Margaret Oliphant - Madonna Mary

“Poor old man!” said Mary, “I am very sorry. I had forgotten his name; but really, – if you speak like this of our unfortunate marriage, you will hurt my feelings,” Mrs. Ochterlony added. She had cast down her eyes on her work, but still there was a gleam of fun out of one of the corners. This was all the effect made upon her mind by words which would have naturally produced a scene between half the married people in the world.

As for the Major, he sighed: he was in a sighing mood, and at such moments his wife’s obtusity and thoughtlessness always made him sad. “It is easy talking,” he said, “and if it were not on your account, Mary – The fact is that everything has gone wrong that had any connection with it. The blacksmith’s house, you know, was burned down, and his kind of a register – if it was any good, and I am sure I don’t know if it was any good; and then that woman died, though she was as young as you are, and as healthy, and nobody had any right to expect that she would die,” Major Ochterlony added with an injured tone, “and now old Sommerville; and we have nothing in the world to vouch for its being a good marriage, except what that blacksmith fellow called the ‘lines.’ Of course you have taken care of the lines,” said the Major, with a little start. It was the first time that this new subject of doubt had occurred to his mind.

“To vouch for its being a good marriage!” said Mrs. Ochterlony: “really, Hugh, you go too far. Our marriage is not a thing to make jokes about, you know – nor to get up alarms about either. Everybody knows all about it, both among your people and mine. It is very vexatious and disagreeable of you to talk so.” As she spoke the colour rose to Mary’s matron cheek. She had learned to make great allowances for her husband’s anxious temper and perpetual panics; but this suggestion was too much for her patience just at the moment. She calmed down, however, almost immediately, and came to herself with a smile. “To think you should almost have made me angry!” she said, taking up her work again. This did not mean to imply that to make Mrs. Ochterlony angry was at all an impossible process. She had her gleams of wrath like other people, and sometimes it was not at all difficult to call them forth; but, so far as the Major’s “temperament” was concerned, she had got, by much exercise, to be the most indulgent of women – perhaps by finding that no other way of meeting it was of any use.

“It is not my fault, my love,” said the Major, with a meekness which was not habitual to him. “But I hope you are quite sure you have the lines. Any mistake about them would be fatal. They are the only proof that remains to us. I wish you would go and find them, Mary, and let me make sure.”

“The lines!” said Mrs. Ochterlony, and, notwithstanding her self-command, she faltered a little. “Of course I must have them somewhere – I don’t quite recollect at this moment. What do you want them for, Hugh? Are we coming into a fortune, or what are the statistics good for? When I can lay my hand upon them, I will give them to you,” she added, with that culpable carelessness which her husband had already so often remarked in her. If it had been a trumpery picture or book that had been mislaid, she could not have been less concerned.

“When you can lay your hands upon them!” cried the exasperated man. “Are you out of your senses, Mary? Don’t you know that they are your sheet-anchor, your charter – the only document you have – ”

“Hugh,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “tell me what this means. There must be something in it more than I can see. What need have I for documents? What does it matter to us this old man being dead, more than it matters to any one the death of somebody who has been at their wedding? It is sad, but I don’t see how it can be a personal misfortune. If you really mean anything, tell me what it is.”

The Major for his part grew angry, as was not unnatural. “If you choose to give me the attention you ought to give to your husband when he speaks seriously to you, you will soon perceive what I mean,” he said; and then he repented, and came up to her and kissed her. “My poor Mary, my bonnie Mary,” he said. “If that wretched irregular marriage of ours should bring harm to you! It is you only I am thinking of, my darling – that you should have something to rest upon;” and his feelings were so genuine that with that the water stood in his eyes.

As for Mrs. Ochterlony, she was very near losing patience altogether; but she made an effort and restrained herself. It was not the first time that she had heard compunctions expressed for the irregular marriage, which certainly was not her fault. But this time she was undeniably a little alarmed, for the Major’s gravity was extreme. “Our marriage is no more irregular than it always was,” she said. “I wish you would give up this subject, Hugh; I have you to rest upon, and everything that a woman can have. We never did anything in a corner,” she continued, with a little vehemence. “Our marriage was just as well known, and well published, as if it had been in St. George’s, Hanover Square. I cannot imagine what you are aiming at. And besides, it is done, and we cannot mend it,” she added, abruptly. On the whole, the runaway match had been a pleasant frolic enough; there was no earthly reason, except some people’s stupid notions, why they should not have been married; and everybody came to their senses rapidly, and very little harm had come of it. But the least idea of doubt on such a subject is an offence to a woman, and her colour rose and her breath came quick, without any will of hers. As for the Major, he abandoned the broader general question, and went back to the detail, as was natural to the man.

“If you only have the lines all safe,” he said, “if you would but make sure of that. I confess old Sommerville’s death was a great shock to me, Mary, – the last surviving witness; but Kirkman tells me the marriage lines in Scotland are a woman’s safeguard, and Kirkman is a Scotchman and ought to know.”

“Have you been consulting him ?” said Mary, with a certain despair; “have you been talking of such a subject to – ”

“I don’t know where I could have a better confidant,” said the Major. “Mary, my darling, they are both attached to you; and they are good people, though they talk; and then he is Scotch, and understands. If anything were to happen to me, and you had any difficulty in proving – ”

“Hugh, for Heaven’s sake have done with this. I cannot bear any more,” cried Mrs. Ochterlony, who was at the end of her powers.

It was time for the great coup for which his restless soul had been preparing. He approached the moment of fate with a certain skill, such as weak people occasionally display, and mad people almost always, – as if the feeble intellect had a certain right by reason of its weakness to the same kind of defence which is possessed by the mind diseased. “Hush, Mary, you are excited,” he said, “and it is only you I am thinking of. If anything should happen to me – I am quite well, but no man can answer for his own life: – my dear, I am afraid you will be vexed with what I am going to say. But for my own satisfaction, for my peace of mind – if we were to go through the ceremony again – ”

Mary Ochterlony rose up with sudden passion. It was altogether out of proportion to her husband’s intentions or errors, and perhaps to the occasion. That was but a vexatious complication of ordinary life; and he a fidgety, uneasy, perhaps over-conscientious, well-meaning man. She rose, tragic without knowing it, with a swell in her heart of the unutterable and supreme – feeling herself for the moment an outraged wife, an insulted woman, and a mother wounded to the heart. “I will hear no more,” she said, with lips that had suddenly grown parched and dry. “Don’t say another word. If it has come to this, I will take my chance with my boys. Hugh, no more, no more.” As she lifted her hands with an impatient gesture of horror, and towered over him as he sat by, having thus interrupted and cut short his speech, a certain fear went through Major Ochterlony’s mind. Could her mind be going? Had the shock been too much for her? He could not understand otherwise how the suggestion which he thought a wise one, and of advantage to his own peace of mind, should have stung her into such an incomprehensible passion. But he was afraid and silenced, and could not go on.