The Two Marys

“But, perhaps,” said Grace, “as – Geoffrey – is not the right heir – it might be something different. Perhaps if it came back to the old family there might be something more. Sometimes – things pass away, don’t they, when it is not the direct line?”

“Peerages?” said Dr Brewer with a laugh. “Oh, yes; but I never heard of property going astray. Money must find its level, you know; it must go somewhere; it cannot just be spilt upon the earth like water and made an end of. It must turn up somewhere. When a man dies intestate, I believe his money goes to the Queen; which is hard, I have always thought. If it were divided among the poorest of his neighbours it would be more sensible. Sometimes a title drops by reason of a failure in the direct line. But I don’t suppose you thought – ” Here he stopped short, and gave vent to a sudden laugh. “I do believe, my poor dear girl, that this is what was in your mind – ”

“I never said there was any such thing in my mind,” said Grace, growing crimson. She felt as if she could have sunk into the earth. She had nothing to say to defend herself, except this simple denial, and to hear the doctor laugh was terrible. He laughed so frankly, as at the most apparent nonsense. The girl did not know what to do. Was she such a fool as he thought?

“It is very romantic,” he said; “but I fear, Miss Grace, in modern days such things happen very rarely. Life was a great deal more picturesque in the past. Now people are very thankful for such small mercies as money in the funds.”

Grace made no reply. She too felt very much disposed to cry; it seemed cruel that anybody should laugh at them in their circumstances, in their deep crape. The sound of laughter even was out of place in the room from which so lately the chief inhabitant had gone. She felt herself hurt, as well as ashamed, by being made the cause of merriment; and even little Milly, though she had not agreed with her, uncovered her little tearful face, and was indignant in Grace’s cause.

“I don’t think there is so much to laugh at, Dr Brewer,” Milly ventured to say. “You were not there to see what happened. You would have thought it very, very important if you had seen how they looked, and heard what they said.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor, “was I unmannerly? I didn’t mean to be. Why we should laugh at simplicity I cannot tell, but everybody does. I have not the least doubt it was a most natural mistake.”

Simplicity! when everybody had always thought her so sensible, so superior to all delusions. Grace shrank back into herself. She would scarcely reply to any further questions.

“But, you know,” Dr Brewer said, with great gravity, “it is no laughing matter. Where there is a question of taking their living from another family, you must be very sure of your facts. It is such a hard case that a jury would give every advantage of a doubt to the people assailed. It would prefer to see what they did in the very best light. There would be a prejudice against the claimants, however much dans leur droit they might be. The evidence would have to be very exact, as clear as daylight. Any lawyer would tell you this. He would tell you, if your evidence was not beyond question, to accept, or even offer, a compromise. Such things are of every-day occurrence. You may have a strong case, but if you can’t support it, and make it all as distinct as clockwork, they will suggest a compromise. Have you found anything among these papers to support the claim you are intending to make?”

“No.”

“You say your father never spoke about it, never referred to his former name; gave you not the slightest hint of any rights of his in England?”

“No.”

“In short, you have no proof at all?” the doctor said.

“Not any, that we know of,” said Grace.

She sat, dogged and obstinate, answering only in monosyllables, or with as few words as possible, sitting bolt upright against the high back of her chair. Her heart had sunk, and her confidence was failing her; but she would not yield, or at least seem to yield.

“That is not very hopeful,” said Dr Brewer, “any lawyer would tell you. But you are determined, notwithstanding, to make out your case?”

“Yes,” said Grace.

She no longer felt amiably disposed towards the doctor. He had cast down her dream-castle; he had represented her to herself as a vulgar money-seeker; he had overthrown all her romantic hopes of gaining advancement for her family, and making of Lenny a pattern English gentleman, perhaps nobleman. She saw now what a slender foundation she had built it all upon; but as nothing in the world would ever make Grace give in, she hardened herself over her inward confusion, and stood like a rock though her heart was quaking. The doctor made two or three sharp little speeches; but he was half-angry, too, that the girls upon whom he had been spending so much feeling should be so impervious to his influence. He got up hurriedly at last, and said something about still having some patients to see, though it was getting late.

“Good-night,” he said. “I should say I would be glad to do anything I could to help you, if I did not think you were embarking upon a most perilous undertaking. I think, permit me to say so, you should take your mother’s advice first.”

“I shall do nothing mamma will disapprove of,” said Grace; and she parted with stateliness from this friend who had been the only one to succour them in their trouble.

