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 wereall 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 anythingto 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.
“EEVERYBODY 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 inwhich 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 discontentedthoughts. 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 wasright, 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 ofthe 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.”
“AndIhope, 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——”
“My dear Miss Seton,” said Sir Edward, with a gentle laugh, “you don’t suppose that I expect him to have a heartache for love of me? He is a nice young fellow, and I am sorry to lose him; but if it were onlymypleasant company——”
Then Aunt Agatha blushed as if it had been herself who was young Percival’s attraction. “We shall all miss him, I am sure,” she said. “He is so delicate and considerate. He has not come in, thinking no doubt that Mary is not equal to seeing strangers; but I am so anxious that Mary should see him—that is, I like her to know our friends,” said the imprudent woman, correcting herself, and once more blushing crimson, as if young Percival had been a lover of her very own.
“He is a very nice fellow,” said Sir Edward; “most people like him; but I don’t know that I should have thought of describing him as considerate or delicate. Mary must not form too high an idea. He is just a young man like other young men,” said the impartial baronet, “and likes his own way, and is not without a proper regard for his own interest. He is not in the least a hero of romance.”
“I don’t think he is at all mercenary, Sir Edward, if that is what you mean,” said Aunt Agatha, blushing no longer, but growing seriously red.
“Mercenary!” said Sir Edward. “I don’t think I ever dreamt of that. He is like other young men, you know. I don’t want Mary to form too high an idea. But one thing I am sure of is that he is very sorry to go away.”
And then a little pause happened, which was trying to Aunt Agatha, and in the interval the voices of the two young people in the garden sounded pleasantly from outside. Sitting thus within hearing of them, it was difficult to turn to any other subject; but yet Miss Seton would not confess that she could by any possibility understand what her old neighbour meant; and by way of escaping from that embarrassment plunged without thought into another in which she floundered helplessly after the first dash.
“Mary has just come from Earlston,” she said. “It has grown quite a museum, do you know?—every sort of beautiful thing, and all so nicely arranged. Francis—Mr. Ochterlony,” said Aunt Agatha, in confusion, “had always a great deal of taste—— Perhaps you may remember——”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Sir Edward—“such things are not easily forgotten—but I hope you don’t mean to suppose that Percival——”
“I was thinking nothing about Captain Percival,” Miss Seton said, feeling ready to cry—“What I meant was, Ithought—I supposed you might have some interest—I thought you might like to know——”
“Oh, if that is all,” said Sir Edward, “of course I take a great interest—but I thought you meant something of the same kind might be going on here. You must never think of that. I would never forgive myself if I were twice to be the occasion——”
“I was thinking nothing about Captain Percival,” said Aunt Agatha, with tears of vexation in her eyes; “nor—nor anything else—I was talking for the sake of conversation: I was thinking perhaps you might like to hear——”
“May I show you my boys, Sir Edward?” said Mary, ringing the bell—“I should like you to see them; and I am going to ask you, by-and-by, what I must do with them. My brother-in-law is very much a recluse—I should be glad to have the advice of somebody who knows more of the world.”
“Ah, yes, let us see the boys,” said Sir Edward. “Allboys are they?—that’s a pity. You shall have the best advice I can give you, my dear Mary—and if you are not satisfied with that, you shall have better advice than mine; there is nothing so important as education; come along, little ones. So these are all?—three—I thought you had more than three. Ah, I beg your pardon. How do you do, my little man? I am your mamma’s old friend—I knew her long before you were born—come and tell me your name.”
And while Sir Edward got at these particulars, and took the baby on his knee, and made himself agreeable to the two sturdy little heroes who stood by, and stared at him, Aunt Agatha came round behind their backs, and gave Mary a quiet kiss—half by way of consolation, half by way of thanks—for, but for that happy inspiration of sending for the children, there was no telling what bog of unfortunate talk Miss Seton might not have tumbled into. Sir Edward was one of those men who know much, too much, about everybody—everything, he himself thought. He could detect allusions in the most careless conversation, and never forgot anything even when it was expedient and better that it should be forgotten. He was a man who had been unlucky in his youth, and who now, in his old age, though he was as well off as a man living all alone, in forlorn celibacy, could be, was always called poor Sir Edward. The very cottagers called him so, who might well have looked upon his life as a kind of paradise; and being thus recognised as an object of pity, Sir Edward had on the whole a very pleasant life. He knew all about everybody, and was apt at times to confuse his neighbours sadly, as he had just doneAunt Agatha, by a reference to the most private bits of their individual history; but it was never done with ill-nature—and after all there is a charm about a person who knows everything about everybody. He was a man who could have told you all about the Gretna Green marriage, which had cost poor Major Ochterlony so much trouble, as well, or perhaps even better, than if he had been present at it; and he was favourable to marriages in general, though he had never himself made the experience, and rather liked to preside over a budding inclination like that between Winifred Seton and young Percival. He took little Wilfrid on his knee when the children were thus brought upon the scene, in a fatherly, almost grand-fatherly way, and was quite ready to go into Mary’s plans about them. He thought it was quite right, and the most suitable thing she could do, to settle somewhere where there was a good grammar-school; and he had already begun to calculate where the best grammar-schools were situated, and which would be the best plan for Mrs. Ochterlony, when the voices in the garden were heard approaching. Aunt Agatha had escaped from her embarrassment by going out to the young people, and was now bringing them in to present the young man for Mary’s approval and criticism. Miss Seton came first, and there was anxiety in her face; and after her Winnie stepped in at the window, with a little flush upon her pretty cheek, and an unusual light in her eye; and after her—but at that moment the whole party were startled by a sudden sound of surprise, the momentary falling back of the stranger’s foot from the step, and a surprised, half-suppressed exclamation. “Oh!