The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

These were the words, doubtful and suggestive, which made every heart in Seat-Sandal thoroughly uncomfortable. And yet Charlotte stoutly said, "I would not mind Sophia's insinuations, father and mother. She is angry at Harry. Harry has as much right in Florence as Sophia has. He told us he was going there. He has written to us frequently. Suppose he was with a beautiful girl: is Julius the only young man entitled to such a privilege? Sophia is happy in her own way, and we do not envy nor interfere with her happiness; but why should we permit her to make us unhappy? Throw the letter out of your memories, dear father and mother. It is only a piece of ill-nature. Perhaps Julius had been cross with her; and if Sophia has a grievance, she never rests until she passes it on to some one."

Women still hold the divining-cup, and Charlotte was not far wrong in her supposition. In spite of their twinship of soul, and in spite of that habit of loving which was involved in their belief "that they had been husband and wife in many a previous existence," Mr. and Mrs. Julius Sandal disagreed as conventionally as the ordinary husband and wife of one existence. The day on which the Florence letter was written had been a very unhappy one for Sophia. Julius had quarrelled with her about some very trivial affair, and had gone out in a temper disgracefully at variance with the occasion for it; and Sophia had sat all day nursing her wrath in her darkened room. She did not dress for the evening drive, for she had determined to "keep up" her anger until Julius made her some atonement.

But when he came home, she could not resist his air of confidence and satisfaction. He had quite forgotten the affair at the breakfast-table, and was only eager for her help and sympathy. "I have seen Harry," he said.

"Very well. You came here to find him. I suppose I can see him also. I am sure I need to see some one. I have been neglected all day; suffering, lonely,"—

"Sophia, you and I are here to look after our own affairs a little. If you are willing to help me, I shall be glad; if not"—

"You know I will help you in any thing I can, Julius."

Then he kissed her, and she cried a little, and he kissed her again; and she dressed herself, and they went for a drive, and during it met Harry, and brought him back to dine with them. Julius was particularly pleasant to the unsuspicious soldier. He soon perceived that he was thoroughly disgusted with the rigor and routine of military life, and longing to free himself from its thraldom; and he encouraged him in the idea.

"I wonder how you stand it, Harry," he said sympathetically.

"You see, Julius, when I went into the army, I was so weary of Sandal-Side; and I liked the uniform, and the stir of an officer's life, and the admiration of the girls, and the whole éclat of the thing. But when a man's time comes, and he falls so deeply in love that he cares for nothing on earth but one woman, then he hates whatever comes between himself and that woman."

"Naturally so. I suppose it is the young lady I saw you walking with this morning."

And Harry blushed like a girl as he gravely nodded his head.

"Does she live here?"

"She will for the future."

"And you must go back to your regiment?"

"Almost immediately."

"Too bad! Too bad! Why not leave the army?"

"I—I have thought of that; but unless I returned to Sandal-Side, my father would be angry beyond every thing."

"Fathers cannot be autocrats—quite. You might sell out."

"Julius, you ought not to suggest such a thing. The temptation has been lurking in my own heart. I am sorry you have given it a voice. It would be a shameful thing to do unless father were willing."

"I have a friend anxious for a commission. I should think a thousand pounds would make an exchange."

"Do not speak on the subject, Julius."

"Very well. I was only supposing; a fellow-feeling, you know. I have married the girl I desired; and I am sorry for a young man who is obliged to leave a handsome mistress, and to feel that others may see her and talk to her while he cannot. It was only a supposition. Do not mind it."

But the germ of every wrong deed is the reflection whether it be possible. And after Harry had gone away with the thought in his heart, Julius sat musing over his own plans, and Sophia wrote the letter which so unnecessarily and unkindly shadowed the pleasant life at Seat-Sandal. For though the squire pooh-poohed it, and Charlotte professed indifference about it, and Mrs. Sandal kept assuring herself and others that "Harry never, never would do any thing wrong or unkind, especially about a woman," every one was apprehensive and watchful. But at last, even suspicion tires of watching for events that never happen; and Sophia sent other letters, and made no mention of Harry; and the fear that had crouched at each home-heart slunk away into forgetfulness.

