“SO Mr Pringle is on the other side,” said Mary Percival. “Perhaps it is just as well, considering all things.”
“Why should it be just as well?” said Violet, with a spark of fire lighting up her soft eyes. “Is unkindness, and opposition among people who ought to be friends, ever ‘just as well’? You are not like yourself when you say so;” and a colour which was almost angry rose upon Vi’s delicate cheek.
“My dear, I have never concealed from you that I want to keep you and Val apart from each other,” said Miss Percival, with an injudicious frankness which I have never been able to understand in so sensible a woman; but the most sensible persons are often foolish on one special point, and this was Mary’s particular weakness.
“Why should we be kept apart?” said Violet, with lofty youthful indignation. “Nobody can keep us apart—neither papa’s politics nor anything else outside of ourselves.”
“Vi! Vi! I don’t think that is how a girl should speak of a young man.”
“Oh, I cannot bear you when you go on about girls and young men!” cried Violet, stamping her small foot in the vehemence of her indignation. “Is it my fault that I am a girl and Val a boy? Must I not be friends with him because of that, a thing we neither of us can help, though I have known him all my life? But we are fast friends,” cried Vi, with magnificent loftiness, her pretty nostrils dilating, her bright eyes flashing upon her companion. “Neither of us thinks for a moment of any such nonsense. We were friends when we were seven years old, and I would not give up my friend, not if he were twenty young men!”
“You are a foolish little girl, and I am sorry for you, Vi,” said Mary, shaking her head. “At any rate, because you are fond of Val, that is no reason for being uncivil to me.”
At these words, as was natural, Violet, with tears in her eyes, flew to her friend and kissed her, and begged pardon with abject penitence. “But I wish I had nothing more on my mind than being friends with Val,” the girl said, sighing, “or the difference of people’s politics. Of course people must differ in politics, as they do in everything else. I am a Liberal myself. I think that to resist everything that is new, and cling to everything that is old, whether they are bad, or whether they are good, is very wrong. To choose what is best, whether old or new, is surely the right way.”
“Oh, you are a Liberal yourself?” said Mary, amused; “but I don’t doubt Val could easily turn you into a Conservative, Vi.”
“Val could not do anything of the kind,” said Violet, with some solemnity. “Of course I can’t have lived to be twenty without thinking on such subjects. But I wish I had nothing more on my mind than that. Both Liberals and Conservatives may be fond of their country, and do their best for it. I don’t like a man less for being a Tory, though I am a Liberal myself.”
“That is very satisfactory for us Tories, my dear,” said Mary, “and I am obliged to you for your magnanimity; but what is it then, my pretty Vi, that you have upon your mind?”
The girl paused and let fall a few sudden tears. “Mary,” she said (for there was a Scotch tie of kinship between them also which made this familiarity admissible), “I am so frightened—and I don’t know what I am frightened at. I feel sure papa means to do something more than any one knows of, against Val.”
“Against Val! He means to oppose his election, no doubt, and give Lord Eskside and our side all the trouble possible: we know that,” cried Mary, who was a politician of the old school. “These are always the tactics of the party—to give as much trouble, and sow as many heart-burnings as possible; though they know they have not a chance of success.”
“I suppose it is just what the Tories would do if they were in the same position,” said Violet, naturally on the defensive. “But all that is nothing to me,” she cried; “if people like to fight, let them: I don’t mind it myself—the excitement is pleasant. But, of course, you know better than I do—are you sure there is nothing more than fair fighting that papa could do to Val?”
“I am sure your papa is not a man to do anything inconsistent with fair fighting,” said Mary, evasively, her curiosity strongly roused.
This stopped Violet once more. She gave a heavy sigh. “I hear them say that everything is fair in an election contest, as everything is fair in war.”
“Or love.”
“I don’t understand such an opinion,” said Violet, rising to her feet and striking her pretty hands together in impatience. “If a thing is wrong once, it is wrong always. Love! they call that love which can be pushed on by tricks and lies; and people like you, Mary—people who ought to know better—say so too. Of course, one knows you cannot think it,” the girl cried, with a quick-drawn breath, half sob, half sigh.
