The Long Vacation Read online

  Anna could not listen to anything but "The boat is coming!"

  "Oh, but they don't see! They are going away from it!"

  "That's the current," said Mrs. Norris. "My man knows what he is about, and so does the gentleman, never fear."

  There was another terrible interval, and then boat and swimmers began to approach, though in what condition could not be made out. A dark little head, no doubt that of Fergus, was lifted in, then another figure was raised and taken into the boat; Gerald swam with a hand on it for a short distance, then was helped in, and almost at once took an oar.

  "That's right," said Mrs. Norris. "It will keep out the cold."

  "They are not coming here," exclaimed Anna. "They are going round the point."

  "All right," was the answer. "'Tis more direct, you see, no shoals, and the young gentlemen will get to their own homes and beds all the quicker. Now, miss, you will come in and take a cup of tea, I am sure you want it, and I had just made it when Norris saw the little lads."

  "Oh, thank you, I must get back at once. My little brother-"

  "Yes, yes, miss, but you'll be able to ride the faster for a bit of bread and cup of tea! You are all of a tremble."

  It was true, and to pacify her, Mrs. Norris sent a child up to bid Petros have the horses ready, and Anna was persuaded to swallow a little too, which happily had cooled enough for her haste, but she hurried off, leaving Mrs. Norris to expend her hospitality on Davy, who endured his drenching like a fish, and could hardly wait even to swallow thick bread-and-butter till he could rush off to hear of his dear Master Fergus.

  The horses were ready. Petros had been joined by other spectators, and was able to entrust the bicycles to one of them, while he himself undertook to lead Mr. Underwood's horse to the stable. Anna rode off at as much speed or more than was safe downhill among the stones. She had to cross the broad parade above the quay, and indeed she believed she had come faster than the boat, which had to skirt round the side of the promontory between Anscombe Cove and Rockquay. In fact, when she came above the town she could see a crowd on the quay and pier, all looking out to sea, and she now beheld two boats making for the harbour.

  Then she had to ride between walls and villas, and lost sight of all till she emerged on the parade, and thought she saw Uncle Clement's hat above the crowd as she looked over their heads.

  She gave her horse to a bystander, who evidently knew her, for a murmur went through the crowd of "Little chap's sister," and way was made for her to get forward, while several rough voices said, "All right"; "Coast-guard boat"; "Not this one."

  Her uncle and Miss Mohun wore standing together. General Mohun could be seen in the foremost boat, and they could hear him call out, with a wave of his arm-

  "All right! All safe!"

  "You hero! Where's Gerald?" Miss Mohun exclaimed, as Anna came up to her.

  "There!" and she pointed to the Coast-guard boat. "We saw the boys from Anscombe Cliff, and he went out to them."

  "Gerald," exclaimed his uncle, with a ring of gladness in his voice, all the more that it was plain that the rower was indeed Gerald, and he began to hail those on shore, while Fergus's head rose up from the bottom of the boat.

  In a few moments they were close to the quay, and the little sodden mass that purported to be Fergus was calling out-

  "Aunt Jane! Oh, I've lost such a bit of aralia. Where's Davy?"

  "Here, take care. He is all right," were Gerald's words.

  He meant Adrian, whom his cousin lifted out, with eyes open and conscious, but with limp hands and white exhausted looks, to be carried to the fly that stood in waiting.

  "Is the other boy safe?" asked Gerald anxiously.

  "Oh yes; but how could you?" were the first words that came to Anna; but she felt rebuked by a strange look of utter surprise, and instead of answering her he replied to General Mohun-

  "Thanks, no, I'll walk up!" as a rough coat was thrown over his dripping and scanty garments.

  "The wisest way," said the General. "Can you, Fergus?"

  "Yes, quite well. Oh, my aralia!"

  "He has been half crying all the way home about his fossils," said Gerald. "Never mind, Fergus; look out for the next spring-tide. Uncle Clem, you ought to drive up."

  Clement submitted, clearly unable to resist, and sat down by Anna, who had her brother in her arms, rubbing his hands and warming them, caressing him, and asking him how he felt, to which the only answer she got was-

  "It was beastly. I have my mouth awfully full of water still."

