Madonna Mary

“No legacies?” he said – “excuse me, Mr. Ochterlony – nothing about your beautiful collection? There ought to be some stipulation about that.”

“My nephew knows all my wishes,” Mr. Ochterlony said, briefly, “and I have no time now for details. Is it ready to be signed? Everything else of which I die possessed to my brother, Hugh Ochterlony’s eldest son. That is what I want. The property is his already, by his grandfather’s will. Everything of which I die possessed, to dispose of according as his direction and circumstances may permit.”

“But there are other friends – and servants,” pleaded Mr. Preston; “and then your wonderful collection – ”

“My nephew knows all my wishes,” said Mr. Ochterlony; and his weakness was so great that he sank back on his pillows. He took his own way in this, while poor Hugh hung about the room wistfully looking on. It was to Hugh’s great advantage, but he was not thinking of that. He was asking himself could he have done anything to stop the malady if he had noticed it in time? And he was thinking how to arrange the Ochterlony Museum. If it could only have been done in his lifetime, so that its founder could see. When the doctor and the attorney were both gone, Hugh sat down by his uncle’s bedside, and, half afraid whether he was doing right, began to talk of it. He was too young and too honest to pretend to disbelieve what Mr. Ochterlony himself and the doctor had assured him of. The room was dimly lighted, the lamp put away on a table in a corner with a shade over it, and the sick room “made comfortable,” and everything arranged for the night. And then the two had an hour of very affectionate, confidential, almost tender talk. Mr. Ochterlony was almost excited about the museum. It was not to be bestowed on his college, as Hugh at first thought, but to be established at Dalken, the pretty town of which everybody in the Fells was proud. And then the conversation glided off to more familiar subjects, and the old man who was dying gave a great deal of very sound advice to the young man who was about to begin to live.

“Islay will be all right,” said Mr. Ochterlony; “he will have what your father had, and you will always make him at home in Earlston. It is Will I am thinking about. I am not fond of Will. Don’t be too generous to him, or he will think it is his right. I know no harm of the boy, but I would not put all my affairs into his hands as I put them into yours.”

“It will not be my fault if I don’t justify your confidence, uncle,” said Hugh, with something swelling in his throat.

“If I had not known that, I would not have trusted you, Hugh,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “Take your mother’s advice – always be sure to take your mother’s advice. There are some of us that never understand women; but after all it stands to reason that the one-half of mankind should not separate itself from the other. We think we are the wisest; but I am not so sure – ”

Mr. Ochterlony stopped short and turned his eyes, which were rather languid, to the distant lamp, the one centre of light in the room. He looked at it for a long time in a dreamy way. “I might have had a woman taking care of me like the rest,” he said. “I might have had the feeling that there was somebody in the house; but you see I did not give my mind to it, Hugh. Your father left a widow, and that’s natural – I am leaving only a collection. But it’s better for you, my boy. If you should ever speak to Agatha Seton about it, you can tell her that– ”

Then there was a pause, which poor young Hugh, nervous, and excited, and inexperienced, did not know how to break, and Mr. Ochterlony continued to look at the lamp. It was very dim and shaded, but still a pale ray shone sideways between the curtains upon the old man who lay a-dying, and cast an enlarged shadow of Hugh’s head upon the wall. When Mr. Ochterlony turned round a little, his eye caught that, and a tender smile came over his face.

“It looks like your father,” he said to Hugh, who was startled, and did not know what he meant. “It is more like him than you are. He was a good fellow at the bottom – fidgety, but a very good fellow – as your mother will tell you. I am glad it is you who are the eldest, and not one of the others. They are fine boys, but I am glad it is you.”

“Oh, uncle,” said Hugh, with tears in his eyes, “you are awfully good to me. I don’t deserve it. Islay is a far better fellow than I am. If you would but get well again, and never mind who was the eldest – ”

Mr. Ochterlony smiled and shook his head. “I have lived my day,” he said, “and now it is your turn; and I hope you’ll make Earlston better than ever it was. Now go to bed, my boy; we’ve talked long enough. I think if I were quiet I could sleep.”

“And you’ll call me, uncle, if you want me? I shall be in the dressing-room,” said Hugh, whose heart was very full.

“There is no need,” said Mr. Ochterlony, smiling again. “But I suppose it pleases you. You’ll sleep as sound as a top wherever you are – that’s the privilege of your age; but John will be somewhere about, and nothing is going to happen before morning. Good night.”

