IT was on a bright spring morning that the nomination of a knight of the shire to represent Eskshire in Parliament took place in Castleton, the quiet little country town which was not far from the Duke’s chief seat, and tolerably central for all the county. The party from Eskside drove over in state, my lord and my lady, with Miss Percival and Val, in the barouche, and with four horses in honour of so great an occasion. They were all in high spirits, with hopes as bright as the morning, though I think Valentine thought more than once how pleasant it would have been to have had little Vi sitting bodkin on the front seat of the carriage between himself and his grandfather. There would have been plenty of room for her, though I don’t know that this would have been considered quite a dignified proceeding by my lady. The little town was all astir, and various cheers were raised as Lord Eskside and Val went into the committee room; and my lady and Mary went on to the hotel which was in their interest,—a heavy, serious, old, grey stone house in the market-place close to the hustings, from one of the windows of which they were to witness the nomination. On the opposite side stood the other hotel where Mr Seisin’s supporters congregated. When Lady Eskside took her place at the window specially reserved for her, there was a flutter of movement among the crowd already assembled, and many people turned to look at her with interest scarcely less than that with which they welcomed the candidate and his supporters. Lady Eskside was a great deal older than when we saw her first; indeed, quite an old lady, over seventy, as was her husband. But she had retained all her activity, her lightness of figure and movement, and the light in her eyes, which shone almost as brightly as ever. The beauty of age is as distinct as, and not less attractive in its way than, the beauty of youth; the one extremity of life having, like the other, many charms which fail to us commonplace persons in the dull middle-ages, the period of prose which intervenes in every existence. Lady Eskside was a beautiful old woman; her eyes were bright, her colour almost as sweet and fresh, though a little broken and run into threads, as when she was twenty; her hair was snowwhite, which is no disadvantage, but the reverse, to a well-tinted face. She had a soft dove-coloured bonnet of drawn or quilted satin coming a little forward round her face, not perched on the top of the head as ladies now wear that necessary article of dress; and a blue ribbon, of Val’s colours, round her throat,—though I think, as a matter of choice, she would have preferred red, as “more becoming” to her snowy old beauty. Mary, you may be sure, was in Val’s colours too, and was the thorough partisan of the young candidate, however little she had been the partisan of the boy himself in his natural and unofficial character. There was a bright fire blazing in the room behind them to which they could retire when they pleased; and the window was thrown wide open, so that they might both see and hear.
The hotel opposite—not by any mean such a good one as the Duke’s Head—was of course in the opposition interest, and blazed with yellow flags and streamers. At the window there, just before the commencement of proceedings, several ladies appeared. They did not come in state like Lady Eskside, for Mr Seisin had no womankind belonging to him; and these feminine spectators were wives and daughters of his supporters, and not so enthusiastic in his cause as they were about their own special relations who intended to perform on the occasion. Among them, in a prominent position, but keeping back as much as possible, Mrs Pringle and Violet were soon descried by the ladies opposite. Neither of them wore anything yellow, as Lady Eskside, with sharp old eyes, undimmed by age, discovered in a moment. “They are both fair, and yellow is unbecoming to fair people,” she said, with involuntary cynicism. I do not much wonder that she was severe upon them; for indeed had they not pretended all manner of kindness and friendship for her boy? “It is not their fault,” said Mary, apologetically. “I wonder what you mean by telling me it is not their fault!” cried Lady Eskside. “Is a man’s wife just his housekeeper, that she should have no power over him? They should not have let Sandy Pringle make a fool of himself. They should not have given their consent, and stuck themselves up there in opposition to the family. I have no patience with such women.” It was not wonderful that my lady should disapprove; and I don’t think that two greater culprits in feeling than Mrs Pringle and her daughter were to be found in all Eskside. They had the satisfaction of knowing that the husband and father who had driven them to make this appearance was not unaware of the sentiments with which they regarded it; but that, I think, was all the comfort these poor ladies had.
