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

'Oh, what a place! what a place!' shouted Lance, starting up in the carriage. 'It's like the minster, and the jolly old river besides! Two of them! Oh! what fishing there must be!'

'I did not know it was really so beautiful,' said Felix in a low voice.

'You remember it?' said Mr. Staples.—'I suppose you can't?' to Lance.

'Oh no! I wasn't born! More's the pity! Do the salmon come up here, Sir?'

'Yes, since the fisheries have been protected; but young Mr. Underwood is a great fisherman, and I fear it is not easy to get a card.'

'Oh, I wasn't thinking about leave, Sir, thank you. I've got no tackle nor anything; but I am glad we have salmon,' said Lance, as though he had acquired an accession of dignity.

Descending from the bridge, they were in a road skirting the river, and on which presently opened the lodge gates of the Rectory. Here Mr. Staples got out, telling his servant to drive the young gentlemen round to the village.

'I say, Felix,' said Lance, as they were whirled on along the lane which swept round the long wall overhung by trees, 'that old party must know all about it.'

'Most likely,' said Felix; 'but if there had been any good in my hearing, my father could have told me himself. How well I remember his giving me my first ride along this lane! Do you smell the bean field? I don't believe I have thought of the scent since.'

Felix seemed absorbed in the pleasures of recognition; and Lance, amazed at the beauty and what seemed to him the splendour of the place, looked up at his brother with a kind of romantic feeling for a disinherited knight, as he contrasted the scene with the counter and printing-office.

The lane led to the village street, a very pretty one sloping upwards, and lying on each side of the Leston, which rippled along as clear as crystal, crossed every here and there by foot-bridges, some wooden, some a single stone; while the cottages on the opposite side were perched on a high shelf or terrace, and were approached by charming irregular flights of stairs with low walls or balustrades. Over the rail of one, smoking a pipe in summer evening enjoyment, was seen Abednego Tripp, with long nose, brown parchment cheeks, and lank hair not yet grey—one of the genuine almost extinct species of parish clerk. As the carriage stopped, he began to descend, keys in hand, for the church was a lion, and many carriages did stop there; but it was not till Felix jumped out and hailed him that he knew who were his visitors.

'Bless me, if it is not Master Felix after all! I did think you was never coming, Sir. And this is the young gentleman as has been so ill. You're kindly welcome, Sir. I think he'd favour poor Master Eddard if he didn't look so nesh.'

'I shall get well here,' said Lance. 'If it is not my native air, it ought to be.'

'Will you come and rest a bit, Sir? or would you like to go to the church?'

'The church,' they said. Felix first explained what he knew would give pleasure—that they had come depending on him for a cup of tea, and a cast in his boat which was wont to convey the marketables of Vale Leston twice a week to Ewmouth.

Abednego sped up his stairs like a lamp-lighter, to cause his grand-daughter to make preparations, and was speedily down again, delighted to hear Felix prove his memory by inquiries after the inhabitants of the old dwellings.

'Ha! the Miss Hepburns!' said Felix, looking at a tall narrow house completely embowered in trailing roses, and with the rails of the bridge of entrance wreathed with clematis. 'Are they there still?'

'Oh yes, Sir, all the four on 'em; and a sight of good they does to the poor!'

'I wonder whether I ought to call?' said Felix; 'they used to be very kind to me.'

'What, is that Rob's godmother, that never gave her anything but that queer name?' asked Lance.

'I shouldn't think they were rich,' said Felix. 'I fancy they used to be very fond of my mother, and made her promise that the next girl should be named for one of them. There was Miss Bridget, and Miss Martha, and something else as bad, and Robina was the least objectionable of the lot. I think they used to write to my mother; but it is late in the day for calling.'

'Here comes Miss Bridget,' said the clerk, as there appeared in sight a tall, rigid, angular figure, with a big brown hat and long straight cloak, and a decidedly charity-looking basket in her hand.

Felix stepped forward with his hand to his hat. 'Miss Hepburn, I believe. I must introduce myself—Felix Underwood.'

The lady's first move had been a startled shy drawing herself up and into herself, at being addressed by a stranger. Then she looked up with an amazed 'Felix Underwood! Little Felix!' and as he smiled and bowed, she fumbled and put out a hesitating hand.

'Yes. Tripp did tell us something—something of your being at Ewmouth, but we were not sure.'

