'Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to be in his bed?'
'Ha, Sibby!' cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery, withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. 'You see your baby has begun to run alone.'
'Ah, Master Lance, 'twas your doing. You always was the mischief.'
'No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was in the house; but I'll bring him back again.'
'May I not stay a little longer, Sibby,' said Clement, rather piteously, 'to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day.'
'If ye'll take yer jelly, sir,' said Sibby, 'as it's fainting ye'll be, and bringing our hearts into our mouths.'
So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance's children, then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only sing once, she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her once crowded nursery.
'What shall that once be, Clem?' asked Lance.
''Lead, kindly Light.''
'Is it not too much?' he inquired, glancing towards his widowed sister.
'I want it as much as he does,' she answered fervently.
At thirty-eight Lance's voice was, if possible, more perfect in sweetness, purity, and expression than it had been at twenty, and never had the poem, connected with all the crises of their joint lives, come more home to their hearts, filling them with aspiration as well as memory.
Then Lance helped his brother up, and was surprised, after those cheerful tones, to feel the weight so prone and feeble, that Gerald's support on the other side was welcome. Mrs. Grinstead followed to take Gertrude to her room and find her children's photographs.
The two young people began to smile as soon as they were left alone.
'Did you ever see Bexley?' asked Anna.
'Yes-an awful hole,' and both indulged in a merry laugh.
'My mother mentions it with pious horror,' said Anna.
'Life is much more interesting when it is from hand to mouth,' said Gerald, with a yawn. 'If I went in for sentiment, which I don't, it would be for Fiddler's Ranch; though it is now a great city called Violinia, with everything like everything else everywhere.'
'Not Uncle Lance.'
'Certainly not. For a man with that splendid talent to bury it behind a counter, mitigated by a common church organ, is as remarkable as absurd; though he seems to thrive on it. It is a treat to see such innocent rapture, all genuine too!'
'You worn-out old man!' laughed Anna. 'Aunt Cherry has always said that self-abnegation is the secret of Uncle Lance's charm.'
'All very well in that generation-ces bons jours quand nous etions si miserables,' said Gerald, in his low, maundering voice. 'Prosperity means the lack of object.'
'Does it?'
'In these days when everything is used up.'
'Not to those two-'
'Happy folk, never to lose the sense of achievement!'
'Poor old man! You talk as if you were twenty years older than Uncle Lance.'
'I sometimes think I am, and that I left my youth at Fiddler's Ranch.'
Wherewith he strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something so yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle came back and mentioned the tune the old cow died of.
Was Gerald, the orphan of Fiddler's Ranch, to be always the spoilt child of prosperity and the creature of modern life, with more aspirations than he saw how to fulfil, hampered as he was by duties, scruples, and affections?
CHAPTER III. DARBY AND JOAN
My reason haply more To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now I see our lances are but straws! SHAKESPEARE.
Lancelot saw his brother's doctors the next morning, and communicated to his wife the upshot of the interview when they were driving to their meeting in Mrs. Grinstead's victoria, each adorned with a big bunch of primroses.
'Two doctors! and not Tom,' said Gertrude.
'Both Brownlows. Tom knows them well, and wrote. One lives at the East-end, and is sheet anchor to Whittingtonia. He began with Clement, but made the case over to the cousin, the fashionable one, when we made the great removal.'
'So they consulted?'
'And fairly see the way out of the wood, though not by any means quit of it, poor Tina; but there's a great deal to be thankful for,' said Lance, with a long breath.
'Indeed there is!' said the wife, with a squeeze of the hand. 'But is there any more to be feared?'
'Everything,' Lance answered; 'heart chiefly, but the lungs are not safe. He has been whirling his unfortunate machine faster and faster, till no wonder the mainspring has all but broken down. His ideal always was working himself to death, and only Felix could withhold him, so now he has fairly run himself down. No rest from that tremendous parish work, with the bothers about curates, school boards and board schools, and the threatened ritual prosecution, which came to nothing, but worried him almost as much as if it had gone on, besides all the trouble about poor Alda, and the loss of Fulbert took a great deal out of him. When Somers got a living, there was no one to look after him, and he never took warning. So when in that Stinksmeech Mission he breathed pestiferous air and drank pestiferous water, he was finished up. They've got typhus down there-a very good thing too,' he added vindictively.
'I put it further back than Mr. Somers' going,' said Gertrude. 'He never was properly looked after since Cherry married. What is he to do now?'
'Just nothing. If he wishes to live or have a chance of working again, he must go to the seaside and vegetate, attempt nothing for the next six months, nor even think about St. Matthew's for a year, and, as they told me afterwards, be only able to go on cautiously even then.'
'How did he take it?'
'He laid his head against Cherry, who was standing by his chair, put an arm round her, and said, 'There!' and she gave him such a smile as I would not have missed seeing on any account. 'Mine now,' she said. 'Best!' he said. He is too much tired and worn out to vex himself about anything.'
'Where are they to go? Not to Ewmouth, or all the family worries would come upon them. Alda would give him no peace.'
'Certainly not there. Brownlow advises Rockquay. His delicate brother is a curate there, and it agrees with him better than any other place. So I am to go and see for a house for them. It is the very best thing for Cherry.'
'Indeed it is. Was not she like herself last night? Anna says she has never brightened up so much before! I do believe that if Clement goes on mending, the dear person will have a good time yet; nay, all the better now that she is free to be a thorough-going Underwood again.'
'You Underwooder than Underwood!'
'Exactly! I never did like-Yes, Lance, I am going to have it out. I do think Clement would have done better to let her alone.'
'He did let her alone. He told me so.'
'Yes, but she let out to me the difference between that time and the one of the first offer when dear Felix could not keep back his delight at keeping her; whereas she could not help seeing that she was a burthen on Clement's soul, between fear of neglecting her and that whirl of parish work, and that St. Wulstan's Hall was wanted for the girls' school. Besides, Wilmet persuaded her.'
'She did. But it turned out well. The old man worshipped her, and she was very fond of him.'
'Oh! very well in a way, but you know better, Lance.'
