Never Despair. A tale

Chapter I

" 'Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." Pope. " It really is very annoying ; I cannot conceive why Lady Norbury does not give me longer notice. It so happens that I have an engagement on the sixteenth, the day on which she tells me the school is to be examined, hut I suppose I had better give it up ; I am very sorry, though, to be obliged to do so, for it is of long standing." With these words Mr. Leighton, the rector of Canondale, in Staffordshire, passed to his wife a letter which he had just received from Oakwood Park. B " It is annoying, I must confess," said Mrs. Leighton, when she laid down the letter. " Lady Norbury always forgets that you have a great many things to do in addition to your duties as rector of the parish. I have no doubt that she does not for a moment mean to slight you in any way, but that it is simply inadvertence on her part."

" I don't know whether she means to slight me or not, but this I do know, that it is excess ively inconvenient. I had promised on that day to go over to Loughborough to see the church wardens about a pew, the assignment of which has been made a matter of dispute, and which the Archdeacon has asked me to try to settle. Really I hardly know what to do. Perhaps if I were to write to Lady Norbury, to tell her the facts of the case, she might give me longer notice in future, but then in all probability she would be annoyed, and very likely say that I was neglecting the duties of my parish to run about the country doing other people's business." " Yes, I do not think it would be wise in you to say you could not come to the school examination. It would be much better, in my opinion, to write to one of the churchwardens of Lough borough, explaining all the circumstances to him, and appointing another day.

If you were not at the school examination it might give rise to a great deal of misrepresentation, and I do think it is very important that you should always be there to examine in Scripture." " I quite agree with you. I will do so. It would be most unwise I am sure for me to act in any way that might make people suppose I was touchy about the school. At the same time I do most heartily wish Lady Norbury would act differently. Sir Lionel always treats me as one gentleman should treat another, and I wish Lady Norbury would take a leaf out of his book." " Well, dear, I sometimes wish so too ; but we cannot have all we want, and we must be content to take the rough with the smooth. I advise you to write to Lady Norbury at once, saying you will be at the examination, and not referring at all to your previous engagement, for after all we ought to remember that parochial duties should come first, and extra-parochial occupy only the second place."

" Yes, that is quite true ; but at the same time if Lady Norbury had just told me of the examination ten days ago, I should have appointed another day for Loughborough, and then parochial and extra-parochial work would not have clashed. If there is one thing more than another that I dislike, it is having to break an engagement. But it must be done, and so the sooner I get it off my mind the better." And so, ere ten minutes had elapsed, a courteous note was dispatched to Lady Norbury, to the effect that Mr. Leighton would be very glad to be at the school examination on the day named, that he hoped the Government Inspector would be pleased with the progress of the children since the last examination, and that with kind regards he remained her's truly, B. Leighton. that night's post carried a letter to the principal churchwarden of Loughborough, stating that a parochial engagement of which he had been unaware until that day, but which he could not postpone, would prevent Mr. Leighton from coming over to Loughborough as he had proposed on the sixteenth, but that he hoped the eighteenth would suit equally well, and that he was his very faithfully, B. Leighton.

It can hardly be necessary to state the relation ship which existed between Lady Norbury and Mr. Leighton, hut a few details must be added to the knowledge which the reader will have already gained respecting some of the inhabitants of Canondale. Mr. Leighton was the second son of a Devon shire squire, and had gone through the usual course of education which is considered most likely to qualify a man for whatever position in life he may be destined to fill. His father, having been at Eton himself, naturally sent his son thither, and after some five or six years spent NEVEE DESPAIR. there with a thorough enjoyment of public school life, and with the unqualified testimony of his tutor to his uniformly good conduct, Baldwin Leighton matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. His allowance from his father, though sufficient to enable him to live at Christ Church in perfect comfort, was not such as to make it desirable for him to live as expensively as some of his former companions.

He found many old acquaintances on his arrival at college, and as there is a sort of freemasonry amongst old Etonians, a pleasant agreeable man, such as Baldwin Leighton un doubtedly was, would readily have been admitted into any set he might choose at Christ Church. But he had from his early childhood deliberately chosen the ministry of the Church as his future profession, and the fact that ere long he should enter into Holy Orders greatly influenced him in the choice of his companions at the university. Hence it was that Leighton's career at Oxford, though not brilliant, was thoroughly respectable. The Dean was loud in his praises of him, when at the end of three years his name appeared in the second class (for it was before the modern innovations had puzzled old college men), his father thanked God who had given him such a son.

