"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the least interest in her country—even when—pardon me—they brag. They generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."
"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only, but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues. Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such affairs—except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of politics they regard as the height of bad form."
"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face. "She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the House, and she is heart and soul in politics—which she regards as a sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style—and no one would accuse Rex of that—and during an election she never rests. Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day, and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."
"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is the matter with the rest of them?—the thin ones, I mean?"
"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at committee meetings—she is great on colonial politics—for three or four hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England, but does not go in for them—Spence isn't in the House; that may account for it!"
"Your fashionable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel, meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."
"What!"
"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds; the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them. There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.' And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the country from destruction."
"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."
"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor. Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of gossip it is not to be despised."
"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.
"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.
"Cousin?"
"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation. Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out of him. Isabel, innocent and impassive, turned her eyelashes upon her partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"
Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a silent convulsion in the massive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.
"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course, manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids. He replied, suavely:
"I hope you will find us more polite—if less picturesque. I cannot flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far. 'Precise image'—is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"
"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be his son instead of his second cousin."
"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at the earliest moment the constitution permitted."
He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombshell. "I was born in America," he said.
His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."
Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "Thereis a career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults! Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United States. If I only had a brother—" Her eyes were flashing for the first time. "However—they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."
"I am afraid I have not the qualities that do count. To be as frank as yourself—I don't think I could stand your politics."
"But think of the excitement of really sounding your capacities!" Impersonality was an achievement with Isabel and she could always command it. "You can never do that here, no matter how brilliant your success. There must always be the question of how far you would have gone without your family, and friends of equal power. The ugliest lesson of life is its snobbishness. Even when the herd can expect no return, a blind instinct—doubtless an inheritance from the days when there were but two classes—drives it to beat the drums for the socially elect. We have enough of that in America, heaven knows, but the best thing that can be said of American politics is that they are free of it. Besides, if our politics are bad, so much the better for you. You might do for the United States what your English great-grandfather helped to do for this country in 1832. You might be another 'Great Revolutioner,' like your still more illustrious ancestor, Sam Adams. You'll never, never have such an opportunity to become a great historical figure over here, for English dissatisfaction hardly counts, and in the United States there are increasing millions that demand reform, a closer approach to the ideal republic promised by their ancestors, and the man for the hour."
The angry glitter had left his eyes and he was looking at her with interest and curiosity. He respected her courage and obvious power to rise above the personal attitude of her sex.
"I dislike intensely many things in your country," he said, slowly; "but I will confess that it interests me greatly. If it has failed in some of its original ideals it has at least continued to be a republic for more than a century; and when one considers its enormous size and conflicting elements—for I suppose you will not claim that you are a homogeneous race—that is very inspiring! It makes one believe that fundamentally the country must be sound—that unswerving fidelity to an ideal. It is a great thing! a stupendous thing! I wish I knew that I should live to see England, all Europe, a republic. There is no other state fit for self-respecting men—that voice in the selection of their own rulers."
"By Jove, Jack!" cried Lord Hexam. "I never heard you go as far as that before."
"Possibly you never will again. I have no desire to rank with those brilliant failures that are born before their time, and no intention of wasting my energies on the unattainable. Moreover, radicals and socialists per se are merely a nuisance. The Liberal party is the only choice in England to-day, and when I get it at my back, I can, at least, after I have led it to a stronger position, fight for the soundest of the extremist dogmas, as well as for the reorganization of the House of Peers. Hereditary legislation in the twentieth century and the most civilized country in the world! Why not an hereditary army and navy? Russia has few greater anachronisms. And when one thinks of the careers it has ruined! Look at Barnstaple."
The two men plunged into discussion, and Isabel, her eyes expressing a polite interest, studied the face of her cousin. She appreciated for the first time something of its power. A brief illumination of his eyes had betrayed the soul of the idealist; a passion that in a less sound mind might result in fanaticism. He was talking with none of the fiery enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute, receptive, and antagonistic intelligence. As he sat there talking, with hardly a change of expression in his voice or on his cold face, faintly sneering, he seemed to be holding his powers in solution; to have resolved them for the time being into their elements, that they might rest and recuperate. While no doubt in first-rate physical condition, he looked as if he had not a red corpuscle in his body, and this very contrast to the warm full-blooded people surrounding him gave him a distinction of his own, the distinction of pure brain independent of those auxiliaries that few public men have been able to dispense with. It was obvious that he was too self-centred, too haughtily indifferent, or too spoilt, to make any effort in private life to charm or bewilder; when he vanquished from the platform it was by the awakened rush of the forces within him; and this very indifference, this contemptuous knowledge of his mighty reserves, this serene faith in his star, invested his personal unattractiveness with a formidable significance. Isabel's imagination dilated him into a disembodied intellect surrounded by mere statues of human flesh. As she left the dining-room the illusion vanished. She liked him less than ever, nevertheless wished that he were her brother and the rising star in American politics.
As the women entered a large room on the opposite side of the central hall, where coffee was to be served, Flora Thangue laid her hand deprecatingly on Isabel's arm. "I was so sorry not to be able to wait for you," she said. "But I had a distracted note from Vicky at eight asking me to dress as quickly as I could and see if the cards on the table were all right: the new butler is rather a muff, and such a martinet the footmen dare not interfere. I was delighted to see that Jack had taken charge of you. What do you think of our infant prodigy?"
"I have had little chance to think anything," said Isabel, evasively. "Is he the typical Englishman—I mean apart from his peculiar gifts?"
"Only in certain qualities. You see he has Celtic blood in him: of course the Gwynnes had their origin in Wales; and then he is one-fourth American, isn't he? I can't say how far that inheritance has influenced his character, but there is no doubt about the Celtic. Outwardly he is even more impassive than the usual Oxford product, and if he had been born a generation earlier he would have had all sorts of affectations. But affectation, thank heaven, is out of date. We wouldn't tolerate a Grandcourt five minutes. Whom should you like to talk to? You will have enough of me."
"I am sure there is no one I shall like half so well," said Isabel, truthfully; and Flora loved her for not being gracious. "I think I should like to know Mrs. Kaye."
