Chapter Five.
The Seytons of Elderthwaite

“All things here are out of joint.”

In the midst of a waste of unswept snow across the hill behind Oakby Hall, there was a large old house, originally of something the same square and substantial type, but of more ambitious architecture, for there were turrets at the four corners, overgrown and almost borne down by enormous bushes of ancestral ivy; while the great gates leading to the stables were of fanciful and beautiful ironwork, now broken and falling into decay. Great tree-trunks lay here and there on undulating slopes, the shrubberies flung wild branches over the low stone wall dividing them from the park, where a gate swung weakly on its hinges. There were few tall trees, but litre and there along the drive a solitary beech of great size and beauty suggested the course of an avenue once without its equal in the country round. An old man was feebly sweeping away the snow in front of the house, and a gentleman stood smoking a cigar on the steps – a slenderly-made man, with a delicate, melancholy face, and a pointed grey beard, dressed in a shabby shooting-coat. His eyes turned from the slow old sweeper, past the relics of the avenue, to a ruinous-looking lodge, the chimneys of which sent no smoke into the frosty air.

Mr Seyton of Elderthwaite was used to these signs of adversity, but to-day he was struck by them anew, for he was wondering how they would look in the eyes of a stranger. Oakby, with its strict laws, its rough humours, its ready-made life, would be a strange experience to its foreign heir. What would Elderthwaite, with ruined fortunes and blighted reputation be to a petted and prosperous girl, brought up by gentle, religious women, in all the proprieties and sociabilities of well-to-do country villa life? What would his daughter say to the home she had left as a child, and had never seen since?

The Seytons were a family of older standing in the county than the Lesters, and had once been of superior fortune. At present their condition was, and rightly, very different. The Lesters, with many shortcomings, had been men who, on the whole, had endeavoured to do their duty in their station, and had governed their tenants, brought up their children, attended to public business, and managed their own affairs in an honest and right-minded, if not always in a very enlightened fashion.

But the Seytons had had a bad name for generations. It is true that no tales of wild and picturesque wickedness were told of the present head of the house, such as had made his father’s name a bye-word for harshness and violence, and for all manner of evil living; but the family traditions were strong against him; he inherited debt and a dishonoured name, and, alas! with them the tendencies and temptations that had brought them about. He had looked with bitter, injured eyes at the timber that was sold for his father’s gaming debts; but many a noble tree fell to pay his own, before he married a girl, innocent, high-minded, and passionate-tempered.

It was a very unhappy marriage, and Mr Seyton never forgave his wife for her broken heart, nor himself for breaking it. When she died, her relations took away her daughter, pledging themselves to provide for her, if she were left undisturbed in their hands. The father had enough to do with his sons. The eldest, Roland, was a fine, handsome fellow, and began life with the sad disadvantage of being expected to go wrong. He got a commission, but during the short intervals that he spent at home, was personally unpopular.

In one of these he took a great fancy to Cheriton Lester during an interval between the latter’s school and college life, and Cheriton being warned against him as a bad companion, stuck to him with equal perverseness and generosity. Roland was much the elder of the two, but Cherry’s vigorous youth took the lead in the friendship, and gave it his own impress. It was ended by such a scandal in Elderthwaite village as those which had made the name of Roland Seyton’s grandfather hated by all the country round, as one by whom no man’s hearth was respected, and with whom no man’s daughter was safe.

The discovery shocked Cheriton unspeakably; all the parties concerned were well known to him, and he felt that of such sins he could never think or speak lightly. But he would not join in loud or careless blame of his friend, who perhaps felt his truest pang of repentance at the boy’s confused miserable face in the one parting interview allowed by Mr Lester before Roland joined his regiment, about to sail for India.

“You need not have been afraid, sir,” Roland said, when accused of having set him a bad example; “I knew how to choose my confidant.”

After Roland’s departure, other tales to his discredit, and debts which it was impossible to pay, came to his father’s ears, and these additional troubles helped to strengthen habits of self-indulgence already formed, which had made Mr Seyton a man old before his time, melancholy-faced and gentle-mannered, whom nobody respected and nobody disliked. But the two younger boys had a bad start in life, and seemed little likely to redeem the family fortunes.

