Madonna Mary

“What is the use of telling all the world of our domestic troubles?” said Aunt Agatha. “My dear, though Winnie will not see him, would it not be better to keep him to dinner, and show that we are friendly with him all the same? So long as he is with us, nobody is to know that Winnie keeps in her own room. After the way these people behaved to the poor dear child – ”

“They were very foolish and ill-bred,” said Mary; “but it was because she had herself been foolish, not because she was away from her husband: and I don’t like him to be with my boys.”

“But for your dear sister’s sake! Oh, Mary, my love, for Winnie’s sake!” said Aunt Agatha; and Mary yielded, though she saw no benefit in it. It was her part to go back into the drawing-room, and make the best of Winnie’s resistance, and convey the invitation to this unlooked-for guest, while Aunt Agatha looked after the dinner, and impressed upon Peggy that perhaps Major Percival might not be able to stay long; and was it not sad that the very day her husband came to see her, Mrs. Percival should have such a very bad headache? “She is lying down, poor dear, in hopes of being able to sit up a little in the evening,” said the anxious but innocent deceiver – doubly innocent since she deceived nobody, not even the housemaid, far less Peggy. As for Major Percival, he was angry and excited, as Winnie was, but not to an equal extent. He did not believe in his wife’s resistance. He sat down in the familiar room, and expected every moment to see Winnie rush down in her impulsive way, and throw herself into his arms. Their struggles had not terminated in this satisfactory way of late, but still she had gone very far in leaving him, and he had gone very far in condescending to come to seek her; and there seemed no reason why the monster quarrel should not end in a monster reconciliation, and all go on as before.

But it was bad policy to leave him with Mary. The old instinctive dislike that had existed between them from the first woke up again unawares. Mrs. Ochterlony could not conceal the fact that she took no pleasure in his society, and had no faith in him. She stayed in the room because she could not help it, but she did not pretend to be cordial. When he addressed himself to Will, and took the boy into his confidence, and spoke to him as to another man of the world, he could see, and was pleased to see, the contraction in Mary’s forehead. In this one point she was afraid of him, or at least he thought so. Winnie stayed upstairs with the door locked, watching to see him go away; and Hugh, to whom Winnie had been perhaps more confidential than to any one else in the house, went out and in, in displeasure ill-concealed, avoiding all intercourse with the stranger. And Mary sat on thorns, bearing him unwilling company, and Nelly watched and marvelled. Poor Aunt Agatha all the time arranged her best silver, and filled the old-fashioned épergne with flowers, thinking she was doing the very best for her child, saving her reputation, and leaving the way open for a reconciliation between her and her husband, and utterly unconscious of any other harm that could befall.

When the dinner-hour arrived, however (which was five o’clock, an hour which Aunt Agatha thought a good medium between the early and the late), Major Percival’s brow was very cloudy. He had waited and listened, and Winnie had not come, and now, when they sat down at table, she was still invisible. “Does not my wife mean to favour us with her company?” he asked, insolently, incredulous after all that she could persevere so long, and expecting to hear that she was only “late as usual;” upon which Aunt Agatha looked at Mary with anxious beseeching eyes.

“My sister is not coming down to-day,” said Mary, with hesitation, “at least I believe – ”

“Oh, my dear love, you know it is only because she has one of her bad headaches!” Aunt Agatha added, precipitately, with tears of entreaty in her eyes.

Percival looked at them both, and he thought he understood it all. It was Mary who was abetting her sister in her rebellion, encouraging her to defy him. It was she who was resisting Miss Seton’s well-meant efforts to bring them together. He saw it all as plain, or thought he saw it, as if he had heard her tactics determined upon. He had let her alone, and restrained his natural impulse to injure the woman he disliked, but now she had set herself in his way, and let her look to it. This dinner, which poor Aunt Agatha had brought about against everybody’s will, was as uncomfortable a meal as could be imagined. She was miserable herself, dreading every moment that he might burst out into a torrent of rage against Winnie before “the servants,” or that Winnie’s bell would ring violently and she would send a message – so rash and inconsiderate as she was – to know when Major Percival was going away. And nobody did anything to help her out of it. Mary sat at the foot of the table as stately as a queen, showing the guest only such attentions as were absolutely necessary. Hugh, except when he talked to Nelly, who sat beside him, was as disagreeable as a young man who particularly desires to be disagreeable and feels that his wishes have not been consulted, can be. And as for the guest himself, his countenance was black as night. It was a heavy price to pay for the gratification of saying to everybody that Winnie’s husband had come to see her, and had spent the day at the Cottage. But then Aunt Agatha had not the remotest idea that beyond the annoyance of the moment it possibly could do any harm.

