Marcella Part 99

At the end he had died in her arms, his head on her breast; she had closed his eyes and performed every last office without a tear; nor had Marcella ever seen her weep from then till now. The letters she had received, mostly, Marcella believed, from her own family, remained unopened in her travelling-bag. She spoke very little, and was constantly restless, nor could Marcella as yet form any idea of the future.

After the funeral at Naples Mrs. Boyce had written immediately to her husband's solicitor for a copy of his will and a statement of affairs.

She had then allowed herself to be carried off to Amalfi, and had there, while entirely declining to admit that she was ill, been clearly doing her best to recover health and nerve sufficient to come to some decision, to grapple with some crisis which Marcella also felt to be impending--though as to why it should be impending, or what the nature of it might be, she could only dread and guess.

There was much bitter yearning in the girl's heart as she sat, breathed on by the soft Italian wind blowing from this enchanted sea. The inner cry was that her mother did not love her, had never loved her, and might even now--weird, incredible thought!--be planning to desert her. Hallin was dead--who else was there that cared for her or thought of her? Betty Macdonald wrote often, wild, "_schwarmerisch_" letters. Marcella looked for them with eagerness, and answered them affectionately. But Betty must soon marry, and then all that would be at an end. Meanwhile Marcella knew well it was Betty's news that made Betty's adoration doubly welcome. Aldous Raeburn--she never did or could think of him under his new name--was apparently in London, much occupied in politics, and constantly, as it seemed, in Betty's society. What likelihood was there that her life and his would ever touch again? She thought often of her confession to Hallin, but in great perplexity of feeling. She had, of course, said no word of secrecy to him at the time. Such a demand in a man's last hour would have been impossible. She had simply followed a certain mystical love and obedience in telling him what he asked to know, and in the strong spontaneous impulse had thought of nothing beyond. Afterwards her pride had suffered fresh martyrdom. Could he, with his loving instinct, have failed to give his friend some sign? If so, it had been unwelcome, for since the day of Hallin's funeral she and Aldous had been more complete strangers than before. Lady Winterbourne, Betty, Frank Leven, had written since her father's death; but from him, nothing.

By the way, Frank Leven had succeeded at Christmas, by old Sir Charles Leven's unexpected death, to the baronetcy and estates. How would that affect his chances with Betty?--if indeed there were any such chances left.

As to her own immediate future, Marcella knew from many indications that Mellor would be hers at once. But in her general tiredness of mind and body she was far more conscious of the burden of her inheritance than of its opportunities. All that vivid castle-building gift which was specially hers, and would revive, was at present in abeyance. She had pined once for power and freedom, that she might make a Kingdom of Heaven of her own, quickly. Now power and freedom, up to a certain point, were about to be put into her hands; and instead of plans for acting largely and bountifully on a plastic outer world, she was saying to herself, hungrily, that unless she had something close to her to love and live for, she could do nothing. If her mother would end these unnatural doubts, if she would begin to make friends with her own daughter, and only yield herself to be loved and comforted, why _then_ it might be possible to think of the village and the straw-plaiting!

Otherwise--the girl's att.i.tude as she sat dreaming in the sun showed her despondency.

She was roused by her mother's voice calling her from the other end of the _pergola_.

"Yes, mamma."

"Will you come in? There are some letters."

"It is the will," thought Marcella, as Mrs. Boyce turned back to the hotel, and she followed.

Mrs. Boyce shut the door of their sitting-room, and then went up to her daughter with a manner which suddenly struck and startled Marcella.

There was natural agitation and trouble in it.

"There is something in the will, Marcella, which will, I fear, annoy and distress you. Your father inserted it without consulting me. I want to know what you think ought to be done. You will find that Lord Maxwell and I have been appointed joint executors."

Marcella turned pale.

"Lord Maxwell!" she said, bewildered. "_Lord Maxwell--Aldous_! What do you mean, mamma?"

