MARY ANNE
It was the Sunday afternoon after these visits to the ancestor and to
the group in the Commercial Road. Leonard was slowly returning home
after a solitary lunch. He walked with drooping head, touching the
lamp-posts as he passed with his umbrella. This, as everybody knows, is
a certain sign of preoccupation and dejection.
He was becoming, in fact, conscious of a strange obsession of his soul.
The Family History sat upon him like a nightmare: it left him not either
by day or by night. He was beginning to realise that he could not shake
it off, and that it was come to stay.
When a man is born to a Family History, and has to grow up with it, in
full consciousness of it, he generally gets the better of it, and either
disregards it or treats it with philosophy, or laughs at it, or even
boasts of it. The illustrious Mr. Bounderby was one of the many who
boast of it. But, then, he had grown up with it, and it had become part
of him, and he was able to present his own version of it.
Very different is the case when a man has a Family History suddenly and
quite unexpectedly sprung upon him. What could have been more desirable
than the position of this young man for a whole quarter of a century?
Sufficiently wealthy, connected for generations with gentlefolk,
successful, with nothing whatever to hamper him in his career, with the
certainty of succeeding to a large property--could mortal man desire
more?
And then, suddenly, a Family History of the darkest and most gloomy
kind--murder, sudden death, suicide, early death, the shattering of a
strong mind, bankruptcy, poverty, cousins whom no kindliness could call
presentable--all this fell upon him at one blow. Can one be surprised
that he touched the lamp-posts as he went along?
Is it wonderful that he could not get rid of the dreadful story? It
occupied his whole brain; it turned everything else out--the great
economical article for the _Nineteenth Century_, all his books, all his
occupations. If he read in the printed page, his eyes ran across the
lines and up and down the lines, but nothing reached his brain. The
Family History was a wall which excluded everything else; or it was a
jealous tenant who drove every intruder out as with a broom. If he tried
to write, his pen presently dropped from his fingers, for the things
that lay on his brain were not allowed by that new tenant to escape. And
all night long, and all day long, pictures rose up and floated before
his eyes; terrible pictures--pictures of things that belonged to the
History; pictures that followed each other like animated photographs,
irrepressible, not to be concealed, or denied, or refused admission.
This obsession was only just beginning: it intended to become deeper and
stronger: it was going to hold him with grip and claw, never to let him
go by night or day until---- But the end he could not understand.
You know how, at the first symptoms of a long illness, there falls upon
the soul a premonitory sadness: the nurses and the doctors utter words
of cheerfulness and hope: there is a loophole, there always is a
loophole, until the climax and the turning-point. The patient hears, and
tries to receive solace. But he knows better. He knows without being
told that he stands on the threshold of the torture chamber: the door
opens, he steps in, because he must: he will lie there and suffer--O
Lord! how long?
With such boding and gloom of soul--boding without words, gloom
inarticulate--Leonard walked slowly homewards.
It was about three in the afternoon that he mounted his stairs. In his
mood, brooding over the new-found tragedies, it seemed quite natural,
and a thing to be expected, that his cousin Mary Anne should be sitting
on the stairs opposite his closed door. She rose timidly.
“The man said he could not tell when you would come home, so I waited,”
she explained.
“He ought to have asked you to wait inside. Did you tell him who you
were?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry to disturb your Sabbath calm.”
“My---- Oh yes! Pray come in.”
She obeyed, and sat down by the fire, glancing round the room curiously.
In her lap lay a brown-paper parcel.
“I thought you would come home to dinner after chapel,” she began, “so I
got here about one.”
She observed that his face showed some trouble, and she hesitated to go
on.
“Have you come to tell me of more family misfortunes?” he asked
abruptly.
“Oh,” she said, “I wish I hadn’t come. I told her you didn’t want it and
you wouldn’t like it. Besides, what’s the use? It all happened so long
ago. But granny would have it. I’ve brought you a book. She says you
must read it. If you’d rather not have it, I will take it back again.
Granny ought to know that you don’t want to be worried about these old
things.”
He pulled himself together, and assumed a mask of cheerfulness.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Why should I not read about these old things which
are to me so new? They belong to me as much as to you.”
He observed the girl more narrowly while he spoke. Her words and her
hesitation showed perception and feeling at least. As for her
appearance, she was short and sturdy; her features were cast in one of
the more common moulds. She wore a black cloth jacket and a skirt of
dark green serge, a modest hat with black plumes nodding over her head
in the hearse-like fashion of the day before yesterday, and her gloves
were doubtful.
