despicable institution of a celibate clergy. He was far from being celibate, poor man! He, or at least his wife, had such a succession of babies as no man could number. They had children at “home” in genteel asylums for the sons and daughters of the clergy, and they had children in the airiest costume at the station, whom people were kind to, and who were waiting their chance of being sent “home” too; and withal, there were always more arriving, whom their poor papa received with mild despair. For his part, he was not one of the happy men who held appointments under the beneficent rule of the Company, nor was he a regimental chaplain. He was one of that hapless band who are always “doing duty” for other and better-off people. He was almost too old now (though he was not old), and too much hampered and overlaid by children, to have much hope of anything better than “doing duty” all the rest of his life; and the condition of Mrs. Churchill, who had generally need of neighbourly help, and of the children, who were chiefly clothed – such clothing as it was – by the bounty of the Colonel’s and Major’s and Captain’s wives, somehow seemed to give these ladies the upper hand of their temporary pastor. He managed well enough among the men, who respected his goodness, and recognised him to be a gentleman, notwithstanding his poverty; but he stood in terror of the women, who were more disposed to interfere, and who were kind to his family and patronised himself. He tried hard on this occasion, as on many others, to escape, but he was hemmed in, and no outlet was left him. If he had been a celibate brother, there can be little doubt it would have been he who would have had the upper hand; but with all his family burdens and social obligations, the despotism of the ladies of his flock came hard upon the poor clergyman; all the more that, poor though he was, and accustomed to humiliations, he had not learned yet to dispense with the luxury of feelings and delicacies of his own.
“Mr. Churchill, do give us your advice,” said Miss Sorbette, who was first. “Do tell us what all this means? They surely must have told you at least the rights of it. Do you think they have really never been married all this time? Goodness gracious me! to think of us all receiving her, and calling her Madonna, and all that, if this be true! Do you think – ”
“I don’t think anything but what Major Ochterlony told me,” said Mr. Churchill, with a little emphasis. “I have not the least doubt he told me the truth. The witnesses of their marriage are dead, and that wretched place at Gretna was burnt down, and he is afraid that his wife would have no means of proving her marriage in case of anything happening to him. I don’t know what reason there can be to suppose that Major Ochterlony, who is a Christian and a gentleman, said anything that was not true.”
“My dear Mr. Churchill,” said Mrs. Kirkman, with a sigh, “you are so charitable. If one could but hope that the poor dear Major was a true Christian, as you say. But one has no evidence of any vital change in his case. And, dear Mary! – I have made up my mind for one thing, that it shall make no difference to me. Other people can do as they like, but so far as I am concerned, I can but think of our Divine Example,” said the Colonel’s wife. It was a real sentiment, and she meant well, and was actually thinking as well as talking of that Divine Example; but still somehow the words made the blood run cold in the poor priest’s veins.
“What can you mean, Mrs. Kirkman?” he said. “Mrs. Ochterlony is as she always was, a person whom we all may be proud to know.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Sorbette, who interrupted them both without any ceremony; “but that is not what I am asking. As for his speaking the truth as a Christian and a gentleman, I don’t give much weight to that. If he has been deceiving us for all these years, you may be sure he would not stick at a fib to end off with. What is one to do? I don’t believe it could ever have been a good marriage, for my part!”
This was the issue to which she had come by dint of thinking it over and discussing it; although the doctor’s sister, like the Colonel’s wife, had got up that morning with the impression that Major Ochterlony’s fidgets had finally driven him out of his senses, and that Mary was the most ill-used woman in the world.
“And I believe exactly the contrary,” said the clergyman, with some heat. “I believe in an honourable man and a pure-minded woman. I had rather give up work altogether than reject such an obvious truth.”
“Ah, Mr. Churchill,” Mrs. Kirkman said again, “we must not rest in these vain appearances. We are all vile creatures, and the heart is deceitful above all things. I do fear that you are taking too charitable a view.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Churchill, but perhaps he made a different application of the words; “I believe that about the heart; but then it shows its wickedness generally in a sort of appropriate, individual way. I daresay they have their thorns in the flesh, like the rest; but it is not falsehood and wantonness that are their besetting sins,” said the poor man, with a plainness of speech which put his hearers to the blush.
“Goodness gracious! remember that you are talking to ladies, Mr. Churchill,” Miss Sorbette said, and put down her veil. It was not a fact he was very likely to forget; and then he put on his hat as they left the chapel, and hoped he was now free to go upon his way.
“Stop a minute, please,” said Miss Sorbette. “I should like to know what course of action is going to be decided on. I am very sorry for Mary, but so long as her character remains under this doubt – ”
“It shall make no difference to me,” said Mrs. Kirkman. “I don’t pretend to regulate anybody’s actions, Sabina; but when one thinks of Mary of Bethany! She may have done wrong, but I hope this occurrence will be blessed to her soul. I felt sure she wanted something to bring her low, and make her feel her need,” the Colonel’s wife added, with solemnity; “and it is such a lesson for us all. In other circumstances, the same thing might have happened to you or me.”
“It could never have happened to me,” said Miss Sorbette, with sudden wrath; which was a fortunate diversion for Mr. Churchill. This was how her friends discussed her after Mary had gone away from her second wedding; and perhaps they were harder upon her than she had supposed even in her secret thoughts.
CHAPTER V
BUT the worst of all to Mrs. Ochterlony was that little Hugh had been there – Hugh, who was six years old, and so intelligent for his age. The child was very anxious to know what it meant, and why she knelt by his father’s side while all the other people were standing. Was it something particular they were praying for, which Mrs. Kirkman, and the rest did not want? Mary satisfied him as she best could, and by-and-by he forgot, and began to play with his little brother as usual; but his mother knew that so strange a scene could not fail to leave some impression. She sat by herself that long day, avoiding her husband for perhaps the first time in her life, and imagining a hundred possibilities to herself. It seemed to her as if everybody who ever heard of her henceforth must hear of this, and as if she must go through the world with a continual doubt upon her; and Mary’s weakness was to prize fair reputation and spotless honour above everything in the world. Perhaps Mrs. Kirkman was not so far wrong after all, and there was a higher meaning in the unlooked-for blow that thus struck her at her tenderest point; but that was an idea she could not receive. She could not think that God had anything to do with her husband’s foolish restlessness, and her own impatient submission. It was a great deal more like a malicious devil’s work, than anything a beneficent providence could have arranged. This way of thinking was far from bringing Mary any consolation or solace, but still there was a certain reasonableness in her thoughts. And then an indistinct foreboding of harm to her children, she did not know what, or how to be brought about, weighed upon Mary’s mind. She kept looking at them as they played beside her, and thinking how, in the far future, the meaning of that scene he had been a witness to might flash into Hugh’s mind when he was a man, and throw a bewildering doubt upon his mother’s name, which perhaps she might not be living to clear up; and these ideas stung her like a nest of serpents, each waking up and darting its venom to her heart at a separate moment. She had been very sad and very sorry many a time before in her life, – she
