HE experience of this evening, though it was only the second of her stay at Earlston, proved to Mary that the visit she was paying to her brother-in-law must be made as short as possible. She could not get up and run away because Hugh had put an Etruscan vase in danger, and Islay had broken his uncle’s chair. It was Mr. Ochterlony who was the injured party, and he was magnanimously silent, saying nothing, and even giving no intimation that the presence of these objectionable little visitors was not to be desired in the drawing-room; and Mary had to stay and keep her boys out of sight, and live consciously upon sufferance, in the nursery and her bedroom, until she could feel warranted in taking leave of her brother-in-law, who, without doubt, meant to be kind. It was a strange sort of position, and strangely out of accord with her character and habits. She had never been rich, nor lived in such a great house, but she had always up to this time been her own mistress—mistress of her actions, free to do what she thought best, and to manage her children according to her own wishes. Now she had, to a certain extent, to submit to the housekeeper, who changed their hours, and interfered with their habits at her pleasure. The poor ayah went weeping away, and nobody was to be had to replace her except one of the Earlston maids, who naturally was more under Mrs. Gilsland’s authority than Mrs. Ochterlony’s; and to this girl Mary had to leave them when she went down to the inevitable dinner which had always to be eaten downstairs. She made several attempts to consult her brother-in-law upon her future, but Mr. Ochterlony, though very polite, was not a sympathetic listener. He had received the few details which she had been moved at first, with restrained tears, to give him about the Major, with a certain restlessness which chilled Mary. He was sorry for his brother; but he was one of those men who do not care to talk about dead people, and who think it best not to revive and recall sorrow—which would be very true and just if true sorrow had any occasion to be revived and recalled; and her own arrangements were all more or less connected with this (as Mr. Ochterlony called it) painful subject. And thus it was that her hesitating efforts to make her position clear to him, and to get any advice which he could give, was generally put aside or swallowed up in some communication from the Numismatic Society, or questions which she could not answer about Indian art.
“We must leave Earlston soon,” Mrs. Ochterlony took courage to say one day, when the housekeeper, and the continued exclusion of the children, and her own curious life on sufferance, had been too much for her. “If you are at leisure, would you let me speak to you about it? I have so little experience of anything but India—and I want to do what is best for my boys.”
“Oh—ah—yes,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “you must send them to school. We must try and hear of some good school for them. It is the only thing you can do——”
“But they are so young,” said Mary. “At their age they are surely best with their mother. Hugh is only seven. If you could advise me where it would be best to go——”
“Where it would be best to go!” said Mr. Ochterlony. He was a little surprised, and not quite pleased for the moment. “I hope you do not find yourself uncomfortable here?”
“Oh, no,” said Mary, faltering; “but—they are very young and troublesome, and—I am sure they must worry you. Such little children are best by themselves,” she said, trying to smile—and thus, by chance, touched a chord of pity in her brother-in law’s heart.
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “I assure you I feel the painfulness of your position. If you had been unencumbered, you might have looked forward to so different a life; but with such a burden as these children, and you so young still——”
“Burden?” said Mary; and it may be supposed how her eyes woke up, and what a colour came to her cheek, and how her heart took to beating under her crape. “You can’t really think my children are a burden to me? Ah! you don’t know—— I would not care to live another day if I had not my boys.”
And here, her nerves being weak with all she had come through, she would have liked to cry—but did not, the moment being unsuitable, and only sat facing the virtuoso, all lighted up and glowing, brightened by indignation, and surprise, and sudden excitement, to something more like the former Mary than ever yet had been seen underneath her widow’s cap.
“Oh!” said Mr. Ochterlony. He could have understood the excitement had it been about a Roman camp or a newly-discovered statue; but boys did not commend themselves in the same way to his imagination. He liked his sister-in-law, however, in his way. She was a good listener, and pleasant to look at, and even when she was unintelligible was never without grace, or out of drawing, and he felt disposed even to take a little trouble for her. “You must send them to school,” he said. “There is nothing else to be done. I will write to a friend of mine who knows about such matters; and I am sure, for my part, I shall be very glad if you can make yourself comfortable at Earlston—you and—and the baby, of course,” Mr. Ochterlony said, with a slightly wry face. The innocent man had not an idea of the longing she had for that cottage with the fire in it. It was a notion which never could have been made intelligible to him, even had he been told in words.