A year or two more and Baldwin Leighton was ready to enter the ministry. His father was the patron of Canondale, and as Mr. Marsden, the rector of that place, was far advanced in years, there was every prospect of an early vacancy. It was arranged that he should enter upon a curacy in the same diocese as that in which his lot would afterwards be cast. The serving of a curacy with him was not such weary work as it is with many. In the first place, before he had been ordained many months, he married a lady to whom he had been for some time engaged. In the next place, his rector was a gentleman, and remembered that Mr. Leighton was one too, and in the last place he had every reason to expect that he would not remain very long in his then subordinate position, but would soon enter upon his duties as rector of Canondale.

In fact, however, some ten years passed before this event occurred, and then the ties which had bound him to his rector were not sundered without real regret on both sides. At the time at which the present story opens Mr. Leighton had been at Canondale about eight years. Of three children two only were then living ; Cecil, who was shortly about to go to Oxford, for matriculation at University College, and Marion, who was rejoicing in emancipation from the thraldom of the schoolroom. No pains had been spared in their education, for though Mr. Leighton's means were not more than sufficient for the many calls which were made upon him, yet he rightly felt that, if necessary, any sacrifice should be made so that his children should have the best education which it was possible to give them. Sir Lionel and Lady Norbury, who lived at Oakwood Park, Canondale, were, each in their several spheres, persons of considerable importance.

Sir Lionel was great in magisterial and county business. Quarter sessions would have seemed tame and flat without his presence. He was one of the Visiting Justices of the county gaol, and the mainstay of the finance committee. He seemed never so happy as when busied in the voluminous accounts which it was necessary that some Curtius should wade through for the en lightenment thereon of his brother magistrates. Hence it was that Sir Lionel was a good deal called away from home, and home pursuits, and left many details of management in Lady Nor bury's hands which might otherwise have come under his own personal supervision. Truth to say, however, Lady Norbury was well able to have undertaken duties even of a more onerous character than any which devolved upon her. She had been from early years left without a mother's care, and thrown thus iu a great measure upon her own resources, her character had grown singularly self-reliant.

Her fortune was an ample one, and many a claimant for her hand had come forward ere twenty summers had passed over her head, but Miss Maltravers had no intention of giving her hand and fortune where she could not give her heart, and thus in turn each suitor retired from the contest, and the prize remained for some more fortunate competitor. Then it was that Sir Lionel entered the lists, and in him she found a nature con genial to her own. His personal appearance was very prepossessing, his character unexcep tionable, his broad acres at Canondale a sufficient guarantee that mercenary motives at any rate had nothing to do with his coming forward as a suitor for Miss Maltravers' hand, and none were surprised when it began to be whispered at county meetings, at the quarter sessions, and in the hunting field that Sir Lionel Norbury had been successful where so many before him had failed, and that Miss Maltravers had consented to become the wife of Sir Lionel, and the presid ing genius of Oakwood Park.

Fully competent she was to enter upon the duties which now devolved upon her, and well did she become the character of the Lady Bountiful. A happy thing indeed it was for Canondale when Lady Norbury entered the place. The rector had been appointed to the living some thirty years before, and although at the time of his appointment he was con sidered to be an active and fairly energetic clergyman, yet during his incumbency the times had changed, and if the truth must be told, he had long been stranded high and dry. His sermons were thoroughly orthodox — no heresy lay latent there — but they were innocent of the faintest tinge of that earnestness and (no other word expresses it so well) unction which one would suppose that a dying man speaking to dying men on the unspeakably important affairs of their souls must necessarily feel.

The self-righteous Pharisee left the church Sunday after Sunday comfortable in his own self-righteousness; the decent moralist failed to see that something more than a mere negative orthodoxy was required of the true Christian; the slumberer was not roused, the hungry were not fed; cottage lectures, pastoral visitation, as distinct from gossiping visits, the anxious leading of inquiring souls, were alike unknown to the rector of Canondale. It cannot then be a matter of surprise that when Lady Norbury came there she should deeply feel the lethargy and deadness which were on all sides of her. Sir Lionel had regretted the state of things, but his business and occupations led him to absent himself a good deal from home, and he contented himself with a liberal distribution of coals and blankets at Christmas, of soup twice a week during the cold weather, and a general injunction to the rector to apply to him when ever money was wanted.

