Dick’smother sat upon the bank where he had left her, with her hands clasping her knees, and her abstract eyes gazing across the river into the distance, seeing scarcely anything before her, but seeing much which was not before her nor could be. A tramp has no room to sit in, no domestic duties to do, even were she disposed to do them; and to sit thus in a silent musing, or without even musing at all, in mere empty leisure, beaten upon by wind and sun, was as characteristic of her wandering life as were the long fatigues of the road along which at other times she would plod for hours, or the noisy tumult of racecourse or fair through which she often carried her serious face and abstract eyes—a figure always remarkable and never having any visible connection with the scene in which she was. But this day she was as she had not been for years. The heart which fulfilled its ordinary pulsations in her breast calmly and dully on most occasions, like something far off and scarcely belonging to her, was now throbbing high with an emotion which influenced every nerve and fibre of her frame. It had never stilled since last night when she heard Val’s name sounding clear through the sunny air, and saw the tall well-formed boy, with his wet jersey clinging to his shoulders, moving swiftly away from her, a vision, but moresubstantial than any other vision. Her old heart, the heart of her youth, had leaped back into life at that moment; and instead of the muffled beating of the familiar machine which had simply kept her alive all these years, a something full of independent life, full of passion, and eagerness, and quick-coming fancies, and hope, and fear, had suddenly come to life within her bosom. I don’t know if her thoughts were very articulate. They could scarcely have been so, uneducated, untrained, undisciplined soul as she was—a creature ruled by impulses, and with no hand to control her; but as she sat there and saw her placid Dick go happily off, to meet the other lad who was to him “a young swell,” able to advance and help him, one to whom he had taken a sudden fancy, he could not tell why,—the strangeness of the situation roused her to an excitement which she was incapable of subduing. “It mayn’t be him after all—it mayn’t be him after all,” she said to herself, watching Dick till he disappeared into the distance. She would have given all she had (it was not much) to go with him, and look face to face upon the other. It seemed to her that she must know at the first glance whether it washimor not. But, indeed, she had no doubt that it washim. For I do not attempt to make any pretence at deceiving the well-informed and quick-sighted reader, who knows as well as I do who this woman was. She had carried on her wandering life, the life which she had chosen, for the last eight years, exposed to all the vicissitudes of people in her condition, sometimes in want, often miserable, pursuing in her wild freedom a routine as mechanically fixed as that of the most rigid conventional life, and bound, had she known it, by as unyielding a lacework of custom as any that could have affected the life of the Honourable Mrs Richard Ross, the wife of the Secretary of Legation. But she did not know this, poor soul; and besides, all possibility of that other existence, all hold upon it or thought of it, had disappeared out of her horizon for sixteen years.
Sixteen years! a large slice out of a woman’s life who had not yet done more than pass the half-way milestone of human existence. She had never possessed so much even of the merest rudimentary education as to know what the position of Richard Ross’s wife meant, except that it involved living in a house, wearing good clothes, and being surrounded by people of whom she was frightened, who didnot understand her, and whom she could not understand. Since her flight back into her natural condition, the slow years had brought to her maturing mind thoughts which she understood as little. She was not more educated, more clever, nor indeed more clear in her confused fancies, than when she gave back one of her boys, driven thereto by a wild sense of justice, into his father’s keeping; but many strange things had seemed to pass before her dreamy eyes since then,—things she could not fathom, vague visions of what might have been right, of what was wrong. These had come to little practical result, except in so far that she had carefully preserved her boy Dick from contact with the evil around—had trained him in her way to truth and goodness and some strange sense of honour—had got him even a little education, the faculties of reading and writing, which were to herself a huge distinction among her tribe; and by keeping him in her own dreamy and silent but pure companionship, had preserved the lad from moral harm.
She had however, in doing this, a material to work upon which had saved her much trouble. The boy was, to begin with, of a character as incomprehensible to her as were the other vague and strange influences which had shaped her shipwrecked life. He was good, gentle, more advanced than herself, his teacher, in the higher things which she tried to teach him, getting by instinct to conclusions which only painfully and dimly had forced themselves upon her, not subject to the temptations which she expected to move him, not lawless, nor violent, nor hard to control, but full of reason and sense and steady trustworthiness from his cradle. She had by this time got over the surprise with which she had slowly come to recognise in Dick a being totally different from herself. She was no analyst of character, and she had accepted the fact with dumb wonder which did not know how to put itself into words. Even now there awaited her many lesser surprises, as Dick, going on from step to step in life, did things which it never would have occurred to her to do, and showed himself totally impervious to those temptations against which it had been necessary for her to struggle. His last declaration to her was as surprising as anything that went before it. The nomad’s son, who had been “on the tramp” all his life, whose existence had been spent “on the road,” alternating between the noisy excitement of those scenes ofamusement which youth generally loves, and that dull semi-hibernation of the winter which gives the tramp so keen a zest for the new start of spring,—was it the boy so bred who had spoken to her of a “home,” of steady work, and the commonplace existence of a man who had learned a trade? She wondered with a depth of vague surprise which it would be impossible to put into words—for she herself had no words to express what she meant. Had it not happened to chime in with the longing in her own mind to stay here and see the other boy, whose momentary contact had filled her with such excitement, I don’t know how she would have received Dick’s strange proposal; but in her other agitation it passed without more than an additional but temporary shock of that surprise which Dick constantly gave her; and she did not count the cost of the concession she had made to him—the tacit agreement she had come under to live under a commonplace roof, and confine herself to indoor life during this flush of midsummer weather—for the longing that she had to know something, if only as a distant spectator, of the life and being of that other boy.
After a while she roused herself and went over in the ferry-boat to the other side of the river, where were “the rafts” to which Dick looked with so much anxiety and hope. Everything was very still on the rafts at that sunny hour before mid-day, when Eton, shut up in its schoolrooms, did its construing drowsily, and dreamed of the delights of “after twelve” without being able to rush forth and anticipate them. The attendants on the rafts, lightly-clad, softly-stepping figures, in noiseless boating shoes, and such imitation of boating costume as their means could afford, were lounging about with nothing to do, seated on the rails drawling in dreary Berkshire speech, or arranging their boats in readiness for the approaching rush. Dick’s mother approached along the road, without attracting any special observation, and got into conversation with one or two of the men with the ease which attends social intercourse on these levels of life. “If there is a new hand wanted, my lad is dreadful anxious to come,” she said. “Old Harry’s looking for a new lad,” answered the man she addressed. And so the talk began.
“There was a kind of an accident on the river last night,” she said, after a while; “one of the gentlemen got his boat upset, and my lad brought it down——”
“Lord bless you! call that a haccident?” said her informant; “half-a-dozen of ’em swamps every night. They don’t mind, nor nobody else.”
“The name of this one was—Ross, I think,” she said, very slowly; “maybe you’ll know him?”
“I know him well enough—he’s in the Victory; not half a bad fellow in his way, but awful sharp, and not a bit of patience. I seed him come in dripping wet. He’s free with his money, and I daresay he’d pay your lad handsome. If I were you I’d speak to old Harry himself about the place; and if you say you’ve a friend or two among them young swells, better luck.”
“Is this one what you call a swell?” said the woman.
“Why, he’sMrRoss, ain’t he? that’s Eton for honourable,” said one of the men.
