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

'But they don't suspect you?'

'No; but Beccles got into an awful way, and swears—'

'You don't mean really swears!'

'No, no—stuff—vows—that unless he gets to the bottom of it, not one of us shall have the good-conduct prize. Now I did think I might have had that—though I'm not a church candle like Tina—for I never was had up for anything; and it is precious hard lines! Such a beauty, Robin, the Bishop gives it—all the Cathedral music, bound in red morocco; and this beggar hinders us all this very last chance! And then, he is dirty enough to write and tell Felix to get out of me who has been getting out through the Cathedral, and dropping the cards.'

'Do you know?'

'Hold your tongue; I thought you had a little sense! Felix had that; he saw I could not tell him, and said it must be as I pleased about that; but then he rowed me, as he never did before, for wasting time, and not mugging for the exhibition—as if that was any use.'

'Why shouldn't you get the exhibition?'

'Put that out of your head,' said Lance, angrily; 'Harewood is sure of that! A fellow that construes by nature—looks at a sentence, and spots the nominative in a moment—makes verses—rale, superior, iligant articles.'

'But I thought he wasn't always accurate. Can't you catch him out? O Lance, don't look so fierce! I only said so because he can't want the exhibition as much as you. He can go to some other school, or be paid for.'

'Not conveniently,' said Lance; 'they are not at all well off, and Jack helps them. Besides, I wouldn't get the thing in a sneaking way; and besides, Bill could no more make a mull in construing out of carelessness than I could a false note—it's against nature. I can't beat him, except in arithmetic. My birth-day comes at such an unlucky time. I should get another year if I'd only been born in July instead of June! I might be second, for Shapcote is only dogged by his father; but that's no good for the exhibition: and then there's an end of Cathedral and all!'

'What should you do then, Lance?'

'Whatever costs least! I'd as lief work my way out to Fulbert, if this is to go on.'

'Oh, don't! don't do that, whatever you do!' cried Robina, clinging to his arm.

'I don't see why not, if everybody is to be as savage as a bear when one comes home. One always trusted to Felix to see sense, if nobody else did; but what with his jawing one about the exhibition, and Wilmet about the tin and every spot on one's clothes, and Alda growling at whatever one does in the parlour, I'm sure I wish I'd stayed at Bexley.'

The boy and girl had never before been tried by want of sympathy, and what seemed to them injustice, when they had thus descended into the perturbed atmosphere of what they were used to regard as a happy home. There was a long mutual communication of grievances—irritable speeches—inattention from their elders—fancies and complaints of Alda's enforced peremptorily by Wilmet—appeals to Felix either quashed or unheeded; the strange thing was, in how short a time so much had managed to go wrong with them, except that they added the vexations of the last quarter to the present discomfort, real or fancied; and though they were both good children, each had the strong feeling that there was not as much encouragement as usual to goodness, and that it could not have been much worse if they had been seriously to blame. One had expected to be caressed for her endurance in a good cause; the other had not expected to be severely rebuked for what he scarcely viewed as faults. It was the first time this younger half of the family had ever suffered anything approaching to neglect or injustice from their seniors, and the moment was perilous. The discussion was forming their discontents into a dangerously avowed state, if it had the beneficial effect of raising their spirits by force of sympathy. At any rate, they were in no gloomy mood when they reached the tidy little villa, with its beds of open-hearted crocuses defying the cold wind, and admitting the sun to the utmost depths of their purple and golden bosoms, as they laughed their cheery greeting.

No less cheerful was the welcome from kind old Mrs. Froggatt, who met them at the door. 'Master Lancelot, Miss Robina, this is an unlooked-for pleasure, to be sure! My dear Miss Robina!' as the girl gave her hearty embrace.

They were the prime favourites next to Felix, and were the more gladly hailed that Mr. Froggatt was anxious about the business on which they came, and had been trying to get leave from his wife to peril his rheumatics by coming in to Bexley about it. They must stay to luncheon; and while Mr. Froggatt went off to answer his note, they were made much of over the fire, in the way that had of late become so abhorrent to Bernard, with difficulty avoiding a pre-luncheon or nooning of cake and wine within an hour of the meal of the day.

'And how is Mr. Underwood?' asked Mrs. Froggatt, when Robina had been divested of her wraps, placed close to the fire, screened and footstooled, and when Lance had transferred the big white cat from the arm-chair to his own knee.

'Oh, very well, thank you,' said Robina, rather surprised that the lengthy catechism on the family health did not as usual start from 'poor dear Miss Geraldine.'

