The Two Marys by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XV

A WEEK after their settlement at Grove Road, while the girls were expecting every day to receive at least by telegraph some news from their mother, Geoffrey made his appearance in the middle of the day, and with a face of much serious meaning. He asked his mother and her guests to come with him to Miss Anna’s room; and then having gathered them all around him, he took out some papers and made a little speech to them with great seriousness. “I thought it was of the utmost importance that we should all know exactly how we stood,” he said, “and I put the whole case into Mr Furnival’s hands. We all trust him who know him, and Grace and Milly were willing to take him on my word. He has had all the facts before him for some days; with such scraps of evidence as you could furnish us with,” he added, turning to Grace: “and he took counsel’s opinion. I informed him that it would be in any case an amicable suit to settle our respective rights. I have brought you their opinions now.”

“I thought there was something going on,” said Miss Anna, “something underhand, a conspiracy, concealed from me.”

“Conspiracies are not in my way,” Geoffrey said. “Perhaps you would like me to read what they say. It confirms my own opinion—though perhaps my advice would have been different.”

He spread out his papers on the table, and the women round him turned their eyes to him with expressions as different as their characters: his mother proud of the position her boy was assuming, yet a little nervous as to how Anna would take it, and suspicious of the look which she thought she detected him directing towards Milly; Grace a little reserved, holding her head erect, looking at him with an interest which had not much curiosity in it, but a rising impulse of resistance—although she could not tell as yet what it was she was to resist; Milly with milder interest and a gentle admiration of Geoff which was like a shy shadow of his mother’s. But Miss Anna, all alert, turned eagerly towards him as if she would have snatched the papers out of his hands, her dark eyes blazing, her whole figure full of energy and latent wrath, which she was ready to pour out upon him should the lawyers’ opinion go against her own.

“I need not read it word for word,” said Geoff; “I will give it afterwards to my cousin Grace. The lawyers think, after close consideration, that there is—no case——.” (Here there was a movement on the part of Miss Anna and a quick “I told you so.”) “Wait a little,” said Geoffrey, “They say there is scarcely any case to go to a jury; but they say also that if it did go to a jury the strong moral probability and the touching character of all the circumstances might lead to a verdict for the claimants notwithstanding the weakness of the evidence. Law would be against it; but the jury might be for it.”

“I understand that reasoning,” said Miss Anna: “most men are fools, and jurymen are men—therefore it is likely that fools being the judges, the verdict would be preposterous. Is that all your wiseacres have got to say?”

“Not quite,” said Geoff; “the lawyers advise a compromise.”

“A compromise? I object—I object at once. I will not hear of it. Let it go into court. If I am compelled to yield to the sentiment of a dozen British idiots, I must do so; but consent to rob myself, for no reason? oh no, no! I will never do that.”

“Aunt Anna, you are not the only person concerned.”

“I am,” she said; “I have the largest share. I am the eldest. Your mother has never gone against me in her life, and she will not now.”

“Anna,” said Mrs Underwood tremulously, “I always have followed your advice—oh, always, it is quite true; but Geoff, you know—Geoff is a man now; and he has been bred up to the law, and he ought to know better, far better than we do.”

“Should he? but he doesn’t; he’s a poor weak sentimental creature not strong enough to be either one thing or another, a swindler or an honest man. He naturally takes refuge in compromises. I haven’t known him so long without knowing that. I believe the lawyer’s opinion is his own, it is so like him. A compromise? no! I will have no compromise,” cried Miss Anna, striking her stick upon the floor.

“And we reject it too,” cried Grace—“we will have nothing, nothing! we settled upon all that before we came here. If we had not decided so, we should never have come.”

“Let it go to a jury if you like,” said Miss Anna, paying no attention to this. “I am not afraid. I take the risk of sentiment. Yes, of course, they are a pack of sentimental fools: two pretty girls in deep mourning will get anything out of a British jury. Still I’ll risk it. But nothing, nothing in the world will make me consent to a compromise.”

