IT was said by everybody that nothing could be more pathetic than Lord Frogmore’s funeral. When a man dies over seventy he is usually attended to his grave, if he has been a good man, by much respect and reverential seriousness, but not by any acute feelings; but there was something in the aspect of the little boy whom John Parke led by the hand after the old man’s coffin which went to the hearts of the bystanders. Poor little boy! an interloper if ever there was one, a being unnecessary, who never ought to have been. It is needless to say that this was not the popular sentiment. The village folks gaped after the little lord with a partiality and sympathy partly made up of compassion for him, and partly of admiration for his great good fortune. A little thing like that! and already a great lord. People of another class, however, entertained different feelings. The man of business, who was his other guardian, looked at little Mar with a troubled pity that had a little impatience in it. Poor little man! Why on earth had he ever been born? Nobody wanted him. He stood horribly in the way of John Parke and all his sturdy children. It was not at all surprising if John felt it so, and certainly Mrs. John did. There could be no doubt on that subject. They had married on the strength of that inheritance, which nobody ever doubted, and he had been his brother’s heir presumptive all his life. Who wanted this little thing? If even his mother had been fond of him, had taken some pride in him! But she threw him off altogether. The poor little forlorn creature with his little pale face! He was in everybody’s way. But for him John Parke would have come tranquilly into his kingdom, the inheritance which he had expected all his life, which had been his right. There was scarcely anybody, Mr. Blotting thought, who would not be glad if the child were removed to a better world. “If the Lord would take him,” that was what poor people said of their superfluous children. The lawyer could not but think with a feeling not so pious that this would really be the best way. The event would break his aunt’s heart perhaps, but what does it matter if a middle-aged unmarried woman, an old maid, should chance to break her heart? And to everybody else it would be a relief. “They’ll never rare him,” was what the village gossips said. Mr. Blotting had not the slightest doubt that Mrs. John Parke would do the best she possibly could to “rare” Mar, though it would be much against her interest. But what a saving of trouble, what a clearing up of difficulties, if only the Lord would take him. Poor unnecessary child! the old man’s plaything, now nothing but a trouble and hindrance, what to him were all the good things to which he had been born? Nobody wanted him to be born, not even his mother it appeared; and the best thing for him would be to slip away out of life and be heard of no more.
Mar had a very white serious little face, and watched every detail of the funeral service with a strange earnestness. He clutched fast hold of his uncle’s hand as he stood gazing, wondering, not knowing what it was all about. To associate the ominous blackness of that coffin, which was the central object in the dismal scene, with his old kind father, was beyond Mar’s powers. He took a great interest in it, how it was to be got down into the hole, and even stepped forward eagerly, dragging John a step or two to see how it was done, which gave some of the bystanders the idea that the poor little precocious lad was about to throw himself into the grave of his father, and made several take a hasty step towards him to rescue the child. Poor little thing—and not such a bad business either if it could be done—if the Lord would take him. The village people, too, thought it would be a great thing if the Lord would take him. He never would be reared they were sure; and what with his mother, poor lady, who was mad, and his father, who was dead, there was little prospect of any comfort or petting, such as his forlorn orphanhood required, for poor little Mar.
Mary went to the church, though it was considered by Mrs. Hill that it was more decorous that she should not be able to follow the mournful little procession to the grave, and it was not practicable to shut her out afterwards from the assembly of the mourners, before whom the will was read. She came in looking perhaps better than she had ever looked in her life before, in the imposing black and white of her widow’s weeds—that dress which it is so common to decry as hideous, but which is almost always advantageous to its wearer. She was pale and grave, but had that air of soft exhaustion and almost repose which so often follows a grief which is natural, but not impassioned or excessive. The tears came easily to her eyes, her lips occasionally trembled, and her voice broke; but she was quite composed and quiet, guilty of no exaggeration or extravagance of mourning. She came in with her own party surrounding and supporting her—the vicar first of the group, the doctor bringing up the rear with the apologetic air of a man who knows he is not wanted, yet is conscious of a certain right to come. The two factions, so to speak, kept instinctively on different sides of the room, and the vicar and John Parke had a momentary silent struggle for the commanding position in front of the fire which both aimed at. When the one saw the intention of the other he involuntarily hesitated and fell back a step, so that there was first a mutual withdrawal from the coveted place; and then it came simultaneously into the minds of both that to give up this advantage out of mere politeness was unnecessary in the position in which they now stood to each other, so that both began to advance again, as if by a word of command. But if John Parke was more nimble, being younger, the vicar carried more weight, and with a sweep of his large shoulder pushed on, before the other’s attitude was secure. The result was therefore to the advantage of the vicar in this brief preliminary encounter. Mrs. John had placed herself in a comfortable chair near the fire, with her handkerchief and smelling-bottle ready. Mary was more in the open, so to speak, with her mother seated near; Agnes standing by her chair, and the doctor behind. There was little remark as Mr. Blotting read and expounded the will, to which, indeed, no one paid very much attention. They were all tolerably acquainted with its scope and conditions before.
