[to be continued.]
BY MARGARET SUTTON BRISCOE.
I.
he Right Rev. Bishop Hegan and his younger brother were holding a family conclave in the Bishop's library, one at each side of the sermon-strewn writing-table.
"I may be wrong," the younger man was saying, "but I see no better way out of my difficulty. My dear brother, you pray every Sunday for fatherless children and widows; why don't you mention widowers and motherless children; they are in far more need of help."
"It is hard," said the Bishop, sympathetically; "but I am afraid you are making your path harder by this last move."
Mr. Hegan made no effort to contradict his brother. "I see no better way," he repeated. "I went to Mildred's, and there found Tom, a boy of eighteen, eating his ten-o'clock breakfast—quail on toast. I picked Master Tom up with me and went on. At Jane's I found my four other young ones. But you have seen for yourself how I found them."
The Bishop laughed genially. "There was nothing to worry you in their training."
"No, for there was none. Perhaps I ought to have let their mother's sister bring them up as she offered."
"Whip them up, you mean," said the Bishop.
"Exactly; that's why I refused. It was good of my sisters to take my children for me; but they are not as their mother left them."
"No," said the Bishop, shaking his head; "they have lost what cannot be replaced. I suppose, Tom, you are not thinking of marrying again?" The brothers talked together with the utmost freedom, the younger answering the point-blank question as frankly as it was asked.
"I had thought of that, but the chances seemed to me as even that a step-mother would make the children unhappy as that my plan may. Joan is now—let me see—sixteen years old. She ought not to study this year; she is not as strong as she should be. She has been growing too fast and thinking too hard. The change to a year of home life and home cares will do her good."
"Is Joan to keep your house?"
"That was my idea. Jane has been filling her little head with romances, and letting her talk freely with the servants at the same time, until her conversation is a grotesque mixture of cultivation and picturesque terms culled from the servants' hall. Tom hears her in horror. But he needs to be shocked, so that's one good gained. I shall take Tom out to the furnaces with me, and start him with a crowbar in his hand to work his way up. It's the only chance for redeeming him. I haven't broken that piece of news to him yet. He thinks he is to go to college. I don't dare to send him there in his present trim. Milly has meant well, but she has almost ruined my boy with her money. Jane has done less harm to the others, but I must have my children with me for a year at least to straighten them out, and then I can decide what each one needs."
The Bishop looked grave. "It seems to me an awful experience ahead for you, and a pretty hard one for the young people, Tom. Aren't you just a little severe on them?"
"I don't think so; I know I don't mean to be. The truth is they have lost their dear mother, and life must be hard for us all at present. I think they ought to take their share of it. Shirking their burden, as I have been letting them, was certainly doing them harm. We are a motherless brood, and a motherless brood we will be, and work it out together."
The elder brother looked tenderly across the table at the younger. "You are a brave fellow, Tom. God bless you and your undertaking! I can't help feeling it's a wild experiment, but, as you have the courage to conceive it, you may have the character to bring it to a good end. Now that you have your little brood all collected here, let them roost in the garret as long as you like, and draw a free breath before you plunge in. Here come the youngsters now."
The study door was banged open, and three little children, two boys and a girl, hurtled into the room. The elder children were dragging the baby girl between them, and they were followed by Joan, who had plainly set out with the intention of quelling the riot, but forgot her errand by the way, and now wandered in dreamily after the procession. The Bishop's quiet study, kept always by his housekeeper as a half-sacred retreat, buzzed as if blue-bottle flies had flown in.
"Godfather, we can play here, can't we?"
The Bishop was godfather to all his brother's children.
"Play here? No, my dears," said the Bishop, promptly; "you cannot. See! I tied my manuscript scissors to my desk yesterday, because— Well, you two boys know why; and now somebody has most impudently cut the string with those very same scissors, and they are off again. This will not do, gentlemen—it will not do."
The Bishop was afraid of no man, woman, or child either; for, strange to say, it is not uncommon to find those who are bold with grown people fearful with little folk.
Mr. Hegan laughed to see his two stormy boys stand staring solemnly and guiltily at their uncle. "I wish I had your royal talent," he said. "I never shall make myself loved yet respected as you do. Once, twenty years ago, you found me shoving about some of your papers on this very desk, and I took a long walk afterward, and crept in at the back door when I came home. I loved you just as dearly, but I never touched your desk papers again, any more than my boys will your scissors."
"Dear! dear! I must have a frightful temper," said the Bishop, easily. "Tom, suppose you wake Joan. But the child has a lovely face when she sleeps awake, hasn't she?"
