Madonna Mary

“Will she?” said Winnie; and she looked at the boy and heard him receive his instructions, and felt his quick eyes go through and through her. “He will go and tell his mother the wreck I am,” she said to herself, with bitterness; and felt as if she hated Wilfrid. She had no children to defend and surround her, or even to take messages. No one could say, referring to her, “Go and tell your mother.” It was Mary that was well off, always the fortunate one, and for the moment poor Winnie felt as if she hated the keen-eyed boy.

Will, for his part, went off to seek his mother, leaving Aunt Agatha to conduct her dear and welcome, but embarrassing and difficult, guest upstairs. He did not run, nor show any symptoms of unnecessary haste, but went along at a very steady, leisurely way. He was so far like Winnie that he did not see any occasion for disturbing himself much on account of other people. He went to seek Mrs. Ochterlony with his hands in his pockets, and his mind working steadily on the new position of affairs. Why this new-comer should have arrived so unexpectedly? why Aunt Agatha should look so anxious, and helpless, and confused, as if, notwithstanding her love, she did not know what to do with her visitor? were questions which exercised all Will’s faculties. He walked up to his mother, who was coming quietly along the road from the village, and joined her without disturbing himself. “Aunt Agatha sent me to look for you,” he said, and turned with her towards the Cottage in the calmest way.

“I am afraid she thought I was late,” said Mary.

“It was not that,” said Will. “Mrs. Percival has just come, so far as I could understand, and she sent me to tell you.”

“Mrs. Percival?” cried Mary, stopping short. “Whom do you mean? Not Winnie? Not my sister? You must have made some mistake.”

“I think it was. It looked like her,” said Will, in his calm way.

Mary stood still, and her breath seemed to fail her for the moment; she had what the French call a serrement du cœur. It felt as if some invisible hand had seized upon her heart and compressed it tightly; and her breathing failed, and a chill went through her veins. The next moment her face flushed with shame and self-reproach. Could she be thinking of herself and any possible consequences, and grudging her sister the only natural refuge which remained to her? She was incapable for the moment of asking any further questions, but went on with a sudden hasty impulse, feeling her head swim, and her whole intelligence confused. It seemed to Mary, for the moment, though she could not have told how, as if there was an end of her peaceful life, of her comfort, and all the good things that remained to her; a chill presentiment, confounding and inexplicable, went to her heart; and at the same time she felt utterly ashamed and horrified to be thinking of herself at all, and not of poor Winnie, the returned wanderer. Her thoughts were so busy and full of occupation that she had gone a long way before it occurred to her to say anything to her boy.

“You say it looked like her, Will,” she began at last, taking up the conversation where she had left off; “tell me, what did she look like?”

“She looked just like other women,” said Will; “I didn’t remark any difference. As tall as you, and a sort of a long nose. Why I thought it looked like her, was because Aunt Agatha was in an awful way.”

“What sort of a way?” cried Mary.

“Oh, well, I don’t know. Like a hen, or something – walking round her, and looking at her, and cluck-clucking; and yet all the same as if she’d like to cry.”

“And Winnie,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “how did she look? – that is what I want most to know.”

“Awfully bored,” said Will. He was so sometimes himself, when Aunt Agatha paid any special attentions to him, and he said it with feeling. This was almost all the conversation that passed between them as Mrs. Ochterlony hurried home. Poor Winnie! Mary knew better than Miss Seton did what a dimness had fallen upon her sister’s bright prospects – how the lustre of her innocent name had been tarnished, and all the freshness and beauty gone out of her life; and Mrs. Ochterlony’s heart smote her for the momentary reference to herself, which she had made without meaning it, when she heard of Winnie’s return. Poor Winnie! if the home of her youth was not open to her, where could she find refuge? if her aunt and her sister did not stand by her, who would? and yet – The sensation was altogether involuntary, and Mary resisted it with all her might; but she could not help a sort of instinctive sense that her peace was over, and that the storms and darkness of life were about to begin again.

