it were; and yet their hearts ached over her, as if
somehow they had purchased their own exemption at
her expense. Wlien the first dark moment, during
which nobody saw Madonna Mary â a sweet title
which had come back to all their lips in the hour of
trouble â was over, they took turns to be with her,
those grieved and compunctious women â compunctious
MADONNA MARY. 107
not SO much because at one time in thought they had
done her -wrong, as because now they were happy and
she was sorrowful. And thus passed over a time that
cannot be described in a book, Âİr at least in such a
book as this. Mary had to separate herself, with still
the bloom of her life unimpaired, from all the fair
company of matrons round her; to put the widow's
veil over the golden reflections in her hair, and the
faint colour that came faintly back to her cheek by
imprescriptible right of her health and comparative
youth, and to go away out of the high-road of life
where she had been wayfaring in trouble and in hap-
piness, to one of those humble by-ways where the
feeble and broken take shelter. Heaven knows she
did not think of that. All that she thought of was
her dead soldier who had gone away iu the bloom of
his days to the unknown darkness which God alone
knows the secrets of, who had left all his comrades
uninjured and at peace behind him, and had himself
been the only one to answer for that enterprize with
his life. It is strange to see this wonderful selection
going on in the world, even when one has no imme-
diate part in it; but stranger, far stranger, to wake up
from one's musings and feel all at once that it is one's
self whom God has laid his hand upon for this stern
purpose. The wounded creature may wi-ithe upon the
sword, but it is of no use; and again as ever, those
who are not wounded â those perhaps for whose in-
struction the spectacle is made â draw round in a
hushed circle and look on. Mary Ochterlony was a
dutiful woman, obedient and submissive to God's will;
and she gave no occasion to that circle of spectators to
break up the hush and awe of natural sympathy and
108 MADONNA MARY.
criticise lier liow slie bore it. But after a wliilo she
came to perceive, what everybody comes to perceive who
lias been in sxich a position, that the sympathy had changed
its character. Thatjwas natural too. How a man bears
death and suffering of body, has long been one of the
favourite objects of primitive human ciu'iosity; and to
see how anguish and sorrow affect the mind is a study as
exciting and still more interesting. It was this that roused
Mrs. Ochterlony out of her first stupor, and made her
decide so soon as she did upon her journey home.
All these events had passed in so short a time, that
there were many people who on waking up in the
morning, and recollecting that Mary and her children
were going next day, could scarcely realize that the
fact was possible, or that it could be true about the
Major, who had so fully intended sending his little
boys home by that same mail. But it is, on the whole,
astonishing how soon and how calmly a death is ac-
cepted by the general community; and even the people
who asked themselves could this change really have
happened in so short a time, took pains an hour or two
after to make up little parcels for friends at home,
which Mary was to carry, bits of Oriental embroidery
and filagree ornaments, and little portraits of the
children, and other trifles that were not important
enough to warrant an Overland parcel, or big enough
to go by the Cape. Mary was very kind in that way,
they all said. She accepted all kinds of commissions,
perhaps without knowing very well what she was doing,
and promised to go and see people whom she had no
likelihood of ever going to see; the truth was, that she
heard and saw and understood only partially, some-
times rousing up for a moment and catching one word
iIAl>ONNA MAllV. 1U9
or oue little incident with the inteusest distinctness, and
then relapsing back again into herself. She did not
quite make out what Emma Askell was saying the last
time her little friend came to see her. Mary was pack-
ing her boys' things at the moment, and much occupied
with a host of cares, and what she heard was only a
stream of talk, broken with the occasional burden
which came in like a chorus "when you see mamma."
"When I see mamma?" said Mary, with a little
surprise.
"Dear Mrs. Ochterlony, you said you would per-
haps go to see her â in St. John's Wood," said Emma,
with tears of vexation in her eyes; "you know I told
you all about it. The Laburnums, Acacia-road. And
she will be so glad to see you. I explained it all, and
you said you would go. I told her how kind you had
been to me, and how you let me stay with you when I
was so anxious about Charlie. Oh, dear Mrs. Ochter-
lony, forgive me! I did not mean to bring it back to
your mind."
