The readers of this history must be prepared to pass over an interval of something less than seven years from the end of the last chapter. I allow that it is a most undesirable break, but yet it has been involved from the beginning as a necessity of the narrative.
Nearly seven years had elapsed since Mr. Renton’s death at the moment when we again approach Renton Manor. He died in September, and it was the beginning of August when Mrs. Renton received a note from Mr. Ponsonby, the lawyer, announcing his intention of arriving at the Manor the next day. Mrs. Renton had not improved much in health, but she had laid aside her mourning, and wore grey and violet, and pretty caps, once more. Her existence had known very little change during all these years. Now and then the tonics had been changed, and she had substituted for a whole year the Revalenta Arabica for the arrowroot; but the difference was scarcely perceptible except to the{v.3-74} maid and the cook, and I believe, on the whole, the arrowroot was found to agree with her best. She had taken her drive almost every day with a feeling that she was doing her duty. ‘My dear husband always made such a point of my drive,’ she said, plaintively, though for her own part she would have preferred her sofa; and so had lived on, very punctual in taking her medicine, a woman humbly conscious of fulfilling all the duties of her life. Mary Westbury had been generally her companion in these drives; and as she was younger and not so settled in mind, had sometimes, it must be allowed, felt as if life was no better than a leisurely promenade between two rows of hedgerows, sometimes green and sometimes brown. The carriage was very comfortable and the horses were very fat, and there were a great many charming points of view within a radius of fifteen miles round Renton; but still there were moments in which Mary was such an infidel as to wish herself jogging to market in the passing cart, or carrying a basket along the road, or anywhere rather than in that luxurious corner. If anything had happened to make Mrs. Renton ‘put down,’ as people say, her carriage, she would have regarded it as a calamity altogether immeasurable; but I think that both she and her niece would have felt a burden taken off their minds. She would have been left at peace on her sofa, and Mary could have taken needful exercise in her own way. But{v.3-75} such a blessing in disguise was beyond praying for. Mr. Renton, though he had been so hard upon his sons, had provided very tenderly for his wife’s comfort.
Renton had been hers for these seven years, and had been kept precisely as it was when it was the home of the whole family,—not a servant dismissed nor a change made; and thus the height of comfort had been secured. Mary, too, was very comfortable,—no young woman could be more so. She had a maid of her own, which would have been an impossible luxury at home, and a liberal allowance for her dress, and a fire in her room, if she chose, from October to May, or indeed all the year through, if such was her pleasure; and the freedom of various libraries, and an excellent piano, and any amount of worsted work she chose. And then the drive every afternoon, wet and dry, ‘so that she has the air and the change, when we poor people, who have no carriage, must stay indoors,’ Mrs. Westbury said when she described her daughter’s happiness. And this felicity had gone on for nearly seven years.
‘I wonder what Mr. Ponsonby wants,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘He might have come without any intimation. I am sure he generally does. Why he should send word like this, as if he had some news to bring, I cannot conceive. I do hope it is nothing about the boys.’
‘It cannot be anything about them,’ said Mary.{v.3-76} ‘Consider, godmamma, you had a letter from Ben just the other day, and Frank and Alice wrote by the last mail.’
‘That is all very true,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but how can I tell that they may not have telegraphed or something? And then there is Laurie always wandering all over the world. He may have gone off, as he did the first time, without letting any one know.’
‘But he would never have dreamed of sending Mr. Ponsonby to tell you,’ said Mary; ‘he would have written direct. Laurie is the best correspondent of them all.’
‘Or he may be going to be married,’ said Mrs. Renton,—‘he or Ben. By the way, he says something about Ben; but all those business people write such bad hands. Perhaps you can make it out. I am sure it is too much for me.’
After this little introduction, Mary took the lawyer’s letter with some slight tremulousness. She was nearly seven-and-twenty by this time, and ought, she said to herself, to have been quite steady about such matters. Of course some day Ben would marry, and so long as it was any one who would make him happy she could only be glad. Many a wandering thought about Millicent Tracy had come into her mind. Had she been faithful to him? Had there been any intercourse between them? Had he kept steadfast to his imagination of her for all these{v.3-77} years? For it was only an imagination, as Mary felt sure. Every letter that came from Ben had caused her a certain tremor,—not, as she said to herself, that it would make any difference to her; but if he were to bind himself to a woman unworthy of him! And now that he was coming back so soon, it was with a thrill of more intense expectation than usual that she took Mr. Ponsonby’s letter in her hand. But there was nothing about marrying or giving in marriage in that sober epistle. It intimated to Mrs. Renton, in the first place, that the time specified in her husband’s will had nearly expired; that he had received a letter from her son Ben, informing him that he intended to meet him at the Manor, along with the other members of the family, on the 15th of September; and that, accordingly, Mr. Ponsonby was coming to Renton next day to go over the property with the bailiff, and see with his own eyes the condition in which everything was, that there might be no delay, when the time came, in making everything over to the heir. All that Mrs. Renton had made of this very distinct letter was the fact that the lawyer was to pay her a visit, and that there was something about Ben. But indeed Mr. Ponsonby did not write a legible hand.
‘Then it is just what Ben told us about coming home,’ said Mrs. Renton, ‘though he was not so particular to me in naming the day. He said the{v.3-78} beginning of September, if you recollect, Mary; and Frank and his wife are coming by the next mail. I am afraid the children will make a dreadful commotion in the house, and altogether it will be so odd to see Renton full of people again. Of course, Laurie is coming, too. I don’t know what I shall do with them all. They can’t expect me to have parties and that sort of thing for them, Mary, in my state of health?’
