The Story of Valentine and His Brother

by Mrs. Oliphant

He stood for a moment silent, looking at them, confused too. “My father and my mother,” he said to himself under his breath. Then he tried to rally his powers, and put on a smile, and look composed and self-possessed, which he was not; but instead of succeeding in this attempt, grew hot and red, though he was old enough to have been done with such vanities. “This is a very unexpected meeting,” he said. “Mother, excuse me if I am startled. Nothing was further from my thoughts than to see you here.” Then he stopped short, and made a gulp of agitation and resumed again. “You have heard that Valentine is here? He is just the same; we must wait for the crisis. He is taken good care of——”

“Richard!” said his mother—“oh, none of your pretending to me—for God’s sake tell us the truth! Do you know?—or is it by chance you have come here?”

“It will be better to come into the house, my lady,” said Lord Eskside.

I scarcely think she heard what he was saying. She put her hand upon her son’s arm, grasping him almost harshly. She was too much excited to be able to contain herself. She had forgotten Val, whom the old lord was longing for. “Do you know, or do you not know?” she cried, her voice growing hoarse. Dick, who had come to the door a minute later than Richard, stood upon the threshold looking at them with a wondering countenance. But no one saw or noticed Dick. He saw the old people absorbed with this new personage, whose back was turned to him, and whom he had never seen before. The mystery was thickening, for here now was another in it, and more and more it grew incomprehensible to Dick. His was not one of the spirits that love mystery. He was open as the day, straightforward, downright. His heart sickened at this maze, at all those difficulties, at the new people who had thus come into his life. He stood looking at them painfully with a confusion in all his thoughts which utterly disconcerted and disturbed him. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and went away. Where? To his work; that at least never disappointed nor confused him. No strangers came into it to tangle the threads, to turn it all into chaos. He had heard how Valentine was, and that the crisis had not yet come; and he was half indignant, half sad, in his sense of a disturbance which was wholly unaccountable and unjustifiable. The house was his—Dick’s—it did not belong to the stranger who had preceded him to the door, and was standing there now in colloquy with the old couple, who evidently had forgotten Dick. What right had they to take him up and cast him down—to take possession of his house, which had cost him dear, which was his, and not theirs, as if he were nothing in it? Dick strode away, more hurt, angry, and “put out,” than he had ever been in his life. He threw off his Sunday coat (none the better for these railway journeys), and hastily putting on his working-jacket, hurried off to the rafts. There a man could always find something to occupy him—there was honest work, uncomplicated by any bewilderments. He went and thrust himself into it, almost forgetting that he was head-man in his anxiety to dislodge all these disturbing questions from his mind, and to feel himself in reality what he was.

“I think,” said Richard, not without excitement himself, but trying hard not to show his rapid changes of colour, his breathless heat and agitation, “that my father gives good advice, and that you ought to come into the house, where at least we can talk with quiet and decency. There is no reason why you shouldn’t come in,” he said, with nervous vehemence, pushing open the door behind him; “or the Queen, for that matter, if she were here. The mistress of it is as spotless as any one of you. That much I may say.”

Lady Eskside did not say another word. She grasped her old lord’s arm again, and suffered herself to be led into the little parlour, which she had seen before on another occasion, little thinking whose house it was. Her eye, I need not say, was caught at once by the little shawl on the table. She pointed at it hastily to her husband, who stared, totally unaware what it was to which his attention was directed. They put her into an old carved chair, which was one of poor Dick’s latest acquisitions before all this wonderful commotion began. Richard, scarcely knowing what he was doing, led the way, introduced them into the strange little room, as a man does when he is in his own house. He had got to feel as if it were his own house. Already he had passed many hours there, feeling himself no intruder. He received his mother and placed her in Dick’s easy-chair as he might have received her in the Palazzo Graziani; and the old lady, with her keen eyes, caught at this, though he was as unconscious of it as a man could be.

“You are at home here,” she said to him, with keen suspicion—“it’s no strange place to you, Richard, though it’s strange, strange, to my old lord and me. What does it mean, man?—what does it mean? Have you known all the time? Have you been keeping it secret to drive us wild? What is it?—what is it you mean?”

“Where is the boy?” said Lord Eskside. “I do not enter into this question between your mother and you. You will satisfy us both, doubtless, about the mystery,—which, as you all well know, is a thing I abhor. Richard,” said the old man, with a break in his voice, “I want to see the boy.”

“Listen first, sir,” said Richard, indignant; “how my mother has found out, I don’t know; but she is right. Chance—or Providence, if you like the word better—has thrown Val into his—mother’s hands. I guessed it when I saw you at Rosscraig, and I came here at once and found it was so——”

“You guessed it? God forgive you, Richard! You’ve known, then, all the time? you’ve exposed us and Val to abuse and insult, and maybe killed the lad and broken my old lord’s heart. Oh, God forgive you, Richard! is this the way you’ve done your duty to us and your boy?”