OF all the persons involved at this crisis, I think the most to be sympathised with was honest Dick, who wrote the letter over which Mrs Pringle pondered out of such a maze and confusion of feeling as seldom arises without personal guilt in any mind. From his very first glimpse of the new personage introduced into his little world—the stranger who had suddenly appeared to him when he went to open his own door to Lady Eskside, standing between him and her, anticipating and forestalling him—a glimmering instinctive knowledge who this stranger was had flashed into Dick’s mind. Already the reader is aware he had thought it probable that Valentine’s father was also his own father, and had endeavoured to account to himself for his mother’s strange behaviour on this score. I cannot quite describe the feelings with which Dick, with his tramp-traditions, regarded such a supposed father. What could “the gentleman,” who had been his mother’s lover, be to him? Nothing, or less than nothing—not “the author of his being,” as our pious grandfathers used to say; but something much more like an enemy, a being half malignant, half insulting, with whom he had nothing to do, and towards whom his feelings, if not those of mere indifference, would be feelings of repulsion and instinctive dislike. He felt no shame on his mother’s account or his own; but for the other who had left that mother and himself to take their chance in the woods or on the streets, he was ashamed of his connection with him, and felt mortified and humbled by the mere suggestion of his existence. So long as he kept out of the way, Dick could refrain from thinking of this unknown parent; but the moment he appeared, he woke a hundred lively emotions in the bosom of his son. Dislike, annoyance, a sense of pride injured, and secret humiliation, came to him at the first glance of Richard Ross. This was his feeling before any hint of the real state of affairs had reached him. The old lord had not made the disclosure that first day, but waited until the crisis of Valentine’s fever was over. Then he called to Dick to go out with him, and there, on the bank of that river which had witnessed all the changes in his fortune, this last and most extraordinary change was revealed to the bewildered young man. Dick’s mind was already excited by the painful interval of suspense which had occurred; and when this revelation was made to him, the confusion in his thoughts was indescribable. That he was Valentine’s brother—not secretly and guiltily, but in the eye of day—that the great house which he had looked upon with so much awe and admiration was his home—that all the accessories and all the realities of wealth and rank were his, actually his—relatives, connections, leisure, money, luxury,—was more than he could understand. He did not believe it at first. He thought the old lord had gone mad, that he had been seized with some sudden frenzy, that he had altogether misconceived the relationship between his son, the gentleman whom Dick disliked and suspected of being his father, and the poor lad who never had known what a father was. “I think I know what you mean. I had got to suppose he was my father for some time,” said Dick, bluntly, “but not in that way. You are mistaken, sir; surely you are mistaken.”
“How could I be mistaken? are there more ways of being your father than one?” said the old lord, half amused by the lad’s incredulity. Dick shook his head; he was better informed than Lord Eskside, who was so much his senior. He knew things which it was impossible the other could know—but how was he to say them? It did not occur to him even now that there was any relationship between the father of Richard Ross and himself, even though he was prepared to believe that he himself was Richard Ross’s son.
“I don’t understand you, any more than you understand me,” said Lord Eskside, “and I don’t wonder that you’re confounded; but, nevertheless, what I have told you is true. I am your grandfather, Dick. Ah, that takes you by surprise? Now, why, I would like to know? since you believe my son is your father, though ‘not in that way’——”
“My lord,” said Dick, “I beg your pardon; but there’s ways of being a man’s son without being anything to his relations, and that’s what I am thinking of. In my class we understand that such things are—though perhaps they oughtn’t to be.”
“But, you gomeral, you belong to my class, and not to your own!” said the old lord, feeling, with a mixture of pain and amusement and impatience, his own ignorance before the superior and melancholy knowledge of life possessed by this boy. “What must I say to convince you? You are Valentine’s twin brother; do you not see what that means? and can you suppose that anything in the world but a boy’s mother would nurse Val as that woman is doing?—besides, he’s her living picture,” said Lord Eskside, abruptly, and not without a grudge. He said it to convince this boy, who was a genuine Ross, without dispute or doubt; but even now it gave him a pang to acknowledge that his Val was like the tramp-mother, and not like the noble race of which his father came.
