Madonna Mary

And then Mary sat down and cried. It went to her heart and dispersed all her heaviness and stupor, and opened the great sealed fountains. And Mr. Churchill once more felt the climbing sorrow in his throat, and said in broken words, “Don’t cry – God will take care of you. He knows why He has done it, though we don’t; and He has given his own word to be a father to the boys.”

That was all the poor priest could find it in his heart to say – but it was better than a sermon – and he went away with the extract from the register still in his pocket-book and tears in his eyes; while for her part Mary finished her packing with a heart relieved by her tears. Ah, how cheery and hearty he had been, how kind to the down-hearted man; how different the stagnant quietness now from that cheerful commotion he used to make, and all the restless life about him; and then his favourite words seemed to come up about and surround her, flitting in the air with a sensation between acute torture and a dull happiness. His bonnie Mary! It was not any vanity on Mary’s part that made her think above all of that name. Thus she did her packing and got ready for her voyage, and took the good people’s commissions without knowing very well to what it was that she pledged herself; and it was the same mail – “the mail after next” – by which she had written to Aunt Agatha that Hugh was to be sent home.

They would all have come to see her off if they could have ventured to do it that last morning; but the men prevented it, who are good for something now and then in such cases. As it was, however, Mrs. Kirkman and Mrs. Hesketh and Emma Askell were there, and poor sick Mrs. Churchill, who had stolen from her bed in her dressing-gown to kiss Mary for the last time.

“Oh, my dear, if it had been me – oh, if it had only been me! – and you would all have been so good to the poor children,” sobbed the poor clergyman’s ailing wife. Yet it was not her, but the strong, brave, cheery Major, the prop and pillar of a house. As for Mrs. Kirkman, there never was a better proof that she was, as we have so often said, in spite of her talk, a good woman, than the fact that she could only cry helplessly over Mary, and had not a word to say. She had thought and prayed that God would not leave her friend alone, but she had not meant Him to go so far as this; and her heart ached and fluttered at the terrible notion that perhaps she had something to do with the striking of this blow. Mrs. Hesketh for her part packed every sort of dainties for the children in a basket, and strapped on a bundle of portable toys to amuse them on the journey, to one of Mrs. Ochterlony’s boxes. “You will be glad of them before you get there,” said the experienced woman, who had once made the journey with half-a-dozen, as she said, and knew what it was. And then one or two of the men were walking about outside in an accidental sort of way, to have a last look of Mary. It was considered a very great thing among them all when the doctor, who hated to see people in trouble, and disapproved of crying on principle, made up his mind to go in and shake hands with Mrs. Ochterlony; but it was not that he went for, but to look at the baby, and give Mary a little case “with some sal volatile and so forth, and the quantities marked,” he said, “not that you are one to want sal volatile. The little shaver there will be all right as soon as you get to England. Good-bye. Take care of yourself.” And he wrung her hand and bolted out again like a flash of lightning. He said afterwards that the only sensible thing he knew of his sister, was that she did not go; and that the sight of all those women crying was enough to give a man a sunstroke, not to speak of the servants and the soldiers’ wives who were howling at the back of the house.

Oh, what a change it was in so short a time, to go out of the Indian home, which had been a true home, with Mr. Churchill to take care of her and her poor babies, and set her face to the cold far-away world of her youth which she had forgotten, and which everybody called home by a kind of mockery; and where was Hugh, who had always taken such care of his own? Mary did not cry as people call crying, but now and then, two great big hot tears rolled out of the bitter fountain that was full to overflowing, and fell scalding on her hands, and gave her a momentary sense of physical relief. Almost all the ladies of the station were ill after it all the day; but Mary could not afford to be ill; and Mr. Churchill was very kind, and went with her through all the first part of her journey over the cross roads, until she had come into the trunk road, where there was no more difficulty. He was very, very kind, and she was very grateful; but yet perhaps when you have had some one of your very own to do everything for you, who was not kind but did it by nature, it is better to take to doing it yourself after, than have even the best of friends to do it for kindness’ sake. This was what Mary felt when the good man had gone sadly back to his sick wife and his uncertain lot. It was a kind of relief to her to be all alone, entirely alone with her children, for the ayah, to be sure, did not count – and to have everything to do; and this was how they came down mournfully to the sea-board, and to the big town which filled Hugh and Islay with childish excitement, and Mary bade an everlasting farewell to her life, to all that she had actually known as life – and got to sea, to go, as they said, home.

It would be quite useless for our purpose to go over the details of the voyage, which was like other voyages, bad and good by turns. When she was at sea, Mrs. Ochterlony had a little leisure, and felt ill and weak and overworn, and was the better for it after. It took her mind for the moment off that unmeasured contemplation of her sorrow which is the soul of grief, and her spirit got a little strength in the interval of repose. She had been twelve years in India, and from eighteen to thirty is a wonderful leap in a life. She did not know how she was to find the things and the people of whom she had a girl’s innocent recollection; nor how they, who had not changed, would appear to her changed eyes. Her own people were very kind, like everybody. Mary found a letter at Gibraltar from her brother-in-law, Francis, full of sympathy and friendly offers. He asked her to come to Earlston with her boys to see if they could not get on together. “Perhaps it might not do, but it would be worth a trial,” Mr. Ochterlony sensibly said; and there was even a chance that Aunt Agatha, who was to have met with Hugh at Southampton, would come to meet her widowed niece, who might be supposed to stand still more in need of her good offices. Though indeed this was rather an addition to Mary’s cares; for she thought the moment of landing would be bitter enough of itself, without the pain of meeting with some one who belonged to her, and yet did not belong to her, and who had doubtless grown as much out of the Aunt Agatha of old as she had grown out of the little Mary. When Mrs. Ochterlony left the North-country, Aunt Agatha had been a middle-aged maiden lady, still pretty, though a little faded, with light hair growing grey, which makes a woman’s countenance, already on the decline, more faded still, and does not bring out the tints as dark hair in the same powdery condition sometimes does. And at that time she was still occupied by a thought of possibilities which people who knew Agatha Seton from the time she was sixteen, had decided at that early period to be impossible. No doubt twelve years had changed this – and it must have made a still greater change upon the little sister whom Mary had known only at six years old, and who was now eighteen, the age she had herself been when she married; a grown-up young woman, and of a character more decided than Mary’s had ever been.

