← catalogue

The Long Vacation

by Charlotte M. Yonge · English · Gutenberg #5251 · 527,065 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Long Vacation
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Long Vacation

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5251]
                Most recently updated: October 13, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5251

Credits: Produced by Sandra Laythorpe and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG VACATION ***




Produced by Sandra Laythorpe






THE LONG VACATION

By Charlotte M. Yonge



     How the children leave us, and no traces
       Linger of that smiling angel-band,
     Gone, for ever gone, and in their places
       Weary men and anxious women stand.
                          ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR





PREFACE



If a book by an author who must call herself a veteran should be taken
up by readers of a younger generation, they are begged to consider the
first few chapters as a sort of prologue, introduced for the sake of
those of elder years, who were kind enough to be interested in the
domestic politics of the Mohuns and the Underwoods.

Continuations are proverbially failures, and yet it is perhaps a
consequence of the writer’s realization of characters that some seem as
if they could not be parted with, and must be carried on in the mind,
and not only have their after-fates described, but their minds and
opinions under the modifications of advancing years and altered
circumstances.

Turner and other artists have been known literally to see colours in
absolutely different hues as they grew older, and so no doubt it is
with thinkers. The outlines may be the same, the tints are insensibly
modified and altered, and the effect thus far changed.

Thus it is with the writers of fiction. The young write in full sympathy
with, as well as for, the young, they have a pensive satisfaction in
feeling and depicting the full pathos of a tragedy, and on the other
hand they delight in their own mirth, and fully share it with the
beings of their imagination, or they work out great questions with the
unhesitating decision of their youth.

But those who write in elder years look on at their young people,
not with inner sympathy but from the outside. Their affections and
comprehension are with the fathers, mothers, and aunts; they dread,
rather than seek, piteous scenes, and they have learnt that there are
two sides to a question, that there are many stages in human life, and
that the success or failure of early enthusiasm leaves a good deal more
yet to come.

Thus the vivid fancy passes away, which the young are carried along
with, and the older feel refreshed by; there is still a sense of
experience, and a pleasure in tracing the perspective from another
point of sight, where what was once distant has become near at hand, the
earnest of many a day-dream has been gained, and more than one ideal has
been tried, and merits and demerits have become apparent.

And thus it is hoped that the Long Vacation may not be devoid of
interest for readers who have sympathized in early days with Beechcroft,
Stoneborough, and Vale Leston, when they were peopled with the outcome
of a youthful mind, and that they may be ready to look with interest on
the perplexities and successes attending on the matured characters in
after years.

If they will feel as if they were on a visit to friends grown older,
with their children about them, and if the young will forgive the seeing
with elder eyes, and observing instead of participating, that is all the
veteran author would ask.


C. M. YONGE.

Elderfield,

January 31, 1895.




LIST OF CONTENTS



I. A CHAPTER OF RETROSPECT

II. A CHAPTER OF TWADDLE

III. DARBY AND JOAN

IV. SLUM, SEA, OR SEASON

V. A HAPPY SPRITE

VI. ST. ANDREW’S ROCK

VII. THE HOPE OF VANDERKIST

VIII. THE MOUSE-TRAP

IX. OUT BEYOND

X. NOBLESSE OBLIGE

XI. HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

XII. THE LITTLE BUTTERFLY

XIII. TWO SIDES OF A SHIELD AGAIN

XIV. BUTTERFLY’S NECTAR

XV. A POOR FOREIGN WIDOW

XVI. “SEE, THE CONQUERING HERO COMES”

XVII. EXCLUDED

XVIII. THE EVIL STAR

XXX. SHOP-DRESSING

XX. FRENCH LEAVE

XXI. THE MASQUE

XXII. THE REGATTA

XXIII. ILLUMINATIONS

XXIV. COUNSELS OF PATIENCE

XXV. DESDICHADO

XXVI. THE SILENT STAR

XXVII. THE RED MANTLE

XXVIII. ROCCA MARINA

XXIX. ROWENA AND HER RIVAL

XXX. DREAMS AND NIGHTINGALES

XXXI. THE COLD SHOULDER

XXXII. THE TEST OF DAY-DREAMS

XXXIII. A MISSIONARY WEDDING

XXXIV. RIGHTED





THE LONG VACATION




CHAPTER I. -- A CHAPTER OF RETROSPECT



     Sorrow He gives and pain, good store;
     Toil to bear, for the neck which bore;
     For duties rendered, a duty more;
     And lessons spelled in the painful lore
       Of a war which is waged eternally.--ANON.


“Ah! my Gerald boy! There you are! Quite well?”

Gerald Underwood, of slight delicate mould, with refined,
transparent-looking features, and with hair and budding moustache too
fair for his large dark eyes, came bounding up the broad stair, to the
embrace of the aunt who stood at the top, a little lame lady supported
by an ivory-headed staff. Her deep blue eyes, dark eyebrows, and sweet
though piquant face were framed by the straight crape line of widowhood,
whence a soft white veil hung on her shoulders.

“Cherie sweet! You are well? And the Vicar?”

“Getting on. How are they all at Vale Leston?”

“All right. Your mother got to church on Easter-day.” This was to Anna
Vanderkist, a young person of the plump partridge order, and fair, rosy
countenance ever ready for smiles and laughter.

“Here are no end of flowers,” as the butler brought a hamper.

“Daffodils! Oh!--and anemones! How delicious! I must take Clement a
bunch of those dear white violets. I know where they came from,” and she
held them to her lips. “Some primroses too, I hope.”

“A few; but the main body, tied up in tight bunches like cauliflowers, I
dropped at Kensington Palace Gardens.”

“A yellow primrose is much more than a yellow primrose at present,”
 said Mrs. Grinstead, picking out the few spared from political purposes.
“Clement will want his button-hole, to greet Lance.”

“So he is advanced to button-holes! And Lance?”

“He is coming up for the Press dinner, and will sleep here, to be ready
for Primrose-day.”

“That’s prime, whatever brings him.”

“There, children, go and _do_ the flowers, and drink tea. I am going to
read to your uncle to keep him fresh for Lance.”

“How bright she looks,” said Gerald, as Anna began collecting vases from
the tables in a drawing-room not professionally artistic, but entirely
domestic, and full of grace and charm of taste, looking over a suburban
garden fresh with budding spring to a church spire.

“The thought of Uncle Lance has cheered them both very much.”

“So the Vicar is really recovering?”

“Since Cousin Marilda flew at the curates, and told them that if they
came near him with their worries, they should never see a farthing of
hers! And they are all well at home? Is anything going on?”

“Chiefly defence of the copses from primrose marauders. You know the
great agitation. They want to set up a china clay factory on Penbeacon,
and turn the Ewe, not to say the Leston, into milk and water.”

“The wretches! But they can’t. It is yours.”

“Not the western quarry; but they cannot get the stream without a
piece of the land which belongs to Hodnet’s farm, for which they make
astounding bids; but, any way, nothing can be done till I am of age,
when the lease to Hodnet is out, except by Act of Parliament, which is
hardly worth while, considering--”

“That you are near twenty. But surely you won’t consent?”

“Well, I don’t want to break all your hearts, Cherie’s especially, but
why should all that space be nothing but a playground for us Underwoods,
instead of making work for the million?”

“And a horrid, nasty million it would be,” retorted Anna. “You born
Yankee! Don’t worry Aunt Cherry about profaning the Ewe, just to spoil
good calico with nasty yellow dust.”

“I don’t want to worry her, but there never were such groovy people as
you are! I shall think it over, and make up my mind by the time I have
the power.”

“I wish you had to wait till five-and-twenty, so as to get more time and
sense.”

Gerald laughed, and sauntered away. He was not Yankee, except that he
had been born at Boston. His father was English, his mother a Hungarian
singer, who had divorced and deserted his father, the ne’er-do-weel
second son of an old family. When Gerald was five years old his father
was killed, and he himself severely injured, in a raid of the Indians
far west, and he was brought home by an old friend of the family. His
eldest uncle’s death made him heir to the estate, but his life was a
very frail one till his thirteenth year, when he seemed to have outgrown
the shock to spine and nerves.

Much had befallen the house of Underwood since the days when we took
leave of them, still sorrowing under the loss of the main pillar of
their house, but sending forth the new founders with good hope.

Geraldine had made her home at St. Matthew’s with her brother Clement
and the little delicate orphan Gerald; but after three years she had
yielded to the persevering constancy of Mr. Grinstead, a sculptor of
considerable genius and repute, much older than herself, who was ready
and willing to be a kind uncle to her little charge, and who introduced
her to all at home or abroad that was refined, intellectual, or
beautiful.

It was in the first summer after their marriage that he was charmed with
the vivacity and musical talent of her young sister Angela, now upon the
world again. Angela had grown up as the pet and plaything of the Sisters
of St. Faith’s at Dearport, which she regarded as another home, and when
crushed by grief at her eldest brother’s death had hurried thither for
solace. Her family thought her safe there, not realizing how far life
is from having its final crisis over at one-and-twenty. New Sisters came
in, old ones went to found fresh branches; stricter rules grew, up,
and were enforced by a Superior out of sympathy with the girl, who had
always rebelled against what she thought dictation. It was decided that
she could stay there no longer, and her brother Lancelot and his wife
received her at Marshlands with indignant sympathy for her wrongs; but
neither she nor her sister-in-law were made to suit one another.
With liberty her spirit and audacity revived, and she showed so much
attraction towards the Salvation Army, that her brother declared their
music to have been the chief deterrent from her becoming a “Hallelujah
lass.” However, in a brief visit to London, she so much pleased Mr.
Grinstead that he invited her to partake in the winter’s journey to
Italy. Poor man, he little knew what he undertook. Music, art, Roman
Catholic services, and novelty conspired to intoxicate her, and her
sister was thankful to carry her off northward before she had pledged
herself to enter a convent.

Mountain air and scenery, however, proved equally dangerous. Her
enterprises inspired the two quiet people with constant fears for her
neck; but it was worse when they fell in with a party of very Bohemian
artists, whom Mr. Grinstead knew just well enough not to be able to
shake them off. The climax came when she started off with them in
costume at daybreak on an expedition to play the zither and sing at a
village fete. She came back safe and sound, but Geraldine was already
packed up to take her to Munich, where Charles Audley and Stella now
were, and to leave her under their charge before she had driven Mr.
Grinstead distracted.

There was a worse trouble at home. Since the death of his good old
mother and of Felix Underwood, Sir Adrian Vanderkist had been rapidly
going downhill; as though he had thrown off all restraint, and as if
the yearly birth of a daughter left him the more free to waste his
patrimony. Little or nothing had been heard direct from poor Alda till
Clement was summoned by a telegram from Ironbeam Park to find his sister
in the utmost danger, with a new-born son by her side, and her husband
in the paroxysms of the terrible Nemesis of indulgence in alcohol.

Sir Adrian had quarrelled with all the family in turn except Clement,
and this fact, or else that gentleness towards a sufferer that had won
on old Fulbert Underwood, led him in a lucid interval to direct and sign
a hurried will, drawn up by his steward, leaving the Reverend Edward
Clement Underwood sole guardian to his children, and executor, together
with his lawyer. It was done without Clement’s knowledge, or he would
have remonstrated, for never was there a more trying bequest than the
charge which in a few days he found laid on him.

He had of course already made acquaintance with the little girls. Poor
children, they had hitherto led a life as dreary as was possible to
children who had each other, and fresh air and open grounds. Their
mother was more and more of an invalid, and dreaded that their father
should take umbrage at the least expense that they caused; so that they
were scrupulously kept out of his way, fed, dressed, and even educated
as plainly as possible by a governess, cheap because she was passe, and
made up for her deficiencies by strictness amounting to harshness,
while they learnt to regard each new little sister’s sex as a proof of
naughtiness on her part or theirs.

The first time they ever heard a man’s step in the school-room passage
was in those days of undefined sorrow, alarm, and silence after the
governess had despatched the message to the only relation whose address
she knew. The step came nearer; there was a knock, the sweet, strong
voice asked,

“Are the poor little girls here?” and the tall figure was on one knee
among them, gathering as many as he could within his loving arms.
Perhaps he recollected Sister Constance among the forlorn flock at
Bexley; but these were even more desolate, for they had no past of love
and loyalty. But with that embrace it seemed to the four elders that
their worst days were over. What mattered it to them that they all eight
of them--were almost destitute? the birth of the poor little male heir
preventing the sale of the property, so terribly encumbered; and the
only available maintenance being the £5000 that Mr. Thomas Underwood had
settled securely upon their mother.

They began to know what love and kindness meant. Kind uncles and aunts
gathered round them. Their mother seemed to be able to live when her
twin-sister hung over her, and as soon as she could be moved, the whole
party left the gloom of Ironbeam for Vale Leston, where a house was
arranged for them. Lady Vanderkist continued a chronic invalid, watched
over by her sister Wilmet and her excellent young daughter Mary. Robina,
who had only one girl, and had not forgotten her training as a teacher,
undertook, with the assistance of Sophia, the second daughter, the
education of the little ones; and the third and fourth, Emilia and Anna,
were adopted into the childless homes of Mrs. Travis Underwood and Mrs.
Grinstead, and lived there as daughters. Business cares of the most
perplexing kind fell, however, on Clement Underwood’s devoted and
unaccustomed head, and in the midst arrived a telegram from Charles
Audley, summoning him instantly to Munich.

Angela was in danger of fulfilling her childish design of marrying a
Duke, or at least a Graf. Diplomates could not choose their society, and
she had utterly disdained all restraints from “the babies,” as she chose
to call Mr. and Mrs. Audley, and thus the wunderschones madchen had
fascinated the Count, an unbelieving Roman Catholic of evil repute, and
had derided their remonstrances.

Clement hurried off, but to find the bird flown. She had come down in
the morning, white and tear-stained, and had told Stella that she could
stay no longer, kissed her, and was gone out of the house before even
Charles could be called. Stella’s anxiety, almost despair, had however
been relieved just before her brother’s arrival by an electric message
from Vale Leston with the words, “Angela safe at home.”

Letters followed, and told how Robina had found her sobbing upon her
brother Felix’s grave. Her explanation was, that on the very night
before her proposed betrothal, she had dreamt that she was drifting
down the Ewe in the little boat Miss Ullin, and saw Felix under the
willow-tree holding out his bared arms to her. She said, “Is that the
scar of the scald?” and his only answer was the call “Angela! Angela!”
 and with the voice still sounding in her ears, she awoke, and determined
instantly to obey the call, coming to her, as she felt, from another
world. If it were only from her own conscience, still it was a cause
of great thankfulness to her family, and she soon made herself very
valuable at Vale Leston in a course of epidemics which ran through the
village, and were in some cases very severe. The doctors declared that
two of the little Vanderkists owed their lives to her unremitting care.

Her destiny seemed to be fixed, and she went off radiant to be trained
at a London hospital as a nurse. Her faculty in that line was undoubted.
All the men in her ward were devoted to her, and so were almost all the
young doctors; but the matron did not like her, and at the end of the
three years, an act of independent treatment of a patient caused a
tremendous commotion, all the greater because many outsiders declared
that she was right. But it almost led to a general expulsion of lady
nurses.

Of course she had to retire, and happily for her, Mother Constance was
just at that time sentenced by her rheumatism to spend the winter in a
warm climate. She eagerly claimed Angela’s tendance, and just at the end
of the year there came an urgent request for a Sister from England to
form a foundation in one of the new cities of Australia on the model of
St. Faith’s; and thither Mother Constance proceeded, with one Sister and
Angela, who had thenceforth gone on so well and quietly that her family
hoped the time for Angela’s periodical breaking out had passed.

The ensuing years had been tranquil as to family events, though the
various troubles and perplexities that fell on Clement were endless,
both those parochial and ritualistic, and those connected with the
Vanderkist affairs, where his sister did not spare him her murmurs.
Fulbert’s death in Australia was a blow both to Lancelot and to him,
though they had never had much hope of seeing this brother again. He
had left the proceeds of his sheep-farm between Lancelot, Bernard, and
Angela.

Thus had passed about fourteen years since the death of Felix, when kind
old Mr. Grinstead died suddenly at a public meeting, leaving his widow
well endowed, and the possessor of her pretty home at Brompton. When,
soon after the blow, her sisters took her to the home at Vale Leston,
she had seemed oppressed by the full tide of young life overflowing
there, and as if she again felt the full force of the early sorrow in
the loss that she had once said made Vale Leston to her a desolation. On
her return to Brompton, she had still been in a passive state, as though
the taste of life had gone from her, and there was nothing to call
forth her interest or energy. The first thing that roused her was the
dangerous illness of her brother Clement, the result of blood-poisoning
during a mission week in a pestilential locality, after a long course
of family worries and overwork in his parish. Low, lingering fever had
threatened every organ in turn, till in the early days of January,
a fatal time in the family, he was almost despaired of. However, Dr.
Brownlow and Lancelot Underwood had strength of mind to run the risk,
with the earnest co-operation of Professor Tom May, of a removal to
Brompton, where he immediately began to mend, so that he was in April
decidedly convalescent, though with doubts as to a return to real
health, nor had he yet gone beyond his dressing-room, since any exertion
was liable to cause fainting.




CHAPTER II. -- A CHAPTER OF TWADDLE



     The blessing of my later years
     Was with me when a boy.--WORDSWORTH.


When Mrs. Grinstead, on her nephew’s arm, came into her drawing-room
after dinner, she was almost as much dismayed as pleased to find a long
black figure in a capacious arm-chair by the fire.

“You adventurous person,” she said, “how came you here?”

“I could not help it, with the prospect of Lancey boy,” he said in
smiling excuse, holding out a hand in greeting to Gerald, and thanking
Anna, who brought a cushion.

“Hark! there he is!” and Gerald and Anna sprang forward, but were only
in time to open the room door, when there was a double cry of greeting,
not only of the slender, bright-eyed, still youthful-looking uncle, but
of the pleasant face of his wife. She exclaimed as Lancelot hung over
his brother--

“Indeed, I would not have come but that I thought he was still in his
room.”

“That’s a very bad compliment, Gertrude, when I have just made my
escape.”

“I shall be too much for you,” said Gertrude. “Here, children, take me
off somewhere.”

“To have some dinner,” said Geraldine, her hand on the bell.

“No, no, Marilda feasted me.”

“Then don’t go,” entreated Clement. “It is a treat to look at you two
sunny people.”

“Let us efface ourselves, and be seen and not heard,” returned Gertrude,
sitting down between Gerald and Anna on a distant couch, whence she
contemplated the trio--Clement, of course, with the extreme pallor,
languor, and emaciation of long illness, with a brow gaining in dignity
and expression by the loss of hair, and with a look of weary, placid
enjoyment as he listened to the talk of the other two; Lance with
bright, sweet animation and cheeriness, still young-looking, though
his hair too was scantier and his musical tones subdued; and Geraldine,
pensive in eye and lip, but often sparkling up with flashes of her
inborn playfulness, and, like Clement, resting in the sunshine diffused
by Lance. This last was the editor and proprietor of the ‘Pursuivant’,
an important local paper, and had come up on journalistic business as
well as for the fete. Gertrude meantime had been choosing carpets and
curtains.

“For,” said Lance, with a smack of exultation, “we are actually going
back to our old quarters over the shop.”

“Oh!” A responsive sound of satisfaction from Geraldine.

“Nothing amiss?” asked Clement.

“Far from it. We let Marshlands to great advantage, and there are many
reasons for the flitting. I ought to be at head-quarters, and besides
there are the Sundays. We are too many now for picnicking in the
class-room, or sponging on the rectory.”

“And,” said Gertrude, “I dare not put his small family in competition
with his organ.”

“Besides,” said Lance, “the ‘Pursuivant’ is more exacting, and the
printing Will Harewood’s books has brought in more business--”

“But how about space? We could squeeze, but can you?”

“We have devoured our two next-door neighbours. There’s for you! You
know Pratt the dentist had a swell hall-door and staircase, which we
absorb, so we shall not eat in the back drawing-room, nor come up the
flight which used to be so severe on you, Cherry.”

“I can only remember the arms that helped me up. I have never left off
dreaming of the dear old step springing up the stair after the day’s
work, and the whistle to Theodore.”

“Ah, those were the jolly old days!” returned Lance, con amore.

“Unbroken,” added Clement, in the same tone.

“Better than Vale Leston?” asked Gertrude.

“The five years there were, as Felix called those last hours of delight,
halcyon days,” said Geraldine; “but the real home was in the rough and
the smooth, the contrivances, the achievements, the exultation at each
step on the ladder, the flashes of Edgar, the crowded holiday times--all
happier than we knew! I hope your children will care as much.”

“Vale Leston is their present paradise,” said Gertrude. “You should
see Master Felix’s face at the least hope of a visit, and even little
Fulbert talks about boat and fish.”

“What have you done with the Lambs?” demanded Clement.

“They have outgrown the old place in every direction, and have got a
spick-and-span chess-board of a villa out on the Minsterham road.”

“They have not more children than you have.”

“Five Lambkins to our four, besides Gussy and Killy,” said Lance;
“though A--which is all that appears of the great Achilles’ unlucky
name--is articled to Shapcote, and as for Gussy, or rather Mr. Tanneguy,
he is my right hand.”

