Chapter XXVIII: Stars Gratis (2)

Edgar had not been seen that morning, except to leave word that he meant to breakfast with his friends at the Fortinbras Arms; but at the dinner hour he looked into the office, and saying, 'You are at liberty, Lance, I want you,' carried him off, Felix knew not why nor where, and had no time to ask, even when Lance came back, and this was not till past two, with the shop overflowing, and customers waiting to be attended to. It was one of those times when gossipry was rife, and the master had to stand talking, talking, while his assistants had more than enough on their hands with the real purchasers, a division of labour that usually came naturally, but to which Lance was evidently not conforming himself as usual; and at last Felix heard him absolutely denying that certain blotting-blocks ever had been, would, or could be made, and had to turn hastily to the rescue and undertake that they should be forthcoming by the next week. Also two orders proved to have been left not entered, and therefore not attended to, and Felix was thoroughly roused into vexation and anger. As soon as the last hurried customers had come and gone, while Stubbs and Lightfoot were closing the shutters, he again summoned Lance with, 'This will not do, Lance. Your ignorance and laziness are not to be the limit of people's wants, and I will not have my customers neglected. I have had patience with you all through this business, and that good fellow Lamb has shown forbearance that amazes me, but it must go on no longer. Things cannot be done by halves. Either you must turn over a new leaf, and give your mind to the business, or you must give it up, and look out for some other employment.'

'You wish me to give it up?' mumbled Lance, in a voice that sounded sullen.

'You are going the way to make me do so.'

'You don't want me? Very well.'

'Stay, Lance,' said Felix, whose reproofs had never before been received by Lance in this manner, 'I wish you to understand. You offered your services under a generous impulse last year, when I was overdone and perplexed; but I doubted then if it were not a mistake. You had come to be very valuable, more so than any mere hireling could be, and I am very thankful to you; but if you are to be like what you have been for a month past, you are doing some harm to the business and a great deal to yourself; and you had better choose some line that you can be hearty in.'

'Could you afford it, Felix?'

'I must afford it! Such work as yours has been of late is the most expensive of all. Eh!' rather startled; 'have you anything in your head?'

'I hardly know.'

A message came in at the moment, and by the time Felix had answered it, Lance had vanished, rather to his vexation and uneasiness. He went up to supper, the first family meeting where there had been time to talk over the humours of the day before. Edgar was full of fun; and the report Cherry had been writing for the Pursuivant was read aloud in the family conclave, and freely canvassed, but Lance, though he put in a word or two here and there, was much quieter than usual; and when all the others moved back into the drawing-room, he touched Robina's arm, and kept her with him in the dark room.

'What should you say, Bob, if I got out of it all?' was his first word.

'Out of it all!'

'Ay. Felix thinks me no loss, and I've got a chance.'

'Oh!' a long interrogative not well pleased sound it was, not answered at once; and Robina added, 'Does Mr. Miles want an assistant?'

''Tisn't that sort. You saw the gentleman that came down with Edgar and the Hungarians?'

'Yes, his name is Allen, he is manager of the National Minstrelsy,' Edgar said.

'Just so. He has got a lease of a concert-room in town, and he would give me five pounds a week to sing two nights a week through the season!'

'Lance!' Robina could only stand breathless.

'I'll tell you all about it. You know Edgar came and called me just at dinner-time.'

'I know, and Felix got no dinner at all except a sandwich that Wilmet sent down.'

'Well, that was his own fault. However, there they were at the Fortinbras Arms, in the best blue room, just come down to breakfast.'

'Who? The Hungarians?'

'Yes. Mr. Allen and M. Prebel were waiting for the lady, to ring and have the hot things up. What a stunner she is, to be sure! the finest woman I ever saw in my life, and such pretty ways when she can't find an English word, I should think a queen must be just like her.'

'Yes, if she is waited for in that way. Did you get anything to eat, then, Lance?'

'Didn't we, though? Why, they had asked us to breakfast; and such a breakfast I never set eyes on--devilled kidneys, and pie with truffles in it, and pine-apple jam--and wine! They asked for wines that Reid the waiter had never heard of--nor, it is my belief, Mr. Jones either.'

'But is this all to come out of their expenses that are paid for them?'

