During thirty years of the first half
of this century Mrs. St. Alban’s finishing school
for young gentlewomen was a famous institution of its
kind. For she had been born to the manner of courts
and of people of high degree; and when evil fortune
met her, she very wisely turned her inherited social
advantages into a means of honest livelihood.
Aspatria was much impressed by her noble bearing and
fine manners, and by the elaborate state in which
the twelve pupils, of whom she was one, lived.
Each had her own suite of apartments;
each was expected to keep a maid, and to dress with
the utmost care and propriety. There were fine
horses in the stables for their equestrian exercise,
there were grooms to attend them during it, and there
were regular reception-days, which afforded tyros
in social accomplishments practical opportunities
for cultivating the graceful and gracious urbanity
which evidences really fine breeding.
Many of Aspatria’s companions
were of high rank,-Lady Julias and Lady
Augustas, who were destined to wear ducal coronets
and to stand around the throne of their young queen.
But they were always charmingly pleasant and polite,
and Aspatria soon acquired their outward form of calm
deliberation and their mode of low, soft speech.
For the rest, she decided, with singular prudence,
to cultivate only those talents which nature had obviously
granted her.
A few efforts proved that she had
no taste for art. Indeed, the attempt to portray
the majesty of the mountains or the immensity of the
ocean seemed to her childishly petty and futile.
She had dwelt among the high places and been familiar
with the great sea, and to make images of them appeared
a kind of sacrilege. But she liked the study
of languages, and she had a rich contralto voice capable
of expressing all the emotions of the heart.
At the piano she hesitated; its music, under her unskilled
fingers, sounded mechanical; she doubted her ability
to put a soul into that instrument. But the harp
was different; its strings held sympathetic tones she
felt competent to master. To these studies she
added a course of English literature and dancing.
She was already a fine rider, and her information
obtained from the vicar’s library and the Encyclopædia
covered an enormous variety of subjects, though it
was desultory, and in many respects imperfect.
Her new life was delightful to her.
She had an innate love for study, for quiet, and for
elegant surroundings. These tastes were fully
gratified. The large house stood in a fair garden,
surrounded by very high walls, with entrance-gates
of handsomely wrought iron. Perfect quiet reigned
within this flowery enclosure. She could study
without the constant interruptions which had annoyed
her at home; and she was wisely aided in her studies
by masters whose low voices and gliding steps seemed
only to accentuate the peace of the wide schoolroom,
with its perfect appointments and its placid group
of beautiful students.
On Saturdays Brune generally spent
several hours with her; and if the weather were fine,
they rode or walked in the Park. Brune was a
constant wonder to Aspatria. Certainly his handsome
uniform had done much for him, but there was a greater
change than could be effected by mere clothes.
Without losing that freshness and singleness of mind
he owed to his country training, he had become a man
of fashion, a little of a dandy, a very innocent sort
of a lady-killer. His arrival caused always a
faint flutter in Mrs. St. Alban’s dove-cot, and
the noble damosels found many little womanly devices
to excuse their passing through the parlour while
Brune was present. They liked to see him bend
his beautiful head to them; and Lady Mary Boleyn, who
was Aspatria’s friend and companion, was mildly
envied the privileges this relation gave her.
During the vacations Aspatria was
always the guest of one or other of her mates, though
generally she spent them at the splendid seat of the
Boleyns in Hampshire, and the unconscious education
thus received was of the greatest value to her.
It gave the ease of nature to acquired accomplishments,
and, above all, that air which we call distinction,
which is rarely natural, and is attained only by frequent
association with those who dwell on the highest social
peaks.
Much might be said of this phase of
Aspatria’s life which may be left to the reader’s
imagination. For three years it saw only such
changes as advancing intelligence and growing friendships
made. The real change was in Aspatria personally.
No one could have traced without constant doubt the
slim, virginal, unfinished-looking girl that left
Seat-Ambar, in the womanly perfection of Aspatria aged
twenty-four years. She had grown several inches
taller; her angles had all disappeared; every joint
was softly rounded. Her hands and arms were exquisite;
her throat and the poise of her head like those of
a Greek goddess. Her hair was darker and more
abundant, and her eyes retained all their old charm,
with some rarer and nobler addition.
