the most ridiculous figure everywhere. They came to Clifton Springs once
while I was there; and they were really too dreadful; the kind of people
you can't stay in the room with." Cousin Susan had not talked so much
for years, and began to feel that the excitement was doing her good,
which may excuse her merciless pelting of poor Margaret. "You were too
young, perhaps," she went on, "to have heard about Ossian Smith, the
oldest son, but the newspapers were full of him--of the life he led in
London and Paris, when he was a mere boy. The American minister got him
home at last, and a pretty penny old Smith had to pay to get him out of
his entanglements. He had delirium tremens, and jumped out of a window,
and killed himself, soon after--the best thing he could do. But you must
have heard of Lunetta Smith, the daughter; about her running away with
the coachman; it happened only about three or four years ago. Why, the
New York _Sun_ had two columns about it, and the _World_ four. All the
family were interviewed, your young man among the rest, and the comic
papers said the mesalliance appeared to be on the coachman's side. She
died, too, soon after; you must have heard of it."
"No, I never did. Father never lets me read the daily papers," said
Margaret, a little proudly.
"Well!" said Cousin Susan, with relaxing energy, "I don't often read
such things myself; but one can't help noticing them; and Mrs. Champion
Pryor has been telling me a great deal about it."
"And did Mrs. Pryor tell you anything about my--about young Mr. Smith?"
"Oh, she said he was always very well spoken of. He was younger than the
rest and delicate in health, and took to study; and his father had a
good deal of money in time to educate him. They say he's rather clever,
and the old man is quite proud of him; but he can't be a gentleman,
Margaret--it is not possible."
"Yes, he can!" burst out Margaret; "he's too much of a man not to be a
gentleman, too!"
"Well," said Cousin Susan, suddenly collapsing, "I can't talk any
longer. I have such a headache. If you have asked him to call, I suppose
he must come; but I can't see him. What's that? a box for you? more
flowers? Oh, dear, do take them away. If there is anything I cannot
stand when I have a headache, it is flowers about, and I can smell those
lilacs you carried last night all the way downstairs, and through two
closed doors."
Poor Margaret escaped to her own room with her flowers to write her
letter, the difficulty of her task suddenly increased. Mrs. Manton threw
herself back on the sofa to nurse her headache, but found that it was of
no use, and that what she needed was fresh air. She ordered a cab, and
drove round to see Mrs. Underwood, unto whom, in strict confidence, she
freed her mind. She found some relief in the dismay her recital gave her
hearer. Ralph Underwood was slowly recovering from the fit of
disappointment in which he had wreaked his ill-temper on whoever came
near him, as a younger, badly trained child might do on the chairs and
tables; and his mother, his chief _souffre douleur_; who in her turn had
made all around her feel her own misery, was now beginning ruefully to
count up the damages, of which she felt a large share was due to the
Parkes. She had been wondering whether she could not give a little lunch
for Margaret; she could, at least, take her to the next German, and find
her some better partner than Al Smith. Nothing could have been more
disconcerting than this news. She could not with any grace do anything
for Margaret now to efface the memories of the first part of her visit,
and the Parkes must blame her doubly for the neglect which had allowed
this engagement to take place. Why, even Susan Manton put on an injured
air!
She craved some comfort in her turn, and after keeping the secret for a
day and a night, told it in the strictest confidence to her intimate
friend, Mrs. Thorndike Freeman, whose "dropping in" was an irresistible
temptation.
"What!" cried Mrs. Freeman, "is it that large young woman with red
cheeks, whom you brought one evening to Papanti's? I think it will be an
excellent thing; why, the Smiths can use her photograph as an
advertisement for the Elixir."
"Yes--but then her parents--you see, she's Mary Pickering's daughter."
"Mary Pickering has been married to a country doctor for five and twenty
years, hasn't she? You may be sure her eyes are open by this time.
Depend upon it, they would swallow Al Smith, if he were bigger than he
is. The daughter seems to have found no difficulty in the feat."
"Well," said Mrs. Underwood, with a sigh, "perhaps I ought to be glad
that poor Al has got some respectable girl to take him for his money. I
never dreamed one would."
"It isn't likely that he ever asked one before," said Mrs. Freeman, with
a double-edged sneer.
The door-bell rang, and the butler ushered in Margaret, who had come to
make her farewell call. Mrs. Underwood looked at her in astonishment.
