TO describe the state of the Park under the effect of this event would be very difficult. It changed altogether in the most curious way. Indeed Lord Frogmore’s country seat had gone through several transformations of late. Nothing could have been more composed, more orderly and perfect than it had been under the sway of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Upjames, the respectable valet and butler who had organized the life of the bachelor lord into an elegant comfort and tranquillity which was beyond praise. Everything had gone upon velvet in those halcyon days; not a sound had even been heard to disturb the calm, save the sound of conversation among the well-chosen visitors or of a cheerful fire burning, a thing which could not be reduced to absolute subjection. There had never been any hitch in the arrangements; not even a crumpled rose-leaf on a couch. The servants moved about like polite ghosts, noiselessly warding off every annoyance. It had been a model of a luxurious house. Then there had come a strange modification when the bride was brought home, and the entire dwelling had recognized her presence with mingled distrust and affection and pride. The flutter of women’s dresses about the place and women’s voices had been at first difficult for the old servants to bear, who had always hitherto kept the women strictly in their proper places, there being no housekeeper—for Mr. Upjames was more than equal to that office—and only a meek cook to make any division of authority. Rogers and Upjames had, however, on the whole taken kindly to Lady Frogmore, who did not attempt to make any fundamental changes, and who always was exceedingly civil, and not jealous of their authority; and they were elated to think that their old lord at sixty-eight was equal to taking upon him all the responsibilities of life as if he had been thirty. The mild time of Mary’s reign had therefore only added a little brightness, a little ornament, a gentle gaiety to the well-ordered house. Rogers himself had grown younger, and Mr. Upjames added a grace to his perfect manner. The butler had been heard to acknowledge before that he did not feel equal to tackling the ladies, but he made no such acknowledgment now. Lady Frogmore reconciled them to the feminine sex, and the Park gained a certain consequence and liberality and light. It was not so completely centred in the task of making exquisite the comfort of its own master. It began to have thoughts of other people and other things.
But now! The house became at a touch the saddest house. All the great sitting-rooms lay empty, like a sort of vestibule to the rooms upstairs in which trouble and sorrow dwelt. Lord Frogmore came and went with a troubled face. His marriage had not changed his habits much. He had taken all the old precautions to keep in perfect health. His beef-tea and his baths, and the certain amount of walking which he preferred any day, and every one of his sanitary regulations, had been fully observed as before. But now he cared nothing for any of these things. He walked about all day, going out in the morning after breakfast, and wandering aimlessly about, instead of his habitual brisk constitutional. But when he came in, instead of going to the library to write his letters or read his papers, all that he did was to walk upstairs to the door of his wife’s room to see if there was any change. He came in always with a little hope for the first few weeks, confidently expecting each time he asked the question to hear that she was better. But after that his countenance changed. He became very grave, scarcely smiling, seldom speaking to any one. Every time he came in he went upstairs with the same question; but there was something spiritless in his look, in his step, in his aspect generally, which made you feel that he had given up expecting a good reply. And when the poor little baby, who was the cause of all this trouble, was brought out to take the air and walked about in its nurse’s arms up and down the avenue, the old lord would walk up and down too, accompanying the group with a look of such melancholy in his face as was like to break the spectator’s heart. The baby it was allowed on all hands was very delicate. The flannel shawls, so soft and white and fine, were scarcely opened a little from its tiny face to let in the sunny atmosphere, and with never a smile on his thin old face, the father would walk beside it up and down, up and down. Poor little thing! and poor old gentleman! they were at the opposite extremities of human feebleness, and the fully counted life which should have linked them together was not theirs. Lord Frogmore did not look much at his little boy. He was afraid of the child lest something should happen to it. It was to him rather a part of the substantial nurse who carried it, and in whose powerful arms it was safer than anything belonging to him. And yet he walked by its side with his brisk step subdued, his head cast down, a melancholy languor about him. The starch seemed to have gone out of his collar, his cheek so rosy and firm had grown limp. To see him turning up and down, up and down by the side of that infant was enough to break anyone’s heart.
Meanwhile to poor Mary there came but little change. She did not recover as the doctor had promised. She had nothing that could be called a recovery at all. She kept her bed because apparently she had no desire to get up. And sometimes she would hold long conversations about baby clothes and the like with the nurse, rationally enough, as if her mind was able to occupy itself with ordinary duties. Sometimes even she would allow the baby to be brought to her, and cry over it. “Poor little thing!” she would say, “if that is to be its fate; oh, it is not the little thing’s fault. I might be to blame, but it couldn’t be to blame. Oh, poor little thing. I’ll not cry out if you kill me, poor baby. It will not be you, but dreadful, dreadful fate.”
“Oh, my lady, don’t talk like that. The child will grow up to be your comfort and joy.”
