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Chapter Eight.
Revenge

 
”‘Now, look you,’ said my brother, ‘you may talk,
Till, weary with the talk, I answer nay.’”
 

Alvar, having avoided his brothers after dinner, came back into the hall, and, sitting down by the fire, lighted a cigarette. As he sat there in the great chair by himself, the flames flickering on the oak panels, and the subdued light of the lamp failing to penetrate the dark corners of the old hall, his face took an expression of melancholy, and there was an air of loneliness about his solitary figure – a loneliness which was not merely external. He was perplexed and unhappy, and the fact that his unhappiness had roused in his breast pride and jealousy and anger, did not make it less real. He had not come to the point of owning himself in the wrong, and yet he felt puzzled. He could not see how he had offended. It was a critical moment. Gentle and affectionate as Cheriton was, and happy as the relations had hitherto been between them, Alvar felt himself judged and condemned by his brother’s higher standard, now that he had at last become aware of its existence. He had never been distressed by Virginia’s way of looking at things, she was a woman, and her view’s could not affect his; and for a long time, as has been said, he had regarded Cheriton’s ideas of duty as as much an idiosyncrasy as his fair complexion, or his affection for Rolla and Buffer. Now he perceived that Cheriton himself did not so regard them, but with whatever excuses and limitations, expected them to be binding on Alvar himself; and Alvar’s whole nature kicked against the criticism. Cheriton had been clear-sighted enough to perceive this, and so judged it better to draw back; but Alvar, through clouds and darkness, had seen a glimpse of the light. He knew that Cheriton was right, and the knowledge irritated him. In a fitful, dark sort of way he tried to assert his independence and yet justify himself to Cheriton. It was doubtful whether he would gradually follow the light thus held out to him, or decidedly turn away from it, and just now his wounded pride prompted him to the latter course. He would go his own way; and when he had settled his affairs to his mind, his brothers should own that he was right. And yet – did he not owe a debt, never to be forgotten, to the kind hand that had welcomed him, the bright face that had smiled on him, long ago, on that dreary Christmas Eve? Alvar did not say to himself, as he perhaps might have done with truth, that he had repaid Cheriton’s early kindness to him tenfold; but he thought of the joyous, active youth, whose animal spirits, constant activity, and frequent laughter had been such a new experience to him.

As Alvar thought how great the change had been, his softer feelings revived, and with them the instinct of caving for his brother’s comfort in a thousand trifling ways. He remembered that Cheriton had hardly eaten any dinner, and rose, intending to go to him and persuade him to have some of the chocolate for which he had never lost the liking gained in Spain. As he moved towards the library the butler came into the hall, and, with some excitement, told him that Fletcher, his farm bailiff, wanted to speak to him.

“But it is too late,” said Alvar. “He may come to-morrow.”

“Indeed, sir, I think it is of consequence. Some ill-disposed persons, sir, have set one of your ricks on fire, as I understand,” said the butler, with the air of elevation with which the news of any misdemeanour is usually communicated.

“Tell him, then, to come in,” said Alvar, coolly; and Fletcher appearing, deposed that a certain valuable hayrick, in a field about a mile from the house, on a small farm called Holywell, which had always been managed, together with the home farm, by Mr Lester himself, had been discovered by one of the men going home from work to be on fire. In spite of all their efforts, a great part had been burnt, and the rest much injured by the water used to put out the fire.

“And how did the hay catch fire?” asked Alvar, with composure.

“Well, sir, that young lad Fleming was found hanging about behind a hedge, as soon as we had eyes for anything but the flames; and after this morning’s work, and words that many have heard him drop, the constable thought it his duty to take him up on suspicion, and he is in the lock-up at Hazelby.”

Fletcher eyed his master as he spoke, to see how the intelligence would be received.

“Ah, then,” said Alvar, “he will be sent to prison.”

“The magistrates meet on Thursday, sir – day after to-morrow; but arson being a criminal offence, he’ll be committed for trial at quarter-sessions,” said Fletcher, in an instructive manner. “Wilfully setting fire to property we name arson, sir; the sentence is transportation for a term of years, sir.”

“It is the passion of revenge,” said Alvar, calmly. “It does not surprise me.”

Fletcher looked as if the squire surprised him greatly; but Alvar wished him good-night, and dismissed him.

