Madonna Mary

“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Askell, springing up. “Oh, my Madonna, can it be you? Are you sure it is you, you dear, you darling! Don’t go looking at the children as if they were the principal, but give me a kiss and say it is you, – say you are sure it is you!”

And the rapture of delight and welcome she went into, though it showed how weak-minded and excitable she was, was in its way not disagreeable to Mary, and touched her heart. She gave the kiss she was asked for, and received a flood in return, and such embraces as nearly took her breath away; and then Nelly was summoned to take “the things” off an easy chair, the only one in the room, which stood near her mother’s sofa. Mary was still in Mrs. Askell’s embrace when this command was given, but she saw the girl gather up the baby in her arms, and moving softly not to disturb the little sleeper, collect the encumbering articles together and draw the chair forward. No one else moved or took any trouble. The bigger boy stood and watched behind his sister’s chair, and the younger one turned round to indulge in the same inspection, and little Emma took her fists out of her eyes. But there was nobody but the little woman with the baby who could get for the guest the only comfortable chair.

“Now sit down and be comfortable, and let me look at you; I could be content just to look at you all day,” said Emma. “You are just as you always were, and not a bit changed. It is because you have not had all our cares. I look a perfect fright, and as old as my grandmother, and I am no good for anything; but you are just the same as you used to be. Oh, it is just like the old times, seeing you! I have been in such a state, I did not know what to do with myself since ever I knew we were coming here.”

“But I do not think you are looking old, though you look delicate,” said Mary. “Let me make acquaintance with the children. Nelly, you used to be in my arms as much as your mamma’s when you were a baby. You are just the same age as my Will, and you were the best baby that ever was. Tell me their names and how old they all are. You know they are all strangers to me.”

“Yes,” said their mother, with a little fretfulness. “It was such a mercy Nelly was the eldest. I never could have kept living if she had been a boy. I have been such a suffering creature, and we have been moved about so much, and oh, we have had so much to do! You can’t fancy what a life we have had,” cried poor Emma; and the mere thought of it brought tears to her eyes.

“Yes, I know it is a troublesome life,” said Mary; “but you are young, and you have your husband, and the children are all so well – ”

“Yes, the children are all well,” said Emma; “but then every new place they come to, they take measles or something, and I am gone to a shadow before they are right again; and then the doctors’ bills – I think Charley and Lucy and Emma have had everything,” said the aggrieved mother; “and they always take them so badly; and then Askell takes it into his head it is damp linen or something, and thinks it is my fault. It is bad enough when a woman is having her children,” cried poor Emma, “without all their illnesses, you know, and tempers and bills, and everything besides. Oh, Madonna! you are so well off. You live quiet, and you know nothing about all our cares.”

“I think I would not mind the cares,” said Mary; “if you were quiet like me, you would not like it. You must come out to Kirtell for a little change.”

“Oh, yes, with all my heart,” said Emma. “I think sometimes it would do me all the good in the world just to be out of the noise for a little, and where there was nothing to be found fault with. I should feel like a girl again, my Madonna, if I could be with you.”

“And Nelly must come too,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, looking down upon the little bright, anxious, careful face.

Nelly was thirteen – the same age as Wilfrid; but she was little, and laden with the care of which her mother talked. Her eyes were hazel eyes, such as would have run over with gladness had they been left to nature, and her brown hair curled a little on her neck. She was uncared for, badly dressed, and not old enough yet for the instinct that makes the budding woman mindful of herself. But the care that made Emma’s cheek hollow and her life a waste, looked sweet out of Nelly’s eyes. The mother thought she bore it all, and cried and complained under it, while the child took it on her shoulders unawares and carried it without any complaint. Her soft little face lighted up for a moment as Mary spoke, and then her look turned on the sleeping baby with that air half infantile, half motherly, which makes a child’s face like an angel’s.

“I do not think I could go,” she said; “for the children are not used to the new nurse; and it would make poor papa so uncomfortable; and then it would do mamma so much more good to be quiet for a little without the children – ”

Mary rose up softly just then, and, to Nelly’s great surprise, bent over her and kissed her. Nobody but such another woman could have told what a sense of envy and yearning was in Mary’s heart as she did it. How she would have surrounded with tenderness and love that little daughter who was but a domestic slave to Emma Askell! and yet, if she had been Mary’s daughter, and surrounded by love and tenderness, she would not have been such a child. The little thing brightened and blushed, and looked up with a gleam of sweet surprise in her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Ochterlony,” she said, in that sudden flush of pleasure; and the two recognised each other in that moment, and knitted between them, different as their ages were, that bond of everlasting friendship which is made oftener at sight than in any more cautious way.

