When Dick saw his friend and patron come down to the rafts that evening
in company with another of the “gentlemen,” bigger, stronger, and older
than himself, at whom everybody looked with respect and admiration, the
state of his mind may be supposed. He had been hanging about all day, as
I have said, making himself useful--a handy fellow, ready to push a boat
into the water, to run and fetch an oar, to tie on the sheepskin on a
rower’s seat, without standing on ceremony as to who told him to do so.
The master himself, in the hurry of operations, had given him various
orders without perceiving, so willing and ready was Dick, that it was a
stranger, and not one of his own men, whom he addressed. Dick
contemplated the conversation which ensued with a beating heart. He saw
the lads look round, and that Valentine pointed him out to the potentate
of the river-side; and he saw one of the men join in, saying something,
he was sure, in his favour; and, after a terrible interval of suspense,
Val came towards him, waving his hand to him in triumph. “There,” cried
Val, “we’ve got you the place. Go and talk to old Harry yourself about
wages and things. And mind what I said to you, Brown; neither Lichen nor
I will stand any nonsense. We’ve made all sorts of promises for you;
and if you don’t keep them, Lichen will kick you--or, if he don’t, I
will. You’d best keep steady, for your own sake.”
“I’ll keep steady,” said Dick, with a grin on his face; and it was all
the boy could do to keep himself from executing a dance of triumph when
he found himself really engaged at reasonable wages, and informed of the
hour at which he was expected to present himself on the morrow. “Give an
eye to my boat, Brown,” said Val; “see she’s taken care of. I’ll expect
you to look out for me, and have her ready when you know I’m coming. I
hate waiting,” said the lad, with imperious good-humour. How Dick
admired him as he stood there in his flannels and jersey--the
handsomest, splendid, all-commanding young prince, who had stooped from
his skies to interfere on his (Dick’s) behalf, for no reason in the
world except his will and pleasure. “How lucky I am,” thought Dick to
himself, “that he should have noticed me last night!”--and he made all
manner of enthusiastic promises on account of the boat, and of general
devotion to Val’s service. The young potentate took all these
protestations in the very best part. He stepped into his outrigger with
lordly composure, while Dick, all glowing and happy, knelt on the raft
to hold it. “You shan’t want a friend, old fellow, as long as you behave
yourself,” said Val, with magnificent condescension which it was fine to
see; “I’ll look after you,” and he nodded at him as he shot along over
the gleaming water. As for Dick, as his services were not required till
next day, he went across the river to Coffin Lane, where his mother was
waiting for him, to tell his news. She did not say very much, nor did he
expect her to do so, but she took him by the arm and led him along the
water-side to a house which stood in a corner, half facing the river,
looking towards the sunset. She took him in at the open door, and
up-stairs to the room in which she had already set out a homely and very
scanty table for their supper. Dick did not know how to express the
delight and thanks in his heart. He turned round and gave his mother a
kiss in silent transport--a rare caress, such as meant more than words.
The window of this room looked up the river, and straight into the
“Brocas clump,” behind which the sunset was preparing all its splendour.
In the little room beyond, which was to be Dick’s bedroom--glorious
title!--the window looked straight across to the rafts. I do not think
that any young squire coming into a fine property was ever more happy
than the young tramp finding himself for almost the first time in his
life in a place which he could call home. He could not stop smiling, so
full of happiness was he, nor seat himself to his poor supper, but went
round and round the two rooms, planning where he could put up a shelf or
arrange a table. “I’ll make it so handy for you, mother; you’ll not know
you’re born!” cried Dick, in the fulness of his delight.
And yet two barer little rooms perhaps no human home ever was made in.
