The lawyer did not come until the following day; and then it was young Mr. Preston who came, his father being occupied, and Mr. Ochterlony had a distaste somehow to young Mr. Preston. He was weak, too, and not able to go into details. All that he would say was, that Islay and Wilfrid were to have the same younger brother’s portion as their father had, and that everything else was to go to Hugh. He would not suffer himself to be tempted to say anything about the museum, though the suggestion had gone to his heart—and to make awill with so little in it struck the lawyer almost as an injury to himself.
“No legacies?” he said—“excuse me, Mr. Ochterlony—nothing about your beautiful collection? There ought to be some stipulation about that.”
“My nephew knows all my wishes,” Mr. Ochterlony said, briefly, “and I have no time now for details. Is it ready to be signed? Everything else of which I die possessed to my brother, Hugh Ochterlony’s eldest son. That is what I want. The property is his already, by his grandfather’s will. Everything of which I die possessed, to dispose of according as his direction and circumstances may permit.”
“But there are other friends—and servants,” pleaded Mr. Preston; “and then your wonderful collection——”
“My nephew knows all my wishes,” said Mr. Ochterlony; and his weakness was so great that he sank back on his pillows. He took his own way in this, while poor Hugh hung about the room wistfully looking on. It was to Hugh’s great advantage, but he was not thinking of that. He was asking himself could he have done anything to stop the malady if he had noticed it in time? And he was thinking how to arrange the Ochterlony Museum. If it could only have been done in his lifetime, so that its founder could see. When the doctor and the attorney were both gone, Hugh sat down by his uncle’s bedside, and, half afraid whether he was doing right, began to talk of it. He was too young and too honest to pretend to disbelieve what Mr. Ochterlony himself and the doctor had assured him of. The room was dimly lighted, the lamp put away on a table in a corner with a shade over it, and the sick room “made comfortable,” and everything arranged for the night. And then the two had an hour of very affectionate, confidential, almost tender talk. Mr. Ochterlony was almost excited about the museum. It was not to be bestowed on his college, as Hugh at first thought, but to be established at Dalken, the pretty town of which everybody in the Fells was proud. And then the conversation glided off to more familiar subjects, and the old man who was dying gave a great deal of very sound advice to the young man who was about to begin to live.
“Islay will be all right,” said Mr. Ochterlony; “he will have what your father had, and you will always make him at home in Earlston. It is Will I am thinking about. I am not fond of Will. Don’t be too generous to him, or he will think it is his right. I know no harm of the boy, but I would not put all my affairs into his hands as I put them into yours.”
“It will not be my fault if I don’t justify your confidence, uncle,” said Hugh, with something swelling in his throat.
“If I had not known that, I would not have trusted you, Hugh,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “Take your mother’s advice—always be sure to take your mother’s advice. There are some of us that never understand women; but after all it stands to reason that the one-half of mankind should not separate itself from the other. We think we are the wisest; but I am not so sure——”
Mr. Ochterlony stopped short and turned his eyes, which were rather languid, to the distant lamp, the one centre of light in the room. He looked at it for a long time in a dreamy way. “I might have had a woman taking care of me like the rest,” he said. “I might have had the feeling that there was somebody in the house; but you see I did not give my mind to it, Hugh. Your father left a widow, and that’s natural—I am leaving only a collection. But it’s better for you, my boy. If you should ever speak to Agatha Seton about it, you can tell herthat——”
Then there was a pause, which poor young Hugh, nervous, and excited, and inexperienced, did not know how to break, and Mr. Ochterlony continued to look at the lamp. It was very dim and shaded, but still a pale ray shone sideways between the curtains upon the old man who lay a-dying, and cast an enlarged shadow of Hugh’s head upon the wall. When Mr. Ochterlony turned round a little, his eye caught that, and a tender smile came over his face.
“It looks like your father,” he said to Hugh, who was startled, and did not know what he meant. “It is more like him than you are. He was a good fellow at the bottom—fidgety, but a very good fellow—as your mother will tell you. I am glad it is you who are the eldest, and not one of the others. They are fine boys, but I am glad it is you.”
“Oh, uncle,” said Hugh, with tears in his eyes, “you are awfully good to me. I don’t deserve it. Islay is a far better fellow than I am. If you would but get well again, and never mind who was the eldest——”
Mr. Ochterlony smiled and shook his head. “I have lived my day,” he said, “and now it is your turn; and I hope you’ll make Earlston better than ever it was. Now go to bed, my boy; we’ve talked long enough. I think if I were quiet I could sleep.”
“And you’ll call me, uncle, if you want me? I shall be in the dressing-room,” said Hugh, whose heart was very full.
“There is no need,” said Mr. Ochterlony, smiling again.“But I suppose it pleases you. You’ll sleep as sound as a top wherever you are—that’s the privilege of your age; but John will be somewhere about, and nothing is going to happen before morning. Good night.”
But he called Hugh back before he reached the door. “You’ll be sure to remember about the Henri Deux?” he said, softly. That was all. And the young man went to the dressing-room, and John, who had just stolen in, lay down on a sofa in the shadow, and sleep and quiet took possession of the room. If Mr. Ochterlony slept, or if he still lay looking at the lamp, seeing his life flit past him like a shadow, giving a sigh to what might have been, and thinking with perhaps a little awakening thrill of expectation of what was so soon to be, nobody could tell. He was as silent as if he slept—almost as silent as if he had been dead.
But Aunt Agatha was not asleep. She was in her room all alone, praying for him, stopping by times to think how different it might have been. She might have been with him then, taking care of him, instead of being so far away; and when she thought of that, the tears stood in her eyes. But it was not her fault. She had nothing to upbraid herself with. She was well aware whose doing it was—poor man, and it was he who was the sufferer now; but she said her prayers for him all the same.
When a few days had passed, the event occurred of which there had never been any doubt. Francis Ochterlony died very peaceably and quietly, leaving not only all of which he died possessed, but his blessing and thanks to the boy who had stood in the place of a son to him. He took no unnecessary time about his dying, and yet he did not do anything hastily to shock people. It was known he was ill, and everybody had the satisfaction of sending to inquire for him, and testifying their respect before he died. Such a thing was indeed seen on one day as seven servants, all men on horseback, sent with messages of inquiry, which was a great gratification to Mrs. Gilsland, and the rest of the servants. “He went off like a lamb at the last,” they all said; and though he was not much like a lamb, there might have been employed a less appropriate image. He made a little sketch with his own hands as to how the Museum was to be arranged, and told Hugh what provision to make for the old servants; and gave him a great many advices, such as he never had taken himself; and was so pleasant and cheery about it, that they scarcely knew the moment when the soft twilight sank into absolute night. He died an old man, full of many an unexpressed philosophy, andyet, somehow, with the sentiment of a young one: like a tree ripe and full of fruit, yet with blossoms still lingering on the topmost branches, as you see on orange-trees—sage and experienced, and yet with something of the virginal and primal state. Perhaps it was not a light price to give for this crowning touch of delicacy and purity—the happiness (so to speak) of his own life and of Aunt Agatha’s. And yet the link between the old lovers, thus fancifully revived, was very sweet and real. And they had not been at all unhappy apart, on the whole, either of them. And it is something to preserve this quintessence of maidenhood and primal freshness to the end of a long life, and leave the visionary perfume of it among a community much given to marrying and giving in marriage. It was thus that Francis Ochterlony died.
