WHAT IT MAY LEAD TO.
'I never was so berhymed since I was an Irish rat, which I can
scarcely remember.'--_As You Like It_.
'Dim memories haunt the child,
Of lives in other beings led--
Other, and yet the same.'--_Keble_.
In the autumn Alda made a visit at home. She had, as usual, gone with
Mr. and Mrs. Underwood to their German baths, and had there fallen in
with a merry set of her intimates in London, who had persuaded her to
join them in an expedition to the Tyrol, which lasted till the end of
September. On her return, she was dropped at Bexley, where her sisters
were greatly edified by her sketch-book, a perfect journal in clever
scenes and groups, like the 'Voyage en zig-zag.' Two of the gentlemen
seemed always in waiting on the graceful outline that did duty for
Alda; and indeed, she gave Wilmet to understand that only the skill
that played them off one against the other had averted an offer from
each, hundreds of miles from home, when it would have been so very
inconvenient! Every morning Wilmet considered how her dinner would
appear if one or both should suddenly drop in to pursue his courtship.
Even Felix, though he had pooh-poohed the mysterious whisper from
his sisters, was startled at the apparition of a picturesque figure;
in Tyrolese hat, green knickerbockers, belt, knapsack, loose velvet
coat, and fair moustache, marching full into the shop; and while the
customers who were making it a rendezvous gazed in doubt between
gamekeepers and stage banditti, holding out a hand too fair and dainty
for either character, and exclaiming, 'How are you, Mr. Froggatt!
Hollo, Felix!'
Mr. Froggatt was amazed beyond measure, and it was only on hearing the
ring of the mirthful laugh that he exclaimed, 'Mr. Edgar! This is an
alteration! You will find the young ladies up-stairs.'
Felix was disengaged at the moment, and could take him through the
parlour, too glad to have him there at all to utter the faintest wish
that he would have rung at the private door; and he ushered him into
the drawing-room with the words, 'Here's the artist who has begun with
himself;' and then retreated.
'Edgar! oh, you wonderful boy!' cried happy Geraldine, as he threw his
arms round her; while Alda asked:
'Is that the _thing_ now, Edgar?'
'Quite _comifo_,' he answered. 'Ha, little ones, have you forgotten me?'
'Stella says you're the clarionet in the brass band,' said Bernard.
'What have you got in that pack?'
'Munitions of war!' he answered, unstrapping his bag, and producing
packets of French bon-bons, bought on his way home, from the sketching
tour Mr. Renville always made with sundry of his pupils in early
autumn. 'Gobble them up, little mice, before the cat comes home.'
Stella paused with a dutiful 'May I?' and Cherry had to interfere
between the little maiden's scruples, Bernard's omnivorous inclination,
and Theodore's terror at any new article of food; while Alda and Edgar
exchanged eager question and answer:
'You've been at home. You've seen them all?'
'I dined there on Sunday--might do so any day; they can't do without
me, that's a fact.'
'Nor me, I imagine,' said Alda. 'I suppose I am to go back with you?'
'So Madam proposed; but the fact is, that Molly has done uncommonly
well without you this time.'
'What do you mean?' asked Alda, sharply.
'What think you of a friend of Cherry?'
'I haven't got any friends.'
'Think again! Not the great convert, the Cacique of all the Mexicos?'
'Ferdinand Travis! You don't mean it?'
'_I_ don't; but the elders mean it, and the youngers will do it.'
'Do tell me! I can't understand,' cried Alda, much excited. 'We have
never met him.'
'The uncle or father--which?'
'The uncle.'
'Well, the uncle has been in England, and fraternized with our governor
at Peter Brown's; there was a banqueting all round, and his nephew was
carried at his chariot wheels. If I am not much mistaken, gold and
timber jingled to silver and bullock-hide, and concluded a prospective
union in the persons of my nephew and my daughter. I'm sorry. I have
long been persuaded that a very small effort on the part of our
respected Blunderbore might have redeemed the family fortunes in the
person of Polly.'
'How could you think of anything so absurd?' said Alda. 'As if my uncle
would consent!'
'If Tom has any sentiment, it is for my father and the name of
Underwood,' said Edgar. 'You remember he was sorely disappointed that
Felix would not step into my shoes.'
'And very angry and hurt,' said Alda, 'as well he might be.'
'Yes; but that anger proved the vastness of his good intentions.
Besides there's something about our old giant--steadiness and breeding,
I believe--that uniformly makes Tom knock under to him; and there's a
peculiar affinity of good sense between him and Marilda, that ought to
have ripened under favourable circumstances.'
'And is he really cut out?' said Alda. 'I don't know how to believe
this! How far has it gone?'
'Hanger on and oyster in love,' promptly answered Edgar. 'Honest
Polly has the most comical look of anxious coyness on her jolly face,
and holds her elbows squarer than ever; and a few paces off stands
Montezuma, magnificent and melancholic;' and Edgar assumed the posture.
'Melancholy, no wonder,' said the conscious beauty; 'Edgar, he must be
over head and ears in debt.'
'So it struck me; but he must have managed it uncommon quietly, for
they call him the Mexican Muff; he's hand and glove with all their
holinesses up at Clement's shop, and the wildest orgie he has been
detected at was their magic-lantern.'
'Then it is real goodness that draws them together!' exclaimed Cherry,
looking up from her presidency over the comfits.
'Goodness and a balance,' said Edgar.
'Did you know,' said Cherry, 'that as soon as he came of age, he paid
the Insurance all the money for the Fortinbras Arms? The agents were
quite overwhelmed, and wanted to put it in the Pursuivant.'