—Mrs. Ochterlony!” exclaimed Sir Edward’s young friend. As it happened all the rest were silent at that moment, and his voice was distinctly audible, though perhaps he had not meant it to be so. He himself was half hidden by the roses which clambered all over the cottage, but Mary naturally turned round, and turned her face to the window, when she heard her own name—as indeed they all did—surprised at the exclamation, and still more at the tone. And it was thus under the steady gaze of four pairs of eyes that Captain Percival came into the room. Perhaps but for that exclamation Mary might not have recognised him; but her ear had been trained to quick understanding of that inflection, half of amusement, half of contempt, which she had not heard for so long. To her ears it meant, “Oh, Mrs. Ochterlony!—she who was married over again, as people pretended—she who took in the Kirkmans, and all the people at the station.” Captain Percival came in, and he felt his blood run cold as he met all those astonished eyes,and found Mary looking so intently at him. What had he done that they should all stare at him like that? for he was not so well aware of what he had given utterance to, nor of his tone in giving utterance to it, as they were. “Good heavens, what is the matter?” he said; “you all look at me as if I were a monster. Miss Seton, may I ask you to introduce me——”
“We have met before, I think,” Mary said, quietly. “When I heard of Captain Percival I did not know it was the same I used to hear so much about in India. I think, when I saw you last, it was at——”
She wanted by sudden instinct to say it out and set herself right for ever and ever, here where everything about her was known; but the words seemed to choke her. In spite of herself she stopped short; how could she refer to that, the only great grievance in her life, her husband’s one great wrong against her, now that he was in his grave, and she left in the world the defender and champion of all his acts and ways? She could not do it—she was obliged to stop short in the middle, and swallow the sob that would have choked her with the next word. And they stood all gazing at her, wondering what it was.
“Yes,” said the young man, with a confidential air—“I remember it very well indeed—I heard all about it from Askell, you know;—but I never imagined, when I heard you talking of your sister, that it was the same Mrs. Ochterlony,” he added, turning to Winnie, who was looking on with great and sudden interest. And then there was a pause—such a pause as occurs sometimes when there is an evident want of explanation somewhere, and all present feel that they are on the borders of a mystery. Somehow it changed the character of the assembled company. A few minutes before it had been the sad stranger, in her widow’s cap, who was the centre of all, and to whom the visitors had to be presented in a half apologetic way, as if to a queen. Aunt Agatha, indeed, had been quite anxious on the subject, pondering how she could best bring Sir Edward’s young friend, Winnie’s admirer, under Mrs. Ochterlony’s observation, and have her opinion of him; and now in an instant the situation was reversed, and it was Mary and Captain Percival alone who seemed to know each other, and to have recollections in common! Mary felt her cheeks flush in spite of herself, and Winnie grew pale with incipient jealousy and dismay, and Aunt Agatha fluttered about in a state of the wildest anxiety. At last both she and Sir Edward burst out talking at the same moment, with the same visible impulse. And they brought the children into theforeground, and lured them into the utterance of much baby nonsense, and even went so far as to foster a rising quarrel between Hugh and Islay, all to cover up from each other’s eyes and smother in the bud this mystery, if it was a mystery. It was a singular disturbance to bring into such a quiet house; for how could the people who dwelt at home tell what those two strangers might have known about each other in India, how they might have been connected, or what secret might lie between them?—no more than people could tell in a cosy sheltered curtained room what might be going on at sea, or even on the dark road outside. And here there was the same sense of insecurity—the same distrust and fear. Winnie stood a little apart, pale, and with her delicate curved nostril a little dilated. Captain Percival was younger than Mary, and Mary up to this moment had been hedged round with a certain sanctity, even in the eyes of her discontented young sister. But there was some intelligence between them, something known to those two which was known to no one else in the party. This was enough to set off the thoughts of a self-willed girl, upon whose path Mary had thrown the first shadow, wildly into all kinds of suspicions. And to tell the truth, the elder people, who should have known better, were not much wiser than Winnie. Thus, while Hugh and Islay had a momentary struggle in the foreground, which called for their mother’s active interference, the one ominous cloud of her existence once more floated up upon the dim firmament over Mary’s head; though if she had but finished her sentence it would have been no cloud at all, and might never have come to anything there or thereafter. But this did not occur to Mrs. Ochterlony. What did occur to her in her vexation and pain was that her dead Hugh would be hardly dealt with among her kindred, if the stranger should tell her story. And she was glad, heartily glad, that there was little conversation afterwards, and that very soon the two visitors went away. But it was she who was the last to be aware that a certain doubt, a new and painful element of uncertainty stayed behind them in Aunt Agatha’s pretty cottage after they were gone.
