“You must hold yourself ready to be called back at a moment’s notice,
Val,” said the old lord. “It must be some time next year, and it may be
any day. That is to say, we can scarcely have it, I suppose, before
Parliament meets, except in some unforeseen case. Therefore see all you
can as soon as you can, and after February hold yourself in readiness to
be recalled any day.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Val, with a blithe assent which was trying to his
grandfather. He was quite ready to do anything that was wanted of
him--to make up his mind on any political subject on the shortest
notice, and sign anything that was thought desirable; but as for
personal enthusiasm on the subject, or excitement in the possibility of
being elected member for the county, I am afraid Val was as little moved
as the terrier he was caressing. Perhaps, however, he was all the more
qualified on that account to carry the traditionary principles of the
Rosses to the head of the poll, and to vote as his fathers had voted
before him, when they had the chance,--or would have voted had they had
the chance. Val was setting out on his travels when this warning was
given. He was going to see his father in Florence, and, under his
auspices, to visit Italy generally, which was a very pleasant prospect.
Up to this time he had done the whole duty of boy in this world; and now
he had taken his degree, and had a right to the prouder title of man.
Not that Val was very much changed from his Eton days. He was still slim
and slight, notwithstanding all his boating. His brown complexion was a
trifle browner, if that were possible, with perpetual exposure to the
sun; his hair as full of curls, and as easily ruffled as ever, rising up
like a crest from his bold brown forehead; and I do not think he had yet
got his temper under command, though its hasty flashes were always
repented of the moment after. “A quick temper, not an ill temper,” Lady
Eskside said; and she made out that Valentine Ross, the tenth lord, her
husband’s father--he whose portrait in the library her son called “a
Raeburn,” and between whom and Val she had already attempted to
establish a resemblance--was very hasty and hot-tempered too; which was
an infinite comfort to her, as proving that Val got his temper in the
legitimate way--“from his own family”--and not through that inferior
channel, “his mother’s blood.” He was slightly excited about the visit
to his father, and about his first progress alone into the great
world--much more excited, I am sorry to say, than he was about
representing the county; but on that point Lord Eskside did everything
that was necessary, filling up what was wanting on Valentine’s part in
interest and emotion. He had again filled Rosscraig with a party which
made the woods ring with their guns all morning, and talked politics all
night; and there was not a voter of importance in the whole county who
had not already been “sounded,” one way or other, as to how he meant to
dispose of his vote. “The first thing to be done is to make sure of
keeping the Radicals out,” Lord Eskside said; for, indeed, a Whig lawyer
was known to be poising on well-balanced wing, ready to sweep down upon
a constituency which had always been stanch--faithful among the
faithless known. The present Member, I must explain, was in weak health;
and but for embarrassing his party, and thwarting the cherished purpose
of Lord Eskside, who was one of the leading members of the Conservative
party in the county, would have retired before now.
Val’s term of residence at home was not, therefore, much more than a
visit. He did what an active youth could do to renew all his old
alliances, and climbed up the brae to the Hewan many times without
seeing any of the family there, except the younger boys, who were
mending of some youthful complaint under Mrs Moffatt’s care, and who
looked up to him with great awe, but were not otherwise interesting to
the young man. “Are any of the others coming--is your mother coming--or
Vi?” said Valentine; but these youthful individuals could afford him no
information. “Oh ay, they’re maybe coming next month,” said old Jean,
who took a feminine pleasure in the dismay that was visible in
Valentine’s face. “They were here a’ the summer, June and July; and I
wouldna wonder but we’ll see them all October--if it’s no too cauld,”
the old woman added, with a twinkle in her eye.
“What good will that do me?” said Val; and he leapt the dyke and went
home through the ferns angry with disappointment. And yet he was not at
all in love with Violet, he thought, but only liked her as the nicest
girl he knew. When he remarked to Lady Eskside that it was odd to find
none of the Pringles at the Hewan, my lady arose and slew him on the
spot. “Why should the Pringles be at the Hewan?” she said; “they have a
place of their own, where it becomes them much better to be. To leave
Violet there so long by herself last year was a scandal to her mother,
and gave much occasion for talking.”
“Why should it give occasion for talking?” said Val.