Then there came a stir in the crowd, and a thickening and increase of its numbers, as if more had been poured into a vessel nearly full; and the candidates and their supporters came up to the hustings. How Lady Eskside’s heart swelled and fluttered as her handsome boy, a head taller than his old grandfather, appeared on that elevation over the crowd, detached from the rest, not only by his position as the hero of the day, but by his fresh youth, and those advantages of nature which had been so lavishly bestowed upon him! Lady Eskside looked at him with pride and happiness indescribable, and kissed her hand to him as he turned to salute her at her window; but I will not venture to describe the feelings of the other ladies, when Val, with, they thought, a reproachful look on his handsome face, took off his hat to them at their opposite window. Mrs Pringle blushed crimson, and pushed back her chair; and Violet, who was very pale, bent her poor little head upon her mother’s shoulder and cried. “Oh, how cruel of papa to set us up here!” sobbed Vi. Mrs Pringle was obliged to keep up appearances, and checked her child’s emotion summarily; but she made up her mind that the cause of this distress and humiliation should suffer for it, though she would not fly in his face by refusing absolutely to appear. These agitated persons did not find themselves able to follow the thread of the proceedings as Lady Eskside did, who did not lose a word that was said, from the speech of Sir John who proposed Val, down to the young candidate’s own boyish but animated address, which, and his good looks, and the prestige and air of triumph surrounding him, completely carried away the crowd. Sir John’s little address was short, but very much to the purpose. It gave a succinct account of Val. “Born among us, brought up among us—the representative of one of the most ancient and honourable families in the county; a young man who has distinguished himself at the university, and in every phase of life through which he has yet passed,” said Sir John, with genial kindness. Mr Lynton, who seconded Val’s nomination, was more political and more prosy. He went into the policy of his party, and all it meant to do, and the measures of which he was sure his young friend would be a stanch supporter, as his distinguished family had always been. Mr Lynton was cheered, but he was also interrupted and assailed by questions from Radical members of the crowd, and had a harder time of it than Sir John, who spoke largely, without touching abstract principles or entering into details. Mr Lynton was a little hustled, so to speak, and put through a catechism, but on the whole was not badly received.
Val’s, however, was the speech of the day. He rushed into it like a young knight-errant, defying and conciliating the crowd in the same breath, with his handsome head thrown back and his young face bright and smiling. “He has no end of way on him,” Lord Hightowers said, who stood by, an interested spectator—or rather, metaphorically, ran along the bank, as he had done many a day while Val rowed triumphant races, shouting and encouraging. Val undertook everything, promised everything, with the confidence of his age. He gave a superb assurance to the Radicals in the crowd that it should be the aim of his life to see that the intelligence of the working classes, which had done so much for Great Britain, should have full justice done to it; and to the tenant-farmer on the other side, that the claims of the land, and those who produced the bread of the country, should rank highly in his mind as they ought always to do. The young man believed that everything could be done that everybody wanted; that all classes and all the world could be made happy;—what so easy? And he said so with the sublime confidence of his age, promising all that was asked of him. When Mr Seisin’s supporters and himself came after this youthful hero, it is inconceivable what a downfall everybody felt. I am bound to add that Mr Seisin’s speech read better than Val’s in the paper, and so did that of his own proposer. But that mattered very little at the moment. Val carried the crowd with him, even those of them who were a little unwilling, and tried to resist the tide. The show of hands was triumphantly in his favour. He was infinitely more Liberal than Mr Seisin, and far more Tory than Sir John. He thought every wrong could be redressed, and that every right must conquer: there was no compromise, no moderation, in his triumphant address.
Lady Eskside and Mary made a progress down the High Street when the gentlemen went to the committee rooms, and saw the Duchess and the Dowager-Duchess, who were both most complimentary. These great ladies had heard Val’s speech, or rather had seen it, being too far off to hear very much, from their carriage, where they sat on the outskirts of the crowd. “What fire, what vigour he has!” said the Dowager. “I congratulate you, dear Lady Eskside; though how you could ever think that boy like his father——”
“He is not much like your family at all, is he?” said the Duchess-regnant, with a languid smile. This was the only sting Lady Eskside received during all that glorious day. The old lord and the young candidate joined them ere long, and their drive back was still more delightful to the old couple than the coming. Lord Eskside, however, growled and laughed and shook his head over Val’s speech. “You’re very vague in your principles,” he said. “Luckily you have men at your back that know what they are doing. You must not commit yourself like that, my man, wherever you go, or you’ll soon get into a muddle.”
“Never mind!” said my lady; “he carried everybody with him; and, once in the House, I have no fear of his principles; he’ll be kept all right.”
“Luckily for him, the county knows me, and knows he’s all right; though he’s a young gowk,” said the old lord, looking from under his bended eyebrows at his hope and pride. They were more pleased, I think, than if Val had made the most correct of speeches. His exuberance and overflow of generous youthful readiness for everything made the old people laugh, and made them weep. They knew, at the other end of life, how these enthusiasms settle down; but it was delicious to see them spring a perennial fountain, to refresh the fields and brighten the landscape, which of itself is arid enough. They looked at each other, and remembered, fifty years back, how this same world had looked to them—a dreary old world, battered and worn, and going on evermore in a dull repetition of itself, they knew; but as they had seen it once, in all the glamour which they recollected, so it appeared now to Val.
