Yet when the morning came, and the sober daylight brightened upon his dreams, Will, notwithstanding all his confidence, began to see the complication of circumstances. How was he to announce his discovery to his mother? How was he to acquaint Hugh with the change in their mutual destinies? What seemed so easy and simple to him the night before, became difficult and complicated now. He began to have a vague sense that they would insist, that Mrs. Ochterlony would fight for her honour, and Hugh for his inheritance, and that in claiming his own rights, he would have to rob his mother of her good name, and put a stigma ineffaceable upon his brother. This idea startled him, and took away his breath; but it did not make him falter; Uncle Penrose’s suggestion about buying up him and his beggarly estate, and Major Percival’s evident entire indifference to the question whether anything it suited him to do was right or wrong, had had their due effect on Will. He did not see what call he had to sacrifice himself for others. No doubt, he would be sorry for the others, but after all it was his own life he had to take care of, and his own rights that he had to assert. But he mused and knitted his brows over it as he had never done before in his life. Throughout it will be seen that he regarded the business in a very sober, matter-of-fact way—not in the imaginative way which leads you to enter into other people’s position, and analyse their possible feelings. As for himself, he who had been so jealous of his mother’s visitors, and watched over her so keenly, did not feel somehow that horror which might have been expected at the revelation that she was not the spotless woman he thought her. Perhaps it was the importance of the revelation to himself—perhaps it was a secret disbelief in any guilt of hers—perhaps it was only the stunned condition in which the announcement left him. At all events, he was neither horrified at the thought, nor profoundly impressed by the consciousness that to prove his own rights, would be to take away everything from her, and to shut her up from all intercourse with the honourable and pure. When the morning roused him to a sense of thedifficulties as well as the advantages of his discovery, the only thing he could think of was to seek advice and direction from Percival, who was so experienced a man of the world. But it was not so easy to do this without betraying his motive. The only practical expedient was that of escorting Nelly home; which was not a privilege he was anxious for of itself; for though he was jealous that she had been taken away from him, he shrank instinctively from her company in his present state of mind. Yet it was the only thing that could be done.
When the party met at the breakfast-table, there were three of them who were ill at ease. Winnie made her appearance in a state of headache, pale and haggard as on the day of her arrival; and Aunt Agatha was pale too, and could not keep her eyes from dwelling with a too tender affectionateness upon her suffering child. And as for Will, the colour of his young face was indescribable, for youth and health still contended in it with those emotions which contract the skin and empty the veins. But on the other hand, there were Hugh and Nelly handsome and happy, with hearts full of charity to everybody, and confidence in the brightness of their own dawning lot. Mary sat at the head of the table, with the urn before her, superintending all. The uneasiness of last night had passed from her mind; her cheek was almost as round and fair as that of the girl by her side—fairer perhaps in its way; her eyes were as bright as they had ever been; her dress, it is true, was still black, but it had not the shadowy denseness of her widow’s garb of old. It was silk, that shone and gave back subdued reflections to the light, and in her hair there were still golden gleams, though mixed with here and there a thread of silver. Her mourning, which prevented any confusion of colours, but left her a sweet-complexioned woman, rich in the subdued tints of nature, in the soft austerity of black and white, did all for her that toilette could do. This was the figure which her son Wilfrid saw at the head of a pretty country breakfast-table, between the flowers and the sunshine—an unblemished matron and a beloved mother. He knew, and it came into his mind as he looked at her, that in the parish, or even in the country, there was nobody more honoured; and yet—— He kept staring at her so, and had so scared a look in his eyes, that Mrs. Ochterlony herself perceived it at last.
“What is the matter, Will?” she said. “I could think there was a ghost standing behind you, from your eyes. Why do you look so startled?”
“Nothing,” said Will, hastily; “I didn’t know I lookedstartled. A fellow can’t help how he looks. Look here, Nelly, if you’re going home to-day, I’ll go with you, and see you safe there.”
“You’ll go with her?” said Hugh, with a kind of good-natured elder-brotherly contempt. “Not quite so fast, Will. We can’t trust young ladies inyourcare. I am going with Nelly myself.”
“Oh! I am sure Will is very kind,” said Nelly; and then she stopped short, and looked first at Mrs. Ochterlony and then at Hugh. Poor Nelly had heard of brothers being jealous of each other, and had read of it in books, and was half afraid that such a case was about to come under her own observation. She was much frightened, and her impulse was to accept Will’s guardianship, that no harm might come of it, though the sacrifice to herself would be considerable; but then, what if Hugh should be jealous too?
“I see no reason why you should not both go,” said Mrs. Ochterlony: “one of you shall take care of Nelly, and one shall do my commissions; I think that had better be Will—for I put no confidence, just now, in Hugh.”
“Of course it must be Will,” said Hugh. “A squire of dames requires age and solidity. It is not an office for a younger brother. Your time will come, old fellow; it is mine now.”
“Yes, I suppose it is yours now,” said Will.
He did not mean to put any extraordinary significance in his tone, but yet he was in such a condition of mind that his very voice betrayed him against his will. Even Winnie, preoccupied as she was, intermitted her own thoughts a moment to look at him, and Hugh reddened, though he could not have told why. There was a certain menace, a certain implication of something behind, which the inexperienced boy had no intention of betraying, but which made themselves apparent in spite of him. And Hugh too grew crimson in spite of himself. He said “By Jove!” and then he laughed, and cleared his mind of it, feeling it absurd to be made angry by the petulance of his boy-brother. Then he turned to Nelly, who had drawn closer to him, fearing that the quarrel was about to take place as it takes place in novels, trembling a little, and yet by the aid of her own good sense, feeling that it could not be so serious after all.
“If we are going to the Lady’s Well we must go early,” he said; and his face changed when he turned to her. She was growing prettier every day,—every day at least she spent in Hugh’s society,—opening and unfolding as to the sun. Herprecocious womanliness, if it had been precocious, melted under the new influence, and all the natural developments were quickened. She was more timid, more caressing, less self-reliant, and yet she was still as much as ever head of the house at home.
“But not if it will vex Will,” she said, almost in a whisper, in his ear; and the close approach which this whisper made necessary, effaced in an instant all unbrotherly feelings towards Wilfrid from Hugh’s mind. They both looked at Will, instinctively, as they spoke, the girl with a little wistful solicitude in case he might be disturbed by the sight of their confidential talk. But Will was quite unmoved. He saw the two draw closer together, and perceived the confidential communication that passed between them, but his countenance did not change in the slightest degree. By this time he was far beyond that.
“You see he does not mind,” said Hugh, carrying on the half-articulate colloquy, of which one half was done by thoughts instead of words; and Nelly, with the colour a little deepened on her cheek, looked up at him with a look which Hugh could not half interpret. He saw the soft brightness, the sweet satisfaction in it tinged by a certain gleam of fun, but he did not see that Nelly was for a moment ashamed of herself, and was asking herself how she ever could, for a moment, have supposed Will was jealous. It was a relief to her mind to see his indifference, and yet it filled her with shame.
When the meal was over, and they all dispersed with their different interests, it was Mary who sought to soften what she considered the disappointment of her boy. She came to him as he stood at the window under the verandah, where the day before Percival had given him his fatal illumination, and put her arm within his, and did her best to draw his secret from his clouded and musing eyes.
