Lady Gregory - "The Kiltartan Poetry Book"

George Bernard Shaw - "The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet"

Jack London - "Smoke Bellew"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Young Folks' History of England"

The Young Step Mother

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Young Step Mother




'How could you make him cry?' said Sophy, in reproach.

'I believe the tears only wanted an excuse. I _did_ put it on his
naughtiness, which usually would have elated him; but his heart was
so full as to make even a long holiday a punishment. That boy often
shows me what a thorough Kendal he is; things sink into him as they
never did into us at the same age, when my aunts used to think I had
no feeling. Oh, Sophy! how will you comfort him?'

'His will be an unstained sorrow,' said Sophy, from the depths of her
heart. 'O, mamma, only tell Gilbert what you know I feel--no, you
don't, no one can, but what I would not give, to change all I have
felt towards him? If I had been like Edmund, and prized his
gentleness and sweetness, and the humility that was the best worth of
all, how different it would be! But I was proud of despising where
truth was wanting.'

'I should have thought I should have done the same,' said Albinia;
but there was no keeping from loving Gibbie. Besides, he was
sincere, except when he was afraid, and he was miserable when he was
deceiving.'

'Yes, after you came,' said Sophy; 'but I believe I helped him to
think truth disagreeable. I showed my scorn for his want of
boldness, instead of helping him. Think of my having fancied _he_
had no courage.'

'Kindness taught him courage,' said Albinia. 'It might perhaps have
earlier taught him moral courage. If you and he could have leant
against each other, and been fused together, you would have made
something like what Edmund was, I suppose.'

'I drove him off,' cried Sophy. 'I was no sister to him. Will you
bring me his forgiveness?'

'Indeed I will; and you may feel sure of it already, dearest. It
will make you gentler all your life.'

'No, I shall grow harder and harsher the longer I live, and the fewer
I have to love me in spite of myself.'

'I think not,' said Albinia. 'Humility will make your severity more
gentle, and you will soften, and win love and esteem.'

She looked up, but cried, 'I shall never make up to Gilbert nor to
grandmamma!'

Albinia felt it almost as hard to leave her as the two little ones.

When once on her journey, and feeling each moment an advance towards
the goal, Albinia was less unhappy than she could have thought
possible; she trusted to her brother, and enjoyed the absence of
responsibility, and while he let her go on, could give her mind to
what pleased and interested him, and he, who was an excellent
courier, so managed that there were few detentions to overthrow her
equanimity on the way to Marseilles.

But when the Vectis came in sight of the rocky isle, with its white
stony heights, the heart-sickness of apprehension grew over her, and
she saw, as in a mist, the noble crescent-shaped harbour, the stately
ramparts, mighty batteries, the lofty terraces of flat-roofed
dwellings, apparently rather hewn out of, than built on, the dazzling
white stone, between the intense blue of the sky above and of the sea
below. Her eye roamed as in a dream over the crowds of gay boats
with white awnings, and the motley crowds of English and natives, the
boatmen screaming and fighting for the luggage, and beggars
plaintively whining out their entreaties for small coins. Her
brother Maurice had been at Malta as a little boy, and remembered the
habits of the place enough, as soon as they had set foot on shore, to
secure a brown-skinned loiterer, in Phrygian cap, loose trousers, and
crimson sash, to act as guide and porter.

Along the Strada San Giovanni, a street of stairs, shut in by high
stone walls, with doors opening on either side, they went not as fast
as Albinia's quivering limbs would fain have moved, yet too fast when
her breath came thick with anxiety--down again by the stone stairs
called 'Nix Mangiare' (nothing to eat), from the incessant cry of the
beggars that haunt them--then again in a boat, which carried them
amid a strange world of shipping to the bottom of the dockyard creek,
where, again landing, she was told she had but to ascend, and she
would be at Bormola.

She could have paused, in dread; and she leant heavily on her
brother's arm when they presently turned up a lane, no broader than a
passage, with low stone steps at irregular intervals. They were
come!

The summons at the door was answered by a dark-visaged Maltese, and
while Maurice was putting the question whether Colonel Ferrars and
Captain Kendal lived here, a figure appeared on the stairs, and
beckoned, ascending noiselessly with languid steps and slippered
feet, and leading the way into a slightly furnished room, with green
balcony and striped blind. There he turned and held out his hand;
but Albinia hardly recognised him till he said, 'I thought I heard
your voice, Maurice;' and then the low subdued tone, together with
the gaunt wasted form, haggard aged face, the long beard, and worn
undress uniform, with the armless sleeve, made her so realize his
sufferings, that, clasping his remaining hand in both her own, she
could utter nothing but, 'Oh! Fred! Fred!'

