“I have sometimes wondered,” retorted Mr. Rivenhall, “whether Sir Charles will ever be the same man again either! How Lady Lutterworth can have reconciled it with her conscience to have foisted upon a public man such a nincompoop to be his secretary I must leave it to herself to decide! All we are privileged to know is that your precious Augustus no longer fills that office! Or any other!” he added trenchantly.
“Augustus,” said Cecilia loftily, “is a poet. He is quite unfitted for the — the humdrum business of an ambassador’s secretary.”
“I do not deny it,” said Mr. Rivenhall. “He is equally unfitted to support a wife, my dear sister. Do not imagine that I will frank you in this folly, for I tell you now I will not! And do not delude yourself into believing that you will obtain my father’s consent to this most imprudent match, for while I have anything to say you will not!”
“I know well that it is only you who have anything to say in this house!” cried Cecilia, large teardrops welling over her eyelids. “I hope that when you have driven me to desperation you may be satisfied!”
From the tightening of the muscles about his mouth it was to be seen that Mr. Rivenhall was making a praiseworthy effort to keep his none too amiable temper in check. His mother glanced anxiously up at him, but the voice in which he answered Cecilia was almost alarmingly even. “Will you, my dear sister, have the goodness to reserve these Cheltenham tragedies for some moment when I am not within hearing? And before you carry Mama away upon the tide of all this rodomontade, may I be permitted to remind you that so far from being forced into an unwelcome marriage you expressed your willingness to listen to what you have yourself described as Lord Charlbury’s very flattering offer?”
Lady Ombersley leaned forward to take one of Cecilia’s hands in hers, and to squeeze it compassionately. “Well, you know, my dearest love, that is quite true!” she said. “Indeed, I thought you liked him excessively! You must not imagine that Papa or I have the least notion of compelling you to marry anyone whom you hold in aversion, for I am sure that such a thing would be quite shocking! And Charles would not do so either, would you, dear Charles?”
“No, certainly not. But neither would I consent to her marriage with any such frippery fellow as Augustus Fawnhope!”
“Augustus,” announced Cecilia, putting up her chin, “will be remembered long after you have sunk into oblivion!”
“By his creditors? I don’t doubt it. Will that compensate you for a lifetime spent in dodging duns?”
Lady Ombersley could not repress a shudder. “Alas, my love, it is too true! You cannot know the mortification — but we will not speak of that!”
“It is useless to speak to my sister of anything outside the covers of a novel from the lending library!” said Charles. “I might have supposed that she would be thankful, in the state to which this family has been reduced, to have been on the point of contracting even a respectable alliance! But no! She is offered not a respectable but a brilliant match, and she chooses to behave like any Bath miss, swooning and languishing over a poet! A poet! Good God, Mama, if the specimen of his talent which you were so ill advised as to read me — But I have no patience to argue further on that head! If you cannot prevail upon her to conduct herself in a manner worthy of her breeding she had better be sent down to Ombersley, to rusticate for a while, and see if that will bring her to her senses!”
With this terrible threat he strode out of the room, leaving his sister to dissolve into tears, and his mother to recruit her strength through the medium of her vinaigrette.
Between sobs Cecilia animadverted for some moments on the cruelty of fate, which had saddled her with a brother who was as heartless as he was tyrannical, and parents who were totally unable to enter into her feelings. Lady Ombersley, though sympathetic in the main, could not allow this to pass. Without taking it upon herself to answer for her husband’s sensibilities, she assured Cecilia that her own were extremely nice, making it perfectly possible for her to appreciate the anguish of a forbidden love.
“When I was a girl, dearest, something of the same nature happened to me,” she said, sighing. “He was not a poet, of course, but I fancied myself very much in love with him. But it would not do, and in the end I was married to your papa, which was thought to be a splendid match, for in those days he had scarcely begun to run through his fortune, and — ” She broke off, realizing that these reminiscences were infelicitous. “In short, Cecilia — and I should not be obliged to say this to you — persons of our order do not marry only to please themselves.”
Cecilia was silenced, and could only hang down her head, dabbing at her eyes with an already damp handkerchief. She knew herself to have been a good deal indulged through the fondness of one parent and the cheerful indifference of the other, and was well aware that in discovering her inclination before permitting Lord Charlbury to address his suit to her Lady Ombersley had shown more consideration for her than would have been approved of by the greater part of her contemporaries. Cecilia might read novels, but she knew that the spirited behavior of her favorite heroines was not for her to imitate. She foresaw that she was doomed to spinster-hood; and this reflection was so melancholy that she drooped more than ever, and once more applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Only think how happy your sister is!” said Lady Ombersley, in a heartening tone. “I am sure nothing could be more gratifying than to see her in her own home, with her dear baby, and James so attentive and obliging, and — and everything just what one would wish! I declare I do not believe that any love match could have turned out better, not that I mean to say that Maria is not sincerely attached to James! But she had not met him above half-a-dozen times when he asked Papa’s leave to speak to her, and her affections were not engaged. Naturally, she felt a strong degree of liking, or I should never — But Maria was such a good, pretty-behaved girl! She told me herself that she felt it to be her duty to accept such a respectable offer, with Papa in such difficulties, and four more of you to be provided for!”
“Mama, I hope I am not an unnatural daughter, but I had rather be dead than married to James!” declared Cecilia, raising her head. “He thinks of nothing but hunting, and when they do not have company in the evening, he goes to sleep, and snores!”
Daunted by this disclosure, Lady Ombersley could find nothing to say for a minute or two. Cecilia blew her nose, and added, “And Lord Charlbury is even older than James!”
“Yes, but we do not know that he snores, my love,” Lady Ombersley pointed out. “Indeed, we may be almost certain that he does hot, for his manners are so very gentlemanlike!”
“A man who would contract the mumps,” declared Cecilia, “would do anything!”
Lady Ombersley saw nothing unreasonable in this pronouncement, nor was she surprised that his lordship’s unromantic behavior had given Cecilia a distaste for him. She had herself been sadly disappointed, for she had thought him a man of sense, certainly not one to be succumbing to childish ailments at inopportune moments. She could think of nothing to say to palliate his offense, and as Cecilia had apparently no further observations to make, silence reigned uneasily for a time. Cecilia presently broke it, asking rather listlessly whether it was true that her uncle had been in the house that afternoon. Glad of an excuse to talk of more cheerful matters, Lady Ombersley at once told her of the treat in store for her, and had the satisfaction of seeing the cloud lift a little from her daughter’s brow. It was not difficult to enlist Cecilia’s sympathies on behalf of her cousin. She could scarcely envisage a more horrid fate than to be sent to stay for an indefinite period amongst relatives who were almost strangers, and warmly promised to do all that lay in her power to make Sophia feel herself at home in Berkeley Square. She could conjure up no very clear recollection of her cousin, for it had been some years since they had met; and although she had sometimes thought that to travel about Europe must be exciting, she had also suspected that it might also be extremely uncomfortable, and readily agreed with Lady Ombersley that such an unconventional existence was scarcely an ideal preparation for a London debut. The reflection that Sophia’s arrival in Berkeley Square must mean some relaxation of the almost conventual life imposed upon the family by Charles’s determination to economize sent her away to change her dress for dinner in a far happier frame of mind.