Earlston, of course, was all shut up immediately, blinds drawn and shutters closed, and what was more unusual, true tears shed, and a true weight, so long as it lasted, upon the hearts of all the people about. The servants, perhaps, were not quite uninfluenced by the thought that all their legacies, &c., were left in the hands of their new master, who was little more than a boy. And the Cottage, too, was closed, and the inmates went about in a shadowed atmosphere, and were very sorry, and thought a little of Mr. Ochterlony—not all as Aunt Agatha did, who kept her room, and shed many tears; but still he was thought of in the house. It is true that Mary could not help remembering that now her Hugh was no longer a boy, dependent upon anybody’s pleasure, but the master of the house of his fathers—the house his own father was born in; and an important personage. She could not help thinking of this, nor, in spite of herself, feeling her heart swell, and asking herself if it was indeed her Hugh who had come to this promotion. And yet she was very sorry for Mr. Ochterlony’s death. He had been good to her children, always courteous and deferential to herself; and she was sorry for him as a woman is sorry for a manwho has nobody belonging to him—sorrier far, in most cases, than the man is for himself. He was dead in his loneliness, and the thought of it brought a quiet moisture to Mary’s eyes; but Hugh was living, and it was he who was the master of all; and it was not in human nature that his mother’s grief should be bitter or profound.
“Hugh is a lucky boy,” said Mrs. Percival; “I think you are all lucky, Mary, you and your children. To come into Earlston with so little waiting, and have everything left in his own hands.”
“I don’t think he will be thinking of that,” said Mary. “He was fond of his uncle; I am sure he will feel his loss.”
“Oh, yes, no doubt; I ought not to have said anything so improper,” said Winnie, with that restrained smile and uncomfortable inference which comes so naturally to some people. She knew nothing and cared nothing about Francis Ochterlony; and she was impatient of what she called Aunt Agatha’s nonsense; and she could not but feel it at once unreasonable and monstrous that anything but the painful state of her own affairs should occupy people in the house she was living in. Yet the fact was that this event had to a certain extent eclipsed Winnie. The anxiety with which everybody looked for a message or letter about Mr. Ochterlony’s state blinded them a little to her worn looks and listless wretchedness. They did not neglect her, nor were they indifferent to her; for, indeed, it would be difficult to be indifferent to a figure which held so prominent a place in the foreground of everything; but still when they were in such a state of suspense about what was happening at Earlston, no doubt Winnie’s affairs were to a certain extent overlooked. It is natural for an old man to die: but it is not natural for a young woman—a woman in the bloom and fulness of life—one who has been, and ought still to be, a great beauty—to be driven by her wrongs out of all that makes life endurable. This was how Winnie reasoned; and she was jealous of the attention given to Mr. Ochterlony as he accomplished the natural act of dying. What was that in comparison with the terrible struggles of life?
But naturally it made a great difference when it was all over, and when Hugh, subdued and very serious, but still another man from the Hugh who the other day was but a boy, came to the Cottage “for a little change,” and to give his mother all the particulars. He came all tender in his natural grief, with eyes ready to glisten, and a voice that sometimes faltered; but, nevertheless, there was something about him which showed that it was he who was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston now.
THIS was the kind of crisis in the family history at which Uncle Penrose was sure to make his appearance. He was the only man among them, he sometimes said—or, at least, the only man who knew anythingabout money; and he came into the midst of the Ochterlonys in their mourning, as large and important as he had been when Winnie was married, looking as if he had never taken his left hand out of his pocket all the time. He had not been asked to the funeral, and he marked his consciousness of that fact by making his appearance in buff waistcoats and apparel which altogether displayed light-heartedness if not levity—and which was very wounding to Aunt Agatha’s feelings. Time, somehow, did not seem to have touched him. If he was not so offensively and demonstratively a Man, in the sweet-scented feminine house, as he used to be, it was no reticence of his, but because the boys were men, or nearly so, and the character of the household changed. And Hugh was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston; which, perhaps, was the fact that made the greatest difference of all.
He came the day after Hugh’s return, and in the evening there had been a very affecting scene in the Cottage. In faithful discharge of his promise, Hugh had carried the Henri Deux, carefully packed, as became its value and fragile character, to Aunt Agatha; and she had received it from him with a throbbing heart and many tears. “It was almost the last thing he said to me,” Hugh had said. “He put it all aside with his own hand, the day you admired it so much; and he told me over and over again, to be sure not to forget.” Aunt Agatha had been sitting with her hands clasped upon the arm of his chair, and her eyes fixed upon him, not to lose a word; but when he said this, she covered her face with those soft old hands, and was silent and did not even weep. It was the truest grief that was in her heart, and yet with that, there was an exquisite pang of delight, such as goes through and through a girl when first she perceives that she is loved, and sees her power! She was as a widow, and yet she was an innocent maiden, full of experience and inexperience, feeling the heaviness of the evening shadows, and yet still in the age of splendour in the grass and glory in the flower. The sense of that last tenderness went through her with a thrill of joy and grief beyond description. It gave him back to her for ever and ever, but not with that sober appropriation which might have seemed natural to her age. She could no more look them in the face while it was being told, than had he been a living lover and she a girl. It was a supreme conjunction and blending of the two extremes of life, a fusion of youth and of age.
“I never thought he noticed what I said,” she answered at last with a soft sob—and uncovered the eyes that were full of tears, and yet dazzled as with a sudden light; and she wouldlet no one touch the precious legacy, but unpacked it herself, shedding tears that were bitter and yet sweet, over its many wrappings. Though he was a man, and vaguely buoyed up, without knowing it, by the strange new sense of his own importance, Hugh could have found it in his heart to shed tears, too, over the precious bits of porcelain, that had now acquired an interest so much more near and touching than anything connected with Henri Deux; and so could his mother. But there were two who looked on with dry eyes: the one was Winnie, who would have liked to break it all into bits, as she swept past it with her long dress, and could not put up with Aunt Agatha’s nonsense; the other was Will, who watched the exhibition curiously with close observation, wondering how it was that people were such fools, and feeling the shadow of his brother weigh upon him with a crushing weight. But these two malcontents were not in sympathy with each other, and never dreamt of making common cause.
And it was when the house was in this condition, that Uncle Penrose arrived. He arrived, as usual, just in time to make a fuss necessary about a late dinner, and to put Peggy out of temper, which was a fact that soon made itself felt through the house; and he began immediately to speak to Hugh about Earlston, and about “your late uncle,” without the smallest regard for Aunt Agatha’s feelings. “I know there was something between him and Miss Agatha once,” he said, with a kind of smile at her, “but of course that was all over long ago.” And this was said when poor Miss Seton, who felt that the bond had never before been so sweet and so close, was seated at the head of her own table, and had to bear it and make no sign.
“Probably there will be a great deal to be done on the estate,” Mr. Penrose said; “these studious men always let things go to ruin out of doors; but there’s a collection of curiosities or antiquities, or something. If that’s good, it will bring in money. When a man is known, such things sell.”
“But it is not to be sold,” said Hugh quickly. “I have settled all about that.”
“Not to be sold?—nonsense!” said Mr. Penrose; “you don’t mean to say you are a collector—at your age? No, no, my boy; they’re no good to him where he is now; he could not take them into his vault with him. Feelings are all very well, but you can’t be allowed to lose a lot of money for a prejudice. What kind of things are they—pictures and that sort? or——”
“I have made all the necessary arrangements,” said Hughwith youthful dignity. “I want you to go with me to Dalken, mother, to see some rooms the mayor has offered for them—nice rooms belonging to the Town Hall. They could have ‘Ochterlony Museum’ put up over the doors, and do better than a separate building, besides saving the expense.”
