The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

THE NEW SQUIRE.

“A word was brought,
Unto him,—­the King himself desired his presence.”

                  “The mystery of life

He probes; and in the battling din of things
That frets the feeble ear, he seeks and finds
A harmony that tunes the dissonant strife
To sweetest music.”

This year the effort to keep Christmas in Seat-Sandal was a failure.  Julius did not return in time for the festival, and the squire was unable to take any part in it.  There had been one of those sudden, mysterious changes in his condition, marking a point in life from which every step is on the down-hill road to the grave.  One day he had seemed even better than usual; the next morning he looked many years older.  Lassitude of body and mind had seized the once eager, sympathetic man; he was weary of the struggle for life, and had given up.  This change occurred just before Christmas; and Charlotte could not help feeling that the evergreens for the feast might, after all, be the evergreens for the funeral.

One snowy day between Christmas and New Year, Julius came home.  Before he said a word to Sophia, she divined that he had succeeded in his object.  He entered the house with the air of a master; and, when he heard how rapidly the squire was failing, he congratulated himself on his prudent alacrity in the matter.  The next morning he was permitted an interview.  “You have been a long time away, Julius,” said the squire languidly, and without apparent interest in the subject.

“I have been a long journey.”

“Ah!  Where have you been?  Eh?”

“To Italy.”

The sick man flushed crimson, and his large, thin hands quivered slightly.  Julius noted the change in him with some alarm; for, though it was not perhaps actually necessary to have the squire’s signature to Harry’s relinquishment, it would be more satisfactory to obtain it.  He knew that neither Mrs. Sandal nor Charlotte would dispute Harry’s deed; but he wished not only to possess Seat-Sandal, but also the good-will of the neighborhood, and for this purpose he must show a clear, clean right to the succession.  He had explained the matter to Sophia, and been annoyed at her want of enthusiasm.  She feared that any discussion relating to Harry might seriously excite and injure her father, and she could not bring herself to advise it.  But the disapproval only made Julius more determined to carry out his own views; and therefore, when the squire asked, “Where have you been?” he told him the truth; and oh, how cruel the truth can sometimes be!

“I have been to Italy.”

“To see”—­

“Harry?  Yes.”

Then, without waiting to inform himself as to whether the squire wished the conversation dropped or continued, he added, “He was in a miserable condition,—­destitute, with a dying wife and child.”

“Child!  Eh?  What?”

“Yes, a son; a little chap, nothing but skin and bone and black eyes,—­an Italian Sandal.”

The squire was silent a few minutes; then he asked in a slow, constrained voice, “What did you do?”

“Harry sent for me in order that we might discuss a certain proposal he wished to make me.  I have accepted it—­reluctantly accepted it; but really it appeared the only way to help him to any purpose.”

“What did Harry want?  Eh?  What?”

“He wanted to go to America, and begin a new life, and found a new house there; and, as he had determined never under any circumstances to visit Sandal-Side again, he asked me to give him the money necessary for emigration.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“For what?  What equivalent could he give you?”

“He had nothing to give me but his right of succession.  I bought it for ten thousand pounds.  A sum of money like that ought to give him a good start in America.  I think, upon the whole, he was very wise.”

“Harry Sandal sold my home and estate over my head, while I was still alive, without a word to me!  God have mercy!”

“Uncle, he never thought of it in that light, I am sure.”

“That is what he did; sold it without a thought as to what his mother’s or sister’s wishes might be.  Sold it away from his own child.  My God!  The man is an immeasurable scoundrel; and, Julius Sandal, you are another.”

“Sir?”

“Leave me.  I am still master of Sandal.  Leave me.  Leave my house.  Do not enter it again until my dead body has passed the gates.”

“It will be right for you first to sign this paper.”

“What paper?  Eh?  What?”

“The deed of Harry’s relinquishment.  He has my money.  I look to your honor to secure me.”

“You look the wrong road.  I will sign no such paper,—­no, not for twenty years of life.”

