XV
Mrs. Bode had come that afternoon to Bosquith with the well-defined intention of receiving an invitation to return and spend a week. Mrs. Winstone, who was about to be deserted by Mrs. Macmanus, and was growing more bored daily, now that the novelty of playing hostess for the Duke of Kingsborough was wearing thin, and meditated a round of visits to more amusing houses at no distant date, was delighted at the advent of the vivacious American and needed no subtle arts of suggestion to invite her for the following Monday. The children were included in the invitation, but Emily begged to be permitted to visit a school friend at present in London, and Mrs. Bode returned with the enamoured Dan.
She had been astounded, then amused at his plan to abduct young Mrs. France, but found herself forced to appeal to his reason. He had stormed about the hotel sitting-room, calling her names for the first time in his life: “snob,” “coward,” “heartless woman,” “no sister.” Mrs. Bode, whose good-nature was one of her assets, and immune to unspoken insults long since, refused to be offended, wisely repressed her desire to laugh, pretended sympathy, did not once allude to the fact that he was merely fifteen, and talked to him as a wise woman ever talks to a man whose common sense is for the moment in abeyance.
“Come back and get her when you are twenty-one,” she advised. “By that time you will be a full partner in the business, and father can’t balk you. You know how romantic he is! And you also know his old-fashioned prejudice against divorce, his Puritanical morals generally. A nice figure we should both cut in his eyes if we returned with the runaway wife of an Englishman who hadn’t given her the ghost of an excuse. I happen to know France is mad about her. I also know she hasn’t a cent of her own, and she looks as proud as they make ’em. Do you fancy she’d live on our charity for six years? Not she. Even if she were mad enough to come, she’d go to work —”
“Work? My wife work? She work?”
“There you are!” And, as a matter of fact, this argument clinched the matter. The moment he was alone with Julia after his arrival at Bosquith he informed her that within twenty-four hours after he was made a partner in the firm, and his own master, he should start for England—should use the ten thousand for that purpose instead of going on a spree. He should take her at once to the quickest place in America for divorce, and then marry her. Julia was much too feminine to laugh, vowed never to forget him, and during his stay at the castle devoted herself to his entertainment. He showed no disposition to be sentimental, and as it was a novel experience, and he was always bright and amusing, besides telling her much of his strange continent, she enjoyed herself thoroughly.
Young Tay, aside from his natural jealousy, took an immediate and profound dislike to France, a sensation inspired in most moderately decent men by that reprobate, even when he was on his good behavior. Dan went so far as to avoid his vicinity lest he punch him. As for France, he was little more than aware of the youth’s presence in the castle, and thought Julia damned good-natured to talk to him. That they spent their days riding over the moors, or along the cliffs, or sitting in the various romantic nooks of garden and ruin, he had, of course, no suspicion, or he might have concluded that his wife carried her notions of hospitality a bit too far.
When young Tay left, Julia kissed him good-by, gave him a lock of her hair, intimated that six years would seem an eternity, promised to write once a week, then cruelly forgot him, save when his postcards arrived.
At first they came in a shower, then straggled along for a year, finally ceased after an apologetic one from college. Julia answered a few of them, but boys of fifteen, no matter how clever and companionable, cannot hope to make a very deep impression on nineteen; and Julia had much to drive him from her mind, in any case. She rarely saw Mrs. Bode during that lady’s frequent visits to London, and, had she thought about the matter at all, would have ticketed Tay as one of the few amusing episodes in her life, and assumed that he had gone out of it forever. A young wife, revolting in profound distaste from her husband, and at the same time high-minded and fastidious, is the most unimpressionable of human beings. All men are alike hateful to her.
XVI
In December and January two historical events caused an excitement into which Julia threw herself so whole-heartedly that for a time she managed to forget her personal life; taking pains to become intimate with every detail, she was obligingly conversed with by some of the important older men at Bosquith, and pronounced by the younger to be “waking up.”
On December 17 the President of the United States, Mr. Cleveland, sent his famous message to Congress concerning the long-standing dispute between England and Venezuela as to the boundaries between that state and British Guiana. The United States had proposed arbitration; Lord Salisbury would have none of it, intimating that England knew what belonged to her without being told. Whereupon Mr. Cleveland hurled his bomb: Congress, after being reminded of the Monroe Doctrine (which accumulates mould from long intervals of disuse), was requested to authorize the President to appoint a boundary commission whose findings would be “imposed upon Great Britain by all the resources of the United States.”
There was a financial panic (in which, incidentally, Mr. Jones lost a great deal of money), the newspapers thundered, Mr. Cleveland, at Bosquith, as elsewhere, was called an “ignorant firebrand,” and “no doubt a well-meaning bourgeois,” everybody tried to understand the Monroe Doctrine that they might despise it, and for nearly a week war between the two countries seemed imminent.
Mr. Cleveland went fishing and was unapproachable until the excitement had subsided. Lord Salisbury consented to the Boundary Commission, with modifications; and the whole matter was forgotten on New Year’s Day in a far more picturesque sensation, and one productive of far graver results: England was electrified with news of the Jameson Raid. Over this episode feeling for and against the impulsive doctor ran so high, before all the facts came to light, that more than one house-party was threatened with disruption; although in the main it was the young people with warm adventurous blood that sympathized, and alarmed older heads that condemned. “Little Englanders,” “Imperialists,” exploded like bombs at every table, even after a hard day with guns or hounds. But although the excitement lasted all through the hunting season (with which it did not interfere in the least), the chief advantage derived from it by Julia was a romantic interest in a new and mighty personality. For long after she kept a scrap book about Cecil Rhodes, followed his testimony before the special committee in Westminster with breathless interest, trying to find it as picturesque as Macaulay’s “Trial of Warren Hastings,” which she read at the time; and, until life became too personal, consoled herself with the belief that he was the man heaven had made for her. This fact would not be worth mentioning save that half the women in England were cherishing the same belief. These liaisons in the air have cheated the divorce court and saved the hearthstone far oftener than man has the least idea of.