He looked at her brother with such inquiry, perplexity, and
compassion, that almost in despair Maurice exclaimed, 'We are not too
late!'

'No, thank God!' said Frederick. 'We did hope you might come! Sit
down, Albinia; I'll--'

'Edmund! Is he there!' she said, scarcely alive to what was passing,
and casting another expressively sorrowful look at Maurice, Fred
answered, 'Yes, I will tell him: I will see if you can come in.'

'Stay,' said Mr. Ferrars; 'she should compose herself, or she will
only hurt herself and Gilbert.'

'I don't know,' murmured Fred, hastily leaving them.

Maurice understood that Gilbert was even then summoned by one who
would brook no delays; but Albinia, too much agitated to notice
slight indications, was about to follow, when her brother took her
hand, and checked her like a child. 'Wait a minute, my dear, he will
soon come back.'

'Where's Edmund? Why mayn't I go to Gilbert?' she said, still
bewildered.

'Fred is gone to tell them. Sit down, my dear; take off your bonnet,
you are heated, you will be better able to go to him, if you are
quiet.'

She passively submitted to be placed on a chair, and to remove her
bonnet; and seeing some dressing apparatus through an open door,
Maurice brought her some cold water to refresh her burning face. She
looked up with a smile, herself again. 'There thank you, Maurice: I
wont be foolish now.'

'God support you, my dear!' said her brother, for the longer the
Colonel tarried, the worse were his forebodings.

'Perhaps the doctor is there,' she proceeded. 'That will be well.
Ask him everything, Maurice. But oh! did you ever see any one so
much altered as poor Fred! He looks twenty years older! Ah! I am
quite good now! I may go now!' she cried, as the door opened.

But as Frederick returned, there was that written on his brow, which
lifted her out of the childishness of her agitation.

'My dear Albinia,' he said in a trembling voice, 'Mr. Kendal cannot
leave him to come to you. He has been much worse since last night,'
and as her face showed that she was gathering his meaning, he pursued
in a lower and more awe-struck tone: 'We think he is sensible, but we
cannot tell. It could not hurt him for you to come in, and perhaps
he may know you, but are you able to bear it? Is she, Maurice?'

'Yes, I am,' she answered; and the calm firmness of her tone proved
that she was a woman again. Her hand shook less than did that of her
cousin, as silently and reverently he took it, and led her into
another room on the same floor.

There, in the subdued light, she saw her husband, seated on the bed,
holding in his arms his son, who lay lifted up and supported upon his
breast, with head resting on his shoulder, and eyes closed. There
was no greeting, no sound save the long, heavily drawn, gasping
breaths. Mr. Kendal raised his eyes to her; she silently knelt down
and took the wasted hand that lay helplessly on the coverlet, but it
moved feebly from her as though harassed by the touch.

'Gilbert, dear boy,' said his father, earnestly, 'she is come! Speak
to him, Albinia.'

She hardly knew her own voice as she said, 'Gilbert, Gibbie dear,
here I am.'

Those large brown eyes were shown for a few moments beneath the heavy
lids, and met hers. The mouth, hitherto only gasping for air,
endeavoured to form a word; the hand sought hers. She kissed him,
and his eyes opened wide and brightened, while he said, 'I think it
is pardon now.'

'Pardon indeed!' said his father, with a greater look of relief than
Albinia understood, 'you are resting in His Merits.'

Gilbert's look brightened, and he said, 'I know it now.'

'Thank God,' said Mr. Kendal.

His eyes closed, and Fred whispered to the father, 'Maurice is here
too.'

Again the light woke in the eye, with almost a smile, the look that
always welcomed the little brother; and Albinia grieved to say, 'Not
little Maurice, though he longed to come; it is my brother.' But the
air of eagerness did not pass away, and he seemed satisfied when Mr.
Ferrars came in. It was as a priest, speaking words not his own; and
Albinia and Fred knelt with him. At the close of each prayer or
psalm, Gilbert signed imploringly for more, even like our mighty
dying queen; and at each short pause, the distressed agonized
expression would again contract the brow, though in the sound of the
holy words all was peace. The Psalm of the Good Shepherd with the
Rod and Staff in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, recurred so
strongly to Maurice, that he repeated it like a cadence after each
penitential supplication, every time bringing a look of peace to the
countenance of the sufferer.

