The Cottage changed its aspect greatly after the arrival of the
regiment, and it was a change which lasted a long time, for the depôt
was established at Carlisle, and Captain Askell got an appointment which
smoothed the stony way of life a little for himself and his wife.
Kirtell was very accessible and very pretty, and there was always a
welcome to be had at the Cottage; and the regiment returned in the
twinkling of an eye to its old regard for its Madonna Mary. The officers
came about the house continually, to the great enlivenment of the parish
in general. And Mrs. Kirkman came, and very soon made out that the vicar
and his curate were both very incompetent, and did what she could to
form a missionary nucleus, if not under Mrs. Ochterlony's wing, at least
protected by her shadow; and the little Askells came and luxuriated in
the grass and the flowers; and Miss Sorbette and the doctor, who were
still on the strength of the regiment, paid many visits, bringing with
them the new people whom Mary did not know. When Hugh and Islay came
home at vacation times, they found the house so lively, that it acquired
new attractions for them, and Aunt Agatha, who was not so old as to be
quite indifferent to society, said to herself with natural sophistry,
that it was very good for the boys, and made them happier than two
solitary women could have done by themselves, which no doubt was true.
As for Mrs. Ochterlony herself, she said frankly that she was glad to
see her friends; she liked to receive them in her own house. She had
been rather poor in India, and not able to entertain them very
splendidly; and though she was poor still, and the Cottage was a very
modest little dwelling-place, it could receive the visitors, and give
them pleasant welcome, and a pleasant meal, and pleasant faces, and
cheerful companionship. Mrs. Ochterlony was not yet old, and she had
lived a quiet life of late, so peaceful that the incipient wrinkles
which life had outlined in her face, had been filled up and smoothed out
by the quietness. She was in perfect health, and her eyes were bright,
and her complexion sweet, and her hair still gave by time a golden gleam
out of its brown masses.
No wonder then that her old friends saw little or no change in her, and
that her new ones admired her as much as she had ever been admired in
her best days. Some women are sweet by means of being helpless, and
fragile, and tender; and some have a loftier charm by reason of their
veiled strength and composure, and calm of self-possession. Mary was one
of the last; she was a woman not to lean, but to be leant upon; soft
with a touch like velvet, and yet as steady as a rock--a kind of beauty
which wears long, and does not spoil even by growing old.
It was a state of affairs very agreeable to everybody in the place,
except, perhaps, to Will, who was very jealous of his mother. Hugh and
Islay when they came home took it all for granted, in an open-handed
boyish way, and were no more afraid of anything Mrs. Ochterlony might
do, than for their own existence. But Will was always there. He haunted
the drawing-room, whoever might be in it at the moment; yet--though to
Aunt Agatha's consciousness, the boy was never absent from the big
Indian chair in the corner--he was at the same time always ready to
pursue his curate to the very verge of that poor gentleman's knowledge,
and give him all the excitement of a hairbreadth 'scape ten times in a
morning. Nobody could tell when he learned his lessons, or what time he
had for study--for there he was always, taking in everything, and making
comments in his own mind, and now and then interposing in the
conversation to Aunt Agatha's indignation. Mary would not see it, she
said; Mary thought that all her boys did was right--which was, perhaps,
to some extent true; and it was said in the neighbourhood, as was
natural, that so many gentlemen did not come to the Cottage for nothing;
that Mrs. Ochterlony was still a young woman; that she had devoted
herself to the boys for a long time, and that if she were to marry
again, nobody could have any right to object. Such reports spring up in
the country so easily, either with or without foundation; and Wilfrid,
who found out everything, heard them, and grew very watchful and
jealous, and even doubtful of his mother. Should such an idea have
entered into _her_ head, the boy felt that he would despise her; and yet
at the same time he was very fond of her and filled with unbounded
jealousy. While all the time, Mary herself was very glad to see her
friends, and, perhaps, was not entirely unconscious of exciting a
certain respectful admiration, but had as little idea of severing
herself from her past life, and making a new fictitious beginning, as if
she had been eighty; and it never occurred to her to imagine that she
was watched or doubted by her boy.
