Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II)

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Oliver was obliged to conclude that no offer had passed between the
two young people; but on the way home next morning the Earl observed,
'Clara Frost has a fine figure, and is much improved by dress. She
shows excellent feeling, and does credit to her education.'

'The Pendragon blood never had a finer development,' said Louis.

'Even supposing justice done to poor James, she will have a handsome
portion. Oliver will have far more to dispose of than the five
thousand pounds guaranteed to her.'

'Poor child!' said Louis.

'Yes, I pity her for being exposed to his parading. He forgot the
gentleman in his merchant's office. If you should ever have any
thoughts of rescuing her from him, my approval would not be wanting,
and it would be the easiest way of restoring her brother.'

'My dear father, if Clara and I were always sister and brother when
she was poor, we certainly shall be no more now.'

Lord Ormersfield mentally execrated Mr. Ponsonby, and felt that he
had spoken too soon.

Jane's felicity was complete when, a few days after, she received,
addressed in Lord Fitzjocelyn's handwriting, an Illustrated News,
with a whole page containing 'the reception of Mrs. Dynevor of
Cheveleigh,' with grand portraits of all the flounces and veils, many
gratuitous moustaches, something passing for Oliver standing up with
a wine-glass in his hand, a puppy that would have perfectly justified
Mr. Ponsonby's aversion representing Lord Fitzjocelyn, and no gaps at
the banquet-table.

That picture Mrs. Beckett caused to be framed and glazed, kept it as
her treasure for life, and put it into her will as a legacy to
Charlotte Arnold.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GIANT OF THE WESTERN STAR.

Come, let us range the subterranean vast,
Dark catacombs of ages, twilight dells,
And footmarks of the centuries long past,
Which look on us from their sepulchral cells.

Then glad emerge we to the cheering day,
Some sun-ranged height, or Alpine snowy crown,
Or Chimborazo towering far away
O'er the great Andes chain, and, looking down,
On flaming Cordilleras, mountain thrown
O'er mountain, vast new realms.
The Creation--REV. I. WILLIAMS.

The same impression of the Illustrated London News which delighted
Jane Beckett's simple heart in England, caused no small sensation at
Lima.

Dona Rosita cast one glance at El Visconde there portrayed, and then
became absorbed in Clara's bonnet; Mr. Robson pronounced Lord
Ormersfield as good a likeness as Mr. Dynevor, Mr. Ponsonby cast a
scornful look and smile at the unlucky figure representing
Fitzjocelyn; and not a critical voice was heard, excepting Tom
Madison's, who indignantly declared that they had made the young Lord
look as if he had stood behind a counter all his life.

The juxtaposition of Lord Fitzjocelyn and Mr. Dynevor's niece, was
not by any means forgotten. It looked very like a graceful
conclusion to Oliver's exertions that he should crown their union,
and the county paper, which had likewise been forwarded, very nearly
hinted as much. Mr. Ponsonby took care that the paragraph should be
laid in his daughter's way, and he offered her the sight of Oliver
Dynevor's own letter.

Mary suspected that he regarded it as something conclusive, and took
care to read it when there were no eyes to mark her emotions.
'Ormersfield and his son were there,' wrote Oliver. 'The young man
is not so soft as he looks. They tell me he is going to work
sensibly at the estate, and he has a sharp eye for the main chance.
I hear he played fast and loose till he found your daughter had
better prospects than Miss Conway, whom my fool of a nephew chose to
marry, and now he is making up to my niece. My mother dotes on him,
and I shall make no objection--no extravagance that I can see, and he
will take care of the property. You will take no offence, since you
refuse the tender altogether.'

Of this Mary believed two sentences--namely, that Aunt Catharine
doted on Fitzjocelyn, and that he was not so soft as he looked, which
she took as an admission that he was not comporting himself
foolishly. She was quite aware that the friendship between him and
Clara might deceive an uninitiated spectator; and, though she
commanded herself to think that an attachment between them would be
equally natural and desirable, she could not but look with great
satisfaction at the easy unsuspicious tone of Mrs. Frost's letter,
which, after mentioning with much affection and gratitude all
Oliver's attempts to make her happy, in spite of the many sad changes
around, ended by saying that poor Clara felt the separation from her
brother so much, that without dear Louis she did not know how she
would have gone through the festivities. 'You can guess how he is
everything to us all,' said Aunt Kitty, 'and I brightened up his
looks with giving him your last letter to read. I dare say, Miss
Mary, you would like to scold me.'

