IT was accordingly with a little excitement that when the regiment had actually arrived Mrs. Ochterlony set out for the neighbouring town to renew her acquaintance with her old friends. It was winter by that time, and winter is seldom very gentle in Cumberland: but she was too much interested to be detained by the weather. She had said nothing to Wilfrid on the subject, and it startled her a little to find him standing at the door waiting for her, carefully dressed, which was not usually a faculty of his, and evidently prepared to accompany her. When she opened the Cottage door to go out, and saw him, an unaccountable panic seized her. There he stood in the sunshine,—not gay and thoughtless like his brother Hugh, nor preoccupied like Islay,—with his keen eyes and sharp ears, and mind that seemed always to lie in wait for something. The recollection of the one thing which she did not want to be known had come strongly to her mind once more at that particular moment; a little tremor had run through her frame—a sense of half-painful, half-pleasant, excitement. When her eye fell on Wilfrid, she went back a step unconsciously, and her heart for the moment seemed to stop beating. She wanted to bring her friends to Kirtell, to show them her boys and make them acquainted with all her life; and probably, had it been Hugh, he would have accompanied her as a matter of course. But somehow Wilfrid was different. Without knowing what her reason was, she felt reluctant to undergo the first questionings and reminiscences with this keen spectator standing by to hear and see all, and to demand explanation of matters which it might be difficult to explain.
“Did you mean to go with me, Will?” she said. “But you know we cannot leave Aunt Agatha all by herself. I wanted to see you to ask you to be as agreeable as possible while I am gone.”
“I am never agreeable to Aunt Agatha,” said Will; “she always liked the others best; and besides, she does not want me, and I am going to take care of you.”
“Thank you,” said Mary, with a smile; “but I don’t want you either for to-day. We shall have so many things to talk about—old affairs that you would not understand.”
“I like that sort of thing,” said Will; “I like listening towomen’s talk—especially when it is about things I don’t understand. It is always something new.”
Mary smiled, but there was something in his persistence that frightened her. “My dear Will, I don’t want you to-day,” she said with a slight shiver, in spite of herself.
“Why, mamma?” said Will, with open eyes.
He was not so well brought up as he ought to have been, as everybody will perceive. He did not accept his mother’s decision, and put away his Sunday hat, and say no more about it. On the contrary, he looked with suspicion (as she thought) at her, and kept his position—surprised and remonstrative, and not disposed to give in.
“Will,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “I will not have you with me, and that must be enough. These are all people whom I have not seen since you were a baby. It may be a trial for us all to meet, for I don’t know what may have happened to them. I can speak of my affairs before you, for you—know them all,” Mary went on with a momentary faltering; “but it is not to be supposed that they could speak of theirs in the presence of a boy they do not know. Go now and amuse yourself, and don’t do anything to frighten Aunt Agatha: and you can come and meet me by the evening train.”
But she could not get rid of a sense of fear as she left him. He was not like other boys, from whose mind a little contradiction passes away almost as soon as it is spoken. He had that strange faculty of connecting one thing with another, which is sometimes so valuable, and sometimes leads a lively intellect so much astray; and if ever he should come to know that there was anything in his mother’s history which she wished to keep concealed from him—— It was a foolish thought, but it was not the less painful on that account. Mary had come to the end of her little journey before she got free from its influence. The united household at the cottage was not rich enough to possess anything in the shape of a carriage, but they were near the railway, which served almost the same purpose. It seemed to Mrs. Ochterlony as if the twelve intervening years were but a dream when she found herself in a drawing-room which had already taken Mrs. Kirkman’s imprint, and breathed of her in every corner. It was not such a room, it is true, as the hot Indian chamber in which Mary had last seen the colonel’s wife. It was one of the most respectable and sombre, as well as one of the best of the houses which let themselves furnished, with an eye to the officers. It had red curtains and red carpets, and blinds drawn more than half way down; and there were two or three boxes, with a significant slit in the lid, distributedabout the different tables. In the centre of the round table before the fire there was a little trophy built up of small Indian gods, which were no doubt English manufacture, but which had been for a long time Mrs. Kirkman’s text, and quite invaluable to her as a proof of the heathen darkness, which was her favourite subject; and at the foot of this ugly pyramid lay a little heap of pamphlets, reports of all the societies under heaven. Mary recognised, too, as she sat and waited, the large brown-paper cover, in which she knew by experience Mrs. Kirkman’s favourite tracts were enclosed; and the little basket which contained a smaller roll, and which had room besides occasionally for a little tea and sugar, when circumstances made them necessary; and the book with limp boards, in which the Colonel’s wife kept her list of names, with little biographical comments opposite, which had once amused the subalterns so much when it fell into their hands. She had her sealed book besides, with a Bramah lock, which was far too sacred to be revealed to profane eyes; but yet, perhaps, she liked to tantalize profane eyes with the sight of its undiscoverable riches, for it lay on the table like the rest. This was how Mary saw at a glance that, whatever might have happened to the others, Mrs. Kirkman at least was quite unchanged.
She came gliding into the room a minute after, so like herself that Mrs. Ochterlony felt once more that time was not, and that her life had been a dream. She folded her visitor in a silent embrace, and kissed her with inexpressible meaning, and fanned her cheeks with those two long locks hanging out of curl, which had been her characteristic embellishments since ever any one remembered. The light hair was now a little grey, but that made no difference to speak of either in colour or general aspect; and, so far as any other change went, those intervening years might never have been.
“My dear Mary!” she said at last. “My dear friend! Oh, what a thought that little as we deserve it, we should have beenbothspared to meet again!”
There was an emphasis on thebothwhich it was very touching to hear; and Mary naturally could not but feel that the wonder and the thankfulness were chiefly on her own account.
“I am very glad to see you again,” she said, feeling her heart yearn to her old friend—“and so entirely unchanged.”
“Oh, I hope not,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “I hope we havebothprofited by our opportunities, and made some return for so many mercies. One great thing I have looked forward to ever since I knew we were coming here, was the thought ofseeing you again. You know I always considered you one of my own little flock, dear Mary! one of those who would be my crown of rejoicing. It is such a pleasure to have you again.”
And Mrs. Kirkman gave Mrs. Ochterlony another kiss, and thought of the woman that was a sinner with a gush of sweet feeling in her heart.
As for Mary, she took it very quietly, having no inclination to be affronted or offended—but, on the contrary, a kind of satisfaction in finding all as it used to be; the same thoughts and the same kind of talk, and everything unchanged, while all with herself had changed so much. “Thank you,” she said; “and now tell me about yourself and about them all; the Heskeths and the Churchills, and all our old friends. I am thirsting to hear about them, and what changes there may have been, and how many are here.”
“Ah, my dear Mary, there have been many changes,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “Mrs. Churchill died years ago—did you not hear?—and in a very much more prepared state of mind, I trust and hope; and he has a curacy somewhere, and is bringing up the poor children—in his own pernicious views, I sadly fear.”
“Has he pernicious views?” said Mary. “Poor Mrs. Churchill—and yet one could not have looked for anything else.”
“Don’t say poor,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “It is good for her to have been taken away from the evil to come. He is very lax, and always was very lax. You know how little he was to be depended upon at the station, and how much was thrown upon me, unworthy as I am, to do; and it is sad to think of those poor dear children brought up in such opinions. They are very poor, but that is nothing in comparison. Captain Hesketh retired when we came back to England. They went to their own place in the country, and they are very comfortable, I believe—too comfortable, Mary. It makes them forget things that are so much more precious. And I doubt if there is anybody to say a faithful word——”
“She was very kind,” said Mary, “and good to everybody. I am very sorry they are gone.”