The duke returned to London two days before the opening of Parliament, and took his household with him. France, now quite restored to health, bitterly resented leaving the country before the hunting was over, and Julia, who felt her happiest and freest when on a horse, and had proved herself a fine cross-country rider, had no desire to be shut up in a gloomy London house during what for England was still midwinter. But France dared not sulk aloud, and Julia was doing her best to be philosophical. Besides, she was to have a purely feminine compensation.
Mrs. Winstone, accepting the invitation of Mrs. Macmanus, had gone to the Riviera to remain until mid-April, but before she left she had given France several hints on the subject of his wife’s wardrobe for the coming season. In consequence, on the morning after their arrival in London, he entered his wife’s room at seven o’clock, attired for his morning ride, awakened her, and handed over a check for fifty pounds.
“Your aunt says that some of your fine clothes are not worn out and can be remodelled, but that you must have others and hats and all that rot. Women’s things cost too much, anyhow. They ought to make their own things. I’ve seen women do it. You must manage with this now, and as much more six months hence. It’s a bally lot, but you’ve got to have some sort of finery for our ball on the fifteenth. Don’t pay anybody till the last minute. They’re such silly asses it does me good to wring ’em dry. Besides, what are they made for? By and by when you know more about money, you can send me the bills for the same amount. But afraid to trust you now. Know women. By-by.”
He kissed her casually (not being in a mood for love-making) and Julia sat up and blinked at the check, the first she had ever held in her hand; Mrs. Winstone having had charge of her mother’s little wedding present, and the larger sum placed at her disposal by the duke.
She now knew something of the value of money. She also knew that her husband’s income, between his annuity, the rent of his place in Hertfordshire, and the duke’s allowance, was quite two thousand pounds a year. This would have gone a short distance if he had been obliged to set up in London for himself, but, living with the duke, his only expenses were his club dues, his valet, and his clothes, which he didn’t pay for. She had expected no less than two hundred pounds, and wondered at his meanness. There could be no other reason for the smallness of the check: there was no question of his fidelity to her, he pretended to despise cards (Julia already guessed that men would not play with him), and he did not even have to pay for the keep of his horse, as the duke’s mews were at his disposal.
Julia thought upon Mrs. Bode’s immense allowance with a frown, and wished she were an American, sent a fleeting thought to the still faithful Dan, and wondered if he would really come for her one of these long days.
To be sure Ishbel had spent quantities of money, but only to gratify an upstart millionnaire; and although Julia had now met many women with bewildering wardrobes, she knew that they were paid for in divers ways, when paid for at all. Still, she doubted if any of them had a husband as mean as hers, for most men, no matter how selfish, have a certain pride in their wives, and, in the absence of settlements, make them a decent allowance. And she, a future duchess of England, to get along on a hundred pounds a year!
“I should be paid high for living with him,” she thought as she rang for her tea; and had not the least idea that she was voicing the sentiments of thousands of wives, from the topmost branch of the peerage down to the mates of laborers that slaved to make both ends meet and had less to spend than a housemaid; whose rewards for work were her own.
But Julia was not troubling her young head with problems sociological and economic at this time. She knew that she had missed happiness, but she craved enjoyment, pleasure, excitement, and, if the truth must be told, unlimited sweets. The duke disapproved of anything but the heavy puddings of his race, varied only by “tarts” drenched with cream; and Julia had discovered an American “candy store,” and her sweet tooth ached.
As soon as she was dressed, she sought Ishbel and held a consultation with her in the little boudoir above the shop.
Ishbel could not suppress an exclamation at the amount of the check.
“Surely the duke—” she began.
But Julia shook her head. “Aunt Maria said he could not be expected to do more, as we live with him, and he gives Harold a thousand a year. But I know she expected me to have far more than this. She told me she had had a very satisfactory talk with Harold and was sure he would be generous.”
“Perhaps you can talk him over—”
“I’ll never mention the subject of money to him if I can help it. Why doesn’t the law compel every man to settle a part of his income on his wife? It should be automatic.”
“We are not half civilized yet—all laws having been made by men! But every woman of spirit gets the best of them one way or another, although her character often suffers in the process. That was the obscure reason of my strike for liberty. I see it now. There is nothing for you but to practise the time-honored methods. You have been placed in a great position and you must dress it. Get what you want. Your position assures you credit. Dressmakers are used to waiting, poor dears, and so are shopkeepers. Your husband will be forced to pay the bills in time. You will have to be adamant, impervious to rowing, when the days of reckoning come. Tell him that it is clothes or a flat in West Kensington, where nothing will be expected of you —”
“I hate it!” cried Julia, her eyes blazing, and her hair looking redder than flames. “I hate such a life.”
“Of course you do. So do thousands of other women; but as long as society, with all its abominable demands, exists, and men are unreasonable, just so long will we limp along on credit, and gain our ends by devious methods. Now to be practical. I shall make your hats at cost price, and France will not keep me waiting much longer than most people do. This afternoon I’ll go and look over your wardrobe. I know a splendid little dressmaker—Toner, her name is—who remodels last year’s gowns and brings them up to date. She is the only person you will have to pay at once, for she really is badly off. For your new reception gowns, ball gowns and tailor things, you will have to go to the smartest houses. I shall introduce you, but it is hardly necessary; they will fall down before you —”
“I shall feel like a thief!”
“Of course. You will be one, but only temporarily, and it will be much more disagreeable for you than for them. Your husband is not bankrupt, and must pay your bills. I wonder where you get your squeamishness from—at your age? You belong to our class, and from what you have told me of your life at home —”
“I know! Mother thought I didn’t know it, but I did. Children see everything. But it horrifies and disgusts me. I suppose I must be innately middle class!”
“Dear me, no. You are merely ultra-modern. I wonder what has waked you up before your time—and with no outside influences? Odd. Well, I fancy sensitive brains get messages, are played upon by waves of the intense thought that is in operation all the time, trying to solve the problems of existence. Bridgit was right. I thought it would take longer.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“She’ll explain when she gets hold of you! Oh, thank heaven I am my own mistress, and need never accept a penny from a man again,—and am done with the crooked ways of my sex.”
