An English Squire

“Hurt me? Suppose he had?” said Cherry disdainfully. “But, Jack – Jack, I do believe you’re getting too many for me at last.”

“That is what you call athletics,” said Alvar, who looked unusually bright.

“Yes; wrestling is a regular north-country game, and the fellows about here have taught us all the tricks of it. Come, Jack, let us show him a bout.”

The two brothers pulled off their coats, and set to with a will; and after a long struggle, and with considerable difficulty, Cheriton succeeded in throwing Jack.

“There, I’ve done it once more!” he said breathlessly, “and I don’t suppose I shall ever do it again. You’re getting much stronger than I am, and of course you’re heavier.”

“Let me try to throw you down,” said Alvar eagerly.

“Nay, Jack may have first turn; but it’s fair to tell you there’s a great deal of knack in it.”

Alvar, however, was man instead of boy; he was quite as tall as Jack, and however he might have learnt to exercise his muscles, his grasp was like steel; and though Jack’s superior skill triumphed in the end, Alvar rose up cool and smiling, and Jack panted out, in half-unwilling admiration, —

“You’d beat us all with a little training.”

“Ah yes; that is because I am an Englishman,” said Alvar complacently. “But I bear no malice, Jack. It is in sport.”

“Of course,” said Jack. “Now, Cherry, you try.”

“It’s hardly fair in a biting frost,” said Cherry; “nobody can have any wind. However, here’s for the honour of Westmoreland.”

The younger ones gathered round in an admiring circle, and Cheriton, who did not like to be beaten, put forth all the strength and skill of which he was master. But he was the more slightly made, and had met his match, and to the extreme chagrin of his brothers and Nettie, sustained an entire defeat.

“Well, I never thought you would throw him,” said Jack, in a tone of deep disappointment.

“Ah,” said Alvar, “they always called me the strong Englishman.”

“Papa was the strongest man in Westmoreland,” said Nettie.

“Then,” said Alvar, “so far I have proved myself his son, and your brother. I would not skate with you, for I should look like a fool; but I knew you could not easily throw me down, since that is your sport. But, my brother, I have hurt you.”

“No,” said Cheriton getting up, “only knocked all the wind out of me, and made me look like a fool! Never mind, we shall understand each other all the better. Come upstairs, and we will show you some of the cups and things we have won in boat-races and athletics.”

This was a clever stroke of Cheriton’s; he wanted to make Alvar free of the premises, and had not yet found a good excuse. So, leaving the younger ones to finish their snowballing, he and Jack conducted Alvar up to the top of the house, where, at the end of the passage where they slept, was a curious low room, with a long, low window, looking west, above the west window of the drawing-room, and occupying nearly one side of the room, almost like the windows of the hand-loom weavers in the West Riding.

There was a low seat underneath, broad enough to lie on, but furnished with very dilapidated cushions. There was a turning-lathe in the room, and a cupboard for guns, and sundry cases of stuffed birds, one table covered with tools, glue-pots, and messes of all descriptions; and another, it is but justice to add, supplied with ink, pens, and paper, and various formidable-looking books, for here the boys did their reading. There was a great, old-fashioned grate with a blazing fire in it, and very incongruous ornaments above it – a stuffed dormouse, Nettie’s property – she maintained a footing in the room by favour – various pipes, two china dogs, white, with brown spots on them, presented to Cherry in infancy by his nurse, and a wooden owl carved by their cousin Rupert – a cousin in the second degree, who had been much with them owing to his father’s early death. On one side of the room were arranged on a sort of sideboard the cups and tankards which were the trophies of the brothers’ prowess, and these were now each pointed out to Alvar, and the circumstances of their acquisition described. Cheriton’s were fewer in proportion, and chiefly for leaping and hurdle-racing; and Jack explained that Cherry’s forte was cricket, and that, since he had once knocked himself up at school by a tremendous flat-race, their father had greatly objected to his going into training.

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Cherry; “he would not care now; but I really haven’t time. I must grind pretty hard from now to midsummer.”

“There is one thing I have read of,” said Alvar, “in English newspapers. It is a race of boats on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge.”

“Oh, yes, you must go and see it. That’s Jack’s ambition – to be one of the crew.”

“Ah, but you see there’s no river at R – , and that’s so unlucky,” said Jack seriously.