“Thank you,” said Mary, faltering more and more; indeed she made a dead pause, and he thought she had accepted his decision, and that there was to be no more about it—which was comforting and satisfactory. He had just risen up to leave the room, breakfast being over, when she put out her hand to stop him. “I will not detain you a minute,” she said, “it is so desolate to have no one to tell me what to do. Indeed, we cannot stay here—though it is so good of you; they are too young to leave me, and I care for nothing else in life,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, yielding for an instant to her emotion; but she soon recovered herself. “There are good schools all over England, I have heard; in places where we could live cheaply. That is what I want to do. Near one of the good grammar schools. I am quite free; it does not matter where I live. If you would give me your advice,” she added, timidly. Mr. Ochterlony, for his part, was taken so much by surprise that he stood between the table and the door, with one foot raised to go on, and not believing his ears. He had behaved like an angel, to his own conviction, and had never said a word about the chair, though it had to be sent to town to be repaired. He had continued to afford shelter to the little ruffian who did it, and had carefully abstained from all expression of his feelings. What could the woman want more?—and what should he know about grammar-schools, and places where people could live cheaply? A woman, too, whom he liked, and had explained his theory of ancient art more fully to than he had ever done to any one. And she wanted to leave Earlston and his society, and the Psyches and Venuses, to settle down in some half-pay neighbourhood, where people with large families lived for the sake of education. No wonder Mr. Ochterlony turned round, struck dumb with wonder, and came slowly back before giving his opinion, which, but for an unexpected circumstance, would no doubt have been such an opinion as to overwhelm his companion with confusion, and put an instant stop to her foolish plans.
But circumstances come wildly in the way of the best intentions, and cut off the wisest speech sometimes on a man’s very lips. At this moment the door opened softly, and a new interlocutor presented herself. The apparition was one which took not only the words but the very breath from the lips of the master of Earlston. Aunt Agatha was twenty years older than her niece, but so was Francis Ochterlony; and such a thing was once possible as that the soft ancient maiden and the elderly solitary dilettante might have made a cheerful human household at Earlston. They had not met for years, not since the time when Miss Seton was holding on by her lingering youth, and looking forward to the loss of it with an anxious and care-worn countenance. She was twenty times prettier now than she had been in those days—prettier perhaps, if the truth were told, than she ever had been in her life. She was penitent, too, and tearful in her white-haired sweetness, though Mr. Ochterlony did not know why—with a soft colour coming and going on her checks, and a wistful look in her dewy eyes. She had left her home at least two hours before, and came carrying all the freshness and odours of the morning, surrounded with sunshine and sweet air, and everything that seems to belong to the young. Francis Ochterlony was so bewildered by the sight that he stepped back out of her way, and could not have told whether she was eighteen or fifty. Perhaps the sight of him had in some degree the same effect upon Aunt Agatha. She made a little rush at Mary, who had risen to meet her, and threw herself, soft little woman as she was, upon her niece’s taller form. “Oh, my dear love, I have been a silly old woman—forgive me!” said Aunt Agatha. She had put up with the estrangement as long as ever it was in human nature to put up with it. She had borne Peggy’s sneers, and Winnie’s heartless suggestions that it was her own doing. How was Winnie to know what made it so difficult for her to have any communications with Earlston? But finally Aunt Agatha’s heart had conquered everything else. She had made such pictures to herself of Mary, solitary and friendless (“for what is a Man? no company when one is unhappy” Miss Seton had said to herself with unconscious eloquence), until instinct and impulse drove her to this decided step. The hall door at Earlston had been standing open, and there was nobody to announce her. And this was how Aunt Agatha arrived just at the critical moment, cutting off Mr. Ochterlony’s utterance when he was on the very point of speech.
The poor man, for his part, did not know what to do; after the first moment of amaze he stood dumb and humble, with his hand stretched out, waiting to greet his unexpected visitor. But the truth was, that the two women as they clung together were both so dreadfully disposed to cry that they dared not face Mr. Ochterlony. The sudden touch of love and unlooked-for sympathy had this effect upon Mary, who had been agitated and disturbed before; and as for Aunt Agatha, she was not an old maid by conviction, and perhaps would not have objected to this house or its master, and the revival of these old associations was hard upon her. She clasped Mary tight, as if it was all for Mary’s sake; but perhaps there was also a little personal feeling involved. Mr. Ochterlony stood speechless for a moment, and then he heard a faint sob, and fled in consternation. If that was coming, it was high time for him to go. He went away and took refuge in his library, in a confused and uncomfortable state of mind. This was the result of having a woman in the house; a man who had nothing to do in his own person with the opposite half of humanity became subject to the invasion of other women, and still worse, to the invasion of recollections and feelings which he had no wish to have recalled. What did Agatha Seton mean by looking so fresh and fair at her age? and yet she had white hair too, and called herself an old woman. These thoughts came dreadfully in his way when he sat down to work. He was writing a monograph upon Icelandic art, and naturally had been much interested in a subject so characteristic and exciting; but somehow after that glimpse of his old love his mind would not stick to his theme. The two women clinging together, though one of them had a bonnet on, made a pretty “subject.” He was not mediæval, to speak of, but rather classical in his tastes; yet it did strike him that a painter might have taken an idea for a Visitation out of that embrace. And so that was how Agatha Seton looked when she was an old woman! This idea fluttered in and out before his mind’s eye, and threw such reflections upon his paper as came dreadfully in the way of his monograph. He lost his notes and forgot his researches in the bewilderment produced by it; for, to tell the truth, Agatha Seton was in a very much finer state of preservation, not to say fairer to look upon, than most of the existing monuments of Icelandic art.
