Young Musgrave

by Mrs. Oliphant

“It is no use arguing with women,” said Randolph, white with rage. “I don’t understand this nonsense about my father wanting him. I don’t believe a word of it. But I tell you this, Mary, if he is the heir, I am his uncle, his next friend; and I say, he sha’n’t lose his time here and get ruined among a pack of women. He must go to school. Supposing even that my father did want him (which is absolute absurdity; why, my father pretends not to know of his existence!) would you put a selfish old man’s fancy against the boy’s good?”

“Randolph! how do you dare, when he is so ill,” cried Mary, with trembling lips, “to speak of my father so!”

“It is true enough anyhow,” said the undutiful son. “When he is so ill! Why, that is the reason I can speak freely. One would not hurt his feelings if he could ever know it. But he was always known to be selfish. I did not think there was any doubt about that. The boy must not be ruined for an old man’s whim, even if it is true.”

“It is dreadful to go against you,” said the Vicar, looking at her with piteous eyes, beseeching her forgiveness; “but Randolph is in the right. Nello is losing his time; he is doing no good; he ought to go to school.”

“You too!” cried Mary. She could not but smile, though the tears were in her eyes. And poor Mr. Pen’s dissent from her cost the good man so much. He looked at her, his eyes too filling, with deprecating, beseeching, wistful looks, as a dog does. When he thus took part so distinctly against Mary, conscience, it was clear, must have been strong within Mr. Pen. He had tried hard for her sake to overcome the habit of irregular hours and desultory occupation which had grown upon him, and to give the children their lessons steadily, at the same hours, day by day. But poor Mr. Pen had not known how hard it would be to accomplish this. The idea of being able to make up the failing lessons at any odd moment which made the children at the Vicarage so uncertain in their hours, had soon returned after the first bracing up of duty towards Lilias and Nello had come to an end. And then Mrs. Pen had been ill, and could not bear the noise of the children; and then the Squire had been ill, upsetting everybody and everything; and then—the Vicar did not know what more to say for himself. He had got out of the way of teaching, out of the habit of exact hours, and Emily had been very poorly, and, on the whole, Randolph was right, and the boy ought to go to school.

Several of these discussions, however, took place before Mary gave way. The account Randolph had heard of the last scene in the library, before the Squire had his “stroke,” had not been at all satisfactory to his mind. He sincerely believed (though with an uneasy sense of something in it that sounded like truth) that this story was a fabrication to suit a purpose. But, on the other hand, his own intentions were very distinct. The mere fact that such a story had been invented showed the meaning on the other side. This boy was to be foisted into the place which, for years, he had supposed himself to occupy. John not being possible, who but Randolph could fill that place? Another heir was ridiculous, was shameful, and a wrong to him. He would not suffer it. What right had John, an outlaw and exile, to have a son, if it came to that? He would not allow the child to stay here to be petted and pampered, and made to believe himself the heir. For, in the end, Randolph had made up his mind that the boy could not and should not be admitted to the advantages of heirship without a very different kind of proof of identity from any they possessed. And it would be ruin to the child to be allowed to fill such a false position now. The mere idea of it filled him with suppressed rage. He did not mean the boy any harm—not any real harm. On the contrary, it would be a real advantage to him in any case to be bred up frugally and industriously; and this he would insist upon, in spite of every resistance. He would not leave the child here to have him wormed into the old man’s affections, made a tool of by Mary in John’s interests, and to his own detriment. He was determined to get rid of Nello, whatever it cost him: not to do him harm, but to get him out of the way. This idea began to possess him like a mania—to get rid of the child who was more dangerous, a great deal more dangerous, than John himself. And all the circumstances of the house favoured his removal at this moment, when the Squire’s illness occupied everybody’s attention. And then it was a great point to have enlisted on his side the reluctant and abashed, yet conscientious support of Mr. Pen.

