"Love should ride the wind
With Spain's dark-glancing daughters."
Some six or seven and twenty years before the date when his sons were
thus discussing their elder brother's arrival, Gerald Lester, then a
young man fresh from college, had been sent abroad by his father to
separate him from a girl, somewhat his inferior in rank, for whom he had
formed an attachment. He was not then his father's heir, as he had an
elder brother living, and he was supposed to be going to make his way at
the bar; but though well-conducted and brilliantly handsome, his talents
and tastes were not of an order to make success rapid or certain, and
such a marriage as he had contemplated would have been, though he had a
small independence, peculiarly inexpedient. Though at times passionate
and defiant, he was not a person of much strength of will; and he
yielded to the pressure put on him, partly from sense of duty--for he
was by no means wanting in principle--and partly because it was too much
trouble to resist.
The affair, however, left him in an unsettled state of mind, and
increased his dislike to his profession. While wandering about in the
south of Spain, he became acquainted, through some letters of
introduction with which he had been provided, with a family of position
of the name of De la Rosa. While staying with them he met with an
accident which disabled him from travelling, and afforded him time and
opportunity to flirt and sentimentalise with the beautiful Maria de la
Rosa, who fell passionately in love with the handsome Englishman.
Gerald's feelings were more on the surface, but he was much carried away
by the circumstances; he felt that he would make a poor return for the
hospitality that had been shown him if he only "loved and rode away."
He was enough irritated by the compulsion that his father had put upon
him to feel glad to act independently; while the natural opposition of
Don Guzman de la Rosa to his daughter's marriage with a foreigner,
stirred Gerald to more ardour than Maria's dark eyes had already
awakened. Her birth, at any rate, was all that could be desired, her
religion ought not to be an objection in one so good and pious, and the
nationality of his younger son's wife could be of no consequence to old
Mr Lester. Don Guzman was not a zealous Catholic, and he yielded at
length to his daughter's entreaties; the young Englishman's small
independence seeming, in the eyes of the frugal Spaniard, a sufficient
fortune.
Gerald Lester and Maria de la Rosa were married at Gibraltar, the
difficulties of a legal marriage between a Protestant and a Roman
Catholic being almost insurmountable on Spanish territory. In Gibraltar
they lived for some time; but the marriage was not a happy one. Maria
was a mere ignorant child, with all her notions irreconcilably at war
with her husband's; and Gerald, who had his ideals, was very unhappy.
After some months, the sudden illness of his elder brother summoned him
home, and while he was absent his child was born unexpectedly, and his
young wife died. He learnt almost at once that he was his father's
heir, and that a son was born to him. It seemed no moment for making
such a disclosure. His grief for his brother sheltered the shock and
surprise of the death of the poor young wife, and he satisfied his
conscience by writing to the English clergyman who had solemnised his
marriage, and desiring that he should baptise the boy according to the
rites of the English Church. As this stipulation had been made at the
marriage, Don Guzman allowed the order to be carried into effect. But
as no desire was expressed by the father as to a name, it was christened
Alvaro Guzman--the Spanish grandfather omitting the Gerald, which he
felt had been an ill-omened name to his daughter.
Gerald himself, meanwhile, was almost ready to forget the little Alvar's
existence. He was ashamed of his foolish marriage, and remorseful at
its secrecy and disobedience; the new life opened to him by his
brother's death was exceedingly congenial. Why could not those unhappy
months be as if they had never been!
The child was of course an unfamiliar idea to him, and except with an
occasional pang he hardly realised its existence; when the thought was
forced on him, he regarded it with aversion.
Three months had not, however, passed since his wife's death, when he
became acquainted with a Miss Cheriton, a young lady of good family and
some fortune. She was not very pretty; but she was full of intelligence
and refinement, and she was very good. Perhaps the force of contrast
was half the attraction. When his father urged him to pay his addresses
to Miss Cheriton, he felt how willingly he would have done so, but an
awkward disclosure lay between them. With all his faults he could not
be so dishonourable as to marry her, without telling her that his heir
was already born.
But the friendship between them, so different from anything that he had
ever known before, grew and strengthened, till at last one evening he
told her all the story. He had married foolishly and secretly, as far
as his relations were concerned; his wife was dead and had left a little
son. That was the story. Must it be for ever a bar between them?
Fanny Cheriton listened, though she was a merry, quick-tongued girl, in
silence. Then she said that he must tell his father the whole truth,
and must acknowledge the child; he ought to come home and be brought up
as an Englishman.
"Who is to bring it up?" asked Gerald.
"I will," said Fanny simply, amid fierce blushes, as she saw what her
answer implied.
Thus supported, Gerald would indeed have been a coward had he shrunk
from the communication; but it was a great blow to his father, who,
however, was a stronger man than his son; and having been satisfied that
all was fair and legal, and that Alvaro Guzman Lester was really his
lawful heir, and next to Gerald in the entail, said shortly,--
"Fetch him home, and make an Englishman of him if you can. What's done
can't be undone."