Mr. Penrose gave a long whistle, which under any circumstances would have been very indecorous at a lady’s table. “So that is how it’s to be!” he said; “but we’ll talk that over first, with your permission, Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston. You are too young to know what you’re doing. I suppose the ladies are at the bottom of it; they never know the value of money. And yet we know what it costs to get it when it is wanted, Miss Agatha,” said the insolent man of money, who never would forget that Miss Seton herself had once been in difficulties. She looked at him with a kind of smile, as politeness ordained, but tears of pain stood in Aunt Agatha’s eyes. If ever she hated anybody in her gentle life, it was Mr. Penrose; and somehow he made himself hateful in her presence to everybody concerned.
“It costs more to get it than it is ever worth,” said Winnie, indignant, and moved for the first time, to make a diversion, and come to Aunt Agatha’s aid.
“Ah, I have no doubt you know all about it,” said Mr. Penrose, turning his arms upon her. “You should have taken my advice. If you had come to Liverpool, as I wanted you, and married some steady-going fellow with plenty of money, and gone at a more reasonable pace, you would not have changed so much at your age. Look at Mary, how well preserved she is: I don’t know what you can have been doing with yourself to look so changed.”
“I am sorry you think me a fright,” said Winnie, with an angry sparkle in her eye.
“You are not a fright,” said Uncle Penrose; “one can see that you’ve been a very handsome woman, but you are not what you were when I saw you last, Winnie. The fault of your family is that you are extravagant,—I am sure you did not get it from your mother’s side;—extravagant of your money and your hospitality, and your looks and everything. I am sure Mary has nothing to spare, and yet I’ve found people living here for weeks together.Ican’t afford visitors like that—I have my family to consider, and people that have real claims upon me—no more than I could afford to set up a museum. If I had a lot of curiosities thrown on my hands, I should make them into money. It is not everybody that can appreciatepictures, but everybody understands five per cent. And then he might have done something worth while for his brothers: not that I approve of a man impoverishing himself for the sake of his friends, but still two thousand pounds isn’t much. And he might have done something for his mother, or looked after Will’s education. It’s family pride, I suppose; but I’d rather give my mother a house of her own than set up an Ochterlony Museum. Tastes differ, you know.”
“His mother agrees with him entirely in everything he is doing,” said Mary, with natural resentment. “I wish all mothers had sons as good as mine.”
“Hush,” said Hugh, who was crimson with indignation and anger: “I decline to discuss these matters with Uncle Penrose. Because he is your uncle, mother, he shall inquire into the estates as much as he likes; but I am the head of the house, and I am responsible only to God and to those who are dead—and, mother, to you,” said Hugh, with his eyes glistening and his face glowing.
Uncle Penrose gave another contemptuous prolonged whistle at this speech, but the others looked at the young man with admiration and love; even Winnie, whose heart could still be touched, regarded the young paladin with a kind of tender envy and admiration. She was too young to be his mother, but she did not feel herself young; and her heart yearned to have some one who would stand by her and defend her as such a youth could. A world of softer possibilities than anything she would permit herself to think of now, came into her mind, and she looked at him. If she too had but been the mother of children like her sister! but it appeared that Mary was to have the best of it, always and in every way.
As for Will, he looked at the eldest son with very different feelings. Hugh was not particularly clever, and his brother had long entertained a certain contempt for him. He thought whathewould have done had he been the head of the house. He was disposed to sneer, like Mr. Penrose, at the Ochterlony Museum. Was it not a confession of a mean mind, an acknowledgment of weakness, to consent to send away all the lovely things that made Will’s vision of Earlston like a vision of heaven? If it had been Will he would not have thought of five per cent., but neither would he have thought of making a collection of them at Dalken, where the country bumpkins might come and stare. He would have kept them all to himself, and they would have made his life beautiful. And he scorned Hugh for dispossessing himself of them, and reducing the Earlston rooms into rooms of ordinary habitation. Had theybut been his—had he but been the eldest, the head of the house—then the world and the family and Uncle Penrose would have seen very different things.
But yet Hugh had character enough to stand firm. He made his mother get her bonnet and go out with him after dinner; and everybody in the house looked after the two as they went away—the mother and her firstborn—he, with his young head towering above her, though Mary was tall, and she putting her arm within his so proudly—not without a tender elation in his new importance, a sense of his superior place and independent rank, which was strangely sweet. Winnie looked after them, envying her sister, and yet with an envy which was not bitter; and Will stood and looked fiercely on this brother who, by no virtue of his own, had been born before him. As for Aunt Agatha, who was fond of them all, she went to her own room to heal her wounds; and Mr. Penrose, who was fond of none of them, went up to the Hall to talk things over with Sir Edward, whom he had once talked over to such purpose. And the only two who could stray down to the soft-flowing Kirtell, and listen to the melody of the woods and waters, and talk in concert of what they had wished and planned, were Mary and Hugh.
“The great thing to be settled is about Will,” the head of the house was saying. “You shall see, mother, when he is in the world and knows better, allthatwill blow away. His two thousand pounds is not much, as Uncle Penrose says; but it was all my father had: and when he wants it, and when Islay wants it, there can always be something added. It is my business to see to that.”
“It was all your father had,” said Mary, “and all your uncle intended; and I see no reason why you should add to it, Hugh. There will be a little more when I am gone; and in the meantime, if we only knew what Will would like to do——”
“Why, they’ll make him a fellow of his college,” said Hugh. “He’ll go in for all sorts of honours. He’s awfully clever, mother; there’s no fear of Will. The best thing I can see is to send him to read with somebody—somebody with no end of a reputation, that he would have a sort of an awe for—and then the University. It would be no use doing it if he was just like other people; but there’s everything to be made of Will.”
“I hope so,” said Mary, with a little sigh. And then she added, “So I shall be left quite alone?”
“No; you are coming to Earlston with me,” said Hugh; “that is quite understood. There will be a great deal to do;and I don’t think things are quite comfortable at the Cottage, with Mrs. Percival here.”
“Poor Winnie!” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “I don’t think I ought to leave Aunt Agatha—at least, while she is so much in the dark about my sister. And then you told me you had promised to marry, Hugh?”
“Yes,” said the young man; and straightway the colour came to his cheek, and dimples to the corners of his mouth; “but she is too y—— I mean, there is plenty of time to think of that.”
“She is too young?” said Mary, startled. “Do I know her, I wonder? I did not imagine you had settled on the person as well as the fact. Well; and then, you know, I should have to come back again. I will come to visit you at Earlston: but I must keep my head-quarters here.”
“I don’t see why you should have to come back again,” said Hugh, somewhat affronted. “Earlston is big enough, and you would be sure to be fond ofher. No, I don’t know that the person is settled upon. Perhaps she wouldn’t have me; perhaps—— But, anyhow, you are coming to Earlston, mother dear. And, after a while, we could have some visitor perhaps—your friends: you know I am very fond of your friends, mamma.”
“All my friends, Hugh?” said his mother, with a smile.
This was the kind of talk they were having while Mr. Penrose was laying the details of Hugh’s extravagance before Sir Edward, and doing all he could to incite him to a solemn cross-examination of Winnie. Whether she had run away from her husband, or if not exactly that, what were the circumstances under which she had left him; and whether a reconciliation could be brought about;—all this was as interesting to Sir Edward as it was to Uncle Penrose; but what the latter gentleman was particularly anxious about was, what they had done with their money, and if the unlucky couple were very deeply in debt. “I suspect that is at the bottom of it,” he said. And they were both concerned about Winnie, in their way—anxious to keep her from being talked about, and to preserve to her a place of repentance. Mrs. Percival, however, was not so simple as to subject herself to this ordeal. When Sir Edward called in an accidental way next morning, and Uncle Penrose drew a solemn chair to her side, Winnie sprang up and went away. She went off, and shut herself up in her own room, and declined to go back, or give any further account of herself. “If they want to drive me away, I willgo away,” she said to Aunt Agatha, who came up tremulously to her door, and begged her to go downstairs.
