An English Squire

“I did not quarrel with him, and I think the failure was in myself. Why should he love me? – it does not seem as if I was very lovable.”

There crossed Virginia’s young gentle face a look that was like a foretaste of the bitterness and self-weariness that had seized on so many of her race – a sort of self-scorn that was not wholesome.

“Why should you think so?” said Ruth.

“I think I should have got on better at home if I had been.”

She spoke humbly enough, but there was utter discouragement in every line of her face and figure.

“Nonsense!” said Ruth briskly. “Nobody would get on, in your sense, at Elderthwaite. I don’t think you ought to stay there. You know it is quite in your power to arrange differently. You might make them long visits and – come fresh to every one.”

“I’ll never have it said that I could not live there,” said Virginia, colouring deeply. “And if I was away – I could not. – I would not – ”

“Go back into the neighbourhood? Well, at any rate you are going to have a holiday now, and see something besides moors and mud.”

The change of scene could not fail to do Virginia good, though there might be something in the courtship of Ruth and Rupert to remind her, with a difference, of her own. It was sometimes breezy, for Rupert loved to tease his betrothed, and having got his will, was a free-and-easy and contented lover, not much liking to be put out of his way, and not quite coming up to Ruth’s requirements.

Ruth, though very kind to her cousin, believed that she had lost her lover in great measure through a feminine scrupulosity and desire to bring him up to her own standard. Ruth would never be so narrow and unsympathetic, she would be prepared to understand all the story of her hero’s life; and being young, and much more simple than she believed herself to be, thought that her indiscriminate reading of somewhat free-spoken novels, gave her the necessary experience. But Rupert took quite another view. He was not aware of having any particular story to tell, and had no intention whatever of telling it. He did not in the least desire Ruth’s sympathy with his past, which was quite commonplace. He was not in a state of repentance, desirous of making a confession; nor had his heart ever been withered up by any frightful experiences. No doubt he could remember much that was not particularly creditable, and which he rightly thought unfit for discussion with his betrothed. Moreover, he did not care at all for poetry, and very little for novels, and at last actually told her that one she mentioned was unfit for her to read.

Ruth was very angry, and had a sense of being put aside. Had Rupert – like herself – a secret, or was she going to be “only a little dearer than his horse?” as she expressed it to herself, and with tears to him. Rupert laughed, and then grew a little angry, and then they made it up again; but he teased her for her romance, laughed at her most muscular and strong-souled heroes, and never would put himself in a heroic attitude. Ruth quarrelled with him, made it up with him, was vexed by him, and sometimes was vexatious; but all the while she never told him about Cheriton.

Chapter Seven.

Don Juan

“I wonder if the spring-tide of this yearWill bring another spring both lost and dear;If heart and spirit will find out their spring,Or if the world alone will bud and sing.”

It was a bright sunny day in December, fresh enough to make the Sevillanos pull their picturesque cloaks over their shoulders out of doors, and light scraps of wood-fire in their sitting-rooms, but with the sun pouring down in unveiled splendour over quaint painted relics of a bygone world, when the Moor employed his rich fancy in decorating the city, and over dark Gothic arches and towers that seemed to tell of a life almost equally remote from nineteenth-century England. It was a very new sort of Christmas weather for Jack Lester as he tried to find his way from the railway station to Don Guzman de la Rosa’s house. He soon discovered that he had lost it, and stopped by a fruit-stall piled with grapes, oranges, and melons to ask the brown, skinny old woman in a gay handkerchief who kept it, for some directions, hoping that she would at least understand the name of the street. So she did, but it seemed to him that she pointed in every direction at once, and Jack stared round bewildered as a young lady stepped across the street towards the fruit-stall. Jack looked at her and she looked full at him from under her straw hat, with a pair of eyes dark as any in Andalusia, but direct and clear, level and fearless, as her face broke into a smile just saved from a laugh.

“If you are looking for Don Guzman de la Rosa’s,” she said in distinct and comprehensible English, “I can direct you; but your brothers, Mr Lester, are much nearer, at my father’s, Mr Stanforth’s. Will you come there with me when I have bought some fruit?”