It was not often that Mr Seyton thought of anything but the immediate dulness and discomfort of the hour, or of its small alleviations; but to-day these recollections pressed on him. He thought, too, of his shabby furniture, and his ill-conducted household; how unfit a home for his well-dowered daughter; how unlike both her aunt’s house and the pleasant foreign tour which, since her aunt’s death, she had been enjoying.

“Papa, papa!” cried a bright voice behind him, “Good morning,” then as he turned round, the newly-arrived daughter exclaimed, throwing her arms round his neck, “Oh, how nice it is to say ‘Good morning, papa!’”

She was a fair creature enough, a true Seyton, with slender frame and pointed chin, creamy complexion and rich brown hair, but the large, round eyes, tender, intense, and full of life, were her mother’s, though clear and untroubled as the mother’s had never been.

“So you are glad to come home, Virginia?” said her father, rather sadly.

“Yes, papa, I am just delighted. I always made stories about home when I was at Littleton. I was very happy, you know, with dear Aunt Mary and all my friends; but it was so uninteresting not to know more of my very nearest relations.”

“You will find it very different, my dear, from what you are accustomed to. This is a dull place.”

“Oh, papa, I think it is so silly to be dull! I shall be quite ready to like anything you wish,” said Virginia warmly.

“My dear, you shall take your own way. It would be hard at least if I could not give you that,” said Mr Seyton, looking at her as if he did not quite know what to do with this gaily-dressed, frank-spoken daughter. “Now let us come to breakfast.”

“I am afraid I am late,” said Virginia; “but it is never easy to be in time after a journey.”

“You are punctual for this house, my dear; we take such things easy. But your aunt is down, you see, in your honour.” As Mr Seyton spoke they came into the dining-room, a long, low room, with treasures of curious carving round its oak-panels, hardly visible in its imperfect light.

A lady sat pouring out the tea. She had the delicate features and peculiar complexion of her family, but her eyes, instead of being like Mr Seyton’s, vague and sad, were sharp and sarcastic; she had more play of feature, and, though she looked fully her age, had the air of having been a beauty.

Miss Seyton had once been engaged to be married, but her engagement had been broken off in one of the storms of discreditable trouble that had overwhelmed her father and brothers, no one knew exactly how or why. She had never married, and had lived ever since with her brother, not always without scandal and remark. Still her presence had kept Elderthwaite on the visiting-list of the county, and made it possible for her niece to live there.

In spite of her sharp, eager eyes, she had an indescribable laziness and nonchalance of manner, and poured out the tea as if it was an effort beyond her. The boys’ places remained vacant. There was a little talk at breakfast-time, but it did not flow easily. Virginia would have had plenty to say, but she had a sense that what she did say caused her aunt inward surprise or amusement, and she began to feel shy.

When the meal was over, Mr Seyton sauntered away slowly, and Virginia said, “Do we sit in the drawing-room in the morning, Aunt Julia?”

“Yes, as often as not,” said Miss Seyton. “You are welcome to arrange all such matters for yourself. Girls have ways of their own.”

“I don’t want to have any strange or uncomfortable ways, auntie,” said Virginia; “I want to feel quite at home, and to be useful.”

“Useful!” said Miss Seyton. “What’s your notion of being useful?”

She did not speak unkindly, but with a curious sort of inward amusement, as if the notions of the bright-eyed girl were an odd study to her.

“I’m afraid I haven’t very clear notions. I want to make it cheerful for papa – Aunt Mary always said he wasn’t strong or well; and perhaps the boys want things done for them; my friends’ brothers always did,” said Virginia a little pathetically.

“There’s one thing, my dear, I wish you to understand at once. I shall never interfere with you; but I don’t mean to abdicate in your favour. I keep house – whatever house is kept – and you’d better shut your eyes and ears to it. It isn’t work for you.”

“Oh, Aunt Julia!” said Virginia distressed, “I would not think of such a thing. It is your place.”

“No, my dear, it’s not; but I mean to stick to it,” interposed Miss Seyton.

“And I know nothing about housekeeping, I’m afraid. I should be very extravagant.”

“Like a true Seyton. So much for that, then. And now another thing. Don’t you ever give your brothers so much as a half-sovereign secretly. You have money, and they know it, and it’s scarce here. Mind what I say.”

A kind of puzzled sense of something that she did not understand crossed Virginia’s face.