She was cut short by the return of Wilmet and Angela, accompanied by
Miss Knevett. The effect of Edgar's appearance was startling. Alice
gave a little scream of surprise, Angela crept behind her sisters, and
Wilmet stood for a moment like a stag at gaze; then, as he said, 'Well,
Mettie, are you going to send for the police?' exclaimed, 'You, Edgar!
What a figure you have made of yourself!'
'See how our eldest crushes me!' said Edgar. 'Such a face as yours,
Mettie, ought not to be wedded to the commonplace.'
'I suppose it is like German artists,' said Wilmet, trying to resign
herself.
'It is such a beautiful becoming dress,' whispered Alice to Geraldine;
while Edgar rattled on--'No wonder there is a deterioration in taste
from living in the very tents of the Philistines. Why, Cherry, how do
you bear existence surrounded by such colours as these?'
'The paper?' asked Wilmet, surprised. 'It is rather a large pattern, to
be sure.'
'I call it cruelty to animals to shut Cherry up among the eternal
abortive efforts of that gilded trellis to close upon those blue
dahlias, crimson lilacs, and laburnums growing upwards, tied with huge
ragged magenta ribbons. They would wear out my brain.'
'Well, I think when you remember our old paper, you might be thankful!'
said Wilmet.
'Precisely what I do, and am not thankful. What our paper may have been
in its earlier stages of existence, I am not prepared to say; but since
I can remember, that hateful thing, the pattern, could only be traced
by curious researches in dark corners, and the wall presented every
_nuance_ of purplish salmon or warm apricot.'
'Dear old paper!' cried Cherry. 'Yes; wasn't it soft, deepening off in
clouds and bars, sunsets and storm-clouds, to make stories about?'
'Where it was most faded and grimy,' said Wilmet. 'It is all
affectation not to be glad to have clean walls.'
'Clean!' cried Edgar, in horror. 'Defend me from the clean! Bare, bald,
and frigid, with hard lines breaking up and frittering your background.
If walls are ornamented at all, it should not be in a poor material
like paper, but rich silk or woollen tapestry hangings.'
'We couldn't have tapestry now,' said Alice, in a puzzled voice.
'Then,
'"Comrades, take warning by my fall,
And have it strong or not at all."'
'Not walls,' laughed Cherry.
'Let them be of natural, or, at any rate, uniform tint; and cover them
with your own designs of some character and purpose, not patterns
bought by the yard.'
'Oh! I see what you would be at,' said Wilmet quaintly. 'You are
bewailing the loss of your great Man Friday.'
'Achilles, I beg your pardon.'
'He never would come out,' said Angela; 'he came through the whitewash
after the measles.'
'I wonder what the present inhabitants think of him,' said Cherry. 'One
comfort is, if he is a bogy now, they may show him some day as an early
effort of Sir Edgar Underwood, President of the Royal Academy.'
'Oh dear! I must go!' cried Alice. 'I only came to fetch a pattern for
Aunt Maria, and she is waiting for it; but you are all so delightful
here.'
'What pretty little thing have you picked up there?' asked Edgar, as
she went.
'Have we not told you of Miss Pearson's niece?'
'You should take her likeness, Cherry, as a relief from the classically
severe.'
Cherry opened her portfolio, and showed two or three water-coloured
drawings of the graceful little head and piquant features. Edgar
criticised, and promised a lesson; and the sitter, nothing loth, though
rather coy, was caught. She blushed and smiled, and took exception at
little personalities, and laughed her forgiveness, going through a play
of countenance very perplexing to the pupil, but much relished by the
master, as he called up the pout and smile by turns, and played with
her little airs.
He took Alda back on Monday, but promised to come home for Christmas,
and kept his word. Perhaps the Renville _wirthschaft_ afforded less
contrast with home than did the Underwood _ménage_; and, in spite of
the Philistine furniture, the rooms in the High Street agreed better
with his tastes than the old house in St. Oswald's Buildings. He was
above objecting to the shop; and whereas Clement carefully avoided
the public precincts, he was often there, hunting up books, reading
newspapers, gossiping with Mr. Froggatt or with Redstone, and always
ensuring himself a welcome by the free bright sweetness of his manner
and his amusing talk.
It was a prosperous winter; Felix, as partner and acknowledged editor,
was in a more comfortable position both as to income and authority.
Other matters were going well. Fulbert, to the general surprise,
turned out a capital letter-writer, and sent home excellent accounts
of himself, working heartily in a situation in the post-office, which
Mr. Audley's Somerville interest had managed to secure for him.
Moreover, all close scholarships had not been abolished, and Felix's
opportunities in the newspaper line had enabled him to discover one at
St. Cadoc's, a small college at Cambridge, to be competed for by the
natives of the county where Clement had fortunately been born. A letter
to the parish clerk of Vale Leston, to ask for the baptismal register
of Edward Clement Underwood, produced a reply from a well-remembered
old Abednego Tripp, who declared himself 'horned and rejoiced' at
hearing from Master Felix, and at being able to do anything for one of
the Reverend Mr. Edward's sons. The competition was not very severe;
Clement obtained the scholarship, and therewith his maintenance for
three years to come; and he was at the same time able to exercise a
bit of patronage on his sisters' behalf, more gratifying to his own
feelings than theirs. Mr. Fulmort's unmarried sisters had lived in
the country with a former governess, until on the death of the elder,
the survivor decided on employing her very considerable fortune in
establishing a school where girls of small means might be prepared
for becoming first-rate governesses, with special openings for the
daughters of poor clergy and of missionaries.
