Madonna Mary

But Hugh, of course, knew nothing at all about that. He sat down again to his interrupted breakfast, and laughed and talked, and made merry. “I wonder what Uncle Penrose will say to him?” said Hugh. “I suppose he has gone and spent all his money getting to Liverpool; and what could his motive be, odd fellow as he is? The girls are all married – ”

“My dear boy, Will is not thinking of girls as you are,” said Mary, beguiled into a smile.

Hugh laughed and grew red, and shook his abundant youthful locks. “We are not talking of what I think,” he said; “and I suppose a man may do worse than think about girls – a little: but the question is, what was Will thinking about? Uncle Penrose cannot have ensnared him with his odious talk about money? By-the-way, I must send him some. We can’t let an Ochterlony be worried about a few miserable shillings there.”

“I don’t think we can let an Ochterlony, at least so young a one as Will, stay uninvited,” said Mary. “I feel much disposed to go after him and bring him home, or at least find out what he means.”

“No, you shall do nothing of the kind,” said Hugh, hastily. “I suppose our mother can trust her sons out of her sight. Nobody must go after him. Why, he is seventeen – almost grown up. He must not feel any want of confidence – ”

“Want of confidence!” said Aunt Agatha. “Hugh, you are only a boy yourself. What do you know about it? I think Mary would be very wrong if she let Will throw himself into temptation; and one knows there is every kind of temptation in those large, wicked towns,” said Miss Seton, shuddering. It was she who knew nothing about it, no more than a baby, and still less did she know or guess the kind of temptation that was acting upon the truant’s mind.

“If that were all,” said Mary, slowly, and then she sighed. She was not afraid of the temptations of a great town. She did not even know what she feared. She wanted to bring back her boy, to hear from his own lips what his motive was. It did not seem possible that there could be any harm meant by his boyish secrecy. It was even hard for his mother to persuade herself that Will could think of any harm; but still it was strange. When she thought of Percival’s visit and Will’s expedition to Carlisle, her heart fluttered within her, though she scarcely knew why. Will was not like other boys of his age; and then it was “something he had heard.” “I think,” she said, with hesitation, “that one of us should go – either you or I – ”

“No,” said Hugh. “No, mother, no; don’t think of it; as if he were a girl or a Frenchman! Why it’s Will! What harm can he do? If he likes to visit Uncle Penrose, let him; it will not be such a wonderful delight. I’ll send him some money to-day.”

This, of course, was how it was settled; for Mary’s terrors were not strong enough to contend with her natural English prejudices against surveillance and restraint, backed by Hugh’s energetic remonstrances. When Winnie heard of it, she dashed immediately at the idea that her husband’s influence had something to do with Will’s strange flight, and was rather pleased and flattered by the thought. “I said he would strike me through my friends,” she said to Aunt Agatha, who was bewildered, and did not know what this could mean.

“My dear love, what good could it do him to interfere with Will?” said Miss Seton. “A mere boy, and who has not a penny. If he had wanted to injure us, it would have been Hugh that he would have tried to lead away.”

“To lead away?” said Winnie scornfully. “What does he care for leading away? He wants to do harm, real harm. He thinks he can strike me through my friends.”

When Aunt Agatha heard this she turned round to Mary, who had just come into the room, and gave a little deprecating shake of her head, and a pathetic look. Poor Winnie! She could think of nothing but her husband and his intentions; and how could he do this quiet household real harm? Mary said nothing, but her uneasiness increased more and more. She could not sit down to her work, or take up any of her ordinary occupations. She went to Will’s room and examined it throughout, and looked through his wardrobe to see what he had taken with him, and searched vainly for any evidence of his meaning; and then she wrote him a long letter of questions and appeals, which would have been full of pathetic eloquence to anybody who knew what was in her mind, but would have appeared simply amazing and unintelligible to anybody ignorant of her history, as she herself perceived, and burnt it, and wrote a second, in which there was still a certain mystery. She reminded him that he might have gone away comfortably with everybody’s knowledge, instead of making the household uneasy about him; and she could not but let a little wonder creep through, that of all people in the world it was Uncle Penrose whom he had elected to visit; and then she made an appeal to him: “What have I done to forfeit my boy’s confidence? what can you have heard, oh Will, my dear boy, that you could not tell to your mother?” Her mind was relieved by writing, but still she was uneasy and disquieted. If he had been severely kept in, or had any reason to fear a refusal; – but to steal away when he might have full leave and every facility; this was one of the things which appeared the most strange.

