Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 10

"Would you have had me accept him, aunt?"

"Yes," cried Lady Marabout, firmly, forgetting every vestige of "duty,"

and every possibility of dear Adeliza's vengeance, "if you love him, I would, decidedly. When I married my dear Philip's father, he was what Cardonnel is, a cavalry man, as far off his family t.i.tle then as Cardonnel is off his now."

"The more reason I should not imitate your imprudence, my dear aunt; death might not carry off the intermediate heirs quite so courteously in this case! No, I refused Major Cardonnel, and I did rightly; I should have repented it by now had I accepted him. There is nothing more silly than to be led away by romance. You De Boncoeurs _are_ romantic, you know; we Valletorts are happily free from the weakness. I am very tired, aunt, so good night."

The Hon. Val went, the waxlight she carried shedding a paler shade on her handsome face, whiter and more set than usual, but held more proudly, as if it already wore the Doncaster coronet; and Lady Marabout sighed as she rang for her maid.

"Of course she acted wisely, and I ought to be very pleased; but that poor dear fellow!--his eyes _are_ so like his mother's!"

"I congratulate you, mother, on a clear field. You've sent poor Arthur off very nicely," said Carruthers, the next morning, paying his general visit in her boudoir before the day began, which is much the same time in Town as in Greenland, and commences, whatever almanacs may say, about two or half-past P.M. "Cardonnel left this morning for Heaven knows where, and is going to exchange, Sh.e.l.leto tells me, into the ----th, which is ordered to Bengal, so _he_ won't trouble you much more.

When shall I be allowed to congratulate my cousin as the future d.u.c.h.ess of Doncaster?"

"Pray, don't tease me, Philip. I've been vexed enough about your friend.

When he came to me this morning, and asked me if there was no hope, and I was obliged to tell him there was none, I felt wretched," said Lady Marabout, as nearly pettishly as she ever said anything; "but I am really not responsible, not in the least. Besides, even you must admit that Goodwood is a much more desirable alliance, and if Valencia had accepted Cardonnel, pray what would all Belgravia have said? Why, that, disappointed of Goodwood, she took the other out of pure pique! We owe something to society, Philip, and something to ourselves."

Carruthers laughed:

"Ah, my dear mother, you women will never be worth all you ought to be till you leave off kowtow-ing to 'what will be said,' and learn to defy that terrible oligarchy of the Qu'en dira-t-on?"

"When will Goodwood propose?" wondered Lady Marabout, fifty times a day, and Valencia Valletort wondered too. Whitebait was being eaten, and yachts being fitted, manned, and victualled, outstanding Ascot debts were being settled, and outstanding bills were being pa.s.sed hurriedly through St. Stephen's; all the clockwork of the season was being wound up for the last time previous to a long standstill, and going at a deuce of a pace, as if longing to run down, and give its million wheels and levers peace; while everybody who'd anything to settle, whether monetary or matrimonial, personal or political, was making up his mind about it and getting it off his hands, and some men were being pulled up by wide-awake Jews to see what they were "made of," while others were pulled up by adroit dowagers to know what they had "meant" before the accounts of the season were scored out and settled. "Had Goodwood proposed?" asked all Belgravia. "Why hadn't Goodwood proposed?" asked Lady Marabout and Valencia. Twenty most favorable opportunities for the performance of that ceremony had Lady Marabout made for him "accidentally on purpose" the last fortnight; each of those times she had fancied the precious fish hooked and landed, and each time she had seen him, free from the hook, floating on the surface of society.

"He _must_ speak definitely to-morrow," thought Lady Marabout. But the larvae of to-morrow burst into the b.u.t.terfly of to-day, and to-day pa.s.sed into the chrysalis of yesterday, and Goodwood was always very nearly caught, and never _quite_!

"Come up-stairs, Philip; I want to show you a little Paul Potter I bought the other day," said Lady Marabout one morning, returning from a shopping expedition to Regent Street, meeting her son at her own door just descending from his tilbury. "Lord Goodwood calling, did you say, Soames? Oh, very well."

And Lady Marabout floated up the staircase, but signed to her footman to open the door, not of the drawing-room, but of her own boudoir.

"The Potter is in my own room, Philip; you must come in here if you wish to see it," said that adroit lady, for the benefit of Soames. But when the door was shut, Lady Marabout lowered her voice confidentially: "The Potter isn't here, dear; I had it hung in the little cabinet through the drawing-rooms, but I don't wish to go up there for a few moments--you understand."

Carruthers threw himself in a chair, and laughed till the dogs Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore all barked in a furious concert.

"I understand! So Goody's positively coming to the point up there, is he?"

"No doubt he is," said Lady Marabout, reprovingly. "Why else should he come in when I was not at home? There is nothing extraordinary in it.

The only thing I have wondered at is his having delayed so long."

"If a man had to hang himself, would you wonder he put off pulling the bolt?"

"I don't see any point in your jests at all!" returned Lady Marabout.

"There is nothing ridiculous in winning such a girl as Valencia."

"No; but the question here is not of winning her, but of buying her. The price is a little high--a ducal coronet and splendid settlements, a wedding-ring and bondage for life; but he will buy her, nevertheless.

Cardonnel couldn't pay the first half of the price, and so he was swept out of the auction-room. You are shocked, mother! Ah, truth _is_ shocking sometimes, and always _maladroit_; one oughtn't to bring it into ladies' boudoirs."

