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Chapter Three.
A Mother of Heroes
“And the old grandmother sat in the chimney corner and spun.”
Alvar Lester was coming home; but his image was so complete a blank to his brothers, that they could form no idea as to how it would become them to receive him. Jack, after lingering a little longer by the hall fire, observed that he could get nearly two hours’ reading before dinner, and went off to his usual occupations. Cheriton’s studies were, to say the least, equally important, as he was to take his degree in the ensuing summer; but now he shook his head.
“I can’t fiddle while Rome is burning. There’s too much to think of, and I’m tired with skating. I shall go and see what granny has to say about it.”
But when he was left alone, he still stood leaning against the mantelpiece. The Lesters were not a family who took things easily, and perhaps there was not one of them who shrank from the thought of the strange brother as much as he who had so persistently urged his return. Not all his excellent arguments could cure his own distaste to the foreigner. He was shy too, and could not tell how to be affectionate to a stranger, and yet he valued the tie of relationship highly, and could not carelessly ignore it. And he knew that he was jealous of the very rights of eldership on which he had just been insisting. Which of those things that he most valued were his own, and which belonged to the eldest son and heir of Oakby? What duties and pleasures must he give up to the newcomer? He did not think that any of their friends would cease to wish to see him at their houses, even if they included Alvar in their invitations.
Certainly he had a much more powerful voice than his brothers in the management of the stable, and indeed of all the estate; but he held this privilege only by his father’s will; and probably Alvar would ride very badly, if at all. No – that sentiment was worthy of Bob himself! Certainly he could not understand English farming, if he were only half as ignorant of foreign countries as the clever English undergraduate, who did not feel quite sure if he had ever heard of any animals in Spain but bulls and goats, and could have sworn to nothing but grapes as a vegetable product of the peninsula. Nor could any stranger enter into the wants and welfare of his father’s tenants, nor be expected to understand the schemes for the amusement and improvement of the neighbourhood, with which Cheriton was in the habit of concerning himself.
How could Alvar be secretary of a cricket club, or captain of a volunteer corps? No more than he could know each volunteer and cricketer, or be known by them, with the experience and interest of a life-time. “They wouldn’t hear of him,” thought Cherry. He was too young, and his father was too young, for his thoughts to move easily forward to the time when Alvar was to be the master; it was simply as elder brother that he regarded him. “He ought to carve, and sit at the bottom of the table when my father’s away!” And having come to this magnificent result of so much meditation, he laughed and shook himself, the ludicrous side of his perplexities striking him like a gleam of sunlight as he came to the wise resolution of letting things settle themselves as they came, and ran upstairs to his grandmother.
The ground-floor of Oakby Hall consisted of the hall, before mentioned, on one side of which opened a billiard-room, and on the other a large, long library, containing a number of old books in old editions, in which Mr Lester took a kind of pride, though he rarely disturbed them in their places. There were some pictures, dark, dingy, but bearing honoured names, and much respected by the family as “old masters,” though Cheriton had once got into a great scrape by declaring that he had lived all his life in doubt as to whether a certain one in a corner was a portrait or a landscape, until, one exceptionally sunny day, he discovered it to be a fruit and flower piece.
The room was panelled with dark oak and fitted up with heavy carved furniture, and curtains, which, whatever their original tint, were now “harmonious” with the fading of more than one generation. Three small, deeply-recessed windows looked out to the front, and at the end of the long room opposite the door was a large one facing westward, with thick mullions and a broad, low-cushioned window-seat. This window gave its character to the room, for through its narrow casements miles and miles of moor and fell were visible; a wide, wild landscape, marked by no conspicuous peaks, and brightened by no expanse of water, yet with infinite variety in its cold, dark northern colouring, and grandeur and freedom in its apparently limitless extent.
Here was the place to watch sunset and moonrise, or to see the storms coming up or drifting away, and to hear them, too, howling and whistling round the house or dashing against the window-panes. The west window was one of the strong influences that moulded life at Oakby. This library was the Lesters’ ordinary living room; but behind it was a smaller and more sheltered one, called Mr Lester’s study, which he kept pretty much to himself.
The dining-room was at the other side of the house, behind the billiard-room, and had a view of a hill-side and fir-trees. It contained all the modern works of art in the house – a large picture of Mr Lester and his second wife, their children, horses, and dogs, all assembled at the front-door; and a very stiff pink and white, blue-eyed likeness of Cheriton in hunting costume, which had been taken when he came of age.
