I don’t know if Dick felt any annoyance at their impatient outcries, or resented such an address in Lord Eskside’s presence. But he came to the call, as was his duty, his cheeks a little flushed, but ready to do whatever was wanted of him. “Here, Brown,” said the boating man, carelessly; but he never ended his order. For, before another word could be said, Lord Eskside, glooming, with knitted brows, came hurriedly up to Dick, and put his arm through his. “This is no occupation for you,” said the old lord. “It is time that this was over;” and before the eyes of the astonished lookers-on, he led him away, too much astonished for the moment to resist. “Who is the old fellow?” asked the boating men; and when (for rank will out, like murder) it was whispered who “Brown’s friend” was, a sudden awe fell upon the rafts. A lord! and he had put his arm familiarly into Dick Brown’s, and carried him off, declaring this to be no work for him! What could it mean? The effect produced by Val’s accident was nothing to the ferment which rose, up and down the river-side, when it was known that a lord—an old lord—not one of your wild undergrads—had walked off Styles’s raft, in broad daylight, arm-in-arm with Dick Brown.
Violetwent back to Edinburgh the day after her meeting in the woods with Dick. Her heart was so full of what she had heard, that it was all she could do to keep the particulars from old Jean, who was her guardian and companion when, in her trouble, poor child, she managed to escape for a day or two to the Hewan. By a strong effort she kept from talking over the details with her homely old friend; but she could not keep from her the fact that Val was ill. I need not say that Jean knew well enough that there was “something wrong” between the two families—a thing she had been aware of, with the curious instinct which all our servants possess—almost before they knew it themselves. And by this time, of course, Jean knew all that popular opinion said about Mr Pringle’s supposedguilt in respect to the election; and she was aware that there had been painful scenes in the house, and that neither his wife, nor his sons, nor his daughter “held with” the unlucky culprit, who, since the election, had gone about with drooping head “as if he was gaun to be hanged,” old Jean said. Jean was very much shocked and distressed when she heard of Val’s illness. “I thought there was something out o’ the ordinary,” she said; “him away when there was yon grand dinner, and a strange look about the house a’thegether. Ye may aye ken when the family’s in trouble by the look o’ the house. Poor callant! there’s naething like trouble of mind for bringing on thae fevers; you may take my word, Miss Violet, it’s something about that weary election. Eh, what creatures men are! Can they no fecht fair, and take their neives to ane anither, instead of casting up auld ill stories? They say that’s women’s way; for my part, I’m of the opinion that if women are ill with their tongues, men are waur.”
“But fevers are not brought on by trouble of mind,” said Violet, endeavouring to argue against her own inmost convictions. “Fevers are brought on by—oh, by very different things, by bad air, and—— you may read it all in the papers—— Oh, I hope, I hope it is not that, Jean!”
“If you put your faith in the papers,” said Jean, contemptuously, “that say one thing the day, and another the morn, just as it suits them! Oh ay, they’ll tell you an honest midden is waur than an ill story, that creeps into the heart and saps the strength. I’m fond o’ the fresh air mysel. We’re used to it here up at the Hewan, and it’s like meat and drink; but if some ill-wisher was to rake up a nasty story about my auld man that’s in heaven, or my John, what do you think would harm me maist, Miss Vi’let—that, or a’ the ill smells in Lasswade? and I’ll no say but what that corner by the smiddy is like to knock you down—though Marion Miller’s bairns, so far as I can see, are no a prin the waur.”
Violet did not venture upon any reply, for, indeed, it seemed to her innocent soul that mental causes were far more likely to make one ill than those vulgar evils upon which the newspapers insisted. For her own part, she felt very sure, as old Jean did, that Val’s illness arose from the misery and excitement of the election, and not from any lesser cause. I suppose this was quite foolish, and that the pooryoung member for Eskshire must have gone into some cottage, or passed by some drain in the course of his canvassing, which was the real occasion of his fever. My ignorance is too great on such subjects to warrant me in venturing the supposition that the other part of him, that mental part so much discredited and put out of court in the present day—the one thing about us which nobody can quite account for—had anything to do with it. But Violet and old Jean, both of them as ignorant as myself though more courageous—and both convinced in their different ways that this special development of protoplasm called by ignorant persons their mind, is the most important part of us—unhesitatingly ignored the drain, which no doubt did the mischief, and set down Val’s fever to his misery with all the evident precision of cause and effect. Violet could not say any more to the old woman whose remarks she neither dared to be sympathetic with or irritated by, since either demonstration would have betrayed her father, who had done it all. So she hurried home next morning, attended by her maid, breathless till she reached the mother, the natural receiver of all her plaints and troubles. Mrs Pringle saw there was something to tell from the first glance at Violet’s countenance, in which all her emotions writ themselves easily to the accustomed eye. She sent her up-stairs to “take off her things,” and followed her, hoping that old Lady Eskside might perhaps have met the child somewhere, and melted towards her, the only imaginable way in which any renewal of friendship could be possible. When she heard what it was, however, Mrs Pringle shook her head. “My dear,” she said, “you are letting your feelings run away with you. Men don’t get ill and take fevers from excitement except in novels. No doubt there must be something wrong about Rosscraig; these old houses are never quite to be depended upon. God knows that letter has done you and me harm enough, more harm than it could do to Valentine—but we have taken no fever. I am very sorry for him, poor fellow; but he’s young, and has a good constitution—no doubt he’ll pull through; and my Vi must not cry like this for a man that is nothing to her,” the good mother said, proudly—putting her handkerchief and her hand, which was still softer, across Violet’s streaming eyes to stop her tears.
“Oh, mamma, how can I help it?” sobbed poor Vi.
“My darling, you must help it. I am not saying it willbe easy. Me myself, with children of my own that take up my mind, I find myself thinking of that poor boy when I have plenty other things to think of. Ah, Violet, you kiss me for that! but, my dear, ask yourself—after what has come and gone—how could it ever, ever be?”
“No one wants it to be!” said Violet, with one of her vehement impulses of maiden pride, raising her head from her mother’s shoulder with a hot angry flush covering her face; “but one does not cease—to take an interest—in one’s—friend, because of any quarrel. I am friends with him for ever, whatever happens. No one can say anything against that. And we are cousins, whatever happens. I told Mr Brown so.”
Mrs Pringle shook her head over the friendship and cousinship which continued to take so warm “an interest” in Val; but she was wise and made no further remark. “I wonder who this Mr Brown may be?” was all she said, and instantly set her wits to work to find something for Violet to do. In a house where there were so many boys this was not difficult; and it cannot be questioned that at this crisis of her young existence the Hewan would have been a much less safe residence for Violet than Moray Place.
