DICK became in a manner the head of the expedition when the party reached Oxford; his foot was on his native heath; he knew where to take the two old people, both of whom became more and more agitated in their different ways, as they approached to the end of their journey. He put them into a cab; and getting on the box himself, had them driven to the river-side. Lady Eskside grasped her old lord’s hand, as they sat there together, jolting through the streets, going to this strangest incident of their lives. She was trembling, though full of resolute strength. The emergency was too much for her nerves, but not for her brave old heart, which beat high with generous courage, yet with a sense of danger not to be despised or overlooked. How was she to meet and master this untamed creature of the wilds? how secure her that she might not escape again? and how make the revelation to her son who had got to hate his wife, and to Valentine who knew nothing of his mother? Lady Eskside, with a mixture of pride and terror, felt that it was all in her own hands. She must do everything. The thought made her tremble; but it gave her a certain elation which the reader will understand, but which I cannot describe—which was not vanity nor self-importance—but yet a distinct personal pleasure and satisfaction in being thus able to set everything right for her children. I don’t doubt that she had some idea that only her own penetrating eye could have made sure of Dick’s identity, and only her close questioning could have elicited from him so many certain proofs; and it seemed so just, so right, such a heavenly recompense for what she had suffered, that to her hands and no other should be given the power of setting all right. Lord Eskside was less excited. He was thinking more of the boy, less of the circumstances in which he was about to find him, and the thrill in his old frame was almost entirely that of natural anxiety to know how Val was. Dick on the box was not without his tremor too. He did not know what his mother would think of this visit—if it would terrify her, if she would think he had been unfaithful to the charge she had laid upon him not to speak of her. He stopped the cab when they reached the river-side; and, scarcely knowing what he was about, handed Lady Eskside out. “I’ll go round by the back and open the door: that’s the house,” he said, hoarsely; and left them standing by the edge of the grey Thames, which, still somewhat swollen with spring rains, ran full and swift, sweeping round the eyot with all its willows faintly green, upon which, though they did not know it, poor Val had stranded. The sun was shining brightly, but still the river was grey; and Lady Eskside shivered and trembled with that chill of anxiety and excitement which is more penetrating than cold. “This is where Val brought me,” said the old lady, as they walked tremulously to the door. “Yes, yes, I mind it all—and there was a shawl like one of mine upon a table. Yes, yes, yes,” she said to herself, almost inarticulate—“my own shawl! Oh, how was it I was so foolish, and did not see at once that it must be her; and she had fled out of the place not to see me? It all comes back! She must have known it was me. It’s nothing, nothing, my dear! I’m trembling, it’s true—how can I help it! But all the time I am steady, steady as a rock; you need not be feared for me.”
“I wonder if he is in one of these rooms,” said the old lord, looking wistfully at the upper windows. They opened the garden gate, not without difficulty, for they were both very tremulous, and went in to the little garden where there was a pale glow of primroses. There they stood for perhaps a moment looking towards the house, waiting for Dick to open to them, breathless, feeling the great crisis to be near. Lady Eskside clung still to her old lord’s arm. He was not a pillar of strength, and shook, too, in his old age and agitation; but there was strength as well as comfort in the mere touch—the sense of standing by each other in those hardest moments, as in all others. As they stood thus waiting, the door opened, and some one came out, walking towards them. He strolled out with one hand in his pocket, with the air of a man issuing forth from his own house. It was not Dick coming to open to them, to admit them. Lady Eskside dropped her husband’s arm, and gave a strange cry—a cry of astonishment and confused dismay, half querulous, half violent. Hot tears came rushing to her eyes in the keen disappointment, mingled with wonder, which penetrated her mind. She clasped her hands together almost with a movement of anger—“Richard, Richard!” she cried.
He stood for a moment silent, looking at them, confused too. “My father and my mother,” he said to himself under his breath. Then he tried to rally his powers, and put on a smile, and look composed and self-possessed, which he was not; but instead of succeeding in this attempt, grew hot and red, though he was old enough to have been done with such vanities. “This is a very unexpected meeting,” he said. “Mother, excuse me if I am startled. Nothing was further from my thoughts than to see you here.” Then he stopped short, and made a gulp of agitation and resumed again. “You have heard that Valentine is here? He is just the same; we must wait for the crisis. He is taken good care of——”
“Richard!” said his mother—“oh, none of your pretending to me—for God’s sake tell us the truth! Do you know?—or is it by chance you have come here?”
