VAL’S letter was of a character sufficiently exciting to have made Dick forget anything less important than the crisis which had thus arrived. Its object was to invite him to Oxford, to a place somewhat similar to that which he had held at Eton, in one of the great boating establishments on the river. The master was old, and wanted somebody of trust to superintend and manage his business, with a reasonable hope of succeeding to him. “You had better come up and talk it over,” wrote Val, ever peremptory. “I have always said you must rise in the world, and here is the opportunity for you. They have too much regard for you at Eton to keep you from doing what would be so very advantageous; therefore come up at once and look after it.” Dick’s heart, which had been beating very low in his honest breast, overwhelmed with fear and forebodings, gave one leap of returning confidence; but then he reflected that his mother must be made the final judge, and with a sickening pang of suspense he “knocked off” his work, and rowed himself across to the little house at the corner. His mother was wearied and languid with her long walk on the day before. She had paused in the midst of her morning occupations, and Dick found her seated in the middle of the room, with her back turned to the window, and her face supported on her hands. She was gazing at the wall opposite, much as she gazed into the distant landscape, not seeing it, but longing to see through it—to see something she could not see. She started when Dick came in, and smiled at him deprecating and humble. “I was resting a moment,” she said, with an air of apology that went to his heart. “Have you forgotten something, Dick?”
“No, mother, but I’ve heard of something,” he said, taking out his letter. This made her sit upright, and flushed her cheek suddenly with a surprised alarm for which he could not account—for which, she herself could not account; for it was perhaps the first time in her life that it had occurred to her what would happen if Dick found out the secret of his own story. The possibility of Valentine doing so had crossed her mind, and she had shrunk from it. But what if Dick should find out? the idea had never entered her imagination before.
“It’s a letter from Mr Ross, mother,” said Dick, steadily looking at her. “He says he has heard of a place for me at Oxford where he is himself—a place where I should be almost master at once, have everything to manage, and might succeed, and get it into my own hands. Mother! that would please you? Now to think you should like that when you can’t endure this! It would be the same kind of place.”
“Don’t be hard upon me, Dick,” she said, faltering, and turning away her eyes that he might not see the strange light in them—which she was herself aware must be too remarkable to be overlooked. “I can’t answer for my feelings. It’s a change, I suppose—a change that I want. My old way I can’t go back to, for more things than one. I’m too weak and old; and more than that, I’m changed in my mind. Dick, I think it will be a comfort to you to tell you. It ain’t only my limbs, boy, nor my strength. My mind’s changed; I couldn’t go on the tramp again.”
“No, mother? thank God!”
“I don’t thank God,” she said, shaking her head. “I am not glad; but so it is, and I want a change. Let us go, boy. Please God, I’ll be happier there.”
“Mother,” said Dick, anxiously, “your looks are changed all at once. I’m going to ask you a curious question. Has it anything to do with—Mr Ross?”
She made no answer for the moment, but leant her head upon her hands, and looked vaguely at the wall.
“I know it’s a curious question,” repeated Dick, with an attempt at a smile. “But you were satisfied as long as he was here; and since he’s gone you have fallen back—only since he’s gone! You never got that longing sort of look while he was here. What has Mr Ross to do with you and me? Mother—don’t you suppose I think it’s anything wrong, for I don’t—but what has he to do with you and me?”
“Nothing—nothing, Dick,” she cried—“nothing; never will have, never can have. Don’t ask me. When I was young, when I was a girl, I knew his—people—his—father. There, that’s all. I never meant to have said as much. There is nothing wrong. Yes, I suppose it’s him I miss somehow. Not that he is half to me, or quarter to me, that you are—or anything to me at all.”
“It’s very strange,” said Dick, troubled; “and somehow I feel for him as I never felt for anybody else. You knew his—father——?”
“I won’t have any questions from you, Dick,” she cried passionately, rising from her chair. “I told you I knew his—people. Some time or other I’ll tell you how I knew them; but not now.”
“I wonder does he know anything about it,” said Dick, speaking more to himself than her. “It’s very strange; he said he thought you were a lady, mother; and that he had seen you before——”
“Did he? God bless him!” cried the woman, surprised by sudden tears. “But I ain’t a lady—I ain’t a lady,” she added, under her breath; “he was wrong there.”
