and this was how it all ended, so far as any end can be said to have come to any episode in human history. while will was still only recovering—putting his recollections slowly together—and not very certain about them, what they were, hugh and his mother went through the preliminaries necessary to have mrs. ochterlony’s early marriage proved before the proper court—a proceeding which mary did not shrink from when the time came that she could look calmly over the whole matter, and decide upon the best course. she was surprised to see her own unfinished letter preserved so carefully in hugh’s pocket-book. “put it in the fire,” she said to him, “it will only put us in mind of painful things if you keep it;” and it did not occur to mary why it was that her son smiled and put it back in its place, and kissed her hand, which had grown thin and white in her long seclusion. and then he told her of nelly, and mrs. ochterlony was glad—glad to the bottom of her heart, and yet touched with a momentary pang for which she was angry with herself. he had stood by her so in all this time of trial, and now he was about to remove himself a little, ever so little further off from her, though he was her first-born and her pride; but then she despised herself, who could grudge, even for half a moment, his reward to hugh, and made haste to make amends for it, even though he was unconscious of the offence.
“i always thought she should have been my child,” mary said, “the very first time i saw her. i had once one like her; and i hungered and thirsted for nelly when i saw her first. i did not think of getting her like this. i will love her as if she were my own, hugh.”
“and so she will be your own,” said hugh, not knowing the difference. and he was so happy that the sight of him made his mother happy, though she had care enough in the meantime for her individual share.
for it may be supposed that will, such a youth as he was, did not come out of his fever changed and like a child. such changes are few in this world, and a great sickness is not of necessity a moral agent. when the first languor and comfort of his convalescence was over, his mind began to revive and to join things together, as was natural—and he did not know where or how he had broken off in the confused and darkling story that returned to his brain as he pondered. he had forgotten, or never understood about all that happened on the day he was taken ill, but yet a dreamy impression that some break had come to his plans, that there was some obstacle, something that made an end of his rights, as he still called them in his mind, hovered about his recollections. he was as frank and open as it was natural to his character to be, for the first few days after he began to recover, before he had made much progress with his recollections; and then he became moody and thoughtful and perplexed, not knowing how to piece the story out. this was perhaps, next to death itself, the thing which mary had most dreaded, and she saw that though his sickness had been all but death, it had not changed the character or identity of the pale boy absorbed in his own thoughts, uncommunicating and unyielding, whose weakness compelled him to obey her like an infant in everything external, yet whose heart gave her no such obedience. it was as unlike hugh’s frank exuberance of mind, and islay’s steady but open soul, as could be conceived. but yet he was her boy as much as either; as dear, perhaps even more bound to her by the evil he had tried to do, and by the suffering he himself had borne. and now she had to think not only how to remedy the wrong he had attempted, and to put such harm out of his and everybody’s power, but to set the discord in himself at rest, and to reconcile the jangled chords. it was this that gave her a preoccupied look even while hugh spoke to her of all his plans. it was more difficult than appearing before the court, harder work perhaps than anything she had yet had in her hands to do—and hard as it was, it was she who had to seek the occasion and begin.
she had been sitting with her boy, one winterly afternoon, when all was quiet in the house—they were still in the lodging in liverpool, not far from mr. penrose’s, to which will had been removed when his illness began; he was not well enough yet to be removed, and the doctors were afraid of cold, and very reluctant to send him, in this weak state, still further to the north. she had been reading to him, but he was evidently paying no attention to the reading, and she had left off and began to talk, but he had been impatient of the talk. he lay on the sofa by the fire, with his pale head against the pillow, looking thin, spectral, and shadowy, and yet with a weight of weary thought upon his overhanging brow, and in his close compressed lips, which grieved his mother’s heart.
“will,” she said suddenly, “i should like to speak to you frankly about what you have on your mind. you are thinking of what happened before you were taken ill?”
“yes,” he said, turning quickly upon her his great hollow eyes, shining with interest and surprise; and then he stopped short, and compressed his upper lip again, and looked at her with a watchful eye, conscious of the imperfection of his own memory, and unwilling to commit himself.
“i will go over it all, that we may understand each other,” said mary, though the effort made her own cheek pale. “you were told that i had been married in india just before you were born, and you were led to believe that your brothers were—were—illegitimate, and that you were your father’s heir. i don’t know if they ever told you, my poor boy, that i had been married in scotland long before; at all events, they made you believe——”
“made me believe!” said will, with feverish haste; “do people generally marry each other more than once? i don’t see how you can say ‘made me believe.’”