The servants, for their part, set it down to a quarrel with his brother, and jealousy about Nelly, and took Hugh’s part, who was always the favourite. And as for Hugh himself, he sent his brother a cheque (his privilege of drawing cheques being still new, and very agreeable), and asked why he was such an ass as to run away, and bade him enjoy himself. The house was startled – but after all, it was no such great matter; and nobody except Mary wasted much consideration upon Will’s escapade after that first morning. He was but a boy; and it was natural, everybody thought, that boys should do something foolish now and then.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN a curious state of mind, Will was flying along towards Liverpool, while this commotion arose in the Cottage. Not even now had the matter taken any moral aspect to him. He did not feel that he had gone skulking off to deliver a cowardly blow. All that he was conscious of was the fact, that having something to tell which he could not somehow persuade himself to tell, he was going to make the communication from a distance under Uncle Penrose’s advice. And yet the boy was not comfortable. It had become apparent to him vaguely, that after this communication was made, the relations existing between himself and his family must be changed. That his mother might be “angry,” which was his boyish term for any or every displeasure that might cloud Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind; that Hugh might take it badly – and that after all it was a troublesome business, and he would be pleased to get it over. He was travelling in the cheapest way, for his money was scanty; but he was not the kind of boy to be beguiled from his own thoughts by the curious third-class society into which he was thus brought, or even by the country, which gradually widened and expanded under his eyes from the few beaten paths he knew so well, into that wide unknown stretch of hill and plain which was the world. A vague excitement, it is true, came into his mind as he felt himself to have passed out of the reach of everything he knew, and to have entered upon the undiscovered; but this excitement did not draw him out of his own thoughts. It did but mingle with them, and put a quickening thrill of life into the strange maze. The confused country people at the stations, who did not know which carriage to take, and wandered, hurried and disconsolate, on the platforms, looking into all – the long swift moment of passage over the silent country, in which the train, enveloped in its own noise, made for itself a distinct atmosphere – and then again a shriek, a pause, and another procession of faces looking in at the window – this was Will’s idea of the long journey. He was not imaginative; but still everybody appeared to him hurried, and downcast, and pre-occupied. Even the harmless country folks had the air of having something on their minds. And through all he kept on pondering what his mother and what Hugh would say. Poor boy! his discovery had given him no advantage as yet; but it had put a cross upon his shoulders – it had bound him so hard and fast that he could not escape from it. It had brought, if not guilt, yet the punishment of guilt into all his thoughts.

Mr. Penrose had a handsome house at some distance from Liverpool, as was usual. And Will found it a very tedious and troublesome business to get there, not to speak of the calls for sixpences from omnibuses and porters, and everybody (he thought) who looked at him, which was very severe on his slender purse. And when he arrived, his uncle’s servants looked upon him with manifest suspicion; he had never been there before, and Mr. Penrose was now living alone, his wife being dead, and all his children married, so that there was nobody in the house who could identify the unknown nephew. The Cottage was not much bigger than Mr. Penrose’s porter’s lodge, and yet that small tenement had looked down upon the great mansion all its life, and been partly ashamed of it, which sentiment gave Will an unconscious sense that he was doing Uncle Penrose an honour in going to visit him. But when he was met at the door by the semi-polite suspicion of the butler, who proposed that he should call again, with an evident reference in his mind to the spoons, it gave the boy the forlornest feeling that can be conceived. He was alone, and they thought him an impostor, and nobody here knew or cared whether he was shut out from the house or not. His heart went back to his home with that revulsion which everybody knows. There, everybody would have rushed to open the door to him, and welcome him back; and though his errand here was simply to do that home as much injury as possible, his heart swelled at the contrast. While he stood, however, insisting upon admittance in his dogged way, without showing any feelings, it happened that Mr. Penrose drove up to the door, and hailed his nephew with much surprise. “You here, Will?” Mr. Penrose said. “I hope nothing has gone wrong at the Cottage?” and his man’s hand instantly, and as by magic, relaxed from the door.