'We had not been able to come over before,' said Felix, thinking she meant to imply that he ought to have called. 'We came for health and have not been equal to the walk.'

'Oh, indeed. Nothing infectious, I hope?'

'Oh no,' he said, explaining in a few words the total want of connection between his case and Lance's.

'I am glad. I'll—I'll tell my sisters. I'm glad to have seen you.'

There was something faltering and ill-assured in her manner, and in a moment she turned back with 'Mr. Underwood, where are you stopping?'

He answered; and with 'I'll tell my sisters,' she parted with them again.

'That's Miss Bridget,' commented old Tripp. 'She's the one as allys says, "I'll tell my sisters." They do say as Miss Isabella, she be the master on 'em all.'

Felix and Lance smiled to one another the assurance that every family had its Wilmet; but while the younger brother shrugged his shoulders, the elder felt a certain chill in the contrast with those days of old, when the sugar-plums and picture-books of the whole sisterhood were all at his service, and bethought him that times were changed.

They entered the churchyard by a little side-gate. The church was a grand pile of every style of architecture that had prevailed since the Cistercians had settled in Vale Leston, and of every defacement that the alternate neglect and good-will of the Underwoods could perpetrate. The grand tower at the west end was, however, past their power to spoil, and they had not done much damage to the exterior, except in a window or buttress here and there. But within! The brothers, used to the heavy correctness of the St. Oswald's restoration, stood aghast when Abednego admitted them by the door of excommunication, straight into the chancel, magnificently deep, but with the meanest of rails, a reredos where Moses and Aaron kept guard over the Commandments in black and gold, and walls bristling with genii and angels of all descriptions, weeping over Underwoods of different generations. Lance stood open-mouthed before a namesake of his own, whose huge monumental slab was upborne by the exertions of a kind of Tartarean cherub, solely consisting of a skull and a pair of bats' wings!

'My stars! where did that brute come from?' muttered Lance under his breath. 'He's got no trifle of a piece of work!'

However, Felix had taken in that the chancel had respectable poppy-headed benches, though the lower part of the church was completely 'emparoked in pues,' such as surprised Lance out of all bounds when he withdrew his eyes from the white marble death's head.

'My stars!' again he said, 'this is what I've heard of, but never saw.'

'Ay, Sir,' said Mr. Tripp, 'every one that come here do be crying out upon the pews; and to be sure, I see the folk sleepin' in them as is shameful!'

Well he might, for his place was the lowest in a lofty three-decker, against one pier of the chancel arch, surmounted by a golden angel blowing a trumpet, and with lettering round the sounding-board, recording it to have been the gift of the Reverend Lancelot Underwood, Rector and Vicar of this parish—the owner of the mural slab before mentioned. That angel recalled to Felix that the sight of it had been his great pleasure in going to church, only marred by the fact that he was out of sight of it in the chancel.

'Why, you weren't in the choir then?' said Lance.

'Choir! no, Sir,' said the clerk. 'They sits in the gallery. The chancel is for Mr. Underwood's family—the Rector, Sir. They seats was just put up instead of the red baize pew before old Mr. Underwood as was then died, and your poor papa went away. And that there font was put, as 'tis there, just when the twin young ladies was christened.'

'Where was I christened, then?'

'In the bowl as we used to have on the Communion, Sir.'

It was plain how far Edward Underwood had dared to work at renovation, and that nothing had since been done. The Lady-chapel, with a wonderful ceiling of Tudor fans and pendants, was full of benches and ragged leaves of books for such Sunday schooling as took place there, the national school having been built half a mile off, that the children might not be obnoxious to the Rectory. The church was a good way behind the ordinary churches of 1861, and struck the two brothers the more from the system in which they had been brought up.

'What a state Clem would be in!' uttered Lance, as they came out.

'It is of no use to think about it,' said Felix. 'Let us enjoy the beautiful exterior.'

'Ay, Sir,' said old Tripp, 'parties do be saying as how it is a mortial pity to see such a church go to wrack; and I do believe the Squire wouldn't be so hard to move if it warn't for the Passon—that's young Mr. Fulbert, the vicar.'

'I don't understand all these rectors and vicars,' said Lance. 'I thought they never hung out together.'

