Lordand Lady Eskside, as the reader has seen, were not quite in accord about their grandson: or at least they took different views of the circumstances which attended his arrival. They took (perhaps) each the view which came naturally to man and woman in such a position of affairs. The old lord, although himself at length absolutely convinced that the boy was his son’s child and his own heir, was deeply oppressed by the consciousness that though there was moral certainty of this fact, there was no legal proof. “Moral certainty’s a grand thing,” said Willie Maitland, the factor, a man who knew the Eskside affairs to the very depths, and from whom there were no secrets possible; but he spoke so doubtfully as to inflame the mind of my lady, who sat by listening to their talk with an impatience beyond words.
“A grand thing!” cried Lady Eskside; “it is simply everything: what would you have more? And who can judge in such a question but ourselves? my son, who must know best, and my old lord and myself, who are next nearest? What do the men mean by their dubious looks? What can you have more than certainty? Mr Maitland, with yourknowledge of the law, I would like you to answer me that.”
“Well, madam, as my lord says,” said Willie Maitland, who was old-fashioned in his manners, “there is legal proof wanted. It may be just a deficiency on our part—and indeed, according to the Scriptures themselves, law is a sign of moral deficiency—but everything has to be summered and wintered before the Lords of Session.”
“And what have the Lords of Session to do with our boy?” said my lady, indignantly. “I hope we are not so doited but what we can take care of him ourselves.”
“My dear Catherine, that is not the question.”
“What is the question, I would like to know?” said Lady Eskside, flushing with the heat of argument. “Do I need the Lords of Session to tell me whose son my own bairn is? I think you are all taking leave of your senses with your formalities and your legal proof. Poor Alexander Pringle there, up the water, cannot bring his delicate little girlie to the country for change of air but you think he’s plotting against Val. If this suspicion and distrust of every mortal is what your bonnie law brings, I’m thankful for my part that I know nothing about the law; and I wish everybody was of my mind.”
Lord Eskside and his factor went out quite cowed from my lady’s presence. They were half ashamed both of the law and themselves, and I think the visit which they made to the land which was being marked out for “feus” was necessary to get up their spirits. Lord Eskside was rather excited about these feus—allotments of land to be let for building, upon a kind of copyhold which secured a perpetual revenue in the shape of ground-rent to the proprietor: though he was a little disposed at the same time to alarm himself as to the persons who might come to live there, and perhaps bring Radical votes into the county, and corrupt a constituency still stanch, amid Scotland’s many defections, to “the right side.” This public anxiety was a relief to his mind from the private anxiety; for however public-spirited a man may be, and however profound his interest in politics, the biting of a little private trouble is more sharp and keen than that patriotic concern for his country which drives him wild with excitement over a contested election. Willie Maitland the factor—a man “very well connected,” half a lawyer, half a farmer, and spoken of by every soul in theparish and on the estate by his Christian name—was big and burly and easy-minded, and took things much more easily than his lord. “By the time there is any question of the succession,” he said, “the story will be clean forgotten. It will be many a year, I hope, before Richard succeeds, let alone the boy.”
“Ay, ay, that is very true,” said the old lord, knitting his brows; “it may be many a year; but it might be a question of days, Willie, for anything you and me can tell. Well, well; for the moment we can make nothing better of it; and here are the feus. Good morning, doctor! I hope you’re all well at the Manse. It is a fine day for a walk. We are going to take a look at Willie Maitland’s pet scheme here.”
“An excellent scheme,” said Dr Bruce, the parish minister, turning to accompany them, with all that sober pleasure in something new which moves the inhabitants of a tranquil rural district in favour of such gentle revolutions as do not affect their own habits or comforts; and the three gentlemen spent an agreeable half-hour pacing and measuring the allotments. While they were thus engaged, Lady Eskside drove past with Val on the coach-box, making believe to drive. “There is my lady with her boy,” said Lord Eskside, waving his hand to them as they passed; but he thought he saw an incredulous smile upon the face of the minister, which took away from him all pleasure in the feus.
My lady worked while my lord thus allowed himself to be overcast by every doubtful look. Strong in her moral certainty, she took every means which lay in her power to spread the same conviction far and wide; and as she worked very hard at this undertaking, she had a right to the success, which she enjoyed thoroughly. Her chief work, however, was with the child himself—the strange little unknown being unable to express all the wonderments that were in him at his change of lot, who was in her hands as wax in some respects, while in others she could make but little of him. Val had reconciled himself to the revolution in his fate with wonderful facility. He was so young, that after a few fits of violent weeping and crying for his mother and his brother, he had to all appearance forgotten them; and being indulged in every whim, and petted to the top of his bent, with abundant air, exercise, toys, and caresses, had so adapted himself to his new position as to look familiar and at ease init before many weeks had passed. What vague recollections and baby thoughts upon the subject might be in him, nobody knew; but as childish recollections are in most cases carefully cultivated, and exist by means of constant reminders, I suppose Val, deprived of such aids, actually did forget much more readily than children usually do. Lady Eskside devoted herself specially to his polish and social education, to the amending of his manners and speech, and the imparting of those acts of politeness which are the special inheritance of small gentlemen: and she succeeded, to her own surprise, much more perfectly than she had hoped to do. Val took to the teaching in which no books nor perplexing printed symbols were involved, with perhaps a precocious sense of humour, but certainly a readiness of apprehension which filled my lady with joy. She taught him to bow, to open the door for her when she went out or in, to listen, and to reply; and what was still more wonderful, to sit still when circumstances demanded that painful amount of self-restraint. “A little gentleman tries first of all to be pleasant to other people,” said his instructress. “When you are out playing, you shall please yourself, Val, and everybody will help you to enjoy yourself; but in company a gentleman always thinks of others, not of himself.” And having well laid down this principle, my lady proceeded, with great minuteness, to details. She thought it was a certain sign of his gentle blood that he learned his social lesson with such quickness; but I am inclined to believe that Valentine’s success was owing much more surely to that latent dramatic power which exists in almost all children, and which they are so proud and happy to exercise on every possible occasion.
Certainly, whatever the cause was, the result was triumphant. When Val was alone—in the nursery, where he ruled like a little despot, or out of doors, where he conducted himself like a tiny desperado, always in mischief—he was uncontrollable; but in the drawing-room, when his grandmother received her visitors, or when he accompanied her on the visits which it was now a point in her diplomacy to make, no little paladin born in the purple could have shown more perfect manners, or behaved himself more gracefully. He was acting a part, well defined and recognisable, and therôlegave him pleasure. Not that the child himself was conscious of this, or could have defined what his instinct enabled him to do so perfectly; but yet the mental exercisewas one that excited him, and called forth all his powers. The little actor threw himself off, as he jumped from the coach-box, where he had been driving wildly, with precocious dash and nerve, restrained, with difficulty, by the cautious old coachman, who knew exactly how much my lady could put up with—and assumed in a moment the gracious character of the little prince, suave, soft, and courteous, saying what he had to say with childish frankness, and keeping himself still and in order with a virtue which was heroic. From the Dowager Duchess to the farmers’ wives on Eskside, everybody was satisfied by these performances; and no reasonable creature who had seen Val’s little exhibition could have lent a moment’s credence to the vulgar story of the “randy wife.” “I don’t see the strong likeness to his father,” said the Dowager Duchess, who was, as it were, the last court of appeal and highest tribunal of social judgment in the county. “To me there is another type of feature very evident besides the difference of complexion; but in manners he’s his father’s son. Not a lout, like Castleton’s boy, who ought to be a gentleman, heaven knows! if race is anything—on both sides of the house.” Lady Eskside felt the implied sting about “both sides of the house,” but bore it heroically, knowing that the Marquis of Hightowers, the Duke of Castleton’s only son, was like any ploughman’s child beside her own bonnie boy; and it did not occur to her, any more than it did to Val himself, that the whole secret of his success was his superiority in dramatic power, and in enjoyment of that suppressed but exquisite joke of mystification which children by nature love so dearly. Probably it was the blood of gipsy and tramp and roadside mime in Val’s veins which gave him more facility than usual in the representation; but the same gift shows in every nursery in a greater or lesser degree. Little Violet Pringle, with her dolls around her, discoursing to them—scolding one for its naughtiness, and another for having neglected its lessons, with high maternal dignity—was not more purely histrionic than was Val when he played at being young prince and good boy, according to his grandmother’s injunctions, and enjoyed the mystification—unless when it chanced to last too long.
