Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II)

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Charlotte came up to remove the breakfast, and he looked up to give
an order for some nourishing dainty for her mistress, adding, 'What
did that mutton come to? No, I am not displeased with you, but Miss
Clara has sent me some money.'

His assurance was needed, for Charlotte went down thinking she had
never seen master look so stern. He had spoken from a sense that the
truth was due to the generous girl, but each word had been intense
pain. He wrote on, often interrupted by little riots among the
children, and finally by a sharp contention, the twins having
possessed themselves of a paper-knife, which Kitty, with precocious
notions of discipline, considered as forbidden; and little Mercy was
rapped over the fingers in the struggle. The roar brought down
interference, and Kitty fell into disgrace; but when, after long
persuasion, she was induced to yield the paper-cutter, kiss and make
friends, Mercy, instead of embracing, locked her fingers into her
dark curls, and tugged at them in a way so opposite to her name, that
all Kitty's offence was forgotten in her merit for stopping her
scream half-way at the sight of her father's uplifted finger, and his
whisper of 'Poor mamma!'

That life of worry and baby squabbles, the reflection of his own
faults, was hard to bear; and with a feeling of seeking a refuge,
when the two little ones had fallen into their noonday sleep, and
were left with their mother to the care of good Miss Mercy, he set
out for some parish work at Ormersfield, still taking with him little
Kitty, whose quicksilver nature would never relieve her elders by a
siesta.

He was afraid to speak to Isabel until he should have composed
himself, and, harassed and weary in spirits and in frame, he walked
slowly, very sore at the domestic discovery, and scarcely feeling the
diminution of the immediate pressure in the new sense of degradation.
He could own that it was merited, and was arguing with himself that
patience and gratitude were the needful proofs that the evil temper
had been expelled. He called back his thankfulness for his wife's
safety, his children's health, the constancy of his kind friends, and
the undeserved ardour of his young sister's affection, as well as
poor little Charlotte's unselfishness. The hard exasperated feeling
that once envenomed every favour, and barbed every dart that wounded
him, was gone; he could own the loving kindness bestowed on him, both
from Heaven and by man, and began to find peace and repose in culling
the low fragrant blossoms which cheered even the Valley of
Humiliation.

He turned down the shady lane, overhung by the beech-trees of Mr.
Calcott's park, and as he lifted Kitty in his arms to allow her the
robin-redbreast, he did not feel out of tune with the bird's sweet
autumnal notes, nor with the child's merry little voice, but each
refreshed his worn and contrite spirit.

The sound of hoofs approaching made him turn his head; and while
Kitty announced 'horse!' and 'man!' he recognised Mr. Calcott, and
felt abashed, and willing to find a retreat from the meeting; but
there was no avoiding it, and he expected, as usual, to be passed
with a bow; but the Squire slackened his pace as he overtook him, and
called out, good-humouredly, 'Ha, Mr. Frost, good morning' (once it
would have been Jem). 'I always know you by the little lady on your
shoulder. I was intending to call on you this afternoon on a little
business; but if you will step up to the house with me, I shall be
much obliged.'

James's heart beat thick with undefined hope; but, after all, it
might be only to witness some paper. After what had occurred, and
Mrs. Calcott considering herself affronted by Isabel, bare civility
was forgiveness; and he walked up the drive with the Squire, who had
dismounted, and was inquiring with cordial kindness for Mrs. Frost,
yet with a little awkwardness, as if uncertain on what terms they
stood, more as if he himself were to blame than the young clergyman.

Arriving at the house, James answered for his little girl's absence
of shyness, and she was turned over to the Miss Calcotts, while the
Squire conducted him to the study, and began with hesitation and
something of apology--'It had struck him--it was not worth much--he
hardly liked to propose it, and yet till something better should turn
up--anything was better than doing nothing.' To which poor James
heartily agreed. The board of guardians, where Mr. Calcott presided,
were about to elect a chaplain to the union workhouse; the salary
would be only fifty pounds, but if Mr. Frost would be willing to
offer himself, it would be a great blessing to the inmates, and there
would be no opposition.

Mr. Caloott, making the proposal from sincere goodwill, but with some
dread how the Pendragon blood would receive it, was absolutely
astounded by the effect.

