The Story of Valentine and His Brother

by Mrs. Oliphant

Lord Eskside was seated in a little dingy sitting-room in Jermyn Street. Once upon a time, long years ago, the Esksides had possessed a town-house in a region which is no longer habitable by lords and ladies; but as they had ceased for years to come for even that six weeks in London which consoles country families with a phantasmagoric glimpse of “the world,” the town-house had long passed out of their hands. Lord Eskside had spent this dreary week in rooms which overlooked the dreary blank wall of St James’s, with its few trees, and the old gravestones inside—not a cheerful sight for an old man whose last hopes seemed to be dying from him. He had employed detectives, had advertised with immense precaution in the newspapers, and himself had wandered about the town, night and day, seeking his boy; while all the time, the few people whom he met when he appeared at rare intervals in such streets as are frequented by anybody worth speaking of, paid him compliments on his grandson’s success, and hoped that Val, when he appeared in the House of Commons, would show himself worthy of his race. “I expect him to do us credit,” the old lord said, working his shaggy eyebrows in such a way that his acquaintances thought he had some nervous complaint, and shook their heads, and wondered that “in his state of health” he should be in town alone. What bitter pangs were in his heart when he said these words! The boy had done them credit all his life up to this moment. If it was not the loftiest kind of reputation which Val had acquired, it was yet a kind highly estimated in the world, and which young men prized; and no stain had ever touched that bright young reputation, no shadow of shame ever lighted upon it. And now! These congratulations, which in other circumstances would have been so sweet to him, were gall and bitterness. What if Val had disappeared like his mother, with the same indifference to the claims of life and duty which that undisciplined, uneducated woman had shown? What if, crushed by the revelations so suddenly made to him, he were now—instead of taking the manly way, facing the scandal and living it out—to give in, and fail, and leave his place to be occupied by others? The thought of that election declared void for which he had struggled so stoutly, and of some one else coming in upon Val’s ruin, triumphing in his downfall, was sharp as a poisoned sword in the old man’s heart. Lady Eskside thought chiefly of the boy himself, and of what he might do in his despair; but the public downfall which seemed imminent, added pangs even more bitter to her husband’s sufferings. His adversary had done all that an adversary might; but no adversary could harm Lord Eskside and break his heart as his boy could. The old lord was very strong upon race. It was one of the objects of his fullest faith. He believed not only in the efficacy of being well-born, but extended that privilege far beyond the usual limits allowed to it. He had faith in the race of a ploughman as well as in that of his own noble house. But the blood in the veins of his boy had come from a race of wanderers—a species, indeed, not a race at all—made up by intermixtures of which neither law nor honour took note; and how could he tell that the honest ichor of the Rosses would predominate over the influence of that turbid mixture? Already it was evident enough that the vagabond strain had not lost its power. He had feared it all Val’s life, and sternly repressed it from his boyhood up; but repression had now ceased to be possible, and here was the evil in full force.

Lord Eskside had a very distinct ideal of life, and one of his theories was that no man could be a man who was not capable of setting his face hard against difficulty and fighting it out. To flee was a thing impossible to him; but Valentine had fled, and what but his vagrant blood could be to blame? It did not occur to the old lord that his own son, in whom there was no vagrant blood, had fled more completely than poor Val—turning his back upon his country, and hiding his shame in unknown regions and unknown duties. Richard’s desertion had wounded his father to the quick in its time; but Val had obliterated Richard, and now he scarcely recollected that previous flight. It never occurred to him to think that Richard’s example had put it into the boy’s mind to abandon his natural place, and flee before the sudden mortification and downfall. With strange pain, and anxiety deeper than words, he set everything down to the unfortunate mother. Her wild blood—the blood of a creature without reason, incapable of that supreme human faculty of endurance, which was to Lord Eskside one of the highest of qualities—was at the bottom of it all. If he could but find the boy in time to exert his old influence over him, to induce him to make a stand against the coward principle in his mind, to bring him back to his duty! Lord Eskside thought of Val as an old soldier might think of a descendant who had turned his back upon an enemy. Shame, and love eager to conceal the shame—sharp personal mortification and the sting of wounded pride, battling with tenderness unspeakable, and anxious longing at any cost, at all hazards, to wipe out this stain and inspire the unfortunate to redeem himself: these were the feelings in his mind. The sharpest ingredient in such a cup of bitterness is, that the parent well knows he cannot work out redemption for his boy. No other but the boy himself can do that. Prayers, and tears, and atonements, and concealments, and all the piteous expedients of human love and misery, cannot do it. No man can redeem his brother. The coward must himself prove that he has overcome his cowardice; the man who has failed must himself turn back the tide of fortune and win. And I do not know anything more pathetic in nature than the brave old hero trying hard to put his own heart of gold into the leaden bosom of some degenerate boy; or the pure strong woman labouring to inspire with her own white fervent soul some lump of clay that has been given to her—God knows how—for a daughter. This was how the old lord felt. If he could but put himself, his old steadfast heart, his obdurate courage, his dogged strength of purpose, into the boy! If there was but any way to do it!—transfusion of spirit like that fanciful medical notion of transfusion of blood. Lord Eskside would have given his old veins to be drained—his aged frame to be hacked as any physician pleased—would have had his very heart taken out of his breast had that been possible—to give the best of it to Val; but could not, heaven help us!—could only sit and think what impotent words to say, what arguments to use, when he should find him, to make the boy stand and endure like a man.

He was sitting thus, his head leaning on his hand, his shaggy eyebrows so bent over his eyes that you scarcely could see them glimmer in the caverns below, though there was a painful suffusion in them which glistened when the light caught it. A claret-jug was on the table and a single glass. He had dined late, after being out all day, and was worn out by the sickness of hope deferred, and the heaviness of disappointment. There was a little fire smouldering in the grate, but he had thrown the window open with an irritable impatience of the close small shut-up room. The distant sounds of the streets still came in, though the full tide of traffic was over. There was still a roll and murmur of distant carriages and voices, the hum of that sea which calls itself London. The old lord paid no attention. He was going over ideas which he had pondered again and again, anxiously, but with a certain languor and hopelessness in his heart. If he heard the carriage stop below, the sound of the opening door, he took no notice. What was it to him? Carriages stopped continually all through the evening. People were always coming and going. What could it matter to him—a stranger, alone?

He sat facing the door; it was a habit he had fallen into since he came here—not with any expectation, but only in case—for, to be sure, some visitor might come, some one with news might come, though he did not look for anything. Even the sound of steps and voices coming up-stairs did not excite him, it was so usual. All at once, however, he roused himself. The door was thrown wide open, without any preliminary, and Lady Eskside walked straight in, her old eyes shining, her figure dilating with triumph, like a figure in a procession. The sight of her startled her husband beyond expression, yet not so much as did the other figure behind her. “You, Catherine, you? and you’ve got him!” he cried; for there was a certain general resemblance in height and form between Dick and Val. “I’ve got him!” said Lady Eskside, standing aside with that extraordinary air of triumph, to show to her husband the figure of a timid young man, respectful and hesitating, who looked at him with blue eyes, half deprecating, half apologetic. Lord Eskside’s heart, which had jumped high, sank down in his breast. He gave but one look at the stranger whom, at first, he had taken for Valentine. “Good Lord! do you mean to drive me mad? My lady! is this what you bring me for Val?” he cried; and turned his back upon the new-comer with feverish irritability, feeling the disappointment go to his very heart.

“Oh, my dear, forgive me!” cried Lady Eskside; “I was not thinking of Val for the moment. Look at him, look at him! look at the boy again!”

“You were not thinking of Val? In the name of heaven, who else was there to think of?” said her husband. He was almost too angry to speak—and so sick with his disappointment, that he could have done something cruel to show it, had the means been in his way.

“Forgive me!” said my lady, putting her hand upon his arm; “but there’s news of Val. I have brought you news of him. He’s ill—in his bed with fever; oh! when I think of it, I am half frantic to find how long it takes, with all their bonnie railways! But he’s safe. It had been more than he could bear. My poor boy!—he’s been ill since the day he left us. What ails you? what ails you, my old man?”

“Nothing,” he said, fumbling, with his hands clasped, his shaggy eyebrows concealing any gleam of the light underneath, his lips quivering—“nothing.” It took him a minute to recover himself, to get over the sudden stilling of the storm within him, and the sudden calm that came after so much trouble. The change seemed to stop his breath, but not painfully, and rolled off loads as of Atlas himself—more than the world—from his shoulders. “Wait a moment,” said Lord Eskside, his eyebrows gradually widening; “what did you say it was? I did not catch it clearly; ill, in his bed?”

“But nothing to be frightened about—nothing to alarm us——”

“I am not alarmed, I am not alarmed!” said the old lord. To tell the truth, he was giddy with the sudden cessation of pain. “There, Catherine! it’s you I ought to think of, after such a journey,” he added, quickly coming to himself. “Sit down and rest; no doubt you’re very tired. Ill—in his bed? Then it’s all accounted for; and God be thanked!” said Lord Eskside. He said this under his breath, and drew a chair close to the smouldering fire, and put his old wife into it, grasping her by both the arms for a moment, which was his nearest approach to an embrace.