The Bible has nothing to do with politics, John. I wish it had! Happen then we would have a few wise-like, honest politicians. The Bible divides men into good men and bad men; but thou dividest all men into Tories and Radicals; and the Bible has nothing to do with either of them. I can tell thee that. Nay, but Im wrong; it does say a deal about doing justice, and loving mercy, and treating your neighbour and poor working-folk as you would like to be treated yourself. Radicals can get a good deal out of the New Testament.
I dont believe a word of what thou art saying.
I dont wonder at that. Thou readest nothing but the newspapers; if thou didst happen to read a few words out of Christs own mouth, thou wouldst say, Thou never heardest the like, and thou wouldst think the man who quoted them wrote them out of his own head, and call him a Radical. Get off to thy bed, John. I can always tell when thou hast been drinking Rudbys port-wine. It is too heavy and heady for thee. As soon as thou art thyself again, I will tell thee what a grand son thou art the father of. My word! If the Duke gives thee a seat at his mahogany two or three times a year, thou art as proud as a peacock; now then, thy son Edgar is hob-nobbing with earls and lords every day of his life, and they are proud of his company.
The Squire laughed boisterously. It is time, Maude, he said, I went to my bed; and it is high time for thee to wake up and get thy head on a feather pillow; then, perhaps, thou will not dream such raving nonsense.
With these scornful words he left the room, and Mrs. Atheling rose and put away her knitting. She was satisfied with herself. She expected her mysterious words to keep the Squire awake with curiosity; and in such case, she was resolved to make another effort to reconcile her husband to his son. But the Squire gave her no opportunity; he slept with an indifferent continuity that it was useless to interrupt. Perhaps there was intention in this heavy sleep, for when he came downstairs in the morning he went at once to seek Kate. He soon saw her in the herb garden; for she had on a white dimity gown, and was standing upright, shading her eyes with her hands to watch his approach. A good breeze of wind from the wolds fluttered her snowy skirts, and tossed the penetrating scents of thyme and marjoram, mint and pennyroyal upward, and she drew them through her parted lips and distended nostrils.
They are so heavenly sweet! she said with a smile of sensuous pleasure. They smell like Paradise, Father.
Ay, herbs are good and healthy. The smell of them makes me hungry. I didnt see thee last night, Kitty; and I wanted to see thee.
I was so tired, Father. It was a day to tire any one. Was it not?
I should say it was, he replied with conscious diplomacy. Now what part of it pleased thee best?
Well, Mr. Norths visit was of course wonderful; and Lord Exhams visit was very pleasant. I enjoyed both; but Mr. Norths news was so very surprising.
To be sure. What dost thou think of it?
Of course, Edgar is on the other side, Father. In some respects that is a pity.
It is a shame! It is a great shame!
Nay, nay, Father! We wont have shame mixed up with Edgar. He is in dead earnest, and he has taken luck with him. Just think of our Edgar being one of Lord Durhams favourites, of him speaking all over England and Scotland for Reform. Mr. North says there is no one like him in the drawing-rooms of the Reform ladies; and no one like him on the Reform platforms; and he was made a member of the new Reform Club in London by acclamation. And Earl Grey will get him a seat in Parliament next election.
Who is this Mr. North?
Why, Father! You heard him speak, and you threw him down on the Green, you know.
Oh! Him! Dost thou believe all this palaver on the word of a travelling mountebank?
He is not a travelling mountebank. I am sure he is a gentleman. You shouldnt call a man names that you have thrown fairly. You know better than that.
I know nothing about the lad. And he does not seem to have told thee anything about himself. As for thy mother and then he hesitated, and looked at Kate meaningly and inquiringly.
Mother liked him. She liked him very much indeed. He brought both mother and me a ring from Edgar, and she put out her hand and showed the Squire the little gold circle.
Trumpery rubbish! he said scornfully. It didnt cost half a crown. Give it to me, and I will get thee a ring worth wearing,sapphires or rubies.
I would not part with it for loops and hoops of sapphires and rubies. Edgar sent it as a love-token; he wants his money for nobler things than rubiesbut, dear me! you cant buy love for any money. Oh, Father! I do wish you would be friends with Edgar.