“We thought him a nice sort of youth when he was improving himself in
London,” said Clement.

“You both were very good to him,” said Lance, “and those three years
were not wasted. He is a far better sub-editor and reporter than I was
at his age, with his French wit and cleverness. The only fault I find
with him is that he longs for plate-glass and flummery instead of old
Froggatt’s respectable panes.”

“He has become the London assistant, who was our bugbear,” said
Geraldine.

“I don’t know how we should get on without him since we made ‘Pur’
daily,” said Lance.

“How old ambitions get realized!” said Geraldine.

“Does his mother endure the retail work, or has she not higher views for
him?” asked Clement.

“In fact, ever since the first Lambkin came on the stage any one would
have thought those poor boys were her steps, not good old Lamb’s;
whereas Felix always made a point of noticing them. Gus was nine years
old that last time he was there, while I was ill, and he left such an
impression as to make him the hero model.--Aye, Gus is first-rate.”

“I am glad you have not altered the old shop and office.”

“Catch me! But we are enlarging the reading-room, and the new press
demands space. Then there’s a dining-room for the young men, and what
do you think I’ve got? We (not Froggatt, Underwood, and Lamb, but the
Church Committee) have bought St. Oswald’s buildings for a coffee hotel
and young men’s lodging-house.”

“Our own, old house. Oh! is Edgar’s Great Achilles there still?”

“I rushed up to see. Alas! the barbarians have papered him out. But what
do you think I’ve got? The old cupboard door where all our heights were
marked on our birthdays.”

“He set it up in his office,” said Gertrude. “I think he danced round
it. I know he brought me and all the children to adore it, and showed
us, just like a weather record, where every one shot up after the
measles, and where Clement got above you, Cherry, and Lance remained a
bonny shrimp.”

“A great move, but it sounds comfortable,” said Clement.

“Yes; for now Lance will get a proper luncheon, as he never has done
since dear old Mrs. Froggatt died,” said Gertrude, “and he is an animal
that needs to be made to eat! Then the children want schooling of the
new-fashioned kinds.”

All this had become possible through Fulbert’s legacy between his
brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides
which the firm had gone on prospering. Clement asked what was the
present circulation of the ‘Pursuivant’, and as Lance named it,
exclaimed--

“What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?”

“It is his doing,” said Lance, “the lines he traced out.”

“My father says it is the writing with a conscience,” said Gertrude.

“Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from
being a dead weight,” added Geraldine.

“No wonder,” said Lance, “with such contributors as the Harewoods, and
such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May.”

Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage
disconsolately exclaimed--

“Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to
be in his bed?”

“Ha, Sibby!” cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery,
withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. “You see your baby has begun to
run alone.”

“Ah, Master Lance, ‘twas your doing. You always was the mischief.”

“No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was
in the house; but I’ll bring him back again.”

“May I not stay a little longer, Sibby,” said Clement, rather piteously,
“to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day.”

“If ye’ll take yer jelly, sir,” said Sibby, “as it’s fainting ye’ll be,
and bringing our hearts into our mouths.”

So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance’s
children, then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only
sing once, she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her
once crowded nursery.

“What shall that once be, Clem?” asked Lance.

“‘Lead, kindly Light.’”

“Is it not too much?” he inquired, glancing towards his widowed sister.

“I want it as much as he does,” she answered fervently.

At thirty-eight Lance’s voice was, if possible, more perfect in
sweetness, purity, and expression than it had been at twenty, and never
had the poem, connected with all the crises of their joint lives, come
more home to their hearts, filling them with aspiration as well as
memory.

Then Lance helped his brother up, and was surprised, after those
cheerful tones, to feel the weight so prone and feeble, that Gerald’s
support on the other side was welcome. Mrs. Grinstead followed to take
Gertrude to her room and find her children’s photographs.

The two young people began to smile as soon as they were left alone.

“Did you ever see Bexley?” asked Anna.

“Yes--an awful hole,” and both indulged in a merry laugh.

“My mother mentions it with pious horror,” said Anna.

“Life is much more interesting when it is from hand to mouth,” said
Gerald, with a yawn. “If I went in for sentiment, which I don’t, it
would be for Fiddler’s Ranch; though it is now a great city called
Violinia, with everything like everything else everywhere.”

“Not Uncle Lance.”

“Certainly not. For a man with that splendid talent to bury it behind a
counter, mitigated by a common church organ, is as remarkable as absurd;
though he seems to thrive on it. It is a treat to see such innocent
rapture, all genuine too!”

“You worn-out old man!” laughed Anna. “Aunt Cherry has always said that
self-abnegation is the secret of Uncle Lance’s charm.”

“All very well in that generation--ces bons jours quand nous etions
si miserables,” said Gerald, in his low, maundering voice. “Prosperity
means the lack of object.”

“Does it?”

“In these days when everything is used up.”

“Not to those two--”

“Happy folk, never to lose the sense of achievement!”

“Poor old man! You talk as if you were twenty years older than Uncle
Lance.”

“I sometimes think I am, and that I left my youth at Fiddler’s Ranch.”

Wherewith he strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something so
yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle came back
and mentioned the tune the old cow died of.

Was Gerald, the orphan of Fiddler’s Ranch, to be always the spoilt child
of prosperity and the creature of modern life, with more aspirations
than he saw how to fulfil, hampered as he was by duties, scruples, and
affections?




CHAPTER III. -- DARBY AND JOAN



                        My reason haply more
     To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
     But now I see our lances are but straws!
                                        SHAKESPEARE.


Lancelot saw his brother’s doctors the next morning, and communicated
to his wife the upshot of the interview when they were driving to their
meeting in Mrs. Grinstead’s victoria, each adorned with a big bunch of
primroses.

“Two doctors! and not Tom,” said Gertrude.

“Both Brownlows. Tom knows them well, and wrote. One lives at the
East-end, and is sheet anchor to Whittingtonia. He began with Clement,
but made the case over to the cousin, the fashionable one, when we made
the great removal.”

“So they consulted?”

“And fairly see the way out of the wood, though not by any means quit of
it, poor Tina; but there’s a great deal to be thankful for,” said Lance,
with a long breath.

“Indeed there is!” said the wife, with a squeeze of the hand. “But is
there any more to be feared?”

“Everything,” Lance answered; “heart chiefly, but the lungs are not
safe. He has been whirling his unfortunate machine faster and faster,
till no wonder the mainspring has all but broken down. His ideal always
was working himself to death, and only Felix could withhold him, so
now he has fairly run himself down. No rest from that tremendous parish
work, with the bothers about curates, school boards and board schools,
and the threatened ritual prosecution, which came to nothing, but
worried him almost as much as if it had gone on, besides all the trouble
about poor Alda, and the loss of Fulbert took a great deal out of him.
When Somers got a living, there was no one to look after him, and he
never took warning. So when in that Stinksmeech Mission he breathed
pestiferous air and drank pestiferous water, he was finished up. They’ve
got typhus down there--a very good thing too,” he added vindictively.

“I put it further back than Mr. Somers’ going,” said Gertrude. “He never
was properly looked after since Cherry married. What is he to do now?”

“Just nothing. If he wishes to live or have a chance of working again,
he must go to the seaside and vegetate, attempt nothing for the next six
months, nor even think about St. Matthew’s for a year, and, as they told
me afterwards, be only able to go on cautiously even then.”

“How did he take it?”

“He laid his head against Cherry, who was standing by his chair, put
an arm round her, and said, ‘There!’ and she gave him such a smile as
I would not have missed seeing on any account. ‘Mine now,’ she said.
‘Best!’ he said. He is too much tired and worn out to vex himself about
anything.”

“Where are they to go? Not to Ewmouth, or all the family worries would
come upon them. Alda would give him no peace.”

“Certainly not there. Brownlow advises Rockquay. His delicate brother is
a curate there, and it agrees with him better than any other place. So
I am to go and see for a house for them. It is the very best thing for
Cherry.”

“Indeed it is. Was not she like herself last night? Anna says she has
never brightened up so much before! I do believe that if Clement goes on
mending, the dear person will have a good time yet; nay, all the better
now that she is free to be a thorough-going Underwood again.”

“You Underwooder than Underwood!”

“Exactly! I never did like--Yes, Lance, I am going to have it out. I do
think Clement would have done better to let her alone.”

“He did let her alone. He told me so.”

“Yes, but she let out to me the difference between that time and the one
of the first offer when dear Felix could not keep back his delight at
keeping her; whereas she could not help seeing that she was a burthen on
Clement’s soul, between fear of neglecting her and that whirl of parish
work, and that St. Wulstan’s Hall was wanted for the girls’ school.
Besides, Wilmet persuaded her.”

“She did. But it turned out well. The old man worshipped her, and she
was very fond of him.”

“Oh! very well in a way, but you know better, Lance.”

“Well, perhaps he did not begin young enough. He was a good, religious
man, but Pro Ecclesia Dei had not been his war-cry from his youth, and
he did not understand, and thought it clerical; good, but outside his
life. Still, she was happy.”

“Petting, Society, Art, travels! I had rather have had our two first
years of tiffs than all that sort of happiness.”

“Tiffs! I thought we might have gone in for the Dunmow flitch.”

“You might! Do you mean that you forget how fractious and nasty and
abominable I was, and how many headaches I gave you?”

“Only what you had to put up with.”

“You don’t recollect that first visit of my father’s, when I was so
frightfully cross because you said we must ask the Lambs and Bruces to
dinner? You came down in the morning white as a ghost, an owl in its
blinkers, and though I know you would rather have died than have uttered
a word, no sooner were you off than he fell upon me with, ‘Mrs. Daisy,
I give you to understand that you haven’t a husband made of such tough
commodity as you are used to at home, and if you worry him you will have
to rue it.’”

“What an ass I must have looked! Did I really go playing the martyr?”

“A very smiling martyr, pretending to be awfully jolly. I believe I
requited papa by being very cross.”

“At his interfering, eh? No wonder.”

“Chiefly to conceal my fright, but I did begin trying not to fly out as
I used to do, and I was frightened whenever I did so.”

“Poor Daisy! That is why you always seemed to think every headache your
fault.”

“The final effect--I won’t say cure--was from that book on education
which said that a child should never know a cross word or look between
father and mother. So you really have forgotten how horrid I could be?”

“Or never felt it! But to return to our muttons. I can’t believe
otherwise than that Cherry liked her old man, and if their parallel
lines did not meet, she never found it out.”

“That is true. She liked him and leant on him, and was constantly
pleased and amused as well as idolized, but I don’t think the deep
places in her heart were stirred. Then there were constraints. He could
not stand Angela’s freaks. And his politics--”

“He was not so very much advanced.”

“Enough not to like the ‘Pursuivant’ to lie about, nor her writing for
it, even about art or books; nor did his old bones enjoy the rivers at
Vale Leston. Now you will see a rebound.”

“Or will she be too tender of him to do what he disliked?”

“That will be the test. Now she has Clement, I expect an article will
come on the first book they read together.”

Lance laughed, but returned to defend his sister.

“Indeed she was attached to him. She was altogether drooping and crushed
at Vale Leston in the autumn.”

“It was too soon. She was overdone with the multitudes, and in fact it
was more the renewal of the old sorrow than the new one. Anna tells me
that when they returned there was the same objectless depression. She
would not take up her painting again, she said it was of no use, there
was no one to care. I remember her being asked once to do something for
the Kyrle Society, and Mr. Grinstead did not like it, but now Clement’s
illness has made a break, and in a new place, with him to occupy her
instead of only that dawdling boy, you will see what you shall see!”

“Ah! Gerald!” was the answer, in a doubtful, wistful tone, just as they
arrived.




CHAPTER IV. -- SLUM, SEA, OR SEASON



     For in spite of all her mother had taught her,
     She was really remarkably fond of the water.
                                            JANE TAYLOR.


Mr. and Mrs. Lancelot Underwood had not long been gone to their meeting
when there ran into the drawing-room a girl a year older than Anna, with
a taller, better figure, but a less clear complexion, namely Emilia, the
adopted child of Mr. Travis Underwood. She found Anna freshening up the
flowers, and Gerald in an arm-chair reading a weekly paper.

“I knew I should find you,” she cried, kissing Anna, while Gerald held
out a finger or two without rising. “I thought you would not be gone
primrosing.”

“A perspicacity that does you credit,” said Gerald, still behind his
paper.

“Are the cousins gone?” asked Anna.

“Of course they are; Cousin Marilda, in a bonnet like a primrose bank,
is to pick up Fernan somewhere, but I told her I was too true to my
principles to let wild horses drag me there.”

“Let alone fat tame ones,” ejaculated Gerald.

“What did she say?” asked Anna.

“Oh, she opened her eyes, and said she never should ask any one to
act against principles, but principles in her time were for Church and
State. Is Aunt Cherry in the vortex?”

“No, she is reading to Uncle Clem, or about the house somewhere. I don’t
think she would go now at least.”

“Uncle Grin’s memory would forbid,” muttered Gerald. “He saw a good many
things, though he was a regular old-fashioned Whig, an Edinburgh Review
man.”

“You’ve got the ‘Censor’ there! Oh, let me see it. My respected cousins
don’t think it good for little girls. What are you going to do?”

“I believe the doctors want Uncle Clem to get a long leave of absence,
and that we shall go to the seaside,” replied Anna.

“Oh! then you will come to us for the season! We reckon on it.”

“No, indeed, Emmie, I don’t see how I can. Those two are not in the
least fit to go without some one.”

“But then mother is reckoning on our having a season together. You lost
the last.”

Gerald laughed a little and hummed--


          “If I were na to marry a rich sodger lad
           My friends would be dismal, my minnie be mad.”


“Don’t be so disgusting, Gerald! My friends have too much sense,” cried
Anna.

“But it is true enough as regards ‘my minnie,’” said Emilia.

“Well, eight daughters _are_ serious--baronet’s daughters!” observed
Gerald in his teasing voice.

“Tocherless lasses without even the long pedigree,” laughed Anna. “Poor
mother.”

“The pedigree is long enough to make her keep poor Vale Leston suitors
at arm’s length,” mumbled Gerald; but the sisters did not hear him, for
Emilia was exclaiming--

“I mean to be a worker. I shall make Marilda let me have hospital
training, and either go out to Aunt Angela or have a hospital here. Come
and help me, Annie.”

“I have a hospital here,” laughed Anna.

“But, Nan dear, do come! You know such lots of swells. You would get one
into real society if one is to have it; Lady Rotherwood, Lady Caergwent,
besides all your delightful artist friends; and that would pacify
mother, and make it so much pleasanter for me. Oh, if you knew what the
evenings are!”

“What an inducement!”

“It would not be so if Annie were there. We should go out, and miss the
horrid aldermanic kind of dinners; and at home, when we had played the
two old dears to sleep, as I have to do every night, while they nod over
their piquet or backgammon, we could have some fun together! Now, Annie,
you would like it. You do care for good society, now don’t you?”

“I did enjoy it very much when Aunt Cherry went with me, but--”

“No buts, no buts. You would come to the laundry girls, and the
cooking-class, and all the rest with me, and we should not have a dreary
moment. Have you done fiddling over those flowers?”

“Not yet; Vale Leston flowers, you know. Besides, Aunt Cherry can’t bear
them not artistic.”

“Tidy is enough for Marilda. She does them herself, or the housekeeper;
I can’t waste time worrying over them.”

“That’s the reason they always look like a gardener’s prize bouquet at a
country horticultural show,” said Gerald.

“What does it signify? They are only a testimony to Sir Gorgias Midas’
riches. I do hate orchids.”

“I wish them on their native rocks, poor things,” said Gerald. “But poor
Fernan, you do him an injustice.”

“Oh, yes, he does quantities of good works, and so does Marilda, till I
am quite sick of hearing of them! The piles of begging letters they get!
And then they want them read and explained, and answered sometimes.”

“A means of good works,” observed Gerald.

“How would you like it? Docketing the crumbs from Dives’ table,”
 exclaimed Emilia.

“A clerk or secretary could do it,” said Anna.

“Of course. Now if you have finished those flowers, do come out with me.
I want to go into Ponter’s Court, and Fernan won’t let me go alone.”

“Have you any special object?” said Gerald lazily, “or is it to refresh
yourself with the atmosphere?”

“That dear boy--that Silky--has been taken up, and they’ve sent him to a
reformatory.”

“What a good thing!”

“Yes, only I don’t believe he did it! It was that nasty little Bill
Nosey. I am sure that he got hold of the lady’s parcel, and stuffed it
into Silky’s cap.”

Emilia spoke with a vehemence that made them both laugh, and Gerald
said--

“But if he is in a reformatory, what then? Are we to condole with his
afflicted family, or bring Bill Nosey to confess?”

“I thought I would see about it,” said Emilia vaguely.

“Well, I decline to walk in the steps of the police as an amateur! How
about the Dicksons?”

“Drifted away no one knows where. That’s the worst of it. Those poor
things do shift about so.”

“Yes. I thought we had got hold of those boys with the gymnasium. But
work wants regulating.”

“Oh, Gerald, I am glad you are coming. Now I am free! Just fancy, they
had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the
burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing
to the match-girls!”

“You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the
follies of poverty.”

“Oh, to hear Mrs. Brown discourse on her troubles with her first,
second, and third coachman!”

“Was the irresistible Ferdinand Brown there?”

“Yes, indeed, with diamond beetle studs and a fresh twist to his
moustache. It has grown long enough to be waxed.”

“How happy that fellow would be if he were obliged to dig! I should like
to scatter his wardrobe over Ponter’s Court.”

“There, Nan, have you finished?” as Anna swept the scattered leaves into
a basket. “Are you coming?”

“I don’t think I shall. You would only talk treason--well--social
treason all the way, and you don’t want me, and Aunt Cherry would have
to lunch alone, unless you wait till after.”

“Oh no, I know a scrumptious place for lunch,” said Gerald. “You are
right, Annie, one lady is quite enough on one’s hands in such regions.
You have no jewellery, Emmie?”

“Do you see any verdure about me?” she retorted.

So when Gerald’s tardy movements had been overcome, off they started
to their beloved slum, Emilia looking as if she were setting forth for
Elysium, and they were seen no more, even when five o’clock tea was
spread, and Anna making it for her Uncle Lance and his wife, who had
just returned, full of political news; and likewise Lance said that he
had picked up some intelligence for his sister. He had met General Mohun
and Sir Jasper Merrifield, both connections of the Underwoods.

General Mohun lived with his sister at Rockstone, Sir Jasper, his
brother-in-law, at Clipstone, not far off, and they both recommended
Rockquay and its bay “with as much praise,” said Lance, “as the
inhabitants ever give of a sea place.”

“Very good, except for the visitors,” said Geraldine.

“Exactly so. Over-built, over-everythinged, but still tolerable. The
General lives there with his sister, and promises to write to me about
houses, and Sir Jasper in a house a few miles off.”

“He is Bernard’s father-in-law?”

“Yes,” said Gertrude; “and my brother Harry married a sister of Lady
Merrifield, a most delightful person as ever I saw. We tell my father
that if she were not out in New Zealand we should all begin to be
jealous, he is so enthusiastic about Phyllis.”

“You have never told us how Dr. May is.”

“It is not easy to persuade him that he is not as young as he was,” said
Gertrude.

“I should say he was,” observed Lance.

“In heart--that’s true,” said Gertrude; “but he does get tired, and goes
to sleep a good deal, but he likes to go and see his old patients, as
much as they like to have him, and Ethel is always looking after him. It
is just her life now that Cocksmoor has grown so big and wants her less.
Things do settle themselves. If any one had told her twenty years ago
that Richard would have a great woollen factory living, and Cocksmoor
and Stoneborough meet, and a separate parish be made, with a disgusting
paper-mill, two churches, and a clergyman’s wife--(what’s the female of
whipper-snapper, Lance?)--who treats her as--”

“As an extinct volcano,” murmured Lance.

“She would have thought her heart would be broken,” pursued Gertrude.
“Whereas now she owns that it is the best thing, and a great relief,
for she could not attend to Cocksmoor and my father both. We want her to
take a holiday, but she never will. Once she did when Blanche and Hector
came to stay, but he was not happy, hardly well, and I don’t think she
will ever leave him again.”

“Mrs. Rivers is working still in London?”

“Oh yes; I don’t know what the charities of all kinds and descriptions
would do without her.”

“No,” said Clement from his easy-chair. “She is a most valuable person.
She has such good judgment.”

“It has been her whole life ever since poor George Rivers’ fatal
accident,” said Gertrude. “I hardly remember her before she was married,
except a sense that I was naughty with her, and then she was terribly
sad. But since she gave up Abbotstoke to young Dickie May she has
been much brighter, and she can do more than any one at Cocksmoor. She
manages Cocksmoor and London affairs in her own way, and has two houses
and young Mrs. Dickie on her hands to boot.”

“How many societies is she chairwoman of?” said Lance. “I counted
twenty-four pigeon-holes in her cabinet one day, and I believe there was
a society for each of them; but I must say she is quiet about them.”

“It is fine to see the little hen-of-the-walk of Cocksmoor lower her
crest to her!” said Gertrude, “when Ethel has not thought it worth while
to assert herself, being conscious of being an old fogey.”