“My dear boy, let us give in to Hugh,” said Mary; “he is only a guest now, you know, and you are at home.” She was smiling when she said this, and yet it made her sigh. “And then I think he is getting fond of Nelly, and you are far too young for anything of that sort,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, with anxiety and a little doubt, looking him in the face all the time.
“There are some things I am not too young for,” said Will. “Mamma, if I were Hugh I would be at home nowhere unlessyouwere at home there as well.”
“My dear Will, that is my own doing,” said Mary. “Don’t blame your brother. I have refused to go to Earlston. It willalways be best for me, for all your sakes, to have a house of my own.”
“If Earlston had been mine, I should not have minded your refusal,” said Will. Perhaps it was as a kind of secret atonement to her and to his own heart that he said so, and yet it was done instinctively, and was the utterance of a genuine feeling. He was meditating in his heart her disgrace and downfall, and yet the first effects of it, if he could succeed, would be to lay everything that he had won by shaming her, at her feet. He would do her the uttermost cruelty and injury without flinching, and then he would overwhelm her with every honour and grandeur that his ill-got wealth could supply. And he did not see how inconsistent those two things were.
“But my boysmustmind when I make such a decision,” said Mary; and yet she was not displeased with the sentiment. “You shall go to Carlisle for me,” she added. “I want some little things, and Hugh very likely would be otherwise occupied. If you would like to have a little change, and go early, do not wait for them, Will. There is a train in half an hour.”
“Yes, I would like a little change,” he answered vaguely—feeling somehow, for that moment solely, a little prick of conscience. And so it was by his mother’s desire to restore his good-humour and cheerfulness, that he was sent upon his mission of harm and treachery.
WHILE Hugh showed Nelly the way to the Lady’s Well with that mixture of brotherly tenderness and a dawning emotion of a much warmer kind, which is the privileged entrance of their age into real love and passion; and while Will made his with silent vehemence and ardour to Carlisle, Winnie was left very miserable in the Cottage. It was a moment of reaction after the furious excitement of the previous day. She had held him at bay, she had shown him her contempt and scorn, she had proved to him that their parting was final, and that she would never either see or listen to him again; and the excitement of doing this had so supported her that the day which Aunt Agatha thought a day of such horrible trial to her poor Winnie, was, in short, the only day in which she had snatched a certain stormy enjoymentsince she returned to the Cottage. Butthe day afterwas different. He was gone; he had assented to her desire, and accepted her decision to all appearance, and poor Winnie was very miserable. For the moment all seemed to her to be over. She had felt sure he would come, and the sense of the continued conflict had buoyed her up; but she did not feel so sure that he would come again, and the long struggle which had occupied her life and thoughts for so many years seemed to have come to an abrupt end, and she had nothing more to look forward to. When she realized this fact, Winnie stood aghast. It is hard when love goes out of a life; but sometimes, when it is only strife and opposition which go out of it, it is almost as hard to bear. She thought she had sighed for peace for many a long day. She had said so times without number, and written it down, and persuaded herself that was what she wanted; but now that she had got it she found out that it was not that she wanted. The Cottage was the very home of peace, and had been so for many years. Even the growth of young life within it, the active minds and varied temperaments of the three boys, and Will’s cloudy and uncomfortable disposition, had not hitherto interfered with its character. But so far from being content, Winnie’s heart sank within her when she realized the fact, that War had marched off in the person of her husband, and that she was to be “left in peace”—horrible words that paralysed her very soul.
This event, however, if it had done nothing else, had opened her mouth. Her history, which she had kept to herself, began to be revealed. She told her aunt and her sister of his misdeeds, till the energy of her narrative brought something like renewed life to her. She described how she had herself endured, how she had been left to all the dangers that attend a beautiful young woman whose husband has found superior attractions elsewhere; and she gave such sketches of the women whom she imagined to have attracted him, as only an injured wife in a chronic state of wrath and suffering could give. She was so very miserable on that morning that she had no alternative but to speak or die; and as she could not die, she gave her miseries utterance. “And if he can do you any harm—if he can strike me through my friends,” said Winnie, “if you know of any point on which he could assail you, you had better keep close guard.”
“Oh, my dear love!” said Aunt Agatha, with a troubled smile, “what harm could he do us? He could hurt us only in wounding you; and now we have you safe, my darling, and can defend you, so he never can harm us.”
“Of course I never meantyou,” said Winnie. “But he might perhaps harm Mary. Mary is not like you; she has had to make her way in the world, and no doubt there may be things in her life, as in other people’s, that she would not care to have known.”
Mary was startled by this speech, which was made half in kindness, half in anger; for the necessity of having somebody to quarrel with had been too great for Winnie. Mrs. Ochterlony was startled, but she could not help feeling sure that her secret was no secret for her sister, and she had no mind for a quarrel, though Winnie wished it.
“There is but one thing in my life that I don’t wish to have known,” she said, “and Major Percival knows it, and probably so do you, Winnie. But I am here among my own people, and everybody knows all about me. I don’t think it would be possible to do me harm here.”
“It is because you don’t know him,” said Winnie. “He would do the Queen harm in her own palace. You don’t know what poison he can put on his arrows, and how he shoots them. I believe he will strike me through my friends.”
All this time Aunt Agatha looked at the two with her lips apart, as if about to speak; but in reality it was horror and amazement that moved her. To hear them talking calmly of something that must be concealed! of something, at least, that it was better should not be known!—and that in a house which had always been so spotless, so respectable, and did not know what mystery meant!
Mary shook her head, and smiled. She had felt a little anxious the night before about what Percival might be saying to Wilfrid; but, somehow, all that had blown away. Even Will’s discontent with his brother had taken the form of jealous tenderness for herself, which, in her thinking, was quite incompatible with any revelation which could have lowered her in his eyes; and it seemed to her as if the old sting, which had so often come back to her, which had put it in the power of her friends in “the regiment” to give her now and then a prick to the heart, had lost its venom. Hugh was peacefully settled in his rights, and Will, if he had heard anything, must have nobly closed his ears to it. Sometimes this strange feeling of assurance and confidence comes on the very brink of the deadliest danger, and it was so with Mary at the present moment that she had no fear.
As for Winnie, she too was thinking principally of her own affairs, and of her sister’s only as subsidiary to them. Shewould have rather believed in the most diabolical rage and assault than in her husband’s indifference and the utter termination of hostilities between them. “He will strike me through my friends,” she repeated; and perhaps in her heart she was rather glad that there still remained this oblique way of reaching her, and expressed a hope rather than a fear. This conversation was interrupted by Sir Edward, who came in more cheerfully and alertly than usual, taking off his hat as soon as he became visible through the open window. He had heard what he thought was good news, and there was satisfaction in his face.
“So Percival is here,” he said. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was. Come, we’ll have some pleasant days yet in our old age. Why hasn’t he come up to the Hall?”
There was an embarrassed pause—embarrassed at least on the part of Miss Seton and Mrs. Ochterlony; while Winnie fixed her eyes, which looked so large and wild in their sunken sockets, steadily upon him, without attempting to make any reply.
“Yes, Major Percival was here yesterday,” said Aunt Agatha with hesitation; “he spent the whole day with us—— I was very glad to have him, and I am sure he would have gone up to the Hall if he had had time—— But he was obliged to go away.”
