THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

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There was one who would have smoothed matters far better than any,
who, like Ermine, took her weapons from the armoury of good sense;
but that person was entirely unconscious how the incumbent regarded
her soft eyes, meek pensiveness, motherly sweetness, and, above all,
the refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading
station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman
was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as
to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details
had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself
how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last
person to guess. She viewed him, like all else outside her nursery,
as something out of the focus of her eye; her instinct regarded her
clergyman as necessarily good and worthy, and her ear heard Rachel
railing at him; it sounded hard, but it was a pity Rachel should be
vexed and interfered with. In fact, she never thought of the matter
at all; it was only part of that outer kind of dreamy stage-play at
Avonmouth, in which she let herself he moved about at her cousin's
bidding. One part of her life had passed away from her, and what
remained to her was among her children; her interests and
intelligence seemed contracted to Conrade's horizon, and as to
everything else, she was subdued, gentle, obedient, but slow and
obtuse.

Yet, little as he knew it, Mr. Touchett might have even asserted his
authority in a still more trying manner. If the gentle little widow
had not cast a halo round her relatives, he could have preached that
sermon upon the home-keeping duties of women, or have been too much
offended to accept any service from the Curtis family; and he could
have done without them, for he had a wide middle-class popularity;
his manners with the second-rate society, in which he had been bred,
were just sufficiently superior and flattering to recommend all his
best points, and he obtained plenty of subscriptions from visitors,
and of co-operation from inhabitants. Many a young lady was in a
flutter at the approach of the spruce little figure in black, and
so many volunteers were there for parish work, that districts and
classes were divided and subdivided, till it sometimes seemed as if
the only difficulty was to find poor people enough who would submit
to serve as the corpus vile for their charitable treatment.

For it was not a really poor population. The men were seafaring, the
women lacemaking, and just well enough off to make dissent doubly
attractive as an escape from some of the interfering almsgiving of
the place. Over-visiting, criticism of dress, and inquisitorial
examinations had made more than one Primitive Methodist, and no
severe distress had been so recent as to render the women tolerant of
troublesome weekly inspections. The Curtis sisters were, however,
regarded as an exception; they were viewed as real gentlefolks, not
only by their own tenants, but by all who were conscious of their
hereditary claims to respect; they did not care whether hair were
long or short, and their benefits were more substantial and reliable
than could be looked for from the casual visitors and petty gentry
around, so that sundry houses that were forbidden ground to district
visitors, were ready to grant them a welcome.

One of these belonged to the most able lacemaker in the place, a
hard-working woman, who kept seven little pupils in a sort of
cupboard under the staircase, with a window into the back garden,
"because," said she, "they did no work if they looked out into the
front, there were so many gapsies;" these gapsies consisting of the
very scanty traffic of the further end of Mackarel Lane. For ten
hours a day did these children work in a space just wide enough for
them to sit, with the two least under the slope of the stairs,
permitted no distraction from their bobbins, but invaded by their
mistress on the faintest sound of tongues. Into this hotbed of
sprigs was admitted a child who had been a special favourite at
school, an orphan niece of the head of the establishment. The two
brothers had been lost together at sea; and while the one widow
became noted for her lace, the other, a stranger to the art, had
maintained herself by small millinery, and had not sacrificed her
little girl to the Moloch of lace, but had kept her at school to a
later age than usual in the place. But the mother died, and the
orphan was at once adopted by the aunt, with the resolve to act the
truly kind part by her, and break her in to lacemaking. That
determination was a great blow to the school visitors; the girls were
in general so young, or so stupefied with their work, that an
intelligent girl like Lovedy Kelland was no small treasure to them;
there were designs of making her a pupil teacher in a few years, and
offers and remonstrances rained in upon her aunt. But they had no
effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had been spoilt by
learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory scholar; she was
too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind was too much
awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had not been
brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt her
thread, and Mrs. Kelland decided that "she'd never get her bread till
she was broke of her buke;" which breaking was attempted by a summary
pawning of all poor Lovedy's reward books. The poor child confided
her loss to her young lady teacher at the Sunday school; the young
lady, being new, young, and inflammable, reproached Mrs. Kelland with
dishonesty and tyranny to the orphan, and in return was nearly
frightened out of her wits by such a scolding as only such a woman as
the lace mistress could deliver. Then Mr. Touchett tried his hand,
and though he did not meet with quite so much violence, all he heard
was that she had "given Lovedy the stick for being such a little tod
as to complain, when she knew the money for the bukes was put safe
away in her money-box. She was not going to the Sunday schule again,
not she, to tell stories against her best friends!" And when the
next district visitor came that way, the door was shut in her face,
with the tract thrown out at the opening, and an intimation in Mrs.
Kelland's shrill voice, that no more bukes were wanted; she got
plenty from Miss Curtis.

