LETITIA hurried along the passage to the room which she always occupied at the Park, and where Felicie was already arranging her “things” out of the box. She took refuge in this room as in a safe place, and locked the door behind her with an impulse of fright. When, however, she sat down panting to think it over, reassured by these walls and by the tranquil presence of her maid busied about ordinary concerns, and by the conviction that Mary was in the hands of the attendant and would not be allowed to follow her, Mrs. Parke began to perceive that her panic might be thought foolish, and that there was really nothing to be afraid of. “For they would never have allowed her to hurt me,” she said to herself—“and she did not mean to hurt me, poor thing. She meant to be kind. She was always silly,” Letitia said to herself, her old contempt for Mary Hill beginning to get the better of her panic and terror of Lady Frogmore. But her heart again jumped to her mouth when the sound of someone running along the corridor ended in a thump upon the locked door. “Oh, don’t open it, don’t open it, Felicie!” she said, springing up to hide herself. She was only stopped by the sound of a voice which came in among the drumming. “Mamma, mamma, open—mamma, let me in, I want mamma,” said the intruder. Even then Letitia had horrible visions of the mad-woman taking advantage of the opportunity, while Duke was admitted, to rush in upon her victim. But even the boy’s presence was an additional protection. He would come between her and any assault. He was a big, strong boy. When John Parke came in just behind his son, Letitia felt almost at her ease. Between them, the man and the boy could surely deal with the maniac. She could not in their presence do any real harm. John Parke’s face was covered with clouds; he was moody and serious, scarcely moving out of his absorbed gravity to receive the eager salutations of Duke, who had been greatly subdued by the melancholy of the house, and delighted to find in the advent of his parents an opening out of the gloom. John went up scowling to his wife, and, standing over her, desired that Felicie might be sent away. “I have something to say to you,” he said. Letitia made herself as comfortable as circumstances would permit. She took off her cloak and hat, and had an easy chair drawn to the fire. Then she sent her maid away and turned to her husband, who had been looking on at these proceedings with impatience. “Now, what is it?” she said.
“I am glad you can attend to me at last. I want to speak to you about that poor woman and the state of the house.”
“What poor woman? Do you mean Mary Hill? You can’t tell me much about her, for I have seen her. Talk of cures! She is as mad as a March hare. Duke, just lock the door.”
“Why should he lock the door? What I’ve got to say is of importance. Don’t let us have any nonsense!” said John Parke.
“She is as mad—as any one ever was. If she came bursting into the room in that state—I should die. I know I should die.”
“They said she was quite quiet,” he cried.
“And so she is! very quiet. John, she said she was the Dowager and that I was Lady Frogmore.”
“Then you know,” said John, “though that was not how they told me. They say she remembers nothing about the little boy. She declares she never had any child; that he is a little boy who was invited to play with Duke; and that Frogmore took a fancy to him and adopted him. Letitia, it’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, and very exciting to people in our position. Do you hear me? What do you think? Was such a thing ever heard of, that a woman should forget she had a child? I never heard of such a thing. Do you think——?” He looked at her with eyes full of excitement, full of awakened anxiety, and a hundred questions. John Parke was not a clever man; he had never pretended to be: but he had boundless faith in his wife’s cleverness, and he brought her this extraordinary question with an unhesitating confidence in her power to draw something out of it that would be somehow to his advantage and that of the family. He fixed his eyes upon her with all the fervor of a question of life and death.
“Oh, I know that,” cried little Duke. “Aunt Mary is Mar’s mother, ain’t she, mamma? But she says she never heard of him. She says she don’t know him. And she’s his own mother! I laughed till I thought I should have dropped. Fancy mamma; Aunt Mary! And Mar laughed too,” the boy said; but added in another moment in a subdued tone, “He was going to cry, but I made him laugh. He’s a very little thing; he doesn’t always see the fun.”
Neither of his parents paid any attention to Duke, though they let him have his say. But John Parke, who had never taken his eyes from his wife’s face, standing over her waiting for her decision on the question he had put before her, now touched her on the shoulder, recalling her to herself and what he had asked. “Eh?” he said interrogatively. “Letitia—don’t you think——”
“No!” she said suddenly, when this little by-play had been twice repeated, “I don’t. Nothing can be made of it. A child born in this house in everybody’s knowledge; put in the papers—as public as if he had been a prince. No! Don’t ask me what I think. There’s nothing to be thought or said on the subject. She’s mad; that is all.”