Val himself was so much excited by all that had happened, that he strolled out alone as soon as he had got free, for the refreshment of a long walk. It was the end of March: the trees were greening over; the river, softening in sound, had begun to think of the summer as his banks changed colour; and the first gowans put out their timid hopeful heads among the grass. Val went on instinctively to the linn, with a minute wound in his heart, through all its exhilarations. He thought it very hard that Vi should not have been near him, that she should not have tied up her pretty hair with his blue ribbon, that she should have been ranged on the other side. It was the only unpleasant incident in the whole day, the only drop in his cup that was not sweet. He explained to himself how it was, and felt that the reason of it was quite comprehensible; but this gives so little satisfaction to the mind. “Of course he must stick to his party,” Val murmured to himself between his teeth; and of course Mrs Pringle and Violet could not go against the head of the family in the sight of the world at least. When Val saw, however, a gleam of his own colour between the two great beech-trees he knew so well, he rushed forward, his heart beating lighter. He felt sure that it was Violet’s blue gown, which she must have put on, on her return, by way of indemnifying herself for wearing no blue in the morning. He quickened his step almost to a run, going softly over the mossy grass, so that she did not hear him. The sunset was glowing in the west, lighting up the woods with long slanting gleams, and clouds of gorgeous colour, which floated now and then over the trees like chance emissaries from some army where the cohorts were of purple and gold. Vi sat with her face to that glow in the west, under the old beech-tree where the Babes in the Wood had been discovered; but her face was hidden, and she was weeping quite softly, confident in the loneliness of the woods, through which now and then a long sobbing sigh like a child’s would break. The pretty little figure thus abandoned to sorrow, the hidden face, the soft curved shoulders, the golden hair catching a gleam of the sunset through the branches, and still more, the pathetic echo of the sob, went to Val’s heart. He went up close to her, and touched her shoulder with a light caressing touch. “Vi! what’s the matter?” said the boy, half ready to cry too out of tender sympathy, though he was nearly twenty-two, and just about to be elected knight of the shire.
“Oh Val, is it you?” She sprang up, and looked at him with the tears on her cheeks. “Oh, don’t speak to me!” cried Violet. “Oh, how can you ask me what is the matter, after what has happened to-day?”
“Is that what you are crying for?” said Val. “Never mind, Vi, dear. I know you have got to stick to your father, and he must stick to his party. It was hard to see you over there on the other side; but if you feel it like this, I don’t mind.”
“How did you think I should feel it?” cried the girl. “Oh no, you don’t mind! you have plenty, plenty better than me to be with you, and stand up for you; but I—I do mind. It goes to my heart.”
And here she sat down again, and covered her face once more. Val knelt beside her, and drew away her hands.
“Here was where we sat when we were children,” he said softly, to comfort her. “We have always cared more for each other than for any one else; haven’t we, Vi? How could I have plenty, plenty to stand by me? wasn’t it unkind to say so—when you know you are the one I care for most?”
Violet did not lift up her head, but she cried more softly, letting the voice of the charmer steal into her heart.
“I was savage when I saw you over there,” said Val, with his lips very close to her ear. “But you did not put on their ugly colours at least; and now you are all dressed out in mine, and I don’t care,” said the youth; and he stooped and kissed her blue gown prettily, as a young knight-errant might.
“Oh Val!” cried Violet, with a fresh outburst, but turning towards him; “I thought you would be angry.”
“How could I be angry with you, Vi? Should you have been angry if it had been me?”
“Yes,” she said quickly; “if I had thought you didn’t care.” And here she stopped and grew crimson, and turned away her head.
“But you could not suppose that I didn’t care,” said Val; “that would have been impossible. If you only knew how often I have thought of you while I have been away! It was cruel of you not to let me see you before I went; but when I was gone, I am sure there never was a day, seldom an hour, that I did not think of you, Vi.”
She turned round her head to look at him for a moment: there were tears still in her eyes, but very soft ones, a kind of honey-dew. “Did you, Val?” she said, half under her breath.
“Always,” said the lad. “I wanted you to see everything I saw. I thought how sweet it would be if we could go everywhere together, as we did when we were children—but not just like that either. You know, don’t you, how fond I am of you, Vi?”
