“Eh? Is it you, Mary? What were you saying? I do not feel sure,” said Lady Eskside, looking up with a smile, “that I was not dozing myself upon the bairn’s head. Put him to his bed? it would perhaps be the best thing, as you say; but I cannot give him over to Harding, I will carry him up-stairs myself.”
“Rather give him to me,” said Mary; “he is too heavy for you. I will take him to the old nursery——”
“Where his father and you have played many a day,” said Lady Eskside, with a smile which was weak with happiness. “Oh, my dear, my dear! but how different our thoughts were then!” Here she saw a contraction upon Mary’s face which gave her a note of warning. “Call the women, Mary,” she added, hurriedly. “I have lost count of time.Sheshould have been here by now with the other one. Oh! but I can never love him like this one, that has slept on my bosom like a child of my own, and crept into my heart.”
“She has not come. She does not mean to come,” said Mary; but she spoke low, and Lady Eskside did not mark what she said. Her own mind was filled to overflowing with her new possession, and no real anxiety about the other one or about the mother existed for the moment in her mind. “Jean, take this darling in your arms—softly, softly,” she said to the maid. “You are a strong, good girl, and you will carry him kindly. Don’t waken my bonnie boy. I’ll go with you up-stairs and see him put to bed.”
And, absorbed in this new occupation, she hurried up-stairs after Jean, giving a hundred warnings—to lay his head comfortably—to hold him faster—to throw her apron about his little feet—like a foolish old mother, half beside herself with love and happiness. She could think of nothing but the lost treasure restored; and I might spend pages on the description before I could tell you with what renewal of all old and dead joys she watched the maid’s anxious but vain attempts to prepare the child for bed without awaking him,and to soothe him when he stirred and pushed them away with his rosy feet, and murmured whimpering childish objections to everything that was being done for him. In this unlooked-for fulness of joy, she forgot everything else in the world.
Lord Esksidewas a homely representative of Scotch aristocracy. He was as proud as Lucifer in his own way, but that way was quaint and unsuspected by strangers; and his outward appearance and manners, and the principles he professed, were even humorously homely and almost democratical. Pretension of any kind moved him to an exaggeration of this natural homeliness; though when his dignity was really touched nobody could be more decided in his treatment of the vulgar, whom on ordinary occasions he seemed to incline towards, and to whom, so long as they made no fictitious claims to importance, he was whimsically friendly and indulgent. He had many other paradoxical sentiments about him. Being a high Tory by tradition and birth, it happened to him now and then to take up a trenchant Radical theory, which he clung to with the obstinacy of his race, and would carry out in the most uncompromising manner. He was keenly intelligent when he chose; but when he did not choose, no lout in the village could be more thickheaded than the old lord, nor show greater need to have everything “summered and wintered” to him, as Lady Eskside often impatiently said. He had strong feelings, but they lay very deep, and were seldom exhibited to the common eye, his own consciousness of their existence showing itself chiefly in a testy determination to avoid all means of moving them, which gave many ignorant persons the impression that our old lord was an ill-tempered man. He was impatient, I allow, and resented all long and slow explanations, except when it happened to be his caprice to put on the air of requiring them; and many people were afraid of his sharp retorts and ruthless questions. He was a little man, with keen hazel eyes gleaming out fromunder overhanging eyebrows, which often gathered into seeming frowns; not a man with whom, you may be sure, sentimental considerations would weigh much—or at least who would permit it to be seen how much they weighed.
He was very much startled when he heard what had happened—so much startled that he received the tale in comparative silence, half stupefied by the strange incident; and allowed himself to be led by his wife to the side of the bed where the child slept profoundly, almost without a word of remark. He stood and gazed at it, his keen eyes twinkling from beneath their heavy eyebrows, and his under lip working, as it habitually did when he was moved by any feeling which he did not choose to show. But he uttered nothing more than an unintelligible “humph!” and instead of sympathising with Lady Eskside’s excitement, her tearful enthusiasm, and the tumult of agitation in which she was, turned away almost without response, and went off to his study, where he had been painfully busy with calculations and cogitations over the ‘Journal of Agriculture;’ for he was a great farmer, and just then deeply occupied with the question of manures, a study of thrilling and delicate interest. He tried to resume these studies, but for this his philosophy did not suffice. He sat down, however, by his table as before, and with his periodical open before him—working his under lip, which projected slightly, and bending his brows—gave his mind to this new problem, which was more astounding than anything in agriculture. After a while he rose and rang the bell. It was answered by Harding, the English butler, who had been in Lord Eskside’s service for thirty years, and knew all about the family as an old servant knows—that is, rather more than there is to know. The fact, however, that Harding was English, gave a certain peculiarity to the connection between himself and his old master, who was equally ready to hold him up to admiration as “a good solid Englishman, not troubling himself about whimsies,” or to denounce him as “a doited English body, never understanding the one-half of what you said to him.” Lord Eskside had a mingled trust in Harding and contempt for him, which I do not think he could have entertained for a countryman of his own.
“Harding,” he said, “come in and shut the door. I suppose you know all that’s happened in the house to-night.You should have called me. Haven’t I always told you to call me when anything out of the way occurred?”
“My lord,” said Harding, not without agitation, “there has never nothing happened much out of the way before. When I did call your lordship the night of the fire in the laundry, your lordship said I was a doited old fool—and how was I to know——?”
“That will do,” said Lord Eskside; “you needn’t recriminate. The thing I want to know is about this child. How did it come? who brought it? My lady has told me something, but I want your account. Now take your time, and begin at the beginning. Who brought the boy here?”
“My lord, if I were to die this moment,” Harding began——
“Idiot! what would you die for this moment?” cried the old lord; “and if you did die, what information would I get from that? Begin at the beginning, I tell you: what happened? none of your adjurations. What do youknow?”
“If your lordship will let me speak,” said Harding, aggrieved. “I don’t know from Adam who brought him. It was close upon dark, and the storm raging. I thought it was nothing but the wind that swept in, and a blast of rain that came full in my face. There hasn’t been such a wind that I recollect since the year Mr Richard went first to college—when there was a hawful storm, as your lordship may remember——”
“Never mind the storm,” said Lord Eskside, with an effort of patience, “think a little.—When did this occur. Fix upon the hour. Now—that’s something definite. We’ll get on from that.”
“Thatthere can be no doubt about, my lord,” said Harding, promptly. “The bell was ringing for the servants’ hall supper—which made it a little hard at first to hear the door-bell. We has our supper sharp at nine——”
(“Trust him to mind his times of eating!” ejaculated Lord Eskside: “an Englishman never forgets that.”)
“——And just then the door-bell rang. Not expecting nobody, I was a little scared-like. I said to myself, ‘Who’s this a-coming at this time of the night?’ and I called to Mrs ’Arding——”
“Lordsake, man, never mind your thoughts or your Mrs Hardings! get on.”
