Marriage a la mode

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

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Marcus started on his chair. "_Pardon, Madame!_" he said, turning
hastily to look at the slender lady in white, of whom he had as yet
taken no notice.

"We have the motor. We can take it with us," said Daphne, stretching out
her hand for it triumphantly.

"Madame," said Marcus, in some agitation, "I have not the honour. The
price----"

"The price doesn't matter," said Daphne, smiling. "You know me quite
well, Mr. Marcus. Do you remember selling a Louis Seize cabinet to Miss
Floyd?"

"Ah!" The dealer was on his feet in a moment, saluting, excusing
himself. Daphne heard him with graciousness. She was now the centre of
the situation: she had asserted herself, and her money. Marcus outdid
himself in homage. Lelius in the background looked on, a sarcastic smile
hidden by his fair moustache. Mrs. Fairmile, too, smiled; Roger had
grown rather hot; and the Duchess was frankly annoyed.

"I surrender it to _force majeure_," she said, as Daphne took it from
her. "Why are we not all Americans?"

And then, leaning back in her chair, she would talk no more. The
pleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end.

* * * * *

But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs. Fairmile had again
found means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into the
garden. Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging the
leather case, had, all the same, to look on.

When they were once more alone together, speeding through the bright
sunset air, each found the other on edge.

"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested. "It
wasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house?"

Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons in
deportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what was
the meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs. Fairmile. Whereupon
Roger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any account
of himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which only
just stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insulting
things which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could not
as yet bring herself to say them.

An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening. But in the
dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of her
husband beside her on the pillow. He lay peacefully sleeping, the noble
outline of brow and features still nobler in the dim light which effaced
all the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her that
mingled passion of the jealous woman, which is half love, half hate, of
which she had felt the first stirrings in her early jealousy of Elsie
Maddison. It was the clutch of something racial and inherited--a
something which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before on
one or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of Chloe
Fairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfection
of her appeal to men, men like Roger.

[Illustration: "In the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at
the face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow."]

She must wring from him--she must and would--a much fuller history of
his engagement. And of those conversations in the garden, too. It stung
her to recollect that, after all, he had given her no account of them.
She had been sure they had not been ordinary conversations!--Mrs.
Fairmile was not the person to waste her time in chit-chat.

A gust of violence swept through her. She had given Roger
everything--money, ease, amusement. Where would he have been without
her? And his mother, too?--tiresome, obstructive woman! For the first
time that veil of the unspoken, that mist of loving illusion which
preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her
marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had
settled upon Roger--on his tendencies to extravagance--his
happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for
her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his
previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The
heat and corrosion of this idea spread through her being, and the will
made no fight against it.

CHAPTER VII

"You're off to the meet?"

"I am. Look at the day!"

Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window of
the Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess.

A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe's
face--the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strange
withering--had caught a freshness from the morning.

The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody.

"You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell me
what I shall do with this invitation."

"From Lady Warton? May I look?"

Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand.

"What were her governesses about?" said the Duchess, pointing to it.
"_Really_--the education of our class! Read it!"

... "Can I persuade you to come--and bring Mrs. Fairmile--next
Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at
the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable
little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must--a
Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!--and people as rich as they
are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes
herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked
particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much
money--but Warton says it isn't their fault--it's Protection, or
something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to
trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his
tapestries--you know, those we're so proud of--that they were bad
Flemish copies of something or other--a set belonging to a horrid
friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the
people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now
ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had
them restored--et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her
millions--and her brains--too much. We're paupers, but we're not
worms. Then there's the Archdeacon--why should she fall foul of
him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She
told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their
husbands or wives longer than it pleased them--and that in America
nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of
her;--though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. is likely to
give him trouble--do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us
all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she
shouldn't even want to be liked!--a young woman in a strange
neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares
she's already tired of Roger--and she's certainly not nice to him.
What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, _do_ come, and help
us through."

"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed
back the letter.

"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for _you_
to ask, my dear," said the Duchess quietly.

Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.

"Me?"

The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a
chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.

"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "I
can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try."

She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it
again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners,
became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The
Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement
announced that morning in the _Times_.

* * * * *

Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom--she was an
excellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her
friends' servants--through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for
the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly
pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.

