Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II)

C >> Charlotte M Yonge >> Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II)

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James and Isabel glanced at each other in amused indignation; and
Mrs. Frost entered, tremulous with joy, and her bright hazel eyes
lustrous with tears, as she leant on the arm of her recovered son.
He was a little, spare, shrivelled man, drolly like his nephew, but
with all the youthfulness dried out of him, the freckles multiplied
by scores, and the keen black eyes sunken, sharpened, and surrounded
with innumerable shrewd puckers. The movements were even more brisk,
as if time were money; and in speech, the small change of particles
was omitted, and every word seemed bitten off short at the end; the
whole man, in gesture, manner, and voice, an almost grotesque
caricature of all James's peculiarities.

'Mrs. Roland Dynevor, I presume? said Oliver, as Isabel came forward
to meet him.

'Never so known hitherto,' returned her husband. 'My wife is Mrs.
James Frost, if you please.'

'That is over now,' said Oliver, consequentially; and as his mother
presented to him 'poor Henry's little Clara,' he kissed her
affectionately, saying, 'Well-grown young lady, upon my word! Like
her father--that's right.'

'Here is almost another grandchild,' said Mrs. Frost--'Louis
Fitzjocelyn--not much like the Fitzjocelyn you remember, but a new
M.P. as he was then.'

'Humph!' said Oliver, with a dry sound, apparently expressing, 'So
that is what our Parliament is made of. Father well?' he asked.

'Quite well, thank you, sir.'

Oliver levelled his keen eyes on him, as though noting down
observations, while he was burning for tidings of Mary, yet held back
by reserve and sense of the uncongeniality of the man. His aunt,
however, in the midst of her own joy, marked his restless eye, and
put the question, whether Mary Ponsonby had arrived?

'Ha! you let her go, did you?' said Oliver, turning on Louis. 'I
told her father you'd be no such fool. He was in a proper rage at
your letter, but it would have blown over if you had stuck by her,
and he is worth enough to set you all on your legs.'

Louis could not bring himself to make any answer, and his mother
interrupted by a question as to Dona Rosita.

'Like all the rest. Eyes and feet, that's all. Foolish business!
But what possessed Ormersfield to make such a blunder? I never saw
Ponsonby in such a tantrum, and his are no trifles.'

'It was all the fault of your clerk, Robson,' said James; 'he would
not refute the story.'

'Sharp fellow, Robson,' chuckled Oliver; 'couldn't refute it. No; as
he told me, he knew the way Ponsonby had gone on ever since his wife
went home, and of late he had sent him to Guayaquil, about the
Equatorial Navigation--so he had seen nothing;--and, says he to me,
he had no notion of bringing out poor Miss Ponsonby--did not know
whether her father would thank him; and yet the best of it is, that
he pacifies Ponsonby with talking of difficulty of dealing with
preconceived notions. Knows how to get hold of him. Marriage would
never have been if he had been there, but it was the less damage.
Mary would have had more reason to have turned about, if she had not
found him married.'

'But, Oliver,' said his mother, 'I thought this Robson was an honest
man, in whom you had entire confidence!'

'Ha! ha! D'ye think I'd put that in _any_ man? No, no; he knows how
far to go with me. I've plenty of checks on him. Can't get business
done but by a wide-awake chap like that.'

'Is Madison under him?' asked Louis, feeling as if he had been
apprenticing the boy to a chief of banditti.

'The lad you sent out? Ay. Left him up at the mines. Sharp fellow,
but too raw for the office yet.'

'Too scrupulous!' said James, in an undertone, while his uncle was
explaining to his mother that he could not have come away without
leaving Robson to manage his affairs, and Mr. Ponsonby, and telling
exultingly some stories of the favourite clerk's sharp practice.

The party went down together in a not very congenial state.

Next to Mrs. Frost's unalloyed gladness, the most pleasant spectacle
was old Jane, who volunteered her services in helping to wait, that
she might have the delight of hovering about Master Oliver, to whom
she attended exclusively, and would not let Charlotte so much as
offer him the potatoes. And Charlotte was in rather an excited state
at the presence of a Peruvian production, and the flutter of
expecting a letter which would make her repent of the smiles and
blushes she had expended over an elaborate Valentine, admired as an
original production, and valued the more, alas! because poor Marianne
had received none. Charlotte was just beginning to repent of her
ungenerous triumph, and agitation made her waiting less deft and
pretty than usual; but this mattered the less, since to Oliver any
attendance by women-servants was a shock, as were the small table and
plain fare; and he looked round uneasily.

