I cannot tell how it was that this natural noble attitude in which his son stood, asking, like a loyal soul as he was, for that consent, without which he could not be wholly happy, to his happiness—affected almost to rage the mind of Richard, whose mode had been entirely the reverse; who had plucked in hot haste, without sanction or knowledge of any one, the golden apples which had turned to ashes and bitterness. To marry as he had done, wildly, hotly, in sudden passion,—is not that much more easily condoned by the great world in which he lived, which loves a sensation, than a respectable mediocre marriage, equally removed from scandal and from distinction? To marry a gipsy, or an opera-dancer, or a maid-of-all-work, is more pardonable, as being a piquant rebellion against all law and order, than it is to marry a virtuous person out of the lower circles of good society, sufficiently well-born and well-bred to make no sensation. The lawyer’s daughter was gall to Richard. He interposed with one of those sudden fits of passionate irritability to which his smooth nature was liable.
“Do not let this folly go any further, Val. We all know what is meant by these ravings about love and happiness. Whatever place I may have gained among men it is not from having been my father’s son; neither will that serve you as you think. Lord Eskside’s grandson!” said Richard, with scorn on his lip; “how much will that do for the younger of you two—the one who is not the heir,” he continued, with rising energy—“the one who has a second son’s allowance, a second son’s position; the one—whom we have all agreed in cheating out of his rights——”
“Dick?” said Val, with hesitation and wonder. He looked round upon them all, and saw something in their eyes which alarmed him he could not tell why. “Is it Dick?”
“Valentine,” said his father, suddenly coming up to him, seizing his arm, “it is not for me to speak to you of the miseries of a foolish marriage; but look here. Give up this boyish folly. You have a foundation, as you say, built up by those who have gone before you; you may make any match you please; you may cover all that has gone before with the world’s pardon and more than pardon. I look to you to do this. I can give you opportunities—you will have countless opportunities; give up this girl who is nobody—or if you refuse——”
“What then, sir, if I refuse?” Val loosed his arm from his father’s hold and stood confronting him, steadfast and erect, yet surprised and with a novel kind of pain in his eyes. The two old people gave one look at each other, then paused breathless to hear what was to come next, both of them aware that Richard, diplomatist as he was, forgot himself sometimes, and perceiving that the crisis, which in their previous talk they had prepared for, had now arrived.
“Then,” said Richard—he paused a moment, and all the old prick of a jealousy which he had despised himself for feeling, all the old jars of sensation at which he had tried to laugh, which had arisen out of the perpetual preference of Val to himself, surged up for one moment in his temper rather than his heart. The weapon lay at his hand so ready; the boy was somehow so superior, so irritating in his innocence. His face flushed with this sudden impulse to humiliate Val. “Then,” he said, “perhaps you will pause when I tell you, for your good, that you have totally mistaken your own position; that you are not the great man you think yourself; that though you have condescended to your brother, and patronised him, and been, as it were, his good genius, it is Dick who is Lord Eskside’s heir, and not you.”
Lady Eskside started with a low cry. It was because Dick had come in a moment before at the door, in front of which his father and brother were standing; but Richard thought her exclamation was because of what he said, and turned to her with a smile which it was not good to see.
“Yes, mother,” he said, “you wished him to know. Benissimo! now he knows. He has been the grand seigneur, and Dick has been nobody. Now the positions are reversed; and I hope his magnanimity will bear it. Anyhow, now, with his second son’s allowance, he will be obliged to pause in this mad career.”
“Is it so?” said Val, going forward to the table, and, I confess, leaning upon it a hand which trembled—for he had been thunderstruck by this revelation—“is it so?” No one spoke; and poor Val, standing there with his eyes cast down, had, I avow it, a bitter moment; but the very sting of the shock stimulated him, and called all his faculties together. After that minute, which felt like a year, he raised his head with a glimmer of painful moisture in his eyes, but a faint smile. “Well,” he said, “at all events there can never more be any doubt about me, who I belong to, or what position I hold. I wish Dick all the luck in the world, and he deserves it. He’ll be sorrier than I am,” said Val. “What, grandmamma, crying! Not a bit of it! I shall be as happy as the day is long with my second son’s allowance; and Vi!—for of course,” he added, with a bright defiant smile all round, “there can be no possible objection to Vi now.”
Dick had been standing quite still behind, moved not by curiosity, but by that respectful attention to the preoccupation of the others, which I suppose his former lowliness had put into him, though it is the highest grace of a gentleman. He had heard everything, indeed, but his mind was too full of something else to care for what he had heard. He broke in here, with a new subject, in a voice hoarse with anxiety and emotion. “Has any one seen my mother?” said Dick. “I have been all over the house looking for her, high and low.”