The Pillars of the House Part 91

'A little dab out, as Sibby calls it,' said Lance. 'It's my puggery.

Ever since it fell overboard it has been a disgrace to human nature, so I have been washing it, and now I've got an iron heating.'

'What a mess you will make of it!' observed Felix, with a grimace of disgust, as Lance returned again from the kitchen, holding the iron scientifically near his cheek.'

'That's all you know about it! Why, I've ironed dozens of pocket- handkerchiefs--at least, not dozens, but my own, dozens of times--in the Harewood tubs.'

'I thought the Chapter washed you?'

'So it does, in reason; but last spring there was a doom on my pocket-handkerchiefs. The Harewood puppy ate up one; one dropped into the ca.n.a.l; I tied up a fellow that had got a cut with one, and the beggar never returned it; and two or three more went I don't know how. I knew W. W. would be in a dreadful state if I asked for a fresh lot, so I used to wash out the last two by turns, till I got some tip and bought some fresh ones--such jolly ones, all over acrobats and British flags; and after all, didn't I catch it? Wilmet was no end of disgusted to miss her little stupid speckotty ones, vowed these weren't decent for the Cathedral, and boned them all for Theodore!

Now, hush! or I shall come to grief!'

Felix held his pen suspended to watch the dexterity that reduced the crude ma.s.s to smooth muslin, which in its expanded state looked as impracticable as before.

'Now, do you mean to get Mrs. Pettigrew to put it on in those elegant festoons?'

'You just mind your leader, Blunderbore! A man who has had women to do for him all his life is a pitiable being!'

And Lance, according to instructions obtained from John Harewood, wreathed his hat triumphantly in the white drapery, and completed Felix's surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt by producing a needle and thread, and setting to work on various needful repairs of his own b.u.t.tons and his brother's, over which he shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt as he chuckled at the decay which had befallen the garments of so neat a personage as Felix, and which had been very distressing to himself.

'Ah! thank you. I never knew what Robinson Crusoe felt like before!'

said Felix, as Lance came on a wrist-band minus b.u.t.ton.

'Robinson Crusoe! You'd soon have been like Man Friday before he caught him.'

'But doesn't the matron mend for you?'

'She pretends; but I should like to see her face if one brought her a chance thing to do. My eyes! if that isn't old Staples! I must absquattilate.'

Which after all he had no time to effect, with all his works, before their friend came to ask whether they were relieved about their sister, and was amused at the handy little schoolboy's ingenious preparations. 'After all, I find it is to be more of an affair than I expected; I thought it was to be only ourselves and the Brandons, but they are the kind of people who always pick up every one.'

'Does that yacht belong here?' eagerly asked Lance.

'That! It is the Kittiwake--Captain Audley's.'

'Ha! That's what Fulbert went to Alexandria in! What fun!'

'He is the son of Sir Robert Audley. Do you know him?'

'His brother was my father's fellow-curate,' said Felix, 'and is our guardian and kindest friend. I have seen this one in London. Will he be at this picnic?'

'Not likely. He is shy and uncertain, very hearty and friendly when you do meet him, but reluctant to go into society, and often taking no notice one day, when he has seemed like one's best friend the day before. They say he has never got over the loss of his wife; but I don't like such manners.'

'Does he live here, then!'

'He rents the little Tudor cottage under the cliff year by year, for the sake of his yachting--for he won't go near the regular stations.

He's got his boy at school at Stoneborough, and stays here all the winter.'

When the brothers were walking part of the way back with their visitor, they met the gentleman in question, with three boys after him, and he was evidently in a cordial mood; for after shaking hands with Mr. Staples, he exclaimed, 'I am sure I ought to know you!'

'Felix Underwood,' said the owner of that name.

'_Indeed_! Not staying with your worthy relations?'

'No, I am down here with my brother, who has been laid up by a sunstroke, and wanted sea air.'

'I wish I had been at home' said the Captain, who had taken a great fancy to Felix when they had been together in London two years before; 'but I've been giving my boy and his cousins, the two young Somervilles, a trip to the Hebrides; and now, just as I am come home, I fall upon Mrs. Brandon, hounding me out to an abominable picnic, and my youngsters are wild to go. Are you in for it? I believe we shall go round to the cove in the yacht. Can I take you two?'

Felix gladly accepted, aware that their transport was a difficulty to the Stapleses, and that the Kittiwake would be felicity to Lance, who had fraternised with the boys, and went off with them to see the vessel. He returned brimful of delight and fatigue, only just in time to tumble into bed as fast as possible, and Felix was thus able to get his work off his mind by midnight.

