Mrs. Oliphant

“ Lord Eskside thought of Val as an old soldier might think of a descendant who had turned his back upon an enemy. Shame, and love eager to conceal the shame—sharp personal mortification and the sting of wounded pride, battling with tenderness unspeakable, and anxious longing at any cost, at all hazards, to wipe out this stain and inspire the unfortunate to redeem himself: these were the feelings in his mind. The sharpest ingredient in such a cup of bitterness is, that the parent well knows he cannot work out redemption for his boy. No other but the boy himself can do that. ”

“ He was as fair as Val was dark, about the same height, and though not like Val, was so like another face which Mr Pringle knew, that his heart made a jump into his mouth with wonder and terror. Perhaps he might not have remarked this likeness but for the strange association of the two lads, standing side by side as they were, and evidently on the most friendly terms. “Who is that?” cried Mr Pringle, staring with wide-open eyes.
“It is the best fellow in the world,” cried Val, laughing, as Dick sprang aside to arrange the cushions in a boat which lay alongside the raft. ”

“ Lord Eskside was as eager about the sight as if it had been he who was the new boy. “Look how light they are, Val!” he cried—“how cleverly they manage them! If those long oars get out of balance the thing upsets. Look at that small creature there no bigger than yourself——”
“Bigger! he’s not up to my elbow,” cried Val, indignant.
“Well, smaller than yourself: but you could not do that, you lout, to save your life.”
Val’s face grew crimson. “Come back next week, grandpa,” he said, “and see if I can’t; or come along, I’ll try now; it would only be a ducking—and what do I care for a ducking? ”

“ To marry as he had done, wildly, hotly, in sudden passion,—is not that much more easily condoned by the great world in which he lived, which loves a sensation, than a respectable mediocre marriage, equally removed from scandal and from distinction? To marry a gipsy, or an opera-dancer, or a maid-of-all-work, is more pardonable, as being a piquant rebellion against all law and order, than it is to marry a virtuous person out of the lower circles of good society, sufficiently well-born and well-bred to make no sensation. The lawyer’s daughter was gall to Richard. ”

“ If you were not what you are, sir, the first man in the county, as you ought to be—if my father were not what he is, distinguished in other circles than ours—then, perhaps, I, who as yet am nobody, might have required to look outside, to get crutches of other people’s distinctions; but as it is, what does it matter? We are rich enough, we are more independent than the Queen, who, poor lady, must always consider other people, I suppose; whereas I, who am your grandson—and your son, sir—I,” cried Val, “am more free than a prince to ask for love only and happiness! ”

“ There are different kinds of love, Mary. You and I even would love very differently, let alone you and her. With you there would be no thought of anything but of the person loved——”
“I am not at all in question, Lady Eskside,” said the other, with the strangest delicate haughtiness.
“I beg your pardon,” said the old lady, quickly. “You are right, my dear; there is no question of you. But still there are different kinds of love. Some think only of the person loved, as I said; but some are roused up into a kind of fierce consciousness of themselves through their very love. ”

“ You have not the heart not to help us, Mary. Come and sit down again and let us think what to do. Here is where we played truant when we were children. Here is where you brought us, Mary—you—when we were older; and here is where Vi gave me her promise. This is the place of all others to meet again. As for any pretence of separating us, how can any one do it? Think a little,” said Val, standing before the fallen tree on which Vi had sat with poor Dick, and from which she now regarded him with soft eyes suffused with light and happiness. ”

“ What it was to be a gentleman, he thought! and this was his father, his father! A new pride unknown to him before came into existence within him, a glimmer which lighted up that dim landscape. After all, the new world, though it was so strangely mysterious and uncertain, was it not more splendid, more beautiful to the imagination, than the old world could ever have been?
Val made slow but sure progress towards recovery, and the family lived a strange life in attendance upon him, occupying Dick’s little parlour all day, and returning to the hotel for the night. ”

“ I am not sure that a momentary regret over her chicken-pie did not make itself felt in Mrs Pringle’s soul; but she, too, paused with a little emotion to look at the unconscious baby-pair, leaning against each other in mutual support; the little woman overwhelmed with remorse and fatigue, the little man moody and penitent over the dregs of the feast, and the wild career of pleasure past. But just then there came a crash of branches, and louder steps resounding down the brae among the ferns, which made Val’s face light up with hope and shame, and woke little Violet from her momentary oblivion. ”

