Before leaving England, Mr. Audley was resolved that little Theodore should be shown to some London physician. The child was five years old, but looked no more than three. He could totter in an uncertain run, and understood a few simple sentences, but came no nearer to language than the appropriation of a musical sound to every one whom he knew. There was nothing unpleasant about him, except his constant purring and humming; he was perfectly docile, loved music, and could be amused by simple recurring games. His affections seemed to have gone out chiefly to Felix and to Sibby; and as to his twin-sister, he seemed lost without her, and she seemed to view him as the complement of herself-like a sort of left hand, giving him things to hold in his feeble grasp, saying her lessons to him, and talking as if to a doll. There was something sad in the very resemblance; for their eyes were of the same shade of deep blue, their long soft hair of the same flaxen tint, their faces equally fair, but while hers was all colour, light, and life, his was pale and vacant, and scarcely ever stirred into expression.
Mr. Audley thought it right to ascertain whether treatment could be of any use; and finding that his father's London house was only occupied by his brother the Captain, he arranged that Felix should come up to town with the child and Sibby, when the law business could be arranged, and there would be an opportunity of his seeing something of the world.
He had never had a holiday before, and Mr. Froggatt rivalled his guardian in his desire that it should not be too short. The first call was by appointment on the doctor. He was not used to have patients like Theodore brought by youths of Felix's age, and was touched by the care and tenderness of the young man, as he tried to overcome the alarm that was rendering the little one impracticable, when it was desirable to exhibit his slender store of accomplishments. His nearest approach to his natural state was when perched on his brother's knee, with his back to the strange faces, listening as Felix whistled the tunes he loved best.
After all, little was gained by the consultation, except the assurance that the poor little fellow was as well situated as was possible. A few directions for treatment and discipline were given, but very little hope was held out of any important change for the better.
The verdict disappointed Felix to an extent that surprised Mr. Audley, who had better understood the hopelessness of the case. Of all the family, Felix had the most of the parental instinct for the most helpless; and while he warmly thanked his friend, he looked so mournfully at the child who clung to him, that Mr. Audley said in a voice of sympathy, 'It is a burthen, but one that will never bring the sting of sin.'
'Not a burthen,' said Felix. 'No; as my father said when he gave him to me, he is the Gift of God, the son of my right hand. May it always be able to work for you!' he murmured, as he bent his head over the little one.
'And I think the gift will bring a blessing!' said Mr. Audley.
Theodore was sent home with Sibby, thus restoring Stella to herself, for she had been greatly lost without her speechless companion: but Felix remained in London for a week of business and pleasure. Captain Audley was very good-natured and friendly, and abetted his brother in all his arrangements for showing Felix as much of life as was possible in a week, assuring him that every new experience was a duty to the Pursuivant-a plea that Felix, with his lover-like devotion to every detail of his paper, admitted with a smile. Edgar was of almost all their expeditions, and dined with them nearly every day. That young gentleman's peculiar pleasantness had very nearly averted the remonstrances with which his brother and his guardian had come up armed. There he was, finding his work real, and not a royal road to immediate wealth, idling, lounging, and gratifying his taste for art and music; and when his employer stormed and threatened, listening with aggravating coolness, and even sweetness, merely hinting that his occupation was a mistake; and living all the time as a son of the house, with a handsome allowance, and free access to society and amusement. Thus, when Mr. Audley talked to him, he smiled with a certain resignation, and observed that he was concerned for poor old Tom, to have been unlucky enough to have drawn such a fellow as himself. Probably it was a judgment on him for not having come forward sooner, when he might have had Felix! And when Mr. Audley upheld Felix as an example of hearty sacrifice of taste and inclination, it was to obtain an enthusiastic response. Nobody breathed equal to dear old Fee, and it was the most ardent desire of Edgar's heart to take some of the burthen from his shoulders! When it was hinted that such an allowance as Tom Underwood gave afforded the opportunity, Edgar smiled between melancholy and scorn, saying, 'Times must have altered since your time, Mr. Audley.-No, I forgot. Expense is the rule in our line. Swells can do as they please.'
