'I thought there could be no distress of mind where the suffering is for the truth.'
'Ah! if he could quite feel it so!'
'What do you mean? There has been a cabal against James from the first to make him lay aside his principles, and I cannot regret his refusal to submit to improper dictation, at whatever cost to myself.'
'I am afraid he better knows than you do what that cost is likely to be.'
'Does he think I cannot bear poverty?' exclaimed Isabel.
'He had not said so—' began Louis; 'but—'
'You both think me a poor, helpless creature,' said Isabel, her eyes kindling as they had done in the midst of danger. 'I can do better than you think. I may be able myself to do something towards our maintenance.'
He could not help answering, in the tone that gave courtesy to almost any words, 'I am afraid it does not answer for the wife to be the bread-winner.'
'Then you doubt my writing being worth anything?' she asked, in a hurt tone of humility. 'Tell me candidly, for it would be the greatest kindness;' and her eye unconsciously sought the bag where lay Sir Hubert, whom all this time her imagination was exalting, as the hero who would free them from their distresses.
'Worth much pleasure to me, to the world at large,' said Louis; 'but—you told me to speak plainly—to your home, would any remuneration be worth your own personal care?'
Isabel coloured, but did not speak.
Louis ventured another sentence—'It is a delicate subject, but you must know better than I how far James would be likely to bear that another, even you, should work for his livelihood.'
When Isabel spoke again, it was to ask further particulars; and when he had told all, she found solace in exclaiming at the folly and injustice of James's enemies, until the sense of fairness obliged him to say, 'I wish the right and the wrong ever were fairly divided in this world; and yet perhaps it is best as it is: the grain of right on either side may save the sin from being a presumptuous one.'
'It would be hard to find the one grain of right on the part of the Ramsbotham cabal.'
'Perhaps you would not think so, if you were a boy's mother.'
'Oh!' cried Isabel, with tears in her eyes, 'if he thought he had been too hasty, he always made such reparation that only cowards could help being touched. I'm sure they deserved it, and much more.'
'No doubt,' said Louis; 'but, alas! if all had their deserts—'
'Then you really think he was too severe?'
'I think his constitutional character was hardly fit for so trying a post, and that his family and school troubles reacted upon each other.'
'You mean Clara's conduct; and dear grandmamma—oh! if she could but have stayed with us! If you could have seen how haggard and grieved he came home from Cheveleigh! I do not think he has been quite the same ever since.'
'And No. 5 has never been the same,' said Louis.
'Tell me,' said Isabel, suddenly, 'are we very poor indeed?'
'I fear so, Isabel. Till James can find some employment, I fear there is a stern struggle with poverty before you.'
'Does that mean living as the Faithfulls do?'
'Yes, I think your means will be nearly the same as theirs.'
'Fitzjocelyn,' said Isabel, after a long pause, 'I see what you have been implying all this time, and I have been feeling it too. I have been absorbed in my own pursuits, and not paid attention enough to details of management, and so I have helped to fret and vex my husband. You all think my habits an additional evil in this trial.'
'James has never said a word of the kind,' cried Louis.
'I know he has not; but I ought to have opened my eyes to it long ago, and I thank you for helping me. There—will you take that manuscript, and keep it out of my way? It has been a great tempter to me. It is finished now, and it might bring in something. But I can have only one thought now—how to make James happier and more at ease.'
'Then, Isabel, I don't think your misfortunes will be misfortunes.'
'To suffer for right principles should give strength for anything,' said Isabel. 'Think what many better women than I have had to endure, when they have had to be ashamed of their husband, not proud of him! Now, I do hope and trust that God will help us, and carry us and the children through with it!'
Louis felt that in this frame she was truly fit to cheer and sustain James. How she might endure the actual struggle with penury, he dared not imagine; at present he could only be carried along by her lofty composure.
James still lay on his tossed, uncomfortable bed in the evening twilight. The long, lonely hours, when he imagined Louis to have taken him at his word and gone home, had given him a miserable sense of desertion, and as increasing sensations of illness took from him the hopes of moving on that day, he became distracted at the thought of the anxiety his silence would cause Isabel, and, after vainly attempting to write, had been lying with the door open, watching for some approaching step.
