The Story of Valentine and His Brother

by Mrs. Oliphant

It was on a bright spring morning that the nomination of a knight of the shire to represent Eskshire in Parliament took place in Castleton, the quiet little country town which was not far from the Duke’s chief seat, and tolerably central for all the county. The party from Eskside drove over in state, my lord and my lady, with Miss Percival and Val, in the barouche, and with four horses in honour of so great an occasion. They were all in high spirits, with hopes as bright as the morning, though I think Valentine thought more than once how pleasant it would have been to have had little Vi sitting bodkin on the front seat of the carriage between himself and his grandfather. There would have been plenty of room for her, though I don’t know that this would have been considered quite a dignified proceeding by my lady. The little town was all astir, and various cheers were raised as Lord Eskside and Val went into the committee room; and my lady and Mary went on to the hotel which was in their interest,—a heavy, serious, old, grey stone house in the market-place close to the hustings, from one of the windows of which they were to witness the nomination. On the opposite side stood the other hotel where Mr Seisin’s supporters congregated. When Lady Eskside took her place at the window specially reserved for her, there was a flutter of movement among the crowd already assembled, and many people turned to look at her with interest scarcely less than that with which they welcomed the candidate and his supporters. Lady Eskside was a great deal older than when we saw her first; indeed, quite an old lady, over seventy, as was her husband. But she had retained all her activity, her lightness of figure and movement, and the light in her eyes, which shone almost as brightly as ever. The beauty of age is as distinct as, and not less attractive in its way than, the beauty of youth; the one extremity of life having, like the other, many charms which fail to us commonplace persons in the dull middle-ages, the period of prose which intervenes in every existence. Lady Eskside was a beautiful old woman; her eyes were bright, her colour almost as sweet and fresh, though a little broken and run into threads, as when she was twenty; her hair was snowwhite, which is no disadvantage, but the reverse, to a well-tinted face. She had a soft dove-coloured bonnet of drawn or quilted satin coming a little forward round her face, not perched on the top of the head as ladies now wear that necessary article of dress; and a blue ribbon, of Val’s colours, round her throat,—though I think, as a matter of choice, she would have preferred red, as “more becoming” to her snowy old beauty. Mary, you may be sure, was in Val’s colours too, and was the thorough partisan of the young candidate, however little she had been the partisan of the boy himself in his natural and unofficial character. There was a bright fire blazing in the room behind them to which they could retire when they pleased; and the window was thrown wide open, so that they might both see and hear.

The hotel opposite—not by any mean such a good one as the Duke’s Head—was of course in the opposition interest, and blazed with yellow flags and streamers. At the window there, just before the commencement of proceedings, several ladies appeared. They did not come in state like Lady Eskside, for Mr Seisin had no womankind belonging to him; and these feminine spectators were wives and daughters of his supporters, and not so enthusiastic in his cause as they were about their own special relations who intended to perform on the occasion. Among them, in a prominent position, but keeping back as much as possible, Mrs Pringle and Violet were soon descried by the ladies opposite. Neither of them wore anything yellow, as Lady Eskside, with sharp old eyes, undimmed by age, discovered in a moment. “They are both fair, and yellow is unbecoming to fair people,” she said, with involuntary cynicism. I do not much wonder that she was severe upon them; for indeed had they not pretended all manner of kindness and friendship for her boy? “It is not their fault,” said Mary, apologetically. “I wonder what you mean by telling me it is not their fault!” cried Lady Eskside. “Is a man’s wife just his housekeeper, that she should have no power over him? They should not have let Sandy Pringle make a fool of himself. They should not have given their consent, and stuck themselves up there in opposition to the family. I have no patience with such women.” It was not wonderful that my lady should disapprove; and I don’t think that two greater culprits in feeling than Mrs Pringle and her daughter were to be found in all Eskside. They had the satisfaction of knowing that the husband and father who had driven them to make this appearance was not unaware of the sentiments with which they regarded it; but that, I think, was all the comfort these poor ladies had.

Then there came a stir in the crowd, and a thickening and increase of its numbers, as if more had been poured into a vessel nearly full; and the candidates and their supporters came up to the hustings. How Lady Eskside’s heart swelled and fluttered as her handsome boy, a head taller than his old grandfather, appeared on that elevation over the crowd, detached from the rest, not only by his position as the hero of the day, but by his fresh youth, and those advantages of nature which had been so lavishly bestowed upon him! Lady Eskside looked at him with pride and happiness indescribable, and kissed her hand to him as he turned to salute her at her window; but I will not venture to describe the feelings of the other ladies, when Val, with, they thought, a reproachful look on his handsome face, took off his hat to them at their opposite window. Mrs Pringle blushed crimson, and pushed back her chair; and Violet, who was very pale, bent her poor little head upon her mother’s shoulder and cried. “Oh, how cruel of papa to set us up here!” sobbed Vi. Mrs Pringle was obliged to keep up appearances, and checked her child’s emotion summarily; but she made up her mind that the cause of this distress and humiliation should suffer for it, though she would not fly in his face by refusing absolutely to appear. These agitated persons did not find themselves able to follow the thread of the proceedings as Lady Eskside did, who did not lose a word that was said, from the speech of Sir John who proposed Val, down to the young candidate’s own boyish but animated address, which, and his good looks, and the prestige and air of triumph surrounding him, completely carried away the crowd. Sir John’s little address was short, but very much to the purpose. It gave a succinct account of Val. “Born among us, brought up among us—the representative of one of the most ancient and honourable families in the county; a young man who has distinguished himself at the university, and in every phase of life through which he has yet passed,” said Sir John, with genial kindness. Mr Lynton, who seconded Val’s nomination, was more political and more prosy. He went into the policy of his party, and all it meant to do, and the measures of which he was sure his young friend would be a stanch supporter, as his distinguished family had always been. Mr Lynton was cheered, but he was also interrupted and assailed by questions from Radical members of the crowd, and had a harder time of it than Sir John, who spoke largely, without touching abstract principles or entering into details. Mr Lynton was a little hustled, so to speak, and put through a catechism, but on the whole was not badly received.

