It was the beginning of May when the party went home, and everything was
green on Eskside. Were I to describe all that happened before they left
Oxford, so strange a family group as they were--the old Lady Eskside
with the tramp-woman, the high-bred Secretary of Legation, along with
Styles’s head man--and how they managed to exist together, the lion with
the lamb--I should require a volume. But this would weary the reader,
who can easily imagine for himself that any happiness which might be
produced by this reunion of the divided family was counterbalanced by
many circumstances which were not happy. The grandparents, I think,
would have been really happy in the removal of all mystery from their
family story, the complete establishment of the rights and heirship of
their beloved Val, and the winning qualities of Dick, but for the sudden
chaos into which they were replunged by the mother’s calm declaration of
Dick’s seniority. Its effect upon them was indescribable. Richard, with
his diplomatic instincts, seeing that his sons had not paid any
attention to, or even heard, this extraordinary statement, hushed it up
with an impetuous and peremptory promptitude which took even his father
and mother by surprise, and silenced them. “Not another word,” he
whispered to them; “not a word! the boys have heard nothing; for the
present let nothing more be said;” and the old couple, in the suddenness
of this strange juncture, let themselves be overruled, and left the
guidance in his hands. As for the mother herself, she attached no weight
to the circumstance. She was too ignorant to know, and too much
abstracted in her mind to think, that it made any difference which was
the eldest. She had not kept Dick for that reason, nor had she left Val
at Rosscraig with any intention of avenging herself upon the family by
thus substituting the youngest for the just heir, which was the first
thought that crossed Lady Eskside’s mind. No; she had been guided by
mere chance, as we say, snatching up the one boy instead of the other in
her despair, for the most trivial reason, as the reader may recollect.
And even now it did not occur to her that what she had said was of any
consequence, though she saw it affected the others in some
incomprehensible way. Her mind had no capacity for entering upon such a
question. She was far more deeply moved by the chance that Valentine
might be tired out--more solicitous to know whether it was time for his
beef-tea. Richard kept his parents quiet until Val had gone to bed, and
Dick to sit by him and read to him, when the three had an anxious
consultation; and the packet of papers which Richard had brought from
Italy, and which up to this moment had remained unopened, was examined,
and found to confirm, with frightful accuracy, the statements of the
mother. There it was incontestable, Dick was set down as the eldest,
notwithstanding the impression upon Richard’s mind which, on Val’s first
appearance, had led to the mistake.
This confirmation subdued them all into a kind of despair. Lord and Lady
Eskside, both at different times, had received Dick into their
affections, as they thought, and acknowledged, with a certain pride, his
natural worthiness. But when it appeared possible that this new and
unknown boy (though they liked him) might put himself in the place of
their Valentine--the child of their old age, the light of their
eyes--their hearts sank within them. All their satisfaction and
enthusiasm was chilled, nay, frozen; they sat and looked at each other
blankly, their gladness turned into dire disappointment and heaviness.
Then it was that Richard urged upon them the necessity of silence. “Let
us take time to think,” he said; “time is everything. Val, it is clear,
can bear no further excitement; it might be fatal to him; nor can it be
good for the other boy. He is an honest, kind fellow; but how can we
tell if his head is strong enough to bear such a change of fortune? Let
him get used to the part of younger brother first. For heaven’s sake,
let us hold our tongues, and say nothing more about it now.”
Lord Eskside shook his head; but my lady seconded her son, alarmed at
the idea he had skilfully brought forward of danger to Val. “Yes, he is
a good honest fellow,” they both said, but with an involuntary grudge
against Dick, as if it could be his fault; and the papers were put up
carefully in Lord Eskside’s despatch-box, and the news still more
closely locked in the bosoms of the three who knew the secret. But it is
astonishing how their knowledge of this took all heart out of their
conscientious effort to adapt themselves to the new state of things.