‘No, dear godmamma,’ said Mary, soothingly, ‘they will not expect anything of the kind; and you will never think of the trouble when you have all the boys at home. Fancy Frank having boys of his own!’ she cried, with a little laugh. The choice lay between laughing and crying, and the first was certainly the best.
‘I hope his wife has kept up her practice,’ said Mrs. Renton, still with a cloud on her brow, ‘since that was what he married her for.’
‘Godmamma!’ cried Mary, with consternation.
‘Well, my dear, I don’t know what else she had to recommend her. No family, nor connexions; not a penny,—not even expectations! If it was not for her music, what was it for? And so many women give up practice when they marry. I always forget,—is it three or four children they have?’
‘Two, godmamma,’ said Mary, gently; ‘don’t you remember the poor, dear, little baby died?’
‘Well, it is quite enough,’ said Mrs. Renton;{v.3-79} ‘with nothing but their pay to depend upon. And there will be a black nurse, you may be sure, driving the servants out of their senses. But if she has kept up her practice, it will be an amusement for the boys. And things might have been worse. There might have been three families instead of one, you know, Mary; and then I think I should certainly have run away.’
‘Yes,—perhaps it is selfish,’ said Mary; ‘but I am glad, too, that they are not all married. It will be more like old times.’
‘Selfish!’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘I can’t see how it can be selfish. Of course Ben will have to marry some time or other, for the sake of the property. But I never can make out why young men marry, for my part. Haven’t they everything that heart can desire? and no care, and much more petted and taken notice of in society than if they were dragging a wife about with them everywhere? A girl is quite different. She has everything to gain, you see. I often wondered whether I have been doing my duty by you, Mary, keeping you out of the way of a good establishment in life.’
‘Pray don’t speak so, godmamma,’ said Mary, with a blush of indignation; ‘not to me at least.’
‘But I do, my dear. And I am sure no one ever deserved to be comfortably settled better than you do. However, I have always found, in my experience,’ said Mrs. Renton, with a profound look of{v.3-80} wisdom, ‘that when these things are coming they come, however quietly you may be living; and, if they are not to come, they don’t, however much you may go into society. Look at Jane Sutton, who never was seen out of her father’s house, and now she’s Lady Egmont! I suppose we must expect Mr. Ponsonby to lunch.’
‘I should think he would come early,’ said Mary, with a smile; and, as it was Mrs. Renton’s hour for taking something, she went away to tell the housekeeper of the guest. And then she made a little tour of the house; peeping into the rooms, in some of which preparations had already begun. The west wing, in which the ‘boys’ rooms’ were, was all in commotion,—carpets taken up, women with pails and brooms in every corner. The only one as yet untouched was the little sitting-room, or dressing-room, attached to Ben’s chamber, where his old treasures were still hanging about,—his books and his pictures, and all his knicknacks. Into this oasis Mary strayed, with a strange thrill of expectation creeping over her. Seven years! what a slice it was out of a life; and how much had happened to the others and how little to herself! Mary felt as if she had done nothing but drive all these years in that most comfortable of family coaches, with her aunt by her side, and a bottle of medicine in the pocket of the carriage. And now they were all coming back! To what? What change should she{v.3-81} find in them? and ah! what changes would they find in her? Ben must be thirty-two by this time; and Mary was seven-and-twenty, which, for a woman, is about twenty years older, as all the world knows!
As for ‘the Frank Rentons,’ they were not to be placed in the west wing at all, but in a suite of rooms over the great doorway, the guest-chambers of the house, as became their dignity as married people with children and nurses to be accommodated. How funny that was! Frank, who had always been the youngest in every way, whom they all,—even Mary herself in a manner,—had bullied and domineered over,—and here had he attained a point of social dignity to which none of the others had yet approached! Mary laughed to herself, and then she dried her eyes. It was an agitating crisis altogether, to which she looked forward with the strangest mixture of feelings. Laurie, it was true, had come home long since; and came to the Manor now and then, and had not drifted out of knowledge. But, then, one always knew exactly how Laurie would be, and it did not matter if he were in London or at the end of the world, so far as that went; but Ben—— And to think everything was going to be settled, and they were all coming home!
Mr. Ponsonby arrived next day; not, as they expected, to luncheon, but in the evening. He was an old friend of the family, and Mr. Renton, as{v.3-82} people say, had no secrets from him. But that was a figure of speech, for the Ponsonbys had managed the Rentons’ affairs for generations, and there were no secrets to keep. ‘I shall want the whole day for what I have to do,’ he told Mary when he arrived; ‘so I thought it best to come overnight.’ And he dined with the two ladies, and did his best to make himself agreeable. His coming and his talk were the most tangible sign that they had yet had that their long vigil was over, and that the tide of life was about to flow back to them. He spoke in a very guarded way, betraying nothing of the secret he had kept those seven years; but when Mrs. Renton spoke of one thing and another which she wanted to have done, Mr. Ponsonby made answers which infinitely piqued Mary’s curiosity. ‘We must see what the will says about it,’ said the lawyer. ‘It is not worth while doing anything now till he is here to decide for himself. All that is the heir’s business, not mine.’
‘Do you mean Ben?’ said Mrs. Renton; for even she was moved to a little surprise.
‘I cannot tell whom I mean until the will is read,’ he said; ‘but, of course, whoever is the heir will be but too happy to do what you wish, my dear Mrs. Renton. It must be a great pleasure to you to have all your boys at home.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but when one does{v.3-83} not know whether they are coming to disappointment or to satisfaction! If they should have had to travel all this way for nothing, what a thing it would be,—if it were only for the expens............