Boston Neighbours In Town and Out Part 10

"What do you mean?"

"As if you did not know perfectly well that you were taking that--that Smith--" she paused in vain for an epithet; but the mere name sounded more opprobrious than any she could have selected--"for his money!"

"What do you mean? Mr. Smith hasn't much money; he may have enough to live on; but I can't help that."

"Margaret, don't quibble with the truth. You know well enough that he will have it all. Who else is there for the old man to leave it to?"

"What old man?"

"Why, old Smith, of course! You can't pretend you don't know who he is, and you have been artful enough to keep it all from me! You knew if I heard his Christian name it would all come out! I don't know what your father and mother will say! Mrs. Champion Pryor has been calling here to-day, and told me the whole story, and how you have been seen walking the streets with him for hours. I would scarcely credit it."

"His Christian name! what's that got to do with it? He can't help it!"

Margaret's first words rang out defiantly enough; but her voice faltered on the last, as her mind made another painful plunge after vanished memories. Cousin Susan rose, and rang the bell herself; more wonderful still, she went out into the entry, closing the door after her while she spoke to Jenny, and when the girl had run rapidly upstairs and down again, returned with something in her hand.

"I knew Jenny had some of the vile stuff," she said triumphantly; "she was taking it last Friday, when I tried to persuade her to send for the doctor, and be properly treated for her cough." And she thrust a large green gla.s.s bottle under Margaret's eyes with these words on the paper label:

"ERIGERON ELIXIR.

"An Unfailing cure for

"Ague. Asthma. Bright's Disease. Bronchitis.

Catarrh. Consumption. Colds. Coughs.

Diphtheria. Dropsy.

"(We spare our readers the remainder of the alphabet.)

"All genuine have the name of the inventor and proprietor blown on the bottle, thus:

"ALCIBIADES SMITH."

A sudden light flashed upon poor Margaret, showing her forgotten piles of bottles on the counters of village stores, and long columns of unheeded advertis.e.m.e.nts in the country newspapers. She stood silent and shamefaced.

"What will your father say?" reiterated Cousin Susan. Dr. Parke's reputation with the general public was largely founded on a series of letters he had contributed to a scientific journal exposing and denouncing quack medicines.

"I didn't know," said Margaret, helplessly, wondering that the truth could sound so like a lie, but unable to fortify it by any a.s.severation.

"Why, you must have heard about the Smiths: everybody has. They have cut the most ridiculous figure everywhere. They came to Clifton Springs once while I was there; and they were really too dreadful; the kind of people you can't stay in the room with." Cousin Susan had not talked so much for years, and began to feel that the excitement was doing her good, which may excuse her merciless pelting of poor Margaret. "You were too young, perhaps," she went on, "to have heard about Ossian Smith, the oldest son, but the newspapers were full of him--of the life he led in London and Paris, when he was a mere boy. The American minister got him home at last, and a pretty penny old Smith had to pay to get him out of his entanglements. He had delirium tremens, and jumped out of a window, and killed himself, soon after--the best thing he could do. But you must have heard of Lunetta Smith, the daughter; about her running away with the coachman; it happened only about three or four years ago. Why, the New York _Sun_ had two columns about it, and the _World_ four. All the family were interviewed, your young man among the rest, and the comic papers said the mesalliance appeared to be on the coachman's side. She died, too, soon after; you must have heard of it."

"No, I never did. Father never lets me read the daily papers," said Margaret, a little proudly.

"Well!" said Cousin Susan, with relaxing energy, "I don't often read such things myself; but one can't help noticing them; and Mrs. Champion Pryor has been telling me a great deal about it."

"And did Mrs. Pryor tell you anything about my--about young Mr. Smith?"

"Oh, she said he was always very well spoken of. He was younger than the rest and delicate in health, and took to study; and his father had a good deal of money in time to educate him. They say he's rather clever, and the old man is quite proud of him; but he can't be a gentleman, Margaret--it is not possible."

"Yes, he can!" burst out Margaret; "he's too much of a man not to be a gentleman, too!"

"Well," said Cousin Susan, suddenly collapsing, "I can't talk any longer. I have such a headache. If you have asked him to call, I suppose he must come; but I can't see him. What's that? a box for you? more flowers? Oh, dear, do take them away. If there is anything I cannot stand when I have a headache, it is flowers about, and I can smell those lilacs you carried last night all the way downstairs, and through two closed doors."