A little stir of reviving life awoke in her and moved her, when the weary journey was over, and the steam-boat at length had reached Southampton, to go up to the deck and look from beneath the heavy pent-house of her widow’s veil at the strangers who were coming – to see, as she said to herself, with a throb at her heart, if there was anybody she knew. Aunt Agatha was not rich, and it was a long journey, and perhaps she had not come. Mary stood on the crowded deck, a little apart, with Hugh and Islay on each side of her, and the baby in his nurse’s arms – a group such as is often seen on these decks – all clad with loss and mourning, coming “home” to a country in which perhaps they have no longer any home. Nobody came to claim Mrs. Ochterlony as she stood among her little children. She thought she would have been glad of that, but when it came to the moment – when she saw the cold unknown shore and the strange country, and not a Christian soul to say welcome, poor Mary’s heart sank. She sat down, for her strength was failing her, and drew Hugh and Islay close to her, to keep her from breaking down altogether. And it was just at that moment that the brightest of young faces peered down under her veil and looked doubtfully, anxiously at her, and called out impatiently, “Aunt Agatha!” to some one at the other side, without speaking to Mary. Mrs. Ochterlony did not hear this new-comer’s equally impatient demand: “Is it Mary? Are those the children?” for she had dropped her sick head upon a soft old breast, and had an old fresh sweet faded face bent down upon her, lovely with love and age, and a pure heart. “Cry, my dear love, cry, it will do you good,” was all that Aunt Agatha said. And she cried, too, with good will, and yet did not know whether it was for sorrow or joy. This was how Mary, coming back to a fashion of existence which she knew not, was taken home.

CHAPTER X

AUNT AGATHA had grown into a sweet old lady: not so old, perhaps, but that she might have made up still into that elderly aspirant after youth, for whose special use the name “old maid” must have been invented. And yet there is a sweetness in the name, and it was not inapplicable to the fair old woman, who received Mary Ochterlony into her kind arms. There was a sort of tender misty consciousness upon her age, just as there is a tender unconsciousness in youth, of so many things that cannot but come to the knowledge of people who have eaten of the tree in the middle of the garden. She was surrounded by the unknown as was seemly to such a maiden soul. And yet she was old, and gleams of experience, and dim knowledge at second hand, had come to her from those misty tracts. Though she had not, and never could have, half the vigour or force in her which Mary had even in her subdued and broken state, still she had strength of affection and goodness enough to take the management of all affairs into her hands for the moment, and to set herself at the head of the little party. She took Mary and the children from the ship, and brought them to the inn at which she had stayed the night before; and, what was a still greater achievement, she repressed Winnie, and kept her in a semi-subordinate and silent state – which was an effort which taxed all Aunt Agatha’s powers. Though it may seem strange to say it, Mary and her young sister did not, as people say, take to each other at that first meeting. It was twelve years since they had met, and the eighteen-year-old young woman, accustomed to be a sovereign among her own people, and have all her whims attended to, did not, somehow, commend herself to Mary, who was broken, and joyless, and feeble, and little capable of glitter and motion. Aunt Agatha took the traveller to a cool room, where comparative quiet was to be had, and took off her heavy bonnet and cloak, and made her lie down, and came and sat by her. The children were in the next room, where the sound of their voices could reach their mother to keep her heart; and then Aunt Agatha took Mary’s hand in both of hers, and said, “Tell me about it, my dear love.” It was a way she had of speaking, but yet such words are sweet; especially to a forlorn creature who has supposed that there is nobody left in the world to address her so. And then Mary told her sad story with all the details that women love, and cried till the fountain of tears was for the time exhausted, and grief itself by its very vehemence had got calm; which was, as Aunt Agatha knew by instinct, the best way to receive a poor woman who was a widow, and had just set her solitary feet for the first time upon the shores which she left as a bride.

And so they rested and slept that first night on English soil. There are moments when sorrow feels sacramental, and as if it never could be disturbed again by the pettier emotions of life. Mrs. Ochterlony had gone to sleep in this calm, and it was with something of the same feeling that she awoke. As if life, as she thought, being over, its cares were in some sense over too, and that now nothing could move her further; unless, indeed, it might be any harm to the children, which, thank God, there was no appearance of. In this state of mind she rose up and said her prayers, mingling them with some of those great tears which gather one by one as the heart fills, and which seem to give a certain physical relief when they brim over; and then she went to join her aunt and sister at breakfast, where they had not expected to see her. “My love, I would have brought you your tea,” said Aunt Agatha, with a certain reproach; and when Mary smiled and said there was no need, even Winnie’s heart was touched, – wilful Winnie in her black muslin gown, who was a little piqued to feel herself in the company of one more interesting than even she was, and hated herself for it, and yet could not help feeling as if Mary had come in like the prodigal, to be feasted and tended, while they never even killed a kid for her who had always been at home.

