She advanced a step to meet him, timid, yet with that confidence which
social superiority gives: for Dick, I am bound to confess, though I love
him, was not one of those wonderful beings who bear the exterior of a
fine gentleman even in a workman’s clothes. He was not vulgar in any
respect, being perfectly free from every kind of pretension, and with
all the essence of fine manners--that politeness of the heart which
neither birth nor education by themselves can give; but though, as I
have said, his dress was to a certain degree copied from
Valentine’s--who possessed the _je ne sais quoi_ in perfection--and was
quite well made and unobtrusive, yet I am obliged to allow that Dick had
not that mysterious something which makes a gentleman. You could have
found no fault with his appearance, and to look at his candid
countenance was to trust him; but yet he had not the _je ne sais quoi_,
and Violet knew that, conventionally speaking, she was addressing one
who was “not a gentleman” this fact gave her a degree of freedom in
calling him which she would scarcely have felt with a stranger of her
own class. But more than that, Violet had recognised Dick. It was some
years since she had seen him, but she remembered him. Not all at once,
it is true. When he appeared first, before he saw her, she had felt as
he did, that she had seen his face before; but ere he passed again, she
had made out where and how it was that she had seen him; for it must be
recollected that Violet’s heart was full to overflowing with thoughts of
Val, of whom this stranger, so suddenly and strangely appearing, was a
kind of shadow in her mind. The whole scene, in which she had seen this
stranger, came before her as by a flash of light, after five minutes’
pondering within herself--for from the first glance she had felt that he
was somehow associated with Valentine. What could bring him here, this
boatman from the Thames? Her heart was breaking for news of her young
lover, so dismally parted from her, whom she must never see again (she
thought); but only to hear his name, to know where he was, would be
something. She would not have betrayed herself to “a gentleman,” to one
of Val’s friends and equals; but of “Mr Brown”--she remembered even his
name by good fortune--she might make her inquiries freely. So, urged by
the anguish in her poor little breast, Vi took this bold step. She had
been sitting thus for hours crying all alone, and thinking to herself
that this horrible blank was to go on for ever, that she would nevermore
hear of him even--and I have not the heart to blame her for appealing
thus to the first possibility of help. She made a step forward and
looked at him with a pitiful little smile. “Perhaps you do not
remember,” she said, “but I think I am sure it is you. I never forget
people whom I have once seen. Did not you row us once, on the Thames, at
Eton--my father and----”
“Oh yes, ma’am, to be sure!” cried Dick. “I knew that I had seen you
before.” He was a little confused, after his experience with Lady
Eskside, how he ought to address a lady, but after reflection decided
that “ma’am” must always be right; for had he not heard the Queen
herself addressed by the finest of fine ladies as “Ma’am”?
“Yes; and I remember you,” said Vi. Then she made a pause, and with a
wistful glance at him, and a sudden flush which went as quickly as it
came, added--“I am Mr Ross’s cousin.”
“I recollect now,” cried Dick. “He was so set on it that you should see
everything. I think he was a bit better when I left.”
“Better!” cried Violet, clasping her hands together; “was he----” She
was going to say, was he ill? and then reflected that, perhaps, it was
best not to betray to a stranger how little she knew of him. So she
stood looking up in his face, with great eyes dilated. Her eyes had been
pathetic and full of entreaty even when poor Vi was at her happiest. Now
there is no telling how beseeching those pretty eyes were, with the
tears stealing into them, making them bigger, softer, more liquid and
tender still. This look quite made an end of poor Dick, who felt
disposed to cry too for company, and was aware of some strange, unusual
movements in his own good heart.
“Don’t you fret,” he said soothingly; “I brought the old lady the news
this morning. He had an accident, and his illness was sudden. But it had
nothing to do with the accident,” he added. “Don’t be frightened, ma’am.
It’s some fever, but not the worst kind; and the doctor told me himself
that he’d pull through.”
