AGNES HILL had given herself entirely up to her sister in these latter days. There had been nothing at all remarkable about Miss Hill in the former portion of her life. She had never been so attractive as Mary, or so sweet: a good clergyman’s daughter—very thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the parish, and ready at any moment to respond to the call of those who were in need—but no more. However, in her later development many new faculties had appeared in Agnes. She had become a mother to little Mar; a mother with all the devotion of maternity, but with something of the reason of the unmarried woman, whose instinct it is to keep in the background and not to show her feelings. She was, indeed, all the mother little Mar had ever known, but she made no claim upon the first of his affections, always directing them, indeed, towards his adoring father, suppressing herself entirely in favor of Lord Frogmore as the most self-denying of mothers could not have done. And since Mary arrived, and the horror of the discovery that Mary, though sane, was unconscious of the great event of her life—the birth of her child—had burst upon the family, Agnes had devoted herself entirely to her sister. She had, perhaps, as most people have, a secret conviction that her own exertions might bring about that in which no one else had succeeded—that she would surely be able to seize the right moment to bring forgotten circumstances to Mary’s mind, to convince her of that in which it was so strange to think she could require conviction—in the reality of her child’s existence. Agnes had been accordingly her sister’s anxious companion during these days; but she had as yet made no attempt to move her. She had quieted as much as she could Mrs. Hill’s indiscreet remonstrances. She had watched over Mary’s tranquillity and peace, saving her from every disturbance. But when she led Lady Frogmore away from that assemblage of the family, it appeared to Agnes that her time had now come. An hour or two passed during which Mary was soothed and comforted in a natural paroxysm of grief by her anxious sister. But in the evening she was better composed and ready to talk. The nurse of whom Agnes felt no need was sent away. Mrs. Hill had been persuaded that she was over-fatigued and had much better go to bed early after the great strain of the day. The vicar, on the other hand, had been recalled to the necessity of looking over his sermon, as he had to return to his parish before the next Sunday. Thus the two sisters were left alone. “You will make Mary go to bed,” was Mrs. Hill’s last charge. “Oh, yes, I will make her go to bed,” said Agnes—but in reality her mind was full of other things.
“There is one thing,” said Lady Frogmore, “that we must settle soon, and that is where we are to live. It is wonderful how little familiar it feels to me here. Now that my dear lord is gone I don’t seem as if I know this place. He was all that made it feel like home.”
“It is not wonderful you should think so,” said Agnes, “you have been so little here.”
“Only all the time I have been married,” said Mary, with a faint, uneasy smile.
“No, my dear, only a year and a half at first. It is five years and more since you were taken away.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mary; “but I am not able to argue, and you are all in a story, as if you wanted to make me believe—— You think I will feel it so much—I know that is your motive. You think that to give up my house and be only the Dowager, while Letitia is here——”
“Mary, you must try to open your eyes to the real state of affairs: why shouldn’t you stay here—with your boy? He ought to be brought up in his own house.”
“Agnes, will you torment me too? Did Frogmore say that? Did he want me to pretend—oh, no! no! My dear old lord would never have done so—for he was true, as true as steel.”
“My poor dear, it is you who are not true—you have been so ill, Mary—you have been away for a long, long time. You were driven into it at the time you were so weak, just before the baby was born. Try and throw back your mind, oh, Mary, dear. Don’t you recollect when the baby was coming. When you were all so happy, dear Frogmore the most of all. Mary, think! when the baby was coming——”
Mary’s pale face flushed. She shook her head. “I never wished it,” she said. “Oh no, I never wished it—to ruin little Duke and do Letitia all that harm——”
“Letitia! who did her best to kill you—who came when you were weak, and reproached you, and said—horrible things. Mary, Mary, rouse yourself! Do not let her succeed in her bad, bad intent. She hoped the baby would die. And almost as well if he had, poor child,” cried Agnes, in the petulance of her misery, “when his mother disowns him. His father is dead, and his mother has forgotten him. Oh, poor child, poor child.”
This did not move Mary as she had hoped. She said sadly, “Yes, I know, Letitia was not very kind. But it was not wonderful. If I had been the means of keeping her husband and her children out of the title—out of their inheritance. Would you have taken it better, Agnes? I should not—if I had had children——”
Her voice shook a little. “I do remember a time when I suppose there were hopes—and I felt very happy for a moment—and dear Frogmore——”
“Yes,” said Agnes, anxiously.
