The Story of Valentine and His Brother

by Mrs. Oliphant

All this time there had not been a word said about the author of the placard which, next morning as they drove into Castleton, was to be seen on every wall, in every village, near every house they passed. Valentine recognised, with a heightened colour, the first copy of it he saw, but said not a word, restraining himself, and turning his eyes away. In Castleton the whole town was placarded with it, and the streets brimming over with excitement. Wherever the carriage passed with its four horses, the groups which were gathered round, reading it, would stop, and pause, and turn to gaze at the handsome young fellow, the very flower of the country, who yet might not be Mr Ross after all, but only some chance child—a vagrant of the street. Valentine did all that man could do to banish from his face every appearance of knowing what these looks meant, or of being affected by them; but how hard it is to do this with the certainty that everybody around you knows that you know! He made a brave stand; he smiled and bowed to the people he knew, and spoke here and there a cheerful word, restraining his sense of shame, his wounded pride, the horror in his mind, with a strong hand. But his young face had lost its glow of healthful colour, the circles of his eyes seemed somehow expanded, and his nostrils quivered and dilated like those of a high-bred horse at a moment of excitement. The effect upon his face was curious, giving it a certain elevation of meaning and power—but it was the power of nature at its utmost strain, so quivering with the tension that one pull tighter of the curb, one step further, might burst the bond altogether. The polling had already begun when they reached Castleton, but the voters in the Ross interest flagged—nobody could tell how. Mr Seisin’s name was above that of Val when the state of the poll was published. This, everybody said, told for nothing; for, as it was well known, Mr Seisin had not the shadow of a chance. His supporters had been probably polled at once, to strike a bold keynote, and prove that there were still possibilities, even in Eskshire, for the Liberal party. It told for nothing, they all said to each other, surrounding Lord Eskside, who sat somewhat grim and silent, in the committee-room; but the men there assembled, though stanch as partisans could be, undeniably grew anxious as the moments went on. It was impossible there to ignore the attack, which had never been mentioned by any of his family to Valentine, except on the previous night, when he was told of it solemnly. Here it was of course the chief subject of discussion; and though he took no part in the talk, he had to hear it referred to without flinching. “Depend upon it,” said Sir John, “it’s a sign of weakness; it is an expedient of despair. They know their cause is desperate, and they don’t mind what they say.” But reassuring as this was, a cold shiver of alarm began to run through the party. One man stole out after another to see what news there was, to send off messengers hither and thither. The county was stanch;—of that there could be no doubt. Nothing would induce the Eskshire men to give their votes to Mr Seisin; but their minds might have been so affected by this sudden assault, coming just at the critical moment when there was no time to contradict it, that, bewildered and uncertain, they might refrain from voting at all.

Twelve o’clock! The business of the election seemed to have come to a pause. One individual now and then came up to the polling-booths. Already a great yellow placard, “What has become of the Tory voters?” had flashed out upon the walls. A dramatic pause fell into the midst of the excitement. The people of Castleton looked on curiously, as if they had been at a play. Even the crowds in the streets slackened—almost disappeared. When Valentine walked up the High Street to speak to Lady Eskside, who sat trembling and pale at the window of the Duke’s Head, looking on, he was taken no more notice of than on the most ordinary occasion. For one thing, a smart shower had come on, and the idlers had taken refuge under the porches of the houses, and at the shop-doors, where they gazed at him calmly, without a cheer, without a salutation. Lady Eskside, looking out of the window, watched all this with an aching heart. It seemed to her that all was over. She could not take her eyes from the impertinent placard opposite on the Liberal headquarters—“Seisin, 355; Ross, 289.” The yellow ribbons seemed to flaunt at her; her very heart was sick; and the dullness of mental suffering crept over her old frame. “Oh, Val, my dear, I wish this was over,” she said, taking his hand between hers. “Never fear, grandma,” he said, smiling at her dimly, as if from the midst of a dream. He scarcely knew what he was saying; and so far as he was conscious of the words, he did not believe them. The young man gave a glance across at the other window, but Violet was not there, which was a kind of vague consolation to him. He held the old lady’s hand, and tried to smile, and talk, and encourage her, without the least idea what he said.

At that moment the tide turned. The impatient little rattle of a small pony-carriage came up the long street, heard rattling over every particular stone all the way up, so great was the stillness of this strange moment of suspense. The pony-carriage drew up before the Duke’s Head, and Dr Rintoul, who lived in one of the new villas on Lord Eskside’s feus, got out and walked towards the polling-booth. His daughter, who had driven him, stood up—a large woman, bigger than the pony she drove—with a wave of her whip, on which there streamed a blue ribbon. “Good morning, Lady Eskside,” cried Miss Rintoul. “We are all Liberals, but we hate a mean advantage, and all blows in the dark. I’ve driven papa over to vote for Ross for ever, against all your sneaking enemies!” Miss Rintoul was not afraid of the sound of her own voice—she had outlived all such weaknesses. She said out what she had to say roundly, seeing no reason to be ashamed of it, standing up as on a platform, and waving her whip with the blue ribbon. Her vigorous voice caught the capricious ear of the crowd; for just at that moment the shower had stopped, the sun shone out, and the bystanders began to burst out from their hiding-places. “Ross for ever!”—two or three caught up the cry. It was echoed with a lusty roar from the Edinburgh road, whence a string of hackney-cabs, and an old coach which had once plied between Lasswade and Princes Street, and bore their names emblazoned on it, came clattering full speed round the corner. “Down with Pringle, and Ross for ever!” cried the Lasswade men, packed like herrings in their cabs. Blue flags streamed from the dusty roofs; familiar faces, hot and breathless, but beaming, looked up at the old lady and her boy. The shout ran down the length of the High Street, and called out the committee-men to their balcony. When Val turned away, moved by the restlessness of excitement, his way down the street was a triumph: the crowd divided to let him pass, cheered him, held out damp hands to be shaken, and strewed his path, so to speak, with smiles. He was received by his committee almost with embraces, with shaking of hands, and general tumult, half-a-dozen speaking together.

