I amafraid I cannot tell any one “which” it was that poor Val had, not having any medical knowledge. He was very ill, and lay there for the week during which Dick was absent on his master’s affairs, knowing nobody, often delirious, never himself, unable to send any message, or even to think of those he had left behind, who knew nothing of him. He talked of them, raved about them when his mind wandered, sometimes saying things which conveyed some intelligence to the mind of the anxious woman who watched over him, and often uttering phrases which she listened to eagerly, but which were all blank and dark to her. Poor soul! how she watched, how she strained her ear for every word he said. Her own, thus, once more; thus at last in her hands, with none to come between them; dependent on her—receiving from her the tendance of weary days and sleepless nights. Receiving from her, not she from him—eating her bread even, so to speak, though he could eat nothing—living under her roof—dependent on her, as a son should be on a mother. I cannot describe the forlorn sweetness there was to her in this snatch of nature, this sudden, unexpected, impossible crisis which, for the time, gave her her son. I do not know if it ever occurred to her mind that the others who had a right to him might be wondering what had become of their boy. Even now her mind was not sufficiently developed to dwell upon this. She thought only that she had him—she, and no other. She closed her doors, and answered all questions sparingly, and admitted nobody shecould help; for what had anybody to do with him but she? When the doctor asked if she had written to his friends, she nodded her head or said “Yes, yes,” impatiently. His friends! who were they in comparison to his mother? They had had him all his life—she had him for so short a time, so very, very short a time!—why should any one come and interfere? She could get him everything he wanted, could give up all her time to watch him and nurse him. Once she said, when the doctor pressed her, “I have let his mother know;” and he was satisfied with the reply. “If his mother knows, of course it is all right,” he said. “Oh yes, yes,” she cried, “his mother knows;” and what more was necessary? She had not the faintest intention of revealing herself to him afterwards, of taking the advantage of all she was doing for him. No! it seemed to her that she could die easier than say to Val, “I am your mother;” a subtle instinct in her—delicacy of perception communicated by love alone—made her feel that Val would receive the news with no delight—that to be made aware that she was his mother would be no joy to him; and she would have died rather than betray herself. But to have him there, unconscious as he was, “wandering in his mind,” not knowing her, or any one—but yet with her as if he had been a baby again, dependent on her, receiving everything from her! No words can say what this was. She passed the time in a strange trance of exquisite mingled pleasure and pain; suffering now and then to see him ill, to feel that he did not know her, and if he knew her, would not care for her; suffering, too, from the sleepless nights to which she was totally unaccustomed, and the close confinement to one room, though scarcely realising what it was that made her head so giddy and her sensations so unusual; but all the time and through all the suffering rapt in a haze of deep enjoyment—a happiness sacred and unintelligible, with which no one could intermeddle; which no one even knew or could understand but herself. She had no fear for Valentine’s life; though the doctor looked very grave, it did not affect her; and though her brain was keen and clear to understand the instructions he gave, and to follow them with pertinacious, unvarying, almost unreasoning exactitude, she did not study his looks, or ask with brooding anxiety his opinion, as most other women in her circumstances would have done. She never asked his opinion, indeed, at all. She was merely anxious,not at all afraid; or if she was afraid, it was rather of her patient getting well than dying. The doctor, who was the only one who beheld this strange sickbed, was more puzzled than tongue could tell. What did the woman mean? she was utterly devoted to the sick man—devoted to him as only love can be; but she was not anxious, which love always is. It was a puzzle which he could not understand.
In a week Dick came back. He had been away on his master’s business, being now a trusted and confidential servant, with the management of everything in his hands. It was Easter week, too, and his business had been combined with a short holiday for himself. His mother was not in the habit of writing to him, though she did, in some small degree at least, possess the accomplishment of writing—so that he came home, utterly ignorant of what had happened, on one of those chilly March evenings when the light lengthens and the cold strengthens, according to the proverb. Dick was tired, and the landscape, though it was home, looked somewhat dreary to him as he arrived; the river was swollen, and muddy, and rapid; the east wind blanching colour and beauty out of everything; a pale sunset just over, and a sullen twilight settling down, tinting with deep shadows and ghastly white gleams of light the cold water. He shivered in spite of himself. The door was not standing open as usual, nor was there any light in the little parlour. He had to stand and knock, and then, when no one answered, went round to the back door (which was his usual entrance, though he had chosen the other way to-night) to get in. The kitchen was vacant, the maid having gone to the doctor’s for poor Val’s medicine. Dick went into the parlour, and found it dreary and deserted, looking as if no one had been there for months. Finally, he went up-stairs, and found his mother at the door of a bedroom coming to meet him. “I thought it must be you,” she said, “but I could not leave him.” “Leave him? Leave whom, mother? what do you mean?” he said, bewildered. “Hush, hush,” she cried, looking back anxiously into the room she had just left; then she came out closing the door softly after her. “Come in here,” she said, opening the next door, which was that of his own room. “I can speak to you here; and if he stirs I’ll hear him.” Dick followed her with the utmost astonishment, not knowing what his mother meant, or if she had gone out of her wits. But when he heard that it was Mr Ross wholay there ill, and that his mother had saved his young patron’s life, and was now nursing him, with an absorbing devotion that made her forget everything else, Dick’s mind was filled with a strange tumult of feeling. He showed his mother nothing but his satisfaction to be able to do something for Mr Ross, and anxiety that he should have everything he required; but in his heart there was a mixture of other sentiments. He had not lost in the least his own devotion to the young man to whom (he always felt) he owed all his good fortune; but there was something in his mother’s tremulous impassioned devotion to Valentine that had disturbed his mind often, and her looks now, engrossed altogether in her patient, thinking of nothing else, not even of Dick’s comfort, though she knew he was to return to-day, affected him, he could scarcely tell how. When he had heard all the story, he laid his hand kindly on her shoulder, looking at her. “You are wearing yourself out,” he said; “you are making yourself ill. But it’s all right; to be sure, when he was taken ill like this, he could go nowhere but here.”
“Nowhere,” she said with fervour. “Here it’s natural; but never mind me, boy, I’m happy. I want nothing different. It’s what I like best.”
“I’ll just step in and look at him, mother.”
“Not now,” she said quickly, with an instinct of jealous reserve. She did not want any one to interfere—not even her boy. Then she added—“He’s sleeping. You might wake him if he heard another step on the floor. Go and get your supper, Dick; you’re tired—and maybe after, if he wakes up——”
“Is there any supper for me?” said Dick, half laughing, but with a momentary sensation of bitterness. He felt ashamed of it the moment after. “Go in, go in to him, mother dear,” he said. “You’re in the right of it. I’ll go and get my supper; and after that, if he wakes I’ll see him—only don’t wear yourself out.”
“I do nothing but sit by him—that’s all; doing nothing, how could I wear myself out?” she said. “But oh, I’m glad you’re home, Dick; very glad you’re home!”