How difficult it was to say all this under the gaze of Winnie’s eyes, and with the possibility of being contradicted flatly at any moment, may be imagined. And while Aunt Agatha made her faltering statement, her own look and voice contradicted her; and then there was a still more embarrassed pause, and Sir Edward looked from one to another with amazed and unquiet eyes.
“He came and spent the day with you,” said their anxious neighbour, “and he was obliged to go away! I confess I think I merited different treatment. I wish I could make out what you all mean——”
“The fact is, Sir Edward,” said Winnie, “that Major Percival was sent away.... He is a very important person, no doubt; but he can’t do just as he pleases. My aunt is so good that she tries to keep up a little fiction, but he and I have done with each other,” said Winnie in her excitement, notwithstanding that she had been up to this moment so reticent and self-contained.
“Who sent him away?” asked Sir Edward, with a pitiful, confidential look to Aunt Agatha, and a slight shake of his head over the very bad business—a little pantomime which moved Winnie to deeper wrath and discontent.
“Isent him away,” said Mrs. Percival, with as much dignity as this ebullition of passion would permit her to assume.
“My dear Winnie,” said Sir Edward, “I am very, very sorry to hear this. Think a little of what is before you. You are a young woman still; you are both young people. Do you mean to live here all the rest of your life, and let him go where he pleases—to destruction, I suppose, if he likes? Is that what you mean? And yet we all remember when you would not hear a word even of advice—would not listen to anybody about him. He had not been quitesans reprochewhen you married him, my dear; and you took him with a knowledge of it. If that had not been the case, there might have been some excuse. But what I want you to do is to look it in the face, and consider a little. It is not only for to-day, or to-morrow—it is for your life.”
Winnie gave a momentary shudder, as if of cold, and drew her shawl closer around her. “I had rather not discuss our private affairs,” she replied: “they are between ourselves.”
“But the fact is, they are not between yourselves,” said Sir Edward, who was inspired by the great conviction of doing his duty. “You have taken the public into your confidence by coming here. I am a very old friend, both of yours and his, and I might do some good, if you let me try. I dare say he is not very far from here; and if I might mediate between you——”
A sudden gleam shot out from Winnie’s eyes—perhaps it was a sudden wild hope—perhaps it was merely the flash of indignation; but still the proposal moved her. “Mediate!” she said, with an air which was intended for scorn; but her lips quivered as she repeated the word.
“Yes,” said Sir Edward, “I might, if you would have confidence in me. No doubt there are wrongs on both sides. He has been impatient, and you have been exacting, and—— Where are you going?”
“It is no use continuing this conversation,” said Winnie. “I am going to my room. If I were to have more confidence in you than I ever had in any one, it would still be useless. I have not been exacting. I have been—— But it is no matter. I trust, Aunt Agatha, that you will forgive me for going to my own room.”
Sir Edward shook his head, and looked after her as she withdrew. He looked as if he had said, “I knew how it would be;” and yet he was concerned and sorry. “I have seen such cases before,” he said, when Winnie had left the room, turningto Aunt Agatha and Mary, and once more shaking his head: “neither will give in an inch. They know that they are in a miserable condition, but it is neither his fault nor hers. That is how it always is. And only the bystanders can see what faults there are on both sides.”
“But I don’t think Winnie is so exacting,” said Aunt Agatha, with natural partisanship. “I think it is worse than that. She has been telling me two or three things——”
“Oh, yes,” said Sir Edward, with mild despair, “they can tell you dozens of things. No doubthecould, on his side. It is always like that; and to think that nothing would have any effect on her!—she would hear no sort of reason—though you know very well you were warned that he was not immaculate before she married him: nothing would have any effect.”
“Oh, Sir Edward!” cried Aunt Agatha, with tears in her eyes: “it is surely not the moment to remind us of that.”
“For my part, I think it is just the moment,” said Sir Edward; and he shook his head, and made a melancholy pause. Then, with an obvious effort to change the subject, he looked round the room, as if that personage might, perhaps, be hidden in some corner, and asked where was Hugh?
“He has gone to show Nelly Askell the way to the Lady’s Well,” said Mary, who could not repress a smile.
“Ah! he seems disposed to show Nelly Askell the way to a great many things,” said Sir Edward. “There it is again you see! Not that I have a word to say against that little thing. She is very nice, and pretty enough; though no more to be compared to what Winnie was at her age—— But you’ll see Hugh will have engaged himself and forestalled his life before we know where we are.”
“It would have been better had they been a little older,” said Mary; “but otherwise everything is very suitable; and Nelly is very good, and very sweet——”
Again Sir Edward sighed. “You must know that Hugh might have done a very great deal better,” he said. “I don’t say that I have any particular objections, but only it is an instance of your insanity in the way of marriage—all you Setons. You go and plunge into it head foremost, without a moment’s reflection; and then, of course, when leisure comes—— I don’t mean you, Mary. What I was saying had no reference to you. So far as I am aware, you were always very happy, and gave your friends no trouble. Though in one way, of course, it ought to be considered that you did the worst of all.”
“Captain Askell’s family is very good,” said Mary, by the way of turning off too close an inquiry into her own affairs;“and he is just in the same position as Hugh’s father was; and I love Nelly like a child of my own. I feel as if she ought to have been a child of my own. She and Will used to lie in the same cradle——”
“Ah, by the way,” said Sir Edward, looking round once more into the corners, “where is Will?”
And then it had to be explained where Will had gone, which the old man thought very curious. “To Carlisle? What did he want to go to Carlisle for? If he had been out with his fishing rod, or out with the keepers, looking after the young pheasants—— But what could he want going into Carlisle? Is Percival there?”
“I hope not,” said Mary, with sudden anxiety. It was an idea which had not entered into her mind before.
“Why should you hope not? If he really wants to make peace with Winnie, I should think it very natural,” said Sir Edward; “and Will is a curious sort of boy. He might be a very good sort of auxiliary in any negotiation. Depend upon it that’s why he is gone.”
“I think not. I think he would have told me,” said Mary, feeling her heart sink with sudden dread.
“I don’t see why he should have told you,” said Sir Edward, who was in one of his troublesome moods, and disposed to put everybody at sixes and sevens. “He is old enough to act a little for himself. I hope you are not one of the foolish women, Mary, that like to keep their boys always at their apron-strings?”
With this reproach Sir Edward took his leave, and made his way placidly homeward, with the tranquillity of a man who has done his duty. He felt that he had discharged the great vocation of man, at least for the past hour. Winnie had heard the truth, whether she liked it or not, and so had the other members of the family, over whom he shook his head kindly but sadly as he went home. Their impetuosity, their aptitude to rush into any scrape that presented itself—and especially their madness in respect to marriage, filled him with pity. There was Charlie Seton, for example, the father of these girls, who had married that man Penrose’s sister. Sir Edward’s memory was so long, that it did not seem to him a very great stretch to go back to that. Not that the young woman was amiss in herself, but the man who, with his eyes open, burdened his unborn descendants with such an uncle, was worse then lunatic—he was criminal. This was what Sir Edward thought as he went quietly home, with a rather comfortable dreary sense of satisfaction in his heart inthe thought that his own behaviour had been marked by no such aberrations; and, in the meantime, Winnie was fanning the embers of her own wrath, and Mary had sickened somehow with a sense of insecurity and unexplainable apprehension. On the other hand, the two young creatures were very happy on the road to the Lady’s Well, and Will addressed himself to his strange business with resolution: and, painful as its character was, was not pained to speak of, but only excited. So ran the course of the world upon that ordinary summer day.