“Listen, then,” said Mary, “it’s only to you I will tell the secret,” and she would put her lips to the woman’s ear and whisper that eager, anxious, busy whisper that meant nothing. And when this secret communication was completed, Mary added in her ordinary voice, “So you see we cannot help it, neither he nor I. Oh to think he should have been born only for this, and to put everything wrong. Take it away, take it away,” she would cry suddenly, her voice rising to a scream, thrusting the poor child into the nurse’s arms. And then she would draw the nurse to her and whisper again, “Tell him, tell him,” she said: but the whisper was never intelligible, and the look which the poor old lord gave her made the unfortunate nurse lose her head altogether. “Oh, my lord!” the woman said, and Mary nodded her head with satisfaction as if everything was being explained. Lord Frogmore would turn away more wretched than ever, unable to elicit a word or hardly a look which reminded him of her former self, and went downstairs to pace up and down the library, up and down, paying no attention to anything. Never was there a more sad house. Agnes, who remained with her sister, though Mary took no notice of her, would steal down after those dreadful interviews to comfort the poor old gentleman. “She will not speak to me at all,” said Agnes, weeping. “She thinks I am a stranger. I don’t think she knows me.”
“What is she always whispering?” said the old lord. “There must be something in that. The nurse ought to make out what it is. Perhaps she wants something. Perhaps we might find some way to work if we could but know what that whisper was? I don’t think you should stand upon a point of honor, but try—try to understand what she says.”
“Oh, dear Lord Frogmore,” cried Agnes with tears in her eyes. “It is nothing. I don’t think she says words at all.”
Lord Frogmore in his trouble ignored this speech. “You should not be punctilious,” he said, walking about the long room with short agitated steps. “It may be a matter of life and death. You should not stand upon a point of honor. You should make every effort to understand what your dear sister says.”
And it was by a sort of pitiful understanding between them that Agnes said no more. He knew as well as she did that poor Mary’s whispered communications were unintelligible—but he would not allow it to be said. He preferred to blame someone for an exaggerated point of honor in not listening, not understanding. Such voluntary miscomprehensions are among the most piteous subterfuges of despair.
It cannot be supposed that Mary’s condition and the sad change in the house could be long ignored by Letitia, whose very faculty was on the alert to know what, if anything, had followed her last dreadful attempt against the unfortunate mother of the heir. Letitia was as yet inexperienced in what may be called crime. She had never, as has been said, knowingly assailed the life or reason of a fellow creature before—and she had not had any certainty that her attempt would be successful. It was not exactly like a knife or a revolver. Letitia was very well aware that such operations as she had carried out upon Mary would not in the least have affected herself—and, therefore, she felt herself justified in ignoring the possibility of serious harm. But when the news was brought to her, whispered with bated breath, that Lady Frogmore’s mind was affected, indeed, that she was mad which was the succinct way of stating the matter, Letitia was so much startled and horrified that she cried—which did her great good with her husband. John had been uneasy at the vehemence of his wife’s hatred of Mary in her new exaltation, and when he saw her suddenly burst into most real tears, his good heart was touched and he felt that he had been doing her injustice. He got up from his seat in his compunction and went to his wife and caressed and soothed her. “You must go over and inquire, Letitia,” he said. And once more Letitia was so moved by genuine horror, that, anxious though she was to know everything, she held back from doing this.
“Oh, John,” she said, “I did perhaps say something that was too strong when I knew what her schemings had come to. They might not like me to go.”
“I have always told you, Letitia, I did not think there was any scheming about it. But anyhow Frogmore would be pleased—he would see that we bear no malice. Of course, I felt it at the first just as you did,” said the unconscious John.
“The child,” said Letitia, “is very delicate, too.” She could not help stealing a glance at John under her eyelids to see whether he would respond.
“Poor people!” said John, “or rather poor old Frogmore, to put off so long and then have such a sad time of it. I’m very sorry for the poor old fellow.”
“He had no right to do anything of the kind,” Letitia cried.
“Well, it was hard upon us,” said John with a sigh: “but I’ve made up my mind to it now. You had better go over to-morrow and ask how she is.”
Letitia was very eager to go to see with her own eyes what was the condition of affairs, but yet it was not without difficulty that she persuaded herself to return to the house where her last visit had been so disastrous. It was now September, and the days were beginning to get short, but this time she took no bag, nor had she the least intention of staying over the night. An hour would be enough, she thought, to hear all she wanted and see what she could. But her sense of guilt would not be subdued as she approached the house and remembered how she had fled away from it six weeks before, having done all the harm that it was possible to do. She had no intention now of doing any harm; oh, no, no! only to inquire and if practicable see for herself what prospect of sanity there was for Mary or life for her boy. When she met in her progress up the avenue in the fly she had hired at the station the little pathetic group above described, the nurse carrying the infant and Lord Frogmore marching melancholy at its side, she hurriedly stopped and sprang out, feeling that Lord Frogmore was likely to be more easily dealt with than Agnes, whose feminine instincts would divine her object. But Letitia did not find that a very gracious reception awaited her. Lord Frogmore looked out with a little irritation as the cab drew up. He evidently thought a visitor an impertinence. When he was compelled by his sister-in-law’s eager and excessively affectionate accost to stop in his walk and speak to her, a gleam of angry light came into his eyes. “Oh, it is you, Mrs. John!” he said.