“Oh Val!” She was almost as near him as when she fell asleep on his shoulder. “But you must not speak to me so now,” she cried suddenly, making an effort to break the innocent spell which seemed to draw them closer and closer; “it makes me wretched. Oh Val, it is not only that we were on the other side this morning. My heart is breaking. I am sure papa means to do something against you, and I cannot stop him. I think my heart will break.”
“What can he do against me?” said Val, in his light-hearted confidence; “and he would not if he could. Don’t think of such nonsense, Vi, but listen to me. We are not children now, but I am fonder of you than of anybody in the world. Why shouldn’t we go everywhere together, be always together. If I might go to your father now and say you belonged to me, he could not carry you off to the other side—could he? Vi,” said the lad, a little chilled and anxious, “don’t turn your head away, dear. Won’t you have me, Vi?”
“Oh Val, wait a little—I daren’t listen to you now. I should be afraid to say a word.”
“Afraid, Vi, to say anything to me—except that you don’t care for me!” said Valentine, holding her fast. “Look me in the face, and you could never have the heart to say that.”
Violet did not say anything good or bad, but she turned softly to him: her face met his eyes as a child turns to a mother or a flower to the sun, and they kissed each other tenderly under the great beech boughs where they had sat leaning against each other, two forlorn babies, ten long years before. The scene now was the completion of the scene then. What explanations were wanted between the children? they had loved each other all along; no one else had so much as come within the threshold of either heart. They clung together, feeling it so natural, murmuring in each other’s ears with their heads so close; the sunset glowing, then fading about them, till the green glade under the beeches was left in a silvery grey calm of evening, instead of that golden glow. The Babes in the Wood had forgotten themselves. Violet at last discovered with a start, how changed the light was and how embrowned the evening. She started from her young lover’s arm.
“Oh, how late it is!” she cried. “Oh, what will they think at home? I must go. I must go at once, or they will think I am lost.”
“We have been lost before now,” said Val, taking it much more easily. “But it is late, and there’s a dinner and fine people at Rosscraig. Oh Vi, what a bore, what a bore! Can’t you come with me?—not this night when so much has happened, not this one night?”
“Indeed you are very bold to speak of such a thing,” said Vi, with dignity; “and you must not come with me either,” she said, mournfully. “Oh Val, I am afraid we have gone and made things worse. I told you not to speak.”
“Very likely that I should not speak!” said Val. “But, Vi, look here; now that it is settled, you may come with grandmamma on Thursday, mayn’t you? I cannot have you on the other side now.”
“But I am on the other side,” said Vi, with some loftiness. “I am a Liberal myself. I should never have opposed you, Val, or worn anybody else’s colours, even if I had not—cared for you; but I am a Liberal as well as papa.”
“You must be a Tory when you belong to me,” said Val.
“Never!” cried Violet; and she shook his arm away and stood independent, with eyes glowing and cheek flushing. Valentine was half angry, half amused, with a man’s instinctive sense of the futility of such protestations. How delightful it was! almost a first quarrel, though their engagement was not an hour old!
“Well, then, you shall be a little Radical if you like—so long as you come,” he said. “I give in; but you must come with us for the election. I have set my heart on that; otherwise I shall stand up on the hustings,” cried Val, “and say, That young lady is going to be my wife, and this is how she treats me. I swear, if you are not with grandmamma, I will——”
“How foolish you boys are!” said Vi; and she took his arm, as if, they both thought, they had been old engaged people, or married people (it did not much matter which). And in this way they made their charmed progress through the wood, forgetting the passage of time till they came to the brae at the Hewan, where Violet, with some terror, dismissed her lover. “You shall not come any farther,” she said; “you shall not. I don’t mean you to see papa to-night. Oh Val, Val! what shall I do if he means to do you any harm?”
“Tell him he will be harming you,” said Val; but how lightly he took her terror! what could Mr Pringle or any man do to him? He was at the high topgallant of success and happiness, almost intoxicated with all the good things that had come to him, and with the young innocent love which rose warm as a summer stream and as soft, fed by all the springs of his heart, growing with all the growth of his life. It was very hard to leave her there, and make his way to his dinner and his politics; but still it had to be done, though Violet stamped her little foot in impatience before he would go. When they parted at last, Val sped along the twilight woods like an arrow, with nothing but triumph and delight in him. He had plucked the last flower of happiness, to wear in his bosom for ever; there seemed to be nothing wanted to the perfection of the moment, and of his life.
