Cheriton looked very much affronted.
“I don’t know if you are aware,” he said, “that my brother’s marriage has just been fixed to take place in October; he was at Elderthwaite to-day. And for the rest, Alvar is very unselfish, and I have taken up a great deal of his time.”
The parson looked at him with an odd sort of twinkle. “Ay, ay; I know all about that,” he said; “but we old fellows know what we’re about. Well, I turn off here; so good day to you, and mind my words.” Cheriton walked on, somewhat ruffled and disturbed. He knew the old parson would not have spoken as he had without some reason; and it crossed his mind that Bob must be engaged in some undesirable amusements with Dick; but if so, what could he do? It was instinctive with Cheriton to try to do something when any difficulty was brought before him. Unselfish, loving, and, like all influential people, fond of influence, he had surrounded himself by calls on his energies and his interest. And now these surroundings were all unchanged, while he was changed utterly. The relations of son, brother, neighbour, friend, which he had filled so thoroughly, remained; and the feelings due to each seemed to have all died away, killed by the blow that had come upon him. He had never lived to himself, nor realised his life apart from the other lives in which it was bound up, or from his school, his college, and, most of all, his home; and now, with this great loss and pain, he suddenly found that he had a self behind it all – a self, fearfully strong, utterly absorbing; all the proportions of life were changed to him. Nothing seemed to matter but the chance of rest and relief. The plans he made had no heart in them; he felt as if the labour necessary for success in life was impossible, the success itself indifferent. His tastes were pure; the many temptations of life had been fairly met and conquered by him; but each one now seemed to look him in the face from a new point of view, and with new force. Soul as well as heart is risked in such an injury as Ruth had done him, and the more finely balanced perhaps the more easily overthrown. He did not cease to resist; but it was chiefly against the increasing weakness and languor which were sure in the end to prove irresistible to him.
Chapter Six.
A Crisis
“I will take a year out of my life and story.”
One chilly morning, a week or so after these events, Virginia was sitting in the drawing-room, with a heap of patterns in her lap. She was choosing her wedding gown, and as she laid the glistening bits of silk and satin on the table before her, she sighed at the thought that there was no one to help her, no one to take an interest in her choice. Ruth was gone, and Virginia missed her sorely, feeling as if the loneliness, the uncongeniality of her home would be intolerable but for the thought of the release so soon coming. She felt that, though her little efforts in the village had had some reward, within doors she had never felt naturalised, never been able to produce any impression. Her father never showed her nearly as much affection as her uncle did, and she could not know how much this was owing to a sense of his own deficiencies towards her. He was exceedingly irritable, too, and difficult to deal with, discontented wholly with life; while Miss Seyton’s sarcastic tongue always seemed to pierce the weak places in Virginia’s armour, and when she was inclined to be cheerful, her talk implied such alien views of life and duty that she made Virginia wretched.
Dick had been offered some appointment in London, provided that he could pass a decent examination next spring, but his sister could not perceive that he made much preparation for it. She also began to suspect that he and Nettie Lester were more together than was good, and to wish for an opportunity of hinting as much to Cheriton, whom she instinctively felt to be the best depositary of such a vague suspicion.
But Cheriton was much less well again; he had been obliged to give up going to Paris, and the whole family were suffering anxiety on his account, more trying, perhaps, though less openly acknowledged, than that caused by his actual illness. Virginia was not quite the girl to deal successfully with her home troubles. Ruth, who did not care a bit whether she could respect her relations or not, had made herself more agreeable to them; while Virginia was timid and miserable, afraid of being unfilial, and yet perpetually conscious of defects. Of course, if she could have felt that Alvar had really comprehended her troubles, they would have weighed more lightly; but though his tenderness always made her forget them for a time, she never had the sense of taking counsel with him.
Now, as she turned over her patterns, her first thought was which he would prefer, and as her aunt came in and with irresistible feminine attraction began to examine them, Virginia said, —
“I shall wait till Alvar comes, and ask him whether he would like me to have silk or satin.”
“He will tell you that you look enchanting in either. That will be a pretty compliment, and save the trouble of a choice.”
“Oh, no,” said Virginia, “Alvar has a great deal of taste, and he likes some of my dresses much better than others. I wonder if Cherry is better to-day.”
“Probably, as I see his most devoted brother coming up the garden.”
