Chapter Forty Five.
My Lady and My Queen.
“Let all be well—be well.”
“So, Queenie, you see there will soon be an end of it all!”
The speaker was Miss Seyton. She stood looking down at her niece with an odd quiver in lip and voice, even while her tone was not altogether a sad one. Virginia sat in dismayed silence; she had been arranging a bunch of autumn leaves and berries to brighten up the dark old drawing-room, which bore many a trace of her presence in bits of needlework and tokens of pleasant occupation, though the house was duller and quieter than ever now that Mr Seyton’s rapidly failing health gave him the habits of an invalid, and that both the boys were absent. Miss Seyton looked more faded than ever, but she was kind and friendly with Virginia, even though she could not divest her voice of its sarcastic tone as she continued,—
“You are a person of consequence, and you ought to understand the state of the case.”
“That Roland means to sell Elderthwaite?” said Virginia, slowly.
“Yes. We can’t afford, Virginia, to make pretences to each other, and we know that it will come before many months. Then what are we to do?”
However much it went against Virginia to discuss the results of her father’s death, she felt that there was some truth in her aunt’s words, that they ought to be prepared for so great a change; and she had also learnt to practise great directness in dealing with Miss Seyton.
“I have sometimes supposed that you would live at the vicarage, Aunt Julia,” she said.
“Not if I have a penny to live on elsewhere,” replied Miss Seyton. “James and I were never friends, and I’ll not see the place in the hands of strangers. Besides, I’ve had a thirty years’ imprisonment, and I’d like my freedom. Look here—when I was a girl I was just like the others; I loved pleasure as well as they did, and had it too. I was as daring as ever a Seyton of them all. However, I meant to marry and live in the south, and I was quite good enough, my dear, for the man I was engaged to. Then he quarrelled with James, and that began the breach. I didn’t marry, as you may see, and when my father died my portion couldn’t be paid off without a sale, and things were in such a mess I had no power to claim it. So here I stayed, and, let me tell you, I’ve stopped up a good many holes, and been quite as great a blessing to my family as they deserved.”
Virginia laughed in spite of herself, though her answer was grave.
“Yes, I know that, now.”
“But now, d’ye see, Virginia, I’m tired of it. I’m only fifty, and it’ll go hard if I don’t get some pickings out of the sale of the estate. Do you know, we have some old cousins living in Bath, a Ruth and Virginia of another generation? I’m inclined to think I should like to go into society—to ‘come out,’ in fact, in a smart cap, and to live within reach of a circulating library and scandal. That’s my view, and that’s what I mean to aim at when the time comes. What do you say?”
“I should like the boys to have a home somehow,” said Virginia. “Perhaps that would make some place into home for me.”
“I don’t wish to desert you,” said Miss Seyton, “but candidly I think we should be happier apart. We shouldn’t amuse each other if we lived together. But won’t James want to keep you?”
“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I am afraid it would not be a good plan for the boys to go there for holidays—if this place is to be given up. But oh, Aunt Julia, how can we tell what will happen? I can’t make plans; I don’t feel as if it mattered; and Roland seems to want to cast us all off.”
“Yes; he’s a selfish fellow. But, my dear, just consider how much worse it would be, if we had to take him on. Thank your stars that he means to stay in India. And as for the place, with its paint and its fences and its broken glass, let it go. We’re better free of it. He is right, there. The worst part of the story is poor old James who must stay.”
“He can’t forgive Roland.”
“No—you see, Queenie, it’s wits that tell.—James hasn’t brains, and he has never thought of cutting himself loose. He couldn’t live away from Elderthwaite, any more than he could live without his skin. But when he hasn’t the family dignity to keep him up, I’m afraid he’ll go down.”
“He is so wretched now about Cheriton Lester.”
“Yes. He is the only Lester worth fretting for. As for that prig Jack, I’d like to see him make a fool of himself. I’d like to see him ‘exceed his allowance considerably.’ There’s a pretty way of putting it for you!”
