Chapter IV: Friends in Need

Only once was there an interruption threatened to the brother and sister relations between Master Charles and the ladies of Summerhill, and that began and ended among themselves, and had nothing to do with on-lookers.

Master Charles called on his friends one day in a moody frame of mind. He looked over some debatable accounts which belonged to Mrs. Sundon’s department of the joint housekeeping. He undertook to see and settle with the offending tradesman, and bring him to reason. He agreed to stay to the three-o’clock dinner, and relieve Lady Bell from the chicken carving. Still his mind was not lightened, so that his friends felt it necessary to press him to make a clean breast of it.

The young man admitted that he had been with a party of gentlemen on the previous evening, when horse-racing had been discussed, and bets had been freely given and taken over the wine.

He had been flushed and excited like the rest, and he had made such a book as he feared, without the greatest good luck, would be ruinous to him, when he had not yet got his property into his own hands, and any disgrace in money matters would put a stop to the exertions of the friends who were seeking to procure for him a pair of colours.

He was mad with himself, for he was by no means without sense and shrewdness as well as principle. He heartily wished that he had joined the army as a volunteer, sailed for Quebec or Boston in the first transport, and been taken prisoner by the Indians, before worse happened to him, and before he baulked the expectations of all who had taken an interest in so foolish a fellow. He hung his head as he made the confession.

“Worse shall not happen,” Mrs. Sundon interposed with decision. “You are right in consenting to confide in us; indeed, we value your confidence, sir, and women are not always the worst councillors. I shall speak to the Mayor to come forward and help you, if the worst come to the worst; he will do something for my sake, as well as for yours. I shall have a little loan at your service.”

“And I shall club every shilling I can muster with Mrs. Sundon’s,” proposed Lady Bell eagerly; “so pray don’t be down-hearted, Master Charles.”

The young man only hung his head lower. He hated to lay women under contribution to pay for his recklessness, while he dared not, were it but for the sake of another woman—his sister Deb—decline the assistance offered to him in case of necessity.

The ready generosity of his friends melted him, so that he faltered with feeling, in place of declaiming glibly in the expression of his thanks.

“Don’t speak of it,” Mrs. Sundon forbade him; “only let this be a lesson to you in the future,” she added with soft earnestness.

The young man went away subdued in his gratitude, but when the crisis was over, he presented himself in a state of riotous glee, to free the ladies from their promises, and demand their congratulations.

Master Charles’s three to one and five to two had turned out, after all, on the winning side. He had had amazing pieces of luck.

“By George! you ladies must wish me joy, and allow me the honour and felicity, as the town sparks say, of treating you to whatever takes your fancy, a prince’s plume, my Lady Bell, a lace apron, Madam Sundon; sure you richly deserve it, and I can afford to please myself for once in my life, since in place of coming to grief by this little transaction, I vow I have made a very good thing of it,” and he thrust his hands braggingly into the pockets of his frock coat.

“Yes, I claim my right to a return for my willingness to befriend you, Master Charles,” cried Mrs. Sundon, before Lady Bell could speak. “I thought you were to have a lesson, but I find it to be a snare. I want no lace aprons, though I shall be happy to take one from you, if you like to grant what I ask. Promise me solemnly, sir, on the word of a gentleman, that you will both now and after you have entered the army, do your best to resist betting on cards and horses, at least round a supper-table in the heat of conviviality.”

“But—but, Mrs. Sundon,” objected Master Charles, taken aback, becoming immediately crest-fallen, and colouring violently. “No fellow of spirit could be expected to give and keep such a promise. I am not soft in these matters, I think for a novice I have shown myself as sharp as my neighbours,” he drew himself up and laughed, though the laugh was a little forced. “I think—I beg your pardon, but I do think you take advantage of your kindness—I own it was very great, to seek to bind me, as no man not a Molly Coddle and a nincompoop would be bound in the circumstances.”

“Oh, Master Charles, think of Henry, Earl of Morland, in the ‘Fool of Quality,’” implored Lady Bell, “and how you were of opinion he was a fine character, and ought to be imitated in this dissipated world.”

“Such conduct is very fine in a book and in theory, but it won’t do for bloods in real life and in practice,” he put her off impatiently.

