“There is nothing wrong, sir,” said Will, “but I wanted to speak to you;” and he entered triumphantly, not without a sense of victory, as the subdued servant took his bag out of his hand. Mr. Penrose was, as we have said, alone. He had shed, as it were, all incumbrances, and was ready, unfettered by any ties or prejudices, to grow richer and wiser and more enlightened every day. His children were all married, and his wife having fulfilled all natural offices of this life, and married all her daughters, had quietly taken her dismissal when her duties were over, and had a very handsome tombstone, which he looked at on Sunday. It occurred to very few people, however, to lament over Mr. Penrose’s loneliness. He seemed to have been freed from all impediments, and left at liberty to grow rich, to get fat, and to believe in his own greatness and wisdom. Nor did it occur to himself to feel his great house lonely. He liked eating a luxurious dinner by himself, and knowing how much it had cost, all for his single lordly appetite—the total would have been less grand if wife and children had shared it. And then he had other things to think of—substantial things, about interest and investments, and not mere visionary reflections about the absence of other chairs or other faces at his table. But he had a natural interest in Wilfrid, as in a youth who had evidently come to ask his advice, which was an article he was not disinclined to give away. And then “the Setons,” as he called his sister’s family and descendants, had generally shut their ears to his advice, and shown an active absence of all political qualities, so that Will’s visit was a compliment of the highest character, something like an unexpected act of homage from Mordecai in the gate.
But even Mr. Penrose was struck dumb by Will’s communication. He put up his hand to his cravat and gasped, and thumped himself on the breast, staring at the boy with round, scared, apoplectic eyes—like the eyes of a boiled fish. He stared at Will,—who told the story calmly enough, with a matter-of-fact conciseness—and looked as if he was disposed to ring the bell and send for a doctor, and get out of the difficulty by concluding his nephew to be mad. But there was no withstanding the evidence of plain good faith and sincerity in Will’s narration. Mr. Penrose remained silent longer than anybody had ever known him to remain silent before, and he was not even very coherent when he had regained the faculty of speech.
“That woman was present, was she?” he said, “and Winnie’s husband—good Lord! And so you mean to tell me Mary has been all this time—When I asked her to my house, and my wife intended to make a party for her, and all that—and when she preferred to visit at Earlston, and that old fool, Sir Edward, who never had a penny—except what he settled on Winnie—and all that time, you know, Mary was—good Lord!”
“I don’t see what difference it makes to my mother,” said Will. “She is just what she always was—the difference it makes is to me—and of course to Hugh.”
But this was not a view that Mr. Penrose could take, who knew more about the world than Will could be supposed to know—though his thoughts were usually so preoccupied by what he called the practical aspect of everything. Yet he was disturbed in this case by reflections which were almost imaginative, and which utterly amazed Will. He got up, though he was still in the middle of dessert, and walking about the room, making exclamations. “That’s what she has been, you know, all this time—Mary, of all people in the world! Good Lord! That’s what she was, when we asked her here.” These were the exclamations that kept bursting from Uncle Penrose’s amazed lips—and Will at last grew angry and impatient, and hurried into the practical matter on his own initiative.
“When you have made up your mind about it, Uncle, I should be glad to know what you think best to be done,” said Will, in his steady way, and he looked at his adviser with those sceptical, clear-sighted eyes, which, more than anything else, make a practical man ashamed of having indulged in any momentary aberration.
Mr. Penrose came back to his chair and sat down, and looked with respect, and something that was almost awe, in Will’s face. Then the boy continued, seeing his advantage: “You must see what an important thing it is between Hugh and me,” he said. “It is a matter of business, of course, and it would be far better to settle it at once. If I am the right heir, you know, Earlston ought to be mine. I have heard you say, feelings had nothing to do with the right and wrong.”
“No,” said Mr. Penrose, with a slight gasp; “that is quite true; but it is all so sudden, you know—and Mary—I don’t know what you want me to do——”
“I want you to write and tell them about it,” said Will.
Mr. Penrose put his lips into the shape they would naturally have taken had he been whistling as usual; but he was not capable of a whistle. “It is all very easy to talk,” he said, “and naturally business is business, and I am not a man to think too much about feelings. But Mary—the fact is, it must be a matter of arrangement, Will. There can’t be any trial, you know, or publicity to expose her——”