Virginia’s face flushed into ecstasy in a moment. She sprang to the garden-door, scattering her patterns on the floor; while her aunt looked after her, and muttered more softly than usual as she left the room, “Poor little thing!”
Alvar looked very grave as he came towards her, as if he hardly saw the slender figure in its fluttering delicate dress, or noticed the eager eyes and smiling lips; but, as usual, he smiled when he came up the steps, and seemed to put aside his previous thoughts, and to adopt the courteous manner which made Virginia feel herself held at a distance.
For once, she was more full of her own affairs than of his. “Look,” she said, picking up her silks, “do you see these? Which do you like best?”
Alvar twisted the patterns over his fingers as he stood in the window and did not at once answer.
“How is Cherry?” she said. “Is he better to-day?”
“Perhaps – a little,” said Alvar. “But the doctors have seen him again, and they say that he must not stay here – that he must go abroad for all the winter.”
“Do they?” said Virginia; “that looks very serious.”
“Ah yes,” said Alvar a little impatiently, “but my father – they all talk as if it would kill him to go; he will get well away from these bitter winds – and – and the businesses that are too much for him.”
“Yes,” said Virginia slowly, perceiving that Alvar did not quite understand how startling a sound being ordered abroad had to English ears after such an illness as Cheriton’s. “What does he say himself about it?”
“He dreads it very much; but we will go to Seville, and then he must find it pleasant.”
Virginia started; she changed colour, and her heart began to beat very fast.
“Mi querida!” said Alvar, taking her hand. “I feel that I – affront you – I do not know how to ask you to let me go; but how can I send my brother away without me? For his sake I expose myself perhaps to blame from your father – ”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Virginia, withdrawing a little, and speaking with unusual clearness. “Did Cherry ask you to go with him?”
“Ah, no. He refused and said it must not be. But he told Jack that he hated the thought of going to Mentone or any such place alone. My father is too unhappy about him to be his companion, and Jack must go to Oxford. So, when I told him how the wish of my heart was to show him my Spanish home, he owned that he should like to see it. The climate will not cure him if he is dull and miserable.”
“Certainly you must go with him,” said Virginia steadily, though she felt half suffocated.
“Ah, mi reyna!” cried Alvar, his brow clearing; “you see my trouble. Without your approval I could not go!”
Virginia turned round and fixed her eyes on Alvar with a look never seen before under their soft fringes. The sharp agony of personal loss and disappointment, the feeling, horrible to the gentle modest girl, that the loss and the disappointment reserved all their sting for her, the outward necessity of the proposal, and the inward knowledge that Alvar wronged her by his feeling, though not by his act, drove her to bay at last. She would have shared in any sacrifice, but she instinctively knew that Alvar was making none. The vague dissatisfactions, the dim misunderstandings, the unacknowledged jealousies of many months, all rushed at once into the light. Her love was too passionate to be patient, and her self-control broke down at last.
“Yes,” she said, “of course you must go with your brother. I see that. I admit it quite. But – Alvar – that’s not all. I have seen for a long time that our engagement was a tie to you – it was a mistake. I don’t blame you – you did not understand – but it is better to end it. I release you – you are free!”
“Señorita!” cried Alvar, flashing up, “I have given no one the right to doubt my honour. You mistake me.”
“No,” said Virginia, “I do not mistake. I know – I know you mean rightly – I ought not to wonder if you don’t – if you don’t – ” she broke off faltering and trembling, humiliated by the sense that she had not been able to win him.
But Alvar’s pride had taken fire. “I am at your service,” he said proudly, “since you mistake my request.”
“I will not hold you back one day,” she answered. “Nor do I blame you. Don’t mistake me. You have done all for me that you could; but our ideas are different, and I feel convinced we should only go on making each other unhappy. It is better to part.”
“Since it is your wish to have it so,” said Alvar in a tone of deep offence, but with a curious pang at his heart. “I was your true lover, and I would never have caused you grief. But since I did not satisfy you, I withdraw. I force myself on no lady.”
“Indeed – indeed,” faltered Virginia, “I do not blame you; it is perhaps my fault, that – that we have so often mistaken each other.”
“It is that to you – as to my father I am a stranger,” said Alvar. “I will go – it is as you wish.”