These bukes from Miss Curtis were sanatory tracts, which Rachel was
constantly bestowing, and which on Sundays Mrs. Kelland spelt
through, with her finger under the line, in happy ignorance whether
the subject were temporal or spiritual, and feeling herself in the
exemplary discharge of a Sunday duty. Moreover, old feudal feeling
made Rachel be unmolested when she came down twice a week, opened the
door of the blackhole under the stairs, and read aloud something
religious, something improving, and a bit of a story, following it up
by mental arithmetic and a lesson on objects, which seemed to Mrs.
Kelland the most arrant nonsense in the world, and to her well-broken
scholars was about as interesting as the humming of a blue-bottle
fly; but it was poor Lovedy's one enjoyment, though making such havoc
of her work that it was always expiated by extra hours, not on her
pillow, but at it.

These visits of Rachel were considered to encourage the Kelland
refractoriness, and it was officially intimated that it would be wise
to discontinue them, and that "it was thought better" to withdraw
from Mrs. Kelland all that direct patronage of her trade, by which
the ladies had enabled her to be in some degree independent of the
middle-men, who absorbed so much of the profit from the workers.
Grace and Rachel, sufficiently old inhabitants to remember the
terrible wreck that had left her a struggling widow, felt this a
hard, not to say a vindictive decision. They had long been a kind of
agents for disposing of her wares at a distance; and, feeling that
the woman had received provocation, Grace was not disposed to give
her up, while Rachel loudly averred that neither Mr. Touchett nor any
of his ladies had any right to interfere, and she should take no
notice.

"But," said Grace, "can we run counter to our clergyman's direct
wishes?"

"Yes, when he steps out of his province. My dear Grace, you grew up
in the days of curatolatry, but it won't do; men are fallible even
when they preach in a surplice, and you may be thankful to me that
you and Fanny are not both led along in a string in the train of
Mr. Touchett's devotees!"

"I wish I knew what was right to do," said Grace, quietly, and she
remained wishing it after Rachel had said a great deal more; but the
upshot of it was, that one day when Grace and Fanny were walking
together on the esplanade, they met Mr. Touchett, and Grace said to
him, "We have been thinking it over, and we thought, perhaps, you
would not wish us not to give any orders to Mrs. Kelland. I know she
has behaved very ill; but I don't see how she is to get on, and she
has this child on her hands."

"I know," said Mr. Touchett, "but really it was flagrant."

"Oh," said Lady Temple, gently, "I dare say she didn't mean it, and
you could not be hard on a widow."

"Well," said Mr. Touchett, "Miss Brown was very much put out, and--
and--it is a great pity about the child, but I never thought myself
that such strong measures would do any good."

"Then you will not object to her being employed?"

"No, not at all. From a distance, it is not the same thing as close
at home; it won't be an example."

"Thank you," said Grace; and "I am so glad," said Lady Temple; and
Mr. Touchett went on his way, lightened of his fear of having let his
zealous coadjutors oppress the hard-working, and far more brightened
by the sweet smile of requital, but all the time doubtful whether he
had been weak. As to the victory, Rachel only laughed, and said,
"If it made Grace more comfortable, it was well, except for that
acknowledgment of Mr. Touchett's jurisdiction."

A few days after, Rachel made her appearance in Mackerel Lane, and
announced her intention of consulting Ermine Williams under seal of
secrecy. "I have an essay that I wish you to judge of before I send
it to the 'Traveller.'"

