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.