Valentine went off gaily upon his journey, without any thought of the
tragic elements he had left behind him. I think, had Dick been still at
the rafts at Eton, his young patron would have proposed to him to
accompany him to Italy in that curious relationship which exists in the
novel and drama, and could perhaps exist in former generations, but not
now, among men--as romantic humble servant and companion. But Dick was
grown too important a man to make any such proposal possible. Valentine
dallied a little in Paris, which he saw for the first time, and made his
way in leisurely manner across France, and along the beautiful Cornice
road, as people used to do in the days before railways were at all
general, or the Mont Cenis tunnel had been thought of. He met, I need
not add, friends at every corner--old “Eton fellows,” comrades from
Oxford, crowds of acquaintances of his own class and kind--a peculiarity
of the present age which is often very pleasant for the traveller, but
altogether destroys the strangeness, the novelty, the characteristic
charm, of a journey through a foreign country. A solid piece of England
moving about over the Southern landscape could not be more alien to the
soil on which it found itself than were those English caravans in which
the young men travelled; talking of cricket if they were given that
way--of hits to leg, and so many runs off one bat; or, if they were
boating men, of the last race, or what happened at Putney or at Henley,
while the loveliest scenes in the world flew past their carriage-windows
like a panorama. I think Mr Evelyn saw a great deal more of foreign
countries when he made the grand tour; and even Val, though he was not
very learned in the jargon of the picturesque, got tired of those
endless _réchauffés_ of stale games and pleasures. He got to Florence
about a fortnight after he left England, and made his way at once to the
steep old Tuscan palace, with deeply-corniced roof and monotonous gloom
of aspect, which stood in one of the smaller streets opening into the
Via Maggio on the wrong side of the river. The wrong side--but yet the
Pitti palace is there, and certain diplomatists preferred that regal
neighbourhood. Val found a servant, a bland and splendid Italian
major-domo, waiting for him when he arrived, but not his father, as he
had half hoped; and even when they reached the great gloomy house, he
was received by servants only--rather a dismal welcome to the English
youth. They led him through an endless suite of rooms, half lighted,
softly carpeted, full of beautiful things which he remarked vaguely in
passing, to an inner sanctuary, where his father lay upon a sofa with a
luxurious writing-table by his side. Richard Ross sprang up when he
heard his son announced, and came forward holding out his hand. He even
touched Valentine’s face with his own, first one cheek, then the
other,--a salutation which embarrassed Val beyond measure; and then he
bade him welcome in set but not unkindly terms, and began to ask him
about his journey, and how he had left “everybody at home.”
This was only the third time that Val had seen his father, and Richard
was now a man approaching fifty, and considerably changed from the
elegant young diplomatist, who had surveyed with so little favour
fourteen years ago the boy brought back to him out of the unknown.
Richard’s first sensation now on seeing his son was one of quick
repugnance. He was so like--the vagrant woman against whom Mr Ross was
bitter as having destroyed his life. But he was too wise to allow any
such feeling to show, and indeed did his best to make the boy at home
and comfortable. He asked him about his studies, and received Val’s
half-mournful confession of not having perhaps worked so well as he
might have done, with an indulgent smile. “It was not much to be
expected,” he said; “boys like you, with no particular motive for work,
seldom do exert themselves. But I heard you had gained reputation in a
still more popular way,” he added; and spoke of the boat-race, &c., in a
way that made Val deeply ashamed of that triumph, though up to this
moment he had been disposed to think it the crowning triumph of his
life. “You were quite right to go in for it, if your inclination lies
that way,” said his bland father. “It is as good a way as another of
getting a start in society.” And he gave Val a list of “who” was in
Florence, according to the usage established on such occasions. He even
took the trouble of going himself to show him his room, which was a
magnificent chamber, with frescoed walls and gilded ceilings, grand
enough for a prince’s reception-room, Val thought; and told him the
hours of meals, and the arrangements of the household generally. “My
house is entirely an Italian one,” he said, “but two or three of the
people speak French. I hope you know enough of that language at least,
to get on easily. Your own servant, of course, will be totally helpless,
but I will speak to Domenico to look after him. If you know anything at
all of Italian, you should speak it,” he added, suavely; “you will find
it the greatest help to you in your reading hereafter. Now I will leave
you to rest after your long journey, and we shall meet at dinner,” said
the politest of fathers. Val sat staring before him half stupefied when
he found himself left alone in the beautiful room. This was not the kind
of way in which a son just arrived would be treated at Eskside. How much
he always had to explain to his grandmother, to tell her of, to hear
about! What a breathless happy day the first day at home always was, so
full of talk, news, consultations, interchange of the family nothings
that are nothing, yet so sweet! Val’s journey had only been from
Leghorn, no further, so he was not in the least fatigued; and why he
should be shut up here in his room to rest he had not a notion, any
desire to rest being far from his thoughts. After a while he got up and
examined the room, which was full of handsome old furniture. How he
wished Dick had been with him, who would have enjoyed all those
cabinets, and followed every line of the carvings with interest!
