THE OLD SQUIRE AND THE NEW.
'I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn.'
T. Hood.
So it was that the Reverend Edward Clement Underwood became Vicar of Vale Leston Abbas; and as Geraldine observed, when she saw his whole worldly possessions waiting for the omnibus, he probably carried with him less personal property than any entering incumbent on the rolls of fame. All was contained in one box, one portmanteau, and one black bag, and chiefly consisted in the more clerical of his father's books, his pocket-communion plate in the well-worn case, and a few gifts from St Matthew's, not unaccompanied with cautions on their use.
He spent a few days at home; and Mr. Bevan, who after his five years' holiday had just come home, not only called on him, but asked him to preach and to dine, including Felix in the latter invitation; but both were impossible, as Clement was due at Vale Leston on the Saturday. Thenceforth his family heard little of him. He had never been much of a letter-writer, except when he sent a sort of essay on Church affairs to direct the Pursuivant, and even these nearly ceased, so that, as Lance said, there was no guessing whether he viewed the squire as the wicked world or as a sick old sinner. And with Lance, Clement had had a sort of passage-at-arms. He wanted much to have sent him to the University, and was much vexed when Lance for many reasons declined; but the offer and refusal were unknown—by the wish of both parties—to the rest of the family. Clement said it was all indolence, and passion for that organ of Ferdinand Travis's, which, now it had come at last, had proved transcendently well worth waiting for. Clement viewed it with some jealousy, and predicted that Lance would rue his decision; and Lance could not help resenting what was unjust in the accusation and prognostic, the more for what was just in it. To be sure, his displeasure went no further than the resumption of the impudent old name of Tina, but from Lance that implied much.
Clement as a beneficed clergyman was something tangible; otherwise people were rather disappointed to find Mr. Underwood in his natural place, looking just as usual, and though to one or two close inquirers he allowed that some property might come to him some day, he declared that it made no difference. And when people found no blunders in their accounts, no failures in their serials, and no neglect of their parcels, they left off thinking he must necessarily be demoralised; and though the Tribune sneered more than ever at the organ of a bloated aristocracy, the world in general soon forgot, and then disbelieved, that their attentive bookseller had any 'expectations.'
Indeed, Felix himself had made up his mind, as he told his home sister and brother, that the Squire had still many years to live, and that the inheritance was only to be viewed as a dispensation from laying by for old age, a point on the duty of which he had never decided, having in truth nothing to lay by. The interests he now had in the place, and the security of a welcome, satisfied his affection for it; and he was too much at home in his present occupation to feel impatient to have it ended.
Geraldine found the waiting a greater trial. Longings for the green grass, the purple moorland, the sparkling river, and broad sea would come over her; and she would wonder whether the best years of their lives were to be spent in the Bexley streets, where she could not help fancying the smoke of the potteries more apparent than ever; and whether Felix were condemned to stand behind a counter till he had grown too old to begin a new life. Then she blamed herself, and tried to struggle the thought away; but there was to her an absolute oppression in Bexley summer air, and an uncongeniality in the dull ugly surroundings, that made content an almost impossible achievement; and the anticipation assuredly did not make her happier for the present.
She declared however that Angela was wholesome to her, as a tipsy Helot was to the Spartans. The girl was intoxicated with the prospect when she suddenly plunged into it on coming home for the summer holidays. It seemed nearly as good as her intended Duke, and she talked continually of the horses she would ride, the tours she would take, the balls she would frequent, while Felix would drily build up her castles to some such manifestly outrageous height as to make them topple down headlong with her.
She was not the only Helot. Madame Tanneguy's sympathetic excitement knew no bounds, and she clasped her hands with a gesture learnt in France, as she rejoiced in Mr. Underwood being reinstated, and never would hear or understand that there was no re in the case. She would be enthusiastic; she would drop in on Sundays, and question Felix point by point about that magnificent place; and it must be owned that he liked sympathy well enough not to answer her as ungraciously as Cherry would have approved. She even tried to bring little Gustave, that he and Theodore might grow accustomed to one another; but in this she never succeeded, for Theodore having learnt that he must neither scream at nor attack the little Frenchman, never saw him approach without retreating to Sibby in the kitchen, or his brothers in the office.
But Lady Price's demonstrations were much more amusing. She had come home a good deal subdued and more on her guard, and she could take advantage of the former Miss Underwood having been so fully occupied to excuse her past neglect. She asked Felix to dinner, and his sisters to croquet parties indefatigably, and tried to get up musical entertainments which must lead to his singing with Miss Caroline. What to do was a perplexity. Felix did not like to refuse altogether overtures from the Rectory, for he had a warm feeling for poor Mr. Bevan himself; but the horrible penance of singing with Miss Price he backed out of pitilessly on the score of want of time; and as to the garden parties, Geraldine hated them, and would have declined them altogether if Angela had not been wild to go; and Felix and Wilmet both decreed that it would be better for the child to accustom her to a little society than to leave her pining and raving for amusement within her reach. So as long as Angela was at home, Cherry consented to go to the Rectory croquet, and horribly dull she found it. Lady Price used demonstratively to inquire after her sister Lady Vanderkist, and how Mr. Clement was getting on, and would introduce her to two or three of the lookers on; but they were not apt to be of the mould who brought out Cherry's powers of conversation; and she never got on well with any one but the old Miss Crabbe who had once brought Stella home, and who knew the Vale Leston neighbourhood, and could tell her a good deal about it.
Wilmet had never come home to institute her reformation. John's occupation did not give him much leisure, and his mother's kindred sent him so urgent an invitation, that he felt the more obliged to carry his wife among them, because it was an act of forgiveness for his marrying her. One of his mother's sisters had died, leaving him her portion, and the survivor yearned after poor Lucy's son and his little boy. So Wilmet was taken amongst the Oglandby clan, and took all the gentlemen by storm by her beauty, and all the ladies by her domesticity and good sense; and John found himself so taken up with business connected with the bequest, that no time could be made for either of the homes. Besides, it was greatly suspected that as a mother Wilmet was afraid of Theodore and his jealousy, for she never offered to run down without her husband. Indeed, he was carrying on a hard struggle to keep up to his work through the inveterate remains of neuralgic suffering left by his accident, and only those who stayed any time in the house knew how brave an effort were his industry and cheerfulness.
Robina had a capital situation as second governess in a large household, where she seemed very happy; while William Harewood continued to win prosperity and honour at Oxford, ending by obtaining a first class, and becoming a student of Christchurch. Who would have augured the like of Bill?
The most visible effects of the heirship were big hampers of game, which appeared at intervals all through the autumn and winter; and Felix did thoroughly enjoy the carrying over the choicest spoils therefrom to Marshlands, where they gave a great deal of pleasure and a certain kind of pride. Now that Mr. Froggatt had seen no symptoms of the turning of Felix's head, he began to believe in his prospects, and to be a good deal divided between regard for him and for the business.
Bernard was the one who profited most by the present state of things. Not only did he go over twice, for a day, from Stoneborough to Vale Leston, but he spent a week there at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, chiefly in the society of the gamekeeper. So supremely happy was he, and so brilliant were his descriptions to Madame Tanneguy, that by the time they had gone through a Russian scandal process among her confidantes Vale Leston had swelled to the dimensions of Windsor Castle; and Lance and Angel were incited to prepare for her especial benefit a parody of 'Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time,' with Clement in the character and costume of the Abbot, presiding over the like profusion of game.
