Nuttie\'s Father by Charlotte M. Yonge
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> Nuttie\'s Father
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Nuttie's Father
by Charlotte M Yonge
CHAPTER I.
ST. AMBROSE'S CHOIR.
'For be it known
That their saint's honour is their own.'--SCOTT.
The town of Micklethwayte was rising and thriving. There were
salubrious springs which an enterprising doctor had lately brought
into notice. The firm of Greenleaf and Dutton manufactured umbrellas
in large quantities, from the stout weather-proof family roof down to
the daintiest fringed toy of a parasol. There were a Guild Hall and
a handsome Corn Market. There was a Modern School for the boys, and
a High School for the girls, and a School of Art, and a School of
Cookery, and National Schools, and a British School, and a Board
School, also churches of every height, chapels of every denomination,
and iron mission rooms budding out in hopes to be replaced by
churches.
Like one of the animals which zoologists call radiated, the town was
constantly stretching out fresh arms along country roads, all living
and working, and gradually absorbing the open spaces between. One of
these arms was known as St. Ambrose's Road, in right of the church,
an incomplete structure in yellow brick, consisting of a handsome
chancel, the stump of a tower, and one aisle just weather-tight and
usable, but, by its very aspect, begging for the completion of the
beautiful design that was suspended above the alms-box.
It was the evening of a summer day which had been very hot. The
choir practice was just over, and the boys came out trooping and
chattering; very small ones they were; for as soon as they began to
sing tolerably they were sure to try to get into the choir of the old
church, which had a foundation that fed, clothed, taught, and finally
apprenticed them. So, though the little fellows were clad in
surplices and cassocks, and sat in the chancel for correctness sake,
there was a space round the harmonium reserved for the more
trustworthy band of girls and young women who came forth next,
followed by four or five mechanics.
Behind came the nucleus of the choir--a slim, fair-haired youth of
twenty; a neat, precise, well-trimmed man, closely shaven, with
stooping shoulders, at least fifteen years older, with a black poodle
at his heels, as well shorn as his master, newly risen from lying
outside the church door; a gentle, somewhat drooping lady in black,
not yet middle-aged and very pretty; a small eager, unformed, black-
eyed girl, who could hardly keep back her words for the outside of
the church door; a tall self-possessed handsome woman, with a fine
classical cast of features; and lastly, a brown-faced, wiry
hardworking clergyman, without an atom of superfluous flesh, but with
an air of great energy.
'Oh! vicar, where are we to go?' was the question so eager to break
forth.
'Not to the Crystal Palace, Nuttie. The funds won't bear it. Mr.
Dutton says we must spend as little as possible on locomotion.'
'I'm sure I don't care for the Crystal Palace. A trumpery tinsel
place, all shams.'
'Hush, hush, my dear, not so loud,' said the quiet lady; but Nuttie
only wriggled her shoulders, though her voice was a trifle lowered.
'If it were the British Museum now, or Westminster Abbey.'
'Or the Alps,' chimed in a quieter voice, 'or the Ufizzi.'
'Now, Mr. Dutton, that's not what I want. Our people aren't ready
for that, but what they have let it be real. Miss Mary, don't you
see what I mean?'
'Rather better than Miss Egremont herself,' said Mr. Dutton.
'Well,' said the vicar, interposing in the wordy war, 'Mrs.
Greenleaf's children have scarlatina, so we can't go to Horton
Bishop. The choice seems to be between South Beach and Monks
Horton.'
'That's no harm,' cried Nuttie; 'Mrs. Greenleaf is so patronising!'
'And both that and South Beach are so stale,' said the youth.
'As if the dear sea could ever be stale,' cried the young girl.
'I thought Monks Horton was forbidden ground,' said Miss Mary.
'So it was with the last regime', said the vicar; 'but now the new
people are come I expect great things from them. I hear they are
very friendly.'
'I expect nothing from them,' said Nuttie so sententiously that all
her hearers laughed and asked 'her exquisite reason,' as Mr. Dutton
put it.
'Lady Kirkaldy and a whole lot of them came into the School of Art.'
'And didn't appreciate "Head of Antinous by Miss Ursula Egremont,"'
was the cry that interrupted her, but she went on with dignity
unruffled--'Anything so foolish and inane as their whole talk and all
their observations I never heard. "I don't like this style," one of
them said. "Such ugly useless things! I never see anything pretty
and neatly finished such as we used to do."' The girl gave it in a
tone of mimicry of the nonchalant voice, adding, with fresh
imitation, "'And another did not approve of drawing from the life--
models might be such strange people."'
