Marriage a la mode by Mrs. Humphry Ward (best book club books TXT) 📖

*

The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.

They found the old Duchess, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius, alone. The Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married _en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality, by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself. He had left her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was now nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her. She was largely made, shapeless, and untidy. Her mannish face and head were tied up in a kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist; and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.

As soon as Mrs. Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had an intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great people of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions. Amused curiosity, first. Evidently Daphne represented to her one of the queer, crude types that modern society is always throwing up on the shores of life--like strange beasts from deep-sea soundings.

An American heiress, half Spanish--South-American Spanish--with no doubt a dash of Indian; no manners, as Europe understands them; unlimited money, and absurd pretensions--so Chloe said--in the matter of art; a mixture of the pedant and the _parvenue_; where on earth had young Barnes picked her up! It was in some such way, no doubt--so Lelius guessed--that the Duchess's thoughts were running.

Meanwhile Mrs. Barnes was treated with all possible civility. The Duchess inquired into the plans for rebuilding Heston; talked of her own recollections of the place, and its owners; hoped that Mrs. Barnes was pleased with the neighbourhood; and finally asked the stock question, "And how do you like England?"

Daphne looked at her coolly. "Moderately!" she said, with a smile, the colour rising in her cheek as she became aware, without looking at them, that Roger and Mrs. Fairmile had adjourned to the farther end of the large room, leaving her to the Duchess and Lelius.

The small eyes above the Duchess's prominent nose sparkled. "Only moderately?" The speaker's tone expressed that she had been for once taken by surprise. "I'm extremely sorry we don't please you, Mrs. Barnes."

"You see, my expectations were so high."

"Is it the country, or the climate, or the people, that won't do?" inquired the Duchess, amused.

"I suppose it would be civil to say the climate," replied Daphne, laughing.

Whereupon the Duchess saw that her visitor had made up her mind not to be overawed. The great lady summoned Dr. Lelius to her aid, and she, the German, and Daphne, kept up a sparring conversation, in which Mrs. Barnes, driven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.

Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch them, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told of this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to the Duchess.

* * * * *

At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which the room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus de portes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to Beaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ at Versailles.

Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand, inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant of one--she named it--at Berlin.

"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."

And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived among them from her childhood--these things had long since given Chloe Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her, consumed with angry envy, the _precieuse_ in her resenting the easy mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.

She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at the slender barrier of self-control. And some malicious god did, in fact, send an opportunity.

After tea, when Roger, in spite of efforts to confine himself to the Duchess, had been once more drawn into the orbit of Mrs. Fairmile, as she sat fingering a cigarette between the two men, and gossiping of people and politics, the butler entered, and whispered a message to the Duchess.

The mistress of the house laughed. "Chloe! who do you think has called? Old Marcus, of South Audley Street. He's been at Brendon House--buying up their Romneys, I should think. And as he was passing here, he wished to show me something. Shall we have him in?"

"By all means! The last time he was here he offered you four thousand pounds for the blue Nattier," said Chloe, with a smile, pointing to the picture.

The Duchess gave orders; and an elderly man, with long black hair, swarthy complexion, fine eyes, and a peaked forehead, was admitted, and greeted by her, Mrs. Fairmile, and Dr. Lelius as an old acquaintance. He sat down beside them, was given tea, and presented to Mr. and Mrs. Barnes. Daphne, who knew the famous dealer by sight and reputation perfectly well, was piqued that he did not recognize her. Yet she well remembered having given him an important commission not more than a year before her marriage.

As soon as a cup of tea had been dispatched, Marcus came to the business. He drew a small leather case out of the bag he had brought into the room with him; and the case, being opened, disclosed a small but marvellous piece of Sevres.

"There!" he said, pointing triumphantly to a piece on the Duchess's chimney-piece. "Your Grace asked me--oh! ten years ago--and again last year--to find you the pair of that. Now--you have it!"

He put the two together, and the effect was great. The Duchess looked at it with greed--the greed of the connoisseur. But she shook her head.

"Marcus, I have no money."

"Oh!" He protested, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.

"And I know you want a brigand's price for it."

"Oh, nothing--nothing at all."

The Duchess took it up, and regretfully turned it round and round.

"A thousand, Marcus?" she said, looking up.

He laughed, and would not reply.

"That means more, Marcus: how do you imagine that an old woman like me, with only just enough for bread and butter, can waste her money on Sevres?" He grinned. She put it down resolutely. "No! I've got a consumptive nephew with a consumptive family. He ought to have been hung for marrying, but I've got to send them all to Davos this winter. No, I can't, Marcus; I can't--I'm too poor." But her eyes caressed the shining thing.

Daphne bent forward. "If the Duchess has _really_ made up her mind, Mr. Marcus, I will take it. It would just suit me!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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