Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I)

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  This led to intercourse with Mary Ponsonby; and Isabel was a very different person in that homely, friendly parlour, from the lofty, frigid Miss Conway of the drawing-room. Cold hauteur melted before Mary's frank simplicity, and they became friends as fast as two ladies could beyond the age of romantic plunges, where on one side there was good-will without enthusiasm, on the other enthusiasm and reserve. They called each other 'Miss Conway' and 'Miss Ponsonby,' and exchanged no family secrets; but they were, for all that, faster friends than young ladies under twenty might imagine.

  One winter's day, the crisp, exhilarating frost had lured them far along the high road beyond Mr. Calcott's park palings, talking over Isabel's favourite theme, what to wish for her little brother, when the sound of a large clock striking three made Isabel ask where she was.

  'It was the stable clock at Ormersfield,' said Mary, 'did you not know we were on that road?'

  'No, I did not.' And Isabel would have turned, but Mary begged her to take a few steps up the lane, that they might see how Lord Fitzjocelyn's new cottages looked. Isabel complied, and added, after a pause, 'Are you one of Lord Fitzjocelyn's worshippers?'

  'I should not like to worship any one,' said Mary, looking straightforward. 'I am very fond of him, because I have known him all my life. And he is so good!'

  'Then I think I may consider you exempt! It is the only fault I have to find with Northwold. You are the only person who does not rave about him-the only person who has not mentioned his name.'

  'Have I not? I think that was very unkind of me-'

  'Very kind to me,' said Isabel.

  'I meant, to him,' said Mary, blushing; 'if you thought that I did not think most highly of him-'

  'Don't go on! I was just going to trust to you for a calm, dispassionate statement of his merits, and I shall soon lose all my faith in you.'

  'My mother-' began Mary; but just then Lord Ormersfield came forth from one of the cottages, and encountered the young ladies. He explained that Fitzjocelyn was coming home next week, and he had come to see how his last orders had been executed, since Frampton and the carpenter had sometimes chosen to think for themselves. He was very anxious that all should be right, and, after a few words, revealed a perplexity about ovens and boilers, in which Mary's counsel would be invaluable. So, with apologies and ceremonies to Miss Conway, they entered, and Isabel stood waiting in the dull kitchen, smelling of raw plaster, wondering at the extreme eagerness of the discussion with the mason over the yawning boiler, the Earl referring to his son's letter, holding it half-a-yard off, and at last giving it to Mary to decipher by the waning light.

  So far had it waned, that when the fixtures had all been inspected, Lord Ormersfield declared that the young ladies must not return alone, and insisted on escorting them home. Every five minutes some one thought of something to say: there was an answer, and by good luck a rejoinder; then all died away, and Mary pondered how her mother would in her place have done something to draw the two together, but she could not. She feared the walk had made Isabel more adverse to all connected with Ormersfield than even previously; for the Ormersfield road was avoided, and the question as to Fitzjocelyn's merits was never renewed.

  Mary thought his cause would be safest in the hands of his great champion, who was coming home from Oxford with him, and was to occupy his vacation in acting tutor to little Sir Walter Conway. Louis came, the day after his return, with his father, to make visits in the Terrace, and was as well-behaved and uninteresting as morning calling could make him. He was looking very well-his general health quite restored, and his ankle much better; though he was still forbidden to ride, and could not walk far.

  'You must come and see me, Aunt Kitty,' he said; 'I am not available for coming in to see you. I'm reading, and I've made a resignation of myself,' he added, with a slight blush, and debonnaire shrug, glancing to see that his father was occupied with James.

  They were to dine with Lady Conway on the following Tuesday. In the interim, no one beheld them except Jem, who walked to Ormersfield once or twice for some skating for his little pupil Walter, and came back reporting that Louis had sold himself, body and soul, to his father.

  Clara came home, a degree more civilized, and burning to confide to Louis that she had thought of his advice, had been the less miserable for it, and had much more on which to consult him. She could not conceive why even grandmamma would not consent to her accompanying the skaters; though she was giving herself credit for protesting that she was not going on the ice, only to keep poor Louis company, while the others were skating.

