It was the pleasantest two days that had been spent at Earlston in the memory of man. Mrs. Ochterlony went over all the house with very different feelings from those she had felt when she was an inmate of the place, and smiled at her own troubles and found her misery very comical; and little Nelly, who never in all her life before had known what it was to have two days to herself, was so happy that she was perfectly wretched about it when she went to bed. For it had never yet occurred to Nelly, as it does to so many young ladies, that she had a right to everything that was delightful and pleasant, and that the people who kept her out of her rights were ogres and tyrants. She was frightened and rather ashamed of herself for being so happy; and then she made it up by resolving to be doubly good and make twice as much a slave of herself as ever as soon as she got home. This curious and unusual development of feeling probably arose from the fact that Nelly had never been brought up at all, so to speak, but had simply grown; and had too much to do to have any time for thinking of herself—which is the best of all possible bringings up for some natures. As for Aunt Agatha, she went and came about this house, which could never be otherwise than interesting to her, with a wistful look and a flickering unsteady colour that would not have shamed even Nelly’s sixteen-year old cheek. Miss Seton saw ghosts of what might have been in every corner; she saw the unborn faces shine beside the never-lighted fire. She saw herself as she might have been, rising up to receive her guests, sitting at the head of the long, full, cheerful table. It was a curious sensation, and made her stop to think now and then which was the reality and which the shadow; and yet there could be no doubt that there was in it a certain charm.
And there could be no doubt, either, that a certain sadness fell upon Mr. Ochterlony when they were all gone. He had a fire lighted in his study that night, though it was warm, “to make it look a little more cheerful,” he said; and made Hugh sit with him long after the usual time. He sat buried in his great chair, with his thin, long limbs looking longer and thinner than ever, and his head a little sunk upon his breast. And then he began to moralize and give his nephew good advice.
“I hope you’ll marry, Hugh,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good to shut one’s self out from the society of women; they’re very unscientific, but still—— And it makes a great difference in a house. When I was a young fellow like you—— But, indeed, it is not necessary to go back so far. A man has it in his power to amuse himself for a long time, but it doesn’t last for ever—— And there are always things that might have been better otherwise——” Here Mr. Ochterlony made a long pause and stared into the fire, and after a while resumed without any preface: “When I’m gone, Hugh, you’ll pack up all that Henri Deux ware and send it over to—to your Aunt Agatha. I never thought she cared for china. John will pack it for you—he is a very careful fellow for that sort of thing. I put it all into the Louis Quinze cabinet; now mind you don’t forget.”
“Time enough for that, sir,” said Hugh, cheerfully, and not without a suppressed laugh; for the loves of Aunt Agatha and Francis Ochterlony were slightly comical to Hugh.
“That is all you know about it,” said his uncle. “But I shall expect you altogether to be of more use in the world than I have been, Hugh; and you’ll have more to do. Your father, you know, married when he was a boy, and went out of my reach; but you’ll have all your people to look after. Don’t play the generous prince and spoil the boys—mind you don’t take any stupid notions into your head of being a sort of Providence to them. It’s a great deal better for them to make their own way; but you’ll be always here, and you’ll lend a helping hand. Stand by them—that’s the great thing; and as for your mother, I needn’t recommend her to your kindest care. She has done a great deal for you.”
“Uncle, I wish you would not talk like this,” said Hugh; “there’s nothing the matter with you? What’s the good of making a fellow uneasy and sending him uncomfortable to bed? Leave those sort of things till you’re old and ill, and then I’ll attend to what you say.”
Mr. Ochterlony softly shook his head. “You won’t forget about the Henri Deux,” he said; and then he paused again and laughed as it were under his breath, with a kind of laugh that was pathetic and full of quaint tenderness. “If it had ever come to that, I don’t think you would have been any the worse,” he added; “we were not the sort of people to have heirs,” and the laugh faded into a lingering, wistful smile, half sad, half amused, with which on his face, he sat for a long time and gazed into the fading fire. It was, perhaps, simply that the presence of such visitors had stirred up the old recollections in his heart—perhaps that it felt strange to him to look back on his own past life in the light thrown upon it by the presence of his heir, and to feel that it was ending, while yet, in one sense, it had never begun. As for Hugh, to tell the truth, he was chiefly amused by his uncle’s reflective mood. He thought, which no doubt was to some extent true, that the old man was thinking of an old story which had come to nothing, and of which old Aunt Agatha was the heroine. There was something touching in it he could not but allow, but still he gave a laugh within himself at the superannuated romance. And all that immediately came of it, was the injunction not to forget about the Henri Deux.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
F the visit to Earlston, this was all that came immediately; but yet, if anybody had been there with clear-sighted eyes, there might have been other results perceptible and other symptoms of a great change at hand. Such little shadows of an event might have been traced from day to day if that once possible lady of the house, whose ghost Aunt Agatha had met with in all the rooms, had been there to watch over its master. There being nobody but Hugh, everything was supposed to go on in its usual way. Hugh had come to be fond of his uncle, and to look up to him in many ways; but he was young, and nothing had ever occurred to him to put insight into his eyes. He thought Mr. Ochterlony was just as usual—and so he was; and yet there were some things that were not as usual, and which might have aroused an experienced observer. And in the meantime something happened at the Cottage, where things did not happen often, which absorbed everybody’s thoughts for the moment, and threw Earlston and Mr. Ochterlony entirely into the shade.