The next two days were each made memorable by a note from Dick. These missives were couched almost in the same words, and Violet, reading them over and over again, could extract nothing from them more than met the eye. Dick, in a very careful handwriting, too neat perhaps, and legible, wrote as follows:—
“Madam,—Mr Ross is just the same. This is not to be wondered at, as I told Miss Violet that there could be no change till Saturday. With your permission I will write again to-morrow.—Your obedient servant,“Richard Brown.”
“Madam,—Mr Ross is just the same. This is not to be wondered at, as I told Miss Violet that there could be no change till Saturday. With your permission I will write again to-morrow.—Your obedient servant,
“Richard Brown.”
Even Mrs Pringle could find nothing to remark upon in this brief epistle. “I wonder how he knows your name?” was all she said, and Violet did not feel it necessary to enter into any particulars on this point. The second bulletin was just like the first. Mrs Pringle had this note in her pocket in the evening after dinner when her husband came up to her with an excited look, and thrust the little local Eskside paper, the ‘Castleton Herald,’ into her hand.“Look at this!” he said, pointing out a paragraph to her with a hand that trembled. How glad she was then that the news conveyed no shock to her, and that Violet knew with certainty the state of the matter which the newspaper unfolded so mysteriously! “We regret to learn,” said the ‘Herald,’ “that the new member for the county, Mr Ross, whose election so very lately occupied our pages, lies dangerously ill in England of fever—we suppose of that typhoid type which has lately made so much havoc in the world, and threatened still greater havoc than it has made. We have no information as to how the disease was contracted, but in the meantime Lasswade and the neighbourhood have been thrown into alarm and gloom by the sudden departure of such members of the noble family of Eskside as were still remaining at Rosscraig. We trust before our next week’s issue to be able to give a better account of Mr Ross’s state.”
“I knew Val was ill,” said Mrs Pringle, composedly; “Violet heard of it at Eskside.” She could not refrain from a stroke of vengeance as she handed the paper back to him. “I hope you are satisfied with your handiwork now,” she said.
“My handiwork?”
“Just yours,” said Mrs Pringle—“just yours, Alexander; and if the boy should die—which as good as him have done—what will your feelings be?”
“My feelings!” said Mr Pringle; “what have I to do with it?—did I give him his fever? Of course it must have been bad air or some blood-poisoning—or something. These are the only ways in which fever communicates itself;” but as he spoke (for he was not a bad man) his lips quivered, and there was a tremor in his voice.
“It is easy to say that—very easy to say it—and it may be true; but if you take the heart and strength out of a man, and leave him no power to throw off the ill thing when it comes? Alexander,” said Mrs Pringle, solemnly, “I will never hold up my head again in this world if anything happens to Val!”
“You speak like a fool—or a woman! It comes to much the same thing,” cried her husband; and he went away down-stairs and shut himself into his library quivering with the hot sudden rage which belongs to his conscience-stricken state. How miserable he was, trying to study a case in which he had to speak next day, and able to understandnothing except that Valentine Ross was ill, perhaps dying, and through his means! He had never meant that. He had meant to have his revenge for an imaginary wrong, and many little imaginary slights, and perhaps to make his young supplanter lose his election; but that he might put Val’s life in danger or injure him seriously had never entered into Mr Pringle’s thoughts. He tried to persuade himself that it was no concern of his, pursuing in an undercurrent, as his eyes went over his law-papers, all the arguments about sanitary dangers he had ever read. “What a fool I am to think that could have had anything to do with it!” he cried, throwing away his papers when he could bear it no longer, and beginning to pace up and down his room. What a burning restless pain he had at his heart! He cast about him vaguely in a kind of blank hopelessness what he could do, or if he could do anything. This he had never meant. He would not (he said to himself) have hurt Val or any one, for all the Eskside estates ten times over; and if anything happened to the boy he could never hold up his head again, as his wife said.
Mr Pringle had been wretched enough since that miserable election day. He had been conscious that even his own friends looked coldly upon him, suspecting him of something which went too far for ordinary political animosity or the fair fighting of honourable contest; and feeling that his own very family, and even the wife of his bosom, were against him, though Mrs Pringle, after her first very full and indignant expression of her opinion, had said no more on the subject. Still he had not her moral support, a backing which had scarcely ever failed him before; and he had the sense of having broken all the ties of friendship with the Eskside family—old ties which, though he did not love the Rosses, it was painful altogether to break. He had thrown away those ties, and made his adversaries bitter and his friends suspicious. So little was Mr Pringle a bad man, that he had pursued these thoughts for a long time in his secret heart without recollecting that, should Valentine die, he would be reinstalled in his position as heir-presumptive. When this suddenly flashed upon him, he threw himself in his chair and covered his face with his hands. In that case it would be murder, mere murder! it would be as if he had killed the boy for the sake of his inheritance. This startled him beyond anything I can say. Perhaps the profoundestand most impassioned of all the prayers that were said that night for Val’s recovery rose in a sudden anguish of remorse and surprised guilt from the heart of Val’s enemy. He shook like a man struck with palsy; his nerves contracted; the veins stood out on his forehead. He had never meant to harm the boy—never, never, God knows!—except in some momentary way, by a little shame, a little disappointment, which could have made no real difference in so happy and prosperous a life. The pain of this thought gripped him as with the crushing grasp of a giant. What could he do, he said to himself, writhing in his chair—what could he do to make amends? If he could but have believed in pilgrimages, how gladly would he have set out bare-footed to any shrine, if that would have brought back the young life that was in danger! Heaven help him! of all the people concerned there was no one so entirely to be pitied as poor Mr Pringle, lying there prostrate in his chair without any strength left in him, bodily or mental, or any one to back him up, saying to himself that perhaps it might be that he had murdered Val. He seemed to see before his eyes the bold handsome boy, the fine young fellow all joyous and triumphant in the glory of his youth; and was it his hand—a man with children of his own whom he loved—that had stricken Valentine down?
