“I like all your people, mamma,” said Hugh, “and I like little Nelly best of all. She is a little jewel, and as fresh as a little rose.”
“And such a thing might happen as that she might make you a nice little wife one of these days,” said Aunt Agatha, who was always a match-maker in her heart.
Upon which Hugh nodded and laughed and grew slightly red, as became his years. “I had always the greatest confidence in your good sense, my dear Aunt,” he said in his laughing way, and never so much as thought of Wilfrid in the big Indian chair, who had been Nelly’s constant companion for at least one long year.
“I should like to know what business he has with Nelly,” said Will between his teeth. “A great hulking fellow, old enough to be her father.”
“She would never have you, Will,” said Hugh, laughing; “girls always despise a fellow of their own age. So you need not look sulky, old boy. For that matter I doubt very much if she’d have me.”
“You are presumptuous boys,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “to think she would have either of you. She has too much to do at home, and too many things to think of. I should like to have her all to myself,” said Mary, with a sigh. She sighed, but she smiled; for though her boys could not be with her as Nelly might have been, still all was well with them, and the heart of their mother was content.
“My uncle wants you all to come over to Earlston,” said Hugh. “I think the poor old boy is beginning to give in. He looks very shaky in the morning when he comes downstairs. I’d like to know what you think of him, mamma; I don’t think his wanting to see you all is a good sign. He’s awfully good when you come to know him,” said Hugh, clearing his throat.
“Do you mean that Francis Ochterlony is ill?” said Aunt Agatha, with sudden interest. “Your mother must go and see him, but you must not ask me; I am an old woman, and I have old-fashioned notions, you know—but a married lady can go anywhere. Besides he would not care for seeing me,” Aunt Agatha added, with a slightly-wistful look, “it is so very—very many years since we used to——”
“I know he wants to see you,” said Hugh, who could not help laughing a little; “and with so many people in the house I think you might risk it, Aunt Agatha. He stands awfully in awe of you, I can tell you. And there are to be a lot of people. It’s a kind of coming of age affair,” said Hugh. “I am to be set up on Psyche’s pedestal, and everybody is to look at me and sing out, ‘Behold the heir!’ That’s the sort of thing it’s to be. You can bring anybody you like, you two ladies—little Nelly Askell, and all that sort of thing,” he added, with a conscious laugh; and grew red again, not at thought of Nelly Askell, but with the thrill which “all that sort of thing” naturally brought into the young man’s veins.
The face of Wilfrid grew darker and darker as he sat and listened. It was not a precocious passion for Nelly Askell that moved him. If Nelly had been his sister, his heart might still have swelled with a very similar sentiment. “He’ll have her too,” was what the boy said to himself. There was no sort of justice or distribution in it; Hugh was the lucky fellow who had everything, while no personal appropriation whatever was to be permitted to Wilfrid. He could not engross his mother as he would have liked to do, for she loved Hugh and Islay just as well as she loved himself, and had friends and acquaintances, and people who came and talked, and occupied her time, and even one who was supposed to have the audacity to admire her. And there was no one else to supply the imperious necessity which existed in Will’s mind, to be the chief object of somebody’s thoughts. His curate had a certain awe of him, which was satisfactory enough in its way; but nobody watched and worshipped poor Will, or did anything more than love him in a reasonable unadoring way; and he had no sister whom he could make his slave, nor humble friend to whom he could be the centre of interest. Nelly’s coming had been a God-send to the boy. She had found out his discontent, and taken to comforting him instinctively, and had been introduced into a world new to her by means of his fancies: and the budding woman had regarded the budding man with that curiosity, and wonder, and respect, and interest, which exists by nature between the two representatives of humanity. And now here was Hugh, who, not content with being an Oxford scholar, and the heir of Earlston, and his mother’s eldest son, and Sir Edward’s favourite, and the most interesting member of the family to the parish in general, was about to seize on Nelly too. Will, though he was perhaps of a jealous temper, was not mean or envious, nor did he grudge his brother his elevation. But he thought it hard that all should go to one, and that there should be no shares: if he had had the arranging of it, it would have been otherwise arranged; Hugh should still have had