It was dreadful to leave him with the boys after dinner, who probably – or at least Hugh – might not be so civil as was to be wished; but still more dreadful ten minutes after to hear Hugh’s voice with Nelly in the garden. Why had he left his guest?

“He left me,” said Hugh. “He went out under the verandah to smoke his cigar. I don’t deny I was very glad to get away.”

“But I am sure, Hugh, you are very fond of smoking cigars,” said Aunt Agatha, in her anxiety and fright.

“Not always,” Hugh answered, “nor under all circumstances.” And he laughed and coloured a little, and looked at Nelly by his side, who blushed too.

“So there is nobody with him but Will?” said Aunt Agatha with dismay, as she went in to where Mary was sitting; and the news was still more painful to Mary. Will was the only member of the family who was really civil to the stranger, except Aunt Agatha, whose anxiety was plainly written in her countenance. He was sitting now under the verandah which shaded the dining-room windows, quite at the other side of the house, smoking his cigar, and Will sat dutifully and not unwillingly by, listening to his talk. It was a new kind of talk to Will – the talk of a man blasé yet incapable of existing out of the world of which he was sick – a man who did not pretend to be a good man, nor even possessed of principles. Perhaps the parish of Kirtell in general would not have thought it very edifying talk.

“It is he who has come into the property, I suppose,” said Percival, pointing lazily with his cigar towards the other end of the garden, where Hugh was visible far off with Nelly. “Get on well with him, eh? I should say not if the question was asked of me?”

“Oh yes, well enough,” said Will, in momentary confusion, and with a clouding of his brows. “There is nothing wrong with him. It’s the system of the eldest sons that is wrong. I have nothing to say against Hugh.”

“By Jove,” said Percival, “the difficulty is to find out which is anybody’s eldest son. I never find fault with systems, for my part.”

“Oh, about that there can’t be any doubt,” said Will; “he is six years older than I am. I am only the youngest; though I don’t see what it matters to a man, for my part, being born in ’32 or ’38.”

“Sometimes it makes a great deal of difference,” said Percival; and then he paused: for a man, even when he is pushed on by malice and hate and all uncharitableness, may hesitate before he throws a firebrand into an innocent peaceful house. However, after his pause he resumed, making a new start as it were, and doing it deliberately, “sometimes it may make a difference to a man whether he was born in ’37 or ’38. You were born in ’38 were you? Ah! I ought to recollect.”

“Why ought you to recollect?” asked Will, startled by the meaning of his companion’s face.

“I was present at a ceremony that took place about then,” said Percival; “a curious sort of story. I’ll tell it you some time. How is the property left, do you know? Is it to him in particular as being the favourite, and that sort of thing? – or is it simply to the eldest son?”

“Simply to the eldest son,” said Will, more and more surprised.

Percival gave such a whistle as Uncle Penrose had given when he heard of the museum, and nodded his head repeatedly. “It would be good fun to turn the tables,” he said, as if he were making a remark to himself.

“How could you turn the tables? What do you mean? What do you know about it?” cried Will, who by this time was getting excited. Hugh came within his line of vision now and then, with Nelly – always with Nelly. It was only the younger brother, the inferior member of the household, who was left with the unwelcome guest. If any one could turn the tables! And again he said, almost fiercely, “What do you mean?”

“It is very easy to tell you what I mean; and I wonder what your opinion will be of systems then?” said Percival. “By Jove! it’s an odd position, and I don’t envy you. You think you’re the youngest, and you were born as you say in ’38.”

“Good heavens! what is that to do with it?” cried Wilfrid. “Of course I was born in ’38. Tell me what you mean.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what I mean,” said Percival, tossing away the end of his cigar, “and plainly too. That fellow there, who gives himself such airs, is no more the eldest son than I am. The property belongs to you.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

