Great Possessions | Page 7

tone of authority and intense anxiety.
After all it might be easier to answer now as they battled with the rain.
"I don't know how to tell you, mother. Mr. Murray has been with me
and shown me the will. There was some one all the time who had some
claim on him. She may have been his real wife--I know nothing except
that since we have had John Steele's fortune David has always paid her
an income and now has left her a very great deal and me very little.
That would not matter--God knows it is not the poverty that hurts--but
the thing itself, the horror, the shame, the publicity. I mind it all,
everything, more than I ought. I----" She stopped, not a word more
would come.
Lady Charlton could only make broken sounds of incredulous horror.
When they crossed the brilliantly lighted hall the mother suddenly
seemed much older, and Rose, for the first time, bore all the traces of a
great, an overpowering sorrow.
"It wasn't natural to be so calm," thought the maid, who had been with
her since her girlhood, as she helped her to take off her cloak. "She
didn't understand at first. It's coming over her now, poor dear, and
indeed he was a real gentleman, and such a husband! Never a harsh
word--not one--that I ever heard, at least."
It was some time before Lady Charlton could be brought to believe it
all, and then at first she was overwhelmed with self-blame. Her mind
fastened chiefly on the fact that she had allowed the marriage without
settlements. Then the next thought was the horror of the publicity, the
way in which this dreadful woman must be heard of and talked about.
Lady Charlton's broken sentences had almost the feebleness of extreme
old age that cannot accept as true what it cannot understand. "It seems
impossible, quite impossible," she said. She was very tired, and Rose
wished it had been practicable to keep this knowledge from her till later.
She knew that her mother was one of those highly-strung women

whose nerve power is at its best quite late at night. As it was, Lady
Charlton had to dress for dinner and sit as upright as usual through the
meal, and to talk a little before the servants. Rose appeared the more
dazed of the two then, though her mind had been quite clear before.
There was nothing said as soon as they were alone, but, as if with one
accord, both glanced at each of the many letters brought by the last post,
and, if it were one of condolence, laid it aside unread. The butler had
placed on a small table two evening papers, which had notices of the
memorial service for Sir David Bright, and one had some lines "In
Memoriam" from a poet of considerable repute. Rose, finding the
papers at her elbow, got up and changed her chair. It was not till they
had gone up to their rooms and parted that Lady Charlton felt speech to
be possible. She wrapped her purple dressing-gown round her and went
into Rose's room. She found her sitting in a low chair by the fire
leaning forward, her elbows pressed on her knees, her face buried in
her hands. Then, very quietly and impersonally, they discussed the
situation. With a rare self-command the mother never used one
expression of reprobation; if she had done so, Rose could not have
spoken again. It seemed more and more, as they spoke in the two gentle
voices, so much alike in tone and accent, in a half pathetic, half musical
intonation; it seemed as they sat so quietly without tears, almost
without gestures, as if they discussed the story of another woman and
another man. There were some differences in their views, and the
mother's was ever the hardest on the dead man. For instance, Rose
believed through all that another will existed, although she was
convinced that she should never see it. Her mother's judgment
coincided with the lawyer's; the soldier would have made the change, if
it were made at all, before starting for the war. No, the whole thing had
been too recently gone into; it was so short a time since the codicil had
been added. Of that codicil, too, Lady Charlton's view was quite clear.
She thought the object of adding it had been to save appearances. "As
long as you live in this house, furnished as well as possible, people will
forget the wording of the will, or they will think that money was given
to you in his lifetime to escape the death duties."
Like many idealists and even mystics, both mother and daughter took
sensible views on money matters. They did not undervalue the fortune

that