“Oh, she must be ill!” wailed poor Emma; “I knew she would be ill. If she dies it will be your fault. Oh, let me go up and see. I knew she must be ill.”
As for Mrs. Kirkman, she shook her head and her long curls, and looked compassionately upon her agitated audience. And then Winnie heard all the long-hoarded well-remembered tale. The only difference made in it was that by this time all confidence in the Gretna Green marriage, which had once been allowed, at least as a matter of courtesy, had faded out of the story. Even Mrs. Askell no longer thought of that. When the charm of something to tell began to work, the Captain’s wife chimed in with the narrative of her superior officer. All the circumstances of that long-past event were revealed to the wonder-stricken hearers. Mary’s distress, and Major Ochterlony’s anxiety, and the consultations he had with everybody, and the wonderful indulgence and goodness of the ladies at the station, who never made any difference, and all their benevolent hopes that so uncomfortable an incident was buried in the past, and could now have no painful results;—all this was told to Winnie in detail; and in the confidential committee thus formed, her own possible deficiencies and shortcomings were all passed over. “Nothing would have induced me to say a syllable on the subject if you had not been dear Mary’s sister,” Mrs. Kirkman said; and then she relieved her mind and told it all.
Winnie, for her part, sat dumb and listened. She was more than struck dumb—she was stupified by the news. She had thought that Mary might have been “foolish,” as she herself had been “foolish;” even that Mary might have gone further, and compromised herself; but of a dishonour which involved such consequences she had never dreamed. She sat and heard it all in a bewildered horror, with the faces of Hugh and Will floating like spectres before her eyes. A woman gone astray from her duty as a wife was not, Heaven help her! so extraordinary an object in poor Winnie’s eyes—but, good heavens! Mary’s marriage, Mary’s boys, the very foundation and beginning of her life! The room went round and round with her as she sat and listened. A public trial, a great talk in the papers, one brother against another, and Mary, Mary, the chief figure in all! Winnie put her hands up to her ears, not to shut out the sound of this incredible story, but to deaden the noises in her head, the throbbing of all her pulses, and stringing of all her nerves. She was so stupified that she could make no sort of stand against it, no opposition to the evidence, which, indeed, was crushing, and left no opening for unbelief. She accepted it all, or rather, was carried away by the bewildering, overwhelming tide. And even Emma Askell got excited, and woke up out of her crying, and added her contribution of details. Poor little Nelly, who had heard it all before, had retired to a corner and taken up her work, and might be seen in the distance working furiously, with a hot flush on her cheek, and now and then wiping a furtive tear from her eye. Nelly did not know what to say, nor how to meet it—but there was in her little woman’s soul a conviction that something unknown must lie behind, and that the inference at least was not true.
“And you told Will?” said Winnie, rousing up at last. “You knew all the horrible harm it might do, and you told Will.”
“It was not I who told him,” said Mrs. Kirkman; and then there was a pause, and the two ladies looked at each other, and a soft, almost imperceptible flutter, visible only to a female eye, revealed that there might be something else to say.
“Who told him?” said Winnie, perceiving the indications, and feeling her heart thrill and beat high once more.
“I am very sorry to say anything, I am sure, to make it worse,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “It was not I who told him. I suppose you are aware that—that Major Percival is here? He was present at the marriage as well as I. I wonder he never told you. It was he who told Will. He only came to get the explanations from me.”
They thought she would very probably faint, or make some demonstration of distress, not knowing that this was what poor Winnie had been waiting, almost hoping for; and on the contrary, it seemed to put new force into her, and a kind of beauty, at which her companions stood aghast. The blood rushed into her faded cheek, and light came to her eyes. She could not speak at first, so overwhelming was the tide of energy and new life that seemed to pour into her veins. After all, she had been a true prophet. It was all for her sake. He had struck at her through her friends, and she could not be angry with him. It was a way like another of showing love, a way hard upon other people, no doubt, but carrying a certain poignant sweetness to her for whose sake the blow had fallen. But Winnie knew she was in the presence of keen observers, and put restraint upon herself.
“Where is Major Percival to be found?” she said, with a measured voice, which she thought concealed her excitement, but which was overdone, and made it visible. They thought she was meditating something desperate when she spoke in that unnatural voice, and drew her shawl round her in that rigid way. She might have been going to stab him, the bystanders thought, or do him some grievous harm.
“You would not go to him for that?” said Emma, with a little anxiety, stopping short at once in her tears and in her talk. “They never will let you talk to them about what they have done; and then they always say you take part with your own friends.”