“He is a strange child,” said Lady Eskside to her favourite confidant Mary Percival, whose visits became more frequent and prolonged after this, and whose curiosity aboutthe boy, whom she was not fond of, gave a certain point of interest and almost excitement to the pleasure she had in seeing her old friend. “He is a strange boy. When he goes out with me, you should see, Mary, the gentleman he is. The politest manners—better than Richard’s, for Richard was shy; never too forward, nor taking too much upon him, but a smile and an answer for everybody; and ready to open the door or hand you anything, as if he had been brought up to it all his life. But when he comes home, he is just a whirlwind, nothing else—what is the meaning of it? I sometimes think the spirits of both the bairns have got together in one frame.”
“You have heard nothing of the other?”
“Nothing; nor ofher, which is hard to bear. I cannot say for my own part either, that I feel it so hard; but I’m sorry for my old lord. I never saw him so full of fears and fancies. He thinks unless we can find her and the other boy, that Val’s place in the world will never be sure. I tell him it’s just nonsense. Who has anything to do with it but ourselves? and who can be such judges as we are? But he will not listen to me.”
“I think Lord Eskside must be right,” said Mary. “Lawsuits are terrible things, and bring great trouble. I know something about that.”
“Lawsuits!” said Lady Eskside, with a laugh. “If Sandy Pringle has the assurance to bring a lawsuit, I think we could soon let him see his mistake. Besides, what could he bring a lawsuit about? I don’t think you show your usual sense, my dear. Because my lord and me have found our son’s son, and have killed the fatted calf for our grand-bairn? The fatted calf is ours, and not Sandy Pringle’s. He could scarcely make a case of that.”
“No, indeed,” said Mary; but she did not feel any security in Lady Eskside’s triumphant argument. Val had been out on one of his expeditions with his grandmother, in which he had won all hearts, and now was in the wood making the air ring with shouts, and letting out the confined exuberance of his spirits in every kind of noise and mischief possible to a child of his age. “That’s the boy,” said Lady Eskside, leaning from the open window to listen. “You may be sure he is on the rampage, as Marg’ret Harding says.” The smile upon the old lady’s face went to Mary’s heart; there was the foolishness of love in it, as there was the foolishnessof triumphant security in her reasoning. She was not troubled by the problem of this little creature so strangely thrown upon her hands, nor even by the twofold life, which she wondered at. People do not analyse the characters of their children, but accept them—often with a mingling of wonder at their peculiarities, and frank unconsciousness of any cause for these peculiarities, which is very strange to the beholder. Lady Eskside took pride in Val’s versatility, even while it occasioned her some delighted wonder; but she did not trouble herself by any speculation as to the qualities that produced it, or the results to which it might lead.
Thus things went on for some years, and the country-side, as Willie Maitland predicted, partially forgot the story. The boy grew tall and strong, a favourite in society, and not unpopular among the rougher public of his own age and kind, who, indeed, were chiefly represented to Val by the Pringle boys. The Pringles continued to keep possession of the Hewan partly because the children liked it, partly because the father still cherished in his secret soul some hope of finding out the fraud which he believed was being perpetrated against his rights and his boy’s; and as the cottage was within easy reach of Edinburgh, some member of the family was almost always there. Sometimes it was the mother, with Violet and the little ones,—sometimes the boys alone, walking out in a dusty merry party, on a holiday, for any diversion that happened to be in season. They came for skating in winter, for fishing in spring and autumn; for the Esk above the Hewan was sweet, and free from all poisonous paper-mills. And as they were undoubtedly relations, though in a very distant degree, it was not within the possibilities of Scotch politeness to refuse the boys some share of the shooting; and it was in the company of Sandy and his stalwart brethren that young Val first fired a shot and missed a bird. Though Lord Eskside looked glum at the associations thus formed, and wondered more than ever what Sandy Pringle meant, it was impossible to keep his grandson from the company of the only boys within reach who were of his own class, or something approaching to it. He learnt all kinds of manly exercises from them or with them, and knew the way to the Hewan blindfold by night or day, as well as he knew the way to his own chamber—a result which the parents on either side were far from desiring, but seemed helpless to prevent.
One day in the early summer, when the boy was about twelve years old, he escaped, I don’t know how, from the tutor who had been brought from Oxford for him, and whose life Val did his best to make a burden. He got away quite early in the morning, and escaped into the woods, with a double sense of pleasure in the thought that this holiday was surreptitious, the conquest of his bow and his spear rather than lawful leisure granted by lawful authority. Val had had no breakfast, but he did not mind—he was free. He went away into the thickest of the woods and climbed a tree, and lay there among the branches in a cradle of boughs which he had long since found out, looking up at the breaks of blue sky through the leaves in the fresh early morning, before anything was astir but the birds. Val was great in birds, like most country boys. He listened to the universal twitter about him, amusing himself by identifying every separate note, till he tired of this tranquil pleasure. Then he looked out from his lofty retreat to count how many different kinds of trees he could see from that leafy throne; and then for a few minutes he lay back with his face to the sky, and watched the white airy puffs of cloud which floated slowly across the blue, with a dreamy enjoyment. But such meditative pleasures could not last very long. It was true he had the delightful thought that he had played truant, and had a whole day to himself, to fall back upon when he was tired, and this was always refreshing. But after a while it weighed heavy upon Val that he had nothing to do, and presently even the satisfaction of having stolen a march upon Mr Grinder scarcely bulked so large in his mind as the want of breakfast, which he saw no easy way of obtaining up here among the leaves. He did not venture to go to a gamekeeper’s cottage for a share of the children’s porridge, lest he should be led ignominiously back to Grinder and grammar. All at once a brilliant idea suggested itself—the Hewan! In a moment this notion was carried into practice; and Val, jumping down like a squirrel from his nest in the branches, stole up the brae under the deepest trees, through the ferns all wet with dew, to the little airy platform on which the sun was shining, where the windows had just been opened and the day begun. One little figure sat perched on the low earthen dyke looking down the course of the Esk over tower and tree, and showing from far likea blue flower in her bright-coloured frock. “It’s the flag,” said Val at first to himself, as he toiled upward through the high ferns, keeping carefully away from the path; then he corrected this first notion, and said, “It’s Sandy’s cricket-cap;” and then he added to himself with animation, “It’s Vi!”
