The Long Vacation Read online

  CHAPTER II. A CHAPTER OF TWADDLE

  The blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy.-WORDSWORTH.

  When Mrs. Grinstead, on her nephew's arm, came into her drawing-room after dinner, she was almost as much dismayed as pleased to find a long black figure in a capacious arm-chair by the fire.

  "You adventurous person," she said, "how came you here?"

  "I could not help it, with the prospect of Lancey boy," he said in smiling excuse, holding out a hand in greeting to Gerald, and thanking Anna, who brought a cushion.

  "Hark! there he is!" and Gerald and Anna sprang forward, but were only in time to open the room door, when there was a double cry of greeting, not only of the slender, bright-eyed, still youthful- looking uncle, but of the pleasant face of his wife. She exclaimed as Lancelot hung over his brother-

  "Indeed, I would not have come but that I thought he was still in his room."

  "That's a very bad compliment, Gertrude, when I have just made my escape."

  "I shall be too much for you," said Gertrude. "Here, children, take me off somewhere."

  "To have some dinner," said Geraldine, her hand on the bell.

  "No, no, Marilda feasted me."

  "Then don't go," entreated Clement. "It is a treat to look at you two sunny people."

  "Let us efface ourselves, and be seen and not heard," returned Gertrude, sitting down between Gerald and Anna on a distant couch, whence she contemplated the trio-Clement, of course, with the extreme pallor, languor, and emaciation of long illness, with a brow gaining in dignity and expression by the loss of hair, and with a look of weary, placid enjoyment as he listened to the talk of the other two; Lance with bright, sweet animation and cheeriness, still young-looking, though his hair too was scantier and his musical tones subdued; and Geraldine, pensive in eye and lip, but often sparkling up with flashes of her inborn playfulness, and, like Clement, resting in the sunshine diffused by Lance. This last was the editor and proprietor of the 'Pursuivant', an important local paper, and had come up on journalistic business as well as for the fete. Gertrude meantime had been choosing carpets and curtains.

  "For," said Lance, with a smack of exultation, "we are actually going back to our old quarters over the shop."

  "Oh!" A responsive sound of satisfaction from Geraldine.

  "Nothing amiss?" asked Clement.

  "Far from it. We let Marshlands to great advantage, and there are many reasons for the flitting. I ought to be at head-quarters, and besides there are the Sundays. We are too many now for picnicking in the class-room, or sponging on the rectory."

  "And," said Gertrude, "I dare not put his small family in competition with his organ."

  "Besides," said Lance, "the 'Pursuivant' is more exacting, and the printing Will Harewood's books has brought in more business-"

  "But how about space? We could squeeze, but can you?"

  "We have devoured our two next-door neighbours. There's for you! You know Pratt the dentist had a swell hall-door and staircase, which we absorb, so we shall not eat in the back drawing-room, nor come up the flight which used to be so severe on you, Cherry."

  "I can only remember the arms that helped me up. I have never left off dreaming of the dear old step springing up the stair after the day's work, and the whistle to Theodore."

  "Ah, those were the jolly old days!" returned Lance, con amore.

  "Unbroken," added Clement, in the same tone.

  "Better than Vale Leston?" asked Gertrude.

  "The five years there were, as Felix called those last hours of delight, halcyon days," said Geraldine; "but the real home was in the rough and the smooth, the contrivances, the achievements, the exultation at each step on the ladder, the flashes of Edgar, the crowded holiday times-all happier than we knew! I hope your children will care as much."

  "Vale Leston is their present paradise," said Gertrude. "You should see Master Felix's face at the least hope of a visit, and even little Fulbert talks about boat and fish."

  "What have you done with the Lambs?" demanded Clement.

  "They have outgrown the old place in every direction, and have got a spick-and-span chess-board of a villa out on the Minsterham road."

  "They have not more children than you have."

  "Five Lambkins to our four, besides Gussy and Killy," said Lance; "though A-which is all that appears of the great Achilles' unlucky name-is articled to Shapcote, and as for Gussy, or rather Mr. Tanneguy, he is my right hand."

  "We thought him a nice sort of youth when he was improving himself in London," said Clement.

  "You both were very good to him," said Lance, "and those three years were not wasted. He is a far better sub-editor and reporter than I was at his age, with his French wit and cleverness. The only fault I find with him is that he longs for plate-glass and flummery instead of old Froggatt's respectable panes."

  "He has become the London assistant, who was our bugbear," said Geraldine.

  "I don't know how we should get on without him since we made 'Pur' daily," said Lance.

  "How old ambitions get realized!" said Geraldine.

  "Does his mother endure the retail work, or has she not higher views for him?" asked Clement.

  "In fact, ever since the first Lambkin came on the stage any one would have thought those poor boys were her steps, not good old Lamb's; whereas Felix always made a point of noticing them. Gus was nine years old that last time he was there, while I was ill, and he left such an impression as to make him the hero model.-Aye, Gus is first-rate."

  "I am glad you have not altered the old shop and office."