One of the first families thought of was that of the favourite
chorister; so Angela, now ten years old, was nominated at once,
to the relief of Wilmet, who did not think her romping intimacies
with the girls at Miss Pearson's very desirable. Moreover, after a
correspondence between Miss Fulmort and Miss Lyveson, it was decided
that Robina should be transferred to the new school at Brompton with
her sister, partly by way of infusing a trustworthy element, and partly
that her studies might be perfected by London masters. Robina, whose
allegiance to Miss Lyveson was most devoted, was greatly grieved, but
she was a reasonable, womanly little being, aware that governess-ship
was her profession, and resolute to qualify herself; so though she
came home with tell-tale spots under her eyes, she replied to all
condolences with, 'I know it's right, what must be must;' and her
spirits rose when Lance came home, bound only to return during the
holidays on two or three special days when his voice was indispensable
at the cathedral.
Edgar and he together kept the house in continual merriment, so that
the sober pillars of the house found themselves carried along, they
knew not whither.
'I have had a serious application,' said Felix one evening. 'A solemn
knock came to the office door, and an anxious voice came in--"Please,
brother, I want to speak to you." There stood the little Star! I
thought at least she had broken the chandelier, but no such thing. It
was, "Please, brother, mayn't I have a birth-day?"'
'Poor little darling!' cried some voices.
'What could have put it into her head?' said Wilmet.
'She said all little girls had birth-days, and Ellen Bruce had told
Angel all about the dance in honour of hers.'
'Ah!' said Wilmet, 'we'll have Angel out of the way of that kind of
chatter.'
'Poor little maid! of course I had to quench her,' said Felix, 'as far
as her own day was concerned. I told her more about it than she had
ever heard, but then she took me aback by saying Father was happy, and
she thought he would like her to be happy.'
'You didn't consent!' exclaimed Wilmet.
'I represented that it was Theodore's birth-day as well, and that
strangers would make him miserable. She was really very good, and I
want you just to consider whether we could not do something--of course
on a different day--but in the course of the holidays, by way of treat.
Surely you could invite some of Miss Pearson's pupils.'
'I don't like to begin, Felix,' said Wilmet; 'there would be
reciprocity, and no one knows where it might lead to.'
'A few white muslin frocks--eh, W. W.? I think we could stand them.'
'That is not all I mean,' said Wilmet; 'it is the sort of style of
thing. It would be all very well to have a few little girls here, but
they would all ask us again, and I could not answer for what might
happen at their homes.'
'It is out!' said Edgar. 'Now we know the sort of style of thing it
might lead to. Minerva under a mistletoe bough.'
'Hurrah!' burst out Lance, in convulsions of mirth, which infected
Felix and Cherry; while Wilmet, as simple as she was discreet, blushed
up to the tips of her ears, and tried to defend herself.
'They tell me of doings at their parties that are what I should not
like for our little girls, and I don't think you would, Felix.'
'Forfeits, to wit?' asked Edgar. 'Or cards, or waltzing. You may as
well be explicit, Mettie.'
'No, no,' said Felix, 'Mettie shall not be teased: she is right in the
main.' But his _tone_ was that he always used when her prudence was too
much for him.
'And the family refinement is to be secured by sitting in ashes all
Christmas,' said Edgar. 'Slightly unchristian, it strikes me.'
'But,' continued Felix, 'out of these domestic ashes, we _must_ get up
some sport for the children. I stand committed to Stella.'
'Shall I get Bill Harewood, and do Box and Cox?' suggested Lance.
'Might we not get up something they could take part in themselves?'
said Cherry; 'Cinderella, or some such little play?--Edgar, you know
how to manage such things.'
'Wilmet doesn't know where they would lead to,' gravely responded Edgar.
'To Lance's going off with a circus,' said Felix.
'I always had a great mind to do so,' responded Lance. 'To sing comic
songs on one leg on a spotted horse's back, and go about day and night
in a yellow van drawn by elephants--I call that life!'
'Secure a berth for me as scene-painter!' cried Edgar. 'See how I'd
draw a house by the very outline of Mazeppa outside!'
'And Felix will print all our advertisements gratis!'
'Oh!' broke in Cherry; 'I have a notion. Couldn't we make a play of the
conjuror in disguise? It is Dr. Knowall in German popular tales, Robin
the Conjuror in English.'
'Nothing foolish, I hope?' seriously asked Wilmet.
'Oh no. Don't you recollect? The story is, that a set of thieves steal
a jewel, a man comes shamming conjuror and offering to find it for the
owner, intending to trust to chance, and feast at her expense as long
as he is not found out.'
'I remember!' exclaimed Lance; 'you used to tell us the story. Somebody
suspects him, and brings a creature shut up in a covered dish to ask
him to tell what it was--and it happens to be a robin; so when he cries
out, "Oh, poor Robin!" thinking himself done for, out hops the bird,
and the enemy is sold.'
'Yes; and then he counts his dinners every day, and the thieves who
have come to look on think he is counting them, and throw themselves on
his mercy.'
'It has capabilities,' said Edgar.
'But the moral!' said Wilmet.
'What! Not the lesson against dealing with conjurors?' demanded Edgar.
'I'll undertake to arm your pupils against spirit-rapping for ever.'
'In that point of view--' said Wilmet doubtfully.
'In that point of view,' said Felix, laughing, 'it has my vote.'
'I don't like deception to succeed,' said Wilmet; 'but at least there's
none of the worst sort of nonsense.'
