Chapter II: The Lovers' Walk

LEAVING Tincroft for the present to the hospitalities of the Manor House, we introduce two other actors in our domestic drama. The time is evening; the place, an old-fashioned garden; the date, a year or thereabouts before that of our previous chapter, for necessity is laid upon us to take a retrograde step or two before fairly starting off in our history.

There was a shaded walk in the garden just referred to, which, from time immemorial, had been known as "the lovers' walk." True to this designation, the grass-path was, on the evening of a summer's day, trodden by two lovers, who paced up and down it side by side.

"I don't like this going away from you, Sarah dear, any better than you like it yourself," he said, in a tone half-sorrowful, half-remonstrative.

"What occasion is there for your going away then, Walter?"

She was a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl of eighteen, who asked this question. Her eyes were filled with tears as she looked up into her lover's face. It was hard to withstand such a pleading look—so Walter doubtless felt.

"You know the reason why, Sarah," he replied, tremulously; "I have told you, over and over again, that father says there are too many of us at home, eating up all the profits of his small farm, and that one of us boys ought to be getting on at something else, and earning a living for himself."

"I know all that, Walter; but there is no occasion for you to be the one. You are the oldest, and ought to be at home. And we going to be married, too; and that will have to be put off—with such a home as you know I have got! Oh, Walter, Walter, it does not seem as if you loved me much!" Saying this, the now weeping girl threw herself on a rustic seat and sobbed sadly.

What could the lover do but seat himself close by her side and speak soothing words, comforting words, encouraging words, very gently, very lovingly?

But she would not hear him.

"I know why it is; you want to be rid of me now you know that there's nothing to be got by me—that father has no money, and can't pay back what your father lent him, and it's all an excuse your going away to make more room for the rest. Why couldn't George go if somebody must—or Alfred, or James?"

"Sarah, you don't mean what you say—you can't mean what you say."

The words were spoken very gravely, we may be sure, yet not sternly. Walter Wilson was a commonplace man enough—a rough farmerly young man, without much education; but he was tender-hearted and true-hearted, and his love for his cousin was strong. For they were cousins, these two, as well as lovers—the children of two brothers.

Matthew Wilson (Walter's father) and Mark Wilson (Sarah's father) were both farmers in a small way, but they were widely different in character, different also in regard to their home surroundings. Matthew, for instance, had a large family; Mark had but one child, the Sarah of our narrative.

Matthew was hard-working and sober; Mark was idle and dissipated. In spite of his large family, Matthew had prospered, while Mark—who, by the way, had the better farm of the two—had managed to go down in the world, sinking lower and lower, as time went on, into debt and despondency. So it came to pass that, in one particular strait, and with promises of stricter attention to business in future, Mark had been saved from absolute or immediate ruin by the generosity and confidence of his brother, who placed nearly the whole of his hard-earned savings in Mark's hands—and lost them.

Matthew had a hearty affection for his brother, but he liked money too; and it was not in human nature—at least, it was not in his nature to be indifferent to the loss of the four or five hundred pounds which he had lent to Mark when the certainty came home to him that they were lost. In his first paroxysm of vexation, he vowed that, brother or no brother, Mark Wilson should smart for his treachery; and, though he soon cooled down in these thoughts of vengeance, he declared that neither he nor his family should hold any further intercourse with the man who had stripped him of almost every ready-money pound he could call his own.

This, however, was easier said than done. Matthew's eldest son, Walter, was not only in love with, but had been sometime affianced to, his (Walter's) pretty cousin, Mark's daughter, and that with the mutual consent and liking of the parents on either side. And Walter, at any rate, had no thought of visiting the sins of the father upon the innocent girl, and—himself. He even clung with the greater fondness to poor Sarah, who could not be held accountable for her father's misconduct and consequent misfortunes.

Matthew himself acknowledged this; but inwardly determined, if possible, to sever the only remaining link between his unlucky brother and himself; and probably thinking, not unwisely, that such a connection would be a drag to Walter in after-life, he insisted that his own altered circumstances made it necessary that his eldest son should leave home. He did this trusting to the probable chances that absence would, in some way or other, effect the separation which he had no power to compass by absolute authority. But he had a fair reason also for this determination. Walter, of all his sons, was the most fitted to push his way in the world. And, added to this, an old school-fellow and friend had made overtures to him to join him in a distant part of the north country, where he himself was established as a land surveyor.

These explanations given, we return to the two disconsolate lovers.