To be sure, she had not the perfect
regularity of feature that distinguished some of her
associates, that exact beauty which Titian’s
Venus possesses, and which makes no man’s heart
beat a throb the faster. Her face had rather
the mobile irregularity of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa,
the charming face that men love passionately, the face
that men can die for.
At the close of the third year she
refused all invitations for the summer holidays, and
went back to Seat-Ambar. There had not been much
communication between Will and herself. He was
occupied with his land and his sheep, his wife and
his two babies. People then took each other’s
affection as a matter of course, without the daily
assurance of it. About twice a year Will had
sent her a few strong words of love, and a bare description
of any change about the home, or else Alice had covered
a sheet with pretty nothings, written in the small,
pointed, flowing characters then fashionable.
But the love of Aspatria for her home
depended on no such trivial, accidental tokens.
It was in her blood; her personality was knotted to
Seat-Ambar by centuries of inherited affection; she
could test it by the fact that it would have killed
her to see it pass into a stranger’s hands.
When once she had turned her face northward, it seemed
impossible to travel quickly enough. Hundreds
of miles away she felt the cool wind blowing through
the garden, and the scent of the damask rose was on
it. She heard the gurgling of the becks and the
wayside streams, and the whistling of the boys in the
barn, and the tinkling of the sheep-bells on the highest
fells. The raspberries were ripe in their sunny
corner; she tasted them afar off. The dark oak
rooms, their perfume of ancient things, their air of
homelike comfort,-it was all so vivid,
so present to her memory, that her heart beat and
thrilled, as the breast of a nursing mother thrills
and beats for her longing babe.
She had told no one she was coming;
for, the determination made, she knew that she would
reach home before the Dalton postman got the letter
to Seat-Ambar. The gig she had hired she left
at the lower garden gate; and then she walked quickly
through the rose-alley up to the front door.
It stood open, and she heard a baby crying. How
strange the wailing notes sounded! She went forward,
and opened the parlour door; Alice was washing the
child, and she turned with an annoyed look to see
the intruder.
Of course the expression changed,
but not quickly enough to prevent Aspatria seeing
that her visit was inopportune. Alice said afterward
that she did not recognize her sister-in-law, and,
as Will met her precisely as he would have met an
entire stranger, Alice’s excuse was doubtless
a valid one. There were abundant exclamations
and rejoicings when her identity was established,
but Will could do nothing all the evening but wonder
over the changes that had taken place in his sister.
However, when the first joy of reunion
is over, it is a prudent thing not to try too far
the welcome that is given to the home-comer who has
once left home. Will and Alice had grown to the
idea that Aspatria would never return to claim the
room in Seat-Ambar which was hers legally so long
as she lived. It had been refurnished and was
used as a guest-room. Aspatria looked with dismay
on the changes made. Her very sampler had been
sent away,-the bit of canvas made sacred
by her mother’s fingers holding her own over
it. She could remember the instances connected
with the formation of almost every letter of its simple
prayer,-
Jesus, permit thy gracious name to stand
As the first effort of my infant hand;
And, as my fingers on the sampler move,
Engage my tender heart to seek thy love.
With thy dear children may I have a part,
And write thy Name, thyself, upon my heart.
And it was gone! She went into
the lumber-room, and picked it out from under a pile
of old prints and shabbily framed certificates for
prize cattle.
With a sad heart Aspatria regarded
the other changes. Her little tent-bed, with
its white dimity curtains, had been given to baby’s
nurse. The vase her father had bought her at Kendal
fair was broken. Her small mirror and dressing-table
had been removed for a fine Psyche in a gilded frame.
Nothing, nothing was untouched, but the big dower-chest
into which she had flung her wretched wedding-clothes.
She stood silently before it, reflecting, with excusable
ill-nature, that neither Will nor Alice knew the secret
of its spring. Her mother had taught it to her,
and that bit of knowledge she determined to keep to
herself.
After some hesitation she tried the
spring: it answered her pressure at once; the
lid flew back, and there lay the unhappy white satin
dress, the wreath, and veil, and slippers, just as
she had tumbled them in. The bitter hour came
sharply back to her; she thought and gazed, and thought
and gazed, until she felt herself to be weeping.
Then she softly closed the lid, and, as she did so,
a smile parted her lips,-a smile that denied
all that her tears said; a smile of hope, of good
presage, of coming happiness.
