Marriage a la mode

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

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If he were in love with her--well and good! She might no doubt have
tamed him by these stripes. But she was no goddess to him; no golden
cloud enveloped her; he saw her under a common daylight. At the same
time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and
uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune. "I'll make her
an excellent husband if she marries me," he said to himself stubbornly;
"I can, and I will."

But meanwhile how was this first stage to end? At the White House that
night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He
must either go or bring her to the point.

He withdrew suddenly from the window, flinging out the end of his
cigarette. "I'll propose to her to-morrow--and she may either take me or
leave me!"

He paced up and down his room, conscious of relief and fresh energy. As
he did so his eyes were drawn to a letter from Herbert French lying on
the table. He took it up and read it again--smiling over it broadly, in
a boyish and kindly amusement. "By Jove! he's happy."

Then as he put it down his face darkened. There was something in the
letter, in its manliness and humour, its unconscious revelation of
ideals wholly independent of dollars, that made Roger for the moment
loathe his own position. But he pulled himself together.

"I shall make her a good husband," he repeated, frowning. "She'll have
nothing to complain of."

* * * * *

On the following day a picnic among the woods of the Upper Potomac
brought together most of the personages in this history. The day was
beautiful, the woods fragrant with spring leaf and blossom, and the
stream, swollen with rain, ran seaward in a turbid, rejoicing strength.

The General, having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far
as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score
of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the
night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle;
and for once the old had to learn patience from the young.

The party was given by the wife of one of the staff of the French
Embassy--a young Frenchwoman, as gay and frank as her babies, and
possessed, none the less, of all the social arts of her nation. She had
taken a shrewd interest in the matter of Daphne Floyd and the
Englishman. Daphne, according to her, should be promptly married and her
millions taken care of, and the handsome, broad-shouldered fellow
impressed the little Frenchwoman's imagination as a proper and capable
watchdog. She had indeed become aware that something was wrong, but her
acuteness entirely refused to believe that it had any vital connection
with the advent of pretty Elsie Maddison. Meanwhile, to please Daphne,
whom she liked, while conscious of a strong and frequent desire to smite
her, Madame de Fronsac had invited Mrs. Verrier, treating her with a
cold and punctilious courtesy that, as applied to any other guest, would
have seemed an affront.

In vain, however, did the hostess, in vain did other kindly bystanders,
endeavour to play the game of Daphne Floyd. In the first place Daphne
herself, though piped unto, refused to dance. She avoided the society of
Roger Barnes in a pointed and public way, bright colour on her cheeks
and a wild light in her eyes; the Under-Secretary escorted her and
carried her wrap. Washington did not know what to think. For owing to
this conduct of Daphne's, the charming Boston girl, the other _ingenue_
of the party, fell constantly to the care of young Barnes; and to see
them stepping along the green ways together, matched almost in height,
and clearly of the same English ancestry and race, pleased while it
puzzled the spectators.

The party lunched in a little inn beside the river, and then scattered
again along woodland paths. Daphne and the Under-Secretary wandered on
ahead and were some distance from the rest of the party when that
gentleman suddenly looked at his watch in dismay. An appointment had to
be kept with the President at a certain hour, and the Under-Secretary's
wits had been wandering. There was nothing for it but to take a short
cut through the woods to a local station and make at once for
Washington.

Daphne quickened his uneasiness and hastened his departure. She assured
him that the others were close behind, and that nothing could suit her
better than to rest on a mossy stone that happily presented itself till
they arrived.

The Under-Secretary, transformed into the anxious and ambitious
politician, abruptly left her.

Daphne, as soon as he was gone, allowed herself the natural attitude
that fitted her thoughts. She was furiously in love and torn with
jealousy; and that love and jealousy could smart so, and cling so, was a
strange revelation to one accustomed to make a world entirely to her
liking. Her dark eyes were hollow, her small mouth had lost its colour,
and she showed that touch of something wasting and withering that
Theocritan shepherds knew in old Sicilian days. It was as though she had
defied a god--and the god had avenged himself.

Suddenly he appeared--the teasing divinity--in human shape. There was a
rustling among the brushwood fringing the river. Roger Barnes emerged
and made his way up towards her.

"I've been stalking you all this time," he said, breathless, as he
reached her, "and now at last--I've caught you!"

Daphne rose furiously. "What right have you to stalk me, as you call
it--to follow me--to speak to me even? I wish to avoid you--and I have
shown it!"

