Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Then listen to me,” said Mary, rising up, and holding by her chair to support herself; “I may be weak, but I am not like that. My boy shall not give up his rights. I know what I am saying; if there should be twenty trials, I am ready to bear them. It shall be proved whether in England a true woman cannot tell her true story, and be believed. Neither lie nor shame has ever attached to me. If I have to see my own child brought against me—God forgive you!—I will try to bear it. My poor Will! my poor Will!—but Hugh’s boy shall not be sacrificed. What! my husband, my son, my own honour—a woman’s honour involves all belonging to her—— Do you think I, for the sake of pain or exposure, would give them all up? It must be that you have gone out of your senses, and don’t know what to say. I, to save myself at my son’s expense!”

“But Wilfrid is your son too,” said Mr. Penrose, shrinking somewhat into himself.

“Oh, my poor Will! my poor Will!” said Mary, moaning in her heart; and after that she went away, and left the supporter of Will’s cause startled, but not moved from his intention, by himself. As for Mrs. Ochterlony, she went up into her room, and sank down into the first chair that offered, and clasped her hands over her heart lest it should break forth from the aching flesh. She thought no more of seeing Will, or of telling him her story, or delivering him from his delusion. What she thought of was, to take him into her arms in an infinite pity, when the poor boy, who did not know what he was doing, should come to himself. And Hugh—Hugh her husband, who was thought capable of such wrong and baseness—Hugh her boy, whose name and fame were to be taken from him,—and they thought she would yield to it, to save herself a pang! When she came to remember that the night was passing, and to feel the chill that had crept over her, and to recall to herself that she must not exhaust her strength, Mary paused in her thoughts, and fell upon her knees instead. Even that was not enough; she fell prostrate, as one who would have fallen upon the Deliverer’s feet; but she could say no prayer. Her heart itself seemed at last to break forth, and soar up out of her, in a speechless supplication—“Let this cup pass!” Did He not say it once Who had a heavier burden to bear?

CHAPTER XLV.

O very late it was when Will came in, that he crept up to his room with a silent stealth which felt more like ill-doing to him than any other sin he had been guilty of. He crept to his room, though he would have been glad to have lingered, and warmed himself and been revived with food. But, at the end of this long, wretched day, he was more than ever unfit to face his mother, who he felt sure must be watching for him, watchful and unwearied as she always had been. It did not occur to him that Mrs. Ochterlony, insensible for the moment to all sounds, was lying enveloped in darkness, with her eyes open, and all her faculties at work, and nothing but pain, pain, ever, for ever, in her mind. That she could be wound up to a pitch of emotion so great that she would not have heard whatever noise he might have made, that she would not have heeded him, that he was safe to go and come as he liked, so far as Mary was concerned, was an idea that never entered Will’s mind. He stole in, and went softly up the stairs, and swallowed the glass of wine the butler compassionately brought him, without even saying a word of thanks. He was chilled to his bones, and his head ached, and a sense of confused misery was in all his frame. He crept into his bed like a savage, in the dark, seeking warmth, seeking forgetfulness, and hiding; so long as he could be hid, it did not matter. His mother could not come in with the light in her hand to stand by his bedside, and drive all ghosts and terrors away, for he had locked the door in his panic. No deliverance could come to him, as it seemed, any way. If she was “angry” before, what must she be now when he had fled and avoided her? and poor Will lay breathing hard in the dark, wondering within himself why it was he dared not face his mother. What had he done? Instead of having spent the day in his usual fashion, why was he weary, and footsore, and exhausted, and sick in body and in mind? He had meant her no harm, he had done no wrong he knew of. It was only a confused, unintelligible weight on his conscience, or rather on his consciousness, that bowed him down, and made him do things which he did not understand. He went to sleep at last, for he was young and weary, and nothing could have kept him from sleeping; but he had a bad night. He dreamed dreadful dreams, and in the midst of them all saw Mary, always Mary, threatening him, turning away from him, leaving him to fall over precipices and into perils. He started up a dozen times in the course of that troubled night, waking to a confused sense of solitude, and pain, and abandonment, which in the dark and the silence were very terrible to bear. He was still only a boy, and he had done wrong, dreadful wrong, and he did not know what it was.

