CHAPTER XXII
AS Lee walked along the many corridors to her mother-in-law’s rooms she reflected that she was grateful Lord Barnstaple had not refrained from mentioning the diamonds: their vision was both pleasing and sustaining. She was obliged to give serious thought to the coming interview, but they glittered in the background and poured their soothing light along her nerves.
Lady Barnstaple had but just risen from her afternoon nap and was drinking her tea. She looked cross and dishevelled.
“Do sit down,” she said, as Lee picked up a porcelain ornament from the mantel and examined it. “I hate people to stand round in spots.”
Lee took a chair opposite her mother-in-law. She was the last person to shirk a responsibility when she faced the point.
“You have seemed very nervous lately,” she said. “Is anything the matter?”
“Yes, everything is. I wish I could simply hurt some people. I’d go a long ways aside to do it. What right have these God-Almighty English to put on such airs, anyhow? One person’s exactly as good as another. I come from a free country and I like it.”
“I wonder you have deserted it for five-and-twenty years. But it is still there.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d like to get rid of me. But you won’t. I’ve worn myself out getting to the top, and on the top I’ll stay. I’d be just nothing in New York. And Chicago—goodLord!”
“You’ve stepped down two or three rungs, and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself at the foot—”
“What do you mean?” screamed Lady Barnstaple. “I’ve half a mind to throw this teacup at you.”
“Don’t you dare to throw anything at me. I should have a right to speak even if I did not consider your own interest—which I do; please believe me. Surely you must know that Mr. Pix has hurt you.”
“I’d like to know whyIcan’t have a lover as well as anybody else.”
“Do you mean to acknowledge that he is your lover?”
“It’s none of your business whether he is or not! And I’m not going to be dictated to by you or anybody else.”
Lady Barnstaple was too nervous and too angry to be cowed by the cold blue blaze before her, but she asserted herself the more defiantly.
“I have no intention of dictating to you, but it certainly is my business. And it’s Lord Barnstaple’s and Cecil’s—”
“You shut up your mouth,” screamed Lady Barnstaple; her language always revealed its pristine simplicity when her nerves were fairly galloping. “The idea of a brat like you sitting up there and lecturing me. And what do you know about it, I’d like toknow? You’re married to the salt of the earth and you’re such a fool you’re tired of him already. If you’d been tied up for twenty years to a cold-blooded brute like Barnstaple you might—yes, you might have a little more charity——”
“I am by no means without charity, and I know that you are not happy. I wish you were; but surely there are better ways of consoling oneself——”
“Arethere? Well, I don’t know anything about them and I guess you don’t know much more. I was pretty when I married Barnstaple, and I was really in love with him, if you want to know it. He was such a real swell, and I was so ambitious, I admired him to death; and he was so indifferent he fascinated me. But he never even had the decency to pretend he hadn’t married me for my money. He’s never so much as crossed my threshold, if you want to know the truth.”
“People say he was in love with his first wife, and took her death very much to heart. Perhaps that was it.”
“That was just it. He’s got her picture hanging up in his bedroom; won’t even have it in his sitting-room for fear somebody else might look at it. I went to see him once out of pure charity, when he was ill in bed and he shouted at me to get out before I’d crossed the threshold. But I sawher.”
“I must say I respect him more for being perfectly honest, for not pretending to love you. After all, it was a square business transaction: he sold you a good position and a prospective title. You’ve both got a good deal out of it——”
“I hate him! I hate a good many people in England, but I hate him the most. I’m biding my time, but when I do strike there won’t be one ounce of starch left in him. I’d do it this minute if it wasn’t for Cecil. What right has he got to stick his nose into my affairs and humiliate the only man that ever really loved me——”
“If you mean Mr. Pix, it seems to me that Lord Barnstaple has restrained himself as only a gentleman can. He is a very fastidious man, and you surely cannot be so blind as not to see how an underbred——”
“Don’t you dare!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. She sprang to her feet, overturning the tea-table and ruining her pink velvet carpet. “He’s as good as anybody, I tell you, and so am I. I’m sick and tired of airs—that cad’s that’s ruined me and your ridiculous Southern nonsense. I’m not blind! I can see you look down on me because I ain’t connected with your old broken aristocracy! What does it amount to, I’d like to know? There’s only one thing that amounts to anything on the face of this earth and that’s money. You can turn up your nose at Chicago but I can tell you Chicago’d turn up its nose at you if it had ever heard of you. You’re just a nonentity, with all your airs, and all your eyes too for that matter, and I’m known on two continents. I’m the Countess of Barnstaple, if I was—but it’s none of yours or anybody else’s business who I was. I’m somebody now and somebody I’m going to stay. If I’ve gone down three rungs I’ll climb up again—I will! I will! I will! And I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!I haven’t a penny left! Not a penny! Not a penny! I’m going to kill myself——”
Lee jumped up, caught her by the shoulders and literally shook the hysterics out of her. Then she sat her violently into a chair.