“Are you, mother?” Dick said, with a vague smile, half gratified, half sceptical. Perhaps she did not hear him, for she was already in Val’s room, watching his breathing. Dick went down-stairs with the smile still upon his face, determined to make the best of it—for after all Mr Ross had the best right to everything that was in the house, since, but for him, that house would never have belonged to Dick at all. He called the maid, who had come back, to get him his supper, and stepped outside while it was getting ready, to take counsel of the river and the skies, as he had done so often. It was now almost dark, and the river gleamed half sullen, under skies which were white and black, but showed no warmer tinge of colour. Heavy clouds careered over the blanched and watery firmament—a dreary wind sighed in the willows on the eyot. They did not give cheery counsel, that river and those trees. But Dick soon shook off this painful jealousy, which was not congenial to his nature. What so natural, after all, as that she should give her whole mind to the sufferer she was nursing, even at the risk of momentarily neglecting her son, who was quite well, and could shift for himself? Dick laughed at his own foolishness, and felt ashamed of himself that he could have any other feeling in his mind but pity and interest. He stole up, after his meal, to look into the sickroom, and then the tenderest compassion took possession of him. Val was lying awake with his eyes open but seeing nothing—noticing no one. Dick had never seen him otherwise than in the full flush of strength and health. A pang of terror and love took possession of him. He thought of all Val had done for him, since they met, boys, on the river at Eton, generously exaggerating all his boy-patron’s goodness, and putting his own out of sight. The tears came to his eyes. He asked himself with awe, and a pang of sudden pain and terror, could Valentine be going to die? His mother sat quite motionless by the bedside, with her eyes fixed on the patient. There was in her face no shadow of the cloud which Dick felt to be hanging over the room, but only a curious dim beatitude—happiness in being there—which the young man divined but could not understand.
Dick stole down again quietly to the little parlour, where his lamp gave a more cheerful light to think by than the eerie river. It would be absurd were I to deny that his mind had been troubled by many painful and anxious thoughts touching the connection of his mother with the Rosses. He thought he had come to a solution of it at last. In his class, as I have already said, people accept with comparative calm many things which in higher regions would beconsidered very terrible. Dick had made up his mind, after many thoughts, to a conclusion such as would have horrified and driven desperate a man differently brought up. He concluded that most likely Val’s father was his own father—that his mother had been very young, beautiful, and easily deceived, and that he himself was the son of this unknown “gentleman.” Dick was not ashamed of the supposed paternity. It had given him a pang when he thought it out at first; but to a lad who has been born a tramp, things show differently, and have other aspects from that which they bear to the rest of the world. Putting feeling aside, this was what he thought the most probable solution of the mystery; and Val, she knew, was this man’s son, and therefore he had a fascination for her. Probably, Dick thought, with a little pang, Val was like his father, and reminded her of him; and it did wound the good fellow to think that his mother could forget and set aside himself for the stranger who was nothing to her, who merely reminded her of a lover she had not seen for years and years. When he thought of his own problematical relationship to Valentine, his heart softened immensely. To think that it was to his brother he owed so much kindness—a brother who had no suspicion of the relationship, but was good to him out of pure generosity of heart and subtle influence of nature, was a very affecting idea, and brought a thrill to his breast when it came into his mind.
These were the conclusions he had hammered out by hard thinking from the few and very misty facts he knew. Some connection there clearly was, and this seemed so much the most likely explanation. Dick thought no worse of his mother for it; he knew her spotless life as long as he could remember—a life remarkable, even extraordinary, in her class—and his heart swelled with pity and tenderness at thought of all she must have come through. He had too much natural delicacy to ask her any questions on such a subject; but since he had (as he thought) found out, or rather divined this secret, it had seemed to account for many peculiarities in her. It explained everything that wanted explanation—her extraordinary interest in Val, her fear of encountering the lady who had been with him, her strange lingerings of manner and look that did not belong to her class. Dick thought this all over again, as he sat in the little parlour gazing steadily into the lamp; and, with astrange emotion in which pain, and wonder, and pity, and the tenderest sympathy, were all mingled together, tried to make himself master of the position. His lip quivered as he realised that in reality it might be his brother, his father’s son, who lay unconscious in the little room up-stairs. No doubt Val was like his father—no doubt he recalled to the woman, who had once been proud (who could doubt?) of being loved by a “gentleman,” the handsome, noble young deceiver who had betrayed her. But Dick did not use such hard words; he did not think of any betrayal in the case. He knew how tramp-girls are brought up, and only pitied, did not blame, or even defend, his mother. It seemed to him natural enough; and Val no doubt recalled his handsome father as homely Dick never did and never could do. Poor Dick! if there was a little pang in this, it was merely instinctive and momentary. The thought that Val might be—nay, almost certainly was—his father’s son, half his brother, melted his heart entirely. He would have sat up all night, though he was tired, if his mother had permitted him. His brother! and in his ignorance, in his youthful kind-heartedness, how good he had been! They had taken a fancy to each other the moment they set eyes upon each other, Dick remembered; and no wonder if they were brothers, though they did not know. The good fellow overcame every less tender feeling, and felt himself Val’s vassal and born retainer when he thought of all that had come and gone between them. He scarcely slept all night, making noiseless pilgrimages back and forward to the sick-room, feeling, unused as he was to illness, as if some change might be taking place for better or worse at any moment; and though he had as yet no real clue to the devotion with which his mother watched the sufferer, he shared it instinctively, and felt all at once as if the central point of the universe was in that uneasy bed, and there was nothing in the world to be thought of but Val.
“Mother, you’ve sent word to—his friends?” Dick had some feeling he could not explain which prevented him from saying “his father.” This was early next morning, when she had come out to say that Val was asleep, and had spent a better night.
She looked at him with a look which was almost an entreaty, and shook her head. “No—don’t be vexed, Dick; I’m bad at writing—and besides, I didn’t want no one to come.”
“But they must be anxious, mother. Think! if it had been yourself; and you know who they are. If it wasn’t far off in the north, I’d go.”
“Ah,” she said, with a gasping, long-drawn breath—“If it must be done, that’s the way, Dick. I’m bad at writing, and a letter would frighten ’em, as you say.”
“I didn’t say a letter would frighten. Mother, I can write well enough. It’s Lord Eskside—I recollect the name. Tell me where, and I’ll write to-day.”
“No,” she said, “no; a letter tells so little—and oh! I don’t want ’em to come here. There’s things I can’t tell you, boy—old things—things past and done with. You’ve always been a good son, the best of sons to me——”
“And I’ll do anything now, mother dear,” said poor Dick, moved almost to tears by the entreaty in her face, and putting his arm round her to support her; “I’ll do anything now to give you a bit of ease in your mind. You’ve been a good mother if I’ve been a good son, and never taught me but what was good and showed me an example. I’ll do whatever you would like best, mother dear.”
He said this, good fellow, to show that he found no fault with her if it was shame that kept her from speaking to him more openly. But she who had no shame upon her, no burden of conscious wrong, did not catch this subtle meaning. She was not clear enough in her mind to catch hidden meanings at any time. She took him simply at his word.
“Dick,” she said softly, entreating still, “he’s better—he’ll get well—why shouldn’t he get well? he’s young and strong, the same age as you are—a bit of an illness is nothing when you’re young. He’ll get well fast enough; and then,” she said, with a sigh, “he’ll go and tell his people himself. What is the use of troubling you and me?”
Dick shook his head. “They must be told, mother,” he said. “I’ll write; or if you like, I’ll go.”
She gave a long weary sigh. She was reluctant, he thought, to have any communication with those unknown people, Val’s father, and perhaps his mother, some great lady who would have no pity for the woman thus strangely thrown in her son’s path. This was quite natural, too, and Dick, in his tender sympathy with her, entered into the feeling. His tenderness and compassion made a poet of him; he seemed to see every shade of emotion in her disturbed soul.
