A Manifest Destiny Part 6

On her way back to England she stopped in Paris to choose her costumes for the coming season. It was a pleasure to her to try on these beautiful things, which she bought without any thought of the cost of them; but it was a pleasure which she had become accustomed to, and so its keenness was gone. Besides this, she had nothing to look forward to except the London season, and custom had also detracted from the zest of that. She was in the att.i.tude of always looking beyond. Surely, with such a position and such a fortune as she had attained to, there must be something to satisfy the vague longing within her which she called desire for happiness.

It was decided that they were to stay at Kingdon Hall a short time before going up to town, and Bettina had looked forward to the freedom of the country life with a hopefulness which reality disappointed. Here again she thought of Horace, and the possible injustice she had done him forced its way into her consciousness, and so disturbed her with doubts and misgivings that she determined to overcome her reluctance to mention Horace's name to her husband, and ask boldly whether he had actually received the sum of money which she had been promised that he should have. It had become so essential to her to know about this that she determined to use her very first opportunity of asking.

Not ten minutes after she had made this resolution she unexpectedly encountered Lord Hurdly, in crossing a hall. He had been out on horseback, and still wore his riding-clothes. The correct and carefully fitted leggings showed legs that were thin and shapeless.

Beneath them were small feet, on which their owner did not step very firmly. The somewhat showy waistcoat and short coat had an air of displaying themselves and concealing the form beneath them, which was perhaps a high tribute to his tailor's art. His chest looked narrower, his face more wrinkled, his hair thinner, than Bettina had before noticed them to be, and there was a certain loose-jointedness in his figure which, as he moved toward her on his narrow and closely booted feet, gave him the sort of teetering motion of the elderly beau. His face, neutral and cold as ever, showed the signs of age less, yet Bettina felt that it masked the inadequacy of his soul as distinctively as his clothes masked that of his body.

As they came toward each other--this man and this woman, whose marriage was supposed to be a union of two into one--the face of each might, by an eye sensitive to the subtleties of human expression, have been seen to harden slightly. Lord Hurdly took off his hat with an automatic motion which might have prompted the thought that the action arose from his ideal of himself rather than from any a.s.sociation with the woman before him.

"Excuse me for detaining you a moment," said Bettina, "but I want to know whether Horace Spotswood actually received the money which you made over to him at the time of your marriage to me. I have heard that he is leading a very active life, on lines where money will be of great use to him. Naturally I am anxious to be sure of the fact that he has suffered no injury, however indirectly, through me."

She had been able to control both her voice and expression entirely--a fact on which she fervently congratulated herself.

"You may feel quite at ease on that score, I a.s.sure you," Lord Hurdly answered, in his cold, incisive tones. "He received the money, and has probably used it for the furtherance of these ridiculous and sentimental schemes of his. This should give you the gratifying a.s.surance that he has been bettered, and not worsted, by reason of his connection with you."

The tone in which he spoke was galling to Bettina, but she made no answer, though no words which she could have spoken would have conveyed a greater resentment of his speech than did her disdainful silence. She made a motion to move away, but he deliberately placed himself in front of her, saying, in the same hard tone:

"It occurred to me, from time to time while we were abroad, that you were rather eager in gleaning information about the person we have been speaking of, and I want to tell you that what has been evident to me may be evident to others. You may not care how the thing looks, but as I do, perhaps you will be more careful in the future."

His use of the word "eager" in connection with her att.i.tude in this affair gave Bettina swift offence, and this feeling was heightened by the suggestion that she had made herself liable to criticism on such a subject.

"You cannot, I think," she answered, in a tone of proud resentment, "be more careful than I am that I shall act with propriety as your wife. Since there is so little besides the form to be complied with, I see the greater necessity for punctiliousness in observing that.

The rebuke you have just given me is utterly unmerited, and I shall therefore not change my manner of conducting myself in any particular."

"Perhaps you will think better of that decision, and will oblige me by not making yourself conspicuous by holding your breath to listen whenever that person chances to be mentioned. You are not unlikely to hear him alluded to during the coming season, as he has been making a bid for popularity at his new post by taking up the matter of the famine, and," he added with a sneering smile, "relieving it with the money I paid him."

The word cut into Bettina's heart.

"Paid him?" she said, scrutinizing him with a glance before which even his hard eyes faltered. "Paid him for what?"

"Oh, for keeping himself out of my way!"