She looked radiant, and Julia exclaimed: —
“Why, you are more beautiful than ever. You haven’t gone off a bit.”
“Why should I?” asked Ishbel, in amazement.
“Well—I made friends with an American last autumn, and he thought it dreadful for women to work.”
“It is a toss-up which women suffer the greatest injustice from their men, the English or the Americans. At least our oppressions have developed us far ahead of them. They’ve only scratched the surface of their minds as yet—those that are known as the ‘fortunate’ ones. Of course there is a big middle class, scrimping hard to make ends meet, and, no doubt, having quite as much trouble with their men as we do. They will catch up with us far sooner than those walking advertisements of millionnaires, who think they are independent and spoiled, and are only slaves of a new sort. It is well, by the way, that I set up when I did. Jimmy not only lost thousands during the panic, but has developed a mania for speculation. I think it is because he has so much less of society than formerly, and wants excitement.”
“Does he blame you?” asked Julia, going to the point as usual. “Of course people don’t want him without you. I hear he wasn’t asked to a single house party.”
“Yes, he blames me. My conscience hurt me for a time, but I talked it out with Bridgit, and we both came to the same conclusion: during those five years I paid him back with interest. If he can’t take care of himself now, it is his own lookout. I am living to repay him what I borrowed, for he has thrown it at my head more than once, his losses not having improved his temper. That is the reason I am not going out at all this year.”
Julia, twirling her check, stared at her. The immense amount of reading she had done had set her mind in active motion, developing natural powers of reason and analysis. And unconsciously, during the last six months, at least, she had been studying and classifying the many types she had met. She knew that Ishbel, as she uttered her apparently heartless and unfeminine sentiments, should have looked hard, sharp, or, at the best, superintellectualized and businesslike. But never had she looked prettier, more piquant, more feminine. Her liquid brown eyes were full of laughter, her pink lips were as softly curved as those of a child that has never whined, and her rich voice had no edge on it. Charm radiated from her. In a flash of intuition Julia understood.
“It is because you like men—that you don’t change,” she said. “You never will. But how do you reconcile it? You despise them —”
“Oh, dear me, no. I adore them. No charming man’s magnetism is ever lost on me, and I am in love with three at the present moment. That is all, besides my work, that I have time for. Only—I don’t have to marry any of them, and find out all their little absurdities. I idealize them, sentimentalize over them, and that pleasant process would color the grayest of lives.”
“Suppose you should really fall in love?”
“Oh, I am quite safe until thirty, then again until forty; then again I shall have a respite until fifty. Perhaps by that time we shall carry over till sixty. It would be rather jolly. And the certainty of falling in love once in ten years is not only something to look forward to, but ought to satisfy any reasonable woman.”
“I wonder if you are what my American friend called bluffing.”
Ishbel blushed, dimpled, looked the most lovable creature in the world and the most temperamental. But she laughed outright.
“Of course I bluff, my dearest girl. I bluff every moment of my life; I bluffed myself, poor Jimmy, and the world for five years. Now I bluff myself into thinking I am radiantly happy because I am independent, whereas as a matter of fact, I am often tired to death, hate the people I have to be nice to—it is not so vastly different from matrimonial servility and management, except that you are more easily rid of them, and they are always changing. But I stick to this, shall stick to it until I have made enough to invest and give me an independent income; no matter how much I may long to be lazy or frivolous, to dance, to flirt week in and out at house parties—partly because I now enjoy that supreme form of egoism known as self-respect, partly because the spirit of the times, the great world-tides urge me on, partly because, when all is said and done, work fills up your time more satisfactorily than anything else. I had exhausted pleasure, was on the verge of satiety. That would have been hideous. But I purpose to bluff myself one way and another to the end of my days. I am convinced it is the only form of happiness.”
Julia drank all this in. She knew that although Ishbel spoke in her lightest and sweetest tones, she uttered the precise truth, and that she was deliberately being presented with a window out of which she should be expected to look occasionally, instead of remaining smugly within the conventional early Victorian walls of her present destiny. Julia was used to these little lessons in life from her older friends and liked them, but she sighed, nevertheless. She was proud to develop so much more quickly than most young women of her too sheltered type, but on the other hand she longed at times for youth and freedom and an utter indifference to the serious side of life. For the moment she regretted her reading, wished ardently that she could have been a girl in London for two seasons. Being put into training for a duchess at the age of eighteen may gratify the vanity, but, given certain circumstances, it extracts the juices from life.
Ishbel, as if she had received a flash from that highly charged brain, leaned over and kissed her impulsively. “Oh, you poor little duchess!” she exclaimed.
But Julia was shy of demonstrations and asked hastily: —
“How is Bridgit? It is nearly a year since I saw her, and she only sends me a line occasionally like a telegram.”
“Not as happy as she would be if she were earning her bread, but she is rapidly finding her métier. All this last year, inspired in the first place by Nigel’s book, she has been investigating the poor and the poor laws, visiting settlements, hospitals, factories, laundries—you know her energy and thoroughness. The result is that she is close to being a Socialist—of an intelligent sort, of course—pays her bills as soon as they are presented, despises charities, and is convinced that women should become enfranchised and have full control of the poor laws.”
“She must be rather terrifying!”
“She has succeeded in terrifying Geoffrey, and I fancy with no regrets. He is having a tremendous flirtation with Molly Cardiff and is little at home.”
“And Nigel?”
“Still on a Swiss mountain top, writing another book. Of course he is in love with you still, poor dear!”
Julia was not displeased, but replied philosophically: “It’s well he’s not here, for I should want to talk to him, and I never could. Harold is insanely jealous.”
“Oh, that will wear off. They are all like that at first. Englishmen of our class are not provincial, whatever else they may be.”
But as Julia followed her downstairs to try on the newest models in hats, she felt that she had got no cheer out of the last observation. She had a foreboding that Harold would become worse instead of better.
