It is Christmas-day, 186-. Jane Hogarth is busy making arrangements for a quiet family dinner party, in her pretty house, not far from Melbourne, a little annoyed because the season is so backward that no fruit is to be had for love or money; but, on the whole, certain that things will go off very well without it. Francis has succeeded very well in Victoria. His talents and industry made him very valuable to the mercantile house he went into. In the course of a few years he put his capital into it, and got a partnership, which, now that the principal was absent on a visit to England, was on equal terms. The Brandons and Hogarths exchange Christmas visits with each other, and this year it is Jane's turn to be the entertainer, and Elsie with her husband and children have come down from the bush to have a little gaiety in Melbourne.
This occasion was one to be especially remarked on, for there was a bride to be honoured in the person of pretty Grace Forrester, whom Tom Lowrie, now a rising engineer, had succeeded in winning as his wife. All the Lowries had made good colonists; the eldest girl had married respectably; the second assisted her aunt in the shop, which she had recently enlarged and improved; but Tom's prospects were better than those of any other of the family, and fully justified Jane's hopes and expectations. There is no saying where he may stop in his colonial career. Peggy, now called Miss Walker universally, except by one or two old friends, was to accompany her nephew and his wife. Is it really Peggy whom we see at Mrs. Hogarth's door with the dress of rich black silk, destitute of crinoline, and the bonnet, in these days of tall bonnets, flattened down in contempt of fashion, but still of excellent materials?
She is a better-looking woman in her older days than when she was younger. Brandon declares that in time she will turn out quite a beauty, and takes more interest in the caps that his wife makes as a regular thing for Peggy—four every year (nobody can make them to please her as Mrs. Brandon can do)—than in any other of her attempts at millinery.
Another member of the party was Mr. Dempster, who had just come over from Adelaide. He had been seized on by Francis, and begged to accept of a little corner of their somewhat crowded house. There are a number of very bright faces collected round the table. How many recollections of early difficulties faithfully wrestled with and overcome, throng upon our friends at such an hour of meeting!
Peggy was disposed to improve the occasion. "Well," said she, "to think of us all being together in this way after all we've come through! I'm not speaking of you, Mr. Dempster, for I know none of your harassments—but when I mind of the night when Miss Jean and Miss Elsie sat in my little room, so downcast, and so despairing, and I told them about all my troubles just to hearten them up a bit, and to show what God had enabled me to win through, little did I think of how the Almighty was leading us all! You mind well of how I spoke of Miss Thomson that night, and of the money she gave for my help when I was in sore straits how to provide for my bairns. And to think of my Tam being married on her niece! It's no for worms like us to be proud, but to be connected with such as Miss Thomson is a cause of thanksgiving."
"And I have had a letter from Aunt Margaret, and so has Tom," said Grace, "and she is quite pleased with our engagement. She says she knows that as Tom has raised himself so far by his own industry and abilities, helped by the education his good aunt gave to him, that there is no fear of his ever falling; and she said Tom's letter to her is the best thing of the kind she ever read."
"Mrs. Hogarth taught him to write letters," said Peggy; "and really when he reads out anything to me that he has written, it reads like a printed book. As for Miss Thomson's own letter, it deserves to be printed in letters of gold; but mind, you young folk, not to be overmuch set up about being married, and all your friends being so satisfied. It is a great good Providence that you have happened so well; but all folk have not your good luck. You must not look down on your sister Mary—who is the best of the whole bunch of you, I reckon—because she is six years older than you and not married yet."
"Oh, auntie!" said Grace,—"with such a maiden aunt as I have, and such a maiden aunt as Tom has, you never could dream of my looking down on old maids, or fancying I can be compared to Mary."
"Bravo! Mrs. Lowrie," said Brandon; "I wish I could find any one good enough for Miss Forrester, but I cannot."
"Mr. Sinclair cannot comprehend my going off before Mary. He says, if he does not hear news of her in two years' time, he must come to Australia for her himself," said Grace.
"There is likely to be another wedding ere long, at Wiriwilta, however," said Brandon.
"Emily," said Peggy, "Grace was getting word of it from her sister. She's young yet."
"So she is, and so is Edgar; but it is a settled thing. A year's engagement—or something of that sort. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips have consented very handsomely, but Mrs. Grant thinks that, with Emily's beauty and education (for Miss Forrester has certainly brought her on wonderfully), she should make a better marriage."