Grace had risen to her feet, with her usual eagerness of impulse, “Do you not hear me—do you not understand me, Miss Anna? We will take nothing; we will have no compromises, no more talk even, not a word said. We will have nothing, nothing to do with it! We have a right to be heard as well as you——”

“And I think I also have a right to be heard,” cried Geoff—he was calm between the excitement of the others; “I am not without a voice. Whatever you say, justice must be done, and justice suggests this course. Yes, Aunt Anna, whatever you say, I have a right to be heard. It is for our own comfort, without thought of them.”

“I want no such comfort,” she cried. “I gave in to your mother’s nonsense, and allowed them to be asked here. I allowed them to be asked because they were——”

“Aunt Anna! do you wish me to tell them in so many words why you wanted them——?”

“Geoff, Geoff!” cried his mother, in alarm.

The girls paid but little attention to this quarrel as it raged. They did not comprehend even what it was about. “We had better go away as this is not our affair,” Grace said, with a stately little bow. And Milly, too, rose to go with her sister—when the conflict around suddenly ceased, and the two girls, who seemed to have been pushed aside by the other more energetic emotions, suddenly became again the centre of the scene, and the chief persons in it. What was it? only the entrance of old Simmons with a yellow envelope in his hand.

The others stopped short in their conflict. They acknowledged with a little awe the presence of something greater which had come into their midst. They looked on in silence while the girls, clinging together, read their telegram. Then there was a little pause.

“We must go home at once,” said Grace, as well as she could speak for tears. “We do not require to wait. There are steamers every day, I suppose. Would you answer this for us, Cousin Geoffrey? and say we want no one. We will come.”

It required some power of divination to make out the last words, which were almost choked with the weeping to which Milly had entirely given way.

“Go at once?” said Miss Anna, “without an escort—without seeing anything?”

The girls gave her, both together, an indignant look; and then they turned and went out of the room, moving in one step, like one creature, with a soft sweep as of wings. So at least Geoffrey thought, looking after them with the tenderest pity in his eyes. They did not walk but disappeared, flying to be alone and get some comfort from their tears.

“What does the telegram say—who sends it—is it long or short—is it from the mother herself, is it—?” Miss Anna put out her hand and tried to take it from Geoff. Both the ladies were full of curiosity. Mrs Underwood, indeed, in sympathy with the trouble of the girls, dried her eyes as she looked up eagerly for news—but Miss Anna owned no trace of tears. She was full of interest and keen curiosity. “Give it me. The very wording of it will tell us something more about them,” she cried.

Geoff’s first movement was to hurry away, carrying this communication with him; but he paused as a new idea took possession of him. He was too good a man to be altogether a free agent. He paused, and looked at the mother upon whom he knew he was about to inflict a great blow. She was not a wise woman, and the instinct of curiosity which had possession of her at the moment was not one to please that critical faculty which is so exaggerated in youth. He did not like to see in her eyes even a shadow of the hungry appetite for news which burned in her sister’s. Nevertheless, he read the telegram slowly.

“Your terrible news just received. Mother utterly prostrated. Wire if wish me to come for you—otherwise return first ship.”

The name of the sender was a strange one—it was evidently an uncle or some relation who could speak with authority. Geoff paid no attention to what the ladies said, but went on. “Mother, I am going to say something which will vex you. You must try to remember that I am old enough to take care of myself. I am going with them, to take them to their mother.”

“Geoff—Geoff—by sea!—to America!” Mrs Underwood gasped; she could not get her breath.

“Of course it must be by sea if he goes to America,” said Miss Anna. “There is no land passage invented yet.”

“It is my plain duty,” said Geoff, colouring a little, “if, as I believe, they are our near relations; and in any case there is a question between us which they are too young in their generosity to settle. We cannot take advantage of the generosity of two children, mother——”

“Oh, Geoff! but for you to go—to go to America—a long voyage, and at this time of the year——”

“The equinoctials coming on,” put in Miss Anna quickly.

