Madonna Mary

“It is very kind of you to come down, Winnie, my darling, when you knew I was alone,” said Aunt Agatha, giving her a tender embrace.

“I don’t think it is kind in me,” said Winnie; and then she sat down, and took her sister’s office upon her, to Miss Seton’s still greater bewilderment, and make the tea, without quite knowing what she was doing. “I suppose Mary has been travelling all night,” she said; “I am going into Carlisle, Aunt Agatha, to that woman, to know what it is all about.”

“Oh, my darling, you were always so generous,” cried Aunt Agatha, in amaze; “but you must not do it. She might say things to you, or you might meet people – ”

“If I did meet people, I know how to take care of myself,” said Winnie; and that flush came to her face, and that light to her eye, like the neigh of the war-horse when he hears the sound of battle.

Aunt Agatha was struck dumb. Terror seized her, as she looked at the kindling cheeks and rapid gesture, and saw the Winnie of old, all impatient and triumphant, dawning out from under the cloud.

“Oh, Winnie, you are not going away,” she cried, with a thrill of presentiment. “Mary has gone, and they have all gone. You are not going to leave me all by myself here?”

“I?” said Winnie. There was scorn in the tone, and yet what was chiefly in it was a bitter affectation of humility. “It will be time enough to fear my going, when any one wants me to go.”

Miss Seton was a simple woman, and yet she saw that there lay more meaning under these words than the plain meaning they bore. She clasped her hands, and lifted her appealing eyes to Winnie’s face – and she was about to speak, to question, to remonstrate, to importune, when her companion suddenly seized her hands tight, and silenced her by the sight of an emotion more earnest and violent than anything Aunt Agatha knew.

“Don’t speak to me,” she said, with her eyes blazing, and clasped the soft old hands in hers till she hurt them. “Don’t speak to me; I don’t know what I am going to do – but don’t talk to me, Aunt Agatha. Perhaps my life – and Mary’s – may be fixed to-day.”

“Oh, Winnie, I don’t understand you,” cried Aunt Agatha, trembling, and freeing her poor little soft crushed hands.

“And I don’t understand myself,” said Winnie. “Don’t let us say a word more.”

What did it mean, that flush in her face, that thrill of purpose and meaning in her words, and her step, and her whole figure? – and what had Mary to do with it? – and how could their fate be fixed one way or other? – Aunt Agatha asked herself these questions vainly, and could make nothing of them. But after breakfast she went to her room and said her prayers – which was the best thing to do; and in that moment Winnie, whose prayers were few though her wants were countless, took a rose from the trellis, and pinned it in with her brooch, and went softly away. I don’t know what connection there was between the rose and Aunt Agatha’s prayers, but somehow the faint perfume softened the wild, agitated, stormy heart, and suggested to it that sacrifice was being made and supplications offered somewhere for its sins and struggles. Thus, when his sons and daughters went out to their toils and pleasures, Job drew near the altar lest some of them might curse God in their hearts.

