Demos Part 73

'Why, mother's just getting ready to go and say good-bye to you. As soon as she comes down and takes this little rogue I shall just slip my own things on. We didn't think you'd come here.'

'We're not going to-day,' Adela replied, playing with the baby's face.

'Not going?'

'Business prevents Richard.'

'How you frightened us by leaving church yesterday! I was on my way to ask about you, but Mr. Wyvern met me and said there was nothing the matter. And you went to Agworth, didn't you?'

'To Belwick. We had to see Mr. Yottle, the solicitor.'

Mrs. Waltham issued from the house, and explanations were again demanded.

'Could you give baby to the nurse for a few minutes?' Adela asked Letty.

'I should like to speak to you and mother quietly.'

The arrangement was effected and all three went into the sitting-room.

There Adela explained in simple words all that had come to pa.s.s; emotionless herself, but the cause of utter dismay in her hearers. When she ceased there was blank silence.

Mrs. Waltham was the first to find her voice.

'But surely Mr. Eldon won't take everything from you? I don't think he has the power to--it wouldn't be just; there must be surely some kind of provision in the law for such a thing. What did Mr. Yottle say?'

'Only that Mr. Eldon could recover the whole estate.'

'The estate!' exclaimed Mrs. Waltham eagerly. 'But not the money?'

Adela smiled.

'The estate includes the money, mother. It means everything.'

'Oh, Adela!' sighed Letty, who sat with her hands on her lap, bewildered.

'But surely not Mrs. Rodman's settlement?' cried the elder lady, who was rapidly surveying the whole situation.

'Everything,' affirmed Adela.

'But what an extraordinary, what an unheard-of thing! Such injustice I never knew! Oh, but Mr. Eldon is a gentleman--he can never exact his legal rights to the full extent. He has too much delicacy of feeling for that.' Adela glanced at her mother with a curious openness of look--the expression which by apparent negation of feeling reveals feeling of special significance. Mrs. Waltham caught the glance and checked her flow of speech.

'Oh, he could never do that!' she murmured the next moment, in a lower key, clasping her hands together upon her knees. 'I am sure he wouldn't.'

'You must remember, mother,' remarked Adela with reserve, 'that Mr.

Eldon's disposition cannot affect us.'

'My dear child, what I meant was this: it is impossible for him to go to law with your husband to recover the uttermost farthing. How are you to restore money that is long since spent? and it isn't as if it had been spent in the ordinary way--it has been devoted to public purposes.

Mr. Eldon will of course take all these things into consideration. And really one must say that it is very strange for a wealthy man to leave his property entirely to strangers.'

'Not entirely,' put in Adela rather absently.

'A hundred and seven pounds a year!' exclaimed her mother protestingly.

'My dear love, what _can_ be done with such a paltry sum as that!'

'We must do a good deal with it, dear mother. It will be all we have to depend upon until Richard finds--finds some position.'

'But you are not going to leave the Manor at once?'

'As soon as ever we can. I don't know what arrangement my husband is making. We shall see Mr. Yottle again to-morrow.'

'Adela, this is positively shocking! It seems incredible I never thought such things could happen. No wonder you looked white when you went out of church. How little I imagined! But you know you can come here at any moment. You can sleep with me, or we'll have another bed put up in the room. Oh, dear; oh, dear! It will take me a long time to understand it.

Your husband could not possibly object to your living here till he found you a suitable home. What _will_ Alfred say? Oh, you must certainly come here. I shan't have a moment's' rest if you go away somewhere whilst things are in this dreadful state.'

'I don't think that will be necessary,' Adela replied with a rea.s.suring smile. 'It might very well have happened that we had nothing at all, not even the hundred pounds; but a wife can't run away for reasons of that kind--can she, Letty?'

Letty gazed with her eyes of loving pity, and sighed, 'I suppose not, dear.'

Adela sat with them for only a few minutes more. She did not feel able to chat at length on a crisis such as this, and the tone of her mother's sympathy was not soothing to her. Mrs. Waltham had begun to put a handkerchief to her eyes.

'You mustn't take it to heart,' Adela said as she bent and kissed her cheek. 'You can't think how little it troubles me--on my own account.

Letty, I look to you to keep mother cheerful. Only think what numbers of poor creatures would dance for joy if they had a hundred a year left them! We must be philosophers, you see. I couldn't shed a tear if I tried ever so hard. Good-bye, dear mother!'

Mrs. Waltham did not rise, but Letty followed her friend into the hall.

She had been very silent and undemonstrative; now she embraced Adela tenderly. There was still something of the old diffidence in her manner, but the effect of her motherhood was discernible. Adela was childless--a circ.u.mstance in itself provocative of a gentle sense of protection in Letty's heart.

'You'll let us see you every day, darling?'

'As often as I can, Letty. Don't let mother get low-spirited. There's nothing to grieve about.'

Letty returned to the sitting-room; Mrs. Waltham was still pressing the handkerchief on this cheek and that alternately.

'How wonderful she is!' Letty exclaimed. 'I feel as if I could never again fret over little troubles.'

'Adela has a strong character,' a.s.sented the mother with mournful pride.

Letty, unable to sit long without her baby, fetched it from the nurse's arms. The infant's luncheon-hour had arrived, and the nourishment was still of Letty's own providing. It was strange to see on her face the slow triumph of this ineffable bliss over the grief occasioned by the recent conversation. Mrs. Waltham had floated into a stream of talk.

'Now, what a strange thing it is!' she observed, after many other reflections, and when the sound of her own voice had had time to soothe.

'On the very morning of the wedding I had the most singular misgiving, a feeling I couldn't explain. One would almost think I had foreseen this very thing. And you know very well, my dear, that the marriage troubled me in many ways. It was not _the_ match for Adela, but then--. Adela, as you say, has a strong character; she is not very easy to reason with.

I tried to make both sides of the question clear to her. But then her prejudice against Mr. Eldon was very strong, and how naturally, poor child! Young people don't like to trust to time; they think everything must be done quickly. If she had been one to marry for reasons of interest it might look like a punishment; but then it was so far otherwise. How much better it would have been to wait a few years! One really never knows what is going to happen. Young people really ought to trust others' experience.'

Letty was only lending half an ear. The general character of her mother-in-law's monologues did not encourage much attention. She was conscious of a little surprise, even now and then of a mild indignation; but the baby sucking at her breast lulled her into a sweet maternal apathy. She could only sigh from time to time and wonder whether it was a good thing or the contrary that Adela had no baby in her trials.

CHAPTER XXVI

Mutimer did not come to the Manor for luncheon. Rodman, who had been spending an hour at the works, brought word that business pressed; a host of things had to be unexpectedly finished off and put in order. He, Alice, and Adela made pretence of a midday meal; then he went into the library to smoke a cigar and meditate. The main subject of his meditation was an interview with Adela which he purposed seeking in the course of the afternoon. But he had also half-a-dozen letters of the first importance to despatch to town by the evening post, and these it was well to get off hand. He had finished them by half-past three. Then he went to the drawing-room, but found it vacant. He sought his wife's chamber. Alice was endeavouring to read a novel, but there was recent tear-shedding about her eyes, which had not come of the author's pathos.