The Pillars of the House; Or, Under Wode, Under Rode, Vol. 1 (of 2)

'Of course! who else should?'

'My eyes! And to see her looking like that!' Then, with a deep sigh, 'If I could only book her for my wife on the spot!'

Whence it may be inferred, that Stella's birth-day party was not only a brilliant success, but might, in Wilmet's phrase, 'lead to something.' All it seemed to have led to at present was a discovery on the part of the good Miss Pearsons, that the household they had been wont to pity as small orphan children, now contained three fine young men.

At least Geraldine connected this with the desire they expressed that Alice might enjoy the same opportunities as Robina of giving her acquirements a final polish, up to diploma pitch. A correspondence commenced, resulting in Miss Knevett being engaged as teacher, being remunerated by lessons in languages and accomplishments. The arrangement gave universal satisfaction; Cherry could not detect any regret on the part of Felix; Alice would still spend her holidays with her aunts; and the sense that her departure was near made the intercourse between the two houses more frequent and familiar than it had ever yet been.

One evening Cherry, while looking up a quotation for Felix in Southey's 'Doctor,' lit on his quaint theory of the human soul having previously migrated through successive stages of vegetable and animal life, and still retaining something characteristic from each transmigration. Her brothers were a good deal tickled with the idea; and Lance exclaimed, 'I know who must have been rhubarb, queen-wasp, and a hen-harrier.'

'Oh, that's too bad!' cried Robina.

'Why a hen-harrier?' asked Felix, recognising, like almost all the others.

'One of the birds of prey where the female is bigger than her mate,' drily observed Edgar.

'Besides,' said Cherry, 'recollect the hen-harrier's countenance in pictures, with beady eyes, and a puffed supercilious smile about the beak.'

'Why, that's Lady Price!' chimed in Alice, making the discovery at last.

Lengthily and gravely Edgar uttered the words, 'Puzzle-monkey, praying mantis, sacred stork, howler.'

Lance and Robin roared with merriment, and after one glance at Clement's half virtuous, half offended countenance, Felix and Cherry fell into like convulsions; while Alice exclaimed, 'But who is it?' and Angel shouted the sufficiently evident answer, 'Clement, oh! the howler, the black preaching monkey in a natural surplice!'

'I can't think how you do it!' exclaimed Alice.

'I object to the mantis,' Cherry struggled to say. 'Nasty hypocritical creature that eats things up.'

'Praying for its living, eh, Cherry?' said wicked Edgar. 'If you had ever seen the long thin animal, with head back, hands joined, and pious attitude, you couldn't doubt.'

And as he spoke he sketched his mischievous likeness, at which the mirth grew more furious; while Cherry, always the most easily excited, uttered in a strangled voice, 'A parsnip, a barn-door hen, a dilapidated Guernsey cow, an old mother whale.'

'O Cherry, Cherry, you've immortalized yourself!' shouted Lance. 'How did you hit off the parsnip? the very thing that had stumped me.'

'The colour, and the odd sort of sweetness,' said Cherry.

'Won't we have fun with it when I go back!' cried Lance.—'Not tell? Nonsense! Why, no one will enjoy it like Mother Harewood herself.'

'Only don't say I made it. There, Edgar has got one.'

'Touch-me-not balsam, blister-fly, bantam-cock (full strut), black terrier.'

He did not caricature this time except with the muscles of his face, and with these he contrived to put on four different aspects, each so exactly like Mr. Mowbray Smith that not even Alice required the proclamation of the name; and Wilmet gravely said, 'I do not think this is a proper sort of game. It must be ill-natured or irreverent.'

'That depends,' said Geraldine, now thoroughly in the swing.—'Here! Hawthornden apple-tree, stickleback, goldfinch, beaver.'

'The hardy Norseman's house of yoreWas on the foaming wave,'

sang out Lance, recalling Theodore's substitute for Felix's name.

'Exactly like—figures, tastes, and all,' said Edgar, scanning Felix's clear, bright, fresh face, glossy hair, and rather short figure, at once trim and sturdy. 'The goldfinch hit him off exactly, but I don't see the force of the apple-tree.'

'You would,' said Cherry, 'if you were properly acquainted with our three trees and their individualities. The Hawthornden is a resolute looking fellow, but it indulges in the loveliest pink and white blossoms, and waxen, delicate, peachy fruit.'

'Uncommonly sour! Thank you, Cherry,' said Felix.

