'That's the modern system,' said the Colonel indignantly. 'Fine work it would make in the army. I know when punishment is deserved. I don't set up to be Providence, to know exactly what work it is to do. I leave that to my Maker and do my duty.'
He was cut short by his son Joe rushing in headlong, exclaiming-
'Papa, papa, please come! Rob has knocked Johnny down and he doesn't come round.'
Colonel Brownlow hurried off, Caroline trying to make him hear her offer to follow if she could be useful, and sending Jock to see whether there was any opening for her. Unless the emergency were very great indeed she knew her absence would be preferred, and so she and Mr. Ogilvie remained, talking the matter over, with more pity for the delinquent than his own family would have thought natural.
'It really is a terrible thing to be stupid,' she said. 'I don't imagine that unlucky boy ever entered into his father's idea of truth and honour, which really is fine in its way.'
'Very fine, and proved to have made many fine fellows in its time. I dare say the lad will grow up to it, but just now he simply feels cruelly injured by interference with a senior's claim to absolute submission.'
'Which he sees as singly as his father sees the simple duty of justice.'
'It would be comfortable if we poor moderns could deal out our measures with that straightforward military simplicity. I cannot help seeing in that unfortunate boy the victim of examinations for commissions. Boys must be subjected to high pressure before they can thoroughly enter into the importance of the issues that depend upon it; and when a sluggish, dull intellect is forced beyond endurance, there is an absolute instinct of escape, impelling to shifts and underhand ways of eluding work. Of course the wrong is great, but the responsibility rests with the taskmaster in the same manner as the thefts of a starved slave might on his owner.'
'The taskmaster being the country?'
'Exactly so. Happy those boys who have available brains, like yours.'
'Ah! I am very sorry about Bobus; what ought I to do?'
'Hardly more than write a few words of warning, since the change may probably have put an end to the practice.'
Jock presently brought back tidings that his namesake was all right, except for a black eye, and was growling like ten bears at having been sent to bed.
'Uncle Robert was more angry than ever, in a white heat, quiet and terrible,' said Jock, in an awe-struck voice. 'He has locked Rob up in his study, and here's Joe, for Aunt Ellen is quite knocked up, and they want the house to be very quiet.'
No tragical consequences, however, ensued. Mother and sons both appeared the next morning, and were reported as 'all right' by the first inquirer from the Folly; but Jessie came to her lessons with swollen eyelids as if she had cried half the night; and when her aunt thanked her for defending Armine, she began to cry again, and Essie imparted to Barbara that Rob was 'just like a downright savage with her.'
'No; hush, Essie, it is not that,' said Jessie; 'but papa is so dreadfully angry with him, and he is to be sent away, and it is all my fault.'
'But Jessie, dear, surely it is better for Rob to be stopped from those deceitful ways.'
'O yes, I know. But that I should have turned against him!' And Jessie was so thoroughly unhappy that none of her lessons prospered and her German exercise had three great tear blots on it.
Rob's second misdemeanour had simplified matters by deciding his father on sending him from home at once into the hands of a professed coach, who would not let him elude study, and whose pupils were too big to be bullied. To the last he maintained his sullen dogged air of indifference, though there might be more truth than the Folly was disposed to allow in his sister's allegations that it was because he did feel it so very much, especially mamma's looking so ill and worried.
Ellen did in truth look thoroughly unhinged, though no one saw her give way. She felt her boy's conduct sorely, and grieved at the first parting in her family. Besides, there was anxiety for the future. Rob's manner of conducting his studies was no hopeful augury of his success, and the expenses of sending him to a tutor fell the more heavily because unexpectedly. A horse and man were given up, and Jessie had to resign the hope of her music lessons. These were the first retrenchments, and the diminution of dignity was felt.
The Colonel showed his trouble and anxiety by speaking and tramping louder than ever, ruling his gardener with severe precision, and thundering at his boys whenever he saw them idle. Both he and his wife were so elaborately kind and polite that Caroline believed that it was an act of magnanimous forgiveness for the ill luck that she and her boys had brought them. At last the Colonel had the threatened fit of the gout, which restored his equilibrium, and brought him back to his usual condition of kindly, if somewhat ponderous, good sense.
He had not long recovered before Number Nine made his appearance at Kencroft, and thus his mother had unusual facilities for inquiries of Dr. Leslie respecting the master of Belforest.
The old man really seemed to be in a dying state. A hospital nurse had taken charge of him, but there was not a dependent about the place, from Mr. Richards downwards, who was not under notice to quit, and most were staying on without his knowledge on the advice of the London solicitor, to whom the agent had written. There was even more excitement on the intelligence that Mr. Barnes had sent for Farmer Gould.
On this there was no doubt, for Mr. Gould, always delicately honourable towards Mrs. Brownlow, came himself to tell her about the interview. It seemed to have been the outcome of a yearning of the dying man towards the sole survivor of the companions of his early days. He had talked in a feeble wandering way of old times, but had said nothing about the child, and was plainly incapable of sustained attention.
He had asked Mr. Gould to come again, but on this second visit he was too far gone for recognition, and had returned to his moody instinctive aversion to visitors, and in three days more he was dead.
CHAPTER XV. THE BELFOREST MAGNUM BONUM.
Where is his golden heap? Divine Breathings.
Mrs. Robert Brownlow was churched with all the expedition possible, in order that she might not lose the sight of the funeral procession, which would be fully visible from the studio in the top of the tower.
The excitement was increased by invitations to attend the funeral being sent to the Colonel and to his two eldest nephews, who were just come home for the holidays, also to their mother to be present at the subsequent reading of the will.
A carriage was sent for her, and she entered it, not knowing or caring to find out what she wished, and haunted by the line, 'Die and endow a college or a cat.'
Allen met her at the front door, whispering-'Did you see, mother, he has still got his ears?' And the thought crossed her-'Will those ears cost us dear?'
She was the only woman present in the library-a large room, but with an atmosphere as if the open air had not been admitted for thirty years, and with an enormous fire, close to which was the arm-chair whither she was marshalled, being introduced to the two solicitors, Mr. Rowse and Mr. Wakefield, who, with Farmer Gould, the agent, Richards, the Colonel, and the two boys, made up the audience.
The lawyers explained that the will had been sent home ten years ago from Yucatan, and had ever since been in their hands. Search had been made for a later one, but none had been found, nor did they believe that one could exist.
It was very short. The executors were Charles Rowse and Peter Ball, and the whole property was devised to them, and to Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Brownlow, as trustees for the testator's great-niece, Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, daughter of John and Caroline Allen, and wife of Joseph Brownlow, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., the income and use thereof to be enjoyed by her during her lifetime; and the property, after her death, to be divided among her children in such proportions as she should direct.
That was all; there was no legacy, no further directions.
'Allow me to congratulate-' began the elder lawyer.
'No-no-oh, stay a bit,' cried she, in breathless dismay and bewilderment. 'It can't be! It can't mean only me. There must be something about Elvira de Menella.'
'I fear there is not,' said Mr. Rowse; 'I could wish my late client had attended more to the claims of justice, and had divided the property, which could well have borne it; but unfortunately it is not so.'
'It is exactly as he led us to expect,' said Mr. Gould. 'We have no right to complain, and very likely the child will be much happier without it. You have a fine family growing up to enjoy it, Mrs. Brownlow, and I am sure no one
