CHESTS AND HEARTS.
'Waketh a vision, and a voice within her
Sweeter than dreams and dearer than complaint--
Is it a man thou lovest, and a sinner?
No; but a soul, O woman! and a saint.'
_Frederick W.H. Myers._
One snowy November night Lancelot caught cold, and aggravated the
ailment during his organist's duties on Sunday so much, that though
he resigned himself to Mrs. Froggatt's attentions on Monday, she soon
found herself obliged to supplement them by Mr. Rugg's; and her letter
on the Wednesday caused Felix to bring Angela to nurse him through a
sharp attack of pleurisy, complicated with bronchitis.
All went well, and by the week before Christmas he was fit to be taken
home, uniting in persuading Mrs. Froggatt that her care was necessary
to him _en route_, chiefly because he and his brother could not bear
to leave her to her widowed Christmas. She came, but nothing would
induce her to stay beyond Christmas Day; nor would she even wait till
Felix returned with the New Year to Bexley, to busy himself with the
accounts, about which Lance was concerning himself too much for his
good, writing such characteristic notes that when, half way through
January, Felix came home, he was disappointed to find so little
progress made towards recovery. The great musical brow, big blue eyes,
straight nose, and brown hairiness, seemed to have lost the cheeks
from among them: there was a weary yearning look in the eyes, and the
whole demeanour was languid and dejected. Lance just crept into the
painting-room at noon, and spent the afternoon by the drawing-room
fire, talking a little at times, or amused by Wilmet's baby; but her
boys were too much for him; and though he liked Stella's music, he was
fretted by Angela's careless notes, and had not energy to play for
himself. His voice indeed was scarcely serviceable even for speaking,
and its absence always made him unhappy. A reader only in the way of
business, books and newspapers were distasteful; and though he could
not be ill-humoured, he was evidently a heavy burden to himself; sad
and listless; he neither ate nor slept, and yet the actual symptoms
were not unfavourable.
'He does not get on,' said Felix, as he and Clement stood consulting in
the library.
'He sleeps so badly, and has two hours or so of bad cough in the early
morning, and that seems to exhaust him for the day.'
'So you wrote, and I told Rugg, who said that would wear off gradually;
but I cannot see that he is mending.'
'Nor does he think so,' said Clement.
'Rugg declares that there is no reason he should not entirely get over
this, and he never gives any encouragement he can help. I shall not
rest till May has seen him.'
'I should have sent if you had not been coming.'
'So he is low about himself, dear fellow! Have you had it out with him?'
'Nay, he seemed to me quite willing it should be so. If he is not, I
don't know who should be! He never seems to have been from under the
shadow of his cathedral. I believe he rather puzzled Miss Isabella the
other day!'
'You don't mean that she has been at him?
'Yes, she affected an entrance when no one was on guard but poor little
Stella, who was dreadfully upset, and told Cherry all about it. It
seems the good lady is shocked at our all deceiving him.'
'And took it on herself to warn him?'
'And to inquire if he were a Christian, and into the foundation of his
hope--all which he seems to have received as a kindness. Stella says
he answered that he was quite aware of his condition, but he did not
think there was much need to grieve himself or others over it. Indeed,
she--Miss Isabella--told me herself that he is a heavenly-minded young
man.'
'Yes, they met in the inmost heart of things, without battling on the
outworks. When I look back at that boy's life, I do not feel as if I
deserved him; I ought not to have let him sacrifice himself to that
life at Bexley.'
'It was his own doing, poor fellow! and he sees his mistake.'
'None of us could realize at the time the force of contrast,' said
Felix; 'indeed, I should have thought him the last person to have been
affected by it.'
'I did not mean that only. I meant the higher service,' said Clement,
making Felix suspect that his consolations had been so applied as to
deepen the depression, and resolve the more to write to Dr. May.
So two days later, with a certain passiveness, as though the
physician's visits were a matter of course, Lance, who had just
finished his tardy toilette, obeyed the summons into the library, and
submitted to the examination, which ended in an assurance that there
was no tendency to pulmonary disease, and that care and patience would
soon subdue the remains of his illness.
'Thank you, Sir,' in a perplexed half-incredulous tone, as he leant
back, not troubling himself to ask a question as to the treatment.
Dr. May waited a little, then looked steadily into his face. 'Now,
Lance, we doctors ask startling questions. You've not fallen in love?'
'Not particularly,' said Lance, without a particle of blush, even if he
had had cheeks to blush with.
'What does that mean? Generally?'
'I never let myself go in for it. It was of no use.'
'Without letting yourself, then?'
'No, indeed!' returned Lance, almost petulantly; 'I never had the
chance. How should I? It would have been something to care about.'
'This fellow does not half believe in me,' muttered the Doctor.
'Lance, do you remember consulting me before, when you thought your
brains were addled by the sun-stroke?'
'They might as well have been, for any good I have done with them.'
'I thought you were one of the lights of Bexley.'
'A nice sort of light, and place too,' muttered he, with scant
courtesy; but the Doctor caught an idea from the dull weary tone.
'It must be a dullish sort of life,' he threw out.
'Can't be helped,' in the same tone, almost conveying that it was
merely his own affair. 'It was my own doing; and I've been like this
before, and come round.'
'Your chest has been as sound as a bell before!' said the Doctor, with
a little wilful misunderstanding.
'My chest,' with a sound of contempt.
'If not your chest, what?'