“Oh, Mr Brown!” cried poor Vi. She dropped down upon a fallen tree, and
began to cry, so that he could scarcely look at her for pity.
“Indeed you must not be frightened,” said Dick. “I am not anxious a bit,
after what the doctor told me. Neither is the old lady up there at the
Castle--Lady Eskside. She is going with me to-morrow morning to help to
nurse him. Mother has him in hand,” Dick added with a little pride, “and
he’s very safe with her. Don’t fret like this--now don’t! when I tell
you the doctor says he’ll pull through!”
“Oh Val, Val, my Val!” cried poor little Violet. It was not because she
was frightened; for at her age--unless experience has taught
otherwise--getting better seems so necessary, so inevitable a conclusion
to being ill. She was not afraid of his life; but her heart was rent
with pity, with tenderness, with that poignant touching remorse, to
which the innocent are liable. All that had gone before, all that
Valentine had suffered, seemed to come back to her. It was not her
fault, but it was “our” fault. She seemed to herself to be involved in
the cause of it, though she would have died sooner than harm him. Her
lips began to quiver, the tears rained through the fingers with which
she tried to hide her piteous streaming eyes. “Oh Val, Val, my Val!” she
cried. It was “our” fault; her father had done it, and even good Sandy
had had his share; and herself, who had twined her foolish little life
with his, so that even parting with her had been another complication in
Valentine’s woes. She seemed to see him looking up at her in the
moonlight, bidding her good-bye. Oh, why did he think of her? why did he
take that trouble for her? She scarcely heard Dick’s anxious attempts at
consolation. She was not thinking of the future, in which, no doubt--how
could she doubt it?--Valentine would get better; but of the past and of
all that made him ill. Her tears, her abandonment to that sorrow, her
attempts to command herself, went to Dick’s heart. He stood looking at
her, wondering wistfully for the first time in his life over the
differences in men’s lots. If he (Dick) were to fall ill, his mother, no
doubt, would be grieved; but Dick knew that it would create no commotion
in the world; would not “upset” any one as Val’s illness did. Naturally,
the good fellow felt, Mr Ross was of much more importance than he was,
or could ever be; but still----
“Oh, how foolish you must think me!” cried Violet, drying her eyes. “It
is not that I am frightened. It is because I know all that made him ill.
Oh, Mr Brown, tell me about it--tell me everything! He is my cousin, and
he has always been like my--brother. He used to bring me here when I was
a child. You can’t think how everything here is full of him--and then
all at once never to hear a word!” Between every broken sentence the
tears fell in little bright showers from Violet’s eyes.
Dick sat down on the same fallen tree, but at a respectful distance, and
told her all he knew--which was not everything, for his mother had not
entered into details, and he knew little about the incident on the
river, and her share in it. Violet listened, never taking her eyes from
his face, which was hard upon Dick, yet not undelightful to him. He had
gone through a great many experiences that morning. But even Lady
Eskside’s strange emotion, her curiosity about himself, and agitated
manner, had not the same effect as this still more unexpected and
strange encounter. He sat, at first rather awkwardly, upon the edge of
his end of the tree, with his face turned towards her, but not always
bold enough to look at her. The slant of the sunbeam, which was
gradually dying off the scene, fell in the middle between them like a
rail of gold, separating them from each other. Across this heavenly line
of separation her eyes shone like stars, often bewildering Dick, though
he kept pretty straight in his narrative, taking as little account as
possible of the occasional giddiness that came over him, and the
dazzling sensation in his eyes. Violet, interrupting him now and then by
a brief question, sometimes crying softly under her breath, gave her
entire attention to every word; and Esk ran on through all, with a
murmur as of a third person keeping them company; and the wood
contributed those numberless soft sounds which make up the silence of
nature, enveloping them in an atmosphere of her own. Dick was not much
given to poetry, but he felt like something in a fairy tale. It was an
experience altogether new and strange; for hitherto there had been no
enchantments in his life. How different it was to her and to him! To the
young man, the first thrill of romance, the first touch of magic--the
beginning of all sweet delusions, follies, and dreams; to the girl, an
imperfect, faltering narrative, filled out by imagination, a poor,
blurred picture--better, far better, indeed, than nothing, and giving
her for the moment a kind of miserable happiness, but in itself nothing.
