It is hard to believe, that along with these financial statistics, no whisper of the Sherringham peculiarities should ever have reached her maternal ears. But she was resolutely bent on having her own way. Have I said that the Digbys were nobodies, in the polite acceptation of the term? such was the case; but they were of that class of aspiring nobodies who contrive to hang on to the skirts of society, and who are tolerated by some because they are endured by others. Lucy had no such pitiful ambition as this, but her mother had decided that her child should be Lady Sherringham.
Events took the usual course, when a soft and yielding character is compressed between two opposite forms of selfishness tending towards a common end. I proposed, and was accepted, with what a tearful, shuddering, reluctant acceptance, I do not like to think. Father, mother, brother—for even that hopeful heir of the Digbys, who found it convenient to borrow my money and ride my horses, was on my side—father, mother, and brother were able to browbeat or cajole Lucy into a mockery of consent.
She only made one stipulation. The crowning mockery of marriage that was the necessary result of the first mockery of consent was to be deferred—deferred till the middle of the winter. In vain I pleaded, in vain Mrs. Digby expostulated, urging with affected hilarity that the murky winter was a cheerless season for such a festive ceremony.
“The fitter time for my marriage, mamma,” said Lucy, and she was pressed no more.
And now I ought to have been happy, but I was not so. I had gained my point, Lucy had promised; she was too honourable to draw back; and besides, her family would hold her to her word. But I began now to see more clearly how she shrank front me, feared me, avoided me, and that as the bright days of early autumn passed, my utmost assiduity could not conquer her innate dislike to her future husband.
This would have been a bitter discovery for any man,—it was gall and wormwood to me. Did she, Lucy, know of the Heirloom? Impossible, unless a friend had whispered it in her ear. Mrs. Digby was too worldly-wise to have spoken on the topic, and the majority of our friends neither knew nor cared to suspect anything amiss. Still, I felt there was a barrier between us, invisible, but strong as adamant. I sometimes saw in Lucy’s eyes the old look of watchful fear that I had so early detected in those of my mother; but in the poor mother’s eyes there was love, deep, yearning love, to soften that detested scrutiny. Not so in Lucy’s frightened gaze. Worse, almost, than this, I was jealous. Jealousy is a mean passion, and I do not think it would have taken root in my breast, had I been as others. I was not. A gnawing sense of my inferiority, in consequence of the accursed Heirloom, to the very clowns who tilled my estate, to the servants who did my bidding, made me morbidly sensitive on this score.
A nephew of Mrs. Digby’s, and of course a cousin of Lucy’s, had returned from India, and was a guest in the house. His name was Captain Harold Langley, and he had a high reputation for courage, ability, and honour. I must own that he deserved his reputation. He was a fine soldierly fellow, with a bronzed face and frank bearing. He stole Lucy’s heart from me; no, let me be just even here, and fully admit that even if Captain Langley had never come back, Lucy’s aversion to myself would have been insuperable. I soon saw the truth, knew it sooner than either Lucy or Langley. Each of those two had grown dear to the other, almost insensibly, without the exchange of a word of sentimental feeling. I alone saw the growth of this affection, for Lucy’s engagement to myself served to shut the eyes of her relations, and only the hateful future husband knew how Lucy’s colour rose and fell, how Lucy’s eye and mouth brightened and dimpled into smiles, at the approach of the handsome cousin.
It was enough, more than enough, I did not seek to dissemble with myself. My glimpse of happiness grew dim, but other and darker thoughts assumed an empire over my troubled soul. I proposed a yachting expedition, sent out numerous invitations, and prepared to give a sumptuous fête on board the Calypso. Mrs. Digby did not care to thwart me, but she said something about the ungenial season,—it was already November.
That mattered little to me; the stormy and uncertain weather matched well with my own perturbed spirit. I was slowly maturing in my stricken brain the details of a horrid design.
THE MELON.
II.—ITS VARIETIES.