My little lass, I cannot be friends with any one if he goes against the land, and the King, and the Constitution. I am loyal straight through; up and down to-day, and to-morrow, and every day; and I cant bear traitors,men that would sell their country for a bit of mob power or mob glory. All of Edgars friends and neighbours are for the King and the Laws; and it shames me and pains me beyond everything to have a rascal and a Radical in my family. The Duke and his son are finger and thumb, buckle and belt; and Edgar and I ought to be the same. And it stands to reason that a father knows more than his own lad of twenty-six years old. What dost thou think of Lord Exham?
The question was asked at a venture; but Kate had no suspicion, and she answered frankly, I think very well of him. He talked mostly of politics; but every one does that. It was pleasant to see him at our tea-table again.
To be sure. So he stayed to tea?
Yes; did not mother tell you?
Nay, we were talking of other things. What does he look like?
I think he is much improved.
Well, he ought to be. He must have learned a little, and he has seen a lot since we saw him. Come, let us go and find out what kind of a breakfast mother can give us. I am hungry enough for two.
So Kate lifted the herbs which she had cut into her garden apron, and cruddling close to her fathers side, they went in together, with the smell of the thyme and marjoram all about them. Mrs. Atheling drew it in as they entered the parlour, and then turned to them with a smile. The Squire went to her side, and promptly kissed her. It was one of his ways to ignore their little tiffs; and this morning Mrs. Atheling was also agreeable. She looked into his eyes, and said:
Why, John! are you really awake. You lay like the Seven Sleepers when I got up, and I said to myself, John will sleep the clock round, so Kate and I will have our breakfasts.
Nay, I have too much to look after, Maude. Then he turned the conversation to the farms, and talked of the draining to be done, and the meadows to be left for grass; but he eschewed politics altogether, and, greatly to Mrs. Athelings wonder, never alluded to the information she had given him about their son Edgar. Did he really think she had been telling him a made-up story? She could not otherwise understand this self-control in her curious lord. However, sometime during the morning, Kate told her about the conversation in the herb garden; then she was content. She knew just where she had her husband; and the little laugh with which she terminated the conversation was her expression of conscious power over him, and of a retaliation quite within her reach.
CHAPTER FOURTH
THE DAWN OF LOVE
There is always in every life some little part which even those dearer than life to us cannot enter. Kate had become conscious of this fact. She hoped her mother would not talk of Lord Exham; for she did not as yet understand anything about the feelings his return had evoked. She would have needed the uncertain, enigmatical language which comes in dreams to explain the yes and the no of the vague, trembling memories, prepossessions, and hopes which fluttered in her breast.
THE DAWN OF LOVE
There is always in every life some little part which even those dearer than life to us cannot enter. Kate had become conscious of this fact. She hoped her mother would not talk of Lord Exham; for she did not as yet understand anything about the feelings his return had evoked. She would have needed the uncertain, enigmatical language which comes in dreams to explain the yes and the no of the vague, trembling memories, prepossessions, and hopes which fluttered in her breast.
Fortunately Mrs. Atheling had some dim perception of this condition, and without analysing her reasons, she was aware it was best not to meddle between two lives so surrounded by contradictious circumstances as were those of her daughter and Lord Exham. Besides, as she said to her husband, It was no time for love-making, with the King dying, and the country on the quaking edge of revolution, and starvation and misery all over the land. And the Squire answered: Exham has not one thought of love-making. He is far too much in with a lot of men who have the country and their own estates to save. He wont bother himself with women-folk now, whatever he may do in idle times.
They had both forgotten, or their own love affair had been of such Arcadian straightness and simplicity that they had never learned Loves ability to domineer all circumstances that can stir this mortal frame. Exham had indeed enlisted himself with passionate earnestness in the cause of his class, which he called the cause of his countrybut as the drop of
lucent sirup tinct with cinnamon
is forever flavoured and perfumed by the spice, so Exhams life was coloured and prepossessed by the thought of the sweet girl who had been blended with so many of his purest and happiest hours.
It was then of Kate he thought as he wandered about the stately rooms and beautiful gardens of Exham Hall. He was not oblivious of his engagements with the Duke and the tenants; but he was considering how best to keep these engagements, and yet not miss a visit to her. The dying King, the riotous land, were accidentals of his life and condition; his love for Kate Atheling was at the root of his existence; it was a fundamental of the past and of the future. For five years of constant change and movement, it had lain in abeyance; but old love is a dangerous thing to awaken; and Piers Exham found in doing this thing that every event of the past strengthened the influence of the present, and fixed his heart more passionately on the girl he had first found fair; the
rosebud set with little, wilful thorns,
And sweet as English airs could make her,
that had sung and swung herself into his affection when she was only twelve years old.