OF the strangest kind were Wilfrid’s sensations when he found himself in the streets of Carlisle on his extraordinary mission. It was the first time he had ever taken any step absolutely by himself. To be sure, he had been brought up in full possession of the freedom of an English boy, in whose honour everybody has confidence—but never before had he been moved by an individual impulse to independent action, nor had he known what it was to have a secret in his mind, and an enterprise which had to be conducted wholly according to his own judgment, and in respect to which he could ask for no advice. When he emerged out of the railway station, and found himself actually in the streets, a thrill of excitement, sudden and strange, came over him. He had known very well all along what he was coming to do, and yet he seemed only to become aware of it at that moment, when he put his foot upon the pavement, and was appealed to by cab-drivers, eager to take him somewhere. Here there was no time or opportunity for lingering; he had to go somewhere, and that instantly, were it only to the shops to execute his mother’s innocent commissions. It might be possible to loiter and meditate on the calm country roads about Kirtell, but the town and the streets have other associations. He was there to do something, to go somewhere, and it had to be begun at once. He was not imaginative, but yet he felt a kind of palpable tearing asunder as he took his first step onward. He had hesitated, and his old life seemed to hold out its arms to him. It was not an unhappy life; he had his own way in most things, he had his future before him unfettered, and he knew that his wishes would be furthered, and everything possible done tohelp and encourage him. All this passed through his mind like a flash of lightning. He would be helped and cared for and made much of, but yet he would only be Will, the youngest, of whom nobody took particular notice, and who sat in the lowest room; whereas, by natural law and justice, he was the heir. After he had made that momentary comparison, he stepped on with a firm foot, and then it was that he felt like the tearing asunder of something that had bound him. He had thrown the old bonds, the old pleasant ties, to the wind; and now all that he had to do was to push on by himself and gain his rights. This sensation made his head swim as he walked on. He had put out to sea, as it were, and the new movement made him giddy—and yet it was not pain; love was not life to him, but he had never known what it was to live without it. There seemed no reason why he should not do perfectly well for himself; Hugh would be affronted, of course—but it could make no difference to Islay, for example, nor much to his mother, for it would still be one of her sons. These were the thoughts that went through Wilfrid’s mind as he walked along; from which it will be apparent that the wickedness he was about to do was not nearly so great in intention as it was in reality; and that his youth, and inexperience, and want of imagination, his incapacity to put himself into the position of another, or realize anything but his own wants and sentiments, pushed him unawares, while he contemplated only an act of selfishness, into a social crime.
But yet the sense of doing this thing entirely alone, of doing it in secret, which was contrary to all his habitudes of mind, filled him with a strange inquietude. It hurt his conscience more to be making such a wonderful move for himself, out of the knowledge of his mother and everybody belonging to him, than to be trying to disgrace his mother and overthrow her good name and honour; of the latter, he was only dimly conscious, but the former he saw clearly. A strange paradox, apparently, but yet not without many parallels. There are poor creatures who do not hesitate at drowning themselves, and yet shrink from the chill of the “black flowing river” in which it is to be accomplished. As for Will, he did not hesitate to throw dark anguish and misery into the peaceful household he had been bred in—he did not shrink from an act which would embitter the lives of all who loved him, and change their position, and disgrace their name—but the thought of taking his first great step in life out of anybody’s knowledge, made his head swim, and the light fail in his eyes—and filled him with a giddy mingling of excitement andshame. He did not realize the greater issue, except as it affected him solely—but he did the other in its fullest sense. Thus he went on through the common-place streets, with his heart throbbing in his ears, and the blood rushing to his head; and yet he was not remorseful, nor conscience-stricken, nor sorry, but only strongly excited, and moved by a certain nervous shyness and shame.
Notwithstanding this, a certain practical faculty in Wilfrid led him, before seeking out his tempter and first informant, to seek independent testimony. It would be difficult to say what it was that turned his thoughts towards Mrs. Kirkman; but it was to her he went. The colonel’s wife received him with a sweet smile, but she was busy with much more important concerns; and when she had placed him at a table covered with tracts and magazines, she took no further notice of Will. She was a woman, as has been before mentioned, who laboured under a chronic dissatisfaction with the clergy, whether as represented in the person of a regimental chaplain, or of a Dean and Chapter; and she was not content to suffer quietly, as so many people do. Her discontent was active, and expressed itself not only in lamentation and complaint, but in very active measures. She could not reappoint to the offices in the Cathedral, but she could do what was in her power, by Scripture-readers, and societies for private instruction, to make up the deficiency; and she was very busy with one of her agents when Will entered, who certainly had not come about any evangelical business. As time passed, however, and it became apparent to him that Mrs. Kirkman was much more occupied with her other visitor than with any curiosity about his own boyish errand, whatever it might be, Will began to lose patience. When he made a little attempt to gain a hearing in his turn, he was silenced by the same sweet smile, and a clasp of the hand. “My dear boy, just a moment; what we are talking of is of the greatest importance,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “There are so few real means of grace in this benighted town, and to think that souls are being lost daily, hourly—and yet such a show of services and prayers—it is terrible to think of it. In a few minutes, my dear boy.”
“What I want is of the greatest importance, too,” said Wilfrid, turning doggedly away from the table and the magazines.
Mrs. Kirkman looked at him, and thought she saw spiritual trouble in his eye. She was flattered that he should have thought of her under such interesting circumstances. It was a tardy but sweet compensation for all she had done, as shesaid to herself, for his mother; and going on this mistaken idea she dismissed the Scripture-reader, having first filled him with an adequate sense of the insufficiency of the regular clergy. It was, as so often happens, a faithful remnant, which was contending alone for religion against all the powers of this world. They were sure of one thing at least, and that was that everybody else was wrong. This was the idea with which her humble agent left Mrs. Kirkman; and the same feeling, sad but sweet, was in her own mind as she drew a chair to the table and sat down beside her dear young friend.
“And so you have come all the way from Kirtell to seeme, my dear boy?” she said. “How happy I shall be if I can be of some use to you. I am afraid you won’t find very much sympathy there.”
“No,” said Wilfrid, vaguely, not knowing in the least what she meant. “I am sorry I did not bring you some flowers, but I was in a hurry when I came away.”
“Don’t think of anything of the kind,” said the colonel’s wife, pressing his hand. “What are flowers in comparison with the one great object of our existence? Tell me about it, my dear Will; you know I have known you from a child.”
“You knew I was coming then,” said Will, a little surprised, “though I thought nobody knew? Yes, I suppose you have known us all our lives. What I want is to find out about my mother’s marriage. I heard you knew all about it. Of course you must have known all about it. That is what I want to understand.”
“Your mother’s marriage!” cried Mrs. Kirkman; and to do her justice she looked aghast. The question horrified her, and at the same time it disappointed her. “I am sure that is not what you came to talk to me about,” she said coaxingly, and with a certain charitable wile. “My dear, dear boy, don’t let shyness lead you away from the greatest of all subjects. I know you came to talk to me about your soul.”
