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THAT UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE.
BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE
AUTHOR OF "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE," "A CHARMING FELLOW," "LIKE SHIPS
UPON THE SEA," ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1888.
(_All rights reserved._)
THAT UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER I.
Augustus Cheffington had made an unfortunate marriage. That was admitted
on all hands. When he was a Cornet in a cavalry regiment quartered in
the ancient Cathedral City of Oldchester, he ran away with pretty Susan
Dobbs, the daughter of his landlady. Augustus's friends and family--all
the Cheffingtons, the Dormer-Smiths, the Castlecombes--deplored this
rash step. It was never mentioned, either at the time or afterwards,
without expressions of deep commiseration for him.
Nevertheless, from one point of view there were compensations. This
unfortunate marriage was made responsible for a great many shortcomings,
which would otherwise have been attributed more directly to Augustus
Cheffington himself. For example, it was said to account for his failure
in his profession. He had chosen it chiefly because he very much liked
the brilliant uniform of a certain crack regiment (it was in the days
before competitive examinations); and he had no other aptitude for it
than a showy seat on horseback, and a person well calculated to set off
the works of the regimental tailor. But when years had passed, and he
had remained undistinguished, his friends said, "What could one expect
after Augustus's unfortunate marriage?"
After a time he sold out of the Army, and went to live on the Continent,
where very shortly he had squandered nearly all his money, and fallen
into shady paths of life; and again there was a chorus of "I told you
so!" and a general sense that all this was due to the unfortunate
marriage.
Finally, his wife died, leaving him with one little girl, the sole
survivor of five children; and he came to England with the idea of
securing some place which should be suited to his birth, his abilities,
his habits, and his inclinations. No such place was found. Several
members of the Peerage were applied to, to exert their influence with
"Government" on behalf of so well-connected a personage as Augustus
Cheffington. But "Government" behaved very badly, "Government" was
insensible to his claims. His claims, it is true, were not small. They
required a maximum of remuneration for a minimum of labour. He was
unable, also, to furnish any proofs of his fitness for one or two posts
which happened to be vacant, except the undeniable fact of his
cousinship with all the Cheffingtons and Castlecombes in England; and to
this kind of qualification "Government," it appeared, attached no
importance at all.
He paid a round of visits at country houses, and renewed his
long-disused acquaintance with a score of more or less distant
relations. But he was not popular. It has been observed that
unsuccessful men very often are not popular. "Gus Cheffington has
dropped out of the running," men said. "A fellow naturally gets
forgotten when he has kept out of sight for years--and besides, he makes
himself so deuced disagreeable! He's always grumbling."
This latter accusation was true. If England had shown no maternal
affection for her long-absent son, the son returned her hard-heartedness
with interest. Indeed, in his case, it turned into active resentment. He
got tired of country houses and town mansions where he was received but
coolly. He was sarcastic and bitter on the failure of his connections to
procure him a lucrative sinecure. He considered that the country was
travelling downhill at break-neck speed, and, for his part, he did not
feel inclined to move his little finger to impede that fatal course.
Moreover, the black coffee was, nine times out of ten, utterly
undrinkable. One day he shook the dust of England's inhospitable shores
from off his feet, and returned to his shady haunts on the
Continent--its irresponsibility, its _cafes_, its boulevards, and its
billiards. And when he was fairly gone, all the Cheffingtons, and the
Dormer-Smiths, and the Castlecombes were softened into sympathy; and
with much shrugging of shoulders and shaking of heads declared that it
was a heartrending spectacle to behold such a man as Augustus
Cheffington ruined, crushed, eclipsed, destroyed by his unfortunate
marriage.
When he went back to Belgium, he left behind him at school in Brighton
his little motherless girl Miranda, familiarly called May. The
Honourable Mrs. Cheffington, Augustus's mother, had advised her son to
give the little girl a first-rate education, so as to mitigate as far as
possible one disastrous effect of the unfortunate marriage, which was,
that May had a plebeian mother. Mrs. Cheffington, known throughout all
the ramifications of the family as "the dowager," was a hard-featured,
selfish old woman, with a black wig, a pale yellow skin, and frowning
eyebrows. She lived on a pension which would cease at her death, and she
was supposed by some of her relations to be making a purse. They thought
it would turn out that the dowager had considerable savings to leave
behind her; and they founded this supposition on her never giving away
anything during her lifetime. Mrs. Dormer-Smith, Augustus Cheffington's
sister, declared that her mother made one exception to her rule of
refusing assistance to any of them. She believed that Augustus, who had
always been her favourite child, profited by the dowager's indulgence,
and managed to extract some money from her tightly-closed purse. And it
certainly was true that the old lady had paid May's school bills--so far
as they had been paid at all.