With which parting shot Miss Seyton went away, and Virginia sat sorrowful and perplexed, and with something of the family bitterness in her heart. Life was very hard to her. Her love for each one of her relations was a triumph over difficulties, and the sweet spontaneous passion that had promised to make her happy had been in its turn triumphed over by the uncongeniality of her lover. The softness of early youth and of her previous training had been replaced by something of the strength that expects little and makes the best of a bad business, but at a risk, the risk of the sense that evil is inevitable. Virginia was always outwardly gentle; but she had been thrown back on herself till she had gained a self-reliance that the Seyton blood in her was ready to exaggerate into scorn. For even Ruth was slow in answering her letters, and never wrote as in her girlish days.
As she sat musing a note was brought to her. It was from Mrs Lester, containing Cheriton’s imperative request that she would come and see him. Would she come at once?
Virginia’s cheeks flamed as if the missive had been from Alvar himself. She got up and put the note in her pocket, dressed herself, and leaving word with one of the servants that she meant to take a walk, set forth without delay for Oakby, walking through the plantations, across the fell, and through the fir-wood, as she had scarcely ever done alone before. She remembered going as Alvar’s betrothed to ask for Cheriton during his first illness, and Alvar’s absorption and indifference to her presence. Now that would be natural enough. Still she could scarcely think of Cheriton in her dread and wonder as to who might greet her, as she rang at the bell, and asked for Mrs Lester, who came forward into the hall to receive her.
“My dear,” she said, “I do not know what Cherry wants with you; but we can’t refuse him. Will you come at once?”
Virginia was afraid to ask questions, she followed the old lady’s slow progress up the dusky staircase, and into Cheriton’s room.
The daylight was now fast fading, but its last rays fell on Cheriton’s wide-opened eyes and flushed face.
He took hold of her hand, and said with extreme difficulty,—
“Thank you—my love to the parson. Ask Jack what I meant to do—and then tell him. Tell him—I say—he must reform Elderthwaite for my sake. He must do it himself. I know he can. Don’t let him be one of the abuses. Don’t get into despair.” He paused for breath, and then with an accent and smile that through all the suffering had something of his old playful daring, “I mustn’t say anything else to you, but that will come right too.”
“I will tell him,” faltered Virginia, awed, bewildered, and yet with a strange sense of encouragement; she let herself be drawn away, heard Mrs Lester say that it was too dark for her to go home alone, she should send Jack with her to get a breath of air, while Cherry was suffering less. He was so fully himself it was hard to believe in the danger, but the attacks of coughing were most exhausting, and he could hardly take anything, she was very hopeless, and “my grandson”—this always meant Alvar—thought badly of him. “Come in here, my dear, and I will fetch Jack.”
As Mrs Lester put her into the library, and left her there alone in the dusk, the tears that she had hitherto restrained broke forth.
She thought that she was crying for Cheriton, but all her own sad future, all her yearnings for the lost past, mingled together, and she wept the more because, she knew not how, Cheriton had given her a sort of indefinite comfort.
She did not hear the study door open, nor see Alvar come through the room, nor did he see her in the dim light, till he heard her sobbing.
“Who is it?” he exclaimed, becoming aware of a woman’s figure near the fire. She started up, and with her first movement he knew her. “Mi dona!” he cried in his astonishment.
“Cherry asked to see me,” she faltered. “He is so ill—I could not help crying.”
“Ah, no!” said Alvar; “and I may not comfort you!”
But he came close and stood by her side, and she saw that he too was greatly agitated. She wanted to speak about Cheriton, but she could not command her voice, nor think of a word to say.
Suddenly Alvar turned and clasped her hand.
“Ah!” he cried, with such vehemence as she had never seen in him before. “My heart is breaking! Can you never forgive? I love you; I have always loved you. When you sent me from you, it was my pride that let me submit! In my own country I knew that for your sake I was English—English altogether. I am not worthy, but I repent. I have confessed. Help me, and I will be a good Englishman! For I have now no other country, and I cannot live without you. Give me your hand once more!”
