And go they did, conscientiously seeing everything. They went to “Speeches” in the morning—that august ceremonial—and heard Val speak, and a great many more. Violet confined her interest to the modern languages which she understood; but Mr Pringle felt it incumbent upon him to look amused at the jokes in Greek, which, I fear, the poor gentleman in reality knew little more about than Vi did. But the crowning glory of the morning was that Val in his “speaking clothes” (and very speaking, very telling articles they were, in Violet’s eyes at least) walked through college with them afterwards, bareheaded, with the sun shining on his dark curls, the same bold brown boy who had carried off the little girl from the Hewan six years before, though by this time much more obsequious to Vi. He showed himself most willing and ready all day to be the cicerone of “his cousins;” and when in the evening, Violet, holding fast by her father’s arm, her heart beating high with pleasure past and pleasure to come, walked down to the rafts in company with Val in the aquatic splendours of his boating costume—straw hat wreathed with flowers, blue jacket and white trousers—the girl would have been very much unlike other girls if she had not been dazzled by this versatile hero, grand in academic magnificence in the morning, and resplendent now in the uniform of the river. “I am so sorry I can’t take you out myself,” said Val, “for of course I must go with my boat; but I have a man here, the best of fellows, who will row you up to Surly. Here, Brown,” he cried, “get out the nicest gig you have, and come yourself—there’s a good fellow. I want my cousinsto see everything. Oh, I’ll speak to Harry, and make it all right. I want you, and nobody else,” he added, looking with friendly eyes at hisprotégé. I don’t think Mr Pringle heard this address, but looking round suddenly, he saw a young man standing by Valentine whose appearance made his heart jump. “Good God!” he cried instinctively, staring at him. Dick had grown and developed in these years. He had lost altogether the slouch of the tramp, and was, if not so handsome as Val, trim and well made, with a chest expanded by constant exercise, and his head erect with the constant habit of attention. He was dressed in one of Val’s own coats, and no longer looked like a lad on the rafts. For those who did not look closely, he might have been taken for one of Val’s schoolfellows, so entirely had he fallen into the ways and manners of “the gentlemen.” He was as fair as Val was dark, about the same height, and though not like Val, was so like another face which Mr Pringle knew, that his heart made a jump into his mouth with wonder and terror. Perhaps he might not have remarked this likeness but for the strange association of the two lads, standing side by side as they were, and evidently on the most friendly terms. “Who is that?” cried Mr Pringle, staring with wide-open eyes.
“It is the best fellow in the world,” cried Val, laughing, as Dick sprang aside to arrange the cushions in a boat which lay alongside the raft. “He’ll take you up to Surly faster than any one else on the river.”
“But, Valentine—it is very kind of him,” said Vi, hesitating—“but you did not introduce him to us——”
“Oh, he’s not a gentleman,” said Val, lightly; “that is to say,” he added, seeing Dick within reach, with a hasty blush, “he’s as good in himself as any one I know; but he ain’t one of the fellows, Vi; he works at the rafts—his name is Brown. Now, do you think you can steer? You used to, on the water at home.”
“Oh yes,” said Violet, with modest confidence. Val stood and looked after them as the boat glided away up the crowded river; then he stalked along through the admiring crowd, feeling as a man may be permitted to feel who holds the foremost rank on a day offêteand universal enjoyment.
“To him each lady’s look was lent,On him each courtier’s eye was bent.”
“To him each lady’s look was lent,On him each courtier’s eye was bent.”
“To him each lady’s look was lent,On him each courtier’s eye was bent.”
To be sure there were a great many others almost as exalted as Val; and only the initiated knew that he rowed in the Eight, and was captain of the Victory,—the best boat on the river. He stalked along to his boat, over the delicious turf of the Brocas, in the afternoon sunshine, threading his way through throngs of ladies in pretty dresses, and hundreds of white-waistcoated Etonians. How proud the small boys who knew him were, after receiving a nod from the demigod as he passed, to discourse loudly to gracious mother or eager sister, Val’s style and title! “That’s Ross at my dame’s—he’s in the Eight—he won the school sculling last summer half; and we think we’ll get the House Fours, now he’s captain. He’s an awfully jolly fellow when you know him,” crowed the small boys, feeling themselves exalted in the grandeur of his acquaintance; and the pretty sisters looked after Val, a certain awe mingling with their admiration; while Philistines and strangers, unaccompanied by even a small boy, felt nobodies, as became them. Then came the start up the river. Never was a prettier sight than this ceremonial. The river all golden with afternoon glory; the great trees on the Brocas expanding their huge boughs in the soft air, against the sky; the banks all lined with animated, bright-coloured crowds; the stream alive with attendant boats; and the great noble pile of the castle looking down serene from its height upon the children and subjects at its royal feet, making merry under its great and calm protection. It is George III.’s birthday—poor, obstinate, kindly old soul!—and this is how a lingering fragrance of kindness grows into a sort of fame. They say he was paternally fond and proud of the boys, who thus yearly, without knowing it, celebrate him still.
Dick took his boat with Val’s cousins in it up the river, and waited there among the willows, opposite the beautiful elms of the Brocas, till the “Boats” went past in gay procession. He pointed out Val’s boat and Val’s person to Violet with a pleasure as great as her own. “It is the best boat on the river, and he is one of the best oars,” cried Dick, his honest fair face glowing with pleasure. “We all think his house must win the House Fours—they didn’t last year, for Mr Lichen was still here, and he’s heavier than Mr Ross; but Grinder’s will have it this time.” Dick’s face so brightened with generous delight, and acquired an expression so individual and characteristic, that Mr Pringle began to breathefreely, and to say to himself that fancy had led him astray.
“Do you belong to this place?” he asked, when they started again to follow the boats up the river, in the midst of a gay flotilla, looking Dick very steadily, almost severely, in the face.
“Not by birth, sir,” said Dick. “Indeed, I don’t belong anywhere; but I’m settled here, I hope, for good.”
“But you don’t mean to say you are a boatman?” said Mr Pringle; “you don’t look like it. It must be a very precarious life.”
“I am head man at the rafts,” said Dick—“thanks to Mr Ross, who got me taken on when I was a lad”—(he was not quite nineteen then, but maturity comes early among the poor), “and we’re boatbuilders to our trade. You should see some of the boats we turn out, sir, if you care for such things.”
“But I suppose, my man, you have had a better education than is usual?” said Mr Pringle, looking so gravely at him that Dick thought he must disapprove of such vanities. “You don’t speak in the least like the other lads about here.”
“I suppose it’s being so much with the gentlemen,” said Dick, with a smile. “I am no better than the other lads. Mr Ross has given me books—and things.”
“Mr Ross must have been very kind to you,” said Mr Pringle, with vague suspicions which he could not define—“he must have known you before?”
“Hasn’t he just been kind to me!” said Dick, a flush coming to his fair face; “an angel couldn’t have been kinder! No, I never saw him till two years ago; but lucky for me, he took a fancy to me—and I, if I may make so bold as to say so, to him.”
“Mr Brown,” said Violet, looking at him with a kind of heavenly dew in her dark eyes—for to call such effusion of happiness tears would be a word out of place—“I am afraid, if we are going through the lock, I shall not be able to steer.”
This was not in the least what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, I can see you are a dear, dear, good fellow, and I love you for being so fond of Val; and how Dick should have attained to a glimmering of understanding, and known that this was what she meant, I cannot tell—but he did. Such things happen now and then even in this stupid everyday world.
