“No,” said Hugh. “No, mother, no; don’t think of it; as if he were a girl or a Frenchman! Why it’s Will! What harm can he do? If he likes to visit Uncle Penrose, let him; it will not be such a wonderful delight. I’ll send him some money to-day.”
This, of course, was how it was settled; for Mary’s terrors were not strong enough to contend with her natural English prejudices against surveillance and restraint, backed by Hugh’s energetic remonstrances. When Winnie heard of it, she dashed immediately at the idea that her husband’s influence had something to do with Will’s strange flight, and was rather pleased and flattered by the thought. “I said he would strike me through my friends,” she said to Aunt Agatha, who was bewildered, and did not know what this could mean.
“My dear love, what good could it do him to interfere with Will?” said Miss Seton. “A mere boy, and who has not a penny. If he had wanted to injure us, it would have been Hugh that he would have tried to lead away.”
“To lead away?” said Winnie scornfully. “What does he care for leading away? He wants to do harm, real harm. He thinks he can strike me through my friends.”
When Aunt Agatha heard this she turned round to Mary, who had just come into the room, and gave a little deprecating shake of her head, and a pathetic look. Poor Winnie! She could think of nothing but her husband and his intentions; and how could he do this quiet household real harm? Mary said nothing, but her uneasiness increased more and more. She could not sit down to her work, or take up any of her ordinary occupations. She went to Will’s room and examined it throughout, and looked through his wardrobe to see what he had taken with him, and searched vainly for any evidence of his meaning; and then she wrote him a long letter of questions and appeals, which would have been full of pathetic eloquence to anybody who knew what was in her mind, but would have appeared simply amazing and unintelligible to anybody ignorant of her history, as she herself perceived, and burnt it, and wrote a second, in which there was still a certain mystery. She reminded him that he might have gone away comfortably with everybody’s knowledge, instead of making the household uneasy about him; and she could not but let a little wonder creep through, that of all people in the world it was Uncle Penrose whom he had elected to visit; and then she made an appeal to him: “What have I done to forfeit my boy’s confidence? what can you have heard, oh Will, my dear boy, that you could not tell to your mother?” Her mind was relieved by writing, but still she was uneasy and disquieted. If he had been severely kept in, or had any reason to fear a refusal;—but to steal away when he might have full leave and every facility; this was one of the things which appeared the most strange.
The servants, for their part, set it down to a quarrel with his brother, and jealousy about Nelly, and took Hugh’s part, who was always the favourite. And as for Hugh himself, he sent his brother a cheque (his privilege of drawing cheques being still new, and very agreeable), and asked why he was such an ass as to run away, and bade him enjoy himself. The house was startled—but after all, it was no such great matter; and nobody except Mary wasted much consideration upon Will’s escapade after that first morning. He was but a boy; and it was natural, everybody thought, that boys should do something foolish now and then.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
N a curious state of mind, Will was flying along towards Liverpool, while this commotion arose in the Cottage. Not even now had the matter taken any moral aspect to him. He did not feel that he had gone skulking off to deliver a cowardly blow. All that he was conscious of was the fact, that having something to tell which he could not somehow persuade himself to tell, he was going to make the communication from a distance under Uncle Penrose’s advice. And yet the boy was not comfortable. It had become apparent to him vaguely, that after this communication was made, the relations existing between himself and his family must be changed. That his mother might be “angry,” which was his boyish term for any or every displeasure that might cloud Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind; that Hugh might take it badly—and that after all it was a troublesome business, and he would be pleased to get it over. He was travelling in the cheapest way, for his money was scanty; but he was not the kind of boy to be beguiled from his own thoughts by the curious third-class society into which he was thus brought, or even by the country, which gradually widened and expanded under his eyes from the few beaten paths he knew so well, into that wide unknown stretch of hill and plain which was the world. A vague excitement, it is true, came into his mind as he felt himself to have passed out of the reach of everything he knew, and to have entered upon the undiscovered; but this excitement did not draw him out of his own thoughts. It did but mingle with them, and put a quickening thrill of life into the strange maze. The confused country people at the stations, who did not know which carriage to take, and wandered, hurried and disconsolate, on the platforms, looking into all—the long swift moment of passage over the silent country, in which the train, enveloped in its own noise, made for itself a distinct atmosphere—and then again a shriek, a pause, and another procession of faces looking in at the window—this was Will’s idea of the long journey. He was not imaginative; but still everybody appeared to him hurried, and downcast, and pre-occupied. Even the harmless country folks had the air of having something on their minds. And through all he kept on pondering what his mother and what Hugh would say. Poor boy! his discovery had given him no advantage as yet; but it had put a cross upon his shoulders—it had bound him so hard and fast that he could not escape from it. It had brought, if not guilt, yet the punishment of guilt into all his thoughts.
Mr. Penrose had a handsome house at some distance from Liverpool, as was usual. And Will found it a very tedious and troublesome business to get there, not to speak of the calls for sixpences from omnibuses and porters, and everybody (he thought) who looked at him, which was very severe on his slender purse. And when he arrived, his uncle’s servants looked upon him with manifest suspicion; he had never been there before, and Mr. Penrose was now living alone, his wife being dead, and all his children married, so that there was nobody in the house who could identify the unknown nephew. The Cottage was not much bigger than Mr. Penrose’s porter’s lodge, and yet that small tenement had looked down upon the great mansion all its life, and been partly ashamed of it, which sentiment gave Will an unconscious sense that he was doing Uncle Penrose an honour in going to visit him. But when he was met at the door by the semi-polite suspicion of the butler, who proposed that he should call again, with an evident reference in his mind to the spoons, it gave the boy the forlornest feeling that can be conceived. He was alone, and they thought him an impostor, and nobody here knew or cared whether he was shut out from the house or not. His heart went back to his home with that revulsion which everybody knows. There, everybody would have rushed to open the door to him, and welcome him back; and though his errand here was simply to do that home as much injury as possible, his heart swelled at the contrast. While he stood, however, insisting upon admittance in his dogged way, without showing any feelings, it happened that Mr. Penrose drove up to the door, and hailed his nephew with much surprise. “You here, Will?” Mr. Penrose said. “I hope nothing has gone wrong at the Cottage?” and his man’s hand instantly, and as by magic, relaxed from the door.