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MADONNA MARY.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF
"LAST OF THE MORTIMERS," "IN THE DAYS OF MY
LIFE," "SQUIRE ARDEN," "OMBRA," "MAY,"
ETC., ETC.
_NEW EDITION._
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1875.
[_All rights reserved._]
LONDON:
SWIFT AND CO., NEWTON STREET, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.
MADONNA MARY.
CHAPTER I.
Major Ochterlony had been very fidgety after the coming in of the mail.
He was very often so, as all his friends were aware, and nobody so much
as Mary, his wife, who was herself, on ordinary occasions, of an
admirable composure. But the arrival of the mail, which is so welcome an
event at an Indian station, and which generally affected the Major very
mildly, had produced a singular impression upon him on this special
occasion. He was not a man who possessed a large correspondence in his
own person; he had reached middle life, and had nobody particular
belonging to him, except his wife and his little children, who were as
yet too young to have been sent "home;" and consequently there was
nobody to receive letters from, except a few married brothers and
sisters, who don't count, as everybody knows. That kind of formally
affectionate correspondence is not generally exciting, and even Major
Ochterlony supported it with composure. But as for the mail which
arrived on the 15th of April, 1838, its effect was different. He went
out and in so often, that Mary got very little good of her letters,
which were from her young sister and her old aunt, and were naturally
overflowing with all kinds of pleasant gossip and domestic information.
The present writer has so imperfect an idea of what an Indian bungalow
is like, that it would be impossible for her to convey a clear idea to
the reader, who probably knows much better about it. But yet it was in
an Indian bungalow that Mrs. Ochterlony was seated--in the dim hot
atmosphere, out of which the sun was carefully excluded, but in which,
nevertheless, the inmates simmered softly with the patience of people
who cannot help it, and who are used to their martyrdom. She sat still,
and did her best to make out the pleasant babble in the letters, which
seemed to take sound to itself as she read, and to break into a sweet
confusion of kind voices, and rustling leaves, and running water, such
as, she knew, had filled the little rustic drawing-room in which the
letters were written. The sister was very young, and the aunt was old,
and all the experience of the world possessed by the two together, might
have gone into Mary's thimble, which she kept playing with upon her
finger as she read. But though she knew twenty times better than they
did, the soft old lady's gentle counsel, and the audacious girl's advice
and censure, were sweet to Mary, who smiled many a time at their
simplicity, and yet took the good of it in a way that was peculiar to
her. She read, and she smiled in her reading, and felt the fresh English
air blow about her, and the leaves rustling--if it had not been for the
Major, who went and came like a ghost, and let everything fall that he
touched, and hunted every innocent beetle or lizard that had come in to
see how things were going on; for he was one of those men who have a
great, almost womanish objection to reptiles and insects, which is a
sentiment much misplaced in India. He fidgeted so much, indeed, as to
disturb even his wife's accustomed nerves at last.
"Is there anything wrong--has anything happened?" she asked, folding up
her letter, and laying it down in her open work-basket. Her anxiety was
not profound, for she was accustomed to the Major's "ways," but still
she saw it was necessary for his comfort to utter what was on his mind.
"When you have read your letters I want to speak to you," he said. "What
do your people mean by sending you such heaps of letters? I thought you
would never be done. Well, Mary, this is what it is--there's nothing
wrong with the children, or anybody belonging to us, thank God; but it's
very nearly as bad, and, I am at my wit's end. Old Sommerville's dead."
"Old Sommerville!" said Mrs. Ochterlony. This time she was utterly
perplexed and at a loss. She could read easily enough the anxiety which
filled her husband's handsome, restless face; but, then, so small a
matter put _him_ out of his ordinary! And she could not for her life
remember who old Sommerville was.
"I daresay _you_ don't recollect him," said the Major, in an aggrieved
tone. "It is very odd how everything has gone wrong with us since that
false start. It is an awful shame, when a set of old fogies put young
people in such a position--all for nothing, too," Major Ochterlony
added: "for after we were actually married, everybody came round. It is
an awful shame!"
"If I was a suspicious woman," said Mary, with a smile, "I should think
it was our marriage that you called a false start and an awful shame."
"And so it is, my love: so it is," said the innocent soldier, his face
growing more and more cloudy. As for his wife being a suspicious woman,
or the possible existence of any delicacy on her part about his words,
the Major knew better than that. The truth was that he might have given
utterance to sentiments of the most atrocious description on that point,
sentiments which would have broken the heart and blighted the existence,
so to speak, of any sensitive young woman, without producing the
slightest effect upon Mary, or upon himself, to whom Mary was so utterly
and absolutely necessary, that the idea of existing without her never
once entered his restless but honest brain. "That is just what it is,"
he said; "it is a horrid business for me, and I don't know what to do
about it. They must have been out of their senses to drive us to marry
as we did; and we were a couple of awful fools," said the Major, with
the gravest and most care-worn countenance. Mrs. Ochterlony was still a
young woman, handsome and admired, and she might very well have taken
offence at such words; but, oddly enough, there was something in his
gravely-disturbed face and pathetic tone which touched another chord in
Mary's breast. She laughed, which was unkind, considering all the
circumstances, and took up her work, and fixed a pair of smiling eyes
upon her perplexed husband's face.