Winnie was eighteen, and she was not like her sister. She was tall, but not like Mary’s tallness – a long slight slip of a girl, still full of corners. She had corners at her elbows, and almost at her shoulders, and a great many corners in her mind. She was not so much a pretty girl as a girl who would, or might be, a beautiful woman. Her eyebrows were arched, and so were her delicate nostrils, and her upper lip – all curved and moveable, and ready to quiver and speak when it was needful. When you saw her face in profile, that outline seemed to cut itself out, as in some warm marble against the background. It was not the beauté du diable, the bewildering charm of youth, and freshness, and smiles, and rose tints. She had something of all this, and to boot she had features —beaux traits. But as for this part of her power, Winnie, to do her justice, thought nothing of it; perhaps, to have understood that people minded what she said, and noticed what she did because she was very handsome, would have conveyed something like an insult and affront to the young lady. She did not care much, nor mind much at the present moment, whether she was pretty or not. She had no rivals, and beauty was a weapon the importance of which had not occurred to her. But she did care a good deal for being Winifred Seton, and as such, mistress of all she surveyed; and though she could have beaten herself for it, it galled her involuntarily to find herself thus all at once in the presence of a person whom Providence seemed to have set, somehow, in a higher position, and who was more interesting than herself. It was a wicked thought, and she did it battle. If it had been left to her, how she could have petted and cared for Mary, how she would have borne her triumphantly over all the fatigues of the journey, and thought nothing to take the tickets, and mind the luggage, and struggle with the railway porters for Mary’s sake! But to have Mary come in and absorb Aunt Agatha’s and everybody’s first look, their first appeal and principal regard, was trying to Winnie; and she had never learned yet to banish altogether from her eyes what she thought.

“It does not matter, aunt,” said Mary; “I cannot make a recluse of myself – I must go among strangers – and it is well to be able to practise a little with Winnie and you.”

“You must not mind Winnie and me, my darling,” said Aunt Agatha, who had a way of missing the arrow, as it were, and catching some of the feathers of it as it flew past.

“What do you mean about going among strangers?” said the keener Winnie. “I hope you don’t think we are strangers; and there is no need for you to go into society that I can see – not now at least; or at all events not unless you like,” she continued with a suspicion of sharpness in her tone, not displeased, perhaps, on the whole that Mary was turning out delusive, and was thinking already of society – for which notwithstanding she scorned her sister, as was natural to a young woman at the experienced age of eighteen.

“Society is not what I was thinking of,” said Mary, who in her turn did not like her young sister’s criticism; and she took her seat and her cup of tea with an uncomfortable sense of opposition. She had thought that she could not be annoyed any more by petty matters, and was incapable of feeling the little cares and complications of life, and yet it was astonishing how Winnie’s little, sharp, half-sarcastic tone brought back the faculty of being annoyed.

“The little we have at Kirtell will be a comfort to you, my love,” said the soothing voice of Aunt Agatha; “all old friends. The vicar you know, Mary, and the doctor, and poor Sir Edward. There are some new people, but I do not make much account of them; and our little visiting would harm nobody,” the old lady said, though with a slight tone of apology, not quite satisfied in herself that the widow should be even able to think of society so soon.

Upon which a little pucker of vexation came to Mary’s brow. As if she cared or could care for their little visiting, and the vicar, and the doctor, and Sir Edward! she to whom going among strangers meant something so real and so hard to bear.

“Dear Aunt Agatha,” she said, “I am afraid you will not be pleased; but I have not been looking forward to anything so pleasant as going to Kirtell. The first thing I have to think of is the boys and their interests. And Francis Ochterlony has asked us to go to Earlston.” These words came all confused from Mary’s lips. She broke down, seeing what was coming; for this was something that she never had calculated on, or thought of having to bear.

A dead pause ensued; Aunt Agatha started and flushed all over, and gave an agitated exclamation, and then a sudden blank came upon her sweet old face. Mary did not look at her, but she saw without looking how her aunt stiffened into resentment, and offence, and mortification. She changed in an instant, as if Mrs. Ochterlony’s confused statement had been a spell, and drew herself up and sat motionless, a picture of surprised affection and wounded pride. Poor Mary saw it, and was grieved to the heart, and yet could not but resent such a want of understanding of her position and sympathy for herself. She lifted her cup to her lips with a trembling hand, and her tea did not refresh her. And it was the only near relative she had in the world, the tenderest-hearted creature in existence, a woman who could be cruel to nobody, who thus shut up her heart against her. Thus the three women sat together round their breakfast-table, and helped each other, and said nothing for one stern moment, which was a cruel moment for one of them at least.

“Earlston!” said Aunt Agatha at last, with a quiver in her voice. “Indeed it never occurred to me – I had not supposed that Francis Ochterlony had been so much to – But never mind; if that is what you think best for yourself, Mary – ”

“There is nothing best for myself,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with the sharpness of despair. “I think it is my duty – and – and Hugh, I know, would have thought so. Our boy is his uncle’s heir. They are the – the only Ochterlonys left now. It is what I must – what I ought to do.”

