THERE was a great dinner at Rosscraig before Val went to Oxford: as much fuss made about him, the neighbours began to say, as was made for his father who came home so seldom, and had distinguished himself in diplomacy, and turned out to be a man of whom the county could be proud; whereas Val was but an untried boy going to college, of whom no one could as yet say how he would turn out. Mr Pringle was invited to this great ceremonial, partly by way of defiance to show him how popular the heir was, and partly (for the two sentiments are not incapable of conjunction) out of kindness, as recognising his relationship. He came, and he listened to the remarks, couched in mysterious terms, yet comprehensible enough, which were made as to Val’s future connection with the county, in grim silence. After dinner, when the ladies had retired, and as the wine began to circulate, these allusions grew broader, and at length Mr Pringle managed to make out very plainly that old Lord Eskside was already electioneering, though his candidate was but nineteen, and for the moment there was very little chance of a new election. Val, careless of the effect he was intended to produce, and quite unconscious of his grandfather’s motives, was letting loose freely his boyish opinions, all marked, as we have said, with the Eton mark, which may be described as Conservative in the gross, with no very clear idea what the word means in detail, but a charming determination to stick to it, right or wrong. Lord Eskside smiled benignly upon these effusions, and so did most of his guests. “He has the root of the matter in him,” said the old lord, addressing Sir John, who was as anxious as himself to have “a good man” elected for the county, but who had no son, grandson, or nephew of his own; and Sir John nodded back in genial sympathy. Mr Pringle, however, as was natural, being on the opposite side from the Rosses in everything, was also on the other side in politics, and maintained an eloquent silence during this part of the entertainment. He bided his time, and when there came a lull in the conversation (a thing that will happen occasionally), he made such an interpellation as showed that his silence arose from no want of inclination to speak.
“Your sentiments are most elevated, Valentine,” he said, “but your practice is democratical to an extent I should scarcely have looked for from your father’s son. I hope your friend the boatman at Eton is flourishing—the one you introduced to my daughter and me?”
“A boatman at Eton,” said the old lord, bending his brows, “introduced to Violet? You are dreaming, Pringle. I hope Val knows better than that.”
“Indeed I think it shows very fine feeling on Valentine’s part—this was one of nature’s noblemen, I gathered from what he said.”
“Nature’s fiddlestick!” exclaimed Lord Eskside, and the Tory gentlemen pricked up their ears. There was scarcely one of them who did not recollect, or find himself on the eve of recollecting, at that moment, that Val’s mother was “not a lady,” and that blood would out.
“I introduced him to you as a boatman, sir,” said Val, “not as anything else; though as for noblemen, Brown is worth twenty such as I have known with handles to their names. We get to estimate people by their real value at Eton, not by their accidental rank,” said the youth splendidly, at which Mr Pringle cried an ironical “Hear, hear!”
“Gently, gently, my young friend,” said Sir John. “Rank is a great power in this world, and not to be lightly spoken of; it does not become you to speak lightly of it; and it does not agree with your fine Tory principles, of which I warmly approve.”
“What have Tory principles to do with it?” said Val. “A fellow may be rowdy or a snob though he is a lord; and in that case at Eton, sir, whatever may happen at other places, we give him the cold shoulder. I don’t mean to set up Eton for an example,” said Val, gravely, at which there was a general roar.
“Bravo, bravo, my young Tory!” cried the Duke himself, no less a person, who on that night honoured Lord Eskside’s table. “In that respect, if you are right, Eton is an example, let any one who pleases take the other side.”
“If Wales had been at Eton, and had been wowdy, we’d have sent him to Coventry as soon as look at him,” said Lord Hightowers, smoothing an infantile down on his upper lip.
“A very fine sentiment; but I don’t know if the antagonistic principle would work,” said Mr Pringle. “I am a Liberal, as everybody knows; but I don’t care about admitting boatmen to my intimacy, however much I may contemn an unworthy peer.”
“Did Brown intrude upon you?” said Valentine, bewildered; “was he impudent? did he do anything he oughtn’t to? Though I could almost as soon believe that I had behaved like a cad myself, if you say so I’ll go down directly and kick the fellow.” And poor Valentine, flushed and excited, half rose from his seat.
