N a curious state of mind, Will was flying along towards Liverpool, while this commotion arose in the Cottage. Not even now had the matter taken any moral aspect to him. He did not feel that he had gone skulking off to deliver a cowardly blow. All that he was conscious of was the fact, that having something to tell which he could not somehow persuade himself to tell, he was going to make the communication from a distance under Uncle Penrose’s advice. And yet the boy was not comfortable. It had become apparent to him vaguely, that after this communication was made, the relations existing between himself and his family must be changed. That his mother might be “angry,” which was his boyish term for any or every displeasure that might cloud Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind; that Hugh might take it badly—and that after all it was a troublesome business, and he would be pleased to get it over. He was travelling in the cheapest way, for his money was scanty; but he was not the kind of boy to be beguiled from his own thoughts by the curious third-class society into which he was thus brought, or even by the country, which gradually widened and expanded under his eyes from the few beaten paths he knew so well, into that wide unknown stretch of hill and plain which was the world. A vague excitement, it is true, came into his mind as he felt himself to have passed out of the reach of everything he knew, and to have entered upon the undiscovered; but this excitement did not draw him out of his own thoughts. It did but mingle with them, and put a quickening thrill of life into the strange maze. The confused country people at the stations, who did not know which carriage to take, and wandered, hurried and disconsolate, on the platforms, looking into all—the long swift moment of passage over the silent country, in which the train, enveloped in its own noise, made for itself a distinct atmosphere—and then again a shriek, a pause, and another procession of faces looking in at the window—this was Will’s idea of the long journey. He was not imaginative; but still everybody appeared to him hurried, and downcast, and pre-occupied. Even the harmless country folks had the air of having something on their minds. And through all he kept on pondering what his mother and what Hugh would say. Poor boy! his discovery had given him no advantage as yet; but it had put a cross upon his shoulders—it had bound him so hard and fast that he could not escape from it. It had brought, if not guilt, yet the punishment of guilt into all his thoughts.
Mr. Penrose had a handsome house at some distance from Liverpool, as was usual. And Will found it a very tedious and troublesome business to get there, not to speak of the calls for sixpences from omnibuses and porters, and everybody (he thought) who looked at him, which was very severe on his slender purse. And when he arrived, his uncle’s servants looked upon him with manifest suspicion; he had never been there before, and Mr. Penrose was now living alone, his wife being dead, and all his children married, so that there was nobody in the house who could identify the unknown nephew. The Cottage was not much bigger than Mr. Penrose’s porter’s lodge, and yet that small tenement had looked down upon the great mansion all its life, and been partly ashamed of it, which sentiment gave Will an unconscious sense that he was doing Uncle Penrose an honour in going to visit him. But when he was met at the door by the semi-polite suspicion of the butler, who proposed that he should call again, with an evident reference in his mind to the spoons, it gave the boy the forlornest feeling that can be conceived. He was alone, and they thought him an impostor, and nobody here knew or cared whether he was shut out from the house or not. His heart went back to his home with that revulsion which everybody knows. There, everybody would have rushed to open the door to him, and welcome him back; and though his errand here was simply to do that home as much injury as possible, his heart swelled at the contrast. While he stood, however, insisting upon admittance in his dogged way, without showing any feelings, it happened that Mr. Penrose drove up to the door, and hailed his nephew with much surprise. “You here, Will?” Mr. Penrose said. “I hope nothing has gone wrong at the Cottage?” and his man’s hand instantly, and as by magic, relaxed from the door.
“There is nothing wrong, sir,” said Will, “but I wanted to speak to you;” and he entered triumphantly, not without a sense of victory, as the subdued servant took his bag out of his hand. Mr. Penrose was, as we have said, alone. He had shed, as it were, all incumbrances, and was ready, unfettered by any ties or prejudices, to grow richer and wiser and more enlightened every day. His children were all married, and his wife having fulfilled all natural offices of this life, and married all her daughters, had quietly taken her dismissal when her duties were over, and had a very handsome tombstone, which he looked at on Sunday. It occurred to very few people, however, to lament over Mr. Penrose’s loneliness. He seemed to have been freed from all impediments, and left at liberty to grow rich, to get fat, and to believe in his own greatness and wisdom. Nor did it occur to himself to feel his great house lonely. He liked eating a luxurious dinner by himself, and knowing how much it had cost, all for his single lordly appetite—the total would have been less grand if wife and children had shared it. And then he had other things to think of—substantial things, about interest and investments, and not mere visionary reflections about the absence of other chairs or other faces at his table. But he had a natural interest in Wilfrid, as in a youth who had evidently come to ask his advice, which was an article he was not disinclined to give away. And then “the Setons,” as he called his sister’s family and descendants, had generally shut their ears to his advice, and shown an active absence of all political qualities, so that Will’s visit was a compliment of the highest character, something like an unexpected act of homage from Mordecai in the gate.
