Richard Ross left Lasswade as Dick Brown entered it, totally unconscious
of him or his errand. They passed each other on the bridge,--the father
in the carriage, with his servant on the box, and a hundred delicate
comforts about him; the son trudging along the muddy road, somewhat
tired from jolting all night in a third-class carriage, but refreshed by
the “good wash” which, almost more than his breakfast, had set him up
again to encounter strangers. He was well dressed, in something of the
same mode as Val, whose coats he had worn when he was a lad, and whom he
unconsciously copied; and though there was a something about him which
indicated his lower position, or rather an absence of something which
externally marks “a gentleman,” his open countenance and candid
straightforward look gave the merest stranger who looked at him a
confidence in Dick, and conferred upon him a distinction of his own.
Richard Ross, however, did not so much as notice the young man as he
drove to the railway. He was not anxious about Val in the sense in which
his mother was anxious; but his mind was strangely disturbed and
jumbled--turned upside down, so to speak. All the common conditions of
life had changed for him;--his repose of twenty years was broken, and
his thoughts sent back upon the early beginning of his career, when he
was so different a man. To be driven back at forty-five to the thoughts
and feelings of twenty-five, how strange it is!--and stranger to some
men than to others. To those who have lived but little in this long
stretch of existence the return costs less; but Richard Ross had not
changed by the action of years only--he was another man; everything in
him was altered. And yet he was going back, as it were, to twenty-five,
to look at the passion and folly and infatuation of that period of his
existence; but with the interval so clearly marked, not only in himself,
but in all the others concerned.
Richard was not old, nor did he feel old: in himself he was conscious,
not of decay, but of progress. He looked back upon himself at that early
age, not with envy, as so many men of the world do, but with a wondering
contempt. What a fool he had been! Was it possible that he could ever
have been such a fool? Or must it not rather have been some brother,
some cousin, some other, not himself, who had been such an idiot?--some
visionary man, whose faults somehow had fallen upon _his_ shoulders?
This was the feeling in his mind, though, of course, he knew very well
that it was an absurd feeling. And then, with a curious wonder and
bewildering sense of suppressed agitation, he remembered that he was
going to see _her_. Should he know her after three-and-twenty years?--he
had recognised her picture, which was strange enough;--and would she
know him? And must they meet, and what would they say to each other?
There had never been very much to say, for she was incapable of what he
called conversation; and, except words of fondness and attempts at
instruction, it had been impossible for him, a cultivated and fastidious
man, to have any real intercourse with the wild creature of the woods
whom he never even succeeded in taming. What should he find to say to
her now, or she to him? The inquiry thrilled him strangely, giving him
that bewildering sense of unreality which mixes so deeply in all human
emotion. His brain seemed to turn round when he thought of this possible
interview. Was she a real being at all, or was he real who was thinking?
Had that past ever been? Was it not an imagination, a dream? Ah! it does
not even require such a long interval as twenty years to bring this
strange giddiness on the soul. That which we have lost, did we ever have
it?--the happiness, the life, the other who made life and happiness? I
know some houses now, occupied by strange people, whose very names I
can’t tell you, where yet I feel my own old life must be in full
possession of the familiar place, while this dim ghost of me outside
asks, Did it ever exist at all? Richard felt this all the more strongly
that he was not an imaginative man by nature. He felt his head swim and
the world go round with him, and would not believe that the young fool
who had borne his name three-and-twenty years before, was or could have
been him. But yet he was going to see _her_, the other dream, in whom
there was not, nor ever had been, any reality. On the whole, instead of
perplexing himself with such thoughts it is better for a man to read in
the railway, if he can manage it, even at the risk of hurting his eyes,
which require to be _ménagés_ at forty-five; or if that will not do, to
close his eyes and doze, which is perhaps, where it is practicable, the
best way of all.