And then there was another pause. Aunt Agatha for her part would have liked to cry, but then she had her side of the family to maintain, and though every pulse in her was beating with disappointment and mortified affection, she was not going to show that. “You must know best,” she said, taking up her little air of dignity; “I am sure you must know best; I would never try to force my way of thinking on you, Mary. No doubt you have been more in the world than I have; but I did think when a woman was in trouble that to go among her own friends – ”

“Yes,” said Mary, who was overwhelmed, and did not feel able to bear it, “but her friends might understand her and have a little pity for her, aunt, when she had hard things to do that wrung her heart – ”

“My dear,” said Aunt Agatha, with, on her side, the bitterness of unappreciated exertion, “if you will think how far I have come, and what an unusual journey I have made, I think you will perceive that to accuse me of want of pity – ”

“Don’t worry her, Aunt Agatha,” said Winnie, “she is not accusing you of want of pity. I think it a very strange sort of thing, myself; but let Mary have justice, that was not what she meant.”

“I should like to know what she did mean,” said Aunt Agatha, who was trembling with vexation, and with those tears which she wanted so much to shed: and then two or three of them dropped on the broad-brimmed cambric cuff which she was wearing solely on Mary’s account. For, to be sure, Major Ochterlony was not to say a relation of hers that she should have worn such deep mourning for him. “I am sure I don’t want to interfere, if she prefers Francis Ochterlony to her own friends,” she added, with tremulous haste. She was the very same Aunt Agatha who had taken Mary to her arms the day before, and sat by her bed, listening to all the sad story of her widowhood. She had wept for Hugh, and she would have shared her cottage and her garden and all she had with Mary, with goodwill and bounty, eagerly – but Francis Ochterlony was a different matter; and it was not in human nature to bear the preference of a husband’s brother to “her own friends.” “They may be the last Ochterlonys,” said Aunt Agatha, “but I never understood that a woman was to give up her own family entirely; and your sister was born a Seton like you and me, Winnie; – I don’t understand it, for my part.”

Aunt Agatha broke down when she had said this, and cried more bitterly, more effusively, so long as it lasted, than she had cried last night over Hugh Ochterlony’s sudden ending: and Mary could not but feel that; and as for Winnie, she sat silent, and if she did not make things worse, at least she made no effort to make them better. On the whole, it was not much wonder. They had made great changes in the cottage for Mary’s sake. Aunt Agatha had given up her parlour, her own pretty room that she loved, for a nursery, and they had made up their minds that the best chamber was to be Mary’s, with a sort of sense that the fresh chintz and the pictures on the walls – it was the only bed-room that had any pictures – would make up to her if anything could. And now to find all the time that it was Francis Ochterlony, and not her own friends, that she was going to! Winnie sat quite still, with her fine profile cut out sternly against the dark green wall, looking immovable and unfeeling, as only a profile can under such circumstances. This was what came of Mary’s placid morning, and the dear union of family support and love into which she thought she had come. It was harder upon Mrs. Ochterlony than if Aunt Agatha had not come to meet her. She had to sit blank and silent like a criminal, and see the old lady cry and the young lady lift up the stern delicacy of that profile against her. They were disappointed in Mary; and not only were they disappointed, but mortified – wounded in their best feelings and embarrassed in secondary matters as well; for naturally Aunt Agatha had told everybody that she was going to bring her niece, Mrs. Ochterlony, and the poor dear children home.

Thus it will be seen that the first breakfast in England was a very unsatisfactory meal for Mary. She took refuge with her children when it was over, and shut up, as she had been forced to do in other days, another door in her heart; and Aunt Agatha and Winnie, on the other hand, withdrew to their apartment and talked it over, and kindled each other’s indignation. “If you knew the kind of man he was, Winnie!” Aunt Agatha said, with a severity which was not entirely on Mary’s account; “not the sort of man I would trust those poor dear children with. I don’t believe he has any religious principles. Dear, dear, to think how Mary should have changed! I never could have thought she would have preferred Francis Ochterlony, and turned against her own friends.”

“I don’t know anything about Francis Ochterlony,” said Winnie, “but I know what a lot of bother we have had at home making all those changes; and your parlour that you had given up, Aunt Agatha – I must say when I think of that – ”

“That is nothing, my love,” said Aunt Agatha; “I was not thinking of what I have done, I hope – as if the sacrifice was anything.” But nevertheless the tears came into her eyes at the thought. It is hard when one has made a sacrifice with a liberal heart, to have it thrown back, and to feel that it is useless. This is hard, and Aunt Agatha was only human. If she had been alone, probably after the first moment of annoyance she would have gone to Mary, and the two would have cried together, and after little Hugh’s prospects had been discussed, Miss Seton would have consented that it was best for her niece to go to Earlston; but then Winnie was there to talk it over and keep up Aunt Agatha’s indignation. And Mary was wounded, and had retired and shut herself up among her children. And it was thus that the most trifling and uncalled-for of cares came, with little pricks of vexation and disappointment, to disturb at its very outset the new chapter of life which Mrs. Ochterlony had imagined herself to be entering upon in such a calm of tranquillising grief.