“All right, Mr Ross, all right! all right, my lord!” said one eager Castleton supporter. “The Lasswade men have come—Loanhead’s on the road—and there’s a perfect regiment coming up the water. Hurrah for Ross, and fair play for ever! Pringle will have little to brag of his day’s work.”

“He’ll have got us the best majority we’ve had yet,” cried another; “it was too barefaced, and him the next heir.” The room, which had been half empty, began all at once, no one knew how, to surge and overflow with enthusiastic supporters. Val felt himself tossed about on the crest of this wave of triumph. He began to get dizzy with excitement, with the sight of the groups pouring along the street towards the polling-booths, all in his interest, and with the agitation and tumult of talk about him. Long before the close of the poll his victory was secure.

But while the excitement of the crisis thus settled into assurance, another excitement rose in the young man’s mind. All round him, loud and low, in every different tone, he heard the name of Pringle identified with the assault which had shaken all the foundations of his life. He had said nothing about its effect upon his mind;—had even postponed realising it, at his grandfather’s entreaty, and the still greater urgency of circumstances, which compelled him to put a bold face on the matter, and show no emotion to the world. But all the while he knew that the stroke, though he had no time to think of it, had struck at his very heart. He had not slept all the previous night; he had made such a tremendous effort of self-control as his young frame and undisciplined mind were scarcely capable of; and the reaction was beginning to set in. Every faculty, every feeling, began to concentrate in the sense of injury which he had shut out of his mind by such an effort while necessity required it—of injury, and of that passionate impulsive rage which was the weak point of his character. From the moment when he fully realised who it was that had struck this dastardly blow at him, his blood had begun to boil in every vein. Pringle! that was the man—his pretended friend, his relation, a man who had smiled upon him, eaten with him, called him by friendly names, sought him out. I cannot tell how it was that Violet, and everything connected with her, disappeared altogether at this crisis from the young man’s agitated mind. He never paused to think that it was Vi’s father against whom his whole passionate soul rose up in one longing to punish and avenge. She and everything gentle in his life disappeared and was swept away, the burning tide of fury being too strong for them. Before his confused eyes, while the very different scenes of the day were still going on around him, another panorama seemed to be passing, mixed up somehow with the actual events, the central figure in which was always this man, looking like a friend, yet preparing this deadliest sting for him. That burning sense of the intolerable which is in all human affairs the most intolerable of sensations, came upon Val with a force which he seemed helpless to resist. He felt that he could not bear this injury—he could not pass over it, let it go by as if it had not been. His arm tingled to make some stroke. An agitation of haste and anxiety to get through his present business, that he might be free for the other, took hold of him. He went on, doing everything required of him, smiling, shaking hands, speechifying, he could not tell what, answering to the necessities of his position like a man in a dream, and hearing a confused din in his ears of cheers and plaudits, of meaningless talk, congratulations, pæans of victory, through all of which he tried to rush, faster and ever faster, longing to have it over, to get away—to fly at the throat of his enemy. And yet I don’t think that he betrayed himself. He was excited, but what so natural?—and perhaps worn out with his excitement, to the eyes of one or two close observers. “Get him away as soon as you can—he’s overdone,” Sir John said to the old lord. “Tut,” said Lord Eskside, himself feeling ten years younger in the fulness of his triumph, “no fear of Val; his blood is up, and he can stand anything.” Thus the triumphant day came to an end.

The carriage stood in front of the Duke’s Head, Lady Eskside and Mary Percival having already taken their places in it, awaiting the new Member and his party, who came up the street, a little murmuring crowd, buzzing forth satisfaction, pride, and mutual plaudits. Val was carried along in the midst of it, more silent than any, feeling almost at the end of his forces, and sick with eagerness to get free. It was at this unhappy moment that a party of young men, recently arrived, came down the street, meeting Valentine and his body-guard. The first of these was Sandy Pringle—the son, not the father. He had come straight from Edinburgh to ascertain the result of the election, knowing nothing whatever of all that had happened till he heard his own name in every mouth, denounced, by this time, by both sides alike. Sandy, as was natural, was deeply excited: he would not allow the universal censure. “If my father were here he would disprove it,” he had been saying, but vainly. He came straight up in front of Lord Eskside upon the narrow pavement, blocking up the way with his broad shoulders and well-developed form. “Lord Eskside,” he cried, “I appeal to you for justice. I hear my father’s name in every mouth——”

“Stand aside, sir!” cried Val, in a voice so loud and harsh, and so full of emotion, that it seemed to silence every sound about him. The bystanders felt as one man that something was coming. All the young man’s fictitious composure was gone, the veins were swollen on his forehead, his paleness changed into crimson, his eyes flashing fire. Sandy Pringle looked at him with angry surprise.

“I will stand aside when I please,” he said—“no sooner. Lord Eskside, my father——”

“Oh, your father!” cried Val. He stepped out from the group with a movement as swift as lightning. A few words were interchanged, too quick, too furious, for any one to recollect afterwards; and before any of their friends could interfere,—before, indeed, the little group around could divine what was wrong—young Pringle, who was twice as heavy a man as his opponent, fell suddenly without a word, struck down by one tremendous blow. “Pass on, gentlemen,” cried Valentine, quivering with passion; “no man shall stop Lord Eskside in the public streets while I am by!”