Madonna Mary
“That never came into my head,” Major Ochterlony said, drawing a chair again to Mary’s side. “When you saw the danger why did you not tell me? I thought it was only because you did not like it. And then, on the other side, if anything happened to me – . Why did you let me do it when you saw that?” said the Major, almost angrily. And he drew another long impatient sigh.
“Perhaps it will do no harm, after all,” said Mary, who felt herself suddenly put upon her defence.
“Harm! it is sure to do harm,” said the Major. “It is as good as saying we were never married till now. Good heavens! to think you should have seen all that, and yet let me do it. We may have ruined him, for all we know. And the question is, what’s to be done? Perhaps I should write to Francis, and tell him that I thought it best for your sake, in case anything happened to me – and as it was merely a matter of form, I don’t see that Churchill could have any hesitation in striking it out of the register – ”
“Oh, Hugh, let it alone now,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “It is done, and we cannot undo it. Let us only be quiet and make no more commotion. People may forget it, perhaps, if we forget it.”
“Forget it!” the Major said, and sighed. He shook his head, and at the same time he looked with a certain tender patronage on Mary. “You may forget it, my dear, and I hope you will,” he said, with a magnanimous pathos; “but it is too much to expect that I should forget what may have such important results. I feel sure I ought to let Francis know. I daresay he could advise us what would be best. It is a very kind letter,” said the Major; and he sighed, and gave Mary Mr. Ochterlony’s brief and unimportant note with an air of resigned yet hopeless affliction, which half irritated her, and half awoke those possibilities of laughter which come “when there is little laughing in one’s head,” as we say in Scotland. She could have laughed, and she could have stormed at him; and yet in the midst of all she felt a poignant sense of contrast, and knew that it was she and not he who would really suffer – as it was he and not she who was in fault.
While Mary read Mr. Ochterlony’s letter, lulling now and then with a soft movement the baby on her knee, the Major at the other side got attracted after a while by the pretty picture of the sleeping child, and began at length to forego his sighing, and to smooth out the long white drapery that lay over Mary’s dress. He was thinking no harm, the tender-hearted man. He looked at little Wilfrid’s small waxen face pillowed on his mother’s arm – so much smaller and feebler than Hugh and Islay had been, the great, gallant fellows – and his heart was touched by his little child. “My little man! you are all right, at least,” said the inconsiderate father. He said it to himself, and thought, if he thought at all on the subject, that Mary, who was reading his brother’s letter, did not hear him. And when Mrs. Ochterlony gave that cry which roused all the house and brought everybody trooping to the door, in the full idea that it must be a cobra at least, the Major jumped up to his feet as much startled as any of them, and looked down to the floor and cried, “Where – what is it?” with as little an idea of what was the matter as the ayah who grinned and gazed in the distance. When he saw that instead of indicating somewhere a reptile intruder, Mary had dropped the letter and fallen into a weak outburst of tears, the Major was confounded. He sent the servants away, and took his wife into his arms and held her fast. “What is it, my love?” said the Major. “Are you ill? For Heaven’s sake tell me what it is; my poor darling, my bonnie Mary?” This was how he soothed her, without the most distant idea what was the matter, or what had made her cry out. And when Mary came to herself, she did not explain very clearly. She said to herself that it was no use making him unhappy by the fantastical horror which had come into her mind with his words, or indeed had been already lurking there. And, poor soul, she was better when she had had her cry out, and had given over little Wilfrid, woke up by the sound, to his nurse’s hands. She said, “Never mind me, Hugh; I am nervous, I suppose;” and cried on his shoulder as he never remembered her to have cried, except for very serious griefs. And when at last he had made her lie down, which was the Major’s favourite panacea for all female ills of body or mind, and had covered her over, and patted and caressed and kissed her, Major Ochterlony went out with a troubled mind. It could not be anything in Francis’s letter, which was a model of brotherly correctness, that had vexed or excited her: and then he began to think that for some time past her health had not been what it used to be. The idea disturbed him greatly, as may be supposed; for the thought of Mary ailing and weakly, or perhaps ill and in danger, was one which had never yet entered his mind. The first thing he thought of was to go and have a talk with Sorbette, who ought to know, if he was good for anything, what it was.
