Madonna Mary

“Yes, it is very different,” said Mary, returning the pressure of the soft little white hand; but her heart was full, and she could not find much more to say.

“And you, too, my dear love,” Aunt Agatha went on, who was not a wise woman, looking into the new-comer’s face – “you, too Mary, my darling – you will try to be happy in your old home? Well, dear, never mind answering me – I ought to know it is not the same for you as for us. I can’t help feeling so happy to have you and the dear children. Look at Winnie, how delighted she is – she is so fond of children, though you would not think so just at first. Doesn’t it make you feel the difference, Mary, to think you left her a baby, as one may say, and find her grown up into such a great girl?”

“I have so many things to make me feel the difference,” said Mary – for Miss Seton was not one of those people who can do without an answer; and then Aunt Agatha was very sorry, and kissed her, with tears in her eyes.

“Yes, my love – yes, my dear love;” she said, as if she were soothing a child. “It was very foolish of me to use that expression; but you must try not to mind me, Mary. Cry, my dear, or don’t answer me, or do just as you please. I never mean to say anything to recall – Look at the dear boys, how delighted they are. I know they will be fond of Winnie – she has such a nice way with children. Don’t you think she has a very nice way?”

“She is very handsome,” said Mary, looking out wistfully upon the young imperious creature, whose stage of existence seemed the very antipodes of her own.

“My dear love, she is beautiful,” said Aunt Agatha. “Sir Edward told me he had never, even at court – and you know he was a great deal about the court in his young days – seen any one that promised to be such a beautiful woman. And to think she should just be our Winnie all the same! And so simple and sweet – such a perfect child with it all! You may wonder how I have kept her so long,” continued Winnie’s adoring guardian, “when you were married, Mary, before you were her age.”

Mrs. Ochterlony tried hard to look up with the look of inquiry and interest which was expected of her in Aunt Agatha’s face; but she could not. It was difficult enough to struggle with the recollections that hung about this place, without having them thrust continually in her face in this affectionately heartless way. Thus the wheel turned softly round again, and the reality of the situation crept out in bare outline from under the cloak of flowers and tenderness, as hard and clear as at Earlston. Mary’s grief was her own concern, and not of very much consequence to anybody else in the world. She had no right to forget that fact, and yet she did forget it, not being used yet to stand alone. While Aunt Agatha, on her side, could not but think it was rather hard-hearted of Mary to show so little interest in her own sister, and such a sister as Winnie.

“It is not because she is not appreciated,” Miss Seton went on, feeling all the more bound to celebrate her favourite’s praises, “but I am so anxious she should make a good choice. She is not a girl that could marry anybody, you know. She has her own little ways, and such a great deal of character. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me, Mary, my dear love, to think that now we shall have your experience to guide us,” Aunt Agatha added, melting into tenderness again.

“I am afraid experience is good for very little in such cases,” said Mary, “but I hope there will be no guidance needed – she seems very happy now.”

“To tell the truth, there is somebody at the Hall – ” said Aunt Agatha, “and I want to have your opinion, my dear. Oh, Mary, you must not talk of no guidance being needed. I have watched over her ever since she was born. The wind has never blown roughly on her; and if my darling was to marry just an ordinary man, and be unhappy, perhaps – or no happier than the rest of us – ” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh. This last touch of nature went to Mary’s heart.

“She is rich in having such love, whatever may happen to her,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “and she looks as if, after all, she might yet have the perfect life. She is very, very handsome – and good, I am sure, and sweet – or she would not be your child, Aunt Agatha; but we must not be too ready with our guidance. She would not be happy if her choice did not come spontaneously, and of itself.”

“But oh, my dear love, the risk of marrying!” said Miss Seton, with a little sob – and she gave again a nervous pressure to Mary’s hand, and did not restrain her tears. They sat thus in the twilight together, looking out upon the young little creatures for whom life was all brightly uncertain – one of them regarding with a pitiful flutter of dread and anxiety the world she had never ventured to enter into for herself. Perhaps a vision of Francis Ochterlony mingled with Miss Seton’s thoughts, and a wistful backward glance at the life which might have been, but had not. The other sat very still, holding Aunt Agatha’s soft little fluttering hand in her own, which was steady, and did not tremble, with a strange pang of anguish and pity in her heart. Mary looked at life through no such fanciful mists – she knew, as she thought, its deepest depth and profoundest calamity; but the fountain of her tears was all sealed up and closed, because nobody but herself had any longer anything to do with it. And she, too, yearned over the young creature whose existence was all to come, and felt that it was had to think that she might be “no happier than the rest of us.” It was these words which had arrested Mary, who, perhaps, might have otherwise thought that her own unquestionable sorrows demanded more sympathy than Winnie’s problematical future. Thus the two elder ladies sat, until Winnie and the children came in, bring life and commotion with them. The blackbird was still singing in the bushes, the soft northern twilight lingering, and the dew falling, and all the sweet evening odours coming in. As for Aunt Agatha, her heart, though it was old, fluttered with all the agitation and disturbance of a girl’s – while Mary, in the calm and silence of her loneliness, felt herself put back as it were into history, along with Ruth and Rachel, and her own mother, and all the women whose lives had been and were over. This was how it felt to her in the presence of Aunt Agatha’s soft agitation – so that she half smiled at herself sitting there composed and tranquil, and soothing her companion into her usual calm.