But he called Hugh back before he reached the door. “You’ll be sure to remember about the Henri Deux?” he said, softly. That was all. And the young man went to the dressing-room, and John, who had just stolen in, lay down on a sofa in the shadow, and sleep and quiet took possession of the room. If Mr. Ochterlony slept, or if he still lay looking at the lamp, seeing his life flit past him like a shadow, giving a sigh to what might have been, and thinking with perhaps a little awakening thrill of expectation of what was so soon to be, nobody could tell. He was as silent as if he slept – almost as silent as if he had been dead.

But Aunt Agatha was not asleep. She was in her room all alone, praying for him, stopping by times to think how different it might have been. She might have been with him then, taking care of him, instead of being so far away; and when she thought of that, the tears stood in her eyes. But it was not her fault. She had nothing to upbraid herself with. She was well aware whose doing it was – poor man, and it was he who was the sufferer now; but she said her prayers for him all the same.

When a few days had passed, the event occurred of which there had never been any doubt. Francis Ochterlony died very peaceably and quietly, leaving not only all of which he died possessed, but his blessing and thanks to the boy who had stood in the place of a son to him. He took no unnecessary time about his dying, and yet he did not do anything hastily to shock people. It was known he was ill, and everybody had the satisfaction of sending to inquire for him, and testifying their respect before he died. Such a thing was indeed seen on one day as seven servants, all men on horseback, sent with messages of inquiry, which was a great gratification to Mrs. Gilsland, and the rest of the servants. “He went off like a lamb at the last,” they all said; and though he was not much like a lamb, there might have been employed a less appropriate image. He made a little sketch with his own hands as to how the Museum was to be arranged, and told Hugh what provision to make for the old servants; and gave him a great many advices, such as he never had taken himself; and was so pleasant and cheery about it, that they scarcely knew the moment when the soft twilight sank into absolute night. He died an old man, full of many an unexpressed philosophy, and yet, somehow, with the sentiment of a young one: like a tree ripe and full of fruit, yet with blossoms still lingering on the topmost branches, as you see on orange-trees – sage and experienced, and yet with something of the virginal and primal state. Perhaps it was not a light price to give for this crowning touch of delicacy and purity – the happiness (so to speak) of his own life and of Aunt Agatha’s. And yet the link between the old lovers, thus fancifully revived, was very sweet and real. And they had not been at all unhappy apart, on the whole, either of them. And it is something to preserve this quintessence of maidenhood and primal freshness to the end of a long life, and leave the visionary perfume of it among a community much given to marrying and giving in marriage. It was thus that Francis Ochterlony died.

Earlston, of course, was all shut up immediately, blinds drawn and shutters closed, and what was more unusual, true tears shed, and a true weight, so long as it lasted, upon the hearts of all the people about. The servants, perhaps, were not quite uninfluenced by the thought that all their legacies, &c., were left in the hands of their new master, who was little more than a boy. And the Cottage, too, was closed, and the inmates went about in a shadowed atmosphere, and were very sorry, and thought a little of Mr. Ochterlony – not all as Aunt Agatha did, who kept her room, and shed many tears; but still he was thought of in the house. It is true that Mary could not help remembering that now her Hugh was no longer a boy, dependent upon anybody’s pleasure, but the master of the house of his fathers – the house his own father was born in; and an important personage. She could not help thinking of this, nor, in spite of herself, feeling her heart swell, and asking herself if it was indeed her Hugh who had come to this promotion. And yet she was very sorry for Mr. Ochterlony’s death. He had been good to her children, always courteous and deferential to herself; and she was sorry for him as a woman is sorry for a man who has nobody belonging to him– sorrier far, in most cases, than the man is for himself. He was dead in his loneliness, and the thought of it brought a quiet moisture to Mary’s eyes; but Hugh was living, and it was he who was the master of all; and it was not in human nature that his mother’s grief should be bitter or profound.

“Hugh is a lucky boy,” said Mrs. Percival; “I think you are all lucky, Mary, you and your children. To come into Earlston with so little waiting, and have everything left in his own hands.”

“I don’t think he will be thinking of that,” said Mary. “He was fond of his uncle; I am sure he will feel his loss.”

