The Long Vacation

CHAPTER XIII. — TWO SIDES OF A SHIELD AGAIN

The earlier proofs of the Mouse-trap were brought by Lance, who had spent more time in getting them into shape than his wife approved, and they were hailed with rapture by the young ladies on seeing themselves for the first time in print. As to Gerald, he had so long been bred—as it were—to journalism that, young as he was, he had caught the trick, and ‘The Inspector’s Tour’ had not only been welcomed by the ‘Censor’, but portions had been copied into other papers, and there was a proposal of publishing it in a separate brochure. It would have made the fortune of the Mouse-trap, if it had not been so contrary to its principles, and it had really been sent to them in mischief, together with The ‘Girton Girl’, of which some were proud, though when she saw it in print, with a lyre and wreath on the page, sober Mysie looked grave.

“Do you think it profane to parody Jane Taylor?” said Gerald.

“No, but I thought it might hurt some people’s feelings, and discourage them, if we laugh at the High School.”

“Why, Dolores goes to give lectures there,” exclaimed Valetta.

“Nobody is discouraged by a little good-humoured banter,” said Gillian. “Nobody with any stuff in them.”

“There must be some training in chaff though,” said Gerald, “or they don’t know how to take it.”

“And in point of fact,” said Dolores, “the upper tradesmen’s daughters come off with greater honours in the High School than do the young gentlewomen.”

“Very wholesome for the young Philistines,” said Gerald. “The daughters of self-made men may well surpass in energy those settled on their lees.”

Gerald and Dolores were standing with their backs to the wall of Anscombe Church, which Jasper Merrifield and Mysie were zealously photographing, the others helping—or hindering.

“I thought upper tradesfolk were the essence of Philistines,” returned Dolores.

“The elder generation—especially if he is the son of the energetic man. The younger are more open to ideas.”

“The stolid Conservative is the one who has grown up while his father was making his fortune, the third generation used to be the gentleman, now he is the man who is tired of it.”

“Tired of it, aye!” with a sigh.

“Why you are a man with a pedigree!” she returned.

“Pedigrees don’t hinder—what shall I call it?—the sense of being fettered.”

“One lives in fetters,” she exclaimed. “And the better one likes one’s home, the harder it is to shake them off.”

He turned and looked full at her, then exclaimed, “Exactly,” and paused, adding, “I wonder what you want. Has it a form?”

“Oh yes, I mean to give lectures. I should like to see the world, and study physical science in every place, then tell the next about it. I read all I can, and I think I shall get consent to give some elementary lectures at the High School, though Uncle Jasper does not half like it, but I must get some more training to do the thing rightly. I thought of University College. Could you get me any information about it?”

“Easily; but you’ll have to conquer the horror of the elders.”

“I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of things there.”

“You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge.”

“I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies, he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lily really protested against.”

“You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fate was so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, but one bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all manner of cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that old mediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their having been kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all their hearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be an ancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovely sort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to be bound down to.”

“Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are such places.”

“Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle, who had toiled in a bookseller’s shop all his youth and reigned like a little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of Church and State, and I should be a free man.”

“Won’t they let you go about, and see everything?”

“Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools; if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw than I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one gets back to the same place again.”

“Men have so many openings.”

“I’m not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be worse for their hearts,” he said, with a sigh.

“There’s journalism, a great power.”

“Yes, but to put my name to all I could—and long to say—would be an equal horror to the dear folks.”

“Yet you are helping on this concern.”

“True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really want to hear ‘The Outlaws Isle’ performed, and all under protest that the windmill will soon be swept away by the stream.”

“Indeed, yes,” cried Dolores. “They hope to regulate the stream. They might as well hope to regulate Mississippi.”

“Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, but irresistible.”

“Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud.”

“Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals,” said Gerald sadly.

“Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful,” said Dolores, “but one can’t live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt Jane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, but wrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface. Now, if I went in for good works I would go to the bottom—down to the slums.”

“Slums are one’s chief interest,” said Gerald; “but no doubt it will soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish—”

“What?”

“That there could be a revolution before I am of age.”

“What’s that?” cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. “A revolution?”

“Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,” said Gerald lightly.

“Oh! you don’t really mean it.”

“Not that sort,” said Dolores. “Only the coming of the coquecigrues.”

“They are in ‘The Water Babies’,” said Primrose, mystified.

Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of fellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the ‘Censor’ and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where it lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only worthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not but communicate it to her sister, though adding—

“I don’t believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other, unless they work round in some queer fashion.”

However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was becoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years the senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one another. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of responsibility.

“Your nephew’s production has made a stir,” said she, when they found themselves alone together.

“Yes, poor boy.” Then answering the tone rather than the words, “I suppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next. There is a good deal of change in the outlook.”

“Yes,” said Lady Merrifield. “The young ones, especially the youngest, seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow.”

“Exactly,” said Geraldine eagerly.

“You feel the same? To begin with, the laws of young ladyhood—maidenliness—are a good deal relaxed—”

“There I am not much of a judge. I never had any young ladyhood, but I own that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, and more surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily.”

“What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now.”

“Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it. I should say, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble with me. Anna’s passion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up the season on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious to have her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes, she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing.”

“You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?”

“Partly. Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in, rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrained for the young people than what would come in your daughters’ way.”

“Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses had to protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people. That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficult to know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the real principle of modesty. Though to me the question is made easy, for Sir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcely of hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from the dancing-classes since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinks it hard.”

“Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston. They are part of the same spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medical schools.”

“Or colleges, or lecturing. Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see no harm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, if her father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has not occurred to any of my own girls.”

“Sir Jasper would not like it?”

“Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it for Dolores. She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have very different ideals from what we had.”

“Please tell me. I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it.”

“Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools.”

“Are not they Miss Mohun’s ideal still?”

“Oh yes, infinitely developed, and so they are my cousin Florence’s—Lady Florence Devereux; but the young ones think them behind the times. I remember when every girl believed her children the prettiest and cleverest in nature, showed off her Sunday-school as her pride and treasure, and composed small pink books about them, where the catastrophe was either being killed by accident, or going to live in the clergyman’s nursery. Now, those that teach do so simply as a duty and not a romance.”

“And the difficulty is to find those who will teach,” said Geraldine. “One thing is, that the children really require better teaching.”

“That is quite true. My girls show me their preparation work, and I see much that I should not have thought of teaching the Beechcroft children. But all the excitement of the matter has gone off.”

“I know. The Vale Leston girls do it as their needful work, not with their hearts and enthusiasm. I expect an enthusiasm cannot be expected to last above a generation and perhaps a half.”

“Very likely. A more indifferent thing; you will laugh, but my enthusiasm was for chivalry, Christian chivalry, half symbolic. History was delightful to me for the search for true knights. I had lists of them, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody with my affection. Either history is only a lesson, or they know a great deal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and the Black Prince not much better.”

“And are you allowed the ‘Idylls of the King’?”

“Under protest, now that the Mouse-trap has adopted Browning for weekly reading and discussion. Tennyson is almost put on the same shelf with Scott, whom I love better than ever. Is it progress?”

“Well, I suppose it is, in a way.”

“But is it the right way?”

“That’s what I want to see.”

“Now listen. When our young men, my brothers—especially my very dear brother Claude and his contemporaries, Rotherwood is the only one left—were at Oxford, they got raised into a higher atmosphere, and came home with beautiful plans and hopes for the Church, and drew us up with them; but now the University seems just an ordeal for faith to go through.”

“I should think there was less of outward temptation, but more of subtle trial. And then the whole system has altered since the times you are speaking of, when the old rules prevailed, and the great giants of Church renewal were there!” said Geraldine.

“You belong to the generation whom they trained, and who are now passing away. My father was one who grew up then.”

“We live on their spirit still.”

“I hope so. I never knew much about Cambridge till Clement went there, but it had the same influence on him. Indeed, all our home had that one thought ever since I can remember. Clement and Lance grew up in it.”

“But you will forgive me. These younger men either go very, very much further than we older ones dreamt of, or they have flaws in their faith, and sometimes—which is the strangest difficulty—the vehement observance and ritual with flaws beneath in their faith perhaps, or their loyalty—Socialist fancies.”

“There is impatience,” said Geraldine. “The Church progress has not conquered all the guilt and misery in the world.”

“Who said it would?”

“None of us; but these younger ones fancy it is the Church’s fault, instead of that of her members’ failures, and so they try to walk in the light of the sparks that they have kindled.”

“Altruism as they call it—love of the neighbour without love of God.”

“It may lead that way.”

“Does it?”

“Perhaps we are the impatient ones now,” said Geraldine, “in disliking the young ones’ experiments, and wanting to bind them to our own views.”