“Why – the old squire would have been up at Holywell and counted the very sticks of hay that was left!” he thought to himself as he withdrew; while Alvar went and communicated the intelligence to his brothers.

Cheriton listened, dismayed, while Jack exclaimed, —

“I don’t believe it! No Fleming ever was such a fool.”

“But he was angry with me,” said Alvar. “He might have stabbed me out of revenge.”

“Nonsense! we don’t live in Ireland, nor in Spain either! They’ll never forgive you, of course, to their dying day, but they won’t put you in the right by breaking the law – we’re too far north for that.”

“Fletcher doesn’t belong to these parts, you know,” said Cherry; “He might take up an idea. I do think it most unlikely that a boy brought up like Chris would commit such an act. Besides, we saw him down here. When was the fire seen?”

“I do not know,” said Alvar; “but Fletcher said that he was there.”

“It can’t be,” said Cheriton; “I cannot believe it. But they’ll never get over the boy being taken up at all. Why on earth did they never let us know what was going on! I wish I had been there.”

“Yes; a fire, and for us never to know of it!” said Jack, regretfully.

“I think that Chris is a bad boy, and that he has done it,” said Alvar. “But I do not care about the hay. What does that matter?”

“Why, the rick was worth forty pounds,” said Cherry.

“I do not care for forty pounds. I care that I shall be obeyed,” said Alvar.

A great deal more discussion followed, chiefly between Alvar and Jack; the latter at last relieving his mind of much of the good advice which he had long been burning to bestow. He showed Alvar his errors at length, and in the clearest language. Alvar took it very coolly, and without much more interest than if it had been an essay. He was not, as they would have expected, enraged at the burnt rick; indeed Cheriton could not help fancying that he regarded it as a justification of his violence towards Chris. As usual, it was the sense of Cheriton’s opposing view rather than the thing itself that annoyed him.

“Don’t worry yourself, Cherry,” said Jack, as he wished him good-night. “I’ll go the first thing in the morning and find out the rights of it.”

Accordingly, before either of his brothers appeared, Jack started off through wind and rain, and investigated the story of the burnt rick.

He returned in high feather, and found them still at breakfast; for Alvar by no means held his father’s opinion as to the merits of early rising.

“Well,” said Jack, “it’s clear that Chris had nothing to do with it. He left home at half-past four, went straight to old Bill’s cottage, where Alice Fisher gave him some tea, and where no doubt they indulged in a good crack, left them at half-past five, and came straight up here with the note for Alvar, when you saw him.”

“Yes,” said Cherry, “I looked at the clock when I came over to the fire.”

“Well, then, John Kitson saw the rick on fire exactly at half-past five, he heard the church clock strike; so if you and Alvar go over to Hazelby to-morrow, and prove that Chris came here on his way from old Bill’s at that time, you can set it all to rights in a moment. And if that idiot Fletcher had sent for you – for Alvar – last night, poor Chris would never have been suspected.”

“Well, Jack, you have done a good morning’s work,” said Cherry, much relieved.

“Yes. Give me some coffee, I had hardly any breakfast,” said Jack, cutting himself some cold beef. “It is such a cold morning, too.”

“And who did set the rick on fire, then?” said Cherry.

“Ah, that’s not so clear. Fletcher and Jos Green had a shindy a day or two ago, and that lad is capable of anything; but, after all, it may have been an accident.”

Alvar all this time had eaten his breakfast in silence. He did not disbelieve Jack’s evidence, but perhaps he hardly felt its force, and the sense of having been nearly concerned in committing an injustice, did not strike him as forcibly as it did the others. He felt, perhaps not unnaturally, a sense of intense irritation against the whole Fleming family, and a wish never to hear their names again. Besides, Jack was openly triumphant, and he could not doubt that Cherry was secretly so.

The conversation dropped therefore, and Alvar, as the weather brightened, ordered his horse and went out. Jack retreated to his books; and presently came the vicar, to hear the rights of the story about Chris Fleming.

Cheriton said as little as he could, declaring that the arrest had been an entire mistake, which they much regretted, and that Alvar would take care that it was set right to-morrow.

“Have you heard of the outbreak of reforming zeal at Elderthwaite?” asked Mr Ellesmere.

