LADY FROGMORE had hurried home when she left the Park the day after Duke’s birthday full of agitation and confused trouble, not knowing what ailed her, dissatisfied with herself and everything around, yet like a blind creature groping for what she knew not, a clue to guide her through the darkness. She fretted through all that day, impatient of the lingering of the trains and the long time of waiting at one junction and another. “If I can but get home! I think I will never leave it again—one is safest at home,” she said. When she reached that quiet house at last, embowered in its trees and little park, to the great surprise and even displeasure of the servants, who had hoped for a holiday, she repeated the same sentiment, throwing herself down with a sigh of satisfaction on a sofa in her pleasant drawing-room. “One is safest at home!”
“Dear Mary,” said Agnes, whose nerves were fretted and her temper overcast, so that she could not take this unreasonable satisfaction with the calm she usually showed. “You are safe enough anywhere. Who would interfere with you? England is not like a wild country where people are in danger when they move.” Agnes had not been able to show her usual tolerance during this day. It had been very harassing and disagreeable to her, and the very fact of making all things easy for Mary, so that there should be nothing to distract her, reacted upon her guardian, and gave Agnes much more annoyance and trouble than an ordinary traveller. And she had hoped to spend so much of this day with Mar, finding her way again into his confidence, drawing back to her tender bosom the child to whom she had been a mother. Poor Agnes! she had looked forward to it so long, and now it had come to so sudden an end—all for nothing, she said to herself, in her weariness and discouragement; for the hope that had sustained her of a revolution in Mary’s shadowed intelligence seemed to float away in the childish content with which she contemplated the external comforts of home. Agnes knew, too, from the glances thrown at her in passing, that she would have a sullen household to manage—for to look for a week of ease and relaxation in the absence of “the family,” and then to have their capricious mistresses return upon their hands in a day, was too much for the flesh and blood of a house full of English servants. It was not wonderful if Miss Hill, deprived of her holiday too, and accustomed to stand between her sister and all annoyances, should lose heart a little at the end of this weary day.
“I shall never leave home again,” said Mary in her gentle voice. “I am not fit to leave home. Everything seems right now that we are back. Even my dear old lord looks at me as if he were better pleased.”
“It does not seem so to me,” said Agnes. “I know that he would have wished you to stay.”
Lady Frogmore looked up at her sister with a mild surprise. “Do not scold me,” she said. “I would have done it if I could. For you, dear, if not for anything else. And to please poor Letitia——”
“Oh Mary, Letitia!”
“You are very hard upon her,” said Mary. “She is like me, she has been disappointed. She has not had what she might have expected. Oh, don’t ask me how, for it turns me all wrong. I have never understood it, and I never shall understand it. Keep me away from them, Agnes. Keep me away from them. Don’t make me think and think. My head turns round, but I never get any clearer. Oh, don’t ask me to go there again.”
She put her hands together like a child, and turned her mild eyes to her sister’s with more than a child’s passion of entreaty in them. How hard it is to fathom the mysteries of a mind thus veiled by heavy misadventure and injury, cut off in fact from the record of its own life! Mary had been roused to think, she had been startled out of her calm, but all fruitlessly, only enough to make her brain swim, and fill her being with confusion and mental pain. She clung to the quiet which was in her secluded home. She felt when she entered it again as if she had escaped from all that could shake and startle her. The strange commotion that had arisen within her when Mar rose in the rustic assembly, when he spoke with a voice which was familiar, yet unfamiliar, full of echoes of dead voices, and which struck to her very heart, she knew not how, had been like a terrible storm to Mary. She could not find her way among the vague thinkings that were all stirred up within her—broken recollections, suggestions, an indistinct new world which was at the same time old. A little more and she might have caught the clue, found the key, touched the spring that would bring light upon the darkness. But she was not capable of the effort, and the stir of the roused thoughts, like the wings of a crowd of frightened birds disturbed by a strange light, had deafened and dazed her. “Don’t make me think and think:” it was the most pathetic appeal of weakness.