'Here is an old friend, Oliver,' said his mother, taking up a curious
old soup-ladle.

'I see. It will take some time to get up the stock of plate. I
shall give an order as I pass through London. To be engraved with
the Dynevor crest as before, or would you prefer the lozenge, ma'am?'

'Oh, my dear, don't talk of it now! I am only sorry this is nothing
but mutton-broth; but that's what comes of sudden arrivals, Oliver.'

'It shall be remedied at home,' said Oliver, as if he considered
mutton-broth as one degree from famine.

'I know you had it for me,' said Louis. 'If Jane excels in one art
before all others, it is in mutton-broth.'

Oliver darted a glance as if he imagined this compliment to be mere
derision of his mother and Jane.

Things went on in this style all the evening. Oliver had two ideas-
Cheveleigh, and the Equatorial Steam Navigation Company--and on these
he rang the changes.

There was something striking in his devotion of a lifetime to redeem
his mother's fortunes, but the grandeur was not easily visible in the
detail. He came down on Dynevor Terrace as a consequential, moneyed
man, contemptuous of the poverty which he might have alleviated, and
obtruding tardy and oppressive patronage. He rubbed against the new
generation in too many places for charity or gratitude to be easy.
He was utterly at variance with taste, and openly broached unworthy
sentiments and opinions, and his kindness and his displeasure were
equally irksome. If such repugnance to him were felt even by Louis,
the least personally affected, and the best able to sympathize with
his aunt; it was far stronger in James, abhorring patronage, sensible
that, happen what might, his present perfect felicity must be
disturbed, and devoid of any sentiment for Cheveleigh that could make
the restoration compensate for the obligation so unpleasantly
enforced; and Isabel's fastidious taste made her willing to hold
aloof as far as might be without vexing the old lady.

There was no amalgamation. Fitzjocelyn and Isabel were near the
window, talking over her former home and her sisters, and all the
particulars of the society which she had left, and he had entered;
highly interesting to themselves and to the listening Clara, but to
the uninitiated sounding rather like 'taste, Shakspeare, and the
musical glasses.'

Oliver and his mother, sitting close together, were living in an old
world; asking and answering many a melancholy question on friends,
dead or lost sight of, and yet these last they always made sure that
they should find when they went home to Cheveleigh--that home to
which the son reverted with unbroken allegiance; while the whole was
interspersed with accounts of his plans, and explanations of his vast
designs for the renovation of the old place.

James hovered on the outskirts of both parties, too little at ease to
attach himself to either; fretted by his wife's interest in a world
to which he was a stranger, impatient of his uncle's plans, and
trebly angered by observing the shrewd curious glances which the old
man cast from time to time towards the pair by the window.
Fortunately, Mrs. Frost was still too absolutely wrapt in maternal
transport to mark the clouds that were gathering over her peace. To
look at her son, wait on him, and hear his voice, so fully satisfied
her, that as yet it made little difference what that voice said, and
it never entered her mind to suppose that all her dear ones were not
sharing her bliss.

'You were the first to tell me,' she said, as she bade Louis good
night with fondness additional to her messenger of good news; but, as
he pressed her dear old trembling hand, his heart misgave him whether
her joy might not be turned to pain; and when he congratulated Jane,
and heard her call it a blessed day, he longed to be certain that it
would prove so.

And, before he could sleep that night, he wrote a letter to Tom
Madison, warning him to let no temptation nor bad example lead him
aside from strict justice and fair dealing; and advising him rather
to come home, and give up all prospects of rising, than not preserve
his integrity.

James and Isabel were not merciful to their uncle when they could
speak of him without restraint; and began to conjecture his
intentions with regard to them.

'You don't wish to become an appendage to Cheveleigh?' said James,
fondly.

'I! who never knew happiness till I came here!'

'I do not know what my uncle may propose,' said James, 'but I know
you coincide in my determination that he shall never interfere with
the duties of my office.'

'You do not imagine that he wishes it?'

'I know he wishes I were not in Holy Orders. I knew he disliked it
at the time of my ordination; but if he wished me to act according to
his views, he should have given himself the right to dictate.'

'By not neglecting you all your youth.'

'Not that I regret or resent what concerns myself; but it was his
leaving me a burden on my grandmother that drove me to become a
clergyman, and a consistent one I will be, not an idle heir-apparent
to this estate, receiving it as his gift, not my own birthright.'