“Yes,” said Cheriton, colouring. “Miss Seyton told me about it, and besides, Clements was full of it when I saw him last. You see some new blood has come into the place, and there is a violent reaction, of course only among the few.”

“Yes. Clements came to consult me about writing to the bishop. They want to have a curate; but I am afraid the old parson has set all his strength against it, and there are plenty to back him up. Besides, I don’t see how the payment could be managed, as, of course, Miss Seyton will not act against her uncle. I told Clements to have patience; but a good deal of ill-feeling is cropping up. I wish you would go over and see if you can smooth things down a little.”

“Do you think I could?”

“Why, yes; you always take Elderthwaite abuses under your protection. You would be the only curate to please the parson and his parishioners, too!”

Mr Ellesmere spoke entirely in jest, and was exceedingly surprised when Cheriton answered seriously, —

“Indeed, I have thought so;” and then proceeded, at greater length than he had done with Jack, to unfold his project. He did not try to prepossess the vicar in its favour, nor touch on his home difficulties, save by saying that an idle life at Oakby would not suit him. He said plainly that he felt that only the peculiar circumstances of Elderthwaite, and his own independent means, could justify such a step in one who believed himself likely to have but little time and less strength before him. Would Mr Ellesmere explain the whole state of the case to the bishop, and ask – other matters being satisfactory – would he ordain him if the next spring he found himself capable of doing anything.

“And would this really content you, Cherry?” said Mr Ellesmere. “It would be clerical work in its most unattractive form, among, I should say, very unattractive people?”

“Not to me,” said Cheriton. “It would not be a distasteful life to me.”

“And then the climate here – ”

“That the doctors shall decide next spring,” said Cherry, smiling.

“I don’t see my way to it, my boy,” said Mr Ellesmere, struck by his fragile look. “You must not run risks, and you would take responsibilities upon you which would make each particular risk seem unavoidable.” Cheriton evidently did not see his way to a reply. His face fell. The vivid, vigorous nature, checked at every turn, was ever striving after a fresh outlet. The instinct to be up and doing, to put his hand to everything that came to it, could not be stifled by loss and disappointment, or even by want of physical health and strength. After a pause he said, in an altered voice, —

“There are things that make it seem as if that did not much matter. I mean it is my own concern now. A short life and a busy one is better than a few more months, or years even, like mine.”

“I do not think your life has ever been useless yet, Cherry, even under the limitations that have been laid on it,” said Mr Ellesmere, quietly.

Cheriton sat looking into the fire in silence, then he turned round and smiled with much of his old playful defiance, though there was a deeper undercurrent.

“You can keep a look-out on me all the winter, and tell the Elderthwaite reformers that they don’t know what may happen, if they will only have patience. Then next spring I’ll come and ask your advice again, and if you make out a very good case against me, why, I’ll give in.”

He uttered the last words slowly, and Mr Ellesmere fully understood all that they implied. He feared that the question might be answered for him before next spring.

Cherry himself felt that he had not taken a very favourable moment for putting forward his designs, for he was neither looking nor feeling well; and could hardly point to himself as a proof of the suitability of his native climate. Still the communication had given a certain point to look forward to, and was an individual interest apart from the confusing worry of affairs at Oakby. If, after the present crisis had subsided, Alvar still held to his intention of going to the sea with him, their old friendliness would soon supersede the present irritation. Then, afterwards, he would go to London, break up his arrangements there, and see the Stanforths, and would then spend Christmas with his grandmother. In the meantime he would be exceedingly prudent; and having regard both to the bad weather and to the charge of interference, would leave Alvar to go by himself to Hazelby to-morrow.

Alvar’s ride had been interrupted by an encounter with Edward Fleming, full of resentment, by no means unnatural, though it was by this time somewhat unreasonable, for he could hardly help believing that the accusation against Chris had been intentional. A very sturdy and recalcitrant north-countryman he showed himself, respectful indeed in word to the squire, but intensely conscious of his injuries, and giving the squire very plainly to understand that a full explanation before all the magistrates at Hazelby, not to say a full apology, was no more than his duty, and fully to be expected of him. It was an unfortunate meeting. An appeal to Alvar’s generosity and protection would have been instantly responded to; but the one form of pride roused the other, and stirred up the fear of dictation in his mind. He looked down at the sullen, resolute face of the young farmer with an expression of intense haughtiness, a look which, on the dark foreign face, seemed utterly hateful to Fleming, and said, as he made his horse move on, —

“That is as I shall please.”

