SO early as next morning the messenger of vengeance had gone like a fiery cross all over Eskside—up the water and down the water, placarded in the hamlets, sent flying by the post over all the county. It came by the morning’s post to Rosscraig itself. The man who went for the letters got a copy from somebody, which was given with much solemnity and secrecy to Harding the butler for his private information. The upper servants laid their heads together over it in the housekeeper’s room with fright, and yet with that almost agreeable excitement which moves a little community when any great event happens to the heads of it. Excitement is sweet, howsoever it comes; and the grim pleasure which servants often seem to enjoy even in “a death in the family,” is curious to behold. This was much more piquant than a death, and nobody could tell to what it might lead; and then there was the thrilling suspense as to who should venture to tell it to my lord and my lady, and how they would take it when they found it out.
As was to be expected, it was through Harding’s elaborate care to keep it from his master that it was found out. Lord Eskside was in his library before breakfast, very busy with his lists of voters, and the calculations of each district and polling-place, all of which agreed so delightfully in the certain majority which must carry Val triumphantly to his place in Parliament—a triumph which, all the more perfect that it was late, filled the old lord’s heart. His wrinkled forehead was smoothed out as if he had swallowed an elixir of life; his shaggy eyebrows, almost white now, were still, or nearly so; his under lip had subsided peacefully. How many disappointments had passed over that rugged old head! His son Richard had been nothing but one disappointment from beginning to end, sometimes giving acute pain—always a dormant dissatisfaction to his parents. For years and years he had been lost to them altogether: he had sinned like a prodigal, bringing in a wild and miserable romance into the family records, without making up for his sin by the prodigal’s compensating qualities,—the readiness to confess, the humility of asking pardon. Richard had done badly by his family, yet was as proud, and took up as superior a position, as if he had done well. He had not only disappointed but scorned his father’s hopes. Neither father nor mother had any comfort in him, any good of him, any more than if they had no son.
But there was recompense for all their suffering in Val; he was altogether their own, their creation: and the pleasure with which the old lord found all his hopes realising themselves in this boy, who was still young enough to be under his own influence, to take his opinions as a kind of credo and symbol of faith, to carry out his wishes, and take up the inheritance of the Rosses, as he had perfected and filled it up during his long life—was, I think, far greater, more perfect and delightful, than the success of any middle-aged man like Richard, who, as old Jean Moffatt said, was quite as old if not older than himself, could have given him. There were a hundred things in Richard’s character that jarred upon his father, which his good sense made him accept and submit to, knowing how hopeless it would be to attempt to shape a man of the world, who half despised even while he respected his rustic father, into anything like his own image. But there was nothing yet which was grieving or contradictory in Val. The boy was passionate, but then every boy had some defect; and a little wayward and wilful if roused, but always submissive as a child to the arguments of affection, and candid to understand when he was wrong. Lord Eskside saw with fond eyes of affection, and heard from every one—scholastic Grinders, and persons in society, and men of the world—that no more promising lad could be than this hero of his, who had accepted all his schemes and fallen in with all his views. To attain this rare pleasure in your old age is not a common blessing, and it was all the more exquisite because he knew how rare it was.
In this state of mind he rose from his library table and his lists of voters, and stalked out with his hands clasped under his coat tails, to look at the great registering thermometer which hung outside on the shady corner at the west wing. When he came into the hall, Lord Eskside saw Harding in the distance, poring over a paper which he held in his hand,—a large white broadsheet, very much like Val’s address, of which there were some copies about the house. Harding’s obtusity was a joke with the old lord. “Has he not got the sense of it into his old noddle yet?” he said to himself, half laughing, and watched with quiet amusement the butler’s absorption. Lord Eskside’s patience, however, was none of the longest, and he called Harding before many seconds had passed. The man was too much occupied to hear him, and did not stir. Then the old lord, half irritated, half laughing, called again. “If that’s Mr Ross’s address you are reading, bring it here, you haverel, and I’ll explain it to you,” he said. Harding turned round with a scared look, and, crushing up the paper in his hand, he thrust it into his pocket with hurried and almost ostentatious panic.