Not much more could be got out of the boy. He would talk indeed plentifully, but it was all of rabbits and ferrets, pheasants and ducks, horses and dogs. He evidently viewed himself as the Underwood who alone could do his duty by the feræ naturæ of the estate; and though his magniloquence was not perfectly trustworthy, the elders gathered from it that the old Squire had really been pleased to find in one of the brothers the sportsman tastes he could appreciate, and had encouraged the boy by telling him all manner of hunting anecdotes, and letting him have the run of the woods. Bernard was small enough to have no dignity to lose, and had galloped on the ponies turned out to grass; but Felix had a curiosity to learn how Clement got on with the chestnut, a question which set the school-boy into fits of laughing. 'Oh! I believe he sticks on somehow now, but just like a pair of compasses, you know. Joe says if he has been spilt once he has been spilt forty times. He knows by the mud on his clothes, you see; but Mr. Eddard, as every one calls him, never says one word about it, but stalks in just as upright as ever, and only once or twice they thought he was a little stiff.'
'But does he go on all the same?' asked Cherry, rather alarmed.
'Oh yes, 'tis dogged as does it; and one can't get about there without riding; such roads, and mud, and water-courses up to your knees. Yes, and Joe doesn't think he's been off for more than a month now.'
'Hurrah!' said Lance, 'I always knew Clem had lots of pluck in his own way! And does he drive?'
'He drives out the Squire whenever it is fine enough.'
Much more could not be made out. The boy had, as Cherry said, a fine singleness of eye. The game was in full focus, all the rest very dim and obscure. Yes, Clem had a jolly room enough. What he did, or whether he went out much, this deponent knew not, only that he believed the church bell rang at eight—he thought Clem rang it himself. Dinner was at seven, uncommon jolly—a capital cellar—and he was with difficulty called back from an imposing enumeration of wines, to say that Mrs. Fulbert was certainly not in the house. Mr. Underwood seldom left his room till the middle of the day, and then, if he were well and the weather fine, Clement attended his airing, then left him to sleep, and after dinner played piquet or cribbage with him. When once Mr. Staples dined there, Bernard had taken a hand at whist, of which he was inordinately proud.
That was all that could be gathered with any certainty, though Bernard did nothing but groan for Vale Leston whenever he was not skating. They had learnt that the Vicar of Vale Leston could ride and play at cards, and they might make the most of that.
Nor did they hear more till the next April, when Felix received the following note:—
Vale Leston Priory, April 29th.
MY DEAR FELIX,If you can get away I wish you would come down without loss of time. Just after Bernard left us, Mr. Underwood got a chill, and has had a good deal of suppressed gout. The doctor thinks ill of him. I find he never has been a Communicant. Latterly, the sense of wrong done to my father has held him back. It is not satisfactory now, and I long for a priest of experience, but I must do my best, and time and faculty seem failing. Your presence and participation would be a comfort. Can you run down? I will have the 4.40 train met on Monday.
Your affectionate Brother,
E.C.U.
At 4.40 accordingly, Felix beheld a sporting-looking dog-cart of varnished wood, containing a long black figure holding a very big chestnut horse, and stretching out an eager hand to grasp his brother's. 'That's right, Felix! I'm glad you are come!'
'Is he worse?'
'He has been changing rapidly since I wrote to you. Page does not know what to think of him. I've been writing to ask Dr. May to come over to-morrow.'
'You look fagged, Clem. Does the nursing fall on you?'
'We have a nurse now; and he seemed disposed to sleep, so I thought I might come and meet you,' said Clement, who not only had the heavy eyes of broken rest, but altogether had lost the childish contour of face, and acquired the stamp of thought and reality.
'The daughter-in-law is no help, I suppose?'
Clement laughed, but rather sadly. 'They had had a great row over poor Fulbert's properties before I came on the scene at all. She never was anything but a grievance to him. He meant his son to have had Marilda; and when that failed, consented to pay his debts and let him marry this person, on his yielding to take Holy Orders—a miserable business, and he feels it so now. I have tried to bring about a better state of feeling, but I can't feel my way. I think there is more good in her than he gives her credit for; and he fancies she blinds me, and has as good as ordered me never to speak of her again.'
'Then he has quite adopted you?'
'Oh, yes, he is very kind to me,' said Clement warmly, and from what he went on to say, it was clear that he had grown fond of his charge, and found it far less of a burthen than he had expected, though he must have been often crossed, and could have met with little congeniality.
He had been left quite unfettered in action as a clergyman; indeed, the Squire had supported him under the growls of a few malcontents, and though this was chiefly on the ground that State must stand by Church, Underwood by Underwood, and that tenants had no business to think, still it was effective. The only quarrels had been caused by the young Vicar's peacemaking endeavours towards the widow, his proclivities towards the pariahs of Blackstone Gulley, and his backwardness to enter into county gaieties.
'Young men were hardly to be trusted if they were not like young men,' argued the Squire; and he was vexed if he found Clement avoiding a party or refusing a dinner on the score of parish engagements. Indeed, an invitation from a sporting nobleman of a questionable repute was declined at the cost of such offence, that Clement had thought he should have to reconstruct the Vicarage, if not repair at once to sleep in the hay-loft thereof; but after one evening's storm, the subject had never been renewed. To have had more of the animal and less of the spiritual in his young inmate would have been pleasanter and more comprehensible to the old gentleman; and he had begun by a certain distrust of what the military comrades of his youth and the hunting associates of his later years would have declared sanctimonious hypocrisy in so young a man. The first offer—as a mere matter of course—to read prayers to him had been received with a snarl, and a dry 'Thank you, I'll let you know when I require your services.'
Clement had desisted, and strengthened by the Vicar's counsel, had waited to feel his way and win his ground, by many a reading of the newspaper, many a game at piquet, many a prose on the Shaw misdeeds and on county politics, and by what the poor old man had never known before—the genuine filial kindness of reverence for age and infirmity, without interested adulation.
After all, it was the attacks on the young parson's new-fangledness that first led to discussions that died away only to be renewed again, revealing queer prejudices and conclusions based on nearly total ignorance—the ignorance of a careless son of a careless household sixty years back, and since alienated from all religious teaching by the consciousness of one act of injustice in requital of unusual forbearance and generosity.
Clement felt as though he had done nothing, and that the opportunity was fast fleeting. Where he had but stirred the waters, he thought that a man like Mr. Fulmort might have produced real effect; and he was downcast and humble at his own inefficiency, though he allowed that no stranger would probably have been permitted to go so far as he, a youth, an Underwood, and a son of the injured cousin's.
This, Felix's third arrival, was unlike the former ones. He had no need to watch his brother's countenance for tokens of interest; Clement was the one at home, and with his heart in the place, though still he looked as if he thought there was irrelevance in the cry of loving joy that broke from Felix at first sight of the valley in its beauty. The moor, the wood, the river, and the sea, did not go for much with the Vicar—it was the people he thought of, and the damages and deficiencies of the Church struck him infinitely more than the grandeur of the tower and picturesque beauty of the building.
He had no power to make changes in the fabric; and indeed, it had been Mr. Fulmort's advice that in all the alterations which he should introduce, he should carefully distinguish between essentials and non-essentials, including in the former that spiritual support for himself, which was needful to prevent the salt from losing savour, and himself from becoming lowered to his people's level while waiting to raise them, but omitting what would be viewed as mere outward ornament till minds were trained to enter into it.