Dick stopped short, and put out his hand blindly as if to save himself from falling. This was a new view of the subject altogether. He could understand the relationship through the father; but—his mother! Valentine! What did it all mean? He caught his breath, and something like a sob came from his breast “I can’t understand it—I can’t understand it!” he cried, feeling choked as well as blinded; air failing him, sight failing him, and the whole steady earth turning round and round. When he recovered himself a little he turned to Lord Eskside, who was watching him closely from under his shaggy eyebrows. “Don’t say anything more, sir,” he cried with an effort which was almost piteous. “Let me try to make it out—I can’t all at once.”
“Go home, my lad,” said the old lord, kindly patting him on the shoulder, “and think it out at your leisure.”
“Thank you, sir—thank you,” cried Dick; and he turned back without another word, and hurried to his little bedroom, which was next door to the one in which Valentine lay. Ought he to have been overwhelmed with delight and joy? Instead of being a nobody, Dick Brown, Styles’s head-man, he was Richard Ross, Lord Eskside’s grandson, a person of importance, the son of a future baron; superior to all his old surroundings, even to most of his old patrons. But Dick was not glad at first, not even when he had fully realised this wonderful news, and allowed to himself that, Lord Eskside having told it, it must be true. He had found a family, a name, a position in the world; but he seemed to have lost himself. He sat down on his bed in the small room which he had himself furnished with a hundred little graces and conveniences, and of which a week ago he had been proud, and covered his face with his hands. But for his manhood, he could have sobbed over this extraordinary break and stop in his life; and at the first he was no more able to reconcile himself to being Dick Brown no longer, than Mr Richard Ross would have been able to reconcile himself to descending into the place of Styles’s head-man! The change was as great one way as another; indeed I think the higher might have been better able to come down than the lower, who did not understand how he was to mount up, and in whose modest, simple soul there rose on the moment impulses of pride he had never been conscious of possessing. Here, in his natural sphere, he was respected, thought well of, and everybody was aware how well he fulfilled his duties, bearing himself like a man, whatever he had to do. But this new world was all dark to him, a place in which he would have no guidance of experience, in which he would be judged according to another standard, and looked down upon. I do not mean to paint Dick as a perfect being, and this sense of natural pride, this personal humiliation in his social rise, gave him a pang which was at least as respectable as other pangs of pride. He did not know how long he sat there pondering blankly, forecasting with sombre thoughts an unknown future. He had lost himself, whom he knew, and he could not tell how the new self whom he did not know would be able to harmonise his life. He was still sitting there, with his hands over his eyes, when a faint sound in the room roused him, and, looking up, he saw his mother, who had entered softly, and now stood looking at him. He returned her look seriously for a moment before he spoke.
“Mother, is this true?”
“Yes,” she said, clasping her hands as if she would have wrung them. “Yes, boy, yes; it’s true. I gave up the one, because I thought he had a right to one; and I kept you, Dick. I was your mother that bore you, and sure I had a right to you.”
“Just a word more, mother,” said Dick, softly, “not to vex you: the little chap that died—was it him?—the one that you said died?”
“He died to me,” she cried—“to me and to you. I never, never thought to set eyes on him again. I gave him up, free. Dick, that night on the river, when you helped him with his boat——”
“Yes, mother?”
“I should ha’ gone away then. I should have taken you off, my boy, and never let you know him; but it got into my head like wine,” she cried; “the sight of him, Dick, so handsome and so kind! and to think he was my lad, mine, all the same as you. And he’d look at me in such a way, wondering like, as nobody but him ever looked—as if he wanted to ask, who are you? who are you?—what are you to me? Many and many a day I’ve caught his eye; and nobody but me knew why the lad looked like that—him least of all—only me. It got into my head, Dick, watching him. I couldn’t go. And then to see you two together that were never meant to be together all your lives!”
“You mean, mother, that were born never to be separate?” said Dick.
