Dunstable

“ Miss Field replied in a joking tone that Lord Dunstable was depressed because the graceless Herbert had promised his parents a visit—a whole week—in August, and had now cried off on some excuse or other. Meadows inquired if Lady Dunstable minded as much as her husband.
"Quite!" laughed Miss Field. "It is not so much that she wants to see Herbert as that she's found someone to marry him to. You'll see the lady this afternoon. She comes with the Duke's party, to be looked at."
"But I understand that the young man is by no means manageable?" ”

“ He had answered the purpose for which he had been invited, and left Miss Dunstable in a happy frame of mind.
"I am very glad that he came," said Mrs. Harold Smith, with an air of triumph.
"Yes, I am glad," said Miss Dunstable, "though I am thoroughly ashamed that I should be so. After all, what good has he done to me or to any one?" And, having uttered this moral reflection, she made her way into the rooms, and soon discovered Dr. Thorne standing by himself against the wall.
"Well, doctor," she said, "where are Mary and Frank? You do not look at all comfortable, standing here by yourself." ”

“ Therefore it was arranged that the full amount due to the duke on mortgage should be ready for immediate payment; but it was arranged also that the security as held by Miss Dunstable should be very valid.
Miss Dunstable at Boxall Hill or at Greshamsbury was a very different person from Miss Dunstable in London, and it was this difference which so much vexed Mrs. Gresham; not that her friend omitted to bring with her into the country her London wit and aptitude for fun, but that she did not take with her up to town the genuine goodness and love of honesty which made her lovable in the country. ”

“ A genuine Montagu Watson was a prize in the autograph market.
Dunstable was a man of action. When Mark, the boot-boy at Day's, carried his burden of letters to the post that evening, there nestled among them one addressed to M. Watson, Esq., The White House, Chesterton. Looking at it casually, few of his friends would have recognised Dunstable's handwriting. For it had seemed good to that man of guile to adopt for the occasion the role of a backward youth of twelve years old. He thought tender years might touch Mr. Watson's heart. ”

“ Shever roughly thrust a gag in his mouth.
The wash deck tub was filled with salt water, a grating laid across, and Dunstable's hands made fast to it behind, so that he could not rise or struggle without injuring his wrists. The boatswain called for a bucket of coarse sand, took a piece of hard sailcloth, wetted it, dipped it in the sand, and himself commenced to inflict the scandalous torture known as "scrubbing with sand and canvas." His mates fell to with zeal, and these fiends in human shape rubbed and excoriated the person of the wretched Dunstable from head to foot. ”

“ Harold Smith. "I should be sorry to be the means of your losing a ten-pound note."
"Magna est veritas, as the dear bishop said," exclaimed Miss Dunstable. "Let us have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as we agreed just now."
Mrs. Harold Smith did begin to find that the task before her was difficult. There was a hardness about Miss Dunstable when matters of business were concerned on which it seemed almost impossible to make any impression. ”

“ And it soon became known, also, that Miss Dunstable was, in fact, the proprietor of the whole Chaldicotes estate, and that in promoting the success of Mr. Sowerby as a candidate for the county she was standing by her own tenant. It also became known, in the course of the battle, that Miss Dunstable had herself at last succumbed, and that she was about to marry Dr. Thorne of Greshamsbury, or the "Greshamsbury apothecary," as the adverse party now delighted to call him. "He has been little better than a quack all his life," said Dr. ”

“ What has been good security for him will be good security for another;" and then Mrs. Harold Smith made herself more agreeable than ever to Miss Dunstable.
When Miss Dunstable was nearly worn out, but was still endeavoring to buoy herself up by a hope of the still expected great arrival—for she knew that the hero would show himself only at a very late hour if it were to be her good fortune that he showed himself at all—Mr. Sowerby walked up the stairs. ”

“ DUNSTABLE, JOHN (d. 1453) , musician and mathematician, was a native of Dunstable in Bedfordshire. His name is spelt by early writers ‘Dunstaple.’ Nothing is known of his life, but he was famous all over Europe as one of the earliest musicians who laid the foundations of the great schools of the sixteenth century. One of the earliest notices of him occurs in the ‘Proportionale’ of Johannes Tinctoris (1445–1511) . The writer, speaking from hearsay, says that the origin of music took place in England, where Dunstable was the chief musician. ”

“ But one cannot laugh with all the world against one.'
'I am not against you, Miss Dunstable.'
'Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for price! perjure myself, destroy myself—and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr. Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this? Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man's energy, the treasure of your heart? And you, so young! ”

“ The men of the later generation are far inferior to their Netherlandish contemporaries, while Dunstable was equal, if not superior, to Dufay and Binchois. This singular fact can only be accounted for by other than purely musical reasons. The death of Dunstable took place in 1453, at the very time when the Wars of the Roses broke out, and for years England was thrown into a state of hopeless confusion and disorganization, which must have stopped the progress of all the arts of civilization. ”

“ And the woman who thus so spoke was very different from that Miss Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Omnium fêted, and Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she could find among such one special companion on whom her heart might rest, who would help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world! But where was she to find such a friend?—she with her keen wit, her untold money, and loud laughing voice. Everything about her was calculated to attract those whom she could not value, and to scare from her the sort of friend to whom she would fain have linked her lot. ”

“ One half the world knows how the other half lives.
About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack at Thornton's Ferry, and tasted of the waters of Naticook Brook on the same side, where French and his companions, whose grave we saw in Dunstable, were ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble village of Litchfield, with its steepleless meeting-house, stood on the opposite or east bank, near where a dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the shore. ”