Valentine himself cared little for such splendours. And finally he went
out, and found as usual a school-fellow round the first corner, and
marched about the strange beautiful place till it was time for dinner,
and felt himself again.
It was very strange, however, to English--or rather Scotch--Valentine,
to find himself in this Italian house, with a man so polished, so
cultivated, so exotic as his father for his sole companion. Not that
they saw very much of each other. They met at the twelve o’clock
breakfast, where every dish was new to Val, for the _ménage_ was
thoroughly Italian; and at dinner on the days when Richard dined at
home. Sometimes he took his handsome boy with him to great Italian
houses, where, in the flutter of rapid conversation which he could not
follow, poor Val found himself hopelessly left out, and looked as
_gauche_ and unhappy as any traditionary lout of his age; and sometimes
Val himself would join an English party at a hotel, where the hits to
leg and the Ladies’ Challenge Cup would again be the chief subjects of
conversation; if not (which was still more dreary) the ladies’ eager
comparing of notes over Lady Southsea’s garden party, or that charming
Lady Mary Northwood’s afternoon teas. On the whole, Val felt that his
father’s banquets were best adapted to the locality; and when a lovely
princess, with jewels as old as her name and as bright as her eyes,
condescended to put up with his indifferent French, the young man was
considerably elated, and proud of his father and his father’s
society--as, when the same fair lady congratulated Richard upon the
_beaux yeux_ of Monsieur _son fils_, his father was of him.
One of the rare evenings which they spent together, Val informed his
father of Lord Eskside’s eager preparations for the ensuing election,
and of the place he was himself destined to take in the eyes of his
county and country. Richard Ross did not receive this information as his
son expected. His face grew immediately overcast.
“I wonder my father is so obstinate about this,” he said. “He knows my
feeling on the subject. It is the most terrible ordeal a man can be
subjected to. I wish you had let me know, all of you, before making up
your minds to this very foolish proceeding. Parliament!--what should you
want with Parliament at your age?”
“Not much,” said Val, somewhat uneasy to hear his grandfather attacked
by his father, and a little dubious whether it became him to take the
old man’s side so warmly as he wished; “but I hope I shall do my duty as
well as another,” he said, with a little modest pride, “though I have
still everything to learn.”
“Do your duty! stuff and nonsense,” said Richard; “what does a boy of
your age know about duty? Please your grandfather you mean.”
Val felt the warm blood mounting to his face, and bit his lip to keep
himself down. “And if it was so, sir,” he said, his eyes blazing in
spite of himself, “there might be worse things to do.”
Richard stopped short suddenly and looked at him--not at his face, but
into his eyes, which is of all things in the world the most trying to a
person of hot temper. “Ha!” he said, with a soft smile, raising his
eyebrows a little in gentle surprise, “you have a temper, I see! how is
it I never found that out before?”
Val dug his heels into the rich old Turkey carpet; he pressed his nails
into his flesh, wounding himself to keep himself still. One glance he
gave at the perfect calm of his father’s face, then cast down his eyes
that he might not see it. Richard looked at him with amused calculation,
as if measuring his forces, then waited, evidently expecting an
outburst. When none came, he said with that precise and nicely-modulated
voice, every tone of which ministers occasions of madness to the
impatient mind--
“Of course, with that face you must have a temper; I should have seen it
at the first glance. But you have learnt to restrain it, I perceive. I
congratulate you--it augurs well for your success in life.”
Then he fell back quite naturally into the previous subject, changing
his tone in a moment to one of polite and perfect ease.
“I am sorry, as I said before, that my father is so obstinate. Why
doesn’t he put in some squire or other whom he might influence as much
as he pleases? But you; I tell you there isn’t such an ordeal in
existence. Everything a man has ever done is raked up.”