Aunt Kitty! Aunt Kitty! you dearly loved a little kindly mischief!
Let that be as it might, Mr. Ponsonby thought that Mr. Dynevor's
letter had certainly not had much effect, for Mary was more lively
and cheerful than he had seen her since her first arrival. Mary's
cheerfulness was becoming the more necessary to him, since he was
beginning a little to weary of the childish charms of his young
Limenian wife. Rosita had neither education nor conversation; and
when all her pretty ways had been tried on him in succession, they
began to grow tedious. Moreover, the playful submission which she
had brought from her convent was beginning to turn into wilfulness.
Her extravagances in dress were appalling. She refused to wear the
same dresses twice, and cried, stamped her graceful foot, and pouted
when he remonstrated. She managed to spend every evening in
amusement, either at the Opera, or at evening parties, where her
splendid eyes, and scraps of broken English, made great havoc among
young lieutenants and midshipmen visiting Lima. Mr. Ponsonby was
growing tired of these constant gaieties, and generally remained at
home, sending Mary in his stead, as a sort of guard over her; and
Mary, always the same in her white muslin, followed Rosita through
all the salas of Lima--listened to the confidences of Limenian
beauties--talked of England to little naval cadets, more homesick
than they would have chosen to avow--and felt sure of some pleasure
and interest for the evening, when Mr. Ward came to stand by her
chair.

One afternoon, as Mary sat in her window reading, a gay voice
exclaimed, 'Beso las manos a Usted;' and looking up, she saw one of
the prettiest figures imaginable. A full dark purple satin skirt
just revealed the point of a dainty white satin shoe. It was plaited
low on the hips, and girded loosely with a brightly striped scarf.
The head and upper part of the person were shrouded in a close hood
of elastic black silk webbing, fastened behind at the waist, and held
over the face by the hand, which just allowed one be-ringed finger
and one glancing dark eye to appear, while the other hand held a fan
and a laced pocket-handkerchief. So perfectly did the costume suit
the air and shape of the lady, that, as she stood among Mary's orange
trees, it was like an illusion, of the fancy, but consternation took
away all the charm from Mary's eyes. 'Tapada, she cried; 'you surely
are not going out, tapada?'

'Ah, you have found me out,' cried Rosita. 'Yes, indeed I am! and I
have the like saya y manto ready for you. Come, we will be on the
Alameda; Xavier waits to attend us. Your Senor Ouard will be at his
evening walk.'

But Mary drew back. This pretty disguise was a freak, such as only
the most gay ladies permitted themselves; and she had little doubt
that her father would be extremely displeased at his wife and
daughter so appearing, although danger there was none; since, though
any one might accost a female thus veiled, not the slightest
impertinence was ever allowed. Mary implored Bosita to wait till Mr.
Ponsonby's views should be known; but she was only laughed at for her
English precision, and the pretty creature danced away to her stolen
pleasure.

She came in, all glory and delight at the perplexity in which she had
involved the English officers, the guesses and courtesies of her own
countrymen, and her mystification of Mr. Robson, who had evidently
recognised her, though pretending to treat her as a charming
stranger.

The triumph was of short duration. For the first time, she had
aroused one of Mr. Ponsonby's gusts of passion; she quailed under it,
wept bitterly, and made innumerable promises, and then she put on her
black mantilla, and, with Xavier behind her, went to her convent
chapel, and returned, half crying over the amount of repetitions of
her rosary by which her penance was to be performed, and thereby all
sense of the fault put away. Responsibility and reflection never
seemed to be impressed on that childish mind.

Mary had come in for some of the anger, for not having prevented
Rosita's expedition; but they were both speedily forgiven, and Mary
never was informed again of her using the saya y manto.

Their minds were diverted by the eager desire of one of the young
officers to visit the silver mines. It had been an old promise to
Mary from her father to take her to see them; but in her former
residence in Peru, it had never been fulfilled. He now wished to
inspect matters himself, in order to answer the numerous questions
sent by Oliver; and Rosita, eagerly catching at any proposal which
promised a variety, a party was made up for ascending to the San
Benito mines, some days' journey from Lima. Mary and Rosita were the
only ladies; but there were several gentlemen, three naval officers,
and Mr. Ward, who was delighted to have an opportunity of visiting
the wonders which had been, for many years, within his reach without
his rousing himself from his business to see them. Tents, bedding,
and provisions were to be carried with them, and Mary had full
occupation in stimulating Dolores to bring together the requisite
preparations; while Mr. Ward and Robson collected guides, muleteers,
and litters.

