Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I wonder where you learned all that, Will,” said Mary, with a smile. “One would think you had picked up some Radical or other. I might be vexed to see Lady Balderston walk out of the room before me, if it was because she pretended to be a better woman; but when it is only because she is Lady Balderston, what does it matter? Hugh can’t help being the eldest: if you had been the eldest——”

“Ah!” said Will, with a long breath; “if I had been the eldest——” And then he stopped short.

“What would you have done?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, smiling still.

“I would have done what Hugh will never do,” cried the boy. “I would have taken care of everybody. I would have found out what they were fit for, and put them in the right way. The one that had brains should have been cultivated—done something else. There should have been no such mistake as—— But that is always how it is in the world—everybody says so,” said Wilfrid; “stupid people who know nothing about it are set at the head, and those who could manage——”

“Will,” said his mother, “do you know you are very presumptuous, and think a great deal too well of yourself? If you were not such a child, I should be angry. It is very well to be clever at your lessons, but that is no proof that you are able to manage, as you say. Let Hugh and his prospects alone for to-night, and go to bed.”

“Yes, I can let him alone,” said Will. “I suppose it is not worth one’s while to mind—he will do no good at Oxford, you know, that is one thing;—whereas other people——”

“Always yourself, Will,” said Mary, with a sigh.

“Myself—or even Islay,” said the boy, in the most composed way; “though Islay is very technical. Still, he could do some good. But Hugh is an out-of-door sort of fellow. He would do for a farmer or gamekeeper, or to go to Australia, as he says. A man should always follow his natural bent. If, instead of going by eldest sons and that sort of rubbish, they were to try for the right man in the right place. And then you might be sure to be done the best for, mother, and that he would take care of you.”

“Will, you are very conceited and very unjust,” said Mary; but she was his mother, and she relented as she looked into his weary young face: “but I hope you have your heart in the right place, for all your talk,” she said, kissing him before she went away. She went back to her room disturbed, as she had often been before, but still smiling at Will’s “way.” It was all boyish folly and talk, and he did not mean it; and as he grew older he would learn better. Mary did not care to speculate upon the volcanic elements which, for anything she could tell, might be lying under her very hand. She could not think of different developments of character, and hostile individualities, as people might to whom the three boys were but boys in the abstract, and not Hugh, Islay, and Will—the one as near and dear to her as the other. Mrs. Ochterlony was not philosophical, neither could she follow out to their natural results the tendencies which she could not but see. She preferred to think of it, as Will himself said, as a moral affair—a fault which would mend; and so laid her head on her pillow with a heart uneasy—but no more uneasy than was consistent with the full awakening of anxious yet hopeful life.

As for Will, he was asleep ten minutes after, and had forgotten all about it. His heart was in its right place, though he was plagued with a very arrogant, troublesome, restless little head, and a greater amount of “notions” than are good for his age. He wanted to be at the helm of affairs, to direct everything—a task for which he felt himself singularly competent; but, after all, it was for the benefit of other people that he wanted to rule. It seemed to him that he could arrange for everybody so much better than they could for themselves; and he would have been liberal to Hugh, though he had a certain contempt for his abilities. He would have given him occupation suited to him, and all the indulgences which he was most fitted to appreciate: and he would have made a kind of beneficent empress of his mother, and put her at the head of all manner of benevolences, as other wise despots have been known to do. But Will was the youngest, and nobody so much as asked his advice, or took him into consideration; and the poor boy was thus thrown back upon his own superiority, and got to brood upon it, and scorn the weaker expedients with which other people sought to fill up the place which he alone was truly qualified to fill. Fortunately, however, he forgot all this as soon as he had fallen asleep.