Lady Norbury had not been married long before she told Sir Lionel that something really must be done for the education of the children of the village. " There is hardly a place in the neighbourhood," she urged, " which has not a school of its own — many of them under Government inspection — and Canondale has nothing but a wretched dame's school. I really think that we ought to stir in the matter. The children are brought up in ignorance such as I could hardly have believed possible in this nineteenth century, and we must see whether our rector will not move about it." "Well, my dear," said Sir Lionel, "you know I entirely agree with you as regards this subject. I am quite as anxious as you can be that the children of the village— many of them, too, the children of my own people, — should be properly educated.

I spoke once to the rector about it, but he said that he thought over-education was a great mistake, that it was not necessary to teach all the ' ologies ' in a village school, and that for his part he thought a dame's school quite sufficient." " I think the rector entirely mistaken. I can hardly believe that he is aware of the gross ignorance of the children. It is really something appalling. I have no, wish whatever to over educate them, or rather over-instruct them, for over-education is an impossibility, but I do earnestly desire that the children for whom in a certain sense we are responsible, should be trained in such a manner that they may be able to go out into the world with powers of self-restraint and a knowledge at any rate of what is right and what is wrong, and that when they leave #the school they may have acquired the power of carrying on their own education in after life."

" I am sure I am quite ready to do anything as to the school that you think advisable. Suppose you were to walk over to the rectory by and by, and talk the matter over with Mr. Marsden." " I will go at once," said Lady Norbury, and in half an hour she was ensconced in an arm chair in the drawing room at the rectory, Mr. Marsden standing somewhat nervously in front of the blazing fire. After a few preliminary observations, Lady Norbury entered at once upon the subject which had brought her to the rectory. " I have been thinking a good deal lately," she said, " about the educational state of the parish. It hardly seems to me what it ought to be ; our dame's school is terribly inefficient. The children are so imperfectly taught there that they lose what little they learn a year after they leave school.

What do you think, Mr. Marsden ?" Mr. Marsden was seized with a sudden fit of coughing, which gave him a little time for deliberation before replying. At length he said — " I do not wish, Lady Norbury, to deceive you in this matter, and I had better at once confess that in my opinion the country has gone educa tion mad. What good it can ever do to teach our ploughboys geography, history, and grammar I cannot conceive. I am certain that it raises them above their station in life. Go where you will you find the mistresses of households com plaining that they cannot get the same sort of domestic servants as formerly, that servants are always wanting to change their situations, you find the gaols full, crime dreadfully on the increase, the papers full of murders and forgeries, and to my mind it seems clear that this education, about which all the world seems so crazy, is at the bottom of it."

" Well," said Lady Norbury, hardly able to repress a smile ; " I question whether the system of education now in vogue has been tried sufficiently long to test it. It maybe that the increase of crime only keeps pace with the increase of our population ; it may be moreover that offences which were committed secretly in past years, are now by means of the daily press brought to the light of da}-, and that so the increase of crime is more apparent than real. I have heard Sir Lionel say this, and I think there is a great deal of truth in it, but I have no wish to enter upon the general question. Let us come back to Canondale school. I have no desire to raise the' standard of education here to a high pitch, but I do think that at present it is miserably below what it ought to be. The children of thirteen and fourteen years old cannot read without pain fully spelling any word longer than a mono syllable, they are almost entirely ignorant of arithmetic, and, as to their writing, I should pity them if they were in after life called upon to write a letter, and I should equally pity the correspondent who had to read it."

" I really think, Lady Norbury," replied Mr. Marsden, " that you have exaggerated the case. I have not been into the school lately, for there have been some cases of scarlet fever amongst the children, and I hardly knew how far it was safe to encounter the heated atmosphere of the little room, but when last I was there it did not seem to me nearly so bad as you have represented it to be." " I was there yesterday," said Lady Norbury, with a scarcely concealed air of disgust, "and I felt it absolutely necessary that something should be done. I have talked the matter over with c Sir Lionel, who is quite of the same opinion as myself; our wish is to co-operate with you if possible, but if you will not — " , " I should like to know what you think of doing," interposed Mr. Marsden. " Why yon cannot be satisfied with what we have now I cannot conceive.

