Beechcroft at Rockstone

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Then came a whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they
actually included 'poor White' and his family, Gillian was angered
and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come
in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be delighted to see
him.

'What would Lady Rotherwood think of the liberty?' the displeased
mood whispered to Gillian.

But Lady Rotherwood, presiding over her pretty Worcester tea-set, was
quite ready to welcome any of the Merrifield friends. There were
various people in the room besides Lady Merrifield and Mysie, who had
just come in. There was the Admiral talking politics with Lord
Rotherwood, and there was Clement Underwood, who had come with Harry
from the city, and Bessie discussing with them boys' guilds and their
amusements.

Gillian felt frantic. Would no one cast a thought on Alexis in
prison? If he had been to be hanged the next day, her secret
annoyance at their indifference to his fate could not have been
worse.

And yet at the first opportunity Harry brought Mr. Underwood to talk
to her about his choir-boys, and to listen to her account of the 7th
Standard boy, a member of the most musical choir in Rockquay, and the
highest of the high.

'I hope not cockiest of the cocky,' said Mr. Underwood, smiling.
'Our experience is that superlatives may often be so translated.'

'I don't think poor Theodore is cocky,' said Gillian; 'the Whites
have always been so bullied and sat upon.'

'Is his name Theodore?' asked Mr. Underwood, as if he liked the name,
which Gillian remembered to have seen on a cross at Vale Leston.

'Being sat upon is hardly the best lesson in humility,' said Harry.

'There's apt to be a reaction,' said Mr. Underwood; 'but the crack
voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know
too well. I was the veriest young prig myself under those
circumstances!'

'Don't be too hard on cockiness,' said Lord Rotherwood, who had come
up to them, 'there must be consciousness of powers. How are you to
fly, if you mustn't flap your wings and crow a little?'

'On a les defauts de ses qualites,' put in Lady Merrifield.

'Yes,' added Mr. Underwood. 'It is quite true that needful self-
assertion and originality, and sense of the evils around---'

'Which the old folk have outgrown and got used to,' said Lord
Rotherwood.

'May be condemned as conceit,' concluded Mr. Underwood.

'Ay, exactly as Eliab knew David's pride and the naughtiness of his
heart,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'If you won't fight your giant
yourself, you've no business to condemn those who feel it in them to
go at him.'

'Ah! we have got to the condemnation of others, instead of the
exaltation of self,' said Lady Merrifield.

'It is better to cultivate humility in one's self than other people,
eh?' said the Marquis, and his cousin thought, though she did not
say, that he was really the most humble and unself-conscious man she
had ever known. What she did say was, 'It is a plant that grows best
uncultivated.'

'And if you have it not by happy nature, what then?' said Clement
Underwood.

'Then I suppose you must plant it, and there will be plenty of tears
of repentance to water it,' returned she.

'Thank you,' said Clement. 'That is an idea to work upon.'

'All very fine!' sighed Gillian to Mysie, 'but oh, how about Alexis
in prison! There's papa, now he has got rid of Fangs, actually going
to walk off with Uncle Sam, and mamma has let Lady Rotherwood get
hold of her. Will no-body care for anybody?'

'I think I would trust papa,' said Mysie.

He was not long gone, and when he came back he said, 'You may give me
that letter, Gillian. I posted a card to tell your aunt she should
hear to-morrow.'

All that Gillian could say to her mother in private that evening
consisted of, 'Oh, mamma, mamma,' but the answer was, 'I have heard
about it from papa, my dear; I am glad you told him. He is thinking
what to do. Be patient.'

Externally, awe and good manners forced Gillian to behave herself;
but internally she was so far from patient, and had so many bitter
feelings of indignation, that she felt deeply rebuked when she came
down next morning to find her father hurrying through his breakfast,
with a cab ordered to convey him to the station, on his way to see
what could be done for Alexis White.

That day Gillian had her confidential talk with her mother---a talk
that she never forgot, trying to dig to the roots of her failures in
a manner that only the true mother-confessor of her own child can
perhaps have patience and skill for, and that only when she has
studied the creature from babyhood. The concatenation, ending (if it
was so to end) in the committal to Avoncester Jail, and beginning
with the interview over the rails, had to be traced link by link, and
was almost as long as 'the house that Jack built.'

'And now I see,' said Gillian, 'that it all came of a nasty sort of
antagonism to Aunt Jane. I never guessed how like I was to Dolores,
and I thought her so bad. But if I had only trusted Aunt Jane, and
had no secrets, she would have helped me in it all, I know now, and
never have brought the Whites into trouble.'

