AN OLD SCHOOLMISTRESS.
I praise thee, matron, and thy due
Is praise, heroic praise and true;
With admiration I behold
Thy gladness unsubdued and bold.
Thy looks and gestures all present
The picture of a life well spent;
Our human nature throws away
Its second twilight and looks gay.
WORDSWORTH.
Unconscious of Charlotte's flight and Tom's affront, the Earl of
Ormersfield rode along Dynevor Terrace--a row of houses with handsome
cemented fronts, tragic and comic masks alternating over the downstairs
windows, and the centre of the block adorned with a pediment and
colonnade; but there was an air as if something ailed the place: the
gardens were weedy, the glass doors hazy, the cement stained and
scarred, and many of the windows closed and dark, like eyes wanting
speculation, or with merely the dreary words 'To be let' enlivening
their blank gloom. At the house where Charlotte had vanished, he drew
his rein, and opened the gate--not one of the rusty ones--he entered
the garden, where all was trim and fresh, the shadow of the house lying
across the sward, and preserving the hoar-frost, which, in the
sunshine, was melting into diamond drops on the lingering China roses.
Without ring or knock, he passed into a narrow, carpetless vestibule,
unadorned except by a beautiful blue Wedgewood vase, and laying down
hat and whip, mounted the bare staircase, long since divested of all
paint or polish. Avoiding the door of the principal room, he opened
another at the side, and stood in a flood of sunshine, pouring in from
the window, which looked over all the roofs of the town, to the
coppices and moorlands of Ormersfield. On the bright fire sung a
kettle, a white cat purred on the hearth, a canary twittered merrily in
the window, and the light smiled on a languishing Dresden shepherdess
and her lover on the mantelpiece, and danced on the ceiling, reflected
from a beautifully chased silver cream-jug--an inconsistent companion
for the homely black teapot and willow-patterned plates, though the two
cups of rare Indian porcelain were not unworthy of it. The furniture
was the same mixture of the ordinary and the choice, either worn and
shabby, or such as would suit a virtuoso, but the whole arranged with
taste and care that made the effect bright, pleasant, and comfortable.
Lord Ormersfield stood on the hearth-rug waiting. His face was that of
one who had learnt to wait, more considerate than acute, and bearing
the stamp both of toil and suffering, as if grief had taken away all
mobility of expression, and left a stern, thoughtful steadfastness.
Presently a lady entered the room. Her hair was white as snow, and she
could not have seen less than seventy-seven years; but beauty was not
gone from her features--smiles were still on her lips, brightness in
her clear hazel eyes, buoyancy in her tread, and alertness and dignity
in her tall, slender, unbent figure. There was nothing so remarkable
about her as the elasticity as well as sweetness of her whole look and
bearing, as if, while she had something to love, nothing could be
capable of crushing her.
'You here!' she exclaimed, holding out her hand to her guest. 'You are
come to breakfast.'
'Thank you; I wished to see you without interrupting your day's work.
Have you many scholars at present?'
'Only seven, and three go into school at Easter. Jem and Clara, wish
me to undertake no more, but I should sorely miss the little fellows. I
wish they may do me as much credit as Sydney Calcott. He wrote himself
to tell me of his success.'
'I am glad to hear it. He is a very promising young man.'
'I tell him I shall come to honour, as the old dame who taught him to
spell. My scholars may make a Dr. Busby of me in history.'
'I am afraid your preferment will depend chiefly on James and young
Calcott.'
'Nay, Louis tells me that he is going to read wonderfully hard; and if
he chooses, he can do more than even Sydney Calcott.'
'If!' said the Earl.
Jane here entered with another cup and plate, and Lord Ormersfield sat
down to the breakfast-table. After some minutes' pause he said, 'Have
you heard from Peru?'
'Not by this mail. Have you?'
'Yes, I have. Mary is coming home.'
'Mary!' she cried, almost springing up--'Mary Ponsonby? This is good
news--unless,' as she watched his grave face, 'it is her health that
brings her.'
'It is. She has consulted the surgeon of the Libra, a very able man,
who tells her that there is absolute need of good advice and a colder
climate; and Ponsonby has consented to let her and her daughter come
home in the Libra. I expect them in February.'
'My poor Mary! But she will get better away from him. I trust he is
not coming!'
'Not he,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Dear, dear Mary! I had scarcely dared to hope to see her again,'
cried the old lady, with tears in her eyes. 'I hope she will be
allowed to be with us, not kept in London with his sister. London does
her no good.'