XVII
It was the night of the 15th of March. Invitations had been sent out three weeks since for the great party, which on this date was to inaugurate the reopening of Kingsborough House. The footmen had been put into new livery, but although the reception-rooms on the first floor, long swathed in holland and cobwebs, had been aired, cleaned, and polished, Julia’s tentative suggestion that the heavy carpets, curtains, and furniture of the early Victorian era be replaced with the more enlightened art of to-day was received with a haughty and uncomprehending stare. Julia had not returned to the subject. Banishing her scruples, she threw all her energies and taste into the replenishment of her wardrobe. As Harold had announced in terms as final as the duke’s stare that he would take his wife to no dances, where other men would have the right to embrace her, she had confined her apocryphal expenditures to such gowns and their accessories as would be needed at afternoon and evening receptions, luncheons, and the races. The dinner gowns of her first trousseau, although many of them had been worn at the house parties, were “smartened up” by the invaluable Mrs. Toner, and looked fresh and new.
The maid had been dismissed and Julia stood before the mirror in her large gas-lit bedroom, looking herself over carefully, without and within. She had sent for France, and there must be no weak points in her courage.
The vision in the mirror alone gave her courage (being as natural as a human being can be, she was still a vain little thing), and poised her spirit. After several consultations between herself, Ishbel, and the greatest French dressmaker in London, it had been decided that as this party would be her real introduction to society, and as she was little more than a girl in years, her gown must present a certain effect of simplicity. Therefore was Julia arrayed in white tulle and lace, over clinging liberty satin, and embroidered with crystal as fine as diamond dust. With her tropical white skin and flame-colored hair, this skilful costume gave her a curiously elusive and spritelike appearance. She wore some of the Kingsborough jewels: a diamond tiara, not ridiculously large, and several ropes of pearls. Few eyes can compete with the brilliancy of diamonds, but Julia’s did, assisted by the black brows and lashes which most women preferred to believe were artificial. She was not an imposing figure, for her height was only five feet three and a half in her French slippers, and her figure was still thin, although the bones of her neck and arms were covered; but as France entered the room he thought her quite the loveliest and daintiest creature in England.
“By God!” he cried, his heavy glassy eyes flashing. “You are rippin’! Never saw even you so well turned out.”
He had rushed forward, but Julia waved him back.
“You mustn’t touch me when I’m got up for the public,” she said imperiously. “You always muss my hair, and they will be coming in half an hour. I sent for you not to be admired, but because I have something to say to you.”
“Say?” repeated France, sulkily. His wife’s virginal coldness was one of her profoundest fascinations, but submissive she should be, nevertheless. “What can you have to say?”
“I merely want to tell you the cost of this gown.”
“What do you mean?”
“That it cost a hundred pounds.”
“What—what—”
“Just double the amount you gave me. And the rest of my wardrobe, with which I am to do you and the duke credit this season, has cost twice as much more.”
“What in hell are you talking about?” France tried to thunder, but his breath was so short that he could only splutter. “How dare you —”
“You never pay for your clothes until you have been summonsed a dozen times, why should I?”
“But I have to pay in the end! How dared you? I know how women can get on with a little money. Do you think I don’t know anything about ’em? Extravagant as the devil, all of you, but able to do on half what it costs a man to turn himself out, all the same. What are maids for? Every woman could make her own clothes if she tried. I told you—My God! My God! If my word ain’t law—a hundred pounds!”
He was waving his arms, and Julia moved out of their reach, although she continued to look him in the eyes. His were bloodshot. “I shall have everything I want, or need, so long as I live with you,” said his wife, deliberately. “If you don’t want to pay for my clothes you can put me out. I could earn my living. Ishbel would teach me to trim hats.”
“You—you—”
France sat down, his mouth hanging open. Then with a curious instinctive movement he covered his face with his hand. When he removed it, his face, although still red, was closed and hard, and his eyes shone with a new desire.
“You’ve got a will of your own, young lady.”
“I have!”
“Well, by God, I’ll break it.”
“Try it.” Julia shook out her shimmering train.
“Three hundred pounds in one go!”
“Your income is two thousand a year, and you are practically at no expense.”
“It’s not your place to know what my income is, nor what I do with it.”
“But you see I do.”
France looked down, once more concealing his eyes. It was a part of his plan to show himself to the world as a devoted husband, to accept every invitation, save those for dances, to walk with his wife daily in the park, as soon as the fine weather began; in a word, to efface his past. He inferred that Julia had guessed something of this, and, having the whip hand, meant to use it. To antagonize her would be fatal. He longed to beat her: in fact, he felt a curious thrill at the prospect; but between the duke and the world, his hands, for the present, at least, might as well be pulp. He was amazed and bewildered to find that he had married something more than an exquisite bit of youth—conversation between them was almost unknown; and although it would be amusing to break her, he knew that he must temporize until the duke died. He believed that this happy event must occur before long, as the duke, fancying himself, under new medical advice, stronger than he had ever been, had overtaxed his frail constitution during the shooting season, and complained much of fatigue since his return to town. “By God!” he thought, “I’ll beat her the very day he dies.” And, although subtlety galled his abnormal vanity, he brought out in a fairly amiable tone: —
“Look here, old girl, you mustn’t let me in too deep. Remember I’m not Kingsborough yet. It’s not that I can’t pay these three hundred pounds—although the truth is, I’m economizing to pay off old debts, many of them debts of honor—used to gamble a bit when I was in the navy. So, don’t let me in any deeper, and when the old boy chucks it, you shall have all you can spend.”
“Meanwhile, I wish four hundred a year,” said Julia, inexorably.
“Oh, I say! These things should last you for two years. I know women —”
“You haven’t introduced them to me. If you don’t give me four hundred a year I’ll run into debt for that amount, and you are liable. I was married without being consulted. I don’t love you and never shall, but I submit to your demands, because it is my destiny. I am to be a duchess, and that is the end of it. Meanwhile, I shall get everything out of this tiresome life there is in it. You and my mother forced me into it, and I shall have compensations. I shall be as well dressed as any of the great ladies I am to associate with, many of whom I shall one day outrank. I shall see Ishbel and Bridgit just as often as I choose, and I shall buy all the books I want. I am going to job a brougham —”
“No! Not much!”