They must have remained long thus, Fred had grown exhausted with
kneeling and had been forced to sit on the floor, and Maurice's voice
waxed low and hoarse; yet he durst not pause, though doubting whether
Gilbert could follow the meaning. At length the eyes were again
raised. With a start as of haste, Gilbert looked full at Albinia,
and said, 'Thank you. Tell Maurice--' He could not finish, and there
was an agony for breath, then as his father raised him, he contrived
to say, 'Father--mother--kiss me; it is forgiven!'

Another look brought Fred to press his hand, and he smiled his
thanks.

There were a few more terrible minutes, from which they would fain
have led away Albinia, but suddenly his brow grew smooth, his eyes
were eagerly fixed as on something before him, and as if replying to
a call, he said, 'Yes!' with a start and a quiver of all his limbs,
and then--

The first words were Mr. Kendal's. 'Edmund has come for him!'

It was to the rest as if the father had been in some manner conscious
of the presence of the one twin-brother, and, were resigning the
other to his charge, for he calmly kissed the forehead, closed the
eyes, laid down the form, he had so long held in his arms, and after
a few moments on his knees, with his face hidden, in his hands, he
rose with composure, and said to his wife, 'I am glad you were in
time.'

Had he given way, Albinia would have been strong, but there was no
need to support to counteract the force of disappointment and grief,
acting upon overwrought spirits, and a fatigued, exhausted frame.
Were these half-conscious looks and broken words all she had come
for, all she should ever have of Gilbert? This was the moment's
predominant sensation; she was past thinking; and though she still
controlled herself, she cast a wild, piteous eye on her husband, and
as he lifted her up, she sank on his breast, not fainting, not
sobbing, but utterly prostrated, and needing all his support as he
led her out, and laid her on a couch in the next room, speaking
softly as if hoping his voice would restore her. 'We had some faint
hope of you; we knew you would wish it, so you see all is ready. But
you have done too much, my dear: Maurice should not have let you
travel so fast.'

'No, no,' said Albinia, catching her breath. 'Oh! not to have come
sooner!' and she gave way to a violent burst of tears, during which
he fondled and soothed her till she suddenly said, 'I did not come
here to behave in this way! I came to help you! Edmund, what shall
I do?' and she would have started up.

'Only lie still, and let me take care of you,' said he. 'Nothing
could be to me like your coming,' and she was forced to believe his
glistening eyes and voice of tenderness.

'Can you keep quiet a little while,' said Mr. Kendal, wistfully,
'while I go to speak to your brother? It was very good in him to
come! Don't speak; I will come back directly.'

She did lie still, for she was too much spent to move, and the
silence was good for her; for if the overwhelming sensation of grief
would sweep over her, on the other hand, there was the remembrance of
the look of peace, and the perception that her husband was not as yet
so struck to the earth as she had feared. He was not long in
returning, bringing some coffee for her and for himself, and speaking
with the same dreamy serenity, though looking excessively pale.
'Your brother told me to give you this,' he said. 'I am glad the
colonel is under such care, for he is terribly distressed and not at
all fit to bear it. I could not make him go to bed all last night.'

'You were up all last night, and many nights before,' said Albinia;
'and all alone! Oh! why was I not here to help!'

'Fred was a great comfort,' said Mr. Kendal. 'I cannot describe my
gratitude to him. And dearest--' He paused, and added with
hesitation, 'I do not now regret the having come out alone. After
the first disappointment, I think that my boy and I learnt to know
each other better. If he had left me nothing but the recollection
that I had been too severe and unsympathizing to win his confidence,
I hardly know how I could have borne it.'

'He was able to talk to you, then?' cried Albinia. 'That was what I
always wished! Yes, it _was_ right, so it came right. I had got
between you as I ought not to have done, and it was well you should
have him to yourself.'

'Not as you ought not,' he fondly answered. 'You always were his
better angel, and you came at last as a messenger of peace. There
was relief and hope from the moment that he knew you.'

