Маргарет Олифант
Madonna Mary
CHAPTER XXXIV
WHILE Hugh showed Nelly the way to the Lady’s Well with that mixture of brotherly tenderness and a dawning emotion of a much warmer kind, which is the privileged entrance of their age into real love and passion; and while Will made his with silent vehemence and ardour to Carlisle, Winnie was left very miserable in the Cottage. It was a moment of reaction after the furious excitement of the previous day. She had held him at bay, she had shown him her contempt and scorn, she had proved to him that their parting was final, and that she would never either see or listen to him again; and the excitement of doing this had so supported her that the day which Aunt Agatha thought a day of such horrible trial to her poor Winnie, was, in short, the only day in which she had snatched a certain stormy enjoyment since she returned to the Cottage. But the day after was different. He was gone; he had assented to her desire, and accepted her decision to all appearance, and poor Winnie was very miserable. For the moment all seemed to her to be over. She had felt sure he would come, and the sense of the continued conflict had buoyed her up; but she did not feel so sure that he would come again, and the long struggle which had occupied her life and thoughts for so many years seemed to have come to an abrupt end, and she had nothing more to look forward to. When she realized this fact, Winnie stood aghast. It is hard when love goes out of a life; but sometimes, when it is only strife and opposition which go out of it, it is almost as hard to bear. She thought she had sighed for peace for many a long day. She had said so times without number, and written it down, and persuaded herself that was what she wanted; but now that she had got it she found out that it was not that she wanted. The Cottage was the very home of peace, and had been so for many years. Even the growth of young life within it, the active minds and varied temperaments of the three boys, and Will’s cloudy and uncomfortable disposition, had not hitherto interfered with its character. But so far from being content, Winnie’s heart sank within her when she realized the fact, that War had marched off in the person of her husband, and that she was to be “left in peace” – horrible words that paralysed her very soul.
This event, however, if it had done nothing else, had opened her mouth. Her history, which she had kept to herself, began to be revealed. She told her aunt and her sister of his misdeeds, till the energy of her narrative brought something like renewed life to her. She described how she had herself endured, how she had been left to all the dangers that attend a beautiful young woman whose husband has found superior attractions elsewhere; and she gave such sketches of the women whom she imagined to have attracted him, as only an injured wife in a chronic state of wrath and suffering could give. She was so very miserable on that morning that she had no alternative but to speak or die; and as she could not die, she gave her miseries utterance. “And if he can do you any harm – if he can strike me through my friends,” said Winnie, “if you know of any point on which he could assail you, you had better keep close guard.”
“Oh, my dear love!” said Aunt Agatha, with a troubled smile, “what harm could he do us? He could hurt us only in wounding you; and now we have you safe, my darling, and can defend you, so he never can harm us.”
“Of course I never meant you,” said Winnie. “But he might perhaps harm Mary. Mary is not like you; she has had to make her way in the world, and no doubt there may be things in her life, as in other people’s, that she would not care to have known.”
Mary was startled by this speech, which was made half in kindness, half in anger; for the necessity of having somebody to quarrel with had been too great for Winnie. Mrs. Ochterlony was startled, but she could not help feeling sure that her secret was no secret for her sister, and she had no mind for a quarrel, though Winnie wished it.
“There is but one thing in my life that I don’t wish to have known,” she said, “and Major Percival knows it, and probably so do you, Winnie. But I am here among my own people, and everybody knows all about me. I don’t think it would be possible to do me harm here.”
“It is because you don’t know him,” said Winnie. “He would do the Queen harm in her own palace. You don’t know what poison he can put on his arrows, and how he shoots them. I believe he will strike me through my friends.”
All this time Aunt Agatha looked at the two with her lips apart, as if about to speak; but in reality it was horror and amazement that moved her. To hear them talking calmly of something that must be concealed! of something, at least, that it was better should not be known! – and that in a house which had always been so spotless, so respectable, and did not know what mystery meant!
