The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER LII.

“I AM very glad,” said the man of business, “to hear that everything has gone so well.” He gave John a somewhat curious look from under his eyelids. He did not doubt the honest meaning of his co-trustee; but that there should have been for so long before Mr. Parke’s eyes the prospect of such a change—the almost certainty that the delicate boy would die, and title, wealth, and importance—every advancement he had ever dreamed—should come to him; and then in a moment that the whole brilliant prospect should be wiped out, and himself and his children thrust back into the shade, was an ordeal which would try the best. It was impossible but that the thought of it must have entered John’s mind. He must have felt himself again heir presumptive; he must have believed that a few hours would restore to him all and more than he had lost. And then all had disappeared again, and by an event at which John must pronounce himself glad. It was a severe trial for any man. Mr. Blotting attributed to this the cloud upon John Parke’s face, and was sorry, but could not blame him. It was but too natural that he should feel so. His wife’s illness, too, the astute man of business could easily enough conceive to spring from the same cause. She, no doubt, had felt it still more keenly than John had done. He had seen the doctor, and was aware that Dr. Barker did not treat Mrs. Parke’s fever as very serious; and the lawyer had his own ideas of human nature, which seemed to him to account for many things. He would have treated with the supremest contempt any suggestion that either one or the other had thought a thought, much less lifted a finger to the detriment of their charge; but it could not be expected that they should in their hearts welcome the restoration to health of this young supplanter as if he had been their son.

“Blotting,” said John Parke, “I have something very serious to say to you. Do you know that Lady Frogmore has come entirely to herself? She has not only fully recognized and acknowledged her son, but she seems to have forgotten that she ever did otherwise. Barker says it is what he always hoped—that a great shock some time would bring her completely back.”

“But do you think it will last?” said the lawyer, shaking his head.

“He thinks it will last—he is a better authority than I am. Well! she was to be the guardian you know, and all we did has been done by private arrangement between ourselves to save public discussion—and may be changed in the same way?”

“I can’t think what you are driving at?” Mr. Blotting said.

“Oh, it is easy enough to understand. I don’t wish to resume the charge of the boy, Blotting, especially now when it will be full of embarrassments. His mother would always be interfering. I don’t deny her right. But it was only because she was disabled that I took it at all, don’t you know. I want to give it up now. I want to leave this house. Don’t you see it puts us in a false position living here? My children will suffer from it. They get exaggerated ideas of their own importance. They’re of no particular importance,” said John, with perhaps a faint bitterness in his tone, “and it’s very bad for them. There was all that fuss about Duke, for instance. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it was highly absurd. It was calculated to give the boy the most false idea——”

“We—ell,” said the co-trustee. He could not contradict this, which was certainly the truth, and had been remarked by everybody. “Perhaps there may be something in what you say; but that boy of yours is a capital fellow, Parke. How cleverly he brought his cousin in and set things on their right footing.”

John did not for a moment reply. It is always pleasant to hear your son praised, but when he is praised for seeing further, and showing better sense than yourself, it is perhaps not so pleasant. Mr. Parke had thought a great deal since those recent events, and had seen many things in a different light. Amid other things those festivities, in which Duke was the hero, now appeared to him in the light of an almost incredible piece of folly. He was glad to think that he had remonstrated at the time, but his remonstrances (which he did not now remember had been very feeble) were overborne. All the same he did not quite like it when his colleague so readily agreed. It would have been civil at least to say that nobody else thought so, and that it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Well!” he said, sharply, in a very different tone from that lingering monosyllable which expressed so unflatteringly an acquiescence in his own self-reproach. “We agree you see so far as that is concerned. And I am anxious to get back to my own house. Greenpark is our home, not this place, which belongs to my nephew. Now that his mother is quite restored she is the right person to make a home for him. There never can be any question as to her motives.”

“Parke! there never has been, so far as I am aware, the slightest question as to your motives.”

John waved his hand; he did not speak. Was it, perhaps, that he was not capable of doing so? He stood for a moment without saying anything, and then went on—

“Anyhow, it would be better for us all. One gets to think one has a right to things of which one has only the use. I don’t like it for the children. I am anxious to get home. And our tenants there are going: their time is up. I should like it to be settled at once. It was between you and me before an amicable arrangement. Now we can return to the original letter of the will, don’t you know? Mary must be the acting guardian as he wished. My brother,” John said with a faint sigh, which he endeavored to restrain, “had the most perfect confidence in his wife.”

“Talking of that,” said Mr. Blotting, “I hope, if you will allow me to say so, that you are not taking this important step without talking it over with Mrs. Parke. I know she is ill——”

“My wife and I are entirely of the same mind,” said John hastily. “I know her opinion,” he added, hesitating. “Lady Frogmore and she could not get on in the same house. They are very old friends, and there is a long-standing grievance——”

The lawyer laughed, as wise men do when the female element comes in. He thought he had now the key to the situation.

“Ah” he said, “I understand! the ladies are like that—very charming, but apt to have grudges, and hating each other like poison. They are all more or less like that.”

It seemed to John, in his momentary exasperation, as if he would have liked to knock his fellow-trustee down. To treat his sombre misery as if it had no deeper origin than a trivial quarrel! And yet it was the kindest thing that could have been done. He said to himself, with a rebound of the habitual affection he had for his wife, and sense that her credit was his, that Letitia, whatever she might be, was no fool. Blotting’s women might be idiots like that, but she was not. He had the deepest horror for her fault (whatever it was) in his own heart, and sometimes could hardly bear to speak to her from thought of what she had done. But he could not let another man touch her, or point a finger of scorn at her. Whatever Letitia might be she was his, and she was no fool.