“There is nothing wrong, sir,” said Will, “but I wanted to speak to you;” and he entered triumphantly, not without a sense of victory, as the subdued servant took his bag out of his hand. Mr. Penrose was, as we have said, alone. He had shed, as it were, all incumbrances, and was ready, unfettered by any ties or prejudices, to grow richer and wiser and more enlightened every day. His children were all married, and his wife having fulfilled all natural offices of this life, and married all her daughters, had quietly taken her dismissal when her duties were over, and had a very handsome tombstone, which he looked at on Sunday. It occurred to very few people, however, to lament over Mr. Penrose’s loneliness. He seemed to have been freed from all impediments, and left at liberty to grow rich, to get fat, and to believe in his own greatness and wisdom. Nor did it occur to himself to feel his great house lonely. He liked eating a luxurious dinner by himself, and knowing how much it had cost, all for his single lordly appetite – the total would have been less grand if wife and children had shared it. And then he had other things to think of – substantial things, about interest and investments, and not mere visionary reflections about the absence of other chairs or other faces at his table. But he had a natural interest in Wilfrid, as in a youth who had evidently come to ask his advice, which was an article he was not disinclined to give away. And then “the Setons,” as he called his sister’s family and descendants, had generally shut their ears to his advice, and shown an active absence of all political qualities, so that Will’s visit was a compliment of the highest character, something like an unexpected act of homage from Mordecai in the gate.

But even Mr. Penrose was struck dumb by Will’s communication. He put up his hand to his cravat and gasped, and thumped himself on the breast, staring at the boy with round, scared, apoplectic eyes – like the eyes of a boiled fish. He stared at Will, – who told the story calmly enough, with a matter-of-fact conciseness – and looked as if he was disposed to ring the bell and send for a doctor, and get out of the difficulty by concluding his nephew to be mad. But there was no withstanding the evidence of plain good faith and sincerity in Will’s narration. Mr. Penrose remained silent longer than anybody had ever known him to remain silent before, and he was not even very coherent when he had regained the faculty of speech.

“That woman was present, was she?” he said, “and Winnie’s husband – good Lord! And so you mean to tell me Mary has been all this time – When I asked her to my house, and my wife intended to make a party for her, and all that – and when she preferred to visit at Earlston, and that old fool, Sir Edward, who never had a penny – except what he settled on Winnie – and all that time, you know, Mary was – good Lord!”

“I don’t see what difference it makes to my mother,” said Will. “She is just what she always was – the difference it makes is to me – and of course to Hugh.”

But this was not a view that Mr. Penrose could take, who knew more about the world than Will could be supposed to know – though his thoughts were usually so preoccupied by what he called the practical aspect of everything. Yet he was disturbed in this case by reflections which were almost imaginative, and which utterly amazed Will. He got up, though he was still in the middle of dessert, and walking about the room, making exclamations. “That’s what she has been, you know, all this time – Mary, of all people in the world! Good Lord! That’s what she was, when we asked her here.” These were the exclamations that kept bursting from Uncle Penrose’s amazed lips – and Will at last grew angry and impatient, and hurried into the practical matter on his own initiative.

“When you have made up your mind about it, Uncle, I should be glad to know what you think best to be done,” said Will, in his steady way, and he looked at his adviser with those sceptical, clear-sighted eyes, which, more than anything else, make a practical man ashamed of having indulged in any momentary aberration.

Mr. Penrose came back to his chair and sat down, and looked with respect, and something that was almost awe, in Will’s face. Then the boy continued, seeing his advantage: “You must see what an important thing it is between Hugh and me,” he said. “It is a matter of business, of course, and it would be far better to settle it at once. If I am the right heir, you know, Earlston ought to be mine. I have heard you say, feelings had nothing to do with the right and wrong.”

“No,” said Mr. Penrose, with a slight gasp; “that is quite true; but it is all so sudden, you know – and Mary – I don’t know what you want me to do – ”

“I want you to write and tell them about it,” said Will.

Mr. Penrose put his lips into the shape they would naturally have taken had he been whistling as usual; but he was not capable of a whistle. “It is all very easy to talk,” he said, “and naturally business is business, and I am not a man to think too much about feelings. But Mary – the fact is, it must be a matter of arrangement, Will. There can’t be any trial, you know, or publicity to expose her – ”

“I don’t see that it would matter much to her,” said Will. “She would not mind; it would only be one of her sons instead of the other, and I suppose she likes me the same as Hugh.”

“I was not thinking of Hugh, or you either. I was thinking of your mother,” said Mr. Penrose, thrusting his hands into the depths of his pockets, and staring with vacant eyes into the air before him. He was matter-of-fact himself, but he could not comprehend the obtuseness of ignorance and self-occupation and youth.