The first impression was of complete insignificance; the second
impression was of a girl who might interest one. Her eyes were
good--they were the eyes of her grandmother; her hands were small and
delicate--they were the hands of her grandmother; her voice was clear
and soft, with a distinct utterance quite unlike the thick and husky
people among whom she lived. In all these points she resembled her
grandmother. Leonard observed these things--it was a distraction to
think of the cousin apart from the Family History--and became interested
in the girl.
“My cousin,” he said unexpectedly, “you are very much like your
grandmother.”
“Like granny?” She coloured with pleasure. As she was not a girl who
kept company with anyone, she had never before received a compliment.
“Why, she is beautiful still, and I---- Oh!”
She laughed.
“You have her voice and her eyes. She seems to be a very sweet and
gentle lady.”
“She is the sweetest old lady in the world and the gentlest, and, oh!
she’s had an awful time.”
“I am sorry to think so.”
“She cried with pleasure and pride when you went away. For fifty years
not a single member of her family has been to see her. I never saw her
take on so, and you so kind and friendly. Sam said you had as much pride
as a duke.”
“Your brother should not judge by first appearances.”
“And you were not proud a bit. Well, granny said: ‘Nobody ever told him
of the family misfortunes, and it’s shameful. I’ve told him some, but
not all, and now I’ll send him my Scrap-book with the trial in it--the
trial, you know, of John Dunning for the wilful murder of Langley
Holme.’ And I’ve brought it; here it is.” She handed him the parcel in
her lap. “That’s why I came.”
“Thank you,” said Leonard, laying it carelessly on the table: “I will
read it or look at it some time. But I own I am not greatly interested
in the trial; it took place too long ago.”
“Once she had another copy, but she gave it to your grandfather a few
days before he killed himself.”
Leonard remembered these words afterwards. For the moment they had no
meaning for him.
“Granny says we’ve got hereditary misfortunes.”
“So she told me. Hereditary? Why?” His brow contracted. “I don’t know
why. Hereditary misfortunes are supposed to imply ancestral crimes.”
“She puts it like this. If it hadn’t been hereditary misfortune she
wouldn’t have married grandfather; he wouldn’t have been bankrupt;
father wouldn’t have been only a small clerk; Sam would have been
something in a large way; and I should be a lady instead of a Board
School teacher.”
“You can be both, my cousin. Now look at the other side. Your
grandfather was ruined, I take it, by his own incompetence; his poverty
was his own doing. Your father never rose in the world, I suppose,
because he had no power of fight. Your brother has got into a
respectable profession; what right has he to complain?”
“That’s what I say sometimes. Granny won’t have it. She’s all for
hereditary ill-luck, as if we are to suffer for what was done a hundred
years ago. I don’t believe it, for my part. Do you?”
He thought of his talk with Constance in the country road.
“It is a dreadful question; do not let it trouble us. Let us go on with
our work and not think about it.”
“It’s all very well to say ‘Don’t think about it,’ when she talks about
nothing else, especially when she looks at Sam and thinks of you. There
was something else I wanted to say.” She dropped her head, and began
nervously to twitch with her fingertips. “I’m almost ashamed to say it.
Sam would never forgive me, but I think of granny first and of all she
has endured, and I must warn you.” She looked round; there was nobody
else present. “It’s about Sam, my brother. I must warn you--I must,
because he may make mischief between you and granny.”
“He will find that difficult. Well, go on.”
“He goes to your village in the country. He sits and talks with the
people. He pretends that he goes to see how the old man is getting on.
But it is really to find out all he can about the property.”
“What has he to do with the property?”
“He wants to find out what is to become of all the money.”
“Does he think that the rustics can tell him?”
“I don’t know. You see, his head is filled with the hope of getting some
of the money. He wants to get it divided among the heirs. It’s what he
calls the ‘accumulations.’”
“Accumulations!” Leonard repeated impatiently. “They are all in a tale.
I know nothing about these accumulations, or what will be done with
them.”
“Sam is full of suspicions. He thinks there is a conspiracy to keep him
out.”
“Oh, does he? Well, tell him that my great-grandfather’s solicitor
receives the rents and deals with them as he is instructed. I, for one,
am not consulted.”
“I said you knew nothing about it. Granny was so angry. You see, Sam can
think of nothing else. He’s been unlucky lately, and he comforts himself
with calculating what the money comes to. He’s made me do sums--oh!
scores of sums--in compound interest for him: Sam never got so far
himself. If you’ve never worked it out----”
“I never have. Like Sam, I have not got so far.”