'An idle clergyman! Never! never!' cried Isabel. 'I should not
believe it was you! And the school--you could not leave it just as
your plans are working, and the boys improving?'

'Certainly not; it would be fatal to abandon it to that stick,
Powell. Ah! Isabel,' as he looked at her beautiful countenance, 'how
I pity the man who has not a high-minded wife! Suppose you came
begging and imploring me not to give any umbrage to the man, because
you so doted upon diamonds.'

'The less merit when one has learnt that they are very cold hard
stones,' said Isabel, smiling.

Isabel was a high-minded wife, but she would have been a still better
one if her loving admiration had allowed her to soften James, or to
question whether pride and rancour did not lurk unperceived in the
midst of the really high and sound motives that prompted him.

While their grandmother could only see Oliver on the best side, James
and Isabel could only see him on the worst, and lost the greatness of
the design in the mercenary habits that exclusive perseverance in it
had produced. It had been a false greatness, but they could not
grant the elevation of mind that had originally conceived it.

The following day was Sunday, and nothing worse took place than
little skirmishes, in which the uncle and nephew's retort and
rejoinder were so drolly similar, that Clara found herself thinking
of Miss Faithfull's two sandy cats over a mouse; but she kept her
simile to herself, finding that Isabel regarded the faintest,
gentlest comparison of the two gentlemen almost as an affront. All
actual debate was staved off by Mrs. Frost's entreaty that business
discussion should be deferred. 'Humph!' said Oliver, 'you reign
here, ma'am, but that's not the way we get on at Lima.'

'I dare say,' said James.

Mrs. Frost's joy was still undimmed. It was almost a trance of
gladness, trembling in her smile, and overflowing in her eye, at
every congratulation and squeeze of the hand from her friends.

'Dear Jemmy,' said she, taking his arm as they went home in the
evening, 'did not that psalm seem meant for us?--'If riches increase,
set not your heart upon them.''

James had been thinking it meant for some one; but, as he said,
'certainly not for you, dear granny.'

'Ah! snares of wealth were set far enough from me for a time! I
never felt so covetous as when there was a report that there was to
be an opposition school. But now your dear uncle is bringing
prosperity back, I must take care not to set my heart even on what he
has gained for me.'

'I defy riches to hurt you,' said James, smiling.

'Ah! Jemmy, you didn't know me as a county grandee,' she said, with
a bright sad look, 'when your poor grandpapa used to dress me up.
I'm an old woman now, past vanities, but I never could sit as loose
to them as your own dear wife does. I never tried. Well, it will be
changed enough; but I shall be glad to see poor old Cheveleigh. It
does me good to hear poor Oliver call it home. If only we had your
dear father!'

'To me Dynevor Terrace is home,' said James.

'A happy home it has been,' said the old lady.

''Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life!' And
now, Oliver, whom I never thought to see again--oh! what can I do to
be thankful enough! I knew what he was doing! I knew he was not
what you all thought him! And roughing it has been no harm to you or
Clara, and it is all over now! And the dear old place comes back to
the old name. Oh, James, I can sometimes hardly contain myself--that
my poor boy has done it, and all for me, and his brother's children!'

James could scarcely find it in his heart to say a single word to
damp her joy, and all his resolution enabled him to do was to say
gently, 'You know, dear granny, we must not forget that I am a
clergyman.'

'I know. I have been telling your uncle so; but we can do something.
You might take the curacy, and do a great deal of good. There used
to be wild places sadly neglected in my time. I hope that, since it
has been given back to us, we may feel it more as a stewardship than
I did when it was mine.'

James sighed, and looked softened and thoughtful.

'Your uncle means to purchase an annuity for Jane,' she added; 'and
if we could only think what to do for the Faithfulls! I wonder
whether they would come and stay with us. At least they can never
vex themselves again at not paying rent!'

After a pause--'Jem, my dear, could you manage to give your uncle the
true account of your marriage? He admires Isabel very much, I can
tell you, and is pleased at the connexion. But I fancy, though he
will not say so, that Mr. Ponsonby has desired him to find out all he
can about Louis; and unluckily they have persuaded themselves that
poor Louis courted Isabel, supposing that she was to have
Beauchastel, and, finding his error, betook himself to Mary.'

'Turning Isabel over to me! Extremely flattering.'

'Now, Jem, don't be angry. It is only foolish talk! But unluckily
I can't persuade your uncle not to think the real story all my
partiality; and you might do much more, if it be not too unpleasant
to you.'

