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“No,” said Mr. Penrose; “it is not like a childish freak; but still I think it was the wisest thing he could do to come to me. It is impossible you could be his best counsellor where you are yourself so much concerned, and where such important interests are at stake.”
“Let me know at once what you mean,” said Mary faintly. “What important interests are at stake?”
She made a rapid calculation in her mind at the moment, and her heart grew sicker and sicker. Will had been, when she came to think of it, more than a week away from home, and many things might have happened in that time – things which she could not realize nor put in any shape, but which made her spirit faint out of her and all her strength ooze away.
“My dear Mary,” said Mr. Penrose, mildly, “why should you keep any pretence with me? Will has told me all. You cannot expect that a young man like him, at the beginning of his life, would relinquish his rights and give up such a fine succession merely out of consideration to your feelings. I am very sorry for you, and he is very sorry. Nothing shall be done on our part to compromise you beyond what is absolutely necessary; but your unfortunate circumstances are not his fault, and it is only reasonable that he should claim his rights.”
“What are his rights?” said Mary; “what do you suppose my unfortunate circumstances to be? Speak plainly – or, stop; I will tell you what he has heard. He has heard that my husband and I were married in India before he was born. That is quite true; and I suppose he and you think – ” said Mary, coming to a sudden gasp for breath, and making a pause against her will. “Then I will tell you the facts,” she said, with a labouring, long-drawn breath, when she was able to resume. “We were married in Scotland, as you and everybody know; it was not a thing done in secret. Everybody about Kirtell – everybody in the county knew of it. We went to Earlston afterwards, where Hugh’s mother was, and to Aunt Agatha. There was no shame or concealment anywhere, and you know that. We went out to India after, but not till we had gone to see all our friends; and everybody knew – ”
“My wife even asked you here,” said Mr. Penrose, reflectively. “It is very extraordinary; I mentioned all that to Will: but, my dear Mary, what is the use of going over it in this way, when there is this fact, which you don’t deny, which proves that Hugh Ochterlony thought it necessary to do you justice at the last?”
Mary was too much excited to feel either anger or shame. The colour scarcely deepened on her cheek. “I will tell you about that,” she said. “I resisted it as long as it was possible to resist. The man at Gretna died, and his house and all his records were burnt, and the people were all dead who had been present, and I had lost the lines. I did not think them of any consequence. And then my poor Hugh was seized with a panic – you remember him, uncle,” said Mary, in her excitement, with the tears coming to her eyes. “My poor Hugh! how much he felt everything, how hard it was for him to be calm and reasonable when he thought our interests concerned. I have thought since, he had some presentiment of what was going to happen. He begged me for his sake to consent that he might be sure there would be no difficulty about the pension or anything. It was like dragging my heart out of my breast,” said Mary, with the tears dropping on her hands, “but I yielded to please him.”
And then there was a pause, inevitable on her part, for her heart was full, and she had lost the faculty of speech. As for Mr. Penrose, he gave quiet attention to all she was saying, and made mental notes of it while he filled himself another glass of wine. He was not an impartial listener, for he had taken his side, and had the conducting of the other case in his hands. When Mary came to herself, and could see and hear again – when her heart was not beating so wildly in her ears, and her wet eyes had shed their moisture, she gave a look at him with a kind of wonder, marvelling that he said nothing. The idea of not being believed when she spoke was one which had never entered into her mind.
“You expect me to say something,” said Mr. Penrose, when he caught her eye. “But I don’t see what I can say. All that you have told me just amounts to this, that your first marriage rests upon your simple assertion; you have no documentary or any other kind of evidence. My dear Mary, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but if you consider how strong is your interest in it, what a powerful motive you have to keep up that story, and that you confess it rests on your word alone, you will see that, as Wilfrid’s adviser, I am not justified in departing from the course we have taken. It is too important to be decided by mere feeling. I am very sorry for you, but I have Wilfrid’s interests to think of,” said Mr. Penrose, slowly swallowing his glass of wine.