A few years ago there was no school at all, and, for my part, I don't see that the people are any. . . . but I won't enter upon that question. If you have formed any plans, Lady Norbury, I should be glad to be made acquainted with them." " What both Sir Lionel and myself wish, is that we should have a good school at Canondale, if possible under a certificated master ; that the children may be taught to read intelligently without stumbling, to write easily and correctly, and to have such a knowledge of arithmetic as may enable them in after life to turn it to prac tical account. If they are to read with intelli gence they must be taught to understand what they read ; if they are to write a fair hand, their teacher must do the same ; and if their arithmetic is to be of any use to them in after years, they must be carried on a little beyond the simple figures of the multiplication table.

Our wish, therefore, is to obtain the services of a schoolmaster who would do all this, while at the same time we hope he would attend as well to the children's higher and more important interests." " But such a schoolmaster would never consent to keep school in our present building." " Sir Lionel has considered that point, and would convert two of his cottages into a building well adapted for the purposes of the school." " But the expense would be very great. The farmers subscribe next to nothing. I could not afford to increase my present subscription, which is quite as much as can be expected from me, and where the money would come from I am sure I cannot conceive." "With regard to that, I may say at once that any deficiency in the funds we should feel our selves bound to supply." " But our present schoolmistress " — urged Mr. Marsden — " it would be cruel to turn her out on +he wide, wide world.

How could she get a living at her time of life ? I should be very sorry to see her on the parish allowance only." " That, too, we should provide against," said Lady Norbury, rather haughtily. " Sir Lionel would place her at one of his lodges, and we should allow her a small pension. What do you say, Mr. Marsden, to our plan ?" Mr. Marsden was fairly driven into a corner, and after pausing for a few moments, he said — " Lady Norbury, I fear I could not co-operate with you in this plan. With me it is a matter of principle. I consider the present education amply sufficient for the children of Canondale, and I have no wish to have anything whatever to do with one of your Government establishments, which are nothing better than homes for petted schoolmasters who would be clergymen if they could, and nurseries for conceited scholars."

Lady Norbury rose, and, with a fewcommon place remarks, left the rectory. And so it came to pass, that when Mr. Leighton entered upon the possession of the Rectory of Canondale, he found a flourishing school with a capital master, and all educational appliances ready to hand, but a school into which his pre decessor had never once set foot.

Chapter II

" Learning grew Beneath his care, a thriving vigorous plant, The mind was well informed, the passions held Subordinate, and diligence was choice: If e'er it chanced, as sometimes chance it must, That one among so many over-leap'd The limits of control, his gentle eye Grew stern, and darted a severe rebuke ; His frown was full of terror, and his voice Shook the delinquent with such fits of awe As left him not, till penitence had won Lost favour back again, and closed the breach." Cowper. It was on the morning of the sixteenth, that Mr. and Mrs. Leighton might have been seen wending their way towards the village school of Canondale. The engagement at Loughborough was postponed, and Mr. Leighton feeling that he had acted well and wisely, was disposed to be in high good humour with all about him.

" I hope," he said, " that Mr. Wallace will be in stronger health than he was when last he came here. It makes such a difference as to the com fort of the examination. If the opening of a door, or the movement of the pupilteacher puts him out, as I remember it did before, it makes the teachers and the children so nervous and frightened. I must say a word to Johnson before the examination begins. Never having had his school examined before he is very anxious about it, and seems to look upon Mr. Wallace as an ogre in the form of a Government Inspector. I have tried to re-assure him about it, but all to TT no purpose. " Mr. Wallace certainly is no ogre," said Mrs Leighton. " I cannot think how it is that the Government always seem to me to get such very agreeable men as inspectors. I never see them without pitying their wives, because their work takes them so much away from home."

" As to that," replied Mr. Leighton, " I daresay the wives would have a different story to tell. I often think it must be a great nuisance to you to have your husband always at your beck and call, meddling with business which is not in his department, and having a finger in every home made pie." " My husband at my beck and call indeed ! Why, Baldwin, you know I am constantly com plaining how much your work outside your parish takes you away from us. I often wish the Diocesan Boards were —well I won't say what I wish about them, only I don't suppose it is uncharitable to bear a grudge against a Board if I am friendly with all the members of it." Mr. Leighton smiled, and hearing quick steps behind him, turned round and saw Cecil and Marion coming after them as rapidly as Marion's newly found dignity as a young lady released from the trammels of the school room would allow.