Next day—next “lawful day,” as we say in Scotland, for a Sunday intervened—Mr Pringle broke down in his case before the courts, and looked so distracted and miserable that the very Lords of Session took notice of it. “Sandy Pringle is breaking up early,” Lord Birkhill said to Lord Caldergrange; “he never had any constitution to speak of.” “Perhaps it is family affection and anxiety about young Ross of Eskside,” said Lord Caldergrange to Lord Birkhill; and these two learned authorities, both old enough to have been Sandy Pringle’s father, chuckled and took snuff together over his family affection and his early breakdown. The news from the ‘Castleton Herald’ about Val’s illness was copied that morning into all the Edinburgh papers. Mr Pringle himself, being of the Liberal party, saw only the ‘Scotsman,’ where it was simply repeated; but when he was leaving the Parliament House, his son Sandy came to him with the ‘Courant,’ which, as everybody knows, is the Conservative paper,—the one in which acommuniquéfrom the Eskside party would naturally appear. “Have you seenthis, sir?” said Sandy, not, his father thought, without a glimmer of vindictive satisfaction. They were all against him, wife and children, friends and circumstances. But the paragraph in the ‘Courant’ was one of a very startling description, and had already woke up the half of Edinburgh—everybody who knew or professed to know anything of the Eskside family—to wonder and interest. The ‘Courant’ gave first the paragraph from the ‘Herald,’ then added another of its own. “We are glad to be able to add that more favourable news has been received this morning of Mr Ross’s condition. The crisis of the fever is now past, and all the symptoms, we understand, are hopeful.” Then came the further information, which took away everybody’s breath. “We are authorised to state,” said the ‘Courant,’ “that Mr Ross, whose severe illness at such an interesting juncture of his life has called forth so much public interest and sympathy, was fortunately at the house of his mother, the Hon. Mrs Richard Ross, in Oxford, when the first symptoms of fever made their appearance, and accordingly had from the first every medical attention, as well as the most devoted nursing which affection could give.”
The paper fell out of Mr Pringle’s hand when he had read this. Sandy grasped him by the arm, thinking he would have fallen too. “For heaven’s sake,” cried Sandy, in a fierce whisper, “don’t make an exhibition of yourselfhere!” Mr Pringle did not answer a word, not even to the apologies with which, when they were safe out of the crowded precincts of the Parliament House, his son followed these hasty unfilial words. He went home to Moray Place in a condition of mind impossible to describe, feeling himself like a man caught in a snare. The Hon. Mrs Richard Ross, his mother! Had he really read those words in black and white? Were they no fiction, but true? His heart was relieved a little, for Val was better; but how could he ever extricate himself from the labyrinth he had got into? He had defied the Rosses to produce this mother, and her appearance seemed to Mr Pringle to close up every place of repentance for him, and to put him so terribly in the wrong that he could never face his friends again, or the public which knew him to be the author of that fatal letter to the electors of Eskshire. Surely no sin ever had such condign and instantaneous punishment. He was not a murderer, that was a thing to be thankful for; but he could be proved a liar—a maker ofcruel, unfounded statements—a reporter of scandals! He shut himself up in his library, making some pretence of work to be done. As for Sandy, he did not go in at all, being angry and unhappy about the whole business. That Valentine’s mother should be found, and his rights, which Sandy had never doubted, fully established, he was heartily glad of. Mrs Pringle’s wise training had saved Sandy from even a shadow of that folly of expectation which had so painfully affected his father; but Sandy was indignant beyond description, hurt in his pride, and mortified to the heart, that his father should have put himself in such a mean position. I do not think there was any tingling recollection in him of the blow Val had given him. If he had borne malice, it would have vanished utterly at the first mention of Val’s illness; but he did not bear any malice. He bore another burden, however, more heavy—the burden of shame for his father’s unwarrantable assault, which, out of respect for his father, he could not openly disown, but must share the disgrace of, though he loathed the offence. I think Sandy may be excused if he felt himself too cross, too wretched in his false position, to face the rest of the household, and convey to them this startling news.
They had, however, their news too, scarcely less startling. It was the Monday after the Saturday on which Val had passed the crisis of his fever, and Sunday had been very trying to these two women in its entire cessation of news, as Sunday so often is in cases of anxiety. When Dick’s letter at last came, there was something in it which they scarcely noticed in their first agitation of joy, but which, by dint of much reading, came out very strongly at last to their puzzled perceptions. There was an indescribable indefinite change in their correspondent’s style. But the reader shall judge for himself what this was.
“Dear Madam,—I am happy to be able to tell you that the crisis is over, and Valentine is decidedly better. Perhaps you are aware that all the family are here. He has recognised us all, and, though weak, will soon regain his strength, the doctor thinks. Other things have happened, of a very wonderful kind, which I can scarcely write about; but I hope it may now be possible that I may one day see you, and explain everything to Miss Violet which she may wish to know. I do not like to run the risk of agitating Valentine by telling him that I am writing, but, if you will permit me, I will write again; and I hope you will always be so very kind as to think of me, whatever may be the change in circumstances, as yours and Miss Violet’s obedient servant,“Richard.”
“Dear Madam,—I am happy to be able to tell you that the crisis is over, and Valentine is decidedly better. Perhaps you are aware that all the family are here. He has recognised us all, and, though weak, will soon regain his strength, the doctor thinks. Other things have happened, of a very wonderful kind, which I can scarcely write about; but I hope it may now be possible that I may one day see you, and explain everything to Miss Violet which she may wish to know. I do not like to run the risk of agitating Valentine by telling him that I am writing, but, if you will permit me, I will write again; and I hope you will always be so very kind as to think of me, whatever may be the change in circumstances, as yours and Miss Violet’s obedient servant,
“Richard.”
“What does it mean?” said Mrs Pringle. “I am afraid the young man is taking too much upon himself. To sign himself just ‘Richard’ to you and me, is a piece of presumption, Vi; and to call Lord Eskside’s grandson ‘Valentine!’ I am not bigoted about rank, as you know; but this is too much.”
Violet was confounded too. “Perhaps in nursing he has got familiar without knowing it,” she said. “Oh, mamma, you could not think he was presumptuous if you had seen Mr Brown.”
“That is all very well, my dear,” said Mrs Pringle. “I believe he is a good young man; but perhaps it was a little rash to take him into your confidence. I think I heard your papa come in. Go and see if he is in the library. It might be a comfort to him to know that Val is better. Go; and if you see an opportunity, tell him. Say I have had a letter;—that is all that it is needful to say.”
Violet, though reluctant, obeyed; and Mrs Pringle read Dick’s letter again, not knowing what to make of it. What did he mean by signing himself “Richard”? and calling Val by his Christian name? Her conclusion was, that this boatman, in whom Violet had so rashly put confidence, was presuming upon the girl’s openness and innocence. Mrs Pringle thanked heaven that her child “had the sense” to ask him to write to her mother, who was quite safe, and quite able to manage any presuming person. She could not make up her mind about this, feeling an uneasy consciousness in the letter of something unexplained, something more than met the eye, to which, however, she had no clue; but she resolved, at least, that this young man should have no further encouragement; that she would herself write to him, thanking him for his communication, and politely dropping him, as a woman of Mrs Pringle’s age and condition knows how to do. Perhaps it had been imprudent of Violet to refer to him at all; but happily it was an imprudence of which no further harm need come.