It was a pleasant revival, but it had its drawbacks--for one thing, Aunt
Agatha did not, as she said, get on with all Mary's friends. There was
between Miss Seton and Mrs. Kirkman an enmity which was to the death.
The Colonel's wife, though she might be, as became her position, a good
enough conservative in secular politics, was a revolutionary, or more
than a revolutionary, an iconoclast, in matters ecclesiastical. She had
no respect for anything, Aunt Agatha thought. A woman who works under
the proper authorities, and reveres her clergyman, is a woman to be
regarded with a certain respect, even if she is sometimes zealous out of
season; but when she sets up on her own foundation, and sighs over the
shortcomings of the clergy, and believes in neither rector nor curate,
then the whole aspect of affairs is changed. "She believes in nobody but
herself," Aunt Agatha said; "she has no respect for anything. I wonder
how you can put up with such a woman, Mary. She talks to our good vicar
as if he were a boy at school--and tells him how to manage the parish.
If that is the kind of person you think a good woman, I have no wish to
be good, for my part. She is quite insufferable to me."
"She is often disagreeable," said Mary, "but I am sure she is good at
the bottom of her heart."
"I don't know anything about the bottom of her heart," said Aunt Agatha;
"from all one can see of the surface, it must be a very unpleasant
place. And then that useless Mrs. Askell; she is quite strong enough to
talk to the gentlemen and amuse them, but as for taking a little pains
to do her duty, or look after her children--I must say I am surprised at
your friends. A soldier's life is trying, I suppose," Miss Seton added.
"I have always heard it was trying; but the gentlemen should be the ones
to feel it most, and they are not spoiled. The gentlemen are very
nice--most of them," Aunt Agatha added with a little hesitation, for
there was one whom she regarded as Wilfrid did with jealous eyes.
"The gentlemen are further off, and we do not see them so clearly," said
Mary; "and if you knew what it is to wander about, to have no settled
home, and to be ailing and poor----"
"My dear love," said Aunt Agatha, with a little impatience, "you might
have been as poor, and you never would have been like that; and as for
sick---- You know I never thought you had a strong constitution--nor
your sister either--my pretty Winnie! Do you think that sickness, or
poverty, or anything else, could ever have brought down Winnie to be
like that silly little woman?"
"Hush," said Mary, "Nelly is in the garden, and might hear."
"Nelly!" said Aunt Agatha, who felt herself suddenly pulled up short. "I
have nothing to say against Nelly, I am sure. I could not help thinking
last night, that some of these days she would make a nice wife for one
of the boys. She is quite beginning to grow up now, poor dear. When I
see her sitting there it makes me think of my Winnie;--not that she will
ever be beautiful like Winnie. But Mary, my dear love, I don't think you
are kind to me. I am sure you must have heard a great deal about Winnie,
especially since she has come back to England, and you never tell me a
word."
"My dear aunt," said Mary, with a little embarrassment, "you see all
these people as much as I do; and I have heard them telling you what
news of her they know."
"Ah, yes," said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh. "They tell me she is here or
there, but I know that from her letters; what I want to know is,
something about her, how she looks, and if she is happy. She never
_says_ she is not happy, you know. Dear, dear! to think she must be past
thirty now--two-and-thirty her last birthday--and she was only eighteen
when she went away. You were not so long away, Mary----"
"But Winnie has not had my reason for coming back upon your hands, Aunt
Agatha," said Mrs. Ochterlony, gravely.