He spoke sternly, but almost in a whisper.  The strain upon him was terrible; he was using up the last remnants of his life to maintain it.

“That you should sign the deed is only bare honesty.  I gave the money trusting to your honesty.”

“I will not sign it.  It would be a queer thing for me to be a partner in such a dirty job.  The right of succession to Sandal, barring Harry Sandal, is not vested in you.  It is in Harry’s son.  Whoever his mother may be, the little lad is heir of Sandal-Side; and I’ll not be made a thief in my last hours by you.  That’s a trick beyond your power.  Now, then, I’ll waste no more words on you, good, bad, or indifferent.”

He had, in fact, reached the limit of his powers, and Julius saw it; yet he did not hesitate to press his right to Sandal’s signature by every argument he thought likely to avail.  Sandal was as one that heard not, and fortunately Mrs. Sandal’s entrance put an end to the painful interview.

This was a sorrow the squire had never contemplated, and it filled his heart with anxious misery.  He strove to keep calm, to husband his strength, to devise some means of protecting his wife’s rights.  “I must send for Lawyer Moser:  if there is any way out of this wrong, he will know the right way,” he thought.  But he had to rest a little ere he could give the necessary prompt instructions.  Towards noon he revived, and asked eagerly for Stephen Latrigg.  A messenger was at once sent to Up-Hill.  He found Stephen in the barn, where the men were making the flails beat with a rhythm and regularity as exhilarating as music.  Stephen left them at once; but, when he told Ducie what word had been brought him, he was startled at her look and manner.

“I have been looking for this news all day:  I fear me, Steve, that the squire has come to ‘the passing.’  Last night I saw your grandfather.”

“Dreamed of him?”

“Well, then, call it a dream.  I saw your grandfather.  He was in this room; he was sorting the papers he left; and, as I watched his hands, he lifted his head and looked at me.  I have got my orders, I feel that.  But wait not now, I will follow you anon.”

In the “Seat” there was a distinct feeling of consummating calamity.  The servants had come to a state of mind in which the expectation was rather a relief.  They were only afraid the squire might rally again.  In Mrs. Sandal’s heart there was that resentful resignation which says to sorrow, “Do thy worst.  I am no longer able to resist, or even to plead.”  Charlotte only clung to her dream of hope, and refused to be wakened from it.  She was sure her father had been worse many a time.  She was almost cross at Ducie’s unusual visit.

About four o’clock Steve had a long interview with the squire.  Charlotte walked restlessly to and fro in the corridor; she heard Steve’s voice, strong and kind and solemn, and she divined what promises he was making to the dying man for herself and for her mother.  But even her love did not anticipate their parting words,—­

“Farewell, Stephen.  Yet one word more.  If Harry should come back—­what of Harry?  Eh?  What?”

“I will stand by him.  I will put my hand in his hand, and my foot with his foot.  They that wrong Harry will wrong me, they that shame Harry will shame me.  I will never call him less than a brother, as God hears me speak.”

A light “that never was on sea or sky” shone in Sandal’s fast dimming eyes, and irradiated his set gray countenance.  “Stephen, tell him at death’s door I turned back to forgive him—­to bless him.  I stretch—­out—­my hand—­to—­him.”

At this moment Charlotte opened the door softly, and waved Stephen towards her.  “Your mother is come, and she says she must see the squire.”  And then, before Stephen could answer, Ducie gently put them both aside.  “Wait in the corridor, my children,” she said:  “none but God and Sandal must hear my farewell.”  With the words, she closed the door, and went to the dying man.  He appeared to be unconscious; but she took his hand, stroked it kindly, and bending down whispered, “William, William Sandal!  Do you know me?”

“Surely it is Ducie.  It is growing dark.  We must go home, Ducie.  Eh?  What?”