'My--myself. The Everlasting Everything,' said Lance, with a sort of
impatience, covering his face with his hands, as though--had twenty
years been subtracted from his age--he would have begun to cry.
'My dear boy,' said the Doctor, 'never mind me. Have it out. You don't
like to complain to your brother, and you can't stand the life you are
leading?'
'No use to say _can't_,' said Lance, looking up, with his brow
contracted; 'I must and I will, if I am to get well. I got over it
before, and I shall again, I suppose, when my strength comes back. I
made my bed, and must lie on it.'
'You mean that you chose your present business?' said the Doctor,
trying another leading question.
'Ay. My brothers, as soon as they could, both offered me to go to the
University and take Holy Orders! but, as Clem said, my hurdy-gurdy was
a new toy, and I was as proud as Punch of it, and thought life offered
nothing better; besides, I was always a dolt at classics, and thought
they would split my head.'
'Are you ever reminded of that sun-stroke?'
'Less every year; but summer sunshine still makes me sick and giddy,
and now and then extra work brings on a racking headache.'
'Take my word, your instinct was right. You could not have stood
college work.'
'So I thought; but if I had scraped through, it would all have been
over now.'
'Very likely,' was the dry answer.
'Well, it would have been worth dying for. I did not know what I was
giving up.'
'In position?'
'Partly. I was a mere boy, and did not see the difference as I do now
I have been with Will Harewood at Oxford, or when I come here. I keep
out of it as much as I can, for it's just a mockery to go and mix with
their friends here, and talk to a pretty girl, when I know she would
not touch me with a pair of tongs at home.'
'More shame for her, then. Have you no society at home?
'Oh yes, plenty of nice fellows--professionals, I mean, and a dinner
with the upper-crust now and then,' said Lance, laughing; 'not much in
itself, but making me cock of the walk in our own line--trade, I mean.
Nice girls there are, too--if one had seen nothing else--but then, they
keep out of the way, and the others make themselves such fools. It was
good fun once; but one gets sick of it, as one does of everything else.'
The vein of confidence had been found at last, and a mere demonstration
of sympathy was enough to draw him on. 'I seem to have got to the end
of my tether with everything--Pursuivant and all. Even the organ, I
can do no more with it as it is; and it is no good crying out for more
stops, for nobody cares. I have worked at the science as far as Miles
or my own study can take me with my present means; and as it is, I know
more than there is any power to use in my squirrel's cage, yet I can't
go on into what there is beyond without giving my whole self to that
and nothing else.'
'Is that out of the question?'
'It would bring in no return; and I am not a gentleman at large, nor
am I sure of the right and expedience of it after all, nor whether the
craving is to praise God or please myself. What I have seen behind the
scenes at musical festivals--ay, and before them too--has made me doubt
whether the most perfect music gets put to its full use.'
'Or ever can be here.'
'Ay. Practically, the anthem, chant, and hymn, have the direct
devotional use; and that they may serve it, they must not too much go
beyond the average musical capacity of your congregation.'
'Quite true. You have thought it all out,' said Dr. May. 'I wish more
organists saw it so.'
'That's just what the St. Oswald's people say I don't! Well, you see
what it is. My poor brother Edgar told me how it would be when I would
not be a regular professional.'
'How what would be?'
'Why, that it would all get intolerably slow and flat, and that I
should not be able to bear it. It is true enough, but I got over it
once.'
'And as you say, you will do so again. The life you embraced upon
principle may for a time be distasteful, but the restlessness under it
can only be a trail. If I understand you right, Lance, your motto has
been
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning."'
'Stay, stay, Dr. May. I don't regret that first decision--not at
all--but the other--when they offered me to study for Holy Orders. I
find I was like a soldier, who thought playing in the band was fighting
in the ranks!' And Lance lay back in his chair, and shaded his face
with his thin hand.
'And that has been preying on you all this time?'
'Perhaps. I am for ever coming on facts about crime, misery,
ignorance--here, there, everywhere; and I know that with a little
perseverance and resolution I might have been a priest, doing the only
work worth doing--and behold, all I have done--has been--to gratify my
passion--for music--and call it--dedicating--' He had begun to cough
distressingly, and could not go on.
'If I had not known it was more spirits than lungs, I would not have
let you go on,' said Dr. May, when Lance could hear again. 'Your
present life is irksome, and you think you may have done wrong in not
making an effort for the higher service?' Lance nodded assent. 'But
remember, non-commissioned officers are as much needed as commissioned
ones, and your Pursuivant is no mean weapon. It is really easier to
find clergy than thorough-going lay-men in a position like yours;
and from all I can gather, if you had tried to fight your way to
Ordination, you would only have broken down, and done nothing. So be
content, my boy. You have honestly put the higher duty foremost, and it
will come right somehow.'
'Only--'
'Hush! If the thermometer gets above 50 degrees, take a turn in the
cloister. Fresh air will do sleep and spirits the most good; only
lay up entirely, and blister on any symptom of return of pain. But
go about the house, and get back to family habits as you feel up to
them, not troubling yourself as to what is to come after. I'm wrong!
You are _never_ to ride outside a velocipede in the rain again. That
pleasure is for ever forbidden! Somewhere about the end of the east
winds you may go into questions of the future, though to me it seems
that your post is one of rare value and influence. While--as for
the "not impossible she," for whom it is worth while to go in in
particular--depend upon it, she is waiting for you, and will fall in
your way yet, even if, as Captain M'Intyre felicitously expresses it,
your veins were filled with printers' ink! I should be ashamed to think
it could be otherwise. Now rest. Don't speak.'
