the next mail was an important one in many ways. it was to bring aunt agatha’s letter about little hugh, and it did bring something which had still more effect upon the ochterlony peace of mind. the major, as has been already said, was not a man to be greatly excited by the arrival of the mail. all his close and pressing interests were at present concentrated in the station. his married sisters wrote to him now and then, and he was very glad to get their letters, and to hear when a new niece or nephew arrived, which was the general burden of these epistles. sometimes it was a death, and major ochterlony was sorry; but neither the joy nor the sorrow disturbed him much. for he was far away, and he was tolerably happy himself, and could bear with equanimity the vicissitudes in the lot of his friends. but this time the letter which arrived was of a different description. it was from his brother, the head of the house—who was a little of an invalid and a good deal of a dilettante, and gave the major no nephews or nieces, being indeed a confirmed bachelor of the most hopeless kind. he was a man who never wrote letters, so that the communication was a little startling. and yet there was nothing very particular in it. something had occurred to make mr. ochterlony think of his brother, and the consequence was that he had drawn his writing things to his hand and written a few kind words, with a sense of having done something meritorious to himself and deeply gratifying to hugh. he sent his love to mary, and hoped the little fellow was all right who was, he supposed, to carry on the family honours—“if there are any family honours,” the squire had said, not without an agreeable sense that there was something in his last paper on the “coins of agrippa,” that the numismatic society would not willingly let die. this was the innocent morsel of correspondence which had come to the major’s hand. mary was sitting by with the baby on her lap while he read it, and busy with a very different kind of communication. she was reading aunt agatha’s letter which she had been dreading and wishing for, and her heart was growing sick over the innocent flutter of expectation and kindness and delight which was in it. every assurance of the joy she would feel in seeing little hugh, and the care she would take of him, which the simple-minded writer sent to be a comfort to mary, came upon the mother’s unreasonable mind like a kind of injury. to think that anybody could be happy about an occurrence that would be so terrible to her; to think that anybody could have the bad taste to say that they looked with impatience for the moment that to mary would be like dying! she was unhinged, and for the first time, perhaps, in her life, her nerves were thoroughly out of order, and she was unreasonable to the bottom of her heart; and when she came to her young sister’s gay announcement of what for her part she would do for her little nephew’s education, and how she had been studying the subject ever since mary’s letter arrived, mrs. ochterlony felt as if she could have beaten the girl, and was ready to cry with wretchedness and irritation and despair. all these details served somehow to fix it, though she knew it had been fixed before. they told her the little room hugh should have, and the old maid who would take care of him; and how he should play in the garden, and learn his lessons in aunt agatha’s parlour, and all those details which would be sweet to mary when her boy was actually there. but at present they made his going away so real, that they were very bitter to her, and she had to draw the astonished child away from his play, and take hold of him and keep him by her, to feel quite sure that he was still here, and not in the little north-country cottage which she knew so well. but this was an arrangement which did not please the baby, who liked to have his mother all to himself, and pushed hugh away, and kicked and screamed at him lustily. thus it was an agitated little group upon which the major looked down as he turned from his brother’s pleasant letter. he was in a very pleasant frame of mind himself, and was excessively entertained by the self-assertion of little wilfrid on his mother’s knee.
“he is a plucky little soul, though he is so small,” said major ochterlony; “but willie, my boy, there’s precious little for you of the grandeurs of the family. it is from francis, my dear. it’s very surprising, you know, but still it’s true. and he sends you his love. you know i always said that there was a great deal of good in francis; he is not a demonstrative man—but still, when you get at it, he has a warm heart. i am sure he would be a good friend to you, mary, if ever——”
“i hope i shall never need him to be a good friend to me,” said mrs. ochterlony. “he is your brother, hugh, but you know we never got on.” it was a perfectly correct statement of fact, but yet, perhaps, mary would not have made it, had she not been so much disturbed by aunt agatha’s letter. she was almost disposed to persuade herself for that moment that she had not got on with aunt agatha, which was a moral impossibility. as for the major, he took no notice of his wife’s little ill-tempered un-enthusiastic speech.
“you will be pleased when you read it,” he said. “he talks of hugh quite plainly as the heir of earlston. i can’t help being pleased. i wonder what kind of squire the little beggar will make: but we shall not live to see that—or, at least, i shan’t,” the major went on, and he looked at his boy with a wistful look which mary used to think of afterwards. as for little hugh, he was very indifferent, and not much more conscious of the affection near home than of the inheritance far off. major ochterlony stood by the side of mary’s chair, and he had it in his heart to give her a little lesson upon her unbelief and want of confidence in him, who was always acting for the best, and who thought much more of her interests than of his own.
“my darling,” he said, in that coaxing tone which mary knew so well, “i don’t mean to blame you. it was a hard thing to make you do; and you might have thought me cruel and too precise. but only see now how important it was to be exact about our marriage—too exact even. if hugh should come into the estate——”
here major ochterlony stopped short all at once, without any apparent reason. he had still his brother’s letter in his hand, and was standing by mary’s side; and nobody had come in, and nothing had happened. but all at once, like a flash of lightning, something of which he had never thought before had entered his mind. he stopped short, and said, “good god!” low to himself, though he was not a man who used profane expressions. his face changed as a summer day changes when the wind seizes it like a ghost, and covers its heavens with clouds. so great was the shock he had received, that he made no attempt to hide it, but stood gazing at mary, appealing to her out of the midst of his sudden trouble. “good god!” he said. his eyes went in a piteous way from little hugh, who knew nothing about it, to his mother, who was at present the chief sufferer. was it possible that instead of helping he had done his best to dishonour hugh? it was so new an idea to him, that he looked helplessly into mary’s eyes to see if it was true. and she, for her part, had nothing to say to him. she gave a little tremulous cry which did but echo his own exclamation, and pitifully held out her hand to her husband. yes; it was true. between them they had sown thorns in their boy’s path, and thrown doubt on his name, and brought humiliation and uncertainty into his future life. major ochterlony dropped into a chair by his wife’s side, and covered his face with her hand. he was struck dumb by his discovery. it was only she who had seen it all long ago—to whom no sudden revelation could come—who had been suffering, even angrily and bitterly, but who was now altogether subdued and conscious only of a common calamity; who was the only one capable of speech or thought.
“hugh, it is done now,” said mary; “perhaps it may never do him any harm. we are in india, a long way from all our friends. they know what took place in scotland, but they can’t know what happened here.”
the major only replied once more, “good god!” perhaps he was not thinking so much of hugh as of the failure he had himself made. to think he should have landed in the most apparent folly by way of being wise—that perhaps was the immediate sting. but as for mrs. ochterlony, her heart was full of her little boy who was going away from her, and her husband’s horror and dismay seemed only natural. she had to withdraw her hand from him, for the tyrant baby did not approve of any other claim upon her attention, but she caressed his stooping head as she did so. “oh, hugh, let us hope things will turn out better than we think,” she said, with her heart overflowing in her eyes; and the soft tears fell on wilfrid’s little frock as she soothed and consoled him. little hugh for his part had been startled in the midst of his play, and had come forward to see what was going on. he was not particularly interested, it is true, but still he rather wanted to know what it was all about. and when the pugnacious baby saw his brother he returned to the conflict. it was his baby efforts with hands and feet to thrust hugh away which roused the major. he got up and took a walk about the room, sighing heavily. “when you saw what was involved, why did you let me do it, mary?” he said, amid his sighs. that was all the advantage his wife had from his discovery. he was still walking about the room and sighing, when the baby went to sleep, and hugh was taken away; and then to be sure the father and mother were alone.
“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.