"Indeed!" said Ermine, her colour rising. "Would it not be better--"

"Oh, I know what you mean, but don't scruple on that score. At my
age, with a mother like mine, it is simply to avoid teasing and
excitement that I am silent."

"I was going to say I was hardly a fair--"

"Because of your different opinions? But those go for nothing.
You are a worthy antagonist, and enter into my views as my mother
and sister cannot do, even while you oppose them."

"But I don't think I can help you, even if--"

"I don't want help; I only want you to judge of the composition.
In fact, I read it to you that I may hear it myself."

Ermine resigned herself.

"'Curatolatry is a species--'"

"I beg your pardon."

"Curatolatry. Ah! I thought that would attract attention."

"But I am afraid the scholars would fall foul of it."

"Why, have not they just made Mariolatry?"

"Yes; but they are very severe on hybrids between Latin and Greek."

"It is not worth while to boggle at trifles when one has an
expressive term," said Rachel; "if it turns into English, that is all
that is wanted."

"Would it not be rather a pity if it should turn into English? Might
it not be hard to brand with a contemptuous name what does more good
than harm?"

"That sickly mixture of flirtation and hero worship, with a religious
daub as a salve to the conscience."

"Laugh it down, and what do you leave? In Miss Austen's time silly
girls ran to balls after militiamen, now, if they run to schools and
charities more for the curate's sake than they quite know, is not the
alternative better?"

"It is greater humbug," said Rachel. "But I knew you would not
agree, at least beforehand, it is appreciation that I want."

Never did Madame de Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of
the Genius Phanor's tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd
as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian
academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of
the remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is
redeemed by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of
Truth being the author reading his own works. Ermine was thinking of
him all the time. She was under none of the constraint of Phanor's
auditors, though she carried a perpetual palace of truth about with
her; she would not have had either fears or compunctions in
criticising, if she could. The paper was in the essay style, between
argument and sarcasm, something after the model of the Invalid's
Letters; but it was scarcely lightly touched enough, the irony was
wormwood, the gravity heavy and sententious, and where there was a
just thought or happy hit, it seemed to travel in a road-waggon, and
be lost in the rumbling of the wheels. Ermine did not restrain a
smile, half of amusement, half of relief, at the self-antidote the
paper contained; but the smile passed with the authoress as a tribute
to her satire.

"In this age," she said, "we must use those lighter weapons of wit,
or no one will attend."

"Perhaps," said Ermine, "if I approve your object, I should tell you
you don't use them lightly."

"Ah! but I know you don't approve it. You are not lay woman enough
to be impartial, and you belong to the age that was trying the
experiment of the hierarchy modified: I to that which has found it
will not do. But at least you understand my view; I have made out my
case."

"Yes, I understand your view; but--"

"You don't sympathize. Of course not; but when it receives its full
weight from the printer's bands, you will see that it will tell.
That bit about the weak tea fumes I thought of afterwards, and I am
afraid I did not read it well."

"I remember it; but forgive me if I say first I think the whole is
rather too--too lengthy to take."

"Oh, that is only because manuscript takes long to read aloud. I
counted the words, so I can't be mistaken, at least I collated twenty
lines, and multiplied; and it is not so long as the Invalid's last
letter about systematic reading."

"And then comes my question again, Is good to come of it?"

"That I can't expect you to see at this time; but it is to be the
beginning of a series, exposing the fallacies of woman's life as at
present conducted; and out of these I mean to point the way to more
consistent, more independent, better combined exertion. If I can
make myself useful with my pen, it will compensate for the being
debarred from so many more obvious outlets. I should like to have as
much influence over people's minds as that Invalid for instance, and
by earnest effort I know I shall attain it."

"I--I--" half-laughing and blushing, "I hope you will, for I know you
would wish to use it for good; but, to speak plainly, I doubt about
the success of this effort, or--or if it ought to succeed."

"Yes, I know you do," said Rachel. "No one ever can judge of a
manuscript. You have done all I wished you to do, and I value your
sincerity. Of course I did not expect praise, since the more telling
it is on the opposite side, the less you could like it. I saw you
appreciated it."

And Rachel departed, while Rose crept up to her aunt, asking, "Aunt
Ermine, why do you look so very funny? It was very tiresome. Are
not you glad it is over?"