'My ears were not equally open to their profanities,' said Miss Mary.
'I confess that I was struck by the good breeding and courtesy of the
leader of the party, who, I think, was Lady Kirkaldy herself.'
'I saw! I thought she was patronising you, and my blood boiled!'
cried Nuttie.
'Will boiling blood endure a picnic in the park of so much ignorance,
folly, and patronage?' asked Mr. Dutton.
'Oh, indeed, Mr. Dutton, Nuttie never said that,' exclaimed gentle
Mrs. Egremont.
'Whether it is fully worth the doing is the question,' said the
vicar.
'Grass and shade do not despise,' said Miss Mary.
'There surely must be some ecclesiastical remains,' said the young
man.
'And there is a river,' added the vicar.
'I shall get a stickleback for my aquarium,' cried Nuttie. 'We shall
make some discoveries for the Scientific Society. I shall note down
every individual creature I see! I say! you are sure it is not a
sham waterfall or Temple of Tivoli?'
'It would please the choir boys and G. F. S. girls quite as much, if
not more, in that case,' said Miss Mary; 'but you need not expect
that, Nuttie. Landscape-gardening is gone by.'
'Even with the county people?' said Nuttie.
'By at least half a century,' said Mr. Dutton, 'with all deference to
this young lady's experience.'
'It was out of their own mouths,' cried the girl defiantly. 'That's
all I know about county people, and so I hope it will be.'
'Come in, my dear, you are talking very fast,' interposed Mrs.
Egremont, with some pain in the soft sweet voice, which, if it had
been a little stronger, would have been the best in the choir.
These houses in St. Ambrose's Road were semi-detached. The pair
which the party had reached had their entrances at the angles, with a
narrow gravel path leading by a tiny grass plat to each. One, which
was covered with a rich pall of purple clematis, was the home of Mrs.
Egremont, her aunt, and Nuttie; the other, adorned with a Gloire de
Dijon rose in second bloom, was the abode of Mary Nugent, with her
mother, the widow of a naval captain. Farther on, with adjoining
gardens, was another couple of houses, in one of which lived Mr.
Dutton; in the other lodged the youth, Gerard Godfrey, together with
the partner of the principal medical man. The opposite neighbours
were a master of the Modern School and a scholar. Indeed, the saying
of the vicar, the Rev. Francis Spyers, was, and St. Ambrose's Road
was proud of it, that it was a professional place. Every one had
something to do either with schools or umbrellas, scarcely excepting
the doctor and the solicitor, for the former attended the pupils and
the latter supplied them. Mr. Dutton was a partner in the umbrella
factory, and lived, as the younger folk said, as the old bachelor of
the Road. Had he not a housekeeper, a poodle, and a cat; and was not
his house, with lovely sill boxes full of flowers in the windows, the
neatest of the neat; and did not the tiny conservatory over his
dining-room window always produce the flowers most needed for the
altar vases, and likewise bouquets for the tables of favoured ladies.
Why, the very daisies never durst lift their heads on his little
lawn, which even bore a French looking-glass globe in the centre.
Miss Nugent, or Miss Mary as every one still called her, as her elder
sister's marriage was recent, was assistant teacher at the School of
Art, and gave private drawing lessons, so as to supplement the
pension on which her mother lived. They also received girls as
boarders attending the High School.
So did Miss Headworth, who had all her life been one of those people
who seem condemned to toil to make up for the errors or disasters of
others. First she helped to educate a brother, and soon he had died
to leave an orphan daughter to be bred up at her cost. The girl had
married from her first situation; but had almost immediately lost her
husband at sea, and on this her aunt had settled at Micklethwayte to
make a home for her and her child, at first taking pupils, but when
the High School was set up, changing these into boarders; while Mrs.
Egremont went as daily governess to the children of a family of
somewhat higher pretensions. Little Ursula, or Nuttie, as she was
called, according to the local contraction, was like the child of all
the party, and after climbing up through the High School to the last
form, hoped, after passing the Cambridge examination, to become a
teacher there in another year.
CHAPTER II.
MONKS HORTON.
'And we will all the pleasures prove,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.'--Old Ballad.
It was holiday-time, and liberties were taken such as were not
permissible, when they might have afforded a bad precedent to the
boarders. Therefore, when two afternoons later Mary Nugent,
returning from district visiting, came out into her garden behind the
house, she was not scandalised to see a pair of little black feet
under a holland skirt resting on a laurel branch, and going a few
steps more she beheld a big shady hat, and a pair of little hands
busy with a pencil and a blank book; as Ursula sat on the low wall
between the gardens, shaded by the laburnum which facilitated the
ascent on her own side.