THAT night was a painful night for Winnie. The girl was self-willed and self-loving, as has been said. But she was not incapable of the more generous emotions, and when she looked at her sister she could no more suspect her of any wrong or treachery than she could suspect the sun shining over their heads. And her interest in the young soldier had gone a great length. She thought he loved her, and it was very hard to think that he was kept apart from her by a reason which was no reason at all. She roved about the garden all the evening in an unsettled way, thinking he would come again—thinking he could not stay away—explaining to herself that he must come to explain. And when she glanced indoors at the lamp which was lighted so much earlier than it needed to be, for the sake of Mary’s sewing, and saw Mary seated beside it, in what looked like perfect composure and quietness, Winnie’s impatience got the better of her. He was to be banished, or confined to a formal morning call, for Mary’s sake, who sat there so calm, a woman for whom the fret and cares of life were over, while for Winnie life was only beginning, and her heart going out eagerly to welcome and lay claim to its troubles. And then the thought that it was the same Mrs. Ochterlony came sharp as a sting to Winnie’s heart. What could he have had to do with Mrs. Ochterlony? what didshemean coming home in the character of a sorrowful widow, and shutting out their visitors, and yet awakening something like agitation and unquestionable recognition in the first stranger she saw? Winnie wandered through the garden, asking herself those questions, while the sweet twilight darkened, and the magical hour passed by, which had of late associated itself with so many dreams. And again he did not come. It was impossible to her, when she looked at Mary, to believe that there could be anything inexplainable in the link which connected her lover with her sister—but still he ought to have come to explain. And when Sir Edward’s windows were lighted once more, and the certainty that he was not coming penetrated her mind, Winnie clenched her pretty hands, and went crazy for the moment with despite and vexation. Another long dull weary evening, with all the expectation and hope quenched out of it; another lingering night; another day in which there was as much doubt as hope. And next week hewas going away! And it was all Mary’s fault, however you took it—whether she had known more of him than she would allow in India, or whether it was simply the fault of that widow’s cap which scared people away? This was what was going on in Winnie’s agitated mind while the evening dews fell upon the banks of Kirtell, and the soft stars came out, and the young moon rose, and everything glistened and shone with the sweetness of a summer night. This fair young creature, who was in herself the most beautiful climax of all the beauty around her, wandered among her flowers with her small hands clenched, and the spirit of a little fury in her heart. She had nothing in the world to trouble her, and yet she was very unhappy, and it was all Mary’s fault. Probably if Mary could but have seen into Winnie’s heart she would have thought it preferable to stay at Earlston, where the Psyche and the Venus were highly indifferent, and had no hearts, but only arms and noses that could be broken. Winnie was more fragile than the Etruscan vases or the Henri II. porcelain. They had escaped fracture, but she had not; but fortunately this thought did not occur to Mrs. Ochterlony as she sat by the lamp working at Hugh’s little blouses in Aunt Agatha’s chair.
And Aunt Agatha, more actively jealous than Winnie herself, sat by knitting little socks—an occupation which she had devoted herself to, heart and soul, from the moment when she first knew the little Ochterlonys were coming home. She was knitting with the prettiest yarn and the finest needles, and had a model before her of proportions so shapely as to have filled any woman’s soul with delight; but all that was eclipsed for the time by the doubt which hung over Mary, and the evident unhappiness of her favourite. Aunt Agatha was less wise than Winnie, and had not eyes to perceive that people were characteristic even in their wrong-doing, and that Captain Percival of himself could have nothing to do with the shock which Mary had evidently felt at the sight of him. Probably Miss Seton had not been above a little flirtation in her own day, and she did not see how that would come unnatural to a woman of her own flesh and blood. And she sat accordingly on the other side of the lamp and knitted, with a pucker of anxiety upon her fair old brow, casting wistful glances now and then into the garden where Winnie was.
“And I suppose, my dear, you know Captain Percival very well?” said Aunt Agatha, with that anxious look on her face.
“I don’t think I ever saw him but once,” said Mary, who was a little impatient of the question.
“But once, my dear love! and yet you both were so surprised to meet,” said Aunt Agatha, with reasonable surprise.
“There are some moments when to see a man is to remember him ever after,” said Mary. “It was at such a time that I saw Sir Edward’s friend. It would be best to tell you about it, Aunt Agatha. There was a time when my poor Hugh——”
“Oh, Mary, my darling, you can’t think I want to vex you,” cried Aunt Agatha, “or make you go back again upon anything that is painful. I am quite satisfied, for my part, when you say so. And so would Winnie be, I am sure.”
“Satisfied?” said Mary, wondering, and yet with a smile; and then she forgot the wonder of it in the anxiety. “I should be sorry to think that Winnie cared much for anything that could be said about Captain Percival. I used to hear of him from the Askells who were friends of his. Do not let her have anything to do with him, Aunt Agatha; I am sure he could bring her nothing but disappointment and pain.”
