Chapter Twelve.The Oakby Ball.“She went to the ball, and she danced with the handsome prince.”That week of gaiety, so unusual to Oakby, was fraught with great results. The dim and beautiful dream of the future which had grown with Cheriton Lester’s growth became a definite purpose. Ruth Seyton was his first love, almost his first fancy. Whatever other sentiments and flirtations had come across him, had been as light as air; he had loved Ruth ever since he had taught her to ride, and since she had tried to teach him to dance. He had always found her ready to talk to him of the thoughts and aspirations which found no sympathy at home, and still more ready to tease him about them. She was part of the dear and sacred home affections, the long accustomed life which held so powerful a sway over him, and she was besides a wonderful and beautiful thing, peculiar to himself, and belonging to none of the others.He had not seen her since the season when he had met her in town with Virginia; he did not know very much really about her, but she was kind and gracious to him, and he walked about in a dream of bliss which made every commonplace duty and gaiety delightful. Ruth was mixed up in it all, it was all in her honour; and though Cheriton’s memory at this time was not to be depended on, he had spirits for any amount of the hard work of preparation, and a laugh for every disagreeable.He regarded his tongue as tied till after he had taken his degree in the summer—he hoped with credit; after which his prospects at the bar with Judge Cheriton’s interest, were somewhat less obscure than those of most young men. He had inherited some small fortune from his mother, and though he could not consider himself a brilliant match for Miss Seyton, he would then feel himself justified in putting his claims forward. Many spoke with admiration of the entire absence of jealousy which made him take the second place so easily; but Cheriton hardly deserved the praise, he had no room in his mind to think of himself at all.His cousin Rupert was a more recent acquaintance of Ruth’s, though matters had gone much further between them. His attentions had not been encouraged by her grandmother, as, though his fortune was far superior to anything Cheriton possessed, his affairs were supposed to be considerably involved, and this was so far true, that it would have been very inconvenient to him to lay them open to inquiry at present. He hoped, however, in the course of a few months to be able so to arrange them, as to make it possible to apply to Ruth Seyton’s guardians for their consent.Rupert was a lively, pleasant fellow, with a considerable regard for his Oakby cousins, though he had never considered it necessary to regulate his life by the Oakby standard, or concerned himself greatly with its main principles. His life in the army had of course been quite apart from Cheriton’s at school and college, and the latter did not care to realise how far the elder cousin, once a model in his eyes, had grown away from him. Nor did he regard him as a rival.Ruth gave smiles and dances to himself, and he little guessed that while he did his duty joyously in other directions, looking forward to his next word with her, she had given his cousin a distinct promise, and engaged to keep it secret till such time as he chose to ask for her openly. Perhaps Rupert could not be expected to scruple at such a step, when he knew how entirely Ruth had managed her affairs for herself in all her intercourse with him.And as for Ruth she rejoiced in the chance of making a sacrifice to prove her love; and whether the sacrifice was of other people’s feelings, her own ease and comfort, or of any little trifling scruples of conscience, ought, she considered, to be equally unimportant. “Love must still be lord of all,” but the love that loves honour more was in her eyes weak and unworthy. Faults in the hero only proved the strength of his manhood; faults in herself were all condoned by her love.Ruth was clever enough to put into words the inspiring principles of a great many books that she read, and a great deal of talk that she heard, and vehement enough to act up to it. Rupert, who had no desire to be at all unlike other people, had little notion of the glamour of enthusiasm with which Ruth plighted him her troth at Oakby.The Lesters had expended much abuse on the morning of their ball on the blackness of the oak-panels, which no amount of wax candles would overcome but what was lost in gaiety was gained in picturesqueness, and the Oakby ball, with its handsome hosts and its distinguished company, was long quoted as the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Perhaps it owed no little of its charm to the one in whose honour it was given. Alvar in society was neither silent nor languid; he was a splendid dancer, and played the host with a foreign grace that enchanted the ladies, old and young. At the dinner-party the night before he had been silent and stately, evidently fearing to commit himself before the country gentlemen and county grandees, who were such strange specimens of humanity to him; but with their daughters it was different, and those were happy maidens who danced with the stranger. He was of course duly instructed whom he was thus to honour, but he found time to exercise his own choice, and Virginia was conscious that he paid her marked attention.Why waste more words? She had found her fate, and softened with home troubles, attracted by the superiority of the Lesters, and dazzled with the charm of a manner and appearance never seen before, yet suiting all her girlish dreams of heroic perfection, she was giving her heart away to the last man whose previous training or present character was likely really to accord with her own.Though she had never been an acknowledged beauty, she could often look beautiful, and the subtle excitement of half-conscious triumph was not wanting to complete the charm.“There never had been such a pleasant ball,” said Cheriton the next morning, as he was forced to hurry away to Oxford without a chance of discussing its delights.“It is indeed possible to dance in England,” said Alvar.“I think we made it out very well,” said Rupert, with a smile under his moustaches.“There are balls—and balls,” said Ruth to her cousin. “You don’t always have black oak, or black Spanish eyes, eh, Queenie? or some other things?”And Virginia blushed and said nothing.Nettie, after all, had rejoiced in the partners of which her white frock and plaited hair had not defrauded her (she never should forgive her hair for coming down in Rupert’s very sight in the last waltz). Jack had not been so miserable as he expected; and Alvar found that it was possible to enjoy life in England, and that the position awaiting him there was not to be despised, even in the face of parting from his beloved Cheriton.Rupert by no means considered Alvar as an amusing companion, nor Oakby in the dull season an amusing place, but it suited him now to spend his leave there, and suited him also to be intimate at Elderthwaite. Consequently he encouraged Alvar to make excuses for going there, and certainly in finding some interests to supply Cheriton’s place. He cultivated Dick Seyton, who was of an age to appreciate a grown-up man’s attentions, so that altogether there was more intercourse between the two houses than had taken place since the days of Roland.Ruth was paying a long visit at Elderthwaite. One of her aunts—her grandmother’s youngest and favourite child—was in bad health, and Lady Charlton was glad to spend some time with her and to be free from the necessity of chaperoning her granddaughter. The arrangement suited Ruth exactly. She could make Elderthwaite her head-quarters, pay several visits among friends in the north, and find opportunities of meeting Rupert, whose regiment was stationed at York, and who was consequently within reach of many north-country gaieties.For the present no gaieties were needed by either to enliven the wintry woods of Elderthwaite; they were as fairy land to the little brown maiden who, among their bare stems and withered ferns found, as she believed, the very flower of life, and had no memory for the bewitching smiles, the soft, half-sentimental laughter, the many dances, and the preference hardly disguised which were the food of Cheriton’s memory, and gave him an object which lightened every uncongenial task. These little wiles had effectually prevented every one from guessing the real state of the case. Rupert’s difficulty was that he never could be sure how far Alvar was unsuspicious. There was a certain blankness in his way of receiving remarks, calculated to prevent suspicion, which might proceed from entire innocence, or from secret observation which he did not choose to betray. But he was always willing to accompany Rupert to Elderthwaite, and in Cheriton’s absence found Virginia by far his most congenial companion.The amount of confidence already existing between Ruth and her cousin really rendered the latter unsuspicious, and ready to further intercourse with Rupert, believing Ruth to be in a doubtful state of mind, half encouraging, and half avoiding his attentions. And Ruth was very cautious; she never allowed Rupert to monopolise her during his ostensible visits, and if any one at Elderthwaite guessed at their stolen interviews, it was certainly not Virginia.The scheme of the Sunday class had answered pretty well. Virginia knew how to teach, and though her pupils were rough, the novelty of her grace and gentleness made some impression on them.The parson did not interfere with her, and it never occurred to her that he was within hearing, till one Sunday, as she tried to tell them the simplest facts in language sufficiently plain to be understood, and sufficiently striking to be interesting, and felt, by the noise on the back benches, that she was entirely failing to do so, a head appeared at the dining-room door, and a stentorian voice exclaimed,—“Bless my soul, you young ruffians; is this the way to behave to Miss Seyton? If any lad can’t show respect to a lady in my house, out he’ll go, and, by George he won’t come in again.”This unwonted address produced an astonished silence; but it frightened the teacher so much more than her class, that her only resource was to call on the more advanced ones with great solemnity “to say their hymn to the vicar.”Parson Seyton straightened himself up, and listened in silence to—“There is a green hill far away,” stumbled through in the broadest Westmoreland; and when it was over, remarked,—“Very pretty verses. Lads and lasses, keep your feet still and attend to Miss Seyton, and—mind—I can hear ye,” a piece of information with which Virginia at any rate could well have dispensed.But she was getting used to her rough uncle, and was grateful to Cheriton for the advice that he had given her, and so she told Alvar one day when they were all walking down to the vicarage, with the ostensible purpose of showing Nettie some enormous mastiff puppies, the pride of the vicar’s heart.In the absence of her own brothers Nettie found Dick Seyton an amusing companion, “soft” though he might be; she began by daring him to jump over ditches as well as she could, and ended by finding that he roused in her unsuspected powers of repartee. Nettie found the Miss Ellesmeres dull companions; they were a great deal cleverer than she was, and expected her to read story books, and care about the people in them. Rupert and Dick found that her ignorance made her none the less amusing, and took care to tell her so.So everything combined to make intercourse easy; and this was not the first walk that the six young people had taken together.“Your brother,” said Virginia to Alvar, “was very kind to me. I should never have got on so well but for his advice.”“My brother is always kind,” said Alvar, his eyes lighting up. “I cannot tell you how well I love him.”“I am sure you do,” said Virginia heartily, though unable to help smiling.“But in what was it that he helped you?” asked Alvar.Virginia explained how he had persuaded her uncle to agree to her wishes about teaching the children.“To teach the ignorant?” said Alvar. “Ah, that is the work of a saint!”“Oh, no! I like doing it. It is nothing but what many girls can do much better.”“Ah, this country is strange. In Spain the young ladies remain at home. They go nowhere but to mass. If my sister were in Spain she would not jump over the ditches, nor run after the dogs,” glancing at Nettie, who was inciting Rolla to run for a piece of stick.“Do you think us very shocking?” said Virginia demurely.“Nay,” said Alvar. “These are your customs, and I am happy since they permit me the honour of walking by your side, and talking with you. You, like my brother, are kind to the stranger.”“But you must leave off calling yourself a stranger. You tooareEnglish; can you not feel yourself so?”“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Alvar. “See, if I stay here, I have money and honour. My father speaks to me of a ‘position in the county.’ That is to be a great man as I understand it. Nor are there parties here to throw down one person, and then another. In Spain, though not less noble, we are poor, and all things change quickly, and I shall not stay always here in Oakby. I am going to London, and I see that I can make for myself a life that pleases me.”“Yet you love Spain best?”“I love Spain,” said Alvar, “the sunshine and the country; but I am no Spaniard. No, I stayed away from England because it was my belief that my father did not love me. I was wrong. I have a right to be here; it was my right to come here long ago, and my right I will not give up!”He drew himself up with an indescribable air ofhauteurfor a moment, then with sudden softness,—“And who was it that saw that right and longed for me to come, who opened his heart to me? It was Cheriton, my brother. He has explained much to me, and says if I learn to love England it will make him happy. And I will love it for his sake.”“I hope so; soon you will not find it so dull.”“Nay, it is not now so dull. Have I not the happiness of your sympathy? Could I be dull to-day?” said Alvar, with his winning grace.Virginia blushed, and her great eyes drooped, unready with a reply.“And there is your cousin,” she said, shyly; “he is a companion; don’t you think him like Cheriton?”“Yes, a little; but Cheriton is like an angel, though he will not have me say so; but Rupert, he has the devil in his face. But I like him—he is a nice fellow—very nice,” said Alvar, the bit of English idiom sounding oddly in his foreign tones.Virginia laughed, spite of herself.“Ah, I make you laugh,” said Alvar. “I wish I had attended more to my English lessons; but there was a time when it was not my intention to come to England, and I did not study. I am not like Cheriton and Jack, I do not love to study. It is very pleasant to smoke, and to do nothing; but I see it is not the custom here, and it is better, I think, to be like my brother.”“Some people are rather fond of smoking and doing nothing even in England.”“It is a different sort of doing nothing. I hear my father or Cheriton rebuke Bob for doing nothing; but then he is out of doors with some little animal in a bag—his ferret, I think it is called—to catch the rats; or he runs and gets hot; that is what he calls doing nothing.”There was a sort ofbonhommiein Alvar’s way of describing himself and his surroundings, and a charm in his manner which, added to a pair of eyes full of fire and expression, and a great deal of implied admiration for herself, produced no small effect on Virginia.She saw that he was affectionate and ready to recognise the good in his brothers, and she knew that he had been deprived of his due share of home affection. She did not doubt that he was willing himself to do and to be all that he admired; and then—he was not boyish and blunt like his brothers, nor so full of mischief as Cheriton, nor with that indescribable want of something that made her wonder at Rupert’s charm in the eyes of Ruth; she had never seen any one like him.She glanced up in his face with eyes that all unconsciously expressed her thoughts, and as he turned to her with a smile they came up to the vicarage garden, at the gate of which stood Parson Seyton talking to Mr Lester, who was on horseback beside him.“Ha, squire,” said the parson, “Monsieur Alvar is a dangerous fellow among the lasses. Black eyes and foreign ways have made havoc with hearts all the world over.”Mr Lester looked towards the approaching group. Virginia’s delicate face, shy and eager under drooping feathers, and the tall, slender Alvar, wearing his now scrupulously English morning suit with a grace that gave it a picturesque appropriateness, were in front. Ruth and Rupert lingered a little, and Nettie came running up from behind, with Rolla after her, and Dick Seyton lazily calling on her to stop. Mr Lester looked at his son, and a new idea struck him.“I wish Alvar to make acquaintances,” he said. “Nothing but English society can accustom him to his new life.”Here Alvar saw them, and raised his hat as he came up.“Have you had a pleasant walk, Alvar?” said his father, less stiffly than usual.“It has been altogether pleasant, sir,” said Alvar, “since Miss Seyton has been my companion.”Virginia blushed, and went up to her uncle with a hasty question about the puppies that Nettie was to see, and no one exchanged a remark on the subject; but that night as they were smoking, Rupert rallied Alvar a little on the impression he was making.Alvar did not misunderstand him; he looked at him straight.“I had thought,” he said, “that it was here the custom to talk with freedom to young ladies. I see it is your practice, my cousin.”“Yes, yes. Besides, I’m an old friend, you see. Of course it is the custom; but consequences sometimes result from it—pity if they didn’t.”“But it may be,” said Alvar, “that as my father’s son, it is expected that I should marry if it should be agreeable to my father?”“Possibly,” said Rupert, unable to resist trying experiments. “Fellows with expectations have to be careful, you know.”“I thank you,” said Alvar. “But I do not mistake a lady who has been kind to me, or I should be a coxcomb. Good-night, my cousin.”“Good-night,” said Rupert, feeling somewhat baffled, and a little angry; for, after all, he had been perfectly right.
“She went to the ball, and she danced with the handsome prince.”
“She went to the ball, and she danced with the handsome prince.”
That week of gaiety, so unusual to Oakby, was fraught with great results. The dim and beautiful dream of the future which had grown with Cheriton Lester’s growth became a definite purpose. Ruth Seyton was his first love, almost his first fancy. Whatever other sentiments and flirtations had come across him, had been as light as air; he had loved Ruth ever since he had taught her to ride, and since she had tried to teach him to dance. He had always found her ready to talk to him of the thoughts and aspirations which found no sympathy at home, and still more ready to tease him about them. She was part of the dear and sacred home affections, the long accustomed life which held so powerful a sway over him, and she was besides a wonderful and beautiful thing, peculiar to himself, and belonging to none of the others.
He had not seen her since the season when he had met her in town with Virginia; he did not know very much really about her, but she was kind and gracious to him, and he walked about in a dream of bliss which made every commonplace duty and gaiety delightful. Ruth was mixed up in it all, it was all in her honour; and though Cheriton’s memory at this time was not to be depended on, he had spirits for any amount of the hard work of preparation, and a laugh for every disagreeable.
He regarded his tongue as tied till after he had taken his degree in the summer—he hoped with credit; after which his prospects at the bar with Judge Cheriton’s interest, were somewhat less obscure than those of most young men. He had inherited some small fortune from his mother, and though he could not consider himself a brilliant match for Miss Seyton, he would then feel himself justified in putting his claims forward. Many spoke with admiration of the entire absence of jealousy which made him take the second place so easily; but Cheriton hardly deserved the praise, he had no room in his mind to think of himself at all.
His cousin Rupert was a more recent acquaintance of Ruth’s, though matters had gone much further between them. His attentions had not been encouraged by her grandmother, as, though his fortune was far superior to anything Cheriton possessed, his affairs were supposed to be considerably involved, and this was so far true, that it would have been very inconvenient to him to lay them open to inquiry at present. He hoped, however, in the course of a few months to be able so to arrange them, as to make it possible to apply to Ruth Seyton’s guardians for their consent.
Rupert was a lively, pleasant fellow, with a considerable regard for his Oakby cousins, though he had never considered it necessary to regulate his life by the Oakby standard, or concerned himself greatly with its main principles. His life in the army had of course been quite apart from Cheriton’s at school and college, and the latter did not care to realise how far the elder cousin, once a model in his eyes, had grown away from him. Nor did he regard him as a rival.
Ruth gave smiles and dances to himself, and he little guessed that while he did his duty joyously in other directions, looking forward to his next word with her, she had given his cousin a distinct promise, and engaged to keep it secret till such time as he chose to ask for her openly. Perhaps Rupert could not be expected to scruple at such a step, when he knew how entirely Ruth had managed her affairs for herself in all her intercourse with him.
And as for Ruth she rejoiced in the chance of making a sacrifice to prove her love; and whether the sacrifice was of other people’s feelings, her own ease and comfort, or of any little trifling scruples of conscience, ought, she considered, to be equally unimportant. “Love must still be lord of all,” but the love that loves honour more was in her eyes weak and unworthy. Faults in the hero only proved the strength of his manhood; faults in herself were all condoned by her love.
Ruth was clever enough to put into words the inspiring principles of a great many books that she read, and a great deal of talk that she heard, and vehement enough to act up to it. Rupert, who had no desire to be at all unlike other people, had little notion of the glamour of enthusiasm with which Ruth plighted him her troth at Oakby.
The Lesters had expended much abuse on the morning of their ball on the blackness of the oak-panels, which no amount of wax candles would overcome but what was lost in gaiety was gained in picturesqueness, and the Oakby ball, with its handsome hosts and its distinguished company, was long quoted as the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Perhaps it owed no little of its charm to the one in whose honour it was given. Alvar in society was neither silent nor languid; he was a splendid dancer, and played the host with a foreign grace that enchanted the ladies, old and young. At the dinner-party the night before he had been silent and stately, evidently fearing to commit himself before the country gentlemen and county grandees, who were such strange specimens of humanity to him; but with their daughters it was different, and those were happy maidens who danced with the stranger. He was of course duly instructed whom he was thus to honour, but he found time to exercise his own choice, and Virginia was conscious that he paid her marked attention.
Why waste more words? She had found her fate, and softened with home troubles, attracted by the superiority of the Lesters, and dazzled with the charm of a manner and appearance never seen before, yet suiting all her girlish dreams of heroic perfection, she was giving her heart away to the last man whose previous training or present character was likely really to accord with her own.
Though she had never been an acknowledged beauty, she could often look beautiful, and the subtle excitement of half-conscious triumph was not wanting to complete the charm.
“There never had been such a pleasant ball,” said Cheriton the next morning, as he was forced to hurry away to Oxford without a chance of discussing its delights.
“It is indeed possible to dance in England,” said Alvar.
“I think we made it out very well,” said Rupert, with a smile under his moustaches.
“There are balls—and balls,” said Ruth to her cousin. “You don’t always have black oak, or black Spanish eyes, eh, Queenie? or some other things?”
And Virginia blushed and said nothing.
Nettie, after all, had rejoiced in the partners of which her white frock and plaited hair had not defrauded her (she never should forgive her hair for coming down in Rupert’s very sight in the last waltz). Jack had not been so miserable as he expected; and Alvar found that it was possible to enjoy life in England, and that the position awaiting him there was not to be despised, even in the face of parting from his beloved Cheriton.
Rupert by no means considered Alvar as an amusing companion, nor Oakby in the dull season an amusing place, but it suited him now to spend his leave there, and suited him also to be intimate at Elderthwaite. Consequently he encouraged Alvar to make excuses for going there, and certainly in finding some interests to supply Cheriton’s place. He cultivated Dick Seyton, who was of an age to appreciate a grown-up man’s attentions, so that altogether there was more intercourse between the two houses than had taken place since the days of Roland.
Ruth was paying a long visit at Elderthwaite. One of her aunts—her grandmother’s youngest and favourite child—was in bad health, and Lady Charlton was glad to spend some time with her and to be free from the necessity of chaperoning her granddaughter. The arrangement suited Ruth exactly. She could make Elderthwaite her head-quarters, pay several visits among friends in the north, and find opportunities of meeting Rupert, whose regiment was stationed at York, and who was consequently within reach of many north-country gaieties.