“Mother, dear,” he said again, still more gently, “you don’t want to have aught to do with them? I can understand. Tell me where it is and I’ll go. The master will let me go easy. We’re not busy yet. I’ll see the doctor, and go off directly; for whether you like it or not, it’s their right, and they ought to know.”
“Well, well,” she said, after a pause, “if it must be, it must be. I’ve never gone against you, Dick, and I won’t now; and maybe my head’s dazed a bit with all the watching. It makes you stupid like.”
“You’ll be ill yourself, mother, if you don’t mind.”
“And if I was!” she cried. “If they take him, what does it matter? and they’re sure to take him. Dick, it’s like taking the heart out of my bosom. But go, if you will go.”
“I must go, mother,” he said, sorrowfully. This passion was strange to him—hurt him even in spite of himself. Because Val was like his father! The depth of the passionate interest she had in him seemed so disproportionate to the cause.
But when Dick saw the doctor, he was more and more determined to go. The doctor told him that in another week the crisis of the fever might come—one week had passed without any change, and the sufferer was embarked upon the dark uncertain tideway of another, which might be prolonged into another still; but this no one could tell. “I thought your mother had let his friends know—she told me so,” he said. “They ought to be made aware of the state he is in,—they ought to be here before the week is out, when the crisis may come.”
“But you don’t think badly of him, doctor?” said Dick, with tears in his eyes. The mother had never asked so much, the doctor reflected; and he felt for the young man who felt so warmly, and was interested in the whole curious mysterious business, he could scarcely tell why.
“Your mother is a capital nurse,” he said, assuming a confidence he scarcely felt, “and please God, he’ll pull through.”
“Oh, thank you, doctor!” cried honest Dick, drying his eyes, and feeling, as do all simple souls, that it was the doctor who had done it, and that this vague assurance was very sure. He went to see Valentine after, who, he thought, gave him a kind of wan smile, and looked as if he knewhim, which Dick interpreted, knowing nothing about it, to be a capital sign; and then he extorted from his mother directions for his journey. Reluctantly she told him where to go.
“Oh, Dick,” she said, “you’ll do it, whether I will or not—and there’s things will come of it that you don’t think of, and that I don’t want to think of; but don’t you name me, boy, nor let ’em know about me. Say your mother—I’m just your mother, that’s all. And if they come, I’ll not see ’em, Dick. No, I’m not going away; don’t look scared at me. I haven’t it in me now to go away.”
“Take care of yourself, mother,” he said; “don’t watch too long, nor neglect your food. I’ll not be long gone; andI’lltake care of you whoever comes; you needn’t be afraid.”
She shook her head, and followed him with mournful eyes. She did not know what she feared, nor what any one could do to her; but yet in her ignorance she was afraid. And Dick went away still more ignorant, determined to keep her secret, but feeling in his superior knowledge of the world that it was a secret which no one would care to penetrate. “Gentlemen” seldom try, he knew, to find out a woman thus abandoned, or to burden themselves with her, or any others that might belong to her. He smiled even at the idea. “They”—and Dick did not even know who they were—would think of Val only, he felt sure, and inquire no further. He was still more completely set at rest when he discovered that it was Val’s grandmother he was going to see—the old lady who had sent him a present when he was a boy, by Valentine’s hands. Dick somehow had no notion that this old lady was in any way connected with himself, even assuming, as he did, that his own divinations were true. She was a stranger, and he went quite calmly into her presence, not doubting anything that might befall him there.
Richard Rossleft Lasswade as Dick Brown entered it, totally unconscious of him or his errand. They passed each other on the bridge,—the father in the carriage, with his servant on the box, and a hundred delicate comforts about him; the son trudging along the muddy road, somewhat tired from jolting all night in a third-class carriage, but refreshed by the “good wash” which, almost more than his breakfast, had set him up again to encounter strangers. He was well dressed, in something of the same mode as Val, whose coats he had worn when he was a lad, and whom he unconsciously copied; and though there was a something about him which indicated his lower position, or rather an absence of something which externally marks “a gentleman,” his open countenance and candid straightforward look gave the merest stranger who looked at him a confidence in Dick, and conferred upon him a distinction of his own. Richard Ross, however, did not so much as notice the young man as he drove to the railway. He was not anxious about Val in the sense in which his mother was anxious; but his mind was strangely disturbed and jumbled—turned upside down, so to speak. All the common conditions of life had changed for him;—his repose of twenty years was broken, and his thoughts sent back upon the early beginning of his career, when he was so different a man. To be driven back at forty-five to the thoughts and feelings of twenty-five, how strange it is!—and stranger to some men than to others. To those who have lived but little in this long stretch of existence the return costs less; but Richard Ross had not changed by the action of years only—he was another man; everything in him was altered. And yet he was going back, as it were, to twenty-five, to look at the passion and folly and infatuation of that period of his existence; but with the interval so clearly marked, not only in himself, but in all the others concerned.
Richard was not old, nor did he feel old: in himself he was conscious, not of decay, but of progress. He looked back upon himself at that early age, not with envy, as so many men of the world do, but with a wondering contempt.What a fool he had been! Was it possible that he could ever have been such a fool? Or must it not rather have been some brother, some cousin, some other, not himself, who had been such an idiot?—some visionary man, whose faults somehow had fallen uponhisshoulders? This was the feeling in his mind, though, of course, he knew very well that it was an absurd feeling. And then, with a curious wonder and bewildering sense of suppressed agitation, he remembered that he was going to seeher. Should he know her after three-and-twenty years?—he had recognised her picture, which was strange enough;—and would she know him? And must they meet, and what would they say to each other? There had never been very much to say, for she was incapable of what he called conversation; and, except words of fondness and attempts at instruction, it had been impossible for him, a cultivated and fastidious man, to have any real intercourse with the wild creature of the woods whom he never even succeeded in taming. What should he find to say to her now, or she to him? The inquiry thrilled him strangely, giving him that bewildering sense of unreality which mixes so deeply in all human emotion. His brain seemed to turn round when he thought of this possible interview. Was she a real being at all, or was he real who was thinking? Had that past ever been? Was it not an imagination, a dream? Ah! it does not even require such a long interval as twenty years to bring this strange giddiness on the soul. That which we have lost, did we ever have it?—the happiness, the life, the other who made life and happiness? I know some houses now, occupied by strange people, whose very names I can’t tell you, where yet I feel my own old life must be in full possession of the familiar place, while this dim ghost of me outside asks, Did it ever exist at all? Richard felt this all the more strongly that he was not an imaginative man by nature. He felt his head swim and the world go round with him, and would not believe that the young fool who had borne his name three-and-twenty years before, was or could have been him. But yet he was going to seeher, the other dream, in whom there was not, nor ever had been, any reality. On the whole, instead of perplexing himself with such thoughts it is better for a man to read in the railway, if he can manage it, even at the risk of hurting his eyes, which require to beménagésat forty-five; or if that will not do, to closehis eyes and doze, which is perhaps, where it is practicable, the best way of all.