“It’s not Mr Ross’s address, my lord,” he said.
“Hey! what is it then?—let me see. Lord bless us, man!” said his irascible master, “why do you put on that look? What is it? Let me see!”
“I assure you, my lord, it’s nothing—nothing of the least consequence,” said Harding. “Your lordship would not look twice at it; it’s nothing, my lord.” And he put his hand upon his pocket, as if to defend that receptacle of treason, and stood with the air of the hero in the poem—
“Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.”
Harding, for the first time in his life, was melodramatic in his determination to give his blood sooner than the objectionable paper. While the old lord stood looking at him half alarmed, and becoming more and more impatient, Mrs Harding strayed from her room, which was within reach of the voices, as it was her habit to do when her husband was audible in too prolonged colloquy with my lord.
“Marg’ret,” said Lord Eskside, “what has that haverel of a man of yours got in his pocket? I never can get a word of sense out of him, as you well know.”
“Hoots, my lord, it’s some of his nonsense papers. What have you in your pocket, man? Cannot you give my lord a sensible answer? It’s some of the squibs or things about yon auld Seisin, the lawyer body that’s set up against us,—a bonnie like thing in our county, that has never had a Whig member as lang as I can mind.”
“That’s true,” said Lord Eskside, mollified; “it’s scarcely worth the trouble to publish any squibs. Let’s see it, Harding,—and don’t look so like a gowk, if you can help it. What is the matter with the man?”
“Give it him without more ado,” whispered Mrs Harding peremptorily to her spouse. “He maun see it sooner or later, and he’ll think we’ve something to do wi’ it if you keep it back. Here’s the paper, my lord. Na, it’s no a squib on auld Seisin. I’m thinking it’s something on the other side.”
“What do you mean by the other side?” said Lord Eskside, his eyebrows beginning to work as he snatched it out of her hand.
“Nae doubt they have their squibs too,” said Mrs Harding, making her escape with as unconcerned a face as possible. Her husband, on the contrary, stood gaping and pale with horror, not knowing what thunderbolt might burst upon him now.
The old lord smoothed the crumpled paper, and held it out before him at a distance to read it without his spectacles. He stood so for a moment, and then he went back into the library, and shut the door. About half an hour after he rang the bell, and asked that my lady should be called. “Ask Lady Eskside to be so good as to come to me here,” he said, in strange subdued tones, without looking up. This was a very unusual summons. In all the common affairs of life he went to her, and it was only when something more grave than usual happened in the house that Lord Eskside sent for his wife. He did not rise when she came in, which she did at once, her old face flushed with alarm. All the ruddy rustic colour had gone out of my lord’s face; his very hand was pallid which held the paper. He drew a chair close to him with his other hand, and called to her impatiently, “Come here, Catherine, come here!”
“What has happened?” Her eye ran over the papers on the table, looking for the yellow cover of a telegram—thinking of her absent son, as mothers do. If it was nothing about Richard, it could not be anything very terrible. Having satisfied herself on this point, she sat down by him, and put her hand upon his arm. “My dear, you are not well?”
“Never mind me,” he said; “I am well enough. Read that.”
Lady Eskside looked at it, wondering, then looked up at him, gave a low cry, and drew it towards her. This was what she read:—
“To the free and independent Electors of Eskshire.
“GENTLEMEN,—You were called upon to listen to, applaud, and accept certain statements yesterday, coming from no less a person than Sir John Gifford, and other great personages of the county, which it may perhaps be well to examine dispassionately before acting on them so far as to send to Parliament as your representative a young man possessing no real right to such an honour.
