do a great deal more, any day, to please you.”
“I would cut off my hand to please you,” said Mary, with perhaps a momentary extravagance in the height of her passion. “You know there is no sacrifice I would not make for you; but oh, Hugh, not this, not this,” she said, with a sob that startled him – one of those sobs that tear and rend the breast they come from, and have no accompaniment of tears.
His answer was to come up to her side, and take the face which she had been covering, between his hands, and kiss it as if it had been a child’s. “My darling, it is only this that will do me any good. It is for my peace of mind,” he said, with all that tenderness and effusion which made him the best of husbands. He was so loving to her that, even in the bitterness of the injury, it was hard for Mary to refuse to be soothed and softened. He had got his way, and his unbounded love and fondness surrounded her with a kind of atmosphere of tender enthusiasm. He knew so well there was none like her, nobody fit to be put for a moment in comparison with his Mary; and this was how her fate was fixed for her, and the crisis came to an end.
CHAPTER IV
IAM going with you, Mary,” said Mrs. Kirkman, coming suddenly in upon the morning of the day which was to give peace to Major Ochterlony’s mind, and cloud over with something like a shadow of shame (or at least she thought so) his wife’s fair matron fame. The Colonel’s wife had put on her last white bonnet, which was not so fresh as it had been at the beginning of the season, and white gloves which were also a little the worse for wear. To be sure the marriage was not like a real marriage, and nobody knew how the unwilling bride would think proper to dress. Mrs. Kirkman came in at a quicker pace than ordinary, with her hair hanging half out of curl on either side of her face, as was always the case. She was fair, but of a greyish complexion, with light blue eyes à fleur de la tête, which generally she kept half veiled within their lids – a habit which was particularly aggravating to some of the livelier spirits. She came in hastily (for her), and found Mary seated disconsolate, and doing nothing, which is, in such a woman, one of the saddest signs of a mind disturbed. Mrs. Ochterlony sat, dropped down upon a chair, with her hands listlessly clasped in her lap, and a hot flush upon her cheek. She was lost in a dreary contemplation of the sacrifice which was about to be exacted from her, and of the possible harm it might do. She was thinking of her children, what effect it might have on them – and she was thinking bitterly, that for good or evil she could not help it; that again, as on many a previous occasion, her husband’s restless mind had carried the day over her calmer judgment, and that there was no way of changing it. To say that she consented with personal pain of the most acute kind, would not be to say all. She gave in, at the same time, with a foreboding utterly indistinct, and which she would not have given utterance to, yet which was strong enough to heighten into actual misery the pain and shame of her position. When Mrs. Kirkman came in, with her eyes full of observation, and making the keenest scrutiny from beneath the downcast lids, Mrs. Ochterlony was not in a position to hide her emotions. She was not crying, it is true, for the circumstances were too serious for crying; but it was not difficult to form an idea of her state of mind from her strangely listless attitude, and the expression of her face.
“I have come to go with you,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “I thought you would like to have somebody to countenance you. It will make no difference to me, I assure you, Mary; and both the Colonel and I think if there is any doubt, you know, that it is by far the wisest thing you could do. And I only hope – ”
“Doubt!” said Mary, lighting up for the moment. “There is no more doubt than there is of all the marriages made in Scotland. The people who go there to be married are not married again afterwards that I ever heard of. There is no doubt whatever – none in the world. I beg your pardon. I am terribly vexed and annoyed, and I don’t know what I am saying. To hear any one talk of doubt!”
“My dear Mary, we know nothing but what the Major has told us,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “You may depend upon it he has reason for what he is doing; and I do hope you will see a higher hand in it all, and feel that you are being humbled for your good.”
“I wish you would tell me how it can be for my good,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “when even you, who ought to know better, talk of doubt – you who have known us all along from the very first. Hugh has taken it into his head – that is the whole matter; and you, all of you know, when he takes a thing into his head – ”
She had been hurried on to say this by the rush of her disturbed thoughts; but Mary was not a woman to complain of her husband. She came to a sudden standstill, and rose up, and looked at her watch.
“It is about time to go,” she said, “and I am sorry to give you the trouble of going with me. It is not worth while for so short a distance; but, at least, don’t say anything more about it, please.”
Mrs. Kirkman had already made the remark that Mary was not at all “dressed.” She had on her brown muslin, which was the plainest morning dress in her possession, as everybody knew; and instead of going to her room, to make herself a little nice, she took up her bonnet, which was on the table, and tied it on without even so much as looking in the glass. “I am quite ready,” she said, when she had made this simple addition to her dress, and stood there, looking everything that was most unlike the Madonna of former days – flushed and clouded over, with lines in her forehead, and the corners of her mouth dropped, and her fair large serene beauty hidden beneath the thunder-cloud. And the Colonel’s wife was very sorry to see her friend in such a state of mind, as may be supposed.
“My dear Mary,” Mrs. Kirkman said, taking her arm as they went out, and holding it fast. “I should much wish to see you in a better frame of mind. Man is only the instrument in our troubles. It must have been that Providence saw you stood in need of it, my dear. He knows best. It would not have been sent if it had not been for your good.”
“In that way, if I were to stand in the sun till I got a sunstroke, it would be for my good,” said Mary, in anger. “You would say, it was God’s fault, and not mine. But I know it is my fault; I ought to have stood out and resisted, and I have not had the strength; and it is not for good, but evil. It is not God’s fault, but ours. It can be for nobody’s good.”
But after this, she would not say any more. Not though Mrs. Kirkman was shocked at her way of speaking, and took great pains to impress upon her that she must have been doing or thinking something God punished by this means. “Your pride must have wanted bringing down, my dear; as we all do, Mary, both you and I,” said the Colonel’s wife; but then Mrs. Kirkman’s humility was well known.
Thus they walked together to the chapel, whither various wondering people, who could not understand what it meant, were straying. Major Ochterlony had meant to come for his wife, but he was late, as he so often was, and met them only near the chapel-door; and then he did something which sent the last pang of which it was capable to Mary’s heart, though it was only at a later period that she found it out. He found his boy with the Hindoo nurse, and brought little Hugh in, ’wildered and wondering. Mr. Churchill by this time had put his surplice on, and all was ready. Colonel Kirkman had joined his wife, and stood by her side behind the “couple,” furtively grasping his grey moustache, and looking out of a corner of his eyes at the strange scene. Mrs. Kirkman, for her part, dropt her eyelids as usual, and looked down upon Mary kneeling at her feet, with a certain compassionate uncertainty, sorry that Mrs. Ochterlony did not see this trial to be for her good, and at the same time wondering within herself whether it had all been perfectly right, or was not more than a notion of the Major’s. Farther back Miss Sorbette, who was with Annie Hesketh, was giving vent in a whisper to the same sentiments.
“I am very sorry for poor Mary: but could it be all quite right before?” Miss Sorbette was saying. “A man does not take fright like that for nothing. We women are silly, and take fancies; but when a man does it, you know – ”
And it was with such an accompaniment that Mary knelt down, not looking like a Madonna, at her husband’s side. As for the Major, an air of serenity had diffused itself over his handsome features. He knelt in quite an easy attitude, pleased with himself, and not displeased to be the centre of so interesting a group. Mary’s face was slightly averted from him, and was burning with the same flush of indignation as