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."
"Oh! I am sure Will is very kind," said Nelly; and then she stopped
short, and looked first at Mrs. Ochterlony and then at Hugh. Poor Nelly
had heard of brothers being jealous of each other, and had read of it in
books, and was half afraid that such a case was about to come under her
own observation. She was much frightened, and her impulse was to accept
Will's guardianship, that no harm might come of it, though the sacrifice
to herself would be considerable; but then, what if Hugh should be
jealous too?
"I see no reason why you should not both go," said Mrs. Ochterlony: "one
of you shall take care of Nelly, and one shall do my commissions; I
think that had better be Will--for I put no confidence, just now, in
Hugh."
"Of course it must be Will," said Hugh. "A squire of dames requires age
and solidity. It is not an office for a younger brother. Your time will
come, old fellow; it is mine now."
"Yes, I suppose it is yours now," said Will.
He did not mean to put any extraordinary significance in his tone, but
yet he was in such a condition of mind that his very voice betrayed him
against his will. Even Winnie, preoccupied as she was, intermitted her
own thoughts a moment to look at him, and Hugh reddened, though he could
not have told why. There was a certain menace, a certain implication of
something behind, which the inexperienced boy had no intention of
betraying, but which made themselves apparent in spite of him. And Hugh
too grew crimson in spite of himself. He said "By Jove!" and then he
laughed, and cleared his mind of it, feeling it absurd to be made angry
by the petulance of his boy-brother. Then he turned to Nelly, who had
drawn closer to him, fearing that the quarrel was about to take place as
it takes place in novels, trembling a little, and yet by the aid of her
own good sense, feeling that it could not be so serious after all.
"If we are going to the Lady's Well we must go early," he said; and his
face changed when he turned to her. She was growing prettier every
day,--every day at least she spent in Hugh's society,--opening and
unfolding as to the sun. Her precocious womanliness, if it had been
precocious, melted under the new influence, and all the natural
developments were quickened. She was more timid, more caressing, less
self-reliant, and yet she was still as much as ever head of the house at
home.
"But not if it will vex Will," she said, almost in a whisper, in his
ear; and the close approach which this whisper made necessary, effaced
in an instant all unbrotherly feelings towards Wilfrid from Hugh's mind.
They both looked at Will, instinctively, as they spoke, the girl with a
little wistful solicitude in case he might be disturbed by the sight of
their confidential talk. But Will was quite unmoved. He saw the two draw
closer together, and perceived the confidential communication that
passed between them, but his countenance did not change in the slightest
degree. By this time he was far beyond that.
"You see he does not mind," said Hugh, carrying on the half-articulate
colloquy, of which one half was done by thoughts instead of words; and
Nelly, with the colour a little deepened on her cheek, looked up at him
with a look which Hugh could not half interpret. He saw the soft
brightness, the sweet satisfaction in it tinged by a certain gleam of
fun, but he did not see that Nelly was for a moment ashamed of herself,
and was asking herself how she ever could, for a moment, have supposed
Will was jealous. It was a relief to her mind to see his indifference,
and yet it filled her with shame.
When the meal was over, and they all dispersed with their different
interests, it was Mary who sought to soften what she considered the
disappointment of her boy. She came to him as he stood at the window
under the verandah, where the day before Percival had given him his
fatal illumination, and put her arm within his, and did her best to draw
his secret from his clouded and musing eyes.
"My dear boy, let us give in to Hugh," said Mary; "he is only a guest
now, you know, and you are at home." She was smiling when she said this,
and yet it made her sigh. "And then I think he is getting fond of Nelly,
and you are far too young for anything of that sort," Mrs. Ochterlony
said, with anxiety and a little doubt, looking him in the face all the
time.
"There are some things I am not too young for," said Will. "Mamma, if I
were Hugh I would be at home nowhere unless _you_ were at home there as
well."
"My dear Will, that is my own doing," said Mary. "Don't blame your
brother. I have refused to go to Earlston. It will always be best for
me, for all your sakes, to have a house of my own."
"If Earlston had been mine, I should not have minded your refusal," said
Will. Perhaps it was as a kind of secret atonement to her and to his own
heart that he said so, and yet it was done instinctively, and was the
utterance of a genuine feeling. He was meditating in his heart her
disgrace and downfall, and yet the first effects of it, if he could
succeed, would be to lay everything that he had won by shaming her, at
her feet. He would do her the uttermost cruelty and injury without
flinching, and then he would overwhelm her with every honour and
grandeur that his ill-got wealth could supply. And he did not see how
inconsistent those two things were.
"But my boys _must_ mind when I make such a decision," said Mary; and
yet she was not displeased with the sentiment. "You shall go to Carlisle
for me," she added. "I want some little things, and Hugh very likely
would be otherwise occupied. If you would like to have a little change,
and go early, do not wait for them, Will. There is a train in half an
hour."
"Yes, I would like a little change," he answered vaguely--feeling
somehow, for that moment solely, a little prick of conscience. And so it
was by his mother's desire to restore his good-humour and cheerfulness,
that he was sent upon his mission of harm and treachery.