There was the familiar sound of a soft, gliding step on the stairs, then a pause, and the sweet soft voice, 'My poor James, how sadly uncomfortable you are!'
'My dear!' he cried, hastily raising himself, 'who has been frightening you?'
'No one, Fitzjocelyn was so kind as to come for me.'
'Ah! I wished you to have been spared this unpleasant business.'
'Do you think I could bear to stay away! Oh, James! have I been too useless and helpless for you even to be glad to see me?'
'It was for your own sake,' he murmured, pressing her hand. 'Has Fitzjocelyn told you?'
'Yes,' said Isabel, looking up, as she sat beside him. 'Never mind, James. It is better to suffer wrong than to do it. I do not fear but that, if we strive to do our duty, God will help us, and make it turn out for the best for our children and ourselves.'
He grasped her hand in intense emotion.
'I know you are anxious about me,' added Isabel. 'My ways have been too self-indulgent for you to think I can bear hardness. I made too many professions at first; I will make no more now, but only tell you that I trust to do my utmost, and not shrink from my duties. And now, not a word more about it till you are better.'
CHAPTER XV
SWEET USES OF ADVERSITY
One furnace many times the good and bad will hold;
But what consumes the chaff will only cleanse the gold.
R. C. TRENCH.
During the succeeding days, James had little will or power to consider his affairs; and Isabel, while attending on him, had time to think over her plans. Happily, they had not a debt. Mrs. Frost had so entirely impressed her grandson's mind with her own invariable rule of paying her way, that it had been one of his grounds for pride that he had never owed anything to any man.
They were thus free to choose their own course, but Lord Ormersfield urged their remaining at Northwold for the present. He saw Mr. Calcott, who had been exceedingly concerned at the turn affairs had taken, and very far from wishing to depose James, though thinking that he needed an exhortation to take heed to his ways. It had been an improper reprimand, improperly received; but the Earl and the Squire agreed that nothing but morbid fancy could conjure up disgrace, such as need prevent James Frost from remaining in his own house until he could obtain employment, provided he and his wife had the resolution to contract their style of living under the eye of their neighbours.
This gave neither of them a moment's uneasiness. It was not the direction of their pride; and even before James's aching head was troubled with deliberation, Isabel had discussed her plan with the Miss Faithfulls. She would imagine herself in a colony, and be troubled with no more scruples about the conventional tasks of a lady than if she were in the back-woods.
They would shut up some of the rooms, take one servant of all-work, and Isabel would be nursery-maid herself. 'We may do quite as well as the carpenter's wife,' she said; 'she has more children and less income, and yet always seems to me the richest person whom I know.'
James groaned, and turned his face away. He could not forbid it, for even Isabel's exertion must be permitted rather than the dishonour of living beyond their means; and he consoled himself with thinking that when the deadening inertness of his illness should leave him, he should see some means of finding employment for himself, which would save her from toil and exertion, and, in the meantime, with all his keen self-reproach, it was a blessed thing to have been brought back to his enthusiastic admiration for her, all discontents and drawbacks utterly forgotten in her assiduous affection and gallant cheerfulness.
Lord Ormersfield had readily acceded to his son's wish to bring the party to spend Christmas at Ormersfield, as soon as James could be moved. During their visit the changes were to be made, and before setting out Isabel had to speak to the servants. Charlotte's alacrity and usefulness had made her doubly esteemed during her master's illness; and when he heard how she was to be disposed of, he seemed much vexed. He said that she was a legacy from his grandmother, and too innocent and pretty to be cast about among strange servants in all the places where the Conways visited; and that he would not have consented to the transfer, but that, under their present circumstances, it was impossible to keep her. If any evil came to her, it would be another miserable effect of his own temper.
Isabel thought he exaggerated the dangers, and she spoke brightly to Charlotte about fixing the day of her going to Estminster, so as to be put into the ways of the place before her predecessor departed. The tears at once came into Charlotte's eyes, and she answered, 'If you please, ma'am, I should be very sorry to leave, unless I did not give satisfaction.'