It was Vi, grown older and a little bigger since the first time she came to the Hewan—a very stately, splendid, foolish, idle little person, full of laughter and gravity and baby fun and precocious wisdom. She was as fond of taking care of everybody as ever she had been, but she forgot herself oftener, being older, and was not perhaps quite so severe on peccadilloes as at six. She was a little alarmed when she saw the big thing struggling upward among the ferns, and wondered whether there might really be a bear or a wolf in the woods, as there used to be in ancient times. A lion it could not be, Violet reflected, for the weather was too cold in Scotland for lions. She did not like to run away, but she thanked Providence devoutly that none of “the children” were here, and wondered with a delightful thrill of excitement whether, if it should be a lion, it would do anything to her. Then there came a whistle which Violet knew, and looking down through the bushes with a pleasant sense of safety, she recognised the wayfarer. “Oh, is it you?” she cried, calling to him from the top of her fortress: “I thought it was a bear.” “Ay, it’s me. There are no bears nowadays. Who has come?” said Val, laconic andsans cérémonie, as is the use of children, as he panted upwards to the embankment, and putting his foot in a crevice swung himself up with the aid of a tree. “You will break your neck,” said little Vi, with great gravity; “how can you do such things, you foolish boys?—nobody has come but me.”
“Nobody but you!” said Val, with a whistle of surprise and half regret. Then he added with animation, “I’m awfully hungry; give us some breakfast, Vi. I have run off from Grinder, and I don’t mean to go home till night. You can’t think how jolly it is in the woods when there’s nobody to stop you, and you have everything your own way.”
“Oh, Val!” cried Violet, not knowing how to express the tumult of her feelings. She could not approve of such wickedness, but yet “playing truant” bore a glorious soundabout it. She had heard the words from fraternal lips, mingled with sighs of envy. Sandy and the rest had never gone so far as to play truant that she knew of; but the words suggested endless rambles, woods and streams and wild flowers, and everything that stirs a child’s imagination; and it was the beginning of June when the woods are at their freshest, and Vi was all alone at the Hewan, hoping for nothing better than a story from old Jean Moffatt to beguile the endless summer day. Her eyes lighted up with excitement and curiosity. “Oh, Val! if they find you, what will they do to you?” she cried with awe; “and where will you go, and what will you play at?” she added, eager interest following close upon terror. There was not a soul visible about the Hewan in the morning sunshine. Old Jean had gone away to her own quarters on the other side of the house, after putting Violet’s breakfast upon the table in the little parlour—and was busy with her beloved Grumphy, out of sight and hearing. The innocent doors and windows stood wide open; the child, in her blue frock, musing on the dyke in childish dreaminess, had forgotten all about her breakfast. Absolute solitude, absolute stillness, infinitely more deep than that of the forest, which indeed was full of chatter and movement and inarticulate gay society, was about this silent sunny place. The bold brown boy, with his curls pushed off his forehead, his cheeks glowing, his dress stained with the moss and ferns and morning dew, and his young bosom panting with exertion, looked the very emblem of Adventure and outdoor enterprise—the young reiver born to carry peace and quiet away.
“I’m awfully hungry,” was Val’s only response. “Vi, have you had your breakfast? I think I could eat you.”
“To be sure I had forgotten my breakfast,” said Violet, tranquilly; “you are always so hungry, you boys. Come in, there’s sure to be plenty for both of us;” and she led the way in with a certain bustle of hospitality. There was a little coffee and a great deal of fresh milk on the table (for old Jean by this time had attained in a kind of vicarious way to the summit of earthly delight, and had, if not her own, yet Mrs Pringle’s cow to care for, and made her butter, and dispensed the milk to the children with a lavish hand)—with two little bantam’s eggs in a white napkin, and fresh scones, and fresh butter, and jam and marmalade in abundance. Val made a very rueful face at the bantam’s eggs.
“Is that the kind of things girls eat?” he said; “they’re only a mouthful. I should like a dozen.”
“You may have one,” said Vi, graciously. “It’s my own little white bantam, and they’re always saved for me; but if you’re so hungry, I’ll call Jean—or I’ll go myself, and see what’s in the larder——”
“That is best,” said Val; “it’s nice to be by ourselves, just you and me. Don’t call Jean; she might tell the gamekeeper, and the gamekeeper would tell Harding, and somebody would be sent after me. You go to the larder, Vi; and I’ll tell you when you come back what we’ll do.”
Violet ran, swift as her little feet could carry her, and came back laden with all the riches the larder contained, the chief article of which was a chicken-pie, old Mrs Moffatt’s state dish, which had been prepared for the arrival of Mr and Mrs Pringle, who were expected in the afternoon. Vi either forgot, or did not know, the august purpose of this lordly dish: and when were there ever bounds to a child’s hospitality when thus left free to entertain an unexpected visitor? She had some of the pie herself, neglecting her little eggs in compliment to Valentine, who plunged into it, so to speak, body and soul; and they made the heartiest of meals together, with a genuine enjoyment which might have filled an epicure with envy.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Val, with his mouth full; “we’ll go away down by the water-side as far as the linn—were you ever as far as the linn? There’s plenty of primroses there still, if you want them, and I might get you a bird’s nest if you like, though the eggs are all over; and I’ll take one of Sandy’s rods, and perhaps we’ll get some fish; and we can light a fire and roast potatoes: you can’t think how jolly it will be——”
“We?” said Violet, her brown eyes all one glow of brilliant wonder and delight; “do you mean me too?”
“Of course I mean you too—you are the best of them all,” said Val, enthusiastic after his pie; “you never sneak nor whinge, nor say you’re tired, like other girls. Run and get your hat; two is far better fun than one—though it’s very jolly,” he added, not to elate her too much—“all by yourself among the woods. But stop a minute, let’s think all we’ll take; if we stay all day we’ll get hungry, and you can’t always catch fish when you want to. Where’s a basket?—I think we’d better have the pie.”
A cold shiver came over Violet as she asked herself what old Jean would say; but the virtue of hospitality was too strong in her small bosom to permit any objection to her guest’s proposal. “After all, it’s papa’s and mamma’s, not old Jean’s—it’s not like stealing,” Vi said to herself. So the pie was put into the basket, and some cheese from the larder, and some scones, and biscuits, and oatcake; the jam Vi objected to, tidiness here outdoing even hospitality. “The jam always upsets, and there’s a mess,” she said, with a littlemoueof disgust, remembering past experiences; therefore the jam was left behind. Valentine shouldered the basket manfully when all was packed. “You can bring it home full of flowers,” he said—a suggestion which filled up the silent transport in Violet’s mind. Had it really arrived to her, who was only a girl, nothing more, to “play truant” for a whole day in the woods? the thought was almost too ecstatic—for you see Violet in all her little life had never done anythingvery wickedbefore, and her whole being thrilled with delightful expectation. Val put the basket down upon the dyke, pausing for one last deliberation upon all the circumstances before they made their start; while Violet, scarcely able to fathom his great thoughts and advanced generalship, watched him eagerly, divining each word before he said it, with her glowing eyes.
“We shan’t go by the road,” said Val, meditatively, “for we might be seen. You don’t mind the ferns being a little damp, do you, Vi? If you hold the basket till I get down, I’ll lift you over. But look here, haven’t you got a cloak or something? Run and fetch your cloak—look sharp; I’ll wait here till you come back.”
