Everything however went on well enough at the station for some time
after the great occurrence which counted for so much in Mrs.
Ochterlony's history; and the Major was very peaceable, for him, and
nothing but trifling matters being in his way to move him, had fewer
fidgets than usual. To be sure he was put out now and then by something
the Colonel said or did, or by Hesketh's well-off-ness, which had come
to the length of a moral peculiarity, and was trying to a man; but these
little disturbances fizzed themselves out, and got done with without
troubling anybody much. There was a lull, and most people were
surprised at it and disposed to think that something must be the matter
with the Major; but there was nothing the matter. Probably it occurred
to him now and then that his last great fidget had rather gone a step
too far--but this is mere conjecture, for he certainly never said so.
And then, after a while, he began to play, as it were, with the next
grand object of uneasiness which was to distract his existence. This was
the sending "home" of little Hugh. It was not that he did not feel to
the utmost the blank this event would cause in the house, and the
dreadful tug at his heart, and the difference it would make to Mary. But
at the same time it was a thing that had to be done, and Major
Ochterlony hoped his feelings would never make him fail in his duty. He
used to feel Hugh's head if it was hot, and look at his tongue at all
sorts of untimely moments, which Mary knew meant nothing, but yet which
made her thrill and tremble to her heart; and then he would shake his
own head and look sad. "I would give him a little quinine, my dear," he
would say; and then Mary, out of her very alarm and pain, would turn
upon him.
"Why should I give him quinine? It is time enough when he shows signs of
wanting it. The child is quite well, Hugh." But there was a certain
quiver in Mrs. Ochterlony's voice which the Major could not and did not
mistake.
"Oh yes, he is quite well," he would reply; "come and let me feel if you
have any flesh on your bones, old fellow. He is awfully thin, Mary. I
don't think he would weigh half so much as he did a year ago if you were
to try. I don't want to alarm you, my dear; but we must do it sooner or
later, and in a thing that is so important for the child, we must not
think of ourselves," said Major Ochterlony; and then again he laid his
hand with that doubting, experimenting look upon the boy's brow, to feel
"if there was any fever," as he said.
"He is quite well," said Mary, who felt as if she were going distracted
while this pantomime went on. "You do frighten me, though you don't mean
it; but I _know_ he is quite well."
"Oh yes," said Major Ochterlony, with a sigh; and he kissed his little
boy solemnly, and set him down as if things were in a very bad way; "he
is quite well. But I have seen when five or six hours have changed all
that," he added with a still more profound sigh, and got up as if he
could not bear further consideration of the subject, and went out and
strolled into somebody's quarters, where Mary did not see how
light-hearted he was half-and-hour after, quite naturally, because he
had poured out his uneasiness, and a little more, and got quite rid of
it, leaving her with the arrow sticking in her heart. No wonder that
Mrs. Kirkman, who came in as the Major went out, said that even a very
experienced Christian would have found it trying. As for Mary, when she
woke up in the middle of the night, which little peevish Wilfrid gave
her plenty of occasion to do, she used to steal off as soon as she had
quieted that baby-tyrant, and look at her eldest boy in his little bed,
and put her soft hand on his head, and stoop over him to listen to his
breathing. And sometimes she persuaded herself that his forehead _was_
hot, which it was quite likely to be, and got no more sleep that night;
though as for the Major, he was a capital sleeper. And then somehow it
was not so easy as it had been to conclude that it was only his way; for
after his way had once brought about such consequences as in that
re-marriage which Mary felt a positive physical pain in remembering, it
was no longer to be taken lightly. The consequence was, that Mrs.
