UGH had left the Cottage the day after Will’s departure. He had gone to Earlston, where a good deal of business about the Museum and the estate awaited him; and he had gone off without any particular burden on his mind. As for Will’s flight from home, it was odd, no doubt; but then Will himself was odd, and out-of-the-way acts were to be expected from him. When Hugh, with careless liberality, had sent him the cheque, he dismissed the subject from his mind—at least, he thought of his younger brother only with amusement, wondering what he could find to attract him in Uncle Penrose’s prosaic house,—trying to form an imagination of Will wandering about the great Liverpool docks, looking at the big ships, and all the noisy traffic; and Hugh laughed within himself to think how very much all that was out of Will’s way. No doubt he would come home in a day or two bored to death, and would loathe the very name of Liverpool all his life thereafter. As for Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston himself, he had a great deal to do. The mayor and corporation of Dalken had come to a final decision about the Museum, and all that had to be done was to prepare the rooms which were to receive Mr. Francis Ochterlony’s treasures, and to transfer with due tenderness and solemnity the Venus and the Psyche, and all the delicate wealth which had been so dear to the heart of “the old Squire.” The young Squire went round and looked at them all, with a great tenderness in his own, remembering his uncle’s last progress among them, and where he sat down to rest, and the wistful looks he gave to those marble white creations which stood to him in the place of wife and children; and the pathetic humour with which he had said, “It is all the better for you.” It was the better for Hugh; but still the young man in the fulness of his hopes had a tender compunction for the old man who had died without getting the good of his life, and with no treasures but marble and bronze and gold and silver to leave behind him. “My poor uncle!” Hugh said; and yet the chances were that Francis Ochterlony was not, either in living or dying, sorry for himself. Hugh had a kind of reluctance to change the aspect of everything, and make the house his own house, and not Francis Ochterlony’s. It seemed almost impious to take from it the character it had borne so long, and at the same time it was his uncle’s wish. These were Hugh’s thoughts at night, but in the fresh light of the morning it would be wrong to deny that another set of ideas took possession of his mind. Then he began to think of the new aspect, and the changes he could make. It was not bright enough for a home for—well, for any lady that might happen to come on a visit or otherwise; and, to be sure, Hugh had no intention of accepting as final his mother’s determination not to leave the Cottage. He made up his mind that she would come, and that people—various people, ladies and others—would come to visit her; that there should be flowers and music and smiles about the place, and perhaps some one as fair and as sweet as Psyche to change the marble moonlight into sacred living sunshine. Now the fact was, that Nelly was not by any means so fair as Psyche—that she was not indeed what you would call a regular beauty at all, but only a fresh, faulty, sweet little human creature, with warm blood in her veins, and a great many thoughts in her little head. And when Hugh thought of some fair presence coming into these rooms and making a Paradise of them, either it was not Nelly Askell he was thinking of, or else he was thinking like a poet—though he was not poetical, to speak of. However, he did not himself give any name to his imaginations—he could afford to be vague. He went all over the house in the morning, not with the regretful, affectionate eye with which he made the same survey the night before, but in a practical spirit. At his age, and in his position, the practical was only a pleasanter variation of the romantic aspect of affairs. As he thought of new furniture, scores of little pictures flashed into his mind—though in ordinary cases he was not distinguished by a powerful imagination. He had no sooner devised the kind of chair that should stand in a particular corner, than straightway a little figure jumped into it, a whisper of talk came out of it, with a host of imaginary circumstances which had nothing to do with upholstery. Even the famous rococo chair which Islay had broken was taken possession of by that vague, sweet phantom. And he went about the rooms with an unconscious smile on his face, devising and planning. He did not know he was smiling; it was not at anything or about anything. It was but the natural expression of the fresh morning fancies and sweet stir of everything hopeful, and bright, and uncertain, which was in his heart.
And when he went out of doors he still smiled. Earlston was a grey limestone house, as has been described in the earlier part of this history. A house which chilled Mrs. Ochterlony to the heart when she first went there with her little children in the first forlornness of her widowhood. What Hugh had to do now was to plan a flower-garden for—his mother; yes, it was truly for his mother. He meant that she should come all the same. Nothing could make any difference so far as she was concerned. But at the same time, to be sure, he did not mean that his house should make the same impression on any other stranger as that house had made upon Mary. He planned how the great hedges should be cut down, and the trees thinned, and the little moorland burn should be taken in within the enclosure, and followed to its very edge by the gay lawn with its flower-beds. He planned a different approach—where there might be openings in the dark shrubberies, and views over the hills. All this he did in the morning, with a smile on his face, though the tears had been in his eyes at the thought of any change only the previous night. If Francis Ochterlony had been by, as perhaps he was, no doubt he would have smiled at that tender inconsistency—and there would not have been any bitterness in the smile.
