She did in truth blame herself for having given him no profession, and having acquiesced in the indolent dilettante habits which made all harder to him now; and she was not certain how far it was only his fancy that his health and nerves were perilously affected, though Dr. Medlicott, whom she secretly consulted, assured her that the only remedies needed were good sense and something to do.
At last, at Midsummer, the crisis came in a heavy discharge of bills, the consequence of Allen's incredulity as to their poverty and incapability of economising. He said "the rascals could wait," and "his mother need not trouble herself." She said they must be paid, and she found it could be done at the cost of giving up spending August at St. Cradocke's, as well as of breaking into her small reserve for emergencies.
But she told Allen that she insisted on his making some exertion for his own maintenance.
"Yes," said Allen in languid assent.
"I know it is harder at your age to find occupation."
"That is not the point. I can easily find something to do. There's literature. Or I could take up art. And last year there was a Hungarian Count who would have given anything to get me for a tutor."
"Then why didn't you go?"
"Mother, you ask me why!"
"I know you had not made up your mind to the worst, but it is a pity you missed the opportunity."
"There will be more," said Allen loftily. "I never meant to be a burden, but ladies are so impatient, I suppose you do not wish to turn me out instantly to seek my fortune. No, mother, I do not mean to blame you. You have been sadly harassed, and no woman can ever enter into what I have suffered. Put aside those bills. Long before Christmas, I shall be able to discharge them myself."
So Allen wrote to Bobus's friend at Oxford, but he of course did not keep a pocketful of Hungarian Counts. He answered one or two advertisements for a travelling tutor, and had one personal interview, the result of which was that he could have nothing to do with such insufferable snobs. He also concocted an advertisement beginning with "M.A., Oxford, accustomed to the best society and familiar with European languages," but though the newspapers charged highly for it, he only received one answer, except those from agents, and that, he said with illimitable disgust, was from a Yankee.
Meantime he turned over his poems, and made Barbara copy out a ballad he had written for the "Traveller's Joy" on some local tradition in the Tyrol. He offered this to a magazine, whose editor, a lady, was an occasional frequenter of Mrs. Brownlow's evenings. The next time she came, she showed herself so much interested in the legend that Allen said he should like to show her another story, which he had written for the same domestic periodical.
"Would it serve for our Christmas number?"
"I will have it copied out and send it for you to look at," said Allen.
"If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it be worth while to copy it. I shall set forth on my holiday journey the day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my Christmas number."
So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the "Joy," and in a couple of days returned it with a hasty note-
"A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make it taking, and not overdone. Please let me have it, with a few verbal corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of September. It will bring you in about £15."
Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the periodicals more widely circulated. It was plain that literature was his vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial, the instalments paying his expenses for the trial. The only doubt was what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery would be available. Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the "Traveller's Joy," and wanted to see his germ developed.
To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly impossible in Allen's eyes, and he must recruit himself by a yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half compassionately. Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no other way, and he doubted Allen's liking it, but that was his affair. Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was to make a brief stay in his friend's paternal Cumberland farm. He had succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his father's former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of his commission, still made him the rich man of the family. John was of course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm invitation from their friends at Fordham.
"I should like Armie to go," said the mother in conference with Babie, her cabinet councillor.
"O yes, Armie must go," said Babie, "but-"
"Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?"
"I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much."
"Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you would not wish to go without me."
"O no, no, NO, NO, mother," and her face and neck burnt with blushes.
"Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some surprises ready for the others."
"Hurrah! We'll do the painting of the doors. What fun it will be to see London empty."
The male population were horribly scandalised at the decision. Jock and Armine wanted to give up their journey, and John implored his aunt to come to Kencroft; but she only promised to send Babie there if she saw signs of flagging, and the Infanta laughed at the notion, and said she had had an overdose of country enough to last her for years. Allen said ladies overdid everything, and that Mother Carey could not help being one of the sex, and then he asked her for £10, and said Babie would have plenty of time to copy out "The Single Eye." She pouted "I thought you were going to put the finishing touches."
"I've marked them for you. Why, Barbara, I am surprised," he added in an elder brotherly tone; "you ought to be thankful to be able to be useful."
"Useful! I've lots of things to do! And you?"
"As if I could lug that great MS. of yours about with me on board Apthorpe's yacht."
"Never mind, Allen," said his mother, who had not been intended to hear all this. "I will do it for you; but Miss Editor must not laugh at my peaked governessy hand."
"I did not mean that, mother, only Babie ought not to be disobliging."
"Babie has a good deal to do. She has an essay to write for her professor, you know, and her hands are pretty full."
Babie too said, "Mother, I never meant you to undertake it. Please let me have it now. Only Allen will never do anything for himself that he can get any one else to do."
"He could not well do it on board the yacht, my dear. And I don't want you to have so much writing on your hands.'
"And so you punish me," sighed Barbara, more annoyed than penitent.