An English Squire

“Ah!” exclaimed Ruth, springing across on to a very unsteady stone, “you are getting too serious! I declare, there’s a white butterfly, the first for the year. And look – oh, look, Cherry, isn’t that bit of gorse pretty against the sky? It’s too bad to discuss abstract questions at a picnic on a spring day.”

Cheriton stood still for a moment. He heard the rush of the water, he saw the shine of the sun, his eyes followed the butterfly as it fluttered up to the bit of yellow gorse, he could see Ruth smiling and graceful, beckoning to him to follow her; the glamour and dazzle had passed, and the day was like any other fine day now.

“I did not mean to discuss abstract questions,” he said, with a touch of offence.

“Ah! but you were getting very deep! Come, don’t be cross, Cherry; you look exactly like Jack at this minute, and you can’t make your eyebrows meet, so don’t try.”

“Poor Jack, you are very hard on him,” said Cherry, recovering himself. “Will you have a bit of the gorse for your hat, if I cut all the prickles off?”

“If you cut all the prickles off, what will you leave?” said Ruth.

They had a very charming walk after this, and were much more merry and talkative than at first. There was a sense of being baffled deep down in Cherry’s heart, but if the rest was surface work it was very enchanting, and they dawdled and chattered till the time slipped away, and they saw their party in the distance coming back from the tarn.

“Oh, let us run,” said Ruth, “and get into the road before them.”

“Come,” said Cherry, holding out his hand, and they ran across the short turf, the sweet, keen air blowing in their faces, a sort of excitement urging Ruth, who was a lazy little thing usually, to this childish proceeding.

They came running down into the road just as the whole party came back from the tarn, crying out on them for their laziness.

“We have been looking for you,” said Virginia, whose hat was daintily wreathed with stag moss. “Alvar and I tried to find you.”

“Oh, yes, you were miserable without us of course,” said Cherry. “Hallo, Rupert! where on earth did you spring from?”

“I came over for a ball at the Molyneuxes; they have taken Blackrigg Hall, you know. I must get back by the first thing to-morrow. I heard of your picnic from some of the people about, and came to see if I could fall in with you.”

“You are just in time to come back with us to the inn,” said Mr Ellesmere; “we shall have no more than time to get a cup of tea and be off for the train.”

“I thought you would not come,” whispered Ruth to Rupert as they all walked back together.

“So it seemed; what were you doing with Cherry?” said Rupert sharply.

Ruth looked at him with reproach in her eyes, but they had no chance then of obtaining private words. Rupert looked savage, but directed his efforts to sitting next her in the omnibus which was to convey most of the party to the station.

“Don’t spoil these few minutes,” whispered Ruth imploringly as she looked up in his displeased face. “Could I let people guess how I was longing for you? I thought you would have been here sooner.”

“Cherry is always to the fore,” said Rupert with an amount of ill-temper for which Ruth could not quite account. She felt profoundly miserable, so wretched that she could hardly keep the tears out of her eyes. She had looked forward for the last day or two to this poor little meeting as such a light in the darkness, and now some one spoke to Rupert and some one else to herself. There was no chance of making it up – if they were to part so! Oh, it was hard! Virginia could say as much as she liked to her lover. Then Ruth saw that Alvar was not in the omnibus, nor Cheriton either, and hoped that the latter fact might assuage Rupert’s jealousy. Perhaps he felt ashamed of it, for as they neared Blackrigg she felt his hand clasp hers, and he whispered, “Forgive me.”

In the meanwhile Cheriton, having lingered a moment to make payments and final arrangements, was left for the “trap,” a very nondescript vehicle, which had brought Bob and Jack from the station. To his surprise he found that Alvar instead of one of the younger ones was his companion.

“Why, how’s this?” he said.

“I thought that I would wait for you. Is it not my turn?” said Alvar, who sometimes liked to claim an equality with the others.

“I’m afraid you’ll get wet,” said Cherry; “they’ve all the plaids, and it is going to rain. These mountain showers come up so quickly.”