"No," said Mary, with a kind of forlorn amuse-
ment. It seemed so strange, almost droll, that they
should think any of their poor little passing words
would bring that back to her which was never once
out of her mind, nor other than the centre of all her
thoughts. "I must have been dreaming when I said
so, Emma; but if I have promised, I will try to go â
I have nothing to do in London, you know â I am
going to the North-country, among my own people,"
which was an easier form of expression than to say, as
tliey all did, that she was going home.
"But everybody goes to London," insisted Emma;
and it Avas only when Mr. Churchill came in, also with
1 10 MADONNA MARY.
a little packet, that the ensign's wife was silenced.
Mr. Churchill's parcel was for his mother who lived in
Yorkshire, naturally, as Mrs. Ochterlony was going to
the North, quite in her way. But the clergyman, for
his part, had something more important to say. When
Mrs. Askell was gone, he stopped Mary in her packing
to speak to her seriously as he said, "You will forgive
me and feel for me, I know," he said. "It is ahout
your second marriage, Mrs. Ochterlony."
"Don't speak of it â oh, don't speak of it,"
Mary said, with an imploring tone that went to his
heart.
" But I ought to speak of it â if you can bear it,"
said Mr. Churchill, "and I know for the boys' sake
that you can bear everything. I have brought an ex-
tract from the register, if you would like to have it;
and I have added below "
"Mr. Churchill, you are very kind, but I don't
want ever to think of that," said Mrs. Ochterlony. "I
don't want to recollect now that such a thing ever
took place â I wish all record of it would disappear
from the face of the earth. Afterwards he thought the
same," she said, hurriedly. Meanwhile Mr. Churchill
stood with the paper half drawn from his pocket-book,
watching the changes of her face.
"It shall be as you like," he said, slowly, "but
only as I have written below If you change your
mind, you have only to write to me, my dear Mrs.
Ochterlony â if I stay here â and I am sure I don't
know if I shall stay here; but in case I don't, you can
always learn where I am, from my mother at that
address."
"Do you think you will not stay here?" said Mary,
MADONNA MARY. Ill
whose heart was uot so much absorbed in her own sor-
rows that she coukl uot feel for the dismayed, despond-
ing mind that made itself apparent in the poor clergy-
man's voice.
"I don't know," he said, in the dreary tones of a
man who has little choice, "with our large family, and
my wife's poor health. I shall miss you dreadfully â
both of you: you can't think how cheery and hearty
he always was â and that to a down-hearted man
like me "
And then Mary sat down and cried. It went to
her heart and dispersed all her heaviness and stupor,
and opened the great sealed fountains. And Mr.
Churchill once more felt the climbing sorrow in his
throat, and said in broken words, "Don't cry â God
will take care of you. He knows why He has done it,
though we don't; and He has given his own word to
be a father to the boys."
That was all the poor priest could find it in his
heart to say â but it was better than a sermon â
and he went away with the extract from the register
still in his pocket-book and tears in his eyes; while
for her part Mary finished her packing with a heart
relieved by her tears. Ah, how cheery and hearty he
had been, how kind to the down-hearted man; how
different the stagnant quietness now from that cheerful
commotion he used to make, and all the restless life
about him; and then his favourite words seemed to
come up about and surround her, flitting in the air
with a sensation between acute torture and a dull hap-
piness. His bonnie Mary! It was not any vanity on
Mary's part that made her think above all of that name.
Thus she did her packing and got ready for her voy-
112 MAUOA'xNA MAUY.
age, and took the good people's cominisHions without
knowing very well to what it was that she pledged
herself; and it was the same mail â "the mail after
next" â by which she had written to Aunt Agatha,
that Hugh was to be sent home.
They would all have come to see her off if they
could have ventured to do it that last morning: but the
men prevented it, who are good for something now
and then in such cases. As it was, however, Mrs.
Kirkman and Mrs. Hesketh and Emma Askell were
there, and poor sick Mrs. Churchill, who had stolen
from her bed in her dressing-gown to kiss Mary for the
last time.