“And your Bishop?”

“Norman? I do believe he is coming home next year. I think he really
would if papa begged him, but that he--my father, I mean--said he would
never do so; though I believe nothing would be such happiness to him
as to have Norman and Meta at home again. You know they came home on
George’s death, but then those New Somersetas went and chose him Bishop,
and there he is for good.”

“For good indeed,” said Clement; “he is a great power there.”

“So are his books,” added Geraldine. “Will Harewood sets great store by
them. Ah! I hear our young folks--or is that a carriage?”

Emilia and Gerald came in simultaneously with Marilda, expanded into a
portly matron, as good-humoured as ever, and better-looking than long
ago.

She was already insisting on Gerald’s coming to a party of hers and
bringing his violin, and only interrupted her persuasions to greet and
congratulate Clement.

Gerald, lying back on a sofa, and looking tired, only replied in a
bantering, lazy manner.

“Ah! if I asked you to play to the chimney-sweeps,” she said, “you would
come fast enough, you idle boy. And you, Annie, do you know you are
coming to me for the season when your uncle and aunt go out of town?”

“Indeed, Cousin Marilda, thank you, I don’t know it, and I don’t believe
it.”

“Ah, we’ll see! You haven’t thought of the dresses you two are to have
for the Drawing-Room from Worth’s, and Lady Caergwent to present you.”

Anna shook her head laughingly, while Gerald muttered--

“Salmon are caught with gay flies.”

They closed round the tea-table while Marilda sighed--

“Alda’s daughters are not like herself.”

“A different generation,” said Geraldine.

“See the Beggars Opera,” said Lance--


    “‘I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter,
      For when she’s drest with care and cost, and made all neat and gay,
      As men should serve a cucumber, she throws herself away.’”


“Ah! your time has not come yet, Lance. Your little girls are at a
comfortable age.”

“There are different ways of throwing oneself away,” said Clement.
“Perhaps each generation says it of the next.”

“Emmie is not throwing herself away, except her chances,” said Marilda.
“If she would only think of poor Ferdy Brown, who is as good a fellow as
ever lived!”

“Not much chance of that,” said Geraldine.

Their eyes all met as each had glanced at the tea-table, where Emilia
and Gerald were looking over a report together, but Geraldine shook her
head. She was sure that Gerald did not think of his cousins otherwise
than as sisters, but she was by no means equally sure of Emilia, to whom
he was certainly a hero.

Anna had not heard the last of the season. Her mother wrote to her, and
also to Geraldine, whom she piteously entreated not to let Anna lose
another chance, in the midst of her bloom, when she could get good
introductions, and Marilda would do all she could for her.

But Anna was obdurate. She should never see any one in society like
Uncle Clem. She had had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no
more. She should see the best pictures at the studios before leaving
town, and she neither could nor would leave her uncle and aunt to
themselves. So the matter remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn
had been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent what remained of
the Easter vacation in a little of exhibitions with Anna, a little of
slumming with Emilia, a little of society impartially with swells and
artists, and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern reading of
all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed, yet could not understand, his
uncle said, that he was an undeveloped creature.




CHAPTER V. -- A HAPPY SPRITE



     Such trifles will their hearts engage,
       A shell, a flower, a feather;
     If none of these, a cup of joy
       It is to be together.--ISAAC WILLIAMS.


A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to
form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the
walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was
that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld,
emerging on the platform, a slight figure in a grey suit, bag in hand,
accompanied by a pretty pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker-bockered
little boy, whose air of content and elation at being father’s companion
made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold.

“Mr. Underwood! I am glad to see you.”

“I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to
mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea.”

There was a contention between General Mohun’s hospitality and
Lancelot’s intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the
former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance
that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun’s for the sake of his day-school
would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his
curiosities. The boy’s eyes grew round, and he exclaimed--

“Foolish guillemots’ eggs?”

“He is in the egg stage,” said his father, smiling.

“I won’t answer for guillemots,” said the General, “but nothing seems to
come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones.”

There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the
youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the
aforesaid Fergus Merrifield. Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for
the General, had looked out the house that Lance had come to inspect.
As it was nearly half-past twelve o’clock, the party went round by the
school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in
all the dignity of the senior form.

“Look at him,” said the General, “those are honours one only gets once
or twice in one’s life, before beginning at the bottom again.”

Fergus graciously received the introduction; and the next sound that
was heard was, “Have you any good fossils about you?” in a tone as if
he doubted whether so small a boy knew what a fossil meant; but little
Felix was equal to the occasion.

“I once found a shepherd’s crown, and father said it was a fossil
sea-urchin, and that they are alive sometimes.”

“Echini. Oh yes--recent, you mean. There are lots of them here. I don’t
go in for those mere recent things,” said Fergus, in a pre-Adamite tone,
“but my sister does. I can take you down to a fisherman who has always
got some.”

“Father, may I? I’ve got my eighteenpence,” asked the boy, turning up
his animated face, while Fergus, with an air of patronage, vouched for
the honesty of Jacob Green, and undertook to bring his charge back in
time for luncheon.

Lancelot Underwood had entirely got over that sense of being in a false
position which had once rendered society distasteful to him. Many more
men of family were in the like position with himself than had been
the case when his brother had begun life; moreover, he had personally
achieved some standing and distinction through the ‘Pursuivant’.

General Mohun was delighted with his companion, whom he presented to his
sister as the speedy consequence of her recommendation. She was rather
surprised at the choice of an emissary, but her heart was won when she
found Mr. Underwood as deep in the voluntary school struggle as she
could be. Her brother held up his hands, and warned her that it was
quite enough to be in the fray without going over it again, and that the
breath of parish troubles would frighten away the invalid.

“I’ll promise not to molest him,” she said.

“Besides,” said Lance, “one can look at other people’s parishes more
philosophically than at one’s own.”

He had begun to grow a little anxious about his boy, but presently from
the garden, up from the cliff-path, the two bounded in--little Felix
with the brightest of eyes and rosiest of cheeks, and a great ruddy,
white-beaded sea-urchin held in triumph in his hands.

“Oh, please,” he cried, “my hands are too dirty to shake; we’ve been
digging in the sand. It’s too splendid! And they ought to have spines.
When they are alive they walk on them. There’s a bay! Oh, do come down
and look for them.”

“And pray what would become of Aunt Cherry’s house, sir? Miss Mohun, may
I take him to make his paws presentable?”

“A jolly little kid,” pronounced Fergus, lingering before performing the
same operation, “but he has not got his mind opened to stratification,
and only cares for recent rubbish. I wish it was a half-holiday, I would
show him something!”

The General, who had a great turn for children, and for the chase in
any form, was sufficiently pleased with little Felix’s good manners
and bright intelligence about bird, beast, and fish, as to volunteer
to conduct him to the region most favourable to spouting razor-fish and
ambulatory sea-urchins. The boy turned crimson and gasped--

“Oh, thank you!”

“Thank you indeed,” said his father, when he had been carried off to
inspect Fergus’s museum in the lumber-room. “‘To see a real General out
of the wars’ was one great delight in coming here, though I believe he
would have been no more surprised to hear that you had been at Agincourt
than in Afghanistan. ‘It’s in history,’ he said with an awe-stricken
voice.”

When Fergus, after some shouting, was torn from his beloved museum,
Felix came down in suppressed ecstasy, declaring it the loveliest and
most delicious of places, all bones and stones, where his father must
come and see what Fergus thought was a megatherium’s tooth. The long
word was pronounced with a triumphant delicacy of utterance, amid
dancing bounds of the dainty, tightly-hosed little legs.

The General and his companion went their way, while the other two had a
more weary search, resulting in the choice of not the most inviting of
the houses, but the one soonest available within convenient distance of
church and sea. When it came to practical details, Miss Mohun was struck
by the contrast between her companion’s business promptness and the
rapt, musing look she had seen when she came on him listening to the
measured cadence of the waves upon the cliffs, and the reverberations
in the hollows beneath. And when he went to hire a piano she, albeit
unmusical, was struck by what her ears told her, yet far more by the
look of reverent admiration and wonder that his touch and his technical
remarks brought out on the dealer’s face.

“Has that man, a bookseller and journalist, missed his vocation?” she
said to herself. “Yet he looks too strong and happy for that. Has he
conquered something, and been the better for it?”

He made so many inquiries about Fergus and his school, that she began
to think it must be with a view to his own pretty boy, who came back
all sea-water and ecstasy, with a store of limpets, sea-weeds, scales,
purses, and cuttle-fish’s backbones for the delectation of his sisters.
Above all, he was eloquent on the shell of a lacemaker crab, all
over prickles, which he had seen hanging in the window of a little
tobacconist. He had been so much fascinated by it that General Mohun
regretted not having taken him to buy it, though it appeared to be
displayed more for ornament than for sale.

“It is a disgusting den,” added the General, “with ‘Ici on parle
Francais’ in the window, and people hanging about among whom I did not
fancy taking the boy.”

“I know the place,” said Miss Mohun. “Strange to say, it produces rather
a nice girl, under the compulsion of the school officer. She is plainly
half a foreigner, and when Mr. Flight got up those theatricals last
winter she sung most sweetly, and showed such talent that I thought it
quite dangerous.”

“I remember,” said her brother. “She was a fairy among the clods.”

The next morning, to the amazement of Miss Mohun, who thought herself
one of the earliest of risers, she not only met the father and son at
early matins, but found that they had been out for two hours enjoying
sea-side felicity, watching the boats come in, and delighting in the
beauty of the fresh mackerel.

“If they had not all been dead!” sighed the tender-hearted little
fellow. “But I’ve got my lacemaker for Audrey.”

“‘The carapace of a pagurus,’ as Fergus translated it.” Adding, “I don’t
know the species.”

“I can find out when father has time to let us look at the big natural
history book in the shop,” said Felix. “We must not look at it unless he
turns it over, so Pearl and I are saving up to buy it.”

“For instance!” said his father, laughing.

“Oh, I could not help getting something for them all,” pleaded the boy,
“and pagurus was not dear. At least he is, in the other way.”

“Take care, Fely--he won’t stand caresses. I should think he was the
first crab ever so embraced.”

“I wonder you got entrance so early in the day,” said Miss Mohun.

“The girl was sweeping out the shop, and singing the morning hymn,
so sweetly and truly, that it would have attracted me anyway,” said
Lancelot. “No doubt the seafaring men want ‘baccy at all hours. She
was much amazed at our request, and called her mother, who came out in
remarkable dishabille, and is plainly foreign. I can’t think where
I have seen such a pair of eyes--most likely in the head of some
chorus-singer, indeed the voice had something of the quality. Anyway,
she stared at me to the full extent of them.”

So Lancelot departed, having put in hand negotiations for a tolerable
house not far from St. Andrew’s Church, and studied the accommodation
available for horses, and the powers of the pianos on hire.




CHAPTER VI. -- ST. ANDREW’S ROCK



     Helpmates and hearthmates, gladdeners of gone years,
       Tender companions of our serious days,
     Who colour with your kisses, smiles, and tears,
       Life’s worn web woven over wonted ways.--LYTTON.


“How does he seem now?” said Geraldine, as Lancelot came into the
drawing-room of St. Andrew’s Rock at Rockquay, in the full glare of a
cold east windy May evening.

“Pretty well fagged out, but that does not greatly matter. I say,
Cherry, how will you stand this? Till I saw you in this den, I had no
notion how shabby, and dull, and ugly it is.”

“My dear Lance, if you did but know how refreshing it is to see anything
shabby, and dull, and ugly,” Mrs. Grinstead answered with imitative
inflections, which set Anna Vanderkist off into a fit of laughter,
infecting both her uncle and aunt. The former gravely said--

“If you had only mentioned it in time, I could have gratified you more
effectually.”

“I suppose it is Aunt Cherry’s charity,” said Anna, recovering. “The
reflection that but for her the poor natives would never have been able
to go to their German baths.”

“Oh, no such philanthropy, my dear. It is homeliness, or rather
homeyness, that is dear to my bourgeoise mind. I was afraid of
spick-and-span, sap-green aestheticism, but those curtains have done
their own fading in pleasing shades, that good old sofa can be lain
upon, and there’s a real comfortable crack on that frame; while as to
the chiffonier, is not it the marrow of the one Mrs. Froggatt left us,
where Wilmet kept all the things in want of mending?”

“Ah! didn’t you shudder when she turned the key?” said Lance.

“Not knowing what was good for me.”

“But you will send for some of our things and make it nice,” entreated
Anna, “or Gerald will never stay here.”

“Never fear; we’ll have it presentable by the vacation. As for Uncle
Clement, he would never see whether he was in a hermit’s cell, if he
only had one arm-chair and one print from Raffaelle.”

There was a certain arch ring in her voice that had long been absent,
and Anna looked joyous as she waited on them both.

“I am glad you brought her,” said Lance, as she set off with Uncle
Clement’s tea.

“Yes, she would not hear of the charms of the season.”

“So much the better for her. She is a good girl, and will be all
the happier down here, as well as better. There’s a whole hive of
Merrifields to make merry with her; and, by the bye, Cherry, what should
you think of housing a little chap for the school here where Fergus
Merrifield is?”

“Your dear little Felix? Delightful!”

“_Ouf_! No, he is booked for our grammar school.”

“The grammar school was not good for any of you, except the one whom
nothing hurt.”

“It is very different now. I have full confidence in the head, and the
tone is improved throughout. Till my boys are ready for a public school
I had rather they were among our own people. No, Cherry, I can’t do it,
I can’t give up the delight of him yet; no, I can’t, nor lose his little
voice out of the choir, and have his music spoilt.”

“I don’t wonder.”

“I don’t think I spoil him. I really have flogged him once,” said Lance,
half wistfully, half playfully.

“How proud you are of it.”

“It was for maltreating little Joan Vanderkist, though if it had only
been her brother, I should have said, ‘Go it, boys.’ It was not till
afterwards that it turned out that Joan was too loyal not to bear the
penalty of having tied our little Audrey into a chair to be pelted with
horse-chestnuts.”

“At Adrian’s bidding?”

“Of course. I fancy the Harewood boys set him on. And what I thought of
was sending Adrian here to be schooled at Mrs. Edgar’s, boarded by
you, mothered by Anna, and altogether saved from being made utterly
detestable, as he will inevitably be if he remains to tyrannize over
Vale Leston.”

“Would his mother consent?”

“You know he is entirely in Clement’s power.”

“It would only be another worry for Clement.”

“He need not have much of him, and I believe he would prefer to have him
under his own eye; and Anna will think it bliss to have him, though what
it may prove is another question. She will keep you from being too much
bothered.”

“My dear Lance, will you never understand, that as furze and thistles
are to a donkey, so are shabbiness and bother to me--a native element?”

In the morning Clement, raised on his pillows in bed, showed himself
highly grateful for the proposal about his youngest ward.

“It is very good of you, Cherry,” he said. “That poor boy has been very
much on my mind. This is the way to profit by my enforced leisure.”

“That’s the way to make me dread him. You were to lie fallow.”

“Not exactly. I have thirteen or fourteen years’ reading and thinking to
make up. I have done no more than get up a thing cursorily since I left
Vale Leston.”

“You are welcome to read and think, provided it is nothing more recent
than St. Chrysostom.”

“So here is the letter to Alda,” giving it to her open.

“Short and to the purpose,” she said.

“Alda submits to the inevitable,” he said. “Don’t appear as if she had a
choice.”

“Only mention the alleviations. No, you are not to get up yet. There’s
no place for you to sit in, and the east wind is not greatly mitigated
by the sea air. Shall I send Anna to read to you?”

“In half-an-hour, if she is ready then; meantime, those two books, if
you please.”

She handed him his Greek Testament and Bishop Andrews, and repaired
to the drawing-room, where she found Anna exulting in the decorations
brought from home, and the flowers brought in from an itinerant barrow.

“I have been setting down what they must send us from home--your own
chair and table, and the Liberty rugs, and the casts of St. Cecilia and
little St. Cyrillus for those bare corners, and I am going out for a
terra-cotta vase.”

“Oh, my dear, the room is charming; but don’t let us get too dependent
on pretty things. They demoralize as much or more than ugly ones.”

“Do you mean that they are a luxury? Is it not right to try to have
everything beautiful?”

“I don’t know, my dear.”

“Don’t know!” exclaimed Anna.

“Yes, my dear, I really get confused sometimes as to what is mere lust
of the eye, and what is regard to whatever things are lovely. I believe
the principle is really in each case to try whether the high object or
the gratification of the senses should stand first.”

“Well,” said Anna, laughing, “I suppose it is a high object not to
alienate Gerald, as would certainly be done by the culture of the
ugly--”

“Or rather of that which pretends to be the reverse, and is only
fashion,” said her aunt, who meantime was moving about, adding nameless
grace by her touch to all Anna’s arrangements.

“May I send for the things then?” said Anna demurely.

“Oh yes, certainly; and you had better get the study arm-chair for your
uncle. There is nothing so comfortable here. But I have news for you.
What do you say to having little Adrian here, to go to school with the
Merrifield boy?”

“What fun! what fun! How delicious!” cried the sister, springing about
like a child.

“I suspected that the person to whom he would give most trouble would
feel it most pleasure.”

“You don’t know what a funny, delightful child he is! You didn’t see him
driving all the little girls in a team four-in-hand.”

It would be much to say that Mrs. Grinstead was enchanted by this
proof of his charms; but they were interrupted by Marshall, the polite,
patronizing butler, bringing in a card. Miss Mohun would be glad to know
how Mr. Underwood was, and whether there was anything that she could do
for Mrs. Grinstead.

Of course she was asked to come in, and thus they met, the quick, slim,
active little spinster, whose whole life had been work, and the far
younger widow, whose vocation had been chiefly home-making. Their first
silent impressions were--

“I hope she is not going to be pathetic,” and--

“She is enough to take one’s breath away. But I think she has tact.”

After a few exchanges of inquiry and answer, Miss Mohun said--

“My niece Gillian is burning to see you, after all your kindness to
her.”

“I shall be very glad. This is not quite a land of strangers.”

“I told her I was sure you would not want her to-day.”

“Thank you. My brother is hardly up to afternoon visitors yet, and we
have not been able to arrange his refuge.”

“You have transformed this room.”

“Or Anna has.”

On which Miss Mohun begged for Miss Vanderkist to meet her nieces by and
by at tea. Gillian would call for her at four o’clock, and show her the
way that it was hoped might soon be quite natural to her.

“Gillian’s ‘Aunt Jane,’” said Anna, when the visitor had tripped out.
“I never quite understood her way of talking of her. I think she worried
her.”

“Your pronouns are confused, Annie. Which worried which? Or was it
mutual?”

“On the whole,” laughed Anna back, “I prefer an aunt to be waited on to
one who pokes me up.”

“Aunt Log to Aunt Stork? To be poked will be wholesome.”

In due time there was a ring at the front door; Gillian Merrifield was
indulged with a kiss and smile from the heroine of her worship, and
Anna found herself in the midst of a garland of bright girls. She was
a contrast to them, with her fair Underwood complexion, her short plump
Vanderkist figure, and the mourning she still wore for the fatherly
Uncle Grinstead; while the Merrifield party were all in different shades
of the brunette, and wore bright spring raiment.

They had only just come down the steps when they were greeted by a young
clergyman, who said he was on his way to inquire for Mr. Underwood, and
as he looked as if he expected a reply from Miss Vanderkist, she said
her uncle was better, and would be glad to see Mr. Brownlow when he had
rested after his journey.

“I hope he will not bother him,” she added; “I know who he is now. He
was at Whittingtonia for a little while, but broke down. There’s no
remembering all the curates there. My aunt likes his mother. Does he
belong to this St. Andrew’s Church?”

“No, to the old one. You begin to see the tower.”

“Is that where you go?”

“To the old one in the morning, but we have a dear little old chapel at
Clipstone, where Mr. Brownlow comes for the afternoon. It is all a good
deal mixed up together.”

Then another voice--

“Do you think Mr. Underwood would preach to us? Mr. Brownlow says he
never heard any one like him.”

Anna stood still.

“Nobody is to dare to mention preaching to Uncle Clement for the next
six months, or they will deserve never to hear another sermon in their
lives.”

“What an awful penalty!”

“For shame, Dolores! Now,” as the short remainder of a steep street was
surmounted, “here, as you may see, is the great hotel, and next beyond
is Aunt Jane’s, Beechcroft. On beyond, where you see that queer tower,
is Cliff House, Mr. White’s, who married our Aunt Adeline, only they are
in Italy; and then comes Carrara, Captain Henderson’s--”

“You are expected to rave about Mrs. Henderson’s beauty,” said the
cousin, Dolores Mohun, as she opened Miss Mohun’s gate, between two
copper beeches, while Anna listened to the merry tongues, almost
bewildered by the chatter, so unlike the seclusion and silent watching
of the last month; but when Mysie Merrifield asked, “Is it not quite
overwhelming?” she said--

“Oh no! it is like being among them all at Vale Leston. My sisters
always tell me my tongue wants greasing when I come down.”

Her tongue was to have exercise enough among the bevy of damsels who
surrounded her in Miss Mohun’s drawing-room--four Merrifields, ranging
from twenty-two to twelve years old, and one cousin, Dolores Mohun, with
a father in New Zealand.