“well, will, perhaps it seemed very clear as it was told to you,” said mary, with a sigh; “and you have even so much warrant for your mistake, that your father too took fright, and thought because everybody was dead that saw us married that we ought to be married again; and i yielded to his wish, though i knew it was wrong. but it appears everybody was not dead; two people who were present have come to light very unexpectedly, and we have applied to that court—that new court, you know, where they treat such things—to have my marriage proved, and hugh’s legitimacy declared. it will cost some money, and it will not be pleasant to me; but better that than such a mistake should ever be possible again.”
will looked in his mother’s face, and knew and saw beyond all question that she told him was absolute fact; not even truth, but fact; the sort of thing that can be proved by witnesses and established in law. his mouth which had been compressed so close, relaxed; his underlip drooped, his eyes hid themselves, as it were, under their lids. a sudden blank of mortification and humbled pride came over his soul. a mistake, simply a mistake, such a blunder as any fool might make, an error about simple facts which he might have set right if he had tried. and now for ever and ever he was nothing but the youngest son; doubly indebted to everybody belonging to him; indebted to them for forgiveness, forbearance, tenderness, and services of every kind. he saw it all, and his heart rose up against it; he had tried to wrong them, and it was his punishment that they forgave him. it all seemed so hopeless and useless to struggle against, that he turned his face from the light, and felt as if it would be a relief if he could be able to be ill again, or if he had wounds that he could have secretly unbound; so that he might get to die, and be covered over and abandoned, and have no more to bear. such thoughts were about as foreign to mrs. ochterlony’s mind as any human cogitations could be, and yet she divined them, as it were, in the greatness of her pity and love.
“will,” she said, speaking softly in the silence which had been unbroken for long, “i want you to think if this had been otherwise, what it would have been for me. i would have been a woman shut out from all good women. i would have been only all the more wicked and wretched that i had succeeded in concealing my sin. you would have blushed for your mother whenever you had to name her name. you could not have kept me near you, because my presence would have shut against you every honest house. you would have been obliged to conceal me and my shame in the darkness—to cover me over in some grave with no name on it—to banish me to the ends of the earth——”
“mother!” said will, rising up in his gaunt length and paleness on the sofa. he did not understand it. he saw her figure expanding, as it were, her eyes shining in the twilight like two great mournful stars, the hot colour rising to her face, her voice labouring with an excitement which had been long pent up and found no channel; and the thrill and jar in it of suppressed passion, made a thrill in his heart.
“and your father!” she went on, always with growing emotion, “whom you are all proud of, who died for his duty and left his name without a blot;—he would have been an impostor like me, a man who had taken base advantage of a woman, and deceived all his friends, and done the last wrong to his children,—we two that never wronged man nor woman, that would have given our lives any day for any one of you,—that is what you would have made us out.”
“mother!” said will. he could not bear it any longer. his heart was up at last, and spoke. he came to her, crept to her in his weakness, and laid his long feeble arms round her as she sat hiding her face. “mother! don’t say that. i must have been mad. not what i would have made you out——”
“oh, my poor will, my boy, my darling!” said mary, “not you—i never meant you!”
and she clasped her boy close, and held him to her, not knowing what she meant. and then she roused herself to sudden recollection of his feebleness, and took him back to his sofa, and brooded over him like a bird over her nest. and after awhile islay came in, bringing fresh air and news, and a breath from the outer world. and poor will’s heart being still so young, and having at last touched the depths, took a rebound and came up, not like, and yet not unlike the heart of a little child. from that time his moodiness, his heavy brow, his compressed lip, grew less apparent, and out of his long ponderings with himself there came sweeter fruits. he had been on the edge of a precipice, and he had not known it: and now that after the danger was over he had discovered that danger, such a thrill came over him as comes sometimes upon those who are the most foolhardy in the moment of peril. he had not seen the blackness of the pit nor the terror of it until he had escaped.
but probably it was a relief to all, as it was a great relief to poor will, when his doctor proposed a complete change for him, and a winter in the south. mary had moved about very little since she brought her children home from india, and her spirit sank before the thought of travel in foreign parts, and among unknown tongues. but she was content when she saw the light come back to her boy’s eye. and when he was well enough to move, they went away[a] together, will and his mother, mary and her boy. he was the one who needed her most.
[a] they went to san remo, if any one would like to know, for no particular reason that i can tell, except that the beloved physician, dr. antonio, has thrown the shield of his protection over that picturesque little place, with its golden orange groves and its delicious sea.
and when hugh and nelly were married, the percivals sent the little bride a present, very pretty, and of some value, which the ochterlonys in general accepted as a peace-offering. winnie’s letter which accompanied it was not, however, very peaceful in its tone. “i daresay you think yourself very happy, my dear,” winnie wrote, “but i would not advise you to calculate upon too much happiness. i don’t know if we were ever meant for that. mary, who is the best woman among us, has had a terrible deal of trouble; and i, whom perhaps you will think one of the worst, have not been let off any more than mary. i wonder often, for my part, if there is any meaning at all in it. i am not sure that i think there is. and you may tell mrs. kirkman so if you like. my love to aunt agatha, and if you like you can kiss hugh for me. he always was my favourite among all the boys.”
poor aunt agatha heard this letter with a sigh. she said, “my dear love, it is only winnie’s way. she always liked to say strange things, but she does not think like that.” and perhaps on the whole it was aunt agatha that was worst off in the end. she was left alone when the young creatures paired, as was natural, in the spring; and when the mother mary went away with her boy. aunt agatha had no child left to devote herself to; and it was very silent in the cottage, where she sat for hours with nothing more companionable than the henri deux ware, francis ochterlony’s gift, before her eyes. and sir edward was very infirm that year. but yet miss seton found a consolation that few people would have thought of in the henri deux, and before the next winter mary was to come home. and she had always her poor people and her letters, and the kirtell singing softly under its dewy braes.