“The chief point to be settled,” said the man of business, “as circumstances may make certain of the late lord’s stipulations impossible, is the future custody and care of poor little Lord Frogmore. I think it may all be managed amicably among us, which would be so much better than any public interference with what the testator wished. I feel sure he would prefer that we should carry out the spirit of his instructions in good intelligence among ourselves.”
“Mr. Blotting,” said Lady Frogmore, “may I be allowed to speak?”
She was the only one to whom the will had been at all new, and she had received it with little gestures of assent and nods of her head.
“Surely, Lady Frogmore, whatever you may wish to say.”
“It is just this,” said Mary. “I agree in all my dear lord says. If there had been—a child. These things,” she said with an old maidenly blush dying her countenance for a moment, “have always, I believe, to be taken into consideration; but there was, you see, no child——”
“Not when the will was written: but a prospect of one, Lady Frogmore.”
“People don’t make settlements upon prospects,” said Mary with a gleam of shrewdness. “Do you think he would have left it like that, if it had come to anything? My dear lord was far more careful of my comfort than that. It is clearly understood, then, that there was no child?”
“Not then,” said Mr. Blotting.
“Not then,” said Mary, “nor ever. Why, what time was that?”
The lawyer read out the date, “Nearly six years ago.”
She had been unmoved by the figures, but started slightly at this.
“Six years! We have not been married—half that time——”
“Oh, yes, my dear Mary,” said Mrs. Hill; “going on for seven years. You see you have been so long away, such a long time away—more than five years.”
“My dear,” said the vicar, “never mind about dates. Mary must be kept quite calm——”
She glanced round, with a wondering, troubled look.
“Five years! Why!” She burst into a little laugh. “I to be away from my dear old lord for five years! Mother, you must be dreaming. But let us return to the other subject. I have a statement to make, which is very serious. I think I have a right to be heard, for no one can know as well as me. I have always been disturbed ever since I was married by the thought of any harm that might happen to Letitia and her family through me. You all know that. Well! Please let everybody listen to me; it is very, very important. My great comfort in my dear lord’s death is this—that everything of that kind has been mercifully averted. You may think me very calm, seeing how much I have lost. Oh, no one can tell what I have lost—the kindest, the dearest! He was old, but that only made us suit each other the better—for you know I was not young. But my comfort in it all is this—that no harm has been done. I don’t understand your talk about a child. John Parke, my husband’s brother, is of course Lord Frogmore; and Letitia is Lady Frogmore: and I am the Dowager; that is all as plain as daylight. And,” said Mary, rising, her eyes full of tears, her gesture full of dignity, “if they think I grudge it they are very, very wrong. I wish them a happy life and long, long years to bear their new name; and my own comfort in losing my dear lord is that no harm has been done to them.”
She made this long speech with the air of a queen giving up her throne, and with a smile through her tears turned away, taking her sister’s arm, who stood crying silently, not saying a word. The doctor hastened forward from behind to offer his support, but Mary put him away. “No, thank you, doctor,” she said; “I am quite well. I want no help.” She turned to the audience who were silent, struck dumb, not venturing even to look at each other in the awe of the strange communication she had made them. “I need not stay longer?” she said. “No, I could not help to settle anything; but whatever you arrange I will do.” It was John Parke who hurried forward to open the door for her. He took her hand as she passed him and gave it a close grasp. He was strangely disturbed, and moved, in a way Mary was very far from understanding. “Lady Frogmore,” he said, “whether you know it or not, and however hard it may be, I’ll do my duty all the same.” “I never doubted it,” she said; “you were always kind; and God bless you, Lord Frogmore.” John fell back as if he had received a blow. He went back slowly to the rest, who were all silent, not even Letitia finding courage enough to make any remark. John looked at the vicar again as if he would have liked to oust him from his place; but finally, finding that too much to undertake, flung himself down into a low but very comfortable chair by the fire. “Well,” he said, looking round, “here is just as strange a business as ever I met with. Blotting, what do you think?”
