← catalogue

The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

by Amelia E. Barr · English · Gutenberg #16258 · 381,623 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

Author: Amelia E. Barr


        
Release date: July 10, 2005 [eBook #16258]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16258

Credits: E-text prepared by Bethanne M. Simms, Sigal Alon, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SQUIRE OF SANDAL-SIDE: A PASTORAL ROMANCE ***


E-text prepared by Bethanne M. Simms, Sigal Alon, Mary Meehan, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(https://www.pgdp.net)



THE SQUIRE OF SANDAL-SIDE

A Pastoral Romance

by

AMELIA E. BARR

Author of "Jan Vedder's Wife," "A Daughter of Fife,"
"The Bow of Orange Ribbon," etc.

New York
The A.D. Porter Co.
Publishers

1886







CONTENTS.

   I.  SEAT-SANDAL

  II.  THE SHEEP-SHEARING

 III.  JULIUS SANDAL

  IV.  THUS RUNS THE WORLD AWAY

   V.  CHARLOTTE

  VI.  THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS

 VII.  WOOING AND WEDDING

VIII.  THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSEHOLD

  IX.  ESAU

   X.  THE NEW SQUIRE

  XI.  SANDAL AND SANDAL




CHAPTER I.

SEAT-SANDAL.

     "This happy breed of men, this little world."

                                    "To know
     That which before us lies in daily life
     Is the prime wisdom."

     "All that are lovers of virtue ... be quiet, and go a-angling."


There is a mountain called Seat-Sandal, between the Dunmail Raise and
Grisedale Pass; and those who have stood upon its summit know that
Grasmere vale and lake lie at their feet, and that Windermere,
Esthwaite, and Coniston, with many arms of the sea, and a grand
brotherhood of mountains, are all around them. There is also an old gray
manor-house of the same name. It is some miles distant from the foot of
the mountain, snugly sheltered in one of the loveliest valleys between
Coniston and Torver. No one knows when the first stones of this house
were laid. The Sandals were in Sandal-Side when the white-handed,
waxen-faced Edward was building Westminster Abbey, and William the
Norman was laying plans for the crown of England. Probably they came
with those Norsemen who a century earlier made the Isle of Man their
headquarters, and from it, landing on the opposite coast of Cumberland,
settled themselves among valleys and lakes and mountains of primeval
beauty, which must have strongly reminded them of their native land.

For the prevailing names of this district are all of the Norwegian type,
especially such abounding suffixes and prefixes as _seat_ from "set," a
dwelling; _dale_ from "dal," a valley; _fell_ from "fjeld," a mountain;
_garth_ from "gard," an enclosure; and _thwaite_, from "thveit," a
clearing. It is certain, also, that, in spite of much Anglo-Saxon
admixture, the salt blood of the roving Viking is still in the
Cumberland dalesman. Centuries of bucolic isolation have not obliterated
it. Every now and then the sea calls some farmer or shepherd, and the
restless drop in his veins gives him no peace till he has found his way
over the hills and fells to the port of Whitehaven, and gone back to the
cradling bosom that rocked his ancestors.

But in the main, this lovely spot was a northern Lotus-land to the
Viking. The great hills shut him in from the sight of the sea. He built
himself a "seat," and enclosed "thwaites" of greater or less extent;
and, forgetting the world in his green paradise, was for centuries
almost forgotten by the world. And if long descent and an ancient family
have any special claim to be held honorable, it is among the Cumberland
"statesmen," or freeholders, it must be looked for in England.

The Sandals have been wise and fortunate owners of the acres which
Lögberg Sandal cleared for his descendants. They have a family tradition
that he came from Iceland in his own galley; and a late generation has
written out portions of a saga,--long orally transmitted,--which relates
the incidents of his voyage. All the Sandals believe implicitly in its
authenticity; and, indeed, though it is full of fighting, of the plunder
of gold and rich raiment, and the carrying off of fair women, there is
nothing improbable in its relations, considering the people and the
time whose story it professes to tell.

Doubtless this very Lögberg Sandal built the central hall of
Seat-Sandal. There were giants in those days; and it must have been the
hands of giants that piled the massive blocks, and eyes accustomed to
great expanses that measured off the large and lofty space. Smaller
rooms have been built above it and around it, and every generation has
added something to its beauty and comfort; but Lögberg's great hall,
with its enormous fireplace, is still the heart of the home.

For nowhere better than among these "dalesmen" can the English elemental
resistance to fusion be seen. Only at the extreme point of necessity
have they exchanged ideas with any other section, yet they have left
their mark all over English history. In Cumberland and Westmoreland, the
most pathetic romances of the Red Rose were enacted. In the strength of
these hills, the very spirit of the Reformation was cradled. From among
them came the Wyckliffite queen of Henry the Eighth, and the noble
confessor and apostle Bernard Gilpin. No lover of Protestantism can
afford to forget the man who refused the bishopric of Carlisle, and a
provostship at Oxford, that he might traverse the hills and dales, and
read to the simple "statesmen" and shepherds the unknown Gospels in the
vernacular. They gathered round him in joyful wonder, and listened
kneeling to the Scriptures. Only the death of Mary prevented his
martyrdom; and to-day his memory is as green as are the ivies and
sycamores around his old home.

The Protestant spirit which Gilpin raised among these English Northmen
was exceptionally intense; and here George Fox found ready the strong
mystical element necessary for his doctrines. For these men had long
worshipped "in temples not made with hands." In the solemn "high places"
they had learned to interpret the voices of winds and waters; and among
the stupendous crags, more like clouds at sunset than fragments of solid
land, they had seen and heard wonderful things. All over this country,
from Kendal to old Ulverston, Fox was known and loved; and from
Swarthmoor Hall, a manor-house not very far from Seat-Sandal, he took
his wife.

After this the Stuarts came marching through the dales, but the
followers of Wyckliffe and Fox had little sympathy with the Stuarts. In
the rebellion of 1715, their own lord, the Earl of Derwentwater, was
beheaded for aiding the unfortunate family; and the hills and waters
around are sad with the memories of his lady's heroic efforts and
sufferings. So, when Prince Charles came again, in 1745, they were moved
neither by his beauty nor his romantic daring: they would take no part
at all in his brilliant blunder.

It was for his stanch loyalty on this occasion, that the Christopher
Sandal of that day was put among the men whom King George determined to
honor. A baronetcy was offered him, which he declined; for he had a
feeling that he would deeply offend old Lögberg Sandal, and perhaps all
the rest of his ancestral wraiths, if he merged their ancient name in
that of Baron of Torver. The sentiment was one the German King of
England could understand and respect; and Sandal received, in place of a
costly title, the lucrative office of High Sheriff of Cumberland, and a
good share besides of the forfeited lands of the rebel houses of
Huddleston and Millom.

Then he took his place among the great county families of England. He
passed over his own hills, and went up to London, and did homage for the
king's grace to him. And that strange journey awakened in the mountain
lord some old spirit of adventure and curiosity. He came home by the
ocean, and perceived that he had only half lived before. He sent his
sons to Oxford; he made them travel; he was delighted when the youngest
two took to the sea as naturally as the eider-ducks fledged in a
sea-sand nest.

Good fortune did not spoil the old, cautious family. It went "cannily"
forward, and knew how "to take occasion by the hand," and how to choose
its friends. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, an opportune
loan again set the doors of the House of Lords open to the Sandals; but
the head of the family was even less inclined to enter it than his
grandfather had been.

"Nay, then," was his answer, "t' Sandals are too old a family to hide
their heads in a coronet. Happen, I am a bit opinion-tied, but it's over
late to loosen knots made centuries ago; and I don't want to loosen
them, neither."

So it will be perceived, that, though the Sandals moved, they moved
slowly. A little change went a great way with them. The men were all
conservative in politics, the women intensely so in all domestic
traditions. They made their own sweet waters and unguents and pomades,
long after the nearest chemist supplied a far better and cheaper
article. Their spinning-wheels hummed by the kitchen-fire, and their
shuttles glided deftly in the weaving-room, many a year after Manchester
cottons were cheap and plentiful. But they were pleasant, kindly women,
who did wonderful needlework, and made all kinds of dainty dishes and
cordials and sirups. They were famous florists and gardeners, and the
very neatest of housewives. They visited the poor and sick, and never
went empty-handed. They were hearty Churchwomen. They loved God, and
were truly pious, and were hardly aware of it; for those were not days
of much inquiry. People did their duty and were happy, and did not
reason as to "why" they did it, nor try to ascertain if there were a
legitimate cause for the effect.

But about the beginning of this century, a different day began to dawn
over Sandal-Side. The young heir came to his own, and signalized the
event by marrying the rich Miss Lowther of Whitehaven. She had been
finely educated. She had lived in large cities, and been to court. She
dressed elegantly; she had a piano and much grand furniture brought over
the hills to Sandal; and she filled the old house during the summer with
lords and ladies, and poets and artists, who flitted about the idyllic
little village, like gay butterflies in a lovely garden.

The husband and children of such a woman were not likely to stand still.
Sandal, encouraged by her political influence, went into Parliament. Her
children did fairly well; for though one boy was wild, and cost them a
deal of money, and another went away in a passion one morning, and never
came back, the heir was a good son, and the two girls made splendid
marriages. On the whole, she could feel that she had done well to her
generation. Even after she had been long dead, the old women in the
village talked of her beauty and spirit, of the tight hand she kept over
every one and every thing pertaining to Sandal. Of all the mistresses
of the old "seat," this Mistress Charlotte was the most prominent and
the best remembered.

Every one who steps within the wide, cool hall of Seat-Sandal faces
first of all things her picture. It is a life-size painting of a
beautiful woman, in the queer, scant costume of the regency. She wears a
white satin frock and white satin slippers, and carries in her hand a
bunch of white roses. She appears to be coming down a flight of wide
stairs; one foot is lifted for the descent, and the dark background, and
the dim light in which it hangs, give to the illusion an almost
startling reality. It was her fancy to have the painting hung there to
welcome all who entered her doors; and though it is now old-fashioned,
and rather shabby and faded, no one of the present generation cares to
order its removal. All hold quietly to the opinion that "grandmother
would not like it."

In that quiet acre on the hillside, which holds the generations of the
Sandals, she had been at rest for ten years. But her son still bared his
gray head whenever he passed her picture; still, at times, stood a
minute before it, and said with tender respect, "I salute thee,
mother." And in her granddaughter's lives still she interfered; for she
had left in their father's charge a sum of money, which was to be used
solely to give them some pleasure which they could not have without it.
In this way, though dead, she kept herself a part of their young lives;
became a kind of fairy grandmother, who gave them only delightful
things, and her name continued a household word.

Only the mother seemed averse to speak it; and Charlotte, who was most
observant, noticed that she never lifted her eyes to the picture as she
passed it. There were reasons for these things which the children did
not understand. They had been too young at her death to estimate the
bondage in which she had kept her daughter-in-law, who, for her
husband's sake, had been ever patient and reticent. Nothing is, indeed,
more remarkable than the patience of wives under this particular trial.
They may be restive under many far less wrongs, but they bear the
mother-in-law grievance with a dignity which shames the grim joking and
the petulant abuse of men towards the same relationship. And for many
years the young wife had borne nobly a domestic tyranny which pressed
her on every hand. If then, she was glad to be set free from it, the
feeling was too natural to be severely blamed; for she never said
so,--no, not even by a look. Her children had the benefit of their
grandmother's kindness, and she was too honorable to deprive the dead of
their meed of gratitude.

The present holder of Sandal had none of his mother's ambitious will. He
cared for neither political nor fashionable life; and as soon as he came
to his inheritance, married a handsome, sensible daleswoman with whom he
had long been in love. Then he retired from a world which had nothing to
give him comparable, in his eyes, with the simple, dignified pleasures
incident to his position as Squire of Sandal-Side. For dearly he loved
the old hall, with its sheltering sycamores and oaks,--oaks which had
been young trees when the knights lying in Furness Abbey led the
Grasmere bowmen at Crécy and Agincourt. Dearly he loved the large, low
rooms, full of comfortable elegance; and the sweet, old-fashioned, Dutch
garden, so green through all the snows of winter, so cheerfully grave
and fragrant in the summer twilights, so shady and cool even in the
hottest noons.

Thirty years ago he was coming through it one July evening. It had been
a very hot day; and the flowers were drooping, and the birds weary and
silent. But Squire Sandal, though flushed and rumpled looking, had still
the air of drippy mornings and hazy afternoons about him. There was a
creel at his back, and a fishing-rod in his hand, and he had just come
from the high, unplanted places, and the broomy, breezy moorlands; and
his broad, rosy face expressed nothing but happiness.

At his side walked his favorite daughter Charlotte,--his dear companion,
the confidant and sharer of all his sylvan pleasures. She was tired and
dusty; and her short printed gown showed traces of green, spongy grass,
and lichen-covered rocks. But her face was a joy to see: she had such
bright eyes, such a kind, handsome mouth, such a cheerful voice, such a
merry laugh. As they came in sight of the wide-open front-doors, she
looked ruefully down at her feet and her grass-and-water-stained skirt,
and then into her father's face.

"I don't know what Sophia will say if she sees me, father; I don't,
indeed."

"Never you mind her, dear. Sophia's rather high, you know. And we've
had a rare good time. Eh? What?"

"I should think we have! There are not many pleasures in life better
than persuading a fine trout to go a little way down stream with you.
Are there, father?"

"You are right, Charlotte. Trout are the kind of company you want on an
outing. And then, you know, if you can only persuade one to go down
stream a bit with you, there's not much difficulty in persuading him to
let you have the pleasure of seeing him to dinner. Eh? What?"

"I think I will go round by the side-door, father. I might meet some one
in the hall."

"Nay, don't do that. There isn't any need to shab off. You've done
nothing wrong, and I'm ready to stand by you, my dear; and you know what
a good time we've been having all day. Eh? What?"

"Of course I know, father,--

    "Showers and clouds and winds,
       All things well and proper;
     Trailer, red and white,
       Dark and wily dropper.
     Midges true to fling
       Made of plover hackle,
     With a gaudy wing,
       And a cobweb tackle."

"Cobweb tackle, eh, Charlotte? Yes, certainly; for a hand that can
manage it. Lancie Crossthwaite will land you a trout, three pounds
weight, with a line that wouldn't lift a dead weight of one pound from
the floor to the table. I'll uphold he will. Eh? What?"

"I'll do it myself, some day; see if I don't, father."

"I've no doubt of it, Charlotte; not a bit." Then being in the
entrance-hall, they parted with a smile of confidence, and Charlotte
hastened up-stairs to prepare herself for the evening meal. She gave one
quick glance at her grandmother's picture as she passed it, a glance of
mingled deprecation and annoyance; for there were times when the
complacent serenity of the perfect face, and the perfect propriety of
the white satin gown, gave her a little spasm of indignation.

She dressed rapidly, with a certain deft grace that was part of her
character. And it was a delightful surprise to watch the metamorphosis;
the more so, as it went on with a perfect unconsciousness of its
wonderful beauty. Here a change, and there a change, until the bright
brown hair was loosened from its net of knotted silk, to fall in wavy,
curly masses; and the printed gown was exchanged for one of the finest
muslin, pink and flowing, and pinned together with bows of pale blue
satin. A daring combination, which precisely suited her blonde,
brilliant beauty. Her eyes were shining; her cheeks touched by the sun
till they had the charming tints of a peach on a southern wall. She
looked at herself with a little nod of satisfaction, and then tapped at
the door of the room adjoining her own. It was Miss Sandal's room; and
Miss Sandal, though only sixteen months older than Charlotte, exacted
all the deference due to her by the right of primogeniture.

"Come in, Charlotte."

"How did you know it was I?"

"I know your knock, however you vary it. Nobody knocks like you. I
suppose no two people would make three taps just the same." She was far
too polite to yawn; but she made as much of the movement as she could
not control, and then put a mark in her book, and laid it down. A very
different girl, indeed, was she from her younger sister; a stranger
would never have suspected her of the same parentage.

She had dark, fine eyes, which, however, did not express what she felt:
they rather gave the idea of storing up impressions to be re-acted upon
by some interior power. She had a delicate complexion, a great deal of
soft, black hair compactly dressed, and a neat figure. Her disposition
was dreamy and self-willed; occult studies fascinated her, and she was
passionately fond of moonlight. She was simply dressed in a white muslin
frock, with a black ribbon around her slim waist; but the ribbon was
clasped by a buckle of heavily chased gold, and her fingers had many
rings on them, and looked--a very rare circumstance--the better for
them. Having put down her book, she rose from her chair; and as she
dipped the tips of her hands in water, and wiped them with elaborate
nicety, she talked to Charlotte in a soft, deliberate way.

"Where have you been, you and father, ever since daybreak?"

"Up to Blaeberry Tarn, and then home by Holler Beck. We caught a creel
full of trout, and had a very happy day."

"Really, you know?"

"Yes, really; why not?"

"I cannot understand it, Charlotte. I suppose we never were sisters
before." She said the words with the air of one who rather states a fact
than asks a question; and Charlotte, not at all comprehending, looked at
her curiously and interrogatively.

"I mean that our relationship in this life does not touch our anterior
lives."

"Oh, you know you are talking nonsense, Sophia! It gives me such a feel,
you can't tell, to think of having lived before; and I don't believe it.
There, now! Come, dear, let us go to dinner; I'm that hungry I'm fit to
drop." For Charlotte was watching, with a feeling of injury, Sophia's
leisurely method of putting every book and chair and hairpin in its
place.

The sisters' rooms were precisely alike in their general features, and
yet there was as great a relative difference in their apartments as in
their natures. Both were large, low rooms, facing the sunrise. The walls
of both were of dark oak; the roofs of both were of the same sombre
wood; so also were the floors. They were literally oak chambers. And in
both rooms the draperies of the beds, chairs, and windows were of white
dimity. But in Sophia's, there were many pictures, souvenirs of
girlhood's friendships, needlework, finished and unfinished drawings,
and a great number of books mostly on subjects not usually attractive to
young women. Charlotte's room had no pictures on its walls, and no odds
and ends of memorials; and as sewing was to her a duty and not a
pleasure, there was no crotcheting or Berlin-wool work in hand; and with
the exception of a handsome copy of "Izaak Walton," there were no books
on her table but a Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and a very shabby
Thomas à Kempis.

