I, Thou, and the Other One: A Love Story

“Was there no one there that didn’t think as he did?”

“I heard only one dissenting voice. It came from a Minister. He called out, ‘Lads and lasses, take no heed of what this fellow says to you. He is nothing but a Dreamer.’ Instantly Edgar took up the word. ‘A Dreamer!’ he cried joyfully. ‘So be it! What says the old Hebrew prophet? Look to your Bible, sir. Let him that hath a dream tell it. Dreamers have been the creators, the leaders, the saviours of the world. And we will go on dreaming until our dream comes true!’ The crowd answered him with a sob and a shout–and, oh, I wish you had been there!”

Kate uttered involuntarily a low, sympathetic cry that she could not control, and Mrs. Atheling wept and smiled; and when North added, in a lower voice full of feeling, “There is no one like Edgar, and I love him as Jonathan loved David!” she went straight to the speaker, took both his hands in hers, and kissed him.

“Thou art the same as a son to me,” she said, “and thou mayst count on my love as long as ever thou livest.” And in this cry from her heart she forgot her company pronoun, and fell naturally into the familiar and affectionate “thou.”

Fortunately at this point of intense emotion a servant entered with a flagon of the famous ale, and some bread and cheese; and the little interruption enabled all to bring themselves to a normal state of feeling. Then the mother thought of Edgar’s clothing, and asked North if he could take it to him. North smiled. “He is a little of a dandy already,” he answered. “I saw him last week at Lady Durham’s, and he was the best dressed man in her saloon.”

“Now then!” said Mrs. Atheling, “thou art joking a bit. Whatever would Edgar be doing at Lady Durham’s?”

“He had every right there, as he is one of Lord Durham’s confidential secretaries.”

“Art thou telling me some romance?”

“I am telling you the simple truth.”

“Then thou must tell me how such a thing came about.”

“Very naturally. I told Lord Grey and his son-in-law, Lord Durham, about Edgar–and I persuaded Edgar to come and speak to the spur and saddle-makers at Ripon Cross; and the two lords heard him with delight, and took him, there and then, to Studley Royal, where they were staying; and it was in those glorious gardens, and among the ruins of Fountains Abbey, they planned together the Reform Campaign for the next Parliament.”

“The Squire thinks little of Lord Grey,” said Mrs. Atheling.

“That is not to be wondered at,” answered North. “Lord Grey is the head and heart of Reform. When he was Mr. Charles Grey, and the pupil of Fox, he presented to Parliament the famous Prayer, from the Society of Friends, for Reform. That was thirty-seven years ago, but he has never since lost sight of his object. By the side of such leaders as Burke, and Fox, and Sheridan, his lofty eloquence has charmed the House until the morning sun shone on its ancient tapestries. He and his son-in-law, Lord Durham, have the confidence of every honest man in England. And he is brave as he is true. More than once he has had the courage to tell the King to his face what it was his duty to do.”

“And what of Lord Durham?” asked Kate.

“He is a masterful man,–a bolder Radical than most Radicals. All over the country he is known as Radical Jack. He has a strong, resolute will, but during the last half-year he has leaned in all executive matters upon ‘Mr. Atheling.’ Indeed, there was enthusiastic talk last week at Lady Durham’s of sending ‘Mr. Atheling’ to the next Parliament.”

“My word! But that would never do!” exclaimed Mr. Atheling’s mother. “His father is going there for the landed interest; and if Edgar goes for the people, there will be trouble between them. They will get to talking back at each other, and the Squire will pontify and lay down the law, even if the King and the Law-makers are all present. He will indeed!”

“It would be an argument worth hearing, for Edgar would neither lose his temper nor his cause. Oh, I tell you there will be great doings in London next winter! The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel will have to go out; and Earl Grey will surely form a new Government.”

“The Squire says Earl Grey and Reform will bring us into civil war.”

