Percival turned away with a disdainful shrug of his shoulders. He was familiar enough with the taunt. “If you harmed me by that act, I harmed you still more, I suppose,” he said. “We have gone over that ground often enough. Let us have it out now. Are you coming back to your duty and to me.”
“I came to speak of Mary,” said Winnie, facing him as he turned. “Set those right first who have never done you any harm, and then we can think of the others. The innocent come first. Strike at me like a man, but not through my friends.”
She sat down as she spoke, without quite knowing what she did. She sat down, because, though the spirit was moved to passionate energy, the flesh was weak. Perhaps something in the movement touched the man who hated and loved her, as she loved and hated him. A sudden pause came to the conflict, such as does occur capriciously in such struggles; in the midst of their fury a sudden touch of softness came over them. They were alone—nothing but mists of passion were between them, and though they were fighting like foes, their perverse souls were one. He came up to her suddenly and seized her hands, not tenderly, but rudely, as was natural to his state of mind.
“Winnie,” he said, “this will not do; come away with me. You may struggle as you please, but you are mine. Don’t let us make a laughing-stock of ourselves! What are a set of old women and children between you and me? Let them fight it out; it will all come right. What is anything in the world between you and me? Come! I am not going to be turned off or put away as if you did not mind. I know you better than that. Come! I tell you, nothing can stand between you and me.”
“Never!” said Winnie, blazing with passion; but even while she spoke the course of the torrent changed. It leaped the feeble boundaries, and went into the other channel—the channel of love which runs side by side with that of hate. “You leave me to be insulted by everybody who has a mind—and if I were to go with you, it is you who would insult me!” cried Winnie. And the tears came pouring to her eyes suddenly like a thunder-storm. It was all over in a moment, and that was all that was said. What were other people that either he or she should postpone their own affairs to any secondary consideration? Their spirits rushed together with a flash of fire, and roll of thunder. The suddenness of it was the thing that made it effectual. Something “smote the chord of self, that trembling” burst into a tumult of feeling and took to itself the semblance of love; no matter how it had been brought about. Was not anything good that set them face to face, and showed the two that life could not continue for them apart? Neither the tears, nor the reproaches, nor the passion were over, but it changed all at once into such a quarrel as had happened often enough before then. As soon as Winnie came back to her warfare, she had gone back, so to speak, to her duties according to her conception of them. Thus the conflict swelled, and rose, and fluctuated, and softened, like many another; but no more thoughts of the Cottage, or of Aunt Agatha, or of Mary’s sudden calamity drew Winnie from her own subject. After all, it was, as she had felt, a pasteboard cottage let down upon her for the convenience of the moment—a thing to disappear by pulleys when the moment of necessity was over. And when they had had it out, she went off with her husband the same evening, sending a rapid note of explanation to Aunt Agatha—and not with any intention of unkindness, but only with that superior sense of the importance of her own concerns which was natural to her. She hoped Mary would come back soon, and that all would be comfortably settled, she said. “And Mary is more of a companion to you than I ever could be,” Winnie added in her letter, with a touch of that strange jealousy which was always latent in her. She was glad that Mary should be Miss Seton’s companion, and yet was vexed that anybody should take her place with her aunt, to whom she herself had been all in all. Thus Winnie, who had gone into Carlisle that morning tragically bent upon the confounding of her husband’s plans, and the formation of one eternal wall of separation between them, eloped with him in the evening as if he had been her lover. And there was a certain thrill of pride and tenderness in her bosom to think that to win her back he would stick at nothing, and did not hesitate to strike her through her friends.
CHAPTER XLII.
HERE is something wonderful in the ease with which the secondary actors in a great crisis can shake themselves free of the event, and return to their own affairs, however exciting the moment may be at which it suits them to strike off. The bystanders turn away from the most horrible calamity, and sit down by their own tables and talk about their own trivial business before the sound of the guns has ceased to vibrate on the air, or the smoke of the battle has dispersed which has brought ruin and misery to their dearest friends. The principle of human nature, that every man should bear his own burden, lies deeper than all philosophy. Winnie, though she had been excited about her sister’s mysterious misfortune and roused by it, and was ready, to her own inconvenience, to make a great effort on Mary’s behalf, yet could turn off on her way without any struggle, with that comfortable feeling that all must come right in the end which is so easy for the lookers-on. But the real sufferers could not entertain so charming a confidence. That same day rose heavily over poor Hugh, who, all alone in Earlston, still debated with himself. He had written to his uncle to express his amazement and dismay, and to ask for time to give full consideration to the terrible news he had heard. “You need not fear that I will do anything to wound my mother,” the poor boy had written, with a terrible pang in his heart. But after that he had sunk into a maze of questions and discussions with himself, and of miserable uncertainty as to what he ought to do. The idea of asking anybody for information about it seemed almost as bad to him as owning the fact at once; asking about his mother—about facts in her life which she had never herself disclosed—inquiring if, perhaps, she was a woman dishonoured and unworthy of her children’s confidence! It seemed to Hugh as if it would be far easier to give up Earlston, and let Will or any one else who pleased have it. He had tried more than once to write to Mr. Churchill, the chaplain, of whom he had heard his mother speak, and of whom he had