“Yes, she was kind,” said Mrs. Kirkman, “that kind of natural amiability which is such a delusion. And everything goes well with them,” she added, with a sigh: “there is nothing to rouse them up. Oh, Mary, you remember what I said when your pride was brought low—anything is better than being let alone.”
Mrs. Ochterlony began to feel her old opposition stirring in her mind, but she refrained heroically, and went on with her interrogatory. “And the doctor,” she said, “and the Askells?—they are still in the regiment. I want you to tell me where I can find Emma, and how things have gone with her—poor child! but she ought not to be such a baby now.”
Mrs. Kirkman sighed. “No, she ought not to be a baby,” she said. “I never like to judge any one, and I would like you to form your own opinion, Mary. She too has little immortal souls committed to her; and oh! it is sad to see how little people think of such a trust—whereas others who would have given their whole souls to it—— But no doubt it is all for the best. I have not asked you yet how are your dear boys? I hope you are endeavouring to make them grow in grace. Oh, Mary, I hope you have thought well over your responsibility. A mother has so much in her hands.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, quickly; “but they are very good boys, and I have every reason to be content with them. Hugh is at Earlston, just now, with his uncle. He is to succeed him, you know; and he is going to Oxford directly, I believe. And Islay is going to Woolwich if he can pass his examination. He is just the same long-headed boy he used to be. And Will—my baby; perhaps you remember what a little thing he was?—I think he is going to be the genius of the family.” Mary went on with a simple effusiveness unusual to her, betrayed by the delight of talking about her boys to some one who knew and yet did not know them. Perhaps she forgot that her listener’s interest could not possibly be so great as her own.
Mrs. Kirkman sat with her hands clasped on her knee, and she looked in Mary’s eyes with a glance which was meant to go to her soul—a mournful inquiring glance which, from under the dropped eyelids, seemed to fall as from an altitude of scarcely human compassion and solicitude. “Oh, call them not good,” she said. “Tell me what signs of awakening you have seen in their hearts. Dear Mary, do not neglect the one thing needful for your precious boys. Think of their immortal souls. That is what interests me much more than their worldly prospects. Do you think their hearts have been truly touched——”
“I think God has been very kind to us all, and that they are good boys,” said Mary; “you know we don’t think quite alike on some subjects; or, at least, we don’t express ourselves alike. I can see you do as much as ever among the men, and among the poor——”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Kirkman, with a sigh; “I feel unworthy of it, and the flesh is weak, and I would fain draw back; but it happens strangely that there is always a very lukewarm ministry wherever we are placed, my dear. I would give anything in the world to be but a hearer of the word like others; but yet woe is unto me if I neglect the work. This is some one coming in now to speak with me on spiritual matters. I am at home to them between two and three; but, my dear Mary, it is not necessary that you, who have been in the position of an inquiring soul yourself, should go away.”
“I will come back again,” said Mary, rising; “and you will come to see me at Kirtell, will not you? It makes one forget how many years have passed to see you employed exactly as of old.”
“Ah, we are all too apt to forget how the years pass,” said Mrs. Kirkman. She gave a nod of recognition to some women who came shyly in at the moment, and then she took Mary’s hand and drew her a step aside. “And nothing more has happened, Mary?” she said; “nothing has followed, and there is to be no inquiry or anything? I am very thankful, for your sake.”
“Inquiry!” said Mary, with momentary amazement. “What kind of inquiry? what could have followed? I do not know what you mean!!”
“I mean about—what gave us all so much pain—your marriage, Mary,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “I hope there has been nothing about it again?”
This was a very sharp trial for the superstition of old friendship in Mrs. Ochterlony’s heart, especially as the inquiring souls who had come to see Mrs. Kirkman were within hearing, and looked with a certain subdued curiosity upon the visitor and the conversation. Mary’s face flushed with a sudden burning, and indignation came to her aid; but even at that moment her strongest feeling was thankfulness that Wilfrid was not there.
“I do not know what could have been about it,” she said: “I am among my own people here; my marriage was well known, and everything about it, in my own place.”
“You are angry, dear,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “Oh, don’t encourage angry feelings; you know I never made any difference; I never imagined it was your fault. And I am so glad to hear it has made no unpleasantness with the dear boys.”
Perhaps it was not with the same charity as at first that Mrs. Ochterlony felt the long curls again fan her cheek, but stillshe accepted the farewell kiss. She had expected some ideal difference, some visionary kind of elevation, which would leave the same individual, yet a loftier kind of woman, in the place of her former friend. And what she had found was a person quite unchanged—the same woman, harder in her peculiarities rather than softer, as is unfortunately the most usual case. The Colonel’s wife had the best meaning in the world, and she was a good woman in her way; but not a dozen lives, let alone a dozen years, could have given her the finer sense which must come by nature, nor even that tolerance and sweetness of experience, which is a benefit which only a few people in the world draw from the passage of years. Mary was disappointed, but she acknowledged in her heart—having herself acquired that gentleness of experience—that she had no right to be disappointed; and it was with a kind of smile at her own vain expectations that she went in search of Emma Askell, her little friend of old—the impulsive girl, who had amused her, and loved her, and worried her in former times. Young Askell was Captain now, and better off, it was to be hoped: but yet they were not well enough off to be in a handsome house, or have everything proper about them, like the Colonel’s wife. It was in the outskirts of the town that Mary had to seek them, in a house with a little bare garden in front, bare in its winter nakedness, with its little grass-plot trodden down by many feet, and showing all those marks of neglect and indifference which betray the stage at which poverty sinks into a muddle of discouragement and carelessness, and forgets appearances. It was a dirty little maid who opened the door, and the house was another very inferior specimen of the furnished house so well known to all unsettled and wandering people. The chances are, that delicate and orderly as Mrs. Ochterlony was by nature, the sombre shabbiness of the place would not have struck her in her younger days, when she, too, had to take her chance of furnished houses, and do her best, as became a soldier’s wife. And then poor little Emma had been married too early, and began her struggling, shifty life too soon, to know anything about that delicate domestic order, which is half a religion. Poor little Emma! she was as old now as Mary had been when she came back to Kirtell with her boys, and it was difficult to form any imagination of what time might have done for her. Mrs. Ochterlony went up the narrow stairs with a sense of half-amused curiosity, guided not only by the dirty little maid, but by the sound of a little voice crying in a lamentable, endless sort of way. It was a kind of cry which in itself told the story of the family—not violent, as if the result of a suddeninjury or fit of passion, which there was somebody by to console or to punish, but the endless, tedious lamentation, which nobody took any particular notice of, or cared about.
