Chapter XLIII: Princess Fair-Star (2)

Another moment, and Captain Audley crossed her, and bowed to her, as she repaired to the drawing-room, from the window of which she saw the two young things, not idling--Stella never dawdled--but cutting flowers, and filling the whole stock of vases which she had brought out, to renew the cheerfulness of the house for its convalescent master.

The sight was pretty, but Cherry wondered whether she ought to go out and protect her little sister's peace, deciding however, that whatever harm there was must have been done already, and that accessibility was her best condition for the present; and so she sat down to begin some of the numerous letters, though their subject was most incongruous with that of her anticipations, and she wrote with divided attention, till Felix came into the room.

'Cherry,' said he, deliberately placing himself on the settee, 'Had you any notion of this?'

'Only the last day or two, very dimly. Has it come to anything?'

'That I want to ascertain. Which did you think it was?'

'The poor little star, I'm afraid.'

'Why afraid?'

'Because there must be breakers ahead, and that poor little dear need not have been molested for years to come.'

'Is she molested?'

'Look! Ah, no! you can't turn; but if you could see them on the lawn!'

'She is such a child. She might be with him as simply as with Will.'

'I'm afraid that is over. Is not the Captain dead against it?'

'No; that's the odd thing. She seems to have vanquished him on the spot by one glint of her bonnie blue een, and he has not the heart to say No; but the worst of it is, he has no power.'

'He should not have let his son loose here.'

'So he allows, and that I saw clearer than he--which I did not, for my suspicions were in another direction, and I fear not without cause, on one side at least.'

'That's the horrid part of it!'

'So persuaded was I, that I went on at cross-purposes at first, and had to ask point-blank which of my sisters he meant, but I don't think I betrayed Angela. What is to be done about her?'

'Oh! tiresome love! Why could they not let you alone a little while? I think Angela has some notion, and that it must be what has made her so very queer.'

'Perhaps! I thought it was her share in the disaster, poor girl!'

'That would not have made her almost spiteful to poor little Stella.'

'Where is she now?'

'Gone to the penny-club business as usual.'

'I hope this will be over before she comes back. I must speak to my little one, only first let me hear what you think about it. The Captain has been most straightforward with me. He explained that he never was a favourite at home, and his marriage was a case of extorted consent. His wife was never cordially treated, and he could not forget the slights she received. Neither party wanted the other, and he had got into his lonely yachting existence, when, unluckily for him, his elder brother's death has rendered him and his boy important. The widow lives with the old people, and he thinks they want Charlie to marry the daughter. They want him to spend his vacations with them, and he is always shirking.'

'I have heard him bemoan himself.'

'The worst of it is, that if the old people take offence, they are likely to leave the bulk of the property to the grand-daughter. The Captain says he hates it all, and would freely let it go; but at Charlie's age, it would not be right to let him incur such a forfeit blindly.'

'They are both too young for anything.'

'Precisely so; but the thing must be either suffered or not, and it is a mere subterfuge to call it nothing, and let him be always about here. If the child knows nothing, the boy's mouth could be stopped, at least till he has taken his degree. I came to see whether that be still possible. You think not? Well, I have some hope of her simplicity. If not, what think you of this? We tell them they are a couple of babies, and bind the fellow to keep away somewhere till he has taken his degree, when it will either have blown over, or he can judge whether to take to a profession and endanger his prospects, and there will be some test whether he really cares for the poor little dear.'

'I'm afraid there is trial for her any way!'

'The difficulty I foresee, is in keeping the Captain up to anything. If he were set against it, our part would be much easier; but he seems to have surrendered at first sight of our Fair-Star, and he is weaker, more impulsive, and undecided than I could have conceived.'

'He has been indulging his feelings all his life. I should not wonder if Charlie were the more sensible.'

'Our other baby! So! I must see how far it has gone.'

'No! I'll call her. Don't move.'

'A shocking reversal,' resigning himself, 'but I believe you had rather. I don't mind walking; it is getting up and sitting down that beats me. Don't startle the child. There's still hope that he has not stirred the waters.'

Cherry had no such hope, as she stood at the conservatory door, calling Stella. Both came up to her; and as she sent the girl to her brother, Charlie looked at her with an anxious 'Well?' as the colour deepened in his honest face.

'I think your father is in the study,' she evasively said.

'Come, now, Miss Underwood, I am sure you know all about it. What sort of a chance have I?'

'I don't think you ought to have any chance at your age. Indeed, Charlie, I do wish you had let it alone for the present.'

'I assure you, I didn't know I wasn't going to let it alone; but what could I do when I found the dear little darling crying enough to overset a mill-stone? One couldn't but do one's best to comfort her; and when I found I had really got over the line, and been making sheer love, I could not but have it out and go on with it.'

'Then was it only that moment?'

