The Hoyden Part 12

"And as for this affair--objectionable as the girl is, still one must give and take a little when one's fortunes are at the ebb. And I will save my dearest Maurice at all risks if I can, no matter what grief it costs _me_. Who am I"--with a picturesque sigh--"that I should interfere with the prospects of my child? And this girl! If Maurice can be persuaded to have her----"

"My dear Tessie, what a word!" says Margaret, rising, with a distinct frown. "Has he _only_ to ask, then, and have?"

"Beyond doubt," says Lady Rylton insolently, waving her fan to and fro, "if he does it in the right way. In all my experience, my dear Margaret, I have never known a woman to frown upon a man who was as handsome, as well-born, as _chic_ as Maurice! Even though the man might be a--well"--smiling and lifting her shoulders--"it's a rude word, but--well, a very devil!"

She looks deliberately at Margaret over her fan, who really appears in this dull light _nearly_ as young as she is. The look is a cruel one, hideously cruel. Even Marian Bethune, whose bowels of compa.s.sion are extraordinary small, changes colour, and lets her red-brown eyes rest on the small woman lounging in the deep chair with a rather murderous gaze.

Yet Lady Rylton smiles on, enjoying the changes in Margaret's face.

It is a terrible smile, coming from so fragile a creature.

Margaret's face has grown white, but she answers coldly and with deliberation. All that past horrible time--her lover, his unworthiness, his desertion--all her young, _young_ life lies once more ma.s.sacred before her.

"The women who give in to such fascination, such mere outward charms, are fools!" says she with a strength that adorns her.

"Oh, come! Come now, dearest Margaret," says her aunt, with the gayest of little laughs, "would you call _yourself_ a fool? Why, remember, your own dear Harold was----"

"Pray spare me!" says Miss Knollys, in so cold, so haughty, so commanding a tone, that even Lady Rylton sinks beneath it. She makes an effort to sustain her position and laughs lightly, but for all that she lets her last sentence remain a fragment.

"You think Maurice will propose to this Miss Bolton?" says Marian Bethune, leaning forward. There is something sarcastic in her smile.

"He must. It is detestable, of course. One would like a girl in his own rank, but there are so few of them with money, and when there is one, her people want her to marry a Duke or a foreign Prince--so tiresome of them!"

"It is all such folly," says Margaret, knitting her brows.

"Utter folly," says Lady Rylton. "That is what makes it so wise! It would be folly to marry a satyr--satyrs are horrid--but if the satyr had _millions!_ Oh, the wisdom of it!"

"You go too far!" says Margaret. "Money is not everything."

"And Maurice is not a satyr," says Mrs. Bethune, a trifle unwisely.

She has been watching the players on the ground below. Lady Rylton looks at her.

"Of course _you_ object to it," says she.

"I!" says Marian. "Why should I object to it? I talk of marriage only in the abstract."

"I am glad of that!" Lady Rylton's eyes are still fixed on hers.

"This will be a veritable marriage, I a.s.sure you; I have set my mind on it. It is terrible to contemplate, but one must give way sometimes; yet the thought of throwing that girl into the arms of darling Maurice----"

She breaks off, evidently overcome, yet behind the cobweb she presses to her cheeks she has an eye on Marian.

"I don't think Maurice's arms could hold her," says Mrs. Bethune, with a low laugh. It is a strange laugh. Lady Rylton's glance grows keener. "Such a mere doll of a thing. A mite!" She laughs again, but this time (having caught Lady Rylton's concentrated gaze) in a very ordinary manner--the pa.s.sion, the anger has died out of it.

"Yes, she's a mere mite," says Lady Rylton. "She is positively trivial! She is in effect a perfect idiot in some ways. You know I have tried to impress her--to show her that she is not altogether below our level--as she certainly _is_--but she has refused to see my kindness. She--she's very fatiguing," says Lady Rylton, with a long-suffering sigh. "But one gets accustomed to grievances. This girl, just because she is hateful to me, is the one I must take into my bosom. She is going to give her fortune to Maurice!"

