And he felt that he had made a good impression when he went back to the Cottage. He seemed to himself to have secured Mrs. Percival’s three hundred a-year, and even Sir Edward’s more problematical gift to the young people; and he occupied the interval in thinking of a silver tea-service which had rather caught his fancy, in a shop window, and which he thought if his negotiations succeeded, he would give to his niece for a wedding present. If they did not succeed it would be a different question—for a young woman who married upon a captain’s pay and a hundred a-year of her own, would have little occasion for a silver tea-service. So Mr. Penrose mused as he returned to the Cottage. Under the best of circumstances it was now evident that there could be nothing to “settle” upon Winnie. The mother and the friends might make up a little income, but as for capital—which after all was what Mr. Penrose prized most—there was none in the wholematter, except that which Winnie had in her face and person, and was going to throw so lamentably away. Mr. Penrose could not but make some reflections on Aunt Agatha’s feminine idiocy and the cruel heedlessness of Sir Edward, as he walked along the rural road. A girl who had so many advantages, whose husband, to be worthy of her, should have had five thousand a-year at the least, and something handsome to “settle”—and yet her natural guardians had suffered her to get engaged to a captain in a marching regiment, with only his pay! No wonder that Mr. Penrose was sad. But he went home with a sense that, painful as the position was,hehad done his duty, at least.
This was how Winnie’s marriage got itself accomplished notwithstanding all opposition. Captain Percival was the second of his mother’s four sons, and consequently the natural heir of her personal fortune if he had not been “foolish,” as she said; and the thought that it might be the saving of him, which was suggested by Sir Edward, was naturally a very moving argument. A beautiful young wife whom he was very fond of, and who was ready to enter with him into all the risks of life,—if that did not keep him right, what would? And after all he was only five-and-twenty, an age at which reformation was quite possible. So his friends thought, persuading themselves with natural sophistry that the influence of love and a self-willed girl of eighteen would do what all other inducements had failed to do; and as forherfriends, they were so elated to see that in the eyes of Uncle Penrose the young man’s faults bore only the most ordinary aspect, and counted for next to nothing, that their misgivings all but disappeared, and their acceptance of the risk was almost enthusiastic. Sometimes indeed a momentary shadow would cross the mind of Aunt Agatha—sometimes a doubt would change Sir Edward’s countenance—but then these two old people were believers in love, and besides had the faculty of believing what they wished to believe, which was a still more important circumstance. And Mary for her part had said her say. The momentary hope she had felt in Winnie’s strength of character, and in her love—a hope which had opened her heart to speak to her sister—found but little to support it after that moment. She could not go on protesting, and making her presence a thorn in the flesh of the excited household; and if she felt throughout all a sense that the gulf was still there, though all these flowers had been strewed over it—a sense of the terrible risk which was so poorly counterbalanced by the vaguest and most doubtful of hopes—still Mary was aware that this might be simplythe fault of her position, which led her to look upon everything with a less hopeful eye. She was the spectator, and she saw what was going on as the actors themselves could not be expected to see it. She saw Winnie’s delight at the idea of freedom from all restraint—and she saw Percival’s suppressed impatience of the anxious counsels addressed to him, and the look which Winnie and he exchanged on such occasions, as if assuring each other that in spite of all this they would take their own way. And then Mrs. Ochterlony’s own relations with the bridegroom were not of a comfortable kind. He knew apparently by instinct that she was not his friend, and he approached her with a solemn politeness under which Mary, perhaps over-sensitive on that point, felt that a secret sneer was concealed. And he made references to her Indian experiences, with a certain subtle implication of something in them which he knew and nobody else did—something which would be to Mrs. Ochterlony’s injury should it be known—which awoke in Mary an irritation and exasperation which nothing else could have produced. She avoided him as much as it was possible to avoid him during the busy interval before the marriage, and he perceived it and thought it was fear, and the sneer that lay under his courtesy became more and more evident. He took to petting little Wilfrid with an evident consciousness of Mary’s vexation and the painful effect it produced upon her; not Hugh nor Islay, who were of an age to be a man’s plaything, but the baby, who was too young for any but a woman’s interest; and Captain Percival was not the kind of man who is naturally fond of children. When she saw her little boy on her future brother-in-law’s knee, Mary felt her heart contract with an involuntary shiver, of which she could have given no clear explanation. She did not know what she was afraid of, but she was afraid.
Perhaps it was a relief to them all when the marriage day arrived—which had to be shortly, for the regiment was ordered to Malta, and Captain Percival had already had all the leave he could ask for. Mr. Penrose’s exertions had been crowned with such success that when he came to Winnie’s wedding he brought her the silver tea-service which in his heart he had decided conditionally to give her as a marriage gift. Mrs. Percival had decided to settle two hundred and fifty pounds a-year upon her son, which was very near Mr. Penrose’s mark; and Sir Edward, after long pondering upon the subject, and a half-amused, half-serious, consideration of Winnie’s capital which was being thrown away, had made up his mind to a still greater effort. He gave the young man in present possessionwhat he had left him in his will, which was a sum of five thousand pounds—a little fortune to the young soldier. “You might have been my son, my boy, if your mother and I could have made up our minds,” the old baronet said, with a momentary weakness; though if anybody else had suggested such an idea no doubt Sir Edward would have said, “Heaven forbid!” And Mr. Penrose pounced upon it and had it settled upon Winnie, and was happy, though the bridegroom resisted a little. After that there could be no doubt about the tea-service. “If you should ever be placed in Mary’s position you will have something to fall back upon,” Uncle Penrose said; “or even if you should not get on together, you know.” It was not a large sum, but the difficulty there had been about getting it, and the pleasant sense that it was wholly owing to his own exertions, made it sweet to the man of capital, and he gave his niece his blessing and the tea-service with a full heart.
As for Winnie, she was radiant in her glow of beauty and happiness on that momentous day. A thunder-shower of sudden tears when she signed the register, and another when she was taking leave of Aunt Agatha, was all that occurred to overcloud her brightness; and even these did not overcloud her, but were in harmony—hot, violent, and sudden as they were—with the passionate happiness and emancipation of the married girl. She kissed over and over again her tender guardian—who for her part sat speechless and desolate to see her child go away, weeping with a silent anguish which could not find any words—and dropped that sudden shower over Aunt Agatha’s gown; but a moment after threw back the veil which had fallen over her face, and looked back from the carriage window upon them in a flush of joy, and pride, and conscious freedom, which, had no other sentiments been called for at the moment, it would have done one’s heart good to see. She was so happy that she could not cry, nor be sentimental, nor think of broken links, as she said—and why should she pretend to be sad about parting? Which was very true, no doubt, from Winnie’s point of view. And there was not the vestige of a cloud about when she waved her hand to them for the last time as she drove away. She was going away to the world and life, to see everything and enjoy everything, and have her day. Why should she not show her delight? While poor old Aunt Agatha, whose day was so long over, fell back into Mary’s arms, who was standing beside her, and felt that now at last and finally, her heart was broken, and the joy of her life gone. Was it not simply the course of nature and the way of the world?