Mary looked at him aghast; she did not understand him. It seemed to her as if some delusion had taken possession of her mind, and that the words conveyed a meaning which no human words could bear. “I do not understand you,” she said; “I suppose there is some mistake. What course is it you have taken? I want to know what you mean.”
“It is not a matter to be discussed with you,” said Mr. Penrose. “Whatever happens I would not be forgetful of a lady’s feelings. From the first I have said that it must be a matter of private arrangement; and I have no doubt Hugh will see it in the same light. I have written to him, but I have not yet received a satisfactory answer. Under all the circumstances I feel we are justified in asserting Wilfrid to be Major Ochterlony’s only lawful son – ”
An involuntary cry came out of Mary’s breast. She pushed her chair away from the table, and sat bending forward, looking at him. The pang was partly physical, as if some one had thrust a spear into her heart; and beyond that convulsive motion she could neither move nor speak.
“ – and of course he must be served heir to his uncle,” said Mr. Penrose. “Where things so important are concerned, you cannot expect that feeling can be allowed to bear undue sway. It is in this light that Wilfrid sees it. He is ready to do anything for you, anything for his brother; but he cannot be expected to sacrifice his legal rights. I hope Hugh will see how reasonable this is, and I think for your own sake you should use your influence with him. If he makes a stand, you know it will ruin your character, and make everybody aware of the unhappy position of affairs; and it cannot do any good to him.”
Mary heard all this and a great deal more, and sat stupified with a dull look of wonder on her face, making no reply. She thought she had formed some conception of what was coming to her, but in reality she had no conception of it; and she sat listening, coming to an understanding, taking it painfully into her mind, learning to see that it had passed out of the region of what might be – that the one great, fanciful, possible danger of her life had developed into a real danger, more dreadful, more appalling than anything she had ever conceived of. She sat thus, with her chair thrust back, looking in Mr. Penrose’s face, following with her eyes all his unconcerned movements, feeling his words beat upon her ears like a stinging rain. And this was all true; love, honour, pride, or faith had nothing to do with it. Whether she was a wretched woman, devising a lie to cover her shame, or a pure wife telling her tale with lofty truth and indignation, mattered nothing. It was in this merciless man’s hand, and nothing but merciless evidence and proof would be of any use. She sat and listened to him, hearing the same words over and over; that her feelings were to be considered; that nothing was to be done to expose her; that Will had consented to that, and was anxious for that; that it must be matter of private arrangement, and that her character must be spared. It was this iteration that roused Mary, and brought her back, as it were, out of her stupefaction into life.
“I do not understand all you are saying,” she said, at last; “it sounds like a horrible dream; I feel as if you could not mean it: but one thing – do you mean that Hugh is to be made to give up his rights, by way of sparing me?”
“By way of sparing a public trial and exposure – which is what it must come to otherwise,” said Mr. Penrose. “I don’t know, poor boy, how you can talk about his rights.”
“Then listen to me,” said Mary, rising up, and holding by her chair to support herself; “I may be weak, but I am not like that. My boy shall not give up his rights. I know what I am saying; if there should be twenty trials, I am ready to bear them. It shall be proved whether in England a true woman cannot tell her true story, and be believed. Neither lie nor shame has ever attached to me. If I have to see my own child brought against me – God forgive you! – I will try to bear it. My poor Will! my poor Will! – but Hugh’s boy shall not be sacrificed. What! my husband, my son, my own honour – a woman’s honour involves all belonging to her – Do you think I, for the sake of pain or exposure, would give them all up? It must be that you have gone out of your senses, and don’t know what to say. I, to save myself at my son’s expense!”
“But Wilfrid is your son too,” said Mr. Penrose, shrinking somewhat into himself.
