An English Squire

As he spoke, a little bit of an old woman came in with some cold pheasant and a jug of beer, which she placed before him. She was wrinkled up almost to nothing, but her steps were active enough, and she had lived with Parson Seyton all his life.

“Ay, Deborah knows your tastes. And what do you want of me?”

“I want to give you a lecture, Parson,” said Cherry coolly.

“The deuce you do? Out with it, then.”

“Virginia has been telling me that you will not let her teach the little kids on a Sunday.”

“Bless my soul, Cheriton! d’ye think I’m going to let the girl run all over the place and hear tales of her father and brothers, and may be of myself into the bargain?”

“No,” said Cherry; “but you ought to be very much obliged to her, Parson. It’s a shame to see those little ruffians. Now you’re going to call on half-a-dozen decentish people and tell them to send their children down here of a Sunday morning at ten o’clock. Virginia will teach them in the hall. I’ll get them to send over a couple of forms from Oakby. Don’t let her begin with above a dozen, and don’t have any big boys at first. Deborah might give them a bit of cake now and again to make the lessons go down. What do you say?”

“I say you’re the coolest hand in Westmoreland, and enough to wile the flounders out of the frith!” said the old parson, as Cherry peeped at him over his shoulder to see the effect of his words.

“What are we coming to?”

“A model school, perhaps.”

“And a model parson. Eh, Cherry, these enlightened days can’t do with the old lot much longer.”

“Oh, you’re moving with the times,” said Cherry, as he came and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at the parson as he filled his pipe, and smiling at him. Perhaps no other being in the world could have got Parson Seyton to consent to such an innovation, but he loved Cheriton Lester, who little knew how much self-respect the allegiance of his high-principled, promising youth was worth to the queer old sporting parson. One atom of pretence or of priggishness in a well-conducted correct young man would have been of all things odious to him, but the shrewd old man believed in Cheriton to the backbone, and of all the admiration and affection that the popular young man had won perhaps none did him so much credit as the love that made him a sort of good angel to rough Parson Seyton.

“You got my best dog out of me when I gave you Rolla,” he said, “so I suppose you’ll have your own way now.”

“And it’ll turn out quite as well as Rolla,” said Cherry rather illogically.

Parson Seyton set about fulfilling his promise after a manner of his own.

He rapped with his dog-whip at a cottage door and thus addressed the mother: —

“Eh, Betty, there’s a grand new start in Elderthwaite. Here’s Miss Virginia going to turn all the children into first-rate scholars. Wash them up and send them over to my house on Sunday morning, and I’ll give a penny to the cleanest, and a licking to any one that doesn’t mind his manners.”

If Parson Seyton had been a school-board visitor he could hardly have put the matter more plainly, and on the whole could hardly have adopted language more likely to be effectual.

Chapter Eleven.

Alvar Confidential

“He talked of daggers and of darts,Of passions and of pains.”

The rain had ceased, and long pale rays of sunshine were streaming through the mist as Cheriton made his way through a very dilapidated turnstile and across a footpath much in need of drainage towards Elderthwaite House. As he came up through the overgrown shrubberies he saw in front of him a small fur-clothed figure, and his colour deepened and his heart beat faster as he recognised Ruth. He had been thinking that he should see her ever since his promise to Virginia, but he had not expected to meet her out-of-doors on so wet a day, and he had hardly a word to say as he lifted his hat and came up to her. She was less discomposed, perhaps less astonished.

“Ah! how do you do?” she said. “Do you know when I saw some one coming I hoped it might be your new brother. I am so curious to see him.”

“He is not a bit like any of us,” said Cherry.

“No? That would be a change, for all you Lesters are so exactly alike.”

Ruth had a way of saying saucy things in a soft serious voice, with grave eyes just ready to laugh. Cheriton and she had had many a passage of arms together, and now he rallied his forces and answered, —

“Being new, of course he’ll be charming. Rupert and Jack and I will know all our partners are longing for him. But as he can only dance with one young lady at a time, in the intervals I shall hope – I am much improved in my waltzing – just to get a turn.”

“Really improved – at last?” said Ruth; then suddenly changing to sympathy – “But isn’t it very strange for you all? How do you get on? How do you like him?”

“Oh, he isn’t half a bad fellow, and we’re excellent friends.”

“That’s very good of you. Now I have such a bad disposition that if I were in your place I should be half mad with jealousy.”