"If you ever do, please give me the benefit of your investigations. There are as many opinions of her as there are of cats. Vicky believes in her and I don't. Jack is in love with her—with certain of his Celtic instincts gone wrong."
She led Isabel over to Mrs. Kaye, who sat alone on a small sofa, sipping her coffee and absently puffing at a cigarette. She was exquisitely dressed and jewelled, and her little figure was round and symmetrical; but nothing could obscure the ignoble modelling of her face. She might have been misunderstood for a housemaid masquerading had it not been for an air of assured power, a repose as monumental as that of a Chinese joss.
She had cultivated a still radiance of expression which, when she thought it worth her while, broke into a tender or brilliant smile; although even then her large, ripe mouth retained a hint of the austerity her strong will had imposed upon it—to the more complete undoing of the masculine host. She smiled graciously as Miss Thangue murmured the introduction and moved away, but did not offer the other half of the sofa, and Isabel fetched a chair.
"You are the American cousin, of course," she said, with a slight lisp. "We were all talking about you down at our end of the table, but I could not see you until just now. I long to go to America, your novels interest me so much. But one is always so busy—one never gets time for the Atlantic. Lady Victoria says you come from that wonderful country, California, but of course you know New York and Newport still better. All Americans do."
"I have never seen Newport, and passed exactly a week in New York before sailing."
Mrs. Kaye's expressive eyes, which had dwelt on Isabel with flattering attention, fell to the tip of her cigarette. "No? I thought that all smart Americans came from that sacred precinct."
"I am not in the least smart. I don't reallyknowhalf a dozen people in America outside of the county in which I have spent the greater part of my life—not even in San Francisco, where I was born." Isabel held her cigarette poised in one slender hand, letting her eyes fall deliberately on the broad back and flat nails of the exquisitely kept section on Mrs. Kaye's lap. "So far, in my small social ventures I have felt the necessity of little beyond good manners and a small independent income. This is my first excursion into the great world, and of course my cousin is too secure in her position to care whether I am smart or not. Miss Thangue, the only other woman I have talked with, is far too amiable and well-bred. Am I to understand that I shall be tried by New York measurements and found wanting?"
"Oh no!" Mrs. Kaye's bright color had darkened. "On the contrary, the English are always rather amused at American distinctions. It only happens that all my friends are New-Yorkers."
She was a very clever woman, for snobbery had blunted and demoralized only one small chamber of her brain, and she had as comprehensive a knowledge of the world as any woman in it. Nevertheless, as her powerful magnetic eyes met the ingenuous orbs opposite, she was unable to determine whether the barbed words, quivering in a sore spot, had been uttered in innocence or intent. "Of course one doesn't meet so many Americans, after all. Naturally, the New-Yorkers bring the best letters." She paused a moment as if ruminating, then delivered herself of an epigram: "New York is the great American invention for separating the wheat from the tares."
"Indeed!" Isabel was too surprised to strike back.
"It is well known that it is one of the most exclusive social bodies in the world. You have far less difficulty over here."
"That may be merely owing to the fear that affects all new social bodies. I have the honor to know the leader of society in St. Peter—a town of ten thousand inhabitants near my own—and she is frightfully exclusive. She is so afraid of knowing the wrong sort of people that she is barely on nodding terms with the several thousand new-comers that have added to the wealth and importance of the town during the last ten years. Consequently, her circle is as dull as an Anglo-Saxon Sunday. I fancy the same may be said of New York, for its fashionable set is not large and its interests are far from various. From all I have heard, London society alone is perennially interesting, and the reason is, that, absolutely secure, it keeps itself from staleness by constantly refreshing its veins with new blood, exclusive only against offensiveness. Of course you are a daughter of a duke or something," she added, wickedly. "Everybody here seems to be. Don't you feel that your ancestors have given you the right to know whom you please?—instead of eternally plugging the holes in the dike."
In spite of her sharpened wits, Mrs. Kaye smiled radiantly into Isabel's guileless eyes. "I am not the daughter of a duke; I wish I were!" she exclaimed, with a fair assumption of aristocratic frankness. "But your point is quite correct." Again she appeared to ruminate; then added: "The British aristocracy is to society what God is to the world—all-sufficient, all-merciful, all-powerful."
"And she would sacrifice Him and all his archangels to an epigram," thought Isabel, who was somewhat shocked. "How fearfully clever you are!" she murmured. "Do you think in epigrams?"
"Epigrams? Have I made one? I wish I could. They are immensely the fashion."
"I should think you might have set it—"
She did not finish her sentence, for the ear to which it was addressed suddenly closed. Lady Cecilia Spence had sauntered up, and Mrs. Kaye hastily made room for her on the sofa, turning a shoulder upon Isabel. A faint change, as by the agitation of depths on the far surface of waters, rippled her features, and Isabel, summoning the impersonal attitude, watched her curiously. It was her first experience of the snob in a grandiose setting, but it was the type that had aroused her most impassioned inward protest all her life: the smallest circles have their snobs, and, like all the unchosen of mammon, she had had her corroding experiences. But her high spirit resented the power of the baser influences, and, with her intellect, commanded her to accept the world with philosophy and the unsheathed weapon of self-respect. In the present stage of the world's development it was to be expected that the pettier characteristics of human nature would predominate; and perhaps the intellectually exclusive would not have it otherwise.
Mrs. Kaye, polite tolerance giving place to the accent of intimacy, began: "Oh, Lady Cecilia, have you heard—" and plunged into a piece of gossip, no doubt of absorbing interest to those that knew the contributory circumstances and the surnames of the actors, but to the uninitiated as puzzling as success. Lady Cecilia's eyes twinkled appreciatively, and her wells of laughter bubbled close to the surface. Isabel, completely ignored, waited until the story was finished, and then made a deliberate move.
"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Won't you tell me the names of the people?"
Mrs. Kaye, without turning her head, murmured something indistinctly, and lit another cigarette. "Won't you have a light, Lady Cecilia?" she asked.