There was a fine old staircase with wooden wolves of inferior size, but equal ferocity, to their stone brethren without, adorning the corners of the balustrade, and above the library was the drawing-room, whither Cheriton now betook himself. It was a stiff, uninteresting room, but with an unmistakable air of stateliness and position, and though, like all the house, it lacked the living charm of living taste and arrangement, it possessed what even that cannot always give, and what is quite impossible to a new home without it – a certain air of rightness and appropriateness, as if the furniture had grown into its place. Still, the room, handsome as it was, and full of things which were choicer and more valuable than their owners knew, was uncomfortable, the chairs were high and the sofas were hard, and the yellow damask, with which they were covered, slippery; no one had a place of his own in it; the wild western view gave it an unhomely dreariness, hardly redeemed by an extra window looking south over the flower-garden, which in that bleak climate would have needed more fostering care than it ever obtained, to be very gay, even in summer. Now of course it was snowy and desolate.
Only in this winter weather would Mrs Lester have been found in her arm-chair in the drawing-room; but an attack of rheumatism had recently reminded her of her seventy years, and obliged her to remain in the house, at any rate till the frost was over. She had lived with her son ever since his second wife’s death, and had kept his house, and in a manner presided over the education of his children; but though she was the only woman of the family, and an old woman and a grandmother, it was not from her that the boys looked for spoiling tenderness, nor were the softer and sweeter elements of the family life, few as they were, fostered by her influence.
She had handed down to her children, and still exhibited herself, their height and vigorous strength, and perhaps something of their beauty, though she was a darker and more aquiline-featured person than her son, who resembled his father. Whether the grandchildren inherited her clear, but narrow vision, her upright, but prejudiced mind, and her will, that went its way subject to no side lights or shadows, perhaps it was early days to tell. She was an entirely unintellectual, unimaginative person; but within her experience, which was extremely limited – as she could hardly realise, the existence, much less the merits of natures unlike her own – she had a good deal of shrewd sense, and it was much easier to feel her strictures unjust than to prove them so.
She had a thorough knowledge of, and had all her life been accustomed to share in, the outdoor sports and occupations of country life, and very recently had been able to ride and drive with the skill of long practice. These had been the pleasures of her youth; but though she was rather an unfeminine woman, she had never been in any sense a fast one. She was altogether devoid of coquettish instincts, and though she had been a handsome girl, who had passed her life almost entirely among sporting men, and whose tongue was in consequence somewhat free, she had hardly left through the country-side the memory even of an old flirtation.
Within doors she had few occupations; but when her daughter-in-law’s death rendered her presence at Oakby again necessary, she had taken the command of the children, and ruled them vigorously according to her lights. She wished to see them grow up after her ideal, and would have despised them utterly if they had gambled, drunk, or dissipated their property by extravagance. She would have thought very slightingly of them if their taste had been exclusively for an indoor or studious life, or if they had been awkward riders or bad shots, though she recognised the duty of “attention to their studies” in moderation, particularly on wet days.
She was tolerably satisfied with her grandsons, who had imbibed this view of life with the smell of the heather and the pines, but she was a little suspicious of the Cheriton blood, and of the talents of which she had succeeded in making Cherry and Jack half ashamed. Perhaps her granddaughter was her favourite, and she rejoiced in the girl’s love for an outdoor life, and certainly did not discourage the outrageous idleness with which Nettie neglected the lessons she was supposed to learn of the governess at Oakby Rectory.
On the present occasion Cheriton found her in an unusually thoughtful mood. Her bright dark eyes were still so strong that she rarely used glasses; nor did she often give in to wearing a shawl; but her dress, which was scrupulously appropriate to her age and circumstances – handsome black silk, and soft white cap fastened under her chin – had an oddly inappropriate air on her tall, upright figure, and strong, marked features.
“Well, granny, so he’s really coming,” said Cheriton cheerfully, as he sat down opposite to her.
“Oh, your father’s been here,” said Mrs Lester. “We’ll have to do with him for a year, I suppose.”
“Oh, we’ll get on with him somehow. I mean to strike up a friendship,” returned Cherry boldly.
“You’ll be very soft if you do. Your father and I, remember, know what these Spaniards are like; they’re a bad lot – a bad lot.”
