In one other house besides, Val and his concerns were productive of some little tumult of feeling—not the least important of the many eddies with which his stream of life was involved. Mr Pringle was almost as much excited about the approaching conflict as Lord Eskside. He saw in it opportunities for carrying out his own scheme, which he called exposure of fraud, but which to others much more resembled the vengeance of a disappointed man. He was the bosom friend of the eminent lawyer who meant to contest Eskside in the Liberal interest, and had no small share in influencing him to this step. His own acquaintance with the county, in the position of Lord Eskside’s heir-presumptive in past days, had given him considerable advantages and much information which a stranger could not easily command; and with silent vehemence he prepared himself for the conflict—contemplating one supreme stroke of revenge—or, as he preferred to think, contemplating a full exposure to the world of the infamous conspiracy against his rights and those of his children, from which the county also was now about to suffer. He did not speak freely to his family of these intentions, for neither his wife nor his children were in harmony with him on the subject; but this fact, instead of inducing him to reconsider a matter which appeared to other eyes in so different a light, increased the violence of his feelings, just in proportion to the necessity he felt for concealing them. It was even an additional grievance against Valentine, and the old people who had set Valentine up as their certain successor, that the lad had secured the friendship of his enemy’s own family. Sandy, who was by this time a hard-working young advocate, less fanciful and more certain of success than his father—though a very good son, and very respectful of his parents, had a way of changing the subject when the Eskside business was spoken of, which cut Mr Pringle to the quick. He could see that his son considered him a kind of monomaniac on this subject; and indeed there was sometimes very serious talk between Sandy and his mother about this idée fixe which had taken hold upon the father’s mind.
Thus Mr Pringle’s own family set themselves against him; but perhaps there was not one of them that had the least idea what painful results might follow except poor little Violet, who was very fond of her father, and in whose childish heart Val had established himself long ago. She alone was certain that her father meant mischief—mischief of a deeper kind than mere opposition to his election, such as Mr Pringle, as tenant of the Hewan and the land belonging to it, had a right to make if he pleased. Violet watched him with a painful mixture of dread lest her father should take some unworthy step, and dread lest Valentine should be injured, contending in her mind. She could scarcely tell which would have been the most bitter to her; and that these two great and appalling dangers should be combined in one, was misery enough to fill her young soul with the heaviest shadows. This she had to keep to herself, which was still harder to bear, though very usual in the troubles of youth. Everything which concerns an unrevealed and nascent love,—its terrors, which turn the very soul pale; its partings, which press the life out of the heart; its sickness of suspense and waiting,—must not the maiden keep all these anguishes locked up in her heart, until the moment when they are over, and when full declaration and consent make an end at once of the mystery and the misery? This training most people go through, more or less; but the trial is so much harder upon the little blossoming woman that the dawnings of the inclination, which she has never been asked for, are a shame to her, which they are not to her lover. Violet did not venture to say a word even to her mother of her wish to be at the Hewan while Val was there—of her sick disappointment when she found he had gone away without a chance of saying good-bye; and though she did venture to whisper her fears lest papa might “say something to hurt poor Val’s feelings,” which was a very mild way of putting it—she got little comfort out of this suppressed confidence. “I am afraid he will,” Mrs Pringle said. “Indeed, the mere fact that your papa is Mr Seisin’s chief friend and right-hand man, will hurt Val’s feelings. I am very sorry, and I think it very injudicious; for why should we put ourselves in opposition to the Eskside family? but it cannot be helped, and your papa must take his way.”
“Perhaps if you were to speak to him,” said Vi, with youthful confidence in a process, than which she herself knew nothing more impressive, and even terrible on occasion.
“Speak to him!” said Mrs Pringle; “if you had been married to him as long as I have, my dear, you would know how much good speaking to him does. Not that your papa is a bit worse than any other man.”
With this very unsatisfactory conclusion poor Violet had to be satisfied. But she watched her father as no one else did, fearing more than any one else. Her gentle little artifices, in which the child at first trusted much, of saying something pleasant of Val when she had an opportunity—vaunting his fondness for the boys, his care of herself (in any other case the strongest of recommendations to her father’s friendship), his respect for Mr Pringle’s opinions, his admiration of the Hewan—had, she soon perceived, to her sore disappointment, rather an aggravating than a soothing effect. “For heaven’s sake, let me hear no more of that lad! I am getting to hate the very sound of his name,” her father said; and poor Violet would stop short, with tears springing to her eyes.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Valentine went off gaily upon his journey, without any thought of the tragic elements he had left behind him. I think, had Dick been still at the rafts at Eton, his young patron would have proposed to him to accompany him to Italy in that curious relationship which exists in the novel and drama, and could perhaps exist in former generations, but not now, among men—as romantic humble servant and companion. But Dick was grown too important a man to make any such proposal possible. Valentine dallied a little in Paris, which he saw for the first time, and made his way in leisurely manner across France, and along the beautiful Cornice road, as people used to do in the days before railways were at all general, or the Mont Cenis tunnel had been thought of. He met, I need not add, friends at every corner—old “Eton fellows,” comrades from Oxford, crowds of acquaintances of his own class and kind—a peculiarity of the present age which is often very pleasant for the traveller, but altogether destroys the strangeness, the novelty, the characteristic charm, of a journey through a foreign country. A solid piece of England moving about over the Southern landscape could not be more alien to the soil on which it found itself than were those English caravans in which the young men travelled; talking of cricket if they were given that way—of hits to leg, and so many runs off one bat; or, if they were boating men, of the last race, or what happened at Putney or at Henley, while the loveliest scenes in the world flew past their carriage-windows like a panorama. I think Mr Evelyn saw a great deal more of foreign countries when he made the grand tour; and even Val, though he was not very learned in the jargon of the picturesque, got tired of those endless réchauffés of stale games and pleasures. He got to Florence about a fortnight after he left England, and made his way at once to the steep old Tuscan palace, with deeply-corniced roof and monotonous gloom of aspect, which stood in one of the smaller streets opening into the Via Maggio on the wrong side of the river. The wrong side—but yet the Pitti palace is there, and certain diplomatists preferred that regal neighbourhood. Val found a servant, a bland and splendid Italian major-domo, waiting for him when he arrived, but not his father, as he had half hoped; and even when they reached the great gloomy house, he was received by servants only—rather a dismal welcome to the English youth. They led him through an endless suite of rooms, half lighted, softly carpeted, full of beautiful things which he remarked vaguely in passing, to an inner sanctuary, where his father lay upon a sofa with a luxurious writing-table by his side. Richard Ross sprang up when he heard his son announced, and came forward holding out his hand. He even touched Valentine’s face with his own, first one cheek, then the other,—a salutation which embarrassed Val beyond measure; and then he bade him welcome in set but not unkindly terms, and began to ask him about his journey, and how he had left “everybody at home.”
