Books: The Pillars of the House, V1

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

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'Not conveniently,' said Lance, 'they are not at all well off, and
Jack helps them. Besides, I wouldn't get the thing in a sneaking way;
and besides, Bill could no more make a mull in construing out of
carelessness than I could a false note--it's against nature. I can't
beat him, except in arithmetic. My birthday comes at such an unlucky
time. I should get another year if I'd only been born in July instead
of June! I might be second, for Shapcote is only dogged by his
father; but that's no good for the exhibition: and then there's an
end of Cathedral and all!'

'What should you do then, Lance?'

'Whatever costs least! I'd as lief work my way out to Fulbert, if
this is to go on.'

'Oh, don't! don't do that, whatever you do!' cried Robina, clinging
to his arm.

'I don't see why not, if everybody is to be as savage as a bear when
one comes home. One always trusted to Felix to see sense, if nobody
else did; but what with his jawing one about the exhibition, and
Wilmet about the tin and every spot on one's clothes, and Alda
growling at whatever one does in the parlour, I'm sure I wish I'd
stayed at Bexley.'

The boy and girl had never before been tried by want of sympathy, and
what seemed to them injustice, when they had thus descended into the
perturbed atmosphere of what they were used to regard as a happy
home. There was a long mutual communication of grievances--irritable
speeches--inattention from their elders--fancies and complaints of
Alda's enforced peremptorily by Wilmet--appeals to Felix either
quashed or unheeded; the strange thing was, in how short a time so
much had managed to go wrong with them, except that they added the
vexations of the last quarter to the present discomfort, real or
fancied; and though they were both good children, each had the strong
feeling that there was not as much encouragement as usual to
goodness, and that it could not have been much worse if they had been
seriously to blame. One had expected to be caressed for her endurance
in a good cause; the other had not expected to be severely rebuked
for what he scarcely viewed as faults. It was the first time this
younger half of the family had ever suffered anything approaching to
neglect or injustice from their seniors, and the moment was perilous.
The discussion was forming their discontents into a dangerously
avowed state, if it had the beneficial effect of raising their
spirits by force of sympathy. At any rate, they were in no gloomy
mood when they reached the tidy little villa, with its beds of open-
hearted crocuses defying the cold wind, and admitting the sun to the
utmost depths of their purple and golden bosoms, as they laughed
their cheery greeting.

No less cheerful was the welcome from kind old Mrs. Froggatt, who met
them at the door. 'Master Lancelot, Miss Robina, this is an unlooked-
for pleasure, to be sure! My dear Miss Robina!' as the girl gave her
hearty embrace.

They were the prime favourites next to Felix, and were the more
gladly hailed that Mr. Froggatt was anxious about the business on
which they came, and had been trying to get leave from his wife to
peril his rheumatics by coming in to Bexley about it. They must stay
to luncheon; and while Mr. Froggatt went off to answer his note, they
were made much of over the fire, in the way that had of late become
so abhorrent to Bernard, with difficulty avoiding a pre-luncheon or
nooning of cake and wine within an hour of the meal of the day.

'And how is Mr. Underwood?' asked Mrs. Froggatt, when Robina had been
divested of her wraps, placed close to the fire, screened and
footstooled, and when Lance had transferred the big white cat from
the arm-chair to his own knee.

'Oh, very well, thank you,' said Robina, rather surprised that the
lengthy catechism on the family health did not as usual start from
'poor dear Miss Geraldine.'

'He was looking so thin, and had such a cough, I was quite concerned
when he walked out here on Good Friday afternoon,' continued Mrs.
Froggatt. 'I hope he is taking care.'

'Wilmet is always at him about it,' said Lance.

'That is right. And I hope he minds to keep the office-door shut. It
is such a draughty place! Does he wear flannel, do you know, my
dear?'

'I think so,' said Robina. 'Sister Constance told Wilmet he ought,
when he had that long cough after the measles.'

'Ay. You know--you'll excuse me, my dears, a cough is not to be
trifled with in your dear family.'

'You should write to the clerk of the weather-office, Mrs. Froggatt,'
said Lance, rather gruffly.

