The Three Brides

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  "By la belle mere? Skilful strategy to know when the position is not tenable."

  "She wants to retreat to Church-house."

  "Don't consent to that."

  "I said I should prefer Swanslea for ourselves."

  "Hold to that, whatever you do. If she moves to the village you will have all the odium and none of the advantages. There will be the same daily haunt; and as to your freedom of action, there are no spies like the abdicated and their dependents. A very clever plan, but don't be led away by it."

  "No," said Cecil, resolutely; but after a moment: "It would be inconvenient to Raymond to live so far away from the property."

  "Swanslea will be property too, and a ride over on business is not like strolling in constantly."

  "I know I shall never feel like my own mistress in a house of hers."

  "Still less with her close by, with the Rectory family running in and out to exchange remarks. No, no, hold fast to insisting that she must not leave the ancestral halls. That you can do dutifully and gracefully."

  Cecil knew she had been betrayed into the contrary; but they were by this time in the High Street, bowing to others of the committee on their way to the town-hall, a structure of parti-coloured brick in harlequin patterns, with a peaked roof, all over little sham domes, which went far to justify its title of the Rat-house, since nothing larger could well use them. The facade was thus somewhat imposing; of the rear the less said the better; and as to the interior, it was at present one expanse of dust, impeded by scaffold-poles, and all the windows had large blotches of paint upon them.

  It required a lively imagination to devise situations for the stalls; but Mrs. Duncombe valiantly tripped about, instructing her attendant carpenter with little assistance except from the well-experienced Miss Strangeways. The other ladies had enough to do in keeping their plumage unsoiled. Lady Tyrrell kept on a little peninsula of encaustic tile, Cecil hopped across bird-like and unsoiled, Miss Slater held her carmelite high and dry, but poor Miss Fuller's pale blue and drab, trailing at every step, became constantly more blended!

  The dust induced thirst. Lady Tyrrell lamented that the Wil'sbro' confectioner was so far off and his ices doubtful, and Miss Slater suggested that she had been making a temperance effort by setting up an excellent widow in the lane that opened opposite to them in a shop with raspberry vinegar, ginger-beer, and the like mild compounds, and Mrs. Duncombe caught at the opportunity of exhibiting the sparkling water of the well which supplied this same lane. The widow lived in one of the tenements which Pettitt had renovated under her guidance, and on a loan advanced by Cecil, and she was proud of her work.

  "Clio Tallboys would view this as a triumph," said Mrs. Duncombe, as, standing on the steps of the town-hall, she surveyed the four tenements at the corner of the alley. "Not a man would stir in the business except Pettitt, who left it all to me."

  "Taking example by the Professor," said Lady Tyrrell.

  "It is strange," said Miss Slater, "how much illness there has been ever since the people went into those houses. They are in my district, you know."

  "You should make them open their windows," said Mrs. Duncombe.

  "They lay it on the draughts."

  "And stuff up my ventilators. That is always the way they begin."

  The excellent widow herself had a bad finger, which was a great impediment in administering the cooling beverages, but these were so excellent as to suggest the furnishing of a stall therewith for the thirsty, as something sure to be popular and at small expense. Therewith the committee broke up, all having been present but Miss Moy, whose absence was not regretted, though apologized for by Mrs. Duncombe. "I could not get her away from the stables," she said. "She and Bob would contemplate Dark Hag day and night, I believe."

  "I wouldn't allow it," said Lady Tyrrell.

  Mrs. Duncombe shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "That's Mr. Moy's look-out," she said.

  "You don't choose to interfere with her emancipation," said Lady Tyrrell.

  "Clio would tell you she could take care of herself at the stables as well as anywhere else."

  "Query?" said Lady Tyrrell. "Don't get into a scrape, Bessie. Does your Captain report on the flirtation with young Simmonds?"

  "Who is he?" asked Cecil

  "The trainer's son," said Bessie. "It is only a bit of imitation of Aurora Floyd."

  "You know she's an heiress," said Lady Tyrrell. "You had better take care how you put such a temptation in his way."

  "I don't suppose the Moys are anybody," said Cecil.

  "Not in your sense, my dear," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing; "but from another level there's a wide gap between the heiress of Proudfoot Lawn and the heir of the training stables."

  "Cecil looks simply disgusted," said Bessie. "She can't bear the Moys betwixt the wind and her nobility."

  "They are the great drawback to Swansea, I confess," said Cecil.

  "Oh! are you thinking of Swanslea?" cried Mrs Duncombe.

  "Yes," said Lady Tyrrell, "she is one to be congratulated on emancipation."

  "Well can I do so," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Don't I know what mothers-in-law are? Mine is the most wonderful old Goody, with exactly the notions of your meek Mrs. Miles."

  "Incompatibility decidedly," said Lady Tyrrell.

  "Only she was the Spartan mother combined with it," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts's hymns about going to church being like a little heaven below, isn't it?"

  "Increasing his longing that way," said Lady Tyrrell.

  "She doesn't even light the drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear people should not sit in their rooms and meditate," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she regularly hates me."