“Never mind, Miss,” he said cheerfully, looking back at her with his sunshiny blue eyes, “I can manage. Hold your strings fast that you may not lose them: the steerage is never much use in a lock; and if you’re nervous, there’s the Sergeant, who is a great friend of Mr Ross’s, will pull us through.”
The lock was swarming with boats, and Violet, not to say her father, who was not quite sure about this mode of progression, looked up with hope and admiration at the erect figure of the Sergeant, brave and fine in his waterman’s dress with his silver buttons, and medals of a fiercer service adorning his blue coat. The Sergeant had shed his blood for his country before he came to superintend the swimming of the favoured ones on the Thames. His exploits in the water and those of his pupils are lost to the general public, from the unfortunate fact that English prejudice objects to trammel the limbs of itsnatateursby any garments. But literature lifts its head in unsuspected places, and the gentle reader will be pleased to learn that the Sergeant’s Book on Swimming will soon make the name, which I decline to deliver to premature applauses, known over all the world. He looked to Violet, who was somewhat frightened by the crowds of boats, like an archangel in silver buttons, as he caught the boat with his long pole, and guided them safely through.
I cannot, however, describe in detail all the pretty particulars of the scene, which excited and delighted Violet more than words can tell. Her father was infinitely less interested than usual in her pleasure, having something else in his mind, which he kept turning over and over in his busy brain, while he led her round the supper-table of the boys at Surly, or held her fast during the fireworks at the end of the evening. Was this the other? If it was the other, what motive could the Eskside people have to hide him, to keep him in an inferior station? Did Val know? and if Val knew, how could he be so rash as to present to his natural adversary, a boy who had in every feature Dick Ross’s face? Mr Pringle was bewildered with these thoughts. Now and then, when Dick’s face brightened into expressiveness, he said to himself that it was all nonsense, that he was crazy on this point, and that any fair lad who appeared by Val’s side would immediately look like Richard in his prejudiced eyes. Altogether he was more uncomfortable than I can describe, and heartily glad when the show was over. He took Val by the arm when he came to say good-bye to them, and drew him aside for a moment.
“Does your grandfather know of your intimacy with this lad?” he asked, with the morose tone which his voice naturally took when he was excited.
“Yes, of course they do,” said Val, indignant. “I never hid anything from them—why should I?”
“Who is he, then? I think I have a right to know,” said Mr Pringle.
“A right to know! I don’t understand you,” said Val, beginning to feel the fiery blood tingling in his veins; but he thought of Vi, and restrained himself.
“He is Brown,” he said, with a laugh; “that’s all I know about him. You’re welcome to know as much as I do; though as for right, I can’t tell who has the right. You can ask the men at the rafts, who have just the same means of information as I.”
While this conversation was going on, Violet had spoken softly to Dick. “Mr Brown,” she said, being naturally respectful of all strangers, “I am so glad of what you told us about Mr Ross.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Dick; “you could not be more glad to hear than I am to tell. I should like to let every one know that though he’s only a boy, he’s been the making of me.”
“But—I beg your pardon—are you older than a boy?” said Vi.
Dick laughed. “When you have to work for your living, you’re a man before you know,” he said, with a certain oracular wisdom that sank deeply into Vi’s mind. But the next moment her father called her somewhat sharply, and she awoke with a sigh to the consciousness that this wonderful day was over, and that she must go away.
Thiswas Val’s last summer at Eton; he went away with deep regret, as all well-conditioned boys do, and was petted and made much of at home in the interval between his school and his university life. Lady Eskside, who had once carried little Val with her, with care so anxious, was proud and happy beyond description now when Val accompanied her anywhere with that air ofsavoir faireand intimate knowledge of the world which distinguishes his kind. He had already a circle much enlarged from hers, and knew people whom even the Dowager Duchess, who was more in the world than Lady Eskside, could not pretend to know. He was a head taller than good-natured Lord Hightowers, and a thousand times handsomer and better bred. “But not the least like his father,” said her Grace, with pointed particularity. “Not so like as he was,” said Lady Eskside, not unprepared for this attack; “but I can still see the resemblance—though the difference of complexion is bewildering to those who don’t know both faces so well as I do,” she added, with a smile. To be sure, no one else could know the two faces as well as she did. Val was extremely well received in the county, and considered, young as he was, an acquisition to general society; and was asked far and wide to garden-parties, which were beginning to come into fashion, and to the few dances which occurred now and then. He had to go, too, to various entertainments given by the new people in Lord Eskside’s feus. During Val’s boyhood, the feus which the old lord and his factor laid out so carefully had been built upon, to the advantage of the shopkeepers in Lasswade, for one thing; and a row of, on the whole, rather handsome houses, in solid white stone, somewhat urban in architecture for the locality, and built to resist wind and storm for centuries, rose on the crown of the green bank which overlooked the road, and were to be seen from the terrace at Rosscraig. There were two ladies in them who gave parties,—one the wife of a retired physician, the other a well-connected widow. Val had to dance at both houses, for the very good reason that the widow was well connected, which made it impossible to refuse her; while the other house had a vote, more important still. “Itis your business to make yourself agreeable to everybody, Val,” said Lord Eskside, feeling, as he looked at the boy’s long limbs and broad shoulders, that the time was approaching in which his ambition should at last be gratified, and a Ross be elected for the county, notwithstanding all obstacles. Within the next four or five years a general election was inevitable; and it was one of the old lord’s private prayers that it might not come until Val was eligible. He did all he could to communicate to him that interest in politics which every young man of good family, according to Lord Eskside, should be reared in. Val had been rather inattentive on this point: he held, in an orthodox manner, those conventional and not very intelligent Tory principles which belong to Eton; but he had not thought much about the subject, if truth must be told, and was rather amused than impressed by Lord Eskside’s eloquence. “All right, grandpapa,” he would say, with that calm general assent of youth which is so trying to the eager instructor. He was quite ready to accept both position and opinions, but he did not care enough about them to take the trouble of forming any decision for himself.
But he went to Mrs Rintoul’s party, and made himself very agreeable; and not only the retired doctor himself, but what was perhaps more important, his daughters—from Miss Rintoul of five-and-thirty to the little one of sixteen—were ready as one woman to adopt his cause, and wear his colours when the time came. “What does it matter between them, papa?” said Miss Rintoul, who was very strong-minded. “Tory or Radical—what does it matter? They are all conservative in office, and destructive out of it. If I had a vote—and at my age it’s a disgrace to England that I haven’t—I should stand by friends and neighbours. That’s a better rule than your old-fashioned Tory and Whig. A good man is the one thing needful; over whom, if necessary, one can exert intelligent influence,” said this enlightened woman. I do not think her papa, who was better aware how very impossible it is to influence any human creature, was entirely of her opinion; but he informed Willie Maitland that probably on the whole, if no candidate exactly of his own way of thinking appeared in the field, he would not hesitate to support Mr Ross, if he carried out, as there was every reason to expect, the promise of his youth. Thus Val, in gay unconsciousness, was made to begin his canvassing when hewas nineteen, and while still the episode of the university lay between him and public life. Lord Eskside invited a large party for the 1st of September, and the house continued full up to the time of Val’s departure for Oxford; and besides this party of guests at home, there was such a succession of entertainments given at Rosscraig as had not been known before for many years,—not since Val’s father was on his promotion, like Val. Mary Percival was one of the party during this gay time, aiding Lady Eskside to receive her guests and do the honours of her house. She came when it was definitely ascertained that Richard was not coming, as his parents wished. He wrote that he was deeply occupied, and that in the present state of Italian politics it was impossible that he could leave his post—a letter over which Lady Eskside sighed; but as Mary came to make up the deficiency, there was something gained to atone for this loss.