'Not in a pie,' suggested Alice.

'Properly treated and sweetened, eh?' asked he, smiling on her.

'But why is Felix like a stickleback?' said Angela.

'Don't you know?' said Cherry; 'a beautiful bright little fish, and the good male one swims up and down taking care of the nest.'

'I do like the beaver,' allowed Wilmet. 'It always was my favourite beast.'

'It hits off the respectable householder element,' added Edgar. 'Three flaps of his broad tail rule beaverdom like Jupiter's nod.'

'I have one,' interposed Robina.—'Bella-donna lily, working bee, menura—'

'Hold hard!' called Lance; 'is a menura fish, flesh, or fowl?'

'Fowl: the lyre-tailed pheasant, that makes a shelter for its nest with its own tail.'

'Decided liar tale,' muttered Edgar.

'Go on, Bobbie,' Felix encouraged her. 'The pheasant suits both the twins as well as the bella-donna. Any more?'

'Perhaps the leading stag of the herd.'

'Don't make us like that proud, cowardly, tyrannical beast,' exclaimed Wilmet.

'I have seen you look exactly like one,' said Geraldine. 'That and the pheasant both give the notion of your neck.'

'Such a set of trumpery gaudy things!' grumbled Wilmet. 'Nothing but the bee is tolerable.'

'I did think of a speckled Hamburg hen, and a nice quiet she-goat,' said Robina; 'but they are all dowdy, and would not suit Alda.'

'There's something in the theory,' said Edgar. 'That bella-donna approves itself perfectly—so delicate and stately, and yet so essentially unpoetical.'

'That Mettie takes as a compliment,' said Felix, 'only she would rather have been a potato, or a cabbage.'

'Now,' said Cherry, 'you will all know—bell-heather, the grasshopper, the lark, and the squirrel.'

'Is this the lark's crest, or the squirrel's tail?' said Felix, giving an elder brother's pull to the boy's highest wave of hair.

'Or the grasshopper's leap?' cried Lance, springing on him for a bout of buffeting and skirmishing; in the midst of which Alice was heard wondering how the riddles, as she thought them, were either made or guessed.

'They come,' said Geraldine. 'I am only afraid we shall fall into a trick of making them for everybody.'

'I wonder what you would make for me.'

Geraldine had it on her tongue's end that Alice would be difficult, for want of anything distinctive; but Felix and Edgar were both jotting something down, and Robina was beforehand with either—'Scarlet pimpernel, tortoiseshell butterfly, budgerigar, marmoset.'

No one answered, for Felix had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice, on which she read—'"Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't it a little brown bird?'

'With a rich glow of red, and a beautiful song,' said Felix, smiling; and the red glowed redder on her cheek, as she said, laughing, 'Kitten for mischief, eh? For shame, Mr. Underwood!—What, another! Dear me, I shall not know myself!'

This had been slipped into her hand; and Cherry suspected that her exclamation had been a mistake of which she was conscious, as the colour deepened on her already blushing cheeks, and her eyes were cast down, while a demure smile played on her lips. The incautious exclamation had betrayed her, and the young ones clamoured to hear Edgar's view of her transmigration; but there was a little coy struggle of 'Oh no, she wouldn't, and she couldn't.'

'She smiled and blushed, and oft did sayHer pretty oath by yea or nay.'

And in the midst came the message that the maid was arrived to take her home; and this being a cross stiff personage, who might never be kept waiting, she had to hurry away; and had no sooner gone than Angela burst out with, 'Here it is! I've got it! Listen to it: "Say, Lady—"'

'Stay, Angela,' interrupted Felix. 'You have no business with that.'

'Not Edgar's fun!' she exclaimed. 'Why, where is he?'

'Surely he is not going home with her!' said Wilmet in some dismay.

'Oh, but it is such fun,' went on Angela, 'only I can't make it out. You read it, Lance.'

'Did she give it you?' said Felix.

'No, I whipped it up when she dropped it. There's something about Ratton in it.'

Felix quietly took the paper out of her hand, folded it, and put it into an envelope. 'You take it back to her the first thing to-morrow,' he said. 'Now go to bed.'

Angela durst not oppose that tone, so unusually serious and authoritative; but she contrived to prolong her good-nights, and the putting away of her goods, with a kind of half droll, half sullen resignation; and just as Wilmet was hurrying her off, Edgar returned. He always spoilt Angela a little, and she sprang to him with a kind of droll pout. 'You'll not be cross, Edgar. You'll let us hear Alice's transmigrations. Look! here's Felix bottled them up in an envelope, and won't let us peep at them! But you'll let me hear. You won't order me off to bed.'

