But the worst of all to Mrs. Ochterlony was that little Hugh had been
there--Hugh, who was six years old, and so intelligent for his age. The
child was very anxious to know what it meant, and why she knelt by his
father's side while all the other people were standing. Was it something
particular they were praying for, which Mrs. Kirkman, and the rest did
not want? Mary satisfied him as she best could, and by-and-by he forgot,
and began to play with his little brother as usual; but his mother knew
that so strange a scene could not fail to leave some impression. She sat
by herself that long day, avoiding her husband for perhaps the first
time in her life, and imagining a hundred possibilities to herself. It
seemed to her as if everybody who ever heard of her henceforth must hear
of this, and as if she must go through the world with a continual doubt
upon her; and Mary's weakness was to prize fair reputation and spotless
honour above everything in the world. Perhaps Mrs. Kirkman was not so
far wrong after all, and there was a higher meaning in the unlooked-for
blow that thus struck her at her tenderest point; but that was an idea
she could not receive. She could not think that God had anything to do
with her husband's foolish restlessness, and her own impatient
submission. It was a great deal more like a malicious devil's work, than
anything a beneficent providence could have arranged. This way of
thinking was far from bringing Mary any consolation or solace, but still
there was a certain reasonableness in her thoughts. And then an
indistinct foreboding of harm to her children, she did not know what, or
how to be brought about, weighed upon Mary's mind. She kept looking at
them as they played beside her, and thinking how, in the far future, the
meaning of that scene he had been a witness to might flash into Hugh's
mind when he was a man, and throw a bewildering doubt upon his mother's
name, which perhaps she might not be living to clear up; and these ideas
stung her like a nest of serpents, each waking up and darting its venom
to her heart at a separate moment. She had been very sad and very sorry
many a time before in her life,--she had tasted all the usual sufferings
of humanity; and yet she had never been what may be called _unhappy_,
tortured from within and without, dissatisfied with herself and
everything about her. Major Ochterlony was in every sense of the word a
good husband, and he had been Mary's support and true companion in all
her previous troubles. He might be absurd now and then, but he never was
anything but kind and tender and sympathetic, as was the nature of the
man. But the special feature of this misfortune was that it irritated
and set her in arms against him, that it separated her from her closest
friend and all her friends, and that it made even the sight and thought
of her children, a pain to her among all her other pains.
This was the wretched way in which Mary spent the day of her second
wedding. Naturally, Major Ochterlony brought people in with him to lunch
(probably it should be written tiffin, but our readers will accept the
generic word), and was himself in the gayest spirits, and insisted upon
champagne, though he knew they could not afford it. "We ate our real
wedding breakfast all by ourselves in that villanous little place at
Gretna," he said, with a boy's enthusiasm, "and had trout out of the
Solway: don't you recollect, Mary? Such trout! What a couple of happy
young fools we were; and if every Gretna Green marriage turned out like
mine!" the Major added, looking at his wife with beaming eyes. She had
been terribly wounded by his hand, and was suffering secret torture, and
was full of the irritation of pain; and yet she could not so steel her
heart as not to feel a momentary softening at sight of the love and
content in his eyes. But though he loved her he had sacrificed all her
scruples, and thrown a shadow upon her honour, and filled her heart with
bitterness, to satisfy an unreasonable fancy of his own, and give peace,
as he said, to his mind. All this was very natural, but in the pain of
the moment it seemed almost inconceivable to Mary, who was obliged to
conceal her mortification and suffering, and minister to her guests as
she was wont to do, without making any show of the shadow that she felt
to have fallen upon her life.
It was, however, tacitly agreed by the ladies of the station to make no
difference, according to the example of the Colonel's wife. Mrs. Kirkman
had resolved upon that charitable course from the highest motives, but
the others were perhaps less elevated in their principles of conduct.
Mrs. Hesketh, who was quite a worldly-minded woman, concluded it would
be absurd for one to take any step unless they all did, and that on the
whole, whatever were the rights of it, Mary could be no worse than she
had been for all the long time they had known her. As for Miss Sorbette,
who was strong-minded, she was disposed to consider that the moral
courage the Ochterlonys had displayed in putting an end to an
unsatisfactory state of affairs merited public appreciation. Little Mrs.
