“It will never come true if you play your cards well, Mary. You have got it all in your hands,” Miss Anna said, “and it will be a fine thought for you that you have saved your family: though you never thought a great deal of your own powers—I will do you that justice.”
Mrs Underwood shook her head. “My own family—that is, my boy,” she said.
“So it is,” said Miss Anna. “Of course I don’t count; but you will have the satisfaction, my dear, if you should live to be a hundred, of feeling that you have saved your boy.”
At this Mrs Underwood shook her head once more, and two tears came into her eyes. “He will be lost to me,” she said. “Oh, I remember well enough how I felt myself when I married Henry. ‘What does he want with his mother? he has got me,’ I used to say. I never liked him to go too often to the old lady. And now I am the old lady, and his wife will think the same of me.”
“Let us hope she will be a better Christian than you were,” said Miss Anna, with a laugh.
“A better Christian! I hope I have always been a Christian at heart, whatever else I may have failed in. I hope I have always remembered my duty to my Maker,” said Mrs Underwood, offended. This assault dried the tears in her eyes. “And, Anna, though I’m sure I am not one to find fault, I don’t think that you—never going to church, and reading French novels and things, and making schemes to keep your neighbours out of their rights——”
Miss Anna laughed with genuine enjoyment. “I acknowledge all my sins, my dear,” she said. “I am not the person to talk, am I? But, never mind, perhaps there will be no need to hope that Mrs Geoff should be a better Christian than her mother-in-law. Perhaps there will be no Mrs Geoff. It may come to nothing after all.”
“Oh, Anna, how cruel you are!” cried Mrs Underwood. “If it comes to nothing, what is to become of my boy?”
“Anyhow, let us be thankful that you will get a good deal of misery out of it, which will be a satisfaction. Go and put on your bonnet—your best bonnet—and make yourself look nice; we all like you to look nice; and go off, my dear, upon your charitable mission,” Miss Anna cried.
Was it a charitable mission? The good woman quite thought so as she drove down the Hampstead slopes and made her way into the heart of London. She was fluttered and anxious about what she was going to do. The possible consequences to Geoff were like a tragedy in front of her; but as for anything else, she was too much confused to realise that this was not the kindest thing that could be done. Two lonely, fatherless children—orphans they might be called, for they had nobody to care for them. It was not right even that two girls of their age should live in a hotel, without so much as a maid to be with them. To offer them a home, to stretch her own protecting wing over them, was the natural thing for a woman to do. Certainly it was the right thing to do. The other question about the property was very vague in her mind. She could see that her sister was scheming to keep it in her own hands, but her mind was so confused about it that she could not feel any guiltiness on the subject. And then the question about Geoff would come uppermost. She wept a good many quiet tears over this as she drove along the streets. She had always felt herself a good Christian, but she had not been pleased when her husband had paid too many visits to the old lady. The old lady! Looking back, Mrs Underwood, with an effort of memory, recollected that the old lady had not been so very aged a person. She was but sixty when she died, and she had lived ten years at least after her son’s marriage. “About my age!” This conviction surprised Geoff’s mother more than can be described. She was the old lady now; and this girl would grudge her her son’s visits, would not let Geoff come to her, would persuade him that his mother was silly, that she was old-fashioned, that she wanted a great deal too much attention. She had done all that in her day, and had not thought it any harm.