“Master Charles, I trust you will know that there are brave men and gallant soldiers too, that no man would dare call Molly Coddles and nincompoops, who yet set their faces against the indiscriminate betting and gambling of this gambling age,” Mrs. Sundon told him plainly; but that was not all. “Charles Kingscote,” she said, appealing to him, face to face and soul to soul, as it were, when she addressed him thus by his Christian name and surname, and with her own fine pale face working with emotion and the anguish of remembrance. “If you only knew the misery and degradation wrought by this curse of gambling—what generous natures have been undone, what happy homes have been cast down in ruins, never to be built up again. Shall I lay bare the sorrows of my life to enlighten you and save you, if I can?”

“No, Mrs. Sundon,” declared the young man quickly, and with pain in his moodiness. “I shall not allow such sacrilege for my fancied needs, and I should be an ingrate to deny your request as you put it, however difficult it may seem to me. I give you my word, as you desire, without farther parley—and now you will permit me to take my leave.”

The moment he was gone, Lady Bell asked with a puzzled, pensive, rather scared anxiety, “Will he keep his word, think you?”

“I hope and trust he will,” replied Mrs. Sundon, looking troubled still; “granting that it will cost him a great effort, he is manly and honourable enough in his youth to make such an effort; and he has not seen much bad company, that is a blessing, to corrupt him from the beginning. Poor boy! he was so happy when he came in, and we disappointed and mortified him. Do you know how he will regard me from this hour, Bell?” Mrs. Sundon inquired abruptly, with a certain wistfulness and piteousness for herself thrilling through her tones. “He is not bumptious or quarrelsome, he is a fine, warm-hearted, good-natured lad, but he will begin to hate the sight of me.”

“No, no,” exclaimed Lady Bell energetically.

“Yes, yes,” contradicted Mrs. Sundon quietly, shaking her head, “I know all about it. A man pretends sometimes to call a woman his mistress, but he cannot forgive her, if she ever really play the part. He will excuse almost any error in a woman sooner than her finding him wrong, and telling him so. She has humbled him then in his own eyes, and he cares for that still more than being humbled in hers. She becomes irksome to him, and he half fears her, half strives to deceive her, himself sinking lower and lower till he ends by hating her outright. When you marry again, Bell, if your main object be to preserve your husband’s love, fondle and defer to him, and never admit by word or look that you recognise he has forfeited your esteem, as well as that of every honest man and woman, and is on the high road to destruction, carrying you and your unborn child along with him.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” protested Lady Bell, half crying at the idea. “I shall speak the truth and clear my conscience, whether I shame the devil or no. But on second thoughts, I shall not need, for I shall never think of marrying again and leaving you and little Caro, and ending our happy life here, dear,” declared Lady Bell, turning eagerly to caress her friend.

“You will not think of it perhaps, but you will do it all the same,” said Mrs. Sundon as she gave back the caress; “however, we may let sleeping dogs lie and not anticipate evil. To return to Master Charles; see if he do not avoid me from this day.”

For several weeks it seemed as if Mrs. Sundon’s prognostications were to prove correct. It was not that Master Charles intermitted his visits to Summerhill, and he was even punctilious in his continued offers of service to the ladies; but somehow there was a change in the nature of the intercourse, and there was a dryness approaching to sullenness in the young gentleman’s manner to Mrs. Sundon.

But at the close of these weeks Master Charles thought better of it, and came looking shame-faced, yet, but frank and ingenuous as ever, and told Mrs. Sundon, “I have been compelled to be a little more particular in my company since the promise you made me give you, which, of course, I was resolved to keep, come what like of it. But I have reaped the benefit of it already, I have discovered that there are plenty of gentlemen of parts and spirit, good judges of horse-flesh besides, who will not play at higher than half-crown points, and will not lay a wager on a horse, or a dog, unless it be so trifling a one that they have no anxiety about it, and have all their minds to bestow on their proper affairs. They are ready to welcome me to their company when they see that I prefer it. You were quite right, Mrs. Sundon, I add my poor testimony to my promise.”

The dryness and sullenness disappeared from that day.

Lady Bell was jubilant at the issue, and the restoration of their comrade, and disposed to crow over Mrs. Sundon.