“Heain’t Mr Ross,” said an older and better-informed person, with some contempt. The older attendants at the rafts were walking peerages, and knew everybody’s pedigree. “His father was Mister Ross, if you please. He used to be at college in my time; a nice light-haired sort of a lad, not good for much, but with heaps of friends. Not half the pluck of this one; this one’s as dark as you, missis, a kind of a foreign-looking blade, and as wilful as the old gentleman himself. But I like that sort better than the quiet ones; the quiet ones does just as much mischief on the sly.”
“They’re a rare lot, them lads are,” said the other—“shouting at a man like’s he was the dust under their feet. Ain’t we their fellow-creatures all the same? It ain’t much you makes at the rafts, missis, even if you gains a lot in the season. For after all, look how short the season is—you may say just the summer half. It’s too cold in March, and it’s too cold in October—nothing to speak of but the summer half. You makes a good deal while it lasts, I don’t say nothing to the contrary—but what’s that to good steady work all round the year?”
“Maybe her lad isn’t one for steady work,” said another. “Itiswork, I can tell you is this, as long as it lasts; from early morning to lock-up, never a moment to draw your breath, except school-hours; and holidays, and half-holidays without end. Then there’s the regular boating gents as come and go, not constant like the Eton gentlemen. They give a deal of trouble—they do; and as particular with their boats as if they were babies. I tell you what, missis, if youwant him to have an easy place, I wouldn’t send him here.”
“He’s not one that’s afraid of work,” said the woman, “and it’s what he’s set his heart on. I wonder if you could tell me where this Mr Ross comes from?—if he’s west-country now, down Devonshire way?”
“Bless you, no!” said the old man, who was great in genealogies; “he’s from the north, he is—Scotland or thereabouts. His grandfather came with him when he first came to college—Lord something or other. About as like a lord as I am. But the nobility ain’t much to look at,” added this functionary, with whom familiarity had bred contempt. “They’re a poor lot them Scotch and Irish lords. Give me a good railway man, or that sort; they’re the ones for spending their money. Lord—I cannot think on the old un’s name.”
“Was it—Eskside?”
“You’re a nice sort of body to know about the haristocracy,” said the man; “in course it was Eskside. Now, missis, if you knowed, what was the good of coming asking me, taking a fellow in?”
“I didn’t know,” said the woman, humbly; “I only wanted to know. In my young days, long ago, I knew—a family of that name.”
“Ay, ay, in your young days! You were a handsome lass then, I’ll be bound,” said the old man, with a grin.
“Look here,” said one of the others—“here’s old Harry coming, if you like to speak to him about your lad. Speak up and don’t be frightened. He ain’t at all a bad sort, and if you tell him as the boy’s spry and handy, and don’t mind a hard day’s work—Speak up! only don’t say I told you.” And the benevolent adviser disappeared hastily, and began to pull about some old gigs which were ranged on the rafts, as if much too busily occupied to spare a word. The woman went up to the master with a heart beating so strongly that she could scarcely hear her own voice. On any other occasion she would have been shy and reluctant. Asking favours was not in her way—she did not know how to do it. She could not feign or compliment, or do anything to ingratiate herself with a patron. But her internal agitation was so strong that she was quite uplifted beyond all sense of the effort which would have been so trying to her on any other occasion. She went up to him sustained by her excitement,which at the same time blunted her feelings, and made her almost unaware of the very words she uttered.
“Master,” she said, going straight to the point, as the excited mind naturally does—“I have a boy that is very anxious for work. He is a good lad, and very kind to me. We’ve been tramping about the country—nothing better, for all my folks was in that way; but he don’t take after me and my folks. He thinks steady work is better, and to stay still in one place.”
“He is in the right of it there,” was the reply.
“Maybe he is in the right,” she said; “I’m not the one to say, for I’m fond of my freedom and moving about. But, master, you’ll have one in your place that is not afraid of hard work if you’ll have my son.”
“Who is your son? do I know him?” said the master, who was a man with a mobile and clean-shaven countenance, like an actor, with a twinkling eye and a suave manner, the father of an athletic band of river worthies who were regarded generally with much admiration by “the college gentlemen,” to whom their prowess was well known,—“who is your son?”
The woman grew sick and giddy with the tumult of feeling in her. The words were simple enough in straightforward meaning; but they bore another sense, which made her heart flutter, and took the very light from her eyes. “Who was her son?” It was all she could do to keep from betraying herself, from claiming some one else as her son, very different from Dick. If she had done so, she would have been simply treated as a mad woman: as it was, the bystanders, used to tramps of a very different class, looked at her with instant suspicion, half disposed to attribute her giddiness and faltering to a common enough cause. She mastered herself without fully knowing either the risk she had run or the looks directed to her. “You don’t know him,” she said. “We came here but last night. One of the college gentlemen was to speak for him. He’s a good hard-working lad, if you’ll take my word for it, that knows him best.”
“Well, missis, it’s true as you knows him best; but I don’t know as we can take his mother’s word for it. Mothers ain’t always to be trusted to tell what they know,” said the master, good-humouredly. “I’ll speak to you another time, for the gentlemen are coming. Look sharp, lads.”
“All right, sir; here you are.”
The tide was coming in—a tide of boys—who immediately flooded the place, pouring up-stairs into the dressing-rooms to change their school garments for boating dress, and gradually occupying the rafts in a moving restless crowd. The woman stood, jostled by the living stream, watching wistfully, while boat after boat shot out into the water,—gigs, with a laughing, restless crew—outriggers, each with a silent inmate, bent on work and practice; for all the school races had yet to be rowed. She stood gazing, with a heart that fluttered wildly, upon all those unknown young faces and animated moving figures. One of them was bound to her by the closest tie that can unite two human creatures; and yet, poor soul, she did not know him, nor had he the slightest clue to find her out—to think of her as anyhow connected with himself. Her heart grew sick as she gazed and gazed, pausing now upon one face, now upon another. There was one of whom she caught a passing glimpse, as he pushed off into the stream in one of the long-winged dragon-fly boats, who excited her most of all. She could not see him clearly, only a glimpse of him between the crowding figures about;—an oval face, with dark clouds of curling hair pushed from his forehead. There came a ringing in her ears, a dimness in her eyes. Women in her class do not faint except at the most tremendous emergencies. If they did, they would probably be set down as intoxicated, and summarily dealt with. She caught at the wooden railing, and held herself upright by it, shutting her eyes to concentrate her strength. And by-and-by the bewildering sick emotion passed; was it him whom she had seen?
After this she crossed the river again in the ferry-boat, though it was a halfpenny each time, and she felt the expenditure to be extravagant, and walked about on the other bank till she found Dick, who naturally adopted the same means of finding her, neither of them thinking of any return “home,”—a place which did not exist in their consciousness. Then they went and bought something in an eating-shop, and brought it out to a quiet corner opposite the “Brocas clump,” and there ate their dinner, with the river flowing at their feet, and the skiffs of “the gentlemen” darting by. It was, or rather looked, a poetic meal, and few people passed in sight without a momentary envy of the humble picnic; but to Dick Brown and his mother therewas nothing out of the way in it, and she tied up the fragments for supper in a spotted cotton handkerchief when they had finished. It was natural for them to eat out of doors, as well as to do everything else out of doors. Dick told her of his good luck, how kind Valentine had been, and gave her the half-crown he had received, and an account of all that was to be done for him. “If they don’t mind him, they’re sure to mind the other gentleman,” said devout Dick, who believed in Val’s power with a fervent and unquestioning faith. After a while he went across to the rafts, and hung about there ready for any odd job, and making himself conspicuous in eager anxiety to please the master. His mother remained with the fragments of their meal tied up in the handkerchief, on the same grassy bank where they had dined, watching the boats as they came and went. She did not understand how it was that they all dropped off one by one, and as suddenly reappeared again when the hour for dinner and the hour of “three o’clock school” passed. But she had nothing to do to call her from that musing and silence to which she had become habituated, and remained there the entire afternoon doing nothing but gaze.
