Sheadvanced a step to meet him, timid, yet with that confidence which social superiority gives: for Dick, I am bound to confess, though I love him, was not one of those wonderful beings who bear the exterior of a fine gentleman even in a workman’s clothes. He was not vulgar in any respect, being perfectly free from every kind of pretension, and with all the essence of fine manners—that politeness of the heartwhich neither birth nor education by themselves can give; but though, as I have said, his dress was to a certain degree copied from Valentine’s—who possessed theje ne sais quoiin perfection—and was quite well made and unobtrusive, yet I am obliged to allow that Dick had not that mysterious something which makes a gentleman. You could have found no fault with his appearance, and to look at his candid countenance was to trust him; but yet he had not theje ne sais quoi, and Violet knew that, conventionally speaking, she was addressing one who was “not a gentleman” this fact gave her a degree of freedom in calling him which she would scarcely have felt with a stranger of her own class. But more than that, Violet had recognised Dick. It was some years since she had seen him, but she remembered him. Not all at once, it is true. When he appeared first, before he saw her, she had felt as he did, that she had seen his face before; but ere he passed again, she had made out where and how it was that she had seen him; for it must be recollected that Violet’s heart was full to overflowing with thoughts of Val, of whom this stranger, so suddenly and strangely appearing, was a kind of shadow in her mind. The whole scene, in which she had seen this stranger, came before her as by a flash of light, after five minutes’ pondering within herself—for from the first glance she had felt that he was somehow associated with Valentine. What could bring him here, this boatman from the Thames? Her heart was breaking for news of her young lover, so dismally parted from her, whom she must never see again (she thought); but only to hear his name, to know where he was, would be something. She would not have betrayed herself to “a gentleman,” to one of Val’s friends and equals; but of “Mr Brown”—she remembered even his name by good fortune—she might make her inquiries freely. So, urged by the anguish in her poor little breast, Vi took this bold step. She had been sitting thus for hours crying all alone, and thinking to herself that this horrible blank was to go on for ever, that she would nevermore hear of him even—and I have not the heart to blame her for appealing thus to the first possibility of help. She made a step forward and looked at him with a pitiful little smile. “Perhaps you do not remember,” she said, “but I think I am sure it is you. I never forget people whom I have once seen. Did not you row us once, on the Thames, at Eton—my father and——”
“Oh yes, ma’am, to be sure!” cried Dick. “I knew that I had seen you before.” He was a little confused, after his experience with Lady Eskside, how he ought to address a lady, but after reflection decided that “ma’am” must always be right; for had he not heard the Queen herself addressed by the finest of fine ladies as “Ma’am”?
“Yes; and I remember you,” said Vi. Then she made a pause, and with a wistful glance at him, and a sudden flush which went as quickly as it came, added—“I am Mr Ross’s cousin.”
“I recollect now,” cried Dick. “He was so set on it that you should see everything. I think he was a bit better when I left.”
“Better!” cried Violet, clasping her hands together; “was he——” She was going to say, was he ill? and then reflected that, perhaps, it was best not to betray to a stranger how little she knew of him. So she stood looking up in his face, with great eyes dilated. Her eyes had been pathetic and full of entreaty even when poor Vi was at her happiest. Now there is no telling how beseeching those pretty eyes were, with the tears stealing into them, making them bigger, softer, more liquid and tender still. This look quite made an end of poor Dick, who felt disposed to cry too for company, and was aware of some strange, unusual movements in his own good heart.
“Don’t you fret,” he said soothingly; “I brought the old lady the news this morning. He had an accident, and his illness was sudden. But it had nothing to do with the accident,” he added. “Don’t be frightened, ma’am. It’s some fever, but not the worst kind; and the doctor told me himself that he’d pull through.”
“Oh, Mr Brown!” cried poor Vi. She dropped down upon a fallen tree, and began to cry, so that he could scarcely look at her for pity.
“Indeed you must not be frightened,” said Dick. “I am not anxious a bit, after what the doctor told me. Neither is the old lady up there at the Castle—Lady Eskside. She is going with me to-morrow morning to help to nurse him. Mother has him in hand,” Dick added with a little pride, “and he’s very safe with her. Don’t fret like this—now don’t! when I tell you the doctor says he’ll pull through!”
“Oh Val, Val, my Val!” cried poor little Violet. It was not because she was frightened; for at her age—unlessexperience has taught otherwise—getting better seems so necessary, so inevitable a conclusion to being ill. She was not afraid of his life; but her heart was rent with pity, with tenderness, with that poignant touching remorse, to which the innocent are liable. All that had gone before, all that Valentine had suffered, seemed to come back to her. It was not her fault, but it was “our” fault. She seemed to herself to be involved in the cause of it, though she would have died sooner than harm him. Her lips began to quiver, the tears rained through the fingers with which she tried to hide her piteous streaming eyes. “Oh Val, Val, my Val!” she cried. It was “our” fault; her father had done it, and even good Sandy had had his share; and herself, who had twined her foolish little life with his, so that even parting with her had been another complication in Valentine’s woes. She seemed to see him looking up at her in the moonlight, bidding her good-bye. Oh, why did he think of her? why did he take that trouble for her? She scarcely heard Dick’s anxious attempts at consolation. She was not thinking of the future, in which, no doubt—how could she doubt it?—Valentine would get better; but of the past and of all that made him ill. Her tears, her abandonment to that sorrow, her attempts to command herself, went to Dick’s heart. He stood looking at her, wondering wistfully for the first time in his life over the differences in men’s lots. If he (Dick) were to fall ill, his mother, no doubt, would be grieved; but Dick knew that it would create no commotion in the world; would not “upset” any one as Val’s illness did. Naturally, the good fellow felt, Mr Ross was of much more importance than he was, or could ever be; but still——
“Oh, how foolish you must think me!” cried Violet, drying her eyes. “It is not that I am frightened. It is because I know all that made him ill. Oh, Mr Brown, tell me about it—tell me everything! He is my cousin, and he has always been like my—brother. He used to bring me here when I was a child. You can’t think how everything here is full of him—and then all at once never to hear a word!” Between every broken sentence the tears fell in little bright showers from Violet’s eyes.
Dick sat down on the same fallen tree, but at a respectful distance, and told her all he knew—which was not everything, for his mother had not entered into details, and he knew little about the incident on the river, and her share init. Violet listened, never taking her eyes from his face, which was hard upon Dick, yet not undelightful to him. He had gone through a great many experiences that morning. But even Lady Eskside’s strange emotion, her curiosity about himself, and agitated manner, had not the same effect as this still more unexpected and strange encounter. He sat, at first rather awkwardly, upon the edge of his end of the tree, with his face turned towards her, but not always bold enough to look at her. The slant of the sunbeam, which was gradually dying off the scene, fell in the middle between them like a rail of gold, separating them from each other. Across this heavenly line of separation her eyes shone like stars, often bewildering Dick, though he kept pretty straight in his narrative, taking as little account as possible of the occasional giddiness that came over him, and the dazzling sensation in his eyes. Violet, interrupting him now and then by a brief question, sometimes crying softly under her breath, gave her entire attention to every word; and Esk ran on through all, with a murmur as of a third person keeping them company; and the wood contributed those numberless soft sounds which make up the silence of nature, enveloping them in an atmosphere of her own. Dick was not much given to poetry, but he felt like something in a fairy tale. It was an experience altogether new and strange; for hitherto there had been no enchantments in his life. How different it was to her and to him! To the young man, the first thrill of romance, the first touch of magic—the beginning of all sweet delusions, follies, and dreams; to the girl, an imperfect, faltering narrative, filled out by imagination, a poor, blurred picture—better, far better, indeed, than nothing, and giving her for the moment a kind of miserable happiness, but in itself nothing. It is frightful to think at what a disadvantage people meet each other in this world. Dick’s life, which had all been honest prose up to this moment, became on the spot, poetry; but, poor fellow, he was nothing but prose, poor prose to Vi, to whom these woods were full of all the lyric melodies of young life. She listened to him without thinking of him, drinking in every word and not ungrateful, any more than she was ungrateful to the fallen tree, or the beech boughs that sheltered her. Nay, she had a warmer feeling, a sense of grateful friendship, to Dick.