And as Mrs. Froggatt was not good at understanding jokes, but was
always ready to accept Mr. Lance's, she thought he meant Admiral
Fitzroy; and much explanation and banter followed, which the children
made the louder from dread of the subject. Mrs. Froggatt was by no
means the cultivated person her husband was; but, being of a good old
plain farmer stock, she was quite as unassuming, and her manners with
the young Underwoods were a good deal like those of a superior old
housekeeper, only perhaps less authoritative and familiar; but she
was not to be kept away from the subject of her real anxiety. 'I wish
I could see your sister, and speak to her; he ought to have some
advice rather than let it run on in this way. I'm sure Mr. Froggatt
would be willing to do anything. It has been a great concern to him
to have to leave such a heavy charge to him this spring, and with all
the family cares on his head too, at his age. Miss Alda's wedding put
off too--is it? And is the young gentleman here still?'

'No; his leave was over last Monday,' said Robina, 'a week after I
came home.'

'I should like to have seen him! Your brother says he is grown up
such a fine-looking young man, and quite got over his lameness. A
handsome couple they will be! I did see them ride through the place,
but Miss Alda didn't see me.'

'You saw his horse?' broke in Lance, who considered Brown Murad as a
superior specimen to either of the lovers, and Mrs. Froggatt, whose
father had bred horses, and whose son was much more addicted to them
than was for his good, was a much more intelligent auditor of the
perfections now dilated on than could have been expected.

Yet nothing could keep off the dreaded subject, and even at table,
Lance's disappointing deficiency in schoolboy voracity became the
cause of a lamentation over his brother's small appetite, and an
examination of Robina, resulting in her allowing that Felix seldom
gave himself time to do more than snatch a crust of bread in the
middle of the day, and did not always make up for it at tea-time. Mr.
Froggatt shook his head and looked distressed, and his good lady went
on discoursing about the basin of soup she always used to keep
prepared for him, evidently longing, though not quite daring, to send
a lecture to Wilmet on taking care of her brother. But what made more
impression on both the children was, that after they had been into
Mr. Froggatt's little conservatory with him, and had received into
their charge a basket of camellias, violets, and calycanthus, with a
pot of jonquils in the middle for Geraldine, the old gentleman said,
as he bade them good-bye, 'Tell your sister, that if she thinks a day
or two of laying by would be good for your brother, I should be ready
and glad to change places with him. A little change might take away
his cough; and I don't like his looks--no, I don t. He ought to be
careful;' this to himself, with a long sigh.

Then the children got out into the garden, and with the natural
impatience of the evil omen, exclaimed at the same moment--

'Croak, croak, croak, went the frogs,'

and

'Were there ever such a pair of good old coddles?'

But then they walked on for a full quarter of a mile before either
said another word; and then it was, 'You don't think Felix looking
ill, do you, Lance?'

'I never thought about his looks at all,' said Lance.

'No more did I,' said Robina, 'but he does cough; I hear him through
the wall in the morning. Do you think there is anything in it,
Lance?'

'How long has it been going on?'

'Ever since he came up to London. He got a chill in our garden when I
was telling him about--' said Robina, stopping short of what she
hated to mention.

'Then that's it!' said Lance, turning round with a face of one who
had made a great discovery.

'It? What is the matter with him?'

'Yes,' said Lance. 'Hold your tongue, Robina; but Cherry and I
thought long ago that he fancied that little Knevett himself. Then I
made sure it was all a mistake; but now, depend upon it, that's what
he is so cut up about''

It carried conviction to the hearer, perhaps because it fitted in
with a girl's love of romance. 'Then that's why he won't talk to me!'

'Of course!'

And then they began putting together all the tokens of inclination
which their small experience and large imagination could suggest,
till they had pretty well decided the point in their own belief, and
had amused themselves considerably; but the anxiety came back again.

'Do people get over such things, Lance? There was Ophelia, and there
was Wilfred in Rokeby--only she was a woman, and he was pipy. Did
you ever know of anybody really and truly?'

Lance meditated, but his experience reached no farther than the
surgeon's assistant at Minsterham, who was reported to be continually
in love, but who did not look greatly the worse for it.

And then Robina suggested that she did not remember that either
Wilfred or Ophelia had a cough.

'But my father had,' said Lance in the depths of his throat. 'Don't
you know, Robin, it was hard work and trouble and poverty that--_did
it_?'

'Was it?' awe-struck, for she had been so young as to have no clear
ideas.

'I've heard it told often enough. My Lady cut off the third curate;
and that--and all the rest of it--helped to bring on the decline.'

'But, Lance! At least, that wasn't--love.'