So dissimilar were the girls in their appearance and their tastes; and
yet they loved each other with that calm, habitual, family affection,
which, undemonstrative as it is, stands the wear and tug of life with a
wonderful tenacity. Down the broad, oak stairway they sauntered
together; Charlotte's tall, erect figure, bright, loose hair, pink
dress, and flowing ribbons, throwing into effective contrast the dark
hair, dark eyes, white drapery, and gleaming ornaments of her elder
sister.

In the hall they met the squire. He was very fond and very proud of his
daughters; and he gave his right arm to Sophia, and slipped his left
hand into Charlotte's hand with an affectionate pride and confidence
that was charming.

"Any news, mother?" he asked, as he lifted one of the crisp brown trout
from its bed of white damask and curly green parsley.

"None, squire; only the sheep-shearing at the Up-Hill Farm to-morrow.
John of Middle Barra called with the statesman's respects. Will you go,
squire?"

"Certainly. My men are all to lend a hand. Barf Latrigg is ageing fast
now; he was my father's crony; if I slighted him, I should feel as if
father knew about it. Which of you will go with me? Thou, mother?"

"That, I cannot, squire. The servant lasses are all promised for the
fleece-folding; and it's a poor house that won't keep one woman busy in
it."

"Sophia and Charlotte will go then?"

"Excuse me, father," answered Sophia languidly. "I shall have a
headache to-morrow, I fear; I have been nervous and poorly all the
afternoon."

"Why, Sophia, I didn't think I had such a foolish lass! Taking fancies
for she doesn't know what. If you plan for to-morrow, plan a bit of
pleasure with it; that's a long way better than expecting a headache.
Charlotte will go then. Eh? What?"

"Yes, father; I will go. Sophia never could bear walking in the
heat. I like it; and I think there are few things merrier than a
sheep-shearing."

"So poetic! So idyllic!" murmured Sophia, with mild sarcasm.

"Many people think so, Sophia. Mr. Wordsworth would remember Pan and
Arcadian shepherds playing on reedy pipes, and Chaldæan shepherds
studying the stars, and those on Judæa's hills who heard the angels
singing. He would think of wild Tartar shepherds, and handsome Spanish
and Italian."

"And still handsomer Cumberland ones." And Sophia, having given this
little sisterly reminder, added calmly, "I met Mr. Wordsworth to-day,
father. He had come over the fells with a party, and he looked very
much bored with his company."

"I shouldn't wonder if he were. He likes his own company best. He is a
great man now, but I remember well when people thought he was just a
little off-at-side. You knew Nancy Butterworth, mother?"

"Certainly I did, squire. She lived near Rydal."

"Yes. Nancy wasn't very bright herself. A stranger once asked her what
Mr. Wordsworth was like; and she said, 'He's canny enough at times.
Mostly he's wandering up and down t' hills, talking his po-et-ry; but
now and then he'll say, "How do ye do, Nancy?" as sensible as you or
me.'"

"Mr. Wordsworth speaks foolishness to a great many people besides Nancy
Butterworth," said Sophia warmly; "but he is a great poet and a great
seer to those who can understand him."

"Well, well, Mr. Wordsworth is neither here nor there in our affairs.
We'll go up to Latriggs in the afternoon, Charlotte. I'll be ready at
two o'clock."

"And I, also, father." Her face was flushed and thoughtful, and she had
become suddenly quiet. The squire glanced at her, but without curiosity;
he only thought, "What a pity she is a lass! I wish Harry had her good
sense and her good heart; I do that."




CHAPTER II.

THE SHEEP-SHEARING.

     "Plain living and high thinking ...
        The homely beauty of the good old cause,
       ...our peace, our fearful innocence,
     And pure religion breathing household laws."

     "A happy youth, and their old age
      Is beautiful and free."


The sheep-shearings at Up-Hill Farm were a kind of rural Olympics.
Shepherds came there from far and near to try their skill against each
other,--young men in their prime mostly, with brown, ruddy faces, and
eyes of that bright blue lustre which is only gained by a free, open-air
life. The hillside was just turning purple with heather bloom, and along
the winding, stony road the yellow asphodels were dancing in the wind.
Everywhere there was the scent of bog-myrtle and wild-rose and
sweetbrier, and the tinkling sound of becks babbling over glossy rocks;
and in the glorious sunshine and luminous air, the mountains appeared to
expand and elevate, and to throw out glowing peaks and summits into
infinite space.

Hand in hand the squire and his daughter climbed the fellside. They had
left home in high spirits, merrily flinging back the mother's and
Sophia's last advices; but gradually they became silent, and then a
little mournful. "I wonder why it is, father?" asked Charlotte; "I'm not
at all tired, and how can fresh air and sunshine make one melancholy?"

"Maybe, now, sad thoughts are catching. I was having a few. Eh? What?"

"I don't know. Why were you having sad thoughts?"

"Well, then, I really can't understand why. There's no need to fret over
changes. At the long end the great change puts all right. Charlotte, I
have been coming to Barf Latrigg's shearings for about half a century. I
remember the first. I held my nurse's hand, and wore such a funny little
coat, and such a big lace collar. And, dear me! it was just such a day
as this, thirty-two years ago, that your mother walked up to the
shearing with me, Charlotte; and I asked her if she would be my wife,
and she said she would. Thou takes after her a good deal; she had the
very same bright eyes and bonny face, and straight, tall shape thou has
to-day. Barf Latrigg was sixty then, turning a bit gray, but able to
shear with any man they could put against him. He'll be ninety now; but
his father lived till he was more than a hundred, and most of his
fore-elders touched the century. He's had his troubles too."

"I never heard of them."

"No. They are dead and buried. A dead trouble may be forgot: it is the
living troubles that make the eyes dim, and the heart fail. Yes, yes;
Barf is as happy as a boy now, but I remember when he was back-set and
fore-set with trouble. In life every thing goes round like a cart-wheel.
Eh? What?"

In a short time they reached the outer wall of the farm. They were eight
hundred feet above the valley; and looking backwards upon the woods from
their airy shelf, the tops of the trees appeared like a solid green
road, on which they might drop down and walk. Stone steps in the stone
wall admitted them into the enclosure, and then they saw the low gray
house spreading itself in the shadow of the noble sycamores--

     ... "musical with bees;
     Such tents the patriarchs loved."

As they approached, the old statesman strode to the open door to meet
them. He was a very tall man, with a bright, florid face, and a great
deal of fine, white hair. Two large sheep-dogs, which only wanted a hint
to be uncivil, walked beside him. He had that independent manner which
honorable descent and absolute ownership of house and land give; and he
looked every inch a gentleman, though he wore only the old dalesman's
costume,--breeches of buckskin fastened at the knees with five silver
buttons, home-knit stockings and low shoes, and a red waistcoat, open
that day, in order to show the fine ruffles on his shirt. He was
precisely what Squire Sandal would have been, if the Sandals had not
been forced by circumstances into contact with a more cultivated and a
more ambitious life.

"Welcome, Sandal! I have been watching for thee. There would be little
prosperation in a shearing if thou wert absent. And a good day to thee,
Charlotte. My Ducie was speaking of thee a minute ago. Here she comes to
help thee off with thy things."

Charlotte was untying her bonnet as she entered the deep, cool porch,
and a moment afterward Ducie was at her side. It was easy to see the
women loved each other, though Ducie only smiled, and said, "Come in;
I'm right glad to see you, Charlotte. Come into t' best room, and cool
your face a bit. And how is Mrs. Sandal and Sophia? Be things at their
usual, dear?"

"Thank you, Ducie; all and every thing is well,--I hope. We have not
heard from Harry lately. I think it worrits father a little, but he is
never the one to show it. Oh, how sweet this room is!"

She was standing before the old-fashioned swivel mirror, that had
reflected three generations,--a fair, bright girl, with the light and
hope of youth in her face. The old room, with its oak walls, immense
bed, carved awmries, drawers, and cupboards, made a fine environment for
so much life and color. And yet there were touches in it that resembled
her, and seemed to be the protest of the present with the past,--vivid
green and scarlet masses of geranium and fuchsia in the latticed window,
and a great pot of odorous flowers upon the hearthstone. But the
peculiar sweetness which Charlotte noticed came from the polished oak
floor, which was strewed with bits of rosemary and lavender, to prevent
the slipping of the feet upon it.

Charlotte looked down at them as she ejaculated, "How sweet this room
is!" and the shadow of a frown crossed her face. "I would not do it,
Ducie, for any one," she said. "Poor herbs of grace! What sin have they
committed to be trodden under foot? I would not do it, Ducie: I feel as
if it hurt them."

"Nay, now; flowers grow to be pulled dear, just as lasses grow to be
loved and married."

"Is that what you think, Ducie? Some cherished in the jar; some thrown
under the feet, and bruised to death,--the feet of wrong and sorrow,"--

"Don't you talk that way, Charlotte. It isn't lucky for girls to talk of
wrong and sorrow. Talking of things bespeaks them. There's always _them_
that hear; _them_ that we don't see. And everybody pulls flowers,
dearie."

"I don't. If I pull a rose, I always believe every other rose on that
tree is sad about it. They may be in families, Ducie, who can tell? And
the little roses may be like the little children, and very dear to the
grown roses."

"Why, what fancies! Let us go into the yard, and see the shearing.
You've made me feel as if I'd never like to pull a posy again. You
shouldn't say such things, indeed you shouldn't: you've given me quite a
turn, I'm sure."

As Ducie talked, they went through the back-door into a large yard
walled in from the hillside, and having in it three grand old sycamores.
One of these was at the top of the enclosure, and a circle of green
shadow like a tent was around it. In this shadow the squire and the
statesman were sitting. Their heads were uncovered, their long clay
pipes in their hands; and, with a placid complacency, they were watching
the score of busy men before them. Many had come long distances to try
their skill against each other; for the shearings at Latrigg's were a
pastoral game, at which it was a local honor to be the winner. There the
young statesman who could shear his six score a day found others of a
like capacity, and it was Greek against Greek at Up-Hill shearing that
afternoon.

"I had two thousand sheep to get over," said Latrigg, "but they'll be
bare by sunset, squire. That isn't bad for these days. When I was young
we wouldn't have thought so much of two thousand, but every dalesman
then knew what good shearing was. _Now_," and the old man shook his head
slowly, "good shearers are few and far between. Why, there's some here
from beyond Kirkstone Pass and Nab Scar!"

It was customary for young people of all conditions to give men as aged
as Barf Latrigg the honorable name of "grandfather;" and Charlotte said,
as she sat down in the breezy shadow beside him, "Who is first,
grandfather?"

"Why, our Stephen, to be sure! They'll have to be up before day-dawn to
keep sidey with our Steve.--Steve, how many is thou ahead now?" The
voice that asked the question, though full of triumph, was thin and
weak; but the answer came back in full, mellow tones,--

"Fifteen ahead, grandfather."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

"Charlotte Sandal says 'she's so glad.' Now then, if thou loses ground,
I wouldn't give a ha'penny for thee."

Then the women who were folding the fleeces on tables under the other
two sycamores lifted their eyes, and glanced at Steve; and some of the
elder ones sent him a merry jibe, and some of the younger ones, smiles,
that made his brown handsome face deepen in color; but he was far too
earnest in his work to spare a moment for a reply. By and by, the squire
put down his pipe, and sat watching with his hands upon his knees. And a
stray child crept up to Charlotte, and climbed upon her lap, and went to
sleep there, and the wind flecked these four representatives of four
generations all over with wavering shadows; and Ducie came backwards and
forwards, and finally carried the sleeping child into the house; and
Stephen, busy as he was, saw every thing that went on in the group under
the top sycamore.

Even before sundown, the last batch of sheep were fleeced and
_smitten_,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a
mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte,
leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell,
with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather and the squire had
gone into the house; Ducie was calling her from the open door; she knew
it was tea-time, and she was young and healthy and hungry enough to be
glad of it.

At the table she met Stephen. The strong, bare-armed Hercules, whom she
had watched tossing the sheep around for his shears as easily as if they
had been kittens under his hands, was now dressed in a handsome tweed
suit, and looking quite as much of a gentleman as the most fastidious
maiden could desire. He came in after the meal had begun, flushed
somewhat with his hard labor, and perhaps, also, with the hurry of his
toilet; but there was no embarrassment in his manner. It had never yet
entered Stephen's mind that there was any occasion for embarrassment,
for the friendship between the squire's family and his own had been
devoid of all sense of inequality. The squire was "the squire," and was
perhaps richer than Latrigg, but even that fact was uncertain; and the
Sandals had been to court, and married into county families; but then
the Latriggs had been for exactly seven hundred years the neighbors of
Sandal,--good neighbors, shoulder to shoulder with them in every trial
or emergency.

The long friendship had never known but one temporary shadow, and this
had been during the time that the present squire's mother ruled in
Sandal; the Mistress Charlotte whose influence was still felt in the old
seat. She had entirely disapproved the familiar affection with which
Latrigg met her husband, and it was said the disputes which drove one of
her sons from his home were caused by her determination to break up the
companionship existing between the young people of the two houses at
that time.

The squire remembered it. He had also, in some degree, regarded his
mother's prejudices while she lived; but, after her death, Sophia and
Charlotte, as well as their brother, began to go very often to Up-Hill
Farm. Naturally Stephen, who was Ducie's son, became the companion of
Harry Sandal; and the girls grew up in his sight like two beautiful
sisters. It was only within the past year that he had begun to
understand that one was dearer to him than the other; but though none of
the three was now ignorant of the fact, it was as yet tacitly ignored.
The knowledge had not been pleasant to Sophia; and to Charlotte and
Stephen it was such a delicious uncertainty, that they hardly desired to
make it sure; and they imagined their secret was all their own, and were
so happy in it, that they feared to look too curiously into their
happiness.

There was to be a great feast and dance that night: and, as they sat at
the tea-table, they heard the mirth and stir of its preparation; but it
came into the room only like a pleasant echo, mingling with the barking
of the sheep-dogs, and the bleating of the shorn sheep upon the fells,
and the murmur of their quiet conversation about "the walks" Latrigg
owned, and the scrambling, black-faced breed whose endurance made them
so profitable. Something was also said of other shearings to which
Stephen must go, if he would assure his claim to be "top-shearer," and
of the wool-factories which the most astute statesmen were beginning to
build.

"If I were a younger man, I'd be in with them," said Latrigg. "I'd spin
and weave my own fleeces, and send them to Leeds market, with no
go-between to share my profits." And Steve put in a sensible word now
and then, and passed the berry-cake and honey and cream; and withal met
Charlotte's eyes, and caught her smiles, and was as happy as love and
hope could make him.

After tea the squire wished to go; but Latrigg said, "Smoke one pipe
with me Sandal," and they went into the porch together. Then Steve and
Charlotte sauntered about the garden, or, leaning on the stone wall,
looked down into the valley, or away off to the hills. Many things they
said to each other which seemed to mean so little, but which meant so
much when love was the interpreter. For Charlotte was eighteen and
Stephen twenty-two; and when mortals still so young are in love, they
are quite able to create worlds out of nothing.

After a while the squire lifted his eyes, and took in the bit of
landscape which included them. The droop of the young heads towards each
other, and their air of happy confidence, awakened a vague suspicion in
his heart. Perhaps Latrigg was conscious of it; for he said, as if in
answer to the squire's thought, "Steve will have all that is mine. It's
a deal easier to die, Sandal, when you have a fine lad like Steve to
leave the old place to."

"Steve is in the female line. That's a deal different to having sons.
Lasses are cold comfort for sons. Eh? What?"

"To be sure; but I've given Steve my name. Any one not called Latrigg at
Up-Hill would seem like a stranger."

"I know how you feel about that. A squire in Seat-Sandal out of the old
name would have a very middling kind of time, I think. He'd have a sight
of ill-will at his back."

"Thou means with _them_!"

The squire nodded gravely; and after a minute's silence said, "It stands
to reason _they_ take an interest. I do in them. When I think of this or
that Sandal, or when I look up at their faces as I sit smoking beside
them, I'm sure I feel like their son; and I wouldn't grieve them any
more than if they were to be seen and talked to. It's none likely, then,
that _they_ forget. I know they don't."

"I'm quite of thy way of thinking, Sandal; but Steve will be called
Latrigg. He has never known any other name, thou sees."

"To be sure. Is Ducie willing?"

"Poor lass! She never names Steve's father. He'd no business in her
life, and he very soon went out of it. Stray souls will get into
families they have no business in, sometimes. They make a deal of
unhappiness when they do."

Sandal sat listening with a sympathetic face. He hoped Latrigg was going
to tell him something definite about his daughter's trouble; but the old
man puffed, puffed, in silence a few minutes, and then turned the
conversation. However, Sandal had been touched on a point where he was
exceedingly sensitive; and he rose with a sigh, and said, "Well, well,
Latrigg, good-by. I'll go down the fell now. Come, Charlotte."

Unconsciously he spoke with an authority not usual to him, and the
parting was a little silent and hurried; for Ducie was in the throng of
her festival, and rather impatient for Stephen's help. Only Latrigg
walked to the gate with them. He looked after Sandal and his daughter
with a grave, but not unhappy wistfulness; and when a belt of larches
hid them from his view, he turned towards the house, saying softly,--

"It is like to be my last shearing. Very soon this life will _have
been_, but through Christ's mercy I have the over-hand of the future."

It was almost as hard to go down the fell as to come up it, for the road
was very steep and stony. The squire took it leisurely, carrying his
straw hat in his hand, and often standing still to look around him. The
day had been very warm; and limpid vapors hung over the mountains, like
something far finer than mist,--like air made visible,--giving them an
appearance of inconceivable remoteness, full of grandeur; for there is a
sublimity of distance, as well as a sublimity of height. He made
Charlotte notice them. "Maybe, many a year after this, you'll see the
hills look just that way, dearie; then think on this evening and on me."

She did not speak, but she looked into his face, and clasped his hand
tightly. She was troubled with her own mood. Try as she would, it was
impossible to prevent herself drifting into most unusual silences.
Stephen's words and looks filled her heart; she had only half heard the
things her father had been saying. Never before had she found an hour in
her life when she wished for solitude in preference to his
society,--her good, tender father. She put Stephen out of her mind, and
tried again to feel all her old interest in his plans for their
amusement. Alas, alas! The first secret, especially if it be a
love-secret, makes a break in that sweet, confidential intercourse
between a parent and child which nothing restores. The squire hardly
comprehended that there might be a secret. Charlotte was unthoughtful of
wrong; but still there was a repression, a something undefinable between
them, impalpable, but positive as a breath of polar air. She noticed the
mountains, for he made her do so; but the birds sang sleepy songs to her
unheeded, and the yellow asphodels made a kind of sunshine at her feet
that she never saw; and even her father's voice disturbed the dreamy
charm of thoughts that touched a deeper, sweeter joy than moor or
mountain, bird or flower, had ever given her.

