EARLSTON is a house which lies in a little green valley among the grey folds of the Shap Fells. It is not an inviting¹ country, though the people love it as people do love everything that belongs to them; and it has a very different aspect from the wooded dell a little farther north, where strays the romantic little Kirtell, and where Aunt Agatha’s cottage smiled upon a tufted slope, with the music of the cheery river in its ears day and night. The rivers about Earlston were shallow, and ran dry in summer, though it was not because of any want of rain; and the greyness of the hills made a kind of mist in the air to unaccustomed eyes. Everybody, who has ever gone to the north that way, knows the deep cuttings about Shap, where the railway plunges³ through between two humid living limestone⁴ walls, where the cottages, and the fences, and the farm-houses all lead up in level tones of grey to the vast greyness of the piebald hills, and where the line of pale sky above is grey too in most cases. It was at one of the little stations in this monotonous⁵ district that Mrs. Ochterlony and her children and her ayah were deposited—Aunt Agatha, with an aspect of sternness, but a heart that smote⁶ her, and eyes that kept filling with tears she was too proud to shed, looking on the while. Winnie looked on too without the compunction, feeling very affronted⁷ and angry. They were going further on, and the thought of home was overcast⁸ to both these ladies by the fact that everybody would ask for Mary, and that the excitement of the past few weeks would collapse⁹ in the dreariest¹⁰ and suddenest way when they were seen to return alone. As for Mary, she looked grey like the landscape, under her heavy veil—grey, silent, in a kind of dull despair, persuading herself that the best thing of all was to say nothing about it, and shut only more closely the doors of that heart where nobody now had any desire to come in. She lifted her little boys out, and did not care even to look if the carriage was waiting for her—and then she came to the window to bid her aunt and sister good-bye. She was so disappointed and sick-hearted, and felt for the moment that the small amount of affection and comprehension which they were capable of giving her was so little worth the trouble of seeking for, that Mary did not even ask to be written to. She put up her pale face, and said good-bye in a dreary¹¹ unexpectant tone that doubled the compunction in Aunt Agatha’s bosom¹². “Oh, Mary, if you had but been coming with us!” cried that inconsistent woman, on the spur of the moment. “It is too late to speak of it now,” said Mary, and kissed her and turned away; and the heartless train dashed off, and carried off Aunt Agatha with that picture in her eyes of the forlorn little group on the platform of the railway station—the two little boys clinging close to their mother, and she standing¹³ alone among strangers, with the widow’s veil hanging over her colourless face. “Can you see the carriage, Winnie?—look out and tell me if you can see it,” said Aunt Agatha. But the engine that carried them on was too quick for Winnie, and had already swept out of sight. And they pursued their journey, feeling guilty and wretched, as indeed, to a certain extent, they deserved to feel. A two months’ widow, with a baby and two helpless little boys—and at the best it could only be a servant who had come to meet her, and she would have everything to do for herself, and to face her brother-in-law without any support or helper. When Aunt Agatha thought of this, she sank back in her corner and sobbed¹⁵. To think that she should have been the one to take offence and be affronted at Mary’s first word, and desert her thus: when she might have taken her home and comforted her, and then, if it must have ended so, conveyed her to Earlston: Aunt Agatha cried, and deserved to cry, and even Winnie felt a twinge at her heart; and they got rather angry with each other before they reached home, and felt disposed to accuse each other, and trembled both of them before the idea of meeting Peggy, Miss Seton’s domestic tyrant¹⁶, who would rush to the door with her heart in her mouth to receive “our Miss Mary and the puir dear fatherless bairns.” Mary might be silent about it, and never complain of unkindness; but it was not to be expected that Peggy would have the same scruples¹⁷; and these two guilty and miserable¹⁸ travellers trembled at the thought of her as they made their wretched way home.
 