'Only one thing. My voice--will it come again?'
'Your voice? Of course. You spoke very well before I let you wear it
out.'
'For speaking--oh yes--but singing?'
'Singing? Your throat was a good deal affected. Your voice--what kind?
High tenor, did you say? Ah! those are very soon damaged; but one can't
tell; don't go trying experiments on it too soon. Happily, it is not a
vital question with you.' And as he saw the lip tremble, and a tear in
the eye, 'Don't fancy I meant to prepare you for its loss; I dare say
you would rather lose a good deal besides.'
'I believe I had.'
'Let it alone then, and guard your throat.' And with a few more
counsels as to the treatment, Dr. May left him, and much consoled
Felix and Cherry by assurances that the lungs were fast recovering,
and that the spirits would probably follow them. And he then proceeded
to give a message that he was to deliver contingently upon his
patient's state--namely, the offer of a visit from Gertrude. His little
granddaughter, Margaret Rivers, was at Dawlish, in so sad a state of
suffering, that he and Ethel were to go and be with the parents; but
Gertrude was not wanted, and would gladly bestow herself upon Geraldine.
'You'll take care of her,' he said, with the solicitude that fathers
never lose for their youngest daughter. 'You have no young lords nor
precipices to put in her way, I trust.'
'Lords, precipices, and thunder-storms, are equally improbable just
now,' said Cherry; 'the tithe-dinner and school-treat are the most
brilliant entertainments in prospect.'
'I shall tell her to mind you like an Ethel the second. By-the-by,
Ethel says she never saw any one so good for the child. She was our
spoilt one--at least, so Ethel says; though I'm an old fool of a
father, and never saw it, and you are said to have put the womanliness
into her.'
'I'm afraid I don't deserve the compliment. "I speks it growed."'
'To tell the truth, so do I,' laughed the Doctor.
Geraldine in her secret soul thought the development in maidenliness
due to something besides age, for she knew what was the great bond
between herself and Gertrude May; and bethinking herself of the entire
extinction of all remaining sentiment for Alice Knevett, she could
not but speculate on the possible results of the coming visit, and
recollect that to shrink from them would have no such excuse as in the
former case.
The announcement was not received with acclamation. Angela did not
like Gertrude May. Both were high-spirited free-spoken unconventional
girls, in whom something of womanly grace was as yet slow in coming;
but Gertrude was more essentially a lady, though louder voiced and less
naturally graceful; nor had she a particle of flirtation, but disliked
young men, and was unpopular from irony and exclusiveness; whereas
Angela was thoroughly the girl of the period in a highly stimulated
state.
'Bother!' she exclaimed. 'She is nearly as bad as Miss May herself.'
'Indeed!' said Felix, in a much offended voice.
'As good then, and that's as bad!'
'Stuck-up, like all the Mays,' put in Bernard.
'They have been very good-natured to you,' said Felix again, in a tone
of reproof.
'Soup tickets,' muttered Bernard.
'Take care, Bear,' said Cherry. 'Small minds repudiate gratitude.'
'Then Bernard's bound to entertain her,' said Lance.
'Catch me,' quoth Bernard.
'Perhaps she may alleviate his pangs for the faithless Countess,'
suggested Angela.
'She!' The unutterable contempt of that monosyllable set all laughing,
and he indignantly reiterated, 'She is stuck-up enough for ten
countesses and duchesses to boot.'
'The monotony of Bear's ideas was always striking,' said Felix.
'He's got but one pole to run up, poor Bruin!' said Angela. 'Now, I
could have found ever so many objections.'
'Only that it would be a queer way to welcome Cherry's guest,' said
Clement, in reprobation.
'As if you liked her yourself, Clem!' exclaimed Angela, 'when
Stoneborough is altogether in the rear, and not one of the whole crew
belongs to the E.C.U.'
'Is it impossible to be courteous to any one out of the E.C.U.?' said
Clement so gravely, that the laughter was renewed; but Cherry had the
uncomfortable certainty that if there had been a show of hands it would
have been on Bernard's side. Clement and the Mays had never harmonized;
and Lance, who was always reluctant to face his sister's young-lady
associates, now had no escape, and was ready to feel everything an
oppression, so that his silence was an act of forbearance.
It was a good sign, that when Clement came in unobserved from Evensong,
he found Lance at the piano, making twilight beautiful with something
wonderfully yearning and mournful, but with a deep underkey of
resolution ever waxing stronger and stronger. Clement leant on the
settee, listening till his eyes grew moist; and when the cough forced
the musician to desist, and come back exhausted to the sofa, he asked,
'Where did that come from?'
'It is a Largo of Beethoven's in C Major. I fell in love with it when
we had C---- at Minsterham.'
'Dr. May has done you good.'
'I don't know. I see he thinks my voice done for.'
'I would sooner have your fingers than your voice, Lance,' said
Clement, appreciating the grief as Dr. May could not, never having
heard those notes.
Lance shook his head. The trouble was too deep and real for speech.
'Sooner or later we shall have our voices in perfection,' said Clement.
'Meantime, who knows how good it may be for you to be parted from that
beautiful thing!'
'My golden idol!' Lance broke out in a sort of laughing coughing sob.