“Come and sit by me,” said Emma, “or I shall be jealous of my own child. She is a dear little thing, and so good with the others. Come and tell me about your boys. And, oh, please, just one word – we have so often spoken about it, and so often wondered. Tell me, dear Mrs. Ochterlony, did it never do any harm?”

“Did what never do any harm?” asked Mary, with once more a sudden pang of thankfulness that Wilfrid was not there.

Mrs. Askell threw her arms round Mary’s neck and kissed her and clasped her close. “There never was any one like you,” she said; “you never even would complain.”

This second assault made Mary falter and recoil, in spite of herself. They had not forgot, though she might have forgotten. And, what was even worse than words, as Emma spoke, the serious little woman-child, who had won Mrs. Ochterlony’s heart, raised her sweet eyes and looked with a mixture of wonder and understanding in Mary’s face. The child whom she would have liked to carry away and make her own – did she, too, know and wonder? There was a great deal of conversation after this – a great deal about the Askells themselves, and a great deal about Winnie and her husband, whom Mrs. Askell knew much more about than Mrs. Ochterlony did. But it would be vain to say that anything she heard made as great an impression upon Mary as the personal allusions which sent the blood tingling through her veins. She went home, at last, with that most grateful sense of home which can only be fully realized by those who return from the encounter of an indifferent world, and from friends who, though kind, are naturally disposed to regard everything from their own point of view. It is sweet to have friends, and yet by times it is bitter. Fortunately for Mary, she had the warm circle of her own immediate belongings to return into, and could retire, as it were, into her citadel, and there smile at all the world. Her boys gave her that sweetest youthful adoration which is better than the love of lovers, and no painful ghost lurked in their memory – or so, at least, Mrs. Ochterlony thought.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE Cottage changed its aspect greatly after the arrival of the regiment, and it was a change which lasted a long time, for the depôt was established at Carlisle, and Captain Askell got an appointment which smoothed the stony way of life a little for himself and his wife. Kirtell was very accessible and very pretty, and there was always a welcome to be had at the Cottage; and the regiment returned in the twinkling of an eye to its old regard for its Madonna Mary. The officers came about the house continually, to the great enlivenment of the parish in general. And Mrs. Kirkman came, and very soon made out that the vicar and his curate were both very incompetent, and did what she could to form a missionary nucleus, if not under Mrs. Ochterlony’s wing, at least protected by her shadow; and the little Askells came and luxuriated in the grass and the flowers; and Miss Sorbette and the doctor, who were still on the strength of the regiment, paid many visits, bringing with them the new people whom Mary did not know. When Hugh and Islay came home at vacation times, they found the house so lively, that it acquired new attractions for them, and Aunt Agatha, who was not so old as to be quite indifferent to society, said to herself with natural sophistry, that it was very good for the boys, and made them happier than two solitary women could have done by themselves, which no doubt was true. As for Mrs. Ochterlony herself, she said frankly that she was glad to see her friends; she liked to receive them in her own house. She had been rather poor in India, and not able to entertain them very splendidly; and though she was poor still, and the Cottage was a very modest little dwelling-place, it could receive the visitors, and give them pleasant welcome, and a pleasant meal, and pleasant faces, and cheerful companionship. Mrs. Ochterlony was not yet old, and she had lived a quiet life of late, so peaceful that the incipient wrinkles which life had outlined in her face, had been filled up and smoothed out by the quietness. She was in perfect health, and her eyes were bright, and her complexion sweet, and her hair still gave by time a golden gleam out of its brown masses.

No wonder then that her old friends saw little or no change in her, and that her new ones admired her as much as she had ever been admired in her best days. Some women are sweet by means of being helpless, and fragile, and tender; and some have a loftier charm by reason of their veiled strength and composure, and calm of self-possession. Mary was one of the last; she was a woman not to lean, but to be leant upon; soft with a touch like velvet, and yet as steady as a rock – a kind of beauty which wears long, and does not spoil even by growing old.