“I do not mind the rain,” said Alvar. Cheriton, however, mindful of Alvar’s short experience of the cold, driving rain of the country, made him put a dilapidated rug that was in the carriage over his shoulders, and drove on as fast as he could, through mist and wind, till about half-way to Blackrigg there was a great jolt, – off came the wheel of the trap, which turned over, and they were both thrown out on to the high bank beside the road.

Cherry felt Alvar’s arm round him before he had time to get up, and heard him speaking fast in Spanish, and then, “You are not hurt, my brother?”

“Oh, no – no. Nor you? That’s all right; but we’re in a nice fix. No getting to Blackrigg to-night. Here’s the wheel off.”

The bank was soft and muddy; and they were quite unhurt, and after a minute, Cherry hailed a man passing by, and asked him to take the horse back to the inn, proposing to Alvar to try to catch the train at Stonybeach, an intermediate station, to which he knew a short cut.

“Can you make a ran for it?” he said.

“Yes – oh, yes, I can run,” said Alvar. “This is an adventure.”

It was such a run across country as reminded Cheriton of his days of paper-chases, and was probably a new experience to Alvar, who remarked breathlessly, as they neared the station, —

“I can run – when it is necessary; but I do not understand your races for amusement.”

Cheriton made no answer, as they entered the station and found that after all a neighbouring market had delayed the train, and that they had still some minutes to wait.

“That’s too bad,” said Cherry, as strength and breath fairly failed him, and he sat hastily down on a bench, to his own surprise and annoyance, completely exhausted.

“All! you are too tired!” exclaimed Alvar, coming to him; and with a kindness and presence of mind for which few had given him credit, he made Cherry rest, and got the porter to fetch some water for him (the little roadside station afforded nothing else), till after a few minutes of dizzy faintness and breathlessness, Cherry began to revive into a state of indignation with himself, and gratitude to his brother, the expression of which sentiments Alvar silenced.

“Hush! I will not have you talk yet! You must rest till the train comes. Lean back against me. No – you have not made a confounded fool of yourself, when you could not help it.”

“I suppose the fall shook me,” said Cherry, presently. “Hark! there is the train. Now, Alvar, don’t you say a word of this. I am all right now.”

He stood up as the train came creeping and groaning into the station, and Jack made signs to them out of the window. The train was crowded, and the rest of the party were farther back. Jack exclaimed at their appearance, and while they were explaining their adventure, Alvar got some wine for Cheriton out of a hamper that had been brought for the luncheon.

“Why, Alvar, you are more than half a doctor,” said Cherry, as he took it. “I’m all right again now.”

Jack scanned him a little anxiously. “You had no business to be knocked up,” he said briefly. “You should not have tried to run when you were so out of condition.”

“If I am a doctor, Jack,” said Alvar, “I will not have my patient scolded. He is better now, are you not, Cherito mio? And we are not fit to see the ladies. See, I am covered with mud,” and Alvar endeavoured to brush the mud off his hat, and to make his wet clothes look a little less disreputable.

Cherry put a great coat on, as a measure both of prudence and respectability. He had been desperately desirous of catching the train for the sake of a few more words with Ruth; for on the next day he was obliged to return to Oxford. They were all to part at Hazelby, where their respective carriages awaited them.

Ruth had forgotten his very existence as he hurried up to her in the crowded station; for Rupert had been forced to go on by the train. She remembered now that her walk with him had made Rupert angry, and hardly able to control her voice to speak at all, she wished him a cold, hasty good-night, and sprang into the carriage without giving him time for a word.

Cheriton was both angry and miserable; he stood back silently, while Alvar put Virginia into the carriage, and excused himself gaily for his muddy coat. Dick Seyton ran up at the last minute, and the Lesters set out on their six-miles drive in an open break, under waterproofs and umbrellas, through the pouring rain. The twins disputed under their breath, and Jack lectured Cheriton on the amount of exercise necessary during a period of hard reading.

Cherry, for once, answered him sharply, and Alvar, as was usually the case when his Geschwistern quarrelled, wondered silently, both how they could be so un-courteous to each other, and how they could excite themselves so much about nothing. But there had been something in the manner of his kindness and attention that dwelt pleasantly in Cheriton’s memory of a day which for many reasons he had afterwards cause to look back upon with pain.

Chapter Seventeen.