So, though Abednego Tripp's voice still reigned supreme in the responses, there was a full complement of daily prayer and weekly feast, though the Vicar's very heart ached over the blankness, dreariness, and scant attendance. The main body of the parishioners never indeed openly censured an Underwood, but they viewed these aberrations on the part of 'Mr. Eddard,' as an outcome of gentlefolks' lack of employment 'The last Passon Fulbert, he were all for hosses, this here Passon Eddard, he be all for churchings,' was the parish judgment; and only now and then were deep-set grafts implanted by his father discovered to cheer his heart.
Indeed, the influences of school, visiting, lectures, and classes, were the more impeded by the influence of the four Miss Hepburns.
'Ah!' said Clement, as he touched his hat to a tall grey and russet form, 'there goes one of the trials of my life! All the religion in the parish was kept up by those good ladies, and now they think mine worse than none. They call me "Poor young man!" Yes, you may laugh, Felix; but it is they who prevent me from making way. If they were only Dissenters, I should know what to be at; but they have deserved all the love and reverence of the parish all these years, and now they turn it against me!'
'Knowingly?'
'So far as that they sigh at me, and warn people against trusting to ordinances, as if I ever taught any such thing, or as if people needed to be told not to go to church.'
'They don't do that?'
'Not exactly; but it amounts to an excuse for not going. And if I object to one tract, they ingeniously substitute another just as bad. I can't turn them out of the school. They were so much disgusted when I got the Sunday school out of the Lady Chapel into the Vicarage, the stable you know, that I was in hopes they would cut the concern; but no, they go on like martyrs. Their object is to counteract me. They have as good as told me they think it their mission.'
'Do you argue?'
'Oh yes, I did so plentifully the first six months, but they always assumed I said something I never even dreamt of. They even went to Mr. Underwood, but I don't think they got much out of him,' said Clement, laughing a little. 'Of late I have had no time to go near them; and my one comfort is they don't think Blackstone Gulley a place for ladies, and fancy we have nothing to do with the East Ewmouth suburb. I don't know why I should rejoice, though! The place there grows every day, and into heathenism.'
No wonder poor Clement was fagged, melancholy, and discouraged. His life was lonely. There were no gentry in the village but these ladies; and he—with his strong opinions and assertion of his office—was exactly the person to be as heavy a trial to middle-aged ladies of opposite traditions, and accustomed to a semi-pastorate in the neglected parish, as ever they could be to him. The neighbouring clergy, except one overtasked incumbent, on the farther side of Ewmouth, were of their way of thinking, pitied them, and stood courteously aloof from the new-comer. Stoneborough was too far off for much intercourse, and even there his peculiarities stood in his light, and his position as the guest of his invalid kinsman prevented him from bringing a friend to stay with him, or arranging an exchange to give himself relaxation. He had not even been able to go up to Cambridge for his M.A. degree, and had not once slept out of the Priory. Of this he did not complain, but no doubt this isolation had assisted in his depression and belief that he was failing utterly, and doing nothing but mischief.
It seemed to be an inexpressible relief to talk to some one who could understand him; and perhaps he had never so enjoyed his brother's society before.
The butler met them at the door, saying that Mr. Underwood was awake, and asking for both him and 'Mr. Felix;' and Clement led the way at once to the sitting-room, where the old man still was daily wheeled, for the restlessness of rapid failure was on him; and the sight of his wan puffy-looking face and the sinking in of his whole figure startled Felix, even after what he had heard. He lighted up a little at the sight of 'Edward,' and held out a cold damp hand to Felix, complaining of chill; nor could he bear to lose sight of the younger cousin again. Every moment he wanted his help to change his posture or alter his pillows; and when the brothers were called away to dinner, Clement would hardly have gone save to obtain an opportunity of telling his brother that he saw much change in this short time, and to despatch a message for the medical man from Ewmouth.
He, however, said nothing definite, but administered an anodyne, and promised to come early, advising Clement to leave the night-watch to the nurse, as causing less excitement, and perhaps with a view likewise to the visible effects of a long course of anxious and disturbed nights.
But in the early light of May morning, Clement was standing by his brother's bed-side, saying in a low agitated voice, 'Felix, I think the end is coming. His mind is clear, and he wants to see you. I think we ought to have the Celebration. I hoped to have brought him to send for Jane—in fact, I have sent. You must judge if we ought to wait.'
Felix had less experience of the approach of death than the young clergyman, but the ashy sunken face and hollow breath assured him that there was no time to lose. The old man was sensible, and perfectly knew Felix, but was too much oppressed to speak much; only after a time he said, with an odd kind of smile, 'That boy Edward does more for me than ever my own, poor fellow—like his father—glad he has his place—he's not next to you?'
'Not if poor Edgar be living, sir.'
'Don't let a scamp come between him and the property,' gasped the old man; but Felix felt no need of answering.
'Wish my uncle had signed his will,' was the next murmur. 'Edward and Mary would have done better—maybe, my poor boy, too. Is Edward there? I say—you lads—never drive a son into the Church, whatever you do.'
It was a remote temptation, but there was an echo of repentance in the warning. No more was said till all had been made ready. Old Tripp had been sent for to make up the number; the household contained no Communicant. The dying man made each brother give him his hand, and said, 'Peace with all, isn't that it? You, both of you, Felix and Edward, I did use your father and mother as I ought not, though somehow I thought at the time I had the right, but I believe I have suffered for it all my life; and I ask your pardon as I would ask theirs.'
'Indeed you have it, as I know you had theirs,' Felix said. 'My brother knows as well as I, how no word like bitterness was ever allowed amongst us.'
'Did Edward forgive me at last?'
'Not at last,' said Felix; 'he had done it so much at first, that he never thought of it.'
'And,' added Clement, 'will you not send a message to your daughter-in-law—to Jane, sir?'
'To Jane? Much she cares! Well, if you say I must, and if Edward forgave me, I suppose—Tell her I'll do my best to forgive—but if she had never got hold of poor Fulbert—God forgive me—what am I getting to? Only mind she doesn't do the same by you. Ay, I'm at peace with her and all of 'em! Only don't let her come. God have mercy on me?' The cry was, at least, half bodily.
And so the holy rite began in dark doubt and dim trust and hope. How unlike the bright cheeriness and the joy that no man could take away from Edward Underwood's last Communion! This was the last interval of clear consciousness. All that day he was dying, with just perception enough to cling to Clement's presence and voice, as almost unceasingly the young man held him up, and prayed with and for him with the earnestness of one who held intensely full faith in the might of intercessory prayer to aid the spirit in the doubtful strife, often supported by the thought of the prayers that were rising in so many churches far away for the struggling and the dying.
Felix was with him at times, but no one could do much to aid his physical exertion; and it was needful to keep guard over Mrs. Fulbert Underwood, as long as there was mind enough left for her presence to cause emotion. It had been right of Clement to send for her, but she was a trying element in the day, though not loud or coarse, but tearful and affectionate about the dear old Squire's former kindness and the wretched misunderstanding that had come between. There was every reason to believe her a harpy, but at this moment she could not show her talons; and Felix was divided between sense of humbug and fear of injustice during the long uncongenial tête-à-tête. The only breaks in it were from the doctors. Mr. Page was backwards and forwards the whole day, and Dr. May came in the course of the morning; but they could do nothing but apply these resources of science that seem but to lengthen out the death agony. However, the greatest refreshment of that day was a turn under the wall with Dr. May, hearing how highly he thought of Clement's whole conduct towards the old man.