He took up his hat, paused, made her a formal bow, and went out. Virginia sprang after him; but he did not look back. She felt herself cruel, exacting, selfish, and yet she knew that her causes of complaint were just. She had sent him away from her, and she would never see him again. As he passed out of sight, she ran down the steps, whether after him or away from the house, she hardly knew. The trailing overgrown roses caught in her dress and held her back. She turned, and all the desolation of the untrimmed garden and unpainted house seemed to overwhelm her spirit. The wind came up in long, dismal rustles, the sky was grey and cold. As she paused, she saw her aunt’s still graceful figure in its shabby dress cross the lawn, her face with its fair outline and hard, bitter look turned towards her.
“She lost her lover!” thought Virginia, and her own future flashed upon her like a dreadful vision. She turned and fled up to her own room, where every other thought was destroyed by the sense of loss and misery. It was in the middle of the afternoon that she was startled out of her trance of wretchedness by a call in her aunt’s voice, “Virginia, Virginia! Come here, I want you particularly.”
Virginia obeyed passively. She might as well tell her aunt of the morning’s interview then as put it off longer. As she came into the drawing-room, Miss Seyton left it by another door, and she found herself alone with Cheriton Lester.
“Thank you for coming down,” he said, eagerly. “I want to explain; I think there has been a great mistake.”
“No, I think not,” said Virginia, rather faintly.
“But let me tell you. It is all my fault indeed. Alvar must not be punished for my selfishness. You know, I got a fresh cold somehow, and my cough was bad again, so my father was frightened and sent for the doctors, and they ordered me away for the winter. I must not go to London now, they say – ”
“Indeed, Cherry, I am very sorry,” faltered Virginia, as the cough stopped him.
“No, but let me tell you. This was a great shock to me. I want to get to work – and then – my poor father! It seemed to knock me down altogether, and foolishly, I let Jack see it, and said that I hated the notion of any of those regular invalid places, and that going there would do me no good. And then Alvar came and asked me if I should not like to see his friends and Seville, and I said, ‘Yes, if I must go anywhere,’ and he tried in his kind way to make the idea seem pleasant to me, and my father caught at it because he thought I might like it. I shall never forgive myself for making such a fuss! But of course to-day – now I am in my right senses – I should not think of such a thing. If Alvar goes with me, even to Seville, and stays for a few weeks, then, if I am better, he can come home, and I shall not mind staying there alone, and at Christmas Jack might come to me, or my father – it can easily be managed. In short, Virginia,” he added, with an attempt at his usual playfulness, “I want you to understand that I made a complete fool of myself yesterday, and that that’s the whole of it.”
“Did Alvar ask you to come and tell me this?”
“No,” said Cheriton, “he was hurt by your misunderstanding him, he does not know I am here. Jack drove me over. But I shall not agree to any other arrangement than what I have told you, unless,” he added slowly, “things should go badly, and then I know you would have patience.”
“Oh, Cherry,” said Virginia, struggling with her tears, “I hope you don’t think me so selfish as to wish to prevent Alvar from going with you. It is not that.”
“But what is it, then? Can you tell me?” said Cherry gently, and sitting down by her side.
“I have no one to ask,” she said; “but you will think me wrong, and yet – ”
“I know too well how difficult it is to be right in matters of feeling, if you once begin to analyse them,” said Cherry sadly.
The gentleness of his voice and the kind look of his eyes gave her courage, and she said, very low, —
“I think I should not make Alvar happy, because he does not care for me. Please understand that he has done all he could; he is very kind to me, but he does not care for me.”
“You know, Virginia,” said Cherry eagerly, “Alvar has different ways from ours. Indeed, he is loving – ”
“He loves you,” said Virginia quickly; then, blushing scarlet, she added, “oh, Cherry, I think it is beautiful the way he is grateful to you, and thinks so much of you. Please, please, don’t think I would have it otherwise.”
“I have far more cause to be grateful to him.”
“Yes! I like to think that. But Cherry, when you were ill, he didn’t care for me to comfort him, it was no rest to him to come and see me. He never tells me his troubles. It isn’t as Ruth and Rupert love each other. If I say anything, he turns it aside. It will not make him unhappy to give me up.”
“It made him exceedingly angry,” said. Cheriton, too clear-sighted not to acquiesce in the truth of Virginia’s words, though he was unwilling to own as much.
“I don’t think,” said Virginia, “that I should bear that feeling patiently. Things are very miserable any way, but I think Alvar will be happier without me. It has not turned out well.”
