock.

“That’s just it. All the heavier.”

The brothers went upstairs together, and Jock was kept waiting a little while in the dressing-room, till his mother came out, shutting the door on Barbara.

“The poor Infanta!” she said. “She is breaking her foolish little heart over something she said to you. ‘As bad as the woman in the “Black Brunswicker,”’ she says, only she didn’t mean it. Was it so, Jock?”

“I had pretty well made up my mind before. Mother, are you vexed that I did not tell you?”

“You spared me much. Your uncle would never have consented. But oh, Jock! I’m not a Spartan mother. My heart will bound.”

“My colonel said it was right,” said Jock; “so did Cameron, and even Sir James, though he did not like it.”

“With such an array of old soldiers on our side we may let the young ladies rage,” said his mother, but she checked her mirth on seeing how far from a joke their indignation was to her son.

He turned and looked into the fire as he said—

“When did Sydney write that letter, mother?”

“Before meeting you at the wedding. She has not written since.”

“I thought not,” muttered Jock, his brow against the mantel-piece.

“No, but Mrs. Evelyn has written such a nice letter, just like herself, though I did not understand it then. I think she was doubtful how much I knew, for she only said how thankworthy it must be to have such a self-sacrificing spirit among my sons, moral courage, in fact, of the highest kind, and how those who were lavish of strong words in their first disappointment would be wiser by-and-by. I was puzzled then. But oh, my dear, this must have been very grievous to you!”

“I couldn’t go back, but I did not know how it would be,” said Jock, in a choked voice, collapsing at last, and hiding his face on his mother’s lap.

“My Jock, I am so sorry! I wish it were not too late. I could not have let you give up so much,” and she fondled his head. “I did not think I had been so weak as to let you see.”

“No, mother. It was not that you were so weak, but that you were so brave. Besides, I ought to take the brunt of it. I ruined you all by being the prime mover with that assification, and I was the cause of Armie’s illness too. I ought to take my share. If ever I can be any good to any one again,” he added, in a dejected tone.

“Good!—unspeakably good! This is my first bright spot of light through the wood. If it were but bright to you! I am afraid they have been very unkind.”

“Not unkind. She couldn’t be that, but I’ve shocked and disappointed her,” and his head dropped again.

“What, in not being a hero? My dear, you are a true hero in the eyes of us old mothers; but I am afraid that is poor comfort. My Jock, does it go so deep as that? Giving up all that for me! O my boy!”

“It is nonsense to talk of giving up,” said Jock, rousing himself to a common-sense view. “What chance had I of her if I had gone to India ten times over?” but the wave of grief broke over him again. “She would have believed in me, and, may be, have waited.”

“She will believe in you again.”

“No, I’m below her.”

“My poor boy, I didn’t know it had come to this. Do you mean that anything had ever passed between you?”

“No, but it was all the same. Even Evelyn implied it, when he said they must give me up, if we took such different lines.”

“Cecil too! Foolish fellow! Jock, don’t care about such absurdity. They are not worth it.”

“They’ve been the best of my life,” said poor Jock, but he stood up, shook himself, and said, “A nice way this of helping you! I didn’t think I was such a fool. But it is over now. I’ll buckle to, and do my best.”

“My brave boy!” and as the thought of the Magnum Bonum darted into her mind, she said, “You may have greater achievements than are marked by Victoria Crosses, and Sydney herself may own it.”

And Jock went to bed, cheered in spite of himself by his mother’s pleasure, and by Mrs. Evelyn’s letter, which she allowed him to take away with him.

Colonel Brownlow was not so much distressed by Lucas’s retirement as had been apprehended. He knew the life of a soldier with small means too well to recommend it. The staff appointment, he said, might mean anything or nothing, and could only last a short time unless Lucas had extraordinary opportunities. It might be as well, he was very like his grandfather, poor John Allen, and might have had his history over again.

The likeness was a new idea to Caroline and a great pleasure to her. Indeed, she seemed to Armine unfeelingly joyous, as she accepted Mr. Ogilvie’s invitation, and hurried her preparations. There was a bare possibility of a return in the spring, which prevented final farewells, and softened partings a little. The person who showed most grief of all was Mrs. Robert Brownlow, who, glad as she must have been to be free of Bobus and able to recall her daughter, wept over her sister-in-law as if she had been going into the workhouse, with tears partly penitent for the involuntary ingratitude with which past kindness had been received. She was, as Babie said, much more sorry for Mother Carey than Mother Carey for herself.

Yet the relief was all the greater that it was plain that Esther was not happy in her banishment; and that General Hood thought her visit had lasted long enough, while the matter was complicated at home by her sister Eleanor’s undisguised sympathy with her cousin Bobus, for whom she would have sent messages if her mother had not, with some difficulty exacted a promise never to allude to him in her letters.