He got to Oxford the next day in the afternoon--another pale, somewhat
dreary afternoon of March, typical day of a reluctant spring, with dust
in the streets, and east wind spreading a universal grey around,
ruffling the river into pale lines of livid light and gloomy shade, and
pinching all the green buds spitefully back to winter again. Heavy
clouds were rolling over the heavens when he made his way down to the
wharf. His old Oxford recollections and Val’s indications guided him. He
knew the boating wharf of old, though he had never himself been aquatic
in his tastes. And there was the little house with its narrow strip of
garden towards the river, in which a few sickly primroses were trying to
flower. No one had thought of the garden since Val’s accident, and
already it had a neglected look. “Who lives there?” he asked of a
bargeman who was lounging by. “It’s Brown’s, as is head man at
Styles’s,” was the answer. “Head man at Styles’s! I thought a woman
lived there,” said Richard. Then he suddenly recollected himself. “I had
forgotten the boy,” he added, under his breath. How strange it was! and
this was his son too--his son as well as Val! But, to tell the truth,
for the moment he had forgotten the boys, the known and the unknown. He
had forgotten that Val was lost, and that he had come here in search of
him. He was only conscious, in a strange suppressed haze of excitement,
that probably she was within these walls--she--the woman of whom he had
said _maladetta_; of whom Val had said that she looked as if she had
been a lady. This strange notion made him laugh within himself even now.
It was about five in the afternoon, still good daylight, though the day
was a dim one. The maid, who was but a maid-of-all-work, and no better
than her kind, had taken advantage of the entire absence of supervision,
and was out somewhere, leaving the garden-gate and front-door both open.
Richard went up to the door with a certain hesitation, almost
diffidence, and knocked softly. He did not want to have any one come,
and it was a relief to him when a sufficient interval had elapsed
without any response, to justify him, as he thought, in going into the
house. Then he stepped across the threshold, casting a glance behind to
see if any one outside observed him; and seeing no one, he went
in--first to the little parlour, which had been “cleaned up,”
fortunately, that morning. It was a strange little room, as I have
already said, with tokens in it of instinctive good taste struggling
against circumstances. Richard closed the door behind him, and looked
round it with a curious irregularity in his heart’s beats. He sat down,
somehow not feeling equal to anything more, and gazed at those little
familiar evidences of the kind of being who had been living here. It
was, in reality, Dick who had left his traces all about, but Richard
Ross knew nothing about Dick, and had at the present moment very little
curiosity as to that unknown and unrealised person. He thought only of
_her_: somehow Val’s description, at which he had laughed within himself
so often, and at which still he tried to laugh feebly, seemed less
impossible here. A lady might have lived within these four walls, at the
little window which looked out upon the river. The arrangements of the
room--its books (which no one read), its pretty carvings and nicknacks
(for which Dick alone was responsible)--fitted into the conventional
idea of a poor gentlewoman’s tastes, which even Richard, though he ought
to have known better, had received into his mind. The embroidered shawl
which covered the little table caught his eye as it had caught his
mother’s--he, too, remembered it; and that undoubted sign of her made
his heart beat loudly once more.
He seemed to be all alone in the solitary house--there was not a sound:
he had come in and taken possession, and nobody offered to interfere
with him. After a little time, however, he began to realise that the
position was rather a strange one; and recovering himself from the
curious spell under which he had fallen, he opened the door softly and
listened. Then it seemed to him that he heard some faint stir up-stairs.
Accordingly he went up the narrow winding staircase, feeling somehow
that in this place he could go where he would, that it was not the house
of a stranger. He went up, wondering at himself, half bold, half
hesitating, and opened the first door he came to. It was the room in
which Valentine lay sick--his boy whom he sought. Richard opened the
door softly. Everything was very still in it. The patient slept; the
watcher, poor soul, in her exhaustion, perhaps was dozing by him, lulled
by the profound quiet; or else her brain was confused by the long
nursing, and was not easily roused except by the patient, whose lightest
movement always awakened her attention. And the light was dim, the
blind drawn down, every possibility of disturbance shut out. Richard
stood like one spellbound, and looked at them. His heart gave a wild
leap, and then, he thought, stood still. He recognised Val in a moment,
and so perhaps had some anxiety set at rest; but indeed I doubt whether,
in the strange excitement in which he found himself, anxiety for Val
told for much. She sat by the bedside in a large old-fashioned chair,
high-backed and square-elbowed, which made a frame to her figure. Her
eyes were closed, but the intent look in her face, which gave it an
interest even to the mere passer-by, was there in a softened form,
giving a pure and still gravity, almost noble, to its fine lines; the
hair was smoothed off her forehead; the white kerchief, which was her
usual head-dress, tied loosely about her head; her hands, glimmering
white in the partial darkness, crossed upon her lap. Richard stood
still, not daring to breathe, yet catching his breath and hearing his
heart beat in spite of himself, afraid to disturb her, yet wondering
what she would say to him, how she would look at him when she was
roused, as she must be. He was much and strangely agitated; but the
reader must not suppose that it was any wild renewal of old love, any
passion, or even the agitation of longing and tenderness, which so moved
him. He was curious beyond anything he could say--troubled by the sight
of her, strangely eager to know what kind of being this was. She was
another from the girl he had known, though the same. She of time past
had been a wild thing out of the woods, not much above the birds or
other woodland creatures. All her humanity, all her development of mind
and heart, had come since then; and of this human soul, this developed
being, he knew nothing, absolutely nothing; and a thirst came upon him
to find out, the intensest curiosity to know, what manner of woman she
was.
