The Hoyden

by Duchess

CHAPTER VII.

HOW THE ARGUMENT GROWS HIGHER; AND HOW MARIAN LOSES HER TEMPER, AND HOW MARGARET OBJECTS TO THE RUIN OF ONE YOUNG LIFE.

"She is insufferable—intolerable!" says Lady Rylton, almost hysterically. She is sitting in the drawing-room with Margaret and Mrs. Bethune, near one of the windows that overlook the tennis court. The guests of the afternoon have gone; only the house-party remains, and still, in the dying daylight, the tennis balls are being tossed to and fro. Tita's little form may be seen darting from side to side; she is playing again with Sir Maurice.

"She is a very young girl, who has been brought up without a mother's care," says Miss Knollys, who has taken a fancy to the poor hoyden, and would defend her.

"Her manners this afternoon!—her actions—her fatal admissions!" says Lady Rylton, who has not forgiven that word or two about the sugar merchant.

"She spoke only naturally. She saw no reason why she should not speak of——"

"Don't be absurd, Margaret!" Sharply. "You know, as well as I do, that she is detestable."

"I am quite glad you have formed that idea of her," says Miss Knollys, "as it leads me to hope you do not now desire to marry her to Maurice."

After all, there are, perhaps, moments when Margaret is not as perfect as one believes her. She can't, for example, resist this thrust.

"Decidedly I don't _desire _to marry her to Maurice," says Lady Rylton angrily. "I have told you that often enough, I think; but for all that Maurice must marry her. It is his last chance!"

"Tessie," says Margaret sharply, "if you persist in this matter, and bring it to the conclusion you have in view, do you know what will happen? You will make your only child miserable! I warn you of that." Miss Knollys' voice is almost solemn.

"You talk as if Maurice was the only person in the world to be made miserable," says Lady Rylton, leaning back in her chair and bursting into tears—at all events, it must be supposed it is tears that are going on behind the little lace fragment pressed to her eyes. "Am not I ten times more miserable? I, who have to give my only son—as" (sobbing) "you most admirably describe it, Margaret—to such a girl as that! Good heavens! What can his sufferings be to mine?" She wipes her eyes daintily, and sits up again. "You hurt me so, dear Margaret," she says plaintively, "but I'm sure you do not mean it."

"No, no, of course," says Miss Knollys, as civilly as she can. She is feeling a little disgusted.

"And as for this affair—objectionable as the girl is, still one must give and take a little when one's fortunes are at the ebb. And I will save my dearest Maurice at all risks if I can, no matter what grief it costs me. Who am I"—with a picturesque sigh—"that I should interfere with the prospects of my child? And this girl! If Maurice can be persuaded to have her——"

"My dear Tessie, what a word!" says Margaret, rising, with a distinct frown. "Has he only to ask, then, and have?"

"Beyond doubt," says Lady Rylton insolently, waving her fan to and fro, "if he does it in the right way. In all my experience, my dear Margaret, I have never known a woman to frown upon a man who was as handsome, as well-born, as chic as Maurice! Even though the man might be a—well"—smiling and lifting her shoulders—"it's a rude word, but—well, a very devil!"

She looks deliberately at Margaret over her fan, who really appears in this dull light nearly as young as she is. The look is a cruel one, hideously cruel. Even Marian Bethune, whose bowels of compassion are extraordinary small, changes colour, and lets her red-brown eyes rest on the small woman lounging in the deep chair with a rather murderous gaze.

Yet Lady Rylton smiles on, enjoying the changes in Margaret's face.
It is a terrible smile, coming from so fragile a creature.

Margaret's face has grown white, but she answers coldly and with deliberation. All that past horrible time—her lover, his unworthiness, his desertion—all her young, young life lies once more massacred before her.

"The women who give in to such fascination, such mere outward charms, are fools!" says she with a strength that adorns her.

"Oh, come! Come now, dearest Margaret," says her aunt, with the gayest of little laughs, "would you call yourself a fool? Why, remember, your own dear Harold was——"

"Pray spare me!" says Miss Knollys, in so cold, so haughty, so commanding a tone, that even Lady Rylton sinks beneath it. She makes an effort to sustain her position and laughs lightly, but for all that she lets her last sentence remain a fragment.

"You think Maurice will propose to this Miss Bolton?" says Marian
Bethune, leaning forward. There is something sarcastic in her smile.

"He must. It is detestable, of course. One would like a girl in his own rank, but there are so few of them with money, and when there is one, her people want her to marry a Duke or a foreign Prince—so tiresome of them!"

