“You are not the heir,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, frightened for the moment by the tone and his vehemence, and his strange looks.
“I heard it from two people that were both there,” said Will, with a gloomy composure. “It was not without asking about it. I am not blaming you, mother—you might have some reason;—but it was I that was born after that thing that happened in India. What is the use of struggling against it? And if it is I that am the heir, why should you try to keep me out of my rights?”
“Will,” said Mary, suddenly driven back into regions of personal emotion, which she thought she had escaped from, and falling by instinct into those wild weaknesses of personal argument to which women resort when they are thus suddenly stung. “Will, look me in the face and tell me. Can you believe your dear father, who was true as—as heaven itself; can you believe me, who never told you a lie, to have been such wretched deceivers? Can you think we were so wicked? Will, look me in the face!”
“Mother,” said Will, whose mind was too little imaginative to be moved by this kind of argument, except to a kind of impatience. “What does it matter my looking you in the face? what does it matter about my father being true? You might have some reason for it. I am not blaming you; but so long as it was a fact what does that matter? I don’t want to injure any one—I only want my rights.”
It was Mary’s turn now to be struck dumb. She had thought he was afraid of her, and had fled from her out of shame for what he had done; but he looked in her face as she told him with unhesitating frankness, and even that touch of impatience as of one whose common sense was proof to all such appeals. For her own part, when she was brought back to it, she felt the effect of the dreadful shock she had received; and she could not discuss this matter reasonably with her boy. Her mind fell off into a mingled anguish and horror and agonized sense of his sin and pity for him. “Oh, Will, your rights,” she cried; “your rights! Your rights are to be forgiven and taken back, and loved and pitied, though you do not understand what love is. These are all the rights you have. You are young, and you do not know what you are doing. You have still a right to be forgiven.”
“I was not asking to be forgiven,” said Will, doggedly. “I have done no harm. I never said a word against you. I will give Hugh whatever he likes to get himself comfortably out in the world. I don’t want to make any fuss or hurry. It can be quietly managed, if he will; but it’s me that Earlston ought to come to; and I am not going to be driven out of it by talk. I should just like to know what Hugh would do if he was in my place.”
“Hugh could never have been in your place,” cried Mary, in her anguish and indignation. “I ought to have seen this is what it would come to. I ought to have known when I saw your jealous temper, even when you were a baby. Oh, my little Will! How will you ever bear it when you come to your senses, and know what it is you have been doing? Slandering your dear father’s name and mine, though all the world knows different—and trying to supplant your brother, your elder brother, who has always been good to you. God forgive them that have brought my boy to this,” said Mary, with tears. She kept gazing at him, even with her eyes full. It did not seem possible that he could be insensible to her look, even if he was insensible to her words.
Wilfrid, for his part, got up and began to walk about the room. It was hard, very hard to meet his mother’s eyes. “When she is vexed, she gives a fellow such a look.” He remembered those words which he had said to Uncle Penrose only yesterday with a vague sort of recollection. But when he got up his own bodily sensations somehow gave him enough to do. He half forgot about his mother in the strange feeling he had in his physical frame, as if his limbs did not belong to him, nor his head either for that part, which seemed to be floating about in the air, without any particular connexion with the rest of him. It must be that he was so very tired, for when he sat down and clutched at the arms of his chair, he seemed to come out of his confusion and see Mrs. Ochterlony again, and know what she had been talking about. He said, with something that looked like sullenness: “Nobody brought me to this—I brought myself,” in answer to what she had said, and fell, as it were, into a moody reverie, leaning upon the arms of his chair. Mary saw it, and thought it was that attitude of obstinate and immovable resolve into which she had before seen him fall; and she dried her eyes with a little flash of indignation, and turned again to the half-finished letter which trembled in her hands, and which she could not force her mind back to. She said to herself in a kind of despair, that the bitter cup must be drunk—that there was nothing for it but to do battle for her son’s rights, and lose no time in vain outcries, but forgive the unhappy boy when he came to his right mind and returned to her again. She turned away, with her heart throbbing and bleeding, and made an effort to recover her composure and finish her letter. It was a very important letter, and required all her thoughts. But if it had been hard to do it before, it was twenty times harder now.
Just at that moment there was a commotion at the door, and a sound of some one entering below. It might be only Mr. Penrose coming back, as he sometimes did, to luncheon. But every sound tingled through Mrs. Ochterlony in the excitement of her nerves. Then there came something that made her spring to her feet—a single tone of a voice struck on her ear, which she thought could only be her own fancy. But it was not her fancy. Some one came rushing up the stairs, and dashed into the room. Mary gave a great cry, and ran into his arms, and Will, startled and roused up from a sudden oblivion which he did not understand, drew his hand across his heavy eyes, and looked up doubting, and saw Hugh—Hugh standing in the middle of the room holding his mother, glowing with fresh air, and health, and gladness.—Hugh! How did he come there? Poor Will tried to rise from his chair, but with a feeling that he was fixed in it for ever, like the lady in the fable. Had he been asleep? and where was he? Had it been but a bad dream, and was this the Cottage, and Hugh come home to see them all? These were the questions that rose in Will’s darkened mind, as he woke up and drew his hand across his heavy eyes, and sat as if glued in Mr. Penrose’s chair.