'He was looking so thin, and had such a cough, I was quite concerned when he walked out here on Good Friday afternoon,' continued Mrs. Froggatt. 'I hope he is taking care.'

'Wilmet is always at him about it,' said Lance.

'That is right. And I hope he minds to keep the office-door shut. It is such a draughty place! Does he wear flannel, do you know, my dear?'

'I think so,' said Robina. 'Sister Constance told Wilmet he ought, when he had that long cough after the measles.'

'Ay. You know—you'll excuse me, my dears, a cough is not to be trifled with in your dear family.'

'You should write to the clerk of the weather-office, Mrs. Froggatt,' said Lance, rather gruffly.

And as Mrs. Froggatt was not good at understanding jokes, but was always ready to accept Mr. Lance's, she thought he meant Admiral Fitzroy; and much explanation and banter followed, which the children made the louder from dread of the subject. Mrs. Froggatt was by no means the cultivated person her husband was; but, being of a good old plain farmer stock, she was quite as unassuming, and her manners with the young Underwoods were a good deal like those of a superior old housekeeper, only perhaps less authoritative and familiar; but she was not to be kept away from the subject of her real anxiety. 'I wish I could see your sister, and speak to her; he ought to have some advice rather than let it run on in this way. I'm sure Mr. Froggatt would be willing to do anything. It has been a great concern to him to have to leave such a heavy charge to him this spring, and with all the family cares on his head too, at his age. Miss Alda's wedding put off too—is it? And is the young gentleman here still?'

'No; his leave was over last Monday,' said Robina, 'a week after I came home.'

'I should like to have seen him! Your brother says he is grown up such a fine-looking young man, and quite got over his lameness. A handsome couple they will be! I did see them ride through the place, but Miss Alda didn't see me.'

'You saw his horse?' broke in Lance, who considered Brown Murad as a superior specimen to either of the lovers; and Mrs. Froggatt, whose father had bred horses, and whose son was much more addicted to them than was for his good, was a much more intelligent auditor of the perfections now dilated on than could have been expected.

Yet nothing could keep off the dreaded subject, and even at table, Lance's disappointing deficiency in schoolboy voracity became the cause of a lamentation over his brother's small appetite, and an examination of Robina, resulting in her allowing that Felix seldom gave himself time to do more than snatch a crust of bread in the middle of the day, and did not always make up for it at tea-time. Mr. Froggatt shook his head and looked distressed, and his good lady went on discoursing about the basin of soup she always used to keep prepared for him, evidently longing, though not quite daring, to send a lecture to Wilmet on taking care of her brother. But what made more impression on both the children was, that after they had been into Mr. Froggatt's little conservatory with him, and had received into their charge a basket of camellias, violets, and calycanthus, with a pot of jonquils in the middle for Geraldine, the old gentleman said, as he bade them good-bye, 'Tell your sister, that if she thinks a day or two of laying by would be good for your brother, I should be ready and glad to change places with him. A little change might take away his cough; and I don't like his looks—no, I don't. He ought to be careful;' this to himself, with a long sigh.

Then the children got out into the garden, and with the natural impatience of the evil omen, exclaimed at the same moment—

 
'Croak, croak, croak, went the frogs,'
 

and

 
'Were there ever such a pair of good old coddles!'
 

But then they walked on for a full quarter of a mile before either said another word; and then it was, 'You don't think Felix looking ill, do you, Lance?'

'I never thought about his looks at all,' said Lance.

'No more did I,' said Robina; 'but he does cough; I hear him through the wall in the morning. Do you think there is anything in it, Lance?'

'How long has it been going on?'

'Ever since he came up to London. He got a chill in our garden when I was telling him about—' said Robina, stopping short of what she hated to mention.

'Then that's it!' said Lance, turning round with a face of one who had made a great discovery.

'It? What is the matter with him?'

'Yes,' said Lance. 'Hold your tongue, Robina; but Cherry and I thought long ago that he fancied that little Knevett himself. Then I made sure it was all a mistake; but now, depend upon it, that's what he is so cut up about!'

It carried conviction to the hearer, perhaps because it fitted in with a girl's love of romance. 'Then that's why he won't talk to me!'

'Of course!'

And then they began putting together all the tokens of inclination which their small experience and large imagination could suggest, till they had pretty well decided the point in their own belief, and had amused themselves considerably; but the anxiety came back again.

