Madonna Mary

“My dear, one is surely enough in a family to be a soldier,” said Aunt Agatha, “if you would consider your poor mamma’s feelings and mine; but I never thought, for my part, that that was the thing for Islay, with his long head. He had always such a very peculiar head. When he was a child, you know, Mary, we never could get a child’s hat to fit him. Now, I think, if Hugh had gone into a very nice regiment, and Islay had studied for something – ”

“Do you think he will have no study to do, going in for the Engineers?” said Hugh, indignantly. “I am not envious of Islay. I know he is the best fellow among us; but, at the same time – The thing for me would be to go to Australia or New Zealand, where one does not need to be good for anything in particular. That is my case,” said the disconsolate youth; and out of the depths, if not of his soul, at least of his capacious chest, there came a profound, almost despairing sigh.

“Oh, Hugh, my darling boy! you cannot mean to break all our hearts,” cried Aunt Agatha.

It was just what poor Hugh meant to do, for the moment, at least; and he sat with his head down and despair in his face, with a look which went to Mary’s heart, and brought the tears to her eyes, but a smile to her lips. He was so like his father; and Mrs. Ochterlony knew that he would not, in this way, at least, break her heart.

“Would you like to go to Uncle Penrose?” she said; to which Hugh replied with a vehement shake of his head. “Would you like to go into Mr. Allonby’s office? You know he spoke of wanting an articled pupil. Would you think of that proposal Mr. Mortare, the architect, made us? – don’t shake your head off, Hugh; or ask Sir Edward to let you help old Sanders – or – or – Would you really like to be a soldier, like your brother?” said Mary, at her wits’ end; for after this, with their limited opportunities, there seemed no further suggestion to make.

“I must do something, mother,” said Hugh, and he rose up with another sigh; “but I don’t want to vex you,” he added, coming up and putting his arms round her with that admiring fondness which is perhaps sweeter to a woman from her son than even from her lover; and then, his mind being relieved, he had no objection to change the conversation. “I promised to look at the young colts, and tell Sir Edward what I thought of them,” he suddenly said, looking up at Mary with a cloudy, doubtful look – afraid of being laughed at, and yet himself ready to laugh – such as is not unusual upon a boy’s face. Mrs. Ochterlony did not feel in the least inclined for laughter, though she smiled upon her boy; and when he went away, a look of anxiety came to her face, though it was not anything like the tragical anxiety which contracted Aunt Agatha’s gentle countenance. She took up her work again, which was more than Miss Seton could do. The boys were no longer children, and life was coming back to her with their growing years. Life which is not peace, but more like a sword.

“My dear love, something must be done,” said Aunt Agatha. “Australia or New Zealand, and for a boy of his expectations! Mary, something must be done.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “I must go and consult my brother-in-law about it, and see what he thinks best. But as for New Zealand or Australia, Aunt Agatha – ”

“Do you think it will be nice, Mary?” said Miss Seton, with a soft blush like a girl’s. “It will be like asking him, you know, what he means; it will be like saying he ought to provide – ”

“He said Hugh was to be his heir,” said Mary, “and I believe he meant what he said; at all events, it would be wrong to do anything without consulting him, for he has always been very kind.”

These words threw Aunt Agatha into a flutter which she could not conceal. “It may be very well to consult him,” she said; “but rather than let him think we are asking his help – And then, how can you see him, Mary? I am afraid it would be – awkward, to say the least, to ask him here – ”

“I will go to Earlston to-morrow,” said Mary. “I made up my mind while Hugh was talking. After Islay has gone, it will be worse for poor Hugh. Will is so much younger, poor boy.”

“Will,” said Aunt Agatha, sighing, “Oh, Mary, if they had only been girls! we could have brought them up without any assistance, and no bother about professions or things. When you have settled Hugh and Islay, there will be Will to open it up again; and they will all leave us, after all. Oh, Mary, my dear love, if they had been but girls!”