All at once she opened her eyes and saw him; but did not start or cry,
for, waking or sleeping, Valentine was her first object, and she would
not have disturbed him had all heaven and earth melted and given way
round about her. She opened her eyes and saw a man looking at her. She
raised her head, and knew who it was. The blood rushed back to her heart
in a sudden flood, making it beat hard and loud against her side, taking
away her breath; but she did nothing more than rise softly to her feet
and look at him. Yes, it was he. She knew him, as he had known her, at
once. She had expected him. Without any knowledge where he was, or how
he could hear, she had yet felt sure that he must come. And therefore
she was scarcely surprised; she had the advantage of him so far. She
knew him, though to him she was an unknown creature--knew him
ignorantly, not having been able to form any judgment of his character;
yet had as much acquaintance with him as her mind was capable of; while
he had no acquaintance with her. She rose up to meet him, and stood
wistful, humble, yet with something which looked like pride in her erect
figure, and that face which had changed so strangely since he knew it.
They stood on either side of the bed upon which their son was lying,
scrutinising each other in that strange pathetic gaze. Were there things
to be repented of, even in her dim soul?--I cannot tell. She did not
think of judging herself. What she felt was that he was here, that she
was in his power, and all that was hers; that she was not strong enough
to resist him, whatever he might do; that the known and actual had come
to an end for her, and all the future was dark in his hands. A dim
anguish of fear and impotence came over her. He might send her away from
the boy; he might change her life all at once as by the waving of a
wand. She looked at him piteously, putting her hands together unawares;
but while she was thus startled into painful life, plunged into the
anxious disquietude of ignorance, roused to fear and uncertainty, not
knowing what was to be done with her, she was at the same time
incapacitated from any evidence of emotion, silenced, kept still, though
her heart beat so; speechless, though the helpless cry of appeal was on
her lips--because she would not wake Val, who was sleeping, and,
whatever she might be capable of otherwise, could not, would not disturb
the weary rest of the boy.
At length he waved his hand to her impatiently, calling her to follow
him out of the room. He did not know what to say to her. Words had gone
from him too, though from other reasons; but he could not stand there,
however bewildering were his feelings, looking at this woman, who was so
familiar to him and so unknown. She followed him noiselessly, not
resisting, and they stood together on the narrow landing outside, close
to each other, her dress almost touching him, her quick breath crossing
his. What were they to say to each other? She was not capable of
embarrassment in the simplicity of her emotions. But Richard standing
by her, man of the world as he was, was totally helpless in this
emergency. His gaze faltered; he turned his eyes from her; he trembled,
though only he himself was conscious of it. To be so close to her
affected him with a hundred complicated feelings. What could he say?
Faltering, his lips scarcely able to form the confused words, he asked
faintly, “How long has he been ill? how long has he been here?”
“Ten days,” she answered, briefly. She did not hesitate, nor cast down
her eyes. She answered with a kind of despairing calm; for to be sure it
was certain he would take the boy away, and she had nothing else in her
mind. Her own standing in respect to him--the attitude of his mind
towards her--her position in the world as it depended on him--all these
were nothing to her. She was thinking of the boy, of nothing else.
“He has been very ill; what is it? Have you a doctor for him?” said
Richard, getting used to the suppressed sound of his own voice. He was
speaking like a man in a dream, struggling against some necessity which
forced him to say this. It was not what he wanted to say. Had he been
able to manage himself, to do as he wished, he would have said something
to her very different--something kind--something to show her that he was
not sorry he had seen her again--that he was not angry, but came to her
with friendly feelings. But he could not. The only words he could manage
to get out were these bare business-like questions, which he might have
put to a nurse--only that if she had been a mere nurse, a stranger who
had been kind to his boy, Richard would have been full of gratitude and
thanks. He felt all this, but he could not help it; and the more he
wished to say, the less he said.