She felt that she had compelled him to this response, and that he would have liked to put it more brutally. As it was, there lurked a sting in it which provoked her to reply.

"Did he hold the privilege of your proximity at so large a price?"

A smile of quiet irony accompanied the words. As it curved her lips alluringly, Lord Hurdly felt himself touched with the sudden sense of her powerful charm. No one else on earth would have dared to say this to him, or anything remotely comparable with it. There was something very piquant to his jaded palate in the flavor of this audacious speech. Instead of scowling, therefore, he smiled.

"I have heard," he said, amiably, "that America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, and certainly you seem to warrant one in accepting that belief."

Bettina, a good deal relieved at this turn of affairs, took the opportunity that the moment gave her to say, gravely:

"No; I do not consider myself free. I have bound myself, in my marriage to you, and I have no intention or desire to forget the duties which I owe you. But I tell you frankly, Lord Hurdly, that I am not accustomed to either surveillance or tyranny, and I shall not tamely submit to them. In the carrying out of this resolution, at least, you will find that I can be brave."

She looked more than ordinarily beautiful as she stood erect before him and said these words, and he had not gazed so fully into her eyes for a long time. He had almost forgotten their magnetic loveliness.

At sight of them now his pulses beat quicker. A desire for the mastery of this splendid creature returned to him with a force he would not have believed possible.

"Bettina," he said, in a voice which showed an emotion most unusual to him, "have you ever known what it was to love, I wonder?"

"Once--once only," she answered, a quaver in her voice and a sudden suffusion of tears in her eyes. "I loved my mother. No one that ever lived could have loved more truly and more ardently than I loved her; but there it began and ended. I never deceived you as to that. I promised you duty and good faith, and I have not failed in these. I never shall so fail. But love, no! I haven't it to give."

She made a movement to go forward, and he stood aside and let her pa.s.s him. She avoided meeting his gaze, and perhaps it was well that she did. For slowly its expression changed. A look of hardness that was almost significant of dislike came into his eyes and compressed his lips. From the day of their marriage this woman had thwarted and baffled him. He had tried to get the mastery of her, but he had failed, and the sense of that failure angered him. He had been used to dominating every one with whom he came into any sort of close contact. He had married this American girl with the determination to dominate her, and he had found himself as powerless as if she had been a mist maiden. There was no way in which he could lay hold upon her.

Concerning Bettina's att.i.tude toward him he had a theory. He believed that she had really loved Horace. She was too absolutely in the shadow of the sorrow of her mother's death to give full play to any other feeling, but he had always felt, in every effort that he had made to win her, that it was the image of Horace Spotswood in her mind which put him in total eclipse. This theory time had deepened.

His suspicious watchfulness over her every word and look had made him aware that she listened with interest when Horace's name was mentioned, and his imagination heightened the effect of her interest, and caused him to conjecture as to what she might have heard and felt at such times as he was not by. Moreover, a certain secret consciousness in his own soul stimulated him in his suspicions.

CHAPTER VIII

During the early weeks of their marriage Lord Hurdly, while changing his att.i.tude from the solicitude of the pursuer to the masterfulness of the possessor, had certainly made some effort to win Bettina, while she, on her part, had tried to oblige him by responding to his professions for her. Both were aware that this effort had been made on both sides, and that it had quite failed. By the time the honey-moon was over, Lord Hurdly had, to all appearance, ceased to care. The consciousness of this was an immense relief to Bettina, and she had felt ever since that in doing him credit in the eyes of the world she would satisfy his first object in having her for a wife. In this she had not failed. There was a distinct estrangement between them, but it had never been necessary to define it. Whatever disagreements there had been, only themselves were aware of. Lord Hurdly would have felt his authority over her incomplete indeed if he had ever had to a.s.sert it in public.

As for Bettina, a singular change of feeling was going on within her.

She had made her test of the world, and found that she had overrated its power to please. It was almost appalling to reflect that there was no more for her to do than to repeat what she had already done.

Another London season, another autumn in receiving and making visits, another winter abroad. What then? Was there nothing but material pleasure for her in the world? She wanted something more, something different from all this.

One morning she went out into the park, where spring was just beginning to put forth its greenery. Leaping footsteps sounded behind her. It was Comrade, bounding to her side and nestling up against her. She put her arm around his neck and drew him close. He responded with an affectionateness that was almost human.