“Yes, but they are not girls,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a half smile; and then she too sighed. She was glad her boys were boys, and had more confidence in them, and Providence and life, than Aunt Agatha had. But she was not glad to think that her boys must leave her, and that she had no daughter to share her household life. The cloud which sat on Aunt Agatha’s careful brow came over her, too for the moment, and dimmed her eyes, and made her heart ache. “They came into the world for God’s uses and not for ours,” she said, recovering herself, “and though they are boys, we must not keep them unhappy. I will go over to Earlston to-morrow by the early train.”

“If you think it right,” said Miss Seton: but it was not cordially spoken. Aunt Agatha was very proud and sensitive in her way. She was the kind of woman to get into misunderstandings, and shun explanations, as much as if she had been a woman in a novel. She was as ready to take up a mistaken idea, and as determined not to see her mistake, as if she had been a heroine forced thereto by the exigencies of three volumes. Miss Seton had never come to the third volume herself; she thought it more dignified for her own part to remain in the complications and perplexities of the second; and it struck her that it was indelicate of Mary thus to open the subject, and lead Francis Ochterlony on, as it were, to declare his mind.

The question was quite a different one so far as Mary was concerned, to whom Francis Ochterlony had never stood in the position of a lover, nor was the subject of any delicate difficulties. With her it was a straightforward piece of business enough to consult her brother-in-law, who was the natural guardian of her sons, and who had always been well disposed towards them, especially while they kept at a safe distance. Islay was the only one who had done any practical harm at Earlston, and Mr. Ochterlony had forgiven, and, it is to be hoped, forgotten the downfall of the rococo chair. If she had had nothing more important to trouble her than a consultation so innocent! Though, to tell the truth, Mary did not feel that she had a great deal to trouble her, even with the uncertainty of Hugh’s future upon her hands. Even if his uncle were to contemplate anything so absurd as marriage or the founding of a hospital, Hugh could still make his own way in the world, as his brothers would have to do, and as his father had done before him. And Mrs. Ochterlony was not even overwhelmed by consideration of the very different characters of the boys, nor of the immense responsibility, nor of any of the awful thoughts with which widow-mothers are supposed to be overwhelmed. They were all well, God bless them; all honest and true, healthful and affectionate. Hugh had his crotchets and fidgety ways, but so had his father, and perhaps Mary loved her boy the better for them; and Wilfrid was a strange boy, but then he had always been strange, and it came natural to him. No doubt there might be undeveloped depths in both, of which their mother as yet knew nothing; but in the meantime Mary, like other mothers, took things as she saw them, and was proud of her sons, and had no disturbing fears. As for Islay, he was steady as a rock, and almost as strong, and did the heart good to behold, and even the weakest woman might have taken heart to trust him, whatever might be the temptations and terrors of “the world.” Mary had that composure which belongs to the better side of experience, as much as suspicion and distrust belong to its darker side. The world did not alarm her as it did Aunt Agatha; neither did Mr. Ochterlony alarm her, whose sentiments ought at least to be known by this time, and whose counsel she sought with no artful intention of drawing him out, but with an honest desire to have the matter settled one way or another. This was how the interval of calm passed away, and the new generation brought back a new and fuller life.

It was not all pleasure with which Mary rose next morning to go upon her mission to Earlston; but it was with a feeling of resurrection, a sense that she lay no longer ashore, but that the tide was once more creeping about her stranded boat, and the wind wooing the idle sail. There might be storms awaiting her upon the sea; storm and shipwreck and loss of all things lay in the future; possible for her boys as for others, certain for some; but that pricking, tingling thrill of danger and pain gave a certain vitality to the stir of life renewed. Peace is sweet, and there are times when the soul sighs for it; but life is sweeter. And this is how Mary, in her mother’s anxiety, – with all the possibilities of fate to affright her, if they could, yet not without a novel sense of exhilaration, her heart beating more strongly, her pulse fuller, her eye brighter, – went forth to open the door for her boy into his own personal and individual career.

