A Mixed Marriage

Front matter

ROEHAMPTON : PKINTED BV JAMES STANLEY. [All rights reserved.] BY THE LADY AMABEL KERR. LONDON: 21, WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD, S.E. ART AND BOOK COMPANY : LEAMINGTON AND LONDON. I893. CONTENTS. ttbc #trst ipbasc. PaS Chapter I. — Ulminster Gossip ... ... ... i „ II. — The Rich Cousin ... ... ... 12 ,, HI. — The Thin End of the Wedge ... ... 17 ,, IV. — Blackberry Cottage ... ... ... 27 ,, V. — A Fruitless Errand ... ... ... 33 ,, VI. — Uncle Dick ... ... ... ... 44 .. VII. — For Better, for Worse ... ... ... 51 ,, VIII. — The First Year ... ... ... 57 ,, IX. — Opposite Opinions ... ... ... 63 ,, X. — Humphrey's Mother ... ... ... 72 ., XI. — The Drop of Poison ... ... ... 80 ., XII. — The Son and Heir ... ... ... 92 vibe Second fl>baee. Chapter I. — The Effects of the Shock ... ... 101 ,, II. — The Cloud breaks ... ... ... 114 „ III.— The Flight ... ... ... ... 119 ,, IV. — Shelter ... ... ... ... 123 ,, V. — Fetched Back ... ... ... ... 127 ., VI. — The Iron which enters the Soul ... ... 134 ,, VII. — The Two Dark Years ... ... ... 143 ,.

VIII. — Reconciliation ... ... ... 154 Hbe ilbiro lpbasc. Chapter I. — The Great Calm ... ... ... 163 II. — In the Presence of Death ... ... 172 ,, III.— Ashton ... ... ... ... 17S IV. — Gertrude ... ... ... ... 187 V. — Sunset Clouds... ... ... ... 194 ,, VI. — Bygones ... ... ... ... 203 ., VII.— The End ... ... ... ... a slDiyefc slDarriage. THE FIRST PHASE.

Chapter I. Ulminster Gossip

THE town of Ulminster was essentially a social town. It was, it is true, not very far, indeed only an hour or so by rail, from London ; but this proximity did not, as is often the case, cripple its social powers, for Ulminster had certain special properties which made it hold its own, socially, through all difficulties. To begin with, it was a Cathedral town, and round the Cathedral precincts there clustered an eminently respectable and permanent society, all its own. This did not comprise only the clerical element, the Dean and his family, the canons and theirs, but included a circle of people who had made their home under the shadow, as it were, of the Cathedral, and who, if they had sons, educated them at the excellent and economical Grammar-school attached to it. In the second place Ulminster was a garrison town, which brought another distinct though fluctu ating society of its own.

This, however, was not all. B Ulminster was social for reasons above and beyond these two. The country round about the town seemed to adapt itself almost naturally to the for mation of little villas ; and when the large station was built at Ulminster, at which even fast trains stopped, it was as if the X. Y. Z. Railway Company had played into the hands of villa builders, sellers, and buyers. Villa on villa clustered all round the town, and on the heights above it, and far away into the country, till villas became villas no longer, but country-houses. And in the centre of them, above the town, rose a fine old house, Alne Court, the seat of Lord Alne, with some historical associations, and standing in the midst of a beautiful park. It stood in the middle of the villas like a hen in the midst of her chickens, and these chickens, forced to leave room for the spacious mother-bird, tried, as it were, to make up for it by clustering round her walls more closely than anywhere else.

The villas and country-houses were largely though temporarily inhabited by the married officers of what ever regiments were quartered at Ulminster. They were more largely and more permanently inhabited by outsiders who, attracted by the convenience, cheapness, and prettiness of the locality, were glad to combine a social with an almost rural life. Ulminster society, of which these villas formed the very nucleus, was of a harmless, though far from intellectually elevated kind. Its members took it very much as they found it, enjoying it and absorbing it into their own lives as they were. Boys and girls met and made love as they will all the world over, and broke their hearts, and mended them again with never a scar left to show for it. Men, and more especially women, of all ages, met and talked their neighbours over and over, and turned their characters inside and out, and knew what every body else had said and done during the last twenty four hours, and in the whole course of their lives before.

Everybody was discussed, but a deadly wound was seldom inflicted on any one, though may be there were pin-pricks in abundance. Of course this little Ulminster world was worldly, but, if such a term can be used, it was harmlessly worldly. Its worldliness was sor more simple than that, for instance, of the society of a London season, where certainly people do not take life as they find it, but lay themselves out for a time of artificially over packed pleasure-seeking, crowding the enjoyments of an age into a few feverish, hot-breathed months of life. There, over-tired, over-excited men and women rush at high pressure through their lives, allowing themselves no time to breathe or think, either by night or by day; all in hot chase after something. Boys and girls meet and make love there as they will all the world over, and break their hearts, and do not mend them without the leaving of a nasty scar.