Ochterlony wound herself up, and summoned all her courage, and wrote to
Aunt Agatha, though she thought it best, until she had an answer, to say
nothing about it; and she began to look over all little Hugh's wardrobe,
to make and mend, and consider within herself what warm things she could
get him for the termination of that inevitable voyage, and to think what
might happen before she had these little things of his in her care
again--how they would wear out and be replenished, and his mother have
no hand in it--and how he would get on without her. She used to make
pictures of the little forlorn fellow on shipboard, and how he would cry
himself to sleep, till the tears came dropping on her needle and rusted
it; and then would try to think how good Aunt Agatha would be to him,
but was not to say comforted by that--not so much as she ought to have
been. There was nothing in the least remarkable in all this, but only
what a great many people have to go through, and what Mrs. Ochterlony no
doubt would go through with courage when the inevitable moment came. It
was the looking forward to and rehearsing it, and the Major's awful
suggestions, and the constant dread of feeling little Hugh's head hot,
or his tongue white, and thinking it was her fault--this was what made
it so hard on Mary; though Major Ochterlony never meant to alarm her, as
anybody might see.
"I think he should certainly go home," Mrs. Kirkman said. "It is a
trial, but it is one of the trials that will work for good. I don't like
to blame you, Mary, but I have always thought your children were a
temptation to you; oh, take care!--if you were to make idols of
them----"
"I don't make idols of them," said Mrs. Ochterlony, hastily; and then
she added, with an effort of self-control which stopped even the rising
colour on her cheek, "You know I don't agree with you about these
things." She did not agree with Mrs. Kirkman; and yet to tell the truth,
where so much is concerned, it is a little hard for a woman, however
convinced she may be of God's goodness, not to fail in her faith and
learn to think that, after all, the opinion which would make an end of
her best hopes and her surest confidence may be true.
"I know you don't agree with me," said the Colonel's wife, sitting down
with a sigh. "Oh, Mary, if you only knew how much I would give to see
you taking these things to heart--to see you not almost, but altogether
such as I am," she added, with sudden pathos. "If you would but remember
that these blessings are only lent us--that we don't know what day or
hour they may be taken back again----"
All this Mary listened to with a rising of nature in her heart against
it, and yet with that wavering behind,--What if it might be true?
"Don't speak to me so," she said. "You always make me think that
something is going to happen. As if God grudged us our little happiness.
Don't talk of lending and taking back again. If _He_ is not a cheerful
giver, who can be?" For she was carried away by her feelings, and was
not quite sure what she was saying--and at the same time, it comes so
much easier to human nature to think that God grudges and takes back
again, and is not a cheerful giver. As for Mrs. Kirkman, she thought it
sinful so much as to imagine anything of the kind.
"It grieves me to hear you speak in that loose sort of latitudinarian
way," she said; "oh, my dear Mary, if you could only see how much need
you have to be brought low. When one cross is not enough, another
comes--and I feel that you are not going to be let alone. This trial, if
you take it in a right spirit, may have the most blessed consequences.
It must be to keep you from making an idol of him, my dear--for if he
takes up your heart from better things----"
What could Mary say? She stopped in her work to give her hands an
impatient wring together, by way of expressing somehow in secret to
herself the impatience with which she listened. Yet perhaps, after all,
it might be true. Perhaps God was not such a Father as He, the supreme
and all-loving, whom her own motherhood shadowed forth in Mary's heart,
but such a one as those old pedant fathers, who took away pleasures and
reclaimed gifts, for discipline's sake. Perhaps--for when a heart has
everything most dear to it at stake, it has such a miserable inclination
to believe the worst of Him who leaves his explanation to the end,--Mary
thought perhaps it might be true, and that God her Father might be lying
in wait for her somewhere to crush her to the ground for having too much
pleasure in his gift,--which was the state of mind which her friend, who
was at the bottom of her heart a good woman, would have liked to bring
about.
"I think it is simply because we are in India," said Mrs. Ochterlony,
recovering herself; "it is one of the conditions of our lot. It is a
very hard condition, but of course we have to bear it. I think, for my
part, that God, instead of doing it to punish me, is sorry for me, and
that He would mend it and spare us if something else did not make it
necessary. But perhaps it is you who are right," she added, faltering
again, and wondering if it was wrong to believe that God, in a wonderful
supreme way, must be acting, somehow as in a blind ineffective way, she,
a mother, would do to her children. But happily her companion was not
aware of that profane thought. And then, Mrs. Hesketh had come in, who
looked at the question from entirely a different point of view.
