The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

In thy full sight our secret things go on;
Step after step, thy wrath
Follows the caitiff's path,
And in his triumph breaks his vile neck bone.
To all alike, thou meetest out their due,
Cubit for cubit, inch for inch,—stern, true."

At the word "true" he paused a moment, and touched with his finger an old black volume on one of the book-shelves. "'Stern, true,' whether Euripides says 'cubit for cubit,' or Moses 'an eye for an eye,' or Solomon that 'he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.' Stern, true; for surely that which a man sows he shall also reap."

After a while he went up-stairs and talked with Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte. They were much depressed and very anxious, and had what Charlotte defined "a homeless feeling." "But you must be biddable, Charlotte," said the rector; "you must remain here until Stephen returns. Ducie had business that could not wait, and who but Stephen should drive her? When he comes back, we will all look to it. You shall not be very long out of your own home; and, in the mean time, how welcome you are here!"

"It seems such a weary time, sir; so many months that we have been in trouble."

"It was all night long, once, with some tired, fearful ones 'toiling in rowing;' but in the fourth watch came Christ and help to them. It is nigh hand—the 'fourth watch'—with you; so be cheerful."

Yet it was the evening of the sixth day before Ducie and Stephen returned. It was still raining heavily, and Ducie only waited a moment or two at the rectory gate. Charlotte was amazed to see the old clergyman hasten through the plashing shower to speak to her. "Surely Ducie's business must have a great deal of interest to the rector, mother: he has gone out to speak to her, and such weather too."

"Ducie was always a favorite with him. I hope, now that her affairs have been attended to, ours may receive some care."

Charlotte answered only by a look of sympathy. It had seemed to her a little hard that their urgent need must wait upon Ducie's business; that Stephen should altogether leave them in their extremity; that her anxious inquiries and suggestions, her plans and efforts about their new home, should have been so coldly received, and so positively put aside until Ducie and Stephen came back. And she had a pang of jealousy when she saw the rector, usually so careful of his health, hasten with slippered feet and uncovered head, through the wet, chilling atmosphere, to speak to them.

He came back with a radiant face, however, and Charlotte could hear him moving about his study; now rolling out a grand march of musical Greek syllables from Homer or Euripides, anon breaking into some familiar verse of Christian song. And, when tea was served, he went up-stairs for the ladies, and escorted them to the table with a manner so beaming and so happily predictive that Charlotte could not but catch some of its hopeful spirit.

Just as they sat down to the tea-table, the wet, weary travellers reached Up-Hill. With a sigh of pleasure and content, Ducie once more passed into its comfortable shelter; and never had it seemed to her such a haven of earthly peace. Her usually placid face bore marks of strong emotion; she was physically tired; and Stephen was glad to see her among the white fleeces of his grandfather's big chair, with her feet outstretched to the blazing warmth of the fire, and their cosey tea-service by her side. Always reticent with him, she had been very tryingly so on their journey. No explanation of it had been given; and he had been permitted to pass his time among the looms in Ireland's mill, while she and the lawyer were occupied about affairs to which even his signature was not asked.

As they sat together in the evening, she caught his glance searching her face tenderly; and she bent forward, and said, "Kiss me, Stephen, my dear lad. I have seen this week how kind and patient, how honorable and trustful, thou art. Well, then, the hour has come that will try thy love to the uttermost. But wise or unwise, all that has been done has been done with good intent, and I look for no word to pain me from thy mouth. Stephen, what is thy name?"

"Stephen Latrigg."

"Nay, but it isn't."

Stephen blushed vividly; his mother's face was white and calm. "I would rather be called Latrigg than—the other name, than by my father's name."

"Has any one named thy father to thee?"

"Charlotte told me what you and she said on the matter. She understood his name to be Pattison. We were wondering if our marriage could be under my adopted name, that was all, and things like it."

Ducie was watching his handsome face as he spoke, and feeling keenly the eager deprecation of pain to herself, mingling with the natural curiosity about his own identity, which the cloud upon his early years warranted. She looked at him steadily, with eyes shining brightly through tears.

