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.”
“you are not the heir,” said mrs. ochterlony, frightened for the moment by the tone and his vehemence, and his strange looks.
“i heard it from two people that were both there,” said will, with a gloomy composure. “it was not without asking about it. i am not blaming you, mother—you might have some reason;—but it was i that was born after that thing that happened in india. what is the use of struggling against it? and if it is i that am the heir, why should you try to keep me out of my rights?”
“will,” said mary, suddenly driven back into regions of personal emotion, which she thought she had escaped from, and falling by instinct into those wild weaknesses of personal argument to which women resort when they are thus suddenly stung. “will, look me in the face and tell me. can you believe your dear father, who was true as—as heaven itself; can you believe me, who never told you a lie, to have been such wretched deceivers? can you think we were so wicked? will, look me in the face!”
“mother,” said will, whose mind was too little imaginative to be moved by this kind of argument, except to a kind of impatience. “what does it matter my looking you in the face? what does it matter about my father being true? you might have some reason for it. i am not blaming you; but so long as it was a fact what does that matter? i don’t want to injure any one—i only want my rights.”
it was mary’s turn now to be struck dumb. she had thought he was afraid of her, and had fled from her out of shame for what he had done; but he looked in her face as she told him with unhesitating frankness, and even that touch of impatience as of one whose common sense was proof to all such appeals. for her own part, when she was brought back to it, she felt the effect of the dreadful shock she had received; and she could not discuss this matter reasonably with her boy. her mind fell off into a mingled anguish and horror and agonized sense of his sin and pity for him. “oh, will, your rights,” she cried; “your rights! your rights are to be forgiven and taken back, and loved and pitied, though you do not understand what love is. these are all the rights you have. you are young, and you do not know what you are doing. you have still a right to be forgiven.”
“i was not asking to be forgiven,” said will, doggedly. “i have done no harm. i never said a word against you. i will give hugh whatever he likes to get himself comfortably out in the world. i don’t want to make any fuss or hurry. it can be quietly managed, if he will; but it’s me that earlston ought to come to; and i am not going to be driven out of it by talk. i should just like to know what hugh would do if he was in my place.”
“hugh could never have been in your place,” cried mary, in her anguish and indignation. “i ought to have seen this is what it would come to. i ought to have known when i saw your jealous temper, even when you were a baby. oh, my little will! how will you ever bear it when you come to your senses, and know what it is you have been doing? slandering your dear father’s name and mine, though all the world knows different—and trying to supplant your brother, your elder brother, who has always been good to you. god forgive them that have brought my boy to this,” said mary, with tears. she kept gazing at him, even with her eyes full. it did not seem possible that he could be insensible to her look, even if he was insensible to her words.
wilfrid, for his part, got up and began to walk about the room. it was hard, very hard to meet his mother’s eyes. “when she is vexed, she gives a fellow such a look.” he remembered those words which he had said to uncle penrose only yesterday with a vague sort of recollection. but when he got up his own bodily sensations somehow gave him enough to do. he half forgot about his mother in the strange feeling he had in his physical frame, as if his limbs did not belong to him, nor his head either for that part, which seemed to be floating about in the air, without any particular connexion with the rest of him. it must be that he was so very tired, for when he sat down and clutched at the arms of his chair, he seemed to come out of his confusion and see mrs. ochterlony again, and know what she had been talking about. he said, with something that looked like sullenness: “nobody brought me to this—i brought myself,” in answer to what she had said, and fell, as it were, into a moody reverie, leaning upon the arms of his chair. mary saw it, and thought it was that attitude of obstinate and immovable resolve into which she had before seen him fall; and she dried her eyes with a little flash of indignation, and turned again to the half-finished letter which trembled in her hands, and which she could not force her mind back to. she said to herself in a kind of despair, that the bitter cup must be drunk—that there was nothing for it but to do battle for her son’s rights, and lose no time in vain outcries, but forgive the unhappy boy when he came to his right mind and returned to her again. she turned away, with her heart throbbing and bleeding, and made an effort to recover her composure and finish her letter. it was a very important letter, and required all her thoughts. but if it had been hard to do it before, it was twenty times harder now.
just at that moment there was a commotion at the door, and a sound of some one entering below. it might be only mr. penrose coming back, as he sometimes did, to luncheon. but every sound tingled through mrs. ochterlony in the excitement of her nerves. then there came something that made her spring to her feet—a single tone of a voice struck on her ear, which she thought could only be her own fancy. but it was not her fancy. some one came rushing up the stairs, and dashed into the room. mary gave a great cry, and ran into his arms, and will, startled and roused up from a sudden oblivion which he did not understand, drew his hand across his heavy eyes, and looked up doubting, and saw hugh—hugh standing in the middle of the room holding his mother, glowing with fresh air, and health, and gladness.—hugh! how did he come there? poor will tried to rise from his chair, but with a feeling that he was fixed in it for ever, like the lady in the fable. had he been asleep? and where was he? had it been but a bad dream, and was this the cottage, and hugh come home to see them all? these were the questions that rose in will’s darkened mind, as he woke up and drew his hand across his heavy eyes, and sat as if glued in mr. penrose’s chair.
