Stella Fregelius, H. Rider Haggard [list of e readers .TXT] 📗
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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In the issue, confident in his own diplomatic abilities, he determined to manage the affair himself and to speak to his niece. The mistake was grave, for whereas she was as wax to her father or her lover, something in her uncle’s manner, or it may have been his very personality, always aroused in Mary a spirit of opposition. On this occasion, too, that manner was not fortunate, for he put the proposal before her as a thing already agreed upon by all concerned, and one to which her consent was asked as a mere matter of form.
Instantly Mary became antagonistic. She pretended not to understand; she asked for reasons and explanations. Finally, she announced in idle words, beneath which ran a current of determination, that neither her father nor Morris could really wish this hurried marriage, since had they done so one or other of them would have spoken to her on the subject. When pressed, she intimated very politely, but in language whereof the meaning could hardly be mistaken, that she held this fixing of the date to be peculiarly her own privilege; and when still further pressed said plainly that she considered her father too ill for her to think of being married at present.
“But they both desire it,” expostulated the Colonel.
“They have not told me so,” Mary answered, setting her red lips.
“If that is all, they will tell you so soon enough, my dear girl.”
“Perhaps, uncle, after they have been directed to do so, but that is not quite the same thing.”
The Colonel saw that he had made a mistake, and too late changed his tactics.
“You see, Mary, your father’s state of health is precarious; he might grow worse.”
She tapped her foot upon the ground. Of these allusions to the possible, and, indeed, the certain end of her beloved father’s illness, she had a kind of horror.
“In that event, that dreadful event,” she answered, “he will need me, my whole time and care to nurse him. These I might not be able to give if I were already married. I love Morris very dearly. I am his for whatever I may be worth; but I was my father’s before Morris came into my life, and he has the first claim upon me.”
“What, then, do you propose?” asked the Colonel curtly, for opposition and argument bred no meekness in his somewhat arbitrary breast.
“To be married on New Year’s Day, wherever we are, if Morris wishes it and the state of my father’s health makes it convenient. If not, Uncle Richard, to wait till a more fitting season.” Then she rose—for this conversation took place at Seaview—saying that it was time she should give her father his medicine.
Thus the project of an early marriage fell through; for, having once been driven into announcing her decision in terms so open and unmistakable, Mary would not go back on her word.
Morris, who was much disappointed, pleaded with her. Her father also spoke upon the subject, but though the voice was the voice of Mr. Porson, the arguments, she perceived, were the arguments of Colonel Monk. Therefore she hardened her heart and put the matter by, refusing, indeed, to discuss it at any length. Yet—and it is not the first time that a woman has allowed her whims to prevail over her secret wishes—in truth she desired nothing more than to be married to Morris so soon as it was his will to take her.
Finally, a compromise was arranged. There was to be no wedding at present, but the whole party were to go together to Beaulieu, there to await the development of events. It was arranged, moreover, by all concerned, that unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent it, the marriage should be celebrated upon or about New Year’s Day.
CHAPTER VII BEAULIEU
Beautiful as it might be and fashionable as it might be, Morris did not find Beaulieu very entertaining; indeed, in an unguarded moment he confessed to Mary that he “hated the hole.” Even the steam launch in which they went for picnics did not console him, fond though he was of the sea; while as for Monte Carlo, after his third visit he was heard to declare that if they wanted to take him there again it must be in his coffin.
The Colonel did not share these views. He was out for a holiday, and he meant to enjoy himself. To begin with, there was the club at Nice, where he fell in with several old comrades and friends. Then, whom should he meet but Lady Rawlins: once, for a little while in the distant past, they had been engaged; until suddenly the young lady, a beauty in her day, jilted him in favour of a wealthy banker of Hebraic origin. Now, many years after, the banker was aged, violent, and uncomely, habitually exceeded in his cups, and abused his wife before the servants. So it came about that to the poor woman the Colonel’s courteous, if somewhat sarcastic, consolations were really very welcome. It pleased him also to offer them. The jilting he had long ago forgiven indeed, he blessed her nightly for having taken that view of her obligations, seeing that Jane Millet, as she was then, however pretty her face may once have been, had neither fortune nor connections.
“Yes, my dear Jane,” he said to her confidentially one afternoon, “I assure you I often admire your foresight. Now, if you had done the other thing, where should we have been to-day? In the workhouse, I imagine.”
“I suppose so,” answered Lady Rawlins, meekly, and suppressing a sigh, since for the courtly and distinguished Colonel she cherished a sentimental admiration which actually increased with age; “but you didn’t always think like that, Richard.” Then she glanced out of the window, and added: “Oh, there is Jonah coming home, and he looks so cross,” and the poor lady shivered.
The Colonel put up his eyeglass and contemplated Jonah through the window. He was not a pleasing spectacle. A rather low-class Hebrew who calls himself a Christian, of unpleasant appearance and sinister temper, suffering from the effects of lunch, is not an object to be loved.
