A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 31

"Yesterday. We have scarcely settled down."

"And you enjoyed your stay in town? Chatty at least --Chatty must have enjoyed it." Lady Markland turned to her with a soft smile.

"Oh yes, very much," said Chatty, almost under her breath.

And then there was a brief pause, after which, "I hope Geoff is quite well," Mrs. Warrender said.

"Quite well, and I was to bring you his love." Lady Markland hesitated a little, and said, "I should like if I might--to consult you about Geoff."

"Surely," Mrs. Warrender replied, and again there was a pause.

In former times, Chatty would not have perceived the embarra.s.sment of her two companions: but she had learned to divine since her three weeks'

experience. She rose up quietly. "I think, mamma, you will be able to talk better if I go away."

"I don't know, my dear," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight tremulousness.

Lady Markland did not say anything. She retained the advantage of the position, not denying that she wished it, and Chatty accordingly, putting down her work, went away. Mrs. Warrender felt the solemnity of the interview more and more; but she did not know what to say.

Presently Lady Markland took the initiative. She rose and approached nearer to Mrs. Warrender's side. "I want you to tell me," she said, herself growing for the first time a little tremulous, "if you dislike this very much--for Theo."

"Dislike it! oh, how can you think so? His happiness is all I desire, and if you----"

"If I can make him happy? that is a dreadful question, Mrs. Warrender.

How can any one tell that? I hope so; but if I should deceive myself----"

"That was not what I meant: there is no happiness for him, but that which you can give: if you think him good enough--that was what I was going to say."

"Good enough! Theo? Oh then, you do not know what he is, though he is your son; and so far I am better than you are."

"Lady Markland, you are better in a great many ways. It is this that frightens me. In some things you are so much above any pretensions of his. He has so little experience, he is not rich, nor even is he clever (though he is very clever) according to the ways of the world. I seem to be disparaging my boy. It is not that, Lady Markland."

"No; do you think I don't understand? I am too old for him; I am not the kind of woman you would have chosen, or even that he would have chosen, had he been in his right senses."

"It is folly to say that you are old. You are not old; you are a woman that any man might be proud to love. And his love--has been a wonder to me to see," said his mother, her voice faltering, her eyes filling. "I have never known such adoration as that."

"Ah, has it not!" cried the woman who was the object of it, a sudden melting and ineffable change coming over her face. "That was what gave me the courage," she said, after a moment's pause. "How could I refuse?

It is not often, is it, that a man--that a woman"--here her voice died away in a confusion and agitation which melted all Mrs. Warrender's reluctance. She found herself with her arms round the great lady, comforting her, holding her head against her own breast. They shed some tears together, and kissed each other, and for a moment came so close that all secondary matters that could divide them seemed to fade away.

"But now," said Lady Markland, after this little interval, "he is worried and disturbed again, by all the lawyers think it right to do. I should like to spare him all that, but I am helpless in their hands. Oh, dear Mrs. Warrender, you will understand. There are so many things that make it more difficult. There is--Geoff."

Mrs. Warrender pressed her hands and gave her a look full of sympathy; but she said nothing. She did not make a cheerful protest that all these things were without importance, and that Geoff was no drawback, as perhaps it was hoped she might do. Lady Markland drew back a little, discouraged--waiting for some word of cheer which did not come.

"You know," she said, her voice trembling, "what my boy has been to me: everything! until this new light that I never dreamed of, that I never had hoped for, or thought of. You know how we lived together, he and I.

He was my companion, more than a child, sharing every thought. You know----"

"Lady Markland, you have had a great deal of trouble, but how much with it--a child like that, and then----"

"And then--Theo! Was there ever a woman so blessed--or so---- Oh, help me to know what I am to do between them! You can understand better than any of the young ones. Don't you see," said Lady Markland, with a smile in which there was a kind of despair, "that though I am not old, as you say, I am on your level rather than on his, that _you_ can understand better than he?"

If it were possible that a woman who is a mother could cease to be that in the first place and become a friend, first of all a sympathiser in the very difficulties that overwhelm her son, that miracle was accomplished then. The woman whom she had with difficulty accepted as Theo's future wife became, for a moment, nearer to her in this flood of sympathy than Theo himself. The woman's pangs and hindrances were closer to her experience than the man's. To him, in the heat of his young pa.s.sion, nothing was worth considering that interfered with the perfect accomplishment of his love. But to her--the young woman, who had to piece on the present to the past, who though she might have abandoned father and mother could never abandon her child--the other woman's heart went out with a pang of fellow-feeling. Mrs. Warrender, like most women, had an instinctive repugnance to the idea of a second marriage at all, but that being determined and beyond the reach of change, her heart ached for the dilemma which was more painful than any which enters into the possibilities of younger life. As Lady Markland leant towards her, claiming her sympathy, her face full of sentiments so conflicting, the joy of love and yet the anguish of it, and all the contrariety of a heart torn in two, the youthfulness, when all was said, of this expressive countenance, the recollection that, after all, this woman who claimed to be on her own level was not too old to be her child, seized upon Mrs.

