Dick’s mother sat upon the bank where he had left her, with her hands
clasping her knees, and her abstract eyes gazing across the river into
the distance, seeing scarcely anything before her, but seeing much which
was not before her nor could be. A tramp has no room to sit in, no
domestic duties to do, even were she disposed to do them; and to sit
thus in a silent musing, or without even musing at all, in mere empty
leisure, beaten upon by wind and sun, was as characteristic of her
wandering life as were the long fatigues of the road along which at
other times she would plod for hours, or the noisy tumult of racecourse
or fair through which she often carried her serious face and abstract
eyes--a figure always remarkable and never having any visible connection
with the scene in which she was. But this day she was as she had not
been for years. The heart which fulfilled its ordinary pulsations in her
breast calmly and dully on most occasions, like something far off and
scarcely belonging to her, was now throbbing high with an emotion which
influenced every nerve and fibre of her frame. It had never stilled
since last night when she heard Val’s name sounding clear through the
sunny air, and saw the tall well-formed boy, with his wet jersey
clinging to his shoulders, moving swiftly away from her, a vision, but
more substantial than any other vision. Her old heart, the heart of her
youth, had leaped back into life at that moment; and instead of the
muffled beating of the familiar machine which had simply kept her alive
all these years, a something full of independent life, full of passion,
and eagerness, and quick-coming fancies, and hope, and fear, had
suddenly come to life within her bosom. I don’t know if her thoughts
were very articulate. They could scarcely have been so, uneducated,
untrained, undisciplined soul as she was--a creature ruled by impulses,
and with no hand to control her; but as she sat there and saw her placid
Dick go happily off, to meet the other lad who was to him “a young
swell,” able to advance and help him, one to whom he had taken a sudden
fancy, he could not tell why,--the strangeness of the situation roused
her to an excitement which she was incapable of subduing. “It mayn’t be
him after all--it mayn’t be him after all,” she said to herself,
watching Dick till he disappeared into the distance. She would have
given all she had (it was not much) to go with him, and look face to
face upon the other. It seemed to her that she must know at the first
glance whether it was _him_ or not. But, indeed, she had no doubt that
it was _him_. For I do not attempt to make any pretence at deceiving the
well-informed and quick-sighted reader, who knows as well as I do who
this woman was. She had carried on her wandering life, the life which
she had chosen, for the last eight years, exposed to all the
vicissitudes of people in her condition, sometimes in want, often
miserable, pursuing in her wild freedom a routine as mechanically fixed
as that of the most rigid conventional life, and bound, had she known
it, by as unyielding a lacework of custom as any that could have
affected the life of the Honourable Mrs Richard Ross, the wife of the
Secretary of Legation. But she did not know this, poor soul; and
besides, all possibility of that other existence, all hold upon it or
thought of it, had disappeared out of her horizon for sixteen years.
Sixteen years! a large slice out of a woman’s life who had not yet done
more than pass the half-way milestone of human existence. She had never
possessed so much even of the merest rudimentary education as to know
what the position of Richard Ross’s wife meant, except that it involved
living in a house, wearing good clothes, and being surrounded by people
of whom she was frightened, who did not understand her, and whom she
could not understand. Since her flight back into her natural condition,
the slow years had brought to her maturing mind thoughts which she
understood as little. She was not more educated, more clever, nor indeed
more clear in her confused fancies, than when she gave back one of her
boys, driven thereto by a wild sense of justice, into his father’s
keeping; but many strange things had seemed to pass before her dreamy
eyes since then,--things she could not fathom, vague visions of what
might have been right, of what was wrong. These had come to little
practical result, except in so far that she had carefully preserved her
boy Dick from contact with the evil around--had trained him in her way
to truth and goodness and some strange sense of honour--had got him even
a little education, the faculties of reading and writing, which were to
herself a huge distinction among her tribe; and by keeping him in her
own dreamy and silent but pure companionship, had preserved the lad from
moral harm.