It was strange to see her sallying forth by herself, she who had been shielded from every stranger’s eye; – and yet there was a sense of freedom in it – freedom, and danger, and exhilaration, which was sweet to Winnie. She went rushing in to Carlisle in the express train, flying as it were on the wings of the wind. But Mrs. Kirkman was not at home. She was either working in her district, or she was teaching the infant school, or giving out work to the poor women, or perhaps at the mothers’ meeting, which she always said was the most precious opportunity of all; or possibly she might be making calls – which, however, was an hypothesis which her maid rejected as unworthy of her. Mrs. Percival found herself brought to a sudden standstill when she heard this. The sole audible motive which she had proposed to herself for her expedition was to see Mrs. Kirkman, and for the moment she did not know what to do. After a while, however, she turned and went slowly and yet eagerly in another direction. She concluded she would go to the Askells, who might know something about it. They were Percival’s friends; they might be in the secret of his plans – they might convey to him the echo of her indignation and disdain; possibly even he might himself – But Winnie would not let herself consider that thought. Captain Askell’s house was not the same cold and neglected place where Mary had seen Emma after their return. They had a little more money – and that was something; and Nelly was older – which was a great deal more; but even Nelly could not altogether abrogate the character which her mother gave to her house. The maid who opened the door had bright ribbons in her cap, but yet was a sloven, half-suppressed; and the carpets on the stairs were badly fitted, and threatened here and there to entangle the unwary foot. And there was a bewildering multiplicity of sounds in the house. You could hear the maids in the kitchen, and the children in the nursery – and even as Winnie approached the drawing-room she could hear voices thrilling with an excitement which did not become that calm retreat. There was a sound as of a sob, and there was a broken voice a little loud in its accents. Winnie went on with a quicker throb of her heart – perhaps he himself – But when the door opened, it was upon a scene she had not thought of. Mrs. Kirkman was there, seated high as on a throne, looking with a sad but touching resignation upon the disturbed household. And it was Emma who was sobbing – sobbing and crying out, and launching a furious little soft incapable clenched hand into the air – while Nelly, all glowing red, eyes lit up with indignation, soft lips quivering with distress, stood by, with a gaze of horror and fury and disgust fixed on the visitor’s face. Winnie went in, and they all stopped short and stared at her, as if she had dropped from the skies. Her appearance startled and dismayed them, and yet it was evidently in perfect accordance with the spirit of the scene. She could see that at the first glance. She saw they were already discussing this event, whatever it might be. Therefore Winnie did not hesitate. She offered no ordinary civilities herself, nor required any. She went straight up to where Mrs. Kirkman sat, not looking at others. “I have come to ask you what it means,” she said; and Winnie felt that they all stopped and gave way to her as to one who had a right to know.

“That is what I am asking,” cried Emma, “what does it mean? We have all known it for ages, and none of us said a word. And she that sets up for being a Christian! As if there was no honour left in the regiment, and as if we were to talk of everything that happens! Ask her, Mrs. Percival. I don’t believe half nor a quarter what they say of any one. When they dare to raise up a scandal about Madonna Mary, none of us are safe. And a thing that we have all known for a hundred years!”

“Oh, mamma!” said Nelly, softly, under her breath. The child knew everything about everybody, as was to have been expected; every sort of tale had been told in her presence. But what moved her to shame was her mother’s share. It was a murmured compunction, a vicarious acknowledgment of sin. “Oh, mamma!”

“It is not I that am saying it,” cried Emma, again resuming her sob. “I would have been torn to pieces first. Me to harm her that was always a jewel! Oh, ask her, ask her! What is going to come of it, and what does it mean?”

“My dear, perhaps Nelly had better retire before we speak of it any more,” said Mrs. Kirkman, meekly. “I am not one that thinks it right to encourage delusions in the youthful mind, but still, if there is much more to be said – ”

And then it was Nelly’s turn to speak. “You have talked about everything in the world without sending me away,” cried the girl, “till I wondered and wondered you did not die of shame. But I’ll stay now. One is safe,” said Nelly, with a little cry of indignation and youthful rage, “when you so much as name Mrs. Ochterlony’s name.”

All this time Winnie was standing upright and eager before Mrs. Kirkman’s chair. It was not from incivility that they offered her no place among them. No one thought of it, and neither did she. The conflict around her had sobered Winnie’s thoughts. There was no trace of her husband in it, nor of that striking her through her friends which had excited and exhilarated her mind; but the family instinct of mutual defence awoke in her. “My sister has heard something which has – which has had a singular effect upon her,” said Winnie, pausing instinctively, as if she had been about to betray something. “And it is you who have done it; I want to know what it means.”

“Oh, she must be ill!” wailed poor Emma; “I knew she would be ill. If she dies it will be your fault. Oh, let me go up and see. I knew she must be ill.”

As for Mrs. Kirkman, she shook her head and her long curls, and looked compassionately upon her agitated audience. And then Winnie heard all the long-hoarded well-remembered tale. The only difference made in it was that by this time all confidence in the Gretna Green marriage, which had once been allowed, at least as a matter of courtesy, had faded out of the story. Even Mrs. Askell no longer thought of that. When the charm of something to tell began to work, the Captain’s wife chimed in with the narrative of her superior officer. All the circumstances of that long-past event were revealed to the wonder-stricken hearers. Mary’s distress, and Major Ochterlony’s anxiety, and the consultations he had with everybody, and the wonderful indulgence and goodness of the ladies at the station, who never made any difference, and all their benevolent hopes that so uncomfortable an incident was buried in the past, and could now have no painful results; – all this was told to Winnie in detail; and in the confidential committee thus formed, her own possible deficiencies and shortcomings were all passed over. “Nothing would have induced me to say a syllable on the subject if you had not been dear Mary’s sister,” Mrs. Kirkman said; and then she relieved her mind and told it all.

