“Don’t speak of it—oh, don’t speak of it,” Mary said, with an imploring tone that went to his heart.
“But I ought to speak of it—if you can bear it,” said Mr. Churchill, “and I know for the boys’ sake that you can bear everything. I have brought an extract 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—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—if I stay here—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, whose heart was not so much absorbed in her own sorrows that she could not feel for the dismayed, desponding mind that made itself apparent in the poor clergyman’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—both of you: you can’t think how cheery and hearty he always was—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—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—but it was better than a sermon—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 happiness. 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 voyage, and took the good people’s commissions without knowing very well to what it was that she pledged herself; and it was the same mail—“the mail after next”—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—oh, if it had only been me!—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-dozen, as she said, and knew what it was. And then one or two of the men were walking about outside in an accidental sort of way, to have 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 who 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 true home, with Mr. Churchill to take care of her and her poor babies, and set her face to the cold far-away world of her youth which she had forgotten, and which everybody 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 with her through all the first 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—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—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. Ochterlony 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, 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 Earlston 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 itself, without the pain of meeting with some one who belonged to her, and yet did not belong to her, and who had doubtless grown 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 Agatha had been a middle-aged maiden lady, still pretty, though 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 sometimes 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 decided at that early period