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

Which after all he had no time to effect, with all his works, before their friend came to ask whether they were relieved about their sister, and was amused at the handy little schoolboy's ingenious preparations. 'After all, I find it is to be more of an affair than I expected; I thought it was to be only ourselves and the Brandons, but they are the kind of people who always pick up every one.'

'Does that yacht belong here?' eagerly asked Lance.

'That! It is the Kittiwake—Captain Audley's.'

'Ha! That's what Fulbert went to Alexandria in! What fun!'

'He is the son of Sir Robert Audley. Do you know him?'

'His brother was my father's fellow-curate,' said Felix, 'and is our guardian and kindest friend. I have seen this one in London. Will he be at this pic-nic?'

'Not likely. He is shy and uncertain, very hearty and friendly when you do meet him, but reluctant to go into society, and often taking no notice one day, when he has seemed like one's best friend the day before. They say he has never got over the loss of his wife; but I don't like such manners.'

'Does he live here, then?'

'He rents the little Tudor cottage under the cliff year by year, for the sake of his yachting—for he won't go near the regular stations. He's got his boy at school at Stoneborough, and stays here all the winter.'

When the brothers were walking part of the way back with their visitor, they met the gentleman in question, with three boys after him, and he was evidently in a cordial mood; for after shaking hands with Mr. Staples, he exclaimed, 'I am sure I ought to know you!'

'Felix Underwood,' said the owner of that name.

'Indeed! Not staying with your worthy relations?'

'No, I am down here with my brother, who has been laid up by a sun-stroke, and wanted sea air.'

'I wish I had been at home' said the Captain, who had taken a great fancy to Felix when they had been together in London two years before; 'but I've been giving my boy and his cousins, the two young Somervilles, a trip to the Hebrides; and now, just as I am come home, I fall upon Mrs. Brandon, hounding me out to an abominable pic-nic, and my youngsters are wild to go. Are you in for it? I believe we shall go round to the cove in the yacht. Can I take you two?'

Felix gladly accepted, aware that their transport was a difficulty to the Stapleses, and that the Kittiwake would be felicity to Lance, who had fraternized with the boys, and went off with them to see the vessel. He returned brimful of delight and fatigue, only just in time to tumble into bed as fast as possible, and Felix was thus able to get his work off his mind by midnight.

The morning's letters set them quite at rest. Sister Constance and Clement both wrote: Geraldine had been calm and resolute from the time Felix's consent arrived, and doubt was over; and Clement, though tender, and striving hard to be firm, had been chiefly useful in calling out her words of encouragement. He had spent the time of the operation in the oratory, and there had been so entirely overcome by the tidings that all was safely over, that he was hardly fit to go to Cherry when he was sent for; and that was not soon, for the effect of chloroform on her had indeed been to annihilate pain, but only half to make her unconscious, for she went on talking to Felix about the expedience all the time, ever repeating the old motto, 'Under Wode, Under Rode;' and the trance had lasted for a good while, though when once over, she remembered nothing of it, and was only so rejoiced and thankful, that it was difficult to keep her calm enough. She sent her brothers her love, and entreated them not to say a word at home. Lady Liddesdale had contrived the sale of the book of illustrations—a work that had been Cherry's delight of many years; so that she could feel that she herself had earned what would cover the expense incurred, all but the medical attendance, freely given to an inmate of St. Faith's. 'Tell Felix I am as happy as a queen,' was the final message; 'tell him to give thanks for me.'

Felix's voice trembled, shook, and gave way, as he read; and at last he sprang up, and walked about the room, saying that no one ever had such brothers and sisters as himself. There was something almost oppressive in the relief from so much anxiety, and it was some time before he roused his ordinary senses to say, 'Well! we must finish breakfast, or we shan't be ready for the Captain. How round the world is! Those boys must be Sister Constance's nephews—Lady Liddesdale's sons.'

'Those boys,' said Lance. 'What, Sum and Frank? Well, I did think it queer that the sailors on board the Kittiwake called every one My Lord.'

'Sum, I imagine, must mean Lord Somerville. What did you think of them?'

