A gleam came from her eyes—a sparkle of tenderness and light. “I’ll do what’s best,” she said—“whatever is best:” then with a sudden rush of tears, “You may let me think of the old days, Dick; for my strength’s changed, and my mind’s changed, and I never can go back to them—never no more—even if I would.”
“But, mother,” said Dick, “it used to keep you happy to see Val only on the river, once a-day or twice a-day, in his boat. I did not know why it was then; but I saw it; and now you’ve got him altogether——”
“Ah, it’s different, it’s different!” she cried; “can’t you see, lad? Then he was none o’ mine—he was his father’s; it was more than I could have hoped for to see him like that—it kept me alive. Now he’ll come to me when I like, Dick; and kind he looks and kind he speaks, God bless him! He’d do himself an injury to please me; but ah, it’s different! If I could take them to the market in a basket, and sell a bunch here and a bunch there, that’s what I would like,” she went on with a sudden change of tone, drawing the flowers through her thin hands.
It was with a kind of despair that Dick took her home. She was getting thin visibly, he thought. She would sit at the window for hours together, gazing, seeing nothing. For the first few days she suffered herself to be taken to the family meals, but this evidently agitated her beyond endurance, and had to be given up. What was to be done? Not one of them could tell, or indeed form an idea; the only thing that could be trusted in was time, which might possibly bring back a subdued harmony to those chords which at present were all ajar; but for the moment there seemed little hope even of that. All the restlessness of old came back to her. When the active habits of her life at Oxford became unnecessary, the self-restraint she had learnt there failed her also. She took to talking (when she did talk) of nothing but the tramp-life, which seemed to have suddenly come into prominence in her mind. Now and then she dozed in the long afternoons, and Dick heard her murmuring in her sleep about the long road, and how far it was, and the lad that was tired. Poor Dick’s satisfaction in his new circumstances was suddenly subdued by this. It did not occur to him that she was ill; he thought it was one of the old fits coming on, in which he had always felt the dreadful risk there was that she might go secretly away from him, and never be heard of more. To be sure, he comforted himself by thinking these fits had always gone off again, and so perhaps would this one now.
Thus the family life recommenced under its changed circumstances. I doubt whether any one in the great house was happy. The old people had a secret in their keeping, which destroyed their peace, and which must produce further troubles still; and Dick had his mother, whose state alarmed him: and Richard Ross was in a position very difficult for a man to bear, totally ignored by his wife, yet feeling a curious secret attraction towards her, and a half-whimsical half-tragical wonder whether they were ever to be drawn closer, or if all was over between them. Valentine, the happiest of the party, was not without his troubles too, for he had written to Violet, and received no reply, and at the Hewan there was no intelligence to be obtained of her. Thus they had all enough to do to carry on the possibilities of living; and the great happiness and good fortune which had come to them, scarcely looked for the moment like good fortune at all.
CHAPTER XLI.
A short time after their return, Valentine made up his youthful mind that he could bear his share of these uncertainties no longer. He had been to the Hewan again and again; now he set off to Moray Place itself, saying nothing to his relations, except to Dick, who winced, but kept his counsel. But all the ardent young lover made by his persistence was an interview with Mrs Pringle, who received him stiffly, and declined to answer any inquiries about Violet, who was absent from home. “I do not suppose your family would be pleased if they knew; and my family would be still less pleased, that Violet should be held cheap,” said Mrs Pringle. “If you will believe me, Valentine, I think it is much better that there should be no more about it;” and all Val’s remonstrances and pleadings were of no avail. He came back miserable and dejected, and strayed out to the woods, in which there is always some consolation for a heart-broken lover. Val went as far as the linn, that he might see the place at least where he had been so happy. Was it possible, after all he had gone through, that his love and his happiness were to end like a dream, and every link to be snapt between him and Vi? When he approached that spot which was so full of associations, he too heard sounds, as Dick had done, which told of some human intrusion into this realm of woodland and waters. It was not a sob this time that Val heard. It was a sound of low voices—women’s voices—talking in a half-whisper, as if they feared to be discovered. Drawing near, trembling, like a thief, he saw under the big beech-branches a corner of a blue dress, showing from behind one of them. This made his heart beat; but the blue gown might not be Vi’s blue gown; and anyhow there were two of them, as the voices testified, so that caution was needful. Another step, however, relieved him of his doubts. In front of him, on the green bank on the river-side, sat Mary Percival, with her face turned towards some one unseen, to whom she was talking. “My dear, he has had plenty of time to write to you, and he has not done so. If you will believe me, Vi, I think it is a great deal better there should be no more about it.” These were, though Mary did not know it, the self-same words under which Val was suffering. The repetition of them drove him beyond himself. He gave a shout of indignant protestation, and rushing between the two astonished ladies, caught her of the blue dress rudely, suddenly, in his arms.
But do not think Violet was half so much surprised as middle-aged Mary was, to whom this interruption was quite unlocked for. She did not know even that “the family” had arrived at Rosscraig—Lady Eskside, amid all this tumult of events, having become remiss in her correspondence, and Val’s letters to Violet having been, if not suppressed, yet detained at Moray Place during the girl’s absence. Even if the family had returned, Mary felt there were a hundred chances to one that Val would not be there precisely at the right moment to meet her and her companion. In Mary’s own case things had never happened just at the right moment; and therefore she had acquiesced with little difficulty in Violet’s prayer that she might be allowed “one look” at the linn. Violet had been sent to Mary to be taken care of—to be kept out of danger; and this, I am ashamed to say, was how Miss Percival, who had a strong vein of romance in her, notwithstanding all her good sense, fulfilled her trust. She saw her folly now when it was too late.
“Valentine!” she cried, “how dare you—how dare you do that—when her parents do not know?”
“Her parents!” said Val, equally indignant; “what do I care for her parents, or any one’s parents? I am a man, old enough to know my own mind, and so is Vi. Can parents make us happy?” said the young man, with that cruel frankness which seems so easy to the young, and is so hard upon the old. “Vi, my darling, you know you are mine—you won’t let parents or any one come between you and me?”