'Yes,' said Lady Merrifield; 'perhaps I should have warned you a
little more, but I went off in such a hurry that I had no time to
think. You children are all very loyal to us ourselves; but I
suppose you are all rather infected by the modern spirit, that
criticises when it ought to submit to authorities.'

'But how can one help seeing what is amiss? As some review says, how
respect what does not make itself respectable? You know I don't mean
that for my aunts. I have learnt now what Aunt Jane really is---how
very kind and wise and clever and forgiving---but I was naughty enough
to think her at first---'

'Well, what? Don't be afraid.'

'Then I did think she was fidgety and worrying---always at one, and
wanting to poke her nose into everything.'

'Poor Aunt Jane! Those are the faults of her girlhood, which she has
been struggling against all her life!'

'But in your time, mamma, would such difficulties really not have
been seen---I mean, if she had been actually what I thought her?'

'I think the difference was that no faults of the elders were dwelt
upon by a loyal temper. To find fault was thought so wrong that the
defects were scarcely seen, and were concealed from ourselves as well
as others. It would scarcely, I suppose, be possible to go back to
that unquestioning state, now the temper of the times is changed; but
I belong enough to the older days to believe that the true safety is
in submission in the spirit as well as the letter.'

'I am sure I should have found it so,' said Gillian. 'And oh! I
hope, now that papa is come, the Whites may be spared any more of the
troubles I have brought on them.'

'We will pray that it may be so.' said her mother.

CHAPTER XIX. THE KNIGHT AND THE DRAGON

A telegram had been received in the morning, which kept Valetta and
Fergus on the qui vive all day. Valetta was an unspeakable worry to
the patient Miss Vincent, and Fergus arranged his fossils and
minerals.

Both children flew out to meet their father at the gate, but words
failed them as he came into the house, greeted the aunts, and sat
down with Fergus on his knee, and Valetta encircled by his arm.

'Yes, Lilias is quite well, very busy and happy---with her first
instalment of children.'

'I am so thankful that you are come,' said Adeline. 'Jane ventured
to augur that you would, but I thought it too much to hope for.'

'There was no alternative,' said Sir Jasper.

'I infer that you halted at Avoncester.'

'I did so; I saw the poor boy.'

'What a comfort for his sister!'

'Poor fellow! Mine was the first friendly face he had seen, and he
was almost overcome by it'---and the strong face quivered with emotion
at the recollection of the boy's gratitude.

'He is a nice fellow,' said Jane. 'I am glad you have seen him, for
neither Mr. White nor Rotherwood can believe that he is not utterly
foolish, if not worse.'

'A boy may do foolish things without being a fool,' said Sir Jasper.
'Not that this one is such another as his father. I wish he were.'

'I suppose he has more of the student scholarly nature.'

'Yes. The enlistment, which was the making of his father, was a sort
of moral suicide in him. I got him to tell me all about it, and I
find that the idea of the inquest, and of having to mention you, you
monkey, drove him frantic, and the dismissal completed the business.'

'I told them about it,' said Fergus.

'Quite right, my boy; the pity was that he did not trust to your
honour, but he seems to have worked himself into the state of mind
when young men run amuck. I saw his colonel, Lydiard, and the
captain and sergeant of his company, who had from the first seen that
he was a man of a higher class under a cloud, and had expected
further inquiry, though, even from the little that had been seen of
him, there was a readiness to take his word. As the sergeant said,
he was not the common sort of runaway clerk, and it was a thousand
pities that he must go to the civil power---in which I am disposed to
agree. What sort of man is the cousin at the marble works?'

'A regular beast,' murmured Fergus.

'I think,' said Jane, 'that he means to be good and upright.'

'More than means,' said Ada, 'but he is cautious, and says he has
been so often deceived.'

'As far as I can understand,' said Jane, 'there was originally
desperate enmity between him and his cousin.'

'He forgave entirely,' said Ada; 'and he really has done a great deal
for the family, who own that they have no claim upon him.'

'Yes,' said Jane, 'but from a distance, with no personal knowledge,
and a contempt for the foreign mother, and the pretensions to
gentility. He would have been far kinder if his cousin had remained
a sergeant.'

'He only wished to try them,' said Adeline, 'and he always meant to
come and see about them; besides, that eldest son has been begging of
him on false pretences all along.'