“William, try and understand what I say.  You will go the happier to heaven for my words.”  And, as they grew slowly into the squire’s apprehension, a look of amazement, of gratitude, of intense satisfaction, transfigured the clay for the last time.  It seemed as if the departing soul stood still to listen.  He was perfectly quiet until she ceased speaking; then, in a strange, unearthly tone, he uttered one word, “Happy.”  It was the last word that ever parted his lips.  Between shores he lingered until the next daybreak, and then the loving watchers saw that the pallid wintry light fell on the dead.  How peaceful was the large, worn face!  How tranquil!  How distant from them!  How grandly, how terribly indifferent!  To Squire William Sandal, all the noisy, sorrowful controversies of earth had grown suddenly silent.

The reading of the squire’s will made public the real condition of affairs.  Julius had spoken with the lawyer previously, and made clear to him his right in equity to stand in the heir’s place.  But the squires and statesmen of the Dales heard the substitution with muttered dissents, or in a silence still more emphatic of disapproval.  Ducie and Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte were shocked and astounded at the revelation, and there was not a family in Sandal-Side who had that night a good word for Julius Sandal.  He thought it very hard, and said so.  He had not forced Harry in any way.  He had taken no advantage of him.  Harry was quite satisfied with the exchange, and what had other people to do with his affairs?  He did not care for their opinion.  “That for it!” and he snapped his fingers defiantly to every point of the compass.  But, all the same, he walked the floor of the east rooms nearly all night, and kept Sophia awake to listen to his complaints.

Sophia was fretful and sleepy, and not as sympathetic with “the soul that halved her own,” as centuries of fellow-feeling might have claimed; but she had her special worries.  She perceived, even thus early, that as long as the late squire’s widow was in the Seat, her own authority would be imperfect.  “Of course, she did not wish to hurry her mother; but she would feel, in her place, how much more comfortable for all a change would be.  And mother had her dower-house in the village; a very comfortable home, quite large enough for Charlotte and herself and a couple of maids, which was certainly all they needed.”

Where did such thoughts and feelings spring from?  Were they lying dormant in her heart that summer when the squire drove home his harvest, and her mother went joyfully up and down the sunny old rooms, always devising something for her girls’ comfort or pleasures?  In those days how proud Sophia had been of her father and mother!  What indignation she would have felt had one suggested that the time was coming when she would be glad to see a stranger in her father’s place, and feel impatient to say to her mother, “Step down lower; I would be mistress in your room”!  Alas! there are depths in the human heart we fear to look into; for we know that often all that is necessary to assuage a great grief, or obliterate a great loss, is the inheritance of a fine mansion, or a little money, or a few jewels, or even a rich garment.  And as soon as the squire was in his grave, Julius and Sophia began to discuss the plans which only a very shallow shame had made them reticent about before.

Indeed, it soon became necessary for others, also, to discuss the future.  People soon grow unwelcome in a house that is not their own; and the new squire of Sandal-Side was eager to so renovate and change the place that it would cease to remind him of his immediate predecessors.  The Sandals of past centuries were welcome, they gave dignity to his claims; but the last squire, and his son Harry Sandal, only reminded him of circumstances he felt it more comfortable to forget.  So, during the long, dreary days of midwinter, he and Sophia occupied themselves very pleasantly in selecting styles of furniture, and colors of draperies, and in arranging for a full suite of Oriental rooms, which were to perpetuate in pottery and lacquerware, Indian bronzes and mattings, Chinese screens and cabinets, the Anglo-Indian possessor of the old Cumberland estate.

Even pending these alterations, others were in progress.  Every family arrangement was changed in some respect.  The hour for breakfast had been fixed at what Julius called a civilized time.  This, of course, delayed every other meal; yet the servants, who had grumbled at over-work under the old authority, had not a complaint to make under the new.  For the present master and mistress of Sandal were not people who cared for complaints.  “If you can do the work, Ann, you may stay,” said Sophia to the dissatisfied cook; “if not, the squire will pay you your due wages.  He has a friend in London whose cook would like a situation in the country.”  After which explanation Ann behaved herself admirably, and never found her work hard, though dinner was two hours later, and the supper dishes were not sent in until eleven o’clock.