They were to go to London that day, and to continue their journey to the North by the night train: but it was no longer a journey in which any of the party could take any pleasure. As for Mary, in the great revulsion of her disappointment, it seemed to her as if there was no comfort for her anywhere. She had to go to Earlston to accept a home from Francis Ochterlony, whom she had never “taken to,” even in her young days. And it had occurred to her that her aunt and sister would understand why, and would be sorry for her, and console her under this painful effort. When, on the contrary, they proved to be affronted and indignant, Mary’s heart shut close, and retreated within itself. She could take her children into her arms, and press them against her heart, as if that would do it some good; but she could not talk to the little things, nor consult them, nor share anything with them except such smiles as were practicable. To a woman who has been used to talk all her concerns over with some one, it is terrible to feel her yearnings for counsel and sympathy turned back upon her own soul, and to be struck dumb, and feel that no ear is open to her, and that in all the world there is no one living to whom her affairs are more than the affairs of a stranger. Some poor women there are who must have fellowship somehow, and who will be content with pity if sympathy is not to be had. But Mary was not of this kind of women. She shut her doors. She went in, into herself in the silence and solitude, and felt her instinctive yearning to be helped and understood come pouring back upon her like a bitter flood. And then she looked at her little boys in their play, who had need of all from her, and could give her back but their childish fondness, and no help, or stay, or counsel. It is hard upon a woman, but yet it is a thing which every woman must confront and make up her mind to, whom God places in such circumstances. I do not know if it is easier work for a man in the same position. Mary had felt the prop of expected sympathy and encouragement and affection rudely driven from under her, and when she came in among her innocent helpless children she faced her lot, and did not deceive herself any more. To judge for herself, and do the best that in her lay, and take all the responsibilities upon her own head, whatever might follow; to know that nobody now in all the world was for her, or stood by her, except in a very secondary way, after his or her concerns and intentions and feelings had been carefully provided for in the first place. This was how her position appeared to her. And, indeed, such was her position, without any exaggeration. It was very kind of Francis Ochterlony to be willing to take her in, and very kind of Aunt Agatha to have made preparations for her; and kindness is sweet, and yet it is bitter, and hard, and cold, and killing to meet with. It made Mary sick to her heart, and filled her with a longing to take up her babes and rush away into some solitary corner, where nobody would ever see her again or hear of her. I do not say that she was right, or that it was a proper state of mind to be in. And Mary was too right-minded a woman to indulge in it long; but that was the feeling that momentarily took possession of her as she put the doors to in her heart, and realized that she really was alone there, and that her concerns were hers alone, and belonged to nobody else in the world.

And, on the other hand, it was very natural for Aunt Agatha and Winnie. They knew the exertions they had made, and the flutter of generous excitement in which they had been, and their readiness to give up their best for the solace of the widow. And naturally the feeling that all their sacrifices were unnecessary and their preparations made in vain, turned the honey into gall for the moment. It was not their part to take Mary’s duty into consideration, in the first place; and they did not know beforehand of Francis Ochterlony’s letter, nor the poor Major’s confidence that his brother would be a friend to his widow. And then Aunt Agatha’s parlour, which was all metamorphosed, and the changes that had been made through the whole house! The result was, that Aunt Agatha, offended, did not so much as offer to her niece the little breathing-time Mary had hoped for. When they got to London, she re-opened the subject, but it was in an unanswerable way.

“I suppose your brother-in-law expects you?” she said. “I think it will be better to wait till to-morrow before you start, that he may send the carriage to the station for you. I don’t ask you to come to me for the night, for it would be a pity to derange the children for so short a time.”

“Very well, aunt,” said Mary, sadly. And she wrote to Mr. Ochterlony, and slept that night in town – her strength almost failing her at the thought that, in her feebleness and excitement, she had to throw herself immediately on Francis Ochterlony’s tender mercies. She even paused for a moment to think, might she not really do as her heart suggested – find out some corner of refuge for herself with which nobody could intermeddle, and keep apart from them all? But Mary had come “home to her friends,” as everybody said at the station; and she had a woman’s prejudices, and it seemed unnatural to her to begin, without any interposition of the people belonging to her, that strange and solitary life of independence or self-dependence which was what she must decide upon some time. And then there was always Mr. Ochterlony’s letter, which was so kind. Thus it was fixed by a few words, and could not be changed. Aunt Agatha had a terrible compunction afterwards, and could not get Mary’s look out of her head, as she owned to Winnie, and would have got up out of her bed in the middle of the night, and gone to Mary and begged her to come to the cottage first, if it had not been that Winnie might have woke up, and that she would have to cross a passage to Mary’s room; and in an hotel where “gentlemen” were continually about, and who could tell whom she might meet? So they all slept, or pretended to sleep, and said nothing about it; and the next day set off with no further explanations, on their way “home.”