“I mean to say nothing against the gentleman calling himself, and called by others, Mr Valentine Ross. He is young and absolutely untried; therefore, though it cannot be said that he has done anything to justify his claims on your support, it is equally true that he has done nothing to invalidate them, so far as he possesses any. This, however, is the fundamental question which I wish to assist you to examine. What are his claims upon you? They are those of Lord Eskside’s grandson, heir of one of the most considerable families in the county—a family well known and respected by all of us, and about whose principles there can be no doubt, any more than of their high honour and estimation in the district. These are the pretensions of the party who support Mr Ross as a candidate for your suffrages. Sir John Gifford—and no one can respect Sir John more than I do, or would give more weight to his opinion—introduced his name to you with high eulogies, as ‘one born among us, brought up among us, the heir of one of the most ancient and honourable families in the county.’ Now the question I have to lay before you is straightforward and simple—‘Is this true?’ Sir John’s first statement is of course to be taken as a figure of speech, and I will not be so ungracious as to press it, for we all know that the young gentleman in question was not born among us. He made his first appearance at Eskside, as most of you are aware, when a child of about seven years old. How did he make his first appearance? Was he brought home carefully, out of one comfortable nursery into another, under the charge of suitable nurses and attendants, as our own children are, and as it is natural to suppose the son of the Honourable Richard Ross—a man holding an important appointment in Her Majesty’s diplomatic service, and the heir of an old title and very considerable estate—would be? I answer, unhesitatingly, No. The child, in the dress and with the appearance of a tramp-child, was brought to Lord Eskside’s door by a female tramp—a wandering vagrant—who lodged that night in a low tavern in the neighbourhood. He was thrust in at the door, and left there without a word; and equally without a word he was received. The persons who were present know that no message nor letter nor token of any kind was sent with the child. He was left like a parcel at Lord Eskside’s door. Lord Eskside immediately after announced to the world that his grandson had been sent to him, to be brought up at home. And the child thus strangely introduced, without mother, without pedigree, without resemblance, without a single evidence of his identity, is the young gentleman who is known to us by the name of Mr Valentine Ross, and who now asks our suffrages on his family’s merits rather than his own.
“Gentlemen, I am not one to disregard any claim which a man, who has in any way served his country, makes upon his own merits. To such a man I reckon it an impertinence to ask any question as to his pedigree. But when a young man says to me, Elect me, because I am my father’s son, I ask, Is it certain that he is the son of the man he claims as father? All that we know of his history is against it. His reputed father has studiously kept out of the way. Why, if he is Richard Ross’s son, whom we all know, is not Richard Ross here to acknowledge him? Instead of Richard Ross, we have nothing but a fond old man who has adopted an ingratiating boy. Lord Eskside has a right to adopt whom he pleases; but he has no right to set up some base-born pretender—some chance child thrown on his bounty—as the heir of his honours and the representative of his family. Will you send to Parliament, as a Ross of Eskside, an old man’s pet and pensioner, a supposititious heir? or will you not rather demand a searching inquiry into a history so mysterious, before you strengthen, by your election of him, the pretended rights of an impostor? He may be an innocent impostor, for I say nothing against the young man in his own person; but until his claims have been investigated, and some reasonable evidence afforded, an impostor he must be considered by all Eskside men whose ambition it is to have everything about them honest and above-board.
“The demons!” cried Lady Eskside. Hot tears were shining in her eyes, forced there by pressure of rage and shame. She clenched her hand in spite of herself. “Oh, the word’s not bad enough! Devils themselves would have more heart.”
“It’s Sandy Pringle’s doing,” said the old lord. “I thought he was too mim and mild. He’s been preparing it these dozen years; and now the moment’s come, and he’s struck home.”
“It’s too bad for Sandy Pringle,” said the old lady, pushing her chair from the table. “Oh no, no; it’s too bad for that; the man has bairns of his own.”
And the tears ran down her cheeks with sheer pain. “We were never ill to anybody,” she moaned; “never hard-hearted that I know of. Oh, my poor old lord!—just when your heart was light, and you had your way!”
