"With him there rode his sone, a younge squire,
A lovyere and a lusty bachelere."
In that year Easter fell very late, and it was nearly the end of April
before the Lesters gathered together once more at Oakby. Alvar and
Virginia had hardly had time to grow accustomed to their new relations
to each other before the former went to London, where he perhaps adapted
himself more easily to his surroundings than he would have done in the
presence of his father and brothers. He found that all English people
did not regard life precisely from the Oakby point of view; that Lady
Cheriton greatly regretted that Nettie was such a tomboy, and almost
feared that Bob would never be fit for polite society.
He was introduced to people who thought his music enchanting and his
foreign manners charming; he was allowed to be on cousinly terms with
the Miss Cheritons, and was an object of exciting interest to every
young lady who met him. Under these circumstances he was very well
content, and despatched graceful and tender letters to Virginia, which
often had an amusing _naivete_ in their details of his impressions of
English life. He also sent her various offerings, ornaments,
sweetmeats, and flowers, always prettily chosen, and commended to her
notice by some pleasant bit of tender flattery. His engagement was of
course generally known, but his soft words and softer looks, though too
universal to be delusive, were doubtless none the less attractive from
the fact that his foreign breeding offered a constant cause and excuse
for them.
Virginia, on her side, it need hardly be said, wrote him many letters,
full of thoughts, feelings, and hopes, and sometimes requests for his
opinion on any subject that interested her. Alvar's replies were so
charming, so flattering, and so tender, that she hardly found out that
they were in no sense _answers_ to her own.
He made a very great point of going to Oxford, and was full of
excitement at the prospect of meeting "my brother" again. Cheriton,
however, had lost some time by his idle Christmas vacation, and was
forced to work very hard to make up for it. He had always too many
interests in life to make it easy to concentrate all his efforts in one
direction; but now the ambition and love of distinction that were a
constant stimulus to the idle Lester nature in himself and Jack were
fairly alight.
Cheriton cared for success in itself; he was too sweet-natural to
_resent_ failure, and conscientious enough to know that his love of
triumph might be a snare to him, but each object in its turn seemed to
him intensely desirable. He could not feel, and even prevailing fashion
made it difficult for him to affect, indifference. Besides, he wanted
to appear in the light of a young man likely to succeed in life before
Ruth's relations. So he wrote that he hoped Alvar would not think it
unkind if he asked him to pay him only a short visit; and Alvar was half
consoled by hearing the Judge speak in high terms of his nephew as a
brilliant young man and likely to do them all credit.
"Ah," said Alvar, "I fear I should have done my name no credit if I,
like my brother, had gone to Oxford."
"You are an eldest son, my dear fellow, and I don't doubt that you would
have kept up the family traditions," said Judge Cheriton drily.
So Alvar went for one day to Oxford, where he showed an overpowering
delight at seeing Cherry again, and a reprehensible preference for
pouring out to him his various experiences, to inspecting chapels and
halls. He greeted Buffer respectfully, and taxed Cheriton with
overworking himself. He looked pale, he said, and thin--not as he did
at Oakby.
Cherry only laughed at him, but insisted emphatically that he should say
no word at home of any such impression, as perhaps he should stay up and
read during the Easter vacation.
"But what shall I do," said Alvar, "when the boys, who do not like me,
come home, and you are not there?"
"You--why, you will be all day at Elderthwaite."
"I shall never forget my brother who was kind to me first," said Alvar
earnestly.
Alvar finished up his London career by going to see the Boat Race, where
he was exceedingly particular to appear in Oxford colours, and felt as
if the triumph of the dark blue was Cherry's own.
Easter week brought unwontedly soft airs and blue skies to Oakby, and,
after all, Cheriton himself for a few days' holiday. Every one rejoiced
at the sight of him, though Jack promptly told him that he was very
foolish to waste time by coming, and when Cherry owned that he wanted a
little rest, grudgingly admitted that he might be wise to take it; then
seized upon him, first to discuss with him the work he himself was doing
with a view to a scholarship for which he meant to compete at Midsummer;
then demanded an immediate settlement, from Cherry's point of view, of
several important and obscure philosophical questions; and finally
confided to him a long history of Bob's scrapes and deficiencies during
the past term.
He was so low in the school--he got in with such a bad lot--he ought to
leave school and go to a tutor's. He, Jack, had told him he was going
straight to the bad, but had done no good. Would Cherry give him a good
blowing-up? Then Mr Lester, having had a letter from the headmaster,
wanted to consult him on this very point, as well as to tell him all the
story of Alvar's courtship and his own diplomatic behaviour. Also to
regret that Alvar would not take the trouble to understand the details
of English law as applied to local matters; could not see why Mr
Lester, as a magistrate, was prevented from transporting a poacher for
life, or why, as an owner of land, he thought it necessary to be so
particular as to the character of his tenants. Then an attempt at
peacemaking with and for Bob, which resulted in little more than a
persistent growl "that Jack was an awful duffer."
Altogether the family did not seem in a restful state. Mrs Lester was
very indignant because Mrs Ellesmere had observed that Nettie was
growing too tall a girl to go about so much by herself. "Who was there
that did not know Nettie in all the country-side?" While Bob and Nettie
themselves, who usually hung together in everything, especially when
either was in trouble, had an inexplicable quarrel, which made neither
of them pleasant company for their elders.
