[image]"'It is the old story. You are worthy to marry her, but I am not worthy to speak to her'""It is the world which has made that law, not I," responded Sir Percy. "Don't think that I reckon myself worthy to marry this woman whom I love--I only hope to make myself a little less unworthy. Ever since the world was made it has demanded more of women than of men.""That law sounds well when it is enforced by you against me. Good-bye," was Alicia's response.VISir Percy Carlyon went out into the cool March air, which steadied his much-shaken nerves. He had refused to bring about a meeting between Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage, and with masculine directness made not the slightest secret to himself why he did it. Yet he was not without shame at the part he had played in the matter.It was early for his walk, as the spring afternoons were growing longer. He struck out toward the northwest and walked for an hour. As he was returning he reached the top of the hill, where the paved streets began, when Lord Baudesert's carriage with its high-stepping bays overtook him. Lord Baudesert called out of the window, and in another minute Sir Percy was sitting in the carriage opposite Lord Baudesert and General Talbott."It is rather pleasant," said Lord Baudesert, "to come across a countryman once in a while, and not to be always considering American susceptibilities. Talbott, here, is delighted with the country as far as he has got. I told him it is the most interesting, as it certainly is the most complex, of all nations and societies." Lord Baudesert leaned back in the carriage and settled himself comfortably to talk upon that agreeable subject, his own affairs. "The Ambassadors at Paris and Berlin and other European capitals have an easy berth compared with mine. I can walk in and talk with the President and arrange affairs to our mutual satisfaction. It might be supposed that I had accomplished something, as it would be in any Chancellery of Europe, but not here, if you please. At the next Cabinet meeting the Secretary of State may say that it is all a stupid blunder on the part of the President, or the Attorney-General may put in his oar, and all goes to smash. Then, if it gets as far as the approval of the Secretary of State, and the permission of the Attorney-General, as soon as it is done up in official form, it goes to the Senate. The Senate likes to lay the Secretary of State by the heels and the British Ambassador on top of him; and that is where our carefully studied arrangements generally land. The House of Representatives, too, can generally find a peg on which to hang some objection, and, if there is any money involved, we can't turn a wheel without the help of the House. That is diplomacy in America.""How do you get anything done, then?" said General Talbott."There are ways, my dear Talbott. The Speaker of the House is a useful man to have as a friend, and there are, besides, a few men in the Senate who can deny themselves the joy of tripping up an Ambassador. One of them I particularly desire you to meet--Senator March. He stands high with the administration, and with everybody, in fact. He is an uncommonly able man, and has a candour and fairness which disarms opposition. I should not venture to call him absolutely the most gifted man in the Senate, or the most profound lawyer, or the most brilliant speaker, but, take him altogether, I consider him the strongest man in public life in Washington to-day. You will meet him when you dine at the Embassy next week. I will send a card in due form to yourself and Mrs. Vernon. I think I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter once before her marriage?""That marriage turned out most unfortunately for my poor child," replied General Talbott, with the peculiar tenderness in his voice with which he always spoke of Alicia. "Guy Vernon had a large fortune, but he was a scapegrace inborn. My daughter was young, innocent, and had never had the command of money, so you may imagine she made some mistakes, but she was most cruelly treated; that I found out after her patience could no longer stand her husband's unkindness. Vernon died more than a year ago, after having lived long enough to ruin the life of my only child."Sir Percy Carlyon, sitting with his back to the horses, listened with an impassive face to General Talbott's words."Mrs. Vernon had her settlements, had she not?" asked Lord Baudesert."Yes. But she and Vernon between them managed to get some of the provisions of that arrangement set aside, and spent a great part of the money which was supposed would be a provision for my daughter in the event of Vernon's death. Luckily, there were no children. I shouldn't care to have a grandchild with Guy Vernon's blood in him. My daughter is an angel. Pardon a father's pride.""She looked an angel," replied Lord Baudesert, "when I saw her in the first bloom of her beauty."Sir Percy Carlyon, listening to this, reflected that his shrift would be short if General Talbott knew what had happened twelve years before.Lord Baudesert dropped General Talbott at his hotel, then drove back with Sir Percy to the Embassy, where Sir Percy joined the family circle at dinner. When the ladies left the table and the uncle and nephew were alone was Lord Baudesert's favourite time for exchanging confidences with Sir Percy. To-night he chose the subject of General Talbott and his daughter."While I have not seen Talbott's daughter for many years, I remember well what a beautiful and captivating young girl she was, but it seems to me that I have heard rumours--eh? Bad marriage, worthless husband, and gay wife. Do you know anything about it?"Sir Percy then calmly and deliberately proceeded to lie like a gentleman."Nothing except what the world knows. I saw a great deal of Mrs. Vernon twelve years ago when I was in India. As you see, General Talbott is a most devoted father and Mrs. Vernon a most affectionate daughter. She was virtually separated from Vernon when I first knew her.""And had squandered a lot of money?""Both of them were spendthrifts, as far as that goes. Mrs. Vernon was a beautiful young woman and much admired.""And a little gay, perhaps?""Not that I ever heard," responded Sir Percy coolly, looking Lord Baudesert in the eye. "It would be hard to believe that General Talbott's daughter were not everything she should be. He is, I think, altogether the finest man I ever knew."Lord Baudesert, with a catholic interest in beauty, asked:"You saw Mrs. Vernon this afternoon. Is she still beautiful?"Sir Percy paused before answering this question."Yes, she is still beautiful, but she is no longer a girl, of course. If you will excuse me now, I will join my aunt in the drawing-room."Sir Percy went from bad to worse--because as soon as he appeared in the drawing-room Mrs. Vereker and the three girls fell upon him like playful sheep and began to ask him all manner of questions about Alicia Vernon. Was she a great beauty, as Mrs. Vereker had heard, and was she going to marry somebody else, now that Guy Vernon was dead? Jane wished to know how Mrs. Vernon dressed her hair. Sarah inquired if her sleeves were large or small, according to the latest London fashion, and complained that, for her part, Americans changed the mode of their sleeves so often that she could not keep up with them! Isabella yearned to know whether Mrs. Vernon smoked cigarettes or not. Sir Percy almost laughed at the latter suggestion. He had never seen any woman in his life so careful to pay the tithe of mint, anise and cummin to the world as Alicia Vernon, or more ready to avoid the weightier matters of the law. The slightest aroma of fastness was rigidly forsworn by her, and no Cromwellian ever kept out of the way of the fast set more absolutely than did the lady of the violet eyes.In the midst of this patter of questions Lord Baudesert entered the drawing-room, and the three girls suddenly grew mute, while Mrs. Vereker asked Lord Baudesert, for the fourth time that evening, if the east wind hadn't given him a touch of gout. Having answered this question three times with much savagery, Lord Baudesert let it pass, and demanded pen and paper, directing Isabella, who was the family scribe, to make out the list for the dinner which was to be given next week in honour of General Talbott and Mrs. Vernon. The first name put down was Senator March, and then followed a list of eight or ten other representative men whom Lord Baudesert thought General Talbott would like to meet. The selection of the women was more difficult. By way of disciplining Mrs. Vereker, who did not need it in the least, Lord Baudesert commanded Isabella to begin the list of ladies as follows:"Mrs. Chantrey."Mrs. Vereker ventured to say feebly:"Mrs. Chantrey has already dined here twice this season.""She may be dining here oftener than you think," was Lord Baudesert's menacing reply, and Mrs. Vereker, in her mind's eye, saw Mrs. Chantrey as the future Lady Baudesert, presiding with much majesty over the British Embassy.Some girls were required for the unmarried men who were asked. It was the unwritten law that at dinners only one of Mrs. Vereker's covey should appear at the table--an honour which was always received with nervous apprehension by the successful candidate. This time it was Isabella who was the Jephtha's daughter of the occasion. Mrs. Vereker suggested several girls, but each one was remorselessly thrown out by Lord Baudesert on various grounds. Presently he asked:"What is the name of that girl who was here on the afternoon the two South Americans called, and helped to pull us out of the hole?""Miss Armytage," replied Mrs. Vereker."She struck me as rather an unusual sort of a girl."Mrs. Vereker, with her usual capacity for misunderstanding Lord Baudesert's meaning, replied faintly:"Oh, yes, very unusual! She is from a little town called Bardville in Tennessee, or is it Indiana? I forget which. Of course she would not do at all, and we never thought of suggesting her.""Put down Miss Armytage," snapped Lord Baudesert.The comedy suddenly became a tragedy to Sir Percy Carlyon. So, then, Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage were to be brought face to face after all--and it filled him with a dumb rage. Isabella, meaning to conciliate her uncle, murmured:"A lovely girl, Miss Armytage, so intelligent, so interesting!""A provincial, if ever I saw one," was Lord Baudesert's response to this. "Nevertheless she has some beauty and a pretty voice, and we will have her."When Lord Baudesert had retired to his library Mrs. Vereker and the three girls talked in subdued tones for fear the ogre might hear them. They mournfully agreed there must be something between Lord Baudesert and Mrs. Chantrey, and Sir Percy was appealed to for his opinion."Lord Baudesert wouldn't marry Helen of Troy if she had all the virtues of St. Monica and John D. Rockefeller's wealth into the bargain," was Sir Percy's consoling answer. "He simply talks about Mrs. Chantrey to worry you. I wish them both joy if they get each other, but there isn't the shadow of danger."Mrs. Vereker, however, refused to be comforted."And what a surprise that he should have gone out of his way to ask Miss Armytage, whom he frankly called a provincial! Surely, in the language of the hymn, it might be said of Lord Baudesert, 'He moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.'"Sir Percy had promised to stay all the evening, but he broke his promise and left early. He began to believe that Fate, and not he, would settle when and how Lucy Armytage would hear the painful story of his youth.During the next week Sir Percy Carlyon saw General Talbott every day, and for hours, and it was inevitable that he should see much of Alicia Vernon. He did the regular sight-seeing with them, drove with them through the park, went with them to Mount Vernon, and, in short, acted as their cicerone. Nothing could exceed the grace and composure of Alicia Vernon's manner, and in her defeat she was not unlike General Talbott in the few rebuffs that he had experienced during his life. If Sir Percy Carlyon had been a younger or more sanguine man he would have felt quite at ease, but he knew Alicia Vernon too well ever to feel at ease in her neighbourhood. She was not the woman to lay obvious snares and traps to find out things, much less to fall into the open vulgarity of asking questions, yet Sir Percy felt that her sharp intelligence was at work on every word and phrase he uttered, to find out what he had refused to tell her--the name and habitat of the woman he loved.Cards and invitations began to pour in upon General Talbott and his daughter, but the dinner at the Embassy was the first formal entertainment which they attended.Sir Percy's first meeting with Lucy Armytage after Alicia Vernon's arrival was purely accidental. He had taken his late afternoon walk eastward, and as he crossed, after sunset, the deserted plaza of the Capitol he