"But still be a woman to you."
Early the next morning Virginia received a letter from Alvar, written at
intervals during his night watch in Cheriton's room. Perhaps it was the
first real communication she had ever received from him, and in it he
made a sort of confession of his shortcomings, as far as he himself
understood them. He told her that he had been "revengeful" towards his
father, and that in the affair of the Flemings he had allowed "the
passion of jealousy" to overcome him. He recounted his promise to
Cheriton, and with the simplicity that was at once so strange and so
engaging a part of his character, assured her "that he was no longer
indifferent to religion," but would follow the instructions of Mr
Ellesmere. "I think," he added, "that this will give you pleasure."
There was a great deal about Cheriton, Alvar declaring that he could not
_now_ despair of anything, but that he should have written to _her_ at
such a time, and about _himself_, was enough to mark the change in his
former relations with Virginia.
The change in himself she was ready to take for granted. All must be
right where there was such humility and power of repentance; and perhaps
she did him more justice than even Cheriton could have done. For Alvar
had undergone no change of intellectual conviction, that element was
wanting, both in his former carelessness, and in his present acceptance
of a new obligation, and in the excitement of feeling under which he was
acting love and remorse towards his brother had the largest share. But
he had recognised himself as erring, and intended to amend, and such a
resolution must bring a blessing. But as his brothers would only have
altered any settled line of conduct, after infinite heart-searchings and
perplexities, they could not have conceived how simple the matter
appeared to Alvar, when he had once made up his mind that he could
possibly have been in fault.
Virginia had said nothing the night before of her changed prospects; she
knew that the Lesters could have no thought to spare for her; but when
her aunt suggested sending over to inquire, she could not pretend
ignorance, and her blush and few words of explanation were enough for
Miss Seyton.
"Ah, well," she said, "you might have saved yourselves a great deal of
trouble if you had found this out a little sooner."
"We cannot speak of it just now, auntie."
"No; but you say, don't you, that everything happens for good? Now this
good has come out of Cherry's illness; perhaps he'll get well."
After these characteristic congratulations Virginia took her way to the
vicarage. She found her uncle in his "study," a room which was
sufficiently well lined with ancient and orthodox divinity to merit the
name, though the highly respectable volumes, descended from some
unwontedly learned Seyton vicar, did not often see the light.
The parson was looking out of the window down the road.
"Ah, how d'ye do, my dear?" he said, in unwontedly quiet accents. "I
was just looking out, for I sent over to Oakby to inquire how that poor
lad is to-day."
"We have heard," said Virginia. "I don't think he is any worse. And,
uncle, I saw him yesterday; he sent for me to give me a message for
you."
"A message! Well, my lassie, what did he say?"
Virginia came and stood behind the chair in which her uncle had seated
himself.
"He wished me to tell you that he had been making up his mind to take
orders, and that he loved Elderthwaite so much that he meant to ask you
if you would let him come and be your curate, that you and he together
might set things right here. But he said that now that will never be.
And he sent his love, and I was to ask you to reform Elderthwaite for
his sake. He said, `Tell him I know he can, better than any one, if he
will.'"
Virginia paused, as her voice faltered.
"Why, bless my soul," cried the parson, "what does the lad mean? Why,
I'm one of the old abuses myself."
"Yes--yes--uncle. But that is what he said. You must not be one of the
abuses. He said you might do it all, if you would, because you love the
place more than any one can."
There was a silence. The parson sat still.
"He is a good lad--he always was a good lad," he said, after a pause.
"And did he think to come here, to spend his time over a parcel of
scamps and drunkards? Eh! I shouldn't have believed it. He had heard
that they want me to have a curate, I suppose," he added, quickly.
"Oh, yes, uncle; but he was afraid that you would not like it."
"Look here, my lassie, I like the old methody in his proper place; but
I'll have no psalm-singers in my church. I'm a sound Churchman, and I
don't approve of it."
Virginia, finding an objection to psalm-singing in church rather
difficult to reply to, was silent, and her uncle went on rapidly,--
"I hate the whole tribe of your _earnest_, hard-working, `self-devoted'
young fellows--find it pay, and bring them into the society of
gentlemen--write letters in trumpery newspapers, and despise their
elders. Newspapers have nothing to do with religion. The Prayer-book's
the Prayer-book, and a paper's a paper. Give me _Bell's Life_. Bless
you, my dear, do you think I keep my eyes shut?"
"You are not just, uncle," said Virginia. "But Cheriton would not have
been like that."
Mr Seyton's twinkling eyes softened, and the angry resistance to a
higher standard, that mingled with the half-shrewd, half-scornful malice
of his words, subsided, as he said, in quite a different tone,--
"I would have had Cheriton for my curate, my dear."
He said no more, and Virginia could not press him; and when he spoke it
was only to question her about Cheriton's condition.