Meanwhile Violet went down-stairs to the library, somewhat tremulous, and half afraid of the morose tones and look into which of late her father had fallen. When she went in, he snatched up some of his papers, and pretended to be studying them very closely; the ‘Courant’ lay at his side upon the writing-table; but it was the law-papers, and not the ‘Courant,’ which Mr Pringle pretended to read. Violet made a shy circle round the table, not knowing if she might venture to speak. Her courage failed her, until she suddenly remarked, underneath the shadow of the hand which supported his head, that her father was watching her, and that his face was very grey and pallid in the noonday light. This gave her resolution enough to conquer her timidity. She went up to him, and put her hand softly on his shoulder.
“Papa,” she said, “I came to tell you that Valentine is better to-day. Mamma has just had a letter——”
“I know he is better,” said Mr Pringle, with a sigh; and then he pointed out to her the notice in the paper. “He is better; but there is more behind—more than we know.”
Vi read the paragraph wondering. It did not affect her except with surprise. “His mother?” she said; “I never knew——” and then she bethought herself suddenly of all that had passed, and of that fatal attack upon Valentine which had (no doubt) brought on his fever, and which threatened to separate him from her for ever. “Oh, papa!” she cried suddenly, with a flash from her eyes which seemed to scorch the culprit like a gleam of angry yet harmless lightning; then she added, looking at him fixedly, with indignant firmness: “But you are glad of this? glad he is better? glad his mother is found, and that everything will go well?”
Mr Pringle paused a moment looking at her. He was afraid to contradict her. He answered hurriedly, half servilely: “Yes, yes—I’m glad;” then, with a groan—“Vi, I am made a fool of. I am proved a poor, mean, paltry liar; that was never what I meant to be. Perhaps I said more than was right; but it was for justice, Vi—yes, it was for justice, though you may not believe what I say.”
If you consider all that Violet had suffered, you will perceive how hard it was for her all at once to look upon this question impartially, to believe what her father said. She turned away her head from him in natural resentment.Then her tender heart was touched by the tones of wretchedness in his voice.
“Yes,” he said, getting up from his chair, “you may think it was all ill feeling—and so many think; but it was for justice too. And now, apparently, things are turning out as I never expected. I did not believe in this woman, and God knows whether it may not be a cheat still. But if this is true that they are bold enough to put in the newspaper, then,” said Mr Pringle, with a groan, “I’m in the wrong, my dear—I am in the wrong, and I don’t know what to do.”
He sank down again, leaning his head on the table, and hiding his face in his hands. Vi’s heart melted altogether. She put her soft arm round his neck, and bent down her head upon his. She did not feel the bitterness of being in the wrong. It seemed to her innocent soul that there was so easy a way to shake off that burden. She clasped her father round the neck and whispered consolation. “Papa, dear! you have nothing to do but to say this to them. Oh, what makes you think you don’t know what to do? Say you were wrong, and that you are sorry! One is so certain that this must be the right thing.”
He shook her away not unkindly but with a little impatience. “You don’t know—you are too young to know,” he said.
“Papa, can there be any doubt?” said Violet, in the majesty of her innocence. “When one has done wrong, one undoes it, one confesses that it was wicked. What else? Is it not the first lesson one learns in life?” said the girl, serene in perfect certainty, and sadly superior to her age, in what she considered her experience of that existence of which she already knew the sorrows. She stood over him as grave and sweet as an angel, and spoke with entire and childlike confidence in her abstract code. “We all may be wrong,” said Violet, “the best of us; but when we find it out we must say so, and ask pardon of God and of those whom we have wronged, papa. Is there any other way?”
Ofall the persons involved at this crisis, I think the most to be sympathised with was honest Dick, who wrote the letter over which Mrs Pringle pondered out of such a maze and confusion of feeling as seldom arises without personal guilt in any mind. From his very first glimpse of the new personage introduced into his little world—the stranger who had suddenly appeared to him when he went to open his own door to Lady Eskside, standing between him and her, anticipating and forestalling him—a glimmering instinctive knowledge who this stranger was had flashed into Dick’s mind. Already the reader is aware he had thought it probable that Valentine’s father was also his own father, and had endeavoured to account to himself for his mother’s strange behaviour on this score. I cannot quite describe the feelings with which Dick, with his tramp-traditions, regarded such a supposed father. What could “the gentleman,” who had been his mother’s lover, be to him? Nothing, or less than nothing—not “the author of his being,” as our pious grandfathers used to say; but something much more like an enemy, a being half malignant, half insulting, with whom he had nothing to do, and towards whom his feelings, if not those of mere indifference, would be feelings of repulsion and instinctive dislike. He felt no shame on his mother’s account or his own; but for the other who had left that mother and himself to take their chance in the woods or on the streets, he was ashamed of his connection with him, and felt mortified and humbled by the mere suggestion of his existence. So long as he kept out of the way, Dick could refrain from thinking of this unknown parent; but the moment he appeared, he woke a hundred lively emotions in the bosom of his son. Dislike, annoyance, a sense of pride injured, and secret humiliation, came to him at the first glance of Richard Ross. This was his feeling before any hint of the real state of affairs had reached him. The old lord had not made the disclosure that first day, but waited until the crisis of Valentine’s fever was over. Then he called to Dick to go out with him, and there, on the bank of that river which had witnessed all the changes in his fortune, this last and most extraordinary change wasrevealed to the bewildered young man. Dick’s mind was already excited by the painful interval of suspense which had occurred; and when this revelation was made to him, the confusion in his thoughts was indescribable. That he was Valentine’s brother—not secretly and guiltily, but in the eye of day—that the great house which he had looked upon with so much awe and admiration was his home—that all the accessories and all the realities of wealth and rank were his, actually his—relatives, connections, leisure, money, luxury,—was more than he could understand. He did not believe it at first. He thought the old lord had gone mad, that he had been seized with some sudden frenzy, that he had altogether misconceived the relationship between his son, the gentleman whom Dick disliked and suspected of being his father, and the poor lad who never had known what a father was. “I think I know what you mean. I had got to suppose he was my father for some time,” said Dick, bluntly, “but not in that way. You are mistaken, sir; surely you are mistaken.”
“How could I be mistaken? are there more ways of being your father than one?” said the old lord, half amused by the lad’s incredulity. Dick shook his head; he was better informed than Lord Eskside, who was so much his senior. He knew things which it was impossible the other could know—but how was he to say them? It did not occur to him even now that there was any relationship between the father of Richard Ross and himself, even though he was prepared to believe that he himself was Richard Ross’s son.
