An English Squire

And so they did.

Parson Seyton was a man, if an erring one; but the mischief with his young nephews was that they seemed to have no force or energy even for being naughty, and as they grew up their scrapes were all those of idle self-indulgence, save when the hereditary passion for gambling broke out in Dick, the elder of the two, as had been the case lately, causing his removal from the tutor with whom he had been placed. Like their father, they had not strong health, and they had little taste for field sports, and none for books; they lay in bed half the day, lounged about the stables, and quarrelled with each other. But then their father had nothing to do, read little but the paper, and drank a great deal more wine than was good for him.

Their uncle had conferred on them in his time the inestimable advantage of one or two good thrashings, and had scant patience with a kind of evil to which his burly figure, jolly red face, and hearty reckless temper had never been inclined.

Virginia had thought a good deal about her uncle, and was not unprepared to find him very far removed from the clerical ideal to which she was accustomed. Perhaps the notion of bringing a little enlightenment to so “old-fashioned” a place was neither absent nor unwelcome, as she thought of offering to teach the choir, and wondered who was feminine head of the parish.

“I daresay Uncle James has some nice old housekeeper,” she thought, “who trots after the poor people, and takes them jelly, and perhaps teaches the children sewing. There must be a great many people here who remember mamma. I hope they will like me. It will be a much more real thing trying to be helpful here than at Littleton, where there were six people for each bit of work.”

Virginia, finding that her brothers did not appear, began to revive her childish recollections by going over the house. It was very large and rambling, with long unused passages, with all the rooms shut up. Windows overgrown with interlacing ivy, panels from which the paint dropped at a touch, queer little turret chambers, with rickety staircases leading up to them, seemed hardly objectionable to Virginia, who liked the romance of the old forlorn house, and had not yet tried living in it. Yet it was not romantic, for Elderthwaite was not ruinous, only very dirty and out of repair; and perhaps the untidy housemaid, whom Virginia had encountered, was really more in accordance with its condition than the white lady or armed spectre that she gaily thought ought to walk those lonely passages. Her own young smiling face, and warm ruby-coloured dress, was in more startling contrast than either. So apparently thought her brother Dick as he ran up against her on the stairs.

“Hallo, Virginia!” he exclaimed in astonished accents. “What are you doing up here?”

“Trying to remember my way about. Don’t we keep any ghosts, Dick? I’m sure they would find these dark corners exactly suited to them.”

“Better ask old Kitty; she’ll tell you all about them. Good-bye, I’m off,” and Dick clattered downstairs, rather to Virginia’s disappointment, for she had thought the night before that his delicate, handsome face was more prepossessing than the pale stout one of Harry who now joined her.

“Where is Dick going?” she asked.

“Don’t know, I’m sure,” said Harry. “Do you want to know all the old stories?”

“Yes! can you tell me?”

“Do you see that room there?” said Harry, with eyes that twinkled like his aunt’s; “old grandfather Seyton was an old rip, you know, if ever there was one, and he and his friends used to make such a row you heard them over at Oakby. His brother was parson then, and bless you! Uncle Jem’s a bishop to him. Well, he’d got a dozen men dining here, and they all got as drunk as owls, dead drunk every one of them, and the servants put them to bed up in this gallery. One of them was in the room next grandfather’s, that room there, and he was found dead the next morning. Fact, I assure you.”

“What a horrid story!” said Virginia, looking shocked.

“I’ll tell you another. Grandfather and his brother played awfully high, that’s how the avenue was cut down; and when they could get no one else they played with each other, and one night they quarrelled and seized each other by the throats, and they both would have been strangled, only grandmamma rushed in in her nightgown screaming, and parted them; but the parson had the marks on his throat for ever.”

“Harry! you naughty boy!” exclaimed Virginia, laughing. “You are inventing all these frightful stories. I don’t believe them.”

“They’re as true as gospel,” said Harry, looking at her bright, incredulous eyes. “There’s another about the parson – how he came through the park at sunrise. That’s not a pretty story to tell you, though.”

“I had much rather hear something about the parson, as you call him, nowadays. Come downstairs, it’s so cold here, and answer all my questions.”