Before they reached home, the squire had also become silent. He came
into the hall with the face of one dissatisfied and unhappy. The feeling
spread through the house, as a drop of ink spreads itself through a
glass of water. It almost suited Sophia's mood, and Mrs. Sandal was not
inclined to discuss it until the squire was alone with her. Then she
asked the question of all questions the most irritating, "What is the
matter with you, squire?"

"What is the matter, indeed? Love-making. That is the matter, Alice."

"Charlotte?"

"Yes."

"And Stephen Latrigg?"

"Yes."

"I thought as much. Opportunity is a dangerous thing."

"My word! To hear you talk, one would think it was matterless how our
girls married."

"It is never matterless how any girl marries, squire; and our
Charlotte"--

"Oh, I thought Charlotte was a child yet! How could I tell there was
danger at Up-Hill? You ought to have looked better after your daughters.
See that she doesn't go near-hand Latrigg's again."

"I wouldn't be so foolish, William. It's a deal better not to notice.
Make no words about it; and, if you don't like Stephen, send Charlotte
away a bit. Half of young people's love-affairs is just because they are
handy to each other."

"'Like Stephen!' It is more than a matter of liking, as you know very
well. If Harry Sandal goes on as he has been going, there will be little
enough left for the girls; and they must marry where money will not be
wanted. More than that, I've been thinking of brother Tom's boy for one
of them. Eh? What?"

"You mean, you have been writing to Tom about a marriage? I would have
been above a thing like that, William. I suppose you did it to please
your mother. She always did hanker after Tom, and she always did dislike
the Latriggs. I have heard that when people were in the grave they
'ceased from troubling,' but"--

"Alice!"

"I meant no harm, squire, I'm sure; and I would not say wrong of the
dead for any thing, specially of your mother; but I think about my own
girls."

"There, now, Alice, don't whimper and cry. I am not going to harm your
girls, not I. Only mother was promised that Tom's son should have the
first chance for their favor. I'm sure there's nothing amiss in that.
Eh?"

"A young man born in a foreign country among blacks, or very near
blacks. And nobody knows who his mother was."

"Oh, yes! his mother was a judge's daughter, and she had a deal of
money. Her son has been well done to; sent to the very best German and
French schools, and now he is at Oxford. I dare say he is a very good
young man, and at any rate he is the only Sandal of this generation
except our own boy."

"Your sisters have sons."

"Yes, Mary has three: they are _Lockerbys_. Elizabeth has two: they are
_Piersons_. My poor brother Launcie was drowned, and never had son or
daughter; so that Tom's Julius is the nearest blood we have."

"Julius! I never heard tell of such a name."

"Yes, it is a silly kind of a foreign name. His mother is called Julia:
I suppose that is how it comes. No Sandal was ever called such a name
before, but the young man mustn't be blamed for his godfather's
foolishness, Alice. Eh?"

"I'm not so unjust. Poor Launcie! I saw him once at a ball in Kendal.
Are you sure he was drowned?"

"I followed him to Whitehaven, and found out that he had gone away in a
ship that never came home. Mother and Launcie were in bad bread when he
left, and she never fretted for him as she did for Tom."

"Why did you not tell me all this before?"

"I said to myself, there's time enough yet to be planning husbands for
girls that haven't a thought of the kind. We were very happy with them;
I couldn't bear to break things up; and I never once feared about Steve
Latrigg, not I."

"What does your brother and his wife say?"

"Tom is with me. As for his wife, I know nothing of her, and she knows
nothing of us. She has been in England a good many times, but she never
said she would like to come and see us, and my mother never wanted to
see her; so there wasn't a compliment wasted, you see. Eh? What?"

"No, I don't see, William. All about it is in a muddle, and I must say I
never heard tell of such ways. It is like offering your own flesh and
blood for sale. And to people who want nothing to do with us. I'm
astonished at you, squire."

"Don't go on so, Alice. Tom and I never had any falling out. He just got
out of the way of writing. He likes India, and he had his own reasons
for not liking England in any shape you could offer England to him.
There's no back reckonings between Tom and me, and he'll be glad for
Julius to come to his own people. We will ask Julius to Sandal; and you
say, yourself, that the half of young folks' loving is in being handy to
each other. Eh? What?"

"I never thought you would bring my words up that way. But I'll tell you
one thing, my girls are not made of melted wax, William. You'll be a
wise man, and a strong man, if you get a ring on their fingers, if they
don't want it there. Sophia will say very soft and sweet, 'No, thank
you, father;' and you'll move Scawfell and Langdale Pikes before you get
her beyond it. As for Charlotte, you yourself will stand 'making' better
than she will. And you know that nothing short of an earthquake can lift
you an inch outside your own way."

And perhaps Sandal thought the hyperbole a compliment; for he smiled a
little, and walked away, with what his wife privately called "a
peacocky air," saying something about "Greek meeting Greek" as he did
so. Mrs. Sandal did not in the least understand him: she wondered a
little over the remark, and then dismissed it as "some of the squire's
foolishness."




CHAPTER III.

JULIUS SANDAL.

     "Variety's the very spice of life
      That gives it all its flavor."

     "Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
      Of Paradise that has survived the fall."


Life has a chronology quite independent of the almanac. The heart
divides it into periods. When the sheep-shearing had been forgotten by
all others, the squire often looked back to it with longing. It was a
boundary which he could never repass, and which shut him out forever
from the happy days of his daughters' girlhood,--the days when they had
no will but his will, and no pleasures but in his smile and
companionship. His son Harry had never been to him what Sophia and
Charlotte were. Harry had spent his boyhood in public schools, and, when
his education was completed, had defied all the Sandal traditions, and
gone into the army. At this time he was with his regiment,--the old
Cameronian,--in Edinburgh. And in other points, besides his choice of
the military profession, Harry had asserted his will against his
father's will. But the squire's daughters gave him nothing but delight.
He was proud of their beauty, proud of Charlotte's love of out-door
pleasures, proud of Sophia's love of books; and he was immeasurably
happy in their affection and obedience.

If Sandal had been really a wise man he would have been content with his
good fortune; and like the happy Corinthian have only prayed, "O
goddess, let the days of my prosperity continue!" But he had the
self-sufficiency and impatience of a man who is without peer in his own
small arena. He believed himself to be as capable of ordering his
daughters' lives as of directing his sheep "walks," or the change of
crops in his valley and upland meadows.

Suddenly it had been revealed to him, that Stephen Latrigg had found his
way into a life he thought wholly his own. Until that moment of
revelation he had liked Stephen; but he liked him no longer. He felt
that Stephen had stolen the privilege he should have asked for, and he
deeply resented the position the young man had taken. On the contrary,
Stephen had been guilty of no intentional wrong. He had simply grown
into an affection too sweet to be spoken of, too uncertain and immature
to be subjected to the prudential rules of daily life; yet, had the
question been plainly put to him, he would have gone at once to the
squire, and said, "I love Charlotte, and I ask for your sanction to my
love." He would have felt such an acknowledgment to be the father's most
sacred and evident right, and he was thinking of making it at the very
hour in which Sandal was feeling bitterly toward him for its omission.
And thus the old, old tragedy of mutual misunderstanding works to
sorrowful ends.

The night of the sheep-shearing the squire could not sleep. To lay awake
and peer into the future through the dark hours was a new experience,
and it made him full of restless anxieties. Of course he expected Sophia
and Charlotte to marry, but not just yet. He had so far persistently
postponed the consideration of this subject, and he was angry at Stephen
Latrigg for showing him that further delay might be dangerous to his own
plans.

"A presumptuous young coxcomb," he muttered. "Does he think that being
'top-shearer' gives him a right to make love to Charlotte Sandal?"

In the morning he wrote the following letter:--

     NEPHEW JULIUS SANDAL,--I hear you are at Oxford, and I
     should think you would wish to make the acquaintance of your
     nearest relatives. They will be glad to see you at Seat-Sandal
     during the vacation, if your liking leads you that way. To hear
     soon from you is the hope of your affectionate uncle,

     WILLIAM SANDAL, _of Sandal-Side_.

He finished the autograph with a broad flourish, and handed the paper to
his wife. "What do you think of that, Alice? Eh? What?"

There was a short silence, then Mrs. Sandal laid the note upon the
table. "I don't think over much of it, William. Good-fortune won't bear
hurrying. Can't you wait till events ripen naturally?"

"And have all my plans put out of the way?"

"Are you sure that your plans are the best plans?"

"They will be a bit better than any Charlotte and Stephen Latrigg have
made."

"I don't believe they have such a thing as a plan between them. But if
you think so, send Charlotte to her aunt Lockerby for a few months. Love
is just like fire: it goes out if it hasn't fuel."

"Nay, I want Charlotte here. After our Harry, Julius is the next heir,
and I'm set on him marrying one of the girls. If he doesn't like Sophia
he may like Charlotte. I have two chances then, and I'm not going to
throw one away for Steve Latrigg's liking or loving. Don't you see,
Alice? Eh? What?"

"No: I never was one to see beyond the horizon. But if you must have
to-morrow in to-day, why then send off your letter. I would let 'well'
alone. When change comes to the door, it is time enough to ask it over
the threshold. We are very happy now, William, and every happy day is so
much certain gain in life."

"That is a woman's way of talking. A man looks for the future."

"And how seldom does he get what he looks for. But I know you, William
Sandal. You will take your own way, be it good or bad; and what is more,
you will make others take it with you."

"I am inviting my own nephew, Alice. Eh? What?"

"You know nothing about it. There are kin that are not kindred. You are
inviting you know not who or what. But,"--and she pushed the letter
towards him, with a gesture which seemed to say, "I am not responsible
for the consequences."

The squire after a moment's thought accepted them. He went into the
yard, humming a strain of "The Bay of Biscay," and gave the letter to a
groom, with orders to take it at once to the post-office. Then he called
Charlotte from the rose-walk. "The horses are saddled," he said, "and I
want you to trot over to Dalton with me."

Mrs. Sandal had gone to her eldest daughter. She was in the habit of
seeking Sophia's advice; or, more strictly speaking, she liked to
discuss with her the things she had already determined to do. Sophia was
sitting in the coolest and prettiest of gowns, working out with
elaborate care a pencil drawing of Rydal Mount. She listened to her
mother with the utmost respect and attention, and her fine color
brightened slightly at the mention of Julius Sandal; but she never
neglected once to change an F or an H pencil for a B at the precise
stroke the change was necessary.

"And so you see, Sophia, we may have a strange young man in the house
for weeks, and where to put him I can't decide. And I wanted to begin
the preserving and the raspberry vinegar next week, but your father is
as thoughtless as ever was; and I am sure if Julius is like _his_ father
he'll be no blessing in a house, for I have heard your grandmother speak
in such a way of her son Tom."

"I thought uncle Tom was grandmother's favorite."

"I mean of his high temper and fine ways, and his quarrels with his
eldest brother Launcelot."

"Oh! What did they quarrel about?"

"A good many things; among the rest, about the Latriggs. There was more
than one pretty girl at Up-Hill then, and the young men all knew it. Tom
and his mother were always finger and thumb. He was her youngest boy,
and she fretted after him all her life."

"And uncle Launcelot, did she not fret for him?"

"Not so much. Launcelot was the eldest, and very set in his own way: she
couldn't order him around."

"The eldest? Then father would not have been squire of Sandal-Side if
Launcelot had lived?"

"No, indeed. Launcelot's death made a deal of difference to your father
and me. Father was very solemn and set about his brother's rights; and
even after grandfather died, he didn't like to be called 'squire' until
every hope was long gone. But I would as soon have thought of poor
Launcie coming back from the dead as of Tom's son visiting here; and it
is inconvenient right now, exceedingly so; harvesting coming on, and
preserving time, and none of the spare rooms opened since the spring
cleaning."

"It is trying for you, mother, but perhaps Julius may not be very much
trouble. He'll be with father all the time, and he'll make a change."

"Change! That is just what I dread. Young people are always for change.
They are certain that every change must be a gain. Old people know that
changes mean loss of some kind or other. After one is forty years old,
Sophia, the seasons bring change enough."

"I dare say they do, mother. I don't care much for change, even at my
age. Have you told Charlotte?"

"No, I haven't told her yet. I think she is off to Dalton. Father said
he was going this morning, and he never would go without her."

Indeed, the squire and his younger daughter were at that moment
cantering down the valley, mid the fresh green of the fields, and the
yellow of the ripening wheat, and the hazy purple of mountains holding
the whole landscape in their solemn shelter except in front, where the
road stretched to the sea, amid low hills overgrown with parsley-fern
and stag's-horn-moss. They had not gone very far before they met Stephen
Latrigg. He was well mounted and handsomely dressed; and, as he bowed to
the squire and Charlotte, his happy face expressed a delight which
Sandal in his present mood felt to be offensive. Evidently Steve
intended to accompany them as far as their roads were identical; but the
squire pointedly drew rein, and by the cool civility of his manner made
the young man so sensible of his intrusion, that he had no alternative
but to take the hint. He looked at Charlotte with eyes full of tender
reproach, and she was too unprepared for such a speedy termination to
their meeting to oppose it. So Stephen was galloping at headlong speed
in advance, before she realized that he had been virtually refused their
company.

"Father, why did you do that?"

"Do what, Charlotte? Eh? What?"

"Send Steve away. I am sure I do not know what to make of you doing such
a thing. Poor Steve!"

"Well, then, I had my reason for it. Did you see the way he looked at
you? Eh? What?"

"Dear me! A cat may look at a king. Did you send Steve away for a look?
You have put me about, father."

"There's looks and other looks, my lass. Cats don't look at kings the
way Steve looked at you. Now, then, I want no love-making between you
and Steve Latrigg."

"What nonsense! Steve hasn't said a word of love-making, as you call
it."

"I thought you had all your woman-senses, Charlotte. Bethink you of the
garden walk last night."

"We were talking all the time of the sweetbrier and hollyhocks,--and
things like that."

"You might have talked of the days of the week or the
multiplication-table: one kind of words was just as good as another. Any
thing Steve said last night could have been spelled with four letters."

"Four letters?"

"To be sure. L-o-v-e."

"You used to like Stephen."

"I like all bright, honest, good lads; but when they want to make love
to Miss Charlotte Sandal, they think one thing, and I think another.
There has been ill-luck with love-making between the Sandals and the
Latriggs. My brothers Launcie and Tom quarrelled about one of Barf
Latrigg's daughters, and mother lost them both through her. There is no
love-line between the two houses, or if there is nothing can make it run
straight. Don't you try to, Charlotte; neither the dead nor the living
will like it or have it."

He intended then to tell her about Julius Sandal, but a look at her face
checked him. He had a wise perception about women; and he reflected
that he had very seldom repented of speaking too little to them, but
very often repented of speaking too much. So he dropped Stephen, and
dropped Julius; and began to talk about the fish in the becks and tarns,
and the new breed of sheep he was trying in the lower "walks." Ere long
they came into the rich valley of Furness; and he made her notice the
difference between it and the vale of Esk and Duddon, with its dreary
waste of sullen moss and unfruitful solitudes.

"Those old Cistercian monks that built Furness Abbey knew how to choose
a bit of good land, Charlotte. Eh? What?"

"I suppose so. What did they do with it?"

"Let it out."

"I wonder who would want to come here seven hundred years ago."

"You don't know what you are saying, Charlotte. There were great men
here then, and great deeds doing. King Stephen kept things very lively;
and the Scots were always running over the Border for cattle and sheep,
and any thing else they could lay their hands on. And the monks had
great flocks, so they rented their lands to companies of four fighting
men; and one of the four was to be ready day and night to protect the
sheep, and the Scots kept them busy. Eh? What?"

"The Musgraves and Armstrongs and Netherbys, I know," and the cloud
passed from her face; and to the clatter of her horse's hoofs, she
lilted merrily a stanza of an old border song:--

    "The mountain sheep were sweeter,
       But the valley sheep were fatter;
     We therefore deemed it meeter
       To carry off the latter.
     We made an expedition;
       We met a force, and quelled it;
     We took a strong position,
       And killed the men who held it."

And the squire, who knew the effort it cost her, fell readily into her
mood of forced gayety until the simulated feeling became a real one; and
they entered Dalton neck and neck together, after a mile's hard race.

In the mean time the letter which was to summon Fate sped to its
destination. When it arrived in Oxford, Julius had left Oxford for
London, and it followed him there. He was sitting in his hotel the
ensuing night, when it was delivered into his hands; and as it happened,
he was in a mood most favorable to its success. He had been down the
river on a picnic, had found his company very tedious; and early in the
day the climate had shown him what it was capable of, even at
mid-summer. As he sat cowering before the smoky fire, the rain plashed
in the muddy streets, and dripped mournfully down the dim window-panes.
He was wondering what he must do with himself during the long vacation.
He was tired of the Continent, he was lonely in England; and the United
States had not then become the great playground for earth's weary or
curious children.

Many times the idea of seeking out his own relations occurred to him. He
had promised his father to do so. But, as a rule, people haven't much
enthusiasm about unknown relations; and Julius regarded his promise more
in the light of a duty to be performed than as the realization of a
pleasure. Still, on that dreary night, in the solitary dulness of his
very respectable inn, the Sandals, Lockerbys, and Piersons became three
possible sources of interest. While his thoughts were drifting in this
direction, the squire's letter was received; and the young man, who was
something of a fatalist, accepted it as the solution of a difficulty.

"Sandal turns the new leaf for me," he murmured; "the new leaf in the
book of life. I wonder what story will be written in it."

He answered the invitation while the enthusiasm of its reception swayed
him, and he promised to follow the letter immediately. The squire
received this information on Saturday night, as he was sitting with his
wife and daughters. "Your nephew Julius Sandal, from Calcutta, is coming
to pay us a visit, Alice," he said; and his air was that of a man who
thinks he is communicating a piece of startling intelligence. But the
three women had already exchanged every possible idea on the subject,
and felt no great interest in its further discussion.

"When is he coming?" asked Mrs. Sandal without enthusiasm; and Sophia
supplemented the question by remarking, "I suppose he has nowhere else
to go."

"I wouldn't say such things, Sophia; I would not."

"He has been in England some months, father."

"Well, then, he was only waiting till he was asked to come. I'm sure
that was a proper thing. If there is any blame between us, it is my
fault. I sent him a word of welcome last Wednesday morning, and it is
very likely he will be here to-morrow. I'm sure he hasn't let any grass
grow under his feet. Eh? What?"