Askell, for her part, rushed headlong as soon as she heard of it, which
fortunately was not till it was all over, to see her suffering
protectress. Perhaps it was at that moment, for the first time, that the
ensign's wife felt the full benefit of being a married lady, able to
stand up for her friend and stretch a small wing of championship over
her. She rushed into Mrs. Ochterlony's presence and arms like a little
tempest, and cried and sobbed and uttered inarticulate exclamations on
her friend's shoulder, to Mary's great surprise, who thought something
had happened to her. Fortunately the little eighteen-year-old matron,
after the first incoherence was over, began to find out that Mrs.
Ochterlony looked the same as ever, and that nothing tragical could have
happened, and so restrained the offer of her own countenance and
support, which would have been more humbling to Mary than all the
desertion in the world.
"What is the matter, my dear?" said Mrs. Ochterlony, who had regained
her serene looks, though not her composed mind; and little Irish Emma,
looking at her, was struck with such a sense of her own absurdity and
temerity and ridiculous pretensions, that she very nearly broke down
again.
"I've been quarrelling with Charlie," the quick-witted girl said, with
the best grace she could, and added in her mind a secret clause to
soften down the fiction,--"he is so aggravating; and when I saw my
Madonna looking so sweet and so still----"
"Hush!" said Mary "there was no need for crying about that--nor for
telling fibs either," she added, with a smile that went to the heart of
the ensign's wife. "You see there is nothing the matter with me," Mrs.
Ochterlony added; but notwithstanding her perfect composure it was in a
harder tone.
"I never expected anything else," said the impetuous little woman; "as
if any nonsense could do any harm to you! And I love the Major, and I
always have stood up for him; but oh, I should just like for once to box
his ears."
"Hush!" said Mary again; and then the need she had of sympathy prompted
her for one moment to descend to the level of the little girl beside
her, who was all sympathy and no criticism, which Mary knew to be a kind
of friendship wonderfully uncommon in this world. "It did me no harm,"
she said, feeling a certain relief in dropping her reserve, and making
visible the one thing of which they were both thinking, and which had no
need of being identified by name. "It did me no harm, and it pleased
him. I don't deny that it hurt at the time," Mary added after a little
pause, with a smile; "but that is all over now. You need not cry over
me, my dear."
"I--cry over you," cried the prevaricating Emma, "as if such a thing had
ever come into my head; but I _did_ feel glad I was a married lady," the
little thing added; and then saw her mistake, and blushed and faltered
and did not know what to say next. Mrs. Ochterlony knew very well what
her young visitor meant, but she took no notice, as was the wisest way.
She had steeled herself to all the consequences by this time, and knew
she must accustom herself to such allusions and to take no notice of
them. But it was hard upon her, who had been so good to the child, to
think that little Emma was glad she was a married lady, and could in her
turn give a certain countenance. All these sharp, secret, unseen arrows
went direct to Mary's heart.
But on the whole the regiment kept its word and made no difference. Mrs.
Kirkman called every Wednesday and took Mary with her to the
prayer-meeting which she held among the soldiers' wives, and where she
said she was having much precious fruit; and was never weary of
representing to her companion that she had need of being brought down
and humbled, and that for her part she would rejoice in anything that
would bring her dear Mary to a more serious way of thinking; which was
an expression of feeling perfectly genuine on Mrs. Kirkman's part,
though at the same time she felt more and more convinced that Mrs.
Ochterlony had been deceiving her, and was not by any means an innocent
sufferer. The Colonel's wife was quite sincere in both these beliefs,
though it would be hard to say how she reconciled them to each other;
but then a woman is not bound to be logical, whether she belongs to High
or Low Church. At the same time she brought Mary sermons to read, with
passages marked, which were adapted for both these states of
feeling,--some consoling the righteous who were chastened because they
were beloved, and some exhorting the sinners who had been long callous
and now were beginning to awaken to a sense of their sins. Perhaps Mary,
who was not very discriminating in point of sermon-books, read both with
equal innocence, not seeing their special application: but she could
scarcely be so blind when her friend discoursed at the Mothers' Meeting
upon the Scripture Marys, and upon her who wept at the Saviour's feet.