Lance leapt up and performed a _pas seul_, insisting that Bill Harewood
must come and be a robber; and Edgar and Cherry instantly had their
heads together as playwrights and managers.
'Never mind, Wilmet,' said Felix at their bed-room doors that night.
'Remember, Father never was a man for all work and no play.'
'I don't mind play, but I don't know what this may lead to;' then,
as Felix laughed merrily at the repetition, she followed him into
his room, saying, 'I mean, I have no trust in Edgar's discretion, or
Lance's either, and all sorts of things may be put into the children's
heads.'
'You can't keep children's heads a blank,' said Felix; 'and Edgar's
good taste ought to be trusted in his own home, for his own sisters.
Even you might stretch a few points to keep him happy and occupied with
Cherry. Besides, I believe we do live a duller life than can be really
good for any one. It can't be right to shut up all these young things
all their holidays without any pleasure.'
'I thought,' said Wilmet, her eyes growing moist, 'it was pleasure
enough to be all at home together.'
'So it is, to staid old fogies like you and me,' said Felix, kissing
her; 'but the young ones want a lark now and then, and I confess I
should be immensely disappointed if this fun didn't come off. No, no,
W. W., I can't have you an old cat; you are much too young and
pretty.'
The levity of this conclusion shocked Wilmet beyond remonstrance. Was
Felix falling from his height of superiority, or was her strictness
wearisome?
Meantime, Geraldine's brain was ringing with doggrel rhymes, and
whirling with stage contrivances, in the delight of doing something
with Edgar, whether versifying or drawing; and as Felix said, to keep
him happy at home for Christmas was no small gain, even though it
brought a painful realisation that their feast was not his feast.
Geraldine suffered in silence, for a word from her was always put
down by some tender jest, avowing as much inferiority in goodness as
superiority in intellect. As to Clement, Edgar's sport was to startle
him with jokes, dilemmas, and irreverences, and then to decline
discussion on the ground that he never argued with _sisters_, and that
Clement would understand when he went to Cambridge. Otherwise, the
subject was avoided at home; but Edgar consorted a good deal with Mr.
Ryder, calling him the only person in the town, except Cherry, who
knew the use of a tongue; and one day, when Felix was assisting his
old master in a search through old newspapers in the reading-room, Mr.
Ryder said, 'By-the-by, your brother Edgar has a good deal more of the
talk of the day than you can be prepared for.'
'I am afraid so, sir,' said Felix; 'but he does not put it forth much
at home.'
'So I hoped. It would have startled your father a good deal; but I
believe myself acting in the spirit of his wishes in letting him talk
out his crudities.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Felix, not quite knowing how to take this.
'It is a phase to be passed through,' said Mr. Ryder. 'Indeed, a good
deal of it is fashion and vanity.'
'Mr. Audley thinks so,' replied Felix. 'He said he thought poor Edgar
did not think enough to have real doubt, but that he considered other
people's a dispensation from attending to the subject at all.'
'Exactly,' said Mr. Ryder, 'except so far as repeating what he has
caught up seems to him knowing, and according to the spirit of the
time, fit to dazzle us down here. Whatever may deepen him will probably
change all that--I do not say into what you or your father would wish;
but what is jargon now will pass away into something more real, for
better or--'
'For worse?' asked Felix anxiously, as he paused.
'I do not say so,' returned Mr. Ryder. 'Perhaps what I chiefly wished
at this moment was to clear myself in your eyes of treachery to your
father.'
'No, sir, that I never could suspect.'
But the conversation might well leave heaviness behind it. Was it come
to Edgar's views being such as to startle Mr. Ryder! who, for that
matter, had of late shown much less laxity of opinion than in his
younger and more argumentative days; and there was little comfort in
supposing that these were not real honest doubts at all, only apologies
for general carelessness and irreligion.
Yet with even this trouble in the recess of the heart, this was the
merriest winter the Underwood household had known since their father's
time.
Edgar chose to frame the play upon the Italian form of the story, where
the impostor is a starveling poet, nicknamed Signor Topo, or Master
Ratton, because his poverty had brought him to live in a hay-loft. This
character he assumed, and no doubt it fitted him better than either the
English cobbler or the German doctor; besides, as he said, sham court
costume is always the easiest to contrive: but Cherry was by no means
prepared to find the Rat-like poet the secret admirer of a daughter of
the Serene Highness who owned the jewel.
'Such a monstrous interpolation,' quoth Geraldine.
'Interpolations are the beauty of the thing. It would be as flat as a
pancake without.'
'And Wilmet won't like it.'
'Wilmet must be brought to the level of ordinary human nature.'
'I don't feel as if this were using her well. You know she expressly
consented to this "because there was no nonsense in it."'
'_I.e._ if it had been Cinderella, it would have been improper; if the
Sleeping Beauty, highly scandalous. Eh, Chérie?'
'You know I think Mettie _does_ carry her scruples pretty far,' said
Geraldine, trying not to laugh, 'but I won't be a party to cheating
her; and if this young princess is to come in, she must be told of it.'
'Or she will take out her Gorgon's head in the midst, and petrify
her subjects! Maybe it will be safest to prepare her. You see, such
discipline reigns here, that a poor Bohemian like me doesn't know where
to be.'
Accordingly, Edgar said in his airy way, 'O Mettie, by-the-by, we have
put in a part for little Miss Knevett.'
'Indeed! I thought it was to be all among ourselves. Have you spoken to
her?'
'Of course; and she is in the ecstatic state of preparation of spangles
and coronets.'
'I wish you had spoken before. It would be hard to disappoint her now.
What is she to be?'
