Dynevor Terrace; Or, The Clue of Life Volume Ii Part 40

She begged James to walk with her for a farewell visit to her grandmother's other old friend. Great was her enjoyment of this expedition; she said she had not had a walk worth having since she was at Aix-la-Chapelle, and liberty and companions.h.i.+p compensated for all the heat and dust in the dreary tract, full of uncomfortable shabby-genteel abodes, and an unpromising population.

'One cannot regret such a tenantry,' said Clara.

'Poor creatures!' said James. 'I wonder into whose hands they will fall. Your heart may be free, Clara; you have followed the clear path of duty; but it is a painful thought for me, that to strive to amend these festering evils, caused very likely by my grandfather's speculations, might have been my appointed task. I should not have had far to seek for occupation. When I was talking to the Curate yesterday, my heart smote me to think what I might have done to help him.'

'It would all have been over now.'

'It ought not. Nay, perhaps, my presence might have left my uncle free to attend to his own concerns.'

'I really believe you are going to regret the place!'

'After all, Clara, I was a Dynevor before my uncle came home. It might have been my birthright. But, as Isabel says, what we are now is far more likely to be safe for the children. I was bad enough as I was, but what should I have been as a pampered heir! Let it go.'

'Yes, let it go,' said Clara; 'it has been little but pain to me. We shall teach my poor uncle that home love is better than old family estates. I almost wish he may recover nothing in Peru, that he may learn that you receive him for his own sake.'

'That is more than I can wish,' said James. 'A hundred or two a-year would come in handily. Besides, I am afraid that Mary Ponsonby may be suffering in this crash.'

'She seems to have taken care of herself,' said Clara. 'She does not write to me, and I am almost ready to believe her father at last. I could not have thought it of her!'

'Isabel has always said it was the best thing that could happen to Louis.'

'Isabel never had any notion of Louis. I don't mean any offence, but if she had known what he was made of, she would never have had you.'

'Thank you, Clara! I always thought it an odd predilection, but no one can now esteem Fitzjocelyn more highly than ahe does.'

'Very likely; but if she thinks Louis can stand Mary's deserting him--'

'It will be great pain, no doubt; but once over, he will be free.'

'It never will be over.'

'That is young-ladyism.'

'I never was a young lady, and I know what I mean. Mary may not be all he thinks her, and she may be dull enough to let her affection wear out; but I do not believe he will ever look at any one again, as he did after Mary on your wedding-day.'

'So you forbid him to be ever happy again!'

'Not at all, only in that one way. There are many others of being happy.'

'That one way meaning marriage.'

'I mean that sort of perfect marriage that, according to the saying, is made in heaven. Whether that could have been with Mary, I do not know her well enough to guess; but I am convinced that he will always have the same kind of memory of her that a man has of a first love, or first wife.'

'It may have been a mistake to drive him into the attachment, which Isabel thinks has been favoured by absence, leaving scope for imagination; but I cannot give up the hope that his days of happiness are yet to come.'

'Nor do I give up Mary, yet,' said Clara. 'Till she announces her defection I shall not believe it, for it would be common honesty to inform poor Louis, and in that she never was deficient.'

'It is not a plant that seems to thrive on the Peruvian soil.'

'No; and I am dreadfully afraid for Tom Madison. There were hints about him in Mr. Ponsonby's letters, which make me very anxious; and from what my uncle says, it seems that there is such an atmosphere of gambling and trickery about his office, that he thinks it a matter of course that no one should be really true and honest.'

'That would be a terrible affair indeed! I don't know for which I should be most concerned, Louis or our poor little Charlotte. But after all, Clara, we have known too many falsehoods come across the Atlantic, to concern ourselves about anything without good reason.'

So they talked, enjoying the leisure the walk gave them for conversation, and then paying the painful visit, when Clara tried in vain to make it understood by the poor old lady that she was going away, and that James was her brother. They felt thankful that such decay had been spared their grandmother, and Clara sighed to think that her uncle might be on the brink of a like loss of faculties, and then felt herself more than ever bound to him.

On the way home they went together to the church, and pondered over the tombs of their ancestry,--ranging from the grim, defaced old knight, through the polished bra.s.s, the kneeling courtier, and the dishevelled Grief embracing an urn, down to the mural arch enshrining the dear revered name of Catharine, daughter of Roland, and wife of James Frost Dynevor, the last of her line whose bones would rest there. Her grave had truly been the sole possession that her son's labours had secured for her; that grave was the only spot at Cheveleigh that claimed a pang from Clara's heart. She stood beside it with deep, fond, clinging love and reverence, but with no painful recollections to come between her and that fair, bright vision of happy old age. Alas! for the memories that her brother had sown to spring up round him now!

Apart from all these vipers of his own creating, James after all felt more in the cession of Cheveleigh than did his sister. These were days of change and of feudal feeling wearing out; but James, long as he had pretended to scorn 'being sentimental about his forefathers,' was strongly susceptible of such impressions; and he was painfully conscious of being disinherited. He might have felt thus, without any restoration or loss, as the mere effect of visiting his birthright as a stranger; but, as he received all humbly instead of proudly, the feeling did him no harm. It softened him into sympathy with his uncle, and tardy appreciation of his single-minded devotion to the estate, which he had won not for himself, but for others, only to see it first ungratefully rejected, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed away. Then, with a thrill of humiliation at his own unworthiness, came the earnest prayer that it might yet be vouchsafed to him to tend the exhausted body, and train the contracted mind to dwell on that inheritance whence there could be no casting out.

