An hour or so afterwards Fantine Le Grand coming in from a ramble on
the rocks, whither she had gone despite her pretended headache, in
order to quiet her nerves for what she foresaw was to be a stand-up
fight between her and Marrion, found old Lord Drummuir in possession
of her boudoir. He was in his wheeled-chair, but was looking
remarkably spruce in a blue coat with brass buttons, an immaculate
white stock and frill, and his gouty foot was swathed in kersey to
match the breeches he wore. His ruddy face was all smiles, but there
was a vicious look in the blue eyes that reminded her of a horse about
to kick.
And kick he did with a force that left her breathless.
"I've come to tell you," he said, "that we are going to be married
this evening."
She recoiled as if from a blow.
"Now, don't be foolish and make a fuss," he continued, as she gave a
little cry, "or you won't look well in your wedding-dress!" So far he
had gone lightly; but now he settled down to a decision of voice and
manner that was positively terrifying to the woman in its intensity.
"I tell you I won't have any fuss, and I know everything. Marrion Paul
told it me from start to finish, and I don't want to hear any more
about it, if you please!"
The mock politeness of the last finished her. She was ill-bred, not
over brave, and reverting to her early upbringing she burst into a
torrent of abuse of the viper, the hussy who was no better than she
should be, who, if Penelope at the keep-house was to be believed--and
she had seen her but now--had----
So far Lord Drummuir had let her storm; now he stopped her
impatiently.
"I know what Penelope says," he snarled, "and I shall be sorry for her
when she hears what I have to say. And I know you, Fanny, down to the
ground. You're not a bad sort, but you are getting old. Look in the
glass, you foolish woman, and you'll see I'm right. But you suit me
and I mean to have you. There's an end of it."
She summoned up a little courage.
"And supposing I won't! I am a free woman."
He lowered his brows and his words cut like a knife.
"Don't tell lies! You're not free. You think I paid your debts. I
wasn't such a fool till I had you fast. Look here, when I heard all
about this midsummer madness with Marmaduke--the d----d impertinence
of trying to inveigle my son into posturing at the Courts of Europe
for pennies almost made me give you your _conge_, miss, I can tell
you--I sent for Compton. You think I don't know what he is to you; but
I do. If he'd known of this business, I'd have kicked you both out.
But he didn't, poor devil; he was flabbergasted. So I saw it was all
your fault and I determined to punish you, and I'm going to do it my
own way. Now, don't look like a frightened hare; I never touched a
woman save in the way of kindness all my life, and we'll get on all
right once we're married; so the sooner the better."
She sat and looked at him, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. The
bald truth of it all took words from her, and her one feeling was that
she could cheerfully have strangled Marrion Paul for her courage and
straightforwardness.
"My wedding-dress isn't ready," she sobbed at last futilely, and the
old man leant back in his chair and roared with laughter.
"By Gad, Fan," he bawled, "you're a woman, and no mistake; so don't
make those eyes of yours too red with crying. Remember, you're not so
young as you were. And as for this little _penchant_ of yours for
Marmaduke, why, God bless my soul, my dear, you've had dozens such
episodes, and so have I, by Gad, so we'll suit each other down to the
ground. Now, if you will please ring the bell for Dewar, I'll leave
you to prepare--six o'clock sharp. I've told the gardeners to send you
some orange blossoms from the houses and to decorate the hall. My
daughters will be your bridesmaids."
When his wheeled-chair had gone the effect of his brutal
determination, his colossal masterfulness, did not pass with it. That
remained, and Fantine Le Grand gave in to it helplessly. The old man
had said very little; on the whole he had been wonderfully polite, but
she knew she was trapped, and that she might as well try to fly as to
escape from his watchful eye, his unscrupulous power.
And, after all, it was but a return to the old plans; so after a while
she followed Lord Drummuir's advice and dried her eyes.
"You ought to think yourself deuced lucky," growled Colonel Compton,
when he came in, after a time full of alarm and recriminations. "If
anyone had told me the old man would take it so quietly I wouldn't
have believed it. I expected he would have kicked us both out into the
gutter, and then where should we be? And such a mad idea, too! The
Honourable Marmaduke Muir as a public dancer--preposterous!"
