Part 10 (2/2)

Their att.i.tude towards Mary was as though she were a servant no longer necessary. She was not to eat at their table; she was to eat in her own room or in the servants' hall.

”Is it Miss Gray, my lady?” Saunders, the elderly parlourmaid, asked, aghast. ”Her Ladys.h.i.+p thought the world of Miss Gray. She might have been her own child. And I will say, though we didn't hold with it at first, yet----”

Lady Iniscrone closed the discussion haughtily.

”Miss Gray will have her meals in the servants' hall, or in her own room if she prefers it, till after the funeral. We shall make other arrangements then, of course.”

Saunders flounced out of the room. Although she was elderly and had lived in Lady Anne Hamilton's house since she was fourteen, when she had come as a between-maid, she had not forgotten how to flounce.

”Mark my words,” she said in the kitchen, ”she'll make a clean sweep of us, same as Miss Mary, as soon as ever the funeral is over. Supposing as how _we_ gives the notice!”

And they did, to Lady Iniscrone's discomfiture, for she had intended to stay on at the Mall and to keep the staff as it stood till she had supplied its place. However, she showed her dismay only by her bad temper.

”I suppose you've all pretty well feathered your nests,” she said acridly, ”and can afford to retire.”

Nor was her bitterness lessened by the fact that Lady Anne had left handsome legacies to each of the servants, annuities to the elder ones, sums of money to the younger. But the will, dated some years back, made no mention at all of Mary Gray.

”It seems clear to me,” said Mr. Buckton, talking the matter over with Lord Iniscrone, her Ladys.h.i.+p being present, ”that Lady Anne intended to make some provision for her _protegee_. In fact, the letter which she had begun writing to me, which was found in her blotter after her death, plainly indicates that. She was, apparently, on her way to my house when the lamentable accident happened. Dr. Carruthers had seen her that afternoon, and had told her that her heart was in a bad way. I believe she grew alarmed about the unprovided state in which she would leave Miss Gray if she had a sudden seizure, and hurried off to me. In the circ.u.mstances----”

”Of course, we could not think of doing anything more for Miss Gray,”

Lady Iniscrone put in, antic.i.p.ating her lord. ”She has already been dealt with very handsomely out of the estate. She has had a most unsuitable education for a person in her rank of life. She has lived like a lady; been clothed like one. When I saw her she was wearing ornaments--a brooch of amethysts, with pearls around it, I remember, which, I am sure, ought to belong to the estate. I can't see that Lord Iniscrone is called upon to do anything more for the young person. What with those absurd legacies to the servants and the way Lady Anne lived--a big house and a staff of servants and carriages and horses for one old lady!--the estate has been impoverished.”

”Lady Anne had a great sense of her own dignity,” the lawyer put in.

”And this house had been her home for more than fifty years.”

”Everything needs replacing,” Lady Iniscrone grumbled, with a disparaging look around. ”Those curtains and carpets----”

”Your Lords.h.i.+p will, I am sure, feel that, in making some little provision for Miss Gray, you will be doing what Lady Anne wished and intended to do,” Mr. Buckton said earnestly, turning from the lady to her husband.

Lord Iniscrone's eyes fluttered nervously. He was not a bad little man at heart, but he was entirely ruled by his wife.

”I don't think the estate will bear it, Mr. Buckton,” he said in a peevish voice. ”It is heavily burdened as it is. If a five-pound note would be of any use----”

”I can't see that we are called upon to do anything, Jarvis,” his wife put in again. ”In fact, Mr. Buckton, you may take it that we do not intend to do anything more for Miss Gray.”

”Very well, Lady Iniscrone.”

Mr. Buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. He could not trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his professional discretion.

But Mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. Mary, who was sensitive to every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. A good many friends would have been glad to have had her. Lady Agatha Chenevix was away, else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with pa.s.sionate generosity and indignation. She was away, but Jessie Baynes's little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. One could not imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than Jessie's little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a s.h.i.+p on to the blue floor of the sea. Mildred Carruthers had come at once, in the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house, which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice.

Only, where would Mary go to but home? In all those years in the great house on the Mall she had never come to find Wistaria Terrace too little and lowly for her. Indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and sweetness to her mind about the little house. The transfiguring mists of her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. To be sure, there had been hard work and short commons. She had been insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. Her people had gone without fires and many other things which some would have considered essential. But there had always been love. Looking back on those days, Mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out immaterial material things.

She fled back home. She took nothing with her but what she stood up in.

Only her friend, Simmons, while Lady Iniscrone was absent from the house, packed up all Mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the a.s.sistance of the coachman, across the lane to Wistaria Terrace. The servants had made up their minds that Mary was not coming back.

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