Mary, however, never would commit herself to that enthusiasm for Val which his grandmother felt was her boy’s due. She liked him very well, she said—oh, very well: he was a nice boy; she was very glad he had done so well at school, and she hoped he would take a good place at Oxford; but I leave the reader to judge whether this mild approbation was likely to satisfy the old people, who by this time—husband as well as wife—were, as the servants said, altogether “wrapt up” in Val. Mary offended her friend still more by the perverse interest she took in the Pringle family, and her many visits to the Hewan, where Val was delighted to accompany her as often as she chose to go. Violet was “in residence,” as he said, at the cottage, living a somewhat lonely life there, though the others of the family came and went, spending a day or a night as they could manage it. I do not know if any thought of “falling in love” had ever come into Valentine’s boyish head; but there was a delicate link of affection and interest between Violet and himself which affected him he could not quite tell how. As for poor little Vi, I fear her young imagination had gone further than Valentine’s. It was not love in her case, perhaps, any more than in his; but it was fancy, which at seventeen is almost as strong. I think this was the primary reason of Mary’s frequent visits to the Hewan. She saw what was going on in the girl’s young head and heart; and with that intense recollection of thecircumstances which decided her own fate which such gentlewomen, thrown out of the common path of life, often have, she had conceived an almost exaggerated anxiety for the fate of Vi, which seemed to be shaping itself after the model of her own.
“I wish my dear old lady would not spoil that boy so,” she said one September morning, when she had walked alone through the woods to the Hewan. Her prettyparticulargrey gown (for Mary was not without something of that precise order which it is usual to call old-maidishness, about her dress) was marked here and there with a little spot from the damp ferns and grass, which she rubbed with her handkerchief as she spoke, and which suddenly brought back to Violet’s memory that one day of “playing truant” which had been about the sweetest of her life. Mary had perceived that Violet gave a quick look for the other figure which generally followed, and that there was a droop of disappointment about her, when she perceived that her visitor was alone. “I wish she would not spoil that boy so. He is not a bad boy——”
“Is it possible you can mean Val?” said Violet, with dignity, erecting her small head.
“Yes, indeed, my dear, it is quite possible; I do mean Val. He is a good boy enough, if you would not all spoil him with adulation—as if he were something quite extraordinary, and no one had ever seen his like before.”
“You do not like Val, Miss Percival—you never did; but he likes you, and always walks with you when you will let him.”
“Ah, that is when I am coming here,” said Mary, with a momentary compunction. Then perceiving a pleased glow diffuse itself over Vi’s face, she added, quickly, “I mean, he likes to go with me when it pleases himself; but if I were to ask any little sacrifice of his will from him, you should see how he would look. He is one of the most self-willed boys I know.”
Violet did not make any answer. She patted her foot upon the carpet, and the corners of her little mouth were drawn down. She would have frowned had she known how; as it was, she averted her face in wrath and dismay.
“Violet, my dear, I take a great interest in you,” said Mary. “When I look at you, I sometimes think I see myself at your age. I don’t like to think that you may grow up to make a demigod of Val—or indeed of any other.”
“Miss Percival!—I! Oh, how dare you?—how can you say so?” cried Violet, springing to her feet, her face crimson, her eyes shining. “I! make a—anything of Val. Oh, how can you be so unkind, you grown-up people? Must a girl never speak to a boy unless he is her brother? And Val has been just like my brother. I think of him—as I think of Sandy.”
“Oh, you little story-teller!” cried Mary, laughing in spite of herself, as Violet’s indignant voice faltered into uncertainty; “but, Vi, I am not going to scold—don’t be afraid. I am going to tell you for your good what happened to me. I don’t like doing it,” she said, with a blush that almost neutralised the difference of age between herself and the girl who listened to her; “but I think it may be for your good, dear. Violet, when I was your age there was some one—whom I was constantly in the habit of seeing, as you might be of seeing Val. There was never any—flirtation or nonsense between us. How shall I say it, Violet?—for I don’t care to speak of such things any more than you would. I liked him, as I thought, as you do, like a brother; and he was always kept before me—never any one but Richard. After a while he went out into the world, and there did—something which separated us for ever! oh, not anything wrong, Vi—not a crime, or even vice—but something which showed me that I, and all I was, such as I was, was nothing in the world to him—that nothing was of value to him but his own caprice. I never got over it, Violet. You see me now growing old, unmarried; and of course I never shall marry now, nor have young ones round me like your mother——”
“Oh, dear Miss Percival,” cried Violet, with tears in her eyes, “who cares for being married? What has that to do with it? Is it not far finer, far grander, to live like you, for ever constant to your first love? Is not that the best of all?” cried the little enthusiast, flushing with visionary passion. Mary caught her by her pretty shoulders, shook her and kissed her, and laughed, and let one or two tears drop, a tribute, half to her own, half to the child’s excitement.
“You little goose!” she cried. “Vi, I saw him after, years after—such a man to waste one’s life for!—a poor pettydilettante, more fond of a bit of china than of child orwife, or love or honour. Ah, Vi, you don’t understand me! but to think I might have been the mother of a child like you, but for that poor creature of a man!”
“Oh, don’t, don’t!” cried Vi, putting her hands to her ears; “I will not listen to you, now. If you—loved him,” said the girl, hesitating and blushing at the word, “you never, never could speak of him like that.”
“I never—never could have been deceived in him,—is that what you mean? Vi, I hope you will never follow my example.”
“Hollo!” cried another voice of some one coming in at the door, which stood open all day long, as cottage doors do—“is there any one in—is Mary here? Are you in, Vi?” and Val’s head, glowing with a run up the brae, bright with life and mirth, and something which looked very much like boyish innocence and pleasure, looked in suddenly at the parlour door. Val was struck by consternation when he saw the agitated looks which both endeavoured to hide. “What’s the row?” he asked, coming in with his hat in his hand. “You look as if you had been crying. What have you been doing, Mary, to Vi?”
“Scolding her,” said Miss Percival, laughing. “I hope you have no objection, Val.”
“But I have great objections; nobody shall bother Violet and make her cry, if I can help it. She never did anything in her life to deserve scolding. Vi,” cried Val, turning to her suddenly, “do you remember the day we played truant? If Mary hadn’t been here, I meant to carry you off again into the woods.”
Violet looked up first at him and then at Mary; the first glance was full of delight and tender gratitude, the other was indignant and defiant. “Is this the boy you have been slandering?” Vi’s eyes said, as plain as eyes could speak, to her elder friend. Miss Percival rose and made the gentleman a curtsy.
“If Mary is much in your way, she will go; but as Vi is a young lady now, perhaps Mary’s presence would be rather an advantage than otherwise. I put myself at your orders, young people, for the woods, or wherever you like.”
“Well,” said Val, with the composure of his age, “perhaps it might be as well if you would come too. Run to the larder, Violet, and look if there’s a pie. I’ll go and coax Jean for the old basket—the very old basket that we had onthat wonderful day. Quick! and your cloak, Vi.” He rushed away from them like a whirlwind; and soon after, while the two ladies were still looking at each other in doubt whether he should be humoured or not, Jean’s voice was heard approaching round the corner from her nest.
