‘Missis will make herself quite ill!’ cried the maid, in alarm. ‘Oh, please, ma’am,—if you would be so good, ma’am,—Dr. Mixton would never forgive me if you went and walked about after you’ve took your arrowroot.’
‘Don’t worry me, Davison!’ cried Mrs. Renton, ready to cry; ‘as if I had not enough to worry me! Couldn’t she write? or keep to her proper time? I don’t understand how you can countenance such a thing, Mary! As for walking about, I can’t do it. If all the house goes to sixes and sevens,—and there is no place for anybody to sleep in,—I can’t help it; I cannot do it. I have my duty to my children to think of, and I am not going to kill myself.’
At this moment Alice, who had become impatient, knocked at the door. Nobody conceived that such an invasion was possible, and therefore Davison opened the door, cautious, but unsuspecting, while Mrs. Renton put up her foot again, and lay back, the image of exhaustion, on the sofa. Davison gave a little cry of mingled horror and delight, if such a mixture may be. Alice stood in the doorway with a child in each hand. They were all lightly clad in white summer dresses, the young mother and the two children. Little Laurence tottered forward a step or two, holding by his mother’s hand, and Mary held back, gazing, with wistful blue eyes, at the strange scene. Mrs. Renton, as long as she was by herself, was an invalid given up to all sorts of indulgences; but when she was brought face to face with the outside world she was a lady, and knew how to adopt that gracious rôle. Before Mary Westbury could recover from her astonishment and consternation, the mistress of the house held out her hands to her daughter-in-law. ‘Ah, Alice, come in,’ she said; ‘bring them to me. I am not able, my dear, to go to you.’
And in five minutes more, the chatter and the laughter, the tumult of pleasant explanations and questions, and all the talk that belongs to an arrival, was in full course by the side of Mrs. Renton’s sofa. As for Alice, it had never occurred to her to be afraid of her mother-in-law. She was afraid of nobody in the present felicitous state of her affairs. She had forgotten altogether how little she had been at Renton, how small her personal knowledge was of the household there. Somehow, through those six years of correspondence, the Manor and the Square had got jumbled together in the mind of Mrs. Frank Renton. Had she come with any doubt of her reception, the chances were that things would not have gone so pleasantly. But she had not the least doubt of her reception. She could not be kept away even so long as was necessary to get grandmamma’s reply. She took it for granted that her husband’s mother belonged to her almost as much as her own. Who should go and ask admission for Frank’s children into the room their father was born in, but she? And this fearlessness vanquished the invalid, who felt all her tremors of anticipation quieted in a moment. The children did not scream, but only gazed at her in silence, with big, wide-open eyes,—and baby was like his father. And Mrs. Renton, though she had been so long accustomed to think of herself first, and watch over her own peace and comfort, was still Frank’s mother. After awhile old recollections came over her, and she cried a little over Frank’s boy. ‘I remember when his father was just like him,’ she began to tell Alice, and ran into a hundred little nursery stories, which roused her heart within her. ‘I might have talked to her for a hundred years before she would have thought of telling them to me,’ said Mary, with again an unmarried young woman’s admiration, and soft half-envy of the young mother’s privileges. Alice drew a low chair to the side of the sofa, and put the baby—most daring proceeding of all—on the very couch itself, that grandmamma might give her opinion of his little dimpled arms and legs, and say if she did not think he was stout enough, though perhaps not so fat as an English baby ought to be. ‘But mamma says she does not care for those very fat babies,’ Alice said, with eyes intent upon the face of the critic. ‘And neither do I,’ Mrs. Renton said with solemnity, holding her grandson’s little pink foot in her hand. ‘If I had done it, poor godmamma would have been quite ill all day,’ Mary said afterwards, describing the meeting to her mother. And for an hour or two there was nothing to be heard but that soft feminine talk, all full of bits of private history, and interspersed with every kind of digression, which women love. Alice gave them no narrative of her six years’ absence; but apropos of everything and nothing, there would come a little chapter out of the heart of it. ‘It was that time when I was rather ill—that Frank wrote to you about. He took me up to the hills, and we had to leave little Mary at the station. We went along with the General and his wife, and they were so friendly; and it was he, you remember, who recommended Frank for that appointment he has held ever since. To tell the truth, we had got into debt,’ said Alice, with a blush; ‘it was that that made me ill, as much as anything. We were determined not to tell you, but struggle out of it as best we could, and you can’t think how glad we were of that appointment. I thought you would all think me such a wretched little creature to have brought Frank nothing, and yet have let him get into debt. It was there I first saw a lady with a chignon. I could not tell what to make of it at first, and Frank thought it hideous; but then it was too big—it was as big as her head.’
‘Depend upon it, my dear, it was false hair; they say everybody wears false hair now-a-days,’ said Mrs. Renton, who was still holding in her hand the baby’s little dimpled foot.
‘But I don’t believe that,’ said Alice. ‘I like you in the chignon, Mary; it suits you much better than the other fashion; and what a comfort it must be not to have any curls to do when you are sleepy! Grandmamma dear, I wish you would tell me what to do with little Mary’s hair. It is so soft it will not crêper, nor anything. Lady Sinclair’s niece’s little girl looks to have a perfect bush of hair, and Mary has just as much, but it will not stand out.’
‘It must be plaited every night before she goes to bed,’ said Mrs. Renton, ‘and just damped a little before it is plaited. Have you an English nurse? Of course your ayah must be sent back. And, Alice, I hope you are quite sure about that debt.’
‘It was all paid, every penny! Don’t be afraid. I could never have come home and looked you in the face if it had not been paid. And I have taken such care ever since! Frank is,—too generous, you know. He asks people, and does not think. And then everybody that pleases comes and stays with you. India is such a funny place for that. When we were at Goine Ghurla, the Fentons lived with us for six weeks; they could not get a house to suit them, and we had a larger one than we wanted, and of course they came to us as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It is very nice, but it is rather expensive. Of course we could have gone to them in return had we wanted to go, but we never did. How nice it is to see you in your pink ribbons, grandmamma, after that dreadful widow’s cap!’
‘My dear, I am only in my own room; it is only something Davison made up for me,’ said Mrs. Renton, confused. ‘I never wear colours down-stairs. Indeed, my spirits will never be equal to it again.’
‘But they are so becoming to you,’ said Alice. And thus the talk ran on. And the children, awed by the novelty of everything, behaved themselves like little angels, not uttering a cry, nor shedding a tear. When the time of the afternoon drive came, little Mary, inspired by her good genius, made a petition to go in the carriage with grandmamma. And that day the marvellous sight might have been seen of Mrs. Renton with the ayah and the baby seated opposite her, and little Mary, in great state, by her side, perambulating the lanes. Mrs. Renton made the coachman stop when they passed the rector’s pony carriage, and explained, ‘My son Frank’s children, just come from India,’ with such pride as she had scarcely felt since Frank had been the baby. Already these sweet avant-couriers of return and restoration had loosened the prison bonds for the invalid in her unconscious selfishness. She forgot all about her medicine, and even her cup of tea, when she went in, and demanded to know instead if her favourite biscuits had been provided for the children. On the whole, it was pleasanter thus taking thought for others than thinking only of herself.