“I don’t understand you, any more than you understand me,” said Lord Eskside, “and I don’t wonder that you’re confounded; but, nevertheless, what I have told you is true. I am your grandfather, Dick. Ah, that takes you by surprise? Now, why, I would like to know? since you believe my son is your father, though ‘not in that way’——”
“My lord,” said Dick, “I beg your pardon; but there’s ways of being a man’s son without being anything to his relations, and that’s what I am thinking of. In my class we understand that such things are—though perhaps they oughtn’t to be.”
“But, you gomeral, you belong to my class, and not to your own!” said the old lord, feeling, with a mixture of pain and amusement and impatience, his own ignorance before the superior and melancholy knowledge of life possessed by this boy. “What must I say to convince you? You are Valentine’s twin brother; do you not see what that means? and can you suppose that anything in the world but a boy’s mother would nurse Val as that woman is doing?—besides, he’s her living picture,” said Lord Eskside, abruptly, and not without a grudge. He said it to convince this boy, who was a genuine Ross, without dispute or doubt; but even now it gave him a pang to acknowledge that his Val was like the tramp-mother, and not like the noble race of which his father came.
Dick stopped short, and put out his hand blindly as if to save himself from falling. This was a new view of the subject altogether. He could understand the relationship through the father; but—his mother! Valentine! What did it all mean? He caught his breath, and something like a sob came from his breast “I can’t understand it—I can’t understand it!” he cried, feeling choked as well as blinded; air failing him, sight failing him, and the whole steady earth turning round and round. When he recovered himself a little he turned to Lord Eskside, who was watching him closely from under his shaggy eyebrows. “Don’t say anything more, sir,” he cried with an effort which was almost piteous. “Let me try to make it out—I can’t all at once.”
“Go home, my lad,” said the old lord, kindly patting him on the shoulder, “and think it out at your leisure.”
“Thank you, sir—thank you,” cried Dick; and he turned back without another word, and hurried to his little bedroom, which was next door to the one in which Valentine lay. Ought he to have been overwhelmed with delight and joy? Instead of being a nobody, Dick Brown, Styles’s head-man, he was Richard Ross, Lord Eskside’s grandson, a person of importance, the son of a future baron; superior to all his old surroundings, even to most of his old patrons. But Dick was not glad at first, not even when he had fully realised this wonderful news, and allowed to himself that, Lord Eskside having told it, it must be true. He had found a family, a name, a position in the world; but he seemed to have lost himself. He sat down on his bed in the small room which he had himself furnished with a hundred little graces and conveniences, and of which a week ago he had been proud, and covered his face with his hands. But for his manhood, he could have sobbed over this extraordinary break and stop in his life; and at the first he was no more able to reconcile himself to being Dick Brown no longer, than Mr Richard Ross would have been able to reconcile himself to descending into the place of Styles’s head-man! The change was as great one way as another; indeed I think the higher might have been better able to come down than the lower, who did not understand how he was to mount up, and in whose modest, simple soul there rose on the moment impulses of pride he had never been conscious of possessing. Here, in his natural sphere, he was respected, thought well of, and everybody was aware how well he fulfilled his duties, bearing himself like a man, whatever he had to do. But this new world was all dark to him, a place in which he would have no guidance of experience, in which he would be judged according to another standard, and looked down upon. I do not mean to paint Dick as a perfect being, and this sense of natural pride, this personal humiliation in his social rise, gave him a pang which was at least as respectable as other pangs of pride. He did not know how long he sat there pondering blankly, forecasting with sombre thoughts an unknown future. He had lost himself, whom he knew, and he could not tell how the new self whom he did not know would be able to harmonise his life. He was still sitting there, with his hands over his eyes, when a faint sound in the room roused him, and, looking up, he saw his mother, who had entered softly, and now stood looking at him. He returned her look seriously for a moment before he spoke.
“Mother, is this true?”
“Yes,” she said, clasping her hands as if she would have wrung them. “Yes, boy, yes; it’s true. I gave up the one, because I thought he had a right to one; and I kept you, Dick. I was your mother that bore you, and sure I had a right to you.”
“Just a word more, mother,” said Dick, softly, “not to vex you: the little chap that died—was ithim?—the one that you said died?”
“He died to me,” she cried—“to me and to you. I never, never thought to set eyes on him again. I gave him up, free. Dick, that night on the river, when you helped him with his boat——”
“Yes, mother?”
“I should ha’ gone away then. I should have taken you off, my boy, and never let you know him; but it got into my head like wine,” she cried; “the sight of him, Dick, sohandsome and so kind! and to think he was my lad, mine, all the same as you. And he’d look at me in such a way, wondering like, as nobody but him ever looked—as if he wanted to ask, who are you? who are you?—what are you to me? Many and many a day I’ve caught his eye; and nobody but me knew why the lad looked like that—him least of all—only me. It got into my head, Dick, watching him. I couldn’t go. And then to see you two together that were never meant to be together all your lives!”
“You mean, mother, that were born never to be separate?” said Dick.
“Yes, lad, yes; that is what I mean,” she cried, dropping into a chair, and covering her face with her apron. For a moment there was that in Dick’s heart which kept him from speaking, from trying to comfort her. The best of us now and then must think of ourselves. Dick was too much confused in mind to blame his mother, but it gleamed across him, among so many other thoughts—if it was to be that he was not Dick Brown, how much better it would have been that he had never been Dick Brown; this is a confused sentence, but it was thus that the thought passed through his mind. The loss of himself, and even of “the little chap that died,” pained him—and this loss was for no reason, it seemed—for how much better would it have been had he always known the truth! This kept him for a moment from saying anything to her—but only for a moment; then he rose and went to his mother, laying his hand on her shoulder—
“It’s all very confusing, mother,” he said; “but it’s best you did not go away. I’ve got most of my happiness in life from knowing—him. The pity is you ever did go away, mother dear; but never mind; anyhow, though all the rest is changed, there’s nothing changed between you and me.”
“Oh, my lad!” she cried, “they’ll take you from me—they’ll take you both from me, Dick.”
“They can’t do that,” he said with a smile, soothing her; “you forget we’remen, mother. Take heart. So he’s the little chap that died? I always thought there was something about him different from all the other gentlemen,” said Dick, melting. “The first time I set eyes on him, I fancied him—and he me,” he added after a little pause, the moisture creeping to his eyes; “which was more strange; for what was I that he should take notice of me?The first time he saw you, mother, he was so struck he could scarcely speak; and said, Why didn’t I tell him you were a lady——”
“Me!” she cried, looking up; “me—a lady——”
“That was what he said—he knew better than the like of us,” said Dick. Then, after a pause, the good fellow added, with self-abnegation like that of old Lord Eskside, for he did not like to acknowledge this any more than his grandfather did; “and they say he’s your living picture, mother—and it’s true.”