'That is far from being the reason, Charlotte; but we cannot keep so good a servant—Mr. Frost has given up—'
'I have been put out of the school,' said James, from his sofa, in his stern sense of truth. 'We must live on as little as possible, and therefore must part with you, Charlotte, though from no fault of yours. You must look on us as your friends, and in any difficulty apply to us; for, as Mrs. Frost says, we look on you as a charge from my grandmother.'
Charlotte escaped to hide her tears; and when, a few minutes after, the Ormersfield carriage arrived, and nurses and babies were packed in, and her master walked feebly and languidly down stairs, and her mistress turned round to say, kindly, 'You will let me know, Charlotte?' she just articulated, 'Thank you, ma'am, I will write.'
Mr. Frost's words had not been news to Charlotte. His affairs had been already pretty well understood and discussed, and the hard, rude, grasping comments of the vulgar cook—nay, even of the genteel nurse—had been so many wounds to the little maiden, bred up by Jane in the simplicity of feudal reverence and affection for all that bore the name of Frost Dynevor.
Her mistress left to the tender mercies of some servant such as these, some one who might only care for her own ease and profit, and not once think of who and what she had been! The little children knocked about by some careless girl! Never, never! All the doubts and scruples about putting her own weak head and vain heart in the way of being made faithless to Tom revived, reinforced by her strong and generous affection. A romantic purpose suddenly occurred to her, flushing her cheek and brightening her eye. In that one impulse, scrubbing, washing dishes, short lilac sleeves were either forgotten, or acquired a positive glory, and while the cook was issuing her invitations for a jollification and gossip at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Frost, Charlotte sat in her attic, amid Jane's verbenas, which she had cherished there ever since their expulsion from the kitchen, and wrote and cried, and left off, to read over, and feel satisfied at, the felicity of her phrases, and the sentiment of her project.
'Dear and Honoured Madam,—Pardon the liberty I am taking but I am sure that you and my reverend and redoubted master would not willingly have inflicted so much pain as yesterday on a poor young female which was brought up from an orphan child by my dear late lamented mistress and owes everything to her and would never realize the touching lines of the sublime poet
Deserted in his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed.
As to higher wages and a situation offering superior advantages such as might prove attractive to other minds it has none to me. My turn is for fidelity in obscurity and dear and honoured lady I am a poor unprotected girl which has read in many volumes of the dangers of going forth into the snares of a wealthy and powerful family and begs you not to deprive her of the shelter of the peaceful roof which has been her haven and has been the seen of the joys and sorrows of her career. Dear lady pardon the liberty that I have taken but it would brake my heart to leave you and master and the dear children espeshilly in the present winter of adversity which I have hands to help in to the best of my poor abilities. Dear and honoured lady I have often been idle but I will be so no more I love the dear little ladies with all my heart and I can cook and act in any capacity and wages is no object I will not take none nor beer neither—and the parlour tea-leaves will be sufficient. Dear and honoured master and mistress forgive the liberty a poor girl has taken and lend a favourable ear to my request for if you persist in parting with me I know I shall not survive it.
'Your humble and faithful Servant,
'CHARLOTTE ARNOLD.'
Isabel received this letter while she was at breakfast with Lord Ormersfield and Louis, and it was, of course, impossible to keep it to herself. 'Talking of no wages!' said the Earl. 'Send her off at once.'
'You will despise me,' said Isabel, with tears in her eyes; 'but there is something very touching in it, in spite of the affectation. I believe she really means it.'
'Affectation is only matter of taste,' said Louis. 'Half the simplicity of our day is only fashion; and Charlotte's letter, with a few stops, and signed Chloe, would have figured handsomely in Mrs. Radcliffe's time.'
'It does not depend on me,' said Isabel; 'James could not bear her going before, and I am sure he will not now.'
'I think he ought not,' said Louis. 'Poor girl! I do believe the snares of wealthy families and fidelity in obscurity, really mean with her the pomps and vanities versus duty and affection.'
'I am sure I would not drive her back to them,' said Isabel; 'but I am only afraid the work will be too much for her strength.'
'The willing heart goes all the way,' said Louis; 'and maybe it will be more wholesome than London, and sitting up.'
Isabel coloured and sighed; but added, that it would be infinite relief on the children's account to keep some one so gentle-handed, and so entirely to be trusted.