For the present no gaieties were needed by either to enliven the wintry woods of Elderthwaite; they were as fairy land to the little brown maiden who, among their bare stems and withered ferns found, as she believed, the very flower of life, and had no memory for the bewitching smiles, the soft, half-sentimental laughter, the many dances, and the preference hardly disguised which were the food of Cheriton’s memory, and gave him an object which lightened every uncongenial task. These little wiles had effectually prevented every one from guessing the real state of the case. Rupert’s difficulty was that he never could be sure how far Alvar was unsuspicious. There was a certain blankness in his way of receiving remarks, calculated to prevent suspicion, which might proceed from entire innocence, or from secret observation which he did not choose to betray. But he was always willing to accompany Rupert to Elderthwaite, and in Cheriton’s absence found Virginia by far his most congenial companion.
The amount of confidence already existing between Ruth and her cousin really rendered the latter unsuspicious, and ready to further intercourse with Rupert, believing Ruth to be in a doubtful state of mind, half encouraging, and half avoiding his attentions. And Ruth was very cautious; she never allowed Rupert to monopolise her during his ostensible visits, and if any one at Elderthwaite guessed at their stolen interviews, it was certainly not Virginia.
The scheme of the Sunday class had answered pretty well. Virginia knew how to teach, and though her pupils were rough, the novelty of her grace and gentleness made some impression on them.
The parson did not interfere with her, and it never occurred to her that he was within hearing, till one Sunday, as she tried to tell them the simplest facts in language sufficiently plain to be understood, and sufficiently striking to be interesting, and felt, by the noise on the back benches, that she was entirely failing to do so, a head appeared at the dining-room door, and a stentorian voice exclaimed,—
“Bless my soul, you young ruffians; is this the way to behave to Miss Seyton? If any lad can’t show respect to a lady in my house, out he’ll go, and, by George he won’t come in again.”
This unwonted address produced an astonished silence; but it frightened the teacher so much more than her class, that her only resource was to call on the more advanced ones with great solemnity “to say their hymn to the vicar.”
Parson Seyton straightened himself up, and listened in silence to—
“There is a green hill far away,” stumbled through in the broadest Westmoreland; and when it was over, remarked,—
“Very pretty verses. Lads and lasses, keep your feet still and attend to Miss Seyton, and—mind—I can hear ye,” a piece of information with which Virginia at any rate could well have dispensed.
But she was getting used to her rough uncle, and was grateful to Cheriton for the advice that he had given her, and so she told Alvar one day when they were all walking down to the vicarage, with the ostensible purpose of showing Nettie some enormous mastiff puppies, the pride of the vicar’s heart.
In the absence of her own brothers Nettie found Dick Seyton an amusing companion, “soft” though he might be; she began by daring him to jump over ditches as well as she could, and ended by finding that he roused in her unsuspected powers of repartee. Nettie found the Miss Ellesmeres dull companions; they were a great deal cleverer than she was, and expected her to read story books, and care about the people in them. Rupert and Dick found that her ignorance made her none the less amusing, and took care to tell her so.
So everything combined to make intercourse easy; and this was not the first walk that the six young people had taken together.
“Your brother,” said Virginia to Alvar, “was very kind to me. I should never have got on so well but for his advice.”
“My brother is always kind,” said Alvar, his eyes lighting up. “I cannot tell you how well I love him.”
“I am sure you do,” said Virginia heartily, though unable to help smiling.
“But in what was it that he helped you?” asked Alvar.
Virginia explained how he had persuaded her uncle to agree to her wishes about teaching the children.
“To teach the ignorant?” said Alvar. “Ah, that is the work of a saint!”
“Oh, no! I like doing it. It is nothing but what many girls can do much better.”
“Ah, this country is strange. In Spain the young ladies remain at home. They go nowhere but to mass. If my sister were in Spain she would not jump over the ditches, nor run after the dogs,” glancing at Nettie, who was inciting Rolla to run for a piece of stick.
“Do you think us very shocking?” said Virginia demurely.
“Nay,” said Alvar. “These are your customs, and I am happy since they permit me the honour of walking by your side, and talking with you. You, like my brother, are kind to the stranger.”
“But you must leave off calling yourself a stranger. You tooareEnglish; can you not feel yourself so?”
“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Alvar. “See, if I stay here, I have money and honour. My father speaks to me of a ‘position in the county.’ That is to be a great man as I understand it. Nor are there parties here to throw down one person, and then another. In Spain, though not less noble, we are poor, and all things change quickly, and I shall not stay always here in Oakby. I am going to London, and I see that I can make for myself a life that pleases me.”
“Yet you love Spain best?”
“I love Spain,” said Alvar, “the sunshine and the country; but I am no Spaniard. No, I stayed away from England because it was my belief that my father did not love me. I was wrong. I have a right to be here; it was my right to come here long ago, and my right I will not give up!”
He drew himself up with an indescribable air ofhauteurfor a moment, then with sudden softness,—
“And who was it that saw that right and longed for me to come, who opened his heart to me? It was Cheriton, my brother. He has explained much to me, and says if I learn to love England it will make him happy. And I will love it for his sake.”
“I hope so; soon you will not find it so dull.”
“Nay, it is not now so dull. Have I not the happiness of your sympathy? Could I be dull to-day?” said Alvar, with his winning grace.
Virginia blushed, and her great eyes drooped, unready with a reply.
“And there is your cousin,” she said, shyly; “he is a companion; don’t you think him like Cheriton?”
“Yes, a little; but Cheriton is like an angel, though he will not have me say so; but Rupert, he has the devil in his face. But I like him—he is a nice fellow—very nice,” said Alvar, the bit of English idiom sounding oddly in his foreign tones.
Virginia laughed, spite of herself.
“Ah, I make you laugh,” said Alvar. “I wish I had attended more to my English lessons; but there was a time when it was not my intention to come to England, and I did not study. I am not like Cheriton and Jack, I do not love to study. It is very pleasant to smoke, and to do nothing; but I see it is not the custom here, and it is better, I think, to be like my brother.”
“Some people are rather fond of smoking and doing nothing even in England.”
“It is a different sort of doing nothing. I hear my father or Cheriton rebuke Bob for doing nothing; but then he is out of doors with some little animal in a bag—his ferret, I think it is called—to catch the rats; or he runs and gets hot; that is what he calls doing nothing.”
There was a sort ofbonhommiein Alvar’s way of describing himself and his surroundings, and a charm in his manner which, added to a pair of eyes full of fire and expression, and a great deal of implied admiration for herself, produced no small effect on Virginia.
She saw that he was affectionate and ready to recognise the good in his brothers, and she knew that he had been deprived of his due share of home affection. She did not doubt that he was willing himself to do and to be all that he admired; and then—he was not boyish and blunt like his brothers, nor so full of mischief as Cheriton, nor with that indescribable want of something that made her wonder at Rupert’s charm in the eyes of Ruth; she had never seen any one like him.
She glanced up in his face with eyes that all unconsciously expressed her thoughts, and as he turned to her with a smile they came up to the vicarage garden, at the gate of which stood Parson Seyton talking to Mr Lester, who was on horseback beside him.
“Ha, squire,” said the parson, “Monsieur Alvar is a dangerous fellow among the lasses. Black eyes and foreign ways have made havoc with hearts all the world over.”
Mr Lester looked towards the approaching group. Virginia’s delicate face, shy and eager under drooping feathers, and the tall, slender Alvar, wearing his now scrupulously English morning suit with a grace that gave it a picturesque appropriateness, were in front. Ruth and Rupert lingered a little, and Nettie came running up from behind, with Rolla after her, and Dick Seyton lazily calling on her to stop. Mr Lester looked at his son, and a new idea struck him.
“I wish Alvar to make acquaintances,” he said. “Nothing but English society can accustom him to his new life.”
Here Alvar saw them, and raised his hat as he came up.
“Have you had a pleasant walk, Alvar?” said his father, less stiffly than usual.
“It has been altogether pleasant, sir,” said Alvar, “since Miss Seyton has been my companion.”
Virginia blushed, and went up to her uncle with a hasty question about the puppies that Nettie was to see, and no one exchanged a remark on the subject; but that night as they were smoking, Rupert rallied Alvar a little on the impression he was making.
Alvar did not misunderstand him; he looked at him straight.
“I had thought,” he said, “that it was here the custom to talk with freedom to young ladies. I see it is your practice, my cousin.”
“Yes, yes. Besides, I’m an old friend, you see. Of course it is the custom; but consequences sometimes result from it—pity if they didn’t.”
“But it may be,” said Alvar, “that as my father’s son, it is expected that I should marry if it should be agreeable to my father?”
“Possibly,” said Rupert, unable to resist trying experiments. “Fellows with expectations have to be careful, you know.”
“I thank you,” said Alvar. “But I do not mistake a lady who has been kind to me, or I should be a coxcomb. Good-night, my cousin.”
“Good-night,” said Rupert, feeling somewhat baffled, and a little angry; for, after all, he had been perfectly right.