Agnes could not resist that tremulous call. She went to her sister and kissed her tenderly. “I will not trouble you more. I will never trouble you more,” she said with tears. It seemed to be giving up Mar’s cause—but Mar was young and had all the world before him. Even if it never came to him, that recognition from his mother, which the boy who did not know his mother could have at the most but a visionary desire for—it could not harm him much; it would interfere with none of his rights nor with his personal happiness. But poor Mary’s calm and subdued life might be shattered if she were pushed too far. The delusions in which she lived, which sufficed for her, might be destroyed—her quiet banished without any greater good being attained. Agnes gave up a cherished hope when she gave her sister that kiss. She would disturb her no more. Better that she should live and die in this seclusion that suited her, and please herself with a number of innocent things, and do her gentle charities, and smile and be happy in her own subdued way, than forced to search again in the dimness of her confused being, and to wreck her peace—probably for nothing. Agnes gave up her hopes as she yielded in the weariness of that summer evening. She knew as little that events were occurring that very day which might make it entirely unimportant whether Mary ever recovered her complete understanding or not, as she did that a vague light had already been established in Mary’s confused mind, which would not be quenched again. She gave up consciously all attempts to lead that sealed mind to clearer understanding, and doing so with a pang of resignation, seemed to bury for herself all the brighter hopes that had still survived within her—hopes which had supported her through many a troubled and monotonous year.
The Dower House was at the other side of the county, as has been said, and further off from the Park than if it had been twice as far in a more direct way. It stood on the corner of a little property, one of the portions of the estate which had been longest in the hands of the family, six or seven miles from the nearest railway station, with nothing more important than a large village near. The chief society which the two ladies had was in this village, about the outskirts of which were a few “good houses,”—respectable, solid dwellings, with “grounds,” not sufficiently dignified to be country places, but superior to the ordinary villa or village mansion—where there lived a few retired people, a soldier or two, Indian officials on pensions, and such like, who, with the addition of the clergy and the doctor, formed the highest classes of Doveton. Lady Frogmore was much thought of in this little society. Her story, which everyone knew more or less, but about which there was always a considerable mystery, her gentleness and kindness, and not least her rank, made her always interesting to her neighbors, and notwithstanding her own complete retirement, their little neighborly tea parties and garden parties were not disagreeable to Mary. She would go nowhere in the evening, but to sit for an hour in a neighbor’s garden and see the young people amuse themselves and listen to the talk of the elders—which was of a calm description, not exciting, and in which it was very unlikely that there could arise any question likely to touch her too keenly—was pleasant enough.
For some weeks after her return home she would go nowhere, and her absence made a blank to the good people about, who liked to put Lady Frogmore’s name in their list of guests and quote the very simple things that Mary had said; but as it happened, about the time when Letitia had made up her mind with certainty as to what was going to take place, and acting under the doctor’s order had sent a letter to warn Mar’s relations of the state in which he lay, Lady Frogmore and Miss Hill, much entreated, had consented to be present at a garden party at General Forsyth’s, who had the nearest house to theirs. They were able to walk over, as it was near, and the general’s children had grown up since Lady Frogmore came to the Dower House, and were supposed to be favorites of the ever kind but often shrinking woman, who smiled tenderly upon them but avoided and evaded, no one knew why, all near approach.
It was one of the scenes so familiar now in English country life. A pretty scene enough if too common to be notable. Young women and young men in their flower of youth and spirit, not as in the old fashion, too busy even for flirtation, contending in the lists of tennis, a little flushed, a little careless with exercise and the struggle for the mastery—talking as well as playing the game; while the fathers and mothers sat or strolled about, half watching, more than half occupied with their own discussions. Mary was received with open arms, placed in the best place, surrounded by a crowd of anxious courtiers who asked to be allowed to bring her tea or ice or claret cup, or anything that in such circumstances a lady could desire. Miss Hill was not so popular, for one thing because she was not Lady Frogmore, but also because Agnes was not so “sweet” as her poor sister, and with her pre-occupied mind and many cares responded less graciously to the compliments addressed to her. Miss Hill was allowed to settle herself where she pleased, and this was easily discovered by one of the neighboring clergy, who came up to her with an air of special cordiality, and said as he shook hands, “I am delighted to see you here. It shows how little truth there is in the rumors that one hears about young Lord Frogmore.”
