The Squire of Sandal-Side Part 10

"I mean that also, certainly. Handsome, energetic, enterprising, kind, religious."

"Spare me the balance of your adjectives. We all know that Steve is square on every side, and straight in every corner. Don't be so earnest; you fatigue me to-night. I am on the verge of a nervous headache, and I really think you had better leave me." She turned her chair towards the fire as she spoke, and hardly palliated this act of dismissal by the faint "excuse me," which accompanied it. And Charlotte made no remark, though she left her sister's room, mentally promising herself to keep away from it in the future.

She went next to the parlor. The squire's chair was empty, and on the little stand at its side, the "Gentleman's Magazine" lay uncut. His slippers, usually a.s.sumed after dinner, were still warming on the white sheepskin rug before the fire. But the large, handsome face, that always made a sunshiny feeling round the hearth, was absent; and the room had a loneliness that made her heart fear. She waited a few minutes, looking with expectation towards a piece of knitting which was Mrs. Sandal's evening work. But the ivory needles and the colored wools remained uncalled for, and she grew rapidly impatient, and went to her mother's room. Mrs. Sandal was lying upon her couch, exhausted with weeping; and the squire sat holding his head in his hands, the very picture of despondency and sorrow.

"Can I come and speak to you, mother?"

The squire answered, "To be sure you can, Charlotte. We are glad to see you. We are in trouble, my dear."

"Is it Harry, father?"

"Trouble mostly comes that way. Yes, it is Harry. He is in a great strait, and wants five hundred pounds, Charlotte; five hundred pounds, dear, and he wants it at once. Only six weeks ago he wrote in the same way for a hundred and fifty pounds. He is robbing me, robbing his mother, robbing Sophia and you."

"William, I wouldn't give way to temper that road; calling your own son and my son a thief. It's not fair," said Mrs. Sandal, with considerable asperity.

"I must call things by their right names, Alice. I call a cat, a cat; and I call our Harry a thief; for I don't know that forcing money from a father is any better than forcing it from a stranger. It is only using a father's love as a pick-lock instead of an iron tool. That's all the difference, Alice; and I don't think the difference is one that helps Harry's case much. Eh? What?"

"Dear me! it is always money," sighed Charlotte.

"Your father knows very well that Harry must have the money, Charlotte.

I think it is cruel of him to make every one ill before he gives what is sure to be given in the end. Sophia has a headache, I dare say, and I am sure I have."

"But I cannot give him this money, Alice. I have not realized on my wool and wheat yet. I cannot coin money. I will not beg or borrow it. I will not mortgage an acre for it."

"And you will let your only son the heir of Sandal-Side, go to jail and disgrace for five hundred pounds. I never heard tell of such cruelty.

Never, never, never!"

"You do not know what you are saying, Alice. Tell me how I am to find five hundred pounds. Eh? What?"

"There must be ways. How can a woman tell?"

"Father, have I not got some money of my own?"

"You have the accrued interest on the thousand pounds your grandmother left you. Sophia has the same."

"Is the interest sufficient?"

"You have drawn from it at intervals. I think there is about three hundred pounds to your credit."

"Sophia will have nearly as much. Call her, father. Surely between us we can arrange five hundred pounds. I shall be real glad to help Harry.

Young men have so many temptations now, father. Harry is a good sort in the main. Just have a little patience with him. Eh, father?"

And the squire was glad of the pleading voice. Glad for some one to make the excuses he did not think it right to make. Glad to have the little breath of hope that Charlotte's faith in her brother gave him. He stood up, and took her face between his hands and kissed it. Then he sent a servant for Sophia; and after a short delay the young lady appeared, looking pale and exceedingly injured.

"Did you send for me, father?"

"Yes, I did. Come in and sit down. There is something to be done for Harry, and we want your help, Sophia. Eh? What?"

She pushed a chair gently to the table, and sat down languidly. She was really sick, but her air and att.i.tude was that of a person suffering an extremity of physical anguish. The squire looked at her and then at Charlotte with dismay and self-reproach.

"Harry wants five hundred pounds, Sophia."

"I am astonished he does not want five thousand pounds. Father, I would not send him a sovereign of it. Julius told me about his carryings-on."

She could hardly have said any words so favorable to Harry's cause. The squire was on the defensive for his own side in a moment.

"What has Julius to do with it?" he cried. "Sandal-Side is not his property, and please G.o.d it never will be. Harry is one kind of a sinner, Julius is another kind of a sinner. G.o.d Almighty only knows which kind of sinner is the meaner and worse. The long and the short of it, is this: Harry must have five hundred pounds. Charlotte is willing to give the balance of her interest account, about three hundred pounds, towards it. Will you make up what is lacking, out of your interest money? Eh? What?"

