Маргарет Олифант
Madonna Mary
CHAPTER XVI
THAT night was a painful night for Winnie. The girl was self-willed and self-loving, as has been said. But she was not incapable of the more generous emotions, and when she looked at her sister she could no more suspect her of any wrong or treachery than she could suspect the sun shining over their heads. And her interest in the young soldier had gone a great length. She thought he loved her, and it was very hard to think that he was kept apart from her by a reason which was no reason at all. She roved about the garden all the evening in an unsettled way, thinking he would come again – thinking he could not stay away – explaining to herself that he must come to explain. And when she glanced indoors at the lamp which was lighted so much earlier than it needed to be, for the sake of Mary’s sewing, and saw Mary seated beside it, in what looked like perfect composure and quietness, Winnie’s impatience got the better of her. He was to be banished, or confined to a formal morning call, for Mary’s sake, who sat there so calm, a woman for whom the fret and cares of life were over, while for Winnie life was only beginning, and her heart going out eagerly to welcome and lay claim to its troubles. And then the thought that it was the same Mrs. Ochterlony came sharp as a sting to Winnie’s heart. What could he have had to do with Mrs. Ochterlony? what did she mean coming home in the character of a sorrowful widow, and shutting out their visitors, and yet awakening something like agitation and unquestionable recognition in the first stranger she saw? Winnie wandered through the garden, asking herself those questions, while the sweet twilight darkened, and the magical hour passed by, which had of late associated itself with so many dreams. And again he did not come. It was impossible to her, when she looked at Mary, to believe that there could be anything inexplainable in the link which connected her lover with her sister – but still he ought to have come to explain. And when Sir Edward’s windows were lighted once more, and the certainty that he was not coming penetrated her mind, Winnie clenched her pretty hands, and went crazy for the moment with despite and vexation. Another long dull weary evening, with all the expectation and hope quenched out of it; another lingering night; another day in which there was as much doubt as hope. And next week he was going away! And it was all Mary’s fault, however you took it – whether she had known more of him than she would allow in India, or whether it was simply the fault of that widow’s cap which scared people away? This was what was going on in Winnie’s agitated mind while the evening dews fell upon the banks of Kirtell, and the soft stars came out, and the young moon rose, and everything glistened and shone with the sweetness of a summer night. This fair young creature, who was in herself the most beautiful climax of all the beauty around her, wandered among her flowers with her small hands clenched, and the spirit of a little fury in her heart. She had nothing in the world to trouble her, and yet she was very unhappy, and it was all Mary’s fault. Probably if Mary could but have seen into Winnie’s heart she would have thought it preferable to stay at Earlston, where the Psyche and the Venus were highly indifferent, and had no hearts, but only arms and noses that could be broken. Winnie was more fragile than the Etruscan vases or the Henri II. porcelain. They had escaped fracture, but she had not; but fortunately this thought did not occur to Mrs. Ochterlony as she sat by the lamp working at Hugh’s little blouses in Aunt Agatha’s chair.
And Aunt Agatha, more actively jealous than Winnie herself, sat by knitting little socks – an occupation which she had devoted herself to, heart and soul, from the moment when she first knew the little Ochterlonys were coming home. She was knitting with the prettiest yarn and the finest needles, and had a model before her of proportions so shapely as to have filled any woman’s soul with delight; but all that was eclipsed for the time by the doubt which hung over Mary, and the evident unhappiness of her favourite. Aunt Agatha was less wise than Winnie, and had not eyes to perceive that people were characteristic even in their wrong-doing, and that Captain Percival of himself could have nothing to do with the shock which Mary had evidently felt at the sight of him. Probably Miss Seton had not been above a little flirtation in her own day, and she did not see how that would come unnatural to a woman of her own flesh and blood. And she sat accordingly on the other side of the lamp and knitted, with a pucker of anxiety upon her fair old brow, casting wistful glances now and then into the garden where Winnie was.
“And I suppose, my dear, you know Captain Percival very well?” said Aunt Agatha, with that anxious look on her face.
“I don’t think I ever saw him but once,” said Mary, who was a little impatient of the question.
“But once, my dear love! and yet you both were so surprised to meet,” said Aunt Agatha, with reasonable surprise.