"But, for my part, Frank," said Brandon, addressing his brother-in-law. "I do like to see young people falling in love in this natural way, and willing to begin life not just as their fathers leave off. I talked to Emily like a father, and told her what she could expect until they worked for it; and she gave me a kiss, and said that she knew quite well that she could not have everything just as it was at Wiriwilta, but if there was twice as much to give up she would do it; for, as she said very charmingly, 'I am very fond of Edgar, and Edgar is very fond of me.' To see people beginning life in a love-marriage so young as the happy pair in company, or even younger, as in the case of Edgar and Emily, is very refreshing to old fogies like you and me, Frank, who began our married life a good deal on the wrong side of thirty, and whose eldest children look out for white hairs in our heads. The only consolation I have for not being happy younger is, that if I had married before I should have married some one else, and that would never have done. Elsie might have taken me a year before she did, however. I have never quite forgiven her."
"And the young people are very fond of each other," said Peggy. "All very right, but I don't like to see them make too much fuss. Tom and Grace are very ridiculous whiles."
"Well, I must say I like to see it," said Brandon. "I quite enjoy seeing Emily stealing out with Edgar in the gloaming, and meeting him in the hall when she hears his knock, and getting into corners with him. Harriett, who has some notion what the thing means, has patience with it, but Constance, who is younger, despises all this philandering. I said to her the other day, when she was expressing her disgust at these proceedings, 'Ah, Constance! three years or so, and you will be doing just the same. I have another nephew coming out next month, and a fine fellow he is said to be. You'll be just as foolish.' 'You'll see me boiled first!' said Constance, with a vehemence which startled her aunt Harriett, and brought down a serious rebuke, though she herself thought the young people rather ridiculous, to use Peggy's phrase. But I know very well that one great reason for Emily's fancy for Edgar is her wish to call Elsie and myself aunt and uncle. I think it likely that that weighed with you, Mrs. Lowrie."
"None of your nonsense, Mr. Brandon," said Peggy. "Who would care to be connected with an old woman like me?" and yet she was pleased with Brandon's remark, notwithstanding.
"Well, joking apart, I think it is really a great thing for a girl to marry into a family where they are prepared to love her, and to put the most charitable construction on all she does and all she does not do," said Brandon.
"But, Mr. Hogarth," said Mr. Dempster, "you promised at this family party to tell me the whole story of which I have got some separate threads. You recollect that we had some curious revelations one evening at a seance at my house in London. Shortly after I returned to Adelaide, I met in a wayside inn an old woman whom I took to be your mother, who entered into conversation with me; but as the spiritual directions had been to have nothing to do with her, I did not inquire sufficiently to get much information from her. Some time after that, I heard of your giving up your property in Scotland, sailing for Australia, marrying your cousin, and settling here; but what connection these three things have with each other, I never knew. Will you be good enough to explain?"
"The spirit was in the wrong on that occasion in two important particulars. The letter I had in my pocket was from Mrs. Peck, but she was not my mother; Mr. Hogarth was not my father," said Francis.
"Not your mother! not your father!" said Mr. Dempster; "can you prove that?"
"No; but I am quite convinced of it," said Francis.
"I would believe the spirits always, if I had no positive proof to the contrary," said Mr. Dempster.
"Mrs. Peck confessed to Brandon that as her own child died suddenly she had picked up another, with the view of imposing on Mr. Hogarth and getting a handsome allowance from him; but when he saw me he preferred keeping me out of her hands, and educated me, but never loved me," said Francis.
"I would not believe that woman on her oath," said Mr. Dempster; "and I know her motive. She wanted to get something out of your cousins, and for that purpose invented this confession. That would never shake my belief in the spirits. Look at the way in which those names were spelled out—you were convinced of the truth of it at the time."
"My dear sir," said Francis, "I certainly heard and saw a great many things which I could not explain. They seemed to echo my own thoughts marvellously correctly, but whenever I was at fault, they, too, were misinformed. Elsie had been suspicious beforehand that I was not Henry Hogarth's son. Mrs. Peck's confession was consistent and probable; she stuck to it as being true, to her dying day. I went to see her on her death-bed, and she declared that, as she hoped for forgiveness, I was not her child or Mr. Hogarth's; so that, though I never got any clue to my real parents—for she did not know my name, and the advertisements which I put into American papers were never answered—thirty-five years being a lapse of time in which such matters cannot be traced—I am morally certain that I am not Jane's cousin, and consequently that the spirit was wrong. It might be mesmerism, or extraordinary quickness of sight; for though I tried to pass over the letters which spelled out the names, a very practised eye might observe an infinitesimal hesitation over the particular letter;—but of one thing I am certain, that if Henry Hogarth had been there in the spirit, he would have been able to tell me both that he was not my father, and also whose son I really was, which information I wished to obtain."
"But did not the spirit say you were to have happiness after a time," said Mr. Dempster, triumphantly, "and have you not got it?"