“I called to Mrs ’Arding, my lord,” said the butler,solemnly, “to wait and see who it was afore they went into supper. It might have been visitors unexpected, as I’ve known to arrive all in an ’eap and never a room ready. It might have been Mr Richard, as is always particular. Beg your lordship’s pardon, that was what passed through my ’ead. Then them as was outside rang again. I’m a bit confused with all that’s ’appened. It was that loud that it sounded like the day of judgment——”
“There are to be no bells that ever I heard of at the day of judgment,” said his master; “leave metaphors, man, and give me facts—that’s all I want.”
“Then they got to knocking on the door, my lord—not using the knocker like people as knows. I ain’t superstitious, though I’ve heard tales enough to make your hair stand up on your head since I’ve been in the north—warnings and that sort. But I did say to myself, if so be it’s for his lordship or my lady—spirits being in the family, so to speak—— Was it something else your lordship was pleased to want?”
“Send for your wife,” growled Lord Eskside, who had rung the bell violently, and now stood impatient on the hearth with his back to the fire, working his projecting lip and shaggy eyebrows. This was so very common an interruption of the more important interviews between master and man, that Mrs Harding came without further call, not sorry of the opportunity of getting rid of a little of her own excitement, and very anxious to know, in a matter of so much moment, “what my lord would say.”
“Look here,” said her master. “What did he see? Not a word can I get out of him but havers. What did the man see? I suppose you were there too, like all the rest of the house—like everybody, in short, except myself. What did he see?”
“He saw naething, my lord, that I can make out,” said the housekeeper; “just the door dung open in his face with the wind and a good push from the outside. It’s been a wild night, and the sounds of the storm were awfu’ confusing even to the like of me. So far as I can discover, there was just something thrown inside, and a blast of weet, and the big door snatched out of his hand and clashed to, and all in a moment before he could say a word. That’s a’ that I can make out. I was in the servants’ passage myself listening and wondering, and a’ in a tremble with thethoughts of visitors or waur. He didna say a word but gaed a kind of skreigh, and I kent something had happened. When I ran into the hall, and a’ the women after me—for ye ken the story of the Eskside warning, my lord, as well as me—there was the wean standing up in the corner against the wa’; and him there glow’ring at it, as if the bonnie bit laddie was a ghaist.”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all, my lord, as far as I can find out—he says he saw a figure, but what kind of a figure——”
“It was a woman wrapped in a cloak,” said Harding, somewhat sullenly—“I was coming to that; a tall figure of a woman, not like nobody I know—a sort of a beggar—a tramp.”
“Would you know her again, if you saw her?” asked Lord Eskside.
“As for that, my lord—I see as she had black hair hanging down, and something red twisted round her neck,—a roughish sort of a woman. She caught hold of the door and shut it in my face,” said Harding, roused to energy, “though she was the one as was outside and me in——”
“And said nothing—you are sure she said nothing?”
“Not a word, my lord. I called out to her, Hollo! ’old ’ard!” said Harding; “but she didn’t pay no attention. She took hold of the door, and dragged it out of my hand. It’s true as I was taken by surprise and didn’t put out my strength.”
“A muckle strong randy of a woman,” said Mrs Harding. “I think I maun have seen her the other day down by the lodge, with a bairn tied on her back in a shawl:” then suddenly perceiving her mistake, she added, “no that such a quean could have anything to do with—with our wee gentleman, if my lady’s right; and she’s aye right,” the housekeeper continued, in a lower tone, with keen eyes fixed on the old lord. Mrs Harding knew her master and mistress, and flattered herself that she had no small influence with them; but part of her power, like that of many other popular oracles, consisted in her vivid perception of the variations in the minds of her employers, whom she often seemed to lead by means of prompt and instantaneous following. She was herself very much excited, very doubtful and uncertain about this strange event; and she watched her master with a sharpness of observation which proved the urgency of thecase. As for Lord Eskside, he stood knitting his brow, and forgetting, or at least ignoring, the pair who stood, one sharply, and one dully, attentive, awaiting his next observation. When he spoke, his utterance was sharp and sudden—the abrupt issue of a long deliberation.
“Have you any reason to suppose that this—person—this woman—has been haunting the place? You say you saw her down at the lodge?”
“I saw a—beggar-wife,” said the housekeeper, subdued; “but on second thoughts, my lord——”
“D—— second thoughts!” cried her master, impatiently; then turning to her husband,—“and you, Harding, had you ever seen her before?”
Harding paused; he balanced himself first on one leg and then on the other; he scratched his puzzled head, fixing his old master with his eyes, in the hope that this precaution would guard him against an outburst. “Seen her before, your lordship?” Harding said finally, with caution; “I’ve seen—a many like her——”
“Fool! can’t you answer a plain question?” cried his master, furious. “Had you seenherbefore? could you recogniseheragain?”
“My lord, I’m no wanting to interfere out of a woman’s sphere,” said the housekeeper. “You ken better than me, both your lordship andhim; but if you’ll just consider—— He saw her one moment, nae mair. He was sair taken by surprise; it was dark, and the wind blowing wild, and the rain in his face. You should see the hall, a’ weet where it came in—and just one moment, my lord! If it had been myself he would scarce have kent me. And his een are no so shairp as they once were, your lordship well knows.”
“Oh ay, Marg’ret, I know; you take his part whatever happens——”
“And wha but me should take his part, when he’s my man?” said the housekeeper, triumphantly. As soon as she had brought that reluctant impatient smile momentarily to her master’s face, she was safe, she knew. Lord Eskside stood lost in his own thoughts for some time before he dismissed them, forgetting their existence, though to them he was the centre of the earth, and could not be forgotten. When at last, coming to himself abruptly, he waved his hand and muttered something about the night being too far spent for further action, the pair left the room with verydifferent sentiments. Harding, who had not yet recovered the discomfort of his watch in the wet avenue, was too thankful to be spared further trouble to disturb himself with any questions; but his wife, more interested, partly from her deeper concern in all that affected the family, and partly, perhaps, from mere feminine preoccupation with the mystery, was by no means satisfied. “Is my lady right?” she kept saying to herself; and put the evidence together with that strange ability and clearheadedness which family servants, whose entire intelligence is absorbed in the facts of a family history, so often show. My lady was generally right—at least her opinions were generally approved and adopted by the household, which comes to much the same thing; but there was a huge gulf of doubt before her, which Mrs Harding contemplated with a disquieted mind. How could this beggar’s brat be the heir of Eskside? He was like the Rosses; he was called by their favourite name—“a daftlike name, no doubt, and out of the common,” the housekeeper acknowledged to herself; but yet the difficulties overbalanced the probabilities in the judgment of this keen though homely observer. She drove her husband nearly frantic by dwelling upon the subject all the night long. “It ain’t none of our business,” said Harding; “trust my lord and my lady to mind theirselves; it ain’t got nothing to say to us.” He was very glad to get rid of so troublesome a question, and to mind his work, as he said; for a better servant, as both his master and mistress often declared, was not to be found in Scotland. His wife had her faults; but she lay awake half the night pondering this strange incident while he slept the sleep of the just, unburdened by any anxieties. But he was more exact than she was (with her disturbed mind) about the comfort of the household next morning. On the whole, it is difficult to say which kind of service is the best.