'Nothing less than heroine. There must be some sort of conventional
catastrophe, or the whole concern falls flat.'
'I don't see why it should not fall flat,' said Wilmet, with a sober
air that drove Cherry into an uncontrollable convulsion of laughter;
'it would amuse the children just as well.'
'The children of six, maybe,' said Edgar gravely, 'but hardly the
children of sixteen. Have you no mercy on them, my venerable sister?'
Wilmet had arrived at such a pass of resignation as to perceive that
'a fuss' on her part might be more mischievous than any 'nonsense' in
which Edgar was likely to indulge in public, especially with Geraldine
as his coadjutor. She tried to obtain some reassurance that there was
'nothing more silly than needful in this play of yours.'
'No, indeed. There is just a little mock courtship; but as that is the
case with nine-tenths of the stories in the world, I don't think you
gain much by turning it out.'
'I did hope for once in a way we ourselves might be quit of it.'
'It is hard on you,' said Cherry, smiling; 'but it would make a great
uproar to disturb all now.'
'At any rate, I have found the old receipt for tea-cakes,' responded
Wilmet, whose mind was almost as much preoccupied with the
entertainment of the body as her sister's with that of the mind.
She had relented so far as to invite two little girls and their widowed
mother, from whom there was no danger of reciprocities; Lance had
prevailed to have Will Harewood as one of the robbers; and the Miss
Pearsons were coming to behold their niece; besides which, Stella
having imparted the great secret to Mr. Froggatt, Felix found the
good old gentleman and his wife burning to have an invitation. Thus
the party would be the largest Wilmet had ever contemplated; and the
mysteries of tea and supper were so congenial to her housewifely soul,
that she did not distress herself about the frequent rehearsals in Miss
Pearson's empty school-room, the transformations of garments under the
needles of Cherry and Robina, nor even the wildness and ecstacy of
all the children from Lance downwards, all bursting with secrets, and
letting them out at every corner of their grinning mouths.
It must soon be over, and Felix seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly;
and Wilmet could tolerate a great deal when either Felix or Alda
enjoyed. He was much too busy with Christmas accounts to undertake any
part that needed learning; but he was pressed into the service as a
courtier, only with a dispensation from either speaking or rehearsing;
while Wilmet utterly scouted any idea of taking any share in the drama,
having enough to do in her own character.
And in that character she was left alone to entertain the guests, for
even Cherry was in request as prompter and assistant dresser--nay,
with the assistance of Theodore's accordion, formed the whole band of
musicians at the ball which opened the performance, and which required
the entire _corps dramatique_. Robina, as the Elderly Princess,
demonstratively dropped her bracelet, with a ruby about as big as a
pigeon's egg (being the stopper of a scent-bottle), and after the
dancers had taken some trouble not to step on it, they retired, and it
was stolen by the gang of robbers, cloaked up to their corked eyebrows
and moustaches.
Then appeared in his loft--supplied with straw culled from packages at
the printing-house--the poet, well got up in his knickerbockers and
velvet smoking-cap, scarf and guitar, soliloquising in burlesque rhyme
on his fallen state and hopeless admiration, and looking very handsome
and disconsolate, until startled by the cry behind the scenes--
'O yes! O yes! O yes!
By command of her Highness!
Lost, stolen, or strayed,
Gone to the dogs or mislaid,
Her Highness's splendid ruby.
Whoso finds it--wit or booby,
Tinker, tailor, soldier, lord--
Let him ask what he will, he shall have his reward.'
Thereupon the poet, communicating his designs in a stage soliloquy,
disguised himself in a tow wig and beard, and a railway rug turned up
with yellow calico; and the scene shifting to the palace, he introduced
himself to the Elderly Princess as the greatest of spiritualists--so
great, that--
'Detective police are an ignorant fable;
No detective can equal a walnut-wood table.'
But he required as a medium a maiden fair and lovely, but with a
heart as yet untouched, otherwise the spirits might be offended. The
only lady who was available was, of course, the youthful princess
Fiordespina, whose alarm and reluctance had been contrived so as to be
highly flattering to the disguised poet.
The dinner scenes, at which the robbers presented themselves in turn,
and imagined that they heard themselves counted, went off in due order;
also the test, when the courtiers tried to pose the spiritualist with
making him divine what they brought him in a covered dish, and were
disconcerted by his sighing out,
'Alas! alas! see envy batten
On the unhappy Master Ratton!'
while the rat leaped out from beneath the lid!
Then came the avowal by the robber: but the conclusion was so far
varied, that the jewel having been judiciously hidden, the poet made
use of his voice and his guitar to throw the Lady Fiordespina into a
mesmeric sleep before the court, and then to cause a table to rap out
the letters, which she interpreted so as to lead to the spot.
It was the prettiest scene of all, his music and song were so graceful;
and in spite of some suppressed giggling, the attitude and countenance
of Fiordespina were so very pretty in her trance. Nothing more was left
save the restoration of the ruby, the claiming of the reward, and the
final tableau, in which Ratton and Fiordespina, in their native good
mien, had their hands joined by the benignant Elderly Princess; while,
to the equal amusement and confusion of all, good old Mrs. Froggatt
fairly burst out crying with excitement and admiration!
Mrs. Vincent, the young widow, was likewise enchanted, and so was Miss
Maria Pearson; but Wilmet could not quite fathom the tone of the elder
and graver sister, or decide whether it were her own dissatisfaction
that made her think Miss Pearson had not expected to see such a _role_
bestowed upon her niece.