Mary shook her head, and smiled. She had felt a little anxious the night before about what Percival might be saying to Wilfrid; but, somehow, all that had blown away. Even Will’s discontent with his brother had taken the form of jealous tenderness for herself, which, in her thinking, was quite incompatible with any revelation which could have lowered her in his eyes; and it seemed to her as if the old sting, which had so often come back to her, which had put it in the power of her friends in “the regiment” to give her now and then a prick to the heart, had lost its venom. Hugh was peacefully settled in his rights, and Will, if he had heard anything, must have nobly closed his ears to it. Sometimes this strange feeling of assurance and confidence comes on the very brink of the deadliest danger, and it was so with Mary at the present moment that she had no fear.
As for Winnie, she too was thinking principally of her own affairs, and of her sister’s only as subsidiary to them. She would have rather believed in the most diabolical rage and assault than in her husband’s indifference and the utter termination of hostilities between them. “He will strike me through my friends,” she repeated; and perhaps in her heart she was rather glad that there still remained this oblique way of reaching her, and expressed a hope rather than a fear. This conversation was interrupted by Sir Edward, who came in more cheerfully and alertly than usual, taking off his hat as soon as he became visible through the open window. He had heard what he thought was good news, and there was satisfaction in his face.
“So Percival is here,” he said. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was. Come, we’ll have some pleasant days yet in our old age. Why hasn’t he come up to the Hall?”
There was an embarrassed pause – embarrassed at least on the part of Miss Seton and Mrs. Ochterlony; while Winnie fixed her eyes, which looked so large and wild in their sunken sockets, steadily upon him, without attempting to make any reply.
“Yes, Major Percival was here yesterday,” said Aunt Agatha with hesitation; “he spent the whole day with us – I was very glad to have him, and I am sure he would have gone up to the Hall if he had had time – But he was obliged to go away.”
How difficult it was to say all this under the gaze of Winnie’s eyes, and with the possibility of being contradicted flatly at any moment, may be imagined. And while Aunt Agatha made her faltering statement, her own look and voice contradicted her; and then there was a still more embarrassed pause, and Sir Edward looked from one to another with amazed and unquiet eyes.
“He came and spent the day with you,” said their anxious neighbour, “and he was obliged to go away! I confess I think I merited different treatment. I wish I could make out what you all mean – ”
“The fact is, Sir Edward,” said Winnie, “that Major Percival was sent away… He is a very important person, no doubt; but he can’t do just as he pleases. My aunt is so good that she tries to keep up a little fiction, but he and I have done with each other,” said Winnie in her excitement, notwithstanding that she had been up to this moment so reticent and self-contained.
“Who sent him away?” asked Sir Edward, with a pitiful, confidential look to Aunt Agatha, and a slight shake of his head over the very bad business – a little pantomime which moved Winnie to deeper wrath and discontent.
“I sent him away,” said Mrs. Percival, with as much dignity as this ebullition of passion would permit her to assume.
“My dear Winnie,” said Sir Edward, “I am very, very sorry to hear this. Think a little of what is before you. You are a young woman still; you are both young people. Do you mean to live here all the rest of your life, and let him go where he pleases – to destruction, I suppose, if he likes? Is that what you mean? And yet we all remember when you would not hear a word even of advice – would not listen to anybody about him. He had not been quite sans reproche when you married him, my dear; and you took him with a knowledge of it. If that had not been the case, there might have been some excuse. But what I want you to do is to look it in the face, and consider a little. It is not only for to-day, or to-morrow – it is for your life.”
Winnie gave a momentary shudder, as if of cold, and drew her shawl closer around her. “I had rather not discuss our private affairs,” she replied: “they are between ourselves.”
“But the fact is, they are not between yourselves,” said Sir Edward, who was inspired by the great conviction of doing his duty. “You have taken the public into your confidence by coming here. I am a very old friend, both of yours and his, and I might do some good, if you let me try. I dare say he is not very far from here; and if I might mediate between you – ”
A sudden gleam shot out from Winnie’s eyes – perhaps it was a sudden wild hope – perhaps it was merely the flash of indignation; but still the proposal moved her. “Mediate!” she said, with an air which was intended for scorn; but her lips quivered as she repeated the word.
“Yes,” said Sir Edward, “I might, if you would have confidence in me. No doubt there are wrongs on both sides. He has been impatient, and you have been exacting, and – Where are you going?”