"And Maurice?" asks Margaret.

"Is going to take it," returns his mother airily. "And is going to give her, what she has never had--_a name!"_

"A cruel compact," says Margaret slowly, but with decision. "I think this marriage should not be so much as thought of! That child! and Maurice, who cares nothing for her. Marian"--Miss Knollys turns suddenly to Marian, who has withdrawn behind the curtains, as if determined to have nothing to say further to the discussion-- "Marian, come here. Say you think Maurice should not marry this silly child--this baby."

"Oh! as for me," says Mrs. Bethune, coming out from behind the curtains, her face a little pale, "what is my weight in this matter?

Nothing! nothing! Let Maurice marry as he will."

_"As he will!"_ Lady Rylton repeats her words, and, rising, comes towards her. "Why don't you answer?" says she. "We want your answer.

Give it!"

"I have no answer," says Mrs. Bethune slowly. "Why should he not marry Miss Bolton?--and again, why should he? Marriage, as we have been told all our lives, is but a lottery--they should have said a mockery," with a little bitter smile. "One could have understood that."

"Then you advise Maurice to marry this girl?" asks Lady Rylton eagerly.

"Oh, no, no! I advise nothing," says Marian, with a little wave of her arms.

"But why?" demands Lady Rylton angrily.

She had depended upon Marian to support her against Margaret.

"Simply because I won't," says Mrs. Bethune, her strange eyes beginning to blaze.

"Because you daren't?" questions Lady Rylton, with a sneer.

"I don't understand you," says Marian coldly.

"Don't you?" Lady Rylton's soft, little, fair face grows diabolical.

"Then let me explain." Margaret makes a movement towards her, but she waves her back. "Pray let me explain, Margaret. Our dear Marian is so intensely dull that she wants a word in season. We all know why she objects to a marriage of any sort. She made a fiasco of her own first marriage, and now hopes----"

She would have continued her cruel speech but that Mrs. Bethune, who has risen, breaks into it. She comes forward in a wild, tempestuous fashion, her eyes afire, her nostrils dilated! Her beautiful red hair seems alight as she descends upon Lady Rylton.

"And that marriage!" says she, in a suffocating tone. "Who made it?

_Who?"_ She looks like a fury. There is hatred, an almost murderous hatred, in the glance she casts at the little, languid, pretty woman before her, who looks back at her with uplifted shoulders, and an all-round air of surprise and disapprobation. _"You_ to taunt me!"

says she, in a low, condensed tone. _"You_, who hurried, who _forced_ me into a marriage with a man I detested! You, who gave me to understand, when I resisted, that I had no place on this big earth except a pauper's place--a place in a workhouse!"

She stands tall, grave, magnificent, in her fury before Lady Rylton, who, in spite of the courage born of want of feeling, now shrinks from her as if affrighted.

"If you persist in going on like this," says she, pressing her smelling-bottle to her nose, "I must ask you to go away--to go at once. I hate scenes. You _must_ go!"

"I went away once," says Mrs. Bethune, standing pale and cold before her, "at your command--I went to the home of the man you selected for me. What devil's life I led with him you may guess at. _You_ knew him, I did not. I was seventeen then." She pauses; the breath she draws seems to rive her body in twain. "I came back----" she says presently.

"A widow?"

"A widow--_thank G.o.d!"_

A silence follows; something of tragedy seems to have fallen into the air--with that young lovely creature standing there, upright, pa.s.sionate, her arms clasped behind her head, as the heroine of it.

The sunlight from the dying day lights up the red, rich beauty of her hair, the deadly pallor of her skin. Through it all the sound of the tennis-b.a.l.l.s from below, as they hurry to and fro through the hair, can be heard. Perhaps it reaches her. She flings herself suddenly into a chair, and bursts out laughing.

"Let us come back to common-sense," cries she. "What were we talking of? The marriage of Maurice to this little plebeian--this little female Croesus. Well, what of the argument--what?"

Her manner is a little excited.