The Imaginary Marriage. Henry St. John Cooper
Hugh Alston is the man I have selected for you. He is in love with you, there isn't a finer lad living. He has eight thousand a year, and Hurst Dormer is one of the best old properties in Sussex. So that's quite enough, and I don't want to hear any more nonsense about Tom Arundel. I say nothing against him personally. Colonel Arundel is a gentleman, of course, otherwise I would not permit you to know his son; but the Arundels haven't a pennypiece to fly with and—and now—Now I see Hugh coming up the drive. Leave me. I want to talk to him. Go into the garden, and wait by the lily-pond. In all probability Hugh will have something to say to you before long."
"Oh, aunt, I—"
"Shut up!" said her ladyship briefly.
Marjorie went out, with hanging head and bursting heart. She believed herself the most unhappy girl in England. She loved; who could help loving happy-go-lucky, handsome Tom Arundel, who well-nigh worshipped the ground her little feet trod upon? It was the first love and the only love of her life, and of nights she lay awake picturing his bright, young boyish face, hearing again all the things he had said to her till her heart was well-nigh bursting with love and longing for him.
But she did not hate Hugh. Who could hate Hugh Alston, with his cheery smile, his ringing voice, his big generous heart, and his fine manliness? Not she! But from the depths of her heart she wished Hugh Alston a great distance away from Cornbridge.
"Hello, Hugh!" said her ladyship. He had come in, a man of two-and-thirty, big and broad, with suntanned face and eyes as blue as the tear-dimmed eyes of the girl who had gone miserably down to the lily-pond.
Fair haired was Hugh, ruddy of cheek, with no particular beauty to boast of, save the wholesomeness and cleanliness of his young manhood. He seemed to bring into the room a scent of the open country, of the good brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.
"Hello, Hugh!" said Lady Linden.
"Hello, my lady," said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the old dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was singular, and because he was the one person who did not fear her she preferred him to anyone else.
"Hugh," she said—she went straight to the point, she always did; as a hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at the matter she had in hand—"I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom Arundel—"
His cheery face grew a little grave.
"Yes?"
"Well, it is absurd—you realise that?"
"I suppose so, but—" He paused.
"It is childish folly!"
"Do you think so? Do you think that she—" Again he paused, with a nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.
"She's only a gel," said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born, and talked Sussex when she became excited. "She's only a gel, and gels have their fancies. I had my own—but bless you, they don't last. She don't know her own mind."
"He's a good fellow," said Hugh generously.
"A nice lad, but he won't suit me for Marjorie's husband. Hugh, the gel's in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her heart is broken, but it isn't! Go and prove it isn't; go now!"
He met her eyes and flushed red. "I'll go and have a talk to Marjorie," he said. "You haven't been—too rough with her, have you?"
"Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the command of her money, her four hundred a year till she was twenty-five, and not a bob of it should she touch if she married against my wish. Now go and talk to her—and talk sense—" She paused. "You know what I mean—sense!"
A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water over which the dragon-flies skimmed.
Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.
Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.
He had seen her in his mind's eye doing those little housewifely duties that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.
And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond, because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it should be so.
"Marjorie!" he said.
She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand' to him silently.
He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. "Is—is it so bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?"
"Better than my life!" she said. "Oh, if you knew!"
"I see," he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred now and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would be no sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer, and the realisation hurt him badly.
The girl seemed to have crept a little closer to him, as for comfort and protection.
"She has made up her mind, and nothing will change it. She wants you to—to marry me. She's told me so a hundred times. She won't listen to anything else; she says you—you care for me, Hugh."
"Supposing I care so much, little girl, that I want your happiness above everything in this world. Supposing—I clear out?" he said—"clear right away, go to Africa, or somewhere or other?"
"She would make me wait till you came back, and you'd have to come back, Hugh, because there is always Hurst Dormer. There's no way out for me, none. If only—only you were married; that is the only thing that would have saved me!"
"But I'm not!"
She sighed. "If only you were, if only you could say to her, 'I can't ask Marjorie to marry me, because I am already married!' It sounds rubbish, doesn't it, Hugh; but if it were only true!"
"Supposing—I did say it?"
"Oh, Hugh, but—" She looked up at him quickly. "But it would be a lie!"
"I know, but lies aren't always the awful things they are supposed to be—if one told a lie to help a friend, for instance, such a lie might be forgiven, eh?"
"But—" She was trembling; she looked eagerly into his eyes, into her cheeks had come a flush, into her eyes the brightness of a new, though as yet vague, hope. "It—it sounds so impossible!"
"Nothing is actually impossible. Listen, little maid. She sent me here to you to talk sense, as she put it. That meant she sent me here to ask you to marry me, and I meant to do it. I think perhaps you know why"—he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it—"but I shan't now, I never shall. Little girl, we're going to be what we've always been, the best and truest of friends, and I've got to find a way to help you and Tom—"
"Hugh, if you told her that you were married, and not free, she wouldn't give another thought to opposing Tom and me—it is only because she wants me to marry you that she opposes Tom! Oh, Hugh, if—if—if you could, if it were possible!" She was trembling with excitement, and the sweet colour was coming and going in her cheeks.
"Supposing I did it?" he said, and spoke his thoughts aloud. "Of course it would be a shock to her, perhaps she wouldn't believe!"
"She would believe anything you said … "
"It is rather a rotten thing to do," he thought, "yet. … " He