Lady Eskside received her son with the child by her side, going forward to meet him with little Val clinging to her hand; but when she forgot Val and threw her arms round her own boy whom she had not seen for so long, the child, bewildered, shifted his grasp to her gown, which he held fast, somewhat appalled as well as jealous at the appearance of this new-comer. It was not until after Richard had received his father’s less effusive greeting that even Lady Eskside bethought herself of the occasion of the visit—the little silent spectator, who, half buried in the folds of her gown, watched everything with keen eyes. “Ah!” she cried; then with a self-reproach for her own carelessness, “I think of my boy first, without minding that you are thinking of yours. Come, Val, and speak to your papa. Oh, Richard! oh, my dear! here is the child——”
“Oh!—this is the child, is it?” said Richard, with a momentary faintness coming over him. He did not snatch the little fellow into his arms, as his mother expected he would. He did something very different, for the poor man was short-sighted, a thing which none of us can help. He took up nervously that double eyeglass which the French call a pince-nez, and put it on his nose. He could not have seen otherwise had his heart been ever so tender; but it would be impossible to describe the shock, the chill, which this simple proceeding brought upon Lady Eskside. Was there, then, no paternal instinct in her son’s heart—none of the feeling which had made her own expand and glow towards the boy? Was her impulse of nature wrong, or his deadened? The old lord looked on curiously too, but with less vehement feeling, for Lady Eskside had a deeper stake in the matter. She felt that to find herself mistaken, and to have to give up the child whom she had adopted into her warmest affections, would be her death-blow.
“Richard! you don’t think—your father and I—have been wrong?” she cried.
It was on Lord Eskside’s lip to say that this rash adoption was none of his doing, and thus give up his wife to her fate; but he was sorry for her, and held his tongue, watching the man and the child as they stared at each other with gradually growing interest. The boy stood, holding by Lady Eskside’s gown, with a baby scowl upon his soft little forehead, half raising one arm with instinctive suspicion, as he had done on the night of his arrival, to ward off an imaginary blow. Richard sat opposite and gazed at him intently through his pince-nez. Something pathetic, tragic, terrible, yet ludicrous, was in the scene.
“Richard,” faltered Lady Eskside, “don’t keep me in this suspense. Do you suppose—do you think—it is not him?”
“What is your name?” said Richard, looking at his son. “Val?—you are sure you are Val and not the other? Yes. I suppose, then, he’s the eldest,” he said hurriedly, getting up and walking away to the window at the other end of the room. The old couple were too much surprised to say anything. They gave a wondering glance at each other, and Lord Eskside, putting up his hand, stopped the crowd of wondering questions which was about to pour from his wife’s lips. Richard stood perhaps two minutes (it seemed an hour), with his back to them, looking out from the window. When he returned, his voice was husky and his face paler. “You have done quite right, mother, to take him in,” he said, in low tones, “so far as I can judge.” Then, with a suddenly heightened colour, “He is like—his mother. No one who has ever seen her could fail to recognise him.”
“Richard! oh, take him in your arms and give your child a kiss!” cried Lady Eskside, with tears in her eyes. “Oh, take your own mother’s word, it is you the darling is like—you, and none but you!”
“Is that like me?” said Richard, touching his son’s dark hair, with a harsh laugh; “or could we be mixed up, we two, in anything, even a child’s face? No; one of them was hers—all hers. Don’t you recollect, mother? I was pleased then, like an idiot as I was. The other,” he added, with a softened voice, “was like me.”
And then there was silence again. He had not touched the child or spoken to him, except that unfriendly touch; and little Val stood by his grandmother’s knee, still clutching her dress, looking on with a bewildered sense of something adverse to himself which was going on over his head, but which he did not understand. Richard threw himself into a chair, his fair, amiable face flushed with unusual emotion; he swung back in his seat, with an uneasy smile on his face, and an expression of assumed carelessness and real excitement totally unlike his usual aspect. As for Lady Eskside, she was struck dumb; she put her arms round the child, petting and consoling him. “My bonnie man!” she said, pressing him close to her side, comforting the little creature, who was nothing more than perplexed in his baby mind—as if he had shared the distinct pain in her own.
“Enough of this, Richard,” said Lord Eskside, coming to the rescue. “Whatever has happened, it is not the boy’s fault. Your mother and I have the property to think of, and the succession. It is necessary that you should give an opinion one way or another——”