University of Virginia Library

59. CHAPTER LIX.
CROSS-PURPOSES.

It was twilight when the friends reached Blandfield, which
raised its old walls now in the midst of nearly leafless trees from
its snow-covered knoll.

The old African major-domo came at their summons, and with
the deferential urbanity of the old Virginia homestead servants, requested
them to walk in.

Harley asked for Judge Bland. The old servant replied that his
master had been called away in the morning on business, but had
directed him, if Mr. Harley came, to ask him to walk up to his
study—he would soon be back.

This announcement seemed to relieve Harley of some embarrassment.
He had dreaded an interview with Evelyn, feeling how extremely
awkward and disagreeable it must be; and this invitation
from her father to repair to his study came to his succor.

“I will go up, then, my friend,” he said. “When the Judge
comes back, inform him that I am here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you go up, St. Leger?”

“N-o,” said St. Leger. “I think—that is—I'll find it more
cheerful in—Mrs. Bland's room, where I always go, you know. I
would not like to interrupt your business interview by my presence.”

Harley smiled.

“She is there, is she not?” he said. “You know the person
whom I refer to as she?”

St. Leger blushed like a boy.

“Well—yes.”

“I thought so. See how penetrating I am. It was natural, however,
that little Miss Fanny should be taken thither, instead of
being carried up-stairs with her broken arm.”

“Well, she is there; they have made a little bed for her by the
side of Mrs. Bland's,” said St. Leger, “and as I'm a friend of the
family, and Mrs. Bland's chamber is drawing-room number two,
I'll go in!”

Harley nodded and went up-stairs. As he disappeared, sleigh-bells
came jingling up the hill, and soon the fine sleigh of Sainty

stopped at the door, discharging Miss Annie Bland and a young
lady friend staying with her, which personages, with two or three
other young damsels of the neighborhood, had shared the perils
and delights of the sleigh-ride that day.

Just as the sleigh was driven away from the door by the youth's
groom—for Sainty had evidently no intention of going home immediately—carriage-wheels
were heard: they stopped at the door;
a step was heard in the passage; this step ascended the stairs; and
Harley, who had seated himself near the fire, saw Judge Bland
enter.

The old gentleman came forward, smiling cordially, and shook
his guest by the hand.

“I hope I have not kept you waiting, my dear Mr. Harley,” he
said; “and I was so ill-bred as to leave directions that you should
be asked up to my study instead of the drawing-room. Pardon
me. In truth I was much absorbed, and only thought of the business
phase of your visit.”

“I beg you will not let that annoy you, sir!—a trifle! You have
been riding out?”

“Yes.”

The voice of the old counsellor was, as always, cordial, smiling,
and full of a charming courtesy. He took from his shoulders an
enormous old cloak of blue cloth with a fur collar, and secured at
the neck by a massive silver chain and buckle.

“I have been to Oakhill.”

“Ah? To see my uncle?”

“Yes. He requested me to come and see him on some legal
business. He seems much weaker, but is sitting up in his dressing-gown.”

“I am truly glad to hear it.”

“He is growing old now. He is one of my contemporaries. We
old people are passing away—I am myself among the last, and it
really seems as if I were going to die in harness!”

“I hope it will be long before you put off your harness, my dear
sir.”

“Ah! you young people! you young people! It is necessary to
be old to feel what age is.”

Harley inclined his head.

“I am the old man of my family,” he said—“it is Sainty who is
the young one.”

The Judge had taken his seat in his arm-chair, at the corner of
the table, whereon the tall candlesticks rose, as usual, above the
chaos of law-papers, and, leaning back, crossed one leg over the
other, resting his elbows, as he did so, upon the arms of his chair,

and joining the tips of his fingers. The slender legs, from which
he had just removed the heavy cloth wrappings designed to protect
them from the cold, were cased in knee-breeches and silk stockings,
and on his feet were shoes with large steel-buckles. A very long
waistcoat, slightly embroidered, was buttoned nearly to his chin,
allowing only a small quantity of ruffle to be seen; his chin reposed
in a voluminous white cravat—his gray hair was powdered. Judge
Bland, as he sat thus in the full light of the cheerful hickory fire,
was the model of a gentleman of the old school.

When Harley referred to his brother Sainty as the young person
of his family, the Judge gazed at his hands, gently moving the
fingers whose tips touched, and said:

“Your brother's name introduces a subject upon which, with your
permission, Mr. Harley, we will say a few words. The other business
will not suffer.”

