I, Thou, and the Other One: A Love Story. Barr Amelia E.
and the country on the quaking edge of revolution, and starvation and misery all over the land.” And the Squire answered: “Exham has not one thought of love-making. He is far too much in with a lot of men who have the country and their own estates to save. He won’t bother himself with women-folk now, whatever he may do in idle times.”
They had both forgotten, or their own love affair had been of such Arcadian straightness and simplicity that they had never learned Love’s ability to domineer all circumstances that can stir this mortal frame. Exham had indeed enlisted himself with passionate earnestness in the cause of his class, which he called the cause of his country–but as the drop of
“lucent sirup tinct with cinnamon”
is forever flavoured and perfumed by the spice, so Exham’s life was coloured and prepossessed by the thought of the sweet girl who had been blended with so many of his purest and happiest hours.
It was then of Kate he thought as he wandered about the stately rooms and beautiful gardens of Exham Hall. He was not oblivious of his engagements with the Duke and the tenants; but he was considering how best to keep these engagements, and yet not miss a visit to her. The dying King, the riotous land, were accidentals of his life and condition; his love for Kate Atheling was at the root of his existence; it was a fundamental of the past and of the future. For five years of constant change and movement, it had lain in abeyance; but old love is a dangerous thing to awaken; and Piers Exham found in doing this thing that every event of the past strengthened the influence of the present, and fixed his heart more passionately on the girl he had first found fair; the
–“rosebud set with little, wilful thorns,
And sweet as English airs could make her,”
that had sung and swung herself into his affection when she was only twelve years old.
He was however quite aware that any proposal to marry Kate Atheling would meet with prompt opposition from his family; indeed the Duke had already mentioned a very different alliance; and in that case, he did not doubt but that Squire Atheling would be equally resolved never to allow his daughter to enter a home where she would be regarded by any member of it as an intruder. But he put all such considerations for the present behind him. He said to himself, “The first thing to do, is to win Kate’s love; with that sweet consciousness, I shall be ready for all opposition.” For his heart kept assuring him that every trouble and obstacle has an hour in which it may be conquered,–an hour when Fate and Will become One, and are then as irresistible as a great force of Nature. He was sure the hour for this conflict had not yet come. It was the day for a different fight. His home, his estate, his title, and all the privileges of his nobility were in danger. When they were placed beyond peril, then he would fight for the wife he wanted, and win her against all opposition. And who could tell in what way the first conflict would bring forth circumstances to insure victory to the last?
He was deeply in love; he was full of hope; he was at Atheling some part of every day. If he came in the afternoon, Kate’s pony was saddled, and they rode far and away, to where the shadows and sunshine elbowed one another on the moors. The golden gorse shed its perfume over their heads; the linnets sang to them of love; they talked, and laughed, and rode swiftly until their pace brought them among the mountains that looked like a Titanic staircase going up to the skies. There, they always drew rein, and went slower, and spoke softer, and indeed often became quite silent, and knew such silence to be the sweetest eloquence. Then after a little interval Piers would say one word, “Kate!” and Kate only answer with a blush, and a smile, and an upturned face. For Love can put a volume in four letters; and souls say in a glance what a thousand words would only blunder about. Then there was the gallop home, and the merry cup of tea, and the saunter in the garden, and the long tender “good-bye” at the threshold where the damask roses made the air heavy with their sweetness.
So Lord Exham did not find his politics hard to bear with such delicious experiences between whiles. And Kate? What were Kate’s experiences? Oh, any woman who has once loved, any pure girl who longs to love, may divine them! For Love is always the same. The tale he told Kate on the Atheling moors and under the damask roses was the very same tale he told high in Paradise by the four rivers where the first roses blew.
As the summer advanced, startling notes from the outside world forced themselves into this heavenly solitude. On the twenty-sixth of June, King George died; and this death proved to be the first of a series of great events. Piers felt it to be a warning bell. It said to him, “The charming overture of Love, with its restless pleasure, its delicate hopes and fears, is nearly at an end.” He had been with Kate for three divine hours. They had sat among the brackens at the foot of the mountains, and been twenty times on the very point of saying audibly the word “Love!” and twenty times had felt the delicious uncertainty of non-confession to be too sweet for surrender. Nay, they did not reason about it; they simply obeyed that wise, natural self-restraint which knew its own hour, and would not hurry it.
With a sigh of rapture, they rose as the sun began to wester, and rode slowly back to Atheling. No one was at the door to receive them, and Kate wondered a little; but when they entered the hall, the omission was at once understood. There was a large open fireplace at the northern extremity, and over it the Atheling arms, with their motto, “Feare God! Honour the Kinge! Laus Deo!” Squire Atheling was draping this panel with crape; and Mrs. Atheling stood near him with some streamers of the gloomy fabric in her hands. She pointed to the King’s picture–which already wore the emblem of mourning–and said, “The King is dead.”
“The King lives! God save the King!” replied the Squire, instantly. “God save King William the Fourth!”
Then all the clocks in the house were stopped, and draped, and when this ceremony was over, they had tea together. And as it is a Yorkshire custom to make funeral feasts, Mrs. Atheling gave to the meal an air of special entertainment. The royal Derby china added its splendour to the fine old silver and delicate damask. There were delicious cheese-cakes, and Queen’s-cakes, and savoury potted meats, and fresh crumpets; and the ripe red strawberries filled the room with their ethereal scent. No one was at all depressed by the news. If King George was dead, King William was alive; and the Squire thought, “Everything might be hoped from ‘The Sailor King.’ Why!” he said, “he is that good-natured he won’t say a bad word about the Reformers; though, God knows, they are a disgrace to themselves, and to all that back them up.”
“There will now be a general election,” said Exham positively.
“To be sure,” answered the Squire. “And it is to be hoped we may get together a few men that will take the Bull of Reform by the horns, and put a stop to that nonsense forever in England.”
“Before they do that,” said Mrs. Atheling, “they will have to consider the swarms of people they have brought up in dirt, and rags, and misery. For if they don’t, they will bring ruin to the nation that owns them.”
“King William is a fighter. He will back the Law with bayonets, if he thinks it right,” said the Squire.
Mrs. Atheling looked at him indignantly. Then, putting her cup down with unmistakable emphasis, she exclaimed, “The Lord forgive thee, John Atheling! I’ll say one thing, and I’ll say it now, and forever, it isn’t law backed with bayonets that has saved England so far; it is the bit of religion in every man’s heart, and his trust that somehow God will see him righted. If it wasn’t for that it would have been all up with our set long ago.”
“That is just the way women talk politics,” said the Squire, with some contempt. “If there was nothing else in this Reform business to make a man sick, the way they have given in to women, and got them to form clubs and make speeches, is enough to set any sensible person against Reform; and if there is no way of talking people into doing what is right–then they must be made to do right; and that’s all there is about it.”
“Very well, John; but there are two sides to play at making other people do right. I’ll tell you one thing, the Government will have to take a lot of things into consideration before they put their trust in backing law with bayonets. It won’t work! Let them start doing it, and we shall all find ourselves in a wrong box.”
“I