Into total forgetfulness. When Harry voluntarily came home for Christmas, no one coupled his visit with the remarks made by Sophia four months previously. They had not expected to see him, and the news of his advent barely reached the house before he followed it; for there was a heavy snow-storm, and the mail was sent forward with difficulty. So Mrs. Sandal was reading the letter announcing his visit when she heard his voice in the hall, and the joyful cry of Charlotte as she ran to meet him. And that night every one was too happy, too full of inquiry and information, to notice that Harry was under an unusual restraint. It did not even strike Charlotte until she awoke the next morning with all her faculties fresh and clear; then she felt, rather than understood, that there was something not quite right about Harry.

It was still snowing, and every thing was white; but the atmosphere of a quiet, happy Christmas was in the house. There were smiling faces and good wishes at the breakfast-table, and the shifting lustres of blazing fires upon the dark walls and evergreens and wax-white mistletoe. And the wind brought a Christmas greeting from the bells of Furness and Torver, and Sandal-Side peal sent it on to Earlstower and Coniston. After breakfast they all went to church; and Harry saw, as in a dream, the sacred table spread with spotless cloth and silver cups and flagons, and the dim place decked with holly, and the smiling glance of welcome from his old acquaintances in the village. And he fell into a reverie which was not a Christmas reverie, and had it suddenly broken by his sister singing high and clear the carol the angels sung on the hills of Bethlehem,—"Glory be to God on high!" And the tears sprang into his eyes, and he looked stealthily at his father and mother, who were reverently listening; and said softly to himself, "I wish that I had never been born."

For he had come to tell his father news which he knew would shake the foundations of love and life; and he felt like a coward and a thief in delaying the explanation. "What right have I to this one day's more love?" he asked himself; and yet he could not endure to mar the holy, unselfish festival with the revelation of his own selfishness. As the day wore on, a sense of weariness and even gloom came with it. Rich food and wine are by no means conducive to cheerfulness. The squire sloomed and slept in his chair; and finally, after a cup of tea, went to bed. The servants had a party in their own hall, and Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte were occupied an hour or two in its ordering. Then the mother was thoroughly weary; and before it was quite nine o'clock, Harry and Charlotte were left alone by the parlor fire. Charlotte was a little dull also; for Steve had found it impossible to get down the mountain during the storm, and she missed him, and was constantly inclined to fall into short silences.

After one of them, she raised her eyes to Harry's face, and was shocked by its expression. "Harry," she said, leaning forward to take his hand, "I am sure you are in trouble. What is it?"

"If I durst tell you, Charlotte!"

"Whatever you have dared to do, you may dare to tell me, Harry, I think."

"I have got married."

"Well, where is the harm? Is it to the lady whose picture you showed me?"

"Yes. I told you she was poor."

"It is a great pity she is poor. I am afraid we are getting poor too. Father was saying last week that he had been talking with Squire Beverley. Emily is to have fifteen thousand pounds. Father is feverishly anxious about you and Emily. Her fortune would be a great thing at Sandal, and father likes her."

"What is the use of talking about Emily? I have been married to Beatrice Lanza since last September."

"Such a strange name! Is it a Scotch name?"

"She is an Italian."

"Harry Sandal! What a shame!"

"Don't you think God made Italians as well as Englishmen?"

"That is not the question. God made Indians and negroes and all sorts of people. But he set the world in races, as he set races in families. He told the Jews to keep to themselves. He was angry when they intermarried with others. It always brought harm. What kind of a person is an Italian? They are papists, I know. The Pope of Rome is an Italian. O Harry, Harry, Harry! It will kill father and mother. But perhaps, as you met her in Edinburgh, she is a Protestant. The Scotch are all Protestants."

"Beatrice is a Roman Catholic, a very strict Roman Catholic. I had to marry her in a Romish church." He said the words rather defiantly, for Charlotte's attitude offended him; and he had reached that point when it was a reckless pleasure to put things at their worst.

"Then I am ashamed of you. The dear old rector! He married father and mother; he christened and confirmed you; you might be sure, that if you could not ask him to marry you, you had no business to marry at all."

