The little group gathered together in Major Milroy’s parlor to wait for
the carriages from Thorpe Ambrose would hardly have conveyed the idea,
to any previously uninstructed person introduced among them, of a party
assembled in expectation of a picnic. They were almost dull enough,
as far as outward appearances went, to have been a party assembled in
expectation of a marriage.
Even Miss Milroy herself, though conscious, of looking her best in
her bright muslin dress and her gayly feathered new hat, was at this
inauspicious moment Miss Milroy under a cloud. Although Allan’s note had
assured her, in Allan’s strongest language, that the one great object of
reconciling the governess’s arrival with the celebration of the picnic
was an object achieved, the doubt still remained whether the plan
proposed--whatever it might be--would meet with her father’s approval.
In a word, Miss Milroy declined to feel sure of her day’s pleasure until
the carriage made its appearance and took her from the door. The major,
on his side, arrayed for the festive occasion in a tight blue frock-coat
which he had not worn for years, and threatened with a whole long day of
separation from his old friend and comrade the clock, was a man out of
his element, if ever such a man existed yet. As for the friends who had
been asked at Allan’s request--the widow lady (otherwise Mrs. Pentecost)
and her son (the Reverend Samuel) in delicate health--two people less
capable, apparently of adding to the hilarity of the day could hardly
have been discovered in the length and breadth of all England. A young
man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and
listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine
of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at
a picnic. An old lady afflicted with deafness, whose one inexhaustible
subject of interest is the subject of her son, and who (on the happily
rare occasions when that son opens his lips) asks everybody eagerly,
“What does my boy say?” is a person to be pitied in respect of her
infirmities, and a person to be admired in respect of her maternal
devotedness, but not a person, if the thing could possibly be avoided,
to take to a picnic. Such a man, nevertheless, was the Reverend Samuel
Pentecost, and such a woman was the Reverend Samuel’s mother; and in the
dearth of any other producible guests, there they were, engaged to eat,
drink, and be merry for the day at Mr. Armadale’s pleasure party to the
Norfolk Broads.
The arrival of Allan, with his faithful follower, Pedgift Junior, at his
heels, roused the flagging spirits of the party at the cottage. The plan
for enabling the governess to join the picnic, if she arrived that day,
satisfied even Major Milroy’s anxiety to show all proper attention to
the lady who was coming into his house. After writing the necessary
note of apology and invitation, and addressing it in her very best
handwriting to the new governess, Miss Milroy ran upstairs to say
good-by to her mother, and returned with a smiling face and a side look
of relief directed at her father, to announce that there was nothing
now to keep any of them a moment longer indoors. The company at once
directed their steps to the garden gate, and were there met face to face
by the second great difficulty of the day. How were the six persons of
the picnic to be divided between the two open carriages that were in
waiting for them?
Here, again, Pedgift Junior exhibited his invaluable faculty of
contrivance. This highly cultivated young man possessed in an eminent
degree an accomplishment more or less peculiar to all the young men
of the age we live in: he was perfectly capable of taking his pleasure
without forgetting his business. Such a client as the Master of Thorpe
Ambrose fell but seldom in his father’s way, and to pay special but
unobtrusive attention to Allan all through the day was the business of
which young Pedgift, while proving himself to be the life and soul of
the picnic, never once lost sight from the beginning of the merry-making
to the end. He had detected the state of affairs between Miss Milroy and
Allan at glance, and he at once provided for his client’s inclinations
in that quarter by offering, in virtue of his local knowledge, to lead
the way in the first carriage, and by asking Major Milroy and the curate
if they would do him the honor of accompanying him.
“We shall pass a very interesting place to a military man, sir,” said
young Pedgift, addressing the major, with his happy and unblushing
confidence--“the remains of a Roman encampment. And my father, sir, who
is a subscriber,” proceeded this rising lawyer, turning to the curate,
“wished me to ask your opinion of the new Infant School buildings at
Little Gill Beck. Would you kindly give it me as we go along?” He opened
the carriage door, and helped in the major and the curate before they
could either of them start any difficulties. The necessary result
followed. Allan and Miss Milroy rode together in the same carriage,
with the extra convenience of a deaf old lady in attendance to keep the
squire’s compliments within the necessary limits.
Never yet had Allan enjoyed such an interview with Miss Milroy as the
interview he now obtained on the road to the Broads.
