It was a cheerful summer morning when Mary set out on her visit to her
brother-in-law. She had said nothing to her boys about it, for Hugh was
fantastical, like Aunt Agatha, and would have denounced her intention as
an expedient to make his uncle provide for him. Hugh had gone out to
attend to some of the many little businesses he had in hand for Sir
Edward; and Islay was working in his own room preparing for the "coach,"
to whom he was going in a few days; and Wilfrid, or Will, as everybody
called him, was with his curate-tutor. The Cottage held its placid place
upon the high bank of Kirtell, shining through its trees in a purple
cloud of roses, and listening in the sun to that everlasting quiet voice
that sung in its ear, summer and winter, the little river's changeful
yet changeless song. It looked like a place to which no changes could
ever come; calm people in the stillness of age, souls at rest, little
children, were the kind of people to live in it; and the stir and
quickening of pleasurable pain which Mary felt in her own veins,--the
sense of new life and movement about her,--felt out of place with the
quiet house. Aunt Agatha was out of sight, ordering her household
affairs; and the drawing-room was silent and deserted as a fairy palace,
full of a thousand signs of a habitation, but without a single tenant
audible or visible, except the roses that clambered about the open
windows, and the bee that went in and made a confused investigation, and
came out again none the wiser. An odd sense of the contrast struck Mrs.
Ochterlony; but a little while before, her soul had been in unison with
the calm of the place, and she had thought nothing of it; now she had
woke up out of that fair chamber turned to the sunrising, the name which
is Peace, and had stepped back into life, and felt the tingle and thrill
of resurrection. And an unconscious smile came on her face as she looked
back. To think that out of that silence and sunshine should pour out
such a tide of new strength and vigour--and that henceforth hearts
should leap with eagerness and wistfulness under that roof, and perhaps
grow wild with joy, or perhaps, God knows, break with anguish, as news
came good or evil! She had been but half alive so long, that the sense
of living was sweet.
It was a moment to call forth many thoughts and recollections, but the
fact was that she did not have time to entertain them. There happened to
her one of those curious coincidences which occur so often, and which it
is so difficult to account for. Long before she reached the little
station, a tall figure broke the long vacant line of the dusty country
road, a figure which Mary felt at once to be that of a stranger, and yet
one she seemed to recognise. She could not believe her eyes, nor think
it was anything but the association of ideas which misled her, and
laughed at her own fantastic imagination as she went on. But
nevertheless it is true that it was her brother-in-law himself who met
her, long before she reached the railway by which she had meant to go to
him. Her appearance struck him too, it was evident, with a little
surprise; but yet she was at home, and might have been going anywhere;
whereas the strange fact of his coming required a more elaborate
explanation than he had in his power to give.
"I do not know exactly what put it into my head," said Mr. Ochterlony;
"perhaps some old work of mine which turned up the other day, and which
I was doing when you were with me. I thought I would come over and have
a talk with you about your boy."
"It is very strange," said Mary, "for this very morning I had made up my
mind to come to you, and consult you. It must be some kind of magnetism,
I suppose."
"Indeed, I can't say; I have never studied the natural sciences," said
Mr. Ochterlony, with gravity. "I have had a very distinguished visitor
lately: a man whose powers are as much above the common mind as his
information is--Dr. Franklin, whose name of course you have heard--a man
of European reputation."
"Yes," said Mary, doubtfully, feeling very guilty and ignorant, for to
tell the truth she had never heard of Dr. Franklin; but her
brother-in-law perceived her ignorance, and explained in a kind of
compassionate way:
"He is about the greatest numismatist we have in England," said Mr.
Ochterlony, "and somehow my little monograph upon primitive art in
Iceland came to be talked of. I have never completed it, though Franklin
expressed himself much interested--and I think that's how it was
suggested to my mind to come and see you to-day."