“Yes, lad, yes; that is what I mean,” she cried, dropping into a chair, and covering her face with her apron. For a moment there was that in Dick’s heart which kept him from speaking, from trying to comfort her. The best of us now and then must think of ourselves. Dick was too much confused in mind to blame his mother, but it gleamed across him, among so many other thoughts—if it was to be that he was not Dick Brown, how much better it would have been that he had never been Dick Brown; this is a confused sentence, but it was thus that the thought passed through his mind. The loss of himself, and even of “the little chap that died,” pained him—and this loss was for no reason, it seemed—for how much better would it have been had he always known the truth! This kept him for a moment from saying anything to her—but only for a moment; then he rose and went to his mother, laying his hand on her shoulder—
“It’s all very confusing, mother,” he said; “but it’s best you did not go away. I’ve got most of my happiness in life from knowing—him. The pity is you ever did go away, mother dear; but never mind; anyhow, though all the rest is changed, there’s nothing changed between you and me.”
“Oh, my lad!” she cried, “they’ll take you from me—they’ll take you both from me, Dick.”
“They can’t do that,” he said with a smile, soothing her; “you forget we’re men, mother. Take heart. So he’s the little chap that died? I always thought there was something about him different from all the other gentlemen,” said Dick, melting. “The first time I set eyes on him, I fancied him—and he me,” he added after a little pause, the moisture creeping to his eyes; “which was more strange; for what was I that he should take notice of me? The first time he saw you, mother, he was so struck he could scarcely speak; and said, Why didn’t I tell him you were a lady——”
“Me!” she cried, looking up; “me—a lady——”
“That was what he said—he knew better than the like of us,” said Dick. Then, after a pause, the good fellow added, with self-abnegation like that of old Lord Eskside, for he did not like to acknowledge this any more than his grandfather did; “and they say he’s your living picture, mother—and it’s true.”
“Oh, Dick! oh, my boy, my Val, that I’ve carried in my arms and nursed at my breast!—but he’ll never know his mother. Come, Dick, come, as long as we’ve the strength. We’ll go away, lad, you and me——”
“Where, mother?”
“Out, out, anywhere—to the road. It’s there I belong, and not in houses. Before they take you both from me—Dick, Dick, come!—we’ll go away, you and me.”
She started up as she spoke and caught at his arm—but, giddy and weak with long watching and the fatigue, which in her excitement she had not felt, dropped heavily against him, and would have fallen had he not caught her. “It’s nothing; it’s a dizziness,” she murmured. “I’ll rest a moment, and then we’ll go.”
Dick laid her tenderly upon his bed. “You’re overdone, mother dear,” he said; “and this house is mine whatever happens, and you’re the queen in it, to do what you please. When you’re rested, we’ll think what to do. Besides, he may want us yet,” he added, forcing a smile; “he is not out of the wood yet that we should run away from him. Mother, though he’s my—brother, as you all say, I don’t seem to know his name.”
The mother, lying down on her son’s bed, with Dick’s kind face bending over her, gave way to a soft outburst of tears. “He is Val,” she said. “Dick and Val—Dick and Val. Oh, how often I’ve said them over!—and one to him and one to me. That was just; I always knew that was just!” she cried.
It seemed to Dick when he went out of the room, leaving her behind him to rest, that years had passed over him since he took refuge there. Already this strange disclosure was an old thing of which there could be no doubt. Already he was as certain that he was no longer Dick Brown of Styles’s, as he was of his existence—and would have been sharply surprised, I think, had any one called him by that name: and as a consequence of this certainty he had ceased to consider the change in himself. Something else more interesting, more alarming, lay before him—a new world, a family of which he knew nothing, a father whom he disliked to think of. Even Val, whom he knew, would be changed to him. He had felt for him as a brother before he knew; would he be a brother now? or would the very bond of duty, the right Dick had to his affection, quench that warm sweet fountain of boyish kindness which had risen so spontaneously, and brightened the young wanderer’s life? Then there was his mother to think of among all these strange unknown people. He had understood very imperfectly the story Lord Eskside had told him; and now he came to think of it, why was it that she, so young as she must have been, had fled from her husband? What reason could she have had for it, unless her husband treated her unkindly? This idea roused all the temper (there was not much) in Dick’s honest nature. No one should treat her unkindly now, or look down upon her, or scorn her lowliness! With a swelling heart Dick made this vow to himself. He would have to defend her, to protect her honour, and credit, and independence; and then, on the other hand, he would have to stand against herself, her wild impulse of flight, her impatience of control. Already he felt that, though it was but an hour or two since he had been Dick Brown, he could never be Dick Brown again; and though he would not have his mother crossed or troubled, still she must not, if he could help it, fly and turn everything into chaos any more.