Lord Eskside remained for some time longer in his study, and then he went up-stairs to the drawing-room, to join the ladies. Lady Eskside, however, was not to be found there, and a certain look of agitation was in the place of which she was the natural soul. She had gone up to “the nursery,”—long disused and unaccustomed words!—to sit by the child’s bedside, and brood over his slumbers. Mary Percival was sitting by the fire alone, with a book upon her lap, which she did not even pretend to read. The fire was low, thelamp was low, the room was less bright than usual, and everything told of some occurrence which had broken the ordinary calm. Mary put her book aside and took up some knitting which lay on the table, when the old lord entered and took his position on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire as usual; but her knitting was a mere pretence, as her reading had been—the pretence of a pretence, for she only held it vaguely in her hand. For some little time nothing was said except a few commonplaces consequent on Lord Eskside’s curt impatient remarks. How bad the lights were! it was the lamp that had run down, Mary said; and went and screwed it up again, with a hand that trembled. Where was my lady?—She had gone up-stairs; Mary did not know if she meant to come down again; perhaps, having been a good deal shaken, she had gone to bed. Humph! Lord Eskside said, working his under lip, and bending his shaggy brows. Mary felt pained and embarrassed, like a stranger involved in a family quarrel, and obliged to explain the conduct of one member of a household to another; and she felt the silence almost intolerable as she sat down again, and took her knitting in her hand. At last the old lord rushed abruptly into the all-absorbing subject, as was his way.
“What doyouthink of all this, Mary? You’re a sensible girl. Is my lady out of her mind? or what’s to be done about this—child?”
“Oh, Lord Eskside,” said Mary, with tremulous agitation, “how could she be wrong on such a point? It is Richard’s child.”
“How should she not be wrong? how is any one to know? a nameless brat, without sign or surety; probably some gipsy’s spawn or other. Right! It could be but a guess at the best.”
“You did not see him,” said Mary, faltering. “He is like—his father.”
“Like his father!” cried Lord Eskside; and he began to pace up and down the long, large, partially lighted room, a moving atom in it, yet supreme in his disturbed and disturbing humanity; “like his father!—very probably—but how can we tell who is his father? I think my lady, poor soul, has gone out of her mind.”
“But you have not seen him,” said Mary, softly, not knowing what to say.
“I have seen the creature, a little dark toad. Dick was always fair and feeble like my mother’s family, a fusionless being. We must write for him, and have his opinion. God bless me, Mary! if they both hold to it, mother and son, and this foundling grows up as heir to the property, how is he ever to establish his title? We’ll have Sandy Pringle down upon us with all the Scots law at his finger-ends—and what am I, a reasonable man, to do?”
“Oh, Lord Eskside, that is a long way off,” cried Mary, laying hold of the first argument that occurred to her.
“Things are none the easier for being a long way off,” said the old lord; and then he fell silent, pacing up and down the room, and finally returned to his place on the hearth-rug, where he stood pondering and waiting for his wife, whose hasty conclusions he so much objected to, yet whose presence and energy bore him up. Had she been there to argue with him, the strange thing that had occurred would have looked real. But in her absence what could Lord Eskside do but fret and fume? Mary and her gentle arguments were unsubstantial to him as any of the other shadows that filled the silent and deserted room.
Richard Rosshad not visited his parents for years. He had scarcely been at home at all since the miserable catastrophe which had so fatally enlightened the world as to the folly of his marriage; and perhaps the certainty that he must come now contributed something to his mother’s rapture in the recovery of his child: for the instinct of nature overcomes all its unlikenesses; and Richard, though a man whom she would have laughed at and scorned had he not been her son, was, being her son, dearer than all the world to Lady Eskside. The new event which had happened was important enough, and his mother’s appeal was still more urgent and imperative; but I doubt if it would be true to say that there was any excitement of feeling, any happiness of anticipation in Richard’s mind as he travelled home in obedience to the call. Nearly seven years had elapsed since his children were taken from him, and they had been too young to take any permanent hold on his affections. That they were his children was all that could be said; and in Richard’s mind, as time went on and he began to regard his misfortunes with a kind of hopeless apathy, they had come to be more like shadows of their mother than independent beings possessing rights and claims of their own. The first effect of the news was to rouse him to a painful sense of his own dismal shipwreck and hopeless failure in life, rather than to any excitement of a more tender kind. Those great personal misfortunes which change the complexion of our lives may fall into the background, they may cease to render us actively and always wretched; but they lie in wait, keeping, as it were, ever within reach, to wake into hot recollection at a touch. Most of us prefer to avoid that touch when we can, and Richard had done this more persistently and with greater success than most people; but yet they lay there ready, the shame and the pain, wanting nothing but a jog to bring them out in full force.
I would not go the length of saying that he was touched by no feeling of thankfulness that his child was restored; but his pleasure was infinitely less than the suffering he went through by means of this revival of all that was most painful in his life. He had long outgrown the boyish passion which led to his strange marriage; and as he had nothing to look back upon in connection with that marriage which was not miserable and humiliating, it was not wonderful that shame and self-disgust were his most lively sensations when it was recalled to him. He could not understand how he could have been guilty of folly so supreme and so intense; how he could have bartered his credit, his comfort, all the better part of life, not to speak of that hot love of youth, which in calmer years often looks so much like folly, even when it is happy and fortunate—for what? Nothing. He had not even, so far as he knew, touched the heart of the woman for whom he had made so extraordinary a sacrifice. At best she had but accepted and submitted to his love; she had never loved him; his influence had not wrought any change in her. He had not even affected her being so much as to induce her to give up the habits of her former life, or show any inclination to learn the habits of his. She had humiliated him in every way, and in no way so much as by allowing him to perceive his own impotence in regard to herself. This gave the last sting of bitterness to his recollections. A man can bear the outer annoyances which result from a foolish marriage; he can put up, patiently or otherwise, with much that would revolt him in any other less close and binding connection; but when, in addition to these, he is made to feel that he himself is nothing and less than nothing to the creature for whom he has made such sacrifices, it is inevitable, or almost inevitable, that the early infatuation should change into a very different feeling. Sometimes, it is true, the victim of passion, notwithstanding all enlightenment, continues in his subjection, and goes on adoring even where he despises; but such cases are rare, and Richard’s was not one of them. I cannot understand any more than his mother could, how “a son of hers” could have ever made so extraordinary a mistake in life; but now that his existence was permanently ruined and devastated by this great blunder, Richard had felt that his best policy was to ignore it utterly. He had lived a celibate and blameless life during all those years of enforced widowhood. Society knew vaguely that he had been married, and most people thought him a widower; but though much in the world, he had lived so as to avoid all disagreeable inquiries into the actual facts of the case. He had never betrayed even to his friends the blight which had stopped all progress in life for him. According to all precedent of fiction, some other woman ought to have stepped across his path and learned his secret, as Mr Thackeray’s Laura does by George Warrington. But Richard Ross had indulged in no Laura. He had friends enough and to spare, but never any close enough or dear enough to warrant scandal. Instead of Platonic affections he had taken to china, a safer weakness; and it was to this tranquil gentleman in the midst of his collections that the mother’s letter came, thrusting back upon his recollection the dismal and humiliating melodrama of which he had been the hero. It is not difficult to imagine in the circumstances with what bitter annoyance he bore this revival of all his miseries, and girded himself up to answer the summons, and for the first time appear at home.