James's decision was immediate. He called the letter a farrago, but his laugh was mixed with tears at the faithful affection it displayed. 'It was mere folly,' he said, 'to think of keeping her without wages; but, if she would accept such as could be afforded after taking a rough village girl for her food to do the hard work, the experiment should be made, in the hope that the present straits would only endure for a short time.
This little event seemed to have done him much good, and put him more at peace with the world. He was grateful for Lord Ormersfield's kindness and forbearance, and the enforced rest from work was refreshing him; while Isabel had never been so cheerful and lively in her life as now, when braced manfully for her work, full of energy, and feeling that she must show herself happy and courageous to support his depressed spirits. She was making a beginning—she was practising herself in her nursery duties, and, to her surprise, finding them quite charming; and little Kitty so delighted with all she did for her, that all the hitherto unsounded depths of the motherly heart were stirred up, and she could not think why she had never found out her true happiness. She looked so bright and so beautiful, that even Lord Ormersfield remarked it, pitying her for trials which he thought she little realized; but Louis augured better, believing that it was not ignorance but resolution which gave animation and brilliancy to her dark eye and cheerfulness to her smile.
Fitzjocelyn took her to Dynevor Terrace in the afternoon to settle the matter with Charlotte; and, on the way, he took the opportunity of telling her that he had been reading Sir Hubert, and admired him very much, discussing him and Adeline with the same vivid interest as her own sisters showed in them as persons, not mere personages. Isabel said they already seemed to her to belong to a world much farther back than the last fortnight.
'There is some puzzle in the middle,' said Louis. 'I can't make out the hero whose addresses were so inconvenient to Adeline, and who ran away from the pirates. He began as a crabbed old troubadour, who made bad verses; and then he went on as a fantastic young Viscount, skipping and talking nonsense.'
'Oh!' cried Isabel, much discomposed. 'Did I leave that piece there? I took it to Estminster by mistake, and they told me of it. I should have taken it out.'
'That would have been a pity,' said Louis, 'for the Viscount is a much more living man than the old troubadour. When he had so many plans of poems for the golden violet that he made none at all, I was quite taken with him. I began to think I was going to have a lesson.'
Isabel blushed and tried to laugh, but it was so unsuccessful that Louis exclaimed in high glee—'There! I do believe I was the fantastic Viscount! Oh! Isabel, it was too bad! I can fairly acquit myself of skipping ever since I had the honour of your acquaintance.'
'Or of running away from the pirates,' said Isabel. 'No, it was a great deal too bad, and very wrong indeed. It was when you did not run away that I was so much ashamed, that I thought I had torn out every atom. I never told any one—not even Virginia!'
Louis had a very hearty laugh, and, when Isabel gaw him so excessively amused, she ventured to laugh too at her ancient prejudice, and the strange chance which had made the fantastic Viscount, Sir Roland's critic.
'You must restore him,' said Louis, returning to business. 'That old troubadour is the one inconsistency in the story, evidently not fitting into the original plot. I shall be delighted to sit for the portrait.'
'I don't think you could now,' said Isabel. 'I think the motley must have been in the spectacles with which I looked at you.'
'Ah! it is a true poem,' said Louis, 'it must have been a great relief to your feelings! Shall I give it back to you?
'Oh! I can't touch it now!' cried Isabel. 'You may give it to me, and if ever I have time to think again of it, I may touch it up, but certainly not now.'
'And when you do, pray don't omit the Viscount. I can't lose my chance of going down to posterity.'
He went his way, while Isabel repaired to the Terrace, and found Charlotte awaiting her answer in much trepidation.
The low wages, instead of none at all, were a great disappointment, doing away with all the honour and sentiment, and merely degrading her in the eyes of her companions; but her attachment conquered this objection, and face to face with her mistress, the affectation departed, and left remaining such honest and sincere faithfulness and affection, that Isabel felt as if a valuable and noble-hearted friend had suddenly been made known to her. It was a silly little fanciful heart, but it was sound to the core; and when Isabel said, 'There will be very hard work, Charlotte, but we will try to do our best for Mr. Frost and the children, and we will help each other,' Charlotte felt as if no task could be too hard if it were to be met with such a look and smile.