But when she went away he took his hat and walked out through his bit of
garden towards the church, and sitting down on the low stone wall,
looked over the churchyard, where a fine growth of nettles half
smothered the broken gravestones; and as he sat there he thought of his
past life, of his dissipated, godless youth, of the sense of desperation
with which, to pay his debts, he had "gone into the Church," of the
horrible evils he had never tried to check, and yet of the certain
kindliness he had entertained towards his own people. How he had defied
censure and resisted example till his fellow-clergy looked askance at
him, and though he might affect to despise them, he did not like their
contempt. He thought of the family crash that was coming, and he was
keen enough to know how he would be regarded by new comers--"as an old
abuse." And he thought of Cheriton's faith in him, and the project
inspired as much by love for him as by the zeal for reform. He thought
of the first time he had read the service, the sense of incongruity, of
shame-facedness; how a sort of accustomedness had grown upon him till he
had felt himself a parson after a sort, and how, on a low level, he had
in a way adapted his life to the requirements of his profession.
Then he thought of the way Cheriton had proposed such a step to himself,
and, without entering into any of those higher feelings which might have
repelled rather than attracted him, he contrasted with his his own the
unselfishness of the motive that prompted Cheriton.
He made no resolutions, drew no conclusions, but unconsciously he was
looking at life from a new standpoint.
Virginia did not see Alvar, nor hear directly from him all that day; and
but for the letter in her possession, her interview with him would have
seemed like a dream.
The next morning was sunny and still. She stood on the steps at the
garden door, looking over the lawn, now glistening with thick autumn
dew. The sky was clear and blue, the wild overgrown shrubberies that
shut out the landscape were tinted with brown and gold, an "autumn
blackbird" sang low and sweet. All was so peaceful that it seemed as if
ill news could not break in upon it; yet, as the old church clock chimed
the hour, and through the still air that of Oakby sounded in the
distance, Virginia started lest it should be the beginning of the knell.
As the sound of the clock died away, the gate in the shrubbery clicked,
a quick step sounded, and Alvar came up the path.
Virginia could wait no longer. She ran to meet him, gathering hope from
his face as she approached.
"Yes, he is better. There is hope now; but all yesterday he grew weaker
every moment. I thought he would die."
Alvar's voice trembled, and he spoke with more abandonment than was
usual with him; he looked very pale, and had evidently gone through
much. He added details of their suspense, and of Cherry's condition,
"as if," Virginia thought, "he _wanted_ to talk to me."
"You are very tired," she said. "Come in and have some breakfast.
Auntie and I always have it here."
She took him into the drawing-room, where there was a little table near
the fire, and made him sit down, while she waited on him, and poured out
the tea. She did not feel a bit afraid of him now, and, spite of his
punctilious gallantry, he submitted to her attentions without any of the
forms and ceremonies with which he had previously made a distance
between them.
"You have been up all night. I think you ought to have gone to bed,
instead of coming here," she said, sure of a contradiction.
"It is a great deal better than going to sleep to see you, my dear!"
said Alvar, quaintly; and Virginia thought she liked the homely English
better than the magnificent Spanish in which he had been wont to term
her his lady and his queen.
"I am getting very hungry, Virginia," said Miss Seyton, opening the
door. "May I come in to breakfast?"
"Oh, but that is shocking!" cried Alvar, springing up and advancing to
meet her. "Miss Seyton, I have brought good news of my brother. But I
must go home now, he may want me. Perhaps if he is still better I can
come again by-and-by."
"Only think," said Virginia, as she went with him through the garden on
her way to the vicarage to tell the good news to her uncle, "only think,
when the clock struck just before you came, I was afraid it was the
beginning of the knell!"
"Ah, I trust we shall not hear that terrible sound now!" said Alvar,
gravely.
And yet before that day closed the old bell of Elderthwaite church was
tolling, startling every one with the sudden conviction that that
morning's hope had proved delusory. It frightened Mr Ellesmere as he
came home from a distant part of his parish, though a moment's
reflection showed him that his own church tower was silent. What could
be the matter elsewhere?
There was a rush of people to the lodge gates at Oakby, to be met there
by eager questions as to what was the matter at Elderthwaite?
"It must be old Mr Seyton, took off on a sudden," they said. "Well, so
long as Mr Cherry was getting better--"
But before curiosity could take any one down the lane to verify this
opinion, up came the parson's man from Elderthwaite with a letter for
Mr Lester, and the news that a telegram had been received two hours
before at the hall, to say that Mr Roland had been killed out
tiger-hunting in India.
There was more consternation than grief. Roland had not felt nor
inspired affection in his own family; in the neighbourhood his character
was regarded with disapproval, and his sarcastic tongue remembered with
dislike. He had intensified all the worst characteristics of the
family.
Virginia had scarcely ever seen him; his father and uncle had so
resented his determination to sell the estate, though it had perhaps
been the wisest resolve he had ever come to, that he had been to them as
an enemy.
But still the chief sense in all their minds was that the definite, if
distasteful, prospect, to which they had been beginning to look forward,
had melted away, and that all the future was chaos.
