The Long Vacation Read online

  "Ah! Gerald!" was the answer, in a doubtful, wistful tone, just as they arrived.

  CHAPTER IV. SLUM, SEA, OR SEASON

  For in spite of all her mother had taught her, She was really remarkably fond of the water. JANE TAYLOR.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lancelot Underwood had not long been gone to their meeting when there ran into the drawing-room a girl a year older than Anna, with a taller, better figure, but a less clear complexion, namely Emilia, the adopted child of Mr. Travis Underwood. She found Anna freshening up the flowers, and Gerald in an arm-chair reading a weekly paper.

  "I knew I should find you," she cried, kissing Anna, while Gerald held out a finger or two without rising. "I thought you would not be gone primrosing."

  "A perspicacity that does you credit," said Gerald, still behind his paper.

  "Are the cousins gone?" asked Anna.

  "Of course they are; Cousin Marilda, in a bonnet like a primrose bank, is to pick up Fernan somewhere, but I told her I was too true to my principles to let wild horses drag me there."

  "Let alone fat tame ones," ejaculated Gerald.

  "What did she say?" asked Anna.

  "Oh, she opened her eyes, and said she never should ask any one to act against principles, but principles in her time were for Church and State. Is Aunt Cherry in the vortex?"

  "No, she is reading to Uncle Clem, or about the house somewhere. I don't think she would go now at least."

  "Uncle Grin's memory would forbid," muttered Gerald. "He saw a good many things, though he was a regular old-fashioned Whig, an Edinburgh Review man."

  "You've got the 'Censor' there! Oh, let me see it. My respected cousins don't think it good for little girls. What are you going to do?"

  "I believe the doctors want Uncle Clem to get a long leave of absence, and that we shall go to the seaside," replied Anna.

  "Oh! then you will come to us for the season! We reckon on it."

  "No, indeed, Emmie, I don't see how I can. Those two are not in the least fit to go without some one."

  "But then mother is reckoning on our having a season together. You lost the last."

  Gerald laughed a little and hummed-

  "If I were na to marry a rich sodger lad My friends would be dismal, my minnie be mad."

  "Don't be so disgusting, Gerald! My friends have too much sense," cried Anna.

  "But it is true enough as regards 'my minnie,'" said Emilia.

  "Well, eight daughters are serious-baronet's daughters!" observed Gerald in his teasing voice.

  "Tocherless lasses without even the long pedigree," laughed Anna. "Poor mother."

  "The pedigree is long enough to make her keep poor Vale Leston suitors at arm's length," mumbled Gerald; but the sisters did not hear him, for Emilia was exclaiming-

  "I mean to be a worker. I shall make Marilda let me have hospital training, and either go out to Aunt Angela or have a hospital here. Come and help me, Annie."

  "I have a hospital here," laughed Anna.

  "But, Nan dear, do come! You know such lots of swells. You would get one into real society if one is to have it; Lady Rotherwood, Lady Caergwent, besides all your delightful artist friends; and that would pacify mother, and make it so much pleasanter for me. Oh, if you knew what the evenings are!"

  "What an inducement!"

  "It would not be so if Annie were there. We should go out, and miss the horrid aldermanic kind of dinners; and at home, when we had played the two old dears to sleep, as I have to do every night, while they nod over their piquet or backgammon, we could have some fun together! Now, Annie, you would like it. You do care for good society, now don't you?"

  "I did enjoy it very much when Aunt Cherry went with me, but-"

  "No buts, no buts. You would come to the laundry girls, and the cooking-class, and all the rest with me, and we should not have a dreary moment. Have you done fiddling over those flowers?"

  "Not yet; Vale Leston flowers, you know. Besides, Aunt Cherry can't bear them not artistic."

  "Tidy is enough for Marilda. She does them herself, or the housekeeper; I can't waste time worrying over them."

  "That's the reason they always look like a gardener's prize bouquet at a country horticultural show," said Gerald.

  "What does it signify? They are only a testimony to Sir Gorgias Midas' riches. I do hate orchids."

  "I wish them on their native rocks, poor things," said Gerald. "But poor Fernan, you do him an injustice."

  "Oh, yes, he does quantities of good works, and so does Marilda, till I am quite sick of hearing of them! The piles of begging letters they get! And then they want them read and explained, and answered sometimes."

  "A means of good works," observed Gerald.

  "How would you like it? Docketing the crumbs from Dives' table," exclaimed Emilia.

  "A clerk or secretary could do it," said Anna.

  "Of course. Now if you have finished those flowers, do come out with me. I want to go into Ponter's Court, and Fernan won't let me go alone."

  "Have you any special object?" said Gerald lazily, "or is it to refresh yourself with the atmosphere?"

  "That dear boy-that Silky-has been taken up, and they've sent him to a reformatory."

  "What a good thing!"

  "Yes, only I don't believe he did it! It was that nasty little Bill Nosey. I am sure that he got hold of the lady's parcel, and stuffed it into Silky's cap."

  Emilia spoke with a vehemence that made them both laugh, and Gerald said-

  "But if he is in a reformatory, what then? Are we to condole with his afflicted family, or bring Bill Nosey to confess?"