'Why, you see, Master Lancelot, as how this is what they calls a lay rectory, as goes like a landed estate from father to son, without there being any call for 'em to be clergy; and the Vicar, he is just put in to do Passon's work, only he gets his situation for life, like I do, not like them curates.'

'I see,' said Felix; 'and the rectors have generally taken Holy Orders, and presented themselves to the vicarage.'

'Yes, Sir, that's how it ought to be; only this here Squire—not being no Passon, though Rector he be—he puts in a gentleman to keep it warm till his son, young Mr. Fulbert, our Vicar as is, was growed up, and hard work they say it was to get him to bend his mind to 't; nor he'd not have done it at last, but for his father's paying of his bills, and giving consent to his marrying Miss Shaw. And since that, bless you, Sir, the curates have done nothing but change, change, change, till 'tis enough to ruin a good clerk. You knows what that is, Master Felix, you that be one of the cloth.' (For Felix allowed himself no unprofessional coats.)

'It is only the cloth, Mr. Tripp; don't you see I sport a blue tie? I am a bookseller.'

'A bookseller!' The old man recoiled. 'You'll not be passing your jokes on me, Sir. A book-writer—I understands.'

'No, a bookseller in earnest. I have a share in a very good business at Bexley; I've been at it ever since I was sixteen.'

The old clerk was quite overcome; he leant upon a headstone and stared at Felix without speaking, and then it was a sort of soliloquy. 'To think of poor dear Master Eddard's son being come to that! and he looking a dozen times more like a clergyman and a gentleman than ever this young Mr. Fulbert will!'

'Never mind, Mr. Tripp,' said Felix; 'there's one of us on the way to be a clergyman—Edward Clement, you know, that I wrote to you about; and maybe this fellow too. Don't look so angry with me. I was obliged to do the best I could to bring in something for the thirteen of us.'

'And we're as proud of him as can be!' added Lance, affectionately and indignantly.

'Ah, well,' said the old aristocrat, 'that may be, for you never knew them he came of. There was my old Lady Geraldine, as was his great-grandmother, who gave a new coat or new gown to every poor body in the parish at Christmas, and as much roast beef as they could eat; and wore a shawl as come from the Injies and cost two hundred pounds! She was a lady! Bless me, what would she have said to see the day—'

'That she was glad to have a great-grandson good for something,' stoutly answered Lance. 'I declare, Mr. Tripp, you'd have liked him better if he had come a begging!'

'So I do,' said Felix; 'and what's more, Mr. Tripp is going to refuse me because he is too fine to sit down to tea with a tradesman!'

'No, no, sir,' said old Tripp, with tears in his eyes. 'You'll not go for to say that. If it was the last morsel I had, I'd be proud to share it with one of Master Eddard's sons; but I can't but think as how we rung the bells and drunk your health when you was born, just as we did for the Prince of Wales, and how proud poor Master Eddard looked. No doubt he was spared the knowing of it.'

'No,' said Felix, 'it was settled with his full consent.'

Abednego seemed more distressed than ever. 'Poor Master Eddard! he must have been brought very low. Such a gentleman as he was! Never spoke a proud or rude word, Sir, but used to hold up his head like the first lord in the land, and fire and colour up and start like one of young Mr. Fulbert's thoroughbreds if any one said an impudent word.'

'That no one ever ventured,' said Felix. 'He was as much respected at Bexley—yes, and is still—as ever he could be here. I wish you could see my brother Edgar, he is more like him than either of us. Ah, here's the old garden gate, I wish we could go into the shrubbery.'

Tripp was rather for trying it. He said the gardeners would be gone home, and the elder master at dinner—the younger, with his wife, was absent; but Felix could not bear the sense of spying, though he did not withhold Lance from a rush into the garden paths, where he did not discover much. Then they looked into the eddy at the meeting of the waters; and turning back to Tripp's neatest of kitchens, were there regaled upon shrimps, rashers hissing from the fire, and the peculiar native species of hot-buttered cake, which Felix recollected as viewed in the nursery as the ne plus ultra of excellence, probably because it was an almost prohibited dainty. Lance was in his element, delighting himself and Miss Kerenhappuch Tripp by assisting her to toast, to butter, and even to wash up, calling Felix to witness that he always helped Cherry in the holidays; when just as they were rising to seek the boat, Mr. Staples came climbing up the steps.

'I thought I should find you here,' he said. 'Mr. Underwood very much wishes you would come and spend the rest of the evening with him.'