“Now!” she said. “You behave yourself or I’ll shake you again. I’ll stand none of your nonsense and I have several things to say to you yet. So keep quiet.”
Lady Barnstaple panted, but she looked cowed. She did not raise her eyes.
“How long have you been ruined?”
“I don’t know; a long while.”
“And you are spending Mr. Pix’s money?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do the Abbey lands pay the taxes and other expenses?—and the expenses of the shooting season?”
“They pay next to nothing. The farms are too small. It’s all woods and moor.”
“Then Mr. Pix is running the Abbey?”
“Yes he is—and he knows it.”
“And you have no sense of responsibility to the man who has given you the position you were ready to grovel for?”
“He’s a beastly cad.”
“If he were not a gentleman he could have managed you. But that has nothing to do with it. You have no right to enter a family to disgrace it. I suppose it’s not possible to make you understand; but its honour should be your own.”
“I don’t care a hang about any such high-falutin’ nonsense. I entered this family to get what I wanted,and when it’s got no more to give me it can be the laughing-stock of England for all I care.”
“I thought you loved Cecil.”
The ugly expression which had been deepening about Lady Barnstaple’s mouth relaxed for a moment.
“I do; but I can’t help it. He’s got to go with the rest. I don’t know that I care much, though; you’re enough to make me hate him. What I hate more than everything else put together is to give up the Abbey. And you can be sure that after the way Mr. Pix has been treated——”
“Mr. Pix will leave this house to-night. If you don’t send him I shall.”
“You’re a fool. If you knew which side your bread was buttered on you’d make such a fuss over him that everybody else would treat him decently——”
“I have fully identified myself with my husband’s family, if you have not, and I shall do nothing to add to its dishonour. There are worse things than giving up the Abbey—which can be rented; it need not be sold. The Gearys would rent it to-morrow.”
“If you think so much of this family I wonder you can make up your mind to leave it.”
Lee hesitated a moment. Then she said: “I shall never leave it so long as it needs me. And it certainly needs somebody just at present. Mr. Pix must leave; that’s the first point. Lord Barnstaple and Cecil must be told just so much and no more. Don’t you dare tell them that Mr. Pix has been running the Abbey. You can have letters from Chicago to-morrow saying that you are ruined.”
“If Mr. Pix goes I follow. Unless I can keep the Abbey—and if I’ve got to drop out——”
“You can suit yourself about going or remaining. Only don’t you tell Lord Barnstaple or anybody else whose money you have been spending.”
“I’d tell him and everybody else this minute if it weren’t for Cecil. He’s the only person who’s ever really treated me decently. And as for the Abbey——”
She paused so long that Lee received a mental telegram of something still worse to come. As Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes slowly and looked at her with steady malevolence she felt her burning cheeks cool.
“He wouldn’t have the Abbey, anyhow, you know,” said Lady Barnstaple.
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you jabbering with Barnstaple and Cecil not long since about the Abbey and its traditions, but either they hadn’t told you or you hadn’t thought it worth remembering—that there is a curse on all Abbey lands and that it has worked itself out in this family with beautiful regularity.”
“I never heard of any curse.”
“Well, the priests, or monks, or whatever they were, cursed the Abbey lands when they were turned out. And this is the way the curse works.” She paused a moment longer with an evident sense of the dramatic. “They never descend in the direct line,” she added with all possible emphasis.
“I am too American for superstition,” but her voice had lost its vigour.
“That hasn’t very much to do with it. I’m merely mentioning facts. I haven’t gone into other Abbey family histories very extensively, but I know this one. Never, not in a single instance, has Maundrell Abbey descended from father to son.”
Lee looked away from her for the first time. Her eyes blazed no longer; they looked like cold blue ashes.
“It is time to break the rule,” she said.
“The rule’s not going to be broken. Either the Abbey will go to a stranger, or Cecil will die before Barnstaple is laid out in the crypt——”
Lee rose. “It is an interesting superstition, but it will have to wait,” she said. “I am going now to speak to Mr. Pix—unless you will do it yourself.”
“I’ll do it myself if you’ll be kind enough to mind your business that far.”
“Then I shall go and tell Lord Barnstaple that you have consented——”
“Ah! He sent you, did he? I might have known it.”
Lee bit her lip. “I am sorry—but it doesn’t matter. If to-day is a sample of your usual performances, you can’t expect him to court interviews with you.”
“Oh, he’s afraid of me. I could make any man afraid of me, thank Heaven!”