“My darling, they can’t drive you away; you have come to see me,” said Aunt Agatha. “It would be strange if any one wanted to drive you from my house.”
Winnie was excited, and driven out of her usual self-restraint. Perhaps she had begun to soften a little. She gave way to momentary tears, and kissed Aunt Agatha, whose heart in a moment forsook all other pre-occupations, and returned for ever and ever to her child.
“Yes, I have come to seeyou,” she cried; “and don’t let them come and hunt me to death. I have done nothing to them. I have injured nobody; and I will not be put upon my trial for anybody in the wide world.”
“My dear love! my poor darling child!” was all that Aunt Agatha said.
And then Winnie dried her eyes. “I may as well say it now,” she said. “I will give an account of myself to nobody but you; and ifheshould come after me here——”
“Yes, Winnie darling?” said Aunt Agatha, in great suspense, as Mrs. Percival stopped to take breath.
“Nothing in the world will make me see him—nothing in the world!” cried Winnie. “It is best you should know. It is no good asking me—nothing in the world!”
“Oh, Winnie, my dear child!” cried Aunt Agatha in anxious remonstrance, but she was not permitted to say any more. Winnie kissed her again in a peremptory way, and led her to the door, and closed it softly upon her. She had given forth herultimatum, and now it was for her defender to carry on the fight.
But within a few days another crisis arose of a less manageable kind. Uncle Penrose made everybody highly uncomfortable, and left stings in each individual mind, but fortunately business called him back after two days to his natural sphere. And Sir Edward was affronted, and did not return to the charge; and Mrs. Percival, with a natural yearning, had begun to make friends with her nephew, and draw him to her side to support her if need should be. And Mary was preparing to go with her boy after a while to Earlston; and Hugh himself found frequent business at Carlisle, and went and came continually; when it happened one day that her friends came to pay Mrs. Ochterlony a visit, to offer their condolences and congratulations upon Hugh’s succession and his uncle’s death.
They came into the drawing-room before any one was aware; and Winnie was there, with her shawl round her as usual. Allthe ladies of the Cottage were there: Aunt Agatha seated within sight of her legacy, the precious Henri Deux, which was all arranged in a tiny little cupboard, shut in with glass, which Hugh had found for her; and Mary working as usual for her boys. Winnie was the one who never had anything to do; instead of doing anything, poor soul, she wound her arms closer and closer into her shawl. It was not a common visit that was about to be paid. There was Mrs. Kirkman, and Mrs. Askell, and the doctor’s sister, and the wife of a new Captain, who had come with them; and they all swept in and kissed Mary, and took possession of the place. They kissed Mary, and shook hands with Aunt Agatha; and then Mrs. Kirkman stopped short, and looked at Winnie, and made her a most stately curtsey. The others would have done the same, had their courage been as good; but both Mrs. Askell and Miss Sorbette were doubtful how Mary would take it, and compromised, and made some sign of recognition in a distant way. Then they all subsided into chairs, and did their best to talk.
“It is a coincidence that brings us all here together to-day,” said Mrs. Kirkman; “I hope it is not too much for you, my dear Mary. How affecting was poor Mr. Ochterlony’s death! I hope you have that evidence of his spiritual state which is the only consolation in such a case.”
“He was a good man,” said Mary; “very kind, and generous, and just. Hugh, who knew him best, was very fond of him——”
“Ah, fond of him; We are all fond of our friends,” said Mrs. Kirkman; “but the only real comfort is to know what was their spiritual state. Do you know I am very anxious about your parish here. If you would but take up the work, it would be a great thing. And I would like to have a talk with Hugh: he is in an important position now; he may influence for good so many people. Dear Miss Seton, I am sure you will help me all you can to lead him in the right way.”
“He is such a dear!” said Emma Askell. “He has been to see us four or five times: it was so good of him.Ididn’t know Mr. Ochterlony, Madonna dear; so you need not be vexed if I say right out that I am so glad. Hugh will make a perfect Squire; and he is such a dear. Oh, Miss Seton, I knowyouwill agree with me—isn’t he a dear?”
“He’s a very fine young fellow,” said Miss Sorbette. “I remember him when he was onlythatheight, so I think I may speak. It seems like yesterday when he was at that queer marriage, you know—such a funny, wistful little soul. I daresay you recollect, Mary, for it was rather hard upon you.”
“We all recollect,” said Mrs. Kirkman; “don’t speak of it. Thank Heaven, it has done those dear children no harm.”
There was something ringing in Mary’s ears, but she could not say a word. Her voice seemed to die on her lips, and her heart in her breast. If her boys were to hear, and demand an explanation! Something almost as bad happened. Winnie, who was looking on, whom nobody had spoken to, now took it upon herself to interpose.
“What marriage?” she said. “It must have been something of consequence, and I should like to know.”
This question fluttered the visitors in the strangest way; none of them looked at Winnie, but they looked at each other, with a sudden movement of skirts and consultation of glances. Mrs. Kirkman put her bonnet-strings straight, slowly, and sighed; and Miss Sorbette bent down her head with great concern, and exclaimed that she had lost the button of her glove; and Emma Askell shrank behind backs, and made a great rustling with her dress. “Oh, it was nothing at all,” she said; being by nature the least hard-hearted of the three. That was all the answer they gave to Winnie, who was the woman who had been talked about. And the next moment all three rushed at Mary, and spoke to her in the same breath, in their agitation; for at least they were agitated by the boldcoupthey had made. It was a stroke which Winnie felt. She turned very red and then very pale, but she did not flinch: she sat there in the foreground, close to them all, till they had said everything they had to say; and held her head high, ready to meet the eye of anybody who dared to look at her. As for the other members of the party, Mary had been drivenhors du combat, and for the first moment was too much occupied with her own feelings to perceive the insult that had been directed at her sister; and Aunt Agatha was too much amazed to take any part. Thus they sat, the visitors in a rustle of talk and silk and agitation and uneasiness, frightened at the step they had taken, with Winnie immovable and unflinching in the midst of them, until the other ladies of the house recovered their self-possession. Then an unquestionable chill fell upon the party. When such visitors came to Kirtell on ordinary occasions, they were received with pleasant hospitality. It was not a ceremonious call, it was a frank familiar visit, prolonged for an hour or two; and though five o’clock tea had not then been invented, it was extemporized for the occasion, and fruit was gathered, and flowers, and all the pleasant country details that please visitors from a town. And when it was time to go, everybody knew how many minutes were necessary for thewalk to the station, and the Cottage people escorted their visitors, and waved their hands to them as the train started. Such had been the usual routine of a visit to Kirtell. But matters were changed now. After that uneasy rustle and flutter, a silence equally uneasy fell upon the assembly. The new Captain’s wife, who had never been there before, could not make it out. Mrs. Percival sat silent, the centre of the group, and nobody addressed a word to her; and Aunt Agatha leaned back in her chair and never opened her lips; and even Mary gave the coldest, briefest answers to the talk which everybody poured upon her at once. It was all quite mysterious and unexplicable to the Captain’s wife.
“I am afraid we must not stay,” Mrs. Kirkman said at last, who was the superior officer. “I hope we have not been too much for you, my dear Mary. I want so much to have a long talk with you about the parish and the work that is to be done in it. If I could only see you take it up! But I see you are not able for it now.”