Care thus rose upon Dick on every side as he forecasted his new life; but it had to be faced, and he did so with steady valour. He went softly to the door of the sick-room and looked in to see if anything was wanted. Val, very weak and spent, but conscious, and noting what went on with eager curiosity, saw him, and, smiling faintly, beckoned to him with his hand. Lady Eskside was seated in the place so long occupied by his other nurse, bending fondly over her boy. She said, “Come in,” but with a half-jealous, half-fretful tone. She thought it was the mother, and the old lady was jealous, though she would not have willingly betrayed it, longing just for one hour to have her boy to herself. Val held out his thin hand, and said, “Brown, old fellow! how pleasant it is to see you again!” “I am glad you are better,” said Dick, feeling cold and hard as the nether millstone. It was not Val who had changed, but himself. Then he went out of the room with a sensation of meanness and misery, and going down-stairs, wrote that letter in which, for the first time, he called his brother by his name. In the midst of this a sudden softening came to him. He put down his pen, and his dry eyes grew moist, and an infinite sweetness stole into his heart. Now he should see her again, speak to her perhaps, be a friend of hers. He finished his letter hastily, but how could he sign it? What name had he but his Christian name? He could not put a false name to her; so he ended his letter hastily, and went out to post it, as he always did, himself. And then another thing happened to him, a new step in his career.
In the little dark passage at the foot of the stairs, he met Richard face to face: they had scarcely met before, but they could not pass each other now that they knew each other, and each knew that the other knew. It was a strange meeting to be the first between a father and son, but yet there was a kind of advantage in getting it over, which Richard was quick to perceive. In his heart he was little less embarrassed than his son was; but he was a man of the world, and knew how to behave in an emergency with that ease of speech, which looks half miraculous to the inexperienced. He held out his hand to his son at first without saying anything, and poor Dick felt in spite of himself the strangest thrill of unexpected feeling when he put out with hesitation his hard workman’s hand into that white and soft yet vigorous clasp. Then Richard spoke:
“My father has told you what we are to each other,” he said. “My boy, I do not blame your mother; but it is not my fault that I see you now for the first time. But I know you a little—through Val, your brother: who found you by instinct, I suppose, after we had all searched for you in vain.”
Dick’s countenance was all aglow with the conflict of feeling in him; his voice laboured in his throat with words that would not come. The contrast between his own difficulty of speech and the ease of the other unmanned him altogether. “I—I have known—him—a long time,” was all he could stammer forth.
“Thank heaven for that!” said Richard, with a gleam of real pleasure; and with another pressure of his hand he let his new son go. Dick went out to post his letter strangely excited but subdued. What it was to be a gentleman, he thought! and this was his father, his father! A new pride unknown to him before came into existence within him, a glimmer which lighted up that dim landscape. After all, the new world, though it was so strangely mysterious and uncertain, was it not more splendid, more beautiful to the imagination, than the old world could ever have been?