'The very purport of my visit,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'was to ask
whether you could do me the favour to set aside your scholars, and
enable me to receive Mrs. Ponsonby at home.'
'Thank you--oh, thank you. There is nothing I should like better, but
I must consider--'
'Clara would find a companion in the younger Mary in the holidays, and
if James would make Fitzjocelyn his charge, it would complete the
obligation. It would be by far the best arrangement for Mary's
comfort, and it would be the greatest satisfaction to me to see her
with you at Ormersfield.'
'I believe it would indeed,' said the old lady, more touched than the
outward manner of the Earl seemed to warrant. 'I would--you know I
would do my very best that you and Mary should be comfortable
together'--and her voice trembled--'but you see I cannot promise all at
once. I must see about these little boys. I must talk to Jem. In
short, you must not be disappointed'--and she put her hands before her
face, trying to laugh, but almost overcome.
'Nay, I did not mean to press you,' said Lord Ormersfield, gently; 'but
I thought, since James has had the fellowship and Clara has been at
school, that you wished to give up your pupils.'
'So I do,' said the lady, but still not yielding absolutely.
'For the rest, I am very anxious that James should accept Fitzjocelyn
as his pupil. I have always considered their friendship as the best
hope, and other plans have had so little success, that--'
'I'm not going to hear Louis abused!' she exclaimed, gaily.
'Yes,' said Lord Ormersfield, with a look nearly approaching a smile,
'you are the last person I ought to invite, if I wish to keep your
nephew unspoiled.'
'I wish there were any one else to spoil him!'
'For his sake, then, come and make Ormersfield cheerful. It will be
far better for him.'
'And for you, to see more of Jem,' she added. 'If he were yours, what
would you say to such hours?'
The last words were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the
room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in
a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to sitting up till
one!'
'Reading?' said the Earl.
'Reading,' he answered, with a sort of laughing satisfaction in dashing
aside the approval expressed in the query, 'but not quite as you
suppose. See here,' as he held up maliciously a railway novel.
'I am afraid I know where it came from,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Exactly so,' said James. 'It was Fitzjocelyn's desertion of it that
excited my curiosity.'
'Indeed. I should have thought his desertions far too common to excite
any curiosity.'
'By no means. He always has a reason.'
'A plausible one.'
'More than plausible,' cried James, excitement sparkling in his vivid
black eyes. 'It happens that this is the very book that you would most
rejoice to see distasteful to him--low morality, false principles,
morbid excitement, not a line that ought to please a healthy mind.'--
'Yet it has interest enough for you.'
'I am not Fitzjocelyn.'
'You know how to plead for him.'
'I speak simple truth,' bluntly answered James, running his hand
through his black hair, to the ruin of the morning smoothness, so that
it, as well as the whole of his quick, dark countenance seemed to have
undergone a change from sunny south to stormy north in the few moments
since his first appearance.
After a short silence, Lord Ormersfield turned to him, saying 'I have
been begging a favour of my aunt, and I have another to ask of you,'
and repeating his explanation, begged him to undertake the tutorship of
his son.
'I shall not be at liberty at Easter,' said James, 'I have all but
undertaken some men at Oxford.'
'Oh, my dear Jem!' exclaimed the old lady, 'is that settled beyond
alteration?'
'I'm not going to throw them over.'
'Then I shall hope for you at Midsummer,' said the Earl.
'We shall see how things stand,' he returned, ungraciously.
'I shall write to you,' said Lord Ormersfield, still undaunted, and
soon after taking his leave.
'Cool!' cried James, as soon as he was gone. 'To expect you to give up
your school at his beck, to come and keep house for him as long as it
may suit him!'
'Nay, Jem, he knew how few boys I have, and that I intended to give
them up. You don't mean to refuse Louis?' she said, imploringly.
'I shall certainly not take him at Easter. It would be a mere farce
intended to compensate to us for giving up the school, and I'll not
lend myself to it while I can have real work.'
'At Midsummer, then. You know he will never let Louis spend a long
vacation without a tutor.'
'I hate to be at Ormersfield,' proceeded James, vehemently, 'to see
Fitzjocelyn browbeaten and contradicted every moment, and myself set up
for a model. I may steal a horse, while he may not look over the wall!
Did you observe the inconsistency?--angry with the poor fellow first
for having the book, and then for not reading the whole, while it
became amiable and praiseworthy in me to burn out a candle over it!'
