The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

/>
"Oh no! His, too!"

"It will be a risk, certainly," says Colonel Neilson. "I thought--I imagined--I had heard that Rylton was engaged to his cousin, Mrs. Bethune--a very beautiful woman."

"How can you think so!" says Margaret. "Well, yes, no doubt she _is_ beautiful, but I should not like Maurice to marry her."

"You would prefer his marrying the 'charming child'?"

"I don't know what I prefer," says Miss Knollys. She casts a reproachful glance at him that certainly is not deserved. Has he not served her late and early for the past six years? "I thought you would help me!"

"You know I shall do that, however things may turn."

"Well, help me here. What _ought_ Maurice to do? I am so dreadfully unhappy about this projected marriage of his."

"It seems to me you are unhappy about all things except those that concern yourself. Your own future seems a blank to you; is it not so?"

Miss Knollys makes a little movement.

"Why should it be always a blank?" says he. "Margaret," in a low tone, "let me fill it!"

Margaret rises impatiently.

"After all, you can't help me," says she, turning abruptly away.

"Margaret, hear me!"

"No, no, no! What is the use?"

She goes slowly down the hall.


CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE LAST DAY COMES, AND HOW SOME STRANGE WORDS ARE SAID BEFORE THE MARRIAGE IS ACCOMPLISHED; AND HOW MARION BETHUNE SCORES A POINT.


The dawn of the wedding-day has broken. Everything has been hurried over as much as possible; with no unseemly haste--just in the most ordinary, kindly way--however. But Lady Rylton's hand was at the helm, and she guided her barque to a safe anchor with all speed. She had kept Tita with her--under her eye, as it were--until the final accomplishment should have taken place.

The wedding, she declared, should be from her house, from The Place, seeing that the poor darling child was motherless! She made herself all things to Tita in those days, although great anger stung her within. She had been bitterly incensed by Maurice's avowal that Tita had declined to live with her at The Place, but she had been mightily pleased, for all that, in the thought that therefore The Place would be left to her without a division of authority.

Sir Maurice has gone to Rickfort to interview "Uncle George" of unpleasant fame. He had found him a rather strange-looking man, but not so impossible as Tita had led him to imagine. He made no objection of any sort to the marriage, and, indeed, through his cold exterior Maurice could see that the merchant blood in him was flattered at his niece's alliance with some of the oldest blood in England.

He was quite reasonable, too, about his niece's fortune. So much was to go to redeeming the more immediate debts on the property; for the rest, Sir Maurice declared he would have nothing to do with it. The money should be settled on his wife entirely. It was hers; he had no claim to it. He would have something off his own property, a small thing, but sufficient for his requirements. He gave his word to quit the turf finally. He had no desire to amuse himself in that sort of way again--or, indeed, in other ways. He wished to settle down, etc. It occurred to old Bolton, who was a shrewd man, that Sir Maurice looked like one whose interest in life and its joys was at an end. Still, he was a baronet, and of very ancient lineage, and it was a triumph for the Boltons. He refused to acknowledge to _himself_ that he was sacrificing his niece. It was not a sacrifice; it was an honour!

For one thing the old man stipulated, or rather bargained. He had managed his niece's affairs so far with great success; some of her money was in land, in Oakdean and Rickfort, for example; the rest he had invested securely, as he hoped and believed. If he might still be acknowledged as her guardian?

Sir Maurice, of course, gave in. Thoroughly ashamed and humiliated by the whole affair--he, the man, without a penny; she, the woman, possessed of all things in that line--it gave him genuine relief to tell her uncle that he would be actually thankful if he would still continue to be the head of her affairs, and manage her money matters, as he had managed them hitherto--and always with such happy results.

Mr. Bolton had bowed to him over his spectacles; his curious gray eyes caught a little addition of light, as it were. He was honoured by Sir Maurice's confidence, but, if he might suggest it, he thought that whilst Sir Maurice's affairs were righting themselves, he ought to allow himself a certain income out of his wife's money.

But Rylton would not hear of it. He had, as he had already told Mr. Bolton, a small yearly income that he might with honesty call his own. It was specially small on account of his mother's jointure having to be paid out of the estate also. Of course he could not curtail that, nor would he desire to do so. And, seeing how deeply dipped the estates were, he could, of course, only take as much as he could reasonably desire. With his future wife's help, however, he felt the old property could be brought back in time to its former splendid position--to a position that he would be proud to see her the mistress of, etc.