“I am not the clergyman,” said Mary, whose temper was slightly touched. “You know that never was myrôle.”
“Ah, my dear friend!” said Mrs. Kirkman, and she bent her head forward pathetically to Mrs. Ochterlony’s, and shook it in her face, and kissed her, “if one could always feel ones’ self justified in leaving it in the hands of the clergyman! But you are suffering, and I will say no more to-day.”
And Miss Sorbette, too, made a pretence of having something very absorbing to say to Mrs. Ochterlony; and the exit of the visitors was made in a kind of scuffle very different from their dignified entrance. They had to walk back to the station in the heat of the afternoon, and to sit there in the dusty waiting-room an hour and a half waiting for the train. Seldom is justice so promptly or poetically executed. And they took to upbraiding each other, as was natural, and Emma Askell cried, and said it was not her fault. And the new Captain’s wife asked audibly, if that was the Madonna Mary the gentlemen talked about, and the house that was so pleasant? Perhaps the three ladies in the Cottage did not feel much happier; Aunt Agatha rose up tremblingly when they were gone, and went to Winnie and kissed her. “Oh, what does it all mean?” Miss Seton cried. It was the first time she had seen any one belonging to her pointed at by the finger of scorn.
“It means that Mary’s friends don’t approve of me,” said Winnie; but her lip quivered as she spoke. She did not care! But yet she was a woman, and she did care, whatever she might say.
And then Mary, too, came and kissed her sister. “My poor Winnie!” she said, tenderly. She could not be her sister’s partizan out and out, like Aunt Agatha. Her heart was sore for what she knew, and for what she did not know; but she could not forsake her own flesh and blood. The inquisition of Uncle Penrose and Sir Edward was a very small matter indeed in comparison with this woman’s insult, but yet it drew Winnie imperceptibly closer to her only remaining friends.
IT was not likely that Will, who had speculated so much on the family history, should remain unmoved by all these changes. His intellect was very lively, and well developed, and his conscience was to a great extent dormant. If he had been in the way of seeing, or being tempted into actual vices, no doubt the lad’s education would have served him in better stead, and his moral sense would have been awakened. But he had been injured in his finer moral perceptions by a very common and very unsuspected agency. He had been in the way of hearing very small offences indeed made into sins. Aunt Agatha had been almost as hard upon him forgetting a text as if he had told a lie—and his tutor, the curate, had treated a false quantity, or a failure of memory, as a moral offence. That was in days long past, and it was Wilfrid now who found out his curate in false quantities, and scorned him accordingly; and who had discovered that Aunt Agatha herself, if she remembered the text, knew very little about it. This system of making sins out of trifles had passed quite harmlessly over Hugh and Islay; but Wilfrid’s was the exceptional mind to which it did serious harm. And the more he discovered that the sins of his childhood were not sins, the more confused did his mind become, and the more dull his conscience, as to those sins of thought and feeling, which were the only ones at present into which he was tempted. What had any one to do with the complexion of his thoughts? If he felt one way or another, what matter was it to any one but himself? Other people might dissemble and take credit for the emotions approved of by public opinion, but he would be true and genuine. And accordingly he did not see why he shouldpretend to be pleased at Hugh’s advancement. He was not pleased. He said to himself that it went against all the rules of natural justice. Hugh was no better than he; on the contrary, he was less clever, less capable of mental exertion, which, so far as Will knew, was the only standard of superiority; and yet he was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston, with a house and estate, with affairs to manage, and tenants to influence, and the Psyche and the Venus to do what he liked with: whereas Will was nobody, and was to have two thousand pounds for all his inheritance. He had been talking, too, a great deal to Mr. Penrose, and that had not done him any good; for Uncle Penrose’s view was that nothing should stand in the way of acquiring money or other wealth—nothing but the actual law. To do anything dishonest, that could be punished, was of course pure insanity—not to say crime; but to let any sort of false honour, or pride, or delicacy stand between you and the acquisition of money was almost as great insanity, according to his ideas. “Go into business and keep at it, and you may buy him up—him and his beggarly estate”—had been Uncle Penrose’s generous suggestion; and it was a good deal in Wilfrid’s mind. To be sure it was quite opposed to the intellectual tendency which led him to quite a different class of pursuits. But what was chiefly before him in the meantime was Hugh, preferred to so much distinction, and honour, and glory; and yet if the truth were known, a very stupid fellow in comparison with himself—Will. And it was not only that he was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston. He was first with everybody. Sir Edward, who took but little notice of Will, actually consulted Hugh, and he was the first to be thought of in any question that occurred in the Cottage; and, what went deepest of all, Nelly—Nelly Askell whom Will had appropriated, not as his love, for his mind had not as yet opened to that idea, but as his sympathizer-in-chief—the listener to all his complaints and speculations—his audience whom nobody had any right to take from him—Nelly had gone over to his brother’s side. And the idea of going into business, even at the cost of abandoning all his favourite studies, and sticking close to it, and buying him up—him and his beggarly estate—was a good deal at this moment in Wilfrid’s thoughts. Even the new-comer, Winnie, who might if she pleased have won him to herself, had preferred Hugh. So that he was alone on his side, and everybody was on his brother’s—a position which often confuses right and wrong, even to minds least set upon their own will and way.
He was sauntering on Kirtell banks a few days after thevisit above recorded, in an unusually uncomfortable state of mind. Mrs. Askell had felt great compunction about her share in that event, and she had sent Nelly, who was known to be a favourite at the cottage, with a very anxious letter, assuring her dear Madonna that it was not her fault. Mary had not received the letter with much favour, but she had welcomed Nelly warmly; and Hugh had found means to occupy her attention; and Will, who saw no place for him, had wandered out, slightly sulky, to Kirtell-side. He was free to come and go as he liked. Nobody there had any particular need of him; and a solitary walk is not a particularly enlivening performance when one has left an entire household occupied and animated behind. As he wound his way down the bank he saw another passenger on the road before him, who was not of a description of man much known on Kirtell-side. It seemed to Will that he had seen this figure somewhere before. It must be one of the regiment, one of the gentlemen of whom the Cottage was a little jealous, and who were thought to seek occasions of visiting Kirtell oftener than politeness required. As Will went on, however, he saw that the stranger was somebody whom he had never seen before, and curiosity was a lively faculty in him, and readily awakened. Neither was the unknown indifferent to Will’s appearance or approach; on the contrary, he turned round at the sound of the youth’s step and scrutinized him closely, and lingered that he might be overtaken. He was tall, and a handsome man, still young, and with an air which only much traffic with the world confers. No man could have got that look and aspect who had lived all his life on Kirtell; and even Will, inexperienced as he was, could recognise this. It did not occur to him, quick as his intellect was at putting things together, who it was; but a little expectation awoke in his mind as he quickened his steps to overtake the stranger, who was clearly waiting to be overtaken.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, as soon as Wilfrid had come up to him; “are you young Ochterlony? I mean, one of the young Ochterlonys?”
“No,” said Will, “and yet yes; I am not young Ochterlony, but I am one of the young Ochterlonys, as you say.”
Upon this his new companion gave a keen look at him, as if discerning some meaning under the words.
“I thought so,” he said; “and I am Major Percival, whom you may have heard of. It is a queer question, but I suppose there is no doubt that my wife is up there?”
He gave a little jerk with his hand as he spoke in the direction of the Cottage. He was standing on the very same spotwhere he had seen Winnie coming to him the day they first pledged their troth; and though he was far from being a good man, he remembered it, having still a certain love for his wife, and the thought gave bitterness to his tone.