'Oh Miss Mary! Delicious! Come up here! You don't know how
charming this is.'
She moved aside so as to leave the ascent--by an inverted flower-pot
and a laurel branch--open to her friend, thus knocking down one of
the pile of books which she had taken to the top of the wall. Miss
Nugent picked it up, 'Marie Stuart! Is this your way of studying
her?'
'Now, you know 'tis holiday time, and volunteer work; besides, she
was waiting for you, and I could not help doing this.' She held out
a hand, which was scarcely needed, and Mary sprang lightly to share
her perch upon the wall. 'Look here!'
'Am I to guess the subject as in the game of historic outlines,' said
Miss Nugent, as the book was laid on her lap. 'It looks like a
modern--no, a mediaeval--edition of Marcus Curtius about to leap into
the capital opening for a young man, only with his dogs instead of
his horse. That hound seems very rationally to object.'
'Now don't! Guess in earnest.'
'A compliment to your name. The Boy of Egremont, poor fellow, just
about to bound across the strid.'
'Exactly! I always feel sure that my father must have done something
like this.'
'Was it so heroic?' said Miss Mary. 'You know it was for the
hundredth time, and he had no reason to expect any special danger.'
'Oh, but his mother was waiting, and he had to go. Now, I'll tell
you how it must have been with my father. You know he sailed away in
a yacht before I was born, and poor mother never saw him again; but I
know what happened. There was a ship on fire like the Birkenhead,
and the little yacht went near to pick up the people, and my father
called out, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert--
"Do not fear, Heaven is as near
By water as by land."
And the little yacht was so close when the great ship blew up that it
got sucked down in the whirlpool, and rescuers and all died a noble
death together!'
'Has your mother been telling you?' asked Miss Mary.
'Oh no! she never mentions him. She does not know. No one does; but
I am quite sure he died nobly, with no one to tell the tale, only the
angels to look on, and that makes it all the finer. Or just suppose
he was on a desert island all the time, and came back again to find
us! I sometimes think he is.'
'What? When you are _quite sure_ of the other theory?'
'I mean I am quite sure while I am thinking about it, or reading
Robinson Crusoe, or the Swiss Family.'
'Oh!'
'Miss Mary, has no one ever told you anything about my father?'
'No one.'
'They never tell me. Mother cries, and aunt Ursula puts on her
"there's-an-end-of-it look." Do you think there is anything they are
waiting to tell me till I am older?'
'If there were, I am sure you had better not try to find it out
beforehand.'
'You don't think I would do anything of _that sort?_ But I thought
you might know. Do you remember their first settling here?'
'Scarcely. I was a very small child then.'
Miss Nugent had a few vague recollections which she did not think it
expedient to mention. A dim remembrance rose before her of
mysterious whisperings about that beautiful young widow, and that it
had been said that the rector of the Old Church had declared himself
to know the ladies well, and had heartily recommended them. She
thought it wiser only to speak of having been one of their first
scholars, telling of the awe Miss Headworth inspired; but the
pleasure it was to bring a lesson to pretty Mrs. Egremont, who always
rewarded a good one with a kiss, 'and she was so nice to kiss--yes,
and is.'
'Aunt Ursel and mother both were governesses,' continued the girl,
'and yet they don't want me to go out. They had rather I was a
teacher at the High School.'
'They don't want to trust their Little Bear out in the world.'
'I think it is more than that,' said the girl. 'I can't help
thinking that he--my father--must have been some one rather grand,
with such a beautiful name as Alwyn Piercefield Egremont. Yes; I
know it was that, for I saw my baptismal certificate when I stood for
the scholarship; it was Dieppe,--Ursula Alice, daughter of Alwyn
Piercefield and Alice Elizabeth Egremont, May 15, 1860. James
Everett--I think he was the chaplain at Dieppe.'
Mary Nugent thought it the wisest way to laugh and say: 'You, of all
people in the world, to want to make out a connection with the
aristocracy!'
'True love is different,' said Ursula. 'He must have been cast off
by his family for her sake, and have chosen poverty--
"To make the croon a pund, my Alwyn gaed to sea,
And the croon and the pund, they were baith for me."'
Miss Mary did not think a yacht a likely place for the conversion of
a croon into a pound, and the utter silence of mother and aunt did
not seem to her satisfactory; but she feared either to damp the
youthful enthusiasm for the lost father, or to foster curiosity that
might lead to some painful discovery, so she took refuge in an
inarticulate sound.