Poor Margaret escaped to her own room with her flowers to write her letter, the difficulty of her task suddenly increased. Mrs. Manton threw herself back on the sofa to nurse her headache, but found that it was of no use, and that what she needed was fresh air. She ordered a cab, and drove round to see Mrs. Underwood, unto whom, in strict confidence, she freed her mind. She found some relief in the dismay her recital gave her hearer. Ralph Underwood was slowly recovering from the fit of disappointment in which he had wreaked his ill-temper on whoever came near him, as a younger, badly trained child might do on the chairs and tables; and his mother, his chief _souffre douleur_; who in her turn had made all around her feel her own misery, was now beginning ruefully to count up the damages, of which she felt a large share was due to the Parkes. She had been wondering whether she could not give a little lunch for Margaret; she could, at least, take her to the next German, and find her some better partner than Al Smith. Nothing could have been more disconcerting than this news. She could not with any grace do anything for Margaret now to efface the memories of the first part of her visit, and the Parkes must blame her doubly for the neglect which had allowed this engagement to take place. Why, even Susan Manton put on an injured air!

She craved some comfort in her turn, and after keeping the secret for a day and a night, told it in the strictest confidence to her intimate friend, Mrs. Thorndike Freeman, whose "dropping in" was an irresistible temptation.

"What!" cried Mrs. Freeman, "is it that large young woman with red cheeks, whom you brought one evening to Papanti's? I think it will be an excellent thing; why, the Smiths can use her photograph as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Elixir."

"Yes--but then her parents--you see, she's Mary Pickering's daughter."

"Mary Pickering has been married to a country doctor for five and twenty years, hasn't she? You may be sure her eyes are open by this time.

Depend upon it, they would swallow Al Smith, if he were bigger than he is. The daughter seems to have found no difficulty in the feat."

"Well," said Mrs. Underwood, with a sigh, "perhaps I ought to be glad that poor Al has got some respectable girl to take him for his money. I never dreamed one would."

"It isn't likely that he ever asked one before," said Mrs. Freeman, with a double-edged sneer.

The door-bell rang, and the butler ushered in Margaret, who had come to make her farewell call. Mrs. Underwood looked at her in astonishment.

Was this the shy, blus.h.i.+ng girl who had come from Royalston three short months ago? With such gentle sweetness did she express her grat.i.tude for the elder lady's kind attentions, with such graceful dignity did she wave aside a few awkwardly hinted apologies, above all, so regally beautiful did she look, that Mrs. Underwood felt more than ever that she would be called to account by the parents of such a creature. Margaret had quite forgiven Mrs. Underwood, for, she reasoned, if that lady had done as she ought to have done by her, she would never have had the chance of knowing Al, a contingency too dreadful to contemplate; and her forgiveness added to the superiority of her position. Mrs. Underwood could only reiterate the eternal useless regret of the tempted and fallen: "If things had not happened just when, and how, and as they did!" She envied Mrs. Freeman, who was now in the easiest manner possible plying the young girl with devoted attentions, with large doses of flattery thrown in. Mrs. Freeman, meanwhile, was mentally resolving to call on Margaret before she left town, in which case they could hardly avoid sending her wedding-cards. She foresaw that, as two negatives make an affirmative, Mr. and Mrs. Alcibiades Smith, Jr., might yet be worthy of the honor of her acquaintance.

Margaret's engagement was no primrose path. It was easier for her when her lover was away, for he wrote delightful letters, but they rarely had one happy and undisturbed hour together. Dr. and Mrs. Parke, of course, gave their consent to the marriage; but they did not like it, and did not pretend to. Dr. Parke, who, as is the wont of his profession, placed a high value on physical attractions, and who cared as little for money as any sane man could, hardly restrained his expressions of dislike. "What business," he growled, "had the fellow to ask her?" Mrs.

Parke, while trying hard to keep her husband in order, was cold and constrained herself. Being a woman, she thought less of looks, and had learned in her married life to appreciate the value of money. She would have liked Margaret to make a good match; but here was more money by twenty times than she would have asked, had it only been offered by a lover more worthy of her beautiful daughter! And yet, if Margaret would only have been open with her! If she would have frankly said that she was tired of being poor, and could not forego the opportunity of marrying a rich man, who was a good sort of man enough, Mrs. Parke could have understood, and pitied, and forgiven; but to see her put on such an affectation of attachment for him drove her mother nearly wild. Why, she acted as if she were more in love than he was!

The boys had been duly respectful on hearing that their sister's betrothed was a "Harvard man," but grew contemptuous when they found him so unfit for athletics. Relations and friends, and acquaintances of every degree, believed, and still believe, and always will believe, that Margaret's was one of the most mercenary of mercenary marriages.