Violet flew like the wind for her little blue cloak, which, by good luck, was waterproof, before she plunged down with her leader into the wet ferns. Poor little Vi! that first plunge was rather disheartening, after all her delightful anticipations. The ferns were almost as tall as she was; and her little varnished shoes, her cotton stockings and frock, were small protection from the wet. Excitement kept her up for some time; but when her companion, far in advance of her, called loudly to Vi to come on, I think nothing but the dread of being taunted with cowardice ever after, and shut out from further participation in such expeditions, kept the child from breaking down. She held out valiantly, however, and after various adventures—one of which consistedin a scramble up to Val’s favourite seat among the high branches, whither he half dragged, half carried her, leaving the basket at the foot of the tree—they reached the bank on the side of the water where the sun shone, and dried her wet skirts and shoes. Here the true delight of the truants began. “Take off your shoes and stockings, and I’ll put them in the sun to dry,” said Val, who, in his rough way, took care of her; and Violet had never known any sensation so delightful as the touch of the warm, mossy, velvet grass upon her small bare feet, except the other sensation of feeling the warm shallow water ripple over them, as Val helped her out by the stepping-stones to the great boulders at the side of the linn. The opposite bank was one waving mass of foliage, in all the tender tints of the early summer; whilst on that along which the children had been strolling, the trees retired a little, to leave a lovely grassy knoll, with an edge of golden sand and sparkling pebbles. Through this green world the Esk ran, fretted by the opposition of the rocks, foaming over them so close by Violet’s side that, perched upon her boulder, she could put her hand into the foaming current, and feel it rush in silken violence, warm and strong, carrying away with lightning speed the flowers she dropped into it—till her own childish head grew giddy, and she felt all but whirled away herself, notwithstanding that she sat securely in an arm-chair of rock, where her guardian had placed her. Vi would have been happy, beyond words to tell, thus seated almost in the middle of the stream, with the water rushing and foaming, the leaves shining and rustling, the whole universe full of nothing but melodious storms of soft sound—loud, yet soft, penetrating heart and soul—had it not been for the freaks of that wild guardian, who would perch himself on the topmost point of the boulder on one foot, with the other extended over the rushing linn; or jump the chasm back and forward with shouts of joyous laughter, indifferent to all her remonstrances, which, indeed, he did not hear in the roar of the waterfall. But the fearful joy was sweet, though mixed with panic indescribable. “Oh, Val, if you had fallen in!” she cried, half hysterical with fright and pleasure, when they got back in safety to the grassy bank. I suspect Val was rather glad to be back too in safety, though he could not restrain the masculine impulse of showing his prowess, and dazzling and frightening the small woman who furnished the mostappreciative audience Val had ever yet encountered in his short life.
I need not attempt to describe the consternation which filled all bosoms in the two houses from which the truants had fled, when their absence was discovered. The Pringles arrived to find their chicken-pie gone, and their daughter—and Lady Eskside white with terror, consulting with old Jean Moffatt at the cottage door. Jean was not so deeply alarmed, and could not restrain her sense of the joke, the ravished larder, and the prudent provision of the runaways; but poor Lady Eskside did not see the joke. “How can we tell the children alone did it?” she cried, with terrible thoughts in her mind of some gipsy rescue—some wild attempt of the boy’s mother to take him away again. She was ghastly with fear as she examined the marks on the dyke where the culprits had scrambled over. “No bairn ever did that,” cried the old lady, infecting Mr Pringle at least with her terrors. Lord Eskside and Harding and the gamekeepers were dispersed over the woods in all directions, searching for the lost children, and the old lady was on her way to the lower part of the stream, though all agreed it was almost impossible that little Vi could have walked so far as the linn, the most dangerous spot on Esk. “Would you like to come with me?” my lady said with white lips to Mrs Pringle, whose steady bosom, accustomed to the vagaries of seven boys, took less alarm, but who was sufficiently annoyed and anxious to accept the offer. Mr Pringle got over the dyke in the traces of the fugitives, to follow their route to the same spot, and thus all was excitement and alarm in the peaceful place. “It is not the linn I fear—it is those wild folk,” cried poor Lady Eskside in the misery of her suspense, forgetting that it was her adversary’s wife who was also her fellow-sufferer. But good Mrs Pringle was nobody’s adversary, and had long ago given up all thought of the Eskside lordship. She received this agitated confidence calmly. “They could have no reason to carry off my little Vi,” she said, with unanswerable good sense. The two ladies drove down the other side of the hill to the water-side, a little below the linn, and leaving the carriage, walked up the stream—one of them at least with such tortures of anxiety in her breast, as the mother of an only child alone can know. Mrs Pringle was a little uneasy too, but her boys had been in so many scrapes, out of which theyhad scrambled with perfect safety, that her feelings were hardened by long usage. At the linn some traces were visible, which still further consoled Violet’s mother, but did not affect Lady Eskside—Violet’s little handkerchief to wit, very wet, rather dirty, and full of wild flowers. “They have been playing here,” said the more composed mother. “Shehas been here,” cried the old lady; “but oh, my boy! my boy!”
“I see something among the trees yonder,” cried Mrs Pringle, running on. Lady Eskside was over sixty, but she ran too, lighter of foot than her younger companion, and inspired with fears impossible to the other. The sun had set by this time, but the light had not waned—it had only changed its character, as the light of a long summer evening in Scotland changes, magically, into a something which is not day, but as clear as day, sweeter and paler—a visionary light in which spirits might walk abroad, and all sweet visions become possible. Hurrying through this tender, pale illumination of the woodland world about them, the two ladies came suddenly upon a scene which neither of them, I think, ever forgot. It was like a tender travesty, half touching, half comic, of some maturer tale. Between two great trees lay a little glade of the softest mossy grass, with all kinds of brown velvet touches of colour breaking its soft green; vast beech-boughs, stretching over it like a canopy, and a gleam of the river just visible. Over the foreground were scattered the remains of a meal, the central point of which—the dish which had once been a pie—caught Mrs Pringle’s rueful gaze at once. A mass of half-faded flowers, a few late primroses, mixed with the pretty though scentless blue violet which grows along with them, lay dropped about in all directions, having been, it appeared, crazily propped up as an ornament to the rustic dinner-table. Against the further tree were the little runaways—Violet huddled up in her blue cloak, with nothing of her visible but her little head slightly thrown back, leaning half on the tree, half on her companion, who, supporting himself against the trunk, gave her a loyal shoulder to rest upon. The little girl had cried herself to sleep—tears were still upon her long eyelashes, and the little pouting rose-mouth was drawn down at the corners. But Valentine was not sleeping. He was pondering terrible thoughts under his knitted brows. How he was ever to get home—how he was ever togetherhome! The boy was chilled and depressed and worn out, and awful anticipations were in his mind. What would happen if they had to stay there all night through the midnight darkness, among the stirrings of the mysterious woods? Val knew what strange sounds the woods make when it is dark, and you are alone in them—and a whole night! His mind was too much confused to hear the soft steps of the two ladies who stood behind the other big beech, looking, without a word, at this pretty scene—Lady Eskside, for her part, too much overpowered by the sudden sense of relief to be able to speak. I am not sure that a momentary regret over her chicken-pie did not make itself felt in Mrs Pringle’s soul; but she, too, paused with a little emotion to look at the unconscious baby-pair, leaning against each other in mutual support; the little woman overwhelmed with remorse and fatigue, the little man moody and penitent over the dregs of the feast, and the wild career of pleasure past. But just then there came a crash of branches, and louder steps resounding down the brae among the ferns, which made Val’s face light up with hope and shame, and woke little Violet from her momentary oblivion. Lord Eskside’s party of beaters, and Mr Pringle, solitary but vigorous, all converged at the same moment upon this spot. “Here, my lord,” said Willie Maitland’s hearty voice, with laughter that made the woods ring—“here are your babes in the wood.”