  "I thought I would see about it," said Emilia vaguely.

  "Well, I decline to walk in the steps of the police as an amateur! How about the Dicksons?"

  "Drifted away no one knows where. That's the worst of it. Those poor things do shift about so."

  "Yes. I thought we had got hold of those boys with the gymnasium. But work wants regulating."

  "Oh, Gerald, I am glad you are coming. Now I am free!" Just fancy, they had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing to the match-girls!"

  "You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the follies of poverty."

  "Oh, to hear Mrs. Brown discourse on her troubles with her first, second, and third coachman!"

  "Was the irresistible Ferdinand Brown there?"

  "Yes, indeed, with diamond beetle studs and a fresh twist to his moustache. It has grown long enough to be waxed."

  "How happy that fellow would be if he were obliged to dig! I should like to scatter his wardrobe over Ponter's Court."

  "There, Nan, have you finished?" as Anna swept the scattered leaves into a basket. "Are you coming?"

  "I don't think I shall. You would only talk treason-well-social treason all the way, and you don't want me, and Aunt Cherry would have to lunch alone, unless you wait till after."

  "Oh no, I know a scrumptious place for lunch," said Gerald. "You are right, Annie, one lady is quite enough on one's hands in such regions. You have no jewellery, Emmie?"

  "Do you see any verdure about me?" she retorted.

  So when Gerald's tardy movements had been overcome, off they started to their beloved slum, Emilia looking as if she were setting forth for Elysium, and they were seen no more, even when five o'clock tea was spread, and Anna making it for her Uncle Lance and his wife, who had just returned, full of political news; and likewise Lance said that he had picked up some intelligence for his sister. He had met General Mohun and Sir Jasper Merrifield, both connections of the Underwoods.

  General Mohun lived with his sister at Rockstone, Sir Jasper, his brother-in-law, at Clipstone, not far off, and they both recommended Rockquay and its bay "with as much praise," said Lance, "as the inhabitants ever give of a sea place."

  "Very good, except for the visitors," said Geraldine.

  "Exactly so. Over-built, over-everythin
ged, but still tolerable. The General lives there with his sister, and promises to write to me about houses, and Sir Jasper in a house a few miles off."

  "He is Bernard's father-in-law?"

  "Yes," said Gertrude; "and my brother Harry married a sister of Lady Merrifield, a most delightful person as ever I saw. We tell my father that if she were not out in New Zealand we should all begin to be jealous, he is so enthusiastic about Phyllis."

  "You have never told us how Dr. May is."

  "It is not easy to persuade him that he is not as young as he was," said Gertrude.

  "I should say he was," observed Lance.

  "In heart-that's true," said Gertrude; "but he does get tired, and goes to sleep a good deal, but he likes to go and see his old patients, as much as they like to have him, and Ethel is always looking after him. It is just her life now that Cocksmoor has grown so big and wants her less. Things do settle themselves. If any one had told her twenty years ago that Richard would have a great woollen factory living, and Cocksmoor and Stoneborough meet, and a separate parish be made, with a disgusting paper-mill, two churches, and a clergyman's wife-(what's the female of whipper-snapper, Lance?)-who treats her as-"

  "As an extinct volcano," murmured Lance.

  "She would have thought her heart would be broken," pursued Gertrude. "Whereas now she owns that it is the best thing, and a great relief, for she could not attend to Cocksmoor and my father both. We want her to take a holiday, but she never will. Once she did when Blanche and Hector came to stay, but he was not happy, hardly well, and I don't think she will ever leave him again."

  "Mrs. Rivers is working still in London?"

  "Oh yes; I don't know what the charities of all kinds and descriptions would do without her."

  "No," said Clement from his easy-chair. "She is a most valuable person. She has such good judgment."

  "It has been her whole life ever since poor George Rivers' fatal accident," said Gertrude. "I hardly remember her before she was married, except a sense that I was naughty with her, and then she was terribly sad. But since she gave up Abbotstoke to young Dickie May she has been much brighter, and she can do more than any one at Cocksmoor. She manages Cocksmoor and London affairs in her own way, and has two houses and young Mrs. Dickie on her hands to boot."

  "How many societies is she chairwoman of?" said Lance. "I counted twenty-four pigeon-holes in her cabinet one day, and I believe there was a society for each of them; but I must say she is quiet about them."

  "It is fine to see the little hen-of-the-walk of Cocksmoor lower her crest to her!" said Gertrude, "when Ethel has not thought it worth while to assert herself, being conscious of being an old fogey."

  "And your Bishop?"

  "Norman? I do believe he is coming home next year. I think he really would if papa begged him, but that he-my father, I mean-said he would never do so; though I believe nothing would be such happiness to him as to have Norman and Meta at home again. You know they came home on George's death, but then those New Somersetas went and chose him Bishop, and there he is for good."

  "For good indeed," said Clement; "he is a great power there."

  "So are his books," added Geraldine. "Will Harewood sets great store by them. Ah! I hear our young folks-or is that a carriage?"

  Emilia and Gerald came in simultaneously with Marilda, expanded into a portly matron, as good-humoured as ever, and better-looking than long ago.

