The Pillars of the House Part 99

'But he says he must sell out! Think of that! Never was anybody so taken in as I have been!'

'Don't talk so, Alda. It is just as if you had engaged yourself to a Life-guardsman and nothing else.'

'I wonder how you would like to be buried in some horrid wild place in America, where you would never see anybody!'

'One would not want to see anybody but him.'

'That's your nonsense! How tired of it one would be!'

'There would be no time. It would be so nice to do everything for him oneself!'

'In some horrid uncivilised place, with no servants! I'm not going to be a drudge. It is all very well for you, who like it, and have no notion of society, but for me--! And there he is furious to take me out. Men grow so wild and rough too in such places. You never saw anything blaze like his eyes!'

'I don't understand you. Could not you trust yourself anywhere with him?'

'You have no right to say such things,' pouted Alda, 'only because I have a little common prudence. Some one must have it!'

There was no denying that life in the far west would be a foolish thing either for or with Alda; and Felix thought so when Ferdinand came to him for consultation over the letters that made it finally clear that Alfred Travis had appropriated everything available but half a block of unreclaimed land on the wrong side of America, and a few thousands invested in Peter Brown's firm; and what was worse, the sudden failure of the supplies had occasioned serious debts.

Ferdinand's own plan was to clear these off with the price of his commission, and take Alda out with him to rule in American luxury over the unbounded resources of the magnificent land, the very name and scent of which had awakened in him his old prairie-land instincts, and her absolute refusal and even alarm at his enjoyment had greatly mortified him. 'She should not even have to rough it,' he said. 'I could make her like a queen out there, if she would only believe it.'

Felix could not but think Alda might be wise, though it was not pretty wisdom. Go out alone and make the fortune! Ferdinand did not seem to think the separation possible. He said he would rather go to work in Peter Brown's office, where he had already a hold; and his familiarity with Spanish would secure him usefulness and promotion, and five or six years would bring them into a position to marry. He did not look fit for desk-work in London, but his mind was made up to any privation, so that he could be in reach of Alda, and hope to give her what he had once thought easily within his grasp.

Hearing this, Felix propounded an old longing of his--namely, to make the Pursuivant a daily paper, and use means for prompt.i.tude of intelligence, such as might neutralise the unpopularity it was incurring on behalf of Mr. Smith. Rumours of a rival paper were afloat; but if Ferdinand would throw in his capital, and undertake the joint editorship and proprietorship, the hold that the Pursuivant already had warranted quite success enough to permit an immediate marriage. There would be no need to be concerned with the shop; they might take a cottage in the country, and he need not ride in so often as every day. In fact, it was his capital rather than his personal a.s.sistance that was wanted. He caught at the notion. He was too Transatlantic to have any dignities to stand upon, and he said almost with tears in his eyes that he could never be so happy as in working with Felix; and he went off to the Fortinbras Arms, only lamenting that it was too late to tell Alda; while Felix, on his side, could not help knocking at Geraldine's door. Within he found another auditor, Wilmet, who still always helped Cherry to bed. 'It will be the making of the Pursuivant,' he said. How often I have sighed, "If I had but capital, or Mr. Froggatt enterprise!"'

'Ah, Felicissimo mio, that Pursuivant is as dear to you as any brother or sister of us all!'

'So it ought to be, for it has been the making of us.--Come Cherry, confess that you had rather see Pur triumph, than--'

'Than you at Vale Leston,' said Cherry, not knowing what a bolt she shot. 'It would be grand to steal a march on the enemy!'

'And safe?' asked Wilmet.

Felix demonstrated to the comprehending ears of his sisters the circulation that he could securely reckon upon.

'There would be an immense deal more to do,' said Cherry; but at that he smiled, full of vigour.

'True; but we should have a larger staff. There would be Fernan--'

'For the racing articles,' said Cherry dryly.

'And a good deal besides, which only needs application; and that he has.'

'He has great resolution,' said Cherry, 'but he always seems to me a sort of Christian panther of the wilderness; and you seem to be getting him into a cage.'

'Not such a cage as Peter Brown's office; and besides it is only when he is lashed up that the panther leaps about his den. Generally he is a quiet determined animal, with the practical Yankee element strong in him. It may be true, as Edgar says, that he does not see an inch on either side of his nose, but that only makes him go right away in the line he does see. I know he will work well.'

'If Alda--' said Cherry.

'Oh, she will be willing. A cottage in the country! Besides, it is the only reasonable possibility.'

'I should think it would satisfy her,' said Wilmet.

'And then--'

Everybody understood that 'And then.' It was Alda's pretension to be at the head of the family that was the chief obstacle to Wilmet's abdicating that post. Without her, Geraldine, stronger and less lame, might undertake the charge of the comparatively few permanently at home. Might indeed hardly expressed the amount of uncertainty as to her capability; and yet but for that 'And then,' Wilmet would hardly have yielded as she did the next day.

