Lady Eskside wrung her hands. Her old face flushed and grew pale; hot tears filled her eyes. Something of personal disappointment was in the pang with which she felt this supposed deception. Women, I fear, are more apt to think of deception than men. Lady Eskside, in the sharpness of her disappointment, rashly jumped to the conclusion that Richard’s knowledge was not an affair of yesterday; that there was something behind more than had been told to her; that perhaps, for anything she could tell, he had been visiting this woman, who was his lawful wife, as if the tie between them had been of quite a different character; or perhaps, even—who knows?—was trying to palm upon them as his wife some one who did not possess any right to that title. In suspicion, as in other things, it is the first step that costs the most. Lord Eskside did not go so far as his wife did, but the thought began to penetrate his mind too, that if Richard had known this, even for a day, without disclosing it, he had exposed them to cruel and needless pain.
“Catherine,” said the old lord, “we need not quarrel to make matters worse. If he recognises his wife and his other son at last, and it is true that they are here, let us give our attention to make sure of that, and prevent trouble in the future. It is not a question of feeling, but of law and justice. Yes, no doubt, feeling will come in; but you cannot change your son, my lady, any more than he can change his father and mother, which, perhaps, he would have little objection to do. We must put up with each other, such as we are.”
“You do me injustice, sir,” cried Richard; “both you and my mother. There has been no deception in the matter. You shall hear how it happened afterwards; but in the meantime it is true that she is here, mother. I met her at Val’s bedside two days ago for the first time, without warning. I believe if I had given her warning she would have escaped again—but for Val. I am not made of much account between you,” said Richard, with a painful smile. “I have little occasion to be vain. You, my mother, and her, my—wife; what you think of is not me, but Val.”
“Oh Richard! you would aye have been first with me if you would have let me,” said Lady Eskside, as ready to forgive as she had been to censure, her heart melting at this reproach, which was true. As for the old lord, he was not so easily moved either to blame or to pardon. He got up and walked about the room while Richard, still flushed with excitement and a certain indignation, told them the story of the photograph, and his recognition of his wife’s face so strangely brought before him by his son. Richard gave his own version of the story, as was natural. He allowed them to perceive the violence of the shock this discovery had given him, without saying very much on the subject; and described how, though incapable of anything else in the excitement of the moment, he had put force upon himself to make his wife’s residence known to his lawyer, and to have a watch kept upon her movements. What he said was perfectly true, with just that gloss which we all put upon our own proceedings, showing them in their best aspect; and Lady Eskside received it as gospel, taking her son’s hand into her own, following every movement of his lips with moist eyes, entering with tender and remorseful sympathy into those hidden sentiments in his mind which she had doubted the existence of, and which, up to this moment, he had never permitted her to see. Her husband, however, walked about the room while the tale went on, listening intent, without losing a word, but not so sympathetically—staring hard at Dick’s homely ornamentations, his bits of carving, his books, all the signs of individuality which were in the place. I don’t know that he remarked their merits, though he walked from one to another, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and stared almost fiercely at the carving, with eyes wellnigh hidden under his shaggy brows. He did not say anything while Lady Eskside, weeping and smiling, made her peace with her son. When she cried, “Oh yes, my dear, my dear, I understand!” he only worked his expressive eyebrows, giving no articulate evidence of emotion. “Val is up-stairs, I suppose? I am going to see him,” was all he said in the pause after Richard’s story concluded. Lord Eskside climbed up the narrow wooden staircase with a shrug of his shoulders. He was not satisfied with his son’s story, as his wife had been. He opened one door after another before he found the room in which Val was lying. To see the boy stretched there on the bed, with vacant eyes, half dozing, half waking, but quite unconscious of his visitor, went to the old lord’s heart far more than Richard’s story had done. “If he had spoken out like a man, this might have been spared,” he said to himself; and bent over Val’s bed to hide the momentary contortion of his features, which brought the water to his eyes. “My poor lad!” he said, with hidden anguish, scarcely noticing for the first moment the nurse on the other side of the bed. She rose with a sudden dilation of terror in her eyes. She had never seen Lord Eskside, and did not know who he was; but felt by instinct that he had been brought hither by the terrible wave of novel events which was about to sweep over her head, and that he had come to take away from her her boy.
Lord Eskside looked at her across the bed where Val was lying. He made her a low bow, with that courtly politeness which now and then the homely old lord brought forth, like an old patent of nobility. But it was difficult for him to know what to say to her—and she gave him no assistance, standing there with a look of panic which disturbed the still, abstracted dignity of her ordinary aspect. “I am afraid I have startled you,” he said, his voice softening. “Don’t be alarmed. I am your—husband’s father. I am sorry, very sorry, that we never met before.”
She made no answer, but only a slight tremulous movement intended for a curtsey; then some sense of the necessities of her position, struggling with her fright, she said faintly, “He is just the same—on Saturday he’ll be better, please God.”
“On Saturday he’ll be better! God bless you, my dear! You seem sure? How can you be sure?” cried the old lord, with his eyelids all puckered together to hide the moisture within.
She put up her hand with a warning gesture. “Hush,” she said; “it makes him restless when he hears a voice”—then a curious, exquisite twilight seemed to melt over her face as if some last reflections of a waning light had caught her, illuminating her for the moment with the tenderest subdued radiance—“except mine,” she added in tones so low as to be almost inaudible. The old lord was deeply touched. What with his boy’s condition, which was worse than he expected, and this voice of great, subdued, and restrained feeling—emotion that had no object but to conceal itself—all his prejudices floated away. He was not in the least conscious of being affected by the beauty which was concealed, too, like the emotion—indeed he would have denied that she had any beauty; but the suppression of both and ignoring of them by their possessor had a great effect upon him; for there was nothing in the world more noble in the eyes of the old Scots lord than this power of self-restraint. He went round to her softly, walking with elaborate precaution, and took her hand for a moment; “God bless you!” he said; then, with another look at Val, he left the room. He himself, even with all the self-control he had, might have broken down and betrayed the passionate love and anxiety in him had he waited longer there.
Lady Eskside was seated in the parlour alone when he entered; she was leaning back in Dick’s great chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes. “He has gone to get the doctor, that we may know everything exactly,” she said. “He” had changed to her. She had taken back her own son, her very child, into her heart, (had he not the best right?) and it was Richard who was “he,” not any one else. She was so tender, so happy, so deeply moved by this revolution, that she could scarcely speak to her husband, who, she felt instinctively, had not been subjected to the same wonderful change.