CHAPTER XIII
LORD ARROWMOUNT and Randolph wrote to Lady Barnstaple that they would arrive at the Abbey on the eleventh; Mrs. Montgomery was indisposed, but hoped to come a week later with Lady Arrowmount. The Gearys wrote from Paris to expect them any time during August.
Lee laughed as Lady Barnstaple tossed her back Coralie’s letter with a sharp exclamation.
“They are both spoiled children, you know, and Ned has ignored social obligations all his life.”
“He can’t take any liberties with me if I am an American—or was.”
“Oh, you’re quite English.”
Lee and her mother-in-law exchanged hooded sarcasms occasionally, but on the whole were excellent acquaintances. Lady Barnstaple had never paid a second visit to the tower, and was ignorant of her daughter-in-law’s depredations; no other excuse for a quarrel had occurred. Lee having made up her mind to accept “Emmy”—there being no alternative—veiled her with philosophy, and saw as little of her as possible. Lady Barnstaple forgave the younger woman her beauty, as, according to her lights, it might as well have blossomed in Sahara; and she uneasily respected the obvious will beneaththat lovely exterior, and frankly admired Lee’s genius for dress.
On the evening of the eleventh Lee selected her gown with unusual care. During the past three years she had dressed for no man but her husband, who occasionally informed her that she always looked exactly the same to him no matter what she had on, and she had been as indifferent to the admiring glances of other men as a beautiful woman can be. She had not indulged in so much as a dinner flirtation, and had kept her ideal of matrimonial bliss so close to her eyes that she had occasionally received a hint of myopic dangers and a benumbing of certain mental faculties. Her glance, rising on the wing of a phlegmatic fancy, sometimes strayed to the right or left of the steel track she paced, but it returned submissively; and the only alteration in her face was a slightly accentuated determination in the curves of her mouth. During the last six months she had been conscious of a certain restiveness, but had refused to analyse it.
It was quite natural to dress for Randolph, for he was an old and valued friend; and it was certainly a pleasure to dress for him, for he appreciated every detail and his taste was exquisite. She therefore selected the sort of gown in which he had always most admired her, a black gauze made with the dashing simplicity which suited her so well.
He would arrive about five. She sent him word to dress early and come to the tower. She knew that he would doubtless be detained by Cecil in the library for a time, but she was in her boudoir beforeseven. Her flutter of excitement was very agreeable. As it trembled along her nerves it brought with it an admitted desire for a whole series of sudden and brilliant changes. She wished that Randolph had come straight from California, for she could have fancied the wild winds of the Pacific blowing about him. She had learned to keep California out of her mind for many months at a time, but to-night as she stood in her tower looking through the narrow ancient window on the calm beauty of the English landscape, she shook with homesickness for that land which seemed to have all space just above it, and as many moods and features as the imagination of Byron. The sudden nostalgia was as much of the body as of the spirit. Her very veins seemed full of tears; in her brain was a distinct sensation of nausea. She was a child of the redwoods, not of the landscape garden.
Randolph came up the stair with a slower step than of old, but with as light a foot. Lee was conventional at once.
“You have been long enough crossing the Channel to see me,” she said gaily, and shaking him warmly by the hand; “but you know I never harbour malice, and now—I am simply delighted to welcome you.”
“It was my mother that kept me in France after I got within crossing distance of the Channel; her health is really broken, I am afraid.”
They talked of Mrs. Montgomery for some time, while studying each other. Lee hoped that if he found her changed his surprise and approval would equal her own. He had transformed himself intowhat he would have become years since had his mother taken him to Europe while he was still a boy, and kept him there. His restless Americanism, his careless stoop, the nervous play of his features, even the lines about his eyes and mouth had gone. His erect and graceful carriage made him look almost as tall as Cecil Maundrell. He was a trifle stouter than when he had left California; and he was, in his new habit, so handsome and so distinguished, that Lee thrilled with the pride of the Montgomerys, and of the South before the War. His manner was scarcely fraternal, nor did it hint of the lover, discarded and tenacious; it was merely that of an amiable man-of-the-world pleased to renew an intimate friendship with a charming woman.