"I daresay it is not so bad as you think," she said, with the manner of
a woman who was used to this kind of thing. "Come, and tell me all about
it." She drew her chair a trifle nearer his, and looked at him with a
face in which a touch of suppressed amusement was visible, under a good
deal of gravity and sympathy. She was used to lend a sympathetic ear to
all his difficulties, and to give all her efforts to their elucidation,
but still she could not help feeling it somewhat droll to be complained
to in this strain about her own marriage. "We _were_ a couple of fools,"
she said, with a little laugh, "but it has not turned out so badly as it
might have done." Upon which rash statement the Major shook his head.
"It is easy for you to say so," he said, "and if I were to go no deeper,
and look no further---- It is all on your account, Mary. If it were not
on your account----"
"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Ochterlony, still struggling with a perverse
inclination to laugh; "but now tell me what old Sommerville has to do
with it; and who old Sommerville is; and what put it into his head just
at this moment to die."
The Major sighed, and gave her a half-irritated, half-melancholy look.
To think she should laugh, when, as he said to himself, the gulf was
yawning under her very feet. "My dear Mary," he said, "I wish you would
learn that this is not anything to laugh at. Old Sommerville was the old
gardener at Earlston, who went with us, you recollect, when we went
to--to Scotland. My brother would never have him back again, and he went
among his own friends. He was a stupid old fellow. I don't know what he
was good for, for my part;--but," said Major Ochterlony, with solemnity,
"he was the only surviving witness of our unfortunate marriage--that is
the only thing that made him interesting to me."
"Poor old man!" said Mary, "I am very sorry. I had forgotten his name;
but really,--if you speak like this of our unfortunate marriage, you
will hurt my feelings," Mrs. Ochterlony added. She had cast down her
eyes on her work, but still there was a gleam of fun out of one of the
corners. This was all the effect made upon her mind by words which would
have naturally produced a scene between half the married people in the
world.
As for the Major, he sighed: he was in a sighing mood, and at such
moments his wife's obtusity and thoughtlessness always made him sad. "It
is easy talking," he said, "and if it were not on your account, Mary----
The fact is that everything has gone wrong that had any connection with
it. The blacksmith's house, you know, was burned down, and his kind of a
register--if it was any good, and I am sure I don't know if it was any
good; and then that woman died, though she was as young as you are, and
as healthy, and nobody had any right to expect that she would die,"
Major Ochterlony added with an injured tone, "and now old Sommerville;
and we have nothing in the world to vouch for its being a good marriage,
except what that blacksmith fellow called the 'lines.' Of course you
have taken care of the lines," said the Major, with a little start. It
was the first time that this new subject of doubt had occurred to his
mind.
"To vouch for its being a good marriage!" said Mrs. Ochterlony: "really,
Hugh, you go too far. Our marriage is not a thing to make jokes about,
you know--nor to get up alarms about either. Everybody knows all about
it, both among your people and mine. It is very vexatious and
disagreeable of you to talk so." As she spoke the colour rose to Mary's
matron cheek. She had learned to make great allowances for her husband's
anxious temper and perpetual panics; but this suggestion was too much
for her patience just at the moment. She calmed down, however, almost
immediately, and came to herself with a smile. "To think you should
almost have made me angry!" she said, taking up her work again. This did
not mean to imply that to make Mrs. Ochterlony angry was at all an
impossible process. She had her gleams of wrath like other people, and
sometimes it was not at all difficult to call them forth; but, so far as
the Major's "temperament" was concerned, she had got, by much exercise,
to be the most indulgent of women--perhaps by finding that no other way
of meeting it was of any use.
"It is not my fault, my love," said the Major, with a meekness which was
not habitual to him. "But I hope you are quite sure you have the lines.
Any mistake about them would be fatal. They are the only proof that
remains to us. I wish you would go and find them, Mary, and let me make
sure."
"The lines!" said Mrs. Ochterlony, and, notwithstanding her
self-command, she faltered a little. "Of course I must have them
somewhere--I don't quite recollect at this moment. What do you want them
for, Hugh? Are we coming into a fortune, or what are the statistics good
for? When I can lay my hand upon them, I will give them to you," she
added, with that culpable carelessness which her husband had already so
often remarked in her. If it had been a trumpery picture or book that
had been mislaid, she could not have been less concerned.
"When you can lay your hands upon them!" cried the exasperated man. "Are
you out of your senses, Mary? Don't you know that they are your
sheet-anchor, your charter--the only document you have----"
"Hugh," said Mrs. Ochterlony, "tell me what this means. There must be
something in it more than I can see. What need have I for documents?
What does it matter to us this old man being dead, more than it matters
to any one the death of somebody who has been at their wedding? It is
sad, but I don't see how it can be a personal misfortune. If you really
mean anything, tell me what it is."