But, though Julius had succeeded in bringing his table so far within his own ideas of comfort, in other respects he felt his impotence to order events.  Every meal-time brought him in contact with the widow Sandal and with Charlotte; and neither Sophia, nor yet himself, had felt able to request the late mistress to resign her seat at the foot of the table.  And Sophia soon began to think it unkind of her mother not to see the position, and voluntarily amend it.  “I do really think mother might have some consideration for me, Julius,” she complained.  “It puts me in such a very peculiar position not to take my place at my own table; and it is so trying and perplexing for the servants,—­making them feel as if there were two mistresses.”

“And always the calm, scornful face of your sister Charlotte at her side.  Do you notice with what ostentatious obedience and attention she devotes herself to your mother?”

“She thinks that she is showing me my duty, Julius.  But people have some duties toward themselves.”

“And towards their husbands.”

“Certainly.  I thank Heaven I have always put my husband first.”  And she really glanced upwards with the complacent air of one who expected Heaven to imitate men, and “praise her for doing well unto herself.”

“This state of things cannot go on much longer, Sophia.”

“Certainly it cannot.  Mother must look after her own house soon.”

“I would speak to her to-day, Sophia.  She has had six weeks now to arrange her plans, and next month I want to begin and put the house into decent condition.  I think I will write to London this afternoon, and tell Jeffcott to send the polishers and painters on the 15th of March.”

“Mother is so slow about things, I don’t think she will be ready to move so early.”

“Oh, I really can’t stand them any longer!  I can’t indeed, Sophia, and I won’t.  I did not marry your mother and sister, nor yet buy them with the place.  Your mother has her recognized rights in the estate, and she has a dower-house to which to retire; and the sooner she goes there now, the better.  You may tell her I say so.”

“You may as well tell her yourself, Julius.”

“Do you wish me to be insulted by your sister Charlotte again?  It is too bad to put me in such a position.  I cannot punish two women, even for such shameful innuendos as I had to take when she sat at the head of the table.  You ought to reflect, too, that the rooms they occupy are the best rooms in the house,—­the master’s rooms.  I am going to have the oak walls polished, in order to bring out the carvings; and I think we will choose green and white for the carpets and curtains.  The present furniture is dreadfully old-fashioned, and horribly full of old memories.”

“Well, then, I shall give mother to understand that we expect to make these changes very soon.”

“Depend upon it, the sooner your mother and Charlotte go to their own house, the better for all parties.  For, if we do not insist upon it, they will stay and stay, until that Latrigg young man has his house finished.  Then Charlotte will expect to be married from here, and we shall have all the trouble and expense of the affair.  Oh, I tell you, Sophia, I see through the whole plan!  But reckoning without me, and reckoning with me, are different things.”

This conversation took place after a most unpleasant lunch.  Julius had come to it in a fretful, hypercritical mood.  He had been calculating what his proposed changes would cost, and the sum total had given him a slight shock.  He was like many extravagant people, subject to passing spells of almost contemptible economy; and at that hour the proposed future outlay of thousands did not trouble him so much as the actual penny-half-penny value of his mother-in-law’s lunch.

He did not say so, but in some way the feeling permeated the table.  The widow pushed her plate aside, and sipped her glass of wine in silence.  Charlotte took a pettish pleasure in refusing what she felt she was unwelcome to.  Both left the table before Julius and Sophia had finished their meal; and both, as soon as they reached their rooms, turned to each other with faces hot with indignation, and hearts angry with a sense of shameful unkindness.

Charlotte spoke first.  “What is to be done, mother?  I cannot see you insulted, meal after meal, in this way.  Let us go at once.  I have told you it would come to this.  We ought to have moved immediately,—­just as soon as Julius came here as master.”

“My house in the village has been empty for three years.  It is cold and damp.  It needs attention of every kind.  If we could only stay here until Stephen’s house was finished:  then you could be married.”

“O mother dear, that is not possible!  You know Steve and I cannot marry until father has been dead at least a year.  It would be an insult to father to have a wedding in his mourning year.”

“If your father knows any thing, Charlotte, he knows the trouble we are in.  He would count it no insult.”

