Marriage a la mode
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Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Marriage a la mode
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"What sort of ideas?"
Roger's handsome brow puckered in the effort to explain. "They don't
think anything's _settled_, you know, as we do at home. Miss Floyd
doesn't. They think _they've_ got to settle a lot of things that English
girls don't trouble about, because they're just told to do 'em, or not
to do 'em, by the people that look after them!"
"'Everything hatched over again, and hatched different,'" said the
General, who was an admirer of George Eliot; "that's what they'd like,
eh? Pooh! That's when they're young. They quiet down, like all the rest
of the world."
Barnes shook his head. "But they _are_ hatching it over again. You meet
people here in society you couldn't meet at home. And it's all right.
The law backs them up."
"You're talking about divorce!" said the General. "Aye! it's astounding!
The tales one hears in the smoking-room after dinner! In Wyoming,
apparently, six months' residence, and there you are. You prove a little
cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil
good-bye, and the thing's done. Well, they'll pay for it, my dear
Roger--they'll pay for it. Nobody ever yet trifled with the marriage law
with impunity."
The energy of the old man's bearing became him.
Through Roger's mind the thought flashed: "Poor dear Uncle Archie! If
he'd been a New Yorker he'd never have put up with Aunt Lavinia for
thirty years!"
They turned into their hotel, and ordered dinner in an hour's time.
Roger found some English letters waiting for him, and carried them off
to his room. He opened his mother's first. Lady Barnes wrote a large and
straggling hand, which required many sheets and much postage. It might
have been observed that her son looked at the sheets for a minute, with
a certain distaste, before he began upon them. Yet he was deeply
attached to his mother, and it was from her letters week by week that he
took his marching orders. If she only wouldn't ride her ideas quite so
hard; if she would sometimes leave him alone to act for himself!
Here it was again--the old story:
"Don't suppose I put these things before you on _my_ account. No,
indeed; what does it matter what happens to me? It is when I think
that you may have to spend your whole life as a clerk in a bank,
unless you rouse yourself now--(for you know, my dear Roger, though
you have very good wits, you're not as frightfully clever as people
have to be nowadays)--that I begin to despair. But that is
_entirely_ in your own hands. You have what is far more valuable
than cleverness--you have a delightful disposition, and you are one
of the handsomest of men. There! of course, I know you wouldn't let
me say it to you in your presence; but it's true all the same. Any
girl should be proud to marry you. There are plenty of rich girls
in America; and if you play your cards properly you will make her
and yourself happy. The grammar of that is not quite right, but you
understand me. Find a nice girl--of course a _nice_ girl--with a
fortune large enough to put you back in your proper sphere; and it
doesn't matter about me. You will pay my rent, I dare say, and help
me through when I want it; but that's nothing. The point is, that I
cannot submit to your career being spoiled through your poor
father's mad imprudence. You must retrieve yourself--you _must_.
Nobody is anything nowadays in the world without money; you know
that as well as I do. And besides, there is another reason. You
have got to forget the affair of last spring, to put it entirely
behind you, to show that horrid woman who threw you over that you
will make your life a success in spite of her. Rouse yourself, my
dear Roger, and do your best. I hope by now you have forwarded
_all_ my introductions? You have your opportunity, and I must say
you will be a great fool if you don't use it. _Do_ use it my dear
boy, for my sake. I am a very unhappy woman; but you might, if you
would, bring back a little brightness to my life."
After he had read the letter, young Barnes sat for some time in a brown
study on the edge of his bed. The letter contained only one more
repetition of counsels that had been dinned into his ears for
months--almost ever since the financial crash which had followed his
father's death, and the crash of another sort, concerning himself, which
had come so quick upon it. His thoughts returned, as they always did at
some hour of the day or night, to the "horrid woman." Yes, that had hit
him hard; the lad's heart still throbbed with bitterness as he thought
of it. He had never felt anything so much; he didn't believe he should
ever mind anything so much again. "I'm not one of your sentimental
sort," he thought, half congratulating himself, half in self-contempt.
But he could not get her out of his head; he wondered if he ever should.
And it had gone pretty far too. By Jove! that night in the
orchard!--when she had kissed him, and thrown her arms round his neck!
And then to write him that letter, when things were at their worst. She
might have done the thing decently. Have treated a fellow kindly at
least. Well, of course, it was all done with. Yes, it _was_. Done with!
He got up and began to pace his small room, his hands in his pockets,
thinking of the night in the orchard. Then gradually the smart lessened,
and his thoughts passed away to other things. That little Yankee girl
had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a
moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were
wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like
imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she
liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very
likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very
surprising impudence. That was when he believed that she was a teacher,
earning her bread. But the impudence had not prevented him from finding
it much more amusing to talk to her than to anybody else.