Theexploit of the Babes in the Wood, as Willie Maitland called it, was one of the last freaks which Valentine played in his childhood by Eskside. Mr Grinder, who was from Oxford, a cultured and dainty young Don, was recognised to be no fit tutor for a child who preferred the woods to the classics, and could not construe a bit of Greek decently to save his life. What agonies Mr Grinder went through while his term of office lasted I will not attempt to describe. He was a young man of fine mind, one of the finest minds of his day, and that was saying a great deal. He loved pictures and fine furniture and dainty decorations as well as Richard Ross did, though perhaps he was not quite so learned; and when he first saw the great green cabinets in the drawing-room, could barely say the common civilities to Lady Eskside before he went on his knees to adore the Vernis-Martin. It may be supposed how little this dainty personage had in common with the boy, always carrying an atmosphere of fresh air about him, his pockets bulged out with unknown implements, his boots often clogged with mud, and his hands not always clean, whom it seemed a kind of desecration to introduce, all rustic and noisy, into the shadowy world of the Greek drama. Mr Grinder, I am afraid, had looked with lenient eye upon his pupil’s absence on that June day. He had not reported the truant, but reconciled himself easily to the want of him; and it was only when the day was almost over that he had taken fright at the boy’s prolonged absence. Lady Eskside could not forgive him the panic he had caused her, and as soon as the most exquisite politeness and delicate pretences of regret made it possible, Mr Grinder and his knick-knacks were got rid of; and a hard-working student from Edinburgh College, toiling mightily to make his way into the Scotch Church, and indifferent what labours he went through to attain this end, reigned in his stead. He was perhaps not so pleasant a person to have in the house, my lady allowed, but far better for the boy, which was the first object. The new man cared nothing about the sanctity of the Greek drama, and perhaps did not know very much, if the truth were told. He turned Valentine on to Homer, and marched him through battle and tempest with some rough sense of the poetry, but very little delicacy about the grammar. But he kept his eye upon his pupil, and got a certain amount of work out of him, and prevented all such runaway expeditions, relieving the old people from their anxieties for the moment at least.
Val was not an easy boy to manage. He had two natures in him, as Lady Eskside said,—the one wild, adventurous, uncontrollable; the other more than ordinarily impressionable by social influences. But when a boy gets into his teens he is not so easily kept up to the pitch of drawing-room polish as is a dainty little gentleman of eight in velvet and lace. With the period of black jackets the histrionic power begins to wane—temporarily at least: and when Valat thirteen turned his back upon the Dowager Duchess, and fretted furiously against being taken to make calls, his terrified grandmother thought immediately, not of his age, but of the mother’s blood, which made him clownish; and not only thought so herself, but was seized with a panic lest others should think so. It had made her proud to see how far her little Val surpassed in manners the Marquis of Hightowers; but it did not console her to think that Valentine now was no worse than his exalted neighbour. For, alas! the mother of Hightowers had as many quarterings on her shield as his august father, and the boy might be as great a lout as he liked without exciting any remark or suspicion; whereas poor Val could never be free of possible criticism on the score of his mother’s blood.
This troubled the serenity of his childhood, though Val himself did not know the reason why. His recollections of the earlier period of his life had grown very vague in these years. Val had been well disposed to be communicative on the subject when he came to Eskside first. He had shown on many occasions a dangerous amount of interest and knowledge as to the economy of the travelling vans which sometimes passed through Lasswade with shows of various kinds, or basketmakers or tinkers; and once had followed one of them for miles along the road, and had been brought back again much disfigured with weeping, whimpering that his mammy must be there. But children are very quick to perceive when their recollections are not acceptable to the people about them, and still more easily led into other channels of thought; and as he had nothing near him to recall that chapter of his life to his mind, he gradually forgot it. There was still a vague light of familiarity and interest in his eyes if, by any chance, he came upon an encampment of gipsies, or the vans of a show, or even the travelling tramps upon the road; but the boy, I think, came to be ashamed of this feeling of interest, and to divine that his early life was no credit to him, but rather something to be concealed, about the same time as he ceased to be the perfect little actor and social performer he had been in his first stage. He began to be conscious of himself, that most confusing and bewildering of experiences. This consciousness comes later or earlier, according to the constitution of the individual; but when it comes it has always a confusing influence upon the young mind and life. When one’s selfthrusts into sight, and insists upon filling up the foreground of the scene, it changes all natural rules of proportion and perspective. The child or the youth has to review everything around him over again to get it into keeping with this new phantom suddenly arisen, which does nothing but harass his mind, and puts him out in all his calculations. Me—how much has been said about it, philosophies based upon it, the whole heaven and earth founded on this atom! but there is nothing that bewilders the young soul so much as to see it surging up through the fair, sunny, matter-of-fact universe, and through the world of dreams, disturbing and disarranging everything. This change befell Valentine early. I think it began from that day in the woods, which was full of so many experiences. Even then he had been faintly conscious of himself—conscious of “showing off” to dazzle Violet on the linn—conscious of deceiving her as to their safety when she began to cry with fatigue and loneliness, and he, upon whom all the responsibility of the escapade lay, had to think how she was to be got home. In the chaotic bit of existence which followed, when Oxford, worsted, left the field, and Edinburgh, dauntless, came in, Valentine had a tough fight with this Frankenstein of himself, this creature which already had lived two lives, and possessed a vague confusing world of memories half worn out, yet not altogether extinct, alongside of his actual existence. I do not mean to pretend that the boy was a prodigy of reflectiveness, and brooded over these thoughts night and day; but yet there were times when they would come into his mind, taking all his baby grace away from him, and all the security and power of unconsciousness. Lady Eskside did not know what had come over her boy. She discussed it eagerly with her old lord, who tried in vain to dismiss the subject. “He’s at the uncouth age, that’s all,” said Lord Eskside. “Oh, I hope it is not his mother’s blood!” said the old lady. And thus the delightful day of playing truant in the woods was the primary cause of a wonderful revolution in Val’s affairs. The grandfather and grandmother made up their minds to deny themselves, and send him to school.
The incident of the Babes in the Wood made a still greater impression on the other culprit. Mrs Pringle took her little daughter home, not without some emotion—for what mother can resist the delighted look of absolute security which comesto the face even of a naughty child, when, out of unimaginable danger and tragic desolation, it suddenly beholds the Deliverer appear—the parent in whom Providence and Power and Supreme Capacity are conjoined? But she was half amused at the same time; and indeed the whole household at the Hewan regarded Vi’s escapade with more amusement than alarm. “Oh, Miss Violet, to tak’ the pie!—that was a’ I had for your papa’s and mamma’s dinner,” said old Jean. “They maun be content with ham and eggs noo, for I’ve naething else in the hoose. My larder’s sweepit clean,” she added, when Violet had been carried off to have her damp and draggled garments changed. “Cheese and biscuits and everything there was: my word, but yon laddie maun have a good stomach! You wouldna think to bring the pie-dish back?”
“Indeed, we were too thankful,” said Mrs Pringle, “to find the bairns——”
“Oh, the bairns! bless you, there was never ony fear o’ the bairns; but my dish was new, or as good as new. I’ll give little Johnny at the farm a penny to gang and look for’t. There was three fine fat young chickens, no’ to speak of eggs and a’ the seasoning. If that laddie’s no’ ill the morn he maun be an ostridge, or whatever ye ca’ the muckle bird ye get the feathers from; and a’ the morning’s milk and the new bread I laid in for your suppers! Just an ostridge! I wish the laddie nae harm, but he should have a sair head the morn, and a good licking, if he gets what he deserves.”