noticed Lucy's slim figure standing in the purple dusk upon the Capitol terrace. She did not know he was near until he spoke, and then she turned, her face and eyes flooded with the joy of the unexpected meeting. She had come from the National Library with a book, and announced her intention to walk back to the hotel."Since I am to be an Englishwoman, I shall probably be more English than the English themselves. I walk everywhere, and I have bought a pair of large thick boots, which my uncle declares he can't tell from his own."Lucy's feet were slender enough to take this liberty with them. Lucy was full of her invitation to dinner at the British Embassy, where she had never dined before."It will be different," she said, "from any dinner I was ever at, because when Lord Baudesert and Mrs. Vereker know--you understand"--Sir Percy understood well enough, and Lucy continued--"they will, of course, look back and begin to canvass me and I want them to have a good opinion of me."To which Sir Percy, like a true lover, replied:"How could they have any other?" Yet the thought of Lucy coming face to face with Alicia Vernon made him sick at heart.It was still light enough for them to remain out of doors twenty minutes, and the region of the Capitol, which swarmed with people during the day, was absolutely deserted. A sudden impulse prompted Sir Percy to say to her, as they strolled slowly along the quiet streets in the twilight:"I have something to ask of you, something I hope you will grant."Lucy turned upon him two laughing, adoring dark eyes; but the look upon Sir Percy's face sobered her."It is this--to have enough faith in me to accept my word. There is something in my past life, something which the world might think of no great consequence, something I will tell you all about when we are married. It will be a confession, but I repented of it long before I ever met you, and I have repented of it a thousand times more since.""I could not marry any man whose word I could disbelieve," replied Lucy with calm confidence.They walked together until within a square of the hotel, when Lucy demanded that Sir Percy should leave her.The evening of the Embassy dinner came, and Sir Percy Carlyon, who always acted as assistant host, was the first guest to arrive. Almost immediately General Talbott and Alicia Vernon followed. Alicia, like most Englishwomen, was at her best in the evening. She was one of those rare women who could wear jewels in her hair and look well, and to-night she sparkled with gems. No woman could cross a drawing-room floor with more grace than Alicia Vernon, or could sit and rise and bow with greater dignity. She was more like an enthroned queen than a pretty princess such as Lucy Armytage's air and manner suggested when she entered the drawing-room. Nevertheless their charms were so different that they enhanced, rather than outshone, each other. Lucy carried in her hands a huge bouquet of violets. They had been Sir Percy's gift, and a whispered word of thanks, unnoticed by any one, repaid him. Alicia Vernon, apparently absorbed in conversation with various persons who were introduced to her, after the American fashion, watched closely every woman as she entered the room. She was the last woman in the world to underrate her rival, and with discernment saw that this black-haired girl with the milk-white skin was easily the most attractive woman present. Mrs. Chantrey and Eleanor were the last to arrive. The former wore at least a quart of large diamonds strewn over her person, and, recalling with triumph that this was her third dinner at the Embassy during the season, considered herself as good as married to Lord Baudesert, and adopted condescending airs towards weak Mrs. Vereker. Alicia had claimed a woman's prescience in matters of the heart. She felt instinctively that the beautiful Eleanor Chantrey was not the woman whom Sir Percy loved.Not a soul except herself at the long, brilliant dinner-table suspected anything between Sir Percy Carlyon and Lucy Armytage, who sat opposite each other. But Alicia Vernon's violet eyes saw everything without watching. She knew the English habit of not conversing across the table, but she observed that Sir Percy Carlyon spoke to Lucy Armytage once or twice. Lucy, herself, instead of answering him with the gaiety and spirit she showed in her conversation with her neighbours, replied to Sir Percy with only a brilliant smile and a word or two. The indications were so slight that not even the hawk-eyed Lord Baudesert noticed them, but nothing escapes a jealous woman.Meanwhile, never had Alicia Vernon exerted herself more to please. She sat on Lord Baudesert's right hand and on her left was Senator March. Mrs. Vernon was a better listener than talker. She had not the naïve effervescence of the American women, but she had a softness, a charming air of listening with profound attention, which few American women ever acquire. Senator March, struck from the beginning by her manner of the highest breeding, admiring her mature beauty and charmed by her subtle and even silent flattery, thought it the pleasantest dinner he had ever attended. Eleanor Chantrey sat on the other side of him and he experienced a glow of pleasure which a man feels when he basks in beauty's light. But Eleanor Chantrey was not much older than Lucy Armytage and her range of conversation was strictly limited to what had happened since she came out in society. Senator March had passed his fiftieth birthday and liked to talk about things which happened twenty-five years before. He had an agreeable feeling with Mrs. Vernon of being contemporaries, which he could not feel with a younger woman. Alicia Vernon, on her part, recognised Senator March's virtues as a dinner man and was tactful enough to keep to herself the surprise she felt at finding an American so accomplished.When the ladies left the table and the gentlemen's ranks were closed up for that comfortable after-dinner conversation, which is still the heritage of the Englishman, Lord Baudesert took pains to bring General Talbott and Senator March into conversation together. Between the two men a good understanding was instantly established. General Talbott did not lose interest in Senator March's eyes for being the father of the charming woman who had sat next him. With the frank friendliness of the American, he made greater headway in General Talbott's acquaintanceship during their half-hour's talk than many Englishmen make in a month's companionship. Simultaneously Senator March asked permission to call, and General Talbott gave a cordial invitation to him to do so. Lord Baudesert was in high feather. The dinner had been pleasant and agreeable and he was pleased that General Talbott should see what admirable dinner guests Americans of the best sort made. Sir Percy Carlyon appeared to be in his usual form, but, as he sat smoking and talking pleasantly, the thought that Lucy Armytage and Alicia Vernon were at that moment in the same room, on the same terms, and reckoned to be of the same sort, gnawed him like some ravenous beast.Mrs. Vernon at that very time was sitting on a sofa with Lucy Armytage, and with perfect art and tact was finding out from her many things which the girl was quite unconscious of betraying. Alicia Vernon was puzzled by the fact of a secret engagement, because Sir Percy had told her that the girl he loved had promised to marry him, and this was evidently unknown to the rest of the world. Without the least trouble, by asking a few half-laughing questions about the custom of engagements in America, Alicia Vernon discovered that such things as unannounced engagements existed and were not considered discreditable. Lucy answered readily, but in speaking her pale cheeks took on a colour like the faint pink of the azalea. Alicia led her on without questions, but with clever suggestions, to tell of her employments, of the books she read and many other things, which Lucy told frankly and without the slightest suspicion that she was being cross-examined, and was adding link by link to the chain of evidence which had begun with the mere probabilities of a guess.Alicia Vernon's heart burned within her. She would like to have forgotten Sir Percy Carlyon long ago, as she had forgotten many others. She knew that her feeling for him was an infatuation, but in some strange manner he had dominated her imagination from the beginning. It was the most dangerous, on account of General Talbott, of all the affairs in which she had ever been engaged; but all women like Alicia Vernon have one tragic love. The old Greek superstition that those who defy love are punished works out in a different civilisation with those who dishonour love, paying for it in blood and tears.Alicia Vernon had said to Lucy:"Sir Percy Carlyon and I are old friends. We met first in India twelve years ago."Lucy had enough mother wit not to express surprise or to betray how much she knew of the incidents of Sir Percy's life. But she was no match infinessefor Alicia Vernon, who found out, without the least trouble, that the girl knew certain dates, places and events which she could not have known except from Sir Percy Carlyon.The sight which greeted Sir Percy when he entered the drawing-room was Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage still sitting upon the small sofa together, apparently conversing with intimacy. A tall, red-shaded lamp cast a rosy glow over the woman and the girl, and fell upon Alicia Vernon's rich hair, in which a few grey threads showed. Her beautiful eyes were fixed upon Lucy with an expression which Sir Percy Carlyon knew perfectly well. He surmised in a moment what had happened. Lucy was clever as girls are clever, but with Alicia Vernon she was as a bird in the snare of the fowler. His poor little Lucy!The irruption of the gentlemen into the drawing-room was greeted with enthusiasm, as it always is. Mrs. Chantrey made a dive for the Ambassador, and, wedging him into a corner with a chair, leaned over it girlishly and ogled him, much to Lord Baudesert's delight. Nothing he had ever known in his life had diverted him quite so much as Mrs. Chantrey's determination to become Lady Baudesert if she could possibly contrive it. Lord Baudesert, as usual, made plaint of his poverty outside of his official income, and omitted to mention that his private income was something like £10,000 a year. Mrs. Chantrey then held forth eloquently upon the worthlessness of money except to help those one loves. Lord Baudesert, withmalice prepense, led her to the verge of an offer of marriage before making his escape.Sir Percy Carlyon drew up a chair close to the sofa on which sat the woman he hated and the woman he loved, and smiling and outwardly at ease, talked with both of them. Senator March, too, soon gravitated that way. He wished to see more of his late neighbour with her low, delicious voice and her beautiful, melancholy eyes. Then quite naturally came out the story of the late house party at his country house, and what the guests did to amuse themselves."It is very quiet up there," said Senator March; "we are in the Maryland mountains, you see, and there are no ruined abbeys to visit, no hunt balls, or anything of the sort. We simply walk and read and rest and talk; but my friends who give me the privilege of their company are so kind that I feel that they enjoy their visits almost as much as I do."Lucy hastened to corroborate this, and Sir Percy added pleasantly:"The pleasure you offer us is just what we like best. I remember those country walks in which the ladies sometimes did us the honour to join us. Don't you remember them, Miss Armytage?"Alicia Vernon understood this as a cool defiance of her."You must pay me another visit as soon as possible," cried Senator March. "The country is looking beautiful, now that spring is approaching. Perhaps Mrs. Vernon and General Talbott will do me the honour to join us? Of course, I count upon you, Miss Armytage and Sir Percy?"Lucy accepted promptly. So did Sir Percy, with the mental reservation that Lucy should stay away from any house-party of which Alicia Vernon was to be a member.As the guests were leaving, Alicia passed Sir Percy and said to him, unheard by any one else:"It is she."Driving back in the carriage, General Talbott expressed to Alicia his enjoyment of the evening."I have not been to a pleasanter party for a long time. What a fine fellow Senator March is! He has an enormous fortune, Lord Baudesert tells me, but lives very simply. He has no capacity for money-making, and the beginning of his fortune was an inheritance, and he became rich rather by accident than effort. It is years since I met a man who pleased me so well."Then Alicia told the thought which had occurred to her many times during the evening:"I didn't think that Americans could have such good manners as some of those people had."But even while she was speaking her mind was upon that strange problem, why could