“Oh, thank you immensely! I – I thought I would walk up, and I couldn’t find the way. Thank you,” said Jack, colouring and looking rather foolish.

“They did not expect you to be here till to-morrow. What have you done with your things?”

“I’ve lost them, Miss Stanforth,” said Jack; “I can’t think how. You see no one understands anything, and the stations coming from Madrid are so odd.”

“Oh, I think you will get them; we had one box detained for ages. Thank you,” as he took her basket of fruit. “Shall we come?” and then, looking up at him, “Your brother is so much better.”

“I – I am very glad of that,” said Jack, in a sort of inadequate way.

He was nervous about the meeting, and felt conscious that he was dusty with his journey, and sure that he must have looked foolish staring at the old woman.

Gipsy took him down the street, and into a house with a balcony covered with gay-striped blinds, and led him upstairs till she came to a door, or rather curtain, which she lifted, putting her finger on her lip.

It was a long, low room, with the lights carefully arranged and shaded, containing drawing-boards and unframed sketches, a wonderful heap of “art treasures,” in one corner, Algerine scarves and stuffs, great, rough, green pitchers, and odds and ends of colour. Some one sat with his back to the door drawing, but Jack only beheld his brothers who were together at the further end of the room, and did not immediately see him, for they were looking at each other and appeared to the puzzled Jack oddly still and silent.

Miss Stanforth gave a little laugh, and Alvar looked round and exclaimed. Cheriton sprang up, and with a cry of delight seized on Jack, with an outburst of greetings and inquiries, in which all the surroundings were forgotten. Gipsy laughingly described her encounter to Alvar; while “father,” and “granny,” “the old parson,” “no good in having a Christmas at all at home without you,” passed rapidly between the other two.

“Come, Jack, that’s strong! But, indeed, I think you have brought Christmas here. How rude we are! You have never spoken to Mr Stanforth. Mr Stanforth, let him see the picture. Jack, do you think father will like it?”

“Yes. You look much jollier than in the photograph,” said Jack, as Mr Stanforth turned the picture round for his inspection.

It was a small half-length in tinted chalk showing Cherry seated and looking up, with a bright interested face, at Alvar, who was showing him a branch of pomegranates. The execution was of the slightest, but the likenesses were good, and the strong contrast of colouring and resemblance of form was brought out well. “Brothers,” was written underneath, and Jack looked at them as if the idea of any one wishing to make studies of them was strange to him.

“Jack is bewildered – lost, in more senses than one,” said Cherry, smiling.

“Come, it is time we went home, and then for news of every one! Mr Stanforth, we shall see you to-night.”

Jack’s arrival was an intense pleasure to Cheriton, whose reviving faculties were beginning to long for their old interests. He had recovered his natural spirits, and though he still looked delicate, and had no strength to spare, was quite well enough to look forward to his return to England and to beginning life there. Indeed the ardent hopes and ambitions, so cruelly checked in their first outlet, turned – with a difference indeed, but with considerable force – to the desire of distinction and success; and in return for Jack’s endless talk of home and Oxford, he planned the course of study to begin at Easter, and the hard work which he felt sure with patience must ensure good fortune. Cheriton was very sanguine, and since he had felt so much better, had no doubt of entire recovery; and Jack was accustomed to follow his lead, and was much relieved both by his liveliness and by his resolute mention of Rupert, and inquiry as to the arrangements for his marriage.

If Cheriton had not won the battle, he was at least holding his own in it bravely – the bitter pain was first submitted to, and then held down with a strong hand. But surely, he thought, there was something in store for him, if not the sweetness of happy love, yet the ardour of the struggle of life.

He could not say enough of Alvar’s care for him, and Jack found Alvar much more easy of access than at home, and more interested than he had expected in the details of the home life; and in the course of conversation the dinner-party to the Seytons, and its motive, came out.

Alvar coloured deeply; he was silent then, but as soon as he was alone with Cheriton he said with some hurry of manner, —

“My brother, I am ashamed. What can I do? It is not endurable to me that any one should blame Miss Seyton.”

“I suppose my father did the only thing there was to be done. When an engagement is broken people generally say that there were faults on both sides.”