“Well, my father ought to know – certainly! But you see he has told us so little about them.”
“I have told my son that I think he couldn’t have chosen a worse time to have him home – just when you lads are all growing up, and ready to learn all the tricks he can teach you.”
“What tricks?” said Cheriton, feeling much insulted by the suggestion.
“D’ye think I’m going to teach you beforehand?”
“I assure you, granny,” said Cheriton impressively, “that the tricks I see at Oxford are such that it would be impossible for Alvar to beat them.”
“And what have you been up to now?” said his grandmother sharply.
“Why, granny, I really shouldn’t like to tell you the half of them. But I’m quite accustomed to ‘tricks,’ a monkey couldn’t be more used to them. There was that affair with the chapel door – ”
“Oh, don’t tell me your monkey tricks,” said his grandmother, with half-humorous indignation. “I know what they lead to; they’re bad enough. But your half-brother will smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish, and gamble before the lads on a Sunday. If those are your Oxford manners – ”
“Really,” said Cheriton seriously, “we have no reason to suppose that he will do anything of the kind; and if he did, the boys are very little in the mood to imitate him. I only hope they’ll be decently civil to him.” Mrs Lester was herself a much cooler and more imperturbable person than any of her descendants; but she was often the cause of irritation in others, from a calm persistency that ignored all arguments and refutation; and she was especially apt to come across Cheriton, whom she did not regard with the admiration due from a loving grandmother to a dutiful, handsome grandson.
“It’s a great misfortune, as I always told my son it would be. You, Cherry, are fond of strangers and outlandish ways, so maybe he’ll suit you.”
“Well, granny, I hope he may, and we’ll get you to come and light our pipes for us,” said Cherry, keeping his temper. But the coaxing sweetness that made him the one non-conductor of quarrels in a sufficiently stormy household, was apparently lost, for Mrs Lester went on, —
“He’ll suit the Seytons better than he’ll suit us.”
“There’s nothing to say against the Seytons now,” said Cheriton hotly; muttering under his breath, “I hate prejudice.” Mr Lester’s entrance interrupted the discussion, though a long story of a broken fence between his property and Mr Seyton’s did not give it a smoother turn.
As Mr Seyton’s fences had been in a disgraceful condition for at least as long as Cheriton could remember, he was well aware that the present grievance was only an outlet for a deeper-seated one, but his grandmother struck in, —
“Ah, Cheriton may see what it is to take to bad ways and bad connexions. I’ve been telling him his half-brother is likely enough to make friends with the Seytons, and bring their doings over here.”
“With a couple of boys younger than Jack,” cried Cheriton. “Any one would think, granny, that we had a deadly feud with the Seytons.”
“I’ll not hear the matter discussed,” loudly interposed Mr Lester. “Hold your tongue, Cherry. Alvar will have to mind what he is about. I’m sick of the sound of his name. If he had a good English one of his own it would be something.”
“Why hasn’t he, then?” was on the tip of Cherry’s tongue, but he suppressed it; and as his grandmother walked away, saying that it was time to dress for dinner, he got up and stood near his father.
“I say, dad, never mind; we’ll get along somehow,” he said.
The expression of passionate irritation passed out of Mr Lester’s face, and was succeeded by a look of regretful affection as he put his hand on his favourite son’s shoulder.
“I’d give half I’m worth, my boy, to undo it. It’s a wrong to you, Cherry – a wrong. It gives me no pleasure to think of the place in his hands after I’m gone.”
“Father,” interposed Cheriton firmly, “the only wrong is in speaking of it so. It is no wrong to any of us. And you know,” he added shyly and under his breath, “mamma would never let us think so.”
Mr Lester was a person who would not endure a touch on his tenderest feelings. He had never mentioned the young wife, whose word had been his law, to the son whom he adored for her sake, and who influenced his violent yet impressionable nature by the inheritance of hers. That influence led him to listen to the words which he could not controvert; but he did not love his unknown son the better for the pain which this defence of him had cost him. Cheriton felt that he had ventured almost too far, and he turned off the subject after a pause, by saying quaintly, —
“I wonder what the fox thinks of it all.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Don’t you remember that old lady who came to see granny once, and when Jack and I raved about a day’s hunting, would say nothing but ‘I wonder what the fox thinks of it all?’ That was making the other side much too important, wasn’t it?”
