That Unfortunate Marriage Volume I Part 8

"That," replied Mrs. Dobbs, "depends on circ.u.mstances."

"I a.s.sure you," said Theodore, turning round with his most imposing air, "that it would be quite proper for Miss Cheffington to accept the invitation. I should certainly not urge her to do so unless that were the case."

Jo Weatherhead's suspicions as to this young spark's tendency to impertinence were rather vividly revived by this speech, and his forehead flushed as dark a red as his nose. But Mrs. Dobbs, looking at Theodore's fair young face made up into an expression of solemn importance, smiled a broad smile of motherly toleration, and answered in a soothing tone--

"No, no; to be sure, you mean to do what's right and proper; only young folks don't look at everything as has to be considered. But youth has the best of it in so many ways, it can afford to be not quite so wise as its elders."

This glimpse of himself, as Mrs. Dobbs saw him, was so totally unexpected as completely to dumfounder Theodore for a moment. Never, since he left off round jackets, had he been so addressed: for the behaviour of our acquaintances towards us in daily life is generally modified by their idea of what we think of ourselves.

"I--I can a.s.sure you," he stammered; and then stopped, at a loss for words, in most unaccustomed embarra.s.sment.

"There, there, we ain't bound to say yes or no all in a minute," pursued Mrs. Dobbs. "Any way, we couldn't think of making you postman. That's all very well for your step-mother, of course; but May must send her answer in a proper way. Meanwhile, will you stay and have a cup of tea, Mr. Bransby? It's just our teatime. The tray will be here in a minute."

Theodore had risen as if to go. He now stood hesitating, and looking at May, who certainly gave no answering look of encouragement. She wanted him gone, that she might "talk over" the invitation with her grandmother.

With a pleasant clinking sound, Martha now brought in the tea-tray; and in another minute had fetched the kettle and placed it on the hob, where, after a brief interval of wheezing and sputtering, consequent on its sudden removal from the kitchen fire, it resumed its gurgling sound, and made itself cheerfully at home.

If Mrs. Dobbs had urged him by another word,--if she had shown by any look or tone that she thought it would be a condescension in him to remain, Theodore would have refused. But she began placidly to scoop out the tea from the caddy, and awaited his reply with unfeigned equanimity.

There was an unacknowledged feeling in his heart that, to go away then and so, would be to make a flat kind of exit disagreeable to think of.

He would like to leave this obtuse old woman impressed with a sense of his superiority; and apparently it would still require some little time before that impression was made.

"Thanks," he said. "If I am not disturbing you----"

"Dear no! How could it disturb me? Martha, bring another cup and saucer."

And then Theodore, laying aside his hat and gloves, drew a chair up to the table and accepted the proffered hospitality.

Having found the method of supercilious reserve rather a failure, the young man now adopted a different treatment for the purpose of awaking Mrs. Dobbs, and that objectionably familiar person with the red nose, to a sense of his social distinction and general merits. He talked--not volubly, indeed: for that would have been out of his power, even had he wished it, but he talked--in a succession of short speeches, beginning for the most part with "I." His efforts were not, however, exclusively aimed at Mrs. Dobbs and Jo Weatherhead. He watched May a good deal, and spoke to her of the Dormer-Smiths as though that were a topic between themselves, from which the profane vulgar (especially profane ex-booksellers, with red noses) were necessarily excluded. As the others said very little--with the exception of an occasional question from Jo Weatherhead--Theodore's talk a.s.sumed the form of a monologue spoken to a dull audience.

He was conscious, as he walked away from Friar's Row, of being a little surprised at his own conversational efforts, and half-repentant of his condescension. He had been obliged to take his leave without obtaining any definite answer to the dinner invitation. But, perhaps, the feeling uppermost in his mind was irritation at May's perfectly simple acceptance of her position as Mrs. Dobbs's grand-daughter, and her perfectly filial attachment to her grandmother. "It is really too bad!

Cheffington ought never to have allowed his daughter to be got hold of by those people. Mrs. Dormer-Smith cannot have the least idea what sort of a _milieu_ her niece lives in!" he said to himself.

The worst was that May was so evidently contented! If she had been at all distressed by her surroundings, Theodore could have better borne to see her there.

CHAPTER VII.

