Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

Nothing did happen, however, when they arrived at Earlston, where the master of the house received them, not with open arms, which was not his nature, but with all the enthusiasm he was capable of. He took them to see all his collections, everything he had that was most costly and rare. To go back to the house in this way, and see the scene of her former tortures; tortures which looked so light to look back upon, and were so amusing to think of, but which had been all but unbearable at the time, was strange to Mary. She told the story of her miseries, and they all laughed; but Mr. Ochterlony was still seen to change colour, when she pointed out the Etruscan vase which Hugh had taken into his hand, and the rococo chair which Islay had mounted. “This is the chair,” the master of Earlston said; and he did not laugh so frankly as the rest, but turned aside to show Miss Seton his Henri II. porcelain. “It was nothing to laugh at, at the time,” he said, confidentially, in a voice which sank into Aunt Agatha’s heart; and, to restore her composure, she paid great attention to the Henri Deux ware. She said she remembered longing very much to have a set like that when she was a girl. “I never knew you were fond of china,” said Mr. Ochterlony. “Oh, yes,” Aunt Agatha replied; but she did not explain that the china she had longed for was a toy service for her doll’s and little companions’ tea. Mr. Ochterlony put the costly cups away into a little cabinet, and locked it, after this; and he offered Aunt Agatha his arm, to lead her to the library, to see his collection there. She took it, but she trembled a little, the tender-hearted old woman. They looked such an old couple as they walked out of the room together, and yet there was something virginal and poetic about them, which they owed to their lonely lives. It was as if the roses that Hugh had just gathered for Nelly had been put away for half a century, and brought out again all dried and faded, but still roses, and with a lingering pensive perfume. And Sir Edward sat and smiled in a corner, and whispered to Mary to leave them to themselves a little: such things had been as that they might make it up.

There was a great dinner in the evening, at which Hugh’s health was drunk, and everybody hoped to see him for many a happy year at Earlston, yet prayed that it might be many a year before he had to take any other place than the one he now occupied at his uncle’s side. There were some county ladies present, who were very gracious to Mary, and anxious to know all about her boys, and whether she, too, was coming to Earlston; but who were disposed to snub Nelly, who was not Mrs. Ochterlony’s daughter, nor “any relation,” and who was clearly an interloper on such an occasion. Nelly did not care much for being snubbed; but she was very glad to seize the moment to propitiate Wilfrid, who had come into the room looking in what Nelly called “one of his states of mind;” for it must not be forgotten that she was a soldier’s daughter, and had been brought up exclusively in the regiment, and used many very colloquial forms of speech. She managed to glide to the other end of the room where Wilfrid was scowling over a collection of cameos without being noticed. To tell the truth, Nelly was easier in her mind when she was at a little distance from the Psyche and the Venus. She had never had any training in art, and she would have preferred to throw a cloak or, at the least, a lace shawl, or something, over those marble beauties. But she was, at least, wise enough to keep her sentiments to herself.

“Why have you come up so early, Will?” she said.

“What need I stay for, I wonder?” said Will; “I don’t care for their stupid county talk. It is just as bad as parish talk, and not a bit more rational. I suppose my uncle must have known better one time or other, or he could not have collected all these things here.”

“Do you think they are very pretty?” said Nelly, looking back from a safe distance, and thinking that, however pretty they might be, they were not very suitable for a drawing-room, where people in general were in the habit of putting on more decorous garments: by which it will be perceived that she was a very ignorant little girl and knew nothing about it, and had no natural feeling for art.

“Pretty!” said Will, “you have only to look and see what they are—or to hear their names would be enough. And to think of all those asses downstairs turned in among them, that probably would like a few stupid busts much better,—whereas there are plenty of other people that would give their ears——”

“Oh, Will!” cried Nelly, “you are always harping on the old string!”

“I am not harping on any string,” said Will. “All I want is, that people should stick to what they understand. Hugh might know how much money it was all worth, but I don’t know what else he could know about it. If my uncle was in his senses and left things in shares as they do in France and everywhere where they have any understanding——”

“And then what would become of the house and the family?” cried Nelly,—“if you had six sons and Hugh had six sons—and then your other brother. They would all come down to have cottages and be a sort of clan—instead of going and making a fortune like a man, and leaving Earlston to be the head——” Probably Nelly had somewhere heard the argument which she stated in this bewildering way, or picked it out of a novel, which was the only kind of literature she knew much about—for it would be vain to assert that the principles of primogeniture had ever been profoundly considered in her own thoughts—“and if you were the eldest,” she added, forsaking her argumentation, “I don’t think you would care so much for everybody going shares.”

“If I were the eldest it would be quite different,” said Will. And then he devoted himself to the cameos, and would enter into no further explanation. Nelly sat down beside him in a resigned way, and looked at the cameos too, without feeling very much interest in them, and wondered what the children were doing, and whether mamma’s head was bad; and her own astonishing selfishness in leaving mamma’s headache and the children to take care of themselves, struck her vividly as she sat there in the twilight and saw the Psyche and Venus, whom she did not approve of, gleaming white in the grey gloaming, and heard the loud voices of the ladies at the other end of the room. Then it began to come into her head how vain pleasures are, and how to do one’s duty is all one ought to care for in the world. Mrs. Ochterlony was at the other end of the drawing-room, talking to the other ladies, and “Mr. Hugh” was downstairs with a quantity of stupid men, and Will was in one of his “states of mind.” And the chances were that something had gone wrong at home; that Charley had fallen downstairs, or baby’s bath had been too hot for her, or something—a judgment upon Nelly for going away. At one moment she got so anxious thinking of it all, that she felt disposed to get up and run home all the way, to make sure that nothing had happened. Only that just then Aunt Agatha came to join them in looking over the cameos, and began to tell Nelly, as she often did, little stories about Mrs. Percival, and to call her “my dear love,” and to tell her her dress looked very nice, and that nothing was so pretty as a sweet natural rose in a girl’s hair. “I don’t care for artificial flowers at your age, my dear,” Aunt Agatha was saying, when the gentlemen came in and Hugh made his appearance; and gradually the children’s possible mischances and her mamma’s headache faded out of Nelly’s thoughts.