“I am going to job a brougham, and if you forbid it, there will be trouble with Kingsborough. From something he said the other day I know he assumes that I have one already. He knows you can afford it. He uses that ark in the mews, and I don’t want it, anyhow. For a long time I thought I never should speak to you on the subject of money again; you hurt me so that time I asked for a few books; but I have thought it out, and the result is this: while I am determined to have what I need without asking you, I think it only fair to warn you. Besides, I should grow nervous waiting for the bills to come in, for row after row.”
“You are damned hard for a young ’un.”
“I am not hard. I have made up my mind. That is all there is to it.”
France’s face convulsed with passion, but once more he controlled himself, although his hands worked.
“If I give you four hundred a year, will you promise to let me in for no more, and to pay for the brougham?”
“I’ll not let you in for more, but you shall pay for the brougham.”
“By God! You look like an arum lily standing there, and you are a little red-headed she-devil! This is the first time any woman has ever got the best of me. I’ve always treated ’em like cats.”
He rushed out of the room, afraid to trust himself further, and Julia, horrified at life, while experiencing a certain zest at having ground her legal master under her heel and watched him squirm, marched out and took her place beside the duke and Lady Arabella Torrence at the head of the grand staircase.
XVIII
Julia’s new French slippers pinched, and her tiara pressed on certain nerves of her head, as the more humble hat pin has been known to do. The procession up the staircase seemed endless. To Julia it looked like a river of jewels; she had ceased to know or care who were the mere women beneath it. Not all of the men were foils. Royalty, the entire cabinet, and the diplomatic corps were present; gorgeous uniforms, sashes, and orders saved many men from being mistaken for waiters.
As the first guests were ascending, Julia had turned to the duke and said sweetly: —
“I have asked Ishbel and Bridgit, and they have promised to come.”
“You have what?” asked the duke, his dull eyes glowing.
“They were my first friends in England, and as I am your hostess, it occurred to me that I had the right to issue a few invitations on my own account. I merely mention it, that you may not be betrayed by surprise when you see them.”
“You have taken a purely feminine advantage—waiting until this moment to tell me—when I can do nothing!” It was long since the duke had felt himself on fire with passion.
“Of course we all take our advantages where we can, and are as deceitful as possible,” said Julia, smiling into his snapping eyes. “Those are primal weapons, and you gave them to us. Here come some terribly important people.”
The duke had been forced to swallow his wrath, and, in a few moments, forgot it in the sudden stream of arrivals. After a time fatigue overcame him and he slipped away, leaving Julia alone with Lady Arabella (yellow and bony in white embossed velvet and rubies). France was making himself agreeable to the dowagers. The interview with his wife had inspired him with a longing to go out and entice some wretch of the streets to a hiding-place, where he could beat her to a jelly, but the gall in his blood did not affect his shrewd cunning brain, which steadily pursued its object. To-night was his first opportunity to be gallant to women, politics and sport having claimed him since his illness; and after a few well-turned compliments, he talked of nothing but the beauty and virtues of his wife. Perhaps the duke was the only human being who really liked him, for, without magnetism or charm of any sort, he left both men and women cold where he did not repel; but to-night he acquitted himself so creditably that several mothers thought upon their loss with regret.
Julia’s mind was beginning to play her strange tricks. Carlyle’s “French Revolution” had been among the books at Bosquith, and its style had so fascinated her that she had read it twice. It so happened that a number of extremely handsome women with white hair honored the Kingsborough ball to-night. Some were young. All were gorgeously bedecked. The intense hard glitter of diamonds dissolved into mist, took on fantastic shapes: graceful powdered heads, glittering with jewels, on the top of pikes, warm pampered bodies blocking the stairs.
It was not so much that Julia’s mind was awakening to the problem of the poor, the menace of the unemployed and the underpaid; in truth, she generally shuddered and turned away when Bridgit and Ishbel discussed the subject; but these spectacular women on the grand staircase of Kingsborough House seemed so ripe! They looked so useless, so languidly magnificent, so overbred, so close to the apotheosis of their destiny, that—again her fancy veered—Julia half expected to see a row of footlights behind them; then a sudden shifting of scenery, and the tumbrel and guillotine. The time came when Julia knew many of them well enough to deal out a greater measure of justice than the outsider that hurls the word “parasite” at every woman fortunate enough to possess what the poor all want—wealth. She learned that many of them worked harder for their political husbands than an army of secretaries, that others rose, during the season, at an hour when they fain would have slept off the fatigue of the day before, in order to get through a mass of correspondence relating to the particular problem, political, social, or economic, they were striving to solve. Many of these women were mothers to their tenantry, watching over the growth and education of every girl and boy born on their estates. Others went daily to settlements, some to districts so abandoned as to be practically hopeless, and requiring a mettle far higher than the mere soldier needs when racing his fellows to battle. Some worked with churches, others with societies, others alone; nearly all were interested in one charity or another, many trying to feel their way through the obvious method of relief to some cause they could grapple with, since the power to legislate was forbidden them. Scarcely one of those women, dressed from Paris, weighted down with jewels old and new, but faced the serious side of life at some hour during the twenty-four; but although Julia came to know this, the impression of the terrible immaturity of civilization, caused by the blind vanity and selfishness of human nature at the outset, and persisted in through the centuries in spite of lessons written in blood, and of the gross unfairness of life, never left her. If she was in the toils of youth at present, and far more interested in herself than in the world and its problems, the mere fact that these blue marsh lights could dance across her mind occasionally, would have satisfied her more advanced friends that when the awakening came it would be sudden and final.