“I came to ask you about my mother’s marriage,” said Will. His giddiness had passed by this time, and he looked her steadily in the face. It was impossible to mistake him now, or think it a matter of unimportance or mere curiosity. Mrs. Kirkman had her faults, but she was a good woman at the bottom. She did not object to make an allusion now and then which vexed Mary, and made her aware, as it were, of the precipice by which she was always standing. It was what Mrs. Kirkman thought a good moral discipline for her friend, besides giving herself a pleasant consciousness of power and superiority; but when Mary’s son sat down in front of her,and looked with cold but eager eyes in his face, and demanded this frightful information, her heart sank within her. It made her forget for the moment all about the clergy and the defective means of grace; and brought her down to the common standing of a natural Christian woman, anxious and terror-stricken for her friend.
“What have you to do with your mother’s marriage?” she said, trembling a little. “Do you know what a very strange question you are asking? Who has told you anything about that? O me! you frighten me so, I don’t know what I am saying. Did Mary send you? Have you just come from your mother? If you want to know about her marriage, it is of her that you should ask information. Of course she can tell you all about it—she and your Aunt Agatha. What a very strange question to ask of me!”
Wilfrid looked steadily into Mrs. Kirkman’s agitated face, and saw it was all true he had heard. “If you do not know anything about it,” he said, with pitiless logic, “you would say so. Why should you look so put out if there was nothing to tell?”
“I am not put out,” said Mrs. Kirkman, still more disturbed. “Oh, Will, you are a dreadful boy. What is it you want to know? What is it for? Did you tell your mother you were coming here?”
“I don’t see what it matters whether I told my mother, or what it is for,” said Will. “I came to you because you were good, and would not tell a lie. I can depend on what you say to me. I have heard all about it already, but I am not so sure as I should be if I had it from you.”
This compliment touched the colonel’s wife on a susceptible point. She calmed a little out of her fright. A boy with so just an appreciation of other people’s virtues could not be meditating anything unkind or unnatural to his mother. Perhaps it would be better for Mary that he should know the rights of it; perhaps it was providential that he should have come to her, who could give him all the details.
“I don’t suppose you can mean any harm,” she said. “Oh, Will, our hearts are all desperately wicked. The best of us is little able to resist temptation. You are right in thinking I will tell you the truth if I tell you anything; but oh, my dear boy, if it should be to lead you to evil and not good——”
“Never mind about the evil and the good,” said Will impatiently. “What I want is to know what is false and what is true.”
Mrs. Kirkman hesitated still; but she began to persuade herself that he might have heard something worse than the truth. She was in a great perplexity; impelled to speak, and yet frightened to death at the consequences. It was a new situation for her altogether, and she did not know how to manage it. She clasped her hands helplessly together, and the very movement suggested an idea which she grasped at, partly because she was really a sincere, good woman who believed in the efficacy of prayer, and partly, poor soul, to gain a little time, for she was at her wits’ end.
“I will,” she said. “I will, my dear boy; I will tell you everything; but oh, let us kneel down and have a word of prayer first, that we may not make a bad use of—of what we hear.”
If she had ever been in earnest in her life it was at that moment; the tears were in her eyes, and all her little affectations of solemnity had disappeared. She could not have told anybody what it was she feared; and yet the more she looked at the boy beside her, the more she felt their positions change, and feared and stood in awe, feeling that she was for the moment his slave, and must do anything he might command.
“Mrs. Kirkman,” said Will, “I don’t understand that sort of thing. I don’t know what bad use you can think I am going to make of it;—at all events it won’t be your fault. I shall not detain you five minutes if you will only tell me what I want to know.”
And she did tell him accordingly, not knowing how to resist, and warmed in the telling in spite of herself, and could not but let him know that she thought it was for Mary’s good, and to bring her to a sense of the vanity of all earthly things. She gave him scrupulously all the details. The story flowed out upon Will’s hungry ears with scarcely a pause. She told him all about the marriage, where it had happened, and who had performed it, and who had been present. Little Hugh had been present. She had no doubt he would remember, if it was recalled to his memory. Mrs. Kirkman recollected perfectly the look that Mary had thrown at her husband when she saw the child there. Poor Mary! she had thought so much of reputation and a good name. She had been so much thought of in the regiment. They all called her by that ridiculous name, Madonna Mary—and made so much of her, before——
“And did they not make much of her after?” said Will, quickly.
“It is a different thing,” said Mrs. Kirkman, softly shakingher long curls and returning to herself. “A poor sinner returning to the right way ought to be more warmly welcomed than even the best, if we can call any human creature good; but——”
“Is it my mother you call a poor sinner?” asked Will.
Then there was a pause. Mrs. Kirkman shook her head once more, and shook the long curls that hung over her cheeks; but it was difficult to answer. “We are all poor sinners,” she said. “Oh, my dear boy, if I could only persuade you how much more important it is to think of your own soul. If your poor dear mamma has done wrong, it is God who is her judge. I never judged her for my part, I never made any difference. I hope I know my own shortcomings too well for that.”
“I thought I heard you say something odd to her once,” said Will. “I should just like to see any one uncivil to my mother. But that’s not the question. I want that Mr. Churchill’s address, please.”
“I can truly say I never made any difference,” said Mrs. Kirkman; “some people might have blamed me—but I always thought of the Mary that loved much—— Oh, Will, what comforting words! I hope your dear mother has long, long ago repented of her error. Perhaps your father deceived her, as she was so young; perhaps it was all true the strange story he told about the register being burnt, and all that. We all thought it was best not to inquire into it. We know what we saw; but remember, you have pledged your word not to make any dispeace with what I have told you. You are not to make a disturbance in the family about it. It is all over and past, and everybody has agreed to forget it. You are not going to make any dispeace——”
“I never thought of making any dispeace,” said Will; but that was all he said. He was brief, as he always was, and uncommunicative, and inclined, now he had got all he wanted, to get up abruptly and go away.
“And now, my dear young friend, you must do something for me,” said Mrs. Kirkman, “in repayment for what I have done for you. You must read these, and you must not only read them, but think over them, and seek light where it is to be found. Oh, my dear boy, how anxious we are to search into any little mystery in connection with ourselves, and how little we think of the mysteries of eternity! You must promise to give a little attention to this great theme before this day has come to an end.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll read them,” said Will, and he thrust into hispocket a roll of tracts she gave him without any further thought what they were. The truth was, that he did not pay much attention to what she was saying; his head had begun to throb and feel giddy again, and he had a rushing in his ears. He had it all in his hands now, and the sense of his power overwhelmed him. He had never had such an instrument in his hands before, he had never known what it was to be capable of moving anybody, except to momentary displeasure or anxiety; and he felt as a man might feel in whose hand there had suddenly been placed the most powerful of weapons, with unlimited license to use it as he would—to break down castles with it or crowns, or slay armies at a blow—and only his own absolute pleasure to decide when or where it should fall. Something of intoxication and yet of alarm was in that first sense of power. He was rapt into a kind of ecstacy, and yet he was alarmed and afraid. He thrust the tracts into his pocket, and he received, cavalierly enough, Mrs. Kirkman’s parting salutations. He had got all he wanted from her, and Will’s was not a nature to be very expansive in the way of gratitude. Perhaps even, any sort of dim moral sense he might have on the subject, made him feel that in the news he had just heard there was not much room for gratitude. Anyhow he made very little pretence at those hollow forms of courtesy which are current in the elder world. He went away having got what he wanted, and left the colonel’s wife in a state of strange excitement and growing compunction. Oddly enough, Will’s scanty courtesy roused more compunctions in her mind than anything else had done. She had put Mary’s fate, as it were, into the hands of a boy who had so little sense of what was right as to withdraw in the most summary and abrupt way the moment his curiosity was satisfied; who had not even grace enough, or self-control enough, to go through the ordinary decorums, or pay common attention to what she said to him; and now this inexperienced undisciplined lad had an incalculable power in his hands—power to crush and ruin his own family, to dispossess his brother and disgrace his mother: and nothing but his own forbearance or good pleasure to limit him. What had she done?