“They may rake up as much as they please,” said Val, with a violent
effort, determined not to be outdone by his father in power of
self-control. His voice, however, was unsteady, and so was the laugh
which he forced. “They may rake up what they please; I don’t think they
can make much of that, so far as I am concerned.”
“So far as you are concerned!” repeated Richard, impatiently. “Why, if
your grandaunt made a _faux pas_ a hundred years ago, it would be
brought up against you. You! It was not robbing of orchards I was
thinking of. My father is very foolish; and it is wilful folly, for I
told him my sentiments on the subject.”
“I wish, sir, if it was the same to you, you would remember that my
grandfather--is my grandfather,” said Val, not raising his eyes.
“Oh, very well. He is not my grandfather, you see, and that makes me,
perhaps, less respectful,” said Richard. “You have taken away my comfort
with this news of yours, and it is hard if I may not abuse somebody. Do
you know what an election is? If your great-grandaunt, as I said, ever
made a _faux pas_----”
“I don’t suppose she did,” said Val. “Why should we be troubled about
the reputation of people who live only in the picture-gallery? I am not
afraid of my grandaunt.”
“It is because you do not know,” said Richard, with a sigh. “Write to
your grandfather, and persuade him to give it up. It is infinitely
annoying to me. Tell him so. I shall not have a peaceful moment till it
is over. One’s whole history and antecedents delivered up to the gossip
of a vulgar crowd! I think my father must have taken leave of his wits.”
And he began to pace about the great dimly-lighted room in evident
perturbation. The rooms in the Palazzo Graziani were all dimly lighted.
A few softly burning lamps, shaded with delicate _abâtjours_, gave here
and there a silvery glimmer in the midst of the richly-coloured and
balmy darkness--just enough to let you see here a picture, there a bit
of tapestry, an exquisite cabinet, or some priceless “bit” of the
sumptuous furniture which belongs of right to such houses. Richard’s
slight figure moving up and down in this lordly place, with impatient
movements, disturbed its calm like a pale ghost of passions past.
“Every particular of one’s life!” he continued. “I told him so. It is
all very well for men who have never stirred from home. If you want to
save us all a great deal of annoyance, and yourself a great many stings
and wounds, write to your grandfather, and beseech him to give it up.”
“I will tell him that you wish it, sir,” said Val, hesitating; “but I
cannot say that I do myself, or that I distrust his judgment. Will you
tell me what wounds I have to fear should they bring up all my
antecedents--every particular of one’s life?”
Richard eyed his son from the shade in which he stood. Val’s face was in
the full light. It was pale, with a certain set of determination about
the mouth, on which there hovered a somewhat forced smile. He paused a
moment, wondering how to reply. A dim room is an admirable field for
deliberation, with one face in the shade and the other in the light.
Should he settle the subject with a high hand, and put the young man
summarily down? Should he yield? He did neither. He altered his voice
again with the consummate skill of a man trained to rule and make use of
even his self-betrayals, and knowing every possible way of doing so. He
laughed softly as he came back to the table, throwing off his impatience
as if it had been a cloak.
“A snare! a snare!” he said. “If you think I am so innocent as to fall
into it, or if you hope to see me draw a chair to the table and begin,
‘My son, listen to the story of my life,’ you are mistaken, Val. I am
like most other men. I have done things, and known people whom I should
not care to have talked about--and which will be talked about inevitably
if you are set up as a candidate for Eskside. Never mind! I shall have
to put up with it, I suppose, since my father has set his heart upon it;
but I warn you that it may come harder on you than me; and when I say so
I have done. Give me your photographs, and let me look over them--a
crowd of your Eton and Oxford friends, I suppose.”
Val looked at his father with a question in his eyes, which he tried to
put with his lips, and could not. During all these years he had thought
little enough of his mother. Now and then the recollection that there
was such a person wandering somewhere in the world would come to him at
the most unlikely time--in the middle of the night, in the midst of some
moment of excitement, rarely when he could make any inquiries about her,
even had it been possible for him to utter such inquiries. Now at once
these suppressed recollections rushed into his mind. Here was the
fountain-head of information; and no doubt the story which he did not
know, which no one had ever told him, was what his father feared.
“Father,” he began, his mouth growing dry with excitement, his heart
beating so loudly that he could scarcely hear himself speak.