THERE followed after this a time of such tranquillity as never yet entered into Mrs. Ochterlony’s life. Mary had known joy, and she had known sorrow, as people do to whom life comes with full hands, giving and taking; but it had always been life, busy and personal, which left her little leisure for anything beyond the quickly recurring duties of the hour and the day. She had had no time to watch the current how it flowed, being as it were part of it, and going along with it in its ceaseless course. But now all this was changed. After Winnie’s marriage a sudden tranquillity fell upon the ladies in the Cottage. Life had gone on and left them; they were no longer going with the tide, but standing by upon the bank watching it. They were not unhappy, nor was their existence sad,—for the three boys were world enough to satisfy the two women and keep them occupied and cheerful; and when the children were asleep, Aunt Agatha and her niece were, as people say, company for each other, and talked over their work as they sat by the evening lamp, or in the twilight garden, which was always so green and so sweet,—and were content, or more than content; but still sometimes Mrs. Ochterlony would bethink herself, and it would seem as a dream to her that she, too, had once taken her part with the others and gone with the stream, and suffered cruel sufferings and tasted sudden joys, and been Hugh Ochterlony’s wife. Was it so? Or had she never been but with Aunt Agatha by the little river that ran steadily one day like another under the self-same trees? This strange sense of unreality in the past turned her giddy by times, and made her head swim and the world to go round and round; but, to be sure, she never spoke of these sensations, and life continued, and the boys grew, and everything went very well at Kirtell-side.
Everything went so well that Aunt Agatha many a day pitied the poor people who were out in the world, or the young men who set out from the parish to begin their career, and would say, “Oh, if they but knew how much better everybody is at home!” Mary was younger, and perhaps she was not quite of the same mind; but still it was peace that had fallen upon her and was wrapping her all round like a garment. There was the same quiet routine every day; the same things to do, the same places to walk to, the same faces to see. Nothing unforeseen ever arrived to break the calm. When Hugh was old enough to begin serious lessons, a curate turned up in the course of nature who took pupils, and to whom Islay, too went by-and-by, and even little Wilfrid, who was always delicate. The boys went to him with shining morning faces, and came back growing louder and stronger, and, as Peggy said, more “stirring” every day. And Sir Edward made his almost daily visit, and let a thin and gentle echo of the out-of-door din into the Cottage quiet. He told them in his mild way what was going on, and talked about the news in the papers, and about the books reviewed, and about the occasional heavenly visitant in the shape of a new publication that found its way to Kirtell-side. There were few magazines then, and no cheap ones, and a singleBlackwooddid for a good many families. Sir Edward himself, who had been always considered intellectual, took in theEdinburghall for himself, and lent it to his neighbours; but then it could not be expected that many people in a district could be so magnificent as that. When the Curate, on the other hand, came to tea (he was not the sort of man, as Aunt Agatha said, that one would think of making a dinner for), it was all about the parish that he talked; and as Mrs. Ochterlony was a perverse woman in her way, and had her own ideas about her poor neighbours, such conversation was not so interesting to her as it might have been. But it was in this sort of way that she spent the next ten or twelve years of her life.
As for Winnie, she was having her day, as she had said, and was, it is to be supposed, enjoying it. She wrote letters regularly and diligently, which is one point in which a woman, however little elevated she may be above her masculine companion in other respects, always has the better of him. And she possessed a true feminine gift which ought also to be put in the compensating scale against those female drawbacks which are so often insisted upon. Sometimes she was ill-tempered, sometimes bitter in her letters, for the honeymoon happiness naturally did not last for ever; but, whatever mood Winnie might be in, she always threw an unconscious halo of interest around herself when she wrote. It was, as everybody might see, an instinctive and unpremeditated act, but it was successful to the highest extent. Whether she described her triumphs or her disappointments, her husband’s kindness or his carelessness, their extravagant living or their want of money, Winnie herself, in the foreground of the picture, was always charmingly, and sometimes touchingly, posed. A word or two did it, and it was done to perfection; and the course of her historythus traced was followed by Aunt Agatha with unfailing enthusiasm. She herself went through it all in the person of her favourite, and Mary connected herself with a vague but still fairer future in the persons of her boys. And thus the peaceful existence went on day by day, with nothing more serious to trouble it than a transitory childish ailment, or a passing rumour that the Percivals were “going too fast,” or did not “get on,”—clouds which only floated mistily and momentarily about the horizon, and never came down to trouble the quiet waters. It was a time which left no record, and which by times felt languid and lingering to the younger woman, who was still too young to be altogether satisfied with so dead a calm in the middle of her existence; but still, perhaps, it was, on the whole, the happiest time of Mary’s life.
This halcyon time lasted until the boys were so far grown up as to bring the disturbing plans and speculations of their beginning life into the household calm. It lasted until Islay was sixteen and ready to pass his examination for Woolwich, the long-headed boy having fixed his affections upon scientific soldiership in a way which was slightly disappointing to his mother, who, as was natural, had thought him capable of a more learned profession. It roused the Cottage into something like a new stage of existence to think of and prepare for the entry of its nursling into that great vague unseen sphere which Aunt Agatha called the world. But, after all, it was not Islay who was the troublesome member of the family. He had fixed his thoughts upon his chosen profession almost as soon as he knew what was meant by his father’s sword, which had hung in Mrs. Ochterlony’s room from his earliest recollection; and though there might be a little anxiety about how he would succeed at his examination, and how he would get on when he left home, still Islay was so steady that no one felt any alarm or absolute disquiet about him.
But it was rather different with Hugh. Hugh was supposed to be his uncle’s heir, and received as such wherever he went, with perhaps more enthusiasm than might have fallen to his share merely as Mary’s son. He was heir presumptive, recognised to a certain extent at Earlston itself as elsewhere in that capacity; and yet Mr. Ochterlony had not, so far as anybody was aware, made any distinct decision, and might still alter his mind, and, indeed, was not too old to marry and have heirs of his own, which was a view of the subject chiefly taken by Aunt Agatha. And, to aggravate the position, Hugh was far from being a boy of fixed resolutions, like his brother. He was one of the troublesome people, who have no particular bias. Heliked everything that was pleasant. He was not idle, nor had he any evil tendencies; he was fond of literature in a way, and at the same time fond of shooting and hunting, and all the occupations and amusements of a country life. Public opinion in the country-side proclaimed him one of the nicest young fellows going; and if he had been Francis Ochterlony’s son, and indisputably the heir of Earlston, Hugh would have been as satisfactory a specimen of a budding country gentleman as could have been found. But the crook in his lot was, that he was the heir presumptive, and at the same time was generous and proud and high-spirited, and not the kind of nature which could lie in wait for another man’s place, or build his fortunes upon another man’s generosity. His own opinion, no doubt, was that he had a right to Earlston; but he was far too great a Quixote, too highly fantastical in youthful pride and independence, to permit any one to say that it was his uncle’s duty to provide for him. And withal, he did not himself know what manner of life to take up, or what to do. He would have made a good soldier, or a good farmer, different though the two things are; and would have filled, as well as most people, almost any other practical position which Providence or circumstances had set clearly before him. But no intuitive perception of what he was most fit for was in him to enlighten his way; and at the same time he began to be highly impatient, being eighteen, and a man as he thought, of waiting and doing nothing, and living at home.
“If we could but have sent him to Oxford,” Aunt Agatha said; “if I had the means!”—but it is very doubtful whether she ever could have had the means; and of late Aunt Agatha too had been disturbed in her quiet. Her letters to Winnie had begun to convey enclosures of which she did not speak much, even to Mrs. Ochterlony, but which were dead against any such possibility for Hugh.
“If I had been brought up at school where I might have got a scholarship, or something,” said Hugh; “but I don’t know why I should want to go to Oxford. We must send Will if we can, mother; he has the brains for it. Oxford is too grand an idea for me——”
“Not if you are to have Earlston, Hugh,” said his mother.