“It will be better to come into the house, my lady,” said Lord Eskside.
I scarcely think she heard what he was saying. She put her hand upon her son’s arm, grasping him almost harshly. She was too much excited to be able to contain herself. She had forgotten Val, whom the old lord was longing for. “Do you know, or do you not know?” she cried, her voice growing hoarse. Dick, who had come to the door a minute later than Richard, stood upon the threshold looking at them with a wondering countenance. But no one saw or noticed Dick. He saw the old people absorbed with this new personage, whose back was turned to him, and whom he had never seen before. The mystery was thickening, for here now was another in it, and more and more it grew incomprehensible to Dick. His was not one of the spirits that love mystery. He was open as the day, straightforward, downright. His heart sickened at this maze, at all those difficulties, at the new people who had thus come into his life. He stood looking at them painfully with a confusion in all his thoughts which utterly disconcerted and disturbed him. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and went away. Where? To his work; that at least never disappointed nor confused him. No strangers came into it to tangle the threads, to turn it all into chaos. He had heard how Valentine was, and that the crisis had not yet come; and he was half indignant, half sad, in his sense of a disturbance which was wholly unaccountable and unjustifiable. The house was his—Dick’s—it did not belong to the stranger who had preceded him to the door, and was standing there now in colloquy with the old couple, who evidently had forgotten Dick. What right had they to take him up and cast him down—to take possession of his house, which had cost him dear, which was his, and not theirs, as if he were nothing in it? Dick strode away, more hurt, angry, and “put out,” than he had ever been in his life. He threw off his Sunday coat (none the better for these railway journeys), and hastily putting on his working-jacket, hurried off to the rafts. There a man could always find something to occupy him—there was honest work, uncomplicated by any bewilderments. He went and thrust himself into it, almost forgetting that he was head-man in his anxiety to dislodge all these disturbing questions from his mind, and to feel himself in reality what he was.
“I think,” said Richard, not without excitement himself, but trying hard not to show his rapid changes of colour, his breathless heat and agitation, “that my father gives good advice, and that you ought to come into the house, where at least we can talk with quiet and decency. There is no reason why you shouldn’t come in,” he said, with nervous vehemence, pushing open the door behind him; “or the Queen, for that matter, if she were here. The mistress of it is as spotless as any one of you. That much I may say.”
Lady Eskside did not say another word. She grasped her old lord’s arm again, and suffered herself to be led into the little parlour, which she had seen before on another occasion, little thinking whose house it was. Her eye, I need not say, was caught at once by the little shawl on the table. She pointed at it hastily to her husband, who stared, totally unaware what it was to which his attention was directed. They put her into an old carved chair, which was one of poor Dick’s latest acquisitions before all this wonderful commotion began. Richard, scarcely knowing what he was doing, led the way, introduced them into the strange little room, as a man does when he is in his own house. He had got to feel as if it were his own house. Already he had passed many hours there, feeling himself no intruder. He received his mother and placed her in Dick’s easy-chair as he might have received her in the Palazzo Graziani; and the old lady, with her keen eyes, caught at this, though he was as unconscious of it as a man could be.
“You are at home here,” she said to him, with keen suspicion—“it’s no strange place to you, Richard, though it’s strange, strange, to my old lord and me. What does it mean, man?—what does it mean? Have you known all the time? Have you been keeping it secret to drive us wild? What is it?—what is it you mean?”
“Where is the boy?” said Lord Eskside. “I do not enter into this question between your mother and you. You will satisfy us both, doubtless, about the mystery,—which, as you all well know, is a thing I abhor. Richard,” said the old man, with a break in his voice, “I want to see the boy.”
“Listen first, sir,” said Richard, indignant; “how my mother has found out, I don’t know; but she is right. Chance—or Providence, if you like the word better—has thrown Val into his—mother’s hands. I guessed it when I saw you at Rosscraig, and I came here at once and found it was so——”
“You guessed it? God forgive you, Richard! You’ve known, then, all the time? you’ve exposed us and Val to abuse and insult, and maybe killed the lad and broken my old lord’s heart. Oh, God forgive you, Richard! is this the way you’ve done your duty to us and your boy?”