'No! no! no! I'd known her for my Star, my light, my darling, ever since I can't tell when; but of course I knew what a shindy there would be, and as long as I could come here and look at her, I could have gone on quietly till I was of age, and could fight it out. Only when it came to her being lonely--'

'Do you think she knew it for what you say?'

Charlie shrugged his shoulders, laughed, and coloured.

'And your father?'

'That _is_ comical,' he said confidentially. 'He was dead against it! hummed and hawed, called me no end of fools, said I should be cut off with a shilling, and told me how my grandmother bullied my poor mother. I'd hard work to haul him here, and he said it was only to beg the Squire's pardon, cram full of objections. Well, there was the darling girl gathering forget-me-nots in the garden, with Scamp and the doves round her. "That's she, bless her!" says I. "Is it she?" says he; and with that, he whips out of the skiff, leaving me to moor it, you see, looks her full in the face--I believe he hadn't seen a young lady to look at since my mother died--"Are you Charlie's little Stella?" says he; and behold, there he is, giving her a regular paternal kiss, before I could get quit of the boat. And when one's own father is all right, who is to make objections?'

Stella's examination had been short. Felix held out his hands, took hers, and gazing into her blushing face, said, 'Look at me, my child, and tell me if you know what Captain Audley is come for.'

She hung her flower-like head, and answered, 'I think I do.'

'And what do you think of it?'

'O Brother,' the eyes overflowed, 'I didn't know it was _that_, when he came and was so good to me, or I would not have been so unkind in all the trouble. I only thought how nice he was. Indeed it was not forgetting Tedo.'

'No, indeed, my sweet; that was the last thing I meant. Only, since you do know the meaning of it, tell me--whether you like it.'

'Like! O Brother! It did just seem to take away all the unhappiness. I couldn't help it, you know!'

'Ah! No, no, my dear, you didn't hurt me. Now will you be patient, so as not to get Charlie into trouble, and trust me?'

'Trust you, Brother?' in a tone of wonder, as if it would have been impious to do otherwise; and then she faltered, 'I thought Captain Audley didn't mind it _much_--for, Brother, he kissed me.'

'He is ready to like you with all his heart; but he has a father too, and can't do all he pleases. So you may have to be kept waiting to grow older.'

'Oh yes,' said Stella; 'I know I'm too young, and I could not go away from everybody for a long long time.'

So the edict was given in form, with more assumption of authority on Felix's part than had been his wont towards his sisters' lovers; but he saw it was the best way to spare the little maid from what might prove trifling and end in disappointment, and the young lover from unfair usage of his grandparents, and its punishment. Someone must be resolute, and the father would not; so the brother had to depict the impossibility of fostering an attachment between an undergraduate and a child, under the certainty of displeasing the head of the family.

Charlie argued that it was hard his father's consent should not suffice--that he cared not for the property--he would go to his uncle in Australia, become printer's-devil at Bexley--anything to be free to win his Cynosure, while his father seemed far more disposed to applaud him than to say, Nonsense; and it fell to Felix to explain that whatever course Charlie might decide on, it must not be till his Oxford career was ended, and that till then there must be neither engagement nor correspondence, and the vacation must be spent elsewhere, since daily meetings in present circumstances would be a wrong towards all parties concerned.

Captain Audley could not gainsay that this was both reasonable and honourable, and even reminded Charlie of an invitation from Lord Liddesdale, to pay a visit at his foreign embassy in the long vacation. Meantime there was to be nothing to bind either party; but as Charlie had to return to Oxford that night, a parting interview was allowed in the drawing-room, in which he raved a good deal, and she was very quiet and rational.

Then Felix was left to repose, which he so sorely needed as to have to give up both coming in to dinner, and driving to meet Mr. Fulmort.

'Sisters' lovers are tough customers,' he said. 'Thank you, Cherry,' as she elevated the front and lowered the back of his chair, so as to render it a couch; 'it is well for me that you would have nothing to say to the sculptor.'

She kissed him silently; and as she looked at the pallid sunken face, with the eyes closed, she recollected her declaration that he must be more to her dead than any other man alive, and though far from retracting the sentiment, she wished she had uttered nothing so ill-omened.

The effect on Angela was the present anxiety; and it was impossible not to feel it staved off by the announcement, through a school-child, that she was staying to dine and spend the rest of the day at Miss Hepburn's. Whatever this might portend, it was a present relief to Cherry, though Clement looked very gloomy upon it; and the Vicar of St Matthew's had not been many hours in the house before Cherry, rather to her own surprise, found herself invited into Clement's library, to assist at a council over the perplexing girl.