“Won’t you be in the Mouse-trap?” presently asked number three, by name
Valetta.

“If I did not know that she would drag it in!” cried Dolores.

“What may it be?” asked Anna.

“An essay society and not an essay society,” was the lucid answer.
“Gillian said you would be sure to belong to it.”

“I am afraid I can’t if it takes much time,” said Anna in a pleading
tone. “My uncle is very far from well, and I have a good deal to do
in the way of reading to him, and my little brother is coming to go to
school with yours.”

“Mr. Underwood brought his little boy,” said Gillian. “Fergus said he
was one of the jolliest little chaps he had ever seen.”

“Uncle Reginald quite lost his heart to him,” said Mysie, “and Aunt Jane
says he is a charming little fellow.”

“Oh, Felix Underwood!” said Anna. “Adrian is much more manly. You should
see him ride and climb trees.”

The comparative value of brothers and cousins was very apparent.
However, it was fixed that Anna should attend the Mouse-trap, and hear
and contribute as she could find time.

“I did the Erl King,” said Valetta.


          “‘Who rideth so late in the forest so wild?
            It is the fond father and his loving child.’”


“Oh, spare us, Val,” cried her sister Gillian. “Every one has done
that.”

“Gerald parodied mine,” said Anna.


          “‘Who trampeth so late in a shocking bad hat?
           ‘Tis the tipsy old father a-hugging his brat.”


“Oh, go on.”

“I can’t recollect any more, but the Erl King’s daughter is a
beggar-woman, and it ends with--


          “I’ll give thee a tanner and make him a bait,
           So in the gin palace was settled his fate.”


Some of the party were scandalized, others laughed as much or more than
the effusion deserved.

“We accept drawings,” added another voice, “and if any one does anything
extraordinarily good in that way, or in writing, it makes a little
book.”

“We have higher designs than that,” said Gillian. “We want to print the
cream.”

“For the benefit of the school board--no, the board school.”

“Oh! oh! Valetta!” cried the general voice.

“The thing is,” explained Gillian, “that we must build a new school for
the out-liers of St. Kenelm’s, or ‘my lords’ will be down on us, and we
shall be swamped by board schools.”

“Aunt Jane is frantic about it,” said Dolores Mohun.

“There’s no escape from school board worries!” exclaimed Anna. “They
helped to demolish Uncle Clement.”

“There is to be a sale of work, and a concert, and all sorts of jolly
larks,” added Valetta.

“Larks! Oh, Val!”

“Larks aren’t slang. They are in the dictionary,” declared Valetta.

“By the bye, she has not heard the rules of the Mice,” put in Mysie.

“I’ll say them,” volunteered Valetta the irrepressible. “Members of the
Mouse-trap never utter slang expressions, never wear live birds--I mean
dead ones--in their hats.”

“Is an ostrich feather a live bird or a dead?” demanded Anna.

“And,” said Dolores, “what of the feather screens that the old Miss
Smiths have been making all the winter-circles of pheasants’ feathers
and peacocks’ eyes outside a border of drakes’ curls?”

“Oh, like ostriches they don’t count, since peacocks don’t die, and
drakes and pheasants _must_,” said Gillian.

“We have been getting ready for this sale ever so long,” said Mysie.
“Aunt Jane has a working party every Friday for it.”

“The fit day,” said Dolores, “for she is a perfect victim to other
people’s bad work, and spends the evening in stitching up and making
presentable the wretched garments they turn out.”

“The next rule--” began Valetta, but Gillian mercilessly cut her short.

“You know clever people, Anna. Do you know how to manage about our
Mouse-trap book? Our bookseller here is a school-board man, all on
the wrong side, and when I tried to feel our way, he made out that the
printing and getting it up would cost a great deal more than we could
risk.”

“It is a pity that Uncle Lance is gone home,” said Anna. “He could tell
you all about it.”

“Could you not write to him?”

“Oh, yes, but I know he will want to see a specimen before he can make
any estimate.”

It was agreed that the specimen should be forthcoming on the next
occasion, and Miss Mohun coming home, and tea coming in, the conference
was ended. Anna began to unravel the relationships.

Dolores Mohun was a niece of Lady Merrifield. She had lost her own
mother early, and after living with the Merrifields for a year, had been
taken by her father to New Zealand, where he had an appointment. He
was a man of science, and she had been with him at Rotaruna during the
terrible volcanic eruption, when there had been danger and terror enough
to bring out her real character, and at the same time to cause an amount
of intimacy with a young lady visitor little older than herself, which
had suddenly developed into a second marriage of her father. In this
state of things she had gladly availed herself of the home offered her
at Clipstone, and had gone home under the escort of her Aunt Phyllis
(Mrs. Harry May), who was going with her husband to spend a year in
England. Dolores had greatly improved in all ways during her two years’
absence, and had become an affectionate, companionable, and thoughtful
member of the Merrifield household, though still taking a line of her
own.

The Kalliope whom Gillian had befriended, to her own detriment, was now
the very beautiful Mrs. Henderson, wife to the managing partner in the
marble works. She continued to take a great interest in the young women
employed in designing and mosaics, and had a class of them for reading
and working. Dolores had been asked to tell first Aunt Jane’s G. F. S.
(Girl’s Friendly Society) girls, and afterwards Mrs. Henderson’s, about
her New Zealand experiences and the earthquake, and this developed into
regular weekly lectures on volcanoes and on colonies. She did these
so well, that she was begged to repeat them for the girls at the High
School, and she had begun to get them up very carefully, studying the
best scientific books she could get, and thinking she saw her vocation.

Mrs. Henderson was quite a power in the place. Her brother Alexis was
an undergraduate, but had been promised a tutorship for the vacation.
He seldom appeared at Carrara, shrinking from what recalled the pain and
shame that he had suffered; while Petros worked under Captain Henderson,
and Theodore was still in the choir at St. Matthew’s. Maura had become
the darling of Mr. White, and was much beloved by Mrs. White, though
there had been a little alarm the previous year, when Lord Rotherwood
and his son came down to open a public park or garden on the top of the
cliffs, where Lord Rotherwood’s accident had occurred. Lord Ivinghoe,
a young Guardsman, had shown himself enough disposed to flirt with the
pretty little Greek to make the prudent very glad that her home was on
the Italian mountains.

Gillian was always Mrs. Henderson’s friend, but Gillian’s mind was full
of other things. For her father had reluctantly promised, that if one
of her little brothers got a scholarship at one of the public schools,
Gillian might fulfil her ardent desire of going to a ladies’ college.
Wilfred was a hopeless subject. It might be doubted if he could have
succeeded. He had apparently less brain power than some of the family,
and he certainly would not exert what he had. His mother had dragged him
through holiday tasks; but nobody else could attempt to make him work
when at home, and Gillian’s offers had been received with mockery or
violence. So all her hopes centred on Fergus, who, thanks to Aunt Jane’s
evening influence over his lessons, stood foremost in Mrs. Edgar’s
school, and was to go up to try for election at Winchester College at
the end of the term. Were Gillian’s hopes to be ruined by his devotion
to the underground world?




CHAPTER VII. -- THE HOPE OF VANDERKIST



     A breath of air,
     A bullock’s low,
     A bunch of flowers,
     Hath power to call from everywhere
     The spirit of forgotten hours--
     Hours when the heart was fresh and young,
     When every string in freedom sung,
     Ere life had shed one leaf of green.
                              JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.


There had been some curiosity as to who would be thought worthy to bring
the precious little baronet to Rockquay, and there was some diversion,
as well as joy, when it proved that no one was to be entrusted with
him but his eldest aunt, Mrs. Harewood, who was to bring him in Whitsun
week, so that he might begin with a half-term.

The arrival was a pretty sight, as the aunt rejoiced at seeing both her
hosts at the front door to greet her, and as Anna held out her glad arms
to the little brother who was the pride of the family.

“Ha, Adrian, boy!” said the Vicar, only greeting with the hand, at sight
of the impatient wriggle out of the embrace.

It was an open, sunburnt, ruddy face, and wide, fearless grey eyes that
looked up to him, the bullet head in stiff, curly flaxen hair held aloft
with an air of “I am monarch of all I survey,” and there was a tone
of equality in the “Holloa, Uncle Clement,” to the tall clergyman who
towered so far above the sturdy little figure.

Presently on the family inquiries there broke--

“I say, Annie, where’s the school?”

“At the foot of this hill.”

“I want to see it” (imperiously).

“You must have some tea first.”

“Then you are glad to come, Adrian?” said Mrs. Grinstead.

“Yes, Aunt Cherry. It is high time I was away from such a lot of
women-folk,” he replied, with his hands in his pockets, and his legs set
like a little colossus.

Anna had no peace till, after the boy had swallowed a tolerable amount
of bread-and-butter and cake, she took him out, and then Mrs. Harewood
had to explain his mother’s urgent entreaties that the regime at Vale
Leston should be followed up, and the boy see only such habits as would
be those of total abstainers.

Poor woman! as her brother and sisters knew, there was reason to believe
that the vice which had been fatal to her happiness and her husband’s
life, had descended to him from Dutch forefathers, and there was the
less cause for wonder at the passionate desire to guard her son from it.
Almost all her family had been water-drinkers from infancy, and though
Major Harewood called teetotalism a superstitious contempt of Heaven’s
good gifts, and disapproved of supplementing the baptismal vow, his
brother the Rector had found it expedient, for the sake of the parish,
to embrace formally the temperance movement, and thus there had
been little difficulty in giving way to Alda’s desire that, at the
luncheon-table, Adrian should never see wine or beer, and she insisted
that the same rule should prevail at Rockquay.

Clement had taken the pledge when a lad of sixteen, and there were those
who thought that, save for his persistence under warnings of failing
strength, much of his present illness might have been averted, with all
the consequent treatment. He believed in total abstinence as safer for
his ward, but he thought that the time had come for training, in seeing
without partaking. Wilmet agreed, and said she had tried to persuade
her sister; but she had only caused an hysterical agitation, so that
weakness as usual gained the victory, and she had all but promised to
bring the boy home again unless she could exact an engagement.

“To follow the Vale Leston practice at his early dinner,” said
Geraldine.

“That may be,” said Clement; “but I do not engage not to have the matter
out with him if I see that it is expedient.”

“I am only doubtful how Gerald will take it,” said his sister.

“Gerald has always been used to it at Vale Leston,” said Wilmet.

“True, but there he is your guest. Here he will regard himself as at
home. However, he is a good boy, and will only grumble a little for
appearance sake.”

“I should hope so,” said Wilmet severely.

“How is the Penbeacon affair going on?” asked Clement.

“Oh, Clem, I did not think you had heard of it.”

“I had a letter in the middle of the mission, but I could not answer it
then, and it seems to have been lost.”

Geraldine pronounced it the straw that broke the camel’s back, when she
heard of the company that only waited to dig china clay out of Penbeacon
and wash it in the Ewe till they could purchase a slice of the hill
pertaining to the Vale Leston estate. Major Harewood had replied that
his fellow-trustee was too ill to attend to business, and that the
matter had better be let alone till the heir attained his majority.

“Shelved for the present,” said Mrs. Grinstead. “Fancy Ewe and Leston
contaminated!”

“John talks to the young engineer, Mr. Bramshaw, and thinks that may be
prevented; but that is not the worst,” said Wilmet; “it would change the
whole face of the parish, and bring an influx of new people.”

“Break up Penbeacon and cover it with horrible little new houses. Men
like Walsh never see a beautiful place but they begin to think how to
destroy it.”

“Well, Cherry, you have the most influence with Gerald, but he talks to
the girls of our having no right to keep the treasures of the hills for
our exclusive pleasure.”

“It is not exclusive. Half the country disports itself there. It is the
great place for excursions.”

“Then he declares that it is a grave matter to hinder an industry that
would put bread into so many mouths, and that fresh outlets would be
good for the place; something too about being an obstruction, and the
rights of labour.”

“Oh, I know what that means. It is only teasing the cousinhood when they
fall on him open-mouthed,” said Geraldine, with a laugh, though with
a qualm of misgiving at her heart, while Clement sat listening and
thinking.

Mrs. Harewood farther explained, that she hoped either that Gerald would
marry, or that her sister would make a home for him at the Priory. It
then appeared that Major Harewood thought it would be wise to leave the
young man to manage the property for himself without interference; and
that the uncle to whom the Major had become heir was anxious to have the
family at hand, even offering to arrange a house for Lady Vanderkist.

“A year of changes,” sighed Geraldine; “but this waiting time seems
intended to let one gather one’s breath.”

But Wilmet looked careworn, partly, no doubt, with the harass of
continual attention to her sister Alda, who, though subdued and improved
in many important ways, was unavoidably fretful from ill-health, and
disposed to be very miserable over her straitened means, and the future
lot of her eight daughters, especially as the two of the most favourable
age seemed to resign their immediate chances of marrying. Moreover,
though all began life as pretty little girls, they had a propensity to
turn into Dutchwomen as they grew up, and Franceska, the fifth in age,
was the only one who renewed the beauty of the twin sisters.

Alda was not, however, Wilmet’s chief care, though of that she did
not speak. She was not happy at heart about her two boys. Kester was a
soldier in India, not actually unsteady, but not what her own brothers
had been, and Edward was a midshipman, too much of the careless,
wild sailor. Easy-going John Harewood’s lax discipline had not been
successful with them in early youth, and still less had later severity
and indignation been effectual.

“I am glad you kept Anna,” said Mrs. Harewood, “though Alda is very much
disappointed that she is not having a season in London.”

“She will not take it,” said Geraldine. “She insists that she prefers
Uncle Clem to all the fine folk she might meet; and after all, poor
Marilda’s acquaintance are not exactly the upper ten thousand.”

“Poor Marilda! You know that she is greatly vexed that Emilia is bent on
being a hospital nurse, or something like it, and only half yields to go
out with her this summer in very unwilling obedience.”

“Yes, I know. She wants to come here, and I mean to have her before the
long vacation for a little while. We heard various outpourings, and I
cannot quite think Miss Emilia a grateful person, though I can believe
that she does not find it lively at home.”

“She seems to be allowed plenty of slum work, as it is the fashion to
call it, and no one can be more good and useful than Fernan and Marilda,
so that I call it sheer discontent and ingratitude not to put up with
them!”

“Only modernishness, my dear Wilmet. It is the spirit of the times, and
the young things can’t help it.”

“You don’t seem to suffer in that way--at least with Anna.”

“No; Anna is a dear good girl, and Uncle Clem is her hero, but I am very
glad she has nice young companions in the Merrifields, and an excitement
in prospect in this bazaar.”

“I thought a bazaar quite out of your line.”

“There seems to be no other chance of saving this place from board
schools. Two thousand pounds have to be raised, and though Lord
Rotherwood and Mr. White, the chief owners of property, have done,
and will do, much, there still remains greater need than a fleeting
population like this can be expected to supply, and Clement thinks that
a bazaar is quite justifiable in such a case.”

“If there is nothing undesirable,” said Mrs. Harewood, in her original
“what it may lead to” voice.

“Trust Lady Merrifield and Jane Mohun for that! I am going to take you
to call upon Lilias Merrifield.”

“Yea; I shall wish to see the mother of Bernard’s wife.”

Clement, who went with them, explained to his somewhat wondering elder
sister that he thought safeguards to Christian education so needful,
that he was quite willing that, even in this brief stay, all the aid
in their power should be given to the cause at Rockquay. Nay, as
he afterwards added to Wilmet, he was very glad to see how much it
interested Geraldine, and that the work for the Church and the congenial
friends were rousing her from her listless state of dejection.

Lady Merrifield and Mrs. Harewood were mutually charmed, perhaps all the
more because the former was not impassioned about the bazaar. She said
she had been importuned on such subjects wherever she had gone, and had
learnt to be passive; but her sister Jane was all eagerness, and her
younger young people, as she called the present half of her family, were
in the greatest excitement over their first experience of the kind.

“Well is it for all undertakings that there should always be somebody to
whom all is new, and who can be zealous and full of delight.”

“By no means surtout point de zele,” returned Geraldine.

“As well say no fermentation,” said Lady Merrifield.

“A dangerous thing,” said Clement.

“But sourness comes without it, or at least deadness,” returned his
sister.

Wherewith they returned to talk of their common relations.

It was like a joke to the brother and sisters, that their Bernard should
be a responsible husband and father, whereas Lady Merrifield’s notion of
him was as a grave, grand-looking man with a splendid beard.

Fergus Merrifield was asked to become the protector of Adrian, whereat
he looked sheepish; but after the round of pets had been made he
informed his two youngest sisters, Valetta and Primrose, that it was the
cheekiest little fellow he had ever seen, who would never know if he was
bullied within an inch of his life; not that he (Fergus) should let the
fellows do it.

So though until Monday morning Anna was the slave of her brother, doing
her best to supply the place of the six devoted sisters at home, the
young gentleman ungratefully announced at breakfast--

“I don’t want gy-arls after me,” with a peculiarly contemptuous twirl at
the beginning of the word; “Merrifield is to call for me.”

Anna, who had brought down her hat, looked mortified.

“Never mind, Annie,” said her uncle, “he will know better one of these
days.”

“No, I shan’t,” said Adrian, turning round defiantly. “If she comes
bothering after me at dinner-time I shall throw my books at her--that’s
all! There’s Merrifield,” and he banged out of the room.

“Never mind,” again said his uncle, “he has had a large dose of the
feminine element, and this is his swing out of it.”

Hopes, which Anna thought cruel, were entertained by her elders that
the varlet would return somewhat crestfallen, but there were no such
symptoms; the boy re-appeared in high spirits, having been placed well
for his years, but not too well for popularity, and in the playground
he had found himself in his natural element. The boys were mostly of his
own size, or a little bigger, and bullying was not the fashion. He had
heard enough school stories to be wary of boasting of his title, and
as long as he did not flaunt it before their eyes, it was regarded as
rather a credit to the school.

Merrifield was elated at the success of his protege, and patronized
him more than he knew, accepting his devotion in a droll, contemptuous
manner, so that the pair were never willingly apart. As Fergus slept at
his aunt’s during the week, the long summer evenings afforded splendid
opportunities for what Fergus called scientific researches in the
quarries and cliffs. It was as well for Lady Vanderkist’s peace of mind
that she did not realize them, though Fergus was certified by his family
to be cautious and experienced enough to be a safe guide. Perhaps people
were less nervous about sixth sons than only ones.

There was, indeed, a certain undeveloped idea held out that some of the
duplicates of Fergus’s precious collection might be arranged as a
sample of the specimens of minerals and fossils of Rockquay at the
long-talked-of sale of work.




CHAPTER VIII. -- THE MOUSE-TRAP



  If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.
                                        Love’s Labour’s Lost.


The young ladies were truly in an intense state of excitement about the
sale of work, especially about the authorship; and Uncle Lancelot having
promised to send an estimate, a meeting of the Mouse-trap was convened
to consider of the materials, and certainly the mass of manuscript
contributed at different times to the Mouse-trap magazine was appalling
to all but Anna, who knew what was the shrinkage in the press.

She, however, held herself bound not to inflict on her busy uncle the
reading of anything entirely impracticable, so she sat with a stern and
critical eye as the party mustered in Miss Mohun’s drawing-room, and
Gillian took the chair.

“The great design,” said she impressively, “is that the Mouse-trap
should collect and print and publish a selection for the benefit of the
school.”

The Mice vehemently applauded, only Miss Norton, the oldest of the
party, asked humbly--

“Would any one think it worth buying?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Valetta. “Lots of translations!”

“The Erl King, for instance,” put in Dolores Mohun.

“If Anna would append the parody,” suggested Gillian.

“Oh, parodies are--are horrid,” said Mysie.

“Many people feel them so,” said Gillian, “but to others I think they
are almost a proof of love, that they can make sport with what they
admire so much.”

“Then,” said Mysie, “there’s Dolores’ Eruption!”

“What a nice subject,” laughed Gillian. “However, it will do
beautifully, being the description of the pink terraces of that place
with the tremendous name in New Zealand.”

“Were you there?” cried Anna.

“Yes. I always wonder how she can look the same after such adventures,”
 said Mysie.

“You know it is much the same as my father’s paper in the Scientific
World,” said Dolores.

“Nobody over reads that, so it won’t signify,” was the uncomplimentary
verdict.

“And,” added Mysie, “Mr. Brownlow would do a history of Rockquay, and
that would be worth having.”

“Oh yes, the dear ghost and all!” cried Valetta.

The acclamation was general, for the Reverend Armine Brownlow was the
cynosure curate of the lady Church-helpers, and Mysie produced as a
precious loan, to show what could be done, the volume containing the
choicest morceaux of the family magazine of his youth, the Traveller’s
Joy, in white parchment binding adorned with clematis, and emblazoned
with the Evelyn arms on one side, the Brownlow on the other, and full of
photographs and reproductions of drawings.

“Much too costly,” said the prudent.

“It was not for sale,” said Mysie, obviously uneasy while it was being
handed round.

“Half-a-crown should be our outside price,” said Gillian.

“Or a shilling without photographs, half-a-crown with,” was added.