She spoke in a low tone of complete depression, evidently uttering convictions that had been long formed, gently and humbly, but with an undercurrent of firmness.
“I will tell Alvar what you say,” he said. “I quite see what you mean, but perhaps he will be able to show you that you have misinterpreted him.”
“No,” said Virginia, with decision, “do not let him try.”
As she spoke, there was a tap at the door, and Jack opened it.
“Cherry,” he said, “it is so late; are you ready?”
“One minute, Jack,” said Cheriton, “I am coming. Virginia,” he added, taking her hands in his with sudden earnestness, “Alvar will love you enough some day. I am sure of it.”
Cheriton hardly knew what put the words into his mouth; but they chimed in Virginia’s heart for many a weary day, lighted up by the bright, brave smile which had accompanied them.
Chapter Seven.
Farewell
“O near ones, dear ones! you in whose right hands
Our own rests calm, whose faithful hearts all day,
Wide open, wait till back from distant lands
Thought, the tired traveller, wends his homeward way.”
“Of course, since Miss Seyton insists, and you say you wish it, I come home for my marriage in October,” said Alvar.
“You don’t understand,” replied Cheriton vehemently, “and you are unfair to Virginia. She is as kind as she can be. Go and show her that you really care for her as she deserves, and it will all come right. If anything could make matters worse for me, it would be to think I had been the excuse for a break between you!”
Alvar was standing in the library window, leaning back against the shutter. He looked perfectly unmoved and impervious to argument, his mouth shut firm and his eyebrows a little contracted. Cheriton, on the other hand, half lying on the window-seat, was flushed and eager as if he had been pleading for himself, not for another.
“No,” said Alvar obstinately. “Miss Seyton has dismissed me. She tells me that I do not content her. Well, then, I will go.”
“Why make yourself wretched for a mere misunderstanding?”
“I? I shall not be wretched. I hope I can take my dismissal from a lady. She finds that I do not suit her, so I withdraw,” said Alvar in a tone of indescribable haughtiness.
“Perhaps she knows best,” said Cherry, “and is right in thinking you indifferent to her.”
“No – but I will be so soon,” said Alvar coolly.
“It is no good to say so,” said Cherry; then, starting up, he came and put his hand on Alvar’s arm. “Don’t do this thing,” he said imploringly, “you don’t know what it will cost you.”
The two faces clear against the sky were a contrast for a painter; Alvar’s with its rich dark colouring, and calm impassive look just a little sullen, and Cheriton’s delicate, sharpened outlines, the eyes all on fire and the colour varying with excitement.
Perhaps the two natures sympathised as little as the faces. Alvar’s look softened, however, as he put Cherry back on the cushions.
“Lie still,” he said; “why do you care so much? You will be as ill as you were yesterday. If I had known it, you should not have gone to Elderthwaite.”
“But,” said Cherry, more quietly, “I felt sure that there had been a misunderstanding. It was my fault. Of course I like best to have you with me; but I could not consent to any indefinite putting off of your marriage. My father would not agree to it either. And that is not quite the point. Show Virginia that she is your first thought, and everything can be put right.”
Alvar stood silent for a minute, then said suddenly and emphatically, —
“No. I have not the honour of pleasing her as I am. I can change for no one. Do not grieve, Cherito mio, I shall forget all when I show you Seville, and I will teach you to forget too. I take the best of my English home with me when I take my brother.”
He took Cheriton’s hands in his as he spoke, with a gesture, half playful, half tender. The response was cruelly disappointing. Cherry withdrew a little and said, in a tone of extreme coldness, —
“In that case Virginia is perfectly right. I quite understand her meaning. But it will be a great vexation to my father that your engagement should be broken for such a cause.”
“My father cannot complain. I have obeyed him,” said Alvar. “But I shall go and tell him that the proposals he so honourably made me will be unnecessary.” He went away as he spoke, and Jack, who had been listening silently, exclaimed, —
“By Jove! he doesn’t know what he’s in for now?”
“Oh,” cried Cherry, “it is intolerable! If they had married, she would never have found out his coolness! It is most unlucky.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I don’t know. Alvar worships you, and has ways that suit you, yet you can’t understand each other. Alvar is altogether different from us. He is outside our planetary system, and always will be. I’d like my wife to belong to the same species as myself.”