And, on the whole, he thought she had not disliked him, though she had
said the rudest things to him, and he had retaliated. She had asked him,
indeed, to join them in an excursion the following day, and to tea at
the Country Club. He had meant, if possible, to go back to New York on
the morrow. But perhaps a day or two longer----
So she had a million--the little sprite? She was and would be a
handful!--with a fortune or without it. And possessed also of the most
extraordinary opinions. But he thought he would go on the excursion, and
to the Country Club. He began to fold his mother's letter, and put it
back into its envelope, while a slight flush mounted in his cheeks, and
the young mouth that was still so boyish and candid took a stiffer line.
CHAPTER III
"Is Miss Floyd at home?"
The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage
at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and
her chaperon.
The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a
message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was
accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.
This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's
simplicity--like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the
walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued,
even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white,
showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and
straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to
match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful
self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its
costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have
said, of any _bourse moyenne_, with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs
also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the
cultivated cosmopolitan note.
Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as
the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in
her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country?
But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just
as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in
London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these
numerous damsels played their part in the general "simplicity" effect;
but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was
rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.
She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs
and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture
upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered
exclamation.
"So _she_ bought it! Daphne's amazing!"
For what she saw before her was a masterpiece--an excessively costly
masterpiece--of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the
wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and
since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a
well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet
here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the
great world was just--but only just--beginning to talk.
"How like Daphne!" thought her friend with malice. The "simple" room,
and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any
one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.
Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let
herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black.
The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were
fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish
light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large
and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long,
hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful
beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay
upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed
her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date
Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet
reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and
visible sign of losses "far more deeply interfused." As she sat
apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half
consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror
opposite.
Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's
proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had
appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his
departure for England, and was still "enduring hardness" in a Washington
hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if
it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There
was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock
of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could
only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to
watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.
Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good
deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more
than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing
part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with
which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently
ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him
had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was
of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and
first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier
thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young
Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on
as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.
Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?
Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American
society--in that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to
move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the
blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was
not welcome; she was not ostracized, but she had lost consideration.
There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband;
something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved
it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign
towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of
responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved
as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel
intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what
had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and
those the best, who saw her come with distaste and go without regret;
and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her
beauty had withered in a year.
And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her--personally
and socially--was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she
had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil
genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly,
owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some
element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud,
fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence--eagerly,
indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy
of "rights" which is still struggling in the modern mind with a
crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a
warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not "advanced." She
shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never
been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a
fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws
of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were
to talk of the fashions, or "Evangeline." In any disputed case,
moreover, between a man and a woman, Daphne was hotly and instinctively
on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour
into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's
desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and
indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made
her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.
Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what
Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from
it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the
street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner
drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had
emerged thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger--the countenance
of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and
high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:--they were there
embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.
The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes;
her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a
name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded
and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and
painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath
them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up;
the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and
rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had
hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.
Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She
was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence
proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs.
Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend
rather absently.
"Dear Madeleine!--very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I
suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit
down. Some tea, Blount, at once."
Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an
"ouf!" of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other
end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave
the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.
"Where have you been?" asked her companion quietly.
"Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate," said Daphne without a
smile.
"The Senate. What on earth took you there?"
"Well, why shouldn't I go?--why does one do anything? It was just a
debate--horribly dull--trusts, or something of that kind. But there was
a man attacking the President--and the place was crowded. Ugh! the heat
was intolerable!"
"Who took you?"
Daphne named an under-secretary--an agreeable and ambitious man, who had
been very much in her train during the preceding winter, and until Roger
Barnes appeared upon the scene.
"I thought until I got your message that you were going to take Mr.
Barnes motoring up the river."
"Mr. Barnes was engaged." Daphne gave the information tersely, rousing
herself afterwards to make tea, which appeared at that moment.
"He seems to have been a good deal engaged this week," said Mrs.
Verrier, when they were alone again.
Daphne made no reply. And Mrs. Verrier, after observing her for a
moment, resumed:
"I suppose it was the Bostonians?"
"I suppose so. What does it matter?" The tone was dry and sharp.
"Daphne, you goose!" laughed Mrs. Verrier, "I believe this is the very
first invitation of theirs he has accepted at all. He was written to
about them by an old friend--his Eton master, or somebody of that sort.
And as they turned up here on a visit, instead of his having to go and
look for them at Boston, of course he had to call upon them."