'Ah! that was my concern. I tell him he would sing another note if you
were his son.'
'I'd soon make him! I would not stand what Louis does. The more he is
set down and sneered at, the more debonnaire he looks, till I could
rave at him for taking it so easily.'
'I hoped you might have hindered them from fretting each other, as they
do so often.'
'I should only be a fresh element of discord, while his lordship will
persist in making me his pattern young man. It makes me hate myself,
especially as Louis is such an unaccountable fellow that he won't.'
'I am sorry you dislike the plan so much.'
'Do you mean that you wish for it, grandmamma? cried he, turning full
round on her with an air of extreme amazement. 'If you do, there's an
end of it; but I thought you valued nothing more than an independent
home.'
'Nor would I give it up on any account,' said she. 'I do not imagine
this could possibly last for more than a few months, or a year at the
utmost. But you know, dear Jem, I would do nothing you did not like.'
'That's nothing to the purpose,' replied James. 'Though it is to be
considered whether Ormersfield is likely to be the best preparation for
Clara's future life. However, I see you wish it--'
'I confess that I do, for a few months at least, which need interfere
neither with Clara nor with you. I have not seen Lord Ormersfield so
eager for many years, and I should be very sorry to prevent those two
from being comfortably together in the old home--'
'And can't that be without a chaperon?' exclaimed James, laughing.
'Why, his lordship is fifty-five, and she can't be much less. That is
a good joke.'
'It is not punctilio,' said his grandmother, looking distressed. 'It
is needful to be on the safe side with such a man as Mr. Ponsonby. My
fear is that he may send her home with orders not to come near us.'
'She used to be always at Ormersfield in the old times.'
'Yes, when my sister was alive. Ah! you were too young to know about
those matters then. The fact was, that things had come to such a pass
from Mr. Ponsonby's neglect and unkindness, that Lord Ormersfield,
standing in the place of her brother, thought it right to interfere.
His mother went to London with him, to bring poor Mary and her little
girl back to Ormersfield, and there they were till my sister's death,
when of course they could not remain. Mr. Ponsonby had just got his
appointment as British envoy in Peru, and wished her to go with him.
It was much against Lord Ormersfield's advice, but she thought it her
duty, poor dear. I believe he positively hates Lord Ormersfield; and
as if for a parting unkindness, he left his little girl at school with
orders to spend her holidays with his sister, and never to be with us.'
'That accounts for it!' said James. 'I never knew all this! nor why we
were so entirely cut off from Mary Ponsonby. I wonder what she is now!
She was a droll sturdy child in those days! We used to call her
Downright Dunstable! She was almost of the same age as Louis, and a
great deal stouter, and used to fight for him and herself too. Has not
she been out in Peru?'
'Yes, she went out at seventeen. I believe she is an infinite comfort
to her mother.'
'Poor Mary! Well, we children lived in the middle of a tragedy, and
little suspected it! By the bye, what relation are the Ponsonbys to
us?'
'Mrs. Ponsonby is my niece. My dear sister, Mary--'
'Married Mr. Raymond--yes, I know! I'll make the whole lucid; I'll
draw up a pedigree, and Louis shall learn it.' And with elaborate
neatness he wrote as follows, filling in the dates from the first leaf
of an old Bible, after his grandmother had left the room. The task,
lightly undertaken, became a mournful one, and as he read over his
performance, his countenance varied from the gentleness of regret to a
look of sarcastic pride, as though he felt that the world had dealt
hardly by him, and yet disdained to complain.
KING ARTHUR
-
Pendragons and Dynevors innumerable
-
Roland Dynevor, d. 1793
-
1. 2. 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- - -
Catharine, m. James Frost Dynevor, Esq. Elizabeth, m. Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Ormersfield Mary, m. Ch. Raymond, Esq.
b. 1770 b. 1765 b. 1772 b. 1760 b. 1774 d.1802
d. 1816 d. 1835 d. 1833 d. 1800
1. 2.
-------------------------------------------------- Jocelyn, m. Louisa Villars, Mary, m. Robert Ponsonby Esq.,
Henry Roland m. Frances Preston Oliver J. Frost 4th Earl of b. 1805 b. 1796 British Envoy
Frost Dynevor b. 1802 Dynevor Ormersfield d. 1826 in Peru.
b. 1794 d. 1832 b. 1797 b. 1792
d. 1832
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
------------------------------------------------------------
James Roland Frances Catharine Oliver Clara Louis Fitzjocelyn Mary Ponsonby
Frost Dynevor b. 1826 b. 1827 b. 1829 b. 1831 Viscount Fitzjocelyn b. 1826
b. 1824 d. 1832 d. 1832 d. 1832 b. 1826.
