Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood. Yonge Charlotte Mary
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but it was impossible not to make fun at home over the black tokens on Allen’s shirt-collar. His brothers and sisters laughed excessively, and Janet twitted him with his Undine, till he, contrary to his wont, grew so cross as to make his mother recollect that he was still a suffering patient, and insist on his lying quiet on the sofa, while she banished every one, and read Tennyson to him. Poetry, read aloud by her, was Allen’s greatest delight, but not often enjoyed, as Bobus and Jock scouted it, and Janet was getting too strong-minded and used to break in with inopportune, criticisms.
So to have Mother Carey to read “Elaine” undisturbed was as great an indulgence as Allen could well have, but she had not gone far before he broke out—
“Mother, please, I wish you could do something for that girl. She really is a lady.”
“So it appears,” said Carey, much disposed to laugh.
“Now, mother, don’t be tiresome. You have more sense than Janet. Her father was Vice-consul at Sant Ildefonso, one of the Antilles.”
“But, my dear, I am afraid that is not quite so grand as it sounds—”
“Hush, mother. He was nephew to Mr. Barnes, and they lived out of the town in a perfect paradise of a place, looking out into the bay. Mr. Gould says he can hardly believe he ever saw anything so gorgeously beautiful, and there this poor little Elvira de Menella lived like a princess with a court of black slaves. Just fancy what it must be to her to come to that farm, an orphan too, with an aunt who can’t understand a creature like that.”
“Poor child.”
“Then she can’t get any education. Old Gould is a sensible man, who says any school he could afford would only turn her out a sham, and he means, when Mary and Kate are a little older, to get some sort of governess for the three. But, mother, couldn’t you just let him bring her in on market days and teach her a little?”
“My dear boy, what would your aunt do? We can’t have sods of mud flying about the house.”
“Now, mother, you know better! You could make anything of her, you know you could! And what a model she would make! Think what a poor little desolate thing she is. You always have a fellow feeling for orphans, and we do owe those people a great deal of gratitude.”
“Allen, you special pleader, it really will not do! If I had not undertaken Essie and Ellie, I might think about it, but I promised your aunt not to have any other pupils.”
Allen bothered Essie and Ellie, but was forced to acquiesce, which was fortunate, for when on the last day of the holidays it was found that he had walked to River Hollow to take leave of the Goulds, his aunt administered to his mother a serious warning on the dangers of allowing him to become intimate there.
Caroline tingled all over during the discourse, and at last jumped up, exclaiming—
“My dear Ellen, half the harm in the world is done by making a fuss. Things don’t die half so hard when they die a natural death.”
Ellen knew Carey thought she had said something very clever, but was all the more unconvinced.
CHAPTER XII. – KING MIDAS
When I did him at this advantage take, An ass’s nowl I fixed upon his head.
In the early spring an unlooked-for obstacle arose to all wanderings in the Belforest woods. The owner returned and closed the gates. From time that seemed immemorial, the inhabitants of Kenminster had disported themselves there as if the grounds had been kept up for their sole behoof, and their indignation at the monopoly knew no bounds.
Nobody saw Mr. Barnes save his doctor, whose carriage was the only one admitted within the lodge gates, intending visitors being there informed that Mr. Barnes was too unwell to be disturbed.
Mrs. “Folly” Brownlow’s aberrations lost their interest in the Coffinkey world beside the mystery of Belforest. Opinions varied as to his being a miser, or a lunatic, a prey to conscience, disease, or deformity; and reports were so diverse, that at the “Folly” a journal was kept of them, with their dates, as a matter of curiosity—their authorities marked:—
March 4th.—Mr. Barnes eats nothing but fresh turtle. Brings them down in tubs alive and flapping. Mrs. Coffinkey’s Jane heard them cooing at the station. Gives his cook three hundred pounds per annum.
5th.—Mr. Barnes so miserly, that he turned away the housemaid for burning candles eight to the pound. (H. S. H.)
6th.—Mr. B. keeps a bloodhound trained to hunt Indians, and has six pounds of prime beef steaks for it every day. (Emma.)
8th.—Mr. B.‘s library is decorated with a string of human ears, the clippings of his slaves in “the Indies.” (Nurse.)
12th.—Mr. B. whipped a little black boy to death, and is so haunted by remorse, that he can’t sleep without wax-candles burning all round him. (Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.)
14th.—Mr. Barnes’s income is five hundred thousand pounds, and he does not live at the rate of two hundred pounds. (Col. Brownlow.)
l5th.—He has turned off all his gardeners, and the place will be desolation. (H. S. H.)
16th.—He did turn off one gardener’s boy for staring at him when he was being wheeled about in his bath-chair. (Alfred Richards.)
17th.—He threw a stone, which cut the boy’s head open, and he lies at the hospital in a dangerous state. (Emma.)
18th.—Mr. Barnes was crossed in love when he was a young man by one Miss Anne Thorpe, and has never been the same man since, but has hated all society. (Query: Is this a version of being a misanthrope?)
19th.—He is a most unhappy man, who has sacrificed all family affections and all humanity to gold, and whose conscience will not let him rest. He is worn to a shadow, and is at war with mankind. In fine, he is a lesson to weak human nature. (Mrs. Rigby.)
22nd.—All his toilet apparatus is of “virgin gold;” he lets nothing else touch him. (Jessie.)
“Exactly like King Midas.” (Babie.)
The exclusion from the grounds was a serious grievance, entailing much loss of time and hindrance to the many who had profited by the private roads. The Sunday promenade was a great deprivation; nurses and children were cut off from grass and shade, and Mother Carey and her brood from all the delights of the enchanted ground.
She could bear the loss better than in that first wild restlessness, which only free nature could allay. She had made her occupations, and knew of other haunts, though many a longing eye was cast at the sweet green wilderness, and many regrets spent on the rambles, the sketches, the plants, and the creatures that had seemed the certain entertainment of the summer.
To one class of the population the prohibition only gave greater zest—namely, the boys. Should there be birds’ nests in Belforest unscathed by the youth of St. Kenelm’s? What were notice-boards, palings, or walls to boys with arms and legs ready to defy even the celebrated man-traps of Ellangowan, “which, if a man goes in, they will break a horse’s leg?” The terrific bloodhound alarmed a few till his existence was denied by Alfred Richards, the agent’s son; and dodging the keepers was a new and exciting sport. At first, these men were not solicitous for captures, but their negligence was so often detected, that they began to believe that their master kept telescopes that could penetrate through trees, and their vigilance increased.
Bobus, in quest of green hellebore, got off with a warning; but a week later, Robin and Jock were inspecting the heronry, when they caught sight of a keeper, and dashed off to find themselves running into the jaws of another. Swift as lightning, Jock sprung up into an ivied ash; but the less ready Bob was caught by the leg as he mounted, and pulled down again, while his captor shouted, “If there’s any more of you young varmint up yonder, you’d best come down before I fires up into the hoivy.”
He made a click and pointed