“Bwown!” said Lord Hightowers from the other side of the table. “Beg your pardon, but you’re mistaken; you must be mistaken. Bwown! best fellow that ever lived. Awfully sorry he’s not a gentleman; but for a cad—no, not a cad—a common sort of working fellow, he’s the nicest fellow I ever saw. Couldn’t have been impudent—not possible. It ain’t in him, eh, Ross? or else I’d go and kick him too with pleasure,” said the young aristocrat calmly.
Between the fire of these two pairs of young eyes, Mr Pringle was somewhat taken aback.
“Oh, he was not impudent; on the contrary, a well-informed nice young fellow. My only wonder was, that young gentlemen of your anti-democratical principles should make a bosom friend of a man of the people—that’s all. For my part, I think it does you infinite credit,” said Mr Pringle, blandly. “I hope you have been having good sport at Castleton, Lord Hightowers. You ought to have come out to my little moor at Dalrulzian, Val. I don’t know when the boys have had better bags.”
And thus the conversation fell back into its ordinary channels; indeed it had done so before this moment, the battle about Brown having quickly failed to interest the other members of the party. Lord Eskside sat bending his brows and straining his mind to hear, but as he had the gracious converse of a Duke to attend to, he could not actually forsake that potentate to make out the chatter of the boys with his adversary. Thus Mr Pringle fired his first successful shot at Val. The Tory gentlemen forgot the story, but they remembered to have heard something or other of a love of low company on the part of Valentine Ross, “which, considering that nobody ever knew who his mother was, was perhaps not to be wondered at,” some of the good people said. When Lady Eskside heard of it, she was so much excited by the malice of the suggestion, and expressed her feelings so forcibly, that Val blazed up into one of his violent sudden passions, and was rushing out to show Mr Pringle himself what was thought of his conduct, when his grandfather caught him and arrested him. “Do you want to make fools of us all with your intemperate conduct, sir?” cried the old lord, fire flashing from under his heavy brows. “It is only a child that resents a slight like this—a man must put up with a great deal and make no sign. ‘Let the galled jade wince; my withers are unwrung.’ That is the sort of sentiment that becomes us.” I don’t know if this good advice would have mollified Val but for the sudden appearance just then at one of the windows which opened on the terrace, of Violet in her blue gown, whose innocent eyes turned to them with a look which seemed to say, “Don’t, oh don’t, for my sake!” Of course Violet knew nothing about it, and meant nothing by her looks. It was the expression habitual to her, that was all; but as the old man and the young, one hot with fury, the other calming down his rage, perceived the pretty figure outside, the old lord dropped, as if it burned him, his hold on Val’s arm, and Val himself stopped short, and, so to speak, lowered his weapons. “Is my lady in, please?” said Violet through the glass—which was all she had wanted to ask, with those sweet imploring looks. They opened the window for her eagerly, and she stepped in like something dropped out of the sky, in her blue gown, carrying her native colour with her. After this Val could not quite make out what it was that he had against Mr Pringle, until Violet in her innocence brought the subject up.
“Mamma was scolding papa for something—something about Valentine,” said Violet. “I did not hear what it was.”
“Indeed your papa seems to have spoken in far from a nice spirit, my dear, though I don’t like to say it to you,” said Lady Eskside. “What was it about, Val? some boatman whom he called your bosom friend.”
“Oh!” cried Violet, clasping her hands together, “it must have been Mr Brown. Papa used to talk of him for long and long after.”
“And did you think, Violet,” said the old lady, severely, “that my boy made him his bosom friend?”
“Oh, Lady Eskside! he was so nice and so grateful to Val. I took such a fancy to him,” cried Vi, with a blush and a smile, “because he was so grateful. He said Mr Ross had done everything for him. Bosom friend! He looked—I don’t think I ever saw a man look so before—women do sometimes,” said Violet, with precocious comprehension—“as if he would have liked to be hurt or done some harm to for Val’s sake.”
“It is the boy I told you about, grandma,” said Val—“the one that Grinder made himself disagreeable about; as if a fellow couldn’t try to be of use to any other fellow without being had up! He rowed them up the river on the 4th of June. He ain’t my bosom friend,” he added, laughing; “but I’d rather have him to stand by me in a crowd than any one I know—so that Mr Pringle was right.”