But even Mr. Penrose was struck dumb by Will’s communication. He put up his hand to his cravat and gasped, and thumped himself on the breast, staring at the boy with round, scared, apoplectic eyes—like the eyes of a boiled fish. He stared at Will,—who told the story calmly enough, with a matter-of-fact conciseness—and looked as if he was disposed to ring the bell and send for a doctor, and get out of the difficulty by concluding his nephew to be mad. But there was no withstanding the evidence of plain good faith and sincerity in Will’s narration. Mr. Penrose remained silent longer than anybody had ever known him to remain silent before, and he was not even very coherent when he had regained the faculty of speech.
“That woman was present, was she?” he said, “and Winnie’s husband—good Lord! And so you mean to tell me Mary has been all this time—When I asked her to my house, and my wife intended to make a party for her, and all that—and when she preferred to visit at Earlston, and that old fool, Sir Edward, who never had a penny—except what he settled on Winnie—and all that time, you know, Mary was—good Lord!”
“I don’t see what difference it makes to my mother,” said Will. “She is just what she always was—the difference it makes is to me—and of course to Hugh.”
But this was not a view that Mr. Penrose could take, who knew more about the world than Will could be supposed to know—though his thoughts were usually so preoccupied by what he called the practical aspect of everything. Yet he was disturbed in this case by reflections which were almost imaginative, and which utterly amazed Will. He got up, though he was still in the middle of dessert, and walking about the room, making exclamations. “That’s what she has been, you know, all this time—Mary, of all people in the world! Good Lord! That’s what she was, when we asked her here.” These were the exclamations that kept bursting from Uncle Penrose’s amazed lips—and Will at last grew angry and impatient, and hurried into the practical matter on his own initiative.
“When you have made up your mind about it, Uncle, I should be glad to know what you think best to be done,” said Will, in his steady way, and he looked at his adviser with those sceptical, clear-sighted eyes, which, more than anything else, make a practical man ashamed of having indulged in any momentary aberration.
Mr. Penrose came back to his chair and sat down, and looked with respect, and something that was almost awe, in Will’s face. Then the boy continued, seeing his advantage: “You must see what an important thing it is between Hugh and me,” he said. “It is a matter of business, of course, and it would be far better to settle it at once. If I am the right heir, you know, Earlston ought to be mine. I have heard you say, feelings had nothing to do with the right and wrong.”
“No,” said Mr. Penrose, with a slight gasp; “that is quite true; but it is all so sudden, you know—and Mary—I don’t know what you want me to do——”
“I want you to write and tell them about it,” said Will.
Mr. Penrose put his lips into the shape they would naturally have taken had he been whistling as usual; but he was not capable of a whistle. “It is all very easy to talk,” he said, “and naturally business is business, and I am not a man to think too much about feelings. But Mary—the fact is, it must be a matter of arrangement, Will. There can’t be any trial, you know, or publicity to expose her——”
“I don’t see that it would matter much to her,” said Will. “She would not mind; it would only be one of her sons instead of the other, and I suppose she likes me the same as Hugh.”
“I was not thinking of Hugh, or you either. I was thinking of your mother,” said Mr. Penrose, thrusting his hands into the depths of his pockets, and staring with vacant eyes into the air before him. He was matter-of-fact himself, but he could not comprehend the obtuseness of ignorance and self-occupation and youth.
“Well?” said Will.
“Well,” cried the uncle, turning upon him, “are you blind, or stupid, or what? Don’t you see it never can come to publicity, or she will be disgraced? I don’t say you are to give up your rights, if they are your rights, for that. I daresay you’ll take a deal better care of everything than that fellow Hugh, and won’t be so confounded saucy. But if you go and make a row about it in public, she can never hold up her head again, you know. I don’t mind talk myself in a general way; but talk about a woman’s marriage,—good Lord! There must be no public row, whatever you do.”
“I don’t see why there should be any public row,” said Will; “all that has to be done is to let them know.”