But not to-night. Her visions fled. She looked down into a pair of dark satiric eyes, and her own flashed back a more than courteous welcome. Ishbel had come some time since, and after piloting the delighted Mr. Jones up and down for half an hour (wearing his diamonds and looking the radiant wife), had deposited him between two of the haughty dowagers he loved, and fluttered off with her court. But Bridgit was late. She had demurred at coming at all, being “sick of the game”; but had yielded to Julia’s importunities, partly to “please the child,” partly because her mischievous soul suspected that the invitation did not emanate from headquarters, and delighted in giving the duke “a turn.” She might be well on the road to Socialism, and have come to the end of her capacity for mere pleasure, but she had not lost her sense of humor; and inborn arrogance of class never dies, no matter how amenable the brain to reason, and to a sincere democracy which manifests itself so effectively in manner. Bridgit’s paternal grandfather was a duke with three more quarterings to his credit than Kingsborough’s, ancestral performances known to every student of history, and two strains of royal blood with and without the bend sinister; therefore, did Mrs. Herbert feel that she was doing the old pudding an honor in coming to his musty barrack whether invited or not. And, automatically no doubt, she had attired herself in the fashion of her class, of the women in whose company she was to spend a night once more. She wore a gown of gold colored brocade opening over a round skirt of rose point. Rising out of the coils of her wiry black hair was an all-round crown of diamonds, and on her neck, falling to the soft lace of her corsage, was a chain of diamonds and pear-shaped pearls. With her fine upstanding figure, her towering height, and flashing black eyes, she might make the most compelling figure imaginable at the head of a rebel army singing the Marseillaise, but to-night there was no more stately dame in Kingsborough House.
Julia, somewhat in the fashion of royalty, passed on the people separating them, and grasped Bridgit’s hand, revivified by the sight of a dear and familiar face.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she cried, indifferent to stares and the displeasure of Lady Arabella. “And they must nearly all have come. Do wait for me —”
She stopped short. She had had eyes only for Bridgit. Mechanically they had travelled on to Bridgit’s escort. The man standing with his hand outstretched was Nigel Herbert.
“He got home this afternoon,” said Mrs. Herbert, casually. “I knew you would like to see him, so I brought him on. How do, Lady Arabella? Always loved you in rubies.”
“Huh!” said Lady Arabella. She would have cut this dangerous apostate if she had been equal to the effort; but to freeze that bright powerful gaze, by no means without malice, was beyond her capacity, so she merely sniffed and advised her to seek the duke, who would be as delighted as herself to welcome Mrs. Herbert to Kingsborough House. She was of the many that blundered over sarcasm, and her soul shivered under the sweetness of Bridgit’s acceptance.
Meanwhile Julia was exclaiming to Nigel: —
“Oh, but I am glad to see you! And do go to the blue room and wait for me. It’s downstairs behind the library.”
Nigel’s face had flushed, then turned pale; the first moment of the renewal of their acquaintance had been an awkward one for him. It was with some difficulty that he had been persuaded to come at all. For many reasons he had wished never to meet her again, and had returned to England only because it was necessary to see his book through the press; a melancholy experience with the last having lost him his faith in proof-readers forever.
But when he saw the welcome in those big shining eyes, the happy smile on those young parted lips, he forgot even the subtle changes he had noted in her face, while still unobserved, and he flushed again, his heart beat rapidly. “Does she care?” he thought wildly. “Not now! Not now!—But —”
Julia was staring with almost childish delight at the frank handsome face of her first friend in England. She forgot the romantic hour at Bosquith, forgot that she had sat up all night to contrive an extinguisher for the embarrassing passion of this misguided young man, remembered only that here was a real friend; moreover, one possessing that magnet of sex lacking in Bridgit and Ishbel (such being the cross currents in her still imperfect soul), so congenial that she could have flung her arms about him at the head of the grand staircase of Kingsborough House. She had never met any one she liked half as well.
He caught his breath sharply, whether in relief or disillusion, he did not pretend to guess at this moment.
“I’ll wait for you,” he said, and made way for the next arrivals.
Some ten minutes later Julia turned to Lady Arabella.
“They are beginning to straggle,” she said. “If you don’t mind I won’t stay any longer.”
“I do mind,” severely. “And your place is here, child as you are.”
“I can’t see why. . . . More guests. . . . Who cares about a child? And you are vastly more important.”
“You have acquitted yourself very creditably. . . . Besides, people are curious to see you, and nobody cares for an old thing like me.”
“Half of them are still glowing with the honor of having shaken hands with you—you go out so seldom. . . . Besides, my slippers pinch. I want to put on an old pair.”
“I always wear slippers a size too large and made by a surgical shoemaker, on occasions like this. You must do the same. I should have told you.”
“I’ll order a pair to-morrow, but that doesn’t do me any good now.”
“Very well. Run along.”
XIX
The blue room, furnished by the late duchess, and undisturbed by her loyal son, was of that sickly azure hue once affected by pale blondes. The walls were further ornamented by bits of sentimental tapestry, the chair backs with anti-macassars, stitched and woven by her Grace’s own white hands. There was an entire sofa,—but why harrow the soul of the reader, even as Nigel’s soul should have been harrowed as he sat with closed eyes awaiting Julia? As a matter of fact, he forgot the hideous room at once, and, heroically dismissing Julia from his mind that he might be quite composed when she entered, dwelt with satisfaction upon his interview with his father a few hours earlier. That eminently practical peer had cast him off when he fled from England, leaving a curt note to announce his intention to devote himself to the art of fiction. He might have starved after the fashion of more orthodox bidders for immortality, had it not been for a small personal annuity which enabled him to live comfortably in Switzerland while engrossed in his book. It was during this period, living in a mountain inn, without luxuries, paternal menace and thwarted passion behind him, that Nigel learned the profoundest lesson art teaches: its power to pulverize the common human emotions and desires. Only the true artist, of course, gets the message, is capable of immolation conscious or otherwise, of elevating art above life.
