She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of hers had grown moist.
Hallin went straight over to her.
"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed of his outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face.
"There--I am an idiot! We won"t say a word more--except about Lady Selina. Have you seen her?"
"Three or four times."
"What is she like?"
Marcella hesitated.
"Is she fat--and forty?" said Hallin, fervently--she beat him?"
"Not at all. She is very thin--thirty-five, elegant, terribly of her own opinion--and makes a great parade of "papa.""
She looked round at him, unsteadily, but gaily.
"Oh! I see," said Hallin, with disappointment, "she will only take care he doesn"t beat her--which I gather from your manner doesn"t matter. And her politics?"
"Lord Alresford was left out of the Ministry," said Marcella slily. "He and Lady Selina thought it a pity."
"Alresford--_Alresford_? Why, of course! He was Lord Privy Seal in their last Cabinet--a narrow-minded old stick!--did a heap of mischief in the Lords. _Well!_"--Hallin pondered a moment--"Wharton will go over!"
Marcella was silent. The tremor of that wrestler"s hour had not yet pa.s.sed away. The girl could find no words in which to discuss Wharton himself, this last amazing act, or its future.
As for Hallin, he sat lost in pleasant dreams of a whitewashed Wharton, comfortably settled at last below the gangway on the Conservative side, using all the old catch-words in slightly different connections, and living gaily on his Lady Selina. Fragments from the talk of Nehemiah--Nehemiah the happy and truculent, that new "scourge of G.o.d"
upon the parasites of Labour--of poor Bennett, of Molloy, and of various others who had found time to drop in upon him since the Labour smash, kept whirling in his mind. The same prediction he had just made to Marcella was to be discerned in several of them. He vowed to himself that he would write to Raeburn that night, congratulate him and the party on the possibility of so eminent a recruit--and hint another item of news by the way. She had trusted her confidence to him without any pledge--an act for which he paid her well thenceforward, in the coin of a friendship far more intimate, expansive, and delightful than anything his sincerity had as yet allowed him to show her.
But these London incidents and memories, near as they were in time, looked many of them strangely remote to Marcella in this morning silence. When she drew back from the window, after darkening the now sun-flooded room in a very thorough business-like way, in order that she might have four or five hours" sleep, there was something symbolic in the act. She gave back her mind, her self, to the cares, the anxieties, the remorses of the past three weeks. During the night she had been sitting up with her father that her mother might rest. Now, as she lay down, she thought with the sore tension which had lately become habitual to her, of her father"s state, her mother"s strange personality, her own short-comings.
By the middle of the morning she was downstairs again, vigorous and fresh as ever. Mrs. Boyce"s maid was for the moment in charge of the patient, who was doing well. Mrs. Boyce was writing some household notes in the drawing-room. Marcella went in search of her.
The bare room, just as it ever was--with its faded antique charm--looked bright and tempting in the sun. But the cheerfulness of it did but sharpen the impression of that thin form writing in the window. Mrs.
Boyce looked years older. The figure had shrunk and flattened into that of an old woman; the hair, which two years before had been still young and abundant, was now easily concealed under the close white cap she had adopted very soon after her daughter had left Mellor. The dress was still exquisitely neat; but plainer and coa.r.s.er. Only the beautiful hands and the delicate stateliness of carriage remained--sole relics of a loveliness which had cost its owner few pangs to part with.
Marcella hovered near her--a little behind her--looking at her from time to time with a yearning compunction--which Mrs. Boyce seemed to be aware of, and to avoid.
"Mamma, can"t I do those letters for you? I am quite fresh."
"No, thank you. They are just done."
When they were all finished and stamped, Mrs. Boyce made some careful entries in a very methodical account-book, and then got up, locking the drawers of her little writing-table behind her.
"We can keep the London nurse another week I think," she said.
"There is no need," said Marcella, quickly. "Emma and I could divide the nights now and spare you altogether. You see I can sleep at any time."
"Your father seems to prefer Nurse Wenlock," said Mrs. Boyce.
Marcella took the little blow in silence. No doubt it was her due.
During the past two years she had spent two separate months at Mellor; she had gone away in opposition to her father"s wish; and had found herself on her return more of a stranger to her parents than ever. Mr.
Boyce"s illness, involving a steady extension of paralytic weakness, with occasional acute fits of pain and danger, had made steady though very gradual progress all the time. But it was not till some days after her return home that Marcella had realised a tenth part of what her mother had undergone since the disastrous spring of the murder.
She pa.s.sed now from the subject of the nurse with a half-timid remark about "expense."
"Oh! the expense doesn"t matter!" said Mrs. Boyce, as she stood absently before the lately kindled fire, warming her chilled fingers at the blaze.
"Papa is more at ease in those ways?" Marcella ventured. And kneeling down beside her mother she gently chafed one of the cold hands.
"There seems to be enough for what is wanted," said Mrs. Boyce, bearing the charing with patience. "Your father, I believe, has made great progress this year in freeing the estate. Thank you, my dear. I am not cold now."
And she gently withdrew her hand.
Marcella, indeed, had already noticed that there were now no weeds on the garden-paths, that instead of one gardener there were three, that the old library had been decently patched and restored, that there was another servant, that William, grown into a very--tolerable footman, wore a reputable coat, and that a plain but adequate carriage and horse had met her at the station. Her pity even understood that part of her father"s bitter resentment of his ever-advancing disablement came from his feeling that here at last--just as death was in sight--he, that squalid failure, d.i.c.k Boyce, was making a success of something.
Presently, as she knelt before the fire, a question escaped her, which, when it was spoken, she half regretted.
"Has papa been able to do anything for the cottages yet?"
"I don"t think so," said Mrs. Boyce, calmly. After a minute"s pause she added, "That will be for your reign, my dear."
Marcella looked up with a sharp thrill of pain.
"Papa is better, mamma, and--and I don"t know what you mean. I shall never reign here without you."
Mrs. Boyce began to fidget with the rings on her thin left hand.
"When Mellor ceases to be your father"s it will be yours," she said, not without a certain sharp decision; "that was settled long ago. I must be free--and if you are to do anything with this place, you must give your youth and strength to it. And your father is not better--except for the moment. Dr. Clarke exactly foretold the course of his illness to me two years ago, on my urgent request. He may live four months--six, if we can get him to the South. More is impossible."
There was something ghastly in her dry composure. Marcella caught her hand again and leant her trembling young cheek against it.
"I could not live here without you, mamma!"
Mrs. Boyce could not for once repress the inner fever which in general her will controlled so well.
"I hardly think it would matter to you so much, my dear."
Marcella shrank.
"I don"t wonder you say that!" she said in a low voice. "Do you think it was all a mistake, mamma, my going away eighteen months ago--a wrong act?"
Mrs. Boyce grew restless.
"I judge n.o.body, my dear!--unless I am obliged. As you know, I am for liberty--above all"--she spoke with emphasis--"for letting the past alone. But I imagine you must certainly have learnt to do without us.
Now I ought to go to your father."