That Unfortunate Marriage Volume Iii Part 11

"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Dormer-Smith faintly. "What is that? Have those children been here all the time?" She always spoke of Harold and Wilfred as "those children," in a distant tone as though they were somebody else's intrusive little boys. On this occasion, however, she did not altogether disapprove of their presence. It was certainly less _inconvenable_ that they should have been known by the servants to be present at the interview, than if May had been without even that small amount of _chaperonage_. She had no idea that it was Harold who had brought about the interview, or he might not have got off so easily!

"Go away, little boys," she said, in her sweet, soft voice. "Go away upstairs. Cannot Cecile find some lessons for you to do? You really must not prowl about this part of the house in the afternoon."

The children trotted after their cousin willingly enough. They never wished to stay with their mother.

"We shall meet again soon, my dear one," whispered Owen, as he opened the door. And then, with Mrs. Dormer-Smith's eyes fixedly regarding him, he took May's cold little hand in his own, and kissed it, before she pa.s.sed out.

Pauline observed his demeanour with an unbia.s.sed judgment. She would, in the cause of duty, willingly have had him kidnapped and sent off to New Caledonia at that moment. But she said to herself, "He has the manner of a gentleman. It is most disastrous!" For she felt that this circ.u.mstance increased her own difficulties.

"Now, Mrs. Dormer-Smith," said Owen, when the door was shut, "I can answer you with more perfect frankness than I should have liked to employ in May's presence. You were so kind as to say that you would leave it to my good sense to determine whether Captain Cheffington was likely to consent to my marriage with his daughter. My answer is quite simple. I do not intend to ask his consent."

"You do not intend--to ask--his consent?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Pauline, leaning back in her chair, and, in the extremity of her astonishment at this young man's audacity, letting fall a hand-screen which she had been using to s.h.i.+eld her face from the fire.

Owen picked it up and restored it to her before repeating, "No; I do not intend to ask his consent."

"And do you hope to persuade my niece to disregard her father's authority?--Not to mention other members of the family who have a right to be heard!"

"There is only one member of the family who has a right to be heard--Mrs. Dobbs. And her consent I hope I have obtained."

Pauline was for the moment stricken speechless by hearing Mrs. Dobbs mentioned as a member of the family. "The family!" Good heavens, what was the world coming to? She pressed her hand to her forehead with a bewildered look.

Owen went on resolutely. "As to parental authority--Mrs. Dormer-Smith, your brother has abdicated all parental authority over May. He abandoned her--pardon me, I _must_ use that word; for it is the only one which expresses what I mean--when she was a young, motherless child. He went away to his own occupations, or pleasures--any way, he went to live his own life in his own way, utterly careless of May's welfare and happiness. You may tell me that he was sure of her finding the tenderest treatment under her grandmother's roof. He was not sure of it; for he never troubled himself to consider the question. But if he had been sure, he had no right to leave his child as he did. At any rate, having done so, it is too late to pretend that she is morally bound to consider his wishes."

Pauline put her handkerchief to her eyes. "My poor brother Augustus is much to be pitied," she murmured. "Allowances must be made for a man in his position. That unfortunate marriage----"

"I have never been told," said Owen, "that Miss Susan Dobbs seized upon Captain Cheffington and compelled him by main force to marry her.

And--judging from what I know of her mother and daughter--I should think it unlikely."

"Oh, one understands that sort of thing," returned Pauline, with languid disdain. "A young woman in her cla.s.s of life is not to be judged by our standards. No doubt she thought herself justified in doing the best she could for herself."

"It strikes me that she did very badly for herself--lamentably badly. I do not wish to say anything needlessly offensive, but we are in the way of plain speaking, and I must point out to you that so far from any consideration being due to your brother, he is--from the point of view of an honest man wis.h.i.+ng to marry May--a person to be decidedly ashamed of. There are in the city of Oldchester, his late wife's native place, many tradesmen, and even mechanics, who would strongly object to connect themselves by marriage with Captain Cheffington."

To say that Mrs. Dormer-Smith was astonished by this speech would be but faintly to express her sensations. She was bewildered. She had often heard Augustus severely blamed. She had been compelled to blame him herself. Of course he ought not to have thrown away his career as he had done. They had agreed as to that. But all this blame had a.s.sumed that Augustus had chiefly injured--firstly, himself; and in the second place, and more indirectly, the whole Cheffington family.

Persons who live exclusively in any one narrow sphere are apt to have a strange simplicity, or ignorance, as one may choose to call it, as to large sections of their fellow-creatures outside that sphere. And in no cla.s.s is that kind of _navete_ more commonly found than in the cla.s.s to which Mrs. Dormer-Smith belonged, where it is often intensified by the conviction that they possess what is called "knowledge of the world" in a supreme degree.

It was far too late in the day to bring much enlightenment to Mrs.

Dormer-Smith. Owen's words merely struck her mind with a shock of wonder and dismay, and then glanced off again. The impression of having received a shock, however, did remain with her, and made her as resentful as was possible to her placid nature. In speaking of Mr.

Rivers afterwards to her husband, she said--

"I believe him, Frederick, to be a Nihilist."

But for the present her mind was concentrated on the aim of breaking off what Owen chose to call his engagement to her niece, and she was not to be turned aside from it. She addressed herself to argue the case with Owen. In argument she possessed the immense advantage--if it be an advantage to reduce one's adversary to silence--of supposing that the statement of any one truth on her part was a sufficient answer to any other truth which might be advanced against her. As, for instance, when Owen insisted on Captain Cheffington's having forfeited all moral claim to May's duty and affection, she replied that it was a dreadful thing to set a child against a parent; and when Owen denied the right of May's relatives to prevent her from making a marriage of affection, she retorted that Mr. Rivers came of undeniably gentle blood himself, and ought to understand her (Mrs. Dormer-Smith's) strong family feeling.