Mrs. Boyce put the will into her hands, and, pointing the way among the technicalities she had been perusing while Marcella was still lingering in the garden, showed her the paragraph in question. The words of the will were merely formal: "I hereby appoint," &c., and no more; but in a communication from the family solicitor, Mr. French, which Mrs. Boyce silently handed to her daughter after she had read the legal disposition, the ladies were informed that Mr. Boyce had, before quitting England, written a letter to Lord Maxwell, duly sealed and addressed, with instructions that it should be forwarded to its destination immediately after the writer's burial. "Those instructions,"

said Mr. French, "I have carried out. I understand that Lord Maxwell was not consulted as to his appointment as executor prior to the drawing up of the will. But you will no doubt hear from him at once, and as soon as we know that he consents to act, we can proceed immediately to probate."

"Mamma, how _could_ he?" said Marcella, in a low, suffocated voice, letting will and letter fall upon her knee.

"Did he give you no warning in that talk you had with him at Mellor?"

said Mrs. Boyce, after a minute's silence.

"Not the least," said Marcella, rising restlessly and beginning to walk up and down. "He spoke to me about wis.h.i.+ng to bring it on again--asked me to let him write. I told him it was all done with--for ever! As to my own feelings, I felt it was no use to speak of them; but I thought--I _believed_, I had proved to him that Lord Maxwell had absolutely given up all idea of such a thing; and that it was already probable he would marry some one else. I told him I would rather disappear from every one I knew than consent to it--he could only humiliate us all by saying a word. And _now_, after that!--"

She stopped in her restless walk, pressing her hands miserably together.

"What _does_ he want with us and our affairs?" she broke out. "He wishes, of course, to have no more to do with me. And now we force him--_force_ him into these intimate relations. What can papa have said in that letter to him? What _can_ he have said? Oh! it is unbearable!

Can't we write at once?"

She pressed her hands over her eyes in a pa.s.sion of humiliation and disgust. Mrs. Boyce watched her closely.

"We must wait, anyway, for his letter," she said. "It ought to be here by to-morrow morning."

Marcella sank on a chair by an open gla.s.s door, her eyes wandering, through the straggling roses growing against the wall of the stone balcony outside, to the laughing purples and greens of the sea.

"Of course," she said unhappily, "it is most probable he will consent.

It would not be like him to refuse. But, mamma, you must write. _I_ must write and beg him not to do it. It is quite simple. We can manage everything for ourselves. Oh! how _could_ papa?" she broke out again in a low wail, "how could he?"

Mrs. Boyce's lips tightened sharply. It seemed to her a foolish question. _She_, at least, had had the experience of twenty years out of which to answer it. Death had made no difference. She saw her husband's character and her own seared and broken life with the same tragical clearness; she felt the same gnawing of an affection not to be plucked out while the heart still beat. This act of indelicacy and injustice was like many that had gone before it; and there was in it the same evasion and concealment towards herself. No matter. She had made her account with it all twenty years before. What astonished her was, that the force of her strong coercing will had been able to keep him for so long within the limits of the smaller and meaner immoralities of this world.

"Have you read the rest of the will?" she asked, after a long pause.

Marcella lifted it again, and began listlessly to go through it.

"Mamma!" she said presently, looking up, the colour flus.h.i.+ng back into her face, "I find no mention of you in it throughout. There seems to be no provision for you."

"There is none," said Mrs. Boyce, quietly. "There was no need. I have my own income. We lived upon it for years before your father succeeded to Mellor. It is therefore amply sufficient for me now."

"You cannot imagine," cried Marcella, trembling in every limb, "that I am going to take the whole of my father's estate, and leave nothing--_nothing_ for his wife. It would be impossible--unseemly. It would be to do _me_ an injustice, mamma, as well as yourself," she added proudly.

"No, I think not," said Mrs. Boyce, with her usual cold absence of emotion. "You do not yet understand the situation. Your father's misfortunes nearly ruined the estate for a time. Your grandfather went through great trouble, and raised large sums to--" she paused for the right phrase--"to free us from the consequences of your father's actions. I benefited, of course, as much as he did. Those sums crippled all your grandfather's old age. He was a man to whom I was attached--whom I respected. Mellor, I believe, had never been embarra.s.sed before. Well, your uncle did a little towards recovery--but on the whole he was a fool. Your father has done much more, and you, no doubt, will complete it. As for me, I have no claim to anything more from Mellor. The place itself is"--again she stopped for a word of which the energy, when it came, seemed to escape her--"hateful to me. I shall feel freer if I have no tie to it. And at last I persuaded your father to let me have my way."