Then Mr Lester's affairs came forward again in the shape of a dispute
with one of his chief farmers about a certain gate which had been
planted in the wrong place, involving a question of boundaries and
rights of way, and engaging Mr Lester in a difference of opinion with a
new neighbour, "a Radical fellow from Sheffield," whom Mr Lester would
neither have injured nor been intimate with for the world. Alvar had
the misfortune to observe that "he thought it was not worth while to be
so distressed about the post of a gate," an indifference even more
provoking than the misplaced ardour of Jack, who had taken upon himself
to examine the matter, and believing his father mistaken, thought it
necessary to say so, which might have been passed over as a piece of
youthful folly, if there had not been a frightful suspicion that Mr
Ellesmere was of the same opinion.
Cherry had heard enough of the "post of a gate" by the time he had read
half-a-dozen letters of polite indignation, and listened to an hour's
explanation from his father of the grounds of the dispute, after which
he was requested to form an independent opinion on the subject.
"Well, father," he said, looking askance at a plan of the scene of
action which Mr Lester had drawn for his benefit, "it seems that the
removal of this gate has mixed up Ashrigg, Oakby, and Elderthwaite to
such a degree that we sha'n't know who is living in which. Of course
Alvar _can't_ see any boundaries between Oakby and Elderthwaite just
now. How should he? His imagination leaps over them at once. But I
_don't_ think it will `precipitate the downfall of the landed gentry,'
Jack, whichever way it is settled." And having thus succeeded in making
his father and Alvar laugh, and Jack remark "that he never could see the
use of making a joke of everything," he asked Mr Lester to come and
show him the fatal spot. Couldn't they ride over and look at it?
"And I have never seen you yet," said Alvar reproachfully, when Mr
Lester had acceded to this arrangement.
"But you are going to Elderthwaite? I will come and meet you there.
And, look here, the weather is so fine I am sure we might all join
forces and make an excursion somewhere. Wouldn't that be blissful?"
"Ah, you make sport of me!" said Alvar; but he promised to propose the
plan at Elderthwaite.
So Cheriton and his father rode through the bright spring lanes
together, like Chaucer's knight and squire, with the larks singing in
the furrows, and the blue sky overhead, the sunshine full of promise and
joy, even in the wild, bleak country, whose time of perfection never
came till the purple heather clothed the bare moorlands and the summer
months had had time to chase away all thought of the long, dreary
winter. Every breath of the air of the hill-side was like new life to
Cherry.
"It is so delightful to be at home," he said; "it's impossible to be
very angry about `the post of a gate.'"
Perhaps this happy humour contributed no small share towards the
harmonious ending of the scene which Cherry described quaintly enough
when he presented himself at Elderthwaite in the afternoon. How on
arriving at the scene of action they had found Farmer Fleming and the
fellow from Sheffield both engaged in discussing the point; how Mr
Wilson had expressed _his_ readiness to put up two gates if that would
settle the matter, but he could not be dictated to on his own land; how
Mr Fleming's view of the matter seemed to consist in a constant
statement of the fact that he had been the squire's tenant all his life,
and his father before him; how the squire had remarked that Mr
Fleming's father, he was sure, would have known well that those four
feet of land were common land, and half in Oakby and half in Ashrigg
parish, Elderthwaite bordering them on the south, and that he, as Lord
of the Manor, could not allow them to be enclosed; Mr Wilson had
purchased certain manorial rights in Ashrigg parish; they certainly
extended over the two feet on his own side of the lane.
Then Cherry had remembered Mr Wilson's son at Oxford, and knew that
last year he had taken a first. He had met him at breakfast; was he
coming down soon? This had created a diversion; and while the squire
and his tenant were at it hammer and tongs, Cherry had received several
invitations, had warmly applauded Mr Wilson's remark that he did not
wish to be unpleasant to old inhabitants on first coming into the
county, and the squire, having got his own way with the farmer, an
amicable arrangement was arrived at; while Cherry went to see Mrs
Fleming's dairy, "because he remembered how she used to give him such
beautiful new milk."
"Oh, Cherry, you have more than a bit of the blarney," said Ruth.
"Haven't you a drop of Irish blood somewhere?"
"_No_ more than Jack," said Cherry, who was perhaps a little pleased at
his diplomacy. "I like to smooth things down, unless, to be sure, one
is angry oneself."
"You are always the peacemaker," said Alvar.
"Ah, not always, I am afraid! But now I want all the blarney I can
muster to persuade you that it is warm enough to go and spend the day at
Black Tarn. We might go by train from Hazelby to Blackrigg; have lunch
at the inn there, and go up to Black Tarn by the Otter's Glen. I asked
Mr and Mrs Ellesmere, and they will come with us"--to Virginia--"I
assure you Alvar agrees."
"You are wasting your blarney," said Virginia smiling, "for we had
agreed to go before you came. It will be very cold up at Black Tarn,
but that will not signify if we take plenty of wraps."
Such a genuine piece of natural and innocent amusement was quite a
novelty at Elderthwaite, and the boys were delighted. The party agreed
to meet at Hazelby station, and go by train some ten or twelve miles
towards the mountains on the outskirts of which Black Tarn lay. There
was a train in the evening by which they could return, and no one left
at home was to be anxious about them until they saw them coming back.