“Yes, she is there,” said Will.
“Then I will thank you to come back with me,” said Percival. “I don’t want to go and send in my name, like a stranger. Take me in by the garden, where you enter by the window. I suppose nobody can have any objection to my seeing my wife: your aunt, perhaps, or your mother?”
“Perhapsshedoes not wish to see you,” said Will.
The stranger laughed.
“It is a pleasant suggestion,” he said; “but at least you cannot object to admit me, and let me try.”
Wilfrid might have hesitated if he had been more fully contented with everybody belonging to him; but, to tell the truth, he knew no reason why Winnie’s husband should not see her. He had not been sufficiently interested to wish to fathom the secret, and he had accepted, not caring much about it, Aunt Agatha’s oft-repeated declaration, that their visitor had arrived so suddenly to give her “a delightful surprise.” Wilfrid did not care much about the matter, and he made no inquiries into it. He turned accordingly with the new-comer, not displeased to be the first of the house to make acquaintance with him. Percival had all a man’s advantage over his wife in respect to wear and tear. She had lost her youth, her freshness, and all that gave its chief charm to her beauty, but he had lost very little in outward appearance. Poor Winnie’s dissipations were the mildest pleasures in comparison with his, and yet he had kept even his youth, while hers was gone for ever. And he had not the air of a bad man—perhaps he was not actually a bad man. He did whatever he liked without acknowledging any particular restraint of duty, or truth, or even honour, except the limited standard of honour current among men of his class—but he had no distinct intention of being wicked; and he was, beyond dispute, a little touched by seeing, as he had just done, the scene of that meeting which had decided Winnie’s fate. He went up the bank considerably softened, and disposed to be very kind. It was he who had been in the wrong in their last desperate struggle, and he found it easy to forgive himself; and Aunt Agatha’s garden, and the paths, and flower-pots he remembered so well, softened him more and more. If he had gone straight in, and nothing had happened, he would have kissed his wife in the most amiable way, andforgiven her, and been in perfect amity with everybody—but this was not how it was to be.
Winnie was sitting as usual, unoccupied, indoors. As she was not doing anything her eyes were free to wander further than if they had been more particularly engaged, and at that moment, as it happened, they were turned in the direction of the window from which she had so often watched Sir Edward’s light. All at once she started to her feet. It was what she had looked for from the first; what, perhaps, in the stagnation of the household quiet here she had longed for. High among the roses and waving honeysuckles she caught a momentary glimpse of a head which she could have recognised at any distance. At that sight all the excitement of the interrupted struggle rushed back into her heart. A pang of fierce joy, and hatred, and opposition moved her. There he stood who had done her so much wrong; who had trampled on all her feelings and insulted her, and yet pretended to love her, and dared to seek her. Winnie did not say anything to her companions; indeed she was too much engrossed at the moment to remember that she had any companions. She turned and fled without a word, disappearing swiftly, noiselessly, in an instant, as people have a gift of doing when much excited. She was shut up in her room, with her door locked, before any one knew she had stirred. It is true he was not likely to come upstairs and assail her by force; but she did not think of that. She locked her door and sat down, with her heart beating, and her breath coming quick, expecting, hoping—she would herself have said fearing—an attack.
Winnie thought it was a long time before Aunt Agatha came, softly, tremulously, to her door, but in reality it was but a few minutes. He had come in, and had taken matters with a high hand, and had demanded to see his wife. “He will think it is we who are keeping you away from him. He will not believe you do not want to come,” said poor Aunt Agatha, at the door.
“Nothing shall induce me to see him,” said Winnie, admitting her. “I told you so: nothing in the world—not if he were to go down on his knees—not if he were——”
“My dear love, I don’t think he means to go down on his knees,” said Aunt Agatha, anxiously. “He does not think he is in the wrong. Oh, Winnie, my darling!—if it was only for the sake of other people—to keep them from talking, you know——”
“Aunt Agatha, you are mistaken if you think I care,” said Winnie. “As for Mary’s friends, they are old-fashionedidiots. They think a woman should shut herself up like an Eastern slave when her husband is not there. I have done nothing to be ashamed of. And he—Oh, if you knew how he had insulted me!—Oh, if you only knew! I tell you I will not consent to see him, for nothing in this world.”
Winnie was a different woman as she spoke. She was no longer the worn and faded creature she had been. Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks glowing. It was a clouded and worn magnificence, but still it was a return to her old splendour.
“Oh, Winnie, my dear love, you are fond of him in spite of all,” said Aunt Agatha. “It will all come right, my darling, yet. You are fond of each other in spite of all.”
“You don’t know what you say,” said Winnie, in a blaze of indignation.—“Fond of him!—if you could but know! Tell him to think of how we parted. Tell him I will never more trust myself near him again.”
It was with this decision, immovable and often repeated, that Miss Seton at last returned to her undesired guest. But she sent for Mary to come and speak to her before she went into the drawing-room. Aunt Agatha was full of schemes and anxious desires. She could not make people do what was right, but if she could so plot and manage appearances as that they should seem to do what was right, surely that was better than nothing. She sent for Mrs. Ochterlony into the dining-room, and she began to take out the best silver, and arrange the green finger-glasses, to lose no time.
“What is the use of telling all the world of our domestic troubles?” said Aunt Agatha. “My dear, though Winnie will not see him, would it not be better to keep him to dinner, and show that we are friendly with him all the same? So long as he is with us, nobody is to know that Winnie keeps in her own room. After the way these people behaved to the poor dear child——”
“They were very foolish and ill-bred,” said Mary; “but it was because she had herself been foolish, not because she was away from her husband: and I don’t like him to be with my boys.”
“But for your dear sister’s sake! Oh, Mary, my love, for Winnie’s sake!” said Aunt Agatha; and Mary yielded, though she saw no benefit in it. It was her part to go back into the drawing-room, and make the best of Winnie’s resistance, and convey the invitation to this unlooked-for guest, while Aunt Agatha looked after the dinner, and impressed upon Peggy that perhaps Major Percival might not be ableto stay long; and was it not sad that the very day her husband came to see her, Mrs. Percival should have such a very bad headache? “She is lying down, poor dear, in hopes of being able to sit up a little in the evening,” said the anxious but innocent deceiver—doubly innocent since she deceived nobody, not even the housemaid, far less Peggy. As for Major Percival, he was angry and excited, as Winnie was, but not to an equal extent. He did not believe in his wife’s resistance. He sat down in the familiar room, and expected every moment to see Winnie rush down in her impulsive way, and throw herself into his arms. Their struggles had not terminated in this satisfactory way of late, but still she had gone very far in leaving him, and he had gone very far in condescending to come to seek her; and there seemed no reason why the monster quarrel should not end in a monster reconciliation, and all go on as before.
But it was bad policy to leave him with Mary. The old instinctive dislike that had existed between them from the first woke up again unawares. Mrs. Ochterlony could not conceal the fact that she took no pleasure in his society, and had no faith in him. She stayed in the room because she could not help it, but she did not pretend to be cordial. When he addressed himself to Will, and took the boy into his confidence, and spoke to him as to another man of the world, he could see, and was pleased to see, the contraction in Mary’s forehead. In this one point she was afraid of him, or at least he thought so. Winnie stayed upstairs with the door locked, watching to see him go away; and Hugh, to whom Winnie had been perhaps more confidential than to any one else in the house, went out and in, in displeasure ill-concealed, avoiding all intercourse with the stranger. And Mary sat on thorns, bearing him unwilling company, and Nelly watched and marvelled. Poor Aunt Agatha all the time arranged her best silver, and filled the old-fashioned épergne with flowers, thinking she was doing the very best for her child, saving her reputation, and leaving the way open for a reconciliation between her and her husband, and utterly unconscious of any other harm that could befall.