“Am I as much changed as you are?” asked Lee impulsively.
“Am I changed? You—I will tell you when I have been here a little longer. There is a difference—although that gown makes you look very natural. I cannot decide what it is. You are more beautiful than ever, if that could be possible.”
It was so long since Lee had received a vigorous compliment that she blushed with delight.
“I’m so glad you’ve come, Randolph,” she exclaimed. “Do talk to me about old times and California, even if you do hate the thought of it.”
“I hate the thought of it?”
“Well, you hate America.”
“Why will even the cleverest of women add so many little frills? I am immensely proud of the United States; I would have been born under noother flag. What I do hate is the modern spirit of the country as typified by New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. I love California, and am beginning to get a little homesick for her. I fancy it won’t be long before I shall suddenly pack my trunk and go back for a year.”
“Oh, if I could go! If I could go!”
“Couldn’t we all go back together next year?”
“Cecil cannot leave England. I suppose you have not heard——”
“That great things are expected of him. I take several London papers; and, when travelling, they are always at the clubs. How proud you must be of him.”
“I am;” but she was thinking of California; and there seemed to be a hundred things to be talked about at once. There had been a time when she had talked to Randolph about nearly everything that passed through her mind. That time came sharply back to her.
“That is one of the changes in you,” he was saying. “You have the least little more pride in your carriage. You never were very humble, but this is a sort of double duplicated pride, as it were. And—yes—you are more intellectual looking. It is that which has dissipated your girlishness without ageing you a particle.”
“Oh, I am intellectual! I’ve been on one long intellectual orgie for the last three years. I’m ready for a change. If you’ve been cramming your brain, don’t you try to impress me; and don’t you dare to mention politics.”
Randolph laughed. “I should not think of such a thing. My interest is too cursory to burden my conversation. And as for books—I’ve read a good many on rainy days since I saw you last, and am better for them; but I have spent the greater part of the time living books of many sorts.”
“Have you grown serious? You used to take life so lightly. So did everybody. So did I.”
“I am afraid I still take life with reprehensible lightness. I have got an immense amount of fun out of the old world.”
“Do you remember how we used to roar—you and Coralie and Tom and I? And about nothing! Weweresuch good laughers!”
“I hope you haven’t forgotten how.”
“Not much! But I’m out of practice. Let’s go up on top of the fell to-morrow, and sit down on the ground and shriek.”
Randolph threw back his head and laughed so heartily that Lee caught the infection of it, and in a moment was leaping from peal to peal. She caught herself up.
“I shall have hysterics. And it’s nearly dinner time. I’ve got to go down and talk grouse prospects and the tantalising peculiarities of that loathsome bird for two hours. I don’t know if I dare put you on my other side. I’m afraid I’d giggle like an idiot all through dinner if I did. I suppose it’s reaction, but I really feel on the verge of idiocy.”
“The result of my sudden appearance. I am immensely flattered.”