“If you let my brother be wronged, sir,” said Fleming, “mark me, you’ll repent it. ’Tis not the way your father would treat an old tenant, nor your brother either. A dog had his rights at their hands.”

And in a rage, intensified by his consciousness of Alvar’s scorn, he flung off with a sense of injury which would have led an Irishman to fire a shot, but which, in the English farmer, meant opposing the squire in Church and State, disobliging him on every private and parochial question, taking on every occasion the other side, and carrying on this line of conduct till his dying day.

He was young, too, and, as he had remarked to Cheriton, had education, and he might confide his grievance to the county paper. But he was both too proud and too generous to appeal again to Cheriton; and, besides, he never supposed for a moment that the squire would withhold his evidence.

But Alvar’s wrath was hot within him. As master against servant, as head of the family against his juniors, above all, as gentleman against peasant, he felt bound to assert himself and his authority. No one should threaten him into begging off the boy who had insulted him, and whose family had so defied him. He would not yield to any one’s view of his duty. Let the insolent boy have a few weeks more of suspense; what did it matter? When the real trial came he would condescend to give evidence in his favour (subpoenas did not at that moment occur to his mind), and would explain to the judge why he had chosen to delay his evidence. Then every one would see with what vigour he could administer his estate; and perhaps he would, to please Cheriton, then of his own free will confer some benefit on the Flemings which would make everything smooth.

Of course Alvar was not so foolish as his intentions, but all his past negligence had resulted in an amount of present ignorance of his surroundings which made such a scheme appear possible to him. It did strike him that Cheriton might take the matter into his own hands, and go to Hazelby himself; but so great a point had been made of his own going that he hardly knew how far this would supersede the need for it, and he did not mean to provoke a discussion.

Circumstances favoured him; Jack was going to dine and sleep at Ashrigg, he himself had another dinner engagement, and on the next day he had really promised to go early and shoot with Lord Milford. Cheriton had forgotten all about this, and, anxious not to irritate Alvar, said nothing about the magistrates’ meeting during the short time they were together.

Chapter Nine.
A New Life

 
“His peaceful being slowly passes by
To some more perfect peace.”
 

The next morning Cheriton slept late, and awoke to the consciousness that he had caught a slight cold, “which,” as he said to himself, “might happen to any one.”

“Will you ask Mr Lester to come to me before he goes to Hazelby?” he said, not feeling quite able to satisfy himself that Alvar had all the needful evidence clear in his head.

“Mr Lester is not going to Hazelby, sir,” said the man; “he went to Lord Milford’s early this morning in the dog-cart. He left word that he would not disturb you, sir.”

The engagement at Milford flashed across Cheriton’s mind, and with dismay and indignation he perceived that Alvar had not thought it worth while to break it on Chris Fleming’s account. In a moment he recognised the utter ruin that would fall on all chance of Alvar’s success with his tenants, still more the disgrace that he would bring on himself in the eyes of the whole bench of magistrates, by the neglect of such an obvious duty, while on his own part he felt that it was such an unkindness as he hardly knew how to forgive. His first impulse was to let the matter alone, and to leave Alvar to bear the brunt of his own misdoings. But then the thought came of the distress to the Flemings, of the fatal injury to the boy from the weeks of undeserved detention, and, after all, the discredit would fall on them all alike. He forgot all his intention of nursing his cold, forgot its very existence, as he perceived, on looking at his watch, that he had barely time to reach Hazelby for the meeting.

“It is all the same,” he said, “my going to Hazelby will answer every purpose. Tell them to bring Molly round at once. As Mr Lester has the dog-cart, I will ride.”

“There is a very cold wind, and it looks like rain, sir.”

“That can’t be helped,” said Cheriton, “there is no time to lose.”

He tried to make his expedition seem a matter of course; but every one in the house believed that he went because the squire had gone off on his own pleasure, or out of what the old cook did not hesitate to call “nasty spite,” had refused to justify little Fleming. Indeed, as Cheriton rode hurriedly away, he could hardly divest himself of the same opinion.