"I do not know why I should be asked to do this, I am sure."

"Only because I have no ready money at present. And because, however bad Harry is, he is your brother. And because he is heir of Sandal, and the honor of the name is worth saving. And because your mother will break her heart if shame comes to Harry. And there are some other reasons too; but if mother, brother, and honor don't seem worth while to you, why, then, Sophia, there is no use wasting words. Eh? What?"

"Let father have what is needed, Sophia. I will pay you back."

"Very well, Charlotte; but I think it is most unjust, most iniquitous, as Julius says"--

"Now, then, don't quote Julius to me. What right had he to be discussing my family matters, or Sandal matters either, I wonder? Eh? What?"

"He is in the family."

"Is he? Very well, then, I am still the head of the family. If he has any advice to offer, he can come to me with it. Eh? What?"

"Father, I am as sick as can be to-night."

"Go thy ways then. Mother and I are both poorly too. Good-night, girls, both." And he turned away with an air of hopeless depression, that was far more pitiful than the loudest complaining.

The sisters went away together, silent, and feeling quite "out" with each other. But Sophia really had a nervous attack, and was shivery and sick with it. By the lighted candle in her hand, Charlotte saw that her very lips were white, and that heavy tears were silently rolling down her wan cheeks. They washed all of Charlotte's anger away; she forgot her resolution not to enter her sister's room again, and at its door she said, "Let me stay with you till you can sleep, Sophia; or I will go, and ask Ann to make you a cup of strong coffee. You are suffering very much."

"Yes, I am suffering; and father knows how I do suffer with these headaches, and that any annoyance brings them on; and yet, if Harry cries out at Edinburgh, every one in Seat-Sandal must be put out of their own way to help him. And I do think it is a shame that our little fortunes are to be crumbled as a kind of spice into his big fortune. If Harry does not know the value of money I do."

"I will pay you back every pound. I really do not care a bit about money. I have all the dress I want. You buy books and music, I do not.

I have no use for my money except to make happiness with it; and, after all, that is the best interest I can possibly get."

"Very well. Then, you can pay Harry's debts if it gives you pleasure. I suppose I am a little peculiar on this subject. Last Sunday, when the rector was preaching about the prodigal son, I could not help thinking that the sympathy for the bad young man was too much. I know, if I had been the elder brother, I should have felt precisely as he did. I don't think he ought to be blamed. And it would certainly have been more just and proper for the father to have given the feast and the gifts to the son who never at any time transgressed his commandments. You see, Charlotte, that parable is going on all over the world ever since; going on right here in Seat-Sandal; and I am on the elder brother's side.

Harry has given me a headache to-night; and I dare say he is enjoying himself precisely as the Jerusalem prodigal did before the swine husks, when it was the riotous living."

"Have a cup of coffee, Sophy. I'll go down for it. You are just as trembly and excited as you can be."

"Very well; thank you, Charlotte. You always have such a bright, kind face. I am afraid I do not deserve such a good sister."

"Yes, you do deserve all I can help or pleasure you in." And then, when the coffee had been taken, and Sophia lay restless and wide-eyed upon her bed, Charlotte proposed to read to her from any book she desired; an offer involving no small degree of self-denial, for Sophia's books were very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister. But she lifted the nearest two, Barret's "Maga," and "The Veiled Prophet," and rather dismally asked which it was to be?

"Neither of them, Charlotte. The 'Maga' makes me think, and I know you detest poetry. I got a letter to-night from Agnes Bulteel, and it appears to be about Professor Sedgwick. I was so annoyed at Harry I could not feel any interest in it then; but, if you don't object, I should like to hear you read it now."

"Object? No, indeed. I think a great deal of the old professor. What gay times father and I have had on the Screes with him, and his hammer and leather bags! And, as Agnes writes a large, round hand, and does not fresco her letters, I can read about the professor easily."

RESPECTED MISS SANDAL,--I have such a thing to tell you about Professor Sedgwick and our Joe; hoping that the squire or Miss Charlotte may see him, and let him know that Joe meant no harm at all. One hot forenoon lately, when we were through at home, an old gentlemanly make of a fellow came into our fold, and said, quite natural, that he wanted somebody to go with him on to the fells. We all stopped, and took a good look at him before anybody spoke; but at last father said, middling sharp-like,--he always speaks that way, does father, when we're busy,--

"We've something else to do here than go raking over the fells on a fine day like this with n.o.body knows who."