"You said her face was like an angel's, and that you would love her, Charlotte."

"Oh, indeed! But I did not think the angel was an Italian angel and a Roman-Catholic angel. Circumstances alter cases. You, who have been brought up a good Church-of-England gentleman, to go over to the Pope of Rome!"

"I have not gone over to the Pope of Rome."

"All the same, Harry; all the same. And you know how father feels about that. Father would fight for the Church quicker than he would fight for his own house and land. Why! the Sandals got all of their Millom Estate for being good Protestants; for standing by the Hanoverian line instead of those popish Stuarts. Father will think you have committed an act of treason against both church and state, and he will be ashamed to show his face among the Dale squires. It is too bad! too bad for any thing!" and she covered her face, and cried bitterly.

"She is so lovely, so good"—

"Nonsense! Were there no lovely English girls? no good English girls? Emily is ten times lovelier."

"You know what you said."

"I said it to please you."

"Charlotte!"

"Yes, I did,—at least, in a great measure. It is easy enough to call a pretty girl an angel; and as for my promise to love your wife, of course I expected you would choose a wife suitable to your religion and your birth. Suppose you selected some outlandish dress,—an Italian brigand's, for instance,—what would the neighboring gentlemen think of you? It would be an insult to their national costume, and they would do right to resent it. Well, being who and what you are, you have no right to bring an Italian woman into Seat-Sandal. It is an insult to every woman in the county, and they will make you feel it."

"I shall not give them the opportunity. Beatrice cannot live in this beastly climate."

"The climate is wrong also? Naturally. It would follow the religion and the woman. Harry Sandal, I wish I had died, ere my ears had heard such a shame and sorrow for my father and mother! Where are you going to live, then?"

"In Florence. It is the birthplace of Beatrice the city associated with all her triumphs."

"God have mercy, Harry! Her triumphs! Is she, then, an actress?"

"She is a singer,—a wonderful singer; one to whom the world has listened with breathless delight."

"A singing woman! And you have married her? It is an outrage on your ancestors, and on your parents and sisters."

"I will not hear you speak in that way, Charlotte. Of course I married her. Did you wish me to ruin and debase her? That, I suppose, you could have forgiven. My sin against the Sandals and society is, that I married her."

"No, sir; you know better. Your sin is in having any thing whatever to do with her. There is not a soul in Sandal that would have hesitated between ruin and marriage. If it had to be one or the other, then father and mother both, then I, then all your friends, would have said without hesitation, 'Marry the woman.'"

"I expected and hoped this would be your view of the situation. I could not give up Beatrice, and I could not be a scoundrel to her."

"You might have thought of another woman besides Beatrice. Is a sin against a mother a less sin than one against a strange woman? A mother is something sacred. To wound her heart is to throw a stone at her. You have committed a sort of sacrilege. And you are married. No entreaties can prevent, and no repentance can avail. Oh, what a sorrow to darken all the rest of father's and mother's days! What right have you to spoil their lives, in order to give yourself a little pleasure? O Harry! I never knew that you were selfish before."

"I deserve all you say, Charley, but I loved Beatrice so much."

"Are you sure, even of that excuse? I heard you vow that you loved Eliza Pierson 'so much,' and Fanny Ulloch 'so much,' and Emily Beverley 'so much.' Why did you not come home, and speak to me before it was too late? Why come at all now?"

"Because I want to talk to you about money. I have sold out."

"Sold out? Is there any more bad news? Do you know what father paid for your commission? Do you know how it hampered him to do it? that, in fact, he has never been quite easy about ready money since?"

"I had to sell out. Did I not tell you that Beatrice could not live in this climate? She was very ill when she returned to Italy. Signor Lanza was in great trouble about her."

"Signor Lanza? Her brother, I suppose."

"You suppose wrong. He is her father."

"For her, then, you have given up your faith, your country, your home, your profession, every thing that other men hold dear and sacred. Do you expect father to support you? Or is your wife to sing in Italy?"

"I think you are trying how disagreeable you can be, Charlotte."

"I am asking you honest questions in honest words."

"I have the money from the sale of my commission."