“There are some moments when to see a man is to remember him ever after,” said Mary. “It was at such a time that I saw Sir Edward’s friend. It would be best to tell you about it, Aunt Agatha. There was a time when my poor Hugh – ”
“Oh, Mary, my darling, you can’t think I want to vex you,” cried Aunt Agatha, “or make you go back again upon anything that is painful. I am quite satisfied, for my part, when you say so. And so would Winnie be, I am sure.”
“Satisfied?” said Mary, wondering, and yet with a smile; and then she forgot the wonder of it in the anxiety. “I should be sorry to think that Winnie cared much for anything that could be said about Captain Percival. I used to hear of him from the Askells who were friends of his. Do not let her have anything to do with him, Aunt Agatha; I am sure he could bring her nothing but disappointment and pain.”
“I – Mary? – Oh, my dear love, what can I do?” cried Miss Seton, in sudden confusion; and then she paused and recovered herself. “Of course if he was a wicked young man, I – I would not let Winnie have anything to do with him,” she added, faltering; “but – do you think you are sure, Mary? If it should be only that you do not – like him; or that you have not got on – or something – ”
“I have told you that I know nothing of him, Aunt,” said Mary. “I saw him once at the most painful moment of my life, and spoke half-a-dozen words to him in my own house after that – but it is what I have heard the gentlemen say. I do not like him. I think it was unmannerly and indelicate to come to my house at such a time – ”
“My darling!” said Aunt Agatha, soothing her tenderly. Miss Seton was thinking of the major’s death, not of any pain that might have gone before; and Mary by this time in the throng of recollections that came upon her had forgotten that everybody did not know.
“But that is not the reason,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, composing herself: “the reason is that he could not, unless he is greatly changed, make Winnie otherwise than unhappy. I know the reputation he had. The Heskeths would not let him come to their house after Annie came out; and I have even heard Hugh – ”
“My dear love, you are agitating yourself,” cried Aunt Agatha. “Oh, Mary, if you only knew how anxious I am to do anything to recall – ”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a faint smile: “it is not so far off that I should require anything to recall all that has happened to me – but for Winnie’s sake – ”
And it was just at that moment that the light suddenly appeared in Sir Edward’s window, and brought Winnie in, white and passionate, with a thunder-cloud full of tears and lightnings and miserable headache and self-reproach, lowering over her brilliant eyes.
“It is very good of Mary, I am sure, to think of something for my sake,” said Winnie. “What is it, Aunt Agatha? Everything is always so unpleasant that is for one’s good. I should like to know what it was.”
And then there was a dead silence in the pretty room. Mary bent her head over her work, silenced by the question, and Aunt Agatha, in a flutter of uncertainty and tribulation, turned from one to the other, not knowing which side to take nor what to say.
“Mary has come among us a stranger,” said Winnie, “and I suppose it is natural that she should think she knows our business better than we do. I suppose that is always how it seems to a stranger; but at the same time it is a mistake, Aunt Agatha, and I wish you would let Mary know that we are disposed to manage for ourselves. If we come to any harm it is we who will have to suffer, and not Mary,” the impetuous girl cried, as she drew that unhappy embroidery frame out of its corner.
And then another pause, severe and startling, fell upon the little party. Aunt Agatha fluttered in her chair, looking from one to another, and Winnie dragged a violent needle through her canvas, and a great night moth came in and circled about them, and dashed itself madly against the globe of light on the table. As for Mary, she sat working at Hugh’s little blouse, and for a long time did not speak.
“My dear love!” Aunt Agatha said at last, trembling, “you know there is nothing in the world I would not do to please you, Winnie, – nor Mary either. Oh, my dear children, there are only you two in the world. If one says anything, it is for the other’s good. And here we are, three women together, and we are all fond of each other, and surely, surely, nothing ever can make any unpleasantness!” cried the poor lady, with tears. She had her heart rent in two, like every mediatrix, and yet the larger half, as was natural, went to her darling’s side.
“Winnie is right enough,” Mary said, quietly. “I am a stranger, and I have no right to interfere; and very likely, even if I were permitted to interfere, it would do no good. It is a shame to vex you, Aunt Agatha. My sister must submit to hear my opinion one time, but I am not going to disturb the peace of the house, nor yours.”
