The Squire of Sandal-Side | Page 3

visited the poor
and sick, and never went empty-handed. They were hearty

Churchwomen. They loved God, and were truly pious, and were hardly
aware of it; for those were not days of much inquiry. People did their
duty and were happy, and did not reason as to "why" they did it, nor try
to ascertain if there were a legitimate cause for the effect.
But about the beginning of this century, a different day began to dawn
over Sandal-Side. The young heir came to his own, and signalized the
event by marrying the rich Miss Lowther of Whitehaven. She had been
finely educated. She had lived in large cities, and been to court. She
dressed elegantly; she had a piano and much grand furniture brought
over the hills to Sandal; and she filled the old house during the summer
with lords and ladies, and poets and artists, who flitted about the idyllic
little village, like gay butterflies in a lovely garden.
The husband and children of such a woman were not likely to stand
still. Sandal, encouraged by her political influence, went into
Parliament. Her children did fairly well; for though one boy was wild,
and cost them a deal of money, and another went away in a passion one
morning, and never came back, the heir was a good son, and the two
girls made splendid marriages. On the whole, she could feel that she
had done well to her generation. Even after she had been long dead, the
old women in the village talked of her beauty and spirit, of the tight
hand she kept over every one and every thing pertaining to Sandal. Of
all the mistresses of the old "seat," this Mistress Charlotte was the most
prominent and the best remembered.
Every one who steps within the wide, cool hall of Seat-Sandal faces
first of all things her picture. It is a life-size painting of a beautiful
woman, in the queer, scant costume of the regency. She wears a white
satin frock and white satin slippers, and carries in her hand a bunch of
white roses. She appears to be coming down a flight of wide stairs; one
foot is lifted for the descent, and the dark background, and the dim light
in which it hangs, give to the illusion an almost startling reality. It was
her fancy to have the painting hung there to welcome all who entered
her doors; and though it is now old-fashioned, and rather shabby and
faded, no one of the present generation cares to order its removal. All
hold quietly to the opinion that "grandmother would not like it."

In that quiet acre on the hillside, which holds the generations of the
Sandals, she had been at rest for ten years. But her son still bared his
gray head whenever he passed her picture; still, at times, stood a minute
before it, and said with tender respect, "I salute thee, mother." And in
her granddaughter's lives still she interfered; for she had left in their
father's charge a sum of money, which was to be used solely to give
them some pleasure which they could not have without it. In this way,
though dead, she kept herself a part of their young lives; became a kind
of fairy grandmother, who gave them only delightful things, and her
name continued a household word.
Only the mother seemed averse to speak it; and Charlotte, who was
most observant, noticed that she never lifted her eyes to the picture as
she passed it. There were reasons for these things which the children
did not understand. They had been too young at her death to estimate
the bondage in which she had kept her daughter-in-law, who, for her
husband's sake, had been ever patient and reticent. Nothing is, indeed,
more remarkable than the patience of wives under this particular trial.
They may be restive under many far less wrongs, but they bear the
mother-in-law grievance with a dignity which shames the grim joking
and the petulant abuse of men towards the same relationship. And for
many years the young wife had borne nobly a domestic tyranny which
pressed her on every hand. If then, she was glad to be set free from it,
the feeling was too natural to be severely blamed; for she never said
so,--no, not even by a look. Her children had the benefit of their
grandmother's kindness, and she was too honorable to deprive the dead
of their meed of gratitude.
The present holder of Sandal had none of his mother's ambitious will.
He cared for neither political nor fashionable life; and as soon as he
came to his inheritance, married a handsome, sensible daleswoman
with whom he had long been in love. Then he retired from a world
which had nothing