It was a merry party, seated on the gaily-trapped mules, with an idle
young midshipman to make mischief, and all in spirits to enjoy his
nonsense, in the exhilaration of the mountain air blowing freshly
from the snowy summits which seemed to rise like walls before them.
The steaming, misty, relaxing atmosphere of Lima was left behind, and
with it many a care and vexation. Mr. Ponsonby brought his mule to
the side of his wife's litter, and exchanged many a joke in Anglo-
Spanish with her and the lieutenant; and Mr. Ward, his brow
unfurrowed from counting-house cares, walked beside Mary's mule,
gathered each new flower for her, and listened to her narrative of
some of the causes for which she was glad, with her own eyes, to see
Tom Madison in his scene of action.

The first day of adventure they slept at a hacienda, surrounded with
fields where numerous llamas were pasturing. The next began the real
mountain work; the rock looked like a wall before them, and the white
summits were sharply defined against the blue sky. The sharper air
made Rosita shiver; but the English travellers congratulated
themselves on something like a breeze, consoling them for the glow
with which the sunbeams beat upon the rocks. The palms and huge
ferns had given place to pines, and these were growing more scanty.
Once or twice they met a brown Indian, robed in a coloured blanket,
with a huge straw hat, from beneath which he gazed with curious,
though gentle eyes, upon the cavalcade. By-and-by, looking like a
string of ants descending a perpendicular wall, Mary beheld a row of
black specks slowly moving. She was told that these were the mules
bringing down the metal in panniers--the only means of communication,
until, as the lieutenant promised, a perpendicular railroad should be
invented. The electricity of the atmosphere made jokes easily pass
current. The mountain was 'only' one of the spurs of the Andes, a
mere infant among the giants; but, had it been set down in Europe,
Mont Blanc must have hid his diminished head; and the view was better
than on some of the more enormous neighbours, which were both further
inland, and of such height, that to gaze from them was 'like looking
from an air-balloon into vacancy.' Whereas here Mary had but to turn
her head, as her mule steadily crept round the causeway--a legacy of
the Incas--to behold the expanse of the Pacific, a sheet of
glittering light in the sunshine, the horizon line raised so high,
that the first moment it gave her a sense of there being something
wrong with her eye, before the feeling of infinity rushed upon her.

They were turning the flank of the mountain, and losing the sunshine.
The evening air was almost chill, and the clearness such that they
already saw the ragged height whither they were bound rising in
craggy shattered grandeur, every flat space or gentler declivity
covered with sheds and huts for the work-people, and cavernous mouths
opening on the cliff-side. Dark figures could be distinctly seen
moving about; and as to the descending mules, they seemed to be close
on the other side of a narrow ravine. Rosita, who, now it came to
the point, was not without fears of sleeping on the bare mountain-
side, wanted to push on; she was sure they could arrive before night,
but she was told that she knew nothing of mountain atmosphere; and
she was not discontented with the bright fire and comfortable
arrangements on which they suddenly came, after turning round a great
shoulder of rock. Mr. Robson and the sumpter-mules had quietly
preceded them, and the gipsying on the Andes was likely to be not
much less luxurious than an English pic-nic. The negro cook had done
his best; Mary made her father's coffee, and Rosita was waited on to
her satisfaction. And when darkness came on, too early for English
associations with warm days, the lights of the village at the mine
glittered merrily, and, apparently, close at hand; and the stars
above shone as Mary had never seen them, so marvellously large and
bright, and the Magellan clouds so white and mysterious. Mr. Ward
came and told her some of the observations made on them by
distinguished travellers; and after an earnest conversation, she
sought her matted bed, with a pleasant feeling on her mind, as if she
had been unusually near Louis's world.