When she went in hurriedly to the drawing-room, not expecting to see anybody, she found, to her surprise, that Winnie was there, reclining in an easy chair, with Aunt Agatha in wistful and anxious attendance upon her. The poor old lady was hovering about her guest, full of wonder, and pain, and anxious curiosity. Winnie as yet had given no explanation of her sudden appearance. She had given no satisfaction to her perplexed and fond companion. When she found that Aunt Agatha did not leave her, she had come downstairs again, and dropped listlessly into the easy chair. She wanted to have been left alone for a little, to have realized all that had befallen her, and to feel that she was not dreaming, but was actually in her own home. But Miss Seton would have thought it the greatest unkindness, the most signal want of love and sympathy, and all that a wounded heart required, to leave Winnie alone. And she was glad when Mary came to help her to rejoice over, and overwhelm with kindness, her child who had been lost and was found.

“It is your dear sister, thank God!” she cried, with tears. “Oh, Mary! to think we should have her again; to think she should be here after so many changes! And our own Winnie through it all. She did not write to tell us, for she did not quite know the day – ”

“I did not know things would go further than I could bear,” said Winnie, hurriedly. “Now Mary is here, I know you must have some explanation. I have not come to see you; I have come to escape, and hide myself. Now, if you have any kindness, you won’t ask me any more just now. I came off last night because he went too far. There! that is why I did not write. I thought you would take me in, whatever my circumstances might be.”

“Oh, Winnie, my darling! then you have not been happy?” said Aunt Agatha, tearfully clasping Winnie’s hands in her own, and gazing wistfully into her face.

“Happy!” she said, with something like a laugh, and then drew her hand away. “Please, let us have tea or something, and don’t question me any more.”

It was then only that Mary interposed. Her love for her sister was not the absorbing love of Aunt Agatha; but it was a wiser affection. And she managed to draw the old lady away, and leave the new-comer to herself for the moment. “I must not leave Winnie,” Aunt Agatha said; “I cannot go away from my poor child; don’t you see how unhappy and suffering she is? You can see after everything yourself, Mary, there is nothing to do; and tell Peggy – ”

“But I have something to say to you,” said Mary, drawing her reluctant companion away, to Aunt Agatha’s great impatience and distress. As for Winnie, she was grateful for the moment’s quiet, and yet she was not grateful to her sister. She wanted to be alone and undisturbed, and yet she rather wanted Aunt Agatha’s suffering looks and tearful eyes to be in the same room with her. She wanted to resume the sovereignty, and be queen and potentate the moment after her return; and it did not please her to see another authority, which prevailed over the fascination of her presence. But yet she was glad to be alone. When they left her, she lay back in her chair, in a settled calm of passion which was at once twenty times more calm than their peacefulness, and twenty times more passionate than their excitement. She knew whence she came, and why she came, which they did not. She knew the last step which had been too far, and was still tingling with the sense of outrage. She had in her mind the very different scene she had left, and which stood out in flaming outlines against the dim background of this place, which seemed to have stopped still just where she left it, and in all these years to have grown no older; and her head began to steady a little out of the whirl. If he ventured to seek her here, she would turn to bay and defy him. She was too much absorbed by active enmity, and rage, and indignation, to be moved by the recollections of her youth, the romance that had been enacted within these walls. On the contrary, the last exasperation which had filled her cup to overflowing was so much more real than anything that followed, that Aunt Agatha was but a pale ghost to Winnie, flitting dimly across the fiery surface of her own thoughts; and this calm scene in which she found herself, almost without knowing how, felt somehow like a pasteboard cottage in a theatre, suddenly let down upon her for the moment. She had come to escape and hide herself, she said, and that was in reality what she intended to do; but at the same time the thought of living there, and making the change real, had never occurred to her. It was a sudden expedient, adopted in the heat of battle; it was not a flight for her life.

