An English Squire. Coleridge Christabel Rose
pain awoke in Mr Lester’s mind any answering tenderness. He was a man with a weak will, a careful conscience, and imperfectly controlled temper and affections.
He much preferred to do right than to do wrong, and he generally did do right; in this one crucial instance he had neglected and slurred over the right thing for years, and now he was not sufficiently accustomed to question himself to realise how far he could have made amends for past neglect, how far he could now make his son fit for the heirship of which he neither could nor would deprive him. No, Alvar was a painful sight to him, therefore he would continue to ignore him as far as possible. He stood in the beloved Cheriton’s light, and therefore all the small difficulties that his incongruous presence caused would be left to Cheriton to set to rights, or not be set to rights at all.
It was pleasant, and it was not very difficult to Mr Lester, as he woke in the light of the Christmas dawn, to turn his mind from Alvar’s presence to the many duties that the season demanded of him. The children all woke up curious and half-unfriendly. Cheriton wondered what Alvar was thinking of. But they none of them knew to what thoughts or feelings the pealing, crashing Christmas bells awoke the unknown heir.
“Nay, you’ll know no more what he’s after than if he was yonder picture,” said the grandmother in answer to some remarks, and as Cheriton heard him coming down stairs he felt that this was exactly the state of the case.
Chapter Five.
The Seytons of Elderthwaite
“All things here are out of joint.”
In the midst of a waste of unswept snow across the hill behind Oakby Hall, there was a large old house, originally of something the same square and substantial type, but of more ambitious architecture, for there were turrets at the four corners, overgrown and almost borne down by enormous bushes of ancestral ivy; while the great gates leading to the stables were of fanciful and beautiful ironwork, now broken and falling into decay. Great tree-trunks lay here and there on undulating slopes, the shrubberies flung wild branches over the low stone wall dividing them from the park, where a gate swung weakly on its hinges. There were few tall trees, but litre and there along the drive a solitary beech of great size and beauty suggested the course of an avenue once without its equal in the country round. An old man was feebly sweeping away the snow in front of the house, and a gentleman stood smoking a cigar on the steps – a slenderly-made man, with a delicate, melancholy face, and a pointed grey beard, dressed in a shabby shooting-coat. His eyes turned from the slow old sweeper, past the relics of the avenue, to a ruinous-looking lodge, the chimneys of which sent no smoke into the frosty air.
Mr Seyton of Elderthwaite was used to these signs of adversity, but to-day he was struck by them anew, for he was wondering how they would look in the eyes of a stranger. Oakby, with its strict laws, its rough humours, its ready-made life, would be a strange experience to its foreign heir. What would Elderthwaite, with ruined fortunes and blighted reputation be to a petted and prosperous girl, brought up by gentle, religious women, in all the proprieties and sociabilities of well-to-do country villa life? What would his daughter say to the home she had left as a child, and had never seen since?
The Seytons were a family of older standing in the county than the Lesters, and had once been of superior fortune. At present their condition was, and rightly, very different. The Lesters, with many shortcomings, had been men who, on the whole, had endeavoured to do their duty in their station, and had governed their tenants, brought up their children, attended to public business, and managed their own affairs in an honest and right-minded, if not always in a very enlightened fashion.
But the Seytons had had a bad name for generations. It is true that no tales of wild and picturesque wickedness were told of the present head of the house, such as had made his father’s name a bye-word for harshness and violence, and for all manner of evil living; but the family traditions were strong against him; he inherited debt and a dishonoured name, and, alas! with them the tendencies and temptations that had brought them about. He had looked with bitter, injured eyes at the timber that was sold for his father’s gaming debts; but many a noble tree fell to pay his own, before he married a girl, innocent, high-minded, and passionate-tempered.
It was a very unhappy marriage, and Mr Seyton never forgave his wife for her broken heart, nor himself for breaking it. When she died, her relations took away her daughter, pledging themselves to provide for her, if she were left undisturbed in their hands. The father had enough to do with his sons. The eldest, Roland, was a fine, handsome fellow, and began life with the sad disadvantage of being expected to go wrong. He got a commission, but during the short intervals that he spent at home, was personally unpopular.
In one of these he took a great fancy to Cheriton Lester during an interval between the latter’s school and college life, and Cheriton being warned against him as a bad companion, stuck to him with equal perverseness and generosity. Roland was much the elder of the two, but Cherry’s vigorous youth took the lead in the friendship, and gave it his own impress. It was ended by such a scandal in Elderthwaite village as those which had made the name of Roland Seyton’s grandfather hated by all the country round, as one by whom no man’s hearth was respected, and with whom no man’s daughter was safe.
The discovery shocked Cheriton unspeakably; all the parties concerned were well known to him, and he felt that of such sins he could never think or speak lightly. But he would not join in loud or careless blame of his friend, who perhaps felt his truest pang of repentance at the boy’s confused miserable face in the one parting interview allowed by Mr Lester before Roland joined his regiment, about to sail for India.
“You need not have been afraid, sir,” Roland said, when accused of having set him a bad example; “I knew how to choose my confidant.”
After Roland’s departure, other tales to his discredit, and debts which it was impossible to pay, came to his father’s ears, and these additional troubles helped to strengthen habits of self-indulgence already formed, which had made Mr Seyton a man old before his time, melancholy-faced and gentle-mannered, whom nobody respected and nobody disliked. But the two younger boys had a bad start in life, and seemed little likely to redeem the family fortunes.
It was not often that Mr Seyton thought of anything but the immediate dulness and discomfort of the hour, or of its small alleviations; but to-day these recollections pressed on him. He thought, too, of his shabby furniture, and his ill-conducted household; how unfit a home for his well-dowered daughter; how unlike both her aunt’s house and the pleasant foreign tour which, since her aunt’s death, she had been enjoying.
“Papa, papa!” cried a bright voice behind him, “Good morning,” then as he turned round, the newly-arrived daughter exclaimed, throwing her arms round his neck, “Oh, how nice it is to say ‘Good morning, papa!’”
She was a fair creature enough, a true Seyton, with slender frame and pointed chin, creamy complexion and rich brown hair, but the large, round eyes, tender, intense, and full of life, were her mother’s, though clear and untroubled as the mother’s had never been.
“So you are glad to come home, Virginia?” said her father, rather sadly.
“Yes, papa, I am just delighted. I always made stories about home when I was at Littleton. I was very happy, you know, with dear Aunt Mary and all my friends; but it was so uninteresting not to know more of my very nearest relations.”
“You will find it very different, my dear, from what you are accustomed to. This is a dull place.”
“Oh, papa, I think it is so silly to be dull! I shall be quite ready to like anything you wish,” said Virginia warmly.
“My dear, you shall take your own way. It would be hard at least if I could not give you that,” said Mr Seyton, looking at her as if he did not quite know what to do with this gaily-dressed, frank-spoken daughter. “Now let us come to breakfast.”
“I am afraid I am late,” said Virginia; “but it is never easy to be in time after a journey.”
“You are punctual for this house, my dear; we take such things easy. But your aunt is down, you see, in your honour.” As Mr Seyton spoke they came into the dining-room, a long, low room, with treasures of curious carving round its oak-panels,