CHAPTER X
ON June twenty-eighth Parliament was prorogued for the elections, and Cecil and Lee went to Yorkshire at once.
Lord Maundrell made a number of speeches, made himself agreeable to many men whom he would have preferred to kick, and received his nomination. The contest was bitter and exciting, and Lee designated her husband during this period, for want of a better term, as “less English” than she had yet known him. There were times when he let her see just how perturbed and excited he was, carefully as he secluded his inner mind from others. Lee, in the little stone villages, that looked as if they might have been built by the heirs of the cave-dwellers, played the part made familiar to her by the novel and the stage, and, for the life of her, could not take herself seriously. Her difficulty was increased by the fact that she could not understand two words in ten of the Yorkshire dialect. The villagers understood her as little, but there was no doubt that her uncommon beauty and her gracious and magnetic manner duly impressed them.
Cecil was returned, but his party was defeated; and he convinced Lee that without her his melancholy would have lasted fully a month.
There were still two weeks before the twelfth of August, and they took a run over to Normandy. After their return, life until December was precisely what it had been the year before. The same people, almost without exception, came in four instalments to the Abbey for the six weeks which followed the opening of the grouse season, and it seemed to Lee that they talked about precisely the same things. The men spent the day on the moors, and at dinner talked when they felt like talking at all, of the bags which had been made, the condition of the birds and the moor, and the weather prospects, occasionally indulging in reminiscences of other years. The women played tennis and golf, rode or drove, or sat about the Abbey. After dinner the men roused, and permitted themselves to be flirted with, either in historic boudoirs or across the billiard tables, and there were many who played high and late. Cecil and Lee usually started on their long walk to the tower about midnight after a long and fatiguing day.
When Emmy’s guests had gone, Lee went out with Lord Barnstaple, her husband, and half a dozen other enthusiasts, and persuaded herself that sport was really absorbing whether one had been brought up to it or not. It was certainly preferable to wandering all day long by oneself over an immense and echoing Abbey, or driving to neighbouring estates, and taking tea with women who rarely went up to London.
When the hunting season came, although the novelty of riding hard after a yelping pack with some twenty men in beautiful pink coats, or even of dancing with the latter at hunt balls, was no longer a partof her pleasure, she felt that the chase would wear when other things had palled, although she would have been glad to return to the Abbey for December. They visited, however, and they hunted, and they shot; they graced farmers’ balls and hunt races with their presence, and they even attended a great magic-lantern show; only returning to the Abbey for a few days at Christmas. Lord Barnstaple went to Paris, and the young people were alone. It was a blessed interval of rest, during which Lee exacted from Cecil a solemn promise that he would not mention sport, adding hastily that she adored it, but was horribly jealous, and did not want him to think of a thing but herself for an entire week. And to his credit it must be said that he seemed to find no difficulty in humouring her.
In January they went to Paris for a fortnight, as Lee’s wardrobe needed replenishing, and in February Cecil’s parliamentary duties began, and they settled down in London when it was at its dreariest and ugliest, and the rest of England was moist but beautiful. Lee was alone now, for the greater part of the week, from three in the afternoon until midnight or the small hours of the morning, although she frequently went to the Ladies’ Gallery of the House and brought Cecil back to dinner; or took tea with him on the Terrace, which she thought very interesting. There was always—for a reasonable time—at least one distinguished man to be pointed out, and she liked to conjure up the days when the Thames was gay with the barges of sovereigns and their courtiers, instead of mildly picturesque with penny boats andqueer-looking water vehicles for which Cecil had no name.
When the young member was not too busy they still rode or walked in the morning, and attended the play or the opera at night. Occasionally they went to a dinner or a party, and as Emmy’s entertaining this year took the form of morning concerts, with divas and tenors to beckon the fickle world, Cecil made a martyr of himself upon these occasions as gracefully as he could.
On the whole, Lee, although she left a good many cards and received on Tuesdays, saw less of Society than during the preceding season, and learned of its doings and of what faint interest it still felt in her from Lord Barnstaple and Mary Gifford, who came frequently to luncheon or tea. However, she assured herself that after the late hours of the autumn and early winter she was glad to get her beauty sleep again, and went to bed at ten o’clock.
When there was an important debate on in the House she always attended, and more than once came home with Cecil at two in the morning. Such speeches as she did not hear she read next morning, as well as the comments thereon in no less than six different newspapers; and she frequently assured herself that her political education was comparable with that of any Englishwoman born. Her enthusiasm undoubtedly had its reward, for not only was Cecil pleased and grateful, but when they attended dinners of more or less political significance she invariably incited her partner to speech, no matter how silent Heaven had made him. One, and he wasfamous and stout, and had buried conversation with other follies of his past, surprised himself by informing her that she could talk politics with her eyes more eloquently than any woman in England with all the resources of a large vocabulary and all the ambition inspired by the heroines of Disraeli.
Lord Barnstaple laughed when she related this anecdote.
“Oh, you will be wanting asalonnext,” he said. “It is quite natural you should picture statesmen crowding your rooms—I am making no reflection on the size of your house—and whispering their secrets in your pretty little ear—or seeing themselves upside down in your eloquent eyes.”
Lee coloured and lifted her chin in a manner which even a father-in-law must find charming. “I could have one if I liked—and that quite satisfies me, thank you.”
“I’m sorry you can’t go out more, though,” he said tentatively. “You are young and admired, and of course you like what women call pleasure.”
“I don’t care a rap about it,” she said with emphasis. “I am sure one hard London season would bore me to death.”
“Quite so. Quite so. It’s just a beastly grind, nothing more. You’re really far better off in the way you have chosen. I am glad to see you so happy. Cecil is certainly a lucky dog.”
“You gave me some good advice that day.” She smiled brilliantly into his watchful eyes.
“Oh, you were quite clever enough to have arrived at the same conclusions without my help. Of courseif you had wanted a flashing career of your own, or had been a silly woman, greedy for admiration and intrigue, it would have been a different matter—a terribly different matter for Cecil. But you wanted happiness, and there is only one way to get it.”