He got to Oxford the next day in the afternoon—another pale, somewhat dreary afternoon of March, typical day of a reluctant spring, with dust in the streets, and east wind spreading a universal grey around, ruffling the river into pale lines of livid light and gloomy shade, and pinching all the green buds spitefully back to winter again. Heavy clouds were rolling over the heavens when he made his way down to the wharf. His old Oxford recollections and Val’s indications guided him. He knew the boating wharf of old, though he had never himself been aquatic in his tastes. And there was the little house with its narrow strip of garden towards the river, in which a few sickly primroses were trying to flower. No one had thought of the garden since Val’s accident, and already it had a neglected look. “Who lives there?” he asked of a bargeman who was lounging by. “It’s Brown’s, as is head man at Styles’s,” was the answer. “Head man at Styles’s! I thought a woman lived there,” said Richard. Then he suddenly recollected himself. “I had forgotten the boy,” he added, under his breath. How strange it was! and this was his son too—his son as well as Val! But, to tell the truth, for the moment he had forgotten the boys, the known and the unknown. He had forgotten that Val was lost, and that he had come here in search of him. He was only conscious, in a strange suppressed haze of excitement, that probably she was within these walls—she—the woman of whom he had saidmaladetta; of whom Val had said that she looked as if she had been a lady. This strange notion made him laugh within himself even now.
It was about five in the afternoon, still good daylight, though the day was a dim one. The maid, who was but a maid-of-all-work, and no better than her kind, had taken advantage of the entire absence of supervision, and was out somewhere, leaving the garden-gate and front-door both open. Richard went up to the door with a certain hesitation, almost diffidence, and knocked softly. He did not want to have any one come, and it was a relief to him when a sufficient interval had elapsed without any response, to justify him, as he thought, in going into the house. Then he stepped across the threshold, casting a glance behind to see if any one outside observed him; and seeing no one, he went in—first to the little parlour, which had been “cleaned up,” fortunately, that morning. It was a strange little room, as I have already said, with tokens in it of instinctive good taste struggling against circumstances. Richard closed the door behind him, and looked round it with a curious irregularity in his heart’s beats. He sat down, somehow not feeling equal to anything more, and gazed at those little familiar evidences of the kind of being who had been living here. It was, in reality, Dick who had left his traces all about, but Richard Ross knew nothing about Dick, and had at the present moment very little curiosity as to that unknown and unrealised person. He thought only ofher: somehow Val’s description, at which he had laughed within himself so often, and at which still he tried to laugh feebly, seemed less impossible here. A lady might have lived within these four walls, at the little window which looked out upon the river. The arrangements of the room—its books (which no one read), its pretty carvings and nicknacks (for which Dick alone was responsible)—fitted into the conventional idea of a poor gentlewoman’s tastes, which even Richard, though he ought to have known better, had received into his mind. The embroidered shawl which covered the little table caught his eye as it had caught his mother’s—he, too, remembered it; and that undoubted sign of her made his heart beat loudly once more.
He seemed to be all alone in the solitary house—there was not a sound: he had come in and taken possession, and nobody offered to interfere with him. After a little time, however, he began to realise that the position was rather a strange one; and recovering himself from the curious spell under which he had fallen, he opened the door softly and listened. Then it seemed to him that he heard some faint stir up-stairs. Accordingly he went up the narrow winding staircase, feeling somehow that in this place he could go where he would, that it was not the house of a stranger. He went up, wondering at himself, half bold, half hesitating, and opened the first door he came to. It was the room in which Valentine lay sick—his boy whom he sought. Richard opened the door softly. Everything was very still in it. The patient slept; the watcher, poor soul, in her exhaustion, perhaps was dozing by him, lulled by the profound quiet; or else her brain was confused by the long nursing, and was not easily roused except by the patient, whose lightest movement always awakened her attention. And the light was dim, the blind drawn down, every possibility of disturbance shut out. Richard stood like one spellbound, and looked at them. His heart gave a wild leap, and then, he thought, stood still. He recognised Val in a moment, and so perhaps had some anxiety set at rest; but indeed I doubt whether, in the strange excitement in which he found himself, anxiety for Val told for much. She sat by the bedside in a large old-fashioned chair, high-backed and square-elbowed, which made a frame to her figure. Her eyes were closed, but the intent look in her face, which gave it an interest even to the mere passer-by, was there in a softened form, giving a pure and still gravity, almost noble, to its fine lines; the hair was smoothed off her forehead; the white kerchief, which was her usual head-dress, tied loosely about her head; her hands, glimmering white in the partial darkness, crossed upon her lap. Richard stood still, not daring to breathe, yet catching his breath and hearing his heart beat in spite of himself, afraid to disturb her, yet wondering what she would say to him, how she would look at him when she was roused, as she must be. He was much and strangely agitated; but the reader must not suppose that it was any wild renewal of old love, any passion, or even the agitation of longing and tenderness, which so moved him. He was curious beyond anything he could say—troubled by the sight of her, strangely eager to know what kind of being this was. She was another from the girl he had known, though the same. She of time past had been a wild thing out of the woods, not much above the birds or other woodland creatures. All her humanity, all her development of mind and heart, had come since then; and of this human soul, this developed being, he knew nothing, absolutely nothing; and a thirst came upon him to find out, the intensest curiosity to know, what manner of woman she was.
All at once she opened her eyes and saw him; but did not start or cry, for, waking or sleeping, Valentine was her first object, and she would not have disturbed him had all heaven and earth melted and given way round about her. She opened her eyes and saw a man looking at her. She raised her head, and knew who it was. The blood rushed back to her heart in a sudden flood, making it beat hard and loud against her side, taking away her breath; but she did nothing more than rise softly to her feet and look at him. Yes,it was he. She knew him, as he had known her, at once. She had expected him. Without any knowledge where he was, or how he could hear, she had yet felt sure that he must come. And therefore she was scarcely surprised; she had the advantage of him so far. She knew him, though to him she was an unknown creature—knew him ignorantly, not having been able to form any judgment of his character; yet had as much acquaintance with him as her mind was capable of; while he had no acquaintance with her. She rose up to meet him, and stood wistful, humble, yet with something which looked like pride in her erect figure, and that face which had changed so strangely since he knew it. They stood on either side of the bed upon which their son was lying, scrutinising each other in that strange pathetic gaze. Were there things to be repented of, even in her dim soul?—I cannot tell. She did not think of judging herself. What she felt was that he was here, that she was in his power, and all that was hers; that she was not strong enough to resist him, whatever he might do; that the known and actual had come to an end for her, and all the future was dark in his hands. A dim anguish of fear and impotence came over her. He might send her away from the boy; he might change her life all at once as by the waving of a wand. She looked at him piteously, putting her hands together unawares; but while she was thus startled into painful life, plunged into the anxious disquietude of ignorance, roused to fear and uncertainty, not knowing what was to be done with her, she was at the same time incapacitated from any evidence of emotion, silenced, kept still, though her heart beat so; speechless, though the helpless cry of appeal was on her lips—because she would not wake Val, who was sleeping, and, whatever she might be capable of otherwise, could not, would not disturb the weary rest of the boy.
At length he waved his hand to her impatiently, calling her to follow him out of the room. He did not know what to say to her. Words had gone from him too, though from other reasons; but he could not stand there, however bewildering were his feelings, looking at this woman, who was so familiar to him and so unknown. She followed him noiselessly, not resisting, and they stood together on the narrow landing outside, close to each other, her dress almost touching him, her quick breath crossing his. What were they to say to each other? She was not capable of embarrassment in the simplicity of her emotions. But Richard standing by her, man of the world as he was, was totally helpless in this emergency. His gaze faltered; he turned his eyes from her; he trembled, though only he himself was conscious of it. To be so close to her affected him with a hundred complicated feelings. What could he say? Faltering, his lips scarcely able to form the confused words, he asked faintly, “How long has he been ill? how long has he been here?”