Cherry fancied she saw a disconcerted look on his face when he saw the envelope held up to him; but if so, it instantly gave place to the mischievous entertainment of defeating a lesson on discretion.—'The heads of the family must assert themselves sometimes, my dear, even about nothing,' he said consolingly.

'Indeed,' said Wilmet, bristling in defence of Felix, 'of course we knew it was nothing. It was only very ill-mannered and wrong of Angela to go prying into what was not meant to be shown.'

'I'm sure,' said Edgar most ungratefully, 'it might be posted on the church door for what I care, except for its intrinsic vileness.'

'Oh, let's have it! let's have it!' burst out Lance and Robina, who had been burning with curiosity all the time.

'Don't let us have them murdered, whatever they are,' said Edgar, taking them into his own hand. 'Pity the sorrows of a poor wretch seduced into one of your horrid jeux d'esprit—a lady's excuse for fishing for compliments that sound more than they mean. Here goes, then:—

'Say, Lady, what existence pastThine essence hath enfolded;What humble antecedent castThy present self hath moulded.'The hawthorn bush, with blossom whiteVeiling her branches pricking;The painted lady, fluttering light,The rash pursuer tricking.'Grass paraquit, who loves to sitIn clustering rows and chat on;Caressing, purring, traitor kit,Fatal to Master Ratton.

'There, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are satisfied,' he concluded, letting his performance float into the fire; 'the metaphors, to say the least, are startling, but that is the fault of the game.'

'I don't enter into it all,' said Cherry.

'Not likely another of the grass paraquits would, my dear,' said Edgar.

'And it is exactly what Robin made her,' said Angela; 'both that and the butterfly; and Felix, the kitten. You didn't borrow of course. How funny!'

'But I didn't make her inconstant,' said Robin; 'that is not fair.'

'Not when you made her a butterfly, and the shepherd's weather-glass too!'

'I never thought of that, only their being both bright, dark, sparkling things; and Felix has the forget-me-not, by way of antidote.'

'I do not think such things are wise,' pronounced Wilmet. 'And, by-the-by, Edgar, it has always been the custom that nobody should walk home with Alice. Miss Pearson would not like it, and it would make a talk.'

Edgar laughed. 'Dear W. W., let it not trouble you! What it may lead to is a bugbear to you. You can't think how much younger and more agreeable you will be when you have learnt that there can be passages that lead to nothing.'

Geraldine went to bed uncomfortable and perplexed. Before she was dressed in the morning, Alice darted in. 'Cherry, I'm so vexed; I dropped that paper. Do you think it is here?'

'No; Angel picked it up, and Edgar read us the verses, and then threw them into the fire.'

'Burnt them!'

'Yes; he said the worst of such games was that they force one to pay compliments that may be taken to mean more than they do.'

Cherry spoke under a stern sense of virtue doing a service to Alice; and when the quick answer came, 'He didn't say that, I'm sure it was Wilmet,' she asseverated, 'Indeed he did. I don't confuse in that way. It is a very good warning not to dwell on what gentlemen may say in mere play.'

'Who told you I did?' said Alice sharply. 'You've no business to say such things!'

Happily there was an interruption. Cherry felt as if she had had a taste of the claws; but she feared she had been malicious, and she was penitent.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT IT LED TO

'Then out and spak the popinjay.'

Old Ballad.

Geraldine was hard at work on a drawing. Edgar's teaching had improved her so much that, under a sore longing to obtain some good studies, she had ventured to place in the shop one of her best imaginary groups, and to her surprise and delight, it had brought her in fifteen shillings, and an order for a companion.

Vistas of hope began to rise before her, only obscured by her consciousness of the want of knowledge and skill. It took some resolution not to attend exclusively to her art, and she was forced to make it a rule never to touch a pencil till the lessons of Bernard and Stella were both over for the day.

They were finished, the children in the garden, and Cherry was in that world of joy and something like inspiration known to spirits imbued with any of the constructive poetry of art, always endeavouring to fulfil an ideal, never indeed satisfying themselves, but never so at rest as in the effort.