He told her what could scarcely have passed his lips save in those
earlier hours of affliction. It had been a time of grievous mental
distress. Neither natural temperament nor previous life had been
such as to arm poor Gilbert to meet the King of Terrors; and as day
by day he felt the cold grasp tightening on him, he had fluttered
like a bird in the snare of the fowler, physically affrighted at the
death-pang, shrinking from the lonely entrance into the unknown
future, and despairing of the acceptableness of his own repentance.
He believed that he had too often relapsed, and he could not take
heart to grasp the hope of mercy and rest in the great atonement.
The last Communion had been melancholy, the contrite spirit unable to
lift itself up, and apparently only sunk the lower by the weight of
love and gratitude, deepening the sense of how much had been
disregarded. There had since been a few hopeful gleams, but dimmed
by bodily suffering and terror; and doubly mournful had been the
weary hours of the night and morning, while he lay gasping away his
life upon his father's breast. Having at first taken the absence of
his stepmother as a sign that she had not forgiven him, he had only
laid aside this notion for a more morbid fancy that the deprivation
was a token of wrath from above; and there could be little doubt that
her final appearance was hailed as a seal of pardon not merely from
her. Her brother, who had raised him up after his last fall, was
likewise the person above all others to bring the message of mercy to
speed him to the Unseen, where, as his look and gesture had persuaded
his father, his brother, or some yet more blessed one, had received
and welcomed the frail and trembling spirit.

That last farewell, that dawn of peace, so long prayed for, so
ardently desired, had given Mr. Kendal such thankfulness and relief
as sustained him, and enabled him to support his wife, who knew not
how to meet her first home grief; whereas to him sorrow had long been
a household guest more familiar than joy; and he was more at rest
about his son than he had been for many a year. He could dwell on
him together with Edmund, instead of connecting him with shame,
grief, and pain; though how little could he have borne to think that
thus it would end, when in the springtime of his manhood he had
rejoiced over his beautiful twin boys.

He knew his son better than heretofore. After the first day's
disappointment, Gilbert had found him all-sufficient, and had rested
on his tenderness. All sternness had ceased on one side, all
concealment on the other, and the sweetness of both characters had
had full scope. Gilbert's ardent love of home had shown itself in
every word, and his last exertion, had been to write a long letter to
his little brother, which had been completed and despatched by a
private hand a few days previously. He had desired that Maurice
should have his sword, and mentioned the books which he wished his
sisters to share, talking of Sophy as one whom he honoured much, and
wished he had known better; but much pained by hearing nothing from
Lucy, and lamenting his share in her union with Algernon. He had
said something about his wish that the almshouses should be built,
but his father had turned away the subject, knowing that in case of
his dying intestate and unmarried, the property was settled on the
sisters, and seeing little chance of any such work being carried out
with the co-operation of Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy. Latterly he had
spoken of Genevieve Durant; he knew better how unworthy of her he had
been, and how harassing his pursuit must have appeared, but he could
not help entreating that her pardon might be asked in his name, that
she might hear that he had loved her to the last, and above all, that
his father would never lose sight of her; and Mr. Kendal's promise to
regard her as the next thing to his daughters had been requited with
a look of the utmost gratitude and affection.

This was the substance of what Mr. Kendal told his wife as they sat
together, unwitting of the lapse of time, and shrinking from any
interruption that might mar their present peace and renew the sense
of bereavement.

Mr. Ferrars was the first to knock at the door. He had been doing
his utmost to spare both them and Fred, who needed all his care.
These four months of mutual dependence had been even more endearing
than the rescue of Fred's life on the battlefield; and he declared
that Gilbert had done him more good than any one else. They had been
so thrown together as to make the 'religious sentiment' of the
younger tell upon the warm though thoughtless heart of the elder.
They had been most fondly attached; and in his present state, reduced
by wounds and exhausted by watching, Fred was more overpowered than
those more closely concerned. He could hardly speak collectedly when
an officer of the garrison called to consult him with regard to a
military funeral, and it was for this that Maurice was obliged to
refer to the father. There were indeed none of his regiment in the
island, but there was a universal desire in the garrison to do honour
to the distinguished young officer, for whom great interest had been
felt and the compliment brought a glow of exultation to Mr. Kendal's
face, as he expressed his warm thanks, but desired that the decision
might rest with Fred himself, as his son's lieutenant-colonel.

Maurice felt himself fully justified in his expedition when he found
that all devolved on him, even writing to Sophy, and making the most
necessary arrangements; for the colonel was incapable of exertion,
Albinia was prostrated by the shock, and Mr. Kendal appeared to be
lulled into a strange calm by the effects of the excessive bodily
weariness consequent on the exhausting attendance of the last few
days. They all depended upon Mr. Ferrars, and recognised his
presence as an infinite comfort.

