This is the funny, romantic, slightly tongue-in-cheek story of how little May Cheffington makes her way in the world despite being the sole surviving product of "that unfortunate marriage."
By : Frances Eleanor Trollope (1835 - 1913)
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Augustus Cheffington had made an unfortunate marriage. That was admitted on all hands. When he was a Cornet in a cavalry regiment quartered in the ancient Cathedral City of Oldchester, he ran away with pretty Susan Dobbs, the daughter of his landlady. Augustus's friends and family—all the Cheffingtons, the Dormer-Smiths, the Castlecombes—deplored this rash step. It was never mentioned, either at the time or afterwards, without expressions of deep commiseration for him.
Nevertheless, from one point of view there were compensations. This unfortunate marriage was made responsible for a great many shortcomings, which would otherwise have been attributed more directly to Augustus Cheffington himself. For example, it was said to account for his failure in his profession. He had chosen it chiefly because he very much liked the brilliant uniform of a certain crack regiment (it was in the days before competitive examinations); and he had no other aptitude for it than a showy seat on horseback, and a person well calculated to set off the works of the regimental tailor. But when years had passed, and he had remained undistinguished, his friends said, "What could one expect after Augustus's unfortunate marriage?"
After a time he sold out of the Army, and went to live on the Continent, where very shortly he had squandered nearly all his money, and fallen into shady paths of life; and again there was a chorus of "I told you so!" and a general sense that all this was due to the unfortunate marriage.
Finally, his wife died, leaving him with one little girl, the sole survivor of five children; and he came to England with the idea of securing some place which should be suited to his birth, his abilities, his habits, and his inclinations. No such place was found. Several members of the Peerage were applied to, to exert their influence with "Government" on behalf of so well-connected a personage as Augustus Cheffington. But "Government" behaved very badly, "Government" was insensible to his claims. His claims, it is true, were not small. They required a maximum of remuneration for a minimum of labour. He was unable, also, to furnish any proofs of his fitness for one or two posts which happened to be vacant, except the undeniable fact of his cousinship with all the Cheffingtons and Castlecombes in England; and to this kind of qualification "Government," it appeared, attached no importance at all.
He paid a round of visits at country houses, and renewed his long-disused acquaintance with a score of more or less distant relations. But he was not popular. It has been observed that unsuccessful men very often are not popular. "Gus Cheffington has dropped out of the running," men said. "A fellow naturally gets forgotten when he has kept out of sight for years—and besides, he makes himself so deuced disagreeable! He's always grumbling."
This latter accusation was true. If England had shown no maternal affection for her long-absent son, the son returned her hard-heartedness with interest. Indeed, in his case, it turned into active resentment. He got tired of country houses and town mansions where he was received but coolly. He was sarcastic and bitter on the failure of his connections to procure him a lucrative sinecure. He considered that the country was travelling downhill at break-neck speed, and, for his part, he did not feel inclined to move his little finger to impede that fatal course. Moreover, the black coffee was, nine times out of ten, utterly undrinkable. One day he shook the dust of England's inhospitable shores from off his feet, and returned to his shady haunts on the Continent—its irresponsibility, its cafés, its boulevards, and its billiards. And when he was fairly gone, all the Cheffingtons, and the Dormer-Smiths, and the Castlecombes were softened into sympathy; and with much shrugging of shoulders and shaking of heads declared that it was a heartrending spectacle to behold such a man as Augustus Cheffington ruined, crushed, eclipsed, destroyed by his unfortunate marriage.
When he went back to Belgium, he left behind him at school in Brighton his little motherless girl Miranda, familiarly called May. The Honourable Mrs. Cheffington, Augustus's mother, had advised her son to give the little girl a first-rate education, so as to mitigate as far as possible one disastrous effect of the unfortunate marriage, which was, that May had a plebeian mother. Mrs. Cheffington, known throughout all the ramifications of the family as "the dowager," was a hard-featured, selfish old woman, with a black wig, a pale yellow skin, and frowning eyebrows. She lived on a pension which would cease at her death, and she was supposed by some of her relations to be making a purse. They thought it would turn out that the dowager had considerable savings to leave behind her; and they founded this supposition on her never giving away anything during her lifetime. Mrs. Dormer-Smith, Augustus Cheffington's sister, declared that her mother made one exception to her rule of refusing assistance to any of them. She believed that Augustus, who had always been her favourite child, profited by the dowager's indulgence, and managed to extract some money from her tightly-closed purse. And it certainly was true that the old lady had paid May's school bills—so far as they had been paid at all.
