RETROSPECT.
For my part, I am inclined to think that Margaret was more right than
she knew. There was really no inherent fitness between her temperament
and that of Wyvis Brand; and his position in the County was one which
would have fretted her inexpressibly. She, who had been the petted
favorite of a brilliant circle in town and country, to take rank as the
wife of a ploughman's son! It would not have suited her at all; and her
discontent would have ended in making Wyvis miserable.
He was, he considered, miserable enough already. He was sore all
over--sore and injured and angry. He had been deceived in a manner which
seemed to him unjustifiable from beginning to end. The disclosure of his
parentage explained many little things which had been puzzling to him
in his previous life, but it brought with it a baffling, passionate
sense of having been fooled and duped--not a condition of things which
was easy for him to support. Little by little the whole story became
clear to him. For, when he flung out of the Red House after Margaret's
departure, in a tumult of rage and shame, announcing his determination
to go to the devil, he did not immediately seek out the Prince of
Darkness: he only went to his lawyer. His lawyer told him a good deal,
and Mrs. Brand, in a letter dictated to Janetta, told him more.
Mary Wyvis, the daughter of the village inn-keeper at Roxby, was brought
up to act as his barmaid, and early became engaged to marry her cousin,
John Wyvis, ploughman. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, when Mark
Brand appeared upon the scene, and fell desperately in love with the
handsome barmaid. She returned his love, but was too conscientious to
elope with him and forget her cousin, as he wished her to do. Her father
supported John's claim, and threatened to horsewhip the fine gentleman
if he visited the Roxby Arms again. By way of change, Mary then went
into domestic service for a few weeks at Helmsley Manor. It was not
expected that she would remain there, and it was thought by her friends
that she distinctly "lowered herself" by accepting this position, for
her father was a well-to-do man in his way; but Mary Wyvis made the
break with Mark Brand by this new departure which she considered it
essential for her to make; and she was thereby delivered from his
attentions for a time. At Helmsley Manor she was treated with much
consideration, being considered a superior young person for her class;
and although only a scullery maid in name, she was allowed a good deal
of liberty, and promoted to attend on Lady Caroline Bertie, who, as a
girl of fourteen, was then visiting Mrs. Adair, the mother of the man
whom she afterward married. Mary Wyvis was lured into confiding one or
two of her little secrets to Lady Caroline; and when she left Helmsley
Court to marry John Wyvis, that young lady took so much interest in the
affair that she attended the wedding and gave the bride a
wedding-present. And as she often visited the Adairs, she seldom failed
to asked after Mary, until that consummation of Mary's fate which
effectually destroyed Lady Caroline's interest in her.
Wyvis the ploughman was accidentally killed, and Mary's child, named
John after his father, was born shortly after the ploughman's death. It
was then that Mark Brand sought out his old love, and to better purpose
than before. His passion for her had been strengthened by what he was
pleased to call her desertion of him. He proposed marriage, and offered
to adopt the boy. Mary Wyvis accepted both propositions, and left
England with him almost immediately, in order to escape mocking and
slanderous tongues.
It was inevitable that evil should be said of her. Mark Brand's pursuit
of her before her marriage to Wyvis had been well known. That she should
marry him so soon after her first husband's death seemed to point to
some continued understanding between the two, and caused much gossip in
the neighborhood. Such gossip was really unfounded, for Mary was a good
woman in her way, though not a very wise one; but the charges against
her were believed in many places, and never disproved. It was even
whispered that the little boy was Mark Brand's own son, and that John
Wyvis had met his death through some foul play. Rumors of this kind died
down in course of time. But they were certainly sufficient to account
for the disfavor with which the County eyed the Brands in general, and
Mrs. Brand in particular. Mark Brand lived very little at the Red House
after his marriage. He knew what a storm of indignation had been spent
upon his conduct, and he was well aware of the aspersions on his wife's
character. He was too reckless by nature to try to set things straight:
he considered that he did his best for his family when he left England
behind him, and trained the boys, Wyvis and Cuthbert, to love a foreign
land better than their own.