She stayed only a week at Seat-Ambar,
though she had originally intended to remain until
the harvest was over. The time was spent in public
festivity; every one in Allerdale was invited to give
her a fitting welcome. But the very formality
of all this entertainment pained her. It was,
after all, only a cruel evidence that Will and Alice
did not care to take her into their real home-life.
She would rather have sat alone with them, and talked
of their hopes and plans, and been permitted to make
friends of the babies.
So far away, so far away as she had
drifted in three years from the absent living!
Would the dead be kinder? She went to Aspatria
Church and sat down in her mother’s seat, and
let the strange spiritual atmosphere which hovers
in old churches fill her heart with its supernatural
influence. All around her were the graves of her
fore-elders, strong elemental men, simple God-loving
women. Did they know her? Did they care
for her? Her soul looked with piteous entreaty
into the void behind it, but there was no answer; only
that dreadful silence of the dead, which presses upon
the drum of the ear like thunder.
She went into the quiet yard around
the church. The ancient, ancient sun shone on
the young grass. Over her mother’s grave
the sweet thyme had grown luxuriantly. She rubbed
her hands in it, and spread them toward heaven with
a prayer. Then peace came into her heart, and
she felt as if eyes, unseen heavenly eyes, rained
happy influence upon her. Thus it is that death
imparts to life its most intense interest; for, kneeling
in his very presence, Aspatria forgot the mortality
of her parents, and did reverence to that within them
which was eternal.
She returned to London, and was a
little disappointed there also. Mrs. St. Alban
had promised herself an absolute release from any outside
element. She felt Aspatria a trifle in the way,
and, though far too polite to show her annoyance,
Aspatria by some similar instinct divined it.
That is the way always. When we plan for ourselves,
all our plans fail. Happy are they who learn
early to let fate alone, and never interfere with
the Powers who hold the thread of their destiny!
It was not until she had reached this
mood, a kind of content indifference, that her good
genius could work for her. She then sent Brune
as her messenger, and Brune took his sister to meet
her on Richmond Hill. On their way thither they
talked about Seat-Ambar, and Will and Alice, until
Aspatria suddenly noticed that Brune was not listening
to her. His eyes were fixed upon a lovely woman
approaching them. It was Sarah Sandys. Brune
stood bareheaded to receive her salutation.
“I never should have known you,
Lieutenant Anneys,” she said, extending her
hand, and beaming like sunshine on the handsome officer,
“had not your colonel Jardine been in Richmond
to-day. He is very proud of you, sir, and said
so many fine things of you that I am ambitious to
show him that we are old acquaintances. May I
know, through you, Mrs. Anneys also?”
“This is my sister, Mrs. Sandys,-my
sister-” Brune hesitated a moment,
and then said firmly, “Miss Anneys.”
Then Sarah insisted on taking them
to her house to lunch; and there she soon had them
under her influence. She waited on them with
ravishing smiles and all sorts of pretty offices.
She took them in her handsome carriage to drive, she
insisted on their remaining to dinner. And before
the drive was over, she had induced Aspatria to extend
her visit until the opening of Mrs. St. Alban’s
school.
“We three are from the north
country,” she said, with an air of relationship;
“and how absurd for Miss Anneys to be alone at
Mrs. St. Alban’s, where she is not wanted, and
for me to be alone here, when I desire her society
so much!”
Aspatria was much pleased to receive
such a delightful invitation, and a messenger was
sent at once for her maid. Mrs. St. Alban was
quite ready to resign Aspatria, and the maid was as
glad as her mistress to leave the lonely mansion.
In an hour or two she had removed Aspatria’s
wardrobe, and was arranging the pleasant rooms Mrs.
Sandys had placed at her guest’s disposal.
Sarah was evidently bent on conquest.
Her toilet was a marvellous combination of some shining
blue and white texture, mingled with pink roses and
gold ornaments. Her soft fair hair was loosened
and curled, and she had a childlike manner of being
carelessly happy. Brune sat at her right hand;
she talked to him in smiles and glances, and gave her
words to Aspatria. She was determined to please
both sister and brother, and she succeeded. Aspatria
thought she had never in all her life seen a woman
so lovable, so amusing, so individual.