  Clement made a low murmur of thanksgiving, and Anna, looking up, was startled to see how white and helpless he was. The way was happily very short, but he had so nearly fainted that Gerald, hurrying on faster uphill than the horse to reassure his aunt, lifted him out, not far from insensible, and carried him with Sibby's help to his bed in the room on the ground-floor, where the remedies were close at hand, Geraldine and nurse anxiously administering them; when the first sign of revival he gave was pointing to Gerald's dripping condition, and signing to him to go and take care of himself.

  "All right, yes, boys and all! All right Cherie."

  And he went, swallowing down the glass of stimulant which his aunt turned from her other patient for a moment to administer, but she was much too anxious about Clement to have thought for any one else, for truly it did seem likely that he would be the chief sufferer from the catastrophe.

  Little Davy's adventure, as he had lost no clothes, made no more impression on his parents than if he had been an amphibious animal or a water dog, and when Fergus came out of Beechwood Cottage after having changed the few clothes he had retained, and had a good meal, to be driven home with his uncle in the dog-cart, his constant henchman was found watching for news of him at the gate.

  "Please, sir, I think we'll find your aralia next spring-tide."

  Whereupon General Mohun told him he was a good little chap, and presented him with a half-crown, the largest sum he had ever possessed in his life.

  Fergus did not come off quite so well, for when the story had been told, though his mother had trembled and shed tears of thankfulness as she kissed him, and his sisters sprang at him and devoured him, while all the time he bemoaned his piece of the stump of an aralia, and a bit of cone of a pinus, and other treasures to which imaginative regret lent such an aid, that no doubt he would believe the lost contents of his bag to have been the most precious articles that he had ever collected; his father, however, took him into his study.

  "Fergus," he said gravely, "this is the second time your ardour upon your pursuits has caused danger and inconvenience to other people, this time to yourself too."

  Fergus hung his head, and faltered something about-"Never saw."

  "No, that is the point. Now I say nothing about your pursuits. I am very glad you should have them, and be an intelligent lad; but they must not be taken up exclusively, so as to drive out all heed to anything else. Remember, there is a great difference between courage and foolhardiness, and that you are especially warned to be careful if your venturesomeness endangers other people's lives."

  So Fergus went off under a sense of his father's displeasure, while Adrian lay in his bed, kicking about, admired and petted by his sister, who thought every one very unkind and indifferent to him; and when he went to sleep, began a letter to her eldest sister describing the adventure and his heroism in naming terms, such as on second thoughts she suppressed, as likely to frighten her mother, and lead to his immediate recall.

  CHAPTER XI. HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

  Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.-Tempest.

  Sunday morning found Anna in a different frame of mind from that of the evening before. Uncle Clement had been very ill all night, and the house was to be kept as quiet as possible. When Anna came in from early Celebration, Aunt Cherry came out looking like a ghost, and very anxious, and gave a sigh of relief on Adrian being reported still sound asleep. Gerald pre
sently came down, pale and languid, but calling himself all right, and loitering over his breakfast till after the boy appeared, so rosy and ravenous as to cause no apprehension, except that he should devour too much apricot jam, and use his new boots too noisily on the stairs.

  Anna devised walking him to Beechcroft to hear if there were any news of Fergus, and though he observed, with a certain sound of contemptuous rivalship, that there was no need, for "Merrifield was as right as a trivet," he was glad enough to get out of doors a little sooner, and though he affected to be bored by the kind inquiries of the people they met, he carried his head all the higher for them.

  Nobody was at home except General Mohun, but he verified Adrian's impression of his nephew's soundness, whatever the mysterious comparison might mean; and asked rather solicitously not only after Mr. Underwood but after Gerald, who, he said, was a delicate subject to have made such exertions.

  "It really was very gallant and very sensible behaviour," he said, as he took his hat to walk to St. Andrew's with the brother and sister, but Anna was conscious of a little pouting in Adrian's expression, and displeasure in his stumping steps.