As for Violet, she was far from being so happy. She went up the brae more leisurely, in no hurry to go in. Poor child! all her anxieties came back to her with double force. How was she to tell this, how to keep it secret? the one was almost as hard as the other. And then the great chimera in her mind, which she tried to say to herself was nothing, nothing! that dread which she could not explain or define—the consciousness that her father was going to do something against Val. What could she do to hinder him? She shrank from encountering his sharp looks, from telling him her story,—and yet was it not her duty to make one final effort? She went round the new buildings to the little old front of the cottage, which still commanded that view over the Esk which Violet loved so well. Her father was walking about alone smoking his cigar. No one else was visible. The peace of evening had fallen upon the house; but it was cold after the sunset, and Mrs Pringle had not come out to cheer her husband while he smoked his cigar; indeed, to tell the truth, he was not sufficiently in his wife’s good graces to have this indulgence. If Vi, his favourite child, could do anything, now was the moment. Her heart began to beat violently as she stood and looked at him, hesitating, drawn forward by one impulse and back by another. A mere chance movement settled the question. He held out his hand to her as she stood looking at him. “Come, Vi, give me your company,” he said; “your mother thinks it too cold to come out. Where have you been, child, so late?”
“I have been down at the linn,” said Violet; “it is always so pretty there.”
“But you need not have forgotten your dinner, my dear; your mother does not like it; and I thought you were tired after your drive to Castleton,” said Mr Pringle, in slightly reproachful tones.
“I am not tired, papa; I was a little—troubled in my mind. Papa, must we go on the election day, and put ourselves up again, against Val? Oh papa, why? might we not stay at home at least? That is what I was thinking of. Valentine never did any harm to us, papa.”
“Has not he?” said Mr Pringle, fiercely. “You are a goose, Vi, and know nothing about it; you had better not speak of what you don’t understand.”
“Why shouldn’t I understand?” said Violet, roused. “I am just as able to understand as anyone. The only harm Val has done is by being born, and how could he help that? But papa, dear,” said the girl, twining her arm suddenly within his, and leaning on him closely—“that was not what I was thinking of. Down at the linn, where we used to be so much together, how could I help thinking? Val was always so——” Vi paused, with injudicious words on her lips which she stopped just in time—“nice to me,” she added, with a quick breath of fright at her own temerity. “Even the boys were never so good to me; they never took me out into the woods to play truant. Oh papa, if you could only know how delightful it was!”
“He might have broken your neck,” said the obdurate father. “I owe him something for the fright he gave us that day.”
“What fright did he give you? Mamma has told me since she was not a bit frightened. It was the very sweetest—no, almost the very sweetest,” said Violet, a little thrill of tremulous happiness going through her heart, which told of a sweeter still—“day of my life. He took as much care of me as if I had been—his sister; more than the boys ever take. Oh papa! and to sit up yonder against him, as if we were not friends with Val. He is the only one who does not blame you a bit,” said Violet, unused to secrets, and betraying herself once more.
“He! you have seen him, then? It is very kind of him certainly not to blame me,” said Mr Pringle, with a smile.
“He says, of course you must stick to your party,” said Violet. “I just met him—for a moment—in the wood. He was not angry, though I should have been angry in his place. He said it was very hard to see mamma and me over there, but that of course we could not help it; and that he was sure you would not really harm him even if you could.”
Mr Pringle was not a bad man, and his whole being was quaking at that moment with something he had done. Like many another amiable person, led astray by a fixed idea, he had brooded over his injury till it filled all earth and heaven, and made every kind of revenge seem lawful and natural, until, as the climax of a world of brooding, he had launched the deadly shaft he had been pointing and preparing so long. Now it was done, and a cold chill of doubt lest it were ill done had seized upon him. He had called Violet to him on purpose to escape from this, and lo! Violet seized upon him too, like an angel of penitence. He paused a moment, casting a perturbed glance towards Lasswade, whence probably by this time his shaft had been launched—poor little innocent village, under its trees! Had there been time to draw back I almost think he would have done it; but as there was not time, Mr Pringle took the only alternative. He shook off his daughter’s arm, and told her to go in to her mother, and concern herself with things she understood; and that when he wanted her advice and her friend Val’s, he would ask for it, not sooner. “A couple of babies!” he said contemptuously, not perceiving, in his remorse, and resentment, and sore impatience, that even now he had linked the name of his young enemy, upon whom he had revenged himself, with that of his favourite child.