'At least, you have the comfort of knowing you never prostituted it
to any ungodly purpose,' said Clement. 'You always treated it as His
goodly gift.'
Lance made no answer. Perhaps he felt at that moment that his voice
had been the chief thing that made his dull life pleasant to him, and
that to be either dumb or an offence to his own delicate ear was a lot
to which he could hardly resign himself. Clement went to the piano, and
softly sung 'Angels brightly shine forth.'
Angela came into the room with a light as he ended; Lance started up,
and hastened out of the room.
He was rather worse than better for the next day or two, and shuddered
with annoyance when Gertrude May's wheels approached. He would not,
however, vex Cherry by shirking the early dinner, where Gertrude, a
bright mixture of blue merino and swans' down, was making fun of her
precise brother Tom's inclination to escort her on this her first
solitary journey, when she knew it was only 'because of his friend at
Ewmouth, who is equally crazy about microscopes and such unpleasant
things.'
'As microscopes?' said Felix.
'That depends on what you look at. Now Tom is making perquisitions into
the germs of all kinds of diseases and infections, and is never so
happy as when he gets an excuse for driving over to Ewmouth.'
'Is there anything so scientific there?'
'Mr. Elsted, the chemist. He was a fellow-student of Tom's, but he
hasn't nerve enough to practise; so he is a kind of stickit doctor,
though he has science at his fingers' ends--the right place for a
chemist, you'll say--so very sensibly he took to that line.'
'We must make friends with him,' said Felix.
'Do! It would be a great kindness. He is really very much of a
gentle--' where she awkwardly stopped, and caught herself up, colouring
to the ears.
'Which cannot be said of all medical students,' said Felix, greatly
helping her out.
'No! And as Tom could not come himself, he has given me a precious
little box to carry, which the post would squash. Don't be afraid; it
isn't the plague, or the small-pox, or anything--'
'I thought of going to Ewmouth this afternoon if you like the drive,'
said Cherry.
'You don't trust me! You want to be rid of Pandora's box.'
Of course there was more fun about it, resulting in the timid being
only half certified that it contained only some slides of glass; but
Lance took his part in the teasing, nor did he forget--what Cherry
took care to tell him on her return--that Gertrude had shaken hands
cordially with the chemist under the very shadow of his purple jars.
Gertrude's spirits were not much affected by her niece's illness; and
she had been so seldom from home, that this was a new experience, from
which she derived as much freshness as she brought. The Squire was
always her hero, and with him she was always on her best behaviour,
as if trying to redeem her performance on the Kitten's Tail; while he
treated her--like all his sisters' friends--with the gentle playful
courtesy that had first begun with Alice Knevett. A musical evening
seemed to have thoroughly fitted her in among the inhabitants, and in
the forenoon she repaired quite naturally to Cherry's painting-room.
'That's right, I have designs on you.'
'Me, myself me, or in character?'
'In character. I catch every one. One gets so tame and unreal without
fact.'
'But you'll let me write to Ethel. It feels so queer without the old
thing. I'm not sure that my head is on the right way.'
'Pray write. You ought to be doing something.'
Just then a pair of slippered feet came noiselessly to the door, and
with 'Good morning, Miss May,' Lance came in, his sister exclaiming,
'How early! You have not had your sleep after breakfast.'
'No, but I slept a good deal later this morning, which is a better
thing,' he said, advancing to a big arm-chair. Gertrude had hoped for
a snug morning with Cherry; but he looked so wan, pinched, and shadowy
in the morning light, that there was no grudging him the content with
which he sank into his place, nor the anxiety with which Stella was
sent down to hasten his beef-tea.
'Have you made your capture, Cherry?' he asked.
'I was beginning when you came.'
'Then Miss May has not seen your contribution to the "Rights of Woman."'
'I have only escaped from the subject at home. Mrs. Harvey Anderson has
been getting up a meeting for the Ladies' Suffrage, and wanted Ethel to
come to it.'
'O for her likeness!'
'What can you want of it?'
In answer, Cherry produced two cartoons. One was a kind of parody of
Raphael's School of Athens, all the figures female, not caricatures,
but with a vein of satire throughout. The demonstration on the floor
was an endeavour to square the circle; some of the elder ladies were
squabbling, some of the younger furtively peeping at themselves in
pocket-mirrors, or comparing ornaments; some in postures of weariness,
one gazing eagerly as if responding to some signal, another mimicking
her teacher, a third frowning at her rival's success. There was no air
of union or harmony, but something of vanity and vexation of spirit
pervaded all.
The companion was arranged on the same lines, but the portico was
a cloister, and the aisle of a church was dimly indicated through
a door-way. The figures and occupations were the same, but all was
in harmony. The maidens, though mostly in secular garb, wore the
cross; the central figure, in matronly beauty, was portioning out the
household tasks, while in the place of the harsh or sour or tyrannizing
disputatious ladies were women, some in hood and veil, but others
in ordinary dress, all dignified and sweet, while the damsels were
smiling happily over their employments, for the most part the same
as before, but in a different spirit. The demonstration on the floor
was no longer impossible. It was the circle of eternity spanned by
the Cross; the quizzing and teasing had ceased, the loiterers were at
their needlework; the rivals were united; the girl, whose glance down
the grove had been furtive, was now standing in the door-way, openly
watching for the little male figure in the distance. Both were in rough
bold outline, almost scrawled, and here and there dashed with pen or
Indian ink; but Geraldine's masterly hand showed wonderfully in the
grace and expression.
