The Squire of Sandal-Side Part 8

"I bethink me. At the last shearing you were all for spinning and weaving. The Coppice Woods were to make your bobbins; Silver Force was to feed your engines; the little herd lads and la.s.sies to mind your spinning-frames. Well, well, Mr. Latrigg, such doings are not for me to join in! I shall be sorry to see these lovely valleys turned into weaving-shops; but you belong to a new generation, and the young know every thing,--or they think they do."

"And you will soon join the new generation, squire. You were always tolerant and wide awake. I never knew your prejudices beyond reasoning with."

"Mr. Latrigg, leave my prejudices, as you call them, alone. To-day I am not in the humor either to defend them or repent of them."

They talked for some time longer,--talked until the squire felt bored with Steve's plans. The young man kept hoping every moment to say something that would retrieve his previous blunders; but who can please those who are determined not to be pleased? And yet Sandal was annoyed at his own injustice, and then still more annoyed at Steve for causing him to be unjust. Besides which, the young man's eagerness for change, his enthusiasms and ambitions, offended him in a particular way that morning; for he had had an unpleasant letter from his son Harry, who was not eager and enthusiastic and ambitious, but lazy, extravagant, and quite commonplace. Also Charlotte had not cared to come out with him, and the immeasurable self-complacency of his nephew Julius had really quite spoiled his breakfast; and then, below all, there was that disagreeable feeling about the Latriggs.

So Stephen did not conciliate Sandal, and he was himself very much grieved at the squire's evident refusal of his friendly advances. There is no humiliation so bitter as that of a rejected offering. Was it not the failure of Cain's attempted propitiation that kindled the flame of hate and murder in his heart? Steve Latrigg went back to Up-Hill, nursing a feeling of indignation against the man who had so suddenly conceived a dislike to him, and who had dashed, with regrets and doubtful speeches and faint praise, all the plans which at sunrise had seemed so full of hope, and so worthy of success.

The squire was equally annoyed. He could not avoid speaking of the interview, for it irritated him, and was uppermost in his thoughts. He detailed it with a faint air of pitying contempt. "The lad is upset with the money and land he has come into, and the whole place is too small for his greatness." That was what he said, and he knew he was unjust; but the moral atmosphere between Steve and himself had become permeated with distrust and dislike. Unhappy miasmas floated hither and thither in it, and poisoned him. When with Stephen he hardly recognized himself: he did not belong to himself. Sarcasm, contradiction, opposing ideas, took possession of and ruled him by the forces of antipathy, just as others ruled him by the forces of love and attraction.

The days that had been full of peaceful happiness were troubled in all their hours; and yet the sources of trouble were so vague, so blended with what he had called unto himself, that he could not give vent to his unrest and disappointment. His life had had a jar; nothing ran smoothly; and he was almost glad when Julius announced the near termination of his visit. He had begun to feel as if Julius were inimical to him; not consciously so, but in that occult way which makes certain foods and drinks, certain winds and weathers, inimical to certain personalities.

His presence seemed to have blighted his happiness, as the north wind blighted his myrtles. "If I could only have let 'well' alone. If I had never written that letter." Many a time a day he said such words to his own heart.

In the mean time, Julius was quite unconscious of his position. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. If others were losing, he was not. He was in love with the fine old hall. The simple, sylvan character of its daily life charmed his poetic instincts. The sweet, hot days on the fells, with a rod in his hand, and Charlotte and the squire for company, were like an idyl. The rainy days in the large, low drawing-room, singing with Sophia, or dreaming and speculating with her on all sorts of mysteries, were, in their way, equally charmful. He liked to walk slowly up and down, and to talk to her softly of things obscure, cryptic, cabalistic. The plashing rain, the moaning wind, made just the monotonous accompaniment that seemed fitting; and the lovely girl, listening, with needle half-drawn, and sensitive, sensuous face lifted to his own, made a situation in which he knew he did himself full justice.

At such times he thought Sophia was surely his natural mate,--'the soul that halved his own,' the one of 'nearer kindred than life hinted of.'

At other times he was equally conscious that he loved Charlotte Sandal with an intensity to which his love for Sophia was as water is to wine.