Was this the shy, blushing girl who had come from Royalston three short
months ago? With such gentle sweetness did she express her gratitude for
the elder lady's kind attentions, with such graceful dignity did she
wave aside a few awkwardly hinted apologies, above all, so regally
beautiful did she look, that Mrs. Underwood felt more than ever that she
would be called to account by the parents of such a creature. Margaret
had quite forgiven Mrs. Underwood, for, she reasoned, if that lady had
done as she ought to have done by her, she would never have had the
chance of knowing Al, a contingency too dreadful to contemplate; and her
forgiveness added to the superiority of her position. Mrs. Underwood
could only reiterate the eternal useless regret of the tempted and
fallen: "If things had not happened just when, and how, and as they
did!" She envied Mrs. Freeman, who was now in the easiest manner
possible plying the young girl with devoted attentions, with large doses
of flattery thrown in. Mrs. Freeman, meanwhile, was mentally resolving
to call on Margaret before she left town, in which case they could
hardly avoid sending her wedding-cards. She foresaw that, as two
negatives make an affirmative, Mr. and Mrs. Alcibiades Smith, Jr., might
yet be worthy of the honor of her acquaintance.
* * * * *
Margaret's engagement was no primrose path. It was easier for her when
her lover was away, for he wrote delightful letters, but they rarely had
one happy and undisturbed hour together. Dr. and Mrs. Parke, of course,
gave their consent to the marriage; but they did not like it, and did
not pretend to. Dr. Parke, who, as is the wont of his profession,
placed a high value on physical attractions, and who cared as little for
money as any sane man could, hardly restrained his expressions of
dislike. "What business," he growled, "had the fellow to ask her?" Mrs.
Parke, while trying hard to keep her husband in order, was cold and
constrained herself. Being a woman, she thought less of looks, and had
learned in her married life to appreciate the value of money. She would
have liked Margaret to make a good match; but here was more money by
twenty times than she would have asked, had it only been offered by a
lover more worthy of her beautiful daughter! And yet, if Margaret would
only have been open with her! If she would have frankly said that she
was tired of being poor, and could not forego the opportunity of
marrying a rich man, who was a good sort of man enough, Mrs. Parke could
have understood, and pitied, and forgiven; but to see her put on such an
affectation of attachment for him drove her mother nearly wild. Why, she
acted as if she were more in love than he was!
The boys had been duly respectful on hearing that their sister's
betrothed was a "Harvard man," but grew contemptuous when they found him
so unfit for athletics. Relations and friends, and acquaintances of
every degree, believed, and still believe, and always will believe,
that Margaret's was one of the most mercenary of mercenary marriages.
Some blamed her parents for allowing it; others thought that their
opposition was feigned, and that they were really forcing poor Margaret
into it.
The two younger children, Harry and Winnie, at once adopted their new
brother, and stood up stanchly for him on all occasions, and their
sister was eternally grateful to them for it. Her only other support
came, of all the people in the world, from Ralph Underwood. He could not
be best man at the wedding, as he was going abroad with his mother, who
was sadly run down and needed change; but he wrote Margaret a
straightforward, manly letter, in which he said that he trusted,
unworthy as he was, she would admit him to her friendship for Al's sake.
He spoke of all he owed to his friend in such a way that Margaret
perceived that more had passed in their college days than she ever had
been or ever should be told.
The family discomfort came to a climax on the day before the wedding,
when the great Alcibiades Smith himself and his wife made their
appearance at Royalston. They stayed at the hotel with their suite, but
spent the evening with the Parkes to make the acquaintance of their new
connections. Old Mr. Smith pronounced Margaret "a bouncer." He had
always known, he said, that Al would get some kind of a wife, but never
thought it would be such a stunner as this one. It naturally fell to him
to be entertained by Dr. Parke, or rather to entertain him, which he did
by relating the whole history of the Elixir, from its first invention to
the number of million bottles that were put up the last year, winding up
every period with, "As you're a medical man yourself, sir." Mrs. Smith
was quieter, and though well pleased, a little awe-struck, as her French
maid, her authority and terror, had told her, after Mrs. Parke's and
Margaret's brief call at the hotel that afternoon, that these were,
evidently, "_dames tres comme il faut_." She poured into Mrs. Parke's
ear, in a corner, the tale of all Al's early illnesses, and the various
treatments he had had for them, till her hearer no longer wondered at
their being so little of him; the wonder was, that there was anything
left at all. Then, a propos of marriages, she grew confidential and
almost tearful about their distresses in the case of their daughter
"Luny." She did think Mr. Smith a little to blame for poor Luny's
runaway match. There was an Italian count whom she liked, but her father
could not be induced to pay his debts, and "a girl must marry somebody,
you know," she wound up, with a look at Margaret.
