CHAPTER II
ALTHOUGH Lee was happy, she had a hard fight with an attack of tearful repining. Surrounded all her life with demonstrative affection, each homecoming after a brief holiday an event of rejoicing and elaborate preparation, this chill casual entrance into a huge historic pile—apparently uninhabited, and as homelike as a prison—flooded her spirits with an icy rush. Cecil, who had been so close to her, seemed to have mounted to a niche in the grey staircase, and turned to stone. The domestic machinery appeared to run with the precision of an expensive eight-day clock. Were her future associates equally automatic? She remembered the inexcitable Mr. Maundrell, and shuddered. Perhaps even “Emmy” by this time was a mere machine, warranted to have hysterics at certain intervals. Surely a woman who would not sacrifice her routine to receive a petted stepson after two years’ absence and a stranger in a strange land—and so important an addition to the family as her daughter-in-law—must be painfully systematised.
“However,” thought Lee, curling herself down in the hope of a nap, “I can hold my own, that is one comfort. Thank Heaven, I have been brought up all my life to think myself somebody, and that I haveplenty of money; it would be tragic if I were a timid, nervous, portionless little person.”
She heard a light step, and the agreeable sibilation of linings and flounces. In a second she had run to the mirror in her bedroom. Her hair was smooth, and the wrapper of white camel’s hair and blue velvet sufficiently enhancing. There was colour in her cheeks, and the only suggestion of fatigue came from a vague shadow beneath her lashes. She felt that she had nothing to fear from the critical eyes of the other woman.
“May I come in?” Lady Barnstaple had rapped and opened the door simultaneously. “How do you do? Are you tired? You look abominably fresh. And how tall you are! I thought you’d be in a wrapper, so I didn’t send for you. Lie down again, and I’ll sit here. These chairs are stuffed with bricks.”
She was a short woman, with a still beautiful figure above the waist; it was growing massive below. Her colouring was nondescript, but her features must once have been delicate and piquant; now they were sharp, and there were fine lines about the eyes, and weak determined mouth. Her cheeks were charmingly painted, her hair elaborately coiffed; she wore an airy tea-gown of black chiffon, with pink bows, in which she looked like a smart fluffy doll. Her carriage, short as she was, would have been impressive had it not been for the restlessness of her manner. If she had come to England with a Chicago accent, she had sent it home long since. Her voice was abrupt and unpleasing, but its syllabic presentment was wholly English, and her manner was curiouslylike an Englishwoman’s affectation of American animation. Her eyes, for some time after she entered the room, had the round vacant stare of a newly-arrived infant. When the exigencies of conversation removed this stare, they flashed with the nervous irritable domineering character of the woman. It was some time before they were removed from Lee’s face for an instant. Lee was tired, but she obeyed the instinct of the savage who scents a fight, and sat upright.
“You won’t stay in this hole, of course—one might as well live in a dungeon—there is one at the bottom of the tower, for that matter. In the only letter that Cecil condescended to write me after his engagement, he said he wanted his old rooms to be ready for him, and he hoped I wouldn’t put any guests in them. But of course you can’t stand them. Fancy not being able to turn round without falling over a man! You’d be at each other’s throats in a week.”
“Isn’t there another room underneath these that I could fix up as a sitting-room? I like this tower.”