They were again pacing the shady walk, sorrowful enough; but Sarah's complaining mood had disappeared for the time, and she was listening to the hopeful pleadings of her lover. What lover is not hopeful? Can love be without hope?

"It won't be long, darling. Two years will soon pass away, and then I am to have a share in Ralph's business. We shall be sure to get on, for Ralph is a capital fellow, and so clever; and I—well, I can work, you know; and with you, Sarah, to brighten up my prospects, I'll work like a slave, and think nothing of it."

"Dear Walter!"

"The worst of it is, I shall be so far-away that it won't be possible for us to see each other till the two years are gone; but you won't forget me, love?"

"Forget you? Oh, Walter!"

"I know you won't: you are such a darling, you know, to remember. And then, when the two years are past and gone—"

"It is a long time to look forward to, Walter," sighed the young lady. "I shall be quite an old woman by that time."

"An old woman of twenty! What shall I be then? But we won't make a trouble of that: only say that you'll try to keep up a good heart. Courage, my pet, and all will turn out well in the end. And as to this move, I don't know that it isn't the best thing that could have happened. Farming isn't much without plenty of money to carry it on; and if a fellow like me hasn't got money, his knowing how to work on a farm doesn't help him much. He is nothing better than a day-labourer. So, Sarah dear, give me a kiss, and say 'tis all right."

And so the lovers parted that evening.

The next morning, Walter was travelling far-away—every mile widening the distance between him and all that his heart held dear.

Walter Wilson was not a hero exactly; but he had some good stuff in him, for all that. He was, at any rate, sturdy, honest, persevering, and affectionate. All that is necessary to say for him in this chapter, however, is that he reached his destination in due course, joined his friend Ralph, and entered with a good deal of energy on his new line of life. Here, for the present, we leave him.

Poor Sarah, his cousin and affianced wife, had a more trying ordeal to pass through. Her home was not a happy one. Her father was now as often in liquor as sober, and, in whichever state, he was dissatisfied and quarrelsome.

Her mother had never been very managing as a farmer's wife, and what qualifications she once possessed, had long since been abandoned. The cloud that hung over her household was so dark and threatening that she could see no light breaking through it, and she had become hopeless. Worse than this, the habit which had ruined the husband in health and circumstances was insensibly gaining ground upon the wife. She drank secretly, and was for days together incapable of conducting her family affairs. Then, waking up to a sense of her degradation, she made feeble and unsuccessful efforts to "set things to rights."

This was bad enough for the daughter, who had neither strength of body nor mental capacity to cope with surrounding difficulties; and who, now that Walter was gone, had no one to encourage or comfort her. For she was at feud with Walter's family.

Her uncle Matthew looked coldly upon her. Her aunt treated her as if she were a puppet or a doll—so she said—when they met, which was not very often, but it sometimes could not be avoided; for Mrs. Matthew now and then looked in to see how Mr. and Mrs. Mark were getting on, and to report at home what she saw and heard. And these reports served only to widen the breach between the two brothers and their households.

As to her cousins, George, Alfred, and James, they plainly made it to be understood that they considered their brother Walter a fool for tying himself up to "a helpless bit of goods" like Sarah, though she was his cousin and theirs. And they were naturally enough bitter against their uncle Mark for having made off with so much of their father's cash.

All this was hard upon Sarah. Of course, if she had been made of the stuff of which heroines are supposed to be formed, she would have risen above all discouragements. But she was not a heroine. She was merely a farmer's daughter, poorly educated, but fond, and, we must add, feeble also, with no particularly vivid apprehension of the sterner duties of life, and with no very strong principle to help her on in a course of self-denial and self-sacrifice, should this be needed. She knew, however, or thought, that she loved Walter, and she had full faith in his fidelity.

One of Sarah's greatest trials was in the unkindness of her cousin Elizabeth, Walter's sister. With only a year difference in their ages, the two girls had been very close and intimate companions from childhood; and till within a year or two of the date of our history, their friendship had been unbroken. And it was Elizabeth who had been, first of all, the secret prompter of the engagement between the cousins, and then the private go-between of the two lovers until that engagement was ratified by the higher powers. Now, however, all old associations were severed; and Elizabeth, as Sarah well knew, had employed all her skill, though unsuccessfully as yet, to induce her brother Walter to break off the match which she prophesied would be an unhappy one.

Thus completely alienated from her former friends, and more sinned against than sinning, with an unhappy home, and more required of her in domestic duties than she had power to accomplish, poor Sarah Wilson would have given way to utter hopelessness but for the bright vision of Walter and the happy home—in nubibus; where we must leave her, while we take up the former thread of our drama.