“Twenty years is a terrible long time,” she replied, with a little shiver; “I hope I’ll be dead and gone long before that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak so, mother.”
“Ah, but it’s true. My life ain’t much good to any one,” she said. “I am not let to live in my own way, and I can’t live in any other. If God would take me, it would be for the best. Then I might have another chance.”
“Mother, you break my heart,” cried Dick, with a face full of anxiety, throwing away his tools, and coming up to her. “Do you mean that it is I that won’t let you live your own way?”
“I don’t blame nobody but myself—no; you’ve been a good boy—a very good boy—to me,” she cried; “better, a long way, than I’ve been to you.”
“Mother,” said the lad, laying his hand on her shoulder, his face flushing with emotion, “if it’s hard upon you like this—if you want to start off again——”
“No, I don’t, I don’t!” she said, with suppressed passion; then falling back into her old dreamy tone—“So the boats go up on the 1st of March? and that’s Monday. To see ’em makes the river cheery. I’m a little down with the winter and all; but as soon as I see ’em, I’ll be all right.”
“Please God, mother,” said pious Dick, going back to his carving. He was satisfied, but yet he was startled. For, after all, why should she care so much about the boats?
This 1st of March inaugurated Val’s last summer on the river—at least, on this part of the river, for he had still Oxford and its triumphs in prospect. That “summer half” was his last in Eton, and naturally he made the most of it. Val had, as people say, “done very well” at school. He was not a brilliant success, but still he had done very well, and his name in the school list gave his grandparents great pleasure. Lord Eskside kept a copy of that little brochure on his library table, and would finger it half consciously many a time when some county magnate was interviewing the old lord. Val’s name appeared in it like this: * Ross (5) γ. Now this was not anything like the stars and ribbons of the name next above his, which was B * Robinson, (19) α; for I do not mean to pretend that he was very studious, or had much chance of being in the Select for the Newcastle Scholarship (indeed he missed this distinction, though he went in for it gallantly, without being, however, much disappointed by his failure). To be sure, I have it all my own way in recording what Val did at Eton, since nobody is likely nowadays, without hard labour in the way of looking up old lists, to be in a position to contradict me. But he had the privilege of writing his letters upon paper bearing the mystic monogram of Pop.—i.e., he was a member of Eton Society, which was a sure test of his popularity; and he was privileged in consequence to walk about with a cane, and to take part in debates on very abstruse subjects (I am not quite sure which privilege is thought the most important), and received full recognition as “a swell,”—a title which, I am happy to say, bears no vulgar interpretation at Eton, as meaning either rank or riches. And he was a very sublime sight to see on the 4th of June, the great Eton holiday, both in the morning, when he appeared in school in court dress—breeches and black silk stockings—and delivered one of those “Speeches” with which Eton upon that day delights such members of the fashionable world as can spare a summer morning out of the important business of the season; and in the evening, when he turned out in still more gorgeous array, stroke of the best boat on the river, and a greater personage than it is easy for a grown-up and sober-minded imagination to conceive.
It happened that this particular year Mr Pringle was in London upon some business or other, and had brought his daughter Violet with him to see the world. Vi was seventeen, and being an only daughter, and the chief delight of her parents’ hearts, and pride of her brothers’, big and little, was already “out,” though many people shook their heads at Mrs Pringle’s precipitancy in producing her daughter. Violet’s hair was somewhat darker now that it was turned up, but showed the pale golden hue of her childhood still in the locks which, when the wind blew upon her, would shake themselves out in little rings over her ears and round her pretty forehead. Her eyes were as dark and liquid as they had been when she was a child, with a wistful look in them, which was somewhat surprising, considering how entirely happy a life she had led from her earliest breath, surrounded with special love and fondness; but so it was, account for it who will. Those tender eyes that shone out of her happy youthful face were surely conscious of some trouble, which, as it did not exist in the present, must be to come, and which, with every pretty look, she besought and entreated you to ward off from her, to help her through. But a happy little maiden was Vi, looking through those pretty eyes, surprised and sweet, at London—tripping everywhere by her proud father’s side, with her hand on his arm, looking at the fine pictures, looking at the fine people and the fine horses in the Park, and going over the sights as innocent country people do when such a happy chance as a child to take about happens to them. Some one suggested to Mr Pringle the fact of the Eton celebration during this pleasant course of dissipation, and Vi’s eyes lighted up with a sweet glow of pleasure beyond words when it was finally decided that they were to go.