He grew very fond of Mary's boy during the first few years of his
married life. This fondness led him to wish that the boy were his own,
and the appearance of Cuthbert did not alter this odd liking for another
man's son. He never cared very much for Cuthbert, who was delicate and
lame from babyhood; but Wyvis was the apple of his eye. The boy was
called John Wyvis: it was easy enough in a foreign country to let him
slip into the position of the eldest of the family as Wyvis Brand. A
baby son was born before Cuthbert, and dying a month old, gave Mark all
the opportunity that he needed. He sent word to old Wyvis at Roxby that
John's boy was dead; and he then quietly substituted Wyvis in place of
his own son. Every year, he argued, would make the real difference of
age between John's boy and the dead child less apparent: it would save
trouble to speak of Wyvis as his own, and troublesome inquiries were not
likely to be made. Time and use made him almost forget that Wyvis did
not really belong to him; and but for his wife's insistence he would not
even have made the will which secured the Red House to his adopted son.
Cuthbert was of course treated with scandalous injustice by this will;
but the secret had been well kept, and the story was fully known to
nobody save the Brands' lawyer and Mary Brand herself.
The way in which Lady Caroline had ferreted out the secret remained a
mystery to the Brands. But they never gave her half enough credit for
her remarkable cleverness. When she saw Wyvis Brand, she had been struck
almost at once by his likeness to John Wyvis, the man who married her
old favorite, Mary. She leaped quickly to the conviction that he was not
Mark Brand's son. And when Margaret's infatuation for him declared
itself, she went straight to her husband's man of business, and
commissioned him to find out all that could be found out about the
Brands during the period of their early married life in Italy. The task
was surprisingly easy. Mark Brand had taken few precautions, for he had
drifted rather than deliberately steered towards the substitution of
Wyvis for his own eldest son. A very few inquiries elicited all that
Lady Caroline wanted to know. But she had not been quite sure of her
facts when she entered the Red House, and, if Mrs. Brand had been a
little cooler and a little braver, she might have defeated her enemy's
ends, and carried her secret inviolate to her grave.
But courage and coolness were the last things that could be expected
from Mrs. Brand. She had never possessed a strong mind and the various
chances and changes of her life had enfeebled instead of strengthening
it. Mark Brand had proved by no means a loving or faithful husband, and
did not scruple to taunt her with her inferiority of position, and to
threaten that he would mortify Wyvis' pride some day by a revelation of
his true name and descent. He was too fond of Wyvis to carry his threat
into effect but he made the poor woman, his wife, suffer an infinity of
torture, the greater part of which might have been avoided if she had
chanced to be gifted with a higher spirit and a firmer will.
Wyvis Brand went immediately to London after the interview with his
lawyer in Beaminster, and from London, in a few days, he wrote to
Cuthbert. The letter was curt, but not unfriendly. He wished, he said,
to repair the injustice that had been done, and to restore to Cuthbert
the inheritance that was his by right. He had already instructed his
lawyers to take the necessary steps, and he was glad to think that
Cuthbert and Nora would now be able to make the Red House what it ought
to be. He hoped that they would be very happy. For himself, he thought
of immigrating: he was heartily sick of modern civilization, and
believed that he would more easily find friends and fellow-workers
amongst the Red Skins of the Choctaw Indians than in "County"
drawing-rooms. And only by this touch did Wyvis betray the bitterness
that filled his heart.
Cuthbert rushed up to town at once in a white heat of indignation. He
was only just in time to find Wyvis at his hotel, for he had taken his
passage to America, and was going to start almost immediately. But there
was time at least for a very energetic discussion between the two young
men.
"If you think," said Cuthbert, hotly, "that I'm going to take your
place, you are very much mistaken."
"It is not my place. It has been mine only by fraud."
"Not a bit of it. It is yours by my father's will. He knew the truth,
and chose to take this course."
"Very unfair to you, Cuth," said Wyvis, a faint smile showing itself for
the first time on his haggard face.
Cuthbert shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, do you suppose it's
any news to me that my father cared more for your little finger than for
my whole body? He chose--practically--to disinherit me in your favor;
and a very good thing it's been for me too. I should never have taken to
Art if I had been a landed proprietor."
"I don't understand it," said Wyvis, meditatively. "One would have
expected him to be jealous of his wife's family--and then you're a much
better fellow than I am."
"That was the reason," said Cuthbert, sitting down and nursing his lame
leg, after a characteristic fashion of his own "I was a meek child--a
sickly lad who didn't get into mischief. I was afraid of horses, you may
remember, and hated manly exercises of every kind. Now you were never so
happy as when you were on a horse's back----"
"A strain inherited from my ploughman father, I suppose," said Wyvis,
rather grimly.
"And you got into scrapes innumerable; for which he liked you all the
better. And you--well you know, old boy, you were never a reproach to
him, as the sight of me was!"