Earlston, and any other advantages suited to his capacity—but as for Oxford and Nelly—— It was unfair—that was the sting; all to one, and nothing to the other. This sentiment made Wilfrid very unwilling to accompany the rest of the family to Earlston. He did not want to go and survey all the particulars of Hugh’s good-fortune, and to make sure once again, as he had already so often decided, that Hugh’s capacities were inferior to his luck, and that it was really of little advantage to him to be so well off. But Will’s inclinations, as it happened, were not consulted on the subject; the expedition was all settled without any room being left for his protest. Aunt Agatha was to go, though she had very little desire to do so, being coy about Mr. Ochterlony’s house, and even not too well pleased to think that coyness was absurd in her case, and that she was old enough to go to anybody’s house, and indeed do what she pleased. And Sir Edward was going, who was older than any of them, and was still inclined to believe that Francis Ochterlony and Agatha Seton might make it up; and then, though Mrs. Askell objected greatly, and could not tell what she was to do with the children, and limited the expedition absolutely to two days, Nelly was going too. Thus Will had to give in, and withdraw his opposition. It was, as Hugh said, “a coming of age sort of affair,” but it was not precisely a coming of age, for that important event had taken place some time before, when Hugh, whose ambition was literary, had been working like a coal-heaver to take his degree, and had managed to take it and please his uncle. But there was to be a great dinner to introduce the heir of Earlston to his country neighbours, and everything was to be conducted with as much solemnity as if it had been the heir-apparent’s birthday. It was so great an occasion, that Mrs. Ochterlony got a new dress, and Aunt Agatha brought forth among the sprigs of lavender her silver-grey which she wore at Winnie’s marriage. It was not Hugh’s marriage, but it was an event almost as important; and if his own people did not try to do him credit, what was to be expected of the rest of the world?
And for Nelly Askell it was a very important crisis. She was sixteen, but up to this moment she had never had a dress “made long,” and the excitement of coming to this grandeur, and of finding Hugh Ochterlony by her side, full of unspeakable politeness, was almost too much for Nelly; the latter complication was something she did not quite understand. Will, for his part, carried things with a high hand, and behaved to her as a brother behaves to the sister whom he tyrannizes over. It is true that she sometimes tyrannized over him in her turn, as has been seen, but they did not think it necessary to be civil, nor did either of them restrain their personal sentiments in case anything occurred they disapproved of. But Hugh was altogether different—Hugh was one of “the gentlemen;” he was grown up, he had been to the University, he rode, and shot, and hunted, and did everything that the gentlemen are expected to do—and he lowered his voice when he spoke to Nelly, and schemed to get near her, and took bouquets from the Cottage garden which were not intended for Mrs. Askell. Altogether, he was like the hero of a story to Nelly, and he made her feel as if she, just that very moment as it were, translated into a long dress, was a young lady in a story too. Will was her friend and companion, but this was something quite different from Will; and to be taken to see his castle, and his guardian, and his future domains, and assist at the recognition of the young prince, was but the natural continuation of the romance. Nelly’s new long dresses were only muslin, but they helped out the force of the situation, and intensified that vague thrill of commencing womanhood and power undreamed of, which Hugh’s presence had helped to produce. Could it be possible that she could forget the children, and her mamma’s head which was always so bad, and go off for two whole days from her duty? Mrs. Askell could scarcely believe it, and Nelly felt guilty when she realized the dreadful thought, but still she wanted to go; and she had no patience with Will’s objections, but treated them with summary incivility. “Why shouldn’t you like to go?” said Nelly, “you would like it very much if you were your brother. And I would not be jealous like you, not for all the world;” and then Nelly added, “it is not because it is a party that I care for it, but because it is such a pleasure to dear Mrs. Ochterlony, and to—Mr. Hugh——”
“Ah, yes, I knew you would go over to Hugh’s side,” said Will; “I said so the very day he came here.”
“Why should I go over to his side?” cried Nelly, indignantly; “but I am pleased to see people happy; and I am Mr. Hugh’s friend, just as I am your friend,” added the little woman, with dignity; “it is all for dear Mrs. Ochterlony’s sake.”