“I am quite willing to have it deferred, my dear sir,” replied
Harley.

“I may as well say, however, to relieve any anxiety you may
feel, that Mr. Hicks will find it an extremely difficult and tedious
affair to force a sale of the Huntsdon property, inasmuch as the
land-law of Virginia is framed in fundamental hostility to forced
and unfair subjection of real estate to the payment, especially, of
such claims.”

Harley inclined his head.

“Indeed,” said Judge Bland—forgetting, apparently, from interest
in this subject, the announcement that he would defer a discussion
of the Hicks business—“indeed, the common law of England, which
(I need scarcely inform you) is the law of Virginia, seems to have
been wisely shaped to disappoint usurers and money-lenders in
their schemes to prey upon their fellows. It permits no man to
come with a peremptory writ to the father of a family, and say,
`You owe me money! Go out of this house, with your wife and
children, and give me possession.' Much less will the courts, proceeding
upon a fair and liberal construction of the law, permit land
to be set up for peremptory sale to satisfy a debt of far less value
than the property, thus placing it in the power of the credit or to
purchase it—a design which may be attributed in this case, without
injustice, I think, to Mr. Hicks.”

“Such is no doubt his designs, sir.”

“Whoever asks the aid of an equity court must do equity,” continued
the old counsellor, “and I am tolerably certain that the
General Court will not decree a sale in this case. What I am absolutely
sure of, however, my dear Mr. Harley, is the fact that a
suit in Chancery involving land, entailed or not, is a most tedious

affair. The wise provisions of the law render it wellnigh impossible
to—cut short a Chancery suit!”

The old lawyer smiled.

“It will take a long time for Mr. Hicks to reach any result,” he
added; “and now that we have finished with that affair, let us—
leaving the business of the deed for the present—come back to a
more personal matter, my dear Mr. Harley.”

“A more personal matter, sir?”

Harley looked with some curiosity at Judge Bland, who had
become grave, though his suave cordiality had never diminished.

“We were speaking of your brother—of Sainty, as we all call him
—for he is a very great favorite with us.”

“I am truly gratified to hear that assurance, sir.”

“And I may add that, in common with my whole family, I have
a very high opinion of him.”

Harley bowed. It was plain that he was in no slight measure
gratified.

“I have mentioned this personal regard which we all feel for your
brother, Mr. Harley, in order to let you understand that, in hesitating
now to reply to a proposal made by this young gentleman, I
have not been actuated by any ill opinion of him—very far from it,
I assure you.”

“A proposal, sir?—a proposal to you, from—my brother?”

“He asks my consent to his union with my daughter.”

Harley made no reply. A sudden chill came to his heart.

“The proposition was made to me in a brief interview, this
morning, just as I was leaving Blandfield,” said Judge Bland.

“Yes, sir,” Harley said, in a low tone.

I was in some haste, and should on that account have refrained
from giving Mr. Harley a definite reply,” continued the Judge,
“but there was still another consideration which withheld me.”

Harley quietly inclined his head, in token that he was listening.
He felt quite unable to command his voice.

“I refer,” said Judge Bland, “to the obvious propriety of a previous
interview with yourself. Your brother is young, and you
stand to him in loco parentis. You are thus entitled, by every rule
of courtesy and propriety, to be consulted in a matter so intimately
connected with his future.”

Harley made a deprecating movement of his hand, as though to
signify that he regarded this proceeding as unnecessary.

“I therefore informed my young friend,” added the old counsellor,
“that I would beg him to allow me some hours for reflection—
knowing that you would call upon me this evening, and desiring to
speak with you before giving him my reply.”

Harley had listened with a sinking heart. Then his worst fears
were realized. Sainty had announced his intention, in their first
and last interview on the subject—that on their return from Blandfield
after the scene at the rustic seat—to proceed with his courtship,
ascertaining thus what his fate was to be; and now, since he
had asked Judge Bland's consent there could be but one conclusion,
namely, that the consent of the young lady—of Evelyn—had been
obtained. It was this conviction which now entered his heart like
a sudden chill. She was lost to him!