She turned upon him in the midst of her own pain with a pathetic pity, and the two pairs of tremulous old hands clasped each other closely with that sympathy which is far deeper than any words. I do not think it would have taken much to bring a tear down the old lord’s rugged cheek as well as his wife’s. The blow had gone straight to his heart. Pain—helpless, bitter, penetrating, against which the sufferer surprised by it can do nothing but make a speechless appeal to heaven and earth—was the chief sensation in his mind. He was so unprepared and open to attack, so happy and proud, glad and rejoicing in the last evening lights, which were so sweet. For the first moment neither of them could think—they could only feel the pain.
Then there came a sense of what had to be done, which roused the old pair from the pang of the first shock. “It will be all over the county this morning,” said Lord Eskside. “Of that we may be sure. A man could not be bad enough to do so much without being bad enough to do more. We’ll say nothing about it here, Catherine; especially, we’ll tell the boy nothing about it. Leave him at peace for the moment; to-morrow he is sure to hear; but in the mean time, as soon as breakfast is over, I’ll make some excuse, and drive over to Castleton. We’ll keep him out of the way. I’ll see Lynton, and Sir John, and as many more of the committee as I can, and consult what’s to be done.”
“You’ll tell them how false it all is, and how devilish,” said my lady; “devilish, that is the only word.”
“Devilish, if you please,” said Lord Eskside; “but how am I to say it’s false! Half the county know it’s true.”
Lady Eskside stopped the contradiction which came to her lips. She wrung her hands in that impotence which it is so much harder on the strong to bear than on the weak.
“Oh, that woman! that woman!” she cried; “the harm she has done to me and mine!”
“I will lay the whole matter before them,” said Lord Eskside; “there is nothing else for it now—they must hear everything. At times it may be prudent to hold your peace; but when you must speak, you must speak freely. I will tell them everything. It would have been better to have done it long ago.”
“Oh, what is the need of telling them?” cried my lady—“do you think they don’t know? Ay, as well as we do; but do what seems to you good, my good man. It’s like to break my heart; but I am most sorry for you, my dear, my dear!”
“Dry your eyes now, Catherine,” he said, hoarsely; “we must not show our old eyes red to strangers. Come, the bell has rung, and we’ll all be the better of our prayers.”
They went in, arm in arm, to the great dining-room, where the servants were waiting, more curious than can be described, to see how my lord and my lady “were taking it.” They had no satisfaction, I am glad to say. The old lord read his short “chapter,” and the short prayer which followed, in a tone in which the most eager ear could detect no faltering. And my lady, if perhaps not so buoyant in her aspect as yesterday, did not betray herself even to Mary Percival, who knelt calmly by her side, and did not know how her old heart was sinking.
“We will give you a holiday to-day, Val,” Lord Eskside said, after breakfast; “but for me, I will drive over to Castleton and see how everything is going on.”
Val, who had visions of rushing up to the Hewan, and who felt himself perfectly safe in his grandfather’s hands, consented gaily. “If you are sure you don’t want me,” he said; and the old man drove off smiling, waving his hand to the ladies at the door. Harding and the other servants were very much puzzled by their master. They had thought it not unlikely that he might afford them still further excitement by fainting dead away or going off in a fit.
I do not know which had the hardest task—Lord Eskside telling the story of his son’s marriage, with all its unfortunate consequences, to the serious county magnates assembled round the table of the committee room, and looking as grave as though Valentine had committed high treason—or his wife at home, trying to look as if nothing had happened, and to keep Val by her side that he might not hear of the assault upon him. At one period of the day at least my lady’s work was the hardest. It was when Val insisted upon having from her a message to Violet Pringle or her mother, asking that the girl might accompany her next morning to see the election.
“Violet Pringle,” cried the old lady, tingling in every vein with resentment and indignation—“of all the people in the world, why should I take her father’s daughter about with me? You are crazy, Val.”
“Perhaps I am,” said Val, with unusual gravity and humility; “but if I am crazy, I am still more crazy than you think. Grandma, I want you to take Vi about with you everywhere. Don’t you know what friends she and I have always been? Listen, and don’t be angry, Granny dear. When all this is over, and there is time to think of anything, I want you to give your blessing to Vi and me. She is going to be my wife.”