“The equin——, yes; nothing but storms and shipwrecks, and every kind of danger. If you mean me never to have a night’s rest more—to go distracted every wind that blows—to have neither peace nor comfort of my life! Oh, Geoff! all that, for them that you never had seen a fortnight ago! and me, your mother, that have never had another thought but you for eight-and-twenty years——”

“Surely, mother,” cried poor Geoff, “there is no need to put it so tragically. I am not going to abandon you. I am only going to do what half the men of my age do for pleasure—and I shall have a real motive in it. In the first place, a duty to Grace and Milly: if they were your children, how should you like them to go over the sea all alone, when a great idle fellow calling himself their cousin was here doing nothing? And then this business, which otherwise may worry us for years, which we never can be sure about—for if these dear girls, in the generosity of their hearts, refuse to have anything to do with it, who can tell that their mother, their brothers will be of the same mind?”

Mrs Underwood had fallen into tears and broken exclamations. She was incapable of any connected words. “Oh Geoff—my boy—all I have—all I have in the world!” and “a sea voyage—a sea voyage to America,” was all she said.

Miss Anna got up to her feet, and struck her stick emphatically upon the floor. “Listen, Mary! I have said your son was soft, and a dawdle like yourself. I retract. He’s a clever fellow, and sees the rights of a matter when it’s put before him. There, Geoff! go, and you have my blessing. I’ll give you a hundred pounds, too, if you want it, that you may have a pleasant trip. Your mother’s talking nonsense. I never knew her lose a night’s rest, except when you were teething; and then that was your doing, not hers, for you squalled all night. Go, my boy, and success to you. It’s the wisest thing you ever thought of in your life.”

“Oh, Anna!” cried her sister, “how can you be so cruel?” She had dried her eyes at these accusations, and sat up with a flushed countenance. “If you knew, if you only knew half what a mother goes through! Do you think I have always told you when I lay awake thinking of him—or any one? Geoff, I have never denied you anything; but I think this will break my heart!”

“Mother,” said Geoff, half pleading, half angry, “I run no more risk than half the women’s sons in England—no risk at all; you make me feel a fool to talk like this.”

“Never mind,” said Miss Anna, while Mrs Underwood relapsed into weeping; “I’ll bring her round. Go off at once, there is plenty of time, and see about your berths. You’ll find her quite reconciled to it when you come back.”

“But, Aunt Anna, I don’t understand the change on your part. You who rejected all idea of a compromise——”

Aunt Anna laughed. “I have no objection to one kind of compromise. Bring us back that little dove-eyed thing as Mrs Geoff. I’d rather have had the other; but you could never have managed her. Settle my money upon Milly in her marriage settlements; and don’t mind about our absence from the ceremony. Go and see Niagara, and all that, and bring us back your wife—that’s the kind of compromise I want; that’s all I stipulate for, Geoff.”

“If I can, Aunt Anna.”

“Pooh—can! With a week under the same roof, and a fortnight in the same ship. Rubbish! If you can’t, you are a poorer creature than I thought. Go, go, off with you, Geoff—before your mother comes to herself.”

“Where is Geoff going? Oh, Anna, help me, help me! don’t let him go. Geoff!” cried Mrs Underwood.

Upon which Miss Anna confronted her sister with her most imposing looks. “Mary! don’t be a fool. The boy is doing precisely what he ought to do. I never had such a good opinion of him before; let him alone. He is fifty times better able to take care of himself than you are to take care of him. Here’s the telegram; let us see what it says.”

“It says, I suppose, just what he read to us, Anna,” said the other, frightened into some degree of self-denial, and with a little curiosity re-awakening in her blurred overflowing eyes.

“A thing never says anything to you when it’s read aloud. Here it is. ‘Stephen Salisbury, Quebec, to Grace Yorke, Montague Hotel, London.’ (Then it was sent on from the hotel.) ‘Terrible news received; mother prostrated; wire if wish me to come.’ Of course it must be the mother’s brother. The people must be well off, Mary. There cannot be any doubt about that. You see he says he will come if they want him; and even the message shows it. The man would never have sent such a long message if he had not been well off.”

“I always knew that,” said Mrs Underwood feebly, “from what Grace and Milly said. Why shouldn’t their uncle (if it is their uncle) come for them? I don’t know why they should be in such a hurry to get away?”

“It is a great deal better that Geoff should go with them,” Miss Anna said. “Pluck up a heart; or if you can’t do that, get a little common-sense, Mary; common-sense will do just as well. Why should anything happen to a Cunard steamer because your boy happens to be in it more than another? Do you think God has a special spite against you?”