He felt this to the bottom of his heart; but she did not feel it all.
She took the questions quite naturally, and answered them with calm
simplicity. “The doctor comes twice a-day. He’ll be here soon. I cannot
keep the name of it in my mind. Sitting up of nights makes me stupid
like; but when he comes, you’ll hear.”
Then there was a pause. She stood before him, with her hands clasped,
waiting for what he was going to say. She had no thought of resisting or
standing on her rights, for had she not given up the boy long ago?--and
waited with keen but secret anguish for the sentence which she believed
he must be about to pronounce. The door was open behind her. While she
stood waiting for Richard’s words, her ear was intent upon Val, ready to
hear if he made the slightest movement. Between these two things which
absorbed her, she was completely occupied. She had no leisure to think
of herself.
But he who was alive to all the strange troubles of the position, at
what a disadvantage he was! His embarrassment and overwhelming
self-consciousness were painful beyond description, while she was free
from self altogether, and suffered nothing in comparison. While she
stood so steadily, a tremulous quiver ran through his every limb. He was
as superior to her as it is possible to conceive, and yet he was
helpless and speechless before her. At last he made out, faltering, the
confused words, “Do you know who he is?”
“Yes, I know,” she said, with a panting breath. A gleam of light came
over her face. “I have known him ever since he was a boy. He’s been
Dick’s friend. No lad had ever a better friend. They took a fancy to
each other the first day. I heard his name--it’s seven years since--and
knew.”
“And you told--Val----”
She gave a slight start, and looked at him reproachfully, appealingly,
but made no other reply. This look disturbed Richard more and more.
There was in it a higher meaning than any he seemed capable of. He felt
that from some simple eminence of virtue, impossible to him to conceive,
she looked down upon him, quietly indignant of, yet half pitying, his
suspicions of her. And, in fact, though she was not capable of any
sentiments so articulate, these, in a rudimentary confusion, were the
feelings in her mind.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, humbly. “Then he knows nothing? And the
other, the younger--he who is with you----”
How he faltered! man of the world, and highbred gentleman as he was; he
did not know how to put the inquiry into words.
“Oh,” she said, roused from her stillness of expectation, “don’t meddle
with Dick! Oh! sir, leave my boy alone! You don’t know--no one knows but
me--how good he is. He’s put up with all my wild ways. He’s been willing
to give up all he likes best for me; but God’s given me strength, and
I’ve mastered myself. I’ve stayed quiet, though it went near to kill
me,” she said, clasping her hands tightly; “I wouldn’t shame him, and
take his home from him. Oh, don’t meddle with Dick! He’s happy now.”
Her entreating look, her appeal to his generosity, her absolute
detachment from all emotion except in connection with her children,
worked upon Richard in the strangest way. They moved him as he had never
thought to be moved. His heart swelled, and filled with a novel emotion.
“Is this all you think of?” he said, with, in his turn, a strange tone
of reproach in his voice--“only of the children! when we meet like this
after so many--so many years!”
She raised her eyes to him, wondering. I think she scarcely understood
what he could mean. Her mind was so deeply occupied with other thoughts,
that the tide of feeling which encountered hers was driven back by the
meeting. “I’m not clever,” she said, in a very low voice. “I’m
ignorant--not fit to talk to you.”
“But you know me?” he said, driven to his wits’ end. She looked up at
him quickly, with a strange suffusion in her eyes, a momentary dilation.
She did not mean it to be reproachful this time. Then she said
quickly--“We’ll trouble no one, Dick and me. He’s well off, and doing
well. If you will let the other stay till he’s better--who could nurse
him as I would?--and leave Dick alone. I’ll trouble nobody, nobody!”
“Myra,” said Richard, more moved than he could say. It was not love so
much as a strange reluctance to be so powerless--a curious longing to
get some sign of feeling from her. He could not bear the composure in
her eyes.
She gave a low cry, and made a step backwards, withdrawing from him; and
at that moment a faint sound from within the sick-room caught her ear.
Her expression, which had changed for the moment, came back again to
that of the patient sick-nurse, the anxious watcher. “He’s stirring,”
she said. “He wants me. I mustn’t leave him. I’ve been too long away.”