In the morning Albinia came forth like one who had been knocked down
and shattered, weary and gentle, and with the tears ever welling into
her eyes, above all when she endeavoured to write to Sophy; and she
showed her ordinary earnestness only when she entreated to see her
boy once more. Her husband took her to look on the countenance
settled into the expression of unearthly peace, but she was not
satisfied; it was not her own Gilbert, boyish, sensitive, dependent,
and shrinking. The pale brow, the marked manly features, the lower
ones concealed by the brown moustache, belonged to the hero who had
dared the deadly ride and borne his friend through the storm of shot
and shell; the noble, settled, steadfast face was the face of a
stranger, and gave her a thrill of disappointment. She gloried in
the later Gilbert, but the last she had seen of him whom she loved
for his weakness, had been when she had not heeded his farewell.

It made the pang the less when evening came and he was carried to his
resting-place. They would have persuaded Frederick to spare himself,
but as the only officer of the same corps, as well as for the sake of
many closer ties, he would not hear of being absent, and made his
cousin Maurice do his best to restore the smart soldierly air which
he for the first time thought of regretting.

Gilbert's horse had perished at Balaklava, but his cap, sword, and
spurs, were laid on the coffin, and from her shaded window Albinia
watched it borne between the files of soldiers with arms reversed;
and the procession of officers whose bright array contrasted with the
colonel's war-worn dress, ghastly cheek, and empty sleeve, tokens of
the reality of war amid its pageantry, as all moved slowly away to
the deep tones of the solemn Dead March, music well befitting the
calm grandeur of the face she had seen, and leaving her heart
throbbing with the deep exulting awe and pathos of a soldier's
funeral. She knelt alone, and followed the burial service in the
stillness of the room overlooking the broad expanse of blue sea and
sky; and by-and-by, through the window came the sound of the volley
fired over the grave, the farewell of the army to the soldier at
rest, his battles ended.

'There was peace, and there was glory; but she could not divest
herself of a sense of unreality. She could not feel as if it were
really and truly Gilbert, and she were mourning for him. All was
like a dream--that solemn military spectacle--the serene, grave
sunshine on the fortress-harbour stretching its mailed arms into the
sea--the roofs of the knightly old monastic city rising in steps from
the bay crowded with white sails--and even those around her were
different, her husband pale and still, as in a region above common
life, and her cousin like another man, without his characteristic
joyousness and insouciance. She could hardly induce herself, in her
drowsy state, to believe that all was indeed veritable and tangible.

There was nothing to detain them at Malta, and Mr. Ferrars, who
arranged everything, thought the calm of a sea-voyage would be better
for them all than the bustle and fatigue of a land journey.

'Kendal himself does not care about getting home,' he said to Fred,
who was afraid this was determined on his account. 'I fear many
annoyances are in store for him. His son-in-law will not be pleasant
to deal with about the property.'

With an exclamation Fred started from the chairs on which he had been
resting, and dived into his sabre-tasch which hung from the wall. 'I
never liked to begin about it,' he said, 'but I ought to have given
them this. It was done when he was so bad at Scutari. One night he
worked himself into a fever lest he should not live till his
birthday, and said a great deal about this Dusautoy making himself an
annoyance, perhaps insisting on a sale and turning his father out.
Nothing pacified him till, the very day he was of age, we got the
vice-consul to draw up what he wanted, and witness it, and so did I
and the doctor, and here it is. Afterwards he warned me to say
nothing of it when Mr. Kendal came, for he said if the other fellow
made a row, it would be better his father should be able to say he
had known nothing of the matter.'

'Does he make his father his heir?'

'That's the whole of it. He said his sisters would see it was the
only way to get things even, and I was to tell Albinia something
about building cottages or almshouses. Ay, "his father was to do
what ought to have been done."'

'Well, there's the best deed of poor Gilbert's life!'

'Thank you,' mumbled Fred, hall drolly, half gravely.

'Ay, Kendal and Albinia will do more good with that property than you
have thought of in all your life, sir.'

'Their future and my past,' laughed Fred, adding more gravely, 'Scamp
as I am, there's more responsibility coming on me now, and I have
gone through some preparation for it. If I can get out to Canada--'

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