Presently she was startled by a step on the stairs. Nothing short of the Fall of Delhi had ever been known to bring Felix upstairs in business hours; and he was especially bound to his work at present, since Mr. Froggatt was detained at home by a serious attack of rheumatism. She looked up amazed at the eager question, 'Is there a letter from Alda?'

'I believe there is, waiting for Wilmet. What is the matter?'

'The most astonishing thing. Here is Ferdinand Travis writing to tell me of his engagement to Alda.'

'To Alda?'

'To Alda! I looked twice to be sure that there was no confusion between the names, but it is my sister Alda beyond a doubt. He would not ask my consent if it were Marilda. Here's the letter, as good and nice as possible, dear good fellow.'

'Then what Edgar told us must have been pure imagination.'

'Not the old folks' wishes, most likely. For the rest, Edgar can make a good story. One can't wonder at the preference, and there's no denying that it is a brilliant chance for Alda.'

'And what a blessing that he should be so good!'

'Infinite! No one could be so welcome! How pleased Mr. Audley will be! But I must go, and try not to look too much disposed to stand on the counter and crow.'

Whatever Felix did below, upstairs Cherry found drawing impossible. Ferdinand a brother! The pleasure was enhanced by the affectionate simplicity of his letter, the outcome of so good a heart, greatly in love, but very conscientious, and utterly unpresuming on his wealth, but showing all his old affection and reverence for Felix. What a delightful wonder that Alda should bring in a connection so faithful to Felix!

Yet, what would not Cherry have given to be as unsuspicious as Felix or Wilmet? Why would misgivings come into her head such as never troubled theirs? Why must she be haunted by Alda's intimations about her travelling companions, and her manner, half scornful, half nettled, when Edgar described the terms on which Mr. Travis stood?

She read Ferdinand's letter a second time, and was convinced that he looked at the whole with such artless seriousness as to preclude all notion of his having been consciously playing fast and loose; but she was ready to torture herself for the involuntary doubt whether her own sister were equally to be trusted.

However, when Wilmet came home, her genuine wholesome overflow of undoubting rapture could not but sweep Cherry along in the tide. Ferdinand combined the apparently impossible advantages of being thoroughly one of themselves, and yet of being able to give Alda the luxuries to which she had become accustomed; and Wilmet's joy was beyond expression. The contrast between the twins—one admired, praised, followed, esteemed, as one of the brightest ornaments of London society; the other toiling in an obscure poverty-stricken home, a teacher in a small third-class school, her beauty unheeded or viewed as a real disadvantage—all this never occurred for one moment to Wilmet, she only felt elevated in her sister.

Two days passed before more letters were received, and these came by the first instead of the second post, before breakfast was over. Four—besides one unheeded, being only in Robina's childish handwriting—Alda to Wilmet, Thomas Underwood and Ferdinand both to Felix, Edgar to Geraldine. There was a simultaneous opening of the letters, then a general starting and looking into one another's eyes, and Geraldine faintly murmured,

'Then it was really so!'

'So? what do you mean?' broke forth Wilmet. 'These selfish people are treating my poor Alda most cruelly among them; and Felix must go and fetch her home to be married from her own brother's house as she ought to be.'

'I shall have to fetch her home,' said Felix thoughtfully; 'but I wish I were quite clear that she has been dealing kindly by Marilda.'

'You are not believing that man Thomas rather than your own sister!' cried Wilmet. 'If Alda does happen to be prettier than his daughter, she can't help it. I'm sure I should be glad enough not to be pretty, but it is a trial, and one must do the best one can.'

'That is just what I fear Alda has been doing,' said Felix between his teeth, as he frowned over his letter.

'Read her letter, poor dear girl,' cried Wilmet, 'and see if you aren't ashamed of such a judgment! No. Some is only meant for me; but listen—"Your letter of sisterly joy has come on troubled waters. I always knew I was the poor relation upon sufferance, but I have been taught to feel it now." She does not know how she could bear it, but for the security of Ferdinand's strength; and they will not let her see him—say she must give him up or them—Mrs. Underwood's violence inconceivable, and all because of a chimerical fancy.'

'What does Ferdinand himself say?' asked Cherry, as Wilmet looked on for further selections.

'He says,' said Felix, reading, 'that our greeting was especially welcome, from the contrast to what he met with from Mr. Underwood. The angry opposition took him by surprise, having always thought they regarded Alda as a daughter; but of course nothing makes any difference to him, and he would much rather come to us for her than to a stranger. His uncle is at New Orleans, and he is writing to him; he is afraid they ought to wait for the answer, though there can be no doubt about it, and he owes him no obedience.—Now, Cherry, there is just time for Edgar's account before we go our several ways.'