“Mr Brown,” she said, when his tale was done, “I amvery, very thankful to you for telling me. I should never have known but for you. For I ought to say that my people and Val’s people—I mean my cousin’s—are not quite—quite good friends. I must not say whose fault it is,” said Vi, with a suppressed sob; “and I don’t see Lady Eskside now—so without you I should not have known. Mr Brown! would you mind writing—a little note—just two lines—to say how he is when you get back?”
“Mind!” said Dick. “If you will let me——”
“And you can tell him when he gets well,” cried the girl, her voice sinking very low, her eyes leaving Dick’s face, and straying into the glow of sunshine (as he thought) between the two great trees—“you can tell him that you met me here; and that I was thinking of him, and was glad—glad to hear of him——” To show her gladness, Violet let drop two great tears which for some time had been brimming over her eyelids. “It is dreadful to be parted from a friend and to hear no word; but now that I know, it will not be so hard. Mr Brown, you will be sure to send just two lines, two words, to tell me——”
Here her voice faltered, and lost itself in a flutter of suppressed sound—sobs painfully restrained, which yet would burst forth. She did her very best, poor child, to master them, and turning to Dick with a pathetic smile, whispered as well as she could—“I can’t tell you how it all is. It is not only for Val being ill. It is everything—everything that is wrong! Papa, too—but I can’t tell you; only tell him that you met Violet at the linn.”
“I will tell him everything you have said. I will write, if you like, every day,” cried poor Dick, his heart wrung with sympathy—and with envy as well.
“Would that be too much?” she asked, with an entreating look. “Oh, if it would not be too much! And, Mr Brown, perhaps it will be best to send it to mamma. I cannot have any secrets, though I may be unhappy. If you will give me a piece of paper, I will write the address, and thank you—oh, how I will thank you!—all my life.”
Dick, who felt miserable himself, he could scarcely tell why, got out his note-book, with all the rough little drawings in it of the brackets at Rosscraig. He had not known, when he put them down, how much more was to befall him in this one brief afternoon. She wrote the address with a little hand which trembled.
“My hand is so unsteady,” she said. “I am spoiling your book. I must write it over again. Oh, I beg your pardon; my hand never used to shake. Tell Val—but no, no. It is better that you should not tell him anything more.”
“Whatever you bid me I will tell him. I will do anything, everything you choose to say,” said Dick, in his fervour. She gave a surprised wistful look at him, and shook her head.
“I must think for both of us,” she said; “and Val is very hasty, very rash. No, you must not say anything more. Tell him I am quite well if he asks, and not unhappy—not very unhappy—only anxious to know; and when he is well,” she said, with a reluctant little sigh, “you need not mind writing any more. That will be enough. It is a terrible thing when there are quarrels in families, Mr Brown.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dick, who knew nothing about families, nor about quarrels, but followed with a curious solemnity the infantine angelical wisdom and gravity of her face.
“A terrible thing when people try to hurt each other who ought to love each other; and some of us must always pay for it,” said poor Violet, in deep seriousness—“always, always some one must suffer; when it might be so different! If you are going back to Rosscraig, you should go before the sun sets, for it is far, when you don’t know the way.”
“And you?” said Dick, rising in obedience to this dismissal, yet longing to linger, to prolong the conversation, and not willing to allow that this strange episode in his life had come to an end.
“My way is not the same as yours,” she said, holding out her hand with gentle grandeur, like a little princess, sweet and friendly, but stooping out of a loftier region, “and I know every step. Good-bye, and thank you with all my heart. You must keep this path straight up past the firs. I am very, very glad I was here.”
“Good-bye, Miss Violet,” said Dick. It gave him a little pleasure to say her name, which was so pretty and sweet; and he was too loyal and too respectful to linger after this farewell, but walked away as a man goes out of a royal presence, not venturing to stay after the last gracious word has been said. He could not bear to go, but would not remain even a moment against her will. When he had gone a little way he ventured to turn back and look—but nothing wasvisible except the trees. She had disappeared, and the sunshine had disappeared; it seemed to Dick’s awakened fancy as if both must have gone together. The last golden arrow of light was gliding from the opposite bank of the river, and the glade between the bushes lay dim in the greyness of the evening. What a change it made! He went on with a sigh. Violet had gone back to the foot of the tree, and was waiting there till he should be out of sight; and Dick divined that this was the case, and that she wanted no more of him. Well! why should she want any more of him? She was a lady, quite out of Dick’s way, and she had been very sweet to him—as gracious as a queen. Between this impersonation of sweet youth, and the other figure, old Lady Eskside, with her dignity and agitated kindness, Dick was wonderfully dazzled. If all ladies were like these, what a strange sort of enchantment it must be to spend one’s life in such society. Dick had never known any woman but his mother, whom he loved, and upon whose will he had often been dependent, but to whom he was always in some degree forbearing and indulgent, puzzled by her caprices, and full of that tender patience towards her which has in its very nature something of superiority; and to find himself suddenly in the society of these two ladies, one after the other, both taking him into their confidence, betraying their feelings to him, receiving, as it were, favours at his hand, had the most curious effect upon his mind.
Dick had never felt so melancholy in his life as when Violet thus sent him away; and yet his head was full of a delicious intoxication, a sense of something elevated, ethereal, above the world and all its common ways. Should he ever see her again, he wondered? would she speak to him as she had done now, and ask his help, and trust to his sympathy? Poor Dick had not the remotest idea that these new sensations in his mind, this mixture of delight and of melancholy, this stirring up of all emotions, which made his long walk through the woods feel like a swallow-flight to him, had anything to do with the vulgar frenzy he had heard of, which silly persons called falling in love. He had always felt very superior and rather contemptuous of this weakness, which young men of his class feel, no doubt, in its more delicate form, like others, but which is seldom spoken of among them in any but that coarse way which revolts all gentle natures. So he was totally unwarned and unarmed against any insidious beginnings of sentiment, and would have resented indignantly the idea that his tender sympathy with this little lady, who had opened her heart to him, had anything whatever in it of the character of love. How could it have?—when the very foundation of this strange sweet revelation to him of an utterly new kind of intercourse and companionship, was the love, or something that he supposed must be love, between Mr Ross, his patron, and this little princess of the woods? What a lucky fellow Mr Ross was, Dick thought, with the tenderest, friendliest version of envy that ever entered a man’s bosom! and then it occurred to him, with a little sigh, to think that the lots of men in this world were very different; but he was not, he hoped, so wretched a fellow as to grudge his best friend any of the good things that were in his share. Thus he went back to Rosscraig with his mind entirely filled with a new subject—a subject which made him less sensitive even than he was before to any new light upon his own position. He looked at Violet’s writing in his note-book with very bewildering feelings when he got at night to the luxurious room where he was to sleep. She had written the address very unsteadily, then crossed it out, and repeated it with great care and precision—Mrs Pringle, Moray Place, Edinburgh. Though it slightly chilled him to think that this was her mother’s name, not her own, yet the sense of having this little bit of her in his breast-pocket was very delightful and very strange. He sat and looked at it for a long time. On the page just before it were these notes he had made of the brackets in the great drawing-room. These were the tangible evidences of this strange mission of his, and sudden introduction into a life so different from his own. It just crossed his mind to wonder whether these scratches on the paper would be all, whether he might look them up years hence to convince himself that it was not a dream. And then poor Dick gave a great sigh, so full and large, expanding his deep bosom, that it almost blew out his candles; whereupon he gave a laugh, poor fellow, and said his prayers, and got to bed.