“Well?” said Will.

“Well,” cried the uncle, turning upon him, “are you blind, or stupid, or what? Don’t you see it never can come to publicity, or she will be disgraced? I don’t say you are to give up your rights, if they are your rights, for that. I daresay you’ll take a deal better care of everything than that fellow Hugh, and won’t be so confounded saucy. But if you go and make a row about it in public, she can never hold up her head again, you know. I don’t mind talk myself in a general way; but talk about a woman’s marriage, – good Lord! There must be no public row, whatever you do.”

“I don’t see why there should be any public row,” said Will; “all that has to be done is to let them know.”

“I suppose you think Hugh will take it quite comfortable,” said Mr. Penrose, “and lay down everything like a lamb. He’s not a business man, nor good for much; but he will never be such an idiot as that; and then you would need to have your witnesses very distinct, if it was to come to anything. He has possession in his favour, and that is a good deal, and it is you who would have to prove everything. Are you quite sure that your witnesses would be forthcoming, and that you could make the case clear?”

“I don’t know about making the case clear,” said Will, who began to get confused; “all I know is what I have told you. Percival was there, and Mrs. Kirkman – they saw it, you know – and she says Hugh himself was there. Of course he was only a child. But she said no doubt he would remember, if it was brought to his mind.”

“Hugh himself!” said Mr. Penrose – again a little startled, though he was not a person of fine feelings. The idea of appealing to the recollections of the child for evidence against the man’s rights, struck him as curious at least. He was staggered, though he felt that he ought to have been above that. Of course it was all perfectly just and correct, and nobody could have been more clear than he, that any sort of fantastic delicacy coming between a man and his rights would be too absurd to be thought of. And yet it cannot be denied that he was staggered in spite of himself.

“I think if you told him distinctly, and recalled it to his recollection, and he knew everything that was involved,” said Will, with calm distinctness, “that Hugh would give in. It is the only thing he could do; and I should not say anything to him about a younger brother’s portion, or two thousand pounds,” the lad added, kindling up. “He should have everything that the money or the estate could do for him – whatever was best for him, if it cost half or double what Earlston was worth.”

“Then why on earth don’t you leave him Earlston, if you are so generous?” said Mr. Penrose. “If you are to spend it all upon him, what good would it do you having the dreary old place?”

“I should have my rights,” said Will with solemnity. It was as if he had been a disinherited prince whom some usurper had deprived of his kingdom; and this strange assumption was so honest in its way, and had such an appearance of sincerity, that Mr. Penrose was struck dumb, and gazed at the boy with a consternation which he could not express. His rights! Mary’s youngest son, whom everybody, up to this moment, had thought of only as a clever, not very amiable boy, of no particular account anywhere. The merchant began to wake up to the consciousness that he had a phenomenon before him – a new development of man. As he recovered from his surprise, he began to appreciate Will – to do justice to the straightforward ardour of his determination that business was business, and that feelings had nothing to do with it; and to admire his calm impassibility to every other view of the case but that which concerned himself. Mr. Penrose thought it was the result of a great preconcerted plan, and began to awake into admiration and respect. He thought the solemnity, and the calm, and that beautiful confidence in his rights, were features of a subtle and precocious scheme which Will had made for himself; and his thoughts, which had been dwelling for the moment on Mary, with a kind of unreflective sympathy, turned towards the nobler object thus presented before him. Here was a true apotheosis of interest over nature. Here was such a man of business, heaven-born, as had never been seen before. Mr. Penrose warmed and kindled into admiration, and he made a secret vow that such a genius should not be lost.

As for Will, he never dreamt of speculating as to what were his uncle’s thoughts. He was quite content that he had told his own tale, and so got over the first preliminary difficulty of getting it told to those whom it most concerned; and he was very sleepy – dreadfully tired, and more anxious to curl up his poor, young, weary head under his wing, and get to bed, than for anything else in the world. Yet, notwithstanding, when he lay down, and had put out his light, and had begun to doze, the thought came over him that he saw the glow of his mother’s candle shining in under his door, and heard her step on the stairs, which had been such a comfort to him many a night when he was a child, and woke up in the dark and heard her pass, and knew her to be awake and watching, and was not even without a hope that she might come in and stand for a moment, driving away all ghosts and terrors of the night, by his bed. He thought he saw the light under his door, and heard the foot coming up the stairs. And so probably he did: but the poor boy woke right up under this fancy, and remembered with a compunction that he was far away from his mother, and that probably she was “angry,” and perhaps anxious about his sudden departure; and he was very sorry in his heart to have come away so, and never to have told her. But he was not sorry nor much troubled anyhow about the much more important thing he was about to do.