'You're getting like W.W., I declare, Bobbie. I never thought of that; but I'll go up to Reid, and find out the worth of my own share, and wipe that out. Well, they were uncommonly kind and civil. Edgar's quite at home with them, you know; talks French like a house on fire, or German--I don't know which it was, but she made it sound as pretty as could be, and I should soon pick it up. I had no notion what they were at, but Edgar said she wanted to hear me sing that song of Sullivan's again, and I could not help doing it; and then she smiled and bowed and thanked, and Mr. Allen made remarks, about my wanting lightness and style, said it came of singing too much cathedral music.'

'O Lance, wasn't that like the Little Master saying Montjoie St. Denis?'

'Nonsense! He's no more like the Little Master than you are; Edgar says he's as respectable as Old Time, and has got a little mouse of a wife as good as gold. But he does want a high tenor to sing his English ballads, and he'll give me this, with chances to sing at private concerts, and opportunities of getting lessons on the violin. Think of that, you solemn bird, you.'

'Where would you live?'

'With Edgar. Then I could make up the difference to Fee; and what I could save, with Edgar's picture, will take us to Italy. And there I could get finished up first-rate.'

'You've not settled it so?'

'Why, no. The first thing that struck me was that it was awfully cool by Felix, to say all this without notice to him, and I told them as much; but then they said they didn't want to inconvenience Felix, and wouldn't want me till March.'

'Just as if you were his servant.'

'In that light, so I am.'

'You don't really think of doing it, Lance?'

'I don't mean one thing or the other yet, Robin! Here's Felix one side telling us that he's very much obliged to me, but I am worse than no use at all; and Edgar and this Allen on the other, saying that here's the line that I am cut out for.'

'But Felix can only mean when you are gone mad after the concert.'

'And who is to help getting mad, when their life is all dulness and botheration? Edgar told me it would be so--and now Felix himself declares it was a mistake my ever working here.'

'Felix must have been terribly displeased, to say so.'

'I believe he was indeed! but I couldn't help it. How can one mind foolscap and satin wove, and all the rest of it, when there are such glorious things beyond?'

'O Lance, I never heard you say "couldn't help it" before!'

'Now, Robin, say in three words. Do you want me to be a mere counter-jumper all my life?'

'O Lance--don't.'

'There, you see what you really feel about it. Now--without coming to such a point as Sims Reeves, or Joachim, or--' (and Lance's face was full of infinite possibility), 'I could with the most ordinary luck get up high enough to have a handsome maintenance; and at any rate, I should live with what is life to me--have time to study the science--be a composer, maybe--and get into a society that is not all inferior. I hate the isolation we live in here--not a real lady out of one's own family to be friendly with one.'

'But I don't think ladies are so with musical people.'

'Maybe not, but they are a strong, cultivated, refined society of their own, able to take care of themselves. What now, Robin, can't you speak? What is it now?'

'I was only thinking of what you said last time Edgar asked you.'

'I hadn't seen London then, I knew nothing about it. The very Sundays there are different things from what they are in this deadly lively place.'

'That's as you make them. Besides, that makes no difference as to that other thing you said.'

'What?' (A little crossly.)

'About the cathedral and the stage,' whispered Robina, hanging her head.

'One doesn't want all that one ever said when one was a high-flown ass to be thrown in one's teeth,' said Lance, angrily.

'Oh!' but otherwise Robina held her tongue.

Presently Lance began again persuasively. 'You see this is only training, after all, Bobbie; I may take to sacred music, oratorios or anything else, when once I have got thoroughly taught; and I can only do that by living on my own voice. I must lay by enough to take me to Italy, and when I have learnt there, then I can turn to anything.'

'Do you think you ever would lay by?'

That was rather a cutting question, for Lance, though never in debt, never could keep a sixpence in his pocket.

'I could if I had a real object.'

'Only I don't think it would wholly depend on yourself,' said sensible Robina. 'I suppose they don't pay by the week; and then if the concern should not answer?

'That's sheer impossibility. There isn't a safer man in London than Allen. It is a much more profitable investment than old Pur.'

'Then if you lived with Edgar, you don't know how much you might have to go shares for.'

Thereupon Lance broke out into absolute anger against Robina for her unkindness to Edgar, talking much of the want of charity of people who lived at home, and thought everything beyond their ken must be wicked. She ventured to ask what Felix thought of it, and was told in return that Felix was not only not his father, but though the best fellow in the world, had no more knowledge of it than a child in petticoats. It was for the good of Felix, and everyone else, that they should not all hang about at home in the stodge and mire.