Cuthbert's voice dropped. He had never spoken of it before, but he and
Wyvis knew well enough that his lameness was the result of his father's
brutal treatment of Mary Brand shortly before the birth of her second
son.
"He ought to have been more bent on making amends than on sacrificing
you to me," said Wyvis, bitterly.
"Oh, don't look at it in that way," Cuthbert answered. The natural
sweetness of his disposition made it painful to him to hear his father
blamed, although that father had done his best to make his life
miserable. "He never meant to hurt me, the poor old man; and when he had
done it, the sight of my infirmity became exquisitely painful to him. I
can forgive him that; I can forgive him everything. There are others
whom it is more difficult to forgive."
"You mean----"
"I mean women who have not the courage to be true," said Cuthbert, in a
low voice. He did not look at his brother, but he felt certain that a
thrill of pain passed through him. For a minute or two Wyvis did not
speak.
"Well," he said at last, forcing an uneasy laugh, "I think that she was
perhaps right. She might not have been very happy. And I doubt, after
all, whether I ought to have asked her. Janetta thought not, at any
rate."
"Janetta is generally very wise."
"So she is very wise. I am legally quite free, but she thinks
me--morally--bound."
"Well, so do I," said Cuthbert, frankly. "On all moral and religious
grounds, I think you are as much bound as ever you were. And if Miss
Adair refused you on those grounds, she has more right on her side than
I thought."
"Ah, but she did not," answered Wyvis, dryly. "She refused me because I
was not rich, not 'in society,' and a ploughman's son."
"That's bad," said his brother. And then the two sat for a little time
in silence, which is the way of Englishmen when one wishes to show
sympathy for another.
"But we are not approaching what I want to say at all," said Cuthbert,
presently. "We must not let our feelings run away with us. We are both
in a very awkward position, old boy, but we shan't make it better by
publishing it to the world. If you throw up the place in this absurd
fashion--excuse the term--you _will_ publish it to the world at large."
"Do you think that matters to me?" asked Wyvis, sternly.
"Perhaps not to you. But it matters to mother, and to me. And it affects
our father's character."
"Your father's, not mine."
"He was the only father you ever knew, and you have no reason to find
fault with him."
Wyvis groaned impatiently. "One has duties to the living, not to the
dead."
"One has duties to the dead, too. You can't give up the Red House to
me--even if I would take it, which I won't--without having the whole
story made public. My father hasn't a very good reputation in the
County: people will think no better of him for having lamed me,
disinherited me, and practiced a fraud on them. That's what they will
say about the affair, you know. We can't let the world know."
"Then I'd better go and shoot myself. It seems to me the only thing I
can do."
"And what about Julian? The estate would pass to him, of course," said
Cuthbert, coolly. He saw that Wyvis' face changed a little at the
mention of Julian's name.
"No, I could will it to you--make it over to you, with the condition
that it should go to the Foundling Hospital if you wouldn't accept it."
"I think that a will of that kind could be easily set aside on the
ground of insanity," said Cuthbert, with a slight smile.
"I could find a way out of the difficulty, if I tried, I have no
doubt," said Wyvis, frowning gloomily and pulling at his moustache.
"_Don't_ try," said his brother, leaning forward and speaking
persuasively. "Let things continue much as they are. I am content: Nora
is content. Why should you not be so, too?" Then, as Wyvis shook his
head: "Make your mind easy then if you must do something, by giving me a
sum down, or a slice of your income, old man. Upon my word I wouldn't
live in the old place if you gave it to me. It is picturesque--but damp.
Come let's compromise matters."
"I love every stick and stone in the place," said Wyvis grimly.
"I know you do. I don't. I want to live in Paris or Vienna with Nora,
and enjoy myself I don't want to paint pot-boilers. I say like the man
in the parable, 'Give me the portion that belongeth to me,' and I'll go
my way, promising, however, not to spend it in riotous living. Won't
that arrangement suit you?"
Wyvis demurred at first, but was finally persuaded into making an
arrangement of the kind that Cuthbert desired. He retained the Red
House, but he bestowed on his brother enough to give him an ample income
for the life that Cuthbert and Nora wished to lead. During his absence
from England, Mrs. Brand and Julian were still to inhabit the Red House.
And Wyvis announced his intention of going to South America to shoot big
game, from which Cuthbert inferred that his heart, although bruised, was
not broken yet.