"I am very glad," said Mary, "I wanted so much to have your advice. Hugh
is almost a man now----"
"A man!" said Mr. Ochterlony, with a smile; "I don't see how that is
possible. I hope he is not so unruly as he used to be; but you are as
young as ever, and I don't see how your children can be men."
And oddly enough, just at that moment, Hugh himself made his appearance,
making his way by a cross road down to the river, with his basket over
his shoulder, and his fishing-rod. He was taller than his uncle, though
Mr. Ochterlony was tall; and big besides, with large, mighty, not
perfectly developed limbs, swinging a little loosely upon their hinges
like the limbs of a young Newfoundland or baby lion. His face was still
smooth as a girl's, and fair, with downy cheeks and his mother's eyes,
and that pucker in his forehead which Francis Ochterlony had known of
old in the countenance of another Hugh. Mary did not say anything, but
she stopped short before her boy, and put her hand on his shoulder, and
looked at his uncle with a smile, appealing to him with her proud eyes
and beaming face, if this was not almost a man. As for Mr. Ochterlony,
he gave a great start and said, "God bless us!" under his breath, and
was otherwise speechless for the moment. He had been thinking of a boy,
grown no doubt, but still within the limits of childhood; and lo, it was
an unknown human creature that faced him, with a will and thoughts of
his own, like its father and mother, and yet like nobody but itself.
Hugh, for his part, looked with very curious eyes at the stranger, and
dimly recognised him, and grew shamefaced and a little fidgety, as was
natural to the boy.
"You see how he has grown," said Mary, who, being the triumphant one
among the three, was the first to recover herself. "You do not think him
a child now? It is your uncle, Hugh, come to see us. It is very kind of
him--but of course you knew who he was."
"I am very glad to see my uncle," said Hugh, with eager shyness. "Yes, I
knew. You are like my father's picture, sir;--and your own that we have
at the Cottage--and Islay a little. I knew it was you."
And then they all walked on in silence; for Mr. Ochterlony was more
moved by this sudden encounter than he cared to acknowledge; and Mary,
too, for the moment, being a sympathetic woman, saw her boy with his
uncle's eyes, and saw what the recollections were that sprang up at
sight of him. She told Hugh to go on and do his duty, and send home some
trout for dinner; and, thus dismissing him, guided her unlooked-for
visitor to the Cottage. He knew the way as well as she did, which
increased the embarrassment of the situation. Mary saw only the stiles
and the fields, and the trees that over-topped the hedges, familiar
objects that met her eyes every day; but Francis Ochterlony saw many a
past day and past imagination of his own life, and seemed to walk over
his own ashes as he went on. And that was Hugh!--Hugh, not his brother,
but his nephew and heir, the representative of the Ochterlony's,
occupying the position which his own son should have occupied. Mr.
Ochterlony had not calculated on the progress of time, and he was
startled and even touched, and felt wonderingly--what it is so difficult
for a man to feel--that his own course was of no importance to anybody,
and that here was his successor. The thought made him giddy, just as
Mary's wondering sense of the unreality of her own independent life, and
everlastingness of her stay at the Cottage, had made her; but yet in a
different way. For perhaps Francis Ochterlony had never actually
realized before that most things were over for him, and that his heir
stood ready and waiting for the end of his life.