Charlotte looked up quickly. "_Wednesday morning_." She was quite
capable of putting this and that together, and by a momentary mental
process she arrived at an exceedingly correct estimate of her father's
invitation. Her blue eyes scintillated beneath her dropped lids; and,
though she went calmly on tying the feather to the fishing-fly she was
making, she said, in a hurried and unsteady voice, "I know he will be
disagreeable, and I have made up my mind to dislike him."

Julius Sandal arrived the next morning when the ladies were preparing
for church. He had passed the night at Ambleside, and driven over to
Sandal in the first cool hours of the day. The squire was walking about
the garden, and he saw the carriage enter the park gates. He said
nothing to any one, but laid down his pipe, and went to meet it. Then
Julius made the first step towards his uncle's affection,--he left the
vehicle when they met, and insisted upon walking by his side.

When they reached the house, his valet was attending to the removal of
his luggage, and they entered the great hall together. At that moment
Mistress Charlotte's remarkable likeness seemed to force itself upon the
squire's attention. He was unable to resist the impulse which made him
lead his nephew up to it. "Let me introduce you, first of all, to your
father's mother. I greet you in her name as well as in my own." As he
spoke, the squire lifted his hat, and Julius did the same. It was a
sudden, and to both men a quite unexpected, ceremonial; and it gave an
air, touching and unusual, to his welcome.

And if that man is an ingrate who does not love his native land, how
much more _immediate_, tender, and personal must the feeling be for the
_home_ of one's own race. That stately lady, who seemed to meet him at
the threshold, was only the last of a long, shadowy line, whose hands
were stretched out to him, even from the dark, forgotten days in which
Lögberg Sandal laid the foundations of it. Julius was sensitive, and
full of imagination: he felt his heart beat quick, and his eyes grow dim
to the thought; and he loitered up the wide, low steps, feeling very
like a man going up the phantom stairway of a dream.

The squire's cheery voice broke the spell. "We shall be ready for church
in a quarter of an hour, Julius; will you remain at home, or go with
us?"

"I should like to go with you."

"That's good. It is but a walk through the park: the church is almost at
its gates."

When he returned to the hall, the family were waiting for him; Mrs.
Sandal and her daughters standing together in a little group, the squire
walking leisurely about with his hands crossed behind his back. It would
have been to some men a rather trying ordeal to descend the long flight
of stairs, with three pairs of ladies' eyes watching him; but Julius
knew that he had a striking personal appearance, and that every
appointment of his toilet was faultless. He knew also the value of the
respectable middle-aged valet following him, and felt that his
irreproachable manner of serving his hat and gloves was a satisfactory
reflection of his own importance.

It is the women of a family that give the tone and place to it. One
glance at his aunt and cousins satisfied Julius. Mrs. Sandal was stately
and comely, and had the quiet manners of a high-bred woman. Sophia, in
white mull, with a large hat covered with white drooping feathers, and a
glimmer of gold at her throat and wrists, was at least picturesque. Of
Charlotte, he saw nothing in the first moments of their meeting but a
pair of bright blue eyes, and a face as sweet and fresh as if it had
been made out of a rose. He took his place between the girls, and the
squire and his wife walked behind them. Sophia, being the eldest, took
the initiative, talking softly and thoughtfully, as it was proper to do
upon a Sunday morning.

The sods under their feet were thick and green; the oaks and sycamores
above them had the broad shadows of many centuries. The air was balmy
with emanations from the woods and fields, and full of the expanding
melody of church-bells travelling from hill to hill. Julius was
conscious of every thing; even of the proud, shy girl who walked on his
left hand, and whose attitude impressed him as slightly antagonistic.
They soon reached the church, a very ancient one, built in the bloody
days of the Plantagenets by the two knights whose grim effigies kept
guard within the porch. It was dim and still when they entered: the
congregation all kneeling at the solemn confession; the clergyman's
voice, low and pathetic, intensifying silence to which it only added
mortal minors of lament and entreaty. He was a small, spare man, with a
face almost as white as the vesture of his holy office. Julius glanced
up at him, and for a few minutes forgot all his dreamy philosophies,
aggressive free thought, and shallow infidelities. He could not resist
the influences around him; and when the people rose, and the organ
filled the silence with melody, and a young sweet voice chanted
joyfully,--

    _"O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice
       in the strength of our salvation.
    Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving:
       and shew ourselves glad in him with Psalms,"--_

he turned round, and looked up to the singer, with a heart beating to
every triumphant note. Then he saw it was Charlotte Sandal; and he did
not wonder at the hearty way in which the squire joined in the melodious
invocation, nor at his happy face, nor at his shining eyes; and he said
to himself with a sigh, "That is a Psalm one could sing oftener than
once in seven days."

He had not noticed Charlotte much as they went to church: he amended his
error as he returned to the "seat." And he thought that the old sylvan
goddesses must have been as she was; must have had just the same fresh
faces, and bright brown hair; just the same tall, erect forms and light
steps; just the same garments of mingled wood-colors and pale green.

The squire had a very complacent feeling. He looked upon Julius as a
nephew of his own discovering, and he felt something of a personal pride
in all that was excellent in the young man. He watched impatiently for
his wife to express her satisfaction, but Mrs. Sandal was not yet sure
that she had any good reason to express it.

"Is he not handsome, Alice?"

"Some people would think so, William. I like a face I can read."

"I'm sure it is a long way better to keep yourself to yourself. Say what
you will, I am sure he will have plenty of good qualities. Eh? What?"

"For instance, a great deal of money."

"Treat him fair, Alice; treat him fair. You never were one to be unfair,
and I don't think you'll begin with my nephew."

"No, I'll never be unfair, not as long as I live; and I'll take up for
Julius Sandal as soon as I am half sure he deserves it."

"You can't think what a pleasure it would be to me if he fancied one of
our girls. I've planned it this many a long day, Alice."

"Well, then, William, if you have a wish as strong as that, it is
something more than a wish, it is a kind of right; and I'll never go
against you in any fair matter."

"And though you spoke scornful of money, it is a good thing; and the
girl Julius marries will be a rich woman. Eh? What?"

"Perhaps; but it is the happiness and not the riches of her child that
is a good mother's reward, and a good father's too. Eh, William?"

"Certainly, Alice, certainly." But his unspoken reflection was, "women
are that short sighted, they cannot put up with a small evil to prevent
a big one."

He had forgotten that "the wise One" and the "Counsellor" thought one
day's joys and sorrows "sufficient" for the heart to bear.




CHAPTER IV.

THUS RUNS THE WORLD AWAY.

                "But we mortals
     Planted so lowly, with death to bless us,
     Sorrow no longer."

     "Our choices are our destiny. Nothing is ours that our choices have
     not made ours."


Julius Sandal had precisely those superficial excellences which the
world is ready to accept at their apparent value; and he had been in so
many schools, and imbibed such a variety of opinions, that he had a
mental suit for all occasions. "He knows about every thing," said Sandal
to the clergyman, at the close of an evening spent together,--an evening
in which Julius had been particularly interesting. "Don't you think so,
sir?"

The rector looked up at the starry sky, and around the mountain-girdled
valley, and answered slowly, "He has a great many ideas, squire; but
they are second-hand, and do not fit his intellect."

Charlotte had much the same opinion of the paragon, only she expressed
it in a different way. "He believes in every thing, and he might as well
believe in nothing. Confucius and Christ are about the same to him, and
he thinks Juggernaut only 'a clumsier spelling of a name which no man
spells correctly.'"

"His mind is like a fine mosaic, Charlotte."

"Oh, indeed, Sophia, I don't think so! Mosaics have a design and fit it.
The mind of Julius is more like that quilt of a thousand pieces which
grandmother patched. There they are, the whole thousand, just bits of
color, all sizes and shapes. I would rather have a good square of white
Marseilles."

"I don't think you ought to speak in such a way, Charlotte. You can't
help seeing how much he admires you."

There was a tone in Sophia's carefully modulated voice which made
Charlotte turn, and look at her sister. She was sitting at her
embroidery-frame, and apparently counting the stitches in the rose-leaf
she was copying; but Charlotte noticed that her hand trembled, and that
she was counting at random. In a moment the veil fell from her eyes: she
understood that Sophia was in love with Julius, and fearful of her own
influence over him. She had been about to leave the room: she returned
to the window, and stood at it a few moments, as if considering the
assertion.

"I should be very sorry if that were the case, Sophia."

"Why?"

"Because I do not admire Julius in any way. I never could admire him. I
don't want to be in debt to him for even one-half hour of sentimental
affection."

"You should let him understand that, Charlotte, if it be so."

"He must be very dull if he does not understand."

"When father and you went fishing yesterday, he went with you."

"Why did you not come also? We begged you to do so."

"Because I hate to be hot and untidy, and to get my hands soiled, and my
face flushed. That was your condition when you returned home; but all
the same, he said you looked like a water-nymph or a wood-nymph."

"I think very little of him for such talk. There is nothing 'nymphy'
about me. I should hate myself if there were. I am going to write, and
ask Harry to get a furlough for a few weeks. I want to talk sensibly to
some one. I am tired of being on the heights or in the depths all the
time; and as for poetry, I wish I might never hear words that rhyme
again. I've got to feel that way about it, that if I open a book, and
see the lines begin with capitals, my first impulse is to tear it to
pieces. There, now, you have my opinions, Sophia!"

Sophia laughed softly. "Where are you going? I see you have your bonnet
on."

"I am going to Up-Hill. Grandfather Latrigg had a fall yesterday, and
that's a bad thing at his age. Father is quite put out about it."

"Is he going with you?"

"He was, but two of the shepherds from Holler Scree have just come for
him. There is something wrong with the flocks."

"Julius?"

"He does not know I am going; and if he did, I should tell him plainly
he was not wanted either at Up-Hill, or on the way to it. Ducie thinks
little of him, and grandfather Latrigg makes his face like a stone wall
when Julius talks his finest."

"They don't understand Julius. How can they? Steve is their model, and
Steve is not the least like Julius."

"I should think not."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. Good-by."

She shut the door with more emphasis than she was aware of, and went to
her mother for some cordials and dainties to take with her. As she
passed through the hall the squire called her, and she followed his
voice into the small parlor which was emphatically "master's room."

"I have had very bad news about the Holler Scree flock, Charlotte, and I
must away there to see what can be done. Tell Barf Latrigg it is the
sheep, and he will understand: he was always one to put the dumb
creatures first. The kindest thing that is in your own heart say it to
the dear old man for me; will you, Charlotte?"

"You can trust to me, father."

"Yes, I know I can; for that and more too. And there is more. I feel a
bit about Stephen. Happen I was less than kind to him the other day.
But I gave you good reasons, Charlotte; and I have such confidence in
you, that I said to mother, 'You can send Charlotte. There is nothing
underhand about her. She knows my will, and she'll do it.' Eh? What?"

"Yes, father: I'll be square on all four sides with you. But I told you
there had been no love-making between me and Steve."

"Steve was doing his best at it. Depend upon it he meant love-making;
and I must say I thought you made out to understand him very well. Maybe
I was mistaken. Every woman is a new book, and a book by herself; and it
isn't likely I can understand them all."

"Stephen is sure to speak to me about your being so queer to him. Had I
not better tell the truth?"

"I have a high opinion of that way. Truth may be blamed, but it can't be
shamed. However, if he was not making love to you at the shearing, won't
you find it a bit difficult to speak your mind? Eh? What?"

"He will understand."

"Ay, I thought so."

"Father, we have never had any secrets, you and me. If I am not to
encourage Stephen Latrigg, do you want me to marry Julius Sandal?"

"Well, I never! Such a question! What for?"

"Because, at the very first, I want to tell you that I could not do
it--_no way_. I am quite ready to give up my will to your will, and my
pleasure to your pleasure. That is my duty; but to marry cousin Julius
is a different thing."

"Don't get too far forward, Charlotte. Julius has not said a word to me
about marrying you."

"But he is doing his best at it. Depend upon it he means marrying; and I
must say I thought you made out to understand him very well. Maybe I was
mistaken. Every man is a new book, and a book by himself; and it is not
likely I can understand them all."

"Now you are picking up my own words, and throwing them back at me. That
isn't right. I don't know whatever to say for myself. Eh? What?"

"Say, 'dear Charlotte,' and 'good-by Charlotte,' and take an easy mind
with you to Holler Scree, father. As far as I am concerned, I will
never grieve you, and never deceive you,--no, not in the least little
thing."

So she left him. Her face was bright with smiles, and her words had even
a ring of mirth in them; but below all there was a stubborn weight that
she could not throw off, a darkness of spirit that no sunshine could
brighten. Since Julius had come into their home, home had never been the
same. There was a stranger at the table and in all its sweet, familiar
places, and she was sure that to her he always would be a stranger.
Something was said or done that put them farther apart every day. She
could not understand how any Sandal could be so absolutely out of her
love and sympathy. Who has not experienced these invasions of hostile
natures? Alien voices, characters fundamentally different, yet bound to
them by natural ties which the soul refuses to recognize.

The somberness of her thoughts affected her surroundings very much as
rain affects the atmosphere. The hills looked melancholy: she was aware
of every stone on the road. Alas! this morning she had begun to grow
old, for she felt that she had _a past_,--a past that could never
return. Hitherto her life had been to-day and to-morrow, and to-morrow
always in the sunshine. Hitherto the thought of Stephen had been blended
with something that was to happen. Now she knew she must always be
remembering the days that for them would come no more. She found herself
reviewing even her former visits to Up-Hill. In them also change had
begun. And it is over the young, sorrow triumphs most cruelly. They are
so easily wounded, so inapt to resist, so harassed by scruples, so
astonished at troubles they cannot comprehend, that their very
sensitiveness prepares them for suffering. Very bitter tears are shed
before we are twenty years old. At forty we have learned to accept the
inevitable, and to feel many things possible which we once declared
would break our hearts in two.

There was an air of great depression also at Up-Hill. Ducie was full of
apprehension. She said to Charlotte, "When men as old as father fall,
they stumble at their own grave; and I can't think what I'll do without
father."

"You have Steve."

"Steve is going away. He would have left this morning, but for this
fresh trouble. I see you are startled, Charlotte."

"I am that. I heard nothing of it. He moves in a great hurry."

"He always moves that way, does Steve."

"How is grandfather?"

"He has had quite a backening since yesterday night. He has got 'the
call,' Charlotte. I've had more than one sign of it. Just before he fell
he went into the garden, and brought in with him a sprig of
'Death-come-quickly.' [The plant _Geranium Robertianum_.] 'Father,' I
asked, 'whatever made you pull that?' Then he looked so queerly, and
answered, 'I didn't pull it, Ducie: I found it on the wall.' He was quite
curious, and sent me to ask this one and the other one if they had been
in the garden. No one had been there; and, at the long end, he said,
'Make no more talk about it, Ducie. There's _them_ that go up and down
the fellside that no one sees. _They_ lift the latch, and wait not for
the open door, the king's command being urgent. I have had a message.' He
fell an hour afterwards, Charlotte. He did not think he was much hurt at
the time, but he got his death-throw. I know it."

"I should like to speak to him, Ducie. Tell him that Charlotte Sandal
wants his blessing."

He was lying on the big oak bed in the best room, waiting for his
dismissal in cheerful serenity. "Come here, Charlotte," he said; "stoop
down, and let me see you once more. My sight grows dim. I am going away,
dear."

"O grandfather! is there any thing I can do for you?"

"Be a good girl. Be good, and do good. Stand true to
Steve,--remember,--true to Steve." And he did not seem inclined to talk
more.

"He is saving his strength for the squire," said Ducie. "He has a deal
to say to him."

"Father hoped to be back this afternoon."

"Though it be the darkening when he gets home, ask him to come at once,
Charlotte. Father is waiting for him, and I don't think he will pass the
turn of the night."

There were many subtle links of sympathy between Up-Hill and Sandal.
Death could not be in one house without casting a shadow in the other.
Julius privately thought such a fellow-feeling a little stretched. The
Latriggs were on a distinctly lower social footing than the Sandals.
Rich they might be; but they were not written among the list of county
families, nor had they even married into their ranks. He could not
understand why Barf Latrigg's death should be allowed to interfere with
life at Seat-Sandal. Yet Mrs. Sandal was at Up-Hill all the afternoon;
and, though the squire did not get home until quite the darkening, he
went at once, without taking food or rest, to the dying man.

"Why, Barf is very near all the same as my own father," he said. And
then, in a lower voice, "and he may see my father before the strike of
day. I wouldn't miss Barfs last words for a year of life. I wouldn't
that."

It was a lovely night,--warm, and sweet with the scent of August lilies,
and the rich aromas of ripening fruit and grain. The great hills and the
peaceful valleys lay under the soft radiance of a full moon; and there
was not a sound but the gurgle of running water, or the bark of some
solitary sheep-dog, watching the folds on the high fells. Sophia and
Julius were walking in the garden, both feeling the sensitive
suggestiveness of the hour, talking softly together on topics people
seldom discuss in the sunshine,--intimations of lost powers, prior
existences, immortal life. Julius was learned in the Oriental view of
metempsychosis. Sophia could trace the veiled intuition through the
highest inspiration of Western thought.

"It whispers in the heart of every shepherd on these hills," she said;
"and they interpreted for Mr. Wordsworth the dream of his own soul."

"I know, Sophia. I lifted the book yesterday: your mark was in it." And
he recited in a low, intense voice,--

    "'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
       The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
     Hath had elsewhere its setting,
         And cometh from afar:
       Not in entire forgetfulness,
       And not in utter nakedness,
     But trailing clouds of glory do we come
         From God, who is our home:'"

"Oh, yes!" answered Sophia, lifting her dark eyes in a real enthusiasm.

    "Though inland far we be,
     Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
       Which brought us hither.'"

And they were both very happy in this luxury of mystical speculation.
Eternity was behind as before them. Soft impulses from moon and stars,
and from the witching beauty of lonely hills and scented garden-ways,
touched within their souls some primal sympathy that drew them close to
that unseen boundary dividing spirits from shadow-casting men. It is
true they rather felt than understood; but when the soul has faith, what
matters comprehension?

In the cold sweetness of the following dawn, the squire returned from
Up-Hill. "Barf is gone, Alice," were his first words.

"But all is well, William."