CHAPTER XXIII

IT was a cheerful summer morning when Mary set out on her visit to her brother-in-law. She had said nothing to her boys about it, for Hugh was fantastical, like Aunt Agatha, and would have denounced her intention as an expedient to make his uncle provide for him. Hugh had gone out to attend to some of the many little businesses he had in hand for Sir Edward; and Islay was working in his own room preparing for the “coach,” to whom he was going in a few days; and Wilfrid, or Will, as everybody called him, was with his curate-tutor. The Cottage held its placid place upon the high bank of Kirtell, shining through its trees in a purple cloud of roses, and listening in the sun to that everlasting quiet voice that sung in its ear, summer and winter, the little river’s changeful yet changeless song. It looked like a place to which no changes could ever come; calm people in the stillness of age, souls at rest, little children, were the kind of people to live in it; and the stir and quickening of pleasurable pain which Mary felt in her own veins, – the sense of new life and movement about her, – felt out of place with the quiet house. Aunt Agatha was out of sight, ordering her household affairs; and the drawing-room was silent and deserted as a fairy palace, full of a thousand signs of a habitation, but without a single tenant audible or visible, except the roses that clambered about the open windows, and the bee that went in and made a confused investigation, and came out again none the wiser. An odd sense of the contrast struck Mrs. Ochterlony; but a little while before, her soul had been in unison with the calm of the place, and she had thought nothing of it; now she had woke up out of that fair chamber turned to the sunrising, the name which is Peace, and had stepped back into life, and felt the tingle and thrill of resurrection. And an unconscious smile came on her face as she looked back. To think that out of that silence and sunshine should pour out such a tide of new strength and vigour – and that henceforth hearts should leap with eagerness and wistfulness under that roof, and perhaps grow wild with joy, or perhaps, God knows, break with anguish, as news came good or evil! She had been but half alive so long, that the sense of living was sweet.

It was a moment to call forth many thoughts and recollections, but the fact was that she did not have time to entertain them. There happened to her one of those curious coincidences which occur so often, and which it is so difficult to account for. Long before she reached the little station, a tall figure broke the long vacant line of the dusty country road, a figure which Mary felt at once to be that of a stranger, and yet one she seemed to recognise. She could not believe her eyes, nor think it was anything but the association of ideas which misled her, and laughed at her own fantastic imagination as she went on. But nevertheless it is true that it was her brother-in-law himself who met her, long before she reached the railway by which she had meant to go to him. Her appearance struck him too, it was evident, with a little surprise; but yet she was at home, and might have been going anywhere; whereas the strange fact of his coming required a more elaborate explanation than he had in his power to give.

“I do not know exactly what put it into my head,” said Mr. Ochterlony; “perhaps some old work of mine which turned up the other day, and which I was doing when you were with me. I thought I would come over and have a talk with you about your boy.”

“It is very strange,” said Mary, “for this very morning I had made up my mind to come to you, and consult you. It must be some kind of magnetism, I suppose.”

“Indeed, I can’t say; I have never studied the natural sciences,” said Mr. Ochterlony, with gravity. “I have had a very distinguished visitor lately: a man whose powers are as much above the common mind as his information is – Dr. Franklin, whose name of course you have heard – a man of European reputation.”

“Yes,” said Mary, doubtfully, feeling very guilty and ignorant, for to tell the truth she had never heard of Dr. Franklin; but her brother-in-law perceived her ignorance, and explained in a kind of compassionate way:

“He is about the greatest numismatist we have in England,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “and somehow my little monograph upon primitive art in Iceland came to be talked of. I have never completed it, though Franklin expressed himself much interested – and I think that’s how it was suggested to my mind to come and see you to-day.”

“I am very glad,” said Mary, “I wanted so much to have your advice. Hugh is almost a man now – ”

“A man!” said Mr. Ochterlony, with a smile; “I don’t see how that is possible. I hope he is not so unruly as he used to be; but you are as young as ever, and I don’t see how your children can be men.”

And oddly enough, just at that moment, Hugh himself made his appearance, making his way by a cross road down to the river, with his basket over his shoulder, and his fishing-rod. He was taller than his uncle, though Mr. Ochterlony was tall; and big besides, with large, mighty, not perfectly developed limbs, swinging a little loosely upon their hinges like the limbs of a young Newfoundland or baby lion. His face was still smooth as a girl’s, and fair, with downy cheeks and his mother’s eyes, and that pucker in his forehead which Francis Ochterlony had known of old in the countenance of another Hugh. Mary did not say anything, but she stopped short before her boy, and put her hand on his shoulder, and looked at his uncle with a smile, appealing to him with her proud eyes and beaming face, if this was not almost a man. As for Mr. Ochterlony, he gave a great start and said, “God bless us!” under his breath, and was otherwise speechless for the moment. He had been thinking of a boy, grown no doubt, but still within the limits of childhood; and lo, it was an unknown human creature that faced him, with a will and thoughts of his own, like its father and mother, and yet like nobody but itself. Hugh, for his part, looked with very curious eyes at the stranger, and dimly recognised him, and grew shamefaced and a little fidgety, as was natural to the boy.

