The Story of Valentine and His Brother

by Mrs. Oliphant

Val looked at his father with a question in his eyes, which he tried to put with his lips, and could not. During all these years he had thought little enough of his mother. Now and then the recollection that there was such a person wandering somewhere in the world would come to him at the most unlikely time—in the middle of the night, in the midst of some moment of excitement, rarely when he could make any inquiries about her, even had it been possible for him to utter such inquiries. Now at once these suppressed recollections rushed into his mind. Here was the fountain-head of information; and no doubt the story which he did not know, which no one had ever told him, was what his father feared. “Father,” he began, his mouth growing dry with excitement, his heart beating so loudly that he could scarcely hear himself speak.

Probably Richard divined what he was going to say—for Val, I suppose, had hardly ever addressed him solemnly by this title before. He called him “Sir,” when he spoke to him, scarcely anything else. Richard stopped him with a rapid movement of his hand.

“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, speak to me so solemnly,” he said, half fretfully, half playfully. “Let me look at your photographs. There is a good man here, by the way, where you should go and get yourself done. The old people at home would like it, and it might prove a foundation, who knows, for the fine steel engraving of the member for Eskside, which, no doubt will be published some day or other. Come round to this side and tell me who they are.”

The words were stopped on Valentine’s lips; and if any one could have known how bitter these words were to him, his relinquishment of the subject would be more comprehensible to them. Are we not all glad to postpone a disagreeable explanation? “It must be done some time,” we say; “but why now, when we are tolerably comfortable?” Valentine acted upon this natural feeling. His sentiments towards his father were of a very mingled character. He was proud of him; his refinement and knowledge of the world made a powerful impression upon the boy’s mind; Val even admired the man who was so completely unlike himself—admired him and almost disliked him, and watched him with mingled wonder and respect. He had never had a chance of regarding him with the natural feelings of a child or forming the usual prejudices on his behalf. He met him almost as one stranger meets another, and could not but judge him accordingly on his merits rather than receive him blindly, taking those merits for granted, which is in most cases the more fortunate lot of a son. His father was only a relation of whom he knew very little, and with whom he was upon quite distant and independent, yet respectful terms. They were both glad, I think, to take refuge in the photographs; and Richard asked with a very good grace, “Who is this?” and “Who is that?”—through showers of young Oxford men and younger Etonians. When he had made his way through them, there was still a little pack of cards to be turned over—photographs not dignified enough to find a place in any book. Hunter, the gamekeeper, Harding, the butler, his wife the housekeeper, and many other humble personages, were amongst them; and Richard turned them over with more amusement than the others had given him. Suddenly, however, his remarks came to a dead stop. Val, who was standing close by him, felt that his father started and moved uneasily in his chair. He said nothing for the moment; then in a voice curiously unlike his former easy tone, yet curiously conquered into a resemblance of it, he said, with a little catching of his breath, “And who is this, Val?”

It was a scrap of an unmounted photograph, a bit cut off from the corner of a river scene—a portrait taken unawares and unintentionally by a wandering artist who was making studies of the river. It was Dick Brown’s mother, as she had been used to stand every day within her garden wall, looking at Val’s boat as it passed. Val had seen the picture with her figure in it, and had bought and kept it as a memento of two people in whom he took so much interest: for by an odd chance Dick was in it too, stooping to push off a boat from the little pier close by, and very recognisable by those who knew him, though his face was scarcely visible. “Oh, sir,” said Val, instinctively putting out his hand for it, “that is nothing. It was taken by chance. It’s the portrait of a woman at Oxford, the mother of a fellow I know.”

“A fellow you know—who may that be? is his portrait among those I have been looking at? This,” said Richard, holding it fast and disregarding Val’s hand, which was stretched out to take it, “is an interesting face.”

What feelings were in the man’s breast as he looked at it who can tell? Surprise, almost delirious, though he hid it as he had trained himself to hide everything; quick-springing curiosity, almost hatred, wild eagerness to know what his son knew of her. He made that remark about the interesting face not unfeelingly, but unawares, to fill up the silence, because everything in him was stirred up into such wild impulses of emotion. The light swam in his eyes; yet he continued to see the strange little picture thus blown into his hand as it seemed by some caprice of fate. As for Valentine, he felt a repugnance incomprehensible to himself to say anything about Dick or his mother, and could have snatched the scrap of photograph out of his father’s hand, though he could not tell why.

“Oh, it is not much,” he said—“it is not any one you would know. It is the mother of a lad I took a great fancy to a few years ago. He was on the rafts at Eton, and used to do all sorts of things for me. That’s his mother—and indeed there’s himself in the corner, if you could see him. I found it in a photograph of the river; and as I knew the people, and it is so seldom one sees people who are unconscious of their likenesses being taken, I bought it; but of course it has no interest to any one who does not know the originals,” and he put out his hand for it again.

“Pardon,” said Mr Ross, serenely—“it has an interest. The face is a very remarkable face, like one I remember seeing years ago. What sort of a person was her son?”

By skilful questions he drew from Val all that he knew: the whole story of Dick’s struggle upwards; of his determination to do well; of the way he had risen in the world. Val mixed himself as little as he could with the narrative, but could not help showing unwittingly how much share he had in it; and at last grew voluble on the subject, flattered by the interest his father took in it. “You say the son was at the rafts at Eton, and yet this picture was taken at Oxford. How was that?” said Richard. Val was standing behind him all this time, and their looks had not met.