But one day the Honourable Anne Miranda Cheffington took off her black
wig for the last time, and relaxed her frowning eyebrows. The
announcement of her death appeared in the first column of the _Times_,
there was a brief obituary notice in a fashionable journal, and her
place knew her no more.
Augustus hastened home to England on the receipt of a telegram from his
sister. That is to say, he said he hastened; but he did not arrive in
town until some hours after the funeral was over. Mr. Dormer-Smith was
somewhat irritated by this tardiness, and observed to his wife that it
was just like Augustus to keep out of the way while there was any
trouble to be taken, and only arrive in time to be present at the
reading of the will. Any expectations that Augustus might have founded
on his mother's reluctance to give during her lifetime were quite
disappointed. The dowager had no money to bequeath. She had spent nearly
the last shilling of her quarter's income. In fact, there was not enough
to cover the expenses of the funeral, which were finally paid several
months afterwards by Mr. Dormer-Smith.
It seemed almost superfluous, under the circumstances, to have made a
will at all. But the will was there. The chief item in it was a quantity
of yellow old lace, extremely dirty, and much in need of mending, which
was solemnly bequeathed by Mrs. Cheffington to her daughter, Pauline
Augusta Clarissa Dormer-Smith. It was set forth at some length how that
the lace, being an heirloom of the Cheffingtons, should have descended
in due course to the wife of the eldest son, or, failing that, to the
eldest daughter of the eldest son; and how this tradition was
disregarded in the present case by reason of peculiar and unprecedented
family circumstances. This was the dowager's Parthian dart at the
unfortunate marriage. There was little other property, except the dingy
old furniture of Mrs. Cheffington's house at Richmond, and a few books,
treating chiefly of fortification and gunnery, which had belonged to
Lieutenant-General the Honourable Augustus Vane Cheffington, the
dowager's long-deceased husband.
"What the----What on earth my mother did with her money _I_ can't
conjecture!" exclaimed Augustus, staring out of the window of his
brother-in-law's drawing-room the day after the funeral.
"She didn't give it to us, Augustus," returned Mrs. Dormer-Smith
plaintively. "Even when my boy Cyril went to see her at the end of the
holidays, just before returning to Harrow, she never tipped him. Once I
think she gave him five shillings. But it's a long time ago; he was a
little fellow in petticoats."
"Then what _did_ she do with her money?" repeated Augustus, with an
increasingly gloomy scowl at the gardens of the Kensington square on
which his eyes rested.
"I believe that, with the exception of what she paid for May's
schooling, she spent it on herself."
"Spent it on herself? That's impossible! It was a very good income
indeed for a solitary woman, and she lived very quietly."
"You may get through a good deal of money even living quietly, when you
don't deny yourself anything you can get. For instance, she never would
drive one horse; she had been accustomed to a pair all her life."
Augustus checked an oath on his very lips, and, instead of swearing
according to his first impulse, observed with solemnity that he knew not
how his mother had been able to reconcile such selfishness with her
conscience, and hoped her last moments had not been troubled by remorse.
"Oh, I don't think mamma felt anything of that kind," said Mrs.
Dormer-Smith in her slow, gentle tones; "she was always complaining of
other people's unreasonable expectations."
The brother and sister fell silent for a while after this, each being
immersed in private meditation. That very morning a circumstance had
occurred which had put the last touch to Augustus's disappointment and
exasperation. The Brighton schoolmistress had sent Miss Miranda
Cheffington to London in the charge of a maid-servant, and the little
girl had arrived at her aunt's house in a cab with her worldly
possessions, namely, a small black trunk full of clothes, and a
canary-bird in a cage. The schoolmistress wrote civilly, but firmly, to
the effect that, after the lamented decease of the Honourable Mrs.