But Charlotte's indifference mortified him, and their natures were almost antagonistic to each other. Under such circ.u.mstances a great love is often a dangerous one. Very little will turn it into hatred. And Julius had been made to feel more than once the utter superfluity of his existence, as far as Charlotte Sandal was concerned.

Still, he determined not to resign the hope of winning her until he was sure that her indifference was not an affectation. He had read of women who used it as a lure. If it were Charlotte's special weapon he was quite willing to be brought to submission by it. After all, there was piquancy in the situation; for to most men, love sought and hardly won is far sweeter than love freely given.

Yet of all the women whom he had known, Charlotte Sandal was the least approachable. She was fertile in preventing an opportunity; and if the opportunity came, she was equally fertile in spoiling it. But Julius had patience; and patience is the art and secret of hoping. A woman cannot always be on guard, and he believed in not losing heart, and in waiting.

Sooner or later, the happy moment when success would be possible was certain to arrive.

One day in the early part of September, the squire asked his wife for all the house-servants she could spare. "A few more hands will bring home the harvest to-night," he said; "and it would be a great thing to get it in without a drop of rain."

So the men and maids went off to the wheat-fields, as if they were going to a frolic; and there was a happy sense of freedom, with the picnicky dinner, and the general air of things being left to themselves about the house. After an unusually merry lunch, Julius proposed a walk to the harvest-field, and Sophia and Charlotte eagerly agreed to it.

It was a joy to be out of doors under such a sky. The intense, repressing greens of summer were now subdued and shaded. The air was subtle and fragrant. Amber rays shone through the boughs. The hills were clothed in purple. An exquisite, impalpable haze idealized all nature.

Right and left the reapers swept their sharp sickles through the ripe wheat. The women went after them, binding the sheaves, and singing among the yellow swaths shrill, wild songs, full of simple modulations.

The squire's field was busy as a fair; and the idle young people sat under the oaks, or walked slowly in the shadow of the hedges, pulling poppies and wild flowers, and realizing all the poetry of a pastoral life, without any of its hard labor or its vulgar cares. Mrs. Sandal had given them a basket with berries and cake and cream in it. They were all young enough to get pleasantly hungry in the open air, all young enough to look upon berries and cake and cream as a distinct addition to happiness. They set out a little feast under the trees, and called the squire to come and taste their dainties.

He was standing, without his coat and vest, on the top of a loaded wain, the very embodiment of a jovial, handsome, country gentleman. The reins were in his hand; he was going to drive home the wealthy wagon; but he stopped and stooped, and Charlotte, standing on tip-toes, handed him a gla.s.s of cream. "G.o.d love thy bonny face," he said, with a beaming smile, as he handed her back the empty gla.s.s. Then off went the great horses with their towering load, treading carefully between the hedges of the narrow lane, and leaving upon the hawthorns many a stray ear for the birds gleaning.

When the squire returned he called to Julius and his daughters, "What idle-backs you are! Come, and bind a sheaf with me." And they rose with a merry laugh, and followed him down the field, working a little, and resting a little; and towards the close of the afternoon, listening to the singing of an old man who had brought his fiddle to the field in order to be ready to play at the squire's "harvest-home." He was a thin, crooked, old man, very spare and ruddy. "Eighty-three years old, young sir," he said to Julius; and then, in a trembling, cracked voice, he quavered out,--

"Says t' auld man to t' auld oak-tree, Young and l.u.s.ty was I when I kenned thee: I was young and l.u.s.ty, I was fair and clear, Young and l.u.s.ty was I, many a long year.

But sair failed is I, sair failed now; Sair failed is I, since I kenned thou.

Sair failed, honey, Sair failed now; Sair failed, honey, Since I kenned thou."

It was the appeal of tottering age to happy, handsome youth, and Julius could not resist it. With a royal grace he laid a guinea in the old man's open palm, and felt fully rewarded by his look of wonder and delight.

"G.o.d give you love and luck, young sir. I am eighty-three now, and sair failed; but I was once twenty-three, and young and l.u.s.ty as you be. But life is at the f.a.g end with me now. G.o.d save us all!" Then, with a meaning look at the two pretty girls watching him, he went slowly off, droning out to a monotonous accompaniment, an old love ballad:--

"Picking of lilies the other day, Picking of lilies both fresh and gay, Picking of lilies, red, white, and blue, Little I thought what love could do."

