“I cannot think of anything that could be done against Valentine,” she said. “He has been a good boy, so far as we know; and when a boy is not a good boy it is always found out. Sir John is to propose him, and Mr Lynton of the Linn to second,—he could not have a better start; and dear old Lord Eskside to stand by him, to get his heart’s desire,” said Mary, with a little glimmer of moisture in her eyes. “You young things don’t think of the old people. It goes to my heart, after all their disappointments, to think they will have their wish at last.”
Violet did not make any reply. Though she was a Liberal herself, and looked upon politics generally from such an impartial elevation of good sense, it was no small trouble to poor Vi to know that she could not even pretend to be on Valentine’s side at this great crisis of his life;—could not go with Lady Eskside’s triumphant party to see him done honour to in the sight of all men; could not even wear a bit of ribbon, poor child, for his sake, but must put on the colours of snuffy Mr Seisin, and go with her mother to the opposition window, and pretend to look delighted at all the jokes that might be made, and all the assaults upon her friends. Violet would not allow how deeply she felt this, the merely superficial and necessary part of the situation; and, in reality, it was as nothing to her in comparison with the dread in her heart of something more, she knew not what—some masked battery which her father’s hand was arranging. She took Mary out to show her the improvements which were being made at the Hewan, the new rooms which were almost finished, and which would make of the poor little cottage a rustic villa. Jean Moffatt, whose nest had not been interfered with, though Mr Pringle had bought the place, came out as she heard the voices of the ladies, to take her share in the talk. Jean had now the privileged position of an old servant among the Pringles, and still acted as duenna and protectress to Violet on many a summer day when that little maiden escaped alone with her maid from Moray Place. Mr Pringle had been getting on in his profession during those years; not in its honours, the tide of which he had allowed to go past him, but in its more substantial rewards. He was better off, and able to afford himself the indulgence of a whim; so the Hewan had been bought, half in love, half in hatred. In love, because the children, and Violet especially, were fond of the little place; and in hatred, because it commanded the always coveted domain of Eskside.
“You are a Liberal too, I understand, Jean,” said Mary; “you are all Mr Ross’s enemies up here.”
“I wish he might never have waur enemies,” said old Jean, “and that’s no an ill wish; but I’ll never disown my principles. I’ve aye been a Leeberal from the time of the Reform Bill, which made an awfu’ noise in the country. There’s nane o’ your contests worth speaking o’ in comparison with that. But I’m real distressed that there’s this opposition now. We’ll no get our man in, and we’ll make a great deal o’ dispeace; and two folk so muckle thought of in the county as my lord and my lady might have gotten their way for once. I canna bide the notion of going again’ Mr Valentine; but he’s a kindly lad, and will see that, whatever you are, ye maun gang with your pairty. Lord bless the callant! if it was for naething but yon chicken-pie, he’s a hantle mair to me than ony Edinburgh advocate that was ever born. But you see yoursel, Miss Percival, how we’re placed; we maun side with our ain pairty, right or wrong.”
“Yes, I see the difficulty of the position,” said Mary, laughing, “and I shall make a point of explaining it to Val.”
“Do that, mem,” said Jean, seriously. She did not see any joke in the matter, any more than Vi did, whose mind was in a very disturbed state.
“And I suppose your son will be of your mind?” said Mary, not indisposed to a little gentle canvassing on her own part.
“I couldna undertake to answer for John,” said the old woman; “nor I wouldna tamper with him,” she added, “for it’s a great responsibility, and he ought to judge for himself. There’s one thing with men, they tak a bias easy, and John was never a Leeberal on conviction, as ye may say, like his faither and me; and he has a’ the cobbling from the House, and a’ the servants’ work, and my lord’s shooting-boots, and so forth, and noo and then something to do for my lady hersel; so I wouldna say but he might have a bias. It’s a grand thing to have nae vote,” said Jean, meditatively, “and then ye can have the satisfaction of keeping to your pairty without harming your friends on the other side.”