“Oh, yes, no doubt; I ought not to have said anything so improper,” said Winnie, with that restrained smile and uncomfortable inference which comes so naturally to some people. She knew nothing and cared nothing about Francis Ochterlony; and she was impatient of what she called Aunt Agatha’s nonsense; and she could not but feel it at once unreasonable and monstrous that anything but the painful state of her own affairs should occupy people in the house she was living in. Yet the fact was that this event had to a certain extent eclipsed Winnie. The anxiety with which everybody looked for a message or letter about Mr. Ochterlony’s state blinded them a little to her worn looks and listless wretchedness. They did not neglect her, nor were they indifferent to her; for, indeed, it would be difficult to be indifferent to a figure which held so prominent a place in the foreground of everything; but still when they were in such a state of suspense about what was happening at Earlston, no doubt Winnie’s affairs were to a certain extent overlooked. It is natural for an old man to die: but it is not natural for a young woman – a woman in the bloom and fulness of life – one who has been, and ought still to be, a great beauty – to be driven by her wrongs out of all that makes life endurable. This was how Winnie reasoned; and she was jealous of the attention given to Mr. Ochterlony as he accomplished the natural act of dying. What was that in comparison with the terrible struggles of life?

But naturally it made a great difference when it was all over, and when Hugh, subdued and very serious, but still another man from the Hugh who the other day was but a boy, came to the Cottage “for a little change,” and to give his mother all the particulars. He came all tender in his natural grief, with eyes ready to glisten, and a voice that sometimes faltered; but, nevertheless, there was something about him which showed that it was he who was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston now.

CHAPTER XXXI

THIS was the kind of crisis in the family history at which Uncle Penrose was sure to make his appearance. He was the only man among them, he sometimes said – or, at least, the only man who knew anything about money; and he came into the midst of the Ochterlonys in their mourning, as large and important as he had been when Winnie was married, looking as if he had never taken his left hand out of his pocket all the time. He had not been asked to the funeral, and he marked his consciousness of that fact by making his appearance in buff waistcoats and apparel which altogether displayed light-heartedness if not levity – and which was very wounding to Aunt Agatha’s feelings. Time, somehow, did not seem to have touched him. If he was not so offensively and demonstratively a Man, in the sweet-scented feminine house, as he used to be, it was no reticence of his, but because the boys were men, or nearly so, and the character of the household changed. And Hugh was Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston; which, perhaps, was the fact that made the greatest difference of all.

He came the day after Hugh’s return, and in the evening there had been a very affecting scene in the Cottage. In faithful discharge of his promise, Hugh had carried the Henri Deux, carefully packed, as became its value and fragile character, to Aunt Agatha; and she had received it from him with a throbbing heart and many tears. “It was almost the last thing he said to me,” Hugh had said. “He put it all aside with his own hand, the day you admired it so much; and he told me over and over again, to be sure not to forget.” Aunt Agatha had been sitting with her hands clasped upon the arm of his chair, and her eyes fixed upon him, not to lose a word; but when he said this, she covered her face with those soft old hands, and was silent and did not even weep. It was the truest grief that was in her heart, and yet with that, there was an exquisite pang of delight, such as goes through and through a girl when first she perceives that she is loved, and sees her power! She was as a widow, and yet she was an innocent maiden, full of experience and inexperience, feeling the heaviness of the evening shadows, and yet still in the age of splendour in the grass and glory in the flower. The sense of that last tenderness went through her with a thrill of joy and grief beyond description. It gave him back to her for ever and ever, but not with that sober appropriation which might have seemed natural to her age. She could no more look them in the face while it was being told, than had he been a living lover and she a girl. It was a supreme conjunction and blending of the two extremes of life, a fusion of youth and of age.

“I never thought he noticed what I said,” she answered at last with a soft sob – and uncovered the eyes that were full of tears, and yet dazzled as with a sudden light; and she would let no one touch the precious legacy, but unpacked it herself, shedding tears that were bitter and yet sweet, over its many wrappings. Though he was a man, and vaguely buoyed up, without knowing it, by the strange new sense of his own importance, Hugh could have found it in his heart to shed tears, too, over the precious bits of porcelain, that had now acquired an interest so much more near and touching than anything connected with Henri Deux; and so could his mother. But there were two who looked on with dry eyes: the one was Winnie, who would have liked to break it all into bits, as she swept past it with her long dress, and could not put up with Aunt Agatha’s nonsense; the other was Will, who watched the exhibition curiously with close observation, wondering how it was that people were such fools, and feeling the shadow of his brother weigh upon him with a crushing weight. But these two malcontents were not in sympathy with each other, and never dreamt of making common cause.