Nigel was a born artist and had in him the makings of a great one. Nevertheless, the discovery that nothing really mattered but his work, that only his characters lived, and personal memories were dim, not only surprised, but deeply mortified him. Being a man, as ready as the next to love, and to fight and die for his country, it alarmed him to discover that he carried within him a possible rival to his manhood, the highest attribute, etc. But he was not long consoling himself. He progressed to rapture over the discovery, ended by being humbly grateful. He was a man all right, that needn’t worry him; he was willing, therefore, to admit that to be an artist was a greater endowment still. And it gave him a sense of independence, of liberty, of superiority, to which the air of the high Alps contributed little or nothing.
Then came the intoxication of success, of that immediate recognition so many have hungered for in vain. Lest his head be turned and his art suffer, he went on a walking trip through Germany, Italy, and France, sleeping in inns and receiving neither letters nor newspapers. Nor did he meet any one he knew. He even avoided Englishmen lest he prove himself unable to resist the temptation to lead the conversation round to his book. Not only was he a sincere artist, but he blindly clung to this new and friendly magician that made the world so agreeably little.
When he returned to his eyrie, full of his new book, he found a letter from his practical papa, forgiving him, since success had attended his dereliction, and enclosing a check. Nigel responded amiably, then flung himself once more at his desk, anxious to learn if the embryonic book contained the same brand of enchantment as the first: the vision of Julia had haunted his lonely footsteps. It did. Julia fled. He forgot his family, himself, his success. Once more he was pure artist, therefore entirely happy.
But he was still young. The second book had now gone from him. Art slept. As he heard the rustle of a train, the hearty welcome, the proud words of his father, deserted his memory, his heart almost stopped. Nevertheless, as he rose to greet Julia his face was expressionless of all but suave languid politeness. He, too, “fell back on technique.” And this easily adjusted armor of the aristocrat is the best of his assets. When a man smiles in the face of death, without bravado, it merely means that he is well bred. His heart may be water.
Nigel was intensely irritated with himself for having been betrayed into something like emotion at the head of the stair, and he spoke with a slight drawl as he shook Julia’s hand.
“Awfully good to see you,” he remarked. “You look rippin’, too. Will you sit here?”
“Let me get this crown off. It weighs tons.” Julia unfastened the Kingsborough diamonds and deposited them irreverently in a chair, then took the one Nigel offered. “I’d have left it upstairs, but I suppose I shall have to walk about later. I do hope I shan’t have to wear it often. Thank heaven, I’m not a duchess yet!”
Nigel knew the pitfalls in that engaging frankness and steeled himself.
“Oh, you’ll like it when the time comes,” he said indifferently. “How’s the duke?”
The duke had always been such a negligible quantity, both physically and socially, that no one felt self-conscious in referring to his demise a trifle earlier than the conventions prescribed. Julia certainly felt no false shame as she replied: —
“Better—rather. He shot, and even rode to hounds now and again. He’s looked a bit off his feed since our return to town, and I know Harold believes he’s not going to live much longer; but that’s because he’s made up his mind that he’s waited long enough. I hope Kingsborough’ll brace up. Of course I came to England prepared to have him die at once, but, somehow, you can’t live in the house with a man and wish him dead—at least, I can’t. Besides, as I said, I’m in no hurry. In fact, I prefer it this way.”
A shadow passed over her face, and Nigel asked with less languor: —
“Why?”
“Oh—I think it a good thing for a man to have a mental occupation, and waiting for dead men’s shoes is an occupation—rather! Ra-ther, as the boys say. I don’t know Harold so awfully well, but I have an idea he would be lost—and quite impossible—if he couldn’t scheme about something. He’s the sort of man that always has a grievance, loves to think himself abused if only because it gives him an excuse to plot and imagine himself getting the better of somebody. Besides—this is more like playing with life. The real thing must be full of responsibilities that don’t mean so much, after all. Now—sometimes—I can fancy I am a girl, masquerading, and I can do all sorts of things I couldn’t do if I were of any importance.”
“And just how much of a girl do you feel?” he asked with bitter emphasis.
It was not possible for Julia to turn any whiter than she was at all times, but her expressive eyes grew so dark that they deepened the whiteness to pallor. For a moment she looked older, and, swiftly as it passed, Nigel detected an expression of fear and horror in the gaze that no longer met his, but looked beyond. He caught both arms of his chair, and held his breath. But in an instant it was as if a hard little hand had rammed memory down into the depths of consciousness and bolted a lid above it. Julia’s eyes flashed back to his, full of mischievous gayety.
“Now don’t indulge in romantic fancies about me,” she said. “If I proclaimed from the housetops that I don’t love my husband, that I was married by my mother, no one would pay the least attention. Everybody knows it and nobody cares. What is done is done. I have a philosophical nature myself. Remember that my horoscope was cast three times. And I have my compensations.”
“What are your compensations?”
“Oh, books, my best friends—you among them!—a certain freedom I find here in London, and mean to have more of, and clothes! clothes! You have no idea what pretty frocks I have. That isn’t all. It’s great fun to get the best of Harold—to give him another grievance! But I do get the best of him—and of the duke, too, occasionally. There’s a curious satisfaction in it —”
“Be careful! You’ll be hard, first thing you know.”
“The harder women are, the happier they are, I fancy. A sort of fine steel armor that you could hide in your hand but that covers you from head to foot. I’ve used my eyes these last two years. That is all that keeps most women from being ground to powder. One can try to keep soft inside, you know.”
“There’s one thing I don’t know—what you are driving at. I can’t make out whether you are changed altogether, or are the same delicious child, or if you are trying to keep your old personality intact, while forced to admit to partnership an ego you have manufactured in self-defence. One moment you look wise, almost hard, the next —”
“I refuse to be stuck on a pin in your psychological cabinet. But I suppose you’ve got us all there. Herbert Spencer says —”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t become a clever woman! Whatever —”
“Why not? Don’t you fancy that would be a compensation?”
“You clever! It would be too awful!”
“You talk like Mr. Jones.”
“Hang Mr. Jones. Ishbel was entirely right; and she is one of the few women on this earth that can be clever, as deep as the pit, and never let a man find it out. But you! You are too straightforward and honest. Not that Ishbel isn’t honest; she’s a brick; but she has a special talent—possibly it lies in her coquetry. You have little or no coquetry. You are in a state of flux at present, and if you decide for the second ego, if you become hard and clever, you never could disguise it. So beware, or you’ll not be able to love and be happy when your time comes.”