  Gerald came to church, but went to sleep in the sermon, and had altogether such a worn-out look that no one could help remembering that he had never been very strong, and had gone through much exertion the day before, nor could he eat much of the mid-day meal. Mrs. Grinstead, who was more at ease about her brother, looked anxiously at him, and with a kind of smile the word "Apres" passed between them. The Sunday custom was for Clement to take Adrian to say his Catechism, and have a little instruction before going out walking, but as this could not be on this day, Anna and he were to go out for a longer walk than usual, so as to remove disturbance from the household. Gerald declined, of course, and was left extended on the sofa; but just as Anna and Adrian had made a few steps along the street, and the boy had prevailed not to walk to Clipstone, as she wished, but to go to the cliffs, that she might hear the adventure related in sight of the scene of action, he discovered that he had left a glove. He was very particular about Sunday walking in gloves in any public place, and rushed back to find it, leaving his sister waiting. Presently he came tearing back and laughing.

  "Did you find it?"

  "Oh yes; it was in the drawing-room. And what else do you think I found? Why, Cherie administering"-and he pointed down his throat, and made a gulp with a wild grimace of triumph. "On the sly! Ha! ha!"

  Anna felt as if the ground had opened under her feet, but she answered gravely-

  "Poor Gerald went through a great deal yesterday, and is quite knocked up, so no wonder he needs some strengthening medicine."

  "Strengthening grandmother! Don't you think I know better than that?" he cried, with a caper and a grin.

  "Of course you had to have some cordial when you were taken out of the water."

  "And don't you know what it was?"

  "I know the fisher-people carry stuff about with them in case of accidents."

  "That's the way with girls-just to think one knows nothing at all."

  "What do you know, Adrian?"

  "Know? Why, I haven't been about with Kit and Ted Harewood for nothing! Jolly good larks it is to see how all of you take for granted that a fellow never knew the taste of anything but tea and milk-and-water."

  "But what do you know the taste of?" she asked, with an earnestness that provoked the boy to tease and put on a boasting manner, so that she could not tell how much he was pretending for the sake of amazing and tormenting her, in which he certainly succeeded.

  However, his attention was diverted by coming round the corner to where there was a view of Anscombe Bay, when he immediately began to fight his battles o'er again, and show where they had been groping in the mud and seaweed in pursuit of sea-urchins, and stranded star- fish, and crabs.

  "And it wasn't a forest after all, it was just a sell-nothing but mud and weed, only Fergus would go and poke in it, and there were horrid great rough stones and rocks too, and I tumbled over one."

  Anna here became conscious that the whole place was the resort of the afternoon promenaders of Rockquay, great and small, of all ranks and degrees, belonging to the "middle class" or below it, and that they might themselves become the object of attention; and she begged her brother to turn back and wait till they could have the place to themselves.

  "These are a disgusting lot of cads," he agreed, "but there won't be such a jolly tide another time. I declare I see the very rock where I saw the sea-mouse-out there! red and shiny at the top."

  Here a well-dressed man, who had just come up the Coast-guard path, put aside his pipe, and taking off his hat, deferentially asked-

  "Have I the honour of addressing Sir Adrian Vanderkist?"

  Adrian replied with a gracious nod and gesture towards his straw hat, and in another moment Anna found him answering questions, and giving his own account of the adventure to the inquirer, who, she had little doubt, was a reporter, and carrying his head, if possible, higher in consequence as he told how Fergus Merrifield had lingered over his stones, and all the rest after his own version. She did not hear the whole, having had to answer the inquiries of one of the bicycle friends of the previous day, but when her attention was free she heard-

  "And the young lady, Sir Adrian?"

  "Young lady! Thank goodness, we were not bothered with any of that sort."

  "Indeed, Sir Adrian, I understood that there was a young lady, Miss Aurelia, that Master Merrifield was lamenting, as if she had met with a watery grave."

  "Ha! ha! Aralia was only the name of a bit of fossil kind of a stick that Merrifield had us down there to find in the fossil forest. I'm sure I saw no forest, only bits of mud and stuff! But he found a bit, sure enough, and was ready to break his heart when he had to leave his bag behind him on the rock. Aralia a young lady! That's a good one."