'O Felix,' cried Wilmet, 'aren't you going to fetch her home, poor dear?'

'Not possible to-day, Mettie. I shall have much ado to get away to-morrow. Don't be so unhappy, you know she could come alone or with Edgar, if it were so very dreadful; or if you are so fierce, you had better go yourself and encounter "Man Thomas."'

Wilmet looked so much hurt, that Geraldine thought to defend Felix by reading aloud at once.

'Ma Chérie

'Such a bear-garden never was seen! Madame furious, Tom abusive, Alda injured innocence, Montezuma heroism, and poor Polly magnanimous—though the less said about her, the soonest mended. I saw when I went back that the crisis could not be far off. The fact is, that our dear sister cannot see any one else treated as "an object," and has so persuaded herself that she is the proverbial maltreated poor relation, as to think everything fair.'

'Geraldine!' exclaimed Wilmet, 'how can you read? Felix, how can you listen to such things about your own sister?'

'It is only what she said herself,' said Felix drily. 'Go on, Cherry.'

'It must be owned that it was hard, when for once Polly had fallen in with something alike palatable to self and parents, and able to swallow her broad visage! If Madame had had any wit, she would have kept Alda away till the fish was hooked, when, it is my belief, he would have had no eyes for aught beyond; but the good creature is too sure of the charms of her own goose, to dread the admission of any swan whatsoever to her pond. While the Cacique being yet uncommitted, small blame to him if he saw the differ, especially as he attaches to Alda all the sanctity of Bexley, which is to him at the least what St. Matthew's is to Clem. To have been reared on the other—or indeed any side of the Atlantic, our intended brother-in-law is curiously simple. He accepted the intimation that Alda's face is her fortune with superb indifference; whether it will be the same with his uncle, remains to be seen; and I am afraid he is a good deal dependent on him, his mother's Mexican property having been speculated away. I don't like the look of the business; but if any one can do any good it is Marilda herself. Tom is in a towering rage, and his wife worse—neither perceiving that the noise they make is small mercy to their daughter. She looks all manner of colours, but stands out gallantly that she is glad, and that all is as it should be; and I believe that, left to herself, she will set things straight. Felix had better keep out of the fray except upon compulsion.'

'Here is compulsion,' said Felix. 'Tom Underwood summons me; I can't say I like the errand.'

'You ought not to let yourself be led by Edgar's unkind joking way!'

'We ought to be off now, at any rate,' said Felix, glad to close the discussion. 'I'll write to get Fernan to meet me at the station to-morrow.'

Accordingly, when he arrived, there was Ferdinand Travis driving a magnificent horse, the whole turn-out very far from looking like a connection of Froggatt and Underwood. He had certainly developed into a splendidly handsome fellow, though still lithe and slight rather than robust, and his dignified bearing giving the idea of greater height than his inches testified to. His greeting was warmly affectionate, with all his old wishful reverence towards his young godfather, and even with a sort of doubt of his thinking him worthy of his sister. As to the disturbance created by the avowal of the object of his attentions, he seemed amazed at it, and entirely unconscious of any supposed change on his part.

'I knew my uncle wished me to be an intimate with the family,' he said, 'and I was rejoiced to fall in with any one who bore your name, and knew how to appreciate you; but I had reason to think that—that there were other views—for—' and here the olive cheeks grew crimson, and he stammered himself into a hopeless entanglement, whence Felix recalled him charitably to an account of the explosion as it had affected himself.

It appeared that his proposal had not been mentioned to the family till Felix's answer had been received, Ferdinand feeling that no one ought to hear of it before the eldest brother. The lovers had met that night at a ball, and their consultation over the letters had taken place in the conservatory, where they had been surprised, and partly overheard, by Mrs. Underwood. When Ferdinand arrived the next morning, he was received with denunciations of underhand ways, and his explanation only made matters worse. A thunderstorm about ingratitude and treachery was launched forth, and he was told that the connection was so contrary to any intentions of his uncle, that Mr. Underwood could not hear of it, and that Alda must renounce it entirely, on peril of being cast off by the family. That Ferdinand regarded her brother as the true head of her house, was only additionally provoking; and Mr. Underwood had given him warning, which he only hinted at to Felix, that the engagement could not be carried on with impunity.