At last, however, she made a great effort, and roused herself. The unknown boy after whom she yearned could not be identified among all these strange faces; and there was something which could be done for good Dick, the boy who had always been good to her. She did for Dick what no one could have expected her to do; she went and looked for a lodging where they could establish themselves. After a while she found two small rooms in a house facing the river,—one in which Dick could sleep, the other a room with a fireplace, where his hot meals, which he no doubt would insist upon, could be cooked, and where, in a corner, she herself could sleep when the day was over. She had a little stock of reserve money on her person, a few shillings saved, and something more, which was the remnant of a sum she had carried about with her for years, and which I believe she intended “to bury her,” according to the curious pride which is common among the poor. But as for the moment there was no question of burying her, she felt justified in breaking in upon this little hoard to please her boy by such forlorn attempts at comfort as were in her power. She ventured to buy a few necessaries, and to make provision as well as she knew how for the night—the first night whichshe would have passed for years under a roof which she could call her own. One of the chief reasons that reconciled her to this step was, that the room faced the river, and that not Dick alone, but the other whom she did not know, could be watched from the window. Should she get to know him, perhaps to speak to him, that other?—to watch him every summer evening in his boat, floating up and down—to distinguish his voice in the crowd, and his step? But for this hope she could not, I think, have made so great a sacrifice for Dick alone—a sacrifice she had not been able to make when the doing of it would have been still more important than now. Perhaps it was because she was growing older, and the individual had faded somewhat from her consciousness; but the change bewildered even herself. She did it notwithstanding, and of her free will.
WhenDick saw his friend and patron come down to the rafts that evening in company with another of the “gentlemen,” bigger, stronger, and older than himself, at whom everybody looked with respect and admiration, the state of his mind may be supposed. He had been hanging about all day, as I have said, making himself useful—a handy fellow, ready to push a boat into the water, to run and fetch an oar, to tie on the sheepskin on a rower’s seat, without standing on ceremony as to who told him to do so. The master himself, in the hurry of operations, had given him various orders without perceiving, so willing and ready was Dick, that it was a stranger, and not one of his own men, whom he addressed. Dick contemplated the conversation which ensued with a beating heart. He saw the lads look round, and that Valentine pointed him out to the potentate of the river-side; and he saw one of the men join in, saying something, he was sure, in his favour; and, after a terrible interval of suspense, Val came towards him, waving his hand to him in triumph. “There,” cried Val, “we’ve got you the place. Go and talk to old Harry yourself about wages and things. And mind what I said to you, Brown; neither Lichen nor I will standany nonsense. We’ve made all sorts of promises for you; and if you don’t keep them, Lichen will kick you—or, if he don’t, I will. You’d best keep steady, for your own sake.”
“I’ll keep steady,” said Dick, with a grin on his face; and it was all the boy could do to keep himself from executing a dance of triumph when he found himself really engaged at reasonable wages, and informed of the hour at which he was expected to present himself on the morrow. “Give an eye to my boat, Brown,” said Val; “see she’s taken care of. I’ll expect you to look out for me, and have her ready when you know I’m coming. I hate waiting,” said the lad, with imperious good-humour. How Dick admired him as he stood there in his flannels and jersey—the handsomest, splendid, all-commanding young prince, who had stooped from his skies to interfere on his (Dick’s) behalf, for no reason in the world except his will and pleasure. “How lucky I am,” thought Dick to himself, “that he should have noticed me last night!”—and he made all manner of enthusiastic promises on account of the boat, and of general devotion to Val’s service. The young potentate took all these protestations in the very best part. He stepped into his outrigger with lordly composure, while Dick, all glowing and happy, knelt on the raft to hold it. “You shan’t want a friend, old fellow, as long as you behave yourself,” said Val, with magnificent condescension which it was fine to see; “I’ll look after you,” and he nodded at him as he shot along over the gleaming water. As for Dick, as his services were not required till next day, he went across the river to Coffin Lane, where his mother was waiting for him, to tell his news. She did not say very much, nor did he expect her to do so, but she took him by the arm and led him along the water-side to a house which stood in a corner, half facing the river, looking towards the sunset. She took him in at the open door, and up-stairs to the room in which she had already set out a homely and very scanty table for their supper. Dick did not know how to express the delight and thanks in his heart. He turned round and gave his mother a kiss in silent transport—a rare caress, such as meant more than words. The window of this room looked up the river, and straight into the “Brocas clump,” behind which the sunset was preparing all its splendour. In the little room beyond, which was to be Dick’s bedroom—glorious title!—the window lookedstraight across to the rafts. I do not think that any young squire coming into a fine property was ever more happy than the young tramp finding himself for almost the first time in his life in a place which he could call home. He could not stop smiling, so full of happiness was he, nor seat himself to his poor supper, but went round and round the two rooms, planning where he could put up a shelf or arrange a table. “I’ll make it so handy for you, mother; you’ll not know you’re born!” cried Dick, in the fulness of his delight.
And yet two barer little rooms perhaps no human home ever was made in. There was nothing there that was not indispensable—a table, two chairs, and no more; and in Dick’s room a small iron bed. All that his mother possessed for her own use was a mattress, which could be rolled up and put aside during the day. She took her son’s pleasure very quietly, as was her wont, but smiled with a sense of having made him happy, which was pleasant to her, although to make him happy had not been her only motive. When she had put away the things from their supper, she sat down at the open window and looked out on the river. The air was full of sound, so softened by the summer that all rudeness and harshness were taken out of it: in the foreground the ferry-boat was crossing and recrossing, the man standing up with his punt-pole against the glow of the western sky; just under the window lay the green eyot, waving with young willows, and up and down in a continual stream on the sunny side of it went and came the boys in their boats. “Show him to me, Dick, when he comes,” said the woman. Dick did not require to be told whom she meant, neither was he surprised at this intensity of interest inhim, which made his young patron the only figure worth identification in that crowded scene. Had he not been, as it were, Dick’s guardian angel, who had suddenly appeared for the boy’s succour?—and what more natural than that Dick’s mother should desire before everything else to see one who had been such a friend to her boy?