And this was the scene that met Mrs. Ochterlony’s eyes when she entered the room. She had sent the maid away and opened the door herself, for her heart was full. It was a shabby little room on the first floor, with cold windows opening down to the floor, and letting in the cold Cumberland winds to chill the feet and aggravate the temper of the inhabitants. In the foreground sat a little girl with a baby sleeping on her knee, one little brother in front of her and another behind her chair, and that pretty air of being herself the domestic centre and chief mover of everything, which it is at once sweet and sad to see in a child. This little woman neither saw nor heard the stranger at the door. She had been hushing and rocking her baby, and, now that it had peaceably sunk to sleep, was about to hear her little brother’s lesson, as it appeared; while at the same time addressing a word of remonstrance to the author of the cry, another small creature who sat rubbing her eyes with two fat fists, upon the floor. Of all this group, the only one aware of Mary’s appearance was the little fellow behind his sister’s chair, who lifted wondering eyes to the door, and stared and said nothing, after the manner of children. The little party was so complete in itself, and seemed to centre so naturally in the elder sister, that the spectator felt no need to seek further. It was all new and unlooked for, yet it was a kind of scene to go to the heart of a woman who had children of her own; and Mary stood and looked at the little ones, and at the child-mother in the midst of them, without even becoming aware of the presence of the actual mother, who had been lying on a sofa, in a detached and separate way, reading a book, which she now thrust under her pillow, as she raised herself on her cushions and gazed with wide-open eyes at her visitor, who did not see her. It was a woman very little like the pretty Emma of old times, with a hectic colour on her cheeks, her hair hanging loosely and disordered by lying down, and the absorbed, half-awakened look, natural to a mind which had been suddenly roused up out of a novel into an actual emergency. The hushing of the baby to sleep, the hearing of the lessons, the tedious crying of the little girl at her feet, had all gone on without disturbing Mrs. Askell. She had been so entirely absorbed in one of Jane Eyre’s successors and imitators (for that was the epoch of Jane Eyre in novels), and Nelly was so completely responsible for all that was going on, that the mother had never even roused up to a sense of what was passing round her, until thedoor opened and the stranger looked in with a face which was not a stranger’s face.
“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Askell, springing up. “Oh, my Madonna, can it be you? Are you sure it is you, you dear, you darling! Don’t go looking at the children as if they were the principal, but give me a kiss and say it is you,—say you are sure it is you!”
And the rapture of delight and welcome she went into, though it showed how weak-minded and excitable she was, was in its way not disagreeable to Mary, and touched her heart. She gave the kiss she was asked for, and received a flood in return, and such embraces as nearly took her breath away; and then Nelly was summoned to take “the things” off an easy chair, the only one in the room, which stood near her mother’s sofa. Mary was still in Mrs. Askell’s embrace when this command was given, but she saw the girl gather up the baby in her arms, and moving softly not to disturb the little sleeper, collect the encumbering articles together and draw the chair forward. No one else moved or took any trouble. The bigger boy stood and watched behind his sister’s chair, and the younger one turned round to indulge in the same inspection, and little Emma took her fists out of her eyes. But there was nobody but the little woman with the baby who could get for the guest the only comfortable chair.
“Now sit down and be comfortable, and let me look at you; I could be content just to look at you all day,” said Emma. “You are just as you always were, and not a bit changed. It is because you have not had all our cares. I look a perfect fright, and as old as my grandmother, and I am no good for anything; but you are just the same as you used to be. Oh, it is just like the old times, seeing you! I have been in such a state, I did not know what to do with myself since ever I knew we were coming here.”
“But I do not think you are looking old, though you look delicate,” said Mary. “Let me make acquaintance with the children. Nelly, you used to be in my arms as much as your mamma’s when you were a baby. You are just the same age as my Will, and you were the best baby that ever was. Tell me their names and how old they all are. You know they are all strangers to me.”
“Yes,” said their mother, with a little fretfulness. “It was such a mercy Nelly was the eldest. I never could have kept living if she had been a boy. I have been such a suffering creature, and we have been moved about so much, and oh, we have had so much to do! You can’t fancy what a life we havehad,” cried poor Emma; and the mere thought of it brought tears to her eyes.
“Yes, I know it is a troublesome life,” said Mary; “but you are young, and you have your husband, and the children are all so well——”
“Yes, the children are all well,” said Emma; “but then every new place they come to, they take measles or something, and I am gone to a shadow before they are right again; and then the doctors’ bills—I think Charley and Lucy and Emma have hadeverything,” said the aggrieved mother; “and they always take them so badly; and then Askell takes it into his head it is damp linen or something, and thinks it is my fault. It is bad enough when a woman is having her children,” cried poor Emma, “without all their illnesses, you know, and tempers and bills, and everything besides. Oh, Madonna! you are so well off. You live quiet, and you know nothing about all our cares.”
“I think I would not mind the cares,” said Mary; “if you were quiet like me, you would not like it. You must come out to Kirtell for a little change.”
“Oh, yes, with all my heart,” said Emma. “I think sometimes it would do me all the good in the world just to be out of the noise for a little, and where there was nothing to be found fault with. I should feel like a girl again, my Madonna, if I could be with you.”
“And Nelly must come too,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, looking down upon the little bright, anxious, careful face.
Nelly was thirteen—the same age as Wilfrid; but she was little, and laden with the care of which her mother talked. Her eyes were hazel eyes, such as would have run over with gladness had they been left to nature, and her brown hair curled a little on her neck. She was uncared for, badly dressed, and not old enough yet for the instinct that makes the budding woman mindful of herself. But the care that made Emma’s cheek hollow and her life a waste, looked sweet out of Nelly’s eyes. The mother thought she bore it all, and cried and complained under it, while the child took it on her shoulders unawares and carried it without any complaint. Her soft little face lighted up for a moment as Mary spoke, and then her look turned on the sleeping baby with that air half infantile, half motherly, which makes a child’s face like an angel’s.
“I do not think I could go,” she said; “for the children are not used to the new nurse; and it would make poor papa so uncomfortable; and then it would do mamma so much more good to be quiet for a little without the children——”
Mary rose up softly just then, and, to Nelly’s great surprise, bent over her and kissed her. Nobody but such another woman could have told what a sense of envy and yearning was in Mary’s heart as she did it. How she would have surrounded with tenderness and love that little daughter who was but a domestic slave to Emma Askell! and yet, if she had been Mary’s daughter, and surrounded by love and tenderness, she would not have been such a child. The little thing brightened and blushed, and looked up with a gleam of sweet surprise in her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Ochterlony,” she said, in that sudden flush of pleasure; and the two recognised each other in that moment, and knitted between them, different as their ages were, that bond of everlasting friendship which is made oftener at sight than in any more cautious way.
“Come and sit by me,” said Emma, “or I shall be jealous of my own child. She is a dear little thing, and so good with the others. Come and tell me about your boys. And, oh, please, just one word—we have so often spoken about it, and so often wondered. Tell me, dear Mrs. Ochterlony, did it never do any harm?”
“Did what never do any harm?” asked Mary, with once more a sudden pang of thankfulness that Wilfrid was not there.
Mrs. Askell threw her arms round Mary’s neck and kissed her and clasped her close. “There never was any one like you,” she said; “you never even would complain.”
This second assault made Mary falter and recoil, in spite of herself. They had not forgot, though she might have forgotten. And, what was even worse than words, as Emma spoke, the serious little woman-child, who had won Mrs. Ochterlony’s heart, raised her sweet eyes and looked with a mixture of wonder and understanding in Mary’s face. The child whom she would have liked to carry away and make her own—did she, too, know and wonder? There was a great deal of conversation after this—a great deal about the Askells themselves, and a great deal about Winnie and her husband, whom Mrs. Askell knew much more about than Mrs. Ochterlony did. But it would be vain to say that anything she heard made as great an impression upon Mary as the personal allusions which sent the blood tingling through her veins. She went home, at last, with that most grateful sense of home which can only be fully realized by those who return from the encounter of an indifferent world, and from friends who, though kind, are naturally disposed to regard everything from their own point of view. It is sweet to have friends, and yet by times it is bitter. Fortunately for Mary, she had the warm circle of her own immediate belongings to return into, and could retire, as it were, into her citadel, and there smile at all the world. Her boys gave her that sweetest youthful adoration which is better than the love of lovers, and no painful ghost lurked in their memory—or so, at least, Mrs. Ochterlony thought.
