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

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