'I don't know whether I shall make anything of it,' she said. 'I
sketched it in a kind of frenzy; and Felix is bent on my going on with
it.'
'It would do for Punch, if for nothing else,' said Lance.
'For shame!' exclaimed Gertrude.
'No, it is a great compliment,' said Cherry; 'but what the Squire wants
is to have them in the Exhibition. Now I mean No. 1 to bring out--'
'The lesson of Tennyson's Princess,' interrupted Gertrude.
'In part, but going further into life. I mean that while woman works
merely for the sake of self-cultivation, the clever grow conceited
and emulous, the practical harsh and rigid, the light or dull, vain,
frivolous, deceitful, by way of escape, and it all gets absurd. But the
being handmaids of the Church brings all right; and the School of St.
Sophia develops even the intellect.'
'You'll have to write a key,' said Lance.
'I leave that to you gentlemen of the press. I don't expect that many
will enter into it, but if only a few do it will answer its purpose,
and be worth doing. I want to know whether it conveys its meaning to a
fresh eye.'
'Let me see,' said Gertrude. 'Woman working every one for her own hand,
is all nohow, either grim or silly, the laughing-stock of gods and men;
while working for the Church makes all harmonious, and sets each in her
place.'
'It might as well be man as woman,' said Lance.
'More so, I believe,' said Cherry; 'because marriage gives woman a
head; so I think the married ones at least do not suffer so much in
character from misbelief. Family life affords a sort of religion
to those who do not know the truth; and so while man kept them in
subjection, they did not need to think it out, as the single ones must
do now.'
'The Church provides ties and object for them,' said Gertrude. 'Ethel
would like that.'
'Clan Hepburn would more than ever warn one against making an idol of
an abstraction,' said Lance. 'I couldn't help asking them what they
thought of the Bride in the Revelation, and they warned me against
taking the figurative literally; but they are deeply good old girls,
though your St. Sophia has not had the training of them.'
'Not consciously,' said Cherry. 'They did her work, though, in the dark
times; and if she had thorough hold of them, they would not be meddling
with the clergyman's province.'
So saying, she produced two more finished copies, the building
elaborately put in, and some of the faces and figures worked up
evidently from the life. Wilmet was the lovely matronly presiding
spirit; Stella, the damsel in the place of one of the beautiful boys
in the foreground of the School of Athens, though it had been hard to
make her look naughty enough for the first. Gertrude, to her great
amusement, recognised Lady Caergwent: 'So that's the use you make of
your countesses?'
'It arose a good deal out of a talk with her about the dedication of
our powers; and she sent me a horrible photograph to do her bad self
by.'
'I declare you must have got Ethel's nut-cracker photograph for the
original of that forbidding astronomical female with the compasses.
Why! her improved state is Ethel herself, only not quite sweetly odd
enough. Did you mean it?'
'No; I only found it coming like Dr. May.'
'She shall sit! And I'll be one of the wicked ones, whenever you
please.'
'Then you must be a good one too.'
'Oh! I don't promise that. It is much flatter. Let me be the one who is
taking off Urania Ethel's gestures. I declare you are too clever; the
constellation you've turned up on the globe is _vulpecula et anser_.'
'No, you fancied that, Gertrude.'
'No such thing! See the stars really make a little W just like it in
the sky, and observe the moral. Instead of a he-fox running off with
the goose, the vixen will thus run away with the gander.'
Cherry had not laughed so much for weeks, Lance not for a year.
Stella's shoulders shook over her German exercise, and her voice
suggested: 'It ought to have been in the Southern Hemisphere, for the
world turned topsy-turvy.'
'The Southern Hemisphere is stupid, where it got out of sight of the
dear old funny folks that named the stars. What shall we have in the
world set right?'
'Andromeda on the rock,' said Stella, 'and Perseus coming to let her
out!'
'There's Perseus then coming down the walk,' said Gertrude.
'I hope that's me!' said Lance.
'Then you must be _Anser!_'
'_Anser!_' said Cherry. 'If he appears at all, it must be as Athene's
Owl.--What great eyes you have, my dear!'
In a moment she dashed into her first draught an owl, comically
resembling Lance; 'the twinkling blink in its eyes looking out of that
indefinite bushiness,' as Gertrude said.
'Against the beard movement, Miss May?'
'There's only one moustache in the family!'
'Diplomatic,' laughed Cherry.
'Not wholly,' said Gertrude. 'One does go by one's brothers; and I like
to see people's expression.'
'But,' said Lance, 'I trust at least I'm the owl of the church tower,
though I can't hoot any longer.'
'Athene's ought to be prying down with superior contempt upon the
ladies in the Academy.'
'Inspecting them!' said Cherry. 'Hearing them pronounce _vicissim
we-kiss-im_ in turns, and making a note.'
'I declare,' cried Gertrude, 'I've got the very man for the bad owl.
How lucky I brought my photograph book!' She flew back to her room, and
returned in a moment with her album. 'I brought it to show Geraldine
our New Zealand children, and Leonard's pupils,' she said; 'but just
look here. Transplant him, Cherry!'
The photograph represented a handsome, complacent looking,
gentleman-like man, with certainly large eyes and an aquiline nose, and
bushy beard, but nothing else owl-like about him.
'Who is he? What has he done?' asked Cherry.