"Please give me one," said Isabel, sweetly. She reached out and took the cigarette from Mrs. Kaye's faintly resisting hand. "Thank you. I am lazy about looking for matches. Do you smoke a lot?"
But Mrs. Kaye, irritated, or having reached the conclusion that the newcomer was not in the very least worth while, said with soft fervor to her who was: "How delightful that dear Jack was returned! Of course you are as interested in his career as the rest of us."
"I should be a good deal more so if his mother had turned him across her knee a little oftener—or if I could shake him myself occasionally."
Isabel, satisfied, more amazed than ever at the infantile ingenuousness of the snob, rose, and was about to turn away when she met Lady Cecilia's eyes. They were full of amusement, and there was no mistaking its purport. In a flash Isabel had responded with a challenge of appeal, which that accomplished dame was quick to understand.
"Please don't go," she said. "I came over here to talk to you. We are all so interested in the idea that Vicky is half an American—we had quite forgotten it. Did you ever see any one look less as if she had American cousins than Vicky? She might easily have a whole tribe of Spanish ones."
"Well, she has, in a way." And in response to many questions Isabel found herself relating the story of Rezánov and Concha Argüello, while Mrs. Kaye, whatever may have been her sensations, rose with an absent smile and composedly transferred herself to an equally distinguished neighborhood.
"I wonder if she has ever tried to condense rudeness into an epigram," said Isabel viciously, pausing in her narrative.
Lady Cecilia shook expressively. "At least she has not made an art of it," she said. "They never do."
The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel the alien, and the kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and, to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future with a chronic canker of discontent.
Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the archæological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art, attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic literature, the German Theatre.
It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent, sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when she envied the student girls in Munich with their absurd "reform dress," their cigarettes and beer in cheap restaurants and theatres, their more than doubtful standards. Although she had her own private faith and never hesitated to pray for anything she wanted, she was not of those that can make a career of religion; her mind and temperament were both too complex, and she was unable to interest herself in creeds and theologies—and congregations.
Now and again she had considered seriously the study of medicine, architecture, law, of perfecting herself for criticism of some sort, for she had spoken with a measure of truth when she had assured Flora that she had no wish to marry. In her depths she was—had been—romantic and given to dreaming, but the manifold weaknesses of her father—who had been one of the most brilliant and accomplished of men, a graduate of Harvard, and the possessor of many books—and the selfish and tyrannous exactions which had tempered his enthusiasm for all things feminine, the caustic tongue and overbearing masculinity of her uncle, who had been as weak in his way as her father, for he had lost the greater part of his patrimony on the stock-market, and the charming inconsequence of her brother-in-law, who loved his family extravagantly and treated them like poor relations, had not prepared her to idealize the young men she had met in Rosewater and Europe. She had been sought and attracted more than once during her years of liberty, but her prejudices and the deep cold surface of temperament peculiar to American girls of the best class, lent a fatal clarity of vision; and although she had studied men as deeply as she dared, the result had but intensified the sombre threat of the future. It was quite true that she had half-consciously believed that hope would live again and justify itself in Elton Gwynne, and the disappointment, at the first glimpse of his portrait, was so crushing that she had buried her sex under an avalanche of scorn.
But scorn is far more volcanic than glacial and a poor barrier between sex and judgment. It needed more than that, and more than disillusions of the second class, no matter how inordinate, to give a girl the cool reality of poise that had stimulated the curiosity of Miss Thangue; and this Isabel had encountered, during the most critical period of her inner life, in the beautiful city by the Isar. The experience had been so brief and tremendous, the incidents so crowding and tense, the climax so hideous, that she had been stunned for a time, then emerged into her present state of tranquil and not unpleasant philosophy—when the present moment, if it contained distraction, was something to be grateful for; otherwise, to be borne with until the sure compensation arrived. The future had neither terror for her nor any surpassing concern, although all her old impersonal interest in life had revived, and she was still too young not to be very much like other girls when circumstances were propitious. And at last she had conceived—or evolved—a definite purpose.
This morning she was living as eagerly as ever during her first deep months in Europe. The excitement of the evening still possessed her; she had held her own, received homage, lived a little chapter in an English novel; above all, she was young, she was free, she was no longer unhappy; and she loved the early morning and swift walking.
It was Sunday; the shooting would not begin until the morrow; everybody except herself, apparently, still slept; the breakfast-hour was half-past nine. She walked down a long lane behind the lawns and entered the first of the coverts. There was a drowsy whir of wings—once—that was all. There was a glint of dancing water in the heavier shades, a rosy light beyond the farthest of the trees in the little wood where the delicate pendent leaves hung asleep in the sweet peace. There was not an expiring echo of her own wild forests here; nor any likeness to the splendid royal preserves of Germany and Austria, with their ancient trees, their miles of garnished floor, the sudden glimpse of chamois or stag standing on a rocky ledge against the sky as if drilled for his part. These woods had a quality all their own: of Nature in her last little strongholds, but smiling, serenely triumphant, of tempered heat without chill, above all, of perfect peace.
Nothing in England had impressed Isabel like this atmosphere of peace that broods over its fields and lanes, its woods and fells, in the evening and early morning hours; the atmosphere that makes it seem to be set to the tune of Wordsworth's verses, and to keep it everlastingly old-fashioned and out of all relation to its towns. As she left the wood she saw a big hay-stack, as firm and shapely of outline as a house, not a loose wisp anywhere. A girl, bareheaded, was driving a cow across a field. A narrow river moved as slowly as if the world had never awakened. The road turned to her right and led to an old stone village with a winding broken street and several oak-trees, a pump, and a long green bench. It might have been the Deserted Village, for the English rise far later than the Southern races that have fallen so far behind them in importance and wealth. Beyond the village, on a rise of ground, was the church, its square gray tower crumbling down upon its ancient graves. In the distance were farms, coverts, another village, a gray spire against the blossoming red of the sky; and over all—peace—peace. Had anything ever really disturbed it? Would there ever be any change? England had been devastated to the roots, would be again, no doubt, but unless it became one vast London, it would brood on into eternity with the slight defiant smile of a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep.