Will walked about the streets for a full hour after, dizzy with the same extraordinary, intoxicating, alarming sense of power. Before, it had all been vague, now it was distinct and clear; and even beyond his desire to “right” himself, came the inclination to set this strange machine in motion, and try his new strength. He was still so much a boy, that he was curious to see the effect it would produce, eager to ascertain how it would work, and what it could do. He was like a child in possession of an infernal machine, longing to try it, and yet not unconscious of the probable mischief. The sense of his power went to his head, and intoxicated him like wine. Here it was all ready in his hands, an instrument which could take away more than life, and he was afraid of it, and of the strength of the recoil: and yet was full of eagerness to see it go off, and see what results it would actually bring forth. He walked about the town, not knowing where he was going, forgetting all about his mother’s commissions, and all about Percival, which was more extraordinary—solely occupied with the sensation that the power was in his hands. He went into the cathedral, and walked all round it, and never knew he had been there; and when at last he found himself at the railway station again, he woke up again abruptly, as if he had been in a dream. Then making an effort he set his wits to work about Percival, and asked himself what he was to do. Percival was nothing to Will: he was his Aunt Winnie’s husband, and perhaps had not used her well, and he could furnish no information half so clear or distinct as that which Mrs. Kirkman had given. Will did not see any reason in particular why he should go out of his way to seek such a man out. He had been no doubt his first informant, but in his present position of power and superiority, he did not feel that he had any need of Percival. And why should he seek him out? When he had sufficiently recovered his senses to go through this reasoning, Will went deliberately back to town again, and executed his mother’s commissions. He went to several shops, and gave orders which she had charged him with, and even took the trouble to choose the things she wanted, in the most painstaking way, and was as concerned that they should be right as if he had been the most dutiful and tender of sons; and all the while he was thinking to ruin her, and disgrace her, and put the last stigma upon her name, and render her an outcast from the peaceful world. Such was the strange contradiction that existed within him; he went back without speaking to any one, without seeing anybody, knitting his brows and thinking all the way. The train that carried him home, with his weapon in his hands, passed with a rush and shriek the train which was conveying Nelly, with a great basket of flowers in her lap, and a vague gleam of infinite content in her eyes, back to her nursery and her duties, with Hugh by her side, who was taking care of her, and losing himself, if there had been any harm in it. That sweet loss and gain was going on imperceptibly in the carriage where the one brother sat happy as a young prince, when the other brother shot past as it were on wings of flamelike a destroying angel. Neither thought of the other as they thus crossed, the one being busy with the pre-occupation of young love, the other lost in a passion, which was not hate, nor even enmity, which was not inconsistent with a kind of natural affection, and yet involved destruction and injury of the darkest and most overwhelming kind. Contrasts so sharply and clearly pointed occur but seldom in a world so full of modifications and complicated interests; yet they do occur sometimes. And this was how it was with Mary’s boys.
WHEN Wilfrid reached home, he found his mother by herself in the drawing-room. Winnie had a headache, or some other of those aches which depend upon temper and the state of the mind, and Aunt Agatha was sitting by her, in the darkened room, with bottles of eau de Cologne, and sal volatile, and smelling salts, and all the paraphernalia of this kind of indisposition. Aunt Agatha had been apt to take headaches herself in her younger days when she happened to be crossed, and she was not without an idea that it was a very orthodox resource for a woman when she could not have her own way. And thus they were shut up, exchanging confidences. It did poor Winnie good, and it did not do Miss Seton any harm. And Mary was alone downstairs. She was not looking so bright as when Wilfrid went away. The idea which Sir Edward had suggested to her, even if it had taken no hold of her mind, had breathed on her a possible cloud; and she looked up wistfully at her boy as he came in. Wilfrid, too, bore upon his face, to some extent, the marks of what he had been doing; but then his mother did not know what he had been doing, and could not guess what the dimness meant which was over his countenance. It was not a bright face at any time, but was often lost in mists, and its meaning veiled from his mother’s eyes; and she could not follow him, this time any more than other times, into the uncertain depths. All she could do was to look at him wistfully, and long to see a little clearer, and wonder, as she had so often wondered, how it was that his thoughts and ways were so often out of her ken—how it was that children could go so far away, and be so wholly sundered, even while at the very side of those who hadnursed them on their knees, and trained them to think and feel. A standing wonder, and yet the commonest thing in nature. Mary felt it over again with double force to-day, as he came and brought her her wool and bits of ribbon, and she looked into his face and did not know what its meaning was.
As for Will, it was a curious sensation for him, too, on his part. It was such an opportunity as he could scarcely have looked for, for opening to his mother the great discovery he had made, and the great changes that might follow. He could have had it all out with her and put his power into operation, and seen what its effects were, without fear of being disturbed. But he shrank from it, he could not tell why. He was not a boy of very fastidious feelings, but still to sit there facing her and look into her face, and tell her that he had been inquiring into her past life, and had found out her secret, was more than Will was capable of. To meditate doing it, and to think over what he would say, and to arrange the words in which he would tell her that it was still one of her sons who would have Earlston—was a very different thing from fairly looking her in the face and doing it. He stared at her for a moment in a way which startled Mary; and then the impossibility became evident to him, and he turned his eyes away from her and sat down.
“You look a little strange, Will,” said Mary. “Are you tired, or has anything happened? You startled me just now, you looked so pale.”
“No, I am not tired,” said Will, in his curt way. “I don’t know anything about being pale.”
“Well, you never were very rosy,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “I did not expect you so soon. I thought you would have gone to the Askells’, and come home with Hugh.”
“I never thought of that. I thought you wanted your wool and things,” said Will.
It was very slight, ordinary talk, and yet it was quivering with meaning on both sides, though neither knew what the other’s meaning was. Will, for his part, was answering his mother’s questions with something like the suppressed mania of homicide within him, not quite knowing whether at any moment the subdued purpose might not break out, and kill, and reveal itself; whereas his mother, totally unsuspecting how far things had gone, was longing to discover whether Percival had gained any power over him, and what that adversary’s tactics were.
“Have you seen anybody?” she said. “By the way, Sir Edward was talking of Major Percival—he seemed to thinkthat he might still be in Carlisle. Did you by any chance see anything of him there?”
She fixed her eyes full upon him as she spoke, but Will did not in any way shrink from her eyes.
“No,” he said carelessly. “I did not see him. He told me he was going to stay a day or two in Carlisle, but I did not look out for him, particularly. He gets to be a bore after the first.”
