Marriage a la mode

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

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She studied him in a laughing silence a moment, her chin on her hand,
then said:

"That is the worst of the opera; it stops so much interesting
conversation."

"You don't care for the music?"

"Oh, I am a musician!" she said quickly. "I teach it. But I am like the
mad King of Bavaria--I want an opera-house to myself."

"You teach it?" he said, in amazement.

She nodded, smiling. At that moment a bell rang. Captain Boyson rose.

"That's the signal for closing. I think we ought to be moving up."

They strolled slowly towards the house, watching the stream of
excursionists pour out of the house and gardens, and wind down the hill;
sounds of talk and laughter filled the air, and the western sun touched
the spring hats and dresses.

"The holidays end to-morrow," said Daphne Floyd demurely, as she walked
beside young Barnes. And she looked smiling at the crowd of young women,
as though claiming solidarity with them.

A teacher? A teacher of music?--with that self-confidence--that air as
though the world belonged to her! The young man was greatly mystified.
But he reminded himself that he was in a democratic country where all
men--and especially all women--are equal. Not that the young women now
streaming to the steamboat were Miss Floyd's equals. The notion was
absurd. All that appeared to be true was that Miss Floyd, in any
circumstances, would be, and was, the equal of anybody.

"How charming your friend is!" he said presently to Cecilia Boyson, as
they lingered on the veranda, waiting for the curator, in a scene now
deserted. "She tells me she is a teacher of music."

Cecilia Boyson looked at him in amazement, and made him repeat his
remark. As he did so, his uncle called him, and he turned away. Miss
Boyson leant against one of the pillars of the veranda, shaking with
suppressed laughter.

But at that moment the curator, a gentle, gray-haired man, appeared,
shaking hands with the General, and bowing to the ladies. He gave them a
little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the
veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.

CHAPTER II

A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came
the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board,
was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the
house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms
upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save
for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary
lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors
were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.

Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now
following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than
a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his
white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the
house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the
English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other
hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old
English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee
smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with
culture--witness the books of the library--with land-owning, a family
coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood.
Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to
him.

They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and
its balcony overlooking the river.

"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the
curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course,
on that account sacred to every true American."

He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round
him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron
plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.
There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which
Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds
breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the
dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the
generations of the future.

"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,
firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of
humour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, natural
that Americans should consider him a great man."

The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged
guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed
out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An
evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and
gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house;
blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the
coverts of young green.

Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it
was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss
Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the
speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed
him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly
possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the
General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the
young Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth
and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed
of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want
with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive
feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now
that she began to realize him. As compared with the average man in
Washington or New York, here was an exception--an Apollo!--for she too
thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever
had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an
event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a
handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement,
he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy
manner--which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed him
conscious of his advantages.

As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.
He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he
belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his
father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the
lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside,
before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She
envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she
had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.

Meanwhile, the dear young man was evidently trying to talk to her,
without too much reference to the gilt gingerbread of this world. He did
not wish that she should feel herself carried into regions where she was
not at home, so that his conversation ran amicably on music. Had she
learned it abroad? He had a cousin who had been trained at Leipsic;
wasn't teaching it trying sometimes--when people had no ear? Delicious!
She kept it up, talking with smiles of "my pupils" and "my class," while
they wandered after the others upstairs to the dark low-roofed room
above the death-chamber, where Martha Washington spent the last years of
her life, in order that from the high dormer window she might command
the tomb on the slope below, where her dead husband lay. The curator
told the well-known story. Mrs. Verrier, standing beside him, asked some
questions, showed indeed some animation.

"She shut herself up here? She lived in this garret? That she might
always see the tomb? That is really true?"

Barnes, who did not remember to have heard her speak before, turned
at the sound of her voice, and looked at her curiously. She
wore an expression--bitter or incredulous--which, somehow, amused
him. As they descended again to the garden he communicated his
amusement--discreetly--to Miss Floyd.

Did Mrs. Verrier imply that no one who was not a fool could show her
grief as Mrs. Washington did? That it was, in fact, a sign of being a
fool to regret your husband?

"Did she say that?" asked Miss Floyd quickly.