CHAPTER XI

EARLSTON is a house which lies in a little green valley among the grey folds of the Shap Fells. It is not an inviting country, though the people love it as people do love everything that belongs to them; and it has a very different aspect from the wooded dell a little farther north, where strays the romantic little Kirtell, and where Aunt Agatha’s cottage smiled upon a tufted slope, with the music of the cheery river in its ears day and night. The rivers about Earlston were shallow, and ran dry in summer, though it was not because of any want of rain; and the greyness of the hills made a kind of mist in the air to unaccustomed eyes. Everybody, who has ever gone to the north that way, knows the deep cuttings about Shap, where the railway plunges through between two humid living limestone walls, where the cottages, and the fences, and the farm-houses all lead up in level tones of grey to the vast greyness of the piebald hills, and where the line of pale sky above is grey too in most cases. It was at one of the little stations in this monotonous district that Mrs. Ochterlony and her children and her ayah were deposited – Aunt Agatha, with an aspect of sternness, but a heart that smote her, and eyes that kept filling with tears she was too proud to shed, looking on the while. Winnie looked on too without the compunction, feeling very affronted and angry. They were going further on, and the thought of home was overcast to both these ladies by the fact that everybody would ask for Mary, and that the excitement of the past few weeks would collapse in the dreariest and suddenest way when they were seen to return alone. As for Mary, she looked grey like the landscape, under her heavy veil – grey, silent, in a kind of dull despair, persuading herself that the best thing of all was to say nothing about it, and shut only more closely the doors of that heart where nobody now had any desire to come in. She lifted her little boys out, and did not care even to look if the carriage was waiting for her – and then she came to the window to bid her aunt and sister good-bye. She was so disappointed and sick-hearted, and felt for the moment that the small amount of affection and comprehension which they were capable of giving her was so little worth the trouble of seeking for, that Mary did not even ask to be written to. She put up her pale face, and said good-bye in a dreary unexpectant tone that doubled the compunction in Aunt Agatha’s bosom. “Oh, Mary, if you had but been coming with us!” cried that inconsistent woman, on the spur of the moment. “It is too late to speak of it now,” said Mary, and kissed her and turned away; and the heartless train dashed off, and carried off Aunt Agatha with that picture in her eyes of the forlorn little group on the platform of the railway station – the two little boys clinging close to their mother, and she standing alone among strangers, with the widow’s veil hanging over her colourless face. “Can you see the carriage, Winnie? – look out and tell me if you can see it,” said Aunt Agatha. But the engine that carried them on was too quick for Winnie, and had already swept out of sight. And they pursued their journey, feeling guilty and wretched, as indeed, to a certain extent, they deserved to feel. A two months’ widow, with a baby and two helpless little boys – and at the best it could only be a servant who had come to meet her, and she would have everything to do for herself, and to face her brother-in-law without any support or helper. When Aunt Agatha thought of this, she sank back in her corner and sobbed. To think that she should have been the one to take offence and be affronted at Mary’s first word, and desert her thus: when she might have taken her home and comforted her, and then, if it must have ended so, conveyed her to Earlston: Aunt Agatha cried, and deserved to cry, and even Winnie felt a twinge at her heart; and they got rather angry with each other before they reached home, and felt disposed to accuse each other, and trembled both of them before the idea of meeting Peggy, Miss Seton’s domestic tyrant, who would rush to the door with her heart in her mouth to receive “our Miss Mary and the puir dear fatherless bairns.” Mary might be silent about it, and never complain of unkindness; but it was not to be expected that Peggy would have the same scruples; and these two guilty and miserable travellers trembled at the thought of her as they made their wretched way home.

When the train had disappeared, Mary tried to take a kind of cold comfort to herself. She stood all alone, a stranger, with the few rustic passengers and rustic railway officials staring at her as if she had dropped from the skies, and no apparent sign anywhere that her coming had been looked for, or that there was any resting-place for her in this grey country. And she said to herself that it was natural, and must always be so henceforth, and that it was best at once to accustom herself to her lot. The carriage had not come, nor any message from Earlston to say she was expected, and all that she could do was to go into the rude little waiting-room, and wait there with the tired children till some conveyance could be got to take her to her brother-in-law’s house. Her thoughts would not be pleasant to put down on paper, could it be done; and yet they were not so painful as they had been the day before, when Aunt Agatha failed her, or seemed to fail. Now that disappointed craving for help and love and fellowship was over for the moment, and she had nothing but her own duty and Francis Ochterlony to encounter, who was not a man to give any occasion for vain hopes. Mary did not expect fellowship or love from her brother-in-law. If he was kind and tolerant of the children, and moderately considerate to herself, it was all she looked for from him. Perhaps, though he had invited her, he had not been prepared to have her thrown on his hands so soon; and it might be that the domestic arrangements of Earlston were not such as to admit of the unlooked-for invasion of a lady and a nursery on such very short notice. But the most prominent feeling in Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind was weariness, and that longing to escape anywhere, which is the most universal of all sentiments when the spirit is worn out and sick to death. Oh, that she had wings like a dove! – though Mary had nowhere to flee to, nobody to seek consolation from; and instead of having a home anywhere on earth awaiting her, was herself the home, the only shelter they understood, of the little pale fatherless children who clustered round her. If she could but have taken possession of one of those small cottages, grey and homely as they looked, and put the little ones to bed in it, and drawn a wooden chair to the fire, and been where she had a right to be! It was July, but the weather was cold at Shap, and Mary had that instinct common to wounded creatures of creeping to the fire, as if there was a kind of comfort in its warmth. She could have borne her burden bravely, or at least she thought so, if this had been what awaited her. But it was Earlston and Francis Ochterlony that awaited her – a stranger and a stranger’s house. All these thoughts, and many more, were passing through her mind, as she sat in the little waiting-room with her baby in her arms, and her two elder boys pressing close to her. The children clung and appealed to her, and the helpless Hindoo woman crouched at her mistress’s side; but as for Mary, there was nobody to give her any support or countenance. It was a hard opening to the stern way which had henceforward to be trodden alone.