"Your name is not Pattison, neither is it Latrigg. When you marry Charlotte Sandal, it must be by your own true name; and that is Stephen Sandal."

"Stephen Sandal, mother?"

"Yes. You are the son of Launcelot Sandal, the late squire's eldest brother."

"Then, mother, then I am—What am I, mother?"

"You are squire of Sandal-Side and Torver. No living man but you has a right to the name, or the land, or to Seat-Sandal."

"I should have known this before, mother."

"I think not. We had, father and I, what we believed good reasons, and kind reasons, for holding our peace. But times and circumstances have changed; and, where silence was once true friendship and kindness, it is now wrong and cruelty. Many years ago, Stephen, when I was young and beautiful, Launcelot Sandal loved me. And my father and Launcelot's father loved each other as David and Jonathan loved. They were scarcely happy apart; and not even to please the proud mistress Charlotte, would the squire loosen the grip of heart and hand between them. But your father was more under his mother's influence: proud lad as he was, he feared her; and when she discovered his love for me, there was such a scene between them as no man will go through twice in his lifetime. I have no excuse to make for marrying him secretly except the old, old one, Stephen. I loved him, loved him as women have loved, and will love, from the beginning to the end of time."

"Dear mother, there was no wrong in that. But why did you let the world think you loved a man beneath you? an uneducated shepherd like my reputed father? That wronged not only you, but those behind and those after you."

"We were afraid of many things, and we wished to spare the friendship between our fathers. There were many other reasons, scarcely worth repeating now."

"And what became of the shepherd?"

"He was not Cumberland born. He came from the Cheviot Hills, and was always fretting for the border life: so he gladly fell in with the proposal your father made him. One summer morning he said he was going to herd the lambs on Latrigg Fell, but he went to Egremont. Your father had gone there a week before; but he came back that night, and met me at Ravenglass. We were married in Egremont church, by Parson Sellafield, and went to Whitehaven, where we lived quietly and happily for many a week. Pattison witnessed our marriage, and then, with gold in his pocket, took the border road. He went to Moffat and wed the girl he loved, and has been shepherding on Loch Fell ever since."

"He is alive, then?"

"He is at the Salutation Inn at Ambleside to-night. So, also, is Parson Sellafield, and the man and woman with whom we staid in Whitehaven, and in whose house you were born and lived until your fourth year. They are called Chisholm, and have been at Up-Hill many times."

"I remember them."

"And I did not intend that they should forget you."

"I have always heard that Launcelot Sandal was drowned."

"You have always heard that your father was drowned? That was near by the truth. While in Whitehaven, he wrote to his brother Tom, who was living and doing well in India. When his answer came, we determined to go to Calcutta; but I was not in a state of health fit for such a journey as that then was. So it was decided that your father should go first, and get a home ready for me. He left in the 'Lady Liddel,' and she was lost at sea. Your father was in an open boat for many days, and died of exhaustion."

"Who told you so, mother?"

"The captain lived to reach his home again, and he brought me his watch and ring and last message. He never saw your face, my lad, he never saw your face."

A silence of some minutes ensued. Ducie had long ceased to weep for her dead love, but he was unforgotten. Her silence was not oblivion: it was a sanctuary where lights were burning round the shrine, over which the wings of affection were folded.

"When my father was gone, then you came back to Up-Hill?"

"No: I did not come back until you were in your fourth year. Then my mother died, and I brought you home. At the first moment you went straight to your grandfather's heart; and that night, as you lay asleep upon his knee, I told him the truth, as I tell it to you this night. And he said to me, 'Ducie, things have settled a bit lately. The squire has got over his trouble about Launcie; and young William is the acknowledged heir, and the welcome heir. He is going to marry Alice Morecombe at the long last, but it will make a big difference if Launcelot's son steps in where nobody wants him. Now, then,' he said, 'I will tell thee a far better way. We will give this dear lad my own name, none better in old Cumbria; and we will save gold, and we will make gold, to put it to the very front in the new times that are coming. And he will keep my name on the face of the earth, and so please the great company of his kin behind him. And it will be far better for him to be the top-sheaf of the Latriggs, than to force his way into Seat-Sandal, where there is neither love nor welcome for him.'