Margaret, in after years, could appreciate the comedy of the situation.
It is no wonder if it seemed to her at the time the most gloomily
tragical that perverse ingenuity could devise. Al's manner to his
parents was perfect. He was very silent; not more, perhaps, than he
always was in a room full, but she thought he looked fagged and tired,
and wondered how he could bear it. She longed intensely to say something
sympathetic to him; but, like most girls on the eve of their marriage,
she felt overpowered with shyness. If this dreadful evening ever came to
an end, and they were ever married, then she would tell him, once for
all, that she loved him all the better for all and everything that he
had to bear.
* * * * *
"They will spoil the whole effect," said Mrs. Parke, despondently, as
she put the last careful touches to Margaret's wedding-dress. It was a
very simple but becoming one of rich plain silk, with a little lace, and
the pearl daisies with diamond dewdrops, sent by the bridegroom,
accorded with it well. But Mr. Smith, senior, had begged that his gift,
or part of it, should be worn on the occasion, and Mrs. Parke now slowly
opened a velvet box, in which lay a crescent and a cross. Neither she
nor Margaret was accustomed to estimate the price of diamonds, and had
they been, they would have seen that these were far beyond their mark.
"They don't go with the dress," repeated Mrs. Parke, doubtfully.
"Oh, never mind; to please Mr. Smith," said Margaret, carelessly, as she
bent forward to allow her mother to clasp round her neck the slender row
of stones that held the cross, and to stick the long pins of the
crescent with dexterous hand through the gathered tulle, of the veil and
the thick wavy bands of hair beneath it.
As she drew herself up to her full height again before the mirror, it
seemed as if the June day outside had taken on the form of a mortal
girl. The gold and blue of the heavens, the pink and white of the
blossoming fields, whose luminous tints rested so softly on hair and
eyes, on cheek and brow, were reflected and intensified in the rainbow
rays of light that blazed on her head and at her throat. It was not in
human nature not to look with one touch of pride and pleasure at the
vision in the glass. But the sight of another face behind hers made her
turn quickly round, with, "O mamma! mamma! what is it?"
"Nothing, my dear; it's a very magnificent present; only I thought--"
"Mamma! surely you don't think I care for such things! you don't, you
can't think I am the least bit influenced by them in marrying Al. O
mamma! don't, don't look at me so!"
"Never mind, my dear. We will not talk about it now. It is too late for
me to say anything, I know, and I am very foolish."
"Mother!" cried the girl, piteously; "you _must_ believe me! You _know_
that when Al asked me to marry him, and I said I would, I had no idea,
not the slightest idea, that he had a penny in the world!"
"Hush, Margaret! hush, my dear! you are excited, and so am I. Don't say
anything you may wish afterwards that you had not. God bless you, and
make you a happy woman, and a good wife; but don't begin your married
life with a--" Mrs. Parke choked down the word with a great sob, and
hastily left the room. It was high noon, and she had not yet put on her
own array.
Margaret stood stiff and blind with horror. Had she really known, then?
Had her hand been bought? Then she remembered her own innocence when she
told her love. Not so proudly, not so freely, not so gladly, could it
ever have been told to the millionaire's son. A rush of self-pity came
over her, softening the indignant throbbing of her heart, and opening
the fountains of tears. She was at the point where a woman must have a
good cry, or go mad,--but where could she give way? Not here, where
anyone might come in. Indeed, there was Winnie's voice at the door of
the nursery, eager to show her bridesmaid's toilette. Margaret snatched
up two white shawls which lay ready on the sofa, caught up the heavy
train of her gown in one hand, and flew down the front staircase like a
hunted swan, through the library to the sacred room beyond--her father's
study, now, as she well knew, deserted, while its owner was above,
reluctantly dressing for the festivity. She pushed the only chair
forward to the table, threw one shawl over it, and laying the other on
the table itself, sat down, and carefully bending her head down over her
folded arms, so as not to crush her veil by a feather's touch, let loose
the flood-gates. In a moment she was crying as only a healthy girl who
seldom cries can, when she once gives up to it.
