Part 68 (1/2)

Sinewy, spare, and wiry, with keen gray eyes under straight brows, narrow temples, a sunburnt face, and alert, upright bearing and quick step, William Ferrars was every inch a soldier; but nothing so much struck Mr. and Mrs. Kendal as the likeness to their little Maurice, though it consisted more in air and gesture than in feature. His speech was brief and to the point, softened into delicately-polished courtesy towards womankind, in the condescension of strength to weakness--the quality he evidently thought their chief characteristic.

Albinia was amused as she watched him with grown-up eyes, and compared present with past impressions. She could now imagine that she had been an inconvenient charge to a young soldier brother, and that he had been glad to make her over to the aunts, only petting and indulging her as a child; looking down on her fancies, and smiling at her sauciness when she was an enthusiastic maiden--treatment which she had so much resented, that she had direfully offended Maurice by p.r.o.nouncing William a mere martinet, when she was hurt at his neither reading the Curse of Kehama, nor entering into her plans for Fairmead school.

Having herself become a worker, she could better appreciate a man who had seen and acted instead of reading, recollected herself as an emanation of conceit, and felt shy and anxious, even more for her husband than for herself. How would the scholar and the soldier fare together? and could she and Maurice keep them from wearying of each other? She had little trust in her own fascinations, though she saw the General's eye approvingly fixed on her, and believing herself to be a more pleasing object in her womanly bloom than in her unformed girlhood.

'How does the Montreal affair go on?' she asked.

'What affair?'

'Fred and Miss Kinnaird.'

'I am sorry to say he has not put it out of his head.'

'Surely she is a very nice person.'

'Pshaw! He has no right to think of a wife these dozen years.'

'Not even think? When he is not to have one at any rate till he is a field officer!'

'And he is a fool to have one then. A mere enc.u.mbrance to himself and the entire corps.'

'Yes, I know,' said Albinia, 'she always gets the best cabin.'

'And that is no place for her! No man, as I have told Fred over and over again, ought to drag a woman into hards.h.i.+ps for which she is not fitted, and where she interferes with his effectiveness and the comfort of every one else.'

The identical lecture of twelve years since, when he had feared Albinia's becoming this inconvenient appendage! If he had repeated it on all like occasions, she did not wonder that it had wearied his aide-de-camp.

'Perhaps,' she said, 'the backwoods may have fitted Miss Emily for the life; and I can't but be glad of Fred's having been steady to anything.'

Considering this speech like the Kehama days, the General went on to dilate on the damage that marriage was to the 'service,' removing the best officers, first from the mess, and then from the army.

'What a pity William was born too late to be a Knight of St. John!' said Albinia.

All laughed, but she doubted whether he were pleased, for he addressed himself to one of the aunts, while Maurice spoke to her in an under tone--'I believe he is quite right. Homes are better for the individual man, but not for the service. How remarkably the a.n.a.logy holds with this other service!'

'You mean what St. Paul says of the married and unmarried?'

'I always think he and his sayings are the most living lessons I know on the requirements of the other army.'

Albinia mused on the insensible change in Maurice. He had not embraced his profession entirely by choice. It had always been understood that one of the younger branches must take the family living; and as Fred had spurned study, he had been bred up to consider it as his fate, and if he had ever had other wishes, he had entirely accepted his destiny, and sincerely turned to his vocation. The knowledge that he must be a clergyman had ruled him and formed him from his youth, and acting through him on his sister, had rendered her more than the accomplished, prosperous young lady her aunts meant to have made her. Yet, even up to a year or two after his Ordination, there had been a sense of sacrifice; he loved sporting, and even b.a.l.l.s, and it had been an effort to renounce them. He had avoided coming to London because his keen enjoyment of society tended to make him discontented with his narrow sphere; she had even known him to hesitate to ride with the staff at a review, lest he should make himself liable to repinings. And now how entirely had all this pa.s.sed away, not merely by outgrowing the enterprising temper and boyish habits, nor by contentment in a happy home, but by the sufficiency and rest of his service, the engrossment in the charge from his great Captain. Without being himself aware of it, he had ceased to distrust a holiday, because it was no longer a temptation; and his animation and mirth were the more free, because self-regulation was so thoroughly established, that restraint was no longer felt.

Mrs. Annesley was talking of the little Kendals, who she had ruled should be at Fairmead.

'No,' said Maurice, 'Albinia thought her son too mighty for Winifred.

Our laudable efforts at cousinly friends.h.i.+p usually produce war-whoops that bring the two mammas each to s.n.a.t.c.h her own offspring from the fray, with a scolding for the sake of appearances though believing the other the only guilty party.'

'Now, Maurice,' cried Albinia, 'you confess how fond Mary is of setting people to rights.'

'Well--when Maurice bullies Alby.'