“I can but advise,” said Alice; “I can forbid you nothing; for, to forbid, implies power to command obedience. But if you will be wise, and listen to me—Here, and on this spot, we part for ever!”
“Not so, by Heaven!” said Julian, whose bold and sanguine temper scarce saw difficulty in attaining aught which he desired. “We now part, indeed, but it is that I may return armed with my parents’ consent. They desire that I should marry—in their last letters they pressed it more openly—they shall have their desire; and such a bride as I will present to them has not graced their house since the Conqueror gave it origin. Farewell, Alice! Farewell, for a brief space!”
She replied, “Farewell, Julian! Farewell for ever!”
Julian, within a week of this interview, was at Martindale Castle, with the view of communicating his purpose. But the task which seems easy at a distance, proves as difficult, upon a nearer approach, as the fording of a river, which from afar appeared only a brook. There lacked not opportunities of entering upon the subject; for in the first ride which he took with his father, the Knight resumed the subject of his son’s marriage, and liberally left the lady to his choice; but under the strict proviso, that she was of a loyal and an honourable family;—if she had fortune, it was good and well, or rather, it was better than well; but if she was poor, why, “there is still some picking,” said Sir Geoffrey, “on the bones of the old estate; and Dame Margaret and I will be content with the less, that you young folks may have your share of it. I am turned frugal already, Julian. You see what a north-country shambling bit of a Galloway nag I ride upon—a different beast, I wot, from my own old Black Hastings, who had but one fault, and that was his wish to turn down Moultrassie avenue.”
“Was that so great a fault?” said Julian, affecting indifference, while his heart was trembling, as it seemed to him, almost in his very throat.
“It used to remind me of that base, dishonourable Presbyterian fellow, Bridgenorth,” said Sir Geoffrey; “and I would as lief think of a toad:—they say he has turned Independent, to accomplish the full degree of rascality.—I tell you, Gill, I turned off the cow-boy, for gathering nuts in his woods—I would hang a dog that would so much as kill a hare there.—But what is the matter with you? You look pale.”
Julian made some indifferent answer, but too well understood, from the language and tone which his father used, that his prejudices against Alice’s father were both deep and envenomed, as those of country gentlemen often become, who, having little to do or think of, are but too apt to spend their time in nursing and cherishing petty causes of wrath against their next neighbours.
In the course of the same day, he mentioned the Bridgenorth to his mother, as if in a casual manner. But the Lady Peveril instantly conjured him never to mention the name, especially in his father’s presence.
“Was that Major Bridgenorth, of whom I have heard the name mentioned,” said Julian, “so very bad a neighbour?”
“I do not say so,” said Lady Peveril; “nay, we were more than once obliged to him, in the former unhappy times; but your father and he took some passages so ill at each other’s hands, that the least allusion to him disturbs Sir Geoffrey’s temper, in a manner quite unusual, and which, now that his health is somewhat impaired, is sometimes alarming to me. For Heaven’s sake, then, my dear Julian, avoid upon all occasions the slightest allusion to Moultrassie, or any of its inhabitants.”