His voice broke the spell which had lain upon them all.
“I don’t see what there is to think,” said Letitia. “What did you expect? Sense from a woman who is as mad as a March hare.”
“It ill becomes you, Tisch,” said Mrs. Hill, who had been gasping for an opportunity, “it ill becomes you, who drove her to it, to speak of my Mary in that way.”
Mrs. John Parke gave a stare in the direction of the vicar’s wife, and then, turning to the two gentlemen, shrugged her shoulders a little and elevated her eyebrows.
“It is in the family,” she said.
Mr. Blotting, like most other men, feared a passage of arms between the two ladies, so he hastened to put himself in the breach.
“In ordinary circumstances,” he said, “a statement of this kind from a mother would be considered conclusive. If she said, ‘This child is not mine,’ there would not be another word to say.”
“But, I beg—I beg,” said the vicar, wagging his white beard, and see-sawing with his large hand. “Nothing of the sort—nothing of the sort! Lady Frogmore entertains a hallucination. Such a thing has happened to many at a delicate time of life. Where is Dr. Brown? he will tell you. Why, the boy, sir, the boy—is undoubted—Why, my wife was there!”
“I am ready,” said Mrs. Hill, “to be examined before any court in England. I was present from the moment things began. Her mother! Of course, I was with her—I never left her. Why, it was I who received the child—I saw him born. I——”
“Spare us, please, the details. These gentlemen are not old women,” said Letitia. “We, who are most concerned, don’t question the fact. We may have our own opinion; we may think that of all the base, foul designs, to marry an old doting fool of a——”
“Letitia!” said John, springing up (which was no small effort) from his low chair.
“And if she went wrong in her head,” cried Mrs. Hill, with gleaming eyes, “Who drove her to it? Oh, how dare you speak, you bad woman! You tried it first at home at Grocombe to drive her off the marriage—and then the day, the very day before the child was born. Oh, perhaps, you don’t think I remember—but I remember everything, everything! The very day, Mrs. Parke—the afternoon, and little Mar was born in the middle of the night, the same day, so to speak. She came pretending to see how Mary was—and, oh, what she did or what she said I can’t tell, but my Mary never held up her head again. It is all her doing, all! I am ready to swear—before any court——”
“Ladies, ladies!” said Mr. Blotting. “When you begin to quarrel there’s nothing can be done. Of course, you blame each other. It’s always so—but what good does it do. Lady Frogmore is quite well now, my dear madam, you must be thankful for it, except this hallucination.”
“Which is a hallucineth—whatever you call it,” cried the angry mother. “Though in one way it’s the truth, poor lamb—for she never saw him, never looked at him, never knew she had a child. She was driven frantic before ever he was born, and that woman did it, and meant to do it, and came on purpose. She hoped to have killed the child—that is what she wanted—before he was born.”
“Letitia!” cried John Parke again, looking at her with a white threatening face which cowed her spirit, though she despised him.
“Oh, if you choose to believe what they say.” It was good for Mrs. John that she was cowed and sitting motionless in the chair, which seemed to give her a sort of support and shelter, and an air of composure and self-command in which in reality for the moment she had failed. She was afraid of John, her docile husband, for the first time in her life; and she was afraid of this accusation which she knew to be true.
“We did not wish to say anything about it,” said the vicar, wagging his head. “I would not have it mentioned, being a member of the family, but that is the truth about Lady Frogmore.”
“Come, come,” said Mr. Blotting, “in families there are always these mutual recriminations. I say it’s your fault and you say it’s mine. Come, come! don’t you think this has gone too far. Madness is a visitation of God. I don’t ask if it’s in the family, but a person must be much off their balance, my dear lady, that can be upset altogether by an angry visitor. We can’t entertain that, you know! Come! what we have got to decide is what’s to be done about this poor little boy.”
Poor little Mar! If the Lord would take him. That would be so much the best solution of the question.