And Uncle Penrose, under the strange stimulus of his visitor’s earnestness, addressed himself to the task required of him, and wrote to Hugh. He, too, thought first of writing to Mrs. Ochterlony; but, excellent business man as he was, he could not do it; it went against his heart, if he had a heart, – or, if not his heart, against some digestive organ which served him instead of that useful but not indispensable part of the human frame. But he did write to Hugh – that was easier; and then Hugh had been “confounded saucy,” and had rejected his advice, not about the Museum only, but in other respects. Mr. Penrose wrote the letter that very night while Will was dreaming about his mother’s light; and so the great wheel was set a-going, which none of them could then stop for ever.

CHAPTER XXXIX

HUGH had left the Cottage the day after Will’s departure. He had gone to Earlston, where a good deal of business about the Museum and the estate awaited him; and he had gone off without any particular burden on his mind. As for Will’s flight from home, it was odd, no doubt; but then Will himself was odd, and out-of-the-way acts were to be expected from him. When Hugh, with careless liberality, had sent him the cheque, he dismissed the subject from his mind – at least, he thought of his younger brother only with amusement, wondering what he could find to attract him in Uncle Penrose’s prosaic house, – trying to form an imagination of Will wandering about the great Liverpool docks, looking at the big ships, and all the noisy traffic; and Hugh laughed within himself to think how very much all that was out of Will’s way. No doubt he would come home in a day or two bored to death, and would loathe the very name of Liverpool all his life thereafter. As for Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston himself, he had a great deal to do. The mayor and corporation of Dalken had come to a final decision about the Museum, and all that had to be done was to prepare the rooms which were to receive Mr. Francis Ochterlony’s treasures, and to transfer with due tenderness and solemnity the Venus and the Psyche, and all the delicate wealth which had been so dear to the heart of “the old Squire.” The young Squire went round and looked at them all, with a great tenderness in his own, remembering his uncle’s last progress among them, and where he sat down to rest, and the wistful looks he gave to those marble white creations which stood to him in the place of wife and children; and the pathetic humour with which he had said, “It is all the better for you.” It was the better for Hugh; but still the young man in the fulness of his hopes had a tender compunction for the old man who had died without getting the good of his life, and with no treasures but marble and bronze and gold and silver to leave behind him. “My poor uncle!” Hugh said; and yet the chances were that Francis Ochterlony was not, either in living or dying, sorry for himself. Hugh had a kind of reluctance to change the aspect of everything, and make the house his own house, and not Francis Ochterlony’s. It seemed almost impious to take from it the character it had borne so long, and at the same time it was his uncle’s wish. These were Hugh’s thoughts at night, but in the fresh light of the morning it would be wrong to deny that another set of ideas took possession of his mind. Then he began to think of the new aspect, and the changes he could make. It was not bright enough for a home for – well, for any lady that might happen to come on a visit or otherwise; and, to be sure, Hugh had no intention of accepting as final his mother’s determination not to leave the Cottage. He made up his mind that she would come, and that people – various people, ladies and others – would come to visit her; that there should be flowers and music and smiles about the place, and perhaps some one as fair and as sweet as Psyche to change the marble moonlight into sacred living sunshine. Now the fact was, that Nelly was not by any means so fair as Psyche – that she was not indeed what you would call a regular beauty at all, but only a fresh, faulty, sweet little human creature, with warm blood in her veins, and a great many thoughts in her little head. And when Hugh thought of some fair presence coming into these rooms and making a Paradise of them, either it was not Nelly Askell he was thinking of, or else he was thinking like a poet – though he was not poetical, to speak of. However, he did not himself give any name to his imaginations – he could afford to be vague. He went all over the house in the morning, not with the regretful, affectionate eye with which he made the same survey the night before, but in a practical spirit. At his age, and in his position, the practical was only a pleasanter variation of the romantic aspect of affairs. As he thought of new furniture, scores of little pictures flashed into his mind – though in ordinary cases he was not distinguished by a powerful imagination. He had no sooner devised the kind of chair that should stand in a particular corner, than straightway a little figure jumped into it, a whisper of talk came out of it, with a host of imaginary circumstances which had nothing to do with upholstery. Even the famous rococo chair which Islay had broken was taken possession of by that vague, sweet phantom. And he went about the rooms with an unconscious smile on his face, devising and planning. He did not know he was smiling; it was not at anything or about anything. It was but the natural expression of the fresh morning fancies and sweet stir of everything hopeful, and bright, and uncertain, which was in his heart.