“I—Mary?—Oh, my dear love, what canIdo?” cried Miss Seton, in sudden confusion; and then she paused and recovered herself. “Of course if he was a wicked young man, I—I would not let Winnie have anything to do with him,” she added, faltering; “but—do you think you are sure, Mary? If it should be only that you do not—like him; or that you have not got on—or something——”
“I have told you that I know nothing of him, Aunt,” said Mary. “I saw him once at the most painful moment of my life, and spoke half-a-dozen words to him in my own house after that—but it is what I have heard the gentlemen say. I do not like him. I think it was unmannerly and indelicate to come to my house at such a time——”
“My darling!” said Aunt Agatha, soothing her tenderly. Miss Seton was thinking of the major’s death, not of any pain that might have gone before; and Mary by this time in the throng of recollections that came upon her had forgotten that everybody did not know.
“But that is not the reason,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, composing herself: “the reason is that he could not, unless he is greatly changed, make Winnie otherwise than unhappy. I know the reputation he had. The Heskeths would not let him come to their house after Annie came out; and I have even heard Hugh——”
“My dear love, you are agitating yourself,” cried Aunt Agatha. “Oh, Mary, if you only knew how anxious I am to do anything to recall——”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a faint smile: “itis not so far off that I should require anything to recall all that has happened to me—but for Winnie’s sake——”
And it was just at that moment that the light suddenly appeared in Sir Edward’s window, and brought Winnie in, white and passionate, with a thunder-cloud full of tears and lightnings and miserable headache and self-reproach, lowering over her brilliant eyes.
“It is very good of Mary, I am sure, to think of something for my sake,” said Winnie. “What is it, Aunt Agatha? Everything is always so unpleasant that is for one’s good. I should like to know what it was.”
And then there was a dead silence in the pretty room. Mary bent her head over her work, silenced by the question, and Aunt Agatha, in a flutter of uncertainty and tribulation, turned from one to the other, not knowing which side to take nor what to say.
“Mary has come among us a stranger,” said Winnie, “and I suppose it is natural that she should think she knows our business better than we do. I suppose that is always how it seems to a stranger; but at the same time it is a mistake, Aunt Agatha, and I wish you would let Mary know that we are disposed to manage for ourselves. If we come to any harm it is we who will have to suffer, and not Mary,” the impetuous girl cried, as she drew that unhappy embroidery frame out of its corner.
And then another pause, severe and startling, fell upon the little party. Aunt Agatha fluttered in her chair, looking from one to another, and Winnie dragged a violent needle through her canvas, and a great night moth came in and circled about them, and dashed itself madly against the globe of light on the table. As for Mary, she sat working at Hugh’s little blouse, and for a long time did not speak.
“My dear love!” Aunt Agatha said at last, trembling, “you know there is nothing in the world I would not do to please you, Winnie,—nor Mary either. Oh, my dear children, there are only you two in the world. If one says anything, it is for the other’s good. And here we are, three women together, and we are all fond of each other, and surely, surely, nothing ever can make any unpleasantness!” cried the poor lady, with tears. She had her heart rent in two, like every mediatrix, and yet the larger half, as was natural, went to her darling’s side.
“Winnie is right enough,” Mary said, quietly. “I am a stranger, and I have no right to interfere; and very likely, even if I were permitted to interfere, it would do no good. Itis a shame to vex you, Aunt Agatha. My sister must submit to hear my opinion one time, but I am not going to disturb the peace of the house, nor yours.”
“Oh, Mary, my dear, it is only that she is a little impatient, and has always had her own way,” said Aunt Agatha, whispering across the table. And then no more was said. Miss Seton took up her little socks, and Winnie continued to labour hotly at her embroidery, and the sound of her work, and the rustle of Mary’s arm at her sewing, and the little click of Aunt Agatha’s knitting-needles, and the mad dashes of the moth at the lamp, were all the sounds in the room, except, indeed, the sound of the Kirtell, flowing softly over its pebbles at the foot of the brae, and the sighing of the evening air among the trees, which were sadly contradictory of the spirit of the scene within; and at a distance over the woods, gleamed Sir Edward’s window, with the ill-disposed light which was, so to speak, the cause of all. Perhaps, after all, if Mrs. Ochterlony had stayed at Earlston, where the Psyche and the Venus were not sensitive, and there was nothing but marble and china to jar into discord, it might have been better; and what would have been better still, was the grey cottage on the roadside, with fire on the hearth and peace and freedom in the house; and it was to that, with a deep and settled longing, that Mary’s heart and thoughts went always back.
When Mrs. Ochterlony had withdrawn, the scene changed much in Aunt Agatha’s drawing-room. But it was still a pretty scene. Then Winnie came and poured out her girlish passion in the ears and at the feet of her tender guardian. She sank down upon the carpet, and laid her beautiful head upon Aunt Agatha’s knee, and clasped her slender arms around her. “To think she should come and drive every one I care for away from the house, and set even you against me!” cried Winnie, with sobs of vexation and rage.
“Oh, Winnie! not me! Never me, my darling,” cried Aunt Agatha; and they made a group which a painter would have loved, and which would have conveyed the most delicate conception of love and grief to an admiring public, had it been painted. Nothing less than a broken heart and a blighted life would have been suggested to an innocent fancy by the abandonment of misery in Winnie’s attitude. And to tell the truth, she was very unhappy, furious with Mary, and with herself, and with her lover, and everybody in the wide world. The braids of her beautiful hair got loose, and the net that confined them came off, and the glistening silken flood came tumbling about her shoulders. Miss Seton could not but takegreat handfuls of it as she tried to soothe her darling; and poor Aunt Agatha’s heart was rent in twain as she sat with this lovely burden in her lap, thinking, Oh, if nobody had ever come to distract Winnie’s heart with love-making, and bring such disturbance to her life; oh, if Hugh Ochterlony had thought better of it, and had not died! Oh, if Mary had never seen Captain Percival, or seeing him, had approved of him, and thought him of all others the mate she would choose for her sister! The reverse of all these wishes had happened, and Aunt Agatha could not but look at the combination with a certain despair.