“Oh, Mary, my dear, it is only that she is a little impatient, and has always had her own way,” said Aunt Agatha, whispering across the table. And then no more was said. Miss Seton took up her little socks, and Winnie continued to labour hotly at her embroidery, and the sound of her work, and the rustle of Mary’s arm at her sewing, and the little click of Aunt Agatha’s knitting-needles, and the mad dashes of the moth at the lamp, were all the sounds in the room, except, indeed, the sound of the Kirtell, flowing softly over its pebbles at the foot of the brae, and the sighing of the evening air among the trees, which were sadly contradictory of the spirit of the scene within; and at a distance over the woods, gleamed Sir Edward’s window, with the ill-disposed light which was, so to speak, the cause of all. Perhaps, after all, if Mrs. Ochterlony had stayed at Earlston, where the Psyche and the Venus were not sensitive, and there was nothing but marble and china to jar into discord, it might have been better; and what would have been better still, was the grey cottage on the roadside, with fire on the hearth and peace and freedom in the house; and it was to that, with a deep and settled longing, that Mary’s heart and thoughts went always back.
When Mrs. Ochterlony had withdrawn, the scene changed much in Aunt Agatha’s drawing-room. But it was still a pretty scene. Then Winnie came and poured out her girlish passion in the ears and at the feet of her tender guardian. She sank down upon the carpet, and laid her beautiful head upon Aunt Agatha’s knee, and clasped her slender arms around her. “To think she should come and drive every one I care for away from the house, and set even you against me!” cried Winnie, with sobs of vexation and rage.
“Oh, Winnie! not me! Never me, my darling,” cried Aunt Agatha; and they made a group which a painter would have loved, and which would have conveyed the most delicate conception of love and grief to an admiring public, had it been painted. Nothing less than a broken heart and a blighted life would have been suggested to an innocent fancy by the abandonment of misery in Winnie’s attitude. And to tell the truth, she was very unhappy, furious with Mary, and with herself, and with her lover, and everybody in the wide world. The braids of her beautiful hair got loose, and the net that confined them came off, and the glistening silken flood came tumbling about her shoulders. Miss Seton could not but take great handfuls of it as she tried to soothe her darling; and poor Aunt Agatha’s heart was rent in twain as she sat with this lovely burden in her lap, thinking, Oh, if nobody had ever come to distract Winnie’s heart with love-making, and bring such disturbance to her life; oh, if Hugh Ochterlony had thought better of it, and had not died! Oh, if Mary had never seen Captain Percival, or seeing him, had approved of him, and thought him of all others the mate she would choose for her sister! The reverse of all these wishes had happened, and Aunt Agatha could not but look at the combination with a certain despair.
“What can I do, my dear love?” she said. “It is my fault that Mary has come here. You know yourself it would have been unnatural if she had gone anywhere else: and how could we go on having people, with her in such deep mourning? And as for Captain Percival, my darling – ”
“I was not speaking of Captain Percival,” said Winnie, with indignation. “What is he to me? – or any man? But what I will not bear is Mary interfering. She shall not tell us what we are to do. She shan’t come in and look as if she understood everything better than we do. And, Aunt Agatha, she shan’t – she shall never come, not for a moment, between you and me!”
“My darling child! my dear love!” cried poor Aunt Agatha, “as if that was possible, or as if poor Mary wanted to. Oh, if you would only do her justice, Winnie? She is fond of you; I know she is fond of you. And what she was saying was entirely for your good – ”
“She is fond of nobody but her children,” said Winnie, rising up, and gathering her bright hair back into the net. “She would not care what happened to us, as long as all was well with her tiresome little boys.”