“I wish Earlston was at the bottom of the sea,” cried the poor boy; “but for Earlston, one would have known what one was good for. I wish my uncle would make up his mind and found a hospital with it, or marry, as Aunt Agatha says——”
“He will never marry,” said Mary; “he was a great deal older than your father; he is quite an old man.”
“Indeed, Mary, he is not old at all, for a man,” said Aunt Agatha, with eagerness. “Ladies are so different. He might get a very nice wife yet, and children, for anything any one could tell. Not too young, you know—I think it would be a great pity if he were to marry anybody too young; but a nice person, of perhaps forty or so,” said Aunt Agatha; and she rounded off her sentence with a soft little sigh.
“He will never marry, I am sure,” said Mary, almost with indignation; for, not to speak of the injustice to Hugh, it sounded like an imputation upon her brother-in-law, who was sober-minded, and not thinking of anything so foolish; not to say that his heart was with his marble Venus, and he was indifferent to any other love.
“Well, if you think so, my dear——” said Miss Seton; and a faint colour rose upon her soft old cheek. She thought Mary’s meaning was, that after his behaviour to herself, which was not exactly what people expected, he was not likely to entertain another affection; which was probably as true as any other theory of Mr. Ochterlony’s conduct. Aunt Agatha thought this was Mary’s meaning, and it pleased her. It was an old story, but still she remembered it so well, that it was pleasant to thinkhehad not forgotten. But this, to be sure, had very little to do with Hugh.
“I wish he would marry,” said his heir presumptive, “or put one out of pain one way or another. Things can’t go on for ever like this. Islay is only sixteen, and he is starting already; and here am I eighteen past, and good for nothing. You would not like me to be a useless wretch all my life?” said Hugh, severely, turning round upon his mother, who was not prepared for such an address; but Hugh, of all the boys, was the one most like his father, and had the Major’s “way.”
“No,” cried Mary, a little alarmed, “anything but that. I still think you might wait a little, and see what your uncle means. You are not so very old. Well, my dear boy! don’t be impatient; tell me what you wish to do.”
But this was exactly what Hugh could not tell. “If there had been no Earlston in the question, one would have known,” he said. “It is very hard upon a fellow to be another man’s nephew. I think the best thing I could do would be to ignore Earlston altogether, and go in for—anything I could make my own living by. There’s Islay has had the first chance——”
“My dear, one is surely enough in a family to be a soldier,” said Aunt Agatha, “if you would consider your poor mamma’s feelings and mine; but I never thought, for my part, thatthatwas the thing for Islay, with his long head. He had alwayssuch a very peculiar head. When he was a child, you know, Mary, we never could get a child’s hat to fit him. Now, I think, if Hugh had gone into a very nice regiment, and Islay had studied for something——”
“Do you think he will have no study to do, going in for the Engineers?” said Hugh, indignantly. “I am not envious of Islay. I know he is the best fellow among us; but, at the same time—— The thing for me would be to go to Australia or New Zealand, where one does not need to be good for anything in particular. That is my case,” said the disconsolate youth; and out of the depths, if not of his soul, at least of his capacious chest, there came a profound, almost despairing sigh.
“Oh, Hugh, my darling boy! you cannot mean to break all our hearts,” cried Aunt Agatha.
It was just what poor Hugh meant to do, for the moment, at least; and he sat with his head down and despair in his face, with a look which went to Mary’s heart, and brought the tears to her eyes, but a smile to her lips. He was so like his father; and Mrs. Ochterlony knew that he would not, in this way, at least, break her heart.
“Would you like to go to Uncle Penrose?” she said; to which Hugh replied with a vehement shake of his head. “Would you like to go into Mr. Allonby’s office? You know he spoke of wanting an articled pupil. Would you think of that proposal Mr. Mortare, the architect, made us?—don’t shake your head off, Hugh; or ask Sir Edward to let you help old Sanders—or—or—— Would youreallylike to be a soldier, like your brother?” said Mary, at her wits’ end; for after this, with their limited opportunities, there seemed no further suggestion to make.
“I must do something, mother,” said Hugh, and he rose up with another sigh; “but I don’t want to vex you,” he added, coming up and putting his arms round her with that admiring fondness which is perhaps sweeter to a woman from her son than even from her lover; and then, his mind being relieved, he had no objection to change the conversation. “I promised to look at the young colts, and tell Sir Edward what I thought of them,” he suddenly said, looking up at Mary with a cloudy, doubtful look—afraid of being laughed at, and yet himself ready to laugh—such as is not unusual upon a boy’s face. Mrs. Ochterlony did not feel in the least inclined for laughter, though she smiled upon her boy; and when he went away, a look of anxiety came to her face, though it was not anything like the tragical anxiety which contracted Aunt Agatha’s gentle countenance. She took up her work again, which wasmore than Miss Seton could do. The boys were no longer children, and life was coming back to her with their growing years. Life which is not peace, but more like a sword.
“My dear love, something must be done,” said Aunt Agatha. “Australia or New Zealand, and for a boy of his expectations! Mary, something must be done.”
“Yes,” said Mary. “I must go and consult my brother-in-law about it, and see what he thinks best. But as for New Zealand or Australia, Aunt Agatha——”
“Do you think it will benice, Mary?” said Miss Seton, with a soft blush like a girl’s. “It will be like asking him, you know, what he means; it will be like saying he ought to provide——”
“He said Hugh was to be his heir,” said Mary, “and I believe he meant what he said; at all events, it would be wrong to do anything without consulting him, for he has always been very kind.”
These words threw Aunt Agatha into a flutter which she could not conceal. “It may be very well to consult him,” she said; “but rather than let him think we are asking his help—— And then, how can you see him, Mary? I am afraid it would be—awkward, to say the least, to ask him here——”
“I will go to Earlston to-morrow,” said Mary. “I made up my mind while Hugh was talking. After Islay has gone, it will be worse for poor Hugh. Will is so much younger, poor boy.”
“Will,” said Aunt Agatha, sighing, “Oh, Mary, if they had only been girls! we could have brought them up without any assistance, and no bother about professions or things. When you have settled Hugh and Islay, there will be Will to open it up again; and they will all leave us, after all. Oh, Mary, my dear love, if they had been but girls!”
“Yes, but they are not girls,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a half smile; and then she too sighed. She was glad her boys were boys, and had more confidence in them, and Providence and life, than Aunt Agatha had. But she was not glad to think that her boys must leave her, and that she had no daughter to share her household life. The cloud which sat on Aunt Agatha’s careful brow came over her, too for the moment, and dimmed her eyes, and made her heart ache. “They came into the world for God’s uses and not for ours,” she said, recovering herself, “and though they are boys, we must not keep them unhappy. I will go over to Earlston to-morrow by the early train.”
“If you think it right,” said Miss Seton: but it was not cordially spoken. Aunt Agatha was very proud and sensitive in her way. She was the kind of woman to get into misunderstandings, and shun explanations, as much as if she had been a woman in a novel. She was as ready to take up a mistaken idea, and as determined not to see her mistake, as if she had been a heroine forced thereto by the exigencies of three volumes. Miss Seton had never come to the third volume herself; she thought it more dignified for her own part to remain in the complications and perplexities of the second; and it struck her that it was indelicate of Mary thus to open the subject, and lead Francis Ochterlony on, as it were, to declare his mind.