Persons like the Simpsons, who knew Mrs. Dobbs intimately, allowed her to have a strong judgment, and a.s.serted her to have a still stronger will. She was far too bent on her own way ever to take advice, they said. It certainly did not happen that she took theirs. But Mrs. Dobbs's judgment was stronger than they knew. It was strong enough to show her on what points other people were likely to know better than she did. She would undoubtedly have followed Amelia Simpson's counsels as to the best way of dressing the hair in filmy ringlets--if she had chanced to require that information.

On the morning after Theodore Bransby's visit to her house, Mrs. Dobbs put on her bonnet and set off betimes to College Quad. There she had an interview with Mrs. Hadlow, who, it appeared, was going to the Bransbys'

dinner-party, and willingly promised to take charge of May.

"It seemed to me it wouldn't be the right thing for my grand-daughter to go alone to a regular formal party," said Mrs. Dobbs. "But, as I don't pretend to be much of an authority on such matters, I ventured to ask you to tell me."

"Of course you were quite right, Mrs. Dobbs."

"And you think she had better accept the invitation? She doesn't much want to do so herself, being shy of going amongst strangers. But, to be sure, if she may be under your wing, and in company with Miss Hadlow, that would make a vast difference."

"Oh yes, let her go, Mrs. Dobbs. Sooner or later she will have to go into the world, and it may be well to begin amongst people she is used to. Is it true that she is to go to her aunt's house in London very soon?"

"Nothing is settled yet. If there had been, you and Canon Hadlow should have been the first to know it--as it would be only my duty to tell you, after all your kindness to the child. Nothing is settled. But I am in favour of her going myself."

"You take the sensible view, Mrs. Dobbs, as I think you always do--except at election time," added Mrs. Hadlow, smiling.

The elder woman smiled back, with a little resolute setting of the lips, and begged her best respects to the canon as she took her leave. The canon was a great favourite with Mrs. Dobbs; and, on his part, their political struggle in that long past election had inspired him with a British respect for his adversary's pluck and fair play.

The prospect of going with Mrs. Hadlow and Constance greatly reconciled May to the idea of the dinner-party. But she did not look forward to it with antic.i.p.ations of enjoyment.

"I would much rather dine in the nursery with the children," she said, unconsciously echoing Mrs. Bransby's suggestion.

Mr. Weatherhead, who was present, took her up on this, and said, "Why, now, May, you will enjoy being in good society! Mr. Bransby is a very agreeable man, and used to some of the best company in the county. Mrs.

Bransby, too, is very pleasant and very pretty; a Miss Lutyer she was, a regular beauty, and belonging to a good old Shrops.h.i.+re family. And young Theodore----" Jo Weatherhead pausing here, and hesitating for a moment, May broke in, "Come now, Uncle Jo," she exclaimed, "you can't say that _he's_ pretty or pleasant!"

"He's not bad-looking," returned Mr. Weatherhead, rather doubtfully.

"Though, to be sure, he isn't so fine a man as his father."

"No; this lad is like his mother's family," said Mrs. Dobbs. "I remember his grandfather and grandmother very well."

"Do you? Do you, Sarah? Who were they? What sort of people, now, eh?"

"Common sort of people; Rabbitt, their name was. Old Rabbitt kept the Castlecombe Arms, a roadside inn over towards Gloucester way. He ran a coach between his own market-town and Gloucester before the branch railway was made, and they say he did a good deal of money-lending; any way, he sc.r.a.ped together a goodish bit, and his wife came in for a slice of luck by a legacy. So altogether their daughter--the first Mrs. Martin Bransby that was--had a nice fortune of her own. She was sent to a good school and well educated, and she was a very good sort of girl; but she had just the same smooth, light hair, and smooth, pale face as this young Theodore. Martin Bransby had money with his first wife--he's got beauty with his second."

"O-ho!" exclaimed Jo Weatherhead, eager and attentive. "Rabbitt, eh? I never knew before who the first Mrs. Bransby was."

"Not a many folks in Oldchester now do know. I happened to know from being often over at Gloucester, visiting Dobbs's family, when I was a girl. Many a day we've driven past the Castlecombe Arms in the chaise.

Dear, dear, how far off it all seems, and yet so plain and distinct! I couldn't help thinking of those old times when the lad was here the other day; he _has_ such a look of old Rabbitt!"