Cheriton laughed incredulously.

“I daresay you would stroke us all down the right way. Rupert says he feels as if he were lighting his cigar in a powder-magazine. But they get on very well, and Grace and Mary Cheriton think him perfectly charming.”

“I think I shall come to the ball in a mantilla. But have you done anything for poor Virginia?”

“Oh, yes; the old parson only wanted a little explanation,” said Cherry, quite carelessly enough to encourage Ruth in adding earnestly, —

“It is so good of her to want to help these poor people. Queenie is like a girl in a book. I really think she likes disagreeable duties.”

“I am sure you, who can sympathise with Virginia and yet know all the troubles, will be able to make it smooth for her. I wish you would.”

“Ah, but I am not nearly so good as Virginia,” said Ruth – a perfectly true statement, which she herself believed. Whether she expected Cheriton to believe it was a different matter.

Alvar had no excuse now for finding Oakby dull; the house was full of people, Lady Cheriton and her daughters were enchanted with his music, and he brightened up considerably and was off Cheriton’s mind, so that nothing spoilt the radiance of enjoyment that transfigured all the commonplace gaiety into a fairy dream. The younger ones found the times less good. Jack was shy and bored by fine people, Bob hated his dress clothes, Nettie was teased by Rupert, who varied between treating her as a Tomboy and flattering her as an incipient beauty, and thought her grandmother’s restrictions to white muslin and blue ribbons hard. But Mrs Lester had no notion of letting her forestall her career as a county beauty.

When Cheriton came back from Elderthwaite he found the whole party by the hall fire in the full tide of discussion and chatter, Nettie on the rug with Buffer in her arms complaining of the white muslin.

“Sha’n’t I look horrid, Rupert?”

“Frightful; but as you’ll be sure to bring Buffer into the ball-room he’d tear anything more magnificent.”

“I sha’n’t bring in Buffer! Rupert, what an idea! He’ll be shut up, poor darling! But at least I may turn up my hair, and I shall. I’m quite tall enough.”

“Turn your hair up? Don’t you do anything of the sort, Nettie. Little girls are fashionable, and yellow manes and muslin frocks will carry the day against wreaths and silk dresses. You let your hair alone, and then people will know it’s all real by-and-by.”

“Well, I’d much rather turn it up,” said Nettie simply.

“Well, perhaps I would,” said Rupert. “Fellows might say you let it down on purpose.”

Rupert conveyed a great deal of admiration of the golden locks in his tone, but Nettie, though vain enough, was insensible to veiled flattery.

“Plait it up, Nettie,” said Cherry briefly.

“If anybody thought I did such a nasty, mean, affected thing as that I’d never speak to him again. Never! I’d cut it all off sooner,” cried Nettie.

“Young ladies’ hair does come down sometimes,” said Rupert; “when it’s long enough.”

“Mine never shall,” said Nettie emphatically.

“Don’t do it yourself, then,” said Cherry.

“If Nettie ever takes to horrid, affected, flirting ways,” said Jack, who had joined the party, “I for one shall have nothing more to say to her.”

“You don’t admire flirts, Jack?” said Rupert.

“I don’t approve of them,” said Jack crossly.

“Oh, come, come, now, Jack, that’s very severe.”

“Poor Jack!” said Cherry; “he speaks from personal experience. There was that heartless girl last summer, who, after hours of serious conversation with him, went off to play croquet with Tom Hubbard, and gave him a moss-rose-bud. Poor Jack! it was a blow; he can’t recover from it! It has affected all his views of life, you see.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rupert, as Jack forcibly stopped Cherry’s mouth; “I’d no notion it was a personal matter. Will she be at the ball?”

“No; you see, we avoided asking her.”

“Cherry!” interposed the disgusted Jack, “how can you go on in this way! It’s all his humbug, Rupert.”

This serious denial produced, of course, shouts of laughter – in the midst of which Alvar entered and joined himself to the group round the fire as they waited for the arrival of some friends of Cheriton’s.

“And what have you been about?” asked Cherry.

“I have been singing with your cousins. Ah, it is pleasant when there are those who like music!”

“You found all these fellows awful savages, didn’t you?” said Rupert.

Alvar turned his great dark eyes on Cheriton with the same sort of expression with which Rolla was wont to watch him.

