The Long Vacation Part 26

"Well, I am off. Clement Underwood is a reasonable man, and would not send for me without cause."

General Mohun came to that opinion when he heard of the scene on the beach, and of the absolute certainty that the contraband goods had been procured at Mrs. Schnetterling's. Before his visit was over, a note came down on gold-edged, cyphered pink paper, informing the Reverend E. C.

Underwood that Mrs. Campbell was much obliged to him for his attention to her son, who was very unwell, entirely from the effects of clotted cream. And while they were still laughing over the scored words, Anna knocked at the door with a message from her aunt, to ask whether they could come and speak to poor Mrs. Edgar, who was in a dreadful state.

"It is not about Adrian, I hope?" said she.

"Oh no, no, my dear; Adrian is all right, thanks to Fergus again," said her uncle. "He is the boy's great protector; I only wish they could be always together."

Poor Mrs. Edgar! Rumours had not been slow in reaching her of the condition in which her scholars had been found, very odd rumours too.

One that James Campbell had been brought home insensible, and the two sailors carried on board in the like state; and an opposite report, that the poor dear boys had only made themselves sick with dainties out of Mrs. Schnetterling's, and it was all a cruel notion of that teetotal ritualist clergyman. Some boys would not speak, others were vague and contradictory, and many knew nothing, Horner and Campbell were absent.

Clement much relieved her by giving an account of the matter, and declaring that he feared his own elder nephew was the cause of all the scandal, though he believed that some of her bigger pupils were guilty of obtaining a smaller quant.i.ty, knowingly, of the Schnetterling's illicit wares, chiefly so far for the fun of doing something forbidden--"Stolen waters are sweet."

"A wicked woman! Surely she should not be allowed to go on."

"I am going, on the spot, to see what can be done," said General Mohun; "but indeed I should have thought young Campbell rather too old for your precincts."

"Ah! yes. He is troublesome, but he is so backward, and is so delicate, that his mother has implored me to keep him on, that he may have sea-bathing. But this shall be the final stroke!"

"It will be the ruin of your school otherwise," said the General.

"Ah! it might. And yet Mrs. Campbell will never be persuaded of the fact! And she is a person of much influence! However, I cannot have my poor dear little fellows led astray."

Then, with some decided praises of dear little Sir Adrian, and regrets at losing Fergus Merrifield, whom she declared, on the authority of her gentleman a.s.sistant, to be certain of success, she departed; and Clement resumed his task of writing letters, which he believed to be useless, but which he felt to be right--one a grave warning to Edward Harewood, and one to his father, whose indulgence he could not but hold accountable.

Reginald Mohun meanwhile went his way to the officer of Inland Revenue, who already had his suspicions as to Mrs. Schnetterling, and was glad of positive evidence. He returned with the General to hear from Mr.

Underwood the condition in which he had found the boys, and the cause he had for attributing it to the supplies from Mother b.u.t.terfly, and this was thought sufficient evidence to authorize the sending a constable with a search-warrant to the shop. The two gentlemen were glad that the detection should be possible without either sending a spy, or forcing evidence from the boys, who had much better be kept out of the matter altogether. No lack of illicit stores was found when the policemen made their descent, and a summons was accordingly served on its mistress to appear at the next Petty Sessions.

Reginald Mohun, used to the justice of county magistrates, and the unflinching dealings of courts-martial, was determined to see the affair through, so he went to the magistrates' meeting, and returned with the tidings that the possession of smuggled tobacco ready for sale had been proved against Mrs. Schnetterling, and she had been fined twenty-five pounds, to be paid at the next Petty Sessions. Otherwise goods would be seized to that value, or she would have a short term of imprisonment.

There was no doubt that contraband spirits were also found, but it was not thought expedient to press this charge.

He said the poor woman had been in a great pa.s.sion of despair, wringing her hands and weeping demonstratively.

"Quite theatrical," he said. "I am sure she has been an actress."

"It did not prejudice your hard-headed town-councillors in her favour,"

said Gerald.

"Far from it! In fact old Simmonds observed that she was a painted foreign Jezebel."

"Not to her face!" said Gerald.

"We are not quite brutes, whatever you may think us, my boy," said the General good-humouredly.

"Well," said Gerald, in the same tone, "how could I tell how it might be when the Philistines conspired to hunt down a poor foreign widow trying to pick up a scanty livelihood?"

"If the poor foreign widow had been content without corrupting the boys," said Clement, "she would have been let alone."

"It was not for corrupting the boys. That was done--or not done--by my amiable cousin Ted. What harm did her 'baccy do to living soul?"

"It is a risky thing, to say the least of it, for a living soul to defraud the revenue," said Clement.