There was nothing there that was not indispensable--a table, two chairs,
and no more; and in Dick’s room a small iron bed. All that his mother
possessed for her own use was a mattress, which could be rolled up and
put aside during the day. She took her son’s pleasure very quietly, as
was her wont, but smiled with a sense of having made him happy, which
was pleasant to her, although to make him happy had not been her only
motive. When she had put away the things from their supper, she sat down
at the open window and looked out on the river. The air was full of
sound, so softened by the summer that all rudeness and harshness were
taken out of it: in the foreground the ferry-boat was crossing and
recrossing, the man standing up with his punt-pole against the glow of
the western sky; just under the window lay the green eyot, waving with
young willows, and up and down in a continual stream on the sunny side
of it went and came the boys in their boats. “Show him to me, Dick, when
he comes,” said the woman. Dick did not require to be told whom she
meant, neither was he surprised at this intensity of interest in _him_,
which made his young patron the only figure worth identification in that
crowded scene. Had he not been, as it were, Dick’s guardian angel, who
had suddenly appeared for the boy’s succour?--and what more natural than
that Dick’s mother should desire before everything else to see one who
had been such a friend to her boy?
But I do not think she was much the wiser when Val came down the river,
accompanied by a group of backers on the bank, who had made themselves
hoarse shrieking and shouting at him. He was training for a race, and
this was one of his trial nights. Lichen himself had agreed to come down
to give Val his advice and instructions--or, in more familiar
phraseology, was “coaching” him for the important effort. Dick rushed
out at the sight, to cheer and shriek too, in an effervescence of
loyalty which had nothing to do with the character of Val’s performance.
The mother sat at the window and looked out upon them, longing and
sickening with a desire unsatisfied. Was this all she was ever to see of
him--a distant speck in a flying boat? But to know that this was
him--that he was there before her eyes--that he had taken up Dick and
established him in his own train, as it were, near to him, by a sudden
fancy which to her, who knew what cause there was for it, seemed
something like a special interference of God,--filled her with a strange
confused rapture of mingled feelings. She let her tears fall quietly as
she sat all alone, gazing upon the scene. It must be God’s doing, she
felt, since no man had any hand in it. She had separated them in her
wild justice, rending her own heart while she did so, but God had
brought them together. She was totally untaught, poor soul, in religious
matters, as well as in everything else; but in her ignorance she had
reached that point which our high philosophy reaches struggling through
the mist, and which nowadays the unsatisfied and over-instructed mind
loves to go back to, thinking itself happier with one naked primary
truth than with a system however divine. No one could have taken from
this dweller in the woods and wilds the sense of a God in the
world,--almost half visible, sometimes, to musing, silent souls like her
own; a God always watchful, always comprehensible to the simple mind, in
the mere fact of His perpetual watchfulness, fatherliness, yet
severity,--sending hunger and cold as well as warmth and plenty, and
guiding those revolutions of the seasons and the outdoor facts of
existence which impress the untaught yet thoughtful being as nothing
taught by books can ever do. To know as she did that there was a God in
the world, and not believe at the same time that His interference was
the most natural of all things, would have been impossible to this
primitive creature. Therefore, knowing no agencies in the universe but
that of man direct and visible, and that of God, which to her could
scarcely be called invisible, she believed unhesitatingly that God had
done this--that He had balked her, with a hand and power more great than
hers. What was to be the next step she could not tell,--it was beyond
her: she could only sit and watch how things would befall, having not
only no power but no wish to interfere.
Thus things went on for the remaining portion of the “half,” which
lasted only about six weeks more. Dick set himself to the work of making
everything “handy” for her with enthusiasm in his odd hours, which were
few, for his services at the rafts were demanded imperatively from
earliest morning till the late evening after sunset, when the river
dropped into darkness. “The gentlemen,” it is true, were all cleared off
their favourite stream by nine o’clock; but the local lovers of the
Thames would linger on it during those summer nights, especially when
there was a moon, till poor Dick, putting himself across in his boat
when all at last was silent--the last boating party disposed of, and the
small craft all ranged in their places ready for to-morrow--would feel
his arms scarcely able to pull the light sculls, and his limbs trembling
under him. Even then, after his long day’s work, when he had eaten his
supper, he would set to work to put up the shelves he had promised his
mother, or to fix upon his walls the pictures which delighted himself.