THE Cottage changed its aspect greatly after the arrival of the regiment, and it was a change which lasted a long time, for the depôt was established at Carlisle, and Captain Askell got an appointment which smoothed the stony way of life a little for himself and his wife. Kirtell was very accessible and very pretty, and there was always a welcome to be had at the Cottage; and the regiment returned in the twinkling of an eye to its old regard for its Madonna Mary. The officers came about the house continually, to the great enlivenment of the parish in general. And Mrs. Kirkman came, and very soon made out that the vicar and his curate were both very incompetent, and did what she could to form a missionary nucleus, if not under Mrs. Ochterlony’s wing, at least protected by her shadow; and the little Askells came and luxuriated in the grass and the flowers; and Miss Sorbette and the doctor, who were still on the strength of the regiment, paid many visits, bringing with them the new people whom Mary did not know. When Hugh and Islay came home at vacation times, they found the house so lively, that it acquired new attractions for them, and Aunt Agatha, who was not so old as to be quite indifferent to society, said to herself with natural sophistry, that it was very good for the boys, and made them happier than two solitary women could have done by themselves, which no doubt was true. As for Mrs. Ochterlony herself, she said frankly that she was glad to see her friends; she liked to receive them in her own house. She had been rather poor in India, and not able to entertain them very splendidly; and though she was poor still, and the Cottage was a very modest little dwelling-place, it could receive the visitors, and give them pleasant welcome, and a pleasant meal, and pleasant faces, and cheerful companionship. Mrs. Ochterlony was not yet old, and she had lived a quiet life of late, so peaceful that the incipient wrinkles which life had outlined in her face, had been filled up and smoothed out by the quietness. She was in perfect health, and her eyes were bright, and her complexion sweet, and her hair still gave by time a golden gleam out of its brown masses.
No wonder then that her old friends saw little or no change in her, and that her new ones admired her as much as she had ever been admired in her best days. Some women are sweet by means of being helpless, and fragile, and tender; and some have a loftier charm by reason of their veiled strength and composure, and calm of self-possession. Mary was one of the last; she was a woman not to lean, but to be leant upon; soft with a touch like velvet, and yet as steady as a rock—a kind of beauty which wears long, and does not spoil even by growing old.
It was a state of affairs very agreeable to everybody in the place, except, perhaps, to Will, who was very jealous of his mother. Hugh and Islay when they came home took it all for granted, in an open-handed boyish way, and were no more afraid of anything Mrs. Ochterlony might do, than for their own existence. But Will was always there. He haunted the drawing-room, whoever might be in it at the moment; yet—though to Aunt Agatha’s consciousness, the boy was never absent from the big Indian chair in the corner—he was at the same time always ready to pursue his curate to the very verge of that poor gentleman’s knowledge, and give him all the excitement of a hairbreadth ’scape ten times in a morning. Nobody could tell when he learned his lessons, or what time he had for study—for there he was always, taking in everything, and making comments in his own mind, and now and then interposing in the conversation to Aunt Agatha’s indignation. Mary would not see it, she said; Mary thought that all her boys did was right—which was, perhaps, to some extent true; and it was said in the neighbourhood, as was natural, that so many gentlemen did not come to the Cottage for nothing; that Mrs. Ochterlony was still a young woman; that she had devoted herself to the boys for a long time, and that if she were to marry again, nobody could have any right to object. Such reports spring up in the country so easily, either with or without foundation; and Wilfrid, who found out everything, heard them, and grew very watchful and jealous, and even doubtful of his mother. Should such an idea have entered intoherhead, the boy felt that he would despise her; and yet at the same time he was very fond of her and filled with unbounded jealousy. While all the time, Mary herselfwas very glad to see her friends, and, perhaps, was not entirely unconscious of exciting a certain respectful admiration, but had as little idea of severing herself from her past life, and making a new fictitious beginning, as if she had been eighty; and it never occurred to her to imagine that she was watched or doubted by her boy.
It was a pleasant revival, but it had its drawbacks—for one thing, Aunt Agatha did not, as she said, get on with all Mary’s friends. There was between Miss Seton and Mrs. Kirkman an enmity which was to the death. The Colonel’s wife, though she might be, as became her position, a good enough conservative in secular politics, was a revolutionary, or more than a revolutionary, an iconoclast, in matters ecclesiastical. She had no respect for anything, Aunt Agatha thought. A woman who works under the proper authorities, and reveres her clergyman, is a woman to be regarded with a certain respect, even if she is sometimes zealous out of season; but when she sets up on her own foundation, and sighs over the shortcomings of the clergy, and believes in neither rector nor curate, then the whole aspect of affairs is changed. “She believes in nobody but herself,” Aunt Agatha said; “she has no respect for anything. I wonder how you can put up with such a woman, Mary. She talks to our good vicar as if he were a boy at school—and tells him how to manage the parish. If that is the kind of person you think a good woman, I have no wish to be good, for my part. She is quite insufferable to me.”
“She is often disagreeable,” said Mary, “but I am sure she is good at the bottom of her heart.”
“I don’t know anything about the bottom of her heart,” said Aunt Agatha; “from all one can see of the surface, it must be a very unpleasant place. And then that useless Mrs. Askell; she is quite strong enough to talk to the gentlemen and amuse them, but as for taking a little pains to do her duty, or look after her children—I must say I am surprised at your friends. A soldier’s life is trying, I suppose,” Miss Seton added. “I have always heard it was trying; but the gentlemen should be the ones to feel it most, and they are not spoiled. The gentlemen are very nice—most of them,” Aunt Agatha added with a little hesitation, for there was one whom she regarded as Wilfrid did with jealous eyes.
“The gentlemen are further off, and we do not see them so clearly,” said Mary; “and if you knew what it is to wander about, to have no settled home, and to be ailing and poor——”
“My dear love,” said Aunt Agatha, with a little impatience,“you might have been as poor, and you never would have been like that; and as for sick—— You know I never thought you had a strong constitution—nor your sister either—my pretty Winnie! Do you think that sickness, or poverty, or anything else, could ever have brought down Winnie to be like that silly little woman?”
“Hush,” said Mary, “Nelly is in the garden, and might hear.”
“Nelly!” said Aunt Agatha, who felt herself suddenly pulled up short. “I have nothing to say against Nelly, I am sure. I could not help thinking last night, that some of these days she would make a nice wife for one of the boys. She is quite beginning to grow up now, poor dear. When I see her sitting there it makes me think of my Winnie;—not that she will ever be beautiful like Winnie. But Mary, my dear love, I don’t think you are kind to me. I am sure you must have heard a great deal about Winnie, especially since she has come back to England, and you never tell me a word.”
“My dear aunt,” said Mary, with a little embarrassment, “you see all these people as much as I do; and I have heard them telling you what news of her they know.”
“Ah, yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh. “They tell me she is here or there, but I know that from her letters; what I want to know is, something about her, how she looks, and if she is happy. She neversaysshe is not happy, you know. Dear, dear! to think she must be past thirty now—two-and-thirty her last birthday—and she was only eighteen when she went away. You were not so long away, Mary——”
“But Winnie has not had my reason for coming back upon your hands, Aunt Agatha,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, gravely.