Chapter Thirteen.Two Sides of a Question.“Love me and leave me not.”The hill that lay between Oakby and Elderthwaite was partly covered by a thick plantation of larches, through which passed a narrow footpath. In the summer, when the short turf under the trees was dry and sweet, when the blue sky peeped through the wide-spreading branches, and rare green ferns and blue harebells nestled in the low stone walls, the larch wood was a favourite resort; but in the winter, when the moorland winds were bleak and cold rather than fresh and free, when the fir-trees moaned and howled dismally instead of responding like harps to the breezes, before, in that northern region, one “rosy plumelet tufted the larch,” or one lamb was seen out on the fell side, it was a dreary spot enough.All the more undisturbed had it been, and therefore all the more suitable for the secret meetings of Rupert and Ruth. Matters had not always run smooth between them. An unacknowledged tie needs faith and self-restraint if it is to sit easily; and at their very last parting Rupert expressed enough jealousy at the remembrance of Cheriton’s attentions to make Ruth furious at the implied doubt of her faith, forgetting thatshewas miserable if he played with Nettie, or talked for ten minutes to Virginia.Rupert insisted that “Cherry meant mischief.” Ruth vehemently asserted “that it wasn’t in him to mean;” and after something that came perilously near a quarrel, she broke into a flood of tears, and they parted with renewed protestations of inviolable constancy, and amid hopes of chance meetings in the course of the spring.Ruth fled away through the copses to Elderthwaite feeling as if life would be utterly blank and dark till their next meeting; and Rupert strolled homeward, thinking much of Ruth, and not best pleased to meet his uncle coming back from one of his farms, and evidently inclined to be sociable; for Rupert, as compared with Alvar, had an agreeable familiarity.Mr Lester, though he had held as little personal intercourse with Alvar as the circumstances of the case permitted, had hardly ceased, since he came home, to think of his future, and that with a conscientious effort at justice and kindness. He still felt a personal distaste to Alvar, which ruffled his temper, and often made him less than civil to him; but none the less did he wish his eldest son’s career to be creditable and fortunate, nor desire to see him adapt himself to the pursuits likely to be required of him. He made a few attempts to instruct him and interest him in the county politics, the requirements of the estate, and the necessities of the parish; but Alvar, it must be confessed, was very provoking. He was always courteous, but he never exerted his mind to take in anything that was strange to him, and would say, with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile, “Ah, these are the things that I do not understand;” or, as he picked up the current expressions, “It is not in my line to interest myself for the people,” with anaïvetéthat refused to recognise any duty one way or the other. In short, he was quite as impervious as his brothers to anything “out of his line,” and, like Mr Lester himself, thought that what he did not understand was immaterial.Mr Lester was in despair; but when he saw Alvar and Virginia together, and noticed their mutual attraction, it occurred to him that an English wife would be the one remedy for Alvar’s shortcomings; and he also reflected, with some pride in his knowledge of foreign customs, that Alvar would probably require parental sanction before presuming to pay his addresses to any lady.As for Virginia, though she was of Seyton blood, all her training had been away from her family; her fortune was not inconsiderable, and she herself, enthusiastic, refined, and high-minded, was exactly the type of woman in which Mr Lester believed. Besides, since he could not make Alvar other than the heir of Oakby, his one wish was that his grandchildren at least should be English. He was very reluctant that Alvar should return to Spain, and at the same time hardly wished him to be a permanent inmate of Oakby. It had been arranged that Alvar should pay a short visit to the Cheritons before Easter, when he would see what London was like, go to see Cherry at Oxford, and having thus enlarged his experiences, would return to Oakby for Easter and the early part of the summer.After Cheriton had taken his degree, he too would enjoy a taste of the season, and Alvar might go to town again if he liked; while in August Alvar must be introduced to the grouse, and might also see the fine scenery of the Scotch and English lakes. These were plans in which Alvar could find nothing to complain of; but they would be greatly improved in his father’s eyes if they could end in a suitable and happy marriage; for he saw that Alvar could not remain idle at Oakby for long, and had the firmest conviction that he would get into mischief, if he set up for himself in London. His mind, when he met Rupert, was full of the subject, and with a view to obtaining a side light or two if possible, he asked him casually what he thought of his cousin Alvar, and how they got on together.“I don’t think he is half a bad fellow,” said Rupert, “a little stiff and foreign, of course, but a very good sort in my opinion.”This was well meant on Rupert’s part, for he did not personallylikeAlvar, but he had tact enough to see the necessity of harmony, and family feeling enough to wish to produce it.“Of course,” said Mr Lester, “you can understand that I have been anxious about his coming here among the boys.”“I don’t think he’ll do them any harm, sir.”“No; and except Cherry, they don’t take to him very warmly; but I hope we may see him settle into an Englishman in time. A good wife now—”“Is a very good thing, uncle,” said Rupert, with a conscious laugh.“Yes, Rupert, in a year or two’s time you’ll be looking out for yourself.”Rupert liked his uncle, as he had always called him, and, for a moment, was half-inclined to confide in him; but he knew that Mr Lester’s good offices would be so exceedingly energetic, and would involve such thorough openness on his own part, that though his marriage to Ruth might possibly be expedited by them, he could not face the reproofs by which they would be accompanied.So he laughed, and shook his head, saying, “Excellent advice for Alvar, sir; and see, there he comes.”Alvar approached his father with a bow; but was about to join Rupert, as he turned off by another path, when Mr Lester detained him.“I should like a word or two with you,” he said, as they walked on. “I think—it appears to me that you are beginning to feel more at home with us than at first.”“Yes, sir, I know better how to suit myself to you.”“I am uncommonly glad of it. But what I meant to say was—you don’t find yourself so dull as at first?” said Mr Lester rather awkwardly.“It is a little dull,” said Alvar, “but I can well endure it.”This was not precisely the answer which Mr Lester had expected; but after a pause, he went on,—“It would be hard to blame you because you do not take kindly to interests and occupations that are so new to you. I do not feel, Alvar, that I have the same right to dictate your way of life as I should have, if I had earlier assumed the charge of you; but I would remind you that since one day you must be master here, it will be for your own happiness to—to accustom yourself to the life required of you.”“My brother ought to be the squire,” said Alvar.“That is impossible. It is not a matter of choice; but it would cause me great unhappiness if I thought my successor would either be constantly absent or—or indifferent to the welfare of the people about him.”“You would wish me,” said Alvar, “to live in England, and to marry an English lady.”“Why, yes—yes. Not of course that I would wish to put any restraint on your inclinations, or even to suggest any line of conduct; but it had occurred to me that—in short, that you find Elderthwaite attractive, and I wished to tell you that such a choice would have my entire approval.”Mr Lester’s florid face coloured with a sense of embarrassment; he was never at his ease with his son, whereas Alvar only looked considerate, and said thoughtfully,—“Miss Seyton is a charming young lady.”“Very much so, indeed,” said the squire; “and a very good girl.”Alvar walked on in silence. Probably the idea was not strange to him; but his father could not trace the workings of his mind, and a sense of intense impatience possessed him with this strange creature whose interests he was bound to consult, but whose nature he could not fathom. Suddenly Alvar stopped.“My father, I have chosen. This is my country, and Miss Seyton—if she will—shall be my wife.”“Well, Alvar, I’m very glad to hear it,” said his father, “very glad indeed, and I’m sure Cheriton will be delighted. Don’t, however, act in a hurry; I’ll leave you to think it over. I see James Wilson, and I want to speak to him.”And Mr Lester called to one of the keepers who was coming across the park, while Alvar went on towards the house.
“Love me and leave me not.”
“Love me and leave me not.”
The hill that lay between Oakby and Elderthwaite was partly covered by a thick plantation of larches, through which passed a narrow footpath. In the summer, when the short turf under the trees was dry and sweet, when the blue sky peeped through the wide-spreading branches, and rare green ferns and blue harebells nestled in the low stone walls, the larch wood was a favourite resort; but in the winter, when the moorland winds were bleak and cold rather than fresh and free, when the fir-trees moaned and howled dismally instead of responding like harps to the breezes, before, in that northern region, one “rosy plumelet tufted the larch,” or one lamb was seen out on the fell side, it was a dreary spot enough.
All the more undisturbed had it been, and therefore all the more suitable for the secret meetings of Rupert and Ruth. Matters had not always run smooth between them. An unacknowledged tie needs faith and self-restraint if it is to sit easily; and at their very last parting Rupert expressed enough jealousy at the remembrance of Cheriton’s attentions to make Ruth furious at the implied doubt of her faith, forgetting thatshewas miserable if he played with Nettie, or talked for ten minutes to Virginia.
Rupert insisted that “Cherry meant mischief.” Ruth vehemently asserted “that it wasn’t in him to mean;” and after something that came perilously near a quarrel, she broke into a flood of tears, and they parted with renewed protestations of inviolable constancy, and amid hopes of chance meetings in the course of the spring.
Ruth fled away through the copses to Elderthwaite feeling as if life would be utterly blank and dark till their next meeting; and Rupert strolled homeward, thinking much of Ruth, and not best pleased to meet his uncle coming back from one of his farms, and evidently inclined to be sociable; for Rupert, as compared with Alvar, had an agreeable familiarity.
Mr Lester, though he had held as little personal intercourse with Alvar as the circumstances of the case permitted, had hardly ceased, since he came home, to think of his future, and that with a conscientious effort at justice and kindness. He still felt a personal distaste to Alvar, which ruffled his temper, and often made him less than civil to him; but none the less did he wish his eldest son’s career to be creditable and fortunate, nor desire to see him adapt himself to the pursuits likely to be required of him. He made a few attempts to instruct him and interest him in the county politics, the requirements of the estate, and the necessities of the parish; but Alvar, it must be confessed, was very provoking. He was always courteous, but he never exerted his mind to take in anything that was strange to him, and would say, with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile, “Ah, these are the things that I do not understand;” or, as he picked up the current expressions, “It is not in my line to interest myself for the people,” with anaïvetéthat refused to recognise any duty one way or the other. In short, he was quite as impervious as his brothers to anything “out of his line,” and, like Mr Lester himself, thought that what he did not understand was immaterial.
Mr Lester was in despair; but when he saw Alvar and Virginia together, and noticed their mutual attraction, it occurred to him that an English wife would be the one remedy for Alvar’s shortcomings; and he also reflected, with some pride in his knowledge of foreign customs, that Alvar would probably require parental sanction before presuming to pay his addresses to any lady.
As for Virginia, though she was of Seyton blood, all her training had been away from her family; her fortune was not inconsiderable, and she herself, enthusiastic, refined, and high-minded, was exactly the type of woman in which Mr Lester believed. Besides, since he could not make Alvar other than the heir of Oakby, his one wish was that his grandchildren at least should be English. He was very reluctant that Alvar should return to Spain, and at the same time hardly wished him to be a permanent inmate of Oakby. It had been arranged that Alvar should pay a short visit to the Cheritons before Easter, when he would see what London was like, go to see Cherry at Oxford, and having thus enlarged his experiences, would return to Oakby for Easter and the early part of the summer.
After Cheriton had taken his degree, he too would enjoy a taste of the season, and Alvar might go to town again if he liked; while in August Alvar must be introduced to the grouse, and might also see the fine scenery of the Scotch and English lakes. These were plans in which Alvar could find nothing to complain of; but they would be greatly improved in his father’s eyes if they could end in a suitable and happy marriage; for he saw that Alvar could not remain idle at Oakby for long, and had the firmest conviction that he would get into mischief, if he set up for himself in London. His mind, when he met Rupert, was full of the subject, and with a view to obtaining a side light or two if possible, he asked him casually what he thought of his cousin Alvar, and how they got on together.
“I don’t think he is half a bad fellow,” said Rupert, “a little stiff and foreign, of course, but a very good sort in my opinion.”
This was well meant on Rupert’s part, for he did not personallylikeAlvar, but he had tact enough to see the necessity of harmony, and family feeling enough to wish to produce it.
“Of course,” said Mr Lester, “you can understand that I have been anxious about his coming here among the boys.”
“I don’t think he’ll do them any harm, sir.”
“No; and except Cherry, they don’t take to him very warmly; but I hope we may see him settle into an Englishman in time. A good wife now—”
“Is a very good thing, uncle,” said Rupert, with a conscious laugh.
“Yes, Rupert, in a year or two’s time you’ll be looking out for yourself.”
Rupert liked his uncle, as he had always called him, and, for a moment, was half-inclined to confide in him; but he knew that Mr Lester’s good offices would be so exceedingly energetic, and would involve such thorough openness on his own part, that though his marriage to Ruth might possibly be expedited by them, he could not face the reproofs by which they would be accompanied.
So he laughed, and shook his head, saying, “Excellent advice for Alvar, sir; and see, there he comes.”
Alvar approached his father with a bow; but was about to join Rupert, as he turned off by another path, when Mr Lester detained him.