“Ten days,” she answered, briefly. She did not hesitate, nor cast down her eyes. She answered with a kind of despairing calm; for to be sure it was certain he would take the boy away, and she had nothing else in her mind. Her own standing in respect to him—the attitude of his mind towards her—her position in the world as it depended on him—all these were nothing to her. She was thinking of the boy, of nothing else.
“He has been very ill; what is it? Have you a doctor for him?” said Richard, getting used to the suppressed sound of his own voice. He was speaking like a man in a dream, struggling against some necessity which forced him to say this. It was not what he wanted to say. Had he been able to manage himself, to do as he wished, he would have said something to her very different—something kind—something to show her that he was not sorry he had seen her again—that he was not angry, but came to her with friendly feelings. But he could not. The only words he could manage to get out were these bare business-like questions, which he might have put to a nurse—only that if she had been a mere nurse, a stranger who had been kind to his boy, Richard would have been full of gratitude and thanks. He felt all this, but he could not help it; and the more he wished to say, the less he said.
He felt this to the bottom of his heart; but she did not feel it all. She took the questions quite naturally, and answered them with calm simplicity. “The doctor comes twice a-day. He’ll be here soon. I cannot keep the name of it in my mind. Sitting up of nights makes me stupid like; but when he comes, you’ll hear.”
Then there was a pause. She stood before him, with her hands clasped, waiting for what he was going to say. She had no thought of resisting or standing on her rights, for had she not given up the boy long ago?—and waited withkeen but secret anguish for the sentence which she believed he must be about to pronounce. The door was open behind her. While she stood waiting for Richard’s words, her ear was intent upon Val, ready to hear if he made the slightest movement. Between these two things which absorbed her, she was completely occupied. She had no leisure to think of herself.
But he who was alive to all the strange troubles of the position, at what a disadvantage he was! His embarrassment and overwhelming self-consciousness were painful beyond description, while she was free from self altogether, and suffered nothing in comparison. While she stood so steadily, a tremulous quiver ran through his every limb. He was as superior to her as it is possible to conceive, and yet he was helpless and speechless before her. At last he made out, faltering, the confused words, “Do you know who he is?”
“Yes, I know,” she said, with a panting breath. A gleam of light came over her face. “I have known him ever since he was a boy. He’s been Dick’s friend. No lad had ever a better friend. They took a fancy to each other the first day. I heard his name—it’s seven years since—and knew.”
“And you told—Val——”
She gave a slight start, and looked at him reproachfully, appealingly, but made no other reply. This look disturbed Richard more and more. There was in it a higher meaning than any he seemed capable of. He felt that from some simple eminence of virtue, impossible to him to conceive, she looked down upon him, quietly indignant of, yet half pitying, his suspicions of her. And, in fact, though she was not capable of any sentiments so articulate, these, in a rudimentary confusion, were the feelings in her mind.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, humbly. “Then he knows nothing? And the other, the younger—he who is with you——”
How he faltered! man of the world, and highbred gentleman as he was; he did not know how to put the inquiry into words.
“Oh,” she said, roused from her stillness of expectation, “don’t meddle with Dick! Oh! sir, leave my boy alone! You don’t know—no one knows but me—how good he is. He’s put up with all my wild ways. He’s been willing to give up all he likes best for me; but God’s given me strength, and I’ve mastered myself. I’ve stayed quiet, though it wentnear to kill me,” she said, clasping her hands tightly; “I wouldn’t shame him, and take his home from him. Oh, don’t meddle with Dick! He’s happy now.”
Her entreating look, her appeal to his generosity, her absolute detachment from all emotion except in connection with her children, worked upon Richard in the strangest way. They moved him as he had never thought to be moved. His heart swelled, and filled with a novel emotion. “Is this all you think of?” he said, with, in his turn, a strange tone of reproach in his voice—“only of the children! when we meet like this after so many—so many years!”
She raised her eyes to him, wondering. I think she scarcely understood what he could mean. Her mind was so deeply occupied with other thoughts, that the tide of feeling which encountered hers was driven back by the meeting. “I’m not clever,” she said, in a very low voice. “I’m ignorant—not fit to talk to you.”
“But you know me?” he said, driven to his wits’ end. She looked up at him quickly, with a strange suffusion in her eyes, a momentary dilation. She did not mean it to be reproachful this time. Then she said quickly—“We’ll trouble no one, Dick and me. He’s well off, and doing well. If you will let the other stay till he’s better—who could nurse him as I would?—and leave Dick alone. I’ll trouble nobody, nobody!”
“Myra,” said Richard, more moved than he could say. It was not love so much as a strange reluctance to be so powerless—a curious longing to get some sign of feeling from her. He could not bear the composure in her eyes.
She gave a low cry, and made a step backwards, withdrawing from him; and at that moment a faint sound from within the sick-room caught her ear. Her expression, which had changed for the moment, came back again to that of the patient sick-nurse, the anxious watcher. “He’s stirring,” she said. “He wants me. I mustn’t leave him. I’ve been too long away.”
To describe the feelings of Richard Ross when she left him outside the door of the room in which his son lay ill is more than I am able for. Not since she had fled from him at first, three-and-twenty years ago, had there been such a tumult in his mind;—not the sharp tumult of passion and grief, but the strangest maze of embarrassment, pain, defeat, surprise—and yet for the moment relief. Passion was altogether out of his way nowadays—I don’t know that he was capable of it; but all the secondary emotions were warm in him. He had been playing with the thought of this woman for a long time, sayingmaladetta, yet scarcely meaning it—wondering, half attracted in spite of himself, and beyond measure curious to know what changes time had wrought in her, and how far Valentine’s unconscious judgment was true. During this long succession of thoughts, his semi-hatred of her as the curse of his life had strangely evaporated, he could not have told how. And from the moment when he had received that first sudden shock which was given him by the little photograph, down to the present time when she left him standing outside the door, Richard had been the subject of a mental process of the most complicated and mysterious kind. From that first simple introduction of the idea of her, not as a past curse, but as a living and known human being, his thoughts had gone through a long dramatic course, picturing her, realising her, following the unknown line of her existence—making acquaintance with her image, so to speak. She had never been quite absent from his mind since Valentine had reintroduced her to it. He had imagined (in spite of himself) how she would look, what she would say and do—had even pictured to himself how she would meet him, perhaps with terror, perhaps with penitence, with a developed sense of the grievous harm she had done him, and capacity at last to understand how much he had sacrificed for her. If she had grown into an intelligent being, with that look Valentine described, “as if she had once been a lady,”—which was so curious, so bewildering a travesty of all fact—this was how she must have learned to feel; and no doubt Richard thought her first meeting with him would be trying for both, but most trying for her as the one most certain to betray emotion—the wrong-doer in whose awakened mind all feeling must be more strong. He had opened the very door of the room in which she sat with this expectation—nay certainty—in his mind. Now she had left him, and he stood bewildered, confounded, excited, not knowing what to think, and still less what to do. Was it possible that she had not a thought for him, this woman who had destroyed his life?—no feeling that she had destroyed it?—no desire for his forgiveness, no eagerness to make up, no tremulous impassioned anxiety as to what he would think of her? For all these feelings he had given her credit, andcuriously, with an interest which attracted him in spite of himself, had speculated how she would show them. But now!