'Nonsense, Robin! Don't you see, whatever takes the heart and spirit
out of a man, makes him ready for illness to get hold of?' Lance
plucked desperately at the hazels in the hedge, and his eyes were
full of tears.

'O Lance, Lance, what can we do?'

'I don't know! I'd let him pitch into me from morning till night if
that would do him any good!'

'I'm sure I am very sorry I grumbled. We'll give Wilmet Mr.
Froggatt's message, and see what she thinks.'

Poor children! their consternation was such, that they must judge by
their own eyes of Felix without loss of time; so they both marched
into the shop with Mr. Froggatt's note, and there felt half baffled
to see Felix looking much as usual, very busy trying to content a
lady with nursery literature, and casting a glance at Robin as if she
had no business there.

Wilmet received Mr. Froggatt's message without excitement. She
thought it would be a very good thing, but she did not believe Felix
would consent; and Alda broke out, 'Then we should have Mr. Froggatt
inflicted on us all the evening!'

Nor did Felix consent. He said it was very kind, but his cold was
almost gone, and he did not need it. Moreover he had his private
doubts whether Alda would be decently gracious to Mr. Froggatt; and
Wilmet, whose one object in life was to keep her sister contented and
happy at home, could press nothing so disagreeable to her.
Altogether, the reception of their hints at home was so prosaically
placid, that they were both rather ashamed of the alarm into which
they had worked themselves up. Even when Robina privately asked
Cherry whether she thought Felix looking well, the answer was eager.

'Oh, very--very well! He looked pulled down when his cold was bad,
but he is quite well now.'

'Mrs. Froggatt thought--'

'Oh, you've been talking to Mrs. Froggatt! She thinks nothing so kind
as to say one is looking poorly. I said, "How well you are looking,
Mrs. Froggatt," one day, and I assure you she only swallowed it by an
act of Christian forgiveness. She is fondest of Felix, so of course
he looks the worst.'

Robina got no more out of Geraldine, whose fears at that moment were
in the form of utterly denying themselves. Commonplace life greatly
reassured the two young things, and of the alarm there chiefly
remained a certain shame at their own former discontent, and doubly
tender feeling towards their fatherly elder brother. Now that they
guessed something to be amiss with him, they had no irritation for
him--and indeed he gave them no cause for any; the discomfort was
partly indeed occasioned by the lack of his usual quiet mirth, but
far more by Alda's fastidiousness, and Wilmet's vigilance lest she
should be annoyed. This caused restrictions that weighed more heavily
on the younger ones than on Lance and Robina, and had the effect of
making Angela and Bernard rebellious. They had neither the principle
nor the consideration of their two seniors; to them every one seemed
simply 'cross,' and against this crossness there was a constant
struggle, either of disobedience or of grumble.

Both were at rather an insubordinate age. Angela, having begun school
life with getting into a scrape greater than she understood, had
acquired a naughty-girl reputation, of the kind that tempts the young
mind to live up to it; and her high spirits, boisterous nature, and
'don't care' system made her irrepressible by any one but Wilmet,
whose resolute hand might be murmured at, but was never relaxed.
While Bernard, hitherto very fairly amenable to Cherry, and a capital
little scholar, became infected with the spirit of riot and
insubordination. Whatever fastidiousness the children took for fine-
ladyism in Alda they treated unmercifully, and resented in their own
fashion her complaints, and Wilmet's enforcement of regard to her
tastes: nor was Lance always blameless in the tricks played upon her.

It was strange to see the difference made by one incongruous element.
A few sneers at Cherry's pronunciation, an injudicious laugh when she
was rebuking, and a general habit of making light of her, on Alda's
part, upset all Bernard's habits of deference to the sister who had
taught him all he knew. His lessons grew into daily battles--miseries
to himself and far greater miseries to his teacher, and sufficient
misery to the spectator to induce her to do that which the other
sisters could scarcely have brought themselves to do on any
provocation, namely to complain to Felix, and by and by make a
representation, for the general good, she said, that it was a mere
farce to leave the boy under Cherry's management.

Cherry, with bitter tears, was forced to own that she could no longer
keep him in order nor make him learn, and there was no alternative
but to send him to Mr. Ryder's. He had no voice nor ear, so that he
could not follow in Lance's steps; and for the present, Bexley was
the only resource.