“ But after his conversation with his grandmother, this vague terror suddenly took shape and form. His mother, his real mother, who had a right to him, might claim him, might seize upon him and carry him away. The idea filled him for the moment with mortal terror. He lost the security of childhood, and for the time felt himself involved in that insecurity, that panic, which is more terrible to a child than it ever can be in more mature life. A spasm came into his throat—a pang of shame and outraged feeling—which added to the terror, and made it very hard to bear. ”

“ He went in to his grandmother serious, and, as she thought, sad; and Lady Eskside was pleased by the cloud over his face, and set it down to his sorrow at leaving home, putting her own sentiments into Valentine’s mind, as we all do.
“You must not be down-hearted, Val,” she said, drawing him close to her, and speaking with a quiver in her lip. “When once the shock is over, you will find plenty of new friends, and be very happy. It is natural at your age. It is us that will miss you, oh my bonnie boy! far, far more than you will miss my old lord and me.” ”

“ Me myself, with children of my own that take up my mind, I find myself thinking of that poor boy when I have plenty other things to think of. Ah, Violet, you kiss me for that! but, my dear, ask yourself—after what has come and gone—how could it ever, ever be?”
“No one wants it to be!” said Violet, with one of her vehement impulses of maiden pride, raising her head from her mother’s shoulder with a hot angry flush covering her face; “but one does not cease—to take an interest—in one’s—friend, because of any quarrel. ”

“ And I will not attempt to linger at this advanced period of my story, or to tell all the means by which the Pringles, on one side, and the Rosses on the other, were brought to consent to that unalterable decision of the young people, which both Val and Vi believed themselves to have held to with resolution heroical through trials unparalleled. Reflect with yourself, kind reader, how long, if you have an only daughter, your middle-aged, sternness could hold out against the tears in her sweet eyes?—reflect how long you could stand out against your boy—the fine fellow who is your pride and glory? ”

“ 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. ”

“ No doubt Val was like his father—no doubt he recalled to the woman, who had once been proud (who could doubt?) of being loved by a “gentleman,” the handsome, noble young deceiver who had betrayed her. But Dick did not use such hard words; he did not think of any betrayal in the case. He knew how tramp-girls are brought up, and only pitied, did not blame, or even defend, his mother. It seemed to him natural enough; and Val no doubt recalled his handsome father as homely Dick never did and never could do. Poor Dick! if there was a little pang in this, it was merely instinctive and momentary. ”

“ Pringle! that was the man—his pretended friend, his relation, a man who had smiled upon him, eaten with him, called him by friendly names, sought him out. I cannot tell how it was that Violet, and everything connected with her, disappeared altogether at this crisis from the young man’s agitated mind. He never paused to think that it was Vi’s father against whom his whole passionate soul rose up in one longing to punish and avenge. She and everything gentle in his life disappeared and was swept away, the burning tide of fury being too strong for them. ”

“ They obeyed her as they would have obeyed Lady Eskside herself. They thought Val was dead, and so did she. She stood and looked at him, when they rushed away to get help for her, in a misery of impotence and longing beyond all words to say. Oh, could she do nothing for him! nothing! She would have given her life for him; but what is a poor mother’s life, or who would accept so easy a ransom? She could only stand and gaze at him in hopeless, helpless, miserable anguish, and wring her hands. ”

“ She sat and watched him, falling asleep on Lady Eskside’s knee, with the strangest aching mixture of irritation and interest. She was half envious, half impatient of the strange beatitude and absorption with which her old friend held the boy, throwing her own very being into him—the child who had been stolen away from all lawful life and protection, who had lived among outcasts, a beggar, a baby-adventurer, the child of a tramp! How could that proud old woman take him out of hands so stained, and take him to her pure and honourable breast? ”

