DISPOSSESSED
Lady Anne's nephew and heir, Lord Iniscrone, showed no friendly face to
Mary. He came as soon as possible, and took possession of the premises.
Lady Iniscrone was with him. She was a lady with a wide, flat, doughy
face. Her eyes were little and pale and cold. Mary thought afterwards
that if it had not been for Lady Iniscrone, Lord Iniscrone might have
been kinder. She remembered that Lady Anne had detested Lady Iniscrone
to the extent that she would never have her inside the house. She had an
idea, which she could not put away, while she hated it, that Lady
Iniscrone remembered that fact. She took possession of everything
thoroughly, as though she revenged herself on the dead woman. In her
cold speech she disparaged the things Lady Anne had held dear.
Their attitude towards Mary was as though she were a servant no longer
necessary. She was not to eat at their table; she was to eat in her own
room or in the servants' hall.
"Is it Miss Gray, my lady?" Saunders, the elderly parlourmaid, asked,
aghast. "Her Ladyship thought the world of Miss Gray. She might have
been her own child. And I will say, though we didn't hold with it at
first, yet----"
Lady Iniscrone closed the discussion haughtily.
"Miss Gray will have her meals in the servants' hall, or in her own room
if she prefers it, till after the funeral. We shall make other
arrangements then, of course."
Saunders flounced out of the room. Although she was elderly and had
lived in Lady Anne Hamilton's house since she was fourteen, when she had
come as a between-maid, she had not forgotten how to flounce.
"Mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "she'll make a clean sweep of
us, same as Miss Mary, as soon as ever the funeral is over. Supposing as
how _we_ gives the notice!"
And they did, to Lady Iniscrone's discomfiture, for she had intended to
stay on at the Mall and to keep the staff as it stood till she had
supplied its place. However, she showed her dismay only by her bad
temper.
"I suppose you've all pretty well feathered your nests," she said
acridly, "and can afford to retire."
Nor was her bitterness lessened by the fact that Lady Anne had left
handsome legacies to each of the servants, annuities to the elder ones,
sums of money to the younger. But the will, dated some years back, made
no mention at all of Mary Gray.
"It seems clear to me," said Mr. Buckton, talking the matter over with
Lord Iniscrone, her Ladyship being present, "that Lady Anne intended to
make some provision for her _protégée_. In fact, the letter which she
had begun writing to me, which was found in her blotter after her death,
plainly indicates that. She was, apparently, on her way to my house when
the lamentable accident happened. Dr. Carruthers had seen her that
afternoon, and had told her that her heart was in a bad way. I believe
she grew alarmed about the unprovided state in which she would leave
Miss Gray if she had a sudden seizure, and hurried off to me. In the
circumstances----"
"Of course, we could not think of doing anything more for Miss Gray,"
Lady Iniscrone put in, anticipating her lord. "She has already been
dealt with very handsomely out of the estate. She has had a most
unsuitable education for a person in her rank of life. She has lived
like a lady; been clothed like one. When I saw her she was wearing
ornaments--a brooch of amethysts, with pearls around it, I remember,
which, I am sure, ought to belong to the estate. I can't see that Lord
Iniscrone is called upon to do anything more for the young person. What
with those absurd legacies to the servants and the way Lady Anne
lived--a big house and a staff of servants and carriages and horses for
one old lady!--the estate has been impoverished."
"Lady Anne had a great sense of her own dignity," the lawyer put in.
"And this house had been her home for more than fifty years."
"Everything needs replacing," Lady Iniscrone grumbled, with a
disparaging look around. "Those curtains and carpets----"
"Your Lordship will, I am sure, feel that, in making some little
provision for Miss Gray, you will be doing what Lady Anne wished and
intended to do," Mr. Buckton said earnestly, turning from the lady to
her husband.
Lord Iniscrone's eyes fluttered nervously. He was not a bad little man
at heart, but he was entirely ruled by his wife.
"I don't think the estate will bear it, Mr. Buckton," he said in a
peevish voice. "It is heavily burdened as it is. If a five-pound note
would be of any use----"
"I can't see that we are called upon to do anything, Jarvis," his wife
put in again. "In fact, Mr. Buckton, you may take it that we do not
intend to do anything more for Miss Gray."
"Very well, Lady Iniscrone."
Mr. Buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. He could not
trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his
professional discretion.
But Mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her
behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. Mary, who was sensitive to
every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the
atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. A good many friends
would have been glad to have had her. Lady Agatha Chenevix was away,
else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with
passionate generosity and indignation. She was away, but Jessie Baynes's
little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of
sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. One could not
imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than Jessie's
little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a ship on
to the blue floor of the sea. Mildred Carruthers had come at once, in
the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house,
which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice.
Only, where would Mary go to but home? In all those years in the great
house on the Mall she had never come to find Wistaria Terrace too little
and lowly for her. Indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and
sweetness to her mind about the little house. The transfiguring mists of
her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. To be
sure, there had been hard work and short commons. She had been
insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. Her people
had gone without fires and many other things which some would have
considered essential. But there had always been love. Looking back on
those days, Mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out
immaterial material things.
She fled back home. She took nothing with her but what she stood up in.
Only her friend, Simmons, while Lady Iniscrone was absent from the
house, packed up all Mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the
assistance of the coachman, across the lane to Wistaria Terrace. The
servants had made up their minds that Mary was not coming back.
Lady Iniscrone had hoped, in conversation with Lord Iniscrone, that Mary
would not give them any trouble. Never was anyone less inclined to give
trouble than Mary. Not for worlds would she have gone back to the house
where the new cold rule was, to meet Lady Iniscrone's unfriendly eyes.
Only while the body of her benefactress was yet above ground she had
stolen across at quiet hours, in the absence of the enemy, to look for
the last time on the quiet face. She had carried away little Fifine.
Fifine was seventeen years old now, and shook incessantly and moaned in
a lost way in her darkness. But she knew Mary's voice. Mary was the one
that could comfort her. At Wistaria Terrace they went to the unheard-of
extravagance of having a fire in Mary's room, day after day, so that
Fifine might lie before it in a basket, and feel the warmth in her
little bones, and hear Mary's voice.
The day of the funeral came. Mary stood by the graveside quietly, with a
veil down over her face. Walter Gray was by her side. She had come in
the doctor's carriage, and she had no leisure or thought for the
insolence with which Lady Iniscrone stared at her, as though her
presence there required explanation.
She was going to work, to begin at once. Her dear, kind old friend, who
had meant to do so well by her, had at least equipped her for earning
her own bread. The Lady Principal of Queen's College had found her
work--temporary work, to be sure, but something to go on with till she
could look about her. The Lady Principal and Dr. Carruthers were against
her making any definite plans till Lady Agatha Chenevix should
return--she was in America, arranging for a display of her industries at
a forthcoming exhibition. They had an idea that Lady Agatha would expect
to be consulted in any plan that affected her friend's future.
Returning home after the funeral Mary found that all her attention would
be required for a short time for Fifine. The little dog had had a fit or
something of the kind, and had rallied wonderfully, considering her
great age. She had missed her one friend during that hour of absence.
Dr. Carruthers came in and looked at the dog, stooping to examine it
with as much tender care as though it had been human and a paying
patient. "Keep her warm," he said. "There isn't much else possible.
There is nothing the matter, only old age. She seems to know you, Mary.
She is positively wagging her tail."
"She is miserable without me," Mary said, wondering what she was to do
about Fifine when she took up that temporary work which the Lady
Principal of Queen's College had found for her. Meanwhile she devoted
herself to the little creature. But about three days after Lady Anne's
funeral Fifine solved all difficulties concerning her by dying quietly
in the night.
Mary slipped in stealthily to the garden of the old house when the new
owners were not likely to be about, and placed the little rigid body in
the grave Jennings had dug for it, lined with a few flowers that had
come up in the beds, snowdrops and wallflowers and little pale mauve
double primroses. She wept a few bitter tears above the grave. The death
of the little dog was like her last link with her dear old friend. The
day had the bright, clear, strong sunshine of March. There were yet
drifts of snow in the valleys among the hills, but spring was coming,
and the bare boughs would soon be thick with the buds of leafage. She
took one look at the sunny, green place and the old house which had
harboured her so kindly. Then she went away with a drooping head.
That very afternoon Lady Agatha came. She rushed in on Mary like the
March wind, big and beautiful, in her long cloak of orange-tawny velvet,
breathing fire and fury over the unkindness to Mary. She had interviewed
Lady Iniscrone, and had gathered from her what had been happening.