"Oh, my dear, if it had been me â oh, if it had
only been me! â and you would all have been so
good to the poor children," sobbed the poor clergyman's
ailing wife. Yet it was not her, but the strong, brave,
cheery Major, the prop and pillar of a house. As for
Mrs. Kirkman, there never was a better proof that she
was, as we have so often said, in spite of her talk, a
good woman, than the fact that she could only cry
helplessly over Mary, and had not a word to say. She
had thought and prayed that God would not leave her
friend alone, but she had not meant Him to go so far
as this-, and her heart ached and fluttered at the terrible
notion that perhaps she had something to do with the
striking of this blow. Mrs. Hesketh for her part
packed every sort of dainties for the children in a
basket, and strapped on a bundle of portable toys to
amuse them on the journey, to one of Mrs. Ochterlony's
boxes. "You will be glad of them before you get
there," said the experienced woman, who had once
made the journey with half-a-dozon, as she said, and
MADONNA MARY. 113
kuevv what it was. And tlieu one or two of the men
were walking about outside in an accidental sort of
way, to liave a last look of Mary. It was considered
a very great thing among them all when the doctor,
who hated to see people in trouble, and disapproved of
crying on principle, made up his mind to go in and
shake hands with Mrs. Ochterlony; but it was not that
he went for, but to look at the baby, and give Mary a
little case "with some sal volatile and so forth, and the
quantities marked," he said, "not that you are one to
want sal volatile. The little shaver there will be all
right as soon as you get to England. Good-bye. Take
care of yourself." And he wrung her hand and bolted
out again like a flash of lightning. He said afterwards
that the only sensible thing he knew of his sister, was
that she did not go; and that the sight of all those
women crying was enough to give a man a sunstroke,
not to speak of the servants and the soldiers' wives
wlio were howling at the back of the house.
Oh, what a change it was in so short a time, to go
out of the Indian home, which had been a tri;e home,
with Mr. Churchill to take care of her and her poor
babies, and set her face to the cold fai'-away world of
her youth which she had forgotten , and which every-
body called home by a kind of mockery; and where
was Hugh, who had always taken such care of his own?
Mary did not cry as people call crying, but now and
then, two great big hot tears rolled out of the bitter
fountain that was full to overflowing, and fell scalding
on her hands, and gave her a momentary sense of
physical relief. Almost all the ladies of the station
were ill after it all the day; but Mary could not afford
to be ill; and Mr. Churchill was very kind, and went
MudoHHa Marij. 1,^ 8
114 MADONNA MARY.
witb her tlirougli all the liiHt part of her journey over
the cross roads, until she had come into the trunk road,
where there was no more difficulty. He was very,
very kind, and she was very grateful; but yet perhaps
when you have had some one of your very own to do
everything for you, who was not kind but did it by
nature, it is better to take to doing it yourself after ^
than have even the best of friends to do it for kindness'
sake. This was what Mary felt when the good man
had gone sadly back to his sick wife and his uncertain
lot. It was a kind of relief to her to be all alone,
entirely alone with her children, for the ayah, to be
sure, did not count â and to have everything to do;
and this was how they came down mournfully to the
sea-board, and to the big town which filled Hugh and
Islay with childish excitement, and Mary bade an
everlasting farewell to her life, to all that she had
actually known as life â and got to sea, to go, as
they said, home.
It would be quite useless for our purpose to go
over the details of the voyage, which was like other
voyages, bad and good by turns. When she was at
sea, Mrs. Ochterlouy had a little leisure, and felt ill
and weak and overworn, and was the better for it after.
It took her mind for the moment off that unmeasured
contemplation of her sorrow which is the soul of grief,
and her spirit got a little strength in the interval of
repose. She had been twelve years in India, and from
eighteen to thirty is a wonderful leap in a life. She
did not know how she was to find the things and the
people of whom she had a girl's innocent recollection ;
nor how they, who had not changed, would appear to
her changed eyes. Her own people were very kind,
MADONNA MARY. 115
like everybody. Mary found a letter at Gibraltar from
her brother-in-law, Francis, full of sympathy and
friendly offers. He asked her to come to Earlstou
with her boys to see if they could not get on together.
"Perhaps it might not do, but it would be worth a
trial," Mr. Ochterlony sensibly said; and there was
even a chance that Aunt Agatha, who was to have met
with Hugh at Southampton, would come to meet her
widowed niece, who might be supposed to stand still
more in need of her good offices. Though indeed this
was rather an addition to Mary's cares; for she thought
the moment of landing would be bitter enough of it-
self, without the pain of meeting with some one who
belonged to her, and yet did not belong to her, and
who had doubtless groANai as much out of the Aunt
Agatha of old as she had grown out of the little Mary.