And it was when the house was in this condition, that Uncle Penrose arrived. He arrived, as usual, just in time to make a fuss necessary about a late dinner, and to put Peggy out of temper, which was a fact that soon made itself felt through the house; and he began immediately to speak to Hugh about Earlston, and about “your late uncle,” without the smallest regard for Aunt Agatha’s feelings. “I know there was something between him and Miss Agatha once,” he said, with a kind of smile at her, “but of course that was all over long ago.” And this was said when poor Miss Seton, who felt that the bond had never before been so sweet and so close, was seated at the head of her own table, and had to bear it and make no sign.

“Probably there will be a great deal to be done on the estate,” Mr. Penrose said; “these studious men always let things go to ruin out of doors; but there’s a collection of curiosities or antiquities, or something. If that’s good, it will bring in money. When a man is known, such things sell.”

“But it is not to be sold,” said Hugh quickly. “I have settled all about that.”

“Not to be sold? – nonsense!” said Mr. Penrose; “you don’t mean to say you are a collector – at your age? No, no, my boy; they’re no good to him where he is now; he could not take them into his vault with him. Feelings are all very well, but you can’t be allowed to lose a lot of money for a prejudice. What kind of things are they – pictures and that sort? or – ”

“I have made all the necessary arrangements,” said Hugh with youthful dignity. “I want you to go with me to Dalken, mother, to see some rooms the mayor has offered for them – nice rooms belonging to the Town Hall. They could have ‘Ochterlony Museum’ put up over the doors, and do better than a separate building, besides saving the expense.”

Mr. Penrose gave a long whistle, which under any circumstances would have been very indecorous at a lady’s table. “So that is how it’s to be!” he said; “but we’ll talk that over first, with your permission, Mr. Ochterlony of Earlston. You are too young to know what you’re doing. I suppose the ladies are at the bottom of it; they never know the value of money. And yet we know what it costs to get it when it is wanted, Miss Agatha,” said the insolent man of money, who never would forget that Miss Seton herself had once been in difficulties. She looked at him with a kind of smile, as politeness ordained, but tears of pain stood in Aunt Agatha’s eyes. If ever she hated anybody in her gentle life, it was Mr. Penrose; and somehow he made himself hateful in her presence to everybody concerned.

“It costs more to get it than it is ever worth,” said Winnie, indignant, and moved for the first time, to make a diversion, and come to Aunt Agatha’s aid.

“Ah, I have no doubt you know all about it,” said Mr. Penrose, turning his arms upon her. “You should have taken my advice. If you had come to Liverpool, as I wanted you, and married some steady-going fellow with plenty of money, and gone at a more reasonable pace, you would not have changed so much at your age. Look at Mary, how well preserved she is: I don’t know what you can have been doing with yourself to look so changed.”

“I am sorry you think me a fright,” said Winnie, with an angry sparkle in her eye.

“You are not a fright,” said Uncle Penrose; “one can see that you’ve been a very handsome woman, but you are not what you were when I saw you last, Winnie. The fault of your family is that you are extravagant, – I am sure you did not get it from your mother’s side; – extravagant of your money and your hospitality, and your looks and everything. I am sure Mary has nothing to spare, and yet I’ve found people living here for weeks together. I can’t afford visitors like that – I have my family to consider, and people that have real claims upon me – no more than I could afford to set up a museum. If I had a lot of curiosities thrown on my hands, I should make them into money. It is not everybody that can appreciate pictures, but everybody understands five per cent. And then he might have done something worth while for his brothers: not that I approve of a man impoverishing himself for the sake of his friends, but still two thousand pounds isn’t much. And he might have done something for his mother, or looked after Will’s education. It’s family pride, I suppose; but I’d rather give my mother a house of her own than set up an Ochterlony Museum. Tastes differ, you know.”

“His mother agrees with him entirely in everything he is doing,” said Mary, with natural resentment. “I wish all mothers had sons as good as mine.”

“Hush,” said Hugh, who was crimson with indignation and anger: “I decline to discuss these matters with Uncle Penrose. Because he is your uncle, mother, he shall inquire into the estates as much as he likes; but I am the head of the house, and I am responsible only to God and to those who are dead – and, mother, to you,” said Hugh, with his eyes glistening and his face glowing.