Mrs. Ochterlony understood then, and never forgot afterwards, that it
was _that_ Mary with whom, in the mind of one of her most intimate
associates, she had come to be identified. Not the Mary blessed among
women, the type of motherhood and purity, but the other Mary, who was
forgiven much because she had much loved. That night she went home with
a swelling heart, wondering over the great injustice of human ways and
dealings, and crying within herself to the Great Spectator who knew all
against the evil thoughts of her neighbours. Was that what they all
believed of her, all these women? and yet she had done nothing to
deserve it, not so much as by a light look, or thought, or word; and it
was not as if she could defend herself, or convince them of their
cruelty: for nobody accused her, nobody reproached her--her friends, as
they all said, made no difference. This was the sudden cloud that came
over Mary in the very fairest and best moment of her life.
But as for the Major, he knew nothing about all that. It had been done
for his peace of mind, and until the next thing occurred to worry him he
was radiant with good-humour and satisfaction. If he saw at any time a
cloud on his wife's face, he thought it was because of that approaching
necessity which took the pleasure out of everything even to himself, for
the moment, when he thought of it--the necessity of sending Hugh "home."
"We shall still have Islay for a few years at least, my darling," he
would say, in his affectionate way; "and then the baby,"--for there was
a baby, which had come some time after the event which we have just
narrated. That too must have had something to do, no doubt, with Mary's
low spirits. "He'll get along famously with Aunt Agatha, and get
spoiled, that fellow will," the Major said; "and as for Islay, we'll
make a man of him." And except at those moments, when, as we have just
said, the thoughts of his little Hugh's approaching departure struck
him, Major Ochterlony was as happy and light-hearted as a man who is
very well off in all his domestic concerns, and getting on in his
profession, and who has a pleasant consciousness of doing his duty to
all men and a grateful sense of the mercies of God, should be, and
naturally is. When two people are yoked for life together, there is
generally one of the two who bears the burden, while the other takes
things easy. Sometimes it is the husband, as is fit and right, who has
the heavy weight on his shoulders; but sometimes, and oftener than
people think, it is the wife. And perhaps this was why Major Ochterlony
was so frisky in his harness, and Madonna Mary felt her serenity fall
into sadness, and was conscious of going on very slowly and heavily upon
the way of life. Not that he was to blame, who was now, as always, the
best husband in the regiment, or even in the world. Mary would not for
all his fidgets, not for any reward, have changed him against Colonel
Kirkman with his fishy eye, nor against Captain Hesketh's jolly
countenance, nor for anybody else within her range of vision. He was
very far from perfect, and in utter innocence had given her a wound
which throbbed and bled daily whichever way she turned herself, and
which she would never cease to feel all her life; but still at the same
time he stood alone in the world, so far as Mary's heart was concerned:
for true love is, of all things on earth, the most pertinacious and
unreasonable, let the philosophers say what they will.
And then the baby, for his part, was not like what the other babies had
been; he was not a great fellow, like Hugh and Islay; but puny and
pitiful and weakly,--a little selfish soul that would leave his mother
no rest. She had been content to leave the other boys to Providence and
Nature, tending them tenderly, wholesomely, and not too much, and hoping
to make men of them some day; but with this baby Mary fell to dreaming,
wondering often as he lay in her lap what his future would be. She used
to ask herself unconsciously, without knowing why, what his influence
might be on the lives of his brothers, who were like and yet so unlike
him: though when she roused up she rebuked herself, and thought how much
more reasonable it would be to speculate upon Hugh's influence, who was
the eldest, or even upon Islay, who had the longest head in the
regiment, and looked as if he meant to make some use of it one day. To
think of the influence of little weakly Wilfrid coming to be of any
permanent importance in the lives of those two strong fellows seemed
absurd enough; and yet it was an idea which would come back to her, when
she thought without thinking, and escaped as it were into a spontaneous
state of mind. The name even was a weak-minded sort of name, and did not
please Mary; and all sorts of strange fancies came into her head as she
sat with the pitiful little peevish baby, who insisted upon having all
her attention, lying awake and fractious upon her wearied knee.
Thus it was that the first important scene of her history came to an
end, with thorns which she never dreamed of planted in Mrs. Ochterlony's
way, and a still greater and more unthought-of cloud rising slowly upon
the broken serenity of her life.