The dear old lady, after a little anecdote or two on the subject of her
son, did the one thing wanting to secure the perfect felicity of her two
youthful companions: she became considerately blind for the occasion, as
well as deaf. A quarter of an hour after the carriage left the major’s
cottage, the poor old soul, reposing on snug cushions, and fanned by a
fine summer air, fell peaceably asleep. Allan made love, and Miss Milroy
sanctioned the manufacture of that occasionally precious article of
human commerce, sublimely indifferent on both sides to a solemn bass
accompaniment on two notes, played by the curate’s mother’s unsuspecting
nose. The only interruption to the love-making (the snoring, being a
thing more grave and permanent in its nature, was not interrupted at
all) came at intervals from the carriage ahead. Not satisfied with
having the major’s Roman encampment and the curate’s Infant Schools on
his mind, Pedgift Junior rose erect from time to time in his place, and,
respectfully hailing the hindmost vehicle, directed Allan’s attention,
in a shrill tenor voice, and with an excellent choice of language,
to objects of interest on the road. The only way to quiet him was to
answer, which Allan invariably did by shouting back, “Yes, beautiful,”
upon which young Pedgift disappeared again in the recesses of the
leading carriage, and took up the Romans and the Infants where he had
left them last.
The scene through which the picnic party was now passing merited far
more attention than it received either from Allan or Allan’s friends.
An hour’s steady driving from the major’s cottage had taken young
Armadale and his guests beyond the limits of Midwinter’s solitary walk,
and was now bringing them nearer and nearer to one of the strangest and
loveliest aspects of nature which the inland landscape, not of Norfolk
only, but of all England, can show. Little by little the face of the
country began to change as the carriages approached the remote and
lonely district of the Broads. The wheat fields and turnip fields became
perceptibly fewer, and the fat green grazing grounds on either side grew
wider and wider in their smooth and sweeping range. Heaps of dry rushes
and reeds, laid up for the basket-maker and the thatcher, began to
appear at the road-side. The old gabled cottages of the early part of
the drive dwindled and disappeared, and huts with mud walls rose in
their place. With the ancient church towers and the wind and water
mills, which had hitherto been the only lofty objects seen over the
low marshy flat, there now rose all round the horizon, gliding slow and
distant behind fringes of pollard willows, the sails of invisible boats
moving on invisible waters. All the strange and startling anomalies
presented by an inland agricultural district, isolated from
other districts by its intricate surrounding network of pools and
streams--holding its communications and carrying its produce by water
instead of by land--began to present themselves in closer and closer
succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed
boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens;
farmers’ men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast
and the field, in sailors’ hats, and fishermen’s boots, and plowmen’s
smocks; and even yet the low-lying labyrinth of waters, embosomed in its
mystery of solitude, was a hidden labyrinth still. A minute more, and
the carriages took a sudden turn from the hard high-road into a little
weedy lane. The wheels ran noiseless on the damp and spongy ground. A
lonely outlying cottage appeared with its litter of nets and boats. A
few yards further on, and the last morsel of firm earth suddenly ended
in a tiny creek and quay. One turn more to the end of the quay--and
there, spreading its great sheet of water, far and bright and smooth,
on the right hand and the left--there, as pure in its spotless blue, as
still in its heavenly peacefulness, as the summer sky above it, was the
first of the Norfolk Broads.
The carriages stopped, the love-making broke off, and the venerable Mrs.
Pentecost, recovering the use of her senses at a moment’s notice, fixed
her eyes sternly on Allan the instant she woke.
“I see in your face, Mr. Armadale,” said the old lady, sharply, “that
you think I have been asleep.”
The consciousness of guilt acts differently on the two sexes. In nine
cases out of ten, it is a much more manageable consciousness with a
woman than with a man. All the confusion, on this occasion, was on
the man’s side. While Allan reddened and looked embarrassed, the
quick-witted Miss Milroy instantly embraced the old lady with a burst
of innocent laughter. “He is quite incapable, dear Mrs. Pentecost,” said
the little hypocrite, “of anything so ridiculous as thinking you have
been asleep!”
“All I wish Mr. Armadale to know,” pursued the old lady, still
suspicious of Allan, “is, that my head being giddy, I am obliged to
close my eyes in a carriage. Closing the eyes, Mr. Armadale, is one
thing, and going to sleep is another. Where is my son?”
