第25章 CHAPTER VI(2)

"Come, come, mother. I did not call here this morning to hear the Rawdons abused, and you forget your own marriage. It was a happy one, I am sure. One Rawdon, at least, must be excepted; and I think I treated my wife as a good husband ought to treat a wife.""Not you! You treated Mary very badly."

"Mother, not even from you----"

"I'll say it again. The little girl was dying for a year or more, and you were so busy making money you never saw it. If she said or looked a little complaint, you moved restless-like and told her `she moped too much.' As the end came I spoke to you, and you pooh-poohed all I said. She went suddenly, I know, to most people, but she knew it was her last day, and she longed so to see you, that I sent a servant to hurry you home, but she died before you could make up your mind to leave your `cases.' She and I were alone when she whispered her last message for you--a loving one, too.""Mother! Mother! Why recall that bitter day? I did not think--I swear I did not think----""Never mind swearing. I was just reminding you that the Rawdons have not been the finest specimens of good husbands. They make landlords, and judges, and soldiers, and even loom-lords of a very respectable sort;but husbands! Lord help their poor wives!

So you see, as a Mostyn woman, I have no special interest in Rawdon Court.""You would not like it to go out of the family?""I should not worry myself if it did."

"I suppose you know Fred Mostyn has a mortgage on it that the present Squire is unable to lift.""Aye, Fred told me he had eighty thousand pounds on the old place. I told him he was a fool to put his money on it.""One of the finest manors and manor- houses in England, mother."

"I have seen it. I was born and brought up near enough to it, I think.""Eighty thousand pounds is a bagatelle for the place; yet if Fred forces a sale, it may go for that, or even less. I can't bear to think of it.""Why not buy it yourself?"

"I would lift the mortgage to-morrow if I had the means. I have not at present."

"Well, I am in the same box. You have just spoken as if the Mostyns and Rawdons had an equal interest in Rawdon Court.

Very well, then, it cannot be far wrong for Fred Mostyn to have it. Many a Mostyn has gone there as wife and slave. I would dearly like to see one Mostyn go as master.""I shall get no help from you, then, I understand that."

"I'm Mostyn by birth, I'm only Rawdon by, marriage. The birth-band ties me fast to my family.""Good morning, mother. You have failed me for the first time in your life.""If the money had been for you, Edward, or yours----""It is--good-by."

She called him back peremptorily, and he returned and stood at the open door.

"Why don't you ask Ethel?"

"I did not think I had the right, mother."

"More right to ask her than I. See what she says. She's Rawdon, every inch of her.""Perhaps I may. Of course, I can sell securities, but it would be at a sacrifice a great sacrifice at present.""Ethel has the cash; and, as I said, she is Rawdon--I'm not.""I wish my father were alive."

"He wouldn't move me--you needn't think that. What I have said to you I would have said to him. Speak to Ethel. I'll be bound she'll listen if Rawdon calls her.""I don't like to speak to Ethel."

"It isn't what you like to do, it's what you find you'll have to do, that carries the day;and a good thing, too, considering."

"Good morning, again. You are not quite yourself, I think.""Well, I didn't sleep last night, so there's no wonder if I'm a bit cross this morning.

But if I lose my temper, I keep my understanding."She was really cross by this time. Her son had put her in a position she did not like to assume. No love for Rawdon Court was in her heart. She would rather have advanced the money to buy an American estate. She had been little pleased at Fred's mortgage on the old place, but to the American Rawdons she felt it would prove a white elephant; and the appeal to Ethel was advised because she thought it would amount to nothing. In the first place, the Judge had the strictest idea of the sacredness of the charge committed to him as guardian of his daughter's fortune.

In the second, Ethel inherited from her Yorkshire ancestry an intense sense of the value and obligations of money. She was an ardent American, and not likely to spend it on an old English manor; and, furthermore, Madam's penetration had discovered a growing dislike in her granddaughter for Fred Mostyn.

"She'd never abide him for a lifelong neighbor," the old lady decided. "It is the Rawdon pride in her. The Rawdon men have condescended to go to Mostyn for wives many and many a time, but never once have the Mostyn men married a Rawdon girl--proud, set-up women, as far as I remember; and Ethel has a way with her just like them. Fred is good enough and nice enough for any girl, and I wonder what is the matter with him!

It is a week and more since he was here, and then he wasn't a bit like himself."At this moment the bell rang and she heard Fred's voice inquiring "if Madam was at home." Instantly she divined the motive of his call. The young man had come to the conclusion the Judge would try to influence his mother, and before meeting him in the afternoon he wished to have some idea of the trend matters were likely to take. His policy --cunning, Madam called it--did not please her. She immediately assured herself that "she wouldn't go against her own flesh and blood for anyone," and his wan face and general air of wretchedness further antagonized her. She asked him fretfully "what he had been doing to himself, for," she added, "it's mainly what we do to ourselves that makes us sick. Was it that everlasting wedding of the Denning girl?"He flushed angrily, but answered with much of the same desire to annoy, "I suppose it was. I felt it very much. Dora was the loveliest girl in the city. There are none left like her.""It will be a good thing for New York if that is the case. I'm not one that wants the city to myself, but I can spare Dora STANHOPE, and feel the better for it.""The most beautiful of God's creatures!"