“Oh, my poor Will! my poor Will!” said Mary, moaning in her heart; and after that she went away, and left the supporter of Will’s cause startled, but not moved from his intention, by himself. As for Mrs. Ochterlony, she went up into her room, and sank down into the first chair that offered, and clasped her hands over her heart lest it should break forth from the aching flesh. She thought no more of seeing Will, or of telling him her story, or delivering him from his delusion. What she thought of was, to take him into her arms in an infinite pity, when the poor boy, who did not know what he was doing, should come to himself. And Hugh – Hugh her husband, who was thought capable of such wrong and baseness – Hugh her boy, whose name and fame were to be taken from him, – and they thought she would yield to it, to save herself a pang! When she came to remember that the night was passing, and to feel the chill that had crept over her, and to recall to herself that she must not exhaust her strength, Mary paused in her thoughts, and fell upon her knees instead. Even that was not enough; she fell prostrate, as one who would have fallen upon the Deliverer’s feet; but she could say no prayer. Her heart itself seemed at last to break forth, and soar up out of her, in a speechless supplication – “Let this cup pass!” Did He not say it once Who had a heavier burden to bear?
CHAPTER XLV
SO very late it was when Will came in, that he crept up to his room with a silent stealth which felt more like ill-doing to him than any other sin he had been guilty of. He crept to his room, though he would have been glad to have lingered, and warmed himself and been revived with food. But, at the end of this long, wretched day, he was more than ever unfit to face his mother, who he felt sure must be watching for him, watchful and unwearied as she always had been. It did not occur to him that Mrs. Ochterlony, insensible for the moment to all sounds, was lying enveloped in darkness, with her eyes open, and all her faculties at work, and nothing but pain, pain, ever, for ever, in her mind. That she could be wound up to a pitch of emotion so great that she would not have heard whatever noise he might have made, that she would not have heeded him, that he was safe to go and come as he liked, so far as Mary was concerned, was an idea that never entered Will’s mind. He stole in, and went softly up the stairs, and swallowed the glass of wine the butler compassionately brought him, without even saying a word of thanks. He was chilled to his bones, and his head ached, and a sense of confused misery was in all his frame. He crept into his bed like a savage, in the dark, seeking warmth, seeking forgetfulness, and hiding; so long as he could be hid, it did not matter. His mother could not come in with the light in her hand to stand by his bedside, and drive all ghosts and terrors away, for he had locked the door in his panic. No deliverance could come to him, as it seemed, any way. If she was “angry” before, what must she be now when he had fled and avoided her? and poor Will lay breathing hard in the dark, wondering within himself why it was he dared not face his mother. What had he done? Instead of having spent the day in his usual fashion, why was he weary, and footsore, and exhausted, and sick in body and in mind? He had meant her no harm, he had done no wrong he knew of. It was only a confused, unintelligible weight on his conscience, or rather on his consciousness, that bowed him down, and made him do things which he did not understand. He went to sleep at last, for he was young and weary, and nothing could have kept him from sleeping; but he had a bad night. He dreamed dreadful dreams, and in the midst of them all saw Mary, always Mary, threatening him, turning away from him, leaving him to fall over precipices and into perils. He started up a dozen times in the course of that troubled night, waking to a confused sense of solitude, and pain, and abandonment, which in the dark and the silence were very terrible to bear. He was still only a boy, and he had done wrong, dreadful wrong, and he did not know what it was.