It was a state of affairs very agreeable to everybody in the place, except, perhaps, to Will, who was very jealous of his mother. Hugh and Islay when they came home took it all for granted, in an open-handed boyish way, and were no more afraid of anything Mrs. Ochterlony might do, than for their own existence. But Will was always there. He haunted the drawing-room, whoever might be in it at the moment; yet – though to Aunt Agatha’s consciousness, the boy was never absent from the big Indian chair in the corner – he was at the same time always ready to pursue his curate to the very verge of that poor gentleman’s knowledge, and give him all the excitement of a hairbreadth ’scape ten times in a morning. Nobody could tell when he learned his lessons, or what time he had for study – for there he was always, taking in everything, and making comments in his own mind, and now and then interposing in the conversation to Aunt Agatha’s indignation. Mary would not see it, she said; Mary thought that all her boys did was right – which was, perhaps, to some extent true; and it was said in the neighbourhood, as was natural, that so many gentlemen did not come to the Cottage for nothing; that Mrs. Ochterlony was still a young woman; that she had devoted herself to the boys for a long time, and that if she were to marry again, nobody could have any right to object. Such reports spring up in the country so easily, either with or without foundation; and Wilfrid, who found out everything, heard them, and grew very watchful and jealous, and even doubtful of his mother. Should such an idea have entered into her head, the boy felt that he would despise her; and yet at the same time he was very fond of her and filled with unbounded jealousy. While all the time, Mary herself was very glad to see her friends, and, perhaps, was not entirely unconscious of exciting a certain respectful admiration, but had as little idea of severing herself from her past life, and making a new fictitious beginning, as if she had been eighty; and it never occurred to her to imagine that she was watched or doubted by her boy.

It was a pleasant revival, but it had its drawbacks – for one thing, Aunt Agatha did not, as she said, get on with all Mary’s friends. There was between Miss Seton and Mrs. Kirkman an enmity which was to the death. The Colonel’s wife, though she might be, as became her position, a good enough conservative in secular politics, was a revolutionary, or more than a revolutionary, an iconoclast, in matters ecclesiastical. She had no respect for anything, Aunt Agatha thought. A woman who works under the proper authorities, and reveres her clergyman, is a woman to be regarded with a certain respect, even if she is sometimes zealous out of season; but when she sets up on her own foundation, and sighs over the shortcomings of the clergy, and believes in neither rector nor curate, then the whole aspect of affairs is changed. “She believes in nobody but herself,” Aunt Agatha said; “she has no respect for anything. I wonder how you can put up with such a woman, Mary. She talks to our good vicar as if he were a boy at school – and tells him how to manage the parish. If that is the kind of person you think a good woman, I have no wish to be good, for my part. She is quite insufferable to me.”

“She is often disagreeable,” said Mary, “but I am sure she is good at the bottom of her heart.”

“I don’t know anything about the bottom of her heart,” said Aunt Agatha; “from all one can see of the surface, it must be a very unpleasant place. And then that useless Mrs. Askell; she is quite strong enough to talk to the gentlemen and amuse them, but as for taking a little pains to do her duty, or look after her children – I must say I am surprised at your friends. A soldier’s life is trying, I suppose,” Miss Seton added. “I have always heard it was trying; but the gentlemen should be the ones to feel it most, and they are not spoiled. The gentlemen are very nice – most of them,” Aunt Agatha added with a little hesitation, for there was one whom she regarded as Wilfrid did with jealous eyes.

“The gentlemen are further off, and we do not see them so clearly,” said Mary; “and if you knew what it is to wander about, to have no settled home, and to be ailing and poor – ”

“My dear love,” said Aunt Agatha, with a little impatience, “you might have been as poor, and you never would have been like that; and as for sick – You know I never thought you had a strong constitution – nor your sister either – my pretty Winnie! Do you think that sickness, or poverty, or anything else, could ever have brought down Winnie to be like that silly little woman?”

“Hush,” said Mary, “Nelly is in the garden, and might hear.”

“Nelly!” said Aunt Agatha, who felt herself suddenly pulled up short. “I have nothing to say against Nelly, I am sure. I could not help thinking last night, that some of these days she would make a nice wife for one of the boys. She is quite beginning to grow up now, poor dear. When I see her sitting there it makes me think of my Winnie; – not that she will ever be beautiful like Winnie. But Mary, my dear love, I don’t think you are kind to me. I am sure you must have heard a great deal about Winnie, especially since she has come back to England, and you never tell me a word.”

“My dear aunt,” said Mary, with a little embarrassment, “you see all these people as much as I do; and I have heard them telling you what news of her they know.”

“Ah, yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh. “They tell me she is here or there, but I know that from her letters; what I want to know is, something about her, how she looks, and if she is happy. She never says she is not happy, you know. Dear, dear! to think she must be past thirty now – two-and-thirty her last birthday – and she was only eighteen when she went away. You were not so long away, Mary – ”

“But Winnie has not had my reason for coming back upon your hands, Aunt Agatha,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, gravely.