  "Not very wonderful," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing. "I suppose there is a charming reciprocity of feeling."

  "I think I can afford to pity her," said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly. "Just fancy what I must have been to her! You know I was brought up in a convent at Paris. The very bosom of the scarlet woman."

  "But," interrupted Cecil, "you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!"

  "Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone. There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all. I was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad. Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball. Very odd he should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one is ticketed, I believe. My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me, and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home-and then!"

  "And then?"

  "Cecil may have some faint idea."

  "Of what you underwent?"

  "She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you know! I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer- meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!"

  "Did she make you learn Watts's hymns?"

  "No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob. She told him she had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow very nearly cried."

  "Ah, those mothers have such an advantage over their sons," said Lady Tyrrell.

  "I determined I would never go near her again after that," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob goes; he is really fond of her; but I knew we should keep the peace better apart. I let her have the children now and then, when it is convenient, and oddly enough they like it; but I shall soon have to stop that, for I won't have them think me a reprobate; and she has thought me ten times worse ever since I found out that I had brains and could use them."

  "Quite true," said Camilla; "there's no peacemaker like absence."

  "The only pity is that Swanslea is no further off," returned Bessie.

  And so it was that Cecil, backed by her two counsellors, held her p
urpose, and Raymond sadly spoke of the plan of separation to Julius. Both thought Mrs. Poynsett's own plan the best, though they could not bear the idea of her leaving her own house. Raymond was much displeased.

  "At least," he said, "there is a reprieve till this frantic fortnight is over. I envy your exemption from the turmoil."

  "I wish you would exempt yourself from the races," said Julius. "The mischief they have done in these villages is incalculable! The very men-servants are solicited to put into sweepstakes, whenever they go into Wil'sbro'; and only this morning Mrs. Hornblower has been to me about her son."

  "I thought he was the great feather in Herbert Bowater's cap."

  "Showing the direction of the wind only too well. Since Herbert has been infected with the general insanity, poor Harry Hornblower has lapsed into his old ways, and is always hanging about the 'Three Pigeons' with some of the swarm of locusts who have come down already to brawl round the training stables. This has come to Truelove's ears, and he has notice of dismissal. At the mother's desire I spoke to Truelove, but he told me that at last year's races the lad had gambled at a great rate, and had only been saved from dishonesty by detection in time. He was so penitent that Truelove gave him another trial, on condition that he kept out of temptation; but now he has gone back to it, Mr. Truelove thinks it the only way of saving him from some fresh act of dishonesty. 'It is all up with them,' he says, 'when once they take that turn.'"

  "You need not speak as if I were accountable for all the blackguardism."

  "Every man is accountable who lends his name and position to bolster up a field of vice."

  "Come, come, Julius. Remember what men have been on the turf."

  "If those men had withheld their support, fashion would not have led so many to their ruin."

  "Hundreds are present without damage. It is a hearty out-of-doors country amusement, and one of the few general holidays that bring all ranks together."

  "You speak of racing as it has been or might be in some golden age," said Julius. "Of course there is no harm in trying one horse's speed against another; but look at the facts and say whether it is right to support an amusement that becomes such an occasion of evil."

  "Because a set of rascals choose to bring their villainies there you would have the sport of the whole neighbourhood given up. 'No cakes and ale' with a vengeance!"

  "The cakes and ale that make a brother offend ought to be given up."

  "That sentences all public amusements."

  "Not necessarily. The question is of degree. Other amusements may have evil incidentally connected with them, and may lead to temptation, but it is not their chief excitement. The play or the opera is the prime interest, and often a refined and elevated one, but at races the whole excitement depends upon the horses, and is so fictitious that it needs to be enhanced by this betting system. No better faculty is called into play. Some few men may understand the merits of the horse; many more, and most of the ladies, simply like the meeting in numbers; but there is no higher faculty called out, and in many cases the whole attraction is the gambling, and the fouler wickedness in the background."

  "Which would be ten thousand times worse if all gentlemen stood aloof."

  "What good do these gentlemen do beyond keeping the contest honourable and the betting in which they are concerned? Do not they make themselves decoys to the young men on the border-land who would stay away if the turf were left to the mere vulgar? Why should they not leave it to drop like bull-baiting or cock-fighting?"

  "Well done, Julius!" said Raymond. "You will head a clerical crusade against the turf, but I do not think it just to compare it with those ferocious sports which were demoralizing in themselves; while this is to large numbers simply a harmless holiday and excuse for an outing, not to speak of the benefit to the breed of horses."

  "I do not say that all competitions of speed are necessarily wrong, but I do say that the present way of managing races makes them so mischievous that no one ought to encourage them."

  "I wonder what Backsworth and Wil'sbro' would say to you! It is their great harvest. Lodgings for those three days pay a quarter's rent; and where so many interests are concerned, a custom cannot lightly be dropped."

  "Well," said Raymond with a sigh, "it is not pleasure that takes me. I shall look on with impartial eyes, if that is what you wish."

