Dynevor Terrace; Or, The Clue of Life Volume Ii Part 22

'I think not. She was grieved if I were set against Uncle Oliver's plans, and really hurt if she could not make him think as she did about right and wrong, but otherwise she was always bright. She never found people tiresome; she could find something kind to say to and for the silliest; and when my uncle's display was most provoking, she would only laugh at 'poor Oliver's' odd notions of doing her honour. I used to be quite ashamed of the fuss I would make when I thought a thing vulgar; when I saw that sort of vanity by the side of her real indifference, springing from unworldliness.'

'And then her mornings were quiet?'

'More quiet than at home. While we were riding, she used to sit with her dear old big Bible, and the two or three old books she was so fond of. You remember her Sutton and her Bishop Home, and often she would show me some pa.s.sage that had struck her as prettier than ever, well as she had always known it. Once she said she was very thankful for the leisure time, free from household cares, and even from friendly gossip; for she said first she had been gay, then she had been busy, and had never had time to meditate quietly.'

'So she made a cloister of this grand house. Ah! I trusted she was past being hurt by external things. That grand old age was like a pure glad air where worldly fumes could not mount up. My only fear would have been this unlucky estrangement making her unhappy.'

'I think I may tell you how she felt it,' said Clara; 'I am trying to tell James, but I don't know whether I can. She said she had come to perceive that she had confounded pride with independence. She blamed herself, so that I could not bear to hear it, for the grand fine things in her life. She said pride had made her stand alone, and unkindly spurn much that was kindly meant. I don't mean that she repented of the actions, but of the motives; she said the glory of being beholden to no one had run through everything; and had been very hurtful even to Uncle Oliver. She never let him know all her straits, and was too proud, she said, to ask, when she was hurt at his not offering help, and so she made him seem more hard-hearted, and let us become set against him. She said she had fostered the same temper in poor Jem, who had it strongly enough by inheritance, and that she had never known the evil, nor understood it as pride, till she saw the effects.'

'Did they make her unhappy?'

'She cried when she spoke of it, and I have seen her in tears at church, and found her eyes red when she had been alone, but I don't think it was a hard, cruel sorrow; I think the suns.h.i.+ne of her nature managed to beam through it.'

'The suns.h.i.+ne was surely love,' said Louis, 'making the rainbow of hope on the tears of repentance. Perhaps it is a blessing vouchsafed to the true of heart to become aware of such a hidden const.i.tutional infirmity in time to wash it out with blessed tears like those.'

'Hidden,' said Clara, 'yes, indeed it was, even from herself, because it never showed in manner, like my pride; she was gracious and affable to all the world. I heard the weeding-women saying, 'she had not one bit of pride,' and when I told her of it, she shook her head, and laughed sadly, and said that was the kind of thing which had taken her in.'

'Common parlance is a deceitful thing,' said Louis, sighing; 'people can't even be sincere without doing harm! Well, I had looked to see her made happy by harmony between those two!'

'She gave up the hope of seeing it,' said Clara, 'but she looked to it all the same. She said meekly one day that it might be her penalty to see them at variance in her own lifetime, but over her grave perhaps they would be reconciled, and her prayers be answered. How she did love Uncle Oliver! Do you know, Louis, what she was to him showed me what the mother's love must be, which we never missed, because--because we had her!'

'Don't talk of it, Clara,' said Louis, hastily; 'we cannot dwell on ourselves, and bear it patiently!'

It was truly the loss of a most tender mother to them both; bringing for the first time the sense of orphanhood on the girl, left between the uncongenial though doting uncle, and the irritable though affectionate brother; and Louis, though his home was not broken up, suffered scarcely less. His aunt's playful sweetness had peculiarly accorded with his disposition, and the affection and confidence of his fond, clinging nature had fastened themselves upon her, all the more in the absence of his own Mary. Each loss seemed to make the other more painful. Aunt Kitty's correspondence was another link cut away between him and Peru, and he had never known such a sense of dreariness in his whole life. Clara was going patiently and quietly through those trying days, with womanly considerateness; believing herself supported by her brother, and being so in fact by the mere sisterly gratification of his presence, though she was far more really sustained and a.s.sisted by Fitzjocelyn. How much happier was the sorrow of Louis and Clara than that of James or Oliver! Tempers such as those in which the uncle and nephew but too closely resembled each other were soured, not softened by grief, and every arrangement raised discussions which did not tend to bring them nearer together.

