CHAPTER VI.
After this first experience of his feeling on the subject, Lady Eskside, though with a painful effort, wisely resolved to avoid further embarrassment by letting things fall into their natural course, and making no effort to thrust his child upon Richard’s notice. The little fellow, already familiar with the house, and fully reconciled, with a child’s ease and insouciance, to the change in his lot, ran about everywhere, making the great hall resound with his voice, and beginning to reign over Harding and the rest of the servants, as the spoiled darling, the heir of the race, is apt to do, especially in the house of its grandparents. The only person Val was shy of was his father, who took little or no notice of him, but after his first introduction expressed no active feeling towards the child one way or another. Perhaps, indeed, Richard was slightly ashamed of that uncalled-for demonstration of his feelings. Valentine was his son, whether he liked it or not, and must be his heir and representative as well as his father’s; and though it never occurred to him to contemplate the moment when he himself should reign in his father’s stead, he felt it wise to make up his mind that his boy should do so, and to give his parents the benefit of his own experience as to Val’s education. “You must be prepared for an ungovernable temper and utter unreasonableness,” he said to his mother, making a decided and visible effort to open the subject.
“My dear, there is nothing of the kind,” cried Lady Eskside, eagerly; “the bairn is but a bairn, and thoughtless—but nothing of the kind can I see——”
“He is seven years old, and he is fooled to the top of his bent—everybody gives in to him,” said Richard. “Mark my words, mother,—this is what you will have to strive against. Self-control is unknown to that development of character. So long as they don’t care very much for anything, all may go well; but the moment that he takes a fancy into his head——”
Mary was present at this interview, and it was not in human nature to refrain from a glance at his mother to see how she received this lofty delineation of a character which Richard evidently thought entirely different from his own. Lady Eskside saw the glance, and understood it, and faltered in her reply.
“Many do that, my dear,” she said, meekly, “that are gentle enough in appearance. I will remember all the hints you give me. But Val, though he is very high-spirited, is a good child. I think I shall be able to manage him.”
“Send him to school,” said Richard—“that is the best way; let him find his level at school. Send him to Eton, if you like, when he is old enough, but in the mean time, if my advice is worth anything, put him under some strict master who will keep him well in hand, at once. My dear mother, you are too good, you will spoil him. With the blood he has in his veins he wants a firmer hand.”
“My hand is getting old, no doubt,” said Lady Eskside, with a little glow of rising colour.
“I do not mean that; you are not old—you will never be old,” said her son, with that flattery which mothers love. This put the disagreeable parts of his previous speech out of her mind. She smiled at her boy, and said, “Nonsense, Richard!” with fond pleasure. To be sure it was nonsense; but then nonsense is often so much better than the sagest things which wisdom itself can say.
As for the meeting with Mary Percival, that was got over more easily than she herself could have expected. There were so many other things in Richard’s mind that he took her presence there the first evening as a matter of course; and though that too had its sting, she was so great a comfort and help to them all in the excitement and embarrassment involved in the first meeting, that Mary was made into a person of the first importance—a position which always sheds balm upon the mind of one who has been, or thinks she has been, slighted. This state of comfort was somewhat endangered next morning, when Richard thought it proper to express his sense of her great kindness in coming to meet him. “It was very good of you,” he said—“like yourself; you were always much kinder to me than I deserved.” Now this is not a kind of acknowledgment which sensitive women are generally much delighted to receive, from men of their own age at least.