Space forbids the historian to attempt any description of the difficulties which Mary had to encounter in her benevolent undertaking. By Frank’s urgent desire,—for his courage had altogether failed him,—nothing was said on the subject till he was gone; and the consequence was a very uncomfortable day, in which even Mrs. Renton perceived that there was something more going on than was revealed to her. ‘What are you always talking to Frank about?’ she said, pettishly. ‘I never turn my head but I find you whispering, or telegraphing, or something. If there is anything I ought to know, let me know it.’
‘Wait a little,—only wait a little, dear godmamma,’ Mary answered, pleading; and then, when the hero was gone, the tale was told.
‘Going to India,—going to be married!’ said Mrs. Renton, in her bewilderment; ‘but why should he go to India if he marries? Of course he will be provided for if he makes up his mind{v.3-57} to that. Or why should he marry if he goes to India?—one thing is bad enough. Is he out of his senses? Fifty thousand pounds will give them, at least, two thousand a-year.’
‘But, godmamma, you are making a mistake,’ said Mary. ‘It is not Miss Rich Frank is going to marry. It is a young lady,—whom he met at Richmont.’
‘Not Miss Rich!’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘Another girl! The boy must be mad to go on making acquaintance with such people. And how much has she?’ the mother added, with plaintive submission to a hard fate, folding her patient hands.
Mary, thus driven to the last admission of all, grew quite pale, but made a brave stand for her client. ‘Oh, godmamma,’ she cried, ‘you must not be hard upon him. He is so young; and isn’t it better he should marry her because he loves her than because she is rich? She has not a penny, he says.’
When this awful revelation was made, Mrs. Renton was excited to the length of positive passion. Words failed her at first. Her eyes, though they were worn-out eyes, retaining little lustre, flashed fire. Her faded cheeks grew red. She was inarticulate in her rage and indignation. It was Mary who received the first brunt of the onslaught, for encouraging a foolish boy in such nonsense, and for taking it upon her to defend him against all who{v.3-58} wished him well. You would have thought it was Mary who had inspired him with this mad fancy, put it in his head, encouraged him in it, urged him to commit it, and compromise himself in the face of the strenuous, steady, invariable opposition of ‘all who wished him well.’ The poor lady made herself quite ill with indignation, and had to be taken to bed, and comforted with more tonics and arrowroot than ever. She lay there moaning all the evening, refusing to allow poor Mary to read to her, or to perform any of her usual ministrations. If it had not been that Frank had left his boat, having himself returned to Royalborough by the railroad, and thus afforded Mary the opportunity of getting easily across the river, and running all the way to the Cottage to be comforted by her mother for half-an-hour before returning to her charge, I don’t know what would have become of her. Mrs. Westbury did not look the sort of woman to seek comfort from, but she was Mary’s mother, which makes all the difference, and she had never got over her compunction about her nephews. This trial they were all going through was her doing, and though she sympathised much more with her sister-in-law than with Frank in the present case, she was not without a certain pity for the boy. ‘He must be mad,’ she said; ‘but if it can’t be put a stop to, it must be put up with; and your aunt will have got a little used to it by to-morrow.’ Thus comforted{v.3-59} Mary went back, not without a little wondering comparison in her own mind between the people who could do rash things and have their will, and those who had ‘to put up with’ everything that might chance to come in their way, and never had it in their power to please themselves. She was a very good girl, full of womanly kindness and charity; but it is not to be supposed that close attendance upon a weariful invalid like her aunt, not ill enough to move any depth of sympathy, but requiring perpetual pettis soins, and endless consideration in every detail of life, was a kind of existence to be chosen by a lively girl of twenty. Poor Mary was the scapegoat and ransom for the sins of her family. The three ‘Renton boys’ were all going away on their own courses, comforting themselves about their mother,—when they thought of her at all,—by the reflection that Mary was with her. They could go away, but Mary could not budge. It was rather hard, when you came to think of it. And that Frank, not three months older than herself, should marry and set out in life, and go blithely off to all the novelty and all the brightness, and no one have any power to stop him; while she stayed at home, making excuses for him, and doing duty for all three! Mary was a comfortable kind of young woman, and went into no hysterics over her fate; neither did she rave to herself about the awful blank of routine and the{v.3-60} want of excitement in her life. But she did feel a little envy of Frank, and pity for herself, as she glided across the silvery river in the summer twilight. Doing must be a pleasanter thing than ‘putting up with,’ even to a philosophical mind.
The next day Mrs. Renton had got a little used to it. She exerted herself to the unusual extent of writing Frank a letter, conjuring him by all his gods to repent ere it was too late, and to return to the paths of common sense and discretion; and when she had done this, she called Mary to her, and asked a hundred questions about ‘the girl.’ ‘Her mother was one of Laurie’s great friends,’ Mary said, trying to make the best of it.