As for Milly, she was very deprecating and tearful as she held out her two hands to him. “Do not be angry!” she said with her beseeching eyes. It was all the doctor could do not to stoop down and kiss this peace-maker as he went away. He had thought her a little nobody at first, but he did not do so now. “I declare she is as like Laura as one flower is to another,” he said to himself as he went down-stairs. Now Laura was the doctor’s favourite child – and what more could be said?

When he was gone, Grace returned to her previous occupation with her father’s papers; but her heart was gone out of her search. “We might have asked him at least to recommend some lawyer to us,” she said, which was the only observation she made to Milly on the subject. Milly, indeed, was dismissed altogether from the employment she had been trusted with before Dr Brewer came in. Grace continued to look over the papers, to put one on this heap, and the other on that; but she no longer required Milly’s pen to write down and describe what each was. For at least an hour they sat silent, the younger sister looking wistfully on, the elder rustling the papers, bending over them with puckers of careful consideration over her eyes, affecting to pause now and then to deliberate over one or another. At length Grace gathered them all together, with a sudden impatient movement, and, putting them back into the despatch-box, concluded suddenly without any warning by an outburst of tears.

“To think,” she cried, when Milly, greatly alarmed, yet almost glad thus to recover her sister, hurried to her – “to think that we should be going over all these things that were his private things just the other day – not for love, or because it was necessary, but for business, and about money! Oh, how hard we are, how heartless, what poor wretched creatures! I could not have believed it of myself.”

“Dear,” said Milly, soothing her, “it is because everything is so strange; and to do anything is a little comfort; and for the children’s sake.”

“I wish now,” said Grace, with her head upon her sister’s shoulder, “that we had telegraphed at once to mamma.”

“Perhaps it would have been better,” said Milly; “but you thought it would be so dreadful for her, without any warning.”

Grace wept less bitterly when this instance of her own self-denial was suggested to her. “It is so long to wait – so long to wait,” she cried. And then a sense of their desolation came over them, and the two forlorn young creatures clung to each other. Their nerves were overwrought, and they were able for no more.

CHAPTER XII

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.

CHAPTER XIII

GEOFF had not thought it necessary to say anything about his intention, but he had made up his mind during the vigil of the night to act for himself. He did not go to the chambers, which he shared with a friend, or to his club for his letters, or to any of his usual haunts; but went direct to Piccadilly, which is a long way from Grove Road. A long walk is sometimes an advantage when you are going to have a decisive interview; but Geoffrey, it is to be feared, did not do himself much good by thinking of the hostile party whom he was about to meet. They were not only not disagreeable to him, but the very sight of them stilled every warlike inclination in his breast. Not only he did not want to fight with them, but his desire was to take up their cause and fight it for them, against himself and all belonging to him – which it will readily be perceived was not a way to do any good. He saw them only too clearly in his mind’s eye: the one sister standing a little in advance of the other; the eyes of Grace shining with courage and high spirit, while those softer lights under Milly’s soft brows rose upon him from time to time, always with a new eloquence of appeal. “If she were to ask me for my head, I think I would give it her,” Geoff said to himself; but there was no chance that she would ask for his head. He thought of them as he had seen them first, seated close by each other, turning two wistful, pale faces and eyes wet with tears upon him as he stood at the door, alarmed by his own intrusion. Their black dresses and their piteous looks had made an impression upon him which would never be effaced; and he had heard their story with a knot in his throat, ready to weep for very sympathy. When the same wonderful pair had arrived at Grove Road, he had been too much startled to know what to do or say. But now he was going to them with all his wits about him, no surprise possible, to open up all the question, and discuss it amicably, and help them, if it was possible to help those whose cause was so entirely in opposition to his own.

Grace and Milly were together as usual in the sitting-room, which had become by this time so intolerable to them. They were both very much surprised when he came in. They rose to their feet in wonder and partial dismay. They had been talking over all their affairs, and had come to a kind of conclusion between themselves; but this was a circumstance upon which they had not calculated. They had thought it very unlikely that they should hear anything more of Grove Road unless they themselves took the initiative. They gazed at each other with their usual mutual consultation, bewildered; but as soon as they came to themselves they too were very anxious to be polite to the enemy.

“I hope you will not think me intrusive,” he said.

“Oh, no; we do not know any one – ” This was intended to mean that a visitor was welcome; but the speech was broken off in consequence of the embarrassment of the speaker.

“If what we think is true, we – my mother and I – should be more to you than anybody else in England,” Geoff said.