There was still something of this sense of giddiness in his mind when he
followed Mary through the open window into the silent drawing-room where
nobody was. Perhaps he had not behaved just as he ought to have done to
Agatha Seton; and the recollection of a great many things that had
happened, came back upon him as he wound his way with some confusion
through the roses. He was half ashamed to go in, like a familiar friend,
through the window. Of all men in the world, he had the least right to
such a privilege of intimacy. He ought to have gone to the door in a
formal way and sent in his card, and been admitted only if Miss Seton
pleased; and yet here he was, in the very sanctuary of her life, invited
to sit down as it were by her side, led in by the younger generation,
which could not but smile at the thought of any sort of sentiment
between the old woman and the old man. For indeed Mary, though she was
not young, was smiling softly within herself at the idea. She had no
sort of sympathy with Mr. Ochterlony's delicate embarrassment, though
she was woman enough to hurry away to seek her aunt and prepare her for
the meeting, and shield the ancient maiden in the first flutter of her
feelings. Thus the master of Earlston was left alone in the Cottage,
with leisure to look round and recognise the identity of the place, and
see all its differences, and become aware of its pleasant air of
habitation, and all the signs of daily use and wont which had no
existence in his own house. All this confused him, and put him at a
great disadvantage. The probabilities were that Agatha Seton would not
have been a bit the happier had she been mistress of Earlston. Indeed
the Cottage had so taken her stamp that it was impossible for anybody,
whose acquaintance with her was less than thirty years old, to imagine
her with any other surroundings. But Francis Ochterlony had known her
for more than thirty years, and naturally he felt that he himself was a
possession worth a woman's while, and that he had, so to speak,
defrauded her of so important a piece of property; and he was penitent
and ashamed of himself. Perhaps too his own heart was moved a little by
the sense of something lost. His own house might have borne this sunny
air of home; instead of his brother Hugh's son, there might have been a
boy of his own to inherit Earlston; and looking back at it quietly in
this cottage drawing-room, Francis Ochterlony's life seemed to him
something very like a mistake. He was not a hard-hearted man, and the
inference he drew from this conclusion was very much in his nephew's
favour. Hugh's boy was almost a man, and there was no doubt that he was
the natural heir, and that it was to him everything ought to come.
Instead of thinking of marrying, as Aunt Agatha imagined, or founding a
hospital, or making any other ridiculous use of his money, his mind, in
its softened and compunctious state, turned to its natural and obvious
duty. "Let there be no mistake, at least, about the boy," he said to
himself. "Let him have all that is good for him, and all that best fit
him for his position;" for, Heaven be praised, there was at least no
doubt about Hugh, or question as to his being the lawful and inevitable
heir.
It was this process of reasoning, or rather of feeling, that made Mrs.
Ochterlony so entirely satisfied with her brother-in-law when she
returned (still alone, for Miss Seton was not equal to the exertion all
at once, and naturally there was something extra to be ordered for
dinner), and began to talk to their uncle about the children.
"There has been no difficulty about Islay," she said: "he always knew
what he wanted, and set his heart at once on his profession; but Hugh
had no such decided turn. It was very kind what you said when you
wrote--but I--don't think it is good for the boy to be idle. Whatever
you might think it right to arrange afterwards, I think he should have
something to do----"
"I did not think he had been so old," said Mr. Ochterlony, almost
apologetically. "Time does not leave much mark of its progress at
Earlston. Something to do? I thought what a young fellow of his age
enjoyed most was amusing himself. What would he like to do?"
"He does not know," said Mary, a little abashed; "that is why I wanted
so much to consult you. I suppose people have talked to him of--of what
you might do for him; but he cannot bear the thought of hanging, as it
were, on your charity----"
"Charity!" said Mr. Ochterlony, "it is not charity, it is right and
nature. I hope he is not one of those touchy sort of boys that think
kindness an injury. My poor brother Hugh was always fidgety----"
"Oh no, it is not that," said the anxious mother, "only he is afraid
that you might think he was calculating upon you; as if you were obliged
to provide for him----"
"And so I am obliged to provide for him," said Mr. Ochterlony, "as much
as I should be obliged to provide for my own son, if I had one. We must
find him something to do. Perhaps I ought to have thought of it sooner.
What has been done about his education? What school has he been at? Is
he fit for the University? Earlston will be a better property in his
days than it was when I was young," added the uncle with a natural sigh.
If he had but provided himself with an heir of his own, perhaps it would
have been less troublesome on the whole. "I would send him to Oxford,
which would be the best way of employing him; but is he fit for it?
Where has he been to school?"