'Is it settled?' asked Lord Fitzjocelyn, as Charlotte opened the door for him.
'Oh, yes, thank you, my Lord—'
'But, Charlotte, one thing is decided. Mrs. Frost can afford no more eau de Cologne. The first hysterics and you go!'
He passed upstairs, and found Isabel beginning to dismantle the drawing-room—'Which you arranged for us!' she said.
A long, deep sigh was the answer, and Louis mused for some moments ere he said—'It is hard work to say good-bye to trifles with which departed happiness seems connected.'
'Oh, no!' cried Isabel, eagerly. 'With such a home, the happiness cannot be departed.'
'No, not with such a home!' said Louis, with a melancholy smile; 'but I was selfish enough to be thinking who hung that picture—'
'I don't think you were the selfish person,' said Isabel.
'Patience and work!' said Louis, rousing himself. 'Some sort of good time must come,'—and he quickly put his hand to assist in putting the Dresden shepherd and shepherdess into retirement, observing that they seemed the genii of the place, and he set his mind on their restoration.
'I do not think,' said Isabel, as she afterwards narrated this scene to her husband, 'that I ever realized his being so much attached to Mary Ponsonby; I thought it was a convenient suitable thing in which he followed his father's wishes, and I imagined he had quite recovered it.'
'He did not look interesting enough? Yes! he was slow in knowing his own mind; but his heart once given there is no recalling it, whatever his father may wish.'
'Or my mother,' said Isabel, smiling.
'Ah! I have never asked you what your party say of him in the London world.'
'They say he quite provokes them by being such a diligent member, and that people debate as to whether he will distinguish himself. Some say he does not care enough, and others, that he has too many crotchets.'
'Just so! Public men are not made of that soft, scrupulous stuff, which only hardens and toughens when principle is clear before him. Well, as to society—'
'Virginia says he is hardly ever to be had; he is either at the House, or he has something to do for his father; he slips out of parties, and they never catch him unless they are in great want of a gentleman to take them somewhere, and then no one is so useful. Mamma has been setting innumerable little traps for him, but he marches straight through them all, and only a little tone of irony betrays that he sees through them. Every one likes him, and the only complaint is, that he is so seldom to be seen, keeping almost entirely to his father's set, always with his father—'
'Ay! I can bear to watch his submission better than formerly. His attentions are in such perfect good taste that they are quite beautiful; and his lordship has quite ceased snubbing, and begins to have a glimmering that when Louis says something never dreamt of in his philosophy, the defect may be in his understanding, and not in Fitzjocelyn's.'
'I could excuse him for not always understanding Fitzjocelyn! But there never were two kinder people in the world; and I could not have imagined that I should ever like Lord Ormersfield half so much.'
'He is improved. Louis's exclusive devotion has not been lost on him. Holdsworth has been sitting with me, and talking of the great change in the parish. He told me that at his first arrival here, seven years ago, when he was very young, he found himself quite disheartened and disgusted by the respectability of the place. Every one was cold, distant, correct, and self-esteeming; so perfectly contented with themselves and the routine, that he felt all his ardour thrown away, and it seemed to him that he was pastor to a steam-engine—a mere item in the proprieties of Ormersfield. He was almost ready to exchange, out of weariness and impatience, when Fitzjocelyn came home, and awoke fresh life and interest by his absurdities, his wonderful philanthropies, and extraordinary schemes. His sympathy and earnestness were the first refreshment and encouragement; and Holdsworth declares that no one can guess the benefit that he was to him even when he was most ridiculous. Since that, he says, the change has been striking, though so gradual. Louis has all the same freshness and energy, but without the fluctuation and impetuosity. And his example of humility and sincerity has worked, not only in reclaiming the wild outlying people, but even awakening the comfortable dependents from their self-satisfaction. Even Frampton is far from the impenetrable person he used to be.'
'And I suppose they have done infinite good to the wild Marksedge people!'
'Some are better, some are worse. I believe that people always are worse when they reject good. I am glad to find, too, that the improvements answer in a pecuniary point of view. His Lordship is amazed at his son's sagacity, and they have never been so much at ease in money matters.'