“Fancy, now! I believe there is a lumber-room, or something; but what can you do with a tower-room with walls five feet thick, andsuchwindows? Of course I don’t know your tastes, but I must have fluffy airy things in bright colours about me, and floods of light—through pink shades, nowadays,” she added, with a bitter little laugh. “What a lovely complexion you have! I had one too, once, but it’s gone!—it’s gone! I don’t know whether I’m pleased or not that you’re a beauty. Barnstaple assured me that it was impossible you could be, that Cecil must be mad—the English children areso pretty; but I thought it unlikely that Cecil would sacrifice his chances of a fortune for anything less than downright beauty. Of course you’ll be a great card for me. I can make out a lot of you; but on the other hand it’s disgusting having anything so fresh forever at one’s elbow. Repose is not the fashion now, and of course you are a bit of a prude—young married women who are in love with their husbands are always so fiercely virtuous!—and of course you haven’t half enough money; but I can see that you will be a success. We all know that you’re clever, and they like clever people over here, and your voice isn’t nasal—it’s really lovely. It’s a thousand pities—a thousand pities that you couldn’t bring Cecil a fortune!” Her voice gave a sudden querulous break. “He could have had one—probably a dozen—for the asking, and I think the Abbey should have been his first consideration. He won’t inherit a penny from Barnstaple, and Heaven knows what I’ll have left! He can’t possibly keep it up on what you and he have together—your house in town will take every penny—and he’ll either have to break the entail and sell it, or rent the moor, and cut the rest up into farms, and perhaps let the Abbey itself. I should turn in my grave, for the Abbey is the one real love of my life—”
Her restless eyes had been moving about the room; they suddenly met her daughter-in-law’s. Lee had very beautiful eyes, but they were capable of a blue-hot flame of passion at times. Lady Barnstaple blinked rapidly; her own seemed scorching under that blue-fire.
“Oh, of course, it doesn’t signify! Nothing really signifies in this world. I really didn’t mean to be nasty, but I always flare up when the Abbey is in question—and then that old superstition!—But bother! I really want to be nice! Do tell me about your clothes. If you had sent me a lining I could have ordered everything for you in Paris. I shouldn’t have minded running over a bit.”
“My things were made in New York, and will probably answer.”
“Oh, of course! New York’s every bit as smart as Paris, only it eats your head off. Have you many jewels?”
“Very few—compared with the shop-window decorations of New York and English women.”
“We do overload ourselves,” said Lady Barnstaple amiably. “I’ve seen women turn actually grey under the weight of their tiaras. Still, unless you blaze at a great party, you are simply not seen. But of course the Barnstaple jewels are mine till I die, and I sold all my own after having them copied; you could wear some of those if you liked, although, being fresh from the other side, you’d probably scorn imitations.”
“I certainly should.”
“Oh, you’ll get over all that! We are all shams nowadays.”
“You are certainly frank enough.”
“A mere habit—a fashion. Everybody shouts all he knows just now. We even talk of things at the table that would quite shock—Chicago, for instance. And as for your poor little San Francisco—there arethe most amusing points of resemblance between the Americans and the English middle-class.”
“Then perhaps you would not mind telling me if you would have taken the trouble to meet us this afternoon if I had brought a million with me.”
“Dear me, no; not if you had arrived at such an unearthly hour. I assure you I did not intend to be rude, but I always sleep from half after four to half after five. I don’t take my tea with the others.”
“And there would have been no demonstration, I suppose.”
“Well—yes, frankly, perhaps there would have been. Barnstaple did say something about it, but I told him I couldn’t think of affording it, and I couldn’t. Don’t be bitter about it; but we need money—money—money so horribly.”
“I am not bitter in the least. I merely asked out of curiosity.”
“Oh, my dear, when one is young and beautiful one would be a fool to be bitter about anything. You probably think me a devil, but if you knew what my life has been! To-day I’m in one of my moods. I’m sorry it happened so, and I hate myself for being nasty, but I can’t help it. I haven’t any particular reason for being; they just come down on me, and I want to scratch everybody’s eyes out. I may be as cheerful as a lark, and as amiable as a kitten for a week. You have no idea what a popular little person I am!”
Lee’s anger had passed, giving way to a commingling of curiosity, disgust and pity. Was this a sample of engrafted America? She asked if therewere any other English-Americans staying at the Abbey.
Lady Barnstaple scowled, and the scowl routed what little youth she had left. “I’m not on speaking terms with a single American but yourself and Lady Arrowmount, and I barely know her. I adore the English, but the jealousy and rivalry of other Americans! But I’m sent in ahead of the ones I hate most! I am!—I am! It’s been war to the knife between three of us for years now, and I’ve got to go under, because I haven’t the money to smash ’em. That is one reason why I’m a bit off my head about Cecil not having married a million. With a rich and beautiful— But here comes your maid. I must go to mine. I’ll swear you shall think me an angel to-morrow.”