Rifts

“It is the little rift within the lover’s lute.”

In the June following the expedition to Black Tarn, some great festivities were held in honour of the coming of age of a young nobleman, who possessed a large property about fifteen miles from Oakby.

His father, the late Lord Milford, had been a friend of Mr Lester, and the young man himself was at school for a time with his sons. The event being also of importance in the county, old Mrs Lester broke through her usual home-staying habits, and took Ruth and Virginia Seyton for a three days’ visit to Milford Hall.

It was right for Virginia to be seen in her own county before her marriage; it was years since her father and aunt had been present at such a gathering, and Alvar and his father were of course among the guests. Cheriton was passing, or had passed, his examination; but he had decided not to come home until he knew his fate; and in studying the papers every morning, in the hope of seeing the Class Lists long before they could possibly be printed, Mr Lester and Alvar found at last a subject on which they could thoroughly sympathise, though Mr Lester frequently remarked that there was never any knowing how those matters would be managed; he did not expect much, while Alvar suffered from no misgivings at all.

Rupert and some of his brother officers were among the guests; the entertainments were of the most brilliant description, and the weather perfect.

Ruth was well known and popular. True, she distinguished herself neither in archery nor any other outdoor sport; she was not even a very great dancer; but she could talk, and look, and smile as if her companion’s words were the one thing interesting to her; hence her success. And Rupert was there, and in the dark alleys and lonely shrubberies of the great gardens at Milford, opportunities for tête-à-têtes were not wanting. Ruth, conscious of her becoming dress of the soft, warm maize that suited her brown skin, with amusement and admiration to froth her cup of pleasure, and Rupert’s exciting presence to spice it and make it worth the drinking, might seem to be enjoying the most brilliant outcome of young-lady life. Sparkle and colour, feeling and passion, she would have chosen as her greatest good. Theoretically she would have willingly embraced the pains and penalties which they might bring in their train. Yet Ruth on the sunny lawns and stately paths of Milford was profoundly and violently miserable, full of anger and despair.

The terms on which she stood with Rupert were such as could only be endurable with the most perfect trust on both sides. Where it was necessary to feign neglect, it was sometimes a strain to believe in the real devotion. Neither Ruth nor Rupert were people whose manners precluded the possibility of a mistake, and, as has been seen, Rupert was not proof against jealousy. The strength of Ruth’s own passion made her more trustful of his, but at the same time she demanded more from him, and he failed to fulfil her ideal of an ardent lover. He appeared to her to be too cautious, to miss opportunities, and be his necessity for secrecy what it might, she could not bear to see him attentive to others – to another, rather.

There was a young Lady Alice, in her first season, a charming childish beauty, after whom it was the fashion to run, and who found it agreeable enough to torment her many admirers, and provoke the aunt who chaperoned her, by flirting with the handsome Captain Lester, who, on his side, knew well enough that she meant nothing serious; and, while he was true in his heart to Ruth, was vain enough to be flattered by the preference of a beauty, and of a lady, moreover, of rank and distinction. It showed every one that he was a man of the world, and a very agreeable fellow.

Perhaps matters might have mended if Mrs Lester, who thought modern manners much too free, and drew a sharp distinction between the simplicity of her own straightforward, unwatched girlhood and the coquetries of a ball-room, and who, moreover, disapproved of Ruth, had not looked so very sharply after her, that private interviews were rendered difficult, and Ruth was growing too angry to seek one.

She had not sat by him at dinner; they were separated at the great concert that had been given on the day of their arrival; and on the next, which was one long fête, ending in a ball, they only caught a few hasty words with each other; and it appeared to her excited fancy that he was for ever at Lady Alice’s side. In the evening she would not dance with him, crowding her card with names, laughed, talked, flirted, and was wretched. It was not till after supper that he pursued her into the last of a long vista of conservatories, where a very youthful partner had conducted her to smell the stephanotis, and claim the next dance as his own.