“Alexander,” said Mrs Pringle, an hour or two later, when she, with a warm shawl on, took a seat for ten minutes on the earthen dyke to keep her husband company while he smoked his cigar. The night was still clear, and pale with the lingering of the light, though it was past ten o’clock; and the western sky shone with such silvery tints of celestial hue, sublime visions of colour, free of all earthly crudeness, as are never visible save in a northern summer. “Alexander, Sandy’s wife, if he lives to have one, will never be Lady Eskside; but I would not wonder if you and me had more interest in that title than any daughter-in-law could give us. We’ll see what tune may bring forth.”
“You mean you’ll have it yourself? I am sure I hope so, one day, my dear,” said Mr Pringle, complacently: “not meaning any harm to Dick Ross; but his was never a very strong life.”
“I am not meaning myself,” said Mrs Pringle, provoked. “How obtuse you are, you men! Neither you nor Sandy will ever have the lordship, you may take my word for that.”
“And what do I care then who is my lady?” said the heavy husband. “I don’t really see, my dear, why you should be so very decided against your husband and son. One would think you would be more likely to take our side.”
Mrs Pringle shrugged her shoulders slightly, and drew her shawl closer round her. What was the use of throwing away her pearls—her higher insight? She changed the subject; and by-and-by, having no consolation of a cigar, and finding the lovely twilight chilly, though it was so beautiful, she went in, and went up-stairs to the little room in the roof where Violet lay warm and cosy, with her bright eyes still open, and turned to the soft clear sky of which her attic window was full. “Oh, mamma, was it very, very wicked to go?” said Violet. Her mother stooped to kiss the little tearful face.
“We’ll say no more about it, Vi—but you must never play truant again.”
“Never!” cried Vi, with a half sob which prolonged the word, and made it echo through the tiny chamber. Alas! there was more than penitence in that vow; there was regret, there was the ghost of a delight made doubly precious by trouble and terror. Oh no, never again! but what had all Violet’s discreet and exemplary life—a life irreproachable and full of every (nursery) virtue—to show, which could compare with the transport, and terror, and misery, and sweetness, of that one never-to-be-repeated day?
Vi had a great deal to bear afterwards, when the boys heard the story, and held over her the recollection of the “day she played truant,” with all that delight in torture which is natural to their kind. But with all this they could not take from her the memory of it, which grew dearer in proportion as she buried it in her own small bosom. The running of the water, the rustling of the leaves, the solemn drowse of noon in the full sunshine, the soft velvet rush of the foaming linn over the little fingers with which she tried to stop its torrent, and all the stirs and movements among the trees, peopled the child’s recollection for many a day. Seated at a dull window in Moray Place, looking out upon the stiff garden with its shrubs—public property, and unlovely as public property generally is—Violet could see once more her bold companion leaping from one boulder to another, with the furious Esk underneath, and feel again a delicious thrill of visionary terror. She had learned more about “the country,” about woods and wilds, and birds and squirrels, and about the sensations of explorers in a new-discovered land, than anything else could have taught her. “I too in Arcadia,” she could have said: her one day of playing truant was the possession out of which she drew most enjoyment; and I leave the gentle reader to imagine, as Violet grew older, whether she could dismiss the partner of this celestial piece of wickedness into the mere common region of indifference, and leave him there undistinguished by any preference. She was always Val’s defender afterwards, when any discussion of his merits arose among the boys; and what was more remarkable still, Mrs Pringle became Val’s warm partisan and supporter, dismissing almost with indignation any suggestion which might be made to his disfavour. She was impatient of what she called her husband’s “whimsey” about his heirship. “It is just a piece of folly,” she would say with some heat. “Are the Esksides fools to take up a false heir? or what motive could they have? Your father is a very clever man, and has a great deal of sense in a general way. But, boys, don’t you build any hopes upon this, for it’s just nonsense. You may be sure they are not the kind of folk to commit themselves, or expose the property to certain waste and destruction, with an impostor for an heir——” That he should have so important a deserter from his standard filled Mr Pringle with surprise. He was justified in thinking that it would have been natural that, right or wrong, she should have placed herself on her own boy’s side. But Mrs Pringle was a woman who was given to an opinion of her own, and was not to be persuaded out of it when once formed upon sufficient cause.
And thus the soft-paced time went on, gently, dallying with the children, spinning out long tranquil days for them, and years that seemed as if they would never be over, as he does not do with their elders. They grew up slowly like the grass, which never shows itself in the act of growing, but is, while yet we are unaware of it; the happiest of all life’s various periods—not only to the younglings, who are unconscious of it, but also to the fathers and mothers, who sometimes have an inkling of the truth. It looks long whileit is in progress, thank heaven—though after, I suppose, when it is over, and the birds are out of the nest, it is like everything else in life, as short to look back upon as a tale that is told. But in the meantime there is little more to be said than that the children grew. And by-and-by Rosscraig House fell into sudden shadow, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud, and the voices in it died down into subdued sounds of old people’s voices, as had been the case before the child came to it, turning everything topsy-turvy. Val had been sent to school.
Theschool that Valentine Ross, Lord Eskside’s grandson and heir, was sent to was, naturally, Eton. His father had been educated there, but not his grandfather, who belonged to an older fashion in education as in everything else, and was Scotch to his fingers’ tips, and to every shade of idea in his mind. Valentine was placed with the brother of the tutor who had succeeded so indifferently with his early training—a kind of mingled compensation for that failure, and keeping up of old associations—for Mr Grinder’s father had been Richard’s tutor—which satisfied Lord and Lady Eskside. The boy’s departure was no small trial to the old people. Each of them said something to him privately before he went away. Lord-Eskside took him out for a last walk, and showed him the new feus that had been marked out, and told him confidentially—recognising for the first time his partially grown-up condition—of the improvements he had been making, and the addition to the rent-roll of the estate which the feus would give—“enough to pay your school expenses, Val,” he said; and then he gave his grandson his parting advice.
“You have not to make your living by learning,” said the old lord, “therefore I don’t bid you give every moment to it that health allows; but a good scholar is always a credit to every rank in life; and if a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well. But there are other things at Etonbesides books. A man in the position you will hold should know men like himself—not only the outside of them, but their ways of thinking, and what’s working in their heads. The working of young heads is a sign how the tide’s going; and I want you, if it’s in you, Val, some time or other, to go on the top of the tide—not just to be dragged with the swing of it, like common lads. You’re too young for that at present, but when you’re old enough you must try to get into what societies they have—debating, or the like. I don’t know very well what you’re going to turn to. You have good abilities—very good abilities—and plenty of spirit when you like; and mind, to give yourself over to play, and nonsense games, is bairnly, not manly—I would have you recollect that.”
“Do you mean cricket, grandpapa?” said Valentine, with astonished eyes.
“I mean everything that turns a gentleman into a player, sir,” said the old lord, knitting his brows; “setting sport above the honest concerns of this life and the ruling of the world—which is what young men of good family are born for, if they like to put their hand to their work. To set up a game in the highest place is bairnly, Val—mind what I say to you—and not manly. If you mean to put your life into cricket, you had better make up your mind to earn your bread by it, and give up the other trade I’m speaking of—which is not to say you may not play to amuse yourself,” he added, dropping from the seriousness of the previous address, “and, in moderation, as much as you like; only never make a business of a mere pleasure. I am taking you into my confidence,” Lord Eskside continued, after a little pause. “I want you to go into public life at home. Your father will not, and he has his reasons, which are perhaps good enough; and I had not the time nor the possibility when I was young like you. I succeeded early, for one thing; and a Scotch representative peer does not cut much of a figure in politics. But you, my boy, have little chance of succeeding early. If your father lives to be as old as I am, you have a long career before you—and you’ll mind my advice.”