In the morning when Will woke things were not much better. He was utterly unrefreshed by his night’s rest – if the partial unconsciousness of his sleep could be called rest; and the thought he woke to was, that however she might receive him, to-day he must see his mother. She might be, probably was, “angry,” beyond anything he could conceive; but however that might be, he must see her and meet her wrath. It was not until he had fully realized that thought, that a letter was brought to Will, which increased his excitement. It was a very unusual thing for him to get letters, and he was startled accordingly. He turned it over and over before he opened it, and thought it must be from Hugh. Hugh, too, must have adopted the plan of pouring out his wrath against his brother for want of any better defence to make. But then he perceived that the writing was not Hugh’s. When he opened it Will grew pale, and then he grew red. It was a letter which Nelly Askell had written before she wrote the one to Hugh, which had roused him out of his despondency. Something had inspired the little girl that day. She had written this too, like the other, without very much minding what she meant. This is what Will read upon the morning of the day which he already felt to be in every description a day of fate: —
“Will! – I don’t think I can ever call you dear Will again, or think of you as I used to do – oh, Will, what are you doing? If I had been you I would have been tied to the stake, torn with wild horses, done anything that used to be done to people, rather than turn against my mother. I would have done that for my mother, and if I had had yours! Oh, Will, say you don’t mean it? I think sometimes you can’t mean it, but have got deluded somehow, for you know you have a bad temper. How could you ever believe it; She is not my mother, but I know she never did any wrong. She may have sinned perhaps, as people say everybody sins, but she never could have done any wrong; look in her face, and just try whether you can believe it. It is one comfort to me that if you mean to be so wicked (which I cannot believe of you), and were to win (which is not possible), you would never more have a day’s happiness again. I hope you would never have a day’s happiness. You would break her heart, for she is a woman, and though you would not break his heart, you would put his life all wrong, and it would haunt you, and you would pray to be poor, or a beggar, or anything rather than in a place that does not belong to you. You may think I don’t know, but I do know. I am a woman, and understand things better than a boy like you. Oh, Will! we used to be put in the same cradle, and dear Mrs. Ochterlony used to nurse us both when we were babies. Sometimes I think I should have been your sister. If you will come back and put away all this which is so dreadful to think of, I will never more bring it up against you. I for one will forget it, as if it had never been. Nobody shall put it into your mind again. We will forgive you, and love you the same as ever; and when you are a man, and understand and see what it is you have been saved from, you will go down on your knees and thank God.
“If I had been old enough to travel by myself, or to be allowed to do what I like, I should have gone to Liverpool too, to have given you no excuse. It is not so easy to write; but oh, Will, you know what I mean. Come back, and let us forget that you were ever so foolish and so wicked. I could cry when I think of you all by yourself, and nobody to tell you what is right. Come back, and nobody shall ever bring it up against you. Dear Will! don’t you love us all too well to make us unhappy? – Still your affectionate Nelly.”
This letter startled the poor boy, and affected him in a strange way. It brought the tears to his eyes. It touched him somehow, not by its reproaches, but by the thought that Nelly cared. She had gone over to Hugh’s side like all the rest – and yet she cared and took upon her that right of reproach and accusation which is more tender than praise. And it made Will’s heart ache in a dull way to see that they all thought him wicked. What had he done that was wicked? He ached, poor boy, not only in his heart but in his head, and all over him. He did not get up even to read his letter, but lay in a kind of sad stupor all the morning, wondering if his mother was still in the house – wondering if she would come to him – wondering if she was so angry that she no longer desired to see him. The house was more quiet than usual, he thought – there was no stir in it of voices or footsteps. Perhaps Mrs. Ochterlony had gone away again – perhaps he was to be left here, having got Uncle Penrose on his side, to his sole company – excommunicated and cast off by his own. Wilfrid lay pondering all these thoughts till he could bear it no longer; instead of his pain and shrinking a kind of dogged resistance came into his mind; at least he would go and face it, and see what was to happen to him. He would go downstairs and find out, to begin with, what this silence meant.
Perhaps it was just because it was so much later than usual that he felt as if he had been ill when he got up – felt his limbs trembling under him, and shivered, and grew hot and cold – or perhaps it was the fatigue and mental commotion of yesterday. By this time he felt sure that his mother must be gone. Had she been in the house she would have come to see him. She would have seized the opportunity when he could not escape from her. No doubt she was gone, after waiting all yesterday for him, – gone either hating him or scorning him, casting him off from her; and he felt that he had not deserved that. Perhaps he might have deserved that Hugh should turn his enemy – notwithstanding that, even for Hugh he felt himself ready to do anything – but to his mother he had done no harm. He had meditated nothing but good to her. He would not have thought of marrying, or giving to any one but her the supreme place in his house. He would never have asked her or made any doubt about it, but taken her at once to Earlston, and showed her everything there arranged according to her liking. This was what Will had always intended and settled upon. And his mother, for whom he would have done all this, had gone away again, offended and angry, abandoning him to his own devices. Bitterness took possession of his soul as he thought of it. He meant it only for their good – for justice and right, and to have his own; and this was the cruel way in which they received it, as if he had done it out of unkind feelings – even Nelly! A sense that he was wronged came into Wilfrid’s mind as he dressed himself, and looked at his pale face in the glass, and smoothed his long brown hair. And yet he stepped out of his room with the feelings of one who ventures upon an undiscovered country, a new region, in which he does not know whether he is to meet with good or evil. He had to support himself by the rail as he went downstairs. He hesitated and trembled at the drawing-room door, which was a room Mr. Penrose never occupied. Breakfast must be over long ago. If there was any lady in the house, no doubt she would be found there.