The question was quite a different one so far as Mary was concerned, to whom Francis Ochterlony had never stood in the position of a lover, nor was the subject of any delicate difficulties. With her it was a straightforward piece of business enough to consult her brother-in-law, who was the natural guardian of her sons, and who had always been well disposed towards them, especially while they kept at a safe distance. Islay was the only one who had done any practical harm at Earlston, and Mr. Ochterlony had forgiven, and, it is to be hoped, forgotten the downfall of the rococo chair. If she had had nothing more important to trouble her than a consultation so innocent! Though, to tell the truth, Mary did not feel that she had a great deal to trouble her, even with the uncertainty of Hugh’s future upon her hands. Even if his uncle were to contemplate anything so absurd as marriage or the founding of a hospital, Hugh could still make his own way in the world, as his brothers would have to do, and as his father had done before him. And Mrs. Ochterlony was not even overwhelmed by consideration of the very different characters of the boys, nor of the immense responsibility, nor of any of the awful thoughts with which widow-mothers are supposed to be overwhelmed. They were all well, God bless them; all honest and true, healthful and affectionate. Hugh had his crotchets and fidgety ways, but so had his father, and perhaps Mary loved her boy the better for them; and Wilfrid was a strange boy, but then he had always been strange, and it came natural to him. No doubt there might be undeveloped depths in both, of which their mother as yet knew nothing; but in the meantime Mary, like other mothers, took things as she saw them, and was proud of her sons, and had no disturbing fears. As for Islay, he was steady as a rock, and almost as strong, and did the heart good to behold, and even the weakest woman might have taken heart totrust him, whatever might be the temptations and terrors of “the world.” Mary had that composure which belongs to the better side of experience, as much as suspicion and distrust belong to its darker side. The world did not alarm her as it did Aunt Agatha; neither did Mr. Ochterlony alarm her, whose sentiments ought at least to be known by this time, and whose counsel she sought with no artful intention of drawing him out, but with an honest desire to have the matter settled one way or another. This was how the interval of calm passed away, and the new generation brought back a new and fuller life.
It was not all pleasure with which Mary rose next morning to go upon her mission to Earlston; but it was with a feeling of resurrection, a sense that she lay no longer ashore, but that the tide was once more creeping about her stranded boat, and the wind wooing the idle sail. There might be storms awaiting her upon the sea; storm and shipwreck and loss of all things lay in the future; possible for her boys as for others, certain for some; but that pricking, tingling thrill of danger and pain gave a certain vitality to the stir of life renewed. Peace is sweet, and there are times when the soul sighs for it; but life is sweeter. And this is how Mary, in her mother’s anxiety,—with all the possibilities of fate to affright her, if they could, yet not without a novel sense of exhilaration, her heart beating more strongly, her pulse fuller, her eye brighter,—went forth to open the door for her boy into his own personal and individual career.
IT was a cheerful summer morning when Mary set out on her visit to her brother-in-law. She had said nothing to her boys about it, for Hugh was fantastical, like Aunt Agatha, and would have denounced her intention as an expedient to make his uncle provide for him. Hugh had gone out to attend to some of the many little businesses he had in hand for Sir Edward; and Islay was working in his own room preparing for the “coach,” to whom he was going in a few days; and Wilfrid, or Will, as everybody called him, was with his curate-tutor. The Cottage held its placid place upon the high bank of Kirtell, shining through its trees in a purple cloud of roses, and listening in the sun to that everlasting quiet voice that sung in its ear, summer and winter,the little river’s changeful yet changeless song. It looked like a place to which no changes could ever come; calm people in the stillness of age, souls at rest, little children, were the kind of people to live in it; and the stir and quickening of pleasurable pain which Mary felt in her own veins,—the sense of new life and movement about her,—felt out of place with the quiet house. Aunt Agatha was out of sight, ordering her household affairs; and the drawing-room was silent and deserted as a fairy palace, full of a thousand signs of a habitation, but without a single tenant audible or visible, except the roses that clambered about the open windows, and the bee that went in and made a confused investigation, and came out again none the wiser. An odd sense of the contrast struck Mrs. Ochterlony; but a little while before, her soul had been in unison with the calm of the place, and she had thought nothing of it; now she had woke up out of that fair chamber turned to the sunrising, the name which is Peace, and had stepped back into life, and felt the tingle and thrill of resurrection. And an unconscious smile came on her face as she looked back. To think that out of that silence and sunshine should pour out such a tide of new strength and vigour—and that henceforth hearts should leap with eagerness and wistfulness under that roof, and perhaps grow wild with joy, or perhaps, God knows, break with anguish, as news came good or evil! She had been but half alive so long, that the sense of living was sweet.
It was a moment to call forth many thoughts and recollections, but the fact was that she did not have time to entertain them. There happened to her one of those curious coincidences which occur so often, and which it is so difficult to account for. Long before she reached the little station, a tall figure broke the long vacant line of the dusty country road, a figure which Mary felt at once to be that of a stranger, and yet one she seemed to recognise. She could not believe her eyes, nor think it was anything but the association of ideas which misled her, and laughed at her own fantastic imagination as she went on. But nevertheless it is true that it was her brother-in-law himself who met her, long before she reached the railway by which she had meant to go to him. Her appearance struck him too, it was evident, with a little surprise; but yet she was at home, and might have been going anywhere; whereas the strange fact of his coming required a more elaborate explanation than he had in his power to give.
“I do not know exactly what put it into my head,” said Mr. Ochterlony; “perhaps some old work of mine which turned up the other day, and which I was doing when you were withme. I thought I would come over and have a talk with you about your boy.”
“It is very strange,” said Mary, “for this very morning I had made up my mind to come to you, and consult you. It must be some kind of magnetism, I suppose.”
“Indeed, I can’t say; I have never studied the natural sciences,” said Mr. Ochterlony, with gravity. “I have had a very distinguished visitor lately: a man whose powers are as much above the common mind as his information is—Dr. Franklin, whose name of course you have heard—a man of European reputation.”
“Yes,” said Mary, doubtfully, feeling very guilty and ignorant, for to tell the truth she had never heard of Dr. Franklin; but her brother-in-law perceived her ignorance, and explained in a kind of compassionate way:
“He is about the greatest numismatist we have in England,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “and somehow my little monograph upon primitive art in Iceland came to be talked of. I have never completed it, though Franklin expressed himself much interested—and I think that’s how it was suggested to my mind to come and see you to-day.”
“I am very glad,” said Mary, “I wanted so much to have your advice. Hugh is almost a man now——”
“A man!” said Mr. Ochterlony, with a smile; “I don’t see how that is possible. I hope he is not so unruly as he used to be; but you are as young as ever, and I don’t see how your children can be men.”
And oddly enough, just at that moment, Hugh himself made his appearance, making his way by a cross road down to the river, with his basket over his shoulder, and his fishing-rod. He was taller than his uncle, though Mr. Ochterlony was tall; and big besides, with large, mighty, not perfectly developed limbs, swinging a little loosely upon their hinges like the limbs of a young Newfoundland or baby lion. His face was still smooth as a girl’s, and fair, with downy cheeks and his mother’s eyes, and that pucker in his forehead which Francis Ochterlony had known of old in the countenance of another Hugh. Mary did not say anything, but she stopped short before her boy, and put her hand on his shoulder, and looked at his uncle with a smile, appealing to him with her proud eyes and beaming face, if this was not almost a man. As for Mr. Ochterlony, he gave a great start and said, “God bless us!” under his breath, and was otherwise speechless for the moment. He had been thinking of a boy, grown no doubt, but still within the limits of childhood; and lo, it was an unknown human creature that faced him,with a will and thoughts of his own, like its father and mother, and yet like nobody but itself. Hugh, for his part, looked with very curious eyes at the stranger, and dimly recognised him, and grew shamefaced and a little fidgety, as was natural to the boy.