"It does not then strike you as dishonorable to keep it?"

"No, father gave me it."

"It appears to me, that if money was taken from the estate, let us say to stock a sheep-walk, and it was decided after three years' trial to give up the enterprise, and sell the sheep, that the money would naturally go back to the estate. When you came of age, father made you a very generous allowance. After a time you preferred that he should invest a large sum in a military commission for you; and you proposed to live upon your pay,—a thing you never have even tried to do. Suddenly, you find that the commission will not suit your more recent plans, and you sell it. Ought not the money to go back to the estate, and you to make a fresh arrangement with father about your allowance? That is my idea."

"Foolishness! And pray what allowance would my father make me, after the marriage I have contracted?"

"Now, you show your secret heart, Harry. You know you have no right to expect one, and so you keep what is not yours. This sin also for the woman whom you have put before every sentiment of love and honor."

"You were stubborn enough about Steve Latrigg."

"I was honorable; I was considerate for father, and did not put Stephen before him. Do you think I would ever marry Stephen against father's wish, or to the injury or suffering of any one whom I love? Certainly I would marry no one else, but I gave father my word that I would wait for his sanction. When people do right, things come right for them. But if father had stood out twenty years, Steve and I would have waited. Ducie gave us the same advice. 'Wait, children,' she said: 'I have seen many a wilful match, and many a run-away match, but never one, never one that prospered.'"

"Charley, I expected you to stand by me. I expected you to help me."

"O Harry, Harry! How can I help? What can I do? There is nothing left but to suffer."

"There is this: plead for me when I am away. My wife is sick in Florence. I must go to her at once. The money I have from my commission is all I have. I am going to invest it in a little house and vineyard. I have found out that my real tastes are for a pastoral life."

"Ah, if you could only have found that out for father!"

"Circumstances may change."

"That is, your father may die. I suppose you and your wife have talked over that probability. Beatrice will be able to endure the climate then."

"If I did not see that you were under very strong excitement, Charlotte, I should be much offended by what you say. But you don't mean to hurt me. Do you imagine that I feel no sorrow in leaving father and my mother and you and the old home? My heart is very sad to-night, Charley. I feel that I shall come here no more."

"Then why go away? Why, why?"

"Because a man leaves father and mother and every thing for the woman he loves. Charley, help me."

She shook her head sadly.

"Help me to break the trouble to father."

"There is no 'breaking' it. It will break him. It will kill him. Alas, it is the ungrateful child that has the power to inflict a slow and torturing death! Poor father! Poor mother! And it is I that must witness it. I, that would die to save them from such undeserved sorrow."

Then Harry rose up angrily, pushed his chair impatiently away, and without a word went to his own room.

In the morning the squire came down to breakfast in exceedingly high spirits. A Scotchman would have called him "fey," and been certain that misfortune was at his heels. And Charlotte looked at him in wondering pity, for Harry's face was the face of a man determined to carry out his own will regardless of consequences.

"Come, come, Harry," said the squire in a loud, cheerful voice, "you are moping, and eating no breakfast. Charlotte will have to fill three times before it is 'cup down' with me. I think we will take Dobbin, and go over to Windermere in the tax-cart. The roads will be a bit sloppery, but Dobbin isn't too old to splash through them at a rattling pace. He is a famous good old-has-been is Dobbin. Give me a Suffolk Punch for a roadster. I set much by them. Eh? What?"

"I must leave Sandal this morning, sir."

"Sir me no sir, Harry. 'Father' will stand between you and me, I think. You must make a put-off for one day. I was at Bowness last week, and they say such a winter for char-fishing was never seen. While I was on the lakeside, Kit Noble's boat came in. He had all of twenty dozen in the bottom of it. Mr. Wordsworth was there too, and he made a piece of poetry about 'The silvery lights playing over them;' and he took me to see a picture that a London gentleman painted of Kit and his boat. You never saw fish out of the water look so fresh; their olive-green backs and vermillion bellies and dark-red fins were as natural as life. Come Harry, we will go and fetch over a few dozen. If you carry your colonel some, he will take the gift as an excuse for the day. Eh? What?"

"I think Harry had better not go with you, father."

