“You’ve done more harm than you know,” she said; “but I will not tell, and I will not promise.” And with a sort of dignity in her air, she walked out of the room.
“What does she mean?” said Jack.
“Never you mind,” said his grandmother, “and don’t you raise the countryside on her by saying a word to Dick or any one. Hold your tongue, and be thankful. The Seytons are the plague of the place, and we’ll ask them all to dinner before Nettie goes, Dick included.”
“Ask them to dinner?” said Jack.
“Yes; we’ll have no talk of a quarrel. And besides, your father finds that people are apt to think that it was Virginia’s fault that your half-brother left her in the lurch; and that’s not so, though she is a Seyton.”
“No, indeed!”
“So my son means to have a dinner-party, and to show that we are all good friends, and pay them proper attention. A bad lot they are; there’s not one of them to be trusted.”
“But, Granny,” said Jack anxiously, “what do you think about Nettie? What secret can she have?”
“Eh, I can’t tell. He may be getting her a puppy or a creature of some kind; but Nettie’s secret may be one and Dick’s another. I always blamed Cherry for encouraging the Seytons about the place.”
“Poor Cherry!” muttered Jack to himself, with a great longing to throw the burden of his difficulty on to Cherry’s shoulders.
Nettie remained sullen and impenetrable. She treated Jack with an intense resentment that vexed him more than he could have supposed. Neither her father nor her grandmother asked her any questions; but she was watched, though not palpably in disgrace, and she suffered from an agony of shame and of self-reproach which contended strangely with the motive that in her view justified the stolen meetings. Whether her womanly instincts, roughly awakened, justified the warnings given her, or whether, she merely resented the unjust suspicion, she herself scarcely knew, and not for worlds would she have explained her feelings. The dread of giving an advantage, the intense sulky self-respect that leads to an exaggeration of reserve and false shame, was in her nature as in that of all the Lesters, and if Cheriton had been present she could not probably have uttered a word to him. Being absent, she could venture to soften at the thought of him, and cried for him many a time in secret.
Chapter Six.
Broken Links
“Love is made a vague regret.”
Virginia, when she parted from Jack, walked slowly homewards through the mist and the falling leaves, and thought of the bloom and the brightness of that fair Seville which she had so often pictured to herself. How happy the two brothers would be there together, among all the surroundings which she had heard described so often! Alvar would never think of her. “At least, I should have had letters from him if I had not sent him away,” she thought; and though she did not regret the parting in the sense of blaming herself for it, she felt in her utter desolation as if she had rather have had her lover cold and indifferent than not have him at all.
For life was so dreary, home so wretched, and Virginia could not mend it. Indeed in many ways a less high-minded girl with stronger spirits and more tact might have been far more useful there. Virginia held her tongue resolutely; but she could not shut her eyes. She had lost her bearings, and could not possibly understand the proportion of things. Thus even in her inmost soul she never blamed her father for his life-long extravagance, for the vague stories of his dissipated youth – these things were not for her to judge; but the conversation, which he intended to be perfectly fit for her ears, was full of small prejudices, small injustices, and trifles taken for granted that grated on her every hour. She tried very hard to be gentle and pleasant to her aunt; but she could not bring herself, as Ruth could, to laugh at scandalous stories, old or new, or even to think herself right in listening to them. And though her father and aunt so far as they knew how, respected her innocence, the latter only laughed at the ignorance that thought one thing as bad as another. For there were virtues, or at least self-denials in their lives, for which, with all her love and with all her charity, she could not possibly credit them. It was something that Mr Seyton had pulled through without utterly succumbing to debt and difficulty, it was something that when writhing under an injury which she never forgot or forgave, his sister stuck to him and kept things as straight as they were. It was a godless, idle, aimless household, above stairs and below; but it was not a scandalous one, and, with all the antecedents, it easily might have been. But the obvious outcome of this hard narrow life was a deadness to all outer or higher interests, an ignorance of the ordinary views of society, and of modern forms of thought never attained save by selfish people, an absence of restraint of temper, a delight in utter littleness, which were intensely wearying. Higher principles would have made life more interesting if nothing more. The narrowest form of belief in religion and goodness would have given a wider outlook. Virginia was sick to death of tales of little local incidents spiced with ill-nature, or incessant complaints of someone’s ill-behaviour about a fence or a cow. If she had lived at Oakby she would have heard a good deal of the same sort of thing; but there there would have been something else to fall back on, and she would not have heard small triumphs over small overreaching, which Mr Seyton did not mix enough with his kind to hear commented on.