Probably Richard divined what he was going to say--for Val, I suppose,
had hardly ever addressed him solemnly by this title before. He called
him “Sir,” when he spoke to him, scarcely anything else. Richard stopped
him with a rapid movement of his hand.
“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, speak to me so solemnly,” he said, half
fretfully, half playfully. “Let me look at your photographs. There is a
good man here, by the way, where you should go and get yourself done.
The old people at home would like it, and it might prove a foundation,
who knows, for the fine steel engraving of the member for Eskside,
which, no doubt will be published some day or other. Come round to this
side and tell me who they are.”
The words were stopped on Valentine’s lips; and if any one could have
known how bitter these words were to him, his relinquishment of the
subject would be more comprehensible to them. Are we not all glad to
postpone a disagreeable explanation? “It must be done some time,” we
say; “but why now, when we are tolerably comfortable?” Valentine acted
upon this natural feeling. His sentiments towards his father were of a
very mingled character. He was proud of him; his refinement and
knowledge of the world made a powerful impression upon the boy’s mind;
Val even admired the man who was so completely unlike himself--admired
him and almost disliked him, and watched him with mingled wonder and
respect. He had never had a chance of regarding him with the natural
feelings of a child or forming the usual prejudices on his behalf. He
met him almost as one stranger meets another, and could not but judge
him accordingly on his merits rather than receive him blindly, taking
those merits for granted, which is in most cases the more fortunate lot
of a son. His father was only a relation of whom he knew very little,
and with whom he was upon quite distant and independent, yet respectful
terms. They were both glad, I think, to take refuge in the photographs;
and Richard asked with a very good grace, “Who is this?” and “Who is
that?”--through showers of young Oxford men and younger Etonians. When
he had made his way through them, there was still a little pack of
cards to be turned over--photographs not dignified enough to find a
place in any book. Hunter, the gamekeeper, Harding, the butler, his wife
the housekeeper, and many other humble personages, were amongst them;
and Richard turned them over with more amusement than the others had
given him. Suddenly, however, his remarks came to a dead stop. Val, who
was standing close by him, felt that his father started and moved
uneasily in his chair. He said nothing for the moment; then in a voice
curiously unlike his former easy tone, yet curiously conquered into a
resemblance of it, he said, with a little catching of his breath, “And
who is this, Val?”
It was a scrap of an unmounted photograph, a bit cut off from the corner
of a river scene--a portrait taken unawares and unintentionally by a
wandering artist who was making studies of the river. It was Dick
Brown’s mother, as she had been used to stand every day within her
garden wall, looking at Val’s boat as it passed. Val had seen the
picture with her figure in it, and had bought and kept it as a memento
of two people in whom he took so much interest: for by an odd chance
Dick was in it too, stooping to push off a boat from the little pier
close by, and very recognisable by those who knew him, though his face
was scarcely visible. “Oh, sir,” said Val, instinctively putting out his
hand for it, “that is nothing. It was taken by chance. It’s the portrait
of a woman at Oxford, the mother of a fellow I know.”
“A fellow you know--who may that be? is his portrait among those I have
been looking at? This,” said Richard, holding it fast and disregarding
Val’s hand, which was stretched out to take it, “is an interesting
face.”
What feelings were in the man’s breast as he looked at it who can tell?
Surprise, almost delirious, though he hid it as he had trained himself
to hide everything; quick-springing curiosity, almost hatred, wild
eagerness to know what his son knew of her. He made that remark about
the interesting face not unfeelingly, but unawares, to fill up the
silence, because everything in him was stirred up into such wild
impulses of emotion. The light swam in his eyes; yet he continued to see
the strange little picture thus blown into his hand as it seemed by some
caprice of fate. As for Valentine, he felt a repugnance incomprehensible
to himself to say anything about Dick or his mother, and could have
snatched the scrap of photograph out of his father’s hand, though he
could not tell why.
“Oh, it is not much,” he said--“it is not any one you would know. It is
the mother of a lad I took a great fancy to a few years ago. He was on
the rafts at Eton, and used to do all sorts of things for me. That’s his
mother--and indeed there’s himself in the corner, if you could see him.
I found it in a photograph of the river; and as I knew the people, and
it is so seldom one sees people who are unconscious of their likenesses
being taken, I bought it; but of course it has no interest to any one
who does not know the originals,” and he put out his hand for it again.