“Pie! set you up with dainty dishes! Na, Mr Valentine, you’ll get nae pie from me, though you have the grace to come and ask for it this time; but I’ll make you some sandwiches, if you like, for you’ve a tongue like the very deil himself. Oh, ay—go away with your phrases. If you were not wanting something you would take little heed o’ your good Jean, your old friend.”
“Listen,” said Mary to Vi.
“No that ye’re an ill laddie, when a’s said. You’re not one of the mim-mouthed ones, like your father before you; but I wouldna say but you were more to be lippened to, with all your noise and your nonsense. There, go away with you. I’ll do the best I can, and you’ll take care of missie. Here’s your basket till ye, ye wild lad.”
Vi had grasped Mary’s arm in return when old Jean continued; but being pitiful, the girl in her happiness would not say anything to increase what she felt must be the pain of the woman by her side. Vi had divined easily enough that it was Valentine’s father of whom Mary spoke; and the child pitied the woman, who was old enough to be her mother. Ah, had it but been Valentine! He never would disappoint any one—never turn into adilettante, loving china better than child or wife. She kissed Mary in a little outburst of pity—pity so angelic that Violet almost longed to change places with her, that she might see and prove for herself how different Valentine was. As for Mary, she made herself responsible for this mad expedition with a great confusion and mingling of feelings. She went, she said to herself, to prevent harm; but some strange mixture of a visionary maternity, and of a fellow-feeling quite incompatible with her mature age, was in her mind at the same time. She said to herself, with a sigh, as she went down the slope, that she might have been the boy’s mother, and let her heart soften to him, as she had never done before; though I think this same thought it was which had made her feel a little instinctive enmity to him, because he was not her son but another woman’s. How lightly the boy and girl tripped along over the woodland paths, waiting for her at every corner, chattering their happy nonsense, filling the sweet, mellow, waving woods with their laughter! They pushed down to the river, though the walk was somewhat longer than Mary cared for, and brought her to the glade in which the two runaways had eaten their dinner, and where Vi had been found asleep on Val’s shoulder. “It looks exactly as it did then; but how different we are!” cried Violet, on the warm green bank where her shoes and stockings had been put to dry. Mary sat down on the sunny grass, and watched them as they poked into all the corners they remembered, and called to them with maternal tremblings, when the boy once more led the girl across the stepping-stones to the great boulder by the side of which Esk foamed and flashed. She asked herself, was it possible that this bold brown boy would ever turn out to be like his father? and tried to recollect whether Richard had ever been so kind, so considerate of any one’s comfort as Val was of Vi’s. Was it perhaps possible that, instead of her own failure, this romance, so prettily begun, might come to such a climax of happiness as romances all feign to end in? Mary, I fear, though she was so sensible, became slightly foolish as she sat under the big beech, and looked at the two in the middle of the stream together, Esk roaring by over his rocks, and making the words with which she called them back quite inaudible. How handsome Val looked, and how pretty and poetic his little companion! The bank of wood opposite was all tinted with autumn colour, rich and warm. It was a picture which any painter would have loved, and it went to Mary’s heart.
“But you are too big, Val, to play at the Babes in the Wood nowadays,” said old Lady Eskside, with a little wrinkle in her brow, when she heard of the freak; “and I wonder the Pringles leave that poor little thing by herself at the Hewan, sometimes for days together. They say it’s for her health; but I think it would be much better for her health if she were under her mother’s eye.”
“You must remember that I was with them,” said Mary, “representing her mother, or a middle-aged supervision at least.”
“My dear,” said Lady Eskside, half angry, half smiling, as she shook her finger at her favourite, “I have my doubts that you are just a romantic gowk; though you might know better.”
“Yes, I might know better—if experience could teach,” said Mary; but experience so seldom teaches, notwithstanding all that is said to the contrary. And Mary could not but reflect that Lady Eskside had not frowned, but smiled, upon her own delusion. Perhaps in such cases parental frowns are safer than smiles.
Therewas a great dinner at Rosscraig before Val went to Oxford: as much fuss made about him, the neighbours began to say, as was made for his father who came home so seldom, and had distinguished himself in diplomacy, and turned out to be a man of whom the county could be proud; whereas Val was but an untried boy going to college, of whom no one could as yet say how he would turn out. Mr Pringle was invited to this great ceremonial, partly by way of defiance to show him how popular the heir was, and partly (for the two sentiments are not incapable of conjunction) out of kindness, as recognising his relationship. He came, and he listened to the remarks, couched in mysterious terms, yet comprehensible enough, which were made as to Val’s future connection with the county, in grim silence. After dinner, when the ladies had retired, and as the wine began to circulate, these allusions grew broader, and at length Mr Pringle managed to make out very plainly that old Lord Eskside was already electioneering, though his candidate was but nineteen, and for the moment there was very little chance of a new election. Val, careless of the effect he was intended to produce, and quite unconscious of his grandfather’s motives, was letting loose freely his boyish opinions, all marked, as we have said, with the Eton mark, which may be described as Conservative in the gross, with no very clear idea what the word means in detail, but a charming determination to stick to it, right or wrong. Lord Eskside smiled benignly upon these effusions, and so did most of his guests. “He has the root of the matter in him,” said the old lord, addressing Sir John, who was as anxious as himself to have “a good man” elected for the county, but who had no son, grandson, or nephew of his own;and Sir John nodded back in genial sympathy. Mr Pringle, however, as was natural, being on the opposite side from the Rosses in everything, was also on the other side in politics, and maintained an eloquent silence during this part of the entertainment. He bided his time, and when there came a lull in the conversation (a thing that will happen occasionally), he made such an interpellation as showed that his silence arose from no want of inclination to speak.
“Your sentiments are most elevated, Valentine,” he said, “but your practice is democratical to an extent I should scarcely have looked for from your father’s son. I hope your friend the boatman at Eton is flourishing—the one you introduced to my daughter and me?”
“A boatman at Eton,” said the old lord, bending his brows, “introduced to Violet? You are dreaming, Pringle. I hope Val knows better than that.”
“Indeed I think it shows very fine feeling on Valentine’s part—this was one of nature’s noblemen, I gathered from what he said.”
“Nature’s fiddlestick!” exclaimed Lord Eskside, and the Tory gentlemen pricked up their ears. There was scarcely one of them who did not recollect, or find himself on the eve of recollecting, at that moment, that Val’s mother was “not a lady,” and that blood would out.
“I introduced him to you as a boatman, sir,” said Val, “not as anything else; though as for noblemen, Brown is worth twenty such as I have known with handles to their names. We get to estimate people by their real value at Eton, not by their accidental rank,” said the youth splendidly, at which Mr Pringle cried an ironical “Hear, hear!”
“Gently, gently, my young friend,” said Sir John. “Rank is a great power in this world, and not to be lightly spoken of; it does not become you to speak lightly of it; and it does not agree with your fine Tory principles, of which I warmly approve.”
“What have Tory principles to do with it?” said Val. “A fellow may be rowdy or a snob though he is a lord; and in that case at Eton, sir, whatever may happen at other places, we give him the cold shoulder. I don’t mean to set up Eton for an example,” said Val, gravely, at which there was a general roar.
“Bravo, bravo, my young Tory!” cried the Duke himself, no less a person, who on that night honoured Lord Eskside’s table. “In that respect, if you are right, Etonisan example, let any one who pleases take the other side.”
“If Wales had been at Eton, and had been wowdy, we’d have sent him to Coventry as soon as look at him,” said Lord Hightowers, smoothing an infantile down on his upper lip.