Clear, sharp, and cold was the air next day; the snow-fields
glistened gloriously in the rising sun, and a rose-coloured mist
seemed to rise from them. Rosita was shown the unusual spectacle of
hoar frost, and shiveringly profited by Mary's ample provision of
wraps. The hill-sides were beyond conception desolate and bare.
Birds were an almost unknown race in Peru; and here even green things
had departed, scarcely a tuft of blossom looking out on the face of
the red and purple rock; and the exceeding stillness so awful, that
even the boy-sailor scarce dared to speak above his breath. Rosita
began to repent of having come near so horrible a place; and when she
put her head out of her litter, and beheld herself winding along a
ledge projecting from the face of a sheer precipice, she would have
begged to go back instantly; but her husband spoke in a voice of
authority which subdued her; she drew in her head into her basket-
work contrivance, and had recourse to vows to Sta Rosa of Lima of a
chaplet of diamond roses, if she ever came safely down again.

Mary had made up her mind that they should not have been taken
thither if there were any real danger; and so, though she could have
preferred her mule taking the inner side of the ledge, and was not
too happy when it climbed like a cat, she smiled, and answered all
inquiries that she did not think she ought to be frightened. The
region was in general more stern than beautiful, the clefts between
the hills looking so deep, that it seemed as if an overthrown
mountain could hardly fill them; but now and then came sudden peeps
of that wonderful ocean; or almost under her feet, as if she could
throw a stone into it, there would lie an intensely green valley,
shut in with feathering pines, and the hacienda and grazing llamas
dwindled, so that they could have been taken for a Swiss farm and
flocks of sheep.

Not till the middle of the day did they meet the line of mules, and
not until the sunset did they find themselves close before the
wonderful perforated San Benito summit. It was, unlike many other
metalliferous hills, an isolated, sharply-defined mass of rock,
breaking into sudden pinnacles and points, traversed with veins of
silver. These veins had been worked with galleries, which, even
before the Spanish conquest, had honeycombed the solid rock, and had
been thought to have exhausted its riches; but it had been part of
Oliver Dynevor's bold speculations to bring modern science to profit
by the leavings of the Peruvians and their destroyers. It was a
marvellous work, but it might still be a question whether the profit
would bear out the expense.

However, that was not the present consideration. No one could feel
anything but admiring astonishment at the fantastic craggy height of
peaks and spires, rising against the darkening sky, like the very
stronghold of the Giant of the Western Star; and, with the black
openings of the galleries, here and there showing the lights of the
workmen within. Mary remembered the tales, in which Louis used
vainly to try to interest her, of metal-working Dwarfs within the
mountains; and would have been glad to tell him that, after all,
reality was quite as strange as his legends.

The miners, Indians and negroes, might truly have been Trolls, as,
with their brown and black countenances, and wild bright attire, they
came thronging out of their rude houses, built of piled stones on
every tolerably level spot. Three or four stout, hearty Cornish
miners, with picks on their shoulders, made the contrast stranger;
and among them stood a young man, whose ruddy open face carried Mary
home to Ormersfield in one moment; and she could not but blush almost
as if it had been Louis, when she bent her head in acknowledgment of
his bow.

He started towards her as if to help her off her mule; but Mr.
Ponsonby was detaining him by questions, and Mr. Ward, as usual, was
at her rein. In a wonderfully brief time, as it seemed to her, all
the animals were led off to their quarters; and Robson, coming up,
explained that Madison's hut, the only habitable place, had been
prepared for the ladies--the gentlemen must be content to sleep in
their tent.

'The hut was at least clean,' said Robson, as he ushered them in; and
Mary felt as if it were a great deal more. It was rudely built, and
only the part near the hearth was lined with matting; the table and
the few stools and chairs were rough carpentry, chiefly made out of
boxes; but upon the wall hung a beautiful print from Raffaelle, of
which she knew the giver as surely as if his name had been written on
it; and the small bookcase suspended near contained, compressed
together, an epitome of Louis's tastes--the choicest of all his
favourites, in each class of book. Mary stood by it, reading the
names, and trying to perceive Louis's principle of selection in each
case. It jarred upon her when, as the gentlemen loitered about,
waiting for the evening meal, they came and looked at the titles,
with careless remarks that the superintendent was a youth of taste,
and a laugh at the odd medley--Spenser, Shakspeare, 'Don Quixote,'
Calderon, Fouque, and selections from Jeremy Taylor, &c.

Mary would hear no more comments. She went to the fire, and tried to
persuade Rosita they would come safe down again; and then, on the
apology for a mantelshelf, she saw some fossils and some dried
grasses, looking almost as if Fitzjocelyn had put them there.