" Why, Cecil, I thought you said you did not intend to come to the examination? " "No, more I did, Father, but Marion persuaded me after you and my mother had left, that we had better come with you, and as I did not wish the reminiscences of one of my last days with her to be of disobedience to her orders, I yielded as usual, and here we are." " Come along then, both of you. We must make haste, for it is nearly ten o'clock, and I want to be at the school before Lady Norbury brings Mr. Wallace down." But in this respect, Mr. Leighton's wish was not wholly gratified. For on turning a corner in the road which brought the village school into view, they saw Lady Norbury apparently giving some final instructions to Johnson, doubtless with reference to the examination. ' " I hope I'm not late," said the rector to his wife.

" I do so hate unpunctuality." " Oh, no," said Mrs. Leighton, " I am sure you are not. It is most natural that Lady Nor bury should wish to be here before the time, so that she may see that everything is in apple-pie order before the inspector comes ; now Baldwin, dear," (and she drew closer to him so that Cecil and Marion should not hear,) " do not put on your constrained, hard look as though you wished Lady Norbury well out of the way. I have no doubt everything will go off capitally." Mr. Leighton smiled, while Cecil stepped for ward to open the wicket gate. The school was of unpretending architecture. Two tenements had been somewhat cleverly con verted into a fair village school room, with a house for the master containing two bedrooms and a sitting room. On the first inspection the Government Inspector had peremptorily ordered, in accordance with his instructions, that the brick floor which Sir Lionel had thought sufficient should be removed, and a wooden floor substituted for it, and now the whole building, greatly altered and improved, looked comfortable and cheery.

On the present occasion, the windows were ornamented with wreaths of laurel and holly in termixed in honour of the inspector's visit, which gave to the room rather the appearance of having been prepared for a school feast than for a school examination. Lady Norbury came forward and shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Leighton. On seeing Cecil and Marion, a shade seemed to pass over her face, but if so, it passed away so quickly that you could scarcely say whether it was really there or whether it was not rather the effect of your own imagination. " You too, here, Cecil. Why I almost wonder that you don't prefer taking a stroll with your gun, to coming down to sit quietly in a hot school. But I suspect you'll soon be tired of the examination. You will have quite enough of such things when you go up to College.

Marion, you will find a seat there, next to Constance." Constance was Sir Lionel and Lady Norbury's only child. The family had originally consisted of four children. One died when quite a baby, but the two others had been carried off by malignant typhus fever, when they had reached the respective ages of twelve and fourteen, and long was it before Sir Lionel and Lady Norbury recovered from the severe blow. Constance, as may be supposed, was her parents' idol. If Lady Norbury could have spoiled any child, she would assuredly have spoiled Constance. But spoiling was not in Lady Norbury's nature, and though she was devotedly fond of her daughter, yet a certain sternness was occasionally apparent even in her manner towards her. Sir Lionel, on the contrary, petted his child (much to Lady Nor bury's dislike) to such an extent, that everybody said that Constance could do what she liked with her father.

She had just passed her sixteenth birthday, and was a tall elegant girl, with bright eyes, rich dark hair, and well formed features, such as you rarely see except in England or the Tyrol. Marion gladly availed herself of Lady Norbury's hint, and, passing with a kindly nod of recogni tion the smiling group of faces around her, sat down by the side of Constance. " I thought," said Lady Norbury to Mr. Leigh ton, " that I would come clown here to make the final arrangements. I have left orders at home that Mr. Wallace is to be driven down in the pony chaise directly he comes. I expect him almost immediately. I suppose you are prepared to examine the children in Scripture and the Catechism, if Mr. Wallace asks you ? " " Oh, yes," said Mr. Leighton, " I will gladly do my best. I think I hear the wheels of the M pony carriage.

As Mr. Leighton spoke, the little carriage was driven rapidly up to the school, and Lady Norbury went out to welcome Mr. Wallace. It was as Mrs. Leighton had said. Mr.Wallace was a most agreeable, gentlemanly man, and soon put everybody at their ease. To Lady Norbury's inquiries after his health, he answered that though in the early part of the winter he had found his work rather trying, yet that now the bright, clear weather had wonderfully freshened him up. He shook hands warmly with Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, and then had a kind word for the schoolmaster. " Have you got your parchment yet — Johnson I think, Lady Norbury, you said his name was ?" " No, sir," replied Johnson, " I only left Bat tersea last Christmas, so I have never yet had my school examined." " Well, you seem to have everything in very nice order about the grounds, and the maps and diagrams on the walls show that educational apparatus, at any rate, is not stinted."