“There is no will but the early one made soon after the marriage,” said
Lord Frogmore’s man of business on the morning of the second day. “No
guardians appointed, no directions given. I have said as much as I could
from time to time on this subject. Lord Frogmore always agreed but did
nothing; and now here we have a long minority to face and nothing in
order.” He was speaking in the most confidential circle of the family,
addressing the old vicar, who had been summoned with his wife to the
double crisis, the death of their son-in-law, the recovery of their
daughter. Old Mr. Hill was standing up with his back to the fire,
looking like a very solemn old sheep with his white beard. He had always
the air of bearing the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, and
mumbled a little in his speech, half with nervousness, half with that
weight of responsibility that bowed him down.
“It is a very great emergency,” said the vicar. “Frogmore was very
imprudent for a man of his time of life. He ought to have had it all
made out very clear. He ought to have left nothing in any doubt. I have
often said to him myself in my own small affairs----”
It was wrong of Mrs. Hill to interrupt, but she had a bad habit of doing
this; her husband spoke so slowly. “Now that my daughter is so well
again,” she said, with a voice in which there was a quiver in spite of
herself, “it can’t matter so much.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Agnes.
The man of business shook his head. “That is just the worst difficulty
of all. If Lady Frogmore insists on this strange fancy of hers that the
little lord is not her son--that she has no child----”
“Oh!” cried the mother in a tone of intolerable impatience--“That is
nonsense, you know, Mr. Blotting. Why, I was there! How can she persist
when every body knows to the contrary. My daughter Mary has been
troubled in her mind, poor thing; but she never was idiotic I hope--and
when I speak to her--Agnes, what nonsense! I must speak to her! It is
the most dreadful dereliction of duty to let things like this go on----”
“Dr. Marsden says she is going through a very important crisis,” said
Agnes; “and that her mind must not be disturbed----”
“Oh, Dr. Marsden!” cried Mrs. Hill: she did not say blank him, or dash
him, or anything that a clergyman’s wife ought not to say--but she meant
it, as was very clear. “How should Mr. Marsden know better than her
mother?” she inquired with dignity, as if to such a question there could
be but one reply.
“I am of the same opinion as your mother,” said the vicar. “I think you
will find after I have had a conversation with her that there will be no
further trouble. She will not stand out against me.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Hill cried--and stopped again--for she had not the same faith
in her husband’s intervention. “But,” she added quickly, “I am of
opinion that when she is told the facts calmly, with the proofs I can
bring, for I saw everything with my own eyes. Mary who was always a
reasonable creature--you know,” she cried, with a little laugh and toss
of her head, “there never was such a thing known in this world as that a
mother should disown her child.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Blotting, “there will be no want of proof. The
little lord’s rights are safe enough. But who’s to have the
custody?--not a mad mother who disowns him----”
“Sir!” cried Mrs. Hill, springing to her feet.
“Mr. Blotting,” said the vicar, “forgets, my dear--forgets of whom he’s
speaking. Such a phrase used of my daughter----”
“I beg your pardon,” said the man of business. He looked at Agnes, who
had said nothing, whose eyes were anxiously fixed upon him. “I mean no
offence. I must face the facts. What would the Court of Chancery or any
other authority think of a mother who denied that her child was hers?
She says she knows nothing about it, that she never had a child. It’s
monstrous; it’s incredible. She says the most astounding things.”
“What, what?” cried the old people, both together. They were half
reproachful of Mary, wholly impatient of her folly, yet half excusing
and apologizing all the time.
“She says it is quite impossible she could ever have done such a thing.
I can only give you the poor lady’s own words. She says she was bound in
honor to someone--a woman’s name--probably you will know. Poor soul!
Bound in honor to Jane or Marjorie never to have a child! I don’t want
to hurt your feelings, but who do you think would give her the charge
even of her own affairs after such a speech as that?”
“Who is Jane or Marjorie?” said the vicar, mouthing the words. “I don’t
know anybody of those names.”