As for Lady Eskside, she showed more weakness that particular evening than had been visible, I think, all her life before. She could not sleep, but kept Mrs Harding by her bedside, talking, giving her mysterious but yet intelligible confidences. “You’ll set to work, Marg’ret, as soon as I’m gone, to have all the new wing put in order, the carpets putdown, and the curtains put up, and everything ready for habitation. I cannot quite say who may be coming, but it is best to be ready. My poor old lord’s new wing, that gave him so much trouble! It will be strange to see it lived in after so many years!”
“Indeed, and it will that, my lady,” said Mrs Harding, discreet and cautious.
“It will that! I don’t suppose that you take any interest,” said Lady Eskside, “beyond just the furniture, and so forth?—though you’ve lived under our roof and ate our bread these thirty years!”
Mrs Harding was a prudent woman, and knew that too much interest was even more dangerous than too little. “The furniture is a great thought,” she said demurely, “to a person in my position, my lady. If you’ll mind that I’m responsible for everything; and I canna forget it’s all new, and that there is aye the risk that the moths may have got into the curtains. I’ve had more thought about these curtains,” said the housekeeper, with a sigh, “than the Queen hersel’ takes about the state.”
“You and your moths!” said my lady, with sharp scorn. “Oh, Marg’ret Harding, it’s little you know about it! If there was any way of keeping the canker and the care out of folk’s hearts! And what is it to you that I’m standing on the verge of, I don’t know what—that I’ve got the thread in my hand that’s failed us so long—that maybe after all, after all, my old lord may get his way, and everything be smooth, plain, and straight for them that come after us? What’s this to you? I am a foolish old woman to say a word. Oh, if my Mary were but here!”
“My lady, it’s a great deal to me, and I’m as anxious as I can be; but if I were to take it upon me to speak, what would I get by it?” said Mrs Harding, driven to self-defence. “The like of us, we have to know everything, and never speak.”
“Marg’ret, my woman, I cannot be wrong this time—it’s not possible that I can be wrong this time,” said Lady Eskside. “You were very much struck yourself when you saw the young—when you saw my visitor. I could see it in your face—and your husband too. He’s not a clever man, but he’s been a long time about the house.”
“He’s clever enough, my lady,” said the housekeeper. “Neither my lord nor you would do with your owre clevermen, and I canna be fashed with them mysel’. Now, my man, if he’s no that gleg, he’s steady; and I’m aye to the fore,” said Mrs Harding, calmly. This was a compensation of nature which was not to be overlooked.
“You see, you knew his father so well,” said Lady Eskside, with an oracular dimness which even Mrs Harding’s skill could scarcely interpret; and then she added softly, “God bless them! God bless them both!”
“My lady,” said the housekeeper, puzzled, “you’ll never be fit to travel in the morning, if you don’t get a good sleep.”
“That’s true, that’s true; but yet you might say, God bless them. The Angel that redeemed us from all evil, bless the lads,” murmured the old lady, under her breath. “Good night. You may go away, you hard-hearted woman; I’ll try to sleep.”
Lord Esksidewas seated in a little dingy sitting-room in Jermyn Street. Once upon a time, long years ago, the Esksides had possessed a town-house in a region which is no longer habitable by lords and ladies; but as they had ceased for years to come for even that six weeks in London which consoles country families with a phantasmagoric glimpse of “the world,” the town-house had long passed out of their hands. Lord Eskside had spent this dreary week in rooms which overlooked the dreary blank wall of St James’s, with its few trees, and the old gravestones inside—not a cheerful sight for an old man whose last hopes seemed to be dying from him. He had employed detectives, had advertised with immense precaution in the newspapers, and himself had wandered about the town, night and day, seeking his boy; while all the time, the few people whom he met when he appeared at rare intervals in such streets as are frequented by anybody worth speaking of, paid him compliments on his grandson’s success, and hoped that Val, when he appeared in the House of Commons, would show himself worthy of his race. “I expect him to do us credit,” the old lord said,working his shaggy eyebrows in such a way that his acquaintances thought he had some nervous complaint, and shook their heads, and wondered that “in his state of health” he should be in town alone. What bitter pangs were in his heart when he said these words! The boy had done them credit all his life up to this moment. If it was not the loftiest kind of reputation which Val had acquired, it was yet a kind highly estimated in the world, and which young men prized; and no stain had ever touched that bright young reputation, no shadow of shame ever lighted upon it. And now! These congratulations, which in other circumstances would have been so sweet to him, were gall and bitterness. What if Val had disappeared like his mother, with the same indifference to the claims of life and duty which that undisciplined, uneducated woman had shown? What if, crushed by the revelations so suddenly made to him, he were now—instead of taking the manly way, facing the scandal and living it out—to give in, and fail, and leave his place to be occupied by others? The thought of that election declared void for which he had struggled so stoutly, and of some one else coming in upon Val’s ruin, triumphing in his downfall, was sharp as a poisoned sword in the old man’s heart. Lady Eskside thought chiefly of the boy himself, and of what he might do in his despair; but the public downfall which seemed imminent, added pangs even more bitter to her husband’s sufferings. His adversary had done all that an adversary might; but no adversary could harm Lord Eskside and break his heart as his boy could. The old lord was very strong upon race. It was one of the objects of his fullest faith. He believed not only in the efficacy of being well-born, but extended that privilege far beyond the usual limits allowed to it. He had faith in the race of a ploughman as well as in that of his own noble house. But the blood in the veins of his boy had come from a race of wanderers—a species, indeed, not a race at all—made up by intermixtures of which neither law nor honour took note; and how could he tell that the honest ichor of the Rosses would predominate over the influence of that turbid mixture? Already it was evident enough that the vagabond strain had not lost its power. He had feared it all Val’s life, and sternly repressed it from his boyhood up; but repression had now ceased to be possible, and here was the evil in full force.