“On the contrary, only Reform can prevent civil war. Hitherto, the question has been, ‘What will the Lords do?’ Now it is, ‘What must be done with the Lords?’ For once, all England is in dead earnest; and the cry everywhere is, ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but The Bill!’ And if we win, as win we must, we shall remember how Edgar Atheling has championed the cause. George the Fourth is on his death-bed,” he added in a lower voice. “He will leave his kingdom in a worse plight than any king before him. I, who have been through the land, may declare so much.”

“The poor are very poor indeed,” said Mrs. Atheling. “Kate and I do what we can, but the most is little.”

“The whole story of the poor is–slow starvation. The best silk weavers in England are not able to make more than eight or nine shillings a week. Thousands of men in the large towns are working for two-pence half-penny a day; and thousands have no work at all.”

“What do they do?” whispered Kate.

“They die. But I did not come here to talk on these subjects–only when the heart is full, the mouth must speak. I have brought a letter and a remembrance from Edgar,” and he took from his pocket a letter and two gold rings, and gave the letter and one ring to Mrs. Atheling, and the other ring to Kate. “He bid me tell you,” said North, “that some day he will set the gold round with diamonds; but now every penny goes for Reform.”

“And you tell Edgar, sir, that his mother is prouder of the gold thread than of diamonds. Tell him, she holds her Reform ring next to her wedding ring,”–and with the words Mrs. Atheling drew off her “guard” of rubies, and put the slender thread of gold her son had sent her next her wedding ring. At the same moment Kate slipped upon her “heart finger” the golden token. Her face shone, her voice was like music: “Tell Edgar, Mr. North,” she said, “that my love for him is like this ring: I do not know its beginning; but I do know it can have no end.”

Then North rose to go, and would not be detained; and the women walked with him to the very gates, and there they said “good-bye.” And all the way through the garden Mrs. Atheling was sending tender messages to her boy, though at the last she urged North to warn him against saying anything “beyond bearing” to his father, if they should meet on the battle-ground of the House of Commons. “It is so easy to quarrel on politics,” she said with all the pathos of reminiscent disputes.

“It has always been an easy quarrel, I think,” answered North. “Don’t you remember when Joseph wanted to pick a quarrel with his brethren, he pretended to think they were a special commission sent to Egypt to spy out the nakedness of the land?”

“To be sure! And that is a long time ago. Good-bye! and God bless thee! I shall never forget thy visit!”

“And we wish ‘The Cause’ success!” added Kate.

“Thank you. Success will come. They who care and dare can do anything.” With these words he passed through the gates, and Mrs. Atheling and Kate went slowly back to the house, both of them turning the new ring on their fingers. It was dinner-time, but little dinner was eaten. Edgar’s letter was to read; Mr. North to speculate about; and if either of the women remembered Lord Exham’s expected call, no remark was made about it.

Yet Kate was neither forgetful of the visit, nor indifferent to it. A sweet trouble of heart, half-fear and half-hope, flushed her cheeks and sent a tender light into her star-like eyes. In the very depths of her being there existed a feeling she did not understand, and did not investigate. Was it Memory? Was it Hope? Was it Love? She asked none of these questions. But she dressed like a girl in a dream; and just as she was sliding the silver buckle on her belt, a sudden trick of memory brought back to her the rhyme of her childhood. And though she blushed to the remembrance, and would not for anything repeat the words, her heart sang softly to itself,–

“It may so happen, it may so fall,
That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall.”

CHAPTER THIRD

THE LORD OF EXHAM

On the very edge of the deep, tumbling becks which feed the Esk stands Exham Hall. It is a stately, irregular building of gray stone; and when the sunshine is on its many windows, and the flag of Richmoor flying from its central tower, it looks gaily down into the hearts of many valleys, where

“The oak, and the ash, and the bonny ivy-tree,
Flourish at home in the North Countree.”

Otherwise, it has, at a distance, a stern and forbidding aspect. For it is in a great solitude, and the babble of the beck, and the cawing of the rooks, are the only sounds that usually break the silence. The north part was built in A. D. 1320; and the most modern part in the reign of James the First; and yet so well has it stood the wear and tear of elemental and human life in this secluded Yorkshire vale that it does not appear to be above a century old.