“A very fine sentiment; but I don’t know if the antagonistic principle would work,” said Mr Pringle. “I am a Liberal, as everybody knows; but I don’t care about admitting boatmen to my intimacy, however much I may contemn an unworthy peer.”
“Did Brown intrude upon you?” said Valentine, bewildered; “was he impudent? did he do anything he oughtn’t to? Though I could almost as soon believe that I had behaved like a cad myself, if you say so I’ll go down directly and kick the fellow.” And poor Valentine, flushed and excited, half rose from his seat.
“Bwown!” said Lord Hightowers from the other side of the table. “Beg your pardon, but you’re mistaken; you must be mistaken. Bwown! best fellow that ever lived. Awfully sorry he’s not a gentleman; but for a cad—no, not a cad—a common sort of working fellow, he’s the nicest fellow I ever saw. Couldn’t have been impudent—not possible. It ain’t in him, eh, Ross? or else I’d go and kick him too with pleasure,” said the young aristocrat calmly.
Between the fire of these two pairs of young eyes, Mr Pringle was somewhat taken aback.
“Oh, he was not impudent; on the contrary, a well-informed nice young fellow. My only wonder was, that young gentlemen of your anti-democratical principles should make a bosom friend of a man of the people—that’s all. For my part, I think it does you infinite credit,” said Mr Pringle, blandly. “I hope you have been having good sport at Castleton, Lord Hightowers. You ought to have come out to my little moor at Dalrulzian, Val. I don’t know when the boys have had better bags.”
And thus the conversation fell back into its ordinary channels; indeed it had done so before this moment, the battle about Brown having quickly failed to interest the other members of the party. Lord Eskside sat bending his brows and straining his mind to hear, but as he had the gracious converse of a Duke to attend to, he couldnot actually forsake that potentate to make out the chatter of the boys with his adversary. Thus Mr Pringle fired his first successful shot at Val. The Tory gentlemen forgot the story, but they remembered to have heard something or other of a love of low company on the part of Valentine Ross, “which, considering that nobody ever knew who his mother was, was perhaps not to be wondered at,” some of the good people said. When Lady Eskside heard of it, she was so much excited by the malice of the suggestion, and expressed her feelings so forcibly, that Val blazed up into one of his violent sudden passions, and was rushing out to show Mr Pringle himself what was thought of his conduct, when his grandfather caught him and arrested him. “Do you want to make fools of us all with your intemperate conduct, sir?” cried the old lord, fire flashing from under his heavy brows. “It is only a child that resents a slight like this—a man must put up with a great deal and make no sign. ‘Let the galled jade wince; my withers are unwrung.’ That is the sort of sentiment that becomes us.” I don’t know if this good advice would have mollified Val but for the sudden appearance just then at one of the windows which opened on the terrace, of Violet in her blue gown, whose innocent eyes turned to them with a look which seemed to say, “Don’t, oh don’t, for my sake!” Of course Violet knew nothing about it, and meant nothing by her looks. It was the expression habitual to her, that was all; but as the old man and the young, one hot with fury, the other calming down his rage, perceived the pretty figure outside, the old lord dropped, as if it burned him, his hold on Val’s arm, and Val himself stopped short, and, so to speak, lowered his weapons. “Is my lady in, please?” said Violet through the glass—which was all she had wanted to ask, with those sweet imploring looks. They opened the window for her eagerly, and she stepped in like something dropped out of the sky, in her blue gown, carrying her native colour with her. After this Val could not quite make out what it was that he had against Mr Pringle, until Violet in her innocence brought the subject up.
“Mamma was scolding papa for something—something about Valentine,” said Violet. “I did not hear what it was.”
“Indeed your papa seems to have spoken in far from a nice spirit, my dear, though I don’t like to say it to you,” said Lady Eskside. “What was it about, Val? some boatman whom he called your bosom friend.”
“Oh!” cried Violet, clasping her hands together, “it must have been Mr Brown. Papa used to talk of him for long and long after.”
“And did you think, Violet,” said the old lady, severely, “that my boy made him his bosom friend?”
“Oh, Lady Eskside! he was so nice and so grateful to Val. I took such a fancy to him,” cried Vi, with a blush and a smile, “because he was so grateful. He said Mr Ross had done everything for him. Bosom friend! He looked—I don’t think I ever saw a man look so before—women do sometimes,” said Violet, with precocious comprehension—“as if he would have liked to be hurt or done some harm to for Val’s sake.”
“It is the boy I told you about, grandma,” said Val—“the one that Grinder made himself disagreeable about; as if a fellow couldn’t try to be of use to any other fellow without being had up! He rowed them up the river on the 4th of June. He ain’t my bosom friend,” he added, laughing; “but I’d rather have him to stand by me in a crowd than any one I know—so that Mr Pringle was right.”
“But he did not mean it so; it was ill-meant, it was ill-meant!” cried Lady Eskside. Violet looked at them both with entreating looks.
“Papa may have said something wrong, but I am sure he did not mean it,” said Vi, with the dew coming to her pretty eyes. Lady Eskside shook her head; but as for Val, his anger had stolen away out of his heart like the moisture on the grass when the sun comes out; but the sun at the moment had an azure radiance shining out of a blue gown.
After this Val went off to the University with a warm sense of his approaching manhood, and a new independence of feeling. He went to Balliol naturally, as the college of his country, and there fell into the hands of Mr Gerald Grinder, who had condescended to be the boy’s private tutor long ago, just before he attained to the glories of his fellowship. Boys were thus passed up along the line among the Grinder family, which had an excellent connection, and throve well. Val was not clever enough nor studious enough to furnish the ambitious heads of his college with a future first-class man; but as he had one great and well-established quality, they received him with more than ordinary satisfaction; for even at Balliol, has not the most sublime of colleges a certain respect for its place on the river? I have heard of such a thing as a Boating scholarship, the nominal examination for which is made very light indeed to famous oars; but anyhow, Val, though perhaps a very stiff matriculation paper might have floored him, got in upon comparatively easy terms. I will not say much about his successes, nor even insist on the fact that Oxford was an easy winner on the river that triumphant day when Lichen rowed stroke and Val bow in the University boat, and all the small Etonians roared so, under their big hats, that it was a mercy none of them exploded. Val did well, though not brilliantly, in his University career, as he had done at Eton. He had a little difficulty now and then with his hasty temper, but otherwise came to no harm; and thus, holding his own in intellectual matters, and doing more than hold his own in other points that rank quite as high in Oxford, as in the rest of the academical world, made his way to his majority. I believe it crossed Lord Eskside’s mind now and then to think that in Parliament it was very soon forgotten whether a man had been bow or even stroke of the ‘Varsity boat; and that it could count for little in political life, and for less than nothing with the sober constituency of a Scotch county; but then, as all the youth of England, and all the instructors of that youth, set much store by the distinction, even an anxious parent (not to say grandfather) is mollified. “What good will all that nonsense do him?” the old lord would growl, working his shaggy eyebrows, as he read in the papers, even the most intellectual, a discussion of Val’s sinews and breadth of chest and “form” before the great race was rowed. “At least it cannot do him any harm,” said my lady, always and instantly on the defensive; “and I don’t see why you should grudge our boy the honour that other folks’ boys would give their heads for.” “Other folks’ boys may be foolish if they like—I am concerned only for my own,” said Lord Eskside; “what does the county care for his bow-ing or his stroke-ing? it’s a kind of honour that will stand little wear and tear, however much you may think of it, my lady.” But to tell the truth, I don’t think my lady in her soul did think very much of it, except in so far that it was her principle to stand up for most things that pleased Val.