Fifty pounds additional per annum was a boon only to be appreciated
after such a pinching year as the past; the gratitude for the old
Squire's kind pardon was so strong, and the blessing of re-admission
to pastoral work touched him so deeply, that, in his weakened and
dejected state, he could not restrain his tears, nor for some moments
utter a word. At last he said, 'Oh, Mr. Calcott, I have not deserved
this at your hands.'

'There, there,' said the Squire, trying to laugh it off, though he
too became husky, 'say no more about it. It is a poor thing, and
can't be made better; but it will be a real kindness to us to look
after the place.'

'Let me say thus much,' said James, 'for I cannot be at peace till I
have done so--I am aware that I acted unjustifiably in that whole
affair, both when elected and dismissed.'

'No, no, don't let's go over that again!' said Mr. Calcott, in dread
of a scene. 'An over-ardent friend may be a misfortune, and you were
very young. Not that I would have taken your resignation if it had
been left to me, but the world is grown mighty tender. I dare aay
you never flogged a boy like what I underwent fifty years ago, and
was the better for it,' and he launched into some frightful old-world
stories of the like inflictions, hoping to lead away from
personalities, but James was resolved to say what was on his mind.
'It was not severity,' he said, 'it was temper. I richly deserved
some portion of the rebuke, and it would have been well for me if
that same temper had allowed me to listen to you, sir, or to reason.'

'Well,' said Mr. Calcott, kindly, 'you think very rightly about the
matter, and a man of six-and-twenty has time to be wiser, as I tell
Mrs. Calcott, when Sydney treats us to some of his theories. And now
you have said your say, you must let me say mine, and that is, that
there are very few young couples--aye, or old ones--who would have
had the sense to go on as you are doing, fighting it out in your own
neighbourhood without nonsense or false shame. I honour you and Mrs.
Frost for it, both of you!'

James coloured deeply. He could have found commendation an
impertinence, but the old Squire was a sort of patriarch in the
county, and appreciation of Isabel's conduct must give him pleasure.
He stammered something about her having held up wonderfully, and the
salary being an immense relief, and then took refuge in matter-of-
fact inquiries on his intended functions.

This lasted till nearly half-past one, and Mr. Calcott insisted on
his staying to luncheon. He found the ladies greatly amused with
their little guest--a very small, but extremely forward and spirited
child, not at all pretty, with her brown skin and womanly eyes, but
looking most thoroughly a lady, even in her little brown holland
frock, and white sun-bonnet, her mamma's great achievement. Neither
shy nor sociable, she had allowed no one to touch her, but had
entrenched herself in a corner behind a chair, through the back of
which she answered all civilities, with more self-possession than
distinctness, and convulsed the party with laughing, when they asked
if she could play at bo-peep, by replying that 'the children did.'
She sprang from her place of refuge to his knee as soon as he
entered, and occupied that post all luncheon time, comporting herself
with great discretion. There was something touching in the sight of
the tenderness of the young father, taking off her bonnet, and
settling her straggling curls with no unaccustomed hands; and Mrs.
Calcott's heart was moved, as she remarked his worn, almost hollow
cheeks, his eyes still quick, but sunk and softened, his figure spare
and thin, and even his dress not without signs of poverty; and she
began making kind volunteers of calling on Mrs. Frost, nor were these
received as once they would have been.

'He is the only young man,' said Mr. Calcott, standing before the
fire, with his hands behind him, as soon as the guest had departed,
'except his cousin at Ormersfield, whom I ever knew to confess that
he had been mistaken. That's the difference between them and the
rest, not excepting your son Sydney, Mrs. Calcott.'

Mamma and sisters cried in chorus, that Sydney had no occasion for
such confessions.

The Squire gave his short, dry laugh, and repeated that 'Jem Frost
and young Fitzjocelyn differed from other youths, not in being right
but in being wrong.'

On which topic Mrs. Calcott enlarged, compassionating poor Mr. Frost
with a double quantity of pity for his helpless beauty of a fine
lady-wife; charitably owning, however, that she really seemed
improved by her troubles. She should have thought better of her if
she had not kept that smart housemaid, who looked so much above her
station, and whom the housekeeper had met running about the lanes in
the dark, the very night when Mr. Frost was so ill.

'Pshaw! my dear,' said her husband, 'cannot you let people be judges
of their own affairs?'

It was what he had said on the like occasions for the last thirty
years; but Mrs. Calcott was as wise as ever in other folks' matters.