"Certainly I have; and if it had any hand in bringing it about I am very grateful to it," said Francis, looking at his wife with pride and pleasure; "but I think we owe our happiness very much to each other. The will, which was as unjust and absurd a one as could have been made, indirectly did us service. I am quite sure that but for the singular relations in which I was placed I never could have known Jane, and could not have loved her."
"If Elsie had been left 20,000 pounds I never should have dared to have looked up to her," said Brandon; "and what a loss that would have been to her, not speak of myself! It is a hundred chances to one against two heiresses getting two such good husbands, and keeping all such capital friends as we do."
"It is quite true," said Jane; "my uncle's will has resulted in more happiness than even he could have hoped for."
"Though he certainly would not have contemplated with equanimity the passing of Cross Hall into the hands of Mrs. William Dalzell, whose trustees invested her fortune in it when it was sold by the benevolent societies to whom I relinquished the inheritance," said Francis. "Dalzell does not make so bad a landlord as we expected, particularly as he has not much in his power. The proceeds of the sale are doing good to the sick and afflicted, while we are quite as comfortable without it."
"I cannot think enough of the Providence that has made good come out of evil," said Jane. "But with regard to the rappings, Mr. Dempster, the oracular sentences that all would be well in the end, and that Francis should be happy after a time, were of the vaguest description, while on positive matters they were decidedly misinformed."
"It might have been a lying or mocking spirit," said Mr. Dempster; "my faith in the truth of these manifestations is not to be shaken by what you say."
"I wonder if your spirits could tell us if Grant is in for ——, and his majority? The election must have taken place, but no one in the room knows of it; that would be a crucial test, as Jane calls it," said Brandon.
"In such a company of unbelievers," said Mr. Dempster, "we could not get up a seance, and what is more, we have no medium."
"It is well that Grant goes out of his own district," said Brandon, "for he would not stand a chance there; and now he is promising to those strangers anything and everything. With all Grant's aristocratic feelings, and his wife's too, which are still stronger, their desire that he should have a seat in the Assembly, now that McIntyre is in, seems to drag him into as low depths as any one. I cannot see why they should be so anxious about it, unless it is that, since they cannot afford to go home, they want to take as good a position here as any of their neighbours. Grant's affairs will suffer if he has to be so much in Melbourne, and at best he will make a very fourth-rate legislator."
"I think he is naturally 'indifferent honest,'" said Francis. "At least, he is disposed to be honest, but canvassing is very different work here as well as in Britain."
"You should really get into our Assembly, Frank," said Brandon, "to give the natives here the benefit of your experience. How great you would be on a point of order or a question of privilege!"
"I wish Francis had time to give to parliamentary duties," said Jane. "I live in hopes that when Mr. —— returns, he may try his fortune in the political world here. If representative assemblies would limit themselves to what really concerns such bodies, it would not be so heavy a tax upon people in business to give their time to the public; but they will meddle with things that ought to be let alone, and endless floods of talk on such matters take up much valuable time."
"Then Mr. Hogarth's public spirit has not been gently smothered by a happy marriage and a fine family of children? That is the modern view of the case," said Mr. Dempster. "Nothing great is done by married men, unless they are unhappily mated."
"A most ignoble view of a wife's duties," said Jane.
"My wife would never smother any public spirit I may have," said Francis. "She had too much to do with the birth of it, not to cherish it as fondly as any of her other babies; but I fear that, till my friend Mr. Hare's scheme is carried, I could not get a majority in Victoria. We want the reform very much here, and in all the colonies; and as yet, it has been failure, failure, failure."
"And if such men as you do not get in, Frank, it will never be carried. Grant is stupid—thoroughly stupid. I talked to him for four mortal hours on the subject, and made it plain to the meanest capacity, that though we wanted a representation of minorities, the minority in the House would faithfully represent the minority out of doors, and not be able to defeat the majorities, as he was convinced it would do. I put it down in black and white—proved it with figures. Elsie and I made fancy voting-papers, and I acted as returning officer, and showed the thing as clear as day; but though he drank a bottle and a half of sherry during the process, he was just as wise at the end as at the beginning. Now I don't call myself at all clever, but when Frank explained the method of voting to me, I saw it all in a minute—and you, Tom—did not you, too? but then you are rather a genius."
"It is as plain as a pikestaff," said Tom Lowrie.
"Walter thinks, because he has not read very much, that we must think him stupid," said Elsie, "when he really has the quickest apprehension of all sorts of things."
"Dr. Grant will, perhaps, take up the meaning of Hare's scheme when the newspapers have advocated it for years, and it has been familiar to all the people around him," said Francis, "or he may vote for it without understanding it, when it becomes a popular cry."
