"Life has more things to dwell on
Than just one useless pain."
There are few places where the charm of a bright June day is felt more
perfectly than in a London garden. The force of contrast may partly
account for this; but The Laurels, as the Stanforths' house was called,
was a lovely place in itself, dating from days before the villas by
which it was now almost surrounded. Within its old brown sloping walls
flourished white and pink acacias, magnolias, wisterias, and quaint
trees only found in such old gardens; a cork-tree, more curious than
beautiful; a catalpa, which once in Gipsy's memory had put out its queer
brown and white blossoms; and a Judas-tree, still purple with its lovely
flowers. The house, like the garden-walls, was built of brown old
brick, well draped with creepers; and Mr Stanforth's new studio had
been so cunningly devised that it harmonised wonderfully with the rest.
That garden was a very pleasant place in the estimation of a great many
people, who liked to come and idle away an hour there, and was famous
for pleasant parties all through the summer; while it was a delightful
play-place for the little Stanforths, a large party of picturesque and
lively-minded children, who, in spite of artistic frocks and hats, and
tongues trained to readiness by plenty of home society, were very
thoroughly educated and carefully brought up. They were a great
amusement to Cheriton Lester, who was always a welcome guest at The
Laurels, and felt himself thoroughly at home there.
Cheriton's London life was in many ways a pleasant one. He found
himself in the midst of old friends and schoolfellows, he could have as
much society as he wished for, he was free of his uncle's house and of
the `Stanforths', and he had none of the money anxieties which troubled
many of those who, like him, were beginning their course of preparation
for a legal life. He saw a good deal, in and out, of Alvar, who had
established himself in town, and was an exceedingly popular person in
society; and as the obligations of his mourning, which he was careful to
observe, diminished, was full of engagements of all sorts, enjoyed
himself greatly, and thought as little of Oakby as business letters
allowed. Lady Cheriton thought that he ought to have every opportunity
of settling, "so much the best thing for all of them," and arranged her
introductions to him accordingly; but Alvar walked through snares and
pitfalls, and did not even get himself talked of in connexion with any
young lady. Cheriton was much less often to be met with; he found that
he could not combine late hours and anything like study, and so kept his
strength for his more immediate object--an object which, however, was
slowly changing into an occupation. Cheriton soon found out that the
pleasures and pains of hard and successful labour were no longer for
him; that though he did not break down in the warm summer weather, the
winter would always be a time of difficulty, and that his strength would
not endure a long or severe strain--in short, that though reading for
the bar was just as well now as anything else for him, and might lead
the way to interests and occupations, he could not even aim at the
career of a successful lawyer. Besides, London air made him unusually
languid and listless.
"Yes, he is a clever fellow, but he is not strong enough to do much. It
is a great pity, but, after all, he has enough to live on, and plenty of
interests in life," said Judge Cheriton; and his wife made her house
pleasant to Cherry, and encouraged him to come there at all hours, and
no one ever said a word to him about working, or gave him good advice,
except not to catch cold; while he himself ceased to talk at all about
his prospects, but went on from day to day and took the pleasant things
that came to him. And sometimes he felt as if his last hope in life was
gone--and sometimes, again, wondered why he did not care more for such a
disappointment. But now and then, in these days that were so silent and
self-controlled, there came to him an indifference of a nobler kind, an
inward courage, a consoling trust, the reward of much struggling, which
a year ago he could never have brought to bear on such a trial.
Mr Stanforth's presence always gave him a sense of sympathy, and he
spent so many hours at The Laurels, that his aunt suspected him of
designs on Gipsy, though Jack's secret, preserved in his absence, was
likely to ooze out now that the end of the Oxford term had brought him
to London for a few days, previous to joining a reading party with some
of his friends.
The Laurels, with its pretty garden, might be a pleasant resting-place
for Cheriton, but it was a very Arcadia, a fairy-land to Jack, when he
found his way there late on one splendid afternoon, so shy that he had
walked up and down the road twice before he rang the bell, happy,
uncomfortable, and conscious all at once, looking at Gipsy, who had just
come home from a garden party, in a most becoming costume of cream
colour and crimson, but quite unable to say a word to her, as she sat
under the trees, and fanned herself with a great black fan, appealing to
Alvar, who was there with Cheriton, whether she had quite forgotten her
Spanish skill. Gipsy was very happy, and not a bit shy as she peeped at
her solemn young lover over the top of the fan, and laughed behind it at
Jack's look of disgust when Cherry remarked that he had grown since
Easter.