'I don't say the lad is altogether after my cut,' said the Doctor. 'We old folks used to think ourselves up in the steeple, and now we find these young ones think us down in the crypts. I'm afraid he may be bringing a hornet's nest about his ears, but that's all outside; and for the rest, nobody could have had such an effect on poor old Ful Underwood without something very genuine in him.'
'That is quite true,' said Felix; 'Clement has startled us sometimes, but we have never done otherwise than respect his thorough sincerity; and he always shows to the very best in any trouble or trial.'
'Ay,' said Dr. May; 'and I'll tell you another thing I've been slow to find out. It's not one youth in a hundred that if he is moderate enough to stop with what satisfied our—my—generation, has anything in him. Why, as I saw it well put the other day—Ethel was delighted with the notion—King Arthur tried to work up the Round Table, and because Christian chivalry had raised that generation, comes the Quest of the Sancgreal to lead them higher. 'Tis one of the tests of life whether we will take to our Quest and let others take to it. Tying them down to our Round Table does no good at all. But what am I talking of? You are one of these boys yourself.'
'I suppose I am,' said Felix; 'but I own I should be happier to see things as my father would have had them.'
'Somehow I saw it in you. Veneration has fixed your standard, I take it; and you've had all the cares in the world to sober you. But depend upon it—I've seen it many a time, in my own boys as well as others—enthusiasm carries on the work, and where that is, you may be only too thankful to give a loose rein. A young man must have it out one way or another; and we may well be thankful if he gives it to the Church, even though he may run into what seems queer to us.'
Felix laid up the conversation for himself and Geraldine, and thought it over many times that long day.
Not till late in the evening was the unconsciousness such that Mrs. Underwood could be admitted, and it was not till two in the morning that the struggle was over. Clement had scarcely tasted anything since the hurried, interrupted dinner the previous day, except what his brother had almost forced on him at the bed-side; and he was so stiff, spent, and worn out, that Felix could think of nothing till he had seen him safe in bed.
Nor was it till the clash of the knell had sounded several times, that at eight next morning, Felix gradually awoke; and only slowly did the strokes, as he mechanically counted them, recall to him that the event had happened—that he was in his own house—his mother's rightful inheritance—and that his years of toil and effort were over! To say that his first thought was not exultation would not be true. The recovery of his natural position, and the possession of such a home for his sisters, could not but rejoice him, though with it came the sense of responsibility, and of a perplexing knot to be untied, a knot of wrong to be undone at any—yes, at any cost. 'Even if it leave us as poor as heretofore,' he spoke to himself, 'God grant me to prove my faith in His word as to poverty.'
Ere the tolls had ceased all the multiplied honours they could pay to sixty-five years and Squire-rector, Felix saw Clement, instead of sleeping, on his way to the church. Felix followed thither ere long, and the brothers met at the churchyard gate.
'Well, Clement,' said Felix, as their hands met, 'you have led this to end better than one durst hope.'
'It had all been working long before,' said Clement in a trembling voice.
'It has been a terrible time for you. Are you rested?'
'A little stiff and achy—but that will work off, thank you.'
'And now, Clem, you must stand by me, and help me in what is to be done.'
The two brothers stood looking at the fine old house, the cloister connecting it with the church, the spring beauty blossoming round; Clement put his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said, in a half apologetic tone, 'After all, I can't help being glad it has come to you at last.'
It may be doubted whether any congratulation pleased Felix so much. 'I am glad to have known it so long beforehand,' he answered. 'I hope we shall be enabled to see the right and do it.'
Clement looked at the church and at the village; and again, with warm impulse and tears in his eyes, exclaimed, 'I cannot help being glad. Now I have some hope for my poor people.'
'We will do our best,' said Felix; 'and you will bear with me if I disappoint you.'
'Nay,' said Clement, the tears nearly choking him, 'the really best thing for the place would be, if you would let me give up, and appoint old Flowerdew.'
'What! be driven away by the clan Hepburn?'
'Not that, exactly, except that an older man, who had not made such a wretchedly bad beginning, might make all the difference. Till you are settled in here, you will not conceive the mess I have made of it all.'
'I see you have had a great strain on you; you will look on it differently when you have rested.'
'I don't know,' said Clement. 'It is not that I don't care for the place, Felix,' he added, pleadingly; 'I do now, with all my heart and soul—it is my charge, and must be—only if I could learn a little more, and get rid of a little of my youth and priggishness before I come back, it would be so much better for the people.'
'Of that last article I think you have got rid considerably.'
'I'm sure there's been enough to take the conceit out of me;' and perhaps he proved it by adding, 'But I leave it to you, Felix; I know you think it may be essential to your plans that a brother should hold the vicarage, and if so, of course I would go on, knowing too what an immense difference the influence of this house will make, and the having you to turn to for advice.'
'If we can live here at all,' said Felix. 'I do not in the least know the rights of the property.'
Nor could he tell till after a good deal of talk with the lawyers and looking over of papers. The funeral was to be on the Saturday, and conducted exactly like that of last year. Felix thought the present no time for a protest against the seventy-five yards of black cloth. 'Though this is the last of it,' he said to Clement, 'I'll have no church put in mourning for me.'
He saw very little of his brother, for the house was a good deal beset with Shaws; and besides, Clement, who was to go up to London on the Monday, had a good deal of parish visiting and business in arrear to make up, and so far from resting, scarcely sat down or ate. He would accept no assistance at the funeral, but every one remarked how ill he looked. Afterwards there was a public reading of the will, which named Felix as sole executor as well as heir; and added to the provision for the daughter-in-law by the settlements a charge of three hundred a year on the estate so long as she should remain a widow. A few very unkind things were said by the Shaws, which Clement was young enough to mind a good deal, after all his peacemaking efforts, and which made Bernard's eyes flash.
Bernard was to stay with his brothers over the Sunday; but he must have found it a dull evening, for Clement had a sermon to write, and Felix was deep in calculations till long after the boy had yawned himself off to bed.
At last Felix knocked at Clement's study-door. 'Up still! Clem, you want rest.'
'Not I. But I have just finished. How do things turn out?'
'Fairly,' said Felix, showing him a paper where he had drawn up a statement. 'The property altogether, you see, has been counted at four thousand five hundred a year. Well, out of that Mrs. Underwood has eight hundred a year, and the involvements of Fulbert's debts reduce it a good deal more, so that Mr. Wilder says I must not reckon on more than two thousand three hundred at present, and of that nine hundred and fifty is the great tithe, and the rent of the Glebe farm is three hundred and seventy. Blackstone Gulley belongs to the estate, and could not be sold; but the speculator gave a round sum for a twenty-one years' lease, which will not be run out these four years, so we can do nothing about that at present. Now, Clem, this nine hundred and fifty a year—I'm not going to make it over to you bodily. I think that, with the Glebe Farm, your income as Vicar will be quite as much as is good for a parson.'
'I suppose so,' said Clement, laughing; 'I never felt poor in my life till I had four hundred a year, and I should be poorer still if I had fourteen hundred.'
'No wonder, if you subscribe to everything, and pay for whatever is wanted in the parish instead of asking those who ought! I believe four thousand would not make much difference to you, or four hundred thousand either,' said Felix, who had come to some appalling discoveries as to Clement's ways of dealing with money.
