WHEN Lord Frogmore arrived at Grocombe Vicarage the day but one before his marriage, Mary was still so pale, so depressed and nervous, that the brisk old bridegroom was much disturbed. It had been agreed in the family that it would be better to say nothing about that visit, which after all, though disagreeable, had done nobody any harm. This arrangement had been consented to by everybody, but Mrs. Hill and Agnes were always doubtful whether the vicar and Mary could keep their own counsel. And it turned out that these discreeter members of the family were right. For, indeed, Lord Frogmore had not spent an hour with his bride before he ascertained the cause of her low spirits and troubled looks. He was angry yet relieved.
“I had begun to think you had found out since I left you that you would not be happy with an old man,” he said.
“Oh, Lord Frogmore!”
“It was a reasonable fear. You are a great deal younger than I am, though you think yourself so old, Mary. However, if it is only Mrs. John and the dowager who have frightened you, it is to be hoped we may get over that.”
Mary shivered but did not speak. It was her cold hanging about her still her mother thought, but Lord Frogmore was not quite of that opinion.
“They must have said something very nasty to take such a hold upon you. What was it? Come now, Mary. You will not make me think worse of them (which is what you are afraid of) by anything you can tell me, and it will be a relief to you to get it out.”
“It was—nothing particular,” Mary said; but again a shudder ran through her. “It was just, I suppose, what people say when they are very angry.”
“Come, Mary. What did she say?”
“Oh, Frogmore,” cried Mary at last, “she could not mean it. You know she could not mean it. Poor Letitia! she is a mother, and they say a mother will do any thing I am sure she had no ill meaning. She said she hoped I would be cursed, that if I had a——oh, I can’t, I can’t repeat what she said. That she wished I were dead, or would go mad, or—— No, no, she could not mean it. People don’t curse you nowadays. It is too dreadful,” Mary cried, and she shivered more and more, wrapping herself up in her shawl.
“The devil,” cried Lord Frogmore. “The little fierce devil!—a mother. She is no more a mother than a tigress is. She hates you because after all her ill-treatment of you you will have the upper hand of her. And I hope you will take it and make her feel it too. What a woman for my poor brother John to have brought into the family! I can forgive his mother, who is as stupid as a figurehead, but would cut herself or anyone else in little pieces if she thought it would be good for John; but not John’s wife, the odious little shrew—the——”
“Oh, Frogmore,” cried Mary, “don’t speak of her so. I can never forget how kind she was to me.”
“Kind to you—accepting all your time and care and affections and downright hard work, and giving you how much for them?—nothing. Now, Mary, there must be an end of this. She has made a slave of you for years. I hope you don’t mean to let her make a victim of you at the end.”
“Oh—she could not mean it. I don’t think she could mean it; but to curse me—just when everyone, even the old women in the almshouses, send their blessing.”
Mary fell into a fit of shivering again, vainly wrapping herself in the shawl to restore warmth, and keeping with difficulty her teeth from chattering. The old lord was much disturbed by this sight. He tried to caress and soothe her into composure, but elicited little save a weeping apology. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Frogmore.”
“Mary,” he said at length, “I suppose we’ve both agreed as to the source from which blessings and curses come—or rather, let us say good fortune and bad, for I don’t like to credit God with the curses, for my part.”
Mary, a little startled, looked at him with wide, open eyes, the tears, for the moment at least, arrested. She was not sure whether he was not about to say something profane, and as a clergyman’s daughter she felt it her duty to be on her guard.
“Well,” said Lord Frogmore, “I shouldn’t, for my part, think the people who call down curses were very likely to be heard up there—do you think so, my dear? If they are it is not in accordance with anything we know. Curses are only in use in romance books. And as for believing that Mrs. John has any credit in that quarter I don’t, Mary. I’d back the old women in the almshouses against twenty Mrs. Johns.”
It was very profane—still it introduced a view of the subject which proved, after a while, consolatory to Mary. She recognized reason in it. And the presence of the old lord, who was so cheerful and self-possessed, and was afraid of nobody, was also very supporting, as Mrs. Hill said. He had the confidence of a man who had always been accustomed to have his own way, and to be baulked by nobody, which is a great prop to the minds of people who have the persistent sensation, due to the records and traditions of many failures, that something is always likely to interpose between the cup and the lip. Lord Frogmore did not take any such contingency into consideration. When he found that Mary’s cold was so obstinate he changed all his plans with the most lordly indifference to calculations and resolved to take her to the Riviera for what he had too much sense to call the honeymoon. “Moons,” he said to Mr. Hill, “do not drop honey when the bridegroom is sixty-seven, but I hope to make it very pleasant to Mary for all that.” And this was exactly what he did. The marriage and all the little fuss and excitement—for the parish was moved from one end to the other for the vicar’s daughter and her wonderful match—shook her up and roused her spirits. And she wanted to do credit to the old lord, and would not have him carry off a bride with watery eyes and a red nose. So that even before they left Grocombe, Mary had recovered herself. She had a few wedding presents, for her friends were not rich enough to send anything worthy of a lady who was going to be a viscountess. But there was one which moved her much, and amused the old lord. The family at the hall had taken no notice of what was going on in the vicarage—indeed it was so rough a man’s house that the amenities of life were disregarded altogether. But the day before the wedding Ralph Ravelstone, who had been known to be at home, but had showed very little, appeared at the vicarage with a stable-boy behind him leading a colt. He went in to the house, leaving this group at the gate, and paid his respects to the family, where he was received without enthusiasm. “You see I’ve come back,” he said.