She had however, in doing this, a material to work upon which had saved
her much trouble. The boy was, to begin with, of a character as
incomprehensible to her as were the other vague and strange influences
which had shaped her shipwrecked life. He was good, gentle, more
advanced than herself, his teacher, in the higher things which she tried
to teach him, getting by instinct to conclusions which only painfully
and dimly had forced themselves upon her, not subject to the temptations
which she expected to move him, not lawless, nor violent, nor hard to
control, but full of reason and sense and steady trustworthiness from
his cradle. She had by this time got over the surprise with which she
had slowly come to recognise in Dick a being totally different from
herself. She was no analyst of character, and she had accepted the fact
with dumb wonder which did not know how to put itself into words. Even
now there awaited her many lesser surprises, as Dick, going on from step
to step in life, did things which it never would have occurred to her to
do, and showed himself totally impervious to those temptations against
which it had been necessary for her to struggle. His last declaration to
her was as surprising as anything that went before it. The nomad’s son,
who had been “on the tramp” all his life, whose existence had been spent
“on the road,” alternating between the noisy excitement of those scenes
of amusement which youth generally loves, and that dull
semi-hibernation of the winter which gives the tramp so keen a zest for
the new start of spring,--was it the boy so bred who had spoken to her
of a “home,” of steady work, and the commonplace existence of a man who
had learned a trade? She wondered with a depth of vague surprise which
it would be impossible to put into words--for she herself had no words
to express what she meant. Had it not happened to chime in with the
longing in her own mind to stay here and see the other boy, whose
momentary contact had filled her with such excitement, I don’t know how
she would have received Dick’s strange proposal; but in her other
agitation it passed without more than an additional but temporary shock
of that surprise which Dick constantly gave her; and she did not count
the cost of the concession she had made to him--the tacit agreement she
had come under to live under a commonplace roof, and confine herself to
indoor life during this flush of midsummer weather--for the longing that
she had to know something, if only as a distant spectator, of the life
and being of that other boy.
After a while she roused herself and went over in the ferry-boat to the
other side of the river, where were “the rafts” to which Dick looked
with so much anxiety and hope. Everything was very still on the rafts at
that sunny hour before mid-day, when Eton, shut up in its schoolrooms,
did its construing drowsily, and dreamed of the delights of “after
twelve” without being able to rush forth and anticipate them. The
attendants on the rafts, lightly-clad, softly-stepping figures, in
noiseless boating shoes, and such imitation of boating costume as their
means could afford, were lounging about with nothing to do, seated on
the rails drawling in dreary Berkshire speech, or arranging their boats
in readiness for the approaching rush. Dick’s mother approached along
the road, without attracting any special observation, and got into
conversation with one or two of the men with the ease which attends
social intercourse on these levels of life. “If there is a new hand
wanted, my lad is dreadful anxious to come,” she said. “Old Harry’s
looking for a new lad,” answered the man she addressed. And so the talk
began.
“There was a kind of an accident on the river last night,” she said,
after a while; “one of the gentlemen got his boat upset, and my lad
brought it down----”
“Lord bless you! call that a haccident?” said her informant;
“half-a-dozen of ’em swamps every night. They don’t mind, nor nobody
else.”
“The name of this one was--Ross, I think,” she said, very slowly; “maybe
you’ll know him?”
“I know him well enough--he’s in the Victory; not half a bad fellow in
his way, but awful sharp, and not a bit of patience. I seed him come in
dripping wet. He’s free with his money, and I daresay he’d pay your lad
handsome. If I were you I’d speak to old Harry himself about the place;
and if you say you’ve a friend or two among them young swells, better
luck.”
“Is this one what you call a swell?” said the woman.
“Why, he’s _Mr_ Ross, ain’t he? that’s Eton for honourable,” said one of
the men.
“_He_ ain’t Mr Ross,” said an older and better-informed person, with
some contempt. The older attendants at the rafts were walking peerages,
and knew everybody’s pedigree. “His father was Mister Ross, if you
please. He used to be at college in my time; a nice light-haired sort of
a lad, not good for much, but with heaps of friends. Not half the pluck
of this one; this one’s as dark as you, missis, a kind of a
foreign-looking blade, and as wilful as the old gentleman himself. But I
like that sort better than the quiet ones; the quiet ones does just as
much mischief on the sly.”
“They’re a rare lot, them lads are,” said the other--“shouting at a man
like’s he was the dust under their feet. Ain’t we their fellow-creatures
all the same? It ain’t much you makes at the rafts, missis, even if you
gains a lot in the season. For after all, look how short the season
is--you may say just the summer half. It’s too cold in March, and it’s
too cold in October--nothing to speak of but the summer half. You makes
a good deal while it lasts, I don’t say nothing to the contrary--but
what’s that to good steady work all round the year?”