Virginia used to wonder if she would grow like her aunt, her life was so empty. All her young-lady interests, the essay and drawing clubs, the correspondence and the art needlework, with which like other girls she had amused herself, had languished entirely during her engagement, and she did not care to resume them. She would have liked to be a resource to Dick; but she was not used to boys, and had not much faculty for amusing them, and Dick did not care for her. Her Sunday class tired her, and were naughty because her teaching was languid; the children by no means offering the consolations to her depression which they are sometimes represented as doing in fiction. The Ellesmeres, who were always kind to her, were away for their annual holiday, and the library books for which she subscribed, and which might have amused her, could never, by any chance be fetched from the station when she wanted them.
Her uncle showed his sympathy by scolding her roundly for fretting for a black-eyed foreigner, till she was almost too angry to speak to him.
Under all these circumstances Ruth’s urgent invitation had been welcome, and as she received others from her friends at Littleton, she resolved to go and try to pick up the threads that Alvar had broken. Soon after she parted with Jack she met the Parson, and told him what she knew would be welcome news, that Cherry was better.
“Ay,” said Mr Seyton, “Jack brought me a message from him that he would write me an account of a bull-fight. Wonder he’s not ashamed to go near one. Cruel, unmanly sport – disgraceful!”
“Well, uncle,” said Virginia, “I think you ought to be pleased that Cherry is well enough to go.”
“Eh? I’ll ask him if he’ll come and see a cock-fight when he comes home. Plenty of ’em here – round the corner. So you’re going to London to get a little colour in your cheeks, I think it’s time.”
“Yes, uncle; Mrs Clement will teach the children while I’m away.”
“Very well, and tell Miss Ruth she was blind of one eye when she made her choice, but I can see out of both.”
“Uncle, I shouldn’t think of telling her such a thing. What do you mean?”
“Never mind, she’ll understand me. Good-bye, my dear, and never mind the Frenchman.”
Virginia smiled, but she could not turn her thoughts away, not merely from Alvar, but from her life without him. Fain would she have refused the invitation which soon arrived to a solemn dinner-party at Oakby; but it had been accompanied by a hint from Mr Lester to her aunt which caused the latter to insist on accepting it, and they went accordingly to meet Sir John and Lady Hubbard, and one or two other neighbours. Mr Lester was markedly polite to Virginia. Mrs Lester wore her best black velvet, and a certain diamond brooch, only produced on occasions of state. Jack looked proper, silent, and bored. Every one wished to ask after the universally popular Cheriton, but felt that Alvar was an awkward subject of conversation, so that the adventures of the travellers could not be used to enliven the dulness. Nettie did not of course appear at dinner, and afterwards sat in a corner of the drawing-room in her white muslin, apparently determined not to open her mouth. Dick strolled up to her when the gentlemen came in, and was instantly followed by Jack, who stood by her silent and frowning. Nettie looked up under her eyebrows, and said, “Dick, I am going to London.”
“So I hear,” said Dick, with a smile and a slight shrug.
“I hate it, but I can’t help it. You go on.”
Dick smiled again and nodded, and then looked at Jack with an air of secret amusement, indescribably provoking. “All right,” he said, but he turned away and made no further demonstration; and Mrs Lester desired Nettie to show Miss Hubbard “Views on the Rhine,” a very handsome book reserved for occasions of unusual dulness.
Altogether the evening did not raise Virginia’s spirits, and she was half inclined to resent the special kindness shown to her by Mr Lester, as implying blame to his absent son.
It was a wonderful change of scene and circumstance, when she found herself, some few days later, sitting in Lady Charlton’s pleasant London drawing-room, full of books, work, plants, and pretty things, with Ruth, bright-eyed and blooming, sitting on the rug at her feet, ready for a confidential chatter.
She was to be married directly after Christmas, she told Virginia. Rupert did not mean to sell out of the army; she did not at all dislike the notion of moving about for a few years, and now the regiment was at Aldershot she could see Rupert often while she remained in London to get her things.
