Dynevor Terrace; Or, The Clue of Life. Volume 1

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 home. 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.

That party was a thing to be remembered with tingling cheeks for life, and Clara dreaded her next meeting with Louis; but the days passed on without his coming to the Terrace, and the terror began to wear off, especially as she did not find that any one else remembered her outbreak. Mary guarded against any unfavourable impression by a few simple words to Isabel and Miss King as to the brotherly terms that had hitherto prevailed, and poor Clara's subsequent distress. Clara came in for some of the bright tints in which her brother was viewed at the House Beautiful; Walter was very fond of her, and she had been drawn into a friendship for Virginia, cemented in the course of long walks, when the schoolroom party always begged for Mr. and Miss Dynevor, because no one else could keep Walter from disturbing Louisa's nerves by teasing her pony or sliding on dubious ice.

As Mrs. Ponsonby often joined in Lady Conway's drive, Mary and Isabel were generally among the walkers; and Mary was considered by Louisa as an inestimable pony-leader, and an inexhaustible magazine of stories about sharks, earthquakes, llamas, and icebergs.

James and Miss Conway generally had either book or principle to discuss, and were usually to be found somewhat in the rear, either with or without Miss King. One day, however, James gave notice that he should not be at their service that afternoon; and as soon as Walter's lessons had been despatched, he set out with rapid steps for Ormersfield Park, clenching his teeth together every now and then with his determinate resolution that he would make Louis know his own mind, and would 'stand no nonsense.'

'Ah! James, good morning,' said the Earl, as he presented himself in the study. 'You will find Louis in his room. I wish you would make him come out with you. He is working harder than is good for him.'

He spoke of his son far differently from former times; but Jem only returned a judiciously intoned 'Poor fellow.'

Lord Ormersfield looked at him anxiously, and, hesitating, said, 'You do not think him out of spirits?'

'Oh, he carries it off very well. I know no one with so strong a sense of duty,' replied Jem, never compassionate to the father.

Again the Earl paused, then said, 'He may probably speak more unreservedly to you than to me.'

'He shuns the topic. He says there is no use in aggravating the feelings by discussion. He would fain submit in heart as well as in will.'

Lord Ormersfield sighed, but did not appear disposed to say more; and, charitably hoping that a dagger had been implanted in him, Jem ran up-stairs, and found Louis sitting writing at a table, which looked as if Mary had never been near it.

'Jem! That's right! I've not seen you this age.'

'What are you about?'

'I wanted particularly some one to listen. It is an essay on the Police—'

'Is this earnest?'

'Sober earnest. Sir Miles and all that set are anxious to bring the matter forward, and my father has been getting it up, as he does whatever he may have to speak upon. His eyes are rather failing for candle-light work, so I have been helping him in the evening, till it struck me that it was a curious subject to trace in history,—the Censors, the attempts in Germany and Spain, to supply the defective law, the Spanish and Italian dread of justice. I became enamoured of the notion, and when I have thrown all the hints together, I shall try to take in my father by reading them to him as an article in the Quarterly.'

'Oh, very well. If your soul is there, that is an end of the matter.'

'Of what matter?'

'Things cannot run on in this way. It is not a thing to lay upon me to go on working in your cause with her when you will not stir a step in your own behalf.'

'I am very much obliged to you, but I never asked you to work in my cause. I beg your pardon, Jem, don't fly into a Welsh explosion. No one ever meant more kindly and generously—' He checked himself in amaze at the demonstration he had elicited; but, as it was not accompanied with words, he continued, 'No one can be more grateful to you than I; but, as far as I can see, there is nothing for it but to be thankful that no more harm has been done, and to let the matter drop;' and he dropped his hand with just so much despondency as to make Jem think him worth storming at, instead of giving him up; and he went over the old ground of Louis being incapable of true passion and unworthy of such a being if he could yield her without an effort, merely for the sake of peace.

'I say, Jem,' said Louis, quietly, 'all this was bad enough on neutral ground; it is mere treason under my father's own roof, and I will have no more of it.'

'Then,' cried James, with a strange light in his eyes, 'you henceforth renounce all hopes—all pretensions?'

'I never had either hope or pretension. I do not cease to think her, as I always did, the loveliest creature I ever beheld. I cannot help that; and the state I fell into after being with her on Tuesday, convinced me that it is safest to stay here and fill up time and thought as best I may.'

'For once, Fitzjocelyn,' said James, with a gravity not natural to him, 'I think better of your father than you do. I would neither treat him as so tyrannical nor so prejudiced as your conduct supposes him.'

'How? He is as kind as possible. We never had so much in common.'

'Yes. Your submission so far, and the united testimony of the Terrace, will soften him. Show your true sentiments. A little steadiness and perseverance, and you will prevail.'

'Don't make me feverish, Jem.'

A summons to Lord Fitzjocelyn to come down to a visitor in the library cut short the discussion, and James took leave at once, neither cousin wishing to resume the conversation.