  Poor Raymond! it was plain that he had little liking for anything that autumn. He rode over to Swanslea with Cecil, and when he said it was six miles off, she called it four; what he termed bare, marshy, and dreary, was in her eyes open and free; his swamp was her lake; and she ran about discovering charms and capabilities where he saw nothing but damp and dry rot, and, above all, banishment.

  Would she have her will? Clio would have thought her lecture had taken effect, and mayhap, it added something to the general temper of self-assertion, but in fact Cecil had little time to think, so thickly did gaieties and preparations crowd upon her. It was the full glory and importance of the Member's wife, her favourite ideal, but all the time her satisfaction was marred by secret heartache as she saw how wearily and formally her husband dragged through whatever fell to his lot, saw how jaded and depressed he looked, and heard him laugh his company laugh without any heart in it. She thought it all his mother's fault, and meant to make up for everything when she had him to herself.

  Julius had his troubles. When Rosamond found that races were what she called his pet aversion, she resisted with all her might. Her home associations were all on fire again. She would not condemn the pleasures she had shared with her parents, by abstinence from them, any more than she would deviate from Lady Rathforlane's nursery management to please Mrs. Poynsett and Susan. A bonnet, which Julius trusted never to see in church, was purchased in the face of his remark that every woman who carried her gay attire to the stand made herself an additional feather on the hook of evil. At first she laughed, and then grew tearfully passionate in protests that nothing should induce her to let her brothers see what their own father did turned into a crime; and if they went without her to take care of them, and fell into mischief, whose fault would that be?

  It was vain to hint that Tom was gone back to school, and Terry cared more for the Olympic dust than that of Backsworth. She had persuaded herself that his absence would be high treason to her father, whom she respected far more at a distance than when she had been struggling with his ramshackle, easy-going ways. Even now, she was remonstrating with him about poor Terry's present misery. His last half year had been spent under the head-master, who had cultivated his historical and poetical intelligence, whereas Mr. Driver was nothing but an able crammer; and the moment the lad became interested and diverged from routine, he was choked off because such things would not 'tell.' If the 'coach' had any enthusiasm it was for mathematics, and thitherwards Terry's brain was undeveloped. With misplaced ingenuity, he argued that sums came right by chance and that Euclid was best learnt by heart, for 'the pictures' simply confused him; and when Julius, amazed at finding so clever a boy in the novel position of dunce, tried to find out what he did know of arithmetic, his ignorance and inappreciation were so unfathomable that Julius doubted whether the power or the will was at fault. At any rate he was wretched in the present, and dismal as to the future, and looked on his brother-in-law as in league with the oppressors for trying to rouse his sense of duty.

  Remonstrance seemed blunted and ineffective everywhere. When Herbert Bowater tried to reclaim Harry Hornblower into giving up his notorious comrades, he received the dogged reply, "Why should not a chap take his pleasure as well as you?" With the authority at once of clergyman and squire's son, he said, "Harry, you forget yourself. I am not going to discuss my occupations with you."

  "You know better," rudely interrupted the lad. "Racketing about all over the country, and coming home late at night. You'd best not speak of other folks!"

  As a matter of fact, Herbert had never been later than was required by a walk home from a dinner, or a very moderate cricke
t supper; and his conscience was clear as to the quality of his amusements; but instead of, as hitherto, speaking as youth to youth, he used the language of the minister to the insulting parishioner. "I am sorry I have disturbed Mrs. Hornblower, but the case is not parallel. Innocent amusement is one thing-it is quite another to run into haunts that have already proved dangerous to your principles."

  Harry Hornblower laughed. "It's no go coming the parson over me, Mr. Bowater! It's well known what black coats are, and how they never cry out so loud upon other folks as when they've had a jolly lark among themselves. No concealment now, we're up to a thing or two, and parsons, and capitalists, and squires will have to look sharp."

  This oration, smacking of 'The Three Pigeons,' was delivered so loud as to bring the mother on the scene. "O, Harry, Harry, you aren't never speaking like that to Mr. Bowater!"

  "When folks jaw me about what's nothing to them I always give them as good as they bring. That's my principle," said Harry, flinging out of the house, while the curate tried to console the weeping mother, and soon after betook himself to his Rector with no mild comments on the lad's insolence.

  "Another warning how needful it is for us to avoid all occasion for misconstruction," said Julius.

  "We do, all of us," said Herbert. "Even that wretched decoction, Fuller, and that mere dictionary, Driver, never gave cause for imputations like these. What has the fellow got hold of?"

  "Stories of the last century 'two-bottle men,'" said Julius, "trumped up by unionists now against us in these days. The truth is that the world triumphs and boasts whenever it catches the ministry on its own ground. Its ideal is as exacting as the saintly one."

  "I say Rector," exclaimed the curate, after due pause, "you'll be at Evensong on Saturday? The ladies at Sirenwood want me to go to Backsworth with them to hear the band."

  "Cannot young Strangeways take care of his sisters?"

  "I would not ask it, sir, but they have set their heart on seeing Rood House, and want me to go with them because of knowing Dr. Easterby. Then I'm to dine with them, and that's the very last of it for me. There's no more croquet after this week."