MOLLY AND PIERS CRABTREE’S GUARDIANS, BY NATURE AND BY ASSUMPTION.

When Susie descended from the fastness in which she had detained her mother, not a reproachful word was said to her. She was not likely to take to herself a change not alluded to which had been made in the house. ‘Indeed,’ she exclaimed nonchalantly, when she found that the picture of the arch-traitor had been removed from the staircase. It was sufficiently shown otherwise that silence and oblivion were to fall on the episode of the bank robbery; and it was devoutly to be desired that Susie’s plaintive jeremiad on her wasted youth and beauty, and on the trials of a too devoted wife, might come to an end as speedily as possible. Perhaps, as it belonged to Susie’s character to utter this jeremiad, the treatment was trying. Certainly it did not elicit any overpowering expression of gratitude. Susie was equally irresponsive to the knowledge that there was still a home for her and her children at Redcot; that neither her father in his repugnance, no, nor Jack, though he too shrank unconquerably from her--all the more that she gave no sign of shrinking from him--would turn her from their doors till another refuge was found for her. Susie took it as her inalienable right that she should be in the home she had outraged and threatened to render desolate--not only in the most comfortable chair, which she quickly appropriated, but in the place of honour, which she was ready audaciously to fill. In the same manner she would unhesitatingly have called upon her mother to resume the chief of her motherly cares for her--Susie, to be the slave of her whims if she chose. But John Prior interfered and peremptorily forbade the impudent extortion, however gracefully made. Mrs. Prior, on her part, though she had wonderful patience and forbearance, ay, and tears of pity, which were like drops of blood wrung from her heart, where her erring daughter was concerned, rose up after the first few days, in what was not so much self-defence as an honest maintenance of what was right and fit, a strong sense of what was due to her husband and her remaining children.

Susie did not scruple to be mildly indignant, and to complain piteously to all who would listen to her, that even mam-ma had gone against her.

Then Mrs. Lambert Crabtree condescended to make overtures on terms of equality to the late Redcot governess, about whom the cock-and-bull story that she was an heiress in disguise had actually turned out to be true. In addition, she had been eminently successful in her aims, though she was not to be the mistress of Haybridge. Miss Gray had the credit of subduing pap-pa with her bow and spear, though when it came to that, not many elderly gentlemen were wholly inaccessible to the charms of heiresses--open or disguised--as wives for their sons and heirs! Pap-pa had chosen to announce, in the most gushing manner, at a gathering of the colliers--of all people, after an explosion of all things, that Miss Gray was to be the future mistress of Redcot. Of course, when pap-pa had gone so far as to say that in public, even though it was a public of colliers, the family could only submit--nothing more was to be done. But Bennet, though she could not trample on a creature who was down, was inflexibly civil; no more.

From Jane there was nothing to be had save cold magnanimity. No amount of mischief-making, however ingeniously prosecuted, would render the large-minded, large-hearted woman jealous of Jack and his coming wife.

So many of Susie’s vocations were gone already, it was still harder for her to discern that, in spite of her former social sway, and notwithstanding the _éclat_ with which, as it seemed to her, her trial had ended, the county neighbours of the Crabtrees and Priors manifestly fought shy of her--a wife with a cloud upon her, living apart from a disreputable husband, a pensioner on the bounty of her father. Poor old John Prior! he had been sorely tried, though this windfall of a moneyed wife, a charming, handsome, monstrously clever young lady, had turned up in the most romantic manner, in time to redeem the scapegrace Jack’s chances. But as for Susie Crabtree, however cruelly she had been treated, however much she was to be felt for and lamented, with her memory tenderly cherished, as in her day the loveliest, brightest, most pleasant spoken of young matrons unequally yoked to a brute of a husband--she was still a woman who had only escaped by the skin of her teeth from conviction in a public trial for a bank robbery. She was no fit associate for the men’s wives and daughters, however captivating and entertaining she might still be in casual encounters with the men themselves. Susie was to have no more good times of pre-eminence in popularity, unless she was prepared to angle for them on another and very different moral level, which could not be while she stayed at Redcot.

Susie began to droop, and to afford indications of becoming an interesting invalid, and so further burdening her relatives and trading on the sympathies of the world.

Mat Crabtree strove manfully to accommodate himself to the checks put on his former liberality in farming enterprise and scholarly tastes by the mortgages with which Haybridge was now burdened. If they were to be wiped out in his day, they could only be got rid of by all-round retrenchment and strict economy. Nevertheless he proposed again, as he had proposed at the beginning, to take his brother’s wife’s children to stay for the present at Haybridge. But Susie knew better than to imagine that Haybridge under existing circumstances could be preferable to Redcot.

