An Arranged Marriage

Front matter

AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE BY DOROTHEA GERARD AUTHOR OF "LADY BABY," "A QUEEN OF CURDS ANI> CREAM," ETC. AND JOINT-AUTHOR OF " REATA," ETC LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET CONTENTS. chapter page I. En Famille - 1 II. The Intruder - - 16 III. La Principessa ------- 32 IV. The Monastero ' - - - 46 V. The Conspiracy 56 VI. A Schoolfellow .- 76 VII. The Stirrup-Cup 88 VIII. Uncle Carlo's Pictures 102 IX. "Il Bambino" 115 X. " V01 che Sapete— " 127 XL Annie's Catechism ...... 141 XII. Daniel Silberherz ------ 157 XIII. "Che Cosae Amor-" 172 XIV. The New Patient - - - ■ - - - 182 XV. The Rose-Coloured Moss 195 XVI. Cyprus Wine 205 XVII. Teresina 216 XVIII. The Coral Earrings - - - - - - 226 XIX. " The Roman Girl " 235 XX. In the River-House - 247 XXI. The Stone Bench on the Piazza - - - - 259 XXII. The End of the Season 270 XXIII. The First Stage 281 XXIV. The Last Moment 292 XXV. Waiting 302 XXVI. The Second Ball at Farringdon . -

Chapter I. En Famille

On the 7th day of November of the year 188- some two dozen people, the majority of whom called each other by their Christian names, were assembled round the dinner table of Morton Abbey. The ladies had their hair and the gentlemen their cravats ordered not more than six months behind the latest London fashion ; and both ladies and gentlemen had that common air of peacefulness peculiar to people who have always had enough to eat, and have not ruined either their nerves or their tempers over politics. The look was marked enough to create a sort of family likeness, and in point of fact they were a family party, though only in the wider sense of the word. The old men had been rivals in their youth for the affections of these same old ladies, who now looked out upon the world so peaceably from beneath their silver-grey curls ; the young men and the young women had all known each other in brown holland pinafores, and were now beginning to tread the round already trodden by their parents, by finding each other very pleasant to look upon in silk dinner-gowns and dress-coats.

It had been so in Blankshire from time immemorial. Up to this point county society had maintained itself triumphantly intact from the admixture of baser elements. Though there was no Crœsus among them all, yet neither had any elder son ever been reduced to the necessity of " marr}7ing money," and thus tearing a breach in the Chinese wall of exclusiveness with which Blankshire society loved to think itself surrounded. Marrying money is a somewhat modern accomplishment, and in this corner of rural England even the educated classes had not quite marched with the age. They had married and intermarried for so long that it was the rule and not the exception that no man could take an hour's walk without meeting somebody who was, at the very least, his third or fourth cousin. And thus it came about that everybody knew everything about everybody- It is a favourite joke of Lord Collingswood, who sits at the head of the dinner table to-day — an old gentleman with soft, white hair, and a pink face so delicately cut that it might have been a cameo packed in jeweller's cotton — to boast that he has sung " Rock a-bye baby " to every one of his guests under forty years of age.

Mr. Haldane, the puffy man with the white eyelashes, who always has something to say which is of no consequence whatever, distinctly re members the day on which Jenny Linwood, the pretty blonde beside him, solemnly buried her last doll ; while Sir George Claverstone, the tall, highbred man on Miss Linwood's left, whose mind is absorbed in cultivating a calmness of demeanour almost disconcerting to strangers, finds himself a good deal hampered in his role by these common memories ; for it is not easy to play the born philosopher in the very face of people who have seen you howling over a dead guinea-pig, or running for your life from the gardener with your pockets full of apricots. The old lady next to Sir George is Lady Malvern, and her principal delight in life is to pick holes in her friends' pedigrees, for which occupation, however, Blankshire offers her a very limited field.

She nurses a perpetual hatred against one of her ancestors who, as she asserts, ruined the looks of the family by marrying somebody with a snub nose. Indeed, it rarely happens that Lady Malvern manages to talk to a stranger for five minutes together without airing her fury about the family nose. " A snub nose ! " she loves to grind out from between her gold-stuffed teeth, " of all common things it is the commonest. Look at me ! If it had not been for my thrice unfortunate nose, I would have been a beauty in my youth. For two centuries at least our features have been strictly classical, and now a snub nose on the top of it ! I ask you : Is it not cruel ? " The " horsey "-looking man who comes next — horsey looking in spite of his indifferentl}7 made dress-coat — is the Honourable Mr. Paton, celebrated for knowing how to take fences and not knowing how to dress himself.

