There was not very much more happiness under the roof of the house in
Grove Road. Geoffrey, as has been said, sat half the night through in
his study, with his head in his hands, pondering vainly what he ought to
do. Though he said to himself that it was only just that they should
produce their proofs, that they should establish their claim before
anything was done, he jumped at the conclusion all the same, and took it
for granted that the claim would be established, and that his own fate
was certain. And after that what was he to do? He was as confused, as
down-cast as ever, when, in the middle of the night, he made his way
through the darkness of the sleeping house and went to bed, but scarcely
to rest. His mother, whose thoughts also had kept her awake, and who had
cried, and pondered, and dozed, and started up to cry and doze again,
heard him come up-stairs, and with difficulty restrained herself from
going to him, to see that he was warm in bed, and had taken no harm from
his vigil. She did not do it, fortunately remembering that Geoff was not
always grateful for her solicitude; but her fears lest he should have
cold feet mingled with and aggravated her fears lest he should fall in
love, and marry and go from her--and altogether overshadowed her concern
about their fortune and the chances that their money might be taken from
them. Miss Anna, on her side, was wakeful too. That is, she lay among
her pillows in profoundest comfort, with the firelight making the room
bright, and candles burning in dainty Dresden candlesticks at her
bedside, and one or two favourite books within reach, and turned
everything over in her active mind, until she had decided what course to
pursue. Not one detail of all the luxury round her would Miss Anna part
with without a struggle. She was determined to fight for her fortune to
the very last; but if there was any better way than mere brutal
fighting, her mind was ready to grasp it and weigh all its
possibilities. She, too, heard Geoff, so late, a great deal too late,
come up-stairs to bed, but only smiled at it somewhat maliciously, not
without an enjoyment of the uneasy thoughts which no doubt had kept him
from his rest, and no concern whatever about his cold feet. She lay
thus, with her eyes as wakeful as the stars, till she had concluded upon
her plan of action. As soon as she had done this she carefully
extinguished the candles in an elaborate way of her own, so that there
might be no smell, turned round to the fire, which had ceased to flame,
and now shot only a ruddy suppressed glow into the curtained
darkness--and shutting her eyes fell asleep like a baby. But even she,
the most comfortable in the house, was far outdone, it need not be said,
by the two poor young agitators in the hotel who had filled Grove Road
with so many anxieties and cares. Hours before, Grace and Milly, crying
and saying their prayers in one breath, had fallen asleep in each
other’s arms, and knew no more about their troubles nor about the
possibilities before them, nor anything else in the world, till the
morning sunshine awoke them after eight long hours of perfect repose.
Miss Anna never appeared down-stairs till mid-day. She had enjoyed a
great deal of bad health since she had ceased to be a young woman and
queen of hearts. Latterly it had settled into rheumatism, which had made
her a little lame, and justified a great deal of indulgence. Her
attendants said that even this she could throw off when occasion
required. But there could be little pleasure, one would imagine, in
making-believe to be lame. Her general delicacy, however, gave rise to a
hundred necessities which people in health manage to dispense with. Mrs
Underwood and her son had eaten a troubled breakfast long before her
dainty meal was carried into her daintier chamber, and she returned to
wakeful life under the influence of fragrant coffee and delicate roll,
and some elegant trifle of cooked eggs or other light and graceful food.
We say cooked eggs with intention, for boiled eggs, or even poached
eggs, were vulgarities which Miss Anna would not have tolerated. She ate
her pretty breakfast while her sister went through her household duties
with a heavy heart, and Geoffrey took his way to town, striding along
through the muddy streets, for it had rained all night. A little before
noon she sent for Mrs Underwood, who came up with a somewhat haggard
countenance, ready to cry at a moment’s notice, and with a cap which, in
sympathy with her condition of mind, had got awry, and had greatly tried
the nerves of the cook, who had a strong sense of humour, and felt her
inclination to laugh almost too much for her. This was the first thing
Miss Anna remarked when her sister came into the room. She uttered a
suppressed shriek of horror.
“Did you give poor Geoff his breakfast with a cap like that upon your
head? Good gracious! and then you think it wonderful the poor boy should
want to marry and have a trim, neat little wife of his own.”
“What is the matter with my cap?” cried Mrs Underwood in alarm, putting
up her hands and naturally making bad worse. She almost wept with
vexation when she saw herself in one of the many mirrors. “Why didn’t
somebody tell me?” she said piteously, with dreadful thoughts of Geoff’s
disgust, and of the comparison he must be making between that trim,
neat little wife and a mother with her cap awry.
“Set it right now, and come and sit down here,” said Miss Anna.
There could not have been a greater contrast than between these two
sisters. One of them seating herself, timid and anxious, by the bed,
with no confidence either in her own judgment or in her powers of
understanding, or capability of satisfying her imperious critic and
companion--her anxious little mind on tip-toe of troubled solicitude to
catch what Anna should mean, which was always somewhat difficult to her;
while the other, with all her wits about her, seeing everything,
noticing everything, lay amid her luxurious pillows and laughed at her
sister’s agitation.
“I wish I could take things as easily as you do, Anna--oh, I wish I
could take them as easy!” Mrs Underwood said.
“You were always a goose,” was Miss Anna’s remark; but she took the
trouble to push aside her curtain and to draw close to the chair at her
bedside on which the other sat, before she unfolded to her the plan she
had formed--which Mrs Underwood received with great surprise and many
holdings up of her hands and wondering exclamations.
“Why, it was just what I thought I ought to do,” she said. “It was all
in my head, every word. I made it up in my mind to say to them, ‘Anna
may be against you, but you will never find me against you; and as the
house is mine, and I have a right to ask whom I like----’”
“Stick to that,” said Miss Anna with a laugh. “It was very impertinent
and treacherous of you to think of saying it out of your own head; but
now that we have settled it together, stick to that--it is the very
thing to say.”