Lady Eskside wrung her hands. Her old face flushed and grew pale; hot tears filled her eyes. Something of personal disappointment was in the pang with which she felt this supposed deception. Women, I fear, are more apt to think of deception than men. Lady Eskside, in the sharpness of her disappointment, rashly jumped to the conclusion that Richard’s knowledge was not an affair of yesterday; that there was something behind more than had been told to her; that perhaps, for anything she could tell, he had been visiting this woman, who was his lawful wife, as if the tie between them had been of quite a different character; or perhaps, even—who knows?—was trying to palm upon them as his wife some one who did not possess any right to that title. In suspicion, as in other things, it is the first step that costs the most. Lord Eskside did not go so far as his wife did, but the thought began to penetrate his mind too, that if Richard had known this, even for a day, without disclosing it, he had exposed them to cruel and needless pain.
“Catherine,” said the old lord, “we need not quarrel to make matters worse. If he recognises his wife and his other son at last, and it is true that they are here, let us give our attention to make sure of that, and prevent trouble in the future. It is not a question of feeling, but of law and justice. Yes, no doubt, feeling will come in; but you cannot change your son, my lady, any more than he can change his father and mother, which, perhaps, he would have little objection to do. We must put up with each other, such as we are.”
“You do me injustice, sir,” cried Richard; “both you and my mother. There has been no deception in the matter. You shall hear how it happened afterwards; but in the meantime it is true that she is here, mother. I met her at Val’s bedside two days ago for the first time, without warning. I believe if I had given her warning she would have escaped again—but for Val. I am not made of much account between you,” said Richard, with a painful smile. “I have little occasion to be vain. You, my mother, and her, my—wife; what you think of is not me, but Val.”
“Oh Richard! you would aye have been first with me if you would have let me,” said Lady Eskside, as ready to forgive as she had been to censure, her heart melting at this reproach, which was true. As for the old lord, he was not so easily moved either to blame or to pardon. He got up and walked about the room while Richard, still flushed with excitement and a certain indignation, told them the story of the photograph, and his recognition of his wife’s face so strangely brought before him by his son. Richard gave his own version of the story, as was natural. He allowed them to perceive the violence of the shock this discovery had given him, without saying very much on the subject; and described how, though incapable of anything else in the excitement of the moment, he had put force upon himself to make his wife’s residence known to his lawyer, and to have a watch kept upon her movements. What he said was perfectly true, with just that gloss which we all put upon our own proceedings, showing them in their best aspect; and Lady Eskside received it as gospel, taking her son’s hand into her own, following every movement of his lips with moist eyes, entering with tender and remorseful sympathy into those hidden sentiments in his mind which she had doubted the existence of, and which, up to this moment, he had never permitted her to see. Her husband, however, walked about the room while the tale went on, listening intent, without losing a word, but not so sympathetically—staring hard at Dick’s homely ornamentations, his bits of carving, his books, all the signs of individuality which were in the place. I don’t know that he remarked their merits, though he walked from one to another, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stared almost fiercely at the carving, with eyes wellnigh hidden under his shaggy brows. He did not say anything while Lady Eskside, weeping and smiling, made her peace with her son. When she cried, “Oh yes, my dear, my dear, I understand!” he only worked his expressive eyebrows, giving no articulate evidence of emotion. “Val is up-stairs, I suppose? I am going to see him,” was all he said in the pause after Richard’s story concluded. Lord Eskside climbed up the narrow wooden staircase with a shrug of his shoulders. He was not satisfied with his son’s story, as his wife had been. He opened one door after another before he found the room in which Val was lying. To see the boy stretched there on the bed, with vacant eyes, half dozing, half waking, but quite unconscious of his visitor, went to the old lord’s heart far more than Richard’s story had done. “If he had spoken out like a man, this might have been spared,” he said to himself; and bent over Val’s bed to hide the momentary contortion of his features, which brought the water to his eyes. “My poor lad!” he said, with hidden anguish, scarcely noticing for the first moment the nurse on the other side of the bed. She rose with a sudden dilation of terror in her eyes. She had never seen Lord Eskside, and did not know who he was; but felt by instinct that he had been brought hither by the terrible wave of novel events which was about to sweep over her head, and that he had come to take away from her her boy.
Lord Eskside looked at her across the bed where Val was lying. He made her a low bow, with that courtly politeness which now and then the homely old lord brought forth, like an old patent of nobility. But it was difficult for him to know what to say to her—and she gave him no assistance, standing there with a look of panic which disturbed the still, abstracted dignity of her ordinary aspect. “I am afraid I have startled you,” he said, his voice softening. “Don’t be alarmed. I am your—husband’s father. I am sorry, very sorry, that we never met before.”
