Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 15

"Your peace! Good G.o.d! 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 sh.e.l.l 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e.

"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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.ble nature, you say. I don't say anything against his nature! She wors.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.s 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--n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution! 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 unp.r.o.nounceable name that the man is governor of; shut out of all society, with n.o.body 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 Oth.e.l.lo; 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 gla.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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!"