But one day the Honourable Anne Miranda Cheffington took off her black wig for the last time, and relaxed her frowning eyebrows. The announcement of her death appeared in the first column of the Times, there was a brief obituary notice in a fashionable journal, and her place knew her no more.
Augustus hastened home to England on the receipt of a telegram from his sister. That is to say, he said he hastened; but he did not arrive in town until some hours after the funeral was over. Mr. Dormer-Smith was somewhat irritated by this tardiness, and observed to his wife that it was just like Augustus to keep out of the way while there was any trouble to be taken, and only arrive in time to be present at the reading of the will. Any expectations that Augustus might have founded on his mother's reluctance to give during her lifetime were quite disappointed. The dowager had no money to bequeath. She had spent nearly the last shilling of her quarter's income. In fact, there was not enough to cover the expenses of the funeral, which were finally paid several months afterwards by Mr. Dormer-Smith.
It seemed almost superfluous, under the circumstances, to have made a will at all. But the will was there. The chief item in it was a quantity of yellow old lace, extremely dirty, and much in need of mending, which was solemnly bequeathed by Mrs. Cheffington to her daughter, Pauline Augusta Clarissa Dormer-Smith. It was set forth at some length how that the lace, being an heirloom of the Cheffingtons, should have descended in due course to the wife of the eldest son, or, failing that, to the eldest daughter of the eldest son; and how this tradition was disregarded in the present case by reason of peculiar and unprecedented family circumstances. This was the dowager's Parthian dart at the unfortunate marriage. There was little other property, except the dingy old furniture of Mrs. Cheffington's house at Richmond, and a few books, treating chiefly of fortification and gunnery, which had belonged to Lieutenant-General the Honourable Augustus Vane Cheffington, the dowager's long-deceased husband.
"What the——What on earth my mother did with her money I can't conjecture!" exclaimed Augustus, staring out of the window of his brother-in-law's drawing-room the day after the funeral.
"She didn't give it to us, Augustus," returned Mrs. Dormer-Smith plaintively. "Even when my boy Cyril went to see her at the end of the holidays, just before returning to Harrow, she never tipped him. Once I think she gave him five shillings. But it's a long time ago; he was a little fellow in petticoats."
"Then what did she do with her money?" repeated Augustus, with an increasingly gloomy scowl at the gardens of the Kensington square on which his eyes rested.
"I believe that, with the exception of what she paid for May's schooling, she spent it on herself."
"Spent it on herself? That's impossible! It was a very good income indeed for a solitary woman, and she lived very quietly."
"You may get through a good deal of money even living quietly, when you don't deny yourself anything you can get. For instance, she never would drive one horse; she had been accustomed to a pair all her life."
Augustus checked an oath on his very lips, and, instead of swearing according to his first impulse, observed with solemnity that he knew not how his mother had been able to reconcile such selfishness with her conscience, and hoped her last moments had not been troubled by remorse.
"Oh, I don't think mamma felt anything of that kind," said Mrs. Dormer-Smith in her slow, gentle tones; "she was always complaining of other people's unreasonable expectations."
The brother and sister fell silent for a while after this, each being immersed in private meditation. That very morning a circumstance had occurred which had put the last touch to Augustus's disappointment and exasperation. The Brighton schoolmistress had sent Miss Miranda Cheffington to London in the charge of a maid-servant, and the little girl had arrived at her aunt's house in a cab with her worldly possessions, namely, a small black trunk full of clothes, and a canary-bird in a cage. The schoolmistress wrote civilly, but firmly, to the effect that, after the lamented decease of the Honourable Mrs. Cheffington, she could not undertake to keep May any longer; feeling sure, by repeated experience, that all applications for payment made to Captain Cheffington would be in vain, and understanding that Mrs. Dormer-Smith declined to charge herself with her niece's education. Captain Cheffington had been violently angry, and had denounced the schoolmistress—Mrs. Drax—as an insolent, grasping, vulgar harpy. But Mrs. Drax was out of his reach, and there was May, thirteen years old, with a healthy appetite, and limbs rapidly outgrowing her clothes.
Augustus continued to glare moodily at the square for some minutes. His sister leaned her cheek on her hand, and looked at the fire. At length Augustus, composing his face to a less savage expression, turned away from the window, sat down opposite to his sister, and said, pensively—
"We must arrange something for May, Pauline."
"You must, indeed, Augustus."
"We ought to consider her future."
"Yes; I think you ought, Augustus."
"The girl is at a hobbledehoy age. It's a perplexing position. So difficult to know what to do with her."
"There is no age at which it is so awkward to dress a girl. I have sometimes regretted not having daughters; but upon my word there must be a dreadful amount of harass about their clothes between twelve and fifteen—or in some cases sixteen."
"It's impossible for me to have her with me in Brussels. The way I live—am obliged to live malgré moi—she'd upset all my arrangements and habits. In short, you can see for yourself, Pauline, that it would be out of the question."
"No doubt it would be very bad for the girl."
"Of course! That's what I mean. Wouldn't it be the best plan after all, Pauline, to leave her here with you? She could have private masters——"
Mrs. Dormer-Smith shook her head.
"At my expense, of course," added Augustus. "I must screw and scrape and make some sacrifices no doubt, but——"
"It really won't do, Augustus. I assure you it won't do. Frederick will not have it. He talked to me after luncheon. It isn't the least use."
Mrs. Dormer-Smith continued plaintively to shake her head as she spoke, and to look with gentle melancholy at the fire.
"H'm! Frederick is very kind. But let us discuss the thing in a friendly spirit. If I pay for her clothing and education, surely the expense of her board wouldn't ruin you and Frederick!"
"No; but the butcher and the baker are the least part of the matter. It isn't as if May were the daughter of one's housekeeper or one's governess. She is a Cheffington, you know. So many things are required for a girl with her connections; and as to your paying for her masters, of course we know you wouldn't, Augustus."
"Upon my soul you are civil and sisterly!"
"Well, I dare say you would mean to pay, but you wouldn't. It would be sure to turn out so, don't you know? Things always have been like that with you, Augustus."
"Then what the devil do you think I'm to do?"
"Pray don't be violent! I really cannot bear any display of violence. You should remember that it is scarcely a week since poor mamma was taken from us."
"I don't see what that has to do with it. Miranda hasn't been taken from us; that's the point."
Mrs. Dormer-Smith making no answer, her brother continued, after a moment or two—
"You are fertile in objections, but you don't seem to have any plan to suggest."
"Well, an idea did occur to me. I don't know whether you would like it."
"Like it! Probably not. But I am used to sacrifice my inclinations."
"Well, I thought that you might put May into a school in France or Germany, or somewhere, letting her give lessons in English in return for her board and so on. There are plenty of schools where they do that sort of thing. It wouldn't so much matter abroad, because people wouldn't know who she was. You might tide over a year or two in that way."
Augustus got up from his chair. "My daughter a drudge in a Continental school?" he exclaimed indignantly.
"If you chose a place little frequented by English, I don't think people would know."
There was a short silence. Then Augustus said angrily, "I'll take the girl back with me. She must share my home, such as it is. We will neither of us trouble you or Frederick much longer. I shall start for Ostend by the morning mail to-morrow." And he dashed out of the room emitting a muffled roll of oaths, and jarring the door in a way which made Mrs. Dormer-Smith clasp her forehead with both hands, and lean back shrinkingly in her chair.
But when the morrow came, Captain Cheffington and his daughter did not go to Ostend. When they had got out of sight of the Dormer-Smiths' house, he ordered the cabman to drive to the Great Western Railway Station, and started by an express train for Oldchester.
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