A thousand thoughts chased each other through his mind, utterly
depressing him. Had he clung to a last hope—if it could be called
such—that Sainty might offer his hand, be rejected, and, with the
mercurial spirit of youth, soon recover from the blow, and turn his
attentions elsewhere? Had he buoyed up his smiling heart with
the thought, “This is a mere evanescent affair—it will pass—may
not come to a declaration?” Had he hoped against hope—leaning
desperately on the doctrine of chances? If so, it had broken, and
he had fallen, quite stunned.

“May I request your views upon this very important family
business, Mr. Harley?”

He woke up, as it were.

“My views, sir?”

Harley looked with vacant eyes at Judge Bland—or rather at
some object beyond him, in the far distance.

“Yes, sir.”

Harley grew suddenly conscious of the extreme discourtesy of
his words and manner, which were easily liable to be misunderstood.

“Pardon me,” he said, recovering his calmness by an effort;
“these—affairs—are, as you know, sir, calculated to surprise one.”

“Yes, yes! I assure you I was myself much surprised.”

“And it was in order to request my views upon this union that
you have deferred your response, sir?”

“Chiefly, Mr. Harley.”

“I can have but one thing to say, my dear Judge Bland,” Harley
replied; “and you cannot have doubted, I think, what my views
would be. I feel very highly gratified at the prospect of my
brother's alliance with a family so old and honorable as your own,
and am sure that nothing more fortunate could have happened for
Sainty.”

Judge Bland smiled cordially.

“Then he shall have my consent at once,” he replied. “The
marriage may be deferred until next year, but my approbation
shall be given now.”

Harley braced his muscles for the struggle, and said,

“Why should it be deferred until next year, sir—unless the
young lady demand it?”

The Judge smiled again.

“I am unable to say what the wishes of my daughter are, as she
has not consulted me in this romantic affair. I speak as an old
gentleman making business arrangements. The chief objection to
a present union is the age of the parties—more especially of my
daughter.”

“Her—age?”

“Yes, my dear sir. I am well aware that in Virginia it is the
practice to marry early; but it is an injudicious custom.”

Harley looked at the speaker with some surprise. Evelyn was
between nineteen and twenty.

“My own grandmother was married to my grandfather when she
was but thirteen,” said Judge Bland, “and such unions are not very
unusual; certainly a large number take place when the bride is
under sixteen. But there are surely many reasons for regarding
such matches as injudicious—reasons which must be obvious to
any reflecting person.”

Harley was more and more amazed. What was Judge Bland
aiming at.

“I shall therefore give your brother my consent, Mr. Harley,”
continued the Judge; “but must attach to it the condition that his
union shall not take place until after New-Year, when Annie will
be seventeen, and he will be I suppose—”

“Annie!”

The word came from Harley's lips in an outburst. Judge Bland
actually started.

“You seem greatly astonished, my dear sir!”

“Annie!”

“Assuredly!—were we not speaking of my daughter Annie?”

Harley felt as the shipwrecked mariner clinging to a plank in
mid-ocean feels when he sees a ship, and knows that they have
caught sight of his signal for rescue.

“Is it possible! Oh! yes! how blind I was!—then—then—it is
Annie that my boy wishes to marry?”

“Certainly. Did you suppose that it was Evelyn?”

“Such was my impression, sir,” said Harley, restraining his
emotion by a violent effort, but scarcely able to conceal it.

The old Judge laughed.

“Evelyn would fancy herself much too old, I think,” he said.
“At least there is no question of that union, my friend. It is
Annie!—Annie—not Evelyn at all!”

Before Harley could respond, steps were heard ascending the
stairs: they stopped at the door; there was a silence—the silence
of hesitation and confusion, evidently—then a low and timid
knock.

“Come in!” said the old Judge.

Whereupon Sainty Harley, looking very sheepish, downcast and
nervous, entered the room.

Harley rose, went to him, and took his hand.

“Don't be uneasy, Sainty,” he said, laughing. “We old gentlemen
have been discussing your matters, and you are certain not to
be very much cast down by the result of the discussion. Judge
Bland consents to your union with Miss Annie, only stipulating
that the marriage shall not take place until next year.”

Sainty's face burst into sunshine.

“Oh! thank you, Judge Bland! I'm so happy, Judge!”

Harley looked at him with pride and happiness.

“Well, sit down, Sainty,” he said, “and listen to Judge Bland's
views, and the expression of his wishes. I will not intrude upon
your interview, but await you down stairs.”

Harley thereupon retired, closing the door behind him.