“Shall I ask Uncle Lance what can be done for how much?” asked Anna, and
this was accepted with acclamation, but, as Gillian observed, they had
yet got no further than Dolores’ Eruption and the unwritten history.

“There are lots of stories,” said Kitty Varley; “the one about Bayard
and all the knights in Italy.”

“The one,” said Gillian, “where Padua got into the kingdom of Naples,
and the lady of the house lighted a lucifer match, besides the horse who
drained a goblet of red wine.”

“You know that was only the pronouns,” suggested the author.

“Then there’s another,” added Valetta, “called Monrepos--such a beauty,
when the husband was wounded, and died at his wife’s feet just as the
sun gilded the tops of the pines, and she died when the moon set, and
the little daughter went in and was found dead at their feet.”

“No, no, Val,” said Gillian. “Here is a story that Bessie has sent
us--really worth having.”

“Mesa! Oh, of course,” was the acclamation.

“And here’s a little thing of mine,” Gillian added modestly, “about the
development of the brain.”

At this there was a shout.

“A little thing! Isn’t it on the differential calculus?”

“Really, I don’t see why Rockquay should not have a little rational
study!”

“Ah! but the present question is what Rockquay will buy; to further
future development it may be, but I am afraid their brains are not yet
developed enough,” said Emma Norton.

“Well then, here is the comparison between Euripides and Shakespeare.”

“That’s what you read papa and everybody to sleep with,” said Valetta
pertly.

“Except Aunt Lily, and she said she had read something very like it in
Schlegel,” added Dolores.

“You must not be too deep for ordinary intellects, Gillian,” said Emma
Norton good-naturedly. “Surely there is that pretty history you made out
of Count Baldwin the Pretender.”

“That! Oh, that is a childish concern.”

“The better fitted for our understandings,” said Emma, disinterring it,
and handing it over to Anna, while Mysie breathed out--

“Oh! I did like it! And, Gill, where is Phyllis’s account of the Jubilee
gaieties and procession last year?”

“That would make the fortune of any paper,” said Anna.

“Yes, if Lady Rotherwood will let it be used,” said Gillian. “It is
really delightful and full of fun, but I am quite sure that her name
could not appear, and I do not expect leave to use it.”

“Shall I write and ask?” said Mysie.

“Oh yes, do; if Cousin Rotherwood is always gracious, it is specially to
you.”

“I wrote to my cousin, Gerald Underwood,” said Anna, “to ask if he had
anything to spare us, though I knew he would laugh at the whole concern,
and he has sent down this. I don’t quite know whether he was in earnest
or in mischief.”

And she read aloud--


          “Dreaming of her laurels green,
           The learned Girton girl is seen,
           Or under the trapeze neat
           Figuring as an athlete.

           Never at the kitchen door
           Will she scrub or polish more;
           No metaphoric dirt she eats,
           Literal dirt may form her treats.

           Mary never idle sits,
           Home lessons can’t be learnt by fits;
           Hard she studies all the week,
           Answers with undaunted cheek.

           When to exam Mary goes,
           Smartly dressed in stunning clothes,
           Expert in algebraic rule,
           Best pupil-teacher of her school.

           Oh, how clever we are found
           Who live on England’s happy ground,
           Where rich and poor and wretched may
           Be drilled in Whitehall’s favoured way.”


There was a good deal of laughter at this parody of Jane Taylor’s
Village Girl, though Mysie was inclined to be shocked as at something
profane.

“Then what will you think of this?” said Anna, beginning gravely to read
aloud The Inspector’s Tour.

It was very clever, so clever that Valetta and Kitty Varley both
listened as in sober earnest, never discovering, or only in flashes
like Mysie, that it was really a satire on all the social state of the
different European nations, under the denomination of schools. One being
depicted as highly orthodox, but much given to sentence insubordination
to dark cold closets; another as given to severe drill, but neglecting
manners; a third as repudiating religious teaching, and now and
then preparing explosions for the masters--no, teachers. The various
conversations were exceedingly bright and comical; and there were
brilliant hits at existing circumstances, all a little in a socialistic
spirit, which made Anna pause as she read. She really had not perceived
till she heard it in her own voice and with other ears how audacious it
was, especially for a school bazaar.

Dolores applauded with her whole heart, but owned that it might be
too good for the Mouse-trap, it would be too like catching a monkey!
Gillian, more doubtfully, questioned whether it would “quite do”; and
Mysie, when she understood the allusions, thought it would not. Emma
Norton was more decided, and it ended by deciding that the paper should
be read to the elders at Clipstone, and their decision taken before
sending it to Uncle Lance.

The spirits of the Muscipula party rose as they discussed the remaining
MSS., but these were not of the highest order of merit; and Anna thought
that the really good would be sufficient; and all the Underwood kith and
kin had sufficient knowledge of the Press through their connection with
the ‘Pursuivant’ to be authorities on the subject.

“Fergus has some splendid duplicate ammonites for me and bits of
crystal,” said Mysie.

“Oh, do let Fergus alone,” entreated Gillian. “He is almost a
petrifaction already, and you know what depends on it.”

“My sister is coming next week for a few days,” said Anna. “She is very
clever, and may help us.”

Emilia was accordingly introduced to the Mice, but she was not very
tolerant of them. Essay societies, she said, were out of date, and she
thought the Rockquay young ladies a very country-town set.

“You don’t know them, Emmie,” said Anna. “Gillian and Dolores are very
remarkable girls, only--”

“Only they are kept down by their mothers, I suppose. Is that the
reason they don’t do anything but potter after essay societies and
Sunday-schools like our little girls at Vale Leston? Why, I asked
Gillian, as you call her, what they were doing about the Penitents’
Home, and she said her mother and Aunt Jane went to look after it, but
never talked about it.”

“You know they are all very young.”

“Young indeed! How is one ever to be of any use if mothers and people
are always fussing about one’s being young?”

“One won’t always be so--”

“They would think so, like the woman of a hundred years old, who said
on her daughter’s death at eighty, ‘Ah, poor girl, I knew I never should
rear her!’ How shall I get to see the Infirmary here?”

“Miss Mohun would take you.”

“Can’t I go without a fidgety old maid after me?”

“I’ll tell you what I wish you would do, Emmie. Write an account of one
of your hospital visits, or of the match-girls, for the Mouse-trap. Do!
You know Gerald has written something for it.”

“He! Why he has too much sense to write for your voluntary schools. Or
it would be too clever and incisive for you. Ah! I see it was so by your
face! What did he send you? Have you got it still?”

“We have really a parody of his which is going in--The Girton Girl.
Now, Emmie, won’t you? You have told me such funny things about your
match-girls.”

“I do not mean to let them be turned into ridicule by your prim,
decorous swells. Why, I unfortunately told Fernan Brown one story--about
their mocking old Miss Bruce with putting on imitation spectacles--and
it has served him for a cheval de bataille ever since! Oh, my dear Anna,
he gets more hateful than ever. I wish you would come back and divert
his attention.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t you think we could change? You could go and let Marilda fuss with
you, now that Uncle Clem and Aunt Cherry are so well, and I could look
after Adrian, and go to the Infirmary, and the penitents, and all that
these people neglect; maybe I would write for the Mouse-trap, if Gerald
does when he comes home.”

Anna did not like the proposal, but she pitied Emilia, and cared for her
enough to carry the scheme to her aunt. But Geraldine shook her head.
The one thing she did not wish was to have Emmie riding, walking,
singing, and expanding into philanthropy with Gerald, and besides, she
knew that Emilia would never have patience to read to her uncle, or help
Adrian in his preparation.

“Do you really wish this, my dear?” she asked.

“N--no, not at all; but Emmie does. Could you not try her?”

“Annie dear, if you wish to have a fortnight or more in town--”

“Oh no, no, auntie, indeed!”

“We could get on now without you. Or we would keep Emmie till the room
is wanted; but I had far rather be alone than have the responsibility of
Emmie.”

“No, no, indeed; I don’t think Adrian would be good long with her. I had
much rather stay--only Emmie did wish, and she hates the--”

“Oh, my dear, you need not tell me; I only know that I cannot have her
after next week; the room will be wanted for Gerald.”

“She could sleep with me.”

“No, Annie, I must disappoint you. There is not room for her, and her
flights when Gerald comes would never do for your uncle. You know it
yourself.”

Anna could not but own the wisdom of the decision, and Emmie, after
grumbling at Aunt Cherry, took herself off. She had visited the
Infirmary and the Convalescent Home, and even persuaded Mrs. Hablot to
show her the Union Workhouse, but she never sent her contribution to the
Mouse-trap.




CHAPTER IX. -- OUT BEYOND



     Do the work that’s nearest,
     Though it’s dull at whiles,
     Helping, when we meet them,
     Lame dogs over stiles.
     See in every hedgerow
     Marks of angels’ feet;
     Epics in each pebble
     Underneath our feet.--C. KINGSLEY.


“Drawing? Well done, Cherie! That’s a jolly little beggar; quite
masterly, as old Renville would say,” exclaimed Gerald Underwood,
looking at a charming water-colour of a little fisher-boy, which Mrs.
Grinstead was just completing.

“‘The Faithful Henchman,’ it ought to be called,” said Anna. “That
little being has attached himself to Fergus Merrifield, and follows him
and Adrian everywhere on what they are pleased to call their scientific
expeditions.”

“The science of larks?”

“Oh dear, no. Fergus is wild after fossils, and has made Adrian the
same, and he really knows an immense deal. They are always after fossils
and stones when they are out of school.”

“The precious darling!”

“Miss Mohun says Fergus is quite to be trusted not to take him into
dangerous places.”

“An unlooked-for blessing. Ha!” as he turned over his aunt’s portfolio,
“that’s a stunner! You should work it up for the Academy.”

“This kind of thing is better for the purpose,” Mrs. Grinstead said.

“Throw away such work upon a twopenny halfpenny bazaar! Heaven
forefend!”

“Don’t be tiresome, Gerald,” entreated Anna. “You are going to do all
sorts of things for it, and we shall have no end of fun.”

“For the sake of stopping the course of the current,” returned
Gerald, proceeding to demonstrate in true nineteenth-century style the
hopelessness of subjecting education to what he was pleased to call
clericalism. “You’ll never reach the masses while you insist on using an
Apostle spoon.”

“Masses are made up of atoms,” replied his aunt.

“And we shall be lost if you don’t help,” added Anna.

“I would help readily enough if it were free dinners, or anything to
equalize the existence of the classes, instead of feeding the artificial
wants of the one at the expense of the toil and wretchedness of the
other.”

He proceeded to mention some of the miseries that he had learnt through
the Oxford House--dilating on them with much enthusiasm--till presently
his uncle came in, and ere long a parlour-maid announced luncheon, just
as there was a rush into the house. Adrian was caught by his sister,
and submitted, without more than a “Bother!” to be made respectable, and
only communicating in spasmodic gasps facts about Merrifield and hockey.

“Where’s Marshall?” asked Gerald at the first opportunity, on the maid
leaving the room.

“Marshall could not stand it,” said his aunt. “He can’t exist without
London, and doing the honours of a studio.”

“Left you!”

“Most politely he informed me that this place does not agree with his
health; and there did not seem sufficient scope for his services since
the Reverend Underwood had become so much more independent. So we were
thankful to dispose of him to Lord de Vigny.”

“He was a great plague,” interpolated Adrian, “always jawing about the
hall-door.”

“Are you really without a man-servant?” demanded Gerald.

“In the house. Lomax comes up from the stables to take some of the work.
Some lemonade, Gerald?”

Gerald gazed round in search of unutterable requirements; but only
met imploring eyes from aunt and sister, and restraining ones from his
uncle. He subsided and submitted to the lemonade, while Anna diverted
attention by recurring rather nervously to the former subject.

“And I have got rid of Porter, she kept me in far too good order.”

“As if Sibby did not,” said Clement.

“Aye, and you too! But that comes naturally, and began in babyhood!”

“What have you done with the house at Brompton?”

“Martha is taking care of it--Mrs. Lightfoot, don’t you know? One of our
old interminable little Lightfoots, who went to be a printer in London,
married, and lost his wife; then in our break-up actually married Martha
to take care of his children! Now he is dead, and I am thankful to have
her in the house.”

“To frighten loafers with her awful squint.”

“You forgive the rejection of ‘The Inspector’s Tour’? Indeed I think you
expected it.”

“I wanted to see whether the young ladies would find it out.”

“No compliment to our genius,” said his aunt.

“I assure you, like Mrs. Bennet, ‘there is plenty of that sort of
thing,’” said Anna. “Some of them were mystified, but Gillian and
Dolores Mohun were in ecstasies.”

“Ecstasies from that cheerful name?”

“She is the New Zealand niece--Mr. Maurice Mohun’s daughter. They
carried it home to their seniors, and of course the verdict was ‘too
strong for Rockquay atmosphere,’” said his aunt.

“So it did not even go to Uncle Lance,” said Anna. “Shall you try the
‘Pursuivant’?”

“On the contrary, I shall put in the pepper and salt I regretted, and
try the ‘Censor’.”

“Indeed?” observed his uncle, in a tone of surprise.

“Oh,” said Gerald coolly, “I have sent little things to the ‘Censor’
before, which they seem to regard in the light of pickles and laver.”

The ‘Censor’ was an able paper on the side of philosophical politics,
and success in that quarter was a feather in the young man’s cap, though
not quite the kind of feather his elders might have desired.

“Journalism is a kind of native air to us,” said Mrs. Grinstead, “but
from ‘Pur.’”

“‘Pur’ is the element of your dear old world, Cherie,” said Gerald, “and
here am I come to do your bidding in its precincts, for a whole long
vacation.”

He spoke lightly, and with a pretty little graceful bow to his aunt, but
there was something in his eyes and smile that conveyed to her a dread
that he meant that he only resigned himself for the time and looked
beyond.

“Uncle Lance is coming,” volunteered Adrian.

“Yes,” said Geraldine. “Chorister that he was, and champion of
Church teaching that he is, he makes the cause of Christian education
everywhere his own, and is coming down to see what he can do
inexpensively with native talent for concert, or masque, or
something--‘Robin Hood’ perhaps.”

“Ending in character with a rush on the audience?” said Gerald.
“Otherwise ‘Robin Hood’ is stale.”

“Tennyson has spoilt that for public use,” said Mrs. Grinstead. “But was
not something else in hand?”

“Only rehearsed. It never came off,” said Gerald.

“The most awful rot,” said Adrian. “I would have nothing to do with it.”

“In consequence it was a failure,” laughed Gerald.

“It was ‘The Tempest’, wasn’t it?” said Anna.

“Not really!” exclaimed Mrs. Grinstead.

“About as like as a wren to an eagle,” said Gerald.

“We had it at the festival last winter. The authors adapted the plot,
that was all.”

“The authors being--

“The present company,” said Gerald, “and Uncle Bill, with Uncle Lance
supplying or adapting music, for we were not original, I assure you.”

“It was when Uncle Clem was ill,” put in Anna, “and somehow I don’t
think we took in the accounts of it.”

“No,” said Gerald, “and nobody did it con amore, though we could not put
it off. I should like to see it better done.”

“Such rot!” exclaimed Adrian. “There’s an old man, he was Uncle Lance
with the great white beard made out of Kit’s white bear’s skin, and he
lived in a desert island, where there was a shipwreck--very jolly if you
could see it, only you can’t--and the savages--no, the wreckers all came
down.”

“What, in a desert island?”

“It was not exactly desert. Gerald, I say, do let there be savages. It
would be such a lark to have them all black, and then I’d act.”

“What an inducement!”

“Then somebody turned out to be somebody’s enemy, and the old chap
frightened them all with squibs and crackers and fog-horns, till
somebody turned out to be somebody else’s son, and married the
daughter.”

“If you trace ‘The Tempest’ through that version you are clever,” said
Gerald.

“I told you it was awful rot,” said Adrian.

“There’s Merrifield! Excuse me, Cherie.” And off he went.

“The sentiments of the actors somewhat resembled Adrian’s. It was too
new, and needed more learning and more pains, so they beg to revert to
‘Robin Hood’. However, I should like to see it well got up for once,
if only by amateurs. Miranda has a capital song by Uncle Bill, made for
Francie’s soprano. She cuts you all out, Anna.”

“That she does, in looks and voice, but she could not act here in
public. However, we will lay it before the Mouse-trap. Was it printed?”

“Lance had enough for the performers struck off. Francie could send some
up.”

“After all,” said Cherie, “the desert island full of savages and
wreckers is not more remarkable than the ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes’
getting between Argiers and Sicily.”

“It _really was_ one of the Outer Hebrides,” said Gerald, with the
eagerness that belonged to authorship, “so that there could be any
amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has
been set adrift with his daughter--Francie Vanderkist to wit--and
floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies.
Little Fely was a most dainty sprite.”

“I am glad you did not make Ariel an electric telegraph,” said his aunt.

“Tempting, but such profanity in the face of Vale Leston was forbidden,
and so was the comic element, as bad for the teetotallers.”

“But who were the wreckers?” asked Anna.

“Buccaneers, my dear, singing songs out of the ‘Pirate’--schoolmaster,
organist, and choir generally. They had captured Prospero’s supplanter
(he was a Highland chief in league with the Whigs) by the leg, while the
exiled fellow was Jacobite, so as to have the songs dear to the feminine
mind. They get wrecked on the island, and are terrified by the elves
into releasing Alonso, etc. Meantime Ferdinand carries logs, forgathers
with Miranda and Prospero--and ends--” He flourished his hands.

“And it wasn’t acted!”

“No, we were getting it up before Christmas,” said Gerald, “and then--”

He looked towards Clement, whose illness had then been at the crisis.

“Very inconsiderate of me,” said Clement, smiling, “as the old woman
said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale.
But could it not come off at the festival?”

“Now,” said Gerald, “that the boy is gone, I may be allowed a glass of
beer. Is that absurdity to last on here?”

“Adrian’s mother would not let him come on any other terms,” said Mrs.
Grinstead.

“Did she also stipulate that he was never to see a horse? Quite as fatal
to his father.”

“You need not point the unreason, but consider how she has suffered.”

“You go the way to make him indulge on the sly.”

“True, perhaps,” said Clement, “but I mean to take the matter up when I
know the poor little fellow better.”

Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna
proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.

“Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had ‘Midsummer
Night’s Dream’?”

“Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard’s wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield?
Clever man. Always photographing.”

So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and
came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them
to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries
for the sale of work. ‘The Tempest’ was propounded, and received with
acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing,
and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!

Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could
talk so eagerly about “a trumpery raree-show,” especially for an object
that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride
of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard
their report--

“Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him.
Socialist one minute, old Tory the next.”

“A dreamer?” asked Dolores.

“If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his
life, and never do any good!”

“Perhaps he is waiting.”

“I don’t believe in waiting,” said Jasper, wiping the dust off his
photographic glasses. “Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does
not know how to use it!”

“Conclusive,” said Gillian.




CHAPTER X. -- NOBLESSE OBLIGE



     The other won’t agree thereto,
       So here they fall to strife;
     With one another they did fight
       About the children’s life.
                             Babes in the Wood.


“I say, Aunt Cherry,” said Adrian, “the fossil forest is to be uncovered
to-morrow, and Merrifield is going to stay for it, and I’m going down
with him.”

“Fossil forest? What, in the Museum?”

“No, indeed. In Anscombe Cove, they call it. There’s a forest buried
there, and bits come up sometimes. To-morrow there’s to be a tremendous
low tide that will leave a lot of it uncovered, and Merrifield and I
mean to dig it out, and if there are some duplicate bits they may be had
for the bazaar.”

“Yes, they have been begging Fergus’s duplicates for a collection of
fossils,” said Anna. “But can it be safe? A low tide means a high tide,
you know.”

“Bosh!” returned Adrian.

“Miss Mohun is sure to know all about the tides, I suppose,” said
Clement; “if her nephew goes with her consent I suppose it is safe.”

“If--” said Mrs. Grinstead.

Adrian looked contemptuous, and muttered something, on which Anna
undertook to see Miss Mohun betimes, and judge how the land, or rather
the sea, lay, and whether Fergus was to be trusted.

It would be a Saturday, a whole holiday, on which he generally went home
for Sunday, and Adrian spent the day with him, but the boys’ present
scheme was, to take their luncheon with them and spend the whole day in
Anscombe Cove. This was on the further side of the bay from the marble
works, shut in by big cliffs, which ran out into long chains of rocks on
either side, but retreated in the midst, where a little stream from the
village of Anscombe, or rather from the moorland beyond, made its way to
the sea.

The almanacks avouched that on this Saturday there would be an unusually
low tide, soon after twelve o’clock, and Fergus had set his heart on
investigating the buried forest that there was no doubt had been choked
by the combined forces of river and sea. So Anna found that notice had
been sent to Clipstone of his intention of devoting himself to the cove
and not coming home till the evening, and that his uncle and aunt did
not think there was any danger, especially as his constant henchman,
Davie Blake, was going with him, and all the fisher-boys of the place
were endowed with a certain instinct for their own tides. The only
accident Jane Mohun had ever known was with a stranger.

Anna had no choice but to subside, and the boys started as soon as the
morning’s tide would have gone down sufficiently, carrying baskets for
their treasures containing their luncheon, and apparently expecting
to find the forest growing upright under the mud, like a wood full of
bushes.

