naturally; but now hear me for a moment. I have sought Lady Cecil's
society, that is perfectly true; we have been thrown together in
society, very often accidentally; sometimes, I admit, through my own
seeking. Few men could be with her and be steeled against her. I have
been with her too much; but I sought her at first carelessly, then
irresistibly and unconsciously, never with the motive you attribute to
me. I am not as utterly beggared as you deem me, but neither am I
entirely barren of honor. Believe me, Lady Marabout, my pride alone
would be amply sufficient to raise a barrier between me and Cecil
stronger than any that could be opposed to me by others. Yesterday I
casually overheard words from Amandine which showed me that society,
like you, has put but one construction on the attention I have paid
her--a construction I might have foreseen had I not been unconsciously
fascinated, and forgetful, for the time, of the infallible whispers of
my kind friends. Her fortune, I know, was never numbered among her
attractions for me; so little, that now that Amandine's careless words
have reminded me of the verdict of society, I shall neither seek her nor
see her again. Scores of men marry women for their money, and their
money alone, but I am not one of them; with my own precarious fortunes,
only escaping ruin because I am not rich enough to tempt ruin. I would
never take advantage of any interest I may have excited in her, to speak
to her of a passion that the world would tell her was only another name
for avarice and selfishness. I dare not trust myself with her longer,
perhaps. I am no god to answer for my self-control; but you need not
fear; I will never seek her love--never even tell her of mine. I shall
leave town to-morrow; what _I_ may suffer matters not. Lady Cecil is
safe from me! Whatever you may have heard of my faults, follies, or
vices, none ever told you, I think, that I broke my word?"
* * * * *
"And when the man said that, my dear Philip, I assure you I felt as
guilty as if I had done him some horrible wrong; he stood there with his
head up, looking at me with his sad proud eyes--and they are
beautiful!--till, positively, I could almost have cried--I could,
indeed, for though I don't like him on principle, I couldn't help
pitying him," said Lady Marabout, in a subsequent relation of the scene
to her son. "Wasn't it a terrible position? I was as near as possible
forgetting everything due to poor Rosediamond, and saying to him that I
believed Cecil liked him and would never like anybody else, but, thank
Heaven! I remembered myself, and checked myself in time. If it had been
anybody but Chandos Cheveley, I should really have admired him, he spoke
so nobly! When he lifted his hat and left me, though I _ought_ to have
been glad (and I _was_ glad, of course) that Cecil would be free from
the society of anybody so objectionable and so dangerous, I felt
wretched for him--I did indeed. It _is_ so hard always to be placed in
such miserable positions!"
By which you will perceive that the triumphant crushing of Lady
Marabout's Cobra didn't afford her the unmixed gratification she had
anticipated.
"I have done what was my duty to poor Rosediamond, and what General
Ormsby's confidence merited," she solaced herself that day, feeling
uncomfortably and causelessly guilty, she hardly knew why, when she saw
Chandos Cheveley keeping sedulously with the "Amandine set," and read in
Cecil's tell-tale face wonder, perplexity, and regret thereat, till the
Frangipane fete came to an end. She had appeased the manes of the late
Rosediamond, who, to her imagination, always appeared sitting up aloft
keeping watch over the discharge of her chaperone's duties, but she had
a secret and horrible dread that she had excited the wrath of
Rosediamond's daughter. She had driven her Ogre off the scene, it is
true, but she could not feel that she had altogether come off the best
in the contest. Anne Hautton had congratulated her, indeed, on having
"acted with decision _at last_," but then she had marred it all by
asking if Carruthers was likely to be engaged to Cecil? And Lady
Marabout had been forced to confess he was not; Philip, when pressed by
her that very morning to be a little attentive to Cecil, having shaken
his head and laughed:
"She's a bewitching creature, mother, but she don't bewitch _me_! You
know what Shakspeare says of wooing, wedding, and repentance. I've no
fancy for the inseparable trio!"
Altogether, Lady Marabout was far from peace and tranquillity, though
the Cobra _was_ crushed, as she drove away from the Frangipane
breakfast, and she was little nearer them when Cecil turned her eyes
upon her with a question worse to Lady Marabout's ear than the roar of a
Lancaster battery.
"What have you said to him?"
"My dear Cecil! What have I said to whom?" returned Lady Marabout, with
Machiavellian surprise.