"'_Little I thought what love could do_,'" Julius repeated; and he sang the doleful refrain over and over, as they strolled back to the oak under which they had had their little feast. Then Sophia, who had a natural love of neatness and order, began to collect the plates and napkins, and arrange them in the basket; and this being done, she looked around for the housemaid in order to put it in her charge. The girl was at the other end of the field, and she went to her.

Charlotte had scarcely perceived what was going on. The old man's singing had made her a little sad. She, too, was thinking of "what love could do." She was standing under the tree, leaning against the great mossy trunk. Her brown hair had fallen loose, her cheeks were flushed, her lips crimson, her whole form a glowing picture of youth in its perfect beauty and freshness. Sophia was out of hearing. Julius stepped close to her. His soul was in his face; he spoke like a man who was no longer master of himself.

"Charlotte, I love you. I love you with all my heart."

She looked at him steadily. Her eyes flashed. She threw downward her hands with a deprecating motion.

"You have no right to say such words to me, Julius. I have done all a woman could do to prevent, them. I have never given you any encouragement. A gentleman does not speak without it."

"I could not help speaking. I love you, Charlotte. Is there any wrong in loving you? If I had any hope of winning you."

"No, no; there is no hope. I do not love you. I never shall love you."

"Unless you have some other lover, Charlotte, I shall dare to hope"--

"I have a lover."

"Oh!"

"And I am frank with you because it is best. I trust you will respect my candor."

He only bowed. Indeed, he found speech impossible. Never before had Charlotte looked so lovely and so desirable to him. He felt her positive rejection very keenly.

"Sophia is coming. Please to forget that this conversation has ever been."

"You are very cruel."

"No. I am truly kind. Sophia, I am tired; let us go home."

So they turned out of the field, and into the lane. But something was gone, and something had come. Sophia felt the change, and she looked curiously at Julius and Charlotte. Charlotte was calmly mingling the poppies and wheat in her hands. Her face revealed nothing. Julius was a little melancholy. "The fairies have left us," he said. "All of a sudden, the revel is over." Then as they walked slowly homeward, he took Sophia's hand, and swayed it gently to and fro to the old fiddler's refrain,--

"'Little I thought what love could do.'"

CHAPTER V.

CHARLOTTE.

"Oh, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day!"

"Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte."

When Charlotte again went to Up-Hill she found herself walking through a sober realm of leafless trees. The glory of autumn was gone. The hills, with their circular sheep-pens, were now brown and bare; and the plaided shepherds, descending far apart, gave only an air of loneliness to the landscape. She could see the white line of the stony road with a sad distinctness. It was no longer bordered with creeping vines and patches of murmuring bee-bent heather. And the stream-bed also had lost nearly all its sentinel rushes, and the tall brakens from its s.h.a.ggy slopes were gone. But Silver Beck still ran musically over tracts of tinkling stones; and, through the chilly air, the l.u.s.tered black c.o.c.k was crowing for the gray hen in the hollow.

Very soon the atmosphere became full of misty rain; and ere she reached the house, there was a cold wind, and the nearest cloud was sprinkling the bubbling beck. It was pleasant to see Ducie at the open door ready to welcome her; pleasant to get into the snug houseplace, and watch the great fire leaping up the chimney, and throwing l.u.s.tres on the carved oak presses and long settles, and on the bright bra.s.s and pewter vessels, and the rows of showy chinaware. Very pleasant to draw her chair to the little round table on the hearthstone, and to inhale the fragrance of the infusing tea, and the rich aroma of potted char and spiced bread and freshly-baked cheese-cakes. And still more pleasant to be taken possession of, to have her damp shoes and cloak removed, her chill fingers warmed in a kindly, motherly clasp, and to be made to feel through all her senses that she was indeed "welcome as sun-shining."

With a little shiver of disappointment she noticed that there were only two tea-cups on the table; and the house, when she came to a.n.a.lyze its atmosphere, had in it the perceptible loneliness of the absent master.