"Don't be spiteful, Cherry," said Mr Stanforth, with a smile. "Shall
we come and see the picture?"
Jack and Gipsy were left to the last as they came up towards the house,
and she made a little mischievous gesture of measuring herself against
him.
"Yes, I think it's true!"
"Well," said Jack gruffly, though his eyes sparkled, "I shall leave off
growing some time, I suppose. I say, are you going to dine at my aunt's
to-morrow?"
"Yes," said Gipsy. "Lady Cheriton has been here, and she brought your
sister. How handsome she is; but she was so silent. I was afraid of
her. I wonder if she liked me," said Gipsy, blushing in her turn.
"Shy with Nettie?" exclaimed Jack. "You might as well be shy of a wild
cat. She doesn't like any one much but Bob and her pets."
"All, young ladies grow as well as young gentlemen," said Gipsy. "Next
year--"
"Yes; next year--" said Jack; but Gipsy opened the studio door, and
ended the conversation.
Mr Stanforth's studio was arranged with a view more to the painting of
pictures than to the display of curtains, carpets, and china; but it was
still a pretty and pleasant place, with a few rare works of art by other
hands than those of its owner. There were few finished pictures of Mr
Stanforth's there then; but one large canvas on which he was working,
and, besides various portraits in different stages, the drawing of Mr
Lester, which Jack had not hitherto seen. Mr Stanforth brought it
forward, and asked him to make any comment that occurred to him. It was
a fine drawing of a fine face, and brought out forcibly the union of
size and strength with beauty which none of the sons fully equalled,
though there might be more to interest in all their faces. For, after
all, the little imperfections of expression, that which was wanting as
well as that which was present in the coming out and going in, the
pleasures, the duties, and the failures, the changes of mood and temper,
the smiles and the frowns of daily life, had made the individual man,
and could not be shown in a likeness so taken. It was a picture that
would satisfy them better as the years went by. Indeed Alvar thought it
perfect, and Jack could hardly say that he saw anything wanting; but
Cherry, after many praises and some hesitation, had said, "Yes, it is
very like, but it is as if one saw him from a distance. Perhaps that is
best."
After this picture had been put away, Jack began to look round and to
relieve the impression made on him by a little artistic conversation,
evidently carefully studied from the latest Oxford authorities. He
looked at the pictures on the wall, found fault so correctly with what
would have naturally been pleasing to him, and admired so much what a
few months before he would have thought hideous, that Cheriton's eyes
sparkled with fun, and Alvar, for once appreciating the humour of the
situation, said,--
"We must ask Jack to write a book about the pictures at Oakby;" while
Gipsy, seeing it all, laughed, spite of herself.
"Ah, Gipsy, he is carrying his lady's _colours_, like a true knight,"
said Cherry softly, as Jack faced round and inquired,--
"What are you laughing at?"
"Who lectures on art at Oxford, Jack?" said Cherry. "What a first-rate
fellow he must be!"
"Ah, he is indeed a great teacher," said Alvar, "who has taught Jack to
love art."
"A mighty teacher," said Cherry, under his breath.
"Of course," said Jack, "as one sees more of the world, one comes to
take an interest in new fields of thought."
"Why, yes," said Gipsy, recovering from Cherry's words, and flying to
the rescue, "we all learned a great deal about art at Seville."
"My dear," said Mrs Stanforth, "aren't you going to show them the
knights?"
For she thought to herself that if a year was to pass before Jack's
intentions could meet with an acknowledgment, his visits had better be
few and far between, especially in the presence of Cherry's mischievous
encouragement. "Mr Stanforth himself being as bad," as she afterwards
remarked to him.
Now, however, Mr Stanforth turned his easel round and displayed the
still unfinished picture for which he had begun to make sketches in
Spain, when struck with the contrast of his new acquaintances, and with
the capabilities of their appearance for picturesque treatment.
The picture was to be called "One of the Dragon Slayers," and
represented a woodland glade in the first glory of the earliest summer--
blue sky, fresh green, white blossoms, and springing bluebells and
primroses, all in full and yet delicate sunshine--a scene which might
have stood for many a poetic description from Chaucer to Tennyson, a
very image of nature, the same now as in the days of Arthur.