Aunt Agatha wrung her hands, as she looked in despair at the tears on the flushed cheek, and the cloud which still hung upon her child’s brow. What could she say? Perhaps there was a little truth in what Winnie said. The little boys, though Miss Seton could not help feeling them to be so unimportant in comparison with Winnie and her beginning of life, were all in all to Mrs. Ochterlony; and when she had murmured again that Mary meant it all for Winnie’s good, and again been met by a scornful protestation that anything meant for one’s good was highly unpleasant, Aunt Agatha was silenced, and had not another word to say. All that she could do was to pet her wilful darling more than ever, and to promise with tears that Mary should never, never make any difference between them, and that she herself would do anything that Winnie wished or wanted. The interview left her in such a state of agitation that she could not sleep, nor even lie down, till morning was breaking, and the new day had begun – but wandered about in her dressing-gown, thinking she heard Winnie move, and making pilgrimages to her room to find her, notwithstanding all her passion and tears, as fast asleep as one of Mary’s boys – which was very, very different from Aunt Agatha’s case, or Mary’s either, for that matter. As for Mrs. Ochterlony, it is useless to enter into any description of her feelings. She went to bed with a heavy heart, feeling that she had made another failure, and glad, as people are when they have little comfort round them, of the kind night and the possible sleep which, for a few hours at least, would make her free of all this. But she did not sleep as Winnie did, who felt herself so ill-used and injured. Thus, Mrs. Ochterlony’s return, a widow, brought more painful agitation to Miss Seton’s cottage than had been known under its quiet roof since the time when she went away a bride.
CHAPTER XVII
AND after this neither Sir Edward nor his young friend appeared for two whole days. Any girl of Winifred Seton’s impetuous character, who has ever been left in such a position on the very eve of the telling of that love-tale, which had been all but told for several weeks past, but now seemed suddenly and artificially arrested just at the moment of utterance – will be able to form some idea of Winnie’s feelings during this dreadful interval. She heard the latch of the gate lifted a hundred times in the day, when, alas, there was no one near to lift the latch. She was afraid to go out for an instant, lest in that instant “they” should come; her brain was ringing with supposed sounds of footsteps and echoes of voices, and yet the road lay horribly calm and silent behind the garden hedge, with no passengers upon it. And these two evenings the light came early into Sir Edward’s window, and glared cruelly over the trees. And to be turned inward upon the sweet old life from which the charm had fled, and to have to content one’s self with flowers and embroidery, and the canary singing, and the piano, and Aunt Agatha! Many another girl has passed through the same interval of torture, and felt the suspense to be killing, and the crisis tragic – but yet to older eyes perhaps even such a dread suspension of all the laws of being has also its comic side. Winnie, however, took care to keep anybody from laughing at it in the cottage. It was life and death to her, or at least so she thought. And her suppressed frenzy of anxiety, and doubt, and fear, were deep earnest to Aunt Agatha, who seemed now to be living her own early disappointments over again, and more bitterly than in the first version of them. She tried hard to remember the doubt thrown upon Captain Percival by Mary, and to persuade herself that this interposition was providential, and meant to save her child from an unhappy marriage. But when Miss Seton saw Winnie’s tragic countenance, her belief in Providence was shaken. She could not see the good of anything that made her darling suffer. Mary might be wrong, she might be prejudiced, or have heard a false account, and it might be simply herself who was to blame for shutting her doors, or seeming to shut her doors, against her nearest and oldest neighbours. Could it be supposed that Sir Edward would bring any one to her house who was not a fit associate or a fit suitor, if things should take such a turn, for Winnie? Under the painful light thrown upon the subject by Winnie’s looks, Aunt Agatha came altogether to ignore that providential view which had comforted her at first, and was so far driven in the other direction at last as to write Sir Edward a little note, and take the responsibility upon her own shoulders. What Miss Seton wrote was, that though, in consequence of their late affliction, the family were not equal to seeing visitors in a general way, yet that it would be strange indeed if they were to consider Sir Edward a stranger, and that she hoped he would not stay away, as she was sure his company would be more a comfort to Mary than anything else. And she also hoped Captain Percival would not leave the Hall without coming to see them. It was such a note as a maiden lady was fully justified in writing to an old friend – an invitation, but yet given with a full consideration of all the proprieties, and that tender regard for Mary’s feelings which Aunt Agatha had shown throughout. It was written and despatched when Winnie had gone out, as she did on the third day, in proud defiance and desperation, so that if Sir Edward’s sense of propriety and respect for Mary’s cap should happen to be stronger than Aunt Agatha’s, no further vexation might come to the young sufferer from this attempt to set all right.
