CHAPTER III
LEE found no time to think that night. As soon as her maid had left her, Cecil entered from his dressing-room and said that his father would like to see her for a moment before they joined the guests in the library.
“I saw Emmy for a few minutes, and she said she had been to see you—and many complimentary things.”
“How kind of her!”
“Didn’t you like her? Most people do.”
“It’s not polite to criticise your relations, but I may be excused, as she is my countrywoman first. I have been carefully brought up, and I never before met that sort of American. Of course the Middle West is very new, and it is hardly fair to criticise it, but I should think twenty years or so of England would have done something more than remove her accent.”
Cecil smiled. “American women are so popular in England that I fancy they grow more and more American as the years go by. I don’t know much about it.”
“It is rather odd having to stand just behind a stepmother whom I shouldn’t think of knowing at home.”
“Of course there are no distinctions in regard to Americans over here; it is all personality and money. Emmy hasn’t much of the first in a large sense, but she knows how to make herself popular. People find her likeable and amusing—even the women, because, of course, she is so different from themselves; and she is really the best-hearted little creature in the world. I see you don’t like her, but wait a little; perhaps she was nervous to-day.”
“I am not going to be so commonplace as to quarrel with my mother-in-law, but I certainly shall not like her. As you would say, she is not my own sort.”
“Neither am I,” said Cecil laughing, “but you like me.”
“We represent the fusion of the two greatest nations on earth. Why do not you tell me that I am looking particularly well?”
They were traversing one of the long corridors. Cecil glanced uneasily about, then put his arm round her and kissed her.
“I am doing my best to live up to the American standard, and tell you once a day how much I love you, and how beautiful you are. When do you think you will take it for granted?”
“Never! never! Are you proud of me to-night?”
“You never looked lovelier—except when we were married. You nearly knocked me over then.”
“What a pity I can’t wear a wedding-veil on all state occasions.”
“I have a suspicion that as you are a bride you should wear white for a time.”
“All my day summer frocks are white, and I simplywon’t wear it at night. I shall take full advantage of the fact that I am an American.”
She wore a wonderful gown of flame-coloured gauze, more golden than red, and so full of shimmer and sheen, that she had reflected, with some malice, it would outblaze all of Lady Barnstaple’s jewels, and had concluded to wear none.
“To-morrow and the next day I am going out with the other men, and you are coming to luncheon with us on the moor—at least Emmy and the others generally come when the weather is fine; but on Sunday I’ll show you over the Abbey. I’d like to do it myself, but I’m afraid we can’t get into the state bedrooms until the guests are gone.”
“Are they in the rooms that kings and queens and all the rest have slept in?”
“You are improving. How is it you didn’t say ‘kings and queens and things’? I’m afraid they are. This house is all corridors and rooms for entertaining and boudoirs; there are not more than twenty-five bedrooms. Here we are.”
They entered a small room furnished as a study, and Lord Barnstaple entered from the adjoining bedroom almost immediately. He looked rather more impassive and rather more cynical, but hardly ten years older. His monocle might never have been removed. Somewhat to Lee’s surprise, he not only kissed her, but shook her warmly by the hand.
“So another American is my fate, after all,” he said. “You see, I suspected as much the day I left. Have you ever had hysterics?”
“Never!”
“I almost hope you have a temper—oh, you have, you have, with those eyes!” He chuckled. “Turn it loose on her! Give it to her! Gad! but I’d like to see her well trounced! She doesn’t mind me, but you’re a woman, and young, and beautiful, and—nearly twice her height. Gad! how she’ll hate you! But trounce her—trounce her! Don’t give her any quarter!”
Cecil laughed, “Why do you sow these seeds of discord in the family?”
“Oh, we’ll keep out of the way. But fancy Emmy limp and worn out, and not daring to call her soul her own! ’Twould be the happiest day of my life! But I’m famished.”
They entered the library only a moment before dinner was announced. It was a very long room breaking the series of corridors, and only three times their width. Its panelling was black, and its books appeared to be musty with age; above the high cases were many Maundrells; even the furniture looked as ancient as the Abbey. But flooding all was a pink glare of electric light.
The room was full of people, who regarded the bride with descriptive curiosity. Lady Barnstaple was flitting about, her expression in perfect order, her superlatively smart French gown quivering with animation. She came at once toward Lee, followed by a tall good-looking young man, whom she presented as Captain Monmouth.
“What a love of a gown! I’m so glad you know how to dress!” she exclaimed. “You are to go in with Miss Pix,” she added to her stepson.
Cecil drew his brows together. “Why do you send me in with Miss Pix?” he muttered angrily. “You know she bores me to death.”
