That Unfortunate Marriage Volume Iii Part 6

Mr. Dormer-Smith hastened to change the subject. "Post in, I see," he said. "Any news?"

"I have a very nice letter from Constance Hadlow," answered Pauline, with her eyes absently fixed on the fire. "How thoughtful that girl is!

What tact! What proper feeling! Ah! the contrast between her and May is painful at times."

Mr. Dormer-Smith made a little inarticulate sound, which might mean anything. Despite her beauty, which he admired, Miss Hadlow was no great favourite of his. But he would not imperil the present calm in his domestic atmosphere by saying so.

"Misfortunes," pursued Pauline, still gazing at the fire, "never come singly, they say; and really I believe it."

"Does Miss Hadlow announce any misfortune?"

"Oh no!--at least, we are bound not to look on it as a misfortune. Who could wish him to linger, poor fellow? She is staying near Combe Park, and she says Lucius has been quite given up by the doctors. It is a question of days--perhaps of hours."

"No? By George! Poor old Lucius!" returned Mr. Dormer-Smith, with a touch of real feeling in his tone.

"Of course, this will make an immense difference in May's prospects. I don't mean to say that she will easily find another millionnaire, with such extraordinarily liberal ideas about settlements as Mr. Bragg hinted to me this morning; _that_ is, humanly speaking, not possible," said Mrs. Dormer-Smith solemnly. "Still, the affair may not be such an irretrievable disaster as we feared."

"How do you mean?" asked Frederick, whose mind, as we know, moved rather slowly.

"It _must_ make a difference to her," repeated his wife in a musing tone. "The only child and heiress of the future Viscount Castlecombe, of course----"

"By George! I didn't think of that at the moment. Yes, Gus is the next.

I suppose that's quite certain?"

Mrs. Dormer-Smith did not even condescend to answer this query, but merely raised her eyebrows with a superior and melancholy smile.

Frederick pondered a minute or so; then he said, "You say 'heiress,' but I don't think your uncle would leave Gus a pound more than he couldn't help leaving him."

"I fear that is likely. Still, there is much of the land that must come to Augustus, and Uncle George has enormously improved the estate. Do you know I begin to hope that I may see my poor unfortunate brother come back and take his proper place in the world? When I remember what he was five-and-twenty years ago, it does seem cruel that he should have been absolutely eclipsed during all this time. I recollect so well the day he first appeared in his uniform. He was brilliant. Poor Augustus!"

Mr. Dormer-Smith felt that the difficulty of telling his wife what he had just heard a.s.sumed a new shape. He had feared to add to the load of what Pauline considered family misfortunes; now it seemed as if his news would dash her rising spirits, and darken roseate hopes. He pa.s.sed his large hand over his mouth and chin, and said, with his eyes fixed uneasily on his wife, who was still contemplating the fire with an air of abstraction--

"Ah! Yes. But--there may be a Lady Castlecombe to find a place in the world for."

"Not improbable. I hope there may be. Augustus is little past the prime of life. It would compensate for much if----"

"I'm sorry to say, Pauline, that there's no chance of that--I mean of such a marriage as you are thinking of. I came upstairs on purpose to tell you. In one way it won't make any difference to _us_. And I'm sure your brother has never deserved much affection or consideration from you. But still, I know it will worry you."

Mrs. Dormer-Smith sat upright, with her hands grasping the two arms of her chair, and said, with a sort of despairing calm, "Be good enough to go on, Frederick. I entreat you to be explicit. I dare say you mean well, but I do not think I _can_ endure much more suspense."

"Well, you know the rumours we've heard from time to time about that disreputable Italian woman in Brussels--opera-singer, or something of the kind? Well--I'm afraid there's no use deluding ourselves; I think it comes on good authority--your brother has married her."

CHAPTER IV.

Although the little house in Collingwood Terrace had not, perhaps, fully justified Martin's cheery prophecy that it would turn out an "awfully jolly little place when once they got used to it," yet there, as elsewhere, peace, goodwill, order, and cleanliness mitigated what was mean and unpleasant. Mrs. Bransby's love of personal adornment rested on a better basis than vanity, although she was, doubtless, no more free from vanity than many a plainer woman. She had an artistic pleasure in beauty and elegance, and an objection to s.l.u.ttishness in all its Protean forms, which might almost be described as the moral sense applied to material things. Her delicate taste suffered, of course, from much that surrounded her in the squeezed little suburban house. But, far from sinking into a helpless slattern, according to the picture of her painted by Mrs. Dormer-Smith's commonplace fancy, she exerted herself to the utmost to make a pleasant and cheerful home for her children. Her life was one of real toil, although many well-meaning ladies of the Dormer-Smith type would have looked with suspicion on the care Mrs.

Bransby took of her hands, and would have been able to sympathize more thoroughly with her troubles if her collars and cuffs had occasionally shown a crease or a stain.