The mother and daughter looked at each other. They were under no
difficulty in understanding. “Oh,” said Mrs. Hill, “her worst enemy! Do
you mean to say that after all my poor child has borne from that
woman----”
“Dear mother!” said Agnes. “Oh, let us wait a little--let us do nothing
in a hurry. I suppose it has been known before that a poor woman might
be sane enough with one delusion. That is Mary’s case. She is sane, but
she has forgotten. She never saw her baby. It seized her at once, that
terrible trouble. She never knew. Don’t you remember, mother, how she
lay like a log, never caring, never looking at him. Oh, Mr. Blotting,
don’t let her be sent away again for that! In every other way she is
sane, my poor sister is sane.”
“I am sincerely sorry for you, Miss Hill,” the lawyer said. But he gave
no pledge, he made no promise. “It will depend chiefly upon John Parke,”
he said, “as one of the executors, and the child’s uncle. He of course
is the natural guardian. And he no doubt will hear what the doctors have
to say, and decide what is best to be done with Lady Frogmore.”
“John Parke!” both the old people cried again; Mrs. Hill adding in
almost a shriek--“And Tisch--Tisch, who hates my poor Mary, who would
like to kill her! Oh, you will never put the boy in her hands.”
“I fail to see,” said the vicar, mumbling. “I fail to see what can be
the need of John Parke when her parents are here.”
“My dear sir,” said the man of business, “John Parke is the nearest
relation. He’s an executor. He’s the heir, if anything should happen to
the little boy--a very delicate little boy I hear, like old men’s
children generally--and with insanity on one side. You really must
forgive me if I speak my mind. I have been connected with the Parkes, I
and my firm, for longer than any one can say; but I never knew such a
sad conjunction of affairs.”
The Hills, it was evident, were very much startled by this speech. The
vicar stood before the fire swaying his heavy head, looking at the
floor, while Mrs. Hill, who was more active of mind, made little starts
as if to begin speaking, then stopped with the words on her lips.
“Do you mean to say,” said Agnes, “that everything will be in--Mr. John
Parke’s hands?”
“I am the other executor,” said the man of business, not without a
little demonstration of the importance which these country people had
seemed to ignore.
“But,” said the vicar, “we are Lady Frogmore’s parents--I am the child’s
grandfather, nearer than an uncle. Why, my wife was here when he was
born.”
“And we have no object to serve,” cried Mrs. Hill, bursting forth,
“none, none, but their good. It’s for John Parke’s advantage that--that
harm should come. He can’t be supposed to be fond of little Mar. And his
wife--why Tisch, Tisch, everybody knows!--she has her own boy that she
thinks ought to be the heir. He’s not safe, he’s not safe if he’s in
Tisch Grocombe’s hands!”
“Mother, mother!” cried Agnes, in dismay.
“You will excuse me saying,” said the lawyer, “that I can’t listen to
anything of this kind. Ladies go a long way I know in what they permit
themselves to say of each other, but with men of the world, madam,
libels can’t be indulged in. Mrs. John Parke----”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Hill, breathing out fire and fury in the word, “what has
Mrs. John Parke to do with my child--or with my grandchild, Mr.
Blotting? We have no object but their good. We want nothing but their
good. If anything were to happen to little Mar it would be my death. Oh,
can’t you see, can’t you see the difference? I don’t say she would
poison him or throw him out of a window,” cried the old lady, flushed
and trembling with her vehemence. “But it would be for her good that the
child should die. Do you hear me, oh do you hear me! It would be to her
advantage that the child should die, the dear child, the apple of our
eyes. It would give her husband the title--and herself which is
more:--it would make her boy the heir. And you will put him in her
hands, our little delicate boy, our little darling, poor Frogmore’s
little Mar! Oh vicar, speak to him. Oh Agnes, say something--don’t let
them throw little Mar’s life away!”
“I can only say,” said the vicar, shuffling about with his large feet,
“that we’re Lady Frogmore’s parents, and the child’s guardians by--by
nature. I can’t see what there’s more to say.”
“It’s clear that I can hear no more,” said the lawyer, “it’s painful to
see such animosity. Still we know what ladies are. Had anything been
necessary to show how impossible---- But there never could have been any
question of such a thing,” he continued sharply. “Mr. Hill, you ought to
be enough a man of the world to see that the mother’s parents have
nothing to do with the matter. Why, it’s ridiculous. The mother herself
is no more than a sort of accident. What I’ve got to think of is the
Parkes, the family. It is astonishing you don’t understand.”