'Perhaps not,' he answered, good humouredly; 'but what do you mean to do? To be your own ecclesiastical commissioner?'
'Something like it; at any rate, not to put it out of my own hands till I see the best way, and that there will be time to do while it is putting the church and the Glebe cottages into a proper state, and setting the Vicarage to rights. Perhaps first of all should come a school-chapel for Blackstone Gully; and as I reckon that all this will take six or seven years, by that time we shall be able to judge what is most wanted—a church and endowment for Blackstone, or for that Ewmouth suburb, or both; and when that is done, I would make over the rectorial rights to the living.'
'O Felix! I never durst think of anything—so like a dream!' said Clement, looking up at him.
'And you will stay here, Clem? I think you must; for you see I can hand over the rent of the glebe, and settle these things with you, taking my time about them in a way I could not do if the incumbent were not my brother and my next heir.'
'But I am not your next heir.'
'I have made you so. I thought it right to draw up a very short will, leaving everything to you, with John Harewood as executor, to save the dead lock there would be in case of my coming to some sudden end. I can perfectly trust to you to do right by the sisters and Theodore; and if Edgar, poor fellow! should come home, I know you would hand over to him what is really secular, and you would feel to be his right. But, Clement, you need have the less scruple at my doing this, that I have come to think there is little likelihood of the dear fellow being alive.'
'Indeed!'
'More than a year ago, Fulbert sent me a scrap of newspaper with an account of a man being found murdered by the bush-rangers. He had been robbed, and there was nothing about him to lead to his identification; but the diggers he had last been with called him Ned Wood. Fulbert went to the place and made all possible inquiries, but could find out nothing, but that he had been noted for singing, and was light-complexioned. Fulbert himself believes it; and I think nothing else would have led Fernan to give up his search. I thought it so entirely vague and improbable, that I let no one but Lance see the letter; indeed, I so utterly disbelieved it, that it did not dwell on me at the time; but the longer we are without hearing, the more I am driven to believe it.'
'You have not told Cherry?'
'If it were a certainty, I could not tell her half what Fulbert heard. I have never spoken to her about it. I will not take away her hope on such grounds.'
'I think you are right. I do not think anything of this story myself.'
'Nor I, at times when I think of "the child of so many prayers,"' said Felix. 'But with such a dreadful possibility, never to be cleared up, you see it would never do to leave things unsettled; so I just did this for the present.'
'Yes, it can be altered at need,' said Clement, with a long breath.
'This house,' said Felix, returning to business, 'is clearly our own; and you will go on with us of course for the present, if we can live here. It has certainly been a priory, but I do not therefore feel bound to restore that; I have read and thought much about those religious houses, and I think that there is no call to give them up as things now stand.'
'If?'
'I must talk it over with some of the financial heads. Of course I wish it for the girls, and my own duty seems to lie here; but if it will not do, I must let the place till the entanglements clear themselves.'
'Let the place? What! and go on with the business?' cried Clement, in consternation.
'I must keep on the business any way.'
'Felix! Impossible! In your position—'
'I cannot have the position if I cannot have the business. Look at it: here is Bernard to be educated, and Lance to go to the University, and four girls without any provision worth naming, besides Theodore; and how is all to be done out of less than a thousand pounds a year, with this house and grounds to be kept up, and where people are used to see five thousand spent?'
'Could you not sell the business?'
'Of course I could; but judging by what I have gathered during this year, the capital I should receive would not bring me in anything in proportion to what I make now; and I cannot afford to lose so much.'
'I don't see that you are a bit better off than you were before!'
'Rather worse, as far as money goes.—But this place! You don't feel the charm of it half enough. What will it not be to Cherry, and little Stella? I do think Cherry will get along here; though Wilmet will say we ought not to try. But I shall pay off all the servants on Monday, and we'll start on a new tack.'
'Yes; I believe they have preyed awfully on the old Squire. There's not one I should wish to keep, in-door or out-door.'
'Then we would begin on a smaller scale, and harden ourselves against traditions. I would get a real good assistant for Lamb, go backwards and forwards, and keep on the Pursuivant myself as before.'
'The Pursuivant is all very well. It is a valuable influence: but can't you keep that, and drop the retail affair?'
'I can't give up three hundred a year for the honour of the thing.'
'But if I live with you, could you not keep the rent of the Glebe farm as my board?'
'You certainly have been sumptuously maintained here, but hardly at the cost of three hundred and seventy pounds! No; I think it would be only fair that you should give a hundred towards the housekeeping, as Mr. Audley used to do, and something more for your horse; but to take any more would only be robbing the Church under another form.'
'I don't like it! It will do you harm in the neighbourhood. You will never take your proper place;' then, as Felix half smiled, 'you wonder at these arguments from me? Yes, but I know the neighbourhood better than you do, and I do not like to see your influence and usefulness crippled.'
'That may be; but the choice lies between being looked down on for being in trade and continuing in this wrong to the Church.'
'Surely we could live at small expense here! We have all been used to frugality.'
'Yes, and I have seen that stinting has not a happy effect. In such a house as this, we cannot live as we have done at home. We can do without display, but plain hospitality we must have, and debt would be worse than trade. Ah, Clem! the old home has made you the exclusive aristocrat again! Recollect, such a restitution must involve sacrifice of some sort. We must have the Underwood "rood" some way or other. You are ready enough to let it be in money and luxury, but can't you let it be in—what shall I call it—consideration? That is, if it does make any difference, or if we find it out.'
'You'll find it out fast enough from the Miss Hepburns,' muttered Clement.
Felix laughed 'Poor Clem! Hepburns first and last! I'm sorry to disgrace you!'
But during that laugh Clement had bethought himself. 'I beg your pardon, Felix; you are a lesson to me. I did not know that it was the world that was arguing in me. To go on working in trade in order to make restitution to the Church is heroism I did not grasp at first.'
'Perhaps,' said Felix more lightly, 'it is all reluctance to give up being somebody at Bexley for the sake of being nobody in Ewshire. Don't look so unhappy, old fellow; University men and beneficed clergy, like you, think much of what I was inured to long ago. Come, put out your lamp, and come up to bed; I am sure you can't finish that sermon to-night.'
'If I did,' said Clement, shutting it up, 'it would be to say I was not worth ever to preach again!'
Perhaps Felix, who had entirely disbelieved the report of Edgar's fate till his mind had in a manner become accustomed to the idea, had underrated the amount of shock that it would give Clement, who had never been half so much attached to poor Edgar as himself; nor perhaps might it have done so, but for the unnerved overstrained condition to which the year's solitude and responsibility, the months of nursing, and the days of severe fatigue, had brought him.
Felix was wakened from his first sleep by the strangled scream of nightmare in the next room, and hastening in, broke the spell, and found that poor Clement had been dreaming out what he had told him, and had deemed himself bound, gagged, struggling to come to Edgar's aid, and ask his pardon for having done him some horrible injury, the load of which did not at first pass with awakening.
'No,' he said, when he had entirely resumed his waking powers, 'it is too true! Things never were as they ought to have been between us! Who knows what difference it might have made!'
'Of course,' said Felix, thinking that to talk it all out would conduce to Clement's quieter rest. 'We can all look back to much that we would have had otherwise; but I trace the original mischief to those days when Mr. Ryder, young and eager, talked out all his crudities to the cleverest boy in his school, just as he had done to his Oxford friends. He feels it himself, I think. He gave unintentionally a sort of resource against whatever was distasteful, and made all the scepticism that the poor dear fellow was exposed to abroad not seem a mere foreign aberration. Somehow he was afraid of what religion might do to him, and so took refuge not so much in doubt, as in knowing it was doubted. The only thing that I ever knew touch him, was something Lance said to him about refusing to go and live with him in London.'
