HEN Mary went away, she left the two ladies at the Cottage in a singular state of excitement and perplexity. They were tingling with the blows which they had themselves received, and yet at the same time they were hushed and put to shame, as it were, for any secondary pang they might be feeling, by the look in Mrs. Ochterlony’s face, and by her sudden departure. Aunt Agatha, who knew of few mysteries in life, and thought that where neither sickness nor death was, nor any despairs of blighted love or disappointed hope, there could not be anything very serious to suffer, would have got over it, and set it down as one of Mary’s ways, had she been by herself. But Winnie was not so easily satisfied; her mind was possessed by the thought, in which no doubt there was a considerable mingling of vanity, that her husband would strike her through her friends. It seemed as if he had done so now; Winnie did not know precisely what it was that Percival knew about her sister, but only that it was something discreditable, something that would bring Mary down from her pinnacle of honour and purity. And now he had done it, and driven Mrs. Ochterlony to despair; but what was it about Will? Or was Will a mere pretence on the part of the outraged and terrified woman to get away? Something she had known for years! This was the thought which had chiefly moved Winnie, going to her heart. She herself had lived a stormy life; she had done a great many things which she ought not to have done; she had never been absolutely wicked or false, nor forfeited her reputation; but she knew in her heart that her life had not been a fair and spotless life; and when she thought of its strivings, and impatience, and self-will, and bitter discontent, and of the serene course of existence which her sister had led in the quietness, her heart smote her. Perhaps it was for her sake that this blow, which Mary had known of for years, had at last descended upon her head. All the years of her own stormy career, her sister had been living at Kirtell, doing no harm, doing good, serving God, bringing up her children, covering her sins, if she had sinned, with repentance and good deeds; and yet for Winnie’s sake, for her petulance, and fury, and hotheadness, the angel (or was it the demon?) had lifted his fiery sword and driven Mary out of Paradise. All this moved Winnie strangely; and along with these were other thoughts—thoughts of her own strange miserable unprotectedness, with only Aunt Agatha to stand between her and the world, while she still had a husband in the world, between whom and herself there stood no deadly shame nor fatal obstacle, and whose presence would shield her from all such intrusions as that she had just suffered from. He had sinned against her, but that a woman can forgive—and she had not sinned against him, not to such an extent as is unpardonable in a woman. Perhaps there might even be something in the fact that Winnie had found Kirtell and quiet not the medicine suited to her mind, and that even Mary’s flight into the world had brought a tingling into her wings, a longing to mount into freer air, and rush back to her fate. Thus a host of contradictory feelings joined in one great flame of excitement, which rose higher and higher all through the night. To fly forth upon him, and controvert his wicked plans, and save the sister who was being sacrificed for her sake; and yet to take possession of him back again, and set him up before her, her shield and buckler against the world; and at the same time to get out and break loose from this flowery cage, and rush back into the big world, where there would be air and space to move in—such were Winnie’s thoughts. In the morning, when she came downstairs, which was an hour earlier than usual, to Aunt Agatha’s great amazement, she wore her travelling dress, and had an air of life and movement in her, which startled Miss Seton, and which, since her return to Kirtell, had never been seen in Winnie’s looks before.
“It is very kind of you to come down, Winnie, my darling, when you knew I was alone,” said Aunt Agatha, giving her a tender embrace.
“I don’t think it is kind in me,” said Winnie; and then she sat down, and took her sister’s office upon her, to Miss Seton’s still greater bewilderment, and make the tea, without quite knowing what she was doing. “I suppose Mary has been travelling all night,” she said; “I am going into Carlisle, Aunt Agatha, to that woman, to know what it is all about.”
“Oh, my darling, you were always so generous,” cried Aunt Agatha, in amaze; “but you must not do it. She might say things to you, or you might meet people——”
“If I did meet people, I know how to take care of myself,” said Winnie; and that flush came to her face, and that light to her eye, like the neigh of the war-horse when he hears the sound of battle.
Aunt Agatha was struck dumb. Terror seized her, as she looked at the kindling cheeks and rapid gesture, and saw the Winnie of old, all impatient and triumphant, dawning out from under the cloud.
“Oh, Winnie, you are not going away,” she cried, with a thrill of presentiment. “Mary has gone, and they have all gone. You are not going to leave me all by myself here?”
“I?” said Winnie. There was scorn in the tone, and yet what was chiefly in it was a bitter affectation of humility. “It will be time enough to fear my going, when any one wants me to go.”
Miss Seton was a simple woman, and yet she saw that there lay more meaning under these words than the plain meaning they bore. She clasped her hands, and lifted her appealing eyes to Winnie’s face—and she was about to speak, to question, to remonstrate, to importune, when her companion suddenly seized her hands tight, and silenced her by the sight of an emotion more earnest and violent than anything Aunt Agatha knew.
“Don’t speak to me,” she said, with her eyes blazing, and clasped the soft old hands in hers till she hurt them. “Don’t speak to me; I don’t know what I am going to do—but don’t talk to me, Aunt Agatha. Perhaps my life—and Mary’s—may be fixed to-day.”