The Pillars of the House Part 23

'Fancying herself worse, I mean, or wanting things. You know we must be so careful, and Mamma and the babies--'

'My dear, I know you have many to care for, and it is hard to strike the balance; but somehow your voice sounds to me as if Geraldine were the one you most willingly set aside.'

Wilmet did not like this, and said a little bit hastily, 'I am sure Geraldine has everything we can give her. If she complains, it is very wrong of her.'

'She has not said one word of complaint. Her grief and fear is only of being a burden on you. What brought me here was, that Mr. Audley was anxious about her.'

Wilmet was silent, a little abashed.

'Did you know that her ankle is painful again?'

'Sister Constance,' said Wilmet, 'I don't think you or Mr. Audley know how soon Cherry fancies all sorts of things. She does get into whiny states, and is regularly tiresome; and the more you notice her, the worse she is. I know Mamma thought so.'

'My dear, a mother can venture on wholesome neglect when a sister's neglect is not wholesome. I am not accusing you of neglect, mind; only you want experience and sympathy to judge of a thing with a frame like Cherry's. Now, I will tell you what I want to do. I am come to take her back with me, and get her treated by her kind doctor for a month or so, and the sea air and rest will send her back, most likely, in a much more cheery state.'

'Indeed!' cried Wilmet, startled; 'it is very good, but how could we do without her? Mamma and the children! If she could only wait till the holidays.'

'Let her only hear you say that, Wilmet, and it will do her more good than anything.'

'What--that she is of use? Poor little thing, she tries to be; but if Marilda could have had her way, and taken her instead of Alda, it would have been much better for her and all. Ah! there's Felix. May I call him in?'

Felix, das.h.i.+ng up to wash his hands, smooth his hair, and dress himself for the reading-room work instead of the printing-office, had much rather these operations had been performed before he was called to the consultation in the nursery; but he agreed instantly and solicitously, knowing much better than Wilmet what the dinners were to Cherry, and talking of her much more tenderly.

'Yes, poor little dear, she always breaks down more or less in the spring; but I thought she would mend when we could get her out more,'

he said. 'Do you think her really so unwell, Sister Constance?'

'Oh, no, no!' cried Wilmet, fearfully.

'Not very unwell, but only so that I long to put her under our good doctor, who comes to any one in our house, and who is such a fatherly old gentleman, that she would not go through the misery the thought of Mr. Rugg seems to cause her.'

'Dr. Lee?' asked Felix. 'Tom Underwood sent him to see my father once. I remember my father liked him, but called it waste for himself, only longed for his opinion on Cherry. Thank you, I am sure it is the greatest kindness.'

'But, Felix, how can she before the holidays?' cried Wilmet.

'Well, Mamma does not want her before dinner; and as to the kids, why can't you take Angel to school with you? Oh, yes, Miss Pearson will let you. Then Mr. Audley, or Mr. Bevan, is always up in the afternoon, and you come home by four.'

'Perhaps I could earlier on days when the girls go out walking,' said Wilmet. 'If it is to do Cherry good, I don't like to prevent it.'

Wilmet had evidently got all her household into their niches, and the disarrangement puzzled her. A wonderful girl she was to contrive as she did, and carry out her rule; but Sister Constance feared that a little dryness might be growing on her in consequence, and that, like many maidens of fifteen or sixteen, while she was devoted to the little, she was impatient of the intermediate.

So when they went down, and Cherry heard of the scheme, and implored against it in nervous fear of leaving home and dread of new faces, Wilmet, having made up her practical mind that the going was necessary, only made light of that value at home which was Cherry's one comfort, and which made herself feel it so hard to part with her, that this very want of tact was all unselfishness.

Felix was much more comfortable to Cherry when he made playful faces at the bear-garden that the dining-room would become without her, and showed plainly that he at least would miss her dreadfully. Still she nourished a hope that Mamma would say she should not go; but Mamma always submitted to the decrees of authority, and Wilmet and Felix were her authorities now. Sister Constance felt no misgiving lest Wilmet were hardening, when she heard the sweet discretion and cheerful tenderness with which she propounded the arrangement to the sick mother, without giving her the worry of decision, yet still deferentially enough to keep her in her place as the head of the family.

Yet it was with unnecessarily bracing severity that Wilmet observed to Geraldine, 'Now, don't you go crying, and asking questions, and worrying Mamma.'

'I suppose no person can be everything at once, far less a girl of fifteen,' thought Sister Constance, as she drove up to the station in the omnibus with Cherry, who was too miserable and bewildered to cry now; not that she was afraid of either the Sister or the Sisterhood, but only because she had never left home in her life, and felt exactly like a callow nestling shoved out on the ground with a broken wing.

In two months more the omnibus was setting her down again, much nearer plumpness, with a brighter face and stronger spirits. She had been very full of enjoyment at St. Faith's. She had the visitor's room, with delightful sacred prints and photographs, and a window looking out on the sea--a sight enough to fascinate her for hours.

She had been out every fine day on the sh.o.r.e; she had sat in the pleasant community-room with the kind Sisters, who talked to her as a woman, not a baby; she had plenty of books; one of the Sisters had given her daily drawing lessons, and another had read Ta.s.so with her; she had been to the lovely oratory constantly, and to the beautiful church on Sunday, and had helped to make the wreaths for the great May holidays; she had made many new friends, and among them the doctor, who, if he had hurt her, had never deceived her, and had really made her more comfortable than she had ever been for the last five years, putting her in the way of such self-management as might very possibly avert some of that dreadful liability to be cross.