“Then you look on with toleration but with distrust.”

“Distrust of myself as well as of the young ones, and trying not to forget that ‘one good custom may corrupt the world,’ so it may be as well that the pendulum should swing.”

“The pendulum, but not its axis—faith!”

“No; and of my boy’s mainspring of faith I do feel sure, and of his real upright steadiness.”

Lady Merrifield asked no more, but could wait.

But is not each generation a terra incognita to the last? A question which those feel most decidedly who stand on the border-land of both, with love and sympathy divided between the old and the new, clinging to the one, and fearing to alienate the other.

CHAPTER XIV. — BUTTERFLY’S NECTAR

Clement Underwood was so much better as to be arrived at taking solitary rides and walks, these suiting him better than having companions, as he liked to go his own pace, and preferred silence. His sister had become much engrossed with her painting, and saw likewise that in this matter of exercise it was better to let him go his own way, and he declared that this time of thought and reading was an immense help to him, restoring that balance of life which he seemed to himself to have lost in the whirl of duties at St. Matthew’s after Felix’s death.

The shore, with the fresh, monotonous plash of the waves, when the tide served, was his favourite resort. He could stand still and look out over the expanse of ripples, or wander on, as he pleased, watching the sea-gulls float along—

There had been a somewhat noisy luncheon, for Edward Harewood, a midshipman in the Channel Fleet, which was hovering in the offing, had come over on a day’s leave with Horner, a messmate whose parents lived in the town. He was a big lad, a year older than Gerald, and as soon as a little awe of Uncle Clement and Aunt Cherry had worn off, he showed himself of the original Harewood type, directing himself chiefly to what he meant to be teasing Gerald about Vale Leston and Penbeacon.

“All the grouse there were on the bit of moor are snapped up.”

“Very likely,” said Gerald coolly.

“Those precious surveyors and engineers that Walsh brings down can give an account of them! As soon as you come of age, you’ll have to double your staff of keepers, I can tell you.”

“Guardians of ferae naturae,” said Gerald.

“I thought your father did all that was required in that line,” said Clement.

“Not since duffers and land-lubbers have been marauding over Penbeacon—aye, and elsewhere. What would you say to an engineer poaching away one of the august house of Vanderkist?”

“The awful cad! I’d soon show him what I thought of his cheek,” cried Adrian, with a flourish of his knife.

“Ha, ha! I bet that he will be shooting over Ironbeam Park long before you are of age.”

“I shall shoot him, then,” cried Adrian.

“Not improbably there will be nothing else to shoot by that time,” quietly said Gerald.

“I shall have a keeper in every lodge, and bring up four or five hundred pheasants every year,” boasted the little baronet, quite alive to the pride of possession, though he had never seen Ironbeam in his life.

Edward laughed a “Don’t you wish you may get it,” and the others, who knew very well the futility of the poor boy’s expectations, even if Gerald’s augury were not fulfilled, hastened to turn away the conversation to plans for the afternoon. Anna asked the visitor if he would ride out with her and Gerald to Clipstone or to the moor, and was relieved when he declined, saying he had promised to meet Horner.

“You will come in to tea at five?” said his aunt, “and bring him if you like.”

“Thanks awfully, but we hardly can. We have to start from the quay at six sharp.”

All had gone their several ways, and Clement, after the heat of the day, was pacing towards a secluded cove out of an inner bay which lay nearer than Anscombe Cove, but was not much frequented. However, he smelt tobacco, and heard sounds of boyish glee, and presently saw Adrian and Fergus Merrifield, bare-legged, digging in the mud.

“Ha! youngsters! Do you know the tide has turned? I thought you had had enough of that.”

“I thought I might find my aralia!” sighed Fergus. “The tide was almost as low.”

Just then there resounded from behind a projecting rock a peal of undesirable singing, a shout of laughter, and an oath, with—

“Holloa, those little beasts of teetotallers have hooked it.”