Warrender. Nothing that is direct and simple can be so poignant as those complications in which right and wrong and all the duties of human life are so confused that no sharply cut division is possible. What was she to do? She would owe all her heart to her husband, and what was to remain for her child? Geoff had upon her the first claim of nature; her love, her care, were his right--but then Theo? The old mother took the young one into her arms, with an ache of sympathy. "Oh, my dear, what can I say to you? We must leave it to Providence. Things come round when we do not think too much of them, but do our best."

How poor a panacea, how slight a support! and yet in how many cases all that one human creature can say to another! To do our best and to think as little as possible, and things will come round! The absolute mind scorns the mild consolation. To Theo it would have been an irritation, a wrong, but Theo's betrothed received it with humbler consciousness.

The sympathy calmed her, and that so moderate, so humble, voucher of experience that things come round. Was it really so? was nothing so bad as it appeared? was it true that the way opened before you little by little in treading it, as she who had gone on so much farther on the path went on to say? Lady Markland regained her composure as she listened.

"You are speaking to me like a true mother," she said. "I have never known what that was. Help me, only help me! even to know that you understand me is so much--and do not blame me."

"Dear Lady Markland----"

"I have a name," she said, with a smile which was full of pain, as if marking another subject of trouble, "which is my own, which cannot be made any question of. Will you call me Frances? It would please him.

They say it would be unusual, unreasonable, a thing which is never done--to give up---- Is that Theo? Dear Mrs. Warrender, I shall be far happier, now that I know I have a friend in you."

She grasped his mother's hands with a hurried gesture, and an anxious, imploring look. Then gave a hasty glance into the gla.s.s, and recovered in a moment her air of gentle dignity, her smile. It was this that met Theo when he came in eager, yet doubtful, his eyes finding her out, with a rapid question, the instant that he entered. Whatever her troubles might be, none of them were made apparent to him.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

Next day Mr. Longstaffe called upon Mrs. Warrender, nominally about the alterations that had to be made in her house, but really with objects much more important. He made notes scrupulously of what she wanted, and hoped that she would not allow anything to be neglected that was necessary for her comfort. When these necessary preliminaries were over, there was a pause. He remained silent with an expectant air, waiting to be questioned, and though she had resolved if possible to refrain from doing so, the restriction was more than her faculties could bear.

"My son tells me," she said, as indifferently as possible, "that there is a great deal going on between him and you."

"Naturally," cried Mr. Longstaffe, with a certain heat of indignation.

"He is making a marriage which is not at all a common kind of marriage, and yet he would have liked it to be without any settlements at all."

"He could not wish anything that was not satisfactory to Lady Markland."

"Do you think so? then I must undeceive you. He would have liked Lady Markland to give herself to him absolutely with no precautions, no restrictions."

"Mr. Longstaffe, Theo is very much in love. He has always been very sensitive: he cannot bear (I suppose) mixing up business matters, which he hates, with----"

"It is all very well for him to hate business, though between you and me, if you will allow me to say so, I think it very silly. Ladies may entertain such sentiments, but a man ought to know better. If you will believe me, he wants to marry her as if she were sixteen and had not a penny! To make her Mrs. Theodore Warrender and take her home to his own house!"

"What should he do else? is not that the natural thing that every man wishes to do?"

"Yes, if he marries a girl of sixteen without a penny, as I said. Mrs.

Warrender, I know you are full of sense. Perhaps you will be able to put it before him in a better light. When a man marries a lady, with an established position of her own like Lady Markland, and a great many responsibilities, especially when she is a sort of queen mother and has a whole n.o.ble family to be accountable to----"

"I do not wonder that Theo should be impatient, Mr. Longstaffe; all this must be terrible to him, in the midst of his---- Why should not they marry first, and then these things will arrange themselves?"

"Marry first! and leave her altogether unsecured."

"I hope you know that my son is a man of honour, Mr. Longstaffe."

"My dear madam, we have nothing to do with men of honour in the law. I felt sure that you would understand at least. Suppose we had left Miss Minnie dependent upon the honour (though I don't doubt it at all) of the Thynne family."

"I don't mean in respect to money," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight flush. "He will not interfere with her money, of that I am certain."