That Unfortunate Marriage, Vol. 2

by Frances Eleanor Trollope

One of the first visits which May paid was to the old house in College Quad. The Canon received her with his former paternal benevolence; but, at first, a slight indefinable chill was perceptible in Mrs. Hadlow's usually cordial manner. A little maternal jealousy on the subject of Theodore Bransby rankled in her mind. It was true that Constance did not seem to care for him; would not probably have accepted him had he asked her. But, under all the circumstances, Mrs. Hadlow was strongly of opinion that he ought to have asked her. And then a rumour reached Oldchester of Theodore's attentions to Miss Cheffington. But there was no resisting May's warm and single-minded praises of her friend. It seemed that Conny's prospects had grown unexpectedly brilliant. Mr. Owen Rivers, who had recently reappeared in Oldchester after his own erratic fashion, walking in one morning unexpectedly to his aunt's quaint old sitting-room, pronounced his cousin to have made a great social success. "You know my opinion of the worth of that game, Aunt Jane," said he. "But, such as it is, Conny has won it. Old Lord Castlecombe is in love with her. And—which is far more important—so is Mrs. Griffin. You and I always knew she was handsome. But there are certain people to whom the evidence of their senses is as nothing compared with the evidence of peers, and griffins, and such-like heraldic creatures."

"My Aunt Pauline is in love with Conny, too," declared May. "I ought to be jealous; for Aunt Pauline is always quoting Constance Hadlow to me as an example of everything that is delightful in a girl. But I knew it before. I didn't wait for the heraldic creatures, did I, Mrs. Hadlow?"

And so the old affectionate, familiar intercourse was resumed, and May was welcomed in the old way. The Canon missed his daughter, and had not consented easily to her prolonged absence. He liked to see young faces around him; and May's face was particularly pleasant to him. At first May had refused to leave her grandmother. But Mrs. Dobbs urged her to spend some hours every day with the Hadlows. "I have my own occupations in the daytime," she said; "and when you come home of an evening, and tell me all your sayings and doings, I can enjoy it comfortably. I don't want you hanging about this poky little place all day, my lass."

The girl was the more easily persuaded to do as her grandmother wished in this matter from her own secret resolve to fix herself in Oldchester. She did not grudge the hours given to her friends. There would be plenty more time to be spent with granny. So she thought; reckoning on the morrow with the assurance of youth. Day after day she sat during the hot afternoon hours under the black shadow of the old yew tree in the Canon's garden; sometimes volunteering to do some task of needlework for Mrs. Hadlow, sometimes winding wool for the Canon's grey socks, sometimes making up posies for the adornment of the sitting-room. And there was Fox, the terrier, dividing his attentions between her and his mistress; the peaceful Wend flowing by on the other side of the hedge; the garden blooming, the birds twittering, the distant schoolboys shouting, the sweet cathedral bells chiming,—everything as it had been last summer.

And yet not quite as it had been. There was some subtle difference between these afternoons and the afternoons of last summer.

It was not merely that Constance was missed, nor that Theodore Bransby no longer made one of the group beneath the yew tree. Of these changes one was scarcely to be regretted—for Conny was enjoying herself extremely, and only desired to prolong her leave of absence—and the other was undoubtedly satisfactory. But this could not surely suffice to make it a deep delight to sit silent and wind balls of gray worsted for half an hour at a stretch! Was it the negative joy of Theodore's absence which caused May to look forward with her first waking thoughts to those hours in the garden, and to live them over again in her mind when she lay down to rest at night? It seemed as if the London season, far from spoiling her for simple things, had marvellously enhanced the quiet pleasures of her home life, and given them a new intensity.

They were very quiet pleasures, truly. Mary Rayne and the Burton girls seldom appeared in College Quad now that Constance was away. Mrs. Hadlow had no lawn-tennis court, as has already been set forth; and persons who gave up their garden-ground to the frivolous purpose of growing flowers could not expect their younger friends to spare them many minutes out of a summer's day. Visitors of the sterner sex were chiefly represented by Major Mitton and Dr. Hatch, with a liberal sprinkling of the elder cathedral clergy.

The eldest Miss Burton said to May once, "I can't imagine how you stand the dull life down here after your aunt's house in town! But I suppose you are simply resting on your oars. We hear you are to go to Glengowrie in the autumn. How delicious! The Duchess is sure to have her house filled with nice people."

May emphatically denied that she was dull in Oldchester. Dull! She had never, she thought, been so happy in her life. "I wonder," said she to Mrs. Hadlow that same afternoon, "whether Violet Burton feels Oldchester to be dull. And if not, why should she assume that I do?"

"Violet has a serious object in life, you know. She is the best tennis player in the county. One cannot be dull with an absorbing pursuit of that sort," answered Mrs. Hadlow, who, with all her genial benevolence, had an occasional turn of the tongue which proved her kinship with her nephew Owen.