Francis Ochterlony, however, though he had a certain superb indifference to the going-out and coming-in of trains, and had forgotten the precise hour, was not a wretch nor a brute, and had not forgotten his visitors. While Mary sat and waited, and while the master of the little station made slow but persevering search after some possible means of conveyance for her, a heavy rumbling of wheels became audible, and the carriage from Earlston made its tardy appearance. It was an old-fashioned vehicle, drawn by two horses, which betrayed their ordinary avocations much in the same way as the coachman did, who, though dressed, as they were, for the occasion, carried a breath of the fields about him, which was more convincing than any conventionalism of garments. But such as it was, the Earlston carriage was not without consideration in the country-side. All the people about turned out in a leisurely way to lift the children into it, and shoulder the boxes into such corners as could be found for them – which was an affair that demanded many counsellors – and at length the vehicle got under way. Twilight began to come on as they mounted up into the grey country, by the winding grey roads fenced in with limestone walls. Everything grew greyer in the waning light. The very trees, of which there were so few, dropped into the gathering shadows, and deepened them without giving any livelier tint of colour to the scene. The children dropped asleep, and the ayah crooned and nodded over the baby; but Mary, who had no temptation to sleep, looked out with steady eyes, and, though she saw nothing distinctly, took in unawares all the comfortless chill and monotony of the landscape. It went to her heart, and made her shiver. Or perhaps it was only the idea of meeting Francis Ochterlony that made her shiver. If the children, any one of them, had only been old enough to understand it a little, to clasp her hand or her neck with the exuberance of childish sympathy! But they did not understand, and dropped asleep, or asked with timid, quivering little voices, how long it would be before they got home. Home! no wonder Mrs. Ochterlony was cold, and felt the chill go to her heart. Thus they went on for six or seven weary miles, taking as many hours, as Mary thought. Aunt Agatha had arrived at her cottage, though it was nearly thirty miles further on, while the comfortless party were still jogging along in the Earlston carriage; but Mary did not think particularly of that. She did not think at all, poor soul. She saw the grey hill-side gliding past her, and in a vague way, at the same moment, seemed to see herself, a bride, going gaily past on the same road, and rehearsed all the past over again with a dull pain, and shivered, and felt cold – cold to her heart. This was partly perhaps because it is chilly in Cumberland, when one has just come from India; and partly because there was something that affected a woman’s fanciful imagination in the misty monotony of the limestone country, and the grey waste of the hills.

Earlston, too, was grey, as was to be expected; and the trees which surrounded it had lost colour in the night. The hall was but dimly lighted, when the door was opened – as is but too common in country houses of so retired a kind – and there was nobody ready at the instant to open the door or to receive the strangers. To be sure, people were called and came – the housekeeper first, in a silk gown, which rustled excessively, and with a certain air of patronizing affability; and then Mr. Ochterlony, who had been sitting, as he usually did, in his dressing-gown, and who had to get into his coat so hurriedly that he had not recovered from it when he shook hands with his sister-in-law; and then by degrees servants appeared, and lifted out the sleepy, startled children, who, between waking and sleeping, worn out, frightened, and excited, were precisely in the condition which it is most difficult to manage. And the ayah, who could hold no Christian communication with anybody around her, was worse than useless to her poor mistress. When Mr. Ochterlony led the way into the great, solemn, dark, dining-room – which was the nearest room at hand – the children, instead of consenting to be led upstairs, clung with one unanimous accord to their mother. Little Wilfrid got to her arms, notwithstanding all remonstrances, and Hugh and Islay each seized silently a handful of her black dress, crushing the crape beyond all remedy. It was thus she entered Earlston, which had been her husband’s birthplace, and was to be her son’s inheritance – or so at least Mary thought.

“I hope you have had a pleasant journey,” Mr. Ochterlony said, shaking hands with her again. “I daresay they are tired, poor little things – but you have had good weather, I hope.” This he said after he had indicated to Mary a large easy-chair in carved oak, which stood by the side of the fire-place, and into which, with little Wilfrid clinging to her, and Islay and Hugh holding fast by her dress, it was not so easy to get. The master of the house did not sit down himself, for it was dreary and dark, and he was a man of fine perceptions; but he walked to the window and looked out, and then came back again to his sister-in-law. “I am glad you have had such good weather – but I am sure you must all be tired,” he said.

“Yes,” said Mary, who would have liked to cry, “very tired; but I hope we did not come too soon. Your letter was so kind that I thought – ”

“Oh don’t speak of it,” said Mr. Ochterlony; and then he stood before her on the dark hearth, and did not know what more to say. The twilight was still lingering, and there were no lights in the room, and it was fitted up with the strictest regard to propriety, and just as a dining-room ought to be. Weird gleams of dull reflection out of the depths of old mahogany lay low towards the floor, bewildering the visitor; and there was not even the light of a fire, which, for merely conventional motives, because it was July, did not occupy its usual place; though Mary, fresh from India, and shivering with the chill of excitement and nervous grief, would have given anything to be within reach of one. Neither did she know what to say to her almost unknown brother-in-law, whose face even she could see very imperfectly; and the children grasped her with that tight hold which is in itself a warning, and shows that everything is possible in the way of childish fright and passion. But still it was indispensable that she should find something to say.

“My poor little boys are so young,” she said, faltering. “It was very good of you to ask us, and I hope they won’t be troublesome. I think I will ask the housekeeper to show us where we are to be. The railway tires them more than the ship did. This is Hugh,” said Mary, swallowing as best she could the gasp in her throat, and detaching poor little Hugh’s hand from her crape. But she had tears in her voice, and Mr. Ochterlony had a wholesome dread of crying. He gave his nephew a hurried pat on the head without looking at him, and called for Mrs. Gilsland, who was at hand among the shadows rustling with her silk gown.

“Oh!” he said hurriedly. “A fine little fellow I am sure; – but you are quite right, and they must be tired, and I will not detain you. Dinner is at seven,” said Mr. Ochterlony. What could he say? He could not even see the faces of the woman and children whom it was his dread but evident duty to receive. When they went away under Mrs. Gilsland’s charge, he followed them to the foot of the stairs, and stood looking after them as the procession mounted, guided by the rustle of the housekeeper’s gown. The poor man looked at them in a bewildered way, and then went off to his library, where his own shaded lamp was lit, and where everything was cosy and familiar. Arrived there, he threw himself into his own chair with a sigh. He was not a brute, nor a wretch, as we have said, and the least thing he could do when he heard of his poor brother’s death was to offer a shelter – temporarily at least – to the widow and her children; but perhaps a lurking hope that something might turn up to prevent the invasion had been in his mind up to this day. Now she was here, and what was he to do with her? Now they were here, which was still more serious – three boys (even though one of them was a baby) in a house full of everything that was daintiest and rarest and most delicate! No wonder Mr. Ochterlony was momentarily stupefied by their arrival; and then he had not even seen their faces to know what they were like. He remembered Mary of old in her bride-days, but then she was too young, too fresh, too unsubdued to please him. If she were as full of vigour and energy now, what was to become of a quiet man who, above all things, loved tranquillity and leisure? This was what Francis Ochterlony was thinking as his visitors went upstairs.