“Oh! he is a good sort, as Miss Kingscote says,” confessed the authority, “he is more generous than his brethren. I am thankful to have been of use to him.” This was all that Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell, but in her own mind she reflected with apparent incoherence, “I could wish that he had been higher in rank, and Miss Kingscote more presentable. I don’t think that his being a little countrified would have mattered to her else.”

As a supplement to all other interests and entertainments, Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell had little Caro to play with—to plan for with the deepest seriousness, to build castles in the air for with the highest hopefulness.

But Mrs. Sundon was different from many mothers. Mrs. Sundon not only did not expect Lady Bell to be engrossed with her little daughter, Mrs. Sundon herself would have thought it exceedingly ill-judged and ill-bred to bring forward the child, and cause her to fill the first place in the circle, forcing every other interest and satisfaction to give way to Caro’s interest and satisfaction.

No, little Caro, while she was dearly prized and petted, was kept quite in her proper and purely subordinate sphere, and that under wholesome discipline, and was decidedly a happier as well as a more modest and artless child then and afterwards in consequence of her mother’s public spirit in combination with her common sense.

Mrs. Sundon would not permit Caro, unless it were absolutely unavoidable, to interfere with a single study or pursuit, though the mother cared for the child incessantly, and spared no thought or pains upon her, from consecrating to Miss Caro’s wardrobe Mrs. Sundon’s most exquisite needlework, to being the child’s first teacher in health, and nurse in sickness. Mrs. Sundon would not allow Caro’s presence in the morning-room—the company-room of the house, except at stated and limited intervals. Mrs. Sundon put an interdict on Caro and her nurse being a drag on walking and riding excursions.

Mrs. Sundon did not carry Caro to any public place whatever, but did not on that account withdraw from public places. Mrs. Sundon had an old-fashioned notion that society and her friends had a claim upon her, just as Caro had a claim, and though Caro’s claim, as her mother delighted to acknowledge, was the greater, Mrs. Sundon did not conceive that it ought on that account to swallow up the smaller. Mrs. Sundon sent Caro to bed betimes, and would not suffer this, or other excellent rules to be infringed on any pretence.

The desirable result was twofold, Caro from her earliest infancy was one of the healthiest, most natural, and “prettily behaved” of children. Mrs. Sundon had the reward of being assured that the child was regarded by all the friends of the family as a boon to be welcomed, and not as a bore or plague to be endured.

So summer suns and winter moons rose and set on the house at Summerhill, and the two friends were “Bell” and “Sunny,” like sisters to each other.

“Oh, Bell, this peaceful, rational, God-fearing time is good after the distractions of passion and the storms of life,” Mrs. Sundon would say, stifling all yearning in her voice, and setting her strong will to make the best of the alleviations of her lot.

“Yes, Sunny,” Lady Bell would answer brightly. “I get a better gardener every month. Our place will be a spectacle next year, only the French honeysuckle don’t smell like our common honeysuckle, exactly as lupins are not sweet as blossoming beans. I am improving in my drawing. I propose to try painting when the weather will allow. Mayne in Lumley is to come out and give me open-air lessons. I shall paint our Caro nursing her foot in its red shoe under an apple-tree—you shall see what you shall see. But now I must tie on my hood, and run down the lane to Goody Amos’s, with the plaster for her burn. Don’t forget that there is a puppet-show in the town-hall, which we promised to attend this afternoon, before drinking a dish of tea, and staying for a bit of supper with Captain Craddock and his wife.”

Very busy was Lady Bell—the true secret of happiness. Yet, walking home that same evening, escorted by the gallant Captain and the Summerhill man with a lantern, Lady Bell fell behind Mrs. Sundon and her cavalier, and began dreaming under the stars.

The dreams were not in the style of Dr. Young, though Lady Bell had been lately reading his “Night Thoughts,” and admiring them greatly, as everybody admired them then.

The dreams implied rather a vague sense of waiting and of want, and of stirring in the unfathomable depths even of a girl’s nature. Was unruffled tranquillity, after all, the secret of life’s best fulfilment?—whether was it worse to have been torn by warring passions like Mrs. Sundon, or that passion should never be awakened in the dead calm within? Might not the last be a greater loss to Lady Bell than the first had proved to her friend?

Was Lady Bell to pass through life and have adventures, be sad and glad, poor and in comparative affluence, friendless and with many friends, a wife and a widow, and her heart still remain void of a history?