Cousin Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Yes, John, and you shall have her. You shall not be parted again,” Mary cried with tears.

“I want my little girl. They say I frightened thome one that wasn’t mine; I ask her pardon, I’m sure. I never meant to frighten any one; all I want ith my little girl.”

“Father, here I am!” cried little Rhoda, one arm clasping his, one uplifted in defence.

“And, Cousin John, oh! I love you too: I wasn’t frightened,” Hetty cried.

The sound of this prodigious falsehood, told with all the conviction of the heart, brought a note of something like laughter into the room, when this scene ended, the strange little drama, which, but for Hetty’s fright and Mary’s arrival, might have been a tragedy, and ended in a very different way.

The explanation of the circumstances was not difficult to give. John Prescott had married, or rather, to use a juster phraseology, had been married to, a Californian lady with a great fortune, who had come to England to dazzle the old civilization, as so many do. But the earl, or the viscount, or the duke’s son, who are the natural prey of such conquering invaders, had not turned up, and the beautiful old house, and the armorial bearings of the Prescotts, and all that was old and traditionary about them, had been felt by Miss Rotherham to be next best. To say that her husband belonged to the old untitled aristocracy, who looked upon new lordships with contempt, was so refined and exquisite a piece of brag that the imagination of the daughter of the wilds was captivated by it. And John looked every inch an effete aristocrat, languid with over-civilization. She took him, with his old place and impoverished estate, as if he had been a choicer piece of antiquated lumber than all the rest. But when she had been married for a few years to John, that vivacious representative of the New World had found her stupid Englishman too much for her. His very goodness had driven her frantic. He had submitted to almost anything she exacted, with a dull amiability which took all her patience from her. Finally he had got blind, or almost blind, but never otherwise than patient, uncomplaining, and kind, adoring his child, who adored him, and very submissive to his wife. And she did not find her untitled aristocracy did her much good in a social point of view. The compatriots who had secured the earls and the viscounts laughed, and the Prescotts had fallen out of society too long in the days of their poverty to recover their position easily. And John was dull. Ye heavens! how dull he was—dull even to the simple people who loved him at home—how much more dull to the lively Transatlantic who had intended to build her advancement upon him, but never had loved him at all!

Mrs. Asquith found out by degrees that her cousin’s wife had tried to make him out incapable of managing his affairs, and to get him shut up, which was unkind, seeing that he was perfectly content to commit to her hands the management of these affairs, and never grumbled at her absences, or found fault with her proceedings, too happy to be left with Rhoda in the home he loved. Mrs. Prescott-Rotherham, however, had failed in this, and thereupon had organized another plan for freeing herself from circumstances which she would not tolerate. To have great wealth and belong to a new civilization in which there is little bondage of precedent, and not to have whatever you like, whatever you can pay for, is intolerable. It is always intolerable not to be able to do what one pleases, and have what one likes; but these are things which most people have to put up with. Mrs. Prescott-Rotherham did not see why she should put up with anything she disliked so much, and she went off to America to obtain a divorce. If she had told John this, the probabilities were that, unless some sudden gleam of religious objection had crossed the tranquillity of his dulled brain, he would have acquiesced, as he did everything else. But there are limits to the boldness even of a rich Californian, accustomed to see all obstacles disappear before her. And what she did was to persuade her husband that to confine himself entirely to his own rooms would be good for his eyes and for his health, and that until her return it was his policy to lead a secluded life. She pointed out to him the misery of being plagued by visitors, the trouble which even Rhoda’s governess would bring upon him, and that to seclude himself in the east wing while she was absent was the best thing he could do. Poor John did not know till she was gone that he was to be secluded from Rhoda too; but though it was very difficult to manage him when he learned this, yet he was smoothed down and coaxed into patience for the time. Needless to say that of the divorce suit going briskly on on the other side of the Atlantic nobody knew. The citation to John to appear had been conveyed to him in a newspaper, which he had solemnly opened, as was his wont, looked at with his half-blind eyes, and put away with the remark that there was nothing in it. He was indeed more than half blind, and the paper conveyed to him no information at all.

It is needless to say that Mrs. Prescott-Rotherham obtained her divorce in the American court, but that the English law, as was natural, took no notice of that decree, and altogether refused to take Rhoda from her father’s keeping. It is equally of course that from the moment when Mary led him back into his own house, there could be no question of secluding him any more. He was as sane as he had ever been, understanding everything that was kind and friendly, not wise nor yet abundant in speech, which would have been out of nature. The poor relation, who was only Mary, and the poor parson whom she had married, protected his gentle weakness, and John Prescott, with his patient yet half-tragic face, his almost sightless eyes, and his little story of undeserved wrong, wrong of which even now he was barely conscious, opining that his wife had only gone to visit her relations and meant no harm, made a great impression upon the Commissioners in Lunacy who examined him, and pronounced in his favour authoritatively, adding however a gentle recommendation that in view of his yielding character he should have some relation to stay with and to take care of him. This condition was fulfilled by the return of his sister Anna from India, widowed, shortly after, and thus everything was set right.

Hetty took no harm from that attack, which might have been shortened or even averted if any one had been as bold as her mother. Mr. Darrell was of opinion that she required very careful watching for a long time—watching which the young man was too willing to give. He remained in the position of the family doctor for some time after for this cause, in his anxiety about Hetty’s health: and as soon as her parents consider her old enough there is little doubt that he will get his reward.

John Prescott was left poor when his wife, baffled yet emancipated, took away her money, as when the negotiations were all over she was at liberty to do—but without the child, who clung to him, and would not hear a word said of her mother. He was left quite poor, poorer even than the Prescotts had been in Mary’s early days. But yet there was something in Cousin John’s power. One morning, about a year after, the post brought news of the death of the Rev. Hugh Prescott, the rector of Horton, in one of the villages of the Riviera where he had lived so long. In strict justice the appointment ought to have gone to the old clergyman who had officiated as his locum tenens for a dozen years. But when was strict justice ever regarded in this world? John would receive no council on this matter. He had been pronounced able to manage his own affairs, and in this one point at least he was determined to do so. He tried, in his blindness to write a letter to Mary with his own hands offering the Rectory to her husband. The letter was illegible, but the purpose was carried out, and thus Mary returned with all her children to the home of her youth.