'The old humbug!' burst out Lance. 'You won't go, will you, Felix?'

Felix thought a moment, then walked with Mr. Staples to the corner of the narrow ledge in front of the cottage. 'Mr. Staples,' he said, 'I know nothing about it. I trust to you to tell me whether this man treated my father so that I ought not to accept attention from him.'

'Hm? ha? I should not say so. He treated him unkindly, ungenerously, but he hardly knew how much so, and he had the letter of the law on his side. I verily believe he regrets it, and that your father, being what he was, would be the last to wish you to hold aloof.'

'Most likely,' said Felix. 'I am sure he forgave whatever there was to forgive.'

'It is not my doing, I assure you. He spoke of your letters that had gone astray, and that led to more, till when he found you were in the village, he said he should like to see you. He is breaking up; his son has given him a good deal of trouble, and I believe he is altogether concerned for what has passed.'

'And he will not suppose we want anything from him?' said Felix, with something of the almost unavoidable pride of independent poverty.

'Certainly not. I have guarded against that.'

'Then I suppose we must.—That is, how is your head? are you too much tired, Lance?'

'No,' said Lance, almost sulkily; for he was much inclined to make fatigue a plea for escaping the 'mane nagur' and enjoying the boat, and was rather unreasonably disposed to think it all a plot on the part of Mr. Staples for spoiling the evening. Felix might have been equally glad of the excuse, but he believed his father would have thought this act of conciliation a duty, and followed Mr. Staples across the churchyard, where all the little boys in the place seemed to be playing marbles on the flagged paths. Its neglected state was a painful contrast to the exquisitely laid-out shrubbery, as trim as gardeners could make it, and improved and altered beyond Felix's recognition.

Entering the house, Mr. Staples led the way to the dining-room, where there was a large empty table in the middle of the room, and in the deep bay of the window a smaller one, laid out with wine and dessert, where sat 'old Fulbert.' Having always heard him so called, the brothers were surprised to find him no more than elderly. He must have been originally a thorough florid handsome Underwood, and had the remains of military bearing, though with an air of feebleness and want of health, and a good deal of asthmatic oppression on his breath. He did not rise, but held out his hand, saying, 'Good evening. Thank you for coming to see a sick man.'

'I am sorry to see you so unwell, Sir.'

'Thank you, I'm on the mend. Sit down. Take a glass of wine—claret?'

Felix accepted, wondering if his father would regard it as an act of pardon.

'And you?'

'No thank you, Sir.'

'No wine? You are the one that has been so ill? No objection to melon, eh?'

And Lancelot, whose illness had left a strong hankering for fruit, was considerably appeased by the first cut into the cool buff flesh.

'Is he the next brother to you?'

'Oh no. There are three brothers and three sisters between us.'

'And what are they doing? There were one or two with Tom Underwood. Didn't the young fellow offend him and turn out idle?'

'Not that, Sir,' said Felix, his colour rising: 'but he had no turn for a clerkship, and a good deal for art. He is studying at the Royal Academy; but there never was any quarrel; he is often at Thomas Underwood's.'

'And the rest?'

'One has the Ewshire Scholarship at St. Cadoc's; and there's one in Australia.'

'And this lad—what's his name?'

'Lancelot. He is in the choir school at Minsterham Cathedral, and hopes to get a scholarship.'

'Is that all of you?'

'Two more boys, quite little, and the six girls.'

'Any of them able to do anything for themselves?'

'The eldest is a teacher in a school at Bexley,' said Felix, not delighted with the cross-examination; 'and Alda, the one that lived with the Tom Underwoods, is engaged to a man of good fortune. Then two of the younger ones are at schools, where an allowance is made for poor clergymen's daughters.'

'How long has your mother been dead?'

'Four years and a half.'

'And you have managed all single-handed?'

'With my eldest sister's help, Sir.'

'Taken to the press, have you?' (Mr. Staples must have made the best of his vocation.) 'What's your paper?'

'The Bexley Pursuivant. Most likely you never heard of it. It is only a little county paper;' and then feeling that to stop there was a subterfuge, he added, 'Our main business is the retail trade.'

Mr. Underwood was chiefly intent on the next question, the politics of the paper, though he said he need hardly ask. 'All you young stuck-up fellows run in one team—all destructives.'

