Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles,
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.
See in every hedgerow
Marks of angels’ feet;
Epics in each pebble
Underneath our feet.—C. KINGSLEY.
“Drawing? Well done, Cherie! That’s a jolly little beggar; quite masterly, as old Renville would say,” exclaimed Gerald Underwood, looking at a charming water-colour of a little fisher-boy, which Mrs. Grinstead was just completing.
“‘The Faithful Henchman,’ it ought to be called,” said Anna. “That little being has attached himself to Fergus Merrifield, and follows him and Adrian everywhere on what they are pleased to call their scientific expeditions.”
“The science of larks?”
“Oh dear, no. Fergus is wild after fossils, and has made Adrian the same, and he really knows an immense deal. They are always after fossils and stones when they are out of school.”
“The precious darling!”
“Miss Mohun says Fergus is quite to be trusted not to take him into dangerous places.”
“An unlooked-for blessing. Ha!” as he turned over his aunt’s portfolio, “that’s a stunner! You should work it up for the Academy.”
“This kind of thing is better for the purpose,” Mrs. Grinstead said.
“Throw away such work upon a twopenny halfpenny bazaar! Heaven forefend!”
“Don’t be tiresome, Gerald,” entreated Anna. “You are going to do all sorts of things for it, and we shall have no end of fun.”
“For the sake of stopping the course of the current,” returned Gerald, proceeding to demonstrate in true nineteenth-century style the hopelessness of subjecting education to what he was pleased to call clericalism. “You’ll never reach the masses while you insist on using an Apostle spoon.”
“Masses are made up of atoms,” replied his aunt.
“And we shall be lost if you don’t help,” added Anna.
“I would help readily enough if it were free dinners, or anything to equalize the existence of the classes, instead of feeding the artificial wants of the one at the expense of the toil and wretchedness of the other.”
He proceeded to mention some of the miseries that he had learnt through the Oxford House—dilating on them with much enthusiasm—till presently his uncle came in, and ere long a parlour-maid announced luncheon, just as there was a rush into the house. Adrian was caught by his sister, and submitted, without more than a “Bother!” to be made respectable, and only communicating in spasmodic gasps facts about Merrifield and hockey.
“Where’s Marshall?” asked Gerald at the first opportunity, on the maid leaving the room.
“Marshall could not stand it,” said his aunt. “He can’t exist without London, and doing the honours of a studio.”
“Left you!”
“Most politely he informed me that this place does not agree with his health; and there did not seem sufficient scope for his services since the Reverend Underwood had become so much more independent. So we were thankful to dispose of him to Lord de Vigny.”
“He was a great plague,” interpolated Adrian, “always jawing about the hall-door.”
“Are you really without a man-servant?” demanded Gerald.
“In the house. Lomax comes up from the stables to take some of the work. Some lemonade, Gerald?”
Gerald gazed round in search of unutterable requirements; but only met imploring eyes from aunt and sister, and restraining ones from his uncle. He subsided and submitted to the lemonade, while Anna diverted attention by recurring rather nervously to the former subject.
“And I have got rid of Porter, she kept me in far too good order.”
“As if Sibby did not,” said Clement.
“Aye, and you too! But that comes naturally, and began in babyhood!”
“What have you done with the house at Brompton?”
“Martha is taking care of it—Mrs. Lightfoot, don’t you know? One of our old interminable little Lightfoots, who went to be a printer in London, married, and lost his wife; then in our break-up actually married Martha to take care of his children! Now he is dead, and I am thankful to have her in the house.”
“To frighten loafers with her awful squint.”
“You forgive the rejection of ‘The Inspector’s Tour’? Indeed I think you expected it.”
“I wanted to see whether the young ladies would find it out.”
“No compliment to our genius,” said his aunt.
“I assure you, like Mrs. Bennet, ‘there is plenty of that sort of thing,’” said Anna. “Some of them were mystified, but Gillian and Dolores Mohun were in ecstasies.”
“Ecstasies from that cheerful name?”
“She is the New Zealand niece—Mr. Maurice Mohun’s daughter. They carried it home to their seniors, and of course the verdict was ‘too strong for Rockquay atmosphere,’” said his aunt.
“So it did not even go to Uncle Lance,” said Anna. “Shall you try the ‘Pursuivant’?”
“On the contrary, I shall put in the pepper and salt I regretted, and try the ‘Censor’.”
“Indeed?” observed his uncle, in a tone of surprise.
“Oh,” said Gerald coolly, “I have sent little things to the ‘Censor’ before, which they seem to regard in the light of pickles and laver.”
The ‘Censor’ was an able paper on the side of philosophical politics, and success in that quarter was a feather in the young man’s cap, though not quite the kind of feather his elders might have desired.
“Journalism is a kind of native air to us,” said Mrs. Grinstead, “but from ‘Pur.’”
“‘Pur’ is the element of your dear old world, Cherie,” said Gerald, “and here am I come to do your bidding in its precincts, for a whole long vacation.”
He spoke lightly, and with a pretty little graceful bow to his aunt, but there was something in his eyes and smile that conveyed to her a dread that he meant that he only resigned himself for the time and looked beyond.