He was however quite aware that any proposal to marry Kate Atheling would meet with prompt opposition from his family; indeed the Duke had already mentioned a very different alliance; and in that case, he did not doubt but that Squire Atheling would be equally resolved never to allow his daughter to enter a home where she would be regarded by any member of it as an intruder. But he put all such considerations for the present behind him. He said to himself, The first thing to do, is to win Kates love; with that sweet consciousness, I shall be ready for all opposition. For his heart kept assuring him that every trouble and obstacle has an hour in which it may be conquered,an hour when Fate and Will become One, and are then as irresistible as a great force of Nature. He was sure the hour for this conflict had not yet come. It was the day for a different fight. His home, his estate, his title, and all the privileges of his nobility were in danger. When they were placed beyond peril, then he would fight for the wife he wanted, and win her against all opposition. And who could tell in what way the first conflict would bring forth circumstances to insure victory to the last?
He was deeply in love; he was full of hope; he was at Atheling some part of every day. If he came in the afternoon, Kates pony was saddled, and they rode far and away, to where the shadows and sunshine elbowed one another on the moors. The golden gorse shed its perfume over their heads; the linnets sang to them of love; they talked, and laughed, and rode swiftly until their pace brought them among the mountains that looked like a Titanic staircase going up to the skies. There, they always drew rein, and went slower, and spoke softer, and indeed often became quite silent, and knew such silence to be the sweetest eloquence. Then after a little interval Piers would say one word, Kate! and Kate only answer with a blush, and a smile, and an upturned face. For Love can put a volume in four letters; and souls say in a glance what a thousand words would only blunder about. Then there was the gallop home, and the merry cup of tea, and the saunter in the garden, and the long tender good-bye at the threshold where the damask roses made the air heavy with their sweetness.
So Lord Exham did not find his politics hard to bear with such delicious experiences between whiles. And Kate? What were Kates experiences? Oh, any woman who has once loved, any pure girl who longs to love, may divine them! For Love is always the same. The tale he told Kate on the Atheling moors and under the damask roses was the very same tale he told high in Paradise by the four rivers where the first roses blew.
As the summer advanced, startling notes from the outside world forced themselves into this heavenly solitude. On the twenty-sixth of June, King George died; and this death proved to be the first of a series of great events. Piers felt it to be a warning bell. It said to him, The charming overture of Love, with its restless pleasure, its delicate hopes and fears, is nearly at an end. He had been with Kate for three divine hours. They had sat among the brackens at the foot of the mountains, and been twenty times on the very point of saying audibly the word Love! and twenty times had felt the delicious uncertainty of non-confession to be too sweet for surrender. Nay, they did not reason about it; they simply obeyed that wise, natural self-restraint which knew its own hour, and would not hurry it.
With a sigh of rapture, they rose as the sun began to wester, and rode slowly back to Atheling. No one was at the door to receive them, and Kate wondered a little; but when they entered the hall, the omission was at once understood. There was a large open fireplace at the northern extremity, and over it the Atheling arms, with their motto, Feare God! Honour the Kinge! Laus Deo! Squire Atheling was draping this panel with crape; and Mrs. Atheling stood near him with some streamers of the gloomy fabric in her hands. She pointed to the Kings picturewhich already wore the emblem of mourningand said, The King is dead.
The King lives! God save the King! replied the Squire, instantly. God save King William the Fourth!
Then all the clocks in the house were stopped, and draped, and when this ceremony was over, they had tea together. And as it is a Yorkshire custom to make funeral feasts, Mrs. Atheling gave to the meal an air of special entertainment. The royal Derby china added its splendour to the fine old silver and delicate damask. There were delicious cheese-cakes, and Queens-cakes, and savoury potted meats, and fresh crumpets; and the ripe red strawberries filled the room with their ethereal scent. No one was at all depressed by the news. If King George was dead, King William was alive; and the Squire thought, Everything might be hoped from The Sailor King. Why! he said, he is that good-natured he wont say a bad word about the Reformers; though, God knows, they are a disgrace to themselves, and to all that back them up.