The cove for which they were bound was on the further side of the chain
of rocks, nearly two miles from Rockquay, and one of the roads ran along
the top of the red cliffs that shut it in, with no opening except where
the stream emerged, and even that a very scanty bank of shingle.

In spite of all assurances, Anna could not be easy about her darling,
and when afternoon came, and the horses were brought to the door, she
coaxed Gerald into riding along the cliffs in the Anscombe direction,
where there was a good road, from whence they could turn down a steep
hill into the village, and thence go up a wild moor beyond, or else
continue along the coast for a considerable distance.

As they went out she could see nothing of the boys, only rocks rising
through an expanse of mud, and the sea breaking beyond. She would have
preferred continuing the cliff road, but Gerald had a turn for the moor,
and carried her off through the village of Anscombe, up and up, till
they had had a lively canter on the moor, and looked far out at sea.
When they turned back and had reached the cliff road, what had been
a sheet of mud before had been almost entirely covered with sparkling
waves, and there was white foam beating against some of the rocks.

“I hope Adrian is gone home,” sighed Anna.

“Long ago, depend on it,” returned Gerald carelessly; but the next
moment his tone changed. “By Jove!” he exclaimed, and pointed with his
whip to a rock, or island, at the end of the range of rocks.

He was much the more long-sighted of the two, and she could only first
discern that there was something alive upon the rock.

“Oh!” she cried, “is it the boys--I can’t see?”

“I can’t tell. It is boys, maybe fishers. I must get out to them,” he
replied. “Now, Anna, be quiet--use your senses. It is somebody, anyway.
I saw the opening of a path down the rock just now,” and he threw
himself off his horse, and threw her the bridle. “You ride to the first
house; find where there is a Coast-guard station, or any fisherman to
put out a boat. No time to be lost.”

“Oh, is it, is it--” cried the bewildered girl, with no hand to feel for
her eyeglass. “Where shall I go?”

“I tell you I can’t tell,” he shouted in answer to both questions, half
angrily, already on his way. “Don’t dawdle,” and he disappeared.

Poor Anna, she had no inclination to dawdle, but the two horses were
a sore impediment, and she went on some way without seeing any houses.
Should she turn back to the little road leading down from Anscombe? but
that was rough and difficult, and could not be undertaken quickly with a
led horse; or should she make the best of her way to the nearest villas,
outskirts of Rockquay? However, after a moment the swish of bicycles
was heard, and up came two young men, clerks apparently, let loose by
Saturday. They halted, and in answer to her agitated question where
there was a house, pointed to a path which they said led down to the
Preventive station, and asked whether there had been an accident, and
whether they could be of use. They were more able to decide what was
best to be done than she could be, and they grew more keenly interested
when they understood for whom she feared. Petros White, brother to Mrs.
Henderson, and nephew to Aunt Adeline’s husband, was one of them, the
other, a youth also employed at the marble works. This latter took the
horses off her hands, while Petros showed her the way to the Coast-guard
station by a steep path, leading to a sort of ledge in the side of the
cliff, scooped out partly by nature and partly by art, where stood the
little houses covered with slate.

There the mistress was looking out anxiously with a glass; while below,
the Preventive man was unlocking the boat-house, having already observed
the peril of the boys, but lamenting the absence of his mate. Petros ran
down at speed to offer his help, and Anna could only borrow the glass,
through which she plainly saw the three boys, bare-legged, sitting
huddled up on the top of the rock, but with the waves still a good way
from them, and their faces all turned hopefully towards the promontory
of rock along which she could see Gerald picking his way; but there was
evidently a terrible and fast-diminishing space between its final point
and the rock of refuge.

Anna was about to rush down, and give her help with an oar; but the
woman withheld her, saying that she would only crowd the boat and retard
the rescue, for which the two were quite sufficient, only the danger was
that the current of the stream might make the tide rise rapidly in the
bay. There were besides so many rocks and shoals, that it was impossible
to proceed straight across, but it was needful absolutely to pass the
rock and then turn back on it from the open sea. It was agonizing for
the sister to watch the devious course, and she turned the glass upon
the poor boys, plainly making out Adrian’s scared, restless look, as he
clung to the fisher-lad, and Fergus nursing his bag of specimens with
his knees drawn up. By and by Gerald was wading, and with difficulty
preventing himself from being washed off the rocks. He paused, saw her,
and waved encouragement. Then he plunged along, not off his feet, and
reached the island where the boys were holding out their arms to him.
There ensued a few moments of apparently hot debate, and she saw, to her
horror and amazement, that he was thrusting back one boy, who struggled
and almost fell off the rock in his passion, as Gerald lifted down the
little fisher-boy. Of course she could not hear the words, “Come, boy.
No, Adrian. Noblesse oblige. I will come back, never fear. I can take
but one, don’t I tell you. I will come back.”

Those were Gerald’s words, while Adrian threw himself on the rock,
sobbing and screaming, while Fergus sat still, hugging his bag. Anna
could have screamed with her brother, for the boat seemed to have
overshot the mark, and to be going quite aloof, when all depended upon
a few minutes. She could hardly hear the words of the Preventive woman,
who had found a second glass: “Never you fear, miss, the boat will be up
in time.”

She could not speak. Her heart was in wild rebellion as she thought of
the comparative value of her widowed mother’s only son with that of the
fisher-boy, or even of Fergus, one of so large a family. She could not
or would not look to see what Gerald was doing with the wretched little
coast boy; but she heard her companion say that the gentleman had put
the boy down to scramble among the rocks, and he himself was going back
to the pair on the rock, quite swimming now.

She durst look again, and saw that he had scrambled up to the boys’
perch, and had lifted Adrian up, but there was white spray dashing round
now. She could not see the boat.

“They have to keep to the other side,” explained the woman. “God keep
them! It will be a near shave. The gentleman is taking off his coat!”

Again there was a leap of foam--over! over! Then all was blotted out,
but the woman exclaimed--

“There they are!”

“Oh! where?”

“One swimming! He is floating the other.”

Anna could see no longer. She dashed aside the telescope, then begged
to be told, then looked again. No prayer would come but “Save him! save
him!”

There was a call quite close.

“Mr. Norris, sir, put off your boat! Master Fergus--Oh! is he off?” and,
drenched and breathless, Davy sank down on the ground at their feet,
quite spent, unable at first to get out a word after those panting ones;
but in a minute he spoke in answer to the agonized “Which? Who?”

“Master Fergus is swimming. The young sir couldn’t.”

Anna recollected how her mother’s fears and entreaties had prevented Mr.
Harewood from teaching Adrian to swim.

“Gent is floating him,” added the boy. “He took me first, because I
could get over the rocks and get help soonest. He is a real gentleman,
he is.”

Anna could not listen to anything but “The boat is coming!”

“Oh, but they don’t see! They are going away from it!”

“That’s the current,” said Mrs. Norris. “My man knows what he is about,
and so does the gentleman, never fear.”

There was another terrible interval, and then boat and swimmers began to
approach, though in what condition could not be made out. A dark little
head, no doubt that of Fergus, was lifted in, then another figure was
raised and taken into the boat; Gerald swam with a hand on it for a
short distance, then was helped in, and almost at once took an oar.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Norris. “It will keep out the cold.”

“They are not coming here,” exclaimed Anna. “They are going round the
point.”

“All right,” was the answer. “‘Tis more direct, you see, no shoals,
and the young gentlemen will get to their own homes and beds all the
quicker. Now, miss, you will come in and take a cup of tea, I am sure
you want it, and I had just made it when Norris saw the little lads.”

“Oh, thank you, I must get back at once. My little brother--”

“Yes, yes, miss, but you’ll be able to ride the faster for a bit of
bread and cup of tea! You are all of a tremble.”

It was true, and to pacify her, Mrs. Norris sent a child up to bid
Petros have the horses ready, and Anna was persuaded to swallow a little
too, which happily had cooled enough for her haste, but she hurried off,
leaving Mrs. Norris to expend her hospitality on Davy, who endured
his drenching like a fish, and could hardly wait even to swallow thick
bread-and-butter till he could rush off to hear of his dear Master
Fergus.

The horses were ready. Petros had been joined by other spectators,
and was able to entrust the bicycles to one of them, while he himself
undertook to lead Mr. Underwood’s horse to the stable. Anna rode off at
as much speed or more than was safe downhill among the stones. She had
to cross the broad parade above the quay, and indeed she believed she
had come faster than the boat, which had to skirt round the side of the
promontory between Anscombe Cove and Rockquay. In fact, when she came
above the town she could see a crowd on the quay and pier, all looking
out to sea, and she now beheld two boats making for the harbour.

Then she had to ride between walls and villas, and lost sight of all
till she emerged on the parade, and thought she saw Uncle Clement’s hat
above the crowd as she looked over their heads.

She gave her horse to a bystander, who evidently knew her, for a murmur
went through the crowd of “Little chap’s sister,” and way was made
for her to get forward, while several rough voices said, “All right”;
“Coast-guard boat”; “Not this one.”

Her uncle and Miss Mohun wore standing together. General Mohun could be
seen in the foremost boat, and they could hear him call out, with a wave
of his arm--

“All right! All safe!”

“You hero! Where’s Gerald?” Miss Mohun exclaimed, as Anna came up to
her.

“There!” and she pointed to the Coast-guard boat. “We saw the boys from
Anscombe Cliff, and he went out to them.”

“Gerald,” exclaimed his uncle, with a ring of gladness in his voice,
all the more that it was plain that the rower was indeed Gerald, and
he began to hail those on shore, while Fergus’s head rose up from the
bottom of the boat.

In a few moments they were close to the quay, and the little sodden mass
that purported to be Fergus was calling out--

“Aunt Jane! Oh, I’ve lost such a bit of aralia. Where’s Davy?”

“Here, take care. He is all right,” were Gerald’s words.

_He_ meant Adrian, whom his cousin lifted out, with eyes open and
conscious, but with limp hands and white exhausted looks, to be carried
to the fly that stood in waiting.

“Is the other boy safe?” asked Gerald anxiously.

“Oh yes; but how could you?” were the first words that came to Anna;
but she felt rebuked by a strange look of utter surprise, and instead of
answering her he replied to General Mohun--

“Thanks, no, I’ll walk up!” as a rough coat was thrown over his dripping
and scanty garments.

“The wisest way,” said the General. “Can you, Fergus?”

“Yes, quite well. Oh, my aralia!”

“He has been half crying all the way home about his fossils,” said
Gerald. “Never mind, Fergus; look out for the next spring-tide. Uncle
Clem, you ought to drive up.”

Clement submitted, clearly unable to resist, and sat down by Anna,
who had her brother in her arms, rubbing his hands and warming them,
caressing him, and asking him how he felt, to which the only answer she
got was--

“It was beastly. I have my mouth awfully full of water still.”

Clement made a low murmur of thanksgiving, and Anna, looking up, was
startled to see how white and helpless he was. The way was happily very
short, but he had so nearly fainted that Gerald, hurrying on faster
uphill than the horse to reassure his aunt, lifted him out, not far from
insensible, and carried him with Sibby’s help to his bed in the room on
the ground-floor, where the remedies were close at hand, Geraldine and
nurse anxiously administering them; when the first sign of revival he
gave was pointing to Gerald’s dripping condition, and signing to him to
go and take care of himself.

“All right, yes, boys and all! All right Cherie.”

And he went, swallowing down the glass of stimulant which his aunt
turned from her other patient for a moment to administer, but she was
much too anxious about Clement to have thought for any one else, for
truly it did seem likely that he would be the chief sufferer from the
catastrophe.

Little Davy’s adventure, as he had lost no clothes, made no more
impression on his parents than if he had been an amphibious animal or
a water dog, and when Fergus came out of Beechwood Cottage after having
changed the few clothes he had retained, and had a good meal, to be
driven home with his uncle in the dog-cart, his constant henchman was
found watching for news of him at the gate.

“Please, sir, I think we’ll find your aralia next spring-tide.”

Whereupon General Mohun told him he was a good little chap, and
presented him with a half-crown, the largest sum he had ever possessed
in his life.

Fergus did not come off quite so well, for when the story had been told,
though his mother had trembled and shed tears of thankfulness as she
kissed him, and his sisters sprang at him and devoured him, while all
the time he bemoaned his piece of the stump of an aralia, and a bit of
cone of a pinus, and other treasures to which imaginative regret lent
such an aid, that no doubt he would believe the lost contents of his bag
to have been the most precious articles that he had ever collected; his
father, however, took him into his study.

“Fergus,” he said gravely, “this is the second time your ardour upon
your pursuits has caused danger and inconvenience to other people, this
time to yourself too.”

Fergus hung his head, and faltered something about--“Never saw.”

“No, that is the point. Now I say nothing about your pursuits. I am very
glad you should have them, and be an intelligent lad; but they must not
be taken up exclusively, so as to drive out all heed to anything else.
Remember, there is a great difference between courage and foolhardiness,
and that you are especially warned to be careful if your venturesomeness
endangers other people’s lives.”

So Fergus went off under a sense of his father’s displeasure, while
Adrian lay in his bed, kicking about, admired and petted by his sister,
who thought every one very unkind and indifferent to him; and when
he went to sleep, began a letter to her eldest sister describing the
adventure and his heroism in naming terms, such as on second thoughts
she suppressed, as likely to frighten her mother, and lead to his
immediate recall.




CHAPTER XI. -- HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP



     Nothing of him that doth fade,
     But doth suffer a sea-change
     Into something rich and strange.--Tempest.


Sunday morning found Anna in a different frame of mind from that of the
evening before. Uncle Clement had been very ill all night, and the
house was to be kept as quiet as possible. When Anna came in from
early Celebration, Aunt Cherry came out looking like a ghost, and very
anxious, and gave a sigh of relief on Adrian being reported still
sound asleep. Gerald presently came down, pale and languid, but calling
himself all right, and loitering over his breakfast till after the boy
appeared, so rosy and ravenous as to cause no apprehension, except that
he should devour too much apricot jam, and use his new boots too noisily
on the stairs.

Anna devised walking him to Beechcroft to hear if there were any news
of Fergus, and though he observed, with a certain sound of contemptuous
rivalship, that there was no need, for “Merrifield was as right as a
trivet,” he was glad enough to get out of doors a little sooner, and
though he affected to be bored by the kind inquiries of the people they
met, he carried his head all the higher for them.

Nobody was at home except General Mohun, but he verified Adrian’s
impression of his nephew’s soundness, whatever the mysterious comparison
might mean; and asked rather solicitously not only after Mr. Underwood
but after Gerald, who, he said, was a delicate subject to have made such
exertions.

“It really was very gallant and very sensible behaviour,” he said, as
he took his hat to walk to St. Andrew’s with the brother and sister,
but Anna was conscious of a little pouting in Adrian’s expression, and
displeasure in his stumping steps.

Gerald came to church, but went to sleep in the sermon, and had
altogether such a worn-out look that no one could help remembering that
he had never been very strong, and had gone through much exertion the
day before, nor could he eat much of the mid-day meal. Mrs. Grinstead,
who was more at ease about her brother, looked anxiously at him, and
with a kind of smile the word “Apres” passed between them. The Sunday
custom was for Clement to take Adrian to say his Catechism, and have a
little instruction before going out walking, but as this could not be on
this day, Anna and he were to go out for a longer walk than usual, so
as to remove disturbance from the household. Gerald declined, of course,
and was left extended on the sofa; but just as Anna and Adrian had made
a few steps along the street, and the boy had prevailed not to walk to
Clipstone, as she wished, but to go to the cliffs, that she might hear
the adventure related in sight of the scene of action, he discovered
that he had left a glove. He was very particular about Sunday walking
in gloves in any public place, and rushed back to find it, leaving his
sister waiting. Presently he came tearing back and laughing.

“Did you find it?”

“Oh yes; it was in the drawing-room. And what else do you think I found?
Why, Cherie administering”--and he pointed down his throat, and made a
gulp with a wild grimace of triumph. “On the sly! Ha! ha!”

Anna felt as if the ground had opened under her feet, but she answered
gravely--

“Poor Gerald went through a great deal yesterday, and is quite knocked
up, so no wonder he needs some strengthening medicine.”

“Strengthening grandmother! Don’t you think I know better than that?” he
cried, with a caper and a grin.

“Of course you had to have some cordial when you were taken out of the
water.”

“And don’t you know what it was?”

“I know the fisher-people carry stuff about with them in case of
accidents.”

“That’s the way with girls--just to think one knows nothing at all.”

“What do you know, Adrian?”

“Know? Why, I haven’t been about with Kit and Ted Harewood for nothing!
Jolly good larks it is to see how all of you take for granted that a
fellow never knew the taste of anything but tea and milk-and-water.”

“But what do you know the taste of?” she asked, with an earnestness
that provoked the boy to tease and put on a boasting manner, so that she
could not tell how much he was pretending for the sake of amazing and
tormenting her, in which he certainly succeeded.

However, his attention was diverted by coming round the corner to where
there was a view of Anscombe Bay, when he immediately began to fight his
battles o’er again, and show where they had been groping in the mud and
seaweed in pursuit of sea-urchins, and stranded star-fish, and crabs.

“And it wasn’t a forest after all, it was just a sell--nothing but mud
and weed, only Fergus would go and poke in it, and there were horrid
great rough stones and rocks too, and I tumbled over one.”

Anna here became conscious that the whole place was the resort of the
afternoon promenaders of Rockquay, great and small, of all ranks and
degrees, belonging to the “middle class” or below it, and that they
might themselves become the object of attention; and she begged
her brother to turn back and wait till they could have the place to
themselves.

“These are a disgusting lot of cads,” he agreed, “but there won’t be
such a jolly tide another time. I declare I see the very rock where I
saw the sea-mouse--out there! red and shiny at the top.”

Here a well-dressed man, who had just come up the Coast-guard path, put
aside his pipe, and taking off his hat, deferentially asked--

“Have I the honour of addressing Sir Adrian Vanderkist?”

Adrian replied with a gracious nod and gesture towards his straw hat,
and in another moment Anna found him answering questions, and giving his
own account of the adventure to the inquirer, who, she had little
doubt, was a reporter, and carrying his head, if possible, higher in
consequence as he told how Fergus Merrifield had lingered over his
stones, and all the rest after his own version. She did not hear the
whole, having had to answer the inquiries of one of the bicycle friends
of the previous day, but when her attention was free she heard--

“And the young lady, Sir Adrian?”

“Young lady! Thank goodness, we were not bothered with any of that
sort.”

“Indeed, Sir Adrian, I understood that there was a young lady, Miss
Aurelia, that Master Merrifield was lamenting, as if she had met with a
watery grave.”

“Ha! ha! Aralia was only the name of a bit of fossil kind of a stick
that Merrifield had us down there to find in the fossil forest. I’m sure
I saw no forest, only bits of mud and stuff! But he found a bit, sure
enough, and was ready to break his heart when he had to leave his bag
behind him on the rock. Aralia a young lady! That’s a good one.”

He forgathered with a school-fellow on the way home, and Anna heard
little more.

The next day, however, there arrived the daily local paper, addressed
to Sir Adrian Vanderkist, Bart., and it was opened by him at
breakfast-time.

“I say! Look here! ‘Dangerous Accident in Anscombe. A Youthful Baronet
in peril!’ What asses people are!” he added, with an odd access of the
gratified shame of seeing himself for the first time in print. But he
did not proceed to read aloud; there evidently was something he did
not like, and he was very near pocketing it and rushing off headlong to
school with it, if his aunt and Anna had not entreated or commanded for
it, when he threw it over with an uncomplimentary epithet.

“Just what I was afraid of when I saw the man talking to him!” exclaimed
Anna. “Oh, listen!

“‘The young Sir Adrian Vanderkist, at present residing at St. Andrew’s
Rock with his aunt, Mrs. Grinstead, and the Rev. E. C. Underwood, and
who is a pupil at Mrs. Edgar’s academy for young gentlemen, was, we are
informed, involved in the most imminent danger, together with a son
of General Sir Jasper Merrifield, K.G.C., a young gentleman whose
remarkable scientific talent and taste appear to have occasioned the
peril of the youthful party, from whence they were rescued by Gerald F.
Underwood, Esq., of Vale Leston.’”

“What’s all that?” said Gerald F. Underwood, Esquire, sauntering in and
kissing his aunt. “Good-morning. How is Uncle Clement this morning?”

“Much better; I think he will be up by and by,” answered Mrs. Grinstead.

“What bosh have you got there? The reporters seized on their prey, eh?”

“There’s Sir Jasper!” exclaimed Anna, who could see through the blinds
from where she sat.

Sir Jasper had driven over with his little son, and, after leaving him
at school, had come to inquire for Mr. Underwood, and to obtain a fuller
account of the accident, having already picked up a paper and glanced at
it.

“I am afraid my little scamp led them into the danger,” he said.
“Scientific taste forsooth! Science is as good a reason as anything else
for getting into scrapes.”

“Really,” said Gerald, “I can’t say I think your boy came out the worst
in it, though I must own the Rockquay Advertiser bestows most of the
honours of the affair on the youthful baronet! You say he blew his own
trumpet,” added Gerald, turning to Anna.

