“Yes! I had rather by far you were penniless, than—I daresay—.so rich that my own fortune must seem the veriest pittance beside yours!”
Laughter sprang to her eyes. “Oh, you goose! Do you fear to be taken for a fortune-hunter? Of all the crack-brained ideas to take into your head! No, indeed, Hector, this is being foolish beyond permission!”
“I don’t know that I care so much for that—though it is what people will say!—but I must support my wife, not live upon her fortune! Serena, surely you must understand this!”
It seemed to her absurdly romantic, but she only said quizzingly: “Was this thought in your head seven years ago?”
“Seven years ago,” he replied gravely, “your father was alive, and you were not sole mistress of your fortune. If I thought about the matter at all—but you must remember that I was then no more than a green boy!—I imagine I must have supposed that Lord Spenborough, if he countenanced the match, would settle on you a sum comparable to my own means.”
“Or have cut me off without a penny?” she inquired, amused.
“Or have done that,” he agreed, perfectly seriously.
She perceived that he was in earnest, but she could not help saying, with a gurgle of laughter: “It is too bad that you cannot enact the role of Cophetua! I must always possess an independence, which cannot be wrested from me But take heart! It is by no means certain that I shall ever have more than that. Are you prepared to take me with my wretched seven hundred pounds a year, my ridiculous fortune-hunter? I warn you, it may well be no more!”
“Are you in earnest?” he asked, his brow lightening. “Lady Spenborough said something about your fortune’s being oddly tied-up, but no more than that. Tell me!”
“I will, but if you mean to take it as a piece of excellent good news we are likely to fall out!” she warned him. “Nothing was ever more infamous! My dear but misguided papa left my fortune—all but what I have from my mother—to Rotherham, in trust for me, with the proviso that he was to allow me no more than the pin-money I had always been given, until I was married—with, mark you! his lordship’s consent and approval! In the event of my marrying without that august approval. I may, I suppose, kiss my fingers to my inheritance!”
He was staggered, and his first thoughts agreed exactly with her own. “What? You must win Rotherham’s consent? Good God, I never in my life heard of anything so iniquitous!”
“Just so!” said Serena, with immense cordiality. “I hope you will perceive that I was not to be blamed for flying into the worst passion of my career when that clause was read to me!”
“I do not wonder at it! Rotherham, of all men alive! Pardon me, but the indelicacy of such a provision, the—But I must be silent on that head!”
“Abominable, wasn’t it? I am heartily of your opinion!”
He sat for a moment or two, with his lips tightly compressed, but as other thoughts came into his mind, his face relaxed, and he presently exclaimed: “Then if he should refuse his consent, you will have no more than will serve for your gowns, and—and such fripperies!”
“Very true—but you need not say it as though you were glad of it!”
“I am glad of it!”
“Well, so am not I!” retorted Serena tartly.
“Serena, all I have is yours to do with as you please!” he said imploringly.
She was touched, but a strong vein of common sense made her say: “I am very much obliged to you, but what if I should please to spend all you have upon my gowns—and such fripperies? My dear, that is very fine talking, but it won’t do! Besides, the very thought of Ivo’s holding my purse-strings to the day of his death, or mine, is enough to send me into strong convulsions! He shall not do it! And now I come to think of it, I believe he will not be able to. He told me himself that if he withheld his consent unreasonably I might be able to break the Trust. Hector, if you do not instantly wipe from your face that disappointed look, you will have a taste of my temper, and so I warn you!”
He smiled, but said with quiet confidence: “Rotherham will never give his consent to your marrying me!”
“We shall see!”
“And nothing—nothing!—would prevail upon me to seek it!” said the Major, with suppressed violence.
“Oh, you need not! That at least was not stipulated in Papa’s Will! I shall inform him myself of my betrothal—but that will not be until I am out of mourning, in the autumn.”
“The autumn!” He sounded dismayed, but recollected himself immediately, and said: “You are very right! My own feelings—But it would be quite improper for such an announcement to be made until you are out of black gloves!”
She stretched out her hand to lay it upon one of his. “Well, I think it would. Hector. In general, I set little store by the proprieties, but in such a case as this—oh, every feeling would be offended! In private we are engaged, but the world shall not know it until October.”
He lifted the hand to his lips. “You are the only judge: I shall be ruled entirely by your wishes, my queen!”
10
The engaged couple, neither of whom wasted a moment’s thought on what must be the inevitable conclusions arrived at by the interested, admitted only two persons into the secret. One was Fanny, and the other Mrs Kirkby. The Major could not be happy until he had made Serena known to his mother; and since she was reluctant to appear in any way neglectful, it was not long before she was climbing the hill to Lansdown Crescent, escorted by her handsome cavalier.
Had the expedition been left to the Major’s management, Serena would have been carried in a sedan-chair, his rooted conviction that no female was capable of exertion making it quite shocking to him to think of her undertaking so strenuous a walk. But Serena had other ideas. “What, stuff myself into a chair in such bright May weather? Not for the world!” she declared.
“Your carriage, then? My mother goes out so seldom that she has not thought it worth while to keep hers in Bath, or I would—”
“My dear Hector,” she interrupted him, “you cannot in all seriousness suppose that I would have my own or your mother’s horses put to merely to struggle up that steep hill!”
“No, which is why I suggested you should hire a chair. I am afraid you will be tired.”
“On the contrary, I shall enjoy the walk. I feel in Bath as though I were hobbled. Only tell me the exact direction of Mrs Kirkby’s house, and I will engage to present myself punctually, and in no need of hartshorn to revive me!”
He smiled, but said: “I shall fetch you, of course.”
“Well, that will be very agreeable, but I beg you won’t put yourself to the trouble if your reason is that you fear for my safety in this excessively respectable town!”
“Not your safety, precisely, but I know that you won’t take your maid, and I own I cannot like you to go out alone.”
“You would be surprised if you guessed how very well able I am to take care of myself. I was done with young ladyhood some years ago. What is more, my dear, times have changed a trifle since you lived in England before. In London, I might gratify you by taking my maid with me—though it is much more likely that I should prefer to go in my carriage, and alone!—but in Bath it is quite unnecessary.”
“Nevertheless I hope you will allow me to be your escort.”
“Indeed, I shall be glad of your company,” she responded, not choosing to argue the point further, and trusting that time would dull the edge of a solicitude she found a little oppressive.
Certainly the pace she set when they walked up to Lansdown Crescent did not encourage him to suppose that she was less healthy than she looked. She had never lost the rather mannish stride she had acquired in youth, when, to the disapproval of most of her relations, she had been reared more as a boy than as a girl, and she could never shorten it to suit Fanny’s demure steps. A walk with Fanny was to Serena a form of dawdling, which she detested; it was a real pleasure to her to be pacing along beside a man again. She would not take the Major’s arm, but went up the hill at a swinging rate, and exclaimed, when she was obliged to hold her hat on against the wind: “Ah, this is famous! One can breathe up here! I wished we might have found a house in Camden Place, or the Royal Crescent, but there were none to be hired that Lybster thought eligible.”