“I should like a word or two with you,” he said, as they walked on. “I think—it appears to me that you are beginning to feel more at home with us than at first.”
“Yes, sir, I know better how to suit myself to you.”
“I am uncommonly glad of it. But what I meant to say was—you don’t find yourself so dull as at first?” said Mr Lester rather awkwardly.
“It is a little dull,” said Alvar, “but I can well endure it.”
This was not precisely the answer which Mr Lester had expected; but after a pause, he went on,—
“It would be hard to blame you because you do not take kindly to interests and occupations that are so new to you. I do not feel, Alvar, that I have the same right to dictate your way of life as I should have, if I had earlier assumed the charge of you; but I would remind you that since one day you must be master here, it will be for your own happiness to—to accustom yourself to the life required of you.”
“My brother ought to be the squire,” said Alvar.
“That is impossible. It is not a matter of choice; but it would cause me great unhappiness if I thought my successor would either be constantly absent or—or indifferent to the welfare of the people about him.”
“You would wish me,” said Alvar, “to live in England, and to marry an English lady.”
“Why, yes—yes. Not of course that I would wish to put any restraint on your inclinations, or even to suggest any line of conduct; but it had occurred to me that—in short, that you find Elderthwaite attractive, and I wished to tell you that such a choice would have my entire approval.”
Mr Lester’s florid face coloured with a sense of embarrassment; he was never at his ease with his son, whereas Alvar only looked considerate, and said thoughtfully,—“Miss Seyton is a charming young lady.”
“Very much so, indeed,” said the squire; “and a very good girl.”
Alvar walked on in silence. Probably the idea was not strange to him; but his father could not trace the workings of his mind, and a sense of intense impatience possessed him with this strange creature whose interests he was bound to consult, but whose nature he could not fathom. Suddenly Alvar stopped.
“My father, I have chosen. This is my country, and Miss Seyton—if she will—shall be my wife.”
“Well, Alvar, I’m very glad to hear it,” said his father, “very glad indeed, and I’m sure Cheriton will be delighted. Don’t, however, act in a hurry; I’ll leave you to think it over. I see James Wilson, and I want to speak to him.”
And Mr Lester called to one of the keepers who was coming across the park, while Alvar went on towards the house.
Chapter Fourteen.Virginia’s choice.“Things that I know not of, belike to thee are dear.”There was the shadow of such a thought on the blushing face of Virginia Seyton as she sat in a great chair in the old drawing-room at Elderthwaite and listened to the wooing of Alvar Lester. She held a bouquet on her lap, and he stood, bending forward, and addressing: her in language that was checked by no embarrassment, and with a simplicity of purpose which had sought no disguise. Alvar had reflected on his father’s hints over many a cigarette, he had thought to himself that he was resolved to be an Englishman, that Miss Seyton was charming and attractive beyond all other ladies, it was well that he should marry, and he would be faithful, courteous, and kind.Assuredly he was prepared to love her, she made England pleasant to him, and he had no strong ties to the turbulent life of Spain, from which his peculiar circumstances and his natural indolence had alike held him aloof. He had no thought of giving less than was Virginia’s due, it was a simple matter to him enough, and he had come away that morning, with no false shame as to his intentions, with a flower in his coat and flowers in his hand, and had demanded Miss Seyton’s permission to see her niece, heedless how far both households might guess at the matter in hand.With his dark, manly grace, and tender accents, he was the picture of a lover, as she, with her creamy skin rose-tinted, and her fervent eyes cast down, seemed the very type of a maiden wooed, and by a favoured suitor. But if the hearts of this graceful and well-matched pair beat to the same time, the notes for each had very different force, and the experiences and the requirements of each had been, and must be, utterly unlike those of the other.Alvar recognised this, in its obvious outer fact, when he began,—“I have a great disadvantage,” he said, “since I do not know how best to please an English lady when I pay her my addresses. Yet I am bold, for I come to-day to ask you to forget I am a stranger, and to help me to become truly an Englishman. Of all ladies, you are to me the most beautiful, the most beloved. Can you grant my wish—my prayer? Can I have the happiness to please you—Virginia?”Virginia’s heart beat so fast that she could not speak, the large eyes flashed up for a moment into his, then dropped as the tears dimmed them.“Ah! do I make you shed tears?” cried Alvar. “How shall I tell you how I will be your slave?Mi doña, mi reyna!—nay, I must find English words to say you are the queen of my life!” and he knelt on one knee beside her, and took her hand.Perhaps it was all the more enchanting that it was unlike a modern English girl’s ideal of a likely lover.“Please don’t do that,” said Virginia, controlling her emotion with a great effort. “I want to say something, if you would sit down.”With ready tact Alvar rose at once, and drew a chair near her.“It is my privilege to listen,” he said.“It is that I am afraid I must be very different from the girls whom you have known. My ways, my thoughts, you might not like them; you might wish me to be different from myself—or I might not understand you,” she added very timidly.“In asking a lady to be my wife, I think of no other woman,” said Alvar. “In my eyes you are all that is charming.”“This would not have occurred to me,” said Virginia; “but since I came home I have not been very happy, because it is so hard to accommodate oneself to people who think of everything differently from oneself. If that was so with us—with you—”“My thoughts shall be your thoughts,” said Alvar. “You shall teach me to be what you wish—what my brother is. I know well,” and he rose to his feet again and stood before her, “I am not clever, I do not know how to do those things the English admire; my face, my speech, is strange. Is that my fault; is it my fault that my father has hated and shunned his son? Miss Seyton, I can but offer you myself. If I displease you—”Alvar paused. Virginia had been pleading against herself, and before his powerful attraction her misgivings melted away. She rose too, and came a step towards him.“I will trust you,” she said; and Alvar, more moved than he could himself have anticipated, poured forth a torrent of loving words and vows to be, and to do all she could wish. But he did not know, he did not understand, what she asked of him, or what he promised.“But we must be ourtrueselves to each other,” she said afterwards, as they stood together, when he had won her to tell him that his foreign face and tones were not displeasing to her—not at all. No, she did not wish that he was more like his brothers.“I will be always your true lover and your slave,” said Alvar, kissing the hand that she had laid on his. “And now must I not present myself to your father? He will not, I hope, think the foreigner too presuming.”“There is papa,” said Virginia, glancing out of the window; “he is walking on the terrace. Look, you can go out by this glass door.” And leaving Alvar to encounter this far from formidable interview, she ran away up to the little oak room in search of her cousin.There were tears in Ruth’s great velvety eyes as she turned to meet her, but she was smiling, too, and even while she held out her arms to Virginia, she thought—“What, jealous of the smooth course ofherlittle childish love! I would not give up one atom of what I feel for all the easy consent and prosperity in the world.” But none the less was she interested and sympathetic as she listened to the outpourings of Virginia’s first excitement, and to the recital of feelings that were like, and yet unlike, her own.“You see, Ruthie, I could not help caring about him, he was so gentle and kind, and he never seemed angry with the others for misunderstanding him. But then I thought that our lives had been so wide apart that hemightbe quite different from what he seemed; and one has always heard, too, that foreigners pay compliments, and don’t mean what they say.”“I should have despised you, Queenie, if you had thrown over the man you love because he was half a foreigner.”“Oh, no, not forthat. But I didn’t—I hadn’t begun to—like him very muchthen, you see, Ruth. And if he had not been good—”“And how have you satisfied yourself that he is what you call ‘good’ now?” said Ruth curiously.“Of course,” replied Virginia, “it is not as if he had been brought up in England. He cannot have the same notions. But then he cannot talk enough of Cherry’s goodness, and seemed so grateful because he was kind to him. Cherryisa very good, kind sort of fellow of course; but don’t you think there is something beautiful in the humility that makes so much of a little kindness, and recognises good qualities so ungrudgingly?”Ruth laughed a little. Perhaps she thought Alvar’s “bonny black eyes” had something to do with the force of these arguments.“Since you love each other,” she said, “that is a proof that you are intended for each other. What does it matter ‘what he is like,’ as you say?”“But ‘what he is like’ made all the difference in the first instance, I suppose?” said Virginia.“Perhaps,” said Ruth, with a little shrug. “But now you have once chosen, Virginia,nothingought to make you change, not if he were ever so wicked—not if he were a murderer!”“Ruth,” exclaimed Virginia, “how can you be so absurd! A murderer!”“A murderer, a gambler, or a—well, I’m not quite sure about a thief,” said Ruth, cooling down a little; and then the girls both laughed, and Virginia sank into a dreamy silence. She did not even yet know the story of her mother’s married life, or she could not have laughed at the thought of a gambler for her husband; but she did know enough of her family history to give definiteness to the natural desire of a high-principled girl to find perfection in her lover. Virginia’s nature inclined to hero-worship; reverence was a necessary part to her of a happy love. She had thought often to herself that she would never marry a man of whose good principles she was not satisfied. And since Alvar’s offer had not entirely taken her by surprise—his gallantry having been tenderer than he knew—she had considered the point with an effort at impartiality, and had justified the conclusion to which her heart pointed by Alvar’s admiration for the brother, whom, in Virginia’s opinion, he idealised considerably. Of course, if she had chosen wisely, it was instinct, and not knowledge, that led her aright. She knew absolutely nothing of Alvar; and just as from insufficient grounds she now gave him credit for many virtues, it might be that, when the differing natures jarred, a little failure, a little defectiveness, might make her judgment cruelly hard, at whatever cost to her own happiness.It might come to a struggle between the girl’s ideal and the woman’s love—and in such a struggle compromises and forgivenesses and new knowledge on either side would lead to final comprehension and peace. But it comes sometimes to a fight between heart and soul, between the higher self and the love that seems stronger than self. To this extremity Alvar Lester was not likely to drive any woman; but impatience and inexperience sometimes mistake the one contest for the other. Virginia would have something to bear, he much to learn, before mutual criticism ceased, as they became indeed part of each other’s existence, before Virginia’s flutter of startled joy subsided into unquestioning content.“You talk, Ruthie,” exclaimed Virginia, after a little more confidential chatter, “but you cannot make up your own mind. You cannot decide whether you will have poor Captain Lester.”“Hark! hark!” cried Ruth, “they are calling you! Every one is not so lucky as you.” And as Virginia obeyed her father’s summons, and she was left alone, she pulled out the locket that contained Rupert’s portrait, kissed it passionately, and exclaimed, half-aloud,—“Not make up my mind! DoIdoubt and hesitate? What do I care ‘what you are like,’ my darling? I love you with all my heart and soul! I love you—I love you! What would life be without love?”The congratulations of Virginia’s family on the occasion were characteristic. Her father had but a nominal consent to give. Virginia was of age, and besides, the trustees of her fortune could not of course take any exception to such an engagement; but he rejoiced exceedingly, as at the first good and happy thing that had happened in his family for long enough.“And so you have got a husband, though you are a Seyton?” said her aunt. “Well, Roland’s a long way off, and I don’t suppose Dick and Harry can create scandal enough to put an end to it before next October.”“But you’ll give me a kiss, auntie?” said Virginia; and in the warmth of her embrace she tried to show the sympathy for that long past wrong which she never would have dared to utter.Miss Seyton was silent for a moment, and patted her soft hair; then suddenly, with an expression indescribablymalinand elfish, she said, “And all those poor little neglected children, whose souls you were going to save, what will become of them when you are married? Do you think your uncle will teach them himself?”“And I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, Aunt Julia,” interposed Ruth briskly, “now Virginia has shown him the way.” Parson Seyton’s remark was somewhat to the same effect, though made in a more genial spirit.“Well, my lass, so you’ve caught the Frenchman? Why didn’t you set your cap at Cherry? He’s worth a dozen of him.”“Cherry didn’t set his cap at me, uncle,” said Virginia, laughing.“And all the little lads and lasses? Ha, ha, I must set about learning the catechism myself. What’s to be done, my queen?—what’s to be done? Send away Monsieur Alvar; we can’t do without you.” Virginia had not forgotten the children; but as her marriage was not to take place till the late autumn, there was no immediate question of her leaving them.Mr Lester thought that it would be far better that Alvar should see something of England before his marriage, and Alvar acquiesced readily in his father’s wish; and he very shortly left Oakby for London, after receiving congratulations from his brothers, in which astonishment was the prevailing ingredient, though Cheriton softened his surprise with many expressions of satisfaction.He was glad that Alvar had chosen an English wife; still more glad that he had no disposition to choose Ruth.