she not cast off the memory, the passion for Sir Percy Carlyon? He hated her and she knew it, but that only made her love him the more, as she reckoned love--so curious a thing is the heart of a woman.VIIThe very next day Senator March called upon General Talbott and Mrs. Vernon and found them both at home. Alicia seemed to him even more charming than on the evening before. There are few occasions that a woman appears better than when dispensing the simple hospitality of her own tea-table, and it is a charm which many Englishwomen possess. Alicia Vernon had it in great perfection, and her tea-table gave an air of home to the hotel sitting-room. Senator March remained a full hour and enjoyed every minute of it. Alicia Vernon's voice was the soul of music, and her soft and gracious manners completed the charm of her voice. Then, too, she was not so ridiculously young. Before Senator March left, he had arranged for a dinner at his own house, and also for a week-end at his country place. Just as he was leaving, Mrs. Chantrey came fluttering in, and that meant still another dinner for the English visitors, and Senator March, being a court card, was at once grabbed by Mrs. Chantrey for her dinner. The next week was to be one of Grand Opera, and Senator March, who loved music, determined to take the best box at the theatre, chiefly for the pleasure of having Alicia Vernon in it. Quite naturally, in all these plans for pleasure, Sir Percy Carlyon was included. Senator March and himself had become almost chums from the beginning of their acquaintance, and what could be more suitable than that Sir Percy should be one of the party when his old friends were entertained? Then Senator March's fondness for Lucy Armytage, and his somewhat limited acquaintance among the younger set, brought her into the circle.At the dinner which Senator March gave in his big, old-fashioned house Alicia saw, with her own eyes, evidence of inherited as well as acquired wealth. There was a ton, more or less, of family silver on the sideboards and cabinets, while the portraits of three generations hung upon the walls.Among the twenty-five guests were Lord Baudesert, Mrs. Vereker, Lucy Armytage and Sir Percy Carlyon. The second meeting with Lucy Armytage made Alicia Vernon's confirmation doubly sure; but there was a new personality present which divided her interests with Sir Percy Carlyon and Senator March: this was Colegrove, the man whom Senator March and Sir Percy Carlyon had passed in the hotel lobby on the day of their second meeting. He sat directly across the table from Alicia Vernon, who was on Senator March's left, Mrs. Vereker being on his right. The mellow glow from the shaded candelabra fell full upon Colegrove's head and shoulders. He was instantly struck with the beauty of Alicia Vernon's eyes, as most men were, but Alicia was no less struck with his. They were clear, so compelling--they were the eyes of the commanding officer on the field of battle. His well-shaped, iron-grey head, his clear-cut features, spoke power in the lines of their contour. Alicia Vernon found herself involuntarily glancing across at her neighbour, and whenever she looked at him she found his glance fixed upon her.When the ladies retired to the drawing-room the conversation turned upon Colegrove, and Alicia found out that he was one of the great railway magnates of America, one of those men of whom she had heard and read about, who, beginning at the lowest rung of the ladder, make their way up by sheer indomitable force to the top, and then kick the ladder down after them. He had a wife, whom no one had ever seen, stowed away somewhere in the West, but was never known to speak of her, much less to present her. Fabulous tales were told of his wealth and of the simplicity of his mode of living. His winters were generally spent at Washington, in a comfortable but not expensive hotel, where he had a modest suite of rooms. While the ladies were talking about him, the gentlemen appeared from the dining-room. Colegrove walked straight up to Alicia, and, seating himself, plunged into conversation with her. Alicia, with infinite tact, led him to speak of himself, his affairs, his wishes, his aspirations, and listened so intelligently that she bewitched him even more than she had Roger March."I think," she said presently, in her slow, sweet voice, "that I am getting new ideas all the time in this country about money. You Americans are credited with thinking much about it. I never saw people who value money so little.""Why should we?" answered Colegrove, smiling. "We have no hereditary nobility, no entailed property to keep up. Every generation here looks out for itself. Then American ladies don't give their husbands the best chance of saving money.""How can any woman save money?" asked Alicia helplessly. "I am always in want of money, have been all my life, and yet it doesn't seem to me as if I have many costly things or expensive habits.""Oh, the want of money with a woman is chronic," replied Colegrove easily. "The right way to do would be to pay your bills and ask a smile in return."He looked at her with such frank admiration that it brought the colour to Alicia Vernon's face; but she was not displeased with him; on the contrary, she rather liked the sense of power, of innate force, which was so plainly his. How trifling to him would seem the mountain of debt under which Alicia had always laboured, and which she had only managed to keep partially from her father's knowledge."I shouldn't mind a woman spending money on toilettes, jewelry, carriages and such things. That would be just like buying toys," he said, still smiling. "I am a man of simple tastes--you would be disgusted at the plainness of my rooms at the hotel, but I can understand that white birds should have downy nests."Colegrove would have monopolised Mrs. Vernon, but Senator March would by no means have it so. He came up and began to talk about the coming house-party, taking Alicia into the library to show her pictures of the place. Then her eyes fell upon pictures of Senator March's family home, which was in a near-by Eastern State, and the photographs he showed of it proved that it was a fine old Colonial house added to with taste and judgment until it was a beautiful and spacious mansion. Also he had a ranch far off in the Northwest, and his near-by country place in Maryland."You have as many homes as a great English noble.""But they are not castles; they are only houses; and a man alone, as I am, has no home. This was my father's town house; he was in the Senate before me, but you see that it is an old barn compared with the splendid modern houses in Washington. Then the home, in my native State, is where I was born, but I have lived there very little. After I left the university I travelled for some years, and then went into public life, and that has kept me pretty close to Washington. My own home is too far away to go to for the week-end, so I have this little place a hundred miles away in the mountains. I don't know exactly how I happened to acquire the ranch. I went into a land purchase with some friends of mine, and the first thing I knew was that I had a ranch, and I don't yet quite understand how I came by it. I didn't know what to do with it, but I went out there, and found it a gloriously lonely place, with an adobe house and a courtyard, stuck up on the side of the mountain. The people out there told me to stock the place--I have the title to a good part of the big valley--I got a manager, and, strange to say, I haven't been swindled. Every year or two I try to go out there for six weeks. It's a superb climate and I live on horseback, as I did when I was a boy. I should like so much to show you the ranch which I found in my pocket one day."Alicia smiled and shook her head."There is so much to see, and one can't stay in America for ever: it is so expensive."Senator March looked at her with secret pity. He thought what a nasty freak of Fate it was that this exquisite creature should want what he would so easily have given her, but could not.Alicia Vernon, with a woman's subtlety, noticed and liked this attitude of the American toward women--the eternal readiness to give. It was distinctly different from that of the Englishman, who is strictly just to his womankind, but is not expected to be generous, and the normal woman hates justice as much as she loves generosity. Alicia, with a sigh, recalled the storms concerning money in which her married life with Guy Vernon had been passed, and the laborious subterfuges which she was forced to employ to keep her father from knowing the exact state of her finances. And here were two Americans, strangers to her, and with oceans of money, who were as ready to give it to a wife as they would give sugar-plums to children!Colegrove determined to see more of his charmingvis-à-vis, and went up boldly to General Talbott and asked permission to call on him. General Talbott, the kindliest of men under his English reserve, cordially invited him.It was a remarkably pleasant dinner to everybody, with one exception--Sir Percy Carlyon. His pride, his self-respect, his self-love, suffered cruelly every moment that Lucy Armytage was in the company of Alicia Vernon. He had taken Lucy in to dinner, and he could not but see the advance she had made, even in the short time, in tact and self-possession. Not a self-conscious word or look escaped her as she sat talking charming nothings to the man whose lips had been upon hers only the night before, and no one would have dreamed that Sir Percy Carlyon was upon any different footing with her than any other woman at the dinner.The next week was the week of Grand Opera. Senator March took a box for the whole week, and three nights during that week Alicia Vernon and her father were his guests. As Mrs. Vernon sat in the shadow of the box, listening to the enchanting voice of one of the greatest tenors in the world, it dawned upon her mind how privileged was the position of an American woman where men were concerned. The social customs, which permitted men to lie almost at the feet of a woman, were entirely new to her, and when this was done with the tact and high breeding of Senator March, he appealed to the craving for luxury in her which had been her undoing. He had asked her to name which operas in the week's repertoire she would like to hear, and when she had made her selection he called in his carriage for her and her father, and she found a beautiful bouquet waiting for her in the opera box and a supper after the performance.Whither Senator March was drifting was plain to everybody except himself. He had grown accustomed to consider himself as a bachelor for life. He did not, himself, know the cause of his bachelorhood. Few women pleased him thoroughly, and he had put off from year to year the search for the other half of his being, and suddenly he found himself a middle-aged man. He disliked the idea of an inequality in age and felt no desire to make any of the sparkling young girls he knew Mrs. Roger March, and the women who were suitable in age did not often retain the power to please his æsthetic sense. He had no fancy for widows and did not care to be the object of a woman's second love. When he heard Alicia Vernon's history, however, it occurred to him that a woman's second husband might possibly be her first love.These things all came to him before the soft spring days which Alicia Vernon, her father and Sir Percy Carlyon spent at his country place. Senator March had particularly desired Lucy Armytage's company. He had been fond of her from childhood, and she was one of the few young girls who did not worry him with the insistencies of youth, but Lucy, after having accepted the first suggestion of the visit with enthusiasm, was not now able to come. Senator March explained why at dinner the first evening of his house-party, which was as large as his modest house could accommodate, and numbered two ladies besides Alicia Vernon."I regret very much that my young friend, Miss Armytage, is not one of us, but she found herself obliged to go out to Kentucky for a fortnight's visit to some relatives," he said. "I believe that in Kentucky people are in bondage to their relations. However, I shall hope to have Miss Armytage at our next reunion, for we must come here often. Congress promises to sit into the summer and we must take refuge in the country as often as we can."Alicia Vernon, sitting on Senator March's right hand, with Sir Percy Carlyon on her left, turned towards him with a look which held a meaning. It was Sir Percy who would not let Lucy stay under the same roof with her, Alicia Vernon. No repulse he had ever given her stung like this. For the first time she felt an impulse of fury towards him and a desire to make him suffer. She lay awake in her bed that night, hot and cold with rage.The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon the usual Sunday walk along the