“But he did not mean it so; it was ill-meant, it was ill-meant!” cried Lady Eskside. Violet looked at them both with entreating looks.
“Papa may have said something wrong, but I am sure he did not mean it,” said Vi, with the dew coming to her pretty eyes. Lady Eskside shook her head; but as for Val, his anger had stolen away out of his heart like the moisture on the grass when the sun comes out; but the sun at the moment had an azure radiance shining out of a blue gown.
After this Val went off to the University with a warm sense of his approaching manhood, and a new independence of feeling. He went to Balliol naturally, as the college of his country, and there fell into the hands of Mr Gerald Grinder, who had condescended to be the boy’s private tutor long ago, just before he attained to the glories of his fellowship. Boys were thus passed up along the line among the Grinder family, which had an excellent connection, and throve well. Val was not clever enough nor studious enough to furnish the ambitious heads of his college with a future first-class man; but as he had one great and well-established quality, they received him with more than ordinary satisfaction; for even at Balliol, has not the most sublime of colleges a certain respect for its place on the river? I have heard of such a thing as a Boating scholarship, the nominal examination for which is made very light indeed to famous oars; but anyhow, Val, though perhaps a very stiff matriculation paper might have floored him, got in upon comparatively easy terms. I will not say much about his successes, nor even insist on the fact that Oxford was an easy winner on the river that triumphant day when Lichen rowed stroke and Val bow in the University boat, and all the small Etonians roared so, under their big hats, that it was a mercy none of them exploded. Val did well, though not brilliantly, in his University career, as he had done at Eton. He had a little difficulty now and then with his hasty temper, but otherwise came to no harm; and thus, holding his own in intellectual matters, and doing more than hold his own in other points that rank quite as high in Oxford, as in the rest of the academical world, made his way to his majority. I believe it crossed Lord Eskside’s mind now and then to think that in Parliament it was very soon forgotten whether a man had been bow or even stroke of the ‘Varsity boat; and that it could count for little in political life, and for less than nothing with the sober constituency of a Scotch county; but then, as all the youth of England, and all the instructors of that youth, set much store by the distinction, even an anxious parent (not to say grandfather) is mollified. “What good will all that nonsense do him?” the old lord would growl, working his shaggy eyebrows, as he read in the papers, even the most intellectual, a discussion of Val’s sinews and breadth of chest and “form” before the great race was rowed. “At least it cannot do him any harm,” said my lady, always and instantly on the defensive; “and I don’t see why you should grudge our boy the honour that other folks’ boys would give their heads for.” “Other folks’ boys may be foolish if they like—I am concerned only for my own,” said Lord Eskside; “what does the county care for his bow-ing or his stroke-ing? it’s a kind of honour that will stand little wear and tear, however much you may think of it, my lady.” But to tell the truth, I don’t think my lady in her soul did think very much of it, except in so far that it was her principle to stand up for most things that pleased Val.
In the meantime, however, the departure of Val from Eton had produced a much more striking effect upon some nameless persons than on any of his other friends. Dick missed him with unfeigned and unconcealed regret. He insisted upon carrying his bag to the station for him; notwithstanding the cab which conveyed Val’s other effects; and went home again in very depressed spirits, after having bidden him good-bye. But Dick’s depression was nothing to that with which his mother sat gazing blankly over the river, with that look in her eyes which had for some time departed from them—that air of looking for something which she could not find, which had made her face so remarkable. She had never quite lost it, it is true; but the hope which used to light up her eyes of seeing, however far off, that one boat which she never failed to recognise shooting up or down the stream, had softened her expression wonderfully, and brought her back, as it were, to the things surrounding her. Val, though she saw so little of him, was as an anchor of her heart to the boy’s mother. The consciousness that he was near, that she should hear his name, see the shadow of him flitting across the brightness of the river, or that even when he was absent, a few weeks would bring back those dim and forlorn delights to her, kept the wild heart satisfied. This strange visionary absorption in the boy she had given up did not lessen her attachment to the boy she retained—the good Dick, who had always been so good a son to her. She thought that she had totally given up Val; and certainly she never hoped, nor even desired, any more of him than she had from her window. Indeed, in her dim perpetual ponderings on this subject, the poor soul had come to feel that it could be no comfort, but much the reverse, to Val, to find out that she was his mother. Had any hope of the possibility of revealing herself to him ever been in her mind, it would have disappeared after their first interview. After that she had always kept in the background on the occasions when he came to see Dick, and had received his “Good morning” without anything but a curtsy. No, alas! a gentleman like that, with all the consciousness about him of a position so different,—with that indescribable air of belonging to the highest class which the poor tramp-woman recognised at once, remembering her brief and strange contact with it—a gentleman like that to have a mother like herself revealed to him—a mother from the road, from the fairs and racecourses! She almost cried out with fright when she thought of the possibility, and made a vow to herself that never, never would she expose Valentine to this horror and shame. No! she had made her bed, and she must lie upon it.