And so what with explanations and questions the ice melted a little. Alvar looked smiling and beneficent; he did not seem at all ashamed of his own ignorance; and Jack evidently regarded him with a new respect.

Cheriton also contrived that the Seytons, with the vicar of Oakby, Mr Ellesmere and his wife, should be asked to dinner; and as the vicar had some general conversation, some information about Spain was elicited from Alvar, who, moreover, was pleased to find himself in ladies’ society, and was evidently at ease in it; while Virginia, in exchange for the pleasant talk that seemed to come out of her old life, could tell Cheriton that her cousin Ruth was coming to stay with her, and could confide in him that home was still a little strange.

“Well, strangers are strange,” said Cherry. “We are shaking down, but the number of tempers lost in the process might be advertised for ‘as of no value except to the owners,’ if to them. Only the home-made article, you understand – ”

“Dear me,” said Virginia, “I should as soon think of losing my temper with the Cid. Aren’t you afraid of him?”

Cheriton made an irresistibly ludicrous face.

“Don’t tell,” he said, “but I think we are; and yet, you know, we think ‘yon soothern chap,’ as old Bates called him, must be ‘a bit of a softy’ after all.”

“Oh, Cherry, that is how you talked yourself when we were children,” exclaimed Virginia impulsively. “Do you know I feel I was born here, when I hear the broad Westmoreland. I never forgot it.”

“Nay, I’m glad you don’t say I talk so now,” said Cherry. “They tell me at Oxford that my tongue always betrays me when I am excited. But here comes Alvar; now make him fall in love with Westmoreland. Alvar, Miss Seyton has been abroad, so she is not quite a benighted savage.”

“My brother Cheriton is not a savage,” said Alvar, smiling, as Cherry moved away. “He is the kindest and most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

“Yes, he is very kind. But I hope, Mr Lester, that you do not think us all savages, with that one exception.”

“In future I can never think so,” said Alvar, with a bow. “These boys are savage certainly – very savage, but I do not care.”

“It is strange, is it not,” said Virginia, rather timidly, “to have to make acquaintance with one’s own father?”

“Of my father I say nothing,” said Alvar, with a sudden air of hauteur, that made the impulsive Virginia blush, and feel as if she had taken a liberty with him, till he added, with a smile, “Miss Seyton, too, I hear, is a stranger.”

“Yes, I have been away ever since I was a little girl, and – and I had forgotten my relations.”

“I have not known mine,” said Alvar; “Cheriton wrote to me once a little letter. I have it now, and since then I have loved him. I do not know the rest, and they wish I was not here.”

“But don’t you think,” said Virginia earnestly, “that we – that you will soon feel more at home with them?”

“Oh, I do not know,” said Alvar, with a shrug. “It is cold, and I am so dull that I could die. They understand no thing. And in Spain I was the chief; I could do what I wished. Here I must follow and obey. My name even is different. I do not know ‘Mr Lester.’ I am ‘Don Alvar.’ Will you not call me so?”

“But that would be so very strange to me,” said Virginia, parrying this request. “Every one will call you Mr Lester. How tall Nettie is grown. Do you not think her very pretty?”

“Oh, she is pink, and white, and blue, and yellow; but she is like a little boy. There is not in her eyes the attraction, the coquetry, which I admire,” said Alvar, pointing his remark with a glance at his companion’s lucid, beaming, interested eyes, in which however there was little conscious coquetry.

“I am sorry to hear you admire coquettes,” was too obvious an answer to be resisted.

“Nay, it is the privilege of beauty,” said Alvar.

Virginia, like many impulsive people, was apt to recollect with a cold chill conversations by which at the time she had been entirely carried away. But on looking back at this one she liked it. Alvar’s dignity and grace of manner made his trifling compliments both flattering and respectful. His feelings, too, she thought, were evidently deep and tender; and how she pitied him for his solitary condition!

Chapter Eight.

A Day of Rest

“Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar.”

On the third Sunday morning after Alvar’s arrival, Mr Lester came down as usual at the sound of the gong, and as he glanced round the dining-room missed his two elder sons.

Prayers were over and breakfast had begun before Alvar entered.

“Ah pardon,” he said, bowing to his grandmother; “I did not know it was late.”

“I make a point of being punctual on Sunday,” said Mr Lester, in a tone of incipient displeasure.

“Cheriton is late too,” said Alvar.