Mrs. Ochterlony was inducted into the best rooms in the house. Her brother-in-law was not an effusive or sympathetic man by nature, but still he knew what was his duty under the circumstances. Two great rooms gleaming once more with ebon gleams out of big wardrobes and half-visible mirrors, with beds that looked a little like hearses, and heavy solemn hangings. Mrs. Gilsland’s silk gown rustled about everywhere, pointing out a thousand conveniences unknown at the station; but all Mary was thinking about was one of those grey cottages on the road, with the fire burning brightly, and its little homely walls lighted up with the fitful, cheerful radiance. If she could but have had a fire, and crept up to it, and knelt on the hearth and held herself to the comforting warmth! There are times when a poor creature feels all body, just as there are times when she feels all soul. And then, to think that dinner was at seven! just as it had been when she came there with Hugh, a girl all confident of happiness and life. No doubt Mr. Ochterlony would have forgiven his sister-in-law, and probably indeed would have been as much relieved as she, if she had but sent an apology and stayed in her room all the evening. But Mary was not the kind of woman to do this. It did not occur to her to depart from the natural routine, or make so much talk about her own feelings or sentiments as would be necessary even to excuse her. What did it matter? If it had to be done, it had to be done, and there was nothing more to be said. This was the view her mind took of most matters; and she had always been well, and never had any pretext to get out of things she did not like, as women do who have headaches and handy little illnesses. She could always do what was needful, and did always do it without stopping to make any questions; which is a serviceable kind of temperament in life, and yet subjects people to many little martyrdoms which otherwise they might escape from. Though her heart was sick, she put on her best gown all covered with crape, and her widow’s cap, and went down to dine with Francis Ochterlony in the great dining-room, leaving her children behind, and longing unspeakably for that cottage with the fire.

It was not such an unbecoming dress after all, notwithstanding what people say. Mary was worn and sad, but she was not faded; and the dead white of the cap that encircled her face, and the dead black of her dress, did not do so much harm as perhaps they ought to have done to that sweet and stedfast grace, which had made the regiment recognise and adopt young Stafford’s fanciful title. She was still Madonna Mary under that disfigurement; and on the whole she was not disfigured by her dress. Francis Ochterlony lifted his eyes with equal surprise and satisfaction to take a second look at poor Hugh’s widow. He felt by instinct that Phidias himself could not have filled a corner in his drawing-room, which was so full of fine things, with a figure more fair or half so appropriate as that of the serene woman who now took her seat there, abstracted a little into the separation and remoteness of sorrow, but with no discord in her face. He liked her better so than with the group of children, who made her look as if she was a Charity, and the heavy veil hanging half over her face, which had a conventual and uncomfortable effect; and he was very courteous and attentive to his sister-in-law. “I hope you had good weather,” he said in his deferential way; “and I trust, when you have been a few days at Earlston, the fatigue will wear off. You will find everything quiet here.”

“I hope so,” said Mary; “but it is the children I am thinking of. I trust our rooms are a long distance off, and that we will not disturb you.”

“That is quite a secondary matter,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “The question is, are you comfortable? I hope you will let Mrs. Gilsland know if anything is wanted. We are not – not quite used to these sort of things, you know; but I am sure, if anything is wanted – ”

“You are very kind,” said Mary; “I am sure we shall be very comfortable.” And yet as she said so her thoughts went off with a leap to that little cottage interior, and the cheerful light that shone out of the window, and the fire that crackled and blazed within. Ah, if she were but there! not dining with Mr. Ochterlony in solemn grandeur, but putting her little boys to bed, and preparing their supper for them, and cheating away heavy thoughts by that dear common work for the comfort and service of her own which a woman loves. But this was not a sort of longing to give expression to at Earlston, where in the evening Mr. Ochterlony was very kind to his sister-in-law, and showed her a great many priceless things which Mary regarded with trembling, thinking of two small barbarians about to be let loose among them, not to speak of little Wilfrid, who was old enough to dash an Etruscan vase to the earth, or upset the rarest piece of china, though he was still only a baby. She could not tell how they were so much as to walk through that drawing-room without doing some harm, and her heart sank within her as she listened to all those loving lingering descriptions which only a virtuoso can make. Mr. Ochterlony retired that evening with a sense always agreeable to a man, that in doing a kind thing he had not done a foolish one, and that the children of such a fair and gracious woman could not be the graceless imps who had been haunting his dreams ever since he knew they were coming home; but Mary for her part took no such flattering unction to her soul. She sighed as she went upstairs sad and weary to the great sombre room, in which a couple of candles burned like tiny stars in a world of darkness, and looked at her sleeping boys, and wondered what they were to do in this collection of curiosities and beauties. She was an ignorant woman, and did not, alas! care anything at all for the Venus Anadyomene. But she thought of little Hugh tilting that marble lady and her pedestal over, and shook and trembled at the idea. She trembled too with cold and nervous agitation, and the chill of sorrow in her heart. In the lack of other human sources of consolation, oh! to go to that cottage hearth, and kneel down and feel to one’s very soul the comfort of the warm consoling fire.

CHAPTER XII