"Oh! now!" cried Janet, "if it were only the pleasure of being free from patronage it would be something."

"Grat.i.tude!" said Bobus.

"I'll show my grat.i.tude," said Janet; "we'll give all of them at Kencroft all the fine clothes and jewels and amus.e.m.e.nts that ever they care for, more than ever they gave us; only it is we that shall give and they that will take, don't you see?"

"Sweet charity," quoth Bobus.

Those two were a great contrast; Janet had never been so radiant, feeling her sentence of banishment revoked, and realising more vividly than anyone else was doing, the pleasures of wealth. The cloud under which she had been ever since the coming to the PaG.o.da seemed to have rolled away, in the sense of triumph and antic.i.p.ation; while Bobus seemed to have fallen into a mood of sarcastic ill-temper. His mother saw, and it added to her sense of worry, though her bright sweet nature would scarcely have fathomed the cause, even had she been in a state to think actively rather than to feel pa.s.sively. Bobus, only a year younger than Allen, and endowed with more force and application, if not with more quickness, had always been on a level with his brother, and felt superior, despising Allen's Eton airs and graces, and other characteristics which most people thought amiable. And now Allen had become son and heir, and was treated by everyone as the only person of importance. Bobus did not know what his own claims might be, but at any rate his brother's would transcend them, and his temper was thoroughly upset.

Poor Caroline! She did not wholly omit to pray "In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, deliver us!" but if she had known all that was in her children's hearts, her own would have trembled more.

And as to Ellen, the utmost she allowed herself to say was, "Well, I hope she will make a good use of it!"

While the Colonel, as trustee and adviser, had really a very considerable amount of direct importance and enjoyment before him, which might indeed be--to use his own useful phrase--"a fearful responsibility," but was no small boon to a man with too much time on his hands.

CHAPTER XVI. -- POSSESSION.

Vain glorious Elf, said he, dost thou not weete That money can thy wants at will supply; Shields, steeds and armes, and all things for thee meet, It can purvey in twinkling of an eye.

Spenser.

Bobus's opinion that it would be long before anything came of this accession of wealth was for a few days verified in the eyes of the impatient family, for Christmas interfered with some of the necessary formalities; and their mother, still thinking that another will might be discovered, declared that they were not to go within the gates of Belforest till they were summoned.

At last, after Colonel Brownlow had spent a day in London, he made his appearance with a cheque-book in his hand, and the information that he and his fellow-trustee had so arranged that the heiress could open an account, and begin to enter on the fruition of the property. There were other arrangements to be made, those about the out-door servants and keepers could be settled with Richards, but she ought to remove her two sons from the foundation of the two colleges, though of course they would continue there as pupils.

"And Robert," she said, colouring exceedingly, "if you will let me, there is a thing I wish very much--to send your John to Eton with mine.

He is my G.o.dson, you know, and it would be such a pleasure to me."

"Thank you, Caroline," said the Colonel, after a moment's hesitation, "Johnny is to stand at the Eton election, and I should prefer his owing his education to his own exertions rather than to any kindness."

"Yes, yes; I understand that," said Caroline; "but I do want you to let me do anything for any of them. I should be so grateful," she added, imploringly, with a good deal of agitation; "please--please think of it, as if your brother were still here. You would never mind how much he did for them."

"Yes, I should," said the Colonel, decidedly, but pausing to collect his next sentence. "I should not accept from him what might teach my sons dependence. You see that, Caroline."

"Yes," she humbly said. "He would be wise about it! I don't want to be disagreeable and oppressive, Robert; I will never try to force things on you; but please let me do all that is possible to you to allow."

There was something touching in her incoherent earnestness, which made the Colonel smile, yet wink away some moisture from his eyes, as he again thanked her without either acceptance or refusal. Then he said he was going to Belforest, and asked whether she would not like to come and look over the place. He would go back and call for her with the pony carriage.

"But would not Ellen like to go?" she said. "I will walk with the boys."

The Colonel demurred a little, but knowing that his wife really longed to go, and could not well be squeezed into the back seat, he gave a sort of half a.s.sent; and as he left the house, Mother Carey gave a summoning cry to gather her brood, rushed upstairs, put on what Babie called her "most every dayest old black hat;" and when Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow, with Jessie behind, drove into the park, it was to see her careering along by the short cut over the h.o.a.r-frosty gra.s.s, in the midst of seven boys, three girls, and two dogs, all in a most frisky mood of exhilaration.

Distressed at appearing to drive up like the lady of the house, her Serene Highness insisted on stopping at the iron gates of the stately approach. There she alighted, and waited to make the best setting to rights she could of the heiress's wind-tossed hat and cloak, and would have put her into the carriage, but that no power could persuade her to mount that triumphal car, and all that could be obtained was that she should walk in the forefront of the procession with the Colonel.