“And, Queenie, you must choose the dresses for the bridesmaids. Grandmamma will have a gay wedding. I think it will be a great bore.”
“Your bridesmaids ought to wear something warm and gay and bright, like yourself, Ruthie. Are you going to ask Nettie Lester?”
“Oh, no!” said Ruth hurriedly. “Why should I?”
“She is Rupert’s cousin, and she is so handsome.”
“I never thought of her! I am angry with them all since Don Alvar has made you miserable. My darling Queenie, I should like to stamp on him! Now, don’t be angry; but tell me how it all came about?”
“I don’t think I could ever make you understand it, Ruth. He did nothing wrong. It was only that – that I did not suit him, and I found it out,” said Virginia, with a sort of ache in her voice, as she turned her head away.
“The more – well, I won’t finish the sentence. Any way, he has spoiled your life for you; for I am afraid he is your love if you are not his,” said Ruth, scanning her sad face curiously. “Queenie, weren’t you ready to kill him and Cherry, too, when they went off comfortably together?”
“No,” said Virginia, “he could not help going —that was not it. And as for Cherry, he was the only person who understood anything about it – he was so kind! Oh, I hope he is really better!”
“I dare say he is, by this time,” said Ruth, rather oddly; “but they are all so easily frightened about him – they spoil him. I wonder what they would all say if he fell in love with a naughty, wicked siren – a female villain, who broke his heart for him – just for fun.”
“She would break something worth having,” said Virginia indignantly. “But, do you know anything about Cherry, Ruth?”
“I? I don’t believe in sirens who break hearts just for fun and vanity. And as for Cherry, if he did meet with a little trouble, he’d mend up again, heart and lungs and all. There’s something happy-go-lucky about him – don’t you think so?”
“I think Cherry is too many-sided to be left without an object in life, if that is what you mean,” said Virginia. “Besides, it is so different for a man, they can always do something.”
Then Ruth put aside the little uneasy feeling of self-reproach and doubt that had prompted her to talk about Cherry, and put her arms round Virginia, kissing her tenderly.
“My darling Queenie! You have been fretting all by yourself at Elderthwaite till things seem worse than they are.”
“No,” said Virginia; “but my life has all gone wrong. When I found that he did not love me everything seemed over for me.”
Ruth interposed a question, and at last acquired a clearer knowledge of the circumstances under which Alvar and her cousin had parted. She had a good deal of knowledge of the world, and some judgment, though she did not always use it for her own benefit, and she did not think that the case sounded hopeless. She tried an experiment.
“If you gave him up, Queenie, because you discovered that he did not come up to your notions of what he ought to be, why there’s an end of it, for he never will; but it looks to me much more like a very commonplace lovers’ quarrel aggravated by circumstances. He isn’t a bad sort of fellow in his own way; but it’s not the way that you think perfection.”
“I did not quarrel with him, and I think the failure was in myself. Why should he love me? – it does not seem as if I was very lovable.”
There crossed Virginia’s young gentle face a look that was like a foretaste of the bitterness and self-weariness that had seized on so many of her race – a sort of self-scorn that was not wholesome.
“Why should you think so?” said Ruth.
“I think I should have got on better at home if I had been.”
She spoke humbly enough, but there was utter discouragement in every line of her face and figure.
“Nonsense!” said Ruth briskly. “Nobody would get on, in your sense, at Elderthwaite. I don’t think you ought to stay there. You know it is quite in your power to arrange differently. You might make them long visits and – come fresh to every one.”
“I’ll never have it said that I could not live there,” said Virginia, colouring deeply. “And if I was away – I could not. – I would not – ”
“Go back into the neighbourhood? Well, at any rate you are going to have a holiday now, and see something besides moors and mud.”
The change of scene could not fail to do Virginia good, though there might be something in the courtship of Ruth and Rupert to remind her, with a difference, of her own. It was sometimes breezy, for Rupert loved to tease his betrothed, and having got his will, was a free-and-easy and contented lover, not much liking to be put out of his way, and not quite coming up to Ruth’s requirements.