“Ah, I see,” said the Colonel. “Yes, Sir Jonah ages, doesn’t he? as, indeed, we do all of us,” and he glanced at the lady’s spreading proportions. Then he went on. “You really should persuade him to be tidier in his costume, Jane; his ancestral namesake could scarcely have looked more dishevelled after his sojourn with the whale. Well, it is a small failing; one can’t have everything, and on the whole, with your wealth and the rest, you have been a very fortunate woman.”
“Oh, Richard, how can you say so?” murmured the wretched Lady Rawlins, as she took the hand outstretched in farewell. For Jonah in large doses was more than the Colonel could stomach.
Indeed, as the door closed behind him she wiped away a tear, whispering to herself: “And to think that I threw over dear Richard in order to marry that—that—yes, I will say it—that horror!”
Meanwhile, as he strolled down the street, beautifully dressed, and still looking very upright and handsome—for he had never lost his figure—the Colonel was saying to himself:
“Silly old woman! Well, I hope that by now she knows the difference between a gentleman and a half-Christianised, money-hunting, wine-bibbing Jew. However, she’s got the fortune, which was what she wanted, although she forgets it now, and he’s got a lachrymose, stout, old party. But how beautiful she used to be! My word, how beautiful she used to be! To go to see her now is better than any sermon; it is an admirable moral exercise.”
To Lady Rawlins also the Colonel’s visits proved excellent moral exercises tinged with chastenings. Whenever he went away he left behind him some aphorism or reflection filled with a wholesome bitter. But still she sought his society and, in secret, adored him.
In addition to the club and Lady Rawlins there were the tables at Monte Carlo, with their motley company, which to a man of the world could not fail to be amusing. Besides, the Colonel had one weakness—sometimes he did a little gambling, and when he played he liked to play fairly high. Morris accompanied him once to the “Salles de jeu,” and—that was enough. What passed there exactly, could never be got out of him, even by Mary, whose sense of humour was more than satisfied with the little comedies in progress about her, no single point of which did she ever miss.
Only, funny as she might be in her general feebleness, and badly as she might have behaved in some distant past, for Lady Rawlins she felt sorry. Her kind heart told Mary that this unhappy person also possessed a heart, although she was now stout and on the wrong side of middle age. She was aware, too, that the Colonel knew as much, and his scientific pin-pricks and searings of that guileless and unprotected organ struck her as little short of cruel. None the less so, indeed, because the victim at the stake imagined that they were inflicted in kindness by the hand of a still tender and devoted friend.
“I hope that I shan’t quarrel with my father-in-law,” reflected Mary to herself, after one of the best of these exhibitions; “he’s got an uncommonly long memory, and likes to come even. However, I never shall, because he’s afraid of me and knows that I see through him.”
Mary was right. A very sincere respect for her martial powers when roused ensured perfect peace between her and the Colonel. With his son, however, it was otherwise. Even in this age of the Triumph of the Offspring parents do exist who take advantage of their sons’ strict observance of the Fifth Commandment. It is easy to turn a man into a moral bolster and sit upon him if you know that an exaggerated sense of filial duty will prevent him from stuffing himself with pins. So it came about that Morris was sometimes sat upon, especially when the Colonel was suffering from a bad evening at the tables; well out of sight and hearing of Mary, be it understood, who on such occasions was apt to develop a quite formidable temper.
It is over this question of the tables that one of these domestic differences arose which in its results brought about the return of the Monks to Monksland. Upon a certain afternoon the Colonel asked his son to accompany him to Monte Carlo. Morris refused, rather curtly, perhaps.
“Very well,” replied the Colonel in his grandest manner. “I am sure I do not wish for an unwilling companion, and doubtless your attention is claimed by affairs more important than the according of your company to a father.”
“No,” replied Morris, with his accustomed truthfulness; “I am going out sea-fishing, that is all.”
“Quite so. Allow me then to wish good luck to your fishing. Does Mary accompany you?”
“No, I think not; she says the boat makes her sick, and she can’t bear eels.”
“So much the better, as I can ask for the pleasure of her society this afternoon.”
“Yes, you can ask,” said Morris, suddenly turning angry.
“Do you imply, Morris, that the request will be refused?”
“Certainly, father; if I have anything to do with it.”
“And might I inquire why?”
“Because I won’t have Mary taken to that place to mix with the people who frequent it.”
“I see. This is exclusiveness with a vengeance. Perhaps you consider that those unholy doors should be shut to me also.”
“I have no right to express an opinion as to where my father should or should not go; but if you ask me, I think that, under all the circumstances, you would do best to keep away.”
“The circumstances! What circumstances?”
“Those of our poverty, which leaves us no money to risk in gambling.”
Then the Colonel lost all control of his temper, as sometimes happened to him, and became exceedingly violent and unpleasant. What he said does
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