But when he went away, the visionary support which had sustained her visionary nature—the something out of herself which had kept her wild heart satisfied—failed all at once. It was as if a blank had suddenly been spread before the eyes that were always looking for what they could find no more. She never spoke of it—never wept, nor made any demonstration of the change; but she flagged in her life and her spirit all at once. Her work, which she had up to this time got through with an order and swiftness strangely at variance with all the habits which her outdoor life might have been supposed to form, began to drag, and be a weariness to her. She had no longer the inducement to get it over, to be free for the enjoyment of her window. Sometimes she would sit drearily down in the midst of it, with her face turned to the stream by a forlorn habit, and thus Dick would find her sometimes when he came in to dinner. “You are not well, mother,” the lad said, anxiously. “Oh yes, quite well; the likes of me is never ill—till we die,” she would say, with a dreamy smile. “You have too much work, mother,” said Dick; “I can’t have you working so hard—have a girl to help you; we’ve got enough money to afford it, now I’m head man.” “Do you think I’ve gone useless, then?” she would ask, with some indignation, rousing herself; and thus these little controversies always terminated.
But Dick watched her, with a wonder growing in his mind. She was very restless during the autumn, yet when the dark days of winter came, relapsed into a half-stupefied quiet. Even when Val was at Eton, he had of course been invisible on the river during the winter. “The spring will be the pull,” Dick said to himself, wondering, with an anguish which it would be difficult to describe, whether it was his duty to pull up the stakes of this homely habitation, which he had fixed as he thought so securely for himself, and to abandon his work and his living, and the esteem of his neighbours, to resume for her sake the wanderings which he loathed; could it be his duty? A poor lad, reared at the cost of visible privations by a very poor mother, has a better idea of the effort and of the sacrifice made for him, than a young man of a higher class for whom even more bitter sacrifices may have been made. Dick knew what it must have cost the poor tramp-woman to bring him up as she had done, securing him bread always, keeping him from evil communications, even having him taught a little in his childhood. For a tramp to have her child taught to read and write involves as much as Eton and Oxford would to another; and Dick was as much above the level of his old companions in education as a university prizeman is above the common mass; and he knew what it must have cost her, therein having an advantage over many boys, who never realise what they have cost their parents till these parents are beyond all reach of gratitude. Was it, then, his duty to give up everything, his own very life, and open the doors of her prison-house to this woman to whom he owed his life? Such questions come before many of us in this world, and have to be solved one way or other. Our own life, independence, and use; or the happiness of those who have guarded and reared us, though without giving up their all to us, as we are called upon to do for them. Perhaps it is a question which women have to decide upon more often than men. Dick thrust it away from him as long as he could, trying not to think of it, and watching his mother with an anxiety beyond words, as the days lengthened, and the spring freshness came back, and the Brocas elms got their first wash of green. Sometimes he saw her give an unconscious gasp as if for breath, as though the confined air of the room stifled her. Sometimes he found her half bent out of the open window, with her rapt eyes gazing, not at the river, but away over the distant fields. She got paler and thinner every day before his eyes; and he owed everything (he thought) to her, and what was he to do?