The Reverend Samuel appeared silently at the carriage door, and assisted
his mother to get out (“Did you enjoy the drive, Sammy?” asked the old
lady. “Beautiful scenery, my dear, wasn’t it?”) Young Pedgift, on whom
the arrangements for exploring the Broads devolved, hustled about,
giving his orders to the boatman. Major Milroy, placid and patient, sat
apart on an overturned punt, and privately looked at his watch. Was it
past noon already? More than an hour past. For the first time, for many
a long year, the famous clock at home had struck in an empty workshop.
Time had lifted his wonderful scythe, and the corporal and his men had
relieved guard, with no master’s eye to watch their performances, with
no master’s hand to encourage them to do their best. The major sighed
as he put his watch back in his pocket. “I’m afraid I’m too old for this
sort of thing,” thought the good man, looking about him dreamily. “I
don’t find I enjoy it as much as I thought I should. When are we going
on the water, I wonder? Where’s Neelie?”
Neelie--more properly Miss Milroy--was behind one of the carriages
with the promoter of the picnic. They were immersed in the interesting
subject of their own Christian names, and Allan was as near a pointblank
proposal of marriage as it is well possible for a thoughtless young
gentleman of two-and-twenty to be.
“Tell me the truth,” said Miss Milroy, with her eyes modestly riveted on
the ground. “When you first knew what my name was, you didn’t like it,
did you?”
“I like everything that belongs to you,” rejoined Allan, vigorously. “I
think Eleanor is a beautiful name; and yet, I don’t know why, I think
the major made an improvement when he changed it to Neelie.”
“I can tell you why, Mr. Armadale,” said the major’s daughter, with
great gravity. “There are some unfortunate people in this world whose
names are--how can I express it?--whose names are misfits. Mine is a
misfit. I don’t blame my parents, for of course it was impossible to
know when I was a baby how I should grow up. But as things are, I and
my name don’t fit each other. When you hear a young lady called Eleanor,
you think of a tall, beautiful, interesting creature directly--the
very opposite of _me_! With my personal appearance, Eleanor sounds
ridiculous; and Neelie, as you yourself remarked, is just the thing. No!
no! don’t say any more; I’m tired of the subject. I’ve got another
name in my head, if we must speak of names, which is much better worth
talking about than mine.”
She stole a glance at her companion which said plainly enough, “The name
is yours.” Allan advanced a step nearer to her, and lowered his voice,
without the slightest necessity, to a mysterious whisper. Miss Milroy
instantly resumed her investigation of the ground. She looked at it with
such extraordinary interest that a geologist might have suspected her of
scientific flirtation with the superficial strata.
“What name are you thinking of?” asked Allan.
Miss Milroy addressed her answer, in the form of a remark, to the
superficial strata--and let them do what they liked with it, in their
capacity of conductors of sound. “If I had been a man,” she said, “I
should so like to have been called Allan!”
She felt his eyes on her as she spoke, and, turning her head aside,
became absorbed in the graining of the panel at the back of the
carriage. “How beautiful it is!” she exclaimed, with a sudden outburst
of interest in the vast subject of varnish. “I wonder how they do it?”
Man persists, and woman yields. Allan declined to shift the ground from
love-making to coach-making. Miss Milroy dropped the subject.
“Call me by my name, if you really like it,” he whispered, persuasively.
“Call me ‘Allan’ for once; just to try.”
She hesitated with a heightened color and a charming smile, and shook
her head. “I couldn’t just yet,” she answered, softly.
“May I call you Neelie? Is it too soon?”
She looked at him again, with a sudden disturbance about the bosom of
her dress, and a sudden flash of tenderness in her dark-gray eyes.
“You know best,” she said, faintly, in a whisper.
The inevitable answer was on the tip of Allan’s tongue. At the very
instant, however, when he opened his lips, the abhorrent high tenor of
Pedgift Junior, shouting for “Mr. Armadale,” rang cheerfully through the
quiet air. At the same moment, from the other side of the carriage, the
lurid spectacles of the Reverend Samuel showed themselves officiously on
the search; and the voice of the Reverend Samuel’s mother (who had, with
great dexterity, put the two ideas of the presence of water and a sudden
movement among the company together) inquired distractedly if anybody
was drowned? Sentiment flies and Love shudders at all demonstrations of
the noisy kind. Allan said: “Damn it,” and rejoined young Pedgift. Miss
Milroy sighed, and took refuge with her father.