But when even this powerful kind of logic failed to make any impression on Owen's obduracy, she changed her attack, and inquired what he was prepared to offer to her niece, in exchange for the magnificent prospect of being Mrs. Joshua Bragg, with settlements and pin-money such as every duke's daughter would desire, and very few dukes' daughters achieved.

"But, my dear madam," said Owen, "why speak of that alternative when May has a.s.sured you, in my presence, that nothing would induce her to marry Mr. Bragg?"

"Oh, Mr. Rivers, I am surprised you know so little of the world! May is a mere child: peculiarly childish for her age. Besides, even supposing she definitively rejected Mr. Bragg, there will be other good matches open to her _now_. The death of my poor cousin Lucius has made a vast difference in all that, as you must be well aware."

"To me, Mrs. Dormer-Smith, it has made no difference. May is herself.

That is why I love her. She is not in the least transfigured, in my imagination, by being the daughter of a man who may, or may not, be Lord Castlecombe at some future day!"

"Oh," said Mrs. Dormer-Smith, shaking her head with the old plaintive air, "you need not entertain any doubts as to my brother's succession.

He is the next heir. And the estates--at least the bulk of them--are entailed."

"Good heavens!" cried Owen, in despair, "can you not understand that I care not one straw whether they are entailed or not? That I would proudly and joyfully make May my wife--she being what she is--if her father trundled a barrow through the streets?"

Whether Mrs. Dormer-Smith could, or could not, understand this, at any rate she certainly did not believe it. She merely shook her head once more, and said softly--

"I think you ought to consider her prospects a little, Mr. Rivers. It appears to me that your views are entirely selfish."

This seemed very hopeless. With a last effort to come to an understanding, Owen took refuge in a plain and categorical statement of facts. He had loved May when she was penniless. So far as he knew, she was so still. He hoped to be able to offer her a modest home. She had not been accustomed to luxury or show--the season in London having been a mere episode, and not the main part of her life. Absolute dest.i.tution they were quite secure from.

He possessed one hundred and fifty pounds a year of his own. (Pauline gave a little shudder at this. It positively seemed to her worse than nothing at all. With nothing certain in the way of income, a boundless field was left open for possibilities. But a hundred and fifty pounds a year was a hard, hideous, circ.u.mscribing fact, like the bars of a cage!) He was receiving about as much again for his services as secretary.

Moreover, he had tried his hand at literature, not unsuccessfully. He had earned a few pounds by his pen already, and hoped to earn more. That was the state of the case. If May, G.o.d bless her! were content with it, he submitted that no one else could fairly object.

Mrs. Dormer-Smith rose from her chair, to signify that the interview was at an end. Indeed, what use could there be in prolonging it?

"I confess," she said, "you have astonished me, Mr. Rivers. If May--an inexperienced young girl not yet nineteen--is content, you think no one else has a right to interfere! At that rate, if she chose to marry the footman, we must all stand by without raising a finger to prevent it.

That is, certainly, very extraordinary doctrine."

Owen drew himself up, and looked full at her with those blue eyes, which could s.h.i.+ne so fiercely upon occasion as he answered--

"I have already admitted the right of one person to be consulted about May's future:--the benevolent, unselfish, high-minded woman, who befriended her, and cherished her, and was a mother to her, when she was deserted by every one else. As to her marrying the footman--it is clear, madam, that she might have married the hangman, for all the effort _you_ would have made to prevent it, until Mrs. Dobbs bribed you to take some notice of your niece! But in marrying a Rivers of Riversmead I need not, I suppose, inform you that she will confer on you the honour of a connection with a race of gentlemen compared with whom--if we are to stand on genealogies--half the names in the Peerage are a mere fungus-growth of yesterday."

It was the first word he had said to her which was less than courteously forbearing. And it was the first word which gave her a momentary twinge of regret that his suit was altogether inadmissible. She contrasted his bearing with that of May's two other wooers:--Bransby the smooth, and Bragg the unpolished; and she said to herself with a sigh, that there was no doubt about this young man's pedigree, and that "_bon sang ne peut mentir_." But not therefore did she flinch from her position. She answered him in the same words she had used years ago to her brother, in that very room.

"It will not do, Mr. Rivers. I a.s.sure you, it will not do!"

Then she bent her head with quiet grace, and moved to go away.

"One instant, Mrs. Dormer-Smith!" Owen said, following her to the door of the dining-room. "I wish, if you please, to speak with May again before I go away."

"Impossible. I cannot, compatibly with my duty, consent to your seeing her now, or at any future time."

"Am I to understand that you forbid me your house?"

"If you please. Unless, indeed, you consent to come in any other character than as my niece's suitor. In that case it would give me great pleasure to receive you as I have done before."

He stood looking at her rather blankly. The position was undeniably awkward. It was impossible--for May's sake, if from no other consideration--to make a scene of violence, and insist upon seeing her.

And, even if he did so, Mrs. Dormer-Smith might still resist. She was mistress of the situation so far. Even in his vexation and perplexity, the ludicrous side of the affair struck him.

"Well," said he, after a moment, taking up his hat, "I cannot intrude into your house against your will. Our only resource must be to meet elsewhere. I warn you we shall do so. Of course, it is idle to suppose that you have the power to keep us apart."

Mrs. Dormer-Smith shook her head, and repeated with gentle obstinacy, "It will not do, Mr. Rivers. I really am very sorry, but it will _not_ do."

"War, then, is declared between us?"