Dynevor Terrace; Or, The Clue of Life Volume I Part 23

'Don't set her against it. I have been telling her of the necessity all the way home.'

'Is it not to be taken into consideration that a bad--not to say a base-style of girl seems to prevail there?'

'I can't help it, Fitzjocelyn,' cried Jem, ruffling up his hair, as he always did when vexed. 'Girls fit to be her companions don't go to school--or to no school within my means. This place has sound superiors, and she _must_ be provided with a marketable stock of accomplishments, so there's no choice. I can trust her not to forget that she is a Dynevor.'

'Query as to the benefit of that recollection.'

'What do you mean?'

'That I never saw evils lessened by private self-exaltation.'

'Very philosophical! but as a matter of fact, what was it but the sense of my birth that kept me out of all the mischief I was exposed to at the Grammar School!'

'I always thought it had been something more respectable,' said Louis, his voice growing more sleepy.

'Pshaw! Primary motives being understood, secondary stand common wear the best.'

'As long as they don't eat into the primary.'

'The long and short of it is,' exclaimed James, impatiently, 'that we must have no nonsense about Clara. It is pain enough to me to inflict all this on her, but I would not do it, if I thought it were more than mere discomfort. Her principles are fixed, she is above these trumperies. But you have the sense to see that her whole welfare may depend on whether she gets fitted to be a valuable accomplished governess or a mere bonne, tossed about among nursery-maids. There's where poverty galls! Don't go and set my grandmother on! If she grew wretched and took Clara away, it would be mere condemning of her to rudeness and struggling!'

'Very well,' said Louis, as James concluded the brief sentences, uttered in the bitterness of his heart, 'one bargain I make. If I am to hold my tongue about school, I will have my own way with her in the holidays.'

'I tell you, Louis, that it is time to have done with childishness.

Clara is growing up--I _won't_ have you encourage her in all that wild flightiness--I didn't want to have had her here at all! If she is ever to be a reasonable, conformable woman, it is high time to begin. I can't have you undoing the work of six months! when Mary might make some hand of her, too--'

James stopped. Louis's eyes were shut, and he appeared to be completely asleep. If silence were acquiescence, it was at least gained; and so he went away, and on returning, intended to impress his lessons of reserve on Clara and her grandmother, but was prevented by finding Mrs. Ponsonby and her daughter already in the library, consulting over some letters, while Clara sat at her grandmother's knee in the full felicity of hearing all the Northwold news.

The tea was brought in, and there was an inquiry for Louis. He came slowly forward from the sofa at the dark end of the room, but disclaimed, of course, the accusation of fatigue.

'A very bad sign,' said James, 'that you have been there all this time without our finding it out. Decidedly, you have taken me in. You don't look half as well as you promised. You are not the same colour ten minutes together, just now white, and now--how you redden!'

'Don't, Jem!' cried Louis, as each observation renewed the tide of burning crimson in his cheek. 'It is like whistling to a turkey-c.o.c.k.

If I had but the blue variety, it might be more comfortable, as well as more interesting.'

Clara went into a choking paroxysm of laughter, which her brother tried to moderate by a look, and Louis rendered more convulsive by quoting

'Marked you his cheek of heavenly blue,'

and looked with a mischievous amus.e.m.e.nt at James's ill-suppressed displeasure at the merriment that knew no bounds, till even Mrs. Frost, who had laughed at first as much at James's distress as at Louis's travestie or Clara's fun, thought it time to check it by saying, 'You are right, Jem, he is not half so strong as he thinks himself. You must keep him in good order.'

'Take care, Aunt Kitty,' said Louis; 'you'll make me restive. A tutor and governess both! I appeal! Shall we endure it, Clara?'

'Britons never shall be slaves!' was the eager response.

'Worthy of the daughter of the Pendragons,' said Louis; 'but it lost half its effect from being stifled with laughing. You should command yourself, Clara, when you utter a sentiment. I beg to repeat Miss Frost Dynevor's novel and striking speech, and declare my adhesion, 'Britons never shall be slaves!' Liberty, fraternity, and equality!

Tyrants, beware!'

'You ungrateful boy!' said Mrs. Frost; 'that's the way you use your good governess!'

'Only the way the nineteenth century treats all its good governesses,'

said Louis.

'When it gets past them,' said Mary, smiling. 'I hope you did not think I was not ready to give you up to your tutor?'

Mary found the renunciation more complete than perhaps she had expected. The return of his cousins had made Fitzjocelyn a different creature. He did indeed read with James for two hours every morning, but this was his whole concession to discipline; otherwise he was more wayward and desultory than ever, and seemed bent on teazing James, and amusing himself by making Clara extravagantly wild and idle. Tired of his long confinement, he threw off all prudence with regard to health, as well as all struggle with his volatile habits; and the more he was scolded, the more he seemed to delight in making meekly ridiculous answers and going his own way. Sometimes he and Clara would make an appointment, at some unearthly hour, to see Mrs. Morris make cheese, or to find the sun-dew blossom open, or to sketch some effect of morning sun. Louis would afterwards be tired and unhinged the whole day, but never convinced, only capable of promoting Clara's chatter; and ready the next day to stand about with her in the sun at the cottages, to the increase of her freckles, and the detriment of his ankle. Their frolics would have been more comprehensible had she been more attractive; but her boisterous spirits were not engaging to any one but Louis, who seemed to enjoy them in proportion to her brother's annoyance, and to let himself down into nearly equal folly.

