United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That conversation gave Lady Carruthers many uneasy moments. She understood so well the dreamy, yet ardent, romantic temperament of the boy. "What shall I make of him?" she said. "Will he ever learn to live contentedly here at Ulverston, doing his duty, as Marion says, to God and man? My poor Basil, he lives too late!" She asked advice from those best fitted to give it.
I am getting as fat as Prince William at Springhead, and as godly as his friend Parson Winterbotham. My hand shakes no longer. I ride to the banker's at Ulverston with Mr. Postlethwaite, and sit drinking tea, and talking scandal with old ladies. As for the young ones!
Then the carriage entered the Ulverston woods, said by connoisseurs to be the finest and most picturesque in England. Such a glorious sight on this May evening as made the lawyer's heart beat, though many years had passed since the fountain of poetry flowed for him. The hawthorn and chestnut trees were all in flower; the maple and ash wore their most luxuriant foliage.
Still, he left college with high honors, and his masters prophesied great things for him. "He will make himself famous some day," they wrote to his anxious mother. "In the mean time, let him see something of the world, and you will know in what direction his talent lies." So, crowded with honors, he came home to Ulverston.
The colonel and the young squire were most luxuriously established at Roche House, the Carruthers' family mansion in Belgravia. Lady Hildegarde made every arrangement for keeping up the establishment in all bachelor's comforts. There was an excellent housekeeper, one who had been at Ulverston Priory for many years.
Roads lead from Kendal south-westward to Ulverston and Dalton-in- Furness; westward to Bowness, and across Windermere by the ferry to Hawkshead, and Coniston Water in Furness, and to Egremont and Whitehaven in Cumberland; north-westward by Ambleside to Keswick, Cockermouth, and Workington, in Cumberland; north-eastward by Orton to Appleby, with a branch road to Kirkby Stephen to Brough; eastward to Sedbergh, and onwards to Yorkshire.
Go down to Ulverston, build schools, almhouses, mechanics' institutes and all that kind of thing. Marry and bring up your family to fear God and serve the queen. One ounce of such practice is worth all the theory in the world." But Basil could not see it he longed for the unattainable, the ideal. What lay plainly before him was a matter of great indifference to him.
There had been a great flutter in the dovecotes when it was known that Basil Carruthers, the heir of Ulverston, son of the great statesman, a young man whose income was quite twenty thousand per annum, besides the savings of a long minority, was in London free, disengaged, and, as a matter of course, wanting a wife.
In the solemn "high places" they had learned to interpret the voices of winds and waters; and among the stupendous crags, more like clouds at sunset than fragments of solid land, they had seen and heard wonderful things. All over this country, from Kendal to old Ulverston, Fox was known and loved; and from Swarthmoor Hall, a manor-house not very far from Seat-Sandal, he took his wife.
She remained there for a week, and then, finding her son afloat in London society, she returned to Ulverston. And Basil Carruthers, the dreamy, ardent, romantic boy, remained in London alone. A Modern Bayard. Perhaps Lady Carruthers never did a more unwise thing than when she left her son, with his peculiar temperament and notions, to go through a London season alone.
Word Of The Day