“But they all say she is not mad—and she says she never had a child. She ought to know,” said John. “Who should know if she doesn’t. Letitia, when I think—if it hadn’t been for her, you and I would have been coming home here; we should have had everything. And what if, after all, there’s been some mistake, some delusion. Frogmore—poor old fellow, I wouldn’t say a word against him; but he was prejudiced. If she says he adopted the boy—— Well! She ought to know——”
“Don’t be a fool, John Parke,” cried his wife. “Frogmore was proud of him, as you know. He hated me. He would never have married Mary Hill but to have his revenge on me. Do you think I don’t feel it, her set up in my place? And wouldn’t I turn that brat to the door if I could, oh! without a moment’s thought. But I’m not a fool,” said Letitia. “The woman’s mad—she doesn’t know what she’s saying. There’s dozens of witnesses to prove it if she denies. The doctor and the nurse and all the servants in the house, and her mother, and—we needn’t go further—myself. John Parke, don’t be a fool. You’ll never get the better of her in that way.”
“All the same,” said John, who had recovered the first dismay caused by her contradiction while she went on speaking. “All the same, I think it’s worth fighting—with the mother at your back.”
“The mother!” she said, with contempt. “She’d go raving mad in the witness-box, and that would be fine proof for you. Why, the child was born before all the world, so to speak, like the heir to the crown. You might as well fight the one as the other. Oh, it is not for any love of them, you may be sure, that I speak!”
“I don’t understand you, Letitia,” said John. “I’d fight it to the last, if it was any good, but as for turning the child out of doors or so forth as you talk in your wild way——”
“You would leave me to do that,” said Letitia, with a snarl, “and so I should, and never think twice either of him or his mother. Duke, what do you mean staring at me like that? You don’t understand what we’re talking about. Run away and play. Go to the nursery or wherever you live when you’re here.”
“Mamma, Mar’s quite a little fellow; he doesn’t know very much, but he’s a very nice little fellow. If it is Mar you and papa are going to turn out of the house——”
Letitia burst into a shrill laugh. She pushed her boy away from her.
“Go off to your play, you little —— dunce,” she said. “Mar! why, Mar’s the master of the house, don’t you know: he’s Lord Frogmore. It’s we that Mar will turn out of the house if we don’t mind. You had better go and ask him to be kind to papa, and not send us away.”
Father and son looked on with equally bewildered faces at this burst of merriment, which they could not understand.
“I am sure,” said Duke, “that Mar would be very fond of papa if he’d let him, and never, never think of turning anyone away. Mar is—why, Mar is—Mamma! Mar’s father’s dead, and his mother has forgotten him, and he’s a very, very little boy.”
Duke’s eyes filled with tears, his lips began to quiver; the thought of Mar’s loneliness and a vague sense of unkindness and danger around him went to the child’s heart. The effect of Duke’s emotion on his two parents was very different. Letitia gave her son a look of exasperation, as if she would have liked to strike him; but John’s countenance melted, and his hand unconsciously went over with a caress on the boy’s shoulder. John’s obtuse mind had taken what he heard au pied de la lettre, and the idea that “the little boy” might after all be an imposter, and his own rights intact, had inflamed his mind. But he had no unkindly feeling to little Mar, and the tears in Duke’s eyes were not only a reproach to his father, but melted at once the untimely, artificial frost in John’s heart.
“God forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t think of the poor child at all. I was thinking only—— Poor little boy! Duke, my fine fellow, you’re right to stand up for him. You make me ashamed of myself. We’ll do what we can to make it up to the poor little fellow, Duke!”
“Yes, father!” cried Duke, putting his hand into John’s hand.
Letitia looked from one to the other more exasperated than ever. Her lip curled, in spite of herself, over her set teeth like the snarl of a dog. Had there been a thunderbolt handy and within her reach, how unhesitatingly she would have aimed it at those two fools! “I think you’d better go and comfort your friend,” she said. “Take care of him, Duke, he may be a good friend to you another time, for you’re nobody, don’t you know, and he is Lord Frogmore. For goodness sake, John, send the boy off and lock the door after him. I’ve got a hundred things to say.”
