Barbara Rebell

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Mrs. Boringdon made no reply. She still stared on into the fire; a curious look, one of perplexity and hesitation, had come over her face.

"Mother!" he cried, and the tone forced her to look round at him, "surely you don't think—it is not your impression that Lucy——"

"I think she has become very fond of you," said Mrs. Boringdon deliberately. "But I confess that I have sometimes thought that she seemed fonder of me than of you." She smiled as she spoke, but to Boringdon this was no smiling matter—indeed, it was one which to his mind could scarcely be discussed with decency by himself and his mother. Then a vision of Lucy Kemp, steady, clear-eyed Lucy, almost too sensible—so the people at Chancton, he knew, regarded her to be—came to his help. "No, no," he said, with a sudden sense of relief, "I'm quite sure, mother, that any feeling—I mean the kind of feeling of which we are speaking—has been entirely on my side! We will be more careful. I am willing to admit that I have been foolish."

But Mrs. Boringdon scarcely heard what he was saying. She who so seldom doubted as to her course of action, was now weighing the pros and cons of what had become to her a matter for immediate decision. Unfortunately her son's next words seemed to give her the opening she sought.

"Sometimes I am tempted to think"—Oliver had got up, he was leaning against the mantel-piece, looking down into his mother's face—"Sometimes, I say, I am tempted to think that after all money is the one important thing in life! When I look back to how I regarded James Berwick's marriage—he once accused me of condemning what he did, and I could not deny that I had done so—I see how much more wise he was than I. Why, to him that marriage which so shocked me was the turning point—ay, more, that money, together, perhaps, with his wife's death, steadied him—amazingly—I refer of course to his intellectual standpoint, and to his outlook on life! And you, mother—you've always thought more of money than I've ever done. But even you once thought that it could be too dearly purchased."

Mrs. Boringdon reddened. Her son's words gratified her. She was aware that he was alluding to an offer of marriage which she herself had unhesitatingly rejected at a time when her daughter was still in the schoolroom, and her son at Charterhouse. Her middle-aged wooer had been a man of some commercial standing and much wealth, but "not a gentleman," so the two pitiless young people had decided, and Mrs. Boringdon, her children believed, had not hesitated for a moment between a life of poor gentility and one of rather vulgar plenty.

"Oh! yes," she said slowly, "money can certainly be too dearly purchased. But still, you on your side, you and your sister Grace, have always thought far too little of it. Of late I have sometimes wondered, Oliver, if you knew—whether you are aware"—for the life of her she could not help the sudden alteration in her measured voice—"that our dear little friend, Lucy Kemp, is something of an heiress—that in four years time, when she is five-and-twenty, that is, there will be handed over to her £25,000?"

And then, while her son listened to her in complete silence, giving no clue as to how he regarded the information, she explained her knowledge as having come to her from an absolutely sure source, from a certain Miss Vipen, the chartered gossip of Chancton, whose information could be trusted when actual facts were in question.

Even after Mrs. Boringdon had done speaking, Oliver still sat on, resting his head on his hands. "I wonder if Laxton knows of this?" he said at last. "What a brute I should think him if he does!" and Mrs. Boringdon felt keenly, perhaps not unreasonably, irritated. Her son's words also took her by surprise—complete silence would have satisfied her, but this odd comment on the fact she had chosen to reveal was very different from what she had expected.

But when, some three hours later, the mother and son had finished their simple dinner, and Oliver announced to his mother that he must now go down to the Grange for half an hour in order to consult General Kemp over that village lad whose conduct was giving Oliver so much trouble, Mrs. Boringdon smiled. Her son caught the smile and it angered him. How utterly his mother misunderstood him, how curiously little they were in sympathy the one with the other!