  "Catch me! But we are enlarging the reading-room, and the new press demands space. Then there's a dining-room for the young men, and what do you think I've got? We (not Froggatt, Underwood, and Lamb, but the Church Committee) have bought St. Oswald's buildings for a coffee hotel and young men's lodging-house."

  "Our own, old house. Oh! is Edgar's Great Achilles there still?"

  "I rushed up to see. Alas! the barbarians have papered him out. But what do you think I've got? The old cupboard door where all our heights were marked on our birthdays."

  "He set it up in his office," said Gertrude. "I think he danced round it. I know he brought me and all the children to adore it, and showed us, just like a weather record, where every one shot up after the measles, and where Clement got above you, Cherry, and Lance remained a bonny shrimp."

  "A great move, but it sounds comfortable," said Clement.

  "Yes; for now Lance will get a proper luncheon, as he never has done since dear old Mrs. Froggatt died," said Gertrude, "and he is an animal that needs to be made to eat! Then the children want schooling of the new-fashioned kinds."

  All this had become possible through Fulbert's legacy between his brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides which the firm had gone on prospering. Clement asked what was the present circulation of the 'Pursuivant', and as Lance named it, exclaimed-

  "What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?"

  "It is his doing," said Lance, "the lines he traced out."

  "My father says it is the writing with a conscience," said Gertrude.

  "Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from being a dead weight," added Geraldine.

  "No wonder," said Lance, "with such contributors as the Harewoods, and such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May."

  Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage disconsolately exclaimed-

  "Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to be in his bed?"

  "Ha, Sibby!" cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery, withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. "You see your baby has begun to run alone."

  "Ah, Master Lance, 'twas your doing. You always was the mischief."

  "No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was in the house; but I'll bring him back again."

  "May I not stay a little longer, Sibb
y," said Clement, rather piteously, "to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day."

  "If ye'll take yer jelly, sir," said Sibby, "as it's fainting ye'll be, and bringing our hearts into our mouths."

  So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance's children, then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only sing once, she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her once crowded nursery.

  "What shall that once be, Clem?" asked Lance.

  "'Lead, kindly Light.'"

  "Is it not too much?" he inquired, glancing towards his widowed sister.

  "I want it as much as he does," she answered fervently.

  At thirty-eight Lance's voice was, if possible, more perfect in sweetness, purity, and expression than it had been at twenty, and never had the poem, connected with all the crises of their joint lives, come more home to their hearts, filling them with aspiration as well as memory.

  Then Lance helped his brother up, and was surprised, after those cheerful tones, to feel the weight so prone and feeble, that Gerald's support on the other side was welcome. Mrs. Grinstead followed to take Gertrude to her room and find her children's photographs.

  The two young people began to smile as soon as they were left alone.

  "Did you ever see Bexley?" asked Anna.

  "Yes-an awful hole," and both indulged in a merry laugh.

  "My mother mentions it with pious horror," said Anna.

  "Life is much more interesting when it is from hand to mouth," said Gerald, with a yawn. "If I went in for sentiment, which I don't, it would be for Fiddler's Ranch; though it is now a great city called Violinia, with everything like everything else everywhere."

  "Not Uncle Lance."

  "Certainly not. For a man with that splendid talent to bury it behind a counter, mitigated by a common church organ, is as remarkable as absurd; though he seems to thrive on it. It is a treat to see such innocent rapture, all genuine too!"

  "You worn-out old man!" laughed Anna. "Aunt Cherry has always said that self-abnegation is the secret of Uncle Lance's charm."

  "All very well in that generation-ces bons jours quand nous etions si miserables," said Gerald, in his low, maundering voice. "Prosperity means the lack of object."

  "Does it?"

  "In these days when everything is used up."

  "Not to those two-"

  "Happy folk, never to lose the sense of achievement!"

  "Poor old man! You talk as if you were twenty years older than Uncle Lance."

  "I sometimes think I am, and that I left my youth at Fiddler's Ranch."

  Wherewith he strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something so yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle came back and mentioned the tune the old cow died of.

  Was Gerald, the orphan of Fiddler's Ranch, to be always the spoilt child of prosperity and the creature of modern life, with more aspirations than he saw how to fulfil, hampered as he was by duties, scruples, and affections?

  CHAPTER III. DARBY AND JOAN

  My reason haply more To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now I see our lances are but straws! SHAKESPEARE.

  Lancelot saw his brother's doctors the next morning, and communicated to his wife the upshot of the interview when they were driving to their meeting in Mrs. Grinstead's victoria, each adorned with a big bunch of primroses.

  "Two doctors! and not Tom," said Gertrude.

  "Both Brownlows. Tom knows them well, and wrote. One lives at the East-end, and is sheet anchor to Whittingtonia. He began with Clement, but made the case over to the cousin, the fashionable one, when we made the great removal."

  "So they consulted?"

  "And fairly see the way out of the wood, though not by any means quit of it, poor Tina; but there's a great deal to be thankful for," said Lance, with a long breath.

  "Indeed there is!" said the wife, with a squeeze of the hand. "But is there any more to be feared?"