Someone spoke to her; she never heard it. Someone touched her; she never
felt it. It was only when a voice repeated, "Why, Margaret, dearest,
what is the matter?" that she checked herself with a mighty effort,
swallowed her sobs, and still holding her handkerchief over her
tear-stained cheeks and quivering mouth, turned round to find herself
face to face with her bridegroom, who having stopped to take up his
best man, Alick Parke, was waiting till that young man tied his sixth
necktie. She well knew that a lover who finds his betrothed crying her
eyes out half an hour before the wedding has a prescriptive right to be
both angry and jealous; but he looked neither; only a little anxious and
troubled.
"Darling, has anything happened?"
"No--not exactly; that is--O Al! they won't believe me!"
"They! who?"
"Not one single one of them. Not mother, even mother! I thought she
would--but she doesn't."
"Does not what?"
"She does not believe," said Margaret, trying to steady her voice, "that
when you asked me to marry you, and I said I would, that I did not know
you were rich. I told her, but she won't believe me."
"Well," said Mr. Smith, quietly, though with a little flush on his face;
"it's very natural. I don't blame her."
"Al!" cried Margaret, seizing both his hands; "O Al, you don't--you
do--_you_ believe me, don't you, Al? _don't_ you?"
"Of course I do."
[Illustration]
POOR MR. PONSONBY
On a bright, windy morning in March, Miss Emmeline Freeman threw open
the gate of her mother's little front garden on Walnut Street,
Brookline, slammed it behind her with one turn of her wrist, marched
with an emphatic tapping of boot-heels up the path between the
crocus-beds to the front door, threw that open, and rushed into the
drawing-room, where she paused for breath, and began before she found
it:
"O mamma! O Aunt Sophia! O Bessie! What do you think? Lily Carey--you
would never guess--Lily Carey--I was never so surprised in my life--Lily
Carey is engaged!"
Mrs. Freeman laid down her pen by the side of her column of figures,
losing her account for the seventh time; Miss Sophia Morgan paused in
the silk stocking she was knitting, just as she was beginning to narrow;
and Bessie Freeman dropped her brush full of colour on to the panel she
was finishing, while all three exclaimed with one voice, "To whom?"
"That is the queer part of it. You will never guess. Indeed, how should
you?"
"To whom?" repeated the chorus, with a unanimity and precision that
would have been creditable to the stage, and with the due accent of
impatience on the important word.
"To no one you ever would have dreamed of; indeed, you never heard of
him--a Mr. Reginald Ponsonby. It is a most romantic thing. He is an
Englishman, very good family and handsome and all that, but not much
money. That is why it has been kept quiet so long."
"So long? How long?" chimed in the trio, still in unison.
"Why, for three years and more. Lily met him in New York that time she
was there in the summer, you know, when her father was ill at the Fifth
Avenue Hotel. But Mr. Carey would never let it be called an engagement
till now."
"Did Lily tell you all this?" asked Bessie.
"No, Ada Thorne was telling everyone about it at the lunch party. She
heard it from Lily."
"I think Lily might have told us herself."
"She said she did not mean to write to anyone, it has been going on so
long, and her prospects were so uncertain; she did not care to have any
formal announcement, but just to have her friends hear of it gradually.
But she sent you and me very kind messages, Bessie, and she wants you to
take the O'Flanigans--that's her district family, you know--and me to
take her Sunday-school class. She says she really must have her Sundays
now to write to Mr. Ponsonby, poor fellow! She has been obliged to
scribble to him at any odd moment she could, and he is so far off."
"Where is he--in England?"
"Oh, dear, no! In Australia. He owns an immense sheep-farm in West
Australia. He belongs to a very good family; but he was born on the
continent, and has no near relations in England, and has rather knocked
about the world for a good many years. He had not very good luck in
Australia at first, but now things look better there, and he may be able
to come over here this summer, and if he does they will perhaps be
married before he goes back. Mr. Carey won't hear it spoken of now, but
Ada says she has no doubt he will give in when it comes to the point. He
never refuses Lily anything, and if the young man really comes he won't
have the heart to send him back alone, for Ada says he must be
fascinating."