'I think Mr. Dutton knows,' proceeded Nuttie.
'You don't mean to ask him?'
'Catch me! I know how he would look at me.'
'Slang! A forfeit!'
'Oh, it's holiday time, and the boarders can't hear. There's Mr.
Dutton's door!'
This might in one way be a relief to Miss Nugent, but she did not
like being caught upon the wall, and therefore made a rapid descent,
though not without a moment's entanglement of skirt, which delayed
her long enough to show where she had been, as Mr. Dutton was at the
same moment advancing to his own wall on the opposite side of the
Nugent garden. Perhaps he would have pretended to see nothing but
for Nuttie's cry of glee.
'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into
predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! like Robin Goodfellow
himself.'
'You should have kept your elevation and dignity like me,' retorted
Ursula; 'and then you would have had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
Dutton climbing his wall and coming to our feet.'
'Mischievous elves deserve no good news,' said Mr. Dutton, who was by
no means so venerable that the crossing the wall was any effort or
compromise of dignity, and who had by this time joined Mary on her
grass plat.
'Oh, what is it! Are we to go to Monks Horton?' cried Nuttie.
'Here is a gracious permission from Lord Kirkaldy, the only
stipulations being that no vestiges of the meal, such as sandwich
papers or gooseberry skins, be left on the grass; and that nobody
does any mischief,' he added in an awful tone of personality. 'So if
I see anybody rooting up holly trees I shall be bound to interfere.'
'Now, Mr. Dutton, it was only a baby holly in a chink.'
'Only a holly tree! Just like the giant's daughter when she only
carried off waggon, peasant, oxen, and all in her pinafore.'
'It is not longer than my finger now!'
'Well, remember, mischief either wanton or scientific is forbidden.
You are to set an example to the choir-boys.'
'Scientific mischief is a fatal thing to rare plants,' said Mary.
'If I'm not to touch anything, I may as well stay at home,' pouted
Nuttie.
'You may gather as many buttercups and daisies as the sweet child
pleases,' said Mr. Dutton; whereupon she threatened to throw her
books at his head.
Miss Nugent asked how they were to go, and Mr. Dutton explained that
there was only a quarter of a mile's walk from the station; that
return tickets would be furnished at a tariff of fourpence a head;
and that there would be trains at 1.15 and 7.30.
'How hungry the children will be.'
'They will eat all the way. That's the worst of this sort of outing.
They eat to live and live to eat.'
'At least they don't eat at church,' said Nuttie.
'Not since the peppermint day, when Mr. Spyers suspended Dickie
Drake,' put in Mary.
And the Spa Terrace Church people said it was incense.'
'No. Nuttie!'
'Indeed they did. Louisa Barnet attacked us about it at school, and
I said I wished it had been. Only they mustn't eat peppermint in the
train, for it makes mother quite ill.'
'Do you mean that Mrs. Egremont will come?' exclaimed Mr. Dutton.
'Oh yes, she shall. It is not too far, and it will be very good for
her. I shall make her.'
'There's young England's filial duty!' said Mary.
'Why, I know what is good for her, and she always does as "I wish."'
'Beneficent despotism!' said Mr. Dutton. 'May I ask if Miss
Headworth is an equally obedient subject.'
'Oh! Aunt Ursel is very seldom tiresome.'
'Nuttie! Nuttie! my dear,' and a head with the snows of more than
half a century appeared on the other side of the wall, under a cap
and parasol. 'I am sorry to interrupt you, but it is cool enough for
your mother to go into the town, and I wish you to go with her.'
CHAPTER III.
HEIR HUNTING.
'And she put on her gown of green,
And left her mother at sixteen,
To marry Peter Bell!'--WORDSWORTH.
In the shrubberies of Monks Horton were walking a lady somewhat past
middle age, but full of activity and vigour, with one of those bright
faces that never grow old, and with her a young man, a few years over
twenty, with a grave and almost careworn countenance.
More and more confidential waxed the conversation, for the lady was
making fresh acquaintance with a nephew seldom seen since he had been
her pet and darling as almost a baby, and he was experiencing the
inexpressible charm of tone and manner that recalled the young mother
he had lost in early boyhood.
'Then your mind is made up,' she said; 'you are quite right to decide
on having a profession; but how does your father take it?'
'He is quite convinced that to repeat my uncle's life, dangling on as
heir, would be the most fatal mistake.'