The fine lady-wife had meanwhile been arranging a little surprise for
her husband. She was too composed to harass herself at his not
returning at midday, she knew him and Kitty to be quite capable of
taking care of each other, and could imagine him detained by parish
work, and disposing of the little maiden with Betty Gervas, or some
other Ormersfield friend, but she had thought him looking fagged and
worried, she feared his being as tired as he had been on the Sunday,
and she could not bear that he should drink tea uncomfortably in the
study, tormented by the children. So she had repaired to the
parlour, and Miss Mercy, after many remonstrances, had settled her
there; and when the good little lady had gone home to her sister's
tea, Isabel lay on the sofa, wrapped in her large soft shawl,
languidly attempting a little work, and feeling the room dreary, and
herself very weak, and forlorn, and desponding, as she thought of
James's haggard face, and the fresh anxieties that would be entailed
on him if she should become sickly and ailing. The tear gathered on
her eyelash as she said to herself, 'I would not exert myself when I
could; perhaps now I cannot, when I would give worlds to lighten one
of his cares!' And then she saw one little bit of furniture standing
awry, in the manner that used so often to worry his fastidious eye;
and, in the spirit of doing anything to please him, she moved across
the room to rectify it, and then sat down in the large easy chair,
wearied by the slight exertion, and becoming even more depressed and
hopeless; 'though,' as she told herself, 'all is sure to be ordered
well. The past struggle has been good--the future will be good if we
can but treat it rightly.'

Just as the last gleams were fading on the tops of the Ormersfield
coppices, she heard the hall-door, and James's footstep; and it was
more than the ordinary music of his 'coming up the stair;' there was
a spring and life in it that thrilled into her heart, and glanced in
her eye, as she sat up in her chair, to welcome him with no forced
smile.

And as he came in with a pleased exclamation, his voice had no longer
the thin, worn sound, as if only resolute resignation prevented
peevishness; there was a cheerfulness and solidity in the tone, as he
came fondly to her side, regretted having missed her first
appearance, and feared she had been long alone.

'Oh, no; but I was afraid you would be so tired! Carrying Kitty all
the way, too! But you look so much brighter.'

'I am brighter,' said James. 'Two things have happened for which I
ought to be very thankful. My dear, can you bear to be wife to the
chaplain of the Union at fifty pounds a-year!'

'Oh! have you something to do? cried Isabel; 'I am so glad! Now we
shall be a little more off your mind. And you will do so much good!
I have heard Miss Mercy say how much she wished there were some one
to put those poor people in the right way.'

'Yes; I hope that concentrated earnestness of attention may do
something to make up for my deficiency in almost every other
qualification,' said James. 'At least, I feel some of the importance
of the charge, and never was anything more welcome.'

'And how did it happen?'

'People are more forgiving than I could have hoped. Mr. Calcott has
offered me this, in the kindest way; and as if that were not enough,
see what poor little Clara says.'

'Poor little Clara!' said Isabel, reading the letter; 'you don't mean
to disappoint her!'

'I should be a brute if I did. No; I wrote to her this morning to
thank her for her pardoning spirit.'

'You should have told me; I should like to send her my love. I am
glad she has not quite forgotten us, though she mistook the way to
her own happiness.'

'Isabel! unless I were to transport you to Cheveleigh a year ago,
nothing would persuade you of my utter wrong-headedness.'

'Nor that, perhaps,' said Isabel, with a calm smile.

'Not my having brought you to be grateful for the Union chaplaincy?'

'Not if you had brought me to the Union literally,' said Isabel,
smiling. 'Indeed, dear James, I think we have both been so much the
better and happier for this last year, that I would not have been
without it for any consideration; and if any mistakes on your part
led to it, they were mistakes on the right side. Don't shake your
head, for you know they were what only a good man could have made.'

'That may be all very well for a wife to believe!'

And the rest of the little dispute was concluded, as Charlotte came
smiling up with the tea.

CHAPTER XVII.

'BIDE A WEE.'

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands!
Tempest

The Ponsonby family were spending the hot season at Chorillos, the
Peruvian watering-place, an irregular assembly of cane-built, mud-
besmeared ranches, close on the shore of the Pacific, with the
mountains seeming to rise immediately in the rear.