"You know well enough, Lady Marabout! What have you said to him--to Mr.
Cheveley?"
Cecil's impetuosity invariably knocked Lady Marabout down at one blow,
as a ball knocks down the pegs at lawn billiards. She rallied after the
shock, but not successfully, and tried at coldness and decision, as
recommended by Hautton prescriptions.
"My dear Cecil, I have said to him what I think it my duty to say to
him. Responsible as I am for you----"
"Responsible for me, Lady Marabout? Indeed you are not. I am responsible
for myself!" interrupted Lady Cecil, with that haughty arch of her
eyebrows and that flush on her face before which Lady Marabout was
powerless. "What have you said to him? I _will_ know!"
"I said very little to him, indeed, my dear; he said it all himself."
"What did he say himself?"
"I _must_ tell her--she is so dreadfully persistent," thought the
unhappy and badgered Peeress; and tell her she did, being a means of
lessening the young lady's interest in the subject of discussion as
little judicious as she could well have hit upon.
Lady Cecil listened, silent for once, shading her face with her parasol,
shading the tears that gathered on her lashes and rolled down her
delicate flushed cheeks, at the recital of Chandos Cheveley's words,
from her chaperone's sight.
Lady Marabout gathered courage from the tranquillity with which her
recital was heard.
"You see, my love, Chandos Cheveley's own honor points in the same
direction with my judgment," she wound up, in conclusion. "He has acted
rightly at last, I allow, and if you--if you have for the moment felt a
tinge of warmer interest in him--if you have been taken by the
fascination of his manner, and invested him with a young girl's romance,
you will soon see with us how infinitely better it is that you should
part, and how impossible it is that----"
Lady Cecil's eyes flashed such fire through their tears, that Lady
Marabout stopped, collapsed and paralyzed.
"It is by such advice as that you repay his nobility, his generosity,
his honor!--it is by such words as those you reward him for acting as
not one man in a hundred would have acted! Hush, hush, Lady Marabout, I
thought better of you!"
"Good Heavens! _where will it end?_" thought Lady Marabout,
distractedly, as Rosediamond's wayward daughter sprang down at the door
with a flush in her face, and a contemptuous anger in her eyes, that
made Bijou, jumping on her, stop, stare, and whine in canine dismay.
"And I fancied she was listening passively!" thought Lady Marabout.
"Well! the man is gone to-day, that is one comfort. I am very thankful I
acted as I did," reasoned that ever-worried lady in her boudoir the next
morning. "I am afraid Cecil is really very fond of him, there were such
black shadows under her eyes at breakfast, poor child! But it is much
better as it is--much better. I should never have held up my head again
if I had allowed her to make such a disadvantageous alliance. I can
hardly bear to think of what would have been said, even now the danger
is over!"
While Lady Marabout was thus comforting herself over her embroidery
silks, Cecil Ormsby was pacing into the Park, with old Twitters the
groom ten yards behind her, taking her early ride before the world was
up--it was only eleven o'clock; Cecil had been used to early rising, and
would never leave it off, having discovered some recipe that made her
independent of ordinary mortals' quantum of sleep.
"Surely he will be here this morning to see me for the last time,"
thought that young lady, as she paced up the New Ride under the
Kensington Gardens trees, with her heart beating quickly under the gold
aiglettes of her riding-jacket.
"I must see her once more, and then----" thought Chandos Cheveley, as he
leaned against the rails, smoking, as he had done scores of mornings
before. His man had packed his things; his hansom was waiting at the
gates to take him to the station, and his portmanteau was lettered
"Ischl." He had only come to take one last look of the face that haunted
him as no other had ever succeeded in doing. The ring of a horse's hoof
fell on his ear. There she came, on her roan hack, with the sun glancing
off her chestnut hair. He looked up to bow to her as she passed on, for
the Ride had never been a rendezvous for more than a bow (Cecil's
insurrectionary tactics had always been carried on before Lady
Marabout's face), but the roan was pulled up by him that morning for
the very first time, and Cecil's eyes fell on him through their lashes.
"Mr. Cheveley--is it true you are going out of town?"
"Quite true."
If her voice quivered as she asked the question, he barely kept his own
from doing the same as he answered it.
"Will you be gone long?"
"Till next season, at earliest."
His promise to Lady Marabout was hard to keep! He would not have trusted
his strength if he had known she would have done more than canter on
with her usual bow and smile.