"Eh? What is the matter with you, Charlotte? You are as nattert and cross as never was. Where is your mother? I like my morning cup filled with a smile. It helps the day through."

"Mother isn't feeling well. She had a bad dream about Harry and you, and she is making herself sick over it. She is all in a tremble. I didn't think mother was so foolish."

"Dreams are from somewhere beyond us, Charlotte. There's them that visit us a-dreaming. I am not so wise as to be foolish. I believe in some things that are outside of my short wits. Maybe we had better not go to Windermere. We might be tempted into a boat, and dry land is a middling bit safer. Eh? What?"

Charlotte felt as if she could endure her father's unsuspicious happiness no longer. It was like watching a little child smiling and prattling on the road to its mother's funeral. She put Mrs. Sandal's breakfast on a small tray, and with this in her hand went up-stairs, leaving Harry and the squire still at the table.

"Charlotte is a bit hurrysome this morning," he said; and Harry making no answer, he seemed suddenly to be struck with his attitude. He looked curiously at him a moment, and then lapsed into silence. "Harry wants money." That was his first thought, and he began to calculate how far he was able to meet the want. Even then, his only bitter reflection was, that Harry should suppose it necessary to be glum about it. "A cheerful asker is the next thing to a cheerful giver;" and to such musings he filled his pipe, and with a shadow of offence on his large ruddy face went into "the master's room" to smoke.

When kindly good-nature is snubbed, it feels it keenly; and there was a mist of tears in the squire's blue eyes when Harry followed, and he turned them on him. And it was part of his punishment, that, even in the first flush of the pleasure of his sin, he felt all the pangs of remorse.

"Father?"

"Well, well, Harry! I see you are wanting money again."

"It will be the last time. I am married, and am going to Italy to live."

"Eh? What?" The squire flushed hotly. His hand shook, his long clay pipe fell to the hearthstone, and was shattered to pieces.

Then a reckless desire to have the whole wrong out urged the unhappy son to a most cruel distinctness of detail. Without wasting a word in explanation or excuse, he stated broadly that he had fallen in love with the famous singer, Beatrice Lanza, and had married her. He spared himself or his father nothing; he appeared to gather a hard courage as he spoke of her failing health, her hatred of England, her devotion to her own faith, and the necessity of his retirement to Italy with her. He seemed determined to put it out of the power of any one to say worse of him than he had already said of himself. In conclusion he added, "I have sold my commission, and paid what I owed, and have very little money left. Life, however, is not an expensive affair in the village to which I am going. If you will allow me two hundred pounds a year I shall be very grateful."

"I will not give you one penny, sir."

The words came thick and heavy, and with great difficulty; though the wretched father had risen, and was standing by the table, leaning hard with both hands upon it.

He would not look at his son, though the young man went on speaking. He heard nothing that he said. In his ears there was the roaring of mighty waters. All the waves and the billows were going over him. For a few moments he struggled desperately with the black, advancing tide. His sight failed, it was growing dark. Then he threw the last forces of life into one terrible cry, and fell, as a great tree falls, heavily to the ground.

The cry rang through the house. The mother, trembling in her bed; Charlotte, crouching upon the stairs, fearing and listening; the servants, chattering in the kitchen and the chambers,—all heard it, and were for a moment horrified by the agony and despair it expressed. But ere the awful echo had quite subsided, Charlotte was at her father's side; in a moment afterwards, Mrs. Sandal, sobbing at every flying step, and still in her night-clothing, followed; and then servants from every quarter came rushing to the master's room.

There was no time for inquiry or lamentation. Harry and two of the men mounted swift horses in search of medical help. Others lifted the insensible man, and carried him tenderly to his bed. In a moment the atmosphere of the house had changed. The master's room, which had held for generations nothing but memories of pastoral business and sylvan pleasures, had suddenly become a place of sorrow. The shattered pipe upon the hearthstone made Charlotte utter a low, hopeless cry of pain. She closed the shutters, and put the burning logs upon the hearth safely together, and then locked the door. Alas! alas! they had carried the master out, and in Charlotte's heart there was a conviction that he would never more cross its threshold.