We sat down.
"Now begin, Comtesse: "Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I came from--where?""
"Do you really want to hear the family history?" I asked.
"Yes."
I told him an outline of things and how grandmamma and I had lived at the cottage, and of all her wise sayings, and about the Marquis and Roy and Hephzibah, and the simple things of my long-ago past.
It seemed as if I was speaking of some other person, so changed has all my outlook on life and things become since I went to Paris with Augustus.
"And now we come to the day we met in the lane," he said. "You were not even engaged then, were you?"
"Oh no! Grandmamma had never had a fainting-fit; she would have found the idea too dreadful at that time." I stopped suddenly, realizing what I had said. I could not tell him how and why I had married Augustus; he must think what he pleased.
He evidently thought a good deal, by the look in his eyes. I wish--I wish when he looks it did not make my heart beat so; it is foolish and uncomfortable.
"What a fool I was not to come with the automobile the night before your wedding and carry you off to Gretna Green," he said, in a voice that might have been mocking or serious, I could not tell which.
"Tell me, Comtesse, if I had tapped at your window, would you have looked out and come with me?"
"There was a bad thunder-storm, if I recollect. We should have got wet," I laughed, in a hollow way. He could not know how he was hurting me; he should not see, at all events.
"You would have been very dear to take to Gretna Green," he continued.
"I should have loved to watch your wise, sweet eyes changing all expressions as morning dawned and you found yourself away from them all--away from Augustus."
I did not answer. I drew hieroglyphics with the point of the mauve parasol in the soft moss beneath our feet.
"Why don"t you speak, Comtesse?"
"There is nothing to say--I am married--and you did not tap at the window--and let us go back to the house."
IV
The last evening at Harley is one of the things I shall not want to recall. Augustus got drunk--yes, it is almost too dreadful to write even. I had not realized up to this that gentlemen (of course I do not mean that word literally, as applied to Augustus, but I mean people with money and a respectable position)--I never realized that they got drunk. I thought it was only common men in the street.
It struck me he was making a great noise at dinner, but as he was sitting on the same side of the table as I was I could not see. When the men joined us afterwards it came upon me as a thunder-clap. His face was a deep heliotrope, and he walked unsteadily--not really lurching about, but rather as if the furniture was in the way.
One or two of the men seemed very much amused, especially when he went and pushed himself into the sofa where Lady Grenellen was sitting and threw his arm along the back behind her head. I felt frozen. I could not have risen from my chair for a few moments. She, however, did not seem to mind at all; she merely laughed continuously behind her fan, the men helping her to ridicule Augustus.
For me it was an hour of deep humiliation. It required all my self-control to go on talking to Babykins as if nothing had happened.
The Duke came over and joined us. He drew a low chair and sat down so that I could not see the hilarious sofa-party.
I have not the least idea what he said or what any of us said. The guffaws of laughter in Augustus"s thick voice was all I was conscious of.
Sir Antony Thornhirst, who had stopped to speak to Lady Tilchester by the billiard-room door, now came over to us. He stood by me for a moment, then crossed to Lady Grenellen.
"They are wanting you to play bridge in the blue drawing-room," he said.
She rose quite reluctantly, still overcome with mirth. Augustus tried to get up, too, but stumbled back into the sofa.
Then, with infinite tact, my kinsman attracted his attention, said some thrilling thing about the war, and, as Lady Grenellen moved off and Augustus made another ineffectual attempt to rise and follow her, Sir Antony sat down in her vacant place and for half an hour conversed with my husband. Oh, I force myself to write the words "my husband."
It is to keep the hideous fact in remembrance, otherwise I might let myself express aloud the loathing and contempt I feel for him.
Sir Antony had never before taken the least notice of him beyond the most casual politeness, and now, from the sc.r.a.ps of conversation that my preternaturally sharpened ears could catch, he seemed to be trying his best to interest and retain Augustus beside him. Gradually the whole company dispersed into the different drawing-rooms as usual, and I followed the rest to look at the bridge.
As I was pa.s.sing the sofa, where the two men were sitting, Augustus seized hold of my dress.
"Don"t look so d.a.m.ned haughty, little woman," he hiccoughed. "Er--I"m all right--give me a kiss--"
"As I was going to tell you," interrupted Sir Antony, "I heard for a fact that the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry that have escaped so long are going to volunteer to go out, after all."
Augustus dropped my dress. His face got paler. This information seemed to sober him for an instant, and in that blessed interval I got away and into the blue drawing-room. Lady Tilchester was not playing bridge, and she sat down in the window-seat beside me. It was a lovely night, and the windows were wide open.
She is the most delightful companion. I am beginning to know her a little and to realize how much there is to know.
To-night she was more than usually fascinating. It seemed as if she wished to make me forget everything but the pleasure in our conversation. She has a vast knowledge of books, and has even read all the French cla.s.sics that grandmamma loved. We talked of many things, and, among them, gardens. She told me that I must make a new garden at Ledstone, and I would find it an immense interest; and she spoke so kindly of Mrs. Gurrage, and said how charitable she was and good-hearted, and then delicately, and as if it had no bearing upon the Gurrage case, hinted that in these days money was the only thing needed to make an agreeable society for one"s self, and that in the future I must have plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt.
Insensibly my heart became lightened.
She talked to me of grandmamma, too, and drew me into telling her things about our past. She was interested in grandmamma"s strange bringing-up of me, so different, she said, to the English girls of the present day.
"And is it that, I wonder, which has turned you into almost as great a cynic as Antony Thornhirst? He is the greatest I know."
"But can one be a cynic if one has so kind a heart?" I asked.
She looked at me quickly with a strange look.
"How have you discovered that so soon? Most people would not credit him with having any heart at all," she said. "You know with all his immense prestige and popularity people are a little afraid of him. I think one would sum up the impression of Antony as a man who never in all his life has been, or will be, called "Tony.""
Her voice was retrospecting.
"You have known him very long?" I questioned.
"Ever since I married, fourteen years ago. I remember I saw him first at my wedding. He and Tilchester had, of course, been old friends, always living so near each other. We are exactly the same age--thirty-four, both of us. Growing old, you see!" She laughed softly, then she continued:
"Antony was never like other men exactly. He is original, and extraordinarily well read--only casually one would never guess it. He wastes his life rather, though. I wish he would go into Parliament. He has a habit of rushing off on long travels. Some years ago he went off suddenly and was away for ages and ages--about five years, I think.
Then he stayed at Dane Mount for a while, and then, when the war first began, he went out there, and has only been home a year."
"He never speaks of himself nor what he does, I notice."
"No; that is just his charm. I should like you to see Dane Mount. It is far nicer than this, and he has wonderful taste. It is the most comfortable house I know. He has delightful parties there when the shooting begins."
"It would interest me to see it, because grandpapa came from there," I said.