CHAPTER IX
THEY moved up to town on the third of April. Lady Barnstaple had taken a tiny and costly house for them in Green Street, and as there had been much correspondence on the subject, and many samples had travelled from London to Yorkshire and back, it was almost in order when the young couple arrived to take possession.
“For goodness’ sake, have it light and bright,” Lady Barnstaple had written. “London is such a grimy hole, people simply love colour. Don’t mind bothering me; if I were poor I’d be a house decorator. The only fault I had to find with the Abbey was that it was furnished.”
Lee found her doll’s house a delicious nest of colour and luxury after the feudal severity of her tower; and although Cecil was even more serious than when he had married, she managed, during that first spring in London, to make him feel that they were playing at keeping house and at the lighter side of life. She could always amuse and interest him when she thought it wise to do so.
They went out very little, for he detested crushes in hot ill-ventilated rooms, and large dinners were not more to his taste; but he liked the play, and they were always to be seen at Tattersall’s on Sundayafternoons, and often in the Park, which had not yet been vulgarised as a promenade. In the mornings they rose early and rode either through the Park with the many of stereotyped habits, or out into the country; occasionally to Richmond, where they breakfasted at the Star and Garter, and tried to imagine that it was still brilliant and wicked. Sometimes, of an afternoon, they traversed three or four “At Homes,” where Lee had an enchanting sense of being in the great world at last, and Cecil kept his eyes longingly on the windows. At the play they always took a box, as Cecil became restless in the narrower confines of the stalls, and Lord Barnstaple and Mary Gifford usually accompanied them. Lady Barnstaple, although she sang her daughter-in-law’s praises in a loud high key, flatly refused to elevate her passing charms into a box of which Lee was the radiant and novel star. Lee was greatly admired, and knew that she could have been the bride of the season, had Cecil permitted; but although she felt some natural regret, especially when her mother-in-law expostulated, and Lady Mary Gifford commiserated, on the whole she did not care. Cecil barely let her out of his sight, and once he sulked for an entire day because she went to a luncheon; she was happy, and nothing else mattered. When she was stared out of countenance at the opera and theatre he took it as a matter of course, but the newspaper comments were less to his taste, and he peremptorily forbade her to give her photograph to any of the illustrated weeklies, or to be the heroine of certain enterprising “lady-journalists,” who wished to exploither beauty and her many delectable gowns. Her semi-seclusion gave her a touch of mystery, and one woman’s magazine would have made her known to fifty thousand provincials; but Cecil was disgusted at the bare idea of sharing his wife with the public, and flung the artful request for an interview into the fire. Lee was much amused, and assured him that Mrs. Montgomery had brought her up to regard notoriety with horror.
“And after all,” she said to Lady Barnstaple, “suppose I did become a professional beauty, that would place Cecil in a contemptible position, and I’d rather be a desperate failure than do that.”
“Oh, bother! But it’s no use talking to a woman in love. You’ll sacrifice your youth to a selfish brute of a man and spend your thirties regretting it and your forties making up for lost time. I love Cecil, and of course I’m glad to see him happy, but he’s as selfish as all men, and you’re making him more so. I don’t say you won’t keep him. I believe you will, for he’s the sort that would rather be faithful to his wife than not—doesn’t take after his illustrious parent—but he’ll soon take you as a matter of course, and then you’ll realise what the world could do for you. God knows what I should have done without it, and if I ever have to go under, a dose of laudanum will do the rest.”
But Cecil gave no sign of taking his wife as a matter of course. It is true that he took all and gave nothing—except his love. That Lee might have an inner life of her own never crossed his mind; that it had ever crossed any one’s else that she was fittedfor a career more or less apart from his own, however parallel with it, he would have resented as an insult to them both; and he had long since dismissed from his thoughts certain complexities which had puzzled and worried him during the weeks of their engagement. He was perfectly satisfied with her; although he had begged to be released from paying her compliments, and had received his discharge, he would have had her changed in nothing. Her beauty and passion held him in thrall, and he was more than grateful for the companionship she offered him, to say nothing of the incense. He would have liked to be rich that he might have had the pleasure of making her many beautiful presents, but he was philosophical, and wasted no time in regrets. And he was not wholly an egoist, for he occasionally reminded himself that he was the luckiest chap alive; and when he glanced along the future, and reflected that for each of the severe trials, mortifications, and disappointments of his public career he should find solace, and even forgetfulness, in his home, he felt that there were indeed no limits to his good fortune.
Did he ever think of Maundrell Abbey at this time? He gave no sign. But possibly he saw no reason for anxiety. Emmy was entertaining magnificently, and had informed her family that Chicago had taken a sudden leap in the direction of certain of her town lots, and trebled their value. Lee, in spite of the gossip with which Lady Mary Gifford regaled her concerning almost every woman in Society, was not inclined to think evil spontaneously of any one, but she overheard one woman say to another, with ashrug of the shoulders, that “Lady Barnstaple had taken up with the wrong man,” and she was surprised at the constant presence of Mr. Algernon Pix in her mother-in-law’s house. Mr. Pix had none of his sister’s aristocratic beauty, although he was good-looking in a common way; he was very dark, with eyes set close together, and he had a neat little figure. His manner was polite to exaggeration, but his accent was fatal, and three years of Society had not curbed his love of diamonds. In truth, his position was very precarious. Some women liked him, but the men barely accepted him, despite the determined bolstering of several of Victoria’s powerful friends; and as he had never even attempted to handle a gun, and feared a horse as he feared the snub of a Duchess, his social future ran off into vague perspectives. He was wise enough never to accept invitations to the country, and Lee had not met him until she moved up to town. He was the sort of man whom she had heretofore associated with drapers’ counters and railway trains, and inevitably she snubbed him.
“I’d be very much obliged to you if you’d treat my friends decently,” said Lady Barnstaple sharply, when they were alone.
“Surely he is not a friend of yours.”
“His sister is my very most intimate friend; and as for him—well, yes, I do like him—immensely. It means something to me, I can tell you, to have a man show me the thousand and one little attentions that women love—and to think me still beautiful;and he does. I don’t say he would if I were not the Countess of Barnstaple, and miles above him socially—I’mno fool—but that he can be really dazzled means a great deal to me, and when you’re my age you’ll know why.”
Lee reflected that probably the bond between them was the commonness of both, and that “Emmy” was a striking instance of heredity, then dismissed the subject from her mind. Lord Barnstaple, who never took a meal in his wife’s house, except in company with many others, and took many at the little house in Green Street, was apparently unaware of the existence of Mr. Pix, although he commented freely, and with caustic emphasis, upon the idiosyncrasies of his legal wife.