"Are you, too, an early bird?"
Isabel flew out of her reverie. Lady Victoria was approaching from a forking road. She wore a short skirt, leggings, and heavy boots; and she was bright, fresh, almost rosy from swift walking. "I have gone five miles already," she said, smiling. "But I believe you were sauntering."
"Only just now—to absorb it all. I, too, can do my five miles an hour, although Californians are the laziest people in the world about walking."
"Then if you are up to a sharp trot we'll go to that farthest village. My land steward has been telling me a painful tale about one of my young women, and I intend to ask her some embarrassing questions while she is still too stupid with sleep to lie."
"Your young women? Is all this your estate?"
"It belongs to Strathland, but I have lived here since I married, and now the place is virtually Jack's. These people have been my particular charge for thirty years and will continue to be until my son marries. There are only about a hundred families on the estate altogether, but they keep one busy."
"I can't imagine you in the working rôle of the Lady Bountiful. Last night, at least, if I had written to my friend, Anabel Colton, I should have devoted pages to your more famous attributes, but I should never have thought of this."
"Indeed? If one could languish through life in the shell of a mere beauty that life would be a good deal simpler proposition than it is. Unfortunately there are complications, and, agreeable or not, one accepts them as one does enemies, husbands, stupid servants, and all other mortal thorns. But I am not uninterested in my people here, not by any means, and they bore me less than going to court and visiting my father-in-law. I watch them from birth, see that they are properly clothed and fed, that they go to school as soon as they are old enough, later that they find a situation here or elsewhere—those that have no work to do at home. My son gives the young men and women a complete wardrobe when they start out to win their way in life, and the details fall on me. It means correspondence, mothers' meetings, and all that sort of thing. Even during the London season I come down once a month. Of course it is a bore, but on the whole tradition is rather kind than otherwise in making life more or less of a routine."
"Wouldn't you miss it if your son married?" Isabel wondered if this woman had really given her the impression of tragic secrets, unlimited capacities for both license and arrogance. In this early morning freshness there was hardly a suggestion of the woman of the world, barely of the great lady; and in the rich tones of her voice there was a genuine note of interest in her poor.
"Oh, I should always keep an eye on them; young wives have so many distractions. If I had to give them up—yes, of course it would mean a vacancy in my collection of habits; one side of me clings strongly to traditions and duty. The other—well, I'd like to be a free-lance in the world for a while—although," she added, with a sharp intonation, "I don't suppose I should stay away from Jack very long. It is a great relief to have a vital interest in life outside one's self. You, of course, are not old enough to have discovered that; and, indeed, I am not always so sure that it is possible."
Isabel did not ask her if she would not be jealous of the wife who must, if he loved her, take the greater part of all that her "Jack" had to give; she divined in this many-sided woman a quality in her attitude towards her son with which ordinary maternal affection had little in common. Her fine eyes flashed with pride at the mention of his name, and it was more than evident that he was her deep and abiding interest; but this keen and curious young student of life had never seen any one less maternal. Lady Victoria's attitude, indeed, might as reasonably be that of a proud sister or wife. When he was beside her she looked almost commonplace in her content. The moment he passed out of her sight some phase of individuality promptly lit its torch. Last night Isabel had seen her stand for half an hour as motionless as some ivory female Colossus, only her eyes burning down with slow voluptuous fire upon an adoring little Frenchman. She had looked like a Messalina petrified with the complications and commonness of the modern world; possibly with the burden of years, Isabel had added, in girlish intolerance of the wiles of which youth is independent. She had been far from falling under her spell, although not wholly repelled by the glimpse of this worst side of a woman far too complex to be judged off-hand. This morning she liked her suddenly and warmly, and, with the lightning of instinct, divined why she worshipped her son and still was willing to have him marry and swing aside into an orbit of his own. All she needed was a certain amount of his society, opportunities to work for him, the assurance of his success and happiness. He was a refuge from herself; in his imperious demands her memory slept, her depths were stagnant. But Isabel was still too young, in spite of her own experience, more than dimly to apprehend the older woman's attitude, and the innumerable and various acts and sufferings, disenchantments and contacts that had led up to it. Victoria seemed to her the most rounded mortal she had met, and yet with an insistent terror in the depths of her riven and courageous soul, the terror of the complete, the final disillusion. Between that moment and her too exhaustive knowledge of life stood the magnetic figure of her son, safeguarding, almost hypnotizing her. She was as incapable of jealousy as of aching vanity in the fact of a son whom the world was never permitted to forget. She had done with little things, and Isabel, with young curiosity, wondered in what convulsion the last of them had gone down.
Lady Victoria, unconscious of the analytical mind groping to conclusions beside her, was revolving the midnight comments of Flora Thangue, and her own impressions of this American relative whose sudden advent, taken in connection with her eighteenth century beauty and undecipherable quality, wrought the impression of a symbolic figure swimming out of space. Lady Victoria was far too indifferent to analyze the problems of any woman's soul, but she was keenly alive to the vital suggestion of power in the girl, and of the strong will and intellect, the command over every faculty, evidenced in the strong line of the jaw, the stern noble profile, the calm searching gaze so difficult to sustain. None knew better than Victoria the value and rarity of a free and courageous soul. Such a woman must, when more fully developed, throw the whole weight of her character into the scales balancing for the few whom she recognized as equals and accepted as friends. If she had had "some smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much the better.
She said, with a perfectly simulated impulsiveness:
"Of course you understand that I meant what I said last evening. And not merely a week; you must pay us a long visit, if it won't bore you. But the house will rarely be empty now that the shooting has begun, and there is always something going on in the neighborhood. Later comes the hunting, and I am sure you ride."
"Oh yes, I ride! I have spent about half my life on a horse. I want to stay more than I can tell you, but before long I must go home. The same safe old bank that has charge of your ranches looks after my small affairs, and I have a man on the farm that has been in the family for forty years; otherwise I should never have dared to leave my precious chickens; but Mr. Colton writes me that Mac is failing, and before the rainy season commences I must look into things myself."