'Do people get over such things, Lance? There was Ophelia, and there was Wilfred in "Rokeby"—only she was a woman, and he was pipy. Did you ever know of anybody really and truly?'

Lance meditated, but his experience reached no farther than the surgeon's assistant at Minsterham, who was reported to be continually in love, but who did not look greatly the worse for it.

And then Robina suggested that she did not remember that either Wilfred or Ophelia had a cough.

'But my father had,' said Lance in the depths of his throat. 'Don't you know, Robin, it was hard work and trouble and poverty that—did it?'

'Was it?' awe-struck, for she had been so young as to have no clear ideas.

'I've heard it told often enough. My Lady cut off the third curate; and that—and all the rest of it—helped to bring on the decline.'

'But, Lance! At least, that wasn't—love.'

'Nonsense, Robin! Don't you see, whatever takes the heart and spirit out of a man, makes him ready for illness to get hold of?' Lance plucked desperately at the hazels in the hedge, and his eyes were full of tears.

'O Lance, Lance, what can we do?'

'I don't know! I'd let him pitch into me from morning till night if that would do him any good!'

'I'm sure I am very sorry I grumbled. We'll give Wilmet Mr. Froggatt's message, and see what she thinks.'

Poor children! their consternation was such, that they must judge by their own eyes of Felix without loss of time; so they both marched into the shop with Mr. Froggatt's note, and there felt half baffled to see Felix looking much as usual, very busy trying to content a lady with nursery literature, and casting a glance at Robin as if she had no business there.

Wilmet received Mr. Froggatt's message without excitement. She thought it would be a very good thing, but she did not believe Felix would consent; and Alda broke out, 'Then we should have Mr. Froggatt inflicted on us all the evening!'

Nor did Felix consent. He said it was very kind, but his cold was almost gone, and he did not need it. Moreover he had his private doubts whether Alda would be decently gracious to Mr. Froggatt; and Wilmet, whose one object in life was to keep her sister contented and happy at home, could press nothing so disagreeable to her. Altogether, the reception of their hints at home was so prosaically placid, that they were both rather ashamed of the alarm into which they had worked themselves up. Even when Robina privately asked Cherry whether she thought Felix looking well, the answer was eager.

'Oh, very—very well! He looked pulled down when his cold was bad, but he is quite well now.'

'Mrs. Froggatt thought—'

'Oh, you've been talking to Mrs. Froggatt! She thinks nothing so kind as to say one is looking poorly. I said, "How well you are looking, Mrs. Froggatt," one day, and I assure you she only swallowed it by an act of Christian forgiveness. She is fondest of Felix, so of course he looks the worst.'

Robina got no more out of Geraldine, whose fears at that moment were in the form of utterly denying themselves. Commonplace life greatly reassured the two young things, and of the alarm there chiefly remained a certain shame at their own former discontent, and doubly tender feeling towards their fatherly elder brother. Now that they guessed something to be amiss with him, they had no irritation for him—and indeed he gave them no cause for any; the discomfort was partly indeed occasioned by the lack of his usual quiet mirth, but far more by Alda's fastidiousness, and Wilmet's vigilance lest she should be annoyed. This caused restrictions that weighed more heavily on the younger ones than on Lance and Robina, and had the effect of making Angela and Bernard rebellious. They had neither the principle nor the consideration of their two seniors; to them every one seemed simply 'cross,' and against this crossness there was a constant struggle, either of disobedience or of grumble.

Both were at rather an insubordinate age. Angela, having begun school life with getting into a scrape greater than she understood, had acquired a naughty-girl reputation, of the kind that tempts the young mind to live up to it; and her high spirits, boisterous nature, and 'don't care' system made her irrepressible by any one but Wilmet, whose resolute hand might be murmured at, but was never relaxed. While Bernard, hitherto very fairly amenable to Cherry, and a capital little scholar, became infected with the spirit of riot and insubordination. Whatever fastidiousness the children took for fine-ladyism in Alda they treated unmercifully, and resented in their own fashion her complaints, and Wilmet's enforcement of regard to her tastes; nor was Lance always blameless in the tricks played upon her.

It was strange to see the difference made by one incongruous element. A few sneers at Cherry's pronunciation, an injudicious laugh when she was rebuking, and a general habit of making light of her, on Alda's part, upset all Bernard's habits of deference to the sister who had taught him all he knew. His lessons grew into daily battles—miseries to himself and far greater miseries to his teacher, and sufficient misery to the spectator to induce her to do that which the other sisters could scarcely have brought themselves to do on any provocation, namely to complain to Felix, and by-and-by make a representation, for the general good, she said, that it was a mere farce to leave the boy under Cherry's management.

