An English Squire

Chapter Nine.

A New Life

The next morning Cheriton slept late, and awoke to the consciousness that he had caught a slight cold, “which,” as he said to himself, “might happen to any one.”

“Will you ask Mr Lester to come to me before he goes to Hazelby?” he said, not feeling quite able to satisfy himself that Alvar had all the needful evidence clear in his head.

“Mr Lester is not going to Hazelby, sir,” said the man; “he went to Lord Milford’s early this morning in the dog-cart. He left word that he would not disturb you, sir.”

The engagement at Milford flashed across Cheriton’s mind, and with dismay and indignation he perceived that Alvar had not thought it worth while to break it on Chris Fleming’s account. In a moment he recognised the utter ruin that would fall on all chance of Alvar’s success with his tenants, still more the disgrace that he would bring on himself in the eyes of the whole bench of magistrates, by the neglect of such an obvious duty, while on his own part he felt that it was such an unkindness as he hardly knew how to forgive. His first impulse was to let the matter alone, and to leave Alvar to bear the brunt of his own misdoings. But then the thought came of the distress to the Flemings, of the fatal injury to the boy from the weeks of undeserved detention, and, after all, the discredit would fall on them all alike. He forgot all his intention of nursing his cold, forgot its very existence, as he perceived, on looking at his watch, that he had barely time to reach Hazelby for the meeting.

“It is all the same,” he said, “my going to Hazelby will answer every purpose. Tell them to bring Molly round at once. As Mr Lester has the dog-cart, I will ride.”

“There is a very cold wind, and it looks like rain, sir.”

“That can’t be helped,” said Cheriton, “there is no time to lose.”

He tried to make his expedition seem a matter of course; but every one in the house believed that he went because the squire had gone off on his own pleasure, or out of what the old cook did not hesitate to call “nasty spite,” had refused to justify little Fleming. Indeed, as Cheriton rode hurriedly away, he could hardly divest himself of the same opinion.

In the meanwhile, Alvar no sooner found himself well on the way to Milford than he began to feel pangs of compunction. The cold wind and drizzling rain beat in his face, as the conviction was borne in upon him, that Cheriton would certainly go to Hazelby in his place. He had not been at Milford since the day of the great rejoicing, when Cheriton, with all his fresh honours, had met them there, had wooed, and, as he thought, won Ruth Seyton; when he himself was Virginia’s acknowledged lover. He called her to mind, as she had walked by his side in smiling content, as she played with the children – felt now, as he never had then, the wistfulness of her eyes when they met his, and almost for the first time he recognised that the want of devotion had been on his side. He had not loved her enough. A sense of discouragement and despondence seized on him, a deep melancholy softened the resentment which he had been cherishing. As he looked back on the years of his father’s neglect, on Virginia’s dismissal, on his brother’s views of what his position required, for once the sense of his shortcomings overpowered his sense of the many excuses for them. His indifference to the chance of Cheriton’s running a great risk touched him with a self-reproach for which his theories of life offered no palliative. He could not rest, and with a suddenness and vehemence of action most unusual with him, he turned to Lord Milford as they prepared to start on their day’s sport, declared that he had suddenly recollected an important engagement, and must beg them to excuse him at once; overruled all objections on the score of his horse wanting rest by declaring that he would only drive to the station, and go by train to Hazelby.

“I am humiliated by my want of courtesy to your lordship, but it is necessary that I should go,” he said; but what with the delay of starting, and the absence of a train at the last moment, the magistrates’ meeting was over long before he reached Hazelby, every one had dispersed, and the court-house was shut.

He could not bring himself to ask any questions; but ordered a conveyance and started on his way back to Oakby, hardly knowing whether to reveal his change of purpose or not. On the road he passed the three Fleming brothers, trudging home through the mud. They looked away, and omitted to touch their hats to him. Alvar said to himself that he did not care; but the sense of unpopularity can never be other than bitter. He thought to himself that after all English gentlemen did not always live on their estates. There were hundreds of his father’s rank who did not hold his father’s view of their duties. He could shut Oakby up, let it, go where he would never see it again. But where? Never as the disinherited heir would he set foot in Seville, and he had no craving to hunt tigers in India, or buffaloes on the prairies. He did not wish to go yachting; did not care to travel; he hated the fogs and the colourlessness of London. He was as little ready to cut himself loose from all his moorings as Cheriton himself. Suddenly, as he drove on, he saw one of the Oakby grooms riding fast towards him. The man pulled up as he passed.

