THE FROST HOUSEHOLD.
The wind of late breathed gently forth,
Now shifted east, and east by north,
Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know,
Could shelter them from rain or snow,
Stepping into their nests they paddled,
Themselves were chilled, their eggs were addled,
Soon every father bird and mother
Grew quarrelsome, and pecked each other.
Pairing Time Anticipated--COWPER.
Three weeks longer did the session drag on, but on the joyful day when
release was given, Lord Ormersfield was surprised to find Mr. Dynevor's
card upon his table, with an address at Farrance's hotel.
Louis alone was at leisure to repair thither. He found Clara alone,
looking as if her grief were still very fresh, and, though striving to
speak gaily, the tears very near the surface.
'We are going abroad,' she said; 'Uncle Oliver thinks it a part of my
education, and declares he will not have me behind the Miss Brittons.
We are bound straight for Switzerland.'
'Lucky girl,' said Louis.
'I'm sure I don't care for it,' said Clara; 'mountains and pictures are
not a bit in my line, unless I had Isabel and you, Louis, to make me
care.'
'Learn, then,' said Louis; 'it shows that your education is defective.
Yes, I see,' he continued, as Clara signed heavily, 'but you don't know
the good it will do you to have your mind forcibly turned aside.'
'If I could only sit quiet in a corner,' said Clara.
'So you will, in many a corner of a railway carriage.'
She smiled a little. 'The truth is,' she said, 'that poor Uncle Oliver
cannot be quiet. I can't see what pleasure Italy will be to him, but
he is too miserable at home. I never saw such restless unhappiness!'
and her eyes filled with tears. 'Oh, Louis! I am glad you would not
let me say anything about leaving him. Sometimes when he bids me good
night, he puts his arm round me, and says so pitifully that I do not
care for him. Do you know, I think mine is the little spar of love
that he tries to cling to in the great ship wreck; and I feel quite
sorry and hypocritical that it is such a poor, miserable shred.'
'It will grow,' said Louis, smiling.
'I don't know; he is terribly provoking sometimes--and without dear
granny to hinder the rubs. O, Louis! it is true that there is no
bearing to stay at home in those great empty rooms!'
'And Jane?'
'Oh, she goes,' said Clara, recovering a smile; 'she is firmly
persuaded that we shall run into another revolution, and as she could
not frighten us by the description of your wounds, she decides to come
and dress ours when we get any. Dear old Jenny, I am glad she goes;
she is the only creature I can talk to; but, Louis, before my uncle
comes in, I have something to give you.'
It was the letters that Mary had written to her aunt since the parting,
and the Spanish books which she had left in her charge.
'It is very kind in you, Clara,' said Louis, fervently.
They talked of Mary, and a little of James, from whom Clara had once
heard; but it had been a stiff letter, as if a barrier were between
them, and then Mr. Dynevor came in, and seemed pleased to find Louis
there; even asking him whether he could not join them on their tour,
and help Clara to speak French.
'No, thank you, sir,' said Louis, 'I am afraid my company brought no
good luck last time.'
'Never mind that--manage better now--ha, Clara.'
'It would be very nice; but he has a great deal too much to do at
home,' said Clara.
Oliver would not be persuaded that Fitzjocelyn would not meet them
abroad, and began magniloquently talking of his courier, and his route,
and while he was looking for the map, the two cousins smiled, and Clara
said,--'Lucky you to have work at home, and to stay with it.'
'Only I say, Clara, when you break down anywhere, send me a telegraph.'
'No such good luck,' sighed Clara.
'So he won't come,' said her uncle, when he was gone; 'but we shall
have him following us yet--Ha! ha! Never mind, Clara.'
Clara laughed. She knew what her uncle meant, but the notion was to
her too impossible and ridiculous even to need a blush. She did not
think the world contained Louis's equal; but she had always known that
his love was disposed of, and she no more thought of wishing for it
than for any other impossible thing. His affection for Mary gave her
no more pain than did that of James for Isabel; and she would have
treated with scorn and anger anything that impeached his constancy.
The pleasure with which he received Mary's letters was the single
satisfaction that she carried away with her.