“You see how he has grown,” said Mary, who, being the triumphant one among the three, was the first to recover herself. “You do not think him a child now? It is your uncle, Hugh, come to see us. It is very kind of him—but of course you knew who he was.”
“I am very glad to see my uncle,” said Hugh, with eager shyness. “Yes, I knew. You are like my father’s picture, sir;—and your own that we have at the Cottage—and Islay a little. I knew it was you.”
And then they all walked on in silence; for Mr. Ochterlony was more moved by this sudden encounter than he cared to acknowledge; and Mary, too, for the moment, being a sympathetic woman, saw her boy with his uncle’s eyes, and saw what the recollections were that sprang up at sight of him. She told Hugh to go on and do his duty, and send home some trout for dinner; and, thus dismissing him, guided her unlooked-for visitor to the Cottage. He knew the way as well as she did, which increased the embarrassment of the situation. Mary saw only the stiles and the fields, and the trees that over-topped the hedges, familiar objects that met her eyes every day; but Francis Ochterlony saw many a past day and past imagination of his own life, and seemed to walk over his own ashes as he went on. And that was Hugh!—Hugh, not his brother, but his nephew and heir, the representative of the Ochterlony’s, occupying the position which his own son should have occupied. Mr. Ochterlony had not calculated on the progress of time, and he was startled and even touched, and felt wonderingly—what it is so difficult for a man to feel—that his own course was of no importance to anybody, and that here was his successor. The thought made him giddy, just as Mary’s wondering sense of the unreality of her own independent life, and everlastingness of her stay at the Cottage, had made her; but yet in a different way. For perhaps Francis Ochterlony had never actually realized before that most things were over for him, and that his heir stood ready and waiting for the end of his life.
There was still something of this sense of giddiness in his mind when he followed Mary through the open window into the silent drawing-room where nobody was. Perhaps he had not behaved just as he ought to have done to Agatha Seton;and the recollection of a great many things that had happened, came back upon him as he wound his way with some confusion through the roses. He was half ashamed to go in, like a familiar friend, through the window. Of all men in the world, he had the least right to such a privilege of intimacy. He ought to have gone to the door in a formal way and sent in his card, and been admitted only if Miss Seton pleased; and yet here he was, in the very sanctuary of her life, invited to sit down as it were by her side, led in by the younger generation, which could not but smile at the thought of any sort of sentiment between the old woman and the old man. For indeed Mary, though she was not young, was smiling softly within herself at the idea. She had no sort of sympathy with Mr. Ochterlony’s delicate embarrassment, though she was woman enough to hurry away to seek her aunt and prepare her for the meeting, and shield the ancient maiden in the first flutter of her feelings. Thus the master of Earlston was left alone in the Cottage, with leisure to look round and recognise the identity of the place, and see all its differences, and become aware of its pleasant air of habitation, and all the signs of daily use and wont which had no existence in his own house. All this confused him, and put him at a great disadvantage. The probabilities were that Agatha Seton would not have been a bit the happier had she been mistress of Earlston. Indeed the Cottage had so taken her stamp that it was impossible for anybody, whose acquaintance with her was less than thirty years old, to imagine her with any other surroundings. But Francis Ochterlony had known her for more than thirty years, and naturally he felt that he himself was a possession worth a woman’s while, and that he had, so to speak, defrauded her of so important a piece of property; and he was penitent and ashamed of himself. Perhaps too his own heart was moved a little by the sense of something lost. His own house might have borne this sunny air of home; instead of his brother Hugh’s son, there might have been a boy of his own to inherit Earlston; and looking back at it quietly in this cottage drawing-room, Francis Ochterlony’s life seemed to him something very like a mistake. He was not a hard-hearted man, and the inference he drew from this conclusion was very much in his nephew’s favour. Hugh’s boy was almost a man, and there was no doubt that he was the natural heir, and that it was to him everything ought to come. Instead of thinking of marrying, as Aunt Agatha imagined, or founding a hospital, or making any other ridiculous use of his money, his mind, in its softened and compunctious state, turned to its natural andobvious duty. “Let there be no mistake, at least, about the boy,” he said to himself. “Let him have all that is good for him, and all that best fit him for his position;” for, Heaven be praised, there was at least no doubt about Hugh, or question as to his being the lawful and inevitable heir.
It was this process of reasoning, or rather of feeling, that made Mrs. Ochterlony so entirely satisfied with her brother-in-law when she returned (still alone, for Miss Seton was not equal to the exertion all at once, and naturally there was something extra to be ordered for dinner), and began to talk to their uncle about the children.
“There has been no difficulty about Islay,” she said: “he always knew what he wanted, and set his heart at once on his profession; but Hugh had no such decided turn. It was very kind what you said when you wrote—but I—don’t think it is good for the boy to be idle. Whatever you might think it right to arrange afterwards, I think he should have something to do——”
“I did not think he had been so old,” said Mr. Ochterlony, almost apologetically. “Time does not leave much mark of its progress at Earlston. Something to do? I thought what a young fellow of his age enjoyed most was amusing himself. What would he like to do?”
“He does not know,” said Mary, a little abashed; “that is why I wanted so much to consult you. I suppose people have talked to him of—of what you might do for him; but he cannot bear the thought of hanging, as it were, on your charity——”
“Charity!” said Mr. Ochterlony, “it is not charity, it is right and nature. I hope he is not one of those touchy sort of boys that think kindness an injury. My poor brother Hugh was always fidgety——”
“Oh no, it is not that,” said the anxious mother, “only he is afraid that you might think he was calculating upon you; as if you were obliged to provide for him——”
“And so I am obliged to provide for him,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “as much as I should be obliged to provide for my own son, if I had one. We must find him something to do. Perhaps I ought to have thought of it sooner. What has been done about his education? What school has he been at? Is he fit for the University? Earlston will be a better property in his days than it was when I was young,” added the uncle with a natural sigh. If he had but provided himself with an heir of his own, perhaps it would have been less troublesome on the whole. “I would send him to Oxford, which would bethe best way of employing him; but is he fit for it? Where has he been to school?”
Upon which Mary, with some confusion, murmured something about the curate, and felt for the first time as if she had been indifferent to the education of her boy.
“The curate!” said Mr. Ochterlony; and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders, as if that was a very poor security for Hugh’s scholarship.
“He has done very well with all his pupils,” said Mary, “and Mr. Cramer, to whom Islay is going, was very much satisfied——”
“I forgot where Islay was going?” said Mr. Ochterlony, inquiringly.
“Mr. Cramer lives near Kendal,” said Mary; “he was very highly recommended; and we thought the boy could come home for Sunday——”
Mr. Ochterlony shook his head, though still in a patronizing and friendly way. “I am not sure that it is good to choose a tutor because the boy can come home on Sunday,” he said, “nor send them to the curate that you may keep them with yourself. I know it is the way with ladies; but it would have been better, I think, to have sent them to school.”
Mrs. Ochterlony was confounded by this verdict against her. All at once her eyes seemed to be opened, and she saw herself a selfish mother keeping her boys at her own apron-strings. She had not time to think of such poor arguments in her favour as want of means, or her own perfectly good intentions. She was silent, struck dumb by this unthought-of condemnation; but just then a champion she had not thought of appeared in her defence.