Brune was naturally shy and silent
among women. Sarah made him eloquent, because
she had the tact to discover the subject on which
he could talk,-his regiment, and its sayings
and doings. So Brune was delighted with himself;
he had never before suspected how clever he was.
Stimulated by Sarah’s and Aspatria’s laughter
and curiosity, he found it easy to retail funny little
bits of palace and mess gossip, and to describe the
queer men and the vain men and the fine fellows that
were his familiars.
“And pray how do you amuse yourself,
Lieutenant? Do you drink wine, and gamble, and
go to the races, and bet your purse empty?”
“I was never brought up in such
ways,” Brune answered, “and, I can tell
you, I wouldn’t make believe to like them.
There are a good many dalesmen in my company, and
none of us enjoy anything more than a fair throw or
an in-lock.”
“A throw or an in-lock!
What do you mean, Lieutenant? You must explain
yourself to Miss Anneys and myself.”
“Aspatria knows well enough.
Did you ever see north-country lads wrestling, madam?
No? Then you have as fine a thing in keeping for
your eyes as human creatures can show you. I’ll
warrant that! Why-a! wrestling brings all men
to their level. When Colonel Jardine is ugly-tempered,
and top-heavy with his authority, a few sound throws
over Timothy Sutcliffe’s head does bring him
to level very well. I had a little in-play with
him yesterday; for in the wrestling-ring we be all
equals, though out of it he is my colonel.”
“Now for the in-play. Tell
me about it, for I see Miss Anneys is not at all interested.”
“Colonel Jardine is a fine wrestler;
a fair match he would be even for brother Will.
Yesterday he said he could throw me; and I took the
challenge willingly. So we shook hands, and went
squarely for the throw. I was in good luck, and
soon got my head under his right arm, and his head
close down to my left side. Then it was only to
get my right arm up to his shoulder, and lift him
as high as my head, and, when so, lean backward and
throw him over my head: we call it the Flying
Horse.”
“Oh, I can see it very well.
No wonder Rosalind fell in love with Orlando when
he threw the wrestler Charles.”
“Were they north-country or Cornish men?”
She was far too kindly and polite
to smile; indeed, she gave Aspatria a pretty, imperative
glance, and answered, in the most natural manner,
“I think they were Italians.”
“Oh!” said Brune, with
some contempt. “Chaff on their ways!
The Devonshire wrestlers are brutal; the Cornish are
too slow; but the Cumberland men wrestle like gentlemen.
They meet square and level in the ring, and the one
who could carry ill-will for a fair throw would very
soon find himself out of all rings and all good fellowship.”
“You said ‘even brother
Will.’ Is your brother a better wrestler
than you?”
“My song! he is that! Will
has his match, though. We had a ploughman once,-Aspatria
remembers him,-Robert Steadman, an upright,
muscular young fellow, civil and respectful as could
be in everything about his work and place; but on
wet days when we were all, masters and servants, in
the barn together, it was a sight to see Robert wrestling
with Will for the mastery, and Will never so ready
to say, ’Well done!’ nor the rest of us
so happy, as when we saw Will’s two brawny legs
going handsomely over Robert’s head.”
“If I were a man, I should try to be a fine
wrestler.”
“It is a great comfort,”
said Brune. “If you have a quarrel of any
kind, it is a deal more satisfactory to meet your man,
and throw him a few times over your head, than to
go to law with him. It puts a stop to unpleasantness
very quickly and very good-naturedly.”
Then Sarah rose and opened the piano,
and from its keys dashed out a lilting, hurrying melody,
like the galloping of horses and shaking of bridles;
and in a few moments she began to sing, and Brune went
to her side, and, because she looked so steadily into
his eyes, he could remember nothing at all of the
song but its dashing refrain,-
“For he
whom I wed
Must be north
country bred,
And must carry me back to the North Countrie.”
Then Aspatria played some wonderful
music on her harp, and Sarah and Brune sat still and
listened to their own hearts, and sent out shy glances,
and caught each other in the act, and Brune was made
nervous, and Sarah gay, by the circumstance.
By and by they began to talk of schools,
and of how much Aspatria had learned; and so Brune
regretted his own ignorance, and wished he had been
more attentive to his schoolmaster.