Val made slow but sure progress towards recovery, and the family lived a strange life in attendance upon him, occupying Dick’s little parlour all day, and returning to the hotel for the night. The intercourse between them was of a peculiar character. Dick, watching intently, jealous for his mother, soon perceived that she was of much more importance to the others than he thought possible, and had his fears appeased. He watched her almost as if she had been his young sister, and Richard Ross her lover, eager to note if they met, and when and how; but, as it happened, they scarcely met at all, she keeping to the sick-room above, he to the parlour below. As for Dick himself he became Val’s slave, lifting him when he was first moved, helping him continually, indispensable to his invalid existence. He called for “Brown” when he woke in the morning, and ordered him about with an affectionate imperiousness which was at once provoking and delightful to Dick. But Val was much more mysterious in the looks with which he regarded “Brown’s mother.” He did not talk to her much, but watched her movements about the room with a half-reverential admiration. “She will wear herself out. She is too good to me; you ought to make her go and rest,” he said to Dick; but he was uneasy when she left him, and impatient of any other nursing. He half-frightened half-shocked Lady Eskside by his admiration of her. “How handsome she is, grandmamma!” he whispered in the old lady’s ear. “How she carries herself! Where could Brown’s mother get such a way of walking? I think she must have been a princess.” “Hush, my darling, hush!” said my lady. “Nonsense! I am all right; I don’t mean to hush any more,” said Val. “I think she is handsomer than any one I ever saw.” This Lady Eskside put up with, magnanimously making up her mind that nature spoke in the boy’s foolish words; but it was hard upon her when her old lord began to blow trumpets in honour of Dick, who took walks with him when he could be spared from Valentine, and whom in his enthusiasm he would almost compare advantageously with Val! It was true, that it was she herself who had first pressed Dick’s claims upon him; but with Val just getting better, and doubly dear from that fact, who could venture to compare him with any one? She liked Dick—but Lord Eskside was “just infatuated” about him, my lady thought. “He reminds me of my father,” said the old lord. Now this father was the tenth lord—him of the dark locks, by means of whom she had always attempted to account for Valentine’s brown curls, and whose portrait her son Richard disrespectfully called a Raeburn. She gave a little gulp of self-control when she heard these words. “Make no comparisons!” she cried, “or you’ll make me like the new boy less, because I love the old one more. To me there will never be any one in the world like my Val.” Lord Eskside shrugged his old shoulders, and went out for another walk with Dick.
At last the day arrived when Valentine was pronounced well enough to have the great disclosure made to him. For two or three days in succession he had been brought down-stairs and had enjoyed the sight of the old world he knew so well, the river and the trees seen from the window, and the change—with all the delight of convalescence. And wonderfully sweet, and imperious, and seductive he was to them all, in that moment while still he did not know, holding his levée like a sovereign, not enduring any absence. On that important morning when the secret was to be disclosed to him, he noted with his usual imperious friendliness the absence of “Brown’s mother” from the group that gathered round him, and sent Dick off for her at once. “Unless she is resting she must come. Ask her to come; why should she be left out?” said Val, in his ignorance; which made the others look at each other with wondering eyes. She came in at Dick’s call, and seated herself behind backs. She had put off her nursing dress, and wore the black gown and white net kerchief on her fine head, which added so much to the impressive character of her beauty. Amid all these well-born people there was no face in itself so striking and noble. The Rosses were all quite ordinary, except Val, who had taken his dark beauty from her. She, poor ignorant creature, made up of impulses, without a shadow of wisdom or even good sense about her, looked like a dethroned queen among them: which shows, after all, how little looks matter—an argument which would be very powerful if it were not so utterly vain.
“Val,” said Lord Eskside, who was the spokesman, as became his position, “I hope you are getting back your strength fast. The doctor tells us we may now make a disclosure to you which is very important. I do not know how you will take it, my boy; but it is so great, and of so much consequence, that I cannot keep it from you longer. Val——”
“Is it something about Violet?” said Valentine, the little colour there was paling out of his face.
“About—whom?”
“About Violet,” he repeated, with a stronger voice. “Listen, sir; let me speak first;” and with the sudden flush of delicate yet deep colour which showed his weakness, Val raised his head from the sofa, and swung his feeble limbs, which looked so preternaturally long, to the ground. “I have not said anything about her while I have been ill, but it is not because I forgot. Grandfather, Violet and I made up our minds to marry each other before that confounded election. If her father did write that letter, it’s not her fault; and I can’t go on, sir, now I’ve come to myself, not another day, without letting you know that nothing, nothing in the world can make me change to Vi!”
There was a pause of astonishment so great that no one knew what to say: this sudden introduction of a subject altogether new and unsuspected bewildered the others, whose minds were all intent on one thing. Val was as one-idea’d as they were; but his idea was not their idea; and the shock of the encounter jarred upon them, so curiously sudden and out of place it seemed. Lady Eskside, who sat close by him, and to whom this was no revelation, was more jarred even than the rest. She put her fine old ivory hand on his arm, with an impatient grasp. “This is not the question—this is not the question,” she said.
Val looked round upon them all, and saw something in their looks which startled him too. He put back his legs upon the sofa, and the flush gradually went off his cheek. “Well,” he said, “well; whatever it is I am ready to hear it—so long as I make sure that you’ve heard me first.”