In the morning when Will woke things were not much better. He was utterly unrefreshed by his night’s rest—if the partial unconsciousness of his sleep could be called rest; and the thought he woke to was, that however she might receive him, to-day he must see his mother. She might be, probably was, “angry,” beyond anything he could conceive; but however that might be, he must see her and meet her wrath. It was not until he had fully realized that thought, that a letter was brought to Will, which increased his excitement. It was a very unusual thing for him to get letters, and he was startled accordingly. He turned it over and over before he opened it, and thought it must be from Hugh. Hugh, too, must have adopted the plan of pouring out his wrath against his brother for want of any better defence to make. But then he perceived that the writing was not Hugh’s. When he opened it Will grew pale, and then he grew red. It was a letter which Nelly Askell had written before she wrote the one to Hugh, which had roused him out of his despondency. Something had inspired the little girl that day. She had written this too, like the other, without very much minding what she meant. This is what Will read upon the morning of the day which he already felt to be in every description a day of fate:—

“Will!—I don’t think I can ever call you dear Will again, or think of you as I used to do—oh, Will, what are you doing? If I had been you I would have been tied to the stake, torn with wild horses, done anything that used to be done to people, rather than turn against my mother. I would have done that for my mother, and if I had had yours! Oh, Will, say you don’t mean it? I think sometimes you can’t mean it, but have got deluded somehow, for you know you have a bad temper. How could you ever believe it; She is not my mother, but I know she never did any wrong. She may have sinned perhaps, as people say everybody sins, but she never could have done any wrong; look in her face, and just try whether you can believe it. It is one comfort to me that if you mean to be so wicked (which I cannot believe of you), and were to win (which is not possible), you would never more have a day’s happiness again. I hope you would never have a day’s happiness. You would break her heart, for she is a woman, and though you would not break his heart, you would put his life all wrong, and it would haunt you, and you would pray to be poor, or a beggar, or anything rather than in a place that does not belong to you. You may think I don’t know, but I do know. I am a woman, and understand things better than a boy like you. Oh, Will! we used to be put in the same cradle, and dear Mrs. Ochterlony used to nurse us both when we were babies. Sometimes I think I should have been your sister. If you will come back and put away all this which is so dreadful to think of, I will never more bring it up against you. I for one will forget it, as if it had never been. Nobody shall put it into your mind again. We will forgive you, and love you the same as ever; and when you are a man, and understand and see what it is you have been saved from, you will go down on your knees and thank God.

“If I had been old enough to travel by myself, or to be allowed to do what I like, I should have gone to Liverpool too, to have given you no excuse. It is not so easy to write; but oh, Will, you know what I mean. Come back, and let us forget that you were ever so foolish and so wicked. I could cry when I think of you all by yourself, and nobody to tell you what is right. Come back, and nobody shall ever bring it up against you. Dear Will! don’t you love us all too well to make us unhappy?—Still your affectionate Nelly.”

This letter startled the poor boy, and affected him in a strange way. It brought the tears to his eyes. It touched him somehow, not by its reproaches, but by the thought that Nelly cared. She had gone over to Hugh’s side like all the rest—and yet she cared and took upon her that right of reproach and accusation which is more tender than praise. And it made Will’s heart ache in a dull way to see that they all thought him wicked. What had he done that was wicked? He ached, poor boy, not only in his heart but in his head, and all over him. He did not get up even to read his letter, but lay in a kind of sad stupor all the morning, wondering if his mother was still in the house—wondering if she would come to him—wondering if she was so angry that she no longer desired to see him. The house was more quiet than usual, he thought—there was no stir in it of voices or footsteps. Perhaps Mrs. Ochterlony had gone away again—perhaps he was to be left here, having got Uncle Penrose on his side, to his sole company—excommunicated and cast off by his own. Wilfrid lay pondering all these thoughts till he could bear it no longer; instead of his pain and shrinking a kind of dogged resistance came into his mind; at least he would go and face it, and see what was to happen to him. He would go downstairs and find out, to begin with, what this silence meant.