He arrived on a spring night as mild as the former one I have described had been boisterous. The sun had just set, and the rosy clouds hung above the trees of Rosscraig, and over the hillside, just tinged here and there with the bursting of the spring buds, but still for the most part brown andleafless, which sloped to the brawling Esk. I do not know a fairer scene anywhere. Some old turrets of the older part of the house, belonging to that style of domestic architecture which is common to France and to Scotland, peeped forth above the lofty slope of the bank. Had winter been coming, the brown, unclothed trees might have conveyed an impression of sadness; but as spring was coming they were all hopeful, specially where the green breaks of new foliage, big chestnut buds, and silken leaves still creased and folded, threw a wash of delicate colour upon the landscape. Richard’s heart was somewhat touched by the feeling that he was approaching home; but the more his heart was touched the less he was inclined to show it; for had not he himself injured the perfection of that home, which was surrounded by peoplewho knew, and who could not but comment and criticise? He heaved an impatient sigh, even while his heart was melting to the dear familiar place, and wished himself away again among people who knew nothing about him, even though he felt the many charms of home steal into his heart.
Richard Ross was a year or two over thirty—a young man, though he did not feel young—tall and fair, with a placid temper and the gentlest manners; a man to all appearance as free from passion and as prone to every virtuous and gentle affection as man could be. His aspect, indeed, was that of a very model of goodness and English domestic perfection—a man who would be the discreetest of guides to his household, the best of fathers, an example to all surrounding him. This was what he ought to have been. Had he married Mary Percival this is what he would have been; though I think it very likely that Mary would have wearied of him without knowing why, and found life—had she had him—a somewhat languid performance. But, unfortunately, she was quite unconscious of what would have happened had the might have been ever come to pass, and did not know that she missed some evil as well as some good. On the contrary, her heart beat far more than she would have wished it to beat when the roll of the carriage-wheels which conveyed Richard was heard in the avenue. She stole out by the conservatory-door to be out of the way, and hid herself in the woods which slope downward to Eskside. She scarcely heard the brawl of Esk, so loud was her heart beating. Poor Mary! it was not Richardalone who had come back and had to be met with tranquilly, as one stranger meets another—but her youth and all her fancies, and those anticipations long past which were so different from the reality. Mary stayed under the budding trees till almost the last ray of daylight had faded, and the bell from the house, calling all stragglers, tinkled from the height among the evening echoes. This bell of itself was a sign that something had happened: Lord and Lady Eskside were homely in their ways, and it was never rung when they were alone.
Lady Eskside received her son with the child by her side, going forward to meet him with little Val clinging to her hand; but when she forgot Val and threw her arms round her own boy whom she had not seen for so long, the child, bewildered, shifted his grasp to her gown, which he held fast, somewhat appalled as well as jealous at the appearance of this new-comer. It was not until after Richard had received his father’s less effusive greeting that even Lady Eskside bethought herself of the occasion of the visit—the little silent spectator, who, half buried in the folds of her gown, watched everything with keen eyes. “Ah!” she cried; then with a self-reproach for her own carelessness, “I think of my boy first, without minding that you are thinking of yours. Come, Val, and speak to your papa. Oh, Richard! oh, my dear! here is the child——”
“Oh!—this is the child, is it?” said Richard, with a momentary faintness coming over him. He did not snatch the little fellow into his arms, as his mother expected he would. He did something very different, for the poor man was short-sighted, a thing which none of us can help. He took up nervously that double eyeglass which the French call apince-nez, and put it on his nose. He could not have seen otherwise had his heart been ever so tender; but it would be impossible to describe the shock, the chill, which this simple proceeding brought upon Lady Eskside. Was there, then, no paternal instinct in her son’s heart—none of the feeling which had made her own expand and glow towards the boy? Was her impulse of nature wrong, or his deadened? The old lord looked on curiously too, but with less vehement feeling, for Lady Eskside had a deeper stake in the matter. She felt that to find herself mistaken, and to have to give up the child whom she had adopted into her warmest affections, would be her death-blow.
“Richard! you don’t think—your father and I—have been wrong?” she cried.
It was on Lord Eskside’s lip to say that this rash adoption was none of his doing, and thus give up his wife to her fate; but he was sorry for her, and held his tongue, watching the man and the child as they stared at each other with gradually growing interest. The boy stood, holding by Lady Eskside’s gown, with a baby scowl upon his soft little forehead, half raising one arm with instinctive suspicion, as he had done on the night of his arrival, to ward off an imaginary blow. Richard sat opposite and gazed at him intently through hispince-nez. Something pathetic, tragic, terrible, yet ludicrous, was in the scene.
“Richard,” faltered Lady Eskside, “don’t keep me in this suspense. Do you suppose—do you think—it is not him?”
“What is your name?” said Richard, looking at his son. “Val?—you are sure you are Val and not the other? Yes. I suppose, then, he’s the eldest,” he said hurriedly, getting up and walking away to the window at the other end of the room. The old couple were too much surprised to say anything. They gave a wondering glance at each other, and Lord Eskside, putting up his hand, stopped the crowd of wondering questions which was about to pour from his wife’s lips. Richard stood perhaps two minutes (it seemed an hour), with his back to them, looking out from the window. When he returned, his voice was husky and his face paler. “You have done quite right, mother, to take him in,” he said, in low tones, “so far as I can judge.” Then, with a suddenly heightened colour, “He is like—his mother. No one who has ever seenhercould fail to recognisehim.”
“Richard! oh, take him in your arms and give your child a kiss!” cried Lady Eskside, with tears in her eyes. “Oh, take your own mother’s word, it is you the darling is like—you, and none but you!”
“Is that like me?” said Richard, touching his son’s dark hair, with a harsh laugh; “or could we be mixed up, we two, in anything, even a child’s face? No; one of them was hers—all hers. Don’t you recollect, mother? I was pleased then, like an idiot as I was. The other,” he added, with a softened voice, “was like me.”
And then there was silence again. He had not touched the child or spoken to him, except that unfriendly touch;and little Val stood by his grandmother’s knee, still clutching her dress, looking on with a bewildered sense of something adverse to himself which was going on over his head, but which he did not understand. Richard threw himself into a chair, his fair, amiable face flushed with unusual emotion; he swung back in his seat, with an uneasy smile on his face, and an expression of assumed carelessness and real excitement totally unlike his usual aspect. As for Lady Eskside, she was struck dumb; she put her arms round the child, petting and consoling him. “My bonnie man!” she said, pressing him close to her side, comforting the little creature, who was nothing more than perplexed in his baby mind—as if he had shared the distinct pain in her own.
“Enough of this, Richard,” said Lord Eskside, coming to the rescue. “Whatever has happened, it is not the boy’s fault. Your mother and I have the property to think of, and the succession. It is necessary that you should give an opinion one way or another——”
“Father, I beg your pardon,” said Richard, rising to his feet with a sudden flush of shame. “I allowed my feelings to get the better of me. I acknowledge the child. He is too like to be denied. Valentine was the eldest, and had dark hair, like—— I have no doubt on the subject. If my mother chooses to use her eyes, she can see the resemblance——”
“To you, Richard! Oh, do not be bitter against the bairn; he is like you!”