“Ah, you’re ready with your jokes,” said his father, not wishing to follow out the little fable, but with a daily sense of liking for the voice and smile with which it was uttered. “Come, I’ll have a pipe with you before dinner.”
Chapter Four.
Strangers Yet!
“My mother came from Spain…
And I am Spanish in myself
And in my likings.”
It was late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The hall at Oakby was full of branches of holly and ivy. Nettie, perched on the top of an oak cabinet, was sticking sprays into the frame of her grandfather’s picture, and Jack and Bob were arranging, according to time-honoured custom, a great bunch of bright-berried holly over the mantelpiece, to do which in safety was a work unattainable by feminine petticoats.
“It’s a great shame of Cherry not to come in time to help,” said Nettie.
“They’ll have got hold of him down at the church,” said Jack. “There, that’s first-rate.”
“I say, Jack, do you know Virginia Seyton came home yesterday? Isn’t it funny that they should have one too?”
“One what?”
“Why, a relation, a sister, when we’ve got a brother. I wonder – ”
Suddenly Nettie stopped, as a crash of wheels sounded on the frosty gravel, and the front-door bell pealed loudly.
“Oh, Jack!” and Nettie jumped off the cabinet at one bound, six feet high though it was, and caught hold of the end of Jack’s coat in a perfect agony of shyness. “Oh, let’s run away!”
“Let go. I can’t get down. Stand still and don’t be silly,” said Jack, gruffly, as he got off the steps, while the butler hurried forward and threw open the door. Nettie stood in the fire-light, her golden hair flying in the gust of wind, her hands together, like a wild thing at bay. Bob remained perched, half-way up the ladder, and Jack made a step or two forward.
A tall figure in a dark cloak, with bright crimson lining, and a large felt hat, stood in the doorway.
“Are you Cheriton?” he said eagerly, and with a strong foreign accent.
“No; he’s out. I’m Jack. How d’ye do? We didn’t know when you were coming,” said Jack, in a tone from which embarrassment took every shade of cordiality. He put out his hand quickly, however, as the stranger made a movement as if possibly intending a more tender salutation. Alvar took it, then removed his hat, and advancing towards the speechless Nettie said, —
“This is my sister? May I not salute her?” and lightly touched her cheek with his lips. “I have thought of you, my sister,” he said.
“Have you?” stammered Nettie, hanging down her head like a child. Bob remained motionless on his ladder, and Jack said, —
“Here’s my father,” as Mr Lester came hurriedly into the hall, nearly as much embarrassed as his children, and pale with an agitation which they did not share. Alvar turned round, and bowed low with a respectful grace that his brothers certainly could not have imitated.
Mr Lester came forward and held out his hand. It needed all his innate sense of good breeding to overcome the repulsion which the very idea of his strange son caused him. The sense of owing him amends for long-neglected duty, the knowledge how utterly out of place this foreigner must be as heir of Oakby, the feeling that by so recognising him he was wronging alike his forefathers and his other children, while he yet knew how much his whole life through he had wronged Alvar himself, came upon him with renewed force. Then as he heard such tones, and saw such a face as he had not seen for years, what rush of long past sentiment, what dead and buried love and hate came rushing over him with such agitating force, that in the effort to avoid a scene, and a display of feeling which, yielded to, might have smoothed the relations between them for ever, his greeting to his son was as cold as ice!
“How do you do, Alvar? I am glad to see you. We did not expect you so soon. You must have found your journey very cold.”
“I did not delay. It was my wish to see my father,” said Alvar, a little wistfully. “My father, I trust, will find me a dutiful son.”
Here Bob giggled, and Jack nearly knocked him off the ladder with the nudge evoked by his greater sense of propriety.
“No doubt – no doubt,” said Mr Lester. “I hope we shall understand each other, soon. Where’s Cheriton? Jack, suppose you show – him – your brother, his room. Dinner at seven, you know. I daresay you’re hungry.”
“I did take a cup of coffee, but it was not good,” said Alvar, as he followed Jack upstairs; and the latter, mortally afraid of a tête-à-tête, shut him into the bedroom prepared for him, and rushed downstairs to encounter Cheriton, who came hurrying in, thinking himself late for dinner.
“Cherry, he’s come!”
“Oh, Cherry, he’s so queer! He makes pretty speeches, and he bows!”
