The Pillars of the House Part 107

'Only one thing, Felix. Will you hear what Jack Harewood says to it?'

To this Felix readily a.s.sented. He was hurried and hara.s.sed nearly to the extent of his time and capacity; he could not pause to give full consideration to his young brother's project, and was glad that the ungracious task of silencing it should be imposed on one less immediately interested.

John Harewood was always at Wilmet's side after four o'clock. Before that time he sometimes went to his home; he often spent the afternoon with Geraldine, but he was not usually about the house in the morning. So Lance, in a fever of impatience, wandered till he hunted him down writing letters in the coffee-room at the Fortinbras Arms.

'Jack, I say, come and have a walk.'

'Pleasant weather!'

'You want to be watered, after all that parching in India. It isn't raining now, and such a jolly cool day!'

'Jollier for you than a finer day, mayhap,' said the good-natured soldier, who greatly commiserated Lance's enforced idleness, and only wondered at his not making it a greater misery to every one else. He also understood what the inured ears of the family never guessed, since Lance never complained, the distress of Theodore's constant hum and concertina to sensitive ears and excited nerves; and had observed that Lance had flagged ever since the journey to Minsterham, with less of vigour and more of sharpness. Sure that something was preying on the boy, he deferred his least important letters, to splash away with him in mud and mist, and hear him explain his views, with the fullness often more possible towards friend than family.

John was greatly surprised, but did not make any crushing objection, and listened with thorough sympathy. He doubted, however, whether Lance would be doing any real good, and not only throwing more, instead of less work upon Felix. Sensibly enough the boy went into the matter. He said that when Felix began, the staff had also consisted of Mr. Froggatt, Redstone, a lad called Stubbs, and a boy.

Now Felix did much more than Mr. Froggatt had then done, and Stubbs was a useful piece of mechanism without a head, and Lance believed himself quite able to fill the place Felix had taken at the same age; indeed, he had far less either to learn or to overcome, and though his arithmetical powers were still in abeyance, he had rather excelled in that line at the Cathedral school.

'I know, of course,' said Lance, 'that a man from a London house would be of more use; but there's this awful salary, and he would never care to look after Felix.'

'I allow that; but even if you can be of much present use, is it not at the expense of greater usefulness by and by?'

'I am sick of that! Edgar and Clem both mean to be of use by and by, and what comes of it? Edgar has spent Felix's two hundred pounds that he borrowed, and now has got his own, all to repay when he is a great painter. And he is six years older than I am! Now if I earned my guinea a week, as Felix did, it would be real good now, and I should be learning the trade for the future.'

'That's the question. First, would the guinea a week make so much appreciable difference?'

'Is that all you know about it, Jack? First, I should be earning my keep, not eating my head off; and then Bernard might be sent safe off to school.'

'You don't mean to say that otherwise he could not?'

'It has been a terribly costly year. There's Edgar. Then Clem couldn't settle in at Cambridge for nothing, there's been Alda turned back on Felix's hands; there's been illness, and goodness knows what the doctors may charge; and there's Felix's outing and mine!'

John answered by opening his pocket-book and showing Dr. Manby's account receipted.

'O Jack! You don't mean--'

'Considering that Will was the sole cause of the doctor being wanted at all, we could only wish to bear the damages.'

'I hope you have told Wilmet. It would be a ton weight off her mind.'

'I hope she would think the Chapter did it; but if you think she is anxious, let her know that it is all right.'

'You are a brick, John! But Felix himself said it would be a close shave. I wish I could throttle that Bexley Tribune, and all its dirty supporters!'

'Do you know, Lance, I am very much struck with your brother's--ay, and old Froggatt's conduct in this matter.'

Lance flushed with pleasure. 'Go ahead, Jack!'

'Of course, for a paper to keep its politics is nothing; but to take up the cause of an unpopular man, whose slights have been marked--'

'Who has been a malicious little cad,' chimed in the chorister.

'To take up his cause simply as a matter of justice, and therewith of the Church, without truckling to public opinion, at absolute risk and loss, seems to me generosity and principle quite out of the common way.'

'You're about right there,' said Lance, intensely gratified; 'and doesn't it make one burn to help the old fellow?'

'Quite true. The question is, which way to help him; and while I grant you that the being idle at home just now is a terrible trial, whether it might not be better to be patient under it, than to disqualify yourself for a line in which you might do more--that is if it does disqualify you.'

'What line do you mean?' said Lance.

'Scholarship, the University.'