It is frightful to think at what a disadvantage people meet each other
in this world. Dick’s life, which had all been honest prose up to this
moment, became on the spot, poetry; but, poor fellow, he was nothing but
prose, poor prose to Vi, to whom these woods were full of all the lyric
melodies of young life. She listened to him without thinking of him,
drinking in every word and not ungrateful, any more than she was
ungrateful to the fallen tree, or the beech boughs that sheltered her.
Nay, she had a warmer feeling, a sense of grateful friendship, to Dick.
“Mr Brown,” she said, when his tale was done, “I am very, very thankful
to you for telling me. I should never have known but for you. For I
ought to say that my people and Val’s people--I mean my cousin’s--are
not quite--quite good friends. I must not say whose fault it is,” said
Vi, with a suppressed sob; “and I don’t see Lady Eskside now--so without
you I should not have known. Mr Brown! would you mind writing--a little
note--just two lines--to say how he is when you get back?”
“Mind!” said Dick. “If you will let me----”
“And you can tell him when he gets well,” cried the girl, her voice
sinking very low, her eyes leaving Dick’s face, and straying into the
glow of sunshine (as he thought) between the two great trees--“you can
tell him that you met me here; and that I was thinking of him, and was
glad--glad to hear of him----” To show her gladness, Violet let drop two
great tears which for some time had been brimming over her eyelids. “It
is dreadful to be parted from a friend and to hear no word; but now that
I know, it will not be so hard. Mr Brown, you will be sure to send just
two lines, two words, to tell me----”
Here her voice faltered, and lost itself in a flutter of suppressed
sound--sobs painfully restrained, which yet would burst forth. She did
her very best, poor child, to master them, and turning to Dick with a
pathetic smile, whispered as well as she could--“I can’t tell you how it
all is. It is not only for Val being ill. It is everything--everything
that is wrong! Papa, too--but I can’t tell you; only tell him that you
met Violet at the linn.”
“I will tell him everything you have said. I will write, if you like,
every day,” cried poor Dick, his heart wrung with sympathy--and with
envy as well.
“Would that be too much?” she asked, with an entreating look. “Oh, if it
would not be too much! And, Mr Brown, perhaps it will be best to send it
to mamma. I cannot have any secrets, though I may be unhappy. If you
will give me a piece of paper, I will write the address, and thank
you--oh, how I will thank you!--all my life.”
Dick, who felt miserable himself, he could scarcely tell why, got out
his note-book, with all the rough little drawings in it of the brackets
at Rosscraig. He had not known, when he put them down, how much more was
to befall him in this one brief afternoon. She wrote the address with a
little hand which trembled.
“My hand is so unsteady,” she said. “I am spoiling your book. I must
write it over again. Oh, I beg your pardon; my hand never used to shake.
Tell Val--but no, no. It is better that you should not tell him anything
more.”
“Whatever you bid me I will tell him. I will do anything, everything you
choose to say,” said Dick, in his fervour. She gave a surprised wistful
look at him, and shook her head.
“I must think for both of us,” she said; “and Val is very hasty, very
rash. No, you must not say anything more. Tell him I am quite well if he
asks, and not unhappy--not very unhappy--only anxious to know; and when
he is well,” she said, with a reluctant little sigh, “you need not mind
writing any more. That will be enough. It is a terrible thing when there
are quarrels in families, Mr Brown.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dick, who knew nothing about families, nor about
quarrels, but followed with a curious solemnity the infantine angelical
wisdom and gravity of her face.
“A terrible thing when people try to hurt each other who ought to love
each other; and some of us must always pay for it,” said poor Violet, in
deep seriousness--“always, always some one must suffer; when it might be
so different! If you are going back to Rosscraig, you should go before
the sun sets, for it is far, when you don’t know the way.”