How long this might have gone on there is no saying, but Felix's voice was heard calling to them in preparation for evening prayers. When Robina heard Lance's voice rise in all its sweetness in the Evening Hymn, her heart was so full of yearning pain and disappointment, that she could hardly hold back her tears till she could kneel and hide her face in her hands.

She had this comfort. She did not understand from Lance that he had accepted, and he certainly did not join Edgar that night in the kitchen, but, saying he was tired out, he went at once to bed.

On Saturday she had not one private moment with him, but on the other hand, neither she hoped had Edgar; for the work both of the press and of the shop happened to be unusually heavy, and neither he nor Felix had a moment to spare; and Edgar spent the evening with some friends in the town.

Sunday afternoon, the family hour for walks and talks, poured with rain, and thereby was favourable to letters to Fulbert. Indeed, Angela's commencement of some sacred music was stopped, by the general voice entreating her to wait till the letters were finished. Lance, who never wrote to anybody but Fulbert, had resumed the practice ever since he had received an affectionate letter called forth by his illness, and was now busy with his little blotty portfolio; while Robina, having no Sunday correspondent, was half reading, half watching Stella explaining pictures to Theodore.

Presently Lance stretched across, and silently put a sheet of note-paper into her lap, hushing her by a sign. It had been begun in his best hand, and it must be confessed that that hand was at present a scratchy one, and there were various erasures.

DEAR SIR,

I have done my best to consider your kind and flattering
proposal, and have come to the conclusion that for the present
it will be better for me to continue where I am. There will
thus be no need to apply to my eldest brother.

With my respectful thanks,
Yours faithfully,
LANCELOT O. UNDERWOOD.

Robina made a little pantomime of clapping her hands, for which Lance did not appear to thank her, but still in dumb show required her judgment on the choice of several words. She mutely marked her preference, and he returned to his place and copied it. Still he had not addressed the letter. He put it into his pocket, with a significant smile at his sister. Evening came, late service, supper; still it was in his pocket till the moment of bed-time, and then it was that Robina saw him linger with Edgar, and went to her room with a heart full of trembling prayer.

'Edgar,' as his brother arrived in the kitchen, and prepared his pipe, 'how shall I address this?'

'Eh! you needn't be in too great a haste. We had better break it to poor old Blunderbore first.'

'There's no breaking in the case. I'm not going.'

'Ah! I knew how it would be when you began running about to all the womankind in the house.'

'I've not spoken to a soul but Bobbie,' said Lance rather hotly, as Edgar laughed.

'Then one was enough to do your business?'

'I only spoke to her to clear my own mind.'

'Ay, to get someone to contemplate Hercules between Vice and Virtue; but it won't do, my boy. Little Allen is as virtuous as Felix himself, and the choice is simply between the thing you can do and the thing you can't.'

'I can do my duty here,' said Lance bluntly.

'You've tried, my boy; you made a gallant effort, and I let you alone while you had a head to be spared, but 'tis no good trying to force the course of the stream, and you had better break loose, before you get too old for the real thing that you are made for.'

'No, Edgar, I've thought it over, and found out how things stand. Here will Felix begin now to have more on his hands, and can manage to shell out less than ever while he had Froggy to fall back on. Now, not only is my nominal salary much less than he could offer a stranger, but half of it goes back into the housekeeping, while I'm _done for_ at home, and I don't see how he could meet the difference just now.'

'Whew! that's the blind way you all go on, putting the present before the future. If Felix had a grain of spirit, he would revolt at preying on your flesh and blood. Flesh and blood--why, its genius and spirit crushed up in this hole!'

'It is no more than all of us have done by him, ever since he was of my size.'

'But it is so short-sighted, Lance. You could make it up to him so soon. Five pounds for certain the week--and possibilities, remember. You'll lodge with me--that's nothing; and for the rest, you'll soon live as we do--like the birds of the air.'

'I couldn't make it up to him, and save for Italy; besides I should be earning nothing there.'

'But I should! Copying is a certain trade. Come now, Lance, you've taken some panic. Tell me what is at the bottom of it! Have they been warning you against us wicked Bohemians?'

'They? Nonsense!'