Valentine, whatever his internal difficulties were, accepted the
position much more easily. His illness softened it to him, and had
already produced that familiar intercourse with his mother and brother,
which the mere discovery that they were his mother and brother could not
have brought about; and the happiness of convalescence which glorified
all the circumstances about him, made it still more easy. He lived a
life of delightful idleness, feeling nothing but benevolence and
kindness for every created thing, how much more for his tender nurses
and companions?--getting well, eating and sleeping, and loving idle
talk, and to have all his people about him. He was so much a child in
this, that even his father, whom Val had never been familiar with, came
in for a share of his sociable affectionate desire to be always
surrounded by the group of those who belonged to him. He called for
everybody, with that regal power which is never possessed in such
perfection as by an invalid, to whom all who love him are bound by a
hundred ties of gratitude and admiration for having been so good and so
clever as to get well. He could not bear a look too serious, a clouded
face, and was himself as cheerful as the day, enjoying everything. Dick,
I need not say, had told him of that meeting with Violet, and of his
letters to her, and by this means Val had got up a spring of private
delight for himself--carrying on a limited but charming correspondence,
which, indeed, was all on one side, but which still gave him infinite
pleasure. “Keep up the Brown delusion, Dick,” he said, with infinite
relish of the fun, “till we go home; and then we’ll tell her. What a
joke, to be sure, that you should ever have been Brown!” And indeed this
was already the aspect the past had taken to both the young men; and it
was the strangest absurd thing, scarcely comprehensible, how they could
ever have believed it. The two had no share in the perturbation of their
elders. Good Dick was, as he had said, more the servant of that young
demigod and hero than if he had not been his brother. He did everything
for him--read to him, talked to him, brought him the news, and lived
over again every day of their intercourse since that day when they first
“took a liking to each other.” How strange it all seemed--how
extraordinary, and yet how natural--in face of this broad and obvious
explanation, which made everything plain!
I need not say that it was also the idea of Richard Ross to put into the
Edinburgh paper that cunning intimation that the young member for
Eskshire had been taken ill at the house of his mother, the Hon. Mrs
Richard Ross, at Oxford. Scarcely a soul who read that intimation ever
thought of anything but the luxurious and dignified dwelling which an
Hon. Mrs Ross would ordinarily inhabit; and the people who knew Oxford
tried hard to recollect whether they had ever met her, and where her
house was. The county in general was much perplexed and much affected by
this notice. It seemed impossible to believe that there was any specious
falsehood in so matter-of-fact a paragraph. “The old stories must all be
false,” one said to another; “Richard’s wife has been living separate
from her husband, that is all.” “But no one ever heard who she was,” the
doubting ones said; though even the greatest sceptic added, “I will ask
my son if he has ever met her in society.” Thus Richard’s diplomacy had
full success. He followed it up by other delicate touches, bulletins of
Valentine’s recovery, and tantalising hints such as only local gossip
can permit, and which were reserved for the pages of the ‘Castleton
Herald’--of the happy domestic _rapprochements_ which the Editor was
delighted to hear Mr Ross’s illness, otherwise so regrettable, was
likely to bring about. All this made a great commotion in the district.
You may think it was beneath the dignity of a man of Richard Ross’s
pretensions to descend to such means of breaking to the public a great
family event, which might otherwise have been differently interpreted;
but your great man, and especially your _diplomate_ and courtier, is
always the one most disposed to make use of flunkeyism and the popular
love of gossip. It is a sign, perhaps, of the cynical disregard of this
elevated class of mortals for ordinary people; anyhow, they rarely
hesitate to avail themselves of means which would wound the pride of
many less exalted persons. Life, like dreams (to which, heaven knows, it
bears in all matters so close a resemblance), goes by contraries. What
the poor and simple scorn, the rich and wise employ.
The Eskshire people, however, were destined to yet another sensation
more startling than this. It was in the nature of a recantation, and few
recantations have excited more local interest. I will not attempt to
describe all the motives and influences which were supposed to have
brought it about--for the reader is better informed, and knows that it
was brought about very simply, as perhaps some of his own good deeds
are, by the intervention and pertinacity of a slim girl with a soft
voice and a pair of pleading eyes. Nobody on Eskside knew that Violet,
at the point of the sword as it were, had extracted an apology from her
father. It appeared on the walls in the shape of a placard, about the
middle of April, and was sent by post to all the influential persons in
the district. Lasswade was white with it, every bit of fence possessing
the paper. It was addressed, like another notable letter, to the
Electors of Eskshire; but it was much shorter than the former one. What
it said was as follows:--
“GENTLEMEN,--It will be within the recollection of all of you that,
a few months ago, I thought it my duty to address to you a letter
concerning the standing and pretensions of Mr Valentine Ross, now
Conservative member for this county. It seemed right that you
should take into consideration what then appeared to me the very
doubtful proofs of Mr Ross’s identity. I am strongly opposed to him
and his family in politics; and I confess I thought it my duty to
indicate to you in the distinctest manner how poorly supported by
fact were his claims to your confidence. I am a Whig, and Mr Ross
is a Tory, and I do not pretend to be above the ordinary tactics of
electioneering, which have been pushed to further lengths than were
possible to me, by men of much higher worldly pretensions than
myself. But whether as Whig or as Tory, I hope it will always be an
Englishman’s highest boast to be an honest man; and circumstances
have convinced me that it is my duty to convey to my brother
electors an Apology for statements which I formerly made to them
under the influence of a mistake, and which I now find are less
certain than I then thought them. It is no disgrace to any man to
have fallen into a mistake, if, when he discovers it, he takes
pains to undo any mischief it may have produced.
“With this preface I will simply say, that though it is quite true,
as I stated, that Mr Valentine Ross appeared at his grandfather’s
house in a very strange and suspicious way, the inference I drew
from that is, I have reason to believe, incorrect. It does not
become me to enter into the private history of a family so well
known in this county; but I believe steps will shortly be taken to
remove all possibility of doubt upon the subject; and I can only
say that I for one am now convinced that our new member has the
fullest right to the name he bears. These important facts have only
come to my knowledge within the last fortnight; and I consider it
my duty, putting aside all false pride, which so often hinders a
man from acknowledging a mistake publicly made, at once to
communicate this discovery to the electors of Eskshire. I am as far
from agreeing with Mr Ross and his family politically as I ever
was; but I cannot continue to do a social injury to any man after I
have found out that my impression was a mistaken one. If I have
conveyed a prejudice against Mr Valentine Ross to the mind of any
brother elector, I can only add that I am unfeignedly sorry for it.
“AN ESKSIDE ELECTOR.”
This was the first thing that met the eyes of the travelling party
when--duly heralded by the Castleton paper, which in its last issue had
announced the approaching return of “Lord and Lady Eskside, the Hon.
Richard and Mrs Ross, Mr Valentine Ross, M.P. for Eskshire, and Mr
Richard Ross the younger”--they arrived at Lasswade. The old lord
himself was the first to read it when they got out at the little railway
station on the new branch line, which, as everybody knows, is still a
mile or two distant from the village. There were two carriages
waiting--the great barouche, which was Lady Eskside’s favourite, and a
vehicle of the genus dog-cart for “the boys;” and the usual little
commotion which always attends an arrival left a few minutes to spare
while the carriage drew up. Lord Eskside came and took his old wife by
the arm, and led her to the place where this address, blazoned in great
letters, “To the Electors of Eskshire,” held a prominent position. “Is
it something new?” she asked with a sickness at her heart; “oh, don’t
let Val see it!” When she had read it, however, the old pair looked at
each other and laughed with tremulous enjoyment. I am afraid it did not
occur to them to look at this as a high-minded atonement, or to see any
generosity in the confession. “Sandy Pringle is worsted at last,” the
old lord said, with a gleam of light from under his eyebrows. But the
exhilaration of unquestionable victory filled their hearts, and made
them forget for the moment the other drawbacks which attended their
return.
With this sense of having beaten their adversary strong in their minds,
they no longer hesitated to drive home through Lasswade, which they had
not intended to do; where they had a most flattering reception. What
with the curiosity excited by this probable _éclaircissement_ of a
romantic story and the eagerness of everybody to see Richard Ross’s
wife, and the new excitement produced by that placard on the
walls--which most people, I fear, received as Lord Eskside received
it--every one was agog. It was not a formal entrance with triumphal
arches, &c., for this is not a kind of demonstration very congenial to
the natural independence of the Lowland Scotch mind, which is much
disposed to be friendly towards its great neighbours, but very little
disposed to feudal notions of the respect due to a superior. Willie
Maitland, it is true, had once thought of suggesting something of the
sort, but he had fortunately forborne; and accordingly, though there
was an absence of flags and decorations, a very warm spontaneous welcome
was given to the travellers. They stopped at the door of the Bull, and
the carriage was instantly surrounded by a genial crowd, attracted, it
is true, quite as much by a desire for information, as by a wish to do
honour to Lord Eskside’s family; and there, sure enough, by my lady’s
side sat the unknown Mrs Ross, looking out with large eyes, in which a
certain terror and wonder combated the look of abstraction which was
habitual to them. She had been here before--how well she remembered how!
not in the chief street, honoured of everybody, but dragging through the
muddy roads, dull and despairing, with her two crying children. The cold
wild March night of her recollection was not more unlike the soft
sunshine of this May-day, than was her own position now and then. Was
she more happy? She did not ask herself the question. Only people in a
more or less artificial state of self-consciousness do ever ask
themselves if they are happy or not; the uninstructed soul takes life as
it comes. But her aspect impressed the people of Lasswade. They
concluded that she was “not very happy with her husband;” and as Richard
was not popular in the county he despised, this rather prepossessed the
popular mind in her favour; but that this woman had ever been the
“beggar-wife” of the popular legend, the county ever after refused to
believe.
The Dowager-Duchess had driven into Lasswade, of course “by accident,”
on that afternoon, and so had Sir John and his lady; and it is
astonishing how many other carriages of lesser potentates the Eskside
party met on their way home. It was a fine day to be sure; everybody was
out; and every separate detachment of anxious neighbours had its own
remarks to make. “The second son looks a fine lad,” the good people
said; for indeed Dick had beamed with grateful smiles upon every one who
had a welcome for Val. And thus the family, at last united, with glad
welcome of all their neighbours, and retractation of their enemy’s
slanders, made their way home. “You see we’ve brought Sandy Pringle to
his marrow-bones, my lord!” cried Willie Maitland the factor, my lord’s
right-hand man, as they drove away from the door of the Bull. “Ay, ay,
the auld sneck-drawer!” said Lord Eskside in his glee. This was all Mr
Pringle made by his apology. Val, I am happy to say, was otherwise
disposed--he took it generously touched by the confession, not
triumphing in it, as extorted from his assailant; and his explanation of
the placard, which he too had read eagerly to his brother and confidant,
was made in a very different tone. “I knew old Pringle was a good
fellow,” said Val; “he was forced to it by his party; but the moment he
hears the truth he comes forward and owns it like a man. Our fathers and
mothers think differently from us, Dick, old fellow. They think because
old Pringle is out of it so long as you and I are to the fore, that
therefore he must be our enemy. I always knew it was nothing of the
sort, but only a party move,” said Valentine, flourishing his whip with
that delicious sense of generous superior wisdom which dwells in the
bosom of youth; and then he added, softly, “After this, surely they
can’t make any more row about Violet and me.”
“I should think not,” said Dick, with a sigh; the sight of those Eskside
woods, where he had seen her, came back to his mind with a strange
thrill. What a moment of enchantment that had been! He had never hoped
it would come back again. How could he wish it to come back, when only
by injury to Val it could ever bring any happiness to him? And, to be
sure, he had only seen Violet twice, never long enough to----“What a
lucky fellow you are!” was what he said.
“Am I not?” cried Val, in his frank happiness; “I should think this was
the very last stone rolled out of my way.”
There had been a great commotion in Rosscraig, preparing everything for
the family party; the new wing had been opened, the carpets put down,
the curtains up, and everything arranged according to Lady Eskside’s
orders. The new wing had all kinds of conveniences in it--sitting-rooms
for the young couple for whom it was prepared, nurseries for the
children, everything that could help to make it agreeable to a son’s
family under the same roof with his father and mother. But as it
happened now, both Richard and Valentine preferred to keep their old
rooms; and the new wing was given up to Dick and his mother, to whom it
appeared a wilderness of grandeur, confusing and blank in its extent and
wealth. It had windows which looked down upon the wooded bank of the
Esk, and windows which looked to the great door and court-yard, and a
suite of rooms through which you could wander from one side to another,
for it ran all the breadth of the house. I am not sure that these two,
transported into that luxurious place, did not feel the change more
painfully and strangely than its natural occupants would have done had
they been suddenly dismissed to Styles’s river-side cottage. The mother
felt it most of all. She sat in her own rooms almost all the day,
patiently receiving the visits of her sons and of Lady Eskside, but
never seeking them in the other portions of the house--brightening to
see Val, but saying little even to him. She was chilled and stifled by
all these fine surroundings. Often she would rise and fling the windows
open, or pull at the curtains instinctively, as if to pull them down. “I
can’t breathe,” she would sometimes say to Dick, with a plaintive tone
in her voice. Her life, such as it was, was gone from her. She was quite
submissive, doing all that was asked of her, attempting no resistance. I
cannot explain the entire cessation now of the struggle which she had
kept up so long, any more than she could. Fate was too strong for her,
and her strength was waning; but when she yielded, she yielded
altogether, unreasoning and unreasonably, as she had struggled--her mind
was not capable of compromise, or of making the best of a position. When
she gave in she dropped her arms entirely, and with her arms her
strength.
