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 to women'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, distributed about 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 been _both_ spared to meet
again!"
There was an emphasis on the _both_ which 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 have _both_ profited 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 of seeing 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 still she
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
sudden injury 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
the door 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 have had," 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 had _everything_," 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.