'That wasn't what I wanted most,' said Lance; 'and as for that, I'm disqualified enough by all this waste of time.'

'What was your wish, then?'

'I'll tell you,' said Lance, with lowered voice. 'When I used to lie catching notes of the chanting, and knowing that the organ was quiet for me, I used to feel that if I got well, I must give up my life to it, and study music in full earnest, so as to be a real lift to people's praise, perhaps in our own Cathedral. I thought maybe I could get in as a lay-vicar when my year is up, and work at harmony under Miles, and take a musical degree. But then came that day when the organ seemed to be crushing and grinding my head to bits--and of all Psalms in the world it was the forty-second! and Manby telling me on my life not to try to do anything for I can't tell how long.'

'Was that the reason you sold your violin?'

'No, of course not; except that it was a sin and a shame to keep it for no good, when I thought a pound might pull that little ape Bernard out of the mire. And I've been asking questions, and find it would take huge time and cost to study music so as to be worth anything; and here am I, a great lout, not doing that or any other good on the face of the earth--as much worse than Theodore as I am bigger. So if I can help Felix, when he is fighting the fight in the Pursuivant for G.o.d's honour and good and right, wouldn't that be a sort of service?'

'So undertaken,' said John, with a huskiness in his voice. 'Well, Lance, I will talk it over with Felix, if you like.'

For John Harewood, not having any strong musical bias, did not greatly appreciate the career that Lance had chalked out for himself; and while thrilled by the boy's devotional feeling, thought it tinged by enthusiasm, and had seen enough of Cathedral singing-men to have no wish to see him among them. If the loss of time was to prevent a University career, he thought book-selling under Felix's eye the preferable occupation.

Discussion was, however, deferred by the arrival of a home friend, who had sought him out at the hotel; and Lance had to go home without him, and wear through the day between dawdling, drawing, and playing with Stella, as best he might, till after school-hours; when, eager to turn to the account of his wardrobe these moments when Wilmet was free from her Captain, he drew her into his room.

Presently after, Felix heard the most amazing noises to which his family had ever treated him, and thankful that the wet day had reduced the denizens of the reading-room to one deaf old gentleman, he hurried upstairs, and beheld through the open door of Mr.

Froggatt's room, Bernard raying, roaring, dancing, and stamping, in an over-mastering pa.s.sion, and tearing some paper up with teeth and hands. Just then Lance grasped his collar, and tried in vain to rescue the paper; but he fought with fists, bites, and kicks, like something frantic, until Felix, with a bound forward, suddenly captured him, and dragged him back, still tearing and crunching the paper.

'For shame! Be quiet! You are heard all over the place.--Shut the door.'

The door was shut by Wilmet, while Bernard stood quailing under the stern face, strong hand, and tone of displeasure in which Felix demanded, 'What is the meaning of this?'

'That Bernard refuses to wear Lance's outgrown clothes,' said Wilmet.

'Do you mean that this is the cause of this disgraceful outbreak?'

'I--don't see why--' growled Bernard, 'why I should wear everybody's beastly old things.'

'It is right you should hear the whole, Felix,' said Wilmet. 'When I showed him that Lance would have some still shabbier clothes of Clement's altered for him, he said if Lance chose to be a sn.o.b, he would not. Lance answered that it was a choice between that and petticoats; and then he fell into this extraordinary state, when I can only hope he did not know what he was saying or doing.'

'He was drawing me,' bellowed Bernard, 'drawing me in his brute of a book!' and he was so infuriated, that words never before heard by his sister followed, as he quivered and stamped even under Felix's grasp, which at length forced him into desisting; but the command, 'Go up to your room this instant,' could only be carried out by main force, amid tremendous kicking and struggling, Felix carrying him, and Wilmet following to unfasten the hands that clutched at the rail; while Lance stood aghast at one door, and Cherry in an agony at another, and Stella crept into a corner and hid her face in terror.

'Well, we never had the like of this before!' said Felix, coming down, having locked him in, and heard him begin to bounce about the barrack, like prisoners in the breaking-out frenzy. 'Can it be all about the clothes?'

'I don't think you know what a grievance the having to take to old ones has always been to him, poor little boy!' said Cherry, very nearly crying, for Bernard was so much her own child that in spite of his having cast her off she was in full instinct of defence; 'and he dislikes Lance's most of all, because of the Cathedral peculiarities.'

'Ah! you have always humoured him by taking off that chorister's frill,' said Wilmet; 'but there could be no objection to those trousers. They were almost new when Fulbert left them, and Lance has only had them for best one winter.'