Earlston is a house which lies in a little green valley among the grey
folds of the Shap Fells. It is not an inviting country, though the
people love it as people do love everything that belongs to them; and it
has a very different aspect from the wooded dell a little farther north,
where strays the romantic little Kirtell, and where Aunt Agatha's
cottage smiled upon a tufted slope, with the music of the cheery river
in its ears day and night. The rivers about Earlston were shallow, and
ran dry in summer, though it was not because of any want of rain; and
the greyness of the hills made a kind of mist in the air to unaccustomed
eyes. Everybody, who has ever gone to the north that way, knows the deep
cuttings about Shap, where the railway plunges through between two humid
living limestone walls, where the cottages, and the fences, and the
farm-houses all lead up in level tones of grey to the vast greyness of
the piebald hills, and where the line of pale sky above is grey too in
most cases. It was at one of the little stations in this monotonous
district that Mrs. Ochterlony and her children and her ayah were
deposited--Aunt Agatha, with an aspect of sternness, but a heart that
smote her, and eyes that kept filling with tears she was too proud to
shed, looking on the while. Winnie looked on too without the
compunction, feeling very affronted and angry. They were going further
on, and the thought of home was overcast to both these ladies by the
fact that everybody would ask for Mary, and that the excitement of the
past few weeks would collapse in the dreariest and suddenest way when
they were seen to return alone. As for Mary, she looked grey like the
landscape, under her heavy veil--grey, silent, in a kind of dull
despair, persuading herself that the best thing of all was to say
nothing about it, and shut only more closely the doors of that heart
where nobody now had any desire to come in. She lifted her little boys
out, and did not care even to look if the carriage was waiting for
her--and then she came to the window to bid her aunt and sister
good-bye. She was so disappointed and sick-hearted, and felt for the
moment that the small amount of affection and comprehension which they
were capable of giving her was so little worth the trouble of seeking
for, that Mary did not even ask to be written to. She put up her pale
face, and said good-bye in a dreary unexpectant tone that doubled the
compunction in Aunt Agatha's bosom. "Oh, Mary, if you had but been
coming with us!" cried that inconsistent woman, on the spur of the
moment. "It is too late to speak of it now," said Mary, and kissed her
and turned away; and the heartless train dashed off, and carried off
Aunt Agatha with that picture in her eyes of the forlorn little group on
the platform of the railway station--the two little boys clinging close
to their mother, and she standing alone among strangers, with the
widow's veil hanging over her colourless face. "Can you see the
carriage, Winnie?--look out and tell me if you can see it," said Aunt
Agatha. But the engine that carried them on was too quick for Winnie,
and had already swept out of sight. And they pursued their journey,
feeling guilty and wretched, as indeed, to a certain extent, they
deserved to feel. A two months' widow, with a baby and two helpless
little boys--and at the best it could only be a servant who had come to
meet her, and she would have everything to do for herself, and to face
her brother-in-law without any support or helper. When Aunt Agatha
thought of this, she sank back in her corner and sobbed. To think that
she should have been the one to take offence and be affronted at Mary's
first word, and desert her thus: when she might have taken her home and
comforted her, and then, if it must have ended so, conveyed her to
Earlston: Aunt Agatha cried, and deserved to cry, and even Winnie felt a
twinge at her heart; and they got rather angry with each other before
they reached home, and felt disposed to accuse each other, and trembled
both of them before the idea of meeting Peggy, Miss Seton's domestic
tyrant, who would rush to the door with her heart in her mouth to
receive "our Miss Mary and the puir dear fatherless bairns." Mary might
be silent about it, and never complain of unkindness; but it was not to
be expected that Peggy would have the same scruples; and these two
guilty and miserable travellers trembled at the thought of her as they
made their wretched way home.
When the train had disappeared, Mary tried to take a kind of cold
comfort to herself. She stood all alone, a stranger, with the few rustic
passengers and rustic railway officials staring at her as if she had
dropped from the skies, and no apparent sign anywhere that her coming
had been looked for, or that there was any resting-place for her in this
grey country. And she said to herself that it was natural, and must
always be so henceforth, and that it was best at once to accustom
herself to her lot. The carriage had not come, nor any message from
Earlston to say she was expected, and all that she could do was to go
into the rude little waiting-room, and wait there with the tired
children till some conveyance could be got to take her to her
brother-in-law's house. Her thoughts would not be pleasant to put down
on paper, could it be done; and yet they were not so painful as they had
been the day before, when Aunt Agatha failed her, or seemed to fail. Now
that disappointed craving for help and love and fellowship was over for
the moment, and she had nothing but her own duty and Francis Ochterlony
to encounter, who was not a man to give any occasion for vain hopes.