'_She_, then?'

'It is nothing at all that Robina said.'

'Come, make a clean breast. What lies at the bottom of this absurd rejection of the best offer you'll ever have in your life?'

Edgar took the pipe out of his mouth, that the smoke might not obscure his view of the young face whose brow was resting on an arm leant on the mantel-piece, and the eyes far away. 'What's the bugbear? and I'll clear it up.'

'No bugbear.'

'You don't trust me. Eh? Is that it? Have they told you I mean to prey on your innocence?'

'No, indeed, Edgar!'

'Are you afraid of the great and wicked world? I thought you'd more spirit than that; and I've always told you, you might run after as many churches as you chose. I'd never hinder you. Come, have it out, Lance, you think me a corrupter of your artless youth?'

'No!'

'Come, out with it. What has turned you?'

The answer came at last in his low clear voice, speaking more into the fire than to Edgar, the eyes still fixed and far away--'"And here we offer and present unto Thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice."'

'What do you mean? what's that?' said Edgar, half startled, half angry.

'It comes after the Holy Communion,' said Lance, quite as much shocked by the novelty with which the familiar sound struck on his brother's ears.

'Oh! a pious utterance that only a _tête exaltée_ takes literally.'

'I should not join in it if I didn't mean it,' muttered Lance, in the most brief matter-of-fact way.

'Then why aren't you living barefoot on bread and water in a hermitage?'

'Because that's not my duty. It would not be reasonable.'

'There's great force in that word,' began Edgar, with a little scoff in his tone, but altering it into one of more earnestness. 'Now, Lance, I want to understand your point of view. How does that formula hinder you?'

'Because,' said Lance, much against his will, 'it wouldn't be making my soul and body a reasonable sacrifice, to turn the training I had for God's praise into singing love songs to get money and fame.'

'Why do you assume that beauty and delight of any sort is not just as pleasing to God as your chants and anthems?'

'No. One is offered to Him, the other is mere entertainment.'

'So is the first to most folks. Now, you boy, honestly, do you mean that it is not much of a muchness with sacred and profane, so far as motive goes?'

'It is what I am always trying that it should be,' said Lance.

'Only trying?'

'Only trying.'

'And you consider yourself to be this sacrifice, this victim, by singing in a surplice for ladies to whisper about, instead of getting trained to interpret--nay, what I do say! maybe, compose--the grandest human music. You've got it in you, my boy.'

'You may say what you please,' said Lance, turning away to the fire.

'I don't want to vex you, boy, I only want to make it out. I see the _sacrifice_.'

'It was my own fault for saying a word about it to you,' muttered Lance.

'But I don't see the sense of it,' proceeded Edgar, 'or what it is but your own fancy that puts the one thing up in the heights, the other down in the depths.'

'You must know that,' said Lance, 'the fever and transport that comes of one kind of music has nothing good in it.'

'That's the question.'

'I know it has not for me.'

'And has the other?'

'Of course it has! Besides, I don't do it for myself. Come, Edgar, tell me how to direct that letter, and let me go.'

'You may leave it till I go to town.'

'That would not be fair. He will want to look out for someone else. Tell me!'

'Not I! I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself in a fit of religious excitement.'

Lance smiled. 'Much excitement in a cold dark church in a wet morning, with not twenty people there.'

'That's as you work yourself up. Here, sit down and take the other pipe.'

'I can't; I can hardly stand yours, my head is raging!'

'Oh! that accounts for it! Go off to bed, and wake in week-day senses.'

'I wish you'd let me have done with it,' sighed Lance; but Edgar shook his head with, 'All for your good, my dear fellow!'

'If Balak's messengers _will_ stay the night, it is not my doing,' said Lance to himself, as he wearily mounted the stairs to his sleepless bed in the barrack; for though his headaches had become much less frequent and disabling, still his constitution was so sensitive, that a course of disturbed nights always followed any excitement; and thus the morrow found him dull and confused enough to render his attempts at diligence so far from successful, that he was more than once sharply called to order; and Felix came in at dinner-time, exclaiming, 'I can't think what's the matter with that boy. He seems as if he would never do any good again!'

'_Précisément!_' muttered Edgar. 'You had better give him up with a good grace, as I told you before.'