It is told of him that at a garden party in the neighbouring county, while helping people into their carriages, a lady, misled by his leggings, his jockey cap, and his undeniable bow legs, had given him a shilling. He tells the story with great gusto and keeps the shilling under glass. Then follow in proper succession several young ladies and young gentlemen with different shades of flaxen hair, and about whom there is absolutely nothing to be said except that they look healthy and happy. Next comes a lady of uncertain years, whose face is adorned with an eternal nervous grin, whether the subject of conversation be births, deaths, or marriages. Major Morris, a thin, brown man, without an ounce of super fluous flesh about him, and hampered with an idee fixe that he is sarcastic, has taken this lady in to dinner.

Straight opposite to the major there sits an elderly gentleman whom his friends revere as the very last surviving Whig of unmixed opinions, the sort of man who reads the Edinburgh Review conscientiously, and talks of "the deep baying of the bloodhound of democracy . " Baxter doesn't know it," the major is fond of saying, " but he'll be in a museum some day." On the left of the sarcastic major sits Miss Nelton, a graceful brunette, and next to her again there comes an empty place. Miss Nelton, being in her teens and tender-hearted, could not look at the unclaimed table-napkin quite unmoved. "Fred's soup will be getting cold," she remarked to the major. " I wonder what is keeping him so long?" "His moustaches," answered the major promptly. " He won't have got the tips quite Parisian enough yet."

Miss Nelton looked at her neighbour reproachfully. " That is unkind ; you shouldn't hit a person when he is down, you know." " Of course not ; but he isn't down a bit — not in spirits, at any rate, whatever may be his luck. It was nothing but his uproarious humour that he had to thank for that cropper to-day. I believe that mare would have turned out the best hunter in the county." " It was foolish, of course, and yet it's like Fred to do things like that. I wonder how he can be in such spirits. Papa says that the Farringdon affairs are going just as badly as possible. He thinks the establishment will have to be shut up or something. Wouldn't that be terrible? " The major said " Hum," not being able on the spur of the moment to think of anything more sarcastic to say. At the other end of the table the empty place was likewise absorbing attention.

" He denies it point blank, but the fall must have given him a shake," Mr. Haldane was sententiously remarking as he blinked his white eyelashes. " Big jumps are all very well, but ask Paton if any man in his senses has ever taken Torn White's garden wall ! " While everybody looked towards Mr. Paton as an authority on this subject Lord Collingswood quietly observed : — " Perhaps he wasn't in his senses ' The faces turned from Mr. Paton to Lord Collings wood. " What on earth do you mean?" " I only mean that I didn't like the way Alleyne rode at that wall. Unless he bad been drinking I can't explain it. And I. didn't like the way he looked at the mare after she was down." " Oh, Lord Collingswood ! " came from Miss Nelton. " I am sure Fred was terribly sorry that her legs were broken." "I am sure he was.

But I am not sure that he wasn't sorrier that it wasn't his own neck that was broken instead," A pause of consternation followed all round the table. Young and old looked towards their white-haired host, who at that moment might have sat for the great grandfather of the whole party. All the faces had become grave, except that of the lady with the perpetual nervous grin, over which apparently her will exercised no control worth mentioning. It was one of the healthy, happy youths who first broke silence. " But, by Jove ! why should Alleyne want to do any thing of the sort ? It's two years since I've seen him in such good spirits as be was in to-day. I even said to him before we were off this morning : ' You've brought good news from London with you ; now haven't you? You look like it.' And he actually burst out laughing, and said : ' Oh, first-rate ; you'll hear all about it presently ! ' ' " Have you ever heard of such a thing as Galgen humor.' " inquired Lord Collingswood as quietly as before.

Some of the persons present had heard of it and some had not, but nobody quite knew what to make of the word which, literally translated, produced such a strange result as "Gallows humour". While they were dis puting over it the door opened, and the conversation necessarily came to a standstill, for Mr. Alleyne had entered. The possessor of Farringdon was a fair-haired, con sumptive-looking man of about thirty, with a slight stoop, and marks of hard living in bis face. Distant acquaintances who met him onl)7 at long intervals were invariably surprised to find him still above earth. " Oh, Alleyne," they were accustomed to say on hearing his name mentioned, " do you mean to say that he is still alive ? " Mr. Alleyne had outlived several of the questioners, and, in spite of his narrow shoulders, seemed disposed to outlive a good number more, as this class of individual often does.