“Oh, Anna!” cried her sister, horrified; “me? I know God is merciful and good: but——”

“But you would rather not trust Geoff in His hands, lest He should take a cruel advantage? That is the way of people like you.”

“I never said so; I never thought so. I—I hope I have always put my trust in God.”

“But you think, all the same, if He had a chance like this, that He would like to do you an ill turn? Oh, I understand what you mean. I have heard a great many people—pious, devout people—speak just like you.”

Mrs Underwood relapsed into speechless misery. Against such an accusation as this, what could she say? She who never missed church, nor ceased to profess her belief in Providence. She was silenced altogether. She wept and sighed the name of Geoff now and then; but there was nothing more to say.

Geoff went down to the City without loss of a moment. He secured berths in a steamer which was to sail in three days; and with a bound of pleasure and conscious pride in his heart found himself engaged for his passage across the Atlantic. He went home very soberly, but with the blood coursing in his veins. He had taken such an initiative now as he had never been able to take in all his life before. He had emancipated himself at last. It was, however, with a little apprehension that he turned homeward. Whether his mother would impede his way with weeping, whether the sisters would reject his escort, he could not tell; but his fears in both cases were unnecessary. Mrs Underwood had been reduced to subjection some time before he got home. And as for Grace and Milly, they were neither excited about his proposal nor disposed to refuse it. They took it as the most natural thing in the world. There was a gleam of brightness, he thought, in Milly’s face, but Grace paid very little attention. Geoffrey was a little cast down when he perceived that they saw nothing at all heroic in his mission, nothing that anybody would think twice about. But he had to console himself with Miss Anna’s declaration that a fortnight on board ship would settle all questions. He himself felt a great confidence that everything would come right in the end.

Thus the difficulty was brought to a conclusion, in a way little contemplated by the Canadian who once had been Leonard Crosthwaite, and had broken his heart for his cousin Anna. When the young people were gone, the two ladies from Grove Road made a little pilgrimage to the great, grey, dismal London cemetery in which all that remained of him lay—where Mrs Underwood laid some flowers, and Anna gazed with eyes that looked as if they could penetrate the very secrets of the grave, upon the mound under which the lover of her youth slept in peace. What were the thoughts that had lain concealed within his breast for thirty years, yet which had brought him, carrying fear and confusion which he little anticipated, to her dwelling, the first day he spent in England, no one could tell. He had carried all that mystery with him to the other world.

And after a while Geoffrey Underwood came safely back from the terrible voyage which had so much alarmed his mother, bringing with him, exactly as Miss Anna had foreseen and commanded, his young wife. She was far too young a wife, her mother thought, to venture so far; but Milly did not think so. How to do without Grace, and to think for herself, was more difficult to Milly than the distance and the voyage. But she did what was a great deal easier than thinking for herself—she transferred all the responsibility to her husband. Nothing could be handsomer than the marriage settlement which Miss Anna made. She made the little bride her own representative, with the larger share of the fortune. And the Canadian family were well pleased, and asked no more. Indeed, all that Mrs Yorke desired was that nothing should be said about this strange illumination thrown at the last upon the husband who had been hers for twenty years, and who now seemed to be stolen from her and changed into another man. She would not listen to any explanations on the subject; the sound of the other name was odious to her. She took even from her boy, Leonard, that name of his which came from his father’s old life, and jealously called him Robert, which was his second name.

Almost a year elapsed before the young pair came home. They arrived on a bright April afternoon, when the sun was shining over the great smoke. The windows were open: the lawn all green with spring, and set in a frame of English primroses, looked as fresh as the bride herself, who recognised it, and the difference in it, with a little cry of pleasure. Mrs Underwood threw herself, as was natural, upon the wonderful son who had been delivered from the seas, who had not been drowned, or swallowed by a whale, who had come safely through marriage, and all the other terrific dangers to which he had been exposed; but Miss Anna walked across the room with a little stately limp, casting aside her stick, and took little Milly in her arms. “Welcome!” she said, “little girl with the dove’s eyes. I always said I would accept one, but only one, compromise!”

END