The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance

SANDAL AND SANDAL.

     “Time will discover every thing; it is a babbler, and speaks even
     when no question is put.”

     “Run, spindles!  Run, and weave the threads of doom.”

Next morning very early, Stephen had a letter from Charlotte.  He was sitting at breakfast with Ducie when the rector’s boy brought it; and it came, as great events generally come, without any premonition or heralding circumstance.  Ducie was pouring out coffee; and she went on with her employment, thinking, not of the letter Stephen was opening, but of the malt, and of the condition of the brewing-boiler.  An angry exclamation from Stephen made her lift her eyes to his face.  “My word, Stephen, you are put out!  What’s to do?”

“Julius has turned Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte from house and home, yesterday afternoon.  They are at the rectory.  I am going, mother.”

“Stop a moment, Steve.  This is now my affair.”

Stephen looked at his mother with amazement.  Her countenance, her voice, her whole manner, had suddenly changed.  An expression of angry purpose was in her wide-open eyes and firm mouth, as she asked, “Can you or Jamie, or any of the men, drive me to Kendal?”

“To-day?”

“I want to leave within an hour.”

“The rain down-pours; and it is like to be worse yet, if the wind does not change.”

“If it were ten times worse, I must to Kendal.  I am much to blame that I have let weather stop me so far and so long.  While Dame Nature was busy about her affairs, I should have been minding mine.  Deary me, deary me!”

“If you are for Kendal, then I will drive.  The cart-road down the fell is too bad to trust you with any one but myself.  Can we stop a moment at the rectory on our road?”

“We can stop a goodish bit.  I have a deal to say to the parson.  Have the tax-cart ready in half an hour; for there will be no betterness in the weather until the moon—­God bless her!—­is full round; and things are past waiting for now.”

In twenty minutes Ducie was ready.  The large cloak and hood of the Daleswoman wrapped her close.  She was almost indistinguishable in its folds.  The rector met her with a little irritation.  It was very early to be disturbed, and he thought her visit would refer, doubtless, to some trivial right between her son and Charlotte Sandal; besides which, he had made up his mind to discuss the Sandal affairs with no one.

But Ducie had spoken but a few moments before a remarkable change took place in his manner.  He was bending eagerly forward, listening to her half-whispered words with the greatest interest and amazement.  As she proceeded, he could scarcely control his emotion; and very soon all other expressions were lost in one of a satisfaction that was almost triumph.

“I will keep them here until you return,” he answered; “but let me tell you, Ducie, you have been less quick to do right than I thought of you.”

“The fell has been a hard walk for an old woman, the cart-road nearly impassable until this rain washed away the drifts; but I did not neglect my duty altogether, neither, parson.  Moser was written to six weeks since, and he has been at work.  Maybe, after all, no time has been lost.  I’ll away now, if you will call Stephen.  Don’t let Mrs. Sandal ‘take on’ more than you can help;” and, as Stephen lifted the reins, “You think it best to bring all here?”

“Far away best.  God speed you!” He watched them out of sight,—­his snowy hair and strong face and black garments making a vivid picture in the misty, drippy doorway,—­and then, returning to his study, he began his daily walk up and down its carpeted length, with a singularly solemn elation.  Ere long, the thoughtful stride was accompanied by low, musical mutterings, dropping from his lips in such majestic cadences that his steps involuntarily fell to their music in a march-like rhythm.

    “Daughter of Justice, wronged Nemesis,
     Thou of the awful eyes,
     Whose silent sentence judgeth mortal life,—­
       Thou with the curb of steel,
       Which proudest jaws must feel,
     Stayest the snort and champ of human strife.

     Under thy wheel unresting, trackless, all
     Our joys and griefs befall;
     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.

Julius was at breakfast when the company from Ambleside were shown into the master’s room in Seat-Sandal.  The lawyer sent in his card; and Julius, who knew him well, was a trifle annoyed by the visit.  “It will be about your mother’s income, Sophia,” he said, as he viciously broke the egg he was holding; “now mind, I am not going to yield one inch.”

“Why should you, Julius?  I am sure we have been blamed and talked over enough.  We never can be popular here.”

“We don’t want to be popular here.  When we have refurnished the house, we will bring our company from Oxford and London and elsewhere.  We will have fine dinners and balls, hunting-parties and fishing-parties; and, depend upon it, we shall very soon have these shepherd lords and gentlemen begging for our favor.”

“Oh, you don’t know them, Julius!  They would not break bread with us if they were starving.”

“Very well.  What do I care?”