‘All the doubtful people one knows of seem to be Laurie’s friends,’ said his mother, pathetically. And thus the crisis was over at Renton, for the moment at least.
At Richmont, however, affairs took a much more serious turn when the whole truth was known. Nelly’s intimation that Frank was going to India had not very much affected that sanguine household. ‘It will bring things to a point,’ Mrs. Rich had said to her husband. ‘He has done it in some little spirit of independence, not to be obliged to his wife, you know; but if he comes to an understanding with Nelly, we’ll make him exchange again.’
‘Ah! if he comes to an understanding with Nelly. But she shall never go to India with him,{v.3-61}’ said the father. ‘No young fellow shall blow hot and cold with my daughter. I’d have done with him at once.’
‘Nonsense! It has been some little tiff between them,’ said the more genial woman. And even Nelly got by degrees to believe that it was not yet finally over. But when the whole truth was whispered at Richmont,—as it soon was by one of the officers who had learned the fact, no one knew how,—the family in general became frantic. Nelly kept her temper outwardly at least, and held her tongue, having some regard for her own dignity; but the father and mother were wild with rage. People whom they had patronised so liberally!—a woman to whom they had just given such a commission! When this thought occurred to them, they exchanged glances. Next day, without saying a word to any one, Mr. and Mrs. Rich went up to town. They bore no external signs of passion to the ordinary eye, but in their hearts they were breathing fire and flame against every Renton, every Severn, every creature even distantly connected with either. There was very little conversation between the two indignant parents as they made their way solemnly to Fitzroy Square. A certain judicial silence, and stern restraint of all the lighter manifestations of feeling, alone marked the importance of their mission. They were shown up to Mrs. Severn’s studio by their own request,—having peremptorily{v.3-62} refused any such half-way ground as the drawing-room, as if they had come to treat with their equals. The workshop of the woman who was, as it were, in their employment, working to their order, was the more appropriate place.
They found the padrona standing at her work with looks very different from her usual aspect. Something spiritless and worn was in the very attitude of her arm, in the fall of her gown, and dressing of her hair. It was not that she was less neat, less carefully dressed, less busy. But the woman was in such unity with herself, that her unusual despondency communicated itself to every detail about her. She had no heart for Cinderella,—the little loving figure triumphing in its new life,—the sour, elder women standing by who were grudging,—what were they grudging? The child’s happiness, or her triumph, or the loss of her? She had not even heart enough to rouse her to the heights of artist-passion, and to work in her own heart into the picture, as doubtless she would yet do, some time when all was over. She stood with her sketches hung round the walls, and the whole room full of this commission of her rich patron,—the commission which made her living quite secure and above the reach of chance, and her mind easy for the year,—but listless, spiritless, mechanical, her heart gone out of her life.
Mrs. Severn was so much pre-occupied that she{v.3-63} did not even notice, what at another time she would have been so ready to notice,—the changed tone of the Riches as they came in. Luckily for her own comfort, she had never heard that there was ‘anything between’ Nelly Rich and Frank Renton. Such a reason for having nothing to say to him would have been very welcome to the padrona. But she could not refuse to have anything to say to him without breaking her child’s heart; and, accordingly what did it matter? It was to Alice, not to him, that she had yielded. Therefore, she received very much as a matter of course Mrs. Rich’s pretended congratulations. ‘We hear that great things have been happening with you,’ she said. ‘I am sure I had no idea, when Alice was at Richmont, that she was such an advanced young lady. I suppose it was going on then, though we knew nothing about it.’
‘I don’t know,’ said the padrona. ‘I cannot give you any information. It is not a pleasant subject to me; but I don’t suppose it was going on then.’
‘Not a pleasant subject!’ cried Mrs. Rich, with not unjustifiable virulence. ‘Oh, my dear Mrs. Severn, you must not tell me that. We all know what a mother feels when she has succeeded in securing a charming parti like Mr. Frank Renton for her favourite child.’
‘Is he so?’ said the padrona. ‘Indeed, I should not have thought it. But I am not in charity with{v.3-64} Mr. Frank Renton. I wish we had never seen him. I am like Cinderella’s sisters,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile;—‘I am spiteful;’ and there was a something in the droop and languor of her aspect which began to melt the hearts of the avengers. She looked so unlike herself.
‘Nay, nay,’ said Mrs. Severn’s patron. ‘Of course it is a fine thing for you to have your daughter settled so soon. And a fine thing for her too,—a girl without any fortune. Not many men, I can tell you, would have been so rash.’
‘Then I wish Mr. Frank Renton had not been so rash,’ cried the padrona, with rising spirit. ‘I would have thanked him on my knees had he kept away from this house. I cannot see any good in it. Forgive me! I have no right to trouble you with my vexations. I will show you my sketches, which are more to the purpose.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Rich, with hesitation. ‘It was princ............