And when he went out of doors he still smiled. Earlston was a grey limestone house, as has been described in the earlier part of this history. A house which chilled Mrs. Ochterlony to the heart when she first went there with her little children in the first forlornness of her widowhood. What Hugh had to do now was to plan a flower-garden for – his mother; yes, it was truly for his mother. He meant that she should come all the same. Nothing could make any difference so far as she was concerned. But at the same time, to be sure, he did not mean that his house should make the same impression on any other stranger as that house had made upon Mary. He planned how the great hedges should be cut down, and the trees thinned, and the little moorland burn should be taken in within the enclosure, and followed to its very edge by the gay lawn with its flower-beds. He planned a different approach – where there might be openings in the dark shrubberies, and views over the hills. All this he did in the morning, with a smile on his face, though the tears had been in his eyes at the thought of any change only the previous night. If Francis Ochterlony had been by, as perhaps he was, no doubt he would have smiled at that tender inconsistency – and there would not have been any bitterness in the smile.

And then Hugh went in to breakfast. He had already some new leases to sign and other business matters to do, and he was quite pleased to do it – as pleased as he had been to draw his first cheques. He sat down at his breakfast-table, before the little pile of letters that awaited him, and felt the importance of his new position. Even his loneliness made him feel its importance the more. Here were questions of all sorts submitted to him, and it was he who had to answer, without reference to anybody – he whose advice a little while ago nobody would have taken the trouble to ask. It was not that he cared to exercise his privilege – for Hugh, on the whole, had an inclination to be advised – but still the sense of his independence was sweet. He meant to ask Mr. Preston, the attorney, about various things, and he meant to consult his mother, and to lay some special affairs before Sir Edward – but still, at the time, it was he who had everything to do, and Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston sat down before his letters with a sense of satisfaction which does not always attend the mature mind in that moment of trial. One of the uppermost was from Uncle Penrose, redirected from the Cottage, but it did not cause any thrill of interest to Hugh’s mind, who put it aside calmly, knowing of no thunderbolts that might be in it. No doubt it was some nonsense about the Museum, he thought, as if he himself was not a much better judge about the Museum than a stranger and business-man could be. There was, however, a letter from Mary, which directed her son’s attention to this epistle. “I send you a letter directed in Uncle Penrose’s hand,” wrote Mrs. Ochterlony, “which I have had the greatest inclination to open, to see what he says about Will. I daresay you would not have minded; but I conclude, on the whole, that Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston should have his letters to himself; so I send it on to you uninvaded. Let me know what he says about your brother.” Hugh could not but laugh when he read this, half with pleasure, half with amusement. His mother’s estimate of his importance entertained him greatly, and the idea of anything private being in Uncle Penrose’s letter tickled him still more. Then he drew it towards him lightly, and began to read it with eyes running over with laughter. He was all alone, and there was nobody to see any change of sentiment in his face.

He was all alone – but yet presently Hugh raised his eyes from the letter which he had taken up so gaily, and cast a scared look round him, as if to make sure that nobody was there. The smile had gone off his face, and the laughter out of his eyes, – and not only that, but every particle of colour had left his face. And yet he did not see the meaning of what he had read. “Will!” he said to himself. “Will!” He was horror-stricken and bewildered, but that was the sole idea it conveyed to him – a sense of treachery – the awful feeling of unreality and darkness round about, with which the young soul for the first time sees itself injured and betrayed. He laid down the letter half read, and paused, and put up his hands to his head as if to convince himself that he was not dreaming. Will! Good God! Will! Was it possible? Hugh had to make a convulsive effort to grasp this unnatural horror. Will, one of themselves, to have gone off, and put himself into the hands of Uncle Penrose, and set himself against his mother and her sons! The ground seemed to fail under his feet, the solid world to fall off round him into bewildering mystery. Will! And yet he did not apprehend what it was. His mind could not take in more than one discovery at a time. A minute before, and he was ready to have risked everything on the good faith of any and every human creature he knew. Now, was there anybody to be trusted? His brother had stolen from his side, and was striking at him by another and an unfriendly hand. Will! Good heavens, Will!