He gave some slight explanation to Mary, one day when he had been reminded of one of their former occupations--'Ah! I have no time for that now. You see there's n.o.body else to protect that poor Giraffe from being too rational.'

'Is that her great danger?' said Mary.

'Take my advice, Mary, let her alone. Follow your own judgment, and not poor Jem's fidgets. He wants to be 'father, mother both, and uncle, all in one,' and so he misses his natural vocation of elder brother. He wants to make a woman of her before her time; and now he has his way with her at school, he shall let her have a little compensation at home.'

'Is this good for her? Is it the only way she can be happy?'

'It is her way, at least; and if you knew the penance she undergoes at school, you would not grudge it to her. She is under his orders not to disclose the secrets of her prison-house, lest they should disquiet Aunt Catharine; and she will not turn to you, because--I beg your pardon, Mary--she has imbibed a distrust of all school-girls; and besides, Jem has gone and insisted on your being her friend more than human nature can stand.'

'It is a great pity,' said Mary, smiling, but grieved; 'I should not have been able to do her much good--but if I could only try!'

'I'll tell you,' said Louis, coming near, with a look between confidence and embarra.s.sment; 'is it in the power of woman to make her dress look rather more like other people's without inflaming the blood of the Dynevors--cautiously, you know? Even my father does not dare to give her half-a-sovereign for pocket-money; but do ask your mother if she could not be made such that those girls should not make her their laughingstock.'

'You don't mean it!'

'Aye, I do; and she has not even told James, lest he should wish to spend more upon her. She glories in it, but that is hardly wholesome.'

'Then she told you?'

'Oh, yes! We always were brothers! It is great fun to have her here!

I always wished it, and I'm glad it has come before they have made her get out of the boy. He will be father to the woman some day; and that will be soon enough, without teasing her.'

Mary wished to ask whether all this were for Clara's good, but she could not very well put such a question to him; and, after all, it was noticeable that, noisy and unguarded as Clara's chatter was, there never was anything that in itself should not have been said: though her manner with Louis was unceremonious, it was never flirting; and refinement of mind was as evident in her rough-and-ready manner as in his high-bred quietness. This seemed to account for Mrs. Frost's non-interference, which at first amazed her niece; but Aunt Catharine's element was chiefly with boys, and her love for Clara, though very great, showed itself chiefly in still regarding her as a mere child, petting her to atone for the privations of school, and while she might a.s.sent to the propriety of James's restrictions, always laughing or looking aside when they were eluded.

James argued and remonstrated. He said a great deal, always had the advantage in vehemence, and appeared to reduce Louis to a condition of quaint debonnaire indifference; and warfare seemed the normal state of the cousins, the one fiery and sensitive, the other cool and impa.s.sive, and yet as appropriate to each other as the pepper and the cuc.u.mber, to borrow a bon mot from their neighbour, Sydney Calcott.

If Jem came to Mary brimful of annoyance with Louis's folly, a mild word of a.s.sent was sufficient to make him turn round and do battle with the imaginary enemy who was always depreciating Fitzjocelyn. To make up for Clara's avoidance of Mary, he rendered her his prime counsellor, and many an hour was spent in pacing up and down the garden in the summer twilight; while she did her best to pacify him by suggesting that thorough relaxation would give spirits and patience for Clara's next half year, and that it might be wiser not to overstrain his own undefined authority, while the lawful power, Aunt Catharine, did not interfere. Surely she might safely be trusted to watch over her own granddaughter; and while Clara was so perfectly simple, and Louis such as he was, more evil than good might result from inculcating reserve.

At any rate, it was hard to meddle with the poor child's few weeks of happiness, and to this James always agreed; and then he came the next day to relieve himself by fighting the battle over again. So constantly did this occur, that Aunt Kitty, in her love of mischief, whispered to Mrs. Ponsonby that she only hoped the two viziers would not quarrel about the three thousand sequins, three landed estates, and three slaves.

Still, Louis's desertion had left unoccupied so many of the hours of Mary's time that he had previously absorbed, that her mother watched anxiously to see whether she would feel the blank. But she treated it as a matter of course. She had attended to her cousin when he needed her, and now that he had regained his former companion, Clara, she resigned him without effort or mortification, as far as could be seen.

She was forced to fall back on other duties, furnis.h.i.+ng the house, working for every one, and reading some books that Louis had brought before her. The impulse of self-improvement had not expired with his attention, and without any shadow of pique she was always ready to play the friend and elder sister whenever he needed her, and to be grateful when he shared her interests or pursuits. So the world went till Lord Ormersfield's return caused Clara's noise to subside so entirely, that her brother was sufficiently at ease to be exceedingly vivacious and entertaining, and Mrs. Ponsonby hoped for a great improvement in the state of affairs.

CHAPTER X.

THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR.

For who is he, whose chin is but enriched With one appearing hair, that will not follow These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers 'gainst France?

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege.