He that will not when he may; vol. I

by Mrs. Oliphant

It was that very evening, however, that the letters arrived which cast the family into so great a commotion and obliterated all recollection of the Lennys. It had pleased Lady Markham that her husband, of himself, had begun to speak of Paul the next time they met after the departure of their guests. There was a certain tenderness in his tone, a something which was quite unusual. “Have you heard from him lately?” he asked with some anxiety, “poor boy!” This was so unusual that Lady Markham would not spoil so excellent a disposition by any complaint of Paul’s irregularity in correspondence. She replied that she had heard—not very long ago; that he was still in Oxford; that she hoped he would return for Alice’s birthday, which was approaching. Sir William did not say any more then, but he spoke of Paul again at luncheon, saying—“Poor fellow!” this time. “He has very good abilities if he would only make the right use of them,” he said.

“Oh, William!” cried Lady Markham, “he is still so young; why should not he make very good use of them yet? We were not so very wise at his age.”

“That is true. I was not at all wise at his age: poor Paul!” his father said.

The ladies were quite cheered by this exhibition of interest in Paul, who had not been, they felt, so good or submissive to his father as it was right for a young man to be. “He is letting his heart speak at last,” Lady Markham said when she was alone with her daughter; “he is longing to see his boy; and oh, Alice! so am I.”

“May I write to him,” cried Alice, eagerly, “and tell him he is to come home?”

They talked this over all the afternoon. Paul had not listened to any of their previous entreaties, but perhaps now, if he were told how his father had melted, if he knew how everybody was longing for him! There were two letters written that afternoon, full of tenderness, full of entreaties. “If your reading is so important I will not say a word, you shall go back, you shall be left quite free; but oh, my dearest boy! surely you can spare us a week or two,” Lady Markham wrote. Their spirits rose after these letters had been despatched. It did not seem possible that Paul could turn a deaf ear to such entreaties; and by this time surely he, too, must be longing for home. The future had not seemed so bright to them since first these discords began. Now, surely, if Paul would but respond as became an affectionate son, everything would be right.

Markham Chase was situated in one of those districts where the post comes in at night—a very bad thing, as is well known for the digestion, and a great enemy to sleep and comfort. No one, however, had the philosophy to do without his or her letters on that account. The ladies naturally never took it in consideration at all, and Sir William’s official correspondence did not affect his nerves. Lady Markham and her daughter came early into the drawing-room that evening, while it was still daylight, though evening was advancing rapidly. The children, who felt severely the loss of Colonel Lenny and his stories, and were low spirited and out of temper in consequence, went soon to bed. Lady Markham retired into her favourite room—the large recess which made a sort of transept to the great drawing-room. It was filled at the further end by a large Elizabethan window, the upper part of which was composed of quarries of old painted glass in soft tints of greenish white and yellow; and which caught the very last rays of daylight—the lingering glories of the west. Soft mossy velvet curtains framed in, but did not shade the window, for Lady Markham was fond of light—and shrouded the entrance dividing this from the great drawing-room beyond. The fireplace all glimmering with tiles below and bits of mirror above, with shelves of delicate china and pet ornaments, filled the great part of one side, while the other was clothed with bookcases below and pictures above, closely set. One of Raphael’s early Madonnas (or a copy—there was no certainty on the subject, Lady Markham holding to its authenticity with more fervour than any other article of faith, but disinterested critics holding the latter opinion) presided over the whole; and there were some pretty landscapes, and a great many portraits—the true household gods of its mistress. There she had seated herself in the soft waning light of the evening. Alice just outside the velvet curtains was playing softly, now an old stately minuet, now an old-fashioned, quaint gavotte, now a snatch of a languid, dreamy valse—music which did not mean much, but which breathed echoes of soft pleasures past into the quiet. The soft summer twilight fading slowly out of the great window, the cool breathing of the dews and night air from the garden, the dreamy music—all lulled the mind to rest. Lady Markham made not even a pretence at occupation. What was she thinking of? When a woman has her boys out in the world—those strange, unknown, yet so familiar creatures whom she knows by heart yet knows nothing of, who have dipped into a thousand things incomprehensible to her, filling her with vague fears and aches of anxiety—of what but of them is she likely to be thinking? She was groping vaguely after her Paul in strange places which her imagination scarcely took in. When the other boys were away they too had their share in her thoughts; but they were still in the age of innocence at school, not young men abroad in the world. Where was he now? She tried to figure to herself a scene of youthful gaiety—one of the college parties she had read of in novels. She was the more bold to think of this, as she felt that her appeal to Paul just despatched would surely detach him, for a time at least, from all such noisy scenes. Lady Markham’s imagination was not her strong point. She was floating vaguely in a maze of fancies rather than forming for herself any definite picture, when Brown came into the room with the letters. The music stopped instantly, and Alice, rushing at them, uttered a tremulous cry which made the mother at once aware what had happened. Only Paul could have called forth that cry of trembling satisfaction, delight, and alarm. Lady Markham got up at once and held out her hands for the letters, while Alice ran to light the candles. “I can see, I can see,” Lady Markham said. The mere fact that the letter was Paul’s made it more or less luminous in itself and helped the fading light.