But when Gerald arrived at Seville, where Don Guzman lived, and where
little Alvar had been taken, he found that by a strange coincidence the
child had at once become of importance to his relations on both sides.
By the death of Don Guzman's son, Alvar had become his heir, and when
Gerald expressed a desire to take him home, he was met by great
reluctance, and by a declaration that the child was so delicate that a
removal to a northern climate would certainly kill him. Perhaps
Gerald's consciousness that he would not regard the poor little fellow's
death as a misfortune, made him afraid to insist in the face of this
argument. At any rate he returned without the child. Don Guzman's
indifferentism in religion allowed him to consent that Alvar should,
when he grew old enough, be taught the English language and the Anglican
faith, and even showed how this might be managed by means of an English
clergyman residing at Seville for his health; so that he was left with a
sort of understanding that his mother's family were to have the charge
of him for the present.
Miss Cheriton was much disappointed.
"Every year will make it harder," she said, and she resolved to use all
her influence on Alvar's behalf. But her father-in-law's death soon
after her marriage deprived her of his powerful aid, and, though his
will carefully assured the succession to his son's eldest son, she could
not contend with her husband's distaste and the Spanish relations'
determination not to give up the child. She had no other troubles. Her
husband shared her views as to the duties and responsibilities of his
station, and they did much for the good of those around them.
In spite of some harshness, Gerald was a good landlord and a good
magistrate, and the most loving of fathers to the fair rosy boy who was
now born to them. He never cared quite so much for the younger ones,
but "Cherry" was his delight and pride, so pretty, so clever, and so apt
at riding his little pony, or learning to fire a gun, and so fond of his
father! If Alvar could but have been forgotten!
But Mrs Lester was wise and far-seeing, and she would not allow
Cheriton to forget. She talked to him about Alvar; she made him say his
prayers for "my eldest brother away in Spain;" and she even caused him
once to write a little letter expressing his wish to see his big
brother, and to show him his pony and his dogs. Perhaps Alvar's
education was less advanced, for there only arrived a message of love
from him in one of the rare letters that Don Guzman indited to Mr
Lester.
Cherry was rather a thoughtful child; his mother had succeeded in
impressing his imagination, and he thought and talked a good deal about
Alvar. One attempt was made to bring the child to England; but, when he
reached France, he fell ill, and his grandfather hurried him back again,
assuring his father that it was impossible he could live in a northern
climate. Mr Lester was too ready to believe this.
Soon after Cheriton went to school, Mrs Lester died suddenly, and her
loss was greater than even Cheriton in his passion of childish grief
could guess. Grief sharpened Mr Lester's temper, and the loss of his
wife's influence narrowed his mind and character. His mother, who lived
with him, and took care of the four children, did not urge on him the
need for Alvar's return. It ceased to be under discussion, and the
intercourse grew less and less.
Cherry, in his school life, naturally forgot for the time to think much
about him, and at home he had a thousand interests, some shared with his
father, some of his own. For Cheriton and Jack inherited their mother's
talent, and as they grew up, had their minds full of many things out of
their father's ken. When Cherry was twenty-one, his birthday was
celebrated with various festivities. He was very popular, and the
tenants drank his health. Nature had given him a ready tongue, and the
speech he made was much beyond the usual run of boyish eloquence. And
as he concluded, thanking them for their kindness, he paused, and with a
deep flush, added, "And I wish my eldest brother, who is now in Spain,
was here too, that we might know him, and that you might drink his
health as well as mine."
"Cheriton, why did you say that?" said his father afterwards.
"Father, I thought they would forget Alvar's existence, and--I was
afraid of forgetting it myself."
As Cheriton spoke, it occurred to Mr Lester with new distinctness that
he was really doing his second son a wrong, by allowing him to take for
the time a place which could not be his permanently. This boy, with his
ready tongue, his bright wit, and the look in his face that his father
loved, was not his heir; was it well for him to act as if he were so?
With a sudden resolution he wrote his eldest son a letter, requesting
him to pay him a visit, and make his brothers' acquaintance.
Alvar, perhaps hurt at the long neglect, refused to do so, giving as a
reason his grandmother's serious illness, and his father gladly let the
matter drop. Cheriton was disappointed, and asked to be allowed to
spend his next long vacation in Spain, and to see his brother. Mr
Lester, mindful of his own experiences, refused decidedly; and two years
more had passed without any serious renewal of the subject (though
Alvar's grandmother died in a few months), when Mr Lester, while
hunting, had a dangerous accident, and though he escaped comparatively
unhurt, the thought would obtrude itself, "A little more, and my boys
must have welcomed as the head of the family an absolutely unknown
foreigner." Under the influence of this feeling he wrote again to Alvar
in a different strain, and received a different answer. Alvar agreed to
come, and pledged himself to remain in England for a year, so as to have
ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with his relations, and with
the sort of life to which he was born as an English gentleman.