When Mrs. Ochterlony left the North-country, Aunt
Agatlia had been a middle-aged maiden lady, still
pretty, thoiigh a little faded, with light hair growing
grey, which makes a woman's countenance, already on
the decline, more faded still, and does not bring out the
tints as dark hair in the same powdery condition some-
times does. And at that time she was still occupied
by a thought of possibilities which people who knew
Agatha Seton from the time she was sixteen, had de-
cided at that early period to be impossible. No doubt
twelve years had changed this ^ and it must have
made a still greater change upon the little sister whom
Mary had known only at six years old, and who was
now eighteen, the ago she had herself been when she
married; a grown-up young woman, and of a character
more decided than Mary's had ever been.
A little stir of reviving life awoke in her and
116 MADONNA MARY.
moved her, when the weary journey was over, and the
steam-boat at length had reached Southampton, to go
up to the deck and look from beneath the heavy pent-
house of her widow's veil at the strangers who were
coming â to see, as she said to herself, with a throb
at her heart, if there was anybody she knew. Aunt
Agatha was not rich, and it was a long journey, and
perhaps she had not come. Mary stood on the crowded
deck, a little apart, with Hugh and Islay on each side
of her, and the baby in his nurse's arms â a group
such as is often seen on these decks â all clad with
loss and mourning, coming "home" to a country in
Avhich perhaps they have no longer any home. Nobody
came to claim Mrs. Ochterlony as she stood among her
little children. She thought she would have been glad
of that, but when it came to the moment â when she
saw the cold unknown shore and the strange country,
and not a Christian soul to say welcome, poor Mary's
heart sank. She sat down, for her strength was failing
her, and drew Hugh and Islay close to her, to keep
her from breaking down altogether. And it was just
at that moment that the brightest of young faces peered
down under her veil and looked doubtfully, anxiously
at her, and called out impatiently, "Aunt Agatha!" to
some one at the other side, without speaking to Mary.
Mrs. Ochterlony did not hear this newcomer's equally
impatient demand: "Is it Mary? Are those the
children?" for she had dropped her sick head upon a
soft old breast, and had an old fresh sweet faded face
bent down upon her, lovely with love and age, and a
pure heart. "Cry, my dear love, cry, it will do you
good," was all that Aunt Agatha said. And she cried,
too, with good will, and yet did not know whether it
MADONNA MARY. 117
was for sorrow or joy. This was bow Mary, coming-
back to a fashion of existence which she knew not, was
taken home.
CHAPTER X.
Aunt Agatha bad grown into a sweet old lady:
not so old, perhaps, but that she might have made up still
into that elderly aspirant after youth, for whose special
use the name "old maid" must have been invented,
and yet there is a sweetness in the name, and it was
not inapplicable to the fair old woman, who received
Mary Ochterlony into her kind arms. There was a
sort of tender misty consciousness iipon her age, just
as there is a tender unconsciousness in youth, of so
many things that cannot but come to the knowledge of
})eople who have eaten of the tree in the middle of
the garden. She was surrounded by the unknown as
was seemly to such a maiden soitI. And yet she was
old, and gleams of experience, and dim knowledge at
second hand, had come to her from those misty tracts.
Though she had not, and never could have, half the
vigour or force in her which Mary had even in her
subdued and broken state, still she had strength of
affection and goodness enough to take the management
of all affairs into her hands for the moment, and to set
herself at the head of the little party. She took Mary
and the chidreu from the sliip, and brought them to
the inn at which she had stayed the night before; and,
what was a still greater achievement, she repressed
Winnie, and kept her in a semi-subordinate and silent
lib MADONNA MARY.
state â which was an effort which taxed all Aunt
Agatha's powers. Though it may seem strange to say-
it, Mary and her young sister did not, as people say,
take to each other at that first meeting. It was twelve
years since they had met, and the eighteen-year-old
young woman, accustomed to be a sovereign among her
own people, and have all her whims attended to, did
not , somehow , commend herself to Mary, who was
broken, and joyless, and feeble, and little capable of
glitter and motion. Aunt Agatha took the traveller to
a cool room, where comparative quiet was to be had,
and took off her heavy bonnet and cloak, and made
her lie down, and came and sat by her. The children
were in the next room, where the sound of their voices
could reach their mother to keep her heart; and then
Aunt Agatha took Mary's hand in both of hers, and
said, "Tell me about it, my dear love." It was a way
she had of speaking, but yet such words are sweet;
especially to a forlorn creature who has supposed that
there is nobody left in the world to address her so.