They had gone for Mr. Ponsonby's health, and Rosita's amusement; and
in the latter object they had completely succeeded. In her bathing-
dress, full trousers, and a beautifully-embroidered blouse, belted at
the waist, a broad-brimmed straw hat, and her raven hair braided in
two long tresses, she wandered on the shore with many another fair
Limenian, or entered the sea under the protection of a brown Indian;
and, supported by mates or gourds, would float for hours together
among her companions, splashing about, and playing all sorts of
frolics, like so many mermaids.

In the evening she returned to more terrestrial joys, and arraying
herself in some of her infinite varieties of ball-dresses, with
flowers and jewels in her hair, a tiny Panama hat cocked jauntily on
the top of her head, and a rich shawl with one end thrown over the
shoulder, she would step daintily out in her black satin shoes, with
old Xavier in attendance, or sometimes with Robson as her cavalier,
to meet her friends on the beach, or make a call in the lamp-lit
corridor of some other rancho. There were innumerable balls, dances,
and pic-nics to the rich and fertile villages and haciendas around,
and fetes of every description almost every evening; visits to the
tombs of the old Peruvians, whose graves were often rudely and
lightly searched for the sake of their curious images and golden
ornaments. The Senora declared it was the most lovely summer she had
ever spent, and that nothing should induce her to return to Lima
while her friends remained there.

The other object, of re-invigorating Mr. Ponsonby, had not been
attained. He had been ailing for some time past, and, instead of
deriving benefit from the sea-breezes, only missed the comforts of
home. He was so testy and exacting that Mary would have seldom liked
to leave him to himself, even if she had been disposed to lead the
life of a fish; and she was seldom away from him, unless Robson came
down from Lima to transact business with him.

Mary dreaded these interviews, for her father always emerged from
them doubly irritable and dispirited; and when Rosita claimed the
Senor Robson as her knight for her evening promenade, and the father
and daughter were left alone together, he would blame the one lady
for going, the other for staying--then draw out his papers again, and
attempt to go over them, with a head already aching and confused--be
angry at Mary's entreaties that he would lay them aside, or allow her
to help him--and presently be obliged with a sigh to desist, and lie
back in his chair, while she fanned him, or cooled his forehead with
iced water. Yet he was always eager and excited for Robson to come;
and a delay of a day would put his temper in such a state that his
wife kept out of his sight, leaving Mary to soothe him as she might.

'Mary,' said her father one evening, when she was standing at the
window of the corridor, refreshing her eye with gazing at the
glorious sunset in the midst of a pile of crimson and purple clouds,
reflected in the ocean--'Mary, Ward is going to Mew York next week.'

'So soon?' said Mary.

'Aye, and he is coming here to-morrow to see you.'

Mary still looked out with a sort of interest to see a little gold
flake change its form as it traversed a grand violet tower.

'I hope you will make him a more reasonable answer than you did last
time,' said her father; 'it is too bad to keep the poor man dangling
on at this rate! And such a man!'

'I am very sorry for it, but I cannot help it,' said Mary; 'no one
can be kinder or more forbearing than he has been, but I wish he
would look elsewhere.'

'So you have not got that nonsense out of your head!' exclaimed Mr.
Ponsonby, with muttered words that Mary would not hear. 'All my
fault for ever sending you among that crew! Coming between you and
the best match in Lima--the best fellow in the world--strict enough
to content Melicent or your mother either! What have you to say
against him, Mary? I desire to know that.'

'Nothing, papa,' said Mary, 'except that I wish he could make a
better choice.'

'I tell you, you and he were made for each other. It is the most
provoking thing in the world, that you will go on in this obstinate
way! I can't even ask the man to do me a kindness, with having an
eye to these abominable affairs, that are all going to the dogs.
There's old Dynevor left his senses behind him when he went off to
play the great man in England, writing every post for remittances,
when he knows what an outlay we've been at for machinery; and there's
the Equatorial Company cutting its own throat at Guayaquil, and that
young fellow up at the San Benito not half to be trusted--Robson
can't make out his accounts; and here am I such a wretch that I can
hardly tell what two and two make; and here's Ward, the very fellow
to come in and set all straight in the nick of time; and I can't ask
him so much as to look at a paper for me, because I'm not to lay
myself under an obligation.'

'But, papa, if our affairs are not prosperous, it would not be fair
to connect Mr. Ward or any one with them.'

