down till Alda grew desperate, and sallied out to tell them that it was past eleven.
It was only such snatches of time that Felix could give to home affairs, for his hands were full of arrears of business, and the excitement respecting Mr. Smith necessarily occupied him. Pending the arrival of letters from the Rector, every tongue was in commotion, and the reading-room was a focus of debate and centre of intelligence. So many letters, either in assault or defence, were addressed to the editor of the Pursuivant, that only a supplement as big as the Times could have contained them. Every poor person who had not had every demand supplied from the charities was running about, adding to the grievance at every encounter with tender-hearted lady or justice-loving gentleman, whose blood boiled over into a letter for the Pursuivant, which, when sifted and refused, was transferred to the Dearport Hermes, or Erms, as most of its supporters termed it.
CHAPTER XXII. THE REAL THING AND NO MISTAKE
'With asses all his time he spent,
Their club's perpetual president,
He caught their manners, looks, and airs-
An ass in everything but ears.'
GAY.
The master of the house was unable to contribute much more than his name to the propriety of the arrival of the suitors, and this made Wilmet the more determined that Geraldine should precede them. Nor, since the half- crown must be disbursed on an escort for her, did the housewifely conscience object to the expedition, for Wilmet could not but long to thank the Superior and Sister Constance, and to obtain Dr. Lee's advice as to future management. Her coming was great joy to Cherry, who had dreaded the meeting almost with a sense of guilt, though still hoping Felix had been silent on her motive; and Wilmet did not betray him, but only treated her sister with a mixture of almost shy tenderness and reverence. Nor did Cherry dare to ask a question as to Wilmet's own affairs, nor even about Ferdinand Travis, lest she should seem to be leading in that direction. However, Wilmet, in a persuasive tone, communicated that Ferdinand had been long without writing, and though Cherry tried to be sorry for Alda, her spirit quailed at the state of temper her sister evidently meant to prepare her for.
But fate was more kind than she expected. That very Saturday brought both gentlemen, and by the same train. They made each other out as they were leaving their bags at the Fortinbras Arms, and arrived together in marked contrast-the tall, dark, regular-featured, soft-eyed Life-guardsman, and the little sandy, freckled, sun-dried engineer; and thus two courtships had to be carried on in the two rooms, only supplemented by the narrow parallelogram of a garden! For Ferdinand Travis was back again, rather amused at the family astonishment at the rapidity of his journey to America, which to his Transatlantic notions of travel was as nothing, and indeed had been chiefly performed in a big steamer, where he could smoke to his heart's content.
For the first few days there was a good deal of restraint: Wilmet was more shy than in the unconscious days of Bexley, while John Harewood was devoid of his family's assurance and bonhomie, and so thoroughly modest and diffident as to risk nothing by precipitation in begging for a decision. Felix, inexperienced, and strongly sensible of his office as guardian of his sister's dignity, would not hint at the result of his investigations into Wilmet's sentiments; and it was to Geraldine that Captain Harewood's attentions were chiefly paid. Knowing Alda's resolute monopoly of her Cacique, Cherry at first held back, and restrained her keen enjoyment of real conversation; but she found Wilmet thankful to have the talk done for her, and content to sit at work, listening almost in silence, but proud that her Captain should be interested in her sister, and pleased to see Cherry's expressive face flash and sparkle all over for him. While Wilmet was at Miss Pearson's, Cherry was his chief resource; they read, drew, and talked, and in that half-hour's out- of-door exercise, which Dr. Lee had so strongly enjoined, his arm was at her service. They were soon on the borders of confidence, though never quite plunging over them. Perhaps the broad open-mouthed raillery at his home made the gentle reticence of the Underwoods the more agreeable to him; at any rate, he did not try to break through it, nor to presume beyond the step he had gained. Alda, who could best perhaps have acted as helper, had her own affairs to attend to; and they were evidently unsatisfactory, for Ferdinand was more than ever the silent melancholy Don, and she was to domestic eyes visibly cross, and her half-year at home had rendered her much less capable of concealing ill-humour. Something was owing to wear and