And so she was borne away, and her sad heart could not choose but be
somewhat enlivened by change and novelty, while her uncle made it his
business to show her everything as rapidly as it could be seen,
apparently with no relish himself for aught but perpetual movement.
So passed the autumn with Clara. It was not much brighter at Dynevor
Terrace. Clara, being still under age, had it not in her power to
resign her half of her grandmother's income, even if her brother would
have accepted it; and 70 pounds made a difference in such an income as
James's, more especially as his innovations did not tend to fill the
school.
Murmurs were going about that Mr. Frost was severe, or that he was
partial. Some censured his old opinions, others his new studies; one
had been affronted by being almost told his boy was a dunce, another
hated all this new-fangled nonsense. The ladies were all, to a woman,
up against his wife, her airs, her poverty, her twins, and her
housekeeping; and seldom spoke of her save to contrast her with good
old Mrs. Frost. And then it was plain that something was wrong between
him and his uncle, and no one could believe but that his temper had
been the cause. The good Miss Faithfulls struggled in vain to silence
scandal, and keep it from 'coming round;' and luckily Isabel was the
last person likely either to hear or resent.
The boys met with decreased numbers after the holidays; and James
received them with undiminished energy, but with failing patience, and
a temper not improved by the late transactions at Cheveleigh, and
fretted, as Louis had divined, by home cares.
Of all living women, Isabel was one of the least formed by habits or
education to be an economical housewife and the mother of twins.
Maternal love did not develop into unwearied delight in infant
companionship, nor exclusive interest in baby smiles; and while she had
great visions for the future education of her little maidens, she was
not desirous to prolong the time spent in their society, but in general
preferred peace and Sir Hubert. On the other hand, James was an
unusually caressing father. After hours among rough inattentive boys,
nothing rested him so much as to fondle those tender creatures; his
eldest girl knew him, and was in ecstasy whenever he approached; and
the little pair of babies, by their mere soft helplessness, gave him an
indescribable sense of fondness and refreshment. His little ones were
all the world to him, and he could not see how a pattern mother should
ever be so happy as with them around her. He forgot the difference
between the pastime of an hour and the employment of a day. The need
of such care on her part was the greater since the nursery
establishment was deficient. The grand nurse had almost abdicated on
the double addition to her charge, and had only been bribed to stay by
an ill-spared increase in wages, and a share in an underling, who was
also to help Charlotte in her housemaid's department. Nevertheless,
the nurse was always complaining; the children, though healthy, always
crying, and their father always certain it was somebody's fault. Nor
did the family expenses diminish, retrench his own indulgences as he
might. It was the mistress's eye that was wanting, and Isabel did not
know how to use it. The few domestic cares that she perceived to be
her duty were gone through as weary tasks, and her mind continued
involved in her own romantic world, where she was oblivious of all that
was troublesome or vexatious. Now and then she was aware of a sluggish
dulness that seemed to be creeping over her higher aspirations--a want
of glow and feeling on religious subjects, even in the most sacred
moments; and she wondered and grieved at a condition, such as she had
never experienced in what she had thought far more untoward
circumstances. She did not see the difference between doing her best
when her will was thwarted, and her present life of neglect and
indulgence. Nothing roused her; she did not perceive omissions that
would have fretted women of housewifely instincts, and her soft dignity
and smooth temper felt few annoyances; and though James could sometimes
be petulant, he was always withheld from reproving her both by his
enthusiastic fondness, and his sense that for him she had quitted her
natural station of ease and prosperity.
On a dark hazy November afternoon, when the boys had been unusually
obtuse and mischievous, and James, worn-out, wearied, and uncertain
whether his cuts had alighted on the most guilty heads, strode home
with his arm full of Latin exercises, launched them into the study, and
was running up to the drawing-room, when he almost fell over Charlotte,
who was scouring the stairs.
She gave a little start and scream, and stood up to let him pass. He
was about to rebuke her for doing such work at such an hour; but he saw
her flushed, panting, and evidently very tired, and his wrath was
averted. Hurrying on to the drawing-room, he found Isabel eagerly
writing. She looked up with a pretty smile of greeting; but he only
ran his hand through his already disordered hair, and exclaimed--
'Our stairs are like the Captain of Knockdunder's. You never know they
are cleaned, except by tumbling over the bucket and the maid.'