WILFRID was so stunned by the information thus suddenly given him, that he had but a confused consciousness of the explanations which followed. He was aware that it was all made clear to him, and that he uttered the usual words of assent and conviction; but in his mind he was too profoundly moved, too completely shaken and unsettled, to be aware of anything but the fact thus strangely communicated. It did not occur to him for a moment that it was not a fact. He saw no improbability, nothing unnatural in it. He was too young to think that anything was unlikely because it was extraordinary, or to doubt what was affirmed with so much confidence. But, in the meantime, the news was so startling, that it upset his mental balance, and made him incapable of understanding the details. Hugh was not the eldest son. It was he who was the eldest son. This at the moment was all that his mind was capable of taking in. He stayed by Percival as long as he remained, and had the air of devouring everything the other said; and he went with him to the railway station when he went away. Percival, for his part, having once made the plunge, showed no disinclination to explain everything, but for his own credit told his story most fully, and many particulars undreamt of when the incident took place. But he might have spared his pains so far as Will was concerned. He was aware of the one great fact stated to him to begin with, but of nothing more.

The last words which Percival said as he took leave of his young companion at the railway were, however, caught by Wilfrid’s half-stupefied ears. They were these: “I will stay in Carlisle for some days. You can hear where I am from Askell, and perhaps we may be of use to each other.” This, beyond the startling and extraordinary piece of news which had shaken him like a sudden earthquake, was all Percival had said, so far as Will was aware. “That fellow is no more the eldest son than I am – the property is yours;” and “I will stay in Carlisle for some days – perhaps we may be of use to each other.” The one expression caught on the other in his mind, which was utterly confused and stunned for the first time in his life. He turned them over and over as he walked home alone, or rather, they turned over and over in his memory, as if possessed of a distinct life; and so it happened that he had got home again and opened the gate and stumbled into the garden before he knew what the terrific change was which had come over everything, or had time to realize his own sensations. It was such a moment as is very sweet in a cottage-garden. They had all been watering the flowers in the moment of relief after Percival’s departure, and the fragrance of the grateful soil was mounting up among the other perfumes of the hour. Hugh and Nelly were still sprinkling a last shower upon the roses, and in the distance in the field upon which the garden opened were to be seen two figures wandering slowly over the grass – Winnie, whom Aunt Agatha had coaxed out to breathe the fresh air after her self-imprisonment, and Miss Seton herself, with a shawl over her head. And the twilight was growing insensibly dimmer and dimmer, and the dew falling, and the young moon sailing aloft. When Mary came across the lawn, her long dress sweeping with a soft rustle over the grass, a sudden horror seized Wilfrid. It took him all his force of mind and will to keep his face to her and await her coming. His face was not the treacherous kind of face which betrays everything; but still there was in it a look of preoccupation which Mary could not fail to see.

“Is he gone?” she said, as she came up. “You are sure he has gone, Will? It was kind of you to be civil to him; but I am almost afraid you are interested in him too.”

“Would it be wrong to be interested in him?” said Will.

“I don’t like him,” said Mary, simply; and then she added, after a pause, “I have no confidence in him. I should be very sorry to see any of my boys attracted by the society of such a man.”

And it was at this moment that his new knowledge rushed upon Wilfrid’s mind and embittered it; any of her boys, of whom he was the youngest and least important; and yet she must know what his real position was, and that he ought to be the chief of all.

“I don’t care a straw for him,” said Will, hastily; “but he knows a great many things, and I was interested in his talk.”

“What was he saying to you?” said Mrs. Ochterlony.

He looked into her face, and he saw that there was uneasiness in it, just as she, looking at him, saw signs of a change which he was himself unaware of; and in his impetuosity he was very near saying it all out and betraying himself. But then his uncertainty of all the details stood him in good stead.

“He was saying lots of things,” said Will. “I am sure I can’t tell you all that he was saying. If I were Hugh I would not let Nelly make a mess of herself with those roses. I am going in-doors.”

“A lovely evening like this is better than the best book in the world,” said Mary. “Stay with me, and talk to me, Will. You see I am the only one who is left alone.”

“I don’t care about lovely evenings,” said Will; “I think you should all come in. It is getting dreadfully cold. And as for being alone, I don’t see how that can be, when they are all there. Good night, mother. I think I shall go to bed.”