Dick began with the lowest rudiments of art, the pictures in the penny
papers, with which he almost papered his walls; but his taste advanced
as his pennies grew more plentiful: the emotional prints of the ‘Police
News’ ceased to charm him, and he rose to the pictures of the
‘Illustrated,’ or whatever might be the picture-paper of the time. This
advance--so quickly does the mind work--took place in the six weeks that
remained of the half; and by the time “the gentlemen” left, and work
slackened, Dick’s room was already gorgeous, with here and there a
mighty chromo, strong in tint and simple in subject, surrounded with all
manner of royal progresses and shows of various kinds, as represented in
the columns of the prints aforesaid. He grew handy, too, in amateur
carpentering, having managed to buy himself some simple tools; and when
he had a spare moment he betook himself to the bits of simple carving
which Val had handed over to him, and worked at them with a real
enjoyment which proved his possession of some germ at least of artistic
feeling. The boy never had a moment unemployed with all these
occupations, necessary and voluntary. He was as happy as the day was
long, always ready with a smile and pleasant word, always sociable, not
given to calculating his time too nicely, or to grumbling if some of his
“mates” threw upon his willing shoulders more than his share of work.
The boating people about got to know him, and among the boys he had
already become highly popular. Very grand personages indeed--Lichen
himself, for instance, than whom there could be no more exalted
being--would talk to him familiarly; and some kind lads, finding out his
tastes, brought him pictures of which they themselves had got tired, and
little carved brackets from their walls, and much other rubbish of this
description, all of which was delightful to Dick.
As for Valentine, the effect produced upon him by the possession of a
_protégé_ was very striking. He felt the responsibility deeply, and at
once began to ponder as to the duties of a superior to his inferiors, of
which, of course, one time or other he had heard much. An anxious desire
to do his duty to this retainer who had been so oddly thrown upon his
hands, and for whom he felt an unaccountable warmth of patronising
friendship, took possession of him. He made many trite but admirable
theories on the subject--theories, however, not at all trite to Val, who
believed he had invented them for his own good and that of mankind. It
was not enough, he reasoned with himself, to have saved a lad from the
life of a tramp, and got him regular employment, unless at the same time
you did something towards improving his mind, and training him for the
_rôle_ of a respectable citizen. These were very fine words, but Val
(strictly within himself) was not afraid of fine words. No young soul of
sixteen, worth anything, ever is. To make a worthy citizen of his waif
seemed to him for some time his mission. Having found out that Dick
could read, he pondered very deeply and carefully what books to get for
him, and how to lead him upon the path of knowledge. With a little sigh
he recognised the fact that there was no marked literary turn in Dick’s
mind, and that he preferred a bit of wood and a knife, as a means of
relaxation, to books. Val hesitated long between the profitable and the
pleasant in literature as a means of educating his _protégé_. Whether to
rouse him to the practical by accounts of machinery and manufactures, or
to awake his imagination by romance, he could not easily decide. I fear
his decision was biassed ultimately by the possession of a number of
books which he had himself outgrown, but which he rightly judged might
do very well for his humble friend, whose total want of education made
him younger than Val by a few years, and therefore still within the
range of the ‘Headless Horseman,’--of Captain Mayne Reid’s vigorous
productions, and other schoolboy literature of the same class. These he
brought down, a few volumes at a time, to the rafts, and gave them to
his friend with injunctions to read them. “You shall have something
better when you have gone through these; but I daresay you’ll like
them--I used to myself,” said Val. Dick accepted them with devout
respect; but I think the greatest pleasure he got out of them was when
he ranged them in a little book-shelf he had himself made, and felt as a
bibliopole does when he arranges his fine editions, that he too had a
library. Dick did not care much for the stories of adventure with which
Val fed him as a kind of milk for babes. He knew of adventures on the
road, of bivouacs out of doors, quite enough in his own person. But he
dearly liked to see them ranged in his book-shelf. All kinds of curious
instincts, half developed and unintelligible even to himself, were in
Dick’s mind,--the habits of a race of which he knew nothing--partially
burnt out and effaced by a course of life infinitely different, yet
still existing obstinately within him, and prompting him to he knew not
what. If we could study human nature as we study fossils and strata, how
strange it would be to trace the connection between Dick’s rude
book-shelves, with the coarse little ornament he had carved on them, and
the pleasure it gave him to range Val’s yellow volumes upon that rough
shelf--and the great glorious green cabinets in Lady Eskside’s
drawing-room! Nobody was aware of this connection, himself least of all.
