The Two Marys

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I have had no practice to speak of,” she answered; “lies have been told me ever since I can remember. The other is a great deal more uncommon. Don’t puzzle your mother with sophistries. Tell her what you want, that is the shortest way.”

“Indeed, dear,” said Mrs Underwood, with deprecating looks, “your Aunt Anna is right; it would be better just to tell me what I am to do. I would have done anything for poor Leonard. Poor fellow! to die among strangers, far from his poor wife and everybody that knew him! My heart bleeds for her, Geoff. If they had sent for me I would have gone in a moment to nurse him and take care of him. You don’t suppose I would have been so cruel as to let him die by himself if I had known? And now these poor girls. Oh, what a change for them! to come here for pleasure, and to have all their amusement, poor things, turned into misery and sorrow!” Here the kind woman’s voice was choked with tears.

“Mother! mother!” said Geoffrey, “you are the best woman in the world: but I think you will drive me out of my senses all the same.”

Mrs Underwood dried her eyes after a moment and looked up in his face with a tremulous little smile. “That is what your poor father used to say,” she replied with great simplicity. “I am not one to see the rights of everything at a glance like Anna; but if you will explain to me what it is best to do, you will see I will always do it, Geoff. You may trust me for that.”

What was Geoffrey to do? He did his best to shut his ears to Miss Anna’s laugh and her remark, “You perceive it is always a great deal better to talk things over with me.” It was quite true, though he never would own it: and to discuss this matter with her was impossible to him. He stood for a little while by the fire, staring into the mirror, where his own troubled countenance appeared in the centre of all the little carved shelves covered with china, which were reflected on every side. He felt himself, as he had done so many times before, altogether out of place in the house, where he was sometimes the master and sometimes of less account than the dog. So far Geoffrey was always the master. His tastes, his comforts, and even his convenience were the subjects of endless study. But between his mother’s incapacity for any mental exertion, and his aunt’s too keen and casuistical intelligence, it often happened that Geoffrey was driven to the end of his patience, and felt himself no better than a puppet between them, vainly struggling against Miss Anna’s false logic and his mother’s shifty feebleness. At these moments a sort of sickness of despair came over the young man. He thought with longing of any wild scene of emigrant life, any diggings, or sheep-walks, into which he could escape, to encounter the grosser elements of life, and be free of this feminine atmosphere. To plant him here between these two ladies seemed a freak of fate which was unaccountable. Their motives, their ideas, were all different from his. Geoffrey stood for a few minutes staring at himself, thinking what a gloomy ruffian he looked, and how much out of keeping with all those dainty surroundings; then he went hastily out, notwithstanding the appeal of both ladies to him. “You are not going out in the rain, Geoff?” cried his mother; while Miss Anna bade him recollect that it was past six o’clock. Geoffrey paid no attention to either. It would be almost a satisfaction, he felt, to make her wait for her dinner. Not his mother, who cared as little for her dinner as any woman could do, but Miss Anna, who was gourmande, and could not bear to wait. He was glad, too, of the sting of the rain, blown in his face as he stepped out from all the comfort and warmth of the too warm, luxurious house. The chill air and the darkness refreshed him—they were such a contradiction to all the conditions of his life.

He went out upon the borders of the heath, and looked down through the rain upon the distant lights, the smoke of great London lying spread out before him. Though he had been bred among women, and luxuriously cared for all his life, he was not without some knowledge of what existence was outside. And now, when he set himself to think of it, the prospect gave him a shiver. It was almost as discouraging, as dismal as the wet world upon which he looked. He had been called to the bar a few years before, and he had got one or two briefs, which had been a matter of much pride and amusement to the household. But this was a very different thing from living by his work. He tried to realise what the consequences would be of giving up the fortune of which he was aware he had thought lightly enough. If it was all he could do to put up with that feminine atmosphere now, in the midst of abundant space and the many pleasant engagements which relieved him from its monotony, what would it be when he was shut up with it in a few small rooms—when his only relaxation would be home, and his home still, in its scantiness and impoverishment, the domain of Aunt Anna? There flashed before him a vision of one small sitting-room, with her chair in the chief place, her work occupying the table, her nerves affected by every sound, her quick ears catching every word that was said. Geoffrey felt himself able for other kinds of privation, for hard work if need was, for the resignation of most things that were pleasant in life—but when he thought of this his heart failed him. And there was no help for it. Anna had been the tyrant of her sister’s life as long as she remembered, and to withdraw from her now when she was poor would be impossible. To suffer is always possible; there is nothing in life so likely, so universally put up with—but to abandon those who have shared our lives is not a thing that can be done. It is a bond which the worst recognise, which it does not even require heroic virtue to be faithful to. To do it may be heroic, but not to do it is miserable. In prosperity Aunt Anna might by possibility—though by so distant a possibility that Geoffrey hitherto had always felt it hopeless—have been shaken off; but in trouble or poverty she would be the absolute sovereign of his life, and his mother would be her slave. As the young man stood with the rain beating in his face, seeing by times, as the blast permitted, the glimmer of the distant lights through the wet mist, he perceived and consented to this with a sort of desperation. He must work for them both, he must hold by them both. He could never emancipate himself till he or they should die.

If, after this terrible realisation of what was before him, he looked upon the loss of the money with less composure, could any one be surprised? When he got home he went into his study, the room which was sacred to him, where he was free from all intrusion, where, however oppressive the domestic atmosphere might be, he could always escape from it, and feed himself alone. No such refuge would be his were he poor. He would have to sit and do his work at the same table where Aunt Anna spread out her beads and her wools, and worked her impossible, useless fancy work. Was it a duty, after all, to throw all his comfort, all that made life tolerable, at the feet of these two strangers? Geoffrey’s heart was rent in two. His way was no longer clear before him, but covered with doubt and darkness and bewildering clouds.

With all this there was a something unsaid which had glanced across his mind many times in the course of the afternoon—a compromise, a way out of the worst of the trouble, a new life—but he did not dare to think of that. He pushed it away forcibly from the surface of his thoughts.

[CHAPTER X]

“IT is pouring rain,” said Mrs Underwood, “and he will get his death of cold. Oh, how can boys be so incautious; and just when he has heard what comes of it! Poor Leonard! I have not had time to think of him yet, with all you have been saying; but when one thinks how well one knew him once, and that he was our own flesh and blood! And Geoff doing the same thing, the very same thing, in spite of such a warning!”