“Why should you go to bed so early?” said Mary; but he was already gone, and did not hear her. And as he went, he turned right round and looked at Hugh and Nelly, who were still together. When Mrs. Ochterlony remarked that look, she was at once troubled and comforted. She thought her boy was jealous of the way in which his brother engrossed the young visitor, and she was sorry, but yet knew that it was not very serious – while, at the same time, it was a comfort to her to attribute his pre-occupation to anything but Percival’s conversation. So she lingered about the lawn a little, and looked wistfully at the soft twilight country, and the wistful moon. She was the only one who was alone. The two young creatures were together, and they were happy; and poor Winnie, though she was far from happy, was buoyed up by the absorbing passion and hostility which had to-day reached one of its climaxes, and had Aunt Agatha for her slave, ready to receive all the burning outburst of grievance and misery. This fiery passion which absorbed her whole being was almost as good as being happy, and gave her mind full occupation. But as for Mary, she was by herself, and all was twilight with her; and the desertion of her boy gave her a little chill at her heart. So she, too, went in presently, and had the lamp lighted, and sat alone in the room, which was bright and yet dim – with a clear circle of light round the table, yet shadowy as all the corners are of a summer evening, when there is no fire to aid the lamp. But she did not find her son there. His discontent had gone further than to be content with a book, as she had expected; and he had really disappeared for the night.

“I can’t have you take possession of Nelly like this,” she said to Hugh, when, after a long interval, they came in. “We all want a share of her. Poor Will has gone to bed quite discontented. You must not keep her all to yourself.”

“Oh! is he jealous?” said Hugh, laughing; and there was no more said about it; for Will’s jealousy in this respect was not a thing to alarm anybody much.

But Will had not gone to bed. He was seated in his room at the table, leaning his head upon both his hands, and staring into the flame of his candle. He was trying to put what he had heard into some sort of shape. That Hugh, who was downstairs so triumphant and successful, was, after all, a mere impostor; that it was he himself, whom nobody paid any particular attention to, who was the real heir; that his instinct had not deceived him, but from his birth he had been ill-used and oppressed: these thoughts went all circling through his mind as the moths circled round his light, taking now a larger, and now a shorter flight. This strange sense that he had been right all along was, for the moment, the first feeling in his mind. He had been disinherited and thrust aside, but still he had felt all along that it was he who was the natural heir; and there was a satisfaction in having it thus proved and established. This was the first distinct reflection he was conscious of amid the whirl of thoughts; and then came the intoxicating sense that he could now enter upon his true position, and be able to arrange everybody’s future wisely and generously, without any regard for mere proprieties, or for the younger brother’s two thousand pounds. Strange to say, in the midst of this whirlwind of egotistical feeling, Will rushed all at once into imaginations that were not selfish, glorious schemes of what he would do for everybody. He was not ungenerous, nor unkind, but only it was a necessity with him that generosity and kindness should come from and not to himself.

All this passed through the boy’s mind before it ever occurred to him what might be the consequences to others of his extraordinary discovery, or what effect it must have upon his mother, and the character of the family. He was self-absorbed, and it did not occur to him in that light. Even when he did come to think of it, he did it in the calmest way. No doubt his mother would be annoyed; but she deserved to be annoyed – she who had so long kept him out of his rights; and, after all, it would still be one of her sons who would have Earlston. And as for Hugh, Wilfrid had the most generous intentions towards him. There was, indeed, nothing that he was not ready to do for his brothers. As soon as he believed that all was to be his, he felt himself the steward of the family. And then his mind glanced back upon the Psyche and the Venus, and upon Earlston, which might be made into a fitter shrine for these fair creations. These ideas filled him like wine, and went to his head, and made him dizzy; and all the time he was as unconscious of the moral harm, and domestic treachery, as if he had been one of the lower animals; and no scruple of any description, and no doubt of what it was right and necessary to do, had so much as entered into his primitive and savage mind.

We call his mind savage and primitive because it was at this moment entirely free from those complications of feeling and dreadful conflict of what is desirable, and what is right, which belong to the civilized and cultivated mind. Perhaps Will’s affections were not naturally strong; but, at all events, he gave in to this temptation as a man might have given in to it in the depths of Africa, where the “good old rule” and “simple plan” still exist and reign; and where everybody takes what he has strength to take, and he keeps who can. This was the real state of the case in Wilfrid’s mind. It had been supposed to be Hugh’s right, and he had been obliged to give in; now it was his right, and Hugh would have to make up his mind to it. What else was there to say? So far as Will could see, the revolution would be alike certain and instantaneous. It no more occurred to him to doubt the immediate effect of the new fact than to doubt its truth. Perhaps it was his very egotism, as well as his youth and inexperience, which made him so credulous. It had been wonder enough to him how anybody could leave him in an inferior position, even while he was only the youngest; to think of anybody resisting his rights, now that he had rights, was incredible.

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 the difficulties 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 looked startled. 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 in your care. I am going with Nelly myself.”