The warm, scented air, the distant music, the soft, dim mingling of lamp and moonlight, through which strange, rare flowers gleamed out from their dark foliage, formed such a background as Ruth’s vivid fancy, fed by many a tale and poem, had often painted, to scenes that should satisfy her in their tenderness and intensity. Among the wild fir-woods of Oakby, here and there, at odd times and by unexpected chances, she had known blissful moments, every one of which was before her now as she set her mouth hard, and looked at Rupert with eyes full both of love and anger.

Rupert was excited and eager, conscious of having given cause of offence, and a little off his head with the flattery he had received. He failed to read the meaning of her face, and turned to her eagerly.

“At last, my child! Mrs Lester is a perfect dragon!”

“I don’t think it has been Mrs Lester’s fault.”

“It has been none of mine,” said Rupert. “Your fine, yellow dress escaped me at every turn, and I could not get away from the people. I have had to work hard for my fun, and arrange dozens of things.”

“I daresay it is very pleasant to be so popular,” said Ruth, detecting the little boast, which in a cooler moment would have passed unnoticed. There was a sort of airiness in Rupert’s manner, inexpressibly irritating when she wanted every assurance of the passion which she was so often obliged to take upon trust.

“Come, Ruthie, that’s not fair. What is a poor fellow to do? I have been horribly down in the mouth since we parted; it takes so long to get one’s affairs to rights. Your guardians would bow me out of the house pretty quickly if I applied to them now. Can you trust me a little longer, my darling? I’m living on twopence a day to bring things round.”

“And did the gloves Lady Alice won from you, come out of the twopence?” said Ruth, unable to control her anger, sarcastic because such a storm of tears was pending.

Rupert’s quick temper took fire in a moment.

“If you have so little confidence in me, Ruth, as to be angry at such a trifle,” he said hotly, “it is impossible – You make me feel that I ask more of you than you can give.”

“Yes,” said Ruth, “I cannot give such confidence. When it is months since I have seen you – weeks since I heard from you. I cannot see you devoted to – to another, when you cannot find a moment for me. If you can bear it – ”

“You are very unreasonable, Ruth. I thought that you were generous before all other women, and patient. You speak as if you doubted my honour.”

“If it comes to talking of honour,” cried Ruth, “if you need that to bind you, you are free. I will not hold you one hour by your honour!”

“Nor I you to a trial of generosity, which it seems you cannot bear.”

If Rupert had not been first tête montée, and then very angry, he would not have made this remark.

“Generosity!” cried Ruth. “No. If honour and generosity are required between us, I’ll make no claim on them. Let it all be over – we’ll part. Yes, we’ll part, and then you need deny yourself nothing – nothing for my sake.”

“It might be best – if you look on it in this way.”

There was a silence. Rupert pulled his moustaches sharply; his face was pale; in that hot moment he felt he might be well quit of Ruth’s unreasonable jealousy and suspicion. Ruth sat quite still; she would have yielded at a word, perhaps – in a minute more she might even have made the first advance to a reconciliation. But as the dance ended the conservatory filled with people. They were joined by two or three couples, and a young lady, an old acquaintance of Rupert’s, exclaimed, with sufficient forwardness, —

“Oh, Captain Lester, what do you think we were discussing? People say that you are engaged to be married. Is it true – do tell me?”

“No,” said Rupert shortly. “I am not engaged to be married, nor likely to be.”

He laughed bitterly as he spoke, and perhaps under the circumstances could hardly have avoided some sort of denial; but the directness of this one, and the tone in which it was spoken, seemed to seal Ruth’s fate. She said afterwards that she went mad at that moment, and certainly she lost the soft self-possession that was one of her chief charms, grew daring and defiant, and said and did things that others remembered long after she had recovered from the wild excitement that prompted them. The sacredness of ungovernable feeling was an article of her faith, and she was quite as miserable as she ever thought true love would demand of any one. But the poor child, as she sat on the floor in her own room that night, with her face hidden on a chair, did not think at all that she was “having an experience,” nor going through the second volume of the story, in the beginning of which she had so gloried; she only felt that she was utterly and inconceivably wretched, and angry beyond expression. Rupert did not care for her, or only cared in a commonplace fashion. There was nothing left in life for her. Evidently he had been glad to find in the quarrel an excuse for an escape.

