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.