“Mary agrees with me that this is better than Earlston, Winnie,” said Aunt Agatha, when the children were all disposed of for the night, and the three who were so near to each other in blood, and who were henceforward to be close companions, yet who knew so little of each other in deed and truth, were left alone. The lamp was lighted, but the windows were still open, and the twilight still lingered, and a wistful blue-green sky looked in and put itself in swift comparison with the yellow lamplight. Winnie stood in one of the open windows, half in and half out, looking across the garden, as if expecting some one, and with a little contraction in her forehead that marred her fine profile slightly – giving a kind of careless half-attention to what was said.

“Does she?” she answered, indifferently; “I should have thought Earlston was a much handsomer house.”

“It was not of handsome houses we were thinking, my darling,” said Aunt Agatha, with soft reproof; “it was of love and welcome like what we are so glad as to give her here.”

“Wasn’t Mr. Ochterlony kind?” said Winnie, with half contempt. “Perhaps he does not fancy children. I don’t wonder so very much at that. If they were not my own nephews, very likely I should think them dreadful little wretches. I suppose Mary won’t mind me saying what I think. I always have been brought up to speak out.”

“They are dear children,” said poor Aunt Agatha, promptly. “I wish you would come in, my love. It is a great deal too late now to go out.”

And at that moment Mary, who was the spectator, and could observe what was going on, had her attention attracted by a little jar and rattle of the window at which Winnie was standing. It was the girl’s impatient movement which had done it; and whether it was in obedience to Miss Seton’s mild command, or something more urgent, Winnie came in instantly with a lowering brow, and shut the window with some noise and sharpness. Probably Aunt Agatha was used to it, for she took no notice; but even her patient spirit seemed moved to astonishment by the sudden clang of the shutters, which the hasty young woman began to close.

“Leave that to Peggy, my darling,” she said; “besides, it was nice to have the air, and you know how I like the last of the gloaming. That is the window where one can always see poor Sir Edward’s light when he is at home. I suppose they are sure to be at home, since they have not come here to-night.”

“Shall I open the window again, and let you look at the light, since you like it so much?” said the undutiful Winnie. “I closed it for that. I don’t like to have anybody staring down at us in that superior sort of way – as if we cared; and I am sure nobody here was looking for them to-night.”

“No, my dear, of course not,” said Miss Seton. “Sir Edward is far too much of a gentleman to think of coming the night that Mary was expected home.”

And then Winnie involuntarily turned half-round, and darted upon Mary an inquiring defiant look out of her stormy eyes. The look seemed to say, “So it was you who were the cause of it!” and then she swept past her sister with her streaming ribbons, and pulled out an embroidery frame which stood in a corner, and sat down to it in an irritated restless way. In that pretty room, in the soft evening atmosphere, beside the gentle old aunt, who was folding her soft hands in the sweet leisure that became her age, and the fair, mature, but saddened presence of the elder sister, who was resting in the calm of her exhaustion, a beautiful girl bending over an embroidery frame was just the last touch of perfection needed by the scene; but nobody would have thought so to see how Winnie threw herself down to her work, and dashed at it, all because of the innocent light that had been lighted in Sir Edward’s window. Aunt Agatha did her best, by impressive looks and coughs, and little gestures, and transparently significant words, to subdue the spoilt child into good behaviour; and then, in despair, she thought herself called upon to explain.

“Sir Edward very often walks over of an evening,” she said, edging herself as it were between Mary and her sister. “We are always glad to see him you know. It is a little change; and then he has some nice young friends who stay with him occasionally,” said the deceitful woman. “But to be sure, he has too much feeling to think of making his appearance on the night of your coming home.”