“That is not so,” said Alvar. “She is as blameless as a lily. Can I do nothing? I am ashamed,” he repeated vehemently.

“Perhaps when you go home you will be able to show the world that you are of a different opinion,” said Cherry very quietly, but with difficulty suppressing a smile.

“You do not understand,” said Alvar in a tone of displeasure, turning away, and thinking that he had never before known Cheriton so unsympathetic.

Jack did not make much way with the de la Rosas, he did not like committing himself to foreign languages, and was shy, but they were very polite to “Don Juan,” a name that so tickled Cheriton’s fancy that he adopted it at once.

Jack began by somewhat resenting his brother’s intimacy with the Stanforths as a strange and unnecessary novelty, but he soon fell under the charm, and pursued Mr Stanforth with theories of art which were received with plenty of good-humoured banter. Gipsy, too, set to work to enlighten him on Spanish customs; and having rescued him from one difficulty, made it her business to show him the way he should go, so that they became very friendly, and the strange Christmas in this foreign country drew the little party of English closer together. There was enough to interest them in the curious and picturesque customs of Andalusia, but the carols which Gipsy insisted on getting up gave Cherry a fit of home-sickness; and a great longing for Oakby, and the holly and the snow, the familiar occupations, the dogs, and the skating came over him. It had been a long absence; he thought how his father would be wishing for him, and he experienced that sudden doubt of the future which people call presentiment. Would he ever spend Christmas at home again? He was beginning to weary a little of the wonder and admiration that had stood him in such good stead, and to want the time-honoured landmarks which showed themselves unchanged as the flood-tide of passion subsided.

He was quite ready, however, to enter into the plans for a tour through some of the neighbouring towns before the Stanforths should return home at the end of January. Jack’s time was still shorter; and as Cheriton himself had hitherto seen nothing but Seville, a joint expedition was proposed, with liberty to separate whenever it was convenient, as Alvar would consent to nothing that involved Cherry in long days on horseback lasting after sundown, or in extra rough living; and Mr Stanforth backed up his prudent counsels.

But Cordova, Granada, and Malaga could be managed without any extreme fatigue, and Ronda could be reached easily from the latter place. So in the first week in the new year the three Lesters, Mr Stanforth and his daughter, and Miss Weston set off together for a fortnight’s trip. Afterwards they would all separate, and Alvar and Cheriton, after returning for a few weeks to Seville, were to make their way gradually northwards, stopping in France and Italy till the spring was further advanced.

The tour prospered, and in due time they found themselves at Ronda, and strolling out together in the lovely afternoon sunshine, reached the new bridge across the river; Jack and Gipsy engaged in an endless discussion on the expulsion of the Moors, lingering while they talked, and looking down into the deep volcanic chasm that divides the old town of Ronda from the new, while nearly three hundred feet below them roared, dashed, and sparkled the silvery waters of the Guadalvin. On either side were the picturesque buildings of the two towns, fringed with wood – in front, miles of orchards, and beyond, the magnificent snow-crowned mountains of the Sierra; while over all was the sapphire blue, and sun, which, though the year was but a fortnight old, covered the ground with jonquils, and hung the woods with lovely flowers hardly known to our hothouses.

They had marvelled at the Alhambra, and Cheriton had disclaimed all sense of feeling himself in the Crystal Palace. They had noticed and admired the mixture of Moorish and Christian art in Granada and Cordova, and had discussed ardently all the difficult questions of the Moorish occupation and expulsion – discussions in which Gipsy’s fresh school knowledge, and Jack’s ponderous theories, had met in many a hearty conflict. They had sketched, made notes, collected curiosities, or simply enjoyed the beauty according to their several idiosyncrasies, and had remained good friends through all the ups and downs of travel; while Cheriton had stood the fatigue so well that he had set his heart on riding with the others across country to Seville, and could afford to laugh at the discomforts incidental to eating and sleeping at Ronda. There was much to see there, and they did not mean to hurry away. Cherry remarked to Alvar that Jack had improved, and was less sententious than he used to be; but the cause of this increased geniality had struck no one. Every one laughed when Gipsy reminded him of things that he had forgotten, talked Spanish for him because he was too shy to commit himself to an unknown tongue, and stoutly contradicted many of his favourite sentiments. Writing an essay, was he? on the evil of regarding everything from a ludicrous point of view. There were a great many cases in which that was the best point of view to look at things, and Gipsy wrote a counter essay which afforded great amusement. But no one perceived when Gipsy’s sense of the ludicrous fell a little into abeyance; and when she ceased to contradict Jack flatly, and began to think that she received new ideas from him, still less did his brothers dream of the new thoughts and aspirations that were rushing confusedly through the boy’s mind; he was hardly conscious of them himself.