And Winnie went out without knowing of this effort for her consolation. She went down by the Kirtell, winding down the wooded banks, in the sweet light and shade of the August morning, seeing nothing of the brightness, wrapped up and absorbed in her own sensations. She felt now that the moment of fate had passed, – that moment that made or marred two lives; – and had in her heart, in an embryo unexpressed condition, several of Mr. Browning’s minor poems, which were not then written; and felt a general bitterness against the world for the lost climax, the dénouement which had not come. She thought to herself even, that if the tale had been told, the explanation made, and something, however tragical, had happened after, it would not have been so hard to bear. But now it was clear to Winnie that her existence must run on soured and contracted in the shade, and that young Percival must stiffen into a worldly and miserable old bachelor, and that their joint life, the only life worth living, had been stolen from them, and blighted in the bud. And what was it all for? – because Mary, who had had all the good things of this life, who had loved and been married in the most romantic way, and had been adored by her husband, and reigned over him, had come, so far, to an end of her career. Mary was over thirty, an age at which Winnie could not but think it must be comparatively indifferent to a woman what happened – at which the snows of age must have begun to benumb her feelings, under any circumstances, and the loss of a husband or so did not much matter; but at eighteen, and to lose the first love that had ever touched your heart! to lose it without any reason – without the satisfaction of some dreadful obstacle in the way, or misunderstanding still more dreadful; without ever having heard the magical words and tasted that first rapture! – Ah, it was hard, very hard; and no wonder that Winnie was in a turmoil of rage, and bitterness, and despair.
The fact was, that she was so absorbed in her thoughts as not to see him there where he was waiting for her. He had seen her long ago, as she came down the winding road, betraying herself at the turnings by the flutter of her light dress – for Winnie’s mourning was slight – and he had waited, as glad as she could be of the opportunity, and the chance of seeing her undisturbed, and free from all critical eyes. There is a kind of popular idea that it is only a good man, or one with a certain “nobility” in his character, who is capable of being in love; but the idea is not so justifiable as it would seem to be. Captain Percival was not a good young man, nor would it be safe for any conscientious historian to claim for him generous or noble qualities to any marked degree; but at the same time I am not disposed to qualify the state of his sentiments by saying, as is generally said of unsatisfactory characters, that he loved Winnie as much as he could love anything. He was in love with her, heart and soul, as much as if he had been a paladin. He would not have stayed at any obstacle, nor regarded either his own comfort or hers, or any other earthly bar between them. When Winnie thought him distant from her, and contemplating his departure, he had been haunting all the old walks which he knew Miss Seton and her niece were in the habit of taking. He was afraid of Mary – that was one thing indisputable – and he thought she would harm him, and bring up his old character against him; and felt instinctively that the harm which he thought he knew of her, could not be used against her here. And it was for this reason that he had not ventured again to present himself at the cottage; but he had been everywhere about, wherever he thought there was any chance of meeting the lady of his thoughts. And if Winnie had not been so anxious not to miss that possible visitor; if she had been coming and going, and doing all she usually did, their meeting must have taken place two days ago, and all the agony and trouble been spared. He watched her now, and held his breath, and traced her at all the turnings of the road, now by a puff of her black and white muslin dress, and then by a long streaming ribbon catching among the branches – for Winnie was fond of long ribbons wherever she could introduce them. And she was so absorbed with her own settled anguish, that she had stepped out upon him from among the trees before she was aware.
“Captain Percival!” said Winnie, with an involuntary cry; and she felt the blood so rush to her cheeks with sudden delight and surprise, that she was in an instant put on her guard, and driven to account for it. – “I did not see there was any one here – what a fright you have given me. And we, who thought you had gone away,” added Winnie, looking suddenly at him with blazing defiant eyes.
If he had not been in love, probably he would have known what it all meant – the start, the blush, the cry, and that triumphant, indignant, reproachful, exulting look. But he had enough to do with his own sensations, which makes a wonderful difference in such a case.
“Gone away!” he said, on the spur of the moment – “as if I could go away – as if you did not know better than that.”
“I was not aware that there was anything to detain you,” said Winnie; and all at once from being so tragical, her natural love of mischief came back, and she felt perfectly disposed to play with her mouse. “Tell me about it. Is it Sir Edward? or perhaps you, too, have had an affliction in your family. I think that is the worst of all,” she said, shaking her pretty head mournfully – and thus the two came nearer to each other and laughed together, which was as good a means of rapprochement as anything else.