To describe the feelings of Richard Ross when she left him outside the
door of the room in which his son lay ill is more than I am able for.
Not since she had fled from him at first, three-and-twenty years ago,
had there been such a tumult in his mind;--not the sharp tumult of
passion and grief, but the strangest maze of embarrassment, pain,
defeat, surprise--and yet for the moment relief. Passion was altogether
out of his way nowadays--I don’t know that he was capable of it; but all
the secondary emotions were warm in him. He had been playing with the
thought of this woman for a long time, saying _maladetta_, yet scarcely
meaning it--wondering, half attracted in spite of himself, and beyond
measure curious to know what changes time had wrought in her, and how
far Valentine’s unconscious judgment was true. During this long
succession of thoughts, his semi-hatred of her as the curse of his life
had strangely evaporated, he could not have told how. And from the
moment when he had received that first sudden shock which was given him
by the little photograph, down to the present time when she left him
standing outside the door, Richard had been the subject of a mental
process of the most complicated and mysterious kind. From that first
simple introduction of the idea of her, not as a past curse, but as a
living and known human being, his thoughts had gone through a long
dramatic course, picturing her, realising her, following the unknown
line of her existence--making acquaintance with her image, so to speak.
She had never been quite absent from his mind since Valentine had
reintroduced her to it. He had imagined (in spite of himself) how she
would look, what she would say and do--had even pictured to himself how
she would meet him, perhaps with terror, perhaps with penitence, with a
developed sense of the grievous harm she had done him, and capacity at
last to understand how much he had sacrificed for her. If she had grown
into an intelligent being, with that look Valentine described, “as if
she had once been a lady,”--which was so curious, so bewildering a
travesty of all fact--this was how she must have learned to feel; and no
doubt Richard thought her first meeting with him would be trying for
both, but most trying for her as the one most certain to betray
emotion--the wrong-doer in whose awakened mind all feeling must be more
strong. He had opened the very door of the room in which she sat with
this expectation--nay certainty--in his mind. Now she had left him, and
he stood bewildered, confounded, excited, not knowing what to think, and
still less what to do. Was it possible that she had not a thought for
him, this woman who had destroyed his life?--no feeling that she had
destroyed it?--no desire for his forgiveness, no eagerness to make up,
no tremulous impassioned anxiety as to what he would think of her? For
all these feelings he had given her credit, and curiously, with an
interest which attracted him in spite of himself, had speculated how she
would show them. But now!
After a little pause, Richard Ross, Secretary of Legation at Florence,
her Majesty’s future representative to some crowned head, went quite
humbly down the little creaking staircase. He knew how to deal with
Prime Ministers, and would not have allowed himself to be put down by
Prince Bismarck himself; but he was utterly discomfited by Dick Brown’s
mother, and stole down-stairs with his heart beating, and the most
unexampled commotion in his whole being. When he thought of it, he even
laughed at himself feebly, so confounded was he. What was to be done
now? He could not steal away as he had come, with no result to his
visit. Now that they had met, and looked each other in the face again,
they could not part simply with nothing further said. Was it for him to
make advances? to propose some ground of meeting? though he was the
wronged person, and though she ought in reality to approach him on her
knees. When he got down-stairs, he paused again to think what he would
do. And it was only then that it occurred to him that his mission here
was not to reconcile himself to her, but to inquire after Valentine.
Strange! He had seen Valentine lying ill--he had even asked questions
about him--and yet his son’s state, or his son’s existence, had made no
impression whatever on his mind. In the curious ferment and tumult of
his feelings, it occurred to him to remember the half amusement, half
pain, with which he had felt two days ago that his mother hustled him
off, scarcely having patience to let him eat and rest, in order that he
might see after Val; and here was his wife treating him in the same
way--thrusting him aside, postponing him altogether! There was a
whimsical aggravation in this double slight which made him laugh even
now; and then a sudden heat flamed all over his frame, like a sudden
blaze scorching him; his wife! He had used the words unconsciously,
unawares--not _maladetta_!--not the woman who had been his curse. In the
curious excitement of that thought, he went in once more to the little
parlour, and sat down instinctively to get quiet and calm himself; and
then, catching at the first straw of reason which blew his way in this
strange tempest of feeling, he decided that he must wait there, now that
he was there, till the doctor came.