And strangely enough, Val, the sight of whom had kept her alive, lost
his power now over his mother, and Dick, who was her own, became all in
all to her. She was happy only when her familiar companion was by her,
and could not be persuaded to go out except with Dick. Sometimes when
they wandered into the woods a gleam of something like pleasure would
come upon her face. There was one knoll which they found out by chance
in the very heart of the trees, a little bank which, when they
discovered it first, was covered with late primroses. The trees were
very thick round, and the sun came late, and penetrated but a short time
through the heavy boughs; and this, I suppose, kept them later in
blooming than their rustic neighbours. It is long, long since I have
seen these flowers; and perhaps it is the misty glory of that
morning-time of childhood that makes me feel there never were any such
primroses before or after in this commonplace world--so large, so
spotless, so full of sweetness, instinct with a lovely life of their
own, friends rather than flowers. Their long stalks thrilled with a
youthful force of existence, their green cool leaves overlapped each
other, glistening with heavenly dew, their celestial petals were not
like pale gold or soft velvet, which are the first vulgar images one
thinks of, but like themselves only--primroses, the very essence of
spring and fragrance and everlasting youth. When I shut my eyes I can
see them still, lifting up their lovely heads out of their leaves,
looking you and heaven in the face with all the candour of innocence,
though it is, oh, so many years since they and I saw each other! When
Dick and his mother, wandering through the woods, came to this bank, it
seemed to touch her heart as nothing had done. She sat down on the grass
and gazed at the flowers in a transport. “If we were as we used to be,”
she said, “oh, Dick, my lad, how you would have run to the cart for a
basket! It seems no more than waste to gather them now. What would we do
with them? there’s grander flowers in all the rooms; they’d be like you
and me, Dick, out of our place. Flowers were always what I liked. I
never was one for saying much,” she went on, reflectively, “but a basket
of primroses, that speaks for itself.”
“How you go back upon the old days, mother! said Dick, regretfully, and
perhaps with a slight reproach.
“Yes, lad; I liked them best. It’s heavy on me to be shut up in houses.
I was never used to it,” she said, with a sigh.
“But you can put up with it, mother?--you _will_ put up with it?--for
the sake of Val--and me.”
A gleam came from her eyes--a sparkle of tenderness and light. “I’ll do
what’s best,” she said--“whatever is best:” then with a sudden rush of
tears, “You may let me think of the old days, Dick; for my strength’s
changed, and my mind’s changed, and I never can go back to them--never
no more--even if I would.”
“But, mother,” said Dick, “it used to keep you happy to see Val only on
the river, once a-day or twice a-day, in his boat. I did not know why it
was then; but I saw it; and now you’ve got him altogether----”
“Ah, it’s different, it’s different!” she cried; “can’t you see, lad?
Then he was none o’ mine--he was his father’s; it was more than I could
have hoped for to see him like that--it kept me alive. Now he’ll come to
me when I like, Dick; and kind he looks and kind he speaks, God bless
him! He’d do himself an injury to please me; but ah, it’s different! If
I could take them to the market in a basket, and sell a bunch here and
a bunch there, that’s what I would like,” she went on with a sudden
change of tone, drawing the flowers through her thin hands.
It was with a kind of despair that Dick took her home. She was getting
thin visibly, he thought. She would sit at the window for hours
together, gazing, seeing nothing. For the first few days she suffered
herself to be taken to the family meals, but this evidently agitated her
beyond endurance, and had to be given up. What was to be done? Not one
of them could tell, or indeed form an idea; the only thing that could be
trusted in was time, which might possibly bring back a subdued harmony
to those chords which at present were all ajar; but for the moment there
seemed little hope even of that. All the restlessness of old came back
to her. When the active habits of her life at Oxford became unnecessary,
the self-restraint she had learnt there failed her also. She took to
talking (when she did talk) of nothing but the tramp-life, which seemed
to have suddenly come into prominence in her mind. Now and then she
dozed in the long afternoons, and Dick heard her murmuring in her sleep
about the long road, and how far it was, and the lad that was tired.
Poor Dick’s satisfaction in his new circumstances was suddenly subdued
by this. It did not occur to him that she was ill; he thought it was one
of the old fits coming on, in which he had always felt the dreadful risk
there was that she might go secretly away from him, and never be heard
of more. To be sure, he comforted himself by thinking these fits had
always gone off again, and so perhaps would this one now.
Thus the family life recommenced under its changed circumstances. I
doubt whether any one in the great house was happy. The old people had a
secret in their keeping, which destroyed their peace, and which must
produce further troubles still; and Dick had his mother, whose state
alarmed him: and Richard Ross was in a position very difficult for a man
to bear, totally ignored by his wife, yet feeling a curious secret
attraction towards her, and a half-whimsical half-tragical wonder
whether they were ever to be drawn closer, or if all was over between
them. Valentine, the happiest of the party, was not without his troubles
too, for he had written to Violet, and received no reply, and at the
Hewan there was no intelligence to be obtained of her. Thus they had all
enough to do to carry on the possibilities of living; and the great
happiness and good fortune which had come to them, scarcely looked for
the moment like good fortune at all.