At this juncture letters came from Lambert Crabtree, who had gone, from easily understood reasons, to Sweden, where a former acquaintance of his had settled and prospered. Lambert had found an opening through this acquaintance, and by Mat’s consenting to stint himself, in order to give his brother another start in life. Lambert was as ready to brag as ever of what were likely to be the profits of the new concern, and of the progress he had already made in winning the good graces of the leaders of Upsala society. All at once Susie was seized with an ardent longing to be with her husband. A wife’s place was by her husband’s side whatever his faults might have been, and she would say this for her poor dear old Lamb, that he had thought nothing too good for her, and would have liked her to eat out of gold plate and wear gold tissue if she had cared to do it. He would be amazed and indignant to hear how cavalierly she was treated now by her own people among others, she was sorry to say, though they might have felt for her if anybody could feel. A true wife did not mind sharing the reverses and hardships in her husband’s lot. Banishment, privation! What did she care for banishment and privation if she could but be by her poor Lamb and prove a comfort to him? She supposed she would not die of the cold of Scandinavia. If she did, what did it signify when she was in the path of duty--a wife’s duty? The loss would be Lamb’s, for since their misfortunes nobody wanted her at home.

It was pointed out to Mrs. Lambert Crabtree that she could not with prudence take her children to Sweden till it was seen whether their father would succeed and whether he could provide a permanent home for her and them.

Here she was quite amenable to reason. It would be too great a risk and far too much responsibility and fatigue for her to venture to carry the darling babies abroad with her. They at least would be safe enough with their grand-parents and uncles and aunts--there was no lack of relations. The children were too young to be deeply wounded by the unkindness which had cut her to the heart--and she did not mean to say that, mam-ma and Jane, not to say pap-pa and Jack and Mat, or even Miss Gray, would be guilty of inhumanity to their own near kindred in the shape of dear, innocent, helpless children. To part from Molly and Piers--ah! it would be bitterly hard--none save a mother knew how hard, but a wife’s duty came even before a mother’s, and she would give both of the babies for Lamb.

As Lambert Crabtree acquiesced in his wife’s wish to join him, Susie, after shedding a few becoming tears over the children, went her way from Redcot and England. No sooner was she fairly gone than her family, in company with the whole neighbourhood, were keenly sensible what an incubus had been lifted from their shoulders. Susie might repent; it were hard to deny her that half-divine capacity of sinners which is the hope of humanity; but it could scarcely have been among the kindred whom she still in her heart scorned with a light hardened scorn, upon whom she would have continued to trade with self-satisfied assurance.

Poor little Molly and Piers were left, and were likely to be left, unless they could be found of service to their parents, to the custody of other, and, it was to be hoped, more disinterested and trustworthy keepers.

Mat Crabtree, coming upon their Aunt Jane with Piers in her lap and Molly at her knee, listening to their lessons, and striving to be of use to the unlucky wights, thought he had never seen Jane Prior to greater advantage. He longed not only to tell her so, but to share her task and lighten it by sharing it, for were not the boy and girl his nephew and niece as well as hers, Crabtrees still more than Priors? ‘I must have the children to Haybridge, Jane,’ he said, as he sent them to play out of hearing. ‘There can be no question about that being their proper home. They have more claim upon me than upon anyone here, and I am willing enough to acknowledge the claim. A little lad and lass, growing up in the house of a solitary man, should be a boon to him, shouldn’t they? Anyhow, your father and mother ought not to be troubled with the children any longer. The little Woods are enough for a nursery of a previous generation.’

‘I don’t think Molly and Piers bore my father and mother, Mr. Crabtree,’ said Jane, growing a shade paler, ‘and I’m sure they do not bore me. I seem to have learnt experience with Ally and Sam and Tom, or Miss Gray has opened my eyes on some points,’ she went on with a faint smile, ‘for I get on better with Molly and Piers, now that they are my particular charge. I am really fond of them,’ her eyes filling with tears, which she hastily turned her head aside to twinkle away. ‘Indeed, they are not at all bad children, though they are rather slow and a little unruly. They are affectionate, and I think,’ she added, stammering, and her face getting very red, ‘I think they are truthful and honest.’