"We have all got to do it, you know," said that comfortable woman,
"whether we idolize them or not. I don't see what that has to do with
it; but then I never do understand _you_. The great thing is, if you
have somebody nice to send them to. One's mother is a great comfort for
that; but then, there is one's husband's friends to think about. I am
not sure, for my own part, that a good school is not the best. _That_
can't offend anybody, you know; neither your own people, nor _his_; and
then they can go all round in the holidays. Mine have all got on
famously," said Mrs Hesketh; and nobody who looked at her could have
thought anything else. Though, indeed, Mrs. Hesketh's well-off-ness was
not nearly so disagreeable or offensive to other people as her
husband's, who had his balance at his banker's written on his face;
whereas in her case it was only evident that she was on the best of
terms with her milliner and her jeweller, and all her tradespeople, and
never had any trouble with her bills. Mary sat between the woman who had
no children, and who thought she made idols of her boys--and the woman
who had quantities of children, and saw no reason why anybody should be
much put out of their way about them; and neither the one nor the other
knew what she meant, any more than she perhaps knew exactly what they
meant, though, as was natural, the latter idea did not much strike her.
And the sole strengthening which Mrs. Ochterlony drew from this talk
was a resolution never to say anything more about it; to keep what she
was thinking of to herself, and shut another door in her heart, which,
after all, is a process which has to be pretty often repeated as one
goes through the world.
"But Mary has no friends--no _female_ friends, poor thing. It is so sad
for a girl when that happens, and accounts for so many things," the
Colonel's wife said, dropping the lids over her eyes, and with an
imperceptible shake of her head, which brought the little chapel and the
scene of her second marriage in a moment before Mary's indignant eyes;
"but there is one good even in that, for it gives greater ground for
faith; when we have nothing and nobody to cling to----"
"We were talking of the children," Mrs. Hesketh broke in calmly. "If I
were you I should keep Hugh until Islay was old enough to go with him.
They are such companions to each other, you know, and two children don't
cost much more than one. If I were you, Mary, I would send the two
together. I always did it with mine. And I am sure you have somebody
that will take care of them; one always has somebody in one's eye; and
as for female friends----"
Mary stopped short the profanity which doubtless her comfortable visitor
was about to utter on the subject. "I have nothing but female friends,"
she said, with a natural touch of sharpness in her voice. "I have an
aunt and a sister who are my nearest relatives--and it is there Hugh is
going," for the prick of offence had been good for her nerves, and
strung them up.
"Then I can't see what you have to be anxious about," said Mrs. Hesketh;
"some people always make a fuss about things happening to children; why
should anything happen to them? mine have had everything, I think, that
children can have, and never been a bit the worse; and though it makes
one uncomfortable at the time to think of their being ill, and so far
away if anything should happen, still, if you know they are in good
hands, and that everything is done that can be done---- And then, one
never hears till the worst is over," said the well-off woman, drawing
her lace shawl round her. "Good-by, Mary, and don't fret; there is
nothing that is not made worse by fretting about it; I never do, for my
part."
Mrs. Kirkman threw a glance of pathetic import out of the corners of her
down-dropped eyes at the large departing skirts of Mary's other visitor.
The Colonel's wife was one of the people who always stay last, and her
friends generally cut their visits short when they encountered her, with
a knowledge of this peculiarity, and at the same time an awful sense of
something that would be said when they had withdrawn. "Not that I care
for what she says," Mrs. Hesketh murmured to herself as she went out,
"and Mary ought to know better at least;" but at the same time, society
at the station, though it was quite used to it, did not like to think of
the sigh, and the tender, bitter lamentations which would be made over
them when they took their leave. Mrs. Hesketh was not sensitive, but she
could not help feeling a little aggrieved, and wondering what special
view of her evil ways her regimental superior would take this time--for
in so limited a community, everybody knew about everybody, and any
little faults one might have were not likely to be hid.