“He’s a regular nigger, he’s so black!”
“Oh, Cherry, it’s awful!”
“What have you done with him? Where’s the squire?” said Cherry, as soon as he could make himself heard.
“Oh, papa has seen him, and Jack’s taken him into his room,” said Nettie.
“He thought I was you,” said Jack. Cheriton stood still for a moment, as shy as the rest, then, with an effort, he ran upstairs.
“It’s only kind to go and say how d’ye do to a fellow,” he thought, as he tapped at the bedroom door, and entered with outstretched hand, and blushing to the tips of his ears. “Oh, how d’ye do? I’m so sorry I was out of the way; they kept me to nail up the wreaths. I’m very glad to see you. Aren’t you very cold?”
Probably the foreigner understood about half of this lucid and connected greeting; but something in the warmth of the tone made him come forward eagerly.
“You are then really my brother Cheriton? I thought it was again the other one.”
“What, Jack? Yes, we’re thought alike, I believe.”
“I do not see that,” said Alvar, contemplating him gravely; “but I have known you in my thoughts – always.”
“I’m sure – we’ve all thought a great deal about you. But there’s no one to help you. Have you got your things? I’ll ring,” nearly pulling down the bell-rope. “And, look here, I’ll just dress and come back, and go down with you – shall I?” Cheriton’s summons was rapidly answered, as curiosity inspired the servants as well as their masters; and leaving Alvar to make his toilet, he hastened upstairs. The three brothers slept in a long passage at the top of the house, over the drawing-room. As Cherry’s step sounded, both his brothers’ doors burst open simultaneously, and Jack and Bob, in various stages of dressing, at once ejaculated, —
“Well!”
“How can I tell? It’s awfully late. I shall never be ready,” and Cherry banged his own door, too much astounded by the new brother to stand a discussion on him.
As soon as he was ready he went down stairs, and found Alvar, rather to his relief, attired in correct evening costume.
“I suppose you haven’t seen my grandmother yet?” he said.
“Your grandmother? I did not know there was a grandmother,” said Alvar, in a much puzzled voice, which, together with the sense of how much his brother had to learn, nearly upset Cherry’s gravity.
“My father’s mother, you know. She lives with us,” he said. “She is your grandmother too.”
“Ah!” said Alvar, “I loved my grandmother much. This other one, she will be most venerable, I am sure.”
“Come along then,” said Cherry, unable to stand more conversation at present.
Mrs Lester, whatever her private opinions might be, had too much respect for the heir, for herself, and for the house of Lester, not to attire herself with unusual dignity, and to rise and advance to receive her grandson.
“How do you do, Alvar?” she said. “You have been a long time in coming to see us.”
Alvar, after a moment’s pause, as if doubtful what sort of salutation would be acceptable, bowed low and kissed her hand. Nettie laughed; but her grandmother drew herself up as if the act of homage was not altogether displeasing to her, and then looked keenly at the new grandson, who, as far as looks went, was no unworthy scion of the handsome Lesters.
He was as tall as his father, though of a different and slighter make, and stood with a sort of graceful stiffness, unlike the easy loose-limbed air of most young English gentlemen. He had a dark olive skin, and oval face; but his features were not unlike the prevailing family type; and though his hair was raven black, it grew and curled in the picturesque fashion of his father’s, which Cheriton alone of the other sons inherited. But he had the splendid black liquid eyes, with blue whites, and slender arched eyebrows of his Spanish mother, and possessed a picturesque foreign beauty that seemed to group the fair-haired brothers into a commonplace herd. He had a grave, impassive face, and held his head up with an air suggestive of Spanish grandees.
It was very difficult to make conversation when they went in to dinner, the more so as Alvar evidently did not easily follow rapid English, and either he was bewildered by new impressions, or not very open to them, for he had not much to say about his journey. Cheriton, as he tried to talk as if there was no perplexing stranger present, could not help wondering whether all that was so strange to himself came with any familiarity to his father. Had he known what his son would be like? Could he touch any chord to which Alvar could find a response? Had eyes like those great rolling black ones ever looked love into his own? And if so, was it all forgotten, or was the remembrance distasteful?
“He was older than I am now,” thought Cherry. “Surely the thoughts of to-day could never fade away entirely.”