Lord Eskside had a very distinct ideal of life, and one of his theories was that no man could be a man who was not capable of setting his face hard against difficulty and fighting it out. To flee was a thing impossible to him; but Valentine had fled, and what but his vagrant blood could be to blame? It did not occur to the old lord that his own son, in whom there was no vagrant blood, had fled more completely than poor Val—turning his back upon his country, and hiding his shame in unknown regions and unknown duties. Richard’s desertion had wounded his father to the quick in its time; but Val had obliterated Richard, and now he scarcely recollected that previous flight. It never occurred to him to think that Richard’s example had put it into the boy’s mind to abandon his natural place, and flee before the sudden mortification and downfall. With strange pain, and anxiety deeper than words, he set everything down to the unfortunate mother. Her wild blood—the blood of a creature without reason, incapable of that supreme human faculty of endurance, which was to Lord Eskside one of the highest of qualities—was at the bottom of it all. If he could but find the boy in time to exert his old influence over him, to induce him to make a stand against the coward principle in his mind, to bring him back to his duty! Lord Eskside thought of Val as an old soldier might think of a descendant who had turned his back upon an enemy. Shame, and love eager to conceal the shame—sharp personal mortification and the sting of wounded pride, battling with tenderness unspeakable, and anxious longing at any cost, at all hazards, to wipe out this stain and inspire the unfortunate to redeem himself: these were the feelings in his mind. The sharpest ingredient in such a cup of bitterness is, that the parent well knows he cannot work out redemption for his boy. No other but the boy himself can do that. Prayers, and tears, and atonements, and concealments, and all the piteous expedients of human love and misery, cannot do it. No man can redeem his brother. The coward must himself prove that he has overcome his cowardice; the man who has failed must himself turn back the tide of fortune and win. And I do not know anything more pathetic in nature than the brave old hero trying hard to put his own heart of gold into the leaden bosom of some degenerate boy; or the pure strong woman labouring to inspire with her own white fervent soul some lump of clay that has been given to her—God knows how—for a daughter. This was how the old lord felt. If he could but put himself, his old steadfast heart, his obdurate courage, his dogged strength of purpose, into the boy! If there was but any way to do it!—transfusion of spirit like that fanciful medical notion of transfusion of blood. Lord Eskside would have given his old veins to be drained—his aged frame to be hacked as any physician pleased—would have had his very heart taken out of his breast had that been possible—to give the best of it to Val; but could not, heaven help us!—could only sit and think what impotent words to say, what arguments to use, when he should find him, to make the boy stand and endure like a man.
He was sitting thus, his head leaning on his hand, his shaggy eyebrows so bent over his eyes that you scarcely could see them glimmer in the caverns below, though there was a painful suffusion in them which glistened when the light caught it. A claret-jug was on the table and a single glass. He had dined late, after being out all day, and was worn out by the sickness of hope deferred, and the heaviness of disappointment. There was a little fire smouldering in the grate, but he had thrown the window open with an irritable impatience of the close small shut-up room. The distant sounds of the streets still came in, though the full tide of traffic was over. There was still a roll and murmur of distant carriages and voices, the hum of that sea which calls itself London. The old lord paid no attention. He was going over ideas which he had pondered again and again, anxiously, but with a certain languor and hopelessness in his heart. If he heard the carriage stop below, the sound of the opening door, he took no notice. What was it to him? Carriages stopped continually all through the evening. People were always coming and going. What could it matter to him—a stranger, alone?
He sat facing the door; it was a habit he had fallen into since he came here—not with any expectation, but only in case—for, to be sure, some visitor might come, some one with news might come, though he did not look for anything. Even the sound of steps and voices coming up-stairs did not excite him, it was so usual. All at once, however, he roused himself. The door was thrown wide open, without any preliminary, and Lady Eskside walked straight in, her old eyes shining, her figure dilating with triumph, like a figure in aprocession. The sight of her startled her husband beyond expression, yet not so much as did the other figure behind her. “You, Catherine, you? and you’ve got him!” he cried; for there was a certain general resemblance in height and form between Dick and Val. “I’ve got him!” said Lady Eskside, standing aside with that extraordinary air of triumph, to show to her husband the figure of a timid young man, respectful and hesitating, who looked at him with blue eyes, half deprecating, half apologetic. Lord Eskside’s heart, which had jumped high, sank down in his breast. He gave but one look at the stranger whom, at first, he had taken for Valentine. “Good Lord! do you mean to drive me mad? My lady! is this what you bring me for Val?” he cried; and turned his back upon the new-comer with feverish irritability, feeling the disappointment go to his very heart.
“Oh, my dear, forgive me!” cried Lady Eskside; “I was not thinking of Val for the moment. Look at him, look at him! look at the boy again!”
“You were not thinking of Val? In the name of heaven, who else was there to think of?” said her husband. He was almost too angry to speak—and so sick with his disappointment, that he could have done something cruel to show it, had the means been in his way.
“Forgive me!” said my lady, putting her hand upon his arm; “but there’s news of Val. I have brought you news of him. He’s ill—in his bed with fever; oh! when I think of it, I am half frantic to find how long it takes, with all their bonnie railways! But he’s safe. It had been more than he could bear. My poor boy!—he’s been ill since the day he left us. What ails you? what ails you, my old man?”
“Nothing,” he said, fumbling, with his hands clasped, his shaggy eyebrows concealing any gleam of the light underneath, his lips quivering—“nothing.” It took him a minute to recover himself, to get over the sudden stilling of the storm within him, and the sudden calm that came after so much trouble. The change seemed to stop his breath, but not painfully, and rolled off loads as of Atlas himself—more than the world—from his shoulders. “Wait a moment,” said Lord Eskside, his eyebrows gradually widening; “what did you say it was? I did not catch it clearly; ill, in his bed?”
“But nothing to be frightened about—nothing to alarm us——”
“I am not alarmed, I am not alarmed!” said the old lord. To tell the truth, he was giddy with the sudden cessation of pain. “There, Catherine! it’s you I ought to think of, after such a journey,” he added, quickly coming to himself. “Sit down and rest; no doubt you’re very tired. Ill—in his bed? Then it’s all accounted for; and God be thanked!” said Lord Eskside. He said this under his breath, and drew a chair close to the smouldering fire, and put his old wife into it, grasping her by both the arms for a moment, which was his nearest approach to an embrace.
“But you have not given a look or a thought to—him I brought with me,” said the old lady, grasping him in her turn with a forcible yet tremulous hold.
“Him you’ve brought with you?” Lord Eskside turned round with a scowl from under his shaggy eyebrows, which meant no harm, but was one of his devices to conceal emotion. He saw a fair-haired timid young man standing irresolute near the door, evidently very uneasy to find himself there, and not knowing what to do. He had Lady Eskside’s shawl on his arm, and a helpless, apologetic, deprecating look on his face. The old lord did not know what to make of him. Was it a new servant, he asked himself for a moment? But the stranger did not look like a servant. “Here is somebody waiting,” he said, in as quiet a tone as possible, for he did not want to show the impatience he felt.
“Is that all you say?” cried my lady, in keen tones of disappointment. “Oh, look at him—look at him again!”
“Sit down,” said the old lord, abruptly. “It is clear Lady Eskside means you to stay, though she is too tired to introduce you. I ask your pardon for not knowing your name. My lady, as you and I have much to say to each other, and the night is far on, could not this business wait?”
“Oh,” cried Lady Eskside with a groan, “is that all—is that all you say?”
“My lady,” said Dick, emboldened to the use of this title by hearing it used by no less a personage than Lord Eskside himself, “I beg your pardon; but isn’t it best for me to go? I will come back for you in the morning before the train starts. I would rather go, if you don’t mind.” Dick had never felt himself so entirely out of his element, so painfullyde trop, in his life. He was not used to this feeling, and itwounded him mightily—for he, too, had some pride of his own. And he had not come seeking any favour, but rather conferring one, taking a great deal of trouble voluntarily, of his own will, for what was no advantage to him. And then Dick had been made much of these two days—he had found himself elevated into a vague region of mystery, where he met with nothing but kind interested looks, phrases full of meaning which he could not penetrate, but which all tended to make him feel himself of importance. He seemed now for the first time to come down to common life after this curious episode, and the shock was rude. He did not like it; he felt less inclined than usual to put up with anything that was disagreeable. He felt angry even, though he did not wish to show it. What was this old lord to him that he should linger about like a servant, waiting for a word?
