“THERE is no will but the early one made soon after the marriage,” said Lord Frogmore’s man of business on the morning of the second day. “No guardians appointed, no directions given. I have said as much as I could from time to time on this subject. Lord Frogmore always agreed but did nothing; and now here we have a long minority to face and nothing in order.” He was speaking in the most confidential circle of the family, addressing the old vicar, who had been summoned with his wife to the double crisis, the death of their son-in-law, the recovery of their daughter. Old Mr. Hill was standing up with his back to the fire, looking like a very solemn old sheep with his white beard. He had always the air of bearing the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, and mumbled a little in his speech, half with nervousness, half with that weight of responsibility that bowed him down.
“It is a very great emergency,” said the vicar. “Frogmore was very imprudent for a man of his time of life. He ought to have had it all made out very clear. He ought to have left nothing in any doubt. I have often said to him myself in my own small affairs——”
It was wrong of Mrs. Hill to interrupt, but she had a bad habit of doing this; her husband spoke so slowly. “Now that my daughter is so well again,” she said, with a voice in which there was a quiver in spite of herself, “it can’t matter so much.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Agnes.
The man of business shook his head. “That is just the worst difficulty of all. If Lady Frogmore insists on this strange fancy of hers that the little lord is not her son—that she has no child——”
“Oh!” cried the mother in a tone of intolerable impatience—“That is nonsense, you know, Mr. Blotting. Why, I was there! How can she persist when every body knows to the contrary. My daughter Mary has been troubled in her mind, poor thing; but she never was idiotic I hope—and when I speak to her—Agnes, what nonsense! I must speak to her! It is the most dreadful dereliction of duty to let things like this go on——”
“Dr. Marsden says she is going through a very important crisis,” said Agnes; “and that her mind must not be disturbed——”
“Oh, Dr. Marsden!” cried Mrs. Hill: she did not say blank him, or dash him, or anything that a clergyman’s wife ought not to say—but she meant it, as was very clear. “How should Mr. Marsden know better than her mother?” she inquired with dignity, as if to such a question there could be but one reply.
“I am of the same opinion as your mother,” said the vicar. “I think you will find after I have had a conversation with her that there will be no further trouble. She will not stand out against me.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Hill cried—and stopped again—for she had not the same faith in her husband’s intervention. “But,” she added quickly, “I am of opinion that when she is told the facts calmly, with the proofs I can bring, for I saw everything with my own eyes. Mary who was always a reasonable creature—you know,” she cried, with a little laugh and toss of her head, “there never was such a thing known in this world as that a mother should disown her child.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Blotting, “there will be no want of proof. The little lord’s rights are safe enough. But who’s to have the custody?—not a mad mother who disowns him——”
“Sir!” cried Mrs. Hill, springing to her feet.
“Mr. Blotting,” said the vicar, “forgets, my dear—forgets of whom he’s speaking. Such a phrase used of my daughter——”
“I beg your pardon,” said the man of business. He looked at Agnes, who had said nothing, whose eyes were anxiously fixed upon him. “I mean no offence. I must face the facts. What would the Court of Chancery or any other authority think of a mother who denied that her child was hers? She says she knows nothing about it, that she never had a child. It’s monstrous; it’s incredible. She says the most astounding things.”
“What, what?” cried the old people, both together. They were half reproachful of Mary, wholly impatient of her folly, yet half excusing and apologizing all the time.
“She says it is quite impossible she could ever have done such a thing. I can only give you the poor lady’s own words. She says she was bound in honor to someone—a woman’s name—probably you will know. Poor soul! Bound in honor to Jane or Marjorie never to have a child! I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but who do you think would give her the charge even of her own affairs after such a speech as that?”
“Who is Jane or Marjorie?” said the vicar, mouthing the words. “I don’t know anybody of those names.”