“What can I do, my dear love?” she said. “It is my fault that Mary has come here. You know yourself it would have been unnatural if she had gone anywhere else: and how could we go on having people, with her in such deep mourning? And as for Captain Percival, my darling——”
“I was not speaking of Captain Percival,” said Winnie, with indignation. “What is he to me?—or any man? But what I will not bear is Mary interfering. She shall not tell us what we are to do. She shan’t come in and look as if she understood everything better than we do. And, Aunt Agatha, she shan’t—she shall never come, not for a moment, between you and me!”
“My darling child! my dear love!” cried poor Aunt Agatha, “as if that was possible, or as if poor Mary wanted to. Oh, if you would only do her justice, Winnie? She is fond of you; I know she is fond of you. And what she was saying was entirely for your good——”
“She is fond of nobody but her children,” said Winnie, rising up, and gathering her bright hair back into the net. “She would not care what happened to us, as long as all was well with her tiresome little boys.”
Aunt Agatha wrung her hands, as she looked in despair at the tears on the flushed cheek, and the cloud which still hung upon her child’s brow. What could she say? Perhaps there was a little truth in what Winnie said. The little boys, though Miss Seton could not help feeling them to be so unimportant in comparison with Winnie and her beginning of life, were all in all to Mrs. Ochterlony; and when she had murmured again that Mary meant it all for Winnie’s good, and again been met by a scornful protestation that anything meant for one’s good was highly unpleasant, Aunt Agatha was silenced, and had not another word to say. All that she could do was to pet her wilful darling more than ever, and to promise with tears that Mary should never, never make any difference betweenthem, and that she herself would do anything that Winnie wished or wanted. The interview left her in such a state of agitation that she could not sleep, nor even lie down, till morning was breaking, and the new day had begun—but wandered about in her dressing-gown, thinking she heard Winnie move, and making pilgrimages to her room to find her, notwithstanding all her passion and tears, as fast asleep as one of Mary’s boys—which was very, very different from Aunt Agatha’s case, or Mary’s either, for that matter. As for Mrs. Ochterlony, it is useless to enter into any description of her feelings. She went to bed with a heavy heart, feeling that she had made another failure, and glad, as people are when they have little comfort round them, of the kind night and the possible sleep which, for a few hours at least, would make her free of all this. But she did not sleep as Winnie did, who felt herself so ill-used and injured. Thus, Mrs. Ochterlony’s return, a widow, brought more painful agitation to Miss Seton’s cottage than had been known under its quiet roof since the time when she went away a bride.
AND after this neither Sir Edward nor his young friend appeared for two whole days. Any girl of Winifred Seton’s impetuous character, who has ever been left in such a position on the very eve of the telling of that love-tale, which had been all but told for several weeks past, but now seemed suddenly and artificially arrested just at the moment of utterance—will be able to form some idea of Winnie’s feelings during this dreadful interval. She heard the latch of the gate lifted a hundred times in the day, when, alas, there was no one near to lift the latch. She was afraid to go out for an instant, lest in that instant “they” should come; her brain was ringing with supposed sounds of footsteps and echoes of voices, and yet the road lay horribly calm and silent behind the garden hedge, with no passengers upon it. And these two evenings the light came early into Sir Edward’s window, and glared cruelly over the trees. And to be turned inward upon the sweet old life from which the charm had fled, and to have to content one’s self with flowers and embroidery, and the canary singing, and the piano, and Aunt Agatha! Many another girl has passed through the same interval of torture, and felt the suspense to be killing, and the crisis tragic—but yet to oldereyes perhaps even such a dread suspension of all the laws of being has also its comic side. Winnie, however, took care to keep anybody from laughing at it in the cottage. It was life and death to her, or at least so she thought. And her suppressed frenzy of anxiety, and doubt, and fear, were deep earnest to Aunt Agatha, who seemed now to be living her own early disappointments over again, and more bitterly than in the first version of them. She tried hard to remember the doubt thrown upon Captain Percival by Mary, and to persuade herself that this interposition was providential, and meant to save her child from an unhappy marriage. But when Miss Seton saw Winnie’s tragic countenance, her belief in Providence was shaken. She could not see the good of anything that made her darling suffer. Mary might be wrong, she might be prejudiced, or have heard a false account, and it might be simply herself who was to blame for shutting her doors, or seeming to shut her doors, against her nearest and oldest neighbours. Could it be supposed that Sir Edward would bring any one to her house who was not a fit associate or a fit suitor, if things should take such a turn, for Winnie? Under the painful light thrown upon the subject by Winnie’s looks, Aunt Agatha came altogether to ignore that providential view which had comforted her at first, and was so far driven in the other direction at last as to write Sir Edward a little note, and take the responsibility upon her own shoulders. What Miss Seton wrote was, that though, in consequence of their late affliction, the family were not equal to seeing visitors in a general way, yet that it would be strange indeed if they were to consider Sir Edward a stranger, and that she hoped he would not stay away, as she was sure his company would be more a comfort to Mary than anything else. And she also hoped Captain Percival would not leave the Hall without coming to see them. It was such a note as a maiden lady was fully justified in writing to an old friend—an invitation, but yet given with a full consideration of all the proprieties, and that tender regard for Mary’s feelings which Aunt Agatha had shown throughout. It was written and despatched when Winnie had gone out, as she did on the third day, in proud defiance and desperation, so that if Sir Edward’s sense of propriety and respect for Mary’s cap should happen to be stronger than Aunt Agatha’s, no further vexation might come to the young sufferer from this attempt to set all right.