The doors between the drawing-room and the theatre were opened again;
the boys handed round negus and lemonade; and Felix, standing over
Cherry, said, 'Lance's circus speculation would not be a bad one.
There's plenty of dramatic talent in the family.'
'Did you like it, Felix?'
'I could tell exactly which parts were yours and which Edgar's,' was
the ambiguous answer, as he turned to secure the Princess Fiordespina
for the dance that was to crown the performance.
'O Mr. Underwood! Oh yes, thank you! but--'
'Is it part of the programme that wizard and medium should dance
together?'
'Oh no! Only it seems so funny to think of your dancing.'
'What, you thought a stationer must be stationary?'
'O Mr. Underwood, what a shocking pun!' and she was led off sparkling
with pretty laughter; while the Conjuror, muttering,
'The gouty oak began to move
And flounder into hornpipes,'
turned graciously on little Susie Vincent, and scared as much as he
elevated her, by claiming her as his partner.
Will Harewood, dashing across the room, and looking earnestly with his
bold and now flushed face up to Wilmet, blurted out, 'Miss Underwood,
now please, let me dance with you.'
'Thank you,' she said graciously; 'but I believe I must play for them.'
'I'll do that,' said Clement, over her head.
'The Dead March in Saul?' murmured Edgar.
'Nonsense!' broke out Mrs. Vincent, starting up; 'what am I good for
but to play?'
So Clement, who thought he had found an escape, was reduced to the
necessity of asking the other little Vincent; and Wilmet's smile of
consent so elated Bill Harewood, that he could not help flying across
to that very happy and well-matched pair, the Elderly Princess and
First Robber, to tell them, 'I've got her.'
'Who?'
'Why, your sister.'
'You've never been and made up to Wilmet!' said Lance, as if this
instance of valour crowned his merits.
'Yes, I have; and she will. You see there ain't another gentleman out
of the family except the old Froggy, and the little one has got him.
Well, I always wished beyond anything to dance with Miss Underwood!'
'Did you?' said Robina. 'I never should have thought of that.'
'Most likely not,' said Bill; 'but she is the most beautiful woman I
ever did or shall see in all my life;' and he flew back to her side.
'Is she?' said Robina, altogether amazed.
'Well, perhaps,' said Lance; 'you know one might go a long way without
finding any one so handsome.'
'Then I wish people wouldn't say so. It seems making our Wilmet common,
like any other girl, to care for her being pretty.'
'So Froggy's dancing with Stella,' observed Lance. 'I declare I'll try
if Mrs. Frog won't stand up with me. Some one ought. You'll not mind
waiting, Bobbie. It is not often one has the chance to dance with a cap
like that.'
Bobbie resigned herself amicably; and Lance, with his bright arch face,
made his bow and half polite, half saucy addresses to Mrs. Froggatt in
her magnificent head-gear, making her laugh herself almost to tears
again as she declined. He held the Miss Pearsons in greater awe, and
ventured on neither; so that Robina had him for Sir Roger de Coverley,
where the sole contretemps arose from Angel and Bear being in such
boisterous spirits that Wilmet decreed that they must not be partners
again. Of the rest, some had a good deal of dancing-master experience;
Mrs. Harewood's impromptu merry-makings had afforded plenty of practice
to the two choristers; even Clement had had a certain school-feast
training; and Felix, with a good ear, ready eye, and natural ease
of movement, acquitted himself to Miss Knevett's eagerly expressed
admiration.
'Take care, Master Ratton will be jealous,' said Edgar, as he claimed
her for the next dance, a quadrille.
'Jealous! oh no! Some people one never thinks of complimenting.'
Cherry caught the words, and wondered what they meant.
A few more dances, and then came Wilmet's anxiously contrived supper.
'I say,' observed Will Harewood to Lance, 'why can't we have things
like this at home?'
''Tisn't their nature to,' judiciously responded Lance.
'This cream is quite up to the grub we get after a crack let-off in
the Close,' added Will; for requisitions for their voices at private
concerts had made the choir connoisseurs in the relics of feasts.
'Better, I should say,' returned Lance. 'Mettie doesn't make it of
soap, or arsenic, or verdigris, like old Twopenny.'
'What! you don't mean that she made it herself?'
'Of course! who else should?'
'My eyes! And to see her looking like that!' Then, with a deep sigh,
'If I could only book her for my wife on the spot!'
Whence it may be inferred, that Stella's birth-day party was not only a
brilliant success, but might, in Wilmet's phrase, 'lead to something.'
All it seemed to have led to at present was a discovery on the part of
the good Miss Pearsons, that the household they had been wont to pity
as small orphan children, now contained three fine young men.
At least Geraldine connected this with the desire they expressed that
Alice might enjoy the same opportunities as Robina of giving her
acquirements a final polish, up to diploma pitch. A correspondence
commenced, resulting in Miss Knevett being engaged as teacher,
being remunerated by lessons in languages and accomplishments. The
arrangement gave universal satisfaction; Cherry could not detect any
regret on the part of Felix; Alice would still spend her holidays
with her aunts; and the sense that her departure was near made the
intercourse between the two houses more frequent and familiar than it
had ever yet been.
One evening Cherry, while looking up a quotation for Felix in
Southey's '_Doctor_,' lit on his quaint theory of the human soul
having previously migrated through successive stages of vegetable and
animal life, and still retaining something characteristic from each
transmigration. Her brothers were a good deal tickled with the idea;
and Lance exclaimed, 'I know who must have been rhubarb, queen-wasp,
and a hen-harrier.'
'Oh, that's too bad!' cried Robina.