In the time of Fred's father Farringdon had been the great house of the county, and Fred himself was the first Alleyne who for generations past had not been Master of the Hounds. It was not entirely his fault, seeing that the ruin of the house had begun before his time, but doubtless this ruin had been greatly acceler ated by his own doings. With economy all might yet have been well, but he had started by declaring that economy was not his style, and that he preferred to live for ten years on a princely footing rather than to scrape up shillings for fifty. The county had been a good deal startled by this declaration, although it was well known that Fred was always either doing or saying startling things. Indeed, to be startling seemed to be his one object in life. He delighted in making such assertions as that he didn't admire Shakespeare, or that it had been a mistake to annex India, merely for the sake of being gaped at.

And now the ten years of princely living had come to an end. In justice to Fred Alleyne it must be ob served that these ten years were all that he had ex pected to live ; but his lungs had played him a trick by proving tougher than the doctors had supposed them. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen next, though everybody would have liked very much to know ; for Fred, having been left an orphan in very early years, had been in a sort of way adopted by his neighbours en masse, who had vied with each other in making much of him, partly in memory of the great days of Farringdon, and partly in pity for the darker days now closing around him. It was known that he had lost heavily at Ascot, and though of late he had become extremely reticent, it was evident that since summer some sort of cloud was threatening to burst.

Quite lately he had gone up to London to meet his creditors, and had returned from there only two days ago. The question as to what exactly had taken place in London was occupying everybody's mind. For the space of five minutes Lord Collingswood's words continued to weigh a little upon the mind of the company, but by the end of that time almost every one present had veered round to the opinion of the flaxen-haired young man who felt certain that Fred must have brought good news from London. To say that he was in good spirits would have been to say too little — he was absolutely boisterous. He had begun by entering the room with a curious air of jauntiness not observable in his usual demeanour, and with a flush upon his hollow cheek which, as the major could not refrain from observing to his neighbour, ought not to have been there before dinner.

Once seated it took him less than a minute to get the con versation under way again all round the table. He wanted to know what they had been talking about ; he was quite sure it was about himself. Was it his vices or his virtues which they had been discussing ? Pro bably the latter ; everybody knew that he had none of the former worth mentioning. Then he turned to Ada Nelton aud almost frightened her by the intensity with which he whispered : "I am sure you said nothing bad about me ". Before she had time to answer he had already turned to some one else with a joke about some incident in to-day's run. When asked whether the mare had been shot, he answered airily : " Bless her, yes ; may her soul rest in peace," — a remark which caused several old ladies to turn pale. But there is nothing so infectious as a boisterous mood ; and though among the elder people some began to wonder whether the fall had left Fred's head quite uninjured, and though the major, having first looked at the decanter, exchanged a significant look across the table with the man whom he expected to see in a museum some day, yet tbe young people, whose blood was warmed by to-day's successful run, rapidly entered into the spirit of joviality, and the dinner passed off amidst a general gaiety that was almost a little noisy.

But through it all Fred Alleyne remained the leader. The nearer it drew to dessert time the broader did the jokes become which Fred exchanged with the men, and the more reckless the compliments which he paid to the ladies. When he had reached the point of calling upon Lady Malvern to drink to the health of the ancestor to whom the family owed its present shape of nasal organ, the hostess thought it was time to catch her chief guest's eye, for even in a family party there are limits to be observed. With something of a sigh of relief she heard the dining-room door close behind her. It was Fred Alleyne who had insisted on ushering the ladies out, though others had been nearer than he was. He came back to his place slowly, with his napkin in his hand. The flaxen-haired youths looked towards him expectantly, ready for a burst of that freer gaiety in which it had now become possible to indulge.

But this time they were disappointed. From the moment that he had again sat down Fred's mood seemed to have changed. He had become silent, almost morose. He emptied a few more glasses of wine, but he gave short and un gracious answers to the questions addressed to him. It was not until Lord Collingswood was beginning to show symptoms of rising that Fred underwent another trans formation. He raised his head quickly, and in a moment the flush had again mounted to his cheek, and his eyes had begun to shine. " Not yet," he said ; " we mustn't go yet. I have still got something to do." "You had better be quick about it then," said a young man, who was growing impatient to rejoin a young lady in the drawing-room. " Yes, I shall be quick, very quick," laughed Alleyne, with a sudden return to his former joviality of manner, only this time his voice did not sound so steady as be fore, and no one could help feeling that the laugh was overdone.

