This had come to be Edgar's fear as well as Cherry's, when they found that Lance had slept quite as little the second night as the first, though he brought down those great lustrous blue eyes of his quite as wide open and full of zest in the morning. It made Edgar cautious in his choice of sights for the Monday; but one so long habituated to London, and regarding with contempt its stock lions, could not estimate what they were to a lad at once so susceptible and so unsophisticated, and his diversion at Lance's raptures passed into anxiety, not unmingled with tedium, and almost disdain, at anything so very countrified; but his real care and good nature never flagged till he had safely, and to his positive relief, seen his little brother off for Bexley by the five o'clock train, to work off his intoxication at home, among his proper guardians.
'I am sure,' he said to Geraldine, 'if I had had any notion that his brain had continued so ticklish, I would never have had him on my hands. The difference between lionizing him and old Blunderbore! why it was—not exactly fire and water, but Ariel and Gonzalo. Shut the two up in the same shop! It is ridiculous! No, no, Lance must vegetate down there till his brains have cooled down from that unlucky stroke; but after that, you'll see, nothing will keep him down in Felix's hole; 'tisn't in the nature of things that he should be buried there. I've given him the violin I got at Liège, so he won't be quite wasting his time.'
There was rest—at least, for the present—in Edgar's acquiescence in Lance's vegetation, except so far as it gave food for present anxiety, by showing how the boy's excitability had alarmed him; and Cherry anxiously watched for reports from home. Felix and she herself were the chief letter-writers in the family, and he kept her daily supplied with tidings. His first account—written at intervals at the reporter's table at Minsterham—bore that Lance had come all right, and seemed to have enjoyed himself much. So he had kept up for one day; but on the third came the inevitable tidings, 'Poor Lance is in bed, with headache in its worst shape. Wilmet has been obliged to stay at home to attend to him. It must have been coming on yesterday, for he seems to have talked more than enough, and made more blunders than can be remedied in a day. I suppose Edgar would have laughed if I had cautioned him; but I would about as soon have put the boy to stand on the Equator as have taken him to that opera.'
The days of pleasure seemed to have a heavy price; it was not till Saturday that Felix reported Lance as in his place as usual, but still looking ill, quiet, and subdued. 'I am afraid,' proceeded the letter, 'that it has been a very fascinating glimpse he has had of Edgar's way of life, and that F. and U.'s house is more against the grain to him. I doubt whether it be suited to him; but the other course seems over-perilous. I wonder whether fathers have the power of insight and judgment that I need so much. However, for the present, health speaks plainly that home is the only place for him; and I can with a free conscience enjoy his bright face and service of good will. To have you and him both out of the way was severe; but if it were not for his good, it is for yours.'
Yes, Geraldine trusted it was for her good. When Thomas Underwood went to the City in the morning she was always set down at the Renvilles', whence the transit to the Museum was so short, that she could make it either with her brother's arm or the master's. It was not thought fit for her to work all day, so Mrs. Sturt (the old nurse) always came to meet and take her home to luncheon; after which she either went out with Mrs. Underwood and Marilda, or was carried about by her brother, in which case her conveyance was always defrayed at the door with so little knowledge on her part, that Edgar accused her of supposing Cousin Thomas to keep innumerable very seedy equipages always in waiting on her steps.
It was great enjoyment—real instruction of the best sort in that which was most congenial to her, putting the crown on her long lonely perseverance, and giving a daily sense of progress and achievement, was delightful. She had no notion of rivalry; but when she perceived that she was excelling, that commendation almost always attended her attempts, and that in any competition she always came near the mark and was sometimes foremost, she was conscious of a startling sense of triumph; and Edgar was full of exultation. If his own studies at the Royal Academy had been fulfilling all his golden dreams, he could not have been half so uplifted as he was by Cherry's chances of a medal; while, if he had only acted on a quarter of the sensible advice he gave her, he would already have been far advanced in his profession.
If he had been imprudent in Lancelot's case, he showed much tender good judgment in his selection on Cherry's behalf of exhibitions and rehearsals—never overdoing her, and using all his grace and dexterity to obviate her fatigue and prevent embarrassments from her lameness, till she began to take courage and feel at ease.
Alda never went with them. She said Cherry's pace would be the death of her, and she knew it all by heart. Yet, go where they would, there generally appeared, soon after four o'clock, a tall, handsome, black-moustached figure, seldom uttering more than 'Good-morning!' and 'All well at home?' and then content to stalk beside them, perfectly indifferent to their object, but always ready to give an arm to Cherry, or to find a cab.
'Dogged by Montezuma's ghost!' Edgar would mutter when the inevitable black head came towering into view; and even Cherry sometimes felt the silent haunting rather a bore. Edgar and Ferdinand were both good company alone, but together she knew not what to do with them; since her sole common subject of interest to Ferdinand, church details, provoked Edgar's sarcasm; and though Edgar had enough to say on a thousand other points, Fernan was totally silent on all, except horses, of which on her side she knew nothing. Nevertheless, for very pity, he was always allowed to know their designs; and Cherry delivered messages between him and Alda, and marvelled at her never finding it possible to avail herself of such chances of meeting.
Indeed, it puzzled Cherry why Ferdinand should be banished from the house, since Marilda took pains to mark her friendly feeling towards him as Alda's betrothed; and the resentment of her parents appeared to be inactive; but Alda declared that any advance on his side would provoke great wrath, and that open intercourse was impossible; and it could only be supposed that she was the best judge.