Poor Oliver was fretful and restless, insisting on being brought down to his study to watch over the packing of his papers, and miserable at being unable to arrange them himself. Even the tenderest pity for him could not prevent him from being an exceeding trial; and James could hardly yet have endured it, but for pleasure and interest in watching his sister's lively good-humour, saucy and determined when the old man was unreasonable, and caressing and affectionate, when he was violent in his impotence; never seeming to hear, see, or regard anything unkind or unpleasant; and absolutely pleased and gratified when her uncle, in his petulance, sometimes ungraciously rejected her services in favour of those of 'Roland,' who, he took it for granted, must, as a man, have more sense. It would sometimes cross James, how would Isabel and the children fare with this ill-humour; but he had much confidence in his wife's sweet calm temper, and more in the obvious duty; and, on the whole, he believed it was better not to think about it.

The suffering that the surrender cost Oliver was only shown in this species of petty fractiousness, until the last morning, when his nephew was helping him across the hall, and Clara close at his side, he made them stand still beside one of the pillars, and groaned as he said, 'Here I waited for the carriage last time! Here I promised to get it back again!'

'I wish every one kept promises as you did,' said James, looking about for something cheerful to say.

'I had hope then,' said Oliver; and well might he feel the contrast between the youth, with such hopes, energies, and determination mighty within him, and the broken and disappointed man.

'Hope yet, and better hope!' James could not help saying.

'Not while there's such a rascal in the office at Lima,' cried Oliver, testily.

'Oh! Uncle Oliver, he did not mean that!' exclaimed Clara.

Mr. Dynevor grumbled something about parsons, which neither of them chose to hear; and Clara cut it short by saying, 'After all, Uncle Oliver, you have done it all! Dear grandmamma came back and was happy here, and that was all that signified. You never wanted it for yourself, you know, and my dear father was not here to have it. And for you, what could you have had more than your nephew and niece to--to try to be like your children! And hadn't you rather have them without purchase than with?' And as she saw him smile in answer to her bright caress, she added merrily, 'There's nothing else to pity but the fir trees and gold fish; and as they have done very happily before without the Pendragon reign, I dare any they will again; so I can't be very sorry for them!'

This was Clara's farewell to her greatness, and cheerily she enlivened her uncle all the way to London, and tried to solace him after the interviews that he insisted on with various men of business, and which did not tend to make him stronger in health or spirits through the next day's journey.

The engine whistled its arriving shriek at Northwold. Happy Clara!

What was the summer rain to her? Every house, every pa.s.senger, were tokens of home; and the damp rain-mottled face of the Terrace, looking like a child that had been crying, was more welcome to her longing eyes than ever had been lake or mountain.

Isabel and little Catharine stood on the step; but as Mr. Dynevor was lifted out, the little girl shrank out of sight with a childish awe of infirmity. The dining-room had been made a very comfortable sitting-room for him, and till he was settled there, nothing else could be attended to; but he was so much fatigued, that it was found best to leave him entirely to Jane; and Clara, after a few moments, followed her brother from the room.

As she shut the door, she stood for some seconds un.o.bserved, and unwilling to interfere with the scene before her. Halfway upstairs, James had been pulled down to sit on the steps, surrounded by his delighted flock. The baby was in his arms, flouris.h.i.+ng her hands as he danced her; Kitty, from above, had clasped tightly round his neck, chattering and kissing with breathless velocity; one twin in front was drumming on his knee, and shrieking in accordance with every shout of the baby; and below, leaning on the bal.u.s.ters, stood their mother's graceful figure, looking up at them with a lovely smiling face of perfect gladness. She was the first to perceive Clara; and, with a pretty gesture to be silent, she pointed to the stand of the Wedgewood jar, under which sat the other little maid, her two fat arms clasped tight round her papa's umbrella, and the ivory handle indenting her rosy cheek, as she fondled it in silent transport.

'My little Salome,' whispered Isabel, squeezing Clara's hand, 'our quiet one. She could not sleep for expecting papa, and now she is in a fit of shy delight; she can't shout with the others; she can only nurse his umbrella.'

Just then James made a desperate demonstration, amid peals of laughter from his daughters. 'We are stopping the way! Get out, you unruly monsters! Let go, Kitty--Mercy; I shall kick! Mamma, catch this ball;' making a feint of tossing the crowing f.a.n.n.y at her.

a.s.suredly, thought Clara, pity was wasted; there was not one too many.

And then began the happy exulting introductions, and a laugh at little Mercy, who stood blank and open-mouthed, gazing up and up her tall aunt, as if there were no coming to the top of her. Clara sat down on the stairs, to bring her face to a level, and struck up a friends.h.i.+p with her on the spot, while James lilted up his little Salome, her joy still too deep and reserved for manifestation; only without a word she nestled close to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes, as if languid with excess of rapture--a pretty contrast to her sister's frantic delight, which presently alarmed James lest it should disturb his uncle, and he called them up-stairs.

But Clara must first run to the House Beautiful, and little Mercy must needs come to show her the way, and trotted up before her, consequentially announcing, 'Aunt Cara.' Miss Faithfull alone was present; and, without speaking, Clara dropped on the ground, laid her head on her dear old friend's lap, and little Mercy exclaimed, in wondering alarm, 'Aunt Cara naughty--Aunt Cara crying!'

'My darling,' said Miss Faithfull, as she kissed Clara's brow and stroked her long flaxen hair, 'you have gone through a great deal. We must try to make you happy in your poor old home.'

'Oh, no! oh, no! It is happiness! Oh! such happiness! but I don't know what to do with it, and I want granny!'

She was almost like little Salome; the flood of bliss in returning home, joined with the missing of the one dearest welcome, had come on her so suddenly that she was almost stifled, till she had been calmed and soothed by the brief interval of quiet with her dear old friend.