John did as he was told, with the clouds closing over his face again. He had fired his shot, so to speak, and having failed had nothing more on his side to suggest.
“It is a little difficult,” said Letitia, “to know where to have you, when one moment you are ready to take on trust a mad-woman’s denial of a truth that is as well known as the Prince of Wales—and the next are shedding tears over the poor little boy.”
“I don’t see why one might not do both,” said John.
“No; consistency doesn’t matter much, does it? But putting sentiment aside, I should like to know what’s going to be done.”
“I haven’t heard much—how could I,” said John. “There’s no will but one made before the child was born—leaving the mother guardian—of course, if she’s mad, as you say, she can’t be that now, I suppose.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“The doctor says two or three things—as they all do—that she’s quite well, not mad at all, though of course it has a strange appearance that she should have forgotten her child, and would go against her in a court of law. But he thinks it is quite natural, by all kinds of reasons,” said John hurriedly, perceiving, as so few speakers are clever enough to do, that he no longer had the ear of his audience. He gave Letitia a look half affronted, half anxious, and then began to walk up and down the room, awaiting her reply.
“Five years old,” said Letitia, “a little puny thing with no stamina, and the mother out of the question, taking no interest——”
“Poor little thing,” said John.
“And after Mary—you are the guardian, I suppose.”
“Letitia!” he cried. There was something in the tone with which she had said these words—something indescribable, hideous, which horrified him. He turned upon her with staring eyes.
“Well,” she said calmly, “is there anything wonderful in that. I suppose you will be guardian as the next after her. He will be—in your hands——”
“Where he will be as safe,” John cried coming up to her almost as if he would have seized and shaken her, “as if he were my own.”
“I never doubted it,” Letitia said.
What did she mean? her husband looking down upon her from where he stood could not accuse her of anything. The words had been simple enough. And she was now holding her foot to the fire, as if the only thing she cared for in the world was to get warm. She did not look at him. She yawned a little as if the conversation was getting tedious. “You see yourself,” she went on, “that there’s no use trying to unseat the boy because of his mother’s wild fancies. The thing you have to think of is how to do the best for him. And you’ll have to take this into consideration at once. I should say we’d better come here and let Greenpark. It will be best for the boy; and as I suppose you will have a great deal to do with the property it will be better for you. There is a long minority to look forward to, and of course there must be a good allowance for the child. It would be better for Mary that she should have the Dower-house. The boy can’t be any pleasure to her, feeling as she does, and it will be good for him to have children about him instead of being brought up like a little old man.”
“You seem to have got it all cut and dry,” said John, astonished.
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it,” said Letitia. “You need not speak of it all, cut and dry as you call it, at once, but it’s best to have a plan in our heads. That’s what I advise. And as soon as the funeral is over the first thing to do is to get rid of Mary. I am very much frightened of mad people. I have always been so all my life.”
“Well, perhaps it might be the best way. But there is Blotting to consult. Blotting has as much to say as I have. He’s executor too. And so is she for that matter.”
“John,” said Mrs. Parke. “She is much better out of the house. And all those Hills. I can’t bear them. If she keeps on thinking it an interloper, only adopted by Frogmore, she might do some harm to the child. It’s not consistent with your duty to keep her here.”
She looked up as she said this and met his eyes. There was a half smile in hers, but Mrs. Parke’s eyes were not expressive—they were dull eyes, and when Letitia chose they became duller still with no meaning in them at all. Perhaps she had not any meaning. The tone which frightened her husband might have been an accidental change of her voice. He looked at her with all the penetration there was in his, but could make nothing of her. John had been very much frightened, he could not tell how; for, as a matter-of-fact, it was he who had entertained ideas prejudicial to little Mar and not Letitia. What dreadful thing had he imagined about his wife? “You are the guardian.” There could not be simpler words. Was it some suggestion from the devil that had made him hear in them something—that was too dreadful to be spoken? John Parke, who was honest enough, and could not have harmed anyone, though he would have fought tooth and nail for his rights, looked into his wife’s face, and saw nothing there that gave any solution to what he had imagined. But after the shock he had received it was not very easy for him to continue the conversation. He said, “I beg your pardon,” thrusting one of his hands into his pocket, as if to find the solution of the mystery there. Letitia did not ask why he begged her pardon. She begged him to call Felicie, that she might get a cup of tea.