“And you?” said Dick, rising in obedience to this dismissal, yet longing
to linger, to prolong the conversation, and not willing to allow that
this strange episode in his life had come to an end.
“My way is not the same as yours,” she said, holding out her hand with
gentle grandeur, like a little princess, sweet and friendly, but
stooping out of a loftier region, “and I know every step. Good-bye, and
thank you with all my heart. You must keep this path straight up past
the firs. I am very, very glad I was here.”
“Good-bye, Miss Violet,” said Dick. It gave him a little pleasure to say
her name, which was so pretty and sweet; and he was too loyal and too
respectful to linger after this farewell, but walked away as a man goes
out of a royal presence, not venturing to stay after the last gracious
word has been said. He could not bear to go, but would not remain even a
moment against her will. When he had gone a little way he ventured to
turn back and look--but nothing was visible except the trees. She had
disappeared, and the sunshine had disappeared; it seemed to Dick’s
awakened fancy as if both must have gone together. The last golden arrow
of light was gliding from the opposite bank of the river, and the glade
between the bushes lay dim in the greyness of the evening. What a change
it made! He went on with a sigh. Violet had gone back to the foot of the
tree, and was waiting there till he should be out of sight; and Dick
divined that this was the case, and that she wanted no more of him.
Well! why should she want any more of him? She was a lady, quite out of
Dick’s way, and she had been very sweet to him--as gracious as a queen.
Between this impersonation of sweet youth, and the other figure, old
Lady Eskside, with her dignity and agitated kindness, Dick was
wonderfully dazzled. If all ladies were like these, what a strange sort
of enchantment it must be to spend one’s life in such society. Dick had
never known any woman but his mother, whom he loved, and upon whose will
he had often been dependent, but to whom he was always in some degree
forbearing and indulgent, puzzled by her caprices, and full of that
tender patience towards her which has in its very nature something of
superiority; and to find himself suddenly in the society of these two
ladies, one after the other, both taking him into their confidence,
betraying their feelings to him, receiving, as it were, favours at his
hand, had the most curious effect upon his mind.
Dick had never felt so melancholy in his life as when Violet thus sent
him away; and yet his head was full of a delicious intoxication, a sense
of something elevated, ethereal, above the world and all its common
ways. Should he ever see her again, he wondered? would she speak to him
as she had done now, and ask his help, and trust to his sympathy? Poor
Dick had not the remotest idea that these new sensations in his mind,
this mixture of delight and of melancholy, this stirring up of all
emotions, which made his long walk through the woods feel like a
swallow-flight to him, had anything to do with the vulgar frenzy he had
heard of, which silly persons called falling in love. He had always felt
very superior and rather contemptuous of this weakness, which young men
of his class feel, no doubt, in its more delicate form, like others, but
which is seldom spoken of among them in any but that coarse way which
revolts all gentle natures. So he was totally unwarned and unarmed
against any insidious beginnings of sentiment, and would have resented
indignantly the idea that his tender sympathy with this little lady, who
had opened her heart to him, had anything whatever in it of the
character of love. How could it have?--when the very foundation of this
strange sweet revelation to him of an utterly new kind of intercourse
and companionship, was the love, or something that he supposed must be
love, between Mr Ross, his patron, and this little princess of the
woods? What a lucky fellow Mr Ross was, Dick thought, with the
tenderest, friendliest version of envy that ever entered a man’s bosom!
and then it occurred to him, with a little sigh, to think that the lots
of men in this world were very different; but he was not, he hoped, so
wretched a fellow as to grudge his best friend any of the good things
that were in his share. Thus he went back to Rosscraig with his mind
entirely filled with a new subject--a subject which made him less
sensitive even than he was before to any new light upon his own
position. He looked at Violet’s writing in his note-book with very
bewildering feelings when he got at night to the luxurious room where he
was to sleep. She had written the address very unsteadily, then crossed
it out, and repeated it with great care and precision--Mrs Pringle,
Moray Place, Edinburgh. Though it slightly chilled him to think that
this was her mother’s name, not her own, yet the sense of having this
little bit of her in his breast-pocket was very delightful and very
strange. He sat and looked at it for a long time. On the page just
before it were these notes he had made of the brackets in the great
drawing-room. These were the tangible evidences of this strange mission
of his, and sudden introduction into a life so different from his own.