mountains was proposed. Senator March was too accomplished a host to devote himself to any lady of the party, and as there were not enough to pair off all the gentlemen, he attached himself to General Talbott for the afternoon. A little clever management on Alicia's part, in the presence of her father, secured Sir Percy Carlyon as her escort. Sir Percy made no effort to escape. He knew that strange liking which women have for opening the grave of a dead passion and dragging the bones of it into life, weeping and wringing their hands over it and crying aloud to it, commanding it to live again.They walked together in the April afternoon through the budding woods, looking down upon the wide, peaceful valley before them, with the blue peaks cutting the edge of the clear horizon. It was the same walk which Sir Percy had taken Lucy Armytage two months before on the Sunday afternoon, and the recollection of it, and the strangeness of Alicia Vernon being his companion now, almost bewildered him. When they came to a sunny spot on the hillside, where a grey, flat rock afforded a resting-place under the pine-trees, Alicia would have stopped, but Sir Percy said to her almost roughly:"Not here; we must go on farther.""Why not?" asked Alicia. "Was it because you and Lucy Armytage once rested here and therefore I am not worthy to stop for a moment in this place?"It was a chance shot, but it went home. Sir Percy turned his back, and Alicia, with a feeling of triumph, seated herself upon the flat stone where Lucy had first heard the words of love from Sir Percy Carlyon. When he turned round she saw in his face, dark and displeased, that she had scored against him."I wish I could forget you," she said, "and not care whether I can hurt you or not, but I can't. You see, there are some parts of a woman's life which she can live only once, and the memory is always tormenting her. This is the first walk we have taken together since--since that time in India. It was a hilly country somewhat like this."Sir Percy made no answer; the rage in his heart against Alicia Vernon had received an accession in the last fortnight."Of course," she continued in a voice of suppressed anger, "you forbade Miss Armytage to come here. You didn't wish her to be under the same roof with me. One would think that I were the only sinner in the world.""I sinned as much and more than you," replied Sir Percy, "but I have repented.""That is to say, you grew weary of your passion for me. I think that is what men call penitence."Sir Percy looked at her, amazed for the thousandth time. Outwardly she could observe every canon of dignity and refinement, but secretly, like every woman who had ever gone wrong, as far as Sir Percy Carlyon's experience went, she had lost all sense of justice, of proportion, of reticence, of discipline, and even of sound sense. He had heard stories of women who trod the downward path and then retrieved themselves, but he had never met one. These women and Alicia Vernon, with her heritage of the best birth and breeding, "were sisters under their skins." The thing which really surprised him was that Alicia maintained so outwardly and unbrokenly the high standard of her birth and breeding, and was still capable of disinterested affection--her love for her father.As Sir Percy would not reply, Mrs. Vernon said no more for a while. She leaned against the mass of rock at her back and looked around at the still woods, in which only a few trilling bird notes broke the golden silence, across the sunlit valley and then at Sir Percy Carlyon. What strange fate had brought them from one end of the world to the other that they might meet alone in such a place? She was so still that Sir Percy presently looked around to see if she were there. She was sitting quite motionless, looking with deep, inscrutible eyes straight before her. She turned her gaze to him and said:"I know no more than you do why I could speak to you in this way, or why I could ever think of you again. I am like a child who has got hold of some pretty, shiny thing, which turns out to be a jewel, and the child weeps and struggles when the jewel is taken away."Sir Percy could not but be sorry for her; he often had moments and hours of silent rage with her, but it would not hold against her in the presence of her despair. Presently she arose and came toward him, smiling."Look around you," she said; "this spot, I know, I feel, is associated with the image of that girl. Now you will be unable to think of it without thinking of me also. I will not have it that I only shall think of you; I mean that you shall not be able to escape the thought of me. Come, it is late; let us be going."They turned and walked back towards the house. Farther along the mountain path they met Senator March and General Talbott; quite naturally the party divided, and Sir Percy joined General Talbott, while Senator March ranged himself with Mrs. Vernon. They fell behind, as Senator March was pointing out the features and general historic points of the landscape, while Sir Percy and General Talbott went ahead. When they were quite far in advance and walking down the country lane bordered with the mountain ash, now with little brown buds upon the bare white branches, and the whole air scented with the coming spring, General Talbott said:"I think this journey, my dear fellow, to be one of the pleasantest, and even one of the most fortunate, that I ever made. It has been a long time since I have seen my poor child so like her earlier self. She is interested and amused. The social customs over here permit a woman to enjoy a great many pleasures and to receive a great many attentions from men without exciting remark. My daughter is, as you know, extremely careful in her conduct, often prudish. Not that I would wish her otherwise, but still I am glad when she finds herself in an environment that permits her a little innocent enjoyment. Those parties at the opera were extremely pleasant, but no such attention could be offered or accepted in Europe.""You are quite right; socially American customs are extremely pleasant. They embody liberty without license.""I agree with you from what I have seen."As General Talbott spoke, Sir Percy observed in him a cheerfulness and note of pleasure in his voice which always followed when Alicia seemed to be at ease and a little happy.Sir Percy Carlyon left early on the Monday morning and returned to Washington in advance of the rest of the party. It was still some days before Lucy Armytage arrived from Kentucky. At their first meeting afterwards Lucy asked no questions whatever about Senator March's house-party, and the delicate reticence which she showed on this point was not unnoticed by Sir Percy, who volunteered to tell her all of which he could speak. He did not avoid Alicia Vernon's name, but whenever he spoke of her Lucy saw that peculiar expression of his eye which indicated dislike. She asked, however, a great many questions about Senator March and then said:"I wonder if Mrs. Vernon will marry him when he asks her."Sir Percy was thunderstruck; no such idea had entered his thoroughly masculine mind, and after a moment he said so."How stupid!" remarked Lucy, eyeing him with profound contempt. "It was perfectly obvious the first night they met. Everybody in town is talking about it.""They are?" replied Sir Percy after a moment, and then quickly turned the conversation into another channel.Meanwhile his mind was in a tumult. Alicia Vernon married to Senator March, or to any man of honour, for that matter, and Senator March, chivalrous, high-minded, taking everything for granted in the case of the woman he loved! It was staggering to Sir Percy Carlyon; the whole thing was anomalous, inexplicable. But for him Senator March and Alicia Vernon would never have met. His mind went back to those early days in India: how the web then formed not only entangled him, but caught others, innocent and helpless, in its meshes. He would be forced to stand silently by and see a man who loved his honour better than his life take to his heart a woman unworthy of him. This thought possessed Sir Percy, and brought with it the fiercest stings of remorse. He went about that day with a strange sense of unreality concerning everything. Alicia Vernon might indeed have married even an honourable man, but to see a man as proud and sensitive as Senator March lay his honest, tender heart at the feet of Alicia Vernon was an incredible thing to Sir Percy Carlyon. That evening at the club the first person he saw in the smoking-room was General Talbott."I am very glad to have come across you this evening," said General Talbott. "I wish to speak with you confidentially. How are marriages arranged over here?""With the least possible trouble," answered Sir Percy with a glimmer of a smile, "and totally unlike marriages anywhere else. They are supposed to be on a basis of pure sentiment, and the question of money is handled in the most gingerly manner."General Talbott smiled and then continued:"To be quite confidential with you, my dear fellow, I have seen lately that Senator March takes an uncommon interest in my daughter. Whether Alicia would marry him or not I can't say. This afternoon Senator March called to see me, to tell me, what I had suspected for some little time past, that he is deeply attached to my daughter. I needn't tell you that the idea was quite acceptable to me. I am an old man, and at my death my child would be unprotected in the world; she is one of those delicate creatures unfitted to stand alone, and what I most desired for her was the protection of a good man's arm."Sir Percy listened with quiet attention, but all the while a sense of unreality deepened upon him; nevertheless he said quite coolly:"As far as the man himself goes, it would be hard to find Senator March's superior, and, as you probably know, he has a great fortune, honestly come by.""I am not in love with money myself," said General Talbott, and then stopped and looked meditatively at Sir Percy.The idea had occurred to him many times since Alicia's widowhood that the friendship, which was all that General Talbott knew had existed between Alicia and Sir Percy, might bring them into a closer relationship. It would have been an ideal marriage for Alicia, her father thought, except that Sir Percy Carlyon was a poor man and Alicia, as her father always said deprecatingly, had little idea of the value of money. He would rather, he thought, that Alicia should marry in her own country, but, recalling Sir Percy's modest income and expectations, General Talbott dismissed the half-formed wish from his mind. No; Alicia was not the wife for a poor man in public life."To be still more confidential with you, my dear Carlyon," he said, laying his hand on Sir Percy's knee, "nothing could have been more generous in every way than March's proposition to me. The law makes a liberal provision in America for the wife, I find, but Senator March, knowing our customs, volunteered to make settlements, splendid in their generosity, upon my daughter. She will have an independent income of her own, every year, far exceeding the entire income of Guy Vernon's estates, and for a woman of my daughter's luxurious tastes that is a great consideration. She is so high-minded, however, that I scarcely think she took this in, although after Senator March left I talked with her quite frankly on the subject. Of course, she isn't a young girl any longer, and has realised painfully all her life the restrictions of a modest income.""But she will marry Senator March?""I think so; she has asked a little time for consideration, but you know what that means with ladies. March had the good feeling to say to me that, if she would consent to marry him, he would promise in advance that she should visit England once a year to see me, and he hopes that I will agree to spend a part of each year with them--most considerate of a father's feelings."As General Talbott talked, Sir Percy saw in him a deep feeling of gratification and even of relief. The only fault her father could find with Alicia was her reckless expenditure, but if she married Senator March she would be far beyond all need of doing without anything--so General Talbott in his simplicity thought. Sir Percy's manner struck General Talbott as being a little peculiar, but he thought he could account for it: Sir Percy had his own private disappointment to bear; such was General Talbott's explanation.
[image]"'It is the old story. You are worthy to marry her, but I am not worthy to speak to her'"
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"'It is the old story. You are worthy to marry her, but I am not worthy to speak to her'"
"It is the world which has made that law, not I," responded Sir Percy. "Don't think that I reckon myself worthy to marry this woman whom I love--I only hope to make myself a little less unworthy. Ever since the world was made it has demanded more of women than of men."