But he did care.  When the wagoners driving their long teams pretended not to hear his greeting, for the jingling of their bells, he knew it was pretence, and the wagoners’ aversion hurt him.  When the herdsmen sauntered away from his path, and preferred not to talk to him, he felt the bitterness of their dislike, though they were only shepherds.  When the gentlemen of the neighborhood looked straight before them, and did not see him in their path, he burned with an indignation he would have liked well to express.  But no one took the trouble to offend him by word or deed, and a man cannot pick a quarrel with people for simply letting him alone.

Sophia’s opinion recalled one or two of these events that were particularly galling; and he finished his breakfast in a sulky, leisurely fashion, to such reflections as they evoked.  Then, with a cigar in his mouth, he went to the master’s room to see Moser.  He had been told that other parties were there also, but he did not surmise that their business was identical.  Yet he noticed the clergyman on entering, and appeared inclined to attend to his request first; but as he courteously waved his claim away, and retired to the other end of the room, Julius said curtly,—­

“Well, Mr. Moser, good-morning, sir.”

The lawyer was pretending to be absorbed in the captions of the papers in his hand, for he was offended at being kept waiting so long:  “As if a bite of victuals was of more ado than business that could bring Matthew Moser all the road from Kendal.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Sandal.”

The omission of “Squire,” and the substitution of “Mr.,” annoyed Julius very much, though he had not a suspicion of the lawyer’s errand; and he corrected the mistake with a bland smile on his lips, and an angry light in his eyes.  Moser, in reply, selected one particular paper, and put it into the hand of Julius.

“Acting for Squire Sandal, I would be a middling bad sort of a lawyer to give you his name.  Eh?”

“You are talking in riddles, sir.”

“Eh!  But I always read my riddles, Mr. Sandal.  I am here to take possession of house and land, for the real heir of Sandal-Side.”

“I bought his right, as you know very well.  You have Harry Sandal’s own acknowledgment.”

“Eh?  But you see, Harry Sandal never had a penny-worth of right to sell.  Launcelot Sandal left a son, and for him I am acting.  Eh?”

“Launcelot Sandal was drowned.  He never married.”

“Eh, but he did!—­Parson Sellafield, what do you say about that?”

“I married him on July 11, 18—­, at Egremont church.  There,” pointing to Matt Pattison, “is the witness.  Here is a copy of the license and the ‘lines.’  They are signed, ‘Launcelot Sandal’ and ‘Ducie Latrigg.’”

“Confusion!”

“Eh?  No, no!  There’s not a bit of confusion, Mr. Sandal.  It is all as clear as the multiplication table, and there is nothing clearer than that.  Launcelot Sandal married Ducie Latrigg; they had one son, Stephen Sandal, otherwise known as Stephen Latrigg:  proofs all ready, sir, not a link missing, Mr. Sandal.  When will you vacate?  The squire is inclined to be easy with you, and not to back-reckon, unless you force him to do so.”

“This is a conspiracy, Moser.”

“Conspiracy!  Eh?  Ugly word, Mr. Sandal.  An actionable word, I may say.”

“It is a conspiracy.  You shall hear from me through some respectable lawyer.”

“In the mean time, Mr. Sandal, I have taken, as you will see, the proper legal steps to prevent you wasting any more of the Sandal revenues.  Every shilling you touch now, you will be held responsible for.  Also,” and he laid another paper down, “you are hereby restrained from removing, injuring, or in any way changing, or disposing of, the present furniture of the Seat.  The squire insists specially on this direction, and he kindly allows you seven days to remove your private effects.  A very reasonable gentleman is Squire Sandal.”

Without further courtesies they parted; and the deposed squire locked the room-door, lifted the various documents, and read them with every sense he had.  Then he went to Sophia; and at that hour he was almost angry with her, although he could not have told how, or why, such a feeling existed.  When he opened the door of the parlor, her first words were a worry over the non-arrival, by mail, of some floss-silks, needful in the bird’s-nest she was working for a fire-screen.

“They have not come, Julius,” she cried, with a face full of inquiry and annoyance.

“They?  Who?”

“The flosses for my bird’s-nest.  The eggs must be in white floss.”

“The bird’s nest can go to Jericho, or Calcutta, or into the fire.  We are ordered to leave Seat-Sandal in seven days.”

“I would not be so absurd, Julius, so unfeeling, so ungentlemanly.”

“Well, then, my soul,” and he bowed with elaborate grace, “Stephen Latrigg, squire of Sandal-Side, orders us to leave in seven days.  Can you be ready?”

