The morrow brought a bright autumnal morn, and every one woke, if not
happy, interested. There was much to see and much to do. The dew was so
heavy that the children were not allowed to quit the broad gravel walk
that bounded one side of the old house, but they caught enticing vistas
of the gleamy glades, and the abounding light and shade softened and
adorned everything. Every sight and sound too was novel, and from
the rabbit that started out of the grove, stared at them and then
disappeared, to the jays chattering in the more distant woods, all was
wonderment at least for a week. They saw squirrels for the first time,
and for the first time beheld a hedgehog. Their parents were busy in
the house; Mr. Ferrars unpacking and settling his books, and his wife
arranging some few articles of ornamental furniture that had been saved
from the London wreck, and rendering their usual room of residence as
refined as was in her power. It is astonishing how much effect a woman
of taste can produce with a pretty chair or two full of fancy and
colour, a table clothed with a few books, some family miniatures, a
workbag of rich material, and some toys that we never desert. “I have
not much to work with,” said Mrs. Ferrars, with a sigh, “but I think the
colouring is pretty.”
On the second day after their arrival, the rector and his wife made them
a visit. Mr. Penruddock was a naturalist, and had written the history of
his parish. He had escaped being an Oxford don by being preferred early
to this college living, but he had married the daughter of a don, who
appreciated the grand manners of their new acquaintances, and who, when
she had overcome their first rather awe-inspiring impression, became
communicative and amused them much with her details respecting the
little world in which they were now to live. She could not conceal
her wonderment at the beauty of the twins, though they were no longer
habited in those dresses which had once astonished even Mayfair.
Part of the scheme of the new life was the education of the children
by their parents. Mr. Ferrars had been a distinguished scholar, and was
still a good one. He was patient and methodical, and deeply interested
in his contemplated task. So far as disposition was concerned the pupil
was not disappointing. Endymion was of an affectionate disposition and
inclined to treat his father with deference. He was gentle and docile;
but he did not acquire knowledge with facility, and was remarkably
deficient in that previous information on which his father counted. The
other pupil was of a different temperament. She learned with a glance,
and remembered with extraordinary tenacity everything she had acquired.
But she was neither tender nor deferential, and to induce her to study
you could not depend on the affections, but only on her intelligence.
So she was often fitful, capricious, or provoking, and her mother,
who, though accomplished and eager, had neither the method nor the
self-restraint of Mr. Ferrars, was often annoyed and irritable. Then
there were scenes, or rather ebullitions on one side, for Myra was
always unmoved and enraging from her total want of sensibility.
Sometimes it became necessary to appeal to Mr. Ferrars, and her manner
to her father, though devoid of feeling, was at least not contemptuous.
Nevertheless, on the whole the scheme, as time went on, promised to be
not unsuccessful. Endymion, though not rapidly, advanced surely, and
made some amends for the years that had been wasted in fashionable
private schools and the then frivolity of Eton. Myra, who,
notwithstanding her early days of indulgence, had enjoyed the advantage
of admirable governesses, was well grounded in more than one modern
language, and she soon mastered them. And in due time, though much after
the period on which we are now touching, she announced her desire to
become acquainted with German, in those days a much rarer acquirement
than at present. Her mother could not help her in this respect, and that
was perhaps an additional reason for the study of this tongue, for Myra
was impatient of tuition, and not unjustly full of self-confidence.
She took also the keenest interest in the progress of her brother, made
herself acquainted with all his lessons, and sometimes helped him in
their achievement.
Though they had absolutely no acquaintance of any kind except the rector
and his family, life was not dull. Mr. Ferrars was always employed, for
besides the education of his children, he had systematically resumed
a habit in which he had before occasionally indulged, and that was
political composition. He had in his lofty days been the author of more
than one essay, in the most celebrated political publication of the
Tories, which had commanded attention and obtained celebrity. Many a
public man of high rank and reputation, and even more than one Prime
Minister, had contributed in their time to its famous pages, but never
without being paid. It was the organic law of this publication, that
gratuitous contributions should never be admitted. And in this principle
there was as much wisdom as pride. Celebrated statesmen would point with
complacency to the snuff-box or the picture which had been purchased by
their literary labour, and there was more than one bracelet on the arm
of Mrs. Ferrars, and more than one genet in her stable, which had been
the reward of a profound or a slashing article by William.
What had been the occasional diversion of political life was now to
be the source of regular income. Though living in profound solitude,
Ferrars had a vast sum of political experience to draw upon, and though
his training and general intelligence were in reality too exclusive and
academical for the stirring age which had now opened, and on which he
had unhappily fallen, they nevertheless suited the audience to which
they were particularly addressed. His Corinthian style, in which the
Maenad of Mr. Burke was habited in the last mode of Almack’s, his
sarcasms against the illiterate and his invectives against the low, his
descriptions of the country life of the aristocracy contrasted with
the horrors of the guillotine, his Horatian allusions and his Virgilian
passages, combined to produce a whole which equally fascinated and
alarmed his readers.