There were confused cries—“Haul ‘em back! Drench ‘em. Give ‘em a roll in the mud!” and Adrian shrank behind his uncle, taking hold of his coat, as there burst from behind the rock a party of boys, headed by the two cadets, all shouting loudly, till brought to a sudden standstill by the sight of “Parson! By Jove!” as the Horner mid muttered, taking out his pipe, while Edward Harewood mumbled something about “Horner’s brother’s tuck-out.” One or two other boys were picking up the remains of the feast, which had been on lobsters, jam tarts, clotted cream, and the like delicacies dear to the juvenile mind. The two biggest school-boys came forward, one voluble and thick of speech about Horner’s tuck-out, and “I assure you, sir, it is nothing—not a taste. Never thought of such—” Just then the other lad, staggering about, had almost lurched over into the deepening channel; but Clement caught him by the collar and held him fast, demanding in a low voice, very terrible to his hearers—

“Where does this poor boy live?”

It was Adrian who answered.

“Devereux Buildings.”

“You two, Adrian and Fergus, run to the quay and fetch a cab as near this place as it can come,” said Clement. “You little fellows, you had better run home at once. I hope you will take warning by the shame and disgrace of this spectacle.”

The boys were glad enough to disperse, being terrified by the condition of the prisoner, as well as by the detection; but the two who were encumbered with the baskets containing the bottles, jam-pots, and tin of cream remained, and so did the two young sailors, Horner saying civilly—

“You’ll not be hard on the kids, sir, for just a spree carried a little too far.”

“I certainly shall not be hard on the children, whom you seem to have tempted,” was the answer as they moved along; and as the younger Horner turned towards a little shop near the end of the steps to restore the goods, he asked—“Were you supplied from hence?”

“Yes,” said Horner, who was perhaps hardly sober enough for caution. “Mother Butterfly is a jolly old soul.”

Looking up. Clement saw no licence to sell spirituous liquors under the name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard ‘Ici on parle Francais’, and was adorned in a tasteful manner with ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles bore the labels of raspberry vinegar and lemonade, but he had seen too much not to say—

“You drive a dangerous trade.”

“Ah, sir, young people will be gourmands,” she said, with a foreign accent. “Ah, that poor young gentleman is very ill. Will he not come in and lie down to recover?”

“No, thank you,” said Clement. “A carriage is coming to take him home.”

Something about the fat in the fire was passing between the cadets, and the younger of them began to repeat that he had come for his brother’s birthday, and that he feared they had brought the youngsters into a scrape by carrying the joke too far.

“I have nothing to say to you, sir,” said the Vicar of St. Matthew’s, looking very majestic, “except that it is time you were returning to your ship. As to you,” turning to Edward Harewood, “I can only say that if you are aware of the peculiar circumstances of Adrian Vanderkist, your conduct can only be called fiendish.”

Fergus and Adrian came running up with tidings that the cab was waiting. Edward Harewood stood sullen, but the other lad said—

“Unlucky. We are sorry to have got the little fellows into trouble.”

He held out his hand, and Clement did not refuse it, as he did that of his own nephew. Still, there was a certain satisfaction at his heart as he beheld the clear, honest young faces of the other two boys, and he bade Adrian run home and wait for him, saying to Fergus—

“You seem to have been a good friend to my little nephew. Thank you.”

Fergus coloured up, speechless between pleasure at the warm tone of commendation and the obligations of school-boy honour, nor, with young Campbell on their hands, was there space for questions. That youth subsided into a heavy doze in the cab, and so continued till the arrival at No. 7, Devereux Buildings, where a capable-looking maid-servant opened the door, and he was deposited into her hands, the Vicar leaving his card with his present address, but feeling equal to nothing more, and hardly able to speak.

He drove home, finding his nephew in the doorway. Signing to the maid to pay the driver, and to the boy to follow him, he reached his study, and sank into his easy-chair, Adrian opening frightened eyes and saying—

“I’ll call Sibby.”

“No—that bottle—drop to there,” signing to the mark on the glass with his nail.

After a pause, while he held fast the boy, so to speak, with his eyes, he said—

“Thank you, dear lad.”

“Uncle Clement,” said Adrian then, “we weren’t doing anything. Merrifield thought his old bit of auralia, or whatever he calls it, was there.”

“I saw—I saw, my boy. To find you—as you were, made me most thankful. You must have resisted. Tell me, were you of this party, or did you come on them by accident?”

“Horner asked me,” said Adrian, twisting from one leg to another.

Clement saw the crisis was come which he had long expected, and rejoiced at the form it had taken, though he knew he should suffer from pursuing the subject.

“Adrian,” he said, “I am much pleased with you. I don’t want to get you into a row, but I should be much obliged if you would tell me how all this happened.”

“It wouldn’t,” returned Adrian, “but for that Ted and the other chap.”