And Val, who had an evident right to inherit so refined a taste, cared
as little for the Vernis-Martin as though he had been born a savage; by
such strange laws, unknown to us poor gropers after scraps of
information, does inheritance go!
All this time, however, Dick’s mother had not seen Val nearer than in
his boat, for which she looked through all the sunny afternoons and long
evenings, spending half her silent intent life, so different to the
outward one, so full of strange self-absorption and concentrated feeling
in the watch. This something out of herself, to attract her wandering
visionary thoughts and hold her passionate heart fast, was what the
woman had wanted throughout the strange existence which had been warped
and twisted out of all possibility at its very outset. Her wild
intolerance of confinement, her desire for freedom, her instinct of
constant wandering, troubled her no more. She did her few domestic
duties in the morning, made ready Dick’s meals for him (and they lived
with Spartan simplicity, both having been trained to eat what they could
get, most often by the roadside--cold scraps of food which required no
preparation), and kept his clothes and her own in order; and all the
long afternoon would sit there watching for the skimming boat, the white
jersey, with the distinctive mark which she soon came to recognise. I
think Val’s jersey had a little red cross on the breast--an easy symbol
to recollect. When he came down the river at last, and left his boat,
she went in with a sigh, half of relief, from her watch, half of pain
that it was over, and began to prepare her boy’s supper. They held her
whole existence thus in suspense between them; one utterly ignorant of
it, the other not much better informed. When Dick came in, tired but
cheery, he would show her the books Mr Ross had brought him, or report
to her the words he had said. Dick adored him frankly, with a boy’s
pride in all his escapades; and there were few facts in Val’s existence
which were not known in that little house at the corner, all unconscious
as he was of his importance there. One morning, however, Dick approached
this unfailing subject with a little embarrassment, looking furtively at
his mother to see how far he might venture to speak.
“You don’t ever touch the cards now, mother?” he said all at once, with
a guilty air, which she, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not perceive.
“The cards?--I never did when I could help it, you know.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t suppose there’s no harm in it; it ain’t
you as puts them how they come. All you’ve got to do with it is saying
what it means. Folks in the Bible did the same--Joseph, for one, as was
carried to the land of Egypt.”
The Bible was all the lore Dick had. He liked the Old Testament a great
deal better than the ‘Headless Horseman;’ and, like other well-informed
persons, he was glad to let his knowledge appear when there was an
occasion for such exhibitions. His mother shook her head.
“It’s no harm, maybe, to them that think no harm,” she said; “no, it
ain’t me that settles them--who is it? It must be either God or the
devil. And God don’t trouble Himself with the like of that--He has more
and better to do; so it must be the devil; and I don’t hold with it,
unless I’m forced for a living. I can’t think as it’s laid to you then.”
“I wish you’d just do it once to please me, mother; it couldn’t do no
harm.”
She shook her head, but looked at him with questioning eyes.
“Suppose it was to please a gentleman, as I am more in debt to than I
can ever pay--more than I want ever to pay,” cried Dick, “except in
doing everything to please him as long as I live. You may say it ain’t
me as can do this, and that I’m taking it out of you; but you’re all I
have to help me, and it ain’t to save myself. Mother, it’s Mr Ross as
has heard somehow how clever you are; and if you would do it just once
to please him and me!”
