LADY FROGMORE had not been much disturbed by any external interruption since she had been led away from her husband’s room after his death. Poor Mary was very natural in all her ways. She took her sorrow sweetly like the gentle woman she was. There was an hour or two during which she lay weeping on the bed, saying now and then some broken words—how good he was, her dear old lord, how tender, how kind—and what was she to do without him who had been so good to his poor Mary! Agnes not crying so much, feeling the dreadful blank and change perhaps more, sat by her sister’s bedside and held her hand, and received her broken confidences. Poor Mary did not repine, she did not even grieve as at first that she had not been there when Frogmore was taken ill, that they did not send for her soon enough. Even that had floated away from her mind. The tears came flowing from her eyes and the tender words from her lips. Dear Frogmore! There never had been any one like him, so kind! so kind! How was she to live without her old husband, her dear companion? In Mary’s mind there was no consciousness that she had been absent from her husband for years; yet, perhaps, though she was not aware of it, this fact had something to do with the calm of her sorrow. There was no despair in her mourning. By-and-bye she allowed herself to be undressed, to take the draught prepared for her and go to bed. Agnes still sat by her thinking of many things, but it did not occur to anybody that Agnes had anything but a very secondary part in the trouble. And Mary slept and woke again and shed more tears, and then rose up with a patient face and a quiver in her lip, and was very anxious that a black gown might be found somewhere in her wardrobe, turning with a tremor from the others she had been wearing. “I shall never more wear anything again but black,” she said. A little later she was able to think of her mourning and the mourning for the house: both which had to be seen to without delay. Agnes was ready to write the necessary letters, but Lady Frogmore herself joined in the consultation about what would be wanted, and quietly put down Mrs. Hill’s economical suggestions. There were a great many things to think of, and Mary was greatly disturbed to find that a small room which opened from her own was quite open, the sunshine coming in and the outer world visible. “Oh, how is this!” she said; “the blinds are not down nor the shutters closed.”—“They are, over all the house, my lady,” said the maid; “but I thought just this little room, which nobody can see, which is not seen from outside——“—“Oh, close it, close it at once,” said Lady Frogmore. “I can’t bear it—and my dear lord lying dead in the house.” This made her tears flow again; but when the light was shut out she resumed with her mother and sister the consultation about the mourning. She thought of the paper with the deepest black border, and cards to be printed. It seemed to please her to have this occupation, these trifles which had to be attended to—“I suppose,” she said, her voice trembling, her eyes filling—“I must now call myself Dowager on my cards——”
“Oh, no, my dear Mary, no—why should you—not for years and years.”
“You must not think it will hurt me, mother. Oh, no, no! What do I care for anything but losing him. It will not vex me to call John by his name—or Letitia——” She stopped again, her voice failing her. “Oh, Letitia,” she said, “cannot blame me now. She will have nothing, nothing to say against me now.”
“Mary, for goodness sake, do not speak to me of that woman. I can’t bear to hear her name in your mouth,” cried Mrs. Hill.
Agnes gave her mother a look, and laid her hand upon her sister’s. “There is one other thing, Mary,” she said, turning the talk to the mourning. There are times when that mourning is a great relief to the poor people who are shut up with their sorrow and can talk of nothing but the one dreadful subject which fills heaven and earth. Mary returned to the thought of all those necessary gowns for the housemaids with a sort of dismal relief. But when she was left to herself again, her thoughts returned to Letitia—Letitia was coming in the afternoon. There was in Lady Frogmore’s thoughts a faint terror of her former friend mingled with a sort of consolatory consciousness that Letitia could have nothing against her now. All must be right now. Mary’s little superiority was over. She would not have been sorry had it not involved the loss of Frogmore, and now that he was gone it was a consolation to think that she no longer stood in anybody’s way, that she could injure no one any more. Letitia would forgive her now. There had been no harm done. She could not regret—no, not even for Letitia, that she had married her dear old lord. It seemed to Mary that it had been a very short time, only a few months, since she married Frogmore. And it had done no harm. Letitia would have to acknowledge that now. They were none the worse for it. It gave her a little consolation in the midst of her tears.