“No,” said Aunt Agatha: and again she sighed; and this time the sigh was of a kind which did not sound very complimentary to Captain Percival. It seemed to say “More’s the pity!” Winnie had never come back to see the kind aunt who had been a mother to her. She said in her letters how unlucky she was, and that they were to be driven all round the world, she thought, and never to have any rest; but no doubt, if Winnie had been very anxious, she might have found means to come home. And the years were creeping on imperceptibly, and the boys growing up – even Will, who was now almost as tall as his brothers. When such a change had come upon these children, what a change there must be in the wilful, sprightly, beautiful girl whose image reigned supreme in Aunt Agatha’s heart. A sudden thought struck the old lady as she sighed. The little Askells were at Kirtell at the moment with the nurse, and Nelly, who was more than ever the mother of the little party. Aunt Agatha sat still for a little with her heart beating, and then she took up her work in a soft stealthy way, and went out into the garden. “No, my dear, oh no, don’t disturb yourself,” she said, with anxious deprecation to Mary, who would have risen too, “I am only going to look at the lilies,” and she was so conscientious that she did go and cast an undiscerning, preoccupied glance upon the lilies, though her real attraction was quite in an opposite quarter. At the other side, audible but not visible, was a little group which was pretty to look at in the afternoon sunshine. It was outside the garden, on the other side of the hedge, in the pretty green field, all white and yellow with buttercups and daisies, which belonged to the Cottage. Miss Seton’s mild cow had not been able to crop down all that flowery fragrant growth, and the little Askells were wading in it, up to their knees in the cool sweet grass, and feeding upon it and drawing nourishment out of it almost as much as the cow did. But in the corner close by the garden hedge there was a more advanced development of youthful existence. Nelly was seated on the grass, working with all her might, yet pausing now and then to lift her serious eyes to Will, who leant upon an old stump of oak which projected out of the hedge, and had the conversation all in his own hands. He was doing what a boy under such circumstances loves to do; he was startling, shocking, frightening his companion. He was saying a great deal that he meant and some things that he did not mean, and taking a great secret pleasure in the widening of Nelly’s eyes and the consternation of her face. Will had grown into a very long lank boy, with joints which were as awkward as his brother’s used to be, yet not in the same way, for the limbs that completed them were thin and meagre, and had not the vigour of Hugh’s. His trousers were too short for him, and so were his sleeves. His hair had no curls in it, and fell down over his forehead. He was nearly sixteen, and he was thoroughly discontented – a misanthrope, displeased with everything without knowing why. But time had been kinder to Nelly, who was not long and lean like her companion, but little and round and blooming, with the soft outlines and the fresh bloom of earliest youth just emerging out of childhood. Her eyes were brown, very serious, and sweet – eyes that had “seen trouble,” and knew a great many more things in the world than were dreamt of in Will’s philosophy: but then she was not so clever as Will, and his talk confused her. She was looking up to him and taking all in with a mixture of willing faith and instinctive scepticism which it was curious to see.

“You two are always together, I think,” said Aunt Agatha, putting down a little camp-stool she had in her hand beside Nelly – for she had passed the age when people think of sitting on the grass. “What are you talking about? I suppose he brings all his troubles to you.”

“Oh, no,” said Nelly, with a blush, which was on Aunt Agatha’s account, and not on Will’s. He was a little older than herself actually; but Nelly was an experienced woman, and could not but look down amiably on such an unexercised inhabitant of the world as “only a boy.”

“Then I suppose, my dear, he must talk to you about Greek and Latin,” said Aunt Agatha, “which is a thing young ladies don’t much care for: I am very sure old ladies don’t. Is that what you talk about?”

“Oh, yes, often,” said Nelly, brightening, as she looked at Will. That was not the sort of talk they had been having, but still it was true.

“Well,” said Miss Seton, “I am sure he will go on talking as long as you will listen to him. But he must not have you all to himself. Did he tell you Hugh was coming home to see us? We expect him next week.”

“Yes,” said Nelly, who was not much of a talker. And then, being a little ashamed of her taciturnity, she added, “I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony will be glad.”

“We shall all be glad,” said Aunt Agatha. “Hugh is very nice. We must have you to see a little more of him this time; I am sure you would like him. Then you will be well acquainted with all our family,” the old lady continued, artfully approaching her real object; “for you know my dear Winnie, I think – I ought to say, Mrs. Percival; she is the dearest girl that ever was. You must have met her, my dear – abroad.”