“I’ve done it, Mr. Armadale!” cried young Pedgift, greeting his patron
gayly. “We can all go on the water together; I’ve got the biggest boat
on the Broads. The little skiffs,” he added, in a lower tone, as he led
the way to the quay steps, “besides being ticklish and easily upset,
won’t hold more than two, with the boatman; and the major told me he
should feel it his duty to go with his daughter, if we all separated in
different boats. I thought _that_ would hardly do, sir,” pursued Pedgift
Junior, with a respectfully sly emphasis on the words. “And, besides, if
we had put the old lady into a skiff, with her weight (sixteen stone if
she’s a pound), we might have had her upside down in the water half her
time, which would have occasioned delay, and thrown what you call a damp
on the proceedings. Here’s the boat, Mr. Armadale. What do you think of
it?”
The boat added one more to the strangely anomalous objects which
appeared at the Broads. It was nothing less than a stout old lifeboat,
passing its last declining years on the smooth fresh water, after the
stormy days of its youth time on the wild salt sea. A comfortable
little cabin for the use of fowlers in the winter season had been built
amidships, and a mast and sail adapted for inland navigation had been
fitted forward. There was room enough and to spare for the guests,
the dinner, and the three men in charge. Allan clapped his faithful
lieutenant approvingly on the shoulder; and even Mrs. Pentecost,
when the whole party were comfortably established on board, took a
comparatively cheerful view of the prospects of the picnic. “If anything
happens,” said the old lady, addressing the company generally, “there’s
one comfort for all of us. My son can swim.”
The boat floated out from the creek into the placid waters of the Broad,
and the full beauty of the scene opened on the view.
On the northward and westward, as the boat reached the middle of the
lake, the shore lay clear and low in the sunshine, fringed darkly at
certain points by rows of dwarf trees; and dotted here and there, in
the opener spaces, with windmills and reed-thatched cottages, of puddled
mud. Southward, the great sheet of water narrowed gradually to a little
group of close-nestling islands which closed the prospect; while to the
east a long, gently undulating line of reeds followed the windings of
the Broad, and shut out all view of the watery wastes beyond. So clear
and so light was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern
quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer
three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of
the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the
faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes
of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow
water. The world and the world’s turmoil seemed left behind forever
on the land; the silence was the silence of enchantment--the delicious
interflow of the soft purity of the sky and the bright tranquillity of
the lake.
Established in perfect comfort in the boat--the major and his daughter
on one side, the curate and his mother on the other, and Allan and young
Pedgift between the two--the water party floated smoothly toward the
little nest of islands at the end of the Broad. Miss Milroy was in
raptures; Allan was delighted; and the major for once forgot his clock.
Every one felt pleasurably, in their different ways, the quiet and
beauty of the scene. Mrs. Pentecost, in her way, felt it like a
clairvoyant--with closed eyes.
“Look behind you, Mr. Armadale,” whispered young Pedgift. “I think the
parson’s beginning to enjoy himself.”
An unwonted briskness--portentous apparently of coming speech--did
certainly at that moment enliven the curate’s manner. He jerked his head
from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his
hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the company. Getting into
spirits seemed, in the case of this excellent person, to be alarmingly
like getting into the pulpit.
“Even in this scene of tranquillity,” said the Reverend Samuel, coming
out softly with his first contribution to the society in the shape of
a remark, “the Christian mind--led, so to speak, from one extreme to
another--is forcibly recalled to the unstable nature of all earthly
enjoyments. How if this calm should not last? How if the winds rose and
the waters became agitated?”
“You needn’t alarm yourself about that, sir,” said young Pedgift;
“June’s the fine season here--and you can swim.”
Mrs. Pentecost (mesmerically affected, in all probability, by the near
neighborhood of her son) opened her eyes suddenly and asked, with her
customary eagerness. “What does my boy say?”
The Reverend Samuel repeated his words in the key that suited his
mother’s infirmity. The old lady nodded in high approval, and pursued
her son’s train of thought through the medium of a quotation.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs. Pentecost, with infinite relish, “He rides the
whirlwind, Sammy, and directs the storm!”
“Noble words!” said the Reverend Samuel. “Noble and consoling words!”
“I say,” whispered Allan, “if he goes on much longer in that way, what’s
to be done?”
“I told you, papa, it was a risk to ask them,” added Miss Milroy, in
another whisper.
