That Unfortunate Marriage Volume Iii Part 2

"There ain't a many things I'm so sure of as I am of that," answered Mr.

Bragg, in his ordinary quiet tones. And then he opened the door and was gone.

He went down the stairs, and through the hall, and into the street without being challenged. He shut the street door softly behind him, with a kind of instinct of escape; and marched away rather quickly, but square and steady as ever.

After a while he looked at his watch, hesitated, and finally hailed a hansom cab.

"Poultry! You can take it easy. I'm not in a hurry," he said to the driver, as he got into the vehicle.

Then Mr. Bragg leaned back, and began to think. He had a habit of frequently closing his eyes when meditating, and this habit it was which had impelled him to get into a cab, since a pedestrian in the streets of London could only indulge in it at the risk of his life; and Mr. Bragg had no--not even the most pa.s.sing--temptation to suicide. He shut his eyes tight now, tilted his hat backward from his forehead, and reviewed the situation.

He had behaved very well to May, and was conscious of having behaved well to her; she deserved the best and most considerate treatment; but Mr. Bragg was no angel, and he was extremely angry with Mrs.

Dormer-Smith. He felt some irritation--very unreasonably, as he would by-and-by acknowledge--against Mrs. Dobbs--she had been rather exasperatingly in the right. But Mrs. Dormer-Smith had been most exasperatingly in the wrong, and he was very angry with her. Why had she not confessed that she knew nothing at all about her niece's feelings?

It was clear she was quite ignorant of them. She had only to say that she could not undertake to answer for May; that would at least have been honest!

"I dare say I might have spoken, all the same," Mr. Bragg admitted to himself. "I think p'r'aps I should. I'd got to that point where a man _must_ know for himself what the answer is to that question, and when 'likely' or 'unlikely' won't serve his turn. But I could ha' managed different. I needn't have looked like a Tomnoddy. Trotted out there--making a reg'lar show of a man; not a doubt but what that flunkey knew all about it. Woman's a fool!"

Mr. Bragg's indignation rolled off like thunder in these broken growlings. And beneath it all--deeper than all--there lay an aching sorrow. It would not break his heart, as he knew; it might not even spoil his dinner; but it was a real sorrow, nevertheless. In the moment of a.s.suring him that he must not hope to win her, May had seemed to him better worth winning than ever; her soft touch had opened a long sealed-up spring of tenderness. There was some rough poetry within him, none the less pathetic because he knew thoroughly, sensitively, how unable he was to give it expression, and how ridiculous the mere suggestion of his trying to do so would seem to most people. He resolutely refrained as much as possible from letting his mind busy itself with these hidden feelings; his very thoughts seemed to hurt them at that moment.

He preferred to nurse his wrath against Mrs. Dormer-Smith, and to resent her having betrayed him into an undignified position. Mr. Bragg had been prosperous and powerful for many years, and the sense of being balked was very irksome to him; more irksome than in the days of his poverty, when youth and hope were elastic, and battle seemed a not unwelcome condition of existence.

But before he reached the end of his eastward journey Mr. Bragg began to speculate about the man whom May loved. In spite of Mrs. Dobbs's emphatic denial, he could not dismiss the idea that Theodore Bransby was the man. He had gathered the impression that Mrs. Dobbs did not like Theodore, and he remembered May's deprecating words, "Granny would not think any one too good for me!" which seemed to indicate that Mrs. Dobbs had not hailed the engagement with rapture. Thinking over the dates, he concluded--quite correctly--that May's lover, whoever he might be, had declared himself not long after his (Bragg's) interview with Mrs. Dobbs.

Now, Theodore Bransby had been in Oldchester at that time, as he well remembered.

Why Theodore, if it were he, should keep his engagement secret from the Dormer-Smiths, was not easily explicable. But Mr. Bragg knew the young man's political projects; and it might be that Theodore would wish to approach May's family armed with all the importance which a successful electoral campaign would give him. One thing Mr. Bragg felt tolerably sure of--that Aunt Pauline would regret acutely the declension from a nephew-in-law with fifty thousand a year, to one whose income did not count as many hundreds! It was, perhaps, rather agreeable to Mr. Bragg to think of this. It was certainly a comfort to him to be able to dislike May's lover on independent grounds. He had always entertained an antipathy towards the young man; and, however sincere and tender his interest in May Cheffington might be, it did not modify, by a hair's breadth, his opinion of young Bransby.

"And, after all, it may not be him!" said Mr. Bragg, reflectively and ungrammatically. "But if it isn't him, it can't be anybody I know."

The person he had appointed to meet in the City was an Oldchester man; and when the business part of their interview was concluded, he said to Mr. Bragg--

"There's bad news from Combe Park. Haven't you heard? Oh! why they say Mr. Lucius Cheffington can't live many days. So that scamp, What's-his-name, the nephew, will come in for it all. The old lord's awfully savage, I'm told. Shouldn't wonder if it balks young Bransby's hopes of getting his seat. Old Castlecombe won't like paying election expenses for him _now_. Great pity! He's a very rising young man, and a credit to Oldchester."

CHAPTER II.

When Mr. Bragg was gone, May felt a cowardly temptation to run away to her own room, and there recover her composure in solitude. But she reflected that that would be scarcely fair to her aunt, who, no doubt, was waiting with some impatience to hear the result of the interview. So she dried her eyes, and resolutely ascended the stairs to her aunt's room.

