Englefield Grange Part 8

Mrs. Armstrong gladly a.s.sented, and on her way to these apartments met Mrs. Halford, with whom she was equally pleased to make acquaintance.

After a stay of nearly an hour, she at last took her leave of the doctor and his wife, saying--

"I shall send my little boy on Monday week, Dr. Halford, not before, and I feel sure he will make progress under your care, and be quite happy."

The terms for so young a pupil were not of such great importance as to justify Dr. Halford's pleasure at this addition to his numbers, but he had been as quick to detect a gentlewoman in Mrs. Armstrong as she had been respecting himself. Besides, he had heard rumours already of the wealth and good connexions of the family at Lime Grove, and the latter fact was more especially agreeable to him.

A clergyman who is a schoolmaster and his wife are both often well born and well connected though poor, and naturally they prefer to teach boys who learn refinement and good breeding at home, to those who are perhaps better paid for by parents who think everything, even intellect and good manners, can be obtained for money.

Mrs. Armstrong returned home at a quick pace; the pleasure she felt at being able to place her delicate Freddy with such nice people, and the fresh bracing air of the cold morning, invigorated her so greatly that Mary, who met her in the hall, exclaimed--

"Why, mamma, you look quite young and blooming, and as happy as if you had heard pleasant news!"

"Well, dear, I think I have, for Dr. Halford is one of the nicest schoolmasters I ever met with, rather of the old school in manners, but not in the least pedantic, and I like Mrs. Halford exceedingly, there is such a kind, motherly way about her, and they are both really well bred."

"So I suppose you intend Freddy to go there to school, mamma?" said Mary.

"Yes, indeed I do, my dear; and I am so pleased with the house and the arrangements, that if the Grange were not too near home, I should like to send Arthur and Edward as boarders. But I begin to feel rather tired, darling," she added, throwing herself into an easy-chair, "although the fresh bracing air seems to have given me new life."

"Ah, yes, so it may," cried Mary, "but, mamma, I can see you are tired; all the bright colour on your checks is beginning to fade already, so you must sit quite still in that chair till luncheon time; it will soon be ready, and I will take off your things and carry them upstairs while you rest."

The fairies of old are still Mary's attendants; gently and quickly she removed her mother's bonnet and wraps, and running upstairs with them, returned in a very few minutes with her head-dress, which she arranged tastefully on the pale brown hair, still worn in side curls as in the days of her youth.

Mrs. Armstrong has not yet reached the age of forty, and the delicate health of the last few years has only rendered her fair complexion more delicate and her physical powers weaker, without adding age to her appearance or a single grey hair to the s.h.i.+ning curls which hang on each side of her face.

As Mary Armstrong stands by her mother, smoothing the soft ringlets, it is plainly to be seen that the pretty child of twelve has developed into a very beautiful woman. At the age of eighteen she resembles her mother only in complexion, eyes, and hair. Her features, though as regular, are not so delicately chiselled, they are larger and more marked; and in this, as in an expression of calm decision, the resemblance to her father is very striking. It is when she smiles, and her blue eyes light up with pleasure and interest, that strangers often exclaim, "How like you are to your mother, Miss Armstrong!" Mary has grown very little since the time when her cousin named her "Cinderella," but she looks taller, partly on account of her figure having fully developed into rounded proportions, but princ.i.p.ally because the curls have disappeared.

They have been tortured into plaits and ma.s.sive coils at the back of her head, but true to Nature they often rebel, and escape here and there in the form of ringlets--often unnoticed by their owner, but when pointed out to her they are unceremoniously pushed back.

Mary is still influenced by the words of her father; he once said to her, "Mary, can you not arrange your hair as other girls do? those long curls are too childish at your age."

From this moment, to her mother's great regret, she, as it was then called, "turned up her hair" in the way we have described.

Her aunts approved, because this arrangement was less singular and more fas.h.i.+onable, which latter fact would have greatly surprised Mr.

Armstrong. At all events, they differed from him in one respect still.

When the rebellious hair would escape from the plaits in stray ringlets while in the company of her aunts, Mary had at first attempted to reduce them to submission, but she was quickly interrupted. "Leave your hair alone, Mary," her aunt Herbert exclaimed; "why, those stray ringlets are most effective, and quite an improvement to the appearance of your head.

Surely your father will not object to what is natural; if you curled it in paper every night to produce an effect, then he might complain or disapprove."