Cecil was silent. The groom waited like a statue his ten yards behind
them. She played with her reins nervously, the color coming and going
painfully in her face.
"Lady Marabout told me of--of some conversation you had with her
yesterday?"
Low as the words were, Cheveley heard them, and his hand, as it lay on
the rails, shook like a girl's.
Cecil was silent again; she looked at him, her eyes full of unshed
tears, as the color burned in her face, and she drooped her head almost
to a level with her hands as they played with the reins.
"She told me--you----"
She stopped again. Cecil was new to making proposals, though not to
rejecting them. Cheveley set his teeth to keep in the words that rushed
to his lips, and Cecil saw the struggle as she bent her head lower and
lower to the saddle, and twisted the reins into a Gordian knot.
"Do you--must we--why should----"
Fragmentary monosyllables enough, but sufficient to fell his strength.
"For God's sake do not tempt me!" he muttered. "You little know----"
"I know all!" she whispered softly.
"You cannot! My worthless life!--my honor! I could not take such a
sacrifice, I would not!----"
"But--if my peace----"
She could not end her phrase, yet it said enough;--his hand closed on
hers.
"Your peace! Good God! in _my_ hands! I stay; then--let the world say
what it likes!"
* * * * *
"Drive back; I have changed my mind about going abroad to-day," said
Cheveley, as he got into his hansom at Albert Gate.
"How soon she has got over it! Girls do," thought Lady Marabout, as
Cecil Ormsby came in from her ride with the brightest bloom on her
cheeks a June breeze ever fanned there. She laid her hat on the table,
flung her gauntlets at Bijou, and threw herself on her knees by Lady
Marabout, a saucy smile on her face, though her lashes were wet.
"Dear Lady Marabout, I can forgive you now, but you will never forgive
me!"
Lady Marabout turned white as her point-lace cap, gave a little gasp of
paralyzed terror, and pushed back her chair as though a shell had
exploded on the hearth-rug.
"Cecil! Good Heaven!--you don't mean----"
"Yes I do," said Cecil, with a fresh access of color, and a low, soft
laugh.
Lady Marabout gasped again for breath:
"General Ormsby!" was all she could ejaculate.
"General Ormsby? What of him? Did you ever know uncle Johnnie refuse to
please _me_? And if my money be to interfere with my happiness, and not
promote it, as I conceive it its duty and purpose to do, why, I am of
age in July, you know, and I shall make a deed of gift of it all to the
Soldiers' Home or the Wellington College, and there is only one person
who will care for me _then_."
Lady Cecil was quite capable of carrying her threat into execution, and
Lady Cecil had her own way accordingly, as she had had it from her
babyhood.
* * * * *
"I shall never hold up my head again! And what a horrible triumph for
Anne Hautton! I am always the victim--always!" said Lady Marabout, that
day two months, when the last guest at Cecil Ormsby's wedding dejeuner
had rolled away from the house. "A girl who might have married anybody,
Philip; she refused twenty offers this season--she did, indeed! It is
heart-breaking, say what you like; you needn't laugh, it _is_. Why did I
offer them Fernditton for this month, you say, if I didn't countenance
the alliance? Nonsense! that is nothing to the purpose. Of course, I
seemed to countenance it to a degree, for Cecil's sake, and I admire
Chandos Cheveley, I confess (at least I should do, if I didn't dislike
his class on principle); but, say what you like, Philip, it is the most
terrible thing that could have happened for _me_. Those men _ought_ to
be labelled, or muzzled, or done something with, and not be let loose on
society as they are. He has a noble nature, you say. I don't say
anything against his nature! She worships him? Well, I know she does.
What is that to the point? He will make her happy? I am sure he will. He
has the gentlest way with her possible. But how does that console _me_?
Think what _you_ feel when an outsider, as you call it, beats all the
favorites, upsets all your betting-books, and carries off the Doncaster
Cup, and then realize, if you've any humanity in you, what _we_ feel
under such a trial as this is to me! Only to think what Anne Hautton
will always say!"
Lady Marabout is not the only person to whom the first thought, the most
dreaded ghost, the ghastliest skeleton, the direst aggravation, the
sharpest dagger-thrust, under all troubles, is the remembrance of that
one omnipotent Ogre--"QU'EN DIRA-T-ON?"
