CHAPTER III.
‘O Marian, do you know, I’ve met Mr Hawthorn; and what a delightful man he is! I quite fell in love with him myself, I assure you! Wasn’t it absurd? He came down the other morning to the boatrace; and he and a friend of his positively jumped over the wall, without an invitation, into old Colonel Boddington’s front garden.’
Marian took Nora’s hand warmly. ‘I’m so glad you like Edward,’ she said, kissing her cheek and smoothing her forehead. ‘I was sure you’d like him. I’ve been longing for you to come to town ever since we got engaged, so that you might manage to see him.—Well, dear, and do you think him handsome?’
‘Handsome! O Marian, awfully handsome; and so nice, too. Such a sweet voice and manner, so grave and cultivated, somehow. I always do like Oxford and Cambridge men—ever so much better than army men, Marian.’
‘Who had he with him at the boatrace?’ Marian asked.
‘Oh, my dear, such a funny man—a Mr Noel, whom I met last week down at the Buckleburies. Colonel Boddington says his father’s one of the greatest swells in all Lincolnshire—a Sir Somebody Noel, or something. And do you know, Marian, he simply jumped over the wall, without knowing the Boddingtons one bit, just because he saw me there—wasn’t it dreadful of him, after only meeting me once, too?—and then apologised to the old colonel, who was looking daggers. But the moment Mr Noel said something or other incidentally about his father Sir Somebody, the colonel became as mild as a lamb, and asked him to lunch at once, and tried to put him sitting right between Minnie and Adela. And Mr Noel managed to shuffle out of it somehow, and got on one side of me, with Mr Hawthorn on the other side; and he talked so that he kept me laughing right through the whole of lunch-time.’
‘He’s awfully amusing,’ Marian said with a slight smile.—‘And I suppose you rather liked Mr Noel, too, didn’t you, Nora?’
Nora shook her head energetically. ‘No, my dear; not my sort of man at all, really. I certainly wasn’t in the least taken with him.’
‘Not a little bit even, Nora?’
‘Not even a little bit, dear,’ she answered decidedly. ‘He isn’t at all the sort of man I should ever care for. Too dark for me, by several shades, for one thing, Marian. You know, we West Indians never can endure these very dark people.’
‘But I’m dark, Nora, and you like me, you know, don’t you?’
‘Oh, you. Yes; that’s quite another thing, Marian. That’s nothing, to be dark as you are. Your hair and eyes and complexion are just perfect, darling. But Mr Noel—well, he’s a shade or two too dark for me, anyhow; and I don’t mind saying so to you candidly.—Mr Hawthorn’s a great deal more my ideal of what a handsome man ought to be. I think his eyes, his hair, and his moustache are just simply lovely, Marian.’
‘Why, of course, you and he ought to be friends,’ Marian said, a natural thought flashing suddenly across her. ‘He comes from Trinidad, just the same as you do. How funny that the two people I’ve liked best in all the world should both come from the very same little bit of an island. I daresay you used to know some of his people.’
‘That’s the very funniest part of it all, Marian. I can’t recollect anything at all about his family; I don’t even remember ever to have heard of them from any Trinidad people.’
Marian looked up quickly from the needlework on which she was employed, and said simply: ‘I daresay they didn’t happen to know your family.’
‘Well, that’s just what’s odd about it, dear,’ Nora continued, pulling out her crochet. ‘Everybody in Trinidad knows my family. And Mr Hawthorn’s father’s in the Legislative Council, too, just like papa; and Mr Hawthorn has been to Cambridge, you know, and is a barrister, and knows Arabic, and is unusually clever, Mr Noel tells me. I can’t imagine how on earth it is I’ve never even heard of him before.’
‘Well, at anyrate, I’m so awfully glad you really like him, now that you’ve actually seen him, Nora. One’s always so afraid that all one’s friends won’t like one’s future husband.’