" All we need is a bottle of champagne, and I promise to do the thing at once. They are all empty, you see, Lord Colly," and he turned insinuatingly to wards his host, whom he had not called " Lord Colly " since he was ten years old. " May I ring for another bottle of champagne ? " The men round the table looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment. How and where was all this going to end ? " Stop," said Lord Collingswood, whose delicate pink face had suddenly hardened. " What's all this nonsense? You don't need more wine. Why, you're drunk, boy, already." Alleyne turned with his hand upon the bell. " I give you my word that I am not drunk," he said, in a voice that shook with eagerness. "I am as sober as you are, but I have got somebody's health to drink, and I must have wine to drink it in. May I ring?

Say yes, please, dear Lord Colly ! " A movement of interest went through the company. The old man gazed hard at the young one, hesitated for a moment, and then gave a sign of assent. A few minutes later the champagne glasses were being filled, and all faces were turned towards Fred Alleyne, who stood with his knuckles on the table, leaning a little forward, and staring in turn into the expectant eyes of each of his friends. He had not spoken yet ; once he had made a beginning, but his cough had come on, and he had sipped a mouthful of champagne, in doing which he had spilled some on the back of his hand, which had seemed to him so comical that he had been forced to laugh, though no one had joined in the laugh this time. After that his throat required a little time to settle down, and he did not hurry, as though enjoying the suspense which he had created.

As he looked into one pair of eyes after another he could almost read what they were waiting for. One expected this, the other that, but not one among them all looked for what was coming. When his gaze had gone the round of the table, he drew up his stooping figure, squared his narrow shoulders, and feverishly grasped his glass. " My friends," he began in his high-pitched voice, " I told you that I had somebody's health to drink, and I never tell lies. You want to know whose, don't you? And one of you wanted to know what news I had brought from London. Very well, I am going to answer both questions at once. Don't be afraid ; it won't be a long speech. All you have got to do is to take hold of your glasses and to drink with me to the health of the new possessor of Farringdon." Some of the men — the majority of whom had been indistinctly looking for something in the shape of a bridal toast — had already raised their glasses from mere force of habit, and not yet having quite grasped the sense of the last words ; but before a single mouthful had been drunk all the glasses were put down again, and every man looked into his neighbour's face in order to see there whether he had heard aright.

Mr. Haldane's white eyelashes worked in double quick time, and even Sir George Claverstone, who made a point of never being surprised at anything, could not quite suppress a very slight start. " Fred, my boy," said Lord Collingswood after a long pause, " are you quite sure you know what you are talking about? " Alleyne had sat down again, and was now, with an unsteady smile, reviewing the company, as though to note the effects of his coup. This time he had certainly succeeded in being gaped at to his heart's content. " Yes, I rather fancy that I do know what I am talk ing about ; the matter was explained to me very clearly, any way." "But, Fred " began Lord Collingswood again, rather shakily this time. " Farringdon sold ! " burst out one of the younger men. " It's simply impossible." " Why ?

" asked Alleyne, turning fiercely upon him. " Well, because — because nobody who isn't called Alleyne has ever been at Farringdon, and because — well, just because one can't fancy any one else there." " You'll have to make your imagination work harder then," said Alleyne, with an ugly sneer. " I tell you that somebody whose name is as different as possible from Alleyne will be cleaning his boots on the Farring don door-scraper before the month is out." " But who is the man ? " asked the indiscreet youth, and his indiscretion loosed the tongues of the others. " But when did it happen ? " asked one. " How could it possibly be ? " " And what are you going to do yourself? " Alleyne answered only the first of the questions. "It is a man who has more money than I have," he said with something very like a sob, though the smile still flickered about his nervous lips.

" I've called upon you to drink his health — you won't ? Well then, I'm losing time ; there's nothing else for me to do here, except to wish you better luck than I've had. There are too many of you to shake hands with all round, so you must just believe me without it. Good-bye, Lord Colly, and may you live to be a hundred." He was on his feet already, and was wringing Lord Collingswood's beautiful pink hand so savagely that it almost seemed as though it must break off. Then, be fore any one had quite realised what his intention was, the dining-room door had closed behind him. During a few moments his weak cough was heard in the hall, and immediately there followed the sound of wheels grinding through the gravel. One or two of the guests remembered now that they had heard this same sound during dinner, and had wondered whose carriage could be coming round between two courses.