After a little pause, Richard Ross, Secretary of Legation at Florence, her Majesty’s future representative to some crowned head, went quite humbly down the little creaking staircase. He knew how to deal with Prime Ministers, and would not have allowed himself to be put down by Prince Bismarck himself; but he was utterly discomfited by Dick Brown’s mother, and stole down-stairs with his heart beating, and the most unexampled commotion in his whole being. When he thought of it, he even laughed at himself feebly, so confounded was he. What was to be done now? He could not steal away as he had come, with no result to his visit. Now that they had met, and looked each other in the face again, they could not part simply with nothing further said. Was it for him to make advances? to propose some ground of meeting? though he was the wronged person, and though she ought in reality to approach him on her knees. When he got down-stairs, he paused again to think what he would do. And it was only then that it occurred to him that his mission here was not to reconcile himself to her, but to inquire after Valentine. Strange! He had seen Valentine lying ill—he had even asked questions about him—and yet his son’s state, or his son’s existence, had made no impression whatever on his mind. In the curious ferment and tumult of his feelings, it occurred to him to remember the half amusement, half pain, with which he had felt two days ago that his mother hustled him off, scarcely having patience to let him eat and rest, in order that he might see after Val; and here was his wife treating him in the same way—thrusting him aside, postponing him altogether! There was a whimsical aggravation in this double slight which made him laugh even now; and then a sudden heat flamed all over his frame, like a sudden blaze scorching him; his wife! He had used the words unconsciously, unawares—notmaladetta!—not the woman who had been his curse. In the curious excitement of that thought, he went in once more to the little parlour, and sat down instinctively to get quiet and calm himself; and then, catching at the first straw of reason which blew his way in this strange tempest of feeling, he decided that he must wait there, now that he was there, till the doctor came.
Onenail strikes out another, the Italians say. It was not wonderful that Richard Ross should feel this, seeing that the subject which concerned his own individual life most closely was that which drove out of his mind all immediate recollection of the other which was the object of his journey. But that the strange and startling apparition of the new figure which suddenly confronted her should have driven the recollection of Valentine out of Lady Eskside’s head, was much more wonderful—for her heart was rent with anxiety about Val; whereas Richard was only vaguely, lightly affected by that anxiety; and there was no such magic of old associations, old passions, curiosity, and that baffled sense of impotence which provokes the mind to put forth its whole powers, in her mind as in his. But for the moment Lady Eskside forgot her beloved boy, and her devouring anxiety; forgot everything but the shock and startling sensation produced upon her by this face which suddenly looked at her, meeting her gaze calmly, unaware of its own power. When she brought Dick Brown to a stop in his explanations by her eager, almost wild question, “Who are you?” the subject which up to that moment had been engrossing her whole mind departed wholly out of it. Poor Val, lying upon his mother’s bed! He was wronged even by those who loved him best—he was forgotten, if only for a moment, in the strain and stress of affairs more urgent; but happily did not know it. Dick was very much embarrassed, good fellow, to find himself suddenly elevated into a place of such importance, and to be asked so passionately, so urgently, who he was. Nothing in the world more easy than to give an account of himself. He smiled, involuntarily, at the anxiety in Lady Eskside’s face.
“It is very easy to tell you that, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t send my name, thinking you wouldn’t know. I’m Richard Brown, head man now at Mr Styles’s, the boat-builder at Oxford, and for three years at Goodman’s, at Eton. That is all about me.”
“What is it?” said the old lady. “No, I am not deaf—you need not speak loud; but say it again. Richard? Yes,yes; of course it could be nothing but Richard. And you came to tell me that? Is your mother living? is she still living? and where is she? Was it she that sent you here?”
“I came to tell you about Mr Ross——”
“Boy,” said Lady Eskside, “don’t trifle with me. This was what drove my darling away. Is the woman living, and do you know where she is? Your face tells a great deal,” she went on, “but not all. Where is your mother? Did she send you? Is she near? Oh, for God’s sake, if you have any pity, tell me! What with one trouble and another, I am near at an end of my strength.”
“Mr Ross is ill, ma’am,” said Dick, much bewildered, but holding fast to his mother’sconsigne, not to say anything about her. “He is lying ill at our—at my house.”
“What could he be but ill,” cried the old lady, drying her eyes, “after all that has come and gone? But don’t think that I’ll let you go now. Richard, perhaps you are ignorant, perhaps you don’t know how important it is—but oh, for God’s sake, tell me? Have you got her? have you got her safe this time? Come near to me; you have a kindly face,” my lady went on, looking closely at him with the tears in her eyes. “A face I knew as well as I know myself; but kind and young, like what he was before the world touched him. Sit down here; and oh, my bonnie man, have confidence in me!”
She laid her delicate old hand upon his arm; she bent towards him, her face all tremulous with emotion, tears in her eyes, her lips quivering, her voice pathetic and tender as the cooing of a dove. Dick looked at her in return with respectful sympathy, with natural kindness, but with a half smile of wonder. What was it she wanted of him? What could he respond to such an appeal?
“I don’t know, ma’am, what I can do for you, what I can tell you,” he said; “I’m but a working man, not educated to speak of. There is nothing particular about me that I should confide in any one; but if you’ll tell me what it is you want, I’ve nothing to conceal neither,” the young man said with a gentle pride, so innocent and honest that it made his smile all the brighter. “You are welcome, ma’am, if you care for it, to know everything about me.”
“I do care for it,” she said, keeping her hand upon his arm. She had made him sit beside her on the little sofa,and her eyes were so intent upon his face, that he scarcely knew how to sustain the gaze. He paused a little to think what he could say first.
“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am,” he said, with a laugh; “it’s all in what I’ve said already. Except about Mr Ross—perhaps that is what you mean; I can’t say, and you can’t think what he’s done for me. My life is more a story about him than anything about me,” said Dick, with a generous glow coming over his face, “since the day I first met him on the river——”
“That was—how long ago?”
“He wasn’t in the boats till the year after,” said Dick, availing himself of the easiest mode of calculating. “It’s about seven years since—we were both boys, so to speak. He took to me somehow, ma’am—out of his own head—by chance—so some folks says——”
Under other circumstances no story could have been so interesting to Lady Eskside, but at present her mind was too much disturbed to follow it. She interrupted him hastily—“And your mother! what of her? You tell me nothing about her! Was she there as well as you?”
Dick felt as it is natural to feel when you are interrupted in a congenial story, and that your own story, the most interesting of all narratives. He repeated—“My mother!” in a tone of disappointment. How his mother could be more interesting to any one than Mr Ross and himself, and that tale of their meeting, which he had already told successfully more than once, Dick did not know.
“Yes, your mother! Tell me her name, and how she brought you up, and where she is living—for she is living, you said? Tell me! and after that,” said Lady Eskside, in an unconsciously insinuating tone, “I shall be able to listen to you about my poor Val, and all that you have had to do with him. Ah! be sure that is what I would like best! but the other, the other is more important. Where is she? What does she call herself? How did she bring you up? Oh! don’t lose time, my good boy, but tell me this, for I must know!”
Dick became much confused and disturbed, remembering his mother’s caution to him not to mention her. He could not understand why she should thus be dragged into question. But she had evidently expected it, which was very perplexing to him. He faltered a little in his reply.
“My mother—is just my mother, ma’am. She lives with me; she’s nursing Mr Ross now.”