Dimly visible, as if he had crawled away among the brambles and bracken
to die, was the gigantic form of the slain dragon, while, newly arrived
on the scene, having dismounted from his horse, which was held by a page
in the distance, was a knight in festal attire--a vigorous, graceful
presentment of Alvar's dark face and tall figure--who with one hand drew
towards him the delivered maiden, a fair, slender figure in the first
dawn of youth, who clung to him joyfully, while he laid the other in
eager gratitude on the shoulder of the dragon slayer, who, manifestly
wounded in the encounter, was leaning against a tree-trunk, and who, as
he seemed to give the maiden back to her lover, with the other hand
concealed in his breast a knot of the ribbon on her dress; thus hinting
at the story, which after all was better told by the peculiar beaming
smile of congratulation, the look of victory amid strife, of conquest
over self and suffering--a look of love conquering pain, which was the
real point of the picture.
Jack stood looking in silence, and uttering none of his newly-acquired
opinions.
"Is it right, Jack?" said Mr Stanforth. "Yes, I know," said Jack
briefly; and then, "Every one will know Alvar's portrait. And who is
the lady?"
"She is a little niece of mine--almost a child," said Mr Stanforth;
while Cheriton interposed,--
"It is not a group of photographs, Jack. Of course the object was the
idea of the picture, not our faces."
"Well, Cherry," said Mr Stanforth smiling, "your notion of sitting for
your picture partakes of the photographic. You did not help me by
calling up the dragon slayer's look."
"That was for the artist to supply," said Cherry; "but it seems to me
exactly how the knight ought to have looked."
"For my part," said Alvar, "I should not have liked to have been too
late."
"It is very beautiful," said Jack; "but I don't think I approve of false
mediaevalism. At that date these fellows would have fought, and the
best man would have had the girl."
"Pray, at what date do you fix the dragon?" said Cherry.
"Jack is as matter-of-fact as the maiden herself," said Mrs Stanforth,
"who will not be happy because her uncle will not tell her if the knight
got well and married somebody else."
"No--no, mamma," said one of the Stanforth girls, "he did no such thing;
he was killed in King Arthur's last battle. We settled it yesterday--we
thought it was nicer."
"You don't think he gave in to the next dragon?" said Cherry, half to
tease her.
"No, indeed, that knight never gave in. Did he, papa--did he?"
"My dear Minnie, I am not prepared with my knights' history. There they
are, and I leave them to an intelligent public, who can settle whether
my object was to paint sunlight on primroses, or a smile on a wounded
knight's face--very hard matters both."
"Don't you really like it?" said Gipsy aside to Jack.
"Oh, yes," said Jack uneasily, "I have seen him look so. I know what
your father means. But I hate it. I'd rather have had a picture of him
as he used to be, all sunburnt and jolly. Yes, I know, it's the
picture, not Cherry; but I don't like it."
Gipsy demurred a little, and they fell into a long talk in the twilight
garden. Jack kept his promise, he did not "make love" to her, but
never, even to Cheriton, had he talked as he talked then, for if he
might not talk of the future, he could at least make Gipsy a sharer in
all his past. When Cheriton came out upon them to call Jack away, they
looked at him with half-dazzled eyes, as if he were calling them back
from fairy-land.
The dinner-party at Lady Cheriton's offered no such chances, though it
was a gathering together quite unexpected by some of the party. Lady
Cheriton, when the question of a school for Nettie had been discussed,
had renewed her offer of having her to share the studies of her younger
daughters; and Cheriton, who thought that Nettie in a London
boarding-school would be very troublesome to others and very unhappy
herself, had succeeded in getting the plan adopted. So here she was,
dignified and polished, in her long black dress, and bent, so said her
aunt, in a silent and grudging fashion, on acquiring sufficient
knowledge to hold her own among other girls. She was wonderfully
handsome, and so tall that her height and presence marked her out as
much as her intensely red-and-white complexion and yellow hair. There,
too, were Virginia and her brother Dick, Cherry being guilty of assuring
his aunt that there was no reason why Alvar should not meet them. For
Dick's examination had at length been successfully passed, and an
arrangement had been made that he should board with some friends of Mr
Stanforth's, and Virginia had availed herself of an invitation from Lady
Cheriton to come to London with him.
"You did not tell me she was coming," said Alvar angrily to Cheriton.
"It is impossible that you should avoid so near a neighbour," replied
Cherry.