"No doubt of it. I met the rector on the hillside. 'How is Barf?' I
asked; and he answered, 'Thank God, he has the mastery!' Then he went on
without another word. Barf had lost his sight when I got there; but he
knew my voice, and he asked me to lay my face against his face. 'I've
done well to Sandal,--well to Sandal,' he muttered at intervals.
'You'll know it some day, William.' I can't think what he meant. I hope
he hasn't left me any money. I could not take it, Alice."

"Was that all?"

"When Steve came in he said something like 'Charlotte,' and he looked
hard at me; and then again, 'I've done well by Sandal.' But I was too
late. Ducie said he had been very restless about me earlier in the
afternoon: he was nearly outside life when I got there. We thought he
would speak no more; but about three o'clock this morning he called
quite clearly, '_Ducie, the abbot's cross_.' Then Ducie unlocked the oak
chest that stands by the bed-side, and took from it an ivory crucifix.
She put it in his left hand. With a smile he touched the Christ upon it;
and so, clasping the abbot's cross, he died."

"I wonder at that, William. A better Church-of-England man was not in
all the dales than Barf Latrigg."

"Ay; but you see, Alice, that cross is older than the Church of England.
It was given to the first Latrigg of Up-Hill by the first abbot of
Furness. Before the days of Wyckliffe and Latimer, every one of them,
babe and hoary-head, died with it in their hands. There are things that
go deeper down than creeds, Alice; and the cross with the Saviour on it
is one of them. I would like to feel it myself, even when I was past
seeing it. I would like to take the step between here and there with it
in my hands."

In the cool of the afternoon, Julius and the girls went to Up-Hill. He
had a solemn curiousness about death; and both personally and
theoretically the transition filled him with vague, momentous ideas,
relating to all sides of his conscious being. In every land where he had
sojourned, the superstitions and ceremonials that attended it were
subjects of interest to him. So he was much touched when he entered the
deep, cool porch, and saw the little table at the threshold, covered
with a white linen cloth, and holding a plate of evergreens and a
handful of salt. And when Sophia and Charlotte each scattered a little
salt upon the ground, and broke off a small spray of boxwood, he knew
instinctively that they were silently expressing their faith in the
preservation of the body, and in the life everlasting; and he imitated
them in the simple rite.

Ducie met them with a grave and tender pleasure. "Come, and see the
empty soul-case," she said softly; "there is nothing to fear you." And
she led them into the chamber where it lay. The great bed was white as a
drift of snow. On the dark oak walls, there were branches of laurel and
snowberry. The floor was fragrant under the feet, with bits of rosemary,
and bruised ears of lavender, and leaves of thyme. The casements were
wide open to admit the fresh mountain breeze; and at one of them Steve
rested in the carved chair that had been his grandfather's, and was now
his own.

The young men did not know each other; but this was neither the time nor
the place for social civilities, and they only slightly bowed as their
eyes met. Indeed, it seemed wrong to trouble the peaceful silence with
mere words of courtesy; but Charlotte gave her hand to Stephen, and with
it that candid, loving gaze, which has, from the eyes of the beloved,
the miraculous power of turning the water of life into wine. And
Charlotte perceived this, and she went home happy in the happiness she
had given.

Four days later, Barf Latrigg was buried. In the glory of the August
afternoon, the ladies of Seat-Sandal stood with Julius in the shadow of
the park gates, and watched the long procession winding slowly down the
fells. At first it was accompanied by fitful, varying gusts of solemn
melody; but as it drew nearer, the affecting tones of the funeral hymn
became more and more distinct and sustained. There were at least three
hundred voices thrilling the still, warm air with its pathetic music;
and, as they approached the church gates, it blended itself with the
heavy tread of those who carried and of those who followed the dead,
like a wonderful, triumphant march.

After the funeral was over, the squire went back to Up-Hill to eat the
arvel-meal, [Death-feast.] and to hear the will of his old friend read.
It was nearly dark when he returned, and he was very glad to find his
wife alone. "I have had a few hard hours, Alice," he said wearily; "and
I am more bothered about Barfs will than I can tell why."

"I suppose Steve got all."

"Pretty nearly. Barf's married daughters had their portions long ago,
but he left each of them three hundred pounds as a good-will token.
Ducie got a thousand pounds and her right in Up-Hill as long as she
lived. All else was for Steve except--and this bothers me--a box of
papers left in Ducie's charge. They are to be given to me at her
discretion; and, if not given during her lifetime or my lifetime, the
charge remains then between those that come after us. I don't like it,
and I can't think what it means. Eh? What?"

"He left you nothing?"

"He left me his staff. He knew better than to leave me money. But I am
bothered about that box of papers. What can they refer to? Eh? What?"

"I can make a guess, William. When your brother Tom left home, and went
to India, he took money enough with him; but I'm afraid he got it
queerly. At any rate, your father had some big sums to raise. You were
at college at the time; and though there was some underhand talk, maybe
you never heard it, for no one round Sandal-Side would pass on a word
likely to trouble the old squire, or offend Mistress Charlotte. Now,
perhaps it was at that time Barf Latrigg 'did well to Sandal.'"

"I think you may be right, Alice. I remember that father was a bit mean
with me the last year I was at Oxford. He would have reasons he did not
tell me of. One should never judge a father. He is often forced to cut
the loaf unevenly for the good of every one."

But this new idea troubled Sandal. He was a man of super-sensitive honor
with regard to money matters. If there were really any obligation of
that kind between the two houses, he hardly felt grateful to Latrigg for
being silent about it. And still more the transfer of these papers vexed
him. Ducie might know what he might never know. Steve might have it in
his power to trouble Harry when he was at rest with his fore-elders. The
subject haunted and worried him; and as worries are never complete
worries till they have an individuality, Steve very soon became the
personal embodiment of mortifying uncertainty, and wounded _amour
propre_. For if Mrs. Sandal's suspicion were true, or even if it were
not true, she was not likely to be the only one in Sandal-Side who would
construe Latrigg's singular disposition of his papers in the same way.
Certainly Squire William did not feel as if the dead man had 'done well
to Sandal.'

Stephen was equally annoyed. His grandfather had belonged to a dead
century, and retained until the last his almost feudal idea of the bond
between his family and the Sandals. But the present squire had stepped
outside the shadows of the past, and Stephen was fully abreast of his
own times. He understood very well, that, whatever these papers related
to, they would be a constant thorn in Sandal's side; and he saw them
lying between Charlotte and himself, a barrier unknown, and
insurmountable because unknown.

From Ducie he could obtain neither information nor assistance. "Mother,"
he asked, "do you know what those papers are about?"

"Ratherly."

"When can you tell me?"

"There must be a deal of sorrow before I can tell you."

"Do you want to tell me?"

"If I should dare to want it one minute, I should ask God's pardon the
next. When I unlock that box, Steve, there is like to be trouble in
Sandal. I think your grandfather would rather the key rusted away."

"Does the squire know any thing about them?"

"Not he."

"If he asks, will you tell him?"

"Not yet. I--hope never."

"I wish they were in the fire."

"Perhaps some day you may put them there. You will have the right when I
am gone."

Then Steve silently kissed her, and went into the garden; and Ducie
watched him through the window, and whispered to herself, "It is a bit
hard, but it might be harder; and right always gets the over-hand at the
long end."

The first interview between the squire and Stephen after Barf Latrigg's
funeral was not a pleasanter one than this misunderstanding promised.
Sandal was walking on Sandal Scree-top one morning, and met Steve.
"Good-morning, Mr. Latrigg," he said; "you are a statesman now, and we
must give you your due respect." He did not say it unkindly; but Steve
somehow felt the difference between Mr. Latrigg and Squire Sandal as he
had never felt it when the greeting had only been, "Good-morning,
Steve. How do all at home do?"

Still, he was anxious to keep Sandal's good-will, and he hastened to ask
his opinion upon several matters relating to the estate which had just
come into his hands. Ordinarily this concession would have been a piece
of subtle flattery quite irresistible to the elder man, but just at that
time it was the most imprudent thing Steve could have done.

"I had an offer this morning from Squire Methley. He wants to rent the
Skelwith 'walk' from me. What do you think of him, sir?"

"As how?"

"As a tenant. I suppose he has money. There are about a thousand sheep
on it."

"He lives on the other side of the range, and I know him not; but our
sheep have mingled on the mountain for thirty years. I count not after
him, and he counts not after me;" and Sandal spoke coldly, like a man
defending his own order. "Are you going to rent your 'walks' so soon?
Eh? What?"

"As soon as I can advantageously."

"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 lassies 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 circumstances 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
glass of cream. "God love thy bonny face," he said, with a beaming
smile, as he handed her back the empty glass. 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 lusty was I when I kenned thee:
     I was young and lusty, I was fair and clear,
     Young and lusty 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.

"God give you love and luck, young sir. I am eighty-three now, and sair
failed; but I was once twenty-three, and young and lusty as you be. But
life is at the fag end with me now. God 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 shaggy slopes
were gone. But Silver Beck still ran musically over tracts of tinkling
stones; and, through the chilly air, the lustered black cock 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 lustres on the carved
oak presses and long settles, and on the bright brass 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 analyze its
atmosphere, had in it the perceptible loneliness of the absent master.
"Is not Stephen at home?" she asked, as Ducie settled herself
comfortably for their meal; "I thought Stephen was at home."

"No, he isn't. He went to Kendal three days ago about his fleeces.
Whitney's carpet-works have made him a very good offer. Did not the
squire speak of it?"

"No."

"Well he knew all about it. He met Steve, and Steve told him. The squire
has been a little queer with us lately, Charlotte. Do you know what the
trouble is? I thought I would have you up to tea, and ask you; so when
Sandal was up here this morning, I said, 'Let Charlotte come, and have a
cup of tea with me, squire, I'd be glad.' And he said, 'When?' And I
said, 'This afternoon. I am fair lonely without Steve.' And he said,
'I'm agreeable. She'll be glad enough to come.' And I said, 'Thank'ee,
squire, I'll be glad enough to see her.' But what _is_ the matter,
Charlotte? The squire has been in his airs with Steve ever so long."

Then Charlotte's face grew like a flame; and she answered, in a tone of
tender sadness, "Father thinks Steve loves me; and he says there is no
love-line between our houses, and that, if there were, it is crossed
with sorrow, and that neither the living nor the dead will have marriage
between Steve and me."

"I thought that was the trouble. I did so. As for the living, he speaks
for himself; as for the dead, it is your grandmother Sandal he thinks
of. She was a hard, proud woman, Charlotte. Her two daughters rejoiced
at their wedding-days, and two out of her three sons she drove away from
their home. Your father was on the point of going, when his brother
Launcie's death made him the heir. Then she gave him a bit more respect,
and for pretty Alice Morecombe's sake he stayed by the old squire. Ten
years your mother waited for William Sandal, Charlotte."

"Yes, I know."

"Do you love Steve, Charlotte? I am Steve's mother, dear, and you may
speak to me as if you were talking to your own heart. I would never tell
Steve either this way or that way for any thing. Steve would not thank
me if I did. He is one of them that wants to reach his happiness in his
own way, and by his own hand. And I have good reasons for asking you
such a question, or I would not ask it; you may be sure I have, that you
may."

Charlotte had put down her cup, and she sat with her hands clasped upon
her lap, looking down into it. Ducie's question took her by surprise,
and she was rather offended by it. For Charlotte Sandal had been taught
all the reticences of good society, and for a moment she resented a
catechism so direct and personal; but only for a moment. Before Ducie
had done speaking, she had remembered that nothing but true kindness
could have prompted the inquiry. Ducie was not a curious, tattling,
meddlesome woman; Charlotte had never known her to interfere in any
one's affairs. She had few visitors, and she made no calls. Year in and
year out, Ducie could always be found at home with herself.

"You need not tell me, dear, if you do not know; or if you do not want
to tell me."

"I do know, Ducie; and I do not mind telling you in the least. I love
Stephen very dearly. I have loved him ever since--I don't know when."

"And you have always had as good and as true as you have given. Steve is
fondly heart-grown to you, Charlotte. But we will say no more; and what
we have said is dropped into my heart like a stone dropped into deep
water."

Then they spoke of the rector, how he was failing a little; and of one
of the maids at Seat-Sandal who was to marry the head shepherd at
Up-Hill; and at last, when there had been enough of indifferent talk to
effectually put Steve out of mind, Ducie asked suddenly, "How is Harry,
and is he doing well?"

This was a subject Charlotte was glad to discuss with Ducie. Harry was a
great favorite with her, and had been accustomed to run to Up-Hill
whenever he was in any boyish scrape. And Harry was _not_ doing well.
"Father is vexed and troubled about him, Ducie," she answered. "Whenever
a letter comes from Harry, it puts every thing wrong in the house.
Mother goes away and cries; and Sophia sulks because, she says, 'it is a
shame any single one of the family should be allowed to make all the
rest uncomfortable.'"

"Harry should never have gone into the army. He hasn't any resisting
power, hasn't Harry. And there is nothing but temptation in the army.
Dear me, Charlotte! We may well pray not to be led into the way of
temptation; for if we once get into it, we are no better off than a fly
in a spider's web."

She was filling the two empty cups as she spoke, but she suddenly set
down the teapot, and listened a moment. "I hear Steve's footsteps. Sit
still, Charlotte. He is opening the door. I knew it was he."

"Mother! mother!"

"Here I am, Steve."

He came in rosy and wet with his climb up the fellside; and, as he
kissed his mother, he put out his hand to Charlotte. Then there was the
pleasantest stir of care and welcome imaginable; and Steve soon found
himself sitting opposite the girl he loved so dearly, taking his cup
from her hands, looking into her bright, kind eyes, exchanging with her
those charming little courtesies which can be made the vehicles of so
much that is not spoken, and that is understood without speech.

But the afternoons were now very short, and the happy meal had to be
hastened. The clouds, too, had fallen low; and the rain, as Ducie said,
"was plashing and pattering badly." She folded her own blanket-shawl
around Charlotte; and as there was no wind, and the road was mostly wide
enough for two, Steve could carry an umbrella, and get her safely home
before the darkening.

How merrily they went out together into the storm! Steve thought he
could hardly have chosen any circumstances that would have pleased him
better. It was quite necessary that Charlotte should keep close to his
side; it was quite natural that she should lift her face to his in
talking; it was equally natural that Steve should bend towards
Charlotte, and that, in a moment, without any conscious intention of
doing so, he should kiss her.

She trembled and stood still, but she was not angry. "That was very
wrong, Steve. I told you at the harvest-home what father said, and what
I had promised father. I'll break no squares with father, and you must
not make me do so."

"I could not help it, Charlotte, you looked so bewitching."

"Oh, dear! the old, old excuse, 'The woman tempted me,' etc."

"Forgive me, dear Charlotte. I was going to tell you that I had been
very fortunate in Kendal, and next week I am going to Bradford to learn
all about spinning and weaving and machinery. But what is success
without you? If I make every dream come to pass, and have not Charlotte,
my heart will keep telling me, night and day, '_All for nothing, all for
nothing_.'"

"Do not be so impatient. You are making trouble, and forespeaking
disappointment. Before you have learned all about manufacturing, and
built your mill, before you are really ready to begin your life's work,
many a change may have taken place in Sandal-Side. When Julius comes at
Christmas I think he will ask Sophia to marry him, and I think Sophia
will accept his offer. That marriage would open the way for our
marriage."

"Only partly I fear. I can see that squire Sandal has taken a dislike,
and your mother was a little high with me when I saw her last."

"Partly your own fault, sir. Why did you give up the ways of your
fathers? The idea of mills and trading in these dales is such a new
one."

"But a man must move with his own age, Charlotte. There is no prospect
of another Stuart rebellion. I cannot do the queen's service, and get
rewarded as old Christopher Sandal did. And I want to go to Parliament,
and can't go without money. And I can't make money quick enough by
keeping sheep and planting wheat. But manufacturing means money, land,
influence, power."

"Father does not see these things as you do, Steve. He sees the peaceful
dales invaded by white-faced factory-hands, loud-voiced, quarrelling,
disrespectful. All the old landmarks and traditions will disappear; also
simple ways of living, calm religion, true friendships. Every good old
sentiment will be gauged by money, will finally vanish before money, and
what the busy world calls 'improvements.' It makes him fretful, jealous,
and unhappy."

"That is just the trouble, Charlotte. When a man has not the spirit of
his age, he has all its unhappiness. But my greatest fear is, that you
will grow weary of waiting for _our hour_."

"I have told you that I shall not. There is an old proverb which says,
'Trust not the man who promises with an oath.' Is not my simple word,
then, the best and the surest hope?"

Then she nestled close to his side, and began to talk of his plans and
his journey, and to anticipate the time when he would break ground upon
Silver Beck, and build the many-windowed factory that had been his dream
ever since he had began to plan his own career. The wind rose, the rain
fell in a down-pour before they reached the park-gates; but there was a
certain joy in facing the wet breeze, and although they did not loiter,
yet neither did they hurry. In both their hearts there was a little fear
of the squire, but neither spoke of it. Charlotte would not suppose or
suggest any necessity for avoiding him, and Steve was equally sensitive
on the subject.

When they arrived at Seat-Sandal the main entrance was closed, and
Stephen stood with her on the threshold until a man-servant opened
slowly its ponderous panels. There was a bright fire burning in the
hall, and lights were in the sconces on the walls. Charlotte asked Steve
to come in and rest a while. She tried to avoid showing either fear or
hurry, and Steve was conscious of the same effort on his own part; but
yet he knew that they both thought it well none of the family were aware
of her return, or of his presence. She watched him descend the dripping
steps into the darkness, and then went towards the fire. An unusual
silence was in the house. She stood upon the hearthstone while the
servant rebolted the door, and then asked,--

"Is dinner served, Noel?"

"It be over, Miss Charlotte."

So she went to her own room. It was chilly and dreary. The fire had been
allowed to die down, and had only just been replenished. It was smoking
also, and the candles on her toilet-table burned dimly in the damp
atmosphere. She hurriedly changed her gown, and was going down-stairs,
when a movement in Sophia's room arrested her attention. It was very
unusual for Sophia to be up-stairs at that hour, and the fact struck her
significantly. She knocked at the door, and was told rather irritably to
"Come in."

"Dear me, Sophia! what is the matter? It feels as if there were
something wrong in the house."

"I suppose there is something wrong. Father got a letter from Harry by
the late post, and he left his dinner untouched; and mother is in her
room crying, of course. I do think it is a shame that Harry is allowed
to turn the house upside down whenever he feels like it."

"Perhaps he is in trouble."

