“That was not what I meant: there is no happiness for him, but that which you can give: if you think him good enough—that was what I was going to say.”
“Good enough! Theo? Oh then, you do not know what he is, though he is your son; and so far I am better than you are.”
“Lady Markland, you are better in a great many ways. It is this that frightens me. In some things you are so much above any pretensions of his. He has so little experience, he is not rich, nor even is he clever (though he is very clever) according to the ways of the world. I seem to be disparaging my boy. It is not that, Lady Markland.”
“No; do you think I don’t understand? I am too old for him; I am not the kind of woman you would have chosen, or even that he would have chosen, had he been in his right senses.”
“It is folly to say that you are old. You are not old; you are a woman that any man might be proud to love. And his love—has been a wonder to me to see,” said his mother, her voice faltering, her eyes filling. “I have never known such adoration as that.”
“Ah, has it not!” cried the woman who was the object of it, a sudden melting and ineffable change coming over her face. “That was what gave me the courage,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “How could I refuse? It is not often, is it, that a man—that a woman”—here her voice died away in a confusion and agitation which melted all Mrs. Warrender’s reluctance. She found herself with her arms round the great lady, comforting her, holding her head against her own breast. They shed some tears together, and kissed each other, and for a moment came so close that all secondary matters that could divide them seemed to fade away.
“But now,” said Lady Markland, after this little interval, “he is worried and disturbed again, by all the lawyers think it right to do. I should like to spare him all that, but I am helpless in their hands. Oh, dear Mrs. Warrender, you will understand. There are so many things that make it more difficult. There is—Geoff.”
Mrs. Warrender pressed her hands and gave her a look full of sympathy; but she said nothing. She did not make a cheerful protest that all these things were without importance, and that Geoff was no drawback, as perhaps it was hoped she might do. Lady Markland drew back a little, discouraged—waiting for some word of cheer which did not come.
“You know,” she said, her voice trembling, “what my boy has been to me: everything! until this new light that I never dreamed of, that I never had hoped for, or thought of. You know how we lived together, he and I. He was my companion, more than a child, sharing every thought. You know—”
“Lady Markland, you have had a great deal of trouble, but how much with it—a child like that, and then—”
“And then—Theo! Was there ever a woman so blessed—or so—Oh, help me to know what I am to do between them! You can understand better than any of the young ones. Don’t you see,” said Lady Markland, with a smile in which there was a kind of despair, “that though I am not old, as you say, I am on your level rather than on his, that you can understand better than he?”
If it were possible that a woman who is a mother could cease to be that in the first place and become a friend, first of all a sympathiser in the very difficulties that overwhelm her son, that miracle was accomplished then. The woman whom she had with difficulty accepted as Theo’s future wife became, for a moment, nearer to her in this flood of sympathy than Theo himself. The woman’s pangs and hindrances were closer to her experience than the man’s. To him, in the heat of his young passion, nothing was worth considering that interfered with the perfect accomplishment of his love. But to her—the young woman, who had to piece on the present to the past, who though she might have abandoned father and mother could never abandon her child—the other woman’s heart went out with a pang of fellow-feeling. Mrs. Warrender, like most women, had an instinctive repugnance to the idea of a second marriage at all, but that being determined and beyond the reach of change, her heart ached for the dilemma which was more painful than any which enters into the possibilities of younger life. As Lady Markland leant towards her, claiming her sympathy, her face full of sentiments so conflicting, the joy of love and yet the anguish of it, and all the contrariety of a heart torn in two, the youthfulness, when all was said, of this expressive countenance, the recollection that, after all, this woman who claimed to be on her own level was not too old to be her child, seized upon Mrs. Warrender. Nothing that is direct and simple can be so poignant as those complications in which right and wrong and all the duties of human life are so confused that no sharply cut division is possible. What was she to do? She would owe all her heart to her husband, and what was to remain for her child? Geoff had upon her the first claim of nature; her love, her care, were his right—but then Theo? The old mother took the young one into her arms, with an ache of sympathy. “Oh, my dear, what can I say to you? We must leave it to Providence. Things come round when we do not think too much of them, but do our best.”
How poor a panacea, how slight a support! and yet in how many cases