Winnie, for her part, sat dumb and listened. She was more than struck dumb – she was stupified by the news. She had thought that Mary might have been “foolish,” as she herself had been “foolish;” even that Mary might have gone further, and compromised herself; but of a dishonour which involved such consequences she had never dreamed. She sat and heard it all in a bewildered horror, with the faces of Hugh and Will floating like spectres before her eyes. A woman gone astray from her duty as a wife was not, Heaven help her! so extraordinary an object in poor Winnie’s eyes – but, good heavens! Mary’s marriage, Mary’s boys, the very foundation and beginning of her life! The room went round and round with her as she sat and listened. A public trial, a great talk in the papers, one brother against another, and Mary, Mary, the chief figure in all! Winnie put her hands up to her ears, not to shut out the sound of this incredible story, but to deaden the noises in her head, the throbbing of all her pulses, and stringing of all her nerves. She was so stupified that she could make no sort of stand against it, no opposition to the evidence, which, indeed, was crushing, and left no opening for unbelief. She accepted it all, or rather, was carried away by the bewildering, overwhelming tide. And even Emma Askell got excited, and woke up out of her crying, and added her contribution of details. Poor little Nelly, who had heard it all before, had retired to a corner and taken up her work, and might be seen in the distance working furiously, with a hot flush on her cheek, and now and then wiping a furtive tear from her eye. Nelly did not know what to say, nor how to meet it – but there was in her little woman’s soul a conviction that something unknown must lie behind, and that the inference at least was not true.

“And you told Will?” said Winnie, rousing up at last. “You knew all the horrible harm it might do, and you told Will.”

“It was not I who told him,” said Mrs. Kirkman; and then there was a pause, and the two ladies looked at each other, and a soft, almost imperceptible flutter, visible only to a female eye, revealed that there might be something else to say.

“Who told him?” said Winnie, perceiving the indications, and feeling her heart thrill and beat high once more.

“I am very sorry to say anything, I am sure, to make it worse,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “It was not I who told him. I suppose you are aware that – that Major Percival is here? He was present at the marriage as well as I. I wonder he never told you. It was he who told Will. He only came to get the explanations from me.”

They thought she would very probably faint, or make some demonstration of distress, not knowing that this was what poor Winnie had been waiting, almost hoping for; and on the contrary, it seemed to put new force into her, and a kind of beauty, at which her companions stood aghast. The blood rushed into her faded cheek, and light came to her eyes. She could not speak at first, so overwhelming was the tide of energy and new life that seemed to pour into her veins. After all, she had been a true prophet. It was all for her sake. He had struck at her through her friends, and she could not be angry with him. It was a way like another of showing love, a way hard upon other people, no doubt, but carrying a certain poignant sweetness to her for whose sake the blow had fallen. But Winnie knew she was in the presence of keen observers, and put restraint upon herself.

“Where is Major Percival to be found?” she said, with a measured voice, which she thought concealed her excitement, but which was overdone, and made it visible. They thought she was meditating something desperate when she spoke in that unnatural voice, and drew her shawl round her in that rigid way. She might have been going to stab him, the bystanders thought, or do him some grievous harm.

“You would not go to him for that?” said Emma, with a little anxiety, stopping short at once in her tears and in her talk. “They never will let you talk to them about what they have done; and then they always say you take part with your own friends.”

Mrs. Kirkman, too, showed a sudden change of interest, and turned to the new subject with zeal and zest: “If you are really seeking a reconciliation with your husband – ” she began; but this was more than Winnie could bear.

“I asked where Major Percival was to be found,” she said; “I was not discussing my own affairs: but Nelly will tell me. If that is all about Mary, I will go away.”

“I will go with you,” cried Emma: “only wait till I get my things. I knew she would be ill; and she must not think that we are going to forsake her now. As if it could make any difference to us that have known it for ever so long! Only wait till I get my things.”

“Poor Mary! she is not in a state of mind to be benefited by any visit,” said Mrs. Kirkman, solemnly. “If it were not for that, I would go.”