Sarah laughed at the wish. “A
knowledge of Shakspeare and the musical glasses and
the Della Cruscans,” she said, “is for
foolish, sentimental women. You can wrestle,
and you can fight, and I suppose you can make money,
and perhaps even make love. Is there anything
else a soldier needs?”
“Colonel Jardine is very clever,”
continued Brune, regretfully; “and I had a good
schoolmaster-”
“Nonsense, Lieutenant!”
said Sarah. “None of them are good.
They all spoil your eyes, and seek to lay a curse
on you; that is the confusion of languages.”
“Still, I might have learned Latin.”
“It was the speech of pagans and infidels.”
“Or logic.”
“Logic hath nothing to say in a good cause.”
“Or philosophy.”
“Philosophy is curiosity.
Socrates was very properly put to death for it.”
They were all laughing together, when
Sarah condemned Socrates, and the evening passed like
a happy dream away.
It was succeeded by weeks of the same
delight. Aspatria soon learned to love Sarah.
She had never before had a woman friend on whom she
could rely and to whom she could open her heart.
Sarah induced her to speak of Ulfar, to tell her all
her suffering and her plans and hopes, and she gave
her in return a true affection and a most sincere
sympathy. Nothing of the past that referred to
Ulfar was left untold; and as the two women sat together
during the long summer days, they grew very near to
each other, and there was but one mind and one desire
between them.
So that when the time came for Aspatria
to go back to Mrs. St. Alban’s, Sarah would
not hear of their separation. “You have
had enough of book-learning,” she said.
“Remain with me. We will go to Paris, to
Rome, to Vienna. We will study through travel
and society. It is by rubbing yourself against
all kinds of men and women that you acquire the finest
polish of life; and then when Ulfar comes back you
will be able to meet him upon all civilized grounds.
And as for the South Americans, we will buy all the
books about them we can find. Are they red or
white or black, I wonder? Are they pagans or
Christians? I seem to remember that when I was
at school I learned that the Peruvians worshipped
the sun.”
“I think, Sarah, that they are
all descendants of Spaniards; so they must be Roman
Catholics. And I have read that their women are
beautiful and witty.”
“My dear Aspatria, nothing goes
with Spaniards but gravity and green olives.”
Aspatria was easily persuaded to accept
Sarah’s offer; she was indeed very happy in
the prospect before her. But Brune was miserable.
He had spent a rapturous summer, and it was to end
without harvest, or the promise thereof. He could
not endure the prospect, and one night he made a movement
so decided that Sarah was compelled to set him back
a little.
“Were you ever in love, Mrs.
Sandys?” poor Brune asked, with his heart filling
his mouth.
She looked thoughtfully at him a moment,
and then slowly answered: “I once felt
myself in danger, and I fled to France. I consider
it the finest action of my life.”
Aspatria felt sorry for her brother,
and she said warmly: “I think no one falls
in love now. Love is out of date.”
Sarah enjoyed her temper. “You
are right, dear,” she answered. “Culture
makes love a conscious operation. When women are
all feeling, they fall in love; when they have intellect
and will, they attach themselves only after a critical
examination of the object.”
Later, when they were alone, Aspatria
took her friend to task for her cruelty: “You
know Brune loves you, Sarah; and you do love him.
Why make him miserable? Has he presumed too far?”
“No, indeed! He is as adoring
and humble as one could wish a future lord and master
to be.”
“Well, then?”
“I will give our love time to
grow. When we come back, if Brune has been true
to me in every way, he may fall to blessing himself
with both hands;” and then she began to sing,-
“Betide, betide, whatever betide,
Love shall be Lord of Sandy-Side!”
“Love is a burden two hearts
carry very easily together, but, oh, Sarah! I
know how hard it is to bear it alone. Therefore
I say, be kind to Brune while you can.”
“My dear, your idea is a very
pretty one. I read the other day a Hindu version
of it that smelled charmingly of the soil,-
’A clapping is not made with one
hand alone:
Your love, my beloved, must answer my
own.’”
But in spite of such reflections,
Sarah’s will and intellect were predominant,
and she left poor Brune with only such hope as he could
glean from the lingering pressure of her hand and the
tears in her eyes. Aspatria’s pleading
had done no good. Perhaps it had done harm; for
the very nature of love is that it should be spontaneous.