“Thank heaven for that!” said Richard, with a gleam of real pleasure; and with another pressure of his hand he let his new son go. Dick went out to post his letter strangely excited but subdued. What it was to be a gentleman, he thought! and this was his father, his father! A new pride unknown to him before came into existence within him, a glimmer which lighted up that dim landscape. After all, the new world, though it was so strangely mysterious and uncertain, was it not more splendid, more beautiful to the imagination, than the old world could ever have been?
Val made slow but sure progress towards recovery, and the family lived a strange life in attendance upon him, occupying Dick’s little parlour all day, and returning to the hotel for the night. The intercourse between them was of a peculiar character. Dick, watching intently, jealous for his mother, soon perceived that she was of much more importance to the others than he thought possible, and had his fears appeased. He watched her almost as if she had been his young sister, and Richard Ross her lover, eager to note if they met, and when and how; but, as it happened, they scarcely met at all, she keeping to the sick-room above, he to the parlour below. As for Dick himself he became Val’s slave, lifting him when he was first moved, helping him continually, indispensable to his invalid existence. He called for “Brown” when he woke in the morning, and ordered him about with an affectionate imperiousness which was at once provoking and delightful to Dick. But Val was much more mysterious in the looks with which he regarded “Brown’s mother.” He did not talk to her much, but watched her movements about the room with a half-reverential admiration. “She will wear herself out. She is too good to me; you ought to make her go and rest,” he said to Dick; but he was uneasy when she left him, and impatient of any other nursing. He half-frightened half-shocked Lady Eskside by his admiration of her. “How handsome she is, grandmamma!” he whispered in the old lady’s ear. “How she carries herself! Where could Brown’s mother get such a way of walking? I think she must have been a princess.” “Hush, my darling, hush!” said my lady. “Nonsense! I am all right; I don’t mean to hush any more,” said Val. “I think she is handsomer than any one I ever saw.” This Lady Eskside put up with, magnanimously making up her mind that nature spoke in the boy’s foolish words; but it was hard upon her when her old lord began to blow trumpets in honour of Dick, who took walks with him when he could be spared from Valentine, and whom in his enthusiasm he would almost compare advantageously with Val! It was true, that it was she herself who had first pressed Dick’s claims upon him; but with Val just getting better, and doubly dear from that fact, who could venture to compare him with any one? She liked Dick—but Lord Eskside was “just infatuated” about him, my lady thought. “He reminds me of my father,” said the old lord. Now this father was the tenth lord—him of the dark locks, by means of whom she had always attempted to account for Valentine’s brown curls, and whose portrait her son Richard disrespectfully called a Raeburn. She gave a little gulp of self-control when she heard these words. “Make no comparisons!” she cried, “or you’ll make me like the new boy less, because I love the old one more. To me there will never be any one in the world like my Val.” Lord Eskside shrugged his old shoulders, and went out for another walk with Dick.
At last the day arrived when Valentine was pronounced well enough to have the great disclosure made to him. For two or three days in succession he had been brought down-stairs and had enjoyed the sight of the old world he knew so well, the river and the trees seen from the window, and the change—with all the delight of convalescence. And wonderfully sweet, and imperious, and seductive he was to them all, in that moment while still he did not know, holding his levée like a sovereign, not enduring any absence. On that important morning when the secret was to be disclosed to him, he noted with his usual imperious friendliness the absence of “Brown’s mother” from the group that gathered round him, and sent Dick off for her at once. “Unless she is resting she must come. Ask her to come; why should she be left out?” said Val, in his ignorance; which made the others look at each other with wondering eyes. She came in at Dick’s call, and seated herself behind backs. She had put off her nursing dress, and wore the black gown and white net kerchief on her fine head, which added so much to the impressive character of her beauty. Amid all these well-born people there was no face in itself so striking and noble. The Rosses were all quite ordinary, except Val, who had taken his dark beauty from her. She, poor ignorant creature, made up of impulses, without a shadow of wisdom or even good sense about her, looked like a dethroned queen among them: which shows, after all, how little looks matter—an argument which would be very powerful if it were not so utterly vain.
“Val,” said Lord Eskside, who was the spokesman, as became his position, “I hope you are getting back your strength fast. The doctor tells us we may now make a disclosure to you which is very important. I do not know how you will take it, my boy; but it is so great, and of so much consequence, that I cannot keep it from you longer. Val——”
“Is it something about Violet?” said Valentine, the little colour there was paling out of his face.
“About—whom?”
“About Violet,” he repeated, with a stronger voice. “Listen, sir; let me speak first;” and with the sudden flush of delicate yet deep colour which showed his weakness, Val raised his head from the sofa, and swung his feeble limbs, which looked so preternaturally long, to the ground. “I have not said anything about her while I have been ill, but it is not because I forgot. Grandfather, Violet and I made up our minds to marry each other before that confounded election. If her father did write that letter, it’s not her fault; and I can’t go on, sir, now I’ve come to myself, not another day, without letting you know that nothing, nothing in the world can make me change to Vi!”
There was a pause of astonishment so great that no one knew what to say: this sudden introduction of a subject altogether new and unsuspected bewildered the others, whose minds were all intent on one thing. Val was as one-idea’d as they were; but his idea was not their idea; and the shock of the encounter jarred upon them, so curiously sudden and out of place it seemed. Lady Eskside, who sat close by him, and to whom this was no revelation, was more jarred even than the rest. She put her fine old ivory hand on his arm, with an impatient grasp. “This is not the question—this is not the question,” she said.
Val looked round upon them all, and saw something in their looks which startled him too. He put back his legs upon the sofa, and the flush gradually went off his cheek. “Well,” he said, “well; whatever it is I am ready to hear it—so long as I make sure that you’ve heard me first.”
“Valentine,” said his father, “at your age some such piece of foolishness always comes first; but this time you have got to see the obverse of the medal—the other end of all this enthusiasm. It is my story, not your own, that you have to think of. Kind friends of course have told you——”