When the dinner-hour arrived, however (which was five o’clock, an hour which Aunt Agatha thought a good medium between the early and the late), Major Percival’s brow was very cloudy. He had waited and listened, and Winnie had not come, and now, when they sat down at table, she was still invisible. “Does not my wife mean to favour us with her company?” he asked, insolently, incredulous after all that she could persevere so long, and expecting to hear that she wasonly “late as usual;” upon which Aunt Agatha looked at Mary with anxious beseeching eyes.
“My sister is not coming down to-day,” said Mary, with hesitation, “at least I believe——”
“Oh, my dear love, you know it is only because she has one of her bad headaches!” Aunt Agatha added, precipitately, with tears of entreaty in her eyes.
Percival looked at them both, and he thought he understood it all. It was Mary who was abetting her sister in her rebellion, encouraging her to defy him. It was she who was resisting Miss Seton’s well-meant efforts to bring them together. He saw it all as plain, or thought he saw it, as if he had heard her tactics determined upon. He had let her alone, and restrained his natural impulse to injure the woman he disliked, but now she had set herself in his way, and let her look to it. This dinner, which poor Aunt Agatha had brought about against everybody’s will, was as uncomfortable a meal as could be imagined. She was miserable herself, dreading every moment that he might burst out into a torrent of rage against Winnie before “the servants,” or that Winnie’s bell would ring violently and she would send a message—so rash and inconsiderate as she was—to know when Major Percival was going away. And nobody did anything to help her out of it. Mary sat at the foot of the table as stately as a queen, showing the guest only such attentions as were absolutely necessary. Hugh, except when he talked to Nelly, who sat beside him, was as disagreeable as a young man who particularly desires to be disagreeable and feels that his wishes have not been consulted, can be. And as for the guest himself, his countenance was black as night. It was a heavy price to pay for the gratification of saying to everybody that Winnie’s husband had come to see her, and had spent the day at the Cottage. But then Aunt Agatha had not the remotest idea that beyond the annoyance of the moment it possibly could do any harm.
It was dreadful to leave him with the boys after dinner, who probably—or at least Hugh—might not be so civil as was to be wished; but still more dreadful ten minutes after to hear Hugh’s voice with Nelly in the garden. Why had he left his guest?
“He left me,” said Hugh. “He went out under the verandah to smoke his cigar. I don’t deny I was very glad to get away.”
“But I am sure, Hugh, you are very fond of smoking cigars,” said Aunt Agatha, in her anxiety and fright.
“Not always,” Hugh answered, “nor under all circumstances.” And he laughed and coloured a little, and looked at Nelly by his side, who blushed too.
“So there is nobody with him but Will?” said Aunt Agatha with dismay, as she went in to where Mary was sitting; and the news was still more painful to Mary. Will was the only member of the family who was really civil to the stranger, except Aunt Agatha, whose anxiety was plainly written in her countenance. He was sitting now under the verandah which shaded the dining-room windows, quite at the other side of the house, smoking his cigar, and Will sat dutifully and not unwillingly by, listening to his talk. It was a new kind of talk to Will—the talk of a manblaséyet incapable of existing out of the world of which he was sick—a man who did not pretend to be a good man, nor even possessed of principles. Perhaps the parish of Kirtell in general would not have thought it very edifying talk.
“It is he who has come into the property, I suppose,” said Percival, pointing lazily with his cigar towards the other end of the garden, where Hugh was visible far off with Nelly. “Get on well with him, eh? I should say not if the question was asked of me?”
“Oh yes, well enough,” said Will, in momentary confusion, and with a clouding of his brows. “There is nothing wrong withhim. It’s the system of the eldest sons that is wrong. I have nothing to say against Hugh.”
“By Jove,” said Percival, “the difficulty is to find out which is anybody’s eldest son. I never find fault with systems, for my part.”
“Oh, about that there can’t be any doubt,” said Will; “he is six years older than I am. I am only the youngest; though I don’t see what it matters to a man, for my part, being born in ’32 or ’38.”
“Sometimes it makes a great deal of difference,” said Percival; and then he paused: for a man, even when he is pushed on by malice and hate and all uncharitableness, may hesitate before he throws a firebrand into an innocent peaceful house. However, after his pause he resumed, making a new start as it were, and doing it deliberately, “sometimes it may make a difference to a man whether he was born in ’37 or ’38. You were born in ’38 were you? Ah! I ought to recollect.”
“Why oughtyouto recollect?” asked Will, startled by the meaning of his companion’s face.
“I was present at a ceremony that took place about then,” said Percival; “a curious sort of story. I’ll tell it you some time. How is the property left, do you know? Is it to himin particular as being the favourite, and that sort of thing?—or is it simply to the eldest son?”
“Simply to the eldest son,” said Will, more and more surprised.
Percival gave such a whistle as Uncle Penrose had given when he heard of the museum, and nodded his head repeatedly. “It would be good fun to turn the tables,” he said, as if he were making a remark to himself.
“How could you turn the tables? What do you mean? What do you know about it?” cried Will, who by this time was getting excited. Hugh came within his line of vision now and then, with Nelly—always with Nelly. It was only the younger brother, the inferior member of the household, who was left with the unwelcome guest. If any one could turn the tables! And again he said, almost fiercely, “What do you mean?”
“It is very easy to tell you what I mean; and I wonder what your opinion will be of systems then?” said Percival. “By Jove! it’s an odd position, and I don’t envy you. You think you’re the youngest, and you were born as you say in ’38.”
“Good heavens! what is that to do with it?” cried Wilfrid. “Of course I was born in ’38. Tell me what you mean.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what I mean,” said Percival, tossing away the end of his cigar, “and plainly too. That fellow there, who gives himself such airs, is no more the eldest son than I am. The property belongs toyou.”
WILFRID was so stunned by the information thus suddenly given him, that he had but a confused consciousness of the explanations which followed. He was aware that it was all made clear to him, and that he uttered the usual words of assent and conviction; but in his mind he was too profoundly moved, too completely shaken and unsettled, to be aware of anything but the fact thus strangely communicated. It did not occur to him for a moment that it was not a fact. He saw no improbability, nothing unnatural in it. He was too young to think that anything was unlikely because it was extraordinary, or to doubt what was affirmedwith so much confidence. But, in the meantime, the news was so startling, that it upset his mental balance, and made him incapable of understanding the details. Hugh was not the eldest son. It was he who was the eldest son. This at the moment was all that his mind was capable of taking in. He stayed by Percival as long as he remained, and had the air of devouring everything the other said; and he went with him to the railway station when he went away. Percival, for his part, having once made the plunge, showed no disinclination to explain everything, but for his own credit told his story most fully, and many particulars undreamt of when the incident took place. But he might have spared his pains so far as Will was concerned. He was aware of the one great fact stated to him to begin with, but of nothing more.