'Yes; his brightness did good, where my assumptions only added to the general contempt.'
'Still, the more I think, the more I do believe that whether we ever know it or not, so sweet and loving a nature must come right at last.'
And there in the dark those two brothers knelt down together and in deep undertones uttered a few clauses of intense prayer. Then Clement said in a broken voice, 'Felix, do keep your present room, and let us say this together every night.'
And the elder brother's only answer was such a fatherly kiss as he gave the younger ones. They remembered that night long after!
On the Sunday Clement was not only exhausted and unwell, but could not help allowing it, for he fainted after his first service, and was forced to allow himself to lie by whenever he was not actually needed, letting Felix spare him whatever was possible. Thus it was that the new Squire astonished the natives by taking the Vicar's Sunday class in the stable that served for the school. By-the-by, instead of receiving such a lecture as used to be the penalty of intrusting his own Bexley boys to Clement, he was now dejectedly forewarned that the Vale Lestonites did not know half as much, and had the more reason to think it true because such an extraordinary proceeding on a Squire's part filled them with blank speechless amazement.
The congregation were equally full of wonder, approaching to incredulity, when their new Mr. Underwood stood forth surpliced, and read the Lessons. He had done the like often for Mr. Flowerdew; but he would not have thus amazed the villagers on this first Sunday if he had not been really uneasy as to their Vicar's powers of getting through the services. And it really was a memorable thing, to Clement at least, to hear his full clear beautiful voice setting forth the delights of the Land of Promise, the goodly houses and fields, and the warnings that he was verily taking to himself against the heart being lifted up, and forgetting, or turning to serve the gods the former nations had served—the gods may be of family pride, and pleasure, and ease, and comfort. To Clement it seemed as though he read the whole magnificent chapter of Deuteronomy like a manifesto of his own future course, declaring all against which he meant to beware. It was just as, when he had to seal up a bundle of papers that evening, he took up a big old white cornelian seal with the family shield, and said, squeezing it down into a deep well-prepared bed of red sealing-wax, 'There, I never did that before; I couldn't be liable for armorial bearings!' And as Bernard exclaimed, 'Yes, now you are a gentleman out and out!' he answered gravely, 'Not forgetting the motto, Bear. Remember what we take up.'
'There's no sense in those old sing-song saws,' boldly averred Bernard.
'Perhaps you'll know better some day.'
Felix went himself to St Matthew's with Clement, and had a private conference with Mr. Fulmort, the result of which was, that the senior curate, very glad of a breath of May loveliness, went down for three weeks to Vale Leston, while the Vicar thereof refreshed his spirit at St Matthew's, and that when he went back again he was to take with him the Reverend Frederick Somers, to stay till the family move should bring him other companions.
The only sister within reasonable distance was Robina; and Felix could not deny himself a call on her, especially as there were no further considerations about incommoding the family with her relations. He was shown into a big drawing-room, not at the moment inhabited, but with the air of being used by easy-going happy people; and almost immediately in flew the neat trim black-silken personage with the sunny round face he had come in search of.
'Felix! dear Felix! how nice and good to come in all your glory! Lady de la Poer was in the school-room, and she told me to ask you to stay to luncheon. Do, pray! I want you to see her and Grace, and my children.'
'Very well. If I do, can you come out with me afterwards? I want your help.'
'Oh yes! I am sure I shall be able. I'll ask at luncheon, if Lady de la Poer does not offer.'
'Have you spoken to her?'
'Told her? Of course. We had quite a festival in the schoolroom, and all drank your health in cowslip wine. We had had a whole lot of cowslips sent up from the Towers; and their papa came in, and wanted to know if Mr. Underwood were not worthy of a more generous beverage. Oh, I wish he were at home; I want you to see him!' ('And him to see you,' she had on the tip of her tongue, but she thought he would not like it.)
'And when are you coming home?'
'When you all go to take possession. I would not lose that for anything. I am to have my holiday then.'
'Holiday! You are coming for good.'
'Don't you think,' she said, looking up in his face, 'that after all this education on purpose for a teacher, it would be a shame to throw it all up and come to live on you?'
'That was just one of the things I value this inheritance for, Robin. There's no fear but that you would find plenty to do.'
'You have three to do it,' she said; 'and the more Angela has on her hands the better she will get on. I have been thinking it over ever since you wrote, Felix, and I cannot see that your having an estate makes it right in me to live dependent when I can maintain myself. It would not if I were your brother.'
'You are not going in for women's rights, Bob?' he said, smiling.
'Not out-and-out. But listen. What you have for us is just the run of the house, isn't it?'
'Well, yes,' he hesitated. 'It will take some time and prudence to make a provision for you, you horribly wise bird!'
'Then would it not be foolish to come and eat up your provision at home when I can do something towards making one myself; and I am really very happy?' and there was colour enough in her cheek slightly to startle her brother.
'Oh, if you are too happy here to come away—'
'Don't say that! she cried. 'I like it, for they are all kind and bright; and I never had such a friend as Lady Grace—and I feel as if I were doing a duty; but—oh no!—'
'Don't be so horribly discomfited, my dear. Only when young ladies are so happy away from home, and want to make a provision—My dear little sister, I beg your pardon—'
'Stay, Felix; I must tell you now, that you may not fancy anything so dreadful as that it is any one here.'
'Then there's an "it is," after all!'
'No! oh, I don't know! I tried to speak to Wilmet, and she would not let me; but when we were both ridiculous children, a little foolish nonsense passed between him and me.'
'Whom?'
'Willie!'
'Will Harewood? I thought that was all the Bailey nonsense.'
'I can't tell,' said Robina, leaning against him and looking down. 'Do all I can, I can't forget the sort of—of promise; and I've never been sure whether he meant it, but—but I think he did. O Fee! is it bad of me?'
'My sweet Bob,' he said, and kissed her, 'I am glad you have told me. I never thought of such an affair being on your little mind. I must say I wish it had not happened.'
'No, don't say that,' said Robina. 'It does not worry me;' and she laughed at the very sound of the words. 'Why, can't you see how happy I am? and I mean to be. I know how good and nice he is; and if he doesn't remember, or can't do it, there's no harm done. (This was in a tone brave because it was incredulous.) But if ever it did come to anything, I should like to have something to help on with.'
'Very practical and business-like, my bird! And I am afraid it is a sign it goes deep!' he said musingly.
'Deep!' she said, looking up to him, 'of course it does! It would be very odd if it did not! But that will only make me glad of whatever is good for Will; and I think the waiting is all right. I do want to have done something for him! The only question is whether it will be bad for you at Vale Leston to have a governess sister.'
'There's worse than that, Robin,' said Felix, gravely, 'for the Squire himself remains a bookseller!'
'You don't mean that!'
He briefly explained.
'That quite settles it,' she said. 'I could not go home and live in idleness while you were working on.'
'I believe you are right, Robin; but I am disappointed. I did reckon on my sisters living like ladies!'
'Isn't three enough for you,' laughed Robin, 'to set up in a row and wait upon, as Stella does on her dolls?'
'Precisely so. I don't think I could have let you turn Effective Female on my hands, if you hadn't a pretty little feminine aim of your own.'