“Oh, hush, hush!” said the old lady; “look at him again! You don’t think I would come all this way for nothing—me that have not travelled for years. Look at him—look at him again.”
“Do you call Valentine nothing? or have you gone out of your wits?” said the old lord, pettishly. “I think the young man is very sensible. Let him come back to-morrow. We have plenty to think of and plenty to talk of to-night.”
Lady Eskside was so deeply disappointed that her courage failed her; she was very tired, and so much had happened to take away her strength. The tears came into her eyes, and it was all she could do to keep herself from mere feeble crying in her weakness. “Sit down, Richard,” she said. “Oh, my dear, my dear, this is not like you! Can you see nothing in him to tell the tale? I have it all in my hands. Listen to me: I know where she is; I am going to find her: I can make everything clear. It’s salvation for us all—for Val, God bless him! and for this one——”
“For what one?” cried Lord Eskside hoarsely under his breath.
“Oh!” cried Lady Eskside, almost with violence, thrusting her husband away from her, “can you not see? must I summer it and winter it to you—and can you not see? Richard, my man,” she added, rising up suddenly, and holding out both her hands to Dick, “you’re full of sense, and wiser than I am. Don’t stay here to be stared at, my dear, but go to your bed, and get a good night’s rest. The woman told me there was a room for you. See that you have everything comfortable; and good night! We’ll go down to my boy in the morning, you and me; and God bless you, my good lad! You’ll be a comfort to all of us, father and mother, and your grandparents, though they may not have the sense to see. Good night, Richard, my man—good night!”
“What does all this mean, my lady?” said Lord Eskside. He had watched her proceedings with growing excitement, impatience, and an uncomfortable sense of something behind which he did not understand. “You’re not a foolish woman to torment me with nonsense at such a moment. What does it mean?”
“If you had ever looked at the boy, you would have seen. It is Richard himself come back,” cried the old lady: “Richard, not what he is now, as old a man as you and me, and tashed and spotted with the world; but my son as he was, when he was the joy of our hearts, before this terrible marriage, before anything had happened, when he was just too good, too kind, too stainless—or so at least you said; for me, I never can see, and never will see,” cried Lady Eskside, indignantly, “that it is not a man’s crown and glory, as well as a woman’s, to be pure.”
“My lady! my lady!” said the old lord. He was walking about the small room in his agitation; his under lip thrust out, his eyebrows in motion, his hands deep in his pockets. “What do you mean?” he cried. “Have you any foundation, or is it all another wild fancy about a likeness? A likeness!—as if in anything so serious you could trust to that.”
“Do you mean to tell me you did not see it?” she said.
“Oh, see it! My lady,” said the old lord, ungenerously, with a snort of contempt, “you saw a likeness in Val when he came, a dark boy, with eyes like black diamonds, and curly brown hair, to Richard. You said he was his father’s image.” The old man ended with an abrupt short laugh. “Catherine, for heaven’s sake, no more fancies! Have you any foundation? and the lad not even a gentleman,” he added under his breath.
“If you go by the clothes and the outside,” cried the old lady, contemptuous in her turn, “how could he be a gentleman? That poor creature’s son—nothing but a tramp—a tramp! till the fine nature in him came out, and he stopped his wandering and made a home for his mother. Was thatlike a gentleman or not? He’s told me everything, poor boy,” she went on, her tone melting and softening, “without knowing it—every particular; and I am going to find her to clear it all up. When Val gets well, there shall be no more mystery. We’ll take his mother home in the eye of day. She must be a changed woman—a changed woman! He’s told me everything in his innocence—how she would sit and watch Val in his boat, but never said a word. God bless her! for she’s been faithful to what light she had.”
“What is all this you are saying?” said Lord Eskside. He was utterly subdued. He drew a chair close to hers and sat down, humbly putting his hand on her arm. “Catherine, you would not speak to me so if there was not something in it,” he said.
The old pair sat up together far into the night. She told him everything she had found out, or thought she had found out; and he told her what he had been doing, and something of the things he had been thinking—not all, for my lady had never had those fears of Val’s courage and strength which had undermined the old lord’s confidence. But when she told him, weeping and smiling, of the alliance between the two boys, so unwitting of their close relationship, and of the mother’s speechless adoration at a distance of the child she had given up, Lord Eskside put his hand over his face, and his old wife, holding his other hand, felt the quiver of emotion run through him, and laid her head upon his shoulder, and wept there; sweet tears! as when they were young and happiness sought that expression, having exhausted all others. “My dear, we’ll have to die and leave them soon,” she said, sobbing, in his ear.
“Ay, Catherine! but we’ll go together, you and me,” said the old lord, pressing the hand that had held his for fifty years; and they kissed each other with tremulous lips; for was not the old love, that outlasted both sorrow and joy, more sacred, more tender, than any new?
Dick presented himself next morning in time for the train; but he was not quite like himself. He had been put on the defensive, which is not good even for the sweetest nature. Lady Eskside had bewildered him, he felt, with mysterious speeches which he could not understand—making him, in spite of himself, feel something and somebody, he could not tell why; and by so doing had put him in a false position, and subjected him to unjust slight and remark.He had not wanted to thrust himself, a stranger, into the interview between my lord and my lady. She had made him follow her against his will, and Dick felt aggrieved. It was not his doing. “Why did she drag me in where I was not wanted?” he said to himself. He was too faithful and loyal not to keep his appointment with her, though the idea of leaving a note and hurrying away to his work did cross his mind. His work, after all, was the thing that was most important.Thatwould not deceive him, as the ladies most likely would, old and young, who had established a claim upon Dick’s services, he knew not how. What were ladies to him? He must go back to his work. It was with this sentiment clouding his face that he presented himself next morning, having breakfasted half-sulkily by himself. It is hard for the uninitiated to tell which is virtuous melancholy and which is sulkiness, when an early access of that disorder comes on; Dick felt very sad, and did not suspect himself of being sulky; he knocked very formally at the door of Lord Eskside’s little sitting-room. The old lord himself, however, came forward to meet him, with a changed countenance. He held out his hand, and looked him in the face with an eager interest, which startled Dick. “Come in, come in,” said Lord Eskside; “my lady is getting ready. We are all going together.” The old man held his hand fast, though Dick was somewhat reluctant. “I was startled last night, and could not understand you—or rather I could not understandher. But you must not bear me any malice,” he said, with a strange sort of agitated smile, which was bewildering to the young stranger.
“I don’t bear any malice,” said Dick, brightening up; “it would not become me; and to you that are—that belong to Mr Ross.”
“Yes, I belong to Mr Ross—or Mr Ross to me, it doesn’t much matter which,” said Lord Eskside. “You’ll understand better about that by-and-by; but, Richard, my lady’s old, you know, though she has spirit for twenty men. We must take care of her—you and me.”
“Surely,” said Dick, bewildered; and then my lady herself appeared, and took a hand of both, and looked at them, her bright old eyes shining. “I can even see another likeness in him,” she said, looking first at Dick and then at Lord Eskside; and the old lord bent his shaggy eyebrows with a suppressed snort, and shook his head, giving her a look ofwarning. “Time enough,” he said—“time enough when we are there.” Dick went in the same carriage with them, and was not allowed to leave them, though his own idea was that he ought to have travelled with Harding, who had accompanied Lady Eskside; and they talked over him in a strain full of strange allusions, which made him feel that he did not know what was going to happen—speaking of “her” and “them,” and giving glances at Dick which were utterly bewildering to him. “Here is a packet Richard left for me, though I have never had the heart to look at it,” Lord Eskside said—“the certificate of their birth and baptism.” “And that reminds me,” said my lady, “where is Richard? did he go to you? did you see him? I would not wonder but he is passing his time in London, thinking little of our anxiety. God send that he may take this news as he ought.”