“But the occasion is so annoying,” said Cherry. “Why must they order me off in this way – or why couldn’t I have held my tongue about it? Oh, Alvar is the wise man after all.”
“You’ll get well,” said Jack gruffly.
“Well, I’ll try. But – ” he paused; but the thought in his mind was that the home ties had regained their power now that he believed himself likely to leave them for ever.
“Cherry,” said Jack, turning his back, and hunting in a bookshelf, “I know all about it.”
“Do you, Jack?”
“Yes. You ought to go away; but do you mind going alone with Alvar? Let me come.”
“Well, Jack,” said Cheriton, after a pause, “if you know, I can tell you how it is. I’ve had a hard time, and I think I should like to be quiet. But it is right to give oneself a chance, and as for Alvar, I am not at all afraid of going alone with him. You know what a good nurse he is. If I want you, you will come to me.”
“Yes,” muttered Jack.
“But I don’t want father to guess at what the doctors call ‘mental anxiety,’ nor to talk hopelessly to him. You must comfort him. I’m afraid a great deal will be thrown on you, my boy.”
Jack did not answer; and Cheriton, divining his feelings, made an effort, and said cheerfully, —
“Of course, one is no judge oneself in such cases. I am quite willing to go now, and I shall look forward to seeing you at Christmas. You must write and give me your impressions of Oxford.”
“Oh yes,” said Jack, consoled; “and perhaps Alvar will pick up a Spanish lady, and then we should be all right again.” Cherry smiled and shook his head, feeling that he could not wish to dispose of Alvar in so unceremonious a fashion. He was angry with him now, and felt how wide a gulf lay between their points of view; yet he had grown to be very dependent on him, and was keenly conscious of all his unselfish devotion. He saw, too, that it would not do to talk freely even to Jack, since it frightened him and made him miserable, and resolved to keep all his confusing feelings to himself – feelings that seemed to tear him to pieces while he was utterly weary of them all.
He was afraid that he had been hard on Alvar, and still more afraid of how his father would take the revelation; but he had long to wait before the study door was flung open, and Alvar walked in, with his head up, and his face crimson. He was passing through without heeding his brothers, but Cherry’s call checked him, and he came up to the window.
“Mi querido, this will do you harm,” he said gently; “you excite yourself too much.”
“But tell me – ”
“Yes, I will tell you. But we will go upstairs; you must rest.”
But as he spoke, his father came out of the study, and coming up to them, said, in a tone of strong indignation, —
“I wish to know, Cheriton, how long you have been aware of a state of feeling on your brother’s part which places me in a situation of which I am thoroughly ashamed; whether you were aware that, as appears from his own confession, my son has done Miss Seyton the disrespect of engaging himself to her as a matter of expediency, and not of affection.”
“Sir,” said Alvar firmly, “your displeasure is for me alone. I will not allow my brother to be questioned; he is not strong enough to bear it.”
“No, Alvar, it won’t hurt me. Father, I don’t think you understand. If they find that they cannot satisfy each other, it is better to part. Neither would act dishonourably by the other.”
“There is no use in talking,” said Alvar hotly. “At my father’s wish I gave myself to Miss Seyton as I am. Well, she rejects me; there is an end of it. I can change for no one. I am myself. Well, I do not please any of you, but I do not ask you to change yourselves, nor will I.” His words sounded like a mere defiance to his father, but as Cheriton heard them, he felt their force. Why should they all expect Alvar to conform to their standard instead of trying to understand his?
“Be that as it may,” said Mr Lester, “you have found an unworthy pretext. I am far from ungrateful for all your kindness to Cheriton, but it was fair on none of us to take the opportunity of his going abroad to put off your marriage. If you had had the manliness to say at once that your engagement was distasteful to you, we should have known how to act.”
“I will not stay – I will not hear myself so insulted!” cried Alvar, with a sudden fury of passion, that flared high above his father’s angry displeasure, startling both the brothers into an attempt to interfere.
“Father is mistaken,” cried Jack; while Cheriton began to say, —
“Come into the study, father; I think I can explain – ” when his words were stopped by a violent fit of coughing. Agitated and over-fatigued as he was, he could not check it, and the alarm was more effectual than any explanations could have been in silencing the quarrel.