'No, no, Sir,' broke in Mr. Staples eagerly. 'Mr. Felix is staunch to the back-bone.'

Felix was never more tempted to deny his principles than when he found them brought forward as a recommendation; but he could only explain that the Pursuivant was an old established county gentleman's style of paper, in the agricultural interest. Whereupon the Squire mounted his political hobby in such sort and with such abusive violence, especially as to the local representatives of the adverse party, that Felix could not help feeling that if such were indeed the opinions of his own side, he should certainly be on the other. One good effect was the sparing him any more personal catechizing. Mr. Underwood shouted himself weary, without requiring any reply save what Mr. Staple's local knowledge supplied; and when the carriage was announced, the guests were dismissed with a hearty shake of the hands, and invitation to call again—'It was a comfort to talk of public matters to a young man of sense;' and Lance found a sovereign in his hand. He was not sure that he was obliged.

'Well,' said Mr. Staples, rubbing his hands with satisfaction as they drove off, 'what do you think of the Squire?'

'He talks very loud,' said Felix, who had for some time been watching the increase of Lance's head-ache, and now was trying to give him a rest on shoulder and arm.

Mr. Staples gave what help he could towards making the tired boy comfortable, and then returned to the subject in all their minds. 'So your father never told you those particulars?'

'No; I think it was his great object not to dwell on them, nor let us look back with regret or anger.'

'Just like him. I never saw such a case, never! I'll show you a remarkable letter of his. But, first, you ought to understand the way the matter stood. To begin with the relationship.'

'I know nothing about them, only that my father and mother were second cousins; but I don't even know to which of them my great-uncle Underwood was really uncle.'

'To your mother. He had very strong feelings as to the duty of the head of a family, and made his house a home for all that needed it. When Miss Mary was sent home an orphan from India—James's, his favourite brother's, child—he asked his cousin's widow, Mrs. Edward Underwood, to bring her boy, superintend the house, and look after the little girl; and she was glad enough, for the captain had died of his wounds at Waterloo, and she had little but her widow's pension.'

'I know,' said Felix. 'Then whose son is the Squire?'

'The son of Lancelot, who was the second brother, between the Reverend Fulbert (your great-uncle) and James, your mother's father. So he was heir-at-law, but he was a wildish sort of lad, unfit to take Holy Orders; and there came to be an understanding that if his uncle would buy his commission and purchase his steps, he would not look for the Rectory and the estate. On that understanding your father took Orders and married; but on old Mr. Underwood's death there was only a draught of a will, which he had not been in a state to execute, leaving a handsome legacy to Fulbert, but the whole property to your father and mother. It seemed a matter of course that, as the only compensation, Fulbert should have presented his cousin Edward to the vicarage—£400 a year; but as ill-luck would have it, he took offence at some sermon—a Lent one about self-indulgence, I believe it was—swore he wouldn't have a Puseyite parson preaching at him, and went into such a rage, that it is thought to be partly by way of getting off giving him the living, and getting it held for his son.'

'I see,' said Felix.

'It was a dirty trick; and I was a younger man at the time, and it struck me that if your father chose to try the case, the testator's intentions being clear, and instructions in his own hand extant, it was ten to one it might be given in his favour. I even took a counsel's opinion, thinking that at any rate an intimation that the case was to be tried before possession was given up, might bring Fulbert to terms with regard to the living.'

'And he would not?'

'No. I should like to show you his letter. Would you do me the honour of dining with me to-morrow?'

Felix was obliged to mutter something about ladies and no dress-coats; but this was silenced, and he made a promise contingent on Lance's fitness. He was puzzled by the relations in which Mr. Staples seemed to stand with the lay-rector; but he found that they were not of business, only that elections, and county affairs, brought them together, and that Mr. Underwood was regarded with a sort of compassion by the men of his own standing, who used to go and visit him whenever they could be secure of not encountering the cold welcome and ill-breeding of his daughter-in-law—the grievance of his life.

'Did you see any one you remembered?' further asked Mr. Staples.

'One of the Miss Hepburns, who did not seem very well to know whether to acknowledge me or not.'

'Ha, ha!' chuckled Mr. Staples. 'Queer old girls they are. Very high. Very good to the poor. All the good that is done in Vale Leston is by them; but anything between a swell and a pauper don't exist for them. They're as poor as Job, and their pride is all they have, so they make the most of it.'