A Country Gentleman and His Family. Mrs. Oliphant
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through, the strain of everything that had passed, she made little show of her trouble. Her eye was not dim, nor her natural force abated. The girls were dull in complexion and aspect, but their mother was not so. As she came into the room there came with her a brightness, a sense of living, which was inappropriate to the hour and the place.
"Where is Theo?" she asked.
"He is coming in presently; at least, I called to him as he went out, and told him tea was ready, and he said he would be in presently," Chatty replied.
"I wish he would have stayed, if it had even been in the grounds, to-day," said Minnie. "It will look so strange to see him walking about as if nothing had happened."
"He has been very good; he has conformed to all our little rules," said the mother, with a sigh.
"Little rules, mamma? Don't you think it of importance, then, that every respect——"
"My dear," said Mrs. Warrender, "I am tired of hearing of every respect. Theo was always respectful and affectionate. I would not misconstrue him even if it should prove that he has taken a walk."
"On the day of dear papa's funeral!" cried Minnie, with a voice unmoved.
Mrs. Warrender turned away without any reply; partly because the tears sprang into her eyes at the matter-of-fact statement, and partly because her patience was exhausted.
"Have you settled, mamma, what he is going to do?" said Chatty.
"It is not for me to decide. He is twenty-one; he is his own master. You have not," Mrs. Warrender said, "taken time to think yet of the change in our circumstances. Theo is now master here. Everything is his to do as he pleases."
"Everything!" said the girls in chorus, opening their eyes.
"I mean, of course, everything but what is yours and what is mine. You know your father's will. He has been very just, very kind, as he always was." She paused a little, and then went on: "But your brother, as you know, is now the master here. We must understand what his wishes are before we can settle on anything."
"Why shouldn't we go on as we always have done?" said Minnie. "Theo is too young to marry; besides, it would not be decent for a time, even if he wanted to, which I am sure he does not. I don't see why he should make any change. There is nowhere we can be so well as at home."
"Oh, nowhere!" said Chatty.
Their mother sat and looked at them, with a dull throb in her heart. They had sentiment and right on their side, and nature too. Everybody would agree that for a bereaved family there was no place so good as home—the house in which they were born and where they had lived all their life. She looked at them blankly, feeling how unnatural, how almost wicked, was the longing in her own mind to get away, to escape into some place where she could take large breaths and feel a wide sky over her. But how was she to say it, how even to conclude what she had been saying, feeling how inharmonious it was with everything around?
"Still," she said meekly, "I am of Mr. Longstaffe's opinion that everything should be fully understood between us from the first. If we all went on just the same, it might be very painful to Theo, when the time came for him to marry (not now; of course there is no question of that now), to feel that he could not do so without turning his mother and sisters out-of-doors."
"Why should he marry, so long as he has us? It is not as if he had nobody, and wanted some one to make him a home. What would he do with the house if we were to leave it? Would he let it? I don't believe he could let it. It would set everybody talking. Why should he turn his mother and sisters out-of-doors? Oh, I never thought of anything so dreadful!" cried Minnie and Chatty, one uttering one exclamation, and another the other. They were very literal, and in the minds of both the grievance was at once taken for granted. "Oh, I never could have thought such a thing of Theo—our own brother, and younger than we are!"
The mother had made two or three ineffectual attempts to stem the tide of indignation. "Theo is thinking of nothing of the kind," she said at last, when they were out of breath. "I only say that he must not feel he has but that alternative when the time comes, when he may wish—when it may be expedient——No, no, he has never thought of such a thing. I only say it for the sake of the future, to forestall after-complications."
"Oh, I wish you wouldn't frighten one, mamma! I thought you had heard about some girl he had picked up at Oxford, or something. I thought we should have to turn out, to leave the Warren—which would break my heart."
"And mine too—and mine too!" cried Chatty.
"Where we have always been so happy, with nothing to disturb us!"
"Oh, so happy! always the same, one day after another! It will be different," said the younger sister, crying a little, "now that dear papa—— But still no place ever can be like home."
And there was the guilty woman sitting by, listening to everything they said; feeling how good, how natural, it was—and still more natural, still more seemly, for her, at her age, than for them at theirs—yet conscious that this house was a prison to her, and that of all things in the world that which she wanted most was to be turned out and driven away!
"My dears," she said, not daring to betray this feeling, "if I have frightened you, I did not mean to do it. The house in Highcombe, you know, is mine. It will be our home if—if anything should happen. I thought it might be wise to have that ready, to make it our headquarters, in case—in case Theo should carry out the improvements."
"Improvements!" they cried with one voice. "What improvements? How could the Warren be improved?"
"You must not speak to me in such a tone. There has always been a question of cutting down some of the trees."
"But papa would never agree to it; papa said he would never consent to it."
"I think," said Mrs. Warrender, with a guilty blush, "that he—had begun to change his mind."
"Only when he was growing weak, then—only when you over-persuaded him."
"Minnie! I see that your brother was right, and that this is not a time for any discussion," Mrs. Warrender said.
There was again a silence: and they all came back to the original state of mind from which they started, and remembered that quiet and subdued tones and an incapacity for the consideration of secular subjects were the proper mental attitude for all that remained of this day.
It was not, however, long that this becoming condition lasted. Sounds were heard as of voices in the distance, and then some one running at full speed across the gravel drive in front of the door, and through the hall. Minnie had risen up in horror to stop this interruption, when the door burst open, and Theo, pale and excited, rushed in. "Mother," he cried, "there has been a dreadful accident. Markland has been thrown by those wild brutes of his, and I don't know what has happened to him. It was just at the gates, and they are bringing him here. There is no help for it. Where can they take him to?"
Mrs. Warrender rose to her feet at once; her heart rising too almost with pleasure to the thrill of a new event. She hurried out to open the door of a large vacant room on the ground floor. "What was Lord Markland doing here?" she said. "He ought to have reached home long ago."
"He has been in that house in the village, mother. They seemed to think everybody would understand. I don't know what he has to do there."
"He has nothing to do there. Oh, Theo, that poor young wife of his! And had he the heart to go from—from—us, in our trouble—there!"
"He seems to have paid for it, whatever was wrong in it. Go back to the drawing-room, for here they are coming."
"Theo, they are carrying him as if he were——"
"Go back to the drawing-room, mother. Whatever it is, it cannot be helped," Theodore said. He did not mean it, but there was something in his tone which reminded everybody—the servants, who naturally came rushing to see what was the matter, and Mrs. Warrender, who withdrew at his bidding—that he was now the master of the house.