As for Winnie, she was trembling with impatience, eager to be free and to be gone, and yet not content to go until she had left a sting behind her, like a true woman. “How you all talk!” she cried; “as if your making any difference would matter. You can set it going, but all you can do will never stop it. Mary has gone to Will, whom you have made her enemy. Perhaps she has gone to ask her boy to save her honour; and you think she will mind about your making a difference, or about your visits – when it is a thing of life or death!”

And she went to the door all trembling, scarcely able to support herself, shivering with excitement and wild anticipation. Now she must see him – now it was her duty to go to him and ask him why – She rushed away, forgetting even that she had not obtained the information she came to seek. She had been speaking of Mary, but it was not of Mary she was thinking. Mary went totally out of her mind as she hurried down the stairs. Now there was no longer any choice; she must go to him, must see him, must renew the interrupted but never-ended struggle. It filled her with an excitement which she could not subdue nor resist. Her heart beat so loud that she did not hear the sound of her own step on the stairs, but seemed somehow to be carried down by the air, which encircled her like a soft whirlwind; and she did not hear Nelly behind her calling her, to tell her where he lived. She had no recollection of that. She did not wait for any one to open the door for her, but rushed out, moved by her own purpose as by a supernatural influence; and but for the violent start he gave, it would have been into his arms she rushed as she stepped out from the Askells’ door.

This was how their meeting happened. Percival had been going there to ask some questions about the Cottage and its inmates, when his wife, with that look he knew so well, with all the coming storm in her eyes, and the breath of excitement quick on her parted lips – stepped out almost into his arms. He was fond of her, notwithstanding all their mutual sins; and their spirits rushed together, though in a different way from that rush which accompanies the meeting of the lips. They rushed together with a certain clang and spark; and the two stood facing each other in the street, defying, hating, struggling, feeling that they belonged to each other once more.

“I must speak with you,” said Winnie, in her haste; “take me somewhere that I may speak. Is this your revenge? I know what you have done. When everything is ended that you can do to me, you strike me through my friends.”

“If you choose to think so – ” said Percival.

“If I choose to think so? What else can I think?” said the hot combatant; and she went on by his side with hasty steps and a passion and force which she had not felt in her since the day when she fled from him. She felt the new tide in her veins, the new strength in her heart. It was not the calm of union, it was the heat of conflict; but still, such as it was, it was her life. She went on with him, never looking or thinking where they were going, till they reached the rooms where he was living, and then, all by themselves, the husband and wife looked each other in the face.

“Why did you leave me, Winnie?” he said. “I might be wrong, but what does it matter? I may be wrong again, but I have got what I wanted. I would not have minded much killing the boy for the sake of seeing you and having it out. Let them manage it their own way; it is none of our business. Come back to me, and let them settle it their own way.”

“Never!” cried Winnie, though there was a struggle in her heart. “After doing all the harm you could do to me, do you think you can recall me by ruining my sister? How dare you venture to look me in the face?”

“And I tell you I did not mind what I did to get to see you and have it out with you,” said Percival; “and if that is why you are here, I am glad I did it. What is Mary to me? She must look after herself. But I cannot exist without my wife.”

“It was like that, your conduct drove me away,” said Winnie, with a quiver on her lips.

“It was like it,” said he, “only that you never did me justice. My wife is not like other men’s wives. I might drive you away, for you were always impatient; but you need not think I would stick at anything that had to be done to get you back.”

“You will never get me back,” said Winnie, with flashing eyes. All her beauty had come back to her in that moment. It was the warfare that did it, and at the same time it was the homage and flattery which were sweet to her, and which she could see in everything he said. He would have stuck at nothing to get her back. For that object he would have ruined, killed, or done anything wicked. What did it matter about the other people? There was a sort of magnificence in it that took her captive; for neither of the two had pure motives or a high standard of action, or enough even of conventional goodness to make them hypocrites. They both acknowledged, in a way, that themselves, the two of them, were the chief objects in the universe, and everything else in the world faded into natural insignificance when they stood face to face, and their great perennial conflict was renewed.

“I do not believe it,” said Percival. “I have told you I will stick at nothing. Let other people take care of their own affairs. What have you to do in that weedy den with that old woman? You are not good enough, and you never were meant for that. I knew you would come to me at the last.”