These contributions occasioned some communications with the editor or
publisher of the Review, which were not without interest. Parcels came
down by the coach, enclosing not merely proof sheets, but frequently new
books--the pamphlet of the hour before it was published, or a volume
of discoveries in unknown lands. It was a link to the world they had
quitted without any painful associations. Otherwise their communications
with the outside world were slight and rare. It is difficult for us,
who live in an age of railroads, telegraphs, penny posts and penny
newspapers, to realise how uneventful, how limited in thought and
feeling, as well as in incident, was the life of an English family of
retired habits and limited means, only forty years ago. The whole world
seemed to be morally, as well as materially, “adscripti glebae.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ferrars did not wish to move, but had they so wished, it
would have been under any circumstances for them a laborious and costly
affair. The only newspaper they saw was the “Evening Mail,” which
arrived three times a week, and was the “Times” newspaper with all its
contents except its advertisements. As the “Times” newspaper had the
credit of mainly contributing to the passing of Lord Grey’s Reform Bill,
and was then whispered to enjoy the incredible sale of twelve thousand
copies daily, Mr. Ferrars assumed that in its columns he would trace
the most authentic intimations of coming events. The cost of postage
was then so heavy, that domestic correspondence was necessarily very
restricted. But this vexatious limitation hardly applied to the Ferrars.
They had never paid postage. They were born and had always lived in
the franking world, and although Mr. Ferrars had now himself lost
the privilege, both official and parliamentary, still all their
correspondents were frankers, and they addressed their replies without
compunction to those who were free. Nevertheless, it was astonishing
how little in their new life they cared to avail themselves of this
correspondence. At first Zenobia wrote every week, almost every day, to
Mrs. Ferrars, but after a time Mrs. Ferrars, though at first pleased
by the attention, felt its recognition a burthen. Then Zenobia, who
at length, for the first time in her life, had taken a gloomy view of
affairs, relapsed into a long silence, and in fact had nearly forgotten
the Ferrars, for as she herself used to say, “How can one recollect
people whom one never meets?”
In the meantime, for we have been a little anticipating in our last
remarks, the family at Hurstley were much pleased with the country they
now inhabited. They made excursions of discovery into the interior of
their world, Mrs. Ferrars and Myra in the pony-chair, her husband
and Endymion walking by their side, and Endymion sometimes taking his
sister’s seat against his wish, but in deference to her irresistible
will. Even Myra could hardly be insensible to the sylvan wildness of the
old chase, and the romantic villages in the wooded clefts of the downs.
As for Endymion he was delighted, and it seemed to him, perhaps he
unconsciously felt it, that this larger and more frequent experience of
nature was a compensation for much which they had lost.
After a time, when they had become a little acquainted with simple
neighbourhood, and the first impression of wildness and novelty had
worn out, the twins were permitted to walk together alone, though within
certain limits. The village and its vicinity was quite free, but they
were not permitted to enter the woods, and not to wander on the chase
out of sight of the mansion. These walks alone with Endymion were the
greatest pleasure of his sister. She delighted to make him tell her of
his life at Eton, and if she ever sighed it was when she lamented that
his residence there had been so short. Then they found an inexhaustible
fund of interest and sympathy in the past. They wondered if they ever
should have ponies again. “I think not,” said Myra, “and yet how merry
to scamper together over this chase!”
“But they would not let us go,” said Endymion, “without a groom.”
“A groom!” exclaimed Myra, with an elfish laugh; “I believe, if the
truth were really known, we ought to be making our own beds and washing
our own dinner plates.”
“And are you sorry, Myra, for all that has happened?” asked Endymion.
“I hardly know what has happened. They keep it very close. But I am too
astonished to be sorry. Besides, what is the use of whimpering?”
“I cried very much one day,” said Endymion.
“Ah, you are soft, dear darling. I never cried in my life, except once
with rage.”
At Christmas a new character appeared on the stage, the rector’s son,
Nigel. He had completed a year with a private tutor, and was on the
eve of commencing his first term at Oxford, being eighteen, nearly
five years older than the twins. He was tall, with a countenance
of remarkable intelligence and power, though still softened by the
innocence and bloom of boyhood. He was destined to be a clergyman. The
twins were often thrown into his society, for though too old to be their
mere companion, his presence was an excuse for Mrs. Penruddock more
frequently joining them in their strolls, and under her auspices their
wanderings had no limit, except the shortness of the days; but they
found some compensation for this in their frequent visits to the
rectory, which was a cheerful and agreeable home, full of stuffed birds,
and dried plants, and marvellous fishes, and other innocent trophies and
triumphs over nature.