“Yes, grandpapa,” said the boy, bewildered. Valentine was proud, yet much confounded, to be thus advanced to the position of his grandfather’s confidant, and spoken to as if he were on the verge of the university, instead of enteringat fourteen a public school. He did his best to understand, with eyes intent upon the old man’s face.
“The secret of all success, Val,” said the old lord, “is to know how to deny yourself. It does not matter very much what the object is. That’s one advantage about even these games I was speaking of. Training, as they call it, is a good thing, an excellent thing. If you once learn to get the whip-hand of yourself, that’s the best education. There is nothing in this world like it, Val. Prove to me that you can control yourself, and I’ll say you’re an educated man; and without this, all other education is good for next to nothing. Other people, no doubt, can do you harm more or less, but there is no living creature can do you the harm yourself can. I would write that up in gold letters on every school, if I had it in my power. Not that I like asceticism—far from it—but a man is no man that cannot rule himself.”
Lord Eskside paused with a sigh, while the boy looked at him with eyes and ears intent, taking in the words, but not all or indeed much of their meaning. And here I think Val’s attention began to wane a little; for he had not the slightest clue to the thoughts into which the old man plunged, almost against his will—the dismal recollections of shipwreck which crowded into his mind as he spoke. “We won’t enter into the subject at length,” he resumed; “but, Val, you have more than ordinary occasion to be upon your guard.”
“Why have I more than ordinary occasion?” said the boy, wondering and curious; this mysterious intimation immediately roused him up.
“Ah, well, we’ll say nothing about that. You’ve wild blood in you, my boy; and when you’re a man, you’ll remember that I gave you sound advice. These are the great things, Val. I don’t need to tell you to be good, for I hope you know your duty. Try and never do anything that you would think shame to have told to us; you may be sure sooner or later that it will be told to us, and to every soul you want it kept from. There’s no such thing as a secret in this world; and the more you want to hide a thing the more it’s known—mind that. For lesser matters, I’ll see you have enough of pocket-money, and I hope you’ll take care to spend it like a gentleman—which does not mean to throw it away with both hands, mind; andyou’ll keep your place, and learn your lessons like a man; and you’ll write regularly to your grandma; and God bless you, Val!”
Saying this, the old lord wrung the boy’s hand, and turned off down a side path, leaving him alone in the avenue. Lord Eskside’s shaggy eyebrows were working, and something strangely like tears welled up somehow from about his heart, and stood in two pools, unsheddable, under these penthouses. Not for all he had in the world would he have let that moisture drop in sight of living man.
Val was somewhat startled by this abrupt withdrawal, and tried hard, without being quite able, to make it out, what it meant; for the notion that he himself was supremely loved by his old grandfather was one that did not immediately enter into the boy’s mind, far from all sentimental consciousness as boys’ minds generally are. He went up thoughtfully to the house, but I am afraid it was not the wisdom of his grandfather’s advice or the contagion of his emotion which moved him. He was wondering what it meant—why he, Valentine, should have more than ordinary reason to take care; and what was the wild blood he had in his veins? The wonder was vague; I cannot say that the boy was possessed by any eager longing to penetrate the mystery; but still he wondered, having arrived at a kind of crisis in his life, a thing which makes even a child think. He went in to his grandmother serious, and, as she thought, sad; and Lady Eskside was pleased by the cloud over his face, and set it down to his sorrow at leaving home, putting her own sentiments into Valentine’s mind, as we all do.
“You must not be down-hearted, Val,” she said, drawing him close to her, and speaking with a quiver in her lip. “When once the shock is over, you will find plenty of new friends, and be very happy. It is natural at your age. It is us that will miss you, oh my bonnie boy! far, far more than you will miss my old lord and me.”
Val did not say anything; he felt his breast swell with a certain soft sympathy, but he was not deeply dismayed at the thought of leaving home, as she supposed. Lady Eskside put her arm round him, and drew her boy close. She was not ashamed of the tears that came heavily to her eyes.
“My bonnie boy!” she said, “my darling! Ye cannot think what you have been to us, Val—like light to them in darkness; you’ve made God’s providence clear to me, thoughyou’re too young to understand why. When you are away, Val, you’ll think of that. If anything ill were to happen to you in body or soul, it would break my heart—you’ll remember that? Oh, my own boy, be good! There are all kinds at a great school, some not innocent lads like you. You’ll shut your ears to bad words and wicked things for my sake? Don’t listen to them—but say your prayers night and morning, and read your chapter, and God will protect my boy. Nobody can make you do wrong, Val, except yourself.”
“But I don’t mean to do wrong, grandma,” said Valentine, with a little self-assertion. “Why should you think I would? Is there anything particular about me?”
“There is a great deal particular about you,” said the old lady; “you are the hope and the joy of two old folk that would never hold up their heads again in this world if any harm came to you. Is not that enough? But I am not afraid of my boy,” she added, seeing that the admonition had gone far enough, and smiling a wintry watery smile, the best she could muster. “Mind all that Mr Grinder says, and don’t be too rough in your play. You’re a very stirring boy, Val; but I want my boy to be always a gentleman, and not too rough. Your manners are not so nice as they once were——”
“I’m not a baby any longer,” said the boy. “I don’t know how to speak to ladies and grand people; but I don’t mean to be rough.”
“Well, dear, perhaps that is true,” said Lady Eskside, with a sigh; “but you’ll mind, Val, to be very particular about your manners as well as other things. It’s more important than you think.”
“I wish you would tell me something, grandma,” said Val; “why is it more important than I think? and what do grandpapa and you mean by saying that I need to be on my guard more than others? There must be something particular about me.”
“Then your grandpapa has been speaking to you!” said the old lady, with a little vexation, feeling herself forestalled. “I suppose, being old, we are more particular than most people, and more anxious. Your father, you see, makes no such fuss.”
“I don’t know anything about my father, grandma.”
“Oh, Val, hush! he is at a distance, where duty keepshim; he has never been at home but that once since you came, and he is not a good correspondent; but now that you are at school you must write to him direct, and be sure he will answer. He knows you are safe in our hands.”
“That may be,” said Val, seriously; “but still, you see, grandma, it’s a fact that I don’t know much about my father—nor my mother either,” he added, suddenly dropping his voice. Since he had been a small child, he had not mentioned her before. Lady Eskside could not restrain a startled movement, which he felt, standing so close to her. The boy lifted his eyes and fixed them on her face.
“Was that her, grandma,” he said in a low voice, “that brought me here? and why is she never here now? I know there is something strange about me, for all you say.”
“Do you remember her, Val?”
“No,” said the boy, somewhat impatiently; “that is, I rememberher, but not to know her now if I saw her. Why do you never speak of her? why is she never here? I think I ought to know.”
“Oh, my dear, it’s a long story—a long and a sad story,” said the old lady. “I wish—I wish I could find her, Val. I have sought for her everywhere, both now and when you were born; but I cannot find her. It is not our fault.”
“Where is she?” said the boy. His face was flushed and agitated, his utterance hurried and breathless as if with shame.
“I tell you we cannot find her, Val.”