“It is no use continuing this conversation,” said Winnie. “I am going to my room. If I were to have more confidence in you than I ever had in any one, it would still be useless. I have not been exacting. I have been – But it is no matter. I trust, Aunt Agatha, that you will forgive me for going to my own room.”
Sir Edward shook his head, and looked after her as she withdrew. He looked as if he had said, “I knew how it would be;” and yet he was concerned and sorry. “I have seen such cases before,” he said, when Winnie had left the room, turning to Aunt Agatha and Mary, and once more shaking his head: “neither will give in an inch. They know that they are in a miserable condition, but it is neither his fault nor hers. That is how it always is. And only the bystanders can see what faults there are on both sides.”
“But I don’t think Winnie is so exacting,” said Aunt Agatha, with natural partisanship. “I think it is worse than that. She has been telling me two or three things – ”
“Oh, yes,” said Sir Edward, with mild despair, “they can tell you dozens of things. No doubt he could, on his side. It is always like that; and to think that nothing would have any effect on her! – she would hear no sort of reason – though you know very well you were warned that he was not immaculate before she married him: nothing would have any effect.”
“Oh, Sir Edward!” cried Aunt Agatha, with tears in her eyes: “it is surely not the moment to remind us of that.”
“For my part, I think it is just the moment,” said Sir Edward; and he shook his head, and made a melancholy pause. Then, with an obvious effort to change the subject, he looked round the room, as if that personage might, perhaps, be hidden in some corner, and asked where was Hugh?
“He has gone to show Nelly Askell the way to the Lady’s Well,” said Mary, who could not repress a smile.
“Ah! he seems disposed to show Nelly Askell the way to a great many things,” said Sir Edward. “There it is again you see! Not that I have a word to say against that little thing. She is very nice, and pretty enough; though no more to be compared to what Winnie was at her age – But you’ll see Hugh will have engaged himself and forestalled his life before we know where we are.”
“It would have been better had they been a little older,” said Mary; “but otherwise everything is very suitable; and Nelly is very good, and very sweet – ”
Again Sir Edward sighed. “You must know that Hugh might have done a very great deal better,” he said. “I don’t say that I have any particular objections, but only it is an instance of your insanity in the way of marriage – all you Setons. You go and plunge into it head foremost, without a moment’s reflection; and then, of course, when leisure comes – I don’t mean you, Mary. What I was saying had no reference to you. So far as I am aware, you were always very happy, and gave your friends no trouble. Though in one way, of course, it ought to be considered that you did the worst of all.”
“Captain Askell’s family is very good,” said Mary, by the way of turning off too close an inquiry into her own affairs; “and he is just in the same position as Hugh’s father was; and I love Nelly like a child of my own. I feel as if she ought to have been a child of my own. She and Will used to lie in the same cradle – ”
“Ah, by the way,” said Sir Edward, looking round once more into the corners, “where is Will?”
And then it had to be explained where Will had gone, which the old man thought very curious. “To Carlisle? What did he want to go to Carlisle for? If he had been out with his fishing rod, or out with the keepers, looking after the young pheasants – But what could he want going into Carlisle? Is Percival there?”
“I hope not,” said Mary, with sudden anxiety. It was an idea which had not entered into her mind before.
“Why should you hope not? If he really wants to make peace with Winnie, I should think it very natural,” said Sir Edward; “and Will is a curious sort of boy. He might be a very good sort of auxiliary in any negotiation. Depend upon it that’s why he is gone.”
“I think not. I think he would have told me,” said Mary, feeling her heart sink with sudden dread.
“I don’t see why he should have told you,” said Sir Edward, who was in one of his troublesome moods, and disposed to put everybody at sixes and sevens. “He is old enough to act a little for himself. I hope you are not one of the foolish women, Mary, that like to keep their boys always at their apron-strings?”