"Not like that, of course, but----"

They had now reached the open air again, and found themselves crossing
the front court to the kitchen-garden. Daphne Floyd did not wait till
Roger should finish his sentence. She turned on him a face which was
grave if not reproachful.

"I suppose you know Mrs. Verrier's story?"

"Why, I never saw her before! I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't
to have said?"

"Everybody knows it here," said Daphne slowly. "Mrs. Verrier married
three years ago. She married a Jew--a New Yorker--who had changed his
name. You know Jews are not in what we call 'society' over here? But
Madeleine thought she could do it; she was in love with him, and she
meant to be able to do without society. But she couldn't do without
society; and presently she began to dine out, and go to parties by
herself--he urged her to. Then, after a bit, people didn't ask her as
much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him
about a divorce--naturally they had been against her marrying him all
along. He said--as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year
ago, he took the train to Niagara--of course it was a very commonplace
thing to do--and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the
whirlpool; you know, where all the suicides are found!"

Barnes stopped short in front of his companion, his face flushing.

"What a horrible story!" he said, with emphasis.

Miss Floyd nodded.

"Yes, poor Madeleine has never got over it."

The young man still stood riveted.

"Of course Mrs. Verrier herself had nothing to do with the talk about
divorce?"

Something in his tone roused a combative instinct in his companion. She,
too, coloured, and drew herself up.

"Why shouldn't she? She was miserable. The marriage had been a great
mistake."

"And you allow divorce for that?" said the man, wondering. "Oh, of
course I know every State is different, and some States are worse than
others. But, somehow, I never came across a case like that--first
hand--before."

He walked on slowly beside his companion, who held herself a little
stiffly.

"I don't know why you should talk in that way," she said at last,
breaking out in a kind of resentment, "as though all our American views
are wrong! Each nation arranges these things for itself. You have the
laws that suit you; you must allow us those that suit us."

Barnes paused again, his face expressing a still more complete
astonishment.

"You say that?" he said. "You!"

"And why not?"

"But--but you are so young!" he said, evidently finding a difficulty in
putting his impressions. "I beg your pardon--I ought not to talk about
it at all. But it was so odd that----"

"That I knew anything about Mrs. Verrier's affairs?" said Miss Floyd,
with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "Well, you see, American girls are
not like English ones. We don't pretend not to know what everybody
knows."

"Of course," said Roger hurriedly; "but you wouldn't think it a fair and
square thing to do?"

"Think what?"

"Why, to marry a man, and then talk of divorcing him because people
didn't invite you to their parties."

"She was very unhappy," said Daphne stubbornly.

"Well, by Jove!" cried the young man, "she doesn't look very happy now!"

"No," Miss Floyd admitted. "No. There are many people who think she'll
never get over it."

"Well, I give it up." The Apollo shrugged his handsome shoulders. "You
say it was she who proposed to divorce him?--yet when the wretched man
removes himself, then she breaks her heart!"

"Naturally she didn't mean him to do it in that way," said the girl,
with impatience. "Of course you misunderstood me entirely!--_entirely!_"
she added with an emphasis which suited with her heightened colour and
evidently ruffled feelings.

Young Barnes looked at her with embarrassment. What a queer,
hot-tempered girl! Yet there was something in her which attracted him.
She was graceful even in her impatience. Her slender neck, and the dark
head upon it, her little figure in the white muslin, her dainty arms and
hands--these points in her delighted an honest eye, quite accustomed to
appraise the charms of women. But, by George! she took herself
seriously, this little music-teacher. The air of wilful command about
her, the sharpness with which she had just rebuked him, amazed and
challenged him.

"I am very sorry if I misunderstood you," he said, a little on his
dignity; "but I thought you----"

"You thought I sympathized with Mrs. Verrier? So I do; though of course
I am awfully sorry that such a dreadful thing happened. But you'll find,
Mr. Barnes, that American girls----" The colour rushed into her small
olive cheeks. "Well, we know all about the old ideas, and we know also
too well that there's only one life, and we don't mean to have that one
spoilt. The old notions of marriage--your English notions," cried the
girl facing him--"make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when
they see it's a mistake? We say everybody shall have their chance. And
not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what
they couldn't find out before, and so----"

"You let them chuck it just when they're tired of it?" laughed Barnes.
"And what about the----"

"The children?" said Miss Floyd calmly. "Well, of course, that has to be
very carefully considered. But how can it do children any good to live
in an unhappy home?"

