Chapter Eleven.
Alvar Confidential

 
“He talked of daggers and of darts,
Of passions and of pains.”
 

The rain had ceased, and long pale rays of sunshine were streaming through the mist as Cheriton made his way through a very dilapidated turnstile and across a footpath much in need of drainage towards Elderthwaite House. As he came up through the overgrown shrubberies he saw in front of him a small fur-clothed figure, and his colour deepened and his heart beat faster as he recognised Ruth. He had been thinking that he should see her ever since his promise to Virginia, but he had not expected to meet her out-of-doors on so wet a day, and he had hardly a word to say as he lifted his hat and came up to her. She was less discomposed, perhaps less astonished.

“Ah! how do you do?” she said. “Do you know when I saw some one coming I hoped it might be your new brother. I am so curious to see him.”

“He is not a bit like any of us,” said Cherry.

“No? That would be a change, for all you Lesters are so exactly alike.”

Ruth had a way of saying saucy things in a soft serious voice, with grave eyes just ready to laugh. Cheriton and she had had many a passage of arms together, and now he rallied his forces and answered, —

“Being new, of course he’ll be charming. Rupert and Jack and I will know all our partners are longing for him. But as he can only dance with one young lady at a time, in the intervals I shall hope – I am much improved in my waltzing – just to get a turn.”

“Really improved – at last?” said Ruth; then suddenly changing to sympathy – “But isn’t it very strange for you all? How do you get on? How do you like him?”

“Oh, he isn’t half a bad fellow, and we’re excellent friends.”

“That’s very good of you. Now I have such a bad disposition that if I were in your place I should be half mad with jealousy.”

Cheriton laughed incredulously.

“I daresay you would stroke us all down the right way. Rupert says he feels as if he were lighting his cigar in a powder-magazine. But they get on very well, and Grace and Mary Cheriton think him perfectly charming.”

“I think I shall come to the ball in a mantilla. But have you done anything for poor Virginia?”

“Oh, yes; the old parson only wanted a little explanation,” said Cherry, quite carelessly enough to encourage Ruth in adding earnestly, —

“It is so good of her to want to help these poor people. Queenie is like a girl in a book. I really think she likes disagreeable duties.”

“I am sure you, who can sympathise with Virginia and yet know all the troubles, will be able to make it smooth for her. I wish you would.”

“Ah, but I am not nearly so good as Virginia,” said Ruth – a perfectly true statement, which she herself believed. Whether she expected Cheriton to believe it was a different matter.

Alvar had no excuse now for finding Oakby dull; the house was full of people, Lady Cheriton and her daughters were enchanted with his music, and he brightened up considerably and was off Cheriton’s mind, so that nothing spoilt the radiance of enjoyment that transfigured all the commonplace gaiety into a fairy dream. The younger ones found the times less good. Jack was shy and bored by fine people, Bob hated his dress clothes, Nettie was teased by Rupert, who varied between treating her as a Tomboy and flattering her as an incipient beauty, and thought her grandmother’s restrictions to white muslin and blue ribbons hard. But Mrs Lester had no notion of letting her forestall her career as a county beauty.

When Cheriton came back from Elderthwaite he found the whole party by the hall fire in the full tide of discussion and chatter, Nettie on the rug with Buffer in her arms complaining of the white muslin.

“Sha’n’t I look horrid, Rupert?”

“Frightful; but as you’ll be sure to bring Buffer into the ball-room he’d tear anything more magnificent.”

“I sha’n’t bring in Buffer! Rupert, what an idea! He’ll be shut up, poor darling! But at least I may turn up my hair, and I shall. I’m quite tall enough.”

“Turn your hair up? Don’t you do anything of the sort, Nettie. Little girls are fashionable, and yellow manes and muslin frocks will carry the day against wreaths and silk dresses. You let your hair alone, and then people will know it’s all real by-and-by.”

“Well, I’d much rather turn it up,” said Nettie simply.

“Well, perhaps I would,” said Rupert. “Fellows might say you let it down on purpose.”

Rupert conveyed a great deal of admiration of the golden locks in his tone, but Nettie, though vain enough, was insensible to veiled flattery.

“Plait it up, Nettie,” said Cherry briefly.

“If anybody thought I did such a nasty, mean, affected thing as that I’d never speak to him again. Never! I’d cut it all off sooner,” cried Nettie.

“Young ladies’ hair does come down sometimes,” said Rupert; “when it’s long enough.”

“Mine never shall,” said Nettie emphatically.

“Don’t do it yourself, then,” said Cherry.

“If Nettie ever takes to horrid, affected, flirting ways,” said Jack, who had joined the party, “I for one shall have nothing more to say to her.”

“You don’t admire flirts, Jack?” said Rupert.

“I don’t approve of them,” said Jack crossly.

“Oh, come, come, now, Jack, that’s very severe.”

“Poor Jack!” said Cherry; “he speaks from personal experience. There was that heartless girl last summer, who, after hours of serious conversation with him, went off to play croquet with Tom Hubbard, and gave him a moss-rose-bud. Poor Jack! it was a blow; he can’t recover from it! It has affected all his views of life, you see.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rupert, as Jack forcibly stopped Cherry’s mouth; “I’d no notion it was a personal matter. Will she be at the ball?”

