'It will not be without my thoughts. How often I shall think I see the broad road, and the wide field, and the mountain-ash berries, that were reddening when we came; and the canary in the window! How little my first glance at the houses took in what they would be to me!'

And then they had to settle the haunts she was to revisit at Beauchastel. An invitation thither was the ostensible cause of the rapid break-up from the House Beautiful; but the truth was not so veiled but that there were many surmises among the uninitiated. Jane had caught something from my young Lord's demeanour which certified her, and made her so exceedingly proud and grand, that, though she was too honourable to breathe a word of her discovery, she walked with her kind old head three inches higher; and, as a great favour, showed Charlotte a piece of poor dear Master Henry's bridecake, kept for luck, and a little roll of treasured real Brussels lace, that she had saved to adorn her cap whenever Mr. James should marry.

Charlotte was not absolutely as attentive as she might have been to such interesting curiosities. She had one eye towards the window all the time; she wanted to be certified how deeply she had wounded the hero of the barricade, and she had absolutely not seen him since his return! The little damsel missed homage!

'You are not heeding me!' exclaimed Jane at last.

'Yes; I beg your pardon, ma'am--'

'Charlotte, take care. Mind me, one thing at a time,' said Jane, oracularly. 'Not one eye here, the other there!'

'I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Mrs. Beckett.'

'Come, don't colour up, and say you don't know nothing! Why did you water your lemon plant three times over, but that you wanted to be looking out of window? Why did you never top nor tail the gooseberries for the pudding, but sent them up fit to choke my poor missus? If Master Jem hadn't--Bless me! what was I going to say?--but we should soon have heard of it! No, no, Charlotte; I've been a mother to you ever since you came here, a little starveling thing, and I'll speak plain for your good. If you fancy that genteel butler in there, say so downright; but first sit down, and write away a letter to give up the other young man!'

Charlotte's cheeks were in a flame, and something vehement at the end of her tongue, when, with a gentle knock, and 'By your favour, ladies,'

in walked Mr. Delaford.

Jane was very civil, but very stiff at first, till he thawed her by great praise of Lord Fitzjocelyn, the mere prelude to his own magnificent exploits.

Charlotte listened like a very Desdemona. He was very pathetic, and all that was not self-exaltation was aimed at her. Nothing could have been more welcome than the bullets to penetrate his heart, and he turned up his eyes in a feeling manner.

Charlotte's heart was exceedingly touched, and she had tears in her eyes when she moved forward in the att.i.tude of the porcelain shepherdess in the parlour, to return a little volume of selections of tender poetry, bound in crimson silk, that he had lent to her some time since. 'Would she not honour him by accepting a trifling gift?'

She blushed, she accepted; and with needle-like pen, in characters fine as hair, upon a scroll garlanded with forget-me-nots, and borne in mid air by two portly doves, was Charlotte Arnold's name inscribed by the hero of the barricades.

Oh, vanity! vanity! how many garbs dost thou wear!

Delaford went away, satisfied that he had produced an impression such as he could improve if they should ever be thrown together again.

The Lady of Eschalott remained anything but satisfied. She was touchy and fretful, found everything a grievance, left cobwebs in the corners, and finally went into hysterics because the cat jumped at the canary-bird's cage.

CHAPTER XXII.

BURGOMASTERS AND GREAT ONE-EYERS.

When full upon his ardent soul The champion feels the influence roll, He swims the lake, he leaps the wall, Heeds not the depth, nor plumbs the fall.

Unshielded, mailless, on he goes, Singly against a host of foes!

Harold the Dauntless.

'Jem! Jem! have you heard?'

'What should I hear?'

'Mr. Lester is going to retire at Christmas!'

'Does that account for your irrational excitement?'

'And it has not occurred to you that the grammar-school would be the making of you! Endowment, 150 pounds--thirty, forty boys at 10 pounds per annum, 400 pounds at least. That is 550 pounds--say 600 pounds for certain; and it would be doubled under a scholar and a gentleman--1200 pounds a year! And you might throw it open to boarders; set up the houses in the Terrace, and let them at--say 40 pounds? Nine houses, nine times forty--'

'Well done, Fitzjocelyn! At this rate one need not go out to Peru.'

'Exactly so; you would be doubling the value of your own property as a secondary consideration, and doing incalculable good--'

'As if there were any more chance of my getting the school than of the rest of it!'

'So you really had not thought of standing?'

'I would, most gladly, if there were the least hope of success. I can't afford to miss any chance; but it is mere folly to talk of it.