“But it all went off. I have been thinking of that all the time, while you have been saying such strange things. I fainted or something, and there was an end of it. I think I was sorry after, but I’m glad now not to have done any harm to Letitia and her boy.”
“Oh, Mary! if you were to see your own boy, your own boy! and hear him call you mother, don’t you think that would bring things back to your mind.”
“If I had a boy, Agnes,” said Lady Frogmore with a faint, half-reproachful smile, “I should not want that; but you know I never had a child.”
“O, my dear, my dear!” cried Agnes, wringing her hands.
“You may be sorry, but that doesn’t make any difference. If we could change things by being sorry——! not that I am sorry,” said Lady Frogmore, “my only comfort is that my marriage and all that which she disliked so, has done Letitia no harm.”
“She disliked it very much. Oh that is far too gentle a way of putting it, she said dreadful things to you, Mary.”
“Did she! don’t make me think of them. I am quite in charity with her now. Poor Letitia, she needn’t look reproachful any longer. She has got all she wanted now.”
“Mary,” said Agnes, “you are mistaken. It is your little boy that is Lord Frogmore.”
“Tut, tut,” said Mary, with an impatient movement of her hands, “you go on like that only to worry me. Of course, I should always be kind to him if my dear lord adopted him. But adoption won’t go so far as that. No, no. I am tired of hearing of this child. Let’s speak of him no more.”
“Mary, if it were to be proved to you—by eye-witness—that he was your child?”
“Proved to me!” cried Lady Frogmore. “Should not I myself be the chief witness?”
Her smile was so perfectly satisfied in its faint indulgent compassion for her sister’s folly, and the look of uneasiness with which she turned from this perpetual repetition of a disagreeable subject was so natural that Agnes’ heart sank. “I think I must go to bed,” she added. “It has been a hard day, and even though one does not sleep, lying down is always a rest.”
“Shall I read to you, Mary, till you go to sleep?”
“No, my dear. Go to sleep yourself, Agnes. We shall both be better quiet. It will be another life to-morrow,” said Mary, dismissing her sister with a kiss. Poor Agnes went away with a heart almost too sick and sad for thought. She had failed more miserably than the rest. And she did not know now what to say or do; or whether it was best to make no further attempt, to leave everything to the action of time and the guidance of events. It is more easy to adopt the most laborious or heroic measures than to take up this passive plan of operation, and it cost Agnes a great deal to relinquish the effort to set her sister right. Would she ever learn what was right? Would she ever come to a true knowledge of what had passed? or if she did, would the discovery be accompanied by a convulsion which would again rend their life in pieces. That possibility must always be taken into consideration. At present Mary was perfectly sane, and as composed in her gentle thoughts as anyone could be. But if she were urged beyond measure; if this great fact which she ignored were to be rudely pressed upon her, what might happen? Her recovery was still new, her mind fresh fledged, so to speak; too feeble to take many flights. But how to be patient and bear with this Agnes did not know. Those who have to deal with a persistent delusion have need for double patience. It is so difficult not to think that there is perversity in it, or that the deceived person could not understand if they would. Agnes went up to the nursery and bent over Mar’s little crib, and dropped a kiss upon his forehead as soft as the touch of any mother. The child opened his eyes without anything of the startled effect of sudden waking, as if he had only shut his eyes in play. “Why do you say poor child?” he asked in his little soft voice. “Oh, my little Mar, my little Mar!” cried Agnes, and then she scolded him a little for being awake, and bade him shut those big eyes directly and go to sleep. This visit did not dry her tears, or make it more easy to think what she was to do. Indeed Agnes was less and less reconciled to the idea of submitting to Mary’s delusion as she thought it over. It would all have been so very easy otherwise! They might have lived the two together, mother and aunt, in the familiar house of which she had grown so fond during these five years, taking care of the little heir until he was old enough to go to school. His mother was his natural guardian, and so she would have been had it not been for this. It would almost have been better, Agnes thought with bitterness, if she had not recovered at all—if she had still remained with Dr. Brown. For who could tell what the Parkes might do? They would have the power in their hands. They might insist on having her removed again. They might say that still she was not sane, and to prove that a woman was sane who had forgotten the very existence of her child, how difficult would that be. Agnes was the only one in the great house who could not sleep that night. She was sorry, very sorry, too, for the loss of old Frogmore. He had been to her a kind companion, a confiding and respectful brother, and she missed him—more than anyone else who mourned for him. The thought that he was gone and taken away, and that now there would be a clearing out of all his drawers, a searching into all his secrets, his papers examined, his very wardrobe turned inside out, brought tears of sorrow, mingled with a sort of angry dismay, to her eyes. That too, if Mary had but been well, would have been spared. She would have kept the old man’s house sacred. Sorrow and contrariety and care, all the exasperating and irritating elements which make a position intolerable, mingled in the mind of Agnes; and she knew that she could not throw it off as intolerable, but must somehow support everything for the sake of Mary and of the poor little boy. Poor little boy! To think that he was Lord Frogmore, and that after his long minority was over he would be one of the wealthiest peers in England, the poor, little, forlorn child for whom nobody cared, was enough to make any kind woman’s heart overflow with the piteousness of the contrast: and he was dear and precious to Agnes as the apple of her eye.