Mary laughed, but when visiting at her aunt's she allowed Nature to act as she pleased. Yet at home there seemed no happier task to the young girl than to give way to every wish of her father, whether openly expressed or slightly hinted at, no matter to what it referred. It was a kind of hero-wors.h.i.+p in the girl's heart. Her father was her hero, and the fact that she did not love him with the same clinging fondness as she loved her mother was quite unknown to herself.

Mary Armstrong certainly obeyed the command, "Honour thy father and thy mother;" yet in the family at Lime Grove there was still one thing wanting, "the perfect love that casteth out fear."

The principles of honour, rect.i.tude, truthfulness, generosity, and other moral virtues were cultivated in Mary's home, but the "charity, or love," without which, St. Paul tells us, all our doings are as "sounding bra.s.s and tinkling cymbals," was wanting. Love to G.o.d and love to man, on which "hang all the law and the commandments," were known only in theory.

Mary Armstrong had yet to learn that to her Father in heaven she must turn in trouble and sorrow, and in future days she might have said almost in the words of Wolsey, "Had I but served my Father in heaven as diligently as I studied to please my father on earth, He would not have forsaken me now in my hour of sorrow." And yet for these days of trial Mary at last could feel thankful. Christianity in her home had been an acknowledged fact. Its outward duties, its moral principles, were all inculcated; but when our daily life pa.s.ses smoothly, untroubled, by sorrow or poverty, which is, perhaps, the hardest trial of all to bear, especially when accompanied by sickness and pain, we are apt to forget the sweet principle of love to G.o.d and love to man which, St. Paul tells us, "is the fulfilling of the law;" and Mary Armstrong's life hitherto had known no trials more painful than those caused by her father's eccentricities.

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLEFIELD GRANGE.

More than thirty-five years before the period of which we write, James Halford, who had been travelling tutor to the son of a n.o.bleman, commenced a school at Bayswater, then a pretty rural village. His father, a country surgeon in good practice, had given his only son a superior education, but the young man had no liking for his father's profession. To send James to the university Mr. Halford felt would be beyond his means, and the young man's wish to enter the Church was therefore set aside, causing him great disappointment. Ultimately he was engaged as tutor to the youth already spoken of, and while with him in that capacity became acquainted with the governess of his sisters, Clara Marston, whom he afterwards married. At the death of his father a small but unexpected amount of money fell into his hands. He almost immediately relinquished his engagement with the son of Lord Rivers, and took a house at Bayswater. Trifling as the sum was, it still formed a sufficient capital upon which to commence a school, and so well had he performed his duty with his pupil that the high recommendation of the young man's relatives soon gained him several pupils. Six months after his father's death Clara Marston became his wife. For ten years they continued to carry on their school most successfully, till bricks and mortar had completely destroyed the countrified character of the place, and obliged them at last to seek a home elsewhere.

Armies of builders were already invading the beautiful fields and meadows in the neighbourhood; long rows of small semi-detached cottages, at rentals varying from 20_l._ to 50_l._ a year, sprung up as if by magic. Worse still, when the long leases of many old red brick mansions expired they were quickly demolished, and not only on their sites, but in the midst of the beautiful gardens and pleasure-grounds belonging to them arose piles of inferior buildings, bringing to their owners a quick return for the capital expended. The same spoliation of Nature is still going on around us, and in these days of utilitarianism how can it be avoided?

The loveliest of Nature's landscapes--the bright flowers of a well-kept garden--the glorious old trees, from the tops of which is heard the musical cawing of rooks--the red brick mansion with its many windows glittering in the setting sun, and its colour contrasting picturesquely with the green foliage--the stream of limpid water with the graceful swans gliding on its shadowed surface,--all this is very lovely to see, and belongs to the beautiful, but "will it pay?" is the question asked now; and the practical man of business knows that _money_ not "_knowledge_ is power," in these days of mammon-wors.h.i.+p. So the beautiful is sacrificed without regret if it can be replaced by something that "pays better."

This brick-building mania, however, hastened Mr. Halford's removal from a house already too small for his increased number of pupils and rising family. His gentle firmness with the former, and his wife's clever domestic management, had made them very successful, and when they removed to their present commodious residence all their pupils followed them, and others were quickly added to their number.

Many sorrows, however, had overtaken them during the twenty-five years at Englefield Grange. Of their seven children two only survived, the eldest and the youngest.

f.a.n.n.y Halford at the age of twenty had married, and accompanied her husband to Melbourne about fourteen years before the time of which we write. The youngest, Henry, a studious reading boy, was therefore the only hope of his parents. Dr. Halford, remembering his own disappointment about entering the Church, watched his boy anxiously, and as he grew from childhood to youth discovered with satisfaction that his wish to become a clergyman was as strong as his own had been.