“I hope you will make no difference for me,” said Mary.

“My love, I hope I know what is proper,” said Aunt Agatha, with her little air of decision. And once more Winnie gave her sister a defiant accusing glance. “It is I that will be the sufferer, and it is all on your account,” this look said, and the beautiful profile marked itself out upon the wall with that contraction across the forehead which took away half its loveliness. And then an uncomfortable silence ensued. Mrs. Ochterlony could say nothing more in a matter of which she knew so little, and Aunt Agatha, though she was the most yielding of guardians, still came to a point of propriety now and then on which she would not give way. This was how Mary discovered that instead of the Arcadian calm and retirement of which the cottage seemed an ideal resting place, she had come into another little centre of agitated human life, where her presence made a jar and discord without any fault of hers.

But it would have been worse than ungrateful, it would have been heartless and unkind, to have expressed such a feeling. So she, who was the stranger, had to put force on herself, and talk and lead her two companions back, so far as that was possible, from their pre-occupation; but at the best it was an unsatisfactory and forced conversation, and Mrs. Ochterlony was but too glad to own herself tired, and to leave her aunt and sister to themselves. They had given her their best room, with the fresh chintz and the pictures. They had made every arrangement for her comfort that affection and thoughtful care could suggest. What they had not been able to do was to let her come into their life without disturbing it, without introducing forced restrictions and new rules, without, in short, making her, all innocently and unwittingly on both sides, the discord in the house. Thus Mary found that, without changing her position, she had simply changed the scene; and the thought made her heart sick.

When Mrs. Ochterlony had retired, the two ladies of the cottage said nothing to each other for some time. Winnie continued her work in the same restless way as she had begun, and poor Aunt Agatha took up a book, which trembled in her hand. The impetuous girl had thrown open the window when she was reproved for closing it, and the light in Sir Edward’s window shone far off on the tree tops, shedding an irritating influence upon Winnie when she looked up; and at the same time she could see the book shaking in Aunt Agatha’s hand. Winnie was very fond of the guardian of her youth, and would have indignantly declared herself incapable of doing anything to vex her; but at the same time there could be no doubt that Aunt Agatha’s nervousness gave a certain satisfaction to the young tyrant who ruled over her. Winnie saw that she was suffering, and could not help feeling pleased, for had not she too suffered all the evening? And she made no attempt to speak, or to take any initiative, so that it was only after Miss Seton had borne it as long as she was capable of bearing it, that the silence was broken at last.

“Dear Winnie,” said Aunt Agatha, with a faltering voice, “I think, when you think of it, that you will not think you have been quite considerate in making poor Mary uncomfortable the first night.”

“Mary feel uncomfortable?” cried Winnie. “Good gracious, Aunt Agatha, is one never to hear of anything but Mary? What has anybody done? I have been sitting working all the evening, like – like a dressmaker or poor needlewoman; does she object to that, I wonder?” and the young rebel put her frame back into its corner, and rose to the fray. Sir Edward’s window still threw its distant light over the tree tops, and the sight of it made her smouldering passion blaze.

“Oh, my dear, you know that was not what I meant,” said the disturbed and agitated aunt.

“I wish then, please, you would say what you mean,” said Winnie. “She would not come with us at first, when we were all ready for her, and then she would not stay at Earlston after going there of her own free will. I dare say she made Mr. Ochterlony’s life wretched with her trouble and widow’s cap. Why didn’t she be burnt with her Major, and be done with it?” said Winnie. “I am sure it would be by far the most comfortable way.”

“Oh, Winnie, I thought you would have had a little sympathy for your sister,” said Aunt Agatha, with tears.

“Everybody has sympathy for my sister,” said Winnie, “from Peggy up to Sir Edward. I don’t see why she should have it all. Hasn’t she had her day? Nobody came in upon her, when she was my age, to put the house in mourning, and banish all one’s friends. I hate injustice,” cried the young revolutionary. “It is the injustice that makes me angry. I tell you, Aunt Agatha, she has had her day.”

“Oh, Winnie,” cried Miss Seton, weeping – “Oh, my darling child! don’t be so hard upon poor Mary. When she was your age she had not half nor quarter the pleasures you have; and it was I that said she ought to come among her own friends.”

“I am sure she would be a great deal better in some place of her own,” said Winnie, with a little violence. “I wonder how she can go to other people’s houses with all that lot of little children. If I should ever come home a widow from India, or anywhere else – ”

“Winnie!” cried Aunt Agatha, with a little scream, “for Heaven’s sake, don’t say such things. Sorrow comes soon enough, without going to meet it; and if we can give her a little repose, poor dear – And what do a few pleasant evenings signify to you at your time of life?”