"That law sounds well when it is enforced by you against me. Good-bye," was Alicia's response.
VI
Sir Percy Carlyon went out into the cool March air, which steadied his much-shaken nerves. He had refused to bring about a meeting between Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage, and with masculine directness made not the slightest secret to himself why he did it. Yet he was not without shame at the part he had played in the matter.
It was early for his walk, as the spring afternoons were growing longer. He struck out toward the northwest and walked for an hour. As he was returning he reached the top of the hill, where the paved streets began, when Lord Baudesert's carriage with its high-stepping bays overtook him. Lord Baudesert called out of the window, and in another minute Sir Percy was sitting in the carriage opposite Lord Baudesert and General Talbott.
"It is rather pleasant," said Lord Baudesert, "to come across a countryman once in a while, and not to be always considering American susceptibilities. Talbott, here, is delighted with the country as far as he has got. I told him it is the most interesting, as it certainly is the most complex, of all nations and societies." Lord Baudesert leaned back in the carriage and settled himself comfortably to talk upon that agreeable subject, his own affairs. "The Ambassadors at Paris and Berlin and other European capitals have an easy berth compared with mine. I can walk in and talk with the President and arrange affairs to our mutual satisfaction. It might be supposed that I had accomplished something, as it would be in any Chancellery of Europe, but not here, if you please. At the next Cabinet meeting the Secretary of State may say that it is all a stupid blunder on the part of the President, or the Attorney-General may put in his oar, and all goes to smash. Then, if it gets as far as the approval of the Secretary of State, and the permission of the Attorney-General, as soon as it is done up in official form, it goes to the Senate. The Senate likes to lay the Secretary of State by the heels and the British Ambassador on top of him; and that is where our carefully studied arrangements generally land. The House of Representatives, too, can generally find a peg on which to hang some objection, and, if there is any money involved, we can't turn a wheel without the help of the House. That is diplomacy in America."
"How do you get anything done, then?" said General Talbott.
"There are ways, my dear Talbott. The Speaker of the House is a useful man to have as a friend, and there are, besides, a few men in the Senate who can deny themselves the joy of tripping up an Ambassador. One of them I particularly desire you to meet--Senator March. He stands high with the administration, and with everybody, in fact. He is an uncommonly able man, and has a candour and fairness which disarms opposition. I should not venture to call him absolutely the most gifted man in the Senate, or the most profound lawyer, or the most brilliant speaker, but, take him altogether, I consider him the strongest man in public life in Washington to-day. You will meet him when you dine at the Embassy next week. I will send a card in due form to yourself and Mrs. Vernon. I think I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter once before her marriage?"
"That marriage turned out most unfortunately for my poor child," replied General Talbott, with the peculiar tenderness in his voice with which he always spoke of Alicia. "Guy Vernon had a large fortune, but he was a scapegrace inborn. My daughter was young, innocent, and had never had the command of money, so you may imagine she made some mistakes, but she was most cruelly treated; that I found out after her patience could no longer stand her husband's unkindness. Vernon died more than a year ago, after having lived long enough to ruin the life of my only child."
Sir Percy Carlyon, sitting with his back to the horses, listened with an impassive face to General Talbott's words.
"Mrs. Vernon had her settlements, had she not?" asked Lord Baudesert.
"Yes. But she and Vernon between them managed to get some of the provisions of that arrangement set aside, and spent a great part of the money which was supposed would be a provision for my daughter in the event of Vernon's death. Luckily, there were no children. I shouldn't care to have a grandchild with Guy Vernon's blood in him. My daughter is an angel. Pardon a father's pride."
"She looked an angel," replied Lord Baudesert, "when I saw her in the first bloom of her beauty."
Sir Percy Carlyon, listening to this, reflected that his shrift would be short if General Talbott knew what had happened twelve years before.
Lord Baudesert dropped General Talbott at his hotel, then drove back with Sir Percy to the Embassy, where Sir Percy joined the family circle at dinner. When the ladies left the table and the uncle and nephew were alone was Lord Baudesert's favourite time for exchanging confidences with Sir Percy. To-night he chose the subject of General Talbott and his daughter.
"While I have not seen Talbott's daughter for many years, I remember well what a beautiful and captivating young girl she was, but it seems to me that I have heard rumours--eh? Bad marriage, worthless husband, and gay wife. Do you know anything about it?"
Sir Percy then calmly and deliberately proceeded to lie like a gentleman.
"Nothing except what the world knows. I saw a great deal of Mrs. Vernon twelve years ago when I was in India. As you see, General Talbott is a most devoted father and Mrs. Vernon a most affectionate daughter. She was virtually separated from Vernon when I first knew her."
"And had squandered a lot of money?"
"Both of them were spendthrifts, as far as that goes. Mrs. Vernon was a beautiful young woman and much admired."
"And a little gay, perhaps?"
"Not that I ever heard," responded Sir Percy coolly, looking Lord Baudesert in the eye. "It would be hard to believe that General Talbott's daughter were not everything she should be. He is, I think, altogether the finest man I ever knew."
Lord Baudesert, with a catholic interest in beauty, asked:
"You saw Mrs. Vernon this afternoon. Is she still beautiful?"
Sir Percy paused before answering this question.
"Yes, she is still beautiful, but she is no longer a girl, of course. If you will excuse me now, I will join my aunt in the drawing-room."
Sir Percy went from bad to worse--because as soon as he appeared in the drawing-room Mrs. Vereker and the three girls fell upon him like playful sheep and began to ask him all manner of questions about Alicia Vernon. Was she a great beauty, as Mrs. Vereker had heard, and was she going to marry somebody else, now that Guy Vernon was dead? Jane wished to know how Mrs. Vernon dressed her hair. Sarah inquired if her sleeves were large or small, according to the latest London fashion, and complained that, for her part, Americans changed the mode of their sleeves so often that she could not keep up with them! Isabella yearned to know whether Mrs. Vernon smoked cigarettes or not. Sir Percy almost laughed at the latter suggestion. He had never seen any woman in his life so careful to pay the tithe of mint, anise and cummin to the world as Alicia Vernon, or more ready to avoid the weightier matters of the law. The slightest aroma of fastness was rigidly forsworn by her, and no Cromwellian ever kept out of the way of the fast set more absolutely than did the lady of the violet eyes.
In the midst of this patter of questions Lord Baudesert entered the drawing-room, and the three girls suddenly grew mute, while Mrs. Vereker asked Lord Baudesert, for the fourth time that evening, if the east wind hadn't given him a touch of gout. Having answered this question three times with much savagery, Lord Baudesert let it pass, and demanded pen and paper, directing Isabella, who was the family scribe, to make out the list for the dinner which was to be given next week in honour of General Talbott and Mrs. Vernon. The first name put down was Senator March, and then followed a list of eight or ten other representative men whom Lord Baudesert thought General Talbott would like to meet. The selection of the women was more difficult. By way of disciplining Mrs. Vereker, who did not need it in the least, Lord Baudesert commanded Isabella to begin the list of ladies as follows:
"Mrs. Chantrey."
Mrs. Vereker ventured to say feebly:
"Mrs. Chantrey has already dined here twice this season."
"She may be dining here oftener than you think," was Lord Baudesert's menacing reply, and Mrs. Vereker, in her mind's eye, saw Mrs. Chantrey as the future Lady Baudesert, presiding with much majesty over the British Embassy.
Some girls were required for the unmarried men who were asked. It was the unwritten law that at dinners only one of Mrs. Vereker's covey should appear at the table--an honour which was always received with nervous apprehension by the successful candidate. This time it was Isabella who was the Jephtha's daughter of the occasion. Mrs. Vereker suggested several girls, but each one was remorselessly thrown out by Lord Baudesert on various grounds. Presently he asked:
"What is the name of that girl who was here on the afternoon the two South Americans called, and helped to pull us out of the hole?"
"Miss Armytage," replied Mrs. Vereker.
"She struck me as rather an unusual sort of a girl."
Mrs. Vereker, with her usual capacity for misunderstanding Lord Baudesert's meaning, replied faintly:
"Oh, yes, very unusual! She is from a little town called Bardville in Tennessee, or is it Indiana? I forget which. Of course she would not do at all, and we never thought of suggesting her."
"Put down Miss Armytage," snapped Lord Baudesert.
The comedy suddenly became a tragedy to Sir Percy Carlyon. So, then, Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage were to be brought face to face after all--and it filled him with a dumb rage. Isabella, meaning to conciliate her uncle, murmured:
"A lovely girl, Miss Armytage, so intelligent, so interesting!"
"A provincial, if ever I saw one," was Lord Baudesert's response to this. "Nevertheless she has some beauty and a pretty voice, and we will have her."
When Lord Baudesert had retired to his library Mrs. Vereker and the three girls talked in subdued tones for fear the ogre might hear them. They mournfully agreed there must be something between Lord Baudesert and Mrs. Chantrey, and Sir Percy was appealed to for his opinion.
"Lord Baudesert wouldn't marry Helen of Troy if she had all the virtues of St. Monica and John D. Rockefeller's wealth into the bargain," was Sir Percy's consoling answer. "He simply talks about Mrs. Chantrey to worry you. I wish them both joy if they get each other, but there isn't the shadow of danger."
Mrs. Vereker, however, refused to be comforted.
"And what a surprise that he should have gone out of his way to ask Miss Armytage, whom he frankly called a provincial! Surely, in the language of the hymn, it might be said of Lord Baudesert, 'He moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.'"
Sir Percy had promised to stay all the evening, but he broke his promise and left early. He began to believe that Fate, and not he, would settle when and how Lucy Armytage would hear the painful story of his youth.
During the next week Sir Percy Carlyon saw General Talbott every day, and for hours, and it was inevitable that he should see much of Alicia Vernon. He did the regular sight-seeing with them, drove with them through the park, went with them to Mount Vernon, and, in short, acted as their cicerone. Nothing could exceed the grace and composure of Alicia Vernon's manner, and in her defeat she was not unlike General Talbott in the few rebuffs that he had experienced during his life. If Sir Percy Carlyon had been a younger or more sanguine man he would have felt quite at ease, but he knew Alicia Vernon too well ever to feel at ease in her neighbourhood. She was not the woman to lay obvious snares and traps to find out things, much less to fall into the open vulgarity of asking questions, yet Sir Percy felt that her sharp intelligence was at work on every word and phrase he uttered, to find out what he had refused to tell her--the name and habitat of the woman he loved.