'Are they being done?' said Isabel, quietly. 'I suppose the maids were
busy this morning.'
'And Charlotte, too! She looks half dead. I thought Ellen was to do
such work, and ought to have done it in proper time.'
'Little Catharine is so fretful, that Ellen cannot be spared from the
nursery.'
'I suppose she might be, if you were not absorbed in that writing.'
'I had the children with me, while the servants were at dinner; but
Kitty was so troublesome, that I could not keep her. I am particularly
anxious to finish this.'
'Some people would think a sick child more engrossing than that--' He
had very nearly said trash, but he broke off short.
'There is nothing really the matter with her,' began Isabel,
composedly; but James did not wait to listen, and muttering, 'That girl
will be killed if she goes on,' he ran up to the nursery, whence he
already heard a sound of low fretting.
The child was sitting on the nurse's lap, with a hot red spot on one
cheek, teased and disturbed by the noises that the lesser ones were
constantly making, as one lay in her cot, and the other was carried
about by the girl. As he entered, she shrieked joyously, and stretched
out her arms, and Kitty was at once clinging, hugging round his neck.
Sending Ellen down to finish the stairs, he carried off the little
girl, fondling and talking to her, and happy in her perfect content.
But he did not go to the drawing-room. 'No, no, mamma must not be
interrupted,' he bitterly thought, as he carried her down to the
fireless study, hung his plaid round himself and her, and walked up and
down the room with her, amusing her till she fell into a slumber on his
shoulder.
Isabel could not at once resume her pen. Her even temper was for once
ruffled, and her bosom swelled at the thought that his reproach was
unjust; she was willing to do what was fitting, and he ought not to
expect her to be an absolute nursery-maid. Women must keep up the tone
of their own minds, and she might be being useful to the world as well
as to her own family. If he wanted a mere household drudge, why had he
not looked elsewhere? Up went her queenly head, as she believed her
powers were meant for other things; but her heart gave a painful throb
at the recollection that poverty had been her voluntary choice, and had
seemed perfect felicity with James. Alas! she loved, honoured, and
admired him, as her upright, unselfish, uncompromising husband, but
worries, and rebukes, and tart answers, had made many a rent in the
veil in which her fancy had enfolded him. Sir Roland had disappeared,
and James and Sir Hubert were falling farther and farther asunder.
And Isabel sighed, partly at the memory of the imaginary being for whom
she had taken James, and partly at the future prospect, the narrow
sphere, the choice between solitude and dull society, the homely toils
that must increase, worn-out garments, perpetual alphabets, children
always whining, and James always irritated, thinking her remiss, and
coming in with that furrow on his forehead, and his hair standing up
wildly. She shrank from the contemplation, took her letter-case on her
knee, moved close to the fire to profit by the light, stirred up a
clear flame, and proceeded with the benevolent hermit, who came to the
rescue when Sir Hubert was at the last gasp, and Adeline had received
his beautiful resigned words. The hermit had transported him into his
hut, and comforted Adeline, and was beginning a consolatory harangue,
making revelations that were to set everything right, when just as he
had gone as far as 'My son, know that I did not always wear this
amice,' there was a tap at the door, and she saw Fitzjocelyn, who had
been at Oakstead for the last few weeks, attending to some matters
connected with his constituency.
'Ah! is it you?' she said, her lap too full of papers for her to rise.
'I did not know you were come home.'
'I came yesterday; and what company do you think I had in the train as
far as Estminster?'
'Ah, I can guess! How does Louisa look?'
'Rather languid; but Estminster is to work wonders. She declares that
Northwold is her best cure, and I am speculating whether she will
prevail. I think Lady Conway dreads your example.'
'Mamma does not allow for the force of imagination,' said Isabel, not
exactly knowing what prompted either the words or the sigh.
'I am come to ask if you will kindly give me a dinner. My father is
gone to the book-club meeting, so I thought we would try to revive old
times,' he said, smiling, but sadly, for the present scene was little
like the No. 5 of old times.
