CHAPTER XL.
It was the beginning of May when the party went home, and everything was green on Eskside. Were I to describe all that happened before they left Oxford, so strange a family group as they were—the old Lady Eskside with the tramp-woman, the high-bred Secretary of Legation, along with Styles’s head man—and how they managed to exist together, the lion with the lamb—I should require a volume. But this would weary the reader, who can easily imagine for himself that any happiness which might be produced by this reunion of the divided family was counterbalanced by many circumstances which were not happy. The grandparents, I think, would have been really happy in the removal of all mystery from their family story, the complete establishment of the rights and heirship of their beloved Val, and the winning qualities of Dick, but for the sudden chaos into which they were replunged by the mother’s calm declaration of Dick’s seniority. Its effect upon them was indescribable. Richard, with his diplomatic instincts, seeing that his sons had not paid any attention to, or even heard, this extraordinary statement, hushed it up with an impetuous and peremptory promptitude which took even his father and mother by surprise, and silenced them. “Not another word,” he whispered to them; “not a word! the boys have heard nothing; for the present let nothing more be said;” and the old couple, in the suddenness of this strange juncture, let themselves be overruled, and left the guidance in his hands. As for the mother herself, she attached no weight to the circumstance. She was too ignorant to know, and too much abstracted in her mind to think, that it made any difference which was the eldest. She had not kept Dick for that reason, nor had she left Val at Rosscraig with any intention of avenging herself upon the family by thus substituting the youngest for the just heir, which was the first thought that crossed Lady Eskside’s mind. No; she had been guided by mere chance, as we say, snatching up the one boy instead of the other in her despair, for the most trivial reason, as the reader may recollect. And even now it did not occur to her that what she had said was of any consequence, though she saw it affected the others in some incomprehensible way. Her mind had no capacity for entering upon such a question. She was far more deeply moved by the chance that Valentine might be tired out—more solicitous to know whether it was time for his beef-tea. Richard kept his parents quiet until Val had gone to bed, and Dick to sit by him and read to him, when the three had an anxious consultation; and the packet of papers which Richard had brought from Italy, and which up to this moment had remained unopened, was examined, and found to confirm, with frightful accuracy, the statements of the mother. There it was incontestable, Dick was set down as the eldest, notwithstanding the impression upon Richard’s mind which, on Val’s first appearance, had led to the mistake.
This confirmation subdued them all into a kind of despair. Lord and Lady Eskside, both at different times, had received Dick into their affections, as they thought, and acknowledged, with a certain pride, his natural worthiness. But when it appeared possible that this new and unknown boy (though they liked him) might put himself in the place of their Valentine—the child of their old age, the light of their eyes—their hearts sank within them. All their satisfaction and enthusiasm was chilled, nay, frozen; they sat and looked at each other blankly, their gladness turned into dire disappointment and heaviness. Then it was that Richard urged upon them the necessity of silence. “Let us take time to think,” he said; “time is everything. Val, it is clear, can bear no further excitement; it might be fatal to him; nor can it be good for the other boy. He is an honest, kind fellow; but how can we tell if his head is strong enough to bear such a change of fortune? Let him get used to the part of younger brother first. For heaven’s sake, let us hold our tongues, and say nothing more about it now.”
Lord Eskside shook his head; but my lady seconded her son, alarmed at the idea he had skilfully brought forward of danger to Val. “Yes, he is a good honest fellow,” they both said, but with an involuntary grudge against Dick, as if it could be his fault; and the papers were put up carefully in Lord Eskside’s despatch-box, and the news still more closely locked in the bosoms of the three who knew the secret. But it is astonishing how their knowledge of this took all heart out of their conscientious effort to adapt themselves to the new state of things. Valentine, whatever his internal difficulties were, accepted the position much more easily. His illness softened it to him, and had already produced that familiar intercourse with his mother and brother, which the mere discovery that they were his mother and brother could not have brought about; and the happiness of convalescence which glorified all the circumstances about him, made it still more easy. He lived a life of delightful idleness, feeling nothing but benevolence and kindness for every created thing, how much more for his tender nurses and companions?—getting well, eating and sleeping, and loving idle talk, and to have all his people about him. He was so much a child in this, that even his father, whom Val had never been familiar with, came in for a share of his sociable affectionate desire to be always surrounded by the group of those who belonged to him. He called for everybody, with that regal power which is never possessed in such perfection as by an invalid, to whom all who love him are bound by a hundred ties of gratitude and admiration for having been so good and so clever as to get well. He could not bear a look too serious, a clouded face, and was himself as cheerful as the day, enjoying everything. Dick, I need not say, had told him of that meeting with Violet, and of his letters to her, and by this means Val had got up a spring of private delight for himself—carrying on a limited but charming correspondence, which, indeed, was all on one side, but which still gave him infinite pleasure. “Keep up the Brown delusion, Dick,” he said, with infinite relish of the fun, “till we go home; and then we’ll tell her. What a joke, to be sure, that you should ever have been Brown!” And indeed this was already the aspect the past had taken to both the young men; and it was the strangest absurd thing, scarcely comprehensible, how they could ever have believed it. The two had no share in the perturbation of their elders. Good Dick was, as he had said, more the servant of that young demigod and hero than if he had not been his brother. He did everything for him—read to him, talked to him, brought him the news, and lived over again every day of their intercourse since that day when they first “took a liking to each other.” How strange it all seemed—how extraordinary, and yet how natural—in face of this broad and obvious explanation, which made everything plain!
I need not say that it was also the idea of Richard Ross to put into the Edinburgh paper that cunning intimation that the young member for Eskshire had been taken ill at the house of his mother, the Hon. Mrs Richard Ross, at Oxford. Scarcely a soul who read that intimation ever thought of anything but the luxurious and dignified dwelling which an Hon. Mrs Ross would ordinarily inhabit; and the people who knew Oxford tried hard to recollect whether they had ever met her, and where her house was. The county in general was much perplexed and much affected by this notice. It seemed impossible to believe that there was any specious falsehood in so matter-of-fact a paragraph. “The old stories must all be false,” one said to another; “Richard’s wife has been living separate from her husband, that is all.” “But no one ever heard who she was,” the doubting ones said; though even the greatest sceptic added, “I will ask my son if he has ever met her in society.” Thus Richard’s diplomacy had full success. He followed it up by other delicate touches, bulletins of Valentine’s recovery, and tantalising hints such as only local gossip can permit, and which were reserved for the pages of the ‘Castleton Herald’—of the happy domestic rapprochements which the Editor was delighted to hear Mr Ross’s illness, otherwise so regrettable, was likely to bring about. All this made a great commotion in the district. You may think it was beneath the dignity of a man of Richard Ross’s pretensions to descend to such means of breaking to the public a great family event, which might otherwise have been differently interpreted; but your great man, and especially your diplomate and courtier, is always the one most disposed to make use of flunkeyism and the popular love of gossip. It is a sign, perhaps, of the cynical disregard of this elevated class of mortals for ordinary people; anyhow, they rarely hesitate to avail themselves of means which would wound the pride of many less exalted persons. Life, like dreams (to which, heaven knows, it bears in all matters so close a resemblance), goes by contraries. What the poor and simple scorn, the rich and wise employ.
The Eskshire people, however, were destined to yet another sensation more startling than this. It was in the nature of a recantation, and few recantations have excited more local interest. I will not attempt to describe all the motives and influences which were supposed to have brought it about—for the reader is better informed, and knows that it was brought about very simply, as perhaps some of his own good deeds are, by the intervention and pertinacity of a slim girl with a soft voice and a pair of pleading eyes. Nobody on Eskside knew that Violet, at the point of the sword as it were, had extracted an apology from her father. It appeared on the walls in the shape of a placard, about the middle of April, and was sent by post to all the influential persons in the district. Lasswade was white with it, every bit of fence possessing the paper. It was addressed, like another notable letter, to the Electors of Eskshire; but it was much shorter than the former one. What it said was as follows:—
“Gentlemen,—It will be within the recollection of all of you that, a few months ago, I thought it my duty to address to you a letter concerning the standing and pretensions of Mr Valentine Ross, now Conservative member for this county. It seemed right that you should take into consideration what then appeared to me the very doubtful proofs of Mr Ross’s identity. I am strongly opposed to him and his family in politics; and I confess I thought it my duty to indicate to you in the distinctest manner how poorly supported by fact were his claims to your confidence. I am a Whig, and Mr Ross is a Tory, and I do not pretend to be above the ordinary tactics of electioneering, which have been pushed to further lengths than were possible to me, by men of much higher worldly pretensions than myself. But whether as Whig or as Tory, I hope it will always be an Englishman’s highest boast to be an honest man; and circumstances have convinced me that it is my duty to convey to my brother electors an Apology for statements which I formerly made to them under the influence of a mistake, and which I now find are less certain than I then thought them. It is no disgrace to any man to have fallen into a mistake, if, when he discovers it, he takes pains to undo any mischief it may have produced.
“With this preface I will simply say, that though it is quite true, as I stated, that Mr Valentine Ross appeared at his grandfather’s house in a very strange and suspicious way, the inference I drew from that is, I have reason to believe, incorrect. It does not become me to enter into the private history of a family so well known in this county; but I believe steps will shortly be taken to remove all possibility of doubt upon the subject; and I can only say that I for one am now convinced that our new member has the fullest right to the name he bears. These important facts have only come to my knowledge within the last fortnight; and I consider it my duty, putting aside all false pride, which so often hinders a man from acknowledging a mistake publicly made, at once to communicate this discovery to the electors of Eskshire. I am as far from agreeing with Mr Ross and his family politically as I ever was; but I cannot continue to do a social injury to any man after I have found out that my impression was a mistaken one. If I have conveyed a prejudice against Mr Valentine Ross to the mind of any brother elector, I can only add that I am unfeignedly sorry for it.
“An Eskside Elector.”