Cards and invitations began to pour in upon General Talbott and his daughter, but the dinner at the Embassy was the first formal entertainment which they attended.
Sir Percy's first meeting with Lucy Armytage after Alicia Vernon's arrival was purely accidental. He had taken his late afternoon walk eastward, and as he crossed, after sunset, the deserted plaza of the Capitol he noticed Lucy's slim figure standing in the purple dusk upon the Capitol terrace. She did not know he was near until he spoke, and then she turned, her face and eyes flooded with the joy of the unexpected meeting. She had come from the National Library with a book, and announced her intention to walk back to the hotel.
"Since I am to be an Englishwoman, I shall probably be more English than the English themselves. I walk everywhere, and I have bought a pair of large thick boots, which my uncle declares he can't tell from his own."
Lucy's feet were slender enough to take this liberty with them. Lucy was full of her invitation to dinner at the British Embassy, where she had never dined before.
"It will be different," she said, "from any dinner I was ever at, because when Lord Baudesert and Mrs. Vereker know--you understand"--Sir Percy understood well enough, and Lucy continued--"they will, of course, look back and begin to canvass me and I want them to have a good opinion of me."
To which Sir Percy, like a true lover, replied:
"How could they have any other?" Yet the thought of Lucy coming face to face with Alicia Vernon made him sick at heart.
It was still light enough for them to remain out of doors twenty minutes, and the region of the Capitol, which swarmed with people during the day, was absolutely deserted. A sudden impulse prompted Sir Percy to say to her, as they strolled slowly along the quiet streets in the twilight:
"I have something to ask of you, something I hope you will grant."
Lucy turned upon him two laughing, adoring dark eyes; but the look upon Sir Percy's face sobered her.
"It is this--to have enough faith in me to accept my word. There is something in my past life, something which the world might think of no great consequence, something I will tell you all about when we are married. It will be a confession, but I repented of it long before I ever met you, and I have repented of it a thousand times more since."
"I could not marry any man whose word I could disbelieve," replied Lucy with calm confidence.
They walked together until within a square of the hotel, when Lucy demanded that Sir Percy should leave her.
The evening of the Embassy dinner came, and Sir Percy Carlyon, who always acted as assistant host, was the first guest to arrive. Almost immediately General Talbott and Alicia Vernon followed. Alicia, like most Englishwomen, was at her best in the evening. She was one of those rare women who could wear jewels in her hair and look well, and to-night she sparkled with gems. No woman could cross a drawing-room floor with more grace than Alicia Vernon, or could sit and rise and bow with greater dignity. She was more like an enthroned queen than a pretty princess such as Lucy Armytage's air and manner suggested when she entered the drawing-room. Nevertheless their charms were so different that they enhanced, rather than outshone, each other. Lucy carried in her hands a huge bouquet of violets. They had been Sir Percy's gift, and a whispered word of thanks, unnoticed by any one, repaid him. Alicia Vernon, apparently absorbed in conversation with various persons who were introduced to her, after the American fashion, watched closely every woman as she entered the room. She was the last woman in the world to underrate her rival, and with discernment saw that this black-haired girl with the milk-white skin was easily the most attractive woman present. Mrs. Chantrey and Eleanor were the last to arrive. The former wore at least a quart of large diamonds strewn over her person, and, recalling with triumph that this was her third dinner at the Embassy during the season, considered herself as good as married to Lord Baudesert, and adopted condescending airs towards weak Mrs. Vereker. Alicia had claimed a woman's prescience in matters of the heart. She felt instinctively that the beautiful Eleanor Chantrey was not the woman whom Sir Percy loved.
Not a soul except herself at the long, brilliant dinner-table suspected anything between Sir Percy Carlyon and Lucy Armytage, who sat opposite each other. But Alicia Vernon's violet eyes saw everything without watching. She knew the English habit of not conversing across the table, but she observed that Sir Percy Carlyon spoke to Lucy Armytage once or twice. Lucy, herself, instead of answering him with the gaiety and spirit she showed in her conversation with her neighbours, replied to Sir Percy with only a brilliant smile and a word or two. The indications were so slight that not even the hawk-eyed Lord Baudesert noticed them, but nothing escapes a jealous woman.
Meanwhile, never had Alicia Vernon exerted herself more to please. She sat on Lord Baudesert's right hand and on her left was Senator March. Mrs. Vernon was a better listener than talker. She had not the naïve effervescence of the American women, but she had a softness, a charming air of listening with profound attention, which few American women ever acquire. Senator March, struck from the beginning by her manner of the highest breeding, admiring her mature beauty and charmed by her subtle and even silent flattery, thought it the pleasantest dinner he had ever attended. Eleanor Chantrey sat on the other side of him and he experienced a glow of pleasure which a man feels when he basks in beauty's light. But Eleanor Chantrey was not much older than Lucy Armytage and her range of conversation was strictly limited to what had happened since she came out in society. Senator March had passed his fiftieth birthday and liked to talk about things which happened twenty-five years before. He had an agreeable feeling with Mrs. Vernon of being contemporaries, which he could not feel with a younger woman. Alicia Vernon, on her part, recognised Senator March's virtues as a dinner man and was tactful enough to keep to herself the surprise she felt at finding an American so accomplished.
When the ladies left the table and the gentlemen's ranks were closed up for that comfortable after-dinner conversation, which is still the heritage of the Englishman, Lord Baudesert took pains to bring General Talbott and Senator March into conversation together. Between the two men a good understanding was instantly established. General Talbott did not lose interest in Senator March's eyes for being the father of the charming woman who had sat next him. With the frank friendliness of the American, he made greater headway in General Talbott's acquaintanceship during their half-hour's talk than many Englishmen make in a month's companionship. Simultaneously Senator March asked permission to call, and General Talbott gave a cordial invitation to him to do so. Lord Baudesert was in high feather. The dinner had been pleasant and agreeable and he was pleased that General Talbott should see what admirable dinner guests Americans of the best sort made. Sir Percy Carlyon appeared to be in his usual form, but, as he sat smoking and talking pleasantly, the thought that Lucy Armytage and Alicia Vernon were at that moment in the same room, on the same terms, and reckoned to be of the same sort, gnawed him like some ravenous beast.
Mrs. Vernon at that very time was sitting on a sofa with Lucy Armytage, and with perfect art and tact was finding out from her many things which the girl was quite unconscious of betraying. Alicia Vernon was puzzled by the fact of a secret engagement, because Sir Percy had told her that the girl he loved had promised to marry him, and this was evidently unknown to the rest of the world. Without the least trouble, by asking a few half-laughing questions about the custom of engagements in America, Alicia Vernon discovered that such things as unannounced engagements existed and were not considered discreditable. Lucy answered readily, but in speaking her pale cheeks took on a colour like the faint pink of the azalea. Alicia led her on without questions, but with clever suggestions, to tell of her employments, of the books she read and many other things, which Lucy told frankly and without the slightest suspicion that she was being cross-examined, and was adding link by link to the chain of evidence which had begun with the mere probabilities of a guess.
Alicia Vernon's heart burned within her. She would like to have forgotten Sir Percy Carlyon long ago, as she had forgotten many others. She knew that her feeling for him was an infatuation, but in some strange manner he had dominated her imagination from the beginning. It was the most dangerous, on account of General Talbott, of all the affairs in which she had ever been engaged; but all women like Alicia Vernon have one tragic love. The old Greek superstition that those who defy love are punished works out in a different civilisation with those who dishonour love, paying for it in blood and tears.
Alicia Vernon had said to Lucy:
"Sir Percy Carlyon and I are old friends. We met first in India twelve years ago."
Lucy had enough mother wit not to express surprise or to betray how much she knew of the incidents of Sir Percy's life. But she was no match infinessefor Alicia Vernon, who found out, without the least trouble, that the girl knew certain dates, places and events which she could not have known except from Sir Percy Carlyon.
The sight which greeted Sir Percy when he entered the drawing-room was Alicia Vernon and Lucy Armytage still sitting upon the small sofa together, apparently conversing with intimacy. A tall, red-shaded lamp cast a rosy glow over the woman and the girl, and fell upon Alicia Vernon's rich hair, in which a few grey threads showed. Her beautiful eyes were fixed upon Lucy with an expression which Sir Percy Carlyon knew perfectly well. He surmised in a moment what had happened. Lucy was clever as girls are clever, but with Alicia Vernon she was as a bird in the snare of the fowler. His poor little Lucy!
The irruption of the gentlemen into the drawing-room was greeted with enthusiasm, as it always is. Mrs. Chantrey made a dive for the Ambassador, and, wedging him into a corner with a chair, leaned over it girlishly and ogled him, much to Lord Baudesert's delight. Nothing he had ever known in his life had diverted him quite so much as Mrs. Chantrey's determination to become Lady Baudesert if she could possibly contrive it. Lord Baudesert, as usual, made plaint of his poverty outside of his official income, and omitted to mention that his private income was something like £10,000 a year. Mrs. Chantrey then held forth eloquently upon the worthlessness of money except to help those one loves. Lord Baudesert, withmalice prepense, led her to the verge of an offer of marriage before making his escape.
Sir Percy Carlyon drew up a chair close to the sofa on which sat the woman he hated and the woman he loved, and smiling and outwardly at ease, talked with both of them. Senator March, too, soon gravitated that way. He wished to see more of his late neighbour with her low, delicious voice and her beautiful, melancholy eyes. Then quite naturally came out the story of the late house party at his country house, and what the guests did to amuse themselves.
"It is very quiet up there," said Senator March; "we are in the Maryland mountains, you see, and there are no ruined abbeys to visit, no hunt balls, or anything of the sort. We simply walk and read and rest and talk; but my friends who give me the privilege of their company are so kind that I feel that they enjoy their visits almost as much as I do."
Lucy hastened to corroborate this, and Sir Percy added pleasantly:
"The pleasure you offer us is just what we like best. I remember those country walks in which the ladies sometimes did us the honour to join us. Don't you remember them, Miss Armytage?"
Alicia Vernon understood this as a cool defiance of her.
"You must pay me another visit as soon as possible," cried Senator March. "The country is looking beautiful, now that spring is approaching. Perhaps Mrs. Vernon and General Talbott will do me the honour to join us? Of course, I count upon you, Miss Armytage and Sir Percy?"
Lucy accepted promptly. So did Sir Percy, with the mental reservation that Lucy should stay away from any house-party of which Alicia Vernon was to be a member.
