“Ah, it is a great responsibility to have the care of children that are not your own,” said someone standing by.
“I suppose so,” said Mr. Parke, smoothing his big moustache.
The responsibility would not have moved John. He would have let Mar take his chance with the rest, and made no difference; but he had been well tutored, and made to see that this would never do. “A mother’s always anxious, you know,” he said. “As for me, I think it does more harm than good.”
Letitia had, after much vexation, come to the conclusion that it was not a bad thing John should talk like this. It would show that there was no agreement between them for keeping Mar out of the way.
And the ball was most brilliantly successful—more successful, everyone said, than any ball in the county had been for years. There was no shadow at all upon it—no reminder to the family that they were temporary tenants, and that in a few years they would all have to retire from the scene, which they all used, and rejoiced in as if it were their own.
Mrs. Parke, in the satisfaction of finding all possible rivalry absent, felt that her feet were upon her native heath as she had never done: she talked to everybody of Duke’s prospects, and of the difference it made when he came home. She spoke of the younger boys who would have their own way to make, and must not think they would always have their father’s house to fall back upon. She spoke of John’s good intelligence with the “tenants,” and how well he was getting on with the Home Farm, which he had taken into his own hands. For this night only she forgot to be careful; she took the full enjoyment of the position, as if everything was her own. Nearly a dozen years she had been in the house, with full command of everything. The children had grown up in it. How could she help feeling that it was her own? She forgot all about guardians and executors, and it seemed to her for a blessed hour or two as if all difficulties had been smoothed away, and Duke was indeed the heir, and she herself all but Lady Frogmore. Moments of intoxication will come like this in everybody’s career—when we remember nothing that is against us, and are able to believe that all we wish is going to be fulfilled. It was remarked how Mrs. Parke’s eyes, not bright by nature, glittered, and how her little person seemed to swell with satisfaction and pride as she moved about doing the honors. But her aspect, I am afraid, was not regarded with sympathy by the greater part of her guests. We are all apt to believe that the outer world takes our view and regards matters from our standing point in such a moment of triumph. But as a matter of fact that is precisely the time when it does not do so. Letitia’s neighbors whispered to each other that Mrs. Parke looked as if everything belonged to her—“which it doesn’t at all, you know,” and talked as if her husband was the head of the house and her son the heir—“whereas, as soon as little Frogmore comes of age they must all pack off.” They thought it bad taste of Letitia not to have produced the boy. “If he’s as ill as that she might have had him on the sofa. He ought to have showed for a little,” they said. But Mrs. Parke was quite unconscious of their sentiments. There never had been a time in her life when she had so ignored them. Always till now she had retained a consciousness of what people would be saying. But this evening it had vanished from her mind. She was fey, as people say in Scotland; her prosperity had gone to her head and made her forget everything that was not delightful. Either some great and critical moment or perhaps death itself was in her way.
“Well,” she said, when all was over, “it has gone off as I never saw anything go off before. Everything went well, the music and the floor and the supper and the temper of the people. They were all so pleasant. The old marchioness made me the prettiest of speeches. She said, ‘The Park has never been so brilliant as in your time.’ The young people hoped we would have one every year. I said perhaps—for after all there is nothing so easily managed as a ball when it is a success.”
“You must remember, Letitia,” said John, “that there cannot be very many years now before we’ve got to march out bag and baggage.”
“Oh, don’t speak nonsense,” she cried incredulously. In the sweep of her excitement she would not receive that thought.
“But, mother, it’s true,” said Duke. “I’ve liked the ball awfully. You are one for this sort of thing, nobody can do it like you. But of course when Mar comes of age——”