Some blamed her parents for allowing it; others thought that their opposition was feigned, and that they were really forcing poor Margaret into it.

The two younger children, Harry and Winnie, at once adopted their new brother, and stood up stanchly for him on all occasions, and their sister was eternally grateful to them for it. Her only other support came, of all the people in the world, from Ralph Underwood. He could not be best man at the wedding, as he was going abroad with his mother, who was sadly run down and needed change; but he wrote Margaret a straightforward, manly letter, in which he said that he trusted, unworthy as he was, she would admit him to her friends.h.i.+p for Al's sake.

He spoke of all he owed to his friend in such a way that Margaret perceived that more had pa.s.sed in their college days than she ever had been or ever should be told.

The family discomfort came to a climax on the day before the wedding, when the great Alcibiades Smith himself and his wife made their appearance at Royalston. They stayed at the hotel with their suite, but spent the evening with the Parkes to make the acquaintance of their new connections. Old Mr. Smith p.r.o.nounced Margaret "a bouncer." He had always known, he said, that Al would get some kind of a wife, but never thought it would be such a stunner as this one. It naturally fell to him to be entertained by Dr. Parke, or rather to entertain him, which he did by relating the whole history of the Elixir, from its first invention to the number of million bottles that were put up the last year, winding up every period with, "As you're a medical man yourself, sir." Mrs. Smith was quieter, and though well pleased, a little awe-struck, as her French maid, her authority and terror, had told her, after Mrs. Parke's and Margaret's brief call at the hotel that afternoon, that these were, evidently, "_dames tres comme il faut_." She poured into Mrs. Parke's ear, in a corner, the tale of all Al's early illnesses, and the various treatments he had had for them, till her hearer no longer wondered at their being so little of him; the wonder was, that there was anything left at all. Then, a propos of marriages, she grew confidential and almost tearful about their distresses in the case of their daughter "Luny." She did think Mr. Smith a little to blame for poor Luny's runaway match. There was an Italian count whom she liked, but her father could not be induced to pay his debts, and "a girl must marry somebody, you know," she wound up, with a look at Margaret.

Margaret, in after years, could appreciate the comedy of the situation.

It is no wonder if it seemed to her at the time the most gloomily tragical that perverse ingenuity could devise. Al's manner to his parents was perfect. He was very silent; not more, perhaps, than he always was in a room full, but she thought he looked f.a.gged and tired, and wondered how he could bear it. She longed intensely to say something sympathetic to him; but, like most girls on the eve of their marriage, she felt overpowered with shyness. If this dreadful evening ever came to an end, and they were ever married, then she would tell him, once for all, that she loved him all the better for all and everything that he had to bear.

"They will spoil the whole effect," said Mrs. Parke, despondently, as she put the last careful touches to Margaret's wedding-dress. It was a very simple but becoming one of rich plain silk, with a little lace, and the pearl daisies with diamond dewdrops, sent by the bridegroom, accorded with it well. But Mr. Smith, senior, had begged that his gift, or part of it, should be worn on the occasion, and Mrs. Parke now slowly opened a velvet box, in which lay a crescent and a cross. Neither she nor Margaret was accustomed to estimate the price of diamonds, and had they been, they would have seen that these were far beyond their mark.

"They don't go with the dress," repeated Mrs. Parke, doubtfully.

"Oh, never mind; to please Mr. Smith," said Margaret, carelessly, as she bent forward to allow her mother to clasp round her neck the slender row of stones that held the cross, and to stick the long pins of the crescent with dexterous hand through the gathered tulle, of the veil and the thick wavy bands of hair beneath it.

As she drew herself up to her full height again before the mirror, it seemed as if the June day outside had taken on the form of a mortal girl. The gold and blue of the heavens, the pink and white of the blossoming fields, whose luminous tints rested so softly on hair and eyes, on cheek and brow, were reflected and intensified in the rainbow rays of light that blazed on her head and at her throat. It was not in human nature not to look with one touch of pride and pleasure at the vision in the gla.s.s. But the sight of another face behind hers made her turn quickly round, with, "O mamma! mamma! what is it?"

"Nothing, my dear; it's a very magnificent present; only I thought--"

"Mamma! surely you don't think I care for such things! you don't, you can't think I am the least bit influenced by them in marrying Al. O mamma! don't, don't look at me so!"

"Never mind, my dear. We will not talk about it now. It is too late for me to say anything, I know, and I am very foolish."