If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old _fiancee_,
whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually
together? Dinners at Upcott!--invitations to Heston!--a resolute
frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it
with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,--Chloe admitted it. It had been
the wife's doing--all of it. There had been even--rare occurrences--two
or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had
made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her
diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was
plain. "She wishes to keep us under observation--to give us
opportunities--and then torment her husband. Very well then!--_tu l'as
voulu, Madame!_"

As to the "opportunities," Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she
had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the
neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it
seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be
discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked
Roger's former _fiancee_ from the beginning; the money to envy, and the
arrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?

As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men?
Anyway, a man can always--nearly always--keep a corner for the old love,
if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; "though he is a
model husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a fool
could manage him."

* * * * *

It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm
October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet
resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully
green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse
was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which
Chloe passed, a few primroses--frail, unseasonable blooms--pushed their
pale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot;
the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her light
frame to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that every
here and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the high
ground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a train
passing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an old
windmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among their
hedges and uplands: a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth,
and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:--all the English
familiar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Life
was so good--every minute, every ounce of it!--from the Duchess's _chef_
to these ethereal splendours of autumn--from the warm bath, the
luxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to these
artistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from side
to side, reminded now of Turner, now of DeWint, revelling in the
complexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it had
never been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to an
understanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be no
divorce--and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rose
before her that was not the face of her husband, and she
smiled--indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned to
town. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tom
was going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible--probable
even--that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was a
long way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a fresh
horse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together over
the fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined there
were the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give this
particular meet a wide berth.

Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance--and his weakness--were both so
amusing. She thought of the skill--the peremptory smiling skill--with
which she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the young
couple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words at
the back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess were
skirmishing--

"I _must_ speak to you. Something that concerns another
person--something urgent."

Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance on the man's part--the
handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden,
the short colloquy between them--"Of course, I see--you haven't forgiven
me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else--it's a duty." Then
abruptly--"You still have three of my letters."

Amusing again--his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always
was the most unmethodical and unbusiness-like of mortals--poor Roger!
She heard her own voice in reply. "Oh yes, you have. I don't make
mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told
you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?"

A stare--an astonished admission. Precisely!

"Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She
has always confided in me--she trusts me, and I can't have that letter
wandering about the world."

"I certainly sent it back!"

"No--you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how
careless you are--how you leave things about. I was always on
tenterhooks. Look again, _please_! You must have some idea where they
might be."

Perplexity--annoyance!

"When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down
here. We reserved a room--which was locked up."

"_A la bonne heure!_ Of course--there they are."

But all the same--great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he
would be able to find anything--most unlikely there was anything to
find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the
fine hazel eyes--like a horse putting back its ears.

All of no avail--against the laughing persistence which insisted on the
letters. "But I must have them--I really must! It is a horrid tragedy,
and I told you everything--things I had no business to tell you at all."

On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked
determination to go back to the drawing-room....

But it was the second _tete-a-tete_ that was really adroit! After
tea--just a touch on the arm--while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers
to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. "One moment more!--in
the conservatory. I have a few things to add." And in that second little
interview--about nothing, in truth--a mere piece of audacity--the lion's
claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first
and foremost; to realize that she was not afraid of him--not one
bit!--and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few
years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little
pedant--ill-bred besides--and he knew it.

As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be
civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known
as "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational;
and conversation--between old friends and cousins--is beguiling, and may
be lengthy.

The ball at Brendon House--Chloe still felt the triumph of it in her
veins--still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look of
lazy pleasure, and the disapproval--or was it the envy?--in the eyes of
certain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication between
Heston and Upcott.

* * * * *

Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struck
into a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate.
Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a main
road. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway,
and she could hear the occasional rush of a train.

When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a labourer
opened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, she
perceived a man's figure in front of her.

"Roger!"

A touch of the whip--her horse sprang forward. The man in front looked
back startled; but she was already beside him.

"You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!"

Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted her
coldly: "It is a long way for you to come," he said formally. "Twelve
miles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?"

"Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses--to remind
myself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, I
know. Life's gone on for you!"

Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. "It goes on for all of
us," he said gruffly.

"Ah, well!" She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind had
slightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of great
animation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body in
the close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair under
the small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins--all
these various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with them
the fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memory
of a harassing and irritating present.

"Is Heston getting on?" asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling.

He frowned involuntarily.

"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, belied
the words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get
him out."

"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly.

Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before
him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind,
asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already
somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature--a slight
coarsening of form--she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!--had he
been living too well and idling too flagrantly on these American
dollars?

Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm.

"Hadn't it?" she said, in a low voice.

He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off.

"What--the house?" was the ungracious reply. "I'm sure I don't know; I
never thought about it--whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited
us, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it."

Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand.

"Of course a great deal of it was ugly," she said composedly. "Dear Lady
Barnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it--_we_
made it!"

She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash of
expression. He turned and faced her.

"I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite so
pleasant."

She laughed a little--not flinching at all--her face rosy to his
challenge.

"Oh, yes, they are--or should be. What's the use of blackening the past
because it couldn't be the present. My dear Roger, if I hadn't--well,
let's talk plainly!--if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you be
now? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be taking
boarders--or--no!--a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. You
would be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day,
and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through the _Exchange and
Mart_. Whereas--whereas----"

She bent forward again.

"You are a very rich man--you have a charming wife--a dear little
girl--you can get into Parliament--travel, speculate, race, anything you
please. And I did it all!"

"I don't agree with you," he said drily. She laughed again.

"Well, we can't argue it--can we? I only wanted to point out to you the
plain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent our
being excellent friends again--_now_. But first--and once more--_my
letters!_"

Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded.

"I found two of them last night, by the merest chance--in an old
dispatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the way
here."

"Good! But there were three."

"I know--so you said. I could only find two."

"Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?"

He answered unwillingly.

"No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it."

She shook her head with decision.

"You certainly have it. Please look again."

He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been
returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no
one.

Some snaring, entangling instinct--an instinct of the hunter--made her
persist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. "Poor Theresa is so
unhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can't
run the risk!"

With a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again.
Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened.

She praised--she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped into
ordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council--the points of
the great horse he rode--the gossip of the neighbourhood--the charms of
Beatty.

And on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud--of
awkwardness, or of something else not to be analyzed--broke away, and he
began to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even with
eagerness.

Was it right to be so very strict with children?--babies under three?
Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why,
every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite right
too--doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer----

"Who is Miss Farmer?" inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding close
beside him--an embodied friendliness--a soft and womanly Chloe, very
different from the old.

"She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady--by way of--she
doesn't do any rough work--and I dare say she's the newest thing out.
But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!--what do you think of
this! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday,
because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that _devilish_!" He brought his
hand down fiercely on his thigh.

"A Gorgon!" said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. "Any other
qualifications? French? German?"

"Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe."
Roger looked vaguely round him. "Her father managed a brick-field on
this estate--some parson or other recommended her to mother."

"And you don't like her?"

"Well, no--I don't! She's not the kind of woman _I_ want." He blurted it
out, adding hurriedly, "But my wife thinks a lot of her."

Chloe dismissed the topic of the nurse, but still let him run on about
the child. Amazing!--this development of paternity in the careless,
handsome youth of three years before. She was amused and bored by it.
But her permission of it had thawed him--that she saw.

Presently, from the child she led him on to common acquaintance--old
friends--and talk flowed fast. She made him laugh; and the furrows in
the young brow disappeared. Now as always they understood each other at
a word; there was between them the freemasonry of persons sprung from
the same world and the same tradition; his daily talk with Daphne had
never this easy, slipping pleasure. Meanwhile the horses sauntered on,
unconsciously held back; and the magical autumn wood, its lights and
lines and odours, played upon their senses.

At last Roger with a start perceived a gate in front. He looked at his
watch, and she saw him redden.

"We shall be late for the meet."

His eyes avoided hers. He gathered up the reins, evidently conscious.

Smiling, she let him open the gate for her, and then as they passed into
the road, shadowed with over-arching trees, she reined in Whitefoot, and
bending forward, held out her hand. "Good-bye!"

"You're not coming?"

"I think I've had enough. I'll go home. Good-bye."

It was a relief. In both minds had risen the image of their
arrival together--amid the crowd of the meet. As he looked at
her--gratefully--the grace of her movement, the temptation of her eyes,
the rush of old memories suddenly turned his head. He gripped her hand
hard for a minute, staring at her.

The road in front of them was quite empty. But fifty yards behind them
was a small red-brick house buried in trees. As they still paused, hand
in hand, in front of the gate into the wood, which had failed to swing
back and remained half open, the garden door of this house unclosed and
a young woman in a kind of uniform stepped into the road. She perceived
the two riders--stopped in astonishment--observed them unseen, and
walked quickly away in the direction of the station.

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