“Oh, Dick! oh, my boy, my Val, that I’ve carried in my arms and nursed at my breast!—but he’ll never know his mother. Come, Dick, come, as long as we’ve the strength. We’ll go away, lad, you and me——”
“Where, mother?”
“Out, out, anywhere—to the road. It’s there I belong, and not in houses. Before they take you both from me—Dick, Dick, come!—we’ll go away, you and me.”
She started up as she spoke and caught at his arm—but, giddy and weak with long watching and the fatigue, which in her excitement she had not felt, dropped heavily against him, and would have fallen had he not caught her. “It’s nothing; it’s a dizziness,” she murmured. “I’ll rest a moment, and then we’ll go.”
Dick laid her tenderly upon his bed. “You’re overdone, mother dear,” he said; “and this house is mine whatever happens, and you’re the queen in it, to do what you please. When you’re rested, we’ll think what to do. Besides, he may want us yet,” he added, forcing a smile; “he is not out of the wood yet that we should run away from him. Mother, though he’s my—brother, as you all say, I don’t seem to know his name.”
The mother, lying down on her son’s bed, with Dick’s kind face bending over her, gave way to a soft outburst of tears. “He is Val,” she said. “Dick and Val—Dick and Val. Oh, how often I’ve said them over!—and one to him and one to me. That was just; I always knew that was just!” she cried.
It seemed to Dick when he went out of the room, leaving her behind him to rest, that years had passed over him since he took refuge there. Already this strange disclosure was an old thing of which there could be no doubt. Already he was as certain that he was no longer Dick Brown ofStyles’s, as he was of his existence—and would have been sharply surprised, I think, had any one called him by that name: and as a consequence of this certainty he had ceased to consider the change in himself. Something else more interesting, more alarming, lay before him—a new world, a family of which he knew nothing, a father whom he disliked to think of. Even Val, whom he knew, would be changed to him. He had felt for him as a brother before he knew; would he be a brother now? or would the very bond of duty, the right Dick had to his affection, quench that warm sweet fountain of boyish kindness which had risen so spontaneously, and brightened the young wanderer’s life? Then there was his mother to think of among all these strange unknown people. He had understood very imperfectly the story Lord Eskside had told him; and now he came to think of it, why was it that she, so young as she must have been, had fled from her husband? What reason could she have had for it, unless her husband treated her unkindly? This idea roused all the temper (there was not much) in Dick’s honest nature. No one should treat her unkindly now, or look down upon her, or scorn her lowliness! With a swelling heart Dick made this vow to himself. He would have to defend her, to protect her honour, and credit, and independence; and then, on the other hand, he would have to stand against herself, her wild impulse of flight, her impatience of control. Already he felt that, though it was but an hour or two since he had been Dick Brown, he could never be Dick Brown again; and though he would not have his mother crossed or troubled, still she must not, if he could help it, fly and turn everything into chaos any more.
Care thus rose upon Dick on every side as he forecasted his new life; but it had to be faced, and he did so with steady valour. He went softly to the door of the sick-room and looked in to see if anything was wanted. Val, very weak and spent, but conscious, and noting what went on with eager curiosity, saw him, and, smiling faintly, beckoned to him with his hand. Lady Eskside was seated in the place so long occupied by his other nurse, bending fondly over her boy. She said, “Come in,” but with a half-jealous, half-fretful tone. She thought it was the mother, and the old lady was jealous, though she would not have willingly betrayed it, longing just for one hour to have her boy to herself. Val held out his thin hand, and said, “Brown, oldfellow! how pleasant it is to see you again!” “I am glad you are better,” said Dick, feeling cold and hard as the nether millstone. It was not Val who had changed, but himself. Then he went out of the room with a sensation of meanness and misery, and going down-stairs, wrote that letter in which, for the first time, he called his brother by his name. In the midst of this a sudden softening came to him. He put down his pen, and his dry eyes grew moist, and an infinite sweetness stole into his heart. Now he should see her again, speak to her perhaps, be a friend of hers. He finished his letter hastily, but how could he sign it? What name had he but his Christian name? He could not put a false name to her; so he ended his letter hastily, and went out to post it, as he always did, himself. And then another thing happened to him, a new step in his career.
In the little dark passage at the foot of the stairs, he met Richard face to face: they had scarcely met before, but they could not pass each other now that they knew each other, and each knew that the other knew. It was a strange meeting to be the first between a father and son, but yet there was a kind of advantage in getting it over, which Richard was quick to perceive. In his heart he was little less embarrassed than his son was; but he was a man of the world, and knew how to behave in an emergency with that ease of speech, which looks half miraculous to the inexperienced. He held out his hand to his son at first without saying anything, and poor Dick felt in spite of himself the strangest thrill of unexpected feeling when he put out with hesitation his hard workman’s hand into that white and soft yet vigorous clasp. Then Richard spoke:
“My father has told you what we are to each other,” he said. “My boy, I do not blame your mother; but it is not my fault that I see you now for the first time. But I know you a little—through Val, your brother: who found you by instinct, I suppose, after we had all searched for you in vain.”
Dick’s countenance was all aglow with the conflict of feeling in him; his voice laboured in his throat with words that would not come. The contrast between his own difficulty of speech and the ease of the other unmanned him altogether. “I—I have known—him—a long time,” was all he could stammer forth.
“Thank heaven for that!” said Richard, with a gleamof real pleasure; and with another pressure of his hand he let his new son go. Dick went out to post his letter strangely excited but subdued. What it was to be a gentleman, he thought! and this was his father,hisfather! A new pride unknown to him before came into existence within him, a glimmer which lighted up that dim landscape. After all, the new world, though it was so strangely mysterious and uncertain, was it not more splendid, more beautiful to the imagination, than the old world could ever have been?