But with all this, and all her grat.i.tude, Geraldine's longing had been for home. She was very happy, and it was doing her a great deal of good; but Mamma, and Felix, and Wilmet, and Sibby, and the babies, were tugging at her heart, and would not let it go out from them. She was always dreaming that Felix's heels were coming through his stockings, that Mamma was calling and n.o.body coming, or that Bernard was cutting off the heads of the twins with the blunt scissors. And when Dr. Lee's course of treatment was over, and Felix had a holiday to come and fetch her home, it is not easy to say which was happiest.

For she was so glad to be at home amid the dear faces, troubling and troublous as they often were, and so comfortable in the old wheel- ruts of care and toil, that it really seemed as if a new epoch of joy had begun. Felix openly professed how sorely he had missed her, and she clung to his arm with exulting mutual delight; but it was almost more triumphant pleasure to be embraced by Wilmet with the words: 'Dear, dear Cherry, there you are at last. You can't think how we have all wanted you! I never knew how useful you are.'

'I suppose,' said Felix quaintly, 'the world would rather miss its axis, and yet that does not move.'

'Yes, it does,' said Cherry, 'it wobbles. I suppose Wilmet says rotates, just about as much as I am going to do now I have got back into my own dear sphere again.

CHAPTER VI

THE CACIQUE

'Devouring flames resistless glow, And blazing rafters downward go, And never halloo, "Heads below!"

Nor notice give at all.'

Rejected Addresses.

It was a warm night in September, and Wilmet had laid herself down in bed in her nursery with a careful, but not an oppressed heart. About many matters she was happier than before. Her mother had revived in some degree, could walk from her bed-room to the sitting-room, and took more interest in what was pa.s.sing; and this the hopeful spirits of the children interpreted into signs of recovery. Geraldine's health and spirits had evidently taken a start for the better.

Fulbert, too, was off her mind--safe gone to a clergy-orphan foundation; and though Lancelot had not yet been elected, owing, Mr.

Audley imagined, to Lady Price's talk about their fine friends, Wilmet could not be sorry, he was such a little fellow, and the house would be so dull without his unfailing merriment and oddities. And though there had been sore disappointment that Mrs. Thomas Underwood had chosen to go to Brighton instead of coming home, there was the promise of a visit from Alda before Christmas to feed upon. Little Robina had come home for the summer holidays, well, happy, and improved, and crying only in a satisfactory way on returning to school. Moreover, Wilmet's finances had been pleasantly increased by an unexpected present of five pounds at the end of the half year from Miss Pearson, and the promise of the like for the next; increasing as her usefulness increased; and she was also allowed to bring Angela to school with her. The balance of accounts at Midsummer had been satisfactory, and Felix had proudly p.r.o.nounced her to be a brick of a housekeeper. And thus altogether Wilmet did not feel that the weight of care was so heavy and hopeless as when it first descended upon her; and she went to bed as usual, feeling how true her father's words of encouragement and hope had been, how kind friends were, how dear a brother Felix was, and above all, how there is verily a Father of the fatherless. And so she fell fast asleep, but was ere long waked by a voice from the inner room where Cherry slept with the door open.

'Wilmet, Wilmet, what is it?'

Then she saw that the room was aglow with red light from the window, and heard a loud distant hubbub. Hurrying out of bed, she flew to the window of Cherry's room, and drew up the blind. 'O Wilmet, is it fire?'

'Yes,' low and awe-struck, said Wilmet. 'Not here. No. There's nothing to be frightened at Cherry. It is out--out there. I think it must be the Fortinbras Arms. Oh, what a sight!'

'It is dreadful!' said Cherry, shrinking trembling to the foot of her little bed, whence she could see the window. 'How plain one can see everything in the room! Oh! the terrible red glow in the windows! I wonder if all the people are safe. Wilmet, do call Felix.'

'I will,' said Wilmet, proceeding in search of her clothes; but her hands shook so that she could hardly put them on. They longed for Felix as a protection, and yet Cherry could hardly bear to let her sister go out of sight!

'I only hope Mamma does not hear,' said Wilmet.

'How lucky her room looks out the other way! but, oh! Wilmet, don't fires spread?'

'Felix, and Mr. Audley will see about us in time, if there is any fear of that,' said Wilmet trembling a good deal as she wrapped a shawl round Cherry, who sat in a heap on her bed, gazing fascinated at the red sky and roofs. Felix slept at the back of the house; her knock did not waken him, but her entrance startled both him and Lance.

'Felix, the Fortinbras Arms is on fire.--Hush, Lance; take care; the little ones and Mamma! O Felix, do come to our room.'

They followed her there in a few seconds, but they had only glanced from the window before they simultaneously rushed away, to the increased dismay of their sisters, to whom their manly instinct of rus.h.i.+ng into the fray had not occurred.

'I'll go down. I'll try to catch them,' said Wilmet; and she too was gone before Cherry could call to her. She found that Felix and Mr.

Audley were in the act of undoing the front door, and this gave her just time to fly down with the entreaty that Felix would not leave them. It was a great deal more to ask of him than she knew.