  She was obliged to defer her hopes of seeing him until Tuesday, when she had been asked to drink tea in the school-room, and appear in the evening. Mrs. Frost had consented, as a means of exempting herself from the party. And Clara's incipient feminine nature began to flutter at her first gaiety. The event was magnified by a present from Jem, of a broad rose-coloured sash and white muslin dress, with a caution that she was not to consider the tucks up to the waist as a provision for future growth.

  She flew to exhibit the finery to the Miss Faithfulls, and to consult on the making-up, and, to her consternation, was caught by Miss Conway kneeling on the floor, being measured by Miss Salome. To Isabel, there was a sort of touching novelty in the simplicity that could glory in pink ribbon when embellished by being a brother's gift; she looked on with calm pleasure at such homely excitement, and even fetched some bows of her own, for examples, and offered to send Marianne down with patterns.

  Clara was enchanted to recognise in Miss Conway the vision of the Euston-square platform. The grand, quiet style of beauty was exactly fitted to impress a mind like hers, so strongly imbued with sentiments like those of Louis, and regarding Isabel as necessarily Louis's destiny, she began to adore her accordingly, with a girl- reverence, quite as profound, far more unselfish, and little less ardent than that of man for woman. That a female vision of perfection should engross Clara's imagination, was a step towards softening her; but, poor child! the dawn of womanhood was to come in a painful burst.

  Surprised at her own aspect, with her light hair dressed by Jane and wreathed with ivy leaves by grandmamma, and her skirts so full that she could not refrain from making a gigantic cheese, she was inspected and admired by granny and Jane, almost approved by Jem himself; and, exalted by the consciousness of being well-dressed, she repaired to the school-room tea at the House Beautiful.

  Virginia and Louisa were, she thought, very poor imitations of Louis's countenance-the one too round, the other too thin and sallow; but both they, their brother, and Miss King were so utterly unlike anything at school, that she was at once at ease, and began talking with Walter over schoolboy fun, in which he could not be a greater proficient than herself. Walter struck up a violent friendship for her on the spot, and took to calling her 'a fellow,' in oblivion of her sex; and Virginia and Louisa fell into ecstasies of laughter, which encouraged Clara and Walter to compote with each other which should most astonish their weak minds.

  In the drawing-room, Lady Conway spoke so graciously, that Clara, was quite distressed at looking over her head. Mary looked somewhat oppressed, saying her mother had not been so well that day; and she was disposed to keep in the background, and occupy herself with Clara; but it was quite contrary to the Giraffe's notions to be engrossed by any one when Louis was coming. As if she had divined Mary's intentions of keeping her from importuning him, she was continually gazing at the door, ready at once to claim his attention.

  At first, the gentlemen only appeared in a black herd at the door, where Mr. Calcott had stopped Lord Ormersfield short, in his eagerness to impress on him the views of the county on a police-bill in course of preparation for the next session. The other magistrates congregated round; but James Frost and Sydney Calcott had slipped past, to the piano where Lady Conway had sent Miss Calcott and Isabel. 'Why did not Fitzjocelyn, come too?' was murmured by the young group in the recess opposite the door; and when at last he became visible, leaning against
the wall, listening to the Squire, Virginia declared he was going to serve them just as he used at Beauchastel.

  'Oh, no! he shan't-I'll rescue him!' exclaimed Clara; and leaping up to her cameleopard attitude, she sprang forward, and, with a voice audible in an unlucky lull of the music, she exclaimed, 'Louis! Louis! don't you see that I am here?'

  As he turned, with a look of surprise and almost rebuke, her own words came back to her ears as they must have sounded to others; her face became poppy-coloured, nothing light but her flaxen eyebrows; and she scarcely gave her hand to be shaken. 'No, I did not know you were coming,' he said; and almost partaking her confusion, as he felt all eyes upon her, he looked in vain for a refuge for her.

  How welcome was Mary's kind face and quiet gesture, covering poor Clara's retreat as she sank into a dark nook, sheltered by the old black cabinet! Louis thanked Mary by a look, as much as to say, 'Just like you,' and was glad to perceive that James had not been present. He had gone to ask Miss Faithfull to supply the missing stanzas of a Jacobite song, and just then returned, saying that she knew them, but could not remember them.

