This House to Let Part 24

Anyway, after many months of married life, Guy was still as much in love with her as ever, and he was always profoundly touched by the pretty and impressive way in which she insisted that all the advantages were on her side, that she could never repay him sufficiently for the sacrifices he had so cheerfully made.

Of course Guy knew nothing of what his friends were saying; the men who admired her beauty, and were disappointed at the negative qualities which accompanied it; the women who found her unsatisfactory and were determined that she had something to hide.

All he knew, and was content in knowing, was this--that after many months of matrimony, for they had been married few weeks before the Armistice was proclaimed--that Armistice which was to be the precursor of a golden era--he was quite happy. She was a perfect wife, from his point of view, and he never looked back with the faintest misgiving.

What he had done then, he would do again to-day, in spite of the fact that her reticence with regard to the past was as profound with him as with the various acquaintances who occasionally visited her.

Not even the close intimacy of married life had elicited any of those allusions and confidences which enable one to piece together, in some measure, the life-history of the person who makes them. But Guy had a generous nature, and was one of the least suspicious of men. He attributed this strange reticence to the fact that the past contained nothing but painful memories, that even to the man she loved she could not reopen the old wounds.

On this particular night, Lady Nina was awaiting her guests. It was a little dinner-party to meet the young married couple, six in all, herself and father, Mr and Mrs Spencer, a young woman friend of the hostess, and an old friend of the Southleigh family, Hugh Murchison, already met with in the early chapters of this history.

Murchison was the first arrival. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bad wound in the leg. He had been laid-up for a very long time at his own home with the effects of sh.e.l.l-shock. He had only been in London for a few days, and it was ages since the Southleighs had seen him. They welcomed him warmly.

After a little desultory conversation Nina spoke:

"You know from my note that you are here to-night especially to meet Guy and his wife, the wife that he sprang upon us in such a sudden and dramatic manner."

"Yes, I understood that. You know I have been out of the world so long, and more than half the time not in my right senses, that I had heard nothing of the details till, a day or two ago, I picked it up from club gossip. Then I was told that Guy had picked up a girl from nowhere, about whom nothing was known, and married her on the sly at a registry-office. I suppose it would be too unkind to a.s.sume that Guy had gone off his head?"

Lord Southleigh growled out from his easy-chair. "Of course he was off his head when he did it. And the devil of it is he seems just as much off his head now. They are like turtle-doves, my dear boy, after several months of marriage."

Lady Nina laughed. "My dear father gets more cynical every day. He insinuates as a general proposition, anyway it can be deduced from his remarks, that every man who marries a girl for love ought to be disillusioned shortly after the honeymoon. Well, certainly Guy is as much in love as ever, and, to be quite fair, she seems just as much in love with him."

"She's putting it on, I suppose," suggested Hugh, who in a less obtrusive fashion was nearly as cynical as his host. "If she came from nowhere, and n.o.body knows anything about her, we may safely a.s.sume that she married him for his money, and that he was too infatuated to recognise the fact. Is she very bewitching?"

"She is certainly very good-looking," was Nina's reply. "Many people say she is beautiful. From a man's point of view, she would be considered very charming in a subtle and elusive sort of way. Of course, my father hates her, it is a terrible shock to his pride to think she is going to inherit the family honours. Guy could have married anybody, although there would always have been still the danger that he would have been married for his money. When it comes to this point, there is not much difference between the well-born and low-born adventuress."

From which remarks it will be gathered that the Lady Nina Spencer was a young woman of independent opinions, and not too strongly imbued with caste prejudices.

Hugh reflected for a few moments. His thoughts had travelled back to those days at Blankfield, which now seemed so very far off. What folly will not a certain type of man commit for the sake of a pretty woman?

Jack Pomfret, in a moment of frenzy, had taken his life when he found he was tied up to a girl the accomplice and the decoy of a criminal.

And Guy Spencer, a man of a very different type from the easy-going, pleasure-loving Pomfret, had made a hash of his opportunities, flouted his family obligations, to pursue the desire of the moment, to marry out of his own cla.s.s.

"What I hear is, that there is something very mysterious about her, that she preserves a strange reticence as to her past, makes no allusion to family or relatives. Does Guy know what other people do not know, and is he keeping his mouth shut? It is strange. Even if a man marries a ballet-girl, it comes out sooner or later that her father was a railway porter, or something of that sort." He pulled himself up suddenly, and added, awkwardly: "I say, you know, I am afraid I have been very indiscreet. I forgot for the moment that she is one of the family now."

A deep growl came from the Earl's armchair: "She is not one of the family, she never will be. If the young fool had not been left that money by his G.o.dmother he would never have dared to do this disgraceful thing. By gad, Hugh, it is over a hundred years since there was such a _mesalliance_ in our family: please Heaven it will be a hundred years before there is another."

Nina took up the conversation at the point where her angry father left it.

"Of course, Hugh, you can say what you like. You are our old friend; you are Guy's for that matter, and we are prepared to discuss this thing with you quite frankly. Guy may know more than we imagine; personally, I think he knows very little, and only what she has told him."

"But surely, she must have given some particulars of herself," cried Hugh, in amazement that a man like his friend Spencer, endowed with a fair share of common-sense, should take a wife upon trust, as it were.

To be sure, Pomfret had done the same thing, but then poor old Jack, possessor of many excellent qualities, was singularly deficient in brain-power. He was one of those who never looked before they leaped.

Nina shrugged her shoulders. "All we know is that she was a Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of a man who gambled away his fortune at cards and on the race-course. As for relatives, she has for cousin a Mrs L'Estrange, a woman of good birth, but of somewhat shady reputation, who no longer mixes with her own cla.s.s. There is another cousin, a man whose name I forget. I gather more from what has been omitted than what is actually said, that he is not a very desirable person, and has not visited Mrs Spencer since her marriage. That is all I have learned during these many months."