However, there things rested; Mr. Underwood treated him exactly like an idle son, storming at him sometimes, but really both fond and proud of him, and very gracious to Felix, whom he invited once to a very dull and dazzling dinner, and once sent to the opera with his ladies.
Felix's Sunday was chiefly spent at St. Matthew's, which he was very glad to see without Tina's spectacles. He was amazed to find so much more good sense and reality than the effect on Clement had led him to expect; and Mr. Fulmort, who struck him as one of the most practical-looking men he had ever seen, spoke in high terms of Clement's steadiness and wish to do right; but added, 'I am afraid we have rather spoilt him. He came up to us so unlike the kind of boy we generally get, that we may have made rather too much of him at first.'
Felix smiled. 'Perhaps we had knocked him about, and made too little of him at home,' he said.
'Besides, esprit de corps in so small a place as this is apt to become so concentrated as not to be many removes from egotism. I daresay we have been a terrible bore to you.'
Felix laughed. 'We have always been very grateful to you, Sir.'
'I understand. I am glad he is going farther a-field. He will be much improved by seeing other places, and having his exclusiveness and conceit shaken out of him; but we shall always regard him as the child of the house, and I only hope he may end by working among us.'
'Poor fellow! Conceit has been pretty well shaken out for the present,' said Felix.
'I hope it may last. He was rather hurt at my not making his misfortune of more importance: but it seems to have been accident, all except the priggish self-confidence that led to it.'
Felix increased much in cordiality towards Mr. Fulmort, and at the same time mounted many stages in Clement's estimation on the discovery that, however behindhand his ecclesiastical advantages might be, the Vicar was exceedingly impressed by his excellence.
A day or two after Felix's arrival, Ferdinand Travis was first encountered riding a spirited horse in the park, looking remarkably handsome, though still of the small-limbed slender make that recalled his Indian blood. His delight in the meeting was extreme, and he seemed to be as simple and good as ever. He was in deep mourning, having newly heard of his father having been killed in an American railway accident, and though his uncle seemed proud of him, and continued his liberal allowance, the loss and blank were greatly felt-all the more that he had not found it easy to make friends among his brother officers in the Life Guards. His foreign air was somehow uncongenial; he had no vivacity or cleverness, and being little inclined to some of the amusements of his contemporaries, and on his guard against others, he seemed to find his life rather dull and weary. He did not seem to have anything to love except his horses, especially the creature he was then riding, Brown Murad. He had obtained it after such competition, that he viewed the purchase as an achievement; while Felix heard the amount with an incredulous shudder, and marvelled at Mr. Audley's not regarding it as wildly preposterous. It was a dangerous position; and though Mr. Audley certified himself, through his soldier brother, that Travis was steadiness itself-neither betted, gamed, nor ran into debt-yet while he seemed personally acquainted with all the horses that ran, and apparently entered into no literature but the Racing Calendar, it was impossible not to be anxious about him, even though he seemed perfectly happy to be allowed to be
with his two godfathers, and followed them everywhere, from the Houses of Parliament to St. Matthew's.
This was not the last expedition Felix had to make to London that spring. After many appointments of the time, and as many delays, a telegram suddenly summoned him in the beginning of May to bring Fulbert up to London, when the business would be wound up, and Captain Audley would take his brother and the boy in his yacht to Alexandria, there to join the overland passengers.
So Fulbert's farewells were made in the utmost haste, and mixed up with Wilmet's solicitous directions for his proper use of all her preparations for his comfort on the voyage; and Lance could only be seen for the brief moments of halt at the Minsterham Station, during which neither spoke three words, but Lance hung on the step till the train was in motion, and then was snatched back, and well shaken and reprimanded, by a guard; while Fulbert leant out after him at even greater peril of his life, long after the last wave of the trencher cap had ceased to be visible.
