An English Squire. Coleridge Christabel Rose

pleasant fellow, with a considerable regard for his Oakby cousins, though he had never considered it necessary to regulate his life by the Oakby standard, or concerned himself greatly with its main principles. His life in the army had of course been quite apart from Cheriton’s at school and college, and the latter did not care to realise how far the elder cousin, once a model in his eyes, had grown away from him. Nor did he regard him as a rival.

      Ruth gave smiles and dances to himself, and he little guessed that while he did his duty joyously in other directions, looking forward to his next word with her, she had given his cousin a distinct promise, and engaged to keep it secret till such time as he chose to ask for her openly. Perhaps Rupert could not be expected to scruple at such a step, when he knew how entirely Ruth had managed her affairs for herself in all her intercourse with him.

      And as for Ruth she rejoiced in the chance of making a sacrifice to prove her love; and whether the sacrifice was of other people’s feelings, her own ease and comfort, or of any little trifling scruples of conscience, ought, she considered, to be equally unimportant. “Love must still be lord of all,” but the love that loves honour more was in her eyes weak and unworthy. Faults in the hero only proved the strength of his manhood; faults in herself were all condoned by her love.

      Ruth was clever enough to put into words the inspiring principles of a great many books that she read, and a great deal of talk that she heard, and vehement enough to act up to it. Rupert, who had no desire to be at all unlike other people, had little notion of the glamour of enthusiasm with which Ruth plighted him her troth at Oakby.

      The Lesters had expended much abuse on the morning of their ball on the blackness of the oak-panels, which no amount of wax candles would overcome but what was lost in gaiety was gained in picturesqueness, and the Oakby ball, with its handsome hosts and its distinguished company, was long quoted as the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Perhaps it owed no little of its charm to the one in whose honour it was given. Alvar in society was neither silent nor languid; he was a splendid dancer, and played the host with a foreign grace that enchanted the ladies, old and young. At the dinner-party the night before he had been silent and stately, evidently fearing to commit himself before the country gentlemen and county grandees, who were such strange specimens of humanity to him; but with their daughters it was different, and those were happy maidens who danced with the stranger. He was of course duly instructed whom he was thus to honour, but he found time to exercise his own choice, and Virginia was conscious that he paid her marked attention.

      Why waste more words? She had found her fate, and softened with home troubles, attracted by the superiority of the Lesters, and dazzled with the charm of a manner and appearance never seen before, yet suiting all her girlish dreams of heroic perfection, she was giving her heart away to the last man whose previous training or present character was likely really to accord with her own.

      Though she had never been an acknowledged beauty, she could often look beautiful, and the subtle excitement of half-conscious triumph was not wanting to complete the charm.

      “There never had been such a pleasant ball,” said Cheriton the next morning, as he was forced to hurry away to Oxford without a chance of discussing its delights.

      “It is indeed possible to dance in England,” said Alvar.

      “I think we made it out very well,” said Rupert, with a smile under his moustaches.

      “There are balls – and balls,” said Ruth to her cousin. “You don’t always have black oak, or black Spanish eyes, eh, Queenie? or some other things?”

      And Virginia blushed and said nothing.

      Nettie, after all, had rejoiced in the partners of which her white frock and plaited hair had not defrauded her (she never should forgive her hair for coming down in Rupert’s very sight in the last waltz). Jack had not been so miserable as he expected; and Alvar found that it was possible to enjoy life in England, and that the position awaiting him there was not to be despised, even in the face of parting from his beloved Cheriton.

      Rupert by no means considered Alvar as an amusing companion, nor Oakby in the dull season an amusing place, but it suited him now to spend his leave there, and suited him also to be intimate at Elderthwaite. Consequently he encouraged Alvar to make excuses for going there, and certainly in finding some interests to supply Cheriton’s place. He cultivated Dick Seyton, who was of an age to appreciate a grown-up man’s attentions, so that altogether there was more intercourse between the two houses than had taken place since the days of Roland.

      Ruth was paying a long visit at Elderthwaite. One of her aunts – her grandmother’s youngest and favourite child – was in bad health, and Lady Charlton was glad to spend some time with her and to be free from the necessity of chaperoning her granddaughter. The arrangement suited Ruth exactly. She could make Elderthwaite her head-quarters, pay several visits among friends in the north, and find opportunities of meeting Rupert, whose regiment was stationed at York, and who was consequently within reach of many north-country gaieties.

      For the present no gaieties were needed by either to enliven the wintry woods of Elderthwaite; they were as fairy land to the little brown maiden who, among their bare stems and withered ferns found, as she believed, the very flower of life, and had no memory for the bewitching smiles, the soft, half-sentimental laughter, the many dances, and the preference hardly disguised which were the food of Cheriton’s memory, and gave him an object which lightened every uncongenial task. These little wiles had effectually prevented every one from guessing the real state of the case. Rupert’s difficulty was that he never could be sure how far Alvar was unsuspicious. There was a certain blankness in his way of receiving remarks, calculated to prevent suspicion, which might proceed from entire innocence, or from secret observation which he did not choose to betray. But he was always willing to accompany Rupert to Elderthwaite, and in Cheriton’s absence found Virginia by far his most congenial companion.

      The amount of confidence already existing between Ruth and her cousin really rendered the latter unsuspicious, and ready to further intercourse with Rupert, believing Ruth to be in a doubtful state of mind, half encouraging, and half avoiding his attentions. And Ruth was very cautious; she never allowed Rupert to monopolise her during his ostensible visits, and if any one at Elderthwaite guessed at their stolen interviews, it was certainly not Virginia.

      The scheme of the Sunday class had answered pretty well. Virginia knew how to teach, and though her pupils were rough, the novelty of her grace and gentleness made some impression on them.

      The parson did not interfere with her, and it never occurred to her that he was within hearing, till one Sunday, as she tried to tell them the simplest facts in language sufficiently plain to be understood, and sufficiently striking to be interesting, and felt, by the noise on the back benches, that she was entirely failing to do so, a head appeared at the dining-room door, and a stentorian voice exclaimed, —

      “Bless my soul, you young ruffians; is this the way to behave to Miss Seyton? If any lad can’t show respect to a lady in my house, out he’ll go, and, by George he won’t come in again.”

      This unwonted address produced an astonished silence; but it frightened the teacher so much more than her class, that her only resource was to call on the more advanced ones with great solemnity “to say their hymn to the vicar.”

      Parson Seyton straightened himself up, and listened in silence to —

      “There is a green hill far away,” stumbled through in the broadest Westmoreland; and when it was over, remarked, —

      “Very pretty verses. Lads and lasses, keep your feet still and attend to Miss Seyton, and —mind– I can hear ye,” a piece of information with which Virginia at any rate could well have dispensed.

      But she was getting used to her rough uncle, and was grateful to Cheriton for the advice that he had given her, and so she told Alvar one day when they were all walking down to the vicarage, with the ostensible purpose of showing Nettie some enormous mastiff puppies, the pride of the vicar’s heart.

      In the absence of her own brothers Nettie found Dick Seyton an amusing companion, “soft” though he might be; she began by daring him to jump over ditches as well as she could, and ended by finding that he roused in her unsuspected