"It is all such folly," says Margaret, knitting her brows.

"Utter folly," says Lady Rylton. "That is what makes it so wise! It would be folly to marry a satyr—satyrs are horrid—but if the satyr had millions! Oh, the wisdom of it!"

"You go too far!" says Margaret. "Money is not everything."

"And Maurice is not a satyr," says Mrs. Bethune, a trifle unwisely. She has been watching the players on the ground below. Lady Rylton looks at her.

"Of course you object to it," says she.

"I!" says Marian. "Why should I object to it? I talk of marriage only in the abstract."

"I am glad of that!" Lady Rylton's eyes are still fixed on hers. "This will be a veritable marriage, I assure you; I have set my mind on it. It is terrible to contemplate, but one must give way sometimes; yet the thought of throwing that girl into the arms of darling Maurice——"

She breaks off, evidently overcome, yet behind the cobweb she presses to her cheeks she has an eye on Marian.

"I don't think Maurice's arms could hold her," says Mrs. Bethune, with a low laugh. It is a strange laugh. Lady Rylton's glance grows keener. "Such a mere doll of a thing. A mite!" She laughs again, but this time (having caught Lady Rylton's concentrated gaze) in a very ordinary manner—the passion, the anger has died out of it.

"Yes, she's a mere mite," says Lady Rylton. "She is positively trivial! She is in effect a perfect idiot in some ways. You know I have tried to impress her—to show her that she is not altogether below our level—as she certainly is—but she has refused to see my kindness. She—she's very fatiguing," says Lady Rylton, with a long-suffering sigh. "But one gets accustomed to grievances. This girl, just because she is hateful to me, is the one I must take into my bosom. She is going to give her fortune to Maurice!"

"And Maurice?" asks Margaret.

"Is going to take it," returns his mother airily. "And is going to give her, what she has never had—a name!"

"A cruel compact," says Margaret slowly, but with decision. "I think this marriage should not be so much as thought of! That child! and Maurice, who cares nothing for her. Marian"—Miss Knollys turns suddenly to Marian, who has withdrawn behind the curtains, as if determined to have nothing to say further to the discussion— "Marian, come here. Say you think Maurice should not marry this silly child—this baby."

"Oh! as for me," says Mrs. Bethune, coming out from behind the curtains, her face a little pale, "what is my weight in this matter? Nothing! nothing! Let Maurice marry as he will."

"As he will!" Lady Rylton repeats her words, and, rising, comes towards her. "Why don't you answer?" says she. "We want your answer. Give it!"

"I have no answer," says Mrs. Bethune slowly. "Why should he not marry Miss Bolton?—and again, why should he? Marriage, as we have been told all our lives, is but a lottery—they should have said a mockery," with a little bitter smile. "One could have understood that."

"Then you advise Maurice to marry this girl?" asks Lady Rylton eagerly.

"Oh, no, no! I advise nothing," says Marian, with a little wave of her arms.

"But why?" demands Lady Rylton angrily.

She had depended upon Marian to support her against Margaret.

"Simply because I won't," says Mrs. Bethune, her strange eyes beginning to blaze.

"Because you daren't?" questions Lady Rylton, with a sneer.

"I don't understand you," says Marian coldly.

"Don't you?" Lady Rylton's soft, little, fair face grows diabolical. "Then let me explain." Margaret makes a movement towards her, but she waves her back. "Pray let me explain, Margaret. Our dear Marian is so intensely dull that she wants a word in season. We all know why she objects to a marriage of any sort. She made a fiasco of her own first marriage, and now hopes——"

She would have continued her cruel speech but that Mrs. Bethune, who has risen, breaks into it. She comes forward in a wild, tempestuous fashion, her eyes afire, her nostrils dilated! Her beautiful red hair seems alight as she descends upon Lady Rylton.

"And that marriage!" says she, in a suffocating tone. "Who made it? Who?" She looks like a fury. There is hatred, an almost murderous hatred, in the glance she casts at the little, languid, pretty woman before her, who looks back at her with uplifted shoulders, and an all-round air of surprise and disapprobation. "You to taunt me!" says she, in a low, condensed tone. "You, who hurried, who forced me into a marriage with a man I detested! You, who gave me to understand, when I resisted, that I had no place on this big earth except a pauper's place—a place in a workhouse!"

She stands tall, grave, magnificent, in her fury before Lady Rylton, who, in spite of the courage born of want of feeling, now shrinks from her as if affrighted.