"It would only have been for six months and under an assumed name,"
interrupted Fantine defiantly; but all initiative was passing from
her. She felt like clay in the hands of the potter.
"Twaddle!" insisted Colonel Compton. "I can only think you were
insane. The fact is, my dear Fanny, you're getting old and your ankles
wouldn't stand the hacking about of a dancer's life. That is why we
agreed on your becoming Lady Drummuir, and you ought to be very much
obliged to the old man for letting you off so easily."
This, combined with the reiterated allusions to her age, was too much
for patience. Fantine jumped up and stamped her foot in impotent
anger.
"Easily?" she echoed. "Can't you see the malice of the man? He is
making us all feel fools. He is doing all the harm he can. I tell you
he is enjoying himself thoroughly."
She was perfectly right. Lord Drummuir had not felt so young for
years. At that moment, after disposing of Penelope in a way that
reached the very marrow of the unseen bones hidden under that
extinguisher of fat, he was facing, with a special licence in his
hand, the dapper little figure of the Reverend Patrick Bryce, who,
called on some pretext of illness, found himself confronted with an
order to solemnise a marriage that same evening.
The countenance of the small divine was a study in outraged dignity;
that of Lord Drummuir one of supercilious toleration--the toleration
of a cat for the unavailing efforts of a mouse to escape its
paralysing captor.
"Am I to understand, sir, that you refuse to carry out this special
licence at a perfectly appropriate time and place?" said the latter,
his voice even but deliberate. "If so, I must ask you for your reasons
in writing, that I may forward them with my complaint." He waited a
moment, then went on: "You were appointed by the Crown to this charge.
A parishioner of yours in possession of a legal licence calls upon you
to perform the duties of your office. You refuse, and I refuse to
accept your refusal. That, I think, summarises the position between
us. But let me remind you, my good sir, that nothing short of reliable
information of cause or just impediment can justify a minister of the
Church of Scotland in refusing to do the duty for which he is paid by
the State. And if, sir, the licence of this house shocks you--as I am
told it does--I think this endeavour of a man and a woman to keep
within the bounds of so-called respectability should meet your
approval. Briefly, my dear sir, you have not a leg to stand upon, and
I demand your services at six o'clock this evening."
The little minister rose and made him a courtly bow.
"It shall be as your lordship wishes; but I reserve to myself the
right of showing to your lordship that special licences can be used
for, as well as against, the Church."
"Wonder where he gets his manners from," commented Lord Drummuir to
himself, as the trim figure bowed itself out. "Father must have been
someone's valet, I suppose; and that reminds me of Marmaduke's girl.
She's true blue, somehow."
So he sat down, filled from top to toe with a wicked elation at his
own success in upsetting everybody's plans, and indited the following
epistle to his son, as a sort of top note to his man[oe]uvres:
"Dear Boy,--You will be glad to hear that Fantine Le Grand becomes
Lady Drummuir this evening at six o'clock. We have agreed that this is
better than hunting two thousand pounds through the capitals of
Europe, even in company with you. So that is settled. For the rest, I
enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds on my bankers. You owe this
to Marrion Paul, who is worth the whole batch of you put together. I
cannot conceive how you were such a confounded ass as not to see this,
but to let her slip through your fingers and leave the poor girl to
face the insults of the neighbours, as she is doing; for, of course,
her escapade is the talk of the town. My dear Marmaduke, I am ashamed
of you!--Your affectionate father, DRUMMUIR.
"Your step-mamma sends you her duty."
He chuckled over the production which he calculated told enough to
rouse anger and not enough to satisfy curiosity, and which, while
being a regular facer, left the relations between them much as they
were.
After which he had himself wheeled to the big hall where the ceremony
was to take place, and amused himself vastly by superintending
decorations and mystifying Peter, who came in from a day after wild
duck, to find the house upside down. It was the sort of situation in
which his lordship revelled, and he became almost lachrymose over
reminiscences of the past with Jack Jardine, who never moved a muscle,
but took the ceremony as a matter of course. Only when Peter, less
experienced, asked him what the deuce the old man meant by playing the
goat at a moment's notice, he shook his head solemnly, and replied--
"Your father is a very remarkable man, Peter, a very remarkable man
indeed."