In the meanwhile, Alvar no sooner found himself well on the way to Milford than he began to feel pangs of compunction. The cold wind and drizzling rain beat in his face, as the conviction was borne in upon him, that Cheriton would certainly go to Hazelby in his place. He had not been at Milford since the day of the great rejoicing, when Cheriton, with all his fresh honours, had met them there, had wooed, and, as he thought, won Ruth Seyton; when he himself was Virginia’s acknowledged lover. He called her to mind, as she had walked by his side in smiling content, as she played with the children – felt now, as he never had then, the wistfulness of her eyes when they met his, and almost for the first time he recognised that the want of devotion had been on his side. He had not loved her enough. A sense of discouragement and despondence seized on him, a deep melancholy softened the resentment which he had been cherishing. As he looked back on the years of his father’s neglect, on Virginia’s dismissal, on his brother’s views of what his position required, for once the sense of his shortcomings overpowered his sense of the many excuses for them. His indifference to the chance of Cheriton’s running a great risk touched him with a self-reproach for which his theories of life offered no palliative. He could not rest, and with a suddenness and vehemence of action most unusual with him, he turned to Lord Milford as they prepared to start on their day’s sport, declared that he had suddenly recollected an important engagement, and must beg them to excuse him at once; overruled all objections on the score of his horse wanting rest by declaring that he would only drive to the station, and go by train to Hazelby.

“I am humiliated by my want of courtesy to your lordship, but it is necessary that I should go,” he said; but what with the delay of starting, and the absence of a train at the last moment, the magistrates’ meeting was over long before he reached Hazelby, every one had dispersed, and the court-house was shut.

He could not bring himself to ask any questions; but ordered a conveyance and started on his way back to Oakby, hardly knowing whether to reveal his change of purpose or not. On the road he passed the three Fleming brothers, trudging home through the mud. They looked away, and omitted to touch their hats to him. Alvar said to himself that he did not care; but the sense of unpopularity can never be other than bitter. He thought to himself that after all English gentlemen did not always live on their estates. There were hundreds of his father’s rank who did not hold his father’s view of their duties. He could shut Oakby up, let it, go where he would never see it again. But where? Never as the disinherited heir would he set foot in Seville, and he had no craving to hunt tigers in India, or buffaloes on the prairies. He did not wish to go yachting; did not care to travel; he hated the fogs and the colourlessness of London. He was as little ready to cut himself loose from all his moorings as Cheriton himself. Suddenly, as he drove on, he saw one of the Oakby grooms riding fast towards him. The man pulled up as he passed.

“Mr Cheriton is ill, sir; Mrs Lester is there, and she sent me for the doctor.”

Alvar felt as if he had been shot.

“Ride on,” he said, breathlessly; then seized the driver of the trap by the shoulder – “Drive fast; I will give you five pounds if you will drive fast. My brother is ill; he will want me.”

“Ay, sir – all right, sir,” said the lad, lashing up his horse.

Alvar felt as if a telegraph would have been slow; but he folded his arms, and sat like a statue till they reached the door, when he sprang out, and at the foot of the stairs saw Jack.

“Alvar! you here!” he exclaimed.

“What is it? – where is he? – what has happened? – tell me!” cried Alvar.

“Cherry went to Hazelby, of course, to clear Chris, as you were out of the way. He was so done up when he came back, and seems so evidently in for just such a bad attack as he had before, that granny, who came back here with me, sent for Mr Adamson. Yes, he is in bed; he was wet through.”

Jack’s face was like thunder; but Alvar dashed past him upstairs, and opened the door of his brother’s room.

Cheriton was sitting up in bed. He had recovered a little from the exhaustion of his hasty ride, and though suffering much pain and oppression, was spending some of the little breath he had left, in trying to explain matters to his grandmother.

“You always were a perverse lad, or you would not be using your voice now, Cherry,” she said. “When your brother comes back, I shall give him a piece of my mind.”

“There he is,” cried Cherry. There was a look in his eyes for a moment as if he hardly knew how they were to meet; but as Alvar advanced into the room, all his vehemence subsided. He came up to the bed, and laid his hand on Cheriton’s with the old tender touch.

“You are ill, mi caro. I think you must not talk so much just now.”

Cheriton looked up in his face, and read in it, steady as was the voice, an altogether new terror and trouble.