The Major for his part grew angry, as was not unnatural. "If you choose
to give me the attention you ought to give to your husband when he
speaks seriously to you, you will soon perceive what I mean," he said;
and then he repented, and came up to her and kissed her. "My poor Mary,
my bonnie Mary," he said. "If that wretched irregular marriage of ours
should bring harm to you! It is you only I am thinking of, my
darling--that you should have something to rest upon;" and his feelings
were so genuine that with that the water stood in his eyes.
As for Mrs. Ochterlony, she was very near losing patience altogether;
but she made an effort and restrained herself. It was not the first time
that she had heard compunctions expressed for the irregular marriage,
which certainly was not her fault. But this time she was undeniably a
little alarmed, for the Major's gravity was extreme. "Our marriage is no
more irregular than it always was," she said. "I wish you would give up
this subject, Hugh; I have you to rest upon, and everything that a woman
can have. We never did anything in a corner," she continued, with a
little vehemence. "Our marriage was just as well known, and well
published, as if it had been in St. George's, Hanover Square. I cannot
imagine what you are aiming at. And besides, it is done, and we cannot
mend it," she added, abruptly. On the whole, the runaway match had been
a pleasant frolic enough; there was no earthly reason, except some
people's stupid notions, why they should not have been married; and
everybody came to their senses rapidly, and very little harm had come of
it. But the least idea of doubt on such a subject is an offence to a
woman, and her colour rose and her breath came quick, without any will
of hers. As for the Major, he abandoned the broader general question,
and went back to the detail, as was natural to the man.
"If you only have the lines all safe," he said, "if you would but make
sure of that. I confess old Sommerville's death was a great shock to me,
Mary,--the last surviving witness; but Kirkman tells me the marriage
lines in Scotland are a woman's safeguard, and Kirkman is a Scotchman
and ought to know."
"Have you been consulting _him_?" said Mary, with a certain despair;
"have you been talking of such a subject to----"
"I don't know where I could have a better confidant," said the Major.
"Mary, my darling, they are both attached to you; and they are good
people, though they talk; and then he is Scotch, and understands. If
anything were to happen to me, and you had any difficulty in
proving----"
"Hugh, for Heaven's sake have done with this. I cannot bear any more,"
cried Mrs. Ochterlony, who was at the end of her powers.
It was time for the great _coup_ for which his restless soul had been
preparing. He approached the moment of fate with a certain skill, such
as weak people occasionally display, and mad people almost always,--as
if the feeble intellect had a certain right by reason of its weakness to
the same kind of defence which is possessed by the mind diseased. "Hush,
Mary, you are excited," he said, "and it is only you I am thinking of.
If anything should happen to me--I am quite well, but no man can answer
for his own life:--my dear, I am afraid you will be vexed with what I am
going to say. But for my own satisfaction, for my peace of mind--if we
were to go through the ceremony again----"
Mary Ochterlony rose up with sudden passion. It was altogether out of
proportion to her husband's intentions or errors, and perhaps to the
occasion. _That_ was but a vexatious complication of ordinary life; and
he a fidgety, uneasy, perhaps over-conscientious, well-meaning man. She
rose, tragic without knowing it, with a swell in her heart of the
unutterable and supreme--feeling herself for the moment an outraged
wife, an insulted woman, and a mother wounded to the heart. "I will hear
no more," she said, with lips that had suddenly grown parched and dry.
"Don't say another word. If it has come to this, I will take my chance
with my boys. Hugh, no more, no more." As she lifted her hands with an
impatient gesture of horror, and towered over him as he sat by, having
thus interrupted and cut short his speech, a certain fear went through
Major Ochterlony's mind. Could her mind be going? Had the shock been too
much for her? He could not understand otherwise how the suggestion which
he thought a wise one, and of advantage to his own peace of mind, should
have stung her into such an incomprehensible passion. But he was afraid
and silenced, and could not go on.
"My dear Mary," he said mildly, "I had no intention of vexing you. We
can speak of this another time. Sit down, and I'll get you a glass of
water," he added, with anxious affection; and hurried off to seek it:
for he was a good husband, and very fond of his wife, and was terrified
to see her turn suddenly pale and faint, notwithstanding that he was
quite capable of wounding her in the most exquisite and delicate point.
But then he did not mean it. He was a matter-of-fact man, and the idea
of marrying his wife over again in case there might be any doubtfulness
about the first marriage, seemed to him only a rational suggestion,
which no sensible woman ought to be disturbed by; though no doubt it was
annoying to be compelled to have recourse to such an expedient. So he
went and fetched her the water, and gave up the subject, and stayed with
her all the afternoon and read the papers to her, and made himself
agreeable. It was a puzzling sort of demonstration on Mary's part, but
that did not make her the less Mary, and the dearest and best of earthly
creatures. So Major Ochterlony put his proposal aside for a more
favourable moment, and did all he could to make his wife forget it, and
behaved himself as a man naturally would behave who was recognised as
the best husband and most domestic man in the regiment. Mary took her
seat again and her work, and the afternoon went on as if nothing had
happened. They were a most united couple, and very happy together, as
everybody knew; or if one of them at any chance moment was perhaps less
than perfectly blessed, it was not, at any rate, because the love-match,
irregular as it might be, had ended in any lack of love.