'Done! He's a school inspector! Don't you have inspections here? Not
under Government? O thrice happy people! If ever you _do_ wish to
see my dearly beloved sister Ethel in the position of a toad under a
harrow!'
'But why, you have got her harrow in your book?'
'He isn't our proper district harrow,' said Gertrude. 'He's badderer
and wusserer nor that! He's my sister Mary's brother-in-law, and Tom's
bosom friend!'
'Worse and worse!' said Cherry, laughing.
'Exactly, for he comes down for Sundays! He is the youngest of the
Cheviots by a good many years, born after they had got prosperous, and
cockered up beyond all measure--went and got everything a man could go
in for at Oxford--horrid fellow--and then turned school inspector, and
writes smart articles in Harvey Anderson's Magazine.'
'Rupert Cheviot; I know the fellow's style,' said Lance; 'but may I ask
why he is in your book?'
'Because Mary gave me the book, and stuck him in so fast there's no
eradicating him; but I shall paste him over before long. Luckily, he
generally talks to Ethel. They are always fighting, and I believe she
likes him; and he doesn't know what to make of such a clever woman
being so narrow, you see.--Now, an' you love me, Cherry, put him up
there--an owl, inspecting the Academy!'
Just then, Angela burst in to say that Major Harewood wanted Felix to
come and see about the new barn, and Felix had sent to ask if Miss May
would come out before the warmth of the short day was past.
'That's hard,' said Lance, as she went; 'you'll lose the light.'
'Never mind, there will be plenty of time. The pensive face is what I
want. It can be rather fine.'
'Rather!' in an indignant tone.
Lance slept in the third room in the corridor, opening into Clement's,
as Clement's did into Felix's--an arrangement convenient in the earlier
stage of his convalescence, and enabling Clement still to take care
that his fire never was let out.
'I say, Clem,' he said, from his bed, the next morning, 'you haven't
such a thing as a spare razor--mine were left at Marshlands.'
'No, I haven't.'
'I wish you would see if Felix has.'
'Are you mad, to want to begin shaving now?'
'Not at all. It had better be done before it gets thicker, and I have
to go out.'
The application brought Felix in, demanding, 'Are you gone crazy,
Lance?'
'I thought I might as well titivate myself for the tithe dinner this
evening.'
'You need not trouble yourself about that. You'll not dine with us; and
if you did, the farmers would excuse you. I thought you were only too
glad of an apology for cultivating that furze brake.'
'One may as well be fit to be seen.'
'Exactly my sentiments,' said Felix; 'but you must submit for the
present. If you say any more, I shall lock up all my razors from the
raving lunatic.'
'Yes,' added Clement. 'Would you like an axe at the same time, to cut
off your head?'
Lance subsided; and Felix walked back to his room, and smiled to the
risk of his own cheeks over his shaving, as he muttered, 'Tithe dinner,
quotha?'
The tithe and rent dinner were always combined soon after Christmas,
and the Squire and Vicar had agreed that it was best not to make it
a wholesale entertainment at the Rood, but to have a civilized party
in the Priory, bringing the guests into the drawing-room afterwards.
The numbers of superior tenants were not sufficient to make this
unmanageable, and the compliment was appreciated. One or two elderly
men might have preferred devouring the value of their tithe at the inn,
and enjoying subsequent tobacco and spirits, but most liked the being
treated as gentlemen; and the evening was always an odd mixture of
boredom, amusement, and gratification.
The audit occupied most of the day, and the dinner was at the primitive
hour of six, the ladies of the house appearing thereat. Gertrude, who
was worked up to think it capital fun, was warned to deck herself in
her best; and she rejoiced that Ethel had enforced preparations for
possible gaieties, so that she could appear in a pink silk, presented
to her for Mrs. Rivers's last public occasion, and a wreath of clematis.
Her splendours were not thrown away, for the Squire met her on the
stairs, and exclaimed, 'That's right, I'm grateful to you;' and next
moment she saw Mrs. Harewood uncloaking, and revealing the black velvet
her husband always urged on her, and a set of pearls that had not seen
the light since the last old aunt retired into old-maidenhood. The Vale
Leston opinion was that Mrs. Harewood was the finest woman to look at
who had existed since her great-grandmother, Lady Geraldine.
Lance was in the drawing-room when the ladies came in after dinner,
shaking out their plumes and relating their experiences. Angela had
talked hunting with a young farmer whom she wanted to allure into the
choir, though Cherry doubted whether Clement would like to have him
there. Cherry had given Mr. Hodnet an account of the Caergwent wedding,
in which Penbeacon had had so much share, and had received a lament
over Mr. Harewood's absence that winter. 'He was a gentleman that was
strong in the pulpit.'
'That's his tincture of Irish eloquence, and the _go_ that he has in
him!' said Angela.
'I believe the poor people do prefer his preaching to Clement's,' said
Wilmet.
'On the variety principle, I believe,' said Cherry.
'Of which they never get enough,' said Angela.
'After all,' said Cherry, 'inherent poetry does tell more than one
guesses upon an audience.'
'Ah, ha!' said Lance; 'I've got a novelty in that line for you.'
'From Will? You don't mean that you've been revelling in the second
post?'
'Ay! Some one fetched it from Ewmouth, just as your knives and forks
began to clatter. I was just thinking what notes predominated, when in
came this budget from San Remo. It is satisfactory to hear that while
my Lord and my Lady think it the dullest place in the world, our two
lovers find it simply delicious.'
