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

a glimpse of her hostess through the window.

"Yes, come in--come in!" cries Lady Rylton, changing her tone at once, and smiling and beckoning to the girl with long fingers. "I hope you have not been fatiguing yourself on the tennis-courts, you dearest child!"

Her tones are cooing.

"I have won, at all events!" says Tita, jumping in over the window-sill. "Though Mr. Gower," glancing back at her companion, "won't acknowledge it."

"Why should I acknowledge it?" says the stout young man. "It's folly to acknowledge anything."

"But the truth is the truth!" says the girl, facing him.

"Oh, no; on the contrary, it's generally a lie," says he.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," says Miss Bolton, turning her back on him, which proceeding seems to fill the stout young man's soul with delight.

"Do come and sit down, dear child; you look exhausted," says Lady Rylton, still cooing.

"I'm not," says Tita, shaking her head. "Tennis is not so very exhausting--is it, Mrs. Bethune?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. It seems to have exhausted your hair, at all events," says Mrs. Bethune, with her quick smile. "I think you had better go upstairs and settle it; it is very untidy."

"Is it? Is it?" says Tita.

She runs her little fingers through her pretty short locks, and gazes round. Her eyes meet Margaret's.

"No, no," says the latter, laughing. "It looks like the hair of a little girl. You," smiling, _"are_ a little girl. Go away and finish your fight with Mr. Gower."

"Yes. Come! Miss Knollys is on my side. She knows I shall win," says the stout young man; and, whilst disputing with him at every step, Tita disappears.

"What a girl! No style, no manners," says Lady Rylton; "and yet I must receive her as a daughter. Fancy living with that girl! A silly child, with her hair always untidy, and a laugh that one can hear a mile off. Yet it must be done."

"After all, it is Maurice who will have to live with her," says Mrs. Bethune.

"Oh, I hope not," says Margaret quickly.

"Why?" asks Lady Rylton, turning to her with sharp inquiry.

"It would never do," says Margaret with decision. "They are not suited to each other. Maurice! and that _baby!_ It is absurd! I should certainly not counsel Maurice to take such a step as that!"

"Why not? Good heavens, Margaret, I hope you are not in love with him, too!" says Lady Rylton.

"Too?"

Margaret looks blank.

"She means me," says Mrs. Bethune, with a slight, insolent smile. "You know, don't you, how desperately in love with Maurice I am?"

"I know nothing," says Miss Knollys, a little curtly.

"Ah, you will!" says Mrs. Bethune, with her queer smile.

"The fact is, Margaret," says Lady Rylton, with some agitation, "that if Maurice doesn't marry this girl, there--there will be an end of us all. He _must_ marry her."

"But he doesn't love--he barely knows her--and a marriage without love----"

"Is the safest thing known."

"Under given circumstances! I grant you that if two people well on in life, old enough to know their own minds, and what they are doing, were to marry, it might be different. They might risk a few years of mere friendship together, and be glad of the venture later on. But for two _young_ people to set out on life's journey with nothing to steer by--that would be madness!"

"Ah! yes. Margaret speaks like a book," says Mrs. Bethune, with an amused air; "Maurice, you see, is _so_ young, _so_ inexperienced----"

"At all events, Tita is only a child."

"Tita! Is that her name?"

"A pet name, I fancy. Short for Titania; she is such a little thing."

"Titania--Queen of the Fairies; I wonder if the original Titania's father dealt in buttons! Is it buttons, or soap, or tar? You didn't say," says Mrs. Bethune, turning to Lady Rylton.

"I really don't know--and as it _has_ to be trade, I can't see that it matters," says Lady Rylton, frowning.

"Nothing matters, if you come to think of it," says Mrs. Bethune. "Go on, Margaret--you were in the middle of a sermon; I dare say we shall endure to the end."

"I was saying that Miss Bolton is only a child."

"She is seventeen. She told us about it last night at dinner. Gave us month and day. It was very clever of her. We _ought_ to give her birthday-gifts, don't you think? And yet you call her a child!"

"At seventeen, what else?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Margaret," says Lady Rylton pettishly; "and, above all things, don't be old-fashioned. There is no such product nowadays as a child of seventeen. There isn't _time_ for it. It has gone out! The idea is entirely exploded. Perhaps there were children aged seventeen long ago--one reads of them, I admit, but it is too long ago for one to remember. Why, I was only eighteen when I married your uncle."

"Pour uncle!" says Mrs. Bethune; her tone is full of feeling.

Lady Rylton accepts the feeling as grief for the uncle's death; but Margaret, casting a swift glance at Mrs. Bethune, wonders if it was meant for grief for the uncle's life--_with_ Lady Rylton.

"He was the ugliest man I ever saw, without exception," says Lady Rylton placidly; "and I was never for a moment blind to the fact, but he was well off at that time, and, of course, I married him. I wasn't in love with him." She pauses, and makes a little apologetic gesture with her fan and shoulders. "Horrid expression, isn't it?" says she. "In love! So terribly _bourgeois_. It ought to be done away with. However, to go on, you see how admirably my marriage turned out. Not a hitch anywhere. Your poor dear uncle and I never had a quarrel. I had only to express a wish, and it was gratified."

