Marriage a la mode

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Marriage a la mode

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Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But when
Roger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he first
saw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, and
confessed to a broken night.

* * * * *

But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston--to Roger
first and foremost--that something was much amiss. Daphne would not
leave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache and
over-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the new
decoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring for
directions; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Roger
forced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weapons
of weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered as
his step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and he
left her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal as
she clearly meant him to feel.

What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, he
supposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the day
before, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she should
know anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;
and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse to
blurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by this
porcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at least
till she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to a
day's shooting.

Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had taken
advantage of their casual _tete-a-tete_, as she had done before on
several occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead of
accepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of the
temptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only his
conscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she had
been trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him,
and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough to
resist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not clever
enough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. He
was afraid of her, and afraid of himself.

What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and
plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered
pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his
life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?--supposing he could
put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He
meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne
and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford to
give Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carry
off Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time--that was the obviously
prudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no use
for him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, and
disappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him was
doomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappy
during the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his back
on Heston for a time.

But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would take
hers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whatever
deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would
imagine them together.

Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing
entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about
the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs.
Weightman, Chloe's old friend--a friend of his own, too, in former days.
Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more
about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he well
remembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political life
or death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn,
supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the least
likely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurd
hypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the locked
room; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time he
realized that as long as he had not found and returned it she would
still have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him with
inquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, he
could not altogether deny.

A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season the
young corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floated
gaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered bad
language to the underling beside him.

But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as he
walked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepers
and beaters were once more his friends.

The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken his
resolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt for
that letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters to
Chloe--those she had returned to him--which must certainly never fall
into Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North,
to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to his
wife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen words
to your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And,
therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and a
steady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty's
mother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would let
him be?

Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must
exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember
thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days
which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers
might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much
greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most
uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their
short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from
that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for
the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursed
it sorely.

How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it was
that had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and now
held some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manage
it, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!
Should he consult his mother? No; better not.

* * * * *

That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. On
going up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banished
to a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was now
putting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to his
wife.

Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence.

"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but the
breathing quick.

She looked at him--bracing herself.

"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night."

"You had neuralgia?"

"I don't know--I had no sleep. I must be alone."

His eyes and hers met.

"For to-night, then," he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matter
with you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought,
yesterday--but--however, there's no time to talk now. Are you coming
down to dinner?"

"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards."

He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heat
of his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him that
Daphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he would
make his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife.

* * * * *

The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barnes
had grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had long
ceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as the
British matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;
or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger.

The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired in
astonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was not
well, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presence
of the new splendours of Heston, the General had--in Roger's
company--very little to say. He made the vague remark that the
dining-room was "very fine," but he should not have known it again.
Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's father
by Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing.
Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passage
leading to the billiard-room.

"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distaste
and hostility at the famous Signorelli--a full-length nude St.
Sebastian, bound and pierced--which had replaced them on the dining-room
wall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger must
be a fool to allow it!

Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformed
house, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance of
almost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm to
the harassed spirits of the lady.

"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as they
returned to the drawing-room--"thousands and thousands, I should think!
And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste,
and no one should waste money in these days--there are too many
unemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake of
the head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works.

"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnes
complained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of the
side corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger's
mother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment spring
from the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorry
for her.

"It's like all the rest of them--Americans, I mean," he declared; "they
haven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in the
States."

Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General's
unfaltering views of British superiority.

They found Daphne in the drawing-room--a ghostly Daphne, in white, and
covered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation with
them, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining again
of headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs.

The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, after
another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an
hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a
change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the
London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it
seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been
content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple of
thousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could have
been done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgent
beggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than he
used to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. And
there was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felt
a vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the quality
of Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards.

* * * * *

The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-night
to his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts of
the room which still contained the _debris_ of the London house. He
must, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates of
his father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time.
Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right.
But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she the
key? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed.

He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, his
pride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in the
hall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for him
to grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircase
leading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought he
caught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, an
indeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, it
had ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night.

He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectly
familiar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty in
her cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment to
listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She still
sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was
another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a
misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!

Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The
attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were
all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he
might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!

A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank
goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the
threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light
across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him
in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in
considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move
them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected
that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like
appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from
the task of disturbing them.

He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endless
series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various
companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of
politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."
Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley
of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken
ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was
represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as
cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the
process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was
soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,
from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he
upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell
with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was
shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably
sound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, of
course!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few
loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and--by George!--the lost
one!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the
very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk
near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.

His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down
unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end
he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled
off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in
them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!
And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,
the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses
swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own
powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could
hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew
upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a
man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!

The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it
left on nerve and brain.

The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the
packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and
dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was
gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time
finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of
himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had
suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the
preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect
for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.

He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years
since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some
ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As
to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to
have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the
fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he
did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as
he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne
than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to
Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, before
now, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with a
woman without getting very fond of her--he couldn't--especially if she
had given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for a
bit--well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free from
blame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberately
to the States to marry money--with a wife thrown in--in that shabby sort
of way.

But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free of
Chloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he could
and would make her happy--just as she had been in their early days
together. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth,
with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;
he thought of her with longing and tenderness.

With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greek
phrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretched
out an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, Roger
Barnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; he
had become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;
and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accused
him greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were not
fine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call," something akin to
conversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in this
dusty room, amid the night-silence.

As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door had
quietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold.

A voice struck into the stillness.

"Roger!"

He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on the
floor. Daphne stood before him--but with the eyes of a mad woman. Her
hand shook on the handle of the door.

"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow.

"Hallo, Daphne!--is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up
some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." He pointed to it.

"What old papers?"

"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or not
in that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to look
for something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"

He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne came
nearer.

"It must be something you want very badly--something you don't want
other people to see--something you're ashamed of!--or you wouldn't be
searching for it at this time of night." She raised her eyes, still with
the same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face.
Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers--"That's your
hand-writing!--they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"

"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, half
inclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote to
Chloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, and
they were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burn
them, and as you turned me out to-night----"

"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him.

"Oh, that has nothing to do with you--or me----" he said, hastily making
a movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with a
cry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestling
with him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, with
frightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, as
though Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and he
was not aware of her approach.

"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding her
off with one hand, determined not to give her the letter.

Then, all in a moment--without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildest
defensive action on his part--Daphne stumbled and fell.

"Daphne!--I say!----"

He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felt
himself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her."

He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doing
here?"

But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back pale
and frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne--who had a cut
on her forehead and was half fainting--from the ground.

"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "You
have done quite enough. Let me attend to her."

"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure you
it was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"

Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supporting
Daphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who had
been standing dumb again, started forward.

"Let me take her," he said sternly. "Daphne!--send this woman away."

But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved him
from her.

"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a withering
look. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least till
to-morrow."

Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon
him. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear.

* * * * *

Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned to
her companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she had
been pressing to her temple.

"You saw it all?" she said imperiously--"the whole thing?"

"All," said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt."

Daphne gave a hysterical laugh.

"It'll just do--I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good deal
out of it."

And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears.

The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above her
eyebrow.

"It was lucky we heard him," she said triumphantly. "I guessed at once
he must be looking for something--I knew that room was full of papers."

A knock at the door startled them.

"Never mind." The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked."

"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threatening
voice outside.

"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But I
won't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more."

There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded.

Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into the
fire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on Miss
Farmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that--once
again--Roger was hiding something from her--doing something secret and
disgraceful--and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him.
With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meant
to do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been half
spontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how the
incident could be turned--and used.

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