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TITLE: THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE, V1
AUTHOR: CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
EBOOK: E03738 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE

OR

UNDER WODE, UNDER RODE

BY

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

VOL. I

ILLUSTRATED BY HERBERT GANDY

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

CHAP.

    I. THE BIRTH-DAY GIFT

   II. THE PICNIC

  III. FORTUNATUS' PURSE

   IV. TWILIGHT AND DAWN

    V. WORKING FOR BREAD

   VI. THE CACIQUE

  VII. THE CHESS-PLAYER'S BATTLE

 VIII. THE HOME

   IX. THE THIRTEEN

    X. THE FAMILY COBWEB ON THE MOVE

   XI. THE CHORAL FESTIVAL

  XII. GIANT DESPAIR'S CASTLE

 XIII. PEGASUS IN HARNESS

  XIV. WHAT IT MAY LEAD TO

   XV. WHAT IT LED TO

  XVI. THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT

 XVII. MIDSUMMER SUN

XVIII. BY THE RIVER

  XIX. THE HOUSE WITHOUT PILLARS

   XX. VALE LESTON

  XXI. A KETTLE OF FISH

 XXII. THE REAL THING AND NO MISTAKE

XXIII. SMOKE-JACK ALLEY

THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE

OR

UNDER WODE, UNDER RODE

CHAPTER I
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT

'O I've got a plum-cake, and a feast let us make,
 Come, school-fellows, come at my call;
 I assure you 'tis nice, and we'll all have a slice,
 Here's more than enough for us all.'
                               JANE TAYLOR.

'It is come! Felix, it is come!'

So cried, shouted, shrieked a chorus, as a street door was torn open
to admit four boys, with their leathern straps of books over their
shoulders. They set up a responsive yell of 'Jolly! Jolly!' which
being caught up and re-echoed by at least five voices within, caused
a considerable volume of sound in the narrow entry and narrower
staircase, up which might be seen a sort of pyramid of children.

'Where is it?' asked the tallest of the four arrivals, as he soberly
hung up his hat.

'Mamma has got it in the drawing-room, and Papa has been in ever
since dinner,' was the universal cry from two fine-complexioned,
handsome girls, from a much smaller girl and boy, and from a creature
rolling on the stairs, whose sex and speech seemed as yet uncertain.

'And where's Cherry?' was the further question; 'is she there too?'

'Yes, but--' as he laid his hand on the door-- 'don't open the letter
there. Get Cherry, and we'll settle what to do with it.'

'O Felix, I've a stunning notion!'

'Felix, promise to do what I want!'

'Felix, do pray buy me some Turkish delight!'

'Felix, I do want the big spotty horse.'

Such shouts and insinuations, all deserving the epithet of the first,
pursued Felix as he entered a room, small, and with all the contents
faded and worn, but with an air of having been once tasteful, and
still made the best of. Contents we say advisedly, meaning not merely
the furniture but the inmates, namely, the pale wan fragile mother,
working, but with the baby on her knee, and looking as if care and
toil had brought her to skin and bone, though still with sweet eyes
and a lovely smile; the father, tall and picturesque, with straight
handsome features, but with a hectic colour, wasted cheek, and
lustrous eye, that were sad earnests of the future. He was still
under forty, his wife some years less; and elder than either in its
expression of wasted suffering was the countenance of the little girl
of thirteen years old who lay on the sofa, with pencil, paper, and
book, her face with her mother's features exaggerated into a look at
once keen and patient, all three forming a sad contrast to the solid
exuberant health on the other side the door.

Truly the boy who entered was a picture of sturdy English vigour,
stout-limbed, rosy-faced, clear eyed, open, and straight-forward
looking, perhaps a little clumsy with the clumsiness of sixteen,
especially when conscience required tearing spirits to be subdued to
the endurance of the feeble. It was, however, a bright congratulating
look that met him from the trio. The little girl started up, 'Your
sovereign's come, Felix!'

The father showed his transparent-looking white teeth in a merry
laugh. 'Here are the galleons, you boy named in a lucky hour! How
many times have you spent them in fancy?'

The mother held up the letter, addressed to Master Felix Chester
Underwood, No. 8 St. Oswald's Buildings, Bexley, and smiled as she
said, 'Is it all right, my boy?'

'They want me to open it outside, Mamma!--Come, Whiteheart, we want
you at the council.'

And putting his arm round his little sister Geraldine's waist, while
she took up her small crutch, Felix disappeared with her, the mother
looking wistfully after them, the father giving something between a
laugh and a sigh.

'Then you decide against speaking to him,' said Mrs. Underwood.

'Poor children, yes. A little happiness will do them a great deal
more good than the pound would do to us. The drops that will fill
their little cup will but be lost in our sea.'

'Yes, I like what comes from Vale Leston to be still a festive
matter,' said Mrs. Underwood; 'and at least we are sure the dear boy
will never spend it selfishly. It only struck me whether he would not
enjoy finding himself able to throw something into the common stock.'

'He would, honest lad,' said Mr. Underwood; 'but, Mamma, you are very
hard-hearted towards the rabble. Even if this one pound would provide
all the shoes and port wine that are pressing on the maternal mind,
the stimulus of a day's treat would be much more wholesome.'

'But not for you,' said his wife.

'Yes for me. If the boy includes us old folks in his festivity, it
will be as good as a week's port wine. You doubt, my sweet Enid. Has
not our long honeymoon at Vale Leston helped us all this time?' Her
name was Mary, but having once declared her to be a woman made of the
same stuff as Enid, he had made it his pet title for her.

Mrs. Underwood's thoughts went far away into the long ago of Vale
Leston. She could hardly believe that nine years only had passed
since that seven-years' honeymoon. She was a woman of the fewest
possible words, and her husband generally answered her face instead
of her voice.

Vale Leston had promised to be an ample provision when Edward
Underwood had resigned his fellowship to marry the Rector's niece and
adopted daughter, his own distant cousin, with the assurance of being
presented to the living hereafter, and acting in the meantime as
curate. It was a family living, always held conjointly with a
tolerably good estate, enough to qualify the owner for the dangerous
position of 'squarson,' as no doubt many a clerical Underwood had
been ever since their branch had grown out from the stem of the elder
line, which had now disappeared. These comfortable quarters had
seemed a matter of certainty, until the uncle died suddenly and with
a flaw in his will, so that the undesirable nephew and heir-at-law
whom he had desired to exclude, a rich dissipated man, son to a
brother older than the father of the favourite niece, had stepped in,
and differing in toto from Edward Underwood, had made his own son
take orders for the sake of the living, and it had been the effort of
the young wife ever since not to disobey her husband by showing that
it had been to her the being driven out of paradise.

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