“You see how he has grown,” said Mary, who, being the triumphant one among the three, was the first to recover herself. “You do not think him a child now? It is your uncle, Hugh, come to see us. It is very kind of him – but of course you knew who he was.”

“I am very glad to see my uncle,” said Hugh, with eager shyness. “Yes, I knew. You are like my father’s picture, sir; – and your own that we have at the Cottage – and Islay a little. I knew it was you.”

And then they all walked on in silence; for Mr. Ochterlony was more moved by this sudden encounter than he cared to acknowledge; and Mary, too, for the moment, being a sympathetic woman, saw her boy with his uncle’s eyes, and saw what the recollections were that sprang up at sight of him. She told Hugh to go on and do his duty, and send home some trout for dinner; and, thus dismissing him, guided her unlooked-for visitor to the Cottage. He knew the way as well as she did, which increased the embarrassment of the situation. Mary saw only the stiles and the fields, and the trees that over-topped the hedges, familiar objects that met her eyes every day; but Francis Ochterlony saw many a past day and past imagination of his own life, and seemed to walk over his own ashes as he went on. And that was Hugh! – Hugh, not his brother, but his nephew and heir, the representative of the Ochterlony’s, occupying the position which his own son should have occupied. Mr. Ochterlony had not calculated on the progress of time, and he was startled and even touched, and felt wonderingly – what it is so difficult for a man to feel – that his own course was of no importance to anybody, and that here was his successor. The thought made him giddy, just as Mary’s wondering sense of the unreality of her own independent life, and everlastingness of her stay at the Cottage, had made her; but yet in a different way. For perhaps Francis Ochterlony had never actually realized before that most things were over for him, and that his heir stood ready and waiting for the end of his life.

There was still something of this sense of giddiness in his mind when he followed Mary through the open window into the silent drawing-room where nobody was. Perhaps he had not behaved just as he ought to have done to Agatha Seton; and the recollection of a great many things that had happened, came back upon him as he wound his way with some confusion through the roses. He was half ashamed to go in, like a familiar friend, through the window. Of all men in the world, he had the least right to such a privilege of intimacy. He ought to have gone to the door in a formal way and sent in his card, and been admitted only if Miss Seton pleased; and yet here he was, in the very sanctuary of her life, invited to sit down as it were by her side, led in by the younger generation, which could not but smile at the thought of any sort of sentiment between the old woman and the old man. For indeed Mary, though she was not young, was smiling softly within herself at the idea. She had no sort of sympathy with Mr. Ochterlony’s delicate embarrassment, though she was woman enough to hurry away to seek her aunt and prepare her for the meeting, and shield the ancient maiden in the first flutter of her feelings. Thus the master of Earlston was left alone in the Cottage, with leisure to look round and recognise the identity of the place, and see all its differences, and become aware of its pleasant air of habitation, and all the signs of daily use and wont which had no existence in his own house. All this confused him, and put him at a great disadvantage. The probabilities were that Agatha Seton would not have been a bit the happier had she been mistress of Earlston. Indeed the Cottage had so taken her stamp that it was impossible for anybody, whose acquaintance with her was less than thirty years old, to imagine her with any other surroundings. But Francis Ochterlony had known her for more than thirty years, and naturally he felt that he himself was a possession worth a woman’s while, and that he had, so to speak, defrauded her of so important a piece of property; and he was penitent and ashamed of himself. Perhaps too his own heart was moved a little by the sense of something lost. His own house might have borne this sunny air of home; instead of his brother Hugh’s son, there might have been a boy of his own to inherit Earlston; and looking back at it quietly in this cottage drawing-room, Francis Ochterlony’s life seemed to him something very like a mistake. He was not a hard-hearted man, and the inference he drew from this conclusion was very much in his nephew’s favour. Hugh’s boy was almost a man, and there was no doubt that he was the natural heir, and that it was to him everything ought to come. Instead of thinking of marrying, as Aunt Agatha imagined, or founding a hospital, or making any other ridiculous use of his money, his mind, in its softened and compunctious state, turned to its natural and obvious duty. “Let there be no mistake, at least, about the boy,” he said to himself. “Let him have all that is good for him, and all that best fit him for his position;” for, Heaven be praised, there was at least no doubt about Hugh, or question as to his being the lawful and inevitable heir.