Richard! there was then another Richard, Dick thought. He had been roused, as was natural, by the sound of his own name, but soon perceived, with double bewilderment, that it was not to him, but some other Richard, that the conversation referred.
“You are doing him injustice,” said Lord Eskside; “he came yesterday, but I did not see him. I was out wandering about like an old fool. He left the packet and a note for me, and said he was going to Oxford. To be sure, it was to Oxford he said; so we’ll see him, and all can be cleared up, as you say, at once.”
“To Oxford!” cried Lady Eskside, a sudden pucker coming into her forehead. “I mind now—that was what he said to me too. Now, what couldhebe wanting at Oxford?” said the old lady with an impatient look. She said no more during the journey, but sat looking out from the window with that line of annoyance in her forehead. It felt to her somehow unjustifiable, unnecessary, that Richard should be there, in the way of finding out for himself what she had found out for him. The thought annoyed her. Just as she had got everything into her hands! It was not pleasant to feel that the merest chance, the most trivial incident, a meeting in the streets, a word said, might forestall her. My lady was not pleased with this suggestion. “Talk of your railways,” she said—“stop, stopping, every moment, and worrying you to death with waiting. A post-chaise would be there sooner!” cried Lady Eskside.
Dickbecame in a manner the head of the expedition when the party reached Oxford; his foot was on his native heath; he knew where to take the two old people, both of whom became more and more agitated in their different ways, as they approached to the end of their journey. He put them into a cab; and getting on the box himself, had them driven to the river-side. Lady Eskside grasped her old lord’s hand, as they sat there together, jolting through the streets, going to this strangest incident of their lives. She was trembling, though full of resolute strength. The emergency was too much for her nerves, but not for her brave old heart, which beat high with generous courage, yet with a sense of danger not to be despised or overlooked. How was she to meet and master this untamed creature of the wilds? how secure her that she might not escape again? and how make the revelation to her son who had got to hate his wife, and to Valentine who knew nothing of his mother? Lady Eskside, with a mixture of pride and terror, felt that it was all in her own hands. She must do everything. The thought made her tremble; but it gave her a certain elation which the reader will understand, but which I cannot describe—which was not vanity nor self-importance—but yet a distinct personal pleasure and satisfaction in being thus able to set everything right for her children. I don’t doubt that she had some idea that only her own penetrating eye could have made sure of Dick’s identity, and only her close questioning could have elicited from him so many certain proofs; and it seemed so just, so right, such a heavenly recompense for what she had suffered, that to her hands and no other should be given the power of setting all right. Lord Eskside was less excited. He was thinking more of the boy, less of the circumstances in which he was about to find him, and the thrill in his old frame was almost entirely that of natural anxiety to know how Val was. Dick on the box was not without his tremor too. He did not know what his mother would think of this visit—if it would terrify her, if she would think he had been unfaithful to the charge she had laid upon him not to speak of her. He stopped the cab when they reached the river-side; and, scarcely knowingwhat he was about, handed Lady Eskside out. “I’ll go round by the back and open the door: that’s the house,” he said, hoarsely; and left them standing by the edge of the grey Thames, which, still somewhat swollen with spring rains, ran full and swift, sweeping round the eyot with all its willows faintly green, upon which, though they did not know it, poor Val had stranded. The sun was shining brightly, but still the river was grey; and Lady Eskside shivered and trembled with that chill of anxiety and excitement which is more penetrating than cold. “This is where Val brought me,” said the old lady, as they walked tremulously to the door. “Yes, yes, I mind it all—and there was a shawl like one of mine upon a table. Yes, yes, yes,” she said to herself, almost inarticulate—“my own shawl! Oh, how was it I was so foolish, and did not see at once that it must beher; and she had fled out of the place not to see me? It all comes back! She must have known it was me. It’s nothing, nothing, my dear! I’m trembling, it’s true—how can I help it! But all the time I am steady, steady as a rock; you need not be feared for me.”
“I wonder if he is in one of these rooms,” said the old lord, looking wistfully at the upper windows. They opened the garden gate, not without difficulty, for they were both very tremulous, and went in to the little garden where there was a pale glow of primroses. There they stood for perhaps a moment looking towards the house, waiting for Dick to open to them, breathless, feeling the great crisis to be near. Lady Eskside clung still to her old lord’s arm. He was not a pillar of strength, and shook, too, in his old age and agitation; but there was strength as well as comfort in the mere touch—the sense of standing by each other in those hardest moments, as in all others. As they stood thus waiting, the door opened, and some one came out, walking towards them. He strolled out with one hand in his pocket, with the air of a man issuing forth from his own house. It was not Dick coming to open to them, to admit them. Lady Eskside dropped her husband’s arm, and gave a strange cry—a cry of astonishment and confused dismay, half querulous, half violent. Hot tears came rushing to her eyes in the keen disappointment, mingled with wonder, which penetrated her mind. She clasped her hands together almost with a movement of anger—“Richard,Richard!” she cried.
He stood for a moment silent, looking at them, confusedtoo. “My father and my mother,” he said to himself under his breath. Then he tried to rally his powers, and put on a smile, and look composed and self-possessed, which he was not; but instead of succeeding in this attempt, grew hot and red, though he was old enough to have been done with such vanities. “This is a very unexpected meeting,” he said. “Mother, excuse me if I am startled. Nothing was further from my thoughts than to see you here.” Then he stopped short, and made a gulp of agitation and resumed again. “You have heard that Valentine is here? He is just the same; we must wait for the crisis. He is taken good care of——”
“Richard!” said his mother—“oh, none of your pretending to me—for God’s sake tell us the truth! Do youknow?—or is it by chance you have come here?”
“It will be better to come into the house, my lady,” said Lord Eskside.
I scarcely think she heard what he was saying. She put her hand upon her son’s arm, grasping him almost harshly. She was too much excited to be able to contain herself. She had forgotten Val, whom the old lord was longing for. “Do you know, or do you not know?” she cried, her voice growing hoarse. Dick, who had come to the door a minute later than Richard, stood upon the threshold looking at them with a wondering countenance. But no one saw or noticed Dick. He saw the old people absorbed with this new personage, whose back was turned to him, and whom he had never seen before. The mystery was thickening, for here now was another in it, and more and more it grew incomprehensible to Dick. His was not one of the spirits that love mystery. He was open as the day, straightforward, downright. His heart sickened at this maze, at all those difficulties, at the new people who had thus come into his life. He stood looking at them painfully with a confusion in all his thoughts which utterly disconcerted and disturbed him. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and went away. Where? To his work; that at least never disappointed nor confused him. No strangers came into it to tangle the threads, to turn it all into chaos. He had heard how Valentine was, and that the crisis had not yet come; and he was half indignant, half sad, in his sense of a disturbance which was wholly unaccountable and unjustifiable. The house was his—Dick’s—it did not belong to the stranger who had preceded him to the door, and was standing there now in colloquy with the old couple, who evidently had forgotten Dick. What right had they to take him up and cast him down—to take possession of his house, which had cost him dear, which was his, and not theirs, as if he were nothing in it? Dick strode away, more hurt, angry, and “put out,” than he had ever been in his life. He threw off his Sunday coat (none the better for these railway journeys), and hastily putting on his working-jacket, hurried off to the rafts. There a man could always find something to occupy him—there was honest work, uncomplicated by any bewilderments. He went and thrust himself into it, almost forgetting that he was head-man in his anxiety to dislodge all these disturbing questions from his mind, and to feel himself in reality what he was.