Thus Mrs. Dobbs, rather dreamily, with her eyes fixed on the opposite houses of Friar's Row--or as much of them as could be seen above a wire window-blind--and her fingers mechanically busy with her knitting. But she saw neither the quaint gables nor the gray stone-walls. Her mind was transported into the past. She was bowling along a smooth highroad in an old-fas.h.i.+oned chaise. A girl friend sat in the little seat behind her, and leaned over her shoulder from time to time to whisper some saucy joke. Beside her was the girl-friend's brother, young Isaac Dobbs:--A personable young fellow, who drove the old pony humanely, and seemed in no hurry to get home to Gloucester. She could feel the moist, sweet air of a showery summer evening on her cheek, and smell the scent of a branch of sweetbriar which Isaac had gallantly cut for her from the hedge.

Theodore Bransby did not guess that Mrs. Dobbs had treated him with forbearance and indulgence; still less did he imagine that the forbearance and indulgence had been due to reminiscences of her girlhood, wherein his maternal grandfather figured as "Old Rabbit."

The question of May's dress for the dinner-party gave rise to no debate.

Mrs. Dobbs had been brought up in the faith that the proper garb for a young girl on all festive occasions was white muslin; and in white muslin May was arrayed accordingly. The delicate fairness of her arms and neck was not marred by the trying juxtaposition of that dead white material. It served only to give value to the soft flesh tints, and to the sunny brownness of her hair. When she had driven off in the roomy old fly with Mrs. Hadlow and the canon and Constance, who called to fetch her, Mrs. Dobbs and Mr. Weatherhead agreed that she looked lovely, and must excite general admiration. But the truth was that May's appearance did not seem to dazzle anybody. Mrs. Hadlow gave her a comprehensive and approving glance when she took her cloak off in the well-lighted hall of Mr. Bransby's house, and said, "Very neat. Very nice. Couldn't be better, May." Canon Hadlow--a white-haired venerable figure, with the mildest of blue eyes, and a sensitive mouth--smiled on her, and nodded in confirmation of his wife's verdict. Constance, brilliant in amber, with damask roses at her breast and in her hair, thought her friend looked very school-girlish, and wanting in style. But she had the good-nature to pay the one compliment which she sincerely thought was merited, and to say, "Your complexion stands even that blue-white book muslin, May. I should look absolutely mahogany-coloured in it!"

May felt somewhat excited and nervous as she followed Mrs. Hadlow up the softly carpeted stairs to the drawing-room. But she had a wholesome conviction of her own unimportance on this occasion, and comforted herself with the hope of being left to look on without more notice from any one than mere courtesy demanded. Her first impression was one of eager admiration; for just within the drawing-room door stood Mrs.

Bransby, looking radiantly handsome. May thought her the loveliest person she had ever beheld; and her dress struck even May's inexperienced eyes as being supremely elegant. Constance Hadlow's attire, with its unrelieved breadth of bright colour and its stiff outline, suddenly appeared as crude as a cheap chromo-lithograph beside a Venetian masterpiece. Behind his wife, seated in an easy-chair, was Martin Bransby, a fine, powerfully built man of sixty, with dark eyes and eyebrows, and a shock of grizzled hair. His naturally ruddy complexion was pallid from recent illness, and the lines under his eyes and round his mouth had deepened perceptibly during the last two months.

Theodore stood near his father, stiffly upright, and with a cravat and s.h.i.+rt-front so faultlessly smooth and white as to look as though they had been cast in plaster of Paris. Standing with his back to the fire, was Dr. Hatch:--a familiar figure to May, as to most eyes in Oldchester.

He was a short man, rather too broad for his height; with benevolent brown eyes, a wide, low forehead, and a wide, firm mouth, singularly expressive of humour when he smiled. No other guest had arrived when the Hadlows entered the drawing-room.

After the first greetings, the party fell into little groups: the canon and Mr. Bransby, who were very old friends, conversing together in a low voice, whilst Theodore advanced to entertain Mrs. Hadlow with grave politeness, and Constance made a minute and admiring inspection of Mrs.

Bransby's dress.

May thus found herself a little apart from the rest, and sat down in a corner half hidden by the protruding mantelpiece of carved oak, which rose nearly to the ceiling; an elaborate erection of richly carved pillars, and shelves and niches holding blue-and-white china, in the most approved style.

"Well, Miss May, and how are you?" asked Dr. Hatch, moving a little nearer to her, as he stood on the hearthrug.