“I am sure I don’t know in the least what is the matter,” the Major said. “She is not ill, you know. This morning she looked as well as ever she did, and then all at once gave a cry and burst into tears. It is so unlike Mary.”
“It is very unlike her,” said the doctor. “Perhaps you were saying something that upset her nerves.”
“Nerves!” said the Major, with calm pride. “My dear fellow, you know that Mary has no nerves; she never was one of that sort of women. To tell the truth, I don’t think she has ever been quite herself since that stupid business, you know.”
“What stupid business?” said Mr. Sorbette.
“Oh, you know – the marriage, to be sure. A man looks very silly afterwards,” said the Major with candour, “when he lets himself be carried away by his feelings. She ought not to have consented when that was her idea. I would give a hundred pounds I had not been so foolish. I don’t think she has ever been quite herself since.”
The doctor had opened de grands yeux. He looked at his companion as if he could not believe his ears. “Of course you would never have taken such an unusual step if there had not been good reason for it,” he ventured to say, which was rather a hazardous speech; for the Major might have divined its actual meaning, and then things would have gone badly with Mr. Sorbette. But, as it happened, Major Ochterlony was far too much occupied to pay attention to anybody’s meaning except his own.
“Yes, there was good reason,” he said. “She lost her marriage ‘lines,’ you know; and all our witnesses are dead. I thought she might perhaps find herself in a disagreeable position if anything happened to me.”
As he spoke, the doctor regarded him with surprise so profound as to be half sublime – surprise and a perplexity and doubt wonderful to behold. Was this a story the Major had made up, or was it perhaps after all the certain truth? It was just what he had said at first; but the first time it was stated with more warmth, and did not produce the same effect. Mr. Sorbette respected Mrs. Ochterlony to the bottom of his heart; but still he had shaken his head, and said, “There was no accounting for those things.” And now he did not know what to make of it: whether to believe in the innocence of the couple, or to think the Major had made up a story – which, to be sure, would be by much the greatest miracle of all.
“If that was the case, I think it would have been better to let well alone,” said the doctor. “That is what I would have done had it been me.”
“Then why did not you tell me so?” said Major Ochterlony. “I asked you before; and what you all said to me was, ‘If that’s the case, best to repeat it at once.’ Good Lord! to think how little one can rely upon one’s friends when one asks their advice. But in the meantime the question is about Mary. I wish you’d go and see her and give her something – a tonic, you know, or something strengthening. I think I’ll step over and see Churchill, and get him to strike that unfortunate piece of nonsense out of the register. As it was only a piece of form, I should think he would do it; and if it is that that ails her, it would do her good.”
“If I were you, I’d let well alone,” said the doctor; but he said it low, and he was putting on his hat as he spoke, and went off immediately to see his patient. Even if curiosity and surprise had not been in operation, he would still probably have hastened to Madonna Mary. For the regiment loved her in its heart, and the loss of her fair serene presence would have made a terrible gap at the station. “We must not let her be ill if we can help it,” Mr. Sorbette said to himself; and then he made a private reflection about that ass Ochterlony and his fidgets. But yet, notwithstanding all his faults, the Major was not an ass. On thinking it over again, he decided not to go to Churchill with that little request about the register; and he felt more and more, the more he reflected upon it, how hard it was that in a moment of real emergency a man should be able to put so little dependence upon his friends. Even Mary had let him do it, though she had seen how dangerous and impolitic it was; and all the others had let him do it; for certainly it was not without asking advice that he had taken what the doctor called so unusual a step. Major Ochterlony felt as he took this into consideration that he was an injured man. What was the good of being on intimate terms with so many people if not one of them could give him the real counsel of a friend when he wanted it? And even Mary had let him do it! The thought of such a strange dereliction of duty on the part of everybody connected with him, went to the Major’s heart.