“My dear!” remonstrated the major. “We knew nobody else in the
neighborhood, and, as Mr. Armadale kindly suggested our bringing our
friends, what could we do?”
“We can’t upset the boat,” remarked young Pedgift, with sardonic
gravity. “It’s a lifeboat, unfortunately. May I venture to suggest
putting something into the reverend gentleman’s mouth, Mr. Armadale?
It’s close on three o’clock. What do you say to ringing the dinner-bell,
sir?”
Never was the right man more entirely in the right place than Pedgift
Junior at the picnic. In ten minutes more the boat was brought to a
stand-still among the reeds; the Thorpe Ambrose hampers were unpacked
on the roof of the cabin; and the current of the curate’s eloquence was
checked for the day.
How inestimably important in its moral results--and therefore how
praiseworthy in itself--is the act of eating and drinking! The social
virtues center in the stomach. A man who is not a better husband,
father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking,
an incurably vicious man. What hidden charms of character disclose
themselves, what dormant amiabilities awaken, when our common humanity
gathers together to pour out the gastric juice! At the opening of the
hampers from Thorpe Ambrose, sweet Sociability (offspring of the happy
union of Civilization and Mrs. Gripper) exhaled among the boating party,
and melted in one friendly fusion the discordant elements of which that
party had hitherto been composed. Now did the Reverend Samuel Pentecost,
whose light had hitherto been hidden under a bushel, prove at last that
he could do something by proving that he could eat. Now did Pedgift
Junior shine brighter than ever he had shone yet in gems of caustic
humor and exquisite fertilities of resource. Now did the squire, and the
squire’s charming guest, prove the triple connection between Champagne
that sparkles, Love that grows bolder, and Eyes whose vocabulary is
without the word No. Now did cheerful old times come back to the major’s
memory, and cheerful old stories not told for years find their way to
the major’s lips. And now did Mrs. Pentecost, coming out wakefully
in the whole force of her estimable maternal character, seize on a
supplementary fork, and ply that useful instrument incessantly between
the choicest morsels in the whole round of dishes, and the few vacant
places left available on the Reverend Samuel’s plate. “Don’t laugh at my
son,” cried the old lady, observing the merriment which her proceedings
produced among the company. “It’s my fault, poor dear--_I_ make him
eat!” And there are men in this world who, seeing virtues such as
these developed at the table, as they are developed nowhere else, can,
nevertheless, rank the glorious privilege of dining with the smallest
of the diurnal personal worries which necessity imposes on mankind--with
buttoning your waistcoat, for example, or lacing your stays! Trust no
such monster as this with your tender secrets, your loves and hatreds,
your hopes and fears. His heart is uncorrected by his stomach, and the
social virtues are not in him.
The last mellow hours of the day and the first cool breezes of the long
summer evening had met before the dishes were all laid waste, and the
bottles as empty as bottles should be. This point in the proceedings
attained, the picnic party looked lazily at Pedgift Junior to know what
was to be done next. That inexhaustible functionary was equal as ever to
all the calls on him. He had a new amusement ready before the quickest
of the company could so much as ask him what that amusement was to be.
“Fond of music on the water, Miss Milroy?” he asked, in his airiest and
pleasantest manner.
Miss Milroy adored music, both on the water and the land--always
excepting the one case when she was practicing the art herself on the
piano at home.
“We’ll get out of the reeds first,” said young Pedgift. He gave
his orders to the boatmen, dived briskly into the little cabin, and
reappeared with a concertina in his hand. “Neat, Miss Milroy, isn’t
it?” he observed, pointing to his initials, inlaid on the instrument
in mother-of-pearl. “My name’s Augustus, like my father’s. Some of my
friends knock off the ‘A,’ and call me ‘Gustus Junior.’ A small joke
goes a long way among friends, doesn’t it, Mr. Armadale? I sing a little
to my own accompaniment, ladies and gentlemen; and, if quite agreeable,
I shall be proud and happy to do my best.”
“Stop!” cried Mrs. Pentecost; “I dote on music.”
With this formidable announcement, the old lady opened a prodigious
leather bag, from which she never parted night or day, and took out an
ear-trumpet of the old-fashioned kind--something between a key-bugle and
a French horn. “I don’t care to use the thing generally,” explained Mrs.