And then Hugh went in to breakfast. He had already some new leases to sign and other business matters to do, and he was quite pleased to do it—as pleased as he had been to draw his first cheques. He sat down at his breakfast-table, before the little pile of letters that awaited him, and felt the importance of his new position. Even his loneliness made him feel its importance the more. Here were questions of all sorts submitted to him, and it was he who had to answer, without reference to anybody—he whose advice a little while ago nobody would have taken the trouble to ask. It was not that he cared to exercise his privilege—for Hugh, on the whole, had an inclination to be advised—but still the sense of his independence was sweet. He meant to ask Mr. Preston, the attorney, about various things, and he meant to consult his mother, and to lay some special affairs before Sir Edward—but still, at the time, it was he who had everything to do, and Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston sat down before his letters with a sense of satisfaction which does not always attend the mature mind in that moment of trial. One of the uppermost was from Uncle Penrose, redirected from the Cottage, but it did not cause any thrill of interest to Hugh’s mind, who put it aside calmly, knowing of no thunderbolts that might be in it. No doubt it was some nonsense about the Museum, he thought, as if he himself was not a much better judge about the Museum than a stranger and business-man could be. There was, however, a letter from Mary, which directed her son’s attention to this epistle. “I send you a letter directed in Uncle Penrose’s hand,” wrote Mrs. Ochterlony, “which I have had the greatest inclination to open, to see what he says about Will. I daresay you would not have minded; but I conclude, on the whole, that Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston should have his letters to himself; so I send it on to you uninvaded. Let me know what he says about your brother.” Hugh could not but laugh when he read this, half with pleasure, half with amusement. His mother’s estimate of his importance entertained him greatly, and the idea of anything private being in Uncle Penrose’s letter tickled him still more. Then he drew it towards him lightly, and began to read it with eyes running over with laughter. He was all alone, and there was nobody to see any change of sentiment in his face.
He was all alone—but yet presently Hugh raised his eyes from the letter which he had taken up so gaily, and cast a scared look round him, as if to make sure that nobody was there. The smile had gone off his face, and the laughter out of his eyes,—and not only that, but every particle of colour had left his face. And yet he did not see the meaning of what he had read. “Will!” he said to himself. “Will!” He was horror-stricken and bewildered, but that was the sole idea it conveyed to him—a sense of treachery—the awful feeling of unreality and darkness round about, with which the young soul for the first time sees itself injured and betrayed. He laid down the letter half read, and paused, and put up his hands to his head as if to convince himself that he was not dreaming. Will! Good God! Will! Was it possible? Hugh had to make a convulsive effort to grasp this unnatural horror. Will, one of themselves, to have gone off, and put himself into the hands of Uncle Penrose, and set himself against his mother and her sons! The ground seemed to fail under his feet, the solid world to fall off round him into bewildering mystery. Will! And yet he did not apprehend what it was. His mind could not take in more than one discovery at a time. A minute before, and he was ready to have risked everything on the good faith of any and every human creature he knew. Now, was there anybody to be trusted? His brother had stolen from his side, and was striking at him by another and an unfriendly hand. Will! Good heavens, Will!
It would be difficult to tell how long it was before the full meaning of the letter he had thus received entered into Hugh’s mind. He sat with the breakfast things still on the table so long, that the housekeeper herself came at last with natural inquisitiveness to see if anything was the matter, and found Hugh with a face as grey and colourless as that of the old Squire, sitting over his untasted coffee, unaware, apparently, what he was about. He started when she came in, and bundled up his letters into his pocket, and gave an odd laugh, and said he had been busy, and had forgotten. And then he sprang up and left the room, paying no attention to her outcry that he had eaten nothing. Hugh was not aware he had eaten nothing, or probably in the first horror of his discovery of the treachery in the world, he too would have taken to false pretences and saved appearances, and made believe to have breakfasted. But the poor boy was unaware, and rushed off to the library, where nobody could have any pretext for disturbing him, and shut himself up with this first secret—the new, horrible discovery which had changed the face of the world. This was the letter which he had crushed up in his hand as he might have crushed a snake or deadly reptile, but which nothing could crush out of his heart, where the sting had entered and gone deep:—
“MY DEAR NEPHEW,—It is with pain that I write to you, though it is my clear duty to do so in the interests of your brother, who has just put his case into my hands—and I don’t doubt that the intelligence I am about to convey will be a great blow, not only to your future prospects but to your pride and sense of importance, which so fine a position at your age had naturally elevated considerably higher than a plain man like myself could approve of. Your brother arrived here to-day, and has lost no time in informing me of the singular circumstances under which he left home, and of which, so far as I understand him, you and your mother are still in ignorance. Wilfrid’s perception of the fact that feelings, however creditable to him as an individual, ought not to stand in the way of what is, strictly speaking, a matter of business, is very clear and uncompromising; but still he does not deny that he felt it difficult to make this communication either to you or his mother. Accident, the nature of which I do not at present, before knowing your probable course of action, feel myself at liberty to indicate more plainly, has put him in possession of certain facts, which would change altogether the relations between him and yourself, as well as your (apparent) position as head of the family. These facts, which, for your mother’s sake, I should be deeply grieved to make known out of the family, are as follows: your father, Major Ochterlony, and my niece, instead of being married privately in Scotland, as we all believed, in the year 1830, or thereabouts—I forget the exact date—were in reality only married in India in the year 1837, by the chaplain, the Rev.—— Churchill, then officiating at the station where your father’s regiment was. This, as you are aware, was shortly before Wilfrid’s birth, and not long before Major Ochterlony died. It is subject of thankfulness that your father did my niece this tardy justice before he was cut off, as may be said, in the flower of his days, but you will see at a glance that it entirely reverses your respective positions—and that in fact Wilfrid is Major Ochterlony’s only lawful son.