She did not see Madison that night; but the next morning he presented
himself to act as their guide through the wonders of the
extraordinary region where his lot had been cast. She found that
this was only the first floor of the wondrous castle. Above and
above, rose galleries, whence the ore was lowered down to the
buildings here placed, where it underwent the first process of
separation. The paths above were fit for none, save a chamois, or a
barefooted Indian, or a sailor--for the midshipman was climbing aloft
in such places, that Tom's chief work was to summon him back, in
horror lest he should involve himself in endless galleries, excavated
before the days of Atahualpa.

Much of the desperate scrambling which Madison recommended as plain-
sailing, was beyond Mr. Ponsonby; but where he went, Mary went; and
when he stopped, she, though she had not drawn since the master at
her school had resigned her, as a hopeless case, applied herself to
the perpetration of an outline of the rocks, that, as she said, 'her
aunts might see what sort of place it was.' Her steady head, and
firm, enterprizing hand and foot, enabled her to see the crowning
wonder of the mountain, one of the ventanillas or windows. Mr. Ward,
having visited it, came back bent on taking her thither; there was no
danger, if she were not afraid. So, between him and Tom Madison, she
was dragged up a steep path, and conducted into a gallery cut out in
the living rock, growing gloomier and gloomier, till suddenly there
was a spot of light on the sparkling floor, and Mary found herself
beneath an opening through the mountain crown, right up into the sky,
which, through the wild opening, looked of the deepest, most ultra-
marine, almost purple blue, utterly beyond conception in the glory of
intense colour, bringing only to her mind those most expressive, yet
most inexpressive words, 'the body of heaven in His clearness.' She
felt, what she had often heard said, that to all mountain tops is
given somewhat of the glory that dwelt on Sinai. That ineffable blue
was more dazzling than even the fields beyond fields of marvellous
white that met her eye on emerging from the dark gallery.

'I never wish so much that Lord Fitzjocelyn should see anything as
that,' said Tom Madison, when Mary, in her gratitude, was trying to
say something adequate to the trouble she had given, though the
beauty was beyond any word of admiration.

'He would--' she began to answer, but the rest died away, only
answered by Tom with an emphatic 'He _would_!' and then began the
difficulties of getting down.

But Mary had the pleasure at the next pause of hearing Mr. Ward say,
'That is a very fine intelligent young fellow, worthy of his library.
I think your father has a prize in him!'

Mary's eyes thanked Mr. Ward, with all her heart in them. It was
worth going up the Andes for such a sentence to put into a letter
that Aunt Kitty would show to Louis.

Robson seemed anxious to monopolize the attention of the gentlemen,
to the exclusion of Madison; and while Tom was thus thrust aside,
Mary succeeded in having a conversation with him, such as she felt
was a sort of duty to Louis. She asked him the names of the various
mountain-peaks in sight, whose bare crags, too steep to support the
snow, here and there stood out dark in salient contrast to the white
scenery, and as he gave them to her, mentioning the few facts that he
had been able to gather respecting them, she was able to ask him
whether he was in the habit of seeing anything approaching to
society. He smiled, saying that his nearest neighbours were many
miles off--an engineer conducting some far more extensive mining
operations, whom he sometimes met on business, and an old Spanish
gentleman, who lived in a valley far down the mountain side, with
whom he sometimes smoked his cigar on a Sunday, if he felt inclined
for a perpendicular promenade on a Peruvian causeway for nearly four
miles. Mary asked whether he often did feel inclined. No, he
thought not often; he had generally worked hard enough in the week to
make his book the best company; but he liked now and then to see
something green for a change after these bare mountains and rocks,
and the old Don Manrique was very civil and agreeable. Then, after a
few minutes' conversation of this kind, something of the old
conscious abruptness of tone seemed to come over the young man, and
looking down, he said bluntly, 'Miss Ponsonby, do you think there
would be any objection to my coming into Lima just for Christmas?'

'I suppose not; I cannot tell.'

Tom explained that all the miners would be making holiday, and the
senior Cornishman might safely be left in charge of the works, while
he only wished to spend Christmas-day itself in the city, and would
be a very short time absent. He blushed a little as he spoke, and
Mary ventured to reply to what she gathered of his thought, 'No other
day would suit you as well?'

'No, ma'am, it hardly would,' he answered, gravely.

'I will try what can be done,' said Mary, 'unless you would speak to
Mr. Ponsonby yourself.'

He looked inquiringly at Mr. Ponsonby's figure some paces distant,
and shook his head.

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