Madonna Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

It happened on the very evening after their return home. Aunt Agatha had been troubled with a headache on the previous night—she said, from the fatigue of the journey, though possibly the emotions excited at Earlston had something to do with it—and had been keeping very quiet all day; Nelly Askell had gone home, eager to get back to her little flock, and to her mother, who was the greatest baby of all; Mary had gone out upon some village business; and Aunt Agatha sat alone, slightly drowsy and gently thoughtful, in the summer afternoon. She was thinking, with a soft sigh, that perhaps everything was for the best. There are a great many cases in which it is very difficult to say so—especially when it seems the mistake or blindness of man, instead of the direct act of God, that has brought the result about. Miss Seton had a meek and quiet spirit; and yet it seemed strange to her to make out how it could be for the best that her own life and her old lover’s should thus end, as it were, unfulfilled, and all through his foolishness. Looking at it in an abstract point of view, she almost felt as if she could have told him of it, had he been near enough to hear. Such a different life it might have been to both; and now the moment for doing anything had long past, and the two barren existences were alike coming to an end. This was what Miss Seton could not help thinking; and feeling as she did that it was from beginning to end a kind of flying in the face of Providence, it was difficult to see how it could be for the best. If it had been her own fault, no doubt she would have felt as Mr. Ochterlony did, a kind of tender and not unpleasant remorse; but one is naturally less tolerant and more impatient when one feels that it is not one’s own, but another’s fault. The subject so occupied her mind, and her activity was so lulled to rest by the soft fatigue and languor consequent upon the ending of the excitement, that she did not take particular notice how the afternoon glided away. Mary was out, and Will was out, and no visitor came to disturb the calm. Miss Seton had cares of more immediate force even at that moment—anxieties and apprehensions about Winnie, which had brought of late many a sickening thrill to her heart; but these had all died away for the time before the force of recollections and the interest of her own personal story thus revived without any will of her own; and the soft afternoon atmosphere, and the murmuring of the bees, and the roses at the open windows, and the Kirtell flowing audible but unseen, lulled Aunt Agatha, and made her forget the passage of time. Then all at once she roused herself with a start. Perhaps—though she did not like to entertain such an idea—she had been asleep, and heard it in a dream; or perhaps it was Mary, whose voice had a family resemblance. Miss Seton sat upright in her chair after that first start and listened very intently, and said to herself that of course it must be Mary. It was she who was a fantastical old woman to think she heard voices which in the course of nature could not be within hearing. Then she observed how late it was, and that the sunshine slanted in at the west window and lay along the lawn outside almost in a level line. Mary was late, later than usual; and Aunt Agatha blushed to confess, even to herself, that she must have, as she expressed it, “just closed her eyes,” and had a little dream in her solitude. She got up now briskly to throw this drowsiness off, and went out to look if Mary was coming, or Will in sight, and to tell Peggy about the tea—for nothing so much revives one as a cup of tea when one is drowsy in the afternoon. Miss Seton went across the little lawn, and the sun shone so strongly in her eyes as she reached the gate that she had to put up her hand to shade them, and for the moment could see nothing. Was that Mary so near the gate? The figure was dark against the sunshine, which shone right into Aunt Agatha’s eyes, and made everything black between her and the light. It came drifting as it were between her and the sun, like the phantom ship in the mariner’s vision. She gazed and did not see, and felt as if a kind of insanity was taking possession of her. “Is it Mary?” she said, in a trembling voice, and at the same moment felt by something in the air that it was not Mary. And then Aunt Agatha gave such a cry as brought Peggy, and indeed all the household, in alarm to the door.

It was a woman who looked as old as Mary, and did not seem ever to have been half so fair. She had a shawl drawn tightly round her shoulders, as if she were cold, and a veil over her face. She was of a very thin meagre form, with a kind of forlorn grace about her, as if she might have been splendid under better conditions. Her eyes were hollow and large, her cheek-bones prominent, her face worn out of all freshness, and possessing only what looked like a scornful recollection of beauty. The noble form had missed its development, the fine capabilities had been checked or turned in a false direction. When Aunt Agatha uttered that great cry which brought Peggy from the utmost depths of the house, the new-comer showed no corresponding emotion. She said, “No; it is I,” with a kind of bitter rather than affectionate meaning, and stood stock-still before the gate, and not even made a movement to lift her veil. Miss Seton made a tremulous rush forward to her, but she did not advance to meet it; and when Aunt Agatha faltered and was likely to fall, it was not the stranger’s arm that interposed to save her. She stood still, neither advancing nor going back. She read the shock, the painful recognition, the reluctant certainty in Miss Seton’s eye. She was like the returning prodigal so far, but she was not content with his position. It was no happiness for her to go home, and yet it ought to have been; and she could not forgive her aunt for feeling the shock of recognition. When she roused herself, after a moment, it was not because she was pleased to come home, but because it occurred to her that it was absurd to stand still and be stared at, and make a scene.