It would be difficult to tell how long it was before the full meaning of the letter he had thus received entered into Hugh’s mind. He sat with the breakfast things still on the table so long, that the housekeeper herself came at last with natural inquisitiveness to see if anything was the matter, and found Hugh with a face as grey and colourless as that of the old Squire, sitting over his untasted coffee, unaware, apparently, what he was about. He started when she came in, and bundled up his letters into his pocket, and gave an odd laugh, and said he had been busy, and had forgotten. And then he sprang up and left the room, paying no attention to her outcry that he had eaten nothing. Hugh was not aware he had eaten nothing, or probably in the first horror of his discovery of the treachery in the world, he too would have taken to false pretences and saved appearances, and made believe to have breakfasted. But the poor boy was unaware, and rushed off to the library, where nobody could have any pretext for disturbing him, and shut himself up with this first secret – the new, horrible discovery which had changed the face of the world. This was the letter which he had crushed up in his hand as he might have crushed a snake or deadly reptile, but which nothing could crush out of his heart, where the sting had entered and gone deep: —

“My dear Nephew, – It is with pain that I write to you, though it is my clear duty to do so in the interests of your brother, who has just put his case into my hands – and I don’t doubt that the intelligence I am about to convey will be a great blow, not only to your future prospects but to your pride and sense of importance, which so fine a position at your age had naturally elevated considerably higher than a plain man like myself could approve of. Your brother arrived here to-day, and has lost no time in informing me of the singular circumstances under which he left home, and of which, so far as I understand him, you and your mother are still in ignorance. Wilfrid’s perception of the fact that feelings, however creditable to him as an individual, ought not to stand in the way of what is, strictly speaking, a matter of business, is very clear and uncompromising; but still he does not deny that he felt it difficult to make this communication either to you or his mother. Accident, the nature of which I do not at present, before knowing your probable course of action, feel myself at liberty to indicate more plainly, has put him in possession of certain facts, which would change altogether the relations between him and yourself, as well as your (apparent) position as head of the family. These facts, which, for your mother’s sake, I should be deeply grieved to make known out of the family, are as follows: your father, Major Ochterlony, and my niece, instead of being married privately in Scotland, as we all believed, in the year 1830, or thereabouts – I forget the exact date – were in reality only married in India in the year 1837, by the chaplain, the Rev. – Churchill, then officiating at the station where your father’s regiment was. This, as you are aware, was shortly before Wilfrid’s birth, and not long before Major Ochterlony died. It is subject of thankfulness that your father did my niece this tardy justice before he was cut off, as may be said, in the flower of his days, but you will see at a glance that it entirely reverses your respective positions – and that in fact Wilfrid is Major Ochterlony’s only lawful son.

“I am as anxious as you can be that this should be made a matter of family arrangement, and should never come to the public ears. To satisfy your own mind, however, of the perfect truth of the assertion I have made, I beg to refer you to the Rev. Mr. Churchill, who performed the ceremony, and whose present address, which Wilfrid had the good sense to secure, you will find below – and to Mrs. Kirkman, who was present. Indeed, I am informed that you yourself were present – though probably too young to understand what it meant. It is possible that on examining your memory you may find some trace of the occurrence, which though not dependable upon by itself, will help to confirm the intelligence to your mind. We are in no hurry, and will leave you the fullest time to satisfy yourself, as well as second you in every effort to prevent any painful consequence from falling upon your mother, who has (though falsely) enjoyed the confidence and esteem of her friends so long.

“For yourself you may reckon upon Wilfrid’s anxious endeavours to further your prospects by every means in his power. Of course I do not expect you to take a fact involving so much, either upon his word or mine. Examine it fully for yourself, and the more entirely the matter is cleared up, the more will it be for our satisfaction, as well as your own. The only thing I have to desire for my own part is that you will spare your mother – as your brother is most anxious to do. Hoping for an early reply, I am, your affectionate uncle and sincere friend, – J. P. Penrose.”