“Things that I know not of, belike to thee are dear.”
“Things that I know not of, belike to thee are dear.”
There was the shadow of such a thought on the blushing face of Virginia Seyton as she sat in a great chair in the old drawing-room at Elderthwaite and listened to the wooing of Alvar Lester. She held a bouquet on her lap, and he stood, bending forward, and addressing: her in language that was checked by no embarrassment, and with a simplicity of purpose which had sought no disguise. Alvar had reflected on his father’s hints over many a cigarette, he had thought to himself that he was resolved to be an Englishman, that Miss Seyton was charming and attractive beyond all other ladies, it was well that he should marry, and he would be faithful, courteous, and kind.
Assuredly he was prepared to love her, she made England pleasant to him, and he had no strong ties to the turbulent life of Spain, from which his peculiar circumstances and his natural indolence had alike held him aloof. He had no thought of giving less than was Virginia’s due, it was a simple matter to him enough, and he had come away that morning, with no false shame as to his intentions, with a flower in his coat and flowers in his hand, and had demanded Miss Seyton’s permission to see her niece, heedless how far both households might guess at the matter in hand.
With his dark, manly grace, and tender accents, he was the picture of a lover, as she, with her creamy skin rose-tinted, and her fervent eyes cast down, seemed the very type of a maiden wooed, and by a favoured suitor. But if the hearts of this graceful and well-matched pair beat to the same time, the notes for each had very different force, and the experiences and the requirements of each had been, and must be, utterly unlike those of the other.
Alvar recognised this, in its obvious outer fact, when he began,—
“I have a great disadvantage,” he said, “since I do not know how best to please an English lady when I pay her my addresses. Yet I am bold, for I come to-day to ask you to forget I am a stranger, and to help me to become truly an Englishman. Of all ladies, you are to me the most beautiful, the most beloved. Can you grant my wish—my prayer? Can I have the happiness to please you—Virginia?”
Virginia’s heart beat so fast that she could not speak, the large eyes flashed up for a moment into his, then dropped as the tears dimmed them.
“Ah! do I make you shed tears?” cried Alvar. “How shall I tell you how I will be your slave?Mi doña, mi reyna!—nay, I must find English words to say you are the queen of my life!” and he knelt on one knee beside her, and took her hand.
Perhaps it was all the more enchanting that it was unlike a modern English girl’s ideal of a likely lover.
“Please don’t do that,” said Virginia, controlling her emotion with a great effort. “I want to say something, if you would sit down.”
With ready tact Alvar rose at once, and drew a chair near her.
“It is my privilege to listen,” he said.
“It is that I am afraid I must be very different from the girls whom you have known. My ways, my thoughts, you might not like them; you might wish me to be different from myself—or I might not understand you,” she added very timidly.
“In asking a lady to be my wife, I think of no other woman,” said Alvar. “In my eyes you are all that is charming.”
“This would not have occurred to me,” said Virginia; “but since I came home I have not been very happy, because it is so hard to accommodate oneself to people who think of everything differently from oneself. If that was so with us—with you—”
“My thoughts shall be your thoughts,” said Alvar. “You shall teach me to be what you wish—what my brother is. I know well,” and he rose to his feet again and stood before her, “I am not clever, I do not know how to do those things the English admire; my face, my speech, is strange. Is that my fault; is it my fault that my father has hated and shunned his son? Miss Seyton, I can but offer you myself. If I displease you—”
Alvar paused. Virginia had been pleading against herself, and before his powerful attraction her misgivings melted away. She rose too, and came a step towards him.
“I will trust you,” she said; and Alvar, more moved than he could himself have anticipated, poured forth a torrent of loving words and vows to be, and to do all she could wish. But he did not know, he did not understand, what she asked of him, or what he promised.
“But we must be ourtrueselves to each other,” she said afterwards, as they stood together, when he had won her to tell him that his foreign face and tones were not displeasing to her—not at all. No, she did not wish that he was more like his brothers.
“I will be always your true lover and your slave,” said Alvar, kissing the hand that she had laid on his. “And now must I not present myself to your father? He will not, I hope, think the foreigner too presuming.”
“There is papa,” said Virginia, glancing out of the window; “he is walking on the terrace. Look, you can go out by this glass door.” And leaving Alvar to encounter this far from formidable interview, she ran away up to the little oak room in search of her cousin.
There were tears in Ruth’s great velvety eyes as she turned to meet her, but she was smiling, too, and even while she held out her arms to Virginia, she thought—“What, jealous of the smooth course ofherlittle childish love! I would not give up one atom of what I feel for all the easy consent and prosperity in the world.” But none the less was she interested and sympathetic as she listened to the outpourings of Virginia’s first excitement, and to the recital of feelings that were like, and yet unlike, her own.
“You see, Ruthie, I could not help caring about him, he was so gentle and kind, and he never seemed angry with the others for misunderstanding him. But then I thought that our lives had been so wide apart that hemightbe quite different from what he seemed; and one has always heard, too, that foreigners pay compliments, and don’t mean what they say.”
“I should have despised you, Queenie, if you had thrown over the man you love because he was half a foreigner.”
“Oh, no, not forthat. But I didn’t—I hadn’t begun to—like him very muchthen, you see, Ruth. And if he had not been good—”
“And how have you satisfied yourself that he is what you call ‘good’ now?” said Ruth curiously.
“Of course,” replied Virginia, “it is not as if he had been brought up in England. He cannot have the same notions. But then he cannot talk enough of Cherry’s goodness, and seemed so grateful because he was kind to him. Cherryisa very good, kind sort of fellow of course; but don’t you think there is something beautiful in the humility that makes so much of a little kindness, and recognises good qualities so ungrudgingly?”
Ruth laughed a little. Perhaps she thought Alvar’s “bonny black eyes” had something to do with the force of these arguments.
“Since you love each other,” she said, “that is a proof that you are intended for each other. What does it matter ‘what he is like,’ as you say?”
“But ‘what he is like’ made all the difference in the first instance, I suppose?” said Virginia.
“Perhaps,” said Ruth, with a little shrug. “But now you have once chosen, Virginia,nothingought to make you change, not if he were ever so wicked—not if he were a murderer!”
“Ruth,” exclaimed Virginia, “how can you be so absurd! A murderer!”
“A murderer, a gambler, or a—well, I’m not quite sure about a thief,” said Ruth, cooling down a little; and then the girls both laughed, and Virginia sank into a dreamy silence. She did not even yet know the story of her mother’s married life, or she could not have laughed at the thought of a gambler for her husband; but she did know enough of her family history to give definiteness to the natural desire of a high-principled girl to find perfection in her lover. Virginia’s nature inclined to hero-worship; reverence was a necessary part to her of a happy love. She had thought often to herself that she would never marry a man of whose good principles she was not satisfied. And since Alvar’s offer had not entirely taken her by surprise—his gallantry having been tenderer than he knew—she had considered the point with an effort at impartiality, and had justified the conclusion to which her heart pointed by Alvar’s admiration for the brother, whom, in Virginia’s opinion, he idealised considerably. Of course, if she had chosen wisely, it was instinct, and not knowledge, that led her aright. She knew absolutely nothing of Alvar; and just as from insufficient grounds she now gave him credit for many virtues, it might be that, when the differing natures jarred, a little failure, a little defectiveness, might make her judgment cruelly hard, at whatever cost to her own happiness.
It might come to a struggle between the girl’s ideal and the woman’s love—and in such a struggle compromises and forgivenesses and new knowledge on either side would lead to final comprehension and peace. But it comes sometimes to a fight between heart and soul, between the higher self and the love that seems stronger than self. To this extremity Alvar Lester was not likely to drive any woman; but impatience and inexperience sometimes mistake the one contest for the other. Virginia would have something to bear, he much to learn, before mutual criticism ceased, as they became indeed part of each other’s existence, before Virginia’s flutter of startled joy subsided into unquestioning content.
“You talk, Ruthie,” exclaimed Virginia, after a little more confidential chatter, “but you cannot make up your own mind. You cannot decide whether you will have poor Captain Lester.”
“Hark! hark!” cried Ruth, “they are calling you! Every one is not so lucky as you.” And as Virginia obeyed her father’s summons, and she was left alone, she pulled out the locket that contained Rupert’s portrait, kissed it passionately, and exclaimed, half-aloud,—
“Not make up my mind! DoIdoubt and hesitate? What do I care ‘what you are like,’ my darling? I love you with all my heart and soul! I love you—I love you! What would life be without love?”
The congratulations of Virginia’s family on the occasion were characteristic. Her father had but a nominal consent to give. Virginia was of age, and besides, the trustees of her fortune could not of course take any exception to such an engagement; but he rejoiced exceedingly, as at the first good and happy thing that had happened in his family for long enough.
“And so you have got a husband, though you are a Seyton?” said her aunt. “Well, Roland’s a long way off, and I don’t suppose Dick and Harry can create scandal enough to put an end to it before next October.”
“But you’ll give me a kiss, auntie?” said Virginia; and in the warmth of her embrace she tried to show the sympathy for that long past wrong which she never would have dared to utter.