“Do you mean that there would have been none of this—drinking—but for them? Don’t be afraid to tell me all. Was the stuff all got from that Mrs. Schnetter—?”

“Mother Butterfly’s? Oh yes. She keeps bottles of grog with those labels, and it is such a lark for her to be even with the gangers that our fellows generally get some after cricket, or for a tuck-out.”

“Not Fergus Merrifield?”

“Oh no; he’s captain, you know, but he is two years younger than Campbell and Horner, and they can’t bear him, and when he made a jaw about it—he can jaw awfully, you know—and he is stuck up, and Horner major swore he would make him know his bearings—”

“I wonder he was there at all.”

“Well, Horner asked him, and he can’t get those fossils that were lost out of his head, and he thought they might be washed up. He said too, he knew they would be up to something if he wasn’t there.”

“Oh!” said Clement, with an odd recollection, “but I suppose he did not know about these cadets?”

“No, the big Horner sent up to Mother Butterfly’s for some more stuff, not so mild, and then Ted set upon me, and said it was all because of me that Vale Leston had to live like a boiling of teetotal frogs and toads, just to please the little baronet’s lady mamma, but I was a Dutchman all the same, and should sell them yet—I sucked it in so well, and they talked of seeing how much I could stand. Something about my governor, and here—that word in the Catechism.”

“Ah!” gasped Clement, fairly clutching his arm, “and what spared you?”

“Horner came down, and Sweetie Bob, that’s the errand-boy, and there was a bother about the money, for Bob wasn’t to leave anything without being paid, and while they were jawing about that, Merry laid hold of me and said, ‘Come and look for the aralia.’ They got to shouting and singing, and I don’t think they saw what was doing. They were nasty songs, and Merry touched me and said, ‘Let us go after the aralia.’ We got away without their missing us at first, but they ran after us when they found it out, and if you had not been there, Uncle Clem—”

“Thank God I was! Now, Adrian, first tell me, did you taste this stuff? You said you sucked it in.”

“Well, I did, a little. You know, uncle, one cannot always be made a baby. Women don’t understand, you know, and don’t know what a fool it makes a man to have them always after him, and have everything put out of his way like a precious infant, and people drinking it on the sly like Gerald, or—”

“Or me, eh, Adrian? I can tell you that I never tasted it for thirty years, and now only as a medicine. Lance, never.”

“But they did not treat you like a baby, and never let you see so much as a glass of beer.”

“Well, I am going to treat you like a man, but it is a sorrowful history that I have to tell you. You know that your mother and Aunt Wilmet are twin sisters?”

“Oh yes, though Aunt Wilmet is stout and jolly, and mother ever so much prettier and more delicate and nice.”

“Yes, from ill-health. She is never free from suffering.”

“I know. Old Dr. May said there was no help for it.”

“Do you know what caused that ill-health? My boy, they spoke of your father to-day—brutes that they were,” he could not help muttering.

“Yes, he died when I was a week old.”

“He had ruined himself when quite a young man, body, soul, and estate—and you too, beforehand, in estate, and broken your mother’s heart and health by being given up to that miserable habit from which we want to save you.”

“I thought it was only poor men that got drunk and beat their wives” (more knowledge, by the bye, than he was supposed to possess). “He did not beat her?”

“Oh no, no,” said Clement, “but he as surely destroyed all her happiness, and made you and your sisters very poor for your station in life, so that it is really hard to educate you, and you will have to work for yourself and them. And at only thirty-six years old his life was cut off.”

“Was that what D. T. meant? I heard Ted whisper something about that.”

“It was well,” thought Clement, “that he had grace enough to whisper. Yes, my poor boy, it is only too true. I was sent for to find your father dying of delirium tremens—you just born, your mother nearly dead, the desolation of your sisters unspeakable. He was only thirty-six, and that vice, together with racing, had devoured him and all the property that should have come to his children. I think he tried to repent at the very last, but there was little time, little power, only he put you and your sisters in my charge, and begged me to save you from being like him.”

“Did they mean that I was sure to be like that? Like a pointer puppy, pointing.”

“They meant it. And, Adrian, it is so far true that there is an inheritance—with some more, with some less—of our forefathers’ nature. Some have tendencies harder to repress than others. But, my dear boy, you know that we all have had a force given us wherewith to repress and conquer those tendencies, and that we can.”

“When we were baptized, God the Holy Spirit,” said Adrian, under his breath.

