A breath of air,
A bullock’s low,
A bunch of flowers,
Hath power to call from everywhere
The spirit of forgotten hours—
Hours when the heart was fresh and young,
When every string in freedom sung,
Ere life had shed one leaf of green.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
There had been some curiosity as to who would be thought worthy to bring the precious little baronet to Rockquay, and there was some diversion, as well as joy, when it proved that no one was to be entrusted with him but his eldest aunt, Mrs. Harewood, who was to bring him in Whitsun week, so that he might begin with a half-term.
The arrival was a pretty sight, as the aunt rejoiced at seeing both her hosts at the front door to greet her, and as Anna held out her glad arms to the little brother who was the pride of the family.
“Ha, Adrian, boy!” said the Vicar, only greeting with the hand, at sight of the impatient wriggle out of the embrace.
It was an open, sunburnt, ruddy face, and wide, fearless grey eyes that looked up to him, the bullet head in stiff, curly flaxen hair held aloft with an air of “I am monarch of all I survey,” and there was a tone of equality in the “Holloa, Uncle Clement,” to the tall clergyman who towered so far above the sturdy little figure.
Presently on the family inquiries there broke—
“I say, Annie, where’s the school?”
“At the foot of this hill.”
“I want to see it” (imperiously).
“You must have some tea first.”
“Then you are glad to come, Adrian?” said Mrs. Grinstead.
“Yes, Aunt Cherry. It is high time I was away from such a lot of women-folk,” he replied, with his hands in his pockets, and his legs set like a little colossus.
Anna had no peace till, after the boy had swallowed a tolerable amount of bread-and-butter and cake, she took him out, and then Mrs. Harewood had to explain his mother’s urgent entreaties that the regime at Vale Leston should be followed up, and the boy see only such habits as would be those of total abstainers.
Poor woman! as her brother and sisters knew, there was reason to believe that the vice which had been fatal to her happiness and her husband’s life, had descended to him from Dutch forefathers, and there was the less cause for wonder at the passionate desire to guard her son from it. Almost all her family had been water-drinkers from infancy, and though Major Harewood called teetotalism a superstitious contempt of Heaven’s good gifts, and disapproved of supplementing the baptismal vow, his brother the Rector had found it expedient, for the sake of the parish, to embrace formally the temperance movement, and thus there had been little difficulty in giving way to Alda’s desire that, at the luncheon-table, Adrian should never see wine or beer, and she insisted that the same rule should prevail at Rockquay.
Clement had taken the pledge when a lad of sixteen, and there were those who thought that, save for his persistence under warnings of failing strength, much of his present illness might have been averted, with all the consequent treatment. He believed in total abstinence as safer for his ward, but he thought that the time had come for training, in seeing without partaking. Wilmet agreed, and said she had tried to persuade her sister; but she had only caused an hysterical agitation, so that weakness as usual gained the victory, and she had all but promised to bring the boy home again unless she could exact an engagement.
“To follow the Vale Leston practice at his early dinner,” said Geraldine.
“That may be,” said Clement; “but I do not engage not to have the matter out with him if I see that it is expedient.”
“I am only doubtful how Gerald will take it,” said his sister.
“Gerald has always been used to it at Vale Leston,” said Wilmet.
“True, but there he is your guest. Here he will regard himself as at home. However, he is a good boy, and will only grumble a little for appearance sake.”
“I should hope so,” said Wilmet severely.
“How is the Penbeacon affair going on?” asked Clement.
“Oh, Clem, I did not think you had heard of it.”
“I had a letter in the middle of the mission, but I could not answer it then, and it seems to have been lost.”
Geraldine pronounced it the straw that broke the camel’s back, when she heard of the company that only waited to dig china clay out of Penbeacon and wash it in the Ewe till they could purchase a slice of the hill pertaining to the Vale Leston estate. Major Harewood had replied that his fellow-trustee was too ill to attend to business, and that the matter had better be let alone till the heir attained his majority.
“Shelved for the present,” said Mrs. Grinstead. “Fancy Ewe and Leston contaminated!”
“John talks to the young engineer, Mr. Bramshaw, and thinks that may be prevented; but that is not the worst,” said Wilmet; “it would change the whole face of the parish, and bring an influx of new people.”
“Break up Penbeacon and cover it with horrible little new houses. Men like Walsh never see a beautiful place but they begin to think how to destroy it.”
“Well, Cherry, you have the most influence with Gerald, but he talks to the girls of our having no right to keep the treasures of the hills for our exclusive pleasure.”
“It is not exclusive. Half the country disports itself there. It is the great place for excursions.”
“Then he declares that it is a grave matter to hinder an industry that would put bread into so many mouths, and that fresh outlets would be good for the place; something too about being an obstruction, and the rights of labour.”
“Oh, I know what that means. It is only teasing the cousinhood when they fall on him open-mouthed,” said Geraldine, with a laugh, though with a qualm of misgiving at her heart, while Clement sat listening and thinking.
Mrs. Harewood farther explained, that she hoped either that Gerald would marry, or that her sister would make a home for him at the Priory. It then appeared that Major Harewood thought it would be wise to leave the young man to manage the property for himself without interference; and that the uncle to whom the Major had become heir was anxious to have the family at hand, even offering to arrange a house for Lady Vanderkist.
“A year of changes,” sighed Geraldine; “but this waiting time seems intended to let one gather one’s breath.”
But Wilmet looked careworn, partly, no doubt, with the harass of continual attention to her sister Alda, who, though subdued and improved in many important ways, was unavoidably fretful from ill-health, and disposed to be very miserable over her straitened means, and the future lot of her eight daughters, especially as the two of the most favourable age seemed to resign their immediate chances of marrying. Moreover, though all began life as pretty little girls, they had a propensity to turn into Dutchwomen as they grew up, and Franceska, the fifth in age, was the only one who renewed the beauty of the twin sisters.