And Winnie went out without knowing of this effort for her consolation. She went down by the Kirtell, winding down the wooded banks, in the sweet light and shade of the Augustmorning, seeing nothing of the brightness, wrapped up and absorbed in her own sensations. She felt now that the moment of fate had passed,—that moment that made or marred two lives;—and had in her heart, in an embryo unexpressed condition, several of Mr. Browning’s minor poems, which were not then written; and felt a general bitterness against the world for the lost climax, thedénouementwhich had not come. She thought to herself even, that if the tale had been told, the explanation made, and something, however tragical, had happenedafter, it would not have been so hard to bear. But now it was clear to Winnie that her existence must run on soured and contracted in the shade, and that young Percival must stiffen into a worldly and miserable old bachelor, and that their joint life, the only life worth living, had been stolen from them, and blighted in the bud. And what was it all for?—because Mary, who had had all the good things of this life, who had loved and been married in the most romantic way, and had been adored by her husband, and reigned over him, had come, so far, to an end of her career. Mary was over thirty, an age at which Winnie could not but think it must be comparatively indifferent to a woman what happened—at which the snows of age must have begun to benumb her feelings, under any circumstances, and the loss of a husband or so did not much matter; but at eighteen, and to lose the first love that had ever touched your heart! to lose it without any reason—without the satisfaction of some dreadful obstacle in the way, or misunderstanding still more dreadful; without ever having heard the magical words and tasted that first rapture!—Ah, it was hard, very hard; and no wonder that Winnie was in a turmoil of rage, and bitterness, and despair.
The fact was, that she was so absorbed in her thoughts as not to see him there where he was waiting for her. He had seen her long ago, as she came down the winding road, betraying herself at the turnings by the flutter of her light dress—for Winnie’s mourning was slight—and he had waited, as glad as she could be of the opportunity, and the chance of seeing her undisturbed, and free from all critical eyes. There is a kind of popular idea that it is only a good man, or one with a certain “nobility” in his character, who is capable of being in love; but the idea is not so justifiable as it would seem to be. Captain Percival was not a good young man, nor would it be safe for any conscientious historian to claim for him generous or noble qualities to any marked degree; but at the same time I am not disposed to qualify the state of his sentiments by saying, as is generally said of unsatisfactorycharacters, that he loved Winnie as much as he could love anything. He was in love with her, heart and soul, as much as if he had been a paladin. He would not have stayed at any obstacle, nor regarded either his own comfort or hers, or any other earthly bar between them. When Winnie thought him distant from her, and contemplating his departure, he had been haunting all the old walks which he knew Miss Seton and her niece were in the habit of taking. He was afraid of Mary—that was one thing indisputable—and he thought she would harm him, and bring up his old character against him; and felt instinctively that the harm which he thought he knew of her, could not be used against her here. And it was for this reason that he had not ventured again to present himself at the cottage; but he had been everywhere about, wherever he thought there was any chance of meeting the lady of his thoughts. And if Winnie had not been so anxious not to miss that possible visitor; if she had been coming and going, and doing all she usually did, their meeting must have taken place two days ago, and all the agony and trouble been spared. He watched her now, and held his breath, and traced her at all the turnings of the road, now by a puff of her black and white muslin dress, and then by a long streaming ribbon catching among the branches—for Winnie was fond of long ribbons wherever she could introduce them. And she was so absorbed with her own settled anguish, that she had stepped out upon him from among the trees before she was aware.
“Captain Percival!” said Winnie, with an involuntary cry; and she felt the blood so rush to her cheeks with sudden delight and surprise, that she was in an instant put on her guard, and driven to account for it.—“I did not see there was any one here—what a fright you have given me. And we, who thought you had gone away,” added Winnie, looking suddenly at him with blazing defiant eyes.
If he had not been in love, probably he would have known what it all meant—the start, the blush, the cry, and that triumphant, indignant, reproachful, exulting look. But he had enough to do with his own sensations, which makes a wonderful difference in such a case.
“Gone away!” he said, on the spur of the moment—“as if I could go away—as if you did not know better than that.”
“I was not aware that there was anything to detain you,” said Winnie; and all at once from being so tragical, her natural love of mischief came back, and she felt perfectly disposed to play with her mouse. “Tell me about it. Is it Sir Edward? or perhaps you, too, have had an affliction in yourfamily. I think that is the worst of all,” she said, shaking her pretty head mournfully—and thus the two came nearer to each other and laughed together, which was as good a means ofrapprochementas anything else.