  He forgathered with a school-fellow on the way home, and Anna heard little more.

  The next day, however, there arrived the daily local paper, addressed to Sir Adrian Vanderkist, Bart., and it was opened by him at breakfast-time.

  "I say! Look here! 'Dangerous Accident in Anscombe. A Youthful Baronet in peril!' What asses people are!" he added, with an odd access of the gratified shame of seeing himself for the first time in print. But he did not proceed to read aloud; there evidently was something he did not like, and he was very near pocketing it and rushing off headlong to school with it, if his aunt and Anna had not entreated or commanded for it, when he threw it over with an uncomplimentary epithet.

  "Just what I was afraid of when I saw the man talking to him!" exclaimed Anna. "Oh, listen!

  "'The young Sir Adrian Vanderkist, at present residing at St. Andrew's Rock with his aunt, Mrs. Grinstead, and the Rev. E. C. Underwood, and who is a pupil at Mrs. Edgar's academy for young gentlemen, was, we are informed, involved in the most imminent danger, together with a son of General Sir Jasper Merrifield, K.G.C., a young gentleman whose remarkable scientific talent and taste appear to have occasioned the peril of the youthful party, from whence they were rescued by Gerald F. Underwood, Esq., of Vale Leston.'"

  "What's all that?" said Gerald F. Underwood, Esquire, sauntering in and kissing his aunt. "Good-morning. How is Uncle Clement this morning?"

  "Much better; I think he will be up by and by," answered Mrs. Grinstead.

  "What bosh have you got there? The reporters seized on their prey, eh?"

  "There's Sir Jasper!" exclaimed Anna, who could see through the blinds from where she sat.

  Sir Jasper had driven over with his little son, and, after leaving him at school, had come to inquire for Mr. Underwood, and to obtain a fuller account of the accident, having already picked up a paper and glanced at it.

  "I am afraid my little scamp led them into the danger," he said. "Scientific taste forsooth! Science is as good a reason as anything else for getting into scrapes."

  "Really," said Gerald, "I can't say I think your boy came out the worst in it, though I mus
t own the Rockquay Advertiser bestows most of the honours of the affair on the youthful baronet! You say he blew his own trumpet," added Gerald, turning to Anna.

  "The reporter came and beset us," said Anna, in a displeased voice. "I did not hear all that passed, but of course Adrian told him what he told me, only those people make things sound ridiculous."

  "To begin with," said Gerald, "I don't think Fergus, or at any rate Davy Blake, was in fault. They tried to go home in good time, having an instinct for tides, but Adrian was chasing a sea-mouse or some such game, and could not be brought back, and then he fell over a slippery rock, and had to be dragged out of a hole, and by that time the channel of the Anscombe stream was too deep, at least for him, who has been only too carefully guarded from being amphibious."

  "Oh! that did not transpire at home," said Sir Jasper. "Boys are so reserved."

  Mrs. Grinstead and Anna looked rather surprised. Anna even ventured-

  "I thought Fergus got too absorbed."

  "So did I," said his father dryly. "And he did not justify himself."

  "M-m-m," went on Gerald, skimming the article.

  "Read it," cried Anna. "You know none of us have seen it."

  Gerald continued-

  "'Their perilous position having been observed from Anscombe cliffs, Mr. G. F. Underwood of Vale Leston heroically' (i.e. humbugically) 'made his way out to their assistance, while a boat was put off by the Coast-guard, and that of Mr. Carter, fisherman, from Rockquay was launched somewhat later.' We could not see either of them, you know. My eye, this is coming it strong! 'The young baronet generously insisted that the little fisher-boy, David Blake, who had accompanied them, should first be placed in safety-'"

  "Didn't he?" exclaimed Anna. "I saw, and I wondered, but I thought it was his doing."

  "You saw?"

  "Yes, in the Coast-guard's telescope."

  "Oh! That is a new feature in the case!"

  "Then he did not insist?" said Mrs. Grinstead.

  "It was with the wrong side of his mouth."