Upon which Mary, with some confusion, murmured something about the
curate, and felt for the first time as if she had been indifferent to
the education of her boy.
"The curate!" said Mr. Ochterlony; and he gave a little shrug of his
shoulders, as if that was a very poor security for Hugh's scholarship.
"He has done very well with all his pupils," said Mary, "and Mr. Cramer,
to whom Islay is going, was very much satisfied----"
"I forgot where Islay was going?" said Mr. Ochterlony, inquiringly.
"Mr. Cramer lives near Kendal," said Mary; "he was very highly
recommended; and we thought the boy could come home for Sunday----"
Mr. Ochterlony shook his head, though still in a patronizing and
friendly way. "I am not sure that it is good to choose a tutor because
the boy can come home on Sunday," he said, "nor send them to the curate
that you may keep them with yourself. I know it is the way with ladies;
but it would have been better, I think, to have sent them to school."
Mrs. Ochterlony was confounded by this verdict against her. All at once
her eyes seemed to be opened, and she saw herself a selfish mother
keeping her boys at her own apron-strings. She had not time to think of
such poor arguments in her favour as want of means, or her own perfectly
good intentions. She was silent, struck dumb by this unthought-of
condemnation; but just then a champion she had not thought of appeared
in her defence.
"Mr. Small did very well for Hugh," said a voice at the window; "he is a
very good tutor so far as he goes. He did very well for Hugh--and Islay
too," said the new-comer, who came in at the window as he spoke with a
bundle of books under his arm. The interruption was so unexpected that
Mr. Ochterlony, being quite unused to the easy entrance of strangers at
the window, and into the conversation, started up alarmed and a little
angry. But, after all, there was nothing to be angry about.
"It is only Will," said Mary. "Wilfrid, it is your uncle, whom you have
not seen for so long. This was my baby," she added, turning to her
brother-in-law, with an anxious smile--for Wilfrid was a boy who puzzled
strangers, and was not by any means so sure to make a good impression as
the others were. Mr. Ochterlony shook hands with the new-comer, but he
surveyed him a little doubtfully. He was about thirteen, a long boy,
with big wrists and ankles visible, and signs of rapid growth. His face
did not speak of country air and fare and outdoor life and healthful
occupation like his brother's, but was pale and full of fancies and
notions which he did not reveal to everybody. He came in and put down
his books and threw himself into a chair with none of his elder
brother's shamefacedness. Will, for his part, was not given to blushing.
He knew nothing of his uncle's visit, but he took it quietly as a thing
of course, and prepared to take part in the conversation, whatever its
subject might be.
"Mr. Small has done very well for them all," said Mary, taking heart
again; "he has always done very well with his pupils. Mr. Cramer was
very much satisfied with the progress Islay had made; and as for
Hugh----"
"He is quite clever enough for Hugh," said Will, with the same steady
voice.
Mr. Ochterlony, though he was generally so grave, was amused. "My young
friend, are you sure you are a judge?" he said. "Perhaps he is not
clever enough for Wilfrid--is that what you meant to say?"
"It is not so much the being clever," said the boy. "I think he has
taught me as much as he knows, so it is not his fault. I wish we had
been sent to school; but Hugh is all right. He knows as much as he wants
to know, I suppose; and as for Islay, his is technical," the young
critic added with a certain quiet superiority. Will, poor fellow, was
the clever one of the family, and somehow he had found it out.
Mr. Ochterlony looked at this new representative of his race with a
little alarm. Perhaps he was thinking that, on the whole, it was as well
not to have boys; and then, as much from inability to carry on the
conversation as from interest in his own particular subject, he returned
to Hugh.