Marcella rose from her seat impetuously, walked quickly across the room, and threw herself on her knees beside her mother.

"Mamma, are you still determined--now that we two are alone in the world--to act towards me, to treat me as though I were not your daughter--not your child at all, but a stranger?"

It was a cry of anguish. A sudden slight tremor swept over Mrs. Boyce's thin and withered face. She braced herself to the inevitable.

"Don't let us make a tragedy of it, my dear," she said, with a light touch on Marcella's hands. "Let us discuss it reasonably. Won't you sit down? I am not proposing anything very dreadful. But, like you, I have some interests of my own, and I should be glad to follow them--now--a little. I wish to spend some of the year in London; to make that, perhaps, my headquarters, so as to see something of some old friends whom I have had no intercourse with for years--perhaps also of my relations." She spoke of them with a particular dryness. "And I should be glad--after this long time--to be somewhat taken out of oneself, to read, to hear what is going on, to feed one's mind a little."

Marcella, looking at her, saw a kind of feverish light, a sparkling intensity in the pale blue eyes, that filled her with amazement. What, after all, did she know of this strange individuality from which her own being had taken its rise? The same flesh and blood--what an irony of nature!

"Of course," continued Mrs. Boyce, "I should go to you, and you would come to me. It would only be for part of the year. Probably we should get more from each other's lives so. As you know, I long to see things as they are, not conventionally. Anyway, whether I were there or no, you would probably want some companion to help you in your work and plans. I am not fit for them. And it would be easy to find some one who could act as chaperon in my absence."

The hot tears sprang to Marcella's eyes. "Why did you send me away from you, mamma, all my childhood," she cried. "It was wrong--cruel. I have no brother or sister. And you put me out of your life when I had no choice, when I was too young to understand."

Mrs. Boyce winced, but made no reply. She sat with her delicate hand across her brow. She was the white shadow of her former self; but her fragility had always seemed to Marcella more indomitable than anybody else's strength.

Sobs began to rise in Marcella's throat.

"And now," she said, in half-coherent despair, "do you know what you are doing? You are cutting yourself off from me--refusing to have any real bond to me just when I want it most. I suppose you think that I shall be satisfied with the property and the power, and the chance of doing what I like. But"--she tried her best to gulp back her pain, her outraged feeling, to speak quietly--"I am not like that really any more. I can take it all up, with courage and heart, if you will stay with me, and let me--let me--love you and care for you. But, by myself, I feel as if I could not face it! I am not likely to be happy--for a long time--except in doing what work I can. It is very improbable that I shall marry. I dare say you don't believe me, but it is true. We are both sad and lonely. We have no one but each other. And then you talk in this ghastly way of separating from me--casting me off."

Her voice trembled and broke, she looked at her mother with a frowning pa.s.sion.

Mrs. Boyce still sat silent, studying her daughter with a strange, brooding eye. Under her unnatural composure there was in reality a half-mad impatience, the result of physical and moral reaction. This beauty, this youth, talk of sadness, of finality! What folly! Still, she was stirred, undermined in spite of herself.

"There!" she said, with a restless gesture, "let us, please, talk of it no more. I will come back with you--I will do my best. We will let the matter of my future settlement alone for some months, at any rate, if that will satisfy you or be any help to you."

She made a movement as though to rise from her low chair. But the great waters swelled in Marcella--swelled and broke. She fell on her knees again by her mother, and before Mrs. Boyce could stop her she had thrown her young arms close round the thin, shrunken form.

"Mother!" she said. "Mother, be good to me--love me--you are all I have!"

And she kissed the pale brow and cheek with a hungry, almost a violent tenderness that would not be gainsaid, murmuring wild incoherent things.

Mrs. Boyce first tried to put her away, then submitted, being physically unable to resist, and at last escaped from her with a sudden sob that went to the girl's heart. She rose, went to the window, struggled hard for composure, and finally left the room.