"But to have to stir such a dish of skimmed milk to honourable action!" said Brandon. "Frank, you really must stand for our district. I fancy McIntyre will go home by the time your partner comes back, so we will have a vacancy. I will canvass for you, and so will Edgar. It would be a credit to us to have a real British M.P. as our representative, and then you could push your grand idea, as you intended to have done in England, before love routed ambition. As you say, the result has hitherto been a failure in the colonies, but the contest should not be abandoned."
"I hear that the movement makes slow progress in Britain," said Francis, "but still it makes progress. It is too great a change there, and there are so many vested interests which consider such a reform would interfere with their prescriptive rights. On the Continent it makes more way; and, perhaps, as my French friends say, the discovery may be first carried into practice there; but I had hopes of its success in the colonies. There is so much less to disturb here that a change from exclusively local to general elections would not be difficult, if we could only make the idea familiar. All we see in America, all we see in political matters here, only show how much easier it is to reform before abuses go too far. I should very much like to try your district, Brandon, and will be very glad of your services when the time comes; and so I should feel that my work had been postponed, but not altogether given up."
"If we could carry the measure by a COUP DE MAIN in any one of the colonies, and bring it into working, the whole world would be the better for it," said Brandon.
"There can be no carrying it by a COUP DE MAIN," said Francis. "Every inch of the ground must be fought here, as in Britain, but the extent of ground is shorter."
"I have grown much more patriotic since I was married," said Brandon. "The place where you have a real home—the birthplace of your children—and where you hope to see them grow up—becomes very dear to you. And here are the youngsters!"
Little Maggie Brandon (so called in compliment to Peggy) seemed to know by intuition that there was something for her in the pocket of the worthy woman, and went to her at once; and the others distributed themselves according to their several likings.
"Well," said Peggy, "I've often thought to ask you before, Mrs. Hogarth, but how are you going to educate your lassies? What are you going to do with them? and you favour lassies in both families—two to one in each of them."
"Very much as we were educated ourselves," said Jane; "with more care taken for the cultivation of their natural tastes, but the groundwork will be the same."
"That education has certainly turned out admirable wives," said Francis.
"Speak for yourself, Frank," said Brandon; "but my wife spoils me, and everybody in the house. There is a sad want of vinegar in her composition. She cannot scold her servants—the mildest approach to it that she ever makes is by saying, 'Mr. Brandon does not like such a thing,' or that 'Mr. Brandon would be displeased if they do not attend to such another.' The idea of making a bugbear of me is very ingenious, but I fear not very efficacious, for I know they see through it. As for me, a penitent recollection of a conversation in an English railway carriage has stopped her mouth for ever, and she never gives me a hard word, however I may deserve it; and for the children, the less we say of them the better."
"But, Walter, I can keep my servants, and they really do very well; and the children are good enough, and so are you; so there is no need to scold."
"That is where the dangerous part of this subtle flattery lies; it is so perfectly sincere. But I suppose we get along pretty well, considering, as Mrs. Grant would say; and I really think her household would be more comfortable if she took a leaf out of my wife's book. Her servants will not stay three months with her, and she has three of the most spoiled, exacting children I ever saw—far worse than their cousins at Wiriwilta were in their worst days. The Phillipses had spirit, but the Grants have none, except perhaps the spirit of discontent. I think we might do worse, Peggy, than educate our girls to resemble their mothers."
"But," said Jane, "we must make some provision for them also, if we can. I suppose that I could have got on as well as you, Francis, if I had been a man."
"Yes, there is nothing I have done that you could not have done as well. I have as much perseverance as you, but not so much energy. It is likely you would have made a better figure in the world than I have done."
"But I could get nothing to do but to take a governess's situation; and wonderfully lucky I was to get it. Mary Forrester is a much better governess for Mr. Phillips's family than I was. Elsie could only maintain herself as a milliner or as a lady's maid; and yet Elsie, placed as a clerk or bookkeeper in a bank or merchant's office, would have filled the situation as satisfactorily as half the young men I know."
"Then you have not quite given up your notions of woman's rights?" said Mr. Dempster. "For my part, I think the best right a woman has is the right to a husband."
"That is a right she cannot assert for herself," said Jane, smiling. "One would think, to hear people talk on this subject, that the entreaties for work and independence come from those who in their youth disdained faithful lovers, and perversely and unnaturally refused to love, honour, and obey. I think, on the contrary, that the women of our century are only too easily won, and cannot be charged with any unnecessary cruelty to lovers. I do not think that you increase the number of happy marriages or lessen the number of mercenary unions by making the task for a single woman to maintain herself honestly and usefully such very uphill work."
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