“I don’t see how you can call it impertinent, Anna: and
treacherous!--me--to you! I have always been true to you. I can’t think
how you can say so. But it is true: the house is mine, however you
please to put it. It was left to me expressly by dear papa. Of course,
he made sure you would marry; and me a widow with one dear child, it was
so natural that he should leave it to me. It will be all we shall have,”
she added with a sigh, “if this dreadful thing comes true.”
“It will never come true if you play your cards well, Mary. You have got
it all in your hands,” Miss Anna said, “and it will be a fine thought
for you that you have saved your family: though you never thought a
great deal of your own powers--I will do you that justice.”
Mrs Underwood shook her head. “My own family--that is, my boy,” she
said.
“So it is,” said Miss Anna. “Of course I don’t count; but you will have
the satisfaction, my dear, if you should live to be a hundred, of
feeling that you have saved your boy.”
At this Mrs Underwood shook her head once more, and two tears came into
her eyes. “He will be lost to me,” she said. “Oh, I remember well enough
how I felt myself when I married Henry. ‘What does he want with his
mother? he has got me,’ I used to say. I never liked him to go too often
to the old lady. And now I am the old lady, and his wife will think the
same of me.”
“Let us hope she will be a better Christian than you were,” said Miss
Anna, with a laugh.
“A better Christian! I hope I have always been a Christian at heart,
whatever else I may have failed in. I hope I have always remembered my
duty to my Maker,” said Mrs Underwood, offended. This assault dried the
tears in her eyes. “And, Anna, though I’m sure I am not one to find
fault, I don’t think that you--never going to church, and reading French
novels and things, and making schemes to keep your neighbours out of
their rights----”
Miss Anna laughed with genuine enjoyment. “I acknowledge all my sins, my
dear,” she said. “I am not the person to talk, am I? But, never mind,
perhaps there will be no need to hope that Mrs Geoff should be a better
Christian than her mother-in-law. Perhaps there will be no Mrs Geoff. It
may come to nothing after all.”
“Oh, Anna, how cruel you are!” cried Mrs Underwood. “If it comes to
nothing, what is to become of my boy?”
“Anyhow, let us be thankful that you will get a good deal of misery out
of it, which will be a satisfaction. Go and put on your bonnet--your
best bonnet--and make yourself look nice; we all like you to look nice;
and go off, my dear, upon your charitable mission,” Miss Anna cried.
Was it a charitable mission? The good woman quite thought so as she
drove down the Hampstead slopes and made her way into the heart of
London. She was fluttered and anxious about what she was going to do.
The possible consequences to Geoff were like a tragedy in front of her;
but as for anything else, she was too much confused to realise that this
was not the kindest thing that could be done. Two lonely, fatherless
children--orphans they might be called, for they had nobody to care for
them. It was not right even that two girls of their age should live in a
hotel, without so much as a maid to be with them. To offer them a home,
to stretch her own protecting wing over them, was the natural thing for
a woman to do. Certainly it was the right thing to do. The other
question about the property was very vague in her mind. She could see
that her sister was scheming to keep it in her own hands, but her mind
was so confused about it that she could not feel any guiltiness on the
subject. And then the question about Geoff would come uppermost. She
wept a good many quiet tears over this as she drove along the streets.
She had always felt herself a good Christian, but she had not been
pleased when her husband had paid too many visits to the old lady. The
old lady! Looking back, Mrs Underwood, with an effort of memory,
recollected that the old lady had not been so very aged a person. She
was but sixty when she died, and she had lived ten years at least after
her son’s marriage. “About my age!” This conviction surprised Geoff’s
mother more than can be described. She was the old lady now; and this
girl would grudge her her son’s visits, would not let Geoff come to her,
would persuade him that his mother was silly, that she was
old-fashioned, that she wanted a great deal too much attention. She had
done all that in her day, and had not thought it any harm.
These were her thoughts as she went to Piccadilly, crossing through all
those endless streets. When she came near the hotel some one passed her
quickly, holding up an umbrella, so that she could not see his face. But
her heart gave a thump at the sight of him. If it was not Geoff she had
never seen any one so like him. Down to the very coat he wore, the spats
which she had herself buttoned for him, his walk--all was Geoff. Had he
been here forestalling her? Had he come and made his own advances
already, without losing a moment? Her heart sank, but a wild curiosity
took possession of her. She would see for herself how he had been
received, what had happened. What could happen but that this girl, any
girl, would throw herself at the first word into the arms of Geoff? It
was not often a girl had such a chance. “Look at Anna,” she said to
herself, “so pretty, so clever, and never married at all.” Besides,
since Anna’s time there were, everybody said, twice as many women as
there used to be, and a man like Geoff, if such a thing was to be found,
was more and more precious than ever before. Ah, there could be no doubt
how he would be received. Perhaps by this time it was all settled, and
the girls were talking of her as the old lady, and planning how she was
to be kept at arm’s length. She wept once more, then dried her eyes, and
armed herself for what might be awaiting her. What if that little thing
should rush into her arms and tell her--giving her kisses that would not
be genuine, that would mean no affection to her? But even that she would
have to put up with. She remembered--with how many compunctions, though
thirty years too late--how the old lady--poor old lady!--had made little
attempts to propitiate her, and tell her pretty things that Henry had
said of her, and give her to believe that nothing but praise and
sweetness was ever spoken of her between the mother and the son. It
would be her turn now to show herself in the best light to her
daughter-in-law, to conciliate her, and appeal to her tolerance. Alas!
how time goes on, turning triumph into humiliation, and the first into
the last.