'Nicish chaps of eleven and twelve. Nothing like such swells as Tom Bruce! The little one wanted to know where I was at school, and his senior snubbed him; so I supposed he saw by the looks of me that I wasn't upper-crust public school; and when I said I was a choir-boy, the other—Charlie Audley—said, "Oh, then you're one of the awful lot my father always jaws about when he's out of sorts!" I told him I was very sorry, and it wasn't my fault, but yours; and then we got on like a house on fire.'

CHAPTER XXI

A KETTLE OF FISH

'Our Pursuivant at arms will show

Both why we came and when we go.'

Scott.

The place of the pic-nic was a good way off, being the point of the promontory that shut in the mouth of the river, a great crag, with a long reef of rocks running out into the sea, playfully called the Kitten's Tail; though the antiquarians always deposed that the head had nothing to do with cats or kits, but with the disposition to erect chapels to St. Christopher on the points of land where they might first greet the mariners' eyes. Beneath this crag, sheltered by the first and larger joints of the Kitten's Tail, was a delightful sandy nook, where appeared a multitude of smart hats, male and female, a great many strangers even to Captain Audley, who would fain have recognised none of them. In a strong access of his almost morbid silence, he devoted himself to Felix, and kept aloof from almost every one. Even at the dinner, spread on a very sloping bit of beach, pic-nic exigencies enabled him to be nearly tête-à-tête with Felix, who found himself almost back to back to a lady in a brilliant foreign pheasant's plume, with glass dew-drops at the points.

In a pause of their own conversation, they heard the inquiry, 'Do you know who that boy is—that fair delicate-looking lad just opposite, with the white muslin round his hat?'

'Oh—that!' answered the pheasant lady; 'that is young Lord Somerville, son to the Marquess of Liddesdale. He and his brother, Lord Francis, have been out yachting with Captain Audley.'

The Captain smiled as he looked at the boys. 'Ay,' he observed, with a flash of his bright dark eyes,' he has the advantage over Sum.'

For Lance had resumed his lark-like air, and it was perhaps the more striking from the fragility and transparency that remained about his looks; and he was full of animation, as he, with a reinforcement of boys, clustered round a merry sunny-faced girl, full of joyous drollery.

'Very queer and eccentric—quite a bear,' was the next thing they heard; whereat Captain Audley nodded and smiled to Felix. After the general turmoil caused by the change of courses had subsided, that penetrating voice was heard again. 'Yes, we came home sooner than we had intended. The fact was, we found that old Mr. Underwood was being beset by some of those relations. You remember? Oh, yes; they have sunk very low—got into trade, absolutely got into trade! One of them a mere common singing-boy. Mr. Underwood is getting aged—quite past—and we did not know what advantage might be taken of him.'

'Your turn now,' murmured Captain Audley, with a look of diversion calculated to allay the wounded flush on his neighbour's cheek.

'Do you mean Mr. Edward Underwood's sons?' said a voice on the other side. 'I always understood them to be very respectable and well conducted.'

'Oh, very likely! Only I do happen to know that one of them has been a great trouble and vexation to Tom Underwood; and we didn't want the same over again with the poor old Squire.'

'Did I understand you that any of them were here?' added the other voice; 'for I had just been struck by the likeness of that boy opposite, talking to my sister, to poor Mr. Edward Underwood, as I remember him.'

'Oh no, Mrs. Rivers; I assure you that's young Lord Somerville!'

Captain Audley made an effort, rather difficult in his Turkish position, to crane his head beyond the interposing figures, recognised and bowed to the speaker, who greeted him by name, and thus diminished the flow of Mrs. Fulbert Underwood's conversation by her awe of the high and mighty bear whom she scarcely knew by sight. He had no taste for scenes, and did not put either her or Felix to pain by mentioning his name; but when the last act of the meal was over, and people began to move, he made his way in the direction of the inquiring voice. 'Mrs. Rivers, let me introduce Mr. Felix Underwood.'

'I am very happy—' and there was a cordial smile and a hand held out. 'Are you here for long? My father would be so much pleased to see you.'

It was a rather worn pale face; but the ease and sweetness of manner, and the perfect fitness of the dress, made a whole that gave Felix a sense of the most perfect lady he had met with, except his mother and Sister Constance.

'I am at Ewmouth, with one of my brothers who has been ill.'

'Lord Somerville?' and all three burst out laughing. 'My sister has found him out, I see. She and your little boy are old friends, Captain Audley.'

'Yes, you have been very kind to him. But I am as much surprised to see you here as you can be to see my friend. Are you from home?'