Men and women's characters arc discussed as much as they were at Ulminster, but human kindness does not flourish in London atmosphere, and deadly wounds are inflicted right and left, freely and ruthlessly. Yes, compared with that sort of worldliness, the worldliness of Ulminster might be called harmless ! Tennis parties were the rage during the summer months. Each villa, when the size of its garden admitted of it, had its tennis court ; and the inhabitants of those which could not provide one, enjoyed all the more, and played all the more, on those of their more fortunate neighbours. It was on a brilliant afternoon in August that a company of these harmless worldlings was gathered together at " The Limes," one of the largest of the villas, owned by a retired London merchant of the name of Selwyn.

It was five o'clock, and the delights of tennis had temporarily yielded to the attractions of tea, with its accompaniments of fruit and cream and cakes. Two or three large Spanish chestnuts grew in front of the house, and under the lengthening shadow of these sat, or lounged, or sprawled, all the players, and all the non-players, who had made the game of the others their excuse for coming to the gathering. " Has any one seen the people who have taken Blackberry Cottage ? " asked Nina Selwyn, the daughter of the house, who was serving out tea at one of the tables. "Who, and what are they?" asked Mrs. Kirk patrick, the wife of the new Colonel of the — th Regiment, and therefore a stranger to Ulminster and its little world. " Their name is Bligh, a widow with one daughter," explained Nina. " They have taken a little bijou house close up to the lodge-gates of Alne Court."

"/'ve seen them," said a young man clothed in flannels, who was lying on the ground, plucking and chewing the blades of grass. " They were in the barrack-square yesterday with the Melnottes, hearing our band play." "Oh, do tell us about her," and "What is she like?" came from various quarters. " Well," he replied, tantalizingly, " she isn't much. She is only an insignificant, tired-looking little woman." " But that's Mrs. Bligh, we don't want to hear about her," said Nina. " What is the girl like ? " " She's an awfully pretty girl, if you'd like to know. I made her acquaintance. She's no end jolly." " Did she tell you anything about themselves ? " " Not much. We talked about the band, and about tennis, and that sort of thing, you know. They have just come from London, where they have been having a regular season.

I suppose that is why her mother looks so done up, poor thing. Miss Bligh said it was awful hard work." " Do you know," said a girl who had been the young man's particular partner in the game that day, and whom he imagined he would very much like to have for his partner through life, " do you know, I have made a discovery. This is the Miss Bligh whom we heard that Lord Alne was making up to in London." " And has she come down here after him ? " asked another, a rather sharp, pert-looking girl. " You horrid, ill-natured thing," returned the other. " Of course not! You know that Mrs. Bligh is sister to Mr. Melnotte, the banker. That is why they have come here." " Besides," put in Nina Selwyn, " they are Roman Catholics, you know." "Are they? You don't mean it!" exclaimed the sharp girl. " I had not heard it.

Oh, well, then of course there will be no question of Lord Alne marrying her." " Well, I don't know that that quite settles the question," returned Nina. " It very much depends on what sort of Roman Catholics these Blighs are. If they are not extreme people, I do not at all see that it may not end in something. Of course there are Roman Catholics and Roman Catholics." " I hope, my dear, that you don't forget that /am a Catholic," said a youthful, middle-aged lady, turning her head round from the next table, where she had been carrying on an engrossing conversation with another flannel-clad young man. " I beg your pardon, Mrs. Munro, I quite forgot ! " said Nina, colouring crimson ; for people have a way of thinking it an insult and an impropriety to mention the word Catholic, when a Catholic is present.

" You must forgive me. Somehow I always forget that you are a Roman Catholic." It was now Mrs. Munro's turn to flush up. She did not at all approve of its being ignored that she was a Catholic, and yet her whole life seemed to be an effort to make people forget the fact. She was one of those Catholics who take as their standard the Protestant world which surrounds them, and the atmosphere of which is the only air they breathe. They try to see with the eyes of Protestants, to hear with their ears, to speak with their tongues ; to be, in fact, as good imitations of them as possible. They generally outdo those whom they would imitate. If the women around them are rather fast, they are faster. If their neighbours go to twelve balls a week, they will go to thirteen. If there is a word to be said that had better not be said, it is they who say it.