“But all through the Dales it would be a shame to us.  Steve and I would not like to begin life with the ill words or ill thoughts of our neighbors.”

“What shall I do?  Charlotte, dear, what shall I do?”

“Let us go to our own home.  Better to brave a little damp and discomfort than constant humiliation.”

“This is my home, my own dear home!  It is full of memories of your father and Harry.”

“O mother, I should think you would want to forget Harry!”

“No, no, no!  I want to remember him every hour of the day and night.  How could I pray for him, if I forgot him?  Little you know how a mother loves, Charlotte.  His father forgave him:  shall I be less pitiful?—­I, who nursed him at my breast, and carried him in my arms.”

Charlotte did not answer.  She was touched by her mother’s fidelity, and she found in her own heart a feeling much akin to it.  Their conversation reverted to their unhappy position, and to the difficulty of making an immediate change.  For not only was the dower-house in an untenantable state, but the weather was very much against them.  The gray weather, the gloomy sky, the monotonous rains, the melting snow, the spiteful east wind,—­by all this enmity of the elements, as well as by the enmity in the household, the poor bereaved lady was saddened and controlled.

The wretched conversation was followed by a most unhappy silence.  Both hearts were brooding over their slights and wrongs.  Day by day Charlotte’s life had grown harder to bear.  Sophia’s little flaunts and dissents, her astonishments and corrections, were almost as cruel as the open hatred of Julius, his silence, his lowering brows, and insolence of proprietorship.  To these things she had to add the intangible contempt of servants, and the feeling of constraint in the house where she had been the beloved child and the one in authority.  Also she found the insolence which Stephen had to brave every time he called upon her just as difficult to bear as were her own peculiar slights.  Julius had ceased to recognize him, had ceased to speak of him except as “that person.”  Every visit he made Charlotte was the occasion of some petty impertinence, some unmistakable assurance that his presence was offensive to the master of Seat-Sandal.

All these things troubled the mother also, but her bitterest pang was the cruelty of Sophia.  A slow, silent process of alienation had been going on in the girl ever since her engagement to Julius:  it had first touched her thoughts, then her feelings; now its blighting influence had deteriorated her whole nature.  And in her mother’s heart there were sad echoes of that bitter cry that comes down from age to age, “Oh, my son Absalom, Absalom!  My son, my son!”

“O Sophia! oh, my child, my child!  How can you treat me so?  What have I done?” She was murmuring such words to herself when the door was opened, and Sophia entered.  It was characteristic of the woman that she did not knock ere entering.  She had always jealously guarded her rights to the solitude of her own room; and, even when she was a school-girl, it had been an understood household regulation that no one was to enter it without knocking.  But now that she was mistress of all the rooms in Seat-Sandal, she ignored the simple courtesy towards others.  Consequently, when she entered, she saw the tears in her mother’s eyes.  They only angered her.  “Why should the sorrows of others darken her happy home?” Sophia was one of those women whom long regrets fatigue.  As for her father, she reflected, “that he had been well nursed, decorously buried, and that every propriety had been attended to.  It was, in her opinion, high time that the living—­Julius and herself—­should be thought of.”  The stated events of life—­its regular meals, its trivial pleasures—­had quite filled any void in her existence made by her father’s death.  If he had come back to earth, if some one had said to her, “He is here,” she would have been far more embarrassed than delighted.  The worldly advantages built upon the extinction of a great love!  Sophia could contemplate them without a blush.

She came forward, shivering slightly, and stirred the fire.  “How cold and dreary you are!  Mother, why don’t you cheer up and do something?  It would be better for you than moping on the sofa.”

“Suppose Julius had died six weeks ago, would you think of ’cheering up,’ Sophia?”

“Charlotte, what a shameful thing to say!”

“Precisely what you have just said to mother.”

“Supposing Julius dead!  I never heard such a cruel thing.  I dare say it would delight you.”

“No, it would not; for Julius is not fit to die.”

“Mother, I will not be insulted in my own house in such a way.  Speak to Charlotte, or I must tell Julius.”