'Why a hen-harrier?' asked Felix, recognising, like almost all the
others.
'One of the birds of prey where the female is bigger than her mate,'
drily observed Edgar.
'Besides,' said Cherry, 'recollect the hen-harrier's countenance in
pictures, with beady eyes, and a puffed supercilious smile about the
beak.'
'Why, that's Lady Price!' chimed in Alice, making the discovery at last.
Lengthily and gravely Edgar uttered the words, 'Puzzle-monkey, praying
mantis, sacred stork, howler.'
Lance and Robin roared with merriment, and after one glance at
Clement's half virtuous, half offended countenance, Felix and Cherry
fell into like convulsions; while Alice exclaimed, 'But who is it?'
and Angel shouted the sufficiently evident answer, 'Clement, oh! the
howler, the black preaching monkey in a natural surplice!'
'I can't think how you do it!' exclaimed Alice.
'I object to the mantis,' Cherry struggled to say. 'Nasty hypocritical
creature that eats things up.'
'Praying for its living, eh, Cherry?' said wicked Edgar. 'If you had
ever seen the long thin animal, with head back, hands joined, and pious
attitude, you couldn't doubt.'
And as he spoke he sketched his mischievous likeness, at which
the mirth grew more furious; while Cherry, always the most easily
excited, uttered in a strangled voice, 'A parsnip, a barn-door hen, a
dilapidated Guernsey cow, an old mother whale.'
'O Cherry, Cherry, you've immortalized yourself!' shouted Lance. 'How
did you hit off the parsnip? the very thing that had stumped me.'
'The colour, and the odd sort of sweetness,' said Cherry.
'Won't we have fun with it when I go back!' cried Lance.--'Not tell?
Nonsense! Why, no one will enjoy it like Mother Harewood herself.'
'Only don't say I made it. There, Edgar has got one.'
'Touch-me-not balsam, blister-fly, bantam-cock (full strut), black
terrier.'
He did not caricature this time except with the muscles of his face,
and with these he contrived to put on four different aspects, each
so exactly like Mr. Mowbray Smith that not even Alice required the
proclamation of the name; and Wilmet gravely said, 'I do not think this
is a proper sort of game. It must be ill-natured or irreverent.'
'That depends,' said Geraldine, now thoroughly in the swing.--'Here!
Hawthornden apple-tree, stickleback, goldfinch, beaver.'
'The hardy Norseman's house of yore
Was on the foaming wave,'
sang out Lance, recalling Theodore's substitute for Felix's name.
'Exactly like--figures, tastes, and all,' said Edgar, scanning Felix's
clear, bright, fresh face, glossy hair, and rather short figure, at
once trim and sturdy. 'The goldfinch hit him off exactly, but I don't
see the force of the apple-tree.'
'You would,' said Cherry, 'if you were properly acquainted with our
three trees and their individualities. The Hawthornden is a resolute
looking fellow, but it indulges in the loveliest pink and white
blossoms, and waxen, delicate, peachy fruit.'
'Uncommonly sour! Thank you, Cherry,' said Felix.
'Not in a pie,' suggested Alice.
'Properly treated and sweetened, eh?' asked he, smiling on her.
'But why is Felix like a stickleback?' said Angela.
'Don't you know?' said Cherry; 'a beautiful bright little fish, and the
good male one swims up and down taking care of the nest.'
'I do like the beaver,' allowed Wilmet. 'It always was my favourite
beast.'
'It hits off the respectable householder element,' added Edgar. 'Three
flaps of his broad tail rule beaverdom like Jupiter's nod.'
'I have one,' interposed Robina.--'Bella-donna lily, working bee,
menura--'
'Hold hard!' called Lance; 'is a menura fish, flesh, or fowl?'
'Fowl: the lyre-tailed pheasant, that makes a shelter for its nest with
its own tail.'
'Decided liar tale,' muttered Edgar.
'Go on, Bobbie,' Felix encouraged her. 'The pheasant suits both the
twins as well as the bella-donna. Any more?'
'Perhaps the leading stag of the herd.'
'Don't make us like that proud, cowardly, tyrannical beast,' exclaimed
Wilmet.
'I have seen you look exactly like one,' said Geraldine. 'That and the
pheasant both give the notion of your neck.'
'Such a set of trumpery gaudy things!' grumbled Wilmet. 'Nothing but
the bee is tolerable.'
'I did think of a speckled Hamburg hen, and a nice quiet she-goat,'
said Robina; 'but they are all dowdy, and would not suit Alda.'
'There's something in the theory,' said Edgar. 'That bella-donna
approves itself perfectly--so delicate and stately, and yet so
essentially unpoetical.'
'That Mettie takes as a compliment,' said Felix, 'only she would rather
have been a potato, or a cabbage.'
'Now,' said Cherry, 'you will all know--bell-heather, the grasshopper,
the lark, and the squirrel.'
'Is this the lark's crest, or the squirrel's tail?' said Felix, giving
an elder brother's pull to the boy's highest wave of hair.
'Or the grasshopper's leap?' cried Lance, springing on him for a bout
of buffeting and skirmishing; in the midst of which Alice was heard
wondering how the riddles, as she thought them, were either made or
guessed.
'They come,' said Geraldine. 'I am only afraid we shall fall into a
trick of making them for everybody.'
'I wonder what you would make for me.'
Geraldine had it on her tongue's end that Alice would be difficult, for
want of anything distinctive; but Felix and Edgar were both jotting
something down, and Robina was beforehand with either--'Scarlet
pimpernel, tortoiseshell butterfly, budgerigar, marmoset.'