If there is a book written that had just better not be read, it is they who read it, and proclaim that they have read it. If these Catholics would call things by their right names, and would own that they compete in world liness with worldly Protestants for the advantages, whether social or intellectual, which may be gained, it would be a very simple matter, for what is it but the old, old choice between God and the world ? But they will not do so. All the time they are running the unworthy race they have a deluded idea that they are benefiting themselves thereby as Christians ; that they are even benefiting others ; indeed it is by no means sure that they do not think they are benefiting God's Church ! They think that if they can prove to the outside world that they are in all things neither better nor worse than other people, they will thereby show that the Catholic Church is not as black as she is painted !

As has been said, Mrs. Munro was not best pleased' when Nina Selwyn, in apology for her apparent rude ness, said that she always forgot that she was a Catholic. " Well, I don't know why you should feel that) dear," she replied, tartly, as she turned her chair round towards the girl. " I am sure that I never disguise the fact that I am a Catholic. Perhaps you think that Catholics always go about with rosaries in their hands and crucifixes round their necks? You must not think that all Catholics are nuns, my -dear." " Of course not, dear Mrs. Munro," said Nina. " I am afraid to speak, for I am sure to offend you ; but all that I mean is that I always feel quite at my ease with you, and I do not feel that you are any different from the rest of us. Now, I know the Melnottes pretty well. You know whom I mean : the banker's people, who it turns out are cousins of these Blighs.

When I am with them I never do feel quite at my ease. There is always something between us. It is not that they are stiff, for they are awfully nice, but I feel the whole time I am with them that they cannot forget that they are Roman Catholics, and that they consider themselves to be something different from me. With you it is all right. You are such a real sensible Roman Catholic." " Oh, the Melnottes are awfully strict, my dear, awfully," replied Mrs. Munro. " I do not pretend to their degree of sanctity ; but fortunately that is not expected of us, poor ordinary mortals. But tell me> Nina, about these Blighs. They have arrived, have they not ? You know that this year in London Lord Alne was by way of wanting to marry the girl ? " " So Geraldine Boyle was just saying, and we say that we do not think it will come to anything because she is a Roman Catholic.

There, I am not forgetting whom I am speaking to this time ; and I want to know what you think about it." " My dear child," replied Mrs. Munro, " why should her religion prevent it? It is becoming quite a common thing for Catholics and Protestants to marry. You know our Church allows it, and lots of people do it. Why, there is Sir Everard Muncaster, he married a Catholic, and Lord Dumford's second son is going to marry one, and, oh, I could mention lots of cases. I can assure you, I saw Lord Alne with Margaret Bligh (Mrs. Munro was one of those women who always call other people by their Christian names whether they know them or not), and I can assure you that he was most particular in his attentions. In fact everybody thought that it would have been all settled before the season was over."

" Perhaps he considered his mother," said, senten tiously, a stout old lady, who had been sitting a silent listener to this giddy talk. The heart of this Mrs. Forbes had been burning with indignation within her at the light tone taken by her companions as to the possibility of Lord Alne marrying Miss Bligh, for of all those present she was probably the only one possessed of the real, and now old-fashioned, preju dices against Catholics. " He must know too well what her sentiments are to entertain the thought of marrying a Romanist." "Poor — dear — old — lady!" said Mrs. Munro, laying emphasis on each word. " What a sell for her if he does ! " And she burst into a peal of by no means discordant laughter. "If he does really mean it, it is a very good thing for him that the Dowager is abroad," said Nina Selwyn.

" I do not think he would dare do it if he had to face her." " Surely Lord Alne is his own master," observed Mrs. Munro. " No man is his own master," retorted Mrs. Forbes, solemnly. " Moreover, Lord Alne is the most devoted of sons, and would, I am sure, have as close a regard for the Fifth Commandment as, I trust, he will always have for the Second ! " " Oh, I always get mixed up in the Command ments," replied Mrs. Munro, somewhat flippantly. She delighted in teasing Mrs. Forbes, especially as she knew that most of the company in which they met usually sided with her. Nina, who saw that the two ladies were on the verge of a quarrel, now rose and proposed to the players to resume their game before it was too late. Mrs. Munro followed her, finding the younger members of the party more lively companions than their elders.

So Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Kirkpatrick, the new Colonel's wife, were left alone together. " So you say the Dowager Lady Alne is away at present," observed the latter, by way of making con versation. " Yes, dear soul, she has been called away from home to look after her daughter, the Honourable Mrs. Noel, who is out of health abroad, and whose husband is obliged to be in England. I dare say you think it strange that we should call her the Dowager, while her son has no wife, but it is a name we have given her among ourselves." " So Mrs. Noel was a Miss Alne, was she ? " " Miss Chenevix, my dear Mrs. Kirkpatrick," corrected the other. " Chenevix is the family name." " Those names try my patience," returned the Colonel's wife. " Why children cannot have the same name as their parents beats me." " The titles of the aristocracy are certainly very perplexing at first," replied Mrs. Forbes, with a fat smile of superior knowledge.