'Thank you, granny, it is out of the question. If it were as he does
us the honour to imagine, I should be the last person to confess it.
My evidence could be of no service to Fitzjocelyn, when my uncle's
maxim is to place confidence in no one. The sole refutation in my
power is the terms on which we meet.'

'Now, I have vexed you. I wish I had said nothing about it; but when
dear Louis's happiness may depend on his report--'

'If I were base enough to have acted as he supposes, I should be base
enough to deny it. There is not enough to be hoped to make me speak
with unreserve on such a subject.'

He saved himself from saying--to such a man; but the shrewd,
suspicious old bachelor was not an inviting confidant for the
vicissitudes of delicate and tender feelings of such recent date, and
Mrs. Frost reproached herself with asking too much of her proud,
sensitive grandson.

The black gown and trencher cap by no means gratified Oliver, when
James set off to school on Monday morning; but he consoled himself
with observing, 'We shall soon put an end to that.'

'James is quite devoted to the school,' said Isabel, and she was
answered by the dry growl.

'It will be a hard thing to transplant our young people,' said Mrs.
Frost, 'they have managed to be very happy here.'

'So hard of transplantation that I doubt the possibility,' said
Isabel. 'You have made us take very deep root here.'

'Have you ever seen Cheveleigh, Mrs. Dynevor?'

'Never.'

'Poor Oliver! you and I think no place equal to our birthplace,' said
Mrs. Frost.

'I should think Mrs. Roland Dynevor would find it compensation. How
many beds did we make up, mother, the year my father was sheriff?'

'You must go to Jane for that,' said his mother, laughing. 'I'm sure
I never knew.'

'I believe it was twenty-seven,' said Oliver, gravely. 'I know there
were one hundred and eighty-five persons at the ball, and that the
room was hung with blue brocade, mother; and you opened the ball with
Lord Francis. I remember you had violet satin and white blonde.'

'My dear, how can you remember such things! You were a little bit of
a schoolboy!'

'I was sixteen' said Oliver. 'It was the year '13. I will have the
drawing-room hung with blue brocade, and I think Mrs. Roland Dynevor
will own that nothing can exceed it.'

'Very likely,' said Isabel, indifferently; and she escaped, beckoning
with her Clara, who was rather entertained with the reminiscences
over which granny and Uncle Oliver seemed ready to linger for ever;
and yet she was rather ashamed of her own amusement and interest,
when she heard her sister-in-law say, 'If he did but know how weary I
am of that hateful thing, a great house!'

'I hope Cheveleigh is not grander than Ormersfield,' said Clara, in
an odd sort of voice.

The ladies, for the first time, did not sit together this morning.
Clara practised, and Isabel took the Chapel in the Valley out of her
desk, and began a process of turning the Sir Roland into Sir Hubert.

Oliver and his mother were in the sitting-room, and, on James's
return from school in the middle of the day, he was summoned thither.
Mrs. Frost was sitting by the fire, rather tearful and nervous, and
her son stood full in the front, as dignified and magnanimous as size
and features would permit, and the same demeanour was instantly and
unconsciously assumed by his nephew, who was beyond measure chafed by
the attempt at a grand coup,

'I have requested your presence,' began Oliver, 'as the eldest son of
my elder brother, and thus, after my mother, the head of our family.
You are aware that when unfortunate circumstances involved my
mother's property, it was my determination to restore the inheritance
to her, and to my dear brother Henry. For this object, I have worked
for the last thirty-four years, and a fortunate accident having
brought our family estate into the market, I have been enabled to
secure it. I am now ready to make it over to my mother, with entail
to yourself and your heirs, as representatives of my brother Henry,
and settling five thousand pounds on your sister, as the portion to
which the younger children of our family have always been entitled.
If you are willing to reside at our family seat with my mother, I
will assure you of a suitable allowance during her lifetime, and--'

Nothing was more intolerable to a man like James than a shower of
obligations; and his spirit, angered at the very length of the
address, caught at the first opening for avoiding gratitude, and
beheld in the last proposal an absolute bribe to make him sacrifice
his sacred ministry, and he burst forth, 'Sir, I am much obliged to
you, but no offers shall induce me to forsake the duties of my
calling.'

'You mistake, if you think I want anything unclerical. No occasion
to hunt--Mr. Tresham used in my day--no one thought the worse of him
-unlucky your taking Orders.'

'There is no use in entering on that point,' said James. 'No other
course was left open to me, and my profession cannot be taken up nor
laid down as a matter of convenience.'