"Joan!" called Mr. Hegan; "my child!"
Joan turned with a start. She had been standing gazing up at a picture that hung over the Bishop's head. The painting was a spiritual yet spirited conception of the manly Maid of Orleans, with a peculiarly delicate shading of her womanliness into the warlike pose.
"Father," said Joan, as she turned—her voice cooed like a wood-pigeon's—"did you ever see such a perfect picture? Can't the children go out now? They are getting so fritty in the house."
There was no break between the sentences, only a change of tone.
"Fritty?" asked her uncle. "What's fritty, pray?"
"I don't know. I always say that. Frightfully fretful, I suppose. They certainly are that. It's not really raining now, father." She walked to the window. "Just a kinder drizzle-drazzle, slightly drippy-drap."
The father and uncle exchanged glances and waited; but Joan, turning back, was again absorbed in the painting above them, and saw nothing.
"We are talking about the weather, my dear," said Mr. Hegan, dryly, and Joan flushed as she roused again. "Does their nurse think the children should go out?"
Joan laughed aloud. She had a child's laugh. "Lolly? Why, father, Lolly doesn't know anything. You wrote Aunt Jane you would rather the children had a stupid nurse than a bright one who would force them forward, so we chose out Lolly, and indeed, father, you've got your rather." She laughed out again—with no impertinence, but an open enjoyment that anything should be expected of Lolly.
"Is this the nurse you expect to keep?" asked the Bishop of his brother.
Mr. Hegan looked troubled. Joan watched him anxiously, and with a swift keenness of expression that surprised and pleased her uncle.
"Father," she said, seriously, "I haven't asked what your plans are, but whatever they may be, don't part with Lolly. She's half a fool, but she bathes the children beautifully, and keeps their clothes nice, and they love her just as the baby loves her cribby-house. She is so soft and kind and pleasant to them. I always—or Aunt Jane—decide things."
Again the brothers exchanged glances, as Joan stooped to extricate the baby, who had been tilted over into the scrap-basket.
"She looked a woman as she said that," whispered the Bishop, "and like a child the moment before."
"She is both," said the father. "Joan, sit here a moment, my dear. We want to talk with you. Your uncle does not approve what I am going to do, but I have decided, if you feel able to undertake it, to let you drop study for a year, and keep house for me and the children. What do you say? Could you 'decide things' without Aunt Jane?"
To the disappointment of those who were closely watching her on this test question, Joan's radiant delight rose as a screen before any latent capacity she might have shown.
"Oh dear father, is it true? Oh, godfather, I am so happy! Children, children, listen—"
"Let her alone," said the Bishop; "we can only tell by waiting. She is a sweet-hearted child, if she does use extraordinary language, and she still will be sweet if she should utterly fail you in housekeeping. Remember that, Tom."
"But she also shows a lovely and cultivated mind at times," insisted the father.
"Well, not to me as yet," denied the Bishop, laughingly. "'Fritty'—'Drippy-drap'—'drizzle-drazzle'! Nevertheless, you are right to forbid her to study for a time. She has sombre shadows under her eyes that add to her peculiar style of beauty, but they must be painted out by a good common rose-color. Now, Tom, take yourself and your children and your affairs out of my study and my head—out of my heart you never go—but this sermon must be written."
"Oh, just one minute," begged Joan, "Father, what about Tom?"
"He is to be with us. I shall take him on the furnace work with me. But don't mention that to him yet, Joan; I charge you carefully not to tell him."
Joan's face was a flushed joy. "Not for the world. How happy, happy, happy we shall all be together! Tom's coming is my last straw of joy."
"Godfather," pleaded the baby, with hands held up, "you tarry me up 'tairs."
Godfather flung the baby up to his tall broadcloth shoulder, and the whole cavalcade trooped to the stairs, the baby the centre of attraction. Joan, running on ahead, stood smiling from the upper landing, her arms held down for the crowing baby girl, whom she clasped and carried away to bed.
Presently from the highest landing, where the children were quartered, Joan's still sweet tones floated down as if remonstrating against some action of her brother's.
"Tom, Tom, you mustn't grab baby like that with a pin in your coat. Why, I wouldn't keep pins in my clothes any more than I would a hoppy-toad. Sure to scratch baby. Well, dear boy, if you don't like my ways, don't swing on my gate. When you strain my hinges, they creak."
"No lack of spirit, at any rate," laughed the Bishop. "Cheer up, Tom. I am more anxious now for your boy than for your girl. I think she'll do."