“Mr Cheriton is ill, sir; Mrs Lester is there, and she sent me for the doctor.”

Alvar felt as if he had been shot.

“Ride on,” he said, breathlessly; then seized the driver of the trap by the shoulder – “Drive fast; I will give you five pounds if you will drive fast. My brother is ill; he will want me.”

“Ay, sir – all right, sir,” said the lad, lashing up his horse.

Alvar felt as if a telegraph would have been slow; but he folded his arms, and sat like a statue till they reached the door, when he sprang out, and at the foot of the stairs saw Jack.

“Alvar! you here!” he exclaimed.

“What is it? – where is he? – what has happened? – tell me!” cried Alvar.

“Cherry went to Hazelby, of course, to clear Chris, as you were out of the way. He was so done up when he came back, and seems so evidently in for just such a bad attack as he had before, that granny, who came back here with me, sent for Mr Adamson. Yes, he is in bed; he was wet through.”

Jack’s face was like thunder; but Alvar dashed past him upstairs, and opened the door of his brother’s room.

Cheriton was sitting up in bed. He had recovered a little from the exhaustion of his hasty ride, and though suffering much pain and oppression, was spending some of the little breath he had left, in trying to explain matters to his grandmother.

“You always were a perverse lad, or you would not be using your voice now, Cherry,” she said. “When your brother comes back, I shall give him a piece of my mind.”

“There he is,” cried Cherry. There was a look in his eyes for a moment as if he hardly knew how they were to meet; but as Alvar advanced into the room, all his vehemence subsided. He came up to the bed, and laid his hand on Cheriton’s with the old tender touch.

“You are ill, mi caro. I think you must not talk so much just now.”

Cheriton looked up in his face, and read in it, steady as was the voice, an altogether new terror and trouble.

“This is my own fault,” he said. “I was in such a hurry – that – I would not wait for the carriage. After all, there would have been time.”

“Oh, my brother – my brother!” cried Alvar, losing his self-control, “your fault! Grandmother, it is I who have let him kill himself.”

“You are just crazy,” said Mrs Lester, agitated and angry, as Alvar rushed up to her, and threw himself on his knees beside her chair, clasping her hands in his. “I don’t care whose fault it is. No doubt you are one as bad as the other. For the last half hour I have been trying to make Cherry hold his tongue, and now you make a worse turmoil than ever. Since my poor son went there is no one to look to.”

Mrs Lester was shaken and terrified by the shock of sudden alarm, and agitated by Alvar’s extraordinary behaviour, and thus her still fresh grief came back on her, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, granny, don’t – don’t!” cried Cherry, and the distress of his tone recalled Alvar to his senses.

“Oh, I am a fool!” he said, and getting up, he applied himself to soothe his grandmother with all the tact of which he was master, and was so successful, that in a few minutes she went away in search of some remedy for Cheriton, who, as he was left alone with his brother, felt, spite of his increasing suffering, the old sense of repose in Alvar’s care creep over him.

“As violent an attack as the last, and much less strength to meet it,” was the doctor’s verdict, and the great common terror hushed for the time all disputes and differences.

Mrs Lester remained at Oakby, Nettie had returned to London a few days previously, and both she and Bob held themselves ready for a sudden summons.

Mrs Lester questioned Alvar on that first evening about all that had passed, in a dry, caustic fashion, while he answered, meekly enough. “Why, ye’ll have made yourself a laughing-stock to the whole place,” was her only comment on the story of the horsewhipping.

Alvar coloured to his temples, but said nothing; the reproach of Jack’s silent misery was much harder to bear. He who knew how all the last weeks had been troubled by Alvar’s fault, could not forgive, and felt that if Cheriton died, he could never bear the sight of Alvar again.

Alvar himself was shaken and disturbed as he had never been before. He had lost all the calm hopefulness and power of living in the present, that had made him such a support in Cheriton’s previous illness; and though he was still a devoted and efficient nurse to him, there were times when he was quite unable to control his distress. He was frightened, and expected the worst; and poor Jack had to try to encourage him, a process that much softened his indignation.