Thus it was that the new generation stepped in and took up all the foreground of the stage, just as Winnie and her love affairs had done, who was of the intermediate generation—thrusting the people whose play was played out, and their personal story over, into the background. Mary, perhaps, had not seen how natural it was, when her sister was the heroine; but when she began to suspect that the everlasting romance might, perhaps, begin again under her very eyes, with her children for the actors, it gave her a sweet shock of surprise and amusement. She had been in the shade for a long time, and yet she had still been the central figure, and had everything in her hands. What if, now, perhaps, Aunt Agatha’s prophecy should come true, and Hugh, whose future was now secure, should find the little waif all ready for him at the very outset of his career? Such a possibility gave his mother, who had not yet arrived at the age which can consent to be passive and superannuated, a curious thrill—but still it might be a desirable event. When Mary saw her son hanging over the fair young creature, whom she had coveted to be her daughter, a true perception of what her own future must be came over her. The boys must go away, and would probably marry and set up households, and the mother who had given up the best part of her life to them must remain alone. She was glad, and yet it went with a curious penetrating pang to her heart. Some women might have been jealous of the girl who had first revealed this possibility to them; but Mary, for her part, knew better, and saw that it was Nature and not Nelly that was to blame; and she was not a woman to go in the face of Nature. “Hugh will marry early,” she said to Aunt Agatha, with a smile; but her heart gave a little flutter in her breast as she said it, and saw how natural it was. Islay was gone already, and very soon Will would have to go; and there would be no more for their mother to do but to live on, with her occupation over, and her personal history at an end. The best thing to do was to make up her mind to it. There was a little moisture in her eyes as she smiled upon Nelly the night before they set out for Earlston. The girl had to spend the previous night at the Cottage, to be ready for their start next day; and Mrs. Ochterlony smiled upon and kissed her, with a mingled yearning and revulsion. Ah, if she had but been her own—that woman-child! and yet it required a little effort to accept her for her own, at the cost, as it were, of her boy—for women are inconsistent, especially when they are women who have children. But one thing, at least, Mary was sure about, and that was, that her own share of the world would henceforward be very slight. Nothing would ever happen to her individually. Perhaps she regretted the agitations and commotions of life, and felt as if she would prefer still to endure them, and feel herself something in the world; but that was all over; Will must go. Islay was gone. Hugh would marry; and Mary’s remaining years would flow on by necessity like the Kirtell, until some day they would come to a noiseless end. She said to herself that she ought to accept, and make up her mind to it; that boys must go out into the world, and quit the parent nest; and that she ought to be very thankful for the calm and secure provision which had been made for the rest of her life.
And next morning they started for Earlston, on the whole a very cheerful party. Nelly was so happy, that it did every one’s heart good to see her; and she had given Will what she called “such a talking to,” that he was as good as gold, and made no unpleasant remarks. And Sir Edward was very suave and benign, though full of recollections which confused and embarrassed Aunt Agatha. “I remember travelling along this same road when we still thought it could be all arranged,” he said; “and thinking what a long way it would be to have to go to Earlston to see you; but there was no railroad then, and everything is very much changed.”
“Yes, everything,” said Aunt Agatha; and then she talked about the weather in a tremulous way. Sir Edward would not have spoken as he did, if he had not thought that even yet the two old lovers might make it up, which naturally made it very confusing for Aunt Agatha to be the one to go to Earlston, and make, as it were, the first advances. She felt just the same heart thumping a little against her breast, and her white hair and soft faded cheek could not be supposed to be so constantly visible to her as they were to everybody else; and if Francis Ochterlony were to take it into his head to imagine——For Miss Seton, though nothing would have induced her to marry at her age, was not so certainly secure as her niece was that nothing now would ever happen in her individual life.
Nothing did happen, however, when they arrived at Earlston, where the master of the house received them, not with open arms, which was not his nature, but with all the enthusiasm he was capable of. He took them to see all his collections, everything he had that was most costly and rare. To go back to the house in this way, and see the scene of her former tortures; tortures which looked so light to look back upon, and were so amusing to think of, but which had been all but unbearable at the time, was strange to Mary. She told the story of her miseries, and they all laughed; but Mr. Ochterlony was still seen to change colour, when she pointed out the Etruscan vase which Hugh had taken into his hand, and the rococo chair which Islay had mounted. “This is the chair,” the master of Earlston said; and he did not laugh so frankly as the rest, but turned aside to show Miss Seton his Henri II. porcelain. “It was nothing to laugh at, at the time,” he said, confidentially, in a voice which sank into Aunt Agatha’s heart; and, to restore her composure, she paid great attention to the Henri Deux ware. She said she remembered longing very much to have a set like that when she was a girl. “I never knew you were fond of china,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “Oh, yes,” Aunt Agatha replied; but she did not explain that the china she had longed for was a toy service for her doll’s and little companions’ tea. Mr. Ochterlony put the costly cups away into a little cabinet, and locked it, after this; and he offered Aunt Agatha his arm, to lead her to the library, to see his collection there. She took it, but she trembled a little, the tender-hearted old woman. They looked such an old couple as they walked out of the room together, and yet there was something virginal and poetic about them, which they owed to their lonely lives. It was as if the roses that Hugh had just gathered for Nelly had been put away for half a century, and brought out again all dried and faded, but still roses, and with a lingering pensive perfume. And Sir Edward sat and smiled in a corner, and whispered to Mary to leave them to themselves a little: such things had been as that they might make it up.