Cherry, with bitter tears, was forced to own that she could no longer keep him in order nor make him learn, and there was no alternative but to send him to Mr. Ryder's. He had no voice nor ear, so that he could not follow in Lance's steps; and for the present, Bexley was the only resource.

Of course Cherry charged the whole of this upon her poor little self; and some amount of the trouble certainly was due to her incapacity not to show in voice and manner when she was under fret, anxiety, or depression; and now, poor child! all three at once had come upon her. Whether Alda's conversation or the children's naughtiness fretted her most, it would be hard to tell; she was in a continual state of unuttered, vague, and therefore most wearing anxiety on Felix's account, and the physical discomfort of the ungenial spring told on her whole frame and spirits. Alda's talk, when good-humoured, opened such vistas of brightness, amusement, conversation, and above all of beautiful scenes, that they awoke longings and cravings that Cherry had hardly known before. The weariness of the grinding monotony of home seemed to have infected her. She knew it for discontent, and was the more miserable over her want of power to control it, because of the terror that hung over her lest repinings might bring on them all the judicial punishment of a terrible break-up of the home she loved, even while the tedium of the daily round oppressed her. Alternate plaintiveness and weary sharpness of course aggravated both Alda and Bernard, and they knew nothing of the repentant wretchedness that rather weakened than strengthened her.

Little Stella's unfailing docility and sweetness were her great solace. Even Alda was exceedingly fond of Stella, and would have spoilt her if the child had not been singularly firm in her intense love and loyalty to the heads of the family. Angel and Bear were too rough for her, and alarmed her sense of duty; but Lance was her hero; and the happiest moments of those holidays were spent in a certain loft above a warehouse in the court of the printing-office, only attainable by a long ladder. Here, secure that none but favoured ears could hear, Lance practised on his beloved violin, at every hour he could steal, emulating too often Mother Hubbard's dog 'fiddling to mice,' but his audience often including his three younger sisters. He had had scarcely any hints, but his was the nature that could pick music out of anything; and Angela, much more than Robin, was ecstatic in all that concerned the sixth sense, and watched and criticised with rapture, wanted to learn, and pouted at being told that it was not fit for a woman. Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft, with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the annoyances she caused, Cherry striving hard, and not always successfully, with the fretfulness of anxiety, and Felix—they durst not think in what state. That loft and that violin made their fairy-land, and one that rendered it most unusually hard for Lance to learn his holiday task.

'I'll tell you what, Lance,' said Robina at last, when he had vainly been trying to repeat it to her, with his eye on a sheet of music all the time, 'you can't do two things at once. If I were you, I would lock up that violin till the summer examination is over.'

He turned on her quite angrily. 'Very fine talking! Lock up all the pleasure I have in life! Thank you!'

'I'm quite sure you'll never get the exhibition if you have your head in this.'

'I shan't get the exhibition any way.'

'But if you do your utmost for it?'

'I shall do my utmost!'

'You can't if you have these tunes always running in your head, and are always wild to be picking them out.'

'Well, Robin, I sometimes think I should do more good with music than anything else.'

'Maybe,' said Robina, a sensible little woman; 'but you'll do no good by half and half. If you don't do well in the examination, Felix will be horribly vexed, and you'll always hate the thought of it.'

'I tell you I shall be as dull as ditch-water, and as stupid as Shapcote, if I don't have any pleasure.'

'I only don't want you to be stupider.'

Lance chucked up a pen-wiper and caught it.

'The fact is,' said Robina, 'all we've got to do is our best. If we don't, it is wrong in us, and it makes us more a weight on Felix; and I think it is our real duty to keep everything out of the way that hinders us, if it is ever so nice.'

'Is that Cock Robin, or Parson Rook with his little book?' said Lance, throwing the pen-wiper in her face.

But the week after, when Robina was at school again, she was called to receive a letter which had something hard in it.

'Did you leave a key behind you?' she was asked a little suspiciously, for there was nothing about it in the brief note.

'No, Miss Fennimore; but my brother has sent it to me to keep for him. It is the key of his violin-case, and he is not going to touch it till he is past his examination.'

From that time Miss Fennimore entertained a better opinion of Robina Underwood; but little recked Robina. She only felt secure that after this act of heroism Lance could not but gain the exhibition.