As for Mary, it would be a little difficult to express her feelings. She got up as soon as her husband was gone, and threw off the light covering he had put over her so carefully, and went back to her work; for to lie still in a darkened room was not a remedy in which she put any faith. And to tell the truth, poor Mary’s heart was eased a little, perhaps physically, by her tears, which had done her good, and by the other incidents of the evening, which had thrown down as it were the separation between her and her husband, and taken away the one rankling and aching wound she had. Now that he saw that he had done wrong – now that he was aware that it was a wrong step he had taken – a certain remnant of bitterness which had been lurking in a corner of Mary’s heart came all to nothing and died down in a moment. As soon as he was himself awakened to it, Mary forgot her own wound and every evil thought she had ever had, in her sorrow for him. She remembered his look of dismay, his dead silence, his unusual exclamation; and she said, “poor Hugh!” in her heart, and was ready to condone his worst faults. Otherwise, as Mrs. Ochterlony said to herself, he had scarcely a fault that anybody could point out. He was the kindest, the most true and tender! Everybody acknowledged that he was the best husband in the regiment, and which of them could stand beside him, even in an inferior place? Not Colonel Kirkman, who might have been a petrified Colonel out of the Drift (if there were Colonels in those days), for any particular internal evidence to the contrary; nor Captain Hesketh, who was so well off; nor any half dozen of the other officers. This was the state of mind in which Mrs. Ochterlony was when the doctor called. And he found her quite well, and thought her an unaccountable woman, and shrugged his shoulders, and wondered what the Major would take into his head next. “He said it was on the nerves, as the poor women call it,” said the doctor, transferring his own suggestion to Major Ochterlony. “I should like to know what he means by making game of people – as if I had as much time to talk nonsense as he has: but I thought, to be sure, when he said that, that it was a cock-and-bull story. I ought to know something about your nerves.”
“He was quite right,” said Mrs. Ochterlony; and she smiled and took hold of the great trouble that was approaching her and made a buckler of it for her husband. “My nerves were very much upset. You know we have to make up our minds to send Hugh home.”
And as she spoke she looked up at Mr. Sorbette with eyes brimming over with two great tears – real tears, Heaven knows, which came but too readily to back up her sacred plea. The doctor recoiled before them as if somebody had levelled a pistol at him; for he was a man that could not bear to see women crying, as he said, or to see anybody in distress, which was the true statement of the case.
“There – there,” he said, “don’t excite yourself. What is the good of thinking about it? Everybody has to do it, and the monkeys get on as well as possible. Look here, pack up all this work and trash, and amuse yourself. Why don’t you go out more, and take a little relaxation? You had better send over to my sister for a novel; or if there’s nothing else for it, get the baby. Don’t sit working and driving yourself crazy here.”
So that was all Mr. Sorbette could do in the case; and a wonderfully puzzled doctor he was as he went back to his quarters, and took the first opportunity of telling his sister that she was all wrong about the Ochterlonys, and he always knew she was. “As if a man could know anything about it,” Miss Sorbette said. And in the meantime the Major went home, and was very tender of Mary, and petted and watched over her as if she had had a real illness. Though, after all, the question why she had let him do so, was often nearly on his lips, as it was always in his heart.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT Mrs. Ochterlony had to do after this was to write to Aunt Agatha, settling everything about little Hugh, which was by no means an easy thing to do, especially since the matter had been complicated by that most unnecessary suggestion about Islay, which Mrs. Hesketh had thought proper to make; as if she, who had a grown-up daughter to be her companion, and swarms of children, so many as almost to pass the bounds of possible recollection, could know anything about how it felt to send off one’s entire family, leaving only a baby behind; but then that is so often the way with those well-off people, who have never had anything happen to them. Mary had to write that if all was well, and they could find “an opportunity,” probably Hugh would be sent by the next mail but one; for she succeeded in persuading herself and the Major that sooner than that it would be impossible to have his things ready. “You do not say anything about Islay, my dear,” said the Major, when he read the letter, “and you must see that for the child’s sake – ”
“Oh, Hugh, what difference can it make?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with conscious sophistry. “If she can take one child, she can take two. It is not like a man – ” But whether it was Islay or Aunt Agatha who was not like a man, Mary did not explain; and she went on with her preparations with a desperate trust in circumstances, such as women are often driven to. Something might happen to preserve to her yet for a little while longer her three-year-old boy. Hugh was past hoping for, but it seemed to her now that she would accept with gratitude, as a mitigated calamity, the separation from one which had seemed so terrible to her at first. As for the Major, he adhered to the idea with a tenacity unusual to him. He even came, and superintended her at the work-table, and asked continually, How about Islay? if all these things were for Hugh? – which was a question that called forth all the power of sophistry and equivocation which Mrs. Ochterlony possessed to answer. But still she put a certain trust in circumstances that something might still happen to save Islay – and indeed something did happen, though far, very far, from being as Mary wished.