It just crossed his mind to wonder whether these scratches on the paper
would be all, whether he might look them up years hence to convince
himself that it was not a dream. And then poor Dick gave a great sigh,
so full and large, expanding his deep bosom, that it almost blew out his
candles; whereupon he gave a laugh, poor fellow, and said his prayers,
and got to bed.
As for Lady Eskside, she showed more weakness that particular evening
than had been visible, I think, all her life before. She could not
sleep, but kept Mrs Harding by her bedside, talking, giving her
mysterious but yet intelligible confidences. “You’ll set to work,
Marg’ret, as soon as I’m gone, to have all the new wing put in order,
the carpets put down, and the curtains put up, and everything ready for
habitation. I cannot quite say who may be coming, but it is best to be
ready. My poor old lord’s new wing, that gave him so much trouble! It
will be strange to see it lived in after so many years!”
“Indeed, and it will that, my lady,” said Mrs Harding, discreet and
cautious.
“It will that! I don’t suppose that you take any interest,” said Lady
Eskside, “beyond just the furniture, and so forth?--though you’ve lived
under our roof and ate our bread these thirty years!”
Mrs Harding was a prudent woman, and knew that too much interest was
even more dangerous than too little. “The furniture is a great thought,”
she said demurely, “to a person in my position, my lady. If you’ll mind
that I’m responsible for everything; and I canna forget it’s all new,
and that there is aye the risk that the moths may have got into the
curtains. I’ve had more thought about these curtains,” said the
housekeeper, with a sigh, “than the Queen hersel’ takes about the
state.”
“You and your moths!” said my lady, with sharp scorn. “Oh, Marg’ret
Harding, it’s little you know about it! If there was any way of keeping
the canker and the care out of folk’s hearts! And what is it to you that
I’m standing on the verge of, I don’t know what--that I’ve got the
thread in my hand that’s failed us so long--that maybe after all, after
all, my old lord may get his way, and everything be smooth, plain, and
straight for them that come after us? What’s this to you? I am a foolish
old woman to say a word. Oh, if my Mary were but here!”
“My lady, it’s a great deal to me, and I’m as anxious as I can be; but
if I were to take it upon me to speak, what would I get by it?” said Mrs
Harding, driven to self-defence. “The like of us, we have to know
everything, and never speak.”
“Marg’ret, my woman, I cannot be wrong this time--it’s not possible that
I can be wrong this time,” said Lady Eskside. “You were very much struck
yourself when you saw the young--when you saw my visitor. I could see it
in your face--and your husband too. He’s not a clever man, but he’s been
a long time about the house.”
“He’s clever enough, my lady,” said the housekeeper. “Neither my lord
nor you would do with your owre clever men, and I canna be fashed with
them mysel’. Now, my man, if he’s no that gleg, he’s steady; and I’m aye
to the fore,” said Mrs Harding, calmly. This was a compensation of
nature which was not to be overlooked.
“You see, you knew his father so well,” said Lady Eskside, with an
oracular dimness which even Mrs Harding’s skill could scarcely
interpret; and then she added softly, “God bless them! God bless them
both!”
“My lady,” said the housekeeper, puzzled, “you’ll never be fit to travel
in the morning, if you don’t get a good sleep.”
“That’s true, that’s true; but yet you might say, God bless them. The
Angel that redeemed us from all evil, bless the lads,” murmured the old
lady, under her breath. “Good night. You may go away, you hard-hearted
woman; I’ll try to sleep.”