Richard smiled—a painful smile, which sat ill on a countenance of which very nature demanded gentleness. “You may bring him up, sir, as your heir; I acknowledge him. There, mother, what do you want more of me? I can’t be a hypocrite, even for you.”
“You should remember that you are his father,” said the old lady, half indignant, half weeping; “whatever may have happened, as your father says, the child is not to blame.”
“No,” said the young man. “Do you mean me to go, now that I have done what you wanted? Am I to be dismissed, my business being over——”
“What do you mean, sir?” said Lord Eskside, hotly; “you forget that you are speaking to your mother——”
“My mother has not a word nor a look for me!” cried Richard. “She wants me for nothing but this gipsy brat, that I may own him, and advance him to my own place. I say it is hard on a man. I come back here, after years; andthe first words that are said to me are—not to welcome me home—but to upbraid me that I do not grow maudlin all in a moment over this child.”
“Richard!” cried the old lady, with a sharp tone of pain in her voice; “do you want me to think that though I have got your son I have lost mine?”
“That must be as you will, mother; you seem to prefer him,” said Richard, in high offence. It was the first quarrel they had ever had in their lives; for through all his youthful errors she had stood by him always. I do not know what demon of perversity, vexation, and personal annoyance worked in him; but I do know the intense and silent disappointment with which his mother’s heart closed its open doors—wide open always to him—and she turned away, all her joy changed into bitterness. When she came to think of it, she blamed herself, saying to herself that she had been injudicious in thrusting the strange little new-comer upon him the very moment of his arrival; but then she had judged him by herself—what can mortal do more?—and had believed that the boy would be his first thought.
In this way a cloud fell on the house from the very moment of Richard’s return. His was not the prodigal’s return, notwithstanding his long banishment and his great error. He had done more harm to his father’s house than many a profligate son could have done; yet he was not wicked, but virtuous, and could not be received as a prodigal. And he, for his part, was warmly conscious of personal blamelessness, though his position, so far as other people knew, was that of one to whom much had been forgiven—a complication which was very productive of irritating feelings. I do not mean to say that the cloud lasted, or that Richard went to his room that night unreconciled with his mother. On the contrary, when Lady Eskside followed him there, with a woman’s yearning, to wipe out every trace of the misunderstanding, her boy fell upon her neck as when he had been really a boy, and kissed her, and did all but lift up his voice and weep, according to the pathetic language of Scripture. Even yet, after the recollection of his petulance was thus effaced, the shock she had received tingled through his mother’s heart, and indeed through her physical frame, which was beginning to be more sensitive by reason of age, vigorous woman though she was. Even without any painful occurrences in the interval, a visit like this, paid after years of separation, is oftena painful experiment. The son of Lord Eskside, a homely Scots lord, with few interests which were not national, or even local, was a very different person from the Hon. Richard Ross, seniorattachéof the British Legation at Florence, whose life had fallen into grooves entirely different from those of home. Though he returned to all the soft kindness of his natural manner, the keen observation of the two women who were watching him (for Mary was little less interested than Lady Eskside) soon made out that Richard took little interest in his father’s talk, and was quickly fatigued by his mother’s questions. He did not care for the parties of country neighbours who were asked to meet him. “Of course, my dear mother, whoever you please,” he would say, with a faint little contraction in his smooth forehead; but then probably that was because those country neighbours knew all about him, and understood that they were invited to eat the fatted calf, and celebrate a prodigal’s return.
Afterthis first experience of his feeling on the subject, Lady Eskside, though with a painful effort, wisely resolved to avoid further embarrassment by letting things fall into their natural course, and making no effort to thrust his child upon Richard’s notice. The little fellow, already familiar with the house, and fully reconciled, with a child’s ease andinsouciance, to the change in his lot, ran about everywhere, making the great hall resound with his voice, and beginning to reign over Harding and the rest of the servants, as the spoiled darling, the heir of the race, is apt to do, especially in the house of its grandparents. The only person Val was shy of was his father, who took little or no notice of him, but after his first introduction expressed no active feeling towards the child one way or another. Perhaps, indeed, Richard was slightly ashamed of that uncalled-for demonstration of his feelings. Valentine was his son, whether he liked it or not, and must be his heir and representative as well as his father’s; and though it never occurred to him to contemplate the moment when he himself should reign in hisfather’s stead, he felt it wise to make up his mind that his boy should do so, and to give his parents the benefit of his own experience as to Val’s education. “You must be prepared for an ungovernable temper and utter unreasonableness,” he said to his mother, making a decided and visible effort to open the subject.
“My dear, there is nothing of the kind,” cried Lady Eskside, eagerly; “the bairn is but a bairn, and thoughtless—but nothing of the kind can I see——”
“He is seven years old, and he is fooled to the top of his bent—everybody gives in to him,” said Richard. “Mark my words, mother,—this is what you will have to strive against. Self-control is unknown to that development of character. So long as they don’t care very much for anything, all may go well; but the moment that he takes a fancy into his head——”
Mary was present at this interview, and it was not in human nature to refrain from a glance at his mother to see how she received this lofty delineation of a character which Richard evidently thought entirely different from his own. Lady Eskside saw the glance, and understood it, and faltered in her reply.
“Many do that, my dear,” she said, meekly, “that are gentle enough in appearance. I will remember all the hints you give me. But Val, though he is very high-spirited, is a good child. I think I shall be able to manage him.”
“Send him to school,” said Richard—“that is the best way; let him find his level at school. Send him to Eton, if you like, when he is old enough, but in the mean time, if my advice is worth anything, put him under some strict master who will keep him well in hand, at once. My dear mother, you are too good, you will spoil him. With the blood he has in his veins he wants a firmer hand.”
“My hand is getting old, no doubt,” said Lady Eskside, with a little glow of rising colour.
“I do not mean that; you are not old—you will never be old,” said her son, with that flattery which mothers love. This put the disagreeable parts of his previous speech out of her mind. She smiled at her boy, and said, “Nonsense, Richard!” with fond pleasure. To be sure it was nonsense; but then nonsense is often so much better than the sagest things which wisdom itself can say.
As for the meeting with Mary Percival, that was got overmore easily than she herself could have expected. There were so many other things in Richard’s mind that he took her presence there the first evening as a matter of course; and though that too had its sting, she was so great a comfort and help to them all in the excitement and embarrassment involved in the first meeting, that Mary was made into a person of the first importance—a position which always sheds balm upon the mind of one who has been, or thinks she has been, slighted. This state of comfort was somewhat endangered next morning, when Richard thought it proper to express his sense of her great kindness in coming to meet him. “It was very good of you,” he said—“like yourself; you were always much kinder to me than I deserved.” Now this is not a kind of acknowledgment which sensitive women are generally much delighted to receive, from men of their own age at least.
“Was I?” said Mary, trying to laugh; “but in this case at least I had no intention of being kind. I was here before there was any question of your coming; and I do not know that I should have stayed—for when she has you, Lady Eskside wants no other companion—but that I was very anxious to know about Val.”