"I do not like it," said Alvar; and the effect on him was to shake his
graceful self-possession, make him uncertain of what he was saying, and
watch Virginia as she talked to Cherry of Dick's prospects, with a look
that was no more indifferent than the elaborate politeness of Jack's
greeting to Miss Stanforth. She was more self-controlled, but she
missed no word or look. But if Cheriton had played a trick on his
brother, he himself received a startling surprise when Mr and Mrs
Rupert Lester were announced. "You cannot avoid meeting your cousins"
was as true as his excuse to Alvar; but he could not help feeling
himself watched; and as for Ruth, her brilliant, expressive face showed
a consciousness which perhaps she hardly meant to conceal from him as
she looked at him with all the past in her eyes. Ruth liked excitement,
and the situation was not quite disagreeable to her; but while her look
thrilled Cheriton through and through, the fact that she could give it,
broke the last thread of his bondage to her. She made him feel with a
curious revulsion that Rupert was his own cousin, and that she had tried
to make him forget that she was his cousin's wife; and as, being a man,
he attributed far too distinct a meaning to the glance of an excitable,
sentimental girl, it repelled him, though the pain of the repulsion was
perhaps as keen as any that she had made him suffer. He did not betray
himself, and it was left to Jack to frown like a thunder-cloud.
When Cheriton came out of the dining-room, Nettie pursued him into a
corner, and began abruptly,--
"Cherry, I want to speak to you. When Jack went to Spain did he tell
you anything about me?"
"Nothing that I recollect especially," said Cherry, surprised.
"Well, I am going to tell you about it. Mind, I think I was perfectly
right, and Jack ought to have known I should be."
"Have you and Jack had a quarrel, then?"
"Yes," said Nettie, standing straight upright, and making her
communication as she looked down on Cherry, as he sat on a low chair.
"_I_ taught Dick to pass his examination."
"You!"
"Yes. You know he wouldn't work at anything, and I used to make him
come and say his lessons to me--the kings of England, you know, and the
rivers, and populations, and French verbs. Well, then, if he didn't
know them, I made him learn them till he did. But of course he didn't
wish any one to know, so we had to get up early, and sit in the
hay-loft, or down by the bridge. I could not help the boys knowing that
Dick and I went out together, and at last Jack found us in Clements'
hay-loft. Dick ran away, but Jack was very angry with me, and insulted
me; and Cherry--he went and told papa, and they sent me to London. But
I never told the reason, because I had promised Dick. Now, Cherry,
wouldn't it have been very wrong to give up the chance of doing Dick
good because Jack chose to be ridiculous? It just made him succeed, and
perhaps he will owe it to me that he is a respectable person, and earns
his living. _You_ would have helped him, wouldn't you?"
"Why, yes," said Cherry; "but that is not quite the same thing."
"Because I am a girl. Cherry, I think it would be mean to have let that
stop me. But now he is through, I shall never do it again, of course;
and, Cherry, indeed I meant it just as if he had been a ploughboy."
Here Nettie hung her tall head, and her tone grew less defiant.
"But, after all, Nettie, you should not have done what you knew granny
and father would not like," said Cherry, much puzzled what to say to
her.
"It was because papa never knew that I told _you_," said Nettie rapidly.
Cheriton asked a few more questions, and elicited that Nettie had, very
early in their intimacy, taken upon herself the reform of Dick, and had
domineered over him with all the force of a strong will over a weak one.
Nettie had acted in perfect good faith, and had defied her brother's
attack on her; but as the lessons went on, her instinct had taught her
that Dick found her attractive, and came to learn to please himself, not
her. The girl had all the self-confidence of her race, and having set
her mind on what she called "doing good" to Dick, she defied her own
consciousness of his motives, having begun in kindness dashed with
considerable contempt. But lazy Dick had powers of his own, and by the
time of her quarrel with Jack, Nettie had felt herself on dangerous
ground. "I shan't marry--no one is like our boys," she said to herself;
but there was just a little traitorous softening and an indefinite sense
of wrong-doing which had made her seek absolution from Cheriton, and
with the peculiar absence of folly, which was a marked characteristic of
the slow-thinking twins, she gave herself the protection of his
knowledge.
Cheriton's impulse was to take up Jack's line and give her a good
scolding, but he was touched by her appeal, and had learned to weigh his
words carefully. He said something rather lame and inadequate about
being more particular in future, but he gave Nettie's hand a kind little
squeeze, and she felt herself off her own mind. It had been a curious
incident, and had done much to make Nettie into a woman--too much of a
woman to look on her _protege_ with favouring eyes. Dick, too, was
likely to find other interests, but Nettie had helped to give him a fair
start, and her scorn of his old faults could never be quite forgotten.