Читать бесплатно онлайн

The Three Brides

Автор Charlotte Yonge

personВсе книги автора

Удобнее читать в приложении

Читать в Telegram Читать в MAX Читать в VK Читать в WEB

menu_bookЧитать здесь

AI-разбор доступен после входа

Суть книги, пересказ, главный конфликт, ключевые идеи, вывод, кому полезна, главные темы, персонажи и цитаты можно получить после входа в BookRa.

auto_awesomeПолучить AI-разбор

О книге

Дата написания1970-01-01

Язык книгиen

Возрастное ограничение0+

Жанры

зарубежная классика зарубежная старинная литература европейская старинная литература литература 19 века

Читать онлайн

Страница 1 из 131

Charlotte M. Yonge The Three Brides

CHAPTER I The Model And Her Copies

There is sure another Flood toward, that so many couples are coming to the Ark.

—As You Like It

“Ah! it is a pitiable case!”

“What case, boys?”

“Yours, mother, with such an influx of daughters-in-law.”

“I suspect the daughters-in-law think themselves more to be pitied.”

“As too many suns in one sphere.”

“As daughters-in-law at all.”

“There’s a ready cure for that. Eh, Charlie?”

“The sight of the mother-in-law.”

“Safe up on the shelf? Ha, you flattering boys!”

“Well, each of the three bridegrooms has severally told us that his bride was a strong likeness of the mother, so she will have the advantage of three mirrors!”

“Ay, and each married solely for her benefit. I wonder which is the truest!”

“Come, Baby Charles, don’t you take to being cynical and satirical,” said the mother. “It would be more to the purpose to consider of the bringing them home. Let me see, Raymond and his Cecil will be at Holford’s Gate at 5.30. They must have the carriage in full state. I suppose Brewer knows.”

“Trust the ringers for scenting it out.”

“Julius and Rosamond by the down train at Willansborough, at 4.50. One of you must drive old Snapdragon in the van for them. They will not mind when they understand; but there’s that poor wife of Miles’s, I wish she could have come a few days earlier. Her friend, Mrs. Johnson, is to drop her by the express at Backsworth, at 3.30.”

“Inconvenient woman!”

“I imagine that she cannot help it; Mrs. Johnson is going far north, and was very good in staying with her at Southampton till she could move. Poor little thing! alone in a strange country! I’ll tell you what! One of you must run down by train, meet her, and either bring her home in a fly, or wait to be picked up by Raymond’s train. Take her Miles’s letter.”

The two young men glanced at one another in dismay, and the elder said, “Wouldn’t nurse do better?”

“No, no, Frank,” said the younger, catching a distressed look on their mother’s face, “I’ll look up Miles’s little African. I’ve rather a curiosity that way. Only don’t let them start the bells under the impression that we are a pair of the victims. If so, I shall bolt.”

“Julius must be the nearest bolting,” said Frank. “How he accomplished it passes my comprehension. I shall not believe in it till I see him. There, then, I’ll give orders. Barouche for the squire, van for the rector, and the rattling fly for the sailor’s wife. So wags the course of human life,” chanted Frank Charnock, as he strolled out of the room.

“Thanks, Charlie,” whispered his mother. “I am grieved for that poor young thing. I wish I could go myself. And, Charlie, would you cast an eye round, and see how things look in their rooms? You have always been my daughter.”

“Ah! my vocation is gone! Three in one day! I wonder which is the best of the lot. I bet upon Miles’s Cape Gooseberry.—Tired, mother darling? Shall I send in nurse? I must be off, if I am to catch the 12.30 train.”

He bent to kiss the face, which was too delicately shaped and tinted to look old enough to be in expectation of three daughters-in-law. No, prostrate as she was upon pillows, Mrs. Charnock Poynsett did not look as if she had attained fifty years. She was lady of Compton Poynsett in her own right; and had been so early married and widowed, as to have been the most efficient parental influence her five sons had ever known; and their beautiful young mother had been the object of their adoration from the nursery upwards, so that she laughed at people who talked of the trouble and anxiety of rearing sons.

They had all taken their cue from their senior, who had always been more to his mother than all the world besides. For several years, he being as old of his age as she was young, Mr. and Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, with scarcely eighteen years between their ages, had often been taken by strangers for husband and wife rather than son and mother. And though she knew she ought to wish for his marriage, she could not but be secretly relieved that there were no symptoms of any such went impending.

At last, during the first spring after Raymond Charnock Poynsett, Esquire, had been elected member for the little borough of Willansborough, his mother, while riding with her two youngest boys, met with an accident so severe, that in two years she had never quitted the morning-room, whither she had at first been carried. She was daily lifted to a couch, but she could endure no further motion, though her general health had become good, and her cheerfulness made her room pleasant to her sons when the rest of the house was very dreary to them.

Raymond, always the home son, would never have absented himself but for his parliamentary duties, and vibrated between London and home, until, when his mother had settled into a condition that seemed likely to be permanent, and his two youngest brothers were at home, reading each for his examination, the one for a Government clerkship, the other for the army, he yielded to the general recommendation, and set out for a journey on the Continent.

A few weeks later came the electrifying news of his engagement to his second cousin, Cecil Charnock. It was precisely the most obvious and suitable of connections. She was the only child of the head of the family of which his father had been a cadet, and there were complications of inheritance thus happily disposed of. Mrs. Poynsett had not seen her since her earliest childhood; but she was known to have been educated with elaborate care, and had been taken to the Continent as the completion of her education, and there Raymond had met her, and sped so rapidly with his wooing, that he had been married at Venice just four weeks previously.

Somewhat less recent was the wedding of the second son Commander Miles Charnock. (The younger sons bore their patronymic alone.) His ship had been stationed at the Cape and there, on a hunting expedition up the country, he had been detained by a severe illness at a settler’s house; and this had resulted in his marrying the eldest daughter, Anne Fraser. She had spent some months at Simon’s Bay while his ship was there, and when he found himself under orders for the eastern coast of Africa, she would fain have awaited him at Glen Fraser; but he preferred sending her home to fulfil the mission of daughterhood to his own mother.

The passage had been long and unfavourable, and the consequences to her had been so serious that when she landed she could not travel until after a few days’ rest.

Страница 1 из 131

Назад1 2…131 Далее