“Uncle Lance is coming,” volunteered Adrian.
“Yes,” said Geraldine. “Chorister that he was, and champion of Church teaching that he is, he makes the cause of Christian education everywhere his own, and is coming down to see what he can do inexpensively with native talent for concert, or masque, or something—‘Robin Hood’ perhaps.”
“Ending in character with a rush on the audience?” said Gerald. “Otherwise ‘Robin Hood’ is stale.”
“Tennyson has spoilt that for public use,” said Mrs. Grinstead. “But was not something else in hand?”
“Only rehearsed. It never came off,” said Gerald.
“The most awful rot,” said Adrian. “I would have nothing to do with it.”
“In consequence it was a failure,” laughed Gerald.
“It was ‘The Tempest’, wasn’t it?” said Anna.
“Not really!” exclaimed Mrs. Grinstead.
“About as like as a wren to an eagle,” said Gerald.
“We had it at the festival last winter. The authors adapted the plot, that was all.”
“The authors being—
“The present company,” said Gerald, “and Uncle Bill, with Uncle Lance supplying or adapting music, for we were not original, I assure you.”
“It was when Uncle Clem was ill,” put in Anna, “and somehow I don’t think we took in the accounts of it.”
“No,” said Gerald, “and nobody did it con amore, though we could not put it off. I should like to see it better done.”
“Such rot!” exclaimed Adrian. “There’s an old man, he was Uncle Lance with the great white beard made out of Kit’s white bear’s skin, and he lived in a desert island, where there was a shipwreck—very jolly if you could see it, only you can’t—and the savages—no, the wreckers all came down.”
“What, in a desert island?”
“It was not exactly desert. Gerald, I say, do let there be savages. It would be such a lark to have them all black, and then I’d act.”
“What an inducement!”
“Then somebody turned out to be somebody’s enemy, and the old chap frightened them all with squibs and crackers and fog-horns, till somebody turned out to be somebody else’s son, and married the daughter.”
“If you trace ‘The Tempest’ through that version you are clever,” said Gerald.
“I told you it was awful rot,” said Adrian.
“There’s Merrifield! Excuse me, Cherie.” And off he went.
“The sentiments of the actors somewhat resembled Adrian’s. It was too new, and needed more learning and more pains, so they beg to revert to ‘Robin Hood’. However, I should like to see it well got up for once, if only by amateurs. Miranda has a capital song by Uncle Bill, made for Francie’s soprano. She cuts you all out, Anna.”
“That she does, in looks and voice, but she could not act here in public. However, we will lay it before the Mouse-trap. Was it printed?”
“Lance had enough for the performers struck off. Francie could send some up.”
“After all,” said Cherie, “the desert island full of savages and wreckers is not more remarkable than the ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes’ getting between Argiers and Sicily.”
“It really was one of the Outer Hebrides,” said Gerald, with the eagerness that belonged to authorship, “so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter—Francie Vanderkist to wit—and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies. Little Fely was a most dainty sprite.”
“I am glad you did not make Ariel an electric telegraph,” said his aunt.
“Tempting, but such profanity in the face of Vale Leston was forbidden, and so was the comic element, as bad for the teetotallers.”
“But who were the wreckers?” asked Anna.
“Buccaneers, my dear, singing songs out of the ‘Pirate’—schoolmaster, organist, and choir generally. They had captured Prospero’s supplanter (he was a Highland chief in league with the Whigs) by the leg, while the exiled fellow was Jacobite, so as to have the songs dear to the feminine mind. They get wrecked on the island, and are terrified by the elves into releasing Alonso, etc. Meantime Ferdinand carries logs, forgathers with Miranda and Prospero—and ends—” He flourished his hands.
“And it wasn’t acted!”
“No, we were getting it up before Christmas,” said Gerald, “and then—”
He looked towards Clement, whose illness had then been at the crisis.
“Very inconsiderate of me,” said Clement, smiling, “as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off at the festival?”
“Now,” said Gerald, “that the boy is gone, I may be allowed a glass of beer. Is that absurdity to last on here?”
“Adrian’s mother would not let him come on any other terms,” said Mrs. Grinstead.
“Did she also stipulate that he was never to see a horse? Quite as fatal to his father.”
“You need not point the unreason, but consider how she has suffered.”
“You go the way to make him indulge on the sly.”
“True, perhaps,” said Clement, “but I mean to take the matter up when I know the poor little fellow better.”
Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.
“Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?”
“Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard’s wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield? Clever man. Always photographing.”
So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries for the sale of work. ‘The Tempest’ was propounded, and received with acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing, and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!
Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could talk so eagerly about “a trumpery raree-show,” especially for an object that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard their report—
“Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him. Socialist one minute, old Tory the next.”
“A dreamer?” asked Dolores.
“If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his life, and never do any good!”
“Perhaps he is waiting.”
“I don’t believe in waiting,” said Jasper, wiping the dust off his photographic glasses. “Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does not know how to use it!”
“Conclusive,” said Gillian.
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