"In one way I am selfishly glad, Mary, because you will belong so much
more to me. I am going to take possession of you. For the first time for
many years Chenevix House is to be opened this season. I am going to be
among the political hostesses. I shall do all sorts of things. I have
found a dear old lady to live with us, my father's twenty-second cousin,
Mrs. Morres. She will make it possible for me to do the things I want
without running tilt against all the windmills of prejudice. I shall
respect your mourning. You will have your own room to which you can
retire. Chenevix House looks over a quiet, green square. You shall see
the spring come even there. Afterwards, when the season is at an end, we
shall bury ourselves in the green country."
She paused for breath, and Mary smiled at her. She was so big and bonny
and generous it was impossible not to smile at her.
"Where do I come in?" she asked. "I want to earn my bread."
"And so you shall. You shall earn it hard. You are to be my secretary,
Mary. I am going to be a leading Radical lady. They want hostesses.
There are things a woman can do for a cause much better than a man. I
consider my wealth, at least, my comparative wealth, my rank and youth
and energy and brains, and my splendid health, as so many weapons given
to me by God so that I may help the right."
"You forget your charm," Mary reminded her. "It is the most potent of
all."
Lady Agatha suddenly blushed. It was the first time Mary had seen her
blush.
"Charm--oh, come, Mary! Why not beauty if you are inclined to flatter?"
"Yes, indeed; why not beauty?" Mary repeated, looking at her with loving
eyes of admiration.
"A big, black, bounding beggar!" Lady Agatha quoted against herself
merrily.
But Mary was not inclined to make any further excursions from home. The
soul in her was chilled by her recent experiences. In her hurt and
unhappy state the little house at Wistaria Terrace seemed most
desirable. It gave her satisfaction to note the discomforting things
about her--the bare floor, the windows that shook and rattled, the
ill-fitting doors, the ugliness of the painted dressing-table from which
the paint had long departed, the chipped jug and basin that did not
match each other. She liked it all, even the carelessness about meals,
for there was love with it. Her younger sisters growing up had a kind of
worship for Mary. They served her out of pure love. She was not allowed
to do anything for herself. Yes, for the present, at least, home was
best. She could go out and earn money and bring it home to them. She
would stay henceforth in the world into which she had been born. She
would make no more excursions.
However, these thoughts of hers were rendered vain by the fact that
Walter Gray positively took Lady Agatha's part against her. There was no
room for Mary in the cramped life of Wistaria Terrace. She had brains
and beauty and sympathy. The opportunity to make use of these gifts was
given her. She must not reject it.
The thing was put on a business basis. Mary was to be Lady Agatha's
secretary, with a handsome salary. "I shall work you till you cry out,"
her Ladyship promised, and it seemed like enough to be true. She was
talking already of writing a novel when they should retire to the
country. Her energy overflowed. She was perpetually seeking new outlets
for it. Her secretary was not likely to enjoy a sinecure.
"No one but you could have sent me from you again," Mary said to her
father, in tender reproach.
"It is for your good, Moll. You have outgrown Wistaria Terrace. We could
not long have contented you."
But Mary shook her head. She thought she would have been very well
content at home. She could have got plenty of teaching to do. She
thought of the little house as of a resting place from which she was to
be debarred. But she would not dispute her father's will for her. He
rallied her, saying that if they kept her her head and shoulders would
presently be pushing themselves above the slates.
"It was big enough for you," she said indignantly, "and your mind rises
to greater heights than mine ever will. You cramped yourself into it, if
it were a question of cramping. Why should not I?"
"Sometimes it was not big enough, Moll," he answered. "Sometimes it was
sore cramping, and at other times it was big enough to contain the
heaven and all the stars. Perhaps the ambition I flung away for myself I
keep for you. I would not have you at microscopic work all your days."
So it was settled. For a little while longer Mary stayed on at home.
Then, when the leaves were just opening out in pale green silk, and all
the world was fragrant and full of the joy of birds, she went,
unwillingly, and turning back many times to make her sorrowful
farewells.
"I don't want you to stay till you begin to feel cramped," Walter Gray
had said. "I had rather you went away with your illusions."
She did carry away her illusions. It was a happy and blessed thing for
her that she could make illusions about common things all the days she
was to live. Yet somewhere, in her hidden heart, she knew her father was
right.