“No,” said Jack, “he’s gone to Church.”

“All, then we do not go to-day,” said Alvar, with an air of relief so comical that even the solemn Jack could hardly stand it.

“Oh, yes, we do,” he said, “this is extra.”

“Cheriton,” said Mr Lester, “is very attentive to his religious duties.”

“I suppose he’ll have breakfast at the Vicarage,” said Nettie, as Alvar raised his eyebrows and gave a little shrug.

It was a gesture habitual to him, and was not intended to express contempt either for religion or for Cheriton, but only a want of comprehension of the affair; but it annoyed Mr Lester and called his attention to the fact that Alvar had appeared in a black velvet coat of a peculiar foreign cut, the sight of which he disliked on a week-day, and considered intolerable when it was contrasted with the spruce neatness of the rest of the party. He could not very well attack Alvar on the subject, but he sharply reproved Bob for cutting hunches of bread when no one wanted them, and found fault with the coffee. And then, apparently à propos of nothing, he began to make a little speech about the importance of example in a country place, and the influence of trifles.

“And I can assure every one present,” he concluded emphatically, “that there is no need to look far for an example of the evil effects of neglect in these particulars.”

“Elderthwaite?” whispered Nettie to Jack.

“Ay,” said Mrs Lester, “young people should show respect to Sunday morning. It is what in my father’s house was always insisted on. Your grandfather, too, used to say that he liked his dogs even to know Sunday.”

“It is strange to me,” said Alvar coolly.

“It will be well that you should give yourself the pains to become accustomed to it,” said his father curtly.

It was the first time that the stately stranger had been addressed in such a tone, and he looked up with a flash of the eye that startled the younger ones.

“Sir, it is by your will I am a stranger here,” he said, with evident displeasure.

“Stranger or no, my regulations must be respected,” said Mr Lester, his colour rising.

Alvar rose from his seat and proved his claim at any rate to the family temper by bowing to his grandmother and marching out of the room.

“Highty tighty!” said the grandmother. “Here’s a spirt of temper for you!”

“Intolerable insolence!” exclaimed Mr Lester. “Under my roof he must submit to what I please to say to him.”

“It’s just what I told ye, Gerald; a foreigner’s ways are what we cannot do with,” said Mrs Lester.

“Of course,” blurted out Jack, with the laudable desire of mending matters; “of course he is a foreigner. How can you expect him to be anything else? And father never said it was his coat.”

“His coat?” said Mr Lester. “It is his temper to which I object. When he came I told him that I expected Sunday to be observed in my house, and he agreed.”

“But he did not understand that you thought that coat improper on Sunday,” said Jack with persevering justice.

“I am not in the habit of being obscure,” said Mr Lester, as he rose from the table, while Jack thought he would give Alvar a little good advice.

Cherry was too soft; he was equally impartial, and would be more plain spoken. But as he approached the library he heard an ominous tinkling, and entering, beheld Alvar, still in the objectionable coat, beginning to play on the still more objectionable guitar, an air which Jack did not think sounded like a hymn tune.

Jack really intended to mend matters, but his manner was unfortunate, and in the tone he would have used to a disobedient fag he remarked, as he stood bolt upright beside his brother, —

“I say, Alvar, I think you’d better not play on that thing this morning.”

“There is no reason for you to tell me what to do,” said Alvar quietly.

“It’s not, you know,” said Jack, “that I think there’s any harm in it. My views are very liberal. I only think it’s a frivolous and unmanly sort of instrument; but the governor won’t like it, and there’ll be no end of a row.”

“You have not a musical soul,” said Alvar loftily, for he had had time to cool down somewhat.

“Certainly not,” said the liberal Jack, with unnecessary energy and a tone of disgust; “but that’s not the question. It’s not the custom here to play that sort of thing on a thing like that on a Sunday morning. Ask Cherry.”

“Would it vex my brother?” asked Alvar.

“If you mean Cheriton, it certainly would. He hates a row.”

“A row?” said the puzzled Alvar, “that is a noise – my guitar?”

“Oh, hang it! no, a quarrel,” began Jack, when suddenly —

“Sir, I consider this an act of defiance; I beg I may see that instrument put away at once,” and Mr Lester’s voice took the threatening sound that made his anger always appear so much worse than it really was. “I will have the proprieties of my house observed, and no example of this kind set to your younger brothers.”