Neither brother nor sister could say more than that, up to the moment of the accident, she had been in her usual state of ultra-observance and ultra-gaiety, alike wilful and exaggerated, and that on finding herself the real delinquent in the fatal catastrophe, she had petrified into hard fierce reserve. On Sunday alone had she been at Church, and then had been absent from the Feast where all the family had met; she had thrown over all the little ecclesiastical offices that had been her pride and pleasure, and repelled all sympathy, except perhaps that of the ladies to whom she had been most opposed, and whom she had derided and contemned for years. Indeed, she might be said to have hoisted their flag, for the cross round her neck had been discarded, and her hair had descended from the stupendous fabric which no asseveration would avail to persuade the Miss Hepburns to be of native growth, and was now coiled about her head--with an effect, certainly, preferable in itself, save for the signification. Things were come to a droll pass, that the absence of Angel's lofty coiffure should be complained of by one vicar to the other; but Mr. Fulmort had been Angela's first guide, who had prepared her for Confirmation and Communion, and Clement had from the first looked to him to deal with her; but Mr. Fulmort was scarcely encouraging. 'Nothing will be gained by forcing me on her,' he said. 'If I cannot draw, driving will be of no avail.'

'If Miss Isabella has got hold of her,' said Cherry, 'she is likely to imitate the people in books whose first act of virtue is shunning their priest; and when Angel's conscience gets on the side of perverseness, there is no saying what she will not do.'

'One is so in the dark!' said Clement.

'I think I can guess the process,' said the elder clergyman. 'Only actual experience teaches that no system is infallible.'

'Of all plans of education, I should have chosen hers!' said Clement.

'So we trusted to the framework!'

'And how admirably it has answered with Robina, and many more.'

'As far as we see; but this is what I imagine this poor child's history. She has more vehemence and energy than depth, and her musical taste found ritual so congenial, that excitability passed for devotion, in spite of the lack of trustworthy fruit of submission or self-discipline.'

'I believe it did.'

'So she is in a manner justified in complaining that she was allowed to trust to the shell alone. She has been content with the outward form all this time; and when real sorrow makes her find its failure, she is naturally distrustful of the whole teaching that was to her mere surface work.'

'Nothing could be more ungrateful, or improper, than to charge it on you, Sir,' cried the younger vicar.

'Less unjust than you think, though there may be some human nature in it too. When my sister collected those girls, we thought, like most who try experiments, that we had a set of puppets, on whom certain wires must produce certain results--and if we saw untoward specimens, charged it on the want of our system.'

'The system is not ours, but Divine.'

'There was a Divine system in the Wilderness, but with how many did it succeed?'

'According to that,' said Clement, 'nothing would be anybody's fault.'

'And,' said Geraldine, 'did it not succeed with all the mighty men who overlived Joshua?'

'True; but even of that generation, who had never seen Egypt, there were many who lacked faith to drive out the Canaanites. It is the same story over and over again. People who have been led out of something like Egypt, are apt to think those secure who have never been from under the shadow of the Cloud, and have known no bread but manna. We forget how much depends on being "mixed with faith in the hearers."'

'Faith cannot be given from without,' said Clement.

'Certainly not; but looking back at our dealing with our earlier pupils, I suspect that we worked away with the peculiarities we had newly discovered, rather than with the great universal foundations. I am sure we did so with you, Underwood: though happily there was stuff enough beneath to prevent us from doing more than make you unnecessarily priggish.'

'Geraldine can testify that that was done to your hand, Sir,' said Clement, laughing. 'I believe I should have made any place I cared for odious in the ears of my family.'

'We did not know how much party spirit we infused, fancying that once in our groove all must go right. Now, I believe Angela ought to have been held back. She would have done better in a commonplace well-principled school.'

'I don't think her teachers were deceived in her,' said Cherry.

'No; but the observances which she genuinely enjoyed deceived herself. Probably at a dull bare service she would have been naughty and uninterested, but then she would have known her religion for what it was worth. I don't say that I see what ought to have been done, if we could begin over again; but I do see that she has found out her unreality in the time of distress, and concludes that the fault is in what we taught her. To use another metaphor, she thinks that because the Cross has been decked with flowers, it has been no Cross at all; but I trust she is learning the way thither.'

'By casting aside the means?' said Clement.

'Because to her they had not been means, but mirages. If I understand rightly, this is her first true awakening.'

'But is it to be a regular case of conversion?'

'I hope so. I pray so.'

'Is she to be left to these women, to learn contempt for the Sacraments and the Church?'

'Are they Churchwomen?'

'After a fashion! I don't believe they hold a single Catholic doctrine.'

'They never say the Creed--eh?'

Clement looked abashed.

'If she were likely to be led into an act of schism, it might be needful to interfere; but if they seem to be bringing her to the sense of repentance and individual spiritual contact, which is the essential need, resistance would do more harm than good.'

'Why should she not come the right way?'

