Part 24 (1/2)
”It is more than I thought,” she said, before they were half down the street. ”Fifty pounds a year, a small house--not much more than a cottage--and a garden and field; that's about what it comes to. The house is not worth much; it is in an unget-at-able part of Norfolk, in the sandy district towards the sea--the man spoke as if I knew where that was, but I don't--and the garden and field are not fertile. I don't suppose one could let the place, but one could live in it, if one wanted to.”
”Yes, yes,” Johnny said, ”of course; you will have your own estate to retire to; quite an heiress--your mother will be pleased.”
Julia could well imagine what skilful use her mother could make of the legacy; it would figure beautifully in conversation; no doubt Johnny was really thinking of this also, though he did not know it, for actually the thing would not commend itself to Mrs. Polkington so highly as a lump sum of money would have done.
”Why do you think Great-aunt Jane let it to me?” Julia asked. ”Because I went out to work! It seems that father and we three girls are the nearest relations she had, and though we knew nothing about her, she made inquiries about us from time to time. When she heard I had gone abroad as companion or lady-help, she said she should leave all she had to me because I was the only one who even tried to do any honest work. You know that is not really strictly fair, because I did not altogether go with the idea of doing honest work; although, certainly, when I got there I did it.”
Johnny did not quite follow this last, but it did not matter, the only thing that concerned him--or Julia much, either--was the fact that she was the possessor of 50 a year, a cottage, a garden, and a field.
Johnny revelled in the idea and talked of what she was going to do right up to the time that he saw her into the train at Paddington. The only thing that put an end to his talking was the guard requesting him to stand away from the carriage door and Julia admonished him to leave go of the handle before the engine started. Julia herself did not talk so much of what she would do because she did not know; she felt, until she got home and saw how things were there, it was no good even to plan how and when to spend. Five pounds she did spend; it was really her saving acc.u.mulated by economy in Holland, but she reckoned it as drawn from her estate. Johnny found it in an envelope when he returned to the back bedroom, and with it a note to say that it was in part payment of Captain Polkington's debts, for which, of course, his family were responsible; ”and if you make a fuss about it,” the letter concluded, dropping the business-like style, ”I shall trim 'Bouquet'
to stink next time you come to Marbridge, and not come and sit with you.”
I think Johnny sat down and wept over that letter; but then he was rather a silly old man and he had not had a good meal, except last night's steak and onions, for a fortnight.
CHAPTER XIV
THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN
The great Polkington campaign was over and it had failed. Mrs.
Polkington and Cherie cheered each other with a.s.surances of a contrary nature as long as they could, but for all that it had really failed and they knew it. There had been some small successes by the way; they had received a little recognition in superior places, and a few, a very few, invitations of a superior order at the cost, of course, of refusing and so offending some old friends and acquaintances. It might perhaps have been possible to achieve the position at which Mrs.
Polkington aimed in the course of time, or a very long time; society in the country moves slowly, and she could not afford to wait indefinitely; her financial ability was not equal to it. Moreover, there came into her affairs, not exactly a crash, but something so unpleasantly like a full stop that she and Cherie could not fail to perceive it. This occurred on the day when they heard of Mr. Harding's engagement. Mr. Harding was the eligible bachelor addition to county society whose advent had materially a.s.sisted in giving definite form to Mrs. Polkington's ambition. He had helped to feed it, too, during the late summer and early autumn, for he had been friendly, though Cherie was forced to admit that his attentions to her had not been very marked. But now the news was abroad that he was engaged to a girl in his own circle; one whose mother had not yet extended any greater recognition to Mrs. Polkington than an invitation to a Primrose League Fete.
This news was abroad in the middle of October, and there was a certain amount of unholy satisfaction in Marbridge. Some of the old friends and acquaintances who Mrs. Polkington had offended, recognised the Christian duty of forgiveness, and called upon her--to see how she bore up. The Grayson girls, whose dance Cherie had refused at the beginning of the month, came to see her. But they put off their call a day to suit some theatrical rehearsal; by which means they lost the entertainment they promised themselves, for by the time they did come Cherie was ready for them and, with appropriate shyness, let it be known that she herself was engaged to Mr. Brendon Smith.
At this piece of information the girls looked at one another, and neither of them could think of anything smart to say. Afterwards they told each other and their friends that it was ”quick work,” and ”like those Polkingtons.” But at the time they could only offer suitable congratulations to Cherie, who received them and carried off the situation with a charming mingling of a.s.surance and graciousness, which was worthy of her mother.
But the Graysons were right in saying it was quick work; late one afternoon Cherie heard of Mr. Harding's engagement; during the evening she and her mother recognised their failure; in the night she saw that Mr. Brendon Smith was her one chance of dignified withdrawal, and before the next evening she had promised to marry him.