Ruth, though very kind to her cousin, believed that she had lost her lover in great measure through a feminine scrupulosity and desire to bring him up to her own standard. Ruth would never be so narrow and unsympathetic, she would be prepared to understand all the story of her hero’s life; and being young, and much more simple than she believed herself to be, thought that her indiscriminate reading of somewhat free-spoken novels, gave her the necessary experience. But Rupert took quite another view. He was not aware of having any particular story to tell, and had no intention whatever of telling it. He did not in the least desire Ruth’s sympathy with his past, which was quite commonplace. He was not in a state of repentance, desirous of making a confession; nor had his heart ever been withered up by any frightful experiences. No doubt he could remember much that was not particularly creditable, and which he rightly thought unfit for discussion with his betrothed. Moreover, he did not care at all for poetry, and very little for novels, and at last actually told her that one she mentioned was unfit for her to read.
Ruth was very angry, and had a sense of being put aside. Had Rupert – like herself – a secret, or was she going to be “only a little dearer than his horse?” as she expressed it to herself, and with tears to him. Rupert laughed, and then grew a little angry, and then they made it up again; but he teased her for her romance, laughed at her most muscular and strong-souled heroes, and never would put himself in a heroic attitude. Ruth quarrelled with him, made it up with him, was vexed by him, and sometimes was vexatious; but all the while she never told him about Cheriton.
Chapter Seven.
Don Juan
“I wonder if the spring-tide of this year
Will bring another spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing.”
It was a bright sunny day in December, fresh enough to make the Sevillanos pull their picturesque cloaks over their shoulders out of doors, and light scraps of wood-fire in their sitting-rooms, but with the sun pouring down in unveiled splendour over quaint painted relics of a bygone world, when the Moor employed his rich fancy in decorating the city, and over dark Gothic arches and towers that seemed to tell of a life almost equally remote from nineteenth-century England. It was a very new sort of Christmas weather for Jack Lester as he tried to find his way from the railway station to Don Guzman de la Rosa’s house. He soon discovered that he had lost it, and stopped by a fruit-stall piled with grapes, oranges, and melons to ask the brown, skinny old woman in a gay handkerchief who kept it, for some directions, hoping that she would at least understand the name of the street. So she did, but it seemed to him that she pointed in every direction at once, and Jack stared round bewildered as a young lady stepped across the street towards the fruit-stall. Jack looked at her and she looked full at him from under her straw hat, with a pair of eyes dark as any in Andalusia, but direct and clear, level and fearless, as her face broke into a smile just saved from a laugh.
“If you are looking for Don Guzman de la Rosa’s,” she said in distinct and comprehensible English, “I can direct you; but your brothers, Mr Lester, are much nearer, at my father’s, Mr Stanforth’s. Will you come there with me when I have bought some fruit?”
“Oh, thank you immensely! I – I thought I would walk up, and I couldn’t find the way. Thank you,” said Jack, colouring and looking rather foolish.
“They did not expect you to be here till to-morrow. What have you done with your things?”
“I’ve lost them, Miss Stanforth,” said Jack; “I can’t think how. You see no one understands anything, and the stations coming from Madrid are so odd.”
“Oh, I think you will get them; we had one box detained for ages. Thank you,” as he took her basket of fruit. “Shall we come?” and then, looking up at him, “Your brother is so much better.”
“I – I am very glad of that,” said Jack, in a sort of inadequate way.
He was nervous about the meeting, and felt conscious that he was dusty with his journey, and sure that he must have looked foolish staring at the old woman.
Gipsy took him down the street, and into a house with a balcony covered with gay-striped blinds, and led him upstairs till she came to a door, or rather curtain, which she lifted, putting her finger on her lip.
It was a long, low room, with the lights carefully arranged and shaded, containing drawing-boards and unframed sketches, a wonderful heap of “art treasures,” in one corner, Algerine scarves and stuffs, great, rough, green pitchers, and odds and ends of colour. Some one sat with his back to the door drawing, but Jack only beheld his brothers who were together at the further end of the room, and did not immediately see him, for they were looking at each other and appeared to the puzzled Jack oddly still and silent.
Miss Stanforth gave a little laugh, and Alvar looked round and exclaimed. Cheriton sprang up, and with a cry of delight seized on Jack, with an outburst of greetings and inquiries, in which all the surroundings were forgotten. Gipsy laughingly described her encounter to Alvar; while “father,” and “granny,” “the old parson,” “no good in having a Christmas at all at home without you,” passed rapidly between the other two.