The old lady gave a cry, and grasped him by the arm. “Has she told him?” she cried. “Does Val know?”
“Know what?” said Dick, in amaze. She gazed at him intently for a moment, and then all at once fell a-crying and wringing her hands.
“Is my boy ill?” she said. “What is the matter with him? how soon can we go to him? Will you take me there, Richard, as quick as we can go? Your mother is nursing him—you are sure? and you don’t know anything she could have told him? Oh, let us go! there is not a moment to lose.”
She got up hastily to ring the bell, then sat down again. “There will be no train—no train till to-night or to-morrow; oh, these trains, that have always to be waited for! In old days you could start in your post-chaise without waiting a minute. And, poor lad, you will want a rest,” she added, turning to look at him, “and food. Oh, but if you knew the fever in my mind till I am there!”
“Don’t be too anxious,” said Dick, compassionately, understanding this better; “the crisis cannot come for four days yet, and the doctor says my mother is an excellent nurse, and that he’ll pull through.”
Lady Eskside rose again in her restlessness and rang the bell. “Bring something for this gentleman to eat,” she said, when Harding appeared; “bring a tray to the dining-room; and get me the paper about the trains; and let none of the other fools of men come about me to stare and stare!” she cried, fretfully. “Serve us yourself. And bid your wife come here—I have something to say to her.”
“To the dining-room, my lady?”
“Didn’t I say here!” cried Lady Eskside. “You’re all alike, never understanding. Send Marg’ret here.”
Mrs Harding must have been very close behind, for she followed almost instantly. She gave a little cry at sight of Dick. I fear this was not so independent a judgment as Lady Eskside supposed, for of course her husband had suggested the resemblance she was called upon to remark; but, at the same time, she had no unbounded confidence in her husband’s judgment, and was upon the whole as likely as not to have declared against him. Lady Eskside turned sharply round upon her. “What are you crying out about,Marg’ret? I expected a woman like you to have more sense. What I wanted to tell you was, that I am going away for a day or two. Well; why are you staring at a stranger so?”
“Oh, my lady!” cried Mrs Harding, “it’s no possible but what you see——”
“Ay, ay—I see, I see,” cried Lady Eskside, moved to tears; “well I see! and if it please God,” she added, devoutly, “I almost think the long trouble’s over. Marg’ret, you’ll not say anything; but I have no doubt you know what it has been this many a year.”
“Oh, my lady! yes, my lady! How could I be in the house and no know?”
“It is just like you all!” cried Lady Eskside, with another sudden change of sentiment; “prying into other folk’s business, instead of being attentive to your own; just like you all! But keep your man quiet, Marg’ret Harding, and hold your tongue yourself. That’s what I think,” she went on, softly, “but nothing’s clear.”
Dick sat and listened to all this, wondering. He thought she was a very strange old lady to change her tone and manner so often; but there was enough of sympathetic feeling in him to show that, though he could not tell how she was moved, she was much moved and excited. He was sorry for her. She had so kind a look that it went to his heart. Was it all for Val’s sake? and what did she mean about his mother? Somehow he could not connect his own old suspicions as to who his father was with this altogether new acquaintance. He got confused, and felt all power to think abandoning him. In everything she said, it was his mother who seemed to have the first place; and Dick felt that he knew all about his mother, though his father was a mystery to him. Of what importance could she be—a tramp, a vagrant, a woman whom he himself had only been able to withdraw from the fields and roads with difficulty—what could she be to this stately old lady? Dick, for his part, was deeply confounded, and did not know what to think.
She came up to him with a tremulous smile when the housekeeper went away. “Richard,” she said, speaking to him as if (he thought) she had known him all his life—“if I am right in what I think, you and I will be great friends some day. Was it you that my boy wrote about, that he was so fond of when he was at Eton?—oh, how blind I havebeen!—that had a mother you were very good to? My man, was that you?”
“Yes, ma’am—my lady—I suppose it was me——”
“That worked so well, and raised yourself in the world? that he was going to see always, till some fool, some meddling fool that knew no better,” cried Lady Eskside, “wrote to my old lord to stop it? But I thank God I did not stop it!” said my lady, the tears running down her cheeks. “I thank the Lord I had confidence in my boy! Richard! it was you that all this happened about? You are sure it was you?”
“There could not be two of us,” he said, his face lighted up with feeling; for Dick, good fellow, though he did not know why she was crying, felt something rise in his throat at the sight of the old lady’s tears. “Yes, ma’am—I mean, my lady.”
“Don’t call me my lady, my bonnie man! call me—but never mind—we’ll wait awhile; we’ll do nothing rash,” cried Lady Eskside. “You’re hungry and tired all this time, while I’ve been thinking of myself and of Val, and not of you. Come and have something to eat, Richard; and then you’ll take me to my boy.”
But Lady Eskside was two or three years over seventy. She was worn out with anxiety, and now with the sudden excitement of this visitor. She had taken neither food nor sleep, much as her years required all natural support, since Val had disappeared; and before her preparations could be made, she herself allowed that to attempt to travel by the night train would be foolish and unavailing. “I don’t want to die before it’s all settled,” she said, smiling and crying. “We’ll have to wait till to-morrow.” And Dick, who had travelled all night, was very willing to wait. She sat by him and talked to him while he had his meal, and for an hour or more after; and though Dick was not stupid, he was a child in the hands of the clever old lady, who recovered all her spirit now that her anxiety was removed, and this wonderful power of setting everything right was put into her hands. Lady Eskside was but human, and, so far as she was aware, no one but herself had the faintest inkling of this blessed way of clearing up the troubles of the family, or knew anything of Dick Brown and his mother. She felt that she had found it out, that it would be her part to clear it all up, and the thought was sweet to her. And as forher anxiety, Dick made so light of Valentine’s illness, which he had himself ceased to be alarmed about, that Lady Eskside felt almost happy to hear of the fever which supplied her with a reason for Val’s silence without communicating any alarm to her mind. Very soon she knew everything about Dick,—more than he knew himself—his tramp-life, his wanderings with his mother, his longings for something better, for a home and settled dwelling-place. And Dick, without knowing, made such a picture of his mother as touched the old lady’s heart. “She used to sit at the window and watch for the boat. That was the first thing that reconciled her a bit,” said Dick. “She used to watch and watch for Mr Ross’s boat, and sit like a statue when we’d started him, to see him come back. She always took a deal of interest in Mr Ross.”
“Did she ever tell you why?”
“Because he was so kind,” said Dick. “I’ve thought often there was more in it than that; but what could a fellow say to his mother, ma’am? I wasn’t one to worry her with questions. That’s how she used to sit watching. Mother is strange often; but there never was any harm in her,” said Dick, fervently—“never! The others would hold their tongues when she was by—I’ve thought of it often since; and when she saw my heart was set on settling down, she gave into it, all on my account—though what she liked was different. That is what I call a good woman!” he cried, encouraged by the attention and sympathy with which his story was received. Lady Eskside thus learnt more in an hour of the woman who had cost her so dear, than she could have done otherwise in years. She found out everything about her. She even got to feel for and pity the mother—ignorant, foolish, unwitting what harm she was doing—who thus kept to her savage point of honour, and never betrayed herself nor claimed her son. Dick, unconscious, told everything. It was only on thinking it over after that he remembered again his mother’s charge not to say anything of her. “Say only it’s your mother.” Well! he said to himself, he had said no more. It was as his mother that he had spoken of her, and as that alone. He knew her in no other character. He had spoken of her life, her habits, her goodness; but he had told nothing more. There was not, indeed, anything more to tell, had he wished to betray her.