With this reproach Sir Edward took his leave, and made his way placidly homeward, with the tranquillity of a man who has done his duty. He felt that he had discharged the great vocation of man, at least for the past hour. Winnie had heard the truth, whether she liked it or not, and so had the other members of the family, over whom he shook his head kindly but sadly as he went home. Their impetuosity, their aptitude to rush into any scrape that presented itself – and especially their madness in respect to marriage, filled him with pity. There was Charlie Seton, for example, the father of these girls, who had married that man Penrose’s sister. Sir Edward’s memory was so long, that it did not seem to him a very great stretch to go back to that. Not that the young woman was amiss in herself, but the man who, with his eyes open, burdened his unborn descendants with such an uncle, was worse then lunatic – he was criminal. This was what Sir Edward thought as he went quietly home, with a rather comfortable dreary sense of satisfaction in his heart in the thought that his own behaviour had been marked by no such aberrations; and, in the meantime, Winnie was fanning the embers of her own wrath, and Mary had sickened somehow with a sense of insecurity and unexplainable apprehension. On the other hand, the two young creatures were very happy on the road to the Lady’s Well, and Will addressed himself to his strange business with resolution: and, painful as its character was, was not pained to speak of, but only excited. So ran the course of the world upon that ordinary summer day.
CHAPTER XXXV
OF the strangest kind were Wilfrid’s sensations when he found himself in the streets of Carlisle on his extraordinary mission. It was the first time he had ever taken any step absolutely by himself. To be sure, he had been brought up in full possession of the freedom of an English boy, in whose honour everybody has confidence – but never before had he been moved by an individual impulse to independent action, nor had he known what it was to have a secret in his mind, and an enterprise which had to be conducted wholly according to his own judgment, and in respect to which he could ask for no advice. When he emerged out of the railway station, and found himself actually in the streets, a thrill of excitement, sudden and strange, came over him. He had known very well all along what he was coming to do, and yet he seemed only to become aware of it at that moment, when he put his foot upon the pavement, and was appealed to by cab-drivers, eager to take him somewhere. Here there was no time or opportunity for lingering; he had to go somewhere, and that instantly, were it only to the shops to execute his mother’s innocent commissions. It might be possible to loiter and meditate on the calm country roads about Kirtell, but the town and the streets have other associations. He was there to do something, to go somewhere, and it had to be begun at once. He was not imaginative, but yet he felt a kind of palpable tearing asunder as he took his first step onward. He had hesitated, and his old life seemed to hold out its arms to him. It was not an unhappy life; he had his own way in most things, he had his future before him unfettered, and he knew that his wishes would be furthered, and everything possible done to help and encourage him. All this passed through his mind like a flash of lightning. He would be helped and cared for and made much of, but yet he would only be Will, the youngest, of whom nobody took particular notice, and who sat in the lowest room; whereas, by natural law and justice, he was the heir. After he had made that momentary comparison, he stepped on with a firm foot, and then it was that he felt like the tearing asunder of something that had bound him. He had thrown the old bonds, the old pleasant ties, to the wind; and now all that he had to do was to push on by himself and gain his rights. This sensation made his head swim as he walked on. He had put out to sea, as it were, and the new movement made him giddy – and yet it was not pain; love was not life to him, but he had never known what it was to live without it. There seemed no reason why he should not do perfectly well for himself; Hugh would be affronted, of course – but it could make no difference to Islay, for example, nor much to his mother, for it would still be one of her sons. These were the thoughts that went through Wilfrid’s mind as he walked along; from which it will be apparent that the wickedness he was about to do was not nearly so great in intention as it was in reality; and that his youth, and inexperience, and want of imagination, his incapacity to put himself into the position of another, or realize anything but his own wants and sentiments, pushed him unawares, while he contemplated only an act of selfishness, into a social crime.
But yet the sense of doing this thing entirely alone, of doing it in secret, which was contrary to all his habitudes of mind, filled him with a strange inquietude. It hurt his conscience more to be making such a wonderful move for himself, out of the knowledge of his mother and everybody belonging to him, than to be trying to disgrace his mother and overthrow her good name and honour; of the latter, he was only dimly conscious, but the former he saw clearly. A strange paradox, apparently, but yet not without many parallels. There are poor creatures who do not hesitate at drowning themselves, and yet shrink from the chill of the “black flowing river” in which it is to be accomplished. As for Will, he did not hesitate to throw dark anguish and misery into the peaceful household he had been bred in – he did not shrink from an act which would embitter the lives of all who loved him, and change their position, and disgrace their name – but the thought of taking his first great step in life out of anybody’s knowledge, made his head swim, and the light fail in his eyes – and filled him with a giddy mingling of excitement and shame. He did not realize the greater issue, except as it affected him solely – but he did the other in its fullest sense. Thus he went on through the common-place streets, with his heart throbbing in his ears, and the blood rushing to his head; and yet he was not remorseful, nor conscience-stricken, nor sorry, but only strongly excited, and moved by a certain nervous shyness and shame.