'We go back this evening. We slept at the Crewes' last night. My husband had business there; and when they asked us to this pic-nic, it was a good opportunity for Gertrude to learn the beauties of her county.'

'Which she seems to be doing under full escort,' laughed Captain Audley, as the young lady and the young boy flock were seen descending to the rocks.

'She has a strong taste for little boys,' said the elder sister. 'You have the Somerville boys here, haven't you, though?'

'Yes; there had been scarlatina or something or other in their school, and their mother was afraid of them among their sisters, till I had purified them by a sea voyage.'

Probably Mrs. Fulbert never found out her mistake; for Lord Somerville reported that he had never been so pitched into in his life as by an old girl in a 'stunning tile,' who found him washing out an empty pie-dish for the benefit of some maritime monsters that he wanted to carry home to his sisters; but that when Lance came up, she was as meek as a mouse. Certainly, the two boys were little sturdy fellows, burnt lobster-like up to the roots of their bleached and rough hair; and their costumes were more adapted to the deck of the Kittiwake in all weathers, than to genteel society. Their sisters were in an aquarium fever, and their sport all through their expedition had been researches for what they had learnt in Scotland to call 'beasts;' and now the collection was to be completed from the mouth of the Ewe, and the scrambling and tumbling it involved were enchanting.

Kate Staples, who usually considered Lance her charge, was not sorry to see a croquet player disposed of among his own congeners; for the game seemed such a necessary of life, that it was actually prepared for on the sands, to the extreme contempt of the anemone hunters. 'Play at croquet, forsooth, when rocks aren't to be had to scramble on every day!' And scramble ecstatically they did, up and over slippery stone and rock festooned with olive weed, peeping into pools of crystal clearness, and admiring rosy fans of weed, and jewel-like actinias embellished by the magic beauty of intense clear brightness. The boys took off shoes and stockings, turned up trousers, and scrambled and paddled like creatures to the manner born.

'O dear! I wish I might!' sighed the young lady.

'Why don't you?' said Charlie Audley. 'Kate and Em and Annie always do—don't they, Frank?'

'Of course they do, or how would they ever get on!'

'Come along then, Miss Gertrude,' said Charlie. 'You can't think how jolly it is!'

And soon another pair of little white feet were dancing on the rocks. 'Oh dear! what a blunder of civilisation it is to wear shoes at all! How delicious a hold one gets!'

'I can't think why people do wear them! They never are anything but a bother,' said Lance.

'To play at foot-ball with,' suggested Somerville from the top of a rock.

'But women don't,' said Gertrude.

'I think women do it, and make us, that they may have something to worrit about,' said Frank. 'Damp stockings are the bother of creation till one goes to school; and then, isn't it jolly!'

'Except the chilblains,' called out Charlie.

'I believe,' said Lance, 'chilblains come of shoes.'

'No, they can't,' argued Charlie, 'for one has them on one's hands.'

'Well,' said Gertrude, 'let's form ourselves into a society for the suppression of shoes and stockings!'

'Hurrah!' cried Lance. 'I know one person at least that it would be a blessing to.'

The question was, how the five bold reformers were to begin. Frank suggested drowning all the present stock, and pretended to be about to begin, but was of course prevented by a scream.

'Public opinion must be prepared first,' said Lance.

'And that,' said Gertrude, 'we'd better do by a great example! Here, we'll show what can be done. Why shouldn't we get out to the end of the Kitten's Tail?'

'One can't to the end,' said Charlie; 'there's a place big enough for a gig to go through, half way out.'

'And about the tide?' said Lance.

'Tide,' said Charlie, looking at his watch—'tide wouldn't think of playing us such a dirty trick as turning for an hour and a half.'

'And the jolliest beasts of all always live in places like that,' added Somerville. 'Come on, President of the Society for the Suppression of Shoeses—to the front!'

On moved the august Society, now scrambling to a dry flat, now threading a mauvais pas, clinging to festoons of sea-weed; the three little boys climbed like monkeys or sailors; but Lance, agile as he was, had not had the same amount of training, and felt besides that it was requisite to be ready to give a helping hand to Miss Gertrude. She got on very well, being full of lightness and springiness, only she was a little inclined to be adventurous, and to chatter at critical moments.