It was usually tenanted either by the dowager of the family, or the heir of the dukedom; and it had been opened at this time to receive its young lord on his return from Italy. So it happened that at the very hour when Mrs. and Miss Atheling were talking with Cecil North, Piers Exham was sitting in a parlour of Exham Hall, thinking of Kate, and recalling the events of their acquaintanceship. It had begun when he was seventeen years old, and Kate Atheling exactly twelve. Indeed, because it was her birthday, she was permitted to accompany an old servant going to Exham Hall to visit the housekeeper, who was her cousin.

This event made a powerful impression on Kate’s imagination. It was like a visit to some enchanted castle. She felt all its glamour and mystery as soon as her small feet trod the vast entrance hall with its hangings of Arras tapestry, and its flags and weapons from every English battlefield. Her fingers touched lightly standards from Crecy, and Agincourt, and the walls of Jerusalem; and her heart throbbed to the touch. And as she climbed the prodigiously wide staircase of carved and polished oak, she thought of the generations of knights, and lords and ladies, who had gone up and down it, and wondered where they were. And oh, the marvellous old rooms with their shadowy portraits, and their treasures from countries far away!–shells, and carved ivories, and sandalwood boxes; strange perfumes, and old idols, melancholy, fantastic, odd; musky-smelling things from Asia; and ornaments and pottery from Africa, their gloomy, primitive simplicity, mingling with pretty French trifles, and Italian bronzes, and costly bits of china.

It was all like an Arabian Night’s adventure, and hardly needed the touches of romance and superstition the housekeeper quite incidentally threw in: thus, as they passed a very, very tall old clock with a silver dial on a golden face, she said: “Happen, you would not believe it, but on every tenth of June, a cold queer light travels all round that dial. It begins an hour past midnight, and stops at an hour past noon. I’ve seen it myself a score of times.” And again, in going through a state bed-room, she pointed out a cross and a candlestick, and said, “They are made from bits of a famous ship that was blown up with an Exham, fighting on the Spanish Main. I’ve heard tell that candles were once lighted in that stick on his birthday; but there’s been no candle-lighting for a century, anyway.” And Kate thought it was a shame, and wished she knew his birthday, and might light candles again in honour of the hero.

With such sights and tales, her childish head and heart were filled; and the mazy gardens, with their monkish fish-ponds and hedges, their old sun-dials and terraces, their ripening berries and gorgeous flower-beds, completed her fascination. She went back to Atheling ravished and spellbound; too wrapt and charmed to talk much of what she had seen, and glad when she could escape into the Atheling garden to think it all over again. She went straight to her swing. It was hung between two large ash-trees, and there were high laurel hedges on each side. In this solitude she sat down to remember, and, as she did so, began to swing gently to-and-fro, and to sing to her movement,–

“It may so happen, it may so fall,
That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall.”

And as she sung these lines over and over–being much pleased with their unexpected rhyming–the young Lord of Exham Hall came through Atheling garden. He heard his own name, and stood still to listen; then he softly parted the laurel bushes, and watched the little maid, and heard her sing her couplet, and merrily laugh to herself as she did so. And he saw how beautiful she was, and there came into his heart a singular warmth and pleasure; but, without discovering himself to the girl, he delivered his message to Squire Atheling, and rode away.

The next morning, however, he managed to carry his fishing-rod to the same beck where Edgar Atheling was casting his line, and to so charm the warm-hearted youth that meeting after meeting grew out of it. Nor was it long until the friendship of the youths included that of the girl; so that it was a very ordinary thing for Kate to go with her brother and Piers Exham to the hill-streams for trout. As the summer grew they tossed the hay together, and rode after the harvest wagons, and danced at the Ingathering Feast, and dressed the ancient church at Christmastide, and so, with ever-increasing kindness and interest, shared each other’s joy and sorrows for nearly two years.