'Is that the subject of the poem?'
'It might be,' said Gertrude.
'Only it would be hard on my Lord and my Lady,' said Angel.
'The question would be,' said Cherry, 'how long it takes to be so used
to one another that localities cease to be indifferent.'
'How long does it take, Wilmet?' saucily asked Angela.
Wilmet did not choose to answer; and Stella's voice quietly mentioned
how Lizzie Bruce and her lover broke off their engagement after being
shut up together for a whole wet Sunday.
'How very lucky for them!' said Gertrude.
'They agreed it would be impossible to spend life together,' said
Cherry. 'But what is the poem, Lance?'
'The Song of the Electric Wires.'
'Nonsense!'
'They do sing,' said Gertrude. 'I have often wished one could make
something of those Æolian-harp sounds.'
'Have you?' said Lance. 'I've tried ever so often to get them on the
violin. I'll show you.'
It was the first time he had spoken of touching his instrument; but
Wilmet intercepted Stella, who was going as a matter of course to
fetch it, by saying the sound would make the farmers expect a dance.
'So much the better,' said Angela. 'One waltz with Harry Palting, and
my victory would be complete.'
'It seems,' proceeded Lance, 'that poor Bobbie held herself ready to
start off with Bill in case I had been worse; and when the telegraph
relieved their minds, the reaction showed itself in these verses.'
'Which Bobbie was there to secure,' added Cherry. 'I wonder how many
of his get lost for want of her to copy them out, and make him polish
them.'
'When a man hasn't a spark of vanity he misses a very good working
machine,' said Lance.
'Spurring machine, you mean,' said Gertrude.
'Let me have them, Lance; you can't read them,' interposed Cherry.
Strange as was the subject, there was a wild airy grace about the
lines, by turns joyous and pathetic, and really going well to the
fitful music of the winds upon the wires. Lance went up to the piano,
and struck a note or two; and that wonderful power he possessed over
the instrument brought the very expression, if not the sound, and made
Gertrude exclaim with delight, 'Oh! do make a song of it with a piano
accompaniment; I am sure you can.'
'If _you_ tell me I can,' said Lance, flushing and smiling, though
perhaps aware of more technical difficulty than she knew; but the
opening of the dining-room door, and the warm greeting of his brother's
tenants, broke off his promise.
He worked so hard and so merrily the next day in preparing the
Christmas-tree for the schools, in spite--foolish fellow!--of warnings,
chills, and catches of breath, that at the moment of projection, he
was quite overcome by the throng, noise and glare, and forced to beat
a hasty retreat to the drawing-room, whither Miss Bridget Hepburn soon
pursued him.
Finding him for the first time on the sofa, looking worn out she viewed
his assurances that he was really much better as a melancholy delusion,
and warned him against being beguiled by false hopes out of that
blessed frame of mind. John Harewood, divining what she was about,
presently came in to the rescue; not that he could remove her, for she
was burning to communicate a semi-confidential piece of information,
namely, the intended marriage of Mrs. Fulbert Underwood to Mr. Smiles,
whose sickly wife had been dead about a year. The other two sisters
were communicating the same intelligence to any one they could catch in
anything like privacy all the evening. It was not at all unsatisfactory
intelligence, for on the strength of Clement's appointment having
caused his resignation, Mr. Smiles had expected him to supply all his
most pressing needs, from educating his son to paying for his wife's
funeral. The worst of it was that it was hardly credible that Mrs.
Fulbert would be so foolish as to bestow her handsome jointure upon him
and his seven children; but as he had just taken a curacy in a popular
watering-place, there might be attractions; and at any rate, Clement
would be exempted from finding funds for his move.
Lance could not help feeling that if to be weary of everything and
indifferent to the future were a blessed frame, he had certainly lost
it, and it made the subsequent night of pain and distress all the
less endurable, as well as the captivity to bed and blisters that
ensued; nor was it till Sunday evening that he could return to the
painting-room, where all the family collected as they dropped in one
by one from Evensong and the subsequent choir-practice, and stood and
lounged about in the Sunday gossip, deaf to all to the manner born.
Felix came in last, having been looking at his letters, for he never
had time to do more than glance at a few of the more interesting in the
morning.
'It is true,' he said quietly.
'What, about Mrs. Fulbert? Has she written?'
'Yes; a great deal about the love she always had for Mr. Smiles's dear
little family, and an entreaty to me not to deprive her of the three
hundred a year that she was to forfeit by remarriage.'
'Was she? cried Bernard. 'How jolly!'
'So it seems, though I had forgotten it. She keeps all the settlement,
of course.'
'I remember about it,' said Clement. 'Her husband begged his father to
do something for her; and he detested her so, poor woman, that it went
very much against the grain with him, and by way of some solace, he
must have made this charge on the estate contingent on her remaining a
widow.'
'You'll never go on with it, Felix!' exclaimed Angela.
'I hope it will not break off the match,' added Cherry. 'There are some
people whom one would willingly bribe to keep out of one's way.'
'They do it knowingly?' said Gertrude.
'I imagine so; Smiles managed to know most things.'
'Ay!' said Angela. 'But you see he went on precedents. He knew what
Alice Lamb had effected, and had some personal experience of this
Vicar!'
'Felix! you are not going to be so absurd!' expostulated Bernard. 'Why,
it would keep a hunter!'
'Or a curate,' said Angela.