" So you know old Lady Alne well ? " said the other. " Intimately, my dear Mrs. Kirkpatrick, most inti mately. She is at her right post looking after her daughter, as she always is at her right post, dear creature, but, I assure you, that we miss her most terribly. The various charities which she conducts so admirably are suffering sadly from her absence. I am her deputy when she is away, and, I confess, a most inefficient one. The head for business that the dear Dowager has is really quite surprising. She keeps the threads of quite a dozen pious societies in her hands in a way that fairly astonishes us. She is a woman of great ability, I can assure you, and, indeed, a perfect saint, as the Romanists say. In fact, she would be canonized if she belonged to them." " Indeed," replied Mrs. Kirkpatrick, concealing a yawn, for she found the conversation rather dull.

" But we must, I fear, resign ourselves to losing her before long," continued Mrs. Forbes, " for I suppose we must expect that Lord Alne will some day bring a wife to Alne Court. But I do most sincerely hope and pray that it will not be this Miss Bligh. Dear Dowager, how she would suffer ! " Mrs. Kirkpatrick began to feel so exasperated by the bore that she quite devoutly hoped that Lord Alne would marry Miss Bligh, if only to spite Mrs. Forbes and the " dear Dowager." However, she kept her wicked wishes to herself, and bade farewell to her tormentor with the utmost urbanity, saying she was so very glad to have made her acquaintance !

Chapter II. The Rich Cousin

COLONEL Bligh, Margaret's father, had died when she was only a little child, so that she had no distinct recollection of any other life than that which she had led alone with her mother till she was eighteen, at the time that this story begins. She loved to think of those early days, and in after years she often looked back on her young life, and wondered whether it was given to many other girls to be as very happy as she had always been. Many people might have thought that her ideas of happiness were easily realized, for it was a simple and perhaps dull enough life that she had led, living in a small cottage on the outskirts of the remote country town of Amleigh, with few amusements and fewer excitements. Colonel Bligh had left his widow and child with very limited means, so limited that it had cost poor Mrs. Bligh many an anxious hour pondering how to make two The Rich Cousin. 13 ends meet, in accordance with her views of what her mode of living should be.

These anxious hours, working on a naturally anxious mind, had prema turely aged her and lowered her spirits ; but such anxieties never affected Margaret. Their poverty was not enough to stint the Blighs in any necessary of life, and the little luxuries which made Margaret's life happy — such as her chickens, and her rabbit-hutch, and the dear little garden, with its rockery made by herself, and planted by herself with flowers from the woods, or else her snug little room, full of humble though precious possessions, and adorned by her own ingenuity — all these cost but little money. She had been educated as a day scholar at a convent in the town, the existence of which had been Mrs. Bligh's chief reason for her choice of Amleigh as a home. There, among her own school-fellows, and in the orphanage attached to the convent, and among the poor people belonging to the mission, Margaret's naturally sympathetic nature found food on which to expand itself.

Above all there was her mother, from whom she had never been separated for a day, and in caring for whom, in loving whom, and in brightening whose wearied life, she found all her joy and all her duty. She would gladly have led this hidden, uneventful life for the rest of her days, but it was not ordained to be so. It chanced that in the course of her travels a certain rich cousin of Colonel Bligh's, also a widow, paid a visit in the neighbourhood of Amleigh. When there, she suddenly remembered the long-forgotten existence of her cousin's wife, and, following the impulse of the moment, resolved to pay her a visit. The smart carriage in which she was driving, with its tall horses and taller footman, dwarfed the little cottage at the gate of which it drew up. The dimi nutive maid, who, with " cook," formed Mrs. Bligh's whole establishment, was nearly reduced to complete imbecility by the arrival of the stately lady, whose velvet gown fairly raked the gravel path from side to side as she approached the door, and whose heavily trimmed cloak caught and tore down the creeper that twined over the trelliswork porch.