'For shame, Felix! Don't ever think about that again! Only tell me when to ask for my holiday.'
'There are a few repairs that must be done at once; besides I've made a clean sweep of the servants, and turned in old Tripp's daughter to do for Clement. I don't think we can possibly be ready for a month or six weeks.'
By this time the gong was sounding; and Lady de la Poer came in with a kind and friendly greeting. Felix soon found himself in the midst of a large family party of all ages, full of bright mirth, among whom Robina spoke and moved with home-like ease, and he himself took his place as naturally as it was given to him. Lady de la Poer knew a little of Ewshire, and talked to him about it in the pleasantest manner, giving the sense of congratulation without obtruding it; and she, without waiting to be requested—proposed Miss Underwood's going out with him, proclaiming that she would herself take the children into Kensington Gardens.
Then, while Robina was gone to prepare, she said, 'Your sister told me she does not wish to leave us. I said I could not consider the answer as final till she had seen you. Perhaps I ought not till she has seen your new home.'
'Thank you,' said Felix. 'I confess it seemed to me startlingly prudent and independent; but when I came to think it over, I could hardly say that the child is wrong.'
'We were very glad, as you may believe, to find that she was happy enough to be willing to stay on. Indeed, we both feel the benefit not only to the little ones, but of the companionship to the elder girls. Grace is especially fond of her, and I hope it will be a lasting friendship.'
Felix coloured as one very much pleased, and made some acknowledgment.
'There's a sturdy fearless good sense, and yet liveliness, about her,' continued the lady, 'which has already been of great use to Grace, who is naturally all ups and downs. However, if she changes her mind among the attractions of home, we promise not to feel ill-used.'
'What is Mamma saying?' exclaimed Lady Grace in person, entering the room with Robina as her mother was speaking. 'Is she pretending that we shall not feel ill-used if Miss Underwood deserts us? No such thing! I shall never forgive her—never! If you try to persuade her, mind, it is at peril of being haunted by the ghost of a forlorn maiden, pined to death for a faithless friend!'
'You don't half like to trust her with Mr. Underwood,' said her mother, laughing.
'I told you how good he was, Gracie,' interposed Robina.
'He is pretending to consent, and he means to undermine me! It will be just like Beauty and the Beast. Your sisters will do their eyes with onions, to work on your feelings; and then you'll stay on, and find the poor Beast—that's me—at the last gasp!'
'That will be when she goes home,' said Felix, laughing. 'I promise to bring her safe back now, Lady Grace; but surely you have enough sisters of your own to spare me mine!'
'Now listen, Mr. Underwood. It is true, as a matter of history and genealogy, that I've got five sisters; but Number Two—that's Mary—is married, and no good to anybody; and Number One—that's Fanny—is always looking after her when she is not looking after Mamma. Then Adelaide, whom nature designed for my own proper sister, is altogether devoted to Kate Caergwent, and cares for nobody else; and as to the little ones—why, they are only nine and ten, and good for nothing but an excuse for having Miss Underwood in the house! Now is not it true that you have three sisters already at your beck and call?'
'Two, I allow; but the third is hardly at any one's beck.'
'What, that most entertaining person, Angela? I don't think we have had such fun in the school-room since Kate's maddest days.'
'My dear, I think you have a remnant of them,' said Lady de la Poer. 'Let Miss Underwood go; I am sure her brother has no time to spare.'
'I hope,' said Felix, when they were in the street, 'that Angel has not been exposing herself there.'
'No, no, not much,' said Robina, hesitating. 'The first time or two she was asked to tea in the school-room she kept me sitting on thorns, and liked it—the wicked child; but after all, there is something about their manners that keeps her in check; they are so merry, and yet so refined. I think nothing improves her so much as an evening with them—except, indeed, when there's any external element.'
'External element?'
'Anything that—that excites her,' hastily said Robina. 'But is not Lady Grace delightful?'
'She seems passionately fond of you—or was it a young lady's strong language?'
'Oh, she means it, dear Gracie! She is lonely, you see. Lady Adelaide is rather a wise one, and she and Lady Caergwent read and study deep, and have plans together, and leave poor Grace out; and they all tease her for being so excitable.'
'Well, I thought she was almost crying while she talked her nonsense.'
'Just so I think her the sweetest of them all, because she feels so easily; but her sisters do snub her a little. And my Lady herself—is not she exactly one's imagination of a real great lady?'
'Crême de la Crême?'
'Yes, perfect dignity and simplicity, and as tender and careful a mother all the time as a cottage woman. I never felt any one so mother-like, even to me.'
'I can quite believe that. Yes, if you are to work, you could hardly do so more comfortably.'
It was a concession, and Robina had to put up with it; for as they turned into Piccadilly he changed the subject by demanding, 'Now, Robin, what shall it be? Seal-skins?'
'Seal-skins in the height of summer?'
'I thought all ladies pined for seal-skins. We have half a column of advertisements of them at a time.'
'You don't want to extend the business to them?'
'No, but to give one to each of my sisters.'
'They are a monstrous price, you know. You should have heard Lord de la Poer grumble when Addie and Grace had theirs!'
'Fifty pound will do the five, I suppose?'
'I thought there were heavy expenses, and not much ready money.'
'There's enough for that, and I mean it. I shall not know that I have come into my fortune till I have taken home something to show for it.'
'I wonder what Wilmet would say.'
'Wilmet is not my master, and a chit like you had best not try her line. It won't do, with your face and figure.'
Robina could only laugh, and feel that she was still Felix's child, and if he chose to be extravagant she could not stop him.
'Which shall it be?' he continued; 'seal-skins, or silk gowns, or anything of jewellery?'
'Jewellery would last longest, and none of us have got any,' said Robin; 'but I believe you like the seals best.'
'I want to stroke Cherry in one. And wouldn't Wilmet look grand? She hasn't got one, has she?'
'No. I was out with her and John last winter, when she dragged him past the shop.'
'I thought you were aping her! Well, I've broken loose, and she will have no choice now.'
'You don't mean to include Alda?'
'Poor Alda! Seal-skins have ceased to be an object to her; but I have had a very warm letter from her.'
So Robina was only allowed the privilege of assisting in the selection of the smooth brown coats and muffs. Felix insisted on despatching Mrs. John Harewood's to her at once; and he wanted to send Angela's, but yielded, on Robin's representation of the impossibility of her putting it away in any security from the moth. His exultation in his purchases was very amusing, as he stroked them like so many cats, as if he were taking seisin of his inheritance. And when, some hours later, he sprang out of the train, and was met by the station-master with, 'Mr. Underwood! allow me to offer my most sincere congratulations,' and everybody ran for his luggage as never before, he still clung close to his precious parcel, like a child with a new toy, even to his own door, which was suddenly opened at his bell, Sibby crying aloud, 'No, no, Martha, not a sowl shall open the door, barring meself, to me own boy that's come to his own again, an' got the better of all the nagurs that kep' him out. Blessings on you, Masther Felix, me jewel, an' long life to you to reign over it!' And she really had her arms round his neck, kissing him.
'Well done, Sibby, and thank you! Your heart warms to the old place, does it?' and he held out a hand to the less demonstrative Martha, who stood curtseying, and observing, 'I wish you joy, Sir.'
By that time Stella had flown upon him, Theodore was clinging to his leg, Lance half way downstairs, and Cherry hanging over the balusters.