“But she is alive, in the world,like that?” said the boy; and drew a long painful breath. Lady Eskside could not tell, and dared not ask, how much Val understood or remembered of his mother and her life when he said these words; and indeed, I think the boy himself would have found it very difficult to tell. He had lost all clear recollection of her in those seven years past, which were just the years in which a child forgets most easily—or remembers most tenaciously, when its recollections are encouraged and cultivated. He recollected dimly his coming to Eskside, and more dimly a life beyond, which was not as his present life,—a curious dull chaos of wanderings and change, with a woman in it and a playfellow, for whom he used to cry of nights. The chief impression on his mind, however, was of the strange difference between that life and his present one. He had escaped out of that into this; and the thought ofbeing made to go back again gave him a sensation of vague alarm. If this woman was his mother, might she not meet him somewhere, claim him, take him back again? This thought filled him with a confused and indescribable horror. He had experienced this strange feeling before now; when he saw caravans passing—when he met a wandering party of tramps on the road—it had occurred to him more than once, what if some one should claim him? though he scarcely knew the ground of his own fears. This had given a curious inarticulate duality to his life. There were two of him. One Valentine Ross, whom he could identify boldly, who was happy and free and beloved—the other, something he did not know. But after his conversation with his grandmother, this vague terror suddenly took shape and form. His mother, hisrealmother, who had a right to him, might claim him, might seize upon him and carry him away. The idea filled him for the moment with mortal terror. He lost the security of childhood, and for the time felt himself involved in that insecurity, that panic, which is more terrible to a child than it ever can be in more mature life. A spasm came into his throat—a pang of shame and outraged feeling—which added to the terror, and made it very hard to bear. His eyes grew wet with a hot-springing moisture, salt and bitter, which seemed to scorch his eyelids. Lady Eskside, partially discovering the agitation in the boy’s mind, pressed him closer to her in sympathy and tenderness; but he set his elbows square, and repulsed the fond consoling movement. He was angry with her, and with all the world, because he himself was thus separated from all the world, though he was no more than a child.
“I am going out,” he said abruptly, with a slight struggle to be free, “to say good-bye to Hunter and the rest. I promised to say good-bye to them. Let me go, grandma; I shall not be long away.”
“Come back before dinner, dear. You are to have your dinner with us to-night,” said the old lady, kissing his hot forehead as she let him go. He ran from her, and out into the woods, and never drew breath till he reached Hunter the gamekeeper’s cottage, which was two miles off. The hot tears dried in the boy’s eyes as he ran, swift as an arrow from the bow. It was a half-savage way of relieving the pain in him; yet it did relieve it, probably because of the half-savage blood which was boiling in his veins. He didnot feel quite sure that he was safe even in the woods, and flew as if some one were pursuing him. In this panic there mingled no curiosity about his mother—no longing wish to see her—no stirring of filial love, such as one would imagine natural in such a case. Strangely enough, children show little curiosity in most cases about the parents they have lost. It seems so natural to them to accept what is, as absolutely unchangeable, the one only state of affairs they have ever known, as the state which must be, and to which there is no alternative. The very idea of an alternative disturbs the young mind, and wounds it. And Valentine had more than ordinary cause to be disturbed. He was afraid and he was ashamed of that duality in his existence. It mortified him as only a child can be mortified. If he could only forget it, shut it out of his mind for ever! He did not want to hear any more upon the subject, which was hateful to him; he could not bear even to think that any one was aware how much of it he knew. The sight of the little colony of children and dogs at the gamekeeper’s was a wholesome distraction to his burdened mind; and fortunately there were many people to be shaken hands with, and to be told of his start to-morrow. “To Edinburgh first, and then to London! My word, Mr Valentine, but you’ll be far afore us all, country folk. And I wouldna wonder but you would see the Queen and the House of Parliament, and a’ thing that’s splendid,” said the gamekeeper’s wife. The boy was pleased; the thought of all the novelty to come moved him for a moment; but even the delight of novelty could not banish from his mind his new horror and fear.
He dined with his grand-parents that night as they had promised; and the old people watched him with an anxious scrutiny, of which the child was vaguely conscious. They had no insight into the tempest that was surging in his childish bosom, but watched him as wistfully as if they had been the children and he the man, wondering whether “his mother’s blood” was working in him, and any wild desire of adventure and vagrancy like hers arising in his mind, or whether he was thinking of and longing for her, which seemed the most natural supposition. I think, had they known the selfish shame and fear which had taken possession of him, both of them would have been disappointed and shocked, even though satisfied. They wouldhave blamed the boy as without natural feeling, and they would have been wrong. The feeling in Valentine’s heart was all chaotic, undeveloped. He had found out what was the meaning of the contradiction of two natures in him, the jar of which he had been dimly conscious, without knowing what it was. The struggle itself had been going on within him for years, since the time when, a mere child, he had suffered and conquered that natural thirst for the out-of-door life to which he had been born. He had stood by his nursery window many a day and gazed out, and beaten his head and his hands against the panes, longing to escape, with a longing which was only recognised as naughtiness, and which by force of circumstances and some innate force of nature had been restrained. His ductile infantine nature had been forced into the new channel, and now he thought of the old one with a thrill and shiver of imaginative terror: but no distinct enlightenment as to his own position pierced the childish imbroglio of his thoughts. He felt rather than thought that he was in danger; he had lost his happy sense of security; but his mind had not gone further. All this, however, was as invisible, as unrevealable, to the two old people, who watched him so anxiously, as their eager watch was to him. He had not left their charge for a day for seven long years, and yet they knew as little of him as you and I, dear reader, know of the child who has never left our side, and has, as it seems, no thought, no object in life apart from ours. How can we tell what that unknown familiar creature will do when set out upon independent life for itself? and how could they tell what was passing in Val’s bosom, which had no window to it, any more than the rest of us have?
They watched him, however, very closely, consulting each other now and then with their eyes, and said things to him which meant more than the words, but which Val received without thinking at all what they meant. That last night at home was meant to be a solemn one, and would have been so, had Val’s mind not been absorbed in its own excitement. Lord Eskside gave him a watch, which made his heart jump for the moment—a gold hunting-watch, such as Val had long admired and longed for, with his initials and crest on the back; but even this affected him much less than it would have done, had he received it a week—a day before. He was to start early the next morning, and his portmanteaus were packed, and everything ready that night. He went and looked at them before he went to bed, and the higher pulsation of novelty and adventure began to swell in his young veins. The shadow slid still a little further off his heart when Lady Eskside came into his room on her way to her own, as she had done every night for years. Val was not asleep, but only pretended to be so, to avoid any self-betrayal. The boy, peering curiously through his eyelashes, which showed him this little scene as through a veil of tinted gauze, saw the old lady put down her candle, look at him closely, and when she saw him, as she thought, fast asleep, kneel down by his bedside. She said no audible words, but she put her hands together and lifted her face, with tears standing full in her eyes. It was all Val could do not to cry too, and betray himself; the water came welling up, feeling warm within his eyelids, and blurring out the sight before him. After a little while my lady rose, and put her hand softly on his forehead and kissed him; then took up her candle and walked away, closing the door carefully after her not to wake her boy. Val felt strangely desolate for the first moment after the door closed, and the soft light and the watchful presence went away. He did not say anything tender within himself, for he was (or had become) a Scotch boy, totally unused to the employment of endearing words. But his small heart swelled, and a sense of soft security, of watchers round him, and ever-wakeful all-powerful love, came to him unawares.