Meanwhile John Parke and his wife were traveling gloomily towards Frogmore. It would be vain to say that even John, his brother, was deeply affected by the death of the old lord. That would have been too much to expect in any case. Neither could it be said that during five years past they had thought of nothing but the wrong inflicted upon them by Lord Frogmore’s marriage, and the birth of the boy who stood between them and all their hopes of advancement in life. In five years the mind gets accustomed even to such a misfortune as that, and though they may not feel it less, people don’t dwell upon a thing so far off as they did when it was fresh in their minds. The death of Lord Frogmore, however, brought it all back to their thoughts. But for Mary, but for that boy, what a changed world it would now have been for them! By this time it was they who would have been Lord and Lady Frogmore. They would have been going to take possession of their own great family house, to come into their fortune. Hope would by this time have become reality to them—if it had not been for Mary and that miserable puny boy. Even John could not help thinking of this as he looked moodily out of the window of the railway carriage and plucked at his moustache. His servants would already have begun to ‘my lord’ him. His difficulties (for he had difficulties though his wife was so excellent a manager) would all have been over. Good God! and to think that a bit of a sickly child, a creature that nobody wanted, had done him out of all that. It was enough to distract the mind of a saint. As for Letitia, all that and a great deal more was in her mind. She had not been at the Park since that dreadful day when she had discovered what had befallen Mary, and had known that it was she herself who had done it. Since then, though Duke had been a frequent visitor, his parents had never been invited by Frogmore, and Letitia knew why. And now she was going to see Mary, who it was said had recovered all at once and come home. This was a wonderful story, which it was almost impossible to believe; and Letitia, with her guilty conscience, could not but think there was some hidden meaning in it. Mary, suddenly well, returned all in a moment!—it did not seem credible. She set out to accompany John to the house of mourning with very mingled feelings—indignant to have to go there at all, in a position which contrasted so cruelly with her hopes. But also, in spite of all her self-command and capacity for excusing herself, Letitia was afraid in her heart of meeting Mary, terrified for her look, wondering how much she remembered, how much she knew. She could not form an idea to herself how she would be received by her old friend. She was afraid of Mary—afraid lest Lady Frogmore should betray her to John, and make her stolid but upright husband aware of the harm she had done. And also, if truth must be told, Mrs. Parke was afraid of the mad woman whom she had injured, and of whose cure she thought nobody could be certain. She was not a brave woman physically, though it is not necessary to be a coward to fear an insane person. The bravest may quail in such circumstances. An insane person whom you have wronged; who probably will remember the wrong; who will be cunning and vindictive, as mad people are known to be. Letitia’s thoughts were not of a pleasant kind as she travelled towards the home of her husband’s race. She dared not shrink or refuse to do the duty which was incumbent upon her. But she was white and trembling in her furs, quite unable to get warm or to repress the shiver that ran over her from time to time. John observed this with the terror of a man who had never been apt to meet an emergency by himself. “For goodness’ sake,” he said, “take something! Have a glass of wine—have a little brandy. I can get you some brandy at the station. Don’t get ill now, Letitia, for heaven’s sake.” She nodded her head at him with the best smile she could conjure up. She certainly was a faithful woman so far as that was concerned. She would not at such a crisis leave John to his own devices—not whatever might happen. Rather have the lunatic fly upon her than that—— But, all the same, she went on to the Park in terror of her life.
The great house standing all shadowed in the wintry sunshine, every shutter shut and every blind drawn down, was a dismal sight enough, not calculated to raise any one’s spirits. The great door was standing open, and inside were several servants, Upjames in the foreground to receive the visitors and show his own pre-eminence. Behind stood the old vicar, with whom and his big head and his mumbling voice Letitia felt a sickening familiarity as if he were always there in the worst moments of her life. She remembered him just like that when she had made her assault in the vicarage in the vain endeavor to frighten Mary from marrying old Frogmore. She had seen him again before the birth of the child. And here he was once more as she came in cold and trembling, terrified for what was before her. Behind the vicar another man was hanging about, a tall man in a long coat, which swung behind him as he strolled about the hall, stooping, with his shoulders thrust up to his ears. She divined at once that this was the mad-doctor not yet separated from his patient, Letitia let her fur cloak drop off her shoulders into the footman’s hands, and appeared not to see the vicar’s hand which was stretched out with the intention of giving her that silent clasp of sympathy which is the right thing in a house of mourning. “Oh, how do you do?” she said. “I am going at once to Mary,” and passed him quickly, leaving John to make the explanation. She felt that as far as she herself was concerned the worst must be got over at once. Upstairs in the corridor a woman was standing whom Letitia did not know, too serious for a maid, too important for a servant of the house. “Are you Lady Frogmore’s—attendant?” said Mrs. Parke. She was half afraid, as the servants were, of the woman, who, if not mad herself, was a mad nurse. “Yes, my lady,” said the stranger, a mode of address which made the heart burn in Letitia’s bosom. Ah! but for that child, that wretched little boy, that would be her proper title now. “I am Mrs. Parke,” she said breathlessly. “How is Lady Frogmore?”