"He is always in trouble, for he is always busy making trouble. His very
amusements mean trouble for all who have the misfortune to have any
thing to do with him. Julius told me that no man in the 'Cameronians'
had a worse name than Harry Sandal."

"Julius! The idea of Julius talking badly about our Harry, and to you! I
wonder you listened to him. It was a shabby thing to do; it was that."

"Julius only repeated what he had heard, and he was very sorry to do so.
He felt it to be conscientiously his duty."

"Bah! God save me from such a conscience! If Julius had heard any thing
good of Harry, he would have had no conscientious scruples about
silence; not he! I dare say Julius would be glad if poor Harry was out
of his way."

"Charlotte Sandal, you shall not say such very unladylike, such
unchristianlike, things in my room. It is quite easy to see _whose_
company you have been in."

"I have been with Ducie. Can you find me a sweeter or better soul?"

"Or a handsomer young man than her son?"

"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 assumed 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 attitude 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 God it never will be. Harry is one kind of a
sinner, Julius is another kind of a sinner. God 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 nobody knows who."

     He gave father a lile, cheerful bit of a laugh, and said he didn't
     want to hinder work; but he would give anybody that knew the fells
     well a matter of five shillings to go with him, and carry his two
     little bags. And father says to our Joe, "Away with thee! It's a
     crown more than ever thou was worth at home." So the strange man
     gave Joe two little leather bags to carry; and Joe thought he was
     going to make his five shillings middling easy, for he never
     expected he would find any thing on the fells to put into the bags.
     But Joe was mistaken. The old gentleman, he said, went louping over
     wet spots and great stones, and scraffling over crags and screes,
     till you would have thought he was some kin to a Herdwick sheep.

Charlotte laughed heartily at this point. "It is just the way Sedgwick
goes on. He led father and me exactly such a chase one day last June."

"I dare say he did. I remember you looked like it. Go on."

     After a while he began looking hard at all the stones and crags he
     came to; and then he took to breaking lumps off them with a queer
     little hammer he had with him, and stuffing the bits into the bags
     that Joe was carrying. He fairly capped Joe then. He couldn't tell
     what to make of such a customer. At last Joe asked him why ever he
     came so far up the fell for little bits of stone, when he might get
     so many down in the dales? He laughed, and went on knapping away
     with his little hammer, and said he was a jolly-jist.

"Geologist she means, Charlotte."

"Of course; but Agnes spells it 'jolly-jist.'"

"Agnes ought to know better. She waited table frequently, and must have
heard the word pronounced. Go on, Charlotte."

     He kept on at this feckless work till late in the afternoon, and by
     that time he had filled both bags full with odd bits of stone. Joe
     said he hadn't often had a harder darrack after sheep at
     clipping-time than he had after that old man, carrying his leather
     bags. But, however, they got back to our house, and mother gave the
     stranger some bread and milk; and after he had taken it, and talked
     with father about sheep-farming and such like, he paid Joe his five
     shillings like a man, and told him he would give him another five
     shillings if he would bring his bags full of stones down to
     Skeàl-Hill by nine o'clock in the morning.

"Are you sleepy Sophy?"

"Oh, dear, no! Go on."

     Next morning Joe took the bags, and started for Skeàl-Hill. It was
     another hot morning; and he hadn't gone far till he began to think
     that he was as great a fool as the jolly-jist to carry broken
     stones to Skeàl-Hill, when he could find plenty on any road-side
     close to the place he was going to. So he shook them out of the
     bags, and stepped on a gay bit lighter without them. When he got
     near to Skeàl-Hill he found old Abraham Atchisson sitting on a
     stool, breaking stones to mend roads with; and Joe asked him if he
     could fill his leather bags from his heap. Abraham told Joe to take
     them that wasn't broken if he wanted stones; so Joe told him how it
     was, and all about it. The old man was like to tottle off his stool
     with laughing, and he said, "Joe take good care of thysen'; thou
     art over sharp to live very long in this world; fill thy bags, and
     make on with thee."

"Don't you remember old Abraham, Sophy? He built the stone dyke at the
lower fold."

"No, I do not remember, I think."

"You are getting sleepy. Shall I stop?"

"No, no; finish the letter."

     When Joe got to Skeàl-Hill, the jolly-jist had just got his
     breakfast, and they took Joe into the parlor to him. He laughed all
     over when Joe went in with the bags, and told him to set them down
     in a corner, and asked him if he would have some breakfast. Joe had
     had his porridge, but he said he didn't mind; so he told them to
     bring in some more coffee and eggs, and ham and toasted bread; and
     Joe got such a breakfast as isn't common with him, while the old
     gentleman was getting himself ready to go off in a carriage that
     was waiting at the door for him. When he came down-stairs he gave
     Joe another five shillings, and paid for Joe's breakfast, and for
     what he had eaten himself. Then he told him to put the leather bags
     beside the driver's feet, and into the carriage he got, and
     laughed, and nodded, and away he went; and then Joe heard them say
     he was Professor Sedgwick, a great jolly-jist. And Joe thinks it
     would be a famous job if father could sell all of the stones on our
     fell at five shillings a bagful, and a breakfast at odd times. And
     would it not be so, Miss Sandal? But I'm not easy in my mind about
     Joe changing the stones; though, as Joe says, one make of stone is
     about the same as another.

"Sophia, you are sleepy now."

"Yes, a little. You can finish to-morrow."

Then she laid down the simple letter, and sat very still for a little
while. Her heart was busy. There is a solitary place that girdles our
life into which it is good to enter at the close of every day. There we
may sit still with our own soul, and commune with it; and out of its
peace pass easily into the shadowy kingdom of sleep, and find a little
space of rest prepared. So Charlotte sat in quiet meditation until
Sophia was fathoms deep below the tide of life. Sight, speech, feeling,
where were they gone? Ah! when the door is closed, and the windows
darkened, who can tell what passes in the solemn temple of mortality?
Are we unvisited then? Unfriended? Uncounselled?

                                               "Behold!
     The solemn spaces of the night are thronged
     By bands of tender dreams, that come and go
     Over the land and sea; they glide at will
     Through all the dim, strange realms of men asleep,
     And visit every soul."




CHAPTER VI.

THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

     "Still to ourselves in every place consigned.
      Our own felicity we make or find."

     "Catch, then, oh, catch the transient hour!
        Improve each moment as it flies.
      Life's a short summer, man a flower;
        He dies, alas! how soon he dies!"


There are days which rise sadly, go on without sunshine, and pass into
night without one gleam of color. Life, also, has these pallid,
monotonous hours. A distrust of all things invades the soul, and
physical inertia and mental languor make daily existence a simple
weight. It was Christmas-time, but the squire felt none of the elation
of the season. He was conscious that the old festal preparations were
going on, but there was no response to them in his heart. Julius had
arrived, and was helping Sophia to hang the holly and mistletoe. But
Sandal knew that his soul shrank from the nephew he had called into his
life; knew that the sound of his voice irritated him, that his laugh
filled him with resentment, that his very presence in the house seemed
to desecrate it, and to slay for him the very idea of home.

He was sitting in the "master's room," wondering how the change had come
about. But he found nothing to answer the wonder, because he was looking
for some palpable wrong, some distinctive time or cause. He was himself
too simple-hearted to reflect that it is seldom a great fault which
destroys liking for a person. A great fault can be forgiven. It is small
personal offences constantly repeated; little acts of meanness, and,
above all, the petty plans and provisions of a selfish nature. Besides
which, the soul has often marvellous intuitions, unmasking men and
things; premonitions, warnings, intelligences, that it cannot doubt and
cannot explain.

Inside the house there was a pleasant air and stir of preparation; the
rapid movements of servants, the shutting and opening of doors, the low
laughter of gay hearts well contented with the time and the
circumstances. Outside, the mesmerizing snow was falling with a soft,
silent persistence. The squire looked sadly at the white hills, and the
white park, and the branches bending under their load, and the sombre
sky, gray upon darker gray.

Last Christmas the girls had relied entirely upon his help. He had found
the twine, and driven the nails, and steadied the ladder when Sophia's
light form mounted it in order to hang the mistletoe. They had been so
happy. The echo of their voices, their snatches of Christmas carols,
their laughter and merry badinage, was still in his heart. He remembered
the impromptu lunch, which they had enjoyed so much while at work. He
could see the mother come smiling in, with constant samples of the
Christmas cheer fresh out of the oven. He had printed the verses and
mottoes himself, spent all the afternoon over them, and been rather
proud of his efforts. Charlotte had said, "they were really beautiful;"
even Sophia had admitted that "they looked well among the greens." But
to-day he had not been asked to assist in the decorations. True, he had
said, in effect, that he did not wish to assist; but, all the same, he
felt shut out from his old pre-eminence; and he could not help
regarding Julius Sandal as a usurper.

These were drearisome Christmas thoughts and feelings; and they found
their climax in a pathetic complaint, "I never thought Charlotte would
have given me the go-by. All along she has taken my side, no matter what
came up. Oh, my little lass!"

As if in answer to the heart-cry, Charlotte opened the door. She was
dressed in furs and tweeds, and she had the squire's big coat and
woollen wraps in her hand. Before he could speak, she had reached his
chair, and put her arm across his shoulder, and said in her bright,
confidential way, "Come, father, let you and me have a bit of pleasure
by ourselves: there isn't much comfort in the house to-day."

"You say right, Charlotte; you do so, my dear. Where shall we go? Eh?
Where?"

"Wherever you like best. There is no snow to hamper us yet. Some of the
servants are down from Up-Hill. Ducie has sent mother a great spice-loaf
and a fine Christmas cheese."

"Ducie is a kind woman. I have known Ducie ever since I knew myself.
Could we climb the fell-breast, Charlotte? Eh? What?"

"I think we could. Ducie will miss it, if you don't go and wish her 'a
merry Christmas.' You never missed grandfather Latrigg. Old friends are
best, father."

"They are that. Is Steve at home?"

"He isn't coming home this Christmas. I wasn't planning about Steve,
father. Don't think such a thing as that of me."

"I don't, Charlotte. I don't think of Charlotte Sandal and of any thing
underhand at the same time. I'm a bit troubled and out of sorts this
morning, my dear."

She kissed him affectionately for answer. She not only divined what a
trial Julius had become, but she knew also that his heart was troubled
in far greater depths than Julius had any power to stir. Harry Sandal
was really at the root of every bitter moment. For Harry had not taken
the five hundred pounds with the creditable contrite humiliation of the
repenting prodigal. It was even yet doubtful whether he would respond to
his parents' urgent request to spend Christmas at Seat-Sandal. And when
there is one rankling wrong, which we do not like to speak of, it is so
natural to relieve the heart by talking a great deal about those wrongs
which we are less inclined to disguise and deny.

In the great hall a sudden thought struck the squire; and he stood
still, and looked in Charlotte's face. "You are sure that you want to
go, my dear? Won't you be missed? Eh? What?"

She clasped his hand tighter, and shook her head very positively. "They
don't want me, father. I am in the way."

He did not answer until they had walked some distance; then he asked
meaningly, "Has it come to that? Eh? What?"

"Yes, it has come to that."

"I am very glad it isn't you. And I'm nettled at myself for ever showing
him a road to slight you, Charlotte."

"If there is any slight between Julius and me, father, I gave it; for he
asked me to marry him, and I plainly told him no."

"Hear--you--but. I _am_ glad. You refused him? Come, come, that's a bit
of pleasure I would have given a matter of five pounds to have known a
day or two since. It would have saved me a few good ratings. Eh? What?"

"Why, father! Who has been rating you?"

"Myself, to be sure. You can't think what set-downs I have given William
Sandal. Do you mind telling me about that refusal, Charlotte? Eh? What?"

"Not a bit. It was in the harvest-field. He said he loved me, and I told
him gentlemen did not talk that way to girls who had never given them
the least encouragement; and I said I did not love him, and never, never
could love him. I was very firm, father, perhaps a little bit cross; for
I did not like the way he spoke. I don't think he admires me at all now."

"I dare be bound he doesn't. 'Firm and a little bit cross.' It wouldn't
be a nice five minutes for Julius. He sets a deal of store by himself;"
and then, as if he thought it was his duty not to show too much
gratification, he added, "I hope you were very civil, Charlotte. A good
asker should have a good nay-say. And you refused him? Well, I _am_
pleased. Mother never heard tell of it? Eh? What?"

"Oh, no; I have told no one but you. At the long end you always get at
my secrets, father."

"We've had a goodish few together,--fishing secrets, and such like; but
I must tell mother this one, eh? She _will_ go on about it. In the
harvest-field, was it? I understand now why he walked himself off a day
or two before the set day. And he is all for Sophia now, is he? Well, I
shouldn't wonder if Sophia will 'best' him a little on every side. You
_have_ given me a turn, Charlotte. I didn't think of a son-in-law
yet,--not just yet. Dear me! How life does go on! Ever since the
sheep-shearing it has been running away with me. Life is a road on which
there is no turning round, Charlotte. Oh, if there only were! If you
could just run back to where you made the wrong turning! If you could
only undo things that you have done! Eh? What?"

"Not even God can make what has been, not to have been. When a thing is
done, if it is only the taking of a walk, the walk is taken to all
eternity."

At the word "eternity," they stood on the brow of the hill which they
had been climbing, and the squire said it again very solemnly.
"Eternity! How dreadful to spend it in repentance which can undo
nothing! That is the most awful conception of the word 'eternity.' Eh?
What?"

They were silent a moment, then Sandal turned and looked westward. "It
is mizzling already, Charlotte; the snow will turn into rain, and we
shall have a downpour. Had we not better go home?"

But Charlotte painted in such glowing colors Ducie's fireside, and the
pipe, and the cosey, quiet dinner they would be sure to get there, that
the squire could not resist the temptation. "For all will be at sixes
and sevens at home," he commented, "and no peace for anybody, with
greens and carols and what not. Eh? What?"

"And very likely, as it is Christmas Eve, you may be asked to give
Sophia away. So a nice dinner, and a quiet smoke, and an hour's nap will
help you through to-night." And the thought in each heart, beyond this
one, was "Perhaps Harry will be at home."

Nobody missed the fugitives. Mrs. Sandal was sure Harry would come, and
she was busy preparing his room with her own hands. The brightest fire,
the gayest greens, the whitest and softest and best of every thing, she
chose for Harry's room.

Certainly they were not missed by Julius and Sophia. They were far too
much interested in themselves and in their own affairs. From the first
hour of his return to Seat-Sandal, Sophia had understood that Julius was
her lover, and that the time for his declaration rested in the main with
herself. When the Christmas bells were ringing, when the house was
bright with light and evergreens, and the very atmosphere full of
happiness, she had determined to give him the necessary encouragement.
But the clock of Fate cannot be put back. When the moment arrives, the
word is spoken or the deed done. Both of them were prepared for the
moment, and yet not just then prepared; for Love still holds his great
surprise somewhat in reserve.

They were in the drawing-room. The last vase had been filled, the last
wreath hung; and Sophia looked at her beautiful hands, marked with the
rim of the scissors, and stained with leaves and berries, in a little
affected distress. Julius seated himself on the sofa beside her. She
trembled, but he looked at her almost triumphantly. Over Sophia's heart
he knew his power. With the questioning, unwinking gaze of love his eyes
sought hers, and he tenderly spoke her name, "_Sophia_." She could
answer only by her conscious silence.

"My wife! Mine in lives long forgotten."

"O Julius!"

"Always mine; missed in some existences, recovered in others, but
bringing into every life with you my mark of ownership. See here."

Then he lifted her hand, and opening its palm upward, he placed his own
in the same attitude beside it. "Look into them both, Sophia, and see
how closely our line of fortune is alike. That is something, but
behold." And he showed her a singular mark, which had in his own palm
its precise counterpart.

"Is it not also in Charlotte's palm? In others?"

"No, indeed. Among all the women on earth, only yours has this facsimile
of my own. It is the soul mark upon the body. Every educated Hindoo can
trace it; and all will tell you, that, if two individuals have it
precisely alike, they are twin souls, and nothing can prevent their
union."

"Did they explain it to you, Julius?"

"An Oriental never explains. They apprehend what is too subtle for
words. They know best just what they have never been told. Sophia, this
hand of yours fits mine. It is the key to it; the interpreter of my
fate. Give me my own, darling."

To Charlotte he would never have spoken in such a tone. She would have
resented its claim and authority, and perceived that it was likely to be
the first encroachment of a tyranny she did not intend to bow to. But
Sophia was easily deceived on this ground. She liked the mystical air it
gave to the event; the gray sanction of unknown centuries to the love of
to-day.

They speculated and supposed, and were supremely happy. The usual lover
wanders in the dreams of the future: they sought each other through the
phantom visions of the past. And they were so charmed with the
occupation, that they quite forgot the exigencies and claims of the
present existence until the rattle of wheels, the stamping of feet, and
a joyful cry from Mrs. Sandal recalled them to it.

"It is Harry," said Sophia. "I must go to him, Julius."

He held her very firmly. "I am first. Wait a moment. You must promise me
once more: 'My life is your life, my love is your love, my will is your
will, my interest is your interest; I am your second self.' Will you say
this Sophia, as I say it?" And she answered him without a word. Love
knows how such speech may be. Even when she had escaped from her lover,
she was not very sorry to find that Harry had gone at once to his own
room; for he had driven through the approaching storm, and been
thoroughly drenched. She was longing for a little solitude to bethink
her of the new position in which she found herself; for, though she had
a dreamy curiosity about her pre-existences, she had a very active and
positive interest in the success and happiness of her present life.

Suddenly she remembered Charlotte, and with the remembrance came the
fact that she had not seen her since the early forenoon. But she
immediately coupled the circumstance with the absence of the squire, and
then she reached the real solution of the position in a moment. "They
have gone to Up-Hill, of course. Father always goes the day before
Christmas; and Charlotte, no doubt, expected to find Steve at home. I
must tell Julius about Charlotte and Steve. Julius will not approve of
a young man like Steve in our family, and it ought not to be. I am sure
father and mother think so."

At this point in her reflections, she heard Charlotte enter her own
room, but she did not go to her. Sophia had a dislike to wet, untidy
people, and she was not in any particular flurry to tell her success.
Indeed, she was rather inclined to revel for an hour in the sense of it
belonging absolutely to Julius and herself. She was not one of those
impolitic women, who fancy that they double their happiness by imparting
it to others.