'We must have got out a quarter of a mile.'

'Oh no, not that!'

'No? I'm sure it is! How small they look on the beach! I wonder if they can see us! Hark! they're singing—'

'"Drink to me only with thine eyes;" that's Felix's crack glee,' said Lance; 'what fun for him!'

'This is much better fun!' cried the general voice. 'They'll never see us if we wave now!'

'No, no; don't let's wave now! Wait till we get to the farthest point.'

'And there we'll plant our ensign!'

'What shall we do for a flag? We haven't got the Britisher here!'

'No; it must be the flag of the SSSS's.'

'That ought to be a bit of bare skin.'

'No, no—a pair of feet—motto, "Off, vile lendings!"'

'I say, I don't think you can get any farther,' interposed Somerville. 'I've been on four rocks farther, and I'm sure you will never get back again if you go on.'

'Oh, that's base! I'm sure this one isn't so hard.'

She was creeping along a ledge, holding the sea-weed with one hand and Lance by the other.

'I really don't think it passable,' he said; 'there's scarcely the width of one's foot beyond.'

'Hurrah!' shouted Frank. 'Here's the father of all the Daisianas!'

'Oh! oh! he's my cousin. I must see him!' cried Gertrude, with a scramble and a laugh, which ended in a sudden slip—luckily, not into the open sea, but into a very steep-sided bath-like pool; and Lance, whom of course she gripped hard, was pulled after her, both over head and ears; and though they scrambled on their feet in a moment, there they stood up to their shoulders in water.

'Get the Daisiana now you are there!' shouted Frank.

'How are we ever to get out?' said Gertrude, looking up the walls, six feet at least on the lowest side.

'If we had a rope,' said Charlie.

'Make signals—call,' said Somerville, all suiting the action to the word. 'No, they don't hear! they are all singing away. You, Franky, you're too little to be any good, make the best of your way to call somebody.'

'The tide will come in!' said Frank. 'Mamma and Aunt Emmie were once shut in by the tide, and Uncle Edwin. And there was a fellow who was quite drowned—dead—and that was why I was named Francis.'

'That's what you may call a cheering reminiscence at a happy moment,' said Lance, recollecting that he was far more nearly a man than any one present, and instinctively feeling the need of brightening all into cheerful activity, for the girl looked thoroughly frightened. 'Yes, Lord Frank, the best thing you can do is to go for somebody; but we'll be out long first. Can't we make a rope? Have you a sash or anything, Miss Gertrude? Don't fear, we'll soon be out.'

Happily she had both a sash and a broad ribbon round her hat; and Lance tore off his puggery.

'I can do it best,' called Charlie. 'I know all the sailors' knots.'

'It will never bear,' said Gertrude.

'Oh yes, it will. You'll not trust your whole weight to it. Is it done?'

'Besides, how can they draw me up?'

'We'd best get behind that rock, Sum,' suggested Charlie, 'then she won't pull us in.'

Charlie's sailor experience was very useful; and he shouted advice to Lance, who was tying the extemporary rope round Gertrude, not very easily, owing to the material, and to its being done under water.

'Now, then, you do your best at climbing—here,' he said. 'They'll pull you; and look! There, first my knee—yes—now my shoulder—now—' And standing for a moment on his shoulder, Gertrude was really able with a desperate grapple to surmount the wall of her prison, and scramble out beside the two cousins, whose pulls had been very helpful.

Lance's clambering was a harder matter, for he did not venture to trust much to the rope, though the girl's strength was added to that of the two boys; and it was a severe climb up the scarcely indented, slippery, moist, slimy rock, where his hands and feet could hardly find any hold; and when at length he reached the top, he was so panting and dizzy, that Somerville at first held him to hinder his slipping backward into the sea. No one could get at King or Queen Daisiana, so it was left in its glory; while the young people struggled back over rocks that seemed much steeper, and pools far deeper, than in their advance; Lance still trying to be helpful, but with a mazed sense of the same sort of desperate effort with which he had run back with Bill's verses; for not only had his small strength been overtaxed, but the immersion in water was affecting his head.

