Christabel Coleridge - An English Squire

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Cherry; “he would not care now; but I really haven’t time. I must grind pretty hard from now to midsummer.”

“There is one thing I have read of,” said Alvar, “in English newspapers. It is a race of boats on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge.”

“Oh, yes, you must go and see it. That’s Jack’s ambition – to be one of the crew.”

“Ah, but you see there’s no river at R – , and that’s so unlucky,” said Jack seriously.

And so what with explanations and questions the ice melted a little. Alvar looked smiling and beneficent; he did not seem at all ashamed of his own ignorance; and Jack evidently regarded him with a new respect.

Cheriton also contrived that the Seytons, with the vicar of Oakby, Mr Ellesmere and his wife, should be asked to dinner; and as the vicar had some general conversation, some information about Spain was elicited from Alvar, who, moreover, was pleased to find himself in ladies’ society, and was evidently at ease in it; while Virginia, in exchange for the pleasant talk that seemed to come out of her old life, could tell Cheriton that her cousin Ruth was coming to stay with her, and could confide in him that home was still a little strange.

“Well, strangers are strange,” said Cherry. “ We are shaking down, but the number of tempers lost in the process might be advertised for ‘as of no value except to the owners,’ if to them. Only the home-made article, you understand – ”

“Dear me,” said Virginia, “I should as soon think of losing my temper with the Cid. Aren’t you afraid of him?”

Cheriton made an irresistibly ludicrous face.

“Don’t tell,” he said, “but I think we are; and yet, you know, we think ‘yon soothern chap,’ as old Bates called him, must be ‘a bit of a softy’ after all.”

“Oh, Cherry, that is how you talked yourself when we were children,” exclaimed Virginia impulsively. “Do you know I feel I was born here, when I hear the broad Westmoreland. I never forgot it.”

“Nay, I’m glad you don’t say I talk so now,” said Cherry. “They tell me at Oxford that my tongue always betrays me when I am excited. But here comes Alvar; now make him fall in love with Westmoreland. Alvar, Miss Seyton has been abroad, so she is not quite a benighted savage.”

“My brother Cheriton is not a savage,” said Alvar, smiling, as Cherry moved away. “He is the kindest and most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

“Yes, he is very kind. But I hope, Mr Lester, that you do not think us all savages, with that one exception.”

“In future I can never think so,” said Alvar, with a bow. “These boys are savage certainly – very savage, but I do not care.”

“It is strange, is it not,” said Virginia, rather timidly, “to have to make acquaintance with one’s own father?”

“Of my father I say nothing,” said Alvar, with a sudden air of hauteur, that made the impulsive Virginia blush, and feel as if she had taken a liberty with him, till he added, with a smile, “Miss Seyton, too, I hear, is a stranger.”

“Yes, I have been away ever since I was a little girl, and – and I had forgotten my relations.”

“I have not known mine,” said Alvar; “Cheriton wrote to me once a little letter. I have it now, and since then I have loved him. I do not know the rest, and they wish I was not here.”

“But don’t you think,” said Virginia earnestly, “that we – that you will soon feel more at home with them?”

“Oh, I do not know,” said Alvar, with a shrug. “It is cold, and I am so dull that I could die. They understand no thing. And in Spain I was the chief; I could do what I wished. Here I must follow and obey. My name even is different. I do not know ‘Mr Lester.’ I am ‘Don Alvar.’ Will you not call me so?”

“But that would be so very strange to me,” said Virginia, parrying this request. “Every one will call you Mr Lester. How tall Nettie is grown. Do you not think her very pretty?”

“Oh, she is pink, and white, and blue, and yellow; but she is like a little boy. There is not in her eyes the attraction, the coquetry, which I admire,” said Alvar, pointing his remark with a glance at his companion’s lucid, beaming, interested eyes, in which however there was little conscious coquetry.

“I am sorry to hear you admire coquettes,” was too obvious an answer to be resisted.

“Nay, it is the privilege of beauty,” said Alvar.

Virginia, like many impulsive people, was apt to recollect with a cold chill conversations by which at the time she had been entirely carried away. But on looking back at this one she liked it. Alvar’s dignity and grace of manner made his trifling compliments both flattering and respectful. His feelings, too, she thought, were evidently deep and tender; and how she pitied him for his solitary condition!

“Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar.”

On the third Sunday morning after Alvar’s arrival, Mr Lester came down as usual at the sound of the gong, and as he glanced round the dining-room missed his two elder sons.

Prayers were over and breakfast had begun before Alvar entered.

“Ah pardon,” he said, bowing to his grandmother; “I did not know it was late.”

“I make a point of being punctual on Sunday,” said Mr Lester, in a tone of incipient displeasure.

“Cheriton is late too,” said Alvar.

“No,” said Jack, “he’s gone to Church.”

“All, then we do not go to-day,” said Alvar, with an air of relief so comical that even the solemn Jack could hardly stand it.

“Oh, yes, we do,” he said, “this is extra.”

“Cheriton,” said Mr Lester, “is very attentive to his religious duties.”

“I suppose he’ll have breakfast at the Vicarage,” said Nettie, as Alvar raised his eyebrows and gave a little shrug.

It was a gesture habitual to him, and was not intended to express contempt either for religion or for Cheriton, but only a want of comprehension of the affair; but it annoyed Mr Lester and called his attention to the fact that Alvar had appeared in a black velvet coat of a peculiar foreign cut, the sight of which he disliked on a week-day, and considered intolerable when it was contrasted with the spruce neatness of the rest of the party. He could not very well attack Alvar on the subject, but he sharply reproved Bob for cutting hunches of bread when no one wanted them, and found fault with the coffee. And then, apparently à propos of nothing, he began to make a little speech about the importance of example in a country place, and the influence of trifles.

“And I can assure every one present,” he concluded emphatically, “that there is no need to look far for an example of the evil effects of neglect in these particulars.”

“Elderthwaite?” whispered Nettie to Jack.

“Ay,” said Mrs Lester, “young people should show respect to Sunday morning. It is what in my father’s house was always insisted on. Your grandfather, too, used to say that he liked his dogs even to know Sunday.”

“It is strange to me,” said Alvar coolly.

“It will be well that you should give yourself the pains to become accustomed to it,” said his father curtly.

It was the first time that the stately stranger had been addressed in such a tone, and he looked up with a flash of the eye that startled the younger ones.

“Sir, it is by your will I am a stranger here,” he said, with evident displeasure.

“Stranger or no, my regulations must be respected,” said Mr Lester, his colour rising.

Alvar rose from his seat and proved his claim at any rate to the family temper by bowing to his grandmother and marching out of the room.