Pentecost, “because I’m afraid of its making me deafer than ever. But
I can’t and won’t miss the music. I dote on music. If you’ll hold the
other end, Sammy, I’ll stick it in my ear. Neelie, my dear, tell him to
begin.”
Young Pedgift was troubled with no nervous hesitation. He began at once,
not with songs of the light and modern kind, such as might have been
expected from an amateur of his age and character, but with declamatory
and patriotic bursts of poetry, set to the bold and blatant music which
the people of England loved dearly at the earlier part of the present
century, and which, whenever they can get it, they love dearly still.
“The Death of Marmion,” “The Battle of the Baltic,” “The Bay of
Biscay,” “Nelson,” under various vocal aspects, as exhibited by the
late Braham--these were the songs in which the roaring concertina and
strident tenor of Gustus Junior exulted together. “Tell me when you’re
tired, ladies and gentlemen,” said the minstrel solicitor. “There’s no
conceit about _me_. Will you have a little sentiment by way of variety?
Shall I wind up with ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ and ‘Poor Mary Anne’?”
Having favored his audience with those two cheerful melodies, young
Pedgift respectfully requested the rest of the company to follow his
vocal example in turn, offering, in every case, to play “a running
accompaniment” impromptu, if the singer would only be so obliging as to
favor him with the key-note.
“Go on, somebody!” cried Mrs. Pentecost, eagerly. “I tell you again, I
dote on music. We haven’t had half enough yet, have we, Sammy?”
The Reverend Samuel made no reply. The unhappy man had reasons of his
own--not exactly in his bosom, but a little lower--for remaining silent,
in the midst of the general hilarity and the general applause. Alas for
humanity! Even maternal love is alloyed with mortal fallibility. Owing
much already to his excellent mother, the Reverend Samuel was now
additionally indebted to her for a smart indigestion.
Nobody, however, noticed as yet the signs and tokens of internal
revolution in the curate’s face. Everybody was occupied in entreating
everybody else to sing. Miss Milroy appealed to the founder of the
feast. “Do sing something, Mr. Armadale,” she said; “I should so like to
hear you!”
“If you once begin, sir,” added the cheerful Pedgift, “you’ll find it
get uncommonly easy as you go on. Music is a science which requires to
be taken by the throat at starting.”
“With all my heart,” said Allan, in his good-humored way. “I know lots
of tunes, but the worst of it is, the words escape me. I wonder if I
can remember one of Moore’s Melodies? My poor mother used to be fond of
teaching me Moore’s Melodies when I was a boy.”
“Whose melodies?” asked Mrs. Pentecost. “Moore’s? Aha! I know Tom Moore
by heart.”
“Perhaps in that case you will be good enough to help me, ma’am, if my
memory breaks down,” rejoined Allan. “I’ll take the easiest melody in
the whole collection, if you’ll allow me. Everybody knows it--‘Eveleen’s
Bower.’”
“I’m familiar, in a general sort of way, with the national melodies of
England, Scotland, and Ireland,” said Pedgift Junior. “I’ll accompany
you, sir, with the greatest pleasure. This is the sort of thing, I
think.” He seated himself cross-legged on the roof of the cabin, and
burst into a complicated musical improvisation wonderful to hear--a
mixture of instrumental flourishes and groans; a jig corrected by a
dirge, and a dirge enlivened by a jig. “That’s the sort of thing,” said
young Pedgift, with his smile of supreme confidence. “Fire away, sir!”
Mrs. Pentecost elevated her trumpet, and Allan elevated his voice.
“Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower--” He stopped; the
accompaniment stopped; the audience waited. “It’s a most extraordinary
thing,” said Allan; “I thought I had the next line on the tip of my
tongue, and it seems to have escaped me. I’ll begin again, if you have
no objection. ‘Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower--’”
“‘The lord of the valley with false vows came,’” said Mrs. Pentecost.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Allan. “Now I shall get on smoothly. ‘Oh, weep
for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower, the lord of the valley with false
vows came. The moon was shining bright--’”
“No!” said Mrs. Pentecost.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” remonstrated Allan. “‘The moon was shining
bright--’”
“The moon wasn’t doing anything of the kind,” said Mrs. Pentecost.
Pedgift Junior, foreseeing a dispute, persevered _sotto voce_ with the
accompaniment, in the interests of harmony.
“Moore’s own words, ma’am,” said Allan, “in my mother’s copy of the
Melodies.”