'That I can believe,' said Sir Jasper. 'I remember his father's
distress at his untruth in the regimental school, and his foolish
mother shielding him. No doubt he might do enough to cause distrust
of his family; but has Mr. White actually never gone near them, as
Gillian told me?'

'Excepting once walking Maura home,' said Jane, 'no; but I ascribe
all that to the partner, Mr. Stebbing, who has had it all his own way
here, and seems to me to have systematically kept Alexis down to
unnecessarily distasteful drudgery. Kalliope's talent gave her a
place; but young Stebbing's pursuit of her, though entirely
unrequited, has roused his mother's bitter enmity, and there are all
manner of stories afloat. I believe I could disprove every one of
them; but together they have set Mr. White against her, and he cannot
see her in her office, as her mother is too ill to be left. I do
believe that if the case against Alexis is discharged, they will
think she has the money.'

'Stebbing said Maura changed a five-pound note,' put in Fergus; 'and
when I told him to shut up, for it was all bosh, he punched me.'

I hope Richard sent it' said Ada, 'but you see the sort of report
that is continually before Mr. White---not that I think he believes
half, or is satisfied--with the Stebbings.'

'I am sure he is not with Frank Stebbing,' said Jane. 'I do think
and hope that he is only holding off in order to judge; and I think
your coming may have a great effect upon him, Jasper.'

The Rotherwoods had requested Sir Jasper to use their apartments at
the hotel, and he went thither to dress, being received, as he said,
by little Lady Phyllis with much grace and simplicity.

The evening passed brightly, and when the children were gone to bed,
their father said rather anxiously that he feared the aunts had had a
troublesome charge hastily thrust on them.

'We enjoyed it very much,' said Adeline politely.

'We were thankful to have a chance of knowing the young people,'
added Jane. 'I am only glad you did not come home at Christmas, when
I was not happy about the two girls.'

'Yes, Valetta got into trouble and wrote a piteous little letter of
confession about copying.'

'Yes, but you need not be uneasy about that; it was one of those
lapses that teach women without any serious loss. She did not know
what she was about, and she told no falsehoods; indeed, each one of
your children has been perfectly truthful throughout.'

'That is the great point, after all. Lilias could hardly fail to
make her children true.'

'Fergus is really an excellent little boy, and Gillian---poor Gillian-
--I think she really did want more experience, and was only too
innocent.'

'That is what you really think,' said the father anxiously.

'Yes, I do,' said Jane. 'If she had been a fast girl, she would have
been on her guard against the awkward situation, and have kept out of
this mess; but very likely would have run into a worse one.'

'I do not think that her elder sisters would have done like her.'

'Perhaps not; but they were living in your regimental world at the
age when her schoolroom life was going on. I think you have every
reason to be satisfied with her tone of mind. As you said of the
boy, a person may commit an imprudence without being imprudent.'

'I quite agree to that,' he said, 'and, indeed, I see that you have
managed her most wisely, and obtained her affection and gratitude, as
indeed you have mine!' he added, with a tone in his voice that
touched Jane to the core of her heart.

'I never heard anything like it before,' she said to her sister over
their fire at night, with a dew of pleasure in her eyes.

'I never liked Jasper so well before. He is infinitely pleasanter
and more amiable. Do you remember our first visit? No, it was not
you who went with me, it was Emily. I am sure he felt bound to be on
guard all the time against any young officer's attentions to his poor
little sister-in-law,' said Ada, with her Maid-of-Athens look. 'The
smallest approach brought those hawk's eyes of his like a dart right
through one's backbone. It all came back to me to-night, and the way
he used to set poor Lily to scold me.'

'So that you rejoiced to be grown old. I beg your pardon, but I did.
My experience was when I went to help Lily pack for foreign service,
when I suppose my ferret look irritated him, for he snubbed me
extensively, and I am sure he rejoiced to carry his wife out of reach
of all the tribe. I dare say I richly deserved it, but I hope we are
all "mellered down," as Wat Greenwood used to say of his brewery for
the pigs.'

'My dear, what a comparison!'

'Redolent of the Old Court, and of Lily, waiting for her swan's nest
among the reeds, till her stately warrior came, and made her day
dreams earnest in a way that falls to the lot of few. I don't think
his severity ever dismayed her for a moment, there was always such
sweetness in it.

'True knight and lady! Yes. He is grown handsomer than ever, too!'

'I hope he will get those poor children out of their hobble! It is
chivalrous enough of him to come down about it, in the midst of all
his business in London.'

