Books: The Pillars of the House, V1

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Pillars of the House, V1

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She was glad she was still alone, when Felix looked in for a moment
to say, 'Miss Maria goes up by the 11.30 train. I am going to send a
letter by her, and I think she will save Robin. Angel is so mere a
child, that it matters less.'

'How can they all be so unjust?'

'They have not had time to know the child.'

'I did not mean Robina, but you.'

'I don't mind that,' he said, with a smile, 'though I am glad there
is one lady who does not scold me;' and he bent down to kiss her.

'Did the Miss Pearsons?'

'They allowed that I meant to act for the best, and you know what
that means. However,' he added,' they are earnest to save the little
girls, which is more to the purpose. Wilmet or I would have gone up,
but Miss Maria thinks she can do better than either, and I believe
they are more likely to trust an old schoolmistress, who is the
injured party besides. I must write my letter. Shall I help you into
the other room?'

'No, thank you; I have the lessons here, for they tease Alda. If you
would only send Theodore to me as you go.'

'Does Alda never help you?'

'Only by criticising my French pronunciation. She is much too
restless. O Felix, what a cough! You have made your throat worse.'

'It is only this black east wind.'

'You ought to stay upstairs and be taken care of. Can't you, and let
Redstone call if you are wanted?'

'I _am_ wanted. It is quite as warm in the office as here, when the
door is shut. What I want is, only to be twenty years older. Good-
bye.

Cherry's ponderings were divided between that sigh and the possible
sighs of the wind if that door were not shut, until her own door was
opened by Felix's hand, to admit a little figure still in petticoats,
with the loose flaxen curls, tottering feet, limp white fingers, and
vacant blue eyes, whom she daily put through a few exercises to train
his almost useless fingers and tongue. The sight of this, Alda
declared, made her ill; though the little boy was as docile as he was
helpless; but it was quite true that to nerves and ears not inured
from the first, Theodore's humming and his concertina were a trial
from their perpetuity.

Late that evening came a message to beg Mr. and Miss Underwood would
step up; and they stepped, though the east wind was blacker than
ever. They found that in great tribulation Miss Maria had brought
Alice Knevett home, and sent her to bed all tears and exhaustion, but
that Robina and Angela were forgiven--a word so offensive to Felix as
relating to the former, that he sorely lamented that prudence forbade
their removal, but was somewhat consoled by a letter that Miss Maria
brought him from the Vicar of St. Matthew's, who had had a private
investigation of the whole subject. He wrote to Felix that his sister
was new to the management of the girls, and was a good deal annoyed
at the secrecy observed towards herself, not making full allowance
for Robina's exceptional circumstances; but that, for his own part,
he was convinced of the girl's genuine uprightness and unselfish
forbearance; and though he feared her position must be unpleasant
just now, he thought it would be for the good of all if she had the
patience to live it down, and earn the good opinion he was sure she
deserved. Miss Maria reported that Miss Fennimore had been brought
round by his opinion, though Miss Fulmort remained persuaded that
Robina had 'come over him' in some way; and while yielding to his
stringent desire that, as he said, 'one of the worthiest of her girls
should not be unjustly expelled,' only let the child herself know
that she was tolerated in consideration of her youth, her orphanhood,
and her relationship to Clement. Poor Robin! No one could help
grieving for the tempest that had fallen on her guiltless head, and
hope that all would result in her final good; but the sorrows of an
absent school-girl could hardly occupy even her dearest friends, in
the full and present crisis of two love affairs.

For Edgar and Major Knevett both arrived, the lover as dispassionate
as the father was the reverse. Edgar did, however, as he had
undertaken, rise to the position. He joked at it a little in private,
to the annoyance and perplexity of Cherry, and, even of Felix; but he
was perfectly steady in maintaining his perfect right to address Miss
Knevett, in avowing his engagement, and in standing by it.

To Major Knevett, the affair appeared outrageous impudence on the
part of a beggarly young painter out of a country bookseller's shop,
encouraged by the egregious folly of the aunts. What was said of
clergyman's sons and good old family went for absolutely nothing; and
Edgar's quiet assurance of success in his profession was scoffed at
with incredulity not altogether unpardonable. In the encounter that
Felix had the misfortune to witness, since it took place in his own
office-parlour, he could not help thinking that Edgar, with his
perfect temper, unfailing courtesy, calm self-respect, and steady
sense of honour towards the young lady, showed himself the true
gentleman in contrast with the swaggering little Major, who seemed to
expect that he could bluster the young man out of his presumption,
and was quite unprepared for Edgar's cool analysis of his threats.
But instead of, like Tom Underwood, cooling down into moderation and
kindness so soon as his bolt was shot, the finding it fall short only
chafed him the more, and rendered him the more inveterate against all
conciliation.