“Well, it really comes to a most wonderful sum. Sometimes I think that
the rule must be wrong. It mounts up to about a million and a half.”
“Does it?” Leonard replied carelessly. “Let your brother understand, if
you can, that he builds his hopes on a very doubtful succession.”
“Half of it he expects to get. Granny and you, he says, are the only
heirs. What is hers, he says, is his. So he has made her sign a paper
giving him all her share.”
“Oh! And where do you come in?”
“There will be nothing for me, because it will all be granny’s: and she
has signed that paper, so that it is to be all his.”
“I am sorry that she has signed anything, though I do not suppose such a
document would stand.”
“Sam says she owes the family for fifty years’ maintenance: that is,
£20,000, without counting out-of-pocket expenses, incidentals, and rent.
How he makes it out I don’t know, because poor old granny doesn’t cost
more than £30 a year, and I find that. Can’t he claim that money?”
“Of course not. She owes him nothing. Your brother is not, I fear, quite
a--a straight-walking Christian, is he?”
She sighed.
“He’s a Church member; but, then, he says it’s good for business.
Mother sides with Sam. They are both at her every day. Oh, Mr.
Campaigne, is it all Sam’s fancy? Will there be no money at all? When he
finds it out, he’ll go off his head for sure.”
“I don’t know. Don’t listen to him. Don’t think about the money.”
“I must sometimes. It’s lovely to think about being rich, after you’ve
been so poor. Why, sometimes we’ve had to go for days--we women--with a
kippered herring or a bloater and a piece of bread for dinner. And as
for clothes and gloves and nice things----”
“But now you have an income, and you have your work. Those days are
gone. Don’t dream of sudden wealth.”
She got up.
“I won’t think about it. It’s wicked to dream about being rich.”
“What would you do with money if you had it?”
“First of all, it would be so nice not to think about the rent and not
to worry, when illness came into the house, how the Doctor was to be
paid. And next, Sam would be always in a good temper.”
“No,” said Leonard decidedly; “Sam would not always be in a good
temper.”
“Then I should take granny away, and leave mother and Sam.”
“You would have to give up your work, you know--the school and the
children and everything.”
“Couldn’t I go on with the school?”
“Certainly not.”
“I shouldn’t like that. Oh, I couldn’t give up the school and the
children!”
“Well--but what would you buy?”
“Books--I should buy books.”
“You can get them at the Free Library for nothing. Do you want fine
clothes?”
“Every woman likes to look nice,” she said. “But not fine clothes--I
couldn’t wear fine clothes.”
“Then you’d be no better off than you are now. Do you want a carriage?”
“No; I’ve got my bike.”
“Do you want money to give away?”
“No. It only makes poor people worse to give them money.”
“Very well. Now, my cousin, you have given yourself a lesson. You have
work that you like: you have a reasonably good salary: you have access
to books--as many as you want: you can dress yourself as you please and
as you wish: would you improve your food?”
“Oh, the food’s good enough! We women don’t care much what we eat. As
for Sam, he’s always wanting more buttered toast with his tea.”
“Rapacious creature! Now, Mary Anne, please to reflect on these things,
and don’t talk about family misfortunes so long as you yourself are
concerned. And just think what a miserable girl you would be if you were
to become suddenly rich.”
She laughed merrily.
“Miserable!” she said. “I never thought of that. You mean that I
shouldn’t know what to do with the money?”
“No, not that. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. You have been
brought up to certain standards. If you were rich, you would have to
change them. The only way to be rich,” said this philosopher who was
going to inherit a goodly estate, “is to be born rich, and so not to
feel the burden of wealth.”
“I suppose so. I wish you would say it all over again for Sam to hear.
Not that he would listen.”
“And how would you like just to have everything you want by merely
calling for it? There is no desire for anything with a rich girl: no
trying to get it: no waiting for it: no getting it at last, and enjoying
it all the more. Won’t you think of this?”
“I will. Yes, I will.”
“Put the horrid thought of the money out of your head altogether, and go
on with your work. And be happy in it.”
She nodded gravely.
“I am happy in it. Only, sometimes----”
“And remember, please, if there is anything--anything at all that it
would please your grandmother to have, let me know. Will you let me
know? And will you have the pleasure of giving it to her?”
“Yes, I will--I will. And will you come again soon?”
“I will call again very soon.”
“I will tell granny. It will please her--oh! more than I can say. And
you’ll read the book, won’t you, just to please her?”
“I will read the book to please her.”
“She longs to see you again. And so do I. Oh, Mr. Campaigne--cousin,
then--it’s just lovely to hear you talk!”