“Maybe her lad isn’t one for steady work,” said another. “It _is_ work,
I can tell you is this, as long as it lasts; from early morning to
lock-up, never a moment to draw your breath, except school-hours; and
holidays, and half-holidays without end. Then there’s the regular
boating gents as come and go, not constant like the Eton gentlemen. They
give a deal of trouble--they do; and as particular with their boats as
if they were babies. I tell you what, missis, if you want him to have
an easy place, I wouldn’t send him here.”
“He’s not one that’s afraid of work,” said the woman, “and it’s what
he’s set his heart on. I wonder if you could tell me where this Mr Ross
comes from?--if he’s west-country now, down Devonshire way?”
“Bless you, no!” said the old man, who was great in genealogies; “he’s
from the north, he is--Scotland or thereabouts. His grandfather came
with him when he first came to college--Lord something or other. About
as like a lord as I am. But the nobility ain’t much to look at,” added
this functionary, with whom familiarity had bred contempt. “They’re a
poor lot them Scotch and Irish lords. Give me a good railway man, or
that sort; they’re the ones for spending their money. Lord--I cannot
think on the old un’s name.”
“Was it--Eskside?”
“You’re a nice sort of body to know about the haristocracy,” said the
man; “in course it was Eskside. Now, missis, if you knowed, what was the
good of coming asking me, taking a fellow in?”
“I didn’t know,” said the woman, humbly; “I only wanted to know. In my
young days, long ago, I knew--a family of that name.”
“Ay, ay, in your young days! You were a handsome lass then, I’ll be
bound,” said the old man, with a grin.
“Look here,” said one of the others--“here’s old Harry coming, if you
like to speak to him about your lad. Speak up and don’t be frightened.
He ain’t at all a bad sort, and if you tell him as the boy’s spry and
handy, and don’t mind a hard day’s work--Speak up! only don’t say I told
you.” And the benevolent adviser disappeared hastily, and began to pull
about some old gigs which were ranged on the rafts, as if much too
busily occupied to spare a word. The woman went up to the master with a
heart beating so strongly that she could scarcely hear her own voice. On
any other occasion she would have been shy and reluctant. Asking favours
was not in her way--she did not know how to do it. She could not feign
or compliment, or do anything to ingratiate herself with a patron. But
her internal agitation was so strong that she was quite uplifted beyond
all sense of the effort which would have been so trying to her on any
other occasion. She went up to him sustained by her excitement, which
at the same time blunted her feelings, and made her almost unaware of
the very words she uttered.
“Master,” she said, going straight to the point, as the excited mind
naturally does--“I have a boy that is very anxious for work. He is a
good lad, and very kind to me. We’ve been tramping about the
country--nothing better, for all my folks was in that way; but he don’t
take after me and my folks. He thinks steady work is better, and to stay
still in one place.”
“He is in the right of it there,” was the reply.
“Maybe he is in the right,” she said; “I’m not the one to say, for I’m
fond of my freedom and moving about. But, master, you’ll have one in
your place that is not afraid of hard work if you’ll have my son.”
“Who is your son? do I know him?” said the master, who was a man with a
mobile and clean-shaven countenance, like an actor, with a twinkling eye
and a suave manner, the father of an athletic band of river worthies who
were regarded generally with much admiration by “the college gentlemen,”
to whom their prowess was well known,--“who is your son?”
The woman grew sick and giddy with the tumult of feeling in her. The
words were simple enough in straightforward meaning; but they bore
another sense, which made her heart flutter, and took the very light
from her eyes. “Who was her son?” It was all she could do to keep from
betraying herself, from claiming some one else as her son, very
different from Dick. If she had done so, she would have been simply
treated as a mad woman: as it was, the bystanders, used to tramps of a
very different class, looked at her with instant suspicion, half
disposed to attribute her giddiness and faltering to a common enough
cause. She mastered herself without fully knowing either the risk she
had run or the looks directed to her. “You don’t know him,” she said.
“We came here but last night. One of the college gentlemen was to speak
for him. He’s a good hard-working lad, if you’ll take my word for it,
that knows him best.”
“Well, missis, it’s true as you knows him best; but I don’t know as we
can take his mother’s word for it. Mothers ain’t always to be trusted to
tell what they know,” said the master, good-humouredly. “I’ll speak to
you another time, for the gentlemen are coming. Look sharp, lads.”
“All right, sir; here you are.”