Mrs. Kirkman had risen too, and when Mary came back from the door the
Colonel's wife came and sat down beside her on the sofa, and took Mrs.
Ochterlony's hand. "She would be very nice, if she only took a little
thought about the one thing needful," said Mrs. Kirkman, with the usual
sigh. "What does it matter about all the rest? Oh, Mary, if we could
only choose the good part which cannot be taken away from us!"
"But surely, we all try a little after that," said Mary. "She is a kind
woman, and very good to the poor. And how can we tell what her thoughts
are? I don't think we ever understand each other's thoughts."
"I never pretend to understand. I judge according to the Scripture
rule," said Mrs. Kirkman; "you are too charitable, Mary; and too often,
you know, charity only means laxness. Oh, I cannot tell you how those
people are all laid upon my soul! Colonel Kirkman being the principal
officer, you know, and so little real Christian work to be expected from
Mr. Churchill, the responsibility is terrible. I feel sometimes as if I
must die under it. If their blood should be demanded at my hands!"
"But surely God must care a little about them Himself," said Mrs.
Ochterlony. "Don't you think so? I cannot think that He has left it all
upon you----"
"Dear Mary, if you but give me the comfort of thinking I had been of use
to _you_," said Mrs. Kirkman, pressing Mary's hand. And when she went
away she believed that she had done her duty by Mrs. Ochterlony at
least; and felt that perhaps, as a brand snatched from the burning, this
woman, who was so wrapped up in regard for the world and idolatry of her
children, might still be brought into a better state. From this it will
be seen that the painful impression made by the marriage had a little
faded out of the mind of the station. It was there, waiting any chance
moment or circumstance that might bring the name of Madonna Mary into
question; but in the meantime, for the convenience of ordinary life, it
had been dropped. It was a nuisance to keep up a sort of shadowy censure
which never came to anything, and by tacit consent the thing had
dropped. For it was a very small community, and if any one had to be
tabooed, the taboo must have been complete and crushing, and nobody had
the courage for that. And so gradually the cloudiness passed away like a
breath on a mirror, and Mary to all appearance was among them as she had
been before. Only no sort of compromise could really obliterate the fact
from anybody's recollection, or above all from her own mind.
And Mary went back to little Hugh's wardrobe when her visitors were
gone, with that sense of having shut another door in her heart which has
already been mentioned. It is so natural to open all the doors and leave
all the chambers open to the day; but when people walk up to the
threshold and look in and turn blank looks of surprise or sad looks of
disapproval upon you, what is to be done but to shut the door? Mrs.
Ochterlony thought as most people do, that it was almost incredible that
her neighbours did not understand what she meant; and she thought too,
like an inexperienced woman, that this was an accident of the station,
and that elsewhere other people knew better, which was a very fortunate
thought, and did her good. And so she continued to put her boy's things
in order, and felt half angry when she saw the Major come in, and knew
beforehand that he was going to resume his pantomime with little Hugh,
and to try if his head was hot and look at his tongue. If his tongue
turned out to be white and his head feverish, then Mary knew that he
would think it was her fault, and began to long for Aunt Agatha's
letter, which she had been fearing, and which might be looked for by the
next mail.
As for the Major, he came home with the air of a man who has hit upon a
new trouble. His wife saw it before he had been five minutes in the
house. She saw it in his eyes, which sought her and retired from her in
their significant restless way, as if studying how to begin. In former
days Mrs. Ochterlony, when she saw this, used to help her husband out;
but recently she had had no heart for that, and he was left unaided to
make a beginning for himself. She took no notice of his fidgeting, nor
of the researches he made all about the room, and all the things he put
out of their places. She could wait until he informed her what it was.
But Mary felt a little nervous until such time as her husband had seated
himself opposite her, and began to pull her working things about, and to
take up little Hugh's linen blouses which she had been setting in order.
Then the Major heaved a demonstrative sigh. He meant to be asked what
it meant, and even gave a glance up at her from the corner of his eye to
see if she remarked it, but Mary was hard-hearted and would take no
notice. He had to take all the trouble himself.