"Chickens?" said Lady Victoria, much amused. "Do you raise chickens?"
"Rather; and not in the back yard, neither. I have about a thousand of the most beautiful snow-white Leghorns with blood-red combs you ever saw; and I have incubators, runs, colony-houses, and all the rest of it. They are raised on the strictest scientific principles and yield me the greater part of my income. That is the reason I feel obliged to return—if Mac is no longer able—or willing—to get up at night. One must not neglect the chicks—the little ones. I doubt if real babies are more trouble. I don't mind telling you that I have resolved to make a fortune out of chickens, if only that I may be able to live as I should in San Francisco. But I must go back and do the greater part of the work myself."
"Make a fortune—out of chickens! How odd that sounds! Not in the least romantic, but rather the more interesting for that. But why don't you let your ranch for dairy and grazing purposes, as we do? They bring us in a very good income—have done, so far."
"There are about nineteen thousand acres in Lumalitas, and some forty thousand in the southern ranch. I possess exactly three hundred and thirty-two, forty-five of which are marsh. You have now nearly the whole of the original grants, for as my father and uncle sold or mortgaged portions—and could not pay—your agents bought in. You may remember."
"There is seldom any correspondence. Mr. Colton has always had a free hand—yes—I do recall—vaguely. So I am profiting at your expense. I am afraid that must seem unjust to you."
"Not in the least. I did not choose my paternal relatives, but I long since accepted them with philosophy. I am thankful to have anything. Why don't you go to California and look at your property?—live on it for a few years? You could make far more out of it if you ran it yourself. The lease of Lumalitas must expire very soon. I do wish you would come and pay me a visit, and—Mr.—what on earth am I to call him?"
"Jack, of course," said Lady Victoria, warmly, although she would have been swift to resent the liberty had the new relative been so indiscreet.
"I never could manage Jack—never! I can't feel, see him, as Jack. I think Cousin Elton will do."
"Quite so. I shouldn't wonder at all if we went. Jack is rather keen on American politics, knows his Bryce—I suppose it is in the blood. He even takes in an American Review. I have always rather wanted to visit California, and started for it once upon a time—on my wedding journey. But we were entertained so delightfully in New York and Washington that before we realized what an American summer meant it was too hot to cross the continent, and we accepted an invitation to the Adirondacks, intending to return to England in the course of a month. But Arthur broke his leg, and by the time he was well again it was not safe for me to travel. So we rented a place in Virginia, where there was good sport, and there Jack was born. Here we are. Rest under that tree while I interview the erring maiden."
Isabel sat on the bench under an ancient oak for half an hour or more, but took no note of the time. In rural America one always seems to hear the whir of distant machinery and responds to its tensity in the depths of some nerve centre; but in England's open the tendency is to dream away the hours, the nerves as blunt as in the tropics; unless, indeed, one happens to be so astir within that one rebels in responding, and conceives of ultimate hatred for this incompassionate arrogant peace of England.
Isabel had been roused from her mood of unreasoning content by her contact with the older woman, but for a few moments her thoughts waved to and fro in that large tranquillity like pendent moss in a gentle breeze. There was a stir of life in the little village; a window was thrown open; a man came out to the pump and filled a bucket with water; a child cried for its breakfast; the birds were singing in the trees. But they barely rippled the calm. Isabel's eyes dwelt absently upon a white line along a distant hill-top, made, no doubt, by Cæsar's troops; for she had heard that the mosaic floors of Roman houses had been discovered under one of the fields in the neighborhood. This information, imparted by Lord Hexam's cousin, Mrs. Throfton, a lady interested in neither Bridge nor gossip, had not excited her as it might have done before her archæological experience at headquarters, but she was glad to recall it now, for that white road, sharply insistent in the surrounding green, was one of the perceptible vincula of history.
It was all old—old—old; an illimitable backward vista. And she was as new, as out of tune with it as the motorcar flashing like a lost and distracted comet along that hill-top in a cloud of historied dust: she with her problems, her egoisms, the fateful independence of the modern girl. In a fashion she was one of the chosen of earth, but she doubted if the women who had toiled in these villages, or in centuries past had lived their lives in the mansions of their indubious lords, had not had greater compensations than she. Unbroken monotony and a saving sense of the inevitable must in time create for the soul something of the illimitable horizon of the vast level spaces of the earth.
And she? At twenty-five she had lost her old habit of staring with veiled eyes into some sweet ambiguous future, her girlish intensity of emotion. But her theories, in general, were sound, and she had ticketed even her minor experiences. She knew that character was the most significant of all individual forces, and that if developed in strict adjustment to the highest demands of society, dragging strength out of the powers of the universe, were it not inborn, the book of one's objective future at least need never be closed prematurely by those inexorable social forces, which, whatever the weak spots on the surface of life, invariably place a man in the end according to his deserts. She had seen her father, with all his advantages of birth and talents, and early importance in the community, gradually shunned, shelved, dismissed from the daily life of steadier if less gifted men, almost unknown to the young generation. He had clung to certain strict notions of honor through it all, however, and at his death the county had experienced a spasm of remorse and attended his funeral; the sermon had been eloquent with masterly omissions, and even the newspaper that had vilified him in his days of political influence came out with an obituary, which, when included in some future county history, would give to posterity quite as good an impression of him as he deserved.
And James Otis had had his virtues. One of his claims to redemption survived in his daughter. He had reared her in the strict principles and precepts of his New England ancestors, many of which are generally more useful in the life of a man. This early instillation, taken in connection with himself as a commanding illustration in subcontraries, had given Isabel a directness of vision invaluable to a girl in no haste to place her life in stronger hands. Whatever her dissatisfactions and disillusions, her road lay along the upper reaches; the second rate, the failures from birth, the criminal classes, far below. Her start in life was indefectible, and she knew that did the necessity arise to-morrow she could support herself and ask no quarter.