The old lady gave a scream: it was nothing else. She was wild for the moment with wonder, and anger, and horror. “Never! never! it must never be! Your wife!” she cried. “Oh, Val, you are mad. It can never be!”
“How can you say it can never be, when it is?” said Val, gently, with the smile of secure and confident happiness. “Yes, I don’t mind Mary hearing, as she is there. Last night I met Vi in the woods. I was half mad, as you say, to think they had kept her away from me on such a day. I asked her to promise that it should never be so any more; and now nothing can come between us,” said the young man in the confidence of youth. The idea of any strenuous objections on the part of the old people, who had yielded to every wish he had formed all his life, did not occur to him. Why should they object? He knew no reason. He had not announced it last night because there was a great dinner-party, and the house was full of strangers, but not because he felt any alarm as to how his news would be received.
“Val, I tell you you are mad,” said Lady Eskside, deeply flushed with anger, of which she did not venture to show all the causes. “Your grandfather will never hear of it for a moment. Sandy Pringle has always been your enemy—always! and has he not shown himself so, openly, now?”
“Oh, of course he must stick to his party,” said Val, lightly. “As for being my enemy, that is nonsense. Why should we be melodramatic? I am sure he wishes me well in his heart.”
“A likely story!” said the old lady, her old cheeks blazing hotter and hotter; and when Val announced his intention of going off at once to make his proposal known to Mr Pringle, and claim his consent, the passionate resentment and indignation which she strove to suppress were almost too much for her. She bade the boy remember that he owed it to his grandfather at least to tell him first of so important a step, but at last had to come down to arguments of convenience and expediency. “You may be sure Sandy Pringle is not at the Hewan to-day. He has too much mischief in hand to stay there in his hole. He is at work, doing you all the harm he can, the old sneck-drawer!” said the indignant old lady—not daring to put half her indignation into words.
“As he is to be my father-in-law, you must be more civil to him, grandmamma,” said Val, half laughing at her vehemence. He gave in at last, very reluctantly, to put off his going for the day. But even when this was attained, Lady Eskside’s work was but half done, for Val had to be kept at home if possible, kept occupied and amused, that he might not discover prematurely the cruel attack of which he was the victim. She was afraid he might do something rash, and compromise himself before the election. In the excitement of that day itself, and when the business was too near completion to be capable of being deranged by any hot-headed folly poor Val might be guilty of, the risk would be less—or so at least the old people thought.
Thus things went on until the evening. Lord Eskside had fortunately left some business behind him to be completed, which gave Val occupation, and my lady had a moment of ease in which she could confide all that had happened to Mary. This last complication about Violet made everything so much the worse. Lady Eskside would have thought Sandy Pringle’s daughter a poor enough match for her boy at any time; but now! Her only trust was that Mrs Pringle was a sensible woman, and might see the necessity of putting a stop to it; but with the precedent of his father’s reckless marriage before him, and Val’s hot and hasty disposition, the old lady’s heart sank at the prospect. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” she said at last, letting fall a silent tear or two, as she sat with Mary waiting in the dusk of the evening for her husband’s return. “My poor old lord is long of coming; he’ll be worn to death with this terrible day.”
Lord Eskside was very late. The dressing-bell had rung, and the ladies were lingering, waiting for him in the pale dusk, which had come on earlier than usual. The time and the season and the hour were very much like that other bleak night, fifteen years ago, when Val came first to Rosscraig. There was no storm, but it had been raining softly all the afternoon, refreshing the country, but darkening the skies, and increasing the depression of all who were disposed to be depressed. Val had gone out in the rain into the woods after his day’s work, not knowing why it was that some uneasiness in the house had taken hold upon him, some sense of contradictoriness and contrariety. Were things going wrong somehow, that had been so triumphantly right? or what was it that irritated and oppressed him? The ladies, in their anxiety, which he was not allowed to share, were glad when he went away, releasing them from all necessity for dissimulation. They sat in different parts of the room, not even talking to each other, listening to the rain, to the taps of the wet branches upon the windows, and all the hushed sounds of a rainy night. Lady Eskside had her back to the window, but, for that very reason, started with the greater excitement when a sound more distinct than the taps of the branches—the knocking of some one for admission, and a low plaintive voice—came to her ear, mingled with the natural sounds of the night. Crying out, “Mary, for God’s sake! who is it?” she rose up from her chair. Just about the time and the moment when one of the boys was brought to her! I think for the time the old lady’s mind was confused with the pain in it. She thought it was Val’s mother come back at last with the other boy.
