THE experience of this evening, though it was only the second of her stay at Earlston, proved to Mary that the visit she was paying to her brother-in-law must be made as short as possible. She could not get up and run away because Hugh had put an Etruscan vase in danger, and Islay had broken his uncle’s chair. It was Mr. Ochterlony who was the injured party, and he was magnanimously silent, saying nothing, and even giving no intimation that the presence of these objectionable little visitors was not to be desired in the drawing-room; and Mary had to stay and keep her boys out of sight, and live consciously upon sufferance, in the nursery and her bedroom, until she could feel warranted in taking leave of her brother-in-law, who, without doubt, meant to be kind. It was a strange sort of position, and strangely out of accord with her character and habits. She had never been rich, nor lived in such a great house, but she had always up to this time been her own mistress—mistress of her actions, free to do what she thought best, and to manage her children according to her own wishes. Now she had, to a certain extent, to submit to the housekeeper1, who changed their hours, and interfered2 with their habits at her pleasure. The poor ayah went weeping away, and nobody was to be had to replace her except one of the Earlston maids, who naturally was more under Mrs. Gilsland’s authority than Mrs. Ochterlony’s; and to this girl Mary had to leave them when she went down to the inevitable3 dinner which had always to be eaten downstairs. She made several attempts to consult her brother-in-law upon her future, but Mr. Ochterlony, though very polite, was not a sympathetic listener. He had received the few details which she had been moved at first, with restrained tears, to give him about the Major, with a certain restlessness which chilled Mary. He was sorry for his brother; but he was one of those men who do not care to talk about dead people, and who think it best not to revive and recall sorrow—which would be very true and just if true sorrow had any occasion to be revived and recalled; and her own arrangements were all more or less connected with this (as Mr. Ochterlony called it) painful subject. And thus it was that her hesitating efforts to make her position clear to him, and to get any advice which he could give, was generally put aside or swallowed up in some communication from the Numismatic Society, or questions which she could not answer about Indian art.
“We must leave Earlston soon,” Mrs. Ochterlony took courage to say one day, when the housekeeper, and the continued exclusion4 of the children, and her own curious life on sufferance, had been too much for her. “If you are at leisure, would you let me speak to you about it? I have so little experience of anything but India—and I want to do what is best for my boys.”
“Oh—ah—yes,” said Mr. Ochterlony, “you must send them to school. We must try and hear of some good school for them. It is the only thing you can do——”
“But they are so young,” said Mary. “At their age they are surely best with their mother. Hugh is only seven. If you could advise me where it would be best to go——”
“Where it would be best to go!” said Mr. Ochterlony. He was a little surprised, and not quite pleased for the moment. “I hope you do not find yourself uncomfortable here?”
“Oh, no,” said Mary, faltering5; “but—they are very young and troublesome, and—I am sure they must worry you. Such little children are best by themselves,” she said, trying to smile—and thus, by chance, touched a chord of pity in her brother-in law’s heart.
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “I assure you I feel the painfulness of your position. If you had been unencumbered, you might have looked forward to so different a life; but with such a burden as these children, and you so young still——”
“Burden?” said Mary; and it may be supposed how her eyes woke up, and what a colour came to her cheek, and how her heart took to beating under her crape. “You can’t really think my children are a burden to me? Ah! you don’t know—— I would not care to live another day if I had not my boys.”
And here, her nerves being weak with all she had come through, she would have liked to cry—but did not, the moment being unsuitable, and only sat facing the virtuoso6, all lighted up and glowing, brightened by indignation, and surprise, and sudden excitement, to something more like the former Mary than ever yet had been seen underneath7 her widow’s cap.
“Oh!” said Mr. Ochterlony. He could have understood the excitement had it been about a Roman camp or a newly-discovered statue; but boys did not commend themselves in the same way to his imagination. He liked his sister-in-law, however, in his way. She was a good listener, and pleasant to look at, and even when she was unintelligible8 was never without grace, or out of drawing, and he felt disposed even to take a little trouble for her. “You must send them to school,” he said. “There is nothing else to be done. I will write to a friend of mine who knows about such matters; and I am sure, for my part, I shall be very glad if you can make yourself comfortable at Earlston—you and—and the baby, of course,” Mr. Ochterlony said, with a slightly wry10 face. The innocent man had not an idea of the longing11 she had for that cottage with the fire in it. It was a notion which never could have been made intelligible9 to him, even had he been told in words.
“Thank you,” said Mary, faltering more and more; indeed she made a dead pause, and he thought she had accepted his decision, and that there was to be no more about it—which was comforting and satisfactory. He had just risen up to leave the room, breakfast being over, when she put out her hand to stop him. “I will not detain you a minute,” she said, “it is so desolate12 to have no one to tell me what to do. Indeed, we cannot stay here—though it is so good of you; they are too young to leave me, and I care for nothing else in life,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, yielding for an instant to her emotion; but she soon recovered herself. “There are good schools all over England, I have heard; in places where we could live cheaply. That is what I want to do. Near one of the good grammar schools. I am quite free; it does not matter where I live. If you would give me your advice,” she added, timidly. Mr. Ochterlony, for his part, was taken so much by surprise that he stood between the table and the door, with one foot raised to go on, and not believing his ears. He had behaved like an angel, to his own conviction, and had never said a word about the chair, though it had to be sent to town to be repaired. He had continued to afford shelter to the little ruffian who did it, and had carefully abstained14 from all expression of his feelings. What could the woman want more?—and what should he know about grammar-schools, and places where people could live cheaply? A woman, too, whom he liked, and had explained his theory of ancient art more fully13 to than he had ever done to any one. And she wanted to leave Earlston and his society, and the Psyches15 and Venuses, to settle down in some half-pay neighbourhood, where people with large families lived for the sake of education. No wonder Mr. Ochterlony turned round, struck dumb with wonder, and came slowly back before giving his opinion, which, but for an unexpected circumstance, would no doubt have been such an opinion as to overwhelm his companion with confusion, and put an instant stop to her foolish plans.
But circumstances come wildly in the way of the best intentions, and cut off the wisest speech sometimes on a man’s very lips. At this moment the door opened softly, and a new interlocutor presented herself. The apparition16 was one which took not only the words but the very breath from the lips of the master of Earlston. Aunt Agatha was twenty years older than her niece, but so was Francis Ochterlony; and such a thing was once possible as that the soft ancient maiden17 and the elderly solitary18 dilettante19 might have made a cheerful human household at Earlston. They had not met for years, not since the time when Miss Seton was holding on by her lingering youth, and looking forward to the loss of it with an anxious and care-worn countenance20. She was twenty times prettier now than she had been in those days—prettier perhaps, if the truth were told, than she ever had been in her life. She was penitent21, too, and tearful in her white-haired sweetness, though Mr. Ochterlony did not know why—with a soft colour coming and going on her checks, and a wistful look in her dewy eyes. She had left her home at least two hours before, and came carrying all the freshness and odours of the morning, surrounded with sunshine and sweet air, and everything that seems to belong to the young. Francis Ochterlony was so bewildered by the sight that he stepped back out of her way, and could not have told whether she was eighteen or fifty. Perhaps the sight of him had in some degree the same effect upon Aunt Agatha. She made a little rush at Mary, who had risen to meet her, and threw herself, soft little woman as she was, upon her niece’s taller form. “Oh, my dear love, I have been a silly old woman—forgive me!” said Aunt Agatha. She had put up with the estrangement22 as long as ever it was in human nature to put up with it. She had borne Peggy’s sneers23, and Winnie’s heartless suggestions that it was her own doing. How was Winnie to know what made............