"If you persist in going on like this," says she, pressing her smelling-bottle to her nose, "I must ask you to go away—to go at once. I hate scenes. You must go!"

"I went away once," says Mrs. Bethune, standing pale and cold before her, "at your command—I went to the home of the man you selected for me. What devil's life I led with him you may guess at. You knew him, I did not. I was seventeen then." She pauses; the breath she draws seems to rive her body in twain. "I came back——" she says presently.

"A widow?"

"A widow—thank God!"

A silence follows; something of tragedy seems to have fallen into the air—with that young lovely creature standing there, upright, passionate, her arms clasped behind her head, as the heroine of it. The sunlight from the dying day lights up the red, rich beauty of her hair, the deadly pallor of her skin. Through it all the sound of the tennis-balls from below, as they hurry to and fro through the hair, can be heard. Perhaps it reaches her. She flings herself suddenly into a chair, and bursts out laughing.

"Let us come back to common-sense," cries she. "What were we talking of? The marriage of Maurice to this little plebeian—this little female Croesus. Well, what of the argument—what?"

Her manner is a little excited.

"I, for one, object to the marriage," says Margaret distinctly. "The child is too young and too rich! She should be given a chance; she should not be coerced and drawn into a mesh, as it were, without her knowledge."

"A mesh? Do you call a marriage with my son a mesh?" asks Lady Rylton angrily. "He of one of the oldest families in England, and she a nobody!"

"There is no such thing as a nobody," says Miss Knollys calmly. "This girl has intellect, mind, a soul! She has even money! She must be considered."

"She has no birth!" says Lady Rylton. "If you are going in for Socialistic principles, Margaret, pray do not expect me to follow you. I despise folly of that sort."

"I am not a Socialist," says Margaret slowly, "and yet why cannot this child be accepted as one of ourselves? Where is the great difference? You object to her marrying your son, yet you want to marry her to your son. How do you reconcile it? Surely you are more of Socialist than I am. You would put the son of a baronet and the daughter of heaven knows who on an equality."

"Never!" says Lady Rylton. "You don't understand. She will always be just as she is, and Maurice——"

"And their children?" asks Margaret.

Here Mrs. Bethune springs to her feet.

"Good heavens! Margaret, have you not gone far enough?" says she. If her face had been pale before, it is livid now. "Why, this marriage—this marriage"—she beats her hand upon a table near her—"one would think it was a fact accomplished!"

"I was only saying," says Miss Knollys, looking with a gentle glance at Marian, "that if Maurice were to marry this girl——"

"It would be an honour to her," interrupts Lady Rylton hotly.

"It would be a degradation to him," says Margaret coldly. "He does not love her."

She might have said more, but that suddenly Marian Bethune stops her. The latter, who is leaning against the curtains of the window, breaks into a wild little laugh.

"Love—what is love?" cries she. "Oh, foolish Margaret! Do not listen to her, Tessie, do not listen."

She folds the soft silken curtains round her slender figure, and, hidden therein, still laughs aloud with a wild passion of mirth.

"It is you who are foolish," cries Margaret, with some agitation.

"I?" She lets the curtains go; they fall in a sweep behind her. She looks out at Margaret, still laughing. Her face is like ashes. "You speak too strongly," says she.

"Do you think I could speak too strongly?" asks Margaret, looking intently at her. It is a questioning glance. "You! Do you think Maurice ought to ask this poor, ignorant girl to marry him? Do you advise him to take this step?"

"Why, it appears he must take some step," says Marian. "Why not this?"

Margaret goes close to her and speaks in so low a tone that Lady
Rylton cannot hear her.

"His honour, is that nothing to you?" says she.

"To me? What have I got to do with his honour?" says Mrs. Bethune, with a little expressive gesture.

"Oh, Marian!" says Miss Knollys.

She half turns away as if in disgust, but Marian follows her and catches her sleeve.

"You mean——" says she.

"Must I explain? With his heart full of you, do you think he should marry this girl?"

"Oh, his heart!" says Mrs. Bethune. "Has he a heart? Dear Margaret, don't be an enthusiast; be like everybody else. It is so much more comfortable."

"You can put it off like this," says Miss Knollys in a low tone. "It is very simple; but you should think. I have always thought you—you liked Maurice, but you were a—a friend of his. Save him from this. Don't let him marry this child."

"I don't think he will marry a child!" says Mrs. Bethune, laughing.

"You mean——"

"I mean nothing at all—nothing, really," says Marian. "But that baby! My dear Margaret, how impossible!"