People who restored their church and built schools, without begging for subscriptions either directly or through a bazaar, but continued in trade, and cut off superfluous luxuries—servants, horses, and dinner-parties—were a fertile subject for wonder and gossip in the neighbourhood. Society growled, contemned, and remonstrated, by the mouth of Mrs. Fulbert Underwood, and the defence of her misguided family was a heavy charge to Wilmet for the first year; but no one worth caring about really took umbrage, and after a time people accepted them on their own terms. A beautiful lawn, full of sprightly youth, of looks, spirits, and talents, above the average, could not fail to be popular, and an old county name went for something.
Cherry was proof against dinner-parties. Health was no longer an objection, for either Vale Leston had the virtues of native air, or the Bexley potteries had merited Alda's vituperation, for Cherry's ailments were more rare, and she had much advanced in strength and vigour. Felix declared she was growing quite handsome; and he, though not exactly the ideal squire, had acquired much more of the robustness of manhood, and had lost the appearance of fragility he had shown in earlier years, though he retained the fair youthful complexion which sometimes made people hardly credit that his tens were three. He sometimes dined out alone; but Cherry considered dress and reciprocity to settle the question of abstinence for her. Angela was, however, so wild about Ewmouth balls, that John victimized himself and his wife rather than create a grievance, but even his tolerance was sorely taxed.
Was the blame to be laid on prosperity for the difficulty of dealing with the two standing anxieties—Angela and Bernard? They had not been the most docile subjects in the days of comparative poverty, and their heads were certainly turned now. Bernard could not be convinced that expensiveness was not the proof of being a gentleman, and in three years at Harrow cost his brother more than Clement, Fulbert, and Lancelot, all put together, in their whole nonage, had ever done, besides the scrapes that Lance helped him out of. He had no sympathy with Felix's purpose in economy; not that he had reflection enough for a sceptical habit of mind like Edgar's, but he considered it a hardship that the whole family should be stinted and impoverished for what he was pleased to term Tina's maggots; nor could anything persuade him that he himself was no richer than before, and equally dependent on his brother's bounty. There was no positive harm in him, but as genius and taste alike lay in the line of cricket, he cared not for distinction of other kinds, but was content to scrape through the school without disgrace. His farther destiny was a moot point, while he scorned cheap colleges and halls, and Felix insisted that a distinguished one was only to be attained through a scholarship.
Angela was a greater puzzle. She was still much what she had been in childhood, alternating between the fast and the devotional. She was Clement's right hand in the parish, in the schools, Sunday, day, or night, and with even more than Wilmet's nursing instinct, the prime doctress of the village, and enjoying the cure of a broken chilblain as much as a waltz. To take a medical degree had become her ambition in turns with the dukedom, the opera, and the Sisterhood. Therewith she was the most saucy and idle of creatures. With less regular good looks than most of the family, she was more sought after. Figure did much, the hop-pole had become lithe and graceful, and her dress was always becoming, as well it might be, for her bills were never within bounds. She said she could not help it, and certainly her adventurous nature and rapid movements occasioned numerous catastrophes to her wardrobe, though not enough to account for the discrepancy between her accounts and her sisters'. Her charm lay in droll dash and audacity, and the irresistible glance of her eyes. Even Christopher and his little brother Edward preferred her to all their other aunts—the night-school was gathered by her as to a magnet, and better than all the Vicar's arguments and the Squire's influence had her coaxing prevailed to get the choir into surplices. She was by far the most formidable as well as the most unscrupulous adversary of the poor Miss Hepburns, who viewed her with pious pity and horror as the natural outcome of the system they deprecated. Indeed, whether she were Clement's greatest help or hindrance was doubtful. He could not have a friend to stay with him, or obtain the assistance of a curate, without furnishing prey for Angela. Fred Somers, after a six weeks' visit, went back to St Matthew's with his peace upset, and an understanding that the two friends must never meet again in the haunts of that dangerous siren. A few more such experiments convinced the Vicar that unless he wished the village girls to remark that 'Miss Angel was carrying on with another young man,' he must do all the work himself; and his present amount of services, Sunday and weekly, at the parish church, and Blackstone Gulley, were quite up to the mark of any one man's powers, besides his attempts at East Ewmouth. Here Felix had no property, and therefore could not check the eruption of small tenements, which broke forth on some fresh field every spring, containing independent, often surly inhabitants, always changing, and rapidly outrunning the powers of the undaunted young Vicar. The two parishes were so entangled that the difficulties as to territory were endless, and the endeavour at a week-day service was not encouraged or assisted by the incumbent of the nearest district, who feared Clement's 'views,' and had been staggered by Angela's ostentation of them.