She made no answer, but only a slight tremulous movement intended for a curtsey; then some sense of the necessities of her position, struggling with her fright, she said faintly, “He is just the same—on Saturday he’ll be better, please God.”
“On Saturday he’ll be better! God bless you, my dear! You seem sure? How can you be sure?” cried the old lord, with his eyelids all puckered together to hide the moisture within.
She put up her hand with a warning gesture. “Hush,” she said; “it makes him restless when he hears a voice”—then a curious, exquisite twilight seemed to melt over her face as if some last reflections of a waning light had caught her, illuminating her for the moment with the tenderest subdued radiance—“except mine,” she added in tones so low as to be almost inaudible. The old lord was deeply touched. What with his boy’s condition, which was worse than he expected, and this voice of great, subdued, and restrained feeling—emotion that had no object but to conceal itself—all his prejudices floated away. He was not in the least conscious of being affected by the beauty which was concealed, too, like the emotion—indeed he would have denied that she had any beauty; but the suppression of both and ignoring of them by their possessor had a great effect upon him; for there was nothing in the world more noble in the eyes of the old Scots lord than this power of self-restraint. He went round to her softly, walking with elaborate precaution, and took her hand for a moment; “God bless you!” he said; then, with another look at Val, he left the room. He himself, even with all the self-control he had, might have broken down and betrayed the passionate love and anxiety in him had he waited longer there.
Lady Eskside was seated in the parlour alone when he entered; she was leaning back in Dick’s great chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes. “He has gone to get the doctor, that we may know everything exactly,” she said. “He” had changed to her. She had taken back her own son, her very child, into her heart, (had he not the best right?) and it was Richard who was “he,” not any one else. She was so tender, so happy, so deeply moved by this revolution, that she could scarcely speak to her husband, who, she felt instinctively, had not been subjected to the same wonderful change.
“I have just seen him—and his mother,” said Lord Eskside.
“Seen him—the boy? Oh my poor Val!” cried the old lady, weeping; and then she raised her hands and turned to her husband with something which was half an apology and half a reproach. “I feel as if I had got my Richard back—our own boy—and I don’t seem able to think of anything else—not even Val.”
Lord Eskside took another turn round the little parlour. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, my lady,” he said; “but if Richard had had the sense to write to you or me when he wrote to that fine London solicitor of his, all this might have been spared. Sandy Pringle’s miserable letter, and all that stramash about the election, and my poor Val’s fever—maybe his life——”
“His life! his life!” she said, starting up in alarm from her chair.
“Who can say? It’s in God’s hands, not ours. His mother says he’ll be better on Saturday,” Lord Eskside said, turning away.
Meanwhile Dick had thrown himself with a certain passion into his work, feeling a curious reluctance which he had never experienced before to receive the orders of the customers, and to run hither and thither launching boats into the water, drawing them up again, dealing out oars and cushions as he had done for years. If he could have pushed out on the stream himself as Val had done, if he could have rowed a race for life or death with some rival oar, that would have calmed him more than anything. Gentlemen like Val, Lord Eskside’s heir, future possessor of all those lovely woods, and of the grey old house full of beautiful things, which was so fresh in Dick’s memory, could afford to calm themselves down in that way. But Dick, who was only a working man, could not afford it. To him his work was everything, and to that alone, when all his nerves were tingling, could he resort to bring him down again from any fanciful strain of emotion. He ought to be glad to have it to do, Dick felt; for had he been idle, it seemed to him that the beating of his heart would have driven him wild. Now, let it swell as it would, he had enough to do to keep him occupied, and no time to think, heaven be praised! It was, as it happened fortunately, a very busy day. Dick forgot his dinner-hour—forgot everything but the necessity for exertion to keep him from himself. Sometimes he ordered his subordinates about almost fiercely, speaking to them as he had never been heard to speak before. Sometimes, not thinking, he would rush himself to do their work, while they stood by astonished, with a manner so unusual that no one knew what to make of him. Was it possible that the fever was “catching,” and that Dick too was going to have it?