“I ought to be grateful to Val,” said Richard; “he seems to have supplanted me with all my friends—even my mother is more interested, a great deal, in Val’s digestion, than she is in my tastes, nowadays. I have to fall back upon the consolation of all whose day is over. It was not always so.”
There was the slightest touch of bitterness in this, which partially conciliated Mary, though it would be difficult to tell why.
“I suppose that is a consolation,” she said. “I feel it too; but in your case there is no occasion. They worship the child because he is your son.”
“Yes, it is a consolation,” said Richard, “so far as anything can console one for the loss of opportunities, the change of circumstances. I find it safer to say nothing on such subjects, and to live among people who know nothing; but now that I am forced to stand here again, to recollect all that might have been——”
It was a still afternoon, the sun shining with lavish warmth and force, the grass growing, the leaves opening, so that you could almost see their silent haste of progress. They were standing on the terrace outside the windows, looking downover the brown woods all basking in the sunshine, to Esk, which showed here and there in a wider eddy of foam round some great boulder which interrupted his course. It was too early for the twitter of swallows; but some of those hardy birds that dwell all the year at home were interchanging their genial babble, deep among the multitudinous branches, and a few daring insects hummed in the air which was so full of sunshine. Floods of golden crocus had come out on all the borders. It was not the moment for recollection; but these words raised a swell and expansion of feeling in Mary’s heart which it was not safe to indulge. Soft moisture came to her eyes. Happily that rush of sensation was not strong enough to make her wretched, but it confused her so much that she could not reply.
“All the same,” said Richard, quickly, “I do not agree with Browning in his rapture over an English spring. You should see Italy at this season: everything here is pale, a mere shadow of the radiance yonder. From Bellosguardo, for instance, looking down upon Florence; you have never been in Italy, Mary?—a sky to which this is darkness, air all lambent with light and warmth, such towers, such roofs rising up into it, and the Val-d’Arno stretching away in delicious distance, like the sea, as ignorant people say—as if the sea could ever be so full of grace and interest! It is, I suppose, the junction of art with exquisite nature which gives such a landscape its great charm. Here we have nature to be sure, pretty enough in its way; but everything that man touches is monstrous. Those square horrible houses! Happily we don’t see them here.”
The soft flow of feeling which had risen in Mary’s mind, and had filled her eyes with moisture, suddenly turned into gall. “No,” she said, “I have never been in Italy. I don’t know that I want to go. I prefer to think my own country the most beautiful in the world.”
“Well,” said Richard, “perhaps if you are obliged to live in it all your life it is the most philosophical way.”
How little Mary was thinking of philosophy at that moment! It was well for her that his mother came out from the open window, ready to walk down to the village, which she had made her son promise somewhat unwillingly to do. “Mary will go with us,” Lady Eskside had said as an inducement to Richard, not perhaps taking Mary’s inclinations much into account; for, of course (she reckoned securely),Mary would put her own feelings in her pocket rather than take away a motive from Richard to do his duty; and there could be no doubt that it was his duty to visit the old people who remembered him, and who would be wounded if he took no notice of them. “We must go to our old Merran’s, your nurse that used to be. She is married to the smith, you remember, Richard? and doing well, I believe, though always a great gossip, as she was when she was a young woman. Her son has come to be under-gamekeeper, and your father thinks he will give him one of the lodges if he turns out well, for he is going to be married,” said Lady Eskside, walking briskly down the winding path through the wood, which was shorter than the avenue,—and full of a country lady’s satisfaction in that sway over her humble neighbours and full knowledge of their concerns which is so good for both parties. Richard went dutifully by her side, and listened at least; while Mary came behind with little Valentine in wonderful new fine clothes, velvet and lace, the strangest contrast to his former appearance. He had been a beautiful child in his poor garments; he was like a little prince now, with aristocrat (a stranger would have said) written in every fine line of those features, upon which the noble father and the vagrant mother had both impressed their image. The mother not being by, the child was universally wondered over for his resemblance to his father; but to that father’s eyes Val had nothing that had not come to him from the other—that other who had once been Richard’s idol, and now was his enemy and his shame.
Merran Miller, you may be sure, had heard every word of the story, and more, and knew exactly how the beautiful boy, in his fantastic, costly dress, had been brought to Rosscraig, and remembered how she had herself seen him make his entry into his future kingdom, muddy and crying, “a beggar-wean” by the side of the mother who went to lodge at Jean Macfarlane’s. She knew it all, but this did not lessen the warmth of her enthusiasm for Mr Richard’s boy, the bonnie wee gentleman who was so like his papaw. “Eh, bless him, he’s like a prince! I wish the queen herself might have the like!” she cried, with all the loyalty of an old retainer, and wiped her eyes with her apron at thought of the kindness of Mr Richard coming so far to see “the like of me!” Richard, after he had said all that was civil to his old nurse, fell back, while his mother inquired into her domestic affairs, and informed her of Lord Eskside’s intended favour to the young gamekeeper who was about to be married. “We cannot forget that you were a good nurse to our boy,” said the old lady, gracious in her happiness; “and as Providence has been good to us, giving us back our grandchild, who is the heir, and his father at the same time, my lord and myself take a pleasure in seeing other folk happy too.” “Eh, my lady, but you’re kind and good! and what can I say to you for my Willie—for such a grand start in life!” cried Merran, once more applying her apron to her eyes. Richard strayed aside, and would have fallen back upon Mary, not feeling much interest in this conversation, had not Mary, still affronted, eluded his address.
But as he looked round the cottage, something which interested him still more attracted his eye. It was the “aumrie” or oak press in which Merran and her mother before her had kept their “napery” for ages. The connoisseur rushed at it, and examined every line of its old carving; he opened the doors and looked over all the drawers and intricacies inside. “Here is something as fine as any piece of furniture in your house. Ask her if she will part with it,” he said rapidly to his mother in French. His blue eyes sparkled with pleasant excitement, and his colour rose. Since he came back, nothing—not his unknown child, not his parents, not Mary, nor the associations of home—had given him so warm a glow of pleasurable feeling. He was in his natural element once more.
