Marriage a la mode

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

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During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely
jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and
she had ended by laughing at herself.

Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard
with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.

"Well, some of them knew," he said, answering her last reproach. "And
they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have
told you, Daphne--of course I ought--I'm sorry. But the fact was I never
wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her
again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?"

"Because I mean to go."

"Then you'll have to go without me," was the incautious reply.

"Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you
_don't_ go." Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees.

Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire.
Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself.

"Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell you
everything you want to know--the whole beastly story. But it can't be
pleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did--and it
oughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to come
this afternoon."

"She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as she
spoke with a violent movement, her face blazing.

"Nonsense! she came out of nothing in the world but curiosity, and
because she likes making people uncomfortable. She knew very well mother
and I didn't want her!"

But the more he tried to persuade her the more determined was Daphne to
pay the promised visit, and that he should pay it with her. He gave way
at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when
she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account
of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been
broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most
unfriendly listener. Daphne heard it all quietly.

Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown.

When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted.

"I suppose you kissed her?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire
together.

He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose,
with his arm round her.

But she persisted. "You did kiss her?"

"Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?"

"I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne,
quickly.

Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the
scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from
a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and
unapproached. In that one hour the "muddy vesture" of common feeling and
desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure
flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for
years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill
returned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the
common hours and the common earth.

The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him.
Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. "Look here, Daphne! I wish
you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old
girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?"

Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--ugly
thoughts--like "little mice stole in and out." The notion of Roger and
that woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms,
tormented her unendurably.

* * * * *

She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The
morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward
explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the
reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with
complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.

Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentment
showed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment of
Heston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes dared
not oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, or
even criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her own
link with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrily
from the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile a
note of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the Duchess, and had
been accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet,
that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston to
Upcott, and the companionship of Mrs. Fairmile.

* * * * *

It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French had
been trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglected
and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope
that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the
usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way
characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone
out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, _ore
retundo_, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as
he might, there was an ethical and religious passion in French that
would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish.
He had been ordained some two years before this date.

It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or
artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they
which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's
_menage_. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect her
husband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogether
respectable.

So, with much quizzing of him as "the Squire," French tried to goad his
companion into some of a Squire's duties. "Stand for the County Council,
old fellow," he said. "Your father was on it, and it'll give you
something to do."

To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in cap
and knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on his
temples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physical
aspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Beside
him, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert French
would have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Eton
master's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thick
and abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming.

"I don't mind," Roger was saying, "if you think they'd have me. Beastly
bore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep."

He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had
occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband
dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in
French's eyes.

"Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable," said French. "Roads and schools do
as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a
magistrate directly."

Roger laughed. "That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hope
Daphne's going to like Heston."

French hoped so too, guardedly.

"I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?"

He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug.

"That doesn't matter."

"I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed
to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people
making up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good
French--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they
talk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't want
Archdeacons prating at her."

"It'll be all right when she knows the people."

"Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up
the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old
place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't
much to amuse Daphne here."

"She'll be doing up the house."

"And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's
an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_
and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred
with the same brush." Roger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't care,
so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child."
His ruddy countenance took a shade of anxiety.

French inquired what reason there was to suppose that Beatty would not
thrive perfectly at Heston. Roger could only say that the child had
seemed to flag a little since their arrival. Appetite not quite so good,
temper difficult, and so on. Their smart lady-nurse was not quite
satisfied. "And I've been finding out about doctors here," the young
father went on, knitting his brows: "blokes, most of them, and such old
blokes! I wouldn't trust Beatty to one of them. But I've heard of a new
man at Hereford--awfully good, they say--a wunner! And after all a motor
would soon run him out!"

He went on talking eagerly about the child, her beauty, her cleverness,
the plans Daphne had for her bringing up, and so on. No other child ever
had been, ever could be, so fetching, so "cunning," so lovely, such a
duck! The Frenches, indeed, possessed a boy of two, reputed handsome.
Roger wished to show himself indulgent to anything that might be pleaded
for him. "Dear little fellow!"--of course. But Beatty! Well! it was
surprising, indeed, that he should find himself the father of such a
little miracle; he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. Herbert
French smiled as he walked.

"Of course, I hope there'll be a boy," said Roger, stopping suddenly to
look at Heston Park, half a mile off, emerging from the trees. "Daphne
would like a boy--so should I, and particularly now that we've got the
old house back again."

He stood and surveyed it. French noticed in the growing manliness of his
face and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of those
ghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled society
tend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnes
family was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's great
temporary success in politics and business had given it a passing
splendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which had
finally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to think
much about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proud
of the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Since
the fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; and
Roger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sorting
family letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname before
long--perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heir
who was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected.

"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, but
many!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wanted
nowadays."

Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of county
business and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himself
to a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman was
beginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurdities
of the type were already there, indeed, _in posse_. How persistent was
the type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem to
swerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation of
circumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happily
between the shafts.

"If only the wife plays up!" thought French.

The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in both
minds.

"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round," said
Roger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with a
sudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of state
the Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have spared
her call--don't you?"

French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as he
was concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone of
the questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Roger
had come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, after
the "jilting." French had tried to help him, only to find that he was no
more a match for the lady than the rest of the world.

As to the call and the invitation, he agreed heartily that a person of
delicacy would have omitted them. The Fairmile marriage, it was
generally rumoured, had broken down hopelessly.

"Faults on both sides, of course. Fairmile is and always was an
unscrupulous beggar! He left Eton just as you came, but I remember him
well."