'We shall be delighted,' said Isabel, with alacrity, relieved at
avoiding a tete-it-tete with her husband at present, and refreshed by
the sight of one belonging to her former life, and external to her
present round of monotonous detail. 'Fortunately, it is not a lecture
night and James will be very glad.'
I suppose he is not come in from school?'
'Yea, he is. I think he is in the study. I will let him know,' she
said, with her hand on the bell.
'I will go to him,' said Louis, departing out of consideration that she
might wish for space to attend to dinner, room, and dress. The two
last were scarcely in such a state as he had been used to see at No. 5:
books were on the sofa, the table-cover hung awry; the Dresden
Shepherd's hat was grimed, and his damsel's sprigged gown hemmed with
dust; there were no flowers in the vases, which his aunt had never left
unsupplied; and Isabel, though she could not be otherwise than handsome
and refined, had her crape rumpled, and the heavy folds of her dark
hair looking quite ready for the evening toilette; and, as she sat on
her low seat by the fire, the whole had an indescribable air of comfort
passing into listless indulgence.
Fitzjocelyn politely apologized to Ellen for a second time stepping
over her soapy deluge, and, as he opened the study door with a
preliminary knock, a voice, as sharp and petulant as it was low, called
out, 'Hollo! Be quiet there, can't you! You've no business here yet,
and I have no time to waste on your idleness.'
'I am sorry to hear it,' said Louis, advancing into the dim light of
the single bed-room candle, which only served to make visible the
dusky, unshuttered windows, and the black gulf of empty grate. James
was sitting by the table, with his child wrapped in the plaid, asleep
on his breast, and his disengaged hand employed in correcting
exercises. Without moving, he held it out, purple and chilled,
exclaiming, 'Ha! Fitzjocelyn, I took you for that lout of a Garett.'
'Is this an average specimen of your reception of your scholars?'
'I was afraid of his waking the child. She has been unwell all day,
and I have scarcely persuaded her to go to sleep.'
'Emulating Hooker.'
'As little in patience as in judgment,' sighed James.
'And which of them is it who is lulled by the strains of 'As in
proesenti?''
'Which?' said James, somewhat affronted. 'Can't you tell sixteen
months from five?'
'I beg her pardon; but I can't construct a whole child from an inch of
mottled leg--as Professor Owen would a megalosaurus from a tooth. Does
she walk?'
'Poor child, she _must_!' said James. 'She thinks it very hard to have
two sisters so little younger than herself,' and he peeped under the
plaid at the little brown head, and drew it closer round, with a look
of almost melancholy tenderness, guarding carefully against touching
her with his cold hands.
'She will think it all the better by-and-by,' said Louis.
'You had better not stay here in the cold. I'll come when I have heard
that boy's imposition and looked over these exercises.' And he ran his
hand through his hair again.
'Don't! You look like enough to a lion looking out of a bush to
frighten ten boys already,' said Louis. 'I'll do the exercises,'
pulling the copy-books away.
'What, you don't trust me?' as James detained them.
'No, I don't,' said James, his cousin's brightness awakening his
livelier manner. 'It needs an apprenticeship to be up to their
blunders.'
'Let me read them to you. I gave notice to Isabel that I am come to
dinner, and no doubt she had rather I were disposed of.'
James objected no farther, and the dry labour was illuminated by the
discursive remarks and moralizings which Louis allowed to flow in their
natural idle course, both to divert his dispirited cousin, and to
conceal from himself how much cause there was for depression. When the
victim of the imposition approached, Louis prevented the dreaded clumsy
entrance, seized on a Virgil, and himself heard the fifty lines,
scarcely making them serve their purpose as a punishment, but sending
the culprit away in an unusually amiable temper.
Services from Louis were too natural to James to be requited with
thanks; but he was not uncivil in his notice of a wrong tense that had
been allowed to pass, and the question was argued with an eagerness
which showed that he was much enlivened. On the principle that Louis
must care for all that was his, as he rose to take the still-sleeping
child upstairs, he insisted that his cousin should come with him, if
only for the curiosity of looking at the other two little animals, and
learning the difference between them and Kitty, at whom he still looked
as if her godfather had insulted her.