“A boy like you knows nothing about the matter,” the old lady answered,
putting a stop to him decisively. Perhaps that was true enough; but it
was also true that Val took a long walk to the linn next day, and sat
down under the beeches, and mused for half an hour or so, without quite
knowing what he was thinking about. How clearly he remembered those two
expeditions, mingling them a little in his recollection, yet seeing each
so distinctly! the small Violet in her blue cloak, sleeping on his
shoulder (which thought made him colour slightly and laugh in the
silence, such intimate companionship being strangely impossible to think
of nowadays), and the elder Violet, still so sweet and young, younger
than himself, though he was the very impersonation of Youth, repeating
all the earlier experiences except that one. “By Jove, how jolly Mary
is!” said Valentine to himself at the end of this reverie; and when he
went home he devoted himself to Miss Percival, who was again at
Rosscraig, as she always was when Lady Eskside was exposed to the strain
and fatigue of company. “Do you remember our picnic at the linn last
year?” he said, standing over Mary in a corner after dinner, to the
great annoyance of an elderly admirer, who had meant to take this
opportunity of making himself agreeable to a woman who seemed the very
person to “make an excellent stepmother” to his seven children. Mary,
who was conscious in some small degree of the worthy man’s meaning, was
grateful to Val for once; and enjoyed, as the quietest of women do, the
discomfiture of her would-be suitor.
“Yes,” she said, smiling; “what of it, you unruly boy?”
“I am not a proper subject for such epithets,” said Val. “I have
attained my majority, and made a speech to the tenantry. I say, Mary, do
you know, that’s a lovely spot, that linn. I was there to-day----”
“Oh, you were there to-day?”
“Yes, I was there. Is there anything wonderful in that?” said Val, not
sure whether he ought not to take offence at the laughing tone, which
seemed to imply something. “Tell Violet, when you see her, that it was
uncommonly shabby of her not to come this year. We’d have gone again.”
“There’s a virtue in three times, Val,” said Mary. “If you go again, it
will be more than a joke; and I don’t think I’ll give your message to
Vi.”
“Why should it be more than a joke? Or why should it be a joke at all?”
said Val, reddening, he scarcely knew why. He withdrew after this,
slightly confused, feeling as if some chance touch had got at his heart,
giving it a _dinnle_ which was half pleasure and half pain. Do you know
what a _dinnle_ is, dear English reader? It means that curious sensation
which you, in the poverty of your language, call “striking the funny
bone.” You know what it is in the elbow. Valentine had that kind of
sensation in his heart; and I think if this half-painful jar of the
nerve lasted, and suggested quite new thoughts to the boy, it was all
Mary Percival’s fault. I am happy to say that her widower got at her on
Val’s withdrawal, and made himself most overpoweringly agreeable for the
rest of the night.
And then the boy went away on his grand tour, leaving the old people at
home rather lonely, longing after him; though Lord Eskside was too much
occupied to take much notice of Val’s departure. My lady was very busy,
too, paying visits all over the country, and paying court to great and
small. She promised the widower her interest with Mary, but judiciously
put him off till Miss Percival’s next visit, saying, cunningly, that she
must have time to prepare her young friend for the idea, and trusting in
Providence that the election might be over before an answer had to be
given. It was gratifying to the Esksides to find a devoted canvasser for
Valentine in the person of Lord Hightowers, the only possible competitor
who could have “divided the party” in the county. Hightowers, however,
was not fond of politics, and had no ambition for public life; it would
have suited him better to be a locksmith, like Louis Seize. And among
them all, they got the county into such a beautiful state of preparation
that Lord Eskside could scarcely contain his rapture--and having laid
all his trains, and holding his match ready, sat down, in a state of
excitement which it would be difficult to describe, to wait until the
moment of explosion came.
In other places, too, Valentine’s departure had caused far more
excitement than he was at all aware of. He had seen and said good-bye to
Dick with the most cordial kindness, on the day he left Oxford. But Val
had not failed to remark a gravity and preoccupation about his humble
friend which troubled him in no small degree. When he recounted to Dick
the failure of Lady Eskside and himself on the day before, the young man
had received the information with a painful attempt to seem surprised,
which made Val think for a moment that Dick’s mother had avoided the
visit of set purpose. But as he knew of no hidden importance in this,
the idea went lightly out of his head; and a few days after he
remembered it no more. Very much more serious had been the effect upon
Dick. His mother’s flight and her panic were equally unintelligible to
him. The thought that there must be “something wrong” involved, in order
to produce such terror, was almost irresistible; and Dick’s breeding, as
I have said, had been of that practical kind which makes the mind
accustomed to the commoner and vulgarer sorts of wrong-doing. He did not
insist upon knowing what it was that made his mother afraid of Val’s
grandmother; but her abject terror, and the way in which she dragged him
too, out of sight, as if he had been a partner of her shame, had the
most painful effect upon the young man. In the rudimentary state of
morals which existed among the class from which he sprang, and where all
his primitive ideas had been formed, dishonesty was the one crime short
of murder which could bring such heavy shame along with it. He who
steals is shunned in all classes, except among the narrow professional
circles of thieves themselves; and Dick could not banish from his
thoughts a painful doubt and uncertainty about his mother’s relations
with “Mr Ross’s people.” She herself was so stunned and petrified by the
great danger which she seemed to herself to have escaped, that she was
very little capable of giving a rational explanation of her conduct.