“Oh, you would be if you knew! Cecil is simply perfect; don’t think I am casting the faintest reflection on him. It’s the life! Oh, I must! I must! I always did tell you things, Randolph, and you always were so sympathetic. Have you read many English novels that aim to initiate the outside world into the life of our class—the truth without any frills, and all that sort of thing? After I’d been here two years I made a terrible mistake: out of curiosity—to see the influence of England on the imagination circumscribed by conscience—I read, one after the other, about twelve novels of that sort—the sort that might be called the current history of social England. Then I realised what I had got into—that unchanging, inevitable, mathematically precisemise en scène, that wheel that goes round and round with never a change of spoke nor of speed. You know—begin with the twelfth of August: house-parties for grouse shooting. Men—same men—out all day. Women—same women—at home. Sporting talk at luncheon. Sporting talk varied with politics at dinner. Little gambling, little flirting, a rowdy game or two in the evening. Next month same thing in other houses for partridge and pheasant shooting. Next two months hunting and hunting talk for a change; otherwise the same, only a little more hard work for the women. Races and race talk thrown in all along the line. Then the Riviera for some, and for me two months of life in grime and fog and mud. Then the roasting crush of the London season, in which everybody works like a horse, and the women are reduced to a mere combinationof bones and paint. Then more races, a few days’ breathing space, and again the Twelfth of August. I wish I hadn’t read those books; I wouldn’t have realised it so soon. But really, I’ve hardly admitted it before to-night. My own programme is slightly varied. I shoot, and I don’t go to the Riviera, and I’ve had no chance to get tired of London Society. But it surrounds me—that automatically shiftingmise en scène. I know it is there.I am a part of most of it—a fly on its paint. I may get the whole thing any day. That is one reason I don’t really rebel against being out of it in London. Politics are the best there is in the whole thing, because there is some variety, and there is always the promise of some tremendous excitement—only there hasn’t been any yet.”
She sprang to her feet, overturning her chair.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” she cried, her eyes blazing, her voice pitched high with delight. “Do you remember how you and Coralie and Tom and I used to lock ourselves up in the schoolroom, and swear as loud and as fast as we could when Tiny had been primmer than usual, or Aunty had been holding forth on the South before the War? Well, that’s the way I feel to-day, and I’ve been feeling that way for a long time, only I didn’t know it.”
She stopped for want of breath. Randolph had risen too, but his back was against the light. If his voice was not as steady as it had been she was too excited to notice it.
“You certainly ought to return to California,” he said. “We are all half savage—the strongest of usCalifornians. The great civilisations fascinate us, but they don’t satisfy, and in time they pall.”
“I’d like to put dynamite under the whole business, and then take Cecil and go and shoot bears with him in the Santa Lucia Mountains and sleep under the redwoods without so much as a tent. I believe I’d be willing to eat acorns.” She sat down and glanced up at him with all her old coquetry.
“You don’t think I’ve made an idiot of myself, do you?” she asked anxiously.
“You could never be other than the most charming woman in the world.”
“Will you pay me three compliments a day, Randolph?”
“I shall probably pay you twenty.”
“I hope to Heaven you will! I need them—I do reallyneedthem. Now go and wait for me in the library: I must go up and put some powder on; I feel that I have the colour of a dairy-maid. It’s so nice to order you about—and I couldn’t speak out to a soul on earth as I have to you! I should have burst if you hadn’t come soon. If you get lost in those everlasting corridors ring a bell.”
The promptness with which Randolph obeyed her command, with the little laugh that had always saved his dignity, was the first of his signals that the old Randolph still flourished within that mellowed and polished exterior.
Lee ran up to her room. The door of the dressing-room was open; Cecil was ready for dinner, and alone. Her conscience hurt her, and she was still excited. With all her old impulsiveness she ran in,flung her arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him.
The “Imp of the Perverse” is always hovering near to man awaiting the more subtle climaxes of his life. Cecil adored his wife, but he liked to do the love-making; and Lee, long since, had accepted the submissive and responsive rôle her beloved autocrat demanded. And he was a man of moods, which were deep and showed little on the surface. To-night he was keen for the sport of the morrow, for a renewal of the brief and congenial conversation he had had with his men guests before dinner; and if his wife were to be too absorbed in her friends for several days to give him a moment he should not miss her. He had had a hard Session and the reaction to sport and open air was violent, that was all.
He returned Lee’s kiss politely, and took up a hair brush.
“You seem nervous,” he said. “Do calm yourself before dinner. It is always a relief to me that you do not talk as loud as the rest of the women.”
And when his wife rushed out and banged the door, he frowned, then shrugged his shoulders, and went down to the library.