When Eric Chesters of Chesters Castle married Miss Brocklebridge—the bold and handsome heiress of Sir William, ironmaster, baronet, and expectant baron, all the world and his wife clapped hands and cried 'an ideal arrangement,' and foretold long years of success and happiness for the happy pair.
At the club after the wedding the 'best man,' however, set forth a different view of the matter.
'Of course on paper it's ideal,' he said; 'Sir William is of the order of Melchisedec—having neither father nor mother, while Eric's pedigree is the joy of the Heralds' College. Edith's money will pay off the mortgages on Chesters Castle, no doubt, but, as Stevenson shrewdly said, "The Bohemian must not marry the Puritan." Now Eric is not naturally a marrying man; he yielded to his aged mother's solicitations and the well-developed charms and black eyes of his wife. She sighs for a career, and thinks Chesters Castle a fine foundation for it, but her crest is a ladder; Eric's is a pierrot. In short, she is an Alpine climber, and Eric a charming Prince Florizel of Bohemia. I give them a year in which to find each other out—après cela le déluge.'
The 'best man' proved right in his casting of their horoscope, for a prolonged honeymoon spent in going round the world revealed a rift in the lute which a season in town developed into an undoubted crack.
Thus, when Mrs. Chesters pressed on her husband the desirability of entering Parliament, he protested that he had only seven skins; and when she wished to pay a round of visits to distinguished people he maintained that they ought to reside at Chesters Castle for a while.
She yielded, but her husband's castle completed her disillusion. She had thought of it as a social point d'appui—she found it in her own words 'a gloomy shooting barrack.'
But her husband loved it, and rejoiced in the opportunity of renewing his youth with the salmon-fishing, the grouse and blackcock driving, and the great days of hunting on the wide moorlands of the Border, over which his ancestors in bygone centuries had ridden day and night on raid and foray. Mrs. Chesters could ride, had enjoyed the social advantages of the Quorn and Pytchley, but she hated what she called disdainfully, 'bogtrotting with Picts and Scots.'
She had not yet become indifferent to her husband, but she was terribly disappointed with his total lack of ambition.
Now that the salmon-fishing was over and the covers shot, she pined for town, but her husband begged for a few more weeks of hunting first.
What joy could he find in the long days out on the barren fells? She realised that he had become indifferent to her, though his charm of manner to herself was externally the same.