Roger looked at her. He had thrown down his hat, and she saw him against
the background of sunny wood, as the magnificent embodiment of its youth
and force. "And why have you shown it?" There was a warning tremor of
excitement in his voice. "What have I done? I haven't deserved it! You
treat me like--like a friend!--and then you drop me like a hot coal.
You've been awfully unkind to me!"

"I won't discuss it with you," she cried passionately. "You are in my
way, Mr. Barnes. Let me go back to the others!" And stretching out a
small hand, she tried to put him aside.

Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. He caught the hand, he gathered
its owner into a pair of strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed
her. Daphne, suffocated with anger and emotion, broke from
him--tottering. Then sinking on the ground beneath a tree, she burst
into sobbing. Roger, scarlet, with sparkling eyes, dropped on one knee
beside her.

[Illustration: "He caught the hand, he gathered its owner into a pair of
strong arms, and bending over her, he kissed her"]

"Daphne, I'm a ruffian! forgive me! you must, Daphne! Look here, I want
you to marry me. I've nothing to offer you, of course; I'm a poor man,
and you've all this horrible money! But I--I love you!--and I'll make
you a good husband, Daphne, that I'll swear. If you'll take me, you
shall never be sorry for it."

He looked at her again, sorely embarrassed, hating himself, yet inwardly
sure of her. Her small frame shook with weeping. And presently she
turned from him and said in a fierce voice:

"Go and tell all that to Elsie Maddison!"

Infinitely relieved, Roger gave a quick, excited laugh.

"She'd soon send me about my business! I should be a day too late for
the fair, in _that_ quarter. What do you think she and I have been
talking about all this time, Daphne?"

"I don't care," said Daphne hastily, with face still averted.

"I'm going to tell you, all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and
diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat
immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the
rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a
happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays,
about a month before this date.

"There!" cried the young man as he finished it. "And she's talked about
nothing all the time, nothing at all--but old Herbert--and how good he
is--and how good-looking, and the Lord knows what! I got precious sick
of it, though I think he's a trump, too. Oh, Daphne!--you were a little
fool!"

"All the same, you have behaved abominably!" Daphne said, still choking.

"No, I haven't," was Roger's firm reply. "It was you who were so cross.
I couldn't tell you anything. I say! you do know how to stick pins into
people!"

But he took up her hand and kissed it as he spoke.

Daphne allowed it. Her breast heaved as the storm departed. And she
looked so charming, so soft, so desirable, as she sat there in her white
dress, with her great tear-washed eyes and fluttering breath, that the
youth was really touched and carried off his feet; and the rest of his
task was quite easy. All the familiar things that had to be said were
said, and with all the proper emphasis and spirit. He played his part,
the spring woods played theirs, and Daphne, worn out by emotion and
conquered by passion, gradually betrayed herself wholly. And so much at
least may be said to the man's credit that there were certainly moments
in the half-hour between them when, amid the rush of talk, laughter, and
caresses, that conscience which he owed so greatly to the exertions of
"my tutor" pricked him not a little.

After losing themselves deliberately in the woods, they strolled back to
join the rest of the party. The sounds of conversation were already
audible through the trees in front of them, when they saw Mrs. Verrier
coming towards them. She was walking alone and did not perceive them.
Her eyes were raised and fixed, as though on some sight in front of
them. The bitterness, the anguish, one might almost call it, of her
expression, the horror in the eyes, as of one ghost-led, ghost-driven,
drew an exclamation from Roger.

"There's Mrs. Verrier! Why, how ill she looks!"

Daphne paused, gazed, and shrank. She drew him aside through the trees.

"Let's go another way. Madeleine's often strange." And with a
superstitious pang she wished that Madeleine Verrier's face had not been
the first to meet her in this hour of her betrothal.

PART II

THREE YEARS AFTER

CHAPTER V

In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a
well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features,
a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ above
a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character,
and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with
authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her
life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive
cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small
economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the
clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them
to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make
up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to
an English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless and
tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by
adversity.

And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of
it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through
"great trials," to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite
certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence
makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the "trials" had only
lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the
marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.

Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
in the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply parted
on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth a
little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
discontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
singular strength.

Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.

"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she
does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
enough for Daphne!"

The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.

"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
and felicitous.

"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
"I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence
is too amazing!"

"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"

"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what
you _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like."

"I suppose if one studies these things----" Elsie French began timidly.

"What's the good of studying!" cried Lady Barnes; "one has one's own
taste, or one hasn't."

Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked
perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with
Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's
financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which
belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A
park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but
there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an
income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had
been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a
not very exacting tenant.

Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about
seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and
her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston
Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly
must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.
The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a
pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The
tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last
Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of
married life, during which the young couple had rented various "places,"
besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been
vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants
at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been
invited to their councils.

Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the
ancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maiden
name--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the
house--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, what
decoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces
gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious,
overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys
and worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraits
she had ever set eyes upon!

Roger had looked unhappy. "It was father and mother did it," he admitted
penitently. "But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!"--this
with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.

Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared
about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young
face. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with no
doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had
pronounced it "common" in her secret thoughts before she had known its
owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the "bulwark of
the teeth." Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good
terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had
arrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer of
yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither
from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent
invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for
a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.

During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie
French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of
friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes
let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be
re-caged.

"She puts you down so!" cried that lady, making gestures with the
paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.
"If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost at
least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is
positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh,
and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in the
face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it,
especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are."

"Am I?" said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.

Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.

"I meant"--the explanation was hurried--"I thought--Mrs. Barnes was a
South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in
Daphne."

"Yes; in her wonderful eyes," said Mrs. French warmly; "and her
grace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.
She has given her eyes to the child."

"Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!" cried Lady Barnes, carried away.
"But here is the baby."

For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall
outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst
open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by
the hand.

Lady Barnes composed herself. It is necessary to smile at children, and
she endeavoured to satisfy her own sense of it.

"Come in, Beatty; come and kiss granny!" And Lady Barnes held out her
arms.

But the child stood still, surveyed her grandmother with a pair of
startling eyes, and then, turning, made a rush for the door. But her
father was too quick for her. He closed it with a laugh, and stood with
his back to it. The child did not cry, but, with flaming cheeks, she
began to beat her father's knees with her small fists.

"Go and kiss granny, darling," said Roger, stroking her dark head.

Beatty turned again, put both her hands behind her, and stood immovable.

"Not kiss granny," she said firmly. "Don't love granny."

"Oh, Beatty"--Mrs. French knelt down beside her--"come and be a good
little girl, and I'll show you picture-books."

"I not Beatty--I Jemima Ann," said the small thin voice. "Not be a dood
dirl--do upstairs."

She looked at her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he
was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate,
elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding
out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and
pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his
shoulder--a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her
handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and
caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he regarded
her.

He again urged her to kiss her grandmother; but the child again shook
her head. "Then," said he craftily, "father must kiss granny." And he
began to cross the room.

But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it,
Roger: another time."

Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to
her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tucked
under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with
complete indifference.

"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as
the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and
if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."

"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."

"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I
told you she has inherited more than her eyes."

Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any
more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the
prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother
was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a
hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter
of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New
Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a
touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying
to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build
and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her
feelings had been hurt.

So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be
coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's
my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger
depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I
can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when
Roger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure he
wasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and
he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as
he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne
now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a
person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked
round her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... well, who
might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and
uncontrolled that----"

"Dear Lady Barnes, please don't tell me any secrets!" Elsie French
implored, and laid a restraining hand on the mother's arm, ready,
indeed, to take up her work and fly. But Lady Barnes's chair stood
between her and the door, and the occupant of it was substantial.

Laura Barnes hesitated, and in the pause two persons appeared upon the
garden path outside, coming towards the open windows of the
drawing-room. One was Mrs. Roger Barnes; the other was a man, remarkably
tall and slender, with a stoop like that of an overgrown schoolboy,
silky dark hair and moustache, and pale gray eyes.

"Dr. Lelius!" said Elsie, in astonishment. "Was Daphne expecting him?"

"Who is Dr. Lelius?" asked Lady Barnes, putting up her eyeglass.

Mrs. French explained that he was a South German art-critic, from
Wuerzburg, with a great reputation. She had already met him at Eton and
at Oxford.

"Another expert!" said Lady Barnes with a shrug.

The pair passed the window, absorbed apparently in conversation. Mrs.
French escaped. Lady Barnes was left to discontent and solitude.

But the solitude was not for long.

When Elsie French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from
a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room.
Daphne's soprano voice--agreeable, but making its mark always, like its
owner--could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed
to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be her mother-in-law?

When Elsie entered, Daphne was walking up and down in excitement.

"One cannot really live with bad pictures because they happen to be
one's ancestors! We won't do them any harm, mamma! of course not. There
is a room upstairs where they can be stored--most carefully--and anybody
who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been
left as they were painted!--not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery
man in his studio--_passe encore_! they might have been just bearable.
But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few
years ago."

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