But I do not think she was much the wiser when Val came down the river, accompanied by a group of backers on the bank, who had made themselves hoarse shrieking and shouting at him. He was training for a race, and this was one of his trial nights. Lichen himself had agreed to come down to give Val his advice and instructions—or, in more familiar phraseology, was “coaching” him for the important effort. Dick rushed out at the sight, to cheer and shriek too, in an effervescence of loyalty which had nothing to do with the character of Val’s performance. The mother sat at the window and looked out upon them, longing and sickening with a desire unsatisfied. Was this all she was ever to see of him—a distant speck in a flying boat? But to know that this was him—that he was there before her eyes—that he had taken up Dick and established him in his own train, as it were, near to him, by a sudden fancy which to her, who knew what cause there was for it, seemed something like a special interference of God,—filled her with a strange confused rapture of mingled feelings. She let her tears fall quietly as she sat all alone, gazing upon the scene. It must be God’s doing, she felt, since no man had any hand in it. She had separated them in her wild justice, rending her own heart while she did so, but God had brought them together. She was totally untaught, poor soul, in religious matters, as well as in everything else; but in her ignorance she had reached that point which our high philosophy reaches struggling through the mist, and which nowadays the unsatisfied and over-instructed mind loves to go back to, thinking itself happier with one naked primary truth than with a system however divine. No one could have taken from this dweller in the woods and wilds the sense of a God in the world,—almost half visible, sometimes, to musing, silent souls like her own; a God always watchful, always comprehensible to the simple mind, in the mere fact of His perpetual watchfulness, fatherliness, yet severity,—sending hunger and cold as well as warmth and plenty, and guiding those revolutions of the seasons and the outdoor facts of existence which impress the untaught yet thoughtful being as nothing taught by books can ever do. To know as she did that there was a God in the world, and not believe at the same time that His interference was the most natural of all things, would have been impossible to this primitive creature. Therefore, knowing no agencies in the universe but that of man direct and visible, and that of God, which to her could scarcely be called invisible, she believed unhesitatingly that God had done this—that He had balked her, with a hand and power more great than hers. What was to be the next step she could not tell,—it was beyond her: she could only sitand watch how things would befall, having not only no power but no wish to interfere.
Thus things went on for the remaining portion of the “half,” which lasted only about six weeks more. Dick set himself to the work of making everything “handy” for her with enthusiasm in his odd hours, which were few, for his services at the rafts were demanded imperatively from earliest morning till the late evening after sunset, when the river dropped into darkness. “The gentlemen,” it is true, were all cleared off their favourite stream by nine o’clock; but the local lovers of the Thames would linger on it during those summer nights, especially when there was a moon, till poor Dick, putting himself across in his boat when all at last was silent—the last boating party disposed of, and the small craft all ranged in their places ready for to-morrow—would feel his arms scarcely able to pull the light sculls, and his limbs trembling under him. Even then, after his long day’s work, when he had eaten his supper, he would set to work to put up the shelves he had promised his mother, or to fix upon his walls the pictures which delighted himself. Dick began with the lowest rudiments of art, the pictures in the penny papers, with which he almost papered his walls; but his taste advanced as his pennies grew more plentiful: the emotional prints of the ‘Police News’ ceased to charm him, and he rose to the pictures of the ‘Illustrated,’ or whatever might be the picture-paper of the time. This advance—so quickly does the mind work—took place in the six weeks that remained of the half; and by the time “the gentlemen” left, and work slackened, Dick’s room was already gorgeous, with here and there a mighty chromo, strong in tint and simple in subject, surrounded with all manner of royal progresses and shows of various kinds, as represented in the columns of the prints aforesaid. He grew handy, too, in amateur carpentering, having managed to buy himself some simple tools; and when he had a spare moment he betook himself to the bits of simple carving which Val had handed over to him, and worked at them with a real enjoyment which proved his possession of some germ at least of artistic feeling. The boy never had a moment unemployed with all these occupations, necessary and voluntary. He was as happy as the day was long, alwaysready with a smile and pleasant word, always sociable, not given to calculating his time too nicely, or to grumbling if some of his “mates” threw upon his willing shoulders more than his share of work. The boating people about got to know him, and among the boys he had already become highly popular. Very grand personages indeed—Lichen himself, for instance, than whom there could be no more exalted being—would talk to him familiarly; and some kind lads, finding out his tastes, brought him pictures of which they themselves had got tired, and little carved brackets from their walls, and much other rubbish of this description, all of which was delightful to Dick.
As for Valentine, the effect produced upon him by the possession of aprotégéwas very striking. He felt the responsibility deeply, and at once began to ponder as to the duties of a superior to his inferiors, of which, of course, one time or other he had heard much. An anxious desire to do his duty to this retainer who had been so oddly thrown upon his hands, and for whom he felt an unaccountable warmth of patronising friendship, took possession of him. He made many trite but admirable theories on the subject—theories, however, not at all trite to Val, who believed he had invented them for his own good and that of mankind. It was not enough, he reasoned with himself, to have saved a lad from the life of a tramp, and got him regular employment, unless at the same time you did something towards improving his mind, and training him for therôleof a respectable citizen. These were very fine words, but Val (strictly within himself) was not afraid of fine words. No young soul of sixteen, worth anything, ever is. To make a worthy citizen of his waif seemed to him for some time his mission. Having found out that Dick could read, he pondered very deeply and carefully what books to get for him, and how to lead him upon the path of knowledge. With a little sigh he recognised the fact that there was no marked literary turn in Dick’s mind, and that he preferred a bit of wood and a knife, as a means of relaxation, to books. Val hesitated long between the profitable and the pleasant in literature as a means of educating hisprotégé. Whether to rouse him to the practical by accounts of machinery and manufactures, or to awake his imagination by romance, he could not easily decide. I fear his decision was biassed ultimately by the possession of a number of books which he had himself outgrown, but which he rightly judged might do very well for his humble friend, whose total want of education made him younger than Val by a few years, and therefore still within the range of the ‘Headless Horseman,’—of Captain Mayne Reid’s vigorous productions, and other schoolboy literature of the same class. These he brought down, a few volumes at a time, to the rafts, and gave them to his friend with injunctions to read them. “You shall have something better when you have gone through these; but I daresay you’ll like them—I used to myself,” said Val. Dick accepted them with devout respect; but I think the greatest pleasure he got out of them was when he ranged them in a little book-shelf he had himself made, and felt as a bibliopole does when he arranges his fine editions, that he too had a library. Dick did not care much for the stories of adventure with which Val fed him as a kind of milk for babes. He knew of adventures on the road, of bivouacs out of doors, quite enough in his own person. But he dearly liked to see them ranged in his book-shelf. All kinds of curious instincts, half developed and unintelligible even to himself, were in Dick’s mind,—the habits of a race of which he knew nothing—partially burnt out and effaced by a course of life infinitely different, yet still existing obstinately within him, and prompting him to he knew not what. If we could study human nature as we study fossils and strata, how strange it would be to trace the connection between Dick’s rude book-shelves, with the coarse little ornament he had carved on them, and the pleasure it gave him to range Val’s yellow volumes upon that rough shelf—and the great glorious green cabinets in Lady Eskside’s drawing-room! Nobody was aware of this connection, himself least of all. And Val, who had an evident right to inherit so refined a taste, cared as little for the Vernis-Martin as though he had been born a savage; by such strange laws, unknown to us poor gropers after scraps of information, does inheritance go!
All this time, however, Dick’s mother had not seen Val nearer than in his boat, for which she looked through all the sunny afternoons and long evenings, spending half her silent intent life, so different to the outward one, so full of strange self-absorption and concentrated feeling in the watch. This something out of herself, to attract her wandering visionary thoughts and hold her passionate heart fast, was what thewoman had wanted throughout the strange existence which had been warped and twisted out of all possibility at its very outset. Her wild intolerance of confinement, her desire for freedom, her instinct of constant wandering, troubled her no more. She did her few domestic duties in the morning, made ready Dick’s meals for him (and they lived with Spartan simplicity, both having been trained to eat what they could get, most often by the roadside—cold scraps of food which required no preparation), and kept his clothes and her own in order; and all the long afternoon would sit there watching for the skimming boat, the white jersey, with the distinctive mark which she soon came to recognise. I think Val’s jersey had a little red cross on the breast—an easy symbol to recollect. When he came down the river at last, and left his boat, she went in with a sigh, half of relief, from her watch, half of pain that it was over, and began to prepare her boy’s supper. They held her whole existence thus in suspense between them; one utterly ignorant of it, the other not much better informed. When Dick came in, tired but cheery, he would show her the books Mr Ross had brought him, or report to her the words he had said. Dick adored him frankly, with a boy’s pride in all his escapades; and there were few facts in Val’s existence which were not known in that little house at the corner, all unconscious as he was of his importance there. One morning, however, Dick approached this unfailing subject with a little embarrassment, looking furtively at his mother to see how far he might venture to speak.
“You don’t ever touch the cards now, mother?” he said all at once, with a guilty air, which she, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not perceive.
“The cards?—I never did when I could help it, you know.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t suppose there’s no harm in it; it ain’t you as puts them how they come. All you’ve got to do with it is saying what it means. Folks in the Bible did the same—Joseph, for one, as was carried to the land of Egypt.”
The Bible was all the lore Dick had. He liked the Old Testament a great deal better than the ‘Headless Horseman;’ and, like other well-informed persons, he was glad to let his knowledge appear when there was an occasion for such exhibitions. His mother shook her head.
“It’s no harm, maybe, to them that think no harm,” shesaid; “no, it ain’t me that settles them—who is it? It must be either God or the devil. And God don’t trouble Himself with the like of that—He has more and better to do; so it must be the devil; and I don’t hold with it, unless I’m forced for a living. I can’t think as it’s laid to you then.”
“I wish you’d just do it once to please me, mother; it couldn’t do no harm.”
She shook her head, but looked at him with questioning eyes.
“Suppose it was to please a gentleman, as I am more in debt to than I can ever pay—more than I want ever to pay,” cried Dick, “except in doing everything to please him as long as I live. You may say it ain’t me as can do this, and that I’m taking it out of you; but you’re all I have to help me, and it ain’t to save myself. Mother, it’s Mr Ross as has heard somehow how clever you are; and if you would do it just once to please him and me!”
She did not answer for a few minutes. Dick thought she was struggling with herself to overcome her repugnance. Then she replied, in an altered and agitated voice, “For him I’ll do it—you can bring him to-morrow.”
“How kind you are, mother!” said Dick, gratefully. “College breaks up the day after to-morrow,” he added, in a dolorous voice. “I don’t know what I shall do without him and all of them—the place won’t look the same, nor I shan’t feel the same. Mayn’t he come to-night? I think he’s going off to-morrow up to Scotland, as they’re all talking of. Half of ’em goes up to Scotland. I wonder what kind of a place it is. Were we ever there?”
“Once—when you were quite a child.”
“’Twas there the t’other little chap died?” said Dick, compassionately. “Poor mammy, I didn’t mean to vex you. I wonder what he’d have been like now if he’d lived. Look here, mother, mayn’thecome to-night?”
“If you like,” she said, trying to seem calm, but deeply agitated by this reference. He saw this, and set it down naturally to the melancholy recollections he had evoked.
“Poor mother,” he said, rising from his dinner, “youarea feelin’ one! all this time, and you’ve never forgotten. I’ll go away and leave you quiet; and just before lock-up, when it’s getting dark, him and me will come across. You won’t say nothing you can help that’s dreadful if the cards turnup bad?—and speak as kind to him as you can, mother dear, he’s been so kind to me.”
Speak as kind to him as you can! What words were these to be said to her whose whole being was disturbed and excited by the idea of seeing this stranger! Keep yourself from falling at his feet and kissing them; from falling on his neck and weeping over him. If Dick had but known, these were more likely things to happen. She scarcely saw her boy go out, or could distinguish what were the last words he said to her. Her heart was full of the other—the other, whose face her hungry eyes had not been able to distinguish from her window, who had never seen her, so far as he knew, and yet who was hers, though she dared not say so, dared not claim any share in him. Dared not! though she could not have told why. To her there were barriers between them impassable. She had given him up when he was a child for the sake of justice, and the wild natural virtue and honour in her soul stood between her and the child she had relinquished. It seemed to her that in giving him up she had come under a solemn tacit engagement never to make herself known to him, and she was too profoundly agitated now to be able to think. Indeed I do not think that reasonable sober thought, built upon just foundations, was ever possible to her. She could muse and brood, and did so, and had done so,—doing little else for many a silent year; and she could sit still, mentally, and allow her imagination and mind to be taken possession of by a tumult of fancy and feeling, which drew her now and then to a hasty decision, and which, had she been questioned on the subject, she would have called thinking—as, indeed, it stands for thinking with many of us. It had been this confused working in her of recollection and of a fanciful remorse which had determined her to give up Valentine to his father; and now that old fever seemed to have come back again, and to boil in her veins. I don’t know if she had seriously regretted her decision then, or if she had ever allowed herself to think of it as a thing that could have been helped, or that might still be remedied. But by this time, at least, she had come to feel that it never could be remedied, and that Valentine Ross, Lord Eskside’s heir, could never be carried off to the woods and fields as her son, as perhaps a child might have been. He was a gentleman now, she felt, with a forlorn pride, which mingled strangely with the anguish of absoluteloss with which she realised the distance between them,—the tremendous and uncrossable gulf between his state and hers. He was her son, yet never could know her, never acknowledge her,—and she was to speak with him that night.
The sun had begun to sink, before, starting up from her long and agitated musing, the womanish idea struck her of making some preparations for his reception, arranging her poor room and her person to make as favourable an impression as possible upon the young prince who was her own child. What was she to do? She had been a gentleman’s wife once, though for so short a time; and sometimes of late this recollection had come strongly to her mind, with a sensation of curious pride which was new to her. Now she made an effort to recall that strange chapter in her life, when she had lived among beautiful things, and worn beautiful dresses, and might have learned what gentlemen like. She had never seen Val sufficiently near to distinguish his features; and oddly enough, ignoring the likeness of her husband which was in Dick, she expected to find in Valentine another Richard, and instinctively concluded that his tastes must be what his father’s were. After a short pause of consideration, she went to a trunk, which she had lately sent for to the vagrant headquarters, where it had been kept for her for years—a trunk containing some relics of that departed life in which she had been “a lady.” Out of this she took a little shawl embroidered in silken garlands, and which had faded into colours even more tasteful and sweet than they were in their newest glories—a shawl for which Mr Grinder, or any otherdilettantein Eton, would have given her almost anything she liked to ask. This she threw over a rough table of Dick’s making, and placed on it some flowers in a homely little vase of coarse material yet graceful shape. Here, too, she placed a book or two drawn from the same repository of treasures—books in rich faded binding, chiefly poetry, which Richard had given her in his early folly. The small table with its rich cover, its bright flowers and gilded books, looked like a little altar of fancy and grace in the bare room; it was indeed an altar dedicated to the memory of the past, to the pleasure of the unknown.
When she had arranged this touching and simple piece of incongruity, she proceeded to dress herself. She took offher printed gown and put on a black one, which also came out of her trunk. She put aside the printed handkerchief which she usually wore, tramp fashion, on her head, and brushed out her long, beautiful black hair, in which there was not one white thread. Why should there have been? She was not more than thirty-five or thirty-six, though she looked older. She twisted her hair in great coils round her head—a kind of coiffure which I think the poor creature remembered Richard had liked. Her appearance was strangely changed when she had made this simple toilet. She looked like some wild half-savage princess condemned to exile and penury, deprived of her retinue and familiar pomp, but not of her natural dignity. The form of her fine head, the turn of her graceful shoulders, had not been visible in her tramp dress. When she had done everything she could think of to perfect the effect which she prepared, poor soul, so carefully, she sat down, with what calm she could muster, to wait for her boys. Her boys, her children, the two who had come into the world at one birth, had lain in her arms together, but who now were as unconscious of the relationship, and as far divided, as if worlds had lain between them! Indeed she was quite calm and still to outward appearance, having acquired that power of perfect external self-restraint which many passionate natures possess, though her heart beat loud in her head and ears, performing a whole muffled orchestra of wild music. Had any stranger spoken to her she would not have heard; had any one come in, except the two she was expecting, I do not think she would have seen them, she was so utterly absorbed in one thought.
At last she heard the sound of their steps coming up-stairs. The light had begun to wane in the west, and a purple tone of half darkness had come into the golden air of the evening. She stood up mechanically, not knowing what she was doing, and the next moment two figures stood before her—one well known, her familiar boy,—the other! Was this the other? A strange sensation, half of pleasure, half of disappointment, shot through her at the sight of his face.
Val had come in carelessly enough, taking off his hat, but with the ease of a superior. He stopped short, however, when he saw the altogether unexpected appearance of the woman who was Dick’s mother. He felt a curious thrill come into his veins—of surprise, he thought. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I hope you don’t mind my coming? Brown said you wouldn’t mind.”
“You are very welcome, sir,” she said, her voice trembling in spite of her. “If there is anything I can do for you. You have been so kind—to my boy.”
“Oh,” said Val, embarrassed, with a shy laugh, “it pays to be kind to Brown. He’s done us credit. I say—what a nice place you’ve got here!”
He was looking almost with consternation at the beautiful embroidery and the books. Where could they have picked up such things? He was half impressed and half alarmed, he could not have told why. He put out a furtive hand and clutched at Dick’s arm. “I say, do you think she minds?” Val had never been so shy in his life.
“You want me to tell you your fortune, sir?” she said, recovering a little. “I don’t hold with it; but I’ll do it if you wish it. I’ll do it—once—and for you.”
“Oh, thanks, awfully,” cried Val, more and more taken aback—“if you’re sure you don’t mind:” and he held out his hand with a certain timidity most unusual to him. She took it suddenly in both hers by an uncontrollable movement, held it fast, gazed at it earnestly, and bent down her head as if she would have kissed it. Val felt her hands tremble, and her agitation was so evident that both the boys were moved to unutterable wonder; yet somehow, I think, the one of them who wondered least was Valentine, upon whom this trembling eager grasp made the strangest impression. He felt as if the tears were coming to his eyes, but could not tell why.
“It is not the hand I thought to see,” she said, as if speaking to herself—“not the hand I thought.” Then dropping it suddenly, with an air of bewilderment, she said, hastily, “It is not by the hand I do it, but by the cards.”
“I ought to have crossed my hand with silver, shouldn’t I?” said Val, trying to laugh; but he was excited too.
“No, no,” she said, tremulously; “no, no—my boy’s mother can take none of your silver. Are you as fond of him as he is fond of you?”
“Mother!” cried Dick, amazed at the presumption of this inquiry.
“Well—fond?” said Val, doubtfully; “yes, really, I think I am, after all, though I’m sure I don’t know why.He should have been a gentleman. Mrs Brown, I’m afraid it is getting near lock-up——”
“My name is not Mrs Brown,” she said, quickly.
“Oh, isn’t it? I beg your pardon,” said Val. “I thought as he was Brown—Mrs——?”
“There’s no Miss nor Missis among my folks. They call me Myra—Forest Myra,” she said, hastily. “Dick, give me the cards, and I will do my best.”
But Dick was sadly distressed to see that his mother was not doing her best. She turned the cards about, and murmured some of the usual jargon about fair men and dark women, and news to receive and journeys to go. But she was not herself: either the fortune was so very bad that she was afraid to reveal it, or else something strange must have happened to her. She threw them down at last impatiently, and fixed her intent eyes upon Valentine’s face.
“If you have all the good I wish you, you’ll be happy indeed,” she said; “but I can’t do nothing to-night. Sometimes the power leaves us.” Then she put her hand lightly on his shoulder, and gazed at him beseechingly. “Will you come again?” she said.
“Oh yes,” said Val, relieved. He drew a step back, with a sense of having escaped. “I don’t really mind, you know, at all,” he said; “it was nothing but a joke. But I’ll come again with pleasure. I say, what have you done to that carving, Brown?”
How glad Val was to get away from her touch, and from her intent eyes! and yet he did not want to go away. He hastened to the other end of the room with Dick, who was glad also to find that the perplexing interview was at an end, and got out his bit of carving with great relief. Val stood for a long time (as they all thought) side by side with the other, laying their heads together, the light locks and the dark—talking both together, as boys do; and felt himself calm down, but with a sense that something strange had happened to him, something more than he could understand. The mother sat down on her chair, her limbs no longer able to sustain her. She was glad, too, that it was over—glad and sad, and so shaken with conflicting emotions, that she scarcely knew what was going on. Her heart sounded in her ears like great waves; and through a strange mist in her eyes, and the gathering twilight, she saw vaguely, dimly, the two beside her. Oh, if she could but have put her armsround them and kissed them both together! But she could not. She sat down silent among the shadows, a shadow herself, against the evening light, and saw them in a mist, and held her peace.
“You did not tell me your mother was a lady,” said Val, as the two went back together through the soft dusk to the river-side.
“I never knew it,” said wondering Dick; “I never thought it—till to-night.”
“Ah, but I am sure of it,” said Val. “I thought you couldn’t be a cad, Brown, or I should not have taken to you like this. She’s a lady, sure enough; and what’s more,” he added, with an embarrassed laugh, “I feel as if I had known her somewhere—before—I suppose, before I was born!”
Afterthis curious meeting, Val paid several visits to the little corner house; so many, indeed, that his tutor interfered, as he had a perfect right to do, and reproached him warmly for his love of low society, and for choosing companions who must inevitably do him harm. Mr Grinder was quite right in this, and I hope the tutors of all our boys would do exactly the same in such a case; but Val, I am afraid, did not behave so respectfully as he ought, and indeed was insubordinate and scarcely gentlemanly, Mr Grinder complained. The young tutor, who had been an Eton boy himself not so very long before, had inadvertently spoken of poor Dick as a “Brocas cad.” Now I am not sufficiently instructed to know what special ignominy, if any, is conveyed by this designation; but Val flamed up, as he did on rare occasions, his fury and indignation being all the greater that he usually managed to restrain himself. He spoke to Mr Grinder as a pupil ought not to have done. He informed him that if he knew Dick he never would venture to use such terms; and if he did not know him, he had no right to speak at all, not being in the least aware of the injustice he was doing. There was a pretty business altogether between the high-spirited impetuous boy and theyoung man who had been too lately a boy himself to have much patience with the other. Mr Grinder all but “complained of” Val—an awful proceeding, terminating in the block, and sudden execution in ordinary cases—a small matter enough with most boys, but sufficiently appalling to those who had attained such a position as Val’s, high up in school; and intolerable to his impetuous temperament. This terrible step was averted by the interposition of mediators, by the soft words of old Mr Grinder, who was Val’s “dame,” and other friends. But young Mr Grinder wrote a letter to Rosscraig on the subject, which gave Lady Eskside more distress and trouble than anything which had happened to her for a long time. If she had got her will, her husband would have gone up instantly to inquire into the matter, and it is possible that the identity of Dick and his mother might have been discovered at once, and some future complications spared. The old lady wrung her hands and wept salt tears over the idea that “his mother’s blood” was asserting itself thus, and that her son Richard’s story might be about to be repeated again, but with worse and deeper shades of misery. Lord Eskside, however, who had been so much disturbed by dangers which affected her very lightly, was not at all moved by this. He demurred completely to the idea of going to Eton, but agreed that Val himself should be written to, and explanations asked. Val wrote a very magnificent letter in reply, as fine a production as ever sixteen (but he was seventeen by this time) put forth. He related with dignity how he had encountered a friendly boy on the river’s side who helped him when his boat swamped—how he had discovered that he was an admirable fellow, supporting his old mother, and in want of work—how he had exerted himself to procure work for this deserving stranger, and how he had gone to his house two or three times to see how he was getting on. “I have been lending him books,” wrote Val, “and doing what I could to help him to get on. His master, who took him on my recommendation, and Lichen’s (you know Lichen? the captain of the boats), says he never had such a good man in his place; and I have thought it was my duty to help him on. If you and grandmamma think I ought not to do so,” Valentine concluded majestically, “I confess I shall be very sorry; for Brown is one of the best fellows that ever was born.”
Lady Eskside wept when she read this letter—tears ofjoy, and pride, and happy remorse at having thought badly of her boy. She wrote him such a letter as moved even Val’s boyish insensibility, with a ten-pound note in it, with which she intrusted him to buy something for hisprotégé. “It is like your sweet nature to try to help him,” she said; “and oh, Val, my darling, I am so ashamed of myself for having a momentary fear!” Mr Grinder had a somewhat cold response from Lord Eskside, but not so trenchant as my lady would have wished it. “We are very much obliged to you for your care,” said the old lord; “but I think Valentine has given such good reasons for his conduct that we must not be hard upon him. Of course nothing of this sort should be allowed to go too far.” Thus Val was victorious; but I am glad to have to tell of him that as soon as he was sure of this, he went off directly and begged Mr Grinder’s pardon. “I had no right, sir, to speak to you so,” said the boy. They were better friends ever after, I believe; and for a long time Lady Eskside was not troubled with any terrors about Val’s “mother’s blood!”
All this time Dick “got on” so, that it became a wonder to see him. He had finished Val’s carving long ago, and presented it to his gracious patron, declining with many blushes the “five bob” which he had been promised. Before he was eighteen, he had grown, in virtue of his absolute trustworthiness, to be the first and most important ministrant at the “rafts.” Everybody knew him, everybody liked him. So far as young squires and lordlings constitute that desirable thing, Dick lived in the very best society; his manners ought to have been good, for they were moulded on the manners of our flower of English youth. I am not very sure myself that he owed so much to this (for Eton boys, so far as I have seen, bear a quite extraordinary resemblance to other boys) as to his naturally sweet and genial temper, his honest and generous humbleness and unselfishness. Dick Brown was the very last person Dick thought of, whatever he might happen to be doing—and this is the rarest of all qualities in youth. Then he was so happy in having his way, and a “home,” and in overcoming his mother’s fancy for constant movement, that his work was delightful to him. It was hard work, and entailed a very long daily strain of his powers—too long, perhaps, for a growing boy—but yet it was pleasant, and united a kind of play with continuous exertion. All summer long he was on the river-side, thebusiest of lads or men, in noiseless boating-shoes, and with a dress which continually improved till Dick became the nattiest as well as the handiest of his kind. He had a horror of everything that was ugly and dirty: when others lounged about in their hour’s rest, while their young clients were at school, Dick would be hot about something;—painting and rubbing the old boats, scraping the oars, bringing cleanness, and order, and that bold kind of decoration which belongs to boat-building, to the resuscitation of old gigs and “tubs” which had seemed good for nothing. He would even look after the flowers in the little strip of garden, and sow the seeds, and trim the border, while he waited, if there happened to be no old boats to cobble. He was happy when the sun shone upon nothing but orderliness and (as he felt it) beauty.
In his own rooms this quality of mind was still more apparent. I have said that he and his mother lived with Spartan simplicity. This enabled him to do a great deal more with his wages than his more luxurious companions. First, comforts, and then superfluities—elegances, if we may use the word—began to flow into the room. The elegances, perhaps, were not very elegant at first, but his taste improved at the most rapid rate. When he had nothing better to do, he would go and take counsel with Fullady the wood-carver, and get lessons from him, helping now and then at a piece of work, to the astonishment of his master. In the evening he carved small pieces of furniture, with which he decorated his dwelling. In winter he was initiated into the mysteries of boat-building, and worked at this trade with absolute devotion and real enjoyment. In short, Dick’s opinion was that nobody so happy as himself had ever lived—his work was as good as play, and better, he thought; and he was paid for doing what it gave him the greatest pleasure to do—a perennial joke with the gentle fellow. In all this prosperity Dick never forgot his first patron. When Val rowed, Dick ran by the bank shouting till he was hoarse. When Val was preferred to be one of the sublime Eight, who are as gods among men, he went almost out of his wits with pride and joy. “We’llwin now, sure enough, at Henley!” he said to his mother, with unconscious appropriation of the possessive pronoun. But when Dick heard of the squabble between Val and his tutor, his good sense showed at once. He took his young patron a step aside, taking off his hatwith almost an exaggeration of respect—“Don’t come to our house again, sir,” he said; “the gentleman is in the right. You are very kind to be so free with me, to talk and make me almost a friend; but it wouldn’t do if every Eton gentleman were to make friends with the fellows on the water-side—the gentleman is in the right.”
“My people don’t think so, Brown,” cried Val; “look here, what has been sent me to buy you something,” and he showed his ten-pound note.
Dick’s eyes flashed with eager pleasure, not for the money, though even that was no small matter. “I don’t understand,” lie added, after a moment, shaking his head. “I don’t think they’d like it either, if they knew. You must have been giving too good an account, sir, of mother and me.”
Val only laughed, and crushed the crisp bank-note into the pocket of his trousers. “I mean to spend it for you on Monday, when I am going to town on leave,” he said. He was going to see Miss Percival, his grandmother’s friend. And, in fact, he did buy Dick a number of things, which seemed to his youthful fancy appropriate in the circumstances. He bought him some books, a few of those standard works which Val knew ought to be in everybody’s library, though he did not much trouble them himself; and a capital box of tools, and drawing materials, for Dick had displayed some faculty that way. Both the boys were as happy as possible—the one in bestowing, the other in receiving, this gift. Lady Eskside’s present gave them the deepest pleasure, though she was so far from knowing who was the recipient of her bounty. “Brown,” said Val, solemnly, after they had enjoyed the delight of going over every separate article, and examining and admiring it—“Brown, you mind what I am going to say. You must rise in the world; you have made a great deal of progress already, and you must make still more. Heaps of fellows not half so good as you have got to be rich, and raised themselves by their exertions. You must improve your mind; and you must take the good of every advantage that offers, and rise in the world.”
“I’ll try, sir,” said Dick, with the cheeriest laugh. He was ready to have promised to scale the skies, if Val had recommended it. He arranged his books carefully in a little bookcase he had made, which was far handsomer than the old one which had received the yellow volumes—overflowings of Val’s puerile library. But I am not sure that Macaulay and Gibbon instructed him much more than the ‘Headless Horseman’ had done. His was not a mind which was much affected by literature; he cared more for doing than for reading, and liked his box of tools better than his library. Musing over his work, he revolved many things in his head, and got to have very just views about matters concerning which his education had been a blank; but he did not get his ideas out of books. That was not a method congenial to him, though he would have acknowledged with respect that it was most probably the right way. But anyhow, Val had done his duty by hisprotégé. He had put into his hands the means of rising in the world, and he had suggested this ambition. Whatever might happen hereafter, he had done his best.
And Dick’s mother continued contented also, which was a perpetual wonder to him. She weathered through the winter, though Dick often watched her narrowly, fearing a return to her old vagrant way. When Val’s boat disappeared from the river with all the others, she was indeed restless for a little while; but it was, as it happened, just about that time that Val took to visiting the little corner house, and these visits kept her in a visionary absorption, always afraid, yet always glad, when he came. In spring she was again somewhat alarming to her son, moving so restlessly in the small space they had, and looking out so wistfully from the window, that he trembled to hear some suggestion of fresh wandering. All that she asked, however, was, When did the boats go up for the first time? a question which Dick answered promptly.
“On the 1st of March, mother. I wish it was come,” cried Dick, with animation.
“And so do I,” she said, with musing eyes fixed on the river; then alarmed, perhaps, lest he should question her, she added hastily, “It is cheery to see the boats.”
“So it is,” said Dick, “especially for you, mother, who go out so seldom. You should take a walk along the banks; it’s cheerful always. I don’t think you half know how pretty it is.”
She shook her head. “I am not one for walks,” she said, with a half smile—“not for pleasure, Dick. Since I’ve given up our long tramps, I don’t feel to care for moving. I’m getting old, I think.”
“Old!” said Dick, cheerily; “it will be time enough to think of that in twenty years.”
“Twenty years is a terrible long time,” she replied, with a little shiver; “I hope I’ll be dead and gone long before that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak so, mother.”
“Ah, but it’s true. My life ain’t much good to any one,” she said. “I am not let to live in my own way, and I can’t live in any other. If God would take me, it would be for the best. Then I might have another chance.”
“Mother, you break my heart,” cried Dick, with a face full of anxiety, throwing away his tools, and coming up to her. “Do you mean that it is I that won’t let you live your own way?”
“I don’t blame nobody but myself—no; you’ve been a good boy—a very good boy—to me,” she cried; “better, a long way, than I’ve been to you.”
“Mother,” said the lad, laying his hand on her shoulder, his face flushing with emotion, “if it’s hard upon you like this—if you want to start off again——”
“No, I don’t, I don’t!” she said, with suppressed passion; then falling back into her old dreamy tone—“So the boats go up on the 1st of March? and that’s Monday. To see ’em makes the river cheery. I’m a little down with the winter and all; but as soon as I see ’em, I’ll be all right.”
“Please God, mother,” said pious Dick, going back to his carving. He was satisfied, but yet he was startled. For, after all, why should she care so much about the boats?
This 1st of March inaugurated Val’s last summer on the river—at least, on this part of the river, for he had still Oxford and its triumphs in prospect. That “summer half” was his last in Eton, and naturally he made the most of it. Val had, as people say, “done very well” at school. He was not a brilliant success, but still he had done very well, and his name in the school list gave his grandparents great pleasure. Lord Eskside kept a copy of that littlebrochureon his library table, and would finger it half consciously many a time when some county magnate was interviewing the old lord. Val’s name appeared in it like this: * Ross (5) γ. Now this was not anything like the stars and ribbons of the name next above his, which was B * Robinson, (19) α; for I do not mean to pretend that he was very studious, or had much chance of being in the Select for the Newcastle Scholarship (indeed he missed this distinction, though he went in for it gallantly, without being, however, much disappointed by his failure). To be sure, I have it all my own way in recording what Val did at Eton, since nobody is likely nowadays, without hard labour in the way of looking up old lists, to be in a position to contradict me. But he had the privilege of writing his letters upon paper bearing the mystic monogram of Pop.—i.e., he was a member ofEton Society, which was a sure test of his popularity; and he was privileged in consequence to walk about with a cane, and to take part in debates on very abstruse subjects (I am not quite sure which privilege is thought the most important), and received full recognition as “a swell,”—a title which, I am happy to say, bears no vulgar interpretation at Eton, as meaning either rank or riches. And he was a very sublime sight to see on the 4th of June, the great Eton holiday, both in the morning, when he appeared in school in court dress—breeches and black silk stockings—and delivered one of those “Speeches” with which Eton upon that day delights such members of the fashionable world as can spare a summer morning out of the important business of the season; and in the evening, when he turned out in still more gorgeous array, stroke of the best boat on the river, and a greater personage than it is easy for a grown-up and sober-minded imagination to conceive.
It happened that this particular year Mr Pringle was in London upon some business or other, and had brought his daughter Violet with him to see the world. Vi was seventeen, and being an only daughter, and the chief delight of her parents’ hearts, and pride of her brothers’, big and little, was already “out,” though many people shook their heads at Mrs Pringle’s precipitancy in producing her daughter. Violet’s hair was somewhat darker now that it was turned up, but showed the pale golden hue of her childhood still in the locks which, when the wind blew upon her, would shake themselves out in little rings over her ears and round her pretty forehead. Her eyes were as dark and liquid as they had been when she was a child, with a wistful look in them, which was somewhat surprising, considering how entirely happy a life she had led from her earliest breath, surrounded with special love and fondness; but so it was, account for it who will. Those tender eyes that shone out of her happy youthful face were surely conscious of some trouble, which,as it did not exist in the present, must be to come, and which, with every pretty look, she besought and entreated you to ward off from her, to help her through. But a happy little maiden was Vi, looking through those pretty eyes, surprised and sweet, at London—tripping everywhere by her proud father’s side, with her hand on his arm, looking at the fine pictures, looking at the fine people and the fine horses in the Park, and going over the sights as innocent country people do when such a happy chance as a child to take about happens to them. Some one suggested to Mr Pringle the fact of the Eton celebration during this pleasant course of dissipation, and Vi’s eyes lighted up with a sweet glow of pleasure beyond words when it was finally decided that they were to go.