“You know it, you can believe now. Your uncle Lance and I prayed that the old nature might be put down, the new raised up. We pray, your mother and sisters have prayed ever since, that so it may be, that you may conquer any evil tendencies that may be in you; but, Adrian, no one can save you from the outside if you do not strive yourself. Now you see why your poor mother has been so anxious to keep all temptation out of your reach.”

“But I’m growing a man now. I can’t always go on so.”

“No, you can’t. You shall be treated as a man while you are with me. But I do very seriously advise you—nay, I entreat of you, not to begin taking any kind of liquor, for it would incite the taste to grow upon you, till it might become uncontrollable, and be your tyrant. If you have reason to think the pledge would be a protection to you, come to me, or to Uncle Bill.”

He was interrupted by Sibby coming in with his cup of tea, and—

“Now, Mr. Clement, whatever have you been after now? Up to your antics the minute Miss Cherry is out of the way. Aye, ye needn’t go to palavering me. I hear it in your breath,” and she darted at the stimulant.

“I’ve had some, Sibby, since I came in.”

“More reason you should have it now. Get off with you, Sir Adrian, don’t be worriting him. Now, drink that, sir, and don’t speak another word.”

He was glad to obey. He wanted to think, in much thankfulness for the present, and in faith and love which brought hope for the future.

CHAPTER XV. — A POOR FOREIGN WIDOW

Early in the day General Mohun received a note from Clement Underwood, begging him to look in at St. Andrew’s Rock as soon as might be convenient.

“Ah,” said his sister, “I strongly suspect something wrong about the boys. Fergus was very odd and silent last night when I asked him about Jem Horner’s picnic, and he said something about that Harewood cousin being an unmitigated brute.”

“I hope Fergus was not in a scrape.”

“Oh no, it is not his way. His geology is a great safeguard. If it had been Wilfred I might have been afraid.”

“His head is full—at least as much room as the lost aralia leaves—of the examination for the Winchester College election.”

“Yes, you know Jasper has actually promised Gillian that if either of her brothers gets a scholarship, she may be allowed a year at Lady Margaret Hall.”

“Yes, it incited her to worry Wilfred beyond sufferance in his holidays. I know if you or Lily had been always at me I should have kicked as hard as he does.”

“Lily herself can hardly cram him with his holiday task; but Fergus is a good little fellow.”

“You have kept him at it in a more judgmatical way. But won’t Armytage come in between the damsel and her college?”

“Poor Mr. Armytage—Captain, I believe, for he has got his commandership. Gill snubs him desperately. I believe she is afraid of herself and her heart.”

“I hope she won’t be a goose. Jasper told me that he is an excellent fellow, and it will be an absolute misfortune if the girl is besotted enough to refuse him.”

“Girls have set up a foolish prejudice against matrimony.”

“Well, I am off. Clement Underwood is a reasonable man, and would not send for me without cause.”

General Mohun came to that opinion when he heard of the scene on the beach, and of the absolute certainty that the contraband goods had been procured at Mrs. Schnetterling’s. Before his visit was over, a note came down on gold-edged, cyphered pink paper, informing the Reverend E. C. Underwood that Mrs. Campbell was much obliged to him for his attention to her son, who was very unwell, entirely from the effects of clotted cream. And while they were still laughing over the scored words, Anna knocked at the door with a message from her aunt, to ask whether they could come and speak to poor Mrs. Edgar, who was in a dreadful state.

“It is not about Adrian, I hope?” said she.

“Oh no, no, my dear; Adrian is all right, thanks to Fergus again,” said her uncle. “He is the boy’s great protector; I only wish they could be always together.”

Poor Mrs. Edgar! Rumours had not been slow in reaching her of the condition in which her scholars had been found, very odd rumours too. One that James Campbell had been brought home insensible, and the two sailors carried on board in the like state; and an opposite report, that the poor dear boys had only made themselves sick with dainties out of Mrs. Schnetterling’s, and it was all a cruel notion of that teetotal ritualist clergyman. Some boys would not speak, others were vague and contradictory, and many knew nothing, Horner and Campbell were absent. Clement much relieved her by giving an account of the matter, and declaring that he feared his own elder nephew was the cause of all the scandal, though he believed that some of her bigger pupils were guilty of obtaining a smaller quantity, knowingly, of the Schnetterling’s illicit wares, chiefly so far for the fun of doing something forbidden—“Stolen waters are sweet.”

