The only other special feature was that Mary, with the corners of her mouth turned down, and her whole soul wound up to obstinacy, would not call herself by any name but Mary Ochterlony. They persuaded her, painfully, to put her long disused maiden name upon the register, and kind Mr. Churchill shut his ears to it in the service; but yet it was a thing that everybody remarked. When all was over, nobody knew how they were expected to behave, whether to congratulate the pair, or whether to disappear and hold their tongues, which seemed in fact the wisest way. But no popular assembly ever takes the wisest way of working. Mr. Churchill was the first to decide the action of the party. He descended the altar steps, and shook hands with Mary, who stood tying her bonnet, with still the corners of her mouth turned down, and that feverish flush on her cheeks. He was a good man, though not spiritually-minded in Mrs. Kirkman’s opinion; and he felt the duty of softening and soothing his flock as much as of teaching them, which is sometimes a great deal less difficult. He came and shook hands with her, gravely and kindly.
“I don’t see that I need congratulate you, Mrs. Ochterlony,” he said, “I don’t suppose it makes much difference; but you know you always have all our best wishes.” And he cast a glance over his audience, and reproved by that glance the question that was circulating among them. But to tell the truth, Mrs. Kirkman and Miss Sorbette paid very little attention to Mr. Churchill’s looks.
“My dear Mary, you have kept up very well, though I am sure it must have been trying,” Mrs. Kirkman said. “Once is bad enough; but I am sure you will see a good end in it at the last.”
And while she spoke she allowed a kind of silent interrogation, from her half-veiled eyes, to steal over Mary, and investigate her from head to foot. Had it been all right before? Might not this perhaps be in reality the first time, the once which was bad enough? The question crept over Mrs. Ochterlony, from the roots of her hair down to her feet, and examined her curiously to find a response. The answer was plain enough, and yet it was not plain to the Colonel’s wife; for she knew that the heart is deceitful above all things, and that where human nature is considered it is always safest to believe the worst.
Miss Sorbette came forward too in her turn, with a grave face. “I am sure you must feel more comfortable after it, and I am so glad you have had the moral courage,” the doctor’s sister said, with a certain solemnity. But perhaps it was Annie Hesketh, in her innocence, who was the worst of all. She advanced timidly, with her face in a blaze, like Mary’s own, not knowing where to look, and lost in ingenuous embarrassment.
“Oh, dear Mrs. Ochterlony, I don’t know what to say,” said Annie. “I am so sorry, and I hope you will always be very, very happy; and mamma couldn’t come – ” Here she stopped short, and looked up with candid eyes, that asked a hundred questions. And Mary’s reply was addressed to her alone.
“Tell your mamma, Annie, that I am glad she could not come,” said the injured wife. “It was very kind of her.” When she had said so much, Mrs. Ochterlony turned round, and saw her boy standing by, looking at her. It was only then that she turned to the husband to whom she had just renewed her troth. She looked full at him, with a look of indignation and dismay. It was the last drop that made the cup run over; but then, what was the good of saying anything? That final prick however, brought her to herself. She shook hands with all the people afterwards, as if they were dispersing after an ordinary service, and took little Hugh’s hand and went home as if nothing had happened. She left the Major behind her, and took no notice of him, and did not even, as young Askell remarked, offer a glass of wine to the assistants at the ceremony, but went home with her little boy, talking to him, as she did on Sundays going home from church; and everybody stood and looked after her, as might have been expected. She knew they were looking after her, and saying “Poor Mary!” and wondering after all if there must not have been a very serious cause for this re-marriage. Mary thought to herself that she knew as well what they were saying as if she had been among them, and yet she was not entirely so correct in her ideas of what was going on as she thought.
In the first place, she could not have imagined how a moment could undo all the fair years of unblemished life which she had passed among them. She did not really believe that they would doubt her honour, although she herself felt it clouded; and at the same time she did not know the curious compromise between cruelty and kindness, which is all that their Christian feelings can effect in many commonplace minds, yet which is a great deal when one comes to think of it. Mrs. Kirkman, arguing from the foundation of the desperate wickedness of the human heart, had gradually reasoned herself into the belief that Mary had deceived her, and had never been truly an honourable wife; but notwithstanding this conclusion, which in the abstract would have made her cast off the culprit with utter disdain, the Colonel’s wife paused, and was moved, almost in spite of herself, by the spirit of that faith which she so often wrapped up and smothered in disguising talk. She did not believe in Mary; but she did, in a wordy, defective way, in Him who was the son of a woman, and who came not to condemn; and she could not find it in her heart to cast off the sinner. Perhaps if Mrs. Ochterlony had known this divine reason for her friend’s charity, it would have struck a deeper blow than any other indignity to which she had been subjected. In all her bitter thoughts, it never occurred to her that her neighbour stood by her as thinking of those Marys who once wept at the Saviour’s feet. Heaven help the poor Madonna, whom all the world had heretofore honoured! In all her thoughts she never went so far as that.
The ladies waited a little, and sent away Annie Hesketh, who was too young for scenes of this sort, though her mamma was so imprudent, and themselves laid hold of Mr. Churchill, when the other gentlemen had dispersed. Mr. Churchill was one of those mild missionaries who turn one’s thoughts involuntarily to that much-abused, yet not altogether despicable institution of a celibate clergy. He was far from being celibate, poor man! He, or at least his wife, had such a succession of babies as no man could number. They had children at “home” in genteel asylums for the sons and daughters of the clergy, and they had children in the airiest costume at the station, whom people were kind to, and who were waiting their chance of being sent “home” too; and withal, there were always more arriving, whom their poor papa received with mild despair. For his part, he was not one of the happy men who held appointments under the beneficent rule of the Company, nor was he a regimental chaplain. He was one of that hapless band who are always “doing duty” for other and better-off people. He was almost too old now (though he was not old), and too much hampered and overlaid by children, to have much hope of anything better than “doing duty” all the rest of his life; and the condition of Mrs. Churchill, who had generally need of neighbourly help, and of the children, who were chiefly clothed – such clothing as it was – by the bounty of the Colonel’s and Major’s and Captain’s wives, somehow seemed to give these ladies the upper hand of their temporary pastor. He managed well enough among the men, who respected his goodness, and recognised him to be a gentleman, notwithstanding his poverty; but he stood in terror of the women, who were more disposed to interfere, and who were kind to his family and patronised himself. He tried hard on this occasion, as on many others, to escape, but he was hemmed in, and no outlet was left him. If he had been a celibate brother, there can be little doubt it would have been he who would have had the upper hand; but with all his family burdens and social obligations, the despotism of the ladies of his flock came hard upon the poor clergyman; all the more that, poor though he was, and accustomed to humiliations, he had not learned yet to dispense with the luxury of feelings and delicacies of his own.
“Mr. Churchill, do give us your advice,” said Miss Sorbette, who was first. “Do tell us what all this means? They surely must have told you at least the rights of it. Do you think they have really never been married all this time? Goodness gracious me! to think of us all receiving her, and calling her Madonna, and all that, if this