  "Everything," Lance answered; "heart chiefly, but the lungs are not safe. He has been whirling his unfortunate machine faster and faster, till no wonder the mainspring has all but broken down. His ideal always was working himself to death, and only Felix could withhold him, so now he has fairly run himself down. No rest from that tremendous parish work, with the bothers about curates, school boards and board schools, and the threatened ritual prosecution, which came to nothing, but worried him almost as much as if it had gone on, besides all the trouble about poor Alda, and the loss of Fulbert took a great deal out of him. When Somers got a living, there was no one to look after him, and he never took warning. So when in that Stinksmeech Mission he breathed pestiferous air and drank pestiferous water, he was finished up. They've got typhus down there-a very good thing too," he added vindictively.

  "I put it further back than Mr. Somers' going," said Gertrude. "He never was properly looked after since Cherry married. What is he to do now?"

  "Just nothing. If he wishes to live or have a chance of working again, he must go to the seaside and vegetate, attempt nothing for the next six months, nor even think about St. Matthew's for a year, and, as they told me afterwards, be only able to go on cautiously even then."

  "How did he take it?"

  "He laid his head against Cherry, who was standing by his chair, put an arm round her, and said, 'There!' and she gave him such a smile as I would not have missed seeing on any account. 'Mine now,' she said. 'Best!' he said. He is too much tired and worn out to vex himself about anything."

  "Where are they to go? Not to Ewmouth, or all the family worries would come upon them. Alda would give him no peace."

  "Certainly not there. Brownlow advises Rockquay. His delicate brother is a curate there, and it agrees with him better than any other place. So I am to go and see for a house for them. It is the very best thing for Cherry."

  "Indeed it is. Was not she like herself last night? Anna says she has never brightened up so much before! I do believe that if Clement goes on mending, the dear person will have a good time yet; nay, all the better now that she is free to be a thorough-going Underwood again."

  "You Underwooder than Underwood!"

  "Exactly! I never did like-Yes, Lance, I am going to have it out. I do think Clement would have done better to let her alone."

  "He did let her alone. He told me so."

  "Yes, but she let out to me the difference between that time and the one of the first offer when dear Felix could not keep back his delight at keeping her; whereas she could not help seeing that she was a burthen on Clement's soul, between fear of neglecting her and that whirl of parish work, and that St. Wulstan's Hall was wanted for the girls' school. Besides, Wilmet persuaded her."

  "She did. But it turned out well. The old man worshipped her, and she was very fond of him."

  "Oh! very well in a way, but you know better, Lance."

  "Well, perhaps he did not begin young enough. He was a good, religious man, but Pro Ecclesia Dei had not been his war-cry from his youth, and he did not understand, and thought it clerical; good, but outside his life. Still, she was happy."

  "Petting, Society, Art, travels! I had rather have had our two first years of tiffs than all that sort of happiness."

  "Tiffs! I thought we might have gone in for the Dunmow flitch."

  "You might! Do you mean that you forget how fractious and nasty and abominable I was, and how many headaches I gave you?"

  "Only what you had to put up with."

  "You don't recollect that first visit of my father's, when I was so frightfully cross because you said we must ask the Lambs and Bruces to dinner? You came down in the morning white as a ghost, an owl in its blinkers, and though I know you would rather have died than have uttered a word, no sooner were you off than he fell upon me with, 'Mrs. Daisy, I give you to understand that you haven't a husband made of such tough commodity as you are used to at home, and if you worry him you will have to rue it.'"

  "What an ass I must have looked! Did I really g
o playing the martyr?"

  "A very smiling martyr, pretending to be awfully jolly. I believe I requited papa by being very cross."

  "At his interfering, eh? No wonder."

  "Chiefly to conceal my fright, but I did begin trying not to fly out as I used to do, and I was frightened whenever I did so."

  "Poor Daisy! That is why you always seemed to think every headache your fault."

  "The final effect-I won't say cure-was from that book on education which said that a child should never know a cross word or look between father and mother. So you really have forgotten how horrid I could be?"

  "Or never felt it! But to return to our muttons. I can't believe otherwise than that Cherry liked her old man, and if their parallel lines did not meet, she never found it out."

  "That is true. She liked him and leant on him, and was constantly pleased and amused as well as idolized, but I don't think the deep places in her heart were stirred. Then there were constraints. He could not stand Angela's freaks. And his politics-"

  "He was not so very much advanced."

  "Enough not to like the 'Pursuivant' to lie about, nor her writing for it, even about art or books; nor did his old bones enjoy the rivers at Vale Leston. Now you will see a rebound."

  "Or will she be too tender of him to do what he disliked?"

  "That will be the test. Now she has Clement, I expect an article will come on the first book they read together."

  Lance laughed, but returned to defend his sister.

  "Indeed she was attached to him. She was altogether drooping and crushed at Vale Leston in the autumn."

  "It was too soon. She was overdone with the multitudes, and in fact it was more the renewal of the old sorrow than the new one. Anna tells me that when they returned there was the same objectless depression. She would not take up her painting again, she said it was of no use, there was no one to care. I remember her being asked once to do something for the Kyrle Society, and Mr. Grinstead did not like it, but now Clement's illness has made a break, and in a new place, with him to occupy her instead of only that dawdling boy, you will see what you shall see!"