Val made slow but sure progress towards recovery, and the family lived a strange life in attendance upon him, occupying Dick’s little parlour all day, and returning to the hotel for the night. The intercourse between them was of a peculiar character. Dick, watching intently, jealous for his mother, soon perceived that she was of much more importance to the others than he thought possible, and had his fears appeased. He watched her almost as if she had been his young sister, and Richard Ross her lover, eager to note if they met, and when and how; but, as it happened, they scarcely met at all, she keeping to the sick-room above, he to the parlour below. As for Dick himself he became Val’s slave, lifting him when he was first moved, helping him continually, indispensable to his invalid existence. He called for “Brown” when he woke in the morning, and ordered him about with an affectionate imperiousness which was at once provoking and delightful to Dick. But Val was much more mysterious in the looks with which he regarded “Brown’s mother.” He did not talk to her much, but watched her movements about the room with a half-reverential admiration. “She will wear herself out. She is too good to me; you ought to make her go and rest,” he said to Dick; but he was uneasy when she left him, and impatient of any other nursing. He half-frightened half-shocked Lady Eskside by his admiration of her. “How handsome she is, grandmamma!” he whispered in the old lady’s ear. “How she carries herself! Where could Brown’s mother get such a way of walking? I think she must have been a princess.” “Hush, my darling, hush!” said my lady. “Nonsense! I am all right; I don’t mean to hush any more,” said Val. “I think she is handsomer than any one I ever saw.” This Lady Eskside put up with, magnanimously making up her mind that nature spoke in the boy’s foolish words; but it was hard upon her when her oldlord began to blow trumpets in honour of Dick, who took walks with him when he could be spared from Valentine, and whom in his enthusiasm he would almost compare advantageously with Val! It was true, that it was she herself who had first pressed Dick’s claims upon him; but with Val just getting better, and doubly dear from that fact, who could venture to compare him with any one? She liked Dick—but Lord Eskside was “just infatuated” about him, my lady thought. “He reminds me of my father,” said the old lord. Now this father was the tenth lord—him of the dark locks, by means of whom she had always attempted to account for Valentine’s brown curls, and whose portrait her son Richard disrespectfully called a Raeburn. She gave a little gulp of self-control when she heard these words. “Make no comparisons!” she cried, “or you’ll make me like the new boy less, because I love the old one more. To me there will never be any one in the world like my Val.” Lord Eskside shrugged his old shoulders, and went out for another walk with Dick.
At last the day arrived when Valentine was pronounced well enough to have the great disclosure made to him. For two or three days in succession he had been brought down-stairs and had enjoyed the sight of the old world he knew so well, the river and the trees seen from the window, and the change—with all the delight of convalescence. And wonderfully sweet, and imperious, and seductive he was to them all, in that moment while still he did not know, holding hislevéelike a sovereign, not enduring any absence. On that important morning when the secret was to be disclosed to him, he noted with his usual imperious friendliness the absence of “Brown’s mother” from the group that gathered round him, and sent Dick off for her at once. “Unless she is resting she must come. Ask her to come; why should she be left out?” said Val, in his ignorance; which made the others look at each other with wondering eyes. She came in at Dick’s call, and seated herself behind backs. She had put off her nursing dress, and wore the black gown and white net kerchief on her fine head, which added so much to the impressive character of her beauty. Amid all these well-born people there was no face in itself so striking and noble. The Rosses were all quite ordinary, except Val, who had taken his dark beauty from her. She, poor ignorant creature, made up of impulses, without a shadow of wisdomor even good sense about her, looked like a dethroned queen among them: which shows, after all, how little looks matter—an argument which would be very powerful if it were not so utterly vain.
“Val,” said Lord Eskside, who was the spokesman, as became his position, “I hope you are getting back your strength fast. The doctor tells us we may now make a disclosure to you which is very important. I do not know how you will take it, my boy; but it is so great, and of so much consequence, that I cannot keep it from you longer. Val——”
“Is it something about Violet?” said Valentine, the little colour there was paling out of his face.
“About—whom?”
“About Violet,” he repeated, with a stronger voice. “Listen, sir; let me speak first;” and with the sudden flush of delicate yet deep colour which showed his weakness, Val raised his head from the sofa, and swung his feeble limbs, which looked so preternaturally long, to the ground. “I have not said anything about her while I have been ill, but it is not because I forgot. Grandfather, Violet and I made up our minds to marry each other before that confounded election. If her father did write that letter, it’s not her fault; and I can’t go on, sir, now I’ve come to myself, not another day, without letting you know that nothing, nothing in the world can make me change to Vi!”
There was a pause of astonishment so great that no one knew what to say: this sudden introduction of a subject altogether new and unsuspected bewildered the others, whose minds were all intent on one thing. Val was as one-idea’d as they were; but his idea was not their idea; and the shock of the encounter jarred upon them, so curiously sudden and out of place it seemed. Lady Eskside, who sat close by him, and to whom this was no revelation, was more jarred even than the rest. She put her fine old ivory hand on his arm, with an impatient grasp. “This is not the question—this is not the question,” she said.
Val looked round upon them all, and saw something in their looks which startled him too. He put back his legs upon the sofa, and the flush gradually went off his cheek. “Well,” he said, “well; whatever it is I am ready to hear it—so long as I make sure that you’ve heard me first.”
“Valentine,” said his father, “at your age some such piece of foolishness always comes first; but this time you have got to see the obverse of the medal—the other end of all this enthusiasm. It is my story, not your own, that you have to think of. Kind friends of course have told you——”
“Richard,” said Lord Eskside, “this is not the way to enter upon a subject so important. Let me speak. He knows my way best.”
Richard turned away with a short laugh—not of amusement indeed, but full of that irritated sense of incongruity which gives to anger a kind of fierce amusement of its own. Lord Eskside cleared his throat—he preferred to have the matter in his own hands.
“Friends have told you little,” he said; “but an enemy, Val, the enemy whose daughter you have just told us you want to marry—but that’s neither here nor there—let you know the story. Your father there, Richard Ross, my son, married when he was young and foolish, like you. It was not an equal marriage, and the—lady—took some false notion into her head, I know not what, and left him—taking her two babies with her, as you have heard. These two babies,” said the old lord, once more clearing his throat, “were your brother and you—so much as this you know.”
Here he stopped to take breath; he was gradually growing excited and breathless in spite of himself.
“We could not find you, though we did our best. We spared no trouble, either before you were brought home or after. Now, my boy, think a little. It is a very strange position. You have a brother somewhere in the world—the same flesh and blood, but not like you; a mother——” He instinctively glanced at the woman who sat behind backs, like a marble statue, immovable. The crisis became too painful to them all. There was a stir of excitement when Lord Eskside came to this pause. His wife put her hand on his, grasping it almost angrily in the heat of suspense. Richard Ross began to pace about the room with restless passion.
“Go on, oh, go on!” cried my lady, with a querulous quiver in her voice. I am not sure that the old lord, though so much excited himself, had not a certain pleasure in thus holding them all hanging on his breath.
“In good time—in good time,” he said. “Valentine, it may be a shock to you to find out these relations: it cannotbe but a great surprise. You are not prepared for it—your mind is full of other things——”
“For God’s sake, sir,” cried Richard, “do not drive us all mad! Valentine, make up your mind for what you have to hear. Your mother is found——”
“And your brother,” cried Lady Eskside, rushing in unconsciously as the excitement grew to a crisis. “Your brother, too! Oh, my boy, bear up!”