“Mr. Small did very well for Hugh,” said a voice at the window; “he is a very good tutor so far as he goes. He did very well for Hugh—and Islay too,” said the new-comer, who came in at the window as he spoke with a bundle of books under his arm. The interruption was so unexpected that Mr. Ochterlony, being quite unused to the easy entrance of strangers at the window, and into the conversation, started up alarmed and a little angry. But, after all, there was nothing to be angry about.
“It is only Will,” said Mary. “Wilfrid, it is your uncle, whom you have not seen for so long. This was my baby,” she added, turning to her brother-in-law, with an anxious smile—for Wilfrid was a boy who puzzled strangers, and was not by any means so sure to make a good impression as the others were. Mr. Ochterlony shook hands with the new-comer, buthe surveyed him a little doubtfully. He was about thirteen, a long boy, with big wrists and ankles visible, and signs of rapid growth. His face did not speak of country air and fare and outdoor life and healthful occupation like his brother’s, but was pale and full of fancies and notions which he did not reveal to everybody. He came in and put down his books and threw himself into a chair with none of his elder brother’s shamefacedness. Will, for his part, was not given to blushing. He knew nothing of his uncle’s visit, but he took it quietly as a thing of course, and prepared to take part in the conversation, whatever its subject might be.
“Mr. Small has done very well for them all,” said Mary, taking heart again; “he has always done very well with his pupils. Mr. Cramer was very much satisfied with the progress Islay had made; and as for Hugh——”
“He is quite clever enough for Hugh,” said Will, with the same steady voice.
Mr. Ochterlony, though he was generally so grave, was amused. “My young friend, are you sure you are a judge?” he said. “Perhaps he is not clever enough for Wilfrid—is that what you meant to say?”
“It is not so much the being clever,” said the boy. “I think he has taught me as much as he knows, so it is not his fault. I wish we had been sent to school; but Hugh is all right. He knows as much as he wants to know, I suppose; and as for Islay, his is technical,” the young critic added with a certain quiet superiority. Will, poor fellow, was the clever one of the family, and somehow he had found it out.
Mr. Ochterlony looked at this new representative of his race with a little alarm. Perhaps he was thinking that, on the whole, it was as well not to have boys; and then, as much from inability to carry on the conversation as from interest in his own particular subject, he returned to Hugh.
“The best plan, perhaps, will be for Hugh to go back with me to Earlston; that is, if it is not disagreeable to you,” he said, in his old-fashioned, polite way. “I have been too long thinking about it, and his position must be made distinct. Oxford would be the best; that would be good for him in every way. And I think afterwards he might pay a little attention to the estate. I never could have believed that babies grew into boys, and boys to men, so quickly. Why, it can barely be a few years since—— Ah!” Mr. Ochterlony got up very precipitately from his chair. It was Aunt Agatha who had come into the room, with her white hair smoothed under her white cap, and her pretty Shetland shawl over hershoulders. Then he perceived that it was more than a few years since he had last seen her. The difference was more to him than the difference in the boys, who were creatures that sprang up nobody knew how, and were never to be relied upon. That summer morning when she came to Earlston to claim her niece, Miss Seton had been old; but it was a different kind of age from that which sat upon her soft countenance now. Francis Ochterlony had not for many a year asked himself in his seclusion whether he was old or young. His occupations were all tranquil, and he had not felt himself unable for them; but if Agatha Seton was like this, surely then it must indeed be time to think of an heir.
The day passed with a curious speed and yet tardiness, such as is peculiar to days of excitement. When they were not talking of the boys, nobody could tell what to talk about. Once or twice, indeed, Mr. Ochterlony began to speak of the Numismatic Society, or the excavations at Nineveh, or some other cognate subject; but he always came to a standstill when he caught Aunt Agatha’s soft eyes wondering over him. They had not talked about excavations, nor numismatics either, the last time he had been here; and there was no human link between that time and this, except the boys, of whom they could all talk; and to this theme accordingly everybody returned. Hugh came in audibly, leaving his basket at the kitchen door as he passed, and Islay, with his long head and his deep eyes, came down from his room where he was working, and Will kept his seat in the big Indian chair in the corner, where he dangled his long legs, and listened. Everybody felt the importance of the moment, and was dreadfully serious, even when lighter conversation was attempted. To show the boys in their best light, each of the three, and not so to show them as if anybody calculated upon, or was eager about the uncle’s patronage; to give him an idea of their different characters, without any suspicion of “showing off,” which the lads could not have tolerated; all this was very difficult to the two anxious women, and required such an amount of mental effort as made it hard to be anything but serious. Fortunately, the boys themselves were a little excited by the novelty of such a visitor, and curious about their uncle, not knowing what his appearance might mean. Hugh flushed into a singular mixture of exaltation, and suspicion, and surprise, when Mr. Ochterlony invited him to Earlston; and looked at his mother with momentary distrust, to see if by any means she had sought the invitation; and Wilfrid sat and dangled his long legs, and listened, with an odd appreciation of the fact that the visit was to Hugh, and not to himself, or any more important member of the family. As for Islay, he was always a good fellow, and like himself; and his way was clear before him, and admitted of no hopes or fears except as to whether or not he should succeed at his examination, which was a matter about which he had himself no very serious doubts, though he said little about it; and perhaps on the whole it was Islay, who was quite indifferent, whom Mr. Ochterlony would have fixed his choice upon, had he been at liberty to choose.
When the visitor departed, which he did the same evening, the household drew a long breath; everybody was relieved, from Peggy in the kitchen, whose idea was that the man was “looking after our Miss Agatha again,” down to Will, who had now leisure and occasion to express his sentiments on the subject. Islay went back to his work, to make up for the lost day, having only a moderate and temporary interest in his uncle. It was the elder and the younger who alone felt themselves concerned. As for Hugh, the world seemed to have altered in these few hours; Mr. Ochterlony had not said a great deal to him; but what he said had been said as a man speaks who means and has the power to carry out his words; and the vague heirship had become all of a sudden the realest fact in existence, and a thing which could not be, and never could have been, otherwise. And he was slightly giddy, and his head swam with the sudden elevation. But as for Wilfrid, what had he to do with it, any more than any other member of the family? though he was always a strange boy, and there never was any reckoning what he might do or say.
WILL’S room was a small room opening from his mother’s, which would have been her dressing-room had she wanted such a luxury; and when Mrs. Ochterlony went upstairs late that night, after a long talk with Aunt Agatha, she found the light still burning in the little room, and her boy seated, with his jacket and his shoes off, on the floor, in a brown study. He was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin in a patch of moonlight that shone in from the window. The moonlight made him look ghastly, and his candle hadburnt down, and was flickering unsteadily in the socket, and Mary was alarmed. She did not think of any moral cause for the first moment, but only that something was the matter with him, and went in with a sudden maternal panic to see what it was. Will took no immediate notice of her anxious questions, but he condescended to raise his head and prop up his chin with his hands, and stare up into her face.
“Mother,” he said, “you always go on as if a fellow was ill. Can’t one be thinking a little without anything being the matter? I should have put out my light had I known you were coming upstairs.”
“You know, Will, that I cannot have you sit here and think, as you say. It is not thinking—it is brooding, and does you harm,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “Jump up, and go to bed.”
“Presently,” said the boy. “Is it true that Hugh will go to Oxford, mamma?”
“Very likely,” said Mary, with some pride. “Your uncle will see how he has got on with his studies, and after that I think he will go.”
“What for?” said Will. “What is the good? He knows as much as he wants to know, and Mr. Small is quite good enough for him.”
“What for?” said Mary, with displeasure. “For his education, like other gentlemen, and that he may take his right position. But you are too young to understand all that. Get up, and go to bed.”