She determined to dress with extraordinary care. The occasion warranted
it, surely; for it was not only Christmas Eve, it was also her betrothal
eve. She put on her richest garment, a handsome gown of dark blue silk
and velvet. A spray of mistletoe-berries was in her black hair, and a
glittering necklace of fine sapphires enhanced the beauty and whiteness
of her exquisite neck and shoulders. She was delighted with the effect
of her own brave apparel, and also a little excited with the course
events had taken, or she never would have so far forgotten the
privileges of her elder birth as to visit Charlotte's room first on
such an important personal occasion.

Charlotte was still wrapped in her dressing-gown, lazily musing before
the crackling, blazing fire. Her hands were clasped above her head, her
feet comfortably extended upon the fender, her eyes closed. She had been
a little tired with buffeting the storm; and the hot tea, which Mrs.
Sandal had insisted upon as a preventative of cold, had made her, as she
told Sophia, "deliciously dozy."

"But dinner will be ready in half an hour, and you have to dress yet,
Charlotte. How do I look?"

"You look charming. How bright your eyes are, Sophia! I never saw you
look so well. How much Julius will admire you to-night!"

"As to that, Julius always admires me. He says he used to dream about
me, even before he saw me."

"Oh, you know that is nonsense! He couldn't do that. I dare say he
dreams about you now, though. I should think he would like to."

"You will have to hurry, Charlotte."

"I can dress in ten minutes if I want to."

"I will leave you now." She hesitated a moment at the door, but she
could not bring herself to speak of her engagement. She saw that
Charlotte was in one of her "no-matter-every-thing-right" moods, and
knew she would take the important news without the proper surprise and
enthusiasm. In fact, she perceived that Harry's visit occupied her whole
mind; for, as she stood a moment or two irresolute as to her own
desires, Charlotte talked eagerly of her brother.

"Well, I hope if Harry is of so much importance in your eyes, you will
dress decently to meet him. The rector is coming to dinner also."

"I shall wear my blue gown. If I imitate you, I cannot be much out of
the way. Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! I hope Harry will have a pleasant visit. We
must do our best, Sophia, to make him happy."

"O Charlotte, if you have nothing to talk about but Harry, Harry, Harry,
I am going! I am very fond of Harry, but I don't pretend to be blind to
Harry's faults. Remember how many disagreeable hours he has given us
lately. And I must say that I think he was very ungrateful about the
hundred and eighty pounds I gave him. He never wrote me a line of
thanks."

"You did not give it to Harry, you loaned it to me. Be just Sophia. I
have paid you fifteen pounds of it back already, and I shall not buy a
single new dress until it is all returned. You will not lose a shilling,
Sophia."

"How Quixotic you can be! However, it is no use exciting ourselves
to-night. One likes to keep the peace at Yule-tide, and so I will bow
down to your idol as much as I can conscientiously."

Charlotte made no answer. She had risen hastily, and with rather
unnecessary vigor was rattling the ewer and basin, and plashing out the
water. Sophia came back into the room, arranged the glass at the proper
angle to give her a last comprehensive review of herself; and this being
quite satisfactory, she went away with a smiling complacency, and a
subdued excitement of manner, which in some peculiar way revealed to
Charlotte the real position of affairs between her sister and Julius
Sandal.

"She might have told me." She dashed the water over her face at the
implied complaint; and it was easy to see, from the impatient way in
which she subsequently unbound her hair, and pulled the comb through it,
and from the irritability of all her movements, that she felt the
omission to be a slight, not only indicating something not quite
pleasant in the past, but prefiguring also she knew not what
disagreeable feelings for the future.

"It is not Sophia's fault," she muttered; "Julius is to blame for it. I
think he really hates me now. He has said to her, 'There is no need to
tell Charlotte, specially; it will make her of too much importance. I
don't approve of Charlotte in many ways.' Oh, I know you, sir!" and with
the thought she pulled the string of her necklace so impatiently that it
broke; and the golden beads fell to her feet, and rolled hither and
thither about the room.

The incident calmed her. She finished her toilet in haste, and went
down-stairs. All the rooms were lighted, and she saw Julius and Sophia
pacing up and down the main parlor, hand in hand, so interested in their
_sotto voce_ conversation as to be quite unconscious that she had stood
a moment at the open door for their recognition. So she passed on
without troubling them. She heard her mother's happy laugh in the large
dining-room, and she guessed from its tone that Harry was with her. Mrs.
Sandal was beautifully dressed in black satin, and she held in her hand
a handsome silver salver. Evidently she had been about to leave the room
with it, when detained by some remark of her son's; for she was half-way
between the table and the door, her pretty, kindly face all alight with
love and happiness.

Harry was standing on the hearth-rug, facing the room,--a splendidly
handsome young fellow in a crimson and yellow uniform. He was in the
midst of a hearty laugh, but when he saw Charlotte there was a sudden
and wonderful transformation in his face. It grew in a moment much
finer, more thoughtful, wistful, human. He sprang forward, took her in
his arms, and kissed her. Then he held her from him a little, looked at
her again, and kissed her again; and with that last kiss he whispered,
"You good sister. You saved me, Charlotte, with that five hundred
pounds."

"I would have given it had it been my all, it been fifty times as much,
Harry."

There was no need to say another word. Harry and Charlotte understood
each other, and Harry turned the conversation upon his cousin.

"This Indian fellow, this Sandal of the Brahminical caste, what is he
like, Charley?"

"He does not admire me, Harry; so how can I admire him?"

"Then there must be something wrong with him in the fundamentals; a
natural-born inability to admire what is lovely and good."

"You mustn't say such a thing as that, Harry. I am sure that Sophia is
engaged to him."

"Does father like him?"

"Not much; but Julius is a Sandal, after all, and"--

"After me, the next heir. Exactly. It shall not be my fault, Charley, if
he does not stand a little farther off soon. I can get married too."

"O Harry, if you only would! It is your duty; and there is little Emily
Beverley. She is so beautiful and good, and she adores you, Harry."

"Dear little Emmy. I used to love Emmy a long time ago."

"It would make father so happy, and mother and me too. And the Beverleys
are related to mother,--and isn't mother sweet. Father was saying"--

At that moment the squire entered the room. His face was a little
severe; but the moment his eyes fell upon Charlotte and Harry, every
line of sternness was gone like a flash. Harry's arm was round his
sister's waist, her head against his shoulder; but in a moment he gently
released himself, and went to his father. And in his nineteenth-century
way he said what the erring son of old said, "Father, I have not done
right lately. I am very sorry."

"Say no more, Harry, my lad. There shall be no back reckoning between
you and me. You have been mixed up with a sight of follies, but you can
over-get all that. You take after me in looks. Up-sitting and
down-sitting, you are my son. You come of a good kind; you have a kind
heart and plenty of dint;[Dint, energy.] now, then, make a
fresh start, Harry. Oh, my dear, dear son!" The father's eyes were full
of tears, his face shone with love, and he held the young man's hand in
a clasp which forgave every thing in the past, and promised everything
for the future.

Then Julius and Sophia came in, and there was barely time to introduce
the young men before dinner was served. They disliked each other on
sight; indeed, the dislike was anterior to sight, and may be said to
have commenced when Harry first heard how thoroughly at home Julius had
made himself at Seat-Sandal, and when Julius first saw what a desirable
estate and fine old "seat" Harry's existence deprived him of. And in
half an hour this general aversion began to particularize itself. The
slim, suave youth, with his black eyes and soft speech, and small hands
and feet, seemed to Harry Sandal in every respect an interloper. The
Saxon in this Sandal was lost in the Oriental. The two races were,
indeed, distinctly evident in the two men in many ways, but noticeably
in their eyes: Harry's being large, blue, and wide open; those of
Julius, very black; and in their long, narrow setting and dreamy look,
expressing centuries of tranquil contemplation.

But the dinner passed off very pleasantly, more so than family festivals
usually pass. After it the lovers went into private session to consider
whether they should declare their new relationship during the evening,
or wait until Julius could have a private audience with the squire.
Sophia was inclined to the first course, because of the presence of the
rector. She felt that his blessing on her betrothal would add a
religious grace to the event, but Julius was averse to speak on any
matter so private to himself before Harry Sandal. He felt that he could
neither endure his congratulations nor his dissent; that, in fact, he
did not want his opinion on the matter at all. Besides, he had
determined to have but one discussion of the affair, and that must
include all pertaining to Sophia's rights and her personal fortune.

While they were deciding this momentous question, the rector and
Charlotte were singing over the carols for the Christmas service; the
squire was smoking and listening; and Harry was talking in a low voice
to his mother. But after the rector had gone, it became very difficult
to avoid a feeling of _ennui_ and restraint, although it was Christmas
Eve. Mrs. Sandal soon went into the housekeeper's room to assist in the
preparation of the Yule hampers for the families of the men who worked
on the estate. Sandal fell into a musing fit, and soon appeared to be
dozing; although Charlotte saw that he occasionally opened his eyes, and
looked at the whispering lovers, or else shot her a glance full of
sympathetic intelligence.

Music has many according charms, and Charlotte tried it, but with small
success. Julius and Sophia had a song in their own hearts, and this
night they knew no other. Harry loved his sister very dearly, but he was
not inclined to "carolling;" and the repression and constraint were soon
evident through all the conventional efforts to be "merry." It was the
squire who finally hit upon the circumstance which tided over the
evening, and sent every one to bed in a ripple of laughter. For, when
the piano was closed, he opened his eyes, and said, "Sophia, your mother
tells me she has had a very nice Christmas present from the little maid
you took such a liking to,--little Agnes Bulteel. It is a carriage hap
made of sheepskins white as the snow, and from some new breed of sheep
surely; for the wool is longer and silkier than ever I saw."

"Agnes Bulteel!" cried Charlotte. "O Sophia! where are her last letters?
I am sure father would like to hear about Joe and the jolly-jist."

"Joe Bulteel is no fool," said the squire warmly. "It is the way around
here to laugh a bit at Joe; but Joe aims to do right, and he is a very
spirity lad. What are you and Sophia laughing at? Eh? What?"

"Get the letters, Sophia. Julius and Harry will enjoy them I know. Harry
must remember Joe Bulteel."

"Certainly. Joe has carried my line and creel many a day. Trout couldn't
fool Joe. He was the one to find plovers' eggs, and to spot a blaeberry
patch. Joe has some senses ordinary people do not have, I think. I
should like to hear about Joe and the _what_?"

"The jolly-jist,--Professor Sedgwick really. Joe has been on the fells
with the professor."

So they drew around the fire, and Sophia went for the letters. She was a
good reader, and could give the county peculiarities with all their
quaint variations of mood and temper and accent. She was quite aware
that the reading would exhibit her in an entirely new _rôle_ to Julius,
and she entered upon the task with all the confidence and enthusiasm
which insured the entertainment. And as both Professor Sedgwick and Joe
Bulteel were well known to the squire and Harry, they entered into the
joke also with all their hearts; and one peal of laughter followed
another, as the squire's comments made many a distinct addition to the
unconscious humor of the letters.

At that point of the story where Joe had triumphantly pocketed his last
five shillings, and gone home reflecting on what a "famous job it would
be to sell all the stones on their fell at five shillings a little
bagful," Mrs. Sandal entered. A servant followed with spiced wine and
dainty bits of cake and pastry; and then, after a merry interval of
comment and refreshment, Sophia resumed the narrative.

     All this happened at the end of May, Miss Sandal; and one day last
     August father went down Lorton way, and it was gayly late when he
     got home. As he was sitting on his own side the fire, trying to
     loose the buttons of his spats, he said to Joe, "I called at
     Skeàl-Hill on my road home." Mother was knitting at her side of the
     hearth. She hadn't opened her mouth since father came home; nay,
     she hadn't so much as looked at him after the one hard glower that
     she gave him at first; but when he said he'd been at Skeàl-Hill,
     she gave a grunt, and said, as if she spoke to nobody but herself,
     "Ay, a blind body might see that."--"I was speaking to Joe," said
     father. "Joe," said he again, "I was at Skeàl-Hill,"--mother gave
     another grunt then,--"and they told me that thy old friend the
     jolly-jist is back again. I think thou had better step down, and
     see if he wants to buy any more broken stones; old Abraham has a
     fine heap or two lying aside Kirgat." Joe thought he had done many
     a dafter thing than take father at his word, whether he meant it or
     not; and so thought, so done, for next morning he took himself off
     to Skeàl-Hill.

     When he got there, and asked if the jolly-jist was stirring yet,
     one servant snorted, and another grunted, till Joe got rather
     maddish; but at last one of them skipjacks of fellows, that wear a
     little jacket like a lass's bedgown, said he would see. He came
     back laughing, and said, "Come this way, Joe." Well, our Joe
     followed him till he stopped before a room door; and he gave a
     little knock, and then opened it, and says he, "Joe, sir." Joe
     wasn't going to stand that; and he said, "'Joe, sir,' he'll ken its
     'Joe, sir,' as soon as he sees the face of me. And get out with thy
     'Joe, sir,' or I'll make thee laugh at the wrong side of that ugly
     face of thine." With that the fellow skipped out of our Joe's way
     gayly sharp, and Joe stepped quietly into the room.

     There the little old gentleman was sitting at a table
     writing,--gray hair, spectacles, white neck-cloth, black
     clothes,--just as if he had never either doffed or donned himself
     since he went away. But before Joe could put out his hand, or say a
     civil word to him, he glinted up at Joe through his spectacles very
     fierce like, and grunted out something about wondering how Joe
     durst show his face again. Well, that put the cap on all for poor
     Joe. He had thought over what father said, and _how_ he said it, on
     his road down till he found himself getting rather mad about it;
     and the way they all snorted and laughed when he came to Skeàl-Hill
     made him madder; and that bedgown fellow, with his "Joe, sir," made
     him madder than ever; but when the old jolly-jist--that he thought
     would be so fain to see him, if it was only for the sake of their
     sprogue on the fells together--when he wondered "how Joe durst show
     his face there," it set Joe rantin' mad, and he _did_ make a burst.

At this point the squire was laughing so noisily that Sophia had to
stop; and his hearty _ha, ha, ha_! was so contagious, that Harry and
Julius and Charlotte, and even Mrs. Sandal, echoed it in a variety of
merry peals. Sophia was calmer. She sat by the lamp, pleasantly
conscious of the amusement she was giving; and, considering that she had
already laughed the circumstance out in her room, quite as well
entertained as any of the party. In a few minutes the squire recovered
himself. "Let us have the rest now, Sophia. I'd have given a gold
guinea to have heard Joe's 'burst.'"

     "Show my face?" said Joe; "and what should I show, then? If it
     comes to showing faces, I've a better face to show than ever
     belonged to one of your breed, if the rest of them are aught like
     the sample they have sent us. But if you must know," said Joe, "I
     come of a stock that never would be frightened to show their face
     to a king, let alone an old noodles that calls himself a
     jolly-jist. And I defy the face of clay," said Joe, "to show that
     any of us ever did aught he need to be ashamed of, wherever we show
     our faces. Dare to show my face, eh?" said Joe again, "My song! but
     this is a bonnie welcome to give a fellow that has come so far to
     see you such a hot morning." Joe said a deal more of the same make;
     and all the time he was saying it, the old man laid himself back in
     his great chair, and kept twiddling his thumbs, and glancing up at
     Joe with a half-smirk on his face, as if he had got something very
     funny before him.

"Joe is like all these shepherd lads," said the squire, "as independent
as never was. They are a manly race, but the Bulteels all come of a good
kind."

Julius laughed scornfully, but the squire took him up very short. "You
need not laugh, nephew. It is as I say. The Bulteels are as good stock
as the Sandals; a fine old family, and, like the Sandals, at home here
when the Conqueror came. Joe would do the right thing I'll be bound. Let
us hear if he didn't, Sophia."

     After a while Joe stopped, for he had run himself very near short
     of wind; and he began rather to think shame of shouting and
     bellering so at an old man, and him as whisht as a trout through it
     all. And when Joe pulled in, he only said, as quietly as ever was,
     that Joe was a "natural curiosity."

     Joe didn't know very well what this meant; but he thought it was
     sauce, and it had like to have set him off again; but he beat
     himself down as well as he could, and he said, "Have you any thing
     against me? If you have, speak it out like a man; and don't sit
     there twiddling your thumbs, and calling folks out of their names
     in this road." Then it came out plain enough. All this ill-nature,
     Miss Sandal, was just because poor Joe hadn't brought him the same
     stones as he had gathered on the fells; and he said that changing
     them was either a very dirty trick, or a very clumsy joke.

     "Trick," said Joe. "_Joke_, did you say? It was ratherly past a
     joke to expect me to carry a load of broken stones all the way
     here, when there was plenty on the spot. I'm not such a fool as
     you've taken me for," said Joe. The jolly-jist took off his
     spectacles, and glowered at Joe without them. Then he put them on
     again, and glowered at Joe with them; and then he laughed, and
     asked Joe, if he thought there could be no difference in stones.
     "Why!" answered Joe, "you hardly have the face to tell me that one
     bag of stones isn't as good as another bag of stones; and surely to
     man you'll never be so conceited as to say that you can break
     stones better than old Abraham Atchisson, who breaks them for his
     bread, and breaks them all day long and every day."

     With that the old man laughed again, and told Joe to sit down; and
     then he asked him what he thought made him take so much trouble
     seeking bits of stone on the fells, if he could get what he wanted
     on the road-side. "Well," Joe said, "if I must tell you the truth,
     I thought you were rather soft in the head; but it made no matter
     what I thought, so long as you paid me so well for going with you."
     As Joe said this, it came into his head that it was better to
     flatter a fool than to fight him; and after all, that there might
     be something in the old man liking stones of his own breaking
     better than those of other folks' breaking. We all think the most
     of what we have had a hand in ourselves, don't we Miss Sandal? It's
     nothing but natural. And as soon as this run, through Joe's head,
     he found himself getting middling sorry for the old man; and he
     said, "What will you give me to get you your own bits of stones
     back again?"

     He cocked up his ears at that, and asked if his "speciments," as he
     called them, were safe. "Ay," said Joe, "they are safe enough.
     Nobody hereabout thinks a little lot of stones worth meddling with,
     so long as they don't lie in their road." With that the jolly-jist
     jumped up, and said Joe must have something to eat and drink. Then
     Joe thought to himself, "Come, come, we are getting back to our own
     menseful way again." But he would not stir a peg till he heard
     what he was to have for getting the stones again; for Joe knew he
     would never hear the last of it, if he came home empty-handed. They
     made it all right very soon, however; and the old man went
     up-stairs, and brought down the two leather bags, and gave them to
     Joe to carry, as if nothing had happened; and off they started,
     very like as they did before.