Mrs. Burnaby, for such was the rich cousin's name, had called on the Blighs in a spirit of pure patronage, but she left the cottage in a very different frame of mind. In her early girlhood she had had a very tender feeling for Colonel Bligh, and being a very warm-hearted and impulsively affectionate woman, she had not been five minutes in the room with his daughter before she was completely captivated by her pretty bright looks and ways. Towards Mrs. Bligh she felt less attracted. Perhaps, though she herself had refused to marry Colonel Bligh on the score of impecuniosity, she could not quite forgive the woman who had supplanted her in his affections. She left the cottage with every sort of plan for the benefit of her young cousin seething through her brain, and the result of her cogitations was revealed in a letter which arrived two days after her visit, the contents of which fell on poor Mrs. Bligh with something of the effect of a thunder-bolt.

This was the letter : The Rich Cousin. 15 My dear Cecilia, — After my visit to you the other day I could not forgive myself for having allowed all these years to go by without renewing our old acquaintance. Now, however, I wish to make up for lost time. I cannot allow a rose like your Margaret to bloom unseen in your poky little Amleigh, while I am here, a lone woman, on whom Providence has bestowed more than her share of this world's goods, possessed of this large Berkeley Square house with lots of rooms absolutely wasted, and possessed more over of horses and carriages, all eating their heads off for want of work. So now, my dear, you and our Margaret are to come and stay with me as soon after Easter as you can, and the child is to have a real London season. My house shall be yours, if you will only leave me a corner in it from which to look on at the fureur I mean our pretty Margaret to make.

I will take no refusal, my dear, and I have already worried the lives out of fifty dressmakers with the orders for gowns that I have given them. It is my whim that Margaret should be my doll, and that I should dress her and do everything for her while she is under my roof. This is the first real pleasure that I shall have ever been able to give myself with my useless wealth, so you must humour your exacting and affectionate old cousin, Louisa Burnaby. P.S. — I have not forgotten, my dear Cecilia, that you and your child are Roman Catholics. I profess complete ignorance as to how much or in what way your religion may influence your views of life, but I only trust that you will let no scruple stand in the way of what I feel will be so much to the advantage of the child of my dear Cousin Alfred.

Contrary to her usual custom, Mrs. Bligh did not at once communicate the contents of this letter to her daughter. She kept them to herself for twenty four whole hours, and it was only next morning after breakfast that, looking worn and ill from the effects of her night of anxious meditation, she handed the letter silently to Margaret. "It is very kind of her, very, very kind," said the girl, after reading it. " Fortunately it is very easy to say ' No' without wounding her feelings." " On the contrary, my love," replied her mother, nervously, " I am going to write by the middle-day post to say that we will accept the invitation." " Oh, mama, we cannot ! " cried Margaret, aghast. To this girl who had never left home, to break up her life and part with all the little surroundings which made up her home joys, seemed an impossible wrench.

" Yes, dear," returned Mrs. Bligh, with a tremulous sigh, " I have thought and thought it over, and I think it would be wrong to refuse an offer like this ; a chance of letting you know and see people whom you could never meet here. I should not have sought it out, but now that the offer has been made I feel determined that I ought to accept it. So it is no use, dear, trying to make me change my mind." "Really? You mean it really?" murmured Margaret. And somehow in those few moments the scene had changed to her. The enterprise of youth had asserted itself. She had outlived the fear of the wrench of leaving her old life, and her young heart had leaped within her at the prospect of fairyland which was opened out before her.

Chapter III. The Thin End Of The Wedge

It does not come within the scope of this story to enter into the details of Margaret Bligh's London season. Her kind old cousin kept her word most faithfully, and there was no limit put to the girl's enjoyment of any possible pleasure that society could give her. The only enjoyment which was entirely forbidden to her was that of rest. Had she or her mother ventured to refuse any invitation, then indeed would the vials of Mrs. Burnaby's wrath have been poured on both of them. Poor Mrs. Bligh toiled out night after night, day after day, uncomplainingly, nay, cheerfully, till her face became haggard, and her eyes sunken as though she were attacked by some severe illness. But she kept up bravely and unselfishly, and to all Margaret's loving inquiries only replied by persisting that she enjoyed going out, and that it would be good for her in the long run, and so forth.

As for Margaret, she plunged into her new life with a zest and keenness such as could, perhaps, be felt only by a girl brought up as quietly as she had been. Reared in the midst of love and loving friends, and unaccustomed to think about herself, she did not know what shyness meant. Self-consciousness spoils c many a pleasure, and in that way Margaret's pleasure was unspoilt. Her sweet, fair face won most hearts, and her bright natural ways won the hearts of the remainder ; so that few girls have drunk to the dregs of the mere pleasures of a London season more than she did. In this whirl of pleasure-seeking and pleasure finding, to which her former life had totally unaccus tomed her, she seemed to forget any previous existence. Then she had not known what it was to seek for a pleasure. All her many and simple joys had come to her unsought, and in the ordinary path of her daily life.