“What have you come to say, Sophia?”

“I came to talk pleasantly, to see you, and”—­

“You saw me an hour or two since, and were very rude and unkind.  But if you regret it, my dear, it is forgiven.”

“I do not know what there is to forgive.  But really, Charlotte and you seem so completely unhappy and dissatisfied here, that I should think you would make a change.”

“Do you mean that you wish me to go?”

“If you put words into my mouth.”

“It is not worth while affecting either regret or offence, Sophia.  How soon do you wish us to leave?”

The dowager mistress of Sandal-Side had stood up as she asked the question.  She was quite calm, and her manner even cold and indifferent.  “If you wish us to go to-day, it is still possible.  I can walk as far as the rectory.  For your father’s sake, the rector will make us welcome.—­Charlotte, my bonnet and cloak!”

“Mother!  I think such threats very uncalled for.  What will people say?  And how can poor Julius defend himself against two ladies?  I call it taking advantage of us.”

“‘Taking advantage?’ Oh, no!  Oh, no!—­Charlotte, my dear, give me my cloak.”

The little lady was not to be either frightened or entreated; and she deigned Julius—­who had been hastily summoned by Sophia—­no answer, either to his arguments or his apologies.

“It is enough,” she cried, with a slight quiver in her voice, “it is enough!  You turn me out of the home he gave me.  Do you think that the dead see not? know not?  You will find out, you will find out.”  And so, leaning upon Charlotte’s arm, she walked slowly down the stairway, and into the dripping, soaking, gloomy afternoon.  It was indeed wretched weather.  A thick curtain of mist filled all the atmosphere, and made of daylight only a diluted darkness, in which it was hard to distinguish the skeletons of the trees which winter had stripped.  The mountains had disappeared; there was no sky; a veil of chilling moisture and depressing gloom was over every thing.  But neither Charlotte nor her mother was at that hour conscious of such inoffensive disagreeables.  They were trembling with anger and sorrow.  In a moment such a great event had happened, one utterly unconceived of, and unprepared for.  Half an hour previous, the unhappy mother had dreaded the breaking away from her old life, and had declined to discuss with Charlotte any plan tending to such a consummation.  Then, suddenly, she had taken a step more decided and unusual than had ever entered Charlotte’s mind.

The footpath through the park was very wet and muddy.  Every branch dropped water.  They were a little frightened at what they were doing, and their hearts were troubled by many complex emotions.  But fortunately the walk was a short one, and the shortest way to the rectory lay directly through the churchyard.  Without a word Mrs. Sandal took it; and without a word she turned aside at a certain point, and through the long, rank, withered grasses walked straight to the squire’s grave.  It was yet quite bare; the snow had melted away, and it had a look as desolate as her own heart.  She stood a few minutes speechless by its side; but the painfully tight clasp in which she held Charlotte’s hand expressed better than any words could have done the tension of feeling, the passion of emotion, which dominated her.  And Charlotte felt that silence was her mother’s safety.  If she spoke, she would weep, perhaps break down completely, and be unable to reach the shelter of the rectory.

The rector was walking about his study.  He saw the two female forms passing through the misty graveyard, and up to his own front door; but that they were Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte Sandal, was a supposition beyond the range of his life’s probabilities.  So, when they entered his room, he was for the moment astounded; but how much more so, when Charlotte, seeing her mother unable to frame a word, said, “We have come to you for shelter and protection!”

Then Mrs. Sandal began to sob hysterically; and the rector called his housekeeper, and the best rooms were quickly opened and warmed, and the sorrowful, weary lady lay down to rest in their comfort and seclusion.  Charlotte did not find their friend as unprepared for the event as she supposed likely.  Private matters sift through the public mind in a way beyond all explanation, and “There had been a general impression,” he said, “that the late squire’s widow was very ill done to by the new squire.”

