“RICHARD, there is one disagreeable subject which, as you said nothing about it, I have avoided as long as possible; but I must speak now, before you go.”
Lady Eskside had led her son out upon the terrace the evening before he was to leave. She was dressed for dinner in her black satin gown, with a lace cap and stomacher, which even his fastidious eye approved. She had come to the age when little change of costume is possible. Sometimes she wore velvet instead of satin, but that was about all the variety she made, and her lace was her only vanity. She had a crimson Indian scarf thrown over her head and shoulders. Her erect old figure was still as trim, and her step as springy, as any girl’s. She was the picture of an old lady, everybody allowed;—and it was true she was old—yet full of an unquenchable youth. She had taken her son by the arm in the interval before dinner, and led him out into the open air to speak to him. Perhaps it was an inopportune moment; but it was a subject for which she felt a few minutes were enough, as it could not but be painful to both.
“Well, mother,” he said, with a tone of resignation. He was going next day, which gave him strength to bear this ordeal, whatever its cause might be.
“I have said nothing to you—indeed, indeed, I have wished to say nothing—about—— Richard, my dear boy, listen to me with patience, I will not keep you long—— about—Val’s mother—your wife.”
“What about her?” said Richard, with harsh brevity. He made a movement almost as if to throw off his mother’s arm.
“My dear, you must not think this subject is less disagreeable to me than to you. Nothing has been said about her for a long time——”
“And why should anything be said about her?” said Richard. “In such a hopeless business, what is the advantage of discussion? She has chosen her path in life, which is not the same as mine.”
His soft and gentle face set into a harsh rigidity: it grew stern, almost severe. “Come indoors, mother—the evening gets cold,” he added, after a pause.
“Just a word, Richard—just one word! Do you not see a trace of something different rising in her? She has brought back your boy: I suppose she thinks, poor thing, that it is just she should have one of them——”
“Mother,” said Richard, “I am astonished at your charity. You say, poor thing. Do you remember that she has ruined your son’s life?”
Lady Eskside made no answer. She looked at him wistfully, with an evident repression of something that rose to her lips.
“She has been my curse,” said Richard, vehemently. “For God’s sake, if she will leave us alone, let us leave her alone. She has made my life a desert. Is it choice, do you think, that makes me an outcast from my own country? that shuts me out from everything your son and my father’s son ought to have been? Why cannot I take my proper place in society—my natural place? You know well enough what the answer is—she is the cause. She has been my ruin: she is the curse of my life.”
He spoke almost with passion, growing not red but white in the intensity of his feelings. Lady Eskside looked at him, kept looking at him, with a face in which sympathy shone—along with some other expression not so easy to be defined.
“Richard,” she said, in a low voice, “all you say is true—who can know it better than I do? but oh, my dear, mind! she could have had no power on your life, if you had not given it to her—of your free will.”
“So, then, it is I alone who am to blame?” said Richard, with a laugh, which was half rage and half scorn. “I might have known that was what you were sure to say.”
“Yes, you might have known it,” said Lady Eskside—“for nothing, I hope, will ever shut my mind to justice; but not because I am in the habit of reproaching you, Richard—for that I never did, even when you had made my heart sore; but we need not quarrel about it, you and me. What I want to know is, if you do not see now the still greater importance of getting some hold upon her—for Valentine’s—for all our sakes?”
“You will never get a hold upon her: it is folly to dream of it. She is beyond your reach, or that of any reasonable creature. Mother, come in—the bell must have rung for dinner.”
“I have written to the man we employed before,” said Lady Eskside, hurriedly. “This was what I wanted to say. Do not stare at me, Richard! I will not put up with it. I must do my duty as I see it, and whatever comes of it. I have given him all the particulars I could, and told him to try every means, and lose no time. Her heart must be soft after giving up her child.”
“So,” said Richard, with a quivering pale smile, “you consult me what should be done after all the steps have been taken. This is kind! You have taken care to provide for my domestic comfort, mother—”
“If we should find her—which God grant!—I will take charge of her,” said Lady Eskside, with a flush of resentment. “Neither your comfort nor your pride shall be interfered with—never fear.”
“You are most considerate, mother,” said Richard. “Your house, then, is to be finally closed to me, after the effort I have made to revisit it? Well, after all, I suppose the Palazzo Graziani suits me best.”
“You are cruel to say so, Richard,” said his mother. Tears came quickly to her bright old eyes; but at that moment Lord Eskside looked out from one of the drawing-room windows, and stayed the further progress of the quarrel.
“What are you two doing there, philandering like a lad and a lass?” said the old lord. “Richard, bring your mother in; she’ll catch cold. There’s a heavy dew falling, though it’s a fine night.”
“It is my mother who insists on staying out in the night air, which I disapprove of,” said Richard. “The Italians have a prejudice on the subject of sunset. They think it the most dangerous hour of the day. I am so much of an Italian now—and likely to be more so—that I have taken up their ideas; at least so far as sunset is concerned.”
“So much an Italian—and likely to be more so!—I hope not, I hope not, Richard,” said his father. “After this good beginning you have made, it will be hard upon your poor mother and me if we cannot tempt you home.”
