She sat and looked at him, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. The bald truth of it all took words from her, and her one feeling was that she could cheerfully have strangled Marrion Paul for her courage and straightforwardness.
"My wedding-dress isn"t ready," she sobbed at last futilely, and the old man leant back in his chair and roared with laughter.
"By Gad, Fan," he bawled, "you"re a woman, and no mistake; so don"t make those eyes of yours too red with crying. Remember, you"re not so young as you were. And as for this little _penchant_ of yours for Marmaduke, why, G.o.d bless my soul, my dear, you"ve had dozens such episodes, and so have I, by Gad, so we"ll suit each other down to the ground. Now, if you will please ring the bell for Dewar, I"ll leave you to prepare--six o"clock sharp. I"ve told the gardeners to send you some orange blossoms from the houses and to decorate the hall. My daughters will be your bridesmaids."
When his wheeled-chair had gone the effect of his brutal determination, his colossal masterfulness, did not pa.s.s with it. That remained, and Fantine Le Grand gave in to it helplessly. The old man had said very little; on the whole he had been wonderfully polite, but she knew she was trapped, and that she might as well try to fly as to escape from his watchful eye, his unscrupulous power.
And, after all, it was but a return to the old plans; so after a while she followed Lord Drummuir"s advice and dried her eyes.
"You ought to think yourself deuced lucky," growled Colonel Compton, when he came in, after a time full of alarm and recriminations. "If anyone had told me the old man would take it so quietly I wouldn"t have believed it. I expected he would have kicked us both out into the gutter, and then where should we be? And such a mad idea, too! The Honourable Marmaduke Muir as a public dancer--preposterous!"
"It would only have been for six months and under an a.s.sumed name,"
interrupted Fantine defiantly; but all initiative was pa.s.sing from her. She felt like clay in the hands of the potter.
"Twaddle!" insisted Colonel Compton. "I can only think you were insane. The fact is, my dear f.a.n.n.y, you"re getting old and your ankles wouldn"t stand the hacking about of a dancer"s life. That is why we agreed on your becoming Lady Drummuir, and you ought to be very much obliged to the old man for letting you off so easily."
This, combined with the reiterated allusions to her age, was too much for patience. Fantine jumped up and stamped her foot in impotent anger.
"Easily?" she echoed. "Can"t you see the malice of the man? He is making us all feel fools. He is doing all the harm he can. I tell you he is enjoying himself thoroughly."
She was perfectly right. Lord Drummuir had not felt so young for years. At that moment, after disposing of Penelope in a way that reached the very marrow of the unseen bones hidden under that extinguisher of fat, he was facing, with a special licence in his hand, the dapper little figure of the Reverend Patrick Bryce, who, called on some pretext of illness, found himself confronted with an order to solemnise a marriage that same evening.
The countenance of the small divine was a study in outraged dignity; that of Lord Drummuir one of supercilious toleration--the toleration of a cat for the unavailing efforts of a mouse to escape its paralysing captor.
"Am I to understand, sir, that you refuse to carry out this special licence at a perfectly appropriate time and place?" said the latter, his voice even but deliberate. "If so, I must ask you for your reasons in writing, that I may forward them with my complaint." He waited a moment, then went on: "You were appointed by the Crown to this charge.
A parishioner of yours in possession of a legal licence calls upon you to perform the duties of your office. You refuse, and I refuse to accept your refusal. That, I think, summarises the position between us. But let me remind you, my good sir, that nothing short of reliable information of cause or just impediment can justify a minister of the Church of Scotland in refusing to do the duty for which he is paid by the State. And if, sir, the licence of this house shocks you--as I am told it does--I think this endeavour of a man and a woman to keep within the bounds of so-called respectability should meet your approval. Briefly, my dear sir, you have not a leg to stand upon, and I demand your services at six o"clock this evening."
The little minister rose and made him a courtly bow.
"It shall be as your lordship wishes; but I reserve to myself the right of showing to your lordship that special licences can be used for, as well as against, the Church."
"Wonder where he gets his manners from," commented Lord Drummuir to himself, as the trim figure bowed itself out. "Father must have been someone"s valet, I suppose; and that reminds me of Marmaduke"s girl.
She"s true blue, somehow."
So he sat down, filled from top to toe with a wicked elation at his own success in upsetting everybody"s plans, and indited the following epistle to his son, as a sort of top note to his man[oe]uvres:
"Dear Boy,--You will be glad to hear that Fantine Le Grand becomes Lady Drummuir this evening at six o"clock. We have agreed that this is better than hunting two thousand pounds through the capitals of Europe, even in company with you. So that is settled. For the rest, I enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds on my bankers. You owe this to Marrion Paul, who is worth the whole batch of you put together. I cannot conceive how you were such a confounded a.s.s as not to see this, but to let her slip through your fingers and leave the poor girl to face the insults of the neighbours, as she is doing; for, of course, her escapade is the talk of the town. My dear Marmaduke, I am ashamed of you!--Your affectionate father, DRUMMUIR.
"Your step-mamma sends you her duty."
He chuckled over the production which he calculated told enough to rouse anger and not enough to satisfy curiosity, and which, while being a regular facer, left the relations between them much as they were.