She did not answer for a few minutes. Dick thought she was struggling
with herself to overcome her repugnance. Then she replied, in an altered
and agitated voice, “For him I’ll do it--you can bring him to-morrow.”
“How kind you are, mother!” said Dick, gratefully. “College breaks up
the day after to-morrow,” he added, in a dolorous voice. “I don’t know
what I shall do without him and all of them--the place won’t look the
same, nor I shan’t feel the same. Mayn’t he come to-night? I think he’s
going off to-morrow up to Scotland, as they’re all talking of. Half of
’em goes up to Scotland. I wonder what kind of a place it is. Were we
ever there?”
“Once--when you were quite a child.”
“‘Twas there the t’other little chap died?” said Dick, compassionately.
“Poor mammy, I didn’t mean to vex you. I wonder what he’d have been like
now if he’d lived. Look here, mother, mayn’t _he_ come to-night?”
“If you like,” she said, trying to seem calm, but deeply agitated by
this reference. He saw this, and set it down naturally to the melancholy
recollections he had evoked.
“Poor mother,” he said, rising from his dinner, “you _are_ a feelin’
one! all this time, and you’ve never forgotten. I’ll go away and leave
you quiet; and just before lock-up, when it’s getting dark, him and me
will come across. You won’t say nothing you can help that’s dreadful if
the cards turn up bad?--and speak as kind to him as you can, mother
dear, he’s been so kind to me.”
Speak as kind to him as you can! What words were these to be said to her
whose whole being was disturbed and excited by the idea of seeing this
stranger! Keep yourself from falling at his feet and kissing them; from
falling on his neck and weeping over him. If Dick had but known, these
were more likely things to happen. She scarcely saw her boy go out, or
could distinguish what were the last words he said to her. Her heart was
full of the other--the other, whose face her hungry eyes had not been
able to distinguish from her window, who had never seen her, so far as
he knew, and yet who was hers, though she dared not say so, dared not
claim any share in him. Dared not! though she could not have told why.
To her there were barriers between them impassable. She had given him up
when he was a child for the sake of justice, and the wild natural virtue
and honour in her soul stood between her and the child she had
relinquished. It seemed to her that in giving him up she had come under
a solemn tacit engagement never to make herself known to him, and she
was too profoundly agitated now to be able to think. Indeed I do not
think that reasonable sober thought, built upon just foundations, was
ever possible to her. She could muse and brood, and did so, and had done
so,--doing little else for many a silent year; and she could sit still,
mentally, and allow her imagination and mind to be taken possession of
by a tumult of fancy and feeling, which drew her now and then to a hasty
decision, and which, had she been questioned on the subject, she would
have called thinking--as, indeed, it stands for thinking with many of
us. It had been this confused working in her of recollection and of a
fanciful remorse which had determined her to give up Valentine to his
father; and now that old fever seemed to have come back again, and to
boil in her veins. I don’t know if she had seriously regretted her
decision then, or if she had ever allowed herself to think of it as a
thing that could have been helped, or that might still be remedied. But
by this time, at least, she had come to feel that it never could be
remedied, and that Valentine Ross, Lord Eskside’s heir, could never be
carried off to the woods and fields as her son, as perhaps a child might
have been. He was a gentleman now, she felt, with a forlorn pride, which
mingled strangely with the anguish of absolute loss with which she
realised the distance between them,--the tremendous and uncrossable gulf
between his state and hers. He was her son, yet never could know her,
never acknowledge her,--and she was to speak with him that night.
The sun had begun to sink, before, starting up from her long and
agitated musing, the womanish idea struck her of making some
preparations for his reception, arranging her poor room and her person
to make as favourable an impression as possible upon the young prince
who was her own child. What was she to do? She had been a gentleman’s
wife once, though for so short a time; and sometimes of late this
recollection had come strongly to her mind, with a sensation of curious
pride which was new to her. Now she made an effort to recall that
strange chapter in her life, when she had lived among beautiful things,
and worn beautiful dresses, and might have learned what gentlemen like.