Of course Cherry charged the whole of this upon her poor little self;
and some amount of the trouble certainly was due to her incapacity
not to show in voice and manner when she was under fret, anxiety, or
depression; and now, poor child! all three at once had come upon her.
Whether Alda's conversation or the children's naughtiness fretted her
most, it would be hard to tell; she was in a continual state of
unuttered, vague, and therefore most wearing anxiety on Felix's
account, and the physical discomfort of the ungenial spring told on
her whole frame and spirits. Alda's talk, when good-humoured, opened
such vistas of brightness, amusement, conversation, and above all of
beautiful scenes, that they awoke longings and cravings that Cherry
had hardly known before. The weariness of the grinding monotony of
home seemed to have infected her. She knew it for discontent, and was
the more miserable over her want of power to control it, because of
the terror that hung over her lest repinings might bring on them all
the judicial punishment of a terrible break-up of the home she loved,
even while the tedium of the daily round oppressed her. Alternate
plaintiveness and weary sharpness of course aggravated both Alda and
Bernard, and they knew nothing of the repentant wretchedness that
rather weakened than strengthened her.

Little Stella's unfailing docility and sweetness were her great
solace. Even Alda was exceedingly fond of Stella, and would have
spoilt her if the child had not been singularly firm in her intense
love and loyalty to the heads of the family. Angel and Bear were too
rough for her, and alarmed her sense of duty; but Lance was her hero;
and the happiest moments of those holidays were spent in a certain
loft above a warehouse in the court of the printing-office, only
attainable by a long ladder. Here, secure that none but favoured ears
could hear, Lance practised on his beloved violin, at every hour he
could steal, emulating too often Mother Hubbard's dog 'fiddling to
mice,' but his audience often including his three younger sisters. He
had had scarcely any hints, but his was the nature that could pick
music out of anything; and Angela, much more than Robin, was ecstatic
in all that concerned the sixth sense, and watched and criticised
with rapture, wanted to learn, and pouted at being told that it was
not fit for a woman. Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft,
with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible
to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the
spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the
annoyances she caused, Cherry striving hard, and not always
successfully, with the fretfulness of anxiety, and Felix--they durst
not think in what state. That loft and that violin made their fairy-
land, and one that rendered it most unusually hard for Lance to learn
his holiday task.

'I'll tell you what, Lance,' said Robina at last, when he had vainly
been trying to repeat it to her, with his eye on a sheet of music all
the time, 'you can't do two things at once. If I were you, I would
lock up that violin till the summer examination is over.'

He turned on her quite angrily. 'Very fine talking! Lock up all the
pleasure I have in life! Thank you!'

'I'm quite sure you'll never get the exhibition if you have your head
in this.'

'I shan't get the exhibition any way.'

'But if you do your utmost for it?'

'I shall do my utmost!'

'You can't if you have these tunes always running in your head, and
are always wild to be picking them out.'

'Well, Robin, I sometimes think I should do more good with music than
anything else.'

'Maybe,' said Robina, a sensible little woman; 'but you'll do no good
by half and half. If you don't do well in the examination, Felix will
be horribly vexed, and you'll always hate the thought of it.'

'I tell you I shall be as dull as ditch-water, and as stupid as
Shapcote, if I don't have any pleasure.'

'I only don't want you to be stupider.'

Lance chucked up a pen-wiper and caught it.

'The fact is,' said Robina, 'all we've got to do is our best. If we
don't, it is wrong in us, and it makes us more a weight on Felix; and
I think it is our real duty to keep everything out of the way that
hinders us, if it is ever so nice.'

'Is that Cock Robin, or Parson Rook with his little book?' said
Lance, throwing the pen-wiper in her face.

But the week after, when Robina was at school again, she was called
to receive a letter which had something hard in it.

'Did you leave a key behind you?' she was asked a little
suspiciously, for there was nothing about it in the brief note.

'No, Miss Fennimore; but my brother has sent it to me to keep for
him. It is the key of his violin-case, and he is not going to touch
it till he is past his examination.'

From that time Miss Fennimore entertained a better opinion of Robina
Underwood; but little recked Robina. She only felt secure that after
this act of heroism Lance could not but gain the exhibition.

CHAPTER XVII

MIDSUMMER SUN

'For Phoebus' awful self encountered him
Amid the battle throng invisible,
In thickest darkness shrouded all his face;
He stood behind, and with extended palm
Dealt on Patroclus' neck and shoulder broad
A mighty buffet.'
Iliad, Book xvi. (EARL OF DERBY.)