And when Peggy caught her mistress in her arms, to keep her from falling, the stranger made a step forward and gave a hurried kiss, and said, “It is I, Aunt Agatha. I thought you would have known me better. I will follow you directly;” and then turned to take out her purse, and give a shilling to the porter, who had carried her bag from the station—which was a proceeding which they all watched in consternation, as if it had been something remarkable. Winnie was still Winnie, though it was difficult to realize that Mrs. Percival was she. She was coming back wounded, resentful, remorseful to her old home; and she did not mean to give in, nor show the feelings of a prodigal, nor gush forth into affectionateness. To see her give the man the shilling brought Aunt Agatha to herself. She raised her head upon Peggy’s shoulder, and stood upright, trembling, but self-restrained. “I am a silly old woman to be so surprised,” she said; “but you did not write to say what day we were to expect you, my dear love.”

“I did not write anything about it,” said Winnie, “for I did not know. But let me go in, please; don’t let us stay here.”

“Come in, my darling,” said Aunt Agatha. “Oh, how glad, how thankful, how happy I am, Winnie, my dear love, to see you again!”

“I think you are more shocked than glad,” said Winnie; and that was all she said, until they had entered the room where Miss Seton had just left her maiden dreams. Then the wanderer, instead of throwing herself into Aunt Agatha’s kind longing arms, looked all round her with a strange passionate mournfulness and spitefulness. “I don’t wonder you were shocked,” she said, going up to the glass, and looking at herself in it. “You, all just the same as ever, and such a change in me!”

“Oh, Winnie, my darling!” cried Aunt Agatha, throwing herself upon her child with a yearning which was no longer to be restrained; “do you think there can ever be any change in you to me? Oh, Winnie, my dear love! come and let me look at you; let me feel I have you in my arms at last, and that you have really come home.”

“Yes, I have come home,” said Winnie, suffering herself to be kissed. “I am sure I am very glad that you are pleased. Of course Mary is still here, and her children? Is she going to marry again? Are her boys as tiresome as ever? Yes, thank you, I will take my things off—and I should like something to eat. But you must not make too much of me, Aunt Agatha, for I have not come only for a day.”

“Winnie, dear, don’t you know if it was for your good I would like to have you for ever?” cried poor Aunt Agatha, trembling so that she could scarcely form the words.

And then for a moment, the strange woman, who was Winnie, looked as if she too was moved. Something like a tear came into the corner of her eye. Her breast heaved with one profound, unnatural, convulsive swell. “Ah, you don’t know me now,” she said, with a certain sharpness of anguish and rage in her voice. Aunt Agatha did not understand it, and trembled all the more; but her good genius led her, instead of asking questions as she was burning to do, to take off Winnie’s bonnet and her shawl, moving softly about her with her soft old hands, which shook yet did their office. Aunt Agatha did not understand it, but yet it was not so very difficult to understand. Winnie was abashed and dismayed to find herself there among all the innocent recollections of her youth—and she was full of rage and misery at the remembrance of all her injuries, and to think of the explanation which she would have to give. She was even angry with Aunt Agatha because she did not know what manner of woman her Winnie had grown—but beneath all this impatience and irritation was such a gulf of wretchedness and wrong that even the unreasonableness took a kind of miserable reason. She did well to be angry with herself, and all the world. Her friends ought to understand the difference, and see what a changed creature she was, without exacting the humiliation of an explanation; and yet at the same time the poor soul in her misery was angry to perceive that Aunt Agatha did see a difference. She suffered her bonnet and shawl to be taken off, but started when she felt Miss Seton’s soft caressing hand upon her hair. She started partly because it was a caress she was unused to, and partly that her hair had grown thin and even had some grey threads in it, and she did not like that change to be observed; for she had been proud of her pretty hair, and taken pleasure in it as so many women do. She rose up as she felt that touch, and took the shawl which had been laid upon a chair.