Jean expressed thus the sentiments of a great many people in Eskside on the occasion of this election. Even some of the great tenant-farmers who were Liberals, instead of delighting in the contest, as perhaps they ought to have done, grumbled at the choice set before them, and regretted the necessity of vexing the Eskside family, old neighbours, by keeping to their own party. For Val Ross, as they all felt, was on the whole a much more appropriate representative than “a snuffy old Edinburgh lawyer,” said one of the malcontents, “with about as much knowledge of the county as I have of the Parliament House.” “But he knows how to bring you into the Parliament House, and squeeze the siller out of your pouch and mine,” said another. The Parliament House in question, gentle Southern reader, meant not the House of Commons, but the Westminster Hall of Edinburgh, into which, or its purlieus, it was quite easy to get with Mr Seisin’s help, but not so easy to get out again. I am afraid, indeed, that as the Liberal party was weak in the county, and there had been no contest for some time, and no active party organisation existed, there would have been no attempt to oppose Valentine at all but for the determination of Mr Pringle, who, without bringing himself very prominently forward, had kept his party sharply up to the mark, and insisted upon their action. That they had no chance of success, or so little that it was not worth calculating upon, they all acknowledged; but allowed themselves to be pushed on, notwithstanding, by the ardour of one fierce personal animosity, undisclosed and unsuspected. Mr Pringle had been gradually winding himself up to this act of vengeance through many years. I think if other people had recollected the strange way in which his young supplanter had made his first appearance at Eskside, or if any sort of stigma had remained upon Val, the feelings of the heir-presumptive would have been less exaggerated; but to find that everybody had forgotten these suspicious circumstances—that even his insinuations as to the lad’s love of low company, though sufficiently relished for the moment, had produced no permanent impression—and that the world in general accepted Valentine with cheerful satisfaction as Richard Ross’s son and Lord Eskside’s heir, without a doubt or question on the subject,—all this exasperated Mr Pringle beyond bearing. No passionate resentment and sense of injury like this can remain and rankle so long in a mind without somehow obscuring the moral perceptions; and the man had become so possessed by this consciousness of a wrong to set right and an injury to avenge, that it got the better both of natural feeling and morality. He did not even feel that the thing he meditated was beyond the range of ordinary electioneering attack; that it strained every law even of warfare, and exceeded the revenges permitted to civilised and political men. All this he would have seen in a moment had the case not been his own. He would have condemned any other man without hesitation; would have solemnly pointed out to him the deliberate cruelty of the project, and the impossibility of throwing any gloss, even of pretended justice, over it. For no virtuous impulse to punish a criminal, no philanthropic purpose of hindering the accomplishment of a crime, could be alleged for what he meant to do. The parties assailed were guiltless, and there was no chance that his assault, however virulent, could shake poor Val’s real position, however much it might impair his comfort. He could scarcely, even to himself, allege any reason except revenge.
Meanwhile Val had been summoned home. He had spent Christmas with his father, and since then had travelled farther afield, visiting, though with perhaps not much more profit than attended his tour in Italy, the classic islands of Greece. It was early spring when the summons reached him to return without delay, everything in the political horizon being ominous of change. Val got back in March, when the whole country was excited by the preliminaries of a general election. He had been so doubtful of the advantage of the abundant English society he had enjoyed abroad, that he was comforted to find himself in English society at home, where it was undeniably the right thing, and natural to the soil. When he arrived at Eskside there was a great gathering to meet him. His address was to be seen at full length on every bit of wall in Lasswade and the adjoining villages, and even in the outskirts of Edinburgh; and the day of nomination was so nearly approaching that he had scarcely time to shake himself free from the dust and fatigue of his journey, and to think of the speech which it would be necessary to deliver in answer to all the pretty compliments which no doubt would be showered upon him. Val, I am afraid, was a great deal more concerned about making a good appearance on this occasion, and conducting himself with proper manly coolness and composure—as if being nominated for a seat in Parliament was a thing which had already happened to him several times at least in his career—than about the real entry into public life itself, the responsibility of an honourable member, or any other legitimate subject of serious consideration. When he asked after everybody on his return, the dignified seriousness with which he was told of the presence of the Pringles at the Hewan did not affect the young man much. “Ah, you never liked poor Mr Pringle, grandma,” he said, lightly. “I have little occasion to like him,” said Lady Eskside; “and now that he is the getter up of all this opposition, the only real enemy you have, my own boy——”