So at the appointed hour the wheeled-chair took its place, its
occupant duly bedecked with the white flower of a blameless life in
his buttonhole, before the improvised sort of altar which bore on it a
beautiful bunch of late roses; and the Reverend Patrick Bryce with a
colour in his usually pale cheeks sailed in very stiff in his starched
bands and rustling academical black robes and took his place before
it. The bride, composed and cheerful, looking quite virginal in white
and orange blossoms, appeared on the arm of Colonel Compton and
followed by her bridesmaids, also in white. There were, however, but
two of them, for Margaret Muir boldly stalked in separately, attired
in a fine new purple gown, and took a place sedately beside Jack
Jardine, who stared at her incredulously; for her father's eyes were
upon her and scowling disapproval at her disobedience to his commands.
She seemed quite indifferent to this, and nodded an encouraging smile
to her sisters, who, poor souls, were the only people who showed by
their red eyes and general emotion that the occasion was serious and
not a mere farce.
So curtly, baldly, shorn of every unnecessary word, every touch of
sentiment, the simple formula binding those two sinners in the most
holy of bonds went swiftly on, until the Reverend Patrick Bryce closed
the register in which Peter, as his father's best man, and Jack
Jardine, as family friend, had duly attested the marriage, and stepped
down to where Lord Drummuir's chair stood with the new-made Lady
Drummuir beside it.
"My part in this pitiable travesty being ended, sir," he said, with a
dignified bow, "I take my leave. Before I do so, however, I wish to
introduce my wife to you and acquaint you with my marriage--also by
special licence--to your daughter. Margaret, my dear!" he added,
raising his voice, "oblige me by saying farewell to your father. It is
the last time you are likely to see him."
For a second the figure in the purple gown hesitated and gave an
agonised glance at her sisters in white; then with her eyes fixed on
the small dignified figure of the man to whom she had unreservedly
given her whole large heart, her courage returned, she walked forward,
her head held high, and faced her father. He was purple with rage, and
looked as if he would have a fit.
"Do you mean to tell me," he stuttered, "that you have married
that--that jackanapes?"
Her face flushed, her temper was up in a second, and matched his own.
"No, sir; I have married an honourable gentleman of birth equal to my
own! It is more than you can say of your bride's----"
"Margaret, Margaret!" came the little parson's warning voice; for, be
Lord Drummuir's faults what they may, he was still her father.
But she would have none of it, she was going to have her say for the
first and last time of her life; so she went on while the old lord
listened, a sort of wicked approval in his eyes. He had not known she
was so much his daughter.
"And I married him without asking your consent, because I knew you
never would have given it, and I am of age----"
"Yes, my dear, a bit long in the tooth!" broke in the old man
viciously.
"Very," she replied; "but not so old a bride as you are a groom. I'm
thirty-six, and, as you said yourself, if I choose to get married by
special licence, provided there's no cause or just impediment, no
one--not even the nearest and dearest--have a right to object. Isn't
that what he said?" she added, in appeal.
The Reverend Patrick Bryce looked at his lordship and his lordship
looked at him. Then suddenly came one of the rough, rude gaffaws.
"You've caught a tartar, parson!" chuckled the old man. "Take her, and
be d----d to you both for a couple of fools. I'll leave you to be
angry, if you like; this is my wedding-day and I want to be jolly.
Here, Davie--Davie Sim, where the devil are you with your pipes? Skirl
up 'Muir's Matching.' Now, my lady."
And as the wheeled-chair moved off accompanied by white satin and
orange blossoms he looked round to the purple robe with almost boyish
malice in his eye.
"Take the parson's arm and come along, Meg. You may as well get a good
send off from the castle and have your share of the family wedding
march, since it is little else you'll be getting from the Muirs of
Drummuir."
That evening, after the newly made Lady Drummuir had been dismissed to
her own rooms with the injunction to remember her new honours, and not
to stand any cursed nonsense from any one, and the old man, regardless
of gout, sat drinking one glass of port after another on the ground
that, having got royally drunk at his three previous weddings, he was
not going to treat his fourth with less consideration--Jack Jardine,
somewhat breathless after all the disturbing and inexplicable events
of the day, shook his head and said once more--
"Your father is a remarkable man--a very remarkable man!"
"Very," assented Peter. "Now I wonder what Marrion Paul had to do with
it all!"