'Assuredly, and all the legal knowledge you acquire is so much in
favour of your usefulness as the squire.'
'If I ever am the squire, of which I have my doubts.'
'You expect Mr. Egremont to marry?'
'Not a future marriage, but one in the past.'
'A private marriage! Do you suspect it?'
'I don't suspect it--I know it. I have been hoping to talk the
matter over with you. Do you remember our first governess, Miss
Headworth?'
'My dear Mark, did I not lose at Pera the charms of your infancy?'
'Then neither my mother nor my grandmother ever wrote to you about
her?'
'I do remember that it struck me that immunity from governesses was a
compensation for the lack of daughters.'
'Can you tell me no details,' said Mark anxiously. 'Have you no
letters? It was about the time when Blanche was born, when we were
living at Raxley.'
'I am sorry to say that our roving life prevented my keeping old
letters. I have often regretted it. Let me see, there was one who
boxed May's ears.'
'That was long after. I think it was that woman's barbarity that
made my father marry again, and a very good thing that was. It was
wretched before. Miss Headworth was in my own mother's time.'
'I begin to remember something happening that your mother seemed
unable to write about, and your grandmother said that she had been
greatly upset by "that miserable affair," but I was never exactly
told what it had been.'
'Miss Headworth came when I was four or five years old. Edda, as we
used to call her in May's language, was the first person who gave me
a sense of beauty. She had dark eyes and a lovely complexion. I
remember in after times being silenced for saying, "not so pretty as
my Edda." I was extremely fond of her, enough to have my small
jealousy excited when my uncle joined us in our walks, and
monopolised her, turning May and me over to play with his dog!'
'But, Mark, Mr. Egremont is some years older than your father. He
could not have been a young man at that time.'
'So much the worse. Most likely he seemed to her quite paternal.
The next thing I recollect was our being in the Isle of Wight, we two
children, with Miss Headworth and the German nurse, and our being
told of our new sister. Uncle Alwyn and his yacht were there, and we
went on board once or twice. Then matters became confused with me, I
recollect a confusion, papa and grandmamma suddenly arriving,
everybody seeming to us to have become very cross, our dear Miss
Headworth nowhere to be found, our attendants being changed, and our
being forbidden to speak of her again. I certainly never thought of
the matter till a month ago. You know my uncle's eyes have been much
affected by his illness, and he has made a good deal of use of me.
He has got a valet, a fellow of no particular country, more Savoyard
than anything else, I fancy. He is a legacy, like other evils, from
the old General, and seems a sort of necessity to my uncle's
existence. Gregorio they call him. He was plainly used to absolute
government, and viewed the coming down amongst us as an assertion of
liberty much against his will. We could see that he was awfully
jealous of my father and me, and would do anything to keep us out;
but providentially he can't write English decently, though he can
speak any language you please. Well, the man and I came into
collision about a scamp of a groom who was doing intolerable mischief
in the village, and whom they put it on me to get discharged. On
that occasion Mr. Gregorio grew insolent, and intimated to me that I
need not make so sure of the succession. He knew that which might
make the Chanoine and me change our note. Well, my father is always
for avoiding rows; he said it was an unmeaning threat, it was of no
use to complain of Gregorio, and we must digest his insolence. But
just after, Uncle Alwyn sent me to hunt up a paper that was missing,
and in searching a writing-case I came upon an unmistakable marriage
certificate between Alwyn Piercefield Egremont and Alice Headworth,
and then the dim recollections I told you of began to return.'
'What did you do?'
'I thought I had better consult my father, expecting to hear that she
was dead, and that no further notice need be taken of the matter.
But he was greatly disturbed to hear of the certificate, and would
hardly believe me. He said that some friend of my grandmother had
written her word of goings on at Freshwater between his brother and
the young governess, and that they went off at once to put a stop to
it, but found us left with the German maid, who declared that Miss
Headworth had gone off with Mr. Egremont in the yacht. No more was
heard of my uncle for six weeks, and when he came back there was a
great row with the old General, but he absolutely denied being
married. I am afraid that was all the old sinner wished, and they
went off together in the yacht to the West Indies, where it was
burnt; but they, as you know, never came to England again, going
straight off to the Mediterranean, having their headquarters at
Sorrento, and cruising about till the General's death ten years ago.'
'Yes, I once met them at Florence, and thought them two weary
pitiable men. One looked at the General as a curious relic of the
old buck of the Regency days, and compassionated his nephew for
having had his life spoilt by dangling after the old man. It was a
warning indeed, and I am glad you have profited by it, Mark.'
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