But the young soldier had waited too long for this moment to let it all go off in laughter. “If you only knew how I have been trying to see you,” he said. “I have been at the school and at the mill, and in the woods—in all your pet places. Are you condemned to stay at home because of this affliction? I could not come to the cottage because, though Miss Seton is so kind, I am sure your sister would do me an ill turn if she could.”
Winnie was startled, and even a little annoyed by this speech—for it is a fact always to be borne in mind by social critics, that one member of a family may be capable of saying everything that is unpleasant about another, without at the same time being disposed to hear even an echo of his or her own opinion from stranger lips. Winnie was of this way of thinking. She had not taken to her sister, and was quite ready herself to criticise her very severely; but when somebody else did it, the result was very different. “Why should my sister do you an ill turn?” she said.
“Oh!” said young Percival; “it is because you know she knows that I know all about it——”
“All about it!” said Winnie. She was tall already, but she grew two inches taller as she stood and expanded and looked her frightened lover into nothing. “There can be nothing about Mary, Captain Percival, which you and all the world may not know.”
And then the young man saw he had made a wrong move. “I have not been haunting the road for hours to talk about Mrs. Ochterlony,” he said. “She does not like me, and I am frightened for her. Oh, Winnie, you know very well why. You know I would tremble before anybody who might makeyouthink ill of me. It is cruel to pretend you don’t understand.”
And then he took her hand and told her everything—all that she looked for, and perhaps more than all—for there are touches of real eloquence about what a man says when he is really in love (even if he should be no great things in his own person) which transcend as much as they fall short of, the suggestions of a woman’s curious fancy. She had said it for him two or three times in her own mind, and had done it far more elegantly and neatly. But still there was something about the genuine article which had not been in Winnie’s imagination. There were fewer words, but there was a great deal more excitement, though it was much less cleverly expressed. And then, before they knew how, the crisis was over, thedénouementaccomplished, and the two sitting side by side as in another world. They were sitting on the trunk of an old beech-tree, with the leaves rustling and the birds twittering over them, and Kirtell running, soft and sweet, hushed in its scanty summer whisper at their feet; all objects familiar, and well-known to them—and yet it was another world. As for Mr. Browning’s poems about the unlived life, and the hearts all shrivelled up for want of a word at the right moment, Winnie most probably would have laughed with youthful disdain had they been suggested to her now. This little world, in which the fallen beech-tree was the throne, and the fairest hopes and imaginations possible to man, crowded about the youthful sovereigns, and paid them obsequious court, was so different from the old world, where Sir Edward at the Hall, and Aunt Agatha in the Cottage, were expecting the young people, that these two, as was not unnatural, forgot all about it, and lingered together, no one interfering with them, or even knowing they were there, for long enough to fill Miss Seton’s tender bosom with wild anxieties and terrors. Winnie had not reached home at the early dinner-hour—a thing which was to Aunt Agatha as if the sun had declined to rise, or the earth (to speak more correctly) refused to perform her proper revolutions. She became so restless, and anxious, and unhappy, that Mary, too, was roused into uneasiness. “It must be only that she is detained somewhere,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “She never would allow herself to be detained,” cried Aunt Agatha, “and oh, Mary, my darling is unhappy. How can I tell what may have happened?” Thus some people made themselves very wretched about her, while Winnie sat in perfect blessedness, uttering and listening to all manner of heavenly nonsense on the trunk of the fallen tree.
Aunt Agatha’s wretchedness, however, dispersed into thin air the moment she saw Winnie come in at the garden-gate, with Captain Percival in close attendance. Then Miss Seton, with natural penetration, saw in an instant what had happened; felt that it was all natural, and wondered why she had not foreseen this inevitable occurrence. “I might have known,” she said to Mary, who was the only member of the party upon whom this wonderful event had no enlivening effect; and then Aunt Agatha recollected herself, and put on her sad face, and faltered an apology. “Oh, my dear love, I know it must behard upon you to see it,” she said, apologizing as it were to the widow for the presence of joy.
“I would be a poor soul indeed, if it was hard upon me to see it,” said Mary. “No, Aunt Agatha, I hope I am not so shabby as that. I have had my day. If I look grave, it is for other reasons. I was not thinking of myself.”
“My love! you were always so unselfish,” said Miss Seton. “Are you really anxious abouthim? See how happy he looks—he cannot be so fond of her as that, and so happy, and yet a deceiver. It is not possible, Mary.”
This was in the afternoon, when they had come out to the lawn with their work, and the two lovers were still together—not staying in one place, as their elders did, but flitting across the line of vision now and then, and, as it were, pervading the atmosphere with a certain flavour of romance and happiness.
“I did not say he was a deceiver—he dared not be a deceiver to Winnie,” said Mrs. Ochterlony; “there may be other sins than that.”
