That Unfortunate Marriage, Vol. 3

by Frances Eleanor Trollope

Frederick scarcely knew which to regret the most—his niece's departure or his brother-in-law's arrival. He missed May very much, but very shortly he began to be reconciled to her engagement. Rivers was a gentleman and an honest fellow, and might be trusted to take care of May's money, which Mr. Dormer-Smith thought would be otherwise in imminent jeopardy from the arrival on the scene of May's papa.

That gentleman, indeed, who had at first taken the news of his daughter's engagement with supreme indifference, showed some lively symptoms of disapprobation on learning the fact of Lucius's bequest. A daughter dependent on the bounty of Mrs. Dobbs for food, shelter, and raiment, was an uninteresting person enough; but a daughter who possessed between four and five hundred a-year of her own, ought not to be allowed to marry without her father's consent. Frederick dryly remarked that May's capital was stringently tied up in the hands of trustees, whether she were married or single. Whereupon Augustus indulged in very strong language respecting his dead cousin; and declared that the terms of the will were a pointed and intentional insult to him, who was his child's natural guardian.

Still, although the capital was secure, Frederick knew that the income was not. And the more he observed his brother-in-law, the more he felt how desirable it was that May should have a husband to take care of her.

Captain Cheffington had not improved during his years of exile. He smoked all day long; and even at night in his bed, incensing May's chamber, which he occupied, with clouds of tobacco-smoke. He had contracted other unpleasant habits, and his temper was diabolical. He had not brought his wife to England with him. He would sit for hours with his slippered feet on the fender in his sister's dressing-room, railing at the absent Mrs. Augustus Cheffington in a way which was most grievous to Pauline; for he showed not the least reticence in the presence of Smithson. Talk of "floating"—how would it be possible to "float" a woman of whom her own husband spoke in that way?

He had no very grave charges to bring against La Bianca after all. She had been faithful to him, and stuck to him, and worked for him. But he bewailed his fate in having tied himself to "a third-rate Italian opera-singer, without an idea in her head beyond painting her face and squalling!" It was just his cursed luck. Why couldn't Lucius die, since he meant to die, six months earlier?

At another time, he would openly rejoice in the death of his cousins, and express a fervent hope that the old boy wasn't going to last much longer. Pauline would remonstrate, and put her handkerchief to her eyes, and beg her brother not to speak so heartlessly of his own family: especially of "poor dear Lucius." But Augustus pooh-pooh'd this as confounded humbug. He was uncommonly glad to be the heir of Combe Park, and thought it about time that his family, and his country, and the human race generally, made him some amends for the years he had passed under a cloud! He would show them how to enjoy life when he came into possession of "his property," as he had taken to call Lord Castlecombe's estate. He planned out several changes in the disposal of the land, and decided what rent he would take for the house and home-park. For he did not intend to live in this d——d foggy little island, where one had bronchitis if one hadn't got rheumatism, and rheumatism if one hadn't got bronchitis. In one respect his visions coincided with his sister's, since he talked of having a villa on the Mediterranean coast, not far from Monte Carlo; but they differed from hers in several important points: notably in providing no place for her in the villa.

Frederick would sometimes throw a shade over these rosy dreams by observing doggedly that, for his part, he doubted the likelihood of Lord Castlecombe's speedy decease, and that, looking at them both, he was inclined to consider Uncle George's life the better of the two; so that, on the whole, domestic life in Mr. Dormer-Smith's smart house at Kensington was by no means harmonious. Meanwhile Pauline, with considerable pains and earnest meditation, composed a letter to her uncle on behalf of Augustus; she did not venture to entrust the task to Augustus himself. It would be impossible to persuade him to be as smooth and conciliatory as the case demanded. But she wrote a letter which, she thought, combined diplomacy with pathos, and from which she hoped for some satisfactory result. But the reply she received by return of post was of such a nature that she hastily thrust it into the fire lest Augustus should see it, and told him and her husband that "poor dear Uncle George was not yet equal to the effort of seeing Augustus, after the great shock he had suffered." Uncle George had, in fact, stated in the plainest terms that if Captain Cheffington ventured to show himself in Combe Park, the servants had orders to turn him out forcibly!

The object for which Captain Cheffington had come to England at that time being thus baulked, it would have appeared natural that he should return to his wife in Brussels. But day followed day, until nearly three weeks had elapsed since Lucius Cheffington's death, and still Augustus remained at Kensington. Every morning, with a dreadful regularity, Mr. Dormer-Smith inquired of his wife if she knew whether her brother were going away in the course of that day; and every morning the shower of tears with which Mrs. Dormer-Smith received the inquiry, and which generally formed her only answer to it, became more copious. Augustus, on the whole, was the least uncomfortable of the trio. He had contrived to raise a little ready money on his expectations; he was well lodged and well fed; the change to London (now that he had a few pounds in his pocket) was not unwelcome after Brussels; and as to his brother-in-law's undisguised dislike to his presence, he had grown far too callous to heed it, so long as it suited him to ignore it. Not but that he took note of it in his mind keenly enough, and promised himself the pleasure of paying off Frederick with interest, as soon as he should come into "his property."

All this time a humble household in Oldchester was a great deal happier than the wintry days were long. The news of Captain Cheffington's arrival in England had at first disturbed May. Perhaps he might insist on seeing her; and she shrank from seeing him. But she thought it her duty to write to him and inform him herself of her engagement; and neither Owen nor her grandmother opposed her doing so.

If May had any lingering illusion about her father, or any hope that he would manifest some gleam of parental tenderness towards her, the illusion and the hope were short-lived. The reply to her communications was a hurried scrawl, haughtily regretting that Mr. Owen Rivers had not thought proper to wait upon him and ask his consent to the marriage, which he totally disapproved of! And adding that although Rivers of Riversmead was undoubtedly good blood, it appeared that the traditions of gentlemanlike behaviour had been lost by the present bearer of the name, since he entered the service of a tradesman. The letter ended with a peremptory demand for fifty pounds.