“I think,” said Richard, not without excitement himself, but trying hard not to show his rapid changes of colour, his breathless heat and agitation, “that my father gives good advice, and that you ought to come into the house, where at least we can talk with quiet and decency. There is no reason why you shouldn’t come in,” he said, with nervous vehemence, pushing open the door behind him; “or the Queen, for that matter, if she were here. The mistress of it is as spotless as any one of you. That much I may say.”
Lady Eskside did not say another word. She grasped her old lord’s arm again, and suffered herself to be led into the little parlour, which she had seen before on another occasion, little thinking whose house it was. Her eye, I need not say, was caught at once by the little shawl on the table. She pointed at it hastily to her husband, who stared, totally unaware what it was to which his attention was directed. They put her into an old carved chair, which was one of poor Dick’s latest acquisitions before all this wonderful commotion began. Richard, scarcely knowing what he was doing, led the way, introduced them into the strange little room, as a man does when he is in his own house. He had got to feel as if it were his own house. Already he had passed many hours there, feeling himself no intruder. He received his mother and placed her in Dick’s easy-chair as he might have received her in the Palazzo Graziani; and the old lady, with her keen eyes, caught at this, though he was as unconscious of it as a man could be.
“You are at home here,” she said to him, with keen suspicion—“it’s no strange place to you, Richard, thoughit’s strange, strange, to my old lord and me. What does it mean, man?—what does it mean? Have you known all the time? Have you been keeping it secret to drive us wild? What is it?—what is it you mean?”
“Where is the boy?” said Lord Eskside. “I do not enter into this question between your mother and you. You will satisfy us both, doubtless, about the mystery,—which, as you all well know, is a thing I abhor. Richard,” said the old man, with a break in his voice, “I want to see the boy.”
“Listen first, sir,” said Richard, indignant; “how my mother has found out, I don’t know; but she is right. Chance—or Providence, if you like the word better—has thrown Val into his—mother’s hands. I guessed it when I saw you at Rosscraig, and I came here at once and found it was so——”
“You guessed it? God forgive you, Richard! You’ve known, then, all the time? you’ve exposed us and Val to abuse and insult, and maybe killed the lad and broken my old lord’s heart. Oh, God forgive you, Richard! is this the way you’ve done your duty to us and your boy?”
Lady Eskside wrung her hands. Her old face flushed and grew pale; hot tears filled her eyes. Something of personal disappointment was in the pang with which she felt this supposed deception. Women, I fear, are more apt to think of deception than men. Lady Eskside, in the sharpness of her disappointment, rashly jumped to the conclusion that Richard’s knowledge was not an affair of yesterday; that there was something behind more than had been told to her; that perhaps, for anything she could tell, he had been visiting this woman, who was his lawful wife, as if the tie between them had been of quite a different character; or perhaps, even—who knows?—was trying to palm upon them as his wife some one who did not possess any right to that title. In suspicion, as in other things, it is the first step that costs the most. Lord Eskside did not go so far as his wife did, but the thought began to penetrate his mind too, that if Richard had known this, even for a day, without disclosing it, he had exposed them to cruel and needless pain.
“Catherine,” said the old lord, “we need not quarrel to make matters worse. If he recognises his wife and his other son at last, and it is true that they are here, let usgive our attention to make sure of that, and prevent trouble in the future. It is not a question of feeling, but of law and justice. Yes, no doubt, feeling will come in; but you cannot change your son, my lady, any more than he can change his father and mother, which, perhaps, he would have little objection to do. We must put up with each other, such as we are.”
“You do me injustice, sir,” cried Richard; “both you and my mother. There has been no deception in the matter. You shall hear how it happened afterwards; but in the meantime it is true that she is here, mother. I met her at Val’s bedside two days ago for the first time, without warning. I believe if I had given her warning she would have escaped again—but for Val. I am not made of much account between you,” said Richard, with a painful smile. “I have little occasion to be vain. You, my mother, and her, my—wife; what you think of is not me, but Val.”
“Oh Richard! you would aye have been first with me if you would have let me,” said Lady Eskside, as ready to forgive as she had been to censure, her heart melting at this reproach, which was true. As for the old lord, he was not so easily moved either to blame or to pardon. He got up and walked about the room while Richard, still flushed with excitement and a certain indignation, told them the story of the photograph, and his recognition of his wife’s face so strangely brought before him by his son. Richard gave his own version of the story, as was natural. He allowed them to perceive the violence of the shock this discovery had given him, without saying very much on the subject; and described how, though incapable of anything else in the excitement of the moment, he had put force upon himself to make his wife’s residence known to his lawyer, and to have a watch kept upon her movements. What he said was perfectly true, with just that gloss which we all put upon our own proceedings, showing them in their best aspect; and Lady Eskside received it as gospel, taking her son’s hand into her own, following every movement of his lips with moist eyes, entering with tender and remorseful sympathy into those hidden sentiments in his mind which she had doubted the existence of, and which, up to this moment, he had never permitted her to see. Her husband, however, walked about the room while the tale went on, listening intent, without losing a word, but not so sympathetically—staring hard at Dick’s homely ornamentations, his bits of carving, his books, all the signs of individuality which were in the place. I don’t know that he remarked their merits, though he walked from one to another, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stared almost fiercely at the carving, with eyes wellnigh hidden under his shaggy brows. He did not say anything while Lady Eskside, weeping and smiling, made her peace with her son. When she cried, “Oh yes, my dear, my dear, I understand!” he only worked his expressive eyebrows, giving no articulate evidence of emotion. “Val is up-stairs, I suppose? I am going to see him,” was all he said in the pause after Richard’s story concluded. Lord Eskside climbed up the narrow wooden staircase with a shrug of his shoulders. He was not satisfied with his son’s story, as his wife had been. He opened one door after another before he found the room in which Val was lying. To see the boy stretched there on the bed, with vacant eyes, half dozing, half waking, but quite unconscious of his visitor, went to the old lord’s heart far more than Richard’s story had done. “If he had spoken out like a man, this might have been spared,” he said to himself; and bent over Val’s bed to hide the momentary contortion of his features, which brought the water to his eyes. “My poor lad!” he said, with hidden anguish, scarcely noticing for the first moment the nurse on the other side of the bed. She rose with a sudden dilation of terror in her eyes. She had never seen Lord Eskside, and did not know who he was; but felt by instinct that he had been brought hither by the terrible wave of novel events which was about to sweep over her head, and that he had come to take away from her her boy.
Lord Eskside looked at her across the bed where Val was lying. He made her a low bow, with that courtly politeness which now and then the homely old lord brought forth, like an old patent of nobility. But it was difficult for him to know what to say to her—and she gave him no assistance, standing there with a look of panic which disturbed the still, abstracted dignity of her ordinary aspect. “I am afraid I have startled you,” he said, his voice softening. “Don’t be alarmed. I am your—husband’s father. I am sorry, very sorry, that we never met before.”