She had never seen Val sufficiently near to distinguish his features;
and oddly enough, ignoring the likeness of her husband which was in
Dick, she expected to find in Valentine another Richard, and
instinctively concluded that his tastes must be what his father’s were.
After a short pause of consideration, she went to a trunk, which she had
lately sent for to the vagrant headquarters, where it had been kept for
her for years--a trunk containing some relics of that departed life in
which she had been “a lady.” Out of this she took a little shawl
embroidered in silken garlands, and which had faded into colours even
more tasteful and sweet than they were in their newest glories--a shawl
for which Mr Grinder, or any other _dilettante_ in Eton, would have
given her almost anything she liked to ask. This she threw over a rough
table of Dick’s making, and placed on it some flowers in a homely little
vase of coarse material yet graceful shape. Here, too, she placed a book
or two drawn from the same repository of treasures--books in rich faded
binding, chiefly poetry, which Richard had given her in his early folly.
The small table with its rich cover, its bright flowers and gilded
books, looked like a little altar of fancy and grace in the bare room;
it was indeed an altar dedicated to the memory of the past, to the
pleasure of the unknown.
When she had arranged this touching and simple piece of incongruity, she
proceeded to dress herself. She took off her printed gown and put on a
black one, which also came out of her trunk. She put aside the printed
handkerchief which she usually wore, tramp fashion, on her head, and
brushed out her long, beautiful black hair, in which there was not one
white thread. Why should there have been? She was not more than
thirty-five or thirty-six, though she looked older. She twisted her hair
in great coils round her head--a kind of coiffure which I think the poor
creature remembered Richard had liked. Her appearance was strangely
changed when she had made this simple toilet. She looked like some wild
half-savage princess condemned to exile and penury, deprived of her
retinue and familiar pomp, but not of her natural dignity. The form of
her fine head, the turn of her graceful shoulders, had not been visible
in her tramp dress. When she had done everything she could think of to
perfect the effect which she prepared, poor soul, so carefully, she sat
down, with what calm she could muster, to wait for her boys. Her boys,
her children, the two who had come into the world at one birth, had lain
in her arms together, but who now were as unconscious of the
relationship, and as far divided, as if worlds had lain between them!
Indeed she was quite calm and still to outward appearance, having
acquired that power of perfect external self-restraint which many
passionate natures possess, though her heart beat loud in her head and
ears, performing a whole muffled orchestra of wild music. Had any
stranger spoken to her she would not have heard; had any one come in,
except the two she was expecting, I do not think she would have seen
them, she was so utterly absorbed in one thought.
At last she heard the sound of their steps coming up-stairs. The light
had begun to wane in the west, and a purple tone of half darkness had
come into the golden air of the evening. She stood up mechanically, not
knowing what she was doing, and the next moment two figures stood before
her--one well known, her familiar boy,--the other! Was this the other? A
strange sensation, half of pleasure, half of disappointment, shot
through her at the sight of his face.
Val had come in carelessly enough, taking off his hat, but with the ease
of a superior. He stopped short, however, when he saw the altogether
unexpected appearance of the woman who was Dick’s mother. He felt a
curious thrill come into his veins--of surprise, he thought. “I beg your
pardon,” he said; “I hope you don’t mind my coming? Brown said you
wouldn’t mind.”
“You are very welcome, sir,” she said, her voice trembling in spite of
her. “If there is anything I can do for you. You have been so kind--to
my boy.”
“Oh,” said Val, embarrassed, with a shy laugh, “it pays to be kind to
Brown. He’s done us credit. I say--what a nice place you’ve got here!”
He was looking almost with consternation at the beautiful embroidery and
the books. Where could they have picked up such things? He was half
impressed and half alarmed, he could not have told why. He put out a
furtive hand and clutched at Dick’s arm. “I say, do you think she
minds?” Val had never been so shy in his life.
“You want me to tell you your fortune, sir?” she said, recovering a
little. “I don’t hold with it; but I’ll do it if you wish it. I’ll do
it--once--and for you.”