  Fitzjocelyn, however, capped the fragment, and illustrated it with some anecdotes that interested Miss Conway. James had great hopes that she was going to see him to the best advantage, but still there was a great drawback in the presence of Sydney Calcott. Idolized at home, successful abroad, young Calcott had enough of the prig to be a perpetual irritation to Jem Frost, all the more because he could never make Louis resent, nor accept, as other than natural, the goodnatured supercilious patronage of the steady distinguished senior towards the idle junior.

  Jacobite legends and Stuart relics would have made Miss Conway oblivious of everything else; but Sydney Calcott must needs divert the conversation from that channel by saying, 'Ah! there Fitzjocelyn is in his element. He is a perfect handbook to the byways of history.'

  'For the diffusion of useless knowledge?' said Louis.

  'Illustrated by the examination, when the only fact you could adduce about the Argonauts was that Charles V. founded the order of the Golden Fleece.'

  'I beg your pardon; it was his great-grandfather. I had read my Quentin Durward too well for that.'

  'I suspect,' said Isabel, 'that we had all rather be examined in our Quentin Durward than our Charles V.

  'Ah!' said young Calcott, 'I had all my dates at my fingers' ends when I went up for the modern history prize. Now my sister could beat me.'

  'A proof of what I always say,' observed Louis, 'that it is lost labour to read for an examination.'

  'From personal experience?' asked Sydney.

  'A Strasburg goose nailed down and crammed before a fire, becomes a Strasburg pie,' said Louis.

  Never did Isabel look more bewildered, and Sydney did not seem at once to catch the meaning. James added, 'A goose destined to fulfil the term of existence is not crammed, but the pie stimulus is not required to prevent it from starving.'

  'Is your curious and complimentary culinary fable aimed against reading or against examinations?' asked Sydney.

  'Against neither; only against the connecting preposition.'

  'Then you mean to find a superhuman set of students?'

  'No; I'm past that. Men and examinations will go on as they are; the goose will run wild, the requirements will be increased, he will nail himself down in his despair; and he who crams hardest, and has the hottest place will gain.'

  'Then how is the labour lost?' asked Isabel.

  'You are new to Fitzjocelyn's paradoxes,' said Sydney; as if glorying in having made Louis contradict himself.

  'The question is, what is lost labour?' said Louis.

  Both Sydney Calcott and Miss Conway looked as if they thought he was arguing on after a defeat. 'Calcott is teaching her his own obtuseness!' thought James, in a pet; and he exclaimed, 'Is the aim to make men or winners of prizes?'

  'The aim of prizes is commonly supposed to be to make men,' loftily observed Sydney.

  'Exactly so; and, therefore, I would not make them too analogous to the Strasburg system,' said Louis. 'I would have them close, searching, but not admitting of immediate cramming.'

  'Pray how would you bring that about?'

  'By having no subject on which superficial knowledge could make a show.'

  'Oh! I see whither you are working round! That won't do now, my dear fellow; we must enlarge our field, or we shall lay ourselves open to the charge of being narrow-minded.'

  'You have not strength of mind to be narrow-minded!' said Louis, shaking his head. 'Ah! well, I have no more to say; my trust is in the narrow mind, the only expansive one-'

  He was at that moment called away; Lord Ormersfield's carriage had been announced, and his son was not in a quarter of the room where he wished to detain him. James could willingly have bitten Sydney Calcott for the observation, 'Poor Fitzjocelyn! he came out strong to-night.'

  'Very clever,' said Isabel, wishing to gratify James.

  'Oh yes, very; if he had ever taken pains,' said Sydney. 'There is often something in his paradoxes. After all, I believe he is reading hard for his degree, is he not, Jem? His feelings would not be hurt by the question, for he never piqued himself upon his consistency.'

  Luckily for the general peace, the Calcott household was on the move, and Jem solaced himself on their departure by exclaiming, 'Well done, Strasburg system! A high-power Greek-imbibing machine, he may be, but as to comprehending Fitzjocelyn-'

  'Nay,' said Isabel, 'I think Lord Fitzjocelyn ought to carry about a pocket expositor, if he will be so very startling. He did not stay to tell us what to understand by narrow minds.'