“I am not too young to understand,” said Wilfrid; “what is the good of throwing money and time away? You may tell my uncle, Hugh will never do any good at Oxford; and I don’t see, for my part, why he should be the one to go.”
“He is the eldest son, and he is your uncle’s heir,” said Mary, with a conscious swelling of her motherly heart.
“I don’t see what difference being the eldest makes,” said Will, embracing his knees. “I have been thinking over it this long time. Why should he be sent to Oxford, and the rest of us stay at home? What does it matter about the eldest? A fellow is not any better than me because he was born before me. You might as well send Peggy to Oxford,” said Will, with vehemence, “as send Hugh.”
Mrs. Ochterlony, whose mind just then was specially occupied by Hugh, was naturally disturbed by this speech. She put out the flickering candle, and set down her own light, and closed the door. “I cannot let you speak so about your brother, Will,” she said. “He may not be so quick as you are for your age, but I wish you were as modest and as kind as Hughis. Why should you grudge his advancement? I used to think you would get the better of this feeling when you ceased to be a child.”
“Of what feeling?” cried Will, lifting his pale face from his knees.
“My dear boy, you ought to know,” said Mary; “this grudge that any one should have a pleasure or an advantage which you have not. A child may be excused, but no man who thinks so continually of himself——”
“I was not thinking of myself,” said Will, springing up from the floor with a flush on his face. “You will always make a moral affair of it, mother. As if one could not discuss a thing. But I know that Hugh is not clever, though he is the eldest. Let him have Earlston if he likes, but why should he have Oxford? And why should it always be supposed that he is better, and a different kind of clay?”
“I wonder where you learned all that, Will,” said Mary, with a smile. “One would think you had picked up some Radical or other. I might be vexed to see Lady Balderston walk out of the room before me, if it was because she pretended to be a better woman; but when it is only because she is Lady Balderston, what does it matter? Hugh can’t help being the eldest: if you had been the eldest——”
“Ah!” said Will, with a long breath; “if I had been the eldest——” And then he stopped short.
“What would you have done?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, smiling still.
“I would have done what Hugh will never do,” cried the boy. “I would have taken care of everybody. I would have found out what they were fit for, and put them in the right way. The one that had brains should have been cultivated—done something else. There should have been no such mistake as—— But that is always how it is in the world—everybody says so,” said Wilfrid; “stupid people who know nothing about it are set at the head, and those who could manage——”
“Will,” said his mother, “do you know you are very presumptuous, and think a great deal too well of yourself? If you were not such a child, I should be angry. It is very well to be clever at your lessons, but that is no proof that you are able to manage, as you say. Let Hugh and his prospects alone for to-night, and go to bed.”
“Yes, I can let him alone,” said Will. “I suppose it is not worth one’s while to mind—he will do no good at Oxford, you know, that is one thing;—whereas other people——”
“Always yourself, Will,” said Mary, with a sigh.
“Myself—or even Islay,” said the boy, in the most composed way; “though Islay is very technical. Still, he could do some good. But Hugh is an out-of-door sort of fellow. He would do for a farmer or gamekeeper, or to go to Australia, as he says. A man should always follow his natural bent. If, instead of going by eldest sons and that sort of rubbish, they were to try for the right man in the right place. And then you might be sure to be done the best for, mother, and that he would take care ofyou.”
“Will, you are very conceited and very unjust,” said Mary; but she was his mother, and she relented as she looked into his weary young face: “but I hope you have your heart in the right place, for all your talk,” she said, kissing him before she went away. She went back to her room disturbed, as she had often been before, but still smiling at Will’s “way.” It was all boyish folly and talk, and he did not mean it; and as he grew older he would learn better. Mary did not care to speculate upon the volcanic elements which, for anything she could tell, might be lying under her very hand. She could not think of different developments of character, and hostile individualities, as people might to whom the three boys were but boys in the abstract, and not Hugh, Islay, and Will—the one as near and dear to her as the other. Mrs. Ochterlony was not philosophical, neither could she follow out to their natural results the tendencies which she could not but see. She preferred to think of it, as Will himself said, as a moral affair—a fault which would mend; and so laid her head on her pillow with a heart uneasy—but no more uneasy than was consistent with the full awakening of anxious yet hopeful life.
As for Will, he was asleep ten minutes after, and had forgotten all about it. His heartwasin its right place, though he was plagued with a very arrogant, troublesome, restless little head, and a greater amount of “notions” than are good for his age. He wanted to be at the helm of affairs, to direct everything—a task for which he felt himself singularly competent; but, after all, it was for the benefit of other people that he wanted to rule. It seemed to him that he could arrange for everybody so much better than they could for themselves; and he would have been liberal to Hugh, though he had a certain contempt for his abilities. He would have given him occupation suited to him, and all the indulgences which he was most fitted to appreciate: and he would have made a kind of beneficent empress of his mother, and put her at the head of all manner of benevolences, as other wise despots have been knownto do. But Will was the youngest, and nobody so much as asked his advice, or took him into consideration; and the poor boy was thus thrown back upon his own superiority, and got to brood upon it, and scorn the weaker expedients with which other people sought to fill up the place which he alone was truly qualified to fill. Fortunately, however, he forgot all this as soon as he had fallen asleep.
Hugh had no such legislative views for his part. He was not given to speculation. He meant to do his duty, and be a credit to everybody belonging to him; but he was a great deal “younger” than his boy-brother, and it did not occur to him to separate himself in idea—even to do them good—from his own people. The future danced and glimmered before him, but it was a brightness without any theory in it—a thing full of spontaneous good-fortune and well-doing, with which his own cleverness had nothing to do. Islay, for his part, thought very little about it. He was pleased for Hugh’s sake, but as he had always looked upon Hugh’s good fortune as a certainty, the fact did not excite him, and he was more interested about a tough problem he was working at, and which his uncle’s visit had interrupted. It was a more agitated household than it had been a few months before—ere the doors of the future had opened suddenly upon the lads; but there was still no agitation under the Cottage roof which was inconsistent with sweet rest and quiet sleep.
It made a dreadful difference in the house, as everybody said, when the two boys went away—Islay to Mr. Cramer’s, the “coach” who was to prepare him for his examination, and Hugh to Earlston. The Cottage had always been quiet, its inhabitants thought, but now it fell into a dead calm, which was stifling and unearthly. Will, the only representative of youth left among them, was graver than Aunt Agatha, and made no gay din, but only noises of an irritating kind. He kicked his legs and feet about, and the legs of all the chairs, and let his books fall, and knocked over the flower-stands—which were all exasperating sounds; but he did not fill the house with snatches of song, with laughter, and the pleasant evidence that a light heart was there. He used to “read” in his own room, with a diligence which was much stimulated by the conviction that Mr. Small was very little ahead of him, and, to keep up his position of instructor, must work hard, too; and, when this was over, he planted himself in a corner of the drawing-room, in the great Indian chair, with a book, beguiling the two ladies into unconsciousness of his presence, and then interposing in their conversation in the most inconvenient way. This was Will’s way of showing his appreciation of his mother’s society. He was not her right hand, like Hugh, nor did he watch over her comfort in Islay’s steady, noiseless way. But he liked to be in the same room with her, to haunt the places where she was, to interfere in what she was doing, and seize the most unfit moments for the expression of his sentiments. With Aunt Agatha he was abrupt and indifferent, being insensible to all conventional delicacies; and he took pleasure, or seemed to take pleasure, in contradicting Mrs. Ochterlony, and going against all her conclusions and arguments; but he paid her the practical compliment of preferring her society, and keeping by her side.