"I dare say. And of course he had to go to tea with them yesterday, and
he had to take them to Arlington this afternoon! I suppose I'd better
tell you--we had a quarrel on the subject last night."
"Daphne!--don't, for heaven's sake, make him think himself too
important!" cried Mrs. Verrier.
Daphne, with both elbows on the table, was slowly crunching a morsel of
toast in her small white teeth. She had a look of concentrated
energy--as of a person charged and overcharged with force of some kind,
impatient to be let loose. Her black eyes sparkled; impetuosity and will
shone from them; although they showed also rims of fatigue, as if Miss
Daphne's nights had not of late been all they should be. Mrs. Verrier
was chiefly struck, however, by the perception that for the first time
Daphne was not having altogether her own way with the world. Madeleine
had not observed anything of the same kind in her before. In general she
was in entire command both of herself and of the men who surrounded her.
She made a little court out of them, and treated them _en despote_. But
Roger Barnes had not lent himself to the process; he had not played the
game properly; and Daphne's sleep had been disturbed for the first time
in history.
It had been admitted very soon between the two friends--without putting
it very precisely--that Daphne was interested in Roger Barnes. Mrs.
Verrier believed that the girl had been originally carried off her feet
by the young man's superb good looks, and by the natural
distinction--evident in all societies--which they conferred upon him.
Then, no doubt, she had been piqued by his good-humoured, easy way--the
absence of any doubt of himself, of tremor, of insistence. Mrs. Verrier
said to herself--not altogether shrewdly--that he had no nerves, or no
heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had
either possessed too much heart--like Captain Boyson--or a lack of
coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and
her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had
come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then
peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to
suspect that deeper things were really involved.
Certainly there was a good deal to puzzle the spectator. That the
English are a fortune-hunting race may be a popular axiom; but it was
quite possible, after all, that Roger Barnes was not the latest
illustration of it. It was quite possible, also, that he had a
sweet-heart at home, some quiet, Quakerish girl who would never wave in
his face the red flags that Daphne was fond of brandishing. It was
equally possible that he was merely fooling with Daphne--that he had
seen girls he liked better in New York, and was simply killing time till
a sportsman friend of whom he talked should appear on the scene and take
him off to shoot moose and catch trout in the province of Quebec. Mrs.
Verrier realized that, for all his lack of subtlety and the higher
conversation, young Barnes had managed astonishingly to keep his
counsel. His "simplicity," like Daphne's, seemed to be of a special
type.
And yet--there was no doubt that he had devoted himself a great deal.
Washington society had quickly found him out; he had been invited to all
the most fastidious houses, and was immensely in request for picnics and
expeditions. But he had contrived, on the whole, to make all these
opportunities promote the flirtation with Daphne. He had, in fact, been
enough at her beck and call to make her the envy of a young society with
whom the splendid Englishman promised to become the rage, and not enough
to silence or wholly discourage other claimants on his time.
This no doubt accounted for the fact that the two charming Bostonians,
Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, who had but lately arrived in Washington
and made acquaintance with Roger Barnes, were still evidently in
ignorance of what was going on. They were not initiated. They had
invited young Barnes in the innocence of their hearts, without inviting
Daphne Floyd, whom they did not previously know. And the young man had
seen fit to accept their invitation. Hence the jealousy that was clearly
burning in Daphne, that she was not indeed even trying to hide from the
shrewd eyes of her friend.
Mrs. Verrier's advice not to make Roger Barnes "too important" had
called up a flash of colour in the girl's cheeks. But she did not resent
it in words; rather her silence deepened, till Mrs. Verrier stretched
out a hand and laughingly turned the small face towards her that she
might see what was in it.
"Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!"
"Not at all," said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; "I never know what to
talk to him about."
"As if that mattered!"
"Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters
to her the whole time."
Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: "Do you suppose he came to
America to marry money?"
"I haven't an idea."
"Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?"
Daphne drew herself away impatiently. "I really don't suppose anything,
Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty
himself."
Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes
of Mr. Barnes _pere_, as they had been described to her by another
English traveller in Washington.
Daphne listened indifferently. "He can't be very poor or he wouldn't
behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told
me so."
"And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had
married you for money?"
Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands
clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.
"It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.
But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him."
"But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?"
"I'm not an idiot!" said the girl, with energy. "With whom doesn't money
count for something? Of course a man must take money into
consideration." There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture
which accompanied the words.
"'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is to
have money,'" said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. "Yes, I dare
say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I
don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same."
"What do you mean?"
"You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you
would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!"
"You mean I should be jealous?" asked Daphne, almost with violence. "You
are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should
'find quarrel in a straw.'"
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