“Come, Jack, that’s strong! But, indeed, I think you have brought Christmas here. How rude we are! You have never spoken to Mr Stanforth. Mr Stanforth, let him see the picture. Jack, do you think father will like it?”
“Yes. You look much jollier than in the photograph,” said Jack, as Mr Stanforth turned the picture round for his inspection.
It was a small half-length in tinted chalk showing Cherry seated and looking up, with a bright interested face, at Alvar, who was showing him a branch of pomegranates. The execution was of the slightest, but the likenesses were good, and the strong contrast of colouring and resemblance of form was brought out well. “Brothers,” was written underneath, and Jack looked at them as if the idea of any one wishing to make studies of them was strange to him.
“Jack is bewildered – lost, in more senses than one,” said Cherry, smiling.
“Come, it is time we went home, and then for news of every one! Mr Stanforth, we shall see you to-night.”
Jack’s arrival was an intense pleasure to Cheriton, whose reviving faculties were beginning to long for their old interests. He had recovered his natural spirits, and though he still looked delicate, and had no strength to spare, was quite well enough to look forward to his return to England and to beginning life there. Indeed the ardent hopes and ambitions, so cruelly checked in their first outlet, turned – with a difference indeed, but with considerable force – to the desire of distinction and success; and in return for Jack’s endless talk of home and Oxford, he planned the course of study to begin at Easter, and the hard work which he felt sure with patience must ensure good fortune. Cheriton was very sanguine, and since he had felt so much better, had no doubt of entire recovery; and Jack was accustomed to follow his lead, and was much relieved both by his liveliness and by his resolute mention of Rupert, and inquiry as to the arrangements for his marriage.
If Cheriton had not won the battle, he was at least holding his own in it bravely – the bitter pain was first submitted to, and then held down with a strong hand. But surely, he thought, there was something in store for him, if not the sweetness of happy love, yet the ardour of the struggle of life.
He could not say enough of Alvar’s care for him, and Jack found Alvar much more easy of access than at home, and more interested than he had expected in the details of the home life; and in the course of conversation the dinner-party to the Seytons, and its motive, came out.
Alvar coloured deeply; he was silent then, but as soon as he was alone with Cheriton he said with some hurry of manner, —
“My brother, I am ashamed. What can I do? It is not endurable to me that any one should blame Miss Seyton.”
“I suppose my father did the only thing there was to be done. When an engagement is broken people generally say that there were faults on both sides.”
“That is not so,” said Alvar. “She is as blameless as a lily. Can I do nothing? I am ashamed,” he repeated vehemently.
“Perhaps when you go home you will be able to show the world that you are of a different opinion,” said Cherry very quietly, but with difficulty suppressing a smile.
“You do not understand,” said Alvar in a tone of displeasure, turning away, and thinking that he had never before known Cheriton so unsympathetic.
Jack did not make much way with the de la Rosas, he did not like committing himself to foreign languages, and was shy, but they were very polite to “Don Juan,” a name that so tickled Cheriton’s fancy that he adopted it at once.
Jack began by somewhat resenting his brother’s intimacy with the Stanforths as a strange and unnecessary novelty, but he soon fell under the charm, and pursued Mr Stanforth with theories of art which were received with plenty of good-humoured banter. Gipsy, too, set to work to enlighten him on Spanish customs; and having rescued him from one difficulty, made it her business to show him the way he should go, so that they became very friendly, and the strange Christmas in this foreign country drew the little party of English closer together. There was enough to interest them in the curious and picturesque customs of Andalusia, but the carols which Gipsy insisted on getting up gave Cherry a fit of home-sickness; and a great longing for Oakby, and the holly and the snow, the familiar occupations, the dogs, and the skating came over him. It had been a long absence; he thought how his father would be wishing for him, and he experienced that sudden doubt of the future which people call presentiment. Would he ever spend Christmas at home again? He was beginning to weary a little of the wonder and admiration that had stood him in such good stead, and to want the time-honoured landmarks which showed themselves unchanged as the flood-tide of passion subsided.