"I was thinking, Rose, what a difficult language plain English is
sometimes."

"What, Miss Rachel's? I couldn't understand one bit of her long
story, except that she did not like weak tea."

"It was my own that I meant," said Ermine. "But, Rose, always
remember that a person who stands plain speaking from one like me has
something very noble and generous in her. Were you here all the
time, Rosie? I don't wonder you were tired."

"No, Aunt Ermine, I went and told Violetta and Augustus a fairy tale
out of my own head."

"Indeed; and how did they like it?"

"Violetta looked at me all the time, and Augustus gave three winks,
so I think he liked it."

"Appreciated it!" said Aunt Ermine.

CHAPTER IV

THE HERO.

"And which is Lucy's? Can it be
That puny fop, armed cap-a-pie,
Who loves in the saloon to show
The arms that never knew a foe."--SCOTT.

"My lady's compliments, ma'am, and she would he much obliged if you
would remain till she comes home," was Coombe's reception of Alison.
"She is gone to Avoncester with Master Temple and Master Francis."

"Gone to Avoncester!" exclaimed Rachel, who had walked from church to
Myrtlewood with Alison.

"Mamma is gone to meet the Major!" cried three of the lesser boys,
rushing upon them in full cry; then Leoline, facing round, "Not the
major, he is lieutenant-colonel now--Colonel Keith, hurrah!"

"What--what do you mean? Speak rationally, Leoline, if you can."

"My lady sent a note to the Homestead this morning," explained
Coombe. "She heard this morning that Colonel Keith intended to
arrive to-day, and took the young gentlemen with her to meet him."

Rachel could hardly refrain from manifesting her displeasure, and
bluntly asked what time Lady Temple was likely to be at home.

"It depended," Coombe said, "upon the train; it was not certain
whether Colonel Keith would come by the twelve or the two o'clock
train."

And Rachel was going to turn sharply round, and dash home with the
tidings, when Alison arrested her with the question--

"And who is Colonel Keith?"

Rachel was too much wrapped up in her own view to hear the trembling
of the voice, and answered, "Colonel Keith! why, the Major! You have
not been here so long without hearing of the Major?"

"Yes, but I did not know. Who is he?" And a more observant person
would have seen the governess's gasping effort to veil her eagerness
under her wonted self-control.

"Don't you know who the Major is?" shouted Leoline. "He is our
military secretary."

"That's the sum total of my knowledge," said Rachel, "I don't
understand his influence, nor know where he was picked up."

"Nor his regiment?"

"He is not a regimental officer; he is on our staff," said Leoline,
whose imagination could not attain to an earlier condition than "on
our staff."

"I shall go home, then," said Rachel, "and see if there is any
explanation there."

"I shall ask the Major not to let Aunt Rachel come here," observed
Hubert, as she departed; it was well it was not before.

"Leoline," anxiously asked Alison, "can you tell me the Major's
name?"

"Colonel Keith--Lieutenant-Colonel Keith," was all the answer.

"I meant his Christian name, my dear."

"Only little boys have Christian names!" they returned, and Alison
was forced to do her best to tame herself and them to the duties of
the long day of anticipation so joyous on their part, so full of
confusion and bewildered anxiety on her own. She looked in vain,
half stealthily, as often before, for a recent Army List or Peerage.
Long ago she had lost the Honourable Colin A. Keith from among the
officers of the --th Highlanders, and though in the last Peerage she
had laid hands on he was still among the surviving sons of the late
Lord Keith, of Gowanbrae, the date had not gone back far enough to
establish that he had not died in the Indian war. It was fear that
predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have
given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she
thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant, could bring nothing
but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her sister's life.
Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in their wild,
joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her patience almost
beyond her powers; the charge of the younger ones in their mother's
absence was burthensome, and the delay in returning to her sister
became well-nigh intolerable, when she figured to herself Rachel
Curtis going down to Ermine with the tidings of Colonel Keith's
arrival, and her own discontent at his influence with her cousin.
Would that she had spoken a word of warning; yet that might have been
merely mischievous, for the subject was surely too delicate for
Rachel to broach with so recent a friend. But Rachel had bad taste
for anything! That the little boys did not find Miss Williams very
cross that day was an effect of the long habit of self-control, and
she could hardly sit still under the additional fret, when, just as
tea was spread for the school-room party, in walked Miss Rachel, and
sat herself down, in spite of Hubert, who made up a most coaxing,
entreating face, as he said, "Please, Aunt Rachel, doesn't Aunt Grace
want you very much!"