But the young soldier had waited too long for this moment to let it all go off in laughter. “If you only knew how I have been trying to see you,” he said. “I have been at the school and at the mill, and in the woods – in all your pet places. Are you condemned to stay at home because of this affliction? I could not come to the cottage because, though Miss Seton is so kind, I am sure your sister would do me an ill turn if she could.”
Winnie was startled, and even a little annoyed by this speech – for it is a fact always to be borne in mind by social critics, that one member of a family may be capable of saying everything that is unpleasant about another, without at the same time being disposed to hear even an echo of his or her own opinion from stranger lips. Winnie was of this way of thinking. She had not taken to her sister, and was quite ready herself to criticise her very severely; but when somebody else did it, the result was very different. “Why should my sister do you an ill turn?” she said.
“Oh!” said young Percival; “it is because you know she knows that I know all about it – ”
“All about it!” said Winnie. She was tall already, but she grew two inches taller as she stood and expanded and looked her frightened lover into nothing. “There can be nothing about Mary, Captain Percival, which you and all the world may not know.”
And then the young man saw he had made a wrong move. “I have not been haunting the road for hours to talk about Mrs. Ochterlony,” he said. “She does not like me, and I am frightened for her. Oh, Winnie, you know very well why. You know I would tremble before anybody who might make you think ill of me. It is cruel to pretend you don’t understand.”
And then he took her hand and told her everything – all that she looked for, and perhaps more than all – for there are touches of real eloquence about what a man says when he is really in love (even if he should be no great things in his own person) which transcend as much as they fall short of, the suggestions of a woman’s curious fancy. She had said it for him two or three times in her own mind, and had done it far more elegantly and neatly. But still there was something about the genuine article which had not been in Winnie’s imagination. There were fewer words, but there was a great deal more excitement, though it was much less cleverly expressed. And then, before they knew how, the crisis was over, the dénouement accomplished, and the two sitting side by side as in another world. They were sitting on the trunk of an old beech-tree, with the leaves rustling and the birds twittering over them, and Kirtell running, soft and sweet, hushed in its scanty summer whisper at their feet; all objects familiar, and well-known to them – and yet it was another world. As for Mr. Browning’s poems about the unlived life, and the hearts all shrivelled up for want of a word at the right moment, Winnie most probably would have laughed with youthful disdain had they been suggested to her now. This little world, in which the fallen beech-tree was the throne, and the fairest hopes and imaginations possible to man, crowded about the youthful sovereigns, and paid them obsequious court, was so different from the old world, where Sir Edward at the Hall, and Aunt Agatha in the Cottage, were expecting the young people, that these two, as was not unnatural, forgot all about it, and lingered together, no one interfering with them, or even knowing they were there, for long enough to fill Miss Seton’s tender bosom with wild anxieties and terrors. Winnie had not reached home at the early dinner-hour – a thing which was to Aunt Agatha as if the sun had declined to rise, or the earth (to speak more correctly) refused to perform her proper revolutions. She became so restless, and anxious, and unhappy, that Mary, too, was roused into uneasiness. “It must be only that she is detained somewhere,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “She never would allow herself to be detained,” cried Aunt Agatha, “and oh, Mary, my darling is unhappy. How can I tell what may have happened?” Thus some people made themselves very wretched about her, while Winnie sat in perfect blessedness, uttering and listening to all manner of heavenly nonsense on the trunk of the fallen tree.
Aunt Agatha’s wretchedness, however, dispersed into thin air the moment she saw Winnie come in at the garden-gate, with Captain Percival in close attendance. Then Miss Seton, with natural penetration, saw in an instant what had happened; felt that it was all natural, and wondered why she had not foreseen this inevitable occurrence. “I might have known,” she said to Mary, who was the only member of the party upon whom this wonderful event had no enlivening effect; and then Aunt Agatha recollected herself, and put on her sad face, and faltered an apology. “Oh, my dear love, I know it must be hard upon you to see it,” she said, apologizing as it were to the widow for the presence of joy.