Mr. Rivers's room had been prepared with the most solicitous care. It was a labour of love with all the family. Martin and his sister Ethel did good work, and even the younger children insisted on "helping," to the irreparable damage of their pinafores, and temporary eclipse of their rosy faces by dust and blacklead. The young ones were elated by the prospect of seeing their playfellow Owen once again; Martin relied on his a.s.sistance to persuade Mrs. Bransby that he (Martin) should and could earn something; and even Mrs. Bransby could not help building on Owen's arrival to bring some amelioration into her life beyond the substantial a.s.sistance of his weekly payments.

He arrived in the evening, and was received by the children with enthusiasm, and by Mrs. Bransby with an effort to be calm and cheerful, and to suppress her tears, which touched him greatly, seeing her, as he did for the first time, in her widow's garb. He was touched, too, by her almost humble anxiety that he should be content with the accommodation provided for him, and earnestly a.s.sured her that he considered himself luxuriously lodged.

And, indeed, for himself he was more than satisfied; but he could not help contrasting this mean little house with Mrs. Bransby's beautiful home in Oldchester, and he found it singularly painful to see her in these altered circ.u.mstances. In this respect, as in so many others, his feeling differed as widely as possible from Theodore's. For Theodore, although fastidious and exacting as to all that regarded his own comfort, sincerely considered his step-mother's home to be in all respects quite good enough for her, and had privately taxed her with insensibility and ingrat.i.tude for showing so little satisfaction in it.

All the family, including Phoebe, who grinned a recognition from the top of the kitchen stairs, agreed in declaring Owen to be looking remarkably well. He was somewhat browned by the Spanish sunshine, and he had an indefinable air of bright hopefulness. In Oldchester he used to look more dreamy.

"It is business which is grinding my faculties to a fine edge," he answered laughingly, when Mrs. Bransby made some remark to the above effect. "I shall become quite dangerously sharp if I go on at this rate."

"I don't think you look at all sharp," replied Mrs. Bransby gently.

Whereupon Martin told his mother that she was not polite; and Bobby and Billy giggled; and they all sat down to their evening meal very cheerfully.

When the table was cleared, and the younger children had gone away to bed under Ethel's superintendence, Mrs. Bransby said, "You smoke, do you not, Mr. Rivers?"

"Not here, in your sitting-room."

"Oh, pray do! It does not annoy me in the least."

Owen hesitated, and Martin thereupon put in his word. "Mother does not mind it, really. Not decent, human kind of tobacco such as gentlemen use. That beast, old Bucher, used to smoke a great pipe that smelt like double-distilled essence of public-house tap-rooms."

"Well, a cigarette, if I may," said Owen, pulling out his case. Then, drawing the only comfortable easy-chair in the room towards the fireside, he asked, "Is that where you like to have it?"

"That is your chair," said Mrs. Bransby timidly.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Owen, genuinely shocked, "what have I done to make you suppose I could possibly be capable of taking your seat?"

He gently took her hand and led her to the chair. Then, looking round the little parlour, he spied a footstool, which he placed beneath her feet. As he looked up from doing so, he saw her sweet pale face, with the delicate curves of the mouth twitching nervously in an endeavour to smile, and the soft dark eyes full of tears. "You must not spoil me in this fashion," she began. But the attempt to speak was too much for her.

She broke down, and covered her face with her trembling hands.

Martin instantly crossed the room, and stood close beside her, placing one arm round her shoulders, and turning away from Owen, so as to fence his mother in. The boy's protecting att.i.tude was pathetically eloquent.

And so was the way in which his mother presently laid her head down upon his shoulder. They remained thus for a little while. Owen stood by the fire with his elbow on the mantelpiece, and his forehead resting on his hand. And all three were silent.

At length, when Martin felt that his mother was no longer trembling, and that her sobs were subsiding, he looked round and said, "Mother's upset by being treated properly. No wonder! It's like meeting with a white man after living among cannibals. If you had ever seen that beast Bucher, you'd understand it."

"Shall I go away?" asked Owen.

Mrs. Bransby quickly held out one hand entreatingly, while she dried her eyes with the other. "Please stay!" she said. "And please light your cigarette! And please draw your chair near the fire, and make yourself as comfortable--or as little uncomfortable--as you can! Forgive me. I do not often break down in this way; do I, Martin?"

"No," answered Martin, moving the lamp so as to throw his mother's tear-stained face into shadow, and then squeezing his own chair into the corner beside hers, "no; you were cheerful enough with Bucher. Well, of course one _had_ either to take Bucher from the ludicrous side, or else shoot him through the head, and have done with him!"

"I see," said Owen, nodding, and not sorry to hide his own emotion under cover of a joke. "And Mrs. Bransby was unable to make up her mind to justifiably homicide him?"

"Yes. He _was_ a beast, though, and no mistake! Phoebe was in such a rage with him once, that she threatened to throw a hot batter-pudding at his head. I'm sorry now she didn't," added Martin, with pensive regret.

Then they talked quietly. Mrs. Bransby, with womanly tact, led Owen to speak about himself and his prospects. There was little to tell in the way of incident. He had been working steadily, and did not dislike his work. And he had been well contented with his treatment by Mr. Bragg.

Mr. Bragg had made him an offer to send him, in the spring, to Buenos Ayres. It might be an opening to fortune.