“Or drive me away for ever,” said Richard, so low that his mother only heard him. She grasped his arm with a sudden vehemence of mingled love and anger, which for the moment startled him, and then dropped it, and stepped in through the window, letting the subject drop altogether. She was unusually bright at dinner, excited, as it seemed, by the sharp little encounter she had just had, which had stirred up all her powers. Lord Eskside, who was not of a fanciful nature, and whose moods did not change so quickly, regarded her with some suspicion. He was himself depressed by his son’s approaching departure, and somewhat disposed to be angry, as he generally was when depressed.
“You must have been saying something to your mother to raise her spirits,” he said, after one or two ineffectual attempts to subdue her—when Richard and he were left to their claret.
“Not I, sir,” said Richard, “on the contrary; my mother has ideas with which I disagree entirely.”
“Ay, boy, to be sure,” said the old lord, “she was saying something to me. Then it was opposition, and not satisfaction as I thought? You see, Richard, women have their own ways of thinking. We cannot always follow their reasoning; but in the main your mother’s perhaps right.”
And having said this, in mild backing up of his wife’s bolder suggestions, Lord Eskside changed the subject and spoke of the property, and of new leases he was granting, and the improvement of the estate.
“There is a great deal of land about Lasswade that might be feued very advantageously—but I would not do it without ascertaining your feeling on the subject, Richard. It can’t make much difference in my time; but in the course of nature that time can’t be very long.”
“I wish it might be a hundred years,” said Richard, with no false sentiment; for indeed, apart from natural affection, to be Lord Eskside and live up here in the paternal château among the woods did not charm his imagination much.
“That is all very pleasant for you to say,” said his father, receiving and dismissing the compliment with a wave of his hand; “but, as I say, in the course of nature my time must be but short. There is just the question about the amenities, upon which every man has his own opinions——”
“The—— what did you say?” asked Richard, puzzled.
“The amenities of the place. It is true the village is not visible from the house, but if in the future you were to find the new houses that might be built an eyesore——”
“That is entirely a British notion,” Richard answered, with a smile; “I think great part of the beauty in Italy is from the universal life you see everywhere—villages climbing up every hillside. No; I have no English prejudices on that point.”
“I don’t know that it’s an English prejudice,” said Lord Eskside, who never forgot the distinction between English and Scotch as his son invariably did. “Then you don’t object to feuing? Willie Maitland will be a proud man. He has told me often I might add a thousand a-year to the income of the property by judicious feus. They will be taken up by all kind of shopkeeper bodies, retired tradesmen, and the like—a consideration which gives me little trouble, Richard, but may perhaps act upon you. No? Well, you’re a philosopher: they’re bad at an election; they’re totally beyond control—unless, indeed, your mother and I were to put ourselves out of our way to visit and make of them; but we would want a strong inducement for that.”
Here Lord Eskside looked at his son with a look of veiled entreaty, not saying anything; and Richard knew his father well enough to comprehend.
“You must not think of that, sir,—indeed you must not. Am I in a position to be set up before the county, and have every fact of my life brought up against me? No, father, anything else you like—but let me stay among strangers, where the circumstances of my existence need not be inquired into.”
“I don’t know that you have anything to be ashamed of,” said Lord Eskside, with a husky voice.
“Anyhow, I cannot offer myself as a subject to be discussed by all the world,” said Richard. Courage, he said to himself—to-morrow and all this will be over! He made a strenuous effort to be patient, strengthened by the thought.
“Well, Richard, if you have made up your mind—but you know our wishes,” said the old lord with a sigh. Little Val had been exercising his grandfather’s temper by his excursions round the table a little while before. He had been obstinate and childishly disobedient till he was carried off by the ladies; and Lord Eskside, somewhat out of temper, as I have said, by reason of being depressed in spirits, had been ready to augur evil of the child’s future career. But the contradiction of Val’s father was more grave. When he resisted his parent’s wishes it was of little use to be angry. The old lord sighed with a dreary sense that nothing was to be made by struggling. Of all hopeless endeavours that of attempting to make your children carry out the plans you have formed, is (he thought to himself) the most hopeless. Everything might favour the project which would make a man’s friends happy, and satisfy all their aspirations for him; when, lo! a causeless caprice, a foolish dislike, would balk everything. It is true that he had for years resigned the hope of seeing Richard take his true place in the county, and show at once to the new men what the good old blood was worth, and to the old gentry that the Rosses were still their leaders, as they had been for generations; but this visit had brought a renewal of all the old visions. He had seen with a secret pride, of which, even to his wife, he had not breathed a word, his son assume with ease a social position above his brightest hopes. The county had not only received him, but followed him, admired him, listened to his opinions as those of an oracle. To bring him in for the county after this, and to carry his election by acclamation, would be child’s-play, his father thought. But Richard did not see it. He was, or assumed to be, indifferent to the applause of “the county.” He cared nothing for his own country, or for that blessedness of dwelling among his own people which Scripture itself has celebrated. No wonder that Lord Eskside should sigh. “I believe you think more of these fiddling play-acting foreigners,” he said, after an interval of silence, during which his eyebrows and his under lip had been in full activity, “than for all our traditions, and all the duties of your condition in life.”