A little figure, young and light, was standing outside the window in the rain,—not Val’s mother, in her worn and stormy beauty, but poor little Violet in her blue cloak, the hood drawn over her golden hair—her eyes, which had been pathetic at their gayest moment, beseeching now with a power that would have melted the most obdurate. “Oh, my lady, let me in, let me in!” cried Vi. Lady Eskside stood for a minute immovable. “Her heart turned,” as she said afterwards, against this trifling little creature that was the cause of so much trouble (though how poor Vi, who suffered most, could be the cause, heaven knows!—people are not logical when they are in pain). Then I think it was the rain that moved her, and not the child’s pleading face. She could not have left her enemy’s dog, let alone his daughter, out in that drenching rain. She went across the room, slow and stately, and opened the window. But when Violet in her wet cloak came in, Lady Eskside gave her no encouragement. “This is a wet night for you to be out,” was all she said.
“Oh, Lady Eskside!” said poor Violet, throwing herself down in a heap at the old lady’s feet—“I have come to ask your pardon on my knees. Oh, you cannot think we knew of it, mamma and I. She is ill, or she would have been here too. Oh, my lady, my lady, think a moment! if it is hard for you, it is worse for us. It will kill mamma; and my heart is broken, my heart is broken!” cried poor little Vi.
“Miss Pringle, I do not think, on the spur of the moment, that there is much to be said between you and me.”
“Oh, my lady!” Violet cried out, as if she had been struck, at the sound of her own name.
“Nothing to be said,” continued Lady Eskside, though her voice wavered. “Who would blame you, poor thing—or your mother either? but between your father’s family and mine what can there be to say? That is not a fit posture for a young lady. We are not in a theatre, but private life,” said the old lady, severely calm. “If you will rise up and put off your wet cloak, I will order the carriage to take you home.”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Violet, rising to her feet. Her soft eyes sent forth an answering flash; her pale little face flushed over. “If you will not have any pity—I meant nothing else, my lady—will you tell—Val,” she added, with a hysterical sob rising in her throat, “that he is not to think any more of what he said last night. I’ll—forget it. It cannot be now, whatever—might have been. Oh, Mary,” cried the girl, turning to Miss Percival, whom she saw for the first time—“tell him! I never, never can look him in the face again.”
“If you please, my lady,” said Harding, appearing at the door in the darkness, “my lord has just come home; and he would be glad to see your ladyship in his own room.”
Lady Eskside hurried away. She did not pause even to look again at the suppliant whom she had repulsed. Violet stood looking after her, wistful, incredulous. The girl could not think it was anything but cruelty; perhaps at the bottom of her poor little distracted soul she had hoped that the old lady, who was always so kind to her, would have accepted her heart-broken apology, and refused to accept her renunciation. She could not believe that such a terrible termination of all things was possible, as that Lady Eskside should leave her without a word. She turned to Mary, and tottered towards her, with such a look of surprised anguish as went to Miss Percival’s heart.
“My dear, my dear, don’t look so heart-broken! She has gone to hear what has happened. She is very, very anxious. Come to my room, and change your wet things, my poor little Vi.”
“No, no! Not another moment! Let me go, let me go!” cried the girl, escaping from her hold; and, with the swiftness of youth and passion, Violet turned and fled, through the open window by which she had entered, out into the darkness, the rain, and the night.