'Young men are taught to think more seriously than they were in our
day,' said Mrs. Frost. 'I told you that you must not try to make him
turn squire.'

'Well! well! good living may be had perhaps. Move to Cheveleigh, and
look out for it at leisure, if nothing else will content him. But
we'll have this drudgery given up. I'll not go home and show my
nephew, heir of the Dynevors, keeping a third-rate grammar-school,'
said Oliver, with his one remaining Eton quality of contempt for
provincial schools.

The Northwold scholar and master were both roused to arms in James.

'Sir,' he said, 'you should have thought of that when you left this
heir of the Dynevors to be educated by the charity of this third-rate
grammar-school.'

'Is this your gratitude, sir!' passionately exclaimed Oliver; 'I, who
have toiled my whole life for your benefit, might look for another
return.'

'It was not for me,' said James. 'It was for family pride. Had it
been from the affection that claims gratitude, you would not have
left your mother in her old age, to labour unaided for the support of
your brother's orphans. For ourselves, I thank you; the habits
nurtured by poverty are the best education; but I cannot let you
suppose that a grand theatrical restoration can atone to me for
thirty years' neglect of my grandmother, or that my gratitude can be
extorted by benefactions at the expense of her past suffering.'

'Jem! dear Jem! what are you saying!' cried Mrs. Frost. 'Don't you
know how kindly your uncle meant? Don't you know how happy we have
been?'

'You may forgive. You are his mother, and you were injured, but I
can never forget what I have seen you undergo.'

'You foolish boy, to forget all our happiness--'

'Nor,' proceeded James, 'can I consent to forego the career of
usefulness that has been opened to me.'

'But, Jem, you could be so useful in the parish! and your uncle could
not wish you to do anything unhandsome by the trustees--'

'I wish him to do nothing, ma'am,' said Oliver. 'If he is too high
and mighty to accept a favour, it is his own loss. We can do without
him, if he prefers the Fitzjocelyn patronage. Much good may it do
him!'

James deigned no answer, looked at his watch, and found it time to
return to the school.

Oliver broke out into angry exclamations, and his mother did her
utmost to soothe him. He had no turn for being a country-gentleman,
he was fit for nothing but his counting-house, and he intended to
return thither as soon as he had installed his mother at Cheveleigh;
and so entirely did all his plans hinge upon his nephew, that even
now he was persuaded to hold out his forgiveness, on condition that
James would apologize, resign the school, and call himself Dynevor.

Mrs. Frost hoped that Isabel would prevail on her husband to listen
favourably; but Isabel gloried in his impracticability, and would
have regarded any attempt at mediation as an unworthy effort to turn
him aside from the path of duty. She replied, that she would never
say a word to change his notions of right, and she treated poor
Oliver with all the lofty reserve that she had formerly practised
upon possible suitors.

When Fitzjocelyn came in the afternoon to take leave, before his
return to London, Mrs. Frost begged him to use his influence with
James. 'Who would have thought it would have so turned out?' she
said. 'My poor Oliver! to be so met after all his generous plans!
and yet Jem does want to do right!'

Unfortunately, Louis felt that, to own Oliver's generosity, it was
necessary to be out of sight of him; and finding that there was
silence and constraint in the drawing-room, he asked Isabel to walk
with him to meet James.

'One breathes freely!' said she, as they left the house. 'Was there
ever a more intolerable man?'

'Never was a man who made a more unlucky error in judgment.'

'And that is all you call it?'

'The spurious object warped the mind aside,' said Louis. 'The grand
idea was too exclusive, and now he suffers for the exclusiveness. It
is melancholy to see the cinder of a burnt-offering to Mammon,
especially when the offering was meant for better things.'

In this strain he chose to talk, without coming to particulars, till,
near the corner of the old square, they met the shouting throng of
boys, and presently James himself, descending the steps of the grim
old grey building.

'I thought you would forgive me for coming to meet you under such an
escort,' said Isabel, 'especially as it was to escape from our
Peruvian relative.'

'Poor man! it was a great pity he did not come last year!' said
Louis.

'I am glad I have no temptation to bend to his will,' returned James.

'Ha! I like the true core of the quarrel to display itself.'

'Fitzjocelyn, you do not mean that you do not fully approve of the
course I have taken!'

'Extremely magnanimous, but not quite unprecedented. Witness St.
Ronan's Well, where the younger Scrogie abjures the name of Mowbray.'

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