"No," said Aunt Agatha: and again she sighed; and this time the sigh was
of a kind which did not sound very complimentary to Captain Percival. It
seemed to say "More's the pity!" Winnie had never come back to see the
kind aunt who had been a mother to her. She said in her letters how
unlucky she was, and that they were to be driven all round the world,
she thought, and never to have any rest; but no doubt, if Winnie had
been very anxious, she might have found means to come home. And the
years were creeping on imperceptibly, and the boys growing up--even
Will, who was now almost as tall as his brothers. When such a change had
come upon these children, what a change there must be in the wilful,
sprightly, beautiful girl whose image reigned supreme in Aunt Agatha's
heart. A sudden thought struck the old lady as she sighed. The little
Askells were at Kirtell at the moment with the nurse, and Nelly, who was
more than ever the mother of the little party. Aunt Agatha sat still for
a little with her heart beating, and then she took up her work in a soft
stealthy way, and went out into the garden. "No, my dear, oh no, don't
disturb yourself," she said, with anxious deprecation to Mary, who would
have risen too, "I am only going to look at the lilies," and she was so
conscientious that she did go and cast an undiscerning, preoccupied
glance upon the lilies, though her real attraction was quite in an
opposite quarter. At the other side, audible but not visible, was a
little group which was pretty to look at in the afternoon sunshine. It
was outside the garden, on the other side of the hedge, in the pretty
green field, all white and yellow with buttercups and daisies, which
belonged to the Cottage. Miss Seton's mild cow had not been able to crop
down all that flowery fragrant growth, and the little Askells were
wading in it, up to their knees in the cool sweet grass, and feeding
upon it and drawing nourishment out of it almost as much as the cow did.
But in the corner close by the garden hedge there was a more advanced
development of youthful existence. Nelly was seated on the grass,
working with all her might, yet pausing now and then to lift her serious
eyes to Will, who leant upon an old stump of oak which projected out of
the hedge, and had the conversation all in his own hands. He was doing
what a boy under such circumstances loves to do; he was startling,
shocking, frightening his companion. He was saying a great deal that he
meant and some things that he did not mean, and taking a great secret
pleasure in the widening of Nelly's eyes and the consternation of her
face. Will had grown into a very long lank boy, with joints which were
as awkward as his brother's used to be, yet not in the same way, for the
limbs that completed them were thin and meagre, and had not the vigour
of Hugh's. His trousers were too short for him, and so were his sleeves.
His hair had no curls in it, and fell down over his forehead. He was
nearly sixteen, and he was thoroughly discontented--a misanthrope,
displeased with everything without knowing why. But time had been kinder
to Nelly, who was not long and lean like her companion, but little and
round and blooming, with the soft outlines and the fresh bloom of
earliest youth just emerging out of childhood. Her eyes were brown, very
serious, and sweet--eyes that had "seen trouble," and knew a great many
more things in the world than were dreamt of in Will's philosophy: but
then she was not so clever as Will, and his talk confused her. She was
looking up to him and taking all in with a mixture of willing faith and
instinctive scepticism which it was curious to see.
"You two are always together, I think," said Aunt Agatha, putting down a
little camp-stool she had in her hand beside Nelly--for she had passed
the age when people think of sitting on the grass. "What are you talking
about? I suppose he brings all his troubles to you."
"Oh, no," said Nelly, with a blush, which was on Aunt Agatha's account,
and not on Will's. He was a little older than herself actually; but
Nelly was an experienced woman, and could not but look down amiably on
such an unexercised inhabitant of the world as "only a boy."
"Then I suppose, my dear, he must talk to you about Greek and Latin,"
said Aunt Agatha, "which is a thing young ladies don't much care for: I
am very sure old ladies don't. Is that what you talk about?"
"Oh, yes, often," said Nelly, brightening, as she looked at Will. That
was not the sort of talk they had been having, but still it was true.
"Well," said Miss Seton, "I am sure he will go on talking as long as you
will listen to him. But he must not have you all to himself. Did he tell
you Hugh was coming home to see us? We expect him next week."
"Yes," said Nelly, who was not much of a talker. And then, being a
little ashamed of her taciturnity, she added, "I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony
will be glad."