Mary did not expect fellowship or love from her brother-in-law. If he
was kind and tolerant of the children, and moderately considerate to
herself, it was all she looked for from him. Perhaps, though he had
invited her, he had not been prepared to have her thrown on his hands so
soon; and it might be that the domestic arrangements of Earlston were
not such as to admit of the unlooked-for invasion of a lady and a
nursery on such very short notice. But the most prominent feeling in
Mrs. Ochterlony's mind was weariness, and that longing to escape
anywhere, which is the most universal of all sentiments when the spirit
is worn out and sick to death. Oh, that she had wings like a
dove!--though Mary had nowhere to flee to, nobody to seek consolation
from; and instead of having a home anywhere on earth awaiting her, was
herself the home, the only shelter they understood, of the little pale
fatherless children who clustered round her. If she could but have taken
possession of one of those small cottages, grey and homely as they
looked, and put the little ones to bed in it, and drawn a wooden chair
to the fire, and been where she had a right to be! It was July, but the
weather was cold at Shap, and Mary had that instinct common to wounded
creatures of creeping to the fire, as if there was a kind of comfort in
its warmth. She could have borne her burden bravely, or at least she
thought so, if this had been what awaited her. But it was Earlston and
Francis Ochterlony that awaited her--a stranger and a stranger's house.
All these thoughts, and many more, were passing through her mind, as she
sat in the little waiting-room with her baby in her arms, and her two
elder boys pressing close to her. The children clung and appealed to
her, and the helpless Hindoo woman crouched at her mistress's side; but
as for Mary, there was nobody to give her any support or countenance. It
was a hard opening to the stern way which had henceforward to be trodden
alone.
Francis Ochterlony, however, though he had a certain superb indifference
to the going-out and coming-in of trains, and had forgotten the precise
hour, was not a wretch nor a brute, and had not forgotten his visitors.
While Mary sat and waited, and while the master of the little station
made slow but persevering search after some possible means of conveyance
for her, a heavy rumbling of wheels became audible, and the carriage
from Earlston made its tardy appearance. It was an old-fashioned
vehicle, drawn by two horses, which betrayed their ordinary avocations
much in the same way as the coachman did, who, though dressed, as they
were, for the occasion, carried a breath of the fields about him, which
was more convincing than any conventionalism of garments. But such as it
was, the Earlston carriage was not without consideration in the
country-side. All the people about turned out in a leisurely way to
lift the children into it, and shoulder the boxes into such corners as
could be found for them--which was an affair that demanded many
counsellors--and at length the vehicle got under way. Twilight began to
come on as they mounted up into the grey country, by the winding grey
roads fenced in with limestone walls. Everything grew greyer in the
waning light. The very trees, of which there were so few, dropped into
the gathering shadows, and deepened them without giving any livelier
tint of colour to the scene. The children dropped asleep, and the ayah
crooned and nodded over the baby; but Mary, who had no temptation to
sleep, looked out with steady eyes, and, though she saw nothing
distinctly, took in unawares all the comfortless chill and monotony of
the landscape. It went to her heart, and made her shiver. Or perhaps it
was only the idea of meeting Francis Ochterlony that made her shiver. If
the children, any one of them, had only been old enough to understand it
a little, to clasp her hand or her neck with the exuberance of childish
sympathy! But they did not understand, and dropped asleep, or asked with
timid, quivering little voices, how long it would be before they got
home. Home! no wonder Mrs. Ochterlony was cold, and felt the chill go to
her heart. Thus they went on for six or seven weary miles, taking as
many hours, as Mary thought. Aunt Agatha had arrived at her cottage,
though it was nearly thirty miles further on, while the comfortless
party were still jogging along in the Earlston carriage; but Mary did
not think particularly of that. She did not think at all, poor soul. She
saw the grey hill-side gliding past her, and in a vague way, at the same
moment, seemed to see herself, a bride, going gaily past on the same
road, and rehearsed all the past over again with a dull pain, and
shivered, and felt cold--cold to her heart. This was partly perhaps
because it is chilly in Cumberland, when one has just come from India;
and partly because there was something that affected a woman's fanciful
imagination in the misty monotony of the limestone country, and the grey
waste of the hills.
Earlston, too, was grey, as was to be expected; and the trees which
surrounded it had lost colour in the night. The hall was but dimly
lighted, when the door was opened--as is but too common in country
houses of so retired a kind--and there was nobody ready at the instant
to open the door or to receive the strangers. To be sure, people were
called and came--the housekeeper first, in a silk gown, which rustled
excessively, and with a certain air of patronizing affability; and then
Mr. Ochterlony, who had been sitting, as he usually did, in his
dressing-gown, and who had to get into his coat so hurriedly that he had
not recovered from it when he shook hands with his sister-in-law; and
then by degrees servants appeared, and lifted out the sleepy, startled
children, who, between waking and sleeping, worn out, frightened, and
excited, were precisely in the condition which it is most difficult to
manage. And the ayah, who could hold no Christian communication with
anybody around her, was worse than useless to her poor mistress. When
Mr. Ochterlony led the way into the great, solemn, dark,
dining-room--which was the nearest room at hand--the children, instead
of consenting to be led upstairs, clung with one unanimous accord to
their mother. Little Wilfrid got to her arms, notwithstanding all
remonstrances, and Hugh and Islay each seized silently a handful of her
black dress, crushing the crape beyond all remedy. It was thus she
entered Earlston, which had been her husband's birthplace, and was to be
her son's inheritance--or so at least Mary thought.