There is always a good deal of humbug talked on these occasions. Maurice, perhaps, talked very considerably less than most people; and, indeed, when he said he would gladly see her mistress of all he ought to have, he spoke something very near the truth. He was grateful to her beyond all words, and he had sworn to himself to be loyal to her.

Lady Rylton was distinctly annoyed when she heard of the arrangements come to. She would have liked Maurice to have had entire control of his wife's fortune. And, oddly enough, Tita was annoyed too.

"Oh, I _wish_ you had broken away entirely from Uncle George," she had said to Maurice, when he had come down on one of his flying visits to The Place between his engagement and his marriage.

"But why? He seemed to me quite a nice old gentleman."

She could not explain why, however, but only clung to her belief that they would be better without Uncle George. She hated him. That seemed to be the sum total of her objection.

Maurice had left The Place the morning after his engagement. He had had time to have an interview with his little _fiancée_, who seemed surprised that he wanted it in private, and who, to his great relief, insisted on making very cool adieux to him in the public hall, where everyone was passing to and fro, and where Mr. Gower was making a nuisance of himself by playing ball against the library door. Naturally it was impossible to have an affecting parting there.

Marian had not come down to breakfast. And Sir Maurice was conscious of a passionate sense of relief. She had heard. He knew--he felt that! His mother would not spare her; and even if she had not cared as _he_ had cared, still, unless she was the greatest fiend on earth, she must have had some small love for him--how _terribly_ small he knows! He assures himself of that all day long in the living torture he is enduring, as if by it he can reconcile himself to his marriage with this child, whose money is so hateful, and whose presence is such a bore.

There are a few things, however, always to be thankful for. Tita, in the frankest fashion in all their interviews, has told him that she doesn't care a fig about him, that she was marrying him _only_ to escape from Uncle George!

All their interviews have been but few. Sir Maurice had run down from here, and there, and everywhere, just for a night at a time, arriving barely in time for dinner, and going away before breakfast. Once, and once only, he had seen Mrs. Bethune. Those other times she had been confined to her room with neuralgia (what should we all do without neuralgia?), or with letters to write, or something, _any_thing else.

That one time she came out of the library at the very moment he had arrived. They met in the hall, and it was quite impossible to avoid seeing him. She came forward with a charming air.

"Is it you? How long since we have met!" said she. Her tone was evenness itself; she was smiling brightly. If she was pale, he could not see it in the darkening twilight. "How troublesome these elections are! I see you have been staying with the Montgomerys; I do hope he will get in. But Conservatives are nowhere nowadays. Truth lies buried in a well. That's a good old saying." She nodded to him and went up a step or two of the stairs, then looked back. "Don't stay away from The Place on my account," said she, with rather an amused smile. "I like to have you here. And see how badly you are behaving to the beloved one!"

She smiled again, with even more amusement than before, and continued her graceful way up the stairs. He had turned away sore at heart. She had not even thought it worth her while to make an appeal to him. If she had! He told himself that even then, if she had said but one word, he would have thrown up everything, even his _honour_, and gone with her to the ends of the earth. But she had not said that word--she had not cared--_sufficiently_.


* * * *


And now it is indeed all over! They have come back from the church--Tita just as she is every day, without a cloud on her brow, and laughing with everybody, and telling everybody, without the least disguisement, that she is so _glad_ she is married, because now Uncle George can never claim her again. She seems to have no thought but this. She treats her newly-made husband in a merry, perfectly unembarrassed, rather _boyish_ style, and is, in effect, quite delighted with her new move.

Sir Maurice has gone through it all without a flaw. At the breakfast he had made quite a finished little speech (he could never have told you afterwards what it was about), and when the bride was upstairs changing her wedding garments he had gone about amongst his guests with an air that left nothing to be desired. He looks quite an ideal bridegroom. A mad longing for solitude drags him presently, however, into a small anteroom, opening off a larger room beyond. The carriage that is to convey him to the station is at the door, and he almost swears at the delay that arises from Tita's non-appearance.

Yet here--here is rest. Here there is no one to breathe detestable congratulations into his ear--_no_ one.

A tall, slight figure rises from a couch that is half hidden by a Chinese screen. She comes forward a step or two. Her face is pale. It is Marian Bethune.

"You!" says she in a low, strange voice. "Have _you _come here, too, to _think?"_ She speaks with difficulty. Then all at once she makes a stray movement with her hands, and brings herself to her senses by a passionate effort. "You are like me, you want quiet," says she, with a very ordinary little laugh; "so you came here. Well,