“To punish you for not marrying her. You can’t get out of it; she expects you.”
Lee overheard the conversation. So did Lord Barnstaple, who was laughing softly at his son’s discomfiture. She had no time to question him, for they went down at once to dinner, and his attention for a time was claimed by the woman on his left. Cecil was on the other side of the table, some eight or ten seats down. Lee studied his partner attentively while talking with Captain Monmouth, who sat on her right.
The immense room looked like the banqueting hall of kings, but, so far as Lee could judge—and she had one half of the guests within her visual range—the young woman with the dreadful name looked more the traditionally cold haughty aristocrat, for whom such rooms were built, than any one present. The others appeared to have nothing of the massive repose of their caste; they seemed, in fact, to vie with each other in animation, and they certainly talked very loud and very fast. But Miss Pix had that air of arrested development peculiar to the best statuary. Her skin was as white as the tablecloth, her profile was mathematically straight, suggesting an antique marble or a sheep. Her small flaxen head was held very high, and her eyelids had the most aristocratic droop that Lee had ever conceived of.
“Who is she?” the bride asked her companion, who appeared to be an easy and untraditional person.“And why is she so different from the rest—with that name? She looks like one of Ouida’s heroines—the quite impossible ones.”
Captain Monmouth laughed. “Her father was a brewer, disgustingly rich. Her parents are dead. She and her brother—dreadful bounder—have been trying to get into Society for years—only been really successful the last three. Lady Barnstaple took ’em up, for some reason or other. She’s usually rather nasty to new people. Only girl, and has three millions, but doesn’t marry and isn’t popular—scarcely opens her mouth, and has never been known to unbend. Fancy it’s rather on her mind that she wasn’t born into the right set. So she fakes it for all it’s worth, as you Americans would say. I do like American slang. Can you teach me some?”
“I know more than I’ve ever dared to use, and you shall have it all, as my husband disapproves of it. I think Miss Pix has done rather well. She is what we would call a good ‘bluffer.’”
“Quite so—quite so. The women say all sorts of nasty things about her—that all that white is put on with a brush or a sponge or something, as well as that haughty nostril; and that she has had the muscles cut in her eyelids—ghastly thought, ain’t it? Nature gave her that profile, of course; can’t have the bridge of your nose raised—can you?—even with three millions. It’s the profile that made all the trouble, I fancy. She’s livin’ up to it. Must be deuced aggravatin’ to be born with a cameo profile and a Lancashire accent. No wonder she’s frozen.”
“Has she got rid of the accent?”
“Oh, rather! She was educated in Paris with a lot of swagger French girls. She’s quite correct—in a prehistoric way—only she overdoes it.”
His attention was claimed by the woman on his other side, and Lee asked Lord Barnstaple:
“What did Lady Barnstaple mean? Did she want Cecil to marry that Miss Pix?”
“Didn’t she! She never worked so hard for anything in her life. She was ill for two weeks after Cecil went off. It wouldn’t have been a bad thing. I’d have wanted it myself if she hadn’t. I like you—always did—but I wish to gad you had more money! Don’t you think you’ll discover a gold mine on that ranch of yours some day?”
Lee laughed, although the sensation of dismay induced by Lady Barnstaple’s visit returned at his words. “I’m afraid not. Sulphur and arsenic and iron are as much as can be expected of one poor little ranch.”
“Perhaps we can sell the springs to a syndicate—who knows? Syndicates are always buyin’ things and givin’ seven figgers for ’em. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. The next old Jew or brewer that wants to get into Society we’ll send for and tell him that the ranch at seven figgers is our price for a week’s shooting at the Abbey and three dinners in town,” and he gave his ungenial chuckle.
“You aren’t all really as bad as that over here, are you?”
“Oh, we’re mixed, like you Americans. We’re all right so long as we don’t need money; but, you see, we need such a cursed lot of it—several thousandtimes more than the nobodies who sit outside and criticise us. It’s in our blood, and when we can’t get it one way we try another. We all cling to certain ideals, though: I’ve never gambled with a parvenu. It’s true I made an ass of myself and married one, but I pulled up just after. Miss Pix is the only other that has got inside my doors. That’s the one point Emmy and I agree on: I have my ideals”—he laughed again—“and, like all upstarts, she despises other upstarts. Monmouth is the only person in the house except Miss Pix without an hereditary title, and he’s grandson of a duke, and a Guardsman. Some of the smartest women of the day are untitled, but Emmy won’t have ’em. Wonder who she’ll have this time five years?—Second-rate actors and long-haired poets, probably.”