“Oh, the parson’s a jolly old card,” said Harry, following her. “He’s just mad with Dick because he won’t hunt. He’s been in at the death at every meet round, and don’t he swear when any one rides over the dogs, that’s all!”

Virginia began to think Elderthwaite must be very old-fashioned indeed.

“Doesn’t Dick like hunting?” she said. “No, Dick takes after the governor. It’s cards that’ll send him to the devil, and the first Seyton he’ll be that’s not worth having, says Uncle James.”

Harry talked in a low, solemn voice, with the same odd twinkle in his eyes, and it was very difficult to say whether it was wicked mischief, or a sort of shameless naïveté, that made him so communicative.

Virginia still strongly suspected him of a desire to astonish her; but his last speech gave her a strange new pang, and she turned away to safer subjects.

“I suppose the Lester boys are friends of yours?”

“Well, that’s as may be. We’re such a bad lot, you see, that Bob’s never allowed to come here. There was a row once, and old Lester, a humbugging chap, just interfered. Jack’s such a confounded prig he wouldn’t touch us with a pair of tongs.”

“And Cheriton, of course, is too old for you.”

“Cherry! oh, he isn’t a bad fellow. I go over to Oakby sometimes when he’s there. But it’s a slow place, and old Lester keeps them very tight. And then he’s always humbugging after his schools and things. Writing to my father about the state of the village. As if it was his affair!” said Harry, in a tone of virtuous indignation.

“Doesn’t papa approve of education?” said Virginia.

“Bless you, he don’t trouble his head about it. Why should he? Teach a lot of poaching vagabonds to read and write!”

“But Uncle James – ”

“Oh, Uncle James,” said Harry, with a spice of mimicry, “he likes his glass of grog and his ferrets too well to put himself out of the way. By Jove, here’s Aunt Julia! I shall be off before I’m asked what has become of Dick.”

Virginia sat still where he had left her. She only half believed him, and strange to say there was something so comical in his manner that she was rather attracted by its cool sauciness. But she was frightened and perplexed. What sort of a world was this into which she had come? Those stories, even if true, happened a long time ago; Harry must be in joke about Dick, and everything was different nowadays.

It was true. The golden age, if such an expression can be permitted, of Seyton wickedness had passed away; and these were smaller times, times of neglect, mismanagement, and low poor living, the dreary dregs of a cup long since drained. Nobody could quote Mr Seyton as a monster of wickedness, because he dawdled away his time over his sherry, and knew no excitement but an occasional game of cards at not very high stakes. There was many another youth in Westmoreland who gambled and played billiards in low company like Dick, and some ladies perhaps who found all their excitement in the memory of other times, and troubled themselves as little over any question of conscience as Miss Seyton.

But it was not all at once that this absence of all that makes life worth living could be apparent, and Virginia found her first confirmation of Harry’s words as she walked through the village on Christmas morning, and noted the wild, untidy look of the people, and the wretched state of their houses, and observed the sullen look of their faces as her father passed. Dick did not appear at all; Harry audibly “supposed the governor was going to church because Virginia was there,” and certainly church-going did not appear to be a fashion of the village.

Neither her childish recollections, nor Harry’s remarks, had prepared her, as they came into the small, ivy-grown church, for broken floors, cracked windows, and damp fustiness; still less for the very scantiest of congregations, and a rustling silence where responses should have been. Her uncle read the service rapidly, with the broad northern accent now strange to her ears. The old clerk trotted about whenever his services were not required, and did a little sweeping. Her uncle paused as he began the Litany, and called to him in a loud and cheerful voice to shut the door.

Virginia peeped out between the faded green-baize curtains that, hanging round the great square pew, represented to her every Church principle she had been taught to condemn; and found her view obstructed by a large cobweb. Harry poked at the spider, and Virginia recalling her own attention from her despairing visions of having no better church than this, perceived that her father was leaning idly back in his corner. All her standards of right and wrong seemed confused and shocked; so much so that, at the moment, she hardly distinguished the pain of finding herself left alone after the sermon, and seeing her father turn away, from her horror at her uncle’s dirty surplice, and the dreary degradation of the whole place. When the parson came after her after service, and loudly told her she was the prettiest lass he’d seen for long enough, kissing her under the church porch, she still felt as if the typical bad parish priest of her imagination had come to life, and behold he was her own uncle!

