The exploit of the Babes in the Wood, as Willie Maitland called it, was
one of the last freaks which Valentine played in his childhood by
Eskside. Mr Grinder, who was from Oxford, a cultured and dainty young
Don, was recognised to be no fit tutor for a child who preferred the
woods to the classics, and could not construe a bit of Greek decently to
save his life. What agonies Mr Grinder went through while his term of
office lasted I will not attempt to describe. He was a young man of fine
mind, one of the finest minds of his day, and that was saying a great
deal. He loved pictures and fine furniture and dainty decorations as
well as Richard Ross did, though perhaps he was not quite so learned;
and when he first saw the great green cabinets in the drawing-room,
could barely say the common civilities to Lady Eskside before he went on
his knees to adore the Vernis-Martin. It may be supposed how little this
dainty personage had in common with the boy, always carrying an
atmosphere of fresh air about him, his pockets bulged out with unknown
implements, his boots often clogged with mud, and his hands not always
clean, whom it seemed a kind of desecration to introduce, all rustic and
noisy, into the shadowy world of the Greek drama. Mr Grinder, I am
afraid, had looked with lenient eye upon his pupil’s absence on that
June day. He had not reported the truant, but reconciled himself easily
to the want of him; and it was only when the day was almost over that he
had taken fright at the boy’s prolonged absence. Lady Eskside could not
forgive him the panic he had caused her, and as soon as the most
exquisite politeness and delicate pretences of regret made it possible,
Mr Grinder and his knick-knacks were got rid of; and a hard-working
student from Edinburgh College, toiling mightily to make his way into
the Scotch Church, and indifferent what labours he went through to
attain this end, reigned in his stead. He was perhaps not so pleasant a
person to have in the house, my lady allowed, but far better for the
boy, which was the first object. The new man cared nothing about the
sanctity of the Greek drama, and perhaps did not know very much, if the
truth were told. He turned Valentine on to Homer, and marched him
through battle and tempest with some rough sense of the poetry, but very
little delicacy about the grammar. But he kept his eye upon his pupil,
and got a certain amount of work out of him, and prevented all such
runaway expeditions, relieving the old people from their anxieties for
the moment at least.
Val was not an easy boy to manage. He had two natures in him, as Lady
Eskside said,--the one wild, adventurous, uncontrollable; the other more
than ordinarily impressionable by social influences. But when a boy gets
into his teens he is not so easily kept up to the pitch of drawing-room
polish as is a dainty little gentleman of eight in velvet and lace. With
the period of black jackets the histrionic power begins to
wane--temporarily at least: and when Val at thirteen turned his back
upon the Dowager Duchess, and fretted furiously against being taken to
make calls, his terrified grandmother thought immediately, not of his
age, but of the mother’s blood, which made him clownish; and not only
thought so herself, but was seized with a panic lest others should think
so. It had made her proud to see how far her little Val surpassed in
manners the Marquis of Hightowers; but it did not console her to think
that Valentine now was no worse than his exalted neighbour. For, alas!
the mother of Hightowers had as many quarterings on her shield as his
august father, and the boy might be as great a lout as he liked without
exciting any remark or suspicion; whereas poor Val could never be free
of possible criticism on the score of his mother’s blood.