It was this process of reasoning, or rather of feeling, that made Mrs. Ochterlony so entirely satisfied with her brother-in-law when she returned (still alone, for Miss Seton was not equal to the exertion all at once, and naturally there was something extra to be ordered for dinner), and began to talk to their uncle about the children.

“There has been no difficulty about Islay,” she said: “he always knew what he wanted, and set his heart at once on his profession; but Hugh had no such decided turn. It was very kind what you said when you wrote – but I – don’t think it is good for the boy to be idle. Whatever you might think it right to arrange afterwards, I think he should have something to do – ”

“I did not think he had been so old,” said Mr. Ochterlony, almost apologetically. “Time does not leave much mark of its progress at Earlston. Something to do? I thought what a young fellow of his age enjoyed most was amusing himself. What would he like to do?”

“He does not know,” said Mary, a little abashed; “that is why I wanted so much to consult you. I suppose people have talked to him of – of what you might do for him; but he cannot bear the thought of hanging, as it were, on your charity – ”

“Charity!” said Mr. Ochterlony, “it is not charity, it is right and nature. I hope he is not one of those touchy sort of boys that think kindness an injury. My poor brother Hugh was always fidgety – ”

“Oh no, it is not that,” said the anxious mother, “only he is afraid that you might think he was calculating upon you; as if you were obliged to provide for him – ”

“And so I am obliged to provide for him,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “as much as I should be obliged to provide for my own son, if I had one. We must find him something to do. Perhaps I ought to have thought of it sooner. What has been done about his education? What school has he been at? Is he fit for the University? Earlston will be a better property in his days than it was when I was young,” added the uncle with a natural sigh. If he had but provided himself with an heir of his own, perhaps it would have been less troublesome on the whole. “I would send him to Oxford, which would be the best way of employing him; but is he fit for it? Where has he been to school?”

Upon which Mary, with some confusion, murmured something about the curate, and felt for the first time as if she had been indifferent to the education of her boy.

“The curate!” said Mr. Ochterlony; and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders, as if that was a very poor security for Hugh’s scholarship.

“He has done very well with all his pupils,” said Mary, “and Mr. Cramer, to whom Islay is going, was very much satisfied – ”

“I forgot where Islay was going?” said Mr. Ochterlony, inquiringly.

“Mr. Cramer lives near Kendal,” said Mary; “he was very highly recommended; and we thought the boy could come home for Sunday – ”

Mr. Ochterlony shook his head, though still in a patronizing and friendly way. “I am not sure that it is good to choose a tutor because the boy can come home on Sunday,” he said, “nor send them to the curate that you may keep them with yourself. I know it is the way with ladies; but it would have been better, I think, to have sent them to school.”

Mrs. Ochterlony was confounded by this verdict against her. All at once her eyes seemed to be opened, and she saw herself a selfish mother keeping her boys at her own apron-strings. She had not time to think of such poor arguments in her favour as want of means, or her own perfectly good intentions. She was silent, struck dumb by this unthought-of condemnation; but just then a champion she had not thought of appeared in her defence.

“Mr. Small did very well for Hugh,” said a voice at the window; “he is a very good tutor so far as he goes. He did very well for Hugh – and Islay too,” said the new-comer, who came in at the window as he spoke with a bundle of books under his arm. The interruption was so unexpected that Mr. Ochterlony, being quite unused to the easy entrance of strangers at the window, and into the conversation, started up alarmed and a little angry. But, after all, there was nothing to be angry about.