"Hold your tongue, Philip! I will not have you so satirical. Where do you take it from? Not from me, I am sure! Hark! there is Goodwood going!

That is his step on the stairs, I think! Dear me, Philip, I wish you sympathized with me a little more, for I _do_ feel happy, and I can't help it; dear Adeliza will be so gratified."

"My dear mother, I'll do my best to be sympathetic, I'll go and congratulate Goodwood as he gets in his cab, if you fancy I ought; but, you see, if I were in Dahomey beholding the head of my best friend coming off, I couldn't quite get up the amount of sympathy in their pleasure at the refreshing sight the Dahomites might expect from me, and so----"

But Lady Marabout missed the comparison of herself to a Dahomite, for she had opened the door and was crossing to the drawing-rooms, her eyes bright, her step elastic, her heart exultant at the triumph of her manoeuvres. The Hon. Val was playing with some ferns in an etagere at the bottom of the farthest room, and responded to the kiss her aunt bestowed on her about as much as if she had been one of the statuettes on the consoles.

"Well, love, _what did he say_?" asked Lady Marabout, breathlessly, with eager delight and confident antic.i.p.ation.

Like drops of ice on warm rose-leaves fell each word of the intensely chill and slightly sulky response on Lady Marabout's heart.

"He said that he goes to Cowes to-morrow for the Royal Yacht Squadron dinner, and then on in the _Anadyomene_ to the Spitzbergen coast for walruses. He left a P. P. C. card for you."

"_Walruses!_" shrieked Lady Marabout.

"Walruses," responded the Hon. Val.

"And said no more than that?"

"No more than that!"

The Pet Eligible had flown off uncaught after all! Lady Marabout needed no further explanation--_tout fut dit_. They were both silent and paralyzed. Do you suppose Pompey and Cornelia had much need of words when they met at Lesbos after the horrible deroute of Pharsalia?

"I'm in your mother's blackest books for ever, Phil," said Goodwood to Carruthers in the express to Southampton for the R.Y.C. Squadron Regatta of that year, "but I can't help it. It's no good to badger us into marriage; it only makes us double, and run to earth. I _was_ near compromising myself with your cousin, I grant, but the thing that chilled me was, she's too _studied_. It's all got up beforehand, and goes upon clockwork, and it don't interest one accordingly; the mechanism's perfect, but we know when it will raise its hand, and move its eyes, and bow its head, and when we've looked at its beauty once we get tired of it. That's the fault in Valencia, and in scores of them, and as long as they _won't_ be natural, why, they can't have much chance with us!"

Which piece of advice Carruthers, when he next saw his mother, repeated to her, for the edification of all future debutantes, adding a small sermon of his own:

"My dear mother, I ask you, is it to be expected that we can marry just to oblige women and please the newspapers? Would you have me marched off to Hanover Square because it would be a kindness to take one of Lady Elmers' marriageable daughters, or because a leading journal fills up an empty column with farcical lamentation on our dislike to the bondage? Of course you wouldn't; yet, for no better reasons, you'd have chained poor Goodwood, if you could have caught him. Whether a man likes to marry or not is certainly his own private business, though just now it's made a popular public discussion. Do you wonder that we shirk the inst.i.tution?

If we have not fortune, marriage cramps our energies, our resources, our ambitions, loads us with petty cares, and trebles our anxieties. To one who rises with such a burden on his shoulders, how many sink down in obscurity, who, but for the leaden weight of pecuniary difficulties with which marriage has laden their feet, might have climbed the highest round in the social ladder? On the other side, if we have fortune, if we have the unhappy happiness to be eligible, is it wonderful that we are not flattered by the worship of young ladies who love us for what we shall give them, that we don't feel exactly honored by being courted for what we are worth, and that we're not over-willing to give up our liberty to oblige those who look on us only as good speculations? What think you, eh?"

Lady Marabout looked up and shook her head mournfully:

"My dear Philip, you are right. I see it--I don't dispute it; but when a thing becomes personal, you know philosophy becomes difficult. I have such letters from poor dear Adeliza--such letters! Of course she thinks it is all my fault, and I believe she will break entirely with me. It is so very shocking. You see all Belgravia coupled their names, and the very day that he went off to Cowes in that heartless, abominable manner, if an announcement of the alliance as arranged did not positively appear in the _Court Circular_! It did indeed! I am sure Anne Hautton was at the bottom of it; it would be just like her. Perhaps poor Valencia cannot be pitied after her treatment of Cardonnel, but it is very hard on _me_."

Lady Marabout is right: when a thing becomes personal, philosophy becomes difficult. When your gun misses fire, and a fine c.o.c.k bird whirrs up from the covert and takes wing unharmed, never to swell the number of your triumphs and the size of your game-bag, could you by any chance find it in your soul to sympathize with the bird's gratification at your mortification and its own good luck? I fancy not.

LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES;

OR

THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.

IN THREE SEASONS.

SEASON THE SECOND--THE OGRE.

"If there be one cla.s.s I dislike more than another, it is that cla.s.s; and if there be one person in town I utterly detest, it is that man!"

said our friend Lady Marabout, with much unction, one morning, to an audience consisting of Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore, a c.o.c.katoo, an Angora cat, and a young lady sitting in a rocking-chair, reading the magazines of the month. The dogs barked, the c.o.c.katoo screamed, the cat purred a vehement affirmative, the human auditor looked up, and laughed: