Part 4

Before many years had elapsed Mrs. Warnacre sent home her only child, a little boy, to be brought up in England, as the Indian climate is fatal to growing European children. And to whom else could she confide her treasure but to Jane? She must have been an easy-going, shallow creature, this Emily, unable to understand the wrong she had done to her sister, and without an expression of regret, without a word of apology, sent her the child; and easy-going, unscrupulous must Warnacre have been, for he sent remittances for his son’s clothing and education but rarely, so that the cost of the maintenance of the child fell on Jane. Then Emily died of cholera, and after that no more money was sent, no inquiries were made; she found herself burdened with this nephew—and then it was that the title of Auntie attached itself to her never to be lost.

Young John Warnacre grew up under Auntie’s eye, and at her charge. She was obliged then to deprive herself of many little comforts and pleasures. Hitherto she had kept a pony-chaise, and a useful man who attended to her cob and the garden. Now she did without, abandoned the drives that once afforded her so much pleasure and had given such a healthy glow to her cheek, and reduced her garden to a couple of flower-beds that could be attended to by an occasional man.

As young John Warnacre grew up, he proved wayward, headstrong, and selfish. She yielded to him too much, but it was in her nature to yield. She had neither the moral nor physical strength to control a turbulent, self-willed boy.

When he was too old and too ungovernable for her, he was sent to school, and schooling, if good, is costly. Auntie was too conscientious not to send the boy to a school for gentlemen, and one that was expensive, and might therefore be supposed to furnish a thorough education.

So matters rubbed on. In his holidays John was with his aunt, tormenting her cat and dog, running over her flowers, breaking her windows, making for his aunt boobie-traps and apple-pie beds; in a word, leading her such a life that she sighed for the holidays to come to an end, but was too tender at heart to admit, even to herself, that she wished them over.

At last the Squire was obliged to complain. John had been laying snares in his preserves, and was getting into association with some of the worst characters in the place. After a struggle he was sent back to school for the rest of the holiday, but he never arrived at the tutor’s: he ran away, and was heard of no more. Many tears did Auntie shed over the prodigal, and bitterly did she reproach herself for having been so severe as to send him away.

It was ascertained at last that he had gone to sea, with the intention, if possible, of getting to India to his father.

But, if he ever got to India, he did not find Mr. Warnacre there, for this gentleman arrived at Auntie’s and quartered himself upon her. He had left the service of John Company, as he saw no prospect of advancement, and he believed he could better himself elsewhere, with his capacity for business, his knowledge of the world, and his faculty of speaking several languages.

Auntie was pleased rather than the contrary that Mr. Warnacre should come to her. It showed that he had forgotten the past and bore her no grudge. Alas! poor humble soul, it did not occur to her that it was _she_ who should resent his conduct, not he hers, and that his throwing himself upon her showed singular moral insensibility.

He was very desirous that his sister-in-law should see the Squire, who as M.P. might be able to use influence to obtain him a post under Government.

Auntie was shy of asking a favour. Shy and retreating, she would have asked nothing for herself, but for another she would do a great deal. After a battle with her timidity, she did go to the Hall, and had an interview with Mr. Estcourt, who valued and admired the dear old lady, and he readily promised to see what could be done for Mr. Warnacre. All he desired were the testimonials of that gentleman.

But here precisely arose a difficulty. He could not produce them, and when inquiry was made into his antecedents, it was discovered that Mr. Warnacre had been dismissed from the service of the Company. This, Mr. Estcourt did not tell Auntie, but with many apologies expressed his regret at being unable to serve her.

Somehow—it is hard to say how—the rumour circulated that Auntie was about to sell out of the stocks so as to set up Mr. Warnacre in some business he had in view, in which great profits were certain to be made.

The rumour came to the ears of Mrs. Estcourt, and without ado that good, somewhat peremptory lady called on Auntie, and happily found her alone.

The Squire’s wife proceeded at once to attack the old lady on the topic. Was it true that she was about to place her little fortune in the hands of this brother-in-law? For if Jane meditated doing this, Mrs. Estcourt said it would be her painful duty to inform Auntie of certain matters concerning Mr. Warnacre that in kindness had been kept from her.

Auntie coloured and trembled, and raised her bemittened hands in deprecation of the interference and the revelation. Then she began to explain:

“Mr. Warnacre really was a surprisingly clever man. He had met with misfortunes, he had made enemies, who had not scrupled to blacken his character. It was too sad to see a man of his ability and acquirements without an opening in which to display his activity.”

“But, my dear Jane, he has been dishonest!”

“O Maria, we are all guilty of doing wrong sometimes, and I am sure we ought not to be hard on those who have. Even supposing he has made a mistake, we ought to give him the helping hand, and put him in a position where he can make amends.”

“My dear Jane,” said Mrs. Estcourt, and she set her lips. “Excuse me if I speak unpleasant truths. How do you know, how does Mr. Warnacre know, that what he proposes to undertake will be successful? There is many a slip between the cup and the lip. With the very best and most honourable intentions, he may miscarry. Then what will become of you?”

“Oh, my dear Maria, he is certain to succeed. He has shown it me so very plainly.”

“He may not. Always be prepared for a _not_.”

“But for his sake I must risk something. He was my dear Emily’s husband, remember that. And he has had such trials and troubles—he has lost her, and does not know where poor John is.”

“Jane, it won’t do. Excuse my bluntness. Suppose the whole thing fails. Where would you be? If your little income is gone, then you will be penniless in your old age. Now that means—” Mrs. Estcourt moved uncomfortably in her chair. She was going to say a harsh thing, but did it only because she believed that nothing else could save Auntie. “That means, Jane, that you will come upon me. I will not see you turned out of your cottage to starve. When all your income is gone, I shall have to furnish you with an annuity. Now, mind, I should not object to that, if the result of an accident, a bad investment, or failure of a bank. But that you should deliberately and with your eyes open throw this upon me is not fair; no, it is not fair to me.”

Poor little Auntie crimsoned to her temples. She tried to speak, but could not. Then she broke down, covered her face with her kerchief and wept. Mrs. Estcourt held to her point.

“I have promised it him,” sobbed Auntie.

“You may, if you will, give him something. But I insist—I insist for my own sake as well as for yours—that you do not give him all. Reserve to yourself so much as you can live on. Say, keep as much as was expended on yourself when you were sending that boy to school. That alone will satisfy me.”

At length Mrs. Estcourt carried her point. She extorted a solemn reluctant promise to that effect from the old lady, and that she would not go beyond her word Mrs. Estcourt knew very surely.

And well was it for the little Auntie that this interview had taken place, for within a twelvemonth all she had given to Mr. Warnacre was gone, and gone without return of interest or principal. With it also Mr. Warnacre had disappeared. Then she lived on, in the same house, on her shrunken means, doing good to all around—knitting crossovers for old women, making mittens for children, warm woollen caps and mufflers that she sent to the engine-drivers on the line to keep them comfortable on a winter’s night, busy before Christmas in contriving presents for all around, forgetful of no birthday, visiting and sitting with the sick and aged, and although her gifts were never costly, yet they were always valued highly by the recipients, for the love and kindly thought that was worked into them. She manufactured little book-markers, with crosses on them, of perforated card; she did embroidery for the church; she painted little pin-cushions, and her flower-painting was tasteful. These she was glad to sell, and Mrs. Estcourt came to her assistance and disposed of an astonishing number at sixpence each. They were so useful for gentlemen, would go into a breast pocket, and gentlemen were always wanting pins. But Auntie would use none of the money thus acquired upon herself; it was spent in the purchase of material for making her little gifts to the poor, or for the church.

The parson had his daily service, but the most constant of his congregation, certainly in the mornings, was Auntie, who never failed.

Mrs. Estcourt brought visitors from the Hall to see her, not such as were unable to appreciate the goodness and sweetness of the old lady, but kindly-hearted ladies and gentlemen, and somehow these visitors afterwards in town, or wherever else they met the Squire, always inquired after Auntie. They felt they were the better for having seen and spoken with her.

To some it was a revelation that there were, in this self-seeking and somewhat coarse world, some highly-refined, unselfish spirits, the violets of the moral world.

As already said, every one in the place knew her story, but to her face no one alluded to it. Among the English peasantry there is a wonderful and beautiful delicacy of feeling such as often puts to shame those who belong to highly-cultured grades. The utmost done was to ask, “Please, miss, have you heard anything of Master John?”

Then a quiver would pass over the old face, the lip would tremble, and the eye fall, and she would shake her head, unable to give the denial in words.

Often and often did Mrs. Estcourt send to her grapes or peaches or melons from the conservatories at the Hall, and yet she knew that most of these good things were at once distributed by the old lady among the children as they swarmed out of school, or given to some sick body with a capricious appetite.

The farmers also or their wives sent her poultry, the children picked for her watercress, the poor women gave her eggs, and then Auntie had no rest until she had proclaimed to the parson and his wife, to the squiress, to all she knew, how good and generous these poor bodies had been to her.

And every day she sat at her window painting her pin-cushions or making the little crosses for book-markers, or setting them up on little card stands, or illuminating texts, and nodding and smiling to all passers-by in the road, and to the children as they came to school. Between school hours in wet weather many a little girl found a refuge in Auntie’s kitchen, there to eat her dinner and have warm milk or tea.

It was a sad prospect to Auntie when her sight began to fail. Resigned to the will of Heaven she ever was, but she regretted the inability into which she would fall of manufacturing comforting articles for the poor.

So years passed.

Nothing was heard of Warnacre, nothing of John. No word of reproach passed her lips. I believe no resentful thought arose in her mind against her brother-in-law, and I am sure that both he and John were daily mentioned in her prayers.

Then, one stormy evening, a knock came at the door, and she heard some one coughing without. The little maid opened, and a wretched, wet, and draggled man staggered in. It was Warnacre, returned, but returned destitute, a wreck in health, and a beggar.

The little maid who had gone to the door at the rap was frightened, and thought that the man was drunk; she had never seen Mr. Warnacre, and her exclamations of distress and alarm brought the old lady to the passage.

Warnacre had thrown himself into a chair, the rain had sodden his battered hat, and his shapeless and napless greatcoat, and ran over the floor. The man was grey in face, his scanty hair dishevelled, and his eyes dull and sunk in his head.

A fit of coughing prevented him from speaking.

“Oh, please, miss, what shall we do? It’s a tipsy, it is. Shall I run for the police?”

“No, Kate, no, the gentleman is ill.” Auntie had not as yet recognised him, but she brought the light near, and with an exclamation of pain and surprise cried, “O William! William! you here again?”

“What,” said he, “are you like the rest, ready to turn against me? It is a bad and selfish world; no one has a hand to hold out for a fellow who is down on his luck. I’ve walked——”

Again the cough overtook him, and he put a soiled handkerchief to his mouth.

“I have walked, I suppose, fourteen miles in this cursed weather—haven’t had anything to eat. I’d turn out my pockets and prove to you I have not a stiver, but my hands are too cold, and my clothes cling to me with wet.”

“O William! how have you come to this?”

“Ill-health—breakdown—overmuch brain-work. And the world is dishonest; cursed cheats men are. It is no place for a man of genius and integrity.”

“But what will you do?”

He coughed again, and sank back, looking deadly in his exhaustion.

“It is a shame, my troubling you with questions. Kate, Kate, get hot water, and bread and meat, and a tumbler, and I will unlock my cellaret.”

Then, as the little maid bustled about fulfilling commands: “O William! I am so sorry, and why, why did you walk so far?”

“Because I wasn’t going to the workhouse. No, thank you, _I_ am a gentleman. I thought you would give me food and a shake-down.”

“O William, how good of you to think of me. Oh, this is kind, and like a brother-in-law. Of course you could not go to the Union. I would have died of shame to think that you had, and of self-reproach to think you had not come on to me. But you forgive all that is past. That is dear of you, William.”

She took him in; of course she did.

She opened to him her heart as well as her home. And there he remained. He made no movement to leave. Perhaps he perceived that nowhere else would he be so kindly and forgivingly dealt with. Not one word of reproach came from her.

Then it became clear that his stay would not be for long, not that he desired and purposed leaving, but that a hand was pointing sternly to him to move on, to move on from a world in which he had done no worthy act, into another in which he would have to account for his worthlessness.

Auntie fought against the conviction that he was dying. She sent for the best doctors, she provided the most nourishing diet she could procure for him. Her great sorrow was that her means would not allow her to send him to Davos or to some other place of cure.

Warnacre was not a pleasant person to have in the house and as a patient. He grumbled at the wine provided—it came from the grocer, he said; it was without bouquet, mere made-up stuff. He grumbled at his meat, it was tough and overdone or underdone. He bragged about the great people with whom he had dined, whom he had known familiarly; or he whined over the ingratitude and heartlessness of the world, or murmured against that Providence which had thwarted him in all he had taken in hand.

Yet, through all, patiently, lovingly, cheerfully, the old maid ministered to him, bore with his meanness, turned aside his sarcasms, apologised for his ungraciousness when visited by any from the Hall or rectory.

She treasured up every imaginary sign of returning health and shut her eyes to the tokens of decline. At length he was dead, and was laid in the churchyard, unlamented save by Auntie.

Of his son he professed to know nothing. He had not run across him in his meanders through the shady world in which he had moved. But in the heart of Auntie there was still a root of love and expectation that concerned John.

Above Mr. Warnacre’s grave, Auntie, by stinting herself, was able to erect a costly monumental stone, on which was represented a broken lily, the symbol of Warnacre’s stainless life. The inscription recorded his merits in somewhat fulsome terms that were, however, not unreal and untrue to Auntie, or she would not have sanctioned them, for over that wretched creature still hung some of the halo of her first love and idealisation.

And after that her sight failed, and happily not long after that, gently, without pain, old Auntie’s eyes closed altogether.

But then Mrs. Estcourt was gone. Her husband had predeceased her, and at the Hall reigned a nephew, a man of sport, who knew not Auntie.

A year later there appeared a stranger in the place, who after some inquiries went to the churchyard and asked the sexton to point out to him where Auntie was buried. There was no headstone, only a green mound. But there were flowers strewn on it; the poor whom she had loved and to whom she had ministered had not forgotten her.

The stranger signed to the sexton to leave him. Then he stood, with folded hands and bowed head, looking at the little heap. He was a young man, but with a seamed face. Presently the tears came into his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “Poor, dear Auntie,” he said in a whisper, “imposed on, ill-treated—only appreciated by me—and that too late.”

He drew out of his pocket a little cross made of perforated cardboard. It had been given years before to young John.

Then he went to a monumental stone-cutter and said: “Make me a marble cross, just like this.”

“And, sir, what shall I cut on it?”

“Only this—AUNTIE.”

BROTHER AUGUSTINE

BROTHER AUGUSTINE

In 1866 I was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Dalton, near Thirsk in Yorkshire. It was a new parish, cut out of Topcliffe; the church was not built at the time, but an old barn had been converted into a school-chapel, and a little red brick house had been erected, intended eventually to be a schoolmaster’s house, which I was given as parsonage. It was small—containing one sitting-room only, and three bedrooms upstairs. When I went to see the place, the outgoing incumbent said to me, “Would you like to take on Mills?”

“Mills! Who is Mills?”

“I mean Brother Augustine.”

“Brother Augustine!” I echoed; “and who the dickens is Brother Augustine?”

“Well,” replied my friend, “that is not so easy to answer. What he is now is my valet and sacristan. He is a man who can make your clothes, mend anything, wait on you, and be most serviceable in church.”

“What! that fellow who sang in the choir through his nose as though there had been a vibrating metallic tongue in it?”

“The same: very useful, but odd.”

“Where did you pick him up?”

“I advertised for him.”

I took on Brother Augustine or Mr. Mills. Some called him one, some the other, and rightly, for he had two aspects, very distinct.

When I engaged him he was aged, I suppose, thirty-five, but it was impossible to say what his age really was: he was one of those men who look old when twenty, and never alter. He did not tell me his age. He was as coy as an old maid about that, but he was very ready to tell me his story, and it was an odd one.

He had been given when quite a little boy by his father, in Colchester, to the Roman Catholic priest there, who brought him up, and made him serve him daily at the altar, black his boots, and help the old housekeeper to make the beds, and dust the rooms, and clean the dishes. He also brought in the meals.

This went on till, as Mr. Mills said to me, “the dear old priest got so very old that he was fit for nothing but to be chaplain to a convent, so he was moved away, and then I had to be put somewhere. So I was put with Hyams, the tailor.”

How long Mills was with Hyams I do not know, but the swirl of life in freedom after the even and quiet of a parsonage was more than he could bear, and he took it into his head to become a monk.

He entered on his novitiate, “And,” said he, “they shaved my head, and I have been a martyr to neuralgia ever since.”

After a while he was sent to Rome. I cannot now recall what the Order was into which he had entered.

“I got into trouble there,” said Brother Augustine. “You must know that I am passionately fond of cats, and I had not had a cat to pat and coax ever since I had become a monk. Well, one day we were walking in procession down the long street in Trastevere, when I saw a white cat, with one paw black and one ear black, sitting in a doorway of a house. I could not help myself. The sight of that puss was too much for my pent-up feelings—there was a sort of void in me that only a cat could fill. Well, I broke out of the procession and ran to the cat to catch it up. But it was frightened, and made a bolt and was gone. That set all the monks off laughing to see me after the cat. We had been singing a psalm, and they could not get on with it. I was put on bread and water for a week, all because of that cat.”

Brother Augustine was not happy in Rome, and was teased with neuralgia. After a twelvemonth he was sent back to England, and he had made up his mind not to take the vows. So on landing at London he gave the slip to the monk who was sent along with him, and found his way into some sort of refuge for runaway monks and nuns that had been set up, just as there are refuges for stray cats and dogs.

There he made acquaintance with Miss Headly Vicars, who was most kind to him, and of her he spoke with deep regard. By her advice he became a Scripture reader, or if not by her advice, with her consent.

He remained for some little while drawing a salary and doing some off-and-on work, very much against his taste, as Scripture reader, for it was a position for which he was totally unqualified. At last he became uneasy in his conscience, he felt he was earning money he did not deserve, and the work was uncongenial. Then he saw an advertisement from my predecessor at Dalton for a young man to act as man-servant, sing in the choir—(“Bray, rather,” said I to myself)—and attend to the church.

This was exactly what he wanted. He answered, was accepted; and I found him at Dalton, and kept him on.

I have said that Mr. Mills, or Brother Augustine, wore two different aspects.

Usually, about the house and at church he wore a cassock, and a little black square cap set on the back of his head.

When not engaged about the church, he was generally to be seen seated cross-legged on the kitchen table, making a suit for me, or mending or making clothes for himself.

But, when Mr. Mills was dressed to go to Thirsk, the market town, he was as though he had walked out of a bandbox—dapper, spick and span in everything; a masher one would call him now, but in 1866 the word was not invented.

A most disinterested fellow he was. I did not pay him any wage. He had his food and room with me, and nothing else. If he wanted to go to York or Ripon, I gave him his fare, and a shilling to spend as he liked. He never had more whilst with me for two years. His mind was like that of a child. He was happy over the merest trifles, and upset also by trifles. A good-hearted fellow with a limited education, very fond of puss, and devotedly attached to animals. Every one laughed at him, but every one liked him. He would do anything that I asked him to do, and go anywhere.

I had an old housekeeper, a worthy woman who was a widow, and she and Mills were always laughing, and, when not laughing, he was singing. The kitchen was immediately opposite my one sitting-room, and as the door was generally open, they made a good deal of noise, to which I had to become accustomed.