‘Let me dress now,—and go and make yourself pretty,’ he said. ‘We shall not be so badly off; there will be something like a thousand a-year.’
And thus Frank Renton too acknowledged to himself that things might have been worse, and that he was content.
But perhaps the strangest thing of all was that Mrs. Westbury withdrew into her daughter’s room, and locked the door, and had a cry, in which Mary, over-worn and over-excited, was quite disposed to share, though for a different reason. ‘I cannot understand your uncle Laurence,’ said Mrs. Westbury. ‘I am sure I am not mercenary. I have given you up to your aunt, and never grumbled, much though I wanted you; and you have given up seven years of your life to her, and he has not left you so much as a gown. I do feel it, my dear, for you.’
‘I am sure, mamma, I don’t feel it for myself,’ said Mary, with a smile. ‘One does not mind so long as all is right with the boys.’
‘The boys are all very well,’ said Mrs. Westbury, ‘but he might have left something, my dear, to you.’
‘I did not want anything, mamma,’ said Mary. ‘But godmamma will not want me so much when she has Ben, and oh, I do so long to get home!’ Poor Mary was over-done, over-worn, excited by so many diverse feelings that her power of self-command failed her at last. She put her arms round her mother’s neck, and threw, as it were, all her weight of unexpressed cares and griefs upon her. ‘Take me home, mamma!’ she said, and wept in the abandonment of weariness and disappointment, and that overwhelming despondency for which one can give no reason, on her mother’s neck.
Mrs. Westbury was a woman fond of explanations from other people, but she understood her child by instinct, ‘Yes, yes, you shall go home, my darling!’ she said, soothing her, but without any intention of carrying out her promise. It was early days, as she said to herself. Before any change was made, it must be made plainly apparent what the rest of the family meant to do.
On the whole, the dinner-table was more cheerful that night. They were all worn out with excitement, it is true, and signs of tears were about the women’s eyes; but still there was the sense that, after all, justice was once more in force, and natural law ruling their affairs. One man’s will, fantastic and unaccountable, was no longer supreme over them. Ben took his place at the head of the table with a certain glow of satisfaction. ‘I know none of you would have seen me wronged,’ he said when they were sipping over their wine. It was the first time that he had taken any notice of the often-repeated declaration of his younger brothers.
‘Not if the prize had been Great Britain, instead of Renton,’ said Laurie; ‘though, to tell the truth, the one would have been as great a bore as the other, had it come to me.’
‘Of course I should have given it up to Ben,’ said Frank; ‘but it would have been a struggle; therefore I’m very glad things have been settled as they are without my help.’