Fellow of St.
F. College,
Oxford.
'Since 1816,' muttered James, as he finished. 'Thirty years of
drudgery! When shall I be able to relieve her? Ha! O. J. F. Dynevor,
Esquire, if it were you who were coming from Peru, you would find a
score to settle!'
He ran down stairs to assist his grandmother in the Latin lessons of
her little school, the usual employment of his vacations.
Catharine Dynevor had begun life with little prospect of spending
nearly half of it as mistress of a school.
Her father was the last male of the Dynevors of Cheveleigh--a family
mounting up to the days of the Pendragons--and she had been made to
take the place of an eldest son, inheriting the extensive landed
property on condition that her name and arms should be assumed in case
of her marriage. Her choice was one of the instances in which her
affections had the mastery over her next strongest characteristic,
family pride. She married a highly-educated and wealthy gentleman, of
good family, but of mercantile connexions, such as her father, if
living, would have disdained. Her married life was, however, perfectly
unclouded, her ample means gave her the power of dispensing joy, and
her temperament was so blithe and unselfish that no pleasure ever
palled upon her. Cheveleigh was a proverb for hospitality, affording
unfailing fetes for all ages, full of a graceful ease and freedom that
inspired enjoyment.
Mr. Frost Dynevor was a man of refined taste, open-handed even to
extravagance, liberal in all his appointments, and gratifying to the
utmost his love of art and decoration, while his charities and generous
actions were hearty and lavish enough to satisfy even his warm-hearted
wife.
Joined with all this was a strong turn for speculations. When the mind
has once become absorbed in earthly visions of wealth and prosperity,
the excitement exercises such a fascination over the senses that the
judgment loses balance. Bold assumptions are taken as certainties, and
made the foundation of fresh fabrics--the very power of discerning
between fact and possibility departs, and, in mere good-will, men,
honest and honourable at heart, risk their own and their neighbours'
property, and ruin their character and good name, by the very actions
most foreign to to their nature, ere it had fallen under the strong
delusion.
Mr. Frost Dynevor had the misfortune to live in a country rich in
mineral wealth, and to have a brother-in-law easily guided, and with
more love of figures than power of investigating estimates on a large
scale. Mines were set on foot, companies established, and buildings
commenced, and the results were only to be paralleled by those of the
chalybeate springs discovered by Mr. Dynevor at the little town of
Northwold, which were pronounced by his favourite hanger-on to be
destined 'literally to cut the throat of Bath and Cheltenham.'
Some towns are said to have required the life of a child ere their
foundations could be laid. Many a speculation has swallowed a life and
fortune before its time for thriving has come. Mr. Frost Dynevor and
Lord Ormersfield were the foremost victims to the Cheveleigh iron
foundries and the Northwold baths. The close of the war brought a
commercial crisis that their companies could not stand; and Mr.
Dynevor's death spared him from the sight of the crash, which his
talent and sagacity might possibly have averted. He had shown no
misgivings, but, no sooner was he removed from the helm, than the
vessel was found on the brink of destruction. Enormous sums had been
sunk without tangible return, and the liabilities of the companies far
surpassed anything that they had realized.
Lord Ormersfield was stunned and helpless. Mrs. Dynevor had but one
idea--namely, to sacrifice everything to clear her husband's name. Her
sons were mere boys, and the only person who proved himself able to act
or judge was the heir of Ormersfield, then about four-and-twenty, who
came forward with sound judgment and upright dispassionate sense of
justice to cope with the difficulties and clear away the involvements.
He joined his father in mortgaging land, sacrificing timber, and
reducing the establishment, so as to set the estate in the way of
finally becoming free, though at the expense of rigid economy and
self-denial.
Cheveleigh could not have been saved, even had the heiress not been
willing to yield everything to satisfy the just claims of the
creditors. She was happy when she heard that it would suffice, and
that no one would be able to accuse her husband of having wronged him.