In the meantime, however, the departure of Val fromEton had produced a much more striking effect upon some nameless persons than on any of his other friends. Dick missed him with unfeigned and unconcealed regret. He insisted upon carrying his bag to the station for him; notwithstanding the cab which conveyed Val’s other effects; and went home again in very depressed spirits, after having bidden him good-bye. But Dick’s depression was nothing to that with which his mother sat gazing blankly over the river, with that look in her eyes which had for some time departed from them—that air of looking for something which she could not find, which had made her face so remarkable. She had never quite lost it, it is true; but the hope which used to light up her eyes of seeing, however far off, that one boat which she never failed to recognise shooting up or down the stream, had softened her expression wonderfully, and brought her back, as it were, to the things surrounding her. Val, though she saw so little of him, was as an anchor of her heart to the boy’s mother. The consciousness that he was near, that she should hear his name, see the shadow of him flitting across the brightness of the river, or that even when he was absent, a few weeks would bring back those dim and forlorn delights to her, kept the wild heart satisfied. This strange visionary absorption in the boy she had given up did not lessen her attachment to the boy she retained—the good Dick, who had always been so good a son to her. She thought that she had totally given up Val; and certainly she never hoped, nor even desired, any more of him than she had from her window. Indeed, in her dim perpetual ponderings on this subject, the poor soul had come to feel that it could be no comfort, but much the reverse, to Val, to find out that she was his mother. Had any hope of the possibility of revealing herself to him ever been in her mind, it would have disappeared after their first interview. After that she had always kept in the background on the occasions when he came to see Dick, and had received his “Good morning” without anything but a curtsy. No, alas! a gentleman like that, with all the consciousness about him of a position so different,—with that indescribable air of belonging to the highest class which the poor tramp-woman recognised at once, remembering her brief and strange contact with it—a gentleman like that to have a mother like herself revealed to him—a mother from the road, from the fairs and racecourses! She almost criedout with fright when she thought of the possibility, and made a vow to herself that never, never would she expose Valentine to this horror and shame. No! she had made her bed, and she must lie upon it.
But when he went away, the visionary support which had sustained her visionary nature—the something out of herself which had kept her wild heart satisfied—failed all at once. It was as if a blank had suddenly been spread before the eyes that were always looking for what they could find no more. She never spoke of it—never wept, nor made any demonstration of the change; but she flagged in her life and her spirit all at once. Her work, which she had up to this time got through with an order and swiftness strangely at variance with all the habits which her outdoor life might have been supposed to form, began to drag, and be a weariness to her. She had no longer the inducement to get it over, to be free for the enjoyment of her window. Sometimes she would sit drearily down in the midst of it, with her face turned to the stream by a forlorn habit, and thus Dick would find her sometimes when he came in to dinner. “You are not well, mother,” the lad said, anxiously. “Oh yes, quite well; the likes of me is never ill—till we die,” she would say, with a dreamy smile. “You have too much work, mother,” said Dick; “I can’t have you working so hard—have a girl to help you; we’ve got enough money to afford it, now I’m head man.” “Do you think I’ve gone useless, then?” she would ask, with some indignation, rousing herself; and thus these little controversies always terminated.
But Dick watched her, with a wonder growing in his mind. She was very restless during the autumn, yet when the dark days of winter came, relapsed into a half-stupefied quiet. Even when Val was at Eton, he had of course been invisible on the river during the winter. “The spring will be the pull,” Dick said to himself, wondering, with an anguish which it would be difficult to describe, whether it was his duty to pull up the stakes of this homely habitation, which he had fixed as he thought so securely for himself, and to abandon his work and his living, and the esteem of his neighbours, to resume for her sake the wanderings which he loathed; could it be his duty? A poor lad, reared at the cost of visible privations by a very poor mother, has a better idea of the effort and of the sacrifice made for him, than ayoung man of a higher class for whom even more bitter sacrifices may have been made. Dick knew what it must have cost the poor tramp-woman to bring him up as she had done, securing him bread always, keeping him from evil communications, even having him taught a little in his childhood. For a tramp to have her child taught to read and write involves as much as Eton and Oxford would to another; and Dick was as much above the level of his old companions in education as a university prizeman is above the common mass; and he knew what it must have cost her, therein having an advantage over many boys, who never realise what they have cost their parents till these parents are beyond all reach of gratitude. Was it, then, his duty to give up everything, his own very life, and open the doors of her prison-house to this woman to whom he owed his life? Such questions come before many of us in this world, and have to be solved one way or other. Our own life, independence, and use; or the happiness of those who have guarded and reared us, though without giving up their all to us, as we are called upon to do for them. Perhaps it is a question which women have to decide upon more often than men. Dick thrust it away from him as long as he could, trying not to think of it, and watching his mother with an anxiety beyond words, as the days lengthened, and the spring freshness came back, and the Brocas elms got their first wash of green. Sometimes he saw her give an unconscious gasp as if for breath, as though the confined air of the room stifled her. Sometimes he found her half bent out of the open window, with her rapt eyes gazing, not at the river, but away over the distant fields. She got paler and thinner every day before his eyes; and he owed everything (he thought) to her, and what was he to do?
What the sacrifice would have been to Dick, I dare not calculate. In these three years he had become known to everybody about, and was universally liked and trusted. He was his master’s right-hand man. He had begun to know what comfort was, what it was to have a little money, (delightful sensation!) what it was to get on in the world. The tramp-boys about the roads, and the new lads who were taken on at the rafts, attracted his sympathy, but it was the sympathy of a person on a totally different level—who had indeed been as they were, but who had long gone over their heads, and was of a class and of habits totally different.Had Lord Hightowers been called upon to divest himself of his title, and become simple John Seton in an engineer’s workshop, the humiliation would not have been comparable to that which Dick would have endured had he been compelled to degrade himself again into a vagrant, a frequenter of fairs and races. Indeed I think Lord Hightowers would rather have liked the change, being of a mechanical turn,—while to Dick the thought was death. It made him sick and faint to think of the possibility. But, on the other hand, was he to let his mother pine and die like a caged eagle? or let her go away from him, to bear all the inevitable privations alone?
One day the subject was finally forced upon his consideration in such a way that he could not disregard it. When he went home to his early dinner, she was gone. Everything was arranged for him with more care than usual, his meal left by the fire, his table laid, and the landlady informed him that his mother had left word she would not be back till night. Dick did not run wildly off in search of her, as some people would have done. He had to look after his work, whatever happened. He swallowed his dinner hastily, a prey to miserable thoughts. It had come then at last, this misfortune which he had so long foreseen! Could he let her wander off alone to die of cold and weariness behind some hedge? After the three years’ repose, her change of habits, and the declining strength which he could not deceive himself about, how could she bear those privations alone? No, it was impossible. Dick reviewed the whole situation bitterly enough, poor fellow. He knew what everybody would say: how it was the vagrant blood breaking out in him again; how it was, once a tramp always a tramp; how it was a pity—but a good thing, on the whole, that he had done nothing wild and lawless before he left. And some would regret him, Dick thought, brushing his hand across his eyes—“the gentlemen” generally, among whom he had many fast friends. Dick decided that he would do nothing rash. He would not give up his situation, and give notice of leaving to the landlady, till he had first had a talk with his mother; but he “tidied” the room after his solitary dinner with a forlorn sense of the general breaking up of all his comforts—and went to his afternoon’s work with a heavy heart.
