It was a wonder that the letter was written at all. When Maria had done leaning back in her chair, and had taken up her pen again, she was disturbed by painful sounds from Mrs. Rowland’s garden. The lady’s own Matilda, and precious George, and darling Anna, were now pronounced to be naughty, wilful, mischievous, and, finally, to be combined together to break their mamma’s heart. It was clear that they were receiving the discharge of the wrath which was caused by somebody else. Now a wail, now a scream of passion, went to Maria’s heart. She hastened on with her letter, in the hope that Mrs. Rowland would presently go into the house, when the little sufferers might be invited into the schoolroom, to hear a story, or have their ruffled tempers calmed by some other such simple means.
“What a life of discipline this is!” thought Maria. “We all have it, sooner or later. These poor children are beginning early. If one can but help them through it! There she goes in, and shuts the door behind her! Now I may call them hither, and tell them something or another about Una and her lion.”
At the well-known sound of Miss Young’s lame step, the little ones all came about her. One ashamed face was hid on her shoulder; another was relieved of its salt tears; and the boy’s pout was first relaxed, and then forgotten.
Chapter Seven.
Family Correspondence.
From the time of the great event of the arrival of the Miss Ibbotsons, Mr. Hope had longed to communicate all connected with it to his family. As often as Hester looked eminently beautiful, he wished his sisters could see her. As often as he felt his spirit moved and animated by his conversations with Margaret, he thought of Frank, and wished that the poor fellow could for a day exchange the heats and fatigues, and vapid society, of which he complained as accompaniments of service in India, for some one of the wood and meadow rambles, or garden frolics, which were the summer pleasures of Deerbrook, now unspeakably enhanced by the addition lately made to its society. Frank wrote that the very names of meadows and kine, of cowslips, trout, and harriers, were a refreshment to a soldier’s fancy, when the heats, and the solitude of spirit in which he was compelled to live, made him weary of the novelties which had at first pleased him in the East. He begged that Edward would go on to write as he did of everything that passed in the village—of everything which could make him for a whole evening fancy himself in Deerbrook, and repose himself in its shacks and quietness. Mr. Hope had felt, for a month past, that such a letter was by this time due to Frank, and that he had, for once, failed in punctuality: but he now, for the first time, found it difficult to get time to write. He never dreamed of sending Frank letters, which would be esteemed by others of a moderate length. When he did write, it was an epistle indeed: and during this particular May and June, there was always something happening which prevented his having his hours to himself. In other words, he was always at the Greys’ when not engaged in his professional duties. The arrival of a letter from Frank one day gave him the necessary stimulus, and he sat down on the instant to open his heart to his brother.
Frank was his younger and only brother, and the person in the world most deeply indebted to him. Their parents being dead, it was Edward who had been Frank’s dependence as he grew up. It was Edward who had, at great cost and pains, gratified his wish to go into the army, and had procured him the best educational advantages in preparation for a military life. It was Edward who had always treated him with such familiar friendship, that he had scarcely felt as if he wanted any other intimate, and who seemed to forget the five years’ difference of age between them at all times but when it afforded a reason for pressing kindness and assistance upon him. The confidence between them was as familiar and entire as if they had been twin-brothers. The epistle which Frank was to have the benefit of, on the present occasion, was even longer than usual, from the delay which had caused an accumulation of tidings and of thoughts.
“Deerbrook, June 20th, 18—.
“Dear Frank—Your letter of December last has arrived to remind me how far I am past my time in writing to you. I make no apologies for my delay, however, and I do not pretend to feel any remorse about it. We never write to one another from a mere sense of duty; and long may it be before we do so! Unless we write because we cannot help it, pray let us let it alone. As for the reasons why my inclination to talk to you has not overpowered all impediments till now—you shall have them by-and-by. Meanwhile, here, before your eyes, is the proof that I cannot but spend this June evening with you.
“You ask about your grandfather; and I have somewhat to say to you about him. He is still living—very infirm, as you may suppose, but, I think, as clear in mind as I have ever known him. He sent for me two months ago, as you will have heard from the letter I find he caused to be written to you about the business which then occupied his mind. My share in that business he would represent to you as it appeared to him: but I must give you an account of it as it appears to myself. He sent for me to take leave of me, as he said; but, in my opinion, to receive my acknowledgments for his latest disposition of his property by will. The new arrangements did not please me at all; and I am confident that you would have liked them no better than I; and I wished not a little that you were nearer, that we might have acted together. I know that he once intended to divide his property equally among us four; but of late, from some unaccountable feeling of indifference about Emily and Anne, or, as is more likely, from some notion about women not wanting money, and not knowing how to manage it, he has changed his mind, and destined his money for you and me, leaving my sisters only a hundred pounds each as a remembrance. He informed me of this, as soon as I arrived. I thought him quite well enough to hear reason, and I spoke my mind plainly to him. I had no right to answer for you, any further than for your sense of justice, and your affection for your sisters. The way in which the matter was settled at last, therefore, with great pains and trouble, was, that you and our sisters share equally, and that I have the legacy of 100 pounds, which was destined for one of them. The reasons why I declined a fourth part of the property were sufficient to my mind, and will be so, I doubt not, to yours. Out of this property I have had my professional education, while you and my sisters have received nothing at all. This professional education has enabled me to provide sufficiently for myself, so far, and this provision will in all probability go on to increase; while my sisters want as much as can fairly be put into their hands. Their husbands are not likely ever to be rich men, and will probably be poor for some years to come. Their children have to be educated; and in short, there is every reason why Emily and Anne should have this money, and none why I should. I am afraid the old gentleman is not very well pleased with my way of receiving what he intended for kindness; but that cannot be helped. If he falls back into his previous state of mind, and leaves the whole, after all, to you and me, I shall set the matter right, as far as I can, by dividing my portion between my sisters: and I feel confident that you will do the same; but I earnestly hope this will not happen. It will be a very different thing to my sisters receiving this money by their grandfather’s will as their due, and from our hands as a gift—(the way in which they will look at it). The letter to you was sent off without delay, in order that, in case of any dissatisfaction whatever on your part, your wishes might have the better chance of being made known to us during the old gentleman’s life. I doubt not that your thoughts, whatever they may be, will be on the way to me before this reaches you; and I can have as little doubt what they are. You know Mr. Blunt says, that men are created to rob their sisters—a somewhat partial view of the objects and achievements of mortal existence, it must be owned, and a statement which I conceive the course of your life, for one, will not go to confirm; but a man must have had a good deal of experience of what he is talking of before he could make so sweeping a generalisation from the facts of life; and I am afraid Mr. Blunt has some reason for what he says. Medical men receive many confidences in sick rooms, you know; and some, among others, which had better be reserved for the lawyer. What I have seen in this way leads me to imagine that my grandfather’s notion is a very common one—that women have little occasion for money, and do not know how to manage it; and that their property is to be drawn upon to the very last, to meet the difficulties and supply the purposes of their brothers. On the utter injustice and absurdity of such a notion there can be no disagreement between you