“Your mother’s copy was wrong,” retorted Mrs. Pentecost. “Didn’t I tell
you just now that I knew Tom Moore by heart?”
Pedgift Junior’s peace-making concertina still flourished and groaned in
the minor key.
“Well, what _did_ the moon do?” asked Allan, in despair.
“What the moon _ought_ to have done, sir, or Tom Moore wouldn’t have
written it so,” rejoined Mrs. Pentecost. “‘The moon hid her light from
the heaven that night, and wept behind her clouds o’er the maiden’s
shame!’ I wish that young man would leave off playing,” added Mrs.
Pentecost, venting her rising irritation on Gustus Junior. “I’ve had
enough of him--he tickles my ears.”
“Proud, I’m sure, ma’am,” said the unblushing Pedgift. “The whole
science of music consists in tickling the ears.”
“We seem to be drifting into a sort of argument,” remarked Major Milroy,
placidly. “Wouldn’t it be better if Mr. Armadale went on with his song?”
“Do go on, Mr. Armadale!” added the major’s daughter. “Do go on, Mr.
Pedgift!”
“One of them doesn’t know the words, and the other doesn’t know the
music,” said Mrs. Pentecost. “Let them go on if they can!”
“Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,” said Pedgift Junior; “I’m ready to go
on myself to any extent. Now, Mr. Armadale!”
Allan opened his lips to take up the unfinished melody where he had last
left it. Before he could utter a note, the curate suddenly rose, with a
ghastly face, and a hand pressed convulsively over the middle region of
his waistcoat.
“What’s the matter?” cried the whole boating party in chorus.
“I am exceedingly unwell,” said the Reverend Samuel Pentecost. The boat
was instantly in a state of confusion. “Eveleen’s Bower” expired on
Allan’s lips, and even the irrepressible concertina of Pedgift
was silenced at last. The alarm proved to be quite needless. Mrs.
Pentecost’s son possessed a mother, and that mother had a bag. In
two seconds the art of medicine occupied the place left vacant in the
attention of the company by the art of music.
“Rub it gently, Sammy,” said Mrs. Pentecost. “I’ll get out the bottles
and give you a dose. It’s his poor stomach, major. Hold my trumpet,
somebody--and stop the boat. You take that bottle, Neelie, my dear; and
you take this one, Mr. Armadale; and give them to me as I want them.
Ah, poor dear, I know what’s the matter with him! Want of power _here_,
major--cold, acid, and flabby. Ginger to warm him; soda to correct him;
sal volatile to hold him up. There, Sammy! drink it before it settles;
and then go and lie down, my dear, in that dog-kennel of a place they
call the cabin. No more music!” added Mrs. Pentecost, shaking her
forefinger at the proprietor of the concertina--“unless it’s a hymn, and
that I don’t object to.”
Nobody appearing to be in a fit frame of mind for singing a hymn, the
all-accomplished Pedgift drew upon his stores of local knowledge, and
produced a new idea. The course of the boat was immediately changed
under his direction. In a few minutes more, the company found themselves
in a little island creek, with a lonely cottage at the far end of it,
and a perfect forest of reeds closing the view all round them. “What do
you say, ladies and gentlemen, to stepping on shore and seeing what a
reed-cutter’s cottage looks like?” suggested young Pedgift.
“We say yes, to be sure,” answered Allan. “I think our spirits have been
a little dashed by Mr. Pentecost’s illness and Mrs. Pentecost’s bag,” he
added, in a whisper to Miss Milroy. “A change of this sort is the very
thing we want to set us all going again.”
He and young Pedgift handed Miss Milroy out of the boat. The major
followed. Mrs. Pentecost sat immovable as the Egyptian Sphinx, with her
bag on her knees, mounting guard over “Sammy” in the cabin.
“We must keep the fun going, sir,” said Allan, as he helped the major
over the side of the boat. “We haven’t half done yet with the enjoyment
of the day.”
His voice seconded his hearty belief in his own prediction to such good
purpose that even Mrs. Pentecost heard him, and ominously shook her
head.
“Ah!” sighed the curate’s mother, “if you were as old as I am, young
gentleman, you wouldn’t feel quite so sure of the enjoyment of the day!”
So, in rebuke of the rashness of youth, spoke the caution of age. The
negative view is notoriously the safe view, all the world over, and the
Pentecost philosophy is, as a necessary consequence, generally in the
right.