The Major in the meantime had done his best to shake himself free from the alarm and dismay indirectly produced in his mind by his brother’s letter. He had gone to Mr. Churchill after all, but found it impracticable to get the entry blotted out of the register, notwithstanding his assurance that it was simply a matter of form. Mr. Churchill had no doubt on that point, but he could not alter the record, though he condoled with the sufferer. “I cannot think how you all could let me do it,” the Major said. “A man may be excused for taking the alarm, if he is persuaded that his wife will get into trouble when he is gone, for want of a formality; but how all of you, with cool heads and no excitement to take away your judgment – ”
“Who persuaded you?” said the clergyman, with a little dismay.
“Well, you know Kirkman said things looked very bad in Scotland when the marriage lines were lost. How could I tell? he is Scotch, and he ought to know. And then to think of Mary in trouble, and perhaps losing her little provision if anything happened to me. It was enough to make a man do anything foolish; but how all of you who know better should have let me do it – ”
“My dear Major,” said Mr. Churchill mildly, “I don’t think you are a man to be kept from doing anything when your heart is set upon it; – and then you were in such a hurry – ”
“Ah, yes,” said Major Ochterlony with a deep sigh; “and nobody, that I can remember, ever suggested to me to wait a little. That’s what it is, Churchill; to have so many friends, and not one among them who would take the trouble to tell a man he was wrong.”
“Major Ochterlony,” said the clergyman, a little stiffly, “you forget that I said everything I could say to convince you. Of course I did not know all the circumstances – but I hope I shall always have courage enough, when I think so, to tell any man he is in the wrong.”
“My dear fellow, I did not mean you,” said the Major, with another sigh; and perhaps it was with a similar statement that the conversation always concluded when Major Ochterlony confided to any special individual of his daily associates, this general condemnation of his friends, of which he made as little a secret as he had made of his re-marriage. The station knew as well after that, that Major Ochterlony was greatly disturbed about the “unusual step” he had taken, and was afraid it might be bad for little Hugh’s future prospects, as it had been aware beforehand of the wonderful event itself. And naturally there was a great deal of discussion on the subject. There were some people who contented themselves with thinking, like the doctor, that Ochterlony was an ass with his fidgets; while there were others who thought he was “deep,” and was trying, as they said, to do away with the bad impression. The former class were men, and the latter were women; but it was by no means all the women who thought so. Not to speak of the younger class, like poor little Mrs. Askell, there were at least two of the most important voices at the station which did not declare themselves. Mrs. Kirkman shook her head, and hoped that however it turned out it might be for all their good, and above all might convince Mary of the error of her ways; and Mrs. Hesketh thought everybody made a great deal too much fuss about it, and begged the public in general to let the Ochterlonys alone. But the fact was, that so far as the ordinary members of society were concerned, the Major’s new agitation revived the gossip that had nearly died out, and set it all afloat again. It had been dying away under the mingled influences of time, and the non-action of the leading ladies, and Mrs. Ochterlony’s serene demeanour, which forbade the idea of evil. But when it was thus started again the second time, it was less likely to be made an end of. Mary, however, was as unconscious of the renewed commotion as if she had been a thousand miles away. The bitterness had gone out of her heart, and she had half begun to think as the Major did, that he was an injured man, and that it was her fault and his friends’ fault; and then she was occupied with something still more important, and could not go back to the old pain, from which she had suffered enough. Thus it was with her in those troubled, but yet, as she afterwards thought, happy days; when she was very miserable sometimes and very glad – when she had a great deal, as people said, to put up with, a great deal to forgive, and many a thing of which she did not herself approve, to excuse and justify to others. This was her condition, and she had at the same time before her the dreadful probability of separation from both of her children, the certainty of a separation, and a long, dangerous voyage for one of them, and sat and worked to this end day after day, with a sense of what at the moment seemed exquisite wretchedness. But yet, thinking over it afterwards, and looking back upon it, it seemed to Mary as if those were happy days.