It was while thus left alone, and with the excitement of this first change fresh upon her, that Mrs. Ochterlony heard another piece of news which moved her greatly. It was that the regiment at Carlisle was about to leave, and that it wasOurregiment which was to take its place. She thought she was sorry for the first moment. It was upon one of those quiet afternoons, just after the boys had left the Cottage, when the two ladies were sitting in silence, not talking much, thinking how long it was to post-time, and how strange it was that the welcome steps and voices which used to invade the quiet so abruptly and so sweetly, were now beyond hoping for. And the afternoon seemed to have grown so much longer, now that there was no Hugh to burst in with news from the outer world, no Islay to emerge from his problem. Will sat, as usual, in the great chair, but he was reading, and did not contribute to the cheerfulness of the party. And it was just then that Sir Edward came in, doubly welcome, to talk of the absent lads, and ask for the last intelligence of them, and bring this startling piece of news. Mrs. Ochterlony was aware that the regiment had finished its service in India long ago, and there was, of course, no reason why it should not come to Carlisle, but it was not an idea which had ever occurred to her. She thought she was sorry for the first moment, and the news gave her an unquestionable shock; but, after all, it was not a shock of pain; her heart gave a leap, and kept on beating faster, as with a new stimulus. She could think of nothing else all the evening. Even when the post came, and the letters, and all the wonderful first impressions of the two new beginners in the world, this other thought returned as soon as it was possible for any thought to regain a footing. She began to feel as if the very sight of the uniform would be worth a pilgrimage; and then there would be so many questions to ask, so many curiosities and yearnings to satisfy. She couldnot keep her mind from going out into endless speculations—how many would remain of her old friends?—how many might have dropped out of the ranks, or exchanged, or retired, or been promoted?—how many new marriages there had been, and how many children?—little Emma Askell, for instance, how many babies she might have now? Mary had kept up a desultory correspondence with some of the ladies for a year or two, and even had continued for a long time to get serious letters from Mrs. Kirkman; but these correspondences had dropped off gradually, as is their nature, and the colonel’s wife was not a woman to enlarge on Emma Askell’s babies, having matters much more important on hand.
This new opening of interest moved Mrs. Ochterlony in spite of herself. She forgot all the painful associations, and looked forward to the arrival of the regiment as an old sailor might look for the arrival of a squadron on active service. Did the winds blow and the waves rise as they used to do on those high seas from which they came? Though Mary had been so long becalmed, she remembered all about the conflicts and storms of that existence more vividly than she remembered what had passed yesterday, and she had a strange longing to know whether all that had departed from her own life existed still for her old friends. Between the breaks of the tranquil conversation she felt herself continually relapse into the regimental roll, always beginning again and always losing the thread; recalling the names of the men and of their wives whom she had been kind to once, and feeling as if they belonged to her, and as if something must be brought back to her by their return.
There was, however, little said about it all that evening, much as it was in Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind. When the letters had been discussed, the conversation languished. Summer had begun to wane, and the roses were over, and it began to be impracticable to keep the windows open all the long evening. There was even a fire for the sake of cheerfulness—a little fire which blazed and crackled and made twice as much display as if it had been a serious winter fire and essential to existence—and all the curtains were drawn except over the one window from which Sir Edward’s light was visible. Aunt Agatha had grown more fanciful than ever about that window since Winnie’s marriage. Even in winter the shutters were never closed there until Miss Seton herself went upstairs, and all the long night the friendly star of Sir Edward’s lamp shone faint but steady in the distance. In this way the hall and the cottage kept each other kindly company, and the thoughtpleased the old people, who had been friends all their lives. Aunt Agatha sat by her favourite table, with her own lamp burning softly and responding to Sir Edward’s far-off light, and she never raised her head without seeing it and thinking thoughts in which Sir Edward had but a small share. It was darker than usual on this special night, and there were neither moon nor stars to diminish the importance of the domestic Pharos. Miss Seton looked up, and her eyes lingered upon the blackness of the window and the distant point of illumination, and she sighed as she often did. It was a long time ago, and the boys had grown up in the meantime, and intruded much upon Aunt Agatha’s affections; but still these interlopers had not made her forget the especial child of her love.
“My poor dear Winnie!” said the old lady. “I sometimes almost fancy I can see her coming in by that window. She was fond of seeing Sir Edward’s light. Now that the dear boys are gone, and it is so quiet again, does it not make you think sometimes of your darling sister, Mary? If we could only hear as often from her as we hear from Islay and Hugh——”
“But it is not long since you had a letter,” said Mary, who, to tell the truth, had not been thinking much of her darling sister, and felt guilty when this appeal was made to her.
“Yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh, “and they are always such nice letters; but I am afraid I am very discontented, my dear love. I always want to have something more. I was thinking some of your friends in the regiment could tell you, perhaps, about Edward. I never would say it to you, for I knew that you had things of your own to think about; but for a long time I have been very uneasy in my mind.”
“But Winnie has not complained,” said Mary, looking up unconsciously at Sir Edward’s window, and feeling as if it shone with a certain weird and unconscious light, like a living creature aware of all that was being said.
“She is not a girl ever to complain,” said Aunt Agatha, proudly. “She is more like what I would have been myself, Mary, if I had ever been—in the circumstances, you know. She would break her heart before she would complain. I think there is a good deal of difference, my dear, between your nature and ours; and that was, perhaps, why you never quite understood my sweet Winnie. I am sure you are more reasonable; but you are not—not to call passionate, you know. It is a great deal better,” cried Aunt Agatha, anxiously. “You must not think I do not see that; but Winnie and Iare a couple of fools that would do anything for love; and, rather than complain, I am sure she would die.”
Mary did not say that Winnie had done what was a great deal more than complaining, and had set her husband before them in a very uncomfortable light—and she took the verdict upon herself quietly, as a matter of course. “Mr. Askell used to know him very well,” she said; “perhaps he knows something. But Edward Percival never was very popular, and you must not quarrel with me if I bring you back a disagreeable report. I think I will go into Carlisle as soon as they arrive—I should like to see them all again.”
“I should like to hear the truth whatever it is,” said Aunt Agatha, “but my dear love, seeing them all will be a great trial for you.”
Mary was silent, for she was thinking of other things: not merely of her happy days, and the difference which would make such a meeting “a great trial;” but of the one great vexation and mortification of her life, of which the regiment was aware—and whether the painful memory of it would ever return again to vex her. It had faded out of her recollection in the long peacefulness and quiet of her life. Could it ever return again to shame and wound, as it had once done? From where she was sitting with her work, between the cheerful lamp and the bright little blazing fire, Mary went away in an instant to the scene so distant and different, and was kneeling again by her husband’s side, a woman humbled, yet never before so indignantly, resentfully proud, in the little chapel of the station. Would it ever come back again, that one blot on her life, with all its false, injurious suggestions? She said to herself “No.” No doubt it had died out of other people’s minds as out of her own, and on Kirtell-side nobody would have dared to doubt on such a subject; and now that the family affairs were settled, and Hugh was established at Earlston, his uncle’s acknowledged heir, this cloud, at least, could never rise on her again to take the comfort out of her life. She dismissed the very thought of it from her mind, and her heart warmed to the recollection of the old faces and the old ways. She had a kind of a longing to see them, as if her life would be completer after. It was not as “a great trial” that Mary thought of it. She was too eager and curious to know how they had all fared; and if, to some of them at least, the old existence, so long broken up for herself, continued and flourished as of old.