It was pretty to see his tenderness, as he detached the little girl
from her hold, and laid her in the cot, making a little murmuring
sound; and boasted how she would have shown off if awake, and laughed
over her droll little jealousies of his even touching the twins. As
she was asleep, he might venture; and it was comical to hear him
declaring that no one need mistake them for each other, and to see him
trying to lay them side by side on his knees to be compared, when they
would roll over, and interlace their little scratching fingers; and
Louis stood by teasing him, and making him defend their beauty in terms
that became extravagant. He was really happy here; the careworn look
smoothed away, the sharpness left his tones, and there was nothing but
joyous exultation and fondness in his whole manner.
The smile did not last long, for Louis was well-nigh thrown downstairs
by a dustpan in a dark corner, and James was heard muttering that
nothing in that house was ever in its right place; and while Louis was
suggesting that it was only himself who was not in the right place,
they entered the drawing-room, which, like the lady, was in the same
condition as that in which he had left it. Since Isabel had lost
Marianne and other appliances, she had thought it not worth while to
dress for dinner; so nothing had happened, except that the hermit had
proved to be Adeline's great uncle, and had begun to clear up the
affair of the sacrilege.
He was reluctant to leave off when the gentlemen appeared; but Isabel
shut him up, and quietly held out the portfolio to James, who put it on
the side-table, and began to clear the books away and restore some sort
of order; but it was a task beyond his efforts.
Dinner was announced by Charlotte, as usual, all neat grace and
simplicity, in her black dress and white apron, but flushed and heated
by exertions beyond her strength. All that depended on her had been
well done; but it would not seem to have occurred to her mistress that
three people ate more than two; and to Louis, who had been too busy to
take any luncheon, the two dishes seemed alarmingly small. One was of
haricot mutton, the other of potatoes; and Charlotte might be seen to
blush as she carried Lord Fitzjocelyn the plate containing a chop
resembling Indian rubber, decorated with grease and with two balls of
nearly raw carrot, and followed it up with potatoes apparently all
bruises.
Louis talked vigorously of Virginia and Louisa--secretly marvelling how
his hosts had brought themselves down to such fare. Isabel was dining
without apparently seeing anything amiss, and James attempted nothing
but a despairing toss of his chin, as he pronounced the carrots
underdone. After the first course there was a long interval, during
which Isabel and Louis composedly talked about the public meeting which
he had been attending, and James fidgetted in the nervousness of
hardly-restrained displeasure; but suddenly a frightful shrieking
arose, and he indignantly cried, 'That girl!'
'Poor Charlotte in her hysterics again,' said Isabel, moving off,
quickly for her, with the purple scent-bottle at her chatelaine.
'Isabel makes her twice as bad,' exclaimed James; 'to pet her with
eau-de-Cologne is mere nonsense. Some day I shall throw a bucket of
cold water over her.'
Isabel had left the door open, and they heard her softly comforting
Charlotte with 'Never mind,' and 'Lord Fitzjocelyn would not care,'
till the storm lulled. Charlotte crept off to her room, and Isabel
returned to the dinner-table.
'Well, what's the matter now?' said James.
'Poor Charlotte!' said Isabel, smiling; 'it seems that she trusted to
making a grand appearance with the remains of yesterday's pudding, and
that she was quite overset by the discovery that Ellen and Miss
Catharine had been marauding on them.'
'You don't mean that Kitty has been eating that heavy pudding at this
time of night?' cried James.
'Kitty eats everything,' was the placid answer, 'and I do not think we
can blame Ellen, for she often comes down after our dinner to find
something for the nursery supper.'
'Things go on in the most extraordinary manner,' muttered James.
'I suppose Charlotte misses Jane,' said Louis. 'She looks ill.'
'No wonder,' said James, 'she is not strong enough for such work. She
has no method, and yet she is the only person who ever thinks of doing
a thing properly. I wish your friend Madison would come home and take
her off our hands, for she is always alternating between fits of
novel-reading and of remorse, in which she nearly works herself to
death with running after lost time.'
'I should be sorry to part with her,' said Isabel; 'she is so quiet,
and so fond of the children.'