“Well, dear, I suppose we all give in to the saying of things which we don’t think,” said Miss Percival, deprecatingly; “but, Vi, you have made me curious. What is it your father means to do?”
“I wanted to ask you that; what can he do? Can he do anything?” said Violet. Mary looked at the impulsive girl, not knowing what to answer. Vi was true as truth itself in her generous young indignation against all unworthy strategy—and she was “fond of” and “friends with” Val, according to the childish phraseology which, in this respect at least, she chose to retain. But still, even Violet’s innocence was a reason for not trusting her with any admission that Valentine was open to special attack. She might assail her father with injudicious partisanship, entreating him to withhold from assaults which he had never thought of making; so that, on the whole, Mary judged it was judicious to say nothing as to any special flaw in the young candidate’s armour. She shook her head.
“I cannot think of anything that could be done against Valentine,” she said. “He has been a good boy, so far as we know; and when a boy is not a good boy it is always found out. Sir John is to propose him, and Mr Lynton of the Linn to second,—he could not have a better start; and dear old Lord Eskside to stand by him, to get his heart’s desire,” said Mary, with a little glimmer of moisture in her eyes. “You young things don’t think of the old people. It goes to my heart, after all their disappointments, to think they will have their wish at last.”
Violet did not make any reply. Though she was a Liberal herself, and looked upon politics generally from such an impartial elevation of good sense, it was no small trouble to poor Vi to know that she could not even pretend to be on Valentine’s side at this great crisis of his life;—could not go with Lady Eskside’s triumphant party to see him done honour to in the sight of all men; could not even wear a bit of ribbon, poor child, for his sake, but must put on the colours of snuffy Mr Seisin, and go with her mother to the opposition window, and pretend to look delighted at all the jokes that might be made, and all the assaults upon her friends. Violet would not allow how deeply she felt this, the merely superficial and necessary part of the situation; and, in reality, it was as nothing to her in comparison with the dread in her heart of something more, she knew not what—some masked battery which her father’s hand was arranging. She took Mary out to show her the improvements which were being made at the Hewan, the new rooms which were almost finished, and which would make of the poor little cottage a rustic villa. Jean Moffatt, whose nest had not been interfered with, though Mr Pringle had bought the place, came out as she heard the voices of the ladies, to take her share in the talk. Jean had now the privileged position of an old servant among the Pringles, and still acted as duenna and protectress to Violet on many a summer day when that little maiden escaped alone with her maid from Moray Place. Mr Pringle had been getting on in his profession during those years; not in its honours, the tide of which he had allowed to go past him, but in its more substantial rewards. He was better off, and able to afford himself the indulgence of a whim; so the Hewan had been bought, half in love, half in hatred. In love, because the children, and Violet especially, were fond of the little place; and in hatred, because it commanded the always coveted domain of Eskside.
“You are a Liberal too, I understand, Jean,” said Mary; “you are all Mr Ross’s enemies up here.”
“I wish he might never have waur enemies,” said old Jean, “and that’s no an ill wish; but I’ll never disown my principles. I’ve aye been a Leeberal from the time of the Reform Bill, which made an awfu’ noise in the country. There’s nane o’ your contests worth speaking o’ in comparison with that. But I’m real distressed that there’s this opposition now. We’ll no get our man in, and we’ll make a great deal o’ dispeace; and two folk so muckle thought of in the county as my lord and my lady might have gotten their way for once. I canna bide the notion of going again’ Mr Valentine; but he’s a kindly lad, and will see that, whatever you are, ye maun gang with your pairty. Lord bless the callant! if it was for naething but yon chicken-pie, he’s a hantle mair to me than ony Edinburgh advocate that was ever born. But you see yoursel, Miss Percival, how we’re placed; we maun side with our ain pairty, right or wrong.”
“Yes, I see the difficulty of the position,” said Mary, laughing, “and I shall make a point of explaining it to Val.”
“Do that, mem,” said Jean, seriously. She did not see any joke in the matter, any more than Vi did, whose mind was in a very disturbed state.