Angela was the greater heartache to Clement, because she had been trained in the same system with himself, and was inclined to carry it to lengths that even he thought extravagant. There might have been some disadvantage in his inexperience when she came into his hands for direction only at the end of his first year of priesthood, and he would fain have kept her in Mr. Fulmort's keeping; but difficulties had prevented his insistence, and this he increasingly regretted. For in spite of all his efforts, his relations with her were lapsing into what he had always scouted as the popular notion of confession. It was technical, as far as he could see devoid of repentance. Angela contrived to separate the brother and the priest; she would go through any formula, accept any discipline, but mechanically; but she would not endure exhortation, and if he ever attempted to check her boisterous spirits, she scouted him as Tina. Sometimes he wondered whether she sought him only because the practice belonged to what she called an 'out-and-outer,' and Felix retained doubts of its universal expediency.
Did Angela suppress Stella? Never were sisters less alike. Princess Fair Star, as the brothers called her, was still very small, with a lovely little face, tinted like fine porcelain, and hair and eyes more deeply coloured than those of most of the family; hair still snooded and in shining curls, and pensive eyes shining with a lustre of their own. She was the help and handmaid of the whole house, especially of Geraldine, with whom she still did regular lessons; and she was very diligent in all her doings, turning out her handiwork with delicate finish; but she was not enterprising, the very pains she took rendering her slow to undertake, though she spent much time in finishing Angela's odds and ends. She still continued the family lexicon, for even if she could not answer a query off-hand, she could always hunt it down, and the reply was generally ready in the soft low musical voice. Her laugh was noiseless and not frequent, for though never fretful nor depressed, she was only gently merry, pensively gay; and though now and then a quaint remark would drop into the whirl of family fun—and she was no inconsiderable element in games—she was always as happy, if not happier, in the garden or the woods with Theodore, their pets and flowers. She was devoted to the garden, its trimness was in great part owing to her; and as Golightly said, 'The bookets for the 'ouse was Miss Stella's province, and them for the church Miss Hangela's;' and of live-stock the twins tended a curious variety—rabbits, doves, cats, dogs, canaries, dormice, and owls, besides wounded creatures, rescued, cured, and released. Stella's quietness was a great ingredient in taming them; John Harewood called her the only feminine creature devoid of propensity for making a noise, and Felix, their silent Star
'Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.'
Sometimes she would talk freely to Geraldine on any unusual excitement, but if she conversed with any one else, it was with Theodore. No one who watched the pair could doubt that they had more mutual understanding than the boy had with any other person—even Felix, for whom his love was like a dog's devotion to his master. The out-of-door life and country air had been beneficial both to mind and body, and Theodore was much healthier and stronger, made progress in the little that he could be taught; could utter a few words, comprehended more than he could pronounce, and improved in self-control. His conscience was developing in some degree, and his delight in the Church services and music less unintelligent.
Perhaps Stella was content to be the longer a child because each advance into life was further away from Theodore; and she had never yet shed such sorrowful tears as when Clement decided against presenting him for Confirmation, in the inability to trace whether the comprehension that Stella maintained, and Felix believed, were not an illusion of their loving imagination.
Yet strangely enough, Theodore was confirmed after all. He was as usual among the choir-boys, walking in procession with them, and materially aiding them by his perfectly true though wordless chant. His nearest companions were candidates, and he moved instinctively with them to the step; nor had either brother the heart to interfere as they saw him kneeling—for though he could not renew the vow, why might he not receive the Seal? The tickets had been previously taken, so there was no obstacle; and when explanation and apology were afterwards made, they were met with encouragement not to debar the innocent from his Christian privileges because of his lack of power of expression.