Mr Lester uttered no word that betrayed any knowledge of his son’s country. He spoke less than usual, and after due inquiries for Alvar’s relations, entirely on local matters; Alvar volunteered few remarks, but as the dessert appeared, he turned to Cherry, who sat beside him, and said, —
“Is it not now the custom to smoke?”
“Not at dinner,” said Cherry hurriedly, as his father replied, —
“Certainly not,” and all the bright blue eyes round the table stared at Alvar, who for the first time coloured, and said, —
“Pardon, I have transgressed.”
“We’ll go and have a pipe presently,” said Cherry; and oh! how ardently he longed for that terrible evening to be over.
“It was a horrid Christmas Eve,” muttered Nettie to Bob; and perhaps her father thought so too, for he rang the bell early for prayers.
“What is this?” said Alvar, looking puzzled, as a prayer-book was placed before him.
“We’re going to have prayers,” said Nettie, rather pertly. “Don’t you?”
“Ah, it is a custom,” said Alvar, and he took the book, and stood and knelt as they did, evidently matching for his cue.
When this ceremony was over, Bob and Nettie rushed off, evidently to escape saying good-night, and Cheriton invited the stranger to come and smoke with him, conducting him to a little smoking-room downstairs, which was only used for visitors, as the boys generally smoked in a room at the top of the house, into which Cherry knew Bob and Jack would greatly resent any intrusion. Mr Lester walked off with a general good-night. Alvar watched Cherry kiss his grandmother, but contented himself with a bow. Jack discreetly retired, and when Cheriton had ascertained that Alvar never smoked a pipe, but only a cigar or a cigarette, and had made him sit down by the fire, Alvar said, —
“My father is then a member of the clerical party?”
“I don’t think I quite understand you,” said Cherry.
“Your prayers – he is religious?”
“Oh, most people have prayers – I don’t think we’re more particular than others. My father and Mr Ellesmere, our rector, are friends, naturally,” said Cherry, feeling it very difficult to explain himself.
“My grandfather,” said Alvar, “is indifferent.”
“But – you’re a Protestant, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I have been so instructed. But I do not interest myself in the subject.”
Cheriton had heard many odd things at Oxford said about religion, but never anything to equal the naïveté of this avowal. He was quite unprepared with a reply, and Alvar went on, —
“I shall of course conform. I am not an infidel; but I leave those things to your – clergy, do you not call them?”
“Well, some people would say you were right,” said Cherry, thankful that Jack was not present to assert the inalienable right of private judgment.
“And politics?” said Alvar; “I know about your Tories and your Whigs. On which side do you range yourself?”
“Well, my father’s a Tory and High Churchman, which I suppose is what you mean by belonging to the clerical party; and I – if all places were like this – I’d like things very well as they are. Jack, however, would tell you we were going fast to destruction.”
“There are then dissensions among you?”
“Oh, he’ll come round to something, I dare say. But our English politics must seem mere child’s play to you.”
“I have taken no part,” said Alvar. “My grandfather would conform to anything for peace, and I, you know, my brother, am in Spain an Englishman – though a Spaniard here.”
“I hope you’ll be an Englishman soon.”
“It is the same with marriage,” said Alvar; “I have never betrothed myself, nor has my grandfather sought to marry me. He said I must see English ladies also. One does not always follow the heart in these matters,” he concluded rather sentimentally.
“No one would ever dream of your following anything else,” said Cherry, beginning gruffly, but half choked with amusement as he spoke.
“No? And you, you have not decided? Ah, you blush, my brother; I am indiscreet.”
“I didn’t blush – at least that’s nothing. Turkey-cock was my nickname at school always,” said Cherry hastily.
“I do not understand,” said Alvar; and after Cherry had explained the nature and character of turkey-cocks, he said, “But I think that was not civil.”
“Civil! It wasn’t meant to be. English boys don’t stand much upon civility. But,” he added, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, “if we are rough, I hope you won’t mind; the boys don’t mean any harm by it. You’ll soon get used to our ways, and – and we’ll do our best to make you feel at home with us.”
A sudden sense of pity for the lonely brother, a stranger in his father’s house, softened Cheriton’s face and voice as he spoke, though he felt himself to be promising a good deal.
Alvar looked at him with the curious, impassive, unembarrassed air that distinguished him. “You are not ‘rough!’” he said! “you are my brother. I am told that here you do not embrace each other. I am an Englishman, I give you my hand.”