Alvar poured forth this torrent with such burning eagerness, such abandonment of entreaty, that he did not see how weak were the defences he was attacking.
“Indeed,” she whispered, “it was not that—not that I thought you were—not good—I thought you did not love me—much.”
“I did—I do love you—I love you as my life! But you?”
“I have always loved you. I could not change,” she said, with something of her old gentle dignity. “But—I have been very unhappy all this time.”
“Ah, now you shall be happy! Yet, what do I say? How can I make any one happy! I who have grieved and vexed my brother with my unkindness—nay, caused his illness even—I cannot make you happy!” said Alvar, in a tone of real self-blame.
“I think you can!” said Virginia softly; but the words had hardly passed her lips when she started away from him, as Jack came into the room.
“Granny says I am to walk home with you, Virginia. What, Alvar, are you here? they have been looking for you. Do go to Cherry—he is so restless now!”
“I will go,” said Alvar. “Take care of her, Jack, for I must not come. Farewell, mi regna!” He took both her hands and kissed them, then put her towards Jack, and hurried away; while poor Virginia glanced in much confusion at her escort; but he was too much absorbed in grief and anxiety to take in what had passed, or to heed it if he did. He walked on by her side without speaking; till she, trying to collect her thoughts, and actuated by a very unnecessary fear of what he would think of her silence, bethought herself to ask him what Cheriton wished her to tell her uncle.
“He said I was to ask you?”
“He wanted to take orders, and be curate of Elderthwaite,” said Jack. “You know London did not suit him, and the work was too hard, and life at home was so worrying for him. Besides, he hated being idle. He thought that he could manage to get things right at Elderthwaite, and he said that he should like it, and be happy there.”
Jack spoke in a dull, heavy voice, his use of the past tense marking how completely he regarded the possibilities of which he spoke as at an end; and something in the tone showing that the proposal had been distasteful to him.
“Would Cherry have given himself for that?” exclaimed Virginia.
“Yes,” said Jack. “I didn’t like it. It seemed a great sacrifice, and besides—he was not half strong enough.”
“But did he care so much? I don’t mean that I can’t understand his wishing to take orders—but just for Elderthwaite!”
“He is very fond of Elderthwaite. And he said that it was only because he fancied that he could be more useful there than any one else; and because he has money, that he was justified in proposing it—because he was ill, I mean.”
“Indeed, he could do good there! He always did!”
“You know,” said Jack, rather more freely, “that Cherry has a notion that when a person seems specially marked out for any situation, he is likely, in the long run, to be the best person for it. He says you can’t destroy evil without good. That people fit their own places, and so he believes that Elderthwaite would do better, in the long run, if Parson Seyton could be encouraged to make things a little more ship-shape, than it would with a new man, if he were driven away. You see he gets fond of people. I don’t see it; I think it’s fanciful. All reformers begin with a clean sweep. Then Cherry said valuables were sometimes found in the dust; nobody would reform if you ran at them with a besom. Of course he could persuade people; at any rate, he always thought he could.”
“He thinks the sun is more powerful than the north wind,” said Virginia. “I am sure Uncle James would have given in to him.”
“So he said. But he was mistaken in one case, and then he blamed himself, and I suppose—I suppose—he has conquered at last! Any way, Virginia, you were to tell your uncle what he wished to do.”
“I will tell him. He is breaking his heart about Cherry now.”
“I suppose so. I can’t come in. Good-bye; we’ll send over in the morning.” Jack turned away. Cheriton’s kindly theories might seem fanciful to him; but he would never have the chance of knocking them on the head any more. He was so miserable that even the thought of Gipsy only made him feel her absence, and wonder if so bright a creature could continue to care for him, when he had grown into a stern, hard-hearted person, without any power of softening. Poor Jack’s hard heart was very heavy, and beat so fast as he came up to the house, that he could hardly ask if there was any change.