Sir Jasper started the next morning with Fergus on his way to school,
getting on the road a good deal of information, mingled together
about forms and strata, cricket and geology. Leaving his little son
at Mrs. Edgar's door, he proceeded to Ivinghoe Terrace, where he
waited long at the blistered door of the dilapidated house before the
little maid informed him that Mr. Richard was gone out, and missus
was so ill that she didn't know as Miss White could see nobody; but
she took his card and invited him to walk into the parlour, where the
breakfast things were just left.

Down came Kalliope, with a wan face and eyes worn with sleeplessness,
but a light of hope and gratitude flashing over her features as she
met the kind eyes, and felt the firm hand of her father's colonel, a
sort of king in the eyes of all Royal Wardours.

'My poor child,' he said gently, 'I am come to see if I can help
you.'

'Oh! so good of you,' and she squeezed his hand tightly, in the
effort perhaps not to give way.

'I fear your mother is very ill.'

'Very ill,' said Kalliope. 'Richard came last night, and he let her
know what we had kept from her; but she is calmer now.'

'Then your brother Richard is here.'

'Yes; he is gone up to Mr. White's.'

'He is in a solicitor's office, I think. Will he be able to
undertake the case?'

'Oh no, no'---the white cheek flushed, and the hand trembled. 'There
is a Leeds family here, and he is afraid of their finding out that he
has any connection with this matter. He says it would be ruin to his
prospects.'

'Then we must do our best without him,' Sir Jasper said in a fatherly
voice, inexpressively comforting to the desolate wounded spirit. 'I
will not keep you long from your mother, but will you answer me a few
questions? Your brother tells me---'

She looked up almost radiantly, 'You have seen him?'

'Yes. I saw him yesterday,' and as she gazed as if the news were
water to a thirsty soul---'he sent his love, and begged his mother and
you to forgive the distress his precipitancy has caused. I did not
think him looking ill; indeed, I think the quiet of his cell is
almost a rest to him, as he makes sure that he can clear himself.'

'Oh, Sir Jasper! how can we ever be grateful enough!'

'Never mind that now, only tell me what is needful, for time is
short. Your brother sent these notes in their own envelope, he
says.'

'Yes, a very dirty one. I did not open it or see them, but enclosed
it in one of my own, and sent it by my youngest brother, Petros.'

'How was yours addressed?'

'Francis Stebbing, Esq., Marble Works; and I put in a note in
explanation.'

'Is the son's name likewise Francis?'

'Francis James.'

'Petros delivered it?'

'Yes, certainly.'

Here they were interrupted by Maura's stealing timidly in with the
message that poor mamma had heard that Sir Jasper was here, and would
he be so very good as to come up for one minute and speak to her.

'It is asking a great deal,' said Kalliope, 'but it would be very
kind, and it might ease her mind.'

He was taken to the poor little bedroom full of oppressive
atmosphere, though the window was open to relieve the labouring
breath. It seemed absolutely filled with the enormous figure of the
poor dropsical woman with white ghastly face, sitting pillowed up,
incapable of lying down.

'Oh, so good! so angelic!' she gasped.

'I am sorry to see you so ill, Mrs. White.'

'Ah! 'tis dying I am, Colonel Merrifield---begging your pardon, but
the sight of you brings back the times when my poor captain was
living, and I was the happy woman. 'Tis the thought of my poor
orphans that is vexing me, leaving them as I am in a strange land
where their own flesh and blood is unnatural to them,' she cried,
trying to clasp her swollen hands, in the excitement that brought out
the Irish substructure of her nature. 'Ah, Colonel dear, you'll bear
in mind their father that would have died for you, and be good to
them.'

'Indeed, I hope to do what I can for them.'

'They are good children, Sir Jasper, all of them, even the poor boy
that is in trouble out of the very warmth of his heart; but 'tis
Richard who would be the credit to you, if you would lend him the
helping hand. Where is the boy, Kally?'

'He is gone to call on Mr. White.'

'Ah! and you'll say a good word for him with his cousin,' she
pleaded, 'and say how 'tis no discredit to him if things are laid on
his poor brother that he never did.'

The poor woman was evidently more anxious to bespeak patronage for
her first-born, the pride and darling of her heart, than for those
who might be thought to need it more, but she became confused and
agitated when she thought of Alexis, declaring that the poor boy
might have been hasty, and have disgraced himself, but it was hard,
very hard, if they swore away his liberty, and she never saw him
more, and she broke into distressing sobs. Sir Jasper, in a decided
voice, assured her that he expected with confidence that her son
would be freed the next day, and able to come to see her.

