“But, Queenie,” said Ruth cautiously, using a pet name of Virginia’s girlhood, “surely you were told how tumbledown the place was, and how stupid and behindhand everything would be. Poor dear Uncle James ought to have lived fifty years since.”
“I don’t believe that parish priests taught their people nothing but to catch rats fifty years since,” said Virginia, with a touch of the family bitterness in her voice. “Is it because papa is poor that the men-servants get tipsy, and Dick and Harry are always after them? Oh, Ruth,” suddenly softening, “I ought not to have said it, but the boys aren’t brought up well; and if you saw how wretched the people in the village are—and they look so wicked.”
“Yes,” said Ruth, as Virginia’s tears silenced her, “but you know we Seytons are a bad lot. We’re born, they say, with a drop of bad blood in us. Look at Aunt Julia, she was driven desperate and ran away—small blame to her—when her lover’s father forbade the match; but they caught and stopped her. After that she never cared what she did, and just lived by making fun of things.”
Virginia shuddered. Could her lazy, sarcastic aunt have ever known the thrillings and yearnings which were beating in her own heart now?
“There is not much fun in it,” she said. “No. As for Dick, I don’t think much of him. Poor old Roland was worth a dozen of him. I don’t care what people do as long as they are something. But Dick has no fine feelings.”
“Ruth,” said Virginia, “I think I was not taught better for nothing. I am sure papa is very unhappy; he thinks how wrong everything is. Poor papa! Grandpapa was such a bad father for him. I cannot make friends with Dick, and Harry will go back to school. Indoors I have nothing to do; but I am going to ask Uncle James, and then if I go to the cottages and get the children together a little, perhaps it may be better than nothing. Old nurse says they all grow up bad. Poor things, how can they help it!”
“Well, Queenie,” said Ruth dubiously, “I don’t think the people are very fit for you to go to. I don’t think Uncle Seyton would like it.”
“I should not be afraid of them,” said Virginia. “It would be doing something for papa, and doing good besides.”
To think of her father as an involuntary victim to the faults of others was the one refuge of Virginia’s heart; his graceful, melancholy gentleness had caught her fancy, and she was filled with a pity which, however strange from a child to a father, vibrated in every tender string of her nature. On the other hand, all her notions of right were outraged by the more obvious evils prevailing at Elderthwaite, and she went through in those first weeks a variety of emotions, for which action seemed the only cure. She felt as if the sins of generations lay on her father’s shoulders, and she wanted to pull them on to her own—wanted to stand in the deadly breach with the little weapon that her small experience had put into her hand. She wanted to teach a few poor children, a thing that might only be a pleasant occupation or the most commonplace of duties. But it was turning her face right round on the smooth slope the Seytons were treading, and trying to make a step up hill.
Ruth did not think that first step would be easy, and would have liked to see Virginia go downstairs in a somewhat less desperate humour, to find her uncle chatting to Miss Seyton in the drawing-room.