  'Did you ever hear of any one good for anything, that was not accused of a narrow mind?' exclaimed James.

  'If that were what he meant,' said Isabel,-'but he said his trust was in the narrow mind-'

  'In what is popularly so called,' said James.

  'I think,' said Mary, leaning forward, and speaking low, 'that he did not mean it to be explained away. I think he was going to say that the heart may be wide, but the mind must be so far narrow, that it will accept only the one right, not the many wrong.'

  'I thought narrowness of mind consisted in thinking your own way the only right one,' said Isabel.

  'Every one says so,' said Mary, 'and that is why he says it takes strength of mind to be narrow-minded. Is not the real evil, the judging people harshly, because their ways are not the same; not the being sure that the one way is the only right! Others may be better than ourselves, and may be led right in spite of their error, but surely we are not to think all paths alike-

  'And is that Lord Fitzjocelyn's definition of a narrow mind?' said Isabel. 'It sounds like faith and love. Are you sure you did not make it yourself, Miss Ponsonby?'

  'I could not,' said Mary, blushing, as she remembered one Sunday evening when he had said something to that effect, which had insensibly overthrown the theory in which she had been bred up, namely, that all the sincere were right, and yet that, practically every one was to be censured, who did not act exactly like Aunt Melicent.

  She rose to take leave, and Clara clung to her, emerging from the shade of her cabinet with colour little mitigated since her disappearance. James would have come with them, but was detained by Lady Conway for a few moments longer than it took them to put on their shawls; and Clara would not wait. She dragged Mary down the steps into the darkness, and groaned out, 'O Mary, he can never speak to me again!'

  'My dear! he will not recollect it. It was very awkward, but new places and new people often do make us forget ourselves.'

  'Everybody saw, everybody heard! O, I shall never bear to meet one of them again!'

  'I think very few saw or heard-' began Mary.

  'He did! I did! That's enough! The rest is nothing! I have been as bad as any one at school! I shall never hold up my head there again as I have done, and Louis! Oh!'

  'Dear child, it will not be remembered. You only forgot how tall you were, and that you were not at hom
e. He knows you too well to care.'

  James shouted from behind to know why they had not been let into the house; and as Clara rushed in at the door and he walked on with Mary to leave her at home and fetch his grandmother, who had been spending the evening with Mrs. Ponsonby, he muttered, 'I don't know which is most intolerable! He neglects her, talks what, if it be not nonsense, might as well be; and as if she were not ready enough to misunderstand, Sydney Calcott must needs thrust in his wits to embroil her understanding. Mary! can't you get her to see the stuff he is made of?'

  'If she cannot do that for herself, no persuasion of mine will make her,' said Mary.

  'No! you do not half appreciate him either! No one does! And yet you could, if you tried, do something with her! I see she does not think you prejudiced. You made an impression to-night.'

  Mary felt some consternation. Could it depend on her? She could speak naturally, and from her heart in defence of Louis when occasion served; but something within her forbade the thought of doing so on a system. Was that something wrong! She could not answer; but contented herself with the womanly intuition that showed her that anything of persuasion in the present state of affairs would be ineffectual and unbecoming.

  Meantime, Clara had fled to her little room, to bid her childhood farewell in a flood of bitter tears.

  Exaggerated shame, past disdain of the foibles of others, the fancy that she was publicly disgraced and had forfeited Louis's good opinion, each thought renewed her sobs; but the true pang was the perception that old times were passed for ever. He might forgive, he would still be friend and cousin; but womanhood had broken on her, and shown that perfect freedom was at an end. Happy for her that she wept but for the parting from a playfellow! Happy that her feelings were young and undeveloped, free from all the cruel permanence that earlier vanity or self-consciousness might have given; happy that it could be so freely washed away! When she had spent her sobs, she could resolve to be wise and steady, so as to be a fit governess to his children; and the tears flowed at the notion of being so distant and respectful to his lordship. But what stories she could tell them of his boyhood! And in the midst of-'Now, my dears, I will tell you about your papa when he was a little boy,' she fell asleep.