Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

To this Arthur Bohun answered candidly enough. He did like Ellen Adair; if circumstances permitted he should be only too glad to make her his wife; but, as Mrs. Cumberland knew, he had hitherto been very poor. As he pleased, Mrs. Cumberland remarked; the matter was entirely for his own consideration; she did not attempt to press it, one way or the other; if he saw no chance of his circumstances improving, he should freely say so, and terminate his visits; she could not allow Ellen to be played with. And upon that, Arthur begged to have the night for reflection; he would see Mrs. Cumberland in the morning, and give her his decision.

So it was left. When Ellen returned to the room--unsuspicious of what had been said during her few minutes' absence from it--Captain Bohun took his departure. Arrived at the hotel where he had put up, he devoted himself to the consideration of the grave question, weighing it in all its bearings as fairly as his love for Ellen allowed him to do. Of course that biassed him.

He had sufficient to marry upon now. By the death of the relative for whom he was in mourning, he had come into about eight hundred a-year. With his own income, that made twelve. Quite sufficient to begin upon, though he was a Bohun. But--there were deterring considerations. In some way, as he suspected, his mother, in her fear of Ellen Adair, had contrived to instil a suspicion in the mind of Sir Nash, that Arthur, unless he were closely controlled, might be making a mésalliance. Sir Nash possessed all the pride of the Bohuns, and it frightened him. He spoke to Arthur, telling him that unless he married with the full approval of his family, he should never succeed to the estates. No, nor to the title if he could help it. If James died, he, Sir Nash, would marry first, and leave direct heirs.

This, it was, that now interfered with Arthur's decision. One fact was known to him--that James Bohun, since this illness set in, had joined his father in cutting off the entail, so that the threat of leaving the estates away from Arthur (even though he succeeded to the title) could be easily accomplished. What was to be done? Part with Ellen Adair he could not. Oh, if he might only make her his wife without the world knowing it; the world abroad, and the world at home! Might this be? Very slowly Arthur Bohun arrived at a conclusion--that the only plan, if Mrs. Cumberland and Ellen would accede to it, was to have a private marriage.

Arguments are so easy when inclination goes with them. The future looks very much as we ourselves paint it. They might be married at once, here at Eastsea. If James Bohun recovered and lived, why, there could be no question about the title or the estates lapsing to Arthur, and he might avow his marriage as soon as he pleased. If James died, he should not, as he really believed, have to conceal it long, for he thought Sir Nash's life quite as precarious as James's. A few months, perhaps a few weeks, and he might be able to tell the world that Ellen was his wife. He felt an inclination to whisper it beforehand to his good friend and aunt, Miss Bohun. But, he must first of all ascertain from Mrs. Cumberland what was the social standing of Mr. Adair. Unless he were undeniably a gentleman, Ellen could be no fit wife for a Bohun. Arthur, swayed by his love, had hitherto been content to take this fact for granted; now he saw the necessity of ascertaining it more certainly. It was not that he had any real doubt, but it was only right to make sure.

Mr. Adair held some post under the British Government, formerly in India, for a long time now in Australia. His wife had died young; his only child, Ellen, had been sent to a first-rate school in England for her education. Upon its completion, Mr. Adair had begged Mrs. Cumberland to receive her; he had some thought of returning home himself, so that he did not wish Ellen to go out to him. An impression was afloat in Dallory that Ellen Adair would inherit a fortune; also that Mrs. Cumberland received liberal remuneration for the expenses of the young lady. These generalities Arthur Bohun already knew; but he knew no more.

He paid the promised visit to Mrs. Cumberland in the morning. Ellen was on the beach with the maid; there was no interruption, and their conversation was long and confidential. Heaven alone knew how Arthur Bohun succeeded in making Mrs. Cumberland believe in the necessity for a private marriage. He did succeed. But he used no subterfuge. He frankly told of the prejudice his mother had taken against Ellen Adair, and that she had gained the ear of Sir Nash. In short, the same arguments he had used to himself the previous evening, he urged now. Mrs. Cumberland--naturally biassed against madam for the injury she had striven to work upon Dr. Rane--thought it a frightful shame that she should also strive to destroy the happiness and prospects of her own son Arthur, and sympathized with him warmly. It was this feeling that rendered her more easy than she would otherwise have been--in short, that made her give her consent to Arthur's plan. To counteract the bitter wrong contemplated by Mrs. North, she considered would be a merit on Arthur's part, instead of a sin. And then, when things were so far settled, and the speedy marriage determined on, Mrs. Cumberland astonished Captain Bohun by putting Mr. Adair's letter into his hands, explaining how it came to be received, and what she had written to that gentleman to call it forth. "So that her father's blessing will rest on the marriage," remarked Mrs. Cumberland; "but for that fact, I could not have consented to a private one."

This gave Arthur the opportunity to ask about the position of Mr. Adair, which, in the heat of argument, he had been forgetting. Certainly he was a gentleman, Mrs. Cumberland answered, and of very good Scotch family. Major Bohun, Mr. Adair, and her own husband, George Cumberland, had been firm friends in India at the time of Major Bohun's death. She could not help thinking, she added in conclusion, that it was the remembrance of that early friendship which induced Mr. Adair to give so ready and cordial a consent to his daughter's union with Major Bohun's son.

And so there the matter ended, all couleur-de-rose; Arthur believing that there could be no possible objection to his marrying Ellen Adair; nay, that the way had been most markedly paved for it through this letter of Mr. Adair's; Mrs. Cumberland deeming that she was not indiscreet in permitting the marriage to be a private one. Both were unsuspicious as the day. He, that there existed any real objection; she, that Mr. Adair's consent applied to a very different man from Arthur Bohun.

Captain Bohun went out from Mrs. Cumberland's in search of Ellen, with the light of love flushing his cheeks. He found her in the same sheltered spot, hedged in from the gaze of the world. Again alone. The servant had gone to the shops, to buy ribbon. Their salutations hitherto had been nothing but decorum and formality, as witness that of the previous day.