The pair were a little ahead of their companions, who now came up and joined them.

“Well, Jack,” said Alvar, “I have been making inquiries, and I find that we can take the excursion among the mountains that you wished for. Mr Stanforth prefers making sketches here, and it would be too rough for the ladies, or for Cherry.”

“I suppose the mountains are very fine?” said Jack, not very energetically.

“Jack found the four hundred Moorish steps too much for him. He has grown lazy,” said Cherry. “For my part, I think the fruit market is the nicest place here; it has such a splendid view. I shall go there to-morrow and eat melons while you are away.”

“Miss Weston and I are going to buy scarves and curiosities in the market,” said Gipsy; “but they say we should have come here in May to see the great fair; that is the time to buy beautiful things.”

“Yes,” said Alvar, “and Mr Stanforth might have studied all the costumes of Andalusia. But, I think, since we ordered our dinner two hours ago, it is likely now to be ready. I hope the ladies are not tired of fried pork, for I do not think we shall get anything better.”

“Oh!” said Gipsy, “I mean to get mamma to introduce it at home; it is so good.”

“Do you, my dear?” said her father. “I am inclined to think that with the ordinary accompaniments of clean tablecloths and silver forks it might be disappointing.”

Without a table-cloth and with the very primitive implements of Ronda, the fried pork was very welcome; and when their dinner was over, as it was too dark to go out any more, they went down into the great public room on the ground floor of the inn, where round a bright wood-fire were gathered muleteers, other travellers and natives, both men and women.

It was a wonderful picturesque scene in the light of the fire, and Mr Stanforth’s sketching so delighted his subjects that they crowded round him, only anxious that he should draw them all, while the “English hidalgos” were objects of the greatest curiosity. The men came up to Jack and Cheriton, examining their clothes, their tobacco pouches and pipes; and one great fellow in a high hat, and brilliant-coloured shirt, looking so much like an ideal brigand that it was difficult to believe that he was only an olive-grower, after looking at Cheriton for some time, put out a very dirty hand, and touched his hair and cheek as if to assure himself that they were of the same substance as his own. Gipsy’s dress and demeanour interested them greatly, and one or two of them made her write her name on a bit of paper for them to keep.

The next day’s ride was fully discussed, and much information given as to route and destination. Then, at Cherry’s request, some of the muleteers sang to them wild half-melancholy airs, and one of the men danced a species of comic dance for their edification, and then the chief musician diffidently requested them to give a specimen of their national music. Gipsy laughed and looked shy; but her father laid down his pencil, and in a fine voice, and with feeling that told even in an unknown language, sang “Tom Bowling,” and then, as this gave great satisfaction, began “D’ye ken John Peel,” in the chorus of which his companions joined him.

“That,” he explained, “was a hunting song. Now he would give them a really national air;” and in the midst of this strange audience, he struck up the familiar notes of “God save the Queen.”

The English rose to their feet; the men lifted their hats, and all joined in and sang the old words with more patriotic fervour than at home they might have thought themselves capable of; and the Spaniards, with quick wit and ready courtesy, uncovered also, and when they had finished the musician picked out the notes on his guitar.