Oliver designed a stately funeral. Nothing was too much for him to lavish on his mother, and he was profuse in orders for hangings, velvet, blazonry, mutes, and hired mourners, greedy of offers of the dreary state of empty carriages, demanding that of Lord Ormersfield, and wanting James to write to Lady Conway for the same purpose.

Nothing could be more adverse to the feelings of the grandchildren; but Clara had been schooled into letting her uncle have his way, and knew that dear granny would have said Oliver might do as he pleased with her in death as in life, owning the affection so unpleasantly manifested; James, on the other hand, could see no affection, nothing but disgusting parade, as abhorrent to his grandmother's taste as to his own. He thought he had a right to be consulted, for he by no means believed himself to have abdicated his heads.h.i.+p of the family; and he made his voice heard entirely without effect, except the indignation of his uncle, and the absence of the Conway carriage; although Lord Ormersfield wrote that he should bring Sir Walter in his own person, thus leaving James divided between satisfaction in any real token of respect to his grandmother, and dislike to gratifying Oliver's ostentation by the production of his baronet kin.

Sydney Calcott wrote to him in the name of various former scholars of Mrs. Frost, anxious to do her the last honours by attending the funeral. Homage to her days of gallant exertion in poverty was most welcome and touching to the young people; but their uncle, without taste to understand it, wis.h.i.+ng to forget her labours, and fancying them discreditable to a daughter of the Dynevors, received the proposal like an indignity; and but for Fitzjocelyn's mediation and expostulations, it would have been most unsuitably rejected. He was obliged to take the answer into his own hands, since Oliver insisted that his mother was to be regarded in no light save that of Mrs.

Dynevor, of Cheveleigh; and James was equally resolved that she should be only Mrs. Frost, of Dynevor Terrace.

It was heart-sickening to see these bickerings over the grave of one so loving and so beloved; and very trying to be always on the alert to obviate the snappings that might at any time become a sharp dissension; but nothing very distressing actually arose until the last day before the funeral, when the three cousins were sitting together in the morning-room; James writing letters.

'I am asking Lady Conway to give you a bed to-morrow night, Clara,' he said. 'We shall be at home by three o'clock.'

'Oh, Jem!' said Clara, clasping her hands to keep them from trembling; 'I never thought of that.'

'You are not ready! That is unlucky, for I cannot come to fetch you; but I suppose you can travel down with Jane. Only I should have thought it easier to do the thing at once.'

'But, Jem! has my uncle said anything? Does he wish me to go?'

James laid down his pen, and stood upright, as if he did not understand her words.

Clara came up to him, saying, 'I believe I ought to do what he may wish.'

'I told you,' said James, as if her words were not worth considering, 'that you need only remain here on her account, who no longer needs you.'

Louis would have left them to themselves, but Clara's glance sued for his protection, and, as he settled himself in his chair, she spoke with more decision.--'Dear James, nothing would make me so happy as to go to dear home; but I do not think grandmamma would like me to leave Uncle Oliver.'

'Oh, very well,' said James, sitting down to his writing, as if he had done with her; 'I understand.'

'Dear James! O tell me you are not angry with me! Tell me you think I am right!' cried Clara, alarmed by his manner.

'Quite right in one point of view,' he said, with acrimony.

'James,' said Louis, very low, but so as to make them both start, 'that is not the way to treat your sister!'

'We will renew the discussion another time, if you wish it, Clara,'

said James.

