Short Fiction

you think, but I’m inclined to consider that the marriage proposition is the least objectionable.”

Mrs. Pevenly took out her handkerchief.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“Oh, thirty-seven or thirty-eight; a year or two older perhaps.”

“Do you like him?”

Beryl laughed.

“He’s not in the least my style,” she said.

Mrs. Pevenly began to weep.

“What a deplorable situation,” she sobbed; “what a sacrifice for the sake of a miserable sum of money and social considerations! To think that such a tragedy should happen in our family. I’ve often read about such things in books, a girl being forced to marry a man she didn’t care about because of some financial disaster⁠—”

“You shouldn’t read such trash books,” pronounced Beryl.

“But now it’s really happening!” exclaimed the mother; “my own child’s life to be sacrificed by marriage to a man years older than herself, whom she doesn’t care in the least bit about, and all because⁠—”

“Look here,” interrupted Beryl, “I don’t seem to have made things clear. It isn’t me that he wants to marry. ‘Flappers’ don’t appeal to him, he told me so. Mature womanhood is his particular line, and it’s you that he’s infatuated about.”

“Me!”

For the second time that morning Mrs. Pevenly’s voice rose to a scream.

“Yes, he said you were his ideal, a ripe, sun-warmed peach, delicate and desirable, and a lot of other metaphor that he probably borrowed from Swinburne or Edmund John. I told him that under other circumstances I shouldn’t have held out much hope of his getting favourable response from you, but that as we owed him a thousand and twenty-six pounds you would probably consider a matrimonial alliance the most convenient way of discharging the obligation. He’s coming out to speak to you himself in a few minutes, but I thought I’d better come and prepare you first.”

“But, my dear⁠—”

“Of course, you hardly know the man, but I don’t think that matters. You see, you’ve been married before, and a second husband is always something of an anticlimax. Here is Ashcombe. I think I’d better leave you two together. You must have a lot you want to say to each other.”

The wedding took place quietly some eight weeks later. The presents were costly, if not numerous, and consisted chiefly of a cancelled I.O.U., the gift of the bridegroom to the bride’s daughter.

The Elk

A Christmastide Tragedy

Teresa, Mrs. Thropplestance, was the richest and most intractable old woman in the county of Woldshire. In her dealings with the world in general her manner suggested a blend between a Mistress of the Robes and a Master of Foxhounds, with the vocabulary of both. In her domestic circle she comported herself in the arbitrary style that one attributes, probably without the least justification, to an American political Boss in the bosom of his caucus. The late Theodore Thropplestance had left her, some thirty-five years ago, in absolute possession of a considerable fortune, a large landed property, and a gallery full of valuable pictures. In those intervening years she had outlived her son and quarrelled with her elder grandson, who had married without her consent or approval. Bertie Thropplestance, her younger grandson, was the heir-designate to her property, and as such he was a centre of interest and concern to some half-hundred ambitious mothers with daughters of marriageable age. Bertie was an amiable, easygoing young man, who was quite ready to marry anyone who was favourably recommended to his notice, but he was not going to waste his time in falling in love with anyone who would come under his grandmother’s veto. The favourable recommendation would have to come from Mrs. Thropplestance.

Teresa’s house-parties were always rounded off with a plentiful garnishing of presentable young women and alert, attendant mothers, but the old lady was emphatically discouraging whenever any one of her girl guests became at all likely to outbid the others as a possible granddaughter-in-law. It was the inheritance of her fortune and estate that was in question, and she was evidently disposed to exercise and enjoy her powers of selection and rejection to the utmost. Bertie’s preferences did not greatly matter; he was of the sort who can be stolidly happy with any kind of wife; he had cheerfully put up with his grandmother all his life, so was not likely to fret and fume over anything that might befall him in the way of a helpmate.

The party that gathered under Teresa’s roof in Christmas week of the year nineteen-hundred-and-something was of smaller proportions than usual, and Mrs. Yonelet, who formed one of the party, was inclined to deduce hopeful augury from this circumstance. Dora Yonelet and Bertie were so obviously made for one another, she confided to the vicar’s wife, and if the old lady were accustomed to seeing them about a lot together she might adopt the view that they would make a suitable married couple.

“People soon get used to an idea if it is dangled constantly before their eyes,” said Mrs. Yonelet hopefully, “and the more often Teresa sees those young people together, happy in each other’s company, the more she will get to take a kindly interest in Dora as a possible and desirable wife for Bertie.”

“My dear,” said the vicar’s wife resignedly, “my own Sybil was thrown together with Bertie under the most romantic circumstances⁠—I’ll tell you about it some day⁠—but it made no impression whatever on Teresa; she put her foot down in the most uncompromising fashion, and Sybil married an Indian civilian.”

“Quite right of her,” said Mrs. Yonelet with vague approval; “it’s what any girl of spirit would have done. Still, that was a year or two ago, I believe; Bertie is older now, and so is Teresa. Naturally she must be anxious to see him settled.”

The vicar’s wife reflected that Teresa seemed to be the one person who showed no immediate anxiety to supply Bertie with a wife, but she kept the thought to herself.

Mrs. Yonelet was a woman of resourceful energy and generalship; she involved the other members of