The darts had not been injudiciously aimed. The father and son were both rendered uneasy. They had hitherto been unusually comfortable together, and though the life was unexciting, Louis's desire to be useful to his father, and the pressing need of working for his degree, kept his mind fairly occupied. Though wistful looks might sometimes be turned along the Northwold road, when he sallied forth in the twilight for his constitutional walk, he did not analyse which number of the Terrace was the magnet, and he avoided testing to the utmost the powers of his foot. The affection and solicitude shown for him at home claimed a full return; nor had James been greatly mistaken in ascribing something to the facility of nature that yielded to force of character. But Jem had stirred up much that Louis would have been contented to leave dormant; and the hope that he had striven to excite came almost teazingly to interfere with the passive acquiescence of an indolent will. Perturbed and doubtful, he was going to seek counsel as usual of the open air, as soon as the visitor was gone, but his father followed him into the hall, asking whither he was going.

'I do not know. I had been thinking of trying whether I can get as far as Marksedge.'

Marksedge would be fatal to the ankle, solitude to the spirits, thought the Earl; and he at once declared his intention of walking with his son as far as he should let him go.

Louis was half vexed, half flattered, and they proceeded in silence, till conscious of being ruffled, and afraid of being ungracious, he made a remark on the farm that they were approaching, and learnt in return that the lease was nearly out, the tenant did not want a renewal, and that Richardson intended to advertise.

He breathed a wish that it were in their own hands, and this led to a statement of the condition of affairs, the same to which a year before he had been wilfully deaf, and to which he now attended chiefly for the sake of gratifying his father, though he better understood what depended on it. At least, it was making the Earl insensible to the space they were traversing, and the black outlines of Marksedge were rising on him before he was aware. Then he would have turned, but Louis pleaded that having come so far, he should be glad to speak to Madison's grandfather, and one or two other old people, and he prevailed.

Lord Ormersfield was not prepared for the real aspect of the hamlet.

'Richardson always declared that the cottages were kept in repair,' he said.

'Richardson never sees them. He trusts to Reeves.'

'The people might do something themselves to keep the place decent.'

'They might; but they lose heart out of sight of respectability. I will just knock at this door—I will not detain you a moment.'

The dark smoky room, damp, ill-paved floor, and cracked walls produced their effect; and the name and voice of the inmate did more. Lord Ormersfield recognised a man who had once worked in the garden, and came forward and spoke, astonished and shocked to find him prematurely old. The story was soon told; there had been a seasoning fever as a welcome to the half-reclaimed moorland; ague and typhus were frequent visitors, and disabling rheumatism a more permanent companion to labourers exhausted by long wet walks in addition to the daily toil. At an age less than that of the Earl himself, he beheld a bowed and broken cripple.

Fitzjocelyn perceived his victory, and forebore to press it too hastily, lest he should hurt his father's feelings; and walked on silently, thinking how glad Mary would be to hear of this expedition, and what a pity it was that the unlucky passage of last August should have interfered with their comfortable friendship. At last the Earl broke silence by saying, 'It is very unfortunate;' and Louis echoed, 'Very.'

'My poor Uncle Dynevor! He was, without exception, the most wrong-headed person I ever came in contact with, yet so excessively plausible and eager that he carried my poor father entirely along with him. Louis! nothing is so ruinous as to surrender the judgment.'

Fully assenting, Louis wondered whether Marksedge would serve no purpose save the elucidation of this truism, and presently another ensued.

'Mischief is sooner done than repaired. As I have been allowing you, there has never been ready money at command.'

'I thought there were no more mortgages to be paid off. The rents of the Fitzjocelyn estate and the houses in the lower town must come to something.'

He was then told how these, with his mother's fortune, had been set apart to form a fund for his establishment, and for the first time he was shown the object of arrangements against which he had often in heart rebelled. His first impulse was to exclaim that it was a great pity, and that he could not bear that his father should have denied himself on his account.

'Do you think these things are sacrifices to me?' said the Earl. 'My habits were formed long ago.'

'Mine have been formed on yours,' said Louis. 'I should be encumbered by such an income as you propose unless you would let me lay it out in making work for the men and improving the estate, and that I had rather you undertook, for I should be certain to do something preposterous, and then be sorry.'

'Mrs. Ponsonby judged rightly. It was her very advice.'

'Then!' cried Louis, as if the deed were done.

'You would not find the income too large in the event of your marriage.'

'A most unlikely event!'

His father glanced towards him. If there had been a symptom of unhappiness, relenting was near, but it so chanced that Marksedge was reigning supreme, and he was chiefly concerned to set aside the supposition as an obstacle to his views. The same notion as James Frost's occurred to the Earl, that it could not be a tenacious character which could so easily set aside an attachment apparently so fervent, but the resignation was too much in accordance with his desires to render him otherwise than gratified, and he listened with complacency to Louis's plans. Nothing was fixed, but there was an understanding that all should have due consideration.

This settled, Louis's mind recurred to the hint which his father had thrown out, and he wondered whether it meant that the present compliance might be further stretched, but he thought it more likely to be merely a reference to ordinary contingencies. Things were far too comfortable between him and his father to be disturbed by discussion, and he might ultimately succeed better by submitting, and leaving facts and candour to remove prejudice.