Perhaps, she mused, she would be happier in the necessity, for the problem of roof and bread is an abiding substitute for the problem of what to do with one's life. But she had never known an anxious moment regarding the bare necessities, and although there was something pleasantly stimulating in the prospect of making a fortune and being able to live as she wished in the city of her birth—the only object for which she retained any passion in her affections—she smiled somewhat cynically at the modest outlook.
Environments like the present were uplifting, almost deindividualizing, and there had been a time when she had known seconds in the face of nature's surprises that were distinct spiritual experiences. She believed they would return when she was in her own land once more, and Europe a book of fading memories. Her love of beauty at least was as keen as ever, and now that Europe was off her mind, leaving the proper sense of surfeit behind it, no doubt she would have a sense of actually beginning life when the time came to take an active part in it, and she assumed a position of some importance in her own community. She was far too sensible for ingratitude, and fully appreciated the gifts that life had so liberally dealt her. And she fully believed in work as the universal panacea. The mere thought of a busy future brought a glow to her heart. She rose with a smile as Lady Victoria emerged from the cottage at the upper end of the village.
Lady Victoria was not smiling. Her brows were drawn, and she looked angry and contemptuous.
"The little idiot!" she exclaimed, as they started briskly for home. "This is the first failure I have had in ten years. That is one of my boasts. And I took particular pains with that girl. Now Jack will have the agreeable task of coercing the man into marrying her, for it appears that his ardor has cooled."
Her brow cleared in a few moments, but she seemed to have had enough of conversation, and it was evident that words for words' sake, or as a flimsy chain between signposts of genuine interest, had no place in her social rubric. Isabel, who was equally indifferent, strode along beside her without so much as a comment, and so confirmed the good impression she had made on her mettlesome relative. As they approached the house, Lady Victoria turned to her with a smile that brought sweetness to her eyes rather than any one of her more dazzling qualities.
"I am generally in my boudoir at five," she said. "Come in this afternoon for a chat before tea, if you have nothing better to do. Now run and get ready for breakfast."
Whether or not Mr. Gwynne had made up his mind to follow his mother's advice and employ a new weapon in his siege of Mrs. Kaye, or whether, like common mortals, he was subject to the natural impulses of youth, the most novel of the guests of Capheaton found herself on his right in the informality of breakfast, and the object of his solicitude. He fetched her bacon and toast from the sideboard, and when he discovered that she did not like cream in her tea, carried her cup back to his mother and waited for the more pungent substitute. And then he actually made an effort to entertain her. There was a flicker of surprised amusement in the neighborhood, but Isabel accepted his attentions as a matter of course, assuming that the young gentleman felt refreshed after a night's rest in his own bed, or had awakened to a sense of her importance as a member of his family. It was not until she caught Mrs. Kaye's eye and read a contemptuous power to retaliate, that she experienced a certain zest in the situation. With the magnetism of intelligent interest in her own eyes, she turned to Gwynne with a question that betrayed a flattering acquaintance with one of his less popular books, then hung upon the monologue of which he promptly delivered himself. It was characteristic that he either contributed little to the conversation or monopolized it; and he reflected, as he talked of the personal experience which led up to the episode of her interest, that he had never before gazed into eyes at once so lovely and so fine. He disliked American girls, partly because they had shown no disposition to join the ranks of those that lived to spoil him, partly because he believed them to be shallow and cold. Some of the married women had attracted him, but not before they had lived long enough to develop the stronger qualities of the older races; he had his ideals and was not easily satisfied. He was deeply in love with Mrs. Kaye, for her brilliant subtle mind and powerful appeal to his passions had blinded him to her defects, and he was convinced that his heart had travelled to its predestined goal. Nevertheless, he decided that his new cousin, if as cold as the rest of her youthful compatriots, was worth cultivating for her intelligence and obvious talent for good-comradeship.
But in a moment a subject was started that entirely diverted his mind and upset the lively tenor of the breakfast-table.
"Where is Lorcutt?" asked some one, abruptly, referring to a brother of Lord Brathland, who had lost heavily and cheerfully at Bridge the night before.
Isabel's eyes happened to have wandered to the face of the man opposite. To her surprise it became livid. He turned instantly to Gwynne, however, and said: "I should have told you—I quite forgot—he asked me to make his excuses. He got a telegram—bad news—Bratty is dead."
Involuntarily Isabel glanced at Mrs. Kaye; Flora had hinted to her of the lady's designs. That face for once was ghastly and unmasked, but the eyes were not glittering with grief.
"Impossible!" she cried, sharply. "Lord Brathland? Why—I saw him only two days ago, in London. He was as well as possible."
The others barely noticed her. Their astonished eyes were fixed on the first speaker, Captain Ormond, who was sitting very erect, as if to receive the questions fired at him as a brave man faces the hiss of lead on the field.
"I know little," he replied; "except that Brathland was suddenly attacked by appendicitis two nights ago and that an operation was immediately performed—"
"Friday night!" cried Mrs. Kaye. "Why he spent an hour with me that afternoon, and was to dine with Lord Zeal and Lord Raglin and half a dozen other men that night—they all came up to London to talk over one of Sir Cadge Vanneck's mines. Why—I remember you were to be there. Surely Lord Brathland was well then?"
"He was looking very seedy when he came in. I happened to sit next to him—told him he ought to go home. Finally he got so bad he decided that he would, and as he left the table he fainted. Several of us saw him to bed. He said he didn't want his family fidgeting him, and the surgeon said he would be all right in a few days. I thought he was out of danger when I came down last night, so said nothing about it to Harold."
"Was he taken home?" asked Gwynne, whose eyes had never left Ormond's face.
"No—to Raglin's room up-stairs. The dinner was at the Club."
"I cannot understand why his family was not summoned at the last!" exclaimed Lady Victoria.
"Well, there's only the old duke and Harold, you see. Dick is out in Africa. I suppose they didn't want to agitate the duke until the last moment and couldn't find Harold until this morning. Besides, Raglin was with him, and he is a relative, at least. It is awfully sudden. I have been upset ever since Harold woke me up this morning and told me; and hated to speak of it."
"Who was the surgeon?" asked Gwynne.
"Ballast."