“Mr. Blotting,” said Agnes, “my mother perhaps went too far. We don’t
want to show prejudice. Still the child is a delicate child--and he’s
been used to us all his life--to me, at least--I’ve been the same as his
mother,” she said, with the tears in his eyes. “I know all he
requires--their treatment might be dangerous for him. Don’t take him
from us until he’s older and stronger. I don’t ask anything
unreasonable. Mrs. Parke, I don’t doubt, would be--very kind: but she’s
used to robust children--and little Mar is so delicate.”
“She is pleading as if it was a favor,” cried Mrs. Hill, “as if we had
no right----”
“You had better both of you leave it to me--leave it to me,” said the
vicar. “I’ll talk it over with this gentleman, as a man of the world. My
dear, you can go and look after Mary. That’s your business. Leave me to
talk it over, like a man of the world.” The vicar was pleased with that
appeal to his superior wisdom. He wanted nothing so much as to get rid
of the ladies and bring Mr. Blotting to a due sense of the situation,
man to man.
“Sir----,” Mrs. Hill began; but Agnes, too, was against her. She caught
her mother by the arm.
“Oh, father is right,” she said. “Let us go to Mary. I never know what
she may be doing when we leave her too long alone. It is not good for
her to be long alone.”
The house through which these two ladies made their way upstairs had
changed in the strangest way. It was not neglected or out of order, nor
had it the deserted appearance, as if life had altogether ebbed away
from the forsaken sitting-rooms, which often shows the presence of
death, throned in a remote chamber, and making an end even of family
meetings. Mr. Upjames at the head of affairs took care of that, and as
John Parke and his wife were expected in the afternoon, there were fires
in all the rooms, and everything ready for the visitors, who were felt
by all the household instinctively to have so much risen in importance.
The decorous silence, which was proper to a house “in trouble,” reigned,
however, up and down. The servants glided about like mutes, stealing
noiselessly out of sight, or flattening themselves against the wall when
by chance they encountered “one of the family;” and the discipline was
such that not a voice or a laugh betrayed from behind the swing doors
the existence of a number of young servants, who, however impressed by
the circumstances, could not be overcome with grief. The feeling in the
house, it must be allowed, was in favor of the visitors who were
expected rather than those who had arrived. The Hills were “the other
side” to the retainers of the Parke faction. They saw through the
vicar’s bulk and solemnity, and they were aware by instinct that the old
lady would be hard upon servants and keep an inquisitive eye upon their
shortcomings. They were, therefore, though perfectly civil, not anxious
in their service to my lady’s people. My lady, herself, poor thing, the
servants were half afraid of, half sorry for. They thought she might
have another attack at any moment. The women shrank back upon each other
when they attended to her rooms or answered her bell. The maid whom she
had brought with her was even more alarming than herself, a mad nurse
who knew all about the things that were done to lunatics, though she put
on the aspect of an ordinary lady’s maid. Thus poor Mary, who had been
so kind to them all, who was so gentle and so soft-voiced, sympathetic
with everybody, was a sort of bug-bear in the house from which she had
been banished so long, to which she had returned so strangely.
And all through this great silent house there was a thrill of
uncertainty,--nobody knowing what was to be done, or what the _new
régime_ would be. The little lord in the nursery, poor little delicate
boy who would never be “rared” as all the country people said, who was
a child of old age, with madness on one side of the house, whose father
was dead and whose mother denied his existence: and the poor lady shut
up in her rooms, in her grief and widowhood, with the maid who was
nurse, and the mad-doctor hanging about, ever watchful, not leaving her
long out of his sight--the troubled group who hung about her, and about
the child, yet had no real right there, and might be put to the door by
the executors any day--made up a miserable family--a disturbed,
uncertain, uncomfortable, little community--not knowing what was to
happen. The only one in the house who was calm, who feared nothing, was
Mary herself in her retirement, half cured of her madness, full of
gentle sorrow without anguish, and ignoring altogether in a strange
bewilderment of nature all the dangers and miseries amid which, the most
innocent of unconscious sufferers, she was about to take up without
protection or support the strange story of her life.