"Had Mrs. Verrier any children?"

"Yes, one little girl."

"I suppose she meant to keep her?"

"Why, of course."

"And the father didn't care?"

"Well, I believe he did," said Daphne unwillingly. "Yes, that was very
sad. He was quite devoted to her."

"And you think that's all right?" Barnes looked at his companion,
smiling.

"Well, of course, it was a pity," she said, with fresh impatience; "I
admit it was a pity. But then, why did she ever marry him? That was the
horrible mistake."

"I suppose she thought she liked him."

"Oh, it was he who was so desperately in love with her. He plagued her
into doing it."

"Poor devil!" said Barnes heartily. "All right, we're coming."

The last words were addressed to General Hobson, waving to them from the
kitchen-garden. They hurried on to join the curator, who took the party
for a stroll round some of the fields over which George Washington, in
his early married life, was accustomed to ride in summer and winter
dawns, inspecting his negroes, his plantation, and his barns. The grass
in these Southern fields was already high; there were shining
fruit-trees, blossom-laden, in an orchard copse; and the white dogwood
glittered in the woods.

For two people to whom the traditions of the place were dear, this quiet
walk through Washington's land had a charm far beyond that of the
reconstructed interior of the house. Here were things unaltered and
unalterable, boundaries, tracks, woods, haunted still by the figure of
the young master and bridegroom who brought Patsy Curtis there in 1759.
To the gray-haired curator every foot of them was sacred and familiar;
he knew these fields and the records of them better than any detail of
his own personal affairs; for years now he had lived in spirit with
Washington, through all the hours of the Mount Vernon day; his life was
ruled by one great ghost, so that everything actual was comparatively
dim. Boyson too, a fine soldier and a fine intelligence, had a mind
stored with Washingtoniana. Every now and then he and the curator fell
back on each other's company. They knew well that the others were not
worthy of their opportunity; although General Hobson, seeing that most
of the memories touched belonged to a period before the Revolution,
obeyed the dictates of politeness, and made amends for his taciturnity
indoors by a talkative vein outside.

Captain Boyson was not, however, wholly occupied with history or
reminiscence. He perceived very plainly before the walk was over that
the General's good-looking nephew and Miss Daphne Floyd were interested
in each other's conversation. When they joined the party in the garden
it seemed to him that they had been disputing. Miss Daphne was flushed
and a little snappish when spoken to; and the young man looked
embarrassed. But presently he saw that they gravitated to each other,
and that, whatever chance combination might be formed during the walk,
it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the
girl in the rose-coloured sash and the tall handsome youth. Towards the
end of the walk they became separated from the rest of the party, and
only arrived at the little station just in time before the cars started.
On this occasion again, they had been clearly arguing and disagreeing;
and Daphne had the air of a ruffled bird, her dark eyes glittering, her
mouth set in the obstinate lines that Boyson knew by heart. But again
they sat together in the car, and talked and sparred all the way home;
while Mrs. Verrier, in a corner of the carriage, shut her hollow eyes,
and laid her thin hands one over the other, and in her purple draperies
made a picture _a la Melisande_ which was not lost upon her companions.
Boyson's mind registered a good many grim or terse comments, as
occasionally he found himself watching this lady. Scarcely a year since
that hideous business at Niagara, and here she was in that extravagant
dress! He wished his sister would not make a friend of her, and that
Daphne Floyd saw less of her. Miss Daphne had quite enough bees in her
own bonnet without adopting Mrs. Verrier's.

Meanwhile, it was the General who, on the return journey, was made to
serve Miss Boyson's gift for monopoly. She took possession of him in a
business-like way, inquiring into his engagements in Washington, his
particular friends, his opinion of the place and the people, with a
light-handed acuteness which was more than a match for the Englishman's
instincts of defence. The General did not mean to give himself away; he
intended, indeed, precisely the contrary; but, after every round of
conversation Miss Boyson felt herself more and more richly provided with
materials for satire at the expense of England and the English tourist,
his invincible conceit, insularity, and condescension. She was a clever
though tiresome woman; and expressed herself best in letters. She
promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next
letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then,
having led him successfully through the _role_ of the comic Englishman
abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some
secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.
Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and
brilliant career; and here let it be said that the _precieuse_ in her
gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. And finally
she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd. The General,
who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some
little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that
Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.
Was she a native of Washington?

