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.
Poor Cheriton! “Among the blind, the one-eyed is king,” and his sentiments were amazingly liberal for Oakby; but he was very young and deeply attached to his home and his surroundings, too tender-hearted not to be touched at Alvar’s preference, imaginative enough to realise his position, and yet repelled and put out of countenance by his peculiarities. To be tenderly addressed as “my brother,” “mi caro,” “mi Cheriton,” “Cherito mio,” to be deferred to on all occasions, and even told in the hearing of Jack and Bob “that his eyes when he laughed were the colour of the Mediterranean on a sunny day,” was, as he said, “so out-facing, that it made him feel a perfect fool,” especially when his brothers echoed it at every turn.
Yet he put up with it. It was so hard on the poor fellow if no one was kind to him! So hard, he added to himself, to be an unloved and unloving son.
Perhaps, after all, Alvar’s essential strangeness prevented Cheriton from feeling himself put aside.
Cheriton was very popular at school and at college. He had strong, intellectual ambitions, and though of less powerful mind than Jack, had attained to much graceful scholarship and possessed much command of language. He hoped to take honours, to go to the bar, and distinguish himself there under his uncle, Judge Cheriton’s, auspices. He had too a further and a sweeter hope, hitherto confided to no one.
But it was a certain “genius for loving” that really distinguished him from his fellows—really made him every one’s friend. He did not seek out his poorer neighbours so much from a sense of duty, as because his heart went out to every one belonging to Oakby, nay, every animal, every bit of ground—nothing was a trouble that conduced to the welfare of the place. This loving-kindness was a natural gift; but Cheriton made good use of it. He had high principles, and deep within his soul, struggling with the temptations of this ardent nature, were the pure aspirations and the capability of fervent piety which have made saints—responsibilities with which he was born.
But all this fire and force did not make tolerance easy; he was full of instinctive prejudices, and perhaps his greatest aids in his dealings with his new brother were his joyous unchecked spirits and the keen sense of the ludicrous that enabled him to laugh at himself as well as at other people.
Some little time after Alvar’s arrival there was a deep fall of snow, and while the pond was being swept for skating, the young Lesters, with Harry Seyton and the children from the rectory, who had come up for the purpose, proceeded to erect a snow man of gigantic proportions in front of the house.
“What a fright you have made of him!” said Cheriton, coming up with Alvar as they finished; “he has no nose and no expression.”
“Well, come and do his nose, then; it keeps on coming off,” said Nettie, who was standing on a bench to put the finishing touches.