As the guests were leaving, Alicia passed Sir Percy and said to him, unheard by any one else:
"It is she."
Driving back in the carriage, General Talbott expressed to Alicia his enjoyment of the evening.
"I have not been to a pleasanter party for a long time. What a fine fellow Senator March is! He has an enormous fortune, Lord Baudesert tells me, but lives very simply. He has no capacity for money-making, and the beginning of his fortune was an inheritance, and he became rich rather by accident than effort. It is years since I met a man who pleased me so well."
Then Alicia told the thought which had occurred to her many times during the evening:
"I didn't think that Americans could have such good manners as some of those people had."
But even while she was speaking her mind was upon that strange problem, why could she not cast off the memory, the passion for Sir Percy Carlyon? He hated her and she knew it, but that only made her love him the more, as she reckoned love--so curious a thing is the heart of a woman.
VII
The very next day Senator March called upon General Talbott and Mrs. Vernon and found them both at home. Alicia seemed to him even more charming than on the evening before. There are few occasions that a woman appears better than when dispensing the simple hospitality of her own tea-table, and it is a charm which many Englishwomen possess. Alicia Vernon had it in great perfection, and her tea-table gave an air of home to the hotel sitting-room. Senator March remained a full hour and enjoyed every minute of it. Alicia Vernon's voice was the soul of music, and her soft and gracious manners completed the charm of her voice. Then, too, she was not so ridiculously young. Before Senator March left, he had arranged for a dinner at his own house, and also for a week-end at his country place. Just as he was leaving, Mrs. Chantrey came fluttering in, and that meant still another dinner for the English visitors, and Senator March, being a court card, was at once grabbed by Mrs. Chantrey for her dinner. The next week was to be one of Grand Opera, and Senator March, who loved music, determined to take the best box at the theatre, chiefly for the pleasure of having Alicia Vernon in it. Quite naturally, in all these plans for pleasure, Sir Percy Carlyon was included. Senator March and himself had become almost chums from the beginning of their acquaintance, and what could be more suitable than that Sir Percy should be one of the party when his old friends were entertained? Then Senator March's fondness for Lucy Armytage, and his somewhat limited acquaintance among the younger set, brought her into the circle.
At the dinner which Senator March gave in his big, old-fashioned house Alicia saw, with her own eyes, evidence of inherited as well as acquired wealth. There was a ton, more or less, of family silver on the sideboards and cabinets, while the portraits of three generations hung upon the walls.
Among the twenty-five guests were Lord Baudesert, Mrs. Vereker, Lucy Armytage and Sir Percy Carlyon. The second meeting with Lucy Armytage made Alicia Vernon's confirmation doubly sure; but there was a new personality present which divided her interests with Sir Percy Carlyon and Senator March: this was Colegrove, the man whom Senator March and Sir Percy Carlyon had passed in the hotel lobby on the day of their second meeting. He sat directly across the table from Alicia Vernon, who was on Senator March's left, Mrs. Vereker being on his right. The mellow glow from the shaded candelabra fell full upon Colegrove's head and shoulders. He was instantly struck with the beauty of Alicia Vernon's eyes, as most men were, but Alicia was no less struck with his. They were clear, so compelling--they were the eyes of the commanding officer on the field of battle. His well-shaped, iron-grey head, his clear-cut features, spoke power in the lines of their contour. Alicia Vernon found herself involuntarily glancing across at her neighbour, and whenever she looked at him she found his glance fixed upon her.
When the ladies retired to the drawing-room the conversation turned upon Colegrove, and Alicia found out that he was one of the great railway magnates of America, one of those men of whom she had heard and read about, who, beginning at the lowest rung of the ladder, make their way up by sheer indomitable force to the top, and then kick the ladder down after them. He had a wife, whom no one had ever seen, stowed away somewhere in the West, but was never known to speak of her, much less to present her. Fabulous tales were told of his wealth and of the simplicity of his mode of living. His winters were generally spent at Washington, in a comfortable but not expensive hotel, where he had a modest suite of rooms. While the ladies were talking about him, the gentlemen appeared from the dining-room. Colegrove walked straight up to Alicia, and, seating himself, plunged into conversation with her. Alicia, with infinite tact, led him to speak of himself, his affairs, his wishes, his aspirations, and listened so intelligently that she bewitched him even more than she had Roger March.
"I think," she said presently, in her slow, sweet voice, "that I am getting new ideas all the time in this country about money. You Americans are credited with thinking much about it. I never saw people who value money so little."
"Why should we?" answered Colegrove, smiling. "We have no hereditary nobility, no entailed property to keep up. Every generation here looks out for itself. Then American ladies don't give their husbands the best chance of saving money."
"How can any woman save money?" asked Alicia helplessly. "I am always in want of money, have been all my life, and yet it doesn't seem to me as if I have many costly things or expensive habits."
"Oh, the want of money with a woman is chronic," replied Colegrove easily. "The right way to do would be to pay your bills and ask a smile in return."
He looked at her with such frank admiration that it brought the colour to Alicia Vernon's face; but she was not displeased with him; on the contrary, she rather liked the sense of power, of innate force, which was so plainly his. How trifling to him would seem the mountain of debt under which Alicia had always laboured, and which she had only managed to keep partially from her father's knowledge.
"I shouldn't mind a woman spending money on toilettes, jewelry, carriages and such things. That would be just like buying toys," he said, still smiling. "I am a man of simple tastes--you would be disgusted at the plainness of my rooms at the hotel, but I can understand that white birds should have downy nests."
Colegrove would have monopolised Mrs. Vernon, but Senator March would by no means have it so. He came up and began to talk about the coming house-party, taking Alicia into the library to show her pictures of the place. Then her eyes fell upon pictures of Senator March's family home, which was in a near-by Eastern State, and the photographs he showed of it proved that it was a fine old Colonial house added to with taste and judgment until it was a beautiful and spacious mansion. Also he had a ranch far off in the Northwest, and his near-by country place in Maryland.
"You have as many homes as a great English noble."
"But they are not castles; they are only houses; and a man alone, as I am, has no home. This was my father's town house; he was in the Senate before me, but you see that it is an old barn compared with the splendid modern houses in Washington. Then the home, in my native State, is where I was born, but I have lived there very little. After I left the university I travelled for some years, and then went into public life, and that has kept me pretty close to Washington. My own home is too far away to go to for the week-end, so I have this little place a hundred miles away in the mountains. I don't know exactly how I happened to acquire the ranch. I went into a land purchase with some friends of mine, and the first thing I knew was that I had a ranch, and I don't yet quite understand how I came by it. I didn't know what to do with it, but I went out there, and found it a gloriously lonely place, with an adobe house and a courtyard, stuck up on the side of the mountain. The people out there told me to stock the place--I have the title to a good part of the big valley--I got a manager, and, strange to say, I haven't been swindled. Every year or two I try to go out there for six weeks. It's a superb climate and I live on horseback, as I did when I was a boy. I should like so much to show you the ranch which I found in my pocket one day."
Alicia smiled and shook her head.
"There is so much to see, and one can't stay in America for ever: it is so expensive."
Senator March looked at her with secret pity. He thought what a nasty freak of Fate it was that this exquisite creature should want what he would so easily have given her, but could not.
Alicia Vernon, with a woman's subtlety, noticed and liked this attitude of the American toward women--the eternal readiness to give. It was distinctly different from that of the Englishman, who is strictly just to his womankind, but is not expected to be generous, and the normal woman hates justice as much as she loves generosity. Alicia, with a sigh, recalled the storms concerning money in which her married life with Guy Vernon had been passed, and the laborious subterfuges which she was forced to employ to keep her father from knowing the exact state of her finances. And here were two Americans, strangers to her, and with oceans of money, who were as ready to give it to a wife as they would give sugar-plums to children!
Colegrove determined to see more of his charmingvis-à-vis, and went up boldly to General Talbott and asked permission to call on him. General Talbott, the kindliest of men under his English reserve, cordially invited him.
It was a remarkably pleasant dinner to everybody, with one exception--Sir Percy Carlyon. His pride, his self-respect, his self-love, suffered cruelly every moment that Lucy Armytage was in the company of Alicia Vernon. He had taken Lucy in to dinner, and he could not but see the advance she had made, even in the short time, in tact and self-possession. Not a self-conscious word or look escaped her as she sat talking charming nothings to the man whose lips had been upon hers only the night before, and no one would have dreamed that Sir Percy Carlyon was upon any different footing with her than any other woman at the dinner.
The next week was the week of Grand Opera. Senator March took a box for the whole week, and three nights during that week Alicia Vernon and her father were his guests. As Mrs. Vernon sat in the shadow of the box, listening to the enchanting voice of one of the greatest tenors in the world, it dawned upon her mind how privileged was the position of an American woman where men were concerned. The social customs, which permitted men to lie almost at the feet of a woman, were entirely new to her, and when this was done with the tact and high breeding of Senator March, he appealed to the craving for luxury in her which had been her undoing. He had asked her to name which operas in the week's repertoire she would like to hear, and when she had made her selection he called in his carriage for her and her father, and she found a beautiful bouquet waiting for her in the opera box and a supper after the performance.
Whither Senator March was drifting was plain to everybody except himself. He had grown accustomed to consider himself as a bachelor for life. He did not, himself, know the cause of his bachelorhood. Few women pleased him thoroughly, and he had put off from year to year the search for the other half of his being, and suddenly he found himself a middle-aged man. He disliked the idea of an inequality in age and felt no desire to make any of the sparkling young girls he knew Mrs. Roger March, and the women who were suitable in age did not often retain the power to please his æsthetic sense. He had no fancy for widows and did not care to be the object of a woman's second love. When he heard Alicia Vernon's history, however, it occurred to him that a woman's second husband might possibly be her first love.
These things all came to him before the soft spring days which Alicia Vernon, her father and Sir Percy Carlyon spent at his country place. Senator March had particularly desired Lucy Armytage's company. He had been fond of her from childhood, and she was one of the few young girls who did not worry him with the insistencies of youth, but Lucy, after having accepted the first suggestion of the visit with enthusiasm, was not now able to come. Senator March explained why at dinner the first evening of his house-party, which was as large as his modest house could accommodate, and numbered two ladies besides Alicia Vernon.
"I regret very much that my young friend, Miss Armytage, is not one of us, but she found herself obliged to go out to Kentucky for a fortnight's visit to some relatives," he said. "I believe that in Kentucky people are in bondage to their relations. However, I shall hope to have Miss Armytage at our next reunion, for we must come here often. Congress promises to sit into the summer and we must take refuge in the country as often as we can."