The last words which Percival said as he took leave of his young companion at the railway were, however, caught by Wilfrid’s half-stupefied ears. They were these: “I will stay in Carlisle for some days. You can hear where I am from Askell, and perhaps we may be of use to each other.” This, beyond the startling and extraordinary piece of news which had shaken him like a sudden earthquake, was all Percival had said, so far as Will was aware. “That fellow is no more the eldest son than I am—the property isyours;” and “I will stay in Carlisle for some days—perhaps we may be of use to each other.” The one expression caught on the other in his mind, which was utterly confused and stunned for the first time in his life. He turned them over and over as he walked home alone, or rather,theyturned over and over in his memory, as if possessed of a distinct life; and so it happened that he had got home again and opened the gate and stumbled into the garden before he knew what the terrific change was which had come over everything, or had time to realize his own sensations. It was such a moment as is very sweet in a cottage-garden. They had all been watering the flowers in the moment of relief after Percival’s departure, and the fragrance of the grateful soil was mounting up among the other perfumes of the hour. Hugh and Nelly were still sprinkling a last shower upon the roses, and in the distance in the field upon which the garden opened were to be seen two figures wandering slowly over the grass—Winnie, whom Aunt Agatha had coaxed out to breathe the fresh air after her self-imprisonment, and Miss Seton herself, with a shawl over her head. And the twilight was growing insensibly dimmer and dimmer, and the dew falling, and the young moon sailing aloft. When Mary came across the lawn, her long dress sweeping with a soft rustle over thegrass, a sudden horror seized Wilfrid. It took him all his force of mind and will to keep his face to her and await her coming. His face was not the treacherous kind of face which betrays everything; but still there was in it a look of preoccupation which Mary could not fail to see.
“Is he gone?” she said, as she came up. “You are sure he has gone, Will? It was kind of you to be civil to him; but I am almost afraid you are interested in him too.”
“Would it be wrong to be interested in him?” said Will.
“I don’t like him,” said Mary, simply; and then she added, after a pause, “I have no confidence in him. I should be very sorry to see any of my boys attracted by the society of such a man.”
And it was at this moment that his new knowledge rushed upon Wilfrid’s mind and embittered it; any of her boys, of whom he was the youngest and least important; and yet she must know what his real position was, and that he ought to be the chief of all.
“I don’t care a straw forhim,” said Will, hastily; “but he knows a great many things, and I was interested in his talk.”
“What was he saying to you?” said Mrs. Ochterlony.
He looked into her face, and he saw that there was uneasiness in it, just as she, looking at him, saw signs of a change which he was himself unaware of; and in his impetuosity he was very near saying it all out and betraying himself. But then his uncertainty of all the details stood him in good stead.
“He was saying lots of things,” said Will. “I am sure I can’t tell you all that he was saying. If I were Hugh I would not let Nelly make a mess of herself with those roses. I am going in-doors.”
“A lovely evening like this is better than the best book in the world,” said Mary. “Stay with me, and talk to me, Will. You see I am the only one who is left alone.”
“I don’t care about lovely evenings,” said Will; “I think you should all come in. It is getting dreadfully cold. And as for being alone, I don’t see how that can be, when they are all there. Good night, mother. I think I shall go to bed.”
“Why should you go to bed so early?” said Mary; but he was already gone, and did not hear her. And as he went, he turned right round and looked at Hugh and Nelly, who were still together. When Mrs. Ochterlony remarked that look, she was at once troubled and comforted. She thought her boy was jealous of the way in which his brother engrossed the young visitor, and she was sorry, but yet knew that it was not veryserious—while, at the same time, it was a comfort to her to attribute his pre-occupation to anything but Percival’s conversation. So she lingered about the lawn a little, and looked wistfully at the soft twilight country, and the wistful moon. She was the only one who was alone. The two young creatures were together, and they were happy; and poor Winnie, though she was far from happy, was buoyed up by the absorbing passion and hostility which had to-day reached one of its climaxes, and had Aunt Agatha for her slave, ready to receive all the burning outburst of grievance and misery. This fiery passion which absorbed her whole being was almost as good as being happy, and gave her mind full occupation. But as for Mary, she was by herself, and all was twilight with her; and the desertion of her boy gave her a little chill at her heart. So she, too, went in presently, and had the lamp lighted, and sat alone in the room, which was bright and yet dim—with a clear circle of light round the table, yet shadowy as all the corners are of a summer evening, when there is no fire to aid the lamp. But she did not find her son there. His discontent had gone further than to be content with a book, as she had expected; and he had really disappeared for the night.
“I can’t have you take possession of Nelly like this,” she said to Hugh, when, after a long interval, they came in. “We all want a share of her. Poor Will has gone to bed quite discontented. You must not keep her all to yourself.”
“Oh! is he jealous?” said Hugh, laughing; and there was no more said about it; for Will’s jealousy in this respect was not a thing to alarm anybody much.
But Will had not gone to bed. He was seated in his room at the table, leaning his head upon both his hands, and staring into the flame of his candle. He was trying to put what he had heard into some sort of shape. That Hugh, who was downstairs so triumphant and successful, was, after all, a mere impostor; that it was he himself, whom nobody paid any particular attention to, who was the real heir; that his instinct had not deceived him, but from his birth he had been ill-used and oppressed: these thoughts went all circling through his mind as the moths circled round his light, taking now a larger, and now a shorter flight. This strange sense that he had been right all along was, for the moment, the first feeling in his mind. He had been disinherited and thrust aside, but still he had felt all along that it was he who was the natural heir; and there was a satisfaction in having it thus proved and established. This was the first distinct reflection he was conscious of amidthe whirl of thoughts; and then came the intoxicating sense that he could now enter upon his true position, and be able to arrange everybody’s future wisely and generously, without any regard for mere proprieties, or for the younger brother’s two thousand pounds. Strange to say, in the midst of this whirlwind of egotistical feeling, Will rushed all at once into imaginations that were not selfish, glorious schemes of what he would do for everybody. He was not ungenerous, nor unkind, but only it was a necessity with him that generosity and kindness should come from and not to himself.
All this passed through the boy’s mind before it ever occurred to him what might be the consequences to others of his extraordinary discovery, or what effect it must have upon his mother, and the character of the family. He was self-absorbed, and it did not occur to him in that light. Even when he did come to think of it, he did it in the calmest way. No doubt his mother would be annoyed; but she deserved to be annoyed—she who had so long kept him out of his rights; and, after all, it would still be one of her sons who would have Earlston. And as for Hugh, Wilfrid had the most generous intentions towards him. There was, indeed, nothing that he was not ready to do for his brothers. As soon as he believed that all was to be his, he felt himself the steward of the family. And then his mind glanced back upon the Psyche and the Venus, and upon Earlston, which might be made into a fitter shrine for these fair creations. These ideas filled him like wine, and went to his head, and made him dizzy; and all the time he was as unconscious of the moral harm, and domestic treachery, as if he had been one of the lower animals; and no scruple of any description, and no doubt of what it was right and necessary to do, had so much as entered into his primitive and savage mind.
We call his mind savage and primitive because it was at this moment entirely free from those complications of feeling and dreadful conflict of what is desirable, and what is right, which belong to the civilized and cultivated mind. Perhaps Will’s affections were not naturally strong; but, at all events, he gave in to this temptation as a man might have given in to it in the depths of Africa, where the “good old rule” and “simple plan” still exist and reign; and where everybody takes what he has strength to take, and he keeps who can. This was the real state of the case in Wilfrid’s mind. It had been supposed to be Hugh’s right, and he had been obliged to give in; now it was his right, and Hugh would have to make up his mind to it. What else was there to say? So far as Will could see, therevolution would be alike certain and instantaneous. It no more occurred to him to doubt the immediate effect of the new fact than to doubt its truth. Perhaps it was his very egotism, as well as his youth and inexperience, which made him so credulous. It had been wonder enough to him how anybodycouldleave him in an inferior position, even while he was only the youngest; to think of anybody resisting his rights, now that he had rights, was incredible.