"Laugh at her, mother," counselled Carruthers; and, _amis lecteurs_, I
pass on his advice to you as the best and sole bowstring for strangling
the ogre in question, which is the grimmest we have in all Bogeydom.
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES;
OR,
THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.
IN THREE SEASONS.
SEASON THE THIRD.--THE CLIMAX.
"My dear Philip, the most unfortunate thing has happened," said Lady
Marabout, one morning; "really the greatest contretemps that could have
occurred. I suppose I never _am_ to be quiet!"
"What's the row _now_, madre carissima?" asked her son.
"It is no row, but it is an annoyance. You have heard me speak of my
poor dear friend Mrs. Montolieu; you know she married unhappily, poor
thing, to a dreadful creature, something in a West India
regiment--nobody at all. It is very odd, and it is very wrong, and there
must be a great mistake somewhere, but certainly most marriages _are_
unhappy."
"And yet you are always recommending the institution! What an
extraordinary obstinacy and opticism, my dear mother! I suppose you do
it on the same principle as nurses recommend children nasty medicines,
or as old Levett used to tender me dry biscuit _sans confiture_:
''Tisn't so nice as marmalade, I know, Master Philip, but then, dear,
it's _so_ wholesome!'"
"Hold your tongue, Philip," cried Lady Marabout; "I don't mean it in
that sense at all, and you know I don't. If poor Lilla Montolieu is
unhappy, I am sure it is all her abominable odious husband's fault; she
is the sweetest creature possible. But she has a daughter, and
concerning that daughter she wrote to me about a month ago, and--I never
was more vexed in my life--she wants me to bring her out this season."
"A victim again! My poor dear mother, you certainly deserve a Belgravian
testimonial; you shall have a statue set up in Lowndes Square
commemorative of the heroic endurance of a chaperone's existence,
subscribed for gratefully by the girls you married well, and
penitentially by the girls you couldn't marry at all."
Lady Marabout laughed a little, but sighed again:
"'It is fun to you, but it is death to me'----"
"As the women say when we flirt with them," interpolated Carruthers.
"You see, poor dear Lilla didn't know what to do. There she is, in that
miserable island with the unpronounceable name that the man is governor
of; shut out of all society, with nobody to marry this girl to if she
had her there, except their secretary, or a West Indian planter. Of
course, no mother would ruin her daughter's prospects, and take her into
such an out-of-the-world corner. She knew no one so well as myself, and
so to me she applied. She is the sweetest creature! I would do anything
to oblige or please her, but I can't help being very sorry she has
pounced upon me. And I don't the least know what this girl is like, not
even whether she is presentable. I dare say she was petted and spoiled
in that lazy, luxurious, tropical life when she was little, and she has
been brought up the last few years in a convent in France, the very last
education _I_ should choose for a girl. Fancy, if I should find her an
ignorant, unformed hoyden, or a lethargic, overgrown child, or an
artificial French girl, who goes to confession every day, and carries
on twenty undiscoverable love affairs--fancy, if she should be ugly, or
awkward, or brusque, or gauche, as ten to one she will be--fancy, if I
find her utterly unpresentable!--what in the world shall I do?"
"Decline her," suggested Carruthers. "I wouldn't have a horse put in my
tilbury that I'd never seen, and risk driving a spavined, wall-eyed,
underbred brute through the Park; and I suppose the ignominy of the
debut would be to you much what the ignominy of such a turn-out would be
to me."
"Decline her? I can't, my dear Philip! I agreed to have her a month ago.
I have never seen you to tell you till now, you know; you've been so
sworn to Newmarket all through the Spring Meetings. Decline her? she
comes to-night!"
"Comes to-night?" laughed Carruthers. "All is lost, then. We shall see
the Countess of Marabout moving through London society with a West
Indian, who has a skin like Othello; has as much idea of manners as a
housemaid that suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people
to whom she yesterday carried up their hot water; reflects indelible
disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled; throws glass or
silver missiles at Soames's head when he doesn't wait upon her at
luncheon to her liking, as she has been accustomed to do at the
negroes----"
"Philip, pray don't!" cried Lady Marabout, piteously.
"Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young lady fresh from
convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, who astonishes a
dinner-party by only taking the first course, on the score of jours
maigres and conscientious scruples; who is visited by reverends peres
from Farm Street, and fills your drawing-room with High Church curates,
whom she tries to draw over from their 'mother's' to their 'sister's'
open arms; who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking
an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a soiree
musicale, begins 'Sancta Maria adorata!'"