He put his hand on the door, but it was a minute or more before he could open it, and he heard no sound within. No doubt she had gone away. He had walked miles yesterday to avoid her, but yet his heart was sore and bled, and he felt deserted and miserable to think that she was gone. But when Will had opened the door, the sight he saw was more wonderful to him than if she had been gone. Mary was seated at the table writing: she was pale, but there was something in her face which told of unusual energy and resolution, a kind of inspiration which gave character to every movement she made. And she was so much preoccupied, that she showed no special excitement at sight of her boy; she stopped and put away her pen, and rose up looking at him with pitiful eyes. “My poor boy!” she said, and kissed him in her tender way. And then she sat down at the table, and went back to her letters again.
It was not simple consternation which struck Will; it was a mingled pang of wonder and humiliation and sharp disappointment. Only her poor boy! – only the youngest, the child as he had always been, not the young revolutionary to whom Nelly had written that letter, whom Mrs. Ochterlony had come anxious and in haste to seek. She was more anxious now about her letters apparently than about him, and there was nothing but tenderness and sorrow in her eyes; and when she did raise her head again, it was to remark his paleness and ask if he was tired. “Go and get some breakfast, Will,” she said; but he did not care for breakfast. He had not the heart to move – he sat in the depths of boyish mortification and looked at her writing her letters. Was that all that it mattered? or was she only making a pretence at indifference? But Mary was too much occupied evidently for any pretence. Her whole figure and attitude were full of resolution. Notwithstanding the pity of her voice as she addressed him, and the longing look in her eyes, there was something in her which Wilfrid had never seen before, which revealed to him in a kind of dull way that his mother was wound up to some great emergency, that she had taken a great resolution, and was occupied by matters of life and death.
“You are very busy, it seems,” he said, peevishly, when he had sat for some time watching her, wondering when she would speak to him. To find that she was not angry, that she had something else to think about, was not half so great a relief as it appeared.
“Yes, I am busy,” said Mary. “I am writing to your brother, Will, and to some people who know all about me, and I have no time to lose. Your Uncle Penrose is a hard man, and I am afraid he will be hard on Hugh.”
“No, mother,” said Will, feeling his heart beat quick; “he shall not be hard upon Hugh. I want to tell you that. I want to have justice; but for anything else – Hugh shall have whatever he wishes; and as for you – ”
“Oh, Will,” said Mrs. Ochterlony; and somehow it seemed to poor Will’s disordered imagination that she and his letter were speaking together – “I had almost forgotten that you had anything to do with it. If you had but come first and spoken to me – ”
“Why should I have come and spoken to you?” said Will, growing into gradual excitement; “it will not do you any harm. I am your son as well as Hugh – if it is his or if it is mine, what does it matter? I knew you would be angry if I stood up for myself; but a man must stand up for himself when he knows what are his rights.”
“Will, you must listen to me,” said Mary, putting away her papers, and turning round to him. “It is Mr. Penrose who has put all this in your head: it could not be my boy that had such thoughts. Oh, Will! my poor child! And now we are in his pitiless hands,” said Mary, with a kind of cry, “and it matters nothing what you say or what I say. You have put yourself in his hands.”
“Stop, mother,” said Will; “don’t make such a disturbance about it. Uncle Penrose has nothing to do with it. It is my doing. I will do anything in the world for you, whatever you like to tell me; but I won’t let a fellow be there who has no right to be there. I am the heir, and I will have my rights.”