Ruth’s hot displeasure culminated when she came down to breakfast the next morning, and found that every one was regretting the departure of the officers from York, who had been obliged to take leave early that morning. They would be a great loss at the tenants’ ball that night.

“Father, my father,” suddenly exclaimed Alvar Lester, coming into the room with a newspaper in his hand. “See, it is here, ‘Gerald Cheriton Lester.’ And he is first. I said so. Ah! I rejoice!”

Alvar’s eager voice and excited face attracted general attention, as he put the paper into his father’s hand, and pointed over his shoulder. There was a chorus of congratulation, while Mr Lester’s blue eyes looked as bright as his son’s black ones, as he hummed and ha’d, coughed two or three times, and said, with as little exultation as he could manage to show, “That he was glad Cheriton had worked hard and done his best. He was a good lad, and had never given any trouble. Now, they could have him at home for a bit.”

“Ah! that will be jolly,” said Alvar. “But he will have come home, through last night, and we shall not be there.”

“Send a telegram to meet him, and ask him to come over,” said young Lord Milford. “He always was a capital fellow, and I shall be delighted to see him.”

“And I hope, Milford,” said the young lord’s mother, “that you will take example by your friend.”

“Don’t you build on any such hopes, mother, but I’ll go and see about getting him over here at once.”

Mrs Lester was moved to encomiums on Cherry’s studies and steadiness; and more than one of those present remarked with admiration the unselfish pleasure taken by the elder brother in the success of his universally popular junior.

Virginia Seyton watched her betrothed a little wistfully. Ruth’s was not the only love story that was running its course through these early summer months, and Virginia’s heart was not quite at ease. If “what Rupert was like,” had come upon Ruth with a sudden blow, “what Alvar was like,” was still something of a problem to Virginia. He was attractive to her beyond measure, he occupied every corner of her heart; it was joy to her to be near him; his gentle, chivalrous courtship gave her unimaginable delight. She could remember every glance of his eyes, every touch of his hand; but – But what? Alvar was at once too obtuse and too proud ever to assume a character that did not belong to him. He did not think it worth while to acquire or profess new sentiments; perhaps he never even perceived that they were desired. He was, spite of his courteous tongue, as absolutely candid a person as his brother Jack. He was not a bit worse than he seemed, neither was he much better. He behaved very well in his difficult life, and regulated his conduct by certain maxims of honour and courtesy; but, in the sense in which Virginia understood the word, he had no principles at all. It was with a curious mixture of sensations that, when, à propos of some scrape of Dick’s, she had timidly alluded to the gambling that had brought such distress on her family, Virginia heard him answer, —

“Ah, they have had much ill-fortune,” without a spark apparently of righteous indignation.

Nor could she help perceiving that he scarcely ever occupied himself with anything more useful than a cigar. “My father is always busy,” he would say complacently, as he sat idle; but he did not point any popular moral; for idleness made him neither ill-humoured nor mischievous.

Virginia loved him well enough to set all her will on the side of making allowances. When he saw her scrupulous and earnest in fulfilling her religious duties, he would kiss her hand and say, “My queen is as holy as a saint,” and he conformed sufficiently to the Oakby standard to satisfy her conscience, if not his own, never uttering a word that could offend her. But, as he had told Cheriton, “he did not interest himself in these matters,” and she knew it.

Perhaps Virginia, diffident as to her knowledge of masculine standards and modes of expression, might never have realised even thus much to herself, but for the instinctive sense of another shortcoming in her lover, which she would not admit, and which she hated herself for even imagining. It came, by a strange turn of fate, both to her and to Ruth, to feel that the love they gave was not returned in its fulness. With what a passion of despair and jealousy Ruth had resented the discovery has been seen.

To Virginia it brought a disheartening sense of her own demerit, a doubt of the truth of her own impressions, vexation at her own want of trustfulness, shame and self-blame, because she could not help knowing that Alvar missed sometimes the chance of a word or an interview when she would have secured it, because she felt that he did not care as she cared. But then, temperaments differ; some people were reserved; perhaps she was exacting, and her cheek had flushed and her eyes sparkled with joy when Alvar praised the dresses she had taken such pains to choose for the Milford fêtes, and when he paid her all the attention due from an affianced lover.