After which he had himself wheeled to the big hall where the ceremony was to take place, and amused himself vastly by superintending decorations and mystifying Peter, who came in from a day after wild duck, to find the house upside down. It was the sort of situation in which his lordship revelled, and he became almost lachrymose over reminiscences of the past with Jack Jardine, who never moved a muscle, but took the ceremony as a matter of course. Only when Peter, less experienced, asked him what the deuce the old man meant by playing the goat at a moment"s notice, he shook his head solemnly, and replied--
"Your father is a very remarkable man, Peter, a very remarkable man indeed."
So at the appointed hour the wheeled-chair took its place, its occupant duly bedecked with the white flower of a blameless life in his b.u.t.tonhole, before the improvised sort of altar which bore on it a beautiful bunch of late roses; and the Reverend Patrick Bryce with a colour in his usually pale cheeks sailed in very stiff in his starched bands and rustling academical black robes and took his place before it. The bride, composed and cheerful, looking quite virginal in white and orange blossoms, appeared on the arm of Colonel Compton and followed by her bridesmaids, also in white. There were, however, but two of them, for Margaret Muir boldly stalked in separately, attired in a fine new purple gown, and took a place sedately beside Jack Jardine, who stared at her incredulously; for her father"s eyes were upon her and scowling disapproval at her disobedience to his commands.
She seemed quite indifferent to this, and nodded an encouraging smile to her sisters, who, poor souls, were the only people who showed by their red eyes and general emotion that the occasion was serious and not a mere farce.
So curtly, baldly, shorn of every unnecessary word, every touch of sentiment, the simple formula binding those two sinners in the most holy of bonds went swiftly on, until the Reverend Patrick Bryce closed the register in which Peter, as his father"s best man, and Jack Jardine, as family friend, had duly attested the marriage, and stepped down to where Lord Drummuir"s chair stood with the new-made Lady Drummuir beside it.
"My part in this pitiable travesty being ended, sir," he said, with a dignified bow, "I take my leave. Before I do so, however, I wish to introduce my wife to you and acquaint you with my marriage--also by special licence--to your daughter. Margaret, my dear!" he added, raising his voice, "oblige me by saying farewell to your father. It is the last time you are likely to see him."
For a second the figure in the purple gown hesitated and gave an agonised glance at her sisters in white; then with her eyes fixed on the small dignified figure of the man to whom she had unreservedly given her whole large heart, her courage returned, she walked forward, her head held high, and faced her father. He was purple with rage, and looked as if he would have a fit.
"Do you mean to tell me," he stuttered, "that you have married that--that jackanapes?"
Her face flushed, her temper was up in a second, and matched his own.
"No, sir; I have married an honourable gentleman of birth equal to my own! It is more than you can say of your bride"s----"
"Margaret, Margaret!" came the little parson"s warning voice; for, be Lord Drummuir"s faults what they may, he was still her father.
But she would have none of it, she was going to have her say for the first and last time of her life; so she went on while the old lord listened, a sort of wicked approval in his eyes. He had not known she was so much his daughter.
"And I married him without asking your consent, because I knew you never would have given it, and I am of age----"
"Yes, my dear, a bit long in the tooth!" broke in the old man viciously.
"Very," she replied; "but not so old a bride as you are a groom. I"m thirty-six, and, as you said yourself, if I choose to get married by special licence, provided there"s no cause or just impediment, no one--not even the nearest and dearest--have a right to object. Isn"t that what he said?" she added, in appeal.
The Reverend Patrick Bryce looked at his lordship and his lordship looked at him. Then suddenly came one of the rough, rude gaffaws.
"You"ve caught a tartar, parson!" chuckled the old man. "Take her, and be d----d to you both for a couple of fools. I"ll leave you to be angry, if you like; this is my wedding-day and I want to be jolly.
Here, Davie--Davie Sim, where the devil are you with your pipes? Skirl up "Muir"s Matching." Now, my lady."
And as the wheeled-chair moved off accompanied by white satin and orange blossoms he looked round to the purple robe with almost boyish malice in his eye.
"Take the parson"s arm and come along, Meg. You may as well get a good send off from the castle and have your share of the family wedding march, since it is little else you"ll be getting from the Muirs of Drummuir."
That evening, after the newly made Lady Drummuir had been dismissed to her own rooms with the injunction to remember her new honours, and not to stand any cursed nonsense from any one, and the old man, regardless of gout, sat drinking one gla.s.s of port after another on the ground that, having got royally drunk at his three previous weddings, he was not going to treat his fourth with less consideration--Jack Jardine, somewhat breathless after all the disturbing and inexplicable events of the day, shook his head and said once more--
"Your father is a remarkable man--a very remarkable man!"
"Very," a.s.sented Peter. "Now I wonder what Marrion Paul had to do with it all!"
CHAPTER XII
Marrion Paul herself failed to answer that question. When she had returned at six o"clock to the castle--having spent the intervening time down by the seash.o.r.e in order to avoid Penelope--she had been completely taken aback by the sudden development of affairs, wondering if she were in any way responsible for what had happened.
But a single look at the old lord"s face, as he was wheeled in to take his place at the marriage ceremony, made her realise that the unwieldy body, instinct with malice and controlled by autocratic una.s.sailable will, held every inmate of Drummuir Castle, herself included, as puppets in the hollow of its gouty hand.
A sudden unreasoning desire to get away from that influence, an extreme distaste at the part she had played in the serio-comic tragedy filled her. She envied the Reverend Patrick Bryce his independence, and it was with real relief that, according to her plan, she found herself once more rumbling to the Cross-keys in the chaise from the Crow.