Miss Seyton was silent for a moment, and patted her soft hair; then suddenly, with an expression indescribablymalinand elfish, she said, “And all those poor little neglected children, whose souls you were going to save, what will become of them when you are married? Do you think your uncle will teach them himself?”
“And I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, Aunt Julia,” interposed Ruth briskly, “now Virginia has shown him the way.” Parson Seyton’s remark was somewhat to the same effect, though made in a more genial spirit.
“Well, my lass, so you’ve caught the Frenchman? Why didn’t you set your cap at Cherry? He’s worth a dozen of him.”
“Cherry didn’t set his cap at me, uncle,” said Virginia, laughing.
“And all the little lads and lasses? Ha, ha, I must set about learning the catechism myself. What’s to be done, my queen?—what’s to be done? Send away Monsieur Alvar; we can’t do without you.” Virginia had not forgotten the children; but as her marriage was not to take place till the late autumn, there was no immediate question of her leaving them.
Mr Lester thought that it would be far better that Alvar should see something of England before his marriage, and Alvar acquiesced readily in his father’s wish; and he very shortly left Oakby for London, after receiving congratulations from his brothers, in which astonishment was the prevailing ingredient, though Cheriton softened his surprise with many expressions of satisfaction.
He was glad that Alvar had chosen an English wife; still more glad that he had no disposition to choose Ruth.
Chapter Fifteen.A Bit of the Blarney.“With him there rode his sone, a younge squire,A lovyere and a lusty bachelere.”In that year Easter fell very late, and it was nearly the end of April before the Lesters gathered together once more at Oakby. Alvar and Virginia had hardly had time to grow accustomed to their new relations to each other before the former went to London, where he perhaps adapted himself more easily to his surroundings than he would have done in the presence of his father and brothers. He found that all English people did not regard life precisely from the Oakby point of view; that Lady Cheriton greatly regretted that Nettie was such a tomboy, and almost feared that Bob would never be fit for polite society.He was introduced to people who thought his music enchanting and his foreign manners charming; he was allowed to be on cousinly terms with the Miss Cheritons, and was an object of exciting interest to every young lady who met him. Under these circumstances he was very well content, and despatched graceful and tender letters to Virginia, which often had an amusingnaïvetéin their details of his impressions of English life. He also sent her various offerings, ornaments, sweetmeats, and flowers, always prettily chosen, and commended to her notice by some pleasant bit of tender flattery. His engagement was of course generally known, but his soft words and softer looks, though too universal to be delusive, were doubtless none the less attractive from the fact that his foreign breeding offered a constant cause and excuse for them.Virginia, on her side, it need hardly be said, wrote him many letters, full of thoughts, feelings, and hopes, and sometimes requests for his opinion on any subject that interested her. Alvar’s replies were so charming, so flattering, and so tender, that she hardly found out that they were in no senseanswersto her own.He made a very great point of going to Oxford, and was full of excitement at the prospect of meeting “my brother” again. Cheriton, however, had lost some time by his idle Christmas vacation, and was forced to work very hard to make up for it. He had always too many interests in life to make it easy to concentrate all his efforts in one direction; but now the ambition and love of distinction that were a constant stimulus to the idle Lester nature in himself and Jack were fairly alight.Cheriton cared for success in itself; he was too sweet-natural toresentfailure, and conscientious enough to know that his love of triumph might be a snare to him, but each object in its turn seemed to him intensely desirable. He could not feel, and even prevailing fashion made it difficult for him to affect, indifference. Besides, he wanted to appear in the light of a young man likely to succeed in life before Ruth’s relations. So he wrote that he hoped Alvar would not think it unkind if he asked him to pay him only a short visit; and Alvar was half consoled by hearing the Judge speak in high terms of his nephew as a brilliant young man and likely to do them all credit.“Ah,” said Alvar, “I fear I should have done my name no credit if I, like my brother, had gone to Oxford.”“You are an eldest son, my dear fellow, and I don’t doubt that you would have kept up the family traditions,” said Judge Cheriton drily.So Alvar went for one day to Oxford, where he showed an overpowering delight at seeing Cherry again, and a reprehensible preference for pouring out to him his various experiences, to inspecting chapels and halls. He greeted Buffer respectfully, and taxed Cheriton with overworking himself. He looked pale, he said, and thin—not as he did at Oakby.Cherry only laughed at him, but insisted emphatically that he should say no word at home of any such impression, as perhaps he should stay up and read during the Easter vacation.“But what shall I do,” said Alvar, “when the boys, who do not like me, come home, and you are not there?”“You—why, you will be all day at Elderthwaite.”“I shall never forget my brother who was kind to me first,” said Alvar earnestly.Alvar finished up his London career by going to see the Boat Race, where he was exceedingly particular to appear in Oxford colours, and felt as if the triumph of the dark blue was Cherry’s own.Easter week brought unwontedly soft airs and blue skies to Oakby, and, after all, Cheriton himself for a few days’ holiday. Every one rejoiced at the sight of him, though Jack promptly told him that he was very foolish to waste time by coming, and when Cherry owned that he wanted a little rest, grudgingly admitted that he might be wise to take it; then seized upon him, first to discuss with him the work he himself was doing with a view to a scholarship for which he meant to compete at Midsummer; then demanded an immediate settlement, from Cherry’s point of view, of several important and obscure philosophical questions; and finally confided to him a long history of Bob’s scrapes and deficiencies during the past term.He was so low in the school—he got in with such a bad lot—he ought to leave school and go to a tutor’s. He, Jack, had told him he was going straight to the bad, but had done no good. Would Cherry give him a good blowing-up? Then Mr Lester, having had a letter from the headmaster, wanted to consult him on this very point, as well as to tell him all the story of Alvar’s courtship and his own diplomatic behaviour. Also to regret that Alvar would not take the trouble to understand the details of English law as applied to local matters; could not see why Mr Lester, as a magistrate, was prevented from transporting a poacher for life, or why, as an owner of land, he thought it necessary to be so particular as to the character of his tenants. Then an attempt at peacemaking with and for Bob, which resulted in little more than a persistent growl “that Jack was an awful duffer.”Altogether the family did not seem in a restful state. Mrs Lester was very indignant because Mrs Ellesmere had observed that Nettie was growing too tall a girl to go about so much by herself. “Who was there that did not know Nettie in all the country-side?” While Bob and Nettie themselves, who usually hung together in everything, especially when either was in trouble, had an inexplicable quarrel, which made neither of them pleasant company for their elders.Then Mr Lester’s affairs came forward again in the shape of a dispute with one of his chief farmers about a certain gate which had been planted in the wrong place, involving a question of boundaries and rights of way, and engaging Mr Lester in a difference of opinion with a new neighbour, “a Radical fellow from Sheffield,” whom Mr Lester would neither have injured nor been intimate with for the world. Alvar had the misfortune to observe that “he thought it was not worth while to be so distressed about the post of a gate,” an indifference even more provoking than the misplaced ardour of Jack, who had taken upon himself to examine the matter, and believing his father mistaken, thought it necessary to say so, which might have been passed over as a piece of youthful folly, if there had not been a frightful suspicion that Mr Ellesmere was of the same opinion.Cherry had heard enough of the “post of a gate” by the time he had read half-a-dozen letters of polite indignation, and listened to an hour’s explanation from his father of the grounds of the dispute, after which he was requested to form an independent opinion on the subject.“Well, father,” he said, looking askance at a plan of the scene of action which Mr Lester had drawn for his benefit, “it seems that the removal of this gate has mixed up Ashrigg, Oakby, and Elderthwaite to such a degree that we sha’n’t know who is living in which. Of course Alvarcan’tsee any boundaries between Oakby and Elderthwaite just now. How should he? His imagination leaps over them at once. But Idon’tthink it will ‘precipitate the downfall of the landed gentry,’ Jack, whichever way it is settled.” And having thus succeeded in making his father and Alvar laugh, and Jack remark “that he never could see the use of making a joke of everything,” he asked Mr Lester to come and show him the fatal spot. Couldn’t they ride over and look at it?“And I have never seen you yet,” said Alvar reproachfully, when Mr Lester had acceded to this arrangement.“But you are going to Elderthwaite? I will come and meet you there. And, look here, the weather is so fine I am sure we might all join forces and make an excursion somewhere. Wouldn’t that be blissful?”“Ah, you make sport of me!” said Alvar; but he promised to propose the plan at Elderthwaite.So Cheriton and his father rode through the bright spring lanes together, like Chaucer’s knight and squire, with the larks singing in the furrows, and the blue sky overhead, the sunshine full of promise and joy, even in the wild, bleak country, whose time of perfection never came till the purple heather clothed the bare moorlands and the summer months had had time to chase away all thought of the long, dreary winter. Every breath of the air of the hill-side was like new life to Cherry.“It is so delightful to be at home,” he said; “it’s impossible to be very angry about ‘the post of a gate.’”Perhaps this happy humour contributed no small share towards the harmonious ending of the scene which Cherry described quaintly enough when he presented himself at Elderthwaite in the afternoon. How on arriving at the scene of action they had found Farmer Fleming and the fellow from Sheffield both engaged in discussing the point; how Mr Wilson had expressedhisreadiness to put up two gates if that would settle the matter, but he could not be dictated to on his own land; how Mr Fleming’s view of the matter seemed to consist in a constant statement of the fact that he had been the squire’s tenant all his life, and his father before him; how the squire had remarked that Mr Fleming’s father, he was sure, would have known well that those four feet of land were common land, and half in Oakby and half in Ashrigg parish, Elderthwaite bordering them on the south, and that he, as Lord of the Manor, could not allow them to be enclosed; Mr Wilson had purchased certain manorial rights in Ashrigg parish; they certainly extended over the two feet on his own side of the lane.Then Cherry had remembered Mr Wilson’s son at Oxford, and knew that last year he had taken a first. He had met him at breakfast; was he coming down soon? This had created a diversion; and while the squire and his tenant were at it hammer and tongs, Cherry had received several invitations, had warmly applauded Mr Wilson’s remark that he did not wish to be unpleasant to old inhabitants on first coming into the county, and the squire, having got his own way with the farmer, an amicable arrangement was arrived at; while Cherry went to see Mrs Fleming’s dairy, “because he remembered how she used to give him such beautiful new milk.”“Oh, Cherry, you have more than a bit of the blarney,” said Ruth. “Haven’t you a drop of Irish blood somewhere?”“Nomore than Jack,” said Cherry, who was perhaps a little pleased at his diplomacy. “I like to smooth things down, unless, to be sure, one is angry oneself.”“You are always the peacemaker,” said Alvar.“Ah, not always, I am afraid! But now I want all the blarney I can muster to persuade you that it is warm enough to go and spend the day at Black Tarn. We might go by train from Hazelby to Blackrigg; have lunch at the inn there, and go up to Black Tarn by the Otter’s Glen. I asked Mr and Mrs Ellesmere, and they will come with us”—to Virginia—“I assure you Alvar agrees.”“You are wasting your blarney,” said Virginia smiling, “for we had agreed to go before you came. It will be very cold up at Black Tarn, but that will not signify if we take plenty of wraps.”Such a genuine piece of natural and innocent amusement was quite a novelty at Elderthwaite, and the boys were delighted. The party agreed to meet at Hazelby station, and go by train some ten or twelve miles towards the mountains on the outskirts of which Black Tarn lay. There was a train in the evening by which they could return, and no one left at home was to be anxious about them until they saw them coming back.