  She was already insisting on Gerald's coming to a party of hers and bringing his violin, and only interrupted her persuasions to greet and congratulate Clement.

  Gerald, lying back on a sofa, and looking tired, only replied in a bantering, lazy manner.

  "Ah! if I asked you to play to the chimney-sweeps," she said, "you would come fast enough, you idle boy. And you, Annie, do you know you are coming to me for the season when your uncle and aunt go out of town?"

  "Indeed, Cousin Marilda, thank you, I don't know it, and I don't believe it."

  "Ah, we'll see! You haven't thought of the dresses you two are to have for the Drawing-Room from Worth's, and Lady Caergwent to present you."

  Anna shook her head laughingly, while Gerald muttered-

  "Salmon are caught with gay flies."

  They closed round the tea-table while Marilda sighed-

  "Alda's daughters are not like herself."

  "A different generation," said Geraldine.

  "See the Beggars Opera," said Lance-

  "'I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter, For when she's drest with care and cost, and made all neat and gay, As men should serve a cucumber, she throws herself away.'"

  "Ah! your time has not come yet, Lance. Your little girls are at a comfortable age."

  "There are different ways of throwing oneself away," said Clement. "Perhaps each generation says it of the next."

  "Emmie is not throwing herself away, except her chances," said Marilda. "If she would only think of poor Ferdy Brown, who is as good a fellow as ever lived!"

  "Not much chance of that," said Geraldine.

  Their eyes all met as each had glanced at the tea-table, where Emilia and Gerald were looking over a report together, but Geraldine shook her head. She was sure that Gerald did not think of his cousins otherwise than as sisters, but she was by no means equally sure of Emilia, to whom he was certainly a hero.

  Anna had not heard the last of the season. Her mother wrote to her, and also to Geraldine, whom she piteously entreated not to let Anna lose another chance, in the midst of her bloom, when she could get good introductions, and Marilda would do all she could for her.

  But Anna was obdurate. She should never see any one in society like Uncle Clem. She had had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no more. She should see the best pictures at the studios before leaving town, and she neither could nor would leave her uncle and aunt to themselves. So the matter remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn had been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent what remained of the Easter vacation in a little of exhibitions with Anna, a little of slumming with Emilia, a little of society impartially with swells and artists, and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern reading of all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed, yet could not understand, his uncle said, that he was an undeveloped creature.

  CHAPTER V. A HAPPY SPRITE

  Such trifles will their hearts engage, A shell, a flower, a feather; If none of these, a cup of joy It is to be together.-ISAAC WILLIAMS.

  A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure in a grey suit, bag in hand, accompanied by a pretty pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker- bockered little boy, whose air of content and elation at being father's companion made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold.

  "Mr. Underwood! I am glad to see you."

  "I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea."

  There was a contention between General Mohun's hospitality and Lancelot's intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun's for the sake of his day- school would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his curiosities. The boy's eyes grew round, and he exclaimed-

  "Foolish guillemots' eggs?"

  "He is in the egg stage," said his father, smiling.

  "I won't answer for guillemots," said the General, "but nothing seems to come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones."

  There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the aforesaid Fergus Merrifield. Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for the General, had looked out the house that Lance had
come to inspect. As it was nearly half-past twelve o'clock, the party went round by the school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in all the dignity of the senior form.

  "Look at him," said the General, "those are honours one only gets once or twice in one's life, before beginning at the bottom again."

  Fergus graciously received the introduction; and the next sound that was heard was, "Have you any good fossils about you?" in a tone as if he doubted whether so small a boy knew what a fossil meant; but little Felix was equal to the occasion.

  "I once found a shepherd's crown, and father said it was a fossil sea-urchin, and that they are alive sometimes."

  "Echini. Oh yes-recent, you mean. There are lots of them here. I don't go in for those mere recent things," said Fergus, in a pre- Adamite tone, "but my sister does. I can take you down to a fisherman who has always got some."

  "Father, may I? I've got my eighteenpence," asked the boy, turning up his animated face, while Fergus, with an air of patronage, vouched for the honesty of Jacob Green, and undertook to bring his charge back in time for luncheon.

  Lancelot Underwood had entirely got over that sense of being in a false position which had once rendered society distasteful to him. Many more men of family were in the like position with himself than had been the case when his brother had begun life; moreover, he had personally achieved some standing and distinction through the 'Pursuivant'.

  General Mohun was delighted with his companion, whom he presented to his sister as the speedy consequence of her recommendation. She was rather surprised at the choice of an emissary, but her heart was won when she found Mr. Underwood as deep in the voluntary school struggle as she could be. Her brother held up his hands, and warned her that it was quite enough to be in the fray without going over it again, and that the breath of parish troubles would frighten away the invalid.

  "I'll promise not to molest him," she said.

  "Besides," said Lance, "one can look at other people's parishes more philosophically than at one's own."

  He had begun to grow a little anxious about his boy, but presently from the garden, up from the cliff-path, the two bounded in-little Felix with the brightest of eyes and rosiest of cheeks, and a great ruddy, white-beaded sea-urchin held in triumph in his hands.