Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Ah, by the way,” said Sir Edward, looking round once more into the corners, “where is Will?”

And then it had to be explained where Will had gone, which the old man thought very curious. “To Carlisle? What did he want to go to Carlisle for? If he had been out with his fishing rod, or out with the keepers, looking after the young pheasants—— But what could he want going into Carlisle? Is Percival there?”

“I hope not,” said Mary, with sudden anxiety. It was an idea which had not entered into her mind before.

“Why should you hope not? If he really wants to make peace with Winnie, I should think it very natural,” said Sir Edward; “and Will is a curious sort of boy. He might be a very good sort of auxiliary in any negotiation. Depend upon it that’s why he is gone.”

“I think not. I think he would have told me,” said Mary, feeling her heart sink with sudden dread.

“I don’t see why he should have told you,” said Sir Edward, who was in one of his troublesome moods, and disposed to put everybody at sixes and sevens. “He is old enough to act a little for himself. I hope you are not one of the foolish women, Mary, that like to keep their boys always at their apron-strings?”

With this reproach Sir Edward took his leave, and made his way placidly homeward, with the tranquillity of a man who has done his duty. He felt that he had discharged the great vocation of man, at least for the past hour. Winnie had heard the truth, whether she liked it or not, and so had the other members of the family, over whom he shook his head kindly but sadly as he went home. Their impetuosity, their aptitude to rush into any scrape that presented itself—and especially their madness in respect to marriage, filled him with pity. There was Charlie Seton, for example, the father of these girls, who had married that man Penrose’s sister. Sir Edward’s memory was so long, that it did not seem to him a very great stretch to go back to that. Not that the young woman was amiss in herself, but the man who, with his eyes open, burdened his unborn descendants with such an uncle, was worse then lunatic—he was criminal. This was what Sir Edward thought as he went quietly home, with a rather comfortable dreary sense of satisfaction in his heart in the thought that his own behaviour had been marked by no such aberrations; and, in the meantime, Winnie was fanning the embers of her own wrath, and Mary had sickened somehow with a sense of insecurity and unexplainable apprehension. On the other hand, the two young creatures were very happy on the road to the Lady’s Well, and Will addressed himself to his strange business with resolution: and, painful as its character was, was not pained to speak of, but only excited. So ran the course of the world upon that ordinary summer day.

CHAPTER XXXV.

F the strangest kind were Wilfrid’s sensations when he found himself in the streets of Carlisle on his extraordinary mission. It was the first time he had ever taken any step absolutely by himself. To be sure, he had been brought up in full possession of the freedom of an English boy, in whose honour everybody has confidence—but never before had he been moved by an individual impulse to independent action, nor had he known what it was to have a secret in his mind, and an enterprise which had to be conducted wholly according to his own judgment, and in respect to which he could ask for no advice. When he emerged out of the railway station, and found himself actually in the streets, a thrill of excitement, sudden and strange, came over him. He had known very well all along what he was coming to do, and yet he seemed only to become aware of it at that moment, when he put his foot upon the pavement, and was appealed to by cab-drivers, eager to take him somewhere. Here there was no time or opportunity for lingering; he had to go somewhere, and that instantly, were it only to the shops to execute his mother’s innocent commissions. It might be possible to loiter and meditate on the calm country roads about Kirtell, but the town and the streets have other associations. He was there to do something, to go somewhere, and it had to be begun at once. He was not imaginative, but yet he felt a kind of palpable tearing asunder as he took his first step onward. He had hesitated, and his old life seemed to hold out its arms to him. It was not an unhappy life; he had his own way in most things, he had his future before him unfettered, and he knew that his wishes would be furthered, and everything possible done to help and encourage him. All this passed through his mind like a flash of lightning. He would be helped and cared for and made much of, but yet he would only be Will, the youngest, of whom nobody took particular notice, and who sat in the lowest room; whereas, by natural law and justice, he was the heir. After he had made that momentary comparison, he stepped on with a firm foot, and then it was that he felt like the tearing asunder of something that had bound him. He had thrown the old bonds, the old pleasant ties, to the wind; and now all that he had to do was to push on by himself and gain his rights. This sensation made his head swim as he walked on. He had put out to sea, as it were, and the new movement made him giddy—and yet it was not pain; love was not life to him, but he had never known what it was to live without it. There seemed no reason why he should not do perfectly well for himself; Hugh would be affronted, of course—but it could make no difference to Islay, for example, nor much to his mother, for it would still be one of her sons. These were the thoughts that went through Wilfrid’s mind as he walked along; from which it will be apparent that the wickedness he was about to do was not nearly so great in intention as it was in reality; and that his youth, and inexperience, and want of imagination, his incapacity to put himself into the position of another, or realize anything but his own wants and sentiments, pushed him unawares, while he contemplated only an act of selfishness, into a social crime.