“You have some lady ways, mother, now and again,” said Dick, pondering. “It is strange. If you knew his people, as you say, does he know?”
“Not a word, Dick, and he mustn’t know. Remember, if it was my last word—he mustn’t know! Promise me you’ll not speak. If he knew and they knew—they’d—I don’t know what they mightn’t do. Dick, you will never betray your mother?—you will never—never——”
“Hush, mother dear; you are worrying yourself for nothing,” said her gentle boy. “If there’s nothing wrong, what could they or anybody do? Of course, I won’t say a word. All the safer,” he added, with a laugh, “because I don’t know what words to say. When you keep me dark, mother, I can’t give out any light to other people, can I? It’s the surest way.”
She took no notice of this implied reproof, the most severe that had ever come from Dick’s gentle lips. She was another creature altogether from the languid woman whom he had found sitting there in the midst of the untidy room. A new light had come into her eyes—all her stupor and weariness were over. Dick was startled, and he was a trifle hurt at the same time, which was natural enough. If there had been any material for jealousy in him, I think it must have developed at that moment—for all his love had not called forth from his mother one tittle of the feeling which to all appearance an utter stranger awoke. Dick sighed, but his nature was not in the smallest degree self-contemplative; and he shook the momentary feeling away ere it had time to take form. “If I can get leave, I’ll go up to Oxford and see about it to-morrow,” he said. When he had come to this conclusion, he went towards the door to return to his work, leaving her active and revived, both in mind and body. But he stopped before he reached it, and turned back. “Mother,” he said, with a little solemnity, “Mr Ross will be only about two years at Oxford. What shall we do when he goes away? We cannot follow him about wherever he goes.”
“God knows,” she said, stopping short in her sweeping. “Perhaps the world may end before then; perhaps——. We can’t tell,” she added solemnly, bowing her head as if to supreme destiny, “what may happen any day or any year. It’s all in God’s hand.”
Dick went away without another word. He arranged to go to Oxford, and did so, and found Val, and finally made an agreement to take the situation offered him; but this little prick to his pride and affection rankled in his mind. Why should Mr Ross be so much more to her than himself, her son, who had never left her side? “It is strange,” he said, with a sense of injury, which grew fainter every moment, yet still lingered. He looked at Val with more interest than ever, and a curious feeling of somehow belonging to him. What could the link be? Dick knew very little about his own history; he did not know whose son he was, nor what his mother had been. The idea, indeed, gleamed across his mind that Val’s father might have been his own father, and this thought gave him no such thrill of pain and shame as it would naturally have brought to a young man brought up in a different class. Dick, with the terrible practical knowledge of human nature which belongs to the lower levels of society, knew that such things happened often enough; and if he felt a little movement in his mind of unpleasant feeling, he was neither horrified by the suggestion of such a possibility, nor felt his mother lowered in his eyes. Whatever the facts were, they were beyond his ken; and it was not for him to judge them. Pondering it over, however, he came to feel with a little relief that this could not be the solution. He knew what the manners of his class were, and he knew that his mother had always been surrounded by that strange abstract atmosphere of reserve and modesty which no one else of her degree resembled her in. No, that could not be the explanation. Perhaps she had recognised in Val the son of some love of her youth whom she had kept in her thoughts throughout all her rougher life. This was a strangely visionary hypothesis, and Dick felt how unreal it was; but what other explanation could he make?
The situation at Oxford was a great “rise in the world” to Dick. It was a place of trust, with much better wages than he had at Eton, and a little house close to the river-side. His Eton employer grumbled a little, and said something about a want of gratitude, as employers are so apt to do; but eventually it was all arranged to Dick’s satisfaction and benefit. He and his mother took possession of the little house in May, so quickly was the bargain made; and when she made her first appearance at Oxford, she had put off the last lingering remnants of the tramp, and looked after the furniture and fittings-up with a languid show of pleasure in them, such as she had never exhibited before. She changed her dress, too, to Dick’s infinite pleasure. She put off the coloured handkerchief permanently from her head, and adopted a head-dress something of the same shape,—a kerchief of white net tied under her chin, which threw up her still beautiful face, and impressed every one who saw her with Val’s idea that she had been a lady once. This strange head-gear, and the plain black gown without flounces or ornament which she wore constantly, made people think her some sort of a nun; and the new man at Styles’ and his mother became notable on the river-side. They had a little garden to the house, and this, too, seemed to please her. She filled it with common sweet-smelling flowers, and worked in it with a new-born love for this corner of earth which she could call hers; and every day she stood looking over her little garden-wall, and saw Val and his boat go by. This kept the rhythm of her life in cadence, and she was livelier and more ready in conversation and intercourse with her good son than she had ever been before.