“No,” said Aunt Agatha: and again she sighed; and this time the sigh was of a kind which did not sound very complimentary to Captain Percival. It seemed to say “More’s the pity!” Winnie had never come back to see the kind aunt who had been a mother to her. She said in her letters how unlucky she was, and that they were to be driven all round the world, she thought, and never to have any rest; but no doubt, if Winnie had been very anxious, she might have found means to come home. And the years were creeping on imperceptibly, and the boys growing up—even Will, who was now almost as tall as his brothers. When such a change had come upon these children, what a change there must be in the wilful, sprightly, beautiful girl whose image reigned supreme in Aunt Agatha’s heart. A sudden thought struck the old lady as shesighed. The little Askells were at Kirtell at the moment with the nurse, and Nelly, who was more than ever the mother of the little party. Aunt Agatha sat still for a little with her heart beating, and then she took up her work in a soft stealthy way, and went out into the garden. “No, my dear, oh no, don’t disturb yourself,” she said, with anxious deprecation to Mary, who would have risen too, “I am only going to look at the lilies,” and she was so conscientious that she did go and cast an undiscerning, preoccupied glance upon the lilies, though her real attraction was quite in an opposite quarter. At the other side, audible but not visible, was a little group which was pretty to look at in the afternoon sunshine. It was outside the garden, on the other side of the hedge, in the pretty green field, all white and yellow with buttercups and daisies, which belonged to the Cottage. Miss Seton’s mild cow had not been able to crop down all that flowery fragrant growth, and the little Askells were wading in it, up to their knees in the cool sweet grass, and feeding upon it and drawing nourishment out of it almost as much as the cow did. But in the corner close by the garden hedge there was a more advanced development of youthful existence. Nelly was seated on the grass, working with all her might, yet pausing now and then to lift her serious eyes to Will, who leant upon an old stump of oak which projected out of the hedge, and had the conversation all in his own hands. He was doing what a boy under such circumstances loves to do; he was startling, shocking, frightening his companion. He was saying a great deal that he meant and some things that he did not mean, and taking a great secret pleasure in the widening of Nelly’s eyes and the consternation of her face. Will had grown into a very long lank boy, with joints which were as awkward as his brother’s used to be, yet not in the same way, for the limbs that completed them were thin and meagre, and had not the vigour of Hugh’s. His trousers were too short for him, and so were his sleeves. His hair had no curls in it, and fell down over his forehead. He was nearly sixteen, and he was thoroughly discontented—a misanthrope, displeased with everything without knowing why. But time had been kinder to Nelly, who was not long and lean like her companion, but little and round and blooming, with the soft outlines and the fresh bloom of earliest youth just emerging out of childhood. Her eyes were brown, very serious, and sweet—eyes that had “seen trouble,” and knew a great many more things in the world than were dreamt of in Will’s philosophy: but then she was not so clever as Will, and his talk confused her. She was looking up to him and taking allin with a mixture of willing faith and instinctive scepticism which it was curious to see.
“You two are always together, I think,” said Aunt Agatha, putting down a little camp-stool she had in her hand beside Nelly—for she had passed the age when people think of sitting on the grass. “What are you talking about? I suppose he brings all his troubles to you.”
“Oh, no,” said Nelly, with a blush, which was on Aunt Agatha’s account, and not on Will’s. He was a little older than herself actually; but Nelly was an experienced woman, and could not but look down amiably on such an unexercised inhabitant of the world as “only a boy.”
“Then I suppose, my dear, he must talk to you about Greek and Latin,” said Aunt Agatha, “which is a thing young ladies don’t much care for: I am very sure old ladies don’t. Is that what you talk about?”
“Oh, yes, often,” said Nelly, brightening, as she looked at Will. That was not the sort of talk they had been having, but still it was true.
“Well,” said Miss Seton, “I am sure he will go on talking as long as you will listen to him. But he must not have you all to himself. Did he tell you Hugh was coming home to see us? We expect him next week.”
“Yes,” said Nelly, who was not much of a talker. And then, being a little ashamed of her taciturnity, she added, “I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony will be glad.”
“We shall all be glad,” said Aunt Agatha. “Hugh is very nice. We must have you to see a little more of him this time; I am sure you would like him. Then you will be well acquainted with all our family,” the old lady continued, artfully approaching her real object; “for you know my dear Winnie, I think—I ought to say, Mrs. Percival; she is the dearest girl that ever was. You must have met her, my dear—— abroad.”
Nelly looked up a little surprised. “We knew Mrs. Percival,” she said, “but she—— was not a girl at all. She was as old—as old as mamma—like all the other ladies,” she added, hastily; for the word girl had limited meanings to Nelly, and she would have laughed at its application in such a case, if she had not been a natural gentlewoman with the finest manners in the world.
“Ah, yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh, “I forget how time goes; and she will always be a girl to me: but she was very beautiful, all the same; and she had such a way with children. Were you fond of her, Nelly? Because, if that were so, I should love you more and more.”
Nelly looked up with a frightened, puzzled look in Aunt Agatha’s eyes. She was very soft-hearted, and had been used to give in to other people all her life; and she almost felt as if, for Aunt Agatha’s sake, she could persuade herself that she had been fond of Mrs. Percival; but yet at the same time honesty went above all. “I do not think we knew them very well,” she said. “I don’t think mamma was very intimate with Mrs. Percival; that is, I don’t think papa likedhim,” added Nelly, with natural art.
Aunt Agatha gave another sigh. “That might be, my dear,” she said, with a little sadness; “but even when gentlemen don’t take to each other, it is a great pity when it acts upon their families. Some of our friends here even were not fond at first of Captain Percival, but for my darling Winnie’s sake—— You must have seen her often at least; I wonder I never thought of asking you before. She was so beautiful, with such lovely hair, and the sweetest complexion. Was she looking well—and—and happy?” asked Aunt Agatha, growing anxious as she spoke, and looking into Nelly’s face.
It was rather hard upon Nelly, who was one of those true women, young as she was, who can see what other women mean when they put such questions, and hear the heart beat under the words. Nelly had heard a great deal of talk in her day, and knew things about Mrs. Percival that would have made Aunt Agatha’s hair stand on end with horror. But her heart understood the other heart, and could not have breathed a whisper that would wound it, for the world.
“I was such a little thing,” said Nelly; “and then I always had the little ones to look after—mamma was so delicate. I remember the people’s names more than themselves.”
“You have always been a very good girl, I am sure,” said Aunt Agatha, giving her young companion a sudden kiss, and with perhaps a faint instinctive sense of Nelly’s forbearance and womanful skill in avoiding a difficult subject; but she sighed once more as she did it, and wondered to herself whether nobody would ever speak to her freely and fully of her child. And silence ensued, for she had not the heart to ask more questions. Will, who had not found the conversation amusing, had gone in to find his mother, with a feeling that it was not quite safe to leave her alone, which had something to do with his frequent presence in the drawing room; so that the old lady and Nelly were left alone in the corner of the fragrant field. The girl went on with her work, but Aunt Agatha, who was seated on her camp-stool, with her back against the oak stump,let her knitting fall upon her knee, and her eyes wander into vacancy with a wistful look of abstraction that was not natural to them. Nelly, who did not know what to say, and yet would have given a great deal to be able to say something, watched her from under the shadow of her curls, and at last saw Miss Seton’s abstract eyes brighten up and wake into attention and life. Nelly looked round, and her impulse was to jump up in alarm when she saw it was her own mother who was approaching—her mother, whom Nelly had a kind of adoration for as a creature of divine helplessness, for whom everything had to be done, but in whose judgment she had an instinctive want of confidence. She jumped up and called to the children on the spur of this sudden impulse: “Oh! here is mamma, we must go in,” cried Nelly; and it gave her positive pain to see that Miss Seton’s attitude remained unchanged, and that she had no intention of being disturbed by Mrs. Askell’s approach.