'Indeed! Well, I must own that I have always been struck with the very small scale on which things are done here. Just the mere margin of what is required by their station, barely an indulgence!'
'I fancy you must look into subscriptions for Fitzjocelyn's means,' said James; 'and for the rest, they have no heart for new furniture till he marries.'
'Well! I wonder if Mary is worth so much heart! It might be the best thing for him if she would find some worthy merchant. He is very young still, and looks younger. I should like him to begin the world again.'
'Ha! Isabel, you want to cook up a romance of your own for him.'
James was recovering cheerfulness. He thought he was bracing himself to bear bravely with an unmerited wrong. The injustice of his sentence hid from him the degree of justice; and with regard to his own temper, he knew better what he restrained than what he expressed, and habitually gave himself credit for what he did not say or do. There was much that was really good in his present spirit, and it was on the way to be better; but his was not the character to be materially altered by the first brunt of a sudden shock. It was a step that he had brought himself to forgive the trustees. He did not yet see that he had any need to be forgiven.
At the end of three weeks James and Isabel returned to their home, and to their new way of life; and Fitzjocelyn had only time to see that they were beginning their struggle with good courage, before the meeting of Parliament summoned him to London.
Isabel fully justified Miss Faithfull's prediction. She was too truly high-minded to think any task beneath her; and with her heart in, not out of her immediate work, she could not fail to be a happier woman. Success gave as much pleasure in a household duty as in an accomplishment—nay, far more when it was a victory over herself, and an increase to the comfort of her husband. Her strength was much tried, and the children often fatigued and harassed her; but there was unspeakable compensation in their fondness and dependence on her, and even in the actual services themselves. The only wonder began to be how she could have ever trusted them in any hands but her own. Her husband's affection and consideration were sources of joy ever renewed; and though natural irritability and pressing anxieties might now and then betray him into a hasty word, his penitence so far surpassed the momentary pain it might have cost her, that she was obliged to do her utmost to comfort him. She sometimes found herself awkward or ignorant, and sometimes flagged from over-exertion; yet throughout, James's approval, and her own sense that she was striving to do her best, kept her mind at rest. Above all, the secret of her happiness was, that the shock of adversity had awakened her from her previous deadness and sluggishness of soul, and made her alive to a feeling of trust and support, a frame of mind ever repenting, ever striving onwards. Thus she went bravely through the very class of trials that she would once have thought merely lowering, inglorious, and devoid of poetry. What would have been in itself sordid, gained a sweetness from the light of love and duty, and never in all her dreamy ease had she been as cheerful and lighthearted as in the midst of hardship and rigid economy. Her equable temper and calm composure came to her aid; and where a more nervous and excitable woman would have preyed upon herself, and sunk under imaginary troubles, she was always ready to soothe and sustain the anxious and sensitive nature of her husband. After all, hers was the lightest share of the trial. To her, the call was to act, and to undergo misfortunes occasioned by no fault of hers; to him, the call was the one most galling to an active and eager man—namely, to endure, and worse, to see endured, the penalty of his own errors. In vain did he seek for employment. A curacy, without a fair emolument, would have been greater poverty than their present condition, as long as the house was unlet; and, though he answered advertisements and made applications, the only eligible situations failed; and he knew, among so many candidates, the last to be chosen would be a person of violent temper, unable to bear rebuke. Disappointment came upon disappointment, and the literary work, with which, through Louis's exertions, he had been supplied, was not likely to bring in any speedy return.
All that he could do was to take more than his part in domestic trifles, such as most men would have scorned, and to relieve his wife as far as possible of the children, often at the cost of his writing. He bore the brunt of many a trial of which she was scarcely aware—slights from the harsh vulgar, and compassion from the kind vulgar; and the proud self-assertion was gone which had hardened him to all such stings. To his lot fell the misery of weighing and balancing what comforts could best be cut off without positive injury to his wife and little ones. To consider whether an empty house should be repaired for a doubtful tenant, to make the venture, and have it rejected, was a severe vexation, when the expense trenched on absolute necessaries, and hardly less trying was it to be forced to accept the rent of the House Beautiful, knowing how ill it could be spared; and yet, that without it he must lapse into the hopeless abyss of debt. Moreover, there was