“Oh!” cried Lady Eskside, almost with violence, thrusting her husband away from her, “can you not see? must I summer it and winter it to you—and can you not see? Richard, my man,” she added, rising up suddenly, and holding out both her hands to Dick, “you’re full of sense, and wiser than I am. Don’t stay here to be stared at, my dear, but go to your bed, and get a good night’s rest. The woman told me there was a room for you. See that you have everything comfortable; and good night! We’ll go down to my boy in the morning, you and me; and God bless you, my good lad! You’ll be a comfort to all of us, father and mother, and your grandparents, though they may not have the sense to see. Good night, Richard, my man—good night!”
“What does all this mean, my lady?” said Lord Eskside. He had watched her proceedings with growing excitement, impatience, and an uncomfortable sense of something behind which he did not understand. “You’re not a foolish woman to torment me with nonsense at such a moment. What does it mean?”
“If you had ever looked at the boy, you would have seen. It is Richard himself come back,” cried the old lady: “Richard, not what he is now, as old a man as you and me, and tashed and spotted with the world; but my son as he was, when he was the joy of our hearts, before this terrible marriage, before anything had happened, when he was just too good, too kind, too stainless—or so at least you said; for me, I never can see, and never will see,” cried Lady Eskside, indignantly, “that it is not a man’s crown and glory, as well as a woman’s, to be pure.”
“My lady! my lady!” said the old lord. He was walking about the small room in his agitation; his under lip thrust out, his eyebrows in motion, his hands deep in his pockets. “What do you mean?” he cried. “Have you any foundation, or is it all another wild fancy about a likeness? A likeness!—as if in anything so serious you could trust to that.”
“Do you mean to tell me you did not see it?” she said.
“Oh, see it! My lady,” said the old lord, ungenerously, with a snort of contempt, “you saw a likeness in Val when he came, a dark boy, with eyes like black diamonds, and curly brown hair, to Richard. You said he was his father’s image.” The old man ended with an abrupt short laugh. “Catherine, for heaven’s sake, no more fancies! Have you any foundation? and the lad not even a gentleman,” he added under his breath.
“If you go by the clothes and the outside,” cried the old lady, contemptuous in her turn, “how could he be a gentleman? That poor creature’s son—nothing but a tramp—a tramp! till the fine nature in him came out, and he stopped his wandering and made a home for his mother. Was that like a gentleman or not? He’s told me everything, poor boy,” she went on, her tone melting and softening, “without knowing it—every particular; and I am going to find her to clear it all up. When Val gets well, there shall be no more mystery. We’ll take his mother home in the eye of day. She must be a changed woman—a changed woman! He’s told me everything in his innocence—how she would sit and watch Val in his boat, but never said a word. God bless her! for she’s been faithful to what light she had.”
“What is all this you are saying?” said Lord Eskside. He was utterly subdued. He drew a chair close to hers and sat down, humbly putting his hand on her arm. “Catherine, you would not speak to me so if there was not something in it,” he said.
The old pair sat up together far into the night. She told him everything she had found out, or thought she had found out; and he told her what he had been doing, and something of the things he had been thinking—not all, for my lady had never had those fears of Val’s courage and strength which had undermined the old lord’s confidence. But when she told him, weeping and smiling, of the alliance between the two boys, so unwitting of their close relationship, and of the mother’s speechless adoration at a distance of the child she had given up, Lord Eskside put his hand over his face, and his old wife, holding his other hand, felt the quiver of emotion run through him, and laid her head upon his shoulder, and wept there; sweet tears! as when they were young and happiness sought that expression, having exhausted all others. “My dear, we’ll have to die and leave them soon,” she said, sobbing, in his ear.
“Ay, Catherine! but we’ll go together, you and me,” said the old lord, pressing the hand that had held his for fifty years; and they kissed each other with tremulous lips; for was not the old love, that outlasted both sorrow and joy, more sacred, more tender, than any new?