“A few pleasant evenings!” said Winnie; and she gave a kind of gasp, and threw herself into a chair, and cried too, for passion, and vexation, and disgust – perhaps, a little, too, out of self-disgust, though she would not acknowledge it. “As if that were all! And nobody thinks how the days are flying, and how it may all come to an end!” cried the passionate girl. After having given vent to such words, shame and remorse seized upon Winnie. Her cheeks blazed so that the scorching heat dried up her tears, and she sprang up again and flew at the shutters, on which her feelings had already expended themselves more than once, and brought down the bar with a clang that startled the whole house. As for Aunt Agatha, she sat aghast, and gazed, and could not believe her eyes or ears. What were the days that were flying, or the things that might come to an end? Could this wild exclamation have anything to do with the fact that Captain Percival was only on a visit at the Hall, and that his days were, so to speak, numbered? Miss Seton was not so old as to have forgotten what it was to be thus on the eve of losing sight of some one who had, as she would herself have said, “interested you.” But Aunt Agatha had never in her life been guilty of violence or passion, and the idea of committing such a sin against all propriety and good taste as to have her usual visitors while the family was in affliction, was something which she could not take into her mind. It looked a breach of morals to Miss Seton; and for the moment it actually seemed as if Winnie, for the first time in her life, was not to have her way.

CHAPTER XV

E EVERYBODY has sympathy with my sister,” was what Winnie had said; and perhaps that was the hardest thing of all to bear. She was like the respectable son who came in disgusted into the midst of a merry-making all consecrated to the return of his disreputable prodigal brother. What did the fellow mean by coming home? Why did not he stay where he was, and fill his belly with the husks? If Mary had but been left to her young sister’s sympathy, Winnie would (or thought she would) have lavished tenderness upon her. But the fact was, that it was very very hard to think how the days were passing by, and how perhaps all the precious evenings which remained might be cut off for ever, and its fairest prospect taken from her life, by Aunt Agatha’s complaisance to Mary. It was true that it was Captain Percival’s visit that Winnie was thinking of. Perhaps it was a little unmaidenly of her to own as much even to herself. It was a thing which Aunt Agatha would have died sooner than do, and which even Mary could not have been guilty of; but then girls now are brought up so differently. He might find himself shut out from the house, and might think the “family affliction” only a pretence, and might go away and make an end of it for ever – and Winnie was self-willed and passionate, and felt she must move heaven and earth sooner than let this be so. It seemed to her as if the happiness of her life hung upon it, and she could not but think, being young and fond of poetry, of the many instances in books in which the magical moment was thus lost, and two lives made miserable. And how could it harm Mary to see a strange face or two about; she who had had the fortitude to come home all the way from India, and had survived, and was in sufficiently good health after her grief, which of itself was a thing for which the critic of eighteen was disposed to despise a woman?

As she brooded over this at night in her own room with the window open, and her long hair streaming over her shoulders like a romantic heroine, and the young moonlight whitening over the trees, turrets, and windows of the Hall, a wild impatience of all the restrictions which were at that moment pressing upon her came upon Winnie. She had been very bright and pleasant with the little boys in the garden; which was partly because her heart melted towards the helpless children who were her own flesh and blood, and partly because at that time nothing had occurred to thwart or vex her; but from the moment when she had seen Sir Edward’s window suddenly gleam into the twilight matters had changed. Then Winnie had perceived that the event which had been the central point of her daily life for some time back, the visit of Sir Edward and his “young friend,” was not going to happen. It was the first time it had occurred to her that Mary’s arrival was in any way to limit or transform her own existence; and her pride, her independence, her self-love and self-will were all immediately in arms. She, who had a little scorned her sister for the faculty of surviving, and for the steadiness with which she bore her burden, now asked herself indignantly, if Mary wanted to devote herself to her grief why she did not go into some seclusion to do it, instead of imposing penance upon other people? And what harm could it possibly have done Mary to see some one wandering in the garden by Winnie’s side whose presence made the world complete, and left no more to be desired in it? or to look at poor Sir Edward talking to Aunt Agatha, who took an innocent pleasure in his talk? what harm could all this do to the ogress in the widow’s cap who had come to trample on the happiness of the cottage? What pleasure could it be to her to turn the innocent old man, and the charming young one, away from the little flowery bower which they were so fond of? – for to be sure it did not occur to Winnie that Mrs. Ochterlony had nothing to do with it, and that it was of his own will and pleasure that Sir Edward had stayed away. Such were the thoughts which ran riot in the girl’s mind while she stood in the moonlight at the open window. There was no balcony to go forth upon, and these were not sweet musings like Juliet’s, but fiery discontented thoughts. Winnie did not mean to let her happiness slip by. She thought it was her happiness, and she was imperious and self-willed, and determined not to let her chance be stolen from her, as so many people do. As for Mary she had had her day. Let her be twenty times a widow, she had once been wooed, and had tasted all the delights of youth, and nobody had interfered with her – and Winnie too had made up her mind to have her day. Such a process of thinking could never, as has been already said, have gone through the minds of either of the other women in the cottage; but Winnie was a girl of the nineteenth century, in which young ladies are brought up differently – and she meant to have her rights, and the day of her delight, and all the privileges of her youth, whatever anybody might say.