She looked into the suave, mocking, inscrutable face, shrugged her shoulders, and began to count her stitches.  Julius had many varieties of ill-humor.  She regarded this statement only as a new phase of his temper; but he soon undeceived her.  With a pitiless exactness he went over his position, and, in doing so, made the hopelessness of his case as clear to himself as it was to others.  And yet he was determined not to yield without a struggle; though, apart from the income of Sandal, which he could not reach, he had little money and no credit.

The story, with all its romance of attachment and its long trial of faithful secrecy, touched the prejudices and the sympathies of every squire and shepherd between Duddon and Esk and Windermere.  Stephen came to his own, and they received him with open arms.  But for Julius, there was not a “seat” in the Dales, nor a cottage on the fells, no, nor a chair in any of the local inns, where he was welcome.  He stood his social excommunication longer than could have been expected; and, even at the end, his surrender was forced from him by the want of money, and the never-ceasing laments of Sophia.  She was clever enough to understand from the first, that fighting the case was simply “indulging Julius in his temper;” and she did not see the wisdom of spending what little money they had in such a gratification.

“You have been caught in your own trap, Julius,” she said aggravatingly.  “Very clever people often are.  It is folly to struggle.  You had better ask Stephen to pay you back the ten thousand pounds.  I think he ought to do that.  It is only common honesty.”

But Stephen had not the same idea of common honesty as Sophia had.  He referred Julius to Harry.

“Harry, indeed!  Harry who is in New York making ducks and drakes of your money, Julius,—­trying to buy shares and things that he knows no more of than he knows of Greek.  It’s a shame!” and Sophia burst into some genuine tears over the reflection.

Still the idea, on a less extravagant basis, seemed possible to Steve.  He began to think that it would be better to compromise matters with the Julius Sandals; better to lose a thousand pounds, or even two thousand pounds, if, by doing so, he could at once restore Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte to their home.  And he was on the point of making a proposition of this kind, when it was discovered that Julius and his wife had silently taken their departure.

“It is a hopeless fight against destiny,” said Julius.  “When the purse is empty, any cause is weak.  I have barely money to take us to Calcutta, Sophia.  It is very disagreeable to go there, of course; but my father advised this step, and I shall remind him of it.  He ought, therefore, to re-arrange my future.  It is hard enough for me to have lost so much time carrying out his plans.  And I should write a letter to your mother before you go, if I were you, Sophia.  It is your duty.  She ought to have her cruel behavior to you pointed out to her.”

Sophia did her duty.  She wrote a very clever letter, which really did make both her mother and sister wretchedly uncomfortable.  Charlotte held it in her hand with a heartache, wondering whether she had indeed been as envious and unjust and unkind as Sophia felt her to have been; and Mrs. Sandal buried her face in her sofa pillow, and had a cry over her supposed partiality and want of true motherly feeling.  “They had been so misunderstood, Julius and she,—­wilfully misunderstood, she feared; and they were being driven to a foreign land, a deadly foreign land, because Charlotte and Stephen had raised against them a social hatred they had not the heart to conquer.  If they defended themselves, they must accuse those of their own blood and house, and they were not mean enough to do such a thing as that.  Oh, no!  Sophia Sandal had always done her duty, and always would do it forever.”  And broad statements are such confusing, confounding things, that for one miserable hour the mother and sister felt as mean and remorseful as Sophia and Julius could desire.  Then the rector read the letter aloud, and dived down into its depths as if it was a knotty text, and showed the two simple women on what false conditions all of its accusations rested.

At the same time Julius wrote a letter also.  It was to Harry Sandal,—­a very short letter, but destined to cause nearly six years of lonely, wretched wandering and anxious sorrow.

     DEAR HARRY,—­There is great trouble about that ten thousand pounds. 
     It seems you had no right to sell.  “Money on false pretences,” I
     think they call it.  I should go West, far West, if I were you.

     Your friend,

     JULIUS SANDAL.

He read it to Sophia, and she said, “What folly!  Let Harry return home.  You have heard that he comes into the Latrigg money.  Very well, let him come home, and then you can make him pay you back.  Harry is very honorable.”

“There is not the slightest chance of Harry paying me back.  If he had a million, he wouldn’t pay me back.  Harry spoke me fair, but I caught one look which let me see into his soul.  He hated me for buying his right.  With my money in his hand, he hated me.  He would toss his hat to the stars if he heard how far I have been over-reached.  Next to Charlotte Sandal, I hate Harry Sandal; and I am going to send him a road that he is not likely to return.  I don’t intend Stephen and Harry to sit together, and chuckle over me.  Besides, your mother and Charlotte are surely calculating upon having ‘dear Harry’ and ‘poor Harry’ at home again very soon.  I have no doubt Charlotte is planning about that Emily Beverley already.  For Harry is to have Latrigg Hall when it is finished, I hear.”