“I would rather give them things than money,” she said. “Of course papa lets them have what is right.”

“Of course,” said Miss Seyton, with the same perplexing expression of indescribable amusement.

A good joke had for years been the solace, a bitter sarcasm the natural outlet, of a life which certainly had been neither prosperous nor happy in itself, nor glorified by any martyrdom of self-denial.

Miss Seyton was full of malice, both in the French and English acceptations of the word. She loved fun, and she could not see without bitterness the young, unworn creature beside her. To astonish Virginia offered an almost irresistible temptation to both these tendencies. Her evident unconsciousness of the life that lay before her, was at once so funny, and such a cruel satire on them all.

“So you built castles in the air about your relations?” she said, with an odd longing to knock some of these castles down.

“Sometimes,” said Virginia; “then Ruth told me about you; and two years ago she and I met Cheriton Lester and his cousin Rupert in London, and I used to talk to them, Cheriton made me wish to come home very much.”

“Why?” said Miss Seyton shortly.

“He used to tell her about the place, and he made me remember much better what it was like.”

“Cheriton will have to play second fiddle. The eldest brother is coming back from Spain.”

“Ah, I remember, he told us how much he wished it. Oh, and he told me Uncle James ‘wasn’t half a bad fellow.’ I suppose that was a boy’s way of saying he was very nice indeed. Perhaps I can help him, too, in the village. I like school-teaching, and I suppose there aren’t many young ladies in Elderthwaite?”

“You little innocent!” exclaimed Miss Seyton. Then, moving away, she said, in the same wicked undertone, “Well, you had better ask him.”

Virginia remained standing by the fire. She felt ruffled, for she knew herself to be laughed at, and not having the clue to her aunt’s meaning, she fancied that her free and easy mention of Cheriton had elicited the remark; and being a young lady of decided opinions and somewhat warm temper, made up her mind silently, but with energy, that she would never like her Aunt Julia, never! She had been taken away from home when only eleven years old, and since then had only occasionally seen her father and her brothers. Her cousin Ruth, who had frequently stayed at Elderthwaite, had never bestowed on her much definite information; and perhaps the season in London and the renewal of her childish acquaintance with Cheriton Lester had done more than anything else to revive old impressions.

She had been most carefully brought up by her aunt, Lady Hampton, with every advantage of education and influence. Companions and books were all carefully chosen, and her aunt hoped to see her married before there was any chance of her returning to Elderthwaite. But such was the dread of the reckless, defiant, Seyton nature, that her very precautions defeated their wishes.

Virginia never was allowed to be intimate with any young man but Cheriton, who at the time of their meeting was a mere boy, and with thoughts turned in another direction; and though Virginia was sufficiently susceptible, with a nature at once impetuous and dependent, she came home at one-and-twenty, never yet having seen her ideal in flesh and blood.

“Duties enough, and little cares,” had filled her girlhood, and delightful girl friendships and girl reverences had occupied her heart; while her time had been filled by her studies, the cheerful gaieties of a lively neighbourhood, and by the innumerable claims of a church and parish completely organised and vigorously worked.

Lady Hampton was one of the Ladies Bountiful of Littleton; and Virginia had taught in the schools, made tea at the treats, worked at church decorations, and made herself useful and important in all the ways usual to a clever, warm-hearted girl under such influences. And with the same passionate fervour of nature, and the same necessity to her life of an approving conscience, which had made her mother’s heart beat itself to death against the bars of her unsatisfying home, Virginia’s nature had flowed on in perfect tune with her surroundings; till, when she was nearly twenty, came the great grief of her kind aunt’s death, leaving her heiress to a moderate fortune. By the terms of the will she was to travel under carefully selected guardianship till she was of age, and then to choose whether she would go home to her father, or have a home made for her at Littleton.

Virginia chose promptly, and then, in the delicate, indefinite language of those who fear to do harm by every word, was warned of difficulties. Much would be painful to her, much would be strange; her home was not like anything she had been used to. She listened and looked sad, and understood nothing of what they meant to imply; and thus ready to admire, but with only one type in her mind of what was admirable; full of love, but with none of the blinding softening memories that make love easy, she came to a home where admiration was impossible, and love would demand either ignorant indifference to any high ideal, or a rare and perfect charity, alike unknown to a high-minded intolerant girl.