There was an appeal all round to Felix, but he was not so practicable
as the universal compliments to his good sense showed to be expected.
He had expressed his opinion that it was a rash engagement, hitherto
improperly carried on; but he could not be brought to advise his
brother to break it off on his side while the lady held to it on
hers. It might be best to give it up by mutual consent; but as long
as one party was bound, so was the other; and he thoroughly sided
with Edgar in not being threatened out of it whilst Alice persisted.
Still more flatly did he refuse Miss Pearson's entreaty that he would
see the wilful girl, and persuade her how hopeless was her
resistance, and how little prospect of the attachment being
prosperous. Nothing but despair and perplexity could have prompted
the good aunts to try such a resource, but they were at their wits'
end. They really loved their niece, and they dreaded the tender
mercies of her father, who had indeed petted Alice as a young child,
but had made her mother suffer greatly from his temper. If she would
yield, they hoped to procure for her a home at York, with their
brother's widow, and to save her from a residence in Jersey with the
step-mother; but Alice, upheld by a secret commerce of notes
ingeniously conveyed, felt herself a heroine of constancy, and kept
up her spirits by little irritations to whoever tried to deal with
her. She could deftly insinuate, on the one hand, that her aunts had
always preached up the Underwood perfections; and on the other, hint
to her father that if her home had still remained what it was, she
should never have looked out of it; and whenever he flew into a rage,
or used violent language, she would look up under her eyelids and
whisper something about 'real gentlemen.' Those thorns and claws that
had figured in the scale of her transmigration were giving a good
many little scratches, which did her feelings some good, but her
cause none at all, by the vexation they produced. 'If she could only
be made to understand,' said poor Miss Pearson, 'how little she gains
by irritating her father, and that he is really a very dreadful
person when he is thoroughly offended! Poor child! my heart aches for
her.'

So Wilmet was turned in upon her, and before she could utter a word
was hugged and kissed all over because she was the very image of
darling Edgar, and his dear violet eyes were exactly the same colour.

Unsentimental Wilmet extricated herself, saying, 'Eyes can't be
violet coloured. Don't let us go into that silly talk, Alice; things
are too serious now.'

'You are come to help me and be a dear!' cried Alice, clasping her
hands. 'How does he look? the dear boy!'

'The same as usual,' said Wilmet, coolly. 'But, Alice, if you think
that I am come to--'

'Does he--really and truly? I saw him out of the little passage
window, and I thought he looked quite thin! And Lizzie Bruce said
Mrs. Hartley asked who that handsome young man was who looked so
delicate.'

'He is particularly strong and healthy. Alice, I want to set it all
before you as a reasonable being--'

'Only do tell me; has he got his appetite? For you know he is used to
live where everything is recherche, and when one's out of spirits
_things_ do make a difference--'

Was that the claw in the velvet paw?

'He eats three times as much as Felix any day,' said Wilmet, with a
certain remembrance of the startling nudity of the bone of
yesterday's leg of mutton. 'He is doing very well. You need not be
afraid for him; but it seems to me that you should consider whether
it can be right--'

'Come, Wilmet, you were my first friend; you can't help being kind to
me.'

'I want to show you true kindness.'

'True kindness means something horridly cross! Now don't, Wilmet. I
get ever so much kindness as it is! I know what you are going to say.
It is very naughty of people to like each other when neither of them
has got a sixpence; but if they can't help it, what then? Must they
leave off liking, eh?'

'They ought to try to prevent their liking from leading to
disobedience and concealment.'

'Ah! but if they can't?'

'People always can.'

'Were you ever tried?' asked Alice, slyly, for all the simplicity.

'I hope never to be, if deceiving my friends and making others
deceive is to be the consequence.'

'Well, luckily there isn't much chance,' crept out of the demure
lips. It was intended as the thorn beneath the mayflower, but it was
no such thing. Wilmet was quite ready to accept the improbability as
very fortunate.

'That has nothing to do with it,' she said. 'The question is, what it
is right to do now. It seems hard for me to say so, being your friend
and his sister--'

'Oh, never mind that. People's sisters never do like the girls they
are fond of.'