Nelly looked up a little surprised. “We knew Mrs. Percival,” she said, “but she – was not a girl at all. She was as old – as old as mamma – like all the other ladies,” she added, hastily; for the word girl had limited meanings to Nelly, and she would have laughed at its application in such a case, if she had not been a natural gentlewoman with the finest manners in the world.

“Ah, yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh, “I forget how time goes; and she will always be a girl to me: but she was very beautiful, all the same; and she had such a way with children. Were you fond of her, Nelly? Because, if that were so, I should love you more and more.”

Nelly looked up with a frightened, puzzled look in Aunt Agatha’s eyes. She was very soft-hearted, and had been used to give in to other people all her life; and she almost felt as if, for Aunt Agatha’s sake, she could persuade herself that she had been fond of Mrs. Percival; but yet at the same time honesty went above all. “I do not think we knew them very well,” she said. “I don’t think mamma was very intimate with Mrs. Percival; that is, I don’t think papa liked him,” added Nelly, with natural art.

Aunt Agatha gave another sigh. “That might be, my dear,” she said, with a little sadness; “but even when gentlemen don’t take to each other, it is a great pity when it acts upon their families. Some of our friends here even were not fond at first of Captain Percival, but for my darling Winnie’s sake – You must have seen her often at least; I wonder I never thought of asking you before. She was so beautiful, with such lovely hair, and the sweetest complexion. Was she looking well – and – and happy?” asked Aunt Agatha, growing anxious as she spoke, and looking into Nelly’s face.

It was rather hard upon Nelly, who was one of those true women, young as she was, who can see what other women mean when they put such questions, and hear the heart beat under the words. Nelly had heard a great deal of talk in her day, and knew things about Mrs. Percival that would have made Aunt Agatha’s hair stand on end with horror. But her heart understood the other heart, and could not have breathed a whisper that would wound it, for the world.

“I was such a little thing,” said Nelly; “and then I always had the little ones to look after – mamma was so delicate. I remember the people’s names more than themselves.”

“You have always been a very good girl, I am sure,” said Aunt Agatha, giving her young companion a sudden kiss, and with perhaps a faint instinctive sense of Nelly’s forbearance and womanful skill in avoiding a difficult subject; but she sighed once more as she did it, and wondered to herself whether nobody would ever speak to her freely and fully of her child. And silence ensued, for she had not the heart to ask more questions. Will, who had not found the conversation amusing, had gone in to find his mother, with a feeling that it was not quite safe to leave her alone, which had something to do with his frequent presence in the drawing room; so that the old lady and Nelly were left alone in the corner of the fragrant field. The girl went on with her work, but Aunt Agatha, who was seated on her camp-stool, with her back against the oak stump, let her knitting fall upon her knee, and her eyes wander into vacancy with a wistful look of abstraction that was not natural to them. Nelly, who did not know what to say, and yet would have given a great deal to be able to say something, watched her from under the shadow of her curls, and at last saw Miss Seton’s abstract eyes brighten up and wake into attention and life. Nelly looked round, and her impulse was to jump up in alarm when she saw it was her own mother who was approaching – her mother, whom Nelly had a kind of adoration for as a creature of divine helplessness, for whom everything had to be done, but in whose judgment she had an instinctive want of confidence. She jumped up and called to the children on the spur of this sudden impulse: “Oh! here is mamma, we must go in,” cried Nelly; and it gave her positive pain to see that Miss Seton’s attitude remained unchanged, and that she had no intention of being disturbed by Mrs. Askell’s approach.

“Oh how deliciously comfortable you are here,” cried Emma, throwing herself down on the grass. “I came out to have a little fresh air and see after those tiresome children. I am sure they have been teasing you all day long; Nelly is not half severe enough, and nurse spoils them; and after a day in the open air like this, they make my head like to split when they come home at night.”

“They have not been teasing me,” said Aunt Agatha; “they have been very good, and I have been sitting here for a long time talking to Nelly. I wanted her to tell me something about my dear child, Mary’s own sister – Mrs. Percival, you know.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Askell, making a troubled pause, – “and I hope to goodness you did not tell Miss Seton anything that was unpleasant,” she said sharply, turning to Nelly. “You must not mind anything she said,” the foolish little woman added; “she was only a child and she did not know. You should have asked me.”

“What could there be that was not pleasant?” cried Aunt Agatha. “If there is anything unpleasant that can be said about my Winnie, that is precisely what I ought to hear.”