There were some people in Marbridge who pitied Mr. Smith (only the Polkingtons put in the Brendon), but he did not need much pity, for the good reason that he knew very well what he was doing and how it was that his proposals came to be accepted. He was fond of Cherie, and appreciated both her beauty and her several valuable qualities; but he had no illusions about her or her family, and he knew, when he made it, that his proposal would be accepted to cover a retreat. He was not at all a humble and diffident individual, but he did not mind being taken on these terms; he even saw some advantage in it in dealing with the Polkingtons. If there was any mistake in the matter it was Cherie when she said ”Yes” to his suggestion, ”Don't you think you'd better marry me?” She probably did not know how completely she was getting herself a master.
It was not a grand engagement; Mrs. Polkington could not pretend that her son-in-law elect had aristocratic or influential connections; she said so frankly--and her frankness, which was overstrained, was one of her most engaging characteristics.
”It is no use pretending that I should not have been more pleased if he had been better connected,” she said to those old friends and acquaintances whose Christianity led them to call. ”I share your opinion, dear Mrs. ----” (the name varied according to circ.u.mstances) ”about the value of birth; but one can't have everything; he is a most able man, and really charming. It is such a good thing that he is so much older than Cherie; I always felt she needed an older man to guide and care for her--he is positively devoted to her; you know, the devotion of a man of that age is such a different thing from a boy's affection.”
After that the visitor could not reasonably do anything but inquire if Mr. Smith was going to throw up the South African post which all the town knew he was about to take before his engagement.
To this Mr. Polkington was obliged to answer, ”No, he is going, and going almost directly; that is my one hards.h.i.+p; I have got to lose Cherie at once, for he positively will not go without her. Of course, it would be a thousand pities for him to throw it up, such an opening; so very much better than he would ever have here, but it is hard to lose my child--she seems a child to me still--almost before I have realised that she is grown up. Their pa.s.sages are taken already; they will be married by license almost directly; there even won't be time to get a trousseau, only the merest necessaries before the luggage has to go.”
It must not be thought that the news of Mr. Harding's engagement was the one and only thing which convinced Mrs. Polkington and Cherie that the great campaign had failed; it was the finis.h.i.+ng touch, no doubt, in that it had made Cherie feel the necessity of being immediately engaged to some one, but there were other things at work. Captain Polkington had returned from London just five days before they heard the news, and three were quite sufficient to show his wife and daughter that he was considerably the worse for his stay in town.
Bills too, had been coming in of late; not inoffensive, negligible bills such as they were very well used to, but threatening insistent bills, one even accompanied by a lawyer's letter. Then, to crown all, Captain Polkington had a fit of virtue and repentance on the second day after his return. It was not of long duration, and was, no doubt, partly physical, and not unconnected with the effects of his decline from the paths of temperance. But while it lasted, he read some of the bills and talked about the way ruin stared him in the face and the need there was for retrenchment, turning over a new leaf, facing facts and kindred things. Also, which was more important, he wrote to his wife's banker brother--he who had been instrumental in getting the papers sent in years ago. To this influential person he said a good deal about the state of the family finances, the need there was for clearing matters up and starting on a better basis, and his own determination to face things fairly and set to work in earnest. What kind of work was not mentioned; apparently that had nothing to do with the Captain's resolution; there was one thing, however, that was mentioned definitely--the need for the banker brother's advice--and pecuniary a.s.sistance. The answer to this letter was received on the same day as the news of Mr. Harding's engagement. It came in the evening, later than the news, and it was addressed to Mrs. Polkington, not the Captain; it a.s.sisted her in recognising that the end of the campaign had arrived. It said several unpleasant things, and it said them plainly; not the most pleasant to the reader was the announcement that the writer would himself come to Marbridge to look into matters one day that week or the next. Under these circ.u.mstances it is not perhaps so surprising that Cherie found it advisable to accept Mr.
Brendon Smith's offer of marriage, and Mrs. Polkington found the impossibility of getting a trousseau in time no very great disadvantage.
When Julia came home it wanted but a short time to Cherie's wedding. A great deal seemed to have happened since she went away, not only to her family, but, and that was less obviously correct, to herself. She stood in the drawing-room on the morning after her return and looked round her and felt that somehow she had travelled a long way from her old point of view. The room was very untidy; it had not been used, and so, in accordance with the Polkington custom, not been set tidy for two days; dust lay thick on everything; there were dead leaves in the vases, cigarette ash on the table, no coals on the half-laid fire. In the merciless morning light Julia saw all the deficiencies; the way things were set best side foremost, though, to her, the worst side contrived still to show; the display there was everywhere, the trumpery silver ornaments, all tarnished for want of rubbing, and of no more intrinsic value and beauty than the tinfoil off champagne bottles; the cracked pieces of china--rummage sale relics, she called them--set forth in a gla.s.s-doored cabinet, as if they were heirlooms.
Mrs. Polkington had a romance about several of them that made them seem like heirlooms to her friends and almost to herself. The whole, as Julia looked around, struck her as shoddy and vulgar in its unreality.
”I'm not coming back to it, no, I'm not,” she said, half aloud; ”the corduroy and onions would be a great deal better.”