The Squire of Sandal-Side, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [the reading list book TXT] 📗

and slept in his chair; and finally, after a cup of tea, went to bed. The servants had a party in their own hall, and Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte were occupied an hour or two in its ordering. Then the mother was thoroughly weary; and before it was quite nine o'clock, Harry and Charlotte were left alone by the parlor fire. Charlotte was a little dull also; for Steve had found it impossible to get down the mountain during the storm, and she missed him, and was constantly inclined to fall into short silences.

After one of them, she raised her eyes to Harry's face, and was shocked by its expression. "Harry," she said, leaning forward to take his hand, "I am sure you are in trouble. What is it?"

"If I durst tell you, Charlotte!"

"Whatever you have dared to do, you may dare to tell me, Harry, I think."

"I have got married."

"Well, where is the harm? Is it to the lady whose picture you showed me?"

"Yes. I told you she was poor."

"It is a great pity she is poor. I am afraid we are getting poor too. Father was saying last week that he had been talking with Squire Beverley. Emily is to have fifteen thousand pounds. Father is feverishly anxious about you and Emily. Her fortune would be a great thing at Sandal, and father likes her."

"What is the use of talking about Emily? I have been married to Beatrice Lanza since last September."

"Such a strange name! Is it a Scotch name?"

"She is an Italian."

"Harry Sandal! What a shame!"

"Don't you think God made Italians as well as Englishmen?"

"That is not the question. God made Indians and negroes and all sorts of people. But he set the world in races, as he set races in families. He told the Jews to keep to themselves. He was angry when they intermarried with others. It always brought harm. What kind of a person is an Italian? They are papists, I know. The Pope of Rome is an Italian. O Harry, Harry, Harry! It will kill father and mother. But perhaps, as you met her in Edinburgh, she is a Protestant. The Scotch are all Protestants."

"Beatrice is a Roman Catholic, a very strict Roman Catholic. I had to marry her in a Romish church." He said the words rather defiantly, for Charlotte's attitude offended him; and he had reached that point when it was a reckless pleasure to put things at their worst.

"Then I am ashamed of you. The dear old rector! He married father and mother; he christened and confirmed you; you might be sure, that if you could not ask him to marry you, you had no business to marry at all."

"You said her face was like an angel's, and that you would love her, Charlotte."

"Oh, indeed! But I did not think the angel was an Italian angel and a Roman-Catholic angel. Circumstances alter cases. You, who have been brought up a good Church-of-England gentleman, to go over to the Pope of Rome!"

"I have not gone over to the Pope of Rome."

"All the same, Harry; all the same. And you know how father feels about that. Father would fight for the Church quicker than he would fight for his own house and land. Why! the Sandals got all of their Millom Estate for being good Protestants; for standing by the Hanoverian line instead of those popish Stuarts. Father will think you have committed an act of treason against both church and state, and he will be ashamed to show his face among the Dale squires. It is too bad! too bad for any thing!" and she covered her face, and cried bitterly.

"She is so lovely, so good"--

"Nonsense! Were there no lovely English girls? no good English girls? Emily is ten times lovelier."

"You know what you said."

"I said it to please you."

"Charlotte!"

"Yes, I did,--at least, in a great measure. It is easy enough to call a pretty girl an angel; and as for my promise to love your wife, of course I expected you would choose a wife suitable to your religion and your birth. Suppose you selected some outlandish dress,--an Italian brigand's, for instance,--what would the neighboring gentlemen think of you? It would be an insult to their national costume, and they would do right to resent it. Well, being who and what you are, you have no right to bring an Italian woman into Seat-Sandal. It is an insult to every woman in the county, and they will make you feel it."

"I shall not give them the opportunity. Beatrice cannot live in this beastly climate."

"The climate is wrong also? Naturally. It would follow the religion and the woman. Harry Sandal, I wish I had died, ere my ears had heard such a shame and sorrow for my father and mother! Where are you going to live, then?"

"In Florence. It is the birthplace of Beatrice the city associated with all her triumphs."

"God have mercy, Harry! Her triumphs! Is she, then, an actress?"

"She is a singer,--a wonderful singer; one to whom the world has listened with breathless delight."

"A singing woman! And you have married her? It is an outrage on your ancestors, and on your parents and sisters."

"I will not hear you speak in that way, Charlotte. Of course I married her. Did you wish me to ruin and debase her? That, I suppose, you could have forgiven. My sin against the Sandals and society is, that I married her."