Alicia Vernon, sitting on Senator March's right hand, with Sir Percy Carlyon on her left, turned towards him with a look which held a meaning. It was Sir Percy who would not let Lucy stay under the same roof with her, Alicia Vernon. No repulse he had ever given her stung like this. For the first time she felt an impulse of fury towards him and a desire to make him suffer. She lay awake in her bed that night, hot and cold with rage.
The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon the usual Sunday walk along the mountains was proposed. Senator March was too accomplished a host to devote himself to any lady of the party, and as there were not enough to pair off all the gentlemen, he attached himself to General Talbott for the afternoon. A little clever management on Alicia's part, in the presence of her father, secured Sir Percy Carlyon as her escort. Sir Percy made no effort to escape. He knew that strange liking which women have for opening the grave of a dead passion and dragging the bones of it into life, weeping and wringing their hands over it and crying aloud to it, commanding it to live again.
They walked together in the April afternoon through the budding woods, looking down upon the wide, peaceful valley before them, with the blue peaks cutting the edge of the clear horizon. It was the same walk which Sir Percy had taken Lucy Armytage two months before on the Sunday afternoon, and the recollection of it, and the strangeness of Alicia Vernon being his companion now, almost bewildered him. When they came to a sunny spot on the hillside, where a grey, flat rock afforded a resting-place under the pine-trees, Alicia would have stopped, but Sir Percy said to her almost roughly:
"Not here; we must go on farther."
"Why not?" asked Alicia. "Was it because you and Lucy Armytage once rested here and therefore I am not worthy to stop for a moment in this place?"
It was a chance shot, but it went home. Sir Percy turned his back, and Alicia, with a feeling of triumph, seated herself upon the flat stone where Lucy had first heard the words of love from Sir Percy Carlyon. When he turned round she saw in his face, dark and displeased, that she had scored against him.
"I wish I could forget you," she said, "and not care whether I can hurt you or not, but I can't. You see, there are some parts of a woman's life which she can live only once, and the memory is always tormenting her. This is the first walk we have taken together since--since that time in India. It was a hilly country somewhat like this."
Sir Percy made no answer; the rage in his heart against Alicia Vernon had received an accession in the last fortnight.
"Of course," she continued in a voice of suppressed anger, "you forbade Miss Armytage to come here. You didn't wish her to be under the same roof with me. One would think that I were the only sinner in the world."
"I sinned as much and more than you," replied Sir Percy, "but I have repented."
"That is to say, you grew weary of your passion for me. I think that is what men call penitence."
Sir Percy looked at her, amazed for the thousandth time. Outwardly she could observe every canon of dignity and refinement, but secretly, like every woman who had ever gone wrong, as far as Sir Percy Carlyon's experience went, she had lost all sense of justice, of proportion, of reticence, of discipline, and even of sound sense. He had heard stories of women who trod the downward path and then retrieved themselves, but he had never met one. These women and Alicia Vernon, with her heritage of the best birth and breeding, "were sisters under their skins." The thing which really surprised him was that Alicia maintained so outwardly and unbrokenly the high standard of her birth and breeding, and was still capable of disinterested affection--her love for her father.
As Sir Percy would not reply, Mrs. Vernon said no more for a while. She leaned against the mass of rock at her back and looked around at the still woods, in which only a few trilling bird notes broke the golden silence, across the sunlit valley and then at Sir Percy Carlyon. What strange fate had brought them from one end of the world to the other that they might meet alone in such a place? She was so still that Sir Percy presently looked around to see if she were there. She was sitting quite motionless, looking with deep, inscrutible eyes straight before her. She turned her gaze to him and said:
"I know no more than you do why I could speak to you in this way, or why I could ever think of you again. I am like a child who has got hold of some pretty, shiny thing, which turns out to be a jewel, and the child weeps and struggles when the jewel is taken away."
Sir Percy could not but be sorry for her; he often had moments and hours of silent rage with her, but it would not hold against her in the presence of her despair. Presently she arose and came toward him, smiling.
"Look around you," she said; "this spot, I know, I feel, is associated with the image of that girl. Now you will be unable to think of it without thinking of me also. I will not have it that I only shall think of you; I mean that you shall not be able to escape the thought of me. Come, it is late; let us be going."
They turned and walked back towards the house. Farther along the mountain path they met Senator March and General Talbott; quite naturally the party divided, and Sir Percy joined General Talbott, while Senator March ranged himself with Mrs. Vernon. They fell behind, as Senator March was pointing out the features and general historic points of the landscape, while Sir Percy and General Talbott went ahead. When they were quite far in advance and walking down the country lane bordered with the mountain ash, now with little brown buds upon the bare white branches, and the whole air scented with the coming spring, General Talbott said:
"I think this journey, my dear fellow, to be one of the pleasantest, and even one of the most fortunate, that I ever made. It has been a long time since I have seen my poor child so like her earlier self. She is interested and amused. The social customs over here permit a woman to enjoy a great many pleasures and to receive a great many attentions from men without exciting remark. My daughter is, as you know, extremely careful in her conduct, often prudish. Not that I would wish her otherwise, but still I am glad when she finds herself in an environment that permits her a little innocent enjoyment. Those parties at the opera were extremely pleasant, but no such attention could be offered or accepted in Europe."
"You are quite right; socially American customs are extremely pleasant. They embody liberty without license."
"I agree with you from what I have seen."
As General Talbott spoke, Sir Percy observed in him a cheerfulness and note of pleasure in his voice which always followed when Alicia seemed to be at ease and a little happy.
Sir Percy Carlyon left early on the Monday morning and returned to Washington in advance of the rest of the party. It was still some days before Lucy Armytage arrived from Kentucky. At their first meeting afterwards Lucy asked no questions whatever about Senator March's house-party, and the delicate reticence which she showed on this point was not unnoticed by Sir Percy, who volunteered to tell her all of which he could speak. He did not avoid Alicia Vernon's name, but whenever he spoke of her Lucy saw that peculiar expression of his eye which indicated dislike. She asked, however, a great many questions about Senator March and then said:
"I wonder if Mrs. Vernon will marry him when he asks her."
Sir Percy was thunderstruck; no such idea had entered his thoroughly masculine mind, and after a moment he said so.
"How stupid!" remarked Lucy, eyeing him with profound contempt. "It was perfectly obvious the first night they met. Everybody in town is talking about it."
"They are?" replied Sir Percy after a moment, and then quickly turned the conversation into another channel.
Meanwhile his mind was in a tumult. Alicia Vernon married to Senator March, or to any man of honour, for that matter, and Senator March, chivalrous, high-minded, taking everything for granted in the case of the woman he loved! It was staggering to Sir Percy Carlyon; the whole thing was anomalous, inexplicable. But for him Senator March and Alicia Vernon would never have met. His mind went back to those early days in India: how the web then formed not only entangled him, but caught others, innocent and helpless, in its meshes. He would be forced to stand silently by and see a man who loved his honour better than his life take to his heart a woman unworthy of him. This thought possessed Sir Percy, and brought with it the fiercest stings of remorse. He went about that day with a strange sense of unreality concerning everything. Alicia Vernon might indeed have married even an honourable man, but to see a man as proud and sensitive as Senator March lay his honest, tender heart at the feet of Alicia Vernon was an incredible thing to Sir Percy Carlyon. That evening at the club the first person he saw in the smoking-room was General Talbott.
"I am very glad to have come across you this evening," said General Talbott. "I wish to speak with you confidentially. How are marriages arranged over here?"
"With the least possible trouble," answered Sir Percy with a glimmer of a smile, "and totally unlike marriages anywhere else. They are supposed to be on a basis of pure sentiment, and the question of money is handled in the most gingerly manner."
General Talbott smiled and then continued:
"To be quite confidential with you, my dear fellow, I have seen lately that Senator March takes an uncommon interest in my daughter. Whether Alicia would marry him or not I can't say. This afternoon Senator March called to see me, to tell me, what I had suspected for some little time past, that he is deeply attached to my daughter. I needn't tell you that the idea was quite acceptable to me. I am an old man, and at my death my child would be unprotected in the world; she is one of those delicate creatures unfitted to stand alone, and what I most desired for her was the protection of a good man's arm."
Sir Percy listened with quiet attention, but all the while a sense of unreality deepened upon him; nevertheless he said quite coolly:
"As far as the man himself goes, it would be hard to find Senator March's superior, and, as you probably know, he has a great fortune, honestly come by."
"I am not in love with money myself," said General Talbott, and then stopped and looked meditatively at Sir Percy.
The idea had occurred to him many times since Alicia's widowhood that the friendship, which was all that General Talbott knew had existed between Alicia and Sir Percy, might bring them into a closer relationship. It would have been an ideal marriage for Alicia, her father thought, except that Sir Percy Carlyon was a poor man and Alicia, as her father always said deprecatingly, had little idea of the value of money. He would rather, he thought, that Alicia should marry in her own country, but, recalling Sir Percy's modest income and expectations, General Talbott dismissed the half-formed wish from his mind. No; Alicia was not the wife for a poor man in public life.
"To be still more confidential with you, my dear Carlyon," he said, laying his hand on Sir Percy's knee, "nothing could have been more generous in every way than March's proposition to me. The law makes a liberal provision in America for the wife, I find, but Senator March, knowing our customs, volunteered to make settlements, splendid in their generosity, upon my daughter. She will have an independent income of her own, every year, far exceeding the entire income of Guy Vernon's estates, and for a woman of my daughter's luxurious tastes that is a great consideration. She is so high-minded, however, that I scarcely think she took this in, although after Senator March left I talked with her quite frankly on the subject. Of course, she isn't a young girl any longer, and has realised painfully all her life the restrictions of a modest income."
"But she will marry Senator March?"
"I think so; she has asked a little time for consideration, but you know what that means with ladies. March had the good feeling to say to me that, if she would consent to marry him, he would promise in advance that she should visit England once a year to see me, and he hopes that I will agree to spend a part of each year with them--most considerate of a father's feelings."
As General Talbott talked, Sir Percy saw in him a deep feeling of gratification and even of relief. The only fault her father could find with Alicia was her reckless expenditure, but if she married Senator March she would be far beyond all need of doing without anything--so General Talbott in his simplicity thought. Sir Percy's manner struck General Talbott as being a little peculiar, but he thought he could account for it: Sir Percy had his own private disappointment to bear; such was General Talbott's explanation.