Chapter VIII: Millicent's "boys."

BERYL'S guess that her visit to Mrs. Cumming was for purposes of "inspection" lay near the mark.

"You are within such easy distance of Bath," Diana had written to Millicent,—"could you not just manage, out of pity for me, to invite Beryl to your lodgings for a few days, and see what sort of being she has turned out? An opinion beforehand would be an immense help. Two years ago, she was one of the most unpromising of school girls. If she has learnt to behave herself,—and at seventeen she ought,—I suppose I can't well get out of giving her a home for the present. Everybody seems to expect it of me. But I do not want to commit myself in a hurry—one learns wisdom as one grows older. Do pray try, my dear, to bring it about, and send me a report of her. I don't believe Uncle Josiah would mind, and you know you can always get your own way with him if you choose. It only wants a little management. Tell him it would be a kindness to Beryl, and so forth. He is sure to give in, if he thinks it will be a benevolent action. The last year's reports of Beryl have been good, but one does not really know what they are worth, and Mrs. Brigstock is a common sort of person. I am dreadfully afraid sometimes that I made quite a mistake in sending Beryl there, and that she may have turned out a vulgar girl, whom we shall all be ashamed of. If she has, I simply 'cannot' have her in my house. It would fret me to death. But after all, how could I have afforded anything better? It is quite dreadful, the way money runs through one's fingers. Now do, Millie dear, help me in this. I am sure it is little enough of assistance that I get from anybody."

Millicent Cumming did not exactly follow the course suggested. She went indeed to her uncle with the required petition, but she told him quite frankly about Diana's anxieties, and explained the proposed kindness as being primarily towards Diana herself, though no doubt the visit would be a pleasure to Beryl. Mr. Crosbie disliked strangers, and he grumbled a good deal, but he yielded.

They had lodgings in one of the large houses on the cliff, facing the Prince Consort Gardens, with the sea beyond. Millicent sat in the window, sewing, on the afternoon of the day when Beryl was expected. She would have gone to the station to meet her visitor, but Mr. Crosbie placed a veto on the plan.

"He was not going to let Millie knock herself up for anybody. What was the good of girls if they could not be independent? Elderly folks always had to be dancing attendance on young folks in these days,—spoil them out and out,—" and so forth. For Mr. Crosbie was much the same that he had been five years earlier, just as kindhearted and just as discontented. Some men grumble their way through life as unceasingly as an ill-set wheel creaks throughout a journey,—good men too, many of them, little realising how dark a blot on the Christian character is the habit of complaining. Mr. Crosbie was by no means aware of the defect in himself. It was always somebody else that had done wrong, or somebody else's fault that things were not right.

Millicent did not like Beryl to arrive unwelcomed, but she gave in, as she always did give in on minor points, to Mr. Crosbie's wishes, for the sake of peace. And she sat quietly sewing in the window, now and then lifting her eyes to the broad waters beyond and below the cliff gardens,—brown and green and streaky waters, any kind of colour except the orthodox ocean-blue. Millicent at thirty-six had silver hairs showing on either side of her fair brow, and certain shady hollows in her face, though still Madonna-like in serene beauty. Her boys counted that no woman in the world ever came near "mother" in looks, though perhaps one of the two made a small mental reservation in favour of Pearl Fordyce, looking upon himself almost as disloyal for the same.

The twin brothers, now nineteen in age, were changed. Ivor was tall and broad, sunburnt and vigorous. The likeness between the two, so marked in boyish days, had lessened much in the developments of the past five years. The strength and energy due to the twain seemed all to have flowed into the frame of Ivor, while mental growth seemed rather to have favoured Escott. Not that the young officer, now on leave of absence from his regiment, was wanting in intellect of fair ordinary calibre, but certainly his tastes were not bookish. He could wade through a novel occasionally, and he had had one in his hand during the five minutes since his return to the drawing-room. Also a newspaper possessed interests for him, and he studied with tolerable diligence so much of military lore as appeared necessary for advance in his profession. Further than this, he cared little to go. He was a fine young fellow, handsome and popular, and extremely fond of his mother, and she was unlimitedly proud of him.

But strange to say, Millicent did not lean upon Ivor. All the leaning in which she indulged was upon her other boy, the puny wraith-like faced being, lying on a sofa, with hollow cheeks, and large eyes, and long thin fingers. Millicent loved both her sons intensely, and lived for them both, but around Escott her very heart-strings were twined.

It was said that he had no strength of constitution, that he read too much and thought too much. Reading may be stopped, but not thinking, so it was a difficult case to deal with. He was not in a consumption, but from the age of sixteen, he had dwindled and shrunk out of comparatively healthy boyhood into sickly young-manhood; and two terms at college, away from his mother's care, had broken him down utterly. To Escott, the trial was great of being thus cut off from all the work in life, which he had planned and for which he longed. To his mother, the trial was not less, for she knew his to be no common order of mind, and she had looked to see him distinguish himself. But both were patient,—outwardly at least.

Ivor perused his novel steadily for full ten minutes, and then threw it down. "Mother, I'm going out. Anything I can do for you?"

"There would have been," she said, looking up: "if I had expected you in so early. I should have liked you to meet Beryl Fordyce at the station. But I thought you were engaged, so I would not suggest it."

"So I thought this morning. I forgot Miss Fordyce. Can't I go now?"

"Too late. She is a quarter of an hour over-due already."

"What a lazy set she will count us, sitting here at our ease, and leaving her to fend for herself. I wonder if she is like the excitable little being whom we took out primrosing."

"She is older," said Escott.

"That stands to reason, five years having elapsed. Pearl and she must be almost strangers by this time. They will live together now, I suppose, mother?"

Millicent moved her head in doubtful style. "The decision rests with your aunt," she said. "I hope it may be so. We must try to make the poor child happy while she is with us."

"It has been rather a forlorn look-out for her certainly," Ivor said, sauntering to the window. "Here she is, mother,—cab, box, and all."

He was off like a shot to the front door.

Millicent looked at Escott, smiling. "Good boy,—he never fails in politeness," she said. "I shall make him take her for some long walks."

Beryl came in composedly, much more at her ease in a silent way than Millicent had expected. She was evidently prepared to be received as an entire stranger, and her formal manner rendered impossible the kind kiss which Millicent would have given. For Millicent had often thought pityingly of the banished girl.

But somehow Beryl was one of those people whom one does not kiss easily. She sat down as requested, and returned a succession of brief answers to Millicent's questions. Her journey had been quite comfortable, and she was not at all tired; and she agreed that the day was fine, and she had never seen Weston before. And she liked the sea pretty well; and she would not have known Mrs. Cumming's sons again. Millicent, always easily checked, found her powers of small talk failing fast. She took Beryl upstairs without further delay, told her how soon afternoon tea would be ready, asked if she had lunched, sent a maid to unstrap the box, and returned to the drawing-room.

"Hopelessly dull," Ivor said, with a shrug. "Not the least objectionable, but, commonplace to the last degree."

"Not quite so pretty as Pearl," said Millicent.

"Mother!" both cried indignantly.

"Don't let us condemn her in a hurry as too—too—utterly uninteresting," laughed Millicent. "At all events, she is not unladylike."

"It's a case of negative excellence," said Ivor. "Not unladylike, and not downright ugly, and not positively disagreeable,—but a sort of colourless stage bordering on all three."

"Ivor, you have to take her out for long walks, and act showman to Weston," said Escott, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

"I shall decamp. Mother, 'do' probe her and find out what she can talk about. I'm up to anything—except philosophy, crewels, or silence. Good-bye; I'll be back to dinner," and Ivor disappeared.