CHAPTER XII

GENUINE!

MRS. MACKENZIE had to sit down, absolutely panting under the blow, and for once without words, as her husband gave a few particulars. It appeared that the Landors' affairs had been for some years in an involved condition, unknown to many of their most intimate friends. Losses here and embarrassments there dated nearly, though not quite, so far back as their marriage. The prosperous widow chosen by Mr. Landor for his wife had been since by no means so prosperous as was commonly supposed. But inasmuch as he had chosen her for herself, and not for her money, this fact had had no power to touch their happiness.

They had hoped to emerge in the end from their difficulties. And in the ordinary course of events, the hope might have been fulfilled. Now however, at one blow, the main bulk of Mrs. Landor's possessions was swept away by the collapse of the great Company in which most of her money was embarked. An immediate sale of the estate was inevitable, and the utmost that it could be expected to bring in would be swallowed up by previously-existing liabilities.

"The extraordinary thing is that nobody should have expected anything of the sort! No one seems to have so much as guessed what was coming. If you had asked me about that Company, I could have declared that it was almost as staunch as the Bank of England." Mr. Mackenzie looked back to his own haunting fears, as partly expressed to Euphrasia, about the bank with which he was himself closely connected, in a kind of wonder. Clear vision had come suddenly, and he realised now the futility, the needlessness, of his fears.

At this instant, the imaginations which had made him wretched for months past looked absolutely absurd, the mere fruit of a disorganised nervous system, with no positive foundation in fact. That which he had so feared for himself, and for those dependent on him, had not come, might never come. But the blow which none had foretold for the Landors had fallen with startling abruptness. He woke out of a dream to the sound of his wife's voice:—

"Do tell me! What are you thinking about? Do pray tell me. What will they have to live on?"

"My dear, I fear almost nothing—beyond Mr. Landor's stipend."

"A stipend of eighty-five pounds a year!"

Mrs. Mackenzie burst into tears. She might be habitually a good deal self-occupied, and not a little addicted to nursing her own troubles, but she had a warm heart, and a very real affection for his long-tried friend.

"She can't do it, Colin. At her age, and all her life accustomed to have everything she could want. And he is getting elderly, and not strong. It is perfectly dreadful! Of course, they have had some worries now and then, everybody has, but nothing of this sort. Why, she has always been able to get every single thing she wanted. And just think of eighty-five pounds a year!"

"Yes, it's the suddenness of it—and the change from what she is used to. That makes it so much worse."

"Worse! It makes it awful for them. How you can talk of it so quietly! And what in the world are they to do now? This is what I cannot imagine. Brought up as she has been. Eighty-five pounds a year. She must be half dazed with it. Of course she does not see yet what it all really means—she can't. And, oh dear, to think of what I have been saying to her. How I could!"

Colin made a sound of enquiry.

"Oh, I don't know—I mean—Oh, of course I didn't know anything about this; and she never told me. But it must have sounded so horribly unfeeling. I told her about the doctor wanting you to get away, and she said I ought to trust more. And I thought it was so easy for her to talk when she had got everything she wanted, and I said something of the sort. She won't be vexed, I know, because it is not her way, but I am vexed with myself."

"Perhaps it is a little lesson just to be more careful next time, my dear."

Mrs. Mackenzie rather resented having "little lessons" pointed out to her, however clearly she might perceive them for herself. And she hastened to explain that "another time" was very unlikely to recur. In fact, one might think that this was the only time in her life that she had ever been betrayed into hasty speech. But in the midst of her defence, she relapsed into tears.

"Mrs. Landor wanted you to go and see her, Colin. Don't you think I might go too, and tell her how sorry I am?"

"No, my dear. If Mrs. Landor asked for me only, she did not mean you too. It is always best, when people are in trouble, to do exactly what they ask, and not more. It may be that she wishes to put some business questions," observed Colin, in his most oracular tone.

He had his way, and started alone, bearing a long message of unlimited apology and sympathy, which went utterly out of his head by the time he quitted the garden gate.

It was a trying visit to pay. He was a tenderhearted man, and could not endure to look upon distress. And, judging from people generally, he expected to find the Landors overwhelmed by the blow which had fallen upon them, Mr. Landor in depths of despair, Mrs. Landor in floods of tears. She had kept up, it was true, while calling on his wife, doubtless for her sake, but that she should continue to keep up was beyond the bounds of reasonable expectation. Colin wondered sorrowfully what he should say to comfort them.

Of course Mrs. Landor would "trust." Both of them would of course "trust." He felt no doubt on that head. He always asserted the fact of his own "trust," no matter how dismally certain he might feel that everything was going wrong, no matter how dolefully hopeless he might be of any help arriving in time to tide him over rocks ahead. His idea of trust was vague, and therefore was quite compatible with a general hopelessness.

By the time he reached the Rectory, his face had grown portentously long over the thought of his friends' grief. Rather oddly, this blow to them had acted with a rousing force upon himself. He had not for months felt so hopeful, so light-hearted about his own affairs. It was almost as if he had foreseen that something would happen, and had only been mistaken in supposing it to be a something concerning himself. Probably a truer explanation would be that Colin Mackenzie, after repeated attacks of severe influenza, coming upon long years of hard work, had fallen into a dyspeptic and nervous condition of body, which condition had reacted on the mind, rendering him unable to take a fair and reasonable view of things in general, more especially of business questions.

As Mrs. Landor had once said, molehills grew to mountains in his eyes, and a usually unselfish nature had become for the time morbidly self-centred—a state of things largely physical, but not on that account altogether free from blame.

Wakened now by the shock of his friends' trouble, he looked back upon his own past mental condition with a curious sense of surprise, almost of disgust. What could have made him talk as he had done to Euphrasia, the day before she left home? Absurd,—when really there had been no sufficient cause, but only some needful business uncertainties, and a desperate fit of the "blues," inclining him to see everything on its darkest side. Dyspepsia, of course, as Dr. North had at the time assured him. While Colin, because of that same dyspepsia, had counted himself wiser than any number of doctors, and had refused to believe the explanation. Now he knew better!

Poor little Eyebright! How she might have worried herself! Only of course she had not, or she would have written oftener. No doubt she had not grasped his full meaning. Still, he might have spoilt her visit with his ill-considered remarks. He would write at once, this very evening—cheerily, and in a different strain.

But then he would have to tell her about the Landors. She would feel that down in the depth of her loving little heart, which Colin knew to be really loving, though some might count her to be of a cold disposition. No, he would not write yet. Better to wait, since evidently she was not grieving. Mr. Mackenzie, like his wife, had been somewhat hurt by Euphrasia's long silence, even while telling himself that it meant nothing.

Then he reached the Rectory, and his courage was at a low ebb, though not now for himself.

Floods of tears! States of despair! Not a whit! As he stood in the hall, lugubrious with the weight of his pity, he heard the merriest laugh, coming through the closed study door. That Mrs. Landor! And a deeper-toned masculine laugh, no less cheerful. That the poverty-stricken and despairing Rector! Colin could hardly believe his own ears.

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