"The best plan, perhaps, will be for Hugh to go back with me to
Earlston; that is, if it is not disagreeable to you," he said, in his
old-fashioned, polite way. "I have been too long thinking about it, and
his position must be made distinct. Oxford would be the best; that would
be good for him in every way. And I think afterwards he might pay a
little attention to the estate. I never could have believed that babies
grew into boys, and boys to men, so quickly. Why, it can barely be a few
years since---- Ah!" Mr. Ochterlony got up very precipitately from his
chair. It was Aunt Agatha who had come into the room, with her white
hair smoothed under her white cap, and her pretty Shetland shawl over
her shoulders. Then he perceived that it was more than a few years
since he had last seen her. The difference was more to him than the
difference in the boys, who were creatures that sprang up nobody knew
how, and were never to be relied upon. That summer morning when she came
to Earlston to claim her niece, Miss Seton had been old; but it was a
different kind of age from that which sat upon her soft countenance now.
Francis Ochterlony had not for many a year asked himself in his
seclusion whether he was old or young. His occupations were all
tranquil, and he had not felt himself unable for them; but if Agatha
Seton was like this, surely then it must indeed be time to think of an
heir.
The day passed with a curious speed and yet tardiness, such as is
peculiar to days of excitement. When they were not talking of the boys,
nobody could tell what to talk about. Once or twice, indeed, Mr.
Ochterlony began to speak of the Numismatic Society, or the excavations
at Nineveh, or some other cognate subject; but he always came to a
standstill when he caught Aunt Agatha's soft eyes wondering over him.
They had not talked about excavations, nor numismatics either, the last
time he had been here; and there was no human link between that time and
this, except the boys, of whom they could all talk; and to this theme
accordingly everybody returned. Hugh came in audibly, leaving his basket
at the kitchen door as he passed, and Islay, with his long head and his
deep eyes, came down from his room where he was working, and Will kept
his seat in the big Indian chair in the corner, where he dangled his
long legs, and listened. Everybody felt the importance of the moment,
and was dreadfully serious, even when lighter conversation was
attempted. To show the boys in their best light, each of the three, and
not so to show them as if anybody calculated upon, or was eager about
the uncle's patronage; to give him an idea of their different
characters, without any suspicion of "showing off," which the lads could
not have tolerated; all this was very difficult to the two anxious
women, and required such an amount of mental effort as made it hard to
be anything but serious. Fortunately, the boys themselves were a little
excited by the novelty of such a visitor, and curious about their uncle,
not knowing what his appearance might mean. Hugh flushed into a singular
mixture of exaltation, and suspicion, and surprise, when Mr. Ochterlony
invited him to Earlston; and looked at his mother with momentary
distrust, to see if by any means she had sought the invitation; and
Wilfrid sat and dangled his long legs, and listened, with an odd
appreciation of the fact that the visit was to Hugh, and not to
himself, or any more important member of the family. As for Islay, he
was always a good fellow, and like himself; and his way was clear before
him, and admitted of no hopes or fears except as to whether or not he
should succeed at his examination, which was a matter about which he had
himself no very serious doubts, though he said little about it; and
perhaps on the whole it was Islay, who was quite indifferent, whom Mr.
Ochterlony would have fixed his choice upon, had he been at liberty to
choose.
When the visitor departed, which he did the same evening, the household
drew a long breath; everybody was relieved, from Peggy in the kitchen,
whose idea was that the man was "looking after our Miss Agatha again,"
down to Will, who had now leisure and occasion to express his sentiments
on the subject. Islay went back to his work, to make up for the lost
day, having only a moderate and temporary interest in his uncle. It was
the elder and the younger who alone felt themselves concerned. As for
Hugh, the world seemed to have altered in these few hours; Mr.
Ochterlony had not said a great deal to him; but what he said had been
said as a man speaks who means and has the power to carry out his words;
and the vague heirship had become all of a sudden the realest fact in
existence, and a thing which could not be, and never could have been,
otherwise. And he was slightly giddy, and his head swam with the sudden
elevation. But as for Wilfrid, what had he to do with it, any more than
any other member of the family? though he was always a strange boy, and
there never was any reckoning what he might do or say.