“Oh, my lady, she is wonderful,” said the woman. Lady Frogmore’s attendant knew what her mistress thought, and she believed like Mary that Mrs. Parke was now in reality Lady Frogmore, though good breeding prevented her from adopting the title until the old lord was buried. “She is as much herself as her dearest friend could wish her—she is as collected as you or me.”
“What an extraordinary thing?” said Letitia. “Is it thought to be a complete cure?”
“Ah!” said the nurse, “that no man can tell till time has proved it. Things that come of a sudden sometimes go off on a sudden too. But in the meantime what a blessing, my lady! She was able to be with his lordship to the last. And as calm now, and as composed, though sorrowful, as a lady could be.”
“Then she is quite——safe?” said Letitia with a slight shudder.
“My lady!” said the woman with indignation. “She was never but like a blessed lamb even at the worst.”
“I know; I know. She was always gentle. Don’t think badly of me,” said Mrs. Parke, “but I’ve a great horror of—of that sort of thing. Would you mind coming in with me? And just be near me, please, whatever might happen. It would give me great confidence. If you only look at her, it’s enough, isn’t it? Oh! do stay by me when I go in, please.”
“You are doing my poor lady great injustice,” said the attendant with outraged dignity.
“Oh, no—not that—but you’ll stand by me, won’t you?” Letitia said. She went on towards Mary’s door with a slackened step. Not even the assurance she had received, not her conviction that what the nurse said was true, could stand against her conscience, and sense of what she deserved from Mary. She might be a lamb to others, but Letitia had no right to count upon her as a lamb. When she opened the door she looked back and beckoned to the attendant, who was slowly following. “You’ll stand by me?” she said again, and eventually knocked at Mary’s door.
Lady Frogmore and her sister were together in the room. Mary had been trying to read a little in a good book. To read anything that might amuse her, that would draw her thoughts from herself and her sorrow, would have been profane, almost wicked. Mary was far too dutiful to think of anything of the kind, but it was not wrong, it was indeed edifying, to read a little of a sermon about heaven. It conveyed, indeed, no idea at all to the poor lady’s mind, and to think of Lord Frogmore as having been swept up among those abstractions was quite impossible: but still it was a right thing to do. She put it down, however, with alacrity when she heard Letitia’s knock at the door, and came forward a step or two as much as was decorous to meet her sister-in-law. A newly-made widow must not hurry forward with extended hands. It is her place to keep still, to have her visitors brought up to her. “Here I and sorrow sit.” Mary was very observant of all the conventionalities; but when Letitia, trembling, came up to her and put her shaking arms around her, Mary responded with a cordiality which overwhelmed the visitor. She held Letitia close, and wept upon her shoulder, Mrs. Parke trembling all the time, restraining herself with an effort of horror from shrieking, and not at all sure that she might not be rent to pieces at the end of the embrace. “Oh, Letitia! it is all over, all over. My poor old lord is gone,” cried Mary, sobbing. She added, a moment after in a voice that went through and through the hearts of the other listeners, but struck upon that of Mrs. John Parke like some strange chord of which she had no understanding, “and after all there is no harm done to you! It is my only consolation. After all there is no harm done to you!”
“Oh, Mary! It is a sad blow to us all, but we must bear it,” said Letitia, disengaging herself from the embrace which she so feared. She cast a glance round to see that the nurse was near, and strengthened by this, sat down at a little distance from the new-made widow. “It is a great loss,” she said, putting up her handkerchief to her eyes; “so kind to us as he always was. But we must seek for resignation and strength to bear it.”
“Indeed he was kind to everybody,” said Agnes, hoping to keep the strange interview upon safe ground.
“And what a good thing you were able to come back to be with him at the last!” said Mrs. John.
“My dear Letitia,” said Mary, “I can’t find words to tell you. You must not think I will feel it that you should have my name—or that Mr. Parke should have his name. Oh, no! I shall not. You must not put aside your rights out of any thought of me. I am only the Dowager now, and you are Lady Frogmore.”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. John, springing to her feet, “I knew all that was said was nonsense, and that there never would be a cure. Agnes Hill, you may risk your life, but I will not risk mine—at the mercy of a——”
She had sprung up from her chair with a scared face, and hurried towards the door. As for Mary, she did not understand this recoil of her sister-in-law from her. “What is it?” she said; “what is it? Why should she have any grudge against me? Tell her, Agnes, that I have no grudge; that I am glad. After all, though she was so frightened of me, I have done her no harm.”