“Oh how deliciously comfortable you are here,” cried Emma, throwing herself down on the grass. “I came out to have a little fresh air and see after those tiresome children. I am sure they have been teasing you all day long; Nelly is not half severe enough, and nurse spoils them; and after a day in the open air like this, they make my head like to split when they come home at night.”
“They have not been teasing me,” said Aunt Agatha; “they have been very good, and I have been sitting here for a long time talking to Nelly. I wanted her to tell me something about my dear child, Mary’s own sister—Mrs. Percival, you know.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Askell, making a troubled pause,—“and I hope to goodness you did not tell Miss Seton anything that was unpleasant,” she said sharply, turning to Nelly. “You must not mind anything she said,” the foolish little woman added; “she was only a child and she did not know. You should have asked me.”
“What could there be that was not pleasant?” cried Aunt Agatha. “If there is anything unpleasant that can be said about my Winnie, that is precisely what I ought to hear.”
“Mamma!” cried Nelly, in what was intended to be a whisper of warning, though her anxiety made it shrill and audible. But Emma was not a woman to be kept back.
“Goodness, child, you have pulled my dress out of the gathers,” she said. “Do you thinkIdon’t know what I am talking about? When I say unpleasant, I am sure I don’tmean anything serious; I mean only, you know, that—— and then her husband is such a man—I am sure I don’t wonder at it, for my part.”
“What is it your mamma does not wonder at, Nelly?” said Aunt Agatha, who had turned white and cold, and leaned back all feeble and broken upon the old tree.
“Her husband neglected her shamefully,” said Emma; “it was a great sin for her friends to let her marry him; I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony knew what a dreadful character he had. And, poor thing, when she found herself so deserted—— Askell would never let me see much of her, and I had always such wretched health; but I always stood up for Mrs. Percival. She was young, and she had nobody to stand by her——”
“Oh, mamma,” cried Nelly, “don’t you see what you are doing? I think she is going to faint—and it will be all our fault.”
“Oh, no; I am not going to faint,” said Aunt Agatha, feebly; but when she laid back her head upon Nelly’s shoulder, who had come to support her, and closed her eyes, she was like death, so pale did she look and ghastly; and then Mrs. Askell in her turn took fright.
“Goodness gracious! run and get some water, Will,” she cried to Wilfrid, who had rejoined them. “I am sure there was nothing in what I said to make anybody faint. She was talked about a little, that was all—there was no harm in it. We have all been talked about, sometime or other. Why, fancy what a talk there was about our Madonna, her very self.”
“About my mother?” said Wilfrid, standing bolt upright between Aunt Agatha, in her half swoon, and silly little Emma, who sat, a heap of muslin and ribbons, upon the grass. He had managed to hear more about Mrs. Percival than anybody knew, and was very indifferent on the subject. And he was not alarmed about Aunt Agatha; but he was jealous of his mother, and could not bear even the smallest whisper in which there was any allusion to her.
“Goodness, boy, run and get some water!” cried Mrs. Askell, jumping up from the grass in her fright. “I did not mean anything; there was nothing to be put out about—indeed there was not, Miss Seton. It was only a little silly talk; what happens to us all, you know: not half, nor quarter so bad as—— Oh, goodness gracious, Nelly, don’t make those ridiculous signs, as if it was you that was my mother, and I did not know what to say.”
“Will!” said Nelly. Her voice was perfectly quiet and steady, but it made him start as he stood there jealous, and curious, and careless of everybody else. When he met hereye, he grew red and frowned, and made a momentary stand against her; but the next moment turned resolutely and went away. If it was for water, Aunt Agatha did not need it. She came to herself without any restorative; and she kissed Nelly, who had been whispering in her ear. “Yes, my dear, I know you are right—it could have been nothing,” she said faintly, with a wan sort of smile; “but I am not very strong, and the heat, you know——” And when she got up, she took the girl’s arm, to steady her. Thus they went back to the house, Mrs. Askell following, holding up her hands in amazement and self-justification. “Could I tell that she was so weak?” Emma said to herself. “Goodness gracious, how could anybody say it was my fault?” As for Nelly, she said nothing; but supported her trembling companion, and held the soft old hand firm on her arm. And when they approached the house, Nelly, carried away by her feelings, did, what in full possession of herself she never would have done. She bent down to Aunt Agatha’s ear—for though she was not tall, she was a little taller at that moment than the poor old lady who was bowed down with weakness and the blow she had just received. “Mamma says things without meaning them,” said Nelly, with an undutiful frankness, which it is to be hoped was forgiven her. “She does not mean any harm, and sometimes she says whatever comes into her head.”
“Yes, my dear, your mamma is a very silly little woman,” said Aunt Agatha, with a little of her old spirit; and she gave Nelly, who was naturally much startled by this unexpected vivacity, a kiss as she reached the door of her room and left her. The door closed, and the girl had no pretext nor right to follow. She turned away feeling as if she had received a sudden prick which had stimulated all the blood in her veins, but yet yearning in her good little heart over Aunt Agatha who was alone. Miss Seton’s room, to which she had retired, was on the ground floor, as were all the sitting-rooms in the house, and Nelly, as she turned away, suddenly met Wilfrid, and came to a stand-still before him looking him severely in the face.
“I say, Nell!” said Will.
“And I say, Will!” said Nelly. “I will never like you nor care for you any more. You are a shocking, selfish, disagreeable prig. To stand there and never mind when poor Aunt Agatha was fainting—all for the sake of a piece of gossip. I don’t want ever to speak to you again.”
“It was not a piece of gossip,—it was something about my mother,” said Will, in self-defence.
“And what if it were fifty times about your mother?” criedNelly,—“what right had you to stand and listen when there was something to do? Oh, I am so ashamed! and after talking to you so much and thinking you were not so bad——”
“Nelly,” said Wilfrid, “when there is anything said about my mother, I have always a right to listen what it is——”
“Well, then, go and listen,” said Nelly, with indignation, “at the keyhole if you like; but don’t come afterwards and talk to me. There, good-bye, I am going to the children. Mamma is in the drawing-room, and if you like to go there I dare say you will hear a great many things; I don’t care for gossip myself, so I may as well bid you good-bye.”
And she went out by the open door with fine youthful majesty, leaving poor Will in a very doubtful state of mind behind her. He knew that in this particular Nelly did not understand him, and perhaps was not capable of sympathizing in the jealous watch he kept over his mother. But still Nelly was pleasant to look at and pleasant to talk to, and he did not want to be cast off by her. He stood and hesitated for a moment—but he could see the sun shining at the open door, and hear the river, and the birds, and the sound of Nelly’s step—and the end was that he went after her, there being nothing in the present crisis, as far as he could see, to justify a stern adoption of duty rather than pleasure; and there was nobody in the world but Nelly, as he had often explained to himself, by whom, when he talked, he stood the least chance of being understood.
This was how the new generation settled the matter. As for Aunt Agatha she cried over it in the solitude of her chamber, but by-and-by recovered too, thinking that after all it was only that silly woman. And she wrote an anxious note to Mrs. Percival, begging her now she was in England to come and see them at the Cottage. “I am getting old, my dear love, and I may not be long for this world, and you must let me see you before I die,” Aunt Agatha said. She thought she felt weaker than usual after her agitation, and regarded this sentence, which was in a high degree effective and sensational, with some pride. She felt sure that such a thought would go to her Winnie’s heart.
And so the Cottage lapsed once more into tranquillity, and into that sense that everythingmustgo well which comes natural to the mind after a long interval of peace.
“I like all your people, mamma,” said Hugh, “and I like little Nelly best of all. She is a little jewel, and as fresh as a little rose.”
