“Whatever you bid me I will tell him. I will do anything, everything you choose to say,” said Dick, in his fervour. She gave a surprised wistful look at him, and shook her head.
“I must think for both of us,” she said; “and Val is very hasty, very rash. No, you must not say anything more. Tell him I am quite well if he asks, and not unhappy—not very unhappy—only anxious to know; and when he is well,” she said, with a reluctant little sigh, “you need not mind writing any more. That will be enough. It is a terrible thing when there are quarrels in families, Mr Brown.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dick, who knew nothing about families, nor about quarrels, but followed with a curious solemnity the infantine angelical wisdom and gravity of her face.
“A terrible thing when people try to hurt each other who ought to love each other; and some of us must always pay for it,” said poor Violet, in deep seriousness—“always, always some one must suffer; when it might be so different! If you are going back to Rosscraig, you should go before the sun sets, for it is far, when you don’t know the way.”
“And you?” said Dick, rising in obedience to this dismissal, yet longing to linger, to prolong the conversation, and not willing to allow that this strange episode in his life had come to an end.
“My way is not the same as yours,” she said, holding out her hand with gentle grandeur, like a little princess, sweet and friendly, but stooping out of a loftier region, “and I know every step. Good-bye, and thank you with all my heart. You must keep this path straight up past the firs. I am very, very glad I was here.”
“Good-bye, Miss Violet,” said Dick. It gave him a little pleasure to say her name, which was so pretty and sweet; and he was too loyal and too respectful to linger after this farewell, but walked away as a man goes out of a royal presence, not venturing to stay after the last gracious word has been said. He could not bear to go, but would not remain even a moment against her will. When he had gone a little way he ventured to turn back and look—but nothing was visible except the trees. She had disappeared, and the sunshine had disappeared; it seemed to Dick’s awakened fancy as if both must have gone together. The last golden arrow of light was gliding from the opposite bank of the river, and the glade between the bushes lay dim in the greyness of the evening. What a change it made! He went on with a sigh. Violet had gone back to the foot of the tree, and was waiting there till he should be out of sight; and Dick divined that this was the case, and that she wanted no more of him. Well! why should she want any more of him? She was a lady, quite out of Dick’s way, and she had been very sweet to him—as gracious as a queen. Between this impersonation of sweet youth, and the other figure, old Lady Eskside, with her dignity and agitated kindness, Dick was wonderfully dazzled. If all ladies were like these, what a strange sort of enchantment it must be to spend one’s life in such society. Dick had never known any woman but his mother, whom he loved, and upon whose will he had often been dependent, but to whom he was always in some degree forbearing and indulgent, puzzled by her caprices, and full of that tender patience towards her which has in its very nature something of superiority; and to find himself suddenly in the society of these two ladies, one after the other, both taking him into their confidence, betraying their feelings to him, receiving, as it were, favours at his hand, had the most curious effect upon his mind.
Dick had never felt so melancholy in his life as when Violet thus sent him away; and yet his head was full of a delicious intoxication, a sense of something elevated, ethereal, above the world and all its common ways. Should he ever see her again, he wondered? would she speak to him as she had done now, and ask his help, and trust to his sympathy? Poor Dick had not the remotest idea that these new sensations in his mind, this mixture of delight and of melancholy, this stirring up of all emotions, which made his long walk through the woods feel like a swallow-flight to him, had anything to do with the vulgar frenzy he had heard of, which silly persons called falling in love. He had always felt very superior and rather contemptuous of this weakness, which young men of his class feel, no doubt, in its more delicate form, like others, but which is seldom spoken of among them in any but that coarse way which revolts all gentle natures. So he was totally unwarned and unarmed against any insidious beginnings of sentiment, and would have resented indignantly the idea that his tender sympathy with this little lady, who had opened her heart to him, had anything whatever in it of the character of love. How could it have?—when the very foundation of this strange sweet revelation to him of an utterly new kind of intercourse and companionship, was the love, or something that he supposed must be love, between Mr Ross, his patron, and this little princess of the woods? What a lucky fellow Mr Ross was, Dick thought, with the tenderest, friendliest version of envy that ever entered a man’s bosom! and then it occurred to him, with a little sigh, to think that the lots of men in this world were very different; but he was not, he hoped, so wretched a fellow as to grudge his best friend any of the good things that were in his share. Thus he went back to Rosscraig with his mind entirely filled with a new subject—a subject which made him less sensitive even than he was before to any new light upon his own position. He looked at Violet’s writing in his note-book with very bewildering feelings when he got at night to the luxurious room where he was to sleep. She had written the address very unsteadily, then crossed it out, and repeated it with great care and precision—Mrs Pringle, Moray Place, Edinburgh. Though it slightly chilled him to think that this was her mother’s name, not her own, yet the sense of having this little bit of her in his breast-pocket was very delightful and very strange. He sat and looked at it for a long time. On the page just before it were these notes he had made of the brackets in the great drawing-room. These were the tangible evidences of this strange mission of his, and sudden introduction into a life so different from his own. It just crossed his mind to wonder whether these scratches on the paper would be all, whether he might look them up years hence to convince himself that it was not a dream. And then poor Dick gave a great sigh, so full and large, expanding his deep bosom, that it almost blew out his candles; whereupon he gave a laugh, poor fellow, and said his prayers, and got to bed.
As for Lady Eskside, she showed more weakness that particular evening than had been visible, I think, all her life before. She could not sleep, but kept Mrs Harding by her bedside, talking, giving her mysterious but yet intelligible confidences. “You’ll set to work, Marg’ret, as soon as I’m gone, to have all the new wing put in order, the carpets put down, and the curtains put up, and everything ready for habitation. I cannot quite say who may be coming, but it is best to be ready. My poor old lord’s new wing, that gave him so much trouble! It will be strange to see it lived in after so many years!”
“Indeed, and it will that, my lady,” said Mrs Harding, discreet and cautious.