No one answered, for Felix had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice,
on which she read--'"Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't
think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't it a little brown bird?'
'With a rich glow of red, and a beautiful song,' said Felix, smiling;
and the red glowed redder on her cheek, as she said, laughing, 'Kitten
for mischief, eh? For shame, Mr. Underwood!--What, another! Dear me, I
shall not know myself!'
This had been slipped into her hand; and Cherry suspected that her
exclamation had been a mistake of which she was conscious, as the
colour deepened on her already blushing cheeks, and her eyes were
cast down, while a demure smile played on her lips. The incautious
exclamation had betrayed her, and the young ones clamoured to hear
Edgar's view of her transmigration; but there was a little coy struggle
of 'Oh no, she wouldn't, and she couldn't.'
'She smiled and blushed, and oft did say
Her pretty oath by yea or nay.'
And in the midst came the message that the maid was arrived to take
her home; and this being a cross stiff personage, who might never be
kept waiting, she had to hurry away; and had no sooner gone than Angela
burst out with, 'Here it is! I've got it! Listen to it: "Say, Lady--"'
'Stay, Angela,' interrupted Felix. 'You have no business with that.'
'Not Edgar's fun!' she exclaimed. 'Why, where is he?'
'Surely he is not going home with her!' said Wilmet in some dismay.
'Oh, but it is such fun,' went on Angela, 'only I can't make it out.
You read it, Lance.'
'Did she give it you?' said Felix.
'No, I whipped it up when she dropped it. There's something about
Ratton in it.'
Felix quietly took the paper out of her hand, folded it, and put it
into an envelope. 'You take it back to her the first thing to-morrow,'
he said. 'Now go to bed.'
Angela durst not oppose that tone, so unusually serious and
authoritative; but she contrived to prolong her good-nights, and the
putting away of her goods, with a kind of half droll, half sullen
resignation; and just as Wilmet was hurrying her off, Edgar returned.
He always spoilt Angela a little, and she sprang to him with a kind of
droll pout. 'You'll not be cross, Edgar. You'll let us hear Alice's
transmigrations. Look! here's Felix bottled them up in an envelope, and
won't let us peep at them! But you'll let me hear. You won't order me
off to bed.'
Cherry fancied she saw a disconcerted look on his face when he saw the
envelope held up to him; but if so, it instantly gave place to the
mischievous entertainment of defeating a lesson on discretion.--'The
heads of the family must assert themselves sometimes, my dear, even
about nothing,' he said consolingly.
'Indeed,' said Wilmet, bristling in defence of Felix, 'of course we
knew it was nothing. It was only very ill-mannered and wrong of Angela
to go prying into what was not meant to be shown.'
'I'm sure,' said Edgar most ungratefully, 'it might be posted on the
church door for what I care, except for its intrinsic vileness.'
'Oh, let's have it! let's have it!' burst out Lance and Robina, who had
been burning with curiosity all the time.
'Don't let us have them murdered, whatever they are,' said Edgar,
taking them into his own hand. 'Pity the sorrows of a poor wretch
seduced into one of your horrid _jeux d'esprit_--a lady's excuse for
fishing for compliments that sound more than they mean. Here goes,
then:--
'Say, Lady, what existence past
Thine essence hath enfolded;
What humble antecedent cast
Thy present self hath moulded.
'The hawthorn bush, with blossom white
Veiling her branches pricking;
The painted lady, fluttering light,
The rash pursuer tricking.
'Grass paraquit, who loves to sit
In clustering rows and chat on;
Caressing, purring, traitor kit,
Fatal to Master Ratton.
'There, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are satisfied,' he concluded,
letting his performance float into the fire; 'the metaphors, to say the
least, are startling, but that is the fault of the game.'
'I don't enter into it all,' said Cherry.
'Not likely another of the grass paraquits would, my dear,' said Edgar.
'And it is exactly what Robin made her,' said Angela; 'both that and
the butterfly; and Felix, the kitten. You didn't borrow of course. How
funny!'
'But I didn't make her inconstant,' said Robin; 'that is not fair.'
'Not when you made her a butterfly, and the shepherd's weather-glass
too!'
'I never thought of that, only their being both bright, dark, sparkling
things; and Felix has the forget-me-not, by way of antidote.'
'I do not think such things are wise,' pronounced Wilmet. 'And,
by-the-by, Edgar, it has always been the custom that nobody should walk
home with Alice. Miss Pearson would not like it, and it would make a
talk.'
Edgar laughed. 'Dear W. W., let it not trouble you! What it may lead
to is a bugbear to you. You can't think how much younger and more
agreeable you will be when you have learnt that there can be passages
that lead to nothing.'
Geraldine went to bed uncomfortable and perplexed. Before she was
dressed in the morning, Alice darted in. 'Cherry, I'm so vexed; I
dropped that paper. Do you think it is here?'
'No; Angel picked it up, and Edgar read us the verses, and then threw
them into the fire.'
'Burnt them!'
'Yes; he said the worst of such games was that they force one to pay
compliments that may be taken to mean more than they do.'
Cherry spoke under a stern sense of virtue doing a service to Alice;
and when the quick answer came, 'He didn't say that, I'm sure it was
Wilmet,' she asseverated, 'Indeed he did. I don't confuse in that way.
It is a very good warning not to dwell on what gentlemen may say in
mere play.'
'Who told you I did?' said Alice sharply. 'You've no business to say
such things!'
Happily there was an interruption. Cherry felt as if she had had a
taste of the claws; but she feared she had been malicious, and she was
penitent.