Decidedly Wilmet could not get on. Her mouth was stopped either by a
little rapture about Edgar, or a little velvet-pawed scratch to
herself, whenever she tried in earnest to set the matter before
Alice; and when, being a determined person, she at last talked on
through all that Alice tried to thrust in, and delivered her mind of
the remonstrance she had carefully thought over, and balanced between
kindness, prudence, and duty, and all the time with the conviction
that not one word was heeded! If it was not English malice it was
French malice that pointed the replies and sent Wilmet away as much
provoked as pitying, and not at all inclined to be examined by Edgar
on her interview, and let him gather that she had not had the best of
it. Poor Alice! what were these little triumphs of a sharp tongue in
comparison with the harm she did herself by exacerbating whoever
tried to argue with her? There was one person she did profess to wish
to see, namely, Geraldine; but the flying rheumatic pains, excited by
the black east wind with sleet upon its blast, could not be trifled
with; and Major Knevett's wrath put an effectual stop to Alice's
entering the house during the Saturday and Sunday of his stay at
Bexley. Perhaps Cherry was not sorry. She could not have pleaded
against Edgar, in spite of her disapprobation of both; and moreover,
the thought at the bottom of her heart was, 'How could any one who
had been the object of such tones of the one brother's voice be won
by the showy graces of the other? Edgar could easily have thrown off
a disappointment; but Felix came first--and oh! can he shake it off
in the same light way?'

She had not the comfort of talking it over. Felix made no sign, and
Edgar's line was to treat the whole complication as a matter of
pleasantry, pretending that he had only gone into it to please Felix!
and yet, as came to their knowledge, privately exchanging billets and
catch-words with Alice, while he openly declared his engagement and
resolution to work his way up and lay his laurels at her feet.

He went away the very same morning as Major Knevett carried off his
daughter to Jersey, audaciously following them to the station, where
he exchanged a grasp of the hand with her in the very sight of the
'grey tyrant father,' who actually gnashed his teeth, in his
inability either to knock him down or give him in charge.

There was no time to breathe between the departure of this pair of
lovers and the arrival of Alda's splendid Life Guardsman, who, horses
and all, took up his abode at the Fortinbras Arms, and spent his days
in felicity with Alda. A very demonstrative pair they were. To
Geraldine, often unwillingly en tiers, they seemed to spend their
time chiefly in sitting hand in hand, playing with one another's
rings and dangles, of which each seemed to possess an inexhaustible
variety. Ferdinand's dressing-case and its contents were exquisite in
their way, and were something between an amusement and a horror to
Wilmet, who could not understand Felix's regard for so extravagant
and wasteful a person, who gave away sovereigns where half-crowns
would have been more wholesome, half-crowns instead of shillings,
shillings instead of pence, and who moreover was devoted to horse-
flesh. His own favourite steed, Brown Murad, had been secured at a
fabulous price; and the possession of him seemed to be the crowning
triumph over a certain millionaire baronet in the same corps,
evidently his rival. What was even more alarming was that every
detail about races and horses in training was at his fingers' ends,
so that he put Felix up to a good deal of knowledge useful to the
racing articles in the Pursuivant; but he declared that he never
betted. His was a perilous position, homeless and friendless as he
stood; and this rendered him doubly grateful for the brotherly
welcome he received. Yet the days would have been long to any but
lovers, in spite of the rides and walks, one even to Minsterham to
see Lance. Ferdinand liked to recur to the old remembrances of his
convalescence; but in these Alda had no part, and they seemed to jar
on her. She might sometimes seem half fretted by his impetuous
southern love, but she could not bear a particle of his attention to
be bestowed on aught save herself; and when Geraldine would have
utilised his fine straight profile as an artistic study, the monopoly
was so unpleasing that the portrait had to be dropped. The odd thing
was that Alda should have a lover whose most congenial spirit was
Clement. He was a great frequenter of St. Matthew's, and had no
interest save in kindred subjects. Felix always found them alike
difficult to converse with, from a want of any breadth of sympathy
with subjects past or present, such as would have occupied him even
without the exigencies of his profession. They seemed to talk, not
church, but shop, as if they did not look beyond proximate
ecclesiastical details, which they discussed in technical terms
startling to the uninitiated; and yet Felix trusted that Clement's
soul was a good deal deeper and wider than his tongue, and that
Ferdinand's, if narrow, was thoroughly resolute, finding in his
enthusiasm for these details a counterpoise for the temptations of
his position.