“I suppose you think Hugh will take it quite comfortable,” said Mr. Penrose, “and lay down everything like a lamb. He’s not a business man, nor good for much; but he will never be such an idiot as that; and then you would need to have your witnesses very distinct, if it was to come to anything. He has possession in his favour, and that is a good deal, and it is you who would have to prove everything. Are you quite sure that your witnesses would be forthcoming, and that you could make the case clear?”
“I don’t know about making the case clear,” said Will, who began to get confused; “all I know is what I have told you. Percival was there, and Mrs. Kirkman—they saw it, you know—and she says Hugh himself was there. Of course he was only a child. But she said no doubt he would remember, if it was brought to his mind.”
“Hugh himself!” said Mr. Penrose—again a little startled, though he was not a person of fine feelings. The idea of appealing to the recollections of the child for evidence against the man’s rights, struck him as curious at least. He was staggered, though he felt that he ought to have been above that. Of course it was all perfectly just and correct, and nobody could have been more clear than he, that any sort of fantastic delicacy coming between a man and his rights would be too absurd to be thought of. And yet it cannot be denied that he was staggered in spite of himself.
“I think if you told him distinctly, and recalled it to his recollection, and he knew everything that was involved,” said Will, with calm distinctness, “that Hugh would give in. It is the only thing he could do; and I should not say anything to him about a younger brother’s portion, or two thousand pounds,” the lad added, kindling up. “He should have everything that the money or the estate could do for him—whatever was best for him, if it cost half or double what Earlston was worth.”
“Then why on earth don’t you leave him Earlston, if you are so generous?” said Mr. Penrose. “If you are to spend it all upon him, what good would it do you having the dreary old place?”
“I should have my rights,” said Will with solemnity. It was as if he had been a disinherited prince whom some usurper had deprived of his kingdom; and this strange assumption was so honest in its way, and had such an appearance of sincerity, that Mr. Penrose was struck dumb, and gazed at the boy with a consternation which he could not express. His rights! Mary’s youngest son, whom everybody, up to this moment, had thought of only as a clever, not very amiable boy, of no particular account anywhere. The merchant began to wake up to the consciousness that he had a phenomenon before him—a new development of man. As he recovered from his surprise, he began to appreciate Will—to do justice to the straightforward ardour of his determination that business was business, and that feelings had nothing to do with it; and to admire his calm impassibility to every other view of the case but that which concerned himself. Mr. Penrose thought it was the result of a great preconcerted plan, and began to awake into admiration and respect. He thought the solemnity, and the calm, and that beautiful confidence in his rights, were features of a subtle and precocious scheme which Will had made for himself; and his thoughts, which had been dwelling for the moment on Mary, with a kind of unreflective sympathy, turned towards the nobler object thus presented before him. Here was a true apotheosis of interest over nature. Here was such a man of business, heaven-born, as had never been seen before. Mr. Penrose warmed and kindled into admiration, and he made a secret vow that such a genius should not be lost.
As for Will, he never dreamt of speculating as to what were his uncle’s thoughts. He was quite content that he had told his own tale, and so got over the first preliminary difficulty of getting it told to those whom it most concerned; and he was very sleepy—dreadfully tired, and more anxious to curl up his poor, young, weary head under his wing, and get to bed, than for anything else in the world. Yet, notwithstanding, when he lay down, and had put out his light, and had begun to doze, the thought came over him that he saw the glow of his mother’s candle shining in under his door, and heard her step on the stairs, which had been such a comfort to him many a night when he was a child, and woke up in the dark and heard her pass, and knew her to be awake and watching, and was not even without a hope that she might come in and stand for a moment, driving away all ghosts and terrors of the night, by his bed. He thought he saw the light under his door, and heard the foot coming up the stairs. And so probably he did: but the poor boy woke right up under this fancy, and remembered with a compunction that he was far away from his mother, and that probably she was “angry,” and perhaps anxious about his sudden departure; and he was very sorry in his heart to have come away so, and never to have told her. But he was not sorry nor much troubled anyhow about the much more important thing he was about to do.
And Uncle Penrose, under the strange stimulus of his visitor’s earnestness, addressed himself to the task required of him, and wrote to Hugh. He, too, thought first of writing to Mrs. Ochterlony; but, excellent business man as he was, he could not do it; it went against his heart, if he had a heart,—or, if not his heart, against some digestive organ which served him instead of that useful but not indispensable part of the human frame. But he did write to Hugh—that was easier; and then Hugh had been “confounded saucy,” and had rejected his advice, not about the Museum only, but in other respects. Mr. Penrose wrote the letter that very night while Will was dreaming about his mother’s light; and so the great wheel was set a-going, which none of them could then stop for ever.