"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, hardly visible in its imperfect
light.
A lady sat pouring out the tea. She had the delicate features and
peculiar complexion of her family, but her eyes, instead of being like
Mr Seyton's, vague and sad, were sharp and sarcastic; she had more play
of feature, and, though she looked fully her age, had the air of having
been a beauty.
Miss Seyton had once been engaged to be married, but her engagement had
been broken off in one of the storms of discreditable trouble that had
overwhelmed her father and brothers, no one knew exactly how or why.
She had never married, and had lived ever since with her brother, not
always without scandal and remark. Still her presence had kept
Elderthwaite on the visiting-list of the county, and made it possible
for her niece to live there.
In spite of her sharp, eager eyes, she had an indescribable laziness and
nonchalance of manner, and poured out the tea as if it was an effort
beyond her. The boys' places remained vacant. There was a little talk
at breakfast-time, but it did not flow easily. Virginia would have had
plenty to say, but she had a sense that what she did say caused her aunt
inward surprise or amusement, and she began to feel shy.
When the meal was over, Mr Seyton sauntered away slowly, and Virginia
said, "Do we sit in the drawing-room in the morning, Aunt Julia?"
"Yes, as often as not," said Miss Seyton. "You are welcome to arrange
all such matters for yourself. Girls have ways of their own."
"I don't want to have any strange or uncomfortable ways, auntie," said
Virginia; "I want to feel quite at home, and to be useful."
"Useful!" said Miss Seyton. "What's your notion of being useful?"
She did not speak unkindly, but with a curious sort of inward amusement,
as if the notions of the bright-eyed girl were an odd study to her.
"I'm afraid I haven't very clear notions. I want to make it cheerful
for papa--Aunt Mary always said he wasn't strong or well; and perhaps
the boys want things done for them; my friends' brothers always did,"
said Virginia a little pathetically.
"There's one thing, my dear, I wish you to understand at once. I shall
never interfere with you; but I don't mean to abdicate in your favour.
I keep house--whatever house is kept--and you'd better shut your eyes
and ears to it. It isn't work for you."
"Oh, Aunt Julia!" said Virginia distressed, "I would not think of such a
thing. It is your place."
"No, my dear, it's not; but I mean to stick to it," interposed Miss
Seyton.
"And I know nothing about housekeeping, I'm afraid. I should be very
extravagant."
"Like a true Seyton. So much for that, then. And now another thing.
Don't you ever give your brothers so much as a half-sovereign secretly.
You have money, and they know it, and it's scarce here. Mind what I
say."
A kind of puzzled sense of something that she did not understand crossed
Virginia's face.
"I would rather give them things than money," she said. "Of course papa
lets them have what is right."
"Of course," said Miss Seyton, with the same perplexing expression of
indescribable amusement.
A good joke had for years been the solace, a bitter sarcasm the natural
outlet, of a life which certainly had been neither prosperous nor happy
in itself, nor glorified by any martyrdom of self-denial.
Miss Seyton was full of malice, both in the French and English
acceptations of the word. She loved fun, and she could not see without
bitterness the young, unworn creature beside her. To astonish Virginia
offered an almost irresistible temptation to both these tendencies. Her
evident unconsciousness of the life that lay before her, was at once so
funny, and such a cruel satire on them all.
"So you built castles in the air about your relations?" she said, with
an odd longing to knock some of these castles down.
"Sometimes," said Virginia; "then Ruth told me about you; and two years
ago she and I met Cheriton Lester and his cousin Rupert in London, and I
used to talk to them, Cheriton made me wish to come home very much."
"Why?" said Miss Seyton shortly.
"He used to tell her about the place, and he made me remember much
better what it was like."
"Cheriton will have to play second fiddle. The eldest brother is coming
back from Spain."
"Ah, I remember, he told us how much he wished it. Oh, and he told me
Uncle James `wasn't half a bad fellow.' I suppose that was a boy's way
of saying he was very nice indeed. Perhaps I can help him, too, in the
village. I like school-teaching, and I suppose there aren't many young
ladies in Elderthwaite?"
"You little innocent!" exclaimed Miss Seyton. Then, moving away, she
said, in the same wicked undertone, "Well, you had better ask him."
Virginia remained standing by the fire. She felt ruffled, for she knew
herself to be laughed at, and not having the clue to her aunt's meaning,
she fancied that her free and easy mention of Cheriton had elicited the
remark; and being a young lady of decided opinions and somewhat warm
temper, made up her mind silently, but with energy, that she would never
like her Aunt Julia, never! She had been taken away from home when only
eleven years old, and since then had only occasionally seen her father
and her brothers. Her cousin Ruth, who had frequently stayed at
Elderthwaite, had never bestowed on her much definite information; and
perhaps the season in London and the renewal of her childish
acquaintance with Cheriton Lester had done more than anything else to
revive old impressions.
She had been most carefully brought up by her aunt, Lady Hampton, with
every advantage of education and influence. Companions and books were
all carefully chosen, and her aunt hoped to see her married before there
was any chance of her returning to Elderthwaite. But such was the dread
of the reckless, defiant, Seyton nature, that her very precautions
defeated their wishes.
Virginia never was allowed to be intimate with any young man but
Cheriton, who at the time of their meeting was a mere boy, and with
thoughts turned in another direction; and though Virginia was
sufficiently susceptible, with a nature at once impetuous and dependent,
she came home at one-and-twenty, never yet having seen her ideal in
flesh and blood.
"Duties enough, and little cares," had filled her girlhood, and
delightful girl friendships and girl reverences had occupied her heart;
while her time had been filled by her studies, the cheerful gaieties of
a lively neighbourhood, and by the innumerable claims of a church and
parish completely organised and vigorously worked.
Lady Hampton was one of the Ladies Bountiful of Littleton; and Virginia
had taught in the schools, made tea at the treats, worked at church
decorations, and made herself useful and important in all the ways usual
to a clever, warm-hearted girl under such influences. And with the same
passionate fervour of nature, and the same necessity to her life of an
approving conscience, which had made her mother's heart beat itself to
death against the bars of her unsatisfying home, Virginia's nature had
flowed on in perfect tune with her surroundings; till, when she was
nearly twenty, came the great grief of her kind aunt's death, leaving
her heiress to a moderate fortune. By the terms of the will she was to
travel under carefully selected guardianship till she was of age, and
then to choose whether she would go home to her father, or have a home
made for her at Littleton.
Virginia chose promptly, and then, in the delicate, indefinite language
of those who fear to do harm by every word, was warned of difficulties.
Much would be painful to her, much would be strange; her home was not
like anything she had been used to. She listened and looked sad, and
understood nothing of what they meant to imply; and thus ready to
admire, but with only one type in her mind of what was admirable; full
of love, but with none of the blinding softening memories that make love
easy, she came to a home where admiration was impossible, and love would
demand either ignorant indifference to any high ideal, or a rare and
perfect charity, alike unknown to a high-minded intolerant girl.