This troubled the serenity of his childhood, though Val himself did not
know the reason why. His recollections of the earlier period of his life
had grown very vague in these years. Val had been well disposed to be
communicative on the subject when he came to Eskside first. He had shown
on many occasions a dangerous amount of interest and knowledge as to the
economy of the travelling vans which sometimes passed through Lasswade
with shows of various kinds, or basketmakers or tinkers; and once had
followed one of them for miles along the road, and had been brought back
again much disfigured with weeping, whimpering that his mammy must be
there. But children are very quick to perceive when their recollections
are not acceptable to the people about them, and still more easily led
into other channels of thought; and as he had nothing near him to recall
that chapter of his life to his mind, he gradually forgot it. There was
still a vague light of familiarity and interest in his eyes if, by any
chance, he came upon an encampment of gipsies, or the vans of a show, or
even the travelling tramps upon the road; but the boy, I think, came to
be ashamed of this feeling of interest, and to divine that his early
life was no credit to him, but rather something to be concealed, about
the same time as he ceased to be the perfect little actor and social
performer he had been in his first stage. He began to be conscious of
himself, that most confusing and bewildering of experiences. This
consciousness comes later or earlier, according to the constitution of
the individual; but when it comes it has always a confusing influence
upon the young mind and life. When one’s self thrusts into sight, and
insists upon filling up the foreground of the scene, it changes all
natural rules of proportion and perspective. The child or the youth has
to review everything around him over again to get it into keeping with
this new phantom suddenly arisen, which does nothing but harass his
mind, and puts him out in all his calculations. Me--how much has been
said about it, philosophies based upon it, the whole heaven and earth
founded on this atom! but there is nothing that bewilders the young soul
so much as to see it surging up through the fair, sunny, matter-of-fact
universe, and through the world of dreams, disturbing and disarranging
everything. This change befell Valentine early. I think it began from
that day in the woods, which was full of so many experiences. Even then
he had been faintly conscious of himself--conscious of “showing off” to
dazzle Violet on the linn--conscious of deceiving her as to their safety
when she began to cry with fatigue and loneliness, and he, upon whom all
the responsibility of the escapade lay, had to think how she was to be
got home. In the chaotic bit of existence which followed, when Oxford,
worsted, left the field, and Edinburgh, dauntless, came in, Valentine
had a tough fight with this Frankenstein of himself, this creature which
already had lived two lives, and possessed a vague confusing world of
memories half worn out, yet not altogether extinct, alongside of his
actual existence. I do not mean to pretend that the boy was a prodigy of
reflectiveness, and brooded over these thoughts night and day; but yet
there were times when they would come into his mind, taking all his baby
grace away from him, and all the security and power of unconsciousness.
Lady Eskside did not know what had come over her boy. She discussed it
eagerly with her old lord, who tried in vain to dismiss the subject.
“He’s at the uncouth age, that’s all,” said Lord Eskside. “Oh, I hope it
is not his mother’s blood!” said the old lady. And thus the delightful
day of playing truant in the woods was the primary cause of a wonderful
revolution in Val’s affairs. The grandfather and grandmother made up
their minds to deny themselves, and send him to school.
The incident of the Babes in the Wood made a still greater impression on
the other culprit. Mrs Pringle took her little daughter home, not
without some emotion--for what mother can resist the delighted look of
absolute security which comes to the face even of a naughty child,
when, out of unimaginable danger and tragic desolation, it suddenly
beholds the Deliverer appear--the parent in whom Providence and Power
and Supreme Capacity are conjoined? But she was half amused at the same
time; and indeed the whole household at the Hewan regarded Vi’s escapade
with more amusement than alarm. “Oh, Miss Violet, to tak’ the pie!--that
was a’ I had for your papa’s and mamma’s dinner,” said old Jean. “They
maun be content with ham and eggs noo, for I’ve naething else in the
hoose. My larder’s sweepit clean,” she added, when Violet had been
carried off to have her damp and draggled garments changed. “Cheese and
biscuits and everything there was: my word, but yon laddie maun have a
good stomach! You wouldna think to bring the pie-dish back?”
“Indeed, we were too thankful,” said Mrs Pringle, “to find the
bairns----”
“Oh, the bairns! bless you, there was never ony fear o’ the bairns; but
my dish was new, or as good as new. I’ll give little Johnny at the farm
a penny to gang and look for’t. There was three fine fat young chickens,
no’ to speak of eggs and a’ the seasoning. If that laddie’s no’ ill the
morn he maun be an ostridge, or whatever ye ca’ the muckle bird ye get
the feathers from; and a’ the morning’s milk and the new bread I laid in
for your suppers! Just an ostridge! I wish the laddie nae harm, but he
should have a sair head the morn, and a good licking, if he gets what he
deserves.”
“Alexander,” said Mrs Pringle, an hour or two later, when she, with a
warm shawl on, took a seat for ten minutes on the earthen dyke to keep
her husband company while he smoked his cigar. The night was still
clear, and pale with the lingering of the light, though it was past ten
o’clock; and the western sky shone with such silvery tints of celestial
hue, sublime visions of colour, free of all earthly crudeness, as are
never visible save in a northern summer. “Alexander, Sandy’s wife, if he
lives to have one, will never be Lady Eskside; but I would not wonder if
you and me had more interest in that title than any daughter-in-law
could give us. We’ll see what tune may bring forth.”
“You mean you’ll have it yourself? I am sure I hope so, one day, my
dear,” said Mr Pringle, complacently: “not meaning any harm to Dick
Ross; but his was never a very strong life.”