The weather next morning proving all that could be wished, Alvar and Jack, with a couple of guides, set off before daybreak on their ride into the mountains, intending to ascend on foot a certain peak from which the view was very fine, and which was accessible in the winter. The expedition had been entirely planned for Jack’s benefit, and perhaps he was not quite so grateful as he might have been. The others had no lack of occupation. They went down to the “Nereid’s Grotto,” a cave filled with clear emerald water, near which stand an old Moorish mill, built on rocks, fringed with masses of maidenhair fern. Mr Stanforth remained there sketching the building, white with a sort of dazzling eastern whiteness, the strange forms of cactus and aloe crowning the cliffs, and the washerwomen in gay handkerchiefs and scarlet petticoats kneeling on the flat stones by the river. Cheriton, with the ladies, went on their shopping expedition to find presents that might be sent home by Jack, and having found some silk handkerchiefs for his father, a wonderful sash for Nettie, and a striped rug for his grandmother, to whom Alvar intended to despatch some Spanish lace already bought in Seville, he helped Gipsy to choose a present for each of her numerous brothers and sisters, and himself hunted up smaller offerings for his friends of all degrees.

This occupied a long time, especially as the children followed them wherever they went, “as if one was the pied piper,” said Cherry; and afterwards they bought bread and fruit, and ate it for luncheon, and Gipsy reflected that in three weeks’ time she would be back in Kensington, very busy and rather gay, and would probably never buy pomegranates and melons in Ronda again in all her life.

Cheriton employed himself in the evening in writing to his father, while the Stanforths went down again to the mixed company below. He did not expect his brothers till late, and was not giving much heed to the time, when he looked up and saw Gipsy cross the room.

“Have they come back?” he said.

“No,” said Gipsy. “Don’t you think they ought to be here soon?”

Cherry glanced at his watch.

“Nine o’clock? Yes, I suppose they will be here directly, for the guides told us eight. People never get off mountains as soon as they expect they will. I’ll come down. I have finished my letter.”

Some time longer passed without any sign of an arrival, and the landlord of the inn, and some of the muleteers, began to say that either the Ingleses must have changed their route, or that something must have detained them till it was too dark to get down the mountains, so that they must be waiting till daylight to descend. Cheriton did not take alarm quickly; he knew that a very trifling change of path or weather would make this possible, and he was the first to say that they had better go to bed, and expect to see the wanderers in the morning; and Mr Stanforth, very anxious to avoid frightening him, chimed in with a cheerful augury to the same effect. But when Cheriton had left them, he said, anxiously, —

“I don’t like it; I am sure Alvar would not delay if he could help it – he would not cause so much anxiety.”

“But some very trifling matter might have detained them till after dark,” said Miss Weston.

“Oh, yes; I trust it may be so.”

Gipsy said nothing; but before her mind’s eye there rose a vision of more than one little wayside cross which she had been shown on their ride to Ronda, with the inscription, “Here died Don Luis or Don Pedro,” and the date.

These were erected, she was told, where travellers had been killed by saltiadores or brigands; but there were very few of such breakers of the law in Andalusia now. Still, their party had thought it right to carry arms. What if they had been driven to use them? – what if – ? Even to herself Gipsy could not finish the sentence; but she lay awake all night listening for an arrival, till her ears ached and burnt with the strain; till she heard in the night-time, that had hitherto seemed to her so silent, sounds innumerable; till she felt as if she could have heard their footsteps on the mountain side. And all the time the worst of it was that she heard nothing. And for fear that Miss Weston would guess at her terror, for speaking of it seemed to remove it from the vague regions of her imagination and give it new force, and also for fear of missing a sound, she lay as still as a mouse, till, spite of an occasional doze, the night seemed endless, and the most welcome thing in the world was the long-delayed winter dawn.

Gipsy was thankful to get up and dress and find out what was going on, and as soon as possible she ran downstairs and went out to the front of the inn. Her father was just before her, and Cheriton was standing talking to a group of guides and muleteers. He turned round and came up to them saying, —

“I have been making inquiries, and they say that if they kept to their intended route – and I feel sure that they would not change it – there is no reason to fear any dangerous accident such as one hears of on Swiss mountains. And the men all laugh at the notion of any brigandage nowadays. What I think is, that one of them may have got some slight hurt, twisted his foot, for instance, and been unable to get on; and if they don’t turn up in an hour or so I think we ought to go after them.” Cherry looked anxiously at Mr Stanforth as he spoke, as if, having worked up this view for his own benefit, he wanted to see others convinced by it also.