“She has come back to take refuge with us, the poor darling,” said Aunt Agatha. “Oh, Mary, my dear love, don’t let us be hard upon her! She has not been happy, you heard her say so, and she has come home; let me go back to Winnie, my dear. She will think that we are not glad to see her, that we don’t sympathize – And oh, Mary, her poor dear wounded heart! when she looks upon all the things that surrounded her, when she was so happy! – ”

And Mary could not succeed in keeping the tender old lady away, nor stilling the thousand questions that bubbled from her kind lips. All she could do was to provide for Winnie’s comfort, and in her own person to leave her undisturbed. And the night fell over a strangely disquieted household. Aunt Agatha could not tell whether to cry for joy or distress, whether to be most glad that Winnie had come home, or most concerned and anxious how to account for her sudden arrival, and keep up appearances, and prevent the parish from thinking that anything unpleasant had happened. In Winnie’s room there was such a silent tumult of fury, and injury, and active conflict, as had never existed before near Kirtell-side. Winnie was not thinking, nor caring where she was; she was going over the last battle from which she had fled, and anticipating the next, and instead of making herself wretched by the contrast of her former happiness, felt herself only, as it were, in a painted retirement, no more real than a dream. What was real was her own feelings, and nothing else on earth. As for Mary, she too was strangely, and she thought ridiculously affected by her sister’s return. She tried to explain to herself that except for her natural sympathy for Winnie, it affected her in no other way, and was indignant, with herself for dwelling upon a possible derangement of domestic peace, as if that could not be guarded against, or even endured if it came about. But nature was too strong for her. It was not any fear for the domestic peace that moved her; it was an indescribable conviction that this unlooked-for return was the onslaught signal for a something lying in wait – that it was the touch of revolution, the opening of the flood-gates – and that henceforward her life of tranquil confidence was over, and that some mysterious trouble which she could not at present identify, had been let loose upon her, let it come sooner or later, from that day.

CHAPTER XXIX

AFTER that first bewildered night, and when the morning came, the recollection that Winnie was in the house had a curious effect upon the thoughts of the entire household. Even Aunt Agatha’s uneasy joy was mingled with many feelings that were not joyful. She had never had anything to do before with wives who “were not happy.” Any such cases which might have come to her knowledge among her acquaintance she had been in the way of avoiding and tacitly condemning. “A man may be bad,” she had been in the habit of saying, “but still if his wife had right feelings” – and she was in the way of thinking that it was to a woman’s credit to endure all things, and to make no sign. Such had been the pride and the principles of Aunt Agatha’s generation. But now, as in so many cases, principle and theory came right in the face of fact, and gave way. Winnie must be right at whatever cost. Poor Winnie! to think what she had been, to remember her as she left Kirtell splendid in her bridal beauty, and to look at her now! Such arguments made an end of all Aunt Agatha’s old maiden sentiments about a wife’s duty; but nevertheless her heart still ached. She knew how she would herself have looked upon a runaway wife, and she could not endure to think that other people would so look upon Winnie; and she dried an indignant tear, and made a vow to herself to carry matters with a high hand, and to maintain her child’s discretion, and wisdom, and perfect propriety of action, in the face of all comers. “My dear child has come to pay me a visit, the very first chance she has had,” she said to herself, rehearsing her part; “I have been begging and begging her to come, and at last she has found an opportunity. And to give me a delightful surprise, she never named the day. It was so like Winnie.” This was what, omitting all notice of the feelings which made the surprise far from delightful, Aunt Agatha made up her mind to say.

As for Winnie, when she woke up in the sunshine and stillness, and heard nothing but the birds singing, and Kirtell in the distance murmuring below her window, her heart stood still for a moment and wondered; and then a few hot salt tears came scalding to her eyes; and then she began over again in her own mind the recapitulation of her wrongs. She thought very little indeed of Aunt Agatha, or of her present surroundings. What she thought of was the late scenes of exciting strife she had gone through, and future scenes which might still be before her, and what he would say to her, and what she would say to him; for matters had gone so far between them that the constantly progressing duel was as absorbing as the first dream of love, and swallowed up every thought. It cost her an effort to be patient with all the morning greetings, with Aunt Agatha’s anxious talk at the breakfast-table, and discussion of the old neighbours, whom, doubtless, Winnie, she thought, would like to hear of. Winnie did not care a great deal for the old neighbours, nor did she take much interest in hearing of the boys. Indeed she did not know the boys. They had been but babies when she went away, and she had no acquaintance with the new creatures who bore their names. It gave her a little pang when she looked at Mary and saw the results of peace and tranquillity in her face, which seemed to have grown little older – but that was almost the sole thing that drew Winnie from her own thoughts. There was a subtle sort of connection between it and the wrongs which were rankling at her heart.