But it was a very busy day, and there was plenty of work for everybody, which is a thing that stops speculation. In the afternoon Lord Eskside, straying about the place, found himself on the rafts. He had not intended to go there, nor did he know when he got there what he wanted. The old lord was very restless, anxious, and unhappy. He could do nothing indoors—not even keep still and out of the way, which is the first duty of man in a house where sickness is; and the unfamiliar place did not tempt him to walk as he might have done at home. He had done what he could to occupy himself after the brief interview with the doctor, who could say nothing more than had already been said, that no change could come until Saturday, when, for good or evil, the crisis might be looked for. After this Lord Eskside went to the hotel where Richard was living, and engaged rooms, and did what he could for the comfort of his wife, who had come here in her old age without any attendant. But when this slender business was accomplished, he had nothing further to do. He could not keep indoors in Dick’s little parlour, which they had taken possession of, none of them reflecting that there was another proprietor whose leave had not been asked or given; nor could he linger at the outer door, where Harding hung about in attendance. The old lord had no heart to say anything to Harding; he went to the rafts at last in simple restlessness, having, I almost think, forgotten all about Dick. I suppose it diverted him for the moment from his own heavy thoughts and painful tension of suspense, to see the movement in this busy place—the coming and going—the boats run out into the stream with a pleasant rustle—the slim outriggers now and then carried back all wet and dripping to the boathouses, as one party after another came in. The stir of indifferent cheerful life, going on carelessly all the same under the eyes of a spectator paralysed by anxiety and distress, has a curious bewildering effect upon the mind. He had been there for some minutes before he even noticed Dick’s presence at all.
He perceived him at last with, a thrill of surprise. Dick had transmogrified himself; in his working dress he looked more “a gentleman” than he had done in his Sunday coat. He had a straw hat instead of the black one, a blue flannel coat, and noiseless white boating shoes. The excitement against which he was struggling gave a double animation to his aspect, and made him hold himself more erect than usual, with all the energy of wounded pride. Lord Eskside felt that it must be some consciousness of his true position that gave to Dick’s youthful figure that air of superiority which certainly he had not noticed in him before; but it was in reality a contrary influence, the determination to show that he held his own natural position unaffected by all the mysterious hints he had listened to, and found in his work a blessed refuge from the mystery which he did not understand, but was impatient of, and despised. Dick passed Lord Eskside over and over again, in his manifold occupations, touching his hat, as he did so, but taking no further notice of his travelling companion. The old lord, on his side, made no demonstration of interest; but he took up a position on the edge of the wharf, and followed the young fellow with his eyes. Dick had pushed back his hat, showing his fair locks and open face; he was never still for a moment, darting hither and thither with lithe light frame, and feet that scarcely seemed to touch the boards. How workmanlike he was, in his element, knowing exactly what to do, and how to direct the others who looked to him! and yet, Lord Eskside thought, so unlike any one else, so free in his step, so bold in his tranquil confidence, so much above the level of the others. He sat down on a bench close by, and knitting his heavy brows, sat intent upon that one figure, watching him more and more closely. There were a great many boating men about, for it was just the opening of the season, and some of them were impatient, and none were especially disposed to respect the feelings even of the head man at Styles’s. “Here, you, Brown,” said one young man in flannel; “Brown, I say! Can’t the fellow hear? Are we to wait all day?” “Look alive, can’t you?” shouted a second; “he’s not half the handy fellow he was.” “Spoilt by the undergrads,” said another; “he’s the pet of all the Eton men.” “Brown, Brown! By Jove! I’ll speak to Styles if this goes on. You, Dick! can’t you hear?”
I don’t know if Dick felt any annoyance at their impatient outcries, or resented such an address in Lord Eskside’s presence. But he came to the call, as was his duty, his cheeks a little flushed, but ready to do whatever was wanted of him. “Here, Brown,” said the boating man, carelessly; but he never ended his order. For, before another word could be said, Lord Eskside, glooming, with knitted brows, came hurriedly up to Dick, and put his arm through his. “This is no occupation for you,” said the old lord. “It is time that this was over;” and before the eyes of the astonished lookers-on, he led him away, too much astonished for the moment to resist. “Who is the old fellow?” asked the boating men; and when (for rank will out, like murder) it was whispered who “Brown’s friend” was, a sudden awe fell upon the rafts. A lord! and he had put his arm familiarly into Dick Brown’s, and carried him off, declaring this to be no work for him! What could it mean? The effect produced by Val’s accident was nothing to the ferment which rose, up and down the river-side, when it was known that a lord—an old lord—not one of your wild undergrads—had walked off Styles’s raft, in broad daylight, arm-in-arm with Dick Brown.