“I am not meaning myself,” said Mrs Pringle, provoked. “How obtuse you
are, you men! Neither you nor Sandy will ever have the lordship, you may
take my word for that.”
“And what do I care then who is my lady?” said the heavy husband. “I
don’t really see, my dear, why you should be so very decided against
your husband and son. One would think you would be more likely to take
our side.”
Mrs Pringle shrugged her shoulders slightly, and drew her shawl closer
round her. What was the use of throwing away her pearls--her higher
insight? She changed the subject; and by-and-by, having no consolation
of a cigar, and finding the lovely twilight chilly, though it was so
beautiful, she went in, and went up-stairs to the little room in the
roof where Violet lay warm and cosy, with her bright eyes still open,
and turned to the soft clear sky of which her attic window was full.
“Oh, mamma, was it very, very wicked to go?” said Violet. Her mother
stooped to kiss the little tearful face.
“We’ll say no more about it, Vi--but you must never play truant again.”
“Never!” cried Vi, with a half sob which prolonged the word, and made it
echo through the tiny chamber. Alas! there was more than penitence in
that vow; there was regret, there was the ghost of a delight made doubly
precious by trouble and terror. Oh no, never again! but what had all
Violet’s discreet and exemplary life--a life irreproachable and full of
every (nursery) virtue--to show, which could compare with the transport,
and terror, and misery, and sweetness, of that one never-to-be-repeated
day?
Vi had a great deal to bear afterwards, when the boys heard the story,
and held over her the recollection of the “day she played truant,” with
all that delight in torture which is natural to their kind. But with all
this they could not take from her the memory of it, which grew dearer in
proportion as she buried it in her own small bosom. The running of the
water, the rustling of the leaves, the solemn drowse of noon in the full
sunshine, the soft velvet rush of the foaming linn over the little
fingers with which she tried to stop its torrent, and all the stirs and
movements among the trees, peopled the child’s recollection for many a
day. Seated at a dull window in Moray Place, looking out upon the stiff
garden with its shrubs--public property, and unlovely as public
property generally is--Violet could see once more her bold companion
leaping from one boulder to another, with the furious Esk underneath,
and feel again a delicious thrill of visionary terror. She had learned
more about “the country,” about woods and wilds, and birds and
squirrels, and about the sensations of explorers in a new-discovered
land, than anything else could have taught her. “I too in Arcadia,” she
could have said: her one day of playing truant was the possession out of
which she drew most enjoyment; and I leave the gentle reader to imagine,
as Violet grew older, whether she could dismiss the partner of this
celestial piece of wickedness into the mere common region of
indifference, and leave him there undistinguished by any preference. She
was always Val’s defender afterwards, when any discussion of his merits
arose among the boys; and what was more remarkable still, Mrs Pringle
became Val’s warm partisan and supporter, dismissing almost with
indignation any suggestion which might be made to his disfavour. She was
impatient of what she called her husband’s “whimsey” about his heirship.
“It is just a piece of folly,” she would say with some heat. “Are the
Esksides fools to take up a false heir? or what motive could they have?
Your father is a very clever man, and has a great deal of sense in a
general way. But, boys, don’t you build any hopes upon this, for it’s
just nonsense. You may be sure they are not the kind of folk to commit
themselves, or expose the property to certain waste and destruction,
with an impostor for an heir----” That he should have so important a
deserter from his standard filled Mr Pringle with surprise. He was
justified in thinking that it would have been natural that, right or
wrong, she should have placed herself on her own boy’s side. But Mrs
Pringle was a woman who was given to an opinion of her own, and was not
to be persuaded out of it when once formed upon sufficient cause.
And thus the soft-paced time went on, gently, dallying with the
children, spinning out long tranquil days for them, and years that
seemed as if they would never be over, as he does not do with their
elders. They grew up slowly like the grass, which never shows itself in
the act of growing, but is, while yet we are unaware of it; the happiest
of all life’s various periods--not only to the younglings, who are
unconscious of it, but also to the fathers and mothers, who sometimes
have an inkling of the truth. It looks long while it is in progress,
thank heaven--though after, I suppose, when it is over, and the birds
are out of the nest, it is like everything else in life, as short to
look back upon as a tale that is told. But in the meantime there is
little more to be said than that the children grew. And by-and-by
Rosscraig House fell into sudden shadow, as if the sun had gone behind a
cloud, and the voices in it died down into subdued sounds of old
people’s voices, as had been the case before the child came to it,
turning everything topsy-turvy. Val had been sent to school.