"I hope you have had a pleasant journey," Mr. Ochterlony said, shaking
hands with her again. "I daresay they are tired, poor little things--but
you have had good weather, I hope." This he said after he had indicated
to Mary a large easy-chair in carved oak, which stood by the side of the
fire-place, and into which, with little Wilfrid clinging to her, and
Islay and Hugh holding fast by her dress, it was not so easy to get. The
master of the house did not sit down himself, for it was dreary and
dark, and he was a man of fine perceptions; but he walked to the window
and looked out, and then came back again to his sister-in-law. "I am
glad you have had such good weather--but I am sure you must all be
tired," he said.
"Yes," said Mary, who would have liked to cry, "very tired; but I hope
we did not come too soon. Your letter was so kind that I thought----"
"Oh don't speak of it," said Mr. Ochterlony; and then he stood before
her on the dark hearth, and did not know what more to say. The twilight
was still lingering, and there were no lights in the room, and it was
fitted up with the strictest regard to propriety, and just as a
dining-room ought to be. Weird gleams of dull reflection out of the
depths of old mahogany lay low towards the floor, bewildering the
visitor; and there was not even the light of a fire, which, for merely
conventional motives, because it was July, did not occupy its usual
place; though Mary, fresh from India, and shivering with the chill of
excitement and nervous grief, would have given anything to be within
reach of one. Neither did she know what to say to her almost unknown
brother-in-law, whose face even she could see very imperfectly; and the
children grasped her with that tight hold which is in itself a warning,
and shows that everything is possible in the way of childish fright and
passion. But still it was indispensable that she should find something
to say.
"My poor little boys are so young," she said, faltering. "It was very
good of you to ask us, and I hope they won't be troublesome. I think I
will ask the housekeeper to show us where we are to be. The railway
tires them more than the ship did. This is Hugh," said Mary, swallowing
as best she could the gasp in her throat, and detaching poor little
Hugh's hand from her crape. But she had tears in her voice, and Mr.
Ochterlony had a wholesome dread of crying. He gave his nephew a hurried
pat on the head without looking at him, and called for Mrs. Gilsland,
who was at hand among the shadows rustling with her silk gown.
"Oh!" he said hurriedly. "A fine little fellow I am sure;--but you are
quite right, and they must be tired, and I will not detain you. Dinner
is at seven," said Mr. Ochterlony. What could he say? He could not even
see the faces of the woman and children whom it was his dread but
evident duty to receive. When they went away under Mrs. Gilsland's
charge, he followed them to the foot of the stairs, and stood looking
after them as the procession mounted, guided by the rustle of the
housekeeper's gown. The poor man looked at them in a bewildered way, and
then went off to his library, where his own shaded lamp was lit, and
where everything was cosy and familiar. Arrived there, he threw himself
into his own chair with a sigh. He was not a brute, nor a wretch, as we
have said, and the least thing he could do when he heard of his poor
brother's death was to offer a shelter--temporarily at least--to the
widow and her children; but perhaps a lurking hope that something might
turn up to prevent the invasion had been in his mind up to this day. Now
she was here, and what was he to do with her? Now _they_ were here,
which was still more serious--three boys (even though one of them was a
baby) in a house full of everything that was daintiest and rarest and
most delicate! No wonder Mr. Ochterlony was momentarily stupefied by
their arrival; and then he had not even seen their faces to know what
they were like. He remembered Mary of old in her bride-days, but then
she was too young, too fresh, too unsubdued to please him. If she were
as full of vigour and energy now, what was to become of a quiet man
who, above all things, loved tranquillity and leisure? This was what
Francis Ochterlony was thinking as his visitors went upstairs.
Mrs. Ochterlony was inducted into the best rooms in the house. Her
brother-in-law was not an effusive or sympathetic man by nature, but
still he knew what was his duty under the circumstances. Two great rooms
gleaming once more with ebon gleams out of big wardrobes and
half-visible mirrors, with beds that looked a little like hearses, and
heavy solemn hangings. Mrs. Gilsland's silk gown rustled about
everywhere, pointing out a thousand conveniences unknown at the station;
but all Mary was thinking about was one of those grey cottages on the
road, with the fire burning brightly, and its little homely walls
lighted up with the fitful, cheerful radiance. If she could but have had
a fire, and crept up to it, and knelt on the hearth and held herself to
the comforting warmth! There are times when a poor creature feels all
body, just as there are times when she feels all soul. And then, to
think that dinner was at seven! just as it had been when she came there
with Hugh, a girl all confident of happiness and life. No doubt Mr.