“And I suppose your son will be of your mind?” said Mary, not indisposed to a little gentle canvassing on her own part.
“I couldna undertake to answer for John,” said the old woman; “nor I wouldna tamper with him,” she added, “for it’s a great responsibility, and he ought to judge for himself. There’s one thing with men, they tak a bias easy, and John was never a Leeberal on conviction, as ye may say, like his faither and me; and he has a’ the cobbling from the House, and a’ the servants’ work, and my lord’s shooting-boots, and so forth, and noo and then something to do for my lady hersel; so I wouldna say but he might have a bias. It’s a grand thing to have nae vote,” said Jean, meditatively, “and then ye can have the satisfaction of keeping to your pairty without harming your friends on the other side.”
Jean expressed thus the sentiments of a great many people in Eskside on the occasion of this election. Even some of the great tenant-farmers who were Liberals, instead of delighting in the contest, as perhaps they ought to have done, grumbled at the choice set before them, and regretted the necessity of vexing the Eskside family, old neighbours, by keeping to their own party. For Val Ross, as they all felt, was on the whole a much more appropriate representative than “a snuffy old Edinburgh lawyer,” said one of the malcontents, “with about as much knowledge of the county as I have of the Parliament House.” “But he knows how to bring you into the Parliament House, and squeeze the siller out of your pouch and mine,” said another. The Parliament House in question, gentle Southern reader, meant not the House of Commons, but the Westminster Hall of Edinburgh, into which, or its purlieus, it was quite easy to get with Mr Seisin’s help, but not so easy to get out again. I am afraid, indeed, that as the Liberal party was weak in the county, and there had been no contest for some time, and no active party organisation existed, there would have been no attempt to oppose Valentine at all but for the determination of Mr Pringle, who, without bringing himself very prominently forward, had kept his party sharply up to the mark, and insisted upon their action. That they had no chance of success, or so little that it was not worth calculating upon, they all acknowledged; but allowed themselves to be pushed on, notwithstanding, by the ardour of one fierce personal animosity, undisclosed and unsuspected. Mr Pringle had been gradually winding himself up to this act of vengeance through many years. I think if other people had recollected the strange way in which his young supplanter had made his first appearance at Eskside, or if any sort of stigma had remained upon Val, the feelings of the heir-presumptive would have been less exaggerated; but to find that everybody had forgotten these suspicious circumstances—that even his insinuations as to the lad’s love of low company, though sufficiently relished for the moment, had produced no permanent impression—and that the world in general accepted Valentine with cheerful satisfaction as Richard Ross’s son and Lord Eskside’s heir, without a doubt or question on the subject,—all this exasperated Mr Pringle beyond bearing. No passionate resentment and sense of injury like this can remain and rankle so long in a mind without somehow obscuring the moral perceptions; and the man had become so possessed by this consciousness of a wrong to set right and an injury to avenge, that it got the better both of natural feeling and morality. He did not even feel that the thing he meditated was beyond the range of ordinary electioneering attack; that it strained every law even of warfare, and exceeded the revenges permitted to civilised and political men. All this he would have seen in a moment had the case not been his own. He would have condemned any other man without hesitation; would have solemnly pointed out to him the deliberate cruelty of the project, and the impossibility of throwing any gloss, even of pretended justice, over it. For no virtuous impulse to punish a criminal, no philanthropic purpose of hindering the accomplishment of a crime, could be alleged for what he meant to do. The parties assailed were guiltless, and there was no chance that his assault, however virulent, could shake poor Val’s real position, however much it might impair his comfort. He could scarcely, even to himself, allege any reason except revenge.