Felix believed that this parting was more felt than that with all the other eleven, and while Fulbert subsided into his corner, the elder brother felt much oppressed by the sense that it was his duty to give some good advice, together with great perplexity what it should be, how it should be expressed, and whether it would be endured. He would have been thankful for some of Clement's propensity for preaching when he found himself tete-a-tete with Fulbert in a cab; but while he was still considering of the right end by which to take this difficult subject, he was startled by his beginning, 'Felix, I say, I'm glad you are going to get shut of me.'
'I believe it is for your good,' said Felix.
'You'll get on better without me,' repeated Fulbert; then, with an effort, 'Look here. It isn't that I don't know you're a brick and all that, but somehow nothing riles me like your meddling with me.'
'I know it,' answered Felix. 'I wish I could have helped it; but what could be done, when there was nobody else?'
'Ay,' responded Fulbert, 'I know I have been a sulky, nasty brute to you, and I should do it again; and yet I wish I hadn't.'
'I should be as bad myself if I were a junior,' was the moral reflection Felix produced for his brother's benefit. 'Only, Ful, if you try that on with Mr. Audley out there, you'll come to grief.'
'I don't mean to,' said Fulbert.
'And you'll keep in mind what my father meant us to be, Ful-that we have got to live so as to meet him again.'
Fulbert nodded his head emphatically.
'It is his name you have to keep unstained in the new country,' added Felix, the fresh thought rising to his lips; but it was met by a gush of feeling that quite astonished him.
'Ay, and yours, Felix! I do-I do want to be a help, and not a drag to you. I really don't think so much of any of them-not even Lance-as of you. I hope I shouldn't have been better to my father than I have been to you; and when-when I'm out there, I do hope to show-that I do care.'
The boy was fighting with very hard sobs, and for all the frightful faces he made the tears were running down his cheeks. Felix's eyes were overflowing too, but with much of sudden comfort and thankfulness.
'I always knew you were a good fellow, Ful,' he said, with his hand on his brother's knee, 'and I think you'll keep so, with Mr. Audley to keep you up to things, and show you how to be helped.'
All after this was bustle and hurry. Fulbert had to be sent alone to take leave of Alda, while his brother and Mr. Audley transacted their business. Edgar came back with him; and after some hurried rushings out in search of necessaries forgotten, the last farewells were spoken, and Fulbert, with the two Audley brothers, was out of sight; while Felix, after drawing a long, deep sigh, looked at his watch, and spoke of going to see Alda.
'Don't run your head into a hornet's nest,' said Edgar; 'it's all up with me there. Come this way, and I'll tell you all about it.'
'All up with you!'
'There are limits to human endurance, and Tom and I have overpassed each other's. I don't blame him, poor man; he wanted raw material to serve as an importer of hides and tallow, but you, the genuine article, were bespoken, and my father was not in a state for the pleading of personal predilections.'
'What is it now?'
'Only a set of etchings from Atalanta in Caledon. That was the straw that broke the camel's back,' said Edgar, so coolly as to make Felix exclaim-
'How much or how little do you mean?'
'Separated on account of irreconcilable incompatibility.'
'Impossible!'
'Possible, because true.'
'Why did you not tell before Mr. Audley was gone?'
'It would have been bad taste to obtrude one's own little affairs, and leave him with vexatious intelligence to ruminate on his voyage. Nay, who knows but that he might have thought it his duty to wait to compose matters, and so a bright light might have been lost to the Antipodes.'
'You actually mean me to understand that you have broken with Tom Underwood?'
'The etchings were the text of an awful row, in which the old gentleman exposed himself more than I am willing to repeat, and called on me to choose between his hides and tallow and what he was pleased to call my tomfoolery.'
Felix groaned.
'Exactly so. You are conscious that his demand was not only tyrannical but impracticable. One can't change the conditions of one's nature.'
'Are you absolutely dismissed?'