"You never heard of Miss Floyd?--of Daphne Floyd? No? Ah, well!"--and
she laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.
There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that
even Daphne Floyds don't matter."

"Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich?"

General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no
more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--more
strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere fact
of money. But Miss Boyson gave it at once a personal meaning, and set
herself to play on what she scornfully supposed to be the cupidity of
the Englishman. She produced, indeed, a full and particular account of
Daphne Floyd's parentage, possessions, and prospects, during which the
General's countenance represented him with great fidelity. A trace of
recalcitrance at the beginning--for it was his opinion that Miss Boyson,
like most American women, talked decidedly too much--gave way to close
attention, then to astonishment, and finally to a very animated
observation of Miss Floyd's slender person as she sat a yard or two from
him on the other side of the car, laughing, frowning, or chattering with
Roger.

"And that poor child has the management of it all?" he said at last, in
a tone which did him credit. He himself had lost an only daughter at
twenty-one, and he held old-fashioned views as to the helplessness of
women.

But Cecilia Boyson again misunderstood him.

"Oh, yes!" she said, with a cool smile. "Everything is in her own
hands--everything! Mrs. Phillips would not dare to interfere. Daphne
always has her own way."

The General said no more. Cecilia Boyson looked out of the window at the
darkening landscape, thinking with malice of Daphne's dealings with the
male sex. It had been a Sleeping Beauty story so far. Treasure for the
winning--a thorn hedge--and slain lovers! The handsome Englishman would
try it next, no doubt. All young Englishmen, according to her, were on
the look-out for American heiresses. Music teacher indeed! She would
have given a good deal to hear the conversation of the uncle and nephew
when the party broke up.

The General and young Barnes made their farewells at the railway
station, and took their way on foot to their hotel. Washington was
steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its
quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white
and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the
houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the
houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful,
leisurely place--they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing
sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a
southern spring.

"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. "And a very nice
afternoon. How long are you staying here, Uncle Archie?"

"I ought to be off at the end of the week; and of course you want to get
back to New York? I say, you seemed to be getting on with that young
lady?"

The General turned a rather troubled eye upon his companion.

"She wasn't bad fun," said the young man graciously; "but rather an odd
little thing! We quarrelled about every conceivable subject. And it's
queer how much that kind of girl seems to go about in America. She goes
everywhere and knows everything. I wonder how she manages it."

"What kind of girl do you suppose she is?" asked the General, stopping
suddenly in the middle of Lafayette Square.

"She told me she taught singing," said Roger, in a puzzled voice, "to a
class of girls in New York."

The General laughed.

"She seems to have made a fool of you, my dear boy. She is one of the
great heiresses of America."

Roger's face expressed a proper astonishment.

"Oh! that's it, is it? I thought once or twice there was something
fishy--she was trying it on. Who told you?"

The General retailed his information. Miss Daphne Floyd was the orphan
daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king, of the
State of Illinois. He had made vast sums by lumbering, and then invested
in real estate in Chicago and Buffalo, not to speak of a railway or two,
and had finally left his daughter and only child in possession of a
fortune generally estimated at more than a million sterling. The money
was now entirely in the girl's power. Her trustees had been sent about
their business, though Miss Floyd was pleased occasionally to consult
them. Mrs. Phillips, her chaperon, had not much influence with her; and
it was supposed that Mrs. Verrier advised her more than anyone else.

"Good heavens!" was all that young Barnes could find to say when the
story was told. He walked on absently, flourishing his stick, his face
working under the stress of amused meditation. At last he brought out:

"You know, Uncle Archie, if you'd heard some of the things Miss Floyd
was saying to me, your hair would have stood on end."

The General raised his shoulders.

"I dare say. I'm too old-fashioned for America. The sooner I clear out
the better. Their newspapers make me sick; I hate the hotels--I hate the
cooking; and there isn't a nation in Europe I don't feel myself more at
home with."

Roger laughed his clear, good-tempered laugh. "Oh! I don't feel that way
at all. I get on with them capitally. They're a magnificent people. And,
as to Miss Floyd, I didn't mean anything bad, of course. Only the ideas
some of the girls here have, and the way they discuss them--well, it
beats me!"

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