Cheffington, she could not undertake to keep May any longer; feeling
sure, by repeated experience, that all applications for payment made to
Captain Cheffington would be in vain, and understanding that Mrs.
Dormer-Smith declined to charge herself with her niece's education.
Captain Cheffington had been violently angry, and had denounced the
schoolmistress--Mrs. Drax--as an insolent, grasping, vulgar harpy. But
Mrs. Drax was out of his reach, and there was May, thirteen years old,
with a healthy appetite, and limbs rapidly outgrowing her clothes.
Augustus continued to glare moodily at the square for some minutes. His
sister leaned her cheek on her hand, and looked at the fire. At length
Augustus, composing his face to a less savage expression, turned away
from the window, sat down opposite to his sister, and said, pensively--
"We must arrange something for May, Pauline."
"You must, indeed, Augustus."
"We ought to consider her future."
"Yes; I think you ought, Augustus."
"The girl is at a hobbledehoy age. It's a perplexing position. So
difficult to know what to do with her."
"There is no age at which it is so awkward to dress a girl. I have
sometimes regretted not having daughters; but upon my word there must be
a dreadful amount of harass about their clothes between twelve and
fifteen--or in some cases sixteen."
"It's impossible for me to have her with me in Brussels. The way I
live--am obliged to live _malgre moi_--she'd upset all my arrangements
and habits. In short, you can see for yourself, Pauline, that it would
be out of the question."
"No doubt it would be very bad for the girl."
"Of course! That's what I mean. Wouldn't it be the best plan after all,
Pauline, to leave her here with you? She could have private masters----"
Mrs. Dormer-Smith shook her head.
"At my expense, of course," added Augustus. "I must screw and scrape and
make some sacrifices no doubt, but----"
"It really won't do, Augustus. I assure you it won't do. Frederick will
_not_ have it. He talked to me after luncheon. It isn't the least use."
Mrs. Dormer-Smith continued plaintively to shake her head as she spoke,
and to look with gentle melancholy at the fire.
"H'm! Frederick is very kind. But let us discuss the thing in a friendly
spirit. If I pay for her clothing and education, surely the expense of
her board wouldn't ruin you and Frederick!"
"No; but the butcher and the baker are the least part of the matter. It
isn't as if May were the daughter of one's housekeeper or one's
governess. She is a Cheffington, you know. So many things are required
for a girl with her connections; and as to your paying for her masters,
of course we know you wouldn't, Augustus."
"Upon my soul you are civil and sisterly!"
"Well, I dare say you would mean to pay, but you wouldn't. It would be
sure to turn out so, don't you know? Things always have been like that
with you, Augustus."
"Then what the devil do you think I'm to do?"
"Pray don't be violent! I really cannot bear any display of violence.
You should remember that it is scarcely a week since poor mamma was
taken from us."
"I don't see what that has to do with it. Miranda hasn't been taken from
us; that's the point."
Mrs. Dormer-Smith making no answer, her brother continued, after a
moment or two--
"You are fertile in objections, but you don't seem to have any plan to
suggest."
"Well, an idea did occur to me. I don't know whether you would like it."
"Like it! Probably not. But I am used to sacrifice my inclinations."
"Well, I thought that you might put May into a school in France or
Germany, or somewhere, letting her give lessons in English in return for
her board and so on. There are plenty of schools where they do that sort
of thing. It wouldn't so much matter abroad, because people wouldn't
know who she was. You might tide over a year or two in that way."
Augustus got up from his chair. "My daughter a drudge in a Continental
school?" he exclaimed indignantly.
"If you chose a place little frequented by English, I don't think people
would know."
There was a short silence. Then Augustus said angrily, "I'll take the
girl back with me. She must share my home, such as it is. We will
neither of us trouble you or Frederick much longer. I shall start for
Ostend by the morning mail to-morrow." And he dashed out of the room
emitting a muffled roll of oaths, and jarring the door in a way which
made Mrs. Dormer-Smith clasp her forehead with both hands, and lean back
shrinkingly in her chair.
But when the morrow came, Captain Cheffington and his daughter did not
go to Ostend. When they had got out of sight of the Dormer-Smiths'
house, he ordered the cabman to drive to the Great Western Railway
Station, and started by an express train for Oldchester.