The morning's letters set them quite at rest. Sister Constance and Clement both wrote: Geraldine had been calm and resolute from the time Felix's consent arrived, and doubt was over, and Clement, though tender, and striving hard to be firm, had been chiefly useful in calling out her words of encouragement. He had spent the time of the operation in the oratory, and there had been so entirely overcome by the tidings that all was safely over, that he was hardly fit to go to Cherry when he was sent for, and that was not soon, for the effect of chloroform on her had indeed been to annihilate pain, but only half to make her unconscious, for she went on talking to Felix about the expedience all the time, ever repeating the old motto, 'Under Wode, Under Rode;' and the trance had lasted for a good while, though when once over, she remembered nothing of it, and was only so rejoiced and thankful that it was difficult to keep her calm enough. She sent her brothers her love, and entreated them not to say a word at home. Lady Liddesdale had contrived the sale of the book of ill.u.s.trations--a work that had been Cherry's delight of many years, so that she could feel that she herself had earned what would cover the expense incurred, all but the medical attendance, freely given to an inmate of St. Faith's. 'Tell Felix I am as happy as a queen,' was the final message; 'tell him to give thanks for me.'

Felix's voice trembled, shook, and gave way, as he read; and at last he sprang up, and walked about the room, saying that no one ever had such brothers and sisters as himself. There was something almost oppressive in the relief from so much anxiety, and it was some time before he roused his ordinary senses to say, 'Well! we must finish breakfast, or we shan't be ready for the Captain. How round the world is! Those boys must be Sister Constance's nephews--Lady Liddesdale's sons.'

'Those boys,' said Lance. 'What, Sum and Frank? Well, I did think it queer that the sailors on board the Kittiwake called every one My Lord.'

'Sum, I imagine, must mean Lord Somerville. What did you think of them?'

'Nicish chaps of eleven and twelve. Nothing like such swells as Tom Bruce! The little one wanted to know where I was at school, and his senior snubbed him; so I supposed he saw by the looks of me that I wasn't upper-crust public school; and when I said I was a choir-boy, the other--Charley Audley--said, "Oh, then you're one of the awful lot my father always jaws about when he's out of sorts!" I told him I was very sorry, and it wasn't my fault, but yours; and then we got on like a house on fire.'

CHAPTER XXI

A KETTLE OF FISH

'Our Pursuivant at arms will show Both why we came and when we go.'

SCOTT.

The place of the picnic was a good way off, being the point of the promontory that shut in the mouth of the river, a great crag, with a long reef of rocks running out into the sea, playfully called the Kitten's Tail, though the antiquarians always deposed that the head had nothing to do with cats or kits, but with the disposition to erect chapels to St. Christopher on the points of land where they might first greet the mariners' eyes. Beneath this crag, sheltered by the first and larger joints of the Kitten's Tail, was a delightful sandy nook, where appeared a mult.i.tude of smart hats, male and female, a great many strangers even to Captain Audley, who would fain have recognised none of them. In a strong access of his almost morbid silence, he devoted himself to Felix, and kept aloof from almost every one. Even at the dinner, spread on a very sloping bit of beach, picnic exigencies enabled him to be nearly tete-a-tete with Felix, who found himself almost back to back to a lady in a brilliant foreign pheasant's plume, with gla.s.s dew-drops at the points.

In a pause of their own conversation, they heard the inquiry, 'Do you know who that boy is--that fair delicate-looking lad just opposite, with the white muslin round his hat?'

'Oh--that!' answered the pheasant lady; 'that is young Lord Somerville, son to the Marquess of Liddesdale. He and his brother, Lord Francis, have been out yachting with Captain Audley.'

The Captain smiled as he looked at the boys. 'Ay,' he observed, with a flash of his bright dark eyes,' he has the advantage over Sum.'

For Lance had resumed his lark-like air, and it was perhaps the more striking from the fragility and transparency that remained about his looks; and he was full of animation, as he, with a reinforcement of boys, cl.u.s.tered round a merry sunny-faced girl, full of joyous drollery.

'Very queer and eccentric--quite a bear,' was the next thing they heard; whereat Captain Audley nodded and smiled to Felix. After the general turmoil caused by the change of courses had subsided, that penetrating voice was heard again. 'Yes, we came home sooner than we had intended. The fact was, we found that old Mr. Underwood was being beset by some of those relations. You remember? Oh, yes; they have sunk very low--got into trade, absolutely got into trade! One of them a mere common singing-boy. Mr. Underwood is getting aged--quite past- --and we did not know what advantage might be taken of him.'

'Your turn now,' murmured Captain Audley, with a look of diversion calculated to allay the wounded flush on his neighbour's cheek.

'Do you mean Mr. Edward Underwood's sons?' said a voice on the other side. 'I always understood them to be very respectable and well conducted.'