The gentle, refined voice which had once so charmed her (but which, as she had long since learned, could utter sentiments singularly at variance with its own sweetness) answered her tap at the door by saying, "Is that dear May? Come in." May entered, and saw her aunt reclining in a lounging chair by the fireside. A book lay open beside her; but she evidently had not been reading recently. She looked up at May's flushed face and tear-swollen eyes, and these traces of emotion seemed to her satisfactory indications of what had pa.s.sed. "He has spoken! It's all right!" she said to herself. Then aloud, with a tender smile, holding out both her hands, "Well, darling?"

The softness of her tone had a perversely hardening effect on May. If her aunt had expected her to accept Mr. Bragg--and May was not dull enough to doubt this, now that her eyes were illumined by that dawn of clear-sightedness which had been so amazing to her--the least she could do was to be quiet and common-sensible about it. Any a.s.sumption of sentiment seemed to May to be sickening under the circ.u.mstances. So she answered dryly--

"Mr. Bragg desired me to tell you that he will have the honour of calling on you again before long."

"Is he gone?" asked Mrs. Dormer-Smith, with a momentary twinge of anxiety.

"Yes; he is gone. He had an appointment in the City, and was rather pressed for time; so he could not stay to take leave of you."

"Oh!" exclaimed her aunt, sinking back among her cus.h.i.+ons with a smile, "I forgive him." Then seeing May turn away as if to leave the room, she suddenly sat up again, and said with an air of gentle reproach, "And have you nothing to say to me, dear May?"

"Nothing particular, Aunt Pauline."

"Nothing particular! I do not think that is very kindly said, May."

May's conscience told her the same thing. She had yielded to a movement of temper. The most sensitive chords in her own nature had been jarred, and were still quivering. But that was no reason why she should be unkind or uncivil to her aunt; she repented, and, with her usual impulsive candour, said--

"I beg your pardon, Aunt Pauline. I ought not to have answered you so."

"You have been agitated, dear child. Come here, and sit down by me. Now tell me, May--you surely will tell _me_--Mr. Bragg has proposed to you, has he not?"

"No, Aunt Pauline."

"_What?_"

Mrs. Dormer-Smith would have been shocked if she could have seen her own face in the gla.s.s at that moment. The vulgarest market-woman's countenance could not have expressed surprise and consternation more unrestrainedly.

"I think he, perhaps, would have asked me to marry him: but I stopped him."

"You stopped him?" echoed her aunt, with clasped hands. But a little gleam of hope revived her. The matter had been mismanaged in some way.

May was so deplorably devoid of tact! All might yet be well. "And why, for pity's sake, May, did you stop him?"

"Because, as I could not accept him, Aunt Pauline, I wished to spare him as much as possible."

"Could not accept him! Good heavens, May, this is frightful! Have you lost your senses? Do you know who and what Mr. Bragg is?"

"He is a good, honest man; and I esteem him and like him."

"And is not that enough? Do you know that there are girls of--I won't say better family, but--higher rank than yours, who would give their ears to be----But it can't be! You are a foolish, inexperienced child, who don't understand your own good fortune. You cannot be allowed to throw away this splendid opportunity. I will write to Mr. Bragg myself, and----"

"Stay, Aunt Pauline. Please to understand that I will never, under any circ.u.mstances, dream of marrying Mr. Bragg. He is quite persuaded of this. He and I understand each other very well, and we mean to continue good friends; but pray do not lower your own dignity by writing to him on this subject!"

Mrs. Dormer-Smith burst into tears. "Go away, you ungrateful child," she said, from behind her pocket-handkerchief. "I could not have believed you would have behaved in this manner after all I have done for you!"

May would have been more distressed than she was had the spectacle of her aunt's tears been rarer. But she had seen Mrs. Dormer-Smith weep from, what seemed to her, very inadequate motives:--even once at the misfit of a new gown. Nevertheless, she tried to soothe her aunt.

"Please don't cry, Aunt Pauline. I can't bear you to think me ungrateful. But, after all, what have I done? I dare say--I am sure, indeed, that you are only anxious for my welfare. And what sort of a life could I expect if I married a man I could not love?"

"I beg you will not talk such nursery-maid's nonsense to me, May," returned her aunt, sprinkling some rose-water on her pocket-handkerchief, and dabbing her wet cheeks with it. "Could not love, indeed! Why could you not love him? Do you expect to rant through a _grande pa.s.sion_ like a heroine on the stage? I am shocked at you, May! Girls in your position owe a duty to society."

May knew that her aunt was unanswerable when she broached these mysterious dogmas about "society"--unanswerable, at all events, by her.

She could as soon have attempted a theological argument with a devotee of Mumbo Jumbo. So she held her peace, and stood still, anxious to escape, and yet fearful of seeming to be unfeeling by going away at that moment. One idea at length suggested itself to her as a possible consolation for her aunt, and she proceeded to offer it with unreflecting rashness.

"But, Aunt Pauline," she said, "after all, you know, Mr. Bragg is a very low-born man. He was once a common artisan in Oldchester. And you remember you even thought Theodore Bransby presumptuous----"

The immediate reply to this well-meant suggestion was a fresh burst of tears. "You are too insupportable, May. One might suppose you to be an idiot! What has been the use of all my care, and my endeavours to make you look at things as a girl of your condition ought to look at them?

Mr. Bragg could have placed you in a brilliant position. Now, I dare say, he will marry Felicia Hautenville. I have no doubt he will, and it will serve you right if he does. You think of no one but yourself. What do you suppose that worthy woman, Mrs. Dobbs, will say when she hears of your behaviour? After all the money she has spent on sending you to London!"