“A wicked woman! Surely she should not be allowed to go on.”

“I am going, on the spot, to see what can be done,” said General Mohun; “but indeed I should have thought young Campbell rather too old for your precincts.”

“Ah! yes. He is troublesome, but he is so backward, and is so delicate, that his mother has implored me to keep him on, that he may have sea-bathing. But this shall be the final stroke!”

“It will be the ruin of your school otherwise,” said the General.

“Ah! it might. And yet Mrs. Campbell will never be persuaded of the fact! And she is a person of much influence! However, I cannot have my poor dear little fellows led astray.”

Then, with some decided praises of dear little Sir Adrian, and regrets at losing Fergus Merrifield, whom she declared, on the authority of her gentleman assistant, to be certain of success, she departed; and Clement resumed his task of writing letters, which he believed to be useless, but which he felt to be right—one a grave warning to Edward Harewood, and one to his father, whose indulgence he could not but hold accountable.

Reginald Mohun meanwhile went his way to the officer of Inland Revenue, who already had his suspicions as to Mrs. Schnetterling, and was glad of positive evidence. He returned with the General to hear from Mr. Underwood the condition in which he had found the boys, and the cause he had for attributing it to the supplies from Mother Butterfly, and this was thought sufficient evidence to authorize the sending a constable with a search-warrant to the shop. The two gentlemen were glad that the detection should be possible without either sending a spy, or forcing evidence from the boys, who had much better be kept out of the matter altogether. No lack of illicit stores was found when the policemen made their descent, and a summons was accordingly served on its mistress to appear at the next Petty Sessions.

Reginald Mohun, used to the justice of county magistrates, and the unflinching dealings of courts-martial, was determined to see the affair through, so he went to the magistrates’ meeting, and returned with the tidings that the possession of smuggled tobacco ready for sale had been proved against Mrs. Schnetterling, and she had been fined twenty-five pounds, to be paid at the next Petty Sessions. Otherwise goods would be seized to that value, or she would have a short term of imprisonment. There was no doubt that contraband spirits were also found, but it was not thought expedient to press this charge.

He said the poor woman had been in a great passion of despair, wringing her hands and weeping demonstratively.

“Quite theatrical,” he said. “I am sure she has been an actress.”

“It did not prejudice your hard-headed town-councillors in her favour,” said Gerald.

“Far from it! In fact old Simmonds observed that she was a painted foreign Jezebel.”

“Not to her face!” said Gerald.

“We are not quite brutes, whatever you may think us, my boy,” said the General good-humouredly.

“Well,” said Gerald, in the same tone, “how could I tell how it might be when the Philistines conspired to hunt down a poor foreign widow trying to pick up a scanty livelihood?”

“If the poor foreign widow had been content without corrupting the boys,” said Clement, “she would have been let alone.”

“It was not for corrupting the boys. That was done—or not done—by my amiable cousin Ted. What harm did her ‘baccy do to living soul?”

“It is a risky thing, to say the least of it, for a living soul to defraud the revenue,” said Clement.

“Of which probably she never heard.”

“She must have seen the terms of her licence,” said the General.

“Aye, a way of increasing the revenue by burthens on the chief solace of poverty,” said Gerald hotly.

“You’ll come to your senses by and by, young man,” imperturbably answered the General.

“Is she likely to be able to pay?” asked Gerald in return.

“Oh yes, the policeman said she drove a very thriving trade, both with the boys and with the sailors, and that there was no doubt that she could pay.”

Clement was very glad to hear it, for it not only obviated any sense of harshness in his mind, but he thought Gerald, in his present mood of compassion—or opposition, whichever it was—capable of offering to undertake to pay the fine for her.

Poor little Ludmilla was found the next day by Mrs. Henderson, crying softly over her work at the mosaic department—work which was only the mechanical arrangement from patterns provided, for she had no originality, and would never attain to any promotion in the profession.

Mrs. Henderson took the poor girl to her own little office, to try to comfort her, and bring her into condition for the rehearsal of the scene with Ferdinand, which she was to go through in Mr. Flight’s parlour chaperoned by his mother. She was so choked with sobs that it did not seem probable that she would have any voice; for she had been struggling with her tears all day, and now, in the presence of her friend, she gave them a free course. She thought it so cruel—so very cruel of the gentlemen; how could they do such a thing to a poor helpless stranger? And that tall one—to be a clergyman—how could he?

Mrs. Henderson tried to represent that, having accepted the licence on certain terms, it was wrong to break them; and that the gentlemen must be right to hinder harm to their nephews.

It seemed all past the poor girl’s understanding, since the nephews had taken no harm; and indeed the other boys had only touched the spirits by way of joke and doing something forbidden: it had all come of those horrid young midshipmen, who had come down and worried and bothered her mother into giving them the bottles of spirits which had not been mixed. It was very hard.

“Ah, Lydia, one sin leads no one knows where! Those little boys, think of their first learning the taste for alcohol in secret!”

Lydia did see this, but after all, she said, it was not the spirits, but the tobacco, which the Dutch and American sailors were glad enough to exchange for her mother’s commodities. She had never perceived any harm in the arrangement, and hardly comprehended when the saying, “Custom to whom custom,” was pointed out to her.

Kalliope asked whether the fine would fall heavily on her mother.

“Oh, that is worst of all. Mother is gone to Avoncester to raise the money. She won’t tell me how. And I do believe O’Leary’s circus is there.”

Then came another sobbing fit.

“But how—what do you mean, my dear?”

“O’Leary was our clown when my father—my dear father—was alive. He was a coarse horrid man, as cruel to the poor dear horses as he dared. And now he has set up for himself, and has been going about all over the county. Mother has been quite different ever since she met him one day in Avoncester, and I fear—oh, I fear he will advance her this money, and make her give me up to him; and my dear father made her promise that I would never be on the boards.”

This was in an agony of crying, and it appeared that Schnetterling had really been a very decent, amiable person, who had been passionately fond of his little daughter. Her recollection dated from the time when the family had come from America, and he had become partner in a circus, intending to collect means enough to retire to a home in Germany, but he had died five years ago, at Avoncester, of fever, and his wife had used his savings to set up this little shop at Rockquay, choosing that place because it was the resort of foreign trading-vessels, with whom her knowledge of languages would be available. She had suffered from the same illness, and her voice had been affected at the time, and she was altogether subdued and altered, and had allowed her daughter to receive a good National school training; but with the recovery of health, activity, and voice, a new temper, or rather the old one renewed, had seized her, and since she had met her former companion, Ludmilla foreboded that the impulse of wandering had come upon her, and that if the interference of the authorities pressed upon her and endangered her traffic, she would throw it up altogether, and drag her daughter into the profession so dreadful to all the poor child’s feelings.

No wonder that the girl cried till she had no voice, and took but partial comfort from repeated assurances that her friends would do their utmost on her behalf. Mrs. Henderson tried to compose and cheer her, walking with her herself to St. Kenelm’s Parsonage, and trying to keep up her earnest desire to please Mr. Flight, the special object of her veneration. But wishes were ineffectual to prevent her from breaking down in the first line of her first song, and when Mr. Flight blamed, and Lady Flight turned round on the music-stool to say severely—“Command yourself, Lydia,” she became almost hysterical.

“Wait a minute,” said Gerald. “Give her a glass of wine, and she will be better.”

“Oh no, no; please, I’m temp—” and a sob.

The five o’clock tea was still standing on a little table, and Gerald poured out a cup and took it to her, then set her down in an arm-chair, and said—

“I’ll go through Angus’ part, and she will be better,” and as she tried to say “Thank you,” and “So kind,” he held up his hand, and told her to be silent. In fact, his encouragement, and the little delay he had made, enabled her to recover herself enough to get through her part, though nothing like as well as would have been expected of her.

“Never mind,” said Gerald, “she will be all right when my uncle comes. Won’t you, Mona?”

“I should have expected—” began Lady Flight.

Gerald held up his hand in entreaty.

“People’s voices can’t be always the same,” he said cheerily. “I know our Mona will do us credit yet! Won’t you, Mona? You know how to pity me with my logs!”

“You had better go and have some tea in the kitchen, Lydia,” said Lady Flight repressively; and Ludmilla curtsied herself off, with a look of gratitude out of her swollen eyelids at Gerald.

“Poor little mortal,” he said, as she went. “I am afraid that in her case summum jus was summa injuria.”

“It was quite right to prosecute that mischievous woman,” said Mr. Flight.

“Maybe,” said Gerald; “but wheat will grow alongside of tares.”

“I hope the girl is wheat,” half ironically and severely said the lady.

Gerald shrugged his shoulders and took his leave.