Indeed, the youth's tastes all tended to such a result. At eight years old he commenced Greek; Caesar, Horace, and Virgil were the companions of his play-hours, history an amus.e.m.e.nt, and poetry a delight. When these talents developed themselves Mr. Halford could not control his regret at a lost opportunity. Henry had not reached his seventh year when a friend obtained for him a presentation to Christ's Hospital; but the mother, who had followed so many children to the grave, could not spare her youngest boy. Mr. Halford hesitated to press it, and so the opportunity was lost. Now, however, she was ready to make any possible sacrifice to help in carrying out his own and his father's wishes.

When Henry Halford reached the age of sixteen it became necessary to make some decision as to his future. He had his faults, as all young people have, and they had been to a certain extent fostered by the indulgence of his loving mother and sister. f.a.n.n.y was twelve years older than her brother, and knowing how he hated the restrictions of order and neatness, she would, during his early boyhood, quietly set to rights untidy rooms, carefully replace scattered books, and forgive his seeming indifference to her kind attention. Even a certain irritation of temper was pa.s.sed over by mother and sister, for if he was hasty, was he not quick to forgive? and who so penitent as Henry Halford after uttering an angry or unjust word? Besides, they reasoned, studious and imaginative people were often very irritable. After his sister's marriage, he had another to spoil him in her place, of whom we shall hear more by-and-by.

And so the time pa.s.sed on till his father felt it necessary to obtain for his son suitable preparation for the university.

One evening he broached the subject to his wife. "My dear," he said, "there is no one to whom I could send Henry with so much confidence as to Dr. Mason; he is a man of high standing, and his pupils scarcely ever fail in pa.s.sing for the professions in which he prepares them. He took a first cla.s.s at Oxford, and has had many years' experience."

"Are not his terms a hundred a year?" asked Mrs. Halford.

"Yes," was the reply, "but I have thought the matter over seriously; Henry must be with Dr. Mason two years at least, and we can spare the 200_l._, Clara dear, don't you think so?"

"Indeed, I do," she replied; "I would make any sacrifice rather than interfere with the dear boy's prospects."

"There will be no sacrifice," said her husband, "even if it should cost the whole of the thousand pounds I have saved for him, to send him to the university. f.a.n.n.y has had her share, and if Henry is willing for his portion to be spent on preparation for the Church we cannot object to his wishes."

"And is he willing?" asked the mother, who was ready to give up double the sum named by her husband if by so doing she could gratify her son.

"More than willing, he is most anxious. I never saw the boy look so eager and delighted as when he found I could spare the money I had set aside for him without inconvenience to myself. I explained to him the whole cost--200_l._ for two years with Dr. Mason,--and, at the lowest estimate, 600_l._ while at Oxford. Altogether, with coaching, private tutor, ordination fees, and other expenses, a thousand pounds will just about cover it."

"You have set my mind at ease, James, about the boy," said Mrs. Halford.

"In six or seven years he will be ordained, and by that time, if our school continues to be successful, we may still have something to leave to our children after all."

"And you forget, my dear, that if I should be laid up or unable to work, Henry as a clergyman will be much more suitable to carry on the school than myself, although I have a foreign degree. And after my death there will be an income for him to fall back upon if he does not speedily obtain a living."

"Don't antic.i.p.ate evil," said the hopefully proud mother. "G.o.d grant we may both live to see our son a useful minister in the Church before we die, whether as curate or rector."

And in this happy prospect Henry Halford, at the age of seventeen, had been placed with Dr. Mason to prepare for matriculation at Oxford.

The breakfast parlour at the Grange was situated at the back of the house, looking over the prospect so admired by Mrs. Armstrong. The sun s.h.i.+ning upon the front of the house during the summer afternoon made this apartment cool and pleasant for tea, which was now prepared on a table near the window.

Close to it sat a lady past middle age, yet most attractive in appearance. On her white silky hair rested a lace cap tastefully trimmed; beneath the white hair and strongly contrasted with it were dark eyes, eyebrows, and lashes, still reminding those who knew her in youth of the bright and lively Clara Marston. The soft, patient face has now lost its vivacity, but it is not the less pleasing on that account.

Her hand held a stocking, but it rested on her lap, her thoughts were evidently far away.

The door opened and Dr. Halford entered, followed by his niece, who exclaimed--