     The Skeàl-Hill folk all gathered together about the door to look
     after them, as if they had been a show; but they neither of them
     minded for that, but walked away as thick as inkle-weavers till
     they got to the foot of our great meadow, where the stones were all
     lying just as Joe had turned them out of the bags, only rather
     grown over with grass. And as Joe picked them up one by one, and
     handed them to the old jolly-jist, it did Joe's heart good to see
     how pleased he looked. He wiped them on his coat-cuff, and wet
     them, and glowered at them through his spectacles, as if they were
     something good to eat, and he was very hungry; and then he packed
     them away into the bags till they were both chock full again.

     Well, the bargain was, that Joe should carry them back to
     Skeàl-Hill; so back they put, the jolly-jist watching his bags all
     the way, as if they were full of golden guineas, and our Joe a
     thief. When they got there, he made Joe take them right into the
     parlor; and the first thing he did was to call for some red wax and
     a light, and he clapped a great splatch of a seal on either bag;
     and then he looked at Joe, and gave a little grunt of a laugh, and
     a smartish wag of the head, as much as to say, "Do it again, Joe,
     if you can." But after that he said, "Here, Joe, is five shillings
     for restoring my speciments, and here is another five shillings for
     showing me a speciment of human nature that I did not believe in
     until this day." [This story is told of Professor Sedgwick in broad
     _patois_ by Alexander Craig Gibson, F.S.A.]

"That is good," cried the squire, clapping his knee emphatically. "It
was like the professor, and it was like Joe Bulteel. The story does them
both credit. I am glad I heard it. Alice, fill our glasses again." Then
he stood up, and looked around with a smile.

"God's blessing on this house, and on all beneath its roof-tree!

"Wife and children, a merry Christmas to you!

"Friends and serving hands, a merry Christmas to you!"




CHAPTER VII.

WOOING AND WEDDING.

     "She was made for him,--a special providence in his behalf."

     "Like to like,--and yet love may be dear bought."

     "In time comes she whom Fate sends."


Until after Twelfth Night the Christmas festivities were continued; but
if the truth had been admitted, the cumbrous ceremonials, the excessive
eating and visiting, would have been pronounced by every one very
tiresome. Julius found it particularly so, for the festival had no roots
in his boyhood's heart; and he did not include it in his dreams of
pre-existence.

"It is such semblance of good fellowship, such a wearisome pretence of
good wishes that mean nothing," he said one day. "What value is there in
such talk?"

"Well," answered the squire, "it isn't a bad thing for some of us to
feel obliged once in a twelve months to be good-natured, and give our
neighbors a kind wish. There are them that never do it except at
Christmas. Eh? What?"

"Such wishes mean nothing."

"Nay, now, there is no need to think that kind words are false words.
There is a deal of good sometimes in a mouthful of words. Eh? What?"

"And yet, sir, as the queen of the crocodiles remarked, 'Words mend none
of the eggs that are broken.'"

"I know nothing about the queen of the crocodiles. But if you don't
believe in words, Julius, it is quite allowable at Christmas time to put
your good words into any substantial form you like. Nobody will doubt a
good wish that is father to a handsome gift; so, if you don't believe in
good words, you have a very reliable substitute in good deeds. I saw how
you looked when I said 'A merry Christmas' to old Simon Gills, and you
had to say the words after me. Very well; send old Simon a new plaid or
a pound of tobacco, and he'll believe in your wish, and you'll believe
in yourself. Eh? What?"

The days were full of such strained conversations on various topics.
Harry could say nothing which Julius did not politely challenge by some
doubtful inquiry. Julius felt in every word and action of Harry's the
authority of the heir, and the forbearance of a host tolerant to a
guest. He complained bitterly to Sophia of the position in which he was
constantly put. "Your father and brother have been examining timber, and
looking at the out-houses this morning, and I understand they were
discussing the building of a conservatory for Charlotte; but I was left
out of the conversation entirely. Is it fair, Sophia? You and I are the
next heirs, and just as likely to inherit as Harry. More so, I may say,
for a soldier's life is already sold, and Harry is reckless and
dissipated as well. I think I ought to have been consulted. I should not
be in favor of thinning the timber. I dare say it is done to pay Harry's
bills; and thus, you see, it may really be we who are made to suffer. I
don't think your father likes our marriage, dear one."

"But he gave his consent, beloved."

"I was very dissatisfied with his way of doing it. He might as well have
said, 'If it has to be, it has to be; and there is no use fretting
about it.' I may be wrong, but that is the impression his consent left
on my mind. And he was quite unreasonable when I alluded to money
matters. I would not have believed that your father was capable of being
so disagreeably haughty. Of course, I expected him to say something
about our rights, failing Harry's, and he treated them as if they did
not exist. Even when I introduced them in the most delicate way, he was
what I call downright rude. 'Julius,' he said, 'I will not discuss any
future that pre-supposes Harry's death.'"

"Father's sun rises and sets in Harry, and it was like him to speak that
way; he meant nothing against us. Father would always do right. What I
feel most is the refusal to give us our own apartments in Seat-Sandal.
We do not want to live here all the time, but we ought to be able to
feel that we have a certain home here."

"Yes, indeed. It is very important in my eyes to keep a footing in the
house. Possession is a kind of right. But never mind, Sophia. I have
always had an impression that this was my home. The first moment I
crossed the threshold I felt it. All its rooms were familiar to me.
People do not have such presentiments for nothing."

There is a class of lovers who find their supremest pleasure in
isolating themselves; who consider their own affairs an oasis of
delight, and make it desert all around them. Julius and Sophia belonged
to it. They really enjoyed the idea that they were being badly used.
They talked over the squire's injustice, Mrs. Sandal's indifference to
every one but Harry, and Charlotte's envy, until they had persuaded
themselves that they were the only respectable and intelligent members
of the family. Naturally Sophia's nature deteriorated under this
isolating process. She grew secretive and suspicious. Her love-affairs
assumed a proportion which put her in false relations to all the rest of
the world.

It was unfortunate that they had come to a crisis during Harry's visit,
for of course Harry occupied a large share of every one's interest. The
squire took the opportunity to talk over the affairs of the estate with
him, and this was not a kind of conversation they felt inclined to make
general. It took them long solitary walks to the different "folds," and
several times as far as Kendal together. "Am I one of the family, or am
I not?" Julius would ask Sophia on such occasions; and then the
discussion of this question separated them from it, sometimes for hours
at a time.

Mrs. Sandal hardly perceived the growth of this domestic antagonism.
When Harry was at Seat-Sandal, she lived and moved and had her being in
Harry. His food and drink, and the multitude of his small comforts; his
friends and amusements; the renovation of his linen and hosiery; his
hopes and fears, and his promotion or marriage, were enough to fill the
mother's heart. She was by no means oblivious of Sophia's new interests,
she only thought that they could be put aside until Harry's short visit
was over; and Charlotte's sympathies were also with Harry. "Julius and
Sophia do not want them, mother," she said, "they are sufficient unto
themselves. If I enter a room pre-occupied by them, Sophia sits silent
over her work, with a look of injury on her face; and Julius walks
about, and kicks the stools out of his way, and simply 'looks' me out of
their presence."

After such an expulsion one morning, she put on her bonnet and mantle,
and went into the park. She was hot and trembling with anger, and her
eyes were misty with tears. In the main walk she met Harry. He was
smoking, and pacing slowly up and down under the bare branches of the
oaks. For a moment he also seemed annoyed at her intrusion on his
solitude; but the next one he had tucked her arm through his own, and
was looking with brotherly sympathy into her flushed and troubled face.
This morning Charlotte felt it to be a great comfort to complain to him,
to even cry a little over the breaking of the family bond, and the loss
of her sister's affection.

"I have always been so proud of Sophia, always given up to her in every
thing. When grandmother showed me the sapphire necklace, and said she
was going to leave it to me because she loved me best, I begged her not
to slight Sophia in such a way as that,--Sophia being the elder, you
know, Harry. I cried about it until she was almost angry with me. Julius
offered his hand to me first; and though I claim no merit for giving up
what I do not want, yet, all the same, if I had wanted him I should
have refused, because I saw that Sophia had set her heart upon him. I
should indeed, Harry."

"I believe you would, Charlotte."

"And somehow Julius manages to give me the feeling that I am only in
Seat-Sandal on his tolerance. Many a time a day I have to tell myself
that father is still alive, and that I have a right in my own home. I do
not know how he manages to make me feel so."

"In the same way that he conveys to me the impression that I shall never
be squire of Sandal-Side. He has doomed me to death in his own mind; and
I believe if I had to live with him, I should feel constrained to go and
shoot myself."

"I would come home, and get married, Harry. There will be room enough
and welcome enough for your wife in Seat-Sandal, especially if she be
Emily."

"She will not be Emily; for I love some one else far away
better,--millions of times better than I love Emily."

"I am so glad, Harry. Have you told father?"

"Not yet. I do not think he will be glad, Charlotte."

"But why?"

"There are many reasons."

"Such as?"

"She is poor."

"Oh! that is bad, Harry; because I know that we are not rich. But she is
not your inferior? I mean she is not uneducated or unladylike?"

"She is highly educated, and in all England there is not a more perfect
lady."

"Then I can see no reason to think father will not be pleased. I am
sure, Harry, that I shall love your wife. Oh, yes! I shall love her very
dearly."

Then Harry pressed her arm close to his side, and looked lovingly down
into her bright, earnest face. There was no need of speech. In a glance
their souls touched each other.

"And so he asked you first, eh, Charley?"

"Yes."

"And you would not have him? What for Charley?"

"I did not like Julius, and I did like some one else."

"Oh! Oh! Who is the some one else?"

"Guess, Harry. He is very like you, very: fair and tall, with clear,
candid, happy blue eyes; and brown hair curling close over his head. In
the folds and in the fields he is a master. His heart is gentle to all,
and full of love for me. He has spirit, dint, [Dint, energy.]
ambition, enterprise; and can work twenty hours out of the twenty-four
to carry out his own plans. He is a right good fellow, Harry."

"A North-country man?"

"Certainly. Do you think I would marry a stranger?"

"Cumberland born?"

"Who else?"

"Then it is Steve Latrigg, eh? Well, Charley, you might go farther, and
fare worse. I don't think he is worthy of you."

"Oh, but I do!"

"Very few men are worthy of you."

"Only Steve. I want you to like Steve. Harry."

"Certainly. Seat-Sandal folks and Up-Hill folks are always thick
friends. And Steve and I were boy chums. He is a fine fellow, and no
mistake. I am glad he is to be my brother. I asked mother about him;
and she said he was in Yorkshire, learning how to spin and weave wool--a
queer thing, Charley."

"Not at all. He may just as well spin his own fleeces as sell them to
Yorkshiremen to spin." Then they talked awhile of Stephen's plans, and
Harry appeared to be much impressed with them. "It is a pity father does
not join him, Charley," he said. "Every one is doing something of the
kind now. Land and sheep do not make money fast enough for the wants of
our present life. The income of the estate is no larger than it was in
grandfather's time; but the expenses are much greater, although we do
not keep up the same extravagant style. I need money, too, need it very
much; but I see plainly that father has none to spare. Julius will press
him very close."

"What has Julius to do with father's money?"

"Father must, in honor, pay Sophia's portion. Unfortunately, when the
fellow was here last, father told him that he had put away from the
estate one hundred pounds a year for each of his girls. Under this
promise, Sophia's right with interest will be near three thousand
pounds, exclusive of her share in the money grandmother left you. I am
sorry to say that I have had something to do with making it hard for
father to meet these obligations. And Julius wants the money paid at the
marriage. Father, too, feels very much as I feel, and would rather throw
it into the sea than give it to him; only _noblesse oblige_."

The subject evidently irritated Harry beyond endurance, and he suddenly
changed it by taking from his pocket an ivory miniature. He gave it to
Charlotte, and watched her face with a glow of pleasant expectation.
"Why, Harry!" she cried, "does so lovely a woman really exist?"

He nodded happily, and answered in a voice full of emotion, "And she
loves me."

"It is the countenance of an angel."

"And she loves me. I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment,
Charley, but she loves me." Then Charlotte lifted the pictured face to
her lips. Their confidence was complete; and they did not think it
necessary to talk it over, or to exact promises of secrecy from each
other.

The next day Harry returned to his regiment, and Sophia's affairs began
to receive the attention which their important crisis demanded. In those
days it was customary for girls to make their own wedding outfit, and
there was no sewing-machine to help them. "Mine is the first marriage in
the family," Sophia said, "and I think there ought to be a great deal of
interest felt in it." And there was. Grandmother Sandal's awmries were
opened for old laces and fine cambric, and petticoats and spencers of
silks wonderful in quality and color, and guiltless of any admixture of
less precious material. There were whole sets of many garments to make,
and tucking and frilling and stitching were then slow processes. Agnes
Bulteel came to assist; but the work promised to be so tedious, that the
marriage-day was postponed until July.

In the mean time, Julius spent his time between Oxford and Sandal-Side.
Every visit was distinguished by some rich or rare gift to his bride,
and he always felt a pleasure in assuring himself that Charlotte was
consumed with envy and regret. He was very much in love with Sophia, and
quite glad she was going to marry him; and yet he dearly liked to think
that he made Charlotte sorry for her rejection of his love, and
wistfully anxious for the rings and bracelets that were the portion of
his betrothed. Sophia soon found out that this idea flattered and
pleased him, and it gave her neither shame nor regret to indorse it. She
loved no one but Julius, and she made a kind of merit in giving up every
one for him. The sentiment sounded rather well; but it was really an
intense selfishness, wearing the mask of unselfishness. She did not
reflect that the daily love and duty due to others cannot be sinlessly
withheld, or given to some object of our own particular choice, or that
such a selfish idolatry is a domestic crime.

It was a very unhappy time to Charlotte. Her mother was weary with many
unusual cares, her father more silent and depressed than she had ever
before seen him. The sunny serenity of her happy home was disturbed by a
multitude of new elements, for an atmosphere of constant expectation
gave a restless tone to its usual placid routine. And through all and
below all, there was that feeling of money perplexity, which, where it
exists, is no more to be hid than the subtle odor of musk, present
though unseen.

This year the white winter appeared to Charlotte interminable in length.
The days in which it was impossible to go out, full of Sophia's sewing
and little worries and ostentations; the windy, tempestuous nights, that
swept the gathering drifts away; the cloudless moonlight nights, full of
that awful, breathless quiet that broods in land-locked dales,--all of
them, and all of Nature's moods, had become inexpressibly, monotonously
wearisome before the change came. But one morning at the end of March,
there was a great west wind charged with heavy rains, and in a few hours
the snow on all the fells had been turned into rushing floods, that came
roaring down from every side into the valley.

              "'Oh, wind!
      If winter comes, can spring be far behind?'"

quoted Charlotte, as she stood watching the white cascades.

"It will be cuckoo time directly my dear; and the lambs will be bleating
on the fells, and the yellow primroses blowing under all the hedges. I
want to see the swallows take the storm on their wings badly this year.
Eh? What, Charlotte?"

"So do I, father. I never was so tired of the house before."

"There's a bit of a difference lately, I think. Eh? What?"

Charlotte looked at him; there was no need to speak. They both
understood and felt the full misery of household changes that are not
entirely happy ones; changes that bring unfaithfulness and ingratitude
on one side, and resentful, wounded love on the other. And the worst of
it all was, that it might have been so different. Why had the lovers set
themselves apart from the family, had secrets and consultations and
interests they refused to share? How had it happened that Sophia had
come to consider her welfare as apart from, and in opposition to, that
of the general welfare of Seat-Sandal? And when this feeling existed, it
seemed unjust to Charlotte that they should still expect the whole house
and household to be kept in turmoil for the furtherance of their plans,
and that every one should be made to contribute to their happiness.

"After all, maybe it is a bit natural," said the squire with a sad air
of apology. "I have noticed even the robins get angry if you watch them
building their nests."

"But they, at least, build their own nest, father. The cock-robin does
not go to his parents, and the hen robin to her parents, and say, 'Give
us all the straw you can, and put it down at the foot of our tree; but
don't dare to peep into the branches, or offer us any suggestions about
the nest, or expect to have an opinion about our housekeeping.'
Selfishness spoils every thing, father. I think if a rose could be
selfish it would be hideous."

"I don't think a lover would make my Charlotte forget her father and
mother, and feel contempt for her home, and all in and about it that she
does not want for herself. Why, a stranger would think that Sophia was
never loved by any human heart before! They would think that she never
had been happy before. Nay, then, she sets more store by the few
nick-nacks Julius has given her than all I have bought her for twenty
years. When yonder last bracelet came, she went on as if she had never
seen aught of the kind in all her born days. Yet I have bought her one
or two that cost more money, and happen more love, than it did. Eh?
What, Charlotte?"

There were two large tears standing in his blue eyes, and two sprang
into Charlotte's to meet them. She clasped his hand tight, and after a
minute's silence said,--

"I have a lover, father; the best a girl ever had. Has he made any
difference between you and me? Only that I love you better. You are my
first love; the very first creature I remember, father. One summer day
you had me in your arms in the garden. I recollect looking at you and
knowing you. I think it was at that moment my soul found me."

"It was on a summer day, Charlotte? Eh? What?"

"And the garden was all roses, father; red with roses,--roses full of
scent. I can smell them yet. The sunshine, the roses, the sweet air,
your face,--I shall never, never forget that moment, father."

"Nor I. I was a very happy man in those days, Charlotte. Young and
happy, and full of hope. I thought my children were some new make of
children. I could not have believed then, that they would ever give me
a heartache, or have one themselves. And I had not a care. Money was
very easy with me then: now it is middling hard to bring buckle and
tongue together."

"When Sophia is married, we can begin and save a little. Mother and you
and I can be happy without extravagances."

"To be sure, we can; but the trouble is, my saving will be the losing of
all I have to send away. It is very hard, Charlotte, to do right at both
ends. Eh? What?"

After this conversation, spring came on rapidly, and it was not long ere
Charlotte managed to reach Up-Hill. She had not seen Ducie for several
weeks, and she was longing to hear something of Stephen. "But if ill had
come, ill would have cried out, and I would have heard tell;" she
thought, as she picked her way among the stones and _débris_ of the
winter storms. The country was yet bare; the trees had no leaves, no
nests, no secrets; but she could see the sap running into the branches,
making them dark red, scarlet, or yellow as rods of gold. Higher up, the
pines, always green, took her into their shade; into their calm spirit
of unchangeableness, their equal light, their keen aromatic air. Then
came 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/16258