She made no answer, but only a slight tremulous movement intended for a curtsey; then some sense of the necessities of her position, struggling with her fright, she said faintly, “He is just the same—on Saturday he’ll be better, please God.”
“On Saturday he’ll be better! God bless you, my dear! You seem sure? How can you be sure?” cried the old lord, with his eyelids all puckered together to hide the moisture within.
She put up her hand with a warning gesture. “Hush,” she said; “it makes him restless when he hears a voice”—then a curious, exquisite twilight seemed to melt over her face as if some last reflections of a waning light had caught her, illuminating her for the moment with the tenderest subdued radiance—“except mine,” she added in tones so low as to be almost inaudible. The old lord was deeply touched. What with his boy’s condition, which was worse than he expected, and this voice of great, subdued, and restrained feeling—emotion that had no object but to conceal itself—all his prejudices floated away. He was not in the least conscious of being affected by the beauty which was concealed, too, like the emotion—indeed he would have denied that she had any beauty; but the suppression of both and ignoring of them by their possessor had a great effect upon him; for there was nothing in the world more noble in the eyes of the old Scots lord than this power of self-restraint. He went round to her softly, walking with elaborate precaution, and took her hand for a moment; “God bless you!” he said; then, with another look at Val, he left the room. He himself, even with all the self-control he had, might have broken down and betrayed the passionate love and anxiety in him had he waited longer there.
Lady Eskside was seated in the parlour alone when he entered; she was leaning back in Dick’s great chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes. “He has gone to get the doctor, that we may know everything exactly,” she said. “He” had changed to her. She had taken back her own son, her very child, into her heart, (had he not the best right?) and it was Richard who was “he,” not any one else. She was so tender, so happy, so deeply moved by this revolution, that she could scarcely speak to her husband, who, she felt instinctively, had not been subjected to the same wonderful change.
“I have just seen him—and his mother,” said Lord Eskside.
“Seenhim—the boy? Oh my poor Val!” cried the old lady, weeping; and then she raised her hands and turned to her husband with something which was half an apology and half a reproach. “I feel as if I had got my Richard back—our own boy—and I don’t seem able to think of anything else—not even Val.”
Lord Eskside took another turn round the little parlour. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, my lady,” he said; “but if Richard had had the sense to write to you or me when he wrote to that fine London solicitor of his, all this might have been spared. Sandy Pringle’s miserable letter, and all that stramash about the election, and my poor Val’s fever—maybe his life——”
“His life! his life!” she said, starting up in alarm from her chair.
“Who can say? It’s in God’s hands, not ours. His mother says he’ll be better on Saturday,” Lord Eskside said, turning away.
Meanwhile Dick had thrown himself with a certain passion into his work, feeling a curious reluctance which he had never experienced before to receive the orders of the customers, and to run hither and thither launching boats into the water, drawing them up again, dealing out oars and cushions as he had done for years. If he could have pushed out on the stream himself as Val had done, if he could have rowed a race for life or death with some rival oar, that would have calmed him more than anything. Gentlemen like Val, Lord Eskside’s heir, future possessor of all those lovely woods, and of the grey old house full of beautiful things, which was so fresh in Dick’s memory, could afford to calm themselves down in that way. But Dick, who was only a working man, could not afford it. To him his work was everything, and to that alone, when all his nerves were tingling, could he resort to bring him down again from any fanciful strain of emotion. He ought to be glad to have it to do, Dick felt; for had he been idle, it seemed to him that the beating of his heart would have driven him wild. Now, let it swell as it would, he had enough to do to keep him occupied, and no time to think, heaven be praised! It was, as it happened fortunately, a very busy day. Dick forgot his dinner-hour—forgot everything but the necessity for exertion to keep him from himself. Sometimes he ordered his subordinates about almost fiercely, speaking to them ashe had never been heard to speak before. Sometimes, not thinking, he would rush himself to do their work, while they stood by astonished, with a manner so unusual that no one knew what to make of him. Was it possible that the fever was “catching,” and that Dick too was going to have it?
But it was a very busy day, and there was plenty of work for everybody, which is a thing that stops speculation. In the afternoon Lord Eskside, straying about the place, found himself on the rafts. He had not intended to go there, nor did he know when he got there what he wanted. The old lord was very restless, anxious, and unhappy. He could do nothing indoors—not even keep still and out of the way, which is the first duty of man in a house where sickness is; and the unfamiliar place did not tempt him to walk as he might have done at home. He had done what he could to occupy himself after the brief interview with the doctor, who could say nothing more than had already been said, that no change could come until Saturday, when, for good or evil, the crisis might be looked for. After this Lord Eskside went to the hotel where Richard was living, and engaged rooms, and did what he could for the comfort of his wife, who had come here in her old age without any attendant. But when this slender business was accomplished, he had nothing further to do. He could not keep indoors in Dick’s little parlour, which they had taken possession of, none of them reflecting that there was another proprietor whose leave had not been asked or given; nor could he linger at the outer door, where Harding hung about in attendance. The old lord had no heart to say anything to Harding; he went to the rafts at last in simple restlessness, having, I almost think, forgotten all about Dick. I suppose it diverted him for the moment from his own heavy thoughts and painful tension of suspense, to see the movement in this busy place—the coming and going—the boats run out into the stream with a pleasant rustle—the slim outriggers now and then carried back all wet and dripping to the boathouses, as one party after another came in. The stir of indifferent cheerful life, going on carelessly all the same under the eyes of a spectator paralysed by anxiety and distress, has a curious bewildering effect upon the mind. He had been there for some minutes before he even noticed Dick’s presence at all.
He perceived him at last with, a thrill of surprise. Dick had transmogrified himself; in his working dress he looked more “a gentleman” than he had done in his Sunday coat. He had a straw hat instead of the black one, a blue flannel coat, and noiseless white boating shoes. The excitement against which he was struggling gave a double animation to his aspect, and made him hold himself more erect than usual, with all the energy of wounded pride. Lord Eskside felt that it must be some consciousness of his true position that gave to Dick’s youthful figure that air of superiority which certainly he had not noticed in him before; but it was in reality a contrary influence, the determination to show that he held his own natural position unaffected by all the mysterious hints he had listened to, and found in his work a blessed refuge from the mystery which he did not understand, but was impatient of, and despised. Dick passed Lord Eskside over and over again, in his manifold occupations, touching his hat, as he did so, but taking no further notice of his travelling companion. The old lord, on his side, made no demonstration of interest; but he took up a position on the edge of the wharf, and followed the young fellow with his eyes. Dick had pushed back his hat, showing his fair locks and open face; he was never still for a moment, darting hither and thither with lithe light frame, and feet that scarcely seemed to touch the boards. How workmanlike he was, in his element, knowing exactly what to do, and how to direct the others who looked to him! and yet, Lord Eskside thought, so unlike any one else, so free in his step, so bold in his tranquil confidence, so much above the level of the others. He sat down on a bench close by, and knitting his heavy brows, sat intent upon that one figure, watching him more and more closely. There were a great many boating men about, for it was just the opening of the season, and some of them were impatient, and none were especially disposed to respect the feelings even of the head man at Styles’s. “Here, you, Brown,” said one young man in flannel; “Brown, I say! Can’t the fellow hear? Are we to wait all day?” “Look alive, can’t you?” shouted a second; “he’s not half the handy fellow he was.” “Spoilt by the undergrads,” said another; “he’s the pet of all the Eton men.” “Brown, Brown! By Jove! I’ll speak to Styles if this goes on. You, Dick! can’t you hear?”