What the sacrifice would have been to Dick, I dare not calculate. In these three years he had become known to everybody about, and was universally liked and trusted. He was his master’s right-hand man. He had begun to know what comfort was, what it was to have a little money, (delightful sensation!) what it was to get on in the world. The tramp-boys about the roads, and the new lads who were taken on at the rafts, attracted his sympathy, but it was the sympathy of a person on a totally different level—who had indeed been as they were, but who had long gone over their heads, and was of a class and of habits totally different. Had Lord Hightowers been called upon to divest himself of his title, and become simple John Seton in an engineer’s workshop, the humiliation would not have been comparable to that which Dick would have endured had he been compelled to degrade himself again into a vagrant, a frequenter of fairs and races. Indeed I think Lord Hightowers would rather have liked the change, being of a mechanical turn,—while to Dick the thought was death. It made him sick and faint to think of the possibility. But, on the other hand, was he to let his mother pine and die like a caged eagle? or let her go away from him, to bear all the inevitable privations alone?
One day the subject was finally forced upon his consideration in such a way that he could not disregard it. When he went home to his early dinner, she was gone. Everything was arranged for him with more care than usual, his meal left by the fire, his table laid, and the landlady informed him that his mother had left word she would not be back till night. Dick did not run wildly off in search of her, as some people would have done. He had to look after his work, whatever happened. He swallowed his dinner hastily, a prey to miserable thoughts. It had come then at last, this misfortune which he had so long foreseen! Could he let her wander off alone to die of cold and weariness behind some hedge? After the three years’ repose, her change of habits, and the declining strength which he could not deceive himself about, how could she bear those privations alone? No, it was impossible. Dick reviewed the whole situation bitterly enough, poor fellow. He knew what everybody would say: how it was the vagrant blood breaking out in him again; how it was, once a tramp always a tramp; how it was a pity—but a good thing, on the whole, that he had done nothing wild and lawless before he left. And some would regret him, Dick thought, brushing his hand across his eyes—“the gentlemen” generally, among whom he had many fast friends. Dick decided that he would do nothing rash. He would not give up his situation, and give notice of leaving to the landlady, till he had first had a talk with his mother; but he “tidied” the room after his solitary dinner with a forlorn sense of the general breaking up of all his comforts—and went to his afternoon’s work with a heavy heart.
It was quite late when she came home. He could hear by her steps upon the stair that she was almost too tired to drag one foot after another, as he ran to open the door for her. Poor soul! she came in carrying a basket of primroses, which she held out to him with a pathetic smile. “Take them, Dick; I’ve been far to get ’em, and you used to be fond of them when you were little,” she said, dropping wearily into the nearest seat. She was pale, and had been crying, he could see; and her abstract eyes looked at him humbly, beseechingly, like the eyes of a dumb creature, which can express a vague anguish but cannot explain.
“Was it for them you went, mother?” cried Dick, with momentary relief: but this was turned into deeper distress when she shook her head, and burst out into a low moaning and crying that was pitiful to hear.
“No,” she said,—“no, no, it wasn’t for them; it was to try my strength; and I can’t do it, Dick—I can’t do it, no more, never no more. The strength has gone out of me. I’m dying for free air and the road—but I can’t do it, no more, no more!”
Poor Dick went and knelt down by her side, and took her hand into his. He was glad, and conscience-stricken, and full of pity for her, and understanding of her trouble. “Hush, mother! hush!” he said; “don’t cry. You’re weakly after the long winter, as I’ve seen you before——”
“No, lad, no,” she cried, rocking herself in her chair; “no, I’ll never be able for it again—no more, no more!”
Dick never said a word of the tumult in his own mind: he tried to comfort her, prophesying—though heaven knows how much against his own interests!—that she would soon feel stronger, and coaxed her to eat and drink, and at length prevailed upon her to go to bed. Now that they had become comparatively rich, she had the little room behind which had once been Dick’s, and he was promoted to a larger chamber up-stairs. He sat up there, poor fellow, as long as he could keep awake, wondering what he must do. Could it be that he was glad that his mother was less strong? or was it his duty to lose no time further, but to take her away by easy stages to the open air that was necessary for her, and the fields that she loved? Dick’s heart contracted, and bitter tears welled up into his eyes. But he felt that he must think of himself no longer, only of her. That was the one thing self-evident, which required no reasoning to make clear.
The next day a letter came from Valentine Ross, the first sign of his existence all this time, which changed entirely the current of affairs.