His seemed to be a nature that would alternate between apathetic
indolence and strong craving for excitement. He could go on for days
with a patient, almost silent, round of mechanical occupations
performed well, nigh in his sleep, and then, when once stirred up
became possessed with a vehement restlessness, as if there were still
a little about him of the panther of the wilderness.

At first he awaited his letter from his uncle much more
philosophically than did Alda, but when it tarried still, he became
so eager that he made two journeys to London to meet the mail, and
pestered every one with calculations as to time and space.

The letter came, and was all that every one else had expected. Alfred
Travis had always detested the family into which his nephew had been
thrown by his accident, and the tidings that the heiress had been
rejected for the sake of one of these designing girls could not be
welcome. So he gave notice that nothing more could be expected from
him if his nephew stooped thus low. This, however, did not much
concern Ferdinand. He curled his black moustache, and quietly said
his uncle would not find that game answer. The affairs of the
brothers had always been mixed together, and Ferdinand had been
content to leave the whole in his uncle's hands, only drawing for his
own handsome allowance; but the foundation had been his mother's
fortune, and he had only to claim his own share of the capital, and
disentangle it from the rest, either to bring his uncle to terms at
once, or to be able to dispense with his consent. The delay was
vexatious, but it could be but brief; and in the meantime Bexley was
felicity. Yes, in spite of the warning he received at the Rectory,
which my Lady followed up by a remonstrance to Felix--over the
counter, for in vain he tried to get her into the office. He could
only tell her that he much regretted Edgar's conduct, but as to Alda,
there was no disobedience, and the young man's character was high. He
was just as impracticably courteous as his father and Lady Price
shrugged her shoulders and hoped. 'For, Felix Underwood,' she said,
'I am convinced that after all you are a very well-meaning young
man.'

This was her farewell, for Mr. Bevan had been more ailing than usual,
and had obtained permission to leave his parish for a year, to be
spent partly in the south of France, partly at the German baths.

Well was it for those who could get away! Never had the spring been
sourer; Easter came so early as itself to seem untimely, and the
Wednesday of its week was bleakness itself, as Lance and Robina stood
on the top of the viaduct over the railway, looking over the parapet
at the long perspective of rails and electric wires their faces
screwed up, and reddened in unnatural places by the bitter blast.
Felix had asked at breakfast if any one would be the bearer of a note
to Marshlands; Lance had not very willingly volunteered, because no
one else would; then Robina joined him, and they had proceeded
through the town without a syllable from either of the usually lively
tongues, till as they stood from force of habit watching for a train,
the following colloquy took place, Robina being the first speaker.

'What is it?'

'What is what?'

'What is the matter?'

'What is the matter with what?'

'With it all?'

There came a laugh, but Robina returned to the charge. 'Well, but
what is it? Is it east wind?'

'Something detestable--whatever it is,' grunted Lance.

'You've found it so too,' said Robina; for Lance had only come home
after evening cathedral the day before.

'Haven't I, though!'

He said no more, being a boy of much reserve as to his private
troubles; and Robina presently said,--

'I say, Lance, did Alda use to be nice, or is it love?'

'Never nice, like Wilmet or Cherry.'

'I am sure,' proceeded the girl, 'I thought love was the most
beautiful and romantic thing--too nice to be talked about, for fear
it should turn one's head, but here it seems to be really nothing but
plague and bother and crossness.'

'Poor Bob!' said Lance, 'you got the worst of it up at Brompton.'

'I got it every way,' said Robina. 'There was Edgar treating me like
a little contemptible baby, and Alice sometimes coaxing me and
sometimes spiting me, and Angel poisoned against me; and when I
thought I must be acting for the best in telling Felix, somehow that
turned out altogether horrid.'

'I suppose a girl must be telling some one,' said Lance; 'and if it
was to be done, Felix was the right one.'

'So I made sure,' said poor Robin; 'but Miss Fulmort and Miss
Fennimore seemed to think it no better than if I had told you. They
say I am forgiven, but I hate their forgiveness. I've done nothing
wrong, and yet they don't like or trust me; and they seem to grudge
me all my marks and prizes. "For proficiency, not for conduct," they
say, in that hard cold voice. And then the girls nod and whisper.
Angel and all, think me a nasty spiteful marplot. Alice set half of
them against me before she went!'

'Poor Bob. And you can't have a good set to, and punch their heads
all round! That's the way to have it out, and get comfortable and
friendly.'

'For choir boys? O Lance!'

'Choir boys ain't girls, I thank my stars.'

'Well,' continued Robina, glad to pour out her troubles, even for
such counsel as this, 'when I came home last week, I did think it
would be made up.'

'Well,' said Lance, as Robin grew rather choky, and drew the back of
a woolly glove across her eyes, not much to their benefit.

'Clem looks black, because he says his sisters were meant to raise
the tone of the school.'

'Confound the tone of the school! I know what that is! But who cares
for Tina?'

'Then Wilmet says I ought to have asked leave to write to her, and
she could have managed it quietly, and kept everybody out of a
scrape.'

'Whew--w--w--' whistled Lance; but at the melancholy tone, he
absolutely took his red hand out of its comfortable nest in his
pocket, to draw his sister's arm into his. It was well, for her voice
was far more trembling now. 'I could bear it all if it were not for
Felix himself. I know he is angry with me, but he won't talk, nor
tell me how; he only said, "We both meant to act for the best; but it
is a painful affair, and we had better not discuss it," and then he
began to whistle to Theodore. If any one did know how I hate being
told I meant to act for the best!'

'Something is come over Felix,' said Lance. 'I never knew him give
such a jaw as he has to me. To be sure, he was set on to it.'

'Set on?'

'Yes, by Wilmet for one! You should have seen the way she was in--as
if I hadn't a right to do what I please with my own money.'

'What?'

'My violin! Ferdinand Travis tipped me when he rode over to the
Cathedral, and by good luck it was the day before the auction at old
Spicer's. Bill and I went in to see the fun, and by all that is
lucky, there was a violin routed out of an old cupboard. Nobody bid
against me but Godwin, the broker, and it was knocked down to me for
twenty-two and six. Bill lent me the half-crown; and Poulter, our lay
vicar, who is at a music-shop, says 'tis a real bargain, he's mad to
have missed it himself, but he showed me how to put my fingers on it,
and I can play Mendelssohn's "Hirtenlied." You shall hear by and by,
Robin. Well; Wilmet comes on it when she was unpacking my shirts. I'm
sure I wish she'd let me unpack them myself, instead of poking her
nose there; and if she wasn't in a way! Wasting my money, when I
ought to be saving it up to buy a watch; and wasting my time and all
the rest of it--till one would think 'twas old Scratch himself I'd
brought home!'

'Oh don't, Lance. And did she set on Felix?'

'Ay; and then, you know, our new Precentor, Beccles, isn't one
quarter the man Nixon was; and he has been and written a letter to
Fee that any schoolmaster in creation should be licked for writing,
to go and pison a poor chap's home--all about those cards.'

'What cards?'

'The pack Jones found in the middle of the north transept ten days
ago.'

'Of the Cathedral! How shocking! But why should he write to Felix?'

'Because the big-wigs make sure some one out of the Bailey must have
dropped them, getting into the town through the Cathedral at night'

'But they don't suspect you?'

'No; but Beccles got into an awful way, and swears--'

'You don't mean really swears!'

'No, no--stuff--vows--that unless he gets to the bottom of it, not
one of us shall have the good-conduct prize. Now I did think I might
have had that--though I'm not a church candle like Tina--for I never
was had up for anything; and it is precious hard lines! Such a
beauty, Robin, the Bishop gives it--all the Cathedral music, bound in
red morocco; and this beggar hinders us all this very last chance!
And then, he is dirty enough to write and tell Felix to get out of me
who has been getting out through the Cathedral, and dropping the
cards.'

'Do you know?'

'Hold your tongue; I thought you had a little sense! Felix had that;
he saw I could not tell him, and said it must be as I pleased about
that; but then he rowed me, as he never did before, for wasting time,
and not mugging for the exhibition--as if that was any use.'

'Why shouldn't t you get the exhibition?'

'Put that out of your head,' said Lance, angrily; 'Harewood is sure
of that! A fellow that construes by nature--looks at a sentence, and
spots the nominative in a moment--makes verses--rale, superior,
iligant articles.'

'But I thought he wasn't always accurate. Can't you catch him out? O
Lance, don't look so fierce! I only said so because he can't want the
exhibition as much as you. He can go to some other school, or be paid
for.'