The mother and daughter looked at each other. They were under no difficulty in understanding. “Oh,” said Mrs. Hill, “her worst enemy! Do you mean to say that after all my poor child has borne from that woman——”
“Dear mother!” said Agnes. “Oh, let us wait a little—let us do nothing in a hurry. I suppose it has been known before that a poor woman might be sane enough with one delusion. That is Mary’s case. She is sane, but she has forgotten. She never saw her baby. It seized her at once, that terrible trouble. She never knew. Don’t you remember, mother, how she lay like a log, never caring, never looking at him. Oh, Mr. Blotting, don’t let her be sent away again for that! In every other way she is sane, my poor sister is sane.”
“I am sincerely sorry for you, Miss Hill,” the lawyer said. But he gave no pledge, he made no promise. “It will depend chiefly upon John Parke,” he said, “as one of the executors, and the child’s uncle. He of course is the natural guardian. And he no doubt will hear what the doctors have to say, and decide what is best to be done with Lady Frogmore.”
“John Parke!” both the old people cried again; Mrs. Hill adding in almost a shriek—“And Tisch—Tisch, who hates my poor Mary, who would like to kill her! Oh, you will never put the boy in her hands.”
“I fail to see,” said the vicar, mumbling. “I fail to see what can be the need of John Parke when her parents are here.”
“My dear sir,” said the man of business, “John Parke is the nearest relation. He’s an executor. He’s the heir, if anything should happen to the little boy—a very delicate little boy I hear, like old men’s children generally—and with insanity on one side. You really must forgive me if I speak my mind. I have been connected with the Parkes, I and my firm, for longer than any one can say; but I never knew such a sad conjunction of affairs.”
The Hills, it was evident, were very much startled by this speech. The vicar stood before the fire swaying his heavy head, looking at the floor, while Mrs. Hill, who was more active of mind, made little starts as if to begin speaking, then stopped with the words on her lips.
“Do you mean to say,” said Agnes, “that everything will be in—Mr. John Parke’s hands?”
“I am the other executor,” said the man of business, not without a little demonstration of the importance which these country people had seemed to ignore.
“But,” said the vicar, “we are Lady Frogmore’s parents—I am the child’s grandfather, nearer than an uncle. Why, my wife was here when he was born.”
“And we have no object to serve,” cried Mrs. Hill, bursting forth, “none, none, but their good. It’s for John Parke’s advantage that—that harm should come. He can’t be supposed to be fond of little Mar. And his wife—why Tisch, Tisch, everybody knows!—she has her own boy that she thinks ought to be the heir. He’s not safe, he’s not safe if he’s in Tisch Grocombe’s hands!”
“Mother, mother!” cried Agnes, in dismay.
“You will excuse me saying,” said the lawyer, “that I can’t listen to anything of this kind. Ladies go a long way I know in what they permit themselves to say of each other, but with men of the world, madam, libels can’t be indulged in. Mrs. John Parke——”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Hill, breathing out fire and fury in the word, “what has Mrs. John Parke to do with my child—or with my grandchild, Mr. Blotting? We have no object but their good. We want nothing but their good. If anything were to happen to little Mar it would be my death. Oh, can’t you see, can’t you see the difference? I don’t say she would poison him or throw him out of a window,” cried the old lady, flushed and trembling with her vehemence. “But it would be for her good that the child should die. Do you hear me, oh do you hear me! It would be to her advantage that the child should die, the dear child, the apple of our eyes. It would give her husband the title—and herself which is more:—it would make her boy the heir. And you will put him in her hands, our little delicate boy, our little darling, poor Frogmore’s little Mar! Oh vicar, speak to him. Oh Agnes, say something—don’t let them throw little Mar’s life away!”
“I can only say,” said the vicar, shuffling about with his large feet, “that we’re Lady Frogmore’s parents, and the child’s guardians by—by nature. I can’t see what there’s more to say.”
“It’s clear that I can hear no more,” said the lawyer, “it’s painful to see such animosity. Still we know what ladies are. Had anything been necessary to show how impossible—— But there never could have been any question of such a thing,” he continued sharply. “Mr. Hill, you ought to be enough a man of the world to see that the mother’s parents have nothing to do with the matter. Why, it’s ridiculous. The mother herself is no more than a sort of accident. What I’ve got to think of is the Parkes, the family. It is astonishing you don’t understand.”