He was quite ready, however, to enter into the plans for a tour through some of the neighbouring towns before the Stanforths should return home at the end of January. Jack’s time was still shorter; and as Cheriton himself had hitherto seen nothing but Seville, a joint expedition was proposed, with liberty to separate whenever it was convenient, as Alvar would consent to nothing that involved Cherry in long days on horseback lasting after sundown, or in extra rough living; and Mr Stanforth backed up his prudent counsels.
But Cordova, Granada, and Malaga could be managed without any extreme fatigue, and Ronda could be reached easily from the latter place. So in the first week in the new year the three Lesters, Mr Stanforth and his daughter, and Miss Weston set off together for a fortnight’s trip. Afterwards they would all separate, and Alvar and Cheriton, after returning for a few weeks to Seville, were to make their way gradually northwards, stopping in France and Italy till the spring was further advanced.
The tour prospered, and in due time they found themselves at Ronda, and strolling out together in the lovely afternoon sunshine, reached the new bridge across the river; Jack and Gipsy engaged in an endless discussion on the expulsion of the Moors, lingering while they talked, and looking down into the deep volcanic chasm that divides the old town of Ronda from the new, while nearly three hundred feet below them roared, dashed, and sparkled the silvery waters of the Guadalvin. On either side were the picturesque buildings of the two towns, fringed with wood – in front, miles of orchards, and beyond, the magnificent snow-crowned mountains of the Sierra; while over all was the sapphire blue, and sun, which, though the year was but a fortnight old, covered the ground with jonquils, and hung the woods with lovely flowers hardly known to our hothouses.
They had marvelled at the Alhambra, and Cheriton had disclaimed all sense of feeling himself in the Crystal Palace. They had noticed and admired the mixture of Moorish and Christian art in Granada and Cordova, and had discussed ardently all the difficult questions of the Moorish occupation and expulsion – discussions in which Gipsy’s fresh school knowledge, and Jack’s ponderous theories, had met in many a hearty conflict. They had sketched, made notes, collected curiosities, or simply enjoyed the beauty according to their several idiosyncrasies, and had remained good friends through all the ups and downs of travel; while Cheriton had stood the fatigue so well that he had set his heart on riding with the others across country to Seville, and could afford to laugh at the discomforts incidental to eating and sleeping at Ronda. There was much to see there, and they did not mean to hurry away. Cherry remarked to Alvar that Jack had improved, and was less sententious than he used to be; but the cause of this increased geniality had struck no one. Every one laughed when Gipsy reminded him of things that he had forgotten, talked Spanish for him because he was too shy to commit himself to an unknown tongue, and stoutly contradicted many of his favourite sentiments. Writing an essay, was he? on the evil of regarding everything from a ludicrous point of view. There were a great many cases in which that was the best point of view to look at things, and Gipsy wrote a counter essay which afforded great amusement. But no one perceived when Gipsy’s sense of the ludicrous fell a little into abeyance; and when she ceased to contradict Jack flatly, and began to think that she received new ideas from him, still less did his brothers dream of the new thoughts and aspirations that were rushing confusedly through the boy’s mind; he was hardly conscious of them himself.
The pair were a little ahead of their companions, who now came up and joined them.
“Well, Jack,” said Alvar, “I have been making inquiries, and I find that we can take the excursion among the mountains that you wished for. Mr Stanforth prefers making sketches here, and it would be too rough for the ladies, or for Cherry.”
“I suppose the mountains are very fine?” said Jack, not very energetically.
“Jack found the four hundred Moorish steps too much for him. He has grown lazy,” said Cherry. “For my part, I think the fruit market is the nicest place here; it has such a splendid view. I shall go there to-morrow and eat melons while you are away.”
“Miss Weston and I are going to buy scarves and curiosities in the market,” said Gipsy; “but they say we should have come here in May to see the great fair; that is the time to buy beautiful things.”
“Yes,” said Alvar, “and Mr Stanforth might have studied all the costumes of Andalusia. But, I think, since we ordered our dinner two hours ago, it is likely now to be ready. I hope the ladies are not tired of fried pork, for I do not think we shall get anything better.”
“Oh!” said Gipsy, “I mean to get mamma to introduce it at home; it is so good.”
“Do you, my dear?” said her father. “I am inclined to think that with the ordinary accompaniments of clean tablecloths and silver forks it might be disappointing.”