'Never you trouble yourself about that! You'll come in for a pretty
fortune of your own, whatever happens to that abominable cheat of a
Company; and that might be saved if only I was the man I was, or
Dynevor was here. If Ward would give us a loan, and turn his mind to
it, we should be on our legs in an instant. It is touch and go just
now!--I declare, Mary,' he broke out again after an interval, 'I
never saw anything so selfish as you are! Lingering and pining on
about this foolish young man, who has never taken any notice of you
since you have been out here, and whom you hear is in love with
another woman--married to her very likely by this time--or, maybe,
only wishing you were married and out of his way.'

'I do not believe so,' answered Mary, stoutly.

'What! you did not see Oliver's letter from that German place?'

'Yes, I did,' said Mary; 'but I know his manner to Clara.'

'You do? You take things coolly, upon my word!'

'No,' said Mary. 'I know they are like brother and sister, and Clara
could never have written to me as she has done, had there been any
such notion. But that is not the point, papa. What I know is, that
while my feelings are what they are at present, it would not be right
of me to accept any one; and so I shall tell Mr. Ward, if he is still
determined to see me. Pray forgive me, dear papa. I do admire and
honour him very much, but I cannot do any more; and I am sorry I have
seemed pining or discontented, for I tried not to be so.'

A grim grunt was all the answer that Mr. Ponsonby vouchsafed. His
conscience, though not his lips, acquitted poor Mary of discontent or
pining, as indeed it was the uniform cheerfulness of her demeanour
that had misled him into thinking the unfortunate affair forgotten.

He showed no symptoms of speaking again; and Mary, leaning back in
her chair, had leisure to recover herself after the many severe
strokes that had been made at her. There was one which she had
rebutted valiantly at the moment, but which proved to have been a
poisoned dart--that suggestion that it might be selfish in her not to
set Louis even more free, by her own marriage!

She revolved the probabilities: Clara, formed, guided, supported by
himself, the companion of his earlier youth, preferred to all others,
and by this time, no doubt, developed into all that was admirable.
What would be more probable than their mutual love? And when Mary
went over all the circumstances of her own strange courtship, she
could not but recur to her mother's original impression, that Louis
had not known what he was doing. Those last weeks had made her feel
rather than believe otherwise, but they were far in the distance now,
and he had been so young! It was not unlikely that even yet, while
believing himself faithful to her, his heart was in Clara's keeping,
and that the news of her marriage would reveal to them both, in one
rush of happiness, that they were destined for each other from the
first.

Mary felt intense pain, and yet a strange thrill of joy, to think
that Louis might at last be happy.

She drew Clara's last letter out of her basket, and re-read it, in
hopes of some contradiction. Clara's letters had all hitherto been
stiff. She had not been acknowledged to be in the secret of Mary's
engagement while it subsisted, and this occasioned a delicacy in
writing to her on any subject connected with it; and so the mention
of the meeting at the 'Grand Monarque' came in tamely, and went off
quickly into Lord Ormersfield's rheumatism and Charlemagne's tomb.
But the remarkable thing in the letter was the unusual perfume of
happiness that pervaded it; the conventional itinerary was abandoned,
and there was a tendency to droll sayings--nay, some shafts from a
quiver at which Mary could guess. She had set all down as the
exhilaration of Louis's presence, but perhaps that exhilaration, was
to a degree in which she alone could sympathize.

Mary was no day-dreamer; and yet, ere Rosita's satin shoe was on the
threshold, she had indulged in the melancholy fabric of a castle at
Ormersfield, in which she had no share, except the consciousness that
it had been her self-sacrifice that had given Louis at last the
felicity for which he was so well fitted.

But at night, in her strange little room, lying in her hammock, and
looking up through her one unglazed window, high up in the roof, to
the stars that slowly travelled across the space, she came back to a
more collected opinion. She had no right to sacrifice Mr. Ward as
well as herself. Louis could not be more free than she had made him
already, and it would be doing evil that good might come, to accept
the addresses of one man while she could not detach her heart from
another. 'Have I ever really tried yet? she thought. 'Perhaps I am
punishing him and poor Mr. Ward, because, as papa says, I have
languished, and have never tried in earnest to wean my thoughts from
him. He was the one precious memory, besides my dear mother, and she
never thought it would come to good. He will turn out to have been
constant to Clara all the time, though he did not know it.'

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