The tide was coming in--a tide of boys--who immediately flooded the
place, pouring up-stairs into the dressing-rooms to change their school
garments for boating dress, and gradually occupying the rafts in a
moving restless crowd. The woman stood, jostled by the living stream,
watching wistfully, while boat after boat shot out into the
water,--gigs, with a laughing, restless crew--outriggers, each with a
silent inmate, bent on work and practice; for all the school races had
yet to be rowed. She stood gazing, with a heart that fluttered wildly,
upon all those unknown young faces and animated moving figures. One of
them was bound to her by the closest tie that can unite two human
creatures; and yet, poor soul, she did not know him, nor had he the
slightest clue to find her out--to think of her as anyhow connected with
himself. Her heart grew sick as she gazed and gazed, pausing now upon
one face, now upon another. There was one of whom she caught a passing
glimpse, as he pushed off into the stream in one of the long-winged
dragon-fly boats, who excited her most of all. She could not see him
clearly, only a glimpse of him between the crowding figures about;--an
oval face, with dark clouds of curling hair pushed from his forehead.
There came a ringing in her ears, a dimness in her eyes. Women in her
class do not faint except at the most tremendous emergencies. If they
did, they would probably be set down as intoxicated, and summarily dealt
with. She caught at the wooden railing, and held herself upright by it,
shutting her eyes to concentrate her strength. And by-and-by the
bewildering sick emotion passed; was it him whom she had seen?
After this she crossed the river again in the ferry-boat, though it was
a halfpenny each time, and she felt the expenditure to be extravagant,
and walked about on the other bank till she found Dick, who naturally
adopted the same means of finding her, neither of them thinking of any
return “home,”--a place which did not exist in their consciousness. Then
they went and bought something in an eating-shop, and brought it out to
a quiet corner opposite the “Brocas clump,” and there ate their dinner,
with the river flowing at their feet, and the skiffs of “the gentlemen”
darting by. It was, or rather looked, a poetic meal, and few people
passed in sight without a momentary envy of the humble picnic; but to
Dick Brown and his mother there was nothing out of the way in it, and
she tied up the fragments for supper in a spotted cotton handkerchief
when they had finished. It was natural for them to eat out of doors, as
well as to do everything else out of doors. Dick told her of his good
luck, how kind Valentine had been, and gave her the half-crown he had
received, and an account of all that was to be done for him. “If they
don’t mind him, they’re sure to mind the other gentleman,” said devout
Dick, who believed in Val’s power with a fervent and unquestioning
faith. After a while he went across to the rafts, and hung about there
ready for any odd job, and making himself conspicuous in eager anxiety
to please the master. His mother remained with the fragments of their
meal tied up in the handkerchief, on the same grassy bank where they had
dined, watching the boats as they came and went. She did not understand
how it was that they all dropped off one by one, and as suddenly
reappeared again when the hour for dinner and the hour of “three o’clock
school” passed. But she had nothing to do to call her from that musing
and silence to which she had become habituated, and remained there the
entire afternoon doing nothing but gaze.
At last, however, she made a great effort, and roused herself. The
unknown boy after whom she yearned could not be identified among all
these strange faces; and there was something which could be done for
good Dick, the boy who had always been good to her. She did for Dick
what no one could have expected her to do; she went and looked for a
lodging where they could establish themselves. After a while she found
two small rooms in a house facing the river,--one in which Dick could
sleep, the other a room with a fireplace, where his hot meals, which he
no doubt would insist upon, could be cooked, and where, in a corner, she
herself could sleep when the day was over. She had a little stock of
reserve money on her person, a few shillings saved, and something more,
which was the remnant of a sum she had carried about with her for years,
and which I believe she intended “to bury her,” according to the curious
pride which is common among the poor. But as for the moment there was no
question of burying her, she felt justified in breaking in upon this
little hoard to please her boy by such forlorn attempts at comfort as
were in her power. She ventured to buy a few necessaries, and to make
provision as well as she knew how for the night--the first night which
she would have passed for years under a roof which she could call her
own. One of the chief reasons that reconciled her to this step was, that
the room faced the river, and that not Dick alone, but the other whom
she did not know, could be watched from the window. Should she get to
know him, perhaps to speak to him, that other?--to watch him every
summer evening in his boat, floating up and down--to distinguish his
voice in the crowd, and his step? But for this hope she could not, I
think, have made so great a sacrifice for Dick alone--a sacrifice she
had not been able to make when the doing of it would have been still
more important than now. Perhaps it was because she was growing older,
and the individual had faded somewhat from her consciousness; but the
change bewildered even herself. She did it notwithstanding, and of her
free will.