Sir William, seated in his library by himself, had been thinking, with a difference, much the same thoughts. With a compunction and compassion indescribable, he had been thinking of his son. Paul, with all his foolish democratical notions, was yet the most aristocratic, the most imperious of young men, knowing nothing of the evils he was so ready to take upon him, generous in giving, but to whom it would be bitterness itself to receive. Would Paul ever turn upon him, upbraid him, curse him? A shiver came over his father at the thought—and along with this a horrible sense of the position in which this haughty young heir would find himself, if—— How was it that such a possibility had altogether escaped his mind? He could not tell: he did not know how to answer himself. Forty years is a large slice out of a man’s life. Even had it been some one fully known and loved, it would be unlikely that you should think of him with any persistency of reference after a separation of forty years—and a child, an infant, a thing with no personality at all! But still, he asked himself, had he never thought when Paul was born of the former time, far away in the morning haze of youth, when a young mother and a child had called forth his interest? Yes, he had thought of it; he had thought with alarm of what had happened then; he had been more anxious about his young wife than young husbands usually are—but no more. It had never occurred to him that his child had anything to do with the other. Strange blindness in a man so accurate! He said to himself, “It will come to nothing; it will be arranged; all will be well:” but in the same breath he said, “Poor Paul! God help him! What would happen to Paul, if——”

He had not been able to do anything all day for thinking of this: he had kept his blue-book before him, but he had made nothing of it. Sir William, whose understood creed it was that public affairs went before everything, could pay no attention to these public affairs. When the letters came in, in the evening, he received them languidly, not feeling that there was anything there which could interest him so much as his own thoughts. When he saw Paul’s handwriting an unusual stir arose in his elderly bosom. But he put it down, and took up a letter from his chief, which would be no doubt of far more importance to the country, with a last attempt to conquer himself. But the words of his chiefs letter had no sense to him; he could not understand what there was to be so anxious about. Smith’s candidature for Bannockshire—what did it matter? He made a rapid and novel reflection to himself about the trifling character of the incidents which people made so much of; then laid down the solemn sheet with its coronet, and took up the letter of his boy.

A few minutes after he walked into his wife’s sitting-room, the letter open in his hand. Lady Markham was seated close to the great window against the dying light, with a candle flaring melancholy on a table beside her, reading her letter. Alice, behind her, read it too, over her mother’s shoulder: surprise and trouble were on their faces. Alice had begun to cry. Lady Markham in her wonder and distress, was repeating a few words here and there aloud. “I can no longer hope for anything in this country of prejudice.” “Going away to a new world.” They were both so absorbed that they did not hear Sir William’s entrance till he suddenly appeared, holding out his letter. “What is the meaning,” he asked, “of this, Isabel? What is the meaning of it?” The indignation of the head of the house, which seemed to be directed against themselves, brought the two ladies with a sudden shock out of their own private dismay, and gave them a new part to play. Their hearts still quivering with the sudden blow which Paul’s disclosure had given them, they still turned in a moment into apologists and defenders of Paul.