The Pillars of the House Part 93

'That ought to be a bit of bare skin.'

'No, no--a pair of feet--motto, "Off, vile lendings!"'

'I say, I don't think you can get any farther,' interposed Somerville. 'I've been on four rocks farther, and I'm sure you will never get back again if you go on.'

'Oh, that's base! I'm sure this one isn't so hard.'

She was creeping along a ledge, holding the sea-weed with one hand and Lance by the other.

'I really don't think it pa.s.sable,' he said; 'there's scarcely the width of one's foot beyond.'

'Hurrah!' shouted Frank. 'Here's the father of all the Daisianas!'

'Oh! oh! he's my cousin. I must see him!' cried Gertrude, with a scramble and a laugh, which ended in a sudden slip--luckily, not into the open sea, but into a very steep-sided bath-like pool; and Lance, whom of course she gripped hard, was pulled after her, both over head and ears; and though they scrambled on their feet in a moment, there they stood up to their shoulders in water.

'Get the Daisiana now you are there!' shouted Frank.

'How are we ever to get out?' said Gertrude, looking up the walls, six feet at least on the lowest side.

'If we had a rope,' said Charlie.

'Make signals--call,' said Somerville, all suiting the action to the word. 'No, they don't hear! they are all singing away. You, Franky, you're too little to be any good, make the best of your way to call somebody.'

'The tide will come in!' said Frank. 'Mamma and Aunt Emmie were once shut in by the tide, and Uncle Edwin. And there was a fellow who was quite drowned--dead--and that was why I was named Francis.'

'That's what you may call a cheering reminiscence at a happy moment,'

said Lance, recollecting that he was far more nearly a man than any one present, and instinctively feeling the need of brightening all into cheerful activity, for the girl looked thoroughly frightened.

'Yes, Lord Frank, the best thing you can do is to go for somebody; but we'll be out long first. Can't we make a rope! Have you a sash or anything Miss Gertrude? Don't fear, we'll soon be out.'

Happily she had both a sash and a broad ribbon round her hat; and Lance tore off his puggery.

'I can do it best,' called Charlie. 'I know all the sailors' knots.'

'It will never bear,' said Gertrude.

'Oh yes, it will. You'll not trust your whole weight to it. Is it done?'

'Besides, how can they draw me up?'

'We'd best get behind that rock, Sum,' suggested Charlie, 'then she won't pull us in.'

Charlie's sailor experience was very useful; and he shouted advice to Lance, who was tying the extemporary rope round Gertrude, not very easily, owing to the material, and to its being done under water.

'Now, then, you do your best at climbing--here,' he said. 'They'll pull you; and look! There, first my knee--yes--now my shoulder-- now--' And standing for a moment on his shoulder, Gertrude was really able with a desperate grapple to surmount the wall of her prison, and scramble out beside the two cousins, whose pulls had been very helpful.

Lance's clambering was a harder matter, for he did not venture to trust much to the rope, though the girl's strength was added to that of the two boys; and it was a severe climb up the scarcely indented, slippery, moist, slimy rock, where his hands and feet could hardly find any hold; and when at length he reached the top, he was so panting and dizzy, that Somerville at first held him to hinder his slipping backward into the sea. No one could get at King or Queen Daisiana, so it was left in its glory; while the young people struggled back over rocks that seemed much steeper, and pools far deeper, than in their advance; Lance still trying to be helpful, but with a mazed sense of the same sort of desperate effort with which he had run back with Bill's verses; for not only had his small strength been overtaxed, but the immersion in water was affecting his head.