In the afternoon, Lady Eskside was persuaded to go and rest—a repose which she wanted mightily—and Dick was left alone. It was then that he began to think that possibly he had been indiscreet in his revelations; and he was somewhat frightened, to tell the truth, when he found himself left in the great drawing-room alone. He did not know whether it would be right for him to wait there, where Lady Eskside left him, until she came back. He felt a little doubtful whether he might examine the great cabinets, and all the curious things he saw, and which fired him with interest. He could not do them any harm, at last he reflected; and he did not think the kind old lady would object. So he got out his note-book, and made little drawings of various things that struck his fancy. The wonder being over for the moment, and the pressure of Lady Eskside’s questions, Dick’s mind gladly retired from it altogether, and returned to easier everyday matters. That this discovery, whatever it was, should make any difference in his life, did not seem to him at all a likely idea; nor did such a notion seriously enter his mind. And no thought of the possible transference of his own lowly and active life to such surroundings as those which were now about him, ever occurred to Dick. He would have been extremely amused by the idea. But he made a note in his book—a rough little drawing, yet quite enough to be a guide to him—of sundry little “details”—arrangements of brackets and shelves, which he thought might be adapted even to his little place on a small scale. He had his eyes always about him, ready to note anything of the kind; and though he smiled to himself at the idea of copying in his tiny parlour what he saw in this great room, yet he made his drawings all the same, with his rough workman’s pencil. The drawings were very rough, but he knew how to work from them, and in his mind’s eye already saw a homely imitation of the objects he admired figuring upon his low walls. He even thought it would amuse Val, when he got better, to see in the boatman’s parlour a humble copy of the brackets in Rosscraig.
And after this, as one of the windows was open, he strayed out, with some perturbation, lest he should be taking too much upon him, and wandered through the shrubberies, and out into the woods. It was a soft spring afternoon, the sun near its setting, the trees showing a faint greenness, the sound of the Esk filling the air. The river was full andstrong, swelled by the spring rains, and by the melting of all the early frosts. It made a continuous murmur, filling the whole soft universe around with an all-pervading sound. Dick had almost forgotten what the woods were like in the early spring; and the charm of the stillness and the woodland rustle, the slanting lines of light, the bright gleams of green, the tender depths of shadow, stole into his heart. He had a still, profound, undemonstrative enjoyment of nature, loving her without being able to put his love into words; and the beauty of those irregular banks, all broken with light and shade, topped with trees which threw up their tall columns towards the sky, waiting till the blessing of new life should come upon them—delighted the young man, who for years had known no finer scenery than the unexciting precincts of the Thames. Dear Thames, kind river, forgive the words!—ungrateful words to come from the lips of one who owes thee untold pleasures; but soft meadows and weeping willows, and all the gentle lights and shadows of the level stream, looked tame beside the foaming, tumbling river, rushing with shouts among its rocks, singing over its pebbles, leaping and hurrying onward through all those bold braes that hemmed it in, and played perpetual chase and escape with the brown torrent. The trees on Eskside were not the grand broad placid trees to which Dick was used. Red firs, with the sun on their great russet pillars; white birches, poising daintily on every fairy knowe; pale ash-trees, long-limbed and bare—mixed with the few oaks and beeches, and gave a different character to the scene; and here and there a bold bit of brown rock, a slip of red earth, the stony course of a burn which went rattling in hot haste to join the Esk, crossing the path and toppling down in dozens of tiny waterfalls—all these were like nothing he had ever seen before. He strayed on a little further and a little further, by bypaths of which Val knew every curve and corner, under trees, every one of which, could they have spoken, would have asked for news of their young lord. Sometimes it occurred to him, with a sense of additional pleasure, that all this would one day belong to his young patron. Would Val ever ask him to come here, he wondered? then “Lord bless me!” said Dick to himself, “why should he?” “He’ll always be kind and good as long as he lives; but why should he ask the like of me?” and he laughed at his own absurdity. But what with these thoughts,and what with no thought at all, mere pleasure, which perhaps carries farthest, he went on, much farther than he knew, as far as the linn and the two great beeches which had played so great a part in Val’s life. Just before he reached that point he was stopped by a sudden sound which startled him, which had a distinct tone of humanity in it, and did not spring from the fresh and free nature about. It was the sound of a sob. Dick stood still and looked about him, with recollections of his own childhood rising fresh into his mind, and a tender thought of finding some poor little tired wanderer under some tree, crying for weariness. But he could see nothing, and presently went on again, persuading himself that his ears must have deceived him. He went on, himself rousing intermittent echoes, for his step was sometimes inaudible on the mossy turf, and sometimes sent thrills of sound all through the wood, as his foot crashed on a fallen branch, or struck the pebbles aside in a little shower.
When he got to the linn he paused for some time on the edge of the river, struck by the beauty of the place; and only when he was passing on, perceived behind him, all at once, somebody sitting at the foot of one of the trees—a little figure muffled in a blue cloak, and leaning against the hole of one of the big beeches. Dick made an unconscious exclamation—“I beg your pardon!”—and went hastily on, half frightened lest he should have disturbed some one who had a better right to be there than he had. But this incident broke the spell of his wandering, and recalled him to the thought that he was far from Rosscraig, and that it would be safer to turn back as he had come, than to risk losing his way. Perhaps a little curiosity about the solitary figure under the tree had something to do with this prudent thought; but his curiosity was lessened by a second glance he had stolen through the trees, which showed him that it was a lady who sat there. Had it been a tramp-woman, Dick might have shown his sympathy; but upon a lady, even one in trouble, he could not intrude; and yet he could not help being interested. Could it be from her that the sob had come? and why should she be crying here, all alone, like an enchanted princess? He knew little about enchanted princesses, but he had a tender, heart, and the sob had troubled him. He went back again, passing slowly, trying to make out, without staring—which was not consistent with Dick’s idea of “manners”—whoit was, and what she was doing under the shadow of the tree. The soft grass glade between these two giants of the wood was lighted up by a slant ray of the sun which slid all the way down the high bank on the other side of Esk, to pour that oblique line of glory under the great sweeping boughs over the greensward. She was seated out of the sunshine, but with her face turned towards the light, and it seemed to Dick that it was a face he had seen before. I do not think the fact that it was a young face, and a fair one, touched him so much as that it was very pale and mournful, justifying his idea that the sob must somehow have belonged to it. How he would have liked to linger, to ask what was the matter! He would have done so, had she not been a lady; but Dick knew his place. His surprise was great, however, when, as soon as his back was turned, he heard a stir, a sound of footsteps, a faint call, which seemed addressed to him. He turned round quickly. The girl, whoever she was, had risen from her seat. She had come out of the shade into the sunshine, and was standing between the trees, with the light upon her, catching a glittering edge of hair, and giving a hem of brightness to one side of her figure, and to the outlines of the blue cloak. “I beg your pardon; did you call me?” said Dick, shy but eager. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she wanted help of one kind or another. Then the little woodland lady beckoned to him timidly. I think, if it had not been for the anxiety and longing that swelled her heart wellnigh to bursting, Violet would never have had the courage thus to appeal to a stranger in the wood.