'Nothing can be more so.'
'And what do you mean to do?' demanded Felix, stung, though to a certain degree reassured, by his tranquillity.
'Study art.'
'And live-?'
'On my own two hundred. You will advance it? I only want sixteen months of years of discretion, and then I'll pay it back with more than interest.'
'I must know more first,' said Felix. 'I must understand what terms you are on with Tom Underwood, and whether you have any reasonable or definite plans.'
'Spoken like an acting partner! Well, come to Renville, he will satisfy you as to my plans. I am to be his pupil; he teaches at the South Kensington Museum, and is respectability itself. In fact, he requires my responsible brother to be presented to him. Come along.'
'Stay, Edgar. I do not think it right by Tom Underwood to see any one before him. I shall go to him before anything else is done.'
'Do not delude yourself with the hope of patching up matters like Audley last winter, losing me five months of time and old Tom of temper.'
'How long ago was this?'
'The crisis was yesterday. I was just packing to come home when Fulbert burst upon the scene.'
Nothing could be worse news, yet Edgar's perfect self-possession greatly disarmed Felix. Never having thought his brother and the work well suited, he was the less disposed to anger, especially as the yoke of patronage was trying to his character; but he persisted in seeing Thomas Underwood before taking any steps for Edgar's future career, feeling that this was only due to the cousin to whom his father had entrusted the lad. So Edgar, with a shrug, piloted him to the Metropolitan Railway, and then to the counting-house where, in the depths of the City, Kedge and Underwood dealt for the produce of the corrals of South America.
Edgar, as he entered the office full of clerks, nodded to their bald-headed middle-aged senior in a half-patronising manner. 'Don't be afraid, Mr. Spooner; I'm not coming back on your hands, whatever this good brother of mine may intend. Is the Governor in?'
'Mr. Underwood is in his room, Mr. Edgar,' was the very severe answer; 'but after this most serious annoyance, I would not answer for the consequences.'
'Wouldn't you indeed?' said Edgar quietly, in a nonchalant tone that made the younger lads bend down to sniggle behind their desks, while he moved on to the staircase.
Mr. Spooner and he were visibly old foes; but the senior devoured his wrath so far as to come forward and offer a chair to Felix, repeating, however, 'Mr. Underwood is very seriously annoyed.'
Before Felix could attempt an answer, Edgar had re-descended, newspaper in hand. '
Go up, Felix,' he said, threw himself into the chair, and proceeded to read the paper; while Felix obeyed, and found the principal standing at his door, ready to meet him.
'What, Felix Underwood! Glad to see you. This intolerable affair can't have brought you up already, though?'
'No, Sir; I was telegraphed for late last night, to bring up my brother Fulbert to start with Mr. Audley.'
'Oh, ay. Well, I hope he'll have a better bargain of him than I've had in Edgar. You've heard his impudence?'
'I am exceedingly sorry-'
Then Mr. Underwood broke out with his account of Edgar's folly and ingratitude, after all the care and expense of his education. He had taken up with a set of geniuses for friends, was always rehearsing for amateur performances with them, keeping untimely hours; and coming late to the office, to cast up accounts, or copy invoices in his sleep, make caricatures on his blotting-paper, or still worse, become 'besotted' with some design for a drawing or series of drawings, and in the frenzy of execution know no more what was said to him than a post. Finally, 'the ladies' being as mad as himself, as Mr. Underwood said, had asked him to draw for a bazaar, and in his frenzy of genius over the etchings he had entirely forgotten an important message, and then said he could not help it. On being told that if so he was not fit for his profession, he merely replied, 'Exactly so, the experiment had been unsuccessful;' and when his meekness had brought down a furious tempest of wrath, and threats of dismissal, he had responded, 'with his intolerable cool insolence,' that 'this would be best for all parties.'
'This is the offence?' anxiously asked Felix.
'Offence? What greater offence would you have?'
The Pillars of the House, V1 Page 32