Lee wondered at even a dilapidated set of ideals, and at a pride—and pride was written all over him—which would permit him to live on a woman’s money. Of course he may have argued that Lady Barnstaple was paying a fair yearly rent for the title and the Abbey, but it was an old-world view-point, to which it would take a long period of habit to accustom the new. She wondered if she had any right to despise a man who was a mere result of a civilisation so different from her own, but felt unindulgent. In the United States, if a penniless man married for money, he had the decency to affect the habit of the worker, if it were only to write alleged poems for the magazines, or to attach himself to a Legation.
After dinner she went with the women into another immense room, also panelled to the ceiling. Eachpanel was set with a portrait, several of which she knew at a glance to be the originals of bygone masters. Their flesh tints were uniformly pink: Lee glanced upward. The stone ceiling, arched and heavily carved, was set with electric pears. It was an irritating anomaly.
Lee thought the women looked very nice, and wondered if she was ever to be introduced to anybody. Emmy was flitting about again—rather the upper part of her seemed to flit as if propelled by the somewhat unwieldy machinery below. She looked indubitably common, despite her acquired “air” and the exquisite taste of her millinery; and Lee wondered what these women—who, well-dressed or ill, loud-voiced or semi-subdued, delicately or heavily modelled of face, intensely modern all of them, looked what they were, and as if they assumed the passing fad in manners, even the fad of vulgarity, as easily and adjustably as a new sleeve or a larger waist—could find in this particular American to their fancy.
“Do sit here by me!” A young woman on a small sofa swept aside her skirts and nodded brightly to Lee. She had sat opposite at dinner, and spoken across the table several times to Captain Monmouth, whom she addressed as “Larry.” She had a large open voice and a large open laugh, and, to use an unforgettable term of Lord Barnstaple’s, she rather sprawled. But she was exquisitely fine of feature and cold of colouring, although charged straight up through her lithe figure with assumed animation or ungoverned nervousness, Lee could not determine which. The bride sat down at once.
“You are Lady Mary Gifford,” she said smiling. “I asked Captain Monmouth who you were.”
“Oh, did you ask who I was? How nice! I wish everybody in the room was talking about me as they are about you. But my day for that is past. Would you guess I was twenty-four?”
Lee shook her head, smiling. In spite of the persistent depression within her, she found her new friends very interesting.
“Twenty-four, not married, and only sixty pounds a year to dress on! Isn’t it a tragedy? I wish I were an American. They’re all so frightfully rich. At least, all those are that come over here; they wouldn’t dare to come if they weren’t.”
“I have dared, and I am not—not as you count riches.”
“No—really now? But of course you’re joking, Cecil Maundrell simply had to marry a ton——”
Lee laughed, with a nearer approach to hysteria than she had ever known. “Would you mind not talking about that?” she said. “If ever I know you as well as I hope I shall, I’ll tell you why.”
“Fancy my being so rude! But I’m quite horribly outspoken, and Cecil Maundrell’s so good-looking, of course he’s been discussed threadbare. Of course we all knew the Abbey must go to another American, and we’ve been so anxious to see you. Emmy is a duck, but she’s not a beauty—few Americans really are, to my mind. They just ‘chic it’ as the French painters say. Everybody is simply staring at you, and you’re so used to it, you don’t appear to see them.You’re going to be a great success. I know all the signs—seen ’em too often!”
“Well, I hope so. I suppose an American failure would be painfully conspicuous.”
“Oh,wouldn’tshe! Tell me, is it really true that you have different grades of society, as we have—an upper and middle-class, and all that sort of thing? Some of the Americans over here have always turned up their noses at Emmy, and it seems so very odd—you are only a day or two old; howcanyou have so many distinctions? Of course I know that some are rich and some are poor, which means that some are educated and some are not, but I should think that would make just two classes. But Emmy is—has been—awfully rich, and yet she has had a hard fight with two or three other Americans that are dead against her. She hasn’t it in her, poor little soul, to be quite as smart as Lady Vernon Spencer and Mrs. Almeric Sturt—you could be!—but she’s ‘popular,’ and unless the Abbey burns down—oh, it’s the sweetest thing in England, and the shootings are famous! But do explain to me.”
“About our social differences? Of course to be really anybody you must have come from the South, one way or another.”
“What South?—South America?”
Lee endeavoured to explain, but Lady Mary quickly lost interest, and made one of her dazzling deflections: it was evident that more than three minutes of any one subject would bore her hopelessly. But Lee had realised in a flash the utter indifference of the English to the most imposing of the new world’s family trees.The haughty Southerner and the raw Westerner were “varieties,” nothing more. She might be pronounced better style than her stepmother, and doubtless would be more respected, but no one would ever think of looking down the perspective of each for the cause. She felt doubly depressed.