'No,' said Clara, 'I wish Louis to be here. He will judge for me,' and she spoke clearly, her face colouring. 'It was grandmamma's great wish that I should love my uncle. She used to beg me to be patient with him, and rejoiced to see us together. She often said he must not be left with no one to make a home for him, and to go out to Lima again.'

'Did she ever desire you to remain here?'

'No,' said Clara, 'she never did; but I am convinced that if she had known how soon she was to leave us, she would have done so. I feel as much bound as if she had. I have heard her call him my charge. And not only so, but my uncle has never varied in his kindness to me, and when he worked all his life for grandmamma, and my father, it would be wicked and cruel in me--if he does care for me--to forsake him, now he has lost them all, and is growing old.'

'You need not scruple on that score,' said James. 'He has attained his object, and made the most of it. He is free now, and he will soon find a Rosita, if his mines are not sufficient for him.'

'James, you should not say wrong things,' said Clara.

'I am not likely to think it wrong, whatever you may. I have no expectations. Do not rise up in arms against me, Fitzjocelyn, I do not accuse her. I might have foreseen it. She meant well at first, but the Terrace cannot bear compet.i.tion with a place like this. Where two so-called duties clash, she is at perfect liberty to make her choice.

It would not be easy to come down to what I have to offer. I understand. The world will call it a wise choice. Say no more, Clara, I feel no anger.'

She attempted no words; she clasped her hands over her face, and ran out of the room.

'James,' said Louis, rising, indignation rendering his voice more low and clearly distinct than ever, 'I little thought to hear you insult that orphan sister of yours in her grief. No! I shall not defend her, I shall go to give her what comfort I can. Heaven help her, poor lonely child!'

He was gone. James paced about in desperation, raving against Louis for maintaining what he thought Clara's self-deception; and, in the blindness of anger, imagining that their ultra-generosity would conduct them to the repair of Ormersfield with the revenues of Cheveleigh; and, disdainful as he was, it seemed another cruel outrage that his rightful inheritance should be in the hands of another, and his children portionless. He was far too wrathful to have any consistency or discrimination in his anger, and he was cruelly wounded at finding that his sister deserted him, as he thought, for her uncle's riches, and that his own closest friend was ready to share the spoil.

In the stillness of the house, the sound of a door had revealed to Louis where to seek his cousin. It was in the grand saloon, where the closed shutters availed not to exclude the solid beams of slanting sunlight falling through the crevices, and glancing on the gilding, velvet, and blazonry upon the costly coffin, that shut her out from the dear tender hands and lips that had never failed to caress away her childish griefs. At first, the strange broad lines of shadowy light in the gloom were all he could see, but one ray tinged with paly light a plaited tress, which could only be Clara's flaxen hair.

She had flung herself, crouching in a heap, on the floor, never stirring, so that he almost feared she had fainted; and, kneeling on one knee beside her, spoke soothingly: 'My poor little dear Clary, this is the worst of all, but you know it was not Jem who spoke. It was only prejudice and temper. He is not himself.'

The dim light seemed to encourage Clara to lift her head to listen to the kind words. 'Was I so very wrong?' she murmured; 'you know I never thought of that! Will he forgive me, and let me come home? But, oh, granny! and what is to become of my uncle?' she ended, with a sound of misery.

'Not here, not now, Clara--' said Louis; 'She is in perfect peace; unhurt by our unhappy dissensions; she is with Him who looks at hearts, who can take away all variance.'

There was a short s.p.a.ce of silence, as the two cousins knelt in the darkened room, in the sunbeams, which seemed as if they could not yet forsake her who had lived in the light of love.

Presently Louis gave Clara his hand to raise her, and led her into the adjoining room, also dim, but full of sweet fragrant breezes from the garden. He seated her on a low couch, and stood by, anxiously watching her.

'If he had only told me I was wrong!' she sighed.

'He could not tell you so, Clara, for it is not wrong, and he knows it is not. He will thank you by-and-by for not attending to him, now that he does not know what he says. He is fairly distracted with this grief coming upon his home cares.'

'Cares at dear, dear happy home!' cried Clara. 'Never!'