And to be sure this was how it ended. All the more for their wish that it should be so, the family, in its three generations, struggled against Dick’s persistence, calling in external testimony—as that of Willie Maitland—to prove how impossible any such arrangement was. Dick never allowed himself to be excited again; but he held by his vow, and nothing that could be said moved him. Sometimes he would get up in the midst of a discussion, and go away, crying out impatiently that they were tiring him to death,—the only time he was disrespectful in word or look to the elders of the party. Sometimes he bore it all, smiling; sometimes he threatened to go away. I think it was by the interposition of Sandy Pringle’s good sense that it was settled at last—Sandy Pringle the younger, a very rising young lawyer, much thought of in the Parliament House. Val had sought Sandy out almost as anxiously as he sought Violet, to beg his pardon for that unadvised blow, and to secure his interest (for is not a friend, once alienated, then recovered, twice a friend?) with his parents. Sandy was the first of the Pringle family reintroduced after the quarrel to Rosscraig. He took Dick’s side energetically and at once, with that entire contempt for the law which I believe only great lawyers venture to entertain. I don’t pretend to understand how he managed it, or how far the bargain which was ultimately made was justifiable, or whether it would stand for a moment if any one contested it. Such arrangements do exist, they say, in many great families, and Sandy had a whole list of them at his fingers’-ends, with which he silenced Lord Eskside. One enormous point in his favour was that Valentine, being already known and acknowledged as Lord Eskside’s eldest grandson and heir, active measures would have been necessary on Dick’s part to establish his own claims—measures which Dick not only would not take, but refused all sanction to. And howsoever it was brought about, this I know, that Val is the eldest son, and Dick the youngest, de facto, if not de jure, to the absolute contentment of everybody concerned; and that this secret, like every other honest secret, is known to a dozen people at least, and up to this time has done nobody any harm.
And I will not attempt to linger at this advanced period of my story, or to tell all the means by which the Pringles, on one side, and the Rosses on the other, were brought to consent to that unalterable decision of the young people, which both Val and Vi believed themselves to have held to with resolution heroical through trials unparalleled. Reflect with yourself, kind reader, how long, if you have an only daughter, your middle-aged, sternness could hold out against the tears in her sweet eyes?—reflect how long you could stand out against your boy—the fine fellow who is your pride and glory? There are stern parents, I suppose, in the world, but I fully confess they are beings as much beyond my comprehension as megatheriums. If the young people hold out, tenderly and dutifully as becomes them, the old people must give in. Is it not a law of nature? I do not advise you, boys and girls, to flout and defy us all the same; for that brings into action a totally different order of feelings,—a different set of muscles, so to speak, producing quite different results. But as my boy and girl, in the present case, heartily loved their fathers and mothers, and were incapable of disrespect towards them, the natural consequence came about in time, as how should it not? Lord and Lady Eskside and Mr and Mrs Pringle, and even the Honourable Richard Ross, in Florence, gave in accordingly, and consented at last. This process occupied the time until the beginning of the next summer from these events; and then, on the first day in June (not May, the virgin month, which is, as everybody in Scotland knows, fatally unlucky for marriages) Valentine and Violet were made one, and all their troubles (they thought, like a pair of babies) came to an end. The wedding feast, out of consideration for the old people, was held at Rosscraig; but I will tell the reader of only one incident which occurred at that feast, or after it, and which has no particular connection either with the bridegroom or the bride.
Richard Ross had come from Florence to be present at his son’s marriage; and there, too, was Miss Percival, who had been much longer absent from her old friend than was usual, the episode of Richard’s wife having interposed a visionary obstacle between them which neither could easily break. At this genial moment, however, Mary forgot herself, and returned to all her old habits in the familiar house. It was she and Dick—who immediately fell in love with each other—who arranged everything, and made the wedding party so completely successful. After the bridal pair had gone, when the guests were dispersing, and Mary’s cares over, she came out on the terrace before the windows to breathe the fresh air, and have a moment’s quiet. Here Richard joined her after a while. Richard Ross was fifty, but his appearance was exactly what it had been ten years before, and I am not sure that he was not handsomer then than at five-and-twenty. Mary was a few years younger—a pretty woman of her age—with hair inclining towards grey, and eyes as bright as they had ever been. I do not think it failed to strike either of them with a curious thrill of half sympathy, half pain, that they two might have been—nay, almost, ought to have been—the father and mother, taking a conjugal stroll in the quiet, after their son had departed in his youthful triumph, feeling half sad, half glad that his time had begun and theirs was over—yet so far from really feeling their day to be over, that the sadness was whimsical, and amused them. I think they both felt this, more or less, and that Mary’s secret grudge at having been, as it were, cheated out of the mothering of Val, had been strong in her mind all day. They looked together over the lovely woods, all soft with the warmth of June, down to where the Esk, never too quiet, played like a big baby with the giant boulder which lay mid-stream, just as he turned round the corner of the hill. The two figures on the terrace were in shade, but all the landscape was shining in the June sunshine. It was a moment to touch the heart.
“You and I have looked at these woods often together, Mary, in many different circumstances,” said Richard, with a touch of sentiment in his voice.
“Yes, indeed—often enough,” she said, compelling herself to laugh.
“And now here have the young ones set out, and we remain. I often wonder if you and I had come together a quarter of a century ago, as seemed so natural—as I suppose everybody wished——”
“Except ourselves,” said Mary, her heart fluttering, but putting forth all her most strenuous powers of self-command.
“Except—ourselves? Well, one never knows exactly what one did wish at that time,” said Richard; “everything that was least good, I suppose. We are very reasonable at our present age, Mary; and I think we suit each other. Suppose you have me now?”
“Suppose—what?” she asked, with surprise.
“I think we suit each other; and my mother would be more pleased than words can tell. Suppose you have me, now?”