"Ballast? Who is he? Why not one of the big men, in heaven's name?" cried Mrs. Kaye.
"Well—they were all out of town—naturally enough at this time of year. We had to take what we could get. No doubt Lester or Masten was telegraphed for later. I—all of us—left the affair in Raglin's hands."
The company broke into general comment, and under cover of the confusion Isabel distinctly heard Gwynne demand:
"What's up your sleeve, Ormond?"
And the response: "For God's sake, old chap, don't ask!"
Gwynne had never recognized the contingency of a serious rival in the affections of the woman he had elected to mate, and had he heard of the late Lord Brathland's attentions it would not have occurred to him that Mrs. Kaye could weigh a prospective dukedom against the reflected glories of his own career. He intended to be prime-minister before he was forty, and older and soberer heads shared his confidence. It was true that Mrs. Kaye was an emphatic Conservative—scorning even the compromise of Liberal-Unionism—and that so far he had been unable to convert her; but he did not take any woman's political convictions very seriously, knowing that they commonly owed their inspiration to social ambition, a desire for a career, or to marital comradeship. The latter he made no doubt would operate in his own case as soon as the lady gave him the opportunity to demand it as his right; and his sharp political discussions with her were among the spiciest of his experiences. She rarely expressed herself in every-day language; and although it had crossed his mind that epigrammatic matrimony might grow oppressive, he had reminded himself that her speech was but a part of a too cultivated individuality and would be unable to endure the strain of daily intercourse. Although he had in his composition little of the femininity that gives a certain type of man a sympathetic comprehension of women, his Celtic blood imparted a subtle understanding of their foibles of which he was but half aware. More than once this subconscious penetration had induced a speedy recovery from misplaced affections; but the toils of Julia Kaye, who piqued, allured, repelled, dazzled, now and again snubbed every one else for his sake, bound him helpless. He was grateful for his mother's abetment, although it somewhat surprised him; but his mother was the woman of whom he had the least comprehension.
So far Mrs. Kaye had ignored his several proposals, but of this he thought nothing. He would have cared little for a woman to be had for the asking; and he rather welcomed any treatment that stirred the somewhat sluggish surfaces of his nature.
He had determined, however, to force a definite answer from her during this visit, and although he was far too courteous a host to embarrass a guest, he knew that were Mrs. Kaye deliberately to grant him a private interview he should be at liberty to press his suit.
Immediately after the hour in the smoking-room that followed breakfast, he started in search of her; but although many of the women were scattered throughout the lower rooms, reading, writing, gossiping, he saw nothing of his inamorata. Flora Thangue happened to be standing alone, and he went up to her impulsively.
"Do you know if Julia has gone to church?" he asked, without circumlocution.
"She went to her room directly after breakfast. I fancy she is rather cut up over Lord Brathland's death," replied the astute Miss Thangue.
"Of course; we all are—poor Bratty! He was rather a bounder, but it is natural to recall his virtues. Flora, go and tell her I want her to come for a walk. I can't go to her room myself, and I don't care to send a servant."
Miss Thangue reflected. Probably this was the most favorable moment for a repulse that he could have chosen. She was sincerely fond of him and distrusted Mrs. Kaye as much as she disliked her.
"Very well," she said. "I will see what I can do."
Mrs. Kaye admitted her promptly and presented an unstained front, although her color was lower than usual. She was a woman of too much natural and acquired poise to remain askew under any shock. But she had experienced an hour of mixed emotions in which a confused and wondering sense of defeat was paramount. It had left her a little aghast, for although she had met with the inevitable snubs in her upward course, she rarely permitted them to agitate her memory in these days when she had grown to believe herself one of the spoiled favorites of destiny; and her fibres were by no means sensitive. But this sudden blow was a reminder that fate had been capricious to spoiled darlings before. She had stood almost motionless before the window from the moment she had entered her room until Miss Thangue knocked at the door, and by that time she had repoised herself and set her heavy mouth in a hard line as she reflected upon her own will as a factor in any game with life.
"Jack wants you to go for a walk," announced Miss Thangue, who saw no occasion for subtlety.
"That means he intends to propose again," said Mrs. Kaye, in her carefully modulated voice. "I don't know that I care about it. I have letters to write."
"Why not get it over? You could compel him to believe, if you chose, that you have no intention of marrying him, and it would be rather a kindness; he has so much else to think about, and he certainly should have a free mind before the opening of Parliament. If you really did Jack any harm," she added, deliberately, "Vicky would never forgive you—nor a good many others."
"I wouldn't do him any harm for the world," said Mrs. Kaye, casting down her eyes and looking very young and innocent. "But I should hate to give him up. After all, there is no one half so interesting. Well, I'll go down and have it over."
A few moments later she joined Gwynne at the foot of the staircase, and they went out to the woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where the elaborate accentuates.
Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally at once.
"What a dreadful—shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at all. Poor dear, we were such friends—and I saw him only a few hours before. Have you heard anything more?"
"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast—as if he were afraid of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if he had something besides his health on his mind."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"
"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself, poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."
"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly Sunday morning."
"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"
"I don't mind, Jack dear."
She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood. His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.
"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."
"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked, in some wonder.
"I have never faced the possibility of failure in my life. And you are as much to me as my career. I cannot imagine life without either."
He suddenly put his hand under her chin and lifted her face; she was of tiny stature and this disadvantage in the presence of man was not the least subtle of her charms. "Say yes quickly," he cried, and the strength of his will and passion vibrated to her through the medium he had established. But she pouted and drew back.
"Perhaps I want a career of my own. You would swallow me whole."
"You could become the most powerful woman in the Liberal party—have a salon and all the rest of it."
"I happen to be a Conservative."
"What has that to do with it? Or politics with love, for that matter? Tell me that you love me. That is all I care about."
"It is only during the engagement that love is all. Marriage is the great public school of life; the passions fall meekly into their proper place—beside the prosaic appetites, the objective demands; somewhat below the faculties that distinguish the higher kingdom."
"Indeed? Well, I am sanguine enough to believe that we would prove the exception. I hardly dare think of it!" he burst out. "For God's sake keep your epigrams for other people and be a woman pure and simple."