Meanwhile Val had been summoned home. He had spent Christmas with his father, and since then had travelled farther afield, visiting, though with perhaps not much more profit than attended his tour in Italy, the classic islands of Greece. It was early spring when the summons reached him to return without delay, everything in the political horizon being ominous of change. Val got back in March, when the whole country was excited by the preliminaries of a general election. He had been so doubtful of the advantage of the abundant English society he had enjoyed abroad, that he was comforted to find himself in English society at home, where it was undeniably the right thing, and natural to the soil. When he arrived at Eskside there was a great gathering to meet him. His address was to be seen at full length on every bit of wall in Lasswade and the adjoining villages, and even in the outskirts of Edinburgh; and the day of nomination was so nearly approaching that he had scarcely time to shake himself free from the dust and fatigue of his journey, and to think of the speech which it would be necessary to deliver in answer to all the pretty compliments which no doubt would be showered upon him. Val, I am afraid, was a great deal more concerned about making a good appearance on this occasion, and conducting himself with proper manly coolness and composure—as if being nominated for a seat in Parliament was a thing which had already happened to him several times at least in his career—than about the real entry into public life itself, the responsibility of an honourable member, or any other legitimate subject of serious consideration. When he asked after everybody on his return, the dignified seriousness with which he was told of the presence of the Pringles at the Hewan did not affect the young man much. “Ah, you never liked poor Mr Pringle, grandma,” he said, lightly. “I have little occasion to like him,” said Lady Eskside; “and now that he is the getter up of all this opposition, the only real enemy you have, my own boy——”
“Oh, enemy! come, grandma, that is too strong,” said Val. “If I never have any worse enemy than old Pringle, I shall do. But I am sorry they are on the other side,” he added, with a boyish thought that his blue colours would have looked prettier than ever near Violet’s bright locks. He paused a moment, and then burst out with a laugh. “I wonder if they will put her into old Seisin’s yellow ribbons,” he cried, quite unaware how dreadfully he was betraying himself. “Poor Vi!”
Lady Eskside and Mary looked at each other—the one with a little triumph, the other with horror and dismay. It was my lady whose face expressed the latter sentiments. She had constantly refused to believe that Val had ever “thought twice” of Sandy Pringle’s daughter. Even now she assailed Mary indignantly, as soon as Valentine’s back was turned. “What did you mean by giving me such a look? Do you mean that a boy like that cannot think of a girl he has known all his life without being in love with her? My dear Mary, that is not like you. I was laughing myself, I confess,” said the old lady, who looked extremely unlike laughter, “at the idea of their yellow ribbons on Vi’s yellow hair. The little monkey! setting herself up, forsooth, as a Liberal; I’m glad the colours are unbecoming,” Lady Eskside concluded, with the poorest possible attempt at a laugh.
Mary made no reply—but she was much more prepossessed in favour of Val than she had ever been. Women like a man, or even a boy for that matter, who betrays himself—who has not so much command of his personal sentiments but that now and then a stray gleam of them breaking forth shows whereabouts he is. Mary—who had taken Violet under her protection, determined that not if she could help it should that little girl fall a victim, as she herself had done—was entirely disarmed by the boyish ingenuousness of his self-disclosure. She thought with a half sigh, half smile, once more, as she had thought that summer day by the linn, that this boy might have been her son had things gone as they should—that he ought indeed to have been her son. Sometimes this was an exasperating, sometimes a softening thought; but it came to Mary on this occasion in the mollifying way.
“Don’t ask me anything about Vi,” she said to Valentine the same evening. “You know I never approved of too much friendship between you; she is your enemy’s daughter.”
“What do you call too much friendship?” said Val, indignantly. “If you think I am going to give her up because her old father is an old fool, and goes against us, you are very much mistaken. Why, Vi! I have known her since I was that high—better than Sandy or any of them.”
“Her father is not so dreadfully old,” said Mary, laughing; “and besides, Val, I don’t put any faith in him; his opposition is a great deal more serious than you think.”
“Well, I suppose he must stick to his party,” said Val, employing in the lightness of his heart old Jean’s words; “but I know very well,” he added, with youthful confidence, “that though he may be forced for the sake of his party to show himself against me, he wishes me well in his heart.”
“You are convinced of that?”
“Quite convinced,” said Val, with magnificent calm. Indeed I rather think the boy was of opinion that this was the case in the world generally, and that however outward circumstances might compel an individual here and there to appear to oppose him, by way of keeping up his party or otherwise, yet in their hearts the whole human race wished him well.