Val’s, however, was the speech of the day. He rushed into it like a young knight-errant, defying and conciliating the crowd in the same breath, with his handsome head thrown back and his young face bright and smiling. “He has no end of way on him,” Lord Hightowers said, who stood by, an interested spectator—or rather, metaphorically, ran along the bank, as he had done many a day while Val rowed triumphant races, shouting and encouraging. Val undertook everything, promised everything, with the confidence of his age. He gave a superb assurance to the Radicals in the crowd that it should be the aim of his life to see that the intelligence of the working classes, which had done so much for Great Britain, should have full justice done to it; and to the tenant-farmer on the other side, that the claims of the land, and those who produced the bread of the country, should rank highly in his mind as they ought always to do. The young man believed that everything could be done that everybody wanted; that all classes and all the world could be made happy;—what so easy? And he said so with the sublime confidence of his age, promising all that was asked of him. When Mr Seisin’s supporters and himself came after this youthful hero, it is inconceivable what a downfall everybody felt. I am bound to add that Mr Seisin’s speech read better than Val’s in the paper, and so did that of his own proposer. But that mattered very little at the moment. Val carried the crowd with him, even those of them who were a little unwilling, and tried to resist the tide. The show of hands was triumphantly in his favour. He was infinitely more Liberal than Mr Seisin, and far more Tory than Sir John. He thought every wrong could be redressed, and that every right must conquer: there was no compromise, no moderation, in his triumphant address.

Lady Eskside and Mary made a progress down the High Street when the gentlemen went to the committee rooms, and saw the Duchess and the Dowager-Duchess, who were both most complimentary. These great ladies had heard Val’s speech, or rather had seen it, being too far off to hear very much, from their carriage, where they sat on the outskirts of the crowd. “What fire, what vigour he has!” said the Dowager. “I congratulate you, dear Lady Eskside; though how you could ever think that boy like his father——”

“He is not much like your family at all, is he?” said the Duchess-regnant, with a languid smile. This was the only sting Lady Eskside received during all that glorious day. The old lord and the young candidate joined them ere long, and their drive back was still more delightful to the old couple than the coming. Lord Eskside, however, growled and laughed and shook his head over Val’s speech. “You’re very vague in your principles,” he said. “Luckily you have men at your back that know what they are doing. You must not commit yourself like that, my man, wherever you go, or you’ll soon get into a muddle.”

“Never mind!” said my lady; “he carried everybody with him; and, once in the House, I have no fear of his principles; he’ll be kept all right.”

“Luckily for him, the county knows me, and knows he’s all right; though he’s a young gowk,” said the old lord, looking from under his bended eyebrows at his hope and pride. They were more pleased, I think, than if Val had made the most correct of speeches. His exuberance and overflow of generous youthful readiness for everything made the old people laugh, and made them weep. They knew, at the other end of life, how these enthusiasms settle down; but it was delicious to see them spring a perennial fountain, to refresh the fields and brighten the landscape, which of itself is arid enough. They looked at each other, and remembered, fifty years back, how this same world had looked to them—a dreary old world, battered and worn, and going on evermore in a dull repetition of itself, they knew; but as they had seen it once, in all the glamour which they recollected, so it appeared now to Val.

Val himself was so much excited by all that had happened, that he strolled out alone as soon as he had got free, for the refreshment of a long walk. It was the end of March: the trees were greening over; the river, softening in sound, had begun to think of the summer as his banks changed colour; and the first gowans put out their timid hopeful heads among the grass. Val went on instinctively to the linn, with a minute wound in his heart, through all its exhilarations. He thought it very hard that Vi should not have been near him, that she should not have tied up her pretty hair with his blue ribbon, that she should have been ranged on the other side. It was the only unpleasant incident in the whole day, the only drop in his cup that was not sweet. He explained to himself how it was, and felt that the reason of it was quite comprehensible; but this gives so little satisfaction to the mind. “Of course he must stick to his party,” Val murmured to himself between his teeth; and of course Mrs Pringle and Violet could not go against the head of the family in the sight of the world at least. When Val saw, however, a gleam of his own colour between the two great beech-trees he knew so well, he rushed forward, his heart beating lighter. He felt sure that it was Violet’s blue gown, which she must have put on, on her return, by way of indemnifying herself for wearing no blue in the morning. He quickened his step almost to a run, going softly over the mossy grass, so that she did not hear him. The sunset was glowing in the west, lighting up the woods with long slanting gleams, and clouds of gorgeous colour, which floated now and then over the trees like chance emissaries from some army where the cohorts were of purple and gold. Vi sat with her face to that glow in the west, under the old beech-tree where the Babes in the Wood had been discovered; but her face was hidden, and she was weeping quite softly, confident in the loneliness of the woods, through which now and then a long sobbing sigh like a child’s would break. The pretty little figure thus abandoned to sorrow, the hidden face, the soft curved shoulders, the golden hair catching a gleam of the sunset through the branches, and still more, the pathetic echo of the sob, went to Val’s heart. He went up close to her, and touched her shoulder with a light caressing touch. “Vi! what’s the matter?” said the boy, half ready to cry too out of tender sympathy, though he was nearly twenty-two, and just about to be elected knight of the shire.

“Oh Val, is it you?” She sprang up, and looked at him with the tears on her cheeks. “Oh, don’t speak to me!” cried Violet. “Oh, how can you ask me what is the matter, after what has happened to-day?”