"Of which probably she never heard."

"She must have seen the terms of her licence," said the General.

"Aye, a way of increasing the revenue by burthens on the chief solace of poverty," said Gerald hotly.

"You'll come to your senses by and by, young man," imperturbably answered the General.

"Is she likely to be able to pay?" asked Gerald in return.

"Oh yes, the policeman said she drove a very thriving trade, both with the boys and with the sailors, and that there was no doubt that she could pay."

Clement was very glad to hear it, for it not only obviated any sense of harshness in his mind, but he thought Gerald, in his present mood of compa.s.sion--or opposition, whichever it was--capable of offering to undertake to pay the fine for her.

Poor little Ludmilla was found the next day by Mrs. Henderson, crying softly over her work at the mosaic department--work which was only the mechanical arrangement from patterns provided, for she had no originality, and would never attain to any promotion in the profession.

Mrs. Henderson took the poor girl to her own little office, to try to comfort her, and bring her into condition for the rehearsal of the scene with Ferdinand, which she was to go through in Mr. Flight's parlour chaperoned by his mother. She was so choked with sobs that it did not seem probable that she would have any voice; for she had been struggling with her tears all day, and now, in the presence of her friend, she gave them a free course. She thought it so cruel--so very cruel of the gentlemen; how could they do such a thing to a poor helpless stranger?

And that tall one--to be a clergyman--how could he?

Mrs. Henderson tried to represent that, having accepted the licence on certain terms, it was wrong to break them; and that the gentlemen must be right to hinder harm to their nephews.

It seemed all past the poor girl's understanding, since the nephews had taken no harm; and indeed the other boys had only touched the spirits by way of joke and doing something forbidden: it had all come of those horrid young midshipmen, who had come down and worried and bothered her mother into giving them the bottles of spirits which had not been mixed.

It was very hard.

"Ah, Lydia, one sin leads no one knows where! Those little boys, think of their first learning the taste for alcohol in secret!"

Lydia did see this, but after all, she said, it was not the spirits, but the tobacco, which the Dutch and American sailors were glad enough to exchange for her mother's commodities. She had never perceived any harm in the arrangement, and hardly comprehended when the saying, "Custom to whom custom," was pointed out to her.

Kalliope asked whether the fine would fall heavily on her mother.

"Oh, that is worst of all. Mother is gone to Avoncester to raise the money. She won't tell me how. And I do believe O'Leary's circus is there."

Then came another sobbing fit.

"But how--what do you mean, my dear?"

"O'Leary was our clown when my father--my dear father--was alive. He was a coa.r.s.e horrid man, as cruel to the poor dear horses as he dared. And now he has set up for himself, and has been going about all over the county. Mother has been quite different ever since she met him one day in Avoncester, and I fear--oh, I fear he will advance her this money, and make her give me up to him; and my dear father made her promise that I would never be on the boards."

This was in an agony of crying, and it appeared that Schnetterling had really been a very decent, amiable person, who had been pa.s.sionately fond of his little daughter. Her recollection dated from the time when the family had come from America, and he had become partner in a circus, intending to collect means enough to retire to a home in Germany, but he had died five years ago, at Avoncester, of fever, and his wife had used his savings to set up this little shop at Rockquay, choosing that place because it was the resort of foreign trading-vessels, with whom her knowledge of languages would be available. She had suffered from the same illness, and her voice had been affected at the time, and she was altogether subdued and altered, and had allowed her daughter to receive a good National school training; but with the recovery of health, activity, and voice, a new temper, or rather the old one renewed, had seized her, and since she had met her former companion, Ludmilla foreboded that the impulse of wandering had come upon her, and that if the interference of the authorities pressed upon her and endangered her traffic, she would throw it up altogether, and drag her daughter into the profession so dreadful to all the poor child's feelings.

No wonder that the girl cried till she had no voice, and took but partial comfort from repeated a.s.surances that her friends would do their utmost on her behalf. Mrs. Henderson tried to compose and cheer her, walking with her herself to St. Kenelm's Parsonage, and trying to keep up her earnest desire to please Mr. Flight, the special object of her veneration. But wishes were ineffectual to prevent her from breaking down in the first line of her first song, and when Mr. Flight blamed, and Lady Flight turned round on the music-stool to say severely--"Command yourself, Lydia," she became almost hysterical.

"Wait a minute," said Gerald. "Give her a gla.s.s of wine, and she will be better."

"Oh no, no; please, I'm temp--" and a sob.

The five o'clock tea was still standing on a little table, and Gerald poured out a cup and took it to her, then set her down in an arm-chair, and said--