It became still more apparent, however, and in a more agreeable way, how much Richard was changed when the first dinner-party convoked in his honour assembled at Rosscraig. The best people in the county were there, straining a point to show the dear old Esksides (as the Dowager-Duchess herself said) that for their sake their son’s misdoings would be overlooked, and himself received again as if nothing had happened. They all came prepared to be kind to him, to forget the disgrace he had brought upon himself and his family, and to condone all past offences on condition of future good conduct. But lo! Richard was civil to the people who had intended to be good tohim—he received them with the quiet self-assured air of a man of the world, which was ever so far removed from that of the conscious offender against social laws whom they had come to meet. He spoke with a certain gentle authority as a man much better acquainted with the great world and the highest levels of life than were his critics—giving them pieces of information about political matters, and deciding which was the real version of fashionable scandals in a way which struck the neighbours dumb. “My dears, we are all under a delusion,” said the same Dowager-Duchess whom we have already quoted, addressing a little group in the corner of the drawing-room to which they had retired to compare notes, and make their astonished comments on leaving the dinner-table. “Depend upon it it’s no tramp he has married, but some foreign princess. He’s no more ashamed of himself than I am.” And, indeed, a rumour to this effect ran through all Mid-Lothian. In the dining-room all the gentlemen were equally impressed. Before they rose from table, Sir John Gifford, the greatest land-owner in the district, and son-in-law to the Marquess of Tranent, asked Richard’s opinion as to what the Ministry would do about the then existing crisis (I do not remember what it was) in foreign politics; and they all listened to what he said about the state of feeling in Italy, and the condition of the smaller courts, as if it had been gospel. “That son of Eskside’s, whatever he may have done to compromise himself in his youth, is a rising man, you may take my word for it,” Sir John said solemnly at the next assembly of the county. “And the less we inquire into most men’s youth the better, my dear Sir John,” said the Dowager-Duchess, of whose tongue most people stood in awe; and Sir John coloured, and felt more and more sympathetic with Dick Ross; for he, too, had known the drawbacks of ajeunesse orageuse.
This revolution was made not gradually but in a single evening. The first dinner-party at Rosscraig was intended more or less to represent that entertainment at which the fatted calf was eaten; but in the curious change of sentiment that ensued there was no more thought of fatted calves. The indulgent reception intended to be given to the exile, almost the outlaw, of whom every one had spoken for years with bated breath, turned imperceptibly into the welcome accorded to a distinguished guest. Richard’s manners were allowed to be perfect; he had all thesavoir vivre, the easy grace, the perfect self-possession of a man of the world. He knew everybody, he had seen everything; he was learned in art of every description, from the old masters in painting to lace and china; and every lady inthe county who possessed either was proud of his approbation. Perhaps he was not quite so great out of doors, where neither agriculture nor sport were in his way; but men forgive much to a political authority, as women do to a connoisseur, and Richard’s visit was an event in the neighbourhood. Lady Eskside’s feelings on witnessing this revolution were of the strangest. She watched it with a certain consternation, half frightened, half triumphant; the poor boy’s humiliation and sufferings, she said to herself, were all being repaid to him; yet Lady Eskside was a just woman, and I do not think she was quite sure that Richard deserved to be thus received with an ovation. But where was there ever a mother who did not glow with pride and happiness to see her son the observed of all observers, the hero of her world? Mary Percival, who stood by and looked on closely, a spectator less prejudiced in Richard’s favour, yet full of the keenest interest, wondered still more, judging him differently in her heart. Mary’s feelings were of a kind which would not bear analysing. She could not keep from watching him, she heard everything that was said of him, she noted his words and actions with a keen and never-failing concern; but this wondering interest and a partial amusement which pained herself, yet would not be altogether subdued, were not sympathy. She seemed to herself to be behind the scenes, and to see more than the rest did; and by this means it came about that the rush of blood to her heart, and the thrill through all her frame with which Mary had acknowledged Richard’s approach at first in spite of herself, died away and left her quite calm as all the world awoke to his merits. This second and less important revolution Lady Eskside perceived dimly, but did not understand.
However, Richard’s sudden popularity was the most fortunate incident possible for his child. Many people, after the first eager interest with which they had received the romantic story of little Val’s first appearance at Rosscraig, began to doubt it because it was so romantic, and pointed out to each other the much more likely and sensible way of accounting for it. “The beggar-wife is all a myth, depend upon it,” said the Dowager-Duchess,—“a myth founded upon the popular conviction that Dick Ross was unfortunate in his marriage. Most of us are unfortunate in our marriages; but it seldom comes to that sort of thing. No, no;depend upon it, the child came with his father, as was natural and proper. What better explanation would you have?” There can be no doubt that this method of introducing a child who is heir to a peerage is a much more comprehensible and reasonable one than a wild tale by which he was represented as having been thrust in at the hall-door on a stormy night. There had been much excitement caused by the story; but that very excitement was a proof to many sober people that it was ridiculous. Why search further? they said. His father had come home on a visit, a very rising young man, and extremely agreeable, and he had brought the child with him. Valentine’s appearance confirmed the district in this sensible view of the question. In his velvet tunic and collar of falling lace, he was utterly unlike anything but a dainty little dandy born to luxury and bred with every care, whose cheek the winds had never been allowed to touch rudely. To look at the child was quite enough, said many. He to have been wandering about the country with a tramp!—the idea was preposterous. He was a little aristocrat all over—from his dark curls to the buckles on his dainty shoes. And when the gentry of the country inquired, as they almost all did individually, into the origin of the other absurd story, it was universally traced to the servants’ hall. My Lady Gifford’s maid had got it from Joseph the footman at Rosscraig, and the Dowager-Duchess had heard it from an under-gardener who kept the lodge, and with whom she did not disdain an occasional gossip. There is no limit to the imagination of persons in that class of life, many people said; and it became a mark of fashion on Eskside by which you could decide whether any individual really belonged to the cream of society or not. Belief in the common-sense theory that (of course) Richard had brought his son to his mother’s care, was for a long time the shibboleth of the county. Those who had faith in the romantic part of the story were given over to a reprobate imagination, and stamped themselves vulgar at once by adopting a theory so ridiculous. Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young heir. Lady Eskside awoke to the importance of maintaining this “sensible” view before she had been tempted to utter the true occasion of her joy to any dear friend. Nobody knew the real facts of the case except Mary and the servants. Mary was safe as Lady Esksideherself, and as careful of the honour of the family; and as for the servants, with their well-known love of the marvellous, how could any one pin his faith on them? Thus circumstances arranged themselves for little Val a hundred times better than the most sanguine imagination could have believed.
But the story lingered in the lower levels of society, where nobody was deceived. Merran Miller herself, though she had been Richard’s nurse, and felt herself a partisan of the family, paused to give an elaborate description of the child and his finery to her friends, when, throwing her apron over her cap, she rushed out to proclaim her Willie’s good fortune to all the world: “I wish I was at the bottom o’t,” cried Merran; “it’s an awfu’ queer story. I’m real glad now that it came into my head to give the weans a piece, and that I was civil to the woman. But to see yon bairn decked up like a cheeny image! and him gaun greeting with a beggar-wife nae later than Wednesday at e’en——!”
“Richard, there is one disagreeable subject which, as you said nothing about it, I have avoided as long as possible; but I must speak now, before you go.”
Lady Eskside had led her son out upon the terrace the evening before he was to leave. She was dressed for dinner in her black satin gown, with a lace cap and stomacher, which even his fastidious eye approved. She had come to the age when little change of costume is possible. Sometimes she wore velvet instead of satin, but that was about all the variety she made, and her lace was her only vanity. She had a crimson Indian scarf thrown over her head and shoulders. Her erect old figure was still as trim, and her step as springy, as any girl’s. She was the picture of an old lady, everybody allowed;—and it was true she was old—yet full of an unquenchable youth. She had taken her son by the arm in the interval before dinner, and led him out into the open air to speak to him. Perhaps it was an inopportune moment; but it was a subject for which she felt a few minutes were enough, as it could not but be painful to both.