As for Aunt Agatha on the other side, she too was making up her mind. She would have cut herself up in little pieces to please her darling, but she could not relinquish those rules of propriety which were dearer than herself – she was making up her mind to the struggle with tears and a kind of despair. It was a heartrending prospect, and she did not know how she could live without the light of her pretty Winnie’s countenance, and see her looking sulky and miserable as she had done that night. But still in consideration of what was right, Miss Seton felt that she must and could bear anything. To expect a family in mourning, and who had just received a widow into their house, to see visitors, was an inhuman idea; and Aunt Agatha would have felt herself deeply humiliated could she really have supposed that anybody thought her capable of such a dereliction of duty. But she cried a little as she considered the awful results of her decision. Winnie, disappointed, sullen, and wretched, roused to rebellion, and taking no pleasure in her life, was a terrible picture to contemplate. Aunt Agatha felt that all the pleasure of her own existence was over, and cried a few salt tears over the sacrifice; but she knew her duty, and at least there was, or ought to be, a certain comfort in that.

Sir Edward came next day to pay a solemn visit at the cottage, and it gave her a momentary gleam of comfort to feel that this was the course of conduct which he at least expected of her. He came, and his “young friend” came with him, and for the moment smiles and contentment came back to the household. Sir Edward entered the drawing-room and shook hands tenderly with Mrs. Ochterlony, and sat down beside her, and began to talk as only an old friend could; but the young friend stayed in the garden with Winnie, and the sound of their voices came in now and then along with the songs of the birds and the fragrance of the flowers – all nature conspiring as usual to throw a charm about the young creatures, who apart from this charm did not make the loveliest feature in the social landscape. Sir Edward, on the other hand, sat down as a man sits down in a room where there is a seat which is known as his, and where he is in the way of doing a great deal of pleasant talk most days of his life. This was a special occasion, and he behaved himself accordingly. He patted Mary’s hand softly with one of his, and held it in the other, and looked at her with that tender curiosity and inquiry which comes natural after a long absence. “She is changed, but I can see our old Mary still in her face,” said the old man, patting her hand; and then he asked about the journey, and if he should see the children; and then the ordinary talk began.

“We did not come last evening, knowing you expected Mary,” Sir Edward said, “and a most unpleasant companion I had all the night in consequence. Young people will be young people, you know – indeed, I never can help remembering, that just the other day I was young myself.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Agatha, faltering; “but you see under the circumstances, Sir Edward, Winnie could not expect that her sister – ”

“Dear aunt,” said Mary, “I have already begged you to make no difference for me.”

“I am sure, my love, you are very kind,” said Aunt Agatha; “you always were the most unselfish – But I hope I know my duty, whatever your good heart may induce you to say.”

“And I hope, after a while,” said Sir Edward, “that Mary too will be pleased to see her friends. We are all friends here, and everybody I know will be glad to welcome her home.”

Most likely it was those very words that made Mary feel faint and ill, and unable to reply. But though she did not say anything, she at least made no sort of objection to the hope; and immediately the pleasant little stream of talk gushed up and ran past her as she knew it would. The two old people talked of the two young ones who were so interesting to them, and all that was special in Sir Edward’s visit came to a close.

“Young Percival is to leave me next week,” Sir Edward said. “I shall miss him sadly, and I am afraid it will cost him a heartache to go.”

Aunt Agatha knew so well what her friend meant that she felt herself called upon to look as if she did not know. “Ah,” she said, “I don’t wonder. It is not often that he will find such a friend as you have been, Sir Edward: and to leave you, who are always such pleasant company – ”