“The reporter came and beset us,” said Anna, in a displeased voice. “I
did not hear all that passed, but of course Adrian told him what he told
me, only those people make things sound ridiculous.”

“To begin with,” said Gerald, “I don’t think Fergus, or at any rate
Davy Blake, was in fault. They tried to go home in good time, having
an instinct for tides, but Adrian was chasing a sea-mouse or some such
game, and could not be brought back, and then he fell over a slippery
rock, and had to be dragged out of a hole, and by that time the channel
of the Anscombe stream was too deep, at least for him, who has been only
too carefully guarded from being amphibious.”

“Oh! that did not transpire at home,” said Sir Jasper. “Boys are so
reserved.”

Mrs. Grinstead and Anna looked rather surprised. Anna even ventured--

“I thought Fergus got too absorbed.”

“So did I,” said his father dryly. “And he did not justify himself.”

“M--m--m,” went on Gerald, skimming the article.

“Read it,” cried Anna. “You know none of us have seen it.”

Gerald continued--

“‘Their perilous position having been observed from Anscombe cliffs, Mr.
G. F. Underwood of Vale Leston heroically’ (i.e. humbugically) ‘made
his way out to their assistance, while a boat was put off by the
Coast-guard, and that of Mr. Carter, fisherman, from Rockquay was
launched somewhat later.’ We could not see either of them, you know. My
eye, this is coming it strong! ‘The young baronet generously insisted
that the little fisher-boy, David Blake, who had accompanied them,
should first be placed in safety--’”

“Didn’t he?” exclaimed Anna. “I saw, and I wondered, but I thought it
was his doing.”

“You saw?”

“Yes, in the Coast-guard’s telescope.”

“Oh! That is a new feature in the case!”

“Then he did not insist?” said Mrs. Grinstead.

“It was with the wrong side of his mouth.”

“But why did you send the fisher-boy first, when after all his life was
less important?” exclaimed Anna, breaking forth at last.

“First, for the reason that I strove to impress on ‘the youthful
baronet,’ Noblesse oblige. Secondly, that Davy knew how to make his way
along the rocks, and also knew where to find the Preventive station. I
could leave him to get on, as I could not have done with the precious
Adrian, and that gave a much better chance for us all. It was swimming
work by the time I got back, and by that time I thought the best
alternative for any of us was to keep hold as long as we could, and then
keep afloat as best we might till we were picked up. Your boy was the
hero of it all. Adrian was so angry with me for my disrespect that I
could hardly have got him to listen to me if Fergus had not made him
understand, that to let himself be passive and be floated by me till the
boats came up was the only thing to be done. There was one howl when he
had to let go his beloved aralia, but he showed his soldier blood, and
behaved most manfully.”

“I am most thankful to hear it,” said his father, “and especially
thankful to you.”

“Oh! there was not much real danger,” said Gerald lightly, “to any one
who could swim.”

“But Adrian could not,” said Anna. “Oh! Gerald, what do we not owe to
you?”

“I must be off,” said Sir Jasper; “I must see about a new jacket for my
boy. By the bye, do you know how the little Davy fared in the matter of
clothes?”

“Better than any of us,” said Gerald. “He was far too sharp to go
mud-larking in anything that would be damaged, and had his boots safe
laid up in a corner. I wish mine were equally safe.”

Sir Jasper’s purchases were not confined to boots and jacket, but as
compensation for his hard words included a certain cabinet full of
drawers that had long been Fergus’s cynosure.

Anna and her aunt were much concerned at what was said of Adrian, and
still more at the boastful account that he seemed to have given; but
then something, as Mrs. Grinstead observed, must be allowed for the
reporter’s satisfaction in having interviewed a live baronet. Each of
the parties concerned had one hero, and if the Merrifields’ was Fergus,
to their own great surprise and satisfaction, Aunt Cherry was very happy
over her own especial boy, Gerald, and certainly it was an easier task
than to accept “the youthful baronet” at his own valuation or that of
the reporter.

Mrs. Grinstead considered whether to try to make him less conceited
about it, and show him his want of truth. She consulted his uncle about
it, showing the newspaper, and telling, and causing Gerald to tell, the
history of the accident, which Clement had not been fit to hear all the
day before.

He was still in bed, but quite ready to attend to anything, and he
laughed over the account, which she illustrated by the discoveries she
had made from the united witnesses.

“And is it not delightful to see for once what Gerald really is?” she
said.

“Yes, he seems to have behaved gallantly,” said his uncle; “and I won’t
say just what might have been expected.”

“One does expect something of an Underwood,” she said.

“Little Merrifield too, who saw the danger coming, deserves more honour
than he seems to have taken to himself.”

“Yes, he accepted severity from that stern father of his, who seems very
sorry for it now. It is curious how those boys’ blood comes out in the
matter--chasser de race.”

“You must allow something for breeding. Fergus had not been the idol of
a mother and sisters, and Gerald remembered his father in danger.”

“Oh, I can never be glad enough that he has that remembrance of him! How
like him he grows! That unconscious imitation is so curious.”

“Yes, the other day, when I had been dozing, I caught myself calling out
that he was whistling ‘Johnny Cope’ so loud that he would be heard in
the shop.”

“He seems to be settling down more happily here than I expected. I
sometimes wonder if there is any attraction at Clipstone.”

“No harm if there were, except--”

“Except what? Early marriage might be the very best thing.”

“Perhaps, though sometimes I doubt whether it is well for a man to have
gone through the chief hopes and crises of life so soon. He looks out
for fresh excitement.”

“There are so many stages in life,” said Geraldine, sighing. “And with
all his likenesses, Gerald is quite different from any of you.”

“So I suppose each generation feels with those who succeed it. Nor do
I feel as if I understood the Universities to-day as I did Cambridge
thought of old. We can do nothing but wait and pray, and put out a hand
where we see cause.”

“Where we see! It is the not seeing that is so trying. The being sure
that there is more going on within than is allowed to meet one’s eye,
and that one is only patronized as an old grandmother--quite out of it.”

“I think the conditions of life and thought are less simple than in our
day.”

“And to come to the present. What is to be done about Adrian--the one
who was not a hero, though he made himself out so?”

“Probably he really thought so. He is a mere child, you know, and it was
his first adventure, before he has outgrown the days of cowardice.”

“He need not have told stories.”

“Depend upon it, he hardly knew that he did so.”

“He had the reporter to help him certainly, and the ‘Rockquay
Advertiser’ may not keep to the stern veracity and simplicity of the
‘Pursuivant’.”

“And was proud to interview a live baronet.”

“Then what shall we do--Anna and I, I mean?”

“Write the simple facts to Vale Leston, and then let it alone.”

“To him?”

“Certainly. He would think your speaking mere nagging. Preserve an
ominous silence if he speaks. His school-fellows will be his best cure.”

“Well, he did seem ashamed!”

Clement was right. The boy’s only mention of the paragraph was once as
“that beastly thing”; and Anna discovered from Valetta Merrifield, that
whatever satisfaction he might have derived from it had been effectually
driven out of him by the “fellows” at Mrs. Edgar’s, who had beset him
with all their force of derision, called him nothing but the “youthful
Bart.,” and made him ashamed as none of the opposite sex or of maturer
years could ever have succeeded in doing. Valetta said Fergus had tried
to stop it, but there had certainly been one effect, namely, that Adrian
was less disposed to be “Merry’s” shadow than heretofore, and seemed
inclined instead to take up with the other seniors.

One thing, however, was certain. Gerald enjoyed a good deal more
consideration among the Clipstone damsels than before. True, as Jasper
said, it was only what any one would have done; but he had done it, and
proved himself by no means inferior to “any one,” and Fergus regarded
him as a true hero, which had a considerable effect on his sisters, the
more perhaps because Jasper derided their admiration.

They were doubly bent on securing him for a contributor to the
Mouse-trap. They almost thought of inviting him to their Browning
afternoons, but decided that he would not appreciate the feminine
company, though he did so often have a number of the ‘Censor’ to discuss
it with Dolores, whenever they met him.




CHAPTER XII. -- THE LITTLE BUTTERFLY



   The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
   history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral.
   --Hamlet.


The Matrons, otherwise denominated lady patronesses, met in committee,
Miss Mohun being of course the soul and spirit of all, though Mrs.
Ellesmere, as the wife of the rector of old Rockstone Church, was the
president, Lady Flight, one of the most interested, was there, also
Lady Merrifield, dragged in to secure that there was nothing decided on
contrary to old-world instincts, Mrs. Grinstead, in right of the musical
element that her brother promised, the beautiful Mrs. Henderson, to
represent the marble works, Mrs. Simmonds of the Cliff Hotel, the
Mayoress, and other notables.

The time was fixed for the first week in August, the only one when
engagements would permit the Rotherwood family to be present for the
opening, and when the regatta was apt to fill Rockquay with visitors.
The place was to be the top of the cliffs of Rockstone, where the
gardens of the Cliff Hotel, of Beechcroft Cottage, Rocca Marina, and
Carrara, belonging respectively to Miss Mohun, Mr. White, and Captain
Henderson, lay close together separated by low walls, and each with a
private door opening on a path along the top of the cliffs. They
could easily be made to communicate together, by planks laid over the
boundaries, and they had lawns adapted for tents, etc., and Rocca
Marina rejoiced in a shrubbery and conservatories that were a show
in themselves, and would be kindly lent by Mr. and Mrs. White, though
health compelled them to be absent and to resort to Gastein. The hotel
likewise had a large well-kept garden, where what Mrs. Simmonds called
a pavilion, “quite mediaeval,” was in course of erection, and could be
thrown open on the great day.

It was rather “tea-gardenish,” but it could be made available for the
representation of The Outlaw’s Isle. Lancelot made a hurried visit
to study the place, and review the forces, and decided that it was
practicable. There could be a gallery at one end for the spectators,
and the outer end toward the bay could be transformed into a stage, with
room for the orchestra, and if the weather were favourable the real sea
could be shown in the background. The scenes had been painted by the
clever fingers at Vale Leston. It remained to cast the parts. Lancelot
himself would be Prospero, otherwise Alaster Maclan, and likewise
conductor, bringing with him the school-master of Vale Leston, who could
supply his part as conductor when he was on the stage. His little
boy Felix would be Ariel, the other elves could be selected from the
school-children, and the local Choral Society would supply the wreckers
and the wrecked. But the demur was over Briggs, a retired purser, who
had always had a monopoly of sea-songs, and who looked on the boatswain
as his right, and was likely to roar every one down. Ferdinand would
be Gerald, under the name of Angus, but the difficulty was his
Miranda--Mona as she was called. The Vanderkists could not be asked to
perform in public, nor would Sir Jasper Merrifield have consented to
his daughters doing so, even if they could have sung, and it had been
privately agreed that none of the other young ladies of Rockquay could
be brought forward, especially as there was no other grown-up female
character.

“My wife might undertake it,” said Lancelot, “but her voice is not her
strong point, and she would be rather substantial for a Miranda.”

“It would be rather like finding a mother instead of a wife--with all
respect to my Aunt Daisy,” laughed Gerald.

“By the bye, I’m sure I once heard a voice, somewhere down by the sea,
that would be perfect,” exclaimed Lance. “Sweet and powerful, fresh and
young, just what is essential. I heard it when I was in quest of crabs
with my boy.”

“I know!” exclaimed Gerald, “the Little Butterfly, as they call her!”

“At a cigar-shop,” said Lance.

“Mrs. Schnetterling’s. Not very respectable,” put in Lady Flight.

“Decidedly attractive to the little boys, though,” said Gerald. “Sweets,
fishing-tackle, foreign stamps, cigars. I went in once to see whether
Adrian was up to mischief there, and the Mother Butterfly looked at me
as if I had seven heads; but I just got a glimpse of the girl, and, as
my uncle says, she would make an ideal Mona, or Miranda.”

“Lydia Schnetterling,” exclaimed Mr. Flight. “She is a very pretty girl
with a nice voice. You remember her, Miss Mohun, at our concerts? A
lovely fairy.”

“I remember her well. I thought she was foreign, and a Roman Catholic.”

“So her mother professes--a Hungarian. The school officer sent her to
school, and she did very well there, Sunday-school and all, and was a
monitor. She was even confirmed. Her name is really Ludmilla, and Lida
is the correct contraction. But when I wanted her to be apprenticed as
a pupil-teacher, the mother suddenly objected that she is a Roman
Catholic, but I very much doubt the woman’s having any religion at all.
I wrote to the priest about her, but I believe he could make nothing
of her. Still, Lydia is a very nice girl--comes to church, and has not
given up the Choral Society.”

“She is a remarkably nice good girl,” added Mrs. Henderson. “She came
to me, and entreated that I would speak for her to be taken on at the
marble works.”

“You have her there?”

“Yes; but I am much afraid that her talents do not lie in the way of
high promotion, and I think if she does not get wages enough to satisfy
her mother, she is in dread of being made to sing at public-houses and
music-halls.”

“That nice refined girl!”

“Yes; I am sure the idea is dreadful to her.”

“Could you not put her in the way of getting trained?” asked Gerald of
his uncle.

“I must hear her first.”

“I will bring her up to the Choral Society tonight,” said Mr. Flight.

“What did you call her?” said Geraldine.

“Some German or foreign name, Schnetterling, and the school calls her
Lydia.”

At that moment the council was invaded, as it sat in Miss Mohun’s
drawing-room, upon rugs and wicker chairs, to be refreshed with tea. In
burst a whole army of Merrifields, headed by little Primrose, now a tall
girl of twelve years old, more the pet of the family than any of her
elders had been allowed to be. Her cry was--

“Oh, mamma, mamma, here’s the very one for the captain of the
buccaneers!”

The startling announcement was followed by the appearance of a tall,
stalwart, handsome young man of a certain naval aspect, whom Lady
Merrifield introduced as Captain Armytage.

“We must congratulate him, Gillian,” she said. “I see you are gazetted
as commander.”

Primrose, who had something of the licence of the youngest, observed--

“We have been telling him all about it. He used to be Oliver Cromwell in
‘How Do You Like It?’ and now he will be a buccaneer!”

“Oliver Cromwell, you silly child!” burst out Gillian, with a little
shake, while the rest fell into fits of laughing.

“I fear it was a less distinguished part,” said Captain Armytage.

“May I understand that you will help us?” said Lancelot. “I heard of you
at Devereux Castle.”

“I don’t think you heard much of my capabilities, especially musical
ones. I was the stick of the party,” said Captain Armytage.

It was explained that Captain Armytage had actually arrived that
afternoon at the Cliff Hotel, and had walked over to call at Clipstone,
whence he found the young ladies setting out to walk to Rockstone.
He could not deny that he had acted and sung, though, as he said,
his performance in both cases was vile. Little Miss Primrose had most
comically taken upon her to patronize him, and to offer him as buccaneer
captain had been a freak of her own, hardly to be accounted for, except
that Purser Briggs’s unsuitableness had been discussed in her presence.

“Primrose is getting to be a horrid little forward thing,” observed
Gillian to her aunt.

“A child of the present,” said Miss Mohun. “Infant England! But her
suggestion seems to be highly opportune.”

“I don’t believe he can sing,” growled Gillian, “and it will be just an
excuse for his hanging about here.”

There was something in Gillian’s “savagery” which gave Aunt Jane a
curious impression, but she kept it to herself.

Late in the evening Lance appeared in his sister’s drawing-room with--

“I have more hopes of it. I did not think it was feasible when Anna
wrote to me, but I see my way better now. That parson, Flight, has a
good notion of drilling, and that recruit of the little Merrifield girl,
Captain Armytage, is worth having.”

“If he roared like a sucking dove we would have him, only to silence
that awful boatswain,” said Gerald; “and as to the little Cigaretta, she
is a born prima donna.”

“Your Miranda? Are you content with her?” said his aunt.

“She is to the manner born. Lovely voice, acts like a dragon, and has an
instinct how to stand and how to hold her hands.”

“Coming in drolly with her prim dress and bearing. Though she was
dreadfully frightened,” said Lance. “Being half-foreign accounts for
something, I suppose, but it is odd how she reminds me of some one.
No doubt it is of some singer at a concert. What did they say was her
name?”

“Ludmilla Schnetterling, the Little Butterfly they call her. Foreign
on both sides apparently,” said Gerald. “Those dainty ankles never were
bred on English clods.”

“I wonder what her mother is,” said Mrs. Grinstead.

“By the bye, I think it must have been her mother that I saw that
morning when little Felix dragged me to a cigar-shop in quest of an
ornamental crab--a handsome, slatternly hag sort of woman, who might
have been on the stage,” said Lance.

“Sells fishing-tackle, twine, all sorts,” came from Adrian.

“Have you been there?” asked his sister, rather disturbed.

“Of course! All the fellows go! It is the jolliest place for”--he paused
a moment--“candies and ginger-beer.”

“I should have thought there were nicer places!” sighed Anna.

“You have yet to learn that there is a period of life when it is a joy
to slip out of as much civilization as possible,” said Lance, putting
his sentence in involved form so as to be the less understood by the
boys.

“Did you say that Flight had got hold of them?” asked Clement.

“Hardly. They are R.C.’s, it seems; and as to the Mother Butterfly,
I should think there was not much to get hold of in her; but Mrs.
Henderson takes interest in her marble-workers, and the girl is the sort
of refined, impressible creature that one longs to save, if possible.
To-morrow I am going to put you all through your parts, Master Gerald,
so don’t you be out of the way.”

“One submits to one’s fate,” said Gerald, “hoping that virtue may be its
own reward, as it is in the matter of ‘The Inspector’s Tour’, which
the ‘Censor’ accepts, really enthusiastically for a paper, though the
Mouse-trap would have found it--what shall I say?--a weasel in their
snare.”

“Does it indeed?” cried Anna, delighted. “I saw there was a letter by
this last post.”

“Aye--invites more from the same pen,” he replied lazily.

“Too much of weasel for the ‘Pursuivant’ even?” said Geraldine.

“Yes,” said Lance; “these young things are apt to tear our old traps and
flags to pieces. By the bye, who is this Captain Armytage, who happily
will limit Purser Briggs to ‘We split, we split, we split,’ or something
analogous?”

“I believe,” said Gerald, “that he joined the Wills-of-the-Wisp, that
company which was got up by Sir Lewis Willingham, and played at Devereux
Castle a year or two ago. Some one told me they were wonderfully
effective for amateurs.”

“That explains the acquaintance with Lady Merrifield,” said Mrs.
Grinstead.

“Oh, yes,” said Anna. “Mysie told me all about it; and how Mr. David
Merrifield married the nicest of them all, and how much they liked this
Captain Armytage.”

“Was not Mysie there when he arrived?”

“No, she was gone to see the Henderson children, but Gillian looked a
whole sheaf of daggers at him. You know what black brows Gillian has,
and she drew them down like thunder,” and Anna imitated as well as her
fair open brows would permit, “turning as red as fire all the time.”

“That certainly means something,” said Geraldine, laughing.

“I should like to see Gillian in love,” laughed Anna; “and I really
think she is afraid of it, she looked so fierce.”

The next evening there was time for a grand review in the parish
school-room of all possible performers on the spot. In the midst,
however, a sudden fancy flashed across Lancelot that there was something
curiously similar between those two young people who occupied the
stage, or what was meant to be such. Their gestures corresponded to one
another, their voices had the same ring, and their eyes wore almost of
the same dark colour. Now Gerald’s eyes had always been the only part of
him that was not Underwood, and had never quite accorded with his fair
complexion.

“Hungarian, I suppose,” said Lance to himself, but he was not quite
satisfied.

What struck him as strange was that though dreadfully shy and frightened
when off the stage, as soon as she appeared upon it, though not yet in
costume, she seemed to lose all consciousness that she was not Mona.

Perhaps Mrs. Henderson could have told him. Her husband being manager
and partner at Mr. White’s marble works, she had always taken great
interest in the young women employed, had actually attended to their
instruction, assisted in judging of their designs, and used these
business relations to bring them into inner contact with her, so that
her influence had become very valuable. She was at the little room which
she still kept at the office, when there was a knock at the door, and
“Miss Schnetterling” begged to speak to her. She felt particularly
tender towards the girl, who was evidently doing her best in a trying
and dangerous position, and after the first words it came out--

“Oh, Mrs. Henderson, do you think I must be Mona?”

“Have you any real objection, Lydia? Mr. Flight and all of them seem to
wish it.”

“Yes, and I can’t bear not to oblige Mr. Flight, who has been so good,
so good!” cried Lydia, with a foreign gesture, clasping her hands.
“Indeed, perhaps my mother would not let me off. That is what frightens
me. But if you or some real lady could put me aside they could not
object.”

“I do not understand you, my dear. You would meet with no unpleasantness
from any one concerned, and you can be with the fairy children. Are you
shy? You were not so in the fairy scenes last winter--you acted very
nicely.”

“Oh yes, I liked it then. It carries me away; but--oh! I am afraid!”

“Please tell me, my dear.”

Lydia lowered her voice.