Alda was not, however, Wilmet’s chief care, though of that she did not speak. She was not happy at heart about her two boys. Kester was a soldier in India, not actually unsteady, but not what her own brothers had been, and Edward was a midshipman, too much of the careless, wild sailor. Easy-going John Harewood’s lax discipline had not been successful with them in early youth, and still less had later severity and indignation been effectual.
“I am glad you kept Anna,” said Mrs. Harewood, “though Alda is very much disappointed that she is not having a season in London.”
“She will not take it,” said Geraldine. “She insists that she prefers Uncle Clem to all the fine folk she might meet; and after all, poor Marilda’s acquaintance are not exactly the upper ten thousand.”
“Poor Marilda! You know that she is greatly vexed that Emilia is bent on being a hospital nurse, or something like it, and only half yields to go out with her this summer in very unwilling obedience.”
“Yes, I know. She wants to come here, and I mean to have her before the long vacation for a little while. We heard various outpourings, and I cannot quite think Miss Emilia a grateful person, though I can believe that she does not find it lively at home.”
“She seems to be allowed plenty of slum work, as it is the fashion to call it, and no one can be more good and useful than Fernan and Marilda, so that I call it sheer discontent and ingratitude not to put up with them!”
“Only modernishness, my dear Wilmet. It is the spirit of the times, and the young things can’t help it.”
“You don’t seem to suffer in that way—at least with Anna.”
“No; Anna is a dear good girl, and Uncle Clem is her hero, but I am very glad she has nice young companions in the Merrifields, and an excitement in prospect in this bazaar.”
“I thought a bazaar quite out of your line.”
“There seems to be no other chance of saving this place from board schools. Two thousand pounds have to be raised, and though Lord Rotherwood and Mr. White, the chief owners of property, have done, and will do, much, there still remains greater need than a fleeting population like this can be expected to supply, and Clement thinks that a bazaar is quite justifiable in such a case.”
“If there is nothing undesirable,” said Mrs. Harewood, in her original “what it may lead to” voice.
“Trust Lady Merrifield and Jane Mohun for that! I am going to take you to call upon Lilias Merrifield.”
“Yea; I shall wish to see the mother of Bernard’s wife.”
Clement, who went with them, explained to his somewhat wondering elder sister that he thought safeguards to Christian education so needful, that he was quite willing that, even in this brief stay, all the aid in their power should be given to the cause at Rockquay. Nay, as he afterwards added to Wilmet, he was very glad to see how much it interested Geraldine, and that the work for the Church and the congenial friends were rousing her from her listless state of dejection.
Lady Merrifield and Mrs. Harewood were mutually charmed, perhaps all the more because the former was not impassioned about the bazaar. She said she had been importuned on such subjects wherever she had gone, and had learnt to be passive; but her sister Jane was all eagerness, and her younger young people, as she called the present half of her family, were in the greatest excitement over their first experience of the kind.
“Well is it for all undertakings that there should always be somebody to whom all is new, and who can be zealous and full of delight.”
“By no means surtout point de zele,” returned Geraldine.
“As well say no fermentation,” said Lady Merrifield.
“A dangerous thing,” said Clement.
“But sourness comes without it, or at least deadness,” returned his sister.
Wherewith they returned to talk of their common relations.
It was like a joke to the brother and sisters, that their Bernard should be a responsible husband and father, whereas Lady Merrifield’s notion of him was as a grave, grand-looking man with a splendid beard.
Fergus Merrifield was asked to become the protector of Adrian, whereat he looked sheepish; but after the round of pets had been made he informed his two youngest sisters, Valetta and Primrose, that it was the cheekiest little fellow he had ever seen, who would never know if he was bullied within an inch of his life; not that he (Fergus) should let the fellows do it.
So though until Monday morning Anna was the slave of her brother, doing her best to supply the place of the six devoted sisters at home, the young gentleman ungratefully announced at breakfast—
“I don’t want gy-arls after me,” with a peculiarly contemptuous twirl at the beginning of the word; “Merrifield is to call for me.”
Anna, who had brought down her hat, looked mortified.
“Never mind, Annie,” said her uncle, “he will know better one of these days.”
“No, I shan’t,” said Adrian, turning round defiantly. “If she comes bothering after me at dinner-time I shall throw my books at her—that’s all! There’s Merrifield,” and he banged out of the room.
“Never mind,” again said his uncle, “he has had a large dose of the feminine element, and this is his swing out of it.”
Hopes, which Anna thought cruel, were entertained by her elders that the varlet would return somewhat crestfallen, but there were no such symptoms; the boy re-appeared in high spirits, having been placed well for his years, but not too well for popularity, and in the playground he had found himself in his natural element. The boys were mostly of his own size, or a little bigger, and bullying was not the fashion. He had heard enough school stories to be wary of boasting of his title, and as long as he did not flaunt it before their eyes, it was regarded as rather a credit to the school.
Merrifield was elated at the success of his protege, and patronized him more than he knew, accepting his devotion in a droll, contemptuous manner, so that the pair were never willingly apart. As Fergus slept at his aunt’s during the week, the long summer evenings afforded splendid opportunities for what Fergus called scientific researches in the quarries and cliffs. It was as well for Lady Vanderkist’s peace of mind that she did not realize them, though Fergus was certified by his family to be cautious and experienced enough to be a safe guide. Perhaps people were less nervous about sixth sons than only ones.
There was, indeed, a certain undeveloped idea held out that some of the duplicates of Fergus’s precious collection might be arranged as a sample of the specimens of minerals and fossils of Rockquay at the long-talked-of sale of work.
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