“You mean to make some man happy!”
“What is the difference?”
“Oh, lots. I try not to think. I want to remain young as long as I can. But I can’t help observing that men like geese,—what they call feminine women. I suppose you mean that clever women find too many other resources, and therefore are independent of men. Ergo, they don’t make men happy.”
Nigel colored. “Something of that sort.”
“I shouldn’t have thought it of you. Fancy your being just the ordinary male, after all.”
“Let us drop generalities and my humble self. I am thinking of you. We don’t live in a moral world or age. Like all women you will, sooner or later, demand happiness as your right. In other words, you will wake up some day and want love. Then you will have lost the power to charm. You would never be content with a fool, and clever men rarely love clever women—not with their eyes open. You are quite right as you are. Enjoy life. Let its problems alone.”
This impassioned plea for her youth left him almost breathless. For the moment he was not conscious of loving her himself, of pleading for his own future before it was too late. His languid dignity had retired from the field; he felt only that he had arrived in time to avert a tragedy, and so impersonal that his chest lifted slightly. The next moment he was gasping under a douche of cold water.
Julia had thrown her head back and was looking at him with softly shining eyes, her lashes half covering, and filling them with little black lines.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered. “I’ve never told any one. I’m—I’m in love.”
“What!”
“You’ll never breathe it?”
“Who—who—”
“It’s a man I’ve never seen.”
“How can you love a man you’ve never seen? What a baby you are!”
“I didn’t say I loved; I said I was in love. And a man I’ve never seen is the only sort I could go that far with. I hate every man I know, simply because he is a man; and I never want really to meet, even to see, this one. But it’s great fun to be in love with him, to live in an inner world of one’s own.”
“Oh!” Once more Nigel writhed with jealousy.
“And that isn’t all.” Julia’s eyes grew even more burdened with dreams. “When I have to be kissed— At first I just set my teeth— Now I shut my eyes and imagine it’s the other.”
Nigel stood up. His face was white. His hands shook.
“And who, may I ask, is this fortunate person?”
“I don’t think I can tell you that.”
“You shall tell me. I have some rights. I was your first friend, and I loved you myself.”
Julia looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He had used the past tense, but he looked more like the present.
“I never thought I could breathe his name,” she whispered. “But I can tell you. It’s Cecil Rhodes.”
“Rhodes? Upon my word, you have good taste!” Then he burst into irrepressible laughter, and threw himself back in his chair.
“Oh, what a kid you are! What a baby! And I thought you were on the road to become a clever woman.”
Julia smiled mysteriously and picked up her crown. Her voice and eyes were more ingenuous than ever. “I told you, partly because you are my only man friend, the only man I don’t hate, and partly because you would have made love to me yourself in another minute. But if you tell Bridgit or Ishbel —”
“Never!” Once more Nigel laughed until the tears blotted his vision.
“Now I must go out and walk about and try to look like a duchess in a semitransparent shell. Will you give me your arm?”
XX
A week later, Julia, who had gone to bed early, woke up suddenly at midnight. For a moment she lay wondering what had awakened her, used as she was to the long unbroken sleep of youth. She became conscious of a steady rhythmical sound in the next room, quite different from the prosaic music to which she was accustomed. When she realized that it was her husband pacing back and forth, back and forth, like a captured beast of the forest, she trembled for a moment, then invoked her nerve, slipped on a dressing-gown, and opened the door.
The lights were blazing. France, his coat off, his hair on end, was pacing up the room as she entered, and when he reached the wall, he flung his hands against it as if to push it outward. Then he turned and saw his wife. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Go back to bed,” he said thickly. “I don’t want you.”
“What do you want?” Julia walked toward him, fear lost in her curiosity. “What is the matter, Harold? Are you ill? If you are, I must take care of you.”
He stared at her for a moment. There were times when he hated her, others when he was quite mad about her; during the intervals of varying length he did not think about her at all. To-night he suddenly experienced a new sensation. He needed a friend badly, and it was her business to fill any office he chose to impose upon her.
“Look here,” he said. “Would you do me a good turn?”
“Why, of course.”
“And use all the brains you’ve got and hold your tongue?”
“Try me.”
“Think you could fool Kingsborough?”
“Oh, quite easily.”
“Well, it’s this: I’ve got to get away for a time—out of this. I ain’t a child, ain’t used to walkin’ a straight line. Never had so many rules to live by since I was a small boy. Navy was nothin’ to it—and two years! Two years—” He clutched his hair with both hands and shouted: “I’ve got to get away for a bit! Do you hear? Got to get away! Ain’t used —”
“Do you mean that you want to go away and drink?”
France’s jaw fell. He took a step forward.
“What d’you mean? Who’s ever said—”
“No one in particular. But one learns a good deal in two years. Didn’t you used to drink now and again—disappear —”
“What if I did? I’ll wring your neck if you peach —”
“I haven’t the least idea of telling any one. It is the sort of family secret one doesn’t share. Where do you intend to go?”
“I’d hardly thought—it doesn’t matter. How can I fool him? If he found me out, he’d chuck me, cut me down to the last penny, he’s such a damned milksop—and in my shoes, in my shoes! Think for me. My brain’s no good. It’s on fire. Let him find out and it’s all up with you, too, my lady. It’s your business to stand by me. Wonder I didn’t think of that before.”
“You’ll go to Paris to-morrow to consult a heart specialist —”
“I tell you I’ve got to get out of this to-night. If I don’t, the roof’ll be off before breakfast. Do you suppose I can wait for a lot of palaver? I’d have been off before this, but I can’t think of a ghost of an excuse.”
“You can’t find a better than that, and you can go to-night. He knows your heart is weak, or was. I’ll tell him I became terrified and packed you off without delay. Get out your portmanteau, and I’ll look up the trains in Bradshaw.”