Notwithstanding this, a certain practical faculty in Wilfrid led him, before seeking out his tempter and first informant, to seek independent testimony. It would be difficult to say what it was that turned his thoughts towards Mrs. Kirkman; but it was to her he went. The colonel’s wife received him with a sweet smile, but she was busy with much more important concerns; and when she had placed him at a table covered with tracts and magazines, she took no further notice of Will. She was a woman, as has been before mentioned, who laboured under a chronic dissatisfaction with the clergy, whether as represented in the person of a regimental chaplain, or of a Dean and Chapter; and she was not content to suffer quietly, as so many people do. Her discontent was active, and expressed itself not only in lamentation and complaint, but in very active measures. She could not reappoint to the offices in the Cathedral, but she could do what was in her power, by Scripture-readers, and societies for private instruction, to make up the deficiency; and she was very busy with one of her agents when Will entered, who certainly had not come about any evangelical business. As time passed, however, and it became apparent to him that Mrs. Kirkman was much more occupied with her other visitor than with any curiosity about his own boyish errand, whatever it might be, Will began to lose patience. When he made a little attempt to gain a hearing in his turn, he was silenced by the same sweet smile, and a clasp of the hand. “My dear boy, just a moment; what we are talking of is of the greatest importance,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “There are so few real means of grace in this benighted town, and to think that souls are being lost daily, hourly – and yet such a show of services and prayers – it is terrible to think of it. In a few minutes, my dear boy.”
“What I want is of the greatest importance, too,” said Wilfrid, turning doggedly away from the table and the magazines.
Mrs. Kirkman looked at him, and thought she saw spiritual trouble in his eye. She was flattered that he should have thought of her under such interesting circumstances. It was a tardy but sweet compensation for all she had done, as she said to herself, for his mother; and going on this mistaken idea she dismissed the Scripture-reader, having first filled him with an adequate sense of the insufficiency of the regular clergy. It was, as so often happens, a faithful remnant, which was contending alone for religion against all the powers of this world. They were sure of one thing at least, and that was that everybody else was wrong. This was the idea with which her humble agent left Mrs. Kirkman; and the same feeling, sad but sweet, was in her own mind as she drew a chair to the table and sat down beside her dear young friend.
“And so you have come all the way from Kirtell to see me, my dear boy?” she said. “How happy I shall be if I can be of some use to you. I am afraid you won’t find very much sympathy there.”
“No,” said Wilfrid, vaguely, not knowing in the least what she meant. “I am sorry I did not bring you some flowers, but I was in a hurry when I came away.”
“Don’t think of anything of the kind,” said the colonel’s wife, pressing his hand. “What are flowers in comparison with the one great object of our existence? Tell me about it, my dear Will; you know I have known you from a child.”
“You knew I was coming then,” said Will, a little surprised, “though I thought nobody knew? Yes, I suppose you have known us all our lives. What I want is to find out about my mother’s marriage. I heard you knew all about it. Of course you must have known all about it. That is what I want to understand.”
“Your mother’s marriage!” cried Mrs. Kirkman; and to do her justice she looked aghast. The question horrified her, and at the same time it disappointed her. “I am sure that is not what you came to talk to me about,” she said coaxingly, and with a certain charitable wile. “My dear, dear boy, don’t let shyness lead you away from the greatest of all subjects. I know you came to talk to me about your soul.”