'You villain!' were Lance's first words; 'why didn't you come home by daylight? All the establishment waited till the six o'clock train was in to give you three times three!'
'And now you are come,' added Cherry, 'stand there, right in the middle! I want to see how a Squire looks!'
He obeyed by planting his feet like a colossus, tucking his umbrella under his arm like a whip, putting on his hat over his brow, and altogether assuming the conventional jolly Squire attitude, which was greeted by shrieks of laughter and applause.
'Now let me see how a Squire's sister looks,' he continued, opening his parcel, and thrusting Stella into the first coat that came to hand, which being Angela's, came down to her heels.
Cherry shouted, 'Like the brown bear!' and Scamp began to bark, and was forcibly withheld by Lance from demolishing the little brown muff that rolled out; while Felix turned on Cherry with the jacket meant for Stella; and she, in convulsions of merriment, could do nothing but shriek, 'Cyrus! Cyrus! Cyrus!'
'Well, then, take the great coat, puss,' said Felix. 'Here, Stella, let me pull you out of that! That's more like it!'
'My dear Felix,' continued Cherry, in great affected gravity, 'are these the official garments wherein we are to be installed? Nearly as severe as royal ermine.'
'Don't scold, Whiteheart. I had enough of that from the wise Robin before she would help me choose them. I had set my heart on them.'
'Dear old Giant!' cried Cherry, craning up to kiss him; 'he couldn't believe he had a landed estate till he had seen it on our backs! But,' she added, fearing to be disappointing, 'I never knew before what it was to be sleek and substantial. If ever I did covet a thing, it was the coat of a seal.'
'But how is Mr. Froggatt, Lance?'
'As well as can be expected,' was Lance's reply. 'He congratulates with tears in his eyes, says you deserve it, but bemoans poor Pur, till I am minded to tell him that I'll stick by him and the concern; for really I don't know what else I'm good for, and honest Lamb couldn't write a leader to save his life.'
'I'll walk over to-morrow, and set him at rest,' said Felix. 'I could not drop Pur if I would.'
'I'm so glad,' said Cherry. 'I felt quite sad over the proofs, like casting off an old friend.'
'Or kicking adrift the plank that has brought one to land. I knew Cherry would have broken her heart to part with Pur.'
'Besides, it is a real power and influence,' added Cherry; 'and it is so improved. We had up a whole file of it for years back. Willie Harewood had lost some of his earlier March Hare poems, and thought they were there; so he and I hunted over reams of ancient Pur, and couldn't find them after all. I believe you had declined them; and they would have been lost to the world if Lance hadn't written to Robina, and she had copies of them all, laid up in lavender.'
'And they are the most splendid of all!' said Lance.
'Only too good for the Pursuivant,' laughed Felix.
'Well,' said Cherry, 'Will and I held up our hands to find how stupid Pur used to be four or five years ago, when you were in bondage to Mr. Froggatt's fine words and his fears.'
'Yes, and had no opposition to put us on our mettle,' added Lance. 'The Tribune was the making of the Pursuivant; I'm inclined to offer it a testimonial. By-the-by, Felix, are you prepared for a testimonial yourself—or at the very least, a dinner in the Town Hall, from your fellow citizens? They're all agog about it.'
'On the principle that "as long as thou doest well unto thyself men will speak good of thee?"' asked Felix. 'No,' correcting himself, 'that's hardly fair; there's kind feeling in it, too; but perhaps they will let me off when they find it is not a farewell.'
'Not!'
'Now, Cherry and Lance, I want you to look at this statement. Clement has seen it, of course; but I don't want it to go any further, except to Jack. It is enough to say that I find the property a good deal burthened, which is only too true.'
'You don't seem to have much of a bargain!' said Lance, coming round to read over Cherry's shoulder.
'The question is whether Cherry can trample on Underwood traditions, and keep house for a thousand a year where people expect three or four times the sum to be laid out.'
'I thought you reckoned things here at five hundred.'
'Hardly so much. We shall have to get our old bugbear, the superior assistant. Besides, Lance, now's your time. You must begin to get ready for Oxford at once.'
'I?' said Lance. 'No, thank you, Felix. Clement offered me the same last year, but my head wouldn't stand grinding nohow. No, if you stick to the old plank, so will I. I was more than half wishing it before, and ready to break my heart at leaving the organ to some stick of my Lady's choosing, only I didn't know what you might think due to the manes of the Underwoods.'
'The manes of the Underwoods must make up their minds to a good deal,' said Felix; 'but is it really true that you do not think yourself fit for study?'
'No, but music I can combine with the work here,' said Lance; 'and that would save the superior assistant, and you will be free to make a gentleman of Bear.'
'Yes, that must be done,' said Felix. 'Even Stoneborough will not do now. He is such a cocky little chap, that the only chance for him is to get him to a great public school, where this promotion will seem nothing to anybody.'
'My poor little Bear! I am very glad,' said Cherry. 'And he is still young enough; yet it hardly seems fair, when all his elders had to earn their own education.'
'Such as it was!' interjected Lance.
'Yes,' said Felix; 'and when I remember the sighs my father now and then let out about Eton or Harrow, I feel bound to give the benefit to the one who can take it; but I don't like the spending two hundred a year on that boy, and then leaving you, Lance, to all the drudgery, and a solitary house.'
'That matters the less,' said Lance, 'because I am busy with the choir and with practice two evenings in the week, and should be more, if it wasn't for doing the agreeable to Cherry.'
'He'll turn into a misogynist, like Mr. Miles,' laughed Cherry.
'No, he'll be consumed by an unrequited affection for all the young ladies that come in with the loveliest eyes in the world,' said Felix.
'He'll set the March Hare poetry to music, and serenade them with it,' added Cherry.
'No, I shall cultivate the Frogs,' said Lance. 'It would be too bad to have left the poor old boy in the lurch.'
'Yes, that has weighed a good deal with me,' said Felix. 'I'm determined that they shall come and stay with us at the Priory as soon as we can get it in order, and before the winter. I'll bring them up myself. You see, Lance, whenever I take a turn here you can be at home.'
'Home! he has begun already!'
'It was home to me first, and I always feel that it is whenever I come in sight of it. Lancey, boy, when I think of leaving you here, it seems letting you sacrifice yourself too much!'
'Nonsense, Blunderbore. You can't give this back to the Church if we don't keep off your hands; and next, that coup d'état addled my brains so far that I'm good for no work but this that I have drifted into.'
'Then, Cherry, you must help me make an estimate of the expenses, and see whether we can venture to live at the Priory, or whether we must let it, and go on here for seven years.'
'Oh!' They both looked very blank.
'I'd rather live on bread and cheese in the country,' said Cherry.
'So had I,' said Felix, 'if the manes of the Underwoods are appeasable. One step is a riddance of all the servants; I wonder how many you can do with. Five maids and five men I paid off, only keeping on one man, to look after Clem's horse and see to the garden.'
'By-the-bye,' said Lance, 'George Lightfoot begged me to state that his sister is at home, and always had a great wish to live with Miss Underwood.'
'Let her come and speak to me, then,' said Cherry; 'though I am afraid she must moderate her expectations. It seems to me that except for the honour of the thing, this is another version of our old friend—"poortith cauld."'
'Our best friend, maybe, Cherry,' said Felix, 'if we can only heartily believe it?'
'His bride, as truly as St. Francis's,' thought she; 'and without the credit of it.'