The Long Vacation

“Yes, indeed, with diamond beetle studs and a fresh twist to his moustache. It has grown long enough to be waxed.”

“How happy that fellow would be if he were obliged to dig! I should like to scatter his wardrobe over Ponter’s Court.”

“There, Nan, have you finished?” as Anna swept the scattered leaves into a basket. “Are you coming?”

“I don’t think I shall. You would only talk treason—well—social treason all the way, and you don’t want me, and Aunt Cherry would have to lunch alone, unless you wait till after.”

“Oh no, I know a scrumptious place for lunch,” said Gerald. “You are right, Annie, one lady is quite enough on one’s hands in such regions. You have no jewellery, Emmie?”

“Do you see any verdure about me?” she retorted.

So when Gerald’s tardy movements had been overcome, off they started to their beloved slum, Emilia looking as if she were setting forth for Elysium, and they were seen no more, even when five o’clock tea was spread, and Anna making it for her Uncle Lance and his wife, who had just returned, full of political news; and likewise Lance said that he had picked up some intelligence for his sister. He had met General Mohun and Sir Jasper Merrifield, both connections of the Underwoods.

General Mohun lived with his sister at Rockstone, Sir Jasper, his brother-in-law, at Clipstone, not far off, and they both recommended Rockquay and its bay “with as much praise,” said Lance, “as the inhabitants ever give of a sea place.”

“Very good, except for the visitors,” said Geraldine.

“Exactly so. Over-built, over-everythinged, but still tolerable. The General lives there with his sister, and promises to write to me about houses, and Sir Jasper in a house a few miles off.”

“He is Bernard’s father-in-law?”

“Yes,” said Gertrude; “and my brother Harry married a sister of Lady Merrifield, a most delightful person as ever I saw. We tell my father that if she were not out in New Zealand we should all begin to be jealous, he is so enthusiastic about Phyllis.”

“You have never told us how Dr. May is.”

“It is not easy to persuade him that he is not as young as he was,” said Gertrude.

“I should say he was,” observed Lance.

“In heart—that’s true,” said Gertrude; “but he does get tired, and goes to sleep a good deal, but he likes to go and see his old patients, as much as they like to have him, and Ethel is always looking after him. It is just her life now that Cocksmoor has grown so big and wants her less. Things do settle themselves. If any one had told her twenty years ago that Richard would have a great woollen factory living, and Cocksmoor and Stoneborough meet, and a separate parish be made, with a disgusting paper-mill, two churches, and a clergyman’s wife—(what’s the female of whipper-snapper, Lance?)—who treats her as—”

“As an extinct volcano,” murmured Lance.

“She would have thought her heart would be broken,” pursued Gertrude. “Whereas now she owns that it is the best thing, and a great relief, for she could not attend to Cocksmoor and my father both. We want her to take a holiday, but she never will. Once she did when Blanche and Hector came to stay, but he was not happy, hardly well, and I don’t think she will ever leave him again.”

“Mrs. Rivers is working still in London?”

“Oh yes; I don’t know what the charities of all kinds and descriptions would do without her.”

“No,” said Clement from his easy-chair. “She is a most valuable person. She has such good judgment.”

“It has been her whole life ever since poor George Rivers’ fatal accident,” said Gertrude. “I hardly remember her before she was married, except a sense that I was naughty with her, and then she was terribly sad. But since she gave up Abbotstoke to young Dickie May she has been much brighter, and she can do more than any one at Cocksmoor. She manages Cocksmoor and London affairs in her own way, and has two houses and young Mrs. Dickie on her hands to boot.”

“How many societies is she chairwoman of?” said Lance. “I counted twenty-four pigeon-holes in her cabinet one day, and I believe there was a society for each of them; but I must say she is quiet about them.”

“It is fine to see the little hen-of-the-walk of Cocksmoor lower her crest to her!” said Gertrude, “when Ethel has not thought it worth while to assert herself, being conscious of being an old fogey.”

“And your Bishop?”

“Norman? I do believe he is coming home next year. I think he really would if papa begged him, but that he—my father, I mean—said he would never do so; though I believe nothing would be such happiness to him as to have Norman and Meta at home again. You know they came home on George’s death, but then those New Somersetas went and chose him Bishop, and there he is for good.”

“For good indeed,” said Clement; “he is a great power there.”

“So are his books,” added Geraldine. “Will Harewood sets great store by them. Ah! I hear our young folks—or is that a carriage?”

Emilia and Gerald came in simultaneously with Marilda, expanded into a portly matron, as good-humoured as ever, and better-looking than long ago.

She was already insisting on Gerald’s coming to a party of hers and bringing his violin, and only interrupted her persuasions to greet and congratulate Clement.

Gerald, lying back on a sofa, and looking tired, only replied in a bantering, lazy manner.

“Ah! if I asked you to play to the chimney-sweeps,” she said, “you would come fast enough, you idle boy. And you, Annie, do you know you are coming to me for the season when your uncle and aunt go out of town?”

“Indeed, Cousin Marilda, thank you, I don’t know it, and I don’t believe it.”

“Ah, we’ll see! You haven’t thought of the dresses you two are to have for the Drawing-Room from Worth’s, and Lady Caergwent to present you.”

Anna shook her head laughingly, while Gerald muttered—

“Salmon are caught with gay flies.”

They closed round the tea-table while Marilda sighed—

“Alda’s daughters are not like herself.”

“A different generation,” said Geraldine.

“See the Beggars Opera,” said Lance—

“‘I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter,
For when she’s drest with care and cost, and made all neat and gay,
As men should serve a cucumber, she throws herself away.’”

“Ah! your time has not come yet, Lance. Your little girls are at a comfortable age.”

“There are different ways of throwing oneself away,” said Clement. “Perhaps each generation says it of the next.”

“Emmie is not throwing herself away, except her chances,” said Marilda. “If she would only think of poor Ferdy Brown, who is as good a fellow as ever lived!”

“Not much chance of that,” said Geraldine.

Their eyes all met as each had glanced at the tea-table, where Emilia and Gerald were looking over a report together, but Geraldine shook her head. She was sure that Gerald did not think of his cousins otherwise than as sisters, but she was by no means equally sure of Emilia, to whom he was certainly a hero.

Anna had not heard the last of the season. Her mother wrote to her, and also to Geraldine, whom she piteously entreated not to let Anna lose another chance, in the midst of her bloom, when she could get good introductions, and Marilda would do all she could for her.

But Anna was obdurate. She should never see any one in society like Uncle Clem. She had had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no more. She should see the best pictures at the studios before leaving town, and she neither could nor would leave her uncle and aunt to themselves. So the matter remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn had been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent what remained of the Easter vacation in a little of exhibitions with Anna, a little of slumming with Emilia, a little of society impartially with swells and artists, and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern reading of all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed, yet could not understand, his uncle said, that he was an undeveloped creature.

CHAPTER V. – A HAPPY SPRITE