“About Frogmore!” cried Agnes—she had not been listening very closely until that name suddenly brought the blood to her face. “What do you know about Frogmore?”
The clergyman, surprised by her surprise, hesitated a little, but finally informed her that he had been lately at Ridding, which was the county town, and there he had heard a very alarming account—that Lord Frogmore was down with fever of the worst kind, caught during a visit to some old cottages which had been allowed to get into a dreadful state of neglect on his property, and that his life was despaired of. Dr. Barker was in constant attendance upon him, it was said, and everyone knew Dr. Barker was too busy a man to make too much of a trifling illness. “I am only telling you what I heard,” said the rector, “for of course you must know better, and it was, I confess, a great relief to my mind to see you. If he were really so ill you would not have been here——”
“I am afraid,” said Agnes, “that is not so true as it appears. We keep up but very little correspondence. All the same,” she cried to herself, rather than to her companion, “Letitia must have written, surely she must have written if Mar had been very ill. He is always delicate,” she said.
“So I have heard.”
“And you are sure it was more than that—you are sure there was something definite talked of—a fever? Oh,” cried Agnes, “for the love of heaven tell me everything you know.”
“I have told you everything I know, dear Miss Hill. I am very, very sorry to have made you so anxious. All that must have been an exaggeration at least. You must have heard.”
“Letitia could not—she could not—oh, even she could not,” cried Agnes, with great agitation; “and yet who can tell? She might say what was the use? Oh, forgive me. What you have said has made me very anxious. Typhoid fever has a horrible sound. It takes the courage out of one’s heart.”
“What I heard must have been an exaggeration,” said the clergyman. “I wish I had not told you. People are so fond of adding a little to a piece of news. Anything to make a sensation. I daresay it is only a common cold or something unimportant. You will not tell Lady Frogmore?”
“Will you see if our carriage is there?” Agnes said.
She felt as if she were tottering as she walked. She could not keep on her feet. Anxiety had seized upon her like a vulture, placing all its claws in her flesh. She sat down on the nearest vacant chair, where she was exposed to the conversation of another guest, a lady who did not know many people, and who accordingly flung herself upon the person who seemed to have taken that seat out of kind consideration to make the solitary lady talk. But Agnes was beyond those managements of civility which she would have adopted in another case. When she had recovered a little, without observing that she was being talked to, thinking over this dreadful piece of information did not make it less but more grave. Mar had not written to her, which already had made her vaguely anxious. And who in that house would think of it? Who would take the trouble? Agnes had not the habit of those modern ways to which so many of us fly in a moment of anxiety. She did not think of the telegraph. She turned over in her distressed mind many things that she would do, but not that. She would write to Dr. Barker—she would go to him, or to the Park, where at least a servant would tell her the truth. But it was already evening, and how could she go so late? and how could she live through the dreadful night without knowing? and how could she disentangle Mary from those smiling groups, and persuade her to come home and explain to her what she wanted—what she must do? The sudden alarm without warning, without preparation—the wild, sudden panic and horror, like the shadow of death descending in a moment over her—took from her all power of thought. When at last she was able to reach the spot where Mary sat, it was almost impossible to get her attention. Lady Frogmore was listening patiently to her neighbors, with all their little stories of the parish and village. She said little herself. That was one reason why they liked her so. She listened to everybody except to Agnes, who had at last got to the back of her chair, and who was too much herself—the other half of herself—to call her exquisite politeness forth.
“Mary, the carriage is here, and it is getting late.”
Mary gave her sister a little nod and sat still, listening to Mrs. Brotherton’s account of the measles, with which all her children had been “down.”
“Mary, couldn’t you come away now? The Howards have gone away already, and the Thomsons. And the grass is damp, and the dew beginning to fall.”
“Presently,” she said, with another look and nod. And now someone else had got possession of her ear.
Agnes went on whispering entreaties; but how was Mary to know there was any urgency in them more than on any other afternoon? She cried at last, in desperation—
“I am ill—I am feeling very ill. For God’s sake, Mary, come away.”
Lady Frogmore only waited to hear the last of what the vicar’s wife was saying, and then she rose hastily and drew Agnes’ arm into her own.
“My dear,” she said, “why did you not tell me you had a headache before?”