As for the children themselves, a subtle discomfort had stolen into their life. The old gentleman’s illness, though it did not affect them, affected the house. The severe and dangerous illness of an important member of any household has always a confusing influence upon domestic life. It changes the centre of existence, so that everything, which once radiated from the cheerful hearth becomes absorbed in the sick-chamber, making of it the temporary and fictitious centre of the dwelling. In this changed orbit, all the stars of the household firmament shine, and beyond it everything is left cold, and sunless, and neglected. Children are always the first to feel this atmospheric change, which affects them more than it does the watchers and nurses, whose time and minds are absorbed in the new occupation. It was as if the sun had gone out of the sky to the children at Penninghame. They were left free indeed, to go and come as they liked, nobody attempting to hustle them out of the way, to say, “Run, children, some one is coming.” All the world might go and come, and it did not matter. Neither did it matter to them now where they went, for every room was equally dreary and empty. Mary, who meant home to them, and to whom they carried all their grievances and pleasures, had disappeared from their view; and Miss Brown, who was their directress in minor matters, had become invisible too, swallowed up by that sick-room, which absorbed everything. It was no pleasure to roam about the drawing-room, generally forbidden ground, and even through and through the passages from the hall to the dining-room, though they had so often longed to do it, when nobody was to be found there, either to laugh with them, or to find fault. Even Eastwood was swept up in the same whirlpool; and as for Mary, their domestic divinity, all that was seen of her was when she passed from one room to another, crossing the corridor, disappearing within the door of the mysterious chamber, where doctors and nurses, and every sort of medicine, and drinks, and appliances of all kinds, were being taken. How could the old gentleman want so much? Twice over a new kind of bed was taken into that strange gulf of a sick-room, and all so silently—Eastwood standing on the stairs, deprecating with voice and gesture, “No noise, no noise!” That was what everybody said. Mary would smile at them when she met them, or wave her hand from the end of the corridor, or over the stairs. Sometimes she would pause and stoop down and kiss them, looking very pale and worn out. “No, dear, he is no better,” she would say. Except for these encounters, and the accounts which the servants gave them of their grandfather’s state,—how he was lying, just breathing, knowing nobody, not able to speak,—accounts which froze the children’s blood in their veins—they had no life at all; only dull meals which they ate under this shadow, and dull hours in which, having nothing to do, they huddled together, weary and lonely, and with nothing before them but to go to bed. Out of doors it was not much better. Mr. Pen had fallen into all the old disorder of his ways, out of which he had made a strenuous effort to wake for their benefit. He never was ready for them when they went with their lessons. “I will hear you to-morrow,” he would say, looking at them with painful humility, feeling the grave countenance of Lilias more terrible than that of any judge; and when to-morrow came, there were always a hundred excuses. “Go on to the next page and learn the next lesson. I have had such a press of work—and Mrs. Pennithorne is so poorly,” the poor man would say. All this shook the pillars of the earth to Lilias and Nello. They were shaken out of everything they knew, and left to blunder out their life as best they could, without any guide.

And this was hardest upon the one who understood it least. Lilias, whose mind was open to everything, and who sat looking out as from a door, making observations, keenly interested in all that went on, and at the same time with a reserve of imagination to fall back upon, was fully occupied at least if nothing more. Every day she watched for “Mr. Geoff” with news of her father. The suspense was too visionary to crush her with that sickening depression which affects elder minds. All had a softening vagueness and confusion to the child. She hoped and hoped, and cried with imaginative misery, then dried her eyes and hoped again. She thought everything would come right if Mr. Geoff would only bring papa; and Mr. Geoff’s ability sooner or later to find and bring papa she never doubted. It was dreadful to have to wait so long—so long; but still every morning, any morning he might come. This hope in her mind absorbed Lilias, and made her silent, indisposed for play. At other times she would talk eagerly, demanding her brother’s interest and response to things he did not understand. Children can go on a long time without understanding, each carrying on his or her monologue, two separate streams, which, flowing tranquilly together, feel like something mutual, and answer all the ends of intercourse; and in this way neither of them was aware how far apart they were. But Nello was dull; he had so little to do. He had no pony, he could not play cricket as Johnny Pen did with the village boys. He was small, even for his age, and he had not been educated in the art of knocking about as English boys are. He was even a little timid of the water and the boats, in which other boys might have found solace. Half of his time he wandered about, listless, not knowing what to make of himself.

This was the condition of mind in which Randolph met him on one of these lingering afternoons. The child had strayed out all by himself; he was standing by the water-side at his old amusement, but not enjoying it this time. “What are you doing?” said his uncle, calling out to him as he approached. Randolph was not a favourite with the children; but it was half an amusement to see any one coming near, and to have to answer a question. He said “Nothing,” with a sigh; not a single skip could he get out of those dull slates. The water would not carry them; they would not go; they went to the bottom with a prosaic splash and thud. How different from that day with the old gentleman, when they flew as if they had been alive! Perhaps this new comer might have luck, and do as well as the old gentleman. “Will you have a try?” he said; “here is a good one—it ought to be a good one; but I can’t make them go to-day.”

“I—have a try?” Randolph was startled by the suggestion. But he was anxious to conciliate the little fellow whom he wanted so much to get rid of. And it was only for once. He took suspiciously (for he was always suspicious) the stone Nello held out to him, and looked at it as if it might be poison—or it might be an attempt on his dignity got up by somebody. When he had satisfied himself that it was a common piece of slate, he took courage, and, with a smile that sat very awkwardly upon his face, threw it, but with the most complete unsuccess.