That day she had him carefully dressed, and led him with her to Mary to make one last attempt. She had taught him with the tenderest exactitude what he was to say. It was not very much, only “Mamma, speak to Mar; dear mamma, speak to father’s little boy.” Mar said it very prettily after Agnes. His great eyes, which were so large and so sad; looked wistfully into the very heart of the woman who loved him. “Speak to father’s little boy.” She cried herself when she heard him, and did not think that any heart could resist it. She led him into Mary’s room, holding his little hand very fast to give him courage, and brought him to the side of the bed where Lady Frogmore was lying very patient and quiet, with tears in her eyes, but a faint smile upon her patient mouth. “Mary,” said Agnes, “I have brought your little Mar to see you. Your own little boy. You have never given him a kiss, not since he was a baby in the cradle.” She led him to his mother’s side, and pulled his arm to remind him of what he had to say. But Mar had forgot, or else he was too much overawed by the sight of this strange lady who was his mother. He gazed at her with his big melancholy eyes, but he could not find a word to say. Mary did not turn her head away. She looked at him not without a little emotion. “Is this the little boy,” she said, “that my dear old lord was fond of? That should always give him a claim upon me.”
“Oh, he has a claim. He has a first claim,” cried Agnes, “on his own account.”
Mary did not risk any reply, but she put her hand upon his head and smoothed his hair, and said, “Poor little boy.”
And Mar did not say a word. Not though Agnes pulled his sleeve, and touched his elbow, and did everything that was possible to jog his memory. “Mar!” she said in an emphatic and significant whisper. But not a syllable did Mar say, not even “mamma,” which would have been so natural. He only stood and gazed with those large eyes that looked doubly large in his small pale face—till there remained nothing for Agnes to do but to take him away again, and to acknowledge to herself that she had failed. “Oh Mar, Mar!” she cried, when she had taken him back to his nursery; “why didn’t you speak? Why didn’t you say what I told you?” But even then Mar had not found his tongue, and he made her no reply.
After this there ensued a strange confused interval, during which the two executors were continually meeting to consult on what was to be done. They had no right to consult without including the third most important of all in their deliberations. But how were they to consult with Lady Frogmore, who ignored the very first particular of their trust. Nothing could be more strange than the position altogether. The vicar and his wife, who would not be shut out, and whose importance as her parents was so very much greater than any claimed by Mary, fought stoutly for what they considered their daughter’s “rights.” But Mary put in no claim of right, and was only anxious that John Parke and his wife should, as she thought, succeed to everything and take their right place. She did not ask either the custody or guardianship of the child. He had a disturbing influence upon her, confident though she was that he was none of hers, and after a while she showed a restlessness to get away, to which the doctor, who was still always in attendance, would not allow any opposition. He would not answer for the consequence, he said, if she were opposed. And thus it happened that to the extreme discomfiture and dismay of the vicar and his wife, and the despair of Agnes, the matter was settled at last. Mary left the Park, leaving behind almost with relief the forlorn little Lord Frogmore, who was her only child. She left him in the keeping of the woman who tried her best to extinguish his little life before it began, carrying away from him in her train the only creature in the world that had been to him as a mother. Alas for little Mar! But so it had to be.