Roger began a sentence to the effect that if Fairmile had no scruples of
his own, Chloe would scarcely have taught him any; but he checked
himself abruptly in the middle, and the two men passed to other topics.
French began to talk of East London, and the parish he was to have
there. Roger, indifferent at first, did not remain so. He did not
profess, indeed, any enthusiasm of humanity; but French found in him new
curiosities. That children should starve, and slave, and suffer--_that_
moved him. He was, at any rate, for hanging the parents.

* * * * *

The day of the Upcott visit came, and, in spite of all recalcitrance,
Roger was made to mount the motor beside his wife. Lady Barnes had
entirely refused to go, and Mr. and Mrs. French had departed that
morning for Eton.

As the thing was inevitable, Roger's male philosophy came to his aid.
Better laugh and have done with it. So that, as he and Daphne sped along
the autumn lanes, he talked about anything and everything. He expressed,
for instance, his friendly admiration for Elsie French.

"She's just the wife for old Herbert--and, by George, she's in love with
him!"

"A great deal too much in love with him!" said Daphne, sharply. The day
was chilly, with a strong east wind blowing, and Daphne's small figure
and face were enveloped in a marvellous wrap, compounded in equal
proportions of Russian sables and white cloth. It had not long arrived
from Woerth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probable
cost. Daphne's "simplicity," the pose of her girlhood, was in fact
breaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct had
gained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The results
often made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easily
intimidated--by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took up
the cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, if it pleased
her? Old Herbert was worth it.

Women, said Daphne, should never put themselves wholly in a man's power.
Moreover, wifely adoration was particularly bad for clergymen, who were
far too much inclined already to give themselves airs.

"I say! Herbert never gives himself airs!"

"They both did--to me. They have quite different ways from us, and they
make one feel it. They have family prayers--we don't. They have ascetic
ideas about bringing up children--I haven't. Elsie would think it
self-indulgent and abominable to stay in bed to breakfast--I don't. The
fact is, all her interests and ideals are quite different from mine, and
I am rather tired of being made to feel inferior."

"Daphne! what rubbish! I'm certain Elsie French never had such an idea
in her head. She's awfully soft and nice; I never saw a bit of conceit
in her."

"She's soft outside and steel inside. Well, never mind! we don't get on.
She's the old America, I'm the new," said Daphne, half frowning, half
laughing; "and I'm as good as she."

"You're a very good-looking woman, anyway," said Roger, admiring the
vision of her among the warm browns and shining whites of her wrap.
"Much better-looking than when I married you." He slipped an arm under
the cloak and gave her small waist a squeeze.

Daphne turned her eyes upon him. In their black depths his touch had
roused a passion which was by no means all tenderness. There was in it
something threatening, something intensely and inordinately possessive.
"That means that you didn't think me good-looking at all, as compared
with--Chloe?" she said insistently.

"Really, Daphne!"--Roger withdrew his arm with a rather angry
laugh--"the way you twist what one says! I declare I won't make you any
more pretty speeches for an age."

Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the
smile--melting, provocative, intent--which is the natural weapon of such
a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side,
and Roger was soon appeased.

* * * * *

The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the
first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.

They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The
Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married
_en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality,
by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a
sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought
himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had
left her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was now
nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largely
made, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in a
kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist;
and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.

As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had an
intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great
people of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amused
curiosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer,
crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores of
life--like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings.

An American heiress, half Spanish--South-American Spanish--with no doubt
a dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimited
money, and absurd pretensions--so Chloe said--in the matter of art; a
mixture of the pedant and the _parvenue_; where on earth had young
Barnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt--so Lelius
guessed--that the Duchess's thoughts were running.

Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. The
Duchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her own
recollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes was
pleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question,
"And how do you like England?"

Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, the
colour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them,
that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of the
large room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius.

The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Only
moderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for once
taken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs.
Barnes."

"You see, my expectations were so high."

"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?"
inquired the Duchess, amused.

"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate," replied Daphne,
laughing.

Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not to
be overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the
German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs.
Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than
Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess
thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.

Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger
had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly
through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back
for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile
was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in
the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly
advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch
them, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told of
this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her
blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying
through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to
the Duchess.

* * * * *

At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which
the room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus de
portes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to
Beaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ at
Versailles.

Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no
special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand,
inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant
of one--she named it--at Berlin.

"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how
clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an
unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."

And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left
Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of
a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived
among them from her childhood--these things had long since given Chloe
Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her,
consumed with angry envy, the _precieuse_ in her resenting the easy
mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange
beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held
Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.

She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at
the slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, in
fact, send an opportunity.

After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to the
Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as
she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of
people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to the
Duchess.

The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called?
Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House--buying
up their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wished
to show me something. Shall we have him in?"

"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousand
pounds for the blue Nattier," said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to the
picture.

The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair,
swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, and
greeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. He
sat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. and Mrs.
Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputation
perfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she well
remembered having given him an important commission not more than a year
before her marriage.

As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to the
business. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had brought
into the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a small
but marvellous piece of Sevres.

"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess's
chimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me--oh! ten years ago--and again last
year--to find you the pair of that. Now--you have it!"

He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked at
it with greed--the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head.

"Marcus, I have no money."

"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.

"And I know you want a brigand's price for it."

"Oh, nothing--nothing at all."

The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round.

"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up.

He laughed, and would not reply.

"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me,
with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money on
Sevres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got a
consumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hung
for marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, I
can't, Marcus; I can't--I'm too poor." But her eyes caressed the shining
thing.

Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has _really_ made up her mind, Mr.
Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"

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