"No, sir; you know better. Your sin is in having any thing whatever to do with her. There is not a soul in Sandal that would have hesitated between ruin and marriage. If it had to be one or the other, then father and mother both, then I, then all your friends, would have said without hesitation, 'Marry the woman.'"

"I expected and hoped this would be your view of the situation. I could not give up Beatrice, and I could not be a scoundrel to her."

"You might have thought of another woman besides Beatrice. Is a sin against a mother a less sin than one against a strange woman? A mother is something sacred. To wound her heart is to throw a stone at her. You have committed a sort of sacrilege. And you are married. No entreaties can prevent, and no repentance can avail. Oh, what a sorrow to darken all the rest of father's and mother's days! What right have you to spoil their lives, in order to give yourself a little pleasure? O Harry! I never knew that you were selfish before."

"I deserve all you say, Charley, but I loved Beatrice so much."

"Are you sure, even of that excuse? I heard you vow that you loved Eliza Pierson 'so much,' and Fanny Ulloch 'so much,' and Emily Beverley 'so much.' Why did you not come home, and speak to me before it was too late? Why come at all now?"

"Because I want to talk to you about money. I have sold out."

"Sold out? Is there any more bad news? Do you know what father paid for your commission? Do you know how it hampered him to do it? that, in fact, he has never been quite easy about ready money since?"

"I had to sell out. Did I not tell you that Beatrice could not live in this climate? She was very ill when she returned to Italy. Signor Lanza was in great trouble about her."

"Signor Lanza? Her brother, I suppose."

"You suppose wrong. He is her father."

"For her, then, you have given up your faith, your country, your home, your profession, every thing that other men hold dear and sacred. Do you expect father to support you? Or is your wife to sing in Italy?"

"I think you are trying how disagreeable you can be, Charlotte."

"I am asking you honest questions in honest words."

"I have the money from the sale of my commission."

"It does not then strike you as dishonorable to keep it?"

"No, father gave me it."

"It appears to me, that if money was taken from the estate, let us say to stock a sheep-walk, and it was decided after three years' trial to give up the enterprise, and sell the sheep, that the money would naturally go back to the estate. When you came of age, father made you a very generous allowance. After a time you preferred that he should invest a large sum in a military commission for you; and you proposed to live upon your pay,--a thing you never have even tried to do. Suddenly, you find that the commission will not suit your more recent plans, and you sell it. Ought not the money to go back to the estate, and you to make a fresh arrangement with father about your allowance? That is my idea."

"Foolishness! And pray what allowance would my father make me, after the marriage I have contracted?"

"Now, you show your secret heart, Harry. You know you have no right to expect one, and so you keep what is not yours. This sin also for the woman whom you have put before every sentiment of love and honor."

"You were stubborn enough about Steve Latrigg."

"I was honorable; I was considerate for father, and did not put Stephen before him. Do you think I would ever marry Stephen against father's wish, or to the injury or suffering of any one whom I love? Certainly I would marry no one else, but I gave father my word that I would wait for his sanction. When people do right, things come right for them. But if father had stood out twenty years, Steve and I would have waited. Ducie gave us the same advice. 'Wait, children,' she said: 'I have seen many a wilful match, and many a run-away match, but never one, never one that prospered.'"

"Charley, I expected you to stand by me. I expected you to help me."

"O Harry, Harry! How can I help? What can I do? There is nothing left but to suffer."

"There is this: plead for me when I am away. My wife is sick in Florence. I must go to her at once. The money I have from my commission is all I have. I am going to invest it in a little house and vineyard. I have found out that my real tastes are for a pastoral life."

"Ah, if you could only have found that out for father!"

"Circumstances may change."

"That is, your father may die. I suppose you and your wife have talked over that probability. Beatrice will be able to endure the climate then."

"If I did not see that you were under very strong excitement, Charlotte, I should be much offended by what you say. But you don't mean to hurt me. Do you imagine that I feel no sorrow in leaving father and my mother and you and the old home? My heart is very sad to-night, Charley. I feel that I shall come here no more."

"Then why go away? Why, why?"

"Because a man leaves father and mother and every thing for the woman he loves. Charley, help me."

She shook her head sadly.

"Help me to break the trouble to father."

"There is no 'breaking' it. It will break him. It will kill him. Alas, it is the ungrateful child that has