"Poor dear uncle was so clever," says Mrs. Bethune, with lowered lids.

Again Margaret looks at her, but is hardly sure whether sarcasm is really meant.

"Clever? Hardly, perhaps," says Lady Rylton meditatively. "Clever is scarcely the word."

"No, wise--wise is the word," says Mrs. Bethune.

Her eyes are still downcast. It seems to Margaret that she is inwardly convulsed with laughter.

"Well, wise or not, we lived in harmony," says Lady Rylton with a sigh and a prolonged sniff at her scent-bottle. "With us it was peace to the end."

"Certainly; it was peace _at_ the end," says Mrs. Bethune solemnly.

It was, indeed, a notorious thing that the late Sir Maurice had lived in hourly fear of his wife, and had never dared to contradict her on any subject, though he was a man of many inches, and she one of the smallest creatures on record.

"True! true! _You_ knew him so well!" says Lady Rylton, hiding her eyes behind the web of a handkerchief she is holding. One tear would have reduced it to pulp. "And when he was----" She pauses.

"Was dead?" says Margaret kindly, softly.

"Oh, _don't,_ dear Margaret, _don't!"_ says Lady Rylton, with a tragical start. "That dreadful word! One should never mention death! It is so rude! He, your poor uncle--he _left_ us with the sweetest resignation on the 18th of February, 1887."

"I never _saw_ such resignation," says Mrs. Bethune, with deep emphasis.

She casts a glance at Margaret, who, however, refuses to have anything to do with it. But, for all that, Mrs. Bethune is clearly enjoying herself. She can never, indeed, refrain from sarcasm, even when her audience is unsympathetic.

"Yes, yes; he was resigned," says Lady Rylton, pressing her handkerchief to her nose.

"So much so, that one might almost think he was _glad_ to go," says Mrs. Bethune, nodding her head with beautiful sympathy.

She is now shaking with suppressed laughter.

"Yes; glad. It is such a comfort to dwell on it," says Lady Rylton, still dabbing her eyes. "He was happy--quite happy when he left me."

"I never saw anyone so happy," says Mrs. Bethune.

Her voice sounds choking; no doubt it is emotion. She rises and goes to the window. The emotion seems to have got into her shoulders.

"All which proves," goes on Lady Rylton, turning to Margaret, "that a marriage based on friendship, even between two young people, is often successful."

"But surely in your case there was love on one side," says Miss Knollys, a little impatiently. "My uncle----"

"Oh, he _adored_ me!" cries she ecstatically, throwing up her pretty hands, her vanity so far overcoming her argument that she grows inconsistent. "You know," with a little simper, "I was a belle in my day."

"I have heard it," says Margaret hastily, who, indeed, has heard it _ad nauseam_. "But with regard to this marriage, Tessie, I don't believe you will get Maurice to even think of it."

"If I don't, then he is ruined!" Lady Rylton gets up from her chair, and takes a step or two towards Margaret. "This house-party that I have arranged, with this girl in it, is a last effort," says she in a low voice, but rather hysterically. She clasps her hands together. "He must--he _must_ marry her. If he refuses----"

"But she may refuse him," says Margaret gently; "you should think of that."

"She--she refuse? You are mad!" says Lady Rylton. "A girl--a girl called _Bolton."_

"It is certainly an ugly name," says Margaret in a conciliatory way.

"And yet you blame me because I desire to give her Rylton instead, a name as old as England itself. I tell you, Margaret," with a little delicate burst of passion, "that it goes to my very soul to accept this girl as a daughter. She--she is _hateful_ to me, not only because of her birth, but in every way. She is antagonistic to me. She--would you believe it?--she has had the audacity to argue with me about little things, as if she--_she,"_ imperiously, "should have an opinion when I was present."

"My dear Tessie, we all have opinions, and you know you said yourself that at seventeen nowadays one is no longer a child."

"I wish, Margaret, you would cure yourself of that detestable habit of repeating one's self _to_ one's self," says Lady Rylton resentfully. "There," sinking back in her chair, and saturating her handkerchief with some delicate essence from a little Louis Quatorze bottle beside her, "it isn't worth so much worry. But to say that she would refuse Maurice----"

"Why should she not? She looks to me like a girl who would not care to risk all her future life for mere position. I mean," says Margaret a little sadly, "that she looks to me as if she would be like that when she is older, and understands."

"Then she must look to you like a fool," says Lady Rylton petulantly.

"Hardly that. Like a girl, rather, with sense, and with a heart."

"My dear girl, we know how romantic you are, we know that old story of yours," says Lady Rylton, who can be singularly nasty at times. "Such an _old_ story, too. I think you might try to forget it."

"Does one ever forget?" says Margaret coldly. A swift flush has dyed her pale face. "And story or no story, I shall always think that the woman who marries a man without caring for him is a far greater fool than the woman who marries a man for whom she does care."