“I came to ask you about my mother’s marriage,” said Will. His giddiness had passed by this time, and he looked her steadily in the face. It was impossible to mistake him now, or think it a matter of unimportance or mere curiosity. Mrs. Kirkman had her faults, but she was a good woman at the bottom. She did not object to make an allusion now and then which vexed Mary, and made her aware, as it were, of the precipice by which she was always standing. It was what Mrs. Kirkman thought a good moral discipline for her friend, besides giving herself a pleasant consciousness of power and superiority; but when Mary’s son sat down in front of her, and looked with cold but eager eyes in his face, and demanded this frightful information, her heart sank within her. It made her forget for the moment all about the clergy and the defective means of grace; and brought her down to the common standing of a natural Christian woman, anxious and terror-stricken for her friend.
“What have you to do with your mother’s marriage?” she said, trembling a little. “Do you know what a very strange question you are asking? Who has told you anything about that? O me! you frighten me so, I don’t know what I am saying. Did Mary send you? Have you just come from your mother? If you want to know about her marriage, it is of her that you should ask information. Of course she can tell you all about it – she and your Aunt Agatha. What a very strange question to ask of me!”
Wilfrid looked steadily into Mrs. Kirkman’s agitated face, and saw it was all true he had heard. “If you do not know anything about it,” he said, with pitiless logic, “you would say so. Why should you look so put out if there was nothing to tell?”
“I am not put out,” said Mrs. Kirkman, still more disturbed. “Oh, Will, you are a dreadful boy. What is it you want to know? What is it for? Did you tell your mother you were coming here?”
“I don’t see what it matters whether I told my mother, or what it is for,” said Will. “I came to you because you were good, and would not tell a lie. I can depend on what you say to me. I have heard all about it already, but I am not so sure as I should be if I had it from you.”
This compliment touched the colonel’s wife on a susceptible point. She calmed a little out of her fright. A boy with so just an appreciation of other people’s virtues could not be meditating anything unkind or unnatural to his mother. Perhaps it would be better for Mary that he should know the rights of it; perhaps it was providential that he should have come to her, who could give him all the details.
“I don’t suppose you can mean any harm,” she said. “Oh, Will, our hearts are all desperately wicked. The best of us is little able to resist temptation. You are right in thinking I will tell you the truth if I tell you anything; but oh, my dear boy, if it should be to lead you to evil and not good – ”
“Never mind about the evil and the good,” said Will impatiently. “What I want is to know what is false and what is true.”
Mrs. Kirkman hesitated still; but she began to persuade herself that he might have heard something worse than the truth. She was in a great perplexity; impelled to speak, and yet frightened to death at the consequences. It was a new situation for her altogether, and she did not know how to manage it. She clasped her hands helplessly together, and the very movement suggested an idea which she grasped at, partly because she was really a sincere, good woman who believed in the efficacy of prayer, and partly, poor soul, to gain a little time, for she was at her wits’ end.
“I will,” she said. “I will, my dear boy; I will tell you everything; but oh, let us kneel down and have a word of prayer first, that we may not make a bad use of – of what we hear.”
If she had ever been in earnest in her life it was at that moment; the tears were in her eyes, and all her little affectations of solemnity had disappeared. She could not have told anybody what it was she feared; and yet the more she looked at the boy beside her, the more she felt their positions change, and feared and stood in awe, feeling that she was for the moment his slave, and must do anything he might command.
“Mrs. Kirkman,” said Will, “I don’t understand that sort of thing. I don’t know what bad use you can think I am going to make of it; – at all events it won’t be your fault. I shall not detain you five minutes if you will only tell me what I want to know.”
And she did tell him accordingly, not knowing how to resist, and warmed in the telling in spite of herself, and could not but let him know that she thought it was for Mary’s good, and to bring her to a sense of the vanity of all earthly things. She gave him scrupulously all the details. The story flowed out upon Will’s hungry ears with scarcely a pause. She told him all about the marriage, where it had happened, and who had performed it, and who had been present. Little Hugh had been present. She had no doubt he would remember, if it was recalled to his memory. Mrs. Kirkman recollected perfectly the look that Mary had thrown at her husband when she saw the child there. Poor Mary! she had thought so much of reputation and a good name. She had been so much thought of in the regiment. They all called her by that ridiculous name, Madonna Mary – and made so much of her, before —