And then Mary told her sad story with all the details
that women love, and cried till the fountain of tears
was for the time exhausted, and grief itself by its very
vehemence had got calm; which was, as Aunt Agatha
knew by instinct, the best way to receive a poor wo-
man who was a widow, and had just set her solitary
feet for the first time upon the shores which she left as
a bride.
And so they rested and slept that first night on
English soil. There are moments when sorrow feels
sacramental, and as if it never could be disturbed again
by the pettier emotions of life. Mrs. Ochterlony had
gone to sleep in this calm, and it was with something
MADONNA MARY. 119
of the same feeling that she awoke. As if life , as she
thought, being over, its cares were in some sense over
too, and that now nothing could move her further-, un-
less, indeed, it might be any harm to the children,
which, thank Grod, there was no appearance of. In
this state of mind she rose up and said her prayers,
mingling them with some of those great tears which
gather one by one as the heart fills , and which seem to give
a certain physical relief when they brim over; and then
she went to join her aunt and sister at breakfast, where
they had not expected to see her. "My love, I would
have brought you your tea," said Aunt Agatha, with
a certain reproach; and when Mary smiled and said
there was no need, even Winnie's heart was touched,
â wilful Winnie in her black muslin gown, who was
a little piqued to feel herself in the company of one
more interesting than even she was , and hated herself for
it, and yet could not help feeling as if Mary had come
in like the prodigal, to be feasted and tended, while
they never even killed a kid for her who had always
been at home.
Winnie was eighteen, and she was not like her
sister. She was tall, but not like Mary's tallness â
a long slight slip of a girl, still full of corners. She
had corners at her elbows, and almost at her shoulders,
and a great many corners in her mind. She was
not so much a pretty girl as a girl who would, or
might be, a beautiful woman. Her eyebrows were
arched, and so were her delicate nostrils, and her up-
per lip â all curved and moveable , and ready to
quiver and speak when it was needful. When you
saw her face in profile, that outline seemed to cut itself
out, as in some warm marble against the back -ground.
120 MADONNA MARY.
It was not the heaute du diahlc , the bewildering charm
of youth, and freshness, and smiles, and rose tints.
She had something of all this, and to boot she had
features â bemix traits. But as for this part of her
power, Winnie, to do her justice, thought nothing of
it; perhaps, to have understood that people minded
what she said, and noticed what she did because she
was very handsome, would have conveyed something
like an insult and affront to the young lady. She did
not care much , nor mind much at the present moment,
whether she was pretty or not. She had no rivals, and
beaixty was a weapon the importance of which had not
occurred to her. But she did care a good deal for being
Winifred Seton, and as such, mistress of all she sur-
veyed; and though she could have beaten herself for it,
it galled her involuntarily to find herself thus all at
once in the presence of a person whom Providence
seemed to have set, somehow, in a higher position, and
who was more interesting than herself. It was a wicked
thought, and she did it battle. If it had been left to
her, how she could have petted and cared for Mary,
how she would have borne her triumphantly over all
the fatigues of the journey, and thought nothing to take
the tickets, and mind the luggage, and struggle with
the railway porters for Mary's sake! But to have Mary
come in and absorb Aunt Agatha's and everybody's fii-st
look, their first appeal and principal regard, was trying
to Winnie; and she had never learned yet to banish
altogether from her eyes what she thought.
"It does not matter, aunt," said Mary; "I cannot
make a recluse of myself ^ â I must go among strangers
â and it is well to be able to practise a little with
Winnie and you."
MADONNA MARY. 121
"You must not mind Winnie cand me, my darling,"
said Aunt Agatlia , who had a way of missing the arrow,
as it Avere, and catching some of the feathers of it as
it flew past.
"What do you mean about going among strangers?"
said the keener AVinnie. "I hope you don't think we
are strangers; and there is no need for you to go into