Stella had a blackberry fever. Possibly Wilmet's frugal regimen engendered a hankering for fruit, or it might have been the mere love of enterprise that rendered her eagerly desirous of an expedition to a lane where splendid blackberries were reported to grow. Since the day she bad been lost, she had never been allowed to go out with Bernard; but in Lance she had acquired a much more complaisant playfellow, who not only promised his escort to the lane, but the purchase of the sugar, and aid in the concoction of the jam; but he durst not venture till late in the day, and thereupon John Harewood suggested, 'Would not your sister be at liberty by that time?'

'Lance can take care of me,' said Stella; but in her eyes the whole romance of the expedition was destroyed by his acquiescence. 'We'll catch her as she comes out, and make her go with us.'

'Among all the girls?' laughed Cherry; and Captain Harewood coloured, shook his head, and shuddered.

'The girls won't hurt me,' said Lance, 'not if there were twenty hundred. I'll bring her from the very teeth of them. Jack may wait round the corner if he likes.'

The party waited till their patience was worn to a thread for the opening of the tall olive door, until Lance valiantly resolved on a single-handed a.s.sault, and had just mounted the steps when it suddenly opened, and he found himself obstructing the path of a swarm of little girls and big, who all stared, most giggled, and some greeted him. To the least of these he confided that he wanted his sister, when she innocently piloted him to the school-room, where Wilmet, with her hat on, was keeping guard over three victims detained by unfinished tasks. Every one gazed at him as if he had been a sort of Actaeon; but nothing daunted, he answered his sister's anxious exclamation. 'Nothing is the matter; but we are going for a walk, and want you.--Miss Maria,' he cried, as the sound of the unfeminine step and voice brought in one of the heads, 'please do let off these impositions, we do so want her!'

'What, you here! This is an invasion!' she added good-humouredly. 'Am I to take it as a convalescent's privilege?'

'Thank you, Ma'am,' said Lance, bowing with his audacious sweetness; 'and please let me have Wilmet. I'd do the impositions myself, only I don't know French.'

The victims t.i.ttered uncontrollably, and Miss Maria laughed, as one who, like her neighbours, descried why Wilmet was in request. 'I will attend to these exercises, Miss Underwood,' she said. 'You must not lose this fine evening for the idleness of these young ladies.'

'Indeed, Ma'am!' began Wilmet, in a blaze of colour. 'I never thought of such a thing.'

'I daresay not, my dear,' said Miss Maria; 'but now you had better do it. I wish you a pleasant walk.'

'Lance, how could you?' broke out Wilmet, as they descended the steps. 'I never was so ashamed in my life.'

'Never mind. We are going to get blackberries at Mile End Lane, and I shall lose Stella to a dead certainty if you don't come and look after her.'

'My dear Lance, I can't go all that way without their knowing it at home.'

'Oh! that's all settled with Cherry.'

'And where's Alda?'

'Off somewhere with her Don. Come, W. W., or who knows whether Stel and I shall ever come home?'

By this time they had reached the corner where Captain Harewood and Stella were lying perdu, and Wilmet made no more resistance, only keeping the little girl's not altogether willing hand till they came to the stile leading to the field and woodland, and then Stella's durance ended, and her adventures with Lance became as free as though no grave 'sister' had been near.

Perhaps, since Wilmet had perceived that surrender was her fate, she was willing that the summons should be over and a mutual understanding reached, so as to waste no more of the time already so short. However that might be, though the talk began with Lance's health and Cherry's talents, there was a tendency towards topics closer still; nor did she start aside, but rather listened pensively as to a strain that touched her quiet soul more deeply than she showed in word or gesture.

The blackberry lane was deep and hollow, the brambles outstretching their arching wreaths, laden with heavy cl.u.s.ters of shining fruit, glossy black, scarlet, or green, sometimes with a lingering pearly flower. A step-ladder stile led down into it from the field, and on the topmost step, her back against the rail, sat Wilmet. On the lowest, turned at right angles to the first, was John Harewood, looking up to her; while scrambling on the bank, contending with the brambles, were the younger ones; Lance, unable to help now and then sending a furtive glance through the tangle.

It was a pretty sight. Sitting aloft, Wilmet was framed by an archway of meeting branches, with nothing but the pale opal of the evening sky behind the beautifully-shaped head and shoulders, and the clear- cut features, drooping just enough to enhance her own peculiar modest dignity, and give it a soft graciousness that had once been wanting.

Her dress was the same in which Captain Harewood had first seen her-- a plain black hat, a pale fawn-coloured skirt, and a loose open jacket over a white cambric vest and sleeves, only that now there had been a budding forth of dainty fresh knots of rose-coloured ribbon at the throat and down the front, as though a slight sensibility to the vanities as well as the cares of life had begun to dawn on the grave young house-mother.

Leaning back against the rough rail to a.s.sist the hand of the climber, John Harewood looked up with as much worship in his countenance as ever good man feels for the being he loves in all her maiden glory. Thus they had been for some moments, only broken by the children's distant calls, till the fervent words broke from him, 'May I not speak now?'