And being at the moment alone in the room with Felix and Geraldine, he not only detailed his plans for Lance, but eagerly counselled Felix to invest at least half Thomas Underwood's legacy in the National Minstrelsy.

'Really!' said Felix, in a tone of irony, 'this is nearly coming to the old plan of setting up a family circus! Then it is this that has so entirely unsettled him?'

'That the old must pass away is not sufficiently appreciated here.'

Then Edgar appealed to Cherry for the charms of artist society, and the confutation of the delusions respecting it held by Philistines at home, a conversation only interrupted by the arrival of dinner, and the rest of the population.

Felix as usual had to go down after a few mouthfuls; Edgar followed him to say on the stairs, 'I've one piece of advice to give. Remember that you are an old Philistine giant, and act with due humility.'

'Is he set upon it?'

'I cannot say heart and soul, for heart and what he thinks soul are pulling opposite ways. I say, Felix, you should take into consideration the effect on me. I haven't sat still to listen to so much piety since my father's time; it is a caution to see a little chap so simply literal.'

Felix could wait no longer. He found Lance alone in the office, resting his head on his desk. 'You'll be in time for dinner, Lance!'

'Thank you, I'd rather not. Send Stubbs home.'

'Head-ache?'

'Not much now!'

'I'm sorry I was sharp with you this morning, Lance. You should have told me!'

'It was not worth while, but I did mean to have done better to-day, Felix!'

'I believe you did. If you think it will set you to rights, I would let you off this afternoon.'

'No, thank you; it is getting better.'

Felix looked at him a moment or two, then said, 'Edgar tells me he has been talking to you.'

'Yes. I hope you have given him a settler, Felix.'

'Have you?'

'I tried, but he would not take it. He thought it was only Sunday.'

'Only Sunday!'

'That made me sure it would not do.'

'You are quite right, Lance. So far as it depends on me, I should have done all in my power to keep you from what cannot but be a life of much temptation, and I am thankful that you have decided it for yourself. You are really content to stay here with me?'

'Content--well, not just now; but I shall be again when all the remains of the bear-fight have subsided,' said Lance. 'I ought and I must, and that's enough.'

With which words he ran out as some one was heard entering the shop; and Felix stood for a few moments over the fire, musing on the brave way in which his young brother had met the enticement, and on the danger into which his own reproofs, however well-merited, had driven him.

Lance's other occupation that evening did not make him better pleased with Edgar's friends. Wilmet had decreed--and he had submitted half ruefully, half-merrily--that what remained of his salary after his contribution to the house expenses, should be guarded by her for his wardrobe, only half-a-crown a week being put into his own hands; and as this always managed to disappear without much to show for it, she viewed it as quite enough for waste; and indeed, out of what was in her keeping she had managed to provide him with a watch.

With his Monday half-crown, and sixpence besides, he repaired to the Fortinbras Arms to pay for his share of the notable breakfast; but he found some demur; Mr. Jones was aghast at his own bill, and really unwilling to send it in. The private supper, the next day's breakfast, and all that the party had called for, amounted to what would make a terrible hole in the receipts of the concert.

As to Lance's paying the fifth part of the _déjeûner_, the landlord thought it was impossible, and though his three shillings might perhaps represent the cost of what he had individually consumed, to offer or accept that was not according to rules. Mr. Jones would gladly have made this bill his subscription to the organ, if he could but have afforded the loss; but this, as he told Lance, he could not do. He listened, however, with a smile of some pity, when Lance assured him that his own and his brother's shares should be made up; and Lance picked out the charge, and carried it off to Edgar.

There again he met with no success. Edgar laughed at him, and told him he did not know the privileges of the artiste; and when Lance waxed hot, and declared that if the concert paid the expenses of the two stars themselves, it was a wicked exaction to make it defray the expenses of either Mr. Allen or their guests, he was answered coolly that expensive articles must be taken on their own terms, and that spoiling the Philistines was always fair.

'Then don't you mean to pay, Edgar?'

Edgar gave his foreign shrug, and made a gesture of incapability. He was vexed with Lance, and at no pains to soften matters.

'Now,' said Lance, with a sort of grave simplicity, 'I understand what living like birds of the air means.'

Lance went back to Mr. Jones, and told him that the two-fifths of the breakfast should be paid. And in twelve weeks it was done, But by this specimen it may be guessed that the new organ was not exactly purchased by the concert.