Marriage a la mode Part 15

"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 a.s.serted 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble outline of brow and features still n.o.bler in the dim light which effaced all the weaker, emptier touches. Daphne felt rising within her that mingled pa.s.sion 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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, amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess's hand.

"What were her governesses about?" said the d.u.c.h.ess, pointing to it.

"_Really_--the education of our cla.s.s! 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 n.o.body 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 d.u.c.h.ess, _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 d.u.c.h.ess quietly.

Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.

"Me?"

The d.u.c.h.ess, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The d.u.c.h.ess 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sing, 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 pa.s.sing 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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!"