At that moment, in the garret nursery, temporarily fitted up for the children's use, Tom's boy was talking with Joan in a way momentous to both. He was a handsome, finely built young fellow, with the look of half-sulky defiance which marks the boy who, for one reason or another, has yet to earn his real manhood.
"So that's the plan for you and the kids, eh? I'm glad for you, Joan, if you like it. I wish I knew what college father will decide to send me to. I can't understand why he won't let me choose. And he was so odd at Aunt Milly's; he swept me away before I had really finished my breakfast, and sat watching me eat with his face like a thunder-cloud."
Joan's heart contracted with a quick fear of unhappy possibilities which had not before occurred to her. What had seemed ideal to her was not, she began to realize, Tom's ideal. She controlled herself to reply.
"What were you eating?" she asked, practically.
"Quail on toast; and there was no harm in that. You would have thought he had caught me picking a pocket. He was closeted for a long time with Aunt Milly, and she came out crying, and told me father meant to take me from her at once. Did you know Aunt Milly wanted to adopt me?"
Joan raised her eyes with the rare searching look her uncle had admired. "You would not like that?" she stated rather than asked.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It would mean money to burn."
"It would mean hearts to burn," replied Joan, quickly. "Tom, would you like it?" She looked in his face with pleading anxiety.
Tom melted. "No, I would hate it. I'm immensely proud of being my father's son. Do you happen to know how father got his first promotion? Uncle told me to-day. He wasn't very much older than I when he went to work. The furnace he was in charge of was cooling fast, and they couldn't control it. He had barrels of oil hoisted to the top of the furnace, and with his own hands he flung them down into the red-hot opening. It saved the company thousands; but what I liked was his doing it himself, and not sending some poor devil of a workman to do it for him."
Joan's dark cheek flushed. "Wasn't that fine? Tom, there are two things I do envy you the chance of doing. Poor me! I shall never be able to do anything fine like that, and I never can knock anybody down. I always wanted to be able to hit out from the shoulder if I needed to, and do deeds of valor like Joan of Arc. Uncle has the most perfect picture of her."
"Don't talk like that, Joan," said Tom, with a humorous look at her. He was at times strikingly like his uncle, with the same unconscious air of gentle breeding, quite different from the man-of-the-world manner he affected whenever he remembered it. "I want you to be like other girls. Fellows don't like peculiar women, and I want my sister to be a toast among my college friends. I suppose father will let me fill the house for the holidays. There's good shooting down there, isn't there?"
"I don't know," said Joan.
"Joan," said Tom, in a still voice, "what are you crying about? You know something you are not telling me, Joan. What is it?"
"Indeed, Tom—"
"Don't try to tell stories, Joan; you don't know how to. Father has some plan for me that I won't like, and you know what it is."
"Oh, Tom, why do you say that; what have I said?"
"Nothing. That's just the trouble. If you don't know anything, deny it." Another long and, to Joan, terrible stillness. "Does father want me to go to work half educated, as he did? There is no earthly necessity for it, as there was with him. If you don't answer, Joan, I shall know that's his plan."
Joan wrung her hands in speechless agony.
"It's a piece of rank tyranny," said Tom, between his teeth. "I won't submit to it, and I shall tell father so this minute. I won't be planned for over my head."
He had accepted the facts as if Joan had told him of them in so many words. Joan had a vague sense that she was being horribly wronged, or that she was wronging some one, her over-tender conscience leading her to settle in the latter conviction. She was trying to clasp Tom's arm and hold him back with sobbing entreaties, but he would not be held. The little baby sister, attracted half pleasurably by the emotion she saw between her elders, had drawn near, and was staring up at them round-eyed. Tom stubbed his toe over her as he made for the door, and did not stop for more than a hasty glance, which told him the baby was more angry than hurt. It was Joan who picked up the child, and the two sobbed together, with their faces tucked each into the other's soft neck.
"Oh," sobbed the elder sister, "don't cry, little sister, don't cry. Big sister wants to think!"
Tom meantime was allowed no preparation between his discovery and his interview with his father, for he stumbled against Mr. Hegan in the lower hall as he had on the baby in the nursery, with the difference that the father not only withstood the shock, but caught his son by the shoulder, steadying him. So the two came face to face and eye to eye in actual arm's-length of each other.
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Hegan; and Tom knew he was not referring to their bodily encounter.
"Joan has been telling me—" he blurted out.
Mr. Hegan's hands dropped. He knew at once what was referred to. "Joan told you!" he exclaimed.
Tom recovered his wits and his generosity. "No, no! I mean I wormed it out of her. She did not mean to tell anything."
