By this time the vicar of Grocombe and his wife were both dead. That Mary had been a dreadful disappointment to them, and that they had not at all approved of her conduct at the time of Lord Frogmore’s death, they had not hesitated to say, and Mrs. Hill has indeed been heard to declare that it gave her husband his death-blow. He had been so much disappointed in Mary! He had felt it such a dereliction of duty on her part to leave her son in the hands of the Parkes, people about whose religious principles there was no certainty, and it had helped him to his grave to think of little Mar being brought up perhaps in the most careless way, while his grandfather was a clergyman. Whether it was this mental trouble or bronchitis that removed the vicar at the ripe age of seventy-five, it is at all events certain that he did succumb, and that his wife did not long survive him. When the new vicar was appointed, Mrs. Hill came to her daughters at the Dower-house, but she never was happy there. She kept asking daily why was Mary there and not at the Park? Why had she abandoned her child?—it was nonsense to say that she had forgotten her child! Why, why had she left Mar? which indeed were very reasonable questions, but did not promote the happiness of the house. After her death the two sisters continued as before each other’s closest companions, and now with no divided duty, save that Mary was very tranquil in her secluded life, and that Agnes’ heart was racked with anxiety. She kept up a little correspondence with Mar, exchanging letters full of love and longing for his schoolboy epistles, in which there was not even the animation of a schoolboy, which poor Agnes looked for with the wildest anxiety, and cried over with the deepest disappointment when they came. How should he be able to respond—that undeveloped, heart-stunned boy—to her tenderness, the tenderness of an old mother, not even young to gain his sympathy? Agnes was the one who suffered amid all these differing interests and feelings. Now and then, at long intervals, she had a glimpse at her boy, a privilege which generally left her sadder than ever. “He looks so delicate,” she was even forced to allow to Letitia, who surprised her in tears after she had taken farewell of the boy. “Yes, he is very delicate,” said Letitia with a grave face. “I take a hundred precautions with him which I should laugh at for my own children. But if anything were to happen to Mar in my house I should die.” “Oh, God forbid that anything should happen!” cried poor Agnes. “I am sure I hope so sincerely,” cried Letitia, but still shaking her head. And the same impression was universal. The old women in the village whom Agnes went to see on her visit, old pensioners, shook their heads, too, and said, “Ma’am, you’ll never rare him.” And the tutor who was leaving seized upon the owner of the sympathetic face and discoursed to her largely of the false system on which Mar was being trained. “He’s like a flower growing in a prison—that flower, you know, that some man wrote a book about, all running to seed, and not a bit of color for want of air and sun.”
“Oh, if it was only air and sun that were wanted,” cried Agnes.
“It is, it is!” said the young man. “I hear his mother’s living; why don’t she send and take him away? To be with you now, who would pet him and study him, would make all the difference in the world.”
“Oh, don’t say so,” said Agnes with tears, “for it cannot be, I fear it cannot be.”
“Well,” said the young man, “I would not leave the boy here if I had anything to do with him: but then perhaps I’m prejudiced, for I hate—Mrs. Parke.” He was going to say “the woman here,” but paused in time.
“You must not speak so,” said Agnes.
“No, I suppose I ought to keep it to myself,” said the tutor. She said to herself afterwards that no doubt it was because he was going to leave, because he had been dismissed. People said you must never trust discharged servants. To be sure he was not a servant, he was a gentleman; but still—Agnes tried a little to comfort herself in this way; but Mrs. Parke’s pious hope that nothing might happen, and the tutor’s bold criticisms rankled in her mind. It was she that decided Lady Frogmore to accept the invitation to all the rejoicings over Duke’s majority, though it was not Agnes but Mary that was fond of Duke. “It is right that you should show yourself,” she said to her sister. Mary did not perceive what good showing herself would do, and feared the great dinner, and the return to a place which had so many sad associations (she said). But Agnes pressed so much that her sister, always gentle and so seldom asserting her own will against anyone else’s, at last consented. A visit to the Park was a great step. It was always on the cards that something might awaken smouldering recollections, or throw a new light upon that mystery of the past. At all events, it was with the stirrings of a new hope that Agnes, who managed everything, got her sister afloat on the day before Duke’s birthday, and steered her by the many junctions through half a dozen different trains across country to the Park. It was a troublesome journey, and took the greater part of the day, what with the difficulty of connecting trains, and long waiting at various stations. These delays and waitings were, however, rather good for Mary, who began to be roused out of her usual quiescence, and to ask questions about when they would arrive, and what company they would be likely to find there. “Duke was always my boy,” poor Mary said. A little cloud passed over her face as she spoke, as though a consciousness of something that had interfered between Duke and her had floated across her thoughts. Agnes did not burst out as she would have liked to do into a blast of sentiment in respect to Duke, which was perfectly uncalled for. But she looked disappointed though she did not say it.
CHAPTER XXXII.
It was June, the brightest weather, and everything at the Park was bright. A family of five children, of whom the eldest had just attained his majority, while the others were old enough to throw themselves into the festivities with devotion, is perhaps the best background that could be supposed for any rejoicing. They all enjoyed it, and the preparations for it, and the general commotion as much, nay more, than the boy himself, who was much troubled in his mind about the speech he was told he would have to make, and still more with a vague uneasiness about the position he was made to occupy. He was, it was true, the eldest son of the family which occupied the Park, the heir and representative of his own branch, but Duke had an uncomfortable feeling about all the “fuss,” as he called it, which was evidently too much. “It seems as if I were taking Mar’s place,” he said to his father. “Your mother thinks not,” said John; but John was a little cloudy too. For one thing, however, Duke had a certain right to the commotion made about his majority. He was not in the same position as the other young Parkes. Lord Frogmore had made special provision for him when it was known that he was no longer to be the heir. Greenpark and the little estate surrounding it had been settled upon Duke. He was a squire in his way, not merely the son of a younger son. Lord Frogmore had been exceedingly liberal to the boy who had irritated the old lord in spite of himself by his little childish brag about being the heir. These favors had been entirely for Mary’s sake, whose conscience had suffered so acutely in the prospect of displacing Duke. But no one knew of that in the strange imbroglio that followed. He went now to meet the ladies at the station, a fine young fellow, with a soldierly air, for he had got his commission a couple years before and now was quite a young man of the world, conversant with all the experiences which are so profound and varied, of military youth. Duke was not fond of Miss Hill, nor she, he was aware, of him; but he was really attached to Mary, who had been so tender to him in his childhood. He took charge of her in the most affectionate way, leaving the less important matters of the boxes, etc., to Agnes and the maid, while he took Lady Frogmore to the carriage which was waiting. “They are going to make a dreadful fuss about me,” he said. “I think a great deal too much.”
“How can that be, Duke, when you are the eldest son, the future head of the family?”