As for Val, after the kind thought which made him send for Dick and warmly plead his cause with the boat-builder on the river-side, there were moments when he felt a certain embarrassment about what he had done. Dick, too, had changed, as well as himself. He could not speak to him as of old, or give him half-crowns, or trust to him to do whatever he wished. In the last case, indeed, he might have trusted Dick entirely; for his gratitude, and what is more, his affection, for his young patron, was unbounded. But Val no longer liked to suggest what Dick would have been but too happy to do. The vagrant whom he had taken up had become in a manner Val’s equal. He was wiser than the other, though he did not know a tenth part so much; and though he owed everything he was to Val’s boyish interposition in his favour, yet he had a great deal in him which Val had not originated, and which, indeed, was quite beyond him. The undergraduate of high degree did not know how to treat the young man who was still so lowly. He could not ask him to his rooms, or bid him to eat at his own table, half out of a lingering social prejudice, half because he had an uncomfortable knowledge of what people would say. He was as much his friend as ever, but he did not know how to show it. Now and then he went to the little house, but Dick’s mother gave him sensations so very strange that he did not care to go often; and had he gone very often, his tutor, no doubt, would have taken notice of the fact, and set it down to a love of low society, as his Eton tutor had done; altogether, the situation was full of embarrassment, and the intercourse not half so easy as it had been. To be sure, the external advantages were certain; Dick had a much better situation and a bright prospect before him, and this was so much gained. Val’s advice to him about rising in the world had been wonderfully carried out. He had risen in the world, and got on the steps of the ladder. Indeed, Dick might almost have been said to have attained all that a person of his class could ever attain; he might make a great deal more money, but he could not materially advance his position. Val was still, and perhaps more than ever, above him, since as they both progressed into manhood, their respective positions began to be more sharply defined: and nothing in the world could ever make it possible for Lord Eskside’s heir to say to the young boat-builder, “Come up higher.” And yet Val had lost all power of treating him as an inferior. It was a curious problem, infinitely more difficult, as was natural, to the generous young fellow on the higher level, than to the lowlier lad who made no pretensions to any sort of dignity, and never “stood upon” a quality which he did not suppose himself to possess.
There happened, however, a curious incident in Val’s last summer at Oxford, which he indeed did not know, but which affected Dick strangely enough. One summer morning (it was in Commemoration week, when the mornings are somewhat languid) Dick’s mother was seated in the little parlour facing the river, which her son had furnished with all the care of an untaught virtuoso. Half the things in it were of his own making; but there were many trifles besides which he had “picked up,” with that curious natural fancy for things pretty and unusual which was innate in him. It was a strange incongruous room. The floor was covered with a square of old Turkey carpet, the subdued harmonious colours of which, and soft mossy texture, were Dick’s delight. The little table, covered with the old faded embroidered shawl, stood in the window; an old-fashioned glass which Dick had “picked up” was on the mantelpiece, reflecting some china vases which his mother had bought, and which showed her taste to be of a different character from his. Prettily carved bookcases of his making were fitted into the corners; and a common deal table, without any cover, stood just under one of them, with a large brown earthenware basin on it, before which his mother sat shelling peas for Dick’s dinner. She had “a girl” now to help her with the work, and it was her son’s desire that she should sit in the parlour. But as it was not within the poor soul’s possibilities to shut herself up to needlework or any lady-like occupation, she brought in her peas to shell there, and sat alone, contented enough, yet oppressed with the sense that within a few days the same blank which she had before experienced would fall on the earth and skies. It was a bright morning, still cool but full of sunshine, which just touched the old-fashioned window-sill, upon which lay Dick’s carving materials and a book or two—not, I am sorry to say, books intended to be read, but only to get designs out of, and suggestions for work. The river lay broad in the sunshine, relieved by here and there the bright green of some willows: the softened sounds outside, the soft silence within, were harmonious with the subdued sensations of the lonely woman, in whom all seemed stilled too for the moment. The shadow hung over her, but it had not yet fallen, and her mind was less excited than it had been—more able to endure, less intolerant of pain.