“This is my own fault,” he said. “I was in such a hurry – that – I would not wait for the carriage. After all, there would have been time.”

“Oh, my brother – my brother!” cried Alvar, losing his self-control, “your fault! Grandmother, it is I who have let him kill himself.”

“You are just crazy,” said Mrs Lester, agitated and angry, as Alvar rushed up to her, and threw himself on his knees beside her chair, clasping her hands in his. “I don’t care whose fault it is. No doubt you are one as bad as the other. For the last half hour I have been trying to make Cherry hold his tongue, and now you make a worse turmoil than ever. Since my poor son went there is no one to look to.”

Mrs Lester was shaken and terrified by the shock of sudden alarm, and agitated by Alvar’s extraordinary behaviour, and thus her still fresh grief came back on her, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, granny, don’t – don’t!” cried Cherry, and the distress of his tone recalled Alvar to his senses.

“Oh, I am a fool!” he said, and getting up, he applied himself to soothe his grandmother with all the tact of which he was master, and was so successful, that in a few minutes she went away in search of some remedy for Cheriton, who, as he was left alone with his brother, felt, spite of his increasing suffering, the old sense of repose in Alvar’s care creep over him.

“As violent an attack as the last, and much less strength to meet it,” was the doctor’s verdict, and the great common terror hushed for the time all disputes and differences.

Mrs Lester remained at Oakby, Nettie had returned to London a few days previously, and both she and Bob held themselves ready for a sudden summons.

Mrs Lester questioned Alvar on that first evening about all that had passed, in a dry, caustic fashion, while he answered, meekly enough. “Why, ye’ll have made yourself a laughing-stock to the whole place,” was her only comment on the story of the horsewhipping.

Alvar coloured to his temples, but said nothing; the reproach of Jack’s silent misery was much harder to bear. He who knew how all the last weeks had been troubled by Alvar’s fault, could not forgive, and felt that if Cheriton died, he could never bear the sight of Alvar again.

Alvar himself was shaken and disturbed as he had never been before. He had lost all the calm hopefulness and power of living in the present, that had made him such a support in Cheriton’s previous illness; and though he was still a devoted and efficient nurse to him, there were times when he was quite unable to control his distress. He was frightened, and expected the worst; and poor Jack had to try to encourage him, a process that much softened his indignation.

All this was fully apparent to Cheriton. There was no longer the daze and confusion of that first attack of illness, the boyish astonishment at the fact of being ill at all, the novelty of all the surroundings, now, alas! so familiar; no longer, too, the sense that the exceeding sweetness of life made death incredible; no longer the same instinctive dependence on those around. Since then Cheriton had travelled a long way on the road of life, had looked across the dark river, and grown familiar with the thought of its other shore; he was no longer frightened at his own suffering, or at its probable result, and, as his senses were generally clear, except sometimes at night, or when under the influence of the remedies, he was able to think for others – a habit in which he had gained considerable skill.

He made Alvar write to Mr Stanforth, and beg that Gipsy might write to Jack, knowing that the surprise and joy of such a letter, and the relief of pouring out his heart in the answer, must lighten the heavy weight of the poor boy’s anxiety; and so, in truth, it did, though Jack could never trust himself to thank Cherry for his kind thought. He also made the vicar go to Edward Fleming, and tell him that Alvar had only been a few minutes too late in coming to give evidence, and to entreat him to lay aside any ill-feeling for the misunderstanding “which,” he said, “was partly caused by my bad management.” He thought much about the state of affairs at Elderthwaite, or rather, perhaps, recalled at intervals much previous thinking. He was not equal to anything like a connected conversation, and he knew that no one would let the poor vehement old parson come near him; but he greatly astonished his grandmother by telling her that he had an especial desire to see Virginia Seyton.

“I cannot talk enough to tell you why,” he said; “but, granny, do get her to come.”

Mrs Lester promised; for how could she refuse him? He gave a good many directions to Mr Ellesmere, and in especial desired that a certain cup, won many years ago at some county athletic sports in a contest with his cousin Rupert, should be given to him as a remembrance.

From only one thing Cheriton’s whole heart shrank, and that was from forcing Jack to listen to parting words. He had several things to say to him, but he put them off; he could not bear the sight of Jack’s grief, and in this case could not trust his own self-command. It was the one parting that he could not yet face.