And this was how it all ended, so far as any end can be said to have
come to any episode in human history. While Will was still only
recovering--putting his recollections slowly together--and not very
certain about them, what they were, Hugh and his mother went through the
preliminaries necessary to have Mrs. Ochterlony's early marriage proved
before the proper court--a proceeding which Mary did not shrink from
when the time came that she could look calmly over the whole matter, and
decide upon the best course. She was surprised to see her own unfinished
letter preserved so carefully in Hugh's pocket-book. "Put it in the
fire," she said to him, "it will only put us in mind of painful things
if you keep it;" and it did not occur to Mary why it was that her son
smiled and put it back in its place, and kissed her hand, which had
grown thin and white in her long seclusion. And then he told her of
Nelly, and Mrs. Ochterlony was glad--glad to the bottom of her heart,
and yet touched with a momentary pang for which she was angry with
herself. He had stood by her so in all this time of trial, and now he
was about to remove himself a little, ever so little further off from
her, though he was her first-born and her pride; but then she despised
herself, who could grudge, even for half a moment, his reward to Hugh,
and made haste to make amends for it, even though he was unconscious of
the offence.
"I always thought she should have been my child," Mary said, "the very
first time I saw her. I had once one like her; and I hungered and
thirsted for Nelly when I saw her first. I did not think of getting her
like this. I will love her as if she were my own, Hugh."
"And so she will be your own," said Hugh, not knowing the difference.
And he was so happy that the sight of him made his mother happy, though
she had care enough in the meantime for her individual share.
For it may be supposed that Will, such a youth as he was, did not come
out of his fever changed and like a child. Such changes are few in this
world, and a great sickness is not of necessity a moral agent. When the
first languor and comfort of his convalescence was over, his mind began
to revive and to join things together, as was natural--and he did not
know where or how he had broken off in the confused and darkling story
that returned to his brain as he pondered. He had forgotten, or never
understood about all that happened on the day he was taken ill, but yet
a dreamy impression that some break had come to his plans, that there
was some obstacle, something that made an end of his rights, as he still
called them in his mind, hovered about his recollections. He was as
frank and open as it was natural to his character to be, for the first
few days after he began to recover, before he had made much progress
with his recollections; and then he became moody and thoughtful and
perplexed, not knowing how to piece the story out. This was perhaps,
next to death itself, the thing which Mary had most dreaded, and she saw
that though his sickness had been all but death, it had not changed the
character or identity of the pale boy absorbed in his own thoughts,
uncommunicating and unyielding, whose weakness compelled him to obey her
like an infant in everything external, yet whose heart gave her no such
obedience. It was as unlike Hugh's frank exuberance of mind, and Islay's
steady but open soul, as could be conceived. But yet he was her boy as
much as either; as dear, perhaps even more bound to her by the evil he
had tried to do, and by the suffering he himself had borne. And now she
had to think not only how to remedy the wrong he had attempted, and to
put such harm out of his and everybody's power, but to set the discord
in himself at rest, and to reconcile the jangled chords. It was this
that gave her a preoccupied look even while Hugh spoke to her of all his
plans. It was more difficult than appearing before the court, harder
work perhaps than anything she had yet had in her hands to do--and hard
as it was, it was she who had to seek the occasion and begin.
She had been sitting with her boy, one winterly afternoon, when all was
quiet in the house--they were still in the lodging in Liverpool, not far
from Mr. Penrose's, to which Will had been removed when his illness
began; he was not well enough yet to be removed, and the doctors were
afraid of cold, and very reluctant to send him, in this weak state,
still further to the north. She had been reading to him, but he was
evidently paying no attention to the reading, and she had left off and
began to talk, but he had been impatient of the talk. He lay on the sofa
by the fire, with his pale head against the pillow, looking thin,
spectral, and shadowy, and yet with a weight of weary thought upon his
overhanging brow, and in his close compressed lips, which grieved his
mother's heart.
"Will," she said suddenly, "I should like to speak to you frankly about
what you have on your mind. You are thinking of what happened before you
were taken ill?"
"Yes," he said, turning quickly upon her his great hollow eyes, shining
with interest and surprise; and then he stopped short, and compressed
his upper lip again, and looked at her with a watchful eye, conscious of
the imperfection of his own memory, and unwilling to commit himself.