"We shall all be glad," said Aunt Agatha. "Hugh is very nice. We must
have you to see a little more of him this time; I am sure you would like
him. Then you will be well acquainted with all our family," the old lady
continued, artfully approaching her real object; "for you know my dear
Winnie, I think--I ought to say, Mrs. Percival; she is the dearest girl
that ever was. You must have met her, my dear---- abroad."
Nelly looked up a little surprised. "We knew Mrs. Percival," she said,
"but she---- was not a girl at all. She was as old--as old as
mamma--like all the other ladies," she added, hastily; for the word girl
had limited meanings to Nelly, and she would have laughed at its
application in such a case, if she had not been a natural gentlewoman
with the finest manners in the world.
"Ah, yes," said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh, "I forget how time goes; and
she will always be a girl to me: but she was very beautiful, all the
same; and she had such a way with children. Were you fond of her, Nelly?
Because, if that were so, I should love you more and more."
Nelly looked up with a frightened, puzzled look in Aunt Agatha's eyes.
She was very soft-hearted, and had been used to give in to other people
all her life; and she almost felt as if, for Aunt Agatha's sake, she
could persuade herself that she had been fond of Mrs. Percival; but yet
at the same time honesty went above all. "I do not think we knew them
very well," she said. "I don't think mamma was very intimate with Mrs.
Percival; that is, I don't think papa liked _him_," added Nelly, with
natural art.
Aunt Agatha gave another sigh. "That might be, my dear," she said, with
a little sadness; "but even when gentlemen don't take to each other, it
is a great pity when it acts upon their families. Some of our friends
here even were not fond at first of Captain Percival, but for my darling
Winnie's sake---- You must have seen her often at least; I wonder I
never thought of asking you before. She was so beautiful, with such
lovely hair, and the sweetest complexion. Was she looking well--and--and
happy?" asked Aunt Agatha, growing anxious as she spoke, and looking
into Nelly's face.
It was rather hard upon Nelly, who was one of those true women, young as
she was, who can see what other women mean when they put such questions,
and hear the heart beat under the words. Nelly had heard a great deal of
talk in her day, and knew things about Mrs. Percival that would have
made Aunt Agatha's hair stand on end with horror. But her heart
understood the other heart, and could not have breathed a whisper that
would wound it, for the world.
"I was such a little thing," said Nelly; "and then I always had the
little ones to look after--mamma was so delicate. I remember the
people's names more than themselves."
"You have always been a very good girl, I am sure," said Aunt Agatha,
giving her young companion a sudden kiss, and with perhaps a faint
instinctive sense of Nelly's forbearance and womanful skill in avoiding
a difficult subject; but she sighed once more as she did it, and
wondered to herself whether nobody would ever speak to her freely and
fully of her child. And silence ensued, for she had not the heart to ask
more questions. Will, who had not found the conversation amusing, had
gone in to find his mother, with a feeling that it was not quite safe to
leave her alone, which had something to do with his frequent presence in
the drawing room; so that the old lady and Nelly were left alone in the
corner of the fragrant field. The girl went on with her work, but Aunt
Agatha, who was seated on her camp-stool, with her back against the oak
stump, let her knitting fall upon her knee, and her eyes wander into
vacancy with a wistful look of abstraction that was not natural to them.
Nelly, who did not know what to say, and yet would have given a great
deal to be able to say something, watched her from under the shadow of
her curls, and at last saw Miss Seton's abstract eyes brighten up and
wake into attention and life. Nelly looked round, and her impulse was to
jump up in alarm when she saw it was her own mother who was
approaching--her mother, whom Nelly had a kind of adoration for as a
creature of divine helplessness, for whom everything had to be done, but
in whose judgment she had an instinctive want of confidence. She jumped
up and called to the children on the spur of this sudden impulse: "Oh!
here is mamma, we must go in," cried Nelly; and it gave her positive
pain to see that Miss Seton's attitude remained unchanged, and that she
had no intention of being disturbed by Mrs. Askell's approach.