'It's the blessing of a dying mother will be on you, Colonel dear!
Oh! bring him back, that his mother's eyes may rest on the boy that
has always been dutiful. No---no, Dick, I tell you 'tis no disgrace
to wear the coat his father wore.' Wandering was beginning, and she
was in no condition for Kalliope to leave her. The communicative
Maura, who went downstairs with him, said that Richard was so angry
about Alexis that it had upset poor mamma sadly. And could Alexis
come?' she asked, 'even when he is cleared?'

'I will ask for furlough for him.'

'Oh! thank you---that would do mamma more good than anything. She is
so fond of Richard, he is her favourite, but Alexis is the real help
and comfort.'

'I can quite believe so. And now will you tell me where I shall find
your brother who took the letter, Peter or Petros?'

'Petros is his name, but the boys call him Peter. He is at school---
the Bellevue National School---up that street.'

Repairing to that imposing building, Sir Jasper knocked at the door,
and sent in his card by an astonished pupil-teacher with a request to
the master that he might speak to Petros White, waiting in the porch
till a handsome little fellow appeared, stouter, rosier, and more
English looking than the others of his family, but very dusty, and
rather scared.

'You don't remember me,' said Sir Jasper, 'but I was your father's
colonel, and I want to find some way of helping your brother. Your
sister tells me she gave you a letter to carry to Mr. Stebbing.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Where did you take it?'

'To his house, Carrara.'

'Was it not directed to the Marble Works?'

'Yes, but---'

'But what? Speak out, my man.'

'At the gate Blake, the porter, was very savage, and would not let us
in. He said he would have no boys loafing about, we had done harm
enough for one while, and he would set his dog at us.'

'Then you did not give him the letter?'

'No. I wouldn't after the way he pitched into me. I didn't know if
he would give it. And he wouldn't hear a word, so we went up to
Rockstone to the house.'

'Whom did you give it to there?'

'I dropped it into the slit in the door.'

'You only told your sister that you delivered it.'

'Yes, sir. Theodore said I must not tell sister; it would only vex
her more to hear how every one pitches into us, right and left,' he
said, with trembling lip.

'Is Theodore your next brother?'

'Yes sir.'

'Was he with you?'

'No; it was Sydney Grove.'

'Is he here? Or---Did any one else see you leave the letter?'

'Mr. Stebbing's son---the young one, George, was in the drive and
slanged us for not going to the back door.'

'That is important. Thank you, my boy. Give my---my compliments to
your master, and ask him to be kind enough to spare this Sydney Grove
to me for a few moments.'

This proved to be an amphibious-looking boy, older and rougher than
Petros, and evidently his friend and champion. He was much less shy,
and spoke out boldly, saying how he had gone with little Peter, and
the porter had rowed them downright shameful, but it was nothing to
that there young Stebbing ordering them out of the grounds for a
couple of beastly cads, after no good. He (Grove) had a good mind to
ha' give 'un a good warming, only 'twas school time, and they was
late as it was. Everybody was down upon the Whites, and it was a
shame when they hadn't done nothing, and he didn't see as they was
stuck up, not he.

Sir Jasper made a note of Master Grove's residence, and requested an
interview with the master, from whom he obtained an excellent
character of both the Whites, especially Theodore. The master
lamented that this affair of their brother should have given a handle
against them, for he wanted the services of the elder one as a
monitor, eventually as a pupil-teacher, but did not know whether the
choice would be advisable under the present circumstances. The boys'
superiority made them unpopular, and excited jealousy among a certain
set, though they were perfectly inoffensive, and they had much to go
through in consequence of the suspicion that had fallen on their
brother. Petros and Sydney should have leave from school whenever
their testimony was wanted.

As Sir Jasper walked down the street, his elder sister-in-law emerged
from a tamarisk-flanked gateway. 'This is our new abode, Jasper,'
she said. 'Come in and see what you think of it! Well, have you had
any success?'

He explained how the letter could be traced to Mr. Stebbing's house,
and then consulted her whether to let all come out at the examination
before the magistrates, or to induce the Stebbings to drop the
prosecution.

'It would serve them right if it all came out in public,' she said.

'But would it be well?'

'One must not be vindictive! And to drag poor Kalliope to Avoncester
would be a dreadful business in her mother's state. Besides, Frank
Stebbing is young, and it may be fair to give them a chance of
hushing it up. I ought to be satisfied with clearing Alexis.'

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