"I will go over it all, that we may understand each other," said Mary,
though the effort made her own cheek pale. "You were told that I had
been married in India just before you were born, and you were led to
believe that your brothers were--were--illegitimate, and that you were
your father's heir. I don't know if they ever told you, my poor boy,
that I had been married in Scotland long before; at all events, they
made you believe----"
"Made me believe!" said Will, with feverish haste; "do people generally
marry each other more than once? I don't see how you can say 'made me
believe.'"
"Well, Will, perhaps it seemed very clear as it was told to you," said
Mary, with a sigh; "and you have even so much warrant for your mistake,
that your father too took fright, and thought because everybody was
dead that saw us married that we ought to be married again; and I
yielded to his wish, though I knew it was wrong. But it appears
everybody was not dead; two people who were present have come to light
very unexpectedly, and we have applied to that Court--that new Court,
you know, where they treat such things--to have my marriage proved, and
Hugh's legitimacy declared. It will cost some money, and it will not be
pleasant to me; but better _that_ than such a mistake should ever be
possible again."
Will looked in his mother's face, and knew and saw beyond all question
that she told him was absolute fact; not even _truth_, but fact; the
sort of thing that can be proved by witnesses and established in law.
His mouth which had been compressed so close, relaxed; his underlip
drooped, his eyes hid themselves, as it were, under their lids. A sudden
blank of mortification and humbled pride came over his soul. A mistake,
simply a mistake, such a blunder as any fool might make, an error about
simple facts which he might have set right if he had tried. And now for
ever and ever he was nothing but the youngest son; doubly indebted to
everybody belonging to him; indebted to them for forgiveness,
forbearance, tenderness, and services of every kind. He saw it all, and
his heart rose up against it; he had tried to wrong them, and it was his
punishment that they forgave him. It all seemed so hopeless and useless
to struggle against, that he turned his face from the light, and felt as
if it would be a relief if he could be able to be ill again, or if he
had wounds that he could have secretly unbound; so that he might get to
die, and be covered over and abandoned, and have no more to bear. Such
thoughts were about as foreign to Mrs. Ochterlony's mind as any human
cogitations could be, and yet she divined them, as it were, in the
greatness of her pity and love.
"Will," she said, speaking softly in the silence which had been unbroken
for long, "I want you to think if this had been otherwise, what it would
have been for me. I would have been a woman shut out from all good
women. I would have been only all the more wicked and wretched that I
had succeeded in concealing my sin. You would have blushed for your
mother whenever you had to name her name. You could not have kept me
near you, because my presence would have shut against you every honest
house. You would have been obliged to conceal me and my shame in the
darkness--to cover me over in some grave with no name on it--to banish
me to the ends of the earth----"
"Mother!" said Will, rising up in his gaunt length and paleness on the
sofa. He did not understand it. He saw her figure expanding, as it were,
her eyes shining in the twilight like two great mournful stars, the hot
colour rising to her face, her voice labouring with an excitement which
had been long pent up and found no channel; and the thrill and jar in it
of suppressed passion, made a thrill in his heart.
"And your father!" she went on, always with growing emotion, "whom you
are all proud of, who died for his duty and left his name without a
blot;--he would have been an impostor like me, a man who had taken base
advantage of a woman, and deceived all his friends, and done the last
wrong to his children,--we two that never wronged man nor woman, that
would have given our lives any day for any one of you,--that is what you
would have made us out."
"Mother!" said Will. He could not bear it any longer. His heart was up
at last, and spoke. He came to her, crept to her in his weakness, and
laid his long feeble arms round her as she sat hiding her face. "Mother!
don't say that. I must have been mad. Not what _I_ would have made you
out----"
"Oh, my poor Will, my boy, my darling!" said Mary, "not you--I never
meant you!"
And she clasped her boy close, and held him to her, not knowing what she
meant. And then she roused herself to sudden recollection of his
feebleness, and took him back to his sofa, and brooded over him like a
bird over her nest. And after awhile Islay came in, bringing fresh air
and news, and a breath from the outer world. And poor Will's heart being
still so young, and having at last touched the depths, took a rebound
and came up, not like, and yet not unlike the heart of a little child.
From that time his moodiness, his heavy brow, his compressed lip, grew
less apparent, and out of his long ponderings with himself there came
sweeter fruits. He had been on the edge of a precipice, and he had not
known it: and now that after the danger was over he had discovered that
danger, such a thrill came over him as comes sometimes upon those who
are the most foolhardy in the moment of peril. He had not seen the
blackness of the pit nor the terror of it until he had escaped.