“Mr. Blotting,” said Agnes, “my mother perhaps went too far. We don’t want to show prejudice. Still the child is a delicate child—and he’s been used to us all his life—to me, at least—I’ve been the same as his mother,” she said, with the tears in his eyes. “I know all he requires—their treatment might be dangerous for him. Don’t take him from us until he’s older and stronger. I don’t ask anything unreasonable. Mrs. Parke, I don’t doubt, would be—very kind: but she’s used to robust children—and little Mar is so delicate.”
“She is pleading as if it was a favor,” cried Mrs. Hill, “as if we had no right——”
“You had better both of you leave it to me—leave it to me,” said the vicar. “I’ll talk it over with this gentleman, as a man of the world. My dear, you can go and look after Mary. That’s your business. Leave me to talk it over, like a man of the world.” The vicar was pleased with that appeal to his superior wisdom. He wanted nothing so much as to get rid of the ladies and bring Mr. Blotting to a due sense of the situation, man to man.
“Sir——,” Mrs. Hill began; but Agnes, too, was against her. She caught her mother by the arm.
“Oh, father is right,” she said. “Let us go to Mary. I never know what she may be doing when we leave her too long alone. It is not good for her to be long alone.”
The house through which these two ladies made their way upstairs had changed in the strangest way. It was not neglected or out of order, nor had it the deserted appearance, as if life had altogether ebbed away from the forsaken sitting-rooms, which often shows the presence of death, throned in a remote chamber, and making an end even of family meetings. Mr. Upjames at the head of affairs took care of that, and as John Parke and his wife were expected in the afternoon, there were fires in all the rooms, and everything ready for the visitors, who were felt by all the household instinctively to have so much risen in importance. The decorous silence, which was proper to a house “in trouble,” reigned, however, up and down. The servants glided about like mutes, stealing noiselessly out of sight, or flattening themselves against the wall when by chance they encountered “one of the family;” and the discipline was such that not a voice or a laugh betrayed from behind the swing doors the existence of a number of young servants, who, however impressed by the circumstances, could not be overcome with grief. The feeling in the house, it must be allowed, was in favor of the visitors who were expected rather than those who had arrived. The Hills were “the other side” to the retainers of the Parke faction. They saw through the vicar’s bulk and solemnity, and they were aware by instinct that the old lady would be hard upon servants and keep an inquisitive eye upon their shortcomings. They were, therefore, though perfectly civil, not anxious in their service to my lady’s people. My lady, herself, poor thing, the servants were half afraid of, half sorry for. They thought she might have another attack at any moment. The women shrank back upon each other when they attended to her rooms or answered her bell. The maid whom she had brought with her was even more alarming than herself, a mad nurse who knew all about the things that were done to lunatics, though she put on the aspect of an ordinary lady’s maid. Thus poor Mary, who had been so kind to them all, who was so gentle and so soft-voiced, sympathetic with everybody, was a sort of bug-bear in the house from which she had been banished so long, to which she had returned so strangely. And all through this great silent house there was a thrill of uncertainty,—nobody knowing what was to be done, or what the new régime would be. The little lord in the nursery, poor little delicate boy who would never be “rared” as all the country people said, who was a child of old age, with madness on one side of the house, whose father was dead and whose mother denied his existence: and the poor lady shut up in her rooms, in her grief and widowhood, with the maid who was nurse, and the mad-doctor hanging about, ever watchful, not leaving her long out of his sight—the troubled group who hung about her, and about the child, yet had no real right there, and might be put to the door by the executors any day—made up a miserable family—a disturbed, uncertain, uncomfortable, little community—not knowing what was to happen. The only one in the house who was calm, who feared nothing, was Mary herself in her retirement, half cured of her madness, full of gentle sorrow without anguish, and ignoring altogether in a strange bewilderment of nature all the dangers and miseries amid which, the most innocent of unconscious sufferers, she was about to take up without protection or support the strange story of her life.