Hugh sat in Francis Ochterlony’s chair, at his table, with his head supported on his hands, looking straight before him, seeing nothing, not even thinking, feeling only this letter spread out upon the table, and the intelligence conveyed in it, and holding his head, which ached and throbbed with the blow, in his hands. He was still, and his head throbbed and his heart and soul ached, tingling through him to every joint and every vein. He could not even wonder, nor doubt, nor question in any way, for the first terrible interval. All he could do was to look at the fact and take it fully into his mind, and turn it over and over, seeing it all round on every side, looking at it this way and that way, and feeling as if somehow heaven and earth were filled with it, though he had never dreamt of such a ghost until that hour. Not his, after all – nor Earlston, nor his name, nor the position he had been so proud of; nothing his – alas, not even his mother, his spotless mother, the woman whom it had been an honour and glory to come from and belong to. When a groan came from the poor boy’s white lips it was that he was thinking of. Madonna Mary! that was the name they had called her by – and this was how it really was. He groaned aloud, and made an unconscious outcry of his pain when it came to that. “Oh, my God, if it had only been ruin, loss of everything – anything in the world but that!” This was the first stage of stupefaction and yet of vivid consciousness, before the indignation came. He sat and looked at it, and realized it, and took it into his mind, staring at it until every drop of blood ebbed away from his face. This was how it was before the anger came. After a while his countenance and his mood changed – the colour and heat came rushing back to his cheeks and lips, and a flood of rage and resentment swept over him like a sudden storm. Will! could it be Will? Liar! coward! traitor! to call her mother, and to tax her with shame even had it been true – to frame such a lying, cursed, devilish accusation against her! Then it was that Hugh flashed into a fiery, burning shame to think that he had given credence to it for one sole moment. He turned his eyes upon her, as it were, and looked into her face and glowed with a bitter indignation and fury. His mother’s face! only to think of it and dare to fancy that shame could ever have been there. And then the boy wept, in spite of his manhood – wept a few, hot, stinging tears, that dried up the moment they fell, half for rage, half for tenderness. – And, oh, my God, was it Will? Then as his mind roused more and more to the dread emergency, Hugh got up and went to the window and gazed out, as if that would help him; and his eye lighted on the tangled thicket which he had meant to make into his mother’s flower-garden, and upon the sweep of trees through which he had planned his new approach, and once more he groaned aloud. Only this morning so sure about it all, so confidently and carelessly happy – now with not one clear step before him to take, with no future, no past that he could dare look back upon – no name, nor rights of any kind – if this were true. And could it be otherwise than true? Could any imagination frame so monstrous and inconceivable a falsehood? – such a horrible impossibility might be fact, but it was beyond all the bounds of fancy; – and then the blackness of darkness descended again upon Hugh’s soul. Poor Mary, poor mother! It came into the young man’s mind to go to her and take her in his arms, and carry her away somewhere out of sight of men and sound of their voices – and again there came to his eyes those stinging tears. Fault of hers it could not be; she might have been deceived; and then poor Hugh’s lips, unaccustomed to curses, quivered and stopped short as they were about to curse the father whom he never knew. Here was the point at which the tide turned again. Could it be Hugh Ochterlony who had deceived his wife? he whose sword hung in Mary’s room, whose very name made a certain music in her voice when she pronounced it, and whom she had trained her children to reverence with that surpassing honour which belongs to the dead alone. Again a storm of rage and bitter indignation swept in his despair and bewilderment over the young man’s mind; an accursed scheme, a devilish, hateful lie – that was how it was: and oh, horror! that it should be Will.

Through all these changes it was one confused tempest of misery and dismay that was in Hugh’s mind. Now and then there would be wild breaks in the clouds – now they would be whirled over the sky in gusts – now settled down into a blackness beyond all reckoning. Lives change from joy to misery often enough in this world; but seldom thus in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. His careless boat had been taking its sweet course over waters rippled with a favourable breeze, and without a moment’s interval he was among the breakers; and he knew so little how to manage it, he was so inexperienced to cope with wind and waves. And he had nobody to ask counsel from. He was, as Will had been, separated from his natural adviser, the one friend to whom hitherto he had confided all his difficulties. But Hugh was older than Will, and his mind had come to a higher development, though perhaps he was not so clever as his brother. He had no Uncle Penrose to go to; no living soul would hear from him this terrible tale; he could consult nobody. Not for a hundred Earlstons, not for all the world, would he have discussed with any man in existence his mother’s good name.