There was a great dinner in the evening, at which Hugh’s health was drunk, and everybody hoped to see him for many a happy year at Earlston, yet prayed that it might be many a year before he had to take any other place than the one he now occupied at his uncle’s side. There were some county ladies present, who were very gracious to Mary, and anxious to know all about her boys, and whether she, too, was coming to Earlston; but who were disposed to snub Nelly, who was not Mrs. Ochterlony’s daughter, nor “any relation,” and who was clearly an interloper on such an occasion. Nelly did not care much for being snubbed; but she was very glad to seize the moment to propitiate Wilfrid, who had come into the room looking in what Nelly called “one of his states of mind;” for it must not be forgotten that she was a soldier’s daughter, and had been brought up exclusively in the regiment, and used many very colloquial forms of speech. She managed to glide to the other end of the room where Wilfrid was scowling over a collection of cameos without being noticed. To tell the truth, Nelly was easier in her mind when she was at a little distance from the Psyche and the Venus. She had never had any training in art, and she would have preferred to throw a cloak or, at the least, a lace shawl, or something, over those marble beauties. But she was, at least, wise enough to keep her sentiments to herself.
“Why have you come up so early, Will?” she said.
“What need I stay for, I wonder?” said Will; “I don’t care for their stupid county talk. It is just as bad as parish talk, and not a bit more rational. I suppose my uncle must have known better one time or other, or he could not have collected all these things here.”
“Do you think they are very pretty?” said Nelly, looking back from a safe distance, and thinking that, however pretty they might be, they were not very suitable for a drawing-room, where people in general were in the habit of putting on more decorous garments: by which it will be perceived that she was a very ignorant little girl and knew nothing about it, and had no natural feeling for art.
“Pretty!” said Will, “you have only to look and see what they are—or to hear their names would be enough. And to think of all those asses downstairs turned in among them, that probably would like a few stupid busts much better,—whereas there are plenty of other people that would give their ears——”
“Oh, Will!” cried Nelly, “you are always harping on the old string!”
“I am not harping on any string,” said Will. “All I want is, that people should stick to what they understand. Hugh might know how much money it was all worth, but I don’t know what else he could know about it. If my uncle was in his senses and left things in shares as they do in France and everywhere where they have any understanding——”
“And then what would become of the house and the family?” cried Nelly,—“if you had six sons and Hugh had six sons—and then your other brother. They would all come down to have cottages and be a sort of clan—instead of going and making a fortune like a man, and leaving Earlston to be the head——” Probably Nelly had somewhere heard the argument which she stated in this bewildering way, or picked it out of a novel, which was the only kind of literature she knew much about—for it would be vain to assert that the principles of primogeniture had ever been profoundly considered in her own thoughts—“and if you were the eldest,” she added, forsaking her argumentation, “I don’t think you would care so much for everybody going shares.”
“If I were the eldest it would be quite different,” said Will. And then he devoted himself to the cameos, and would enter into no further explanation. Nelly sat down beside him in a resigned way, and looked at the cameos too, without feeling very much interest in them, and wondered what the children were doing, and whether mamma’s head was bad; and her own astonishing selfishness in leaving mamma’s headache and the children to take care of themselves, struck her vividly as she sat there in the twilight and saw the Psyche and Venus, whom she did not approve of, gleaming white in the grey gloaming, and heard the loud voices of the ladies at the other end of the room. Then it began to come into her head how vain pleasures are, and how to do one’s duty is all one ought to care for in the world. Mrs. Ochterlony was at the other end of the drawing-room, talking to the other ladies, and “Mr. Hugh” was downstairs with a quantity of stupid men, and Will was in one of his “states of mind.” And the chances were that something had gone wrong at home; that Charley had fallen downstairs, or baby’s bath had been too hot for her, or something—a judgment upon Nelly for going away. At one moment she got so anxious thinking of it all, that she felt disposed to get up and run home all the way, to make sure that nothing had happened. Only that just then Aunt Agatha came to join them in looking over the cameos, and began to tell Nelly, as she often did, little stories about Mrs. Percival, and to call her “my dear love,” and to tell her her dress looked very nice, and that nothing was so pretty as a sweet natural rose in a girl’s hair. “I don’t care for artificial flowers at your age, my dear,” Aunt Agatha was saying, when the gentlemen came in and Hugh made his appearance; and gradually the children’s possible mischances and her mamma’s headache faded out of Nelly’s thoughts.