Dick, suddenly became a person of importance, and now within a month or
two of coming of age, was sent for from London. He had improved in
looks and manner, and seemed duly impressed with the gravity of the
situation. He was told what Roland's intentions had been, and that his
father's life could not be prolonged for many months; listened to Mr
Seyton's faltering and confused explanations of the state of affairs,
and to his uncle's more vigorous, but not much more lucid, denunciation
of it. Dick said not a word in reply, he asked a few questions, and at
last went down into the drawing-room where his sister was sitting alone.
He walked over to the window and stood looking out of it.
"Virginia," he said, "_I_ don't wish to sell Elderthwaite."
"Do you think it can be helped, Dick?" she said, eagerly.
"I don't know. _I'm_ not in debt like Roland--that is, anything to
speak of. I don't want to wipe the family out of the county for good
and all. Why couldn't the place be let for a term of years?"
"But--it is so much out of repair!"
"Yes," said Dick, shrewdly, "but it's an awfully gentlemanly-looking
place yet. Fellows who have made a fortune in trade want to get their
position settled before they _buy_ an estate, or to make a little more
money first. I heard Mr Stanforth talking about some old place in the
south where there were fine pictures, which had been let in that way.
Well then, of course, some sacrifices must be made; something was done
with the money Cheriton Lester paid for Uplands. Then there's all that
part out Ashrigg way--Cuddiwell, you know, and High Ashrigg. Those two
farms have always paid rent. If they were sold--they're handy either
for the Lesters or the Hubbards--we might put things to rights a little
in that way."
"I am _glad_ you care about Elderthwaite, Dick," said Virginia,
impetuously.
"Oh, as to that," returned Dick, "I don't know that I go in for any
sentiment about it. Of course, I couldn't live here for years to come.
I'm not quite such a fool as I was once, Virginia, thanks to you and
some others I could name; and I should go on as I am for the present.
But it makes a difference in a man's position to have a place like this
in the background, even if it is tumbling to pieces. A girl with money
might think twice whether she wouldn't be Mrs Seyton of Elderthwaite."
"Oh, Dick! don't marry a girl for her money," said Virginia, half
laughing; but she could never have imagined herself listening with so
much respect to Dick's sentiments.
In truth, want of sense and insight had never been the cause of the
Seytons' errors; but just as in some men a warm heart and tender
conscience fail to make head against violent passion, so that they feel
their sins while they commit them, so in the Seytons a shrewd _mental_
sense of their own folly had always co-existed with the headstrong
self-will which had overridden it. Dick had a less passionate nature,
and was, moreover, less at the mercy of circumstances than if he had
been brought up as the heir, and his friends in London were sensible
people.
"Perhaps," said his sister, "you might ask Alvar what he thinks of it."
"Alvar? Oh, ho! is that come to pass again? So, you've made it up.
Well, it is a good thing that you have some one to take care of you,"
said Dick, sententiously.
Alvar was taken into counsel, and the results of much discussion and
consideration may be briefly told.
Dick's plans were hailed by his father and uncle as an escape from a
prospect, which had made death doubly bitter to the one, and the rest of
life distasteful to the other. And an unexpected purchaser of the two
farms was found in Judge Cheriton, who had been talking for some time of
buying a small property which might be a home for him when his public
career was over, and a holiday retreat for the present. There was a
farm-house at High Ashrigg which might be improved into a modern antique
of the style at present admired. The two farms were therefore purchased
at once of Mr Seyton himself, and with his full consent and approval.
The rest of Dick's plan could not be carried out in his father's
lifetime, but it was agreed to by Mr Seyton as the best thing his heir
could do.
All this time Cheriton was mending slowly, but with much uncertainty as
to how far his recovery would be complete. He very soon detected the
turn that Alvar's affairs had taken, much to his satisfaction; but Jack,
guessing that the news of Roland's death would be a shock to him, it was
not till he had begun to insist that his own state must not again delay
Alvar's marriage, that he heard the story of which it might have been
said "that nothing in Roland Seyton's life became him like the leaving
of it;" for it proved that he had met his death by an act of
considerable bravery, which had saved the lives of others of the party.
Perhaps Cheriton, unable to be untender to the memory of his boyish
ideal, gave him a truer regret than any of his own family.
He listened with great interest to all the future arrangements, and was
the first to suggest that his old acquaintance, Mr Wilson's son, was to
be married to a young lady of fortune, and might form a possible future
tenant for Elderthwaite.
As for the rest, even setting her deep mourning aside, Virginia would
not hear of marrying while her father grew daily weaker; nor was
Cheriton at all equal to the inevitable excitement and difficulty of
arranging plans for the winter which must have ensued.
It ended, as soon as he was able to bear the journey, in his going to
Torquay with Alvar, to stay for the present. Mrs Lester went back to
Ashrigg, and Oakby was once more left solitary.