suspense, together with the effects of the summer heat and confined monotonous life without change or luxury; but much was chargeable on the manifestations of temper to which she had given way in the home circle. She told Wilmet the trouble, which Ferdinand wished to have kept from open discussion till he had received a final statement of his means to lay before Felix. He had received no remittances since the spring, and on demanding his own share of the capital and investments, had found it, instead of the lion's, a ridiculously small portion. The whole fortunes of the house of Travis had been built on his mother's inheritance; but the accounts laid before him represented all the unprosperous speculations undertaken by his father, William, while the small ventures of his Uncle Alfred had, alongside of them, swelled into the huge wealth of which Ferdinand had been bred to believe himself the heir! So palpably outrageous was this representation, that he had persuaded himself that personal investigation on the spot would clear it up, or perhaps more truly his blood was up, and he could not bear to be inactive. He had rushed over to New York, and of course he had been baffled. Exposure was of no use where sympathy was for the lucky rather than the duped and luckless, and where the Anglicised Life-guardsman could expect it least of all-at a time, too, when all business affairs were convulsed by the uncertainties of civil war. Alda could not believe at first that he had done his utmost, and seemed to have reproached him with weakness and mismanagement; but by her own account she had roused the innate lion. He would not tell her what had passed in the interview with his uncle, but he had shuddered over the remembrance; and when she upbraided him with not having gone far enough, he terrified her by the fierceness with which he had turned upon her, bidding her never recur to what she knew nothing about, and muttering to himself, 'Far enough-thank God I went no further, or I should not be here now!' and then falling into deep gloom. He had certainly made Alda afraid of him, and she burst into tears as she told Wilmet, declaring herself the most miserable girl in the world.
'No, that you can't be, Alda, while he is so good and true.'
'But he says he must sell out! Think of that! Never was anybody so taken in as I have been!'
'Don't talk so, Alda. It is just as if you had engaged yourself to a Life-guardsman and nothing else.'
'I wonder how you would like to be buried in some horrid wild place in America, where you would never see anybody!'
'One would not want to see anybody but him.'
'That's your nonsense! How tired of it one would be!'
'There would be no time. It would be so nice to do everything for him oneself!'
'In some horrid uncivilised place, with no servants! I'm not going to be a drudge. It is all very well for you, who like it, and have no notion of society, but for me-! And there he is furious to take me out. Men grow so wild and rough too in such places. You never saw anything blaze like his eyes!'
'I don't understand you. Could not you trust yourself anywhere with him?'
'You have no right to say such things,' pouted Alda, 'only because I have a little common prudence. Some one must have it!'
There was no denying that life in the far west would be a foolish thing either for or with Alda; and Felix thought so when Ferdinand came to him for consultation over the letters that made it finally clear that Alfred Travis had appropriated everything available but half a block of unreclaimed land on the wrong side of America, and a few thousands invested in Peter Brown's firm; and what was worse, the sudden failure of the supplies had occasioned serious debts. Ferdinand's own plan was to clear these off with the price of his commission, and take Alda out with him to rule in American luxury over the unbounded resources of the magnificent land, the very name and scent of which had awakened in him his old prairie-land instincts, and her absolute refusal and even alarm at his enjoyment had greatly mortified him. 'She should not even have to rough it,' he said. 'I could make her like a queen out there, if she would only believe it.'
Felix could not but think Alda might be wise, though it was not pretty wisdom. Go out alone and make the fortune! Ferdinand did not seem to think the separation possible. He said he would rather go to work in Peter Brown's office, where he had already a hold; and his familiarity with Spanish would secure him usefulness and promotion, and five or six years would bring them into a position to marry. He did not look fit for desk-work in London, but his mind was made up to any privation, so that he could be in reach of Alda, and hope to give her what he had once thought easily within his grasp.