'Still more amusing to you, Angel,' retorted Bernard.
'But, Felix, _do_ promise me you'll do nothing foolish. For my personal
satisfaction,' pleaded Angela.
'That is a promise no one can be warranted in giving, Angela.'
'He's afraid of himself!' cried Angela. 'She has only to get him into a
corner--like Alice.'
'Then it is well I am going away to-morrow.'
'Very unreasonable,' muttered Lance.
'What, to be so soft--I think it is indeed! I don't care for the money,
but how those critters will triumph!'
'He never said they would have it,' said Cherry.
'Oh! if he is only teasing.--What are you going to do, Felix?'
'I do not know. I must look at the terms of the will.'
Gertrude looked triumphantly at Angela, as much as to say, 'Could you
not trust his common sense and justice?'
But Felix put a stop to the conversation by asking Lance whether the
usual Sunday evening hymns would be too much for him.
'Not at all,' he said, 'provided Angela would sing nothing she had
not studied;' and then finding Gertrude took this as a hint, he was
dreadfully distressed, and nearly implied that dissonance from her was
better than harmony from any one else. She, on the other hand, was
as ever, greatly impressed with the sweetness of Felix's voice, and
refused, as they went down to supper, to believe that Lance's could be
better.
'I do not know that it is in what you heard to-night,' said Cherry;
'but Lance had some notes that none of them could come near, except--'
and there she paused, thinking of the voice that still at times she
longed for with inexpressible longing.
Gertrude was full of pity, though disappointed to find that Mr.
Underwood was going away so early that he bade her good-bye as well as
good-night, in spite of her protestation that she should be up to see
him off, and binding over Stella, who was always the morning star of
early travellers, to wake her in time for his 6.30 breakfast.
It was not far from that time when Felix, coming into Lance's room, was
struck with his refreshed and brightened look even at this his worst
time, a sort of indefinable look of hope and recovery.
'You have had a good night?'
'Yes; I slept till just now. I believe this last bout of mustard has
done me a power of good. The tightness is gone as it never went before.'
'That's the best news I've heard yet.'
'Better than Mrs. Fulbert?'
'Oh, I was coming to that. I have looked at the abstract of the will
this morning, and I don't feel myself in the least bound to continue
the annuity. Then I have been going over things this week; and what
with the falling in of the Blackstone lease, and the winding up of the
Rectory business, I shall be likely to get into smooth waters sooner
than I expected. So if you can hold on to the end of the year, I will
then, if all goes right, do whichever you please--give up the concern
at Bexley to you, or let you have an allowance to enable you to go on
with your music.'
'Have I been grumbling?' said Lance.
'Can't one see a thing without its being grumbled at one? It is a hard
life, yours, Lancey. I did not understand how hard till I took this
taste of it, and I am heartily grieved at having let you go on under it
till you broke down. I must try some other plan for you when you can go
back.'
'No, no; don't upset Mrs. Frog. Summer will be coming, and I prefer her
to Mrs. Lamb any day. Give her my love, and tell her I'm mending. Not
that I see any sense in your going,' he added, but somehow a little
less freely than usual.
'You want to see Lamb's report of the speeches at the sessions? Any
commands?'
'Yes; I want some music-paper, and my portfolio of violin music. If you
are sending any books, it might come at once. And tell Ellis he had
better not attempt that anthem from the Creation next Sunday, unless
Speers is come home to take the tenor.'
'I might do that.'
'You don't mean to stay over Sunday?'
'It is of no use to be always running backwards and forwards; I like a
Sunday at the old place now and then,' said Felix. 'Good-bye, Lancey;
let me find you twice yourself when I come back!'
'I could not thank the old Giant,' said Lance, when Cherry looked in on
him; 'but will you tell him, I feel as if he had taken out the stopper
that bunged me up from everything. Only it is absurd of him to go into
banishment just when this place is so uncommonly pleasant?'
Cherry thought she could guess, and that it was not so entirely
distrust of Mr. Lamb's capacity as it was convenient for the family
to suppose. And after all, Lance was protesting from dutiful habit of
unselfishness, but it may be doubted whether he _really_ was quite as
sorry as usual to part with his brother.
The early rising to see him off had been effected; but his absence
did not disturb the good spirits of the party. Lance was gaining
ground quickly, and resumed more of the ordinary family habits every
day--sustaining his spirits the better when left behind on their all
going out, because Gertrude May did not unite with Angela in abusing
the weather for not bringing a skateable frost, and far less in running
wild after a sight of the hunt. Nay, she decidedly snubbed that great
handsome idle fellow Bernard for abusing Felix and the Fates for not
mounting him, and sat soberly at home at her music lesson, when he
and Angela went off upon the chestnut and Ratton, to see the meet and
bemoan themselves. Gertrude had been slow to exhibit her music before
the Underwoods, and had good-humouredly justified Angela's exaggerated
excruciation, owning that she had never had any teaching worthy of
the name. Lance had diffidently offered a few hints, and they were
not accepted as Angela was wont to receive his criticisms; so they
developed into instruction, delightful to both, even though much of it
consisted in unlearning!
And when the little niece had rallied, and Dr. May fetched his daughter
home, Lance did not flag, but was once more the bright Lance of former
days, and spent his time between Pursuivant work and labour over some
musical achievement, dividing himself between a blotted score, his
violin, and piano, using by preference Theodore as a critic, with
Stella to interpret his gestures.