When Mary heard this, her face cleared up like the sky after a storm. It had been all folly, and once more she had made herself unhappy about nothing. How absurd it was! Percival was wicked, but still he had no cause to fix any quarrel upon her, or poison the mind of her son. It was on Winnie’s account he came, and on Winnie’s account, no doubt, he was staying; and in all likelihood Mrs. Ochterlony and her boys were as utterly unimportant to him, as in ordinary circumstances he was to them. Mary made thus the mistake by which a tolerant and open mind, not too much occupied about itself, sometimes goes astray. People go wrong much more frequently from thinking too much of themselves, and seeing their own shadow across everybody’s way; but yet there may be danger even in the lack of egotism: and thus it was that Mary’s face cleared up, and her doubts dispersed, just at the moment when she had most to dread.
Then there was a pause, and the homicidal impulse, so to speak, took possession of Will. He was playing with the things he had bought, putting them into symmetrical and unsymmetrical shapes on the table, and when he suddenly said “Mother,” Mrs. Ochterlony turned to him with a smile. He said “Mother,” and then he stopped short, and picked to pieces the construction he was making, but at the same time he never raised his eyes.
“Well, Will?” said Mary.
And then there was a brief, but sharp, momentary struggle in his mind. He meant to speak, and wanted to speak, but could not. His throat seemed to close with a jerk when he tried; the words would not come from his lips. It was not that he was ashamed of what he was going to do, or that any sudden compunction for his mother seized him. It was a kind of spasm of impossibility, as much physical as mental. He could no more do it, then he could lift the Cottage from its solid foundations. He went on arranging the little parcels on the table into shapes, square, oblong, and triangular, his fingers busy, but his mind much more busy, his eyes looking at nothing, and his lips unable to articulate a single word.
“Well, Will, what were you going to say?” said Mary, again.
“Nothing,” said Will; and he got up and went away with an abruptness which made his mother wonder and smile. It was only Willy’s way; but it was an exaggerated specimen of Will’s way. She thought to herself when he was gone, with regret, that it was a great pity he was so abrupt. It did not matter at home, where everybody knew him; but among strangers, where people did not know him, it might do him so much injury. Poor Will! but he knew nothing about Percival, and cared nothing, and Mary was ashamed of her momentary fear.
As for the boy himself, he went out, and took himself to task, and felt all over him a novel kind of tremor, a sense of strange excitement, the feeling of one who had escaped a great danger. But that was not all the feeling which ought to have been in his mind. He had neglected and lost a great opportunity, and though it was not difficult to make opportunities, Will felt by instinct that his mother’s mere presence had defeated him. He could not tell her of the discovery he had made. He might write her a letter about it, or send the news to her at secondhand; but to look in her face and tell her, was impossible. To sit down there by her side, and meet her eyes, and tell her that he had been making inquiries into her character, and that she was not the woman she was supposed to be, nor was the position of her children such as the world imagined, was an enterprise which Wilfrid had once and for ever proved impossible. He stood blank before this difficulty which lay at the very beginning of his undertaking; he had not only failed, but he saw that he must for ever fail. It amazed him, but he felt it was final. His mouth was closed, and he could not speak.
And then he thought he would wait until Hugh came home. Hugh was not his mother, nor a woman. He was no more than Will’s equal at the best, and perhaps even his inferior; and to him, surely, it could be said. He waited for a long time, and kept lingering about the roads, wondering what train his brother would come by, and feeling somehow reluctant to go in again, so long as his mother was alone. For in Mrs. Ochterlony’s presence Will could not forget that he had a secret—that he had done something out of her knowledge, and had something of the most momentous character to tell her, and yet could not tell it to her. It would be different with Hugh. He waited loitering about upon the dusty summer roads, biting his nails to the quick, and labouring hard through a sea ofthought. This telling was disagreeable, even it was only Hugh that had to be told—more disagreeable than anything else about the business, far more disagreeable, certainly, than he had anticipated it would be; and Wilfrid did not quite make out how it was that a simple fact should be so difficult to communicate. It enlarged his views so far, and gave him a glimpse into the complications of maturer life, but it did not in any way divert him from his purpose, or change his ideas about his rights. At length the train appeared by which it was certain Hugh must come home. Wilfrid sauntered along the road within sight of the little station to meet his brother, and yet when he saw Hugh actually approaching, his heart gave a jump in his breast. The moment had come, and he must do it, which was a very different thing from thinking it over, and planning what he was to say.
“You here, Will!” said Hugh. “I looked for you in Carlisle. Why didn’t you go to Mrs. Askell’s and wait for me?”
“I had other things to do,” said Will, briefly.
Hugh laughed. “Very important things, I have no doubt,” he said; “but still you might have waited for me, all the same. How is Aunt Winnie? I saw that fellow,—that husband of hers,—at the station. I should like to know what he wants hanging about here.”
“He wantsher, perhaps,” said Will, though with another jump of his heart.
“He had better not come and bother her,” said Hugh. “She may not be perfect herself, but I won’t stand it. She is my mother’s sister, after all, and she is a woman. I hope you won’t encourage him to hang about here.”
“I!” cried Will, with amazement and indignation.
“Yes,” said Hugh, with elder-brotherly severity. “Not that I think you would mean any harm by it, Will; it is not a sort of thing you can be expected to understand. A fellow like that should be kept at a distance. When a man behaves badly to a woman—to his wife—to such a beautiful creature as she has been——”
“I don’t see anything very beautiful about her,” said Will.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Hugh, who was hot and excited, having been taken into Winnie’s confidence. “She has been beautiful, and that’s enough. Indeed, she ought to be beautiful now, if that fellow hadn’t been a brute. And if he means to come back here——”“Perhaps it is not her he wants,” said Will, whose profound self-consciousness made him play quite a new part in the dialogue.
“What could he want else?” said Hugh, with scorn. “You may be sure it is no affection for any ofusthat brings him here.”
Here was the opportunity, if Will could but have taken it. Now was the moment to tell him that something other than Winnie might be in Percival’s mind—that it was his own fortune, and not hers, that hung in the balance. But Will was dumb; his lips were sealed; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. It was not his will that was in fault. It was a rebellion of all his physical powers, a rising up of nature against his purpose. He was silent in spite of himself; he said not another word as they walked on together. He suffered Hugh to stray into talk about the Askells, about the Museum, about anything or nothing. Once or twice he interrupted the conversation abruptly with some half-dozen words, which brought it to a sudden stop, and gave him the opportunity of broaching his own subject. But when he came to that point he was struck dumb. Hugh, all innocent and unconscious, in serene elderly-brotherly superiority, good humoured and condescending, and carelessly affectionate, was as difficult to deal with as Mary herself. Without withdrawing from his undertaking, or giving up his “rights,” Wilfrid felt himself helpless; he could not say it out. It seemed to him now that so far from giving in to it, as he once imagined, without controversy, Hugh equally without controversy would set it aside as something monstrous, and that his new hope would be extinguished and come to an end if his elder brother had the opportunity of thus putting it down at once. When they reached home, Will withdrew to his own room, with a sense of being baffled and defeated—defeated before he had struck a blow. He did not come downstairs again, as they remembered afterwards—he did not want any tea. He had not a headache, as Aunt Agatha, now relieved from attendance upon Winnie, immediately suggested. All he wanted was to be left alone, for he had something to do. This was the message that came downstairs. “He is working a great deal too much,” said Aunt Agatha, “you will see he will hurt his brain or something;” while Hugh, too, whispered to his mother, “You shall see;Inever did much, but Will will go in for all sorts of honours,” the generous fellow whispered in his mother’s ear; and Mary smiled, in her heart thinking so too. If they had seen Will at the moment sitting with his face supported by both his hands, biting his nails and knitting his brows, and ponderingmore intently than any man ever pondered over classic puzzle or scientific problem, they might have been startled out of those pleasant thoughts.