“Oh, Frogmore,” cried the lady, “how is Mary? I could not rest when I heard how ill she was till I had come over to see for myself.”
“I do not know,” said Lord Frogmore stiffly, “how ill you may have heard she was: but I don’t wonder that you should wish to see for yourself.”
“No: can you wonder? We have been like sisters almost all our lives.”
Though Letitia quaked at the old lord’s tone, she felt that it was the wisest way to ignore all offence.
“Sisters, if all tales are true, are not always the best of friends,” said Lord Frogmore. “Familiarity interferes with the natural bounds of good breeding. I think, Mrs. John, that I must ask you not to go any further, or at least not to insist on seeing Lady Frogmore.”
“Is she so very bad?” said Letitia in a thrilling whisper.
“No,” he said with irritation. “I did not say she was very bad. I said I could not admit visitors who, perhaps, might forget what is due to a delicate and sensitive woman.”
“I did not know,” said Letitia with an injured air, “that I was so little worthy of confidence. I am very sorry that Mary is so ill; so is John. We both felt we could not rest without knowing personally how much or how little of what we hear is true.”
“And what do you hear?” Lord Frogmore, though he felt it his duty to defend his wife, was not willingly ungracious, and felt it of all things in the world the most difficult to shut his door in anyone’s face. His courage failed him when Letitia put forth so reasonable a plea—
“Oh, Frogmore,” said Mrs. John, “what is the use of questioning and cross-questioning? Tell me how dear Mary is; that is all I want to know.”
He was shaken in his resolution, but still tried to be stern. “What did you say to her,” he asked, “the last time you were here?”
“What did I say to her? Oh, a hundred things! and she to me. We talked of how wonderful it was, and how much may come from the smallest event; that if I had not one day met her in the Academy, and asked her to come and stay with me, you might never have met her, and all that has happened would never have been. That was the last thing we talked of. Is it supposed it did any harm, that talk between Mary and me? Oh, Lord Frogmore, people must be malignant indeed if they can find any harm in that.”
“I don’t know that there was any harm in it. It depends upon how a thing is said, whether there is harm in it or not.”
“I know,” said Letitia, “that I have enemies in this house. I know Mrs. Hill and Agnes. Oh, Agnes is spiteful! She never wishes to see Mary with me. She thinks I put her against them; as if I would ever interfere between a woman and her own family. But, Frogmore, you know what women are. They are jealous; they are spiteful; they never lose an opportunity to whisper against one that has done better than themselves. I know very well what it is that turns you against me. It is Agnes Hill that has put things into your head.”
“No,” he said, but doubtfully feeling that to think so badly of his brother’s wife was very inconvenient, and that perhaps after all it was Agnes who had put it into his head: she had not said much, but it might be she who had suggested it, for it was according to all the tenets with which he was acquainted that a woman should be spiteful, as Letitia said. He hesitated a great deal as to what he should do; whether he should hold by his first resolution to allow Letitia to come no further; or whether it might perhaps be an awakening thing for Mary to see her. Letitia followed him with soft and noiseless steps while he pursued this thought, and then she said suddenly, as if she could contain herself no longer, “Surely, at least, there can be no reason why I should not see the dear child.”
She took the baby out of the nurse’s arms as she spoke, and deftly, with practised hands, folded down the coverings in which it was wrapped. The mother of five children knew how to handle with ease and mastery, which made the old lord wonder and tremble, the little fragile new-born baby, which to him was an object so wonderful.
“If I were you,” said Letitia to the nurse, “I would not have the child covered up so. The air will do him nothing but good. Throw off all your shawls, and let him breathe the good air. I am sure his mother would say so if she were here.”
Letitia, at least in that action, meant no harm to the child. She said it as she would have done to any ignorant cottager who half smothered her baby to keep it from cold. But while she held the infant in her arms, and put down her cheek upon its little dark, downy head, an impulse that was horrible came over her. Oh, the little interloper!—the child so undesired, so unnecessary—who had taken her children’s inheritance from them! To think that a little pressure more than usual, a little more close folding of the shawls, and it would stand in Duke’s way no more. The thought made her strain towards her with a sudden throb of almost savage excitement the little helpless atom, who could never tell any tale.