"Philip, _don't_!" cried Lady Marabout. "Bark at him, Bijou, the
heartless man! It is as likely as not little Montolieu may realize one
of your horrible sketches. Ah, Philip, you don't know what the worries
of a chaperone are!"
"Thank Heaven, no!" laughed Carruthers.
"It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare say--one's
woes always _are_ amusing to other people, they don't feel the smart
themselves, and only laugh at the grimace it forces from one--but I can
tell you, Philip, it is anything but a pleasant prospect to have to go
about in society with a girl one may be ashamed of!--I don't know
anything more trying; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a
girl that is not perfectly good style."
"But why not have thought of all this in time?"
Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's ears, with a
sigh.
"My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would
there be any follies committed at all? It's precisely because repentance
comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a
merciless sting. Besides, _could_ I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy
as she is with that bear of a man?"
"I never felt more anxious in my life," thought Lady Marabout, as she
sat before the fire in her drawing-room--it was a chilly April
day--stirring the cream into her pre-prandial cup of tea, resting one of
her small satin-slippered feet on Bijou's back, while the firelight
sparkled on the Dresden figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand
costly trifles, in which the Marabout rooms equalled any in Belgravia.
"I never felt more anxious--not on any of Philip's dreadful yachting
expeditions, nor even when he went on that perilous exploring tour into
Arabia Deserta, I do think. If she _should_ be unpresentable--and then
poor dear Lilla's was not much of a match, and the girl will not have a
sou, she tells me frankly; I can hardly hope to do anything for her.
There is one thing, she will not be a responsibility like Valencia or
Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for _them_ will be a good
one for her. She must accept the first offer made her, if she have any
at all, which will be very doubtful; few Benedicts bow to Beatrices
nowadays, unless Beatrice is a good 'investment,' as they call it. She
will soon be here. That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How
anxious I feel! Really it can't be worse for a Turkish bridegroom never
to see his wife's face till after the ceremony than it is for one not to
have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. If she shouldn't be good
style!"
And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set
down her little Sevres cup and rose out of her arm-chair, with Bijou
shaking his silver collar and bells, to welcome the new inmate of
Lowndes Square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft
beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady
Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse,
or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now
made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded.
Hypocrisy, you say. Not a bit of it! Hypocrisy may be eminently
courteous, but take my word for it, it's never _cordial_! There are
natures who throw such golden rays around them naturally, as there are
others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, and deal them
out as points of conscience; are there not sunbeams that shine kindly
alike on fragrant violet tufts and barren brambles, velvet lawns and
muddy trottoirs? are there not hail-clouds that send jagged points of
ice on all the world pele-mele, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on
the granite boulder?
"She _is_ good style, thank Heaven!" thought Lady Marabout, as she went
forward, with her white soft hands, their jewels flashing in the light,
outstretched in welcome. "My dear child, how much you are like your
mother! You must let me be fond of you for her sake, first, and
then--for your own!"
The conventional thought did not make the cordial utterance insincere.
The two ran in couples--we often drive such pairs, every one of us--and
if they entail insincerity, _Veritas, vale!_
"Madre mia, I called to inquire if you have survived the anxiety of last
night, and to know what _jeune sauvage_ or feir _religieuse_ you may
have had sent you for the galvanizing of Belgravia?" said Carruthers,
paying his accustomed visit in his mother's boudoir, and throwing
macaroons at Bijou's nose.
"My dear Philip, I hardly know; she puzzles me. She's what, if she were
a man, I should classify as a detrimental."
"Is she awkward?"
"Not in the least. Perfect manners, wherever she learned them."
"Brusque?"
"Soft as a gazelle. Very like her mother."
"Brown?"
"Fair as that statuette, with a beautiful bloom; lovely gold hair, too,
and hazel eyes."
"What are the shortcomings, then?"
"There are none; and it's that that puzzles me. She's been six years in
that convent, and yet, I do assure you, her style is perfect. She's
hardly eighteen, but she's the air of the best society. She is--a--well,
_almost_ nobody, as people rank now, you know, for poor dear Lilla's
marriage was not what she should have made, but the girl might be a
royal duke's daughter for manner."