Lord Francis had made much quicker progress; and boy as he was, showed his breeding by not rus.h.i.+ng open-mouthed on the party with his intelligence, but seeking the Captain, who was smoking the pipe of solitude upon a rock apart. He at once sent Frank to the servants, who were enjoying the relics of the feast, to fetch some wine, and tell the boat's crew to make ready at once, and then went off himself to seek Mrs. Rivers. Felix, who had spied the little messenger speeding up to the Captain, was already on his way to the rocks, and reached the party in good time; for draggled, drenched, and with clinging garments, they were so slow in getting on, that it was no delusion that the water was higher, and the rocks lower; and even Gertrude had neither breath nor spirits to gabble when that grave anxious face met her, and a strong careful hand lifted and helped, first her, then Lance, up and down every difficulty; and when she perceived how the newcomer avoided point-blank looking at the bare ancles that had sometimes to make long stretches, a burning red came up into her face, half of shame, half of indignation at being made ashamed. And after all, when the place where her hose and shoon had been left was reached, the niched shelf in the rock turned out to have been surrounded by the tide, so that they were quite unattainable either by herself or the little boys; and Felix, putting the arm by which Lance had held by him over Somerville's shoulder told them to go on before, and himself made two long strides and a scramble before he could reach the boots and stockings, and give them to the young lady, unable to help looking nearly as grave and vexed as if it had been Angela herself; indeed, he was vexed, for he had an ideal of the young ladyhood of his mother's old native region, and did not like it to be disturbed. He moved away far enough for her to think he had left her to her fate, till she was on her feet and coming on, and then there he was again, in a moment the attentive squire. Revived by her short rest, and on less perilous ground, she glanced at his face in readiness to disperse her discomfort with something saucy, but somehow, it would not do; and she was tamely conducted to terra firma, where her sister saluted her with 'O Daisy!

what a child you are to have charge of!'

That restored her enough to answer, 'I'm quite delighted something should have happened under your keeping! No harm done. Salt water never gives cold.'

'I don't mind it for you,' said the elder sister; 'you have not been ill.--But indeed, Mr. Underwood, I am very sorry,' she added. 'What will be best for your brother?'

'Here!' said Captain Audley, taking from Frank a flask of sherry, and overruling the objection made by the brothers that stimulants were forbidden. He further insisted on taking Lance at once to his own berth on board the yacht while Mrs. Rivers meant to conduct her sister to the preventive house.

'So,' said Lance, rather ruefully, as he shook hands, 'there ends the SSSS.'

'Not at all! Its use is proved. We should have been cooked by this time in the Daisiana cauldron, if we had had great c.u.mbrous boots on.'

It was a valiant effort, and she cast a glance out of the corner of her eye at the elder brother, but it had not relaxed a muscle of his grave anxious face, which was in truth chiefly bent on watching Lance's involuntary s.h.i.+verings; and she again turned crimson, perhaps from her share of the chill, and was dragged off, muttering, 'What intolerable folks guardian brothers are! Henry Ward was a mild specimen compared to this one!'

About noon on the following day, Mrs. Pettigrew's little girl abruptly opened the parlour door, and with 'Please, ye're wanted,'

turned in a tall, thin, grey-haired, spectacled gentleman, who, as Lance started up from the sofa, exclaimed, 'Don't disturb yourself; I came to thank you, and inquire after you after the adventure my mad- cap daughter led you into.'

'I hope she is all right,' said Lance, solicitously.

'As right as Daisiana himself; more so than I fear you are. Let me see you comfortable. Lie down again, pray.'

'Oh, I don't care about lying down, thank you, Sir; I only sleep for want of something to do;' but though he did not put his feet up, he was feeling far too languid not to relax his bolt-upright att.i.tude, and lean back on his pillows.

'That will do. Bad headache?'

'It is nearly gone off now, thank you, Sir; it was bad all night, but it is much better since I have been asleep.'

'Let me see,' laying his left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fas.h.i.+on--eh?'

'I meant to have pulled her out.'

'Instead of which she made a lad into a ladder to climb out on.'

Which bad pun served the purpose of making the boy laugh enough to be at his ease. 'She is much indebted, and so am I. I like to meet an old friend's son. Are you alone?'

'My brother is only gone to the post-office. He will be in before long; but it saves a post to take the letters before twelve, and he ought to be out as much as he can.'

'Is he here on his own account, or yours?'

'He came down first, before I was ill. It was bother and overwork and a cough. Everything always does come to worry him, whenever he ought to have rest or pleasure.' And Lance who was thoroughly weary and dispirited, was nearly ready to cry.

'Even when he goes out for a picnic, young ladies must needs drown themselves!'

This made Lance smile; but he added, with a quivering lip, 'He would not go to bed till I could go to sleep last night, and that was not till past two, and he looks quite done up this morning.'

'Is any one attending you?'

'Dr. Manby did at Minsterham--n.o.body here.'

'What's been amiss with you--fever?'

'Plenty of fever, but it was from sun-stroke.'