“Really?  Is that so?  Are you sure?”

“Harry is to have the new hall, and all of old Latrigg’s gold and property.”

“Julius, would it not be better to try and get around Harry?  We could stay with him.  I cannot endure Calcutta, and I always did like Harry.”

“And I always detested him.  And he always detested me.  No, my sweet Sophia, there is really nothing for us but a decent lodging-house on the shady side of the Chowringhee Road.  My father can give me a post in ‘The Company,’ and I must get as many of its rupees as I can manage.  Go through the old rooms, and bid them farewell, my soul.  We shall not come back to Seat-Sandal again in this chapter of our eternity.”  And with a mocking laugh he turned away to make his own preparations.

“But why go in the night, Julius?  You said to-night at eleven o’clock.  Why not wait until morning?”

“Because, beloved, I owe a great deal of money in the neighborhood.  Stephen can pay it for me.  I have sent him word to do so.  Why should we waste our money?  We have done with these boors.  What they think of us, what they say of us, shall we mind it, my soul, when we drive under the peopuls and tamarinds at Barrackpore, or jostle the crowds upon the Moydana, or sit under the great stars and listen to the tread of the chokedars?  All fate, Sophia!  All fate, soul of my soul!  What is Sandal-Side?  Nothing.  What is Calcutta?  Nothing.  What is life itself, my own one?  Only a little piece out of something that was before, and will be after.”

* * * * *

Who that has seen the Cumberland moors and fells in July can ever forget them?—­the yellow broom and purple heather, the pink and white waxen balls of the rare vacciniums, the red-leaved sundew, the asphodels, the cranberries and blueberries and bilberries, and the wonderful green mosses in all the wetter places; and, above and around all, the great mountain chains veiled in pale, ethereal atmosphere, and rising in it as airy and unsubstantial as if they could tremble in unison with every thrill of the ether above them.

It was thus they looked, and thus the fells and the moors looked, one day in July, eighteen months after the death of Squire William Sandal,—­his daughter Charlotte’s wedding-day.  From far and near, the shepherd boys and lasses were travelling down the craggy ways, making all the valleys ring to their wild and simple songs, and ever and anon the bells rung out in joyful peals; and from Up-Hill to Seat-Sandal, and around the valley to Latrigg Hall, there were happy companies telling each other, “Oh, how beautiful was the bride with her golden hair flowing down over her dress of shining white satin!” “And how proud and handsome the bridegroom!” “And how lovely in their autumn days the two mothers!  Mistress Alice Sandal leaning so confidently upon the arm of the stately Mrs. Ducie Sandal.”  “And how glad was the good rector!” Little work, either in field or house or fellside, was done that day; for, when all has been said about human selfishness, this truth abides,—­in the main, we do rejoice with those who rejoice, and we do weep with those who weep.

The old Seat was almost gay in the sunshine, all its windows open for the wandering breezes, and its great hall doors set wide for the feet of the new squire and his bride.  For they were too wise to begin their married life by going away from their home; they felt that it was better to come to it with the bridal benediction in their ears, and the sunshine of the wedding-day upon their faces.

The ceremony had been delayed some months, for Stephen had been in America seeking Harry; seeking him in the great cities and in the lonely mining-camps, but never coming upon his foot steps until they had been worn away into forgetfulness.  At last the rector wrote to him, “Return home, Stephen.  We are both wrong.  It is not human love, but God love, that must seek the lost ones.  If you found Harry now, and brought him back, it would be too soon.  When his lesson is learned, the heart of God will be touched, and he will say, ’That will do, my son.  Arise, and go home.’”

And when Mrs. Sandal smiled through her tears, for the hope’s sake, he took her hand, and added solemnly, “Be confident and glad, you shall see Harry come joyfully to his own home.  Oh, if you could only listen, angels still talk with men!  Raphael, the affable angel, loves to bring them confidences.  God also speaks to his children in dreams, and by the oracles that wait in darkness.  If we know not, it is because we ask not.  But I know, and am sure, that Harry will return in joy and in peace.  And if the dead look over the golden bar of heaven upon their earthly homes, Barf Latrigg, seeing the prosperity of the two houses, which stand upon his love and his self-denial, will say once more to his friend, ‘William, I did well to Sandal.’”