“He has gone away,” said Aunt Agatha, who was aware of that fact sooner than Mary was, though Mrs. Ochterlony’s face was towards her brother-in-law; and she gave Mary a sudden hug and subsided into that good cry, which is such a relief and comfort to the mind; Mary’s tears came too, but they were fewer and not by any means so satisfactory as Aunt Agatha’s, who was crying for nothing particular. “Oh, my dear love, don’t think me a wretch,” the old lady said. “I have never been able to get you out of my head, standing there on the platform all by yourself with the dear children; and I, like an old monster, taking offence and going away and leaving you! If it is any comfort to you, Mary, my darling, I have been wretched ever since. I tried to write, but I could not write. So now I’ve come to ask you to forgive me; and where are my dear, dear, darling boys?”
The poor little boys! Mary’s heart gave a little leap to hear some one once more talk of those poor children as if they were not in the way. “Mr. Ochterlony is very kind,” she said, not answering directly; “but we must not stay, Aunt Agatha, we cannot stay. He is not used to children, you know, and they worry him. Oh, if I had but any little place of my own!”
“You shall come to me, my darling love,” said Aunt Agatha in triumph. “You should have come to me from the first. I am not saying anything against Francis Ochterlony. I never did; people might think he did not quite behave as was expected; but I am sure I never said a word against him. But how can a Man understand? or what can you look for from them? My dearest Mary, you must come to me!”
“Thank you, Aunt Agatha,” said Mary, doubtfully. “You are very kind—you are all very kind”—and then she repeated, under her breath, that longing aspiration, “Oh, that I had but any little place of my very own!”
“Yes, my love, that is what we must do,” said Aunt Agatha. “I would take you with me if I could, or I would take the dear boys with me. Nobody will be worried by them at the cottage. Oh, Mary, my darling, I never would say anything against poor dear Hugh, or encourage you to keep his relations at a distance; but just at this moment, my dear love, I did think it was most natural that you should go to your own friends.”
“I think when one has little children one should be by one’s-self,” said Mary, “it is more natural. If I could get a little cottage near you, Aunt Agatha——”
“My love, mine is a little cottage,” said Miss Seton; “it is not half nor quarter so big as Earlston—have you forgotten? and we are all a set of women together, and the dear boys will rule over us. Ah, Mary, you must come to me!” said the soft old lady. And after that she went up to the dim Earlston nursery, and kissed and hugged the tabooed children, whom it was the object of Mary’s life to keep out of the way. But there was a struggle in Aunt Agatha’s gentle bosom when she heard of the Etruscan vase and the rococo chair. Her heart yearned a little over the pretty things thus put in peril, for she had a few pretty things herself which were dear to her. Her alarm, however, was swallowed up by a stronger emotion. It was natural for a woman to take thought for such things, but it went to her heart to think of “poor Francis,” once her hero, in such a connection. “You see he has nothing else to care for,” she said—and the fair old maiden paused and gave a furtive sigh over the poor old bachelor, who might have been so different. “It was his own fault,” she added to herself, softly; but still the idea of Francis Ochterlony “wrapped up,” as Miss Seton expressed it, in chairs and vases, gave a shock to her gentle spirit. It was righteous retribution, but still Aunt Agatha was a woman, and pitiful. She was still more moved when Mary took her into the drawing-room, where there were so many beautiful things. She looked upon them with silent and reverent admiration, but still not without a personal reference. “So that is all he cares for, now-a-days,” she said with a sigh; and it was just at the same moment that Mr. Ochterlony, in his study, disturbed by visions of two women in his peaceable house, gave up his monograph on Icelandic art in despair.
This, it may be said, was how Mrs. Ochterlony’s first experiment terminated. She did not leave Earlston at once, but she did so shortly after—without any particular resistance on the part of her brother-in-law. After Aunt Agatha’s visit, Mr. Ochterlony’s thoughts took a different turn. He was very civil to her before she left, as indeed it was his nature to be to all women, and showed her his collections, and paid her a certain alarmed and respectful deference. But after that he did not do anything to detain Mary in his house. Where one woman was, other women were pretty sure to come, and nobody could tell what unseen visitants might enter along with them, to disturb a man in his occupations, and startle him out of his tranquillity. He never had the heart to resume that monograph on Icelandic art—which was a great loss to the Society of Antiquaries and the æsthetic world in general; and though he had no advice in particular to give to his sister-in-law as to her future movements, he did not say anything further to deter her from leaving Earlston. “I hope you will let me know what your movements are, and where you decide upon settling,” he said, as he shook hands with her very gravely at the carriage door, “and if I can be of any use.” And this was how the first experiment came to an end.
Then Mrs. Ochterlony kissed her boys when they were fairly out of the grey shadow of their uncle’s house, and shed a few tears over them. “Now at least I shall not have to keep my bonnie boys out of the way any more,” said Mary. But she caught sight again of the cheery cottage, with the fire burning within, and the hospitable door open, as she drove down to the railway; and her heart longed to alight and take possession, and find herself at home. When should she be at home? or was there no such place in the world? But happily she had no maid, and no time to think or calculate probabilities—and thus she set out upon her second venture, among “her own friends.”