Since this comprehensible form of evil was so plain to her eyes, what terrible secrets might not lurk behind it! Virginia felt as if she would never be light-hearted again.

Chapter Seven.

Fire and Snow

“A northern Christmas, such as painters love.
* * * * *
Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,
Keen ringing air which sets the blood on fire.”

Christmas is no doubt, theoretically, the right season for relations who have been long parted to meet, and there was an ideal appropriateness in the long absent heir appearing at Oakby for the first time on Christmas Day. But practically it would have been better for Alvar if he had come home at any other time of the year. In the first place the frost continued with unabated severity, and precluded every outdoor amusement but skating, in which Alvar of course had no skill, and which he did not seem at all willing to learn. Besides, the season brought an amount of local and parish business which Mr Lester attended to vigorously in person, but the existence of which Alvar never seemed to realise. His grandmother’s charities he understood, and was rather amused at seeing the old women come to fetch their blankets and cloaks; but what could he have to do with any of these people?

Tenants’ dinners and choir-suppers might form a good opportunity for introducing him to his neighbours; and Cheriton, who was the life and soul of such festivities, tried to put him forward; but he only made magnificent silent bows, and comported himself much as his brother Jack had done, when in an access of gruff shyness and democratic ardour he had called the Christmas feasts “relics of feudalism,” and had shown his advanced notions of the union of classes by never speaking a word to any one.

Between the newcomer and his father there was an impassable distance. Alvar never failed in courtesy; but Cheriton’s quick eyes soon perceived that he resented deeply the long neglect; saw too that the sight of him was a pain and distress to his father, sharpened his temper, and produced constant rubs; though he was careful to do everything that the proper introduction of his son demanded of him. A grand ball was organised in his honour, and also a stiff and ponderous dinner-party at which Alvar was to be introduced to the county magnates.

Special invitations were also sent to him by their various neighbours, and he created quite an excitement in the dull country neighbourhood. Mr Lester only half liked being congratulated on his son’s charming foreign manners; but still, as a novelty, Alvar had great attractions, and in society never seemed shy or at a loss. Mr Lester’s brother-in-law, Judge Cheriton, invited the stranger to pay him a visit when the season had a little advanced, and to let him see a little London society; for which attention Mr Lester, who hated London, was very grateful, as Alvar’s grandfather had Spanish friends there, and it would have been too intolerable for the heir of Oakby to have appeared there under auspices which, however distinguished, Mr Lester thought suitable only to a political refugee or a music master.

He had, when he had ceased to pay for Alvar’s English tutor, made him an allowance which had been magnificent in Spain, and greatly added to Alvar’s consideration there, and he now increased this to what he considered a sufficient sum for his eldest son’s dignity. In short he did everything but overcome his personal distaste to him; he never willingly spoke to him, and the very sight of him was an irritation to him. He got less too than usual of Cheriton’s company; their walks, and talks, and consultations were curtailed by Alvar’s requirements. Indeed Cherry was pulled in many different directions, and he ended by sacrificing all the reading that was to have been got through during the vacation. For the home life was very difficult, and the more they saw of the stranger the less they liked him.

“He’s not of our sort,” said Bob, as if that settled the matter, not perceiving that his slowness to receive impressions, and difficulty in accommodating himself to a new life, might spring as much from his Lester blood as from his Spanish breeding.

“He might try and look like an Englishman,” growled Jack.

“When you go to Spain, we shall see you in a sombrero dancing under the orange-trees to a pair of castanets,” retorted Cheriton. “We should all be so ready at foreign languages and so accommodating, shouldn’t we?”

Alvar’s individuality was not to be ignored, though unfortunately it was very distasteful to his kindred. He was so dignified, so terribly polite they were half afraid of him, and as the awe wore off, they wanted to quarrel with him. He announced that he loved riding, and seemed to know something of horses; he played billiards much too well to be a pleasant opponent to his father, he sang much too quaintly and prettily for his family to appreciate, and he played the guitar! Even Cheriton wished it had been a fiddle. He hated going to walk, smoked incessantly, and was indifferent to every one except Cheriton, to whom he deferred in everything.