“Pardon,” said Mr Ross, serenely--“it has an interest. The face is a
very remarkable face, like one I remember seeing years ago. What sort of
a person was her son?”
By skilful questions he drew from Val all that he knew: the whole story
of Dick’s struggle upwards; of his determination to do well; of the way
he had risen in the world. Val mixed himself as little as he could with
the narrative, but could not help showing unwittingly how much share he
had in it; and at last grew voluble on the subject, flattered by the
interest his father took in it. “You say the son was at the rafts at
Eton, and yet this picture was taken at Oxford. How was that?” said
Richard. Val was standing behind him all this time, and their looks had
not met.
“Well, sir,” said Val, “I hope you won’t think, as Grinder did, that it
was my love of what he called low society. If Brown is low society, I
should like to know where to find better.”
“So Grinder said it was your love of low society?”
“He wrote to my grandfather,” said Val, sore at the recollection, “but
fortunately they knew me better; and when I explained everything,
grandmamma, like the old darling she is, sent me ten pounds to buy Brown
a present. I got him some books, and crayons, and carving things----”
“Yes; but you have not told me how this came to be taken at Oxford,”
said Richard, persistent.
“Well, sir, I was going to tell you. I heard that old Styles wanted a
man. Styles, perhaps you recollect him down at---- Yes, that’s him. So I
told him I could recommend Brown, and so could Lichen, who had been
captain of the boats in my time. Lichen of Christ’s-Church. You won’t
know his name? He rowed stroke----”
“Yes, yes; but let us come back to Brown.”
“There is not much more,” said Val, a little disconcerted. “Styles took
him on our recommendation, and hearing what an excellent character he
had--and that’s where he is now. He and his mother have got Styles’
little house, and the old man’s gone into the country. I shouldn’t
wonder if Brown had the business when he dies. He has got on like a
house on fire,” said Val--“educated himself up from nothing, and would
be a credit to any one. I’ve always thought,” said the lad, with an
innocent assumption of superior insight, “that he cannot have been born
a cad, as he seemed, when I first saw him; for the mother looks as if
she had been a lady. You laugh, sir, but I dare swear it’s true.”
“I was not laughing,” said Richard, bundling up the photographs
together, and handing them over to his son; “indeed, I think you have
behaved very creditably, and shown yourself capable of more than I
thought. Now, my dear fellow, I’m going to work to-night. Take your
pictures. They have amused me very much; and I think you should go to
bed.”
Val had been doing a great deal that day, and I think he was not sorry
to take his father’s advice. He gathered all his treasures together, and
bade him a more cordial good-night than usual, as he went away with his
candle through the dim suite of rooms. As soon as he had turned his
back, Richard Ross pushed away the papers he had drawn before him, and
watched the young figure with its light, walking down the long vista of
curtained rooms. The man was not genial enough to let that same gentle
apparition come in and illuminate with love the equally dim and lonely
antechambers of his heart; but some thrill of natural feeling quickened
within him, some strange movement of unwonted emotion as he looked after
the lad, and felt how wonderful was this story, and how unwittingly, in
natural friendliness of his boyish soul, Val had done a brother’s part
to his brother. The idea moved him more than the reality did. He took up
the little photograph again, which he had kept without Valentine’s
knowledge, and gazed at it, but not with love. “Curse of my life!”--he
said to himself, murmuring the words in sonorous Tuscan, which he spoke
like a native; and clenching his teeth as he gazed at the image of the
woman who had ruined him, as he thought. She to look “as if she had
been a lady!”--he laughed within himself secretly and bitterly at the
thought--a lady! the tramp-girl who had been his curse, and whom he had
never been able to teach anything to. When the first vehemence of these
feelings was over, he sat down and wrote a long letter to his
confidential solicitor in London, a man to whom the whole story had long
been known. And I do not think Richard Ross had sound sleep that night.
The discovery excited him deeply, but not with any of the pleasure with
which a man finds what he has lost, with which a husband might be
supposed to discover the traces of his lost wife and child. No; he
wanted no tamed tramp to disgrace him with her presence, no successful
mechanic-son to shame his family: as they had chosen, so let them
remain. He had not even any curiosity, but a kind of instinctive
repugnance to his other son. And yet he was pleased with Valentine, and
thought of the boy more kindly, because he had been kind to his lost
brother. How this paradox should be, I am unable to explain.