'Do you remember Ezekiel's pure springs, which the evil shepherds had fouled with their feet, so that the flock could not drink thereof? Without classing you among evil shepherds, whatever I may do with myself, is it not natural to turn from what has been without benefit?'

'By her own fault. And is she to follow their ways, without check or warning?'

'They are communicants?'

'Four times a year. Frequent Celebrations seem to them superstitious and formal.'

'And irreverent,' added Cherry.

'Is it not doubtful whether our poor girl have been reverent? Should not we perhaps be keeping her back for a time?'

'Not for their reasons.'

'No; but if she be in the way to what she needs and we have failed to afford her, it seems to me that while it is within the Church, we had better abstain from distracting her attention by trying to make her do things in our own way.'

'_Our_ way, Sir?' said Clement, whose mind was never rapid; 'it is the right way. I cannot understand sitting still to see my sister carried off into ultra Low Church.'

'Better that than incur the risk of taking party spirit for zeal and diverting her attention from vital religion to the excitement of persecution.'

'There's nothing that would gratify her more,' said Cherry.

'It is exceedingly mortifying,' added Mr. Fulmort, 'to see one's own child going over to a rival battalion, which disesteems our ensigns and war-cries; but by your own account it is no worse--the army is all one. And for ourselves, nothing can be more wholesome. I wish it all fell on me, since the mismanagement began with me; but unluckily it comes most heavily on you, both as brother and parish-priest.'

Clement was of course disarmed and humbled. 'No doubt you are right, Sir: I will try to accept the personal vexation as my due; I did not know how much it biassed me. Shall you take no notice?'

'I shall express the interest I feel as old friend and guide, but I shall not insist on confidence.'

He could afford to bide this time, for he contrived to give a parson's week, on finding how heavily this sad Whitsuntide had told upon Clement, coming at the end of a clergyman's hardest half-year. Change could not be had, for Felix was not fit for a journey, and was still so much disabled as to be unable to put on his clothes unaided; but nothing could be better for both brothers than the presence of this friend, bringing them fresh interests from the great arena of conflict between good and evil, and giving warm sympathy and satisfaction to their efforts in their own field. One of his scholars, at least, he confessed to have far surpassed his expectations. He had never expected to see his tall, docile, self-complacent chorister all the man that the Vicar of Vale Leston Abbas had become; but on the other hand, Angela, once almost his devotee, eluded him by every means in her power, and never willingly opened her lips in his presence. When at last he succeeded in catching her, and expressing surprise that she was rushing away when the church-bell was ringing, her reply was, 'I've done with those things!'

'With prayers?'

'With heartless forms.'

'So I should hope.'

'Let me go, Mr. Fulmort; I don't want to be ungrateful, but it is all one great mistake.'

'I am afraid you have found it so.'

His tone was sad, and made her exclaim, 'You feel it too, then? Oh, come and learn as I have learnt--see as I have seen!' Some men would have laughed at this sudden reversal of the order of things; but Mr. Fulmort felt the matter far too seriously, and the sound of inquiry he emitted encouraged her to go on. 'Oh; the hollowness of my old life--the utter lack of all aid or light when the hour of darkness came--the misery, the agony, that racked me all day and all night, when all you told me to trust to proved broken reeds. Would that I could proclaim to all what it was to see at last in Whom--in what assurance lies peace!'

'Yes, my child,' he said. 'There truly lies the only hope. May you be able to grasp it firmly, and for ever, and render the fruits of faith and repentance apparent in your life.'

'I shall never put my trust in my own works again. I hate them--I loathe them.'

'You cannot do better than repent, and bring them for forgiveness.'

'To the foot of the Cross?'

'Certainly.'

'Then you really see the hollowness and emptiness of the system of thinking them pardoned by a man's voice?'

'Did I ever tell you they were?'

She was a little conscience-stricken, but rallied enough to say, 'It is the whole principle of auricular confession, to which nothing shall ever bring me back. Not the utmost persecution!' and as he smiled a little, she added, 'It was all form and human intervention.'

'If you can say so from personal experience, Angela,' he replied, 'it proves how lamentably I have failed to express my doctrine and intention, and how vain it is for me to try to converse with you. Indeed, I only attempted it because I knew you had had a great shock, and were unhappy.'

'Unhappy till I turned my back on the world and its vanities, and beheld the true and simple way of salvation! Would you but let me show it to you!'

'My dear child, do you think I have feebly tried to follow my Master all these years, and never seen it? If I have so totally failed in guiding you to it, my words alone were in fault, and it is well that the one Truth has been brought to bear upon you. I thank Him for it, and pray that some day you may be led to _full_ truth.'

There he quitted her; and she could report that Mr. Fulmort had tried to get her under his direction again, and that she had almost brought him to own the emptiness of the system that he inculcated. That he did not was, Miss Martha decided, wholly owing to the Old Adam.