This was only the third time that Val had seen his father, and Richard was now a man approaching fifty, and considerably changed from the elegant young diplomatist, who had surveyed with so little favour fourteen years ago the boy brought back to him out of the unknown. Richard’s first sensation now on seeing his son was one of quick repugnance. He was so like—the vagrant woman against whom Mr Ross was bitter as having destroyed his life. But he was too wise to allow any such feeling to show, and indeed did his best to make the boy at home and comfortable. He asked him about his studies, and received Val’s half-mournful confession of not having perhaps worked so well as he might have done, with an indulgent smile. “It was not much to be expected,” he said; “boys like you, with no particular motive for work, seldom do exert themselves. But I heard you had gained reputation in a still more popular way,” he added; and spoke of the boat-race, &c., in a way that made Val deeply ashamed of that triumph, though up to this moment he had been disposed to think it the crowning triumph of his life. “You were quite right to go in for it, if your inclination lies that way,” said his bland father. “It is as good a way as another of getting a start in society.” And he gave Val a list of “who” was in Florence, according to the usage established on such occasions. He even took the trouble of going himself to show him his room, which was a magnificent chamber, with frescoed walls and gilded ceilings, grand enough for a prince’s reception-room, Val thought; and told him the hours of meals, and the arrangements of the household generally. “My house is entirely an Italian one,” he said, “but two or three of the people speak French. I hope you know enough of that language at least, to get on easily. Your own servant, of course, will be totally helpless, but I will speak to Domenico to look after him. If you know anything at all of Italian, you should speak it,” he added, suavely; “you will find it the greatest help to you in your reading hereafter. Now I will leave you to rest after your long journey, and we shall meet at dinner,” said the politest of fathers. Val sat staring before him half stupefied when he found himself left alone in the beautiful room. This was not the kind of way in which a son just arrived would be treated at Eskside. How much he always had to explain to his grandmother, to tell her of, to hear about! What a breathless happy day the first day at home always was, so full of talk, news, consultations, interchange of the family nothings that are nothing, yet so sweet! Val’s journey had only been from Leghorn, no further, so he was not in the least fatigued; and why he should be shut up here in his room to rest he had not a notion, any desire to rest being far from his thoughts. After a while he got up and examined the room, which was full of handsome old furniture. How he wished Dick had been with him, who would have enjoyed all those cabinets, and followed every line of the carvings with interest! Valentine himself cared little for such splendours. And finally he went out, and found as usual a school-fellow round the first corner, and marched about the strange beautiful place till it was time for dinner, and felt himself again.
It was very strange, however, to English—or rather Scotch—Valentine, to find himself in this Italian house, with a man so polished, so cultivated, so exotic as his father for his sole companion. Not that they saw very much of each other. They met at the twelve o’clock breakfast, where every dish was new to Val, for the ménage was thoroughly Italian; and at dinner on the days when Richard dined at home. Sometimes he took his handsome boy with him to great Italian houses, where, in the flutter of rapid conversation which he could not follow, poor Val found himself hopelessly left out, and looked as gauche and unhappy as any traditionary lout of his age; and sometimes Val himself would join an English party at a hotel, where the hits to leg and the Ladies’ Challenge Cup would again be the chief subjects of conversation; if not (which was still more dreary) the ladies’ eager comparing of notes over Lady Southsea’s garden party, or that charming Lady Mary Northwood’s afternoon teas. On the whole, Val felt that his father’s banquets were best adapted to the locality; and when a lovely princess, with jewels as old as her name and as bright as her eyes, condescended to put up with his indifferent French, the young man was considerably elated, and proud of his father and his father’s society—as, when the same fair lady congratulated Richard upon the beaux yeux of Monsieur son fils, his father was of him.
One of the rare evenings which they spent together, Val informed his father of Lord Eskside’s eager preparations for the ensuing election, and of the place he was himself destined to take in the eyes of his county and country. Richard Ross did not receive this information as his son expected. His face grew immediately overcast.