"He will want warmer things when he goes home," said the Major. "You
must write to Aunt Agatha about that, Mary. I have been thinking a great
deal about his going home. I don't know how I shall get on without him,
nor you either, my darling; but it is for his good. How old is Islay?"
Major Ochterlony added with a little abruptness: and then his wife knew
what it was.
"Islay is not quite three," said Mary, quietly, as if the question was
of no importance; but for all that her heart began to jump and beat
against her breast.
"Three! and so big for his age," said the guilty Major, labouring with
his secret meaning. "I don't want to vex you, Mary, my love, but I was
thinking perhaps when Hugh went; it comes to about the same thing, you
see--the little beggar would be dreadfully solitary by himself, and I
don't see it would make any difference to Aunt Agatha----"
"It would make a difference to _me_," said Mary. "Oh, Hugh, don't be so
cruel to me. I cannot let him go so young. If Hugh must go, it may be
for _his_ good--but not for Islay's, who is only a baby. He would not
know us or have any recollection of us. Don't make me send both of my
boys away."
"You would still have the baby," said the Major. "My darling, I am not
going to do anything without your consent. Islay looked dreadfully
feverish the other day, you know. I told you so; and as I was coming
home I met Mrs. Hesketh----"
"You took _her_ advice about it," said Mary, with a little bitterness.
As for the Major, he set his Mary a whole heaven above such a woman as
Mrs. Hesketh, and yet he _had_ taken her advice about it, and it
irritated him a little to perceive his wife's tone of reproach.
"If I listened to her advice it is because she is a very sensible
woman," said Major Ochterlony. "You are so heedless, my dear. When your
children's health is ruined, you know, that is not the time to send them
home. We ought to do it now, while they are quite well; though indeed I
thought Islay very feverish the other night," he added, getting up again
in his restless way. And then the Major was struck with compunction when
he saw Mary bending down over her work, and remembered how constantly
she was there, working for them, and how much more trouble those
children cost her than they ever could cost him. "My love," he said,
coming up to her and laying his hand caressingly upon her bent head, "my
bonnie Mary! you did not think I meant that you cared less for them, or
what was for their good, than I do? It will be a terrible trial; but
then, if it is for their good and our own peace of mind----"
"God help me," said Mary, who was a little beside herself. "I don't
think you will leave me any peace of mind. You will drive me to do what
I think wrong, or, if I don't do it, you will make me think that
everything that happens is my fault. You don't mean it, but you are
cruel, Hugh."
"I am sure I don't mean it," said the Major, who, as usual, had had his
say out; "and when you come to think--but we will say no more about it
to-night. Give me your book, and I will read to you for an hour or two.
It is a comfort to come in to you and get a little peace. And after all,
my love, Mrs. Hesketh means well, and she's a very sensible woman. I
don't like Hesketh, but there's not a word to say against her. They are
all very kind and friendly. We are in great luck in our regiment. Is
this your mark where you left off? Don't let us say anything more about
it, Mary, for to-night."
"No," said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a sigh; but she knew in her heart that
the Major would begin to feel Islay's head, if it was hot, and look at
his tongue, as he had done to Hugh's, and drive her out of her senses;
and that, most likely, when she had come to an end of her powers, she
would be beaten and give in at last. But they said no more about it that
night; and the Major got so interested in the book that he sat all the
evening reading, and Mary got very well on with her work. Major
Ochterlony was so interested that he even forgot to look as if he
thought the children feverish when they came to say good-night, which
was the most wonderful relief to his wife. If thoughts came into her
head while she trimmed little Hugh's blouses, of another little
three-year-old traveller tottering by his brother's side, and going away
on the stormy dangerous sea, she kept them to herself. It did not seem
to her as if she could outlive the separation, nor how she could permit
a ship so richly freighted to sail away into the dark distance and the
terrible storms; and yet she knew that she must outlive it, and that it
must happen, if not now, yet at least some time. It is the condition of
existence for the English sojourners in India. And what was she more
than another, that any one should think there was any special hardship
in her case?