Even Mrs Pringle could find nothing to remark upon in this brief epistle. “I wonder how he knows your name?” was all she said, and Violet did not feel it necessary to enter into any particulars on this point. The second bulletin was just like the first. Mrs Pringle had this note in her pocket in the evening after dinner when her husband came up to her with an excited look, and thrust the little local Eskside paper, the ‘Castleton Herald,’ into her hand. “Look at this!” he said, pointing out a paragraph to her with a hand that trembled. How glad she was then that the news conveyed no shock to her, and that Violet knew with certainty the state of the matter which the newspaper unfolded so mysteriously! “We regret to learn,” said the ‘Herald,’ “that the new member for the county, Mr Ross, whose election so very lately occupied our pages, lies dangerously ill in England of fever—we suppose of that typhoid type which has lately made so much havoc in the world, and threatened still greater havoc than it has made. We have no information as to how the disease was contracted, but in the meantime Lasswade and the neighbourhood have been thrown into alarm and gloom by the sudden departure of such members of the noble family of Eskside as were still remaining at Rosscraig. We trust before our next week’s issue to be able to give a better account of Mr Ross’s state.”
“I knew Val was ill,” said Mrs Pringle, composedly; “Violet heard of it at Eskside.” She could not refrain from a stroke of vengeance as she handed the paper back to him. “I hope you are satisfied with your handiwork now,” she said.
“My handiwork?”
“Just yours,” said Mrs Pringle—“just yours, Alexander; and if the boy should die—which as good as him have done—what will your feelings be?”
“My feelings!” said Mr Pringle; “what have I to do with it?—did I give him his fever? Of course it must have been bad air or some blood-poisoning—or something. These are the only ways in which fever communicates itself;” but as he spoke (for he was not a bad man) his lips quivered, and there was a tremor in his voice.
“It is easy to say that—very easy to say it—and it may be true; but if you take the heart and strength out of a man, and leave him no power to throw off the ill thing when it comes? Alexander,” said Mrs Pringle, solemnly, “I will never hold up my head again in this world if anything happens to Val!”
“You speak like a fool—or a woman! It comes to much the same thing,” cried her husband; and he went away down-stairs and shut himself into his library quivering with the hot sudden rage which belongs to his conscience-stricken state. How miserable he was, trying to study a case in which he had to speak next day, and able to understand nothing except that Valentine Ross was ill, perhaps dying, and through his means! He had never meant that. He had meant to have his revenge for an imaginary wrong, and many little imaginary slights, and perhaps to make his young supplanter lose his election; but that he might put Val’s life in danger or injure him seriously had never entered into Mr Pringle’s thoughts. He tried to persuade himself that it was no concern of his, pursuing in an undercurrent, as his eyes went over his law-papers, all the arguments about sanitary dangers he had ever read. “What a fool I am to think that could have had anything to do with it!” he cried, throwing away his papers when he could bear it no longer, and beginning to pace up and down his room. What a burning restless pain he had at his heart! He cast about him vaguely in a kind of blank hopelessness what he could do, or if he could do anything. This he had never meant. He would not (he said to himself) have hurt Val or any one, for all the Eskside estates ten times over; and if anything happened to the boy he could never hold up his head again, as his wife said.
Mr Pringle had been wretched enough since that miserable election day. He had been conscious that even his own friends looked coldly upon him, suspecting him of something which went too far for ordinary political animosity or the fair fighting of honourable contest; and feeling that his own very family, and even the wife of his bosom, were against him, though Mrs Pringle, after her first very full and indignant expression of her opinion, had said no more on the subject. Still he had not her moral support, a backing which had scarcely ever failed him before; and he had the sense of having broken all the ties of friendship with the Eskside family—old ties which, though he did not love the Rosses, it was painful altogether to break. He had thrown away those ties, and made his adversaries bitter and his friends suspicious. So little was Mr Pringle a bad man, that he had pursued these thoughts for a long time in his secret heart without recollecting that, should Valentine die, he would be reinstalled in his position as heir-presumptive. When this suddenly flashed upon him, he threw himself in his chair and covered his face with his hands. In that case it would be murder, mere murder! it would be as if he had killed the boy for the sake of his inheritance. This startled him beyond anything I can say. Perhaps the profoundest and most impassioned of all the prayers that were said that night for Val’s recovery rose in a sudden anguish of remorse and surprised guilt from the heart of Val’s enemy. He shook like a man struck with palsy; his nerves contracted; the veins stood out on his forehead. He had never meant to harm the boy—never, never, God knows!—except in some momentary way, by a little shame, a little disappointment, which could have made no real difference in so happy and prosperous a life. The pain of this thought gripped him as with the crushing grasp of a giant. What could he do, he said to himself, writhing in his chair—what could he do to make amends? If he could but have believed in pilgrimages, how gladly would he have set out bare-footed to any shrine, if that would have brought back the young life that was in danger! Heaven help him! of all the people concerned there was no one so entirely to be pitied as poor Mr Pringle, lying there prostrate in his chair without any strength left in him, bodily or mental, or any one to back him up, saying to himself that perhaps it might be that he had murdered Val. He seemed to see before his eyes the bold handsome boy, the fine young fellow all joyous and triumphant in the glory of his youth; and was it his hand—a man with children of his own whom he loved—that had stricken Valentine down?
Next day—next “lawful day,” as we say in Scotland, for a Sunday intervened—Mr Pringle broke down in his case before the courts, and looked so distracted and miserable that the very Lords of Session took notice of it. “Sandy Pringle is breaking up early,” Lord Birkhill said to Lord Caldergrange; “he never had any constitution to speak of.” “Perhaps it is family affection and anxiety about young Ross of Eskside,” said Lord Caldergrange to Lord Birkhill; and these two learned authorities, both old enough to have been Sandy Pringle’s father, chuckled and took snuff together over his family affection and his early breakdown. The news from the ‘Castleton Herald’ about Val’s illness was copied that morning into all the Edinburgh papers. Mr Pringle himself, being of the Liberal party, saw only the ‘Scotsman,’ where it was simply repeated; but when he was leaving the Parliament House, his son Sandy came to him with the ‘Courant,’ which, as everybody knows, is the Conservative paper,—the one in which a communiqué from the Eskside party would naturally appear. “Have you seen this, sir?” said Sandy, not, his father thought, without a glimmer of vindictive satisfaction. They were all against him, wife and children, friends and circumstances. But the paragraph in the ‘Courant’ was one of a very startling description, and had already woke up the half of Edinburgh—everybody who knew or professed to know anything of the Eskside family—to wonder and interest. The ‘Courant’ gave first the paragraph from the ‘Herald,’ then added another of its own. “We are glad to be able to add that more favourable news has been received this morning of Mr Ross’s condition. The crisis of the fever is now past, and all the symptoms, we understand, are hopeful.” Then came the further information, which took away everybody’s breath. “We are authorised to state,” said the ‘Courant,’ “that Mr Ross, whose severe illness at such an interesting juncture of his life has called forth so much public interest and sympathy, was fortunately at the house of his mother, the Hon. Mrs Richard Ross, in Oxford, when the first symptoms of fever made their appearance, and accordingly had from the first every medical attention, as well as the most devoted nursing which affection could give.”
The paper fell out of Mr Pringle’s hand when he had read this. Sandy grasped him by the arm, thinking he would have fallen too. “For heaven’s sake,” cried Sandy, in a fierce whisper, “don’t make an exhibition of yourself here!” Mr Pringle did not answer a word, not even to the apologies with which, when they were safe out of the crowded precincts of the Parliament House, his son followed these hasty unfilial words. He went home to Moray Place in a condition of mind impossible to describe, feeling himself like a man caught in a snare. The Hon. Mrs Richard Ross, his mother! Had he really read those words in black and white? Were they no fiction, but true? His heart was relieved a little, for Val was better; but how could he ever extricate himself from the labyrinth he had got into? He had defied the Rosses to produce this mother, and her appearance seemed to Mr Pringle to close up every place of repentance for him, and to put him so terribly in the wrong that he could never face his friends again, or the public which knew him to be the author of that fatal letter to the electors of Eskshire. Surely no sin ever had such condign and instantaneous punishment. He was not a murderer, that was a thing to be thankful for; but he could be proved a liar—a maker of cruel, unfounded statements—a reporter of scandals! He shut himself up in his library, making some pretence of work to be done. As for Sandy, he did not go in at all, being angry and unhappy about the whole business. That Valentine’s mother should be found, and his rights, which Sandy had never doubted, fully established, he was heartily glad of. Mrs Pringle’s wise training had saved Sandy from even a shadow of that folly of expectation which had so painfully affected his father; but Sandy was indignant beyond description, hurt in his pride, and mortified to the heart, that his father should have put himself in such a mean position. I do not think there was any tingling recollection in him of the blow Val had given him. If he had borne malice, it would have vanished utterly at the first mention of Val’s illness; but he did not bear any malice. He bore another burden, however, more heavy—the burden of shame for his father’s unwarrantable assault, which, out of respect for his father, he could not openly disown, but must share the disgrace of, though he loathed the offence. I think Sandy may be excused if he felt himself too cross, too wretched in his false position, to face the rest of the household, and convey to them this startling news.