But probably it was a relief to all, as it was a great relief to poor
Will, when his doctor proposed a complete change for him, and a winter
in the South. Mary had moved about very little since she brought her
children home from India, and her spirit sank before the thought of
travel in foreign parts, and among unknown tongues. But she was content
when she saw the light come back to her boy's eye. And when he was well
enough to move, they went away[A] together, Will and his mother, Mary
and her boy. He was the one who needed her most.
[A] They went to San Remo, if any one would like to know, for no
particular reason that I can tell, except that the beloved physician,
Dr. Antonio, has thrown the shield of his protection over that
picturesque little place, with its golden orange groves and its
delicious sea.
And when Hugh and Nelly were married, the Percivals sent the little
bride a present, very pretty, and of some value, which the Ochterlonys
in general accepted as a peace-offering. Winnie's letter which
accompanied it was not, however, very peaceful in its tone. "I daresay
you think yourself very happy, my dear," Winnie wrote, "but I would not
advise you to calculate upon too much happiness. I don't know if we were
ever meant for that. Mary, who is the best woman among us, has had a
terrible deal of trouble; and I, whom perhaps you will think one of the
worst, have not been let off any more than Mary. I wonder often, for my
part, if there is any meaning at all in it. I am not sure that I think
there is. And you may tell Mrs. Kirkman so if you like. My love to Aunt
Agatha, and if you like you can kiss Hugh for me. He always was my
favourite among all the boys."
Poor Aunt Agatha heard this letter with a sigh. She said, "My dear love,
it is only Winnie's way. She always liked to say strange things, but she
does not think like that." And perhaps on the whole it was Aunt Agatha
that was worst off in the end. She was left alone when the young
creatures paired, as was natural, in the spring; and when the mother
Mary went away with her boy. Aunt Agatha had no child left to devote
herself to; and it was very silent in the Cottage, where she sat for
hours with nothing more companionable than the Henri Deux ware, Francis
Ochterlony's gift, before her eyes. And Sir Edward was very infirm that
year. But yet Miss Seton found a consolation that few people would have
thought of in the Henri Deux, and before the next winter Mary was to
come home. And she had always her poor people and her letters, and the
Kirtell singing softly under its dewy braes.
THE END.
21/8/75.
LONDON:
SWIFT AND CO., NEWTON STREET, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Major Octherlony's mind=> Major Ochterlony's mind {pg 7}
had been very very kind to=> had been very kind to {pg 9}
but yon cannot make old=> but you cannot make old {pg 20}
Mrs. Kirkman come in=> Mrs. Kirkman came in {pg 23}
n, 'wildered and wondering=> in, 'wildered and wondering {pg 25}
Mrs. Kirkmam=> Mrs. Kirkman {pg 26}
ar six hours=> or six hours {pg 38}
excesssively entertained=> excessively entertained {pg 48}
foreboding's=> forebodings {pg 65}
Souhampton=> Southampton {pg 71}
the ayah croned=> the ayah crooned {pg 85}
A fine little fellw=> A fine little fellow {pg 87}
which sood=> which stood {pg 94}
Pysche=> Psyche {pg 98, 108}
cf conduct=> of conduct {pg 119}
o her last gasp=> to her last gasp {pg 143}
more determind=> more determined {pg 152}
nnrsing one of his legs=> nursing one of his legs {pg 158}
if yon are rich or poor=> if you are rich or poor {pg 167}
This halycon time=> This halcyon time {pg 176}
rather of feeeling=> rather of feeling {pg 187}
you are are able to manage=> you are able to manage {pg 193}
Mr. Octherlony shook hands=> Mr. Ochterlony shook hands {pg 188}
make her feel as if she=> made her feel as if she {pg 225}
every every one's=> every one's {pg 227}
messsages of inquiry=> messages of inquiry {pg 261}
she had began to soften a little=> she had begun to soften a little {pg
270}
these thougets=> these thoughts {pg 286}
other associatious=> other associations {pg 299}
tnrning doggedly away=> turning doggedly away {pg 301}
anxions and terror-stricken=> anxious and terror-stricken {pg 303}
ecstasy=> ecstacy {pg 306}
dutifnl and tender=> dutiful and tender {pg 307}
ace and doing it=> face and doing it {pg 309}
responsibilty=> responsibility {pg 339}
were countlesss=> were countless {pg 351}
fighing like foes=> fighting like foes {pg 359}
rushed tagether=> rushed together {pg 360}
against yon=> against you {pg 387}
that old Somerville's=> that old Sommerville's {pg 400}
Mr. Penrose calied the=> Mr. Penrose called the {pg 401}
as he flow along the road=> as he flew along the road {pg 409}