When the train had disappeared, Mary tried to take a kind of cold comfort to herself. She stood all alone, a stranger, with the few rustic¹⁹ passengers and rustic railway officials staring at her as if she had dropped from the skies, and no apparent sign anywhere that her coming had been looked for, or that there was any resting-place for her in this grey country. And she said to herself that it was natural, and must always be so henceforth, and that it was best at once to accustom² herself to her lot. The carriage had not come, nor any message from Earlston to say she was expected, and all that she could do was to go into the rude little waiting-room, and wait there with the tired children till some conveyance²⁰ could be got to take her to her brother-in-law’s house. Her thoughts would not be pleasant to put down on paper, could it be done; and yet they were not so painful as they had been the day before, when Aunt Agatha failed her, or seemed to fail. Now that disappointed craving²¹ for help and love and fellowship was over for the moment, and she had nothing but her own duty and Francis Ochterlony to encounter, who was not a man to give any occasion for vain hopes. Mary did not expect fellowship or love from her brother-in-law. If he was kind and tolerant of the children, and moderately considerate to herself, it was all she looked for from him. Perhaps, though he had invited her, he had not been prepared to have her thrown on his hands so soon; and it might be that the domestic arrangements of Earlston were not such as to admit of the unlooked-for invasion of a lady and a nursery on such very short notice. But the most prominent feeling in Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind was weariness, and that longing²² to escape anywhere, which is the most universal of all sentiments when the spirit is worn out and sick to death. Oh, that she had wings like a dove!—though Mary had nowhere to flee to, nobody to seek consolation²³ from; and instead of having a home anywhere on earth awaiting her, was herself the home, the only shelter they understood, of the little pale fatherless children who clustered round her. If she could but have taken possession of one of those small cottages, grey and homely²⁴ as they looked, and put the little ones to bed in it, and drawn²⁵ a wooden chair to the fire, and been where she had a right to be! It was July, but the weather was cold at Shap, and Mary had that instinct common to wounded creatures of creeping to the fire, as if there was a kind of comfort in its warmth. She could have borne her burden bravely, or at least she thought so, if this had been what awaited her. But it was Earlston and Francis Ochterlony that awaited her—a stranger and a stranger’s house. All these thoughts, and many more, were passing through her mind, as she sat in the little waiting-room with her baby in her arms, and her two elder boys pressing close to her. The children clung and appealed to her, and the helpless Hindoo woman crouched²⁶ at her mistress’s side; but as for Mary, there was nobody to give her any support or countenance²⁷. It was a hard opening to the stern way which had henceforward to be trodden alone.
 
Francis Ochterlony, however, though he had a certain superb indifference²⁸ to the going-out and coming-in of trains, and had forgotten the precise hour, was not a wretch¹⁴ nor a brute²⁹, and had not forgotten his visitors. While Mary sat and waited, and while the master of the little station made slow but persevering³⁰ search after some possible means of conveyance for her, a heavy rumbling³¹ of wheels became audible, and the carriage from Earlston made its tardy³² appearance. It was an old-fashioned vehicle, drawn by two horses, which betrayed their ordinary avocations³³ much in the same way as the coachman did, who, though dressed, as they were, for the occasion, carried a breath of the fields about him, which was more convincing than any conventionalism of garments. But such as it was, the Earlston carriage was not without consideration in the country-side. All the people about turned out in a leisurely³⁴ way to lift the children into it, and shoulder the boxes into such corners as could be found for them—which was an affair that demanded many counsellors—and at length the vehicle got under way. Twilight³⁵ began to come on as they mounted up into the grey country, by the winding³⁶ grey roads fenced in with limestone walls. Everything grew greyer in the waning³⁷ light. The very trees, of which there were so few, dropped into the gathering³⁸ shadows, and deepened them without giving any livelier tint³⁹ of colour to the scene. The children dropped asleep, and the ayah crooned and nodded over the baby; but Mary, who had no temptation to sleep, looked out with steady eyes, and, though she saw nothing distinctly, took in unawares all the comfortless chill and monotony of the landscape. It went to her heart, and made her shiver. Or perhaps it was only the idea of meeting Francis Ochterlony that made her shiver. If the children, any one of them, had only been old enough to understand it a little, to clasp her hand or her neck with the exuberance⁴⁰ of childish sympathy! But they did not understand, and dropped asleep, or asked with timid, quivering little voices, how long it would be before they got home. Home! no wonder Mrs. Ochterlony was cold, and felt the chill go to her heart. Thus they went on for six or seven weary miles, taking as many hours, as Mary thought. Aunt Agatha had arrived at her cottage, though it was nearly thirty miles further on, while the comfortless party were still jogging along in the Earlston carriage; but Mary did not think particularly of that. She did not think at all, poor soul. She saw the grey hill-side gliding⁴¹ past her, and in a vague way, at the same moment, seemed to see herself, a bride, going gaily⁴² past on the same road, and rehearsed all the past over again with a dull pain, and shivered, and felt cold—cold to her heart. This was partly perhaps because it is chilly⁴³ in Cumberland, when one has just come from India; and partly because there was something that affected⁴⁴ a woman’s fanciful imagination in the misty⁴⁵ monotony of the limestone country, and the grey waste of the hills.
 
Earlston, too, was grey, as was to be expected; and the trees which surrounded it had lost colour in the night. The hall was but dimly lighted, when the door was opened—as is but too common in country houses of so retired⁴⁶ a kind—and there was nobody rea............