“And such a thing might happen as that she might make you a nice little wife one of these days,” said Aunt Agatha, who was always a match-maker in her heart.
Upon which Hugh nodded and laughed and grew slightly red, as became his years. “I had always the greatest confidence in your good sense, my dear Aunt,” he said in his laughing way, and never so much as thought of Wilfrid in the big Indian chair, who had been Nelly’s constant companion for at least one long year.
“I should like to know what business he has with Nelly,” said Will between his teeth. “A great hulking fellow, old enough to be her father.”
“She would never haveyou, Will,” said Hugh, laughing; “girls always despise a fellow of their own age. So you need not look sulky, old boy. For that matter I doubt very much if she’d have me.”
“You are presumptuous boys,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “to think she would have either of you. She has too much to do at home, and too many things to think of.Ishould like to have her all to myself,” said Mary, with a sigh. She sighed, but she smiled; for though her boys could not be with her as Nelly might have been, still all was well with them, and the heart of their mother was content.
“My uncle wants you all to come over to Earlston,” said Hugh. “I think the poor old boy is beginning to give in. He looks very shaky in the morning when he comes downstairs. I’d like to know what you think of him, mamma; I don’t think his wanting to see you all is a good sign. He’s awfully good when you come to know him,” said Hugh, clearing his throat.
“Do you mean that Francis Ochterlony is ill?” said Aunt Agatha, with sudden interest. “Your mother must go and see him, but you must not ask me; I am an old woman, and I have old-fashioned notions, you know—but a married lady can go anywhere. Besides he would not care for seeing me,” Aunt Agatha added, with a slightly-wistful look, “it is so very—very many years since we used to——”
“I know he wants to see you,” said Hugh, who could not help laughing a little; “and with so many people in the house I think you might risk it, Aunt Agatha. He stands awfully in awe of you, I can tell you. And there are to be a lot of people. It’s a kind of coming of age affair,” said Hugh. “I am to be set up on Psyche’s pedestal, and everybody is to look at me and sing out, ‘Behold the heir!’ That’s the sort of thing it’s to be. You can bring anybody you like, you two ladies—little Nelly Askell, and all that sort of thing,” he added, with a conscious laugh; and grew red again, not at thought of Nelly Askell, but with the thrill which “all that sort of thing” naturally brought into the young man’s veins.
The face of Wilfrid grew darker and darker as he sat and listened. It was not a precocious passion for Nelly Askell that moved him. If Nelly had been his sister, his heart might still have swelled with a very similar sentiment. “He’ll havehertoo,” was what the boy said to himself. There was no sort of justice or distribution in it; Hugh was the lucky fellow who had everything, while no personal appropriation whatever was to be permitted to Wilfrid. He could not engross his mother as he would have liked to do, for she loved Hugh and Islay just as well as she loved himself, and had friends and acquaintances, and people who came and talked, and occupied her time, and even one who was supposed to have the audacity to admire her. And there was no one else to supply the imperious necessity which existed in Will’s mind, to be the chief object of somebody’s thoughts. His curate had a certain awe of him, which was satisfactory enough in its way; but nobody watched and worshipped poor Will, or did anything more than love him in a reasonable unadoring way; and he had no sister whom he could make his slave, nor humble friend to whom he could be the centre of interest. Nelly’s coming had been a God-send to the boy. She had found out his discontent, and taken to comforting him instinctively, and had been introduced into a world new to her by means of his fancies: and the budding woman had regarded the budding man with that curiosity, and wonder, and respect, and interest, which exists by nature between the two representatives of humanity. And now here was Hugh, who, not content with being an Oxford scholar, and the heir of Earlston, and his mother’s eldest son, and Sir Edward’s favourite, and the most interesting member of the family to the parish in general, was about to seize on Nelly too. Will, though he was perhaps of a jealous temper, was not mean or envious, nor did he grudge his brother his elevation. But he thought it hard that all should go to one, andthat there should be no shares: if he had had the arranging of it, it would have been otherwise arranged; Hugh should still have had Earlston, and any other advantages suited to his capacity—but as for Oxford and Nelly—— It was unfair—that was the sting; all to one, and nothing to the other. This sentiment made Wilfrid very unwilling to accompany the rest of the family to Earlston. He did not want to go and survey all the particulars of Hugh’s good-fortune, and to make sure once again, as he had already so often decided, that Hugh’s capacities were inferior to his luck, and that it was really of little advantage to him to be so well off. But Will’s inclinations, as it happened, were not consulted on the subject; the expedition was all settled without any room being left for his protest. Aunt Agatha was to go, though she had very little desire to do so, being coy about Mr. Ochterlony’s house, and even not too well pleased to think that coyness was absurd in her case, and that she was old enough to go to anybody’s house, and indeed do what she pleased. And Sir Edward was going, who was older than any of them, and was still inclined to believe that Francis Ochterlony and Agatha Seton might make it up; and then, though Mrs. Askell objected greatly, and could not tell what she was to do with the children, and limited the expedition absolutely to two days, Nelly was going too. Thus Will had to give in, and withdraw his opposition. It was, as Hugh said, “a coming of age sort of affair,” but it was not precisely a coming of age, for that important event had taken place some time before, when Hugh, whose ambition was literary, had been working like a coal-heaver to take his degree, and had managed to take it and please his uncle. But there was to be a great dinner to introduce the heir of Earlston to his country neighbours, and everything was to be conducted with as much solemnity as if it had been the heir-apparent’s birthday. It was so great an occasion, that Mrs. Ochterlony got a new dress, and Aunt Agatha brought forth among the sprigs of lavender her silver-grey which she wore at Winnie’s marriage. It was not Hugh’s marriage, but it was an event almost as important; and if his own people did not try to do him credit, what was to be expected of the rest of the world?
And for Nelly Askell it was a very important crisis. She was sixteen, but up to this moment she had never had a dress “made long,” and the excitement of coming to this grandeur, and of finding Hugh Ochterlony by her side, full of unspeakable politeness, was almost too much for Nelly; the latter complication was something she did not quite understand. Will, for his part, carried things with a high hand, and behaved to heras a brother behaves to the sister whom he tyrannizes over. It is true that she sometimes tyrannized over him in her turn, as has been seen, but they did not think it necessary to be civil, nor did either of them restrain their personal sentiments in case anything occurred they disapproved of. But Hugh was altogether different—Hugh was one of “the gentlemen;” he was grown up, he had been to the University, he rode, and shot, and hunted, and did everything that the gentlemen are expected to do—and he lowered his voice when he spoke to Nelly, and schemed to get near her, and took bouquets from the Cottage garden which were not intended for Mrs. Askell. Altogether, he was like the hero of a story to Nelly, and he made her feel as if she, just that very moment as it were, translated into a long dress, was a young lady in a story too. Will was her friend and companion, but this was something quite different from Will; and to be taken to see his castle, and his guardian, and his future domains, and assist at the recognition of the young prince, was but the natural continuation of the romance. Nelly’s new long dresses were only muslin, but they helped out the force of the situation, and intensified that vague thrill of commencing womanhood and power undreamed of, which Hugh’s presence had helped to produce. Could it be possible that she could forget the children, and her mamma’s head which was always so bad, and go off for two whole days from her duty? Mrs. Askell could scarcely believe it, and Nelly felt guilty when she realized the dreadful thought, but still she wanted to go; and she had no patience with Will’s objections, but treated them with summary incivility. “Why shouldn’t you like to go?” said Nelly, “you would like it very much if you were your brother. And I would not be jealous like you, not for all the world;” and then Nelly added, “it is not because it is a party that I care for it, but because it is such a pleasure to dear Mrs. Ochterlony, and to—Mr. Hugh——”
“Ah, yes, I knew you would go over to Hugh’s side,” said Will; “I said so the very day he came here.”