“ You have been my tutor," he added, with a peculiar smile; "and the pupil will not prove rebellious."
"Well said, my boy!" cried Dunstable. "Have you your dice-box handy?"
"My rascal of a tiger has lost it," answered Egerton. "But I know that the baronet seldom goes abroad without the usual implements."
"Ah! you dog!" chuckled Sir Rupert, as if mightily amused by this sally. "You are, however, quite right; and I do not think that any fashionable man about town should forget to provide himself with the means of the most aristocratic of all innocent recreations. ”

“ Egerton immediately offered his arm to his aunt, well knowing that if he did not take care of her no one else would: Mr. Tedworth Jones escorted his intended; Lord Dunstable took one of the young ladies under his protection; and the three others of course fell respectively to the lot of Colonel Cholmondeley, Sir Rupert Harborough, and Mr. Chichester. ”

“ But here the public showed an unaccountable disinclination to deal. It was gratifying to have acquaintances coming up and saying admiringly: "You are an ass, you know," as if they were paying the highest of compliments—as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton felt that the whole attitude of the public towards the new enterprise was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its prospectus as a literary jeu d'esprit. ”

“ Langridge. The feud between them had begun on Dunstable's arrival in the form two terms before, and had continued ever since. The balance of points lay with the master. The staff has ways of scoring which the school has not. This story really begins with the last day but one of the summer term. It happened that Dunstable's people were going to make their annual migration to Scotland on that day, and the Headmaster, approached on the subject both by letter and in person, saw no reason why—the examinations being over—Dunstable should not leave Locksley a day before the end of term. ”

“ How much do you require?"
"Four hundred pounds will just make up the amount I have to pay," said Dunstable; and having received that sum in Bank-notes, he took his departure, humming an opera air.
It is not necessary to detail the particulars of the young nobleman's visit to Ravensworth Hall: suffice it to say that he was completely successful in his proposed arrangements with the gardener, and that he communicated this result to his friend Egerton at Long's Hotel in the evening. Chichester, Cholmondeley, and Harborough were let into the secret; and they insisted upon joining the party. ”

“ The question of a new meeting-house was now agitating the inhabitants of Dunstable. Their former building was in another Province, where different laws prevailed respecting the qualifications and settlement of ministers. It was clearly evident that another structure must be built, and the customary dispute of small communities arose in regard to its site. Some persons favored one locality, and others another; some wanted the centre of territory, and others the centre of population. ”

“ Those same scandalous and ill-natured people exceed all bounds of propriety; for they actually assert that Sir Rupert Harborough has for years been known as a profligate adventurer——"
"By God, Mr. Egerton!" cried the baronet: "I——"
"And they affirm in quite as positive a manner," continued the young man, heedless of this interruption, "that you, Dunstable, and you too, Cholmondeley, are nothing more nor less than ruined gamesters." ”

“ The first step towards reclaiming the road and the ruins from anarchy and violence was the clearing of these woods. This was followed by the building of a house—probably a hunting-lodge—for the King, and the founding of the once powerful and stately Priory of Dunstable, portions of whose noble church remain to day as the parish church of the town. ”

“ Gresham thought of a former day when he had once been at Gatherum Castle. He had been poor enough then, and the duke had not treated him in the most courteous manner in the world. How hard it is for a rich man not to lean upon his riches! harder, indeed, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
All Barsetshire knew—at any rate, all West Barsetshire—that Miss Dunstable had been brought down in those parts in order that Mr. Sowerby might marry her. ”

“ The young nobleman spoke with a feeling and an evident sincerity that touched both our hero and Egerton; but Cholmondeley turned away in disgust from his penitent friend, and Harborough exchanged a contemptuous look with Chichester.
"Lord Dunstable," said Markham, in an impressive tone, "your conduct has been bad—very bad; but much of its blackness is already wiped away by this manifestation of regret and contrition. Do not allow that spark of good feeling to be extinguished—or destruction must await you. ”

“ Duncombe’s on the left, are places that make a man desirous of possessing £10,000 per annum.
Dunstable is rattled through next, and then comes Fenny Stratford, Stony Stratford, Easton Neston, and then Lord Pomfret’s noble domain. Towcester comes next upon the list, and Weedon Barracks, where a view of the rail road presents itself.
Then the coach enters Dunchurch, changing horses at the Dun Inn; where being pretty well roasted in the hot sun, some of the passengers endeavoured to obtain a draught of something to moisten their parched throats ”

“ The “street” has only of late years been officially dropped by the General Post Office, in response to the request of the inhabitants, to whom, and to strangers having business here, the old address caused considerable trouble and misunderstanding; those not familiar with the place not unnaturally thinking “Markyate Street, Dunstable,” to be a thoroughfare in that town, instead of, as a matter of fact, 41⁄2 miles distant. ”

“ Tedworth Jones and Miss Clarissa Jemima Bustard, he should have the honour of receiving an invitation on the happy occasion.
Even Egerton himself was rendered more comfortable by the distinguished politeness with which his aunt was treated; but he was not the less delighted when she rose and took her departure.
As soon as the door was shut behind her, Dunstable hastened to observe, "There goes an estimable woman—I can vouch for it! What would England's commerce be without such industrious, plodding, intelligent persons as your aunt? ”

“ Sowerby, now again at his ease. "But can I do any thing? shall I go and fetch any one? Oh, Tom Towers! I fear I can't help you. But here he is at the foot of the stairs!" And then Mr. Sowerby stood back with his sister to make way for the great representative man of the age.
"Angels and ministers of grace, assist me!" said Miss Dunstable. "How on earth am I to behave myself? Mr. Sowerby, do you think that I ought to kneel down? My dear, will he have a reporter at his back in the royal livery?" And then Miss Dunstable advanced two or three steps—not into the doorway, as she had done for Mr. ”