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.