“Yes, we heard you had come back,” said Mrs. Hill.
“Mary would tell you. I’m rather put out about Mary. I always meant,” said Ralph, “to marry her myself. Oh, I don’t mind if Frogmore hears. He’s a connection of mine and very jolly. I always meant to marry her myself.”
“You showed your good taste, Mr. Ralph; but I am glad that I was first in the field,” said Lord Frogmore.
“That’s what it is to have plenty of money,” said Ralph, with a grave face. “You see things on the other side didn’t turn out as well as I expected. I’ve brought her a wedding present, though. He looks leggy at present, but he’s a good sort. You wouldn’t know his sire’s name perhaps, but it’s well known in Yorkshire, and if he’s well trained he’ll make a horse. There he is at the gate. I don’t say but he looks a bit leggy as he is now——”
“Oh—is it that foal? l am sure it was very kind of you, Ralph,” said Mrs. Hill, in an extremely doubtful tone.
They had all gone to the window to look, and for a moment there had been some perplexity in the minds of the ladies as to which of the two animals visible was the wedding present—the half-grown stable-boy or the neglected colt. Mary repeated, still more doubtfully, “I am sure it is very kind of you, Ralph,” and there was a momentary pause of consternation. But this Lord Frogmore disposed of in his brisk way.
“We’ll send him to the Park,” he said, “where I don’t doubt he’ll be attended to; and who knows what races you may not win with him, Mary. She shall run him under her own name. We’ll make the Frogmore colors known on the turf, eh, my dear? Mr. Ravelstone has given you a most valuable present, and for my part I am very much obliged.”
“Lord Frogmore always speaks up handsome,” said Ralph. “I saw that the first moment we met at Tisch’s little place. And that little shaver, don’t you remember? By Jove, now he’ll have his little nose put out of joint.”
It was not perhaps a very elegant joke, and the ladies took no notice of it save by alarmed mutual glances between themselves. But Frogmore—the refined and polite little old gentleman; Frogmore, with his old-fashioned superiority in manners; Frogmore—laughed! There was no doubt of it—laughed and chuckled with satisfaction.
“Well,” he said, “such things can’t be helped. It’s best in all circumstances not to count one’s eggs before—— My brother John’s family were, perhaps, what we may call a little cocksure.”
“I don’t know much about your brother,” said Ralph. “But, lord, I shouldn’t like to come in Tisch’s way when she knows. Oh, she knows, does she? I’d just like to see her face when she reads it in the papers. Tisch is a fine one for pushing on in the world, but when she’s roused——”
“Ralph,” said Mrs. Hill, “you might be better employed than speaking against your sister. She has been very kind to Mary; and Lord Frogmore would never have met my daughter at all if it had not been in her house.”
“That was all the worse for me perhaps, Mrs. Hill,” said Ralph.
“You are quite right, my dear lady,” said Lord Frogmore. “We have all I am sure the greatest respect for Mrs. John. She has made my brother an excellent wife, and she has put me in the way of acquiring for myself a similar blessing.” He made this little speech in his precise way, quite concluding the argument, and even quieting Ralph in a manner which much impressed the ladies. But the big bushman shook his head and his beard as he went away. “That’s all very well,” he said, “but if Tisch has ever a chance to come in with a back-hander—” He went off continuing to shake his head all the way.
Fortunately, Mary did not notice this, being diverted by the perplexity and embarrassment caused by Ralph’s “leggy” gift, what to do with it, how to find accommodation for it in the little stable at the vicarage, already occupied by an old and self-opinionated pony, very impatient of being interfered with. But Mrs. Hill and Agnes shook their heads too behind the bride’s back. If Tisch ever had it in her power to do an ill-turn to Mary! Even all the excitement of the wedding preparations could not banish this thought from Mrs. Hill’s mind. She impressed upon her other daughter the oft-repeated lesson that there is no light without an accompanying shadow. “In the course of nature,” said the vicar’s wife, “poor Mary will be left a widow to struggle for herself. It is true that the settlement is all we could desire—but if Tisch is at the back of it, her husband being the heir, how can we know what may happen—and your father an old man, and me with so little experience in the ways of the world——”
“But, mother,” said Agnes, with hesitation, “Mary is not so old, she is only two years older than I am. She may have——”
“Oh, my dear! Heaven forbid there should be any family!” cried Mrs. Hill lifting up her hands and eyes.