But for this, she would hardly have submitted to retain what her nephew
succeeded in securing for her--namely, an income of about 150 pounds
per annum, and the row of houses called Dynevor Terrace, one of the
building ventures at Northwold. This was the sole dependence with
which she and her sons quitted the home of their forefathers. 'Never
mind, mother,' said Henry, kissing her, to prevent the tears from
springing, 'home is wherever we are together!' 'Never fear, mother,'
echoed Oliver, with knitted brow and clenched hands, 'I will win it
back.'
Oliver was a quiet lad, of diligent, methodical habits, and willingly
accepted a clerkship in a mercantile house, which owed some obligations
to his father. At the end of a couple of years he was sent to reside
in South America; and his parting words to his mother were--'When you
see me again, Cheveleigh shall be yours.'
'Oh, my boy, take care. Remember, 'They that haste to be rich shall
not be innocent.''
That was the last time she had seen Oliver.
Her great object was to maintain herself independently and to complete
Henry's education as a gentleman. With this view she took up her abode
in the least eligible of her houses at Northwold, and, dropping the
aristocratic name which alone remained of her heiress-ship, opened a
school for little boys, declaring that she was rejoiced to recall the
days when Henry and Oliver wore frocks and learnt to spell. If any
human being could sweeten the Latin Grammar, it was Mrs. Frost, with
the motherliness of a dame, and the refinement of a lady, unfailing
sympathy and buoyant spirits, she loved each urchin, and each urchin
loved her, till she had become a sort of adopted grandmamma to all
Northwold and the neighbourhood.
Henry went to Oxford. He gained no scholarship, took no honours, but
he fell neither into debt nor disgrace; he led a goodnatured easy life,
and made a vast number of friends; and when he was not staying with
them, he and his mother were supremely happy together. He walked with
her, read to her, sang to her, and played with her pupils. He had
always been brought up as the heir--petted, humoured, and waited on--a
post which he filled with goodhumoured easy grace, and which he
continued to fill in the same manner, though he had no one to wait on
him but his mother, and her faithful servant Jane Beckett. Years
passed on, and they seemed perfectly satisfied with their division of
labour,--Mrs. Frost kept school, and Henry played the flute, or shot
over the Ormersfield property.
If any one remonstrated, Henry was always said to be waiting for a
government appointment, which was to be procured by the Ormersfield
interest. More for the sake of his mother than of himself, the
Ormersfield interest was at length exerted, and the appointment was
conferred on him. The immediate consequence was his marriage with the
first pretty girl he met, poorer than himself, and all the Ormersfield
interest failed to make his mother angry with him.
The cholera of 1832 put an end to poor Henry's desultory life. His
house, in a crowded part of London, was especially doomed by the deadly
sickness; and out of the whole family the sole survivors were a little
girl of ten months old, and a boy of seven years, the latter of whom
was with his grandmother at Northwold.
Mrs. Frost was one of the women of whom affection makes unconscious
heroines. She could never sink, as long as there was aught to need her
love and care; and though Henry had been her darling, the very
knowledge that his orphans had no one but herself to depend on, seemed
to brace her energies with fresh life. They were left entirely on her
hands, her son Oliver made no offers of assistance. He had risen, so as
to be a prosperous merchant at Lima, and he wrote with regularity and
dutifulness, but he had never proposed coming to England, and did not
proffer any aid in the charge of his brother's children. If she had
expected anything from him, she did not say so; she seldom spoke of
him, but never without tenderness, and usually as her 'poor Oliver,'
and she abstained from teaching her grandchildren either to look to
their rich uncle or to mourn over their lost inheritance. Cheveleigh
was a winter evening's romance with no one but Jane Beckett; and the
grandmother always answered the children's inquiries by bidding them
prove their ancient blood by resolute independence, and by that true
dignity which wealth could neither give nor take away.
Of that dignity, Mrs. Frost was a perfect model. A singular compound
of the gentle and the lofty, of tenderness and independence, she had
never ceased to be the Northwold standard of the 'real lady,' too mild
and gracious to be regarded as proud and poor, and yet too dignified
for any liberty to be attempted, her only fault, that touch of pride,
so ladylike and refined that it was kept out of sight, and never
offended, and everything else so sweet and winning that there was
scarcely a being who did not love, as well as honour her, for the
cheerfulness and resignation that had borne her through her many
trials. Her trustful spirit and warm heart had been an elixir of
youth, and had preserved her freshness and elasticity long after her
sister and brother-in-law at Ormersfield had grown aged and sunk into
the grave, and even her nephew was fast verging upon more than middle
age.