“ Lady Eskside, looking out of the window, watched all this with an aching heart. It seemed to her that all was over. She could not take her eyes from the impertinent placard opposite on the Liberal headquarters—“Seisin, 355; Ross, 289.” The yellow ribbons seemed to flaunt at her; her very heart was sick; and the dullness of mental suffering crept over her old frame. “Oh, Val, my dear, I wish this was over,” she said, taking his hand between hers. “Never fear, grandma,” he said, smiling at her dimly, as if from the midst of a dream. ”

“ The thought of that election declared void for which he had struggled so stoutly, and of some one else coming in upon Val’s ruin, triumphing in his downfall, was sharp as a poisoned sword in the old man’s heart. Lady Eskside thought chiefly of the boy himself, and of what he might do in his despair; but the public downfall which seemed imminent, added pangs even more bitter to her husband’s sufferings. His adversary had done all that an adversary might; but no adversary could harm Lord Eskside and break his heart as his boy could. The old lord was very strong upon race. ”

“ Oh no, never again! but what had all Violet’s discreet and exemplary life—a life irreproachable and full of every (nursery) virtue—to show, which could compare with the transport, and terror, and misery, and sweetness, of that one never-to-be-repeated day?
Vi had a great deal to bear afterwards, when the boys heard the story, and held over her the recollection of the “day she played truant,” with all that delight in torture which is natural to their kind. But with all this they could not take from her the memory of it, which grew dearer in proportion as she buried it in her own small bosom. ”

“ Valentine had been lying motionless on his sofa, looking from one to another with large and wondering eyes. It is needless to say that amid so many different narrators he had already divined, even before Dick spoke, the solution of this mystery; and it had given him sufficient shock to drive the blood back wildly to his heart. But he had time to prendre son parti, and he was too much of a man not to bear it like a man, as Dick said. When his new brother held out his hands, a sudden suffusion of colour came to Val’s face, and a smile almost of infantile sweetness and weakness. ”

“ She had meant to give Val up, and her happiness and her life—but, alas, poor little Violet! I fear she had not thought of being taken at her word. In her little breaking heart there had survived an unspoken hope that Lady Eskside would gather her up into her kind old arms, kiss her, forgive her, and make everything again as though this misery had never been. At twenty it is so easy to believe that everything can be made up, if only those who have the power could be persuaded to have the will also. ”

“ Sandy admitted, “and it was enough to drive a man out of his wits; but why should he have laid hands on me? What had I done? You are a girl, Vi, you don’t understand; but, by Jove! to stand being struck—by another fellow, you know.”
“And hadn’t he been struck, and far deeper? Oh Sandy, only think—all that about his mother, and about his coming here! I don’t think he knew of it, or remembered. And to be exposed to the whole county, everybody, all these great people, and all the poor folk—everybody! Oh, poor Val, poor Val!” ”

“ Oh, you cannot think we knew of it, mamma and I. She is ill, or she would have been here too. Oh, my lady, my lady, think a moment! if it is hard for you, it is worse for us. It will kill mamma; and my heart is broken, my heart is broken!” cried poor little Vi.
“Miss Pringle, I do not think, on the spur of the moment, that there is much to be said between you and me.”
“Oh, my lady!” Violet cried out, as if she had been struck, at the sound of her own name.
“Nothing to be said,” continued Lady Eskside, though her voice wavered. “Who would blame you, poor thing—or your mother either? ”

“ He never would disappoint any one—never turn into a dilettante, loving china better than child or wife. She kissed Mary in a little outburst of pity—pity so angelic that Violet almost longed to change places with her, that she might see and prove for herself how different Valentine was. As for Mary, she made herself responsible for this mad expedition with a great confusion and mingling of feelings. She went, she said to herself, to prevent harm; but some strange mixture of a visionary maternity, and of a fellow-feeling quite incompatible with her mature age, was in her mind at the same time. ”

“ God forgive you, Richard! You’ve known, then, all the time? you’ve exposed us and Val to abuse and insult, and maybe killed the lad and broken my old lord’s heart. Oh, God forgive you, Richard! is this the way you’ve done your duty to us and your boy?”
Lady Eskside wrung her hands. Her old face flushed and grew pale; hot tears filled her eyes. Something of personal disappointment was in the pang with which she felt this supposed deception. Women, I fear, are more apt to think of deception than men. ”

“ 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. ”