“Yes, but they are not girls,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with a half smile; and then she too sighed. She was glad her boys were boys, and had more confidence in them, and Providence and life, than Aunt Agatha had. But she was not glad to think that her boys must leave her, and that she had no daughter to share her household life. The cloud which sat on Aunt Agatha’s careful brow came over her, too for the moment, and dimmed her eyes, and made her heart ache. “They came into the world for God’s uses and not for ours,” she said, recovering herself, “and though they are boys, we must not keep them unhappy. I will go over to Earlston to-morrow by the early train.”
“If you think it right,” said Miss Seton: but it was not cordially spoken. Aunt Agatha was very proud and sensitive in her way. She was the kind of woman to get into misunderstandings, and shun explanations, as much as if she had been a woman in a novel. She was as ready to take up a mistaken idea, and as determined not to see her mistake, as if she had been a heroine forced thereto by the exigencies of three volumes. Miss Seton had never come to the third volume herself; she thought it more dignified for her own part to remain in the complications and perplexities of the second; and it struck her that it was indelicate of Mary thus to open the subject, and lead Francis Ochterlony on, as it were, to declare his mind.
The question was quite a different one so far as Mary was concerned, to whom Francis Ochterlony had never stood in the position of a lover, nor was the subject of any delicate difficulties. With her it was a straightforward piece of business enough to consult her brother-in-law, who was the natural guardian of her sons, and who had always been well disposed towards them, especially while they kept at a safe distance. Islay was the only one who had done any practical harm at Earlston, and Mr. Ochterlony had forgiven, and, it is to be hoped, forgotten the downfall of the rococo chair. If she had had nothing more important to trouble her than a consultation so innocent! Though, to tell the truth, Mary did not feel that she had a great deal to trouble her, even with the uncertainty of Hugh’s future upon her hands. Even if his uncle were to contemplate anything so absurd as marriage or the founding of a hospital, Hugh could still make his own way in the world, as his brothers would have to do, and as his father had done before him. And Mrs. Ochterlony was not even overwhelmed by consideration of the very different characters of the boys, nor of the immense responsibility, nor of any of the awful thoughts with which widow-mothers are supposed to be overwhelmed. They were all well, God bless them; all honest and true, healthful and affectionate. Hugh had his crotchets and fidgety ways, but so had his father, and perhaps Mary loved her boy the better for them; and Wilfrid was a strange boy, but then he had always been strange, and it came natural to him. No doubt there might be undeveloped depths in both, of which their mother as yet knew nothing; but in the meantime Mary, like other mothers, took things as she saw them, and was proud of her sons, and had no disturbing fears. As for Islay, he was steady as a rock, and almost as strong, and did the heart good to behold, and even the weakest woman might have taken heart to trust him, whatever might be the temptations and terrors of “the world.” Mary had that composure which belongs to the better side of experience, as much as suspicion and distrust belong to its darker side. The world did not alarm her as it did Aunt Agatha; neither did Mr. Ochterlony alarm her, whose sentiments ought at least to be known by this time, and whose counsel she sought with no artful intention of drawing him out, but with an honest desire to have the matter settled one way or another. This was how the interval of calm passed away, and the new generation brought back a new and fuller life.
It was not all pleasure with which Mary rose next morning to go upon her mission to Earlston; but it was with a feeling of resurrection, a sense that she lay no longer ashore, but that the tide was once more creeping about her stranded boat, and the wind wooing the idle sail. There might be storms awaiting her upon the sea; storm and shipwreck and loss of all things lay in the future; possible for her boys as for others, certain for some; but that pricking, tingling thrill of danger and pain gave a certain vitality to the stir of life renewed. Peace is sweet, and there are times when the soul sighs for it; but life is sweeter. And this is how Mary, in her mother’s anxiety,—with all the possibilities of fate to affright her, if they could, yet not without a novel sense of exhilaration, her heart beating more strongly, her pulse fuller, her eye brighter,—went forth to open the door for her boy into his own personal and individual career.
CHAPTER XXIII.
T was a cheerful summer morning when Mary set out on her visit to her brother-in-law. She had said nothing to her boys about it, for Hugh was fantastical, like Aunt Agatha, and would have denounced her intention as an expedient to make his uncle provide for him. Hugh had gone out to attend to some of the many little businesses he had in hand for Sir Edward; and Islay was working in his own room preparing for the “coach,” to whom he was going in a few days; and Wilfrid, or Will, as everybody called him, was with his curate-tutor. The Cottage held its placid place upon the high bank of Kirtell, shining through its trees in a purple cloud of roses, and listening in the sun to that everlasting quiet voice that sung in its ear, summer and winter, the little river’s changeful yet changeless song. It looked like a place to which no changes could ever come; calm people in the stillness of age, souls at rest, little children, were the kind of people to live in it; and the stir and quickening of pleasurable pain which Mary felt in her own veins,—the sense of new life and movement about her,—felt out of place with the quiet house. Aunt Agatha was out of sight, ordering her household affairs; and the drawing-room was silent and deserted as a fairy palace, full of a thousand signs of a habitation, but without a single tenant audible or visible, except the roses that clambered about the open windows, and the bee that went in and made a confused investigation, and came out again none the wiser. An odd sense of the contrast struck Mrs. Ochterlony; but a little while before, her soul had been in unison with the calm of the place, and she had thought nothing of it; now she had woke up out of that fair chamber turned to the sunrising, the name which is Peace, and had stepped back into life, and felt the tingle and thrill of resurrection. And an unconscious smile came on her face as she looked back. To think that out of that silence and sunshine should pour out such a tide of new strength and vigour—and that henceforth hearts should leap with eagerness and wistfulness under that roof, and perhaps grow wild with joy, or perhaps, God knows, break with anguish, as news came good or evil! She had been but half alive so long, that the sense of living was sweet.
It was a moment to call forth many thoughts and recollections, but the fact was that she did not have time to entertain them. There happened to her one of those curious coincidences which occur so often, and which it is so difficult to account for. Long before she reached the little station, a tall figure broke the long vacant line of the dusty country road, a figure which Mary felt at once to be that of a stranger, and yet one she seemed to recognise. She could not believe her eyes, nor think it was anything but the association of ideas which misled her, and laughed at her own fantastic imagination as she went on. But nevertheless it is true that it was her brother-in-law himself who met her, long before she reached the railway by which she had meant to go to him. Her appearance struck him too, it was evident, with a little surprise; but yet she was at home, and might have been going anywhere; whereas the strange fact of his coming required a more elaborate explanation than he had in his power to give.
“I do not know exactly what put it into my head,” said Mr. Ochterlony; “perhaps some old work of mine which turned up the other day, and which I was doing when you were with me. I thought I would come over and have a talk with you about your boy.”
“It is very strange,” said Mary, “for this very morning I had made up my mind to come to you, and consult you. It must be some kind of magnetism, I suppose.”