Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

Perhaps it was just because it was so much later than usual that he felt as if he had been ill when he got up—felt his limbs trembling under him, and shivered, and grew hot and cold—or perhaps it was the fatigue and mental commotion of yesterday. By this time he felt sure that his mother must be gone. Had she been in the house she would have come to see him. She would have seized the opportunity when he could not escape from her. No doubt she was gone, after waiting all yesterday for him,—gone either hating him or scorning him, casting him off from her; and he felt that he had not deserved that. Perhaps he might have deserved that Hugh should turn his enemy—notwithstanding that, even for Hugh he felt himself ready to do anything—but to his mother he had done no harm. He had meditated nothing but good to her. He would not have thought of marrying, or giving to any one but her the supreme place in his house. He would never have asked her or made any doubt about it, but taken her at once to Earlston, and showed her everything there arranged according to her liking. This was what Will had always intended and settled upon. And his mother, for whom he would have done all this, had gone away again, offended and angry, abandoning him to his own devices. Bitterness took possession of his soul as he thought of it. He meant it only for their good—for justice and right, and to have his own; and this was the cruel way in which they received it, as if he had done it out of unkind feelings—even Nelly! A sense that he was wronged came into Wilfrid’s mind as he dressed himself, and looked at his pale face in the glass, and smoothed his long brown hair. And yet he stepped out of his room with the feelings of one who ventures upon an undiscovered country, a new region, in which he does not know whether he is to meet with good or evil. He had to support himself by the rail as he went downstairs. He hesitated and trembled at the drawing-room door, which was a room Mr. Penrose never occupied. Breakfast must be over long ago. If there was any lady in the house, no doubt she would be found there.

He put his hand on the door, but it was a minute or more before he could open it, and he heard no sound within. No doubt she had gone away. He had walked miles yesterday to avoid her, but yet his heart was sore and bled, and he felt deserted and miserable to think that she was gone. But when Will had opened the door, the sight he saw was more wonderful to him than if she had been gone. Mary was seated at the table writing: she was pale, but there was something in her face which told of unusual energy and resolution, a kind of inspiration which gave character to every movement she made. And she was so much preoccupied, that she showed no special excitement at sight of her boy; she stopped and put away her pen, and rose up looking at him with pitiful eyes. “My poor boy!” she said, and kissed him in her tender way. And then she sat down at the table, and went back to her letters again.

It was not simple consternation which struck Will; it was a mingled pang of wonder and humiliation and sharp disappointment. Only her poor boy!—only the youngest, the child as he had always been, not the young revolutionary to whom Nelly had written that letter, whom Mrs. Ochterlony had come anxious and in haste to seek. She was more anxious now about her letters apparently than about him, and there was nothing but tenderness and sorrow in her eyes; and when she did raise her head again, it was to remark his paleness and ask if he was tired. “Go and get some breakfast, Will,” she said; but he did not care for breakfast. He had not the heart to move—he sat in the depths of boyish mortification and looked at her writing her letters. Was that all that it mattered? or was she only making a pretence at indifference? But Mary was too much occupied evidently for any pretence. Her whole figure and attitude were full of resolution. Notwithstanding the pity of her voice as she addressed him, and the longing look in her eyes, there was something in her which Wilfrid had never seen before, which revealed to him in a kind of dull way that his mother was wound up to some great emergency, that she had taken a great resolution, and was occupied by matters of life and death.

“You are very busy, it seems,” he said, peevishly, when he had sat for some time watching her, wondering when she would speak to him. To find that she was not angry, that she had something else to think about, was not half so great a relief as it appeared.

“Yes, I am busy,” said Mary. “I am writing to your brother, Will, and to some people who know all about me, and I have no time to lose. Your Uncle Penrose is a hard man, and I am afraid he will be hard on Hugh.”

“No, mother,” said Will, feeling his heart beat quick; “he shall not be hard upon Hugh. I want to tell you that. I want to have justice; but for anything else—Hugh shall have whatever he wishes; and as for you——”

“Oh, Will,” said Mrs. Ochterlony; and somehow it seemed to poor Will’s disordered imagination that she and his letter were speaking together—— “I had almost forgotten that you had anything to do with it. If you had but come first and spoken to me——”

“Why should I have come and spoken to you?” said Will, growing into gradual excitement; “it will not do you any harm. I am your son as well as Hugh—if it is his or if it is mine, what does it matter? I knew you would be angry if I stood up for myself; but a man must stand up for himself when he knows what are his rights.”

“Will, you must listen to me,” said Mary, putting away her papers, and turning round to him. “It is Mr. Penrose who has put all this in your head: it could not be my boy that had such thoughts. Oh, Will! my poor child! And now we are in his pitiless hands,” said Mary, with a kind of cry, “and it matters nothing what you say or what I say. You have put yourself in his hands.”

“Stop, mother,” said Will; “don’t make such a disturbance about it. Uncle Penrose has nothing to do with it. It is my doing. I will do anything in the world for you, whatever you like to tell me; but I won’t let a fellow be there who has no right to be there. I am the heir, and I will have my rights.”