Thus she sat absorbed in her homely occupation, when she heard voices approaching through the soft air. One of them she recognised at once with a thrill of pleasure to be Val’s. He was coming slowly along, pointing out everything to some one with him. The woman dropped the peas out of her hands, and listened. The window was open, and so near the road that every sound was distinctly heard. It was some time before any one replied to Val, and the listener had leisure enough for many wild fears and throbs of anxious suspense. At last the answer came—in a lady’s voice, which she knew as well as if she had heard it yesterday, with its soft Scotch accent, its firm tone and character, unlike any other she knew. The woman rose suddenly, noiselessly, to her feet; she grew white and blanched, as with deadly terror.
“Here is where Brown lives,” said Val, in his cheery voice—“and his mother, whom I want you particularly to see. A nice little house, isn’t it? Stop and look at the boats down the river before we go in. Isn’t it pretty, grandma? not like our Esk, to be sure, but with a beauty of its own.”
“Far gayer and brighter than Esk, certainly,” said Lady Eskside, quite willing to humour the boy; though her own opinion of the broad, flat, unshadowed, and unfeatured Thames was not too flattering. She stood leaning upon his arm, rapt in a soft Elysium of pride and happiness. The lovely morning, and the good accounts she had been hearing of her boy, and the fact that he was going home with her, and that she was leaning on his arm, and seeing more beauty in his kind young face than the loveliest summer morning or the fairest scene could have shown her—all combined to make everything fair to Lady Eskside. She was going to visit his humble friends—to seal with her approbation that kindly patronage of the “deserving” poor, which is as creditable to their superiors as a love of low society is discreditable. They stood together talking for a minute at the open door.
At that same moment Dick was on his way to the back door which communicated with the boat-building yard—but was met, to his wonder and dismay, by his mother, flying from the house with a face blanched to deadly paleness, and a precipitate haste about her, which nothing but fear could have produced. She seized him by the arm without a word—indeed she was too breathless and panting to speak—and dragged him with her, too much amazed to resist. “For God’s sake, what is the matter, mother?” he said, when surprise would let him speak. She made no answer, but holding fast by him, took refuge in a boat-house built against the side wall of the little backyard through which she had flown. Dick, who was a patient fellow, not easily excited, stood by her wondering, but refraining to question when he saw the state of painful excitement in which she was. “Listen!” she said, under her breath; and presently he heard Val’s voice in the yard calling her. “Mrs Brown!” cried Val; though it was the first time after her disavowal of it that he had used that name, which was now adopted by everybody else, as of course the name of Dick Brown’s mother. “I can’t think where she can have gone to,” he added, with some vexation; “and I wanted you to see her specially—almost more than Brown himself.”
“Well, my dear, it cannot be helped,” said the voice of Lady Eskside, much more composed than Val’s—for I cannot say that she was deeply disappointed. “No doubt the honest woman has run out about some needful business—leaving her peas, too. Come, Val, since you can’t find her; your grandpapa will be waiting for us, my dear.”
“I can’t see Brown, either,” he said, with still greater annoyance, coming back after an expedition into the yard. “The men say he went home. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am.”
“Well, well, I can see them another time, my dear,” said my lady, smiling within herself at the boy’s disappointment—“and we must be going to meet your grandfather. I wonder where she got that cover on her table. I had a shawl just like it once; but come, dear, come; think of my old lord waiting. We must not lose any more time, Val.”
Dick put his arm round his mother; he thought she was going to faint, so deadly white was her face—white as the kerchief on her head. She laid her head on his shoulder, and moaned faintly. Her closed eyes, her blanched cheeks, her lips falling helplessly apart, gave Dick an impression of almost death.
“Mother, tell me, for God’s sake, who is this, and what is the matter with you?” he cried.