To every one who knew Fred Alleyne — and all present knew him rather better than their own pockets — it became evident that the closing scene had been carefully prepared. Since he had to disappear it was " like Fred" to wish to disappear with a flash in the pan. In their first astonishment some of the guests had risen ; Lord Collingswood hurried into the hall, but came back again presently, shaking his head, and sank despondently into his chair. Then everybody began to talk at once. So it was true after all. Until this moment it had still appeared possible that the thing would prove a joke. That chance was gone now ; there remained only a naked fact to reckon with. After this evening Fred would have ceased to belong to Blank shire. How was Blankshire going to bear the blow ? What was going to become of this petted lost sheep ?

It was known that he had a distant relative in Australia. Was he going to emigrate? Opinions differed greatly. Mr. Haldane held forth unceasingly even when not listened to ; while the major, on the contrary, had to content himself with looking im penetrable. Sarcasm was not suitable for the occasion, he well knew, and to make commonplace remarks would have undermined his reputation. At the end of several minutes of surmises somebody ventured the question, "But how about the new man?" This turned the mind of the company from regret to curiosity, for a great deal depended for Blankshire on the possessor of Farringdon. Not a soul present had a clue to go by. " It's bad enough its not being one of us," said Mr. Haldane, squaring his puffy figure, " but will it be the right sort of man ? " Every guest looked silently into his wineglass.

They were all thinking of the same thing. "It's a man who has got more money than I have," Fred had said. Now, money can be either inherited or acquired, and the dread of seeing the great house of the county fall into the hands of that terrible product of modern times, the nouveau riciie, was weighing upon everybody's mind at that moment. " We don't want any strangers among us," said Mr. Paton, bringing down his closed hand upon the table. " The idea of having a fellow at Farringdon who doesn't know his right stirrup from his left one ! " The idea was so appalling that they all looked in stinctively towards their host, as though for guidance. Lord Collingswood raised himself from his despond ent attitude. He felt that he was expected to do something. " My friends," he said — he had almost said " my children " — " it's no use breaking our heads over the new man ; we'll see him sooner than we care to, and, whoever he is, he won't be Freddy — that's the chief point.

Whether we can make him welcome among us must depend upon himself ; but one point seems to me quite clear — we're not going to drink to his health until we know more about him. I vote, therefore, that poor Freddy's toast be turned inside out. The glasses are full, let us empty them, not to the name of the new possessor of Farringdon, but to the memory of the late one." The champagne disappeared amidst approving ac clamations. Though it was not expressed in so many plain words, yet the toast had virtually been drunk quite as much to the destruction of the "new man" as to the prosperity of the old one. It was as though they had tacitly bound themselves to a league against the intruder. That evening at Morton Abbey the ladies waited long for the appearance of the gentlemen. They, too, had heard the weak cough in the hall, followed by the slamming of the hall door.

Some of them had raised their heads for a moment, but no one thought of con necting this with the long delay in the dining-room. It was on this particular evening that the meaning of the word Galgenhumor dawned upon the minds of several of the company. They would not formerly have believed that a man with a rope round his neck could manage to laugh ; but Fred had shown them that this was quite possible, though the sound of that laugh had not been altogether pleasant to listen to — now that they came to think of it.

Chapter II. The Intruder

The east was beginning to turn white with a first faint suspicion of daylight, when the last carriage— it was only a cab— rolled from the door of Farringdon Manor. Mr. Brand turned thoughtfully back into the house. The spaces inside, deserted except for the servants, were still ablaze with light. In the dancing-room some scraps of coloured tulle were scattered over the floor. Upon a chair in the corner there lay a crushed bouquet ; not far off, on a table, a forgotten glove. Through the open door of the supper-room Mr. Brand could see the crumpled napkins and the dregs of the champagne in the glasses. In the long back drawing-room a small, sleepy woman in red satin was obviously waiting for orders. She wore so many diamonds about her that a person with weak eyes could not have looked at her steadily for more than a couple of seconds at a time, and she her self was the most meagre of excuses for such a display of splendour.

As her husband entered she roused herself with a start. Mr. Brand sat down opposite to his wife, undid a couple of his waistcoat buttons, and stretched his legs in front of him. The ball had been an experiment — had it been a success? The same question was in both their minds, though neither spoke at once. It was Mrs. Brand who first broke silence. " The Malverns must have been prevented from coming," she observed, in a nervous whisper. " Per haps her ladyship's — I mean Lady Malvern's — toothache came on again." "Is toothache infectious?" inquired Mr. Brand, frowning at his boots. " No, Tom — I mean Thomas. But they may all have been taken up with her, mightn't they, and too anxious to go? " " And the Haldanes ? " " That could have been a mistake, surely. Mistakes about messages do happen sometimes, don't they?