"And I thought the same thing, Stephen; and after that, our one care was to make you happy, and to do well to you. That you were a born Sandal, was a great joy to him, for he loved your father and your grandfather; and, when Harry came, he loved him also, and he liked well to see you two on the fells together. Often he called me to come and look at you going off with your rods or guns; and often he said, 'Both fine lads, Ducie, but our Steve is the finer.'"

"Oh, mother, I cannot take Harry's place! I love Harry, and I did not know how much until this hour"—

"Stop a bit, Stephen. When Harry grew up, and went into the army, your grandfather wasn't so satisfied with what he had done. 'Here's a fine property going to sharpers and tailors and Italian singing-women,' he used to say; and he felt baddish about it. And yet he loved Squire William, as he had loved his father, and Mistress Alice and Harry and Sophia and Charlotte; why, he thought of them like his own flesh and blood. And he could not bear to undo his kindness. And he could not bear to tell Squire William the truth, for he knew well that he would undo it. So one day he sent for Lawyer Moser; and the two of them together found out a plan that seemed fair, for both Sandal and Latrigg.

"You were to remain Stephen Latrigg, unless it was to ward off wrong or ruin in Sandal-Side. But if ever the day came when Sandal needed Latrigg, you were to claim your right, and stand up for Sandal. Such a state of things as Harry brought about, my father never dreamed of. He would not have been able to think of a man selling away his right to a place like Seat-Sandal; and among all the villains he ever knew, or heard tell of, he couldn't have picked out one to lead him to such a villain as Julius Sandal. So, you see, he left no special directions for such a case, and I was a bit feared to move in too big a hurry; and, maybe, I was a bit of a coward about setting every tongue in Sandal-Side talking about me and my bygone days.

"But, when the squire died, I thought from what Charlotte told me of the Julius Sandals, that there would have to be a change; and when I saw your grandfather sorting the papers for me, and heard that Mistress Alice and Charlotte had been forced to leave their home, I knew that the hour for the change had struck, and that I must be about the business. Moser was written to soon after the funeral of Squire William. He has now all the necessary witnesses and papers ready. He is at Ambleside with them, and to-morrow morning they will have a talk with Mr. Julius at Seat-Sandal."

"I wonder where Harry Sandal is."

"After you, comes Harry. Your grandfather did not forget him. There is a provision in the will, which directs, that if, for any cause not conceivable by the testator, Harry Sandal must resign in favor of Stephen Sandal, then the land and money devised to you, as his heir, shall become the property of Harry Sandal. In a great measure you would only change places, and that is not a very hard punishment for a man who cared so little for his family home as Harry did. So you see, Stephen, you must claim your rights in order to give Harry his."

The facts of this conversation opened up endlessly to the mother and son, and hour after hour it was continued without any loss of interest. But the keenest pleasure his new prospects gave Stephen referred itself to Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte. He could now reinstate them in their old home and in their old authority in it. For the bright visions underneath his eyelids, he could not sleep,—visions of satisfied affection, and of grief and humiliation crowned with joy and happiness and honor.

It had been decided that Stephen should drive his mother to the rectory in the morning, and there they were to wait the result of Moser's interview with Julius. The dawning came up with sunshine; the storm was over, the earth lay smiling in that "clear shining after rain," which is so exhilarating and full of promise. The sky was as blue, the air as fresh, fell and wood, meadow and mountain, as clean and bright as if they had just come new from the fingers of the Almighty. Ducie was handsomely dressed in dark violet-colored satin, and Stephen noticed with pride how well her rich clothing and quiet, dignified manner became her; while Ducie felt even a greater pride in the stately, handsome young man who drove her with such loving care down Latrigg fell that eventful morning.