"Oh how deliciously comfortable you are here," cried Emma, throwing
herself down on the grass. "I came out to have a little fresh air and
see after those tiresome children. I am sure they have been teasing you
all day long; Nelly is not half severe enough, and nurse spoils them;
and after a day in the open air like this, they make my head like to
split when they come home at night."
"They have not been teasing me," said Aunt Agatha; "they have been very
good, and I have been sitting here for a long time talking to Nelly. I
wanted her to tell me something about my dear child, Mary's own
sister--Mrs. Percival, you know."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Askell, making a troubled pause,--"and I hope to
goodness you did not tell Miss Seton anything that was unpleasant," she
said sharply, turning to Nelly. "You must not mind anything she said,"
the foolish little woman added; "she was only a child and she did not
know. You should have asked me."
"What could there be that was not pleasant?" cried Aunt Agatha. "If
there is anything unpleasant that can be said about my Winnie, that is
precisely what I ought to hear."
"Mamma!" cried Nelly, in what was intended to be a whisper of warning,
though her anxiety made it shrill and audible. But Emma was not a woman
to be kept back.
"Goodness, child, you have pulled my dress out of the gathers," she
said. "Do you think _I_ don't know what I am talking about? When I say
unpleasant, I am sure I don't mean anything serious; I mean only, you
know, that---- and then her husband is such a man--I am sure I don't
wonder at it, for my part."
"What is it your mamma does not wonder at, Nelly?" said Aunt Agatha, who
had turned white and cold, and leaned back all feeble and broken upon
the old tree.
"Her husband neglected her shamefully," said Emma; "it was a great sin
for her friends to let her marry him; I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony knew
what a dreadful character he had. And, poor thing, when she found
herself so deserted---- Askell would never let me see much of her, and I
had always such wretched health; but I always stood up for Mrs.
Percival. She was young, and she had nobody to stand by her----"
"Oh, mamma," cried Nelly, "don't you see what you are doing? I think she
is going to faint--and it will be all our fault."
"Oh, no; I am not going to faint," said Aunt Agatha, feebly; but when
she laid back her head upon Nelly's shoulder, who had come to support
her, and closed her eyes, she was like death, so pale did she look and
ghastly; and then Mrs. Askell in her turn took fright.
"Goodness gracious! run and get some water, Will," she cried to Wilfrid,
who had rejoined them. "I am sure there was nothing in what I said to
make anybody faint. She was talked about a little, that was all--there
was no harm in it. We have all been talked about, sometime or other.
Why, fancy what a talk there was about our Madonna, her very self."
"About my mother?" said Wilfrid, standing bolt upright between Aunt
Agatha, in her half swoon, and silly little Emma, who sat, a heap of
muslin and ribbons, upon the grass. He had managed to hear more about
Mrs. Percival than anybody knew, and was very indifferent on the
subject. And he was not alarmed about Aunt Agatha; but he was jealous of
his mother, and could not bear even the smallest whisper in which there
was any allusion to her.
"Goodness, boy, run and get some water!" cried Mrs. Askell, jumping up
from the grass in her fright. "I did not mean anything; there was
nothing to be put out about--indeed there was not, Miss Seton. It was
only a little silly talk; what happens to us all, you know: not half,
nor quarter so bad as---- Oh, goodness gracious, Nelly, don't make those
ridiculous signs, as if it was you that was my mother, and I did not
know what to say."