“With him there rode his sone, a younge squire,A lovyere and a lusty bachelere.”
“With him there rode his sone, a younge squire,A lovyere and a lusty bachelere.”
In that year Easter fell very late, and it was nearly the end of April before the Lesters gathered together once more at Oakby. Alvar and Virginia had hardly had time to grow accustomed to their new relations to each other before the former went to London, where he perhaps adapted himself more easily to his surroundings than he would have done in the presence of his father and brothers. He found that all English people did not regard life precisely from the Oakby point of view; that Lady Cheriton greatly regretted that Nettie was such a tomboy, and almost feared that Bob would never be fit for polite society.
He was introduced to people who thought his music enchanting and his foreign manners charming; he was allowed to be on cousinly terms with the Miss Cheritons, and was an object of exciting interest to every young lady who met him. Under these circumstances he was very well content, and despatched graceful and tender letters to Virginia, which often had an amusingnaïvetéin their details of his impressions of English life. He also sent her various offerings, ornaments, sweetmeats, and flowers, always prettily chosen, and commended to her notice by some pleasant bit of tender flattery. His engagement was of course generally known, but his soft words and softer looks, though too universal to be delusive, were doubtless none the less attractive from the fact that his foreign breeding offered a constant cause and excuse for them.
Virginia, on her side, it need hardly be said, wrote him many letters, full of thoughts, feelings, and hopes, and sometimes requests for his opinion on any subject that interested her. Alvar’s replies were so charming, so flattering, and so tender, that she hardly found out that they were in no senseanswersto her own.
He made a very great point of going to Oxford, and was full of excitement at the prospect of meeting “my brother” again. Cheriton, however, had lost some time by his idle Christmas vacation, and was forced to work very hard to make up for it. He had always too many interests in life to make it easy to concentrate all his efforts in one direction; but now the ambition and love of distinction that were a constant stimulus to the idle Lester nature in himself and Jack were fairly alight.
Cheriton cared for success in itself; he was too sweet-natural toresentfailure, and conscientious enough to know that his love of triumph might be a snare to him, but each object in its turn seemed to him intensely desirable. He could not feel, and even prevailing fashion made it difficult for him to affect, indifference. Besides, he wanted to appear in the light of a young man likely to succeed in life before Ruth’s relations. So he wrote that he hoped Alvar would not think it unkind if he asked him to pay him only a short visit; and Alvar was half consoled by hearing the Judge speak in high terms of his nephew as a brilliant young man and likely to do them all credit.
“Ah,” said Alvar, “I fear I should have done my name no credit if I, like my brother, had gone to Oxford.”
“You are an eldest son, my dear fellow, and I don’t doubt that you would have kept up the family traditions,” said Judge Cheriton drily.
So Alvar went for one day to Oxford, where he showed an overpowering delight at seeing Cherry again, and a reprehensible preference for pouring out to him his various experiences, to inspecting chapels and halls. He greeted Buffer respectfully, and taxed Cheriton with overworking himself. He looked pale, he said, and thin—not as he did at Oakby.
Cherry only laughed at him, but insisted emphatically that he should say no word at home of any such impression, as perhaps he should stay up and read during the Easter vacation.
“But what shall I do,” said Alvar, “when the boys, who do not like me, come home, and you are not there?”
“You—why, you will be all day at Elderthwaite.”
“I shall never forget my brother who was kind to me first,” said Alvar earnestly.
Alvar finished up his London career by going to see the Boat Race, where he was exceedingly particular to appear in Oxford colours, and felt as if the triumph of the dark blue was Cherry’s own.
Easter week brought unwontedly soft airs and blue skies to Oakby, and, after all, Cheriton himself for a few days’ holiday. Every one rejoiced at the sight of him, though Jack promptly told him that he was very foolish to waste time by coming, and when Cherry owned that he wanted a little rest, grudgingly admitted that he might be wise to take it; then seized upon him, first to discuss with him the work he himself was doing with a view to a scholarship for which he meant to compete at Midsummer; then demanded an immediate settlement, from Cherry’s point of view, of several important and obscure philosophical questions; and finally confided to him a long history of Bob’s scrapes and deficiencies during the past term.
He was so low in the school—he got in with such a bad lot—he ought to leave school and go to a tutor’s. He, Jack, had told him he was going straight to the bad, but had done no good. Would Cherry give him a good blowing-up? Then Mr Lester, having had a letter from the headmaster, wanted to consult him on this very point, as well as to tell him all the story of Alvar’s courtship and his own diplomatic behaviour. Also to regret that Alvar would not take the trouble to understand the details of English law as applied to local matters; could not see why Mr Lester, as a magistrate, was prevented from transporting a poacher for life, or why, as an owner of land, he thought it necessary to be so particular as to the character of his tenants. Then an attempt at peacemaking with and for Bob, which resulted in little more than a persistent growl “that Jack was an awful duffer.”
Altogether the family did not seem in a restful state. Mrs Lester was very indignant because Mrs Ellesmere had observed that Nettie was growing too tall a girl to go about so much by herself. “Who was there that did not know Nettie in all the country-side?” While Bob and Nettie themselves, who usually hung together in everything, especially when either was in trouble, had an inexplicable quarrel, which made neither of them pleasant company for their elders.
Then Mr Lester’s affairs came forward again in the shape of a dispute with one of his chief farmers about a certain gate which had been planted in the wrong place, involving a question of boundaries and rights of way, and engaging Mr Lester in a difference of opinion with a new neighbour, “a Radical fellow from Sheffield,” whom Mr Lester would neither have injured nor been intimate with for the world. Alvar had the misfortune to observe that “he thought it was not worth while to be so distressed about the post of a gate,” an indifference even more provoking than the misplaced ardour of Jack, who had taken upon himself to examine the matter, and believing his father mistaken, thought it necessary to say so, which might have been passed over as a piece of youthful folly, if there had not been a frightful suspicion that Mr Ellesmere was of the same opinion.
Cherry had heard enough of the “post of a gate” by the time he had read half-a-dozen letters of polite indignation, and listened to an hour’s explanation from his father of the grounds of the dispute, after which he was requested to form an independent opinion on the subject.
“Well, father,” he said, looking askance at a plan of the scene of action which Mr Lester had drawn for his benefit, “it seems that the removal of this gate has mixed up Ashrigg, Oakby, and Elderthwaite to such a degree that we sha’n’t know who is living in which. Of course Alvarcan’tsee any boundaries between Oakby and Elderthwaite just now. How should he? His imagination leaps over them at once. But Idon’tthink it will ‘precipitate the downfall of the landed gentry,’ Jack, whichever way it is settled.” And having thus succeeded in making his father and Alvar laugh, and Jack remark “that he never could see the use of making a joke of everything,” he asked Mr Lester to come and show him the fatal spot. Couldn’t they ride over and look at it?
“And I have never seen you yet,” said Alvar reproachfully, when Mr Lester had acceded to this arrangement.
“But you are going to Elderthwaite? I will come and meet you there. And, look here, the weather is so fine I am sure we might all join forces and make an excursion somewhere. Wouldn’t that be blissful?”
“Ah, you make sport of me!” said Alvar; but he promised to propose the plan at Elderthwaite.
So Cheriton and his father rode through the bright spring lanes together, like Chaucer’s knight and squire, with the larks singing in the furrows, and the blue sky overhead, the sunshine full of promise and joy, even in the wild, bleak country, whose time of perfection never came till the purple heather clothed the bare moorlands and the summer months had had time to chase away all thought of the long, dreary winter. Every breath of the air of the hill-side was like new life to Cherry.
“It is so delightful to be at home,” he said; “it’s impossible to be very angry about ‘the post of a gate.’”
Perhaps this happy humour contributed no small share towards the harmonious ending of the scene which Cherry described quaintly enough when he presented himself at Elderthwaite in the afternoon. How on arriving at the scene of action they had found Farmer Fleming and the fellow from Sheffield both engaged in discussing the point; how Mr Wilson had expressedhisreadiness to put up two gates if that would settle the matter, but he could not be dictated to on his own land; how Mr Fleming’s view of the matter seemed to consist in a constant statement of the fact that he had been the squire’s tenant all his life, and his father before him; how the squire had remarked that Mr Fleming’s father, he was sure, would have known well that those four feet of land were common land, and half in Oakby and half in Ashrigg parish, Elderthwaite bordering them on the south, and that he, as Lord of the Manor, could not allow them to be enclosed; Mr Wilson had purchased certain manorial rights in Ashrigg parish; they certainly extended over the two feet on his own side of the lane.
Then Cherry had remembered Mr Wilson’s son at Oxford, and knew that last year he had taken a first. He had met him at breakfast; was he coming down soon? This had created a diversion; and while the squire and his tenant were at it hammer and tongs, Cherry had received several invitations, had warmly applauded Mr Wilson’s remark that he did not wish to be unpleasant to old inhabitants on first coming into the county, and the squire, having got his own way with the farmer, an amicable arrangement was arrived at; while Cherry went to see Mrs Fleming’s dairy, “because he remembered how she used to give him such beautiful new milk.”
“Oh, Cherry, you have more than a bit of the blarney,” said Ruth. “Haven’t you a drop of Irish blood somewhere?”
“Nomore than Jack,” said Cherry, who was perhaps a little pleased at his diplomacy. “I like to smooth things down, unless, to be sure, one is angry oneself.”
“You are always the peacemaker,” said Alvar.
“Ah, not always, I am afraid! But now I want all the blarney I can muster to persuade you that it is warm enough to go and spend the day at Black Tarn. We might go by train from Hazelby to Blackrigg; have lunch at the inn there, and go up to Black Tarn by the Otter’s Glen. I asked Mr and Mrs Ellesmere, and they will come with us”—to Virginia—“I assure you Alvar agrees.”
“You are wasting your blarney,” said Virginia smiling, “for we had agreed to go before you came. It will be very cold up at Black Tarn, but that will not signify if we take plenty of wraps.”
Such a genuine piece of natural and innocent amusement was quite a novelty at Elderthwaite, and the boys were delighted. The party agreed to meet at Hazelby station, and go by train some ten or twelve miles towards the mountains on the outskirts of which Black Tarn lay. There was a train in the evening by which they could return, and no one left at home was to be anxious about them until they saw them coming back.