Almost human! At this thought she began to ask herself how much human affection there was for her in the world. As much, no doubt, she told herself, as she had to bestow. But why was this?

The birds were going wild with song in the branches above her head.

The gra.s.s, the trees, the clouds, the sky, seemed all to have been made to be part of a world for love to dwell in. A great hunger possessed her--a hunger not to be loved, but to love. For the first time she found herself longing for this boon, entirely apart from any idea of her mother. Oh, to have some one with a human, comprehending, ardent heart, to put her arms around as she was now clasping Comrade--some one to whom to offer up the wealth of love which she had once thought she could never give except to her dear mother; some one who might make that mother's words come true, that a love far greater than any she had known might be in store for her; some one, handsome, charming, ardent, loving, sympathetic, kind; some one to be friend and brother and lover all in one; above all, some one with thoughts and feelings akin to her own--some one impulsive and natural--some one young!

When at last she said good-bye to Comrade and returned to her rooms, she felt in some strange way that a new era had dawned for her. But a mood like this was new in her experience, and she fought resolutely against its recurrence. As an aid to this end she threw herself more eagerly into the external interests which were so great in such a position as hers, and became more noted for her splendid entertainments and rich dressing than she had been the season before.

As she got a deeper insight into the conditions of the life about her, she saw opportunities for influence and power, even to a woman, which attracted her. But she was very ignorant. She knew little of the world and English affairs, and she found the women about her so well informed on these subjects that she began to feel herself at a certain disadvantage. This roused her pride, and she set to work to inform herself on many subjects of which she had hitherto been ignorant.

One means to this end was the reading of newspapers, and this occupation now absorbed a part of every morning. In this way she occasionally came upon Horace Spotswood's name, and when she did, a strange agitation would possess her. She could not quite shake off an influence which this man's life seemed to exert upon hers. Lord Hurdly would have had her believe that she had bestowed a great benefit upon Horace, as it was through her that he was in the possession of his present independent fortune, but there was no voice so strong as the one in her own heart which told her that she had wronged him. Here and there she had picked up the impressions of many different people concerning this young diplomatist, and unquestionably the aggregated effect was one of admiration. The brief notices of him which she read in the papers confirmed this impression of him. He was doing well, for a man of his years, in diplomacy, and he was doing more than well in the work he had undertaken for the relief of the famine-stricken population near him.

It was Horace's interest in this cause which had given rise to Bettina's interest in it, and she began to read eagerly all that she could find on the subject. As a result her heart was, for the first time in her life, awakened to an intense perception of the suffering of the world at large. It was a new emotion to her, and one which throbbed through all her consciousness with a power which changed her individuality even to herself. She began to think for the first time of the utter recklessness with which she had been spending the large sums of money which Lord Hurdly placed at her disposal. Her expenditure of these sums heretofore had met with his entire approval, as she could never have too rich a wardrobe to please him.

It was all a part of his own glory and importance, and he never asked a question as to how the money went.

But now the tide within Bettina's heart had turned. As she read of the sufferings of these starving people, the thought of her own excess of luxuriousness sickened her. The more she felt within her soul that nameless sadness which no outside help could relieve, the more she felt it urgent upon her to relieve the wants of others when this a.s.suagement lay within her actual power.

It may seem strange that, with a mother who had a large-hearted sympathy with all sorrow, Bettina should have kept her own heart so closed to the suffering outside it; but no seed can sprout until the soil is prepared for it, and up to this period of her life the ground of Bettina's heart had been unprepared.

Now, however, all was changed. She went to b.a.l.l.s and dinners, as her position as Lord Hurdly's wife demanded, but her heart was elsewhere.

She began to economize strictly in her personal expenditure, and collected all the ready money she could lay her hands on, both from her husband's allowance and from her own small private fortune, and sent it anonymously to the Indian famine fund.

This contribution was sent in with no other identification than "From B.," written on the card which accompanied it. How could Bettina have dreamed that any living soul would connect her with it?

She was not unaware, however, that she was constantly watched by her husband. Since she had become interested in her new pursuits he observed her more closely than ever, and on the morning of the publication in the papers of the special additions to the famine fund which contained her own subscription Lord Hurdly, with apparently no reason at all, read the list aloud to her across the breakfast table.

When he came to the item "From B.," he paused and looked at her searchingly.

Bettina felt her face turn red.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THE MONEY WAS PARTLY MY OWN'"]