"Lily seems to have laid her plans very judiciously," said Miss Morgan,
"and if she wishes them generally understood, she does well to confide
them to Ada Thorne."
"And she has been engaged for years!" burst out Bessie, whose mental
operations had meanwhile been going ahead of the rest; "why then--then
there could never have been anything between her and Jack Allston!"
"Certainly not," replied Emmeline, confidently.
"Very likely he knew it all the time," said Bessie.
"Or she may have refused him," said Mrs. Freeman.
"What is Miss Thorne's version?" said Aunt Sophia. "I shall stand by
that whatever it is. Considering the extent of that young woman's
information, I am perpetually surprised by its accuracy."
"Ada thinks Lily never let it come to a proposal, but probably let Jack
see from the beginning that it would be useless, and that is why they
were on such friendly terms."
"Well!" said Aunt Sophia, "I am always glad to think better of my
fellow-creatures. I always thought Jack Allston a fool for marrying as
he did if he could have had Lily, and now I only think him half a one,
since he couldn't. I am only afraid the folly is on poor Lily's side.
However, we must all fulfil our destiny, and I always said she was born
to become the heroine of a domestic drama, at least."
"Oh, here's Bob!" said Emmeline, as her elder brother's entrance broke
in upon the conversation. "Bob, who do you think is engaged?"
"You have lost your chance of telling, Emmie," replied the young man,
with a careful carelessness of manner; "I have just had the pleasure of
walking from the village with Ada Thorne."
"Really, it is too bad of Ada," said Emmeline, as she adjusted her hat
at the glass. "She will not leave me one person to tell by to-morrow.
Bessie, I think as long as we are going to five o'clock tea at the
Pattersons', and I have all my things on, I will set out now and make
some calls on the way. You might dress and come after me. I will be at
Nina Turner's. Mamma and Aunt Sophy can"--but her voice was an
indistinct buzz in her brother's ears, as he stood looking blankly out
of the window at the bright crocus tufts. He had never had any intention
of proposing to Lily Carey himself, and he knew that if he had she would
never have accepted him, yet somehow a shadow had crept over the day
that was so bright before.
Lily Carey was at that time a very conspicuous figure in Boston society;
that is, in the little circle of young people who went to all the "best"
balls and assemblies. She was also well known in some that were less
select, for the Careys had too assured a position to be exclusive, and
were too good-natured to be fashionable, so that she knew the whole
world and the whole world knew her. To be exact, she was acquainted with
about one five-hundredth part of the inhabitants of Boston and vicinity,
was known by sight to about twice as many, and by name to as many more,
with acquaintance also in such other cities and villages as had
sufficiently advanced in civilisation to have a "set" which knew the
Boston "set." She stood out prominently from the usual dead level of
monotonous prettiness which is the rule in American ballrooms and
gives piquant plainness so many advantages. Her nymph-like figure,
dressed very likely in a last-year's gown of no particular fashion--for
the Careys were of that Boston _monde_ which systematically
under-dresses--made the other girls look small and pinched and
doll-like; her towering head, crowned with a great careless roll of her
bright chestnut hair, made theirs look like barbers' dummies; and her
brilliant colouring made one half of them show dull and dingy, the other
faded and washed out. These advantages were not always appreciated as
such--by no means; unusual beauty, like unusual genius, may fly over the
heads of the uneducated; and it was the current opinion among the young
ladies who only knew her by sight, and their admirers, that "Miss Carey
had no style." Among her own acquaintance she reigned supreme. To have
been in love with Lily Carey was regarded by every youth of quality as a
necessary part of the curriculum of Harvard University; so much so that
it was not at all detrimental to their future matrimonial prospects. Her
old lovers, like her left-over partners, were always at the service of
her whole coterie of adoring intimate friends. If she had no new ideas,
these not being such common articles as is usually supposed, no one
could more cleverly seize upon and deftly adapt some stray old one. She
could write plays when none could be found to suit, and act half the
parts, and coach the other actors; she made her mother give new kinds of
parties, where all the new-old dances and games were brought to life
again; and she set the little fleeting fashions of the day that never
get into the fashion-books, to which, indeed, her dress might happen or
not to correspond; but the exact angle at which she set on her hat, and
the exact knot in which she tied her sash, and the exact spot where she
stuck the rose in her bosom, were subjects of painstaking study, and
objects of generally unsuccessful imitation to the rest of womankind.