Warmer weather came at last, and brought Mr. Froggatt back to his
daily work, lifting a weight of responsibility from his young
partner's shoulders.

The cough mended too, but did not entirely cease; and when June came
in with an unusual access of summer heat, there were those who felt
it as trying as the sharp wind had been. One evening, when the home
party had been sitting in the garden, and the fall of the dew sent
Cherry indoors, Felix, as usual, gave her his arm, and lifted her
step by step up the stairs. She felt, all over her frame, that what
used to be almost nothing to the boy was a severe exertion to the
man.

'You should not do it!' she said, as they both stood resting at the
top, he leaning back against the wall, and wiping his forehead, where
the big blue V of the veins stood out prominently.

'Having so often carried the calf--I should be able to carry--the
cow,' he said, the smile not disguising the panting of his voice.

'You are to be at the agricultural meeting at Dearport tomorrow. I
wish you would just go and see Dr. Lee.'

'I think I shall.' And there they were interrupted.

Poor Geraldine! What worlds of apprehension were founded on that
quiet assent, his first intimation that he believed himself unwell!
She kept absolute silence. She could not have uttered her terrors for
ten thousand worlds.

She was on her couch under the apple-tree, in the late afternoon,
trying to force her thoughts out of miserable possibilities, when she
saw Felix come out of the house, flushed, heated, dusty, tired; but
somehow she gathered hope from his air, as he threw himself down on
the grass by her side, saying, 'Mr. Froggatt sent me out to cool.'

'Stella, dear,' to the little one, who had her story-book at hand,
'run and ask Sibby to bring Felix out a cup of tea.' Then she tried
to guess at his face, but durst not look at him fully. 'Are you very
tired?'

'Rather! That place was a mere oven of roaring! Well, Cherry,'
pulling off his neck-tie, and settling himself, with an elbow on her
couch, and his back against the tree, 'there's nothing amiss with my
lungs.'

She shuddered all over, and almost bounded; then put her hand
tenderly on his shoulder.

'Your doctor is a clever man, I can see,' he continued. 'He seemed to
guess about me directly. He sounded my chest, and says it is all
right now, but that there had been a little damage; he thought the
long cough I had after the measles had left traces that this winter
has told upon.'

'Ah!' A great gasp.

'But there's no active disease--none at all; nor likely, if I can
shake off this remnant of cough, and get into condition before the
winter.'

Cherry sighed again at the white hand, and the network of blue veins
on both it and the temple that was propped against it. 'You must
_indeed_!' she wistfully said.

'I _must_,' said Felix, sighing too, as with little mind for the
struggle. 'I've brought home a detestable bottle of cod-liver oil on
the spot, and am to take to all the good living I can swallow. Won't
that delight Mr. Froggatt s good old soul? Then the worst of it is
that I am to go away to some sea place for the hottest of the
weather.'

'Oh, I'm so glad!'

'He taxed me with not taking food enough; and when I allowed that I
had no turn for eating, insisted on this sea plan: but he laughed me
to scorn when I asked whether I might not get a room at Dearport, and
run backwards and forwards. "Ay," he said, "you have a good deal on
your mind;" and I fell into the trap, and told him my partner had
been ill, and we had a great deal to work up. And he went on to ask
if I had not the charge of the family, and was not apt to get anxious
about them; and he turned round on me, and ordered me to get a
thorough holiday, and turn my back on everybody and everything; for
there's nothing the matter with me but overwork and harass--'
Something that did not amount to _and_ finished the sentence.

'O Felix, I know, I have felt,' she said, the tears standing in her
eyes, and the colour rushing into her face at this first venture.

'Have you--little foolish thing?' he answered, but shifting hand and
elbow so that nothing of his face could be seen but a bit of brow and
temple, and that was crimson to the roots of his hair. 'Don't take it
for more than it ever was,' he muttered.

'It was enough to hurt you grievously,' whispered the sister.

'It ought not,' he said. 'It was only the putting out of a vain
foolish hope I had no right to indulge. Eh, Cherry!' as she made a
little sound, 'tell me one thing; was it all imagination and folly
that she--she could have--liked me?' He bent his head with almost as
much suppressed emotion as if it had been a matter of present hope.

'Certainly not,' said Cherry. 'She liked your--your attentions; and I
thought sometimes you were quite pulling her up to your level. If no
one else--'

'I did not imagine it was visible,' he interrupted. 'I tried to be
very guarded, but one does not know--'