An English Squire. Coleridge Christabel Rose

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