“But you are mistaken,” said Winnie, still breathing fire and flame. “The old woman, as you call her, is good to me, good as nobody ever was. She loves me, though you may think it strange. And if I have come to you it is not for you; it is to ask what you have done, what your horrible motive could be, and why, now you have done every injury to me a man could do, you should try to strike me through my friends.”

“I do not care that for your friends,” said Percival. “It was to force you to see me, and have it out. Let them take care of themselves. Neither man nor woman has any right to interfere in my affairs.”

“Nobody was interfering in your affairs,” cried Winnie; “do you think they had anything to do with it? – could they have kept me if I wanted to go? It is me you are fighting against. Leave Mary alone, and put out your strength on me. I harmed you, perhaps, when I gave in to you and let you marry me. But she never did you any harm. Leave Mary, at least, alone.”

Percival turned away with a disdainful shrug of his shoulders. He was familiar enough with the taunt. “If you harmed me by that act, I harmed you still more, I suppose,” he said. “We have gone over that ground often enough. Let us have it out now. Are you coming back to your duty and to me.”

“I came to speak of Mary,” said Winnie, facing him as he turned. “Set those right first who have never done you any harm, and then we can think of the others. The innocent come first. Strike at me like a man, but not through my friends.”

She sat down as she spoke, without quite knowing what she did. She sat down, because, though the spirit was moved to passionate energy, the flesh was weak. Perhaps something in the movement touched the man who hated and loved her, as she loved and hated him. A sudden pause came to the conflict, such as does occur capriciously in such struggles; in the midst of their fury a sudden touch of softness came over them. They were alone – nothing but mists of passion were between them, and though they were fighting like foes, their perverse souls were one. He came up to her suddenly and seized her hands, not tenderly, but rudely, as was natural to his state of mind.

“Winnie,” he said, “this will not do; come away with me. You may struggle as you please, but you are mine. Don’t let us make a laughing-stock of ourselves! What are a set of old women and children between you and me? Let them fight it out; it will all come right. What is anything in the world between you and me? Come! I am not going to be turned off or put away as if you did not mind. I know you better than that. Come! I tell you, nothing can stand between you and me.”

“Never!” said Winnie, blazing with passion; but even while she spoke the course of the torrent changed. It leaped the feeble boundaries, and went into the other channel – the channel of love which runs side by side with that of hate. “You leave me to be insulted by everybody who has a mind – and if I were to go with you, it is you who would insult me!” cried Winnie. And the tears came pouring to her eyes suddenly like a thunder-storm. It was all over in a moment, and that was all that was said. What were other people that either he or she should postpone their own affairs to any secondary consideration? Their spirits rushed together with a flash of fire, and roll of thunder. The suddenness of it was the thing that made it effectual. Something “smote the chord of self, that trembling” burst into a tumult of feeling and took to itself the semblance of love; no matter how it had been brought about. Was not anything good that set them face to face, and showed the two that life could not continue for them apart? Neither the tears, nor the reproaches, nor the passion were over, but it changed all at once into such a quarrel as had happened often enough before then. As soon as Winnie came back to her warfare, she had gone back, so to speak, to her duties according to her conception of them. Thus the conflict swelled, and rose, and fluctuated, and softened, like many another; but no more thoughts of the Cottage, or of Aunt Agatha, or of Mary’s sudden calamity drew Winnie from her own subject. After all, it was, as she had felt, a pasteboard cottage let down upon her for the convenience of the moment – a thing to disappear by pulleys when the moment of necessity was over. And when they had had it out, she went off with her husband the same evening, sending a rapid note of explanation to Aunt Agatha – and not with any intention of unkindness, but only with that superior sense of the importance of her own concerns which was natural to her. She hoped Mary would come back soon, and that all would be comfortably settled, she said. “And Mary is more of a companion to you than I ever could be,” Winnie added in her letter, with a touch of that strange jealousy which was always latent in her. She was glad that Mary should be Miss Seton’s companion, and yet was vexed that anybody should take her place with her aunt, to whom she herself had been all in all. Thus Winnie, who had gone into Carlisle that morning tragically bent upon the confounding of her husband’s plans, and the formation of one eternal wall of separation between them, eloped with him in the evening as if he had been her lover. And there was a certain thrill of pride and tenderness in her bosom to think that to win her back he would stick at nothing, and did not hesitate to strike her through her friends.