“I am as anxious as you can be that this should be made a matter of family arrangement, and should never come to the public ears. To satisfy your own mind, however, of the perfect truth of the assertion I have made, I beg to refer you to the Rev. Mr. Churchill, who performed the ceremony, and whose present address, which Wilfrid had the good sense to secure, you will find below—and to Mrs. Kirkman, who was present. Indeed, I am informed that you yourself were present—though probably too young to understand what it meant. It is possible that on examining your memory you may find some trace of the occurrence, which though not dependable upon by itself, will help to confirm the intelligence to your mind. We are in no hurry, and will leave you the fullest time to satisfy yourself, as well as second you in every effort to prevent any painful consequence from falling upon your mother, who has (though falsely) enjoyed the confidence and esteem of her friends so long.
“For yourself you may reckon upon Wilfrid’s anxious endeavours to further your prospects by every means in his power. Of course I do not expect you to take a fact involving so much, either upon his word or mine. Examine it fully for yourself, and the more entirely the matter is cleared up, the more will it be for our satisfaction, as well as your own. The only thing I have to desire for my own part is that you will spare your mother—as your brother is most anxious to do. Hoping for an early reply, I am, your affectionate uncle and sincere friend,—J. P. PENROSE.”
Hugh sat in Francis Ochterlony’s chair, at his table, with his head supported on his hands, looking straight before him, seeing nothing, not even thinking, feeling only this letter spread out upon the table, and the intelligence conveyed in it, and holding his head, which ached and throbbed with the blow, in his hands. He was still, and his head throbbed and his heart and soul ached, tingling through him to every joint and every vein. He could not even wonder, nor doubt, nor question in any way, for the first terrible interval. All he could do was to look at the fact and take it fully into his mind, and turn it over and over, seeing it all round on every side, looking at it this way and that way, and feeling as if somehow heaven and earth were filled with it, though he had never dreamt of such a ghost until that hour. Not his, after all—nor Earlston, nor his name, nor the position he had been so proud of; nothing his—alas, not even his mother, his spotless mother, the woman whom it had been an honour and glory to come from and belong to. When a groan came from the poor boy’s white lips it was that he was thinking of. Madonna Mary! that was the name they had called her by—and this was how it really was. He groaned aloud, and made an unconscious outcry of his pain when it came to that. “Oh, my God, if it had only been ruin, loss of everything—anything in the world but that!” This was the first stage of stupefaction and yet of vivid consciousness, before the indignation came. He sat and looked at it, and realized it, and took it into his mind, staring at it until every drop of blood ebbed away from his face. This was how it was before the anger came. After a while his countenance and his mood changed—the colour and heat came rushing back to his cheeks and lips, and a flood of rage and resentment swept over him like a sudden storm. Will! could it be Will? Liar! coward! traitor! to call her mother, and to tax her with shame even had it been true—to frame such a lying, cursed, devilish accusation against her! Then it was that Hugh flashed into a fiery, burning shame to think that he had given credence to it for one sole moment. He turned his eyes upon her, as it were, and looked into her face and glowed with a bitter indignation and fury. His mother’s face! only to think of it and dare to fancy that shame could ever have been there. And then the boy wept, in spite of his manhood—wept a few, hot, stinging tears, that dried up the moment they fell, half for rage, half for tenderness.—And, oh, my God, was it Will? Then as his mind roused more and more to the dread emergency, Hugh got up and went to the window and gazed out, as if that would help him; and his eye lighted on the tangled thicket which he had meant to make into his mother’s flower-garden, and upon the sweep of trees through which he had planned his new approach, and once more he groaned aloud. Only this morning so sure about it all, so confidently and carelessly happy—now with not one clear step before him to take, with no future, no past that he could dare look back upon—no name, nor rights of any kind—if this were true. And could it be otherwise than true? Could any imagination frame so monstrous and inconceivable a falsehood?