"Did you twist her arm or pinch her?"
"Father!"
"It amounts to the same thing. As you have succeeded in 'worming out' of Joan—I use your own terms—what I wanted to tell you myself, suppose we talk it all over now and settle it here."
Mr. Hegan moved to the hall window, leaning against one side of the frame. His tone of cold contempt stung like a whip, and matters did not mend as they progressed. To Tom it was as if the world were at stake, and Mr. Hegan, in a few terse matter-of-fact sentences, was making his will known. The boy broke in at last, unable to wait for a proper pause:
"You had not a college education yourself, sir, or you would realize why I feel it so important."
The tone was not respectful, and Mr. Hegan's brow reddened slightly, but his voice was as even as before: "Does the anticipation of a college education give so much experience? Perhaps I value what I lost more than if I had enjoyed it. You cannot possibly place more importance on education than I do, for you have not felt the handicap of its lack. But, though you will not now believe it, there are things more important. For my own reasons, and thoughtfully"—Mr. Hegan's voice grew warmer and his manner more fatherly—"I have decided, Tom, that you must just now begin as your father began."
Tom looked up steadily in his father's face.
"HAD YOU CONSIDERED THAT I MIGHT REFUSE, SIR?"
"Had you considered that I might refuse, sir?"
Mr. Hegan did not again change color, though now the disrespect was marked. He looked at his son calmly, as he might at a stranger.
"No," he replied, quietly. "I had not considered that for a moment."
Tom strove in vain to render his own tones as quiet. "What is there to prevent my refusing? What is to prevent my acceptance of Aunt Milly's offer of adoption?"
"Nothing," answered Mr. Hegan, as quietly as before. "Your Aunt Milly would be glad to take you back on any terms, pleasant or offensive to me, and once back with her, I assure you I would not move a finger to dislodge you."
In spite of his resentment at fatherly control, this announced indifference cut the son to the quick. He flung back his head.
"I will go at once," he said.
"No," replied Mr. Hegan, "you will not."
"Why not?" asked Tom, and could have choked himself for the involuntary question.
"You will not go simply because I forbid it."
At the simple words Tom's heart stood still. A quick conviction seized him that he would for some unknown reason have to obey this calm command as absolutely as it was given. At the bare mental suggestion a great anger and defiance surged within him. He knew then that he had touched the crisis. It was then or never—freedom or bondage. Hot words that were to cut him loose from all authority were on his tongue, and he opened his lips to say them. Mr. Hegan's calm eyes were fixed on his face. To the boy's amazement, defiant words would not come. In their place, as he gasped in his effort, there was something else—a wordless, voiceless sound tearing its way through his throat and choking an outlet at his lips. Tom was leaning against the window opposite his father, sobbing like a beaten child. In the depths of his mortification, the confusion of his abrupt downfall, he heard his father's footsteps pass by him, leaving the hall. For the first time in his prosperous life Tom had been knocked down flat—in spirit. He was quivering in every nerve with the shock of failure, yet he felt a strange new sense of power. He had measured his strength for the first time against a more powerful nature, and, though beaten, he was stronger for the struggle, and he knew it. There was something in the experience that had developed while it humbled him.
In the Bishop's study Joan was also taking her first lesson in the new life, but she had a different teacher, and her lesson was shorter. He had always been easy for her to talk with, and a few questions drew forth the true state of the case.
"The young rascal!" said the Bishop.
"Do you," sobbed Joan—"do you think father will be harsh with him?"
"I don't doubt it for a moment," said the Bishop, cheerfully. "Tom will be treated to just enough punishment, and not a grain too much."
Her uncle laid his hand tenderly on her dark head. "See here, my little girl," he said, "I want you to take life less heroically. I am going to give you a token to remind you of this. You keep looking up at my Joan of Arc. Well, she is yours. No, you must accept it, for I can spare her easily. I don't care to own too many impediments in my walk through the world. You must hang the picture in your own room; and whenever you look at it I want you to say to yourself, not Joan of Arc, but—Joan of Home. You don't understand what I mean just yet, but some day as you say this you will understand suddenly, and better than if I had explained it. Now run away, my dear."
"Dear! dear!" thought the Bishop to himself, as he shut his study door, "Brother Tom has plainly been reading the riot act. I wonder if his boy will ever make him another declaration of independence?" His eye fell on the calendar on his desk, and he raised his eyebrows, smiling. "Why," he said, "what a man of peace I am! It's the great Fourth of July, and I never realized it. Well, Tom and his family have been Celebrating and Declaring enough for us all. I wonder how it will end?"