“Oh, thanks, awfully,” cried Val, more and more taken aback--“if you’re
sure you don’t mind:” and he held out his hand with a certain timidity
most unusual to him. She took it suddenly in both hers by an
uncontrollable movement, held it fast, gazed at it earnestly, and bent
down her head as if she would have kissed it. Val felt her hands
tremble, and her agitation was so evident that both the boys were moved
to unutterable wonder; yet somehow, I think, the one of them who
wondered least was Valentine, upon whom this trembling eager grasp made
the strangest impression. He felt as if the tears were coming to his
eyes, but could not tell why.
“It is not the hand I thought to see,” she said, as if speaking to
herself--“not the hand I thought.” Then dropping it suddenly, with an
air of bewilderment, she said, hastily, “It is not by the hand I do it,
but by the cards.”
“I ought to have crossed my hand with silver, shouldn’t I?” said Val,
trying to laugh; but he was excited too.
“No, no,” she said, tremulously; “no, no--my boy’s mother can take none
of your silver. Are you as fond of him as he is fond of you?”
“Mother!” cried Dick, amazed at the presumption of this inquiry.
“Well--fond?” said Val, doubtfully; “yes, really, I think I am, after
all, though I’m sure I don’t know why. He should have been a gentleman.
Mrs Brown, I’m afraid it is getting near lock-up----”
“My name is not Mrs Brown,” she said, quickly.
“Oh, isn’t it? I beg your pardon,” said Val. “I thought as he was
Brown--Mrs----?”
“There’s no Miss nor Missis among my folks. They call me Myra--Forest
Myra,” she said, hastily. “Dick, give me the cards, and I will do my
best.”
But Dick was sadly distressed to see that his mother was not doing her
best. She turned the cards about, and murmured some of the usual jargon
about fair men and dark women, and news to receive and journeys to go.
But she was not herself: either the fortune was so very bad that she was
afraid to reveal it, or else something strange must have happened to
her. She threw them down at last impatiently, and fixed her intent eyes
upon Valentine’s face.
“If you have all the good I wish you, you’ll be happy indeed,” she said;
“but I can’t do nothing to-night. Sometimes the power leaves us.” Then
she put her hand lightly on his shoulder, and gazed at him beseechingly.
“Will you come again?” she said.
“Oh yes,” said Val, relieved. He drew a step back, with a sense of
having escaped. “I don’t really mind, you know, at all,” he said; “it
was nothing but a joke. But I’ll come again with pleasure. I say, what
have you done to that carving, Brown?”
How glad Val was to get away from her touch, and from her intent eyes!
and yet he did not want to go away. He hastened to the other end of the
room with Dick, who was glad also to find that the perplexing interview
was at an end, and got out his bit of carving with great relief. Val
stood for a long time (as they all thought) side by side with the other,
laying their heads together, the light locks and the dark--talking both
together, as boys do; and felt himself calm down, but with a sense that
something strange had happened to him, something more than he could
understand. The mother sat down on her chair, her limbs no longer able
to sustain her. She was glad, too, that it was over--glad and sad, and
so shaken with conflicting emotions, that she scarcely knew what was
going on. Her heart sounded in her ears like great waves; and through a
strange mist in her eyes, and the gathering twilight, she saw vaguely,
dimly, the two beside her. Oh, if she could but have put her arms round
them and kissed them both together! But she could not. She sat down
silent among the shadows, a shadow herself, against the evening light,
and saw them in a mist, and held her peace.
“You did not tell me your mother was a lady,” said Val, as the two went
back together through the soft dusk to the river-side.
“I never knew it,” said wondering Dick; “I never thought it--till
to-night.”
“Ah, but I am sure of it,” said Val. “I thought you couldn’t be a cad,
Brown, or I should not have taken to you like this. She’s a lady, sure
enough; and what’s more,” he added, with an embarrassed laugh, “I feel
as if I had known her somewhere--before--I suppose, before I was born!”