‘Oh, it is not that,’ she said. ‘Poor Charles! I don’t think he would mind. The world is so hard, and one makes so little head against it. No, it is because of Mrs. Babington. I heard she lost all her money some years ago, and was dependent on her son. And what can she do on a hundred a year? A hundred a year! Only think of it, for an old lady always accustomed to have her own way. It is horribly unjust, you know, to take it from her, his mother, who was always so good to him; and to give it to me, whom he has not seen for nearly twenty years, and who gave him a sore heart when he did know me. I could not take advantage of it. It is a great temptation, but it would be a great sin. And that is why,’ she added, with a sudden flush on her face, looking at me, ‘I should rather—manage it myself—under cover of you—and—not let Charles know.’
She looked at me, and held me with her eye, demanding of me that I should understand her, and yet defying me to think any the worse of Charles. She was afraid of her husband—afraid that he would clutch at the money without any consideration of the wrong—afraid to trust him with the decision. She would have me understand her without words, and yet she would not have me blame Mr. Merridew. She insisted on the one and defied me to the other; an inconsistent, unreasonable woman! But I did my best to look as if I saw, and yet did not see.
‘Then you want to see the lawyers?’ I said.
‘I want to see Mrs. Babington,’ was her answer. ‘I must go to them and explain. They are proud people, and probably would resist—or they may be otherwise provided for. If that was the case I should not hesitate to take it. Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave, when I look at all the children, and Janet there murmuring and grumbling, don’t you think it wrings my heart to put away this chance of comfort? And poor Charles working himself out. But it could not bring a blessing. It would bring a curse; I cannot take the bread out of the mouth of the old woman who was good to me, even to put it into that of my own child.’
And here two tears fell out of Mrs. Merridew’s eyes. At her age people do not weep abundantly. She gave a little start as they fell, and brushed them off her dress, with, I don’t doubt, a sensation of shame. She to cry like a baby, who had so much to do! She left shortly after, with an engagement to meet me at the station for the twelve o’clock train next day. I was going to town on business, and had asked her to go with me—this was what was to be said to all the world. I explained myself elaborately that very evening to Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella, when I met them taking their walk after dinner.
‘Mrs. Merridew is so kind as to go with me,’ I said; ‘she knows so much more about business than I do.’ And I made up my mind that I would go to the Bank and leave my book to be made up, that it might not be quite untrue.
‘Fancy Mrs. Mulgrave having any business!’ said Lady Isabella. ‘Why don’t you write to some man, and make him do it, instead of all the trouble of going to town?’
‘But Mrs. Merridew is going with me, my dear,’ I said; and nobody doubted that the barrister’s wife, with so much experience as she had, and so many things to do, would be an efficient help to me in my little affairs.
CHAPTER II
The house we went to was a house in St. John’s Wood. Everybody knows the kind of place. A garden wall, with lilacs and laburnums, all out of blossom by this time, and beginning to look brown and dusty, waving over it; inside, a little bright suburban garden, full of scarlet geraniums, divided by a white line of pavement, dazzlingly clean, from the door in the wall to the door of the house; and a stand full of more scarlet geraniums in the little square hall. Mrs. Merridew became very much agitated as we approached. It was all that I could do to keep her up when we had rung the bell at the door. I think she would have turned and gone back even then had it been possible, but, fortunately, we were admitted without delay.