"Not much, certainly. And I suppose the lady dries up when you try to approach her on the subject."

"Oh yes, her manner then is very marked," was Nina's answer. "At the slightest question she seems to become frozen, to shut herself up within her sh.e.l.l. You know, Hugh, I was prepared to make the best of it all for Guy's sake, although, of course, I quite sympathise with my father's resentment. I have nothing to say against her manners or her appearance. If not a lady, she is most ladylike, and she never offends.

But all the same, I can't take to her. To me there seems something about her secretive and underhand. She appears to adore Guy, but, as you have suggested, that may be very accomplished acting."

At this point, Miss Crichton, Lady Nina's friend, was announced. She was not in the inner counsels of the Southleigh family, so no further allusion was made to Guy's wife.

A few moments later the Spencers arrived. Guy shook his old friend Murchison warmly by the hand, they had met of late years only once or twice during Hugh's brief leave from the Front. When they had exchanged a few mutual inquiries, the young husband turned to his wife, looking very slender and elegant in a filmy cream confection.

"Stella, one of my oldest friends, Hugh Murchison. We were boys together. You must have heard me speak of him."

The young woman held out her hand with a charming smile that lighted up the rather sad face, and made her look what so many of her admirers said she was, quite beautiful.

"Yes, Major Murchison, I have heard of you from my husband, and how much you have suffered in this cruel war. You must come and see us, and renew your old friendship."

For a moment Hugh could not speak. The room seemed suddenly peopled with ghosts of the past, summoned by the soft tones of that charming voice, so low and sweetly modulated. Then, collecting himself with a great effort, he dropped her hand, and made some formal answer. And at that moment the butler announced that dinner was served.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Small and informal dinner-parties can be either very lively or very dull, depending, no doubt, upon the careful selection of the guests, also on the personality of the host and hostess, who can sometimes exercise magnetic influence.

Nina was, as a rule, a very vivacious hostess. Her father was uncertain. If he were in a congenial atmosphere, amongst his old friends and comrades, he would radiate geniality. But if there was one guest who did not quite hit it off with him, between whom and himself there was an undefined spirit of personal antagonism, he dried up at once, and became gloomy and morose.

To-night, as his guest of honour, sitting at his right hand, he had the niece-in-law whose entrance into the family he had so bitterly resented.

During the long courses he hardly spoke a word. He was rude almost to boorishness.

But although Stella was fully conscious that she was there on sufferance, her admirable self-control enabled her to comport herself with unruffled demeanour. If this spiteful old man hoped that he was annoying her with his churlish behaviour, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was hurt. She ignored him, as he purposely ignored her.

Miss Crichton, a cheerful, chatty young woman, whose flow of good spirits made her welcome at many houses, sat on the other side of the host. Finding Lord Southleigh disinclined to conversation, and guessing the reason of it, she divided her remarks between Stella Spencer and Murchison, who sat next her.

A good-hearted girl, she felt just a little bit sorry for Stella. Lord Southleigh was not playing the game. His att.i.tude was altogether illogical. It was open to him to refuse to receive his unwelcome niece at all, that would have been perfectly comprehensible. But having admitted her to his house, it was in the worst possible taste to so openly proclaim his dislike and detestation.

Lady Nina talked brightly to her cousin Guy, in the random flashes of her conversation, taking in the others, with the solitary exception of her father, who sat there glum and silent, in one of his blackest and most unapproachable moods. And Miss Crichton did her best, really working very hard to counteract the sombre influence of the taciturn host.

But in spite of the brave efforts of the two young women there was no exhilaration in the air, only a sort of well-defined depression, such as is felt in the atmosphere before the faint rumblings of a thunderstorm.

n.o.body really felt comfortable, not a single guest would feel anything but relief when the tedious evening drew to a close.

Guy Spencer was relieved, in a way, that his uncle had ostensibly buried the hatchet, but still he never felt happy in that uncle's house. The strong disapproval was there, if suppressed for the sake of politeness.

These little informal dinners, given at long intervals to impress upon him that he was still a recognised member of the family, bored him extremely. They were always strictly limited as to numbers, and the other guests were generally people of no importance, on the outer fringe of that society in which the Southleighs moved.

It was difficult to know what Stella was feeling, for she had such admirable self-control. But if she was a sensitive woman she must have been cut to the heart by the behaviour of her elderly relative. And her suffering must have been more poignant from the fact that this contemptuous behaviour must be apparent to every other member of the party.

While the two young women were chattering away, battling, as it were, against the general depression, Hugh Murchison was trying to collect his thoughts.

Strange that his recollections had harked back to that tragedy at Blankfield while Nina was speaking of the young Mrs Spencer. And, if his memory and his eyesight were not playing him false, he was sitting opposite to the unhappy Pomfret's widow.

Six years make a considerable difference in the personal appearance of any man or woman, and they had made a difference in her. If he had met her in the street, he would not have known her. Perhaps he would not have known her to-night, but for that sudden accidental throwing back of the memory of old times. In other words, if his mind had not been accidentally diverted to Jack Pomfret, he would have failed to recognise the woman whom he once knew under the name of Norah Burton.

And yet could he be sure? Let him think a little. Six years ago Norah Burton looked twenty, and Davidson the detective a.s.sured him she was at least four years older than she looked--the appearance of youth, he had added, was one of her a.s.sets.

This young woman did not look a day older than twenty-six, and taking the computation of the years, she must be at least thirty. But if she were Norah Burton, and had retained that priceless a.s.set of youth, she would still have that four years' advantage.