even a faint traditional sort of recollection; but the effort always sickened him, and made him rush away in disgust to the open air, and the soothing sounds of nature. He was quite alone during those few days. His neighbours did not know of his return, for he had been so speedily overtaken by this news as to have had no heart to go anywhere or show himself among them. Thus he was left to his own thoughts, and they were bitter. In the very height of his youthful hopes and satisfaction, just at the moment when he was most full of plans, and taking the most perfect pleasure in his life, this bewildering cloud had come on him. He did not even go on with his preparations for the transfer of the Museum, in the sickness of his heart, notwithstanding the eagerness he felt whenever he thought of it to complete that arrangement at least, and secure his uncle’s will to that extent, if no more. But it did not seem possible to exert himself about one thing without exerting himself about all, and he who had been so fresh and full of energy, fell supine into a kind of utter wretchedness. The course of his life was stopped when it had been in full career. He was suddenly thrown out of all he had been doing, all he had been planning. The scheme of his existence seemed all at once turned into folly and made a lie of. What could he do? His lawyer wrote to say that he meant to come to Earlston on some business connected with the estate, but Hugh put him off, and deferred everything. How could he discuss affairs which possibly were not his affairs, but his brother’s? How could he enter into any arrangements, or think of anything, however reasonable or necessary, with this sword hanging over his head? He got up early in the morning, and startled the servants before they were up, by opening the doors and shutters in his restlessness; and he sat up at night thinking it all over, for ever thinking of it and never coming to any result. How could he inquire, how could he prove or disprove the horrible assertion? Even to think of it seemed a tacit injury to his mother. The only way to do his duty by her seemed to be to give up all and go away to the end of the world. And yet he was a man, and right and justice were dear to him, and he revolted against doing that. It was as if he had been caught by some gigantic iron hand of fate in the sweetness of his fearless life. He had never heard nor read of, he thought, anything so cruel. By times bitter tears came into his eyes, wrung from him by the intolerable pressure. He could not give up his own cause and his mother’s cause without a struggle. He could not relinquish his life and rights to another; and yet how could he defend himself by means that would bring one question to careless lips, one light laugh to the curious world, over his mother’s name? Such an idea had never so much as entered into his head. It made his life miserable.
He read over Mr. Penrose’s letter a dozen times in the day, and he sat at night with his eyes fixed on the flame of his lamp, calling back his childhood and its events. It was as vague as a dream, and he could not identify his broken recollections. If he could have gone to Mrs. Ochterlony and talked it over with her, Hugh might have remembered many things, but wanting that thread of guidance he lost himself in the misty maze. By dint of thinking it over and over, and representing the scene to his mind in every possible way, it came to him finally to believe that some faint impression of the event which he was asked to remember did linger in his memory, and that thought, which he could not put away, stung him like a serpent. Was it really true that he remembered it? Then the accusation must be true, and he nameless and without rights, and Mary——. Not much wonder that the poor boy, sick to the heart, turned his face from the light and hid himself, and felt that he would be glad if he could only die. Yet dying would be of no use, for there was Islay who would come next to him, who never would have dreamt of dispossessing him, but who, if this was true, would need to stand aside in his turn and make room for Will. Will!—It was hard for Hugh not to feel a thrill of rage and scorn and amaze mixing with his misery when he thought of the younger brother to whom he had been so continually indulgent and affectionate. He who had been always the youngest, the most guarded and tender, whom Hugh could remember in his mother’s arms, on her knee, a part of her as it were; he to turn upon them all, and stain her fame, and ruin the family honour for his own base advantage! These thoughts came surging up one after another, and tore Hugh’s mind to pieces and made him as helpless as a child, now with one suggestion, now with another. What could he do? And accordingly he did nothing but fall into a lethargy and maze of despair, did not sleep, did not eat, filled the servants’ minds with the wildest surmises, and shut himself up, as if that could have deferred the course of events, or shut out the coming fate.
This had lasted only a day or two, it is true, but it might have been for a century, to judge by Hugh’s feelings. He felt indeed as if he had never been otherwise, never been light-hearted or happy, or free to take pleasure in his life; as if he had always been an impostor expecting to be found out. Nature itself might have awakened him from his stupor had he been left to himself; but, as it happened, there came a sweeter touch. He had become feverishly anxious about his letters ever since the arrival of that one which had struck him so unlooked-for a blow; and he started when something was brought to him in the evening at an hour when letters did not arrive, and a little note with a little red seal, very carefully folded that no curious eye might be able to penetrate. Poor Hugh felt a certain thrill of fright at the innocent-seeming thing, coming insidiously at this moment when he thought himself safe, and bringing, for anything he could tell, the last touch to his misery. He held it in his hand while it was explained to him that one of the servants had been to Carlisle with an order given before the world had changed—an order made altogether antiquated and out of course by having been issued three days before; and that he had brought back this note. Only when the door closed upon the man and his explanation did Hugh break the tiny seal. It was not a letter to be alarmed at. It was written as it were with tears, sweet tears of sympathy and help and tender succour. This was what Nelly’s little letter said:—