She looked both as she permitted her full red mouth to tremble and his arms to take sudden possession of her.
In the large liberty of an English country-house Isabel might have found the long morning tedious had she been of a more sociable habit. Lady Victoria, Mrs. Throfton, and Lady Cecilia Spence went to church; all three, as great ladies, having a dutiful eye to the edification of humbler folk. Flora Thangue spent the greater part of the morning writing letters for her hostess, the men fled to the golf-links, and the rest of the women not engaged in vehement political discussion, or Bridge, were striding across country. Isabel, tempted by the charmingly fitted writing-table in her room, although an indolent correspondent, wrote a long and amply descriptive letter to her sister, which her brother-in-law, being more than usually hard up at the moment of its arrival, transposed into fiction and illustrated delightfully for a local newspaper. Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores, the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys. She had a quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless, in the carvings on stone; the jewelled façades of Orvieto and Siena, the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.
She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment, with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite room with the guests.
Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies, containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written, doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made American millionaire.
His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the outcome of midnight travail, or, like his eloquence on the platform, a direct flight from the quickened brain. It certainly bore no resemblance to his amputated table talk. But in a moment she dismissed her speculations, for she had discovered a quality, overlooked before, but arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty self-confidence. Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight and large grasp of his subject, which, without his evident care for the graces, would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally conscientious but less gifted men, was the lonely play of a really lofty imagination, and a noble human sympathy. As she read on, this warm full-blooded quality, tempered always by reason, grew more and more visible to her alert sense; and when the fires in his mind blazed forth into a revelation of a passionate love of beauty, both in nature and in human character, Isabel realized what such a man's power over his audience must be; when this second self, so effectually concealed, suddenly burst into being.
"It is too bad a woman would have to live with the other!" she thought, as she raised her eyes and saw Gwynne emerge from the woods with Mrs. Kaye. "I cannot say that I envy her."
"By Jove, they have an engaged look!"
Isabel turned with a start, but greeted Lord Hexam with a smile. He was as yet her one satisfactory experience of the young English nobleman, whom, like most American girls, she had unconsciously foreshadowed in doublet and hose. Hexam was quite six feet, with a fine military carriage; he had been in the Guards and had not left the army until after two years of active service; his blue eyes were both honest and intelligent, and he was generally clean cut and highly bred.
He drew up a chair beside Isabel and reflected that she was even handsomer than he had thought, with the sunlight warming the ivory whiteness of her skin, although it contracted the mobile pupils of her eyes; and that little black moles when rightly placed were more attractive than he had thought possible. They gave a sort of daring unconscious eighteenth-century coquetry to what was otherwise a somewhat severe style of beauty. But he was a man for whom a woman's hair had a peculiar fascination, and while they were uttering commonplaces at random his eyes wandered to the soft yet massive coils encircling Isabel's shapely head, and lingered there.
"Pardon me!" he said, boyishly. "But I always thought—don't you know?—that hair like that was only in novels and poems and that sort of thing. Is it all your own?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.
"You would think so if you had to carry it for a day. I should have had it cut off long ago if it had happened to be coarse hair. It is an inherited evil of which I am too vain to rid myself. The early Spanish women of my family all had hair that touched the ground when they stood up. I have an old sketch of a back view of three of them taken side by side; you see nothing but billows of fine silky hair. But I have put it out of sight, as it looks rather like an advertisement for a famous hair restorer."
"I'd give a lot to see yours down. It's wonderful—wonderful!"
"Well, I have promised a private view to some of the women. If Lady Victoria thinks it quite proper perhaps I'll admit you."
"I'll ask her for a card directly she comes home. Let it be this afternoon just after tea."
"I wonder if they really are engaged," said Isabel, who had been told that Englishmen never paid compliments, and was growing embarrassed under the round-eyed scrutiny. Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye had paused by a sundial.
"Who? Oh yes, I should think so, although there was some talk that poor Bratty—but no doubt that was mere rumor, or Mrs. Kaye wouldn't be on with Jack like that. By Jove, he is engaged. I never saw him look so—so—well, I hardly know what."
"Do you approve of the match?"
"If my consent is asked I shall give them my blessing. He is the salt of the earth, although a bit lumpy now and then; and she is such a jolly little thing, full of genuine affection—just the wife for Jack."
"You believe in her, then?" Isabel wondered, as many another has done, at the miasma that seems to rise and dim a man's perceptive faculties when he is called upon to estimate the worth of a fascinating woman.
"Rather! Don't you?"
"She struck me as being one of the few people without a redeeming virtue. To be sure that has a distinction of its own."
"Oh!" He wondered if so handsome a girl shared the common rancor of her age and sex against charming young widows.
"And the worst mannered," continued Isabel, who knew exactly what he thought. "And plebeian in her marrow. I wish my cousin had chosen Miss Thangue or any one else."
"But he couldn't marry Flora," said the literal young nobleman. "She hasn't a penny, and is the friend of all our mothers. But I'm sorry you've such a bad opinion of Mrs. Kaye. She's tremendously popular with us. I'm not one of her circle—retinue would be more like it; but I've always thought her the brightest little thing going, and I'm sure she wouldn't harm a fly."
"I'm sure she would do nothing so little worth her while. Well, there is no need for your eyes to be opened; but I wish that my cousin's might be. I suppose that you have the same faith in him that so many others—himself included—seem to have."
"Rather!—You are a most critical person. Haven't you?"
"I think I have. In fact I am sure of it. That is the reason I have been wishing he were an American."
He laughed boyishly. "That is a good one! But we need him over here. You haven't the slightest idea how much. We get into a blue funk every time Zeal takes a cold on his chest. To quote Mrs. Kaye, 'A Liberal peer is as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach, and as ornamental as whitewash.' Clever, ain't it?"
"I think people are touchingly easy to satisfy! I have been treated to several of Mrs. Kaye's epigrams and heard as many more quoted. It seems to me that nothing could be easier than the manufacture of that popular superfluity."