Lord Francis had made much quicker progress; and boy as he was, showed his breeding by not rushing open-mouthed on the party with his intelligence, but seeking the Captain, who was smoking the pipe of solitude upon a rock apart. He at once sent Frank to the servants, who were enjoying the relics of the feast, to fetch some wine, and tell the boat's crew to make ready at once, and then went off himself to seek Mrs. Rivers. Felix, who had spied the little messenger speeding up to the Captain, was already on his way to the rocks, and reached the party in good time; for draggled, drenched, and with clinging garments, they were so slow in getting on, that it was no delusion that the water was higher, and the rocks lower; and even Gertrude had neither breath nor spirits to gabble when that grave anxious face met her, and a strong careful hand lifted and helped, first her, then Lance, up and down every difficulty; and when she perceived how the new-comer avoided point-blank looking at the bare ankles that had sometimes to make long stretches, a burning red came up into her face, half of shame, half of indignation at being made ashamed. And after all, when the place where her hose and shoon had been left was reached, the niched shelf in the rock turned out to have been surrounded by the tide, so that they were quite unattainable either by herself or the little boys; and Felix, putting the arm by which Lance had held by him over Somerville's shoulder told them to go on before, and himself made two long strides and a scramble before he could reach the boots and stockings, and give them to the young lady, unable to help looking nearly as grave and vexed as if it had been Angela herself; indeed, he was vexed, for he had an ideal of the young ladyhood of his mother's old native region, and did not like it to be disturbed. He moved away far enough for her to think he had left her to her fate, till she was on her feet and coming on, and then there he was again, in a moment the attentive squire. Revived by her short rest, and on less perilous ground, she glanced at his face in readiness to disperse her discomfort with something saucy, but somehow it would not do; and she was tamely conducted to terra firma, where her sister saluted her with 'O Daisy! what a child you are to have charge of!'

That restored her enough to answer, 'I'm quite delighted something should have happened under your keeping! No harm done. Salt water never gives cold.'

'I don't mind it for you,' said the elder sister; 'you have not been ill.—But indeed, Mr. Underwood, I am very sorry,' she added. 'What will be best for your brother?'

'Here!' said Captain Audley, taking from Frank a flask of sherry, and over-ruling the objection made by the brothers that stimulants were forbidden. He further insisted on taking Lance at once to his own berth on board the yacht while Mrs. Rivers meant to conduct her sister to the preventive house.

'So,' said Lance, rather ruefully, as he shook hands, 'there ends the SSSS.'

'Not at all! Its use is proved. We should have been cooked by this time in the Daisiana cauldron, if we had had great cumbrous boots on.'

It was a valiant effort, and she cast a glance out of the corner of her eye at the elder brother, but it had not relaxed a muscle of his grave anxious face, which was in truth chiefly bent on watching Lance's involuntary shiverings; and she again turned crimson, perhaps from her share of the chill, and was dragged off, muttering, 'What intolerable folks guardian brothers are! Henry Ward was a mild specimen compared to this one!'

About noon on the following day, Mrs. Pettigrew's little girl abruptly opened the parlour door, and with 'Please, ye're wanted,' turned in a tall, thin, grey-haired, spectacled gentleman, who, as Lance started up from the sofa, exclaimed, 'Don't disturb yourself; I came to thank you, and inquire after you after the adventure my mad-cap daughter led you into.'

'I hope she is all right,' said Lance, solicitously.

'As right as Daisiana himself; more so than I fear you are. Let me see you comfortable. Lie down again, pray.'

'Oh, I don't care about lying down, thank you, Sir; I only sleep for want of something to do;' but though he did not put his feet up, he was feeling far too languid not to relax his bolt-upright attitude, and lean back on his pillows.

'That will do. Bad head-ache?'

'It is nearly gone off now, thank you, Sir; it was bad all night, but it is much better since I have been asleep.'

'Let me see,' laying his left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fashion—eh?'

'I meant to have pulled her out.'

'Instead of which she made a lad into a ladder to climb out on.' Which bad pun served the purpose of making the boy laugh enough to be at his ease. 'She is much indebted, and so am I. I like to meet an old friend's son. Are you alone?'

'My brother is only gone to the post-office. He will be in before long; but it saves a post to take the letters before twelve, and he ought to be out as much as he can.'

'Is he here on his own account, or yours?'

'He came down first, before I was ill. It was bother and overwork and a cough. Everything always does come to worry him, whenever he ought to have rest or pleasure.' And Lance, who was thoroughly weary and dispirited, was nearly ready to cry.