—such a horrible impossibility might be fact, but it was beyond all the bounds of fancy;—and then the blackness of darkness descended again upon Hugh’s soul. Poor Mary, poor mother! It came into the young man’s mind to go to her and take her in his arms, and carry her away somewhere out of sight of men and sound of their voices—and again there came to his eyes those stinging tears. Fault of hers it could not be; she might have been deceived; and then poor Hugh’s lips, unaccustomed to curses, quivered and stopped short as they were about to curse the father whom he never knew. Here was the point at which the tide turned again. Could it be Hugh Ochterlony who had deceived his wife? he whose sword hung in Mary’s room, whose very name made a certain music in her voice when she pronounced it, and whom she had trained her children to reverence with that surpassing honour which belongs to the dead alone. Again a storm of rage and bitter indignation swept in his despair and bewilderment over the young man’s mind; an accursed scheme, a devilish, hateful lie—that was how it was: and oh, horror! that it should be Will.
Through all these changes it was one confused tempest of misery and dismay that was in Hugh’s mind. Now and then there would be wild breaks in the clouds—now they would be whirled over the sky in gusts—now settled down into a blackness beyond all reckoning. Lives change from joy to misery often enough in this world; but seldom thus in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. His careless boat had been taking its sweet course over waters rippled with a favourable breeze, and without a moment’s interval he was among the breakers; and he knew so little how to manage it, he was so inexperienced to cope with wind and waves. And he had nobody to ask counsel from. He was, as Will had been, separated from his natural adviser, the one friend to whom hitherto he had confided all his difficulties. But Hugh was older than Will, and his mind had come to a higher development, though perhaps he was not so clever as his brother. He had no Uncle Penrose to go to; no living soul would hear from him this terrible tale; he could consult nobody. Not for a hundred Earlstons, not for all the world, would he have discussed with any man in existence his mother’s good name.
Yet with that, too, there came another complication into Hugh’s mind. Even while he actually thought in his despair of going to his mother, and telling her any tender lie that might occur to him, and carrying her away to Australia, or any end of the world where he could work for her, and remove her for ever from shame and pain, a sense of outraged justice and rights assailed was in his mind. He was not one of those who can throw down their arms. Earlston was his, and he could not relinquish it and his position as head of the house without a struggle. And the thought of Mr. Penrose stung him. He even tried to heal one of his deeper wounds by persuading himself that Uncle Penrose was at the bottom of it, and that poor Will was but his tool. Poor Will! Poor miserable boy! And if he ever woke and came to himself, and knew what he had been doing, how terrible would his position be! Thus Hugh tried to think till, wearied out with thinking, he said to himself that he would put it aside and think no more of it, and attend to his business; which vain imagination the poor boy tried to carry out with hands that shook and brain that refused to obey his guidance. And all this change was made in one little moment. His life came to a climax, and passed through a secret revolution in that one day; and yet he had begun it as if it had been an ordinary day—a calm summer morning in the summer of his days.
This was what Hugh said to his mother of Mr. Penrose’s letter:—“The letter you forwarded to me from Uncle Penrose was in his usual business strain—good advice, and that sort of thing. He does not say much about Will; but he has arrived all safe, and I suppose is enjoying himself—as well as he can, there.”
And when he had written and despatched that note he sat down to think again. He decided at last that he would not go on with the flower-garden and the other works—till he saw; but that he would settle about the Museum without delay. “If it came to the worst they would not recall the gift,” he said to himself, brushing his hand across his eyes. It was his uncle’s wish; and it was he, Hugh, and not any other, whom Francis Ochterlony wished for his heir. Hugh’s hand was wet when he took it from his eyes, and his heart was full, and he could have wept like a child. But he was a man, and weeping could do no good; and he had nobody in the world to take his trouble to—nobody in the world. Love and pride made a fence round him, and isolated him. He had to make his way out of it as best he could, and alone. He made a great cry to God in his trouble; but from nobody in the world could he have either help or hope. And he read the letter over and over, and tried to recollect and to go back into his dim baby-memory of India, and gather out of the thick mists that scene which they said he had been present at. Was there really some kind of vague image of it, all broken and indistinct and effaced, on his mind?