“Oh, Mary, don’t speak as if you thought it would turn out badly,” cried Aunt Agatha, clasping her hands; and she looked into Mrs. Ochterlony’s face as if somehow she had the power by retracting her opinion to prevent things from turning out badly. Mary was not a stoic, nor above the sway of all the influences around her. She could not resist the soft pleading eyes that looked into her face, nor the fascination of her young sister’s happiness. She held her peace, and even did her best to smile upon the spectacle, and to hope in her heart that true love might work magically upon the man who had now, beyond redemption, Winnie’s future in his hands. For her own part, she shrank from him with a vague sense of alarm and danger; and had it been possible to do any good by it, would have felt herself capable of any exertion to cast the intruder out. But it was evident that under present circumstances there was no good to be done. She kept her boys out of his way with an instinctive dread which she could not explain to herself, and shuddered when poor Aunt Agatha, hoping to conciliate all parties, set little Wilfrid for a moment on their visitor’s knee, and with a wistful wile reminded him of the new family relationships Winnie would bring him. Mary took her child away with a shivering sense of peril which was utterly unreasonable. Why had it been Wilfrid of all others who was brought thus into the foreground? Why should it be he who was selected as a symbol of the links of the future? Wilfrid was but an infant, and derived no further impression from his momentary perch upon Captain Percival’s knee, than that ofspecial curiosity touching the beard which was a new kind of ornament to the fatherless baby, and tempting for closer investigation; but his mother took him away, and carried him indoors, and disposed of him carefully in the room which Miss Seton had made into a nursery, with an anxious tremor which was utterly absurd and out of all reason. But though instinct acted upon her to this extent, she made no further attempt to warn Winnie or hinder the course of events which had gone too fast for her. Winnie would not have accepted any warning—she would have scorned the most trustworthy advice, and repulsed even the most just and right interference—and so would Mary have done in Hugh Ochterlony’s case, when she was Winnie’s age. Thus her mouth was shut, and she could say nothing. She watched the two with a pathetic sense of impotence as they went and came, thinking, oh, if she could but make him what Hugh Ochterlony was; and yet the Major had been far, very far from perfect, as the readers of this history are aware. When Captain Percival went away, the ladies were still in the garden; for it was necessary that the young man should go home to the Hall to join Sir Edward at dinner, and tell his story. Winnie, a changed creature, stood at the garden-gate, leaning upon the low wall, and watched him till he was out of sight; and her aunt and her sister looked at her, each with a certain pathos in her face. They were both women of experience in their different ways, and there could not but be something pathetic to them in the sight of the young creature at the height of her happiness, all-confident and fearing no evil. It came as natural to them to think of the shadows thatmust, even under the happiest conditions, come over that first incredible brightness, as it was to her to feel that every harm and fear was over, and that now nothing could touch or injure her more. Winnie turned sharp round when her lover disappeared, and caught Mary’s eye, and its wistful expression, and blazed up at once into momentary indignation, which, however, was softened by the contempt of youth for all judgment other than its own, and by the kindly influence of her great happiness. She turned round upon her sister, sudden and sharp as some winged creature, and set her all at once on her defence.
“You do not like him,” she said, “but you need not say anything, Mary. It does not matter what you say. You had your day, and would not put up with any interference—and I know him a hundred—a thousand times better than you can do; and it is my day now.”
“Yes,” said Mary. “I did not mean to say anything. Ido not like him, and I think I have reason; but Winnie, dear, I would give anything in the world to believe that you know best now.”
“Oh, yes, I know best,” said Winnie, with a soft laugh; “and you will soon find out what mistakes people make who pretend to know—for I am sure he thinks there could be something said, on the other side, about you.”
“About me,” said Mary—and though she did not show it, but stood before her sister like a stately tower firm on its foundation, she was aware of a thrill of nervous trembling that ran through her limbs, and took the strength out of them. “What did he say about me?”
“He seemed to think there was something that might be said,” said Winnie, lightly. “He was afraid of you. He said you knew that he knew all about you; see what foolish ideas people take up! and I said,” Winnie went on, drawing herself up tall and straight by her stately sister’s side, with that superb assumption of dignity which is fair to see at her age, “that there never could be anything about you that he and all the world might not know!”
Mary put out her hand, looking stately and firm as she did so—but in truth it was done half groping, out of a sudden mist that had come up about her. “Thank you, Winnie,” she said, with a smile that had anguish in it; and Winnie with a sudden tender impulse out of her own happiness, feeling for the first time the contrast, looked at Mary’s black dress beside her own light one, and at Mary’s hair as bright as her own, which was put away beneath that cap which she had so often mocked at, and threw her arms round her sister with a sudden thrill of compassion and tenderness unlike anything she had ever felt before.
“Oh, Mary, dear!” she cried, “does it seem heartless to be so happy and yet to know that you——”
“No,” said Mary, steadily—taking the girl, who was as passionate in her repentance as in her rebellion, to her own bosom. “No, Winnie; no, my darling—I am not such a poor soul as that. I have had my day.”
And it was thus that the cloud rolled off, or seemed to roll off, and that even in the midst of that sharp reminder of the pain which life might still have in store for her, the touch of nature came to heal and help. The enemy who knew all about it might have come in bringing with him sickening suggestions of horrible harm and mischief; but anything he could do would be in vain here, where everybody knew more about her still; and to have gained as she thought her little sister’s heart, wasa wonderful solace and consolation. Thus Mary’s faith was revived again at the moment when it was most sorely shaken, and she began to feel, with a grateful sense of peace and security, the comfort of being, as Aunt Agatha said, among her own friends.