“Ah, no,” he said; “my brother is not a savage. But I do like young ladies.”

“But I thought,” said Rupert, “that in Spain young ladies were always under a duenna, so that there was no chance of an afternoon over the piano?”

“But I assure you Miladi Cheriton was present,” said Alvar seriously.

“Oh, that alters the question!” said Rupert. “But come, now, we have been hearing Jack’s views – let us have your confessions. Is the duenna always there, Alvar?”

“Here is my sister,” said Alvar, with the oddest sort of simplicity, and yet with a tone that conveyed a sort of reproach to Rupert and – for the first time – of proprietorship in Nettie.

Rupert burst into a shout of laughter: “My dear fellow, what are you going to tell us?”

“She is a young girl; surely even here you do not say everything to her?” said Alvar, looking perplexed.

“By Jove, no!” said Rupert; “not exactly.”

“Since Nettie is here, we should not have asked you to tell us anything we did not wish her to hear,” said Cheriton, with a sense of annoyance that Alvar should be laughed at.

“You did not ask me,” said Alvar quietly.

At this moment Bob called Nettie so emphatically, that she was obliged unwillingly to go away.

“Now then, Alvar,” said Rupert, “now for it. We won’t be shocked. Tell us how you work the duennas.”

“It would not have been well to explain that to Nettie,” said Alvar seriously.

“Why not?” said Jack, suddenly boiling up. “Do you think she would ever cheat or want a duenna? English girls can always be trusted!”

“Can they?” said Rupert. “Shut up, Jack; you don’t understand. We only want you to tell us how you do in Spain. Affaires du coeur– you know, Alvar.”

Alvar looked round with an air half-shrewd, half-sentimental; while Cheriton listened a little seriously. He knew very little of Alvar’s former life; perhaps because he had been too reticent to ask him questions; perhaps because Alvar found himself in the presence of a standard higher than he was accustomed to. Anyway, Nettie might have heard his present revelations.

“There was a time,” he said, sighing, “when I did not intend to come to England – when I had sworn to be for ever a Spaniard. Ah, my cousin, if you had seen my Luisa, you would not have wondered. I sang under her window; I went to mass that I might gaze on her.”

“Did you now? Foreign customs!” interposed Rupert; while Cherry laughed, though he felt they were hardly treating Alvar fairly.

“I knew not how to speak to her. She was never alone; and it was whispered that she was already betrothed. But one day she dropped her fan.”

“No, no – surely?” said Cherry.

“I seized it, I kissed it, I held it to my heart,” said Alvar, evidently enjoying the narration, “and I returned it. There were looks between us – then words. Ah, I lived in her smiles. We met, we exchanged vows, and I was happy!”

Rupert listened to this speech with amusement, which he could hardly stifle. It was inexpressibly ludicrous to Cheriton; but the fun was lost in the wonder whether Alvar meant what he said. This was neither like the joking sentiment nor the pretended indifference of an Englishman’s reference to such passages in his life; yet the memory evidently cost Alvar no pain. Jack sat, looking totally disgusted.

“At last,” Alvar went on, “we were discovered. Ah, and then my grandfather was enraged, and her parents, they refused their consent, since she was betrothed already. I am an Englishman, and I do not weep when I am grieved, but my heart was a stone. I despaired.”

“She must have been a horrid little flirt not to tell you she was engaged,” said Jack.

“She did not know it till we had met,” said Alvar.

“What awful tyranny!”

“Ah, and she was your only love!” sighed Rupert.

“No,” said Alvar simply, “I have loved others; but she was the most beautiful. But I submitted, and now I forget her!”

“Hm – the truest wisdom,” said Rupert.

Cherry was growing angry. He did not think that Rupert had any business to make fun of Alvar, and he was in a rage with Alvar for making himself ridiculous. That Alvar should tell a true love-tale with sentimental satisfaction to an admiring audience, or sigh over a flirtation which ought to have been a good joke, was equally distasteful to him. He burst out suddenly, with all his Lester bluntness, and in a tone which Alvar had hitherto heard only from Jack, —

“If you fellows are not all tired of talking such intolerable nonsense, I am. It’s too bad of you,” with a sharp look at Rupert. “I don’t see that it’s any affair of ours.”

“You’re not sympathetic,” said Rupert, as he moved away; for he was quite familiar enough with his cousins for such giving and taking.

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.”