Alvar had taken Jack’s interference with cool contempt, but now he started up with a look of such passion as fairly subdued Jack into a hasty —

“Oh come, come, I say, now – don’t!” Alvar controlled himself suddenly and entirely.

“Sir, I obey my father’s commands. I will say good morning,” and taking up his guitar went up to his own room, from which he did not emerge at church time, and as no one ventured to call him they set off without him. Among themselves they might quarrel and make it up again many times a day, but Alvar’s feelings were evidently more serious.

It was occasionally Cheriton’s practice to sing in the choir, more for the popularity of his example than for his voice, which was indifferent. Alvar had been greatly puzzled at his doing so, and had then told him that “in that white robe he looked like the picture of an angel,” a remark which so discomfited Cherry that he had further perplexed his unlucky brother by saying, – “Pray don’t say such a thing to the others, I should never hear the last of it. You’d better say I look like an ass at once.”

He did not therefore see anything of his family till he met them after the service, when Jack attacked him.

“What induced you to go out this morning? Everything has gone utterly wrong, and I shouldn’t wonder if we should find Alvar gone back to Spain.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Alvar came down late in that ridiculous coat and then played the guitar. And if ever you saw a fellow in a passion! He likes his own way.”

“Was father angry?”

“I should just think so, I don’t expect they’ll speak.”

This was a pleasant prospect. Cheriton saw that his father’s brow was cloudy, and as he went upstairs his grandmother called him into her room.

“Cheriton,” she said mysteriously, as she sat down and untied her bonnet, “Jack has told you of your brother’s behaviour, and it’s my belief there’s a clue to it, and I hope you’ll take warning, for I sometimes think ye’ve a hankering after that way yourself.”

“What way, grandmamma? I never play the guitar on a Sunday morning.”

“Nay, but there’s more behind. It’s well known how Sunday is profaned in Popish countries. I’ve heard they keep the shops open in France. Your brother has been brought up among Papists, and it would be a sad thing for your father’s son to give all this property into the hands of the priests.”

“Dear me, granny, what a frightful suggestion. But I’m sure Alvar has no Romish sympathies. He has no turn for anything of the kind, and I should think the Roman Church was very unattractive in Spain.”

“Ay, but they’re very deep.”

“Well,” said Cherry, “if Alvar is a Jesuit in disguise, as you say, and rather a dissipated person, as my father seems to think, and has such an appalling temper as Jack describes, we’re in a bad way. I think I’ll go and see for myself.”

When Cherry entered Alvar’s room he found this alarming compound of qualities sitting by the fire looking forlorn and lonely. “Why, Alvar, what’s all this about?”

“Ah, my brother,” said Alvar, “you were absent and all has been wrong. My father is offended with me. I know not why. He insulted me.”

“Oh, nonsense! we never talk about being insulted. My father’s a little hasty, but he means nothing by it. What did you do that annoyed him?”

“I played my guitar and Jack scolded me. No one shall do so but you.”

“I daresay Jack made an ass of himself – he often does; but he is a thorough good fellow at bottom. You know we do get up in our best clothes on Sunday.”

“I can do that,” said Alvar, “but your Sunday I do not understand. You tell me I may not play at cards or at billiards; you do not dance nor go to the theatre. What good does it do? I would go to church, though it is tiresome, and I shudder at the singing. It is a mark, doubtless, of my father’s politics; but at home – well, I can smoke, if that is better?”

Driven back to first principles, Cheriton hardly knew what to say. “Of course,” he answered. “I have often heard the matter discussed, and I don’t pretend to say that at Oxford the best of us are as particular as we might be. But in a country place like this, carelessness would do infinite harm. And, on the whole, I shouldn’t like the rule to be otherwise.”

Alvar sighed, and made no answer.

“But,” continued Cherry, “I think no one has a right to impose rules on you. I wouldn’t bring out the guitar in the morning – it looks rather odd, you know – nor wear that coat. But we’re not so very strict; there are always newspapers about, and novels, and, as you say, you can smoke or talk, or play the piano – I’m sure no one would know what the tune was – or write letters. Really, it might be worse, you know.”

Perhaps Cherry’s coaxing voice and eyes were more effectual than his arguments; any way, Alvar said, “Well, I will offer my hand to my father, if he will take it.”