“Well, mother,” he said, with a tone of resignation. He was going next day, which gave him strength to bear this ordeal, whatever its cause might be.
“I have said nothing to you—indeed, indeed, I have wished to say nothing—about—— Richard, my dear boy, listen to me with patience, I will not keep you long—— about—Val’s mother—your wife.”
“What about her?” said Richard, with harsh brevity. He made a movement almost as if to throw off his mother’s arm.
“My dear, you must not think this subject is less disagreeable to me than to you. Nothing has been said about her for a long time——”
“And why should anything be said about her?” said Richard. “In such a hopeless business, what is the advantage of discussion? She has chosen her path in life, which is not the same as mine.”
His soft and gentle face set into a harsh rigidity: it grew stern, almost severe. “Come indoors, mother—the evening gets cold,” he added, after a pause.
“Just a word, Richard—just one word! Do you not see a trace of something different rising in her? She has brought back your boy: I suppose she thinks, poor thing, that it is just she should have one of them——”
“Mother,” said Richard, “I am astonished at your charity. You say, poor thing. Do you remember that she has ruined your son’s life?”
Lady Eskside made no answer. She looked at him wistfully, with an evident repression of something that rose to her lips.
“She has been my curse,” said Richard, vehemently. “For God’s sake, if she will leave us alone, let us leave her alone. She has made my life a desert. Is it choice, do you think, that makes me an outcast from my own country? that shuts me out from everything your son and my father’s son ought to have been? Why cannot I take my proper place in society—my natural place? You know well enough what the answer is—she is the cause. She has been my ruin: she is the curse of my life.”
He spoke almost with passion, growing not red but white in the intensity of his feelings. Lady Eskside looked at him, kept looking at him, with a face in which sympathy shone—along with some other expression not so easy to be defined.
“Richard,” she said, in a low voice, “all you say is true—who can know it better than I do? but oh, my dear, mind! she could have had no power on your life, if you had not given it to her—of your free will.”
“So, then, it is I alone who am to blame?” said Richard, with a laugh, which was half rage and half scorn. “I might have known that was what you were sure to say.”
“Yes, you might have known it,” said Lady Eskside—“for nothing, I hope, will ever shut my mind to justice; but not because I am in the habit of reproaching you, Richard—for that I never did, even when you had made my heart sore; but we need not quarrel about it, you and me. What I want to know is, if you do not see now the still greater importance of getting some hold upon her—for Valentine’s—for all our sakes?”
“You will never get a hold upon her: it is folly to dream of it. She is beyond your reach, or that of any reasonable creature. Mother, come in—the bell must have rung for dinner.”
“I have written to the man we employed before,” said Lady Eskside, hurriedly. “This was what I wanted to say. Do not stare at me, Richard! I will not put up with it. I must do my duty as I see it, and whatever comes of it. I have given him all the particulars I could, and told him to try every means, and lose no time. Her heart must be soft after giving up her child.”
“So,” said Richard, with a quivering pale smile, “you consult me what should be done after all the steps have been taken. This is kind! You have taken care to provide for my domestic comfort, mother—”
“If we should find her—which God grant!—I will take charge of her,” said Lady Eskside, with a flush of resentment. “Neither your comfort nor your pride shall be interfered with—never fear.”
“You are most considerate, mother,” said Richard. “Your house, then, is to be finally closed to me, after the effort I have made to revisit it? Well, after all, I suppose the Palazzo Graziani suits me best.”
“You are cruel to say so, Richard,” said his mother. Tears came quickly to her bright old eyes; but at that moment Lord Eskside looked out from one of the drawing-room windows, and stayed the further progress of the quarrel.
“What are you two doing there, philandering like a lad and a lass?” said the old lord. “Richard, bring your mother in; she’ll catch cold. There’s a heavy dew falling, though it’s a fine night.”
“It is my mother who insists on staying out in the night air, which I disapprove of,” said Richard. “The Italians have a prejudice on the subject of sunset. They think it the most dangerous hour of the day. I am so much of an Italian now—and likely to be more so—that I have taken up their ideas; at least so far as sunset is concerned.”
“So much an Italian—and likely to be more so!—I hope not, I hope not, Richard,” said his father. “After this good beginning you have made, it will be hard upon your poor mother and me if we cannot tempt you home.”
“Or drive me away for ever,” said Richard, so low that his mother only heard him. She grasped his arm with a sudden vehemence of mingled love and anger, which for the moment startled him, and then dropped it, and stepped in through the window, letting the subject drop altogether. She was unusually bright at dinner, excited, as it seemed, by the sharp little encounter she had just had, which had stirred up all her powers. Lord Eskside, who was not of a fanciful nature, and whose moods did not change so quickly, regarded her with some suspicion. He was himself depressed by his son’s approaching departure, and somewhat disposed to be angry, as he generally was when depressed.
“You must have been saying something to your mother to raise her spirits,” he said, after one or two ineffectual attempts to subdue her—when Richard and he were left to their claret.
“Not I, sir,” said Richard, “on the contrary; my mother has ideas with which I disagree entirely.”
“Ay, boy, to be sure,” said the old lord, “she was saying something to me. Then it was opposition, and not satisfaction as I thought? You see, Richard, women have their own ways of thinking. We cannot always follow their reasoning; but in the main your mother’s perhaps right.”
And having said this, in mild backing up of his wife’s bolder suggestions, Lord Eskside changed the subject and spoke of the property, and of new leases he was granting, and the improvement of the estate.
“There is a great deal of land about Lasswade that might be feued very advantageously—but I would not do it without ascertaining your feeling on the subject, Richard. It can’t make much difference in my time; but in the course of nature that time can’t be very long.”
“I wish it might be a hundred years,” said Richard, with no false sentiment; for indeed, apart from natural affection, to be Lord Eskside and live up here in the paternalchâteauamong the woods did not charm his imagination much.
“That is all very pleasant for you to say,” said his father, receiving and dismissing the compliment with a wave of his hand; “but, as I say, in the course of nature my time must be but short. There is just the question about the amenities, upon which every man has his own opinions——”
“The—— what did you say?” asked Richard, puzzled.
“The amenities of the place. It is true the village is not visible from the house, but if in the future you were to find the new houses that might be built an eyesore——”
“That is entirely a British notion,” Richard answered, with a smile; “I think great part of the beauty in Italy is from the universal life you see everywhere—villages climbing up every hillside. No; I have no English prejudices on that point.”
“I don’t know that it’s an English prejudice,” said Lord Eskside, who never forgot the distinction between English and Scotch as his son invariably did. “Then you don’t object to feuing? Willie Maitland will be a proud man. He has told me often I might add a thousand a-year to the income of the property by judicious feus. They will be taken up by all kind of shopkeeper bodies, retired tradesmen, and the like—a consideration which gives me little trouble, Richard, but may perhaps act upon you. No? Well, you’re a philosopher: they’re bad at an election; they’re totally beyond control—unless, indeed, your mother and I were to put ourselves out of our way to visit and make of them; but we would want a strong inducement for that.”
Here Lord Eskside looked at his son with a look of veiled entreaty, not saying anything; and Richard knew his father well enough to comprehend.