One-half of the trustees detest my principles; the others would think themselves insulted by a young man in deacon's orders offering himself.'

'It is evident that you are the only man on whom they can combine who can save the school, and do any good to all those boys--mind you, the important middle cla.s.s, whom I would do anything to train in sound principles.'

'So far, it is in my favour that I am one of the few University men educated here.'

'You are your grandmother's grandson--that is everything! and you have more experience of teaching than most men twice your age.'

James made a face at his experience; but little stimulus was needed to make him attempt to avail himself of so fair an opening, coming so much sooner than he could have dared to expect. It was now September, and the two months of waiting and separation seemed already like so many years. By the time Mrs. Frost came in from her walk, she found the two young gentlemen devising a circular, and composing applications for testimonials.

After the first start of surprise, and telling James he ought to go to school himself, Mrs. Frost was easily persuaded to enter heartily into the project; but she insisted on the first measure being to consult Mr.

Calcott. He was the head of the old sound and respectable party--the chairman of everything, both in county and borough--and had the casting vote among the eight trustees of King Edward's School, who, by old custom, nominated each other from the landholders within the town. She strongly deprecated attempting anything without first ascertaining his views; and, as the young men had lashed themselves into great ardour, the three walked off at once to lay the proposal before the Squire.

But Mr. Calcott was not at home. He had set off yesterday, with Miss Calcott and Miss Caroline, for a tour in Wales, and would not return for a week or ten days.

To the imaginations of Lord Fitzjocelyn and Mr. Frost, this was fatal delay. Besides, he would be sure to linger!--He would not come home for a month--nay, six weeks at least!--What candidates might not start--what pledges might not be given in the meantime!

James, vehement and disappointed, went home to spend the evening on the concoction of what his grandmother approved as 'a very proper letter,'

to be despatched to meet the Squire at the post-office at Caernarvon, and resigned himself to grumble away the period of his absence, secretly relieved at the postponement of the evil day of the canva.s.s, at which all the Pendragon blood was in a state of revolt.

But Louis, in his solitude at Ormersfield, had nothing to distract his thoughts, or prevent him from lapsing into one of his most single-eyed fits of impetuosity. He had come to regard James as the sole hope for Northwold school, and Northwold school as the sole hope for James; and had created an indefinite host of dangerous applicants, only to be forestalled by the most vigorous measures. Evening, night, and morning, did but increase the conviction, till he ordered his horse, and galloped to the Terrace as though the speed of his charger would decide the contest.

Eloquently and piteously did he protest against James's promise to take no steps until the Squire's opinion should be known. He convinced his cousin, talked over his aunt, and prevailed to have the letter re-written, and sent off to the post with the applications for testimonials.

Then the rough draft of the circular was revised and corrected, till it appeared so admirable to Louis, that he s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, and ran away with it to read it to old Mr. Walby, who was one of the trustees, and very fond of his last year's patient. His promise, good easy man, was pretty sure to be the prize of the first applicant; but this did not render it less valuable to his young lordship, who came back all glorious with an eighth part of the victory, and highly delighted with the excellent apothecary's most judicious and gratifying sentiments,--namely, all his own eager rhetoric, to which the good man had cordially given his meek puzzle-headed a.s.sent. Thenceforth Mr.

Walby was to 'think' all Fitzjocelyn's strongest recommendations of his cousin.

There was no use in holding back now. James was committed, and, besides, there was a vision looming in the distance of a scholar from a foreign University with less than half a creed. Thenceforth prompt measures were a mere duty to the rising generation; and Louis dragged his Coriola.n.u.s into the town, to call upon certain substantial tradesmen, who had voices among the eight.

Civility was great; but the portly grocer and gentlemanly bookseller had both learned prudence in many an election; neither would make any immediate reply--the one because he never did anything but what Mr.

Calcott directed, and the other never pledged himself till all the candidates were in the field, and he had impartially printed all their addresses.

Richardson, the solicitor, and man-of-business to the Ormersfield estate, appeared so sure a card, that James declared that he was ashamed of the farce of calling on him, but they obtained no decided reply. Louis was proud that Richardson should display an independent conscience, and disdained his cousin's sneering comment, that he had forgotten that there were other clients in the county besides the Fitzjocelyns.

No power could drag Mr. Frost a step further. He would not hear of canva.s.sing that 'very intelligent' Mr. Ramsbotham, of the Factory, who had been chosen at unawares by the trustees before his principles had developed themselves; far less on his nominee, the wealthy butcher, always more demonstratively of the same mind.