And yet the problem he was considering was one that racked his brain, and made his head ache, had he been sufficiently at leisure to feel it. The more impossible he felt it to explain himself and make his claim, the more obstinately determined was he to make it, and have what belonged to him. His discouragement and sense of defeat did but intensify his resolution. He had failed to speak, notwithstanding his opportunities; but he could write, or he could employ another voice as his interpreter. With all his egotism and determination, Wilfrid was young, nothing but a boy, and inexperienced, and at a loss what to do. Everything seemed easy to him until he tried to do it; and when he tried, everything seemed impossible. He had thought it the most ordinary affair in the world to tell his discovery to his mother and brother, until the moment came which in both cases proved the communication to be beyond his powers. And now he thought he could write. After long pondering, he got up and opened the little desk upon which he had for years written his verses and exercises, troubled by nothing worse than a doubtful quantity, and made an endeavour to carry out his last idea. Will’s style was not a bad style. It was brief and terse, and to the point,—a remarkable kind of diction for a boy,—but he did not find that it suited his present purpose. He put himself to torture over his letters. He tried it first in one way, and then in another; but however he put it, he felt within himself that it would not do. He had no sort of harsh or unnatural meaning in his mind. They were still his mother and brother to whom he wanted to write, and he had no inclination to wound their feelings, or to be disrespectful or unkind. In short, it only required this change, and his establishment in what he supposed his just position, to make him the kindest and best of sons and brothers. He toiled over his letters as he had never toiled over anything in his life. He could not tell how to express himself, nor even what to say. He addressed his mother first, and then Hugh, and then his mother again; but the more he laboured the more impossible he found his task. When Mrs. Ochterlony came upstairs and opened his door to see what her boy was about, Wilfrid stumbled up from his seat red and heated, and shut up his desk, and faced her with an air of confusion and trouble which she could not understand. It was not too late even then to bring her in and tell her all; and this possibility bewildered Will, and filled him with agitation and excitement, to which naturally his mother had no clue.
“What is the matter?” she said, anxiously; “are you ill, Will? Have you a headache? I thought you were in bed.”
“No, I am all right,” said Will, facing her with a look, which in its confusion seemed sullen. “I am busy. It is too soon to go to bed.”
“Tell me what is wrong,” said Mary, coming a step further into the room. “Will, my dear boy, I am sure you are not well. You have not been quarrelling with any one—with Hugh——?”
“With Hugh!” said Will, with a little scorn; “why should I quarrel with Hugh?”
“Why, indeed!” said Mrs. Ochterlony, smiling faintly; “but you do not look like yourself. Tell me what you have been doing, at least.”
Will’s heart thumped against his breast. He might put her into the chair by which she was standing, and tell her everything and have it over. This possibility still remained to him. He stood for a second and looked at her, and grew breathless with excitement, but then somehow his voice seemed to die away in his throat.
“If I were to tell you what I was doing, you would not understand it,” he said, repeating mechanically words which he had used in good faith, with innocent schoolboy arrogance, many a time before. As for Mary, she looked at him wistfully, seeing something in his eyes which she could not interpret. They had never been candid, frank eyes like Hugh’s. Often enough before, they had been impatient of her scrutiny, and had veiled their meaning with an apparent blank; but yet there had never been any actual harm hid by the artifice. Mary sighed; but she did not insist, knowing how useless it was. If it was anything, perhaps it was some boyish jealousy about Nelly,—an imaginary feeling which would pass away, and leave no trace behind. But, whatever it was, it was vain to think of finding it out by questions; and she gave him her good-night kiss and left him, comforting herself with the thought that most likely it was only one of Will’s uncomfortable moments, and would be over by to-morrow. But when his mother went away, Will for his part sank down, with the strangest tremor, in his chair. Never before in his life had this sick and breathless excitement, this impulse of the mind and resistance of the flesh, been known to him, and he could not bear it. It seemed to him he never could stand in her presence, never feel his mother’s eyes upon him, without feeling that now was the moment that he must and ought to tell her, and yet could not tell her, no more than if he were speechless. He had never felt very deeply all hislife before, and the sense of this struggle took all his strength from him. It made his heart beat, so that the room and the house and the very solid earth on which he stood seemed to throb and tingle round him; it was like standing for ever on the edge of a precipice over which the slightest movement would throw him, and the very air seemed to rush against his ears as it would do if he were falling. He sank down into his chair, and his heart beat, and the pulses throbbed in his temples. What was he to do?—he could not speak, he could not write, and yet it must be told, and his rights gained, and the one change made that should convert him into the tenderest son, the most helpful brother, that ever man or woman had. At last in his despair and pertinacity, there came into his mind that grand expedient which occurs naturally to everything that is young and unreasonable under the pressure of unusual trials. He would go away; he could not go on seeing them continually, with this communication always ready to break from the lips which would not utter it,—nor could he write to them while he was still with them, and when any letter must be followed by an immediate explanation. But he could fly; and when he was at a safe distance, then he could tell them. No doubt it was cowardice to a certain extent; but there were other things as well. Partly it was impatience, and partly the absoluteness and imperious temper of youth, and that intolerance of everything painful that comes natural to it. He sat in his chair, noiseless and thinking, in the stillness of night, a poor young soul, tempted and yielding to temptation, sinful, yet scarcely conscious how sinful he was, and yet at the same time forlorn with that profound forlornness of egotism and ill-doing which is almost pathetic in the young. He could consult nobody, take no one into his confidence. The only counsellors he had known in all his small experience were precisely those upon whom he was about to turn. He was alone, and had everything to plan, everything to do for himself.
And yet was there nobody whom he could take into his confidence? Suddenly, in the stillness of the night a certain prosperous, comfortable figure came into the boy’s mind—one who thought it was well to get money and wealth and power, anyhow except dishonestly, which of course was an impracticable and impolitic way. When that idea came to him like an inspiration, Will gave a little start, and looked up, and saw the blue dawn making all the bars of his window visible against the white blind that covered it. Night was gone with its dark counsels, and the day had come. What he did after that was to take out his boy’s purse, and count over carefully all themoney it contained. It was not much, but yet it was enough. Then he took his first great final step in life, with a heart that beat in his ears, but not loud enough to betray him. He went downstairs softly as the dawn brightened, and all the dim staircase and closed doors grew visible, revealed by the silent growth of the early light. Nobody heard him, nobody dreamed that any secret step could ever glide down those stairs or out of the innocent honest house. He was the youngest in it, and should have been the most innocent; and he thought he meant no evil. Was it not his right he was going to claim? He went softly out, going through the drawing-room window, which it was safer to leave open than the door, and across the lawn, which made no sound beneath his foot. The air of the summer morning was like balm, and soothed him, and the blueness brightened and grew rosy as he went his way among the early dews. The only spot on which, like Gideon’s fleece, no dew had fallen, was poor Will’s beating heart, as he went away in silence and secrecy from his mother’s door.