“but I mean to take the matter up when I know the poor little fellow better.”
Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.
“Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?”
“Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard’s wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield? Clever man. Always photographing.”
So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries for the sale of work. ‘The Tempest’ was propounded, and received with acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing, and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!
Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could talk so eagerly about “a trumpery raree-show,” especially for an object that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard their report—
“Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him. Socialist one minute, old Tory the next.”
“A dreamer?” asked Dolores.
“If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his life, and never do any good!”
“Perhaps he is waiting.”
“I don’t believe in waiting,” said Jasper, wiping the dust off his photographic glasses. “Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does not know how to use it!”
“Conclusive,” said Gillian.
CHAPTER X. – NOBLESSE OBLIGE
The other won’t agree thereto,
So here they fall to strife;
With one another they did fight
About the children’s life.
“I say, Aunt Cherry,” said Adrian, “the fossil forest is to be uncovered to-morrow, and Merrifield is going to stay for it, and I’m going down with him.”
“Fossil forest? What, in the Museum?”
“No, indeed. In Anscombe Cove, they call it. There’s a forest buried there, and bits come up sometimes. To-morrow there’s to be a tremendous low tide that will leave a lot of it uncovered, and Merrifield and I mean to dig it out, and if there are some duplicate bits they may be had for the bazaar.”
“Yes, they have been begging Fergus’s duplicates for a collection of fossils,” said Anna. “But can it be safe? A low tide means a high tide, you know.”
“Bosh!” returned Adrian.
“Miss Mohun is sure to know all about the tides, I suppose,” said Clement; “if her nephew goes with her consent I suppose it is safe.”
“If—” said Mrs. Grinstead.
Adrian looked contemptuous, and muttered something, on which Anna undertook to see Miss Mohun betimes, and judge how the land, or rather the sea, lay, and whether Fergus was to be trusted.
It would be a Saturday, a whole holiday, on which he generally went home for Sunday, and Adrian spent the day with him, but the boys’ present scheme was, to take their luncheon with them and spend the whole day in Anscombe Cove. This was on the further side of the bay from the marble works, shut in by big cliffs, which ran out into long chains of rocks on either side, but retreated in the midst, where a little stream from the village of Anscombe, or rather from the moorland beyond, made its way to the sea.
The almanacks avouched that on this Saturday there would be an unusually low tide, soon after twelve o’clock, and Fergus had set his heart on investigating the buried forest that there was no doubt had been choked by the combined forces of river and sea. So Anna found that notice had been sent to Clipstone of his intention of devoting himself to the cove and not coming home till the evening, and that his uncle and aunt did not think there was any danger, especially as his constant henchman, Davie Blake, was going with him, and all the fisher-boys of the place were endowed with a certain instinct for their own tides. The only accident Jane Mohun had ever known was with a stranger.
Anna had no choice but to subside, and the boys started as soon as the morning’s tide would have gone down sufficiently, carrying baskets for their treasures containing their luncheon, and apparently expecting to find the forest growing upright under the mud, like a wood full of bushes.
The cove for which they were bound was on the further side of the chain of rocks, nearly two miles from Rockquay, and one of the roads ran along the top of the red cliffs that shut it in, with no opening except where the stream emerged, and even that a very scanty bank of shingle.
In spite of all assurances, Anna could not be easy about her darling, and when afternoon came, and the horses were brought to the door, she coaxed Gerald into riding along the cliffs in the Anscombe direction, where there was a good road, from whence they could turn down a steep hill into the village, and thence go up a wild moor beyond, or else continue along the coast for a considerable distance.
As they went out she could see nothing of the boys, only rocks rising through an expanse of mud, and the sea breaking beyond. She would have preferred continuing the cliff road, but Gerald had a turn for the moor, and carried her off through the village of Anscombe, up and up, till they had had a lively canter on the moor, and looked far out at sea. When they turned back and had reached the cliff road, what had been a sheet of mud before had been almost entirely covered with sparkling waves, and there was white foam beating against some of the rocks.
“I hope Adrian is gone home,” sighed Anna.
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