Sisters

by Ada Cambridge

"I shall not continue to keep house when I am alone," said she grandly. "I intend to travel for a time."

The wedding was quiet, but as "decent" as the trousseau. The other sisters were invited, and Bennet Goldsworthy—who delighted in the connection, and received a thumping fee—performed the ceremony. Deb gave the bride away, but was also treated as the bridesmaid, and had a diamond bracelet forced upon her. She sold it as soon as the donor's back was turned, together with every article of jewellery in her possession, every bit of silver plate, and all her furniture. The breakfast was very elegant, and served in a private room at one of the best hotels; the bride's handsome luggage had also been brought thither, and it was the meeting-place of the family which so seldom met. There, also, when she had parted from Frances, Deb parted from Mary, so silent and constrained, and from Rose, over-dressed, for her station, in her rich gown and Brussels lace (but nevertheless sniffed at and condescended to by her still more wealthy sister), and from the uncongenial brothers-in-law, to whom she was so discouragingly polite. Their expressed anxiety to befriend and to see more of her was gently but firmly ignored.

"I will write," she said. "I will see you again soon. I will let you know my plans. Good-bye!"

And they went. There were no friends to go, for she had insisted on inviting none—for fear of the lynx eyes and the destructive influence upon her plans of Mr Thornycroft and Jim. She gained the one end she had schemed for throughout—to get past the risks of the public marriage and back to her struggle in obscurity, unmolested, unpitied, unshamed. The Urquharts wrote, and Mr Thornycroft, when he sent his present; but she had "bluffed" them with her implied misrepresentations, and hurt their feelings by not wanting them at the wedding. Jim was easily snubbed; Mr Thornycroft—though he did not mention it—was ill at the time.

So she got rid of all possible hindrances, and then—professing to go travelling—went nobody knew where, and was virtually lost for years.

Frances drove away from the hotel in her smart carriage, with her smart luggage and smart maid, and her amorous old husband, and never thought or cared what was to become of her abandoned sister. She could only think of her own exciting affairs.

Partly they were unsatisfactory, no doubt. All her rights were not hers even now—no, not by a long way. But oh, how much better was this than the drab and shabby and barren existence for ever left behind! She was bound, indeed; yet she was free—freer than another might have been in her place, and far, far less bound. One must expect to pay some tax to Fortune for such extraordinary gifts, and Frances was not the one to pay it in heart's blood. She was philosophically prepared to pay it in her own coin, and be done with it, and then give herself to the enjoyment of the pleasures of her lot.

Her first enjoyment was in her beautiful going-away dress—grey cloth and chinchilla fur, with flushes of pink as delicate as the rose of her cheeks—and in her knowledge of the effect she made in that dream of a costume. There was no hiding her light under a bushel any more. The highway, and the middle of it, for her now—her proud husband strutting there beside her—and every passer-by turning to look at and to admire her. There was joy in the occupancy of the best suite of rooms in the best hotel at every place she stopped at during her gay and well-filled bridal holiday; joy in the dainty meals—so long unknown; in the obsequious servants, in the plentiful theatres, in the ever-ready carriage that took her to them, in the having one's hair done to perfection by an expert maid, in sweeping forth with one's silks and laces trailing, and one's diamonds on. These were the delights for which her little soul had so long yearned; she now pursued them greedily. She could not rest if she were not doing something to display herself and feed her craving for what is known as seeing the world. Her husband was almost as obsequious as the servants—doubtless because from the first she took the beauty's high hand with him, as well as the attitude of the superior, naturally assumed by youth towards age—and he enjoyed the sensation she made almost as much as she did. Visibly he swelled and preened himself when his venerable contemporaries cast the eye of surprise, not to say of envy, upon the conjunction of his complacent figure and that of the bride who might have been his grand-daughter; he toiled for that pleasure, and to make pleasure for her, as no old gentleman should toil; he gave her everything she asked for, including his own ease and consequence, his own vital health and strength.

But the honeymoon waned, and the novelty wore off, and prudence and old habits resumed their sway. He grew tired of incessant gadding about, alarmed at his symptoms of physical overstrain, weary for his arm-chair and his club, and his men friends and his masculine occupations. She, on the other hand, insatiable for admiration and excitement still, was weary of his constant company. It became the kill-joy of her festive days, growing from a necessary bore to an intolerable irritation as the dimensions of her little court of younger gallants enlarged about her. Therefore she had no objection to his halting on the toilsome path, so long as he allowed her to go on alone.

It was not a case of allowing, however. He might object, and did; but he was no match for her either in diplomacy or in fight, and her cajoleries were usually sufficient for her ends, without calling out the reserves behind them. In any contest between selfishness and unselfishness, the result is a foregone conclusion.