“Oh, no; pray don’t make a scene about it. There’s the gong. Put on your other coat, and come down. We do eat our dinner on Sunday, and I’m awfully hungry.”

Whether Mr Lester accepted the coat as a flag of truce, or whether he did not wish to provoke a contest with an unknown adversary, nothing more was said; but Alvar’s evil star was in the ascendant, and he was destined to run counter to his family in a more unpardonable way.

He had no sympathy whatever with the love for animals, which was perhaps the softest side of his rough kindred. All the English Lesters were imbued with that devotion to live creatures which is ingrain with some natures. No trouble was too great to take for them. Bob and Nettie got up in the morning and went out in all weathers to feed their ferrets, or their jackdaws, or whatever pet was young, sick, or troublesome. Cheriton’s great Saint Bernard, Rolla, ranked somewhere very near Jack in his affections, and had been taught, trained, beaten, and petted, till he loved his master with untiring devotion. Mrs Lester had her chickens and turkeys, Mr Lester his prize cattle and his horses, some of the latter old and well-tried friends.

It must be admitted that Oakby was a trying place for people devoid of this sentiment. Every one had a dog, more or less valuable, and jackdaws and magpies have their drawbacks as members of a family. Alvar openly said that he had never seen anybody make pets of dumb animals, and that he could not understand doing so; and though he took no notice of them, Rolla and an old pointer of Mr Lester’s, called Rose, had already been thrashed for growling at him.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, the bright cold weather clouded over and promised a thaw. Alvar preferred dulness to the weather out-of-doors, and Cheriton accompanied his father on the Sunday stroll, which included all the beasts on the premises, and generally ended in visits to the old keeper and coachman, who thought it the height of religious advantage to bear the squire read a chapter.

Mr Lester was aware that he had been impatient with his son, and that Alvar could not be expected to be imbued with an instinctive knowledge of those forms of religion with which his father had been inspired by his young brilliant wife, when “Fanny” had taught him to restore his church and build his schools in a fuller fashion than had satisfied his father, and made him believe that his position demanded of himself and his family a personal participation in all good works – some control of them he naturally desired.

He was, as Mr Ellesmere said, with a little shrug, when forced to yield a point, “a model squire,” conscientious and open-handed, but unpersuadable. Perhaps the clear-eyed, wide-souled Fanny might have allowed more readily for the necessary changes of twenty years. Certainly she would better have appreciated a newcomer’s difficulties; while poor Mr Lester felt that Fanny’s ideal was invaded, and not by Fanny’s son. It spoilt his walk with Cheriton, and made him reply sharply to the latter’s attempts at agreeable conversation. Cheriton at length left him at the old gamekeeper’s; and while Mr Lester’s irritable accents were softened into kindly inquiries for the old father, now pensioned off, he chatted to the son, at present in command, who had been taking care of a terrier puppy for him.

Finding that Buffer, so called from his prevailing colour, was looking strong and lively, Cheriton thought it would be as well to accustom him to society, and took him back to the house. He could not help wondering what would become of Alvar when he was left alone at Oakby. Another fortnight would hardly be sufficient to give him any comfortable, independent habits; how could he endure such deadly dulness as the life there would bring him? That fortnight would be lively enough, and there would be his cousin, Rupert Lester, for an additional companion, and another Miss Seyton, more attractive than Virginia, for an occasional excitement. If Alvar was so fascinating a person to young ladies, would he – would she – ? An indefinite haze of questions pervaded Cheriton’s mind, and as he reckoned over the county beauties whom he could introduce to Alvar, and whom he would surely admire more than just the one particular beauty who had first occurred to his thoughts, he reached the house. He found his brothers and Nettie alone in the library, Alvar sitting apart in the window, and looking out at the stormy sky.

“Hallo!” said Jack, “so you have brought Buffer up. Well, he has grown a nice little chap.”

“Yes, I thought it was time he should begin his education. Nice head, hasn’t he? He is just like old Peggy.”

“Yes, he’ll be a very good dog some day.”

“Set him down,” said Bob; “let’s have a look at him.”

“Little darling!” said Nettie, enthusiastically.

Buffer was duly examined, and then, as Cherry turned to the fire to warm himself, observing that it was colder than ever, began to play about the room, while they entered on a discussion of the merits of all his relations up to their dim recollection of his great-grandmother.