“You knew this lady before, mother?” said Dick to her, half pitifully,
half severely, as he took her back to the parlour and placed her in a
chair after the visitors were gone. “Yes,” she answered, but no more.
And though he asked her many other questions, nothing more than
repeated Yes and No could he get in reply.
I do not know what wild sense of peril was in the poor creature’s heart.
She feared, perhaps, that they could have taken her up and punished her
for running away from her husband; she felt sure that they would
separate her from her remaining boy--though had they not the other, whom
she had given up to them? and in her panic at the chance of being found
out, all power of reasoning (if she ever had any) deserted her. Ah, she
thought to herself, only a tramp is safe! As soon as you have a settled
habitation, and are known to neighbours, and can be identified by people
about, all security leaves you: only on the tramp is a woman who wishes
to hide herself safe. In her first panic, the thought of going away
again, of deserting everything, of taking refuge on those open
roads--those outdoor bivouacs which are full in the eye of day, yet
better refuges than any mysterious darkness--came so strongly over her,
that it was all she could do to withstand its force. But when she looked
at her son, active and trim, in his boat-building yard, or saw him
studying the little house at night, with his tools in his hand, to judge
where he could put up something or improve something--his mother felt
herself for the first (or perhaps it was the second) time in her life,
bound as it were by a hundred minute threads which made it impossible
for her to please herself. It was something like a new soul which had
thus developed in her. In former times she had done as the spirit moved
her, obeying her impulses whenever they were so strong as to carry
everything else before them. Now she felt a distinct check to the wild
force of these impulses. The blood in her veins moved as warmly as ever,
impelling her to go, and she knew that she was free to go if she would,
and that Dick too could be vanquished, and would come with her, however
unwillingly. She was free to go, and yet she could not. For the first
time in her life she had learned consciously to prefer another to
herself. She could not ruin Dick. The struggle that she maintained with
her old self was violent, but it was within herself, and was known to
nobody; and finally, the new woman, the higher creature, vanquished the
old self-willed and self-regarding wanderer. She set herself to meet the
winter with a dogged resolution, feeling less, perhaps, the absence of
that visionary solace which she had found in the sight of Val, in
consequence of the hard and perpetual battle she had to fight with
herself. And, to make it harder, she had not the cheery gratitude and
tender appreciation of the struggle, which had rewarded her much less
violent effort before. Dick was gloomy, overcast, pondering upon the
strange thing that had happened. He could not get over it: it stood
between him and his mother, making their intercourse constrained and
unhappy. Had she _robbed_ the old lady from whom she had fled in so
strange a panic? Short of that, or something of that kind, why, poor
Dick thought, should one woman be so desperately afraid of another? He
did not, it is true, say, or even whisper to himself, this word so
terrible to one in his insecure position, working his way in the world
with slow and laborious advances; but the suspicion rankled in his
heart.
All this time, however, his mother neither thought of setting herself
right by telling him what her mystery was, nor once felt that she was
wronging Dick by keeping the secret of his parentage so closely hidden
from him. It did not occur to her that by doing this she was doing an
injury to her boy. The life of gentlefolks--the luxurious and elegant
existence into which her husband had tried to tame her, a wild creature
of the woods--had been nothing but misery to her; and I doubt whether
she was capable of realising that Dick, so different from herself in
nature, would have felt differently in respect to those trammels from
which she had fled. Had she been able to think, she would have seen
how--unconsciously, with the instinct of another race than hers--the boy
had been labouring all his life to manufacture for himself such a poor
imitation of those trammels as was possible to him; but she was little
capable of reasoning, and she did not see it. Besides, he was hers
absolutely, and she had a right to him. She had given up the other,
recognising a certain claim of natural justice on the part of the father
of her children; and in so doing she had gone as far as nature could go,
giving up half, with a rending of her heart which had never healed; but
no principle of which she had ever heard called upon her to give up the
whole. The very fact of having made a sacrifice of one seemed to enhance
and secure her possession of the other--and how could she do better for
Dick than she had done for herself? But this question had not even
arisen in her mind as yet. She feared that _they_ had hidden emissaries,
who, if they found her out, might take her remaining child from her;
but that he was anyhow wronged by her silence, or had any personal
rights in the matter, had not yet entered into her brooding, slowly
working, confused, and inarticulate soul.