“I must tell you, Mrs. Henderson, mother was a singer in public once,
and a dancer; and oh! they were so cruel to her, beat her, and starved
her, and ill-used her. She used to tell me about it when I was very
little, but now I have grown older, and the people like my voice, she
is quite changed. She wants me to go and sing at the Herring-and-a-Half,
but I won’t, I won’t--among all the tipsy men. That was why she would
not let me be a pupil-teacher, and why she will not see a priest. And
now--now I am sure she has a plan in her head. If I do well at this
operetta, and people like me, I am sure she will get the man at the
circus to take me, by force perhaps, and then it would be all her life
over again, and I know that was terrible.”

Poor Ludmilla burst into tears.

“Nay, if she suffered so much she would not wish to expose you to the
same.”

“I don’t know. She is in trouble about the shop--the cigars. Oh! I
should not have told! You won’t--you won’t--Mrs. Henderson?”

“No, you need not fear, I have nothing to do with that.”

“I don’t think,” Lydia whispered again, “that she cares for me as she
used to do when I was a little thing. Now that I care for my duty, and
all that you and Mr. Flight have taught me, she is angry, and laughs
at English notions. I was in hopes when I came to work here that my
earnings would have satisfied her, but they don’t, and I don’t seem to
get on.”

Mrs. Henderson could not say that her success was great, but she
ventured as much as to tell her that Captain Henderson could prevent any
attempt to send her away without her consent.

“Oh! but if my mother went too you could not hinder it.”

“Are you sixteen, my dear? Then you could not be taken against your
will.”

“Not till December. And oh! that gentleman, the conductor, he knew all
about it, I could see, and by and by I saw him lingering about the shop,
as if he wanted to watch me.”

“Mr. Lancelot Underwood! Oh, my dear, you need not be afraid of him,
he is a brother of Mrs. Grinstead’s, a connection of Miss Mohun’s; and
though he is such a musician, it is quite as an amateur. But, Lydia, I
do think that if you sing your best, he may very likely be able to put
you in a way to make your talent available so as to satisfy your mother,
without leading to anything so undesirable and dangerous as a circus.”

“Then you think I ought--”

“It is a dangerous thing to give advice, but really, my dear, I do think
more good is likely to come of this than harm.”




CHAPTER XIII. -- TWO SIDES OF A SHIELD AGAIN



     The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale.
                               Midsummer Night’s Dream.


The earlier proofs of the Mouse-trap were brought by Lance, who had
spent more time in getting them into shape than his wife approved, and
they were hailed with rapture by the young ladies on seeing themselves
for the first time in print. As to Gerald, he had so long been bred--as
it were--to journalism that, young as he was, he had caught the trick,
and ‘The Inspector’s Tour’ had not only been welcomed by the ‘Censor’,
but portions had been copied into other papers, and there was a proposal
of publishing it in a separate brochure. It would have made the fortune
of the Mouse-trap, if it had not been so contrary to its principles, and
it had really been sent to them in mischief, together with The ‘Girton
Girl’, of which some were proud, though when she saw it in print, with a
lyre and wreath on the page, sober Mysie looked grave.

“Do you think it profane to parody Jane Taylor?” said Gerald.

“No, but I thought it might hurt some people’s feelings, and discourage
them, if we laugh at the High School.”

“Why, Dolores goes to give lectures there,” exclaimed Valetta.

“Nobody is discouraged by a little good-humoured banter,” said Gillian.
“Nobody with any stuff in them.”

“There must be some training in chaff though,” said Gerald, “or they
don’t know how to take it.”

“And in point of fact,” said Dolores, “the upper tradesmen’s daughters
come off with greater honours in the High School than do the young
gentlewomen.”

“Very wholesome for the young Philistines,” said Gerald. “The daughters
of self-made men may well surpass in energy those settled on their
lees.”

Gerald and Dolores were standing with their backs to the wall of
Anscombe Church, which Jasper Merrifield and Mysie were zealously
photographing, the others helping--or hindering.

“I thought upper tradesfolk were the essence of Philistines,” returned
Dolores.

“The elder generation--especially if he is the son of the energetic man.
The younger are more open to ideas.”

“The stolid Conservative is the one who has grown up while his father
was making his fortune, the third generation used to be the gentleman,
now he is the man who is tired of it.”

“Tired of it, aye!” with a sigh.

“Why you are a man with a pedigree!” she returned.

“Pedigrees don’t hinder--what shall I call it?--the sense of being
fettered.”

“One lives in fetters,” she exclaimed. “And the better one likes one’s
home, the harder it is to shake them off.”

He turned and looked full at her, then exclaimed, “Exactly,” and paused,
adding, “I wonder what you want. Has it a form?”

“Oh yes, I mean to give lectures. I should like to see the world, and
study physical science in every place, then tell the next about it. I
read all I can, and I think I shall get consent to give some elementary
lectures at the High School, though Uncle Jasper does not half like it,
but I must get some more training to do the thing rightly. I thought of
University College. Could you get me any information about it?”

“Easily; but you’ll have to conquer the horror of the elders.”

“I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of things
there.”

“You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge.”

“I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies,
he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lily
really protested against.”

“You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fate
was so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, but
one bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all manner
of cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that old
mediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their having
been kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all their
hearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be an
ancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovely
sort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to be
bound down to.”

“Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are such
places.”

“Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle,
who had toiled in a bookseller’s shop all his youth and reigned like a
little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there
he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of
Church and State, and I should be a free man.”

“Won’t they let you go about, and see everything?”

“Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools;
if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there
would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument
of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw
than I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one gets
back to the same place again.”

“Men have so many openings.”

“I’m not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be
worse for their hearts,” he said, with a sigh.

“There’s journalism, a great power.”

“Yes, but to put my name to all I could--and long to say--would be an
equal horror to the dear folks.”

“Yet you are helping on this concern.”

“True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really want
to hear ‘The Outlaws Isle’ performed, and all under protest that the
windmill will soon be swept away by the stream.”

“Indeed, yes,” cried Dolores. “They hope to regulate the stream. They
might as well hope to regulate Mississippi.”

“Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, but
irresistible.”

“Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud.”

“Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals,” said
Gerald sadly.

“Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful,” said Dolores, “but
one can’t live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt
Jane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, but
wrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface. Now, if I went
in for good works I would go to the bottom--down to the slums.”

“Slums are one’s chief interest,” said Gerald; “but no doubt it will
soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish--”

“What?”

“That there could be a revolution before I am of age.”

“What’s that?” cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. “A revolution?”

“Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,”
 said Gerald lightly.

“Oh! you don’t really mean it.”

“Not that sort,” said Dolores. “Only the coming of the coquecigrues.”

“They are in ‘The Water Babies’,” said Primrose, mystified.

Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of
fellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the ‘Censor’
and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where it
lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and
though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only
worthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not
but communicate it to her sister, though adding--

“I don’t believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the
boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other,
unless they work round in some queer fashion.”

However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was
anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was
becoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years the
senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited
one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one
another. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from
having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking
cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of
responsibility.

“Your nephew’s production has made a stir,” said she, when they found
themselves alone together.

“Yes, poor boy.” Then answering the tone rather than the words, “I
suppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next.
There is a good deal of change in the outlook.”

“Yes,” said Lady Merrifield. “The young ones, especially the youngest,
seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow.”

“Exactly,” said Geraldine eagerly.

“You feel the same? To begin with, the laws of young
ladyhood--maidenliness--are a good deal relaxed--”

“There I am not much of a judge. I never had any young ladyhood, but I
own that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, and
more surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily.”

“What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now.”

“Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it. I should
say, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble with
me. Anna’s passion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up the
season on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious to
have her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes,
she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing.”

“You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?”

“Partly. Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in,
rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrained
for the young people than what would come in your daughters’ way.”

“Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses had
to protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people.
That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficult
to know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the real
principle of modesty. Though to me the question is made easy, for
Sir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcely
of hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from the
dancing-classes since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinks
it hard.”

“Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston. They are part of the
same spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medical
schools.”

“Or colleges, or lecturing. Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see no
harm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, if
her father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has not
occurred to any of my own girls.”

“Sir Jasper would not like it?”

“Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it for
Dolores. She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have very
different ideals from what we had.”

“Please tell me. I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it.”

“Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools.”

“Are not they Miss Mohun’s ideal still?”

“Oh yes, infinitely developed, and so they are my cousin
Florence’s--Lady Florence Devereux; but the young ones think them
behind the times. I remember when every girl believed her children the
prettiest and cleverest in nature, showed off her Sunday-school as her
pride and treasure, and composed small pink books about them, where the
catastrophe was either being killed by accident, or going to live in the
clergyman’s nursery. Now, those that teach do so simply as a duty and
not a romance.”

“And the difficulty is to find those who will teach,” said Geraldine.
“One thing is, that the children really require better teaching.”

“That is quite true. My girls show me their preparation work, and I see
much that I should not have thought of teaching the Beechcroft children.
But all the excitement of the matter has gone off.”

“I know. The Vale Leston girls do it as their needful work, not with
their hearts and enthusiasm. I expect an enthusiasm cannot be expected
to last above a generation and perhaps a half.”

“Very likely. A more indifferent thing; you will laugh, but my
enthusiasm was for chivalry, Christian chivalry, half symbolic. History
was delightful to me for the search for true knights. I had lists of
them, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody with
my affection. Either history is only a lesson, or they know a great
deal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and the
Black Prince not much better.”

“And are you allowed the ‘Idylls of the King’?”

“Under protest, now that the Mouse-trap has adopted Browning for weekly
reading and discussion. Tennyson is almost put on the same shelf with
Scott, whom I love better than ever. Is it progress?”

“Well, I suppose it is, in a way.”

“But is it the right way?”

“That’s what I want to see.”

“Now listen. When our young men, my brothers--especially my very dear
brother Claude and his contemporaries, Rotherwood is the only one
left--were at Oxford, they got raised into a higher atmosphere, and came
home with beautiful plans and hopes for the Church, and drew us up
with them; but now the University seems just an ordeal for faith to go
through.”

“I should think there was less of outward temptation, but more of subtle
trial. And then the whole system has altered since the times you are
speaking of, when the old rules prevailed, and the great giants of
Church renewal were there!” said Geraldine.

“You belong to the generation whom they trained, and who are now passing
away. My father was one who grew up then.”

“We live on their spirit still.”

“I hope so. I never knew much about Cambridge till Clement went there,
but it had the same influence on him. Indeed, all our home had that one
thought ever since I can remember. Clement and Lance grew up in it.”

“But you will forgive me. These younger men either go very, very much
further than we older ones dreamt of, or they have flaws in their
faith, and sometimes--which is the strangest difficulty--the vehement
observance and ritual with flaws beneath in their faith perhaps, or
their loyalty--Socialist fancies.”

“There is impatience,” said Geraldine. “The Church progress has not
conquered all the guilt and misery in the world.”

“Who said it would?”

“None of us; but these younger ones fancy it is the Church’s fault,
instead of that of her members’ failures, and so they try to walk in the
light of the sparks that they have kindled.”

“Altruism as they call it--love of the neighbour without love of God.”

“It may lead that way.”

“Does it?”

“Perhaps we are the impatient ones now,” said Geraldine, “in disliking
the young ones’ experiments, and wanting to bind them to our own views.”

“Then you look on with toleration but with distrust.”

“Distrust of myself as well as of the young ones, and trying not to
forget that ‘one good custom may corrupt the world,’ so it may be as
well that the pendulum should swing.”

“The pendulum, but not its axis--faith!”

“No; and of my boy’s mainspring of faith I _do_ feel sure, and of his
real upright steadiness.”

Lady Merrifield asked no more, but could wait.

But is not each generation a terra incognita to the last? A question
which those feel most decidedly who stand on the border-land of both,
with love and sympathy divided between the old and the new, clinging to
the one, and fearing to alienate the other.




CHAPTER XIV. -- BUTTERFLY’S NECTAR



     If you heed my warning
     It will save you much.--A. A. PROCTOR.


Clement Underwood was so much better as to be arrived at taking solitary
rides and walks, these suiting him better than having companions, as he
liked to go his own pace, and preferred silence. His sister had become
much engrossed with her painting, and saw likewise that in this matter
of exercise it was better to let him go his own way, and he declared
that this time of thought and reading was an immense help to him,
restoring that balance of life which he seemed to himself to have lost
in the whirl of duties at St. Matthew’s after Felix’s death.

The shore, with the fresh, monotonous plash of the waves, when the tide
served, was his favourite resort. He could stand still and look out
over the expanse of ripples, or wander on, as he pleased, watching the
sea-gulls float along--


          “As though life’s only call and care
             Were graceful motion.”


There had been a somewhat noisy luncheon, for Edward Harewood, a
midshipman in the Channel Fleet, which was hovering in the offing, had
come over on a day’s leave with Horner, a messmate whose parents lived
in the town. He was a big lad, a year older than Gerald, and as soon as
a little awe of Uncle Clement and Aunt Cherry had worn off, he showed
himself of the original Harewood type, directing himself chiefly to what
he meant to be teasing Gerald about Vale Leston and Penbeacon.

“All the grouse there were on the bit of moor are snapped up.”

“Very likely,” said Gerald coolly.

“Those precious surveyors and engineers that Walsh brings down can give
an account of them! As soon as you come of age, you’ll have to double
your staff of keepers, I can tell you.”

“Guardians of ferae naturae,” said Gerald.

“I thought your father did all that was required in that line,” said
Clement.

“Not since duffers and land-lubbers have been marauding over
Penbeacon--aye, and elsewhere. What would you say to an engineer
poaching away one of the august house of Vanderkist?”

“The awful cad! I’d soon show him what I thought of his cheek,” cried
Adrian, with a flourish of his knife.

“Ha, ha! I bet that he will be shooting over Ironbeam Park long before
you are of age.”

“I shall shoot him, then,” cried Adrian.

“Not improbably there will be nothing else to shoot by that time,”
 quietly said Gerald.

“I shall have a keeper in every lodge, and bring up four or five hundred
pheasants every year,” boasted the little baronet, quite alive to the
pride of possession, though he had never seen Ironbeam in his life.

Edward laughed a “Don’t you wish you may get it,” and the others, who
knew very well the futility of the poor boy’s expectations, even
if Gerald’s augury were not fulfilled, hastened to turn away the
conversation to plans for the afternoon. Anna asked the visitor if he
would ride out with her and Gerald to Clipstone or to the moor, and was
relieved when he declined, saying he had promised to meet Horner.

“You will come in to tea at five?” said his aunt, “and bring him if you
like.”

“Thanks awfully, but we hardly can. We have to start from the quay at
six sharp.”

All had gone their several ways, and Clement, after the heat of the day,
was pacing towards a secluded cove out of an inner bay which lay nearer
than Anscombe Cove, but was not much frequented. However, he smelt
tobacco, and heard sounds of boyish glee, and presently saw Adrian and
Fergus Merrifield, bare-legged, digging in the mud.

“Ha! youngsters! Do you know the tide has turned? I thought you had had
enough of that.”

“I thought I might find my aralia!” sighed Fergus. “The tide was almost
as low.”

Just then there resounded from behind a projecting rock a peal of
undesirable singing, a shout of laughter, and an oath, with--

“Holloa, those little beasts of teetotallers have hooked it.”

There were confused cries--“Haul ‘em back! Drench ‘em. Give ‘em a roll
in the mud!” and Adrian shrank behind his uncle, taking hold of his
coat, as there burst from behind the rock a party of boys, headed by the
two cadets, all shouting loudly, till brought to a sudden standstill by
the sight of “Parson! By Jove!” as the Horner mid muttered, taking
out his pipe, while Edward Harewood mumbled something about “Horner’s
brother’s tuck-out.” One or two other boys were picking up the remains
of the feast, which had been on lobsters, jam tarts, clotted cream,
and the like delicacies dear to the juvenile mind. The two biggest
school-boys came forward, one voluble and thick of speech about Horner’s
tuck-out, and “I assure you, sir, it is nothing--not a taste. Never
thought of such--” Just then the other lad, staggering about, had almost
lurched over into the deepening channel; but Clement caught him by the
collar and held him fast, demanding in a low voice, very terrible to his
hearers--

“Where does this poor boy live?”

It was Adrian who answered.

“Devereux Buildings.”

“You two, Adrian and Fergus, run to the quay and fetch a cab as near
this place as it can come,” said Clement. “You little fellows, you had
better run home at once. I hope you will take warning by the shame and
disgrace of this spectacle.”

The boys were glad enough to disperse, being terrified by the condition
of the prisoner, as well as by the detection; but the two who were
encumbered with the baskets containing the bottles, jam-pots, and tin
of cream remained, and so did the two young sailors, Horner saying
civilly--

“You’ll not be hard on the kids, sir, for just a spree carried a little
too far.”

“I certainly shall not be hard on the children, whom you seem to have
tempted,” was the answer as they moved along; and as the younger Horner
turned towards a little shop near the end of the steps to restore the
goods, he asked--“Were you supplied from hence?”

“Yes,” said Horner, who was perhaps hardly sober enough for caution.
“Mother Butterfly is a jolly old soul.”

Looking up. Clement saw no licence to sell spirituous liquors under the
name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard
‘Ici on parle Francais’, and was adorned in a tasteful manner with
ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of
foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman
with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long
gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her
property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had
a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles bore the labels of
raspberry vinegar and lemonade, but he had seen too much not to say--

“You drive a dangerous trade.”

“Ah, sir, young people will be gourmands,” she said, with a foreign
accent. “Ah, that poor young gentleman is very ill. Will he not come in
and lie down to recover?”

“No, thank you,” said Clement. “A carriage is coming to take him home.”

Something about the fat in the fire was passing between the cadets, and
the younger of them began to repeat that he had come for his brother’s
birthday, and that he feared they had brought the youngsters into a
scrape by carrying the joke too far.

“I have nothing to say to you, sir,” said the Vicar of St. Matthew’s,
looking very majestic, “except that it is time you were returning to
your ship. As to you,” turning to Edward Harewood, “I can only say that
if you are aware of the peculiar circumstances of Adrian Vanderkist,
your conduct can only be called fiendish.”

Fergus and Adrian came running up with tidings that the cab was waiting.
Edward Harewood stood sullen, but the other lad said--

“Unlucky. We are sorry to have got the little fellows into trouble.”

He held out his hand, and Clement did not refuse it, as he did that of
his own nephew. Still, there was a certain satisfaction at his heart as
he beheld the clear, honest young faces of the other two boys, and he
bade Adrian run home and wait for him, saying to Fergus--


“You seem to have been a good friend to my little nephew. Thank you.”

Fergus coloured up, speechless between pleasure at the warm tone of
commendation and the obligations of school-boy honour, nor, with young
Campbell on their hands, was there space for questions. That youth
subsided into a heavy doze in the cab, and so continued till the arrival
at No. 7, Devereux Buildings, where a capable-looking maid-servant
opened the door, and he was deposited into her hands, the Vicar leaving
his card with his present address, but feeling equal to nothing more,
and hardly able to speak.

He drove home, finding his nephew in the doorway. Signing to the maid to
pay the driver, and to the boy to follow him, he reached his study, and
sank into his easy-chair, Adrian opening frightened eyes and saying--

“I’ll call Sibby.”

“No--that bottle--drop to there,” signing to the mark on the glass with
his nail.

After a pause, while he held fast the boy, so to speak, with his eyes,
he said--

“Thank you, dear lad.”

“Uncle Clement,” said Adrian then, “we weren’t doing anything.
Merrifield thought his old bit of auralia, or whatever he calls it, was
there.”

“I saw--I saw, my boy. To find you--as you were, made me most thankful.
You must have resisted. Tell me, were you of this party, or did you come
on them by accident?”

“Horner asked me,” said Adrian, twisting from one leg to another.

Clement saw the crisis was come which he had long expected, and rejoiced
at the form it had taken, though he knew he should suffer from pursuing
the subject.

“Adrian,” he said, “I am much pleased with you. I don’t want to get you
into a row, but I should be much obliged if you would tell me how all
this happened.”

“It wouldn’t,” returned Adrian, “but for that Ted and the other chap.”

“Do you mean that there would have been none of this--drinking--but for
them? Don’t be afraid to tell me all. Was the stuff all got from that
Mrs. Schnetter--?”

“Mother Butterfly’s? Oh yes. She keeps bottles of grog with those
labels, and it is such a lark for her to be even with the gangers that
our fellows generally get some after cricket, or for a tuck-out.”

“Not Fergus Merrifield?”

“Oh no; he’s captain, you know, but he is two years younger than
Campbell and Horner, and they can’t bear him, and when he made a jaw
about it--he can jaw awfully, you know--and he is stuck up, and Horner
major swore he would make him know his bearings--”

“I wonder he was there at all.”

“Well, Horner asked him, and he can’t get those fossils that were lost
out of his head, and he thought they might be washed up. He said too, he
knew they would be up to something if he wasn’t there.”

“Oh!” said Clement, with an odd recollection, “but I suppose he did not
know about these cadets?”

“No, the big Horner sent up to Mother Butterfly’s for some more stuff,
not so mild, and then Ted set upon me, and said it was all because of me
that Vale Leston had to live like a boiling of teetotal frogs and toads,
just to please the little baronet’s lady mamma, but I was a Dutchman
all the same, and should sell them yet--I sucked it in so well, and they
talked of seeing how much I could stand. Some

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5251