It was quite late when she came home. He could hearby her steps upon the stair that she was almost too tired to drag one foot after another, as he ran to open the door for her. Poor soul! she came in carrying a basket of primroses, which she held out to him with a pathetic smile. “Take them, Dick; I’ve been far to get ’em, and you used to be fond of them when you were little,” she said, dropping wearily into the nearest seat. She was pale, and had been crying, he could see; and her abstract eyes looked at him humbly, beseechingly, like the eyes of a dumb creature, which can express a vague anguish but cannot explain.
“Was it forthemyou went, mother?” cried Dick, with momentary relief: but this was turned into deeper distress when she shook her head, and burst out into a low moaning and crying that was pitiful to hear.
“No,” she said,—“no, no, it wasn’t for them; it was to try my strength; and I can’t do it, Dick—I can’t do it, no more, never no more. The strength has gone out of me. I’m dying for free air and the road—but I can’t do it, no more, no more!”
Poor Dick went and knelt down by her side, and took her hand into his. He was glad, and conscience-stricken, and full of pity for her, and understanding of her trouble. “Hush, mother! hush!” he said; “don’t cry. You’re weakly after the long winter, as I’ve seen you before——”
“No, lad, no,” she cried, rocking herself in her chair; “no, I’ll never be able for it again—no more, no more!”
Dick never said a word of the tumult in his own mind: he tried to comfort her, prophesying—though heaven knows how much against his own interests!—that she would soon feel stronger, and coaxed her to eat and drink, and at length prevailed upon her to go to bed. Now that they had become comparatively rich, she had the little room behind which had once been Dick’s, and he was promoted to a larger chamber up-stairs. He sat up there, poor fellow, as long as he could keep awake, wondering what he must do. Could it be that he was glad that his mother was less strong? or was it his duty to lose no time further, but to take her away by easy stages to the open air that was necessary for her, and the fields that she loved? Dick’s heart contracted, and bitter tears welled up into his eyes. But he felt that he must think of himself no longer, only of her. That was the one thing self-evident, which required no reasoning to make clear.
The next day a letter came from Valentine Ross, the first sign of his existence all this time, which changed entirely the current of affairs.
Val’sletter was of a character sufficiently exciting to have made Dick forget anything less important than the crisis which had thus arrived. Its object was to invite him to Oxford, to a place somewhat similar to that which he had held at Eton, in one of the great boating establishments on the river. The master was old, and wanted somebody of trust to superintend and manage his business, with a reasonable hope of succeeding to him. “You had better come up and talk it over,” wrote Val, ever peremptory. “I have always said you must rise in the world, and here is the opportunity for you. They have too much regard for you at Eton to keep you from doing what would be so very advantageous; therefore come up at once and look after it.” Dick’s heart, which had been beating very low in his honest breast, overwhelmed with fear and forebodings, gave one leap of returning confidence; but then he reflected that his mother must be made the final judge, and with a sickening pang of suspense he “knocked off” his work, and rowed himself across to the little house at the corner. His mother was wearied and languid with her long walk on the day before. She had paused in the midst of her morning occupations, and Dick found her seated in the middle of the room, with her back turned to the window, and her face supported on her hands. She was gazing at the wall opposite, much as she gazed into the distant landscape, not seeing it, but longing to see through it—to see something she could not see. She started when Dick came in, and smiled at him deprecating and humble. “I was resting a moment,” she said, with an air of apology that went to his heart. “Have you forgotten something, Dick?”
“No, mother, but I’ve heard of something,” he said, taking out his letter. This made her sit upright, and flushed her cheek suddenly with a surprised alarm for whichhe could not account—for which, she herself could not account; for it was perhaps the first time in her life that it had occurred to her what would happen if Dick found out the secret of his own story. The possibility of Valentine doing so had crossed her mind, and she had shrunk from it. But what if Dick should find out? the idea had never entered her imagination before.
“It’s a letter from Mr Ross, mother,” said Dick, steadily looking at her. “He says he has heard of a place for me at Oxford where he is himself—a place where I should be almost master at once, have everything to manage, and might succeed, and get it into my own hands. Mother! that would please you? Now to think you should likethatwhen you can’t endure this! It would be the same kind of place.”
“Don’t be hard upon me, Dick,” she said, faltering, and turning away her eyes that he might not see the strange light in them—which she was herself aware must be too remarkable to be overlooked. “I can’t answer for my feelings. It’s a change, I suppose—a change that I want. My old way I can’t go back to, for more things than one. I’m too weak and old; and more than that, I’m changed in my mind. Dick, I think it will be a comfort to you to tell you. It ain’t only my limbs, boy, nor my strength. My mind’s changed; I couldn’t go on the tramp again.”
“No, mother? thank God!”
“I don’t thank God,” she said, shaking her head. “I am not glad; but so it is, and I want a change. Let us go, boy. Please God, I’ll be happier there.”
“Mother,” said Dick, anxiously, “your looks are changed all at once. I’m going to ask you a curious question. Has it anything to do with—Mr Ross?”
She made no answer for the moment, but leant her head upon her hands, and looked vaguely at the wall.
“I know it’s a curious question,” repeated Dick, with an attempt at a smile. “But you were satisfied as long as he was here; and since he’s gone you have fallen back—only since he’s gone! You never got that longing sort of look while he was here. What has Mr Ross to do with you and me? Mother—don’t you suppose I think it’s anything wrong, for I don’t—but what has he to do with you and me?”
“Nothing—nothing, Dick,” she cried—“nothing; never will have, never can have. Don’t ask me. When I wasyoung, when I was a girl, I knew his—people—his—father. There, that’s all. I never meant to have said as much. There is nothing wrong. Yes, I suppose it’s him I miss somehow. Not that he is half to me, or quarter to me, that you are—or anything to me at all.”
“It’s very strange,” said Dick, troubled; “and somehowIfeel for him as I never felt for anybody else. You knew his—father——?”
“I won’t have any questions from you, Dick,” she cried passionately, rising from her chair. “I told you I knew his—people. Some time or other I’ll tell you how I knew them; but not now.”
“I wonder does he know anything about it,” said Dick, speaking more to himself than her. “It’s very strange; he said he thought you were a lady, mother; and that he had seen you before——”
“Did he? God bless him!” cried the woman, surprised by sudden tears. “But I ain’t a lady—I ain’t a lady,” she added, under her breath; “he was wrong there.”
“You have some lady ways, mother, now and again,” said Dick, pondering. “Itisstrange. If you knew his people, as you say, does he know?”
“Not a word, Dick, and he mustn’t know. Remember, if it was my last word—hemustn’t know! Promise me you’ll not speak. If he knew and they knew—they’d—I don’t know what they mightn’t do. Dick, you will never betray your mother?—you will never—never——”
“Hush, mother dear; you are worrying yourself for nothing,” said her gentle boy. “If there’s nothing wrong, what could they or anybody do? Of course, I won’t say a word. All the safer,” he added, with a laugh, “because I don’t know what words to say. When you keep me dark, mother, I can’t give out any light to other people, can I? It’s the surest way.”
She took no notice of this implied reproof, the most severe that had ever come from Dick’s gentle lips. She was another creature altogether from the languid woman whom he had found sitting there in the midst of the untidy room. A new light had come into her eyes—all her stupor and weariness were over. Dick was startled, and he was a trifle hurt at the same time, which was natural enough. If there had been any material for jealousy in him, I think it must have developed at that moment—for all his love had not called forthfrom his mother one tittle of the feeling which to all appearance an utter stranger awoke. Dick sighed, but his nature was not in the smallest degree self-contemplative; and he shook the momentary feeling away ere it had time to take form. “If I can get leave, I’ll go up to Oxford and see about it to-morrow,” he said. When he had come to this conclusion, he went towards the door to return to his work, leaving her active and revived, both in mind and body. But he stopped before he reached it, and turned back. “Mother,” he said, with a little solemnity, “Mr Ross will be only about two years at Oxford. What shall we do when he goes away? We cannot follow him about wherever he goes.”
“God knows,” she said, stopping short in her sweeping. “Perhaps the world may end before then; perhaps——. We can’t tell,” she added solemnly, bowing her head as if to supreme destiny, “what may happen any day or any year. It’s all in God’s hand.”
Dick went away without another word. He arranged to go to Oxford, and did so, and found Val, and finally made an agreement to take the situation offered him; but this little prick to his pride and affection rankled in his mind. Why should Mr Ross be so much more to her than himself, her son, who had never left her side? “It is strange,” he said, with a sense of injury, which grew fainter every moment, yet still lingered. He looked at Val with more interest than ever, and a curious feeling of somehow belonging to him. What could the link be? Dick knew very little about his own history; he did not know whose son he was, nor what his mother had been. The idea, indeed, gleamed across his mind that Val’s father might have been his own father, and this thought gave him no such thrill of pain and shame as it would naturally have brought to a young man brought up in a different class. Dick, with the terrible practical knowledge of human nature which belongs to the lower levels of society, knew that such things happened often enough; and if he felt a little movement in his mind of unpleasant feeling, he was neither horrified by the suggestion of such a possibility, nor felt his mother lowered in his eyes. Whatever the facts were, they were beyond his ken; and it was not for him to judge them. Pondering it over, however, he came to feel with a little relief that this could not be the solution. He knew what the manners of his class were, and he knew that his motherhad always been surrounded by that strange abstract atmosphere of reserve and modesty which no one else of her degree resembled her in. No, that could not be the explanation. Perhaps she had recognised in Val the son of some love of her youth whom she had kept in her thoughts throughout all her rougher life. This was a strangely visionary hypothesis, and Dick felt how unreal it was; but what other explanation could he make?
The situation at Oxford was a great “rise in the world” to Dick. It was a place of trust, with much better wages than he had at Eton, and a little house close to the river-side. His Eton employer grumbled a little, and said something about a want of gratitude, as employers are so apt to do; but eventually it was all arranged to Dick’s satisfaction and benefit. He and his mother took possession of the little house in May, so quickly was the bargain made; and when she made her first appearance at Oxford, she had put off the last lingering remnants of the tramp, and looked after the furniture and fittings-up with a languid show of pleasure in them, such as she had never exhibited before. She changed her dress, too, to Dick’s infinite pleasure. She put off the coloured handkerchief permanently from her head, and adopted a head-dress something of the same shape,—a kerchief of white net tied under her chin, which threw up her still beautiful face, and impressed every one who saw her with Val’s idea that she had been a lady once. This strange head-gear, and the plain black gown without flounces or ornament which she wore constantly, made people think her some sort of a nun; and the new man at Styles’ and his mother became notable on the river-side. They had a little garden to the house, and this, too, seemed to please her. She filled it with common sweet-smelling flowers, and worked in it with a new-born love for this corner of earth which she could call hers; and every day she stood looking over her little garden-wall, and saw Val and his boat go by. This kept the rhythm of her life in cadence, and she was livelier and more ready in conversation and intercourse with her good son than she had ever been before.
As for Val, after the kind thought which made him send for Dick and warmly plead his cause with the boat-builder on the river-side, there were moments when he felt a certain embarrassment about what he had done. Dick, too, had changed, as well as himself. He could not speak to him asof old, or give him half-crowns, or trust to him to do whatever he wished. In the last case, indeed, he might have trusted Dick entirely; for his gratitude, and what is more, his affection, for his young patron, was unbounded. But Val no longer liked to suggest what Dick would have been but too happy to do. The vagrant whom he had taken up had become in a manner Val’s equal. He was wiser than the other, though he did not know a tenth part so much; and though he owed everything he was to Val’s boyish interposition in his favour, yet he had a great deal in him which Val had not originated, and which, indeed, was quite beyond him. The undergraduate of high degree did not know how to treat the young man who was still so lowly. He could not ask him to his rooms, or bid him to eat at his own table, half out of a lingering social prejudice, half because he had an uncomfortable knowledge of what people would say. He was as much his friend as ever, but he did not know how to show it. Now and then he went to the little house, but Dick’s mother gave him sensations so very strange that he did not care to go often; and had he gone very often, his tutor, no doubt, would have taken notice of the fact, and set it down to a love of low society, as his Eton tutor had done; altogether, the situation was full of embarrassment, and the intercourse not half so easy as it had been. To be sure, the external advantages were certain; Dick had a much better situation and a bright prospect before him, and this was so much gained. Val’s advice to him about rising in the world had been wonderfully carried out. He had risen in the world, and got on the steps of the ladder. Indeed, Dick might almost have been said to have attained all that a person of his class could ever attain; he might make a great deal more money, but he could not materially advance his position. Val was still, and perhaps more than ever, above him, since as they both progressed into manhood, their respective positions began to be more sharply defined: and nothing in the world could ever make it possible for Lord Eskside’s heir to say to the young boat-builder, “Come up higher.” And yet Val had lost all power of treating him as an inferior. It was a curious problem, infinitely more difficult, as was natural, to the generous young fellow on the higher level, than to the lowlier lad who made no pretensions to any sort of dignity, and never “stood upon” a quality which he did not suppose himself to possess.
There happened, however, a curious incident in Val’s last summer at Oxford, which he indeed did not know, but which affected Dick strangely enough. One summer morning (it was in Commemoration week, when the mornings are somewhat languid) Dick’s mother was seated in the little parlour facing the river, which her son had furnished with all the care of an untaughtvirtuoso. Half the things in it were of his own making; but there were many trifles besides which he had “picked up,” with that curious natural fancy for things pretty and unusual which was innate in him. It was a strange incongruous room. The floor was covered with a square of old Turkey carpet, the subdued harmonious colours of which, and soft mossy texture, were Dick’s delight. The little table, covered with the old faded embroidered shawl, stood in the window; an old-fashioned glass which Dick had “picked up” was on the mantelpiece, reflecting some china vases which his mother had bought, and which showed her taste to be of a different character from his. Prettily carved bookcases of his making were fitted into the corners; and a common deal table, without any cover, stood just under one of them, with a large brown earthenware basin on it, before which his mother sat shelling peas for Dick’s dinner. She had “a girl” now to help her with the work, and it was her son’s desire that she should sit in the parlour. But as it was not within the poor soul’s possibilities to shut herself up to needlework or any lady-like occupation, she brought in her peas to shell there, and sat alone, contented enough, yet oppressed with the sense that within a few days the same blank which she had before experienced would fall on the earth and skies. It was a bright morning, still cool but full of sunshine, which just touched the old-fashioned window-sill, upon which lay Dick’s carving materials and a book or two—not, I am sorry to say, books intended to be read, but only to get designs out of, and suggestions for work. The river lay broad in the sunshine, relieved by here and there the bright green of some willows: the softened sounds outside, the soft silence within, were harmonious with the subdued sensations of the lonely woman, in whom all seemed stilled too for the moment. The shadow hung over her, but it had not yet fallen, and her mind was less excited than it had been—more able to endure, less intolerant of pain.