There was n.o.body to receive them but Richards, for the servants had been paid off, and only a keeper and his wife were living in the kitchen in charge. There was a fire in the library, where the Colonel had business to transact with Richards, while the ladies and children proceeded with their explorations. It was rather awful at first in the twilight gloom of the great hall, with a painted mythological ceiling, and cold white pavement, varied by long perspective lines of black lozenges, on which every footfall echoed. The first door that they opened led into a vast and dreary dining-room, with a carpet, forming a crimson roll at one end, and long ranks of faded leathern chairs sitting in each other's laps. At one end hung a huge picture by Snyders, of a bear hugging one dog in his forepaws and tearing open the ribs of another with his hind ones. Opposite was a wild boar impaling a hound with his tusk, and the other walls were occupied by Herodias smiling at the contents of her charger, Judith dropping the gory head into her bag, a brown St.

Sebastian writhing among the arrows; and Juno extracting the painfully flesh and blood eyes of Argus to set them in her peac.o.c.k's tail.

"I object to eating my dinner in a butcher's shop," observed Allen.

"Yes, we must get them out of this place," said his mother.

"They are very valuable paintings," interposed Ellen. "I know they are in the county history. They were collected by Sir Francis Bradford, from whom the place was bought, and he was a great connoisseur."

"Yes, they are just the horrid things great connoisseurs of the last century liked, by way of giving themselves an appet.i.te," said Caroline.

"Are not fine pictures always horrid?" asked Jessie, in all simplicity.

The drawing-rooms, a whole suite--antechamber, saloon, music-room, and card-room, were all swathed up in brown holland, hanging even from the picture rods along the wall. Even in the days of the most liberal housekeeper, Ellen had never done more than peep beneath. So she revelled in investigations of gilding and yellow satin, ormolu and marble, big mirrors and Sevres clocks, a three-piled carpet, and a dazzling prismatic chandelier, though all was pervaded with such a chill of unused dampness and odour of fustiness, that Caroline's first impression was that it was a perilous place for one so lately recovered.

However, Ellen believed in no danger till she came on two monstrous stains of damp on the walls, with a whole crop of curious fungi in one corner, and discovered that all the holland was flabby, and all the damask clammy! Then she enforced the instant lighting of fires, and shivered so decidedly, that Caroline and Jessie begged her to return to the fire in the library, while Jessie went in search of Rob to drive her home.

All the rest of the younger population had deserted the state apartments, and were to be heard in the distance, clattering along the pa.s.sages, banging doors, bawling and shouting to each other, with freaks of such laughter as had never awakened those echoes during the Barnes'

tenure, but Jessie returned not; and her aunt, going in quest of her up a broad flight of shallow stairs, found herself in a grand gallery, with doors leading to various corridors and stairs. She called, and the tramp of the boots of youth began to descend on her, with shouts of "All right!" and downstairs flowed the troop, beginning with Jock, and ending with Armine and Babie, each with some breathless exclamation, all jumbled together--

Jock. "Oh, mother! Stunning! Lots of bats fast asleep."

Johnny. "Rats! rats!"

Rob. "A billiard-table."

Joe. "Mother Carey, may Pincher kill your rats?"

Armine. "One wants a clue of thread to find one's way."

Janet. "I've counted five-and-thirty bedrooms already, and that's not all."

Babie. "And there's a little copper tea-kettle in each. May my dolls have one?"

Bobus. "There's nothing else in most of them; and, my eyes! how musty they smell."

Elvira. "I will have the room with the big red bed, with a gold crown at the top."

Allen. "Mother, it will be a magnificent place, but it must have a vast deal done to it."

But Mother Carey was only looking for Jessie. No one had seen her. Janet suggested that she had taken a rat for a ghost, and they began to look and call in all quarters, till at last she appeared, looking rather white and scared at having lost herself, being bewildered by the voices and steps echoing here, there, and everywhere. The barrenness and uniformity did make it very easy to get lost, for even while they were talking, Joe was heard roaring to know where they were, nor would he stand still till they came up with him, but confused them and himself by running to meet them by some deluding stair.

"We've not got a house, but a Cretan labyrinth," said Babie.

"Or the bewitched castle mother told us of," said Allen, "where everybody was always running round after everybody."

"You've only to have a grain of sense," said Bobus, who had at last recovered Joe, and proceeded to give them a lecture on the two main arteries, and the pa.s.sages communicating with them, so that they might always be able to recover their bearings.

They were more sober after that. Rob drove his mother home, and the Colonel made the round to inspect the dilapidations, and estimate what was wanting. The great house had never been thoroughly furnished since the Bradfords had sold it, and it was, besides, in manifest need of repair. Damp corners, and piles of crumbled plaster told their own tale. A builder must be sent to survey it, and on the most sanguine computation, it could hardly be made habitable till the end of the autumn.