In one other house besides, Val and his concerns were productive of some
little tumult of feeling--not the least important of the many eddies
with which his stream of life was involved. Mr Pringle was almost as
much excited about the approaching conflict as Lord Eskside. He saw in
it opportunities for carrying out his own scheme, which he called
exposure of fraud, but which to others much more resembled the vengeance
of a disappointed man. He was the bosom friend of the eminent lawyer who
meant to contest Eskside in the Liberal interest, and had no small share
in influencing him to this step. His own acquaintance with the county,
in the position of Lord Eskside’s heir-presumptive in past days, had
given him considerable advantages and much information which a stranger
could not easily command; and with silent vehemence he prepared himself
for the conflict--contemplating one supreme stroke of revenge--or, as he
preferred to think, contemplating a full exposure to the world of the
infamous conspiracy against his rights and those of his children, from
which the county also was now about to suffer. He did not speak freely
to his family of these intentions, for neither his wife nor his children
were in harmony with him on the subject; but this fact, instead of
inducing him to reconsider a matter which appeared to other eyes in so
different a light, increased the violence of his feelings, just in
proportion to the necessity he felt for concealing them. It was even an
additional grievance against Valentine, and the old people who had set
Valentine up as their certain successor, that the lad had secured the
friendship of his enemy’s own family. Sandy, who was by this time a
hard-working young advocate, less fanciful and more certain of success
than his father--though a very good son, and very respectful of his
parents, had a way of changing the subject when the Eskside business was
spoken of, which cut Mr Pringle to the quick. He could see that his son
considered him a kind of monomaniac on this subject; and indeed there
was sometimes very serious talk between Sandy and his mother about this
_idée fixe_ which had taken hold upon the father’s mind.
Thus Mr Pringle’s own family set themselves against him; but perhaps
there was not one of them that had the least idea what painful results
might follow except poor little Violet, who was very fond of her father,
and in whose childish heart Val had established himself long ago. She
alone was certain that her father meant mischief--mischief of a deeper
kind than mere opposition to his election, such as Mr Pringle, as tenant
of the Hewan and the land belonging to it, had a right to make if he
pleased. Violet watched him with a painful mixture of dread lest her
father should take some unworthy step, and dread lest Valentine should
be injured, contending in her mind. She could scarcely tell which would
have been the most bitter to her; and that these two great and appalling
dangers should be combined in one, was misery enough to fill her young
soul with the heaviest shadows. This she had to keep to herself, which
was still harder to bear, though very usual in the troubles of youth.
Everything which concerns an unrevealed and nascent love,--its terrors,
which turn the very soul pale; its partings, which press the life out of
the heart; its sickness of suspense and waiting,--must not the maiden
keep all these anguishes locked up in her heart, until the moment when
they are over, and when full declaration and consent make an end at once
of the mystery and the misery? This training most people go through,
more or less; but the trial is so much harder upon the little blossoming
woman that the dawnings of the inclination, which she has never been
asked for, are a shame to her, which they are not to her lover. Violet
did not venture to say a word even to her mother of her wish to be at
the Hewan while Val was there--of her sick disappointment when she found
he had gone away without a chance of saying good-bye; and though she did
venture to whisper her fears lest papa might “say something to hurt poor
Val’s feelings,” which was a very mild way of putting it--she got little
comfort out of this suppressed confidence. “I am afraid he will,” Mrs
Pringle said. “Indeed, the mere fact that your papa is Mr Seisin’s chief
friend and right-hand man, will hurt Val’s feelings. I am very sorry,
and I think it very injudicious; for why should we put ourselves in
opposition to the Eskside family? but it cannot be helped, and your papa
must take his way.”
“Perhaps if you were to speak to him,” said Vi, with youthful confidence
in a process, than which she herself knew nothing more impressive, and
even terrible on occasion.
“Speak to him!” said Mrs Pringle; “if you had been married to him as
long as I have, my dear, you would know how much good speaking to him
does. Not that your papa is a bit worse than any other man.”
With this very unsatisfactory conclusion poor Violet had to be
satisfied. But she watched her father as no one else did, fearing more
than any one else. Her gentle little artifices, in which the child at
first trusted much, of saying something pleasant of Val when she had an
opportunity--vaunting his fondness for the boys, his care of herself (in
any other case the strongest of recommendations to her father’s
friendship), his respect for Mr Pringle’s opinions, his admiration of
the Hewan--had, she soon perceived, to her sore disappointment, rather
an aggravating than a soothing effect. “For heaven’s sake, let me hear
no more of that lad! I am getting to hate the very sound of his name,”
her father said; and poor Violet would stop short, with tears springing
to her eyes.