"Not at all. Why, Hubert?"

"Oh, if you would only go away, and not spoil our fun when the Major
comes."

For once Rachel did laugh, but she did not take the hint, and Alison
obtained only the satisfaction of hearing that she had at least not
been in Mackarel Lane. The wheels sounded on the gravel, out rushed
the boys; Alison and Rachel sat in strange, absolute silence, each
forgetful of the other, neither guarding her own looks, nor remarking
her companion's. Alison's lips were parted by intense listening;
Rachel's teeth were set to receive her enemy. There was a chorus of
voices in the hall, and something about tea and coming in warned both
to gather up their looks before Lady Temple had opened the door, and
brought in upon them not one foe, but two! Was Rachel seeing double?
Hardly that, for one was tall, bald, and bearded, not dangerously
young, but on that very account the more dangerously good-looking;
and the other was almost a boy, slim and light, just of the empty
young officer type. Here, too, was Fanny, flushed, excited, prettier
and brighter than Rachel had seen her at all, waving an introduction
with head and hand; and the boys hanging round the Major with
deafening exclamations of welcome, in which they were speedily joined
by the nursery detachment. Those greetings, those observations on
growth and looks, those glad, eager questions and answers, were like
the welcome of an integral part of the family; it was far more
intimate and familiar than had been possible with the Curtises after
the long separation, and it was enough to have made the two
spectators feel out of place, if such a sensation had been within
Rachel's capacity, or if Alison had not been engaged with the tea.
Lady Temple made a few explanations, sotto voce, to Alison, whom she
always treated as though in dread of not being sufficiently
considerate. "I do hope the children have been good; I knew you
would not mind; I could not wait to see you, or I should have been
too late to meet the train, and then he would have come by the coach;
and it is such a raw east wind. He must be careful in this climate."

"How warm and sunshiny it has been all day," said Rachel, by way of
opposition to some distant echo of this whisper.

"Sunshiny, but treacherous," answered Colonel Keith; "there are cold
gusts round corners. This must be a very sheltered nook of the
coast."

"Quite a different zone from Avoncester," said the youth.

"Yes, delightful. I told you it was just what would suit you," added
Fanny, to the colonel.

"Some winds are very cold here," interposed Rachel. "I always pity
people who are imposed upon to think it a Mentone near home. They
are choking our churchyard."

"Very inconsiderate of them," muttered the young man.

"But what made you come home so late, Fanny?" said Rachel.

Alison suspected a slight look of wonder on the part of both the
officers at hearing their general's wife thus called to account; but
Fanny, taking it as a matter of course, answered, "We found that the
-th was at Avoncester. I had no idea of it, and they did not know I
was here; so I went to call upon Mrs. Hammond, and Colonel Keith went
to look for Alick, and we have brought him home to dine."

Fanny took it for granted that Rachel must know who Alick was, but
she was far from doing so, though she remembered that the --th had
been her uncle's regiment, and had been under Sir Stephen Temple's
command in India at the time of the mutiny. The thought of Fanny's
lapsing into military society was shocking to her. The boys were
vociferating about boats, ponies, and all that had been deferred till
the Major's arrival, and he was answering them kindly, but hushing
the extra outcry less by word than sign, and his own lowered voice
and polished manner--a manner that excessively chafed her as a sort
of insult to the blunt, rapid ways that she considered as sincere and
unaffected, a silkiness that no doubt had worked on the honest,
simple general, as it was now working on the weak young widow.
Anything was better than leaving her to such influence, and in
pursuance of the intention that Rachel had already announced at home,
she invited herself to stay to dinner; and Fanny eagerly thanked her,
for making it a little less dull for Colonel Keith and Alick. It was
so good to come down and help. Certainly Fanny was an innocent
creature, provided she was not spoilt, and it was a duty to guard her
innocence.

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