“Why should I go over to his side?” cried Nelly, indignantly; “but I am pleased to see people happy; and I am Mr. Hugh’s friend, just as I am your friend,” added the little woman, with dignity; “it is all for dear Mrs. Ochterlony’s sake.”
Thus it was that the new generation stepped in and took up all the foreground of the stage, just as Winnie and her love affairs had done, who was of the intermediate generation—thrusting the people whose play was played out, and their personal story over, into the background. Mary, perhaps, had not seen how natural it was, when her sister was the heroine; but when she began to suspect that the everlasting romance might, perhaps, begin again under her very eyes, with her children for the actors, it gave her a sweet shock of surprise and amusement. She had been in the shade for a long time, and yet she had still been the central figure, and had everything in her hands. What if, now, perhaps, Aunt Agatha’s prophecy should come true, and Hugh, whose future was now secure, should find the little waif all ready for him at the very outset of his career? Such a possibility gave his mother, who had not yet arrived at the age which can consent to be passive and superannuated, a curious thrill—but still it might be a desirable event. When Mary saw her son hanging over the fair young creature, whom she had coveted to be her daughter, a true perception of what her own future must be came over her. The boysmustgo away, and would probably marry and set up households, and the mother who had given up the best part of her life to themmustremain alone. She was glad, and yet it went with a curious penetrating pang to her heart. Some women might have been jealous of the girl who had first revealed this possibility to them; but Mary, for her part, knew better, and saw that it was Nature and not Nelly that was to blame; and she was not a woman to go in the face of Nature. “Hugh will marry early,” she said to Aunt Agatha, with a smile; but her heart gave a little flutter in her breast as she said it, and saw how natural it was. Islay was gone already, and very soon Will would have to go; and there would be no more for their mother to do but to live on, with her occupation over, and her personal history at an end. The best thing to do was to make up her mind to it. There was a little moisture in her eyes as she smiled upon Nelly the night before they set out for Earlston. The girl had to spend the previous night at the Cottage, to be ready for their start next day; and Mrs. Ochterlony smiled upon and kissed her, with a mingled yearning and revulsion. Ah, if she had but been her own—that woman-child! and yet it required a little effort to accept her for her own, at the cost, as it were, of her boy—for women are inconsistent, especially when they are women who have children. But one thing, at least, Mary was sure about, and that was, that her own share of the world would henceforward be very slight. Nothing would ever happen to her individually. Perhaps she regretted the agitations and commotions of life, and felt as if she would prefer still to endure them, and feel herself something in the world; but that was all over; Willmustgo.Islay was gone. Hugh would marry; and Mary’s remaining years would flow on by necessity like the Kirtell, until some day they would come to a noiseless end. She said to herself that she ought to accept, and make up her mind to it; that boys must go out into the world, and quit the parent nest; and that she ought to be very thankful for the calm and secure provision which had been made for the rest of her life.
And next morning they started for Earlston, on the whole a very cheerful party. Nelly was so happy, that it did every one’s heart good to see her; and she had given Will what she called “such a talking to,” that he was as good as gold, and made no unpleasant remarks. And Sir Edward was very suave and benign, though full of recollections which confused and embarrassed Aunt Agatha. “I remember travelling along this same road when we still thought it could be all arranged,” he said; “and thinking what a long way it would be to have to go to Earlston to see you; but there was no railroad then, and everything is very much changed.”
“Yes, everything,” said Aunt Agatha; and then she talked about the weather in a tremulous way. Sir Edward would not have spoken as he did, if he had not thought that even yet the two old lovers might make it up, which naturally made it very confusing for Aunt Agatha to be the one to go to Earlston, and make, as it were, the first advances. She felt just the same heart thumping a little against her breast, and her white hair and soft faded cheek could not be supposed to be so constantly visible to her as they were to everybody else; and if Francis Ochterlony were to take it into his head to imagine——For Miss Seton, though nothing would have induced her to marry at her age, was not so certainly secure as her niece was that nothing now would ever happen in her individual life.
Nothing did happen, however, when they arrived at Earlston, where the master of the house received them, not with open arms, which was not his nature, but with all the enthusiasm he was capable of. He took them to see all his collections, everything he had that was most costly and rare. To go back to the house in this way, and see the scene of her former tortures; tortures which looked so light to look back upon, and were so amusing to think of, but which had been all but unbearable at the time, was strange to Mary. She told the story of her miseries, and they all laughed; but Mr. Ochterlony was still seen to change colour, when she pointed out the Etruscan vase which Hugh had taken into his hand, and the rococo chair which Islay had mounted. “This is thechair,” the master of Earlston said; and he did not laugh so frankly as the rest, but turned aside to show Miss Seton his Henri II. porcelain. “It was nothing to laugh at, at the time,” he said, confidentially, in a voice which sank into Aunt Agatha’s heart; and, to restore her composure, she paid great attention to the Henri Deux ware. She said she remembered longing very much to have a set like that when she was a girl. “I never knew you were fond of china,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “Oh, yes,” Aunt Agatha replied; but she did not explain that the china she had longed for was a toy service for her doll’s and little companions’ tea. Mr. Ochterlony put the costly cups away into a little cabinet, and locked it, after this; and he offered Aunt Agatha his arm, to lead her to the library, to see his collection there. She took it, but she trembled a little, the tender-hearted old woman. They looked such an old couple as they walked out of the room together, and yet there was something virginal and poetic about them, which they owed to their lonely lives. It was as if the roses that Hugh had just gathered for Nelly had been put away for half a century, and brought out again all dried and faded, but still roses, and with a lingering pensive perfume. And Sir Edward sat and smiled in a corner, and whispered to Mary to leave them to themselves a little: such things had been as that they might make it up.
There was a great dinner in the evening, at which Hugh’s health was drunk, and everybody hoped to see him for many a happy year at Earlston, yet prayed that it might be many a year before he had to take any other place than the one he now occupied at his uncle’s side. There were some county ladies present, who were very gracious to Mary, and anxious to know all about her boys, and whether she, too, was coming to Earlston; but who were disposed to snub Nelly, who was not Mrs. Ochterlony’s daughter, nor “any relation,” and who was clearly an interloper on such an occasion. Nelly did not care much for being snubbed; but she was very glad to seize the moment to propitiate Wilfrid, who had come into the room looking in what Nelly called “one of his states of mind;” for it must not be forgotten that she was a soldier’s daughter, and had been brought up exclusively in the regiment, and used many very colloquial forms of speech. She managed to glide to the other end of the room where Wilfrid was scowling over a collection of cameos without being noticed. To tell the truth, Nelly was easier in her mind when she was at a little distance from the Psyche and the Venus. She had never had any training in art, and she would have preferred to throw acloak or, at the least, a lace shawl, or something, over those marble beauties. But she was, at least, wise enough to keep her sentiments to herself.
“Why have you come up so early, Will?” she said.
“What need I stay for, I wonder?” said Will; “I don’t care for their stupid county talk. It is just as bad as parish talk, and not a bit more rational. I suppose my uncle must have known better one time or other, or he could not have collected all these things here.”
“Do you think they are very pretty?” said Nelly, looking back from a safe distance, and thinking that, however pretty they might be, they were not very suitable for a drawing-room, where people in general were in the habit of putting on more decorous garments: by which it will be perceived that she was a very ignorant little girl and knew nothing about it, and had no natural feeling for art.