Mrs. Parke recovered slowly, and for weeks the avenue was traversed by files of inquirers with the cards of all the best people about. And it seemed the most natural thing in the world that as soon as she was able she should be taken to her own home at Greenpark for change of air. Lady Frogmore had already gone, taking her son with her to her dower house. It was said that there was something wrong with the drains at the great house, as there is in so many great establishments, and that after two cases of fever they must at once be seen to. In the commotion caused by this it need scarcely be said that the cottages at Westgate were forgotten, and continued till Mar’s majority to be the most picturesque group of dwellings and the most poisonous centre of infection in the parish. Even when that time came it was almost too much for all the romantic people about to see them pulled down. The Park stood empty for a year or two, however, neither young Lord Frogmore nor his former guardian coming back; but as there were various very natural reasons for this, few questions were asked or remarks made. The young lord went abroad with his mother for some time—and when he returned he went to Oxford, which was what he had never been expected to be able for. But a fever is often rather a good thing when it is over, clearing away incipient mischief and settling the constitution. I do not venture to answer for this doctrine, but it was believed by all the servants and village people, who had now changed their opinion as to the practicability of “raring” Mar. By means of the changed treatment to which he was subjected, if not to the settling influence of his fever, he grew so strong that his unusual height seemed to be no drawback to him, and he was not without distinction in the records of his college in matters of athletic success, as well as in other ways. When he reached his majority the festivities rivalled those of a similar period in the history of Duke, his cousin, but were not so imposing. And it was not very long after that great epoch when Lady Frogmore and her constant companion had an announcement made to them which was not unexpected, yet which it must be allowed they had done their best to avert. The reader, perhaps, will have divined what Mary meant when she laid her hand upon the shoulder of her little namesake, Mary Parke—still called Tiny by all her surroundings, though now Tiny no more—and said, “It must be this one, for Letty is too old.” And perhaps that experienced reader will also divine that Lady Frogmore’s conclusion, possibly by mere force of the fact that it was her conclusion, proved wrong. I do not attempt to say anything to excuse the disadvantage of Letty’s age; two years is no doubt a very serious matter when it occurs early in the twenties. But this may be alleged in extenuation, that Mar was very much grown up, almost elderly for his age. He was more like five-and-twenty than one-and-twenty, everybody said. His upbringing, which was on the whole somewhat solitary, and his delicate health as a boy, and the many thoughts into which his peculiar position and circumstances led him, were calculated to mature the mind. And young Frogmore felt himself quite the eldest member of the family when he came back with his degree (in modest honors) a year after his majority, and found his mother and his aunt ready to worship him for being so clever, for being so strong, for having such good health, and for wearing the ribbon of his college eleven. They were not quite certain, at least Mary was not, for which of these things she was most grateful to her boy; but I myself have no doubt upon the subject. It was for being so well that she admired him most.

And the first thing he told them was that it was Letty. Not her sister, whom Lady Frogmore had selected as most suitable in point of age, but the elder of the two, who was and had always been two years older than Mar. Those ladies were so full of the primitive prejudices of their kind that they did not like it. But then they liked Letty, which was much better. She was Letitia’s child; but though Agnes still remembered that, she no longer feared that the mother’s blood would show. Mary on her side had, notwithstanding everything, a satisfaction, which made her fair life all the fairer in the thought that her marriage and her child’s birth were not altogether, after all, injurious to the family of her old friend.

All the events of the dreadful period before the John Parkes’ retirement to their own house happily faded out of human knowledge in the course of these years. They were better off than they had been in their beginning from various causes—because for one thing they had been able to make considerable savings during their residence at the Park as guardians to young Lord Frogmore, and because old Lord Frogmore had made some important additions to their means before his death, and their children were well put out in the world and prospered. But there was one thing which amid this prosperity never changed. John Parke never recovered the confidence in his wife which had been shattered on that July morning. It was never known what she had done, and indeed he forgot that she had done anything as the years went on; but she was no longer to him the infallible guide, the unerring counsellor of the past. His faith had been destroyed; he took her advice often, and what was more he left most things to her guidance by habit and indolence as he had always done. But he did not believe in her as he had once done—that was over. It was a thing that had had few consequences, because as I have said of the indolence which grows with years and habit, which is much stronger than opinion; but a thing almost as remarkable as John’s want of faith, Letitia felt it, though it had so few practical results. She felt it more than she had ever felt anything impalpable in all the course of her life. It made very little difference externally, but yet she felt it to the bottom of her heart. And she for one never forgot those occurrences which destroyed her husband’s faith in her. So far as could be known they had altogether passed from the recollection of Lady Frogmore, but Letitia never forgot. She gave the incident a twist, however, which made it a matter to talk about, and even to exult over, by one of the strangest distortions of thought ever recorded. There was nothing she was so fond of talking of as the tremendous responsibility that had been laid upon her when John undertook the charge of Frogmore. “For it is easy talking,” Mrs. Parke would say, “about John undertaking it. What had John to do with the bringing up of a delicate boy? Of course it was me; and if ever there was a responsibility in this world which I should recommend everybody to avoid it is the task of bringing up other people’s children; and a very delicate boy, and one that would have been a positive advantage to us if anything had happened to him. Can you imagine such a position? I would not undertake it again if the Queen were to ask me. It is a life-long subject of gratitude to me,” Mrs. Parke would add with a sigh of satisfaction, “that he got no harm in my house.”

And John listened to this over and over again repeated—and is never clear why it annoys him so. For events grow dim after the course of years—and he never did know what Letitia had done. Meanwhile it is and will remain for all her life Mrs. Parke’s great subject of self-felicitation that Lord Frogmore never came to any harm while he remained under her care.

THE END.