“No; you see, we avoided asking her.”

“Cherry!” interposed the disgusted Jack, “how can you go on in this way! It’s all his humbug, Rupert.”

This serious denial produced, of course, shouts of laughter – in the midst of which Alvar entered and joined himself to the group round the fire as they waited for the arrival of some friends of Cheriton’s.

“And what have you been about?” asked Cherry.

“I have been singing with your cousins. Ah, it is pleasant when there are those who like music!”

“You found all these fellows awful savages, didn’t you?” said Rupert.

Alvar turned his great dark eyes on Cheriton with the same sort of expression with which Rolla was wont to watch him.

“Ah, no,” he said; “my brother is not a savage. But I do like young ladies.”

“But I thought,” said Rupert, “that in Spain young ladies were always under a duenna, so that there was no chance of an afternoon over the piano?”

“But I assure you Miladi Cheriton was present,” said Alvar seriously.

“Oh, that alters the question!” said Rupert. “But come, now, we have been hearing Jack’s views – let us have your confessions. Is the duenna always there, Alvar?”

“Here is my sister,” said Alvar, with the oddest sort of simplicity, and yet with a tone that conveyed a sort of reproach to Rupert and – for the first time – of proprietorship in Nettie.

Rupert burst into a shout of laughter: “My dear fellow, what are you going to tell us?”

“She is a young girl; surely even here you do not say everything to her?” said Alvar, looking perplexed.

“By Jove, no!” said Rupert; “not exactly.”

“Since Nettie is here, we should not have asked you to tell us anything we did not wish her to hear,” said Cheriton, with a sense of annoyance that Alvar should be laughed at.

“You did not ask me,” said Alvar quietly.

At this moment Bob called Nettie so emphatically, that she was obliged unwillingly to go away.

“Now then, Alvar,” said Rupert, “now for it. We won’t be shocked. Tell us how you work the duennas.”

“It would not have been well to explain that to Nettie,” said Alvar seriously.

“Why not?” said Jack, suddenly boiling up. “Do you think she would ever cheat or want a duenna? English girls can always be trusted!”

“Can they?” said Rupert. “Shut up, Jack; you don’t understand. We only want you to tell us how you do in Spain. Affaires du coeur– you know, Alvar.”

Alvar looked round with an air half-shrewd, half-sentimental; while Cheriton listened a little seriously. He knew very little of Alvar’s former life; perhaps because he had been too reticent to ask him questions; perhaps because Alvar found himself in the presence of a standard higher than he was accustomed to. Anyway, Nettie might have heard his present revelations.

“There was a time,” he said, sighing, “when I did not intend to come to England – when I had sworn to be for ever a Spaniard. Ah, my cousin, if you had seen my Luisa, you would not have wondered. I sang under her window; I went to mass that I might gaze on her.”

“Did you now? Foreign customs!” interposed Rupert; while Cherry laughed, though he felt they were hardly treating Alvar fairly.

“I knew not how to speak to her. She was never alone; and it was whispered that she was already betrothed. But one day she dropped her fan.”

“No, no – surely?” said Cherry.

“I seized it, I kissed it, I held it to my heart,” said Alvar, evidently enjoying the narration, “and I returned it. There were looks between us – then words. Ah, I lived in her smiles. We met, we exchanged vows, and I was happy!”

Rupert listened to this speech with amusement, which he could hardly stifle. It was inexpressibly ludicrous to Cheriton; but the fun was lost in the wonder whether Alvar meant what he said. This was neither like the joking sentiment nor the pretended indifference of an Englishman’s reference to such passages in his life; yet the memory evidently cost Alvar no pain. Jack sat, looking totally disgusted.

“At last,” Alvar went on, “we were discovered. Ah, and then my grandfather was enraged, and her parents, they refused their consent, since she was betrothed already. I am an Englishman, and I do not weep when I am grieved, but my heart was a stone. I despaired.”

“She must have been a horrid little flirt not to tell you she was engaged,” said Jack.

“She did not know it till we had met,” said Alvar.

“What awful tyranny!”

“Ah, and she was your only love!” sighed Rupert.

“No,” said Alvar simply, “I have loved others; but she was the most beautiful. But I submitted, and now I forget her!”

“Hm – the truest wisdom,” said Rupert.

Cherry was growing angry. He did not think that Rupert had any business to make fun of Alvar, and he was in a rage with Alvar for making himself ridiculous. That Alvar should tell a true love-tale with sentimental satisfaction to an admiring audience, or sigh over a flirtation which ought to have been a good joke, was equally distasteful to him. He burst out suddenly, with all his Lester bluntness, and in a tone which Alvar had hitherto heard only from Jack, —

“If you fellows are not all tired of talking such intolerable nonsense, I am. It’s too bad of you,” with a sharp look at Rupert. “I don’t see that it’s any affair of ours.”

“You’re not sympathetic,” said Rupert, as he moved away; for he was quite familiar enough with his cousins for such giving and taking.