“Mamma,” said Frances, trembling. She wanted to say that little as she herself was, she was one who would never forsake her mother. But she was so conscious that Lady Markham’s thoughts went over her head and took no note of her, that the words were stifled on her lips. “He said to me once that he could never—leave you,” she said, faltering, though it was not what she meant to say.
“He said to you once——? Then he has been thinking of it; he has been discussing the question?” Lady Markham said with bitterness. She leant heavily upon Frances’ arm, but not with any tender appreciation of the girl’s wistful desire to comfort her. “That means,” she said, “that I can never desert him. I must go now and get rid of all this excitement, and put on a composed face, and tell the people that they may go away if they like. It will be the right thing for them to go away. But I can’t stay here with death in the house, and take a motherly care of—of that girl, whom I never trusted—whom Markham—— And she will marry him within the year. I know it.”
Frances made a little outcry of horror, being greatly disturbed—“Oh no, no!” without any meaning, for she indeed knew nothing.
“No! How can you say No?—when you are quite in ignorance. I can’t tell you what Markham would wish—to be let alone, most likely, if they would let him alone. But she will do it. She always was headstrong; and now she will be rich. Oh, what a thing it is altogether—like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Who could have imagined, when we came down here so tranquilly, with nothing unusual—— If I thought of any change at all, it was perhaps that Claude—whom, by the way, you must not be rude to, Frances—that Claude might perhaps—— And now, here is everything unsettled, and my life turned upside down.”
What did she hope that Claude would have done? Frances’ brain was all perplexed. She had plunged into a sudden sea of troubles, without knowing even what the wild elements were that lashed the placid waters into fury and made the sky dark all around.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The crisis, however, was averted—“mercifully,” as Lady Markham said. Dr Howard from Southampton—whom she had thought of only by chance, on the spur of the moment, as a way of getting rid of Markham—produced some new lights; and in reality was so successful with the invalid, that he rallied, and it became possible to remove him by slow stages to his own house, to die there, which he did in due course, but some time after, and decorously, in the right way and place. Frances felt herself like a spectator at a play during all this strange interval, looking on at the third act of a tragedy, which somehow had got involved in a drawing-room comedy, with scenes alternating, and throwing a kind of wretched reflection of their poor humour upon the tableaux of the darker drama. She thought that she never should forget the countenance of Nelly Winterbourn as she took her seat beside her husband in the invalid carriage in which he was conveyed away, and turned to wave a farewell to the little group which had assembled to watch the departure. Her face was quivering with a sort of despairing impatience, wretchedness, self-pity, the miserable anticipations of a living creature tied to one who was dead—nerves and temper and every part of her being wrought to a feverish excitement, made half delirious by the prospect, the possibility, of escape. A wretched sort of spasmodic smile was upon her lips as she waved her hand to the spectators—those spectators all on the watch to read her countenance, who, she knew, were as well aware of the position as herself. Frances was learning the lesson thus set practically before her with applications of her own. She knew now to a great extent what it all meant, and why Markham disappeared as soon as the carriage drove away; while her mother, with an aspect of intense relief, returned to her guests. “I feel as if I could breathe again,” Lady Markham said. “Not that I should have grudged anything I could do for poor dear Nelly; but there is something so terrible in a death in one’s house.”
“I quite enter into your feelings, dear—oh, quite!” said Mrs Montague; “most painful, and most embarrassing besides.”
“Oh, as for that!” said Lady Markham. “It would have been indeed a great annoyance and vexation to break up our pleasant party, and put out all your plans. But one has to submit in such cases. However, I am most thankful it has not come to that. Poor Mr Winterbourn may last yet—for months, Dr Howard says.”
“Dear me; do you think that is to be desired?” said the other, “for poor Nelly’s sake.”