Ochterlony would have forgiven his sister-in-law, and probably indeed
would have been as much relieved as she, if she had but sent an apology
and stayed in her room all the evening. But Mary was not the kind of
woman to do this. It did not occur to her to depart from the natural
routine, or make so much talk about her own feelings or sentiments as
would be necessary even to excuse her. What did it matter? If it had to
be done, it had to be done, and there was nothing more to be said. This
was the view her mind took of most matters; and she had always been
well, and never had any pretext to get out of things she did not like,
as women do who have headaches and handy little illnesses. She could
always do what was needful, and did always do it without stopping to
make any questions; which is a serviceable kind of temperament in life,
and yet subjects people to many little martyrdoms which otherwise they
might escape from. Though her heart was sick, she put on her best gown
all covered with crape, and her widow's cap, and went down to dine with
Francis Ochterlony in the great dining-room, leaving her children
behind, and longing unspeakably for that cottage with the fire.
It was not such an unbecoming dress after all, notwithstanding what
people say. Mary was worn and sad, but she was not faded; and the dead
white of the cap that encircled her face, and the dead black of her
dress, did not do so much harm as perhaps they ought to have done to
that sweet and stedfast grace, which had made the regiment recognise
and adopt young Stafford's fanciful title. She was still Madonna Mary
under that disfigurement; and on the whole she was _not_ disfigured by
her dress. Francis Ochterlony lifted his eyes with equal surprise and
satisfaction to take a second look at poor Hugh's widow. He felt by
instinct that Phidias himself could not have filled a corner in his
drawing-room, which was so full of fine things, with a figure more fair
or half so appropriate as that of the serene woman who now took her seat
there, abstracted a little into the separation and remoteness of sorrow,
but with no discord in her face. He liked her better so than with the
group of children, who made her look as if she was a Charity, and the
heavy veil hanging half over her face, which had a conventual and
uncomfortable effect; and he was very courteous and attentive to his
sister-in-law. "I hope you had good weather," he said in his deferential
way; "and I trust, when you have been a few days at Earlston, the
fatigue will wear off. You will find everything quiet here."
"I hope so," said Mary; "but it is the children I am thinking of. I
trust our rooms are a long distance off, and that we will not disturb
you."
"That is quite a secondary matter," said Mr. Ochterlony. "The question
is, are you comfortable? I hope you will let Mrs. Gilsland know if
anything is wanted. We are not--not quite used to these sort of things,
you know; but I am sure, if anything is wanted----"
"You are very kind," said Mary; "I am sure we shall be very
comfortable." And yet as she said so her thoughts went off with a leap
to that little cottage interior, and the cheerful light that shone out
of the window, and the fire that crackled and blazed within. Ah, if she
were but there! not dining with Mr. Ochterlony in solemn grandeur, but
putting her little boys to bed, and preparing their supper for them, and
cheating away heavy thoughts by that dear common work for the comfort
and service of her own which a woman loves. But this was not a sort of
longing to give expression to at Earlston, where in the evening Mr.
Ochterlony was very kind to his sister-in-law, and showed her a great
many priceless things which Mary regarded with trembling, thinking of
two small barbarians about to be let loose among them, not to speak of
little Wilfrid, who was old enough to dash an Etruscan vase to the
earth, or upset the rarest piece of china, though he was still only a
baby. She could not tell how they were so much as to walk through that
drawing-room without doing some harm, and her heart sank within her as
she listened to all those loving lingering descriptions which only a
virtuoso can make. Mr. Ochterlony retired that evening with a sense
always agreeable to a man, that in doing a kind thing he had not done a
foolish one, and that the children of such a fair and gracious woman
could not be the graceless imps who had been haunting his dreams ever
since he knew they were coming home; but Mary for her part took no such
flattering unction to her soul. She sighed as she went upstairs sad and
weary to the great sombre room, in which a couple of candles burned like
tiny stars in a world of darkness, and looked at her sleeping boys, and
wondered what they were to do in this collection of curiosities and
beauties. She was an ignorant woman, and did not, alas! care anything at
all for the Venus Anadyomene. But she thought of little Hugh tilting
that marble lady and her pedestal over, and shook and trembled at the
idea. She trembled too with cold and nervous agitation, and the chill of
sorrow in her heart. In the lack of other human sources of consolation,
oh! to go to that cottage hearth, and kneel down and feel to one's very
soul the comfort of the warm consoling fire.