“Every man has his taste, sir,” Richard answered, with a shrug of his shoulders, which irritated his father still more deeply.
“Well, you are old enough to judge for yourself,” he said, getting up abruptly from the table. A great many things to say to his son had been in the old lord’s mind. He had meant to expound to him his own view of the politics of the day, at home, to which naturally Richard had not paid much attention. He had meant to impress upon him the line the Rosses had always taken in questions exclusively Scotch. But all this was cut short by Richard’s refusal even to consider the question. Being sad beforehand by reason of his son’s departure, I leave you to imagine how melancholy-cross and disappointed Lord Eskside was now.
“What! is that imp still up?” he said, as going into the drawing-room he stumbled over his own best-beloved stick, upon which Val had been riding races round the room. “How dared you take my stick, sir? If you do that again you shall be whipped.”
“You daren’t whip me,” cried saucy Valentine. “Grandma says I am never to be frightened no more—but I ain’t frightened; and I’m to have what I want. Grandma! he is taking my stick away!”
“Your stick, ye little whipper-snapper! No; one generation succeeds another soon enough, but not so soon as that. Send the boy to his bed, my lady. He ought to have been there an hour ago.”
“Just for this night,” said Lady Eskside, as she caught the little rebel, and, holding him close in her arms, smoothed the ruffled curls on his forehead, and whispered in his ear that he was to be good, and not to make grandpa angry. “Just for this night—as his father is going away.”
“Oh, his father!” said her husband, with a slight snort of irritation which showed Lady Eskside that the last evening had been little more satisfactory to him than to herself. Her own voice had faltered a little as she spoke of Richard’s departure, and she looked at her son wistfully, with an incipient tear in the corner of her eye, hoping (though she might have known better) for some response; but Richard, as bland and gentle as ever, had seated himself by Mary, to whom he was talking, and altogether ignored his mother’s furtive appeal. Valentine gave her enough to do just at that moment to hold him, which, perhaps, was well for her; and Lord Eskside walked away to the other end of the room, pretending to look at the books which were scattered about the tables, and whistling softly under his breath, which was one of his ways of showing irritation. Even Mary was agitated she scarcely knew why; not on Richard’s account, she said to herself, but as feeling the suppressed excitement in the house, the secret sense of disappointment and deep heart-dissatisfaction which was in those two old people, who had but little time before them to be happy in, and so wanted the sunshine of life all the more. Richard’s visit had been a success in one sense. It had answered to their highest hopes, and more than answered; but yet in more intimate concerns, in a still closer point of view, it had been a failure; and of this the father and mother were all the more tremulously sensible that he showed so little consciousness of it—nay, no consciousness at all. He sat for a long time by Mary, talking to her of the most ordinary subjects, while his mother sat silent in her chair, and Lord Eskside, at the other end of the room, made-believe to look for something in the drawers of one of the great cabinets, opening and shutting them impatiently. Richard sat and talked quite calmly during these demonstrations, unaffected by them. He kissed his child coolly on the forehead, and bid him good-bye, with something like a sentiment of internal gratitude to be rid of the little plague, who rather repelled than attracted him. Mary went to her room shortly after Valentine’s removal, which was effected with some difficulty, pleading a headache, and in reality unable to bear longer the painful atmosphere of family constraint—Lady Eskside’s half-appealing, half-affronted looks, and anxious consciousness of every movement her son made, and the old lord’s irritation, which was more demonstrative. Then the three who were left gathered together round the fire, and some commonplace conversation—conversation studiously kept on the level of commonplace—ensued. Richard was to start early next morning, and proposed to take leave of his mother that night—“not to disturb her at such an unearthly hour,” he said. “Did you ever leave the house at any hour when I did not make you your breakfast and see you away?” Lady Eskside asked, with a thrill of pain in her voice. And as she left the room, she grasped his hand, and looked wistfully in his face, while he stooped to kiss her. “Richard,” she said in a half whisper, as the two faces approached close to each other, “for myself I do not ask anything—but, oh, mind, your father is an old man! Please him if you can.”
Lord Eskside was leaning upon the mantelpiece, gazing into the fire. He continued the same commonplace strain of talk when his son came back to him. How badly the trains corresponded; how hard it would be, without waiting at cross stations and losing much time, to accomplish the journey. “And as you have to make so early a start you should go to your bed soon, my boy,” he said, and held out his hand; then grasping his son’s, as his wife had done, added hastily, his eyebrows working up and down—“What I have been saying to you, Richard, may look less important to you than it does to me; but if you would make an effort to please your mother! She’s been a good mother to you; and neither I nor anything in the world can give her the pleasure that you could. Good night. I shall see you in the morning;” and Lord Eskside took up his candle and hurried away.
The effect of this double appeal, so pathetically repeated, was not, I fear, all that it should have been. When he reached his own room, Richard yawned, and stretching his arms above his head—“Thank heaven! I shall be out of this to-morrow,” he said.