“Nay—nay, it’s not your cousin. I don’t believe in foreigners, Cherry; and Master Alvar isn’t what I call a lover for a pretty girl that worships the ground he treads on. If he wants her money, why, a gentleman should keep up appearances at least.”
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 Twenty Four.
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.