“There used to be twelve years between us,” she said, abruptly. “I was eighteen when Mary was thirty. I think anybody that saw us would ask which was the eldest now.”

“My darling, you are thin,” said poor Aunt Agatha, anxiously; “but a few weeks of quiet and your native air will soon round out your dear cheeks – ”

“Well,” said Winnie, paying no attention, “I suppose it’s because I have been living all the time, and Mary hasn’t. It is I that have the wrinkles – but then I have not been like the Sleeping Beauty. I have been working hard at life all this time.”

“Yes,” said Mary, with a smile, “it makes a difference: – and of the two I think I would rather live. It is harder work, but there is more satisfaction in it.”

“Satisfaction!” Winnie said, bitterly. There had been no satisfaction in it to her, and she felt fierce and angry at the word – and then her eye fell upon Will, who had been listening as usual. “I wonder you keep that great boy there,” she said; “why isn’t he doing something? You ought to send him to the army, or put him to go through some examinations. What does he want at his mother’s lap? You should mind you don’t spoil them, Mary. Home is the ruin of boys. I have always heard so wherever I have been.”

“My dear love,” cried Aunt Agatha, fearful that Mary might be moved to reply, “it is very interesting to hear you; but I want you to tell me a little about yourself. Tell me about yourself, my darling – if you are fixed there now, you know; and all where you have been.”

“Before that boy?” said Winnie, with a kind of smile, looking Wilfrid in the face with her great sunken eyes.

“Now, Will, be quiet, and don’t say anything impertinent,” cried Aunt Agatha. “Oh, my darling, never mind him. He is strange, but he is a good boy at the bottom. I should like to hear about all my dearest child has been doing. Letters never tell all. Oh, Winnie, what a pleasure it is, my love, to see your dear face again.”

“I am glad you think so, aunt – nobody else does, that I know of; and you are likely to have enough of it,” said Winnie, with a certain look of defiance at her sister and her sister’s son.

“Thank you, my dear love,” said Aunt Agatha, trembling; for the maid was in the room, and Miss Seton’s heart quailed with fear lest the sharp eyes of such a domestic critic should be opened to something strange in the conversation. “I am so glad to hear you are going to pay me a long visit; I did not like to ask you just the first morning, and I was dreadfully frightened you might soon be going again; you owe me something, Winnie, for staying away all these long years.”

Aunt Agatha in her fright and agitation continued this speech until she had talked the maid safely out of the room, and then, being excited, she fell, without knowing it, into tears.

Winnie leant back in her chair and folded a light shawl she wore round her, and looked at Miss Seton. In her heart she was wondering what Aunt Agatha could possibly have to cry about; what could ever happen to her, that made it worth her while to cry? But she did not put this sentiment into words.

“You will be tired of me before I go,” she said, and that was all; not a word, as Aunt Agatha afterwards explained to Mary, about her husband, or about how she had been living, or anything about herself. And to take her by the throat, as it were, and demand that she should account for herself, was not to be thought of. The end was that they all dispersed to their various occupations, and that the day went on almost as if Winnie was not there. But yet the fact that Winnie was there tinged every one’s thoughts, and made a difference in every corner of the house. They had all their occupations to betake themselves to, but she had nothing to do, and unconsciously every individual in the place took to observing the new-comer, with that curious kind of feminine observation which goes so little way, and yet goes so far. She had brought only a portmanteau with her, a gentleman’s box, not a lady’s, and yet she made no move towards unpacking, but let her things remain in it, notwithstanding that the wardrobe was empty and open, and her dresses, if she had brought any, must have been crushed up like rags in that tight enclosure. And she sat in the drawing-room with the open windows, through which every one in the house now and then got a glimpse of her, doing nothing, not even reading; she had her thin shawl round her shoulders, though it was so warm, and she sat there with nothing to occupy her, like a figure carved out of stone. Such an attitude, in a woman’s eyes, is the embodiment of everything that is saddest, and most listless, and forlorn. Doing nothing, not trying to take an interest in anything, careless about the books, indifferent to the garden, with no curiosity about anybody or anything. The sight of her listless figure filled Aunt Agatha with despair.