Charlotte did not spare the new squire.  All his petty ways of annoying her mother and herself and Stephen; all his small economies about their fire and food and comforts; all his scornful contempt for their household ways and traditions; all that she knew regarding his purchase of Harry’s rights, and its ruthless revelation to her dying father,—­all that she knew wrong of Julius, she told.  It was a relief to do it.  While he had been their guest, and afterwards while they had been his guests, her mouth had been closed.  Week after week she had suffered in silence.  The long-restrained tide of wrong flowed from her lips with a strange, pathetic eloquence; and, as the rector held her hands, his own were wet with her fast-falling tears.  At last she laid her head against his shoulder, and wept as if her heart would break.  “He has been our ruin,” she cried, “our evil angel.  He has used Harry’s folly and father’s goodness and Sophia’s love—­all of them—­for his own selfish ends.”

“He is a bad one.  He should be hanged, and cheap at it!  Hear him, talking of having lived so often!  God have mercy!  He is not worthy of one life, let alone of two.”

At this juncture, Julius himself entered the room.  Neither of its occupants had heard his arrival, and he saw Charlotte in the abandon of her grief and anger.  She would have risen, but the rector would not let her.  “Sit still, Charlotte,” he said.  “He has done his do, and you need not fear him any more.  And dry your tears, my dearie; learn while you are young to squander nothing, not even grief.”  Then he turned to Julius, and gave him one of those looks which go through all disguises into the shoals and quicksands of the heart; such a look as that with which the tamer of wild beasts controls his captive.

“Well, squire, what want you?”

“I want justice, sir.  I am come here to defend myself.”

“Very well, I am here to listen.”

Self-justification is a vigorous quality:  Julius spoke with eloquence, and with a superficial show of right.  The rector heard him patiently, offering no comment, and permitting no disputation.  But, when Julius was finished, he answered with a certain stern warmth, “Say what you will, squire, you and I are of two ways of thinking.  You are in the wrong, and you will be hard set to prove yourself in the right; and that is as true as gospel.”

“I am, at least, a gentleman, rector; and I know how to treat gentlewomen.”

“Gentle-man!  Gentle-sinner, let me say!  Will Satan care whether you be a peasant, or a star-and-garter gentleman?  Tut, tut! in my office I know nothing about gentlemen.  There are plenty of gentlemen with Beelzebub; and they will ring all eternity for a drop of water, and never find a servant to answer them.”

“Sir, though you are a clergyman, you have no right to speak to me in such a manner.”

“Because I am a clergyman, I have the right.  If I see a man sleeping while the Devil rocks his cradle, have I not the right to say to him, ‘Wake up, you are in danger’?  Let me tell you, squire, you have committed more than one sin.  Go home, and confess them to God and man.  Above all, turn down a leaf in your Bible where a fool once asked, ’Who is my neighbor?’ Keep it turned down, until you have answered the question better than you have been doing it lately.”

“None of my neighbors can say wrong of me.  I have always done my duty to them.  I have paid every one what I owe”—­

“Not enough, squire; not enough.  Follow on, as Hosea says, to love them.  Don’t always give them the white, and keep the yolk for yourself.  You know your duty.  Haste you back home, then, and do it.”

“I will not be put off in such a way, sir.  You must interfere in this matter:  make these silly women behave themselves.  I cannot have the whole country-side talking of my affairs.”

“Me interfere!  No, no!  I am not in your livery, squire; and I won’t fight your quarrels.  Sir, my time is engaged.”

“I have a right”—­

“My time is engaged.  It is my hour for reading the Evening Service.  Stay and hear it, if you desire.  But it is a bad neighborhood, where a man can’t say his prayers quietly.”  And he stood up, walked slowly to his reading-desk, and began to turn the leaves of the Book of Common Prayer.

Then Julius went out in a passion, and the rector muttered, “The Devil may quote Scripture, but he does not like to hear it read.  Come, Charlotte, let us thank God, thank him twice, nay, thrice, not alone for the faith of Christ Jesus, but also for the legacy of Christ Jesus.  Oh, child, amid earth’s weary restlessness and noisy quarrels, how rich a legacy,”—­

“‘Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give unto you.’”