Dick had been standing by, listening with I know not what fire in his heart: he could bear it no longer. The shock and suspense, which were as great to him as to Valentine, had not been broken in his case by any precautions; and it hurt his pride bitterly, on his mother’s account as well as his own, that the knowledge of them should be supposed such a terrible blow to Val. He stepped forth into the middle of the room (his own room, in which they made so little of him), his honest face glowing, his fair, good-humoured brows bent, almost for the first time in his life,—
“Look here,” he said, hoarsely; “there is more than him to be thought of. If it’s hard upon him, he’s a man, and he’ll bear it like a man. Mr Ross, look here. I’m Dick Brown, sir, your humble servant; I’m the lad you made a man of, from the time we were boys till now. You’ve done for me as the Bible says one brother should do for another,” said Dick, the tears suddenly starting into his eyes, and softening his voice, “without knowing; and now they say we’re brothers in earnest. Perhaps you’ll think it’s poor news; as for me, I don’t mind which it is—your brother or your servant,” said Dick, his eyes shining, holding out both his hands; “one way or other, I couldn’t think more of you than I do now.”
Valentine had been lying motionless on his sofa, looking from one to another with large and wondering eyes. It is needless to say that amid so many different narrators he had already divined, even before Dick spoke, the solution of this mystery; and it had given him sufficient shock to drive the blood back wildly to his heart. But he had time toprendre son parti, and he was too much of a man not to bear it like a man, as Dick said. When his new brother held out his hands, a sudden suffusion of colour came to Val’s face, and a smile almost of infantile sweetness and weakness. He took Dick’s hands and pulled himself up by them, grasping them with an eager pressure; then changing, in his weakness, took Dick’s arm, upon which he leant so heavily that the young man’s whole heart was moved. Familiar tenderness, old brotherhood, and that depth of absolute trust which no untried affection can possess, were all involved in the heavy pressure with which Val leant on Dick’s arm; but he did not say anything to him. His eyes went past Dick to the other side of the room, whither he walked feebly, leaning on his brother’s arm. When they came in front of their mother the two young men stopped. With her old abstracted gaze modified by an indescribable mixture of terror and longing, she turned to them, pushing back her chair unconsciously, almost retreating as they approached. Val could not speak all at once. He looked at her eagerly, tenderly. “Is it true?” he said; “are you my—mother?” The words were spoken slowly one by one, and seemed to tingle through the airstaccato, like notes of music. All the others turned towards this central scene. Lady Eskside sat leaning forward in her chair, crying to herself, her streaming eyes fixed upon them. The old lord walked to the window, and, turning his back, looked out fiercely from under his shaggy eyebrows. Dick, supporting his brother on his arm, stood very erect and firm, while Val wavered and swayed about in his weakness. One great tear ran slowly down Dick’s cheek. They were all spectators of what was about to happen between these two.
The mother stood out as long as she could, holding herself back, labouring to restrain herself. Then all at once her powers failed her. She started to her feet with a great cry, and throwing her arms round them both, pressed them together in a passionate embrace, kissing first one and then the other, wildly. “My two lads!” she cried; “my two babies!—my children—my own children! Only for once,—only for this one time!”
“Mother!” cried Val, faintly, dropping on the floor in his weakness, and drawing her into her seat. And there he lay for another moment, his head upon her breast, his arms round her. Her face was like the face of a saint in ecstasy. She pressed his dark curls against her bosom and kissed them, lifting the heavy locks up one by one—her eyes brimming with great tears which did not fall—saying again and again, under her breath, “For once—only for this once!” while Dick stood over them, sobbing, guarding them, as it seemed, from all other contact. I do not know howmany seconds of vulgar time this lasted. It was, and it was over. Suddenly she raised Valentine from her lap, and loosened his arms. “Dick, put him back upon the sofa; he’s overdone,” she said, putting him into his brother’s charge. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in nervous self-restraint, looking after the two for a moment; watching till her patient was laid at ease upon his couch. Then she turned suddenly, subdued and still, to Richard, who had been looking on like the rest—“Now I’m ready,” she said, very low. “I’ll go where you please. There is one for you and one for me. I will never go back of my word to do you a wrong. It’s good of you to let me kiss my lad once, only once! And now I’ll trouble him and you no more.”
“Myra!” said Richard, coming forward to her. She had risen up, and stood like a stately wild creature, ready for flight. He took her hand in spite of her resistance, and I cannot describe the strange emotion, sympathy, almost tenderness, and hot provocation in Richard’s face. He was more touched at heart than he had been for years, and he was more angry and provoked at the same time. “Myra,” he said, “can you think of nothing but your children? Have you forgotten that you are my wife, and that I have some claim upon you too?”
She stood silent, holding back: then lifting her eyes looked at him pathetically. I think a faint sense of duty had begun to dawn in her mind; and her look was pathetic, because she knew of no response to make to him. She had no desire to humiliate her husband by her indifference—such a thought was far beyond her; but there was no reply to him in her mind. Perhaps he perceived this, and made a sudden effort to save his pride by appearing to ignore her silence. He drew her hand suddenly and impatiently within his arm, and led her forward to his mother’s side—“Myra,” he said quickly, “it is of the first importance for your children—for Val and Dick whom you love—and especially for Val, the eldest, that you should remain with us, and go away no more.”
Lady Eskside rose to receive her; they had met by Val’s bedside many times before, but the old lady had feared to say anything to alarm the worn-out watcher. She rose now, looking at her with wistful anxiety, holding out her hands. My lady’s eyes were still full of tears, and her fair old facetremulous with emotion and sympathy. She took into her own the wanderer’s reluctant hands—“Oh,” she said, anxiously, “listen to what Richard says to you, my dear! You will get to know us by-and-by, and find out that we are your friends—my old lord and me; but your boys you love with all your heart already. Myra, listen! It is of the greatest importance to your children that you should stay with us and never leave us more—and, above all, for the eldest—above all, my dear, for Val.”
She gave one half-frightened glance round as if to see whether there was any escape for her. Then she said, very low—“I will do whatever you please—but it is Dick who is the eldest, not Val.”
“What!” they all cried, pressing round her—all but Val, who lay still on his sofa, and Dick, who stood over him; the two young men did not even notice what was going on. But Lord Eskside came from the window in one stride, and Richard grasped her arm in sudden terror: “What is that?—what is that she says?” cried the old lord.
“God blessmylads!” she said, gaining possession of herself, looking at the two with a smile on her face. She was calm, as utter ignorance, utter foolishness could be; then she added, with a soft sigh, of something that looked like happiness in her ignorant composure—“But it is Dick who is the eldest, and not Val.”