‘I hope so,’ he answered, with quick, grave emphasis. ‘I did not mean to condemn the mites--tolerably big mites for their years, ain’t they? Ah! they take the size and, I daresay, the slowness and unruliness from the Crabtree side of the house, so that I am still more bound to bear what I can of the burden. Your father and mother and you ought not to be left with a house full of grandchildren. Your father told me Jack was looking at Moor Park for himself and Mrs. Jack. Is that settled?’

‘No,’ said Jane, with another little lurking smile. ‘On second thoughts the plan was given up. They are to stay here. Nobody liked to part my mother and Miss Gray--Bennet least of all. You know they were sworn allies from the first, and they have renewed the old bond. Bennet is my mother’s right hand, and she is wanted to keep Jack straight with my father. These two will not drift far apart again, I trust; but an interpreter rather than a peace-maker is still needed between them sometimes. My father has a great respect for Bennet’s opinion, and is inclined to think more of Jack’s when the two are in unison.’

‘All the more reason you should not be cumbered with my nephew and niece, while I dwell in solitary state at Haybridge.’

‘Certainly, Mr. Crabtree, you are the best entitled to the children.’

‘My dear Jane, you don’t imagine that I covet the monkeys on my own account,’ protested Mat Crabtree ruefully. ‘A fine life they will lead me! I shall not have much peace left me. I know they will miss you dreadfully, and that all the good training you have been giving them for the last month or two will soon be lost.’

‘I daresay,’ said Jane shyly, ‘your housekeeper will be able to manage Molly and Piers.’

‘Not at all,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘My housekeeper has given in her leave. That state to which I have alluded has got too sorry for her taste, latterly. Well, I don’t blame her. She has been a faithful servant, but she does not like changes, naturally. She is getting up in years, she has saved money, and she wishes to join a sister who is about to start a lodging-house at Bournemouth. It is all perfectly fair and reasonable, though I may be put about to begin with, getting used to new ways and new servants.’

‘Then why don’t you leave the children where they are, at least in the meantime, if that will be any relief to you?’ urged Jane.

‘Because I think I see a better way if it were not too inconsiderate, too one-sided and full of effrontery.’ He got up from his seat opposite to her, and came and stood beside her, looking down at her. ‘I am no longer young. I have lost sufficient money to keep me pinched in my resources, though I believe I can right myself if the time is granted to me. There is no use in saying what I might have done if all this trouble had not come upon us, particularly as even without it the Priors might well have had enough of the Crabtrees.’

Jane was silent for a moment, and even after she spoke with strong feeling she could not look at him.

‘It might be put the other way--that the Crabtrees have had enough of the Priors,’ she said in a low tone, her eyes cast down in mortification and shame, even while she trembled with a very different feeling.

‘No; a thousand times no, so far as I am concerned,’ said Mat stoutly, taking her hand. ‘But do you mean to say, Janie, that you, with your powers and opportunities, which are likely to be greatly enlarged in the future, would not grudge to devote yourself to a middle-aged impoverished man and a couple of children whom his brother’s misdoing had thrown upon you?’

‘It was my sister’s misdoing as well as your brother’s,’ said Jane frankly, ‘but apart from that I would grudge nothing to the middle-aged man. I would count it a joy and honour to serve him.’

‘Ah! that is kind,’ he said, stooping and kissing her as if he were unable to resist the action. ‘But it is because you are unpractical. I suppose learned ladies are more and not less unpractical than other women--in some senses they can afford it better. But what will your father and mother say?’

‘I know both my father and mother and Jack and Miss Gray and everybody I care for--everybody worth listening to--will say neither they nor I can ever have enough of Mat Crabtree.’

So Jane carried her learning to meet and mingle with more learning at Haybridge, and to develop into sounder, more fruitful scholarship under her old critic’s roof. Molly and Piers found greater room and better soil to afford them the necessary conditions for straight and upward growth than they could ever have commanded at the Bank House, in spite of the fact that a little Mat Crabtree appeared on the scene and deprived Piers of the most distant prospect of succeeding to the old acres. The event gave Piers, what was worth far more to him, the elder brother’s sense of a half-fatherly right in care and tenderness for ‘the little chap,’ whom he had carried in his arms as a baby, for whom Molly had learnt to embroider wonderful small garments, and knit dainty socks and gloves. The bigger cousins, with an honourable, happy feeling of holding a trust for Uncle Mat and Aunt Jane, watched the smaller grow up through all the stages of babyhood and schoolboy life, till he attained their own level.