Uncle Penrose gave another contemptuous prolonged whistle at this speech, but the others looked at the young man with admiration and love; even Winnie, whose heart could still be touched, regarded the young paladin with a kind of tender envy and admiration. She was too young to be his mother, but she did not feel herself young; and her heart yearned to have some one who would stand by her and defend her as such a youth could. A world of softer possibilities than anything she would permit herself to think of now, came into her mind, and she looked at him. If she too had but been the mother of children like her sister! but it appeared that Mary was to have the best of it, always and in every way.

As for Will, he looked at the eldest son with very different feelings. Hugh was not particularly clever, and his brother had long entertained a certain contempt for him. He thought what he would have done had he been the head of the house. He was disposed to sneer, like Mr. Penrose, at the Ochterlony Museum. Was it not a confession of a mean mind, an acknowledgment of weakness, to consent to send away all the lovely things that made Will’s vision of Earlston like a vision of heaven? If it had been Will he would not have thought of five per cent., but neither would he have thought of making a collection of them at Dalken, where the country bumpkins might come and stare. He would have kept them all to himself, and they would have made his life beautiful. And he scorned Hugh for dispossessing himself of them, and reducing the Earlston rooms into rooms of ordinary habitation. Had they but been his – had he but been the eldest, the head of the house – then the world and the family and Uncle Penrose would have seen very different things.

But yet Hugh had character enough to stand firm. He made his mother get her bonnet and go out with him after dinner; and everybody in the house looked after the two as they went away – the mother and her firstborn – he, with his young head towering above her, though Mary was tall, and she putting her arm within his so proudly – not without a tender elation in his new importance, a sense of his superior place and independent rank, which was strangely sweet. Winnie looked after them, envying her sister, and yet with an envy which was not bitter; and Will stood and looked fiercely on this brother who, by no virtue of his own, had been born before him. As for Aunt Agatha, who was fond of them all, she went to her own room to heal her wounds; and Mr. Penrose, who was fond of none of them, went up to the Hall to talk things over with Sir Edward, whom he had once talked over to such purpose. And the only two who could stray down to the soft-flowing Kirtell, and listen to the melody of the woods and waters, and talk in concert of what they had wished and planned, were Mary and Hugh.

“The great thing to be settled is about Will,” the head of the house was saying. “You shall see, mother, when he is in the world and knows better, all that will blow away. His two thousand pounds is not much, as Uncle Penrose says; but it was all my father had: and when he wants it, and when Islay wants it, there can always be something added. It is my business to see to that.”

“It was all your father had,” said Mary, “and all your uncle intended; and I see no reason why you should add to it, Hugh. There will be a little more when I am gone; and in the meantime, if we only knew what Will would like to do – ”

“Why, they’ll make him a fellow of his college,” said Hugh. “He’ll go in for all sorts of honours. He’s awfully clever, mother; there’s no fear of Will. The best thing I can see is to send him to read with somebody – somebody with no end of a reputation, that he would have a sort of an awe for – and then the University. It would be no use doing it if he was just like other people; but there’s everything to be made of Will.”

“I hope so,” said Mary, with a little sigh. And then she added, “So I shall be left quite alone?”

“No; you are coming to Earlston with me,” said Hugh; “that is quite understood. There will be a great deal to do; and I don’t think things are quite comfortable at the Cottage, with Mrs. Percival here.”

“Poor Winnie!” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “I don’t think I ought to leave Aunt Agatha – at least, while she is so much in the dark about my sister. And then you told me you had promised to marry, Hugh?”

“Yes,” said the young man; and straightway the colour came to his cheek, and dimples to the corners of his mouth; “but she is too y – I mean, there is plenty of time to think of that.”

“She is too young?” said Mary, startled. “Do I know her, I wonder? I did not imagine you had settled on the person as well as the fact. Well; and then, you know, I should have to come back again. I will come to visit you at Earlston: but I must keep my head-quarters here.”

“I don’t see why you should have to come back again,” said Hugh, somewhat affronted. “Earlston is big enough, and you would be sure to be fond of her. No, I don’t know that the person is settled upon. Perhaps she wouldn’t have me; perhaps – But, anyhow, you are coming to Earlston, mother dear. And, after a while, we could have some visitor perhaps – your friends: you know I am very fond of your friends, mamma.”