“What is the matter, my dear?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, who had regained her serene looks, though not her composed mind; and little Irish Emma, looking at her, was struck with such a sense of her own absurdity and temerity and ridiculous pretensions, that she very nearly broke down again.
“I’ve been quarrelling with Charlie,” the quick-witted girl said, with the best grace she could, and added in her mind a secret clause to soften down the fiction, – “he is so aggravating; and when I saw my Madonna looking so sweet and so still – ”
“Hush!” said Mary “there was no need for crying about that – nor for telling fibs either,” she added, with a smile that went to the heart of the ensign’s wife. “You see there is nothing the matter with me,” Mrs. Ochterlony added; but notwithstanding her perfect composure it was in a harder tone.
“I never expected anything else,” said the impetuous little woman; “as if any nonsense could do any harm to you! And I love the Major, and I always have stood up for him; but oh, I should just like for once to box his ears.”
“Hush!” said Mary again; and then the need she had of sympathy prompted her for one moment to descend to the level of the little girl beside her, who was all sympathy and no criticism, which Mary knew to be a kind of friendship wonderfully uncommon in this world. “It did me no harm,” she said, feeling a certain relief in dropping her reserve, and making visible the one thing of which they were both thinking, and which had no need of being identified by name. “It did me no harm, and it pleased him. I don’t deny that it hurt at the time,” Mary added after a little pause, with a smile; “but that is all over now. You need not cry over me, my dear.”
“I – cry over you,” cried the prevaricating Emma, “as if such a thing had ever come into my head; but I did feel glad I was a married lady,” the little thing added; and then saw her mistake, and blushed and faltered and did not know what to say next. Mrs. Ochterlony knew very well what her young visitor meant, but she took no notice, as was the wisest way. She had steeled herself to all the consequences by this time, and knew she must accustom herself to such allusions and to take no notice of them. But it was hard upon her, who had been so good to the child, to think that little Emma was glad she was a married lady, and could in her turn give a certain countenance. All these sharp, secret, unseen arrows went direct to Mary’s heart.
But on the whole the regiment kept its word and made no difference. Mrs. Kirkman called every Wednesday and took Mary with her to the prayer-meeting which she held among the soldiers’ wives, and where she said she was having much precious fruit; and was never weary of representing to her companion that she had need of being brought down and humbled, and that for her part she would rejoice in anything that would bring her dear Mary to a more serious way of thinking; which was an expression of feeling perfectly genuine on Mrs. Kirkman’s part, though at the same time she felt more and more convinced that Mrs. Ochterlony had been deceiving her, and was not by any means an innocent sufferer. The Colonel’s wife was quite sincere in both these beliefs, though it would be hard to say how she reconciled them to each other; but then a woman is not bound to be logical, whether she belongs to High or Low Church. At the same time she brought Mary sermons to read, with passages marked, which were adapted for both these states of feeling, – some consoling the righteous who were chastened because they were beloved, and some exhorting the sinners who had been long callous and now were beginning to awaken to a sense of their sins. Perhaps Mary, who was not very discriminating in point of sermon-books, read both with equal innocence, not seeing their special application: but she could scarcely be so blind when her friend discoursed at the Mothers’ Meeting upon the Scripture Marys, and upon her who wept at the Saviour’s feet. Mrs. Ochterlony understood then, and never forgot afterwards, that it was that Mary with whom, in the mind of one of her most intimate associates, she had come to be identified. Not the Mary blessed among women, the type of motherhood and purity, but the other Mary, who was forgiven much because she had much loved. That night she went home with a swelling heart, wondering over the great injustice of human ways and dealings, and crying within herself to the Great Spectator who knew all against the evil thoughts of her neighbours. Was that what they all believed of her, all these women? and yet she had done nothing to deserve it, not so much as by a light look, or thought, or word; and it was not as if she could defend herself, or convince them of their cruelty: for nobody accused her, nobody reproached her – her friends, as they all said, made no difference. This was the sudden cloud that came over Mary in the very fairest and best moment of her life.
But as for the Major, he knew nothing about all that. It had been done for his peace of mind, and until the next thing occurred to worry him he was radiant with good-humour and satisfaction. If he saw at any time a cloud on his wife’s face, he thought it was because of that approaching necessity which took the pleasure out of everything even to himself, for the moment, when he thought of it – the necessity of sending Hugh “home.” “We shall still have Islay for a few years at least, my darling,” he would say, in his affectionate way; “and then the baby,” – for there was a baby, which had come some time after the event which we have just narrated. That too must have had something to do, no doubt, with Mary’s low spirits. “He’ll get along famously with Aunt Agatha, and get spoiled, that fellow will,” the Major said; “and as for Islay, we’ll make a man of him.” And except at those moments, when, as we have just said, the thoughts of his little Hugh’s approaching departure struck him, Major Ochterlony was as happy and light-hearted as a man who is very well off in all his domestic concerns, and getting on in his profession, and who has a pleasant consciousness of doing his duty to all men and a grateful sense of the mercies of God, should be, and naturally is. When two people are yoked for life together, there is generally one of the two who bears the burden, while the other takes things easy. Sometimes it is the husband, as is fit and right, who has the heavy weight on his shoulders; but sometimes, and oftener than people think, it is the wife. And perhaps this was why Major Ochterlony was so frisky in his harness, and Madonna Mary felt her serenity fall into sadness, and was conscious of going on very slowly and heavily upon the way of life. Not that he was to blame, who was now, as always, the best husband in the regiment, or even in the world. Mary would not for all his fidgets, not for any reward, have changed him against Colonel Kirkman with his fishy eye, nor against Captain Hesketh’s jolly countenance, nor for anybody else within her range of vision. He was very far from perfect, and in utter innocence had given her a wound which throbbed and bled daily whichever way she turned herself, and which she would never cease to feel all her life; but still at the same time he stood alone in the world, so far as Mary’s heart was concerned: for true love is, of all things on earth, the most pertinacious and unreasonable, let the philosophers say what they will.
And then the baby, for his part, was not like what the other babies had been; he was not a great fellow, like Hugh and Islay; but puny and pitiful and weakly, – a little selfish soul that would leave his mother no rest. She had been content to leave the other boys to Providence and Nature, tending them tenderly, wholesomely, and not too much, and hoping to make men of them some day; but with this baby Mary fell to dreaming, wondering often as he lay in her lap what his future would be. She used to ask herself unconsciously, without knowing why, what his influence might be on the lives of his brothers, who were like and yet so unlike him: though when she roused up she rebuked herself, and thought how much more reasonable it would be to speculate upon Hugh’s influence, who was the eldest, or even upon Islay, who had the longest head in the regiment, and looked as if he meant to make some use of it one day. To think of the influence of little weakly Wilfrid coming to be