have for that style of thing; but Bobus might have succeeded. You must have expected it of him, at the time when he and I used to laugh at what we thought was a monomania on your part for our taking up medical science as a tribute to our father, when we did not need it as a provision.'
'You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philan- thropy, as some people do-well, at any rate in George Macdonald's novels-it would have been the very qualification. But I had little hope from the time that the fortune came. I dreamt the first night that Midas had turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I was wandering about like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum Bonum to disenchant you.'
'It has come pretty true,' said Allen thoughtfully, 'that inheritance did us all a great deal of mischief.'
'And it took a greater magnum bonum, a maximum bonum, to disenchant us,' said Armine.
'Which I fear did not come from me,' said his mother, 'and I am most grateful to the dear people who applied it to you. I wish I saw my way to the disenchantment of the other two!'
'I suppose you quite despaired till John took his turn in that direction,' said Allen. 'Bobus could really have done better than any of us, I fancy, but he would not have fulfilled the religious condition, as sine qua non.'
'Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,' said Armine.
'Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,' said his mother. 'I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!'
'Perhaps he is not,' said Armine. 'He told me he had been comparing the MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven's published paper, and he thought my father saw farther into the capabilities.'
'Well, he will do right with it. I am thankful to leave it in such hands as his and the Monk's.'
'Then it was this,' continued Allen, 'that was the key to poor Janet's history. I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set on going to Zurich.'
'Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery for her. Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear. If I could only know where she is.'
A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr. Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.
However, they came home more than satisfied. Perhaps in the interim Dr. Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow physicians to accept his system.
Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the notes. He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he said, 'This is just what I wanted. Why did I not think of it before?' and asked permission to copy the passage.
Then he urged the publication of the notes in some medical journal, showing true and generous anxiety that honour should be given where honour was due, and that his system should have the support of a name not yet forgotten. Further, he told his visitors that they would hear from him soon, and altogether they came home so much gratified that the mother began to lose her sense of being forestalled. She was hard at work in her own way on a set of models for dinner-table ornaments which had been ordered. 'Pot-boilers' had unfortunately much more success than the imaginary groups she enjoyed.
Therefore she stayed at home and only sent her young people on a commission to bring her as many varieties of foliage and seed-vessels as they could, when Jock and Armine spent this first holiday of waiting in setting forth with Babie to get a regular good country walk, grumbling horribly that she would not accompany them.
She was deep in the moulding of a branch of chestnut, which carried her back to the first time she saw those prickly clusters, on that day of opening Paradise at Richmond, with Joe by her side, then still Mr. Brownlow to her, Joe, who had seemed so much closer to her side in these last few days. The Colonel might call Armine the most like Joe, and say that Jock almost absurdly recalled her own soldier- father, Captain Allen, but to her, Jock always the most brought back her husband's words and ways, in a hundred little gestures and predilections, and she had still to struggle with her sense of injury that he should not be the foremost.
The maid came up with two cards: Dr. and Mrs. Ruthven. This was speedy, and Caroline had to take off her brown holland apron, and wash her hands, while Emma composed her cap, in haste and not very good will, for she could not but think them her natural enemies, though she was ready to beat herself for being so small and nasty 'when they could not help it, poor things.'
However, Mrs. Ruthven turned out to be a pleasant lively table d'hote acquaintance of six or seven years ago in her maiden days, and her doctor an agreeable Scotsman, who told Mrs. Brownlow that he had been here on several evenings in former days, and did not seem at all hurt that she did not remember him. He seemed disappointed that neither of the young men was at home, and inquired whether they had anything in view. 'Not definitely,' she said, and she spoke of some of the various counsels Dr. Medlicott and others had given them.
In the midst she heard that peculiar dash with which the Fordham carriage always announced itself. Little Esther might be ever so much a Viscountess, but could she ever cease to be shy? In spite of her increasing beauty and grace, she was not a success in society, for the ladies said she was slow; she had no conversation, and no dash or rattle to make up for it, and nothing would ever teach her to like strangers. They were only so many disturbances in the way of her enjoyment of her husband and her baby; and when she could not have the former to go out driving with her, she always came and besought for the company of Aunt Caroline and Babie; above all, when she had any shopping to do. She knew it was very foolish, but she could never be happy in encountering shop people, and she wanted strong support and protection to prevent herself from being made a lay figure by urgent dressmakers. Her home only gave her help and company on great occasions, for Eleanor persisted in objecting to fine people, was determined against attracting another guardsman, and privately desired her sister to abstain from inviting her. Essie was aware that this was all for the sake of a certain curate at St. Kenelm's, and left Ellie to carry out her plan of passive resistance, becoming thus the more dependent on her aunt's family.
In she came, too graceful and courteous for strangers to detect the shock their presence gave her, but much relieved to see them depart. Her husband was on guard, and she had a whole list of commissions for mamma, which would be much better executed without him. Moreover, baby must have a new pelisse and hat for the country, and might not she have little stockings and shoes, in case she should want to walk before the return to London?
As little Alice was but four months old, and her father's leave was only for three months, this did not seem a very probable contingency, but Mother Carey was always ready for shopping. She had never quite outgrown the delight of the change from being a penniless school girl, casting wistful fleeting glances at the windows where happier maidens might enter and purchase.
Then there was to be a great review in two days' time, Cecil would be with his regiment, and Esther wanted the whole family to go with her, lunch with the officers, and have a thorough holiday. Cecil had sent a message that Jock must come to have the cobwebs swept out of his brain, and see his old friends before he got into harness again. It was a well-earned holiday, as Mother Carey felt, accepting it with eager pleasure, for all who could come, though John's power of so doing must be doubtful, and there was little chance of a day being granted to Allen.
In going out with her niece, Caroline's eye had fallen on an envelope among the cards on the hall table, ambiguously addressed to 'J. Brownlow, Esq., M.B.,' and on her return home she was met at the door by Jock with a letter in his hand.
'So Dr. Ruthven has been here,' he said, drawing her into the consulting-room.
'Yes. I like him rather. He seems to wish to make any amends in his power.'
'Amends! you dear old ridiculous mother! Do you call this amends?' holding up the letter. 'He says now this discovery is getting known and he has a name for the sort of case, his practice is outgrowing him, and he wants some one to work with him who may be up to this particular matter, and all he has heard of us convinces him that he cannot do better than propose it to whichever of us has no other designs.'
'Very right and proper of him. It is the only thing he can do. I suppose it would be the making of one of you. Ah!' as she glanced over the letter. 'He gives the preference to you.'
'He was bound to do that, but I think he would prefer the Monk. I wonder whether you care very much about my accepting the offer.'
'Would this house be too far off?'
'I don't know his plans enough to tell. That was not what I was thinking of, but of what it would save her.