Then there was a break in the happy routine. Kate put on long dresses; she was going to a fine ladies’ school in York to be “finished,” and Edgar also was entered at Cambridge. Piers was to go to Oxford. He begged to go to Cambridge with his friend; but the Duke approved the Tory principles of his own University, and equally disapproved of those of Cambridge, which he declared were deeply tainted with Whig and even Radical ideas. Perhaps also he was inclined to break up the close friendship between the Athelings and his heir. “No one can be insensible to the beauty of Kate Atheling,” he said to the Duchess; “and Piers’ constant association with such a lovely girl may not be without danger.” The Duchess smiled at the supposition. A royal princess, in her estimation, was not above her son’s deserts and expectations; and the Squire’s little home-bred girl was beneath either her fears or her suppositions. This also was the tone in which she received all her son’s conversation about the Athelings. “Very nice people, I dare say, Piers,” she would remark; “and I am glad you have such thoroughly respectable companions; but you will, of course, forget them when you go to College, and begin your independent life.” And there was such an air of finality in these assertions that it was only rarely Piers had the spirit to answer, “Indeed, I shall never forget them!”

So it happened that the last few weeks of their friendship missed much of the easy familiarity and sweet confidence that had hitherto marked its every change. Kate, with the new consciousness of dawning womanhood, was shy, less frank, and less intimate. Strangers began to call her “Miss” Atheling; and there were hours when the little beauty’s airs of maidenly pride and reserve made Piers feel that any other address would be impertinent. And this change had come, no one knew how, only it was there, and not to be gainsaid; and every day’s events added some trifling look, or word, or act which widened the space between them, though the space itself was full of sweet and kindly hours.

Then there came a day in autumn when Kate was to leave her home for the York school. Edgar was already in Cambridge. Piers was to enter Oxford the following week. This chapter of life was finished; and the three happy souls that had made it, were to separate. Piers, who had a poetic nature, and was really in love–though he suspected it not–was most impressed with the passing away. He could not keep from Atheling, and though he had bid Kate “good-bye” in the afternoon, he was not satisfied with the parting. She had then been full of business: the Squire was addressing her trunks; Mrs. Atheling crimping the lace frill of her muslin tippets; and Kate herself bringing, one by one, some extra trifle that at the last moment impressed her with its necessity. It was in this hurry of household love and care that he had said “good-bye,” and he felt that it had been a mere form.

Perhaps Kate felt it also; for when he rode up to Atheling gates in the gloaming, he saw her sauntering up the avenue. He thought there was both melancholy and expectation in her attitude and air. He tied his horse outside, and joined her. She met him with a smile. He took her hand, and she permitted him to retain it. He said, “Kate!” and she answered the word with a glance that made him joyous, ardent, hopeful. He was too happy to speak; he feared to break the heavenly peace between them by a word. Oh, this is the way of Love! But neither knew the ways of Love. They were after all but children, and the sweet thoughts in their hearts had not come to speech. They wandered about the garden until the gloaming became moonlight, and they heard Mrs. Atheling calling her daughter. Then their eyes met, and, swift as the firing of a gun, their pupils dilated and flashed with tender feeling; over their faces rushed the crimson blood; and Piers said sorrowfully, “Kate! Sweet Kate! I shall never forget you!” He raised the hand he held to his lips, kissed it, and went hurriedly away from her.

Kate was not able to say a word, but she felt the kiss on her hand through all her sleep and dreams that night. Indeed five years of change and absence had not chilled its warm remembrance; there were hours when it was still a real expression, when the hand itself was conscious of the experience, and willingly cherished it. All through Cecil North’s visit, she had been aware of a sense of expectancy. Interested as she was in Edgar, the thought of Lord Exham would not be put down. For a short time it was held in abeyance; but when the early dinner was over, and she was in the solitude of her own room, Piers put Edgar out of consideration. As she sat brushing and dressing her long brown hair, she recalled little incidents concerning Piers,–how once in the harvest-field her hair had tumbled down, and Piers praised its tangled beauty; how he had liked this and the other dress; how he had praised her dancing, and vowed she was the best rider in the county. He had given her a little gold brooch for a Christmas present, and she took it from its box, and said to herself she would wear it, and see if it evoked its own memory in Exham’s heart.