"Will!" said Nelly. Her voice was perfectly quiet and steady, but it
made him start as he stood there jealous, and curious, and careless of
everybody else. When he met her eye, he grew red and frowned, and made
a momentary stand against her; but the next moment turned resolutely and
went away. If it was for water, Aunt Agatha did not need it. She came to
herself without any restorative; and she kissed Nelly, who had been
whispering in her ear. "Yes, my dear, I know you are right--it could
have been nothing," she said faintly, with a wan sort of smile; "but I
am not very strong, and the heat, you know----" And when she got up, she
took the girl's arm, to steady her. Thus they went back to the house,
Mrs. Askell following, holding up her hands in amazement and
self-justification. "Could I tell that she was so weak?" Emma said to
herself. "Goodness gracious, how could anybody say it was my fault?" As
for Nelly, she said nothing; but supported her trembling companion, and
held the soft old hand firm on her arm. And when they approached the
house, Nelly, carried away by her feelings, did, what in full possession
of herself she never would have done. She bent down to Aunt Agatha's
ear--for though she was not tall, she was a little taller at that moment
than the poor old lady who was bowed down with weakness and the blow she
had just received. "Mamma says things without meaning them," said Nelly,
with an undutiful frankness, which it is to be hoped was forgiven her.
"She does not mean any harm, and sometimes she says whatever comes into
her head."
"Yes, my dear, your mamma is a very silly little woman," said Aunt
Agatha, with a little of her old spirit; and she gave Nelly, who was
naturally much startled by this unexpected vivacity, a kiss as she
reached the door of her room and left her. The door closed, and the girl
had no pretext nor right to follow. She turned away feeling as if she
had received a sudden prick which had stimulated all the blood in her
veins, but yet yearning in her good little heart over Aunt Agatha who
was alone. Miss Seton's room, to which she had retired, was on the
ground floor, as were all the sitting-rooms in the house, and Nelly, as
she turned away, suddenly met Wilfrid, and came to a stand-still before
him looking him severely in the face.
"I say, Nell!" said Will.
"And I say, Will!" said Nelly. "I will never like you nor care for you
any more. You are a shocking, selfish, disagreeable prig. To stand there
and never mind when poor Aunt Agatha was fainting--all for the sake of a
piece of gossip. I don't want ever to speak to you again."
"It was not a piece of gossip,--it was something about my mother," said
Will, in self-defence.
"And what if it were fifty times about your mother?" cried
Nelly,--"what right had you to stand and listen when there was something
to do? Oh, I am so ashamed! and after talking to you so much and
thinking you were not so bad----"
"Nelly," said Wilfrid, "when there is anything said about my mother, I
have always a right to listen what it is----"
"Well, then, go and listen," said Nelly, with indignation, "at the
keyhole if you like; but don't come afterwards and talk to me. There,
good-bye, I am going to the children. Mamma is in the drawing-room, and
if you like to go there I dare say you will hear a great many things; I
don't care for gossip myself, so I may as well bid you good-bye."
And she went out by the open door with fine youthful majesty, leaving
poor Will in a very doubtful state of mind behind her. He knew that in
this particular Nelly did not understand him, and perhaps was not
capable of sympathizing in the jealous watch he kept over his mother.
But still Nelly was pleasant to look at and pleasant to talk to, and he
did not want to be cast off by her. He stood and hesitated for a
moment--but he could see the sun shining at the open door, and hear the
river, and the birds, and the sound of Nelly's step--and the end was
that he went after her, there being nothing in the present crisis, as
far as he could see, to justify a stern adoption of duty rather than
pleasure; and there was nobody in the world but Nelly, as he had often
explained to himself, by whom, when he talked, he stood the least chance
of being understood.
This was how the new generation settled the matter. As for Aunt Agatha
she cried over it in the solitude of her chamber, but by-and-by
recovered too, thinking that after all it was only that silly woman. And
she wrote an anxious note to Mrs. Percival, begging her now she was in
England to come and see them at the Cottage. "I am getting old, my dear
love, and I may not be long for this world, and you must let me see you
before I die," Aunt Agatha said. She thought she felt weaker than usual
after her agitation, and regarded this sentence, which was in a high
degree effective and sensational, with some pride. She felt sure that
such a thought would go to her Winnie's heart.
And so the Cottage lapsed once more into tranquillity, and into that
sense that everything _must_ go well which comes natural to the mind
after a long interval of peace.