It was the pleasantest two days that had been spent at Earlston in the memory of man. Mrs. Ochterlony went over all the house with very different feelings from those she had felt when she was an inmate of the place, and smiled at her own troubles and found her misery very comical; and little Nelly, who never in all her life before had known what it was to have two days to herself, was so happy that she was perfectly wretched about it when she went to bed. For it had never yet occurred to Nelly, as it does to so many young ladies, that she had a right to everything that was delightful and pleasant, and that the people who kept her out of her rights were ogres and tyrants. She was frightened and rather ashamed of herself for being so happy; and then she made it up by resolving to be doubly good and make twice as much a slave of herself as ever as soon as she got home. This curious and unusual development of feeling probably arose from the fact that Nelly had never been brought up at all, so to speak, but had simply grown; and had too much to do to have any time for thinking of herself—which is the best of all possible bringings up for some natures. As for Aunt Agatha, she went and came about this house, which could never be otherwise than interesting to her, with a wistful look and a flickering unsteady colour that would not have shamed even Nelly’s sixteen-year old cheek. Miss Seton saw ghosts of what might have been in every corner; she saw the unborn faces shine beside the never-lighted fire. She saw herself as she might have been, rising up to receive her guests, sitting at the head of the long, full, cheerful table. It was a curious sensation, and made her stop to think now and then which was the reality and which the shadow; and yet there could be no doubt that there was in it a certain charm.
And there could be no doubt, either, that a certain sadness fell upon Mr. Ochterlony when they were all gone. He had a fire lighted in his study that night, though it was warm, “to make it look a little more cheerful,” he said; and made Hugh sit with him long after the usual time. He sat buried in his great chair, with his thin, long limbs looking longer and thinner than ever, and his head a little sunk upon his breast. And then he began to moralize and give his nephew good advice.
“I hope you’ll marry, Hugh,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good to shut one’s self out from the society of women; they’re very unscientific, but still—— And it makes a great difference in a house. When I was a young fellow like you—— But, indeed, it is not necessary to go back so far. A man has it in his power to amuse himself for a long time, but it doesn’t last for ever—— And there are always things that might have been better otherwise——” Here Mr. Ochterlony made a long pause and stared into the fire, and after a while resumed without any preface: “When I’m gone, Hugh, you’ll pack up all that Henri Deux ware and send it over to—to your Aunt Agatha. I never thought she cared for china. John will pack it for you—he is a very careful fellow for that sort of thing. I put it all into the Louis Quinze cabinet; now mind you don’t forget.”
“Time enough for that, sir,” said Hugh, cheerfully, and not without a suppressed laugh; for the loves of Aunt Agatha and Francis Ochterlony were slightly comical to Hugh.
“That is all you know about it,” said his uncle. “But I shall expect you altogether to be of more use in the world than I have been, Hugh; and you’ll have more to do. Your father, you know, married when he was a boy, and went out of my reach; but you’ll have all your people to look after. Don’t play the generous prince and spoil the boys—mind you don’t take any stupid notions into your head of being a sort of Providence to them. It’s a great deal better for them to make their own way; but you’ll be always here, and you’ll lend a helping hand. Stand by them—that’s the great thing; and as for your mother, I needn’t recommend her to your kindest care. She has done a great deal for you.”
“Uncle, I wish you would not talk like this,” said Hugh; “there’s nothing the matter with you? What’s the good of making a fellow uneasy and sending him uncomfortable to bed? Leave those sort of things till you’re old and ill, and then I’ll attend to what you say.”
Mr. Ochterlony softly shook his head. “You won’t forget about the Henri Deux,” he said; and then he paused again and laughed as it were under his breath, with a kind of laugh that was pathetic and full of quaint tenderness. “If it had ever come to that, I don’t think you would have been any the worse,” he added; “we were not the sort of people to have heirs,” and the laugh faded into a lingering, wistful smile, half sad, half amused, with which on his face, he sat for a long time and gazed into the fading fire. It was, perhaps, simply that the presence of such visitors had stirred up the old recollections in his heart—perhaps that it felt strange to him to look back on his own past life in the light thrown upon it by the presence of his heir, and to feel that it was ending, while yet, in one sense, it had never begun. As for Hugh, to tell the truth, he was chiefly amused by his uncle’s reflective mood. He thought, which no doubt was to some extent true, that the old man was thinking of an old story which had come to nothing, and of which old Aunt Agatha was the heroine. There was something touching in it he could not but allow, but still he gave a laugh within himself at the superannuated romance. And all that immediately came of it, was the injunction not to forget about the Henri Deux.