The time was coming very near when Hugh (as Mrs. Ochterlony said), or the children (as the Major was accustomed to say) were going home; when all at once, without any preparation, very startling news came to the station. One of the little local rebellions that are always taking place in India had broken out somewhere, and a strong detachment of the regiment was to be sent immediately to quell it. Major Ochterlony came home that day a little excited by the news, and still more by the certainty that it was he who must take the command. He was excited because he was a soldier at heart, and liked, kind man as he was, to see something doing; and because active service was more hopeful, and exhilarating, and profitable, than reposing at the station, where there was no danger, and very little to do. “I don’t venture to hope that the rogues will show fight,” he said cheerfully; “so there is no need to be anxious, Mary; and you can keep the boys with you till I come back – that is only fair,” he said, in his exultation. As for Mary, the announcement took all the colour out of her cheeks, and drove both Hugh and Islay out of her mind. He had seen service enough, it is true, since they were married, to habituate her to that sort of thing; and she had made, on the whole, a very good soldier’s wife, bearing her anxiety in silence, and keeping a brave front to the world. But perhaps Mr. Sorbette was right when he thought her nerves were upset. So many things all coming together may have been too much for her. When she heard of this she broke down altogether, and felt a cold thrill of terror go through her from her head to her heart, or from her heart to her head, which perhaps would be the most just expression; but she dared not say a word to her husband to deter or discourage him. When he saw the two tears that sprang into her eyes, and the sudden paleness that came over her face, he kissed her, all flushed and smiling as he was, and said: “Now, don’t be silly, Mary. Don’t forget you are a soldier’s wife.” There was not a touch of despondency or foreboding about him; and what could she say who knew, had there been ever so much foreboding, that his duty was the thing to be thought of, and not anybody’s feelings? Her cheek did not regain its colour all that day, but she kept it to herself, and forgot even about little Hugh’s reprieve. The children were dear, but their father was dearer, or at least so it seemed at that moment. Perhaps if the lives of the little ones had been threatened, the Major’s expedition might have bulked smaller – for the heart can hold only one overwhelming emotion at a time. But the affair was urgent, and Mary did not have very much time left to her to think of it. Almost before she had realized what it was, the drums had beat, and the brisk music of the band – that music that people called exhilarating – had roused all the station, and the measured march of the men had sounded past, as if they were all treading upon her heart. The Major kissed his little boys in their beds, for it was, to be sure, unnaturally early, as everything is in India; and he had made his wife promise to go and lie down, and take care of herself, when he was gone. “Have the baby, and don’t think any more of me than you can help, and take care of my boys. We shall be back sooner than you want us,” the Major had said, as he took tender leave of his “bonnie Mary.” And for her part, she stood as long as she could see them, with her two white lips pressed tight together, waving her hand to her soldier till he was gone out of sight. And then she obeyed him, and lay down and covered her head, and sobbed to herself in the growing light, as the big blazing sun began to touch the horizon. She was sick with pain and terror, and she could not tell why. She had watched him go away before, and had hailed him coming back again, and had known him in hotter conflict than this could be, and wounded, and yet he had taken no great harm. But all that did her little good now; perhaps because her nerves were weaker than usual, from the repeated shocks she had had to bear.