And then, to make things worse, Sir Edward made his appearance the very next day to inquire into it all. It was hard to make out how he knew, but he did know, and no doubt all the parish knew, and were aware that there was something strange about it. Sir Edward was an old man, about eighty now, feeble but irreproachable, and lean limbs that now and then were slightly unsteady, but a toilette which was always everything it ought to be. He came in, cool and fresh in his summer morning dress, but his brow was puckered with anxiety, and there was about him that indescribable air of coming to see about it, which has so painful an effect in general upon the nerves of the persons whose affairs are to be put under investigation. When Sir Edward made his appearance at the open window, Aunt Agatha instinctively rose up and put herself before Winnie, who, however, did not show any signs of disturbance in her own person, but only wound herself up more closely in her shawl.

“So Winnie has come to see us at last,” said Sir Edward, and he came up to her and took both her hands, and kissed her forehead in a fatherly way. He did so almost without looking at her, and then he gave an unaffected start; but he had too much delicacy to utter the words that came to his lips. He did not say how much changed she was, but he gave Aunt Agatha a pitiful look of dismay and astonishment as he sat down, and this Winnie did not fail to see.

“Yes, at last,” cried Aunt Agatha, eagerly. “I have begged and begged of her to come, and was wondering what answer I should get, when she was all the while planning me such a delightful surprise; but how did you know?”

“News travels fast,” said Sir Edward, and then he turned to the stranger. “You will find us much changed, Winnie. We are getting old people now, and the boys whom you left babies – you must see a great deal of difference.”

“Not so much difference,” said Winnie, “as you see in me.”

“It was to be expected there should be a difference,” said Sir Edward. “You were but a girl when you went away. I hope you are going to make a good long stay. You will find us just as quiet as ever, and as humdrum, but very delighted to see you.”

To this Winnie made no reply. She neither answered his question, nor gave any response to his expression of kindness, and the old man sat and looked at her with a deeper wrinkle than ever across his brow.

“She must pay me a long visit,” said poor Aunt Agatha, “since she has been so long of coming. Now that I have her she shall not go away.”

“And Percival?” said Sir Edward. He had cast about in his own mind for the best means of approaching this difficult subject, but had ended by feeling there was nothing for it but plain speaking. And then, though there were reports that they did not “get on,” still there was nothing as yet to justify suspicions of a final rupture. “I hope you left him quite well; I hope we are to see him, too.”

“He was very well when I left him, thank you,” said Winnie, with steady formality; and then the conversation once more came to a dead stop.

Sir Edward was disconcerted. He had come to examine, to reprove, and to exhort, but he was not prepared to be met with this steady front of unconsciousness. He thought the wanderer had most likely come home full of complaints and outcries, and that it might be in his power to set her right. He hemmed and cleared his throat a little, and cast about what he should say, but he had no better inspiration than to turn to Aunt Agatha and disturb her gentle mind with another topic, and for this moment let the original subject rest.

“Ah – have you heard lately from Earlston?” he said, turning to Miss Seton. “I have just been hearing a report about Francis Ochterlony. I hope it is not true.”

“What kind of report?” said Aunt Agatha, breathlessly. A few minutes before she could not have believed that any consideration whatever would have disturbed her from the one subject which was for the moment dearest to her heart – but Sir Edward with his usual felicity had found out another chord which vibrated almost as painfully. Her old delusion recurred to Aunt Agatha with the swiftness of lightning. He might be going to marry, and divert the inheritance from Hugh, and she did her best to persuade her lips to a kind of smile.

“They say he is ill,” said Sir Edward; “but of course if you have not heard – I thought he did not look like himself when we were there. Very poorly I heard – not anything violent you know, but a sort of breaking up. Perhaps it is not true.”