'She will break down some day,' said James; 'if not before, certainly
when she hears that Madison has a Peruvian wife.'
'There is no more to come,' said Isabel, rising; 'shall we come
upstairs?'
James took up the candles, and Louis followed, considerably hungry, and
for once provoked by Isabel's serene certainty that nobody cared
whether there were anything to eat. However, he had forgotten all by
the time he came upstairs, and began to deliver a message from Lady
Conway, that she was going to write in a day or two to beg for a visit
from Isabel during her sojourn at Estminster, a watering-place about
thirty miles distant. Isabel's face lighted with pleasure. 'I could
go?' she said, eagerly turning towards James.
'Oh, yes, if you wish it,' he answered, gruffly, as if vexed at her
gratification.
'I mean, of course, if you can spare me,' she said, with an air of more
reserve.
'If you wish it, go by all means. I hope you will.'
'The Christmas holidays are so near, that we may both go,' said Isabel;
but James still had not recovered his equanimity, and Louis thought it
best to begin talking of other things; and, turning to James, launched
into the results of his Inglewood crops, and the grand draining plan
which was to afford Marksedge work for the winter, and in which his
father had become much interested. But he did not find that ready heed
to all that occupied him of which he used to be certain at the Terrace.
Isabel cared not at all for farming, and took no part in 'mere country
squire's talk;' and James was too much overburthened with troubles and
anxieties to enter warmly into those of others. Of those to whom
Louis's concerns had been as their own, one had been taken from him,
the other two were far away; and the cold 'yes,' 'very good,' fell
coldly on his ear.
The conversation reverted to the school; and here it appeared that two
years' experience had taken away the freshness of novelty, and the
cycle of disappointment had begun. More boys were quitting the school
than the new-comers could balance; and James spoke with acute vexation
of the impracticability of the boys, and the folly of the parents. The
attendance at his evening lectures had fallen off; and he declared that
there was a spirit of opposition to whatever he did. The boys
disobeyed, knowing that they should be favoured at home, and if they
were punished, the parents talked of complaints to the trustees. The
Sunday teaching was treated as especially obnoxious: the genteel
mothers talked ridiculously about its resembling a charity-school, the
fathers did not care whether their sons went or not, and he had
scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was
the butcher's son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with
their consent. Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when
he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week,
it was resented as an injustice. To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had
called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been
boxed for reading Pickwick in school, under cover of his Latin grammar,
and Isabel was almost indignant with Miss Faithfull for having ventured
to hint to her that she wished Mr. Frost would be a little more gentle
with the boys.
Isabel was fully alive now, and almost as vehement as her husband, in
her complaints against his many foes. There was no lack of sympathy
here, indeed, there might be rather too much, for she did not afford
the softening influence that James had hitherto found at home.
'Well, Jem,' said Louis, at last, 'I think you should keep your hands
off the boys.'
'You are not bitten with the nonsense about personal dignity and
corporal punishment?' said James.
'By no means. I have an infinite respect for the great institution of
flogging; but a solemn execution is one thing, a random stroke another.'
'Theories are very good things till you come to manage two score dunces
without sense or honour. There is only one sort of appeal to their
feelings that tells.'
'Maybe so, but I have my doubts whether you are the man to make it.'
Louis was sorry he had so spoken, for a flush of pain came up in
James's face at the remembrance of what Fitzjocelyn had long ago
forgotten--a passionate blow given to deter him from a piece of wilful
mischief, in which he was persisting for the mere amusement of
provoking. It stood out among all other varieties of cuff, stroke, and
knock, by the traces it had left, by Mrs. Frost's grief at it, and the
forgiveness from the Earl, and it had been the most humiliating
distress of James's childhood. It humbled him even now, and he
answered--
'You may be right, Louis; I may be not sufficiently altered since I was
a boy. I have struck harder than I intended more than once, and I have
told the boys so.'
'I am sure, if they had any generosity, they would have been touched
with your amends,' cried Isabel.
'After all, a schoolmaster's life does not tend to mend the temper,'
concluded James, sighing, and passing his hand over his forehead.
'No,' thought Louis, 'nor does Isabel's mutton!'