Alvar sprang to his side in a moment, and sent Jack for remedies; while Mr Lester forgot everything but the one great anxiety and distress. The doctors had given a strong enough warning against the possible consequences of such excitement to make them all feel self-reproachful at having caused it; and the next words exchanged between the disputants were an entreaty from Mr Lester to know if Alvar was alarmed, a gentle reassurance on Alvar’s part, and a request, at once complied with, that his father would move out of sight, lest Cherry should attempt to renew the discussion.
It never was renewed. When Cherry recovered, he was too much exhausted to try to speak, or to think of Alvar in any light but of the one who knew best what was comfortable to him, and once more everything seemed indifferent to Mr Lester beside the approaching parting. But though a quarrel was averted, there was much discomfort. Mrs Lester took her son’s view decidedly, and treated Alvar like a culprit, the only voice raised in his favour being Bob’s, who observed unexpectedly “that he thought Alvar was quite right to do as he chose.” Mr Lester had an interview with Mr Seyton, and probably made more than the amende expected from him, for the next day he received a note from Virginia: —
“Dear Mr Lester, – As I find from my father that you do not entirely understand the circumstances which have led to the breach of my engagement, I think it is due to your son to tell you that it was entirely my own doing, and that I have no cause of complaint against him. We parted, because I believe we are unsuited to each other, not because he in any way displeased me; certainly not because he very rightly wished to go abroad with Cheriton. I hope you will forgive me for saying this, and believe me, —
“Yours very sincerely, —
“Virginia Seyton.”
Well meant as poor Virginia’s letter was, it may be doubted whether it much enlightened Mr Lester as to the point in question; but he showed it to Alvar, who read it with a deep blush, and said, —
“She is, as ever, generous – but – I am a stranger to her still.”
Meanwhile, all the arrangements for the journey were being made. Cheriton received a warm invitation from Seville, and it was agreed, at his earnest request, that his father should remain behind at Oakby, but that Jack should go with him to Southampton, whence they were to go to Gibraltar by P and O steamer, the easiest way, it was thought, of making the journey. In London, Cheriton was to see a celebrated physician.
He went bravely and considerately through all the trying leave-takings and arrangements, taxing his strength to the uttermost, in the desire to leave nothing undone for any one. He put aside with a strong hand, that inner self which yet he could not conquer, with its passionate yearning, its bitter disappointment, its abiding sense of wrong; but it was there still, and gave at times the strangest sense of unreality, even to the pain of the partings, which was true pain nevertheless though he seemed to feel it through the others, rather than through himself. Perhaps the vehement Lester temperament was not a very sanguine one, for though they were told to be hopeful, they were all full of fear, and Cheriton himself hardly looked forward to a return, or, indeed, to anything but possible rest from the strain of making the best of himself, for he suffered very much, while all the vivid and appropriate sensations with which he had once looked out on life and death had died away.
He could hardly have borne it all but for Alvar’s constant care and watchfulness, and for the ease given by his apparent absence of feeling, and for the soothing of his tender gentle ways, and yet though he clung to him with ever-increasing gratitude and affection, there was a curious sense of being apart from him.
Alvar, though he had too much tact to fret Cherry by opposition, had no sympathy with the innumerable interests, for each one of which he wished to provide, and thought his parting interviews with the young Flemings and with many another waste of strength and spirits. Cherry had also to go through a trying conversation with old Parson Seyton, who, between anger on Virginia’s account and grief on Cheriton’s, was difficult to deal with, entirely refusing to see Alvar, and more than disposed to quarrel with Cherry for going abroad with him. Even Mr Ellesmere regarded Alvar’s conduct with considerable disapproval, though he would not mar his relations with Cherry by a word.
Alvar said nothing and made no explanations, but he was exceedingly impatient of the strain on Cherry’s fortitude and cheerfulness, not seeing what the memory of this sad time might one day be to them all, and least of all appreciating the value of that last Sunday’s church-going and Communion, which, much as it tried both their feelings and their shy reserve, not one of the others, even Bob, would for worlds have omitted. Yet, when many an old servant and neighbour made a point that day of following the example of the squire and his children, Mr Ellesmere thought the scene no small testimony to the value of the lives, which, however faulty and imperfect, had been led, though at different levels, with a constant sense of responsibility towards man and of looking upwards to God. Yes, and as something to give thanks for, even while his heart swelled at the thought that the best-loved of those tall fair-faced youths might never kneel in Oakby Church again.