‘Like him, dear; how on earth could one help liking him? Why, I think he’s simply delightful And that’s so surprising, too, because generally, you know, one’s friends will go and marry such regular horrid sticks of men. I think he’s the nicest man I’ve ever met anywhere, almost.’
‘And the exception is——?’
‘Put in for propriety’s sake, dear, for fear you should think I was quite too enthusiastic. And do you know, he tells me he’s going in for a judgeship in Trinidad; and won’t it be splendid, Marian, if he happens to get it, and you both go out there with me, darling? I shall be just too delighted.’
Marian gave a little sigh. ‘I shall be very glad if he gets it in one way,’ she said, ‘because then, of course, Edward and I will be able to marry immediately; and papa’s so very much opposed to a long engagement.’
‘Besides which,’ Nora put in frankly, ‘you’d naturally yourself, too, be glad to get married as soon as possible.’
‘But then, on the other hand,’ Marian went on, smiling quietly, ‘it would be a dreadful thing going so far away from all one’s friends and relations and so forth. Though, of course, with Edward to take care of me, I wouldn’t be afraid to go anywhere.’
‘Of course not,’ said Nora confidently. ‘And I shall be there, too, Marian; and we shall have such lovely times together. People have no end of fun in the West Indies, you know. Everybody says it’s the most delightful place in the world in the cool season. The floors are kept polished all the year round, without any carpets, just like the continent, and so you can have a dance at any moment, whenever people enough happen to drop in together accidentally of an evening. Mamma used to say there was no end of gaiety; and that she never could endure the stiffness and unsociability of English society, after the hospitable habits of dear old Trinidad.’
‘I hope we shall like it,’ Marian said, ‘if Edward really succeeds in getting this appointment. It’ll be a great alleviation to the pain of parting with one’s friends here, if you’re going to be there too, Nora.’
‘Yes, my dear, you must get married at once, and we must arrange somehow to go out to Trinidad together in the same steamer. I mean to have no end of fun going out. And when you get there, of course papa’ll be able to introduce you and Mr Hawthorn to all the society in the island. I call it just delightful.’
At that moment, the servant entered and announced Mr Hawthorn.
Marian rose from her seat and went forward to meet him. Edward had a long official envelope in his hands, with a large broken seal in red sealing-wax on the back, and the important words, ‘On Her Majesty’s Service,’ printed in very big letters at the lower left-hand corner. Marian trembled a little with excitement, not unmixed with fear, as soon as she saw it.
‘Well, my darling,’ cried Edward joyously, in spite of Nora’s presence, ‘it’s all right; I’ve got the judgeship. And now, Marian, we shall be able to get married immediately.’
A woman always succeeds in doing the most incomprehensible and unexpected thing under all circumstances; and Marian, hearing now for the first time that their hearts’ desire was at last in a fair way to be accomplished, did not exhibit those emotions Edward might have imagined she would do, but fell back upon the sofa, half faint, and burst out suddenly crying.
Edward looked at her tenderly with a mingled look of surprise and sorrow. ‘Why, Marian,’ he said, a little reproachfully, ‘I thought you would be so delighted and rejoiced to hear the news, that I almost ran the whole way to tell you.’
‘So I am, Edward,’ answered Marian, sobbing; ‘but it’s so sudden, so very sudden.’
‘She’ll be all right in a minute or two, Mr Hawthorn,’ Nora said, looking up at him with an arch smile as she held Marian’s hand in hers and bent over her to kiss her forehead. ‘She’s only taken aback a little at the suddenness of the surprise.—And now, Marian, we shall all be able actually to go out to Trinidad together in the same steamer.’
Edward’s heart smote him rather at the strange way Marian had received the news that so greatly delighted him. It was very natural, after all, no doubt. Every girl feels the wrench of having to leave her father’s house and her mother and her familiar surroundings. But still, he somehow felt vaguely within himself that it seemed like an evil omen for their future happiness in the Trinidad judgeship; and it dashed his joy not a little at the moment when his dearest hopes appeared just about to be so happily and successfully realised.