“Valentine,” said his father, “at your age some such piece of foolishness always comes first; but this time you have got to see the obverse of the medal—the other end of all this enthusiasm. It is my story, not your own, that you have to think of. Kind friends of course have told you——”
“Richard,” said Lord Eskside, “this is not the way to enter upon a subject so important. Let me speak. He knows my way best.”
Richard turned away with a short laugh—not of amusement indeed, but full of that irritated sense of incongruity which gives to anger a kind of fierce amusement of its own. Lord Eskside cleared his throat—he preferred to have the matter in his own hands.
“Friends have told you little,” he said; “but an enemy, Val, the enemy whose daughter you have just told us you want to marry—but that’s neither here nor there—let you know the story. Your father there, Richard Ross, my son, married when he was young and foolish, like you. It was not an equal marriage, and the—lady—took some false notion into her head, I know not what, and left him—taking her two babies with her, as you have heard. These two babies,” said the old lord, once more clearing his throat, “were your brother and you—so much as this you know.”
Here he stopped to take breath; he was gradually growing excited and breathless in spite of himself.
“We could not find you, though we did our best. We spared no trouble, either before you were brought home or after. Now, my boy, think a little. It is a very strange position. You have a brother somewhere in the world—the same flesh and blood, but not like you; a mother——” He instinctively glanced at the woman who sat behind backs, like a marble statue, immovable. The crisis became too painful to them all. There was a stir of excitement when Lord Eskside came to this pause. His wife put her hand on his, grasping it almost angrily in the heat of suspense. Richard Ross began to pace about the room with restless passion.
“Go on, oh, go on!” cried my lady, with a querulous quiver in her voice. I am not sure that the old lord, though so much excited himself, had not a certain pleasure in thus holding them all hanging on his breath.
“In good time—in good time,” he said. “Valentine, it may be a shock to you to find out these relations: it cannot be but a great surprise. You are not prepared for it—your mind is full of other things——”
“For God’s sake, sir,” cried Richard, “do not drive us all mad! Valentine, make up your mind for what you have to hear. Your mother is found——”
“And your brother,” cried Lady Eskside, rushing in unconsciously as the excitement grew to a crisis. “Your brother, too! Oh, my boy, bear up!”
Dick had been standing by, listening with I know not what fire in his heart: he could bear it no longer. The shock and suspense, which were as great to him as to Valentine, had not been broken in his case by any precautions; and it hurt his pride bitterly, on his mother’s account as well as his own, that the knowledge of them should be supposed such a terrible blow to Val. He stepped forth into the middle of the room (his own room, in which they made so little of him), his honest face glowing, his fair, good-humoured brows bent, almost for the first time in his life,—
“Look here,” he said, hoarsely; “there is more than him to be thought of. If it’s hard upon him, he’s a man, and he’ll bear it like a man. Mr Ross, look here. I’m Dick Brown, sir, your humble servant; I’m the lad you made a man of, from the time we were boys till now. You’ve done for me as the Bible says one brother should do for another,” said Dick, the tears suddenly starting into his eyes, and softening his voice, “without knowing; and now they say we’re brothers in earnest. Perhaps you’ll think it’s poor news; as for me, I don’t mind which it is—your brother or your servant,” said Dick, his eyes shining, holding out both his hands; “one way or other, I couldn’t think more of you than I do now.”
Valentine had been lying motionless on his sofa, looking from one to another with large and wondering eyes. It is needless to say that amid so many different narrators he had already divined, even before Dick spoke, the solution of this mystery; and it had given him sufficient shock to drive the blood back wildly to his heart. But he had time to prendre son parti, and he was too much of a man not to bear it like a man, as Dick said. When his new brother held out his hands, a sudden suffusion of colour came to Val’s face, and a smile almost of infantile sweetness and weakness. He took Dick’s hands and pulled himself up by them, grasping them with an eager pressure; then changing, in his weakness, took Dick’s arm, upon which he leant so heavily that the young man’s whole heart was moved. Familiar tenderness, old brotherhood, and that depth of absolute trust which no untried affection can possess, were all involved in the heavy pressure with which Val leant on Dick’s arm; but he did not say anything to him. His eyes went past Dick to