All this was fully apparent to Cheriton. There was no longer the daze and confusion of that first attack of illness, the boyish astonishment at the fact of being ill at all, the novelty of all the surroundings, now, alas! so familiar; no longer, too, the sense that the exceeding sweetness of life made death incredible; no longer the same instinctive dependence on those around. Since then Cheriton had travelled a long way on the road of life, had looked across the dark river, and grown familiar with the thought of its other shore; he was no longer frightened at his own suffering, or at its probable result, and, as his senses were generally clear, except sometimes at night, or when under the influence of the remedies, he was able to think for others – a habit in which he had gained considerable skill.

He made Alvar write to Mr Stanforth, and beg that Gipsy might write to Jack, knowing that the surprise and joy of such a letter, and the relief of pouring out his heart in the answer, must lighten the heavy weight of the poor boy’s anxiety; and so, in truth, it did, though Jack could never trust himself to thank Cherry for his kind thought. He also made the vicar go to Edward Fleming, and tell him that Alvar had only been a few minutes too late in coming to give evidence, and to entreat him to lay aside any ill-feeling for the misunderstanding “which,” he said, “was partly caused by my bad management.” He thought much about the state of affairs at Elderthwaite, or rather, perhaps, recalled at intervals much previous thinking. He was not equal to anything like a connected conversation, and he knew that no one would let the poor vehement old parson come near him; but he greatly astonished his grandmother by telling her that he had an especial desire to see Virginia Seyton.

“I cannot talk enough to tell you why,” he said; “but, granny, do get her to come.”

Mrs Lester promised; for how could she refuse him? He gave a good many directions to Mr Ellesmere, and in especial desired that a certain cup, won many years ago at some county athletic sports in a contest with his cousin Rupert, should be given to him as a remembrance.

From only one thing Cheriton’s whole heart shrank, and that was from forcing Jack to listen to parting words. He had several things to say to him, but he put them off; he could not bear the sight of Jack’s grief, and in this case could not trust his own self-command. It was the one parting that he could not yet face.

With Alvar it was different. In one way, he had with him much less sense of self-restraint, and in another, things lay between them that must be cleared away.

This state of things lasted for several days, and all the while the hard struggle between the remedies and the disease went on, a hand-to-hand fight indeed, and Cheriton’s strength ebbed away, till he knew that he dared wait no longer for what he wanted to say.

It had been raining, but the yellow, level light of an October evening was shining through the thinly-clothed boughs of the great elms, and lighting up the russet and amber of the woodlands; while the purple hills beyond were still heavy with clouds – clouds receding more and more as the clear blue spread over the sky.

As Cheriton listened to the noise of the rooks, and looked out at the sunset, he recalled the awe and strange curiosity, the clinging to the dear home, to the dearer love which had made life so dear; the attempted submission, the dim trust that death, if it came, must be well for him, with which he had first said to himself that he must die; remembered, too, other hours, when, in weakness of body and anguish of soul, he had found it still harder to believe that it must be well for him that he should live. The passionate joy, the passionate sorrow, had passed away, or rather, had been offered at last as a willing sacrifice, and the loving kindly spirit had found sweetness in life without the first, while much anxiety, much trying disappointment, had succeeded to the second. Now there came over him a wonderful peace, as he summoned his strength for what he had in his mind to say.

With a look and sign he called Alvar over to him; and Jack, who was sitting apart in the window, watched and listened.

“Alvar,” he said, taking hold of his hand, “I see it clearly.” And the intent, wide-open eyes, seemed to Jack as if they could indeed look beyond the mists of life. “We were wrong to wish you like ourselves. Forgive